with a combined value of more than $1 billion, it said at the Farnborough Airshow on Wednesday.
Strata Manufacturing, owned by Abu Dhabi investment firm Mubadala, said it would become a source for the Airbus A320 Horizontal Tail Plane (HTP) and A350-900 Inboard Flaps (IBF).
(Editing by Mark Potter)
Juba (AFP) - South Sudan President Salva Kiir on Wednesday said he was granting an amnesty to ex-rebels loyal to his longtime rival, Riek Machar, who battled government troops in four days of fierce fighting in the capital Juba.
As a shaky ceasefire appeared to be holding for the second day, Kiir said in a statement he was "granting (an) amnesty to forces who took up arms against the transitional government of national unity from the 8th to the 10th of July, with effect from July 13."
Kigali (AFP) - Events in South Sudan, where hundreds died in four days of fierce fighting between forces loyal to the country's rival leaders, are "totally unacceptable", African Union Commission president Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma said Wednesday.
"What is happening again in South Sudan is totally unacceptable," she said in Rwanda's capital Kigali ahead of an AU summit due to begin Sunday.
"Governments and leadership are there to protect the vulnerable, to serve the people, not to prey on them and be the cause of their suffering," Dlamini-Zuma said.
"Hardly two months after the formation of this government of national unity, the belligerents are back in the trenches and the people of South Sudan, instead of celebrating five years of independence, once again are barricaded in their homes or must flee like sheep before the wolves," she said.
This weekend's summit will be overshadowed by the ongoing conflict in South Sudan and the protracted political crisis in Burundi, both of which have made the AU appear weak and ineffectual.
It's been 15 months since Courtney Phillips assumed the role of CEO of the state's largest agency: the Department of Health and Human Services.
And she has more or less busted the conventions of previous CEOs and leaders in how she operates and in what more than 5,700 workers might have expected from the top manager.
"This is a first," said Kathie Osterman, communications administrator and long-time HHS employee. "Courtney has made it a goal to get out and about to meet with and hear directly from employees."
Last year, she attended 12 such meetings to which more than 2,800 employees were invited from offices stretching from Southeast Nebraska to Scottsbluff.
This year, she started a similar tour in June and will reach 24 locations all over the state.
And she's taking Gov. Pete Ricketts along. The two have already visited Gering and Scottsbluff. And Wednesday, they held a town hall meeting with about 90 employees in the Lincoln South office.
"The feedback has been great on the things we've done so far," Ricketts said. "They also appreciate the fact that we're communicating out. This is true of a lot of state offices ... the feedback I get is, 'We've never seen a governor here.'"
It's part of a change in culture he and his agencies are working on, he said.
"It's called management by walking around," he said. "Getting out, seeing people and listening to them."
Jasna Tubanovic, a child and family services specialist, attended the Lincoln meeting. Earlier this year, Phillips shadowed her on the job, going with her to a family meeting in Seward.
Tubanovic's job includes case management for families, working with the courts and getting permanent placements for children. She's been with the department four years.
Phillips listened, and also gave feedback in the meeting, and Tubanovic said it was nice to get her perspective.
On Wednesday, she said, Ricketts and Phillips talked about the department's business plan, which details HHS' priority initiatives for the next year, and they answered questions.
"It was very rewarding to actually meet the people that make rules and policies ... for us," she said.
Tubanovic asked the first question of the morning: Is there a way to pass on to workers the good comments Phillips and Ricketts say they hear about those in the trenches?
It would help office workers stay positive, she said.
The worker said Phillips has been friendly and open to getting emails from staff.
"That's been a really nice change for all of our staff," she said.
Baghdad (AFP) - A suicide bomber detonated an explosives-rigged vehicle at a checkpoint near Baghdad on Wednesday, killing at least four people, officials said, an attack claimed by the Islamic State group.
The bombing at a checkpoint leading to the Husseiniyah area, northeast of the capital, also wounded 21 people, the officials said.
IS issued a statement saying an Iraqi carried out a suicide bombing targeting a checkpoint, but gave the location of the attack as Shaab, an area adjoining Husseiniyah.
The blast is the latest in a series of deadly attacks in and around Baghdad, including a bombing in a crowded shopping district on July 3 that killed 292 people, one of the deadliest ever to hit Iraq.
A few days later, jihadists attacked a Shiite shrine in Balad, north of Baghdad, killing 40 people, and on Tuesday, a suicide bomber struck a market near the capital, killing at least seven people.
IS overran large areas north and west of Baghdad in 2014, but has since lost significant ground to Iraqi forces backed by US-led air strikes, training and other assistance.
The Sunni extremist group has responded to the battlefield setbacks by striking civilians, particularly Shiites, and experts have warned there may be more bombings as the jihadists continue to lose ground.
By Tim McLaughlin
BOSTON, July 13 (Reuters) - Participants in SunEdison Inc's $155 million retirement plan suffered heavy losses on their investments in company stock last year in the months before the renewable power plant developer landed in bankruptcy.
The retirement savings plan on Wednesday disclosed $10.3 million in losses from investments in 2015. Nearly all of that came from investments in SunEdison stock, according to the retirement plan's annual report.
SunEdison filed for bankruptcy in April after an aggressive growth plan proved unsuccessful. Last month, SunEdison received final bankruptcy court approval of debtor-in-possession (DIP) financing in the form of new capital totaling up to $300 million.
At the start of 2015, about $17 million, or 13 percent of the retirement plan's $133.1 million in total investments, was held in SunEdison stock, according to the annual report.
SunEdison shares plunged 75 percent in 2015 as the company signaled troubles from its heavy debt load. The stock traded at 14 cents a share on Wednesday.
By the end of 2015, the plan had $155.5 million in net assets available for benefits, but only $5 million of that was in SunEdison stock.
The plan's assets increased from the previous year, largely from new contributions from SunEdison and participants.
In March of this year, SunEdison delivered a blackout notice that prevented retirement plan participants from investing their contributions in the SunEdison stock fund. The notice also prevented them from transferring any amount from other investment options, such as mutual funds, into company stock, according to the annual report.
(Reporting by Tim McLaughlin; Editing by Will Dunham)
Taiwan said on Wednesday that it was ramping up defence training and guidelines after a missile was accidentally launched towards China, killing one person and triggering a stern response from Beijing.
The Hsiung-feng III (Brave Wind) missile flew about 75 kilometres (45 miles) before hitting a trawler earlier this month in waters off Penghu, a Taiwanese-administered island group in the Taiwan Strait. It killed the boat's skipper and injured three crew on board.
The accident came at a time of deteriorating ties between the island and China, which insists self-ruling Taiwan is part of its territory even though the two sides split in 1949 after a civil war. It has not ruled out using force to bring about reunification.
The navy said the staff sergeant who launched the missile had mistakenly chosen "war mode" and "missile loading mode" during the practice drill.
"The incident caused a death and endangered ties with the mainland," Taiwan Defence Minister Feng Shih-kuan said in a statement posted Wednesday on social media.
"It also raised international concerns and upset the morale and honour of the military."
Feng said all units in charge of "precision weapons" must complete the new training by August 15.
The measures also call for improved operating guidelines to be implemented and a disciplinary code for relevant units.
Zhang Zhihjun, the head of China's Taiwan Affairs Office in Beijing, issued a warning in response to the accidental launch.
"At a time when the mainland repeatedly stressed it wants to sustain peaceful development of cross-strait ties...I felt the influence from the event could be very severe," he said.
Beijing mistrusts President Tsai Ing-Wen, whose Democratic Progressive Party replaced the China-friendly Kuomintang (KMT) party in government at the start of the year, and has warned her against any attempt at a breakaway.
By Faith Hung TAIPEI (Reuters) - Taiwan investigators suspect two Russian nationals hacked into a major domestic bank's ATMs last weekend, using malware to withdraw more than $2 million from dozens of machines in the country's first recorded case of its kind. Combining cybercrime with daylight robbery after a typhoon battered greater Taipei, the suspects may have used a cellphone to trigger 41 First Bank ATMs to dispense fat wads of bills, investigators said on Wednesday. In each case, the still-at-large suspects took the money and left quickly, filmed on close-circuit TV cameras. As Taiwan officials continue to piece together how the crime was committed, the theft shows growing boldness in attacks on ATMs in Asia. In May, a gang stole $13 million from Japanese ATMs in a three-hour, 14,000 withdrawal spree. Since discovering the theft on Monday, a range of Taiwan's biggest state-run banks have frozen withdrawals from nearly 1,000 ATMs of the kind used in the heist, supplied by Germany's Wincor Nixdorf. About 4 percent of Taiwan's national ATM network of 27,200 machines is affected, leaving customers obliged to use other machines. The Ministry of Justice's Investigation Bureau on Wednesday said two Russian suspects have been identified, but declined to disclose their names. It said it believed the pair left Taiwan early on Monday, and was still investigating whether a possible third one might have been involved. "So far we think it could have been done remotely, such as via a cellphone, laptop or hacked First Bank staff PC," said Lin Cheng-hsien, a spokesperson for the bureau. First Bank reported T$70 million ($2.2 million) was stolen from its ATMs in hits that investigators said took place at various times during both daytime and nightfall. Investigators have identified three different malware programmes that were used to trigger withdrawals. "After testing the malware, we confirmed hacked ATMs will dispense cash immediately according to the malware," the bureau said in a statement. The raid on Wincor machines comes as its agreed 1.7 billion euro ($1.88 billion) acquisition by U.S. peer Diebold moves closer to its expected closure this summer, creating a global leader in ATMs with a market share of about 35 percent. Wincor said it had been informed about concerted attacks on its ATMs in Taiwan. "Attacks follow a similar pattern, irrespective of their make or brand, and we as well as the banks are aware of them," a Wincor official in Germany told Reuters by email. "The details of the attack are being examined by the police, banks as well as experts from Wincor Nixdorf. To support the local teams we have sent security experts." Officials of Taiwan's banking regulator, the Banking Bureau, declined to comment on the details of the incident, beyond saying First Bank will have to take the loss. It said, however, First Bank's users will not be affected and it will ask local banks to establish monitoring system of their ATMs over the next month. At least four major state-run financial institutions, including First Bank, Chang Hwa Bank, Taiwan Cooperative Bank and Chunghwa Post Co., suspended cash withdrawals service on their ATMs as a precaution. They didn't say when the service would be restored, nor whether the suspension might affect their financial performance. ($1 = 0.9055 euros) (Additional reporting by J.R. Wu in TAIPEI and Anneli Palmen in DUESSELDORF; Editing by Kenneth Maxwell)
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Tesla (TSLA) The electric carmaker has added a cheaper version of its Model X crossover. The new Tesla Model X 60D will start at $74,000, which is $9,000 cheaper than the other model.
Valeant (VRX) Sequoia Fund, once the largest shareholder in Valeant, has exited that position. In a letter the shareholders, the fund noted that it was no longer holding a position in the drug maker as of mid-June.
Pandora (P) Piper Jaffray upgraded the music-streaming service to overweight and raised its price target to $18. Piper Jaffray noted that the upcoming release of its new on-demand product could attract more than 9 million subscribers.
McDonalds (MCD) The Financial Times is reporting that McDonalds is struggling to attract bidders for the sales of its China and Hong Kong franchises.
Fiat Chrysler (FCAU) The automaker is giving up to $1,500 in rewards to hackers that can detect bugs in its vehicle software. The offer comes about a year after cyber security researchers used a wireless connection to take control of a Jeep Cherokees engine.
American Airlines (AA) The airline reported its revenue passenger miles rose 2.2% in June while its capacity climbed 2.8%. The company also announced it expects Q2 passenger revenue per available seat mile to drop about 6% to 7%.
Tesla-P85D.jpg
Tesla
A Tesla Model X crashed while in autopilot mode early Saturday morning when the car swerved off a narrow Montana road. This is the third serious collision related to Teslas self-driving feature. Fortunately, neither the driver who goes only by the last name Pang nor his passenger were injured in the accident.
Pang told CNN Money that he did not receive a warning from his car that he was in danger or needed to act. Tesla contradicted this in a statement of their own, in which they claim, As road conditions became increasingly uncertain, the vehicle again alerted the driver to put his hands on the wheel. He did not do so and shortly thereafter the vehicle collided with a post on the edge of the roadway.
The first of three serious autopilot accidents was a fatal crash in Florida that took place this May. Federal safety agencies including the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board are currently investigating that crash. A second serious yet non-fatal collision took place last week.
Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk told the Wall Street Journal he has no plans to disable Teslas autopilot feature, and would instead be focusing on consumer education. A lot of people dont understand what it is and how you turn it on, he said.
(Via CNN Money & Wall Street Journal)
By Caroline Humer and Tova Cohen
NEW YORK/TEL AVIV (Reuters) - Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd (TEVA.TA) said on Wednesday it expected its $40 billion deal to buy Allergan Plc's (AGN.N) generics business to close "at any time," even as the companies extended the deadline for completing the transaction to October to allow more time for the U.S. antitrust review.
The deal was announced more than a year ago and had been expected to wrap up last month, but it has taken longer as the companies have arranged sales of more drugs than anticipated to clear the antitrust regulators.
"We expect the closing of the ... generics deal at any time now," Teva Chief Executive Officer Erez Vigodman said during a conference call with analysts to discuss the Israeli drugmaker's financial outlook.
The deal closing is contingent on clearance from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the antitrust regulator reviewing the deal, which the companies said they expect at any time. After it clears that hurdle, it will take another 10 days to close on the sale, Vigodman said.
A spokeswoman for the FTC declined to comment.
Teva shares (TEVA.N) rose 2.95 percent to $54.01 in late morning trading in New York, and Allergan gained 1.96 percent to $244.42.
Allergan also said in a regulatory filing earlier on Wednesday that the companies had amended their sale agreement to extend the deadline by three months into late October. As the review has continued into July, it has raised the likelihood of the companies missing the deadline later this month.
As recently as May, Allergan CEO Brent Saunders had said he expected the deal to close within weeks.
But in an emailed statement on Wednesday, the company backed Teva's view of the timing on the closing and an Allergan spokesman said that approval was "imminent."
The filing said Allergan is now planning to exclude two products, Actonel and Carafate, from the sale.
Teva has also agreed to sell some groups of drugs to third parties as it tries to get clearance from the FTC. In June, it announced a $652 million sale to Australia's Mayne Pharma Group Ltd (MYX.AX).
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During the conference call on Wednesday, Teva said it expects to sell about $2.9 billion in assets in 2016. Teva also said that it expected the Allergan generics business, which Allergan put up for sale after it merged with Actavis, to contribute $1.9 billion to net income in 2017.
Teva gave an outlook that forecast 2016 revenue of $22 billion to $22.5 billion and adjusted earnings of $5.20 to $5.40 per share. It provided an outlook through 2019 that included the new assets.
(Additional reporting by Steven Scheer in Jerusalem and Diane Bartz in Washington; editing by Lisa Von Ahn and G Crosse)
BANGKOK, July 13 (Reuters) - PTT Pcl, Thailand's top energy firm, plans to invest more in neighbouring Malaysia including cooperation in a liquefied natural gas (LNG) project, Chief Financial Officer Wirat Uanarumit said on Wednesday.
State-controlled PTT is studying the possibility of joint investments in several projects, Wirat said but declined to give further details.
PTT has been in talks with several LNG suppliers to secure long-term energy supplies as Thailand uses natural gas for almost 70 percent of its power generation.
PTT already has a joint venture, Trans Thai-Malaysia (Thailand) Ltd, with Malaysia's Petronas to overlook the gas pipeline and gas separation plant projects since 2000.
In June, PTT cut its 2016 investment budget by 15 percent to 43.31 billion baht ($1.23 billion), which is part of its five-year plan to spend 297 billion baht during 2016-2020.
Wirat said the investment cut was mainly due to delay in the government's infrastructure investments, while PTT was still looking for opportunities to buy more oil and gas assets after a decline in global oil prices.
The company is also considering to buy back its dollar-denominated debt to manage its excess liquidity and reduce financial costs, the CFO said.
PTT group has cash of about 300 billion baht ($8.53 billion) and debt of about 600 billion baht, of which 30 percent is denominated in foreign currencies, Wirat told reporters on the sidelines of a seminar.
($1 = 35.2000 baht) (Reporting by Manunphattr Dhanananphorn and Khettiya Jittapong; Editing by Gopakumar Warrier)
In her first speech as Britains new prime minister, Theresa May spoke to her countrys working-class families and pledged to build a better Britain for them.
As we leave the European Union, we will forge a bold new positive role for ourselves in the world and we will make Britain a country that works not for a privileged few but for every one of us, she said.
Maybe she can do that, but it will be a daunting task in a post-Brexit economy and a country that is almost split in half and might splinter even further if Scotland decides to secede from the U.K. in order to remain in the EU.
May has already declared that she will push forward with Brexit, despite a backlash of concerns from members of parliament, British citizens and world leaders.
Related: The Upside of Brexit 9 Ways You Can Save Money
Just how she proposes to do it remains unclear, and shell need to come up with concrete, and potentially divisive, details to go with the soothing bromides. The political risks are high: Already, there have been discussions between Labour and Tory MPs about establishing a new faction.
There are rumblings of the pro-Remain factions of both of the major parties splitting off and forming a new pro-EU party of the center, said Christian Jensen, assistant professor of political science at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Also, the Liberal Democrats and Scottish National Party are both unified behind unambiguously pro-EU positions.
Those divisions leave May in a politically precarious position. As Margaret Thatcher learned in 1990, when party unity and loyalty arent there, even a strong leader like Thatcher can find the rug pulled out from under her very quickly, Jensen said. The problem for May is that her party is deeply divided by the Brexit issue.
British legal scholars continue to debate whether the prime minister has the legal authority to trigger Article 50, the portion of the Lisbon treaty on European union that covers countries breaking away.
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The very fact there's ongoing debate suggests May wants to move quickly, said Jensen. Theres no blueprint for her to follow, though. There doesnt seem to be a plan for how to manage Brexit or what negotiating positions to start from, Jensen said. Shell need to form a plan quickly and be seen to have a plan.
The public relations aspect of that is key to reassuring both the British people and global markets. As Jensen said: A secret plan to manage Brexit wont cut it.
Top Reads from The Fiscal Times:
TEGUCIGALPA (Reuters) - Honduran police have arrested three men for the murder of Lesbia Urquia, an environmental activist who fought against hydroelectric and mining projects on indigenous lands in the Central American country, authorities said on Wednesday. Urquia, a colleague of slain Honduran activist Berta Caceres, was found dead with wounds to her head a week ago in the town of Marcala, 62 miles (100 km) west of Tegucigalpa. "Three men suspected of the crime have been arrested, including a brother-in-law of the deceased," said Jorge Galindo, a spokesman for the attorney general's office. The brother-in-law, Manuel Lopez, had threatened to kill Urquia, 49, over a family dispute involving property and was suspected of hiring the other two men to carry out the crime, Galindo said. It was not immediately clear if there was a lawyer who could speak on Lopez's behalf. The Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH), where Urquia had worked since 2009, insisted that her death was linked to powerful mining companies. Caceres, another activist and indigenous leader of the COPINH, was murdered in March. Authorities have arrested five people for the murder of Caceres, including an employee from a company behind a hydroelectric dam project she helped block. The company said it had no connection to Caceres' murder. "Like the case of Berta Caceres, authorities said (Urquia's murder) had first been because of a robbery and then attributed it to a crime of passion," COPINH leader Lilian Martinez said. Honduras has one of the highest murder rates in the world. (Reporting by Gustavo Palencia; Writing by Natalie Schachar; Editing by Tom Brown)
The price of steel has been on the rise in 2016 after it fell to multi-year lows in 2015 owing to cheap imports from countries like China and Korea. The lone ETF dedicated to steel stocks - VanEck Vectors Steel ETF SLX has gained a whopping 57.5% in the year-to-date period. In fact, the fund has attracted inflows of $37.43 million during this period as per ETF.com.
So lets examine in detail the factors that are driving the steel fund and whether the rally is likely to continue (read: Top ETFs of the Best Sectors This Year).
Reasons for the Rise
One of the primary driving forces behind the surge has been the implementation of tariffs on steel imports in the U.S. in order to protect domestic companies from the negative impact of Chinese competitors flooding the market with cheap supply.
Meanwhile, Credit Suisse has raised earnings per share estimates for several steel companies including U.S. Steel Corporation and Nucor in order to reflect improved conversion costs and recent mid-quarter updates from the electric arc furnace (EAF) sector.
Apart from that, steel buyers including service centers reduced their inventory levels last year and now have limited avenues to procure steel other than buying steel from domestic steel mills. Additionally, producers of the metal have maintained a supply discipline that led to higher lead times, which are currently supporting spot steel prices.
Demand-supply matrix for the industry is also looking good. As per World Steel Association, world crude steel production fell 0.1% in the month of May compared with the prior year period.
For those buying into this optimism, investors should focus on the only pure play ETF targeting the steel industry.
Focus on SLX
The fund provides exposure to companies involved in the steel sector by tracking the NYSE Arca Steel Index. It holds 27 securities in its basket. Out of these, Rio Tinto takes the top spot with 13.6% share followed by Vale SA with 10.8% share. The rest of the stocks in the portfolio have less than 7% weight individually. The product has diverse exposure across market spectrums with 33% in small caps, 26% in large caps and the rest in mid caps (see all Materials ETFs here).
In terms of country allocation, U.S. dominates the funds returns at 38%, followed by Brazil (20.4%) and United Kingdom (13.6%). The ETF has amassed $78.3 million in its asset base while trading in lower volume of roughly 68,000 shares a day on average. The product charges 55 bps in fees and expenses from investors and has gained 11.8% in the last one week (as of June 12, 2016) (read: Best New ETFs for Your Portfolio).
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Last summer, Toys R Us shuttered the toy retailers famed FAO Schwarz store. Less than half a year later, it closed the iconic Toys R Us flagship location in Times Square. Theres a simple reason: They were money losers.
If the definition of a flagship store is you are going to lose a lot of money, Im not big on flagship stores, said Toys R Us Chief Executive David Brandon during this years Fortune Brainstorm TECH conference. He explained that traditional flagship stores--massive behemoth locations with several floors full of inventory--cant always afford to be profitable these days. At least not in the toy industry, where average orders are too small and margins are too thin to make money.
Theres a reason why Toys R Us needs to be purposeful about how it invests these days. It operates in the very competitive $19.4 billion U.S. toy market where , duke it out in the brick-and-mortar side of the business. Add into the mix, and youve got an even more competitive e-commerce rivalry. Brandon says Toys R Us generates about $1.4 billion in annual revenue from the website today, but he admits that business should be double or triple that size.
That explains why Brandon finds himself at a tech conference. Toys R Us is a specialty retailer that generates billions by selling dolls, toy cars, action figures and bikes. But it needs to think more digitally than ever before it if wants to stay competitive, especially as a specialty retailer with such a narrow focus.
Back to the example of the toy market in New York City, where the company operates just a single store now--a Babies R Us store in Union Square. Brandon hinted the main Toys R Us brand could return to the island of Manhattan, though he admits it wont look like it did in the past. He says locations will likely be smaller, perhaps between 8,000 to 12,000 square feet, an urban model that is similar to what Toys R Us operates in China. Those potential city locations would have a leaner inventory, but also would be commercially feasible.
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Why would Toys R Us want to think about building urban stores when consumers are spending more and more money online? Brandon explained that theres a synergy between the two. They work together, he said, adding online sales are stronger when there is a physical store in the neighborhood. They also are a distribution center, as Toys R Us can ship from those retail locations.
Another point of differentiation, Brandon hopes, is the fact that Toys R Us is the only national chain left that just focuses on selling toys. We are a specialty retailer and we need to really compete on that, he argues.
That has been a challenge of late. While toy industry sales have increased of late, bolstered by hot properties based on hit films like Star Wars and Frozen, Toys R Us hasnt always capitalized on the bullish market. Last year, the industrys sales jumped 6.7%, but Toys R Us fiscal-year sales slipped 0.6% at existing locations. Results improved at the beginning of this year, with same-store sales up a slim 0.1% in domestic locations for the first quarter of the year.
See original article on Fortune.com
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A public school board in Virginia, arguing that no one ever thought that separate restrooms for the sexes would be illegal, asked the Supreme Court on Wednesday to delay a court order that it must provide equal access to those facilities for transgender students. The plea is written in technical legal terms, but it seeks to put before the Justices for the first time the heated national controversy over transgender rights.
Lawyers for the Gloucester County School Board said the board will file an appeal on the issue within the next several weeks, but needs prompt action to prevent disruption of school routine when classes begin in early September.
Technically, its request will go first to Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., who handles emergency legal requests from the geographic area (the Fourth Circuit) that includes Virginia. He can decide the request on his own, or share it with his seven colleagues the more common approach these days.
The Fourth Circuit also includes North Carolina the scene of a major clash over gender identity between the Obama administration and the governor and legislature of that state. What the Supreme Court does with the Virginia dispute could affect North Carolina, at least by implication. The federal government is relying on the Virginia case involving Gloucester County schools as it seeks to block a new North Carolina law limiting transgender peoples access to restroom and other private facilities in state buildings.
At the core of the Gloucester County case are two lower court rulings. First is a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit on April 19, upholding the federal governments view that discrimination based on gender identity is illegal under so-called Title IX, a federal law that outlaws bias based on sex in education programs receiving federal funds Second is an order by a federal trial judge in Newport News, Va., on June 23 putting that appeals court decision into effect, and requiring access to the boys restroom at Gloucester Courthouse High School for a 17-year-old student who was assigned female gender at birth but now identifies as a male.
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The student, who will be a senior when classes begin September 6, is identified in court papers only by his initials, G.G. Joining in his challenge to the school boards restrooms policy is his mother, Deirdre Grimm.
In the background of this one case about a single students rights is the rapidly spreading dispute over the Obama administrations energetic effort, especially in the past year, to promote equality for transgender people not only in education, but in the workplace and in other settings.
Although the Supreme Court has ruled repeatedly on cases involving sex discrimination, it has not yet decided an issue directly on the rights of transgender people those assigned one gender identity at birth who later express their identity in the opposite way. Doctors label that medical condition as gender dysphoria.
The controversy over transgender rights has grown in intensity in the year since the Supreme Courts historic decision on the rights of gays and lesbians, granting them an equal right to get married. Some of the same approach to equality that prevailed in that case is now being used to try to advance transgender peoples rights.
One of the reasons that lawyers for the Gloucester County school board expressed optimism that the Supreme Court would act in their favor now is that their case involves the highly technical question of whether courts should defer to the interpretation that federal government agencies give to their own regulations implementing federal law. That is the kind of deference the Fourth Circuit Court applied to the federal policy on transgender rights for students.
Three current members of the court Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Samuel A. Alito, Jr., and Clarence Thomas have recently criticized that practice of accepting agency interpretations, arguing that it amounts to handing over to bureaucrats a task that should be done by the courts. . Justice Thomas commented as recently as in May that this practice is on its last gasp. (The late Justice Antonin Scalia also was a critic of that approach.)
The practice dates back to Supreme Court decisions in 1945 and 1997. In the school boards new filing, it explicitly asked the Justices to overrule the precedents behind that practice.
The Chief Justice is expected to ask for a reply from lawyers for G.G. and his mother before Roberts or the full court acts on the issue.
Lyle Denniston is currently the National Constitution Centers constitutional literacy adviser. Later this summer, Denniston will become our full-time Supreme Court correspondent based in the Washington, D.C. area.
Stranded after his plane suffered mechanical problems, Donald Trump on Wednesday held a succession of private meetings in Indianapolis with those believed to be on his shortlist for running mate.
Trump, along with his adult children, met briefly Wednesday morning with Indiana Gov. Mike Pence and his wife at the governors mansion. Returning to a downtown hotel where he spent the night after a campaign rally Tuesday night, Trump and his family later met with former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. And CNN reported that Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, a close Trump ally, was flying to Indianapolis for a sit-down with the GOP candidate and his family.
A source close to the Trump campaign told Yahoo News that the GOP hopeful also had a Wednesday morning phone call with New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. The governor, who campaigned with Trump on Monday, was in Washington, D.C., where Trump had been expected to travel today before heading to California for a two-day fundraising swing. A Trump spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment.
The series of meetings in Indianas capital came as Trumps decision on his veep pick appears to be imminent. Multiple sources have said Trump expects to appear with his chosen running mate on Friday, though the decision on who will be joining the GOP ticket could be made public sooner.
Donald Trump leaves Indiana Gov. Mike Pences residence in Indianapolis on July 13. (Photo: Michael Conroy/AP)
Arthur Culvahouse, a longtime GOP hand who screened potential nominees for John McCain and Mitt Romney, is leading the VP vetting process for Trump. But the New York real estate mogul has indicated in recent days that his gut will ultimately drive the decision. He is also weighing input from his advisers and family, who, according to sources close to the campaign, are split on which candidate would be a good fit with Trump an insurgent candidate whose unlikely campaign has upended the Republican Party.
Paul Manafort, Trumps campaign chairman and top adviser, is said by sources to be championing Pence, a former Republican congressman and staunch conservative who some suggest could help Trump woo mainstream Republicans wary of his campaign. Manafort has privately expressed concern about whether Christie and Gingrich, two powerful personalities with their own political brands, have the ability to be disciplined team players behind Trump heading into the fall.
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Trumps children, meanwhile, are between Christie and Gingrich, according a Republican familiar with the deliberations. The candidates sons, Eric and Donald, Jr., are said to be leaning towards Christie, a longtime Trump family friend who quickly endorsed Trump after his own failed bid for the presidency ended and who has remained loyal to him in spite of withering criticism from fellow Republicans. Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, who has emerged as one of his father-in-laws closest advisers, are said to like Gingrichs legislative experience and his unwavering support for Israel though they have not formally championed any candidate as of yet, according to the source.
Trump publicly campaigned with Pence on Tuesday night, marking the first time he and the Indiana governor shared a stage. At one point, Trump, who is said by those close to him to be truly undecided about whom to pick as his running mate, poked fun at his indecision. I dont know if hes going to be your governor or vice president, Trump said of Pence at the Indiana rally. Who the hell knows?
By Steve Holland WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican Donald Trump conducted last-minute talks with his top potential picks for his vice presidential running mate on Wednesday, trying to choose among three experienced politicians, each with unique strengths and weaknesses. In Indianapolis, Trump had a breakfast meeting with Indiana Governor Mike Pence, and later sat down for talks with former U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Newt Gingrich. His family met on Tuesday with New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who speaks to Trump on a near-daily basis. In addition, U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions, 69, of Alabama, a fourth potential candidate for the No. 2 spot who has been a close adviser to Trump, was seen going into the Conrad Hotel in Indianapolis, where Trump was. A source close to the campaign said Trump appeared to be leaning toward Pence but that he could always change his mind. "It's not done until it's done," the source said. Trump seemed to be trying to decide between Pence and Gingrich, the source added. Trump is to be formally nominated at the Republican National Convention next week in Cleveland. Traditionally, the vice presidential choice is used to build enthusiasm among party loyalists. Pence, who faces a Friday deadline on whether to have his name on the ballot to seek another term as governor, said he was humbled to be considered for Trump's running mate. "I think he's giving it very careful consideration, and were humbled to be a part of that," Pence told reporters later. "There are a number of other noteworthy Americans that they are considering, and I'm just honored to be on that list." Trump is expected to announce his choice on Friday. Republicans close to the campaign said they believed the New York businessman had narrowed his short list to Pence, Gingrich and Christie. He has campaigned with all three in recent days as he girds for perhaps the most consequential decision of his campaign ahead of the Nov. 8 election. In a sign of how seriously the campaign is considering Pence, Trump was joined at the governor's residence for breakfast by his daughter Ivanka, son-in-law Jared Kushner and sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump. Kushner and Trump's children have played important roles in the campaign. Trump's children met with Christie on Tuesday, a source close to the governor confirmed, describing the meeting as good and saying both parties had an existing relationship and were already friendly. Trump, who wants an experienced politician to join him on the ticket, campaigned with Pence at a rally on Tuesday night in Westfield, Indiana. 'MORE ATTENTION THAN USUAL' The presumptive Republican nominee has a tough choice to make. Pence, a 57-year-old former congressman who has flirted in the past with a presidential run of his own, would be perhaps the safest choice for Trump given the governor's popularity among conservatives and his experience in government. He would also bring Midwestern appeal. But Pence has had a couple of missteps as Indiana's chief executive. A religious freedom law he signed had to be revised because it was seen as discriminating against gays and lesbians, and he had to abandon plans to create a state-run news agency. "Throughout history vice presidential selections seldom make much difference in the election. Because Trump has never held office and people are anxious to see how he would assemble a government, this pick might get more attention than usual," said Republican strategist Charlie Black. "Pence would be a very good pick from the standpoint of having federal and state government experience, and also he has been a card-carrying member of the conservative movement his whole life," Black said. Trump is clearly comfortable with both Gingrich and Christie, a factor that Trump advisers say is important to him. Both Gingrich and Christie have been supportive of Trump throughout much of his bitter feud with establishment Republicans. Gingrich is popular among many Trump advisers because of his grasp of policy and his counsel. He was House speaker when Democrat Bill Clinton was president in the 1990s, and they achieved welfare reform, among other legislative achievements. "Trump has staked his candidacy on revolutionary change in Washington and there is no one being considered who has actually achieved revolutionary change like Newt Gingrich," said Rick Tyler, a former spokesman for Gingrich. "If Trump picks him, Ill know that Trump is serious about reforming Washington." But at age 73, Gingrich could have trouble appealing to younger voters. Trump is 70. Christie, 53, is seen as a kindred spirit of Trump who would be a strong attack dog against Democrat Hillary Clinton, 68. But many conservatives doubt he really is one of them. (Additional reporting by Mohammad Zargham and Ginger Gibson in Washington; Editing by Jonathan Oatis and Peter Cooney)
One of the top contenders to serve as vice president in a potential Donald Trump White House believes that radical Islamists are capable of conquering the continental United States. And he knows what that America will look like.
Im totally convinced that, without a proper sense of urgency, we will be eventually defeated, dominated, and very likely destroyed by Islamic militants, retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn writes in his new book, The Field of Fight, which was released Tuesday.
[T]heres no doubt, he adds, that they are dead set on taking us over and drinking our blood.
Flynn, along with co-author Michael Ledeen, a staunch neoconservative who advocated taking on Iran along with a host of other Middle East regimes after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, says radical Islamists currently in the United States are taking steps toward creating an Islamic state right here at home, by laying the legal and cultural groundwork that will give rise to sharia. That echoes a commonly used and thoroughly debunked conservative talking point.
[W]ed live the way the unfortunate residents of the caliphate or the oppressed citizens of the Islamic Republic of Iran live today, in a totalitarian state under the dictates of the most rigid version of Sharia, he writes.
Its hard to believe these melodramatic assessments come from the keyboard of a recently retired three-star general who ran the Defense Intelligence Agency until late 2014 and, before that, the secretive Joint Special Operations Commands intelligence shops in Afghanistan and Iraq. But they do.
Flynns heated rhetoric and plunge into politics have come as a jolt to those who worked with him in the military and at the Defense Department, where he was known as a sharp innovator who was not afraid to deliver bad news about the state of the war effort or the quality of the intelligence being collected.
He stunned his superiors at the Pentagon in early 2010 by publishing a paper with the Center for a New American Security, a left-leaning national security think tank, criticizing how the U.S. military used intelligence in Afghanistan. At the time, he was serving as the top military intelligence official in Kabul under then-commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal but said he wanted his criticisms and proposed fixes to be seen by those outside the normal chain of command.
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Flynns sterling military record makes him an unlikely figure to join forces with Trump, who has praised Saddam Hussein, disparaged veterans who served in Iraq, and even belittled Americas most famous prisoner of war, Sen. John McCain. While Flynn could be forgiving in his zeal to cut through the red tape as an officer, he was not given to hyperbole when describing intelligence threats. Or for giving Russia the benefit of the doubt in his analyses.
But Flynns career has taken an unexpected turn since being fired by the Obama administration in 2014 after waging and losing a bureaucratic turf war. He signed up as a talking head on RT, formerly known as Russia Today, a Kremlin-funded, English-language news organization that pushes pro-Moscow and pro-Vladimir Putin viewpoints presented as objective news.
Flynn even traveled to Moscow in December to attend a gala celebrating the 10th anniversary of the organization, where he sat at the head table just two seats away from the Russian president, a stunning turn of events for a man who just a year earlier was one of Americas top intelligence officials.
While Flynn has appeared on Moscows English-language television mouthpiece, his former colleagues in the military and the intelligence community including the U.S. militarys top-ranking officer, Gen. Joseph Dunford have described Russia as Americas biggest threat.
Flynn offered no public criticism of Russias role in Syria when interviewed last year by RT, despite Moscows backing of the Damascus regime and its bombing of some U.S.-backed rebels. Weve got to look at both sides here, Flynn said in one interview, saying Moscow and Washington should look for ways to cooperate in Syria.
I really believe that the best way forward is to mutually agree that we have common interests and weve got to figure out how to work together to achieve those common interests, he added in the interview.
Flynn also appeared in a long interview with one of RTs anchors, Sophie Shevardnadze, the granddaughter of former Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze, and reiterated his call for finding common ground with Putin in Syria.
The retired generals embrace of RT fits in well with Trump and his campaign. The real estate mogul who has pursued business prospects in Russia over the years has praised Putin as a strong leader who he believes he could work with if he became commander in chief. And one of Trumps foreign-policy aides, Carter Page, a former advisor to Russian state energy giant Gazprom, recently said in a speech in Moscow that Western countries needed to stop antagonizing Russia.
But in their book, Flynn and Ledeen take a dimmer view of the Russian intervention in Syria, criticizing Moscow for working with Iran and not focusing enough on defeating the Islamic State.
In fact, the book argues that Iran is the ringleader of a massive international alliance stretching from Europe to Asia to South America and which is intent on destroying the West.
The war is on. We face a working coalition that extends from North Korea and China to Russia, Iran, Syria, Cuba, Bolivia, Venezuela, and Nicaragua, Flynn writes. While that is a shockingly wide net, the authors say, Iran is the linchpin of the alliance, its centerpiece.
Putin is a willing partner in this cabal, as he fully intends to do the same thing as, and in tandem with, the Iranians: pursue the war against us. The other alliance members do, too.
Putting Iran at the center jibes with Ledeens previous work, which emphasizes Tehrans funding of terrorism across the globe and accuses President Barack Obama of weakening the West to the benefit of the mullahs in Iran. In a speech last November, Ledeen said of Obama that there is no question that he loves radical Muslims all over the world and he is carrying out Iranian foreign policy by failing to take on the regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria.
The transition from a straight-forward military career to a partisan politico offering sound bites on live television has not gone so smoothly for the retired general, who has looked uncomfortable fielding queries about highly charged social issues.
Flynn struggled to formulate answers to questions about abortion and same-sex marriage over the weekend. Asked about the Supreme Courts decision to legalize same-sex marriage, he replied: You know what? Im like Im about national security. Im not going to, you know, I mean.
He then delivered a rambling performance Tuesday on MSNBCs Morning Joe, where he declared the U.S. economy to be the greatest threat to our country, and frankly to the world, right now. He advocated making sure the U.S. dollar remains the strongest global currency and that the English language [remains] the language of choice for global commerce. Those are critical. When asked, he declined to outline any economic plan.
Photo credit: Alex Wong/Getty Images
When it comes to Donald Trumps running mate for the 2016 election, VP contender Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn says one things for sure: Hell make the right decision for the country.
Im not campaigning for a job here, Im campaigning for this country. This country is something that I deeply believe in and I believe the direction that we have been taking for the last eight years is so wrong, he told the FOX Business Networks Stuart Varney.
Also in the running is former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions and Indiana Governor Mike Pence. This morning, Trump and his family met with Governor Pence at his home in Indiana.
Donald Trump has to choose someone who he believes can help us win in this next election and us being the United States of America. Donald Trump is about the future of this country and making sure that we take a direction that puts us back on a track that we can continue to be the global leader around the world, said Flynn.
The former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency also weighed in on reports over the Islamic State preparing for the end of its caliphate.
What I know is that there are large elements, the size of this organization has doubled in capacity in the last few years, they are not fading If they lose some tactical turf in Iraq or even in places like Syria, that doesnt mean that this enemy has disappeared, he said.
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TUNIS (Reuters) - Tunisia's prime minister has refused to resign and wants parliament to decide his fate, creating a political deadlock over President Beji Caid Essebsi's plan to form a new unity government. Habib Essid stood his ground a few weeks after Essebsi called for negotiations on a unity government he believes would overcome coalition tensions that have blocked headway toward much-needed economic reforms. "Prime Minister Habib Essid has chosen to go to parliament," Essebsi said in a speech on Wednesday after the premier insisted on leaving a decision on his future to lawmakers. Tunisia's current ruling coalition has struggled to generate more growth and jobs since a series of Islamist militant attacks gutted the North African state's tourism industry. Essebsi said last month Tunisia needed a bolder, more determined government to carry out the necessary reforms. "It is time for a change, and for audacity. We need a more courageous alternative that can apply the law and fight unemployment." Tunisia's key parties are now expected to resume negotiations to choose a new premier ahead of a likely parliamentary no-confidence vote in Essid, which would require a simple majority to pass. Tunisia has emerged as a political model for democratic change in the Arab world since its 2011 uprising that overthrew autocrat Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali. But economic liberalization demanded by foreign lenders to tackle high unemployment and frustration among its young over their lack of opportunities have lagged behind the political progress. (Reporting By Tarek Amara; editing by Patrick Markey/Mark Heinrich)
The family of Philando Castile the Minnesota man who was fatally shot by police earlier this month has just gained a powerful legal ally. Or at least a familiar one, to fans of court-centric reality TV.
Glenda Hatchett, best known as the titular star of the syndicated offering Judge Hatchett, said during a press conference on Tuesday that she will sue on behalf of Castiles family, the Associated Press reported.
Speaking near the Minnesota state Capitol, Hatchett declared, I am now stepping beyond the bench, the other side of the bench.
Also Read: NRA Breaks Silence on Philando Castile Death -- After Nudge From TheWrap
Hatchett, who prior to her reality TV fame was chief judge of the Fulton County Juvenile Court in Atlanta, launched The Hatchett Firm in 2014.
The celebrity judge said that she believed that Castile, who was black, was the victim of racial profiling.
For him to be stopped as many times as hes been stopped, it just raises some very serious concerns for me, she said.
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The Associated Press reported that Castile was stopped or targeted more than 50 times in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area.
According to Castiles girlfriend, Castile told police that he was armed and was licensed to carry a gun, but was shot after he reached for his identification.
The attorney for Jeronimo Yanez, the police officer who shot Castile, said that Yanez opened fire after seeing a gun, and pulled Castiles car over because he may have been a match for a robbery suspect.
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During Tuesdays conference, Hatchett said that the shooting never should have happened, adding, This time must be the last time.
Judge Hatchett ran for eight seasons from 2000 to 2008.
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Who says that Pokemon Go isn't a force for good in the world?
According to a report from the Orange County Register, two Pokemon Go players helped police catch a man wanted on suspicion of attempted murder while they were out walking around their neighborhood on Tuesday morning.
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Seth Ortega, one of the two men involved in the occurrence, says that he was hunting for Pokemon with his roommate Javier Soch before Spanish class at Fullerton Community College. At some point, Soch's game froze (a common issue for Pokemon Go players), which is when he looked up to see a woman and her children running from a man "dressed in peculiar attire."
"[Soch's] looking up and thats when he gives me a nudge and says, 'Hey, whats going on,'" Ortega remembers. "When we look up in their direction all we see is the mother and her children running across the street away from him."
Ortega and Soch approached the man and tried to point him in the direction of the police station, where he might be able to find help, but he continued to lurk around the park, approaching women and children.
Once Ortega and Soch (who happened to be Marine Corps veterans) realized that the man wasn't going to stop, they called the authorities and stayed with the man until police arrived on the scene.
"When you think Pokemon Go, the worst thing you think of is someone walking out in the street or bumping into a sign," Ortega said after the incident had concluded. "Just definitely not expecting to find this guy."
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By Mica Rosenberg
NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. Attorney for Manhattan Preet Bharara said on Wednesday that "millions of people" across the country believe their police departments are biased against them and that he had not shied away from charging officers for misconduct.
Bharara, who is known for high-profile prosecutions of wrongdoing on Wall Street and in New York's capital Albany, said at a Reuters Newsmaker event that last week's shooting of five police officers at a protest in Dallas was "nothing less than heartbreaking and blood-curdling."
But he said he understood how shootings of African Americans by police officers had raised concerns about bias.
"Undeniably from time to time, there are people who are not living up to the standards of their jobs," he said.
"That is true in business; that is true, God help us, in Albany; that is true sometimes in police departments," Bharara told Harold Evans, Reuters Editor at Large, at the event. "People should be held accountable."
Bharara, who is responsible for the Southern District of New York, said that as a prosecutor, he works closely with police. He called the New York police department one of the finest in the nation.
But he said his office and New York police chiefs, including current Commissioner William Bratton and former Commissioner Ray Kelly, had brought charges against officers who violated their oaths in the past.
"Nobody flinches from bringing prosecutions if the law allows it," Bharara said.
In the interview, Bharara also said cyber security should be a corporate governance concern of C-suite executives and not just an issue to be dealt with by a company's technical people.
"There is no bigger issue for anybody to be thinking about," Bharara said of cyber threats. "I think companies are uniquely situated to be the policemen of their networks and of their intellectual property and of their information."
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Bharara criticized what he called a "naive" decision by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in an insider trading case, which he said would limit prosecutors.
The December 2014 decision reversed the conviction of two hedge fund managers, Todd Newman and Anthony Chiasson, and prompted Bharara's office to drop charges against 12 defendants in other cases, including some who had pleaded guilty.
The 2nd Circuit's ruling held that to prove insider trading, prosecutors must establish that a trader knew the provider of the relevant information had received something of "some consequence" in exchange.
"The court essentially changed the law," Bharara said. "We think that's naive."
Bharara said the Supreme Court denied his office's petition to review the case.
But he said the Supreme Court did agree to review a ruling in another insider trading case by the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which could help answer the question of what determines the illegality of benefits corporate insiders receive for information they disclose.
Asked what he thought about the U.S. presidential election, Bharara referred to recent comments a Supreme Court justice made in a series of media interviews lambasting presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump: "I think it would be rude for me to get ahead of Ruth Bader Ginsburg on that."
(Reporting by Mica Rosenberg; Editing by Amy Stevens and Howard Goller)
By Lisa Lambert
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Representative Peter DeFazio on Wednesday unveiled legislation to tax financial trades that will likely wither in Congress but could stoke partisan fires in the presidential election.
The Oregon Democrat's bill would levy a 0.03 percent tax on most financial trades, and is intended to discourage "risky trading behaviors." DeFazio expects that will collect more than $417 billion in revenue in the next decade, which he said could be used to fund free higher education or infrastructure repairs.
When the Democratic Party gathers in Philadelphia for its national convention at the end of the month, it will adopt a platform that calls for taxing trades. Many liberals in the party embrace the proposal as a way to curb speculative trading, which they say led to both the 2007-09 financial crisis and the 2010 stock market "flash crash."
The party's left wing, led by U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, who ran against Hillary Clinton for the presidential nomination, meanwhile, has pushed for free university education.
"Thanks to the reckless greed of Wall Street over the past few decades, the American economy is a grossly unbalanced playing field," said DeFazio.
"The only way we can level it is if we rein in reckless speculative financial trading and curb near-instantaneous high-volume trades that create instability in the stock market and our national economy."
The legislation is supported by Democratic Party stalwarts, including the AFL-CIO labor union federation, the Americans for Financial Reform coalition, the Center for Economic and Policy Research, the Communications Workers of America union, and advocacy group Public Citizen.
It will likely not get far. Republicans control both chambers of Congress, and most say that Wall Street regulation passed in the aftermath of the financial crisis has been overly restrictive. In addition, the Republican Party generally favors having fewer taxes.
"I am opposed to any taxes that would raise the cost of financial transactions, said Randy Neugebauer, the Republican chairman of a House subcommittee on financial institutions, noting that the bill would tax stock, bond and derivatives trades.
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Currently, the top U.S. securities regulator, the Securities and Exchange Commission, charges a tax on security futures of less than half of a penny to recover the costs of regulating markets and financial professionals.
The idea for the tax can be traced back to economist John Maynard Keynes, who wrote in 1935 after another devastating financial crisis - the Great Depression - that a transfer tax on all transactions might mitigate speculation.
(Reporting by Lisa Lambert; Editing by Jonathan Oatis)
By Richard Cowan WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Senate on Wednesday passed and sent to President Barack Obama legislation aimed at combating a nationwide epidemic of heroin and other opioid addictions. After months of wrangling, the Senate voted overwhelmingly, 92-2, to approve the legislation that has also been approved by the U.S. House of Representatives. The measure aims to help communities develop drug prevention programs and improve access to overdose treatment. In March, the White House praised several provisions included in the legislation that was pending in the Senate, but said that without adequate funding "would do little to address the epidemic." It was not clear whether Obama would sign the bill. Republican Senator Rob Portman of Ohio, a leading proponent of the legislation, said that it marked "the first time that weve treated addiction like the disease that it is, which will help put an end to the stigma that has surrounded addiction for too long." While its passage marked a rare bipartisan effort in this election year, Democrats complained that it falls far short in providing enough resources to effectively address the drug problem. "This bill is like a Hollywood movie set - something that appears real on the surface but has no substance and no life behind its facade," said Senator Charles Schumer of New York, the No. 3 Senate Democrat. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 28,000 people died from opioid overdose in 2014. At least half, HHS said, of those deaths involved a prescription opioid. Among the common prescription drugs are oxycodone, hydrocodone, and fentanyl that are used for pain treatment. Heroin-related deaths have also increased sharply, more than tripling since 2010. In 2014, more than 10,500 people died from heroin, the agency said. The bill authorizes $181 million a year for new programs it creates. Democrats said that with disagreements in Congress over next year's funding for HHS, it was uncertain whether the money contained in the bipartisan bill actually would be delivered. They called on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican, to back up this legislation with $600 million in immediate emergency funds. Obama has requested $920 million for opioid treatment programs over two years. The bill, if enacted into law, also would provide new training for emergency personnel in administering drugs to reverse opioid overdoses and help communities purchase those drugs. (Reporting By Richard Cowan; Editing by Diane Craft)
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew told senior EU officials in Brussels on Wednesday that Washington would help ensure a smooth transition for the global economy as Britain leaves the bloc.
"The United States remains committed to working with our UK and EU counterparts as they work through this transition, to ensure continued economic stability, and advance shared economic growth and prosperity in Europe and around the world," Lew said after meeting members of the European Commission.
He also said: "Given current weaknesses in the global economy, it is also important to maintain our focus on the recommitment made at the last G20 to consult closely with one another on exchange rate policy, and to refrain from competitive devaluation."
(Reporting by Alastair Macdonald; @macdonaldrtr)
By Valerie Volcovici
WASHINGTON, July 13 (Reuters) - A U.S. House of Representatives panel on Wednesday issued subpoenas to the attorneys general of New York and Massachusetts to force them to submit information on their investigations into whether Exxon Mobil misled investors on climate change risks, accusing the attorneys general of having a political agenda.
The House Committee on Science, Space and Technology also subpoenaed eight environmental and legal groups.
"The attorneys general have appointed themselves to decide what is valid and what is invalid regarding climate change," committee Chair Lamar Smith, a Republican of Texas, said.
He said the attorneys general are pursuing a political agenda at the expense of scientists' right to free speech.
The panel has demanded that state attorneys general hand over any records of consultations the prosecutors had with outside environmental groups before their probes were opened.
New York and Massachusetts' top lawyers lead a coalition of 17 state attorneys general who have said they would investigate Exxon and whether its executives misled the public by contradicting research from company scientists that spelled out the threats of global warming.
Smith and Republican members of the House panel have accused the coalition's members of stifling free speech and scientific inquiry by those who do not believe in manmade climate change.
"I don't know what we will find," Smith told reporters. "We might find an intent to intimidate."
So far, New York and Massachusetts have issued subpoenas against Exxon Mobil, one of the world's largest publicly traded companies.
The House committee twice demanded that the state attorneys general hand over all records of communications between their offices and outside groups about Exxon inquiries.
Darin LaHood, a Republican of Illinois on the panel, said on Wednesday that the probe by the attorneys general prohibits free speech in a way "you would see in a third world country."
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Cyndi Roy Gonzalez, the spokeswoman for the Massachusetts attorney general's office, said in a statement that Smith's committee has no right to interfere with "... a state inquiry into whether a private company violated state laws, and we will continue to fight any and all efforts to stop our investigation."
Green groups Greenpeace and 350.org made similar criticisms in a letter to Smith.
Exxon, which has said that it has acknowledged the reality of climate change for years, called the subpoena unreasonably burdensome and intrusive. It also raised questioned about jurisdiction.
The attorneys general and the groups have two weeks to respond.
(Reporting by Valerie Volcovici; Editing by Leslie Adler)
By Lesley Wroughton and John Walcott WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States is using quiet diplomacy to persuade the Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam and other Asian nations not to move aggressively to capitalize on an international court ruling that denied China's claims to the South China Sea, several U.S. administration officials said on Wednesday. "What we want is to quiet things down so these issues can be addressed rationally instead of emotionally," said one official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private diplomatic messages. Some were sent through U.S. embassies abroad and foreign missions in Washington, while others were conveyed directly to top officials by Defense Secretary Ash Carter, Secretary of State John Kerry and other senior officials, the sources said. "This is a blanket call for quiet, not some attempt to rally the region against China, which would play into a false narrative that the U.S. is leading a coalition to contain China," the official added. The effort to calm the waters following the court ruling in The Hague on Tuesday suffered a setback when Taiwan dispatched a warship to the area, with President Tsai Ing-wen telling sailors that their mission was to defend Taiwan's maritime territory. The court ruled that while China has no historic rights to the area within its self-declared nine-dash line, Taiwan has no right to Itu Aba, also called Taiping, the largest island in the Spratlys. Taipei administers Itu Abu but the tribunal called it a "rock", according to the legal definition. The U.S. officials said they hoped the U.S. diplomatic initiative would be more successful in Indonesia, which wants to send hundreds of fishermen to the Natuna Islands to assert its sovereignty over nearby areas of the South China Sea to which China says it also has claims, and in the Philippines, whose fishermen have been harassed by Chinese coast guard and naval vessels. 'UNKNOWN QUANTITY' One official said new Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte remains "somewhat of an unknown quantity" who has been alternately bellicose and accommodating toward China. Philippine Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana said that ahead of the ruling he had spoken to Carter, who he said told him China had assured the United States it would exercise restraint, and that the U.S. government made the same assurance. Carter had sought and been given the same assurance from the Philippines, Lorenzana added. Meanwhile, two Chinese civilian aircraft landed on Wednesday at two new airports on reefs controlled by China in the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea, a move the State Department said would increase tensions rather than lower them. "We don't have a dog in this fight other than our belief ... in freedom of navigation," State Department spokesman Mark Toner told a briefing on Wednesday. "What we want to see in this very tense part of Asia, of the Pacific, rather, is a de-escalation of tensions and we want to see all claimants take a moment to look at how we can find a peaceful way forward." CONTINGENCY PLANHowever, if that effort fails, and competition escalates into confrontation, U.S. air and naval forces are prepared to uphold freedom of maritime and air navigation in the disputed area, a defense official said on Wednesday. Democrat Ben Cardin of Maryland, a senior member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said confrontation is less likely if the Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam and other countries work with the United States rather than on their own. "I don't think China wants a confrontation with the United States," he told reporters. "They dont mind a confrontation with a Vietnamese fishing boat, but they dont want a confrontation with the United States." The court ruling is expected to dominate a meeting at the end of July in Laos of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), which includes the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Myanmar, Vietnam and Thailand. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, and his Chinese counterpart, Foreign Minister Wang Yi, will attend the ministerial. Sino-American relations suffered two fresh blows on Wednesday as a congressional committee found China's government likely hacked computers at the U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the United States challenged China's export duties on nine metals and minerals that are important to the aerospace, auto, electronics and chemical industries. (Additional reporting by Patricia Zengerle and Yara Bayoumy; Editing by John Walcott, Kieran Murray and Grant McCool)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - More than a dozen U.S. Republican lawmakers on Wednesday urged the Obama administration to impose penalties on the Chinese telecommunications equipment maker ZTE Corp for alleged violations of Iran export controls.
In a letter to three Cabinet secretaries, 14 House of Representatives Republicans led by Robert Pittenger of North Carolina said the Chinese technology giant has "blatantly worked to evade American sanctions and export control laws" to sell products to Iran that could be used to oppress dissidents.
ZTE officials were not immediately available for comment.
"We urge you to punish ZTE," the lawmakers said in the letter that was addressed to the secretaries of Commerce, Treasury and State.
"We do not want to see the effectiveness of export control laws become compromised, especially export laws intended to address human rights violations and systematic oppression," the lawmakers wrote.
The Republicans asked the Commerce Department to reimpose sanctions on ZTE Corp that U.S. officials temporarily suspended earlier this year.
(Reporting by David Morgan; Editing by Jonathan Oatis)
By David Shepardson WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. highway safety regulators have demanded that Tesla Motors Inc hand over detailed information about the design, operation and testing of its Autopilot technology following a May 7 fatal crash in which the system was in use. The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), investigating an accident that has increased scrutiny of automated driving technology, also wants to know what Tesla investigators have learned about the crash. The agency's nine-page letter dated July 8 was made public Tuesday. It requires the Palo Alto-based automaker to file responses in the coming weeks. Joshua Brown was killed when his vehicle, operating on Autopilot in Florida, drove under a tractor trailer. It was first known fatality to involve a Model S operating on the Autopilot system that takes control of steering and braking in certain conditions. The agency is seeking details of all design changes and updates to Autopilot since it went into use last year, and information on whether Tesla plans updates in the next four months. It also wants records of how many times the system told drivers to put their hands on the wheel and how often that led to the car automatically reducing vehicle power. Other questions include what Autopilot does when cameras and sensors aren't working properly, how the system was tested, and how it filters out "false positive events and interventions." NHTSA sends such letters as a part of its safety probes. Tesla declined to comment on the letter. Its stock was little changed at $224.65 a share, a decline of less than 0.1 percent. The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday that Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk said the company has no plans to disable Autopilot in the wake of the crash. RECORDS AND DATA LOGS When Tesla launched Autopilot in October, it said the system would allow the vehicle "to steer within a lane, change lanes with the simple tap of a turn signal, and manage speed by using active, traffic-aware cruise control." But it added a disclaimer in a blog post that "the driver is still responsible for, and ultimately in control of, the car." Before activating the service, drivers are informed on their screens that they must keep their hands on the wheel. In its letter, NHTSA said it wants records and data logs of all crashes that could be linked to the software. It disclosed that Tesla and NHTSA officials met on June 14 -- two weeks before the agency opened a formal investigation. Tesla has said it informed NHTSA of the crash on May 16. NHTSA spokesman Bryan Thomas reiterated that the agency "has not made any determination about the presence or absence of a defect in the subject vehicles." Tesla, in a blog post late last month about the accident, described Autopilot as being in a "public beta phase" and said customers have to opt in before activation. In a July 10 tweet, Musk wrote that "beta" for Tesla means "any system (with) less than 1B miles of real world driving." NHTSA said last week it is reviewing another crash in Pennsylvania in which the driver reportedly said he was using Autopilot. Tesla said then it had no reason to believe Autopilot had "anything to do" with the accident. The Pennsylvania State Police said on Tuesday that the Tesla driver, Albert Scaglione of Farmington Hills, Michigan, was charged with careless driving. Tesla also said on Tuesday that its autosteer software was enabled during a third crash involving a Model X in Montana on Sunday. Autosteer is the steering function in Autopilot. In that crash, the driver said Autopilot was engaged when the car slammed into 13 guardrails, said Montana State Trooper Jade Shope. The driver was issued an $85 ticket for careless driving. Tesla said the data suggested "the drivers hands were not on the steering wheel, as no force was detected on the steering wheel for over two minutes after autosteer was engaged." Tesla said the driver was using the feature on an undivided mountain road - which the company advises against - and didn't respond to alerts to put his hands on the wheel. (Additional writing by Alexandria Sage)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. State Department looks forward to working with Boris Johnson, appointed on Wednesday as British foreign secretary, a U.S. State Department spokesman said. The United States will always be able to work with British officials because of its "deep, abiding" relationship with Britain, State Department spokesman Mark Toner said at a daily news briefing. Johnson was a leading figure in the victorious "Leave" campaign in Britain's European Union membership referendum last month (Reporting by Lesley Wroughton; Writing by Mohammad Zargham; Editing by Eric Beech)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate on Wednesday approved a bill that would upgrade security at U.S. airports in the aftermath of the Brussels and Istanbul attacks while extending funds for the Federal Aviation Administration for another 14 months. In an 89-to-4 vote, the lawmakers sent the legislation on to the White House for President Barack Obama's signature. The House of Representatives approved the same measure on Monday. It includes provisions that require tougher vetting of aviation workers with access to secure airport areas, expedited security checks to move passengers more quickly from airport areas that are not secured and a larger number of police dogs for security duty in the U.S. transportation system. It extends the current level of federal funding for FAA programs through September 2017. Congress has been struggling to find agreement on a more comprehensive package to reauthorize the U.S. aviation regulatory agency. A measure that would have provided FAA funding over six years stalled in the House earlier this year, amid disagreement over a proposal to privatize the U.S. air traffic control system. The House later failed to take up a Senate reauthorization bill but added security features from that measure into the legislation approved this week. House Republicans say they intend to use the time between now and September 2017 to find ways to move the privatization plan forward. A Turkish court has jailed seven suspects pending trial on terrorism charges over last month's triple suicide bombing at Istanbul's main airport. The attack killed 45 people. Islamic State suicide bombers killed 16 people at Brussels airport - as well as 16 on a Brussels metro train - on March 22 this year. (Reporting by David Morgan; Editing by Alistair Bell)
(Reuters) - Companies will cut spending on advertising in Britain over the next two years as the country's economic prospects are clouded by uncertainty triggered by the vote to leave the European Union, according to an industry survey on Thursday.
The IPA Bellwether report said that due to the uncertain outlook following last month's Brexit vote, it has downgraded its adspend forecasts for both 2016 and 2017.
Bellwether has downgraded its adspend forecasts to -0.2 percent for 2016 and -1.3 percent for 2017, its first prediction for a fall in adspend since 2013.
It had previously predicted 3.3 percent and 2.7 percent growth in adspend for 2016 and 2017 respectively.
While the uncertainty in the economy caused by the vote to leave Europe continues to linger, we will experience an inevitable period of flux - as reflected in the Bellwethers downgrading of adspend forecasts," said Paul Smith, senior economist at Markit and author of the report.
Marketing budgets were revised markedly higher in the second quarter, extending the current record growth period to 15 consecutive quarters, the report said
A net balance of 10.7 percent of companies increased their budgets, compared with 3.0 percent in the previous quarter. It is also the highest reading for a year.
Despite the growth, the second quarter showed an increasing degree of pessimism about wider industry prospects.
Sentiment towards industry financial prospects dropped to the lowest level in 13 quarters, from -6.5 percent in Q1 to -8.1 percent in Q2.
Growth was strongest in events, which posted a 13.4 percent rise, followed by followed by internet, traditional media and PR.
However net reductions were seen in sales promotions, market research and direct marketing.
(Reporting by Rahul B in Bengaluru; editing by Adrian Croft)
LONDON (Reuters) - British opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn said on Tuesday he hoped there would be no legal challenge to a decision by his Labour Party's ruling executive to automatically include his name on the ballot paper for the leadership of the party. Corbyn, a veteran left-winger, is resisting efforts by Labour lawmakers to oust him, arguing that he has the strong support of party members in the country. Corbyn's opponents say Labour cannot win an election under his leadership. "I would hope there isn't going to be a legal challenge. There's been a very long legal discussion this afternoon, there were very well-qualified lawyers on hand to advise so I think we are fine," he told reporters after the decision of Labour's National Executive Committee. (Reporting by Paul Sandle; Editing by Gareth Jones)
Juba (AFP) - A heavily-armed Ugandan military convoy crossed into South Sudan on Thursday to evacuate citizens trapped in the capital Juba as fears persist that recent days of intense fighting might reignite despite a ceasefire.
The United Nations has warned of tension and the possibility of fresh fighting in Juba, where a ceasefire has held since late Monday.
A convoy of around 50 trucks escorted by machine gun-mounted armoured vehicles crossed the Ugandan border at Nimule to open up a secure corridor for fleeing civilians on the 200 kilometre (120 mile) Juba-Nimule road.
"We plan to go to Juba to extract 3,000 Ugandans stranded by fighting, but that number may grow as we will evacuate anyone who wants to leave," said Uganda's army chief Brigadier Leopold Kyanda.
Kyanda said the mission would likely last "two to three days" but an intelligence officer told AFP some Ugandan troops may remain in Juba.
"Why not? We have the capacity to support the government of South Sudan and we were there before," said the plain-clothed officer accompanying the convoy.
The Ugandan army joined the conflict in South Sudan soon after it began in December 2013, fighting on the side of President Salva Kiir against a rebel force led by Riek Machar, now the country's vice president. The troops only pulled out late last year.
While the situation remained calm in Juba on Thursday concerns remain that fighting might flare once again.
"The current situation in the country remains fluid and uncertain," UN peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous told the Security Council late Wednesday.
- One city, two armies -
Four days of intense battles in the capital left hundreds dead and forced around 40,000 to flee their homes. Aid agencies are warning of a worsening humanitarian crisis with a lack of both water and food.
The recent violence in the capital echoed the fighting that triggered the civil war and marks a fresh blow to last year's deal to end the bitter conflict that began when Kiir accused Machar of plotting a coup.
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Kiir is a member of the Dinka tribe, while Machar is a Nuer, and the dispute has split the country along ethnic lines and caused tens of thousands of deaths.
The August 2015 agreement paved the way for Machar's return to the capital in late April to take up the deputy post in a so-called unity government.
Machar's return with a 1,400-strong bodyguard meant there were two hostile armies in the city. A shoot-out between Kiir's and Machar's guard units triggered the fighting that began on Friday afternoon.
It appears that Kiir's forces -- which outnumbered Machar's in both troops and heavy weaponry in the city -- dominated the battles, with Ladsous stating they were in "full control" of the capital while Machar's former rebels were "scattered" nearby along the city's western outskirts.
"Further clashes, therefore, cannot be ruled out," he said.
Outside Juba there were reports of fighting in the towns of Leer in Unity State and Wau in Western Bahr el Ghazal and of army and rebel forces mobilising around Malakal in Upper Nile.
"We remain very worried about the potential for the resumption of violence and spill-over into other parts of the country," said Ladsous.
Commercial flights resumed to Juba on Thursday morning, with planes arriving almost empty and leaving full of people desperate to get out of the city.
Specially chartered evacuation flights have been taking foreign nationals out of the country since Wednesday.
Unconventional is Yahoo News complete guide to what could be the craziest presidential conventions in decades. Heres what you need to know today.
CLEVELAND And so it begins. Unconventional arrived here this morning after a series of delays and a redeye out of LAX. We could really use a good iced coffee. (Any local recs? Tweet them to @andrewromano.)
For the rest of the week, and the entirety of next, well be filing from the Rock n Roll Capital of World, where the GOP or the portion of it thats able to tolerate Donald Trump, at least will be crowning its 2016 nominee. Then well head directly to the Democratic convention in Philadelphia.
Instead of our usual Monday-Wednesday-Friday schedule, well be posting new installments of Unconventional every weekday from now until July 28. In addition to our usual reporting and analysis, each post will feature original, on-the-ground dispatches from the rest of the Yahoo Politics team. Our goal is to be the one thing you need to read to understand whats really happening at the conventions.
To get the party started, todays Unconventional will serve as an introduction to four of our crack convention correspondents Jon Ward, Hunter Walker, Holly Bailey and Liz Goodwin and the brilliantly unconventional reporting theyre already doing in Cleveland and elsewhere.
Youll be reading a lot more of their work in the days ahead.
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1. The tea party senator who could decide Trumps fate in Cleveland
By Jon Ward
CLEVELAND This week, watch Mike Lee.
The mild-mannered first-term U.S. senator from Utah will arrive here Wednesday night or Thursday morning to cast a significant vote in the long-odds battle being waged by some Republican delegates to snatch the partys presidential nomination from Donald Trump.
(Read the full story here.)
Lee, 45, is one of Utahs two members on the convention Rules Committee, which will vote at the end of the week on a motion to unbind the 2,472 convention delegates next week. If the committee sends the resolution to the convention floor, the whole convention would vote up or down on the measure.
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The obstacles facing the dump-Trump effort are high. Multiple Trump campaign officials said Tuesday their whip count indicated that the conscience clause would not get out of Rules, and that if it did, it would lose on the convention floor. There were no signs of nervousness in the Trump whip operation, one said.
Allies of the dump-Trump effort are more optimistic that the Rules Committee might pass the measure to the full convention, but less hopeful about their chances there. In addition, other observers of the process think that delegates trying to send the convention to multiple ballots by having a few hundred delegates abstain from voting on the first ballot is the better strategy.
Nonetheless, if the Rules Committee does keep the issue alive by sending the conscience clause to the floor of the convention, it could take on life in a way thats hard to predict.
And Lee is at the heart of this battle. His support for or against the conscience clause proposal will send a powerful signal to those among the other 111 members of the Rules Committee who are wavering. Lees wife, Sharon who, like her husband, was chosen by the other Utah delegates to represent them on the committee is believed likely to follow his lead, so his decision could swing two votes of the 28 required to bring the motion to the floor. One member of the Rules Committee said many members believe that Lees support could be crucial.
A spokesman for Lee said Tuesday that the senator has made up his mind how he will vote and will share his decision with other members of the committee this week.
Everyones lobbying him, said a senior Trump campaign official.
So far, Lee has been tightlipped about his intentions. There are plenty of reasons, however, why he would vote against Trump on this issue.
Lee has publicly stated his very deep reservations about Trump. Very recently, Lee said in an interview with NewsMaxTV that Trump had made religiously intolerant statements, referring to Trumps proposal to ban Muslims from entering the country. Lee noted that Trump is wildly unpopular in Utah, which is home to millions of members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, a religious minority who were ordered exterminated by the governor of Missouri in 1838.
Id like some assurances that hes going to be a vigorous defender for the U.S. Constitution, Lee said.
And in May, Lee said of Trump: He scares me to death.
And Lee is a close ally of Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who fought a bitter battle with Trump in the Republican primary. Trump mocked Cruzs wife in one of his infamous retweets and alleged based on a story in the National Enquirer with no apparent basis in fact that Cruzs father was connected to Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald.
Lee was enraged by Trumps accusation about Cruzs father. He said that. He actually said that. He said that without any scintilla, without a scintilla of evidence, Lee told NewsMax.
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2. Sanders endorses Clinton but divisions linger
By Hunter Walker
PORTSMOUTH, N.H. Hillary Clinton stood arm in arm with her former Democratic presidential primary opponent, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, at Portsmouth High School on Tuesday as she accepted his endorsement. But offstage, there were clear signs of lingering divisions after their contentious campaign.
New Hampshire was a stronghold for Sanders and gave him his first primary win in February. The crowd that packed into the tiny high school gym to see him and Clinton come together included many staunch Sanders supporters, and there were isolated boos throughout the event. At one point, an audience member began shouting and waving a sign reading NOPE. Another man wearing a Sanders T-shirt stood high in the bleachers with his back to the stage throughout the speeches. As the campaign teams arrived, longtime Sanders adviser Michael Briggs noted that the venue was much more intimate than the arenas Sanders regularly packed for his rallies.
Its a smaller crowd than usual for us, Briggs quipped.
(Read the full story here.)
Both Clinton and Sanders stressed their desire to see presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump defeated. They argued that this could only be accomplished by unifying behind Clinton. But some people in the crowd clearly werent buying the unity message.
Never Trump! Never Hillary! one person shouted.
Several Sanders supporters in attendance said they were not swayed by his endorsement and planned to vote for third-party candidates. Helena Jensen, who was brandishing a T-shirt with Sanders silhouette blended with the Grateful Dead logo, walked out after getting into multiple arguments with Clinton supporters.
I guess I should just move to Canada! she yelled back at her antagonists as she left.
Jensen told Yahoo News she planned to vote for Green Party candidate Jill Stein or Libertarian Gary Johnson.
Im very disgusted by today, she said.
She is a liar. She has manipulated the entirety of the Democratic National Committee, Jensen said of the primary process. There were so many shenanigans with the election.
She further accused Clinton supporters of being inconsiderate.
The entirety of everything associated with the Hillary campaign is rude. Dont let anyone tell you differently, she said.
After the event, some Sanders and Clinton supporters also bickered outside. Jordan Thompson, a 17-year-old who was a full-time volunteer and intern with the Clinton campaign ahead of the primary, was trying to offer Sanders supporters hugs. But the experience turned, as he put it, rough. Borrowing a Clinton campaign slogan, Thompson said he wanted to show the Sanders supporters they are stronger together, but he ended up getting in a tense argument with a woman who was wearing a Sanders hat and holding a sign that said Clinton for Prison 2016. The woman said she would vote for Trump over Clinton.
She is not a progressive! She is not a progressive! I am a progressive! the woman yelled.
Youre a progressive, and youre saying youre going to vote for Trump? Thats not progressive, Thompson shot back. You sound very privileged and you sound your whiteness is speaking. African-Americans, Latinos, the LGBT community, we cannot risk a Trump presidency. You may be able to sit through four years of a Trump presidency, but we cannot. Muslims cannot sit through a Trump presidency. We need Hillary. She is the only qualified candidate.
The woman said she didnt think Trump would last four years if he was elected, and said she would rather cut off her arm than vote for Clinton.
Im not together with Hillary ever. I will never vote for Hillary ever, ever, vote for Hillary, never, the woman said, as she turned on her heels and left.
While Sanders declared that Clinton has won the Democratic nomination and congratulated her, he did not formally announce the suspension of his campaign in the speech. Sanders has previously said he would remain in the race until the Democratic convention later this month, in order to influence the partys platform, which will be formally ratified there. The Sanders campaign did not respond to requests for comment from Yahoo News asking whether he intends to suspend his campaign. A spokesman for the Secret Service, which provides Sanders protection as long as he technically continues his presidential bid, said the agency could not comment on the status of his campaign.
After his event with Clinton, Sanders sent an email to his supporters in which he said he will announce the creation of successor organizations to carry on the struggle that we have been a part of these past 15 months. However, in the meantime, he said there is still a tremendous amount of work left to do in the Democratic Rules Committee that will be meeting in the coming weeks.
Yahoo News emailed Jennifer Palmieri, the Clinton campaigns communications director, to ask if the campaign has concerns about Sanders not officially ending his run.
No comment, Palmieri wrote.
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3. Indiana Gov. Mike Pence tries out for Trump
By Holly Bailey
WESTFIELD, Ind. Donald Trump held the latest audition in his quest to find a vice presidential running mate, appearing at a campaign rally here Tuesday night with Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, who is said to be on the presumptive Republican nominees shortlist for the job.
Pence, a former Republican congressman who has a reputation for being a mild-mannered but staunch conservative, introduced Trump with a fiery speech, praising him as a fighter, a builder and a patriot who will bring no-nonsense leadership to the White House.
(Read the full story here.)
Donald Trump understands the frustrations and the hopes of the American people, like no other American leader in my lifetime since Ronald Reagan, Pence declared, adding that Trump hears the voice of the American people.
He has been successful on Wall Street, but hes never turned his back on Main Street, Pence continued, reading from notes. He has never forgotten or forsaken the people who work with their hands, who grow the food, build our roads and bridges, tend to our sick, teach our kids and protect our lives and our property.
Pence called on the few thousand people at the rally to come together and elect this good man.
It was the first time Trump had shared a stage with Pence, who briefly considered his own run for the GOP nomination before ultimately endorsing Texas Sen. Ted Cruz late in the primary.
Trump, who met privately with the Indiana governor before the event, hinted at the intrigue surrounding Pences future. I dont know if hes going to be your governor or vice president, Trump declared at one point. Who the hell knows?
Trumps decision on his VP is said to be imminent, and the joint appearance with Pence comes just days before the kickoff of the Republican National Convention in Cleveland where, barring any party drama, Trump is set to formally accept his partys presidential nomination.
Pence was the fourth prospective VP who has campaigned with Trump in recent days. Last week, the New York real estate mogul appeared with Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker who subsequently took himself out of the running for the job. That appearance was followed by a joint rally with former House Speaker Newt Gingrich in Cincinnati, while New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie introduced Trump at a policy speech Monday in Virginia Beach.
For his part, Trump has sent mixed signals about how close he is to settling on a running mate and how many people might be on that list. After teasing the idea that he would announce his pick during the convention for maximum drama, Trump is now expected to announce his decision by this Friday.
At the same time, Trump had previously said he was considering four people. In recent days, hes expanded the list to include five. And in an interview with the New York Times Tuesday, he said that in addition to those original five, he was considering two, two that are unknown to anybody. The Trump campaign did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Adding to the mystery are mixed signals from those on Trumps shortlist. On Tuesday, Fox News announced it was temporarily parting ways with Gingrich, a longtime contributor to the network, as Trump considers whether to add him to the GOP ticket. Meanwhile, Christies office announced that the governor would be traveling out of state Wednesday though aides declined to say where.
Pence, who is currently facing a tough battle for re-election, seems to be enthusiastically positioning himself for the job. After he left the stage, Pences Twitter account suddenly erupted with activity praising Trump as the partys presumptive nominee.
Let us resolve here and now that from this day forward, we will stand together. We will unite, Pence tweeted. We will not rest until we elect (Trump) as the next president of the United States of America.
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4. The GOP just passed the most anti-immigration platform ever
By Liz Goodwin
CLEVELAND Republican delegates voted for a platform that calls for less legal immigration, special scrutiny for immigrants from certain countries and a wall along the entire Southern border a far tougher stance than the party has taken in years past.
The platform, adopted by the Republican National Committees Platform Committee Tuesday, also calls for rescinding President Obamas executive action protecting around a million young people from deportation, calling it a direct violation of federal law.
(Read the full story here.)
The tough immigration stance is one of the few ways the Republican platform has changed to match the views of its nominee, Donald Trump, who is running on an America First platform that at one point included excluding Muslims from immigrating to the country.
Kris Kobach, a Platform Committee delegate and the secretary of state of Kansas, said he believes that the immigration portion of the platform reflects Trumps views. Kobach, an anti-illegal-immigration activist, advised Mitt Romney on immigration in 2012 and is an informal adviser to Trump.
The Republican platform calls for a wall to cover the entirety of the southern border with Mexico to stop unauthorized crossings, a cornerstone of Trumps campaign. But Kobach stopped short of inserting language asking Mexico to pay for the wall which Trump has vowed to do saying that was too specific to include.
Kobach also successfully added an amendment to ask for special scrutiny of immigrants entering the United States from terror-sponsoring countries or from regions associated with Islamic terrorism. The platform also says that current unemployment and underemployment in the country make it indefensible to continue offering lawful permanent residence to more than one million foreign nationals every year. That means, in effect, the Republican Party is asking for fewer green cards to be given to legal immigrants.
The interests of American workers must be protected over the claims of foreign nationals seeking the same jobs, the platform reads.
Meanwhile, Democrats are drafting one of the most pro-immigration platforms the party has seen, calling for a path to citizenship and access to health exchanges for people who immigrated to the U.S. illegally.
Republicans and Democrats werent always so far apart. In 1996, the Democratic platform urged a policy of cracking down on criminal immigrants and complained that the border was under-patrolled. We cannot tolerate illegal immigration and we must stop it, the platform read. In 2000, the Republican Party asked for a total overhaul of the immigration system to meet the manpower needs of our expanding economy. In 2004, its platform supported a guest worker program proposed by then-nominee George W. Bush.
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5. The best of the rest
Cruz is coming to Cleveland to speak to the secretive Council for National Policy https://t.co/IeASdAcTdd Shane Goldmacher (@ShaneGoldmacher) July 12, 2016
Warren out in veepstakes? Monday primetime speaking slot in Philly makes spot on ticket unlikely. Story w/ @jmartNYT https://t.co/sMFLiCWQul Amy Chozick (@amychozick) July 12, 2016
Bernie wrote much of the Dem platform. But the TPP loss shows he cant beat the Establishment when it counts https://t.co/M8MPVQrCo3 Bill Scher (@billscher) July 12, 2016
Every 4 years, GOP regulars eagerly await their national convention.
This year: theyre dreading it https://t.co/zOQ6md5QcW Alex Isenstadt (@politicoalex) July 12, 2016
After Dallas, some worry about ppl being allowed to openly guns into Cleveland during RNC https://t.co/nCiZd6DgTJ pic.twitter.com/DIy1ReLcr7 Yamiche Alcindor (@Yamiche) July 11, 2016
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Countdown
RACINE With police-community relationships at the forefront of the news, the Racine Police Department held an open discussion with local boys to broaden perspectives about both sides of debate.
The event took place Tuesday afternoon at the 16th Street Community Oriented Policing House and was attended by more than 20 boys, ages 7-14, from the area. Four volunteers from the community spoke, as did Officer Bryant Petersen, the community-policing officer for the 16th Street area, Racine Police Detective Tonya Scarver, and Racine Police Chief Art Howell.
It was a great day and Im glad that we had a pretty good turnout with the kids and the community members to come together and talk about some issues, Petersen said.
Volunteers shared their messages about their lives from growing up in the projects of Chicago to going in and out of jail and how they turned their lives around. Howell, Starver and Peterson shared their views from the police perspective as well.
Dyland Weather, a volunteer from the center in the community, told stories from his life about when he was regularly arrested, often times by the same officer. Weather said he ended up in prison several times, but turned his life around, is now 13 years sober and wanted to share his stories with the boys.
I was living on the other side of the tracks, Weather said to the boys. I dont want you to grow up thinking (the police) are the enemy. Theyre not.
Weather also brought up a recent interaction he had with two Racine officers. He gave both bottles of water on a hot day and talked with them about the recent happenings in the country. He took a selfie with the officers and posted the photo on Facebook with the story.
As part of the discussion, Petersen and one of the boys acted out a routine traffic stop. While Petersen explained the perspective of the officer, the boys asked questions about how the process worked and also about what not to do during a traffic stop.
Both sides now
Petersen works with boys in the area a lot and has worked at the 16th Street COP House for three years. He said that often times the local boys only gets community members side of the debate and he was glad to get an opportunity to share the police perspective.
We understand that no one has all of the answers, Petersen said. We kind of have to come together and work together to solve the problems.
Howell also made remarks to the group. He focused on the Dallas incident and told the group that the officers were protecting the protesters in Dallas who were protesting against them even during the shooting.
Thats what police officers do everyday, Howell said to the group. Too often in society, and everybody is guilty of it, we see a situation and we pre-judge the situation. It could be somebody pre-judging what you look like, what neighborhood you live in, because of the type of clothing youre wearing.
Likewise, sometimes people look at police officers that way, Howell continued. So when I hear the term they, that is very disturbing because they infers that everybody is the same.
Weather added that he is working with Howell on setting up a town hall meeting in the future to have a similar discussion with the community about police-community relations. A date and location have not been determined yet.
We understand that no one has all of the answers. We kind of have to come together and work together to solve the problems. Racine Police Officer Bryant Petersen
By Prak Chan Thul PHNOM PENH (Reuters) - A Cambodian court on Wednesday charged an unemployed man with murdering prominent government critic and activist Kem Ley, who was gunned down in broad daylight at a shop in the capital Phnom Penh. Kem Ley's death comes amid rising political tensions between veteran Prime Minister Hun Sen and an opposition hoping to challenge his grip on power at local elections in 2017 and national elections in 2018. The Phnom Penh city court charged Chuop Somlap, 38, with the premeditated murder of Kem Key, 46, the founder of grassroots advocacy group "Khmer for Khmer", deputy prosecutor Ly Sophana told reporters. He was also charged with the illegal possession of a weapon and another unidentified person was charged with the illegal sale of a weapon to Chuop Somlap, Ly Sophana said. Chuop Somlap was arrested shortly after the shooting on Sunday. In a police video he claims to have killed the popular political commentator over a $3,000 debt. Members of Cambodia's opposition and activists have been jailed in recent months on charges they say were trumped up by the government as part of a crackdown to mute critics ahead of the elections. Many of Kem Ley's supporters said the murder was political and were skeptical of the reason given for the killing. Kem Ley's family said the activist did not owe money, adding that they now feared for their safety. "If I continue to live in Cambodia, it's not safe," Kem Ley's wife Bou Rachana said. While Chuop Somlap's wife said her husband was a poor, unemployed man and would not have had such a large amount of money to lend. "He has never had that much money," she said. Kem Ley was a frequent critic of Hun Sen, whose more than 30 years grip on power has been challenged by the rise of the opposition Cambodia Nation Rescue Party (CNRP). His most recent critique was a commentary on a report by anti-corruption pressure group Global Witness, which accused the prime minister and his family of having amassed $200 million in business interests. (Reporting by Prak Chan Thul; Editing by Amy Sawitta Lefevre and Michael Perry)
Istanbul (AFP) - The UN's cultural agency on Wednesday added Mali's legendary earthen buildings to its heritage-in-danger list, saying a lack of security was preventing conservation of the site, and also expressed concern over the impact of tourism on monuments in Uzbekistan.
Mali's old towns of Djenne, 570 kilometres (350 miles) northeast of the capital Bamako, have been inhabited since 250 BC and are characterised by the extraordinary use of earth in their architecture.
The houses, roughly 2,000 of which have survived, are built on a small hill to protect them from seasonal flooding.
UNESCO said that the 40th meeting of its World Heritage Committee in Istanbul decided to place the site on its list of world heritage in danger.
"The Committee has expressed concern over the property, which is situated in an area affected by insecurity," UNESCO said in a statement.
"This situation is preventing safeguarding measures from addressing issues that include the deterioration of construction materials in the historic town, urbanisation, and the erosion of the archaeological site."
UNESCO did not detail the nature of the security threats but Mali has been threatened for the last four years by Islamist militant groups such as Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and Ansar Dine.
The site was inscribed on UNESCO's World Heritage List of the world's outstanding natural and cultural wonders in 1988.
UNESCO says its list of heritage in danger is designed to inform the world of risks to the very characteristics that led to a site being listed as World Heritage and encouraging corrective action.
In 2012, jihadists destroyed nine mausoleums in the ancient Malian town of Timbuktu, as well its famous Sidi Yahia mosque which dates back to the 15th and 16th centuries.
One of the alleged attackers, Ahmad al-Faqi al-Mahdi, will go on trial at the International Criminal Court in The Hague from August 22, the tribunal announced on June 1.
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Including Djenne, Mali now has three sites on the world heritage in danger list. Timbuktu and the Tomb of Askia in Gao were both added in 2012 when the fighting first broke out.
- 'Irreversible changes' -
Meanwhile, the committee also added the historic centre of the southern Uzbek town of Shakhrisyabz to the in-danger list, "due to the over-development of tourist infrastructure in the site."
The town contains an unrivalled collection of religious and secular monuments built during the empire led by the great Turco-Mongol leader Timur in the 15th century.
The committee said the destruction of buildings in the centre of the site and the construction of modern facilities such as hotels had "affected irreversible changes to the appearance of historic Shakhrisyabz."
It requested a mission to assess the extent of damage and propose appropriate corrective measures. The site was given world heritage status in 2000.
In a reverse move also announced on Wednesday, the committee decided to remove the complex of churches and holy sites in the Georgian town of Mtskheta from the in-danger list, where it had been listed since 2009.
"The Committee's decision reflects recognition of Georgia's efforts to improve the safeguarding and management of the site," the UNESCO statement said.
Previously, UNESCO had been concerned by the deterioration of its stone fabric and fresco paintings caused by work carried out to its edifices, as well as urban sprawl.
The UN's cultural agency on Wednesday added Mali's legendary earthen buildings to its heritage-in-danger list, saying a lack of security was preventing conservation of the site, and also expressed concern over the impact of tourism on monuments in Uzbekistan.
Mali's old towns of Djenne, 570 kilometres (350 miles) northeast of the capital Bamako, have been inhabited since 250 BC and are characterised by the extraordinary use of earth in their architecture.
The houses, roughly 2,000 of which have survived, are built on a small hill to protect them from seasonal flooding.
UNESCO said that the 40th meeting of its World Heritage Committee in Istanbul decided to place the site on its list of world heritage in danger.
"The Committee has expressed concern over the property, which is situated in an area affected by insecurity," UNESCO said in a statement.
"This situation is preventing safeguarding measures from addressing issues that include the deterioration of construction materials in the historic town, urbanisation, and the erosion of the archaeological site."
UNESCO did not detail the nature of the security threats but Mali has been threatened for the last four years by Islamist militant groups such as Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and Ansar Dine.
The site was inscribed on UNESCO's World Heritage List of the world's outstanding natural and cultural wonders in 1988.
UNESCO says its list of heritage in danger is designed to inform the world of risks to the very characteristics that led to a site being listed as World Heritage and encouraging corrective action.
In 2012, jihadists destroyed nine mausoleums in the ancient Malian town of Timbuktu, as well its famous Sidi Yahia mosque which dates back to the 15th and 16th centuries.
One of the alleged attackers, Ahmad al-Faqi al-Mahdi, will go on trial at the International Criminal Court in The Hague from August 22, the tribunal announced on June 1.
Story continues
Including Djenne, Mali now has three sites on the world heritage in danger list. Timbuktu and the Tomb of Askia in Gao were both added in 2012 when the fighting first broke out.
- 'Irreversible changes' -
Meanwhile, the committee also added the historic centre of the southern Uzbek town of Shakhrisyabz to the in-danger list, "due to the over-development of tourist infrastructure in the site."
The town contains an unrivalled collection of religious and secular monuments built during the empire led by the great Turco-Mongol leader Timur in the 15th century.
The committee said the destruction of buildings in the centre of the site and the construction of modern facilities such as hotels had "affected irreversible changes to the appearance of historic Shakhrisyabz."
It requested a mission to assess the extent of damage and propose appropriate corrective measures. The site was given world heritage status in 2000.
In a reverse move also announced on Wednesday, the committee decided to remove the complex of churches and holy sites in the Georgian town of Mtskheta from the in-danger list, where it had been listed since 2009.
"The Committee's decision reflects recognition of Georgia's efforts to improve the safeguarding and management of the site," the UNESCO statement said.
Previously, UNESCO had been concerned by the deterioration of its stone fabric and fresco paintings caused by work carried out to its edifices, as well as urban sprawl.
NBCUniversal's motion picture head Jeff Shell was briefly detained in Russia for several hours early Wednesday morning before being kicked out of the country.
Shell told The New York Times that he arrived in Moscow around 11:30 p.m. and was making his way through immigration when he was removed from the line.
"I was then taken to a small room and left alone for about a half-hour before someone came back with a document in Russian that they wanted me to sign," Shell told The Times.
He refused, saying he wouldn't sign something he didn't understand, and was then given a translated version of the document saying he was barred from the country. He was then escorted to and locked inside another room for three hours until a flight to Amsterdam was arranged, he told The Times.
"An armed guard came and got me at about 5 a.m. and walked me onto the plane and to my seat," Shell said. "He gave my passport to the pilot and said not to give it back to me until I was on Dutch soil. It was quite embarrassing."
Read More: Jeff Shell Talks DreamWorks Animation Deal: "I Plead Guilty to Disney Envy" (Q&A)
Shell said he was never told why he was denied entry. The executive is known to spend part of his summer visiting Universal's foreign outposts, meeting with distributors and key executives. Russia is a major market for movie releases.
A blog post from the Broadcasting Board of Governors, on which Shell serves as chairman, confirmed his brief detention but notes that an explanation has not been given as to why. The BBG notes that Shell was denied entry despite having a valid passport and Russian visa. He was accompanied by Russian officials on board his flight to Amsterdam.
According to the BBG, Shell told colleagues with whom he was traveling that airport security authorities told him his denial of entry to Russia is permanent and "a lifetime ban."
BBG officials met early Wednesday with U.S. Ambassador John Tefft in Moscow to discuss the incident.
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The Board oversees all U.S. international media with Shell serving as an official in a part-time capacity following a presidential appointment.
Further details of Shell's expulsion also appeared on Russian radio station Echo of Moscow, which noted Shell had been escorted under armed guard to a flight to Amsterdam where his passport was handed to the pilot who was instructed not to return it to Shell until the plane was on Dutch soil.
Read More: Russia Box Office: 'Legend of Tarzan' No. 1 With Soft $3M; 'BFG' Places Second
Both Russia and the U.S. have expelled diplomats from the other country in recent weeks.
Shell's detention and expulsion appears to be related to his position as BBG chairman. The BBG oversees all U.S. non-military foreign broadcasting in Russia, including Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty's Russian Service, which has a bureau in Moscow.
Shell's expulsion from Russia comes two years after a U.S. journalist who was working as an advisor to Radio Free Europe's Moscow bureau was barred for five years from the country.
David Satter, a former Financial Times Moscow correspondent, who had arrived in Moscow in September 2014 was refused a working visa in December that year by the foreign ministry because the "competent organs" - understood to mean the security services - deemed his presence in Russia to be "undesirable."
At the time the foreign ministry stated that Satter had been in "gross violation" of immigration rules as he was late in applying to formalize his visa status after receiving accreditation to work as a journalist in Russia.
Radio Free Europe is funded by the U.S. Congress and, in some Russian government circles, is viewed with suspicion.
Hollywood films dominate the box office in Russia. Last year, U.S. films dominated ticket sales even more than in recent years as box-office revenue hit a new record in local-currency terms. But the sharply lower value of the ruble last year affected U.S. and other foreign studios, leaving annual box office in dollar terms down considerably.
Read More: NBCU, DreamWorks Animation Move Ahead With Separate Russia Theme Parks
Universal Pictures had two of the three biggest box-office performers in Russia in 2015 as its Furious 7 brought in more than $33 million during the calendar year and Minions only slightly less.
NBCUniversal previously changed its approach in Russia. Its Universal Networks International unit said in early 2015 that it would pull out of the country following a ban on commercials on pay TV, which came into effect at the start of that year.
"Due to the challenging economic environment for our pay TV channels [Universal Channel and E! Entertainment Television] in Russia, Universal Networks International has made the decision to no longer operate in the market and is looking at alternative opportunities for its channels' business," it said back then. "NBCUniversal remains committed to the Russian market, with Universal Pictures International and NBCUniversal International Television Distribution continuing their successful operations there."
Universal declined to comment further.
Read More: Russia Plans Tax Cut for Local Animation Industry
(Adds Republican reaction)
By Lisa Lambert
WASHINGTON, July 13 (Reuters) - U.S. Representative Peter DeFazio on Wednesday unveiled legislation to tax financial trades that will likely wither in Congress but could stoke partisan fires in the presidential election.
The Oregon Democrat's bill would levy a 0.03 percent tax on most financial trades, and is intended to discourage "risky trading behaviors." DeFazio expects that will collect more than $417 billion in revenue in the next decade, which he said could be used to fund free higher education or infrastructure repairs.
When the Democratic Party gathers in Philadelphia for its national convention at the end of the month, it will adopt a platform that calls for taxing trades. Many liberals in the party embrace the proposal as a way to curb speculative trading, which they say led to both the 2007-09 financial crisis and the 2010 stock market "flash crash."
The party's left wing, led by U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, who ran against Hillary Clinton for the presidential nomination, meanwhile, has pushed for free university education.
"Thanks to the reckless greed of Wall Street over the past few decades, the American economy is a grossly unbalanced playing field," said DeFazio.
"The only way we can level it is if we rein in reckless speculative financial trading and curb near-instantaneous high-volume trades that create instability in the stock market and our national economy."
The legislation is supported by Democratic Party stalwarts, including the AFL-CIO labor union federation, the Americans for Financial Reform coalition, the Center for Economic and Policy Research, the Communications Workers of America union, and advocacy group Public Citizen.
It will likely not get far. Republicans control both chambers of Congress, and most say that Wall Street regulation passed in the aftermath of the financial crisis has been overly restrictive. In addition, the Republican Party generally favors having fewer taxes.
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"I am opposed to any taxes that would raise the cost of financial transactions," said Randy Neugebauer, the Republican chairman of a House subcommittee on financial institutions, noting that the bill would tax stock, bond and derivatives trades.
Currently, the top U.S. securities regulator, the Securities and Exchange Commission, charges a tax on security futures of less than half of a penny to recover the costs of regulating markets and financial professionals.
The idea for the tax can be traced back to economist John Maynard Keynes, who wrote in 1935 after another devastating financial crisis - the Great Depression - that a transfer tax on all transactions might mitigate speculation.
(Reporting by Lisa Lambert; Editing by Jonathan Oatis)
Washington (AFP) - The United States challenged China at the World Trade Organization on Wednesday over Beijing's export duties on nine raw materials, alleging they give an unfair competitive advantage to Chinese companies.
The Obama administration envoy announced the WTO filing, noting that when China joined the WTO in 2001, it agreed to eliminate the export duties on these products but had failed to follow through on the commitment.
The nine materials -- antimony, cobalt, copper, graphite, lead, magnesia, talc, tantalum, and tin -- are to key industrial sectors, from aerospace and car manufacturing to electronics and chemicals, the US Trade Representative's office said in a statement.
China's export duties range from five to 20 percent, raising the prices on the materials used by manufacturers outside China and allowing Chinese companies to manufacture lower-priced goods, the USTR said.
In addition, the export duties put pressure on non-Chinese manufacturers to shift production, technologies and jobs to China, it said.
"These duties are China's attempt to game the system so that raw materials are cheaper for their manufacturers and more expensive for ours," said USTR Michael Froman in the statement.
"This scheme is directly at odds with WTO commitments China has made, and as we've shown time and again, we will hold them accountable to their commitments."
The WTO challenge is the 13th enforcement action against China brought to the WTO since President Barack Obama took office in 2009. The US has won every case to date, the USTR said.
The challenge is the first step in settling the trade dispute: a request for consultations with China over the matter. If consultations fail, the US could ask the WTO set up a dispute settlement panel to look at the case.
The Obama administration emphasized its commitment to enforcing trade pacts amid a 2016 presidential campaign where anti-trade sentiment has become an issue.
"This case is part of the administration's continuing work to level the playing field for American workers and manufacturers in order to grow our economy and support quality jobs here at home," Froman said.
Washington (AFP) - US Secretary of State John Kerry left Washington on Wednesday for a tour of European capitals focused on efforts to end the chaos in Syria and other hot spots.
The most closely watched part of Kerry's trip will be Thursday's talks in Moscow with Russian President Vladimir Putin and on Friday with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
These will focus on the conflicts in Syria, Ukraine and the Azerbaijani region of Nagorny-Karabakh as Kerry battles to keep Moscow on board faltering international efforts to resolve them.
But Washington's top diplomat will first head to Paris to celebrate the Bastille Day national holiday with French officials, and afterwards go to Brussels and Luxembourg.
Then on Tuesday he will be the first senior US official to visit the new government in London after Theresa May is sworn in as prime minister to lead Britain out of the EU.
The visit was planned before it became clear that May was taking over from outgoing premier David Cameron, and will focus on multilateral talks on the wars in Syria and Yemen.
Brussels (AFP) - US Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew on Wednesday urged Britain and the European Union to remain "highly integrated" despite the British vote to leave the bloc.
Lew spoke as he travelled Europe to gauge the economic landscape in the wake of the referendum decision in favour of Brexit.
"An outcome from the UK and EU that produces a highly integrated relationship between the two is in the best interests of Europe, the United States and the global economy," Lew told reporters before talks in Brussels with Valdis Dombrovskis, the European Commission vice president for the euro.
Outgoing Prime Minister David Cameron has left it up to his successor Theresa May to trigger divorce talks with the EU.
Lew said these talks should "take place in a smooth, pragmatic, and transparent manner."
"It is important that both sides demonstrate flexibility in order to produce an amicable and mutually-acceptable outcome," he added.
In Brussels, he also met with EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager amid transatlantic tensions over anti-competition probes by Brussels of big US companies, such as Apple, Google and Amazon.
Lew expressed support for the TTIP trade deal linking the EU and US that is currently under negotiation despite growing opposition by bloc powers France and Germany.
"We are committed to continuing to work together on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership to enhance trade, job creation and growth," Lew said, referring to the technical name for the trade agreement.
Trade negotiators are meeting this week in Brussels for the 14th round of talks on the proposed trade pact that would create the world's largest free trade area.
Washington (AFP) - The United States will welcome 10,000 Syrian refugees this fiscal year as promised by President Barack Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry announced Tuesday.
Washington has been criticized by some activists for moving too slowly to settle those fleeing the conflict, while Obama's opponents warn their number may include terrorists.
But Kerry said the United States is now on course to admit 10,000 vulnerable refugees, chosen from UN camps and vetted by US security and intelligence agencies.
"It's also representing six-fold increase over what we did the year before," Kerry said, referring to the US fiscal year, which runs from October 1 to September 30.
"I'm proud to say that the United States is by far the largest contributor of emergency aid, but we all recognize that still more needs to be done," he said.
Kerry made the remarks at a dinner in Washington to mark last week's Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr, shortly before he was due to set off on a tour of European capitals.
This journey was to take him Thursday to Moscow, where he is set to meet with President Vladimir Putin and lobby Russia to do more to help end Syria's five-year-old conflict.
Syria is in the grip of what Kerry called the worst humanitarian crisis since World War II, and more than 4.8 million people have fled the country.
The United States has traditionally been by far the world's most generous host for refugees but has been criticized for moving too slowly to respond to the Syrian crisis.
Frontline states like Lebanon and Jordan meanwhile have been all but overwhelmed, and the arrival of streams of unvetted migrants on Europe's shores provoked a crisis.
Republican White House hopeful Donald Trump has repeatedly alleged Obama plans allow hundreds of thousands of Syrians to come to the United States without security checks.
But the 10,000 who will be allowed in before September 30 were selected in UN camps as vulnerable -- such as widows, the elderly and disabled -- and screened by US officials.
Politics
Veep speculation: Indiana Gov. Mike Pence tries out to be Trumps vice president
Indiana Gov. Mike Pence Pence, a former Republican congressman who has a reputation for being a mild-mannered but staunch conservative, introduced Donald Trump with a fiery speech, praising him as a fighter, a builder and a patriot who will bring no-nonsense leadership to the White House. Pence, who is currently facing a tough battle for re-election, seems to be enthusiastically positioning himself for the job. After the Trump campaign stop in Indiana, Pences Twitter account erupted with praise for the GOPs presumptive nominee.
He has been successful on Wall Street, but hes never turned his back on Main Street. Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, on Donald Trump
Pences name is the latest to be on Trumps shortlist of vice presidential candidates other names include New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, who has vice president is said to be imminent, and the joint appearance with Pence comes just days before the beginning of the Republican National Convention in Cleveland.
Caracas (AFP) - Venezuela's military has been put on the frontline of a worsening national economic crisis by taking charge of food distribution and key ports amid dire shortages and mounting unrest.
President Nicolas Maduro, who is trying to cling to power and avert total collapse of his oil-dependent country, announced Tuesday that the armed forces have taken control of the country's five main seaports.
On Monday, he greatly boosted the authority of his defense minister -- armed forces chief General Vladimir Padrino -- by making him responsible for distributing food, medicine and basic goods, all of which are running out.
The nation's woes have accumulated with multinational firms shutting up shop and, on Tuesday, the US bank Citibank confirming it has closed the government's overseas payments account.
A Citibank insider told AFP on condition of anonymity the decision was due to the "reputational risk" to the bank of continuing to do business with the failing South American country.
Maduro likened Citibank's move to a "financial blockade."
His government had used the account to make payments to other accounts in the United States and elsewhere in the world.
Now it will have to find another bank to deal with, so as not to get closed out of the international financial system altogether.
Citibank's move is the latest in a string of closures or scaling back of operations of foreign companies operating in Venezuela, such as Coca-Cola, US food giant The Kraft Heinz company, Clorox and airlines Lufthansa, Aeromexico and American Airlines.
The Maduro government made good Monday on a threat to take over the facilities of companies that shut down.
A plant run by US consumer products giant Kimberly-Clark has been turned over to its workers.
The company said that it simply could not get hold of hard currency to buy raw materials in Venezuela.
- 'Nobody stops Venezuela' -
In face of the mounting adversity, Maduro has been characteristically defiant in the same vein as his late mentor and predecessor, populist president Hugo Chavez.
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"Nobody stops Venezuela," he said Monday. "With Citibank or without it, we are moving forward. With Kimberly or without, we are moving."
But the country's economic problems are crushing.
An estimated 80 percent of food items, medicines and other basics -- even soap -- are in short supply. Inflation hit 180 percent last year and the IMF has forecast it at 720 percent this year.
The country imports just about everything it consumes. But the dollars needed to buy all that stuff are also in short supply: both because of the drop in oil prices and because of currency controls the government exercises.
"Companies are leaving because they cannot get hard currency. They have nothing with which to import raw materials, and stop producing," said economist Pedro Palma of consulting firm Ecoanalytic.
"The response is to take over plants. But what are the workers going to use to produce?" he mused.
Critics say the problem stems from the leftist government's model of tight grips on the economy and currency controls in place since 2003.
Maduro says he is being targeted by US interests and local business elites bent on stoking grassroots anger and removing him from power.
- Militarization of the economy -
Under Maduro's response, civilian ministers are now subordinate to the military. Maduro has also named a new head of the National Guard.
Maduro says the goal is to end corrupt practices, such as crooked officials turning food deliveries over to smugglers who resell the items at much higher prices to the few Venezuelans who can afford to pay.
"We are seeing a major movement of pushing civilians to the side in benefit of the military, which is what is holding up the Maduro government," economist Jesus Casique told AFP.
"This, the Citibank issue and the companies that are leaving all affect the country's image and discontent within Venezuela," Casique added.
Maduro says the military will make things right, arguing that the private sector controls 93 percent of distribution of basic goods and is killing the economy with hoarding and scalping.
Out of a total of 30 government ministries, the military is now in control in 10.
This not going down well with critics of the Maduro government.
The Venezuelan Bishops Conference said the rise of the military is a "threat to tranquility and peace."
(Reuters) - Olympic silver medalist Shane Rose has negotiated his share of hurdles in the past and the veteran equestrian is chomping at the bit to go one better and win gold when he gallops down the home stretch at the Rio Games this August. The 43-year-old was named in Australia's eventing team for the Aug. 5-21 Games, along with Chris Burton, Sam Griffiths and Stuart Tinney, marking the fourth time he has made the cut for the Olympics. Rose was forced out of the 1996 Games in Atlanta and London 2012 due to horse injuries, and the rider, who won silver in Beijing in 2008, will ride CP Qualified in Rio. "I want to win a gold medal. I want to be the best in the world," he said. "Every stone has been turned, but horses are unique creatures, it's not as though I'm just preparing myself, things happen, we just have to deal with them as best as we can. "Setbacks happen, you need to learn from the mistakes. I feel like I've done that." The team event is a combination of three equestrian disciplines -- dressage, cross country and showjumping -- and Australia has claimed 11 medals in the event between the 1960 Games in Rome and the Beijing Olympics. Rose added that the team was looking forward to adding to the country's medal tally. "We need to be at our best from start to finish. It's the Olympic Games, everyone is primed for it," he said. (Reporting by Nivedita Shankar in Bengaluru; editing by Sudipto Ganguly)
Visitors to Vienna's Belvedere Palace were confronted Wednesday with 1,005 refugees' life jackets drifting in the baroque pond -- courtesy of Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei.
The installation, entitled "F. Lotus", consists of 201 rings each holding five life jackets -- retrieved from the Greek island of Lesbos -- arranged in the letter "F" and floating like lotus flowers.
Ai, who in February this year attached 14,000 life jackets to the columns of a Berlin concert house, said that the work was his way of addressing the tragedy of Europe's migrant crisis.
"There are over 500,000 life jackets left on (Lesbos) and it looks like a landscape," he told reporters. "It is something so related to individuals. It could be the last thing you grab when you have to escape."
The artist went too far for some earlier this year when he recreated the death pose of Aylan Kurdi, the Syrian toddler found dead on a Turkish beach in 2015, in a photo shoot for an Indian magazine.
China's most prominent contemporary artist helped design the Bird's Nest stadium for the Beijing Olympics, but his works have often fallen foul of China's authorities. In 2011, he was detained for 81 days.
BRUSSELS, July 13 - Vodafone and Liberty Global have offered concessions in a bid to secure EU antitrust approval for their plan to merge their Dutch telecoms operations to better compete with KPN.
The companies made their offer on July 12, according to a filing on the European Commission website, which did not give further details.
Telecoms companies usually offer to divest infrastructure assets to rivals to head off competition concerns.
The EU antitrust authority, which is scheduled to decide on the deal by Aug. 3, is expected to seek feedback from competitors and other interested parties before deciding whether to accept the offer or demand more concessions.
(Reporting by Foo Yun Chee; Editing by Elaine Hardcastle)
* UK likely to seek deals with India, U.S, China, plus EU
* Minister says needs some 300 experts in place by year-end
* Negotiations likely to stretch on for years
By William Schomberg
LONDON, July 13 (Reuters) - After last month's Brexit vote, Britain faces the challenge of carving out trade deals with the rest of the world, but a key thing is missing: a strong team of trade negotiators.
London is even resorting to hiring foreign negotiators as it prepares for years of talks with its major trading partners in Europe and with some of the world's biggest economies beyond.
The government is also trying to rehire retired civil servants familiar with the complexities of free trade agreements after voters decided to leave the EU last month.
The European Commission hammers out trade deals on behalf of EU countries, meaning Britain has not had its own negotiators since it joined the bloc in 1973. That leaves it with a staffing problem in a priority area for new prime minister Theresa May.
The government says there is no conflict between hiring foreign negotiators and the promises of the referendum's "Leave" campaign to take control over immigration.
"I see no reason why we wouldn't hire people who were non-British if they were the best people to do the job," foreign minister, Philip Hammond, said on Tuesday.
"Clearly one would not want to hire a citizen of another country to negotiate a trade deal with that country. But having entered that caveat I would hope that we would put together the best and most capable teams from wherever."
Britain is aiming to strike deals not only with the EU but also other economies such as the United States, India and China, all of which have large and experienced trade negotiating teams.
In another part of its push, experts with law firms, consultancies and industrial groups are being offered secondments to help create the firepower London needs.
BULKING UP
Britain's Business Ministry, which has around 40 trade specialists, wants to have as many as 300 experts in place by the end of 2016, Business Minister Sajid Javid said last week as he headed for preliminary talks about a trade deal with India.
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Only a few of the 55 British officials in the European Commission's trade department in Brussels have worked on negotiations, offering a limited recruitment pool but one which London might well tap into.
A senior EU official said he believed that Britons who have been involved in EU trade negotiations would be able to "name their price" in Westminster.
A Brussels diplomat from a non-European country said his government had been approached by British officials looking for negotiating talent. "But they were looking for something like 300 people. There's no way we can help with that," the diplomat said. "They're going to have to take some time to build up their expertise."
Trade negotiators have skills that are hard to acquire quickly. Typically, they are given marching orders by politicians on much they can give away in terms of lower barriers to trade and investment.
The negotiators must then stick to those instructions while trying to coax concessions from their peers on the other side of the table, meaning trade talks often take years to complete.
Britain will also need to create and find staff for a new office to investigate possible dumping of goods in the country, a separate and equally complex discipline within international trade, Stephen Adams, a partner with consultancy Global Counsel.
May has said she will not start the two-year process for Britain's exit from the EU this year. It is unclear if the EU will agree to begin talks about its new trade ties with Britain before the exit is complete.
Countries outside the bloc are unlikely to sit down for detailed negotiations with Britain until they know the terms of its new EU deal, raising the prospect of negotiations stretching out for years to come.
(Additional reporting by Alastair MacDonald in Brussels; Editing by Guy Faulconbridge and Alison Williams)
Christian Siriano keeps Hollywoods leading ladies looking fabulous, but his wedding day was his own moment to shine.
Over the weekend he said I do to longtime love Brad Walsh, a musician, at their country home in Danbury, Conn. The wedding was officiated by 3rd Rock From the Suns Kristen Johnston, who got ordained over the Internet for the occasion, and attended by many of the famous ladies he dresses, including Mad Mens Christina Hendricks, Alicia Silverstone, Kelly Osbourne, and Veeps Anna Chlumsky.
Since there was no bride, the grooms selected white gowns for their many bridesmaids. All in Christian Siriano, of course. Most of the guests wore the same hue. Osbourne punched it up with a silver jacket.
So many beautiful people who made our #wedding day even more special. All my love. #sirianowalsh Photos by @sarakerens A video posted by Christian Siriano (@csiriano) on Jul 12, 2016 at 2:54pm PDT
The designer, who won Season 4 of Project Runway, shared footage from his big day with Brides.com and it seemed like a heartfelt occasion with many tears of happiness shed. Take a look at the video above for highlights, including their vows, which were borrowed from The Velveteen Rabbit.
Theresa May is set to become Britains new prime minister when she takes office Wednesday, after David Cameron, who has held the post since 2010, steps down in the wake of the countrys referendum vote to leave the European Union on June 23.
Cameron, who fought for the country to remain in the E.U. against the wishes of many in his party and, as it turned out, almost 52% of voters will pay a visit to Buckingham Palace to officially tender his resignation to Queen Elizabeth II. As his six years and 62 days as the countrys leader come to an end, Cameron, 49, reportedly plans to stay on as the member of Parliament for Witney in Oxfordshire.
Read More: Everything You Need to Know About Theresa May
The long-serving Home Secretary will follow Cameron in meeting the monarch, who will formally offer May the chance to form a government. May won the leadership of the ruling Conservative party after her final challenger, Andrea Leadsom, dropped out of the race Monday. She now commands the parliamentary majority necessary to form a government.
After accepting, May will travel the short distance from the palace to Number 10 Downing Street, the official residence of the Prime Minister. She becomes only the second woman to hold the post after the late Margaret Thatcher, who was also a Conservative. The so-called Iron Lady held the top job from 1979 to 1990.
Read More: Inside the Tumultuous 24 Hours Britain Got Itself a New Prime Minister
Once in office, May will start appointing lawmakers to Cabinet posts. The Guardian reports that she is likely to assign more women to key ministerial positions and will also have to ensure that Conservatives who campaigned successfully for Brexit are well represented. Like Cameron, May campaigned to remain in the E.U., but is seen as naturally Eurosceptic. She has pledged to follow through with the voters wish to leave the bloc, despite the market turmoil and dramatic slide of the sterling since the referendum.
By Lawrence Hurley and Doina Chiacu WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican Donald Trump thrust the U.S. Supreme Court into the presidential campaign debate on Wednesday, calling for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to resign and describing her as mentally unfit after she lambasted him in media interviews. The Republican presidential nominee led conservatives in a chorus of outrage over the comments by Ginsburg, who described Trump as a "faker" and speculated about the possibility of moving to New Zealand if he won the White House. In a post-midnight counter-attack on Twitter, Trump said the 83-year-old leader of the court's liberal wing had "embarrassed all by making very dumb political statements about me. Her mind is shot - resign!" Other Republicans jumped in, saying Ginsburg's comments showed that she could not be an impartial voice on the country's highest court. "For someone on the Supreme Court who is going to be calling balls and strikes in the future based upon whatever the next president or Congress does, that strikes me as inherently biased and out of the realm," Republican House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan said on CNN on Tuesday. The New York Times and Washington Post joined in the rebukes, with the Times asking her to uphold the court's tradition of silence in political campaigns and drop the "punditry and name-calling." The furore erupted as Trump prepared for the Republicans' July 18-21 convention to formally nominate him for the Nov. 8 election. It gave him an issue to help rally conservatives in his party who are divided over his unorthodox candidacy but concerned that the high court leans too liberal. Recent rulings upholding racial preferences in university administrations and striking down tough abortion restrictions in Texas have compounded that mistrust. Ginsburg is the senior liberal on the court, which has been ideologically split between four liberals and four conservatives since conservative Justice Antonin Scalia died in February. "This gives Trump the ability to attack not only Justice Ginsburg but ultimately the authority of the Supreme Court. That is a very bad situation," said Richard Painter, a law professor at the University of Minnesota Law School who served as a lawyer in the White House under President George W. Bush. U.S. Supreme Court justices are not required to follow the code of judicial conduct that applies to judges on lower federal courts. The code, set by the U.S. Judicial Conference, says judges should not "make speeches for a political organisation or candidate, or publicly endorse or oppose a candidate for public office." Still, the judges on the country's top court typically try to stay out of the political fray. As a judicial counterweight to the executive and legislative branches of government, the court has a sometimes pivotal role in deciding some of the most divisive social issues in American life. In recent years, major rulings legalized gay marriage nationwide and upheld President Barack Obama's healthcare overhaul. NOT 'DEMOCRATS OR REPUBLICANS' In public remarks earlier this year, Chief Justice John Roberts stressed it was important for the justices not to be seen as political players, saying criticisms of partisanship, which he described as inaccurate, were damaging to the courts reputation. We dont work as Democrats or Republicans, he said. Ginsburg was not immediately available for comment on Trump's remarks and the Times editorial. The Supreme Court, whose nine justices are nominated by the U.S. president to lifetime appointments, had already been caught up in political controversy as the Republican-controlled U.S. Senate refused to take up Democratic President Obamas nominee to replace Scalia, Merrick Garland. Republicans have said the next president should be allowed to nominate a replacement for Scalia. Trump has emphasized the importance of naming conservative justices to the court. The next president, potentially serving two four-year terms, could have the opportunity to appoint up to three new justices, not including Scalia's replacement. Ginsburg is the oldest of the justices. Justice Anthony Kennedy turns 80 on July 23, while Justice Stephen Breyer turns 78 in August. Democrats defended Ginsburg, with U.S. Senator Jon Tester of Montana saying "she called him (Trump) for what she saw" and Senator Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota saying "I think she's the ultimate determiner of what's appropriate and what isn't." U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who dropped his presidential bid on Tuesday and endorsed rival Hillary Clinton to be the Democratic candidate for the election, told ABC's "Good Morning America" he agreed with Ginsburg. "I think that Trump is a total opportunist," Sanders said. But Democratic Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut said, "I don't think we're well-served by Supreme Court justices openly expressing their political opinions." Asked about Ginsburg's remarks, White House spokesman Josh Earnest responded with a joke referencing a nickname used widely on social media by Ginsburg's admirers. "She didn't earn the nickname the Notorious R.B.G. for nothing," he said. The name was inspired by rapper Notorious B.I.G. But, saying he had been similarly asked in the last year about some controversial remarks that Scalia once made, Earnest said he would not comment further. (Additional reporting by Emily Stephenson and Caren Bohan; Writing by John Whitesides; Editing by Frances Kerry)
Gov. Scott Walker declared a state of emergency in eight counties Tuesday after torrential rains overnight and into the morning wreaked havoc in northern Wisconsin.
Ashland, Bayfield, Burnett, Douglas, Iron, Price, Sawyer and Washburn counties were included in the declaration after heavy rain washed out roads, caused power outages and produced flash floods.
Two people were confirmed dead after the powerful storm.
The Iron County Sheriffs office identified one of the dead as 56-year-old Mitchell R. Koski. The Sheriffs Office was unable to confirm if the death was storm related. Koski, of Montreal, is a member of the Iron County Board.
An 84-year-old Illinois man died after his car entered a flooded ditch Tuesday morning while he was trying to turn around at a washed-out road, the Bayfield County Sheriffs office said on Facebook.
At 11 a.m., Delmar R. Johnson, of Tower Lakes, Illinois, quickly accelerated while trying to make a Y-turn on Highway M, three miles east of Cable, and his vehicle became completely submerged in the ditch, the sheriffs office said.
A firefighter on the scene immediately entered the water and rescued Johnsons wife, 84-year-old Caryljean Johnson, who was uninjured, the Sheriffs office said. The firefighter went into the ditch again and brought the man out of the car and water, but rescue attempts were unsuccessful, the sheriffs office said.
Some areas received between 8 inches and 10 inches of rain, according to the emergency center, which went into operation Tuesday morning to help local emergency services.
I express my thanks and appreciation to all of the first responders and officials in the area who are working hard to manage the situation, Walker said in a statement. I am instructing the Wisconsin National Guard and all state agencies to aid those affected by the storms.
Walker had planned on traveling to the area with other state officials Tuesday evening to speak with residents and survey the damage, according to the statement.
The National Weather Service said rivers and streams are expected to continue rising over the next two days.
In Sawyer County, people started sandbagging efforts as Smith Creek, which runs through the city, was expected to rise.
Thirty-three people were stranded on Michigan Island in Lake Superior, off of Saxon Harbor in Iron County, but they were rescued with no reported injuries.
The emergency center said more than 100 boat slips and 85 boats in Saxon Harbor were damaged, and officials reported to the center that the harbor is a total loss.
The Bayfield County Sheriffs office said on Facebook a deputys vehicle fell off a washed out portion of a road, and was carried downstream before the deputy was able to get out of the vehicle. The sheriffs office said the deputy hung on to a tree for two hours while authorities attempted to rescue him.
He was taken to a hospital in Duluth, Minnesota, and is in good condition, the sheriffs office said.
Homes in Ashland County experienced sewage backups, and officials have been helping visitors at Copper Falls State Park after camper-trailers became surrounded by water, the emergency center said.
For updated road conditions across Wisconsin, go to readywisconsin.wi.gov/511/.
State Journal reporter Bill Novak and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
The chill Brexit is sending through Britains real estate market could end up warming the hearts of investors in US commercial property. That, in a nutshell, is the view of Michael Hudgins, global strategist at EII Capital Management, an asset manager specializing in real estate.
Following Brexit and the British Pounds fall, several UK real estate funds blocked investors from cashing out. Hudgins says Britains real estate pain is bound to increase interest in US commercial property.
Hudgins points to the more than $250 billion institutions want to invest in real estate. Before Brexit, a good chunk of that money would have gone to both the US and the UK, he says. Given whats happened in the UK, thats going to be reconsidered, he tells Yahoo Finance. And we think on the margin well see capital flows to US property as a safe haven.
Those capital flows and extremely low yields on 10-year Treasury notes, Hudgins says, should benefit investors who buy stock in real estate investment trusts, known as REITs. REITs are publicly traded companies that invest in property including office and apartment buildings, shopping malls and warehouses. REITs pass on almost all their income to investors as dividends.
Investors are going to be looking for alternatives where can they get yield, Hudgins says. US property on a risk-adjusted basis is well set up in that environment.
EII Capital expects REITs that invest in office property to do well as investors shift funds out of the UK and invest in real estate in major American cities like New York and Los Angeles. Hudgins REIT picks include Hudson Pacific Properties (HPP) and SL Green Realty Corp. (SLG).
Hudgins rejects the argument that after several years of expansion, commercial real estate markets are going to slump and take REITs down with them.
Weve looked back in time and US property does not suffer significant value losses unless theres a recession. Right now we do not see the excesses in the US economy that would suggest a recession is on the near horizon, Hudgins says. As a result we think US property will continue to grow rents, to grow cash flow at the property level and to distribute that to investors.
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In addition to office space, EII Capital sees value in some health care REITs that own hospitals, senior living facilities and other medical buildings. Historically, Hudgins viewed the stocks as expensive compared to the real estate they hold. But thats changed, he says.
Health care looks to be modestly less expensive but its also offering the highest dividend yield as a group among all the US REIT property types at about 5% versus about 3.6% for the entire group.
Among the stocks he likes is Ventas (VTR), a company he says is well managed and has a diversified portfolio of property but limited exposure to skilled nursing facilities that may face cuts in government reimbursement rates.
TORONTO, ON / ACCESSWIRE / July 13, 2016 / Wi2Wi Corporation (Wi2Wi or the Company), announces that Messrs. Harry Bloomfield, Sharad Mistry, Daniel Phelan, Zachariah Mathews, Michael Pesner and Eugene Hretzay were elected as directors of the Company at its annual general meeting of shareholders held on June 30, 2016 (the Meeting).
Appointments
Following the Meeting the following appointments were made by the Board of Directors:
Daniel Phelan as Chair of the Board of Directors
Michael Pesner as Chair of the Audit Committee
Eugene Hretzay as Chair of the Governance Committee
Harry Bloomfield as Chair of the Human Resources and Compensation Committee
Zachariah Mathews as President and Chief Executive Officer
Sharad Mistry as Chief Financial Officer
For further information, please contact:
Zachariah Mathews
President and Chief Executive Officer
408-416-4202
zach@nullwi2wi.com
About IoT and M2M
Essentially, IoT and M2M describe the network of physical objects or "things" embedded with electronics, software, sensors, and network connectivity, which enables these objects to collect and exchange data. Driven by several factors including the growth in the availability of Broadband Internet, which reduces the cost of connecting, and the related increase in Wi-Fi capabilities as well as sensors built into myriad technologies, this has been described as the "perfect storm" for the IoT. Almost any device with an on and off switch that can be connected to the Internet (and/or to each other) - anything from cell phones, coffee makers, washing machines, headphones, lamps, wearable devices, cars, as well as machine components in the engine of a jet airplane or the drill of an oil rig. According to analyst firm Gartner, by 2020 there will be over 26 billion connected devices. Others think this figure could be too conservative by a factor of four.
About Wi2Wi Corporation
Wi2Wi is a vertically-integrated technology company which designs, manufactures and markets high performance, low power wireless connectivity solutions, global navigation satellite system (GNSS) modules, and frequency control devices. The Company's products and services address numerous applications in the markets of Internet of Things (IoT), Machine to Machine (M2M), Avionics, Space, and Government Sponsored Projects. Wi2Wi's products and value-added services provide highly integrated, rugged, robust, and reliable multiprotocol wireless actuators with embedded software, along with customized timing and frequency control devices for customers, worldwide. The Company was founded in 2005 and is strategically headquartered in San Jose, California with satellite offices in Middleton, Wisconsin and Hyderabad, India. Wi2Wi's manufacturing operations, its laboratory for reliability and quality control, together with design and engineering for timing and frequency control devices are located in Middleton, WI. The branch office, located in Hyderabad, India, focuses on the development of wireless connectivity; both hardware and software. Wi2Wi's strategic objective is to service the unique needs of each customer by providing end to end wireless integration solutions and highly customizable timing and frequency control devices. Wi2Wi distinguishes itself from commodity grade products, with best in the market performance, highly reliable, low power wireless connectivity products with integrated software that supports broader temperature ranges and a longer product life cycle. Furthermore, Wi2Wi's end to end product solutions helps the customer substantially reduce their end product expense, certification cost, and overall R&D investment, in addition to substantially reducing the time to market. Wi2Wi has partnered with best in class global leaders in technology, manufacturing, and sales. The Company uses a wide network of manufacturer's representatives, worldwide, to promote its products and services, and has partnered with world class distributors for the fulfillment of orders along with direct sales.
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Forward-Looking Statements: This news release contains certain forward-looking statements, including management's assessment of future plans and operations, and the timing thereof, that involve substantial known and unknown risks and uncertainties, certain of which are beyond the Company's control. Such risks and uncertainties include, without limitation, risks associated with the ability to access sufficient capital, the impact of general economic conditions in Canada, the United States and overseas, industry conditions, stock market volatility. The Company's actual results, performance or achievements could differ materially from those expressed in, or implied by, these forward-looking statements and, accordingly, no assurances can be given that any of the events anticipated by the forward-looking statements will transpire or occur, or if any of them do so, what benefits, including the amount of proceeds, that the Company will derive there from. Readers are cautioned that the foregoing list of factors is not exhaustive. Additional information on these and other factors that could affect the Company's operations and financial results are included in reports on file with Canadian securities regulatory authorities and may be accessed through the SEDAR website (www.sedar.com). Forward-looking statements are made based on management's beliefs, estimates and opinions on the date the statements are made and the Company undertakes no obligation to update forward-looking statements and if these beliefs, estimates and opinions or other circumstances should change, except as required by applicable law. All subsequent forward-looking statements, whether written or oral, attributable to the Company or persons acting on its behalf are expressly qualified in their entirety by these cautionary statements. Furthermore, the forward-looking statements contained in this news release are made as at the date of this news release and the Company does not undertake any obligation to update publicly or to revise any of the included forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as may be required by applicable securities laws.
Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.
SOURCE: Wi2Wi Corporation
(Corrects paragraph 4 to Browse instead of Prelude)
MELBOURNE, July 14 (Reuters) - Australia's Woodside Petroleum has agreed to buy ConocoPhillips' deepwater stakes off Senegal, including one of the world's most promising recent oil finds, for $350 million.
The acquisition includes a 35 percent interest in the 560 million barrel SNE deep water oil discovery and the FAN oil discovery farther offshore, with Woodside gaining the option to become operator for development and production of the fields.
"We are taking advantage of our balance sheet to acquire a world-class asset that fits well with our capabilities, offers significant future upside in exploration and line-of-sight to near term oil production," Woodside Chief Executive Peter Coleman said in a statement.
The move is key for Woodside which is short of near term growth prospects after giving up multibillion dollar plans to develop gas off Israel, postponing plans to develop the Browse liquefied natural gas project off Australia, and being spurned in a takeover offer for Oil Search.
The fields' operator is currently Britain's Cairn Energy Plc , which owns 40 percent and is looking to sell down its stake.
Australia's FAR Ltd owns 15 percent of the fields and Senegal's state-owned Petrosen holds 10 percent.
(Reporting by Sonali Paul)
For Immediate Release
Chicago, IL July 13, 2016 Zacks.com announces the list of stocks featured in the Analyst Blog. Every day the Zacks Equity Research analysts discuss the latest news and events impacting stocks and the financial markets. Stocks recently featured in the blog include Altria Group, Inc. (MO), Intel Corporation (INTC), Frontline Ltd (FRO), Grupo Aeroportuario del Centro Norte, S.A.B. de C.V. ( OMAB) and Enbridge Inc. (ENB).
Today, Zacks is promoting its ''Buy'' stock recommendations. Get #1Stock of the Day pick for free.
Here are highlights from Tuesdays Analyst Blog:
5 Stocks with Impressive Growth Prospects & Yields
It is no news that the Brexit vote has sent shock waves throughout the global financial markets.
However, the U.S. equity market has emerged strong from the aftermath. Though the news led to over 5% drop in the benchmark S&P 500 index in just two trading sessions, the market has staged an incredible turnaround thereafter.
Moreover, the recent job data has painted a rosy picture of the labor market, dispelling fears over the health of the U.S. economy. Positive economic data showing a rapid improvement in the U.S. manufacturing activity in June on the back of new orders and increased output and exports also lifted spirits.
Thus, as the dust settles on the Brexit chapter, we can hope for a marked improvement in broader market conditions in the near term. Thereby, making it ideal for investors to put their money into growth stocks for handsome returns.
Should You Bank on Only Growth?
However, it might not be very wise to invest in stocks based only on the growth factor in markets as capricious as these where investment outlooks change every minute.
Thus, to rule out risks pertaining to this, we advice investors to balance their portfolios by investing in high-yielding stocks with bright prospects. Notably, dividend stocks provide much downside protection through sizable yields and also act as a hedge against equity market risks, thereby shielding the portfolio from economic upheavals.
However, the trade-off between growth and dividends makes it a little tricky to zero-in on stocks with a high payout ratio and solid prospects. Nonetheless, though rare, there are companies with efficient capital allocation policies in place that allow them to make high dividend payments and also invest in growth projects. Although it is like trying to find a needle in a haystack for the average investors, we have eased the process.
Zacks to the Rescue
With the help of the Zacks Stock Screener, we have zeroed-in on five stocks with solid growth prospects and a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) or 2 (Buy) along with a dividend yield of above 3%.
To ensure that our stocks stick to the growth track, we took the assistance of our new style score system and refined our screen further by adding a good Growth Style Score criteria.
Our Growth Style Score condenses all the essential metrics from the companys financial statements to get a true sense of the quality and sustainability of its growth. Our research shows that stocks with Growth Style Scores of A or B when combined a Zacks Rank #1 or #2 offer the best investment opportunities in the growth investing space.
5 Solid Picks
Here are the five stocks that follow the holy grail of dividend-growth investing and offer tremendous growth potential, high-dividend yield and consistent and safe operations.
Further, most of these picks have been seeing impressive earnings estimate revision activity of late, which suggests that analysts are getting increasingly bullish on the stocks.
Headquartered at Richmond, VA, Altria Group, Inc. (MO) is the parent company of Philip Morris USA, Inc. (PM USA), UST LLC (UST), John Middleton Inc. and Philip Morris Capital Corporation (PMCC). The extended agreement with Philip Morris regarding technology sharing and distribution of e-vapor products is commendable. Moreover, overall, the companys strong portfolio of tobacco brands and pricing power are encouraging.
The company carries a Zacks Rank #2 and yields dividend of 3.2%. Furthermore, a Growth Style Score of A coupled with projected sales and EPS growth of 11.3% and 8.9%, respectively, for 2016, lends more potential to the stock.
Based in Santa Clara, CA, Intel Corporation (INTC) is one of the worlds leading producers of semiconductor components and digital platforms. Data center is currently the most promising area, where macro factors are impacting the enterprise side (cloud remains strong). Meanwhile, Intels investments in IoT, security and memory, greater integration in products, process technology lead and Chinese collaborations bode well.
This Zacks Rank #2 company has a dividend yield of 3.1% and a Growth Style Score of A. Upward estimate revisions for 2016 and 2017 earnings add to the optimism. Additionally, for full-year 2016, sales growth is pegged at 3.1% while EPS is likely to grow 4.2%.
Based in Hamilton, Bermuda, Frontline Ltd (FRO) is a shipping company that is engaged in the seaborne transportation of crude oil and oil products worldwide. The company carries a Zacks Rank #2, a Growth Style Score of A and has a dividend yield of 21.3%.
Also, upward estimate revisions reinstate hope on the stocks prospects. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for 2016 and 2017 has climbed 40.6% and 36.4%, respectively, over the last 60 days. Further, for full-year 2016, sales growth is pegged at a healthy 33.4%.
Grupo Aeroportuario del Centro Norte, S.A.B. de C.V. (OMAB) operates and manages 13 international airports in the north and central regions of Mexico. The companys airports serve Monterrey, Mexico's third largest metropolitan area, the tourist destinations of Acapulco, Mazatlan, and Zihuatanejo, and nine other regional centers and border cities. This Zacks Rank #2 company has a dividend yield of 3.1%.
Moreover, the company has been seeing an upward trend in earnings estimate revision. Over the past 60 days, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for 2016 and 2017 earnings have increased 5.9% and 5.3%, respectively. Additionally, a Growth Style Score of A and full-year 2016 sales and EPS growth projection of 4.7% and 36.2%, respectively, bode well.
Headquartered in Calgary, Canada, Enbridge Inc. (ENB) is a leader in energy transportation and distribution in North America and internationally. This Zacks Rank #2 company has a dividend yield of 4.1%.
A Growth Style Score of A and upward estimate revisions for 2016 and 2017 suggest further bullishness ahead. Whats more, for full-year 2016, sales growth is pegged at 10.3% while EPS is likely to grow a healthy 8.7%.
High-Yielding Growth Stocks: A Fairly Safe Haven
Growth stocks could be big winners at this point with the markets looking up. However, betting on stocks just based on potential growth would be foolhardy. Thus, when the filter of fundamentals and high yield is added, the risk level is somewhat taken care of.
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Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Inherent in any investment is the potential for loss. This material is being provided for informational purposes only and nothing herein constitutes investment, legal, accounting or tax advice, or a recommendation to buy, sell or hold a security. No recommendation or advice is being given as to whether any investment is suitable for a particular investor. It should not be assumed that any investments in securities, companies, sectors or markets identified and described were or will be profitable. All information is current as of the date of herein and is subject to change without notice. Any views or opinions expressed may not reflect those of the firm as a whole. Zacks Investment Research does not engage in investment banking, market making or asset management activities of any securities. These returns are from hypothetical portfolios consisting of stocks with Zacks Rank = 1 that were rebalanced monthly with zero transaction costs. These are not the returns of actual portfolios of stocks. The S&P 500 is an unmanaged index. Visit https://www.zacks.com/performance for information about the performance numbers displayed in this press release.
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For Immediate Release
Chicago, IL July 13, 2016 Zacks.com announces the list of stocks featured in the Analyst Blog. Every day the Zacks Equity Research analysts discuss the latest news and events impacting stocks and the financial markets. Stocks recently featured in the blog include Chevron Corp. (CVX), National Oilwell Varco Inc. (NOV), Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM), Kinder Morgan Inc. ( KMI) and Petrobras (PBR).
Today, Zacks is promoting its ''Buy'' stock recommendations. Get #1Stock of the Day pick for free.
Here are highlights from Tuesdays Analyst Blog:
Oil & Gas Stock Roundup
It was a week where both oil and gas prices finished lower.
On the news front, Chevron Corp. (CVX)-led consortium approved a $36.7 billion expansion for the giant Tengiz oilfield in Kazakhstan, while National Oilwell Varco Inc. ( NOV) joined forces with General Electric to offer a standardized FPSO package.
Overall, it was a dismal week for the sector. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures dived 7.3% to close at $45.41 per barrel, while natural gas prices plunged 6.2% to $2.801 per million Btu (MMBtu). (See the last Oil & Gas Stock Roundup here: Energy Transfer Quits Williams Deal, Kinder Morgan Sells 50% Ohio Pipeline Stake .)
Oil prices booked a weekly loss after the U.S. Energy Department's latest inventory release showed a lower-than-expected inventory drop. A stronger dollar, which made the greenback-priced crude dearer for investors holding foreign currency, also played spoilsport. Things further worsened with the Baker Hughes report revealing a rise in the U.S. oil rig count indicating resurgence in shale drilling activities.
Oils-Energy Sector Price Index
Natural gas also fared badly despite another lower-than-average build. The downward movement could be attributed to predictions of tepid cooling demand with forecasts of milder temperature across the country over the next few days.
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Recap of the Weeks Most Important Stories
1. Leading U.S. oil giants Chevron Corp. and Exxon Mobil Corp. ( XOM), along with their partners, announced plans to invest around $36.8 billion to boost oil output in a Kazakhstan oil field.
Under the plan, Tengizchevroil, which is 50% owned by Chevron and 25% owned by Exxon Mobil, will go ahead with the development of its Future Growth and Wellhead Pressure Management Project. This, in turn, is expected to bolster production in the Tengiz oil field by 260,000 barrels per day. Upon completion, the field is likely to generate 1 million barrels of oil per day, with the first production planned for 2022.
Tengizchevroil, which is also 20% owned by Kazakhstan's KazMunayGas and 5% owned by Russia's Lukoil, will spend $27.1 billion in facilities, $3.5 billion in wells and $6.2 billion for contingency and escalation. In 1993, Chevron was awarded the rights to develop Tengiz. According to the company, the Tengiz oil field's reservoir is located 12,000 feet below ground, making it the world's deepest operating super-giant oil field. (See More: Chevron, Exxon Mobil to Invest in Tengiz Expansion Project .)
2. Energy equipment maker National Oilwell Varco Inc. has teamed up with General Electric Co. to offer solutions for Floating Production Storage and Offloading (FPSO) vessels. This collaboration will likely lower the expenses of deepwater oilfield developments significantly.
Both companies believe that the collaboration will likely provide industry-leading topside systems with repeatable deliveries, economies of scale and standardized interfaces. This is expected to considerably trim risks related to delay in construction and hazards related to the overrun of cost for clients working with deepwater oil and gas projects.
It is anticipated that the firms will offer services together by the first half of 2017. Both players look forward to providing top class services to overcome challenges that their clients face in the offshore oil and gas industry. (See More: National Oilwell and GE to Offer Improved FPSO Solutions .)
3. Houston, TX-based energy infrastructure provider Kinder Morgan Inc. ( KMI) and electric utility Southern Co. entered into a natural gas pipeline venture intended to enhance leadership in the development of energy infrastructure of both the firms.
Per the deal, Southern Company will acquire a 50% interest in the SNG pipeline system for $1.5 billion. Kinder Morgan, the operator of the pipeline system will continue with its operatorship.
Having a total length of 7,600 mile, SNG links natural gas supply basins in in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and the Gulf of Mexico to markets in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and Tennessee. SNG is a leading natural gas transporter to Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina. These regions represent U.Ss fastest-growing natural gas demand localities. (See More: Kinder Morgan-Southern Company Natural Gas Pipeline Deal .)
4. Brazil's state-run energy giant Petrobras (PBR) is reportedly planning to divest nine shallow water oil fields in the northeastern states of Ceara and Sergipe. These fields produce a total of 13,000 barrels of oil and equivalent natural gas a day from multiple wells.
The aforesaid sale is in line with the companys $15 billion divestment program to shed non-core properties. Petrobras remains the most debt-laden company in the oil industry with a total debt of about $126 billion. Also, it has been hard for the company to raise money in the debt as well as the equity markets after its involvement in a money laundering scam. Hence, the company is focusing on massive asset divestitures to reduce debt and strengthen its balance sheet.
The proposed divestment, however, is not expected to result in a significant reduction in the companys debt. This is because the nine fields contribute even less than 1% of the total production of the company. (See More: Petrobras to Divest Nine Shallow Water Oil Fields .)
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Continuous coverage is provided for a universe of 1,150 publicly traded stocks. Our analysts are organized by industry which gives them keen insights to developments that affect company profits and stock performance. Recommendations and target prices are six-month time horizons.
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Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Inherent in any investment is the potential for loss. This material is being provided for informational purposes only and nothing herein constitutes investment, legal, accounting or tax advice, or a recommendation to buy, sell or hold a security. No recommendation or advice is being given as to whether any investment is suitable for a particular investor. It should not be assumed that any investments in securities, companies, sectors or markets identified and described were or will be profitable. All information is current as of the date of herein and is subject to change without notice. Any views or opinions expressed may not reflect those of the firm as a whole. Zacks Investment Research does not engage in investment banking, market making or asset management activities of any securities. These returns are from hypothetical portfolios consisting of stocks with Zacks Rank = 1 that were rebalanced monthly with zero transaction costs. These are not the returns of actual portfolios of stocks. The S&P 500 is an unmanaged index. Visit https://www.zacks.com/performance for information about the performance numbers displayed in this press release.
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For Immediate Release
Chicago, IL July 13, 2016 - Stocks in this weeks article include: Apple Hospitality REIT (APLE), Isle of Capri Casinos (ISLE) and OMNOVA Solutions (OMN).
Screen of the Week of Zacks Investment Research:
New Highs for "New Highs" Stock Picking Strategy
With both the S&P and the Dow making new all-time highs, I thought I'd celebrate those to record events by showcasing our 'New Highs' strategy, which is also making new highs!
This screen focuses on a powerful concept, and that's buying stocks making new highs.
If somebody were to ask you what your best stocks are, you would likely name the stocks moving up the most in your portfolio. Your worst stocks? The ones going lower, of course.
Simply put, the winners in your portfolio are the ones going up. Period.
If the stock is underperforming the market (or worse, going down), you'll quickly identify it as one of your worst holdings -- and you would be right to do so.
This being the case, it only makes sense that some of these will be making new highs along the way.
Don't Be Afraid of New Highs
I know some are reluctant to buy stocks making new 52-week highs. But there's no reason to be. I suppose some may feel like they've already missed it. Or that now it has more room to fall. But if a stock is making a new 52-week high, that's a 'good thing'. Just like a stock making a new 52-week low is a 'bad thing'.
And I'm pretty sure the person who dislikes buying stocks making new 52-week highs wouldn't be too upset if the stock he already owned, broke out to a new 52-week high. And why should he? As I've mentioned before, statistics have shown that stocks making new highs have a tendency of making even higher highs. These are the stocks we all dream about. Getting in and watching it go up.
Of course, the fundamentals need to be there. And you should keep a watchful eye on valuations. But if you were in a stock making new highs and cheering it on, it seems silly to be afraid of one doing the same just because you haven't bought it yet.
Story continues
One question I like asking myself just to put things into perspective is: If I was in it, would I be excited and would I still want to be in it? If the answer is "yes" -- then I'll look for the best opportunity to get in. If the answer is "no, I would be looking to take profits" -- then I'll move on.
Embrace Stocks Making New Highs
This topic reminds me of a question someone asked me a while ago about a stock I was talking about that was at a new 52-week high. In fact, it was at a new 5-year high.
He said, "Aren't you worried about buying a stock at a 52-week high?" I said of course not. So it just made a new-52 week high. That's great news. Guess what -- last year it made a new 52-week high as well. And the year before that. And the year before that. Can you imagine all the money you'd be leaving on the table if you were afraid of being in stocks every time they made a new high?
Parameters
Current Price/52-Week High greater than or equal to .80
Stocks that are either at a new 52-week high, or have just hit it and are still trading within 20% of it, or are climbing towards their 52-week high and are within a 20% striking distance.
Percent Change in Price over 12 Weeks greater than 0
Even though we're looking for stocks trading near their highs, I want to make sure the price momentum over the last 3 months is positive.
Percent Change in Price over 4 Weeks greater than 0
The same goes for the last month as well.
Zacks Rank equal to 1
Only Zacks Strong Buys for this one.
Price/Sales Ratio less than or equal to Industry Median
As mentioned before, the P/S ratio shows how much you're paying for every $1 of sales the company makes. For this screen, we're requiring the P/S ratio to be less than the median P/S for its Industry. Note: different industries will have different averages or medians for different items. A P/S of 1 is not such a great bargain if the median for its Industry is 0.7. But it's a great find if the Industry's median is 1.5. This parameter lets us focus in on 'discounted' valuations germane to their industry. And this allows these stocks to still be considered undervalued even as their stock price continues higher.
P/E (using F1 Estimates) less than or equal to Industry Median
Just like the P/S ratio, we're looking for stocks whose P/E is below the median for their respective Industry. Including proven valuation metrics when using price momentum screens gives the trader a significant advantage.
Projected One Year EPS Growth F(1)/F(0) greater than or equal to Industry Median
While the P/S and P/E ratios searched for stocks with valuations below their Industry's median. This item is looking for stocks with projected growth rates above the median for its Industry. In order for a stock to continue to go higher, there needs to be a reason for it to do so. And strong growth of course is an important part of that.
Current Avg. 20-Day Volume greater than Previous Week's Avg. 20-Day Volume
This helps find stocks where the volume has increased in the recent week vs. the previous week. Once again, if the price is climbing on increased volume, that shows increased demand or buying coming in. And the more buying demand there is for a stock, the more it should climb.
All of the above parameters are applied to stocks with a Price greater than or equal to $5 and an Average 20-Day Volume of greater than or equal to 100,000 shares.
Percent Change in Price over 12 Weeks + Percent Change in Price over 4 Weeks equal to Top # 5
The screen is then narrowed down to produce no more than 5 stocks at a time. The way we're doing it with this item is by combining the percentage price change for both the 12-week and 4-week periods to select the top 5 stocks. Why? If the 12=-week % price change is solid, but the 4-week change is relatively weak, that might mean the stock is retreating from its high rather than advancing towards it. On the other hand, if the 12-week gain came largely from just the last 4 weeks-worth of gains; while that's impressive, it shows that the trend prior to the most recent period wasn't as robust. This item tries to find the best gainers on both time horizons in an effort to see that momentum carries forward.
The Results
Over the last 16 years, the New Highs strategy, using a one-week holding period, showed an average annual return of 51.9%.
What's interesting is that, even though this strategy is buying stocks near their highs, the risk/volatility (as defined by its maximum drawdown) was 23% less than the market while generating significantly better returns.
Further analysis of the backtest report shows that during bearish periods, there were fewer stocks (and sometimes no stocks) meeting the 52-week high requirement (let alone the Projected Growth Rate requirement) thus reducing the exposure of this strategy.
In bullish periods, as you would expect, there were more stocks coming through (up to our maximum of 5, of course), allowing for greater participation when the market was up.
How is it doing this year? So far, for 2016 (YTD thru 7/8/16) it's up 57.0% vs. the S&P's 5.5%.
Wow!
Stocks
There are 5 new stocks coming thru this screen this week. Here are 3 of them:
(APLE) Apple Hospitality REIT
(ISLE) Isle of Capri Casinos
(OMN) OMNOVA Solutions
Get the rest of the stocks on this list and start looking for the newest companies that fit these criteria. It's easy to do. And it could help you find your next big winner. Start screening for these companies today with a free trial to the Research Wizard. You can do it.
Click here for your 2 week free trial to the Research Wizard >>
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Disclosure: Officers, directors and/or employees of Zacks Investment Research may own or have sold short securities and/or hold long and/or short positions in options that are mentioned in this material. An affiliated investment advisory firm may own or have sold short securities and/or hold long and/or short positions in options that are mentioned in this material.
Disclosure: Performance information for Zacks portfolios and strategies are available at: https://www.zacks.com/performance.
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Disclosure: Officers, directors and/or employees of Zacks Investment Research may own or have sold short securities and/or hold long and/or short positions in options that are mentioned in this material. An affiliated investment advisory firm may own or have sold short securities and/or hold long and/or short positions in options that are mentioned in this material.
About Screen of the Week
Zacks.com created the first and best screening system on the web earning the distinction as the "#1 site for screening stocks" by Money Magazine. But powerful screening tools is just the start. That is why Zacks created the Screen of the Week to highlight profitable stock picking strategies that investors can actively use. Each week, Zacks Profit from the Pros free email newsletter shares a new screening strategy. Learn more about it here https://at.zacks.com/?id=112
About Zacks
Zacks.com is a property of Zacks Investment Research, Inc., which was formed in 1978. The later formation of the Zacks Rank, a proprietary stock picking system; continues to outperform the market by nearly a 3 to 1 margin. The best way to unlock the profitable stock recommendations and market insights of Zacks Investment Research is through our free daily email newsletter; Profit from the Pros. In short, it's your steady flow of Profitable ideas GUARANTEED to be worth your time! Click here for your free subscription to Profit from the Pros.
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Zacks.com provides investment resources and informs you of these resources, which you may choose to use in making your own investment decisions. Zacks is providing information on this resource to you subject to the Zacks "Terms and Conditions of Service" disclaimer. www.zacks.com/disclaimer .
Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Inherent in any investment is the potential for loss. This material is being provided for informational purposes only and nothing herein constitutes investment, legal, accounting or tax advice, or a recommendation to buy, sell or hold a security. No recommendation or advice is being given as to whether any investment is suitable for a particular investor. It should not be assumed that any investments in securities, companies, sectors or markets identified and described were or will be profitable. All information is current as of the date of herein and is subject to change without notice. Any views or opinions expressed may not reflect those of the firm as a whole. Zacks Investment Research does not engage in investment banking, market making or asset management activities of any securities. These returns are from hypothetical portfolios consisting of stocks with Zacks Rank = 1 that were rebalanced monthly with zero transaction costs. These are not the returns of actual portfolios of stocks. The S&P 500 is an unmanaged index. Visit https://www.zacks.com/performance for information about the performance numbers displayed in this press release.
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Harare (AFP) - The Zimbabwean pastor who has emerged as leader of a new protest movement against President Robert Mugabe's authoritarian government called on Thursday for further strikes and shutdowns.
"Tell everyone that you know... tell them that the pastor said we carry on with our 'stay-away' and shutdown," Evan Mawarire said in a Facebook video, the day after a court threw out a case against him of attempting to overthrow the government.
Mawarire, who started the popular ThisFlag internet protest campaign, was one of the organisers of a day-long nationwide strike last week that closed offices, shops, schools and some government departments.
"There is a hope inside you that this country needs, and if you don't get involved, you are robbing us of that hope," he said, wearing the national flag around his neck.
Recent demonstrations, the largest in several years, have been triggered by an economic crisis that has left banks short of cash and the government struggling to pay its workers.
But calls by the ThisFlag movement for another nationwide strike this week fell flat as shops, schools and offices opened as normal across the country.
Home Affairs Minister Ignatius Chombo had warned that anyone taking part in strikes would face "the full wrath of the law", and in recent days many civil servants were paid their delayed June salaries.
Mugabe, 92 and increasingly frail, has previously used his ruthless security forces to crack down on any public show of dissent during his 36 years in power.
Mawarire was arrested on Tuesday, but released after a magistrate dismissed the case against him.
The judge's surprise decision late Wednesday was greeted as a major victory by anti-government protesters, hundreds of whom had waited outside the court all day as riot police looked on.
On Thursday, authorities deported two Sky News journalists for entering the country without work permits, sounding a warning to foreign media workers who may try to enter the country illegally to report on the current social unrest.
Story continues
Journalist Alex Crawford and a cameraman -- both reportedly travelling on British passports -- were arrested at their lodge in the capital Harare on Wednesday and detained overnight at Harare International Airport before being deported.
Foreign journalists require accreditation before arriving in Zimbabwe to work.
- 'Repressive police state' -
"Zimbabwe functions as an inefficiently repressive police state, and regime critics 'disappear'," John Campbell, an analyst with the Council of Foreign Relations, said in a note Thursday.
"Zimbabweans have been remarkably passive (but) driven by and fear of hunger, passivity may be giving way to anger and manifesting itself outside conventional politics."
Amnesty has said about 300 people have been arrested for participating in protests around the country since last week.
The surge in demonstrations has revealed long-simmering frustration in a country where 90 percent of the population is not in formal employment.
Millions have also been left hungry by a collapse in the agriculture sector and a severe drought.
Despite his advanced age and fragile health, Mugabe has refused to step down and has avoided naming an successor.
He still gives fiery 90-minute speeches on his feet, and has vowed to stand again for election in 2018, but his ZANU-PF party is riven with factions jockeying for position.
Regime loyalist Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa is viewed as the most likely next leader, with Mugabe's wife Grace, 50, also a possible candidate.
Mugabe easily defeated the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party to win the last election in 2013, in a vote that was described by the United States as not credible.
The previous presidential election in 2008 was marred by widespread violence and intimidation of voters.
Last week, security forces used tear gas and water cannon to disperse angry protests outside Harare that erupted over police officers allegedly using road blocks to extort cash from motorists.
Television footage showed police beating protesters with sticks.
Other protests have broken out at the border with South Africa over a ban on some imports.
In neighbouring South Africa, about 100 Zimbabweans protested outside the embassy in Pretoria on Thursday carrying placards reading "Thank you Evan to be our voice" and "Mugabe your heart is broken".
Harare (Zimbabwe) (AFP) - The pastor who has emerged as leader of Zimbabwe's new protest movement was charged Wednesday with attempting to overthrow President Robert Mugabe's authoritarian government.
Evan Mawarire, 39, is accused of setting up a campaign aimed at "overthrowing or attempting to overthrow the government by unconstitutional means," according to the charge sheet.
He appeared at Harare magistrates' court with a national flag tied around his neck while several hundred young supporters sang and chanted outside.
A recent series of demonstrations, the largest in years, have been driven by an economic crisis in Zimbabwe that has left banks short of cash and the government struggling to pay its workers.
Mugabe, 92, has previously used his ruthless security forces to crack down on any public show of dissent, and riot police were on duty outside the court.
Mawarire, who started the popular ThisFlag internet campaign in April, was an organiser of a one-day nationwide strike last week that closed offices, shops, schools and some government departments.
Asked by magistrate Vakai Chikwekwe if he understood the charges against him, he said: "I have understood, your worship."
Mawarire was originally charged with inciting public violence when he was arrested on Tuesday, his lawyer Harrison Nkomo said.
"This is clearly unlawful because upon his arrest he was not informed of these (new) charges," Nkomo told the court.
Protest organisers had appealed for Zimbabweans to hold another strike starting on Wednesday, but their calls were largely unsuccessful with businesses and schools open as usual.
"They made sure that they arrested the people who are most vocal and fearless -- that is why the response is not as good as it was last week," Onias Marongwa, who works in a grocery store, told AFP.
- Growing frustration -
Mawarire was brought into court through a back entrance, as scores of lawyers from the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights group offered to represent him.
Story continues
"The arrest of Pastor Evan Mawarire appears to be a well-calculated plan to intimidate him and other activists," Muleya Mwananyanda of Amnesty International said in a statement.
"Instead of suppressing dissenting voices, Zimbabwean authorities should be listening to protesters."
Amnesty said about 300 people had been arrested for participating in protests around the country since they started last week.
Demonstrations have revealed long-bubbling frustration in a country where 90 percent of the population are not in formal employment.
Mugabe, who is increasingly fragile, has overseen years of economic decline, repression of dissent, allegedly rigged elections and mass emigration since he came to power in 1980.
Last week security forces used tear gas and water cannon to disperse violent protests outside Harare that erupted over police officers allegedly using road blocks to extort cash from motorists.
Television footage showed police beating protesters with sticks.
Other protests have erupted at the border with South Africa over a ban on imports such as canned vegetables, powdered milk and cooking oil.
On Tuesday, Home Affairs Minister Ignatius Chombo held a press conference to warn that anyone who took part in the planned two-day strike would face "the full wrath of the law".
Many civil servants have been paid their delayed June salaries since last week.
In the southeastern town of Masvingo, most shops and offices were open despite the planned strike.
"The regime's machinery is very visible," Takafira Zhou, leader of the Progressive Teachers' Union in the town, told AFP.
"Today's response to the strike is low as some people who took part last week had their salaries forfeited and they fear the worst if they are seen to be defiant."
In late June, Lady Gaga and the Dalai Lama got together to discuss love across the globe and, apparently, one romance in particular.
Life & Style is reporting that, when the cameras stopped rolling, Gaga asked the Buddhist leader to officiate her upcoming wedding to fiance Taylor Kinney and he accepted. The secret source has even more juicy details, claiming that Mother Monster basically changed everything about her nups to better suit His Holiness, including the date (shes supposedly fast-tracked it to this fall) and the location (from Malibu or Italy to India or Thailand). Hey, whatever makes them happy.
If the gossip proves true, the Dalai Lama will join a growing list of famous people who have married other famous people. Click through to see who else has joined two celebs in holy matrimony.
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Universal
Mall security is not exactly a glorious job, no matter how you present it, and its a job that makes sense to have robots in place to do it. But it appears were still a little while away from Paul Blart being handed his walking papers, as a mall security robot just ran over a toddler.
The incident happened at the Stanford Shopping Center, a mall in Palo Alto, Calif. The toddlers parents claim he hit his head on the robot, which considering hes 16 months old seems fairly logical, and fell over. The robot, however, didnt seem to notice and rolled right over the kids foot. Fortunately, there were no serious injuries, but the parents are more than a little dismayed at seeing a 300-pound security device treat their child like a speed bump.
The robot, developed by Knightscope, should, at least in theory, be able to sense the difference between a hard tile mall floor and a squishy toddler, but those sensors may not have worked, or simply nobody thought there might be small children in a mall. Either way, the robot is still much safer than its Chinese equivalent. Overseas, they gave that thing a taser, since China clearly missed the entire point of the Terminator franchise. The takeaway here? Teach your children a healthy fear of robots. That way theyll survive the coming insurrection.
(via ABC7 News)
- By Holly LaFon
Equinix, Inc. (EQUIX), the leading provider of Internet Business Exchanges, is an example of a platform company in the Financials sector. Early on, Equinix employed its scale and "network neutral" policy, which allows customers to connect with one another, to attract large telecom networks. Once Equinix established its leading market position, other telecoms, major enterprises, and e-commerce and cloud computing companies felt compelled to join the Equinix "ecosystem" to easily and efficiently access these networks.
Equinix is a beneficiary of continued growth in Internet traffic, globalization of financial markets, IT outsourcing, cloud computing, and mobility. It converted to a REIT in 2015 (and was moved from the IT to the Financials sector - another example of miscategorization). Earlier this year, Equinix acquired TelecityGroup, making it the largest European data center provider. It also acquired a Japanese data center provider and a firm with technical expertise in migrating customers from legacy data center infrastructure to a hybrid one in which Equinix acts as the intermediary between the enterprise IT shop and the cloud.
From Baron Funds' Summer 2016 Newsletter.
This article first appeared on GuruFocus.
Here we are, at a new season of the labrynthine USA Network series Mr. Robot. To make sure youre ready for what will no doubt be another twisty and eventful season, you should peruse our brief primers on all the names youll want to remember even if some of them wont come up again as the show moves forward.
Elliot Alderson (Rami Malek)
The main character of the series, and the titular Mr. Robot by way of a split personality. Elliot is a hacker, and the mastermind behind a cyberattack that wiped the records of corporations that deal in debt of all sorts. As season 2 begins, Elliot is trying to escape the hacker lifestyle that led to his myriad mental and physical health problems in season 1.
Mr. Robot (Christian Slater)
Elliots other personality, who takes the physical form of his dead father. Mr. Robot is the leader of fsociety, the hacker group dedicated to taking down corporations everywhere. Elliot wants to be rid of Mr. Robot, but he might still need him.
Darlene (Carly Chaikin)
Elliots sister and fsociety member, who in his haze in season 1 Elliot forgot actually was his sister. With Elliot trying to get away from all that hacker madness, Darlene takes over leadership of fsociety in season 2.
Angela (Portia Doubleday)
Elliots childhood best friend, and the one who got him his job at cybersecurity firm AllSafe. With AllSafe all but done for, theyve both moved on, with Angela taking a job in public relations at E(vil) Corp, the company that was responsible for the deaths of Elliots father and Angelas mother.
Tyrell Wellick (Martin Wallstrom)
Formerly an executive at Evil Corp, Tyrell hit rock bottom in season 1 after committing a murder to get the CTO position at the company only to get fired shortly after. Tyrell appeared to team up with Elliot at the end of season 1, but as season 2 opens he has disappeared.
Joanna Wellick (Stephanie Corneliussen)
Tyrells wife, who ran him out of the house after their child was born.
Gideon Goddard (Michael Gill)
The CEO of AllSafe, which collapsed after the disastrous hack of their biggest client, Evil Corp. Now, Gideon finds himself under legal fire as the authorities investigate whether he was involved in the hack.
Scott Knowles (Brian Stokes Mitchell)
Current CTO of Evil Corp. Tyrell Wellick murdered his wife in season 1 in hopes he would leave the company, but that obviously didnt work out.
DUBLIN (Reuters) - The European Union's antitrust chief has indicated that it will likely reach a decision in September or October on its two-year probe into Apple's tax dealings with Ireland, Ireland's finance minister said on Wednesday. The European Commission accused Ireland in 2014 of dodging international tax rules by letting Apple shelter profits worth tens of billions of dollars from tax collectors in return for maintaining jobs. Apple and Ireland reject the accusation. "Commissioner Vestager indicated to me that there wouldn't be a decision in July but there would probably be a decision early in the autumn. My expectation is September or early October," Michael Noonan told a news conference after meeting antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager on Tuesday. "I didn't discuss the potential decision but we did discuss the presentation of the decision. I have no indication of what way the decision will go or what the implications of the decision will be," the finance minister said. The investigation could force Apple to pay substantial back taxes. It has said it will join Ireland in appealing any adverse ruling. The European Commission has already ordered Dutch authorities to recover up to 30 million euros from U.S. coffee chain Starbucks and Luxembourg to do the same with Fiat Chrysler for their tax deals. Both companies and countries have appealed the decisions. (Reporting by Padraic Halpin; editing by Adrian Croft)
UW-Madisons Multicultural Student Center separated attendees by race to discuss a violent week of news that stirred debates about racism and law enforcement, prompting criticism from conservative news outlets that the arrangement amounted to segregation.
Campus officials said the decision to hold separate meetings Monday for white and minority students, faculty and staff was made to ensure people of color had a place to discuss their concerns, and said the rules were not meant to exclude participants.
No one was turned away from any session, UW-Madison spokeswoman Meredith McGlone said in a statement.
A post that has since been deleted from the Multicultural Student Centers Facebook page described the meetings as a place where students and UW employees could emotionally process the prior week, which included fatal police shootings of black men in Minnesota and Louisiana, followed by the targeted killing of five police officers in Dallas.
Two of the meetings were for white students and UW employees, according to the post, while two meetings were for people of color.
The Daily Caller, a national conservative news site, wrote about the meetings Monday night, posting a story that included a historic photo of a segregated waiting room sign. The site Right Wisconsin also wrote about the meetings.
McGlone said participants wanted a space to express feelings without the fear of being judged.
Our students of color often find such spaces hard to come by, McGlone said. It is a best practice in student affairs to allow quiet and reflective space for those who request it.
Still, McGlone said, the intent behind the different meetings could have been communicated more clearly to avoid any impression of exclusion.
McGlone did not respond to a followup question asking whether the Multicultural Student Center would use a similar structure for meetings in the future.
The universitys statement was provided in response to a list of questions sent to the centers director and Assistant Dean of Students Gabe Javier, who declined an interview request.
The Multicultural Student Center is part of the Division of Student Life, and the meetings Monday afternoon were held in the Red Gym, which houses the center. They were closed to the media.
McGlone also noted that UW-Madison has held several recent open meetings to discuss diversity and the racial climate on campus.
These forums are broadly inclusive and give members of our community the chance to discuss issues and concerns, McGlone said.
BKA chief Holger Muench, pictured in 2015, said police were taking a "clear stance against hate and incitement on the internet" which had increased amid the refugee crisis and was poisoning public discourse (AFP Photo/John MacDougall) (AFP/File)
Berlin (AFP) - German police on Wednesday launched nationwide raids targeting social media users who posted racial hatred on Facebook and other online networks.
Police swooped on the homes of some 60 suspects across 14 of Germany's 16 states, the BKA federal crime bureau said, in a crackdown on "verbal radicalism" and related criminal offences.
No arrests were made but computer equipment, cameras and smartphones were seized in the first-ever such mass raids targeting online hate crime.
Most of the suspects allegedly belonged to a neo-Nazi Facebook group whose users had posted xenophobic, anti-Semitic or other far-right messages.
BKA chief Holger Muench said police were taking a "clear stance against hate and incitement on the internet" which had increased amid the refugee crisis and was poisoning public discourse.
Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said that "violence, including verbal violence, in any form and in any context" was "unacceptable".
He said there are "moral principles offline and online" and stressed that "criminal law applies on the internet".
Justice Minister Heiko Maas said that pressure had grown on internet giants such as Facebook, Google and Twitter to find and block hate speech.
"First steps have been taken," he said, "but they are nowhere near sufficient."
Facebook pledged in September to fight a surge in racism on its German-language network as Europe's biggest economy became the top destination for refugees, triggering a backlash from the far right.
The US social media network said it would encourage "counter speech" and step up monitoring of anti-foreigner commentary.
Users have accused the company of double standards for cracking down swifter and harder on nudity and sexual content than on hate-mongering.
Motley Fool
Shares of Bionano Genomics (NASDAQ: BNGO) tumbled by more than 55% this year, but that hasn't led Wall Street analysts who follow the stock to walk back their year-ahead price estimates or change their recommendations -- and for them, it's still a buy. In fact, compared to its current price (near $2.50), the average price target of analysts is $11, which would imply a massive run-up over the coming months. Bionano Genomics makes a device called the Saphyr, which biomedical laboratories use to analyze chromosomes.
3 Nepalis killed in UP bus accident
At least five people were killed and 40 others injured when a bus plying from Butwal to New Delhi met with an accident near Bahraich in Uttar Pradesh of India. Three of them are Nepalis and two Indian citizens.
A formidable challenge
Without substantive changes, the District Autonomous Councils will likely trigger a chain of instability in Indias north-east
Adikavi Bhanubhakta remembered
The Bhanu Foundation organized a programme at Nepal Academy on Wednesday in commemoration of the contribution made by the first poet of Nepal- Bhanubhakta Acharya - to the development of Nepali language.
An account of dramatic turn of events
The dramatic turn of events that led to the withdrawal of CPN (Maoist Centre) from the government on Tuesday pushed the country once again into a sort of political vacuum.
Maoist gives 3 pm ultimatum for PM to resign
The CPN (Maoist Centre) has decided to wait until 3 pm today for PM KP Sharma Oli to resign from his post.
Dallas shooting: Obama urges US to 'reject despair'
President Barack Obama has urged the US to "reject despair" as he paid tribute to five police officers killed during a deadly sniper attack in Dallas.
Docs wear black arm bands in support to Dr KC
The doctors associated with the National Resident Doctors' Association (NRDA) have tied black arm band in their arms to express solidarity with Dr Govinda KC who is staging fast-unto-death yet again for four days.
House meet postponed till 3 pm
The Legislature-Parliament meeting that was scheduled to begin at 11:00 pm on Wednesday has been postponed. The meeting is scheduled for 3 pm today.
India offers Ganges holy water by post
India's national postal service is to deliver holy water from the River Ganges through the mail.
Kashmir protests over Burhan Wani leave 36 dead, 1500 injured
Officials in Indian-administered Kashmir say 36 people have now died during protests following the shooting of a well-known militant leader.
Major parties' dissent over budget provisions halts House proceedings
The Legislature-Parliament meeting scheduled for 3 pm today has been postponed after newly formed alliance of Nepali Congress and CPN (Maoist Centre) and ruling CPN-UML failed to reach consensus on the budget.
Make agreement on purchase of Chinese aircraft public: Natl Info Commission to Culture Ministry
The National Information Commission (NIC) has ordered the Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation to make the agreement reached between Nepal and China on purchase of Chinese aircraft public.
Maoist Centre pulls out of govt
In a move described as unexpected and surprising by its coalition partners, the CPN (Maoist Centre) announced on Tuesday that it had withdrawn support for the government led by CPN-UML Chairman KP Sharma Oli.
Maoist ministers submit resignation to PM Oli
Maoist ministers in KP Sharma Oli government have submitted a joint resignation to the PM.
NAC to retire one of its two Boeing 757 jetliners
Nepal Airlines Corporation (NAC) has been moving ahead to phase out its two vintage Boeing 757s as it is no longer profitable to fly them due to their high maintenance costs compared to the revenue they bring in.
PM in minority, NC concludes; demands Oli quit post
The Central Committee meeting of Nepali Congress has concluded that PM KP Sharma Oli resign from his post as his government was in minority after withdrawal from the CPN (Maoist Center).
NC, Maoist file no-confidence motion against PM Oli
Nepali Congress, CPN (Maoist Center) and Samyukta Loktantrik Madhesi Morcha have filed a no-confidence motion against Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli in the Parliament.
'New HIV infections among adults fail to decline since 2010'
UNAIDS warns that after significant reductions, declines in new HIV infections among adults have stalled and are rising in some regions.
NRA distributes 1st instalment to over 30k families
The National Reconstruction Authority (NRA) has disbursed the first instalment of Rs 50,000 in rebuilding aid to 30,265 households in 11 quake-affected districts.
Punish cops involved in misleading the case: House panel
The Women, Children, Elderly Citizen and Social Welfare Committee of Parliament on Tuesday directed the Ministry of Home Affairs (MoHA) bring those involved in the murder of a Tharu woman for Kanchanpur to book and investigate those police personnel who have been accused of misleading the case.
Residents demand proper care for fasting doctor
As Dr Govinda KCs indefinite hunger strike enters third day, resident doctors have warned of disruption in services if the hospital does not provide adequate treatment facilities for him.
Risky business
The govt should bring in a concrete plan to address the security concerns of Nepalis working in high-risk countries
Transitional justice at risk
The CPN (Maoist Centre)s decision to dismantle the ruling coalition has made the half-finished transitional justice process uncertain.
Prithvi Man Shrestha is a political reporter for The Kathmandu Post, covering the governance-related issues including corruption and irregularities in the government machinery. Before joining The Kathmandu Post in 2009, he worked at nepalnews.com and Rising Nepal primarily covering the issues of political and economic affairs for three years.
Universal Painting Exhibition commences
The show commemorates the 60 years of diplomatic relations between Nepal and Russia
US election 2016: Bernie Sanders endorses Hillary Clinton
Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton has received an endorsement from her former rival Bernie Sanders.
Women at work
First woman chief justice is a milestone on Nepals road towards gender equality
South Korea and the United States picked the mountainous southern town of Seongju as the location for deploying a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system on Wednesday as the allies are speeding up efforts to put in place the anti-ballistic missile shield to counter North Korea's growing nuclear and missile threats.
"South Korea and the U.S.' joint working group have proposed the Seongju area, North Gyeongsang Province, as the optimal place for the deployment ... and the countries' defense ministers have approved it," the Ministry of National Defense's deputy minister for policy Yoo Jeh-seung said in a press conference.
The placement of the THAAD system in Seongju, 296 kilometers southeast of Seoul, would help "more firmly secure the safety of our people living in two thirds of South Korea's territory while dramatically increasing the capacity to defend key state facilities like nuclear power plants and oil storages as well as the South Korea-U.S. alliance forces," Yoo noted.
In selecting the final location, the joint working group considered military effectiveness and resident safety as top priorities and conducted comparative studies, on-site inspections and simulations, according to the vice minister.
The latest decision came after the allies announced their decision last week to deploy the high-tech defense shield in South Korea at least by the end of 2017.
The mountainous region of Seongju got high marks for its location that can provide protection for key South Korean and U.S. military headquarters including Camp Humphreys, a new U.S. military base to which most of the 28,500 American forces stationed in South Korea will move to by next year.
The town's relatively far location from China, which bitterly opposes the deployment, has also apparently played into the decision.
The county is located beyond the reach of North Korea's long-range multiple launch rocket systems.
As the new defense system will be deployed in the rear area of the country, South Korea's military plans to increase the deployment of its own Patriot medium-altitude missile interceptors in the capital area, Yoo said.
The medium-altitude interceptor system is more effective in countering North Korea's missiles flying shorter distances, thus at a lower altitude, he said.
South Korea and the U.S. first started their negotiations on the deployment in February in a bid to install a multi-layered air defense system against North Korea's emerging missile capabilities.
In early February, North Korea tested its intercontinental ballistic missile before successfully test-launching its sixth Musudan intermediate-range ballistic missile last month, which could fly as far as the U.S. territory of Guam. (Yonhap)
HUNTERTOWN The nations oldest laser shop is modernizing.
During its meeting on Tuesday, July 5, the Huntertown Town Council approved a declaratory resolution to approve a tax abatement for Precision Laser Services Inc. (PLSMFG).
Ed Ferrier, president of PLSMFG, said the company is purchasing a fiber laser system to replace its current CO2 laser system at a cost of $650,000.
The seven-year abatement would equate to $22,000 in property tax savings. The company is planning to add six new employees.
Its so fast, that you have to staff it different. You have to all these people unloading it to keep it going. It is amazing, Ferrier said.(The town council) has been very supportive of us. We moved here 16 years ago and every time we have needed their help to expand or improve, they been very gracious and allowed us to do that. We are appreciative of that.
A public hearing is scheduled for the next Huntertown Town Council meeting on Monday, July 18. A confirmatory resolution will be voted on after the hearing.
The vote was 4-0 with councilman Brandon Seifert absent from the meeting.
With beginnings in 1941, the company purchased its first laser in 1972. The company specializes in laser processing, laser cutting, metal fabrication, CNC machining and turning. The range of customers include the U.S. Navy, the food service equipment industry, transportation, RV industry and the pleasure boating industry to name a few.
Ferrier said the purchase is part of a five-year growth plan centered around both technology and doubling its sales volume. The company has started a new sales territory in the South Bend/Elkhart area in north-central Indiana, which Ferrier said is going much better than expected. Ferrier said the new technology is 40 percent more efficient than its predecessor and the cost to operate per hour is lower, allowing them to remain competitive.
He said the equipment will likely be installed in August and be in full use by Oct. 1.
We are going to phase it in because it is a different technology. I will have to get my employees up to speed on how to use it, Ferrier said.
Councilman Mike Aker asked if the company planned to sell the old equipment. While Ferrier said that is an option, he plans to hang on to the equipment as a back-up. He also noted that the resale value of the equipment is not that high. He said that in 2000, the council approved a tax abatement for a CO2 laser unit that cost $400,000. That unit has 60,000 hours of work on it and would resell for between $20-25,000, Ferrier said.
The company currently employs 29. Ferrier said the company has a full first shift and a 1/3 full third shift. The six new jobs include a machinist, two helpers, two CNC machine operators and a programmer. Ferrier said that if things go well over the next five years, the company would look at expanding its building.
PLSMFG moved to Huntertown in 2000 from its Wallace Street location in downtown Fort Wayne.
Weve got really good people, Ferrier said. Weve hired from Huntertown recently. Three or four of my people live right here in Huntertown and that has been really good. Our people have been doing a good job of going with the flow as we grow. We like it here.
Middleton-based Frank Beverage Groups distribution network will soon reach into southeast Wisconsin.
The company said Tuesday it will purchase Beer Capitol Distributing Co. in Sussex. Terms of the deal, which is expected to close Oct. 1, were not disclosed.
The combined beverage distribution companies will have a reach from La Crosse through Madison to the metro Milwaukee area.
Mike Frank, president of Frank Beer Distributors, a unit of Frank Beverage Group, said the purchase was a natural fit. Among the brands distributed by Frank Beverage include MillerCoors brands such as Miller Lite and Blue Moon, as well as Heineken and Corona, a similar mix to those carried by Beer Capitol.
If you look at the brands we represent in our market, this (purchase) extends our reach for those products into Milwaukee, Frank said. Beer Capitol is nearly an identical distributor to us in that they sell the same portfolio of products.
Frank said the Beer Capitol name will remain after the sale closes and all of the companys 320 employees will be retained. Frank Beverage Group employs about 450 people.
The only thing thats really changing is the ownership, Frank said. Beer Capitols customers wont notice any change and there will be no impact on the day-to-day business for employees or customers.
This was important to Aldo Madrigrano, owner and CEO of Beer Capitol.
I know the Franks pretty well, and I knew this would be a great fit because our family philosophies about business are the same, Madrigrano said. The neat part about how this deal is set up is even after they take over, the same people who have called on and served our customers will stay in place, so it will be status quo.
He said Beer Capitols president, Mike Merriman, will stay with the company and help with the transition.
Madrigrano has run his familys business the past 32 years but has no children to pass the business on to and neither of his two business partners have children working in the company, so selling it to another family-owned company felt like the right move.
The Franks are a great family, he said. Theyre younger and will bring new ideas in to help move both companies forward.
Who is your neighbor? With all the violence in our nation, and in light of the Dallas shooting, we should ask ourselves, Who is our neighbor? As our community continues to grow more diverse than ever before, and maybe we dont know the person next door as well as we should, we should ask ourselves, Who is my neighbor?
On one occasion, an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. Teacher, he asked, what must I do to inherit eternal life?
What is written in the law? he replied. How do you read it?
He answered, Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and, Love your neighbor as yourself.
You have answered correctly, Jesus replied. Do this and you will live.
But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, And who is my neighbor?
In reply Jesus said, A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he fell into the hands of robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So, too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was, and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, took him to an inn and took care of him. The next day, he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper.Look after him, he said, and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.
Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?
The expert in the law replied, The one who had mercy on him.
Jesus told him, Go and do likewise.
The expert in the law wanted to justify himself, make himself look right. If he was going to love his neighbor as himself, he needed to know who it was so that he could prove that he was justified in his actions.
We come up with all kinds of excuses to justify ourselves in the eyes of God. Have you loved the Lord your God with all your being all the time? It doesnt take long to come to the conclusion that we have not. So we try to justify ourselves with the excuse that we are doing our best, or that others are worse, or that nobodys perfect. We havent loved God with all our being all the time.
We come up with excuses to justify ourselves in the way we love our neighbor: I dont know my neighbor, they are so different from me, they dont love me. We havent loved our neighbors as our self. So if we cant justify ourselves, how can we have eternal life? Since we could not love God and neighbor as we should, God sent Jesus to live and love perfectly in our place. He loved God and his will and kept his commands perfectly, with his entire being, all the time. He loved his neighbor as himself perfectly. And the punishment we deserved for not loving God and neighbor as we should, Jesus also took that on himself at the cross.
Our justification, being right in the eyes of God, comes through faith in Jesus Christ, in his perfect life and innocent death. You cant justify yourself. In the eyes of God, the only way to be justified is to be seen with the righteousness of Jesus that is ours through faith. God has justified you in Jesus.
The love and mercy God has shown us in Jesus is the same love and mercy God wants us to show to others. The expert of the law learned the valuable lesson: our neighbor is anyone and everyone. Its not just the people who we know, or the people we get along with, or the people that look and act just like us. Our neighbor is everyone we come into contact with on a daily basis, whether they are in need or not. Go and do likewise Jesus said. What a difference you will make in your community and that we can make in our nation and world, as we listen to the one who has justified us and tells us to go and show mercy to all people. Keep Christ first!
The Rev. Chris Christenson is the pastor at First Evangelical Lutheran Church in La Crescent.
There was a round of applause and a photo with the board.
That isnt typical for a retirement in Houston County, but Houston County Personnel and Facilities Director Tess Arrick-Kruger said county surveyor Dick Walters stepping down after 31 years of services merited at least a pause. The board of commissioners accepted his retirement notice at its brief July 5 meeting.
Walters retirement is effective Aug. 31.
They say, Time flies when youre having fun, Walter said, and this has been a great run. This is a great county.
Walter said he feels privileged to serve the county and its taxpayers, and he spoke of the huge technological advancements hes seen in his career.
I think weve come a very, very long way, he said.
SMIF annual report
Tim Penny also came before the board, on behalf of (and giving an annual report for) the now 30-year-old Southern Minnesota Initiative Foundation.
Penny, himself a former politician, spoke of SMIFs community funds, of which Fillmore County has five and SMIF helps to manage.
Its based, in part, on the belief that local resources and assets should then be invested in things that make a difference locally, he said.
Penny also mentioned the Farmland Retention Program, which effectively allows donations of farmland to be made to a local community fund. It would be SMIFs intent to manage a related community fund, Penny said, as well as the attendant land donation and rental, then continuing to rent the farmland and pay all taxes and expenses, with the proceeds going into the community fund budget. The program was established a year ago.
Penny also noted that SMIF focuses on business lending, with 25 to 30 small business loans every year made possible through their partnerships with local economic development authorities.
Too, SMIF is instrumental in setting up early childhood provider trainings, which will return to Houston County once again in time, he said.
Library book funds were also noted, which Penny said locally added up to $10,000 worth of books in the past fiscal year. He also mentioned SMIFs paint project, which facilitates and celebrates mural projects on the local level.
Penny told the board that 10 percent of SMIFs budget is raised locally, and the foundation brings $9 into the region for every $1 theyve raised.
We think thats a good return-on-investment, Penny said.
In other news
Arrick-Kruger said the Houston County Corrections Department has two staff members in probation, one full-time and one part-time, and a request has come from the department supervisor of their staff from the state level that the staff shift one day per pay period.
The request will be neutral cost effect, Arrick-Kruger said, which includes a cost analysis of benefits.
The board then unanimously voted to change Nancy Welch, a technical clerk, from .5 to .7 FTE, and Carol Sherburne, a technical clerk, from 1.0 to .8 FTE, effective July 25.
The board also unanimously approved the hire of Andrea Dobosenski as a probationary social worker, at an hourly rate of $19.46, effective July 7, in the human services department. Dobosenskis employment is conditioned on a successful background check.
An Ettrick, Wis., man returned to Minnesota to face charges that accuse him of repeatedly stabbing a woman, a toddler and a dog in La Crescent.
Sean Kasten, 27, was released from a La Crosse hospital on July 2 and booked into the La Crosse County Jail ahead his appearance July 5 in La Crosse County Circuit Court. He agreed to waive extradition to Houston County, where hes charged with multiple counts of attempted murder, assault and mistreating animals.
Kasten was a passenger in a Ford Taurus about 5:15 p.m. June 28 when he went crazy and stabbed the female driver six times in the torso, her 3-year-old child in the neck and leg, and a pit bull twice, according to the complaint filed in Houston County District Court.
Witnesses heard the 23-year-old woman screaming and holding the injured child in the middle of the road when the car stopped at Juniper and Willow streets. A bystander performed CPR on the child as Kasten collapsed in the grass from self-inflicted stab wounds.
The woman suffered two collapsed lungs. The child underwent surgery to repair damage to an artery and is in the care of relatives. The dog also is recovering.
A La Crosse County judge in December placed Kasten on two years of probation for stealing a car and having prescription drugs without a prescription.
The debate over whether to ban frac sand in Winona County took center stage June 30 in the city.
The Tau Center on Winona State Universitys west campus a venue selected specifically because of the interest in the issue, with the meeting moved from the small county government center was filled that night for the county planning commissions first step in discussing the countys proposed frac sand ban.
The public hearing was strictly to receive public comment, with any final decision left to the county board in late summer or early fall, but the groundswell of support for a ban was immediately evident. Prior to the meeting, more than 50 people gathered outside the meeting with signs and chants to show support for the ban.
Tessa Schweitzer, a St. Charles resident, said at the gathering that ban supporters were looking to repeat their success at stopping a sand processing facility near St. Charles two years ago.
We are saying no to the frac sand industry at the county level, Schweitzer said. We should not have to sacrifice our health, safety and quality of life for the profit of the few.
Those pushing the ban forward have concerns with almost every aspect of the frac sand industry, from business practices to cumulative affects.
Lynnea Pfohl, who was also protesting prior to the meeting, said that as a Homer Township resident she wanted the benefits of the land to continue to be available to her children and grandchildren.
In order for this to happen we must have new policies at all levels, Pfohl said. Clean renewable energy, and a productive, replenishing environment must be the way we go forward.
Dozens of people spoke in the meeting. The speakers for the ban outnumbered those against it by wide margins, but both were represented as the discussion moves forward toward a potential fall vote by the county board.
Those against the ban mostly spoke about the use of regulation, and about not using picking and choosing between uses of the fine, round sand thats been favored for fracking operations in Texas and elsewhere in the country.
Mark Clark of Rollingstone said the ban would be discriminating against a legal use.
Winona was settled many years ago by people using natural resources in the area sand is a valuable natural resource, Clark said. I believe sand can be mined in the county without being detrimental to other natural resources.
Others said that regulation would be possible, and the full ban would be damaging to industries other than just mining for frac sand.
Glen Groth, Winona County Farm Bureau president, said that while a ban would be fine in terms of fees assessed for extra staff time or road repair, and extra conditions made to address water safety would be welcomed by farmers and developers, a ban would be overkill.
Its not reasonable to just ban a land use before it occurs in this county, Groth said.
He was referring to the fact that only one sand mine has been approved in recent years in Winona County, with the mine small by comparison and the sand being used not for fracking but instead for animal bedding and other uses.
While Trempealeau County and other western Wisconsin counties have seen an explosive and extensive growth of the frac sand mining and processing industry, Winona County so far has seen a minimal effect.
Those against the ban said that the industry could bring additional jobs and help the rural economy.
Arguing for the ban, other speakers said health risks, environmental problems, degradation to roads and the volatility of the oil business were too much to risk.
Kaitlyn OConnor said the industry wouldnt fit in with the ethics of Winona County.
Frac sand mining goes against the very character of our community, OConnor said. We are not the kind of people in Winona County who sell the earth beneath our feet.
Potential water pollution from both the mining and the processing of the sand after its extraction was also at the forefront of the arguments for the ban, as was the predicted unfeasibility of regulation.
Margaret Lambert said the ban should be recommended over regulation, because the county has not yet fully determined whether or how well regulation would work, where money for it would come from, or whether the county would have to pay for extra employees to inspect and permit mines.
I dont think we have the answers to many of these questions, Lambert said.
The proposed amendment to the zoning ordinance will be tabled until July 21 for more discussion, and the commission set Aug. 8 as a date for discussion and making their recommendation to the board.
The motion was passed 7-1, with planning commission member Don Evanson dissenting.
The commission, which serves in this capacity as an advisory board, has 60 days to make a recommendation to the Winona County Board of Commissioners regarding the amendment.
The board voted 4-1 June 14 to send the issue to the county planning commission. After the commissions recommendation, the county board will make a final decision.
Opponents of frac sand mining have been advocating for the ban for several months through a variety of methods, including speaking regularly at county board meetings. In response, the county kicked off the process April 26 when the board instructed planning staff and the county attorney to develop language for a ban on silica sand mining related to its use in fracking operations elsewhere in the county.
The amendment was drafted by Winona County Attorney Karin Sonneman and draws from several examples, including Goodhue Countys Florence Townships ban on silica sand mining for fracking and the Land Stewardship Projects proposed language for a ban created earlier in the spring.
Sonnemans legal analysis made several additions to the initial language, including making an argument for the amendment as it relates to the values in the countys comprehensive plan and the purpose of the countys zoning ordinance.
It also clarifies the distinctions between restrictions on different types of mineral excavation, extraction and land alteration by defining some as commercial minerals compared to industrial minerals.
For those who couldnt attend the meeting, written comments can also be sent to the countys planning department at any point through Aug. 1.
The city of Hokah should continue to do the best it can with what it has.
Jennifer Johnson, of Nelson & Associates, presented the citys independent auditors report to the Hokah City Council at its July 5 meeting. Councilor Judy Lonkoski was the only member not present.
Total governmental funds showed an increase of $54,125, Johnson pointed out, before turning to the self-sustaining enterprise funds, which include water, sewer and refuse.
Johnson said the sewer fund brought in $51,036, but the bond payment scheduled totals $54,125.
Thats something that you want to make sure youre always generating enough revenue to make that payment, Johnson said.
While she didnt go into all avenues of the report in detail, she did highlight some areas of city indebtedness, specifically, the total owed on the citys wastewater treatment plant as of Dec. 31, 2015, of $927,000.
In the findings that come along with the audit, Johnson said segregation of duties is key when handling cash from an accounting perspective, but thats not always possible in small business and units of government.
We just need to do the best we can with what we have, she said.
The council, she recommended, should continue to monitor all transactions, as well as at least one councilor review the bank reconciliations.
She also singled out Eric Leitzen, Hokahs city clerk, who she said needs more training on accounting portions of the business, as well as payroll. Whats taxable or not seems to be an area of focus. Several 941 forms didnt have the correct information, and those forms are for quarterly reconciliation payroll taxes. Johnson said she would like to see Leitzen be able to say what that information should be and is it that.
Leitzen said he had a conference scheduled in August which would help with his training, and hes been looking at the course catalogue for night accounting classes at Western Technical College in La Crosse. He said he hoped for a smoother year in the future.
City parking issues
City attorney Skip Wieser made a rare appearance in front of the council, having been brought in to discuss Ordinance 101, which, in part, regulated parking within the city limits.
Contemplation is over regulation of the use of city parking lots by the public, Wieser said.
If we wanted to regulate that, Wieser said, we would want some direction from the council on things that youre looking for in respect to regulation.
Wieser wanted to know if vehicle size, weight or other restrictions were to be imposed, or if the council wanted to leave it all alone. The contemplation was triggered by questions to the city staff some time ago, he said.
City administrator Rod Blank said oversized, overweight vehicles in city parking lots, some taking over more than one spot as its painted, has come up as a question, with the condition of the parking lots also a concern.
These issues arent covered in Ordinance 101, Blank said, but its the closest the city had to parking regulations, and if those should have some teeth in them to address any issues, this would be the ordinance most likely to be amended.
Bob Schuldt, Hokahs Chief of Police, said some of the downtown district would be doing more things like loading and unloading on the state highway.
I brought that up to attorney Wieser on the phone, he said.
Schuldt said, as a safety aspect, vehicles are better off in the parking lots. Loading and unloading for commercial entities frequently occur in the parking lots at the present time.
Wieser said the citys zoning manual has a broad definition of parking issues, and the council would need to provide which direction, if any, it would like to go.
Councilor Don Bissen, who is himself a local business owner, said the parking lot in town was paid for by the Hokah Commercial Club, back when they had a bank, insurance office, and grocery store downtown and there was a greater need for parking. Now, a typical day finds four or five cars in a lot with room for 25.
They dont get used much, Bissen said.
Schuldt pointed out that the local Lions Club had signage in the downtown parking lot, but it isnt legible anymore, and there seemed to be confusion amongst those present as to whether it should be a 24- or 48-hour limit. And, it was asked, how is that limit meant to be interpreted and enforced?
It would be nice to have a little clarification, as well, Schuldt said.
There was concern for what was mentioned as junk vehicles, which sit, sometimes non-operational, sometimes filled with trash, which have been left unattended within city parking spaces before.
Wieser said regulations, including size, weight and timeframe, can be decided by the council, but Bissen said hed be guilty himself, as he leaves his own van in an adjacent city parking lot for up to a week at a time.
To me, its right next door, Bissen said, so its kind of hard.
Maintenance and wastewater treatment plant operator Chris Oliver said the city has at least three parking lots. Blank said whats good for one lot should be good for all the others.
I guess youve got to determine if you want to stiffen this ordinance up or not, Blank said, pointing to Wieser, and theres your man to do it.
Street regulations, he further said, are in place, but they dont apply to parking lots or the vehicles found there.
I guess my opinion is, if it doesnt fit the spot, it probably shouldnt be there, Councilor Matt Vetsch said.
Councilor Rebecca Albrecht said she didnt feel unattached trailers should be left anywhere out of safety concerns.
Wieser, who once again asked for some direction, said he would collate some of the discussion hed heard that night and come back before the council with some kind of amended ordinance at a future meeting for consideration and a final vote.
Phone issues
Oliver said the air signal at the wastewater treatment plant has been erratic, and its been a challenge to file required online reports because of the lack of connectivity.
It spurred a discussion between Blank and AcenTek, looking at a new phone and Internet system which is owned by the company and who is responsible for its equipment and maintenance. The system is Internet-based, as opposed the current city-owned lines, which sometimes require employees to shout down the hallway to transfer a call.
The bottom line, Blank said, is the total extra cost is $86 per month, which would give greater ability to take and transfer calls, as well as take messages, and provide Internet at the wastewater plant, which alone is $49.99 of its monthly cost.
So, basically were looking at less than $40 per month for this new phone system for the first three years, Blank said.
After three years, he said, its estimated that the bill would decrease $37. The only variable not included in the estimate is the local pool, which doesnt have Internet and is already an extra cost for phone lines over the summer months anyway. That cost is an estimated $20 per month.
The council unanimously approved the change.
Veterans Park bathrooms
Oliver said the bathrooms at Veterans Park are being vandalized and are frequently in disrepair, and he brought up the possibility of removing the current structure and replacing with portable bathroom units. Pumping and cleaning portable units would cost approximately $150 per month, he said.
Rebuilding the current structure is also possible, Oliver said.
Blank said the bathrooms are in rough shape, with the roof leaking. Sinks have been torn off the walls. The park is used from May through October.
While portable units can be anchored, they can still be damaged, Oliver said. The city would be responsible for any replacement costs.
Blank suggested not locking the bathrooms and opening them up.
Part of the interest the kids probably have in them is that its closed, Blank said. Theyre there and you dont know that theyre there. How about opening the thing up? Dont leave it locked.
An opening, which would require no door and a turn to get into the stall and sink area, would be a possibility, and Oliver and Vetsch said they would look into the matter and report back with cost estimates.
In other news
Blank said the city hall keys were changed after an incident a couple of months ago where a key to longtime volunteer Barb Bissen wasnt reissued for a couple of reasons. The bottom inside and outside library doors are keyed differently than the other top entrance to city hall, Blank said.
The council unanimously approved the joint powers agreement between the city and the Minnesota Department of Public Safety and Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, which effectively approves the use of systems and data available over the states criminal justice data communications network.
Schuldt reminded residents to get their 2016 pet licenses, which he said are down one-third, even though there are approximately still the same number pets in town as there have always been. He reminded pet owners that failure to license their pets is enforceable by ticketing.
We have followed; now we lead.
That was the motto, and the class of 1966 has made good on it. To judge their success, one only need look around at those who returned to La Crescent for the reunion of its first graduating class from the high school 50 years later.
This is class which not only christened the new high school, but came up with the schools mascot and colors. No one remembers if the Lancer emblem was designed by the class or by someone from the outside, but it was in 1966 that it first took its place on the walls, and in the hearts and minds of the city, which at that time was also seeing the rise of rock-and-roll, the ongoing Vietnam War, and still reeling from the assassination of President John F. Kennedy only three years before.
Looking at those who came back last weekend, which involved a tour of the high school, a bus trip up to the Ready depot on North Ridge and Apple Blossom Drive, and a reception at the Waterfront in La Crosse, the kids seemed filled with the same school spirit which was ignited the same year the Orioles won the World Series, their Baby Boomer generation was named Times Man of the Year, Bonanza was the top-rated television show, and the Beatles had a hit with We Can Work It Out.
But to start with, the class honored someone closer to their hearts, and homes, than all of that. While the sun was shining on the track Saturday morning, the class of 1966s John Haugan unveiled a new bench near its entrance: In memory of Earl Seaton, their beloved principal. They all gathered around it for a photo.
Here we are, Haugan said, a bunch of old people that got together.
Speak for yourself, a woman called from the crowd.
Once inside, Haugan stepped aside to talk about the past, as well as his feelings at the present moment.
He spent 25 years in the district as a teacher, 20 of them at Hokahs alternative school Bluff Country Learning Options. He first came to La Crescent in 1966 from California when his father, John, took the job as La Crescents elementary school principal.
Thats the real John Haugan, he said. Im the imitation.
He was as new as the high school, but even as those massive events were shaping the world around them, Haugan spoke of his own coming-of-age.
I dont remember a thing he said, Haugan said. Its a little bit like, who you are when youre 17 or 18-years-old? Your world is about this big, and the stuff thats happening out here, it doesnt quite grab you.
Until classmates were going to Vietnam, or hurt during or after the war. That made it all-too-real. Then, he said, you go off some to college, others directly into the work force or military and the world grows bigger around you.
You go, Whoa, its not just about these 100 kids, he said.
This class in particular was shuttled from year-to-year, school-to-school.
Some of these kids will tell you they didnt bus to school, he said. They hitchhiked or got rides with their parents; thats how they got across.
He stayed in La Crescent out of love. He loved the city itself the moment he arrived.
I felt very accepted, very included, he said.
Then he fell in love with a local girl, married, maintained relationships with his teachers and his parents, too. He lived in their basement while he went to Winona State University, worked in La Crosse, then stayed to build his life and raise a family.
Because he remained, hes seen all the changes within the district over the decades, and thats made him feel proud as a resident.
Whats most remarkable about this reunion stuff, he said, is the anticipation of seeing these kids, many of whom you havent seen for 50 years. We only knew each other for nine months, many of us. And then to come back.
Its overwhelming, the warmth of greeting and hugging of those with a shared past, which even if brief, left an indelible impression.
Theres something that triggers in you, Haugan said. Its just such warmth.
He cant believe, he told his wife, how much fun it all is.
And because a lot of the kids were scattered in the years before the school was built, there was a peculiar notion of community from all angles that encircles the class of 1966.
To bring all these children together into one spot, he said, it mustve been a very powerful thing for the community.
Paula Stahr Tippery said it took two years to plan the reunion. She was a key member of the committee who arranged it all, and she said she did it because she loves everybody. She also called herself an arranger.
Of the 111 classmates, 13 are deceased. And, while theyve had reunions before, some of those who came for their 50th hadnt set foot inside the high school since they graduated.
This was, she pointed out, a class that didnt have a high school in La Crescent until the year they got their diplomas. They went to La Crosses Lincoln for ninth grade, Central for 10th grade, and Logan for 11th grade.
We were like a family, Tippery said. We were close. You can see we still are after 50 years.
Some went off to the military, others to California to become flower children. Others headed off to universities far and wide.
When you think of what all happened in the 1960s, she said. We lived through. And rock-and-roll. Believe it or not, the older people thought rock-and-roll was the death of us.
Things dont necessarily change. Modern parents worry, too, even if its about different stressors, dangers and tragedies out in the world.
Its just something new, Tippery said. There has always been something that we had to rise above.
The spirit of the class is still there, even if they were only in the building one little year, as Tippery noted.
Having lived in Virginia, California and North Carolina, Tippery is now back in Barre Mills, Wis.
This is Gods Country, she said.
Even though they had one school year to get used to each other, as well as the building (which had planks of wood for sidewalks when it first opened its doors), something wonderfully ironic happened.
You really form close relationships, she said.
Some came from Texas, still another from Kansas City, another couple from Montana and some a little closer to home the Twin Cities.
We have followed; now we lead. She still remembers it without missing a beat.
Jan Eden Markwell is one of those who came down from the Twin Cities (Savage, to be precise). Shes been back in the area before, but not in the high school. The tour was her first time inside its doors in half a century.
The most memorable thing is coming the first day and crossing those dang planks, Markwell said. And it was raining out. We were all pretty well soaked.
It didnt dampen their spirits, though. And Markwells certainly isnt dampened by being back in the halls of LCHS.
Unbelievable, Markwell said, looking around. Its kind of mind-boggling.
While it might seem like an odd thing, how big the school is now to her eyes, how much its grown, its a very big thing for Markwell. The building has always been special.
It was our own, she said.
Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon wanted advice.
In office since January 2015, Simon said hed already learned one thing from his brief experience in an office focused intently on the business culture of the state.
It didnt take me long, being in this job, to figure out that you cant do it well by just sitting in the office, Simon said.
The need to build strong relationships and partnerships throughout the state has led Simon to barnstorm all 87 counties, with a commitment to do that every year hes in office. La Crescent was on his circuit of stops June 29, with key business and governmental leaders from the area gathering to sit down with him at the La Crescent Chamber of Commerce office.
Simon wanted their pushback and feedback, he said, although he conceded he was going to throw a lot of information, as well as questions, at them which would require contemplation.
Government isnt new to Simon. He was in the Minnesota House of Representatives for a decade prior to his current post, but by trade, hes a lawyer. While the citizens legislature is only in session three or four months, he noted, the remainder of his time was spent representing businesses via a law firm.
Thats what I did, he said, every single day.
The businesses were big to small; that gave him perspective.
A lot of people think about the election process when it comes secretary of state in particular, the big recounts in recent years which have thrown the office into the spotlight but he said the majority of the workforce in the secretarys office is the business folks by which he meant, they handle business services.
We like to think of ourselves as kind of a welcome mat for businesses, Simon said.
Filing and registering as a business begins, more or less, with the secretary of states office, and thereafter, its not atypical to annually re-register. The mission of his office, he said, should be pretty simple and clear: To make it as easy as possible to start, and continue, a business.
Ive never met a person, ever, in business who wants to spend more time on government paperwork, he said.
If there is such a person, he said, hed love to meet him or her.
Complying with the law is of the utmost importance for his office and staff, but streamlining processes is also key.
So much is done online now, Simon said, which is good. But, even there, there are ways we can streamline things.
As an example, Simon said theres a big push now for entities to move to becoming a limited liability company. Cutting down on the number of steps to do that, without calling for special legislation, he said, has been a focus.
Providing value to individual businesses beyond just being a filing cabinet is also a focus, Simon said, and what that means varies. A paper report, such the one as he distributed to the group, details economic and business conditions throughout the state (in partnership with the School of Public Affairs Research Institute at St. Cloud State University). Based on whats submitted through his office, the report is a collation of economic indicators and filing data on a regional basis. That information can be merged with other data, such as fuel and vacancy rates, employment figures, and much more.
Quarterly reports by six regions are completed, then published in a non-voluminous packet; no one else is doing it, he said. It all helps to make decisions about where weve been, where we are, and where were going. Projections are, perhaps, a quarter ahead.
Of course, Simon said, it has to be useful. He invited civic leaders to contemplate what could be included, dispatched or devised for just such a means. He called the report, and the collaboration with St. Cloud State, a useful experiment.
Resident Steve Bissen questioned if there was overlap with other reports and organizations designed to provide just such business data already.
No one is doing this, Simon assured him.
He also spent a great deal of time discussing a possible online process, which could include voluntary fields for businesses to fill out (subject to later verification), and designed to drill down more specifically within the regions to county-level, if not local, data of importance in time.
There was a concerted desire in the room to see just such county-level data.
I wish we could break down individual reports in a more kind of granular way, Simon said. I hear that in a lot of regions in the state.
Some of that can be done, he said, but it requires self-identifying in certain categories, but that takes time, money and feedback. The identifying would happen at the front end, which presumably means when businesses apply with Simons office. He offered that a handful of questions should be asked; too many eventually becomes unwieldy and potentially less than useful. Those questions might include the type of business someone runs, how many employees they have, whether theyre a full-time or part-time business, and if they are woman-owned or veteran-owned.
He asked those assembled to contemplate if they like the overall concept, what its scope should be, and what questions for self-identification would be useful for them to know. The door, email connection, and phone lines to his office are always open.
Should some sort of online pilot be developed, it could be ready to go as early next year as an experiment; before that, he said, he wanted advice and input.
I think it would be interesting, Simon said.
On June 28, U.S. Secretary of Education John King Jr. gave one of the most powerful compliments to teachers that Ive ever heard.
He noted that his parents, both public school educators, died from illnesses by the time he was 12. He moved from relative to relative, and as he explained, I struggled a lot. And I was kicked out of a high school. However, ultimately, Public school teachers saved my life. He went on to earn degrees at Harvard, Columbia and Yale.
King spoke at an annual national conference sponsored by the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. King described charters as an important and permanent part of public education. But his praise for the impact educators can have went well beyond chartered schools.
King acknowledged that sometimes students misbehave or, as he put it, engage in challenging behaviors. Despite this, King urged educators to do everything you can to get to know students well. Thats what educators did for him as he struggled.
He tried to apply those experiences as a public school teacher in Massachusetts, where he helped start a charter school.
King pointed out that more than 3 million students were suspended in 2013-14. He believes thats too many. He urged educators to learn from the most effective public schools district and charter that use strategies like restorative justice to provide consequences for students without sending them out of the school building.
King also noted charter school enrollment is increasing throughout the country. Both in Minnesota and nationally, enrollment in charters has grown over the past seven years, while enrollment in traditional district schools declined. Stefan Huh, director of charter school programs at the U.S. Department of Education, and I talked at the conference. He shared the following statistics from the National Center for Educational Statistics:
Total public school enrollment was 49,065,594 in 2006-07 and 49,709,977 in 2013-14 an increase of 644,383.
Of that total, in the same years, charter enrollment went from 1,157,359 to 2,519,065 an increase of 1,361,706.
Traditional district enrollment (in district schools) decreased from 47,908,325 to 47,190,912 a decrease of 717,413.
In Minnesota, district enrollment declined from 804,557 in 2006-07 to 780,915 in 2012-13. Meanwhile, charter enrollment increased from 23,689 to 41,604.
Some Minnesota educators have learned that they can carry out their ideas about how to help students by starting charters. And as the statistics cited above show, growing numbers of families are selecting charters. Charters in Minnesota enroll a higher percentage of low-income and students of color than district public schools.
But charters are not just located in cities like Duluth, Minneapolis, Rochester and St. Paul. Charters are located throughout the state, in suburban communities like Anoka, Blaine, Bloomington, Brooklyn Center, Brooklyn Park, Coon Rapids, Eden Prairie, Hopkins, Minnetonka, Ramsey, Richfield and Stillwater. Theyre also found in a number of greater Minnesota communities like Elk River, Forest Lake, Isanti, Cologne, Monticello and Otsego. A complete list of Minnesota charters is at www.mncharterschools.org.
King urged educators, whether in district or charter schools, to remember the huge positive impact they can have. Reflecting on his own experience, he believes that the best educators recognize the vast potential of children.
Joe Nathan is a former director and now senior fellow at the Center for School Change. Reactions are welcome at joe@centerforschoolchange.org.
The Cleveland Town Board has resumed standard operations after the state Supreme Court opted not to hear an appeal of an election challenge that left the board without three of its members for the last 15 months.
The boards two supervisors and clerk took their seats in May after the high courts decision. It subsequently voted 2-0 in June to reimburse former clerk and current supervisor Phil Hazard for legal fees he incurred during the civil case that challenged the 2015 spring election results based on allegations of election fraud against him.
The $35,858 in reimbursement did not involve paying Hazard for any fees he incurred in the criminal case based on similar accusations that was dismissed earlier this year. Julien and Prindle voted in favor of reimbursing Hazard for the civil case-based lawyer costs, and Hazard abstained from the vote.
Tom Harnisch, Clevelands legal counsel, said research with the former Government Accountability Board, Wisconsin Towns Association and review of state statutes indicated there werent any legal issues with reimbursing Hazard because it wasnt for a personal case. Rather, he incurred them in his previous capacity as clerk.
The statues do allow for that, Harnisch said. We really researched it, and thats what we came up with.
Election winners Ralph Prindle and Hazard assumed their supervisor seats and Byron Hazard officially took his position as clerk after the Supreme Courts decision.
Three of the elections losing candidates Bonnie Vance, Joe Egloff and Christopher Underwood had challenged the results of last years election and brought a civil case against the towns board of canvassers, prompting the board to be in limbo with just town Chair Randy Julien conducting town operations in the absence of the other members.
Harnisch said having one town official in charge of operations presented a rare situation.
It was one of uniqueness in town government in the state, he said. He operated in dealing with the issues that would come before the board normally on a monthly basis, but he had to operate alone.
I think he succeeded very well. I think he succeeded in getting through those monthly hurdles and it wasnt easy, by the way.
A circuit court judge upheld the election results and the court of appeals later affirmed the first judges decision before the Supreme Court opted not to hear the case.
David Halbrooks, who represented the three candidates in the election challenge, didnt wish to comment on the high courts decision.
Greg Remen would like you to go fly a kite and hes got just the deal for you: a free kite fashioned from a La Crosse Tribune if youve been featured in a story or photo.
You might have seen samples of Remens work dangling from kite-eating trees in Copeland Park and other parks in La Crosse.
I like to take them up to the Cass Street Bridge and let two or three fly, then come down to Riverside Park and watch them, the La Crosse man said during an interview in the park Tuesday as he pointed to one tethered to the bridge.
Remen, an Onalaska native and 1968 graduate of Onalaska High School, also draws a crowd when he flies kites at Riverside and other parks.
Boats honk. People enjoy the show. I also tie them to a bottle of water (which he floats on the Mississippi River) and let them free-fly on the river until they are out of sight, said Remen, aka Greg the Kite Guy.
The 61-year-old Remens lifelong love of kites is just one of his motivations for crafting 300-plus kites from newspapers during the past year. Just as important, perhaps, is his view of them as a novel way to preserve history.
People are more inclined to keep a kite than a newspaper, he said. Its a good way to record history.
Although he typically sells the kites for $2 or two for $3, he will give them to people featured on the front page or elsewhere.
Ive made a lot for the (Franciscan) Sisters of Perpetual Adoration. They liked me enough that they hooked me up with a place to stay, said Remen, who formerly was homeless but obtained housing through the network involving FSPA members, Catholic Charities and Couleecap Inc.
Now I can go crazy making them in my apartment, he said.
Every time a sister gets in the paper, they get a kite, because they do so much for the community, and theyve done so much for me, he said. I dont know where Id be without them. The sisters and Couleecap get free kites for life.
Among the recipients are FSPA Sister Karen Neuser, who has one of Remens works hanging on the wall in her room. It features the May 7 Tribune front page that included photos of her, housing consultant Erin Healy and St. Clare Health Mission director Sandy Brekke with a story about an initiative to end homelessness in the Coulee Region.
We also have one he did of us celebrating our 137th year of perpetual praying, Neuser said.
I know theyll never fly them, he said of the FSPAs, an observation that Neuser acknowledged, saying, Oh, my God, Ive never flown a kite in my life.
She marveled at Remens intent to dovetail history and people.
He picks appropriate, memorable things for the people, Neuser said. He has a person in mind when he makes a kite.
The kite he dropped off Monday at Kens Barber Shop at 713 Rose St. is a perfect example.
He came in carrying a kite, and I thought, Whats this guy trying to sell me? said Jamie Hanson, Kens new owner, who retained the name of the one-chair shop in honor of the late Ken Garves when he bought it last month.
Remen had fashioned the kite out of a June 19 Sunday Tribune business page that featured a story about Hanson taking over and recounted Garves history, included a photo of Garves cutting a customers hair and another picture of Hanson at his new post.
Garves, who died Jan. 16 at age 87, had bought the shop in 1976 and cut thousands of heads of hair until failing health forced him to hang up his clippers in December after nearly 70 years behind a chair. Hanson keeps alive a tradition that has seen a barber shop at that location since at least 1890, except from about 1901 to 1913 when it was a harness maker and saddlery shop, according to Bobbi Garves, Kens daughter-in-law.
How cool is that? Hanson said Tuesday of the kite, now ensconced on the shops wall under another account of Garves reign.
Remen, who worked as a Merchant Marine on river barges for 15 years before a boiler room accident blinded his left eye in 1985, also has worked as a cabinet maker.
I worked on every river Mississippi, the Ohios, the Tennessee, he said. Ive made a lot of things, but kites are my favorite. This is how I will spend my retirement making grandfather kites.
Grandfather kite is the name of the style Remen makes, an appropriate choice for a man who wore a T-shirt emblazoned with Grandfather Rules Tuesday. (A betting man might wager that Grandkids Rule, from the demeanor of this gentle soul, the father of three and grandfather of five.)
Having made his first kite as a Cub Scout, Remen had not crafted one for decades until becoming homeless several years ago.
Thats how I got into this, he explained with a smile. When youre on the street, you need a gig. I tried music, but it probably was more like noise pollution.
Remen, who also will get a disability pension from his Merchant Marine days, renewed his devotion to the craft about a year ago, after he wrecked a granddaughters kite and needed to make her a new one.
Remens design is the result of experimenting with hundreds of kites, until he was satisfied with his product, fashioned from a 4-foot dowel he cuts once and adds tips made from plastic tubing, yarn and the newspaper page, held with craft glue.
The yarn is for better flying, especially for children because yarn doesnt hurt their hands, Remen said, noting that he prefers toilet paper tails for ease of flight.
Ive got it down pat. I can make 20 before noon, he said.
Remen also has fashioned large kites, such as 6-footers to pull kayaks.
Remen has three newspaper kites in particular that he would like to give away, if he could find the people pictured. Two are front-page pictures of girls, and another is a page 1 photo of the Polar Plunge in 2001. He scrounges for newspapers and said he likes old papers the best for the historical value.
Remen invites people featured in the paper to contact him at 608-881-4299 if they would like their page made into a kite, free of charge.
I think a kite is better than a scrapbook, he said confidently. When Im not here any longer, the kites will be.
There are few jobs that require employees, in the course of performing routine duties, to check in every few minutes to assure co-workers they are not seriously injured or dead. But as a police officer, thats part of my daily routine.
Friends, let this sink in. A teacher is writing her lesson plans for the next week and every few minutes, the principal calls her room to make sure she isnt dead. A nurse is making rounds, handing out medication, and every few minutes, the charge nurse calls his phone to make sure no patient has assaulted him.
That sounds ridiculous. However, if I stop you for a traffic violation, I am expected to answer when the dispatcher calls every few minutes to check on my welfare. While you are berating me and asking why Im not out stopping real criminals, someone downtown is waiting for a timer to go off to again check to make sure I am alive. To make sure that traffic stop does not cost me my life.
I have been searching my soul and seeking and listening for months upon months to understand this complex issue of race and policing in America. There are people whom I love and respect on both sides of this issue. This has led me to wonder why there are sides in this issue at all.
As a profession, policing has a long and honorable history. For hundreds of years, millions of honorable men and women have served their communities with honor and integrity. They have served, they have protected, they have laid down their lives for strangers and friends.
But we cannot deny the other very dark side of the coin. Our history as a profession has been marred by officers who use their power in unjust and violent ways. That cannot be denied. Whole communities have been affected by this abuse. As a result, people are afraid and their fears are not unfounded.
Officers are in a difficult position. When we watch a video that shows an officer unjustly taking a life, we feel a hollow place in the pits of our stomachs. And we have discussions about those videos, usually only among ourselves.
I am privileged to work for a department that seeks to build partnerships and understanding with our community and is intentional about transparency. I serve every day with honorable men and women. We seek not only to serve and protect but to improve our communities. We are not perfect and we make mistakes, but we truly have a heart for serving our communities and keeping all our citizens safe.
So why then do you not hear us speaking out publicly denouncing corrupt officers? I believe this is rooted in fear rather than denial. I cannot speak for everyone, but I believe that most of us fear being lumped in with the bad apples. Working for this department, I do not conduct myself, either personally or professionally, in a way that is colorblind. Instead, I seek to understand and appreciate the perspectives and needs of people different from me. So I, too, fear being lumped in with the corrupt officers when my very life depends on the respect of the community.
After what happened in Dallas, you can be sure that our lives depend on the actions of officers hundreds of miles away from us. Officers have long known this, and I think our citizens are beginning to understand.
As all of these thoughts tumble around in my head, I am struck by the fact that people of color who do good in their communities and seek to build bridges of understanding are probably feeling the same fear of being lumped in with the bad apples. So in all of this, are there really any sides?
It is a slap in the face for anyone to imply that I take my oath so lightly that I would fail to protect all citizens, even those who hate me, or that I would flee in the face of danger. These statements only further damage police credibility. I have vowed to serve all in my community and will continue to do so with my head held high. This is a dark time in our nation. I choose to be light.
It is a slap in the face for anyone to imply that I take my oath so lightly that I would fail to protect all citizens, even those who hate me, or that I would flee in the face of danger. These statements only further damage police credibility.
Andrew Lipovsky/NBCJennifer Lopez and Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda performed their new charity single "Love Make the World Go Round" on Tuesday's Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. The song benefits the victims of the Orlando Pulse nightclub shooting, and J-Lo asked Miranda to join her after being impressed by his Tony Awards acceptance speech, in which he declared, "And love is love is love."
"I had this song for a few months...I was just holding on to it for some reason," Jennifer tells ABC Radio. "I thought, 'The world needs this song right now.'" She adds, "I had seen Lins speech on the Tonys. It moved me to tears. I thought, 'I wonder if he would ever do anything like this?'"
So she reached out "aggressively," J-Lo laughs, to Miranda, pointing out that many of the victims were Puerto Rican, just as they are.
"I felt like the two of us could actually be a powerful voice," says Jennifer.
Though J-Lo knew Miranda was crazy busy, she told him, "I feel like we have to step up." So Miranda signed on, saying, "You can't make the argument 'I'm busy' with J-Lo. She's the busiest person alive!"
The two completed the lyrics in 20 minutes, says Jennifer. Miranda laughs, "It took me seven years to write Hamilton, so Im not used to working this fast! But the mission was so clear...that I think we both felt very inspired."
The song includes excerpts of Miranda's Tony speech, and a rap about "feeling safe on the dance floor again." As he tells ABC Radio, "To counteract terror and fear with this message of love...it felt so important."
"Love Make the World Go Round" is available for download now, and all proceeds go to the Somos Orlando fund, which helps the Orlando victims and their families.
Copyright 2016, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
The Grand Old Party has found a scapegoat for its failure to enact common-sense gun control: ISIS.
After the massacre in Orlando, Sen. John McCain laid the blame on President Barack Obama, saying that his policies in the Middle East were responsible for the rise of ISIS and that ISIS was implicated in the Orlando shooting.
After the Senate's failure to pass some weak gun-control legislation, other GOP members, including U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan, echoed McCains statement.
Was the Sandy Hook or the Virginia Tech or the Dallas shooter a disciple of ISIS? Did ISIS provide the guns and the training for the Orlando shooter, and do we credit ISIS for that shooting just because the shooter made a phone call to someone dedicating his act to ISIS? He purchased the guns from a dealer a week before the massacre. We spend much time and money after the fact trying to find out what motivated a deranged mind, but that knowledge does little good if that person easily is able to get a gun.
Other civilized countries control gun violence by controlling the availability of assault-type guns. Our Second Amendment wasnt written in stone on Mt. Horeb, and, if it is our excuse for not using common sense, lets scrap it. We need to follow Australias example and enact sensible gun control that includes a buyback of guns and, most of all, getting rid of the weaklings in Congress, such as Sen. Ron Johnson, who are beholden to the NRA.
What kind of America do we want? That is the question in this election.
On the one hand, we have a candidate who preaches hate. His words do not reflect equality. It seems that he thinks some people Mexicans, Hispanics, Muslims, African-Americans, Asians, and women are less valuable than white men. According to him, we should fear whole groups; they are the reason for our ills. He tries to make voters believe that they can be rich and beautiful, if only we take America back to a different time.
On the other hand, Hillary Clinton believes that we are Stronger Together. She is realistic. She knows that people get up, go to work, take care of their families, struggle to pay the bills, and sacrifice to receive an education, stay healthy, provide a roof over their heads and comfortably retire. Clinton talks about how the government can help people all people reach these goals.
Clinton has Sen. Elizabeth Warren, President Barack Obama, and Vice President Joe Biden supporting and appearing with her. Many prominent Republicans, including former President George W. Bush and his father, will not appear with Donald Trump. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, however, will go to Cleveland and support Trump, once again demonstrating that he does not reflect the values of the majority of the people of Wisconsin.
Democrat Russ Feingold still leads Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson in Wisconsins U.S. Senate race, but a long-term view of the race shows it becoming increasingly competitive, the director of the Marquette Law School Poll said Wednesday.
Feingold led Johnson among registered voters 48 percent to 41 percent in a head-to-head matchup in the new Marquette poll, results of which were released today.
Among likely voters, Feingolds lead drew closer, to 49-44.
Poll director Charles Franklin said results of this and other recent polls show the U.S. Senate race has tightened from earlier in the campaign, when polls repeatedly showed Feingold with a double-digit lead.
The new poll was conducted July 7-10 and, among registered voters, had a margin of error of plus or minus 4.1 percentage points. Among likely voters, the error margin was plus or minus 4.5 points.
Libertarian Phil Anderson draws a noteworthy level of support from poll respondents, though his presence in the race doesnt significantly alter Feingolds lead in the poll.
Feingold leads a three-way race with 45 percent among registered voters, compared to 38 percent for Johnson and 8 percent for Anderson. Among likely voters, its Feingold at 46 percent, Johnson at 40 percent and Anderson at 7 percent.
Feingold led Johnson in the most recent Marquette poll in June, 45 percent to 41 percent among registered voters. Among likely voters, Feingolds lead expanded to 51-42.
In Marquette polls of the race dating back to last year, Feingold, D-Middleton, has led Johnson, R-Oshkosh, by margins of between three and 14 percentage points.
Democrats view Wisconsin as a top national pickup opportunity in their battle to regain control of the Senate.
THE HAGUE, Netherlands An international tribunal rejected Chinas extensive claims in the South China Sea in a landmark ruling Tuesday that also found the country had aggravated the seething regional dispute and violated the Philippines maritime rights by building up artificial islands that destroyed coral reefs and by disrupting fishing and oil exploration.
While the decision is seen as a major legal declaration regarding one of the worlds most contested regions, China immediately rejected it as a farce and the true impact is uncertain given the tribunal has no power of enforcement.
While the findings cannot reverse Chinas actions, it still constitutes a rebuke, carrying with it the force of the international communitys opinion. It also gives heart to small countries in Asia that have helplessly chafed at Chinas expansionism, backed by its military and economic power.
The Philippines strongly affirms its respect for this milestone decision as an important contribution to ongoing efforts in addressing disputes in the South China Sea, Philippine Foreign Secretary Perfecto Yasay said in Manila, calling on all those concerned to exercise restraint and sobriety.
Former Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario, who helped oversee the filing of the case, said the ruling underscored our collective belief that right is might and that international law is the great equalizer among states.
Del Rosario stressed that it was important for the ruling to be accepted by all.
For the sake of maintaining international order, it is imperative that the Award and clarification of maritime entitlements be accepted by all relevant countrieswithout exceptionso that we can work together on how remaining issues can be peacefully resolved, he said.
Six regional governments have overlapping territorial claims in the South China Sea, waters that are rich in fishing stocks and potential energy resources and where an estimated $5 trillion in global trade passes each year.
The disputes have also increased friction between China and the United States, which has ramped up its military presence in the region as China has expanded its navys reach farther offshore.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest reacted to the ruling by encourage all parties to acknowledge the final and binding nature of this tribunal.
Earnest spoke to reporters aboard Air Force One as President Barack Obama was flying to Dallas. He said the United States was not a claimant in the case and that it seeks a peaceful resolution to disputes and competing claims in the region, while preserving the U.S.s ability engage in the freedom of navigation and commerce.
Earnest said the White House sees the potential that the tribunals ruling could aid in the resolution of the dispute in a way that doesnt further inflame the situation. He also urged the parties not to use the ruling as an opportunity to engage in escalatory or provocative actions.
MIAIMISBURG, Ohio Kermit Kerm Helmke, of Miaimisburg passed away July 2, 2016, at Bethany Lutheran Village, Centerville, Ohio.
He was born on a farm south of Tomah, Aug. 22, 1926, to Chris and Arvilla Helmke. He attended Tomah High School, graduating in 1944. Kermit had two successful Air Force careers: one as a navigator-bombardier, the second as an aerospace engineer. He completed the remote control turret mechanic school at Lowry AFB, in 1947, officer candidate school in 1949, and navigator and radar bombing training at Ellington AFB, in 1950 and 1951. He flew his first combat tours (B-26s) out of Iwakuni Japan, March-August 1951, completing 55 successful missions in six months. Upon return to the states, he attended bomb upgrade training at Ellington AFB, Texas, and Mather AFB, California. His mission was tactical recon until 1964. Kerm flew the B-57 and B-66 in active and passive ECM roles, weather missions, as well as photo missions. He was a high time navigator in the B-66, with most of the work being done at Shaw AFB, South Carolina, Chelveston UK, and Toul Rosierre AFB, France. His final tour on his first career was F-105 radar training at Nellis AFB, Nevada.
After separation from the Air Force in 1967, Kerm attended the Georgia Institute of Technology and earned a Bachelors degree in aerospace engineering. Only two military retirees had successfully completed the undergraduate aero curriculum at Georgia Institute of Technology when he graduated in 1973. Upon graduation, he worked for the Boeing Company near Philadelphia, as a design engineer on the Heavy Lift Helo and at Boeing Wichita, on the KC-135 re-skin. He also worked for Beech Aircraft at Wichita, on the 1089 missile. He later accepted an offer to return to the Air Force as a civilian, working A-7 structural integrity at Tinker AFB, Oklahoma. In 1979, he transferred to Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio, where he worked as a design engineer on many USAF aircraft, and eventually finished service as a logistics engineering manager at AFLC headquarters.
Kerm loved all aspects of aviation. Even though both of his careers were during the Cold War, he managed to amass a couple thousand hours of flying in Stinsons, Taylorcarfts, Pipers, etc. His inspiration to fly came from Vic and Cora Bloyer, when he went for his first airplane ride at a Wilton Dairy Day, circa 1938.
Kermit was preceded in death by his parents; one son, Merlyn Clark Helmke; and one grandson, Alexander Maxis. He is survived by his wife, Helene E. Helmke , of Miamisburg, OH; a son, Dwight (Judy) Helmke of Warrens, WI; a daughter, Christine (Ike) Maxis, of Beavercreek, OH; and a son, Keith (Jill) Helmke, of Park City, UT; three grandchildren, as well as many other relatives and friends.
Kermit was a faithful Lutheran his entire life. Pastors who had a profound influence on his life were the Rev. Berg of Ridgeville, Wis., the Rev. Splett of Wilton, (confirmation July 14, 1940), Chaplain Buck (Lowry AFB), Chaplain Vargas (Nellis AFB), and most recently, Pastor Voss of Centerville, Ohio.
A funeral service will be held at 1 p.m. today, July 14, at Newcomer Funeral Home, 3940 Kettering Blvd., Kettering, Ohio, 45439, with Pastor Joel Voss officiating. Family will receive friends from noon to 1 p.m. at the funeral home. Kermits body will be laid to rest at the VA Cemetery, Dayton, Ohio.
Memorials may be sent to the EAA Aviation Foundation, P.O. Box 3065, Oshkosh, WI 54903; and/or Resurrection Ev. Lutheran Church, 1315 E. Alex-Bell Road, Centerville, OH 45459.
(Editors note: More from Greg and Ellens trip to Canada.)
It got hot Thursday, June 23 miserable in the sun, hot without a breeze during the day as the last couple days of our Canadian fishing week began to vaporize into memory.
We searched for shaded areas with breeze to be comfortable enough to fish. Thursday was also another fish-fly-frustrated fishing day for us. That is to say, the fishing was good, the catching not so much.
I tackled us up some beetle spins and we caught a few smallmouths during the doldrums off of rocky points, and we also tried trolling with Little Joe Spinner rigs. Ellen hooked a smaller northern pike but I mostly just hooked stuff.
Such are the vicissitudes of fishing though and we persevered, enjoying plenty to eat and drink back at Cabin 2 with plenty of time to relax with a good book or movie, take a walk in the bush (in the case of the girls) or take a nap in the cabin (in the case of the boys).
For some variety from our fried fish, we grilled brat patties and we had grilled steaks and pork chops. We tried the Canadian beer batter mix that Chuck had picked up when we bought our licenses in Dryden. It was a nice alternative to our usual fare.
On Friday morning, the last day in camp, the girls made breakfast sandwiches using brat patties, fried eggs and cheese.
Out on the lake, Ellen and I had the best time fishing and catching of the week I think. We found a rocky shoreline in some rough water that was on the edge of an almost protected bay where we caught many smallmouth bass and walleyes and a few perch. We would anchor and toss in slip bobber rig tipped with a chunk of crawler and the bobbers just disappeared, almost as fast as we could present them. The waves and wind made staying anchored difficult so we had to motor back out and then try other spots along the shore to keep the area producing fish. If it hadnt been the last night and we wouldnt have had to start packing up, we could have fished there a lot longer I think.
Our annual trip to Keystone Lodge on Cedar Lake in Ontario was once again memorable, relaxing, adventuresome enough, and fulfilling (with fish dinners and more.) The trip south was uneventful and we were home in something like 13 hours.
Until next time, get out...
We are dealing with another bout with the tick related disease ehrlichiosis, my fifth trip through the merry-go-round of Lymes Disease and other tick-borne troubles. The doxycycline protocol requires one to cover up in the sun that sucks. I am recovering from the sweats and general achiness, but as I am tired all the time, so it is hard to tell if I am recovered or just my usual lazy self.
Finally, Mountain Man Mark came home from Colorado to visit last week. We learned that he has taken a job on the island of Maui, Hawaii. On the Fourth, we drove as far as Altoona, Iowa, with him and we all stayed with our friends Jane and Tom Downs. As usual they put on the dog for us, serving delicious smoked chicken, ribs, sweet corn and more.
Mark took off on Tuesday morning almost four hours closer to home than from Wisconsin for his all-day drive back into the mountains. Tom and Jane also went west that morning to visit their mountain kids Steven and Cassie, and Brad in Fort Collins. We have already decided to save up for our own Christmas present trip to Hawaii this winter to visit our soon-to-be transplanted keiki kana (thats son in Hawaiian) and see paradise first hand. We are told by so many friends and family who have vacationed there that they would never have come back if they could have stayed. Aloha!
Enjoy.
One hour and 10 minutes.
Thats the time it takes to ride public transit from Holmen to La Crosse or La Farge to La Crosse, despite one being 13 miles away and the other 43.
The La Crosse Area Planning Committee and Mississippi River Regional Planning Commission hope to do something about that in 2017, citing benefits to expanding transit including savings on other transportation costs such as parking, road construction and the need for new roads such as the controversial North-South corridor.
The transportation planning groups are in the initial stages of expanding regional public transit north to Arcadia, with a stop in Holmen, and east to Tomah, with a stop in Sparta. Members of the LAPCs transportation committee are reaching out to businesses in both directions to see whether it is feasible to send a transit service similar to the Scenic Mississippi Regional Transit service down the road from its current routes which link La Crosse to Viroqua, Prairie du Chien and La Farge.
While La Crosse County planner Charlie Handy wont have a report until August, preliminary results show a great deal of interest from employers both in Arcadia and La Crosse, who have employees spread throughout the region and want to cast a larger recruitment net.
Those numbers are pretty high. We knew that going in, but its nice to confirm it, Handy said.
Suburbs to the north, including Holmen, are growing rapidly, with the population of Holmen growing to 9,651 in 2015 from just over 6,000 in 2000. Most residents work outside of Holmen, with the average work commute being 21.7 minutes, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Handy suspected regional employers would be amenable to a transit service after seeing how quickly the SMRT Bus got off the ground in 2013. The SMRT Bus had 19,223 riders last year and has seen an 8 to 29 percent increase in ridership each month so far in 2016.
The success that the SMRT Bus has had is part of it. We see how many people do that and they just have better days, Handy said.
Coming from Holmen
As it stands now, getting from Holmen to downtown La Crosse via public transportation isnt hard, although it requires a lot more time, a bit more work and a little more pocket change than the SMRT Buss $3 one-way fare.
To get started, at least half an hour before you want to be picked up, you need to call in a reservation to the Shared Ride transit service, which will pick up and drop off anywhere within the municipal boundaries Onalaska, Holmen and West Salem, plus some La Crosse locations around the Valley View Mall and at Bridgeview Plaza.
One nice thing about Shared Ride is that with your $3.75 fare, you can get a free transfer to get on a La Crosse Municipal Transit Utility bus. If you need to go downtown between 7:10 and 10:30 a.m. or 2 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. weekdays, you could take a Shared Ride minivan to Center 90 on Sand Lake Road in Onalaska and transfer to the Route 9 MTU bus.
In the middle of the day, though, the Route 9 doesnt go through Onalaska, so someone in Holmen has the choice of taking Shared Ride to Bridgeview Plaza for $5 and transferring to Route 6 or paying the standard fare and getting dropped at the Valley View Mall to transfer to Route 5.
The multiple stops and fares dont deter Tyler Loomis, a 2010 Onalaska High School graduate who regularly takes a similar route from his workplace in West Salem, Culpitt Roofing, to his home on La Crosses North Side.
His work day normally starts at 6 a.m., too early to use public transit to get to West Salem, but he said the Shared Ride-to-MTU method has worked pretty well for him. In the two months hes been doing that, he said this day was the first time hed had another passenger in the Shared Ride minivan an older woman who got a ride to Woodmans.
Taking public transit was tricky for Loomis in the beginning, he said, but hes gotten the hang of it. It was pretty stressful at first, actually, he said. Im just used to it now, I guess.
Going to La Farge
In comparison, Organic Valley profitability analyst Mat Grewe, who lives on the South Side of La Crosse and takes the SMRT Bus to La Farge nearly every day, walks or bikes the mile to his stop at University of Wisconsin-La Crosse. Then he gets on the Blue Route bus, which travels between Viroqua and La Crosse with stops in Westby, Coon Valley and La Farge three times each day, at 6:50 a.m. He rides it for just over an hour before pulling up to Organic Valleys headquarters at 8 a.m.
Ill read on the bus. Ill take naps on the bus or daydream just because it has beautiful big glass windows and you can just look out and enjoy the scenery, Grewe said. It reduces a lot of stress.
Once in awhile, hell use the wifi to finish up some work or chat with his fellow riders after boarding the bus to head home at 4:30 p.m., getting dropped off at 5:40 p.m. Grewe likes kicking back and letting someone else do the driving, while he takes some time to relax after work.
I dont have to drive and its actually really pretty. Its really not bad and Id take it over bumper-to-bumper traffic any time, Grewe said.
Business interests
Organic Valley replaced its van pool program which brought in employees at 6:30 and 7 a.m. each day with the SMRT Bus in September of last year. With more than 20 regular riders, the farmer cooperative didnt have a large enough vehicle to make just one drive, so internal sustainability manager Akshay Gavai began looking for ways to make its carpooling efforts more efficient.
We are located in the countryside, Gavai said. We want to make sure that people who are working with us, our employees, have access to our facilities. Its not easy necessarily to make that commute.
The SMRT Bus came immediately to mind.
It was stopping at the same places our van pool was stopping, Gavai said. It was just a good idea to partner with an already existing transportation system that could carry more people.
While only 10 Organic Valley employees ride from La Crosse to La Farge each day, Gavai attributes the drop to the number of staff members who now work out of the co-ops Cashton headquarters, which has a successful van pool program.
Businesses like Organic Valley, and the SMRT Buss other sponsors Gundersen Health System, Crossing Rivers Health, Vernon Memorial Healthcare, Dairyland Power and Otto Bremer Foundation have been a big driver of regional transit as they look at their recruitment and retention of quality staff.
Were a growing co-op and we need to be able to pull from more densely populated areas, La Crosse, of course, being one of them, said Organic Valley workplace services manager Eric Hartwig said. The other aspect is that its the right thing to do environmentally.
Municipal savings
The other thing that really drove this conversation is parking in downtown La Crosse, Handy said.
Between the influx of new development creating a parking shortage and the expense of building both surface lots and parking ramps, La Crosse officials with both the city and county recognize the challenge to find adequate parking for both workers and visitors. Handy hopes increased transit would take some of the pressure off, not to mention alleviate some of the need for a new North-South corridor.
One parking stall can cost up to $20,000. Its an awful lot cheaper for the taxpayers to pay for transit, Handy said.
The SMRT Bus, which is administered through the city of Prairie du Chien and contracted out to Running Inc., has a 2016 budget of about $353,000, 56 percent of which is covered by a Wisconsin Department of Transportation grant. The rest of the funding to keep the three buses running comes from each business sponsor and municipality with a stop, and the $3 fares.
The citys MTU, which served 1.1 million riders on 10 routes with 21 buses in 2015, has a budget of $6.5 million, also supplemented with 51 percent funding from a WisDoT grant.
The problem is making it usable. Knowing where your stop is and your route schedule is vital, but not always easy for new riders. Both the SMRT Bus and MTU have staff members answering phones to help newbies plan their trips.
Handy said he believes routes similar to the SMRT Buss direct approach will help encourage ridership.
People dont want to sit on the bus for a long period of time, so weve got to keep the routes right around an hour, Handy said.
Handy said the feasibility study would tell them whether people would use the new service if it starts, but he would also expect more interest after it is official.
Once you get the wheels on the ground, people get more excited, Handy said. I think more and more people are realizing that if they can ride with somebody else, thats a positive for them.
Handy said there is an increase in use of park and ride service and an increase in bus ridership.
Once you get the wheels on the ground, people get more excited. I think more and more people are realizing that if they can ride with somebody else, thats a positive for them. Charlie Handy, La Crosse County planner
Luther (7-3) built a lead in its Division 6 first-round game at third-seeded Markesan on Friday and held on to beat the Hornets 26-14 for their first playoff win since becoming a member of the WIAA.
It was picture perfect day for the annual Westby-Christiana Fire Department Family Fun Day event held on July 4 at the fire station.
Westby-Christiana Fire Chief Gilbert Turben said he wasnt sure how the event would go with the holiday falling on a Monday, but at the end of the day and after making a few unplanned trips to the grocery store for more food and beverages he was pleasantly surprised and pleased with the outcome.
The kids have a really good time, which makes all the extra work worth the effort, Turben said.
The department grilled hamburgers, brats and hotdogs, served with chips and soda. In addition the Snowflake royalty and parents provided the dessert serving 21 pies and several gallons of ice cream and 90 strawberry shortcake dishes.
Childrens activities included, face painting by Snowflake royalty, Katie Justin and Brynn Cade, plus advisor Terri Kotek. There were inflatable jumping balloons, which were filled to capacity for hours straight; and a saw dust pile scattered with a $100 in quarters donated by WCCU had kids busy filling their pockets with coins.
Freckles the robotic fire dog was a big hit as he strolled around the grounds shaking hands, getting high fives and hugs from kids and adults. The dunk tank proved to be a very successful venture again this year as firemen and local law enforcement spent plenty of time underwater.
Tours of the fire station and equipment were provided throughout the day and Turben thanked the public for attending the annual event and for their continued support of the fire department and first responders. He also acknowledged all the fire department members spouses and significant others for all the extra hands that they provide to make the July 4th celebration a success every year.
The city of Westby held its annual fireworks display at dusk in the industrial park, just north of the fire station. Tara Lyons of Westby honored America by flawlessly singing the National Anthem prior to the fireworks display. Both were real crowd pleasers.
Western students from the Emerging Technologies course will offer three free technology workshops to the community.
The workshops will be offered at the La Crosse campus in the Business Education Building, 405 8th St. N.:
How to Build Your Own Website with Wix, Tuesday, Aug. 2, from 9 to 10:30 a.m.
Google Apps and Online Storage, Tuesday, Aug. 2, from 2:30 to 4 p.m.
Online and Gaming Etiquette, Thursday, Aug. 4, from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m.
Each offering will consist of an informative presentation concerning the topic and then practice time for community members to explore and ask questions.
These offerings are part of Westerns Community Education program. All sessions are free, one-time offerings. Reservations are required, as space is limited. Register with Community Engagement at engage@westerntc.edu or 608-789-4798.
For more information about community education at Western, call 608-789-4798 or visit www.westerntc.edu/engage.
China and the Philippines are considering having talks on their conflicting claims to parts of the South China Sea.
On Tuesday, the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) rejected Chinas historical claim to most of the South China Sea. The court made its ruling based on the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.
The court in The Hague, the Netherlands, is an international organization that seeks to resolve disputes between nations. Both China and the Philippines are members.
On Tuesday, Philippine Foreign Secretary Perfecto Yasay called the PCA ruling "an important contribution."
Chinese officials, however, questioned the PCAs fact-finding process. They say the court does not have the authority to make a ruling. And, they have said they would prefer bilateral talks to resolve the countries issues related to the South China Sea.
Wang Yi, Chinas foreign minister, spoke after the PCA released its decision. He said the Philippines had recently made statements that showed a willingness to continue talks about the South China Sea.
Such negotiations could help prevent threats of war. They could also make the waters between the two countries safer for commercial use on both sides, especially for Philippine fishermen.
And, they could help China repair its image as a bully in the South China Sea dispute.
Philippine position
Many Filipinos cheered the PCA ruling, which said China had violated Philippine rights to use waters off its west coast.
But some Filipinos also expressed fear. They worried China would ignore the ruling and make things harder for Philippine fishing boats in disputed waters. Their concerns increase pressure on the government to hold talks.
Jay Batongbacal directs the Institute for Maritime Affairs and Law of the Sea at the University of the Philippines. He said the Philippine president, Rodrigo Duterte, will likely try to negotiate a friendly settlement with the Chinese.
But, Batongbacal added, the Philippine public will expect its government to take a strong position on the issues and to get a positive result.
Chinese position
If the two countries go forward with talks, analysts say, China is in a difficult position. It must decide whether to stay firm on claiming territory in the South China Sea, or to find a diplomatic way out of conflict.
Tang Siew Mun is a senior fellow at the regional strategic and political studies program under the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute.
He wrote in an email to VOA that China will try to establish its sovereignty by showing its military force. However, Tang said, such a show would only damage Chinas international reputation.
He said talks with Philippine officials would give China a chance to improve its image.
But even if the Philippines and China reach a deal later, another analyst noted that the U.S. and other countries will likely still insist that China follow the decision of the PCA. That decision says China does not have the rights to 12 nautical mile territorial waters around most of the South China Seas islands and reefs.
Kong Lingjie is deputy dean of China Institute of Boundary and Ocean Studies at Wuhan University. He told VOA, The U.S. government will give a lot of pressure for the Chinese government to implement the award. But China, its policy and position is very firm. It wouldnt change even a bit.
Kong added that China will follow the example set by the U.S. in 1986. At that time, the U.S. rejected an arbitration ruling reached by the U.N.s International Court of Justice. That ruling supported Nicaraguas complaints against the U.S. violations of its sovereignty. But the U.S. blocked enforcement of the judgment. In 1992, Nicaragua withdrew its complaints.
Im Anna Matteo.
Pros Laput contributed to this report from Manila and Saibal Dasgupta contributed from Beijing. Kelly Jean Kelly adapted it for Learning English. Mario Ritter was the editor.
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Words in This Story
arbitration n. a process of settling an argument or disagreement in which the people or groups on both sides present their opinions and ideas to a third person or group
bully n. someone who frightens, hurts, or threatens smaller or weaker people
sovereignty n. a country's independent authority and the right to govern itself
People claiming to represent the Islamic State have claimed responsibility for several deadly attacks in the past two weeks.
The attacks came shortly after Islamic State forces lost territory in both Iraq and Syria. They are evidence of the groups plans to remain the worlds leading terror organization.
The Islamic State, or IS, has been linked to terror attacks in Bangladesh, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. But it is not clear if they were ordered, supported or only inspired by the groups leadership.
Intelligence officials believe IS will use the attacks to show that its members are leading a powerful movement that cannot be stopped.
A United States anti-terrorism official spoke with VOA on the condition that the official not be identified. The official said the attacks show that groups like Islamic State are still dangerous. He said they have the intent and capability to direct, support and inspire acts of violence.
The official said it is not yet clear whether IS militants carried out the latest terror attacks. But the official said the attacks show that governments around the world face significant difficulty in stopping groups of determined, suicidal individuals.
Other U.S. officials note that the Islamic State has lost a lot of the territory it once controlled in Iraq and in Syria. Yet these officials say IS still has the ability to carry out and support terrorist attacks throughout the world.
The group can do this through the internet and social media. U.S. officials told a Senate committee this week that IS supporters are using the latest technology to spread their message and increase the groups membership.
Last month, the head of the Central Intelligence Agency, or CIA, met with the Senate Intelligence Committee. CIA Director John Brennan warned that American efforts had not reduced the groups terrorism capability and global reach. He said the Islamic State was likely going to increase its attacks throughout the world.
Malcolm Nance is a former anti-terrorism and intelligence officer. He now leads a not-for-profit research center called the Terror Asymmetrics Project. He thinks the latest attacks were directed and organized by the main IS leadership.
Nance says those leaders will continue to seek out partners worldwide to help them carry out attacks. He says that will give the group the appearance of power at the same time it is losing control of territory in the Middle East.
They have deep knowledge of the people and the places which would have the most impact if a terrorist attack was carried out, Nance says. Its very important for them to keep the pressure on -- for people to believe that (IS) is a solid organization.
This way of thinking could make the militant group even more dangerous.
Daniel Pipes heads the Middle East Forum. He recently told VOA on Skype that the brilliance of the Islamic State has been -- unlike al-Qaida and other groups -- not to get it wrong with logistics, funding (and) planning.
Pipes said this level of organization makes it far easier for them to incite such violence and makes it far more difficult for security agencies to stop it. You cant stop the flow of money. You dont have chatter. You dont have all these mechanisms, these vulnerabilities.
The SITE Intelligence Group studies terrorist activity. It says the Islamic State is already planning more attacks.
In a video released on Tuesday, two Bangladeshi fighters in Syria praised the July 1st attack on a restaurant in the Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka. The attack killed more than 20. The two fighters said there would be more such attacks.
Some intelligence experts are asking how long the Islamic State can survive if the group has separated from its main territorial holdings in Iraq and Syria.
Jessica McFate is a former U.S. Army intelligence officer. She now works at the Institute for the Study of War. She says IS at its core, is still, in my view, an Iraqi military organization that has an outsized global network. Its never going to cease to orient its entire worldview around Iraq.
McFate and others say that at least for a time, IS may be willing to inspire attacks whenever and wherever it can, rather than carry them out directly. It says the groups top leaders may hide and only keep a presence online until they feel they can safely re-group their membership.
Malcolm Nance says as the group starts to lose its manpower and its central caliphate starts being destroyed -- which may happen in the next year -- it is going to devolve into what I call the Ghost Caliphate where they go completely covert and everything is done via the internet.
He says inspiring others to carry out attacks is going to become the future. That is so dangerous, because no one can predict that.
Im Christopher Jones-Cruise.
VOA Correspondent Jeff Seldin reported this story from Washington. Christopher Jones-Cruise adapted his report for Learning English. George Grow was the editor.
We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments Section, or visit our Facebook page.
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Words in This Story
inspire adj. to make (someone) want to do something
chatter n. casual talk that is usually not important or interesting; talk among groups or people planning an event
core n. the central part of something
outsized adj. very large in size or influence
orient v. to change or create (something, such as a book or a film) so that it appeals to a particular group of people or is suitable for a particular group of people; to direct (someone) toward a goal
devolve v. to gradually go from an advanced state to a less advanced state (chiefly US)
covert adj. made, shown, or done in a way that is not easily seen or noticed; secret or hidden
President Barack Obama has urged Americans to channel their anger about police shootings and race into a search for peaceful solutions.
Obama spoke in Dallas, Texas at a memorial for five police officers. A gunman shot and killed the men as they were guarding a peaceful demonstration to protest police shootings of black Americans.
Obama attended the memorial with Vice President Joe Biden and former President George W. Bush. It was the 11th time Obama has addressed a community after a mass shooting.
Obama spoke about each of the five officers. He gave examples of their dedication and spoke of their final moments of duty. He praised them for risking their own lives to protect and serve the public.
Nine other officers and two civilians were also wounded in the attack at the demonstration July 7. Hundreds of people had gathered to protest police killings earlier that week of black men in Louisiana and Minnesota.
The gunman in Dallas told police he was targeting white officers. He was killed in an explosion by a law enforcement robot.
Obama called the shootings in Dallas an act of demented violence and racial hatred. He noted that the officers killed were protecting and upholding the constitutional right of protest at the time of their death.
And despite the fact that police conduct was the subject of the protest, despite the fact that there must have been signs or slogans or chants with which they profoundly disagreed, these men and this department did their jobs like the professionals that they were.
On July 5, police in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, shot and killed 37 year-old Alton Sterling. Two days later in St. Paul, Minnesota a police officer shot and killed 32 year-old Philando Castile. Both incidents were captured on video and widely viewed on social media. Large protests in several U.S. cities followed.
Before his visit to Dallas, Obama placed calls to the families of Sterling and Castile, said an administration spokesman.
Obama also spoke of the men during the memorial.
But even those who dislike the phrase 'Black Lives Matter,' surely we should be able to hear the pain of Alton Sterling's family.
Unless Americans are willing to talk honestly and openly about race, community policing and gun violence, then we will never break this dangerous cycle, Obama said.
In the end, its not about finding policies that work. Its about forging consensus and fighting cynicism, and finding the will to make change.
He said he knows the pain will not soon pass for families and communities in Dallas.
But my faith tells me that they did not die in vain. I believe our sorrow can make us a better country. I believe our righteous anger can be transformed into more justice and more peace.
Former President George W. Bush, who lives in Dallas, also spoke at the service. He said the shock of this evil has still not faded. He urged Americans to remember shared commitments for common ideals as a way to overcome differences.
At times it seems like the forces pulling us apart are stronger than the forces binding us together. Argument turns too easily into animosity. Disagreement escalates too quickly into dehumanization. Too often we judge other groups by their worst examples, while judging ourselves by our best intentions.
Obama and Biden, along with their wives, also met privately in Dallas with families of the dead officers as well as the injured.
Obama is to meet Wednesday with law enforcement officials, activists and civil rights leaders. The discussion is expected to center on ways to repair "the bonds of trust" between communities and police.
Im Bryan Lynn.
Bryan Lynn wrote this story for Learning English based on reporting from VOAnews.com, with additional reports from the Associated Press and Reuters. Caty Weaver was the editor.
We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments section, and visit our Facebook page.
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Words in This Story
channel v. direct toward a particular objective
dedication n. demonstrating strong support or loyalty to a person or cause
demented adj. mad, insane
despite adj. without being affected by
conduct adj. the way a person behaves
in vain adj. not having success
binding v. to cause to have an emotional attachment to something or someone
bond n. a force or feeling that unites people, common goal
intentions n. things a person plans to do or achieve
Children and adults need to develop six important skills to succeed in the modern global economy.
This idea comes from two professors in the U.S. who study how people learn.
Kathy Hirsh-Pasek and Roberta Golinkoff recently published a book called "Becoming Brilliant: What Science Tells Us About Raising Successful Children."
The authors advocate for changing the education systems of many countries around the world, including the United States. They say modern schools need to help people develop a broader set of skills than just reading and math. Those skills all begin with the letter C.
They are:
Collaboration: the ability to work with others, to have social-emotional control, and to form communities. Communication: the ability to develop strong reading, writing, listening and language skills. Content: competencies in subject areas, but also in learning to learn. Critical thinking: the ability to gather information intelligently and to weigh evidence. Creative innovation: the ability to use information in new ways and to solve problems. Confidence: the ability to learn from failure and to persist in a problem.
With these skills, children and adults can better function in the 21st century, say the authors.
What is success in education?
As a first step, Hirsh-Pasek suggests that we reconsider what success in education means. She says that most education currently focuses on reading, writing and basic math. As a result, she says, many people view educational success in a narrow way: a good score on a reading or math test.
One problem with this view is that children learn to be parrots rather than human beings. In other words, people learn to memorize and repeat, but do not learn to think creatively, find information, or collaborate.
Instead, Hirsh-Pasek wants to define educational success in a broader way. She says education should aim to develop people who will be the creators, collaborators and citizens of the future.
How do people learn?
Hirsh-Pasek and her co-author, Roberta Golinkoff, say they were inspired by education changes in Canada and a few other countries. They decided to study the science of learning.
In other words, instead of thinking about how teachers teach best, they tried to think about how people learn best.
Hirsh-Pasek describes what they found.
"The very most important thing in learning, especially in language, but even broadly, is to have a relationship with the person that you are learning from. We are human beings, and our calling card as human beings is to be social creatures..."
The idea, Hirsh-Pasek says, is this: Human beings will never be able to memorize information as well as a computer.
What humans do well is work together in teams, or collaborate. After all, we are social creatures.
Hirsh-Pasek says that collaboration is the starting point for human learning. Collaboration is also a highly desired skill in both public and private sector jobs.
What can you do?
Some good news is that people can build their collaboration skills as well as the other skills the authors recommend throughout their lives.
Hirsh-Pasek recommends that students evaluate themselves to understand what skills they have. Ask yourself: how well can I work with others? How well do I communicate? Do I think critically? How willing am I to make mistakes?
If you need to strengthen a skill, the most important thing you need to do is practice, says Hirsh-Pasek.
You will never get better at speech-making if you don't give speeches. You will never get better at French, you will never get better at Chinese, if you don't practice it! And if you don't have another person to practice it with.
So, if you want to improve your English skills, think about ways you can develop relationships with your English teacher or with English-speaking friends.
Hirsh-Pasek adds that students need to learn to look for experiences that will help them learn. She recommends being creative, and above all, not being afraid to mess up. Learning happens when people make mistakes.
Im John Russell.
John Russell wrote this story for Learning English. Kelly Jean Kelly was the editor.
We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments Section.
________________________________________________________________
Words in This Story
advocate v. to support or argue for (a cause, policy, etc.)
function v. to work or operate
narrow adj. including or involving a small number of things: limited
parrot n. a bright-colored tropical bird that has a curved bill and the ability to imitate speech
collaborate v. to work with another person or group in order to achieve or do something
broad adj. including or involving many things: wide
inspire v. to give (someone) an idea about what to do or create
calling card n. something that identifies a particular person or group
Emerging markets have long been hotbeds of activity for entrepreneurial-minded people. In countries where big business only employs a percentage of the population, industry is not widespread and people have little access to many of the luxuries or even essentials that people in developed nations have, it is up to the entrepreneur to bring those goods and services into hard-to reach areas.
South Africa is a prime example of such a country. With unemployment at a staggering 26.7% and with numerous support structures in place for entrepreneurs, South Africa currently ranks as one of the top entrepreneurial countries in Africa.
One of the most important factors driving entrepreneurial action in South Africa is the digital transformation. According to Global Insider, out of 520,000 South Africa companies, only 142,000 have transformed their revenue streams by using digital techniques - everything from simple smartphone applications that allow for cashless transactions to large-scale adoption of online business-enhancing tools.
Unfortunately, South Africa still lags behind when it comes to digital marketing, with little in the way of social media, online, SEO or other techniques, although a significant proportion of companies do at least have email access. Of the registered companies in South Africa, close to 145,000 have registered a minimum of two to four email addresses and the majority of these companies have opted in for email marketing, which is still one of the most effective digital marketing strategies available.
Entrepreneurs and marketers looking to get in touch with these companies, however, have a daunting task ahead of them. Thanks to the rapidly shifting marketplace, the majority of email marketing lists are outdated, incomplete or inaccurate. And with a potential email marketing database of over 320,000 addresses, ensuring your data is up to date and accurate is essential.
Finding a database supplier that has complete, accurate and up to date information is no easy task. Our research has turned up several players, only to discover that the majority have become significantly outdated. The player with the most complete and current list is a company called Global Database, which currently has access to a sizable rolodex of contacts across 142,000 companies, large and small, representing over 40% of South African business.
The South African consumer, by and large, is online. Even people without home PCs have cell phones and smartphones, all of which are internet-enabled, making them a massive potential market. By embracing online marketing, as well as improved digital systems, South African companies will not only be able to reach more potential customers, but they will also improve their revenue streams.
South Africa is lagging behind on the digital revolution, but it doesnt have to stay that way. You and your company can reach more people, do more business and take your business further by expanding your online capabilities... its just a matter of partnering with the right database provider.
New Delhi: Actress Anushka Sharma, who is currently riding high on the success of her latest release Sultan, is keen to work in Hollywood, as she thinks it would be a "great opportunity".
Other Bollywood actresses Priyanka Chopra and Deepika Padukone have made their foray into international showbiz, and now Anushka has also shown interest in Hollywood.
Asked if she would like to work in a Hollywood project, the NH10 actress told IANS over phone from Mumbai: "Yeah, it would be a great opportunity, because as an actor you would want to do all kinds of work. Working in a different set-up will be interesting".
However, Anuskha said she is "not actively trying to get work from outside".
"I feel today is the right time for Indians and other representations we are getting in international films... So (I would like to do) something where I am not playing a stereotype of an Indian and something interesting and realistic," she added.
The 28-year-old actress said that she wouldn't do something in Hollywood that she hasn't tried in the Hindi film industry.
"Something that I am not doing here (Bollywood), I would not do it in Hollywood either. It would always be a content or a challenge that would take me there, (and) for no other reason I would work there because ultimately for me everything is the same as long as I get to play a good and challenging role any place is most welcome," Anushka said.
Los Angeles: Actor Robert De Niro-starrer family comedy The War with Grandpa is set for release on April 21 2017.
Tim Hill will direct the film, based on the 1984 childrens book by Robert Kimmel Smith, in which a boy is forced to move out of his room when his recently widowed grandfather moves in, reports variety.com.
With the help of his friends, the boy devises outrageous pranks to make his grandfather surrender the room, but he turns out to be tougher than expected and all-out war ensues.
Phillip Glasser, Marvin Peart and Rosa Morris Peart are producing the project with Jane Rosenthal and Barry Welsh serving as executive producers. Lisa Addario and Joey Syracuse wrote the first draft and Matt Ember and Tom Astle are currently doing a polish on the script.
Marro Films is financing and producing the movie with Dimension distributing.
Television actors Vivek Dahiya and Divyanka Tripathi have returned to Mumbai on Tuesday after their grand wedding in Bhopal and they have moved into their new home.
The couple have recently bought a 3BHK house of around 1260 sq ft area in Goregaon to live after their marriage.
The couple were given a grand welcome by their neighbours upon arriving home, and they had decked up their lobby with balloons and flowers. After having shared every moment of their wedding on social media, Divyanka even posted pictures of the grand welcome on Instagram.
Neighbours ho to aise.... Surprise on arrival! #JawDroppingWelcome A photo posted by Divyanka Tripathi (@divyankatripathi) on Jul 12, 2016 at 3:18pm PDT
ABPLive has posted images of their new home on their website.
However, the actress later clarified in an Instagram post that she had bought this house seven years back and it is not a new house.
The actors tied the knot on 8 July in Bhopal and followed it with a grand reception in Chandigarh on 10 July. They will be throwing a party in Mumbai on 14 July for their friends from the television industry.
After all the wedding excitement Divyanka and Vivek, who are currently seen in Yeh Hain Mohabbatein and Kawach respectively, will be returning to their shows shoot.
Hrithik Roshan has often been on the losing end of his very public spat with Kites and Krrish 3 co-star and rumoured former girlfriend Kangana Ranaut.
While Hrithik may have been the one to fire the first salvo he shot off a legal notice to Kangana asking her to retract a statement she made in an interview that referred to "silly exes" (Kangana did not name Hrithik in the piece) Kangana responded with (pot)shots of her own.
Along with her lawyer Rizwan Siddiquee, Kangana took an aggressive approach countering each of Hrithik's claims with some revelations of her own.
Now, Hrithik seems to have got in what he believes will be the last word.
On Firstpost: Stalking and threat What the legal notices of Kangana Ranaut, Hrithik Roshan allege, by the numbers
At an event on 12 July, Tuesday, to promote his his film Mohenjo Daro, Hrithik was asked the usual questions about his fight with Kangana.
Hrithik declined to comment, saying that the platform a film event was inappropriate to discuss what was, in effect, a personal matter.
He said, "It is unethical and unprofessional to say anything on this platform. Be more patient. He added that he would speak about the issue at the right time, saying, "patience is the mother of all virtues".
Hrithik was also quizzed on whether the lack of public support from his Bollywood friends and colleagues had affected him.
Vidya Balan was among those who spoke out on Kangana's behalf, but apart from his immediate family (and former wife Sussanne Khan) no other major actor expressed support for Hrithik. Most people in the film industry chose to take a diplomatic stand on the fight between the Bang Bang star and Kangana.
Also on Firstpost: Hrithik Roshan and Kangana Ranaut spat gets uglier: A dateline of the 'relationship'
Hrithik, however, said that he wasn't looking for support from anyone.
"When you have the truth on your side, you don't need support," the actor added.
While Hrithik has, for the most part, been quieter than Kangana about his side of the spat, he has been more vocal of late although his comments have mostly been of the cryptic sort.
He recently told reporters at the IIFA event in Madrid, of the fight with Kangana: "Nothing is behind me. It's in front of me and soon it will be in front of you."
Brave words Hrithik, but will they be borne out by events? Watch this space for more.
Vikram is a back with a bang. The teaser of his new film Iru Mugan directed by the young Anand Shankar has been making waves for its slick look. Telugu megastar Chiranjeevi, who unveiled the films teaser at the recently concluded SIIMA Awards in Singapore said that Vikram looks terrific in the new role while the film itself looks electrifying.
Iru Mugan (meaning 'two-faced') is said to be a sci-fi espionage thriller in which Vikram plays the role of a RAW agent on a mission that takes him to Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia and finally to Kashmir. The plot of the film has been kept under wraps, though the teaser gives hints that Vikram is playing a dual role as a RAW agent, and a boxer. The buzz is that Vikram is playing both the hero and the villain in the film, which also has top actors like Nayanthara and Nithya Menen as heroines with Harris Jayaraj providing the music.
Vikram is paired for the first time with Nayanthara in this film, and some real cool stills showing the lead pair on a beach in Bali has helped garner even more buzz around this film produced by Shibu Thameens. It is said to be a big budget film costing around Rs 60 crore, and (its distribution rights) in most areas are already sold out.
Anand Shankar, the director of the film, said, "Iru Mugan is an action packed, racy sci-fi thriller set against an espionage milieu. Vikram is awesome in the film, and he has a new look which can be seen in the teaser of the film. The entire shoot of the film is over and right now we are in the post-production stage.
A 25-second song teaser titled 'Halena' releases this Saturday (16 July) and it will be followed by a big audio launch in the first week of August. Vikrams last release was Shankar's I (2015), which was a super hit. The highlight of Iru Mugan is said to be the strong negative character Vikram plays and whenever the actor has portrayed characters with a negative steak (such as in Shankars Anniyan and I), it has worked at the box-office.
Iru Mugan will have also a Telugu version titled Inkokkadu. Initially the film was slated as a summer 2016 release. Now the latest trade talk is that both the versions are getting ready for a Vinayaka Chathurthi-Onam weekend release in the first week of September.
Quentin Tarantino just reminded us in a recent interview with Variety that he plans on only making ten movies in totality, which means he is just two movies short of retirement. This is what he had to say:
Im planning on stopping at 10. So itll be two more. Even if at 75, if I have this other story to tell, it would still kind of work because that would make those 10. They would be there and that would be that.
In a January 2016 press conference for The Hateful Eight (2016), Tarantino discussed his four potential ideas that he might turn into films.
One of the possible ideas Tarantino has always talked about is a sequel to Inglorious Basterds (2009) titled 'Killer Crow'. His original plan for Inglorious Basterds included intricate plot-lines with more characters, but he paused to work on Kill Bill (2003) and it's sequel. Making Killer Crow'with the same world war II story-line as Inglorious Basterds might be high up on his priority list.
Tarantino, who is a fan of Elmore Leonard, has also said he would like to adapt the crime novelist's Forty Lashes Less One into a TV mini series, instead of a movie. Tarantino has already adapted Elmore Leonard's Rum Punch into the film Jackie Brown (1997).
Heres the synopsis for the book Forty Lashes Less One, from Amazon.in:
The hell called Yuma Prison can destroy the soul of any man. And its worse for those whose damning crime is the color of their skin. The law says Chiricahua Apache Raymond San Carlos and black-as-night former soldier Harold Jackson are murderers, and theyll stay behind bars until theyre dead and rotting. But even in the worst place on Earth, theres hope. And for two hard and hated inmates first enemies, then allies by necessity it waits at the end of a mad and violent contest on a bloody trail that winds toward Arizonas five most dangerous men.
Already sounds like a Tarantino movie, doesn't it? Tarantino has already acquired the rights to the book, so it might be possible that an adaptation is underway.
While Tarantino thinks Death Proof (2007) is one of the worst movies he has ever made, he is open to the idea of making an out and out horror film 'with an element of dread looming in the background'.
He has also dropped hints about wanting to do gangster period movies, something on the lines of Bonnie and Clyde.
What will be the iconic director's next pick? While his last film The Hateful Eight didn't do well at the box-office, the director's genre of action movies has become a genre of it's own.
The director plans to settle down and write about film history after retiring from directing films.
New Delhi: An inter-ministerial panel has favoured allowing ultra mega power project developers to use coal mines as collateral for raising funds for their projects that aim to provide affordable power to all.
However, the panel headed by Power Ministry's Additional Secretary (Thermal, Transmission, O&M) Shalini Prasad strongly recommended against allowing the developers to divert coal from the captive mine allocated to their UMPPs.
"The committee has firmed up its view and will submit its report to the Coal Ministry in a couple of days. There is a broad consensus that the UMPPs can assign or mortgage their coal mines to their project lenders," a source said.
"The committee set up by the Coal Ministry has also opined that in case the mine is assigned or mortgaged, the coal should not be allowed to be diverted for other projects. This will ensure smooth functioning of these UMPPs which are aimed
at providing cheaper power to consumers."
The committee was set up following differences between coal and power ministries on whether an UMPP can be allowed to assign or mortgage its coal mine or not. The panel had two rounds of discussions before firming up its view.
The committee, which also has two joint secretaries (coal and thermal) from the Power Ministry and one from the Ministry of Law, took up the issue after Reliance Power's application seeking nod from the Madhya Pradesh government to use its coal mine allocated to Sasan UMPP as a collateral was rejected by the Coal Ministry.
The rejection was communicated to the Madhya Pradesh government. In case UMPPs are allowed to use their coal mines as collateral, it will help them raise money smoothly to run their plants.
The main purpose of setting up of UMPPs is to make available cheap affordable power for all. Thus, these projects are allocated through a single-window mechanism with all mandatory permissions and tying up required resources like land, coal and water beforehand to set up and run plants seamlessly.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi would turn a new page in the history of Indias economic management should he decide to appoint Arvind Panagariya, former chief economist at the Asian Development Bank and current NITI Aayog vice chairman, as the governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) in place of Raghuram Rajan, who will vacate the position on 4 September.
In the history of Indias economic planning, NITI Aayog and its forebear Yojana Aayog (Planning Commission) is considered to be a critical institution, that was created by an executive order and not by law. Yet, it occupies a very exalted position in the governments scheme of things.
Take for example the important tasks assigned to the NITI Aayog by the Narendra Modi government, since it replaced the Planning Commission. The Aayog, for the first time, has been assigned the task of scrutinising each of the ministries and to periodically analyse their performance, once every three months. Though the practice has just begun in the right earnest, it has already led to discomfiture in many of the ministries in the government.
Some of the Cabinet ministers are not amenable to regular scrutiny, and they find it quite humiliating to be held accountable for their words and promises of progress, made in front of the prime minister.
Additionally, the NITI Aayogs agenda consists of carrying out major reforms in education, health and other social sectors without going through the formal bureaucratic maze. For instance, Panagariya was made chairman of the innovation committee that approved the Rs 98,000 crore Mumbai-Ahmedabad bullet train project.
Similarly, many education sector reforms like creating world-class universities by allowing foreign investment in the education sector are being pushed through the NITI Aayog.
But the most important task assigned to the Aayog is of drafting the vision document for the Indian economy, for the Modi government. The document, that would envisage the planning for a 15-year period, would define long-term goals for the Modi government. Remember that Modi, while scrapping the Planning Commission, had pointed out that the new body would take a long-term view of the Indian economy.
Those working with NITI Aayog point out that if one were to look at the agenda of the Aayog, it would become clear that Pangariya and his team are veritably up to their necks in responsibilities. But with Amitabh Kant joining as chief executive officer (CEO), at least the implementation of NITI Aayog-induced changes in the policies has been taken care of.
We have not gathered any sign suggesting a shift for Panagariya, as he is totally engrossed in his work, a senior official of the Aayog said.
At the same time, there is a hierarchical issue involved in shifting Panagriya from the NITI Aayog to the RBI. If one were to look at the records, the post of vice chairman of the Planning Commission was often held by leaders with formidable reputations.
Pranab Mukherjee in the PV Narasimha Rao government, and KC Pant in the Vajpayee regime both one of the senior-most ministers in respective cabinets were regularly invited to attend the cabinet committee on security (CCS), the apex cabinet forum in the government.
Similarly, Montek Singh Ahluwalia was given the status of cabinet minister and had occupied an exalted position from where he could regulate policies. At times, there have been instances in the UPA government when the finance ministry and the planning commission worked at cross-purposes. At such times, the Planning Commission often acted on the PM's behalf to keep a check on the finance ministry.
As of now, all indications suggest that the NITI Aayog has acquired an eminent status in the government, with Panagariya as its head. In the past, there have been instances of ex-RBI governors taking up assignments in the Planning Commission, but never the other way round.
In this context, if the prime minister chooses to shift Panagariya from the NITI Aayog in Delhi to Mint Road in Mumbai, he would not only turn a new leaf but could also expose himself to charges of having a cavalier approach towards the economic vision of the country.
India's drive to ramp up coal output to meet growing energy needs has resulted in members of the Adivasi tribe being displaced from their ancestral lands and forced to wait years to be resettled, Amnesty International said on Wednesday.
The global human rights group said the Adivasi had suffered disproportionately from India's push for coal. One in six of the 87,000 Indians who have been displaced over the past 40 years by state-owned Coal India Ltd (CIL) is Adivasi, Amnesty said.
Laws to protect vulnerable communities such as indigenous groups are poorly implemented and regularly flouted, it said.
"Adivasi communities, who traditionally have strong links to land and forests, have suffered disproportionately from development-induced displacement and environmental destruction in India," Amnesty said in a report.
"The domestic Indian legal framework does not fully recognise the rights of indigenous peoples," it said.
Coal accounts for more than 60 percent of India's electricity capacity, and the government plans to nearly double annual coal output by 2020, opening a new mine nearly every month.
Many of India's coal reserves are located in the central and eastern states of Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Odisha where more than a quarter of the country's Adivasi population lives.
"Coal is essential for our national security and we have to go where the coal is," said N. Das, a chief general manager at Coal India, the country's top coal producer.
"We follow all the laws, work closely with the local communities, provide jobs, set up welfare initiatives and take steps to minimise the environmental impact of mining," he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Serious impacts
Adivasis are among the most marginalised communities. They make up about 8 percent of India's population of 1.2 billion, but about 40 percent of the 60 million people displaced by development projects in past decades, the government estimates.
Adivasis are routinely shut out of decisions on the acquisition of their lands for coal mines with many evicted, poorly compensated and made to wait years for resettlement, Amnesty said.
"The violations of their rights to consultation and consent -- around land acquisition, environmental impacts, indigenous self-governance and the use of traditional lands -- has led to serious impacts on their lives and livelihoods," it said.
Acquisition of land for public-sector coal mining is governed by the Coal Bearing Areas Acquisition and Development Act (1957), a law analysts say is antiquated and falls well short of international human rights law and standards.
A 2014 law on land acquisition for development projects aimed for greater transparency by requiring the consent of affected families, and a social impact assessment study. But the law exempts land acquired for public-sector coal mining.
Amnesty said in some cases legal requirements were adhered to but carried out in a way that did not help Adivasi communities.
For example, the intent to acquire land for the Kusmunda mine in Chhattisgarh was announced in the official government gazette and in a newspaper, yet more than a third of the residents near the mine were not literate, Amnesty said.
An environmental impact assessment hearing was poorly publicised and monitored by security personnel, it said.
"We've lived next to this mine for almost 30 years, and watched our wells go dry, forests disappear and fields become unproductive," Amnesty quoted a villager, Mahesh Mahant, as saying.
"What is the point of this environmental public hearing, except to tell us that we're not fit to live here anymore?"
Amnesty also highlighted the environmental damage, soil erosion and pollution caused by coal mining in India, which is largely open cast.
Among the 10 cities with the most air pollution, four are in India, according to the World Health Organization, with the use of coal in power generation a leading source of pollution.
"We should be looking at ways to increase the efficiency of existing mines, rather than open new mines," Sreedhar Ramamurthi at the non-profit Mines, Minerals & People, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
"The very nature of coal mining is so harmful," he said. "We must ensure stringent compliance of laws and resolve the issues of rehabilitation and resettlement to mitigate the damage."
Heres a bit of good news for the NDA government, battling skepticism over its growth figures. The first-quarter oil demand growth in the country has hit a 10-year high indicating a recovery may be indeed round the corner. An increase in oil demand denotes a consumption revival in the economy.
According to the data available on the Petroleum Planning and Analysis Cell, consumption of petroleum products in April-June quarter has grown 7.8 percent on year, the fastest growth in the last 10 years, to 48.5 million tonnes.
Petrol consumption during the period went up by 10 percent to 5.9 million tonnes and diesel 4.7 percent to 20 million tonnes.
The growth assumes significance as April-June is usually a poor quarter for oil demand in India due to monsoon, which, among other factors, reduces diesel consumption by the agriculture sector.
"We have seen acceleration in Indias oil demand as income levels improve and with infrastructure building picking up pace, Richard Mallinson, a geopolitical analyst at Energy Aspects, has been quoted as saying in a report in Bloomberg, which first noticed the trend.
Last fiscal, the first quarter demand growth stood at 6.6 percent. The next three quarters the oil consumption grew 11-14.7 percent.
In April, Bloomberg had reported that India's thirst for oil is fast overtaking that of China's.
Citing International Energy Agency, the Bloomberg report said it is expected to surpass Japan as the worlds third-largest oil user this year. By 2040, India will be the "fastest-growing crude consumer" in the world. The main driver behind the growth is the thrust on manufacturing India has, a policy China is not pursuing now, the report said.
Data by Kishor Kadam
If youre wondering what the chicken and egg debate is all about, here it is. After nurturing the business venture for a considerable period, the need to scale up whether in terms of target market or product extensions etc, is a necessity.
When one decides to scale up their start-up venture there are generally two ways to go about the entire exercise either use technology to scale up the start-up offering or start looking for funding in order to scale up in the optimum manner. From the outside, it might seem that both can happen together at the same time, but when things start from scratch and each decision in a start-up is taken rationally after weighing all the pros and cons, the reality is far from simple.
Considering the current times when the sources of funding are many, but investors are treading with caution, things arent all that easy for entrepreneurs. Or at least thats what they feel! They are constantly questioning how to scale up without enough funding to keep them going. But I see it the other way around.
If the startup continues to focus on its product and technology rather than funding, things will begin to fall in place themselves since there would be a constant incoming cash flow in terms of the revenues generated. This way youll always have money to keep things rolling, even if it means going the frugal way. You can always cut the frills for now and focus on the right things to ensure that the startup gets past the crucial early-stage when most startups fizzle out. Remember, funding may not necessarily ensure growth and scale, since if the very foundation of the business is weak, it is bound to fail. On the other hand, if the product and technology are sound, itll automatically drive growth and attract more investors for the startup. So in a way, entrepreneurs are worrying about something thats not such a big deal after all. Their real worry should be how they are faring on the product and technology front.
Receiving capital for an idea coined by you seems like the ideal situation for all of us. Moreover, getting funding for a venture that you have started with all your passion and hard work and effort seems to be some sort of a reward for all the toiling and compensates for that cushy job you happily gave up to pursue our dream.
There are no points for guessing that getting funding is always a temptation. After all, it is always an easy option to play with other peoples Money. As a result, most entrepreneurs start focusing on chasing investors right from the start. They equate funding with success and feel it is the only way to accomplish their vision of making the venture a success.
In the process, other important things, which are essential in laying down the foundation of the business, start getting ignored. Hence, in many scenarios even with requisite funding in their kitty, start-up ventures increase their chances of failing since their business venture stands on shaky ground.
As a close observer of the startup eco-system, I have always believed that building a solid product forms the core of a successful startup venture. Therefore, if the entrepreneur focuses on developing a great product and/ or service that strikes a chord with the customers instead, it is only a matter of time before the revenue starts flowing in. Once the revenue comes in, the money keeps things running in autopilot mode.
Moreover, in a bootstrapped venture with no external funding, the zeal to succeed is far higher, since the stakes are high for them not just professionally, but also personally. Additionally with a frugal approach and no frills culture, the entrepreneurs learn how to do more with less and sustain better. With the entrepreneurs energies directed at all the right places, i.e., on the product and/ or service (a large component of which is driven by technology in todays new age startups), the sound health of the business obviously reflects in the business metrics.
Once the business is on a firm footing, and is ready to scale up, that is when the entrepreneur should ideally consider looking for external funding. This is ideal because, there are clear metrics that show the performance of the business, traction, and proof of concept, and even the investors will require less convincing. The numbers will speak for themselves. As a result, chances are, you as an entrepreneur, can negotiate the funding deal on your own terms and conditions to a large extent.
With a proven business model, a product and/ or service in the market which has a large customer base and even larger potential customer base, will always find it easier to attract funding from investors across the table and scale and hence, take the business to greater heights, once capital funding is received.
Therefore, it would not be wrong to say that for most startups a solid product, powered by technology, is the chicken that can yield far better returns than mere funding. It can prove to be the means to get the golden egg in the form of funding. A proven product when funded, can give any start-up the edge it has been looking for all along.
(The writer is Chief Mentor and evangelist at GHV Accelerator. Views are personal)
MUMBAI India on Wednesday relaxed the rules for its tax on gold jewellery sales that was introduced earlier this year in an attempt to address concerns raised by the industry, the government said in a statement.
Jewellers in the world's second biggest gold consumer went on strike for six weeks after the government imposed 1 percent excise duty on gold jewellery from March onwards.
To address jewellers concerns the government formed a committee and accepted its recommendation.
According to the new rules, jewellers with turnover up to 150 million rupees ($2.2 million) a year will be exempt from the excise duty, the statement said. Earlier, the exemption limit was for jewellers with turnover up to 120 million rupees.
The government statement also said that in the first two years, government agencies will not audit jewellers that have turnover of less than 1 billion rupees.
(Reporting by Rajendra Jadhav; editing by David Clarke)
This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
PARIS Iran is assessing whether to apply for associate membership of the ITER multi-national nuclear fusion project, its director said on Wednesday, just a year after Tehran struck a deal with six world powers to curb its own atomic programme.
The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) project, which was launched 10 years ago by Europe, United States, China, India, Japan, Russia and South Korea, aims to build the world's largest experimental reactor, or tokamak.
It would generate energy through nuclear fusion, rather than the fission process currently used in nuclear power stations around the world. Fusion could prove cleaner, safer and more efficient.
The head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, Ali Akbar Salehi, visited ITER's headquarters in southern France this month and Iranian media quoted officials as saying that there was a "general agreement" for cooperation on ITER.
But in an interview with Reuters, ITER Director General Bernard Bigot said the purpose of the visit had been just to understand the project.
"After that they told us they had a long-standing interest in fusion and they would like to consider how to join the ITER project, but clearly not as a full member," he said.
Full members provide experienced engineers and scientists and substantial financial contributions.
"They felt that full membership is not best for them, but consider association in some specific areas or fields where they can contribute. Now it's up to them to make up their mind," Bigot said.
DEAL OPENED DOOR
Any application would have to be approved unanimously by the seven full members and the process would take at least six months.
Iran is already studying the development of nuclear fusion and has smaller laboratory tokamak machines.
However, ITER would give it access to new technologies and help bring it into the international civil nuclear energy fold.
Tehran agreed a deal last July with six world powers - Britain, China, Germany, France, Russia and the United States - to curb its nuclear programme, after Western suspicions that its aims were military.
In one of the deal's annexes the powers, which are all ITER members, said Tehran should be encouraged to cooperate with the project. "The nuclear deal opened the door," Bigot said.
Unlike fission reactors, which produce energy by splitting the nuclei of atoms, ITER would generate power by combining them. It remains unclear whether the technology will work and become commercially viable.
Bigot, the former head of French nuclear agency CEA, said the reactor under construction in Cadarache should see the first test of its super-heated plasma by 2025.
He added that after a management and structural review last year the project was now more credible and on track to meet its deadlines.
The project was pushed back five years earlier this year, with the new delay expected to add 4 billion euros to the total previously estimated cost of 14 to 15 billion euros.
(Reporting by John Irish; editing by Andrew Roche)
This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
WASHINGTON U.S. lawmakers said on Tuesday they were concerned that Malaysia and India were rated too favourably in this year's State Department human trafficking report although the report seemed less influenced by politics than last year's.
The U.S. Department of State's closely watched annual Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report was released on June 30.
After last year's report provoked a firestorm of controversy, the Senate Foreign Relations and House Foreign Affairs Committees held hearings on Tuesday to review this year's findings.
A low ranking is a black mark on a country's reputation and can subject a government to sanctions limiting access to aid from the United States, the International Monetary Fund or the World Bank.
Last year, members of Congress and human rights groups said some countries' ratings were changed for political reasons.
For example, over the objections of State Department experts, Malaysia was upgraded in 2015, despite authorities' discovering mass graves of trafficking victims and rights groups' reporting continued forced labour in its palm oil, construction and electronics industries.
On Tuesday, lawmakers again questioned why Malaysia had not been downgraded. "It's hard to understand that they've made progress in 2016," Senator Ben Cardin, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said.
Susan Coppedge, who runs the State Department's trafficking office, told lawmakers that Malaysia and India had both made improvements.
Some lawmakers and rights groups said Malaysia's 2016 ranking seemed to reflect President Barack Obama's advocacy for the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade pact, which would include Malaysia.
Labour unions oppose the TPP, which they fear could lead to U.S. job losses, while doing nothing to improve the treatment of workers in member countries.
In connection with Tuesday's hearings, the Communications Workers of America union questioned whether the TPP continued to influence the ratings of Malaysia and Thailand.
Senator Bob Corker, the Senate panel's Republican chairman, asked why India was rated Tier 2, saying that there are an estimated 12 million slaves in the country.
"The report highlights some progress, but official complicity in trafficking is widespread, victim protection is inadequate and inconsistent," he said.
The TIP report organises countries into tiers: Tier 1 for nations meeting minimum U.S. standards; Tier 2 for those making significant efforts to meet those standards; Tier 2 "Watch List" for those deserving special scrutiny, and Tier 3 for countries failing to comply with minimum standards and not making significant efforts.
(Reporting by Patricia Zengerle; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
In a huge setback to the Narendra Modi government, the Supreme Court on Wednesday morning restored the Congress government in Arunachal Pradesh and ruled against the Governor's decision.
Here's what the top leaders of the country have to say on the judgement.
Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said it was a slap on the Modi govt.
SC judgment yet another tight slap on dictatorial Modi govt. Hope Modi ji wud learn n now stop interfering in democratically elected govts Arvind Kejriwal (@ArvindKejriwal) July 13, 2016
Rahul Gandhi too sent out a tweet in response to the judgement, applauding the Supreme Court for teaching PM Modi what democracy is.
Thank you Supreme Court for explaining to the Prime Minister what democracy is. #ArunachalPradesh Office of RG (@OfficeOfRG) July 13, 2016
Chief Minister of Arunachal Pradesh Nabam Tuki called the prime minster a dictator in his tweet.
#SCslapsDictatorModi a dictator's face is unmasked post Arunachal/Uttarakhand verdict of SC. ashutosh (@ashutosh83B) July 13, 2016
Sitaram Yechury, the CPM leader, tweeted saying that the Arunachal verdict was a 'huge indictment of the centre.'
Arunachal verdict is a huge indictment of the Centre. It is a warning to those trying to tamper with our federal structure via Raj Bhawans. Sitaram Yechury (@SitaramYechury) July 13, 2016
The verdict on Arunachal raises the question of political morality and accountability. Will anyone in the Union govt take responsibility? Sitaram Yechury (@SitaramYechury) July 13, 2016
Harish Rawat, Chief Minister of Uttarakhand too expressed his gratitude to the Supreme Court for restoring people's faith in democracy.
My heartfelt gratitude to the Supreme Court for restoring cong gov in #ArunachalPradesh. Judiciary has restored faith of people in democracy Harish Rawat (@harishrawatcmuk) July 13, 2016
RPN Singh, Congress spokesperson tweeted about SC's decision to 'uphold demmocracy'.
Top court upholds democracy,from Uttarakhand to #Arunachal.Once again BJP government's attempts to destroy constitutional democracy foiled RPN Singh (@SinghRPN) July 13, 2016
Sanjay Jha, national spokesperson of the Congress, called SC's ruling 'triumph of democracy' and said the verdict exposed BJP's 'diabolical deadly games' .
More than a victory of the Congress party, this is a triumph of democracy. BJP's diabolical. deadly games exposed. https://t.co/BuSUMCgeEF Sanjay Jha (@JhaSanjay) July 13, 2016
The hard truth is the filthy political machinations in #ArunachalPradesh and #Uttarakhand had the blessings of PM Modi-Amit Shah combine. Sanjay Jha (@JhaSanjay) July 13, 2016
Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh said that the verdict is a message for all those who are trying to topple Congress ruled states.
Patna: One person was killed and two others injured in a crude bomb blast outside a court at Sasaram in Bihar on Wednesday, police said.
The preliminary investigation suggested that the bomb was placed by unidentified criminals inside a motorbike near the main gate of the court in Sasaram the headquarters of Rohtas district, a police official said.
The injured have been admitted to a hospital for treatment, police said.
The security in courts across the state has been beefed up following the blast.
Police have lodged a case in this connection and begun an investigation into it.
In March this year, a bomb exploded in Sasaram court premises.
Amritsar: Over 20 kg heroin with a street value of around Rs 100 crore, which was smuggled in by Pakistani nationals, was on Wednesday, seized by the Border Security Force (BSF) along the Indo-Pak border in Amritsar.
The smugglers hurled packets of the drug across the border fence into Indian territory and were challenged by BSF troops deployed in the area.
The smugglers opened fire at the BSF team, which retaliated. However the smugglers managed to escape.
BSF DIG RS Kataria said that incident took place around 3:30 am when a BSF night patrol party noticed suspicious movement near a Border Outpost along the Indo-Pak border.
The BSF personnel immediately rushed to the spot and saw some Pakistani smugglers throwing packets towards the Indian side, he said.
The DIG said when a search operation was launched in the morning, 21 heroin packets (of 1 kg each) and one loaded shot gun of Italian make were seized.
Srinagar: Barring stray protests in rural areas where security forces shot dead a civilian, large parts of curfew-bound Kashmir Valley were calm on Tuesday as Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti appealed for peace to end days of violence.
While curfew continued for a fourth day in most parts of the valley, the authorities said the situation was under control despite some incidents of arson and mob attacks.
After returning from Africa, Modi chaired a high-level meeting and voiced concern over the incidents of violence in the Kashmir Valley that have left over 30 people dead and hundreds injured in widespread violence since security forces shot dead a top militant on Friday.
In Srinagar, Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti described the situation in Kashmir as "a matter of concern for all of us" and urged Kashmiri youths to show "patience and calm" at this "critical and sensitive" hour.
"Bloodshed will result in nothing. Life comes once. It is our duty to respect and appreciate this Godsend gift," Mebooba said in a passionate appeal in Urdu.
Violence erupted in the Kashmir Valley after security forces killed Burhan Wani, the 22-year-old commander of Kashmir's largest rebel group, Hizbul Mujahideen, and two associates in a village on Friday.
The killing of Wani, who had emerged as the new face of Kashmir's militancy with his Facebook and other social media photos and videos, triggered a vicious cycle of protests by angry mobs and counter violence by security forces.
The protests continued on Tuesday but their intensity was less compared to the last four days.
A police spokesman in Srinagar said a mob attacked a police station in Kralpora village in Kupwara district in north Kashmir and set a police van on fire, trapping some policemen.
Police fired back, injuring a person who succumbed to his injuries. The latest killing took to 34 the number killed across the valley.
Earlier on Tuesday, Amir Nazir Latoo, who was injured in firing at Chief Minister Mehbooba Muftis hometown in Bijbehara, succumbed to injuries at a hospital in Srinagar, doctors said.
Police said protesters pelted stones in some areas of south and north Kashmir during which one was injured after he picked up a tear smoke shell that exploded in his hand.
At least three police guard rooms were set ablaze in different villages of south Kashmir, which has been most volatile over past four days. The dead militant commander belonged to this region.
Srinagar remained calm throughout the day even as police reported that some "miscreants lobbed a petrol bomb" targeting paramilitary and police forces in the old city.
Official sources told IANS that the curfew will continue on Wednesday - 13 July - the annual official Martyrdom Day to remember those who were killed in an uprising against the Dogra autocratic rule in 1931.
Separatist leaders, most of them under house arrest, have called for a march to the martyrs graveyard in the old city. The Chief Minister too is scheduled to lay a wreath there.
Srinagar: Curfew continued for the fifth day in most parts of the Valley on Wednesday as 34 people died during this period in the vicious cycle of violence that has plagued Kashmir after the killing of Hizbul commander, Burhan Wani.
Despite relative calm in the Valley on Tuesday, clashes occurred between the security forces and unruly mobs at more than three dozen places.
A mob attacked a police station in north Kashmir's Kralpora town of Kupwara district on Tuesday.
The mob also torched a police vehicle there in which some policemen were trapped.
To save the trapped policemen, security forces opened fire at the mob injuring 14 people. One of the injured later succumbed to bullet injuries taking the death toll to 34 in recent Valley violence, police sources told IANS.
In Awantipora town of south Kashmir's Pulwama district, a mob attacked the unguarded house of a police officer severely beating the officer's wife and daughter.
"The mob also ransacked the house. The mother and daughter have been admitted to hospital for treatment," a senior police officer said.
Another mob attacked a minority police picket in Tral town of the same district setting fire to the picket.
Policemen at the minority picket barely managed to save their lives and weapons.
In north Kashmir's Ganderbal town, another unruly mob attacked the local district magistrate (DM) who miraculously escaped unhurt.
The DM had an armed escort of local policemen whom he ordered not to use firearms so that casualties to protesters are avoided.
The DM's official vehicle was extensively damaged in the incident that occurred barely 200 metres away from the administrative complex in Ganderbal district.
Convoys of Amarnath Yatra bound pilgrims and tourists to and from north Kashmir's Baltal base camp in Ganderbal district are escorted by mobile escorts and road opening parties (ROPs) for safety.
Both the road to the Baltal Yatra base camp and the highway connecting the Ladakh region with the Valley pass through Ganderbal district.
On Tuesday, 4,455 yatris had darshan in the cave shrine. So far this year, over 1.33 lakh yatris have performed the yatra, officials of the Shri Amarnath ji Shrine Board (SASB) told IANS.
Another batch of pilgrims using 150 buses also reached the Valley from Jammu on Tuesday night.
On Tuesday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti appealed for peace to end days of violence.
After returning from Africa, Modi chaired a high-level meeting and voiced concern over the incidents of violence in the Kashmir Valley.
In Srinagar, Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti described the situation in Kashmir as "a matter of concern for all of us" and urged Kashmiri youths to show "patience and calm" at this "critical and sensitive" hour.
"Bloodshed will result in nothing. Life comes once. It is our duty to respect and appreciate this Godsend gift," Mebooba said in a passionate appeal in Urdu.
Violence erupted in the Kashmir Valley after security forces killed Burhan Wani, the 22-year-old commander of Kashmir's largest rebel group, Hizbul Mujahideen, and two associates in a village on Friday.
The killing of Wani, who had emerged as the new face of Kashmir's militancy with his Facebook and other social media photos and videos, triggered a vicious cycle of protests by unruly mobs.
13 July is a public holiday in the state in connection with the annual 'Youm-e-Suhada' (Martyrs' Day) to remember those who were killed in an uprising against the Dogra autocratic rule in 1931. Separatist leaders, most of them under house arrest, have called for a march to the martyrs' graveyard in the old city.
The chief minister too is scheduled to lay a wreath there.
New Delhi: Police on Wednesday booked a juvenile on the charge of rape and a 26-year-old woman under POCSO Act after they allegedly entered into physical relationship and later charged each other of forced sex.
The 17-year-old boy claimed he was approached by the woman through a Facebook profile titled "Zinda" and they became friends, police said.
They met on Wednesday and went to a hotel in Vasant Kunj area where they allegedly indulged in sex. The woman later called the police and accused the boy of raping her, a senior police officer said.
However, the boy claimed that the woman had offered him to enter into a physical relationship and he initially spurned the offer. But she later lured him into it, the officer said.
Cross FIRs have been registered under relevant sections of IPC and POCSO Act, he said, adding police suspect it to be a case of "honey-trapping" and no arrests have been made so far.
Controversial Islamic preacher Zakir Naik has reportedly been denied venues in Mumbai to hold his press conference scheduled for 14 July. Naik, who is facing allegations of inspiring terrorists involved in the Dhaka attacks and some members of Islamic States Hyderabad module, was planning to hold a press conference via Skype at the World Trade Centre (WTC) in Mumbai on Thursday. Besides WTC, Naik has reportedly also been denied permission by three other hotels.
At least 4 hotels, after confirming availability, and some even after taking the booking, have cancelled. The latest one is the World Trade Centre, who after taking the booking yesterday (Tuesday), called today (Wednesday) to cancel it, said a person close to Naik, in Mumbai, said.
We had already sent out media invites with the WTC hall details yesterday (Tuesday). And we're talking about a press conference (PC). Not a public speech, not a public performance, but a press conference! We're now trying to organise another venue for the PC and the PC will happen at its scheduled time and date, albeit at a different venue, said the person.
However, WTC spokesperson has denied that Naik even approached them for a press conference venue. This is to inform and clarify that the World Trade Centre Mumbai has not been booked for the Zakir Naik Press Conference 'via Skype' on 14 July, 2016 at 11:30 am, as mentioned in the Online News Portals, the spokesperson said.
According to Naik's aide, besides WTC three other hotels, including Taj and ITC Grand Central, too denied them permission to hold a press conference.
Naik, currently believed to be in Saudi Arabia, had earlier said that hell return to Mumbai on Monday and will meet the press in person. This was cancelled later. However, Naik said hell hold a Skype presser on Thursday.
We had planned Trident and later changed the plan because of investigations by central agencies. Anyways, Naik is an NRI and keep travelling abroad. So, we decided to hold the presser and approached three more hotels Taj, Sahil Hotel and ITC. WTC said there is an issue of power failure in the building. This is a weird reason and just an excuse. We are not in a position to say who could have instructed these hotels, Mobin Solkar, Naik's advocate told Firstpost.
If indeed Naik has been denied venue for his presser by the government or any other authorities even before any legal charges are established against him, thats a wrong move and can eventually backfire. Naik should be given an opportunity to answer the questions of the local media and face investigations.
Ever since the controversies began, Naik has responded through short video responses and a written statement. Preventing him from addressing the press could prove to be counterproductive because it will help the controversial preacher, whose talk advocates the supremacy of Islam over other religions, gain more public support. Beside the media hullabaloo and certain comments from government functionaries, so far, there are no cases registered against Naik in India.
As Firstpost noted earlier, it is hard to pinpoint a legal case on Naik. There is no serious charge against the suave, English-speaking preacher from Dongri in Mumbai, apart from the possible charges of hurting religious sentiments. There isnt any strong evidence of Naiks terror-links apart from the allegations that he has inspired Dhaka and Hyderabad terrorists linked to the Islamic State.
Even when Naik advocates the false notions of religious supremacy or the merits of Taliban-like social codes, offers a defence of Osama Bin Laden, pledges allegiance to Islamic terrorists, argues against girls education and the LGBT community, he has been doing it through carefully-worded and clever caveats. Naiks allegiance to terrorism before the camera isnt unconditional. So, in a way Naik has always played safe not to get entangled in these legal charges.
Naik, in his statement made on Monday, maintained that he did not support terrorism or violence 'in any form whatsoever'." I have never supported any terrorist organisations and have mentioned this over and over again in thousands of my public talks worldwide. I strongly condemn anyone taking my statements out of context and using it for violence of any form," he said.
Nevertheless, there are reasons to believe that Naiks speeches have indeed raised concerns for the government and have been identified as a threat to the religious harmony of the country. His speeches and activities therefore, needs a close examination. But, the main point here is that preventing Naik from holding a presser and facing the media will only help to generate more public support for the controversial preacher. It will not address the problem.
New Delhi: Air passengers have a reason to smile as the revised norms that caps ticket cancellation charges and bars airlines from levying additional amount for refund process are coming into force from 1 August.
"Cancellation amount not to exceed basic fare plus fuel surcharge; all statutory levies and taxes to be refunded under all circumstances," Civil Aviation Minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju said on Wednesday as he announced that the new cancellation norms for fare refund would become effective from 1 August.
Issuing the revised regulations, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) also made it clear that airlines
cannot levy additional charge to process the refund.
The move would come as a relief to air passengers against the backdrop of many carriers hiking the cancellation charges in recent times.
The regulator said carriers should refund all statutory taxes and User Development Fee (UDF)/Airport Development Fee (ADF)/Passenger Service Fee (PSF) to the passengers in case of "cancellation/ non-utilisation of tickets/no show".
"This provision shall also be applicable for all types of fares offered including promos/special fares and where the basic fare is non-refundable," DGCA noted.
The changes were first proposed by the Civil Aviation Ministry in June as part of putting in place passenger
friendly measures.
These norms would be effective from 1 August, according to the Civil Aviation Requirement (CAR) issued by DGCA chief M Sathiyavathy on Tuesday.
In a tweet, Raju said the process of refund would be completed within 30 days even when booked through travel
agents or online portals.
"Cancellation charges to be clearly displayed on every ticket. The policy to be prominently displayed on the website of the airline," Raju said in another tweet.
No charges can now be levied by airlines for corrections in errors of names of the passengers, he added.
Separately, DGCA has also revised the rules with respect to persons with disability and reduced mobility whereby
airport operators should make provision for such people to embark or disembark from a flight without inconvenience.
Carriers would be required to indicate the refund amount in case of ticket cancellations.
The amount and its break-up may be indicated on the ticket itself or through separate form used for the purpose.
Also, the policy and amount of refund shall be displayed by the airlines on their respective websites, DGCA noted.
Further, passengers can choose whether the refund money should be kept in the airline's credit shell or not.
"Airline shall not levy any additional charge for correction in name of the same person, when error in his name
spelling is pointed out by the passenger to the airline after booking of his ticket," the regulator said.
For tickets booked through travel agents or portal, the onus of refund would be on the airlines.
"In case of purchase of ticket through travel agent/portal, onus of refund shall lie with the airlines, as agents
are their appointed representatives. The airlines shall ensure that the refund process is completed within 30 working days," the regulator said.
At present, in cases of ticket purchases from travel agents, the arrangement for refund is left to the passenger
and the travel agent.
"The option of holding the refund amount in credit shell by the airlines shall be the prerogative of the passenger and not a default practice of the airline," it noted.
In the case of foreign carriers operating to and from India, the refund process would be in accordance with
regulations of their country of origin.
The latest CAR prescribes minimum requirements for refund of ticket purchased by persons with respect to air transport undertakings including scheduled and non-scheduled domestic operators as well as foreign carriers operating to/from India.
As per the revised the rules with respect to persons with disability and reduced mobility, airlines, upon advance
request, have to make provisions for carriage of stretchers and associated equipment for passengers who cannot use the standard airline seat in a sitting/reclining position.
"Such a request shall be made at least 48 hours prior to the scheduled departure of the flight. Airlines shall develop a procedure for making advance request of stretcher and the same should be displayed on airline's website," DGCA said.
Under the new norms, airport operators should make provision for ambulift at the aerodrome for people with
disability or reduced mobility to embark/disembark the aircraft without inconvenience.
"Such provision may be made in coordination with Ground Handling Agencies (GHAs), if required. Airport where ambulift or aerobridge facility is not available, provision of towable ramp should be made," the revised CAR (Civil Aviation Requirments) in this regard said.
Further, the watchdog said the airport operator should ensure that persons with disability or reduced mobility are
transported "within the airport in the same condition, comfort and safety as those available for other passengers".
DGCA also noted that airlines, airport operators, security, customs, and immigration bureau organisations at
airports should conduct training programme for personnel engaged in passenger services.
This is for "sensitisation and developing awareness for assisting persons with disability or reduced mobility and to ensure they are well briefed about their responsibilities," it added.
PTI
Mumbai: Observing that controversial preacher Zakir Naik is spreading "contempt" towards other religions through his speeches, some Muslim activists on Wednesday demanded that such "hate-mongers" be prosecuted for promoting enmity between religious groups.
Addressing a joint press conference here, activists including Javed Anand, Feroze Mithiborwala, Noorjehan Niaz and Zeenat Ali said that "Naik preaches contempt, though not hatred, towards other religious".
Mithiborwala said, "all such hate-mongers, including Naik, should be probed and prosecuted for promoting enmity between religious groups".
Anand said the main question regarding Naik and his preachings on his channel is "whether he is aiding and abetting terrorism?"
Demanding probe against the tele-evangelist, he said Naik is not a messenger of peace "but he has been spreading prejudice against other religions, especially contempt, for past several years".
Zeenat Ali said, "Naik's understanding is very puritanical and several Muslim organisations have joined hands against Naik".
However, we are more concerned about the fact that certain sections of Muslim leaders are supporting Naik, she added.
The activists unanimously condemned Naik's speeches.
Naik, who runs Peace TV which has millions of followers in various countries, is currently under scanner of various agencies after at least one of the terrorists involved in Dhaka attack had posted that he was influenced by Naik's sermons.
Sam Erickson/44 PicturesIt's time for a "Celebration!" Legendary soul/funk band Kool & the Gang are slated to release a brand new song called "SEXY (Where'd You Get Yours)" on Friday, July 15. The song also will appear on the group's forthcoming new studio album, its first in almost a decade.
The band will give the single its live debut tomorrow, July 14, at 9 a.m. ET during an appearance on NBC's Today. In addition, Kool & the Gang will play a medley of some of their biggest hits on the morning show, including "Jungle Boogie," "Get Down on It" and "Celebration."
The release of the new song comes in the wake of their 50th anniversary as a band and ahead of the group's upcoming Keeping the Funk Alive Tour, which begins July 22 in Charlotte, North Carolina, and runs through an August 28 concert in Los Angeles. The trek also will feature appearances by Bootsy's Rubber Band, Morris Day and the Time and Doug E. Fresh at all or most stops.
Kool & the Gang were recently honored with a BET Soul Train Lifetime Achievement Award and a spot in the New Jersey Hall of Fame. Over the course of its long career, the band has sold over 70 million records worldwide, and gained two Grammy Awards, seven American Music Awards, 25 Top 10 R&B hits and 32 gold and platinum albums combined.
"SEXY (Where'd You Get Yours)" will be available for purchase and streaming on July 15 in stores and at the usual digital outlets.
Copyright 2016, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
Ramkumar, the prime accused in the murder of 24-year-old Infosys employee, S Swathi, has been identified as the killer by two eyewitnesses Swathi's father and a bookseller at Nungambakkam railway platform during an identification parade at the Puzhal central prison on Tuesday, reported The Times of India.
According to the report, Swathi's father, Santhana Goplakrishnan, was the first one called in to identify the culprit who stalked his daughter and stabbed her in broad daylight following a spat with him at the station.
Deccan Chronicle reported that Gopalkrishnan held the suspect by hand and asked him as to why he murdered his daughter "You killed my daughter and now I am inside a prison doing all these (sic)," Swathi's father said.
The second eyewitness, Sivakumar, the bookseller too identified Ramkumar, who was moved to the ninth place in the line of men, as the assailant.
The 25-member team investigating the case, questioned more than a hundred people and shortlisted about 20 as probable suspects. They then released a high-resolution image of the main suspect on 1 July.
On 2 July, the Chennai police arrested Ramkumar, a 22-year-old engineering graduate, in Tirunelveli district in southern Tamil Nadu. The man allegedly tried to slash his throat in order to escape arrest.
He was then rushed to a local hospital and given first-aid. Later, he was moved to a government hospital in Tirunelveli, where the doctors said that his injuries were not serious.
Reports claimed that Ramkumar was friends with Swathi on Facebook. The duo got in touch over the social media site and had exchanged numbers, following which the accused became obsessed with Swathi and started stalking her. Miffed over Swathi's refusal, the accused had planned to take her life.
Srinagar: Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti on Wednesday paid tributes to the martyrs of the 1931 struggle against the Dogra rule and appealed for calm in the violence-gripped Kashmir Valley.
Under heavy security, Mehbooba Mufti went to the graveyard at Naqashband Sahib area of Old Srinagar where a guard of honour was presented to her.
The Chief Minister appealed for peace in the troubled valley where street clashes since the killing of a top militant, Burhan Wani, on July 8 has left over 30 people dead and hundreds injured.
She laid a wreath at the graveyard to commemorate those killed by the Dogra Maharaja's soldiers on this day in 1931 outside the Central Jail in Srinagar.
People had stormed the jail during the trial of Abdul Qadeer Khan, an Afghan cook of a British official. Qadeer had been arrested for delivering a fiery speech in support of the Kashmiris.
Srinagar: Barring some incidents of stone-pelting, Kashmir was relatively calm on Wednesday after four days of violence which claimed 34 lives and over which Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti expressed "great sadness and sorrow" and promised a "healing touch".
Curfew remained in force in some parts of Kashmir, including Pampore and Kupwara towns, while restrictions on movement of people were imposed in the rest of the Valley.
A police spokesman said barring "some incidents" of stone pelting at various places, the situation "remained under control" in the valley.
The stray and intermittent incidents of stone pelting were reported from Khudwani, Kulgam, Iman Sahib, Shopian and Kakpora in south Kashmir, Kralpora, Kupwara, Trehgam, Langate, Lalpora, Putkha Sopore and Main Chowk Sopore in north Kashmir, he said.
The death toll rose to 34 in the clashes between stone pelters and security forces since the killing of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani on last Friday.
Reaching out to the people, Mehbooba sought their "support in pulling J&K out of the vortex of violence and bloodshed."
She said she needs people's support in realising the dream of a politically-emancipated, economically self-reliant and socially secure Jammu and Kashmir.
"The 27-year-long violence has left deep wounds in almost each home here and we have to jointly safeguard our state and our people from further bloodshed and destruction," she said after paying homage to the martyrs of 1931 at the Martyrs graveyard in Khawaja Bazar area of downtown Srinagar.
Commenting on the current unrest, Mehbooba said, "My heart is overwhelmed with great sadness and sorrow as a result of the killings in the latest spate of violence in Kashmir." Asserting that "I won't let the people down, despite facing a challenging task", she said, "While my government's immediate priority would be to reach out to the affected families with a healing touch, in the long run a concerted effort shall have to be launched to make peace and stability a reality in J&K, with youth being the focus of the government's welfare initiatives."
She said 13 July, 1931 will always be remembered as a defining moment in the history of J&K when the foundation for democracy and people's rule was laid in the state.
"Each period of the state's history has had its specialchallenges and those confronting us today are as demanding as any in the past," the Chief Minister said. Talking to mediapersons, she said the biggest tribute to these martyrs of 1931 would be to protect J&K's dignity and democracy which became a reality in the state because of their huge sacrifice.
Srinagar: Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Mehbooba Mufti paid tributes to the martyrs of the 1931 struggle against the Dogra rule on Wednesday, and appealed for calm in the violence-gripped Kashmir Valley.
Under heavy security, Mufti went to the graveyard at Naqashband Sahib area of Old Srinagar where a guard of honour was presented to her.
The chief minister appealed for peace in the troubled valley where street clashes since the killing of a top militant, Burhan Wani, on 8 July has left over 30 people dead and hundreds injured.
She laid a wreath at the graveyard to commemorate those killed by the Dogra Maharaja's soldiers on this day in 1931 outside the Central Jail in Srinagar.
People had stormed the jail during the trial of Abdul Qadeer Khan, an Afghan cook of a British official. Qadeer had been arrested for delivering a fiery speech in support of the Kashmiris.
After its volcanic eruption last Saturday, when a police station was taken over and several policemen abducted, anger among Kashmiri youth is showing signs of gradually decreasing. Tempers remain high, but the trend is towards less attacks and demonstrations.
The obvious lack of preparation on Saturday, the day after militant commander Burhan Wani was killed, was a horrifying disaster. But such has been the rapid improvement since Sunday that, on Tuesday morning, one witnessed large numbers of migrant labour on the streets of Srinagar, waiting in hope that a contractor would give them work. Several provision stores, vegetable and fruit vendors and the occasional local bakeries too were open.
The restraint that the forces have shown in many places seems to be paying off. It should be highly appreciated. Many of those killed were shot when security forces reacted to direct attacks on their camps. What is more significant is that, in some instances, the police did not fire even when police stations were directly attacked.
To be sure, some attacks have continued and public anger still lingers at some places. Occasionally, grenades have been lobbed from within a demonstrating crowd. This combination of militancy and stone-pelting is new. Yet, the various security forces have shown amazing restraint. The J&K police deserves particular credit. Their performance in places such as Srinagar and Shopian has been amazingly effective.
Perhaps it was necessary to give youth anger a vent. Such demonstrations are often about underlying factors more than about the immediately visible cause.
The police and the CRPF have borne the brunt of public attacks over the past five days. By comparison, the Army has remained in the background. After all, as a very senior army officer on the ground pointed out, the Army is the last resort. The Army would prefer that the situation does not reach the stage of last resort.
An Army convoy was blocked and pelted with stones on the highway not far from where Burhan was killed, but the Army men in the convoy only fired in the air. The restraint worked and several hours later, the convoy was able to move on safely without having provoked more trouble across the Valley by firing into the crowd.
Backing the policy of restraint, another very senior Army officer expressed unhappiness that some of the CRPF units being rushed into the Valley on an emergency basis did not seem to have a sense of the place, or to be adequately briefed. They were the ones who opened fire relatively easily, he said.
Trigger-happy responses would risk a return to the summer of 2010, when stones were repeatedly met with bullets, until the situation spiralled into uncontrolled mayhem and angry stone-pelting spread right across the Valley. A few days into that round of agitation, even mothers joined their sons on the streets with stones and bricks. Each days toll in firing caused fresh anger, and more stones.
Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti deserves praise for ordering the current restraint, even at the risk of upsetting hardliners within the BJP, her coalition partner, and in the central government. She made an effective dignified but heartfelt appeal for calm over television on Tuesday evening.
She has shown wisdom to impose relatively light restrictions on people Mufti deserves high praise. A light lid often works better than a pressure cooker.
Local residents report that people were able to go towards and move within Tral for prayers and other observances on the chahrum (fourth day after the burial) of militant commander Burhan Wani on Tuesday, and also on Wednesday, which was Martyrs Day in Kashmir. Most observers had expected very tight curfew, but it remained relatively light.
Omar obstructs more than Hurriyat
The various Hurriyat leaders seem to be restrained too. There had been much talk of leading massive processions to the martyrs memorial in the heart of the city. All that happened was that separatist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani was easily arrested when he emerged from his residence rather late in the morning. Mirwaiz Omar remained under house arrest.
In fact, opposition leader Omar Abdullah was a bigger problem. Some of his tweets last weekend and again on Wednesday taunted his successor. Home Minister Rajnath Singhs conversation with him on Monday seemed to have had a salutary effect briefly. A very senior Army officer named at least one National Conference leader who had apparently been stirring ground-level trouble but had stopped on Tuesday.
However, Omar returned to a tweet-offensive again on Wednesday. His public suggestion that Mufti was repeating the mistakes he had made when he was in the chair was way off the mark. The truth is that, he had flailed in a policy vacuum, allowed excessive firing, and ordered extremely repressive curfew in 2010.
The result was that agitations spiralled through that summer until very senior officers feared that things had gone over the brink. Even the then Home Secretary, GK Pillai, had protested over the strictness of curfew during a visit to Srinagar. Omar responded by complaining the Centre was interfering.
This time, the home minister and others at the Centre have played a constructive role to intervene directly with potential troublemakers. Things have improved since National Security Advisor Ajit Doval returned to India.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi took a tough line at the meeting he chaired when he returned on Tuesday morning. Pressure was then increased on Mufti. She did well to respond with a televised statement that evening but also continuing with the light 'restrictions' policy through Wednesday.
Sporadic violence continued, but the trend was towards relative calm. Friday will be another test, but so far the administration and the police have done a creditable job.
Srinagar: Defying curfew restrictions on Wednesday, local Muslims risked their lives to rescue the Amarnath Yatra pilgrims injured in a road accident on Jammu-Srinagar National Highway No.1 A and carried them to hospitals.
The driver of the mini-bus carrying the pilgrims died of injuries after the vehicle met an accident near Bijbehara town in Anantnag district.
With the death of the driver, the toll in the highway accident rose to two.Earlier, a pilgrim died and 20 others were injured in the accident.
Locals in Bijbehara town, who were mourning two deaths due to recent violence in the Kashmir Valley, ignored their personal grief and the curfew to rush to the accident spot and rescue the injured pilgrims.
"Local Muslims carried the injured pilgrims to a hospital in their private vehicles. Some also carried them to a hospital in Srinagar," an eye-witnesse told IANS.
Despite being in the throes of violence triggered by the killing of a top militant, Burhan Wani, which left 34 people, including 33 civilians and a policeman, dead in the last four days, the gesture of the Bijbehara locals was exemplary.
At least two protesters had died in Bijbehara town a day before and tension ran high there on Wednesday."Despite all the violence around, the locals did not ignore the call of humanity," an eye-witness said.While another resident said,"This is the uniqueness of Kashmir, we must all fight to protect."
Of the 34 people killed in the violence, 32 belonged to south Kashmir districts of Anantnag, Shopian, Kulgam and Pulwama while one each belonged to Srinagar and Kupwara districts.
Thiruvananthapuram: The mother of a young pregnant woman, among 21 people from Kerala suspected to have joined the Islamic State, on Tuesday met Union minister Thaawar Chand Gehlot and submitted a petition seeking a probe into the missing of her daughter.
Bindu, mother of 25-year-old Fatheema Nimisha who converted to Islam after marriage, met the Union Minister for Social Justice and Empowerment who is on a visit in Thiruvananthapuram, and submitted the petition seeking Centre's intervention, BJP sources said.
Gehlot assured her that the petition would be handed over to Prime Minister Narendra Modi for necessary action, they said.
Bindu in her petition said her daughter was missing for the past one month and sought a probe.
She had earlier stated that Nimisha came to see her along with her husband on 16 May and on 18 May, she received a call from her daughter that she was going to Sri Lanka for some business. After that there was no information about her daughter, she had said.
Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan had on Monday informed the state assembly that his government viewed the matter of missing Keralites very seriously and would take necessary steps with the support of the central agencies.
Five of the 21 young men and women who have disappeared from Kerala to apparently join the Islamic State (IS) had recently converted to Islam.
Bekson, a Christian, is a 32-year-old MBA graduate. His brother Betson is 10 years younger. Sometime last year, they grew beards and announced to their parents that they had converted to Islam. Bekson changed his name to Easa, and Betson became Yahiya. Then Bekson married Nimisha, a Hindu girl who had just converted and became Fathima. His brother married Merin, a Christian girl who became Mariam. And Abdul Rasheed, an engineer in Palakkad, married Sonia, also an engineer, after she had converted and took the name of Ayisha.
Its not clear whether the case of Rasheed and Ayisha was a love jihad. The two marriages of the brothers arent. Despite the elements of love and jihad in them, they dont come under the definition of love jihad. A love jihad means a Muslim man enticing a non-Muslim girl into Islam with feigned love and then dumping her or doing with her anything other than what a normal husband would do.
But there have been some classic cases of love jihad in Kerala before and plenty of conversions to Islam a conservative estimate is 10,000 in the last 10 years.
Thats what makes us wonder whether the number of people reported to have disappeared from Kerala 21 so far is only a tip of the iceberg.
And just as you wonder about this comes the report on Tuesday in The New Indian Express which says that about 50 other people have disappeared under mysterious circumstances from the Muslim-dominated northern Kerala in the last two years. The police are still investigating to find whether the missing persons have any links with terror groups.
The report quoted an official as saying that many families, who didnt report the disappearance of their children earlier because of the stigma attached to missing" cases are now coming forward to complain.
Its nobodys case that all these 50 or so people who have fled India have joined the IS or any other terror outfit, but considering the present circumstances and the well-known vulnerability of Keralas youth to falling into terror traps, the police are ruling out nothing. Investigators cant forget the significant numbers of Hindus and Christians converting to Islam and the few cases of love jihad that shook the state in the past.
On 25 June, 2012, Oommen Chandy, then chief minister of Kerala, tabled some numbers in the state Legislature:
- 7,713 people converted to Islam between 2006 and 2012.
- 2,195 Hindu women converted to Islam between 2009 and 2012
- 492 Christian women converted to Islam during 2009-2012
Its another matter that Chandy gave no figures for those who converted to Christianity.
Another report in The New Indian Express said on Tuesday that two authorised conversion centres of Muslims, one in Kozhikode and the other in Ponnani, registered a total of 900 conversions during 2015.
With no details available for 2013 and 2014 and adding up Chandys figures for 2006-12 and the new statistics for 2015, we wont be far off the mark if we say that Kerala has seen a total of close to 10,000 conversions to Islam in the last 10 years.
Nobody can and nobody shouldjump to the conclusion that all those who embraced Islam took to guns and militancy.
But the love jihad cases that came to light around the time Chandy gave those figures and the latest disappearances only make people suspicious. At that time, Chandy, however, denied that any love jihad was going on. That didnt surprise many. The Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) is the second biggest party in the United Democratic Front (UDF) led by Chandys Congress. But just two days after he reeled off the conversion figures, the Kerala High Court had directed the police to investigate the alleged elopement of a 20-year-old Hindu girl with a Muslim boy from a Kochi hospital.
And a month after that came the case of Deepa Cherian, which shook the states Christian community. According to the police version, which reads like a thriller, Deepa was in Dubai with her husband and children when an Indian driver called Noushad befriended her. Leaving her family, she came to Kerala with Noushad, converted to Islam, changed her name to Shahina and married him. The story came to light when the police arrested her for handing over a few international SIM cards to Noushad which he, in turn, passed to one T Nazir, a Lashkar-e-Taiba criminal.
After investigation, police found other cases of alleged love jihad" to be baseless. This prompted Muslim politicians to condemn what they called attempts to vilify the community with a myth called love jihad.
The number of conversions and the alleged love jihad" cases are not huge in a state with a population of 3.3 crore (2011 census). Hindus constitute 54.73 percent of the population, while Muslims are 26.56 percent and Christians, 18.38 percent. In the past, Christian community leaders alleged that love jihad was a diabolical, global conspiracy, Kerala being no exception.
The good thing about the latest case of disappearance of young men and women is that no community is hurling charges at the other. Thats because the parents who have lost their children belong to all communities, and they are seized by one common fear: will this happen again?
And at family and social gatherings and office canteen discussions, Hindus, Christians and Muslims ask one common question: how to stop young people from falling into terror traps.
But they have no answers. There is one from Jason Burke, the Africa correspondent of The Guardian.
Burke says in the latest issue of Outlook: Looking at the mechanics of radicalisation spotting networks early, noticing changes in behaviour among key individuals and monitoring their effect on others, using community leaders or other trusted individuals to intervene rapidly and effectively to divert young people who are at risk of radicalisation, are all more practical, and probably more effective, than grandiloquent rhetoric or so-called global solutions to what is often a very particular, local problem.
Also read: Burqa revolution in Kerala was an early sign of Islam radicalisation in the state
Author tweets @sprasadindia
Ahmedabad: One person was seriously injured when three lions attacked him in Gujrat's Amreli district on Tuesday while a video on the social media depicting a pride of eight lions roaming about a human habitat in Junagadh district created panic in the area.
Forests officials said a man from the shepherd community was attacked by three lions while he was grazing goats near Adsang village. He was admitted to a hospital in Savarkundla.
WATCH: A pride of lions seen sauntering through an inhabited road of Junagadh in Gujarat (11.7.16)https://t.co/fJauTPzYMj ANI (@ANI_news) July 13, 2016
Three persons were killed in attacks by lions in Amreli district between March and May this year. An old woman was killed in similar attacks by lions in the adjoining Gir Somnath district during the same period.
Meanwhile, a pride of eight lions, including two cubs, was seen loitering in the residential area of Junagadh town near the Girnar Darwaza area last night. Captured on a mobile phone, the video was posted on social media causing panic in the area.
Mumbai: Maharashtra on Wednesday issued an ordinance amending the Agricultural Produce Market Committee Act, 1963, deregulating sale of vegetables and fruits in a move that signals that the state in all likelihood is moving towards scrapping the APMC Act.
Even though Prime Minister Narendra Modi favours scrapping of the APMC Act it would not be easy for Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis to implement the same as the Nationalist Congress Party is steadfastly holding onto it. Scrapping of APMC is a dream project of Modi and his government already made high budgetary allocations for the upliftment of farmers across the country.
"The objective was to ensure that the farmers get a fair price and the consumers get vegetables and fruits at a cheaper rate," additional chief secretary, marketing, Sunil Porwal told Firstpost in Mumbai, terming the step historic.
A committee of traders, bureaucrats and representatives of farmers is likely to be formed to decide the fine print of the procedure and a meeting has been called to facilitate formation of the committee. A decision to this effect was arrived after a delegation of traders from Mumbai APMC under the leadership of Ashok Hande met Minister for Cooperation and Marketing Subhash Deshmukh at the Mantralaya in Mumbai on Wednesday in the presence of Minister for Revenue Chandrakant Patil.
Although the ongoing strike by traders at APMCs in Vashi and Nashik has been called off as this copy was being written, the protest resulted in the prices of vegetables and fruits going north in the Mumbai region. This even led the state government to allow direct market licensees and farm produce companies to set up open markets. The government granted 148 Direct Marketing Licenses of which 91 are for fruits and vegetables.
"The government is working on plans to bring vegetable trucks from Nashik. A large number of trucks laden with vegetables, fruits are coming to Mumbai," Porwal said.
In view of the strike that was just called off, the state government urged farmers to directly bring their produce for sale to Mumbai. Of the 307 APMCs in the state, 219 are operating, while some are closed due to holidays.
An official statement said heavy rains too had affected the supply, though there was no production shortage. Dipti Goradia, a Direct Marketing License holder, said their organisation of direct marketeers identified 10 open plots across Mumbai for selling vegetables, such as Mahim (behind Sitladevi temple), Mulund East (Chaphekar Bandhu Marg), Andheri (Lokhandwala), Goregaon West (Jawhar Nagar), Kandivali West (Raghuleela Mall), Borivali and Ghatkopar.
Trading in fruits and vegetables across most of the markets controlled by APMC in Maharashtra was closed from Monday. The traders were protesting the state government decision to remove vegetables and fruits from the scope of the APMC.
Karnataka, Nagaland, Assam, Chhattisgarh, Haryana, Odisha and West Bengal have already taken fruits and vegetable completely out of the purview of APMC act. Himachal Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh have done it partially.
In November 2015, Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister Nripendra Misra had written to the Maharashtra Chief Secretary Swadheen Kshtriya to free farmers from the purview of the APMC. The last state government headed by then chief minister Prithviraj Chavan had attempted to scrap the APMC Act but the move was stonewalled by NCP chief Sharad Pawar.
Principal Secretary to PM by Firstpost on Scribd
The Pune APMC, meanwhile, appealed to the farmers from the state as well as from outside to bring their produce to the market and sell those directly.
"We received 10 percent of the regular agriculture produce supply. However, APMC helped the farmers to sell their vegetable to the customers directly, providing them necessary help," said Dilipkumar Khaire, secretary of APMC Pune.
We appeal to the vegetable growers from the state as well as out of Maharashtra to bring their produce here and we assure that necessary help will be given to them to sell their produce to the consumers directly, Khaire said. A control room has been set up at the APMC Market Yard to help the farmers, he said.
MP and president of Swabhimani Shetkari Sanghtana, Raju Shetty, who was in the Pune Market Yard on Wednesday, said, "I will see to it that vegetable growers sell their produce to the buyers directly and they do not face any problem from the traders and commission agents."
Until the ordinance was issued, farmers had to sell most of the produce to the traders who were issued licenses by the APMC. The old APMC Act mandated farmers to sell the produce in the APMC run market yards. Over and above selling the produce to the designated traders, the farmer had to pay APMC cess, taxes, and commissions.
Reports emerging from a Dhanbad college, where students were found using unscrupulous means to write their examinations, might prove to be a major embarrassment for the Jharkhand government, especially considering chief minister Raghubar Das had recently taken a dig at Bihar for its "merit scam".
According to a report in the Hindustan Times, more than a thousand students were seen sitting across the lawns, sitting in small study groups of three and more at Dhanbad's RS Mor College, appearing for an exam with their heads bent together.
What is especially shocking is the fact that no invigilator appears be present anywhere, contrary to chief minister Das' claim that a culture of cheating isn't present in the state.
Over 100 students were seen sitting close to each other and writing their Class XI examination paper on 9 July, allegedly using unfair means in the college campus.
"The intermediate examination at the RS More College centre has surpassed the notoriety of the Bihar Examination Board in allowing cheating in examination," said a professor of the college.
The Jharkhand Academic Council (JAC), which was established for conducting secondary school and intermediate examinations and for prescribing courses of studies, said it will investigate the complaints. "I have come to know from newspapers about large-scale cheating by students at the examination centre and will take action against people responsible," JAC deputy chairman Phool Singh said on Tuesday.
#WATCH: Students appearing for class 11th examination in Dumka's (Jharkhand) RS Mor College, seen sitting in groupshttps://t.co/rVwVaP7PjB ANI (@ANI_news) July 13, 2016
Last month, in what came to be known as the "merit scam" came to light in Bihar after television footage showed various toppers from different streams fumbling over questions which they should have answered without any moment of hesitation. One of the students, Ruby Rai, who topped the Arts section felt Political Science was about the art of cooking, while Science topper Saurabh Kumar was unable to tell the relation between water and H2O.
With Bihar being infamous for cheating during exams, chief minister Nitish Kumar spoke of the need to rein in the "education mafia". Following a re-test, which they failed, Ruby Rai was arrested along with three other toppers.
Kashmirs annual observance of 13 July as Martyrs' Day had special significance this year, but both the violent events of 1931, which it commemorates, and the protests of the past six days, bring to mind the suspension of the Indian independence struggle in 1922.
Mahatma Gandhi called a complete halt in 1922, after a police station was burnt by an agitating mob at Chauri Chaura. Leaders from Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose to Jawaharlal Nehru, and people across the land, were aghast. But such was Gandhis moral authority that his call was followed and he continued as the undisputed leader of the freedom struggle.
In Kashmir, the anger, which was directed at police stations and security camps last Saturday, appears to have been tempered even without the leadership of a leader as colossal as Gandhi. Instead, there appears to have been a reaction from the ground up.
This could mean that anger has been vented, and has therefore subsided for the moment. However, it could also mean that strategies are being thought through, and more trouble could lie ahead. One thing is certain, no putative leader of Kashmirs separatism has the sort of rallying and controlling moral authority that Gandhi had.
Gandhi had laid stress on non-violence as a founding principle of the Indian nationalist struggle. That has not been the case in Kashmir. Shabir Shah and Yasin Malik have at times spoken of non-violent methods, but have lost credibility with people at large. Perhaps, the convincing personal abnegation that accompanied Gandhis political choices were a key to his success.
In 1931, the year of Kashmirs uprising against the Dogra regime, Gandhi recharged the freedom struggle with the overtly non-violent salt satyagraha. That unlikely movement inspired people right across the land far more than any other struggle hitherto had done. It also sharply focussed the deep links between economic exploitation and political repression.
Gandhi had already established the pan-religion nature of the struggle through the Khilafat Movement in 1919. He never allowed that commitment to falter, even until he was killed for it in 1948.
By contrast, the agitation in Kashmir in 1931 had overtly communal overtones. Trouble erupted on 13 July that year when the gate of the jail complex in Srinagar collapsed as people jostled outside the trial that was going on within. Abdul Qadir was being tried for sedition, having rallied publicly against Muslims being ruled by non-Muslims. After police firing killed 21 persons at the jail, the agitating crowd attacked Pandit shops in Maharaj Ganj and later that day in Vichar Nag.
Many Pandits still recall 13 July, 1931 as a 'black day' or 'the first communal riot', although the state observes it as Martyrs Day. Under the lead of Sheikh Abdullah and Chaudhry Abbas, that term was adopted in the state legislature which Maharaja Hari Singh had established even before independence. Of course, it is resented by many Dogras, including BJP ministers in the current coalition government.
Islamic mobilisation continues to be an aspect of Kashmirs struggle. Militants are called mujahid and the slogans and symbols of separatism are based on Islam. In recent years, Syed Ali Shah Geelani has focussed the demand as 'azadi barai Islam' (freedom shaped by Islam). Since 1990, one of the leading slogans has been: 'azadi ka matlab kya? (What does freedom mean?) La Illah, Il Allah or alternatively: 'nizam-e-Mustafa' (the Prophets regime).
At a time when the attacks on security force camps since Saturday have brought the Chauri Chaura arson back into focus, it would be worthwhile for all sides to ponder the significance today of the sort of personal and political morality that Gandhi so powerfully represented.
Thanks to Bangladesh, Indias home ministry officials and state governments like Maharashtra have become aware of televangelist Zakir Naik preaching ultra-conservative version of Islam to millions. If home ministry officials across the country were to make only a little effort, they would realise that the radical version of Islam is being pedalled for years from different social media channels and Salafi mosques that have mushroomed across the country.
There are now animated discussions on Indian TV channels and print media about the radical effect of telepreachers like Naik. Banning PeaceTV will not solve the problem. The growing acceptance of the Salafi version of Islam among young Muslims has not happened overnight or only due to Zakir Naik, but many more who have set up Salafi mosques, educational institutions, media training institutes and TV channels where the dominant theme is: True Muslims follow only Quran and Sunnah, others are not Muslims.
The Salafi brand of Islam one which considers all ideas and practices of Muslims that are not in conjunction with the Holy Book as heretical has taken root across the continent, among a growing population of young Muslims who are being told day in and day out that they must return to their roots.
Salafis are more conservative and do not accept many of the beliefs of Sunni Muslims, and they are more aggressively opposed to any cultural influence impacting Muslim practices. They are greater opponents of mysticism, and reject ideas of saints and their shrines as unacceptable. This makes South Asian Islam as nothing short of heretical. Men and women must not mix with non-Muslims, give up any form of worship such as visits to Sufi shrines and abjure any act that could be construed as unIslamic.
The reach of Salafi preachers who consider Sufis, Shias, Qadianis and Ahmadiyahs as non-Muslims and oppose social integration of Muslims with non-Muslims like Hindus and Christians has attained proportions that are probably beyond the understanding of many in governments.
Today, Saudi Arabia-sponsored and supported Muslim clerics, mosques, educational and charitable institutions span the country, and new technological tools provided by social media have made it far easier for people to watch, hear and get indoctrinated.
Right under the nose of governments of J&K, Karnataka, Kerala, Maharashtra, Odisha and many more, Salafi mosques have come up. Their congregations have rapidly risen with younger Muslims patronising them in large numbers.
Kerala leads all states with the number of radical groups, Salafi mosques and such clerics growing over the years. They are also using social media successfully, given the states high literacy rate.
Over two months ago, the Imam of Holy Kabah in Makkah, Sheikh Muhammed bin Talib, on a visit to India inaugurated the launch of Peace Radio in Kerala. With over 12 hours of daily programming, the radio app can be downloaded on to mobile phones and people in Kerala can listen to varied programmes dealing with Quran and its teachings.
Such apps are beyond the realm of government control. Sermons, Q&As and talks on how to be a true Muslim are beamed to many more on handy mobile phones.
Or, if one wants to listen to respected Islamic orators, then one can log on to Dawa Voice and download Islamic speeches in Malayalam or questions and answers by favourite speakers.
Or, one can download Islamic speeches in Malayalam by logging on to www.islahvoice.com.
Log on to www.salafivoice.com and apart from learning the true teachings of Quran one can also check out the list of deviant sects in Kerala and probably steer clear of them. According to Salafi Voice, the list of deviant sects includes Sufis, Kerala Samstha, Thableeq Jamaath, Jamathe Islami and Chekannoor.
Switch on the internet and search YouTube and one will come across hundreds of recorded interviews and sermons of clerics and preachers who seek to get Muslims to follow true Islam by accepting Salafi Islam.
In one video, Zakir Naik says Hindu culture influenced the trend of going and praying at graves of Sufi saints. My great great great grandfather was a Hindu. I am not Arabic. Those Hindu influences have continuedpraying for the dead is allowed but not praying to dead at their graves, he tells his audience.
Naik and many other preachers focus on the need for a Muslim to be true to Quran and Sunnah. Their sermons or answers to queries from Muslim men and women stress on exclusivism and are against any integration with other religious groups.
If looking for internationally influential preachers then, they too, are easily reachable. US-born Anwar-ul-Alwaqi who was killed in 2011 in a US drone attack when on a visit to his home country, Yemen, spews venom against the Western world and stresses on exclusivism. Sample this: In one YouTube video, he tells Muslims that they should not be swayed in their judgement of non-Muslims by their good neigbours or colleagues.
The social media space is exploding with influential preachers who easily tap into the insecurity of young Muslims. More and more young people are taking shelter in religion and these easy-to-access preachers exploit their insecurities and urge them to adhere to the original teachings of Quran and not follow 'deviant' versions such as Sufism. Mobile apps and ready to digest sermons on social media have only made the challenge posed by radical Islamist preachers much more difficult for governments today to tackle.
Okay, so the farmers who didnt want to sell through the Agricultural Produce Marketing Committees (APMCs) in Maharashtra, brought their produce of fruits and vegetables to the market on Tuesday and sold them directly to the consumers. Or so the media tell us, with two photographs: one of Textile Minister Sadabhau Khot joining the farmers in Mumbai's Dadar market and a farmers leader helping sell them at APMC Vashi.
It is all very well, but the media failed to tell us the crucial information: how much, and at what price were the fruits and vegetables sold? Did the farmers come with weighing machines, even the simple sort? Or did they just sell by quantities roughly estimated? If they did either, at what price did the consumer buy it?
The middleman nature of APMCs and their monopoly farmers have to sell only through the commission agents who are members of the APMCs and who decide at what price their wholesale transactions should take place is the crux of the issue. That is why the government wanted to free the farmers from the APMCs clutches. Which is good.
So were not the direct sales which got the media excited nominal? And the presence of the leader a photo-op, though it does have the potential to enthuse other farmers to sell their crop in the same fashion? Therein lies the story which I missed sorely, though that of late is a trend. Before I am trolled, what I am writing is a column, an opinion, not a news report.
An interesting nugget emerged from the various reports. The Thane edition of Loksatta showing how malls, or superstores in them sold the vegetables cheaper than what were last sold at the APMC mandis. If tomato was Rs 100 a kg at the mandi, the supermarkets sold it at Rs 49, which is cheaper by half and in air-conditioned comfort. Onions went for Rs 19, cheaper by a rupee.
Cabbage was picked up by consumers at Rs 35 per piece as against the mandai rate of Rs 100, and its cousin with college education, the cauliflower, did not get any special price tag it was put on the same scale, truly a humbling experience for it. This issue of excess pricing was protested by the Grahak Panchayat a few days earlier. But the question is, how did this miracle happen?
Apparently long-term contracts between the superstores and the farmers made the shoppers at the supermarkets sweat a little less, with an earlier law allowing such transactions. However, whether farmers who sold to supermarket chains benefitted or remained where they were with respect to the APMC commission agents is a matter for journalistic investigation. Question is: will it be done?
These stores are exempt from having to transact purchases via the APMCs, which in Maharashtra number 307, Vashis being the largest. Maharashtra Times reported on Wednesday that on Tuesday, 215 of the APMCs were open. You can count on profiteering at all levels, except by the farmers.
New Delhi: Uttar Pradesh Governor Ram Naik today met Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh and discussed with him various issues concerning the state.
Sources said the Governor is said to have conveyed to the Home Minister about his assessment on prevailing political and law and order situation in Uttar Pradesh.
The governor's visit to Delhi came a week after he had sent a "special" report, prepared by the state government, to President Pranab Mukherjee on the alleged migration of Hindus from Kairana, Mathura's Jawahar Bagh incident as well as the Dadri lynching.
The report was submitted by state Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav to the Governor on 26 June.
A controversy erupted over BJP MP Hukum Singh's claim that Hindus were forced to 'migrate' from Kairana, which was affected in the 2013 riots in Muzaffarnagar and its surrounding areas, due to law and order issues.
Ruling Samajwadi Party, however, trashed charges of "exodus", accusing the BJP of vitiating the communal atmosphere in the state ahead of the 2017 Assembly polls.
Mohammad Akhlaq, 52, was beaten to death on 28 September last year in Bisahra village of Dadri by a mob infuriated by rumours that he and his family had stored and consumed beef, triggering a fierce debate over intolerance in the country.
Violent clashes broke out between the police and illegal encroachers during an anti-encroachment drive at Jawahar Bagh on 2 June leaving 29 people dead including two police officers.
In his report, Yadav had apprised Naik on action taken on his directive over the grabbing of government land and encroachments in Mathura, sources said.
The Supreme Court has given a panel six weeks to come up with a set of guidelines on how to go about enforcing a ban on 'Sardar jokes'.
The petition filed by lawyer Harvinder Chowdhury has gained serious momentum since it was filed in November last year, with Chowdhury holding the late Khushwant Singh responsible for doing a 'disservice to the Sikh community by encouraging jokes on them and not objecting to those created by others'. And over the past few months, a number of Sikh organisations began to set up committees packed with lawyers to put an end to these jokes once and for all.
On Tuesday, a bench headed by Chief Justice TS Thakur said, She (Chowdhury) has been very passionate about it. We must not waste more time on this. Tell the panel to formulate the mechanism within six weeks so that we are able to hold a proper hearing of the matter. It must be pointed out though that it's not just 'Santa-Banta' jokes that are on the chopping block, jokes about 12 o'clock could also be on their way out.
That's the introduction out of the way. Now on with the show!
Here, at FP Special Forces headquarters, we pride ourselves on our altruistic desire to help others, particularly when it's for an important cause.
And what could be more important than helping out the country's Supreme Court? The way we see it, six weeks is far too long to spend on something as critical as guidelines for jokes. Also, there is a pressing need for a set of concrete guidelines to standardise jokes. Why did the Sikh community have to suffer disproportionately and alone for so many decades? This injustice shall not stand.
So without further ado, here's a bulletproof set of guidelines to craft standardised jokes that we can all enjoy:
It's historically proven that it always helps to illustrate theory with a working example. Remember how quickly we were able to understand 'distance = speed x time' after we were given the example of those trains one of which was leaving Mumbai at 45 kilometres per hour and the other was doing something else? Remember?
Here, then, is an example of how to use the guidelines:
It was at an unknown time of the day that an average nondescript human walked into an establishment designed to serve refreshments. While in said establishment, the human requested another equally average nondescript human for a glass of clear, still liquid. The other human obliged. Midway through the glass of clear, still liquid, the first human mentioned pointed to a non-human living creature sitting on a stool. Who is that fine specimen? the first human enquired. Oh, that non-human living creature? Why, that non-human living creature is my friend and equal to me in every way. Thats wonderful, said the first human, who then paid for the glass of clear, still liquid and exited the establishment in a quiet orderly way. For no particular reason, the human turned around to find that the establishment had been replaced by an establishment that sold books on mathematical diagrams. The surprised, but still polite and well-behaved human patiently rapped one's knuckles on the door of said establishment, but conscientiously did not say, Knock-knock. Upon being welcomed by the proprietor of the establishment, the first human asked, Excuse me, fellow human being who is every bit as worthy as I, wasnt this an establishment that served refreshments? The other human looked at the first human perplexed and asked, Venn?
Okay, now you can laugh.
via GIPHY
Not amused?
Then you're in the perfect frame of mind to imagine a world where jokes must adhere to guidelines.
via GIPHY
Miffed over the fourth cancellation of venue in Mumbai, the Public Relations team of the controversial Islamic preacher, Zakir Naik, issued a statement on Tuesday saying that hotels in Mumbai have been told not to give out venue for the press conference.
Although the PR team says that at least four hotels have cancelled their booking the latest one being the World Trade Centre in Cuff Parade they however said that they will hold the press conference at its scheduled time on 14 July but at a different venue. The statement, available with Firstpost, reads as follows:
It's weird - and unfair - what's going on. Apparently, hotels in Mumbai have been told not to give out venue for Dr Zakir Naik's press conference. At least 4 hotels, after confirming availability, and some even after taking the booking, have cancelled. The latest one is the World Trade Centre, who after taking the booking yesterday (Tuesday), called today (Wednesday) to cancel it. We had already sent out media invites with the WTC hall details yesterday (Tuesday).
And we're talking about a press conference. Not a public speech, not a public performance, but a press conference!
We're now trying to organise another venue for the PC and the PC will happen at its scheduled time and date, albeit at a different venue.
Naik was supposed to address the media on 14 July at 11.30 am at the World Trade Centre. Initially, he was to talk to the media on Monday after reaching Mumbai from Saudi Arabia.
Later his spokesperson informed the media that his trip to India has been cancelled and a new date would be set soon. The reason for the cancellation of his India trip was attributed to his ever-changing schedule.
Naik is set to leave on a tour of African countries in the next few weeks.
Bangladesh on Sunday banned the broadcasting of his Peace TV channel and despite allegations of influencing Islamic terrorists in India and abroad, he maintains that he does not support or propagate killing of innocent people.
Appointment of Raj Babbar as president of Uttar Pradesh Congress and Imran Masood as one of the vice-presidents of the party is a clear pointer that Rahul Gandhi has not learnt any lessons, either from the debacle of the 2012 state Assembly polls or from 2014 Parliamentary polls.
Both Babbar and Masood had been with the Samajwadi Party and turned to Congress when they thought their innings was over in their parent party. Babbar's claim to fame in politics is that in 2009, he defeated Akhilesh Yadav's wife Dimple in a by-election in Firozabad Parliamentary constituency. Masood's claim to fame is his famous hate speech made in the run-up to the 2014 Parliamentary elections, where he said he "would chop" Narendra Modi "into pieces". Both lost the elections comprehensively, with Babbar having the distinction of creating a record of losing by 5.65 lakh votes to Gen VK Singh of BJP in Ghaziabad and Masood having the distinction of getting negligible Hindu votes in Saharanpur, despite being a Congress candidate.
Two years down the line, Rahul Gandhi thinks that Babbar and Masood have enough organisational skills and mass appeal to lead Congress to victory in UP polls, due in another six months time. Imran Masood's rise to prominence in the organisational ladder, speaks volumes of Congress' apparent Muslim tilt in the coming elections. This is also evident from the fact that the appointment came days after Congress General Secretary Digvijaya Singh hit the headlines for surfacing on a video where he hailed controversial terror sympathiser and Islamic preacher Zakir Naik as a messenger of peace. In subsequent interviews to the media, Singh remained unapologetic about his sharing the dais and making laudatory remarks about Naik.
Masood, no doubt, has appeal among Muslims in Saharanpur and the neighbouring districts of communally-sensitive Western Uttar Pradesh, but then there are two factors which make him as much a liability as much Congress thinks he is an asset. First, his name has an instant polarising and counter-polarising effect. He has the potential to win an assembly election for himself, but in other areas where he would campaign, a reverse polarisation would help BJP and lead to a lose-lose situation for Congress. Given the Congress' non-existential position, the Muslims are unlikely to favour the party when strategic voting consideration comes into play, Masood notwithstanding.
The Congress in its own wisdom has decided to play an aggressive pro-Muslim card for UP elections. Incidentally, the Congress' central party in-charge for UP election is Ghulam Nabi Azad. The party will be fighting for its share of Muslim votes with a formidable Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party.
On the surface of it appears to be contrary to what Prashant Kishor, Congress' outsourced poll strategist had suggested: win Brahmins first. Even a retired Sheila Dikshit is unwilling to bear the high-sounding burden of the party's chief ministerial candidate. But Rahul Gandhi would perhaps be hoping that once it regains Muslim backing then the Brahmins would automatically come to its fold.
Babbar's credentials on the other hand is hailed as "caste neutral" a Punjabi born and brought up in Agra, in a deeply caste-infested UP politics. A filmy hero who made a name for himself in 1980 playing the role of a rapist in BR Chopra's Insaf Ka Tarazu. But his appointment has re-opened fissures in the party. He has run over boots of two other solid contenders for the post, Jitin Prasada and Rajesh Mishra.
Babbar like Masood is blessed by Rahul Gandhi. As a local UP Congressman said "yeh dono unki pasand hai (Rahul Gandhi) jinko aaj koi pasand nahi karta (these two have liking of a person who is hardly liked by anyone)". It is no mean statement of a situation, as he pointed out, that "even as Rahul Gandhi is back in the country, nobody is actually aware of his whereabouts. People have perhaps stopped caring about him."
Turn to 2012 when Rahul Gandhi was leading the Congress campaign in UP as an angry young man with his 'Jara Sochiye' pre-poll punch line. Digvijaya Singh was Congress general secretary in-charge of the party and had made the 'fake' Batala House encounter as one of the principal campaign issues to appeal to Muslim electorates in Eastern UP. But in the heart of Azamgarh's Shibli National College, he and Rahul Gandhi were booed.
The Congress poll strategy, and to an extent candidate selection, was sourced to two of Rahul Gandhi's favourites Beni Prasad Verma in eastern UP and Rashid Masood (Imran Masood's uncle) in Western UP. Again like Babbar and Imran Masood, both Verma and Rashid Masood had come from Samajwadi Party. There was a great deal of resentment among the tradition Congress workers and leaders, howsoever depleted their ranks had been.
They practically sat at home during the elections, and in the final, Congress could manage only around two dozen seats, around five percent of the strength of state assembly.
Beni Prasad Verma is back in the Samjawadi Party and has been elected to Rajya Sabha on its ticket. Rashid Masood has the singular distinction of being the first MP to be disqualified of his Rajya Sabha membership in October 2013 on conviction with four years in jail. The Congress then ruled at the Centre and Masood was a Rajya Sabha MP. The Congress had blamed the 2012 loss to organisation in UP.
Congress has not cared to turn new leaves of recent history. There could be Priyanka Gandhi's effect into that.
In what is yet another landmark judgment, the Supreme Court on Wednesday restored the Nabam Tuki-led Congress government in Arunachal Pradesh and quashed Governor Jyoti Prasad Rajkhowa's decision issued in December 2015 to advance the state Assembly session by a month.
But the judgment aimed to restore the status quo ante for the government in Arunachal Pradesh is likely to have less bearing on politics and more on academics. Although the SC ruling is a historical one as the top court rarely has quashed a Governor's order it is quite unlikely that it will change the way politics is conducted in the country.
As usual, the Congress party claimed the verdict as 'peoples victory' and Rahul Gandhi also tweeted in support of the verdict. The BJP is trying to brazen it out by saying , let us read the full judgment before responding to it. The usual rhetoric and worn out idioms that define todays political discourse, to go with the characteristic nonchalance.
The manner in which the Arunachal Pradesh government was dismissed, and a puppet government installed in its place, reflected a much deeper malaise that cannot be addressed by symptomatic treatment. For instance, there were indications to suggest that the Nabam Tuki government had lost confidence of its Congress legislators in December last year. But, this was an internal crisis of the Congress party, and the Centre had no role to fish in troubled water.
The Congress party had received the mandate to rule Arunachal through a democratic process in a state that borders China and figures on the international map because of Chinas claim over its territory.
https://twitter.com/OfficeOfRG/status/753108882948517888
Though a small state geographically, Arunachal is quite critical strategically. The revolt inside the Congress party gave enough room to the BJP a key political player in the region which sensed the kill and went for the jugular. Also, Governor JP Rajkhowa agreed to play a pliable instrument to subvert the peoples mandate.
The rest of the story runs on a familiar script repeated about a dozen times in many states by many regimes at the Centre, irrespective of their political denomination. Governor Rajkhowa allowed the precincts of the Raj Bhavan to be used as a palace of intrigues and conspiracy, to topple a wobbling government by buying support of the rebels.
If one were to closely look at the developments in Arunachal, the Congress proclamation of taking the moral high ground, and claiming the verdict to be a 'peoples verdict', is as hollow now as the BJPs claim of 'saving democracy' by sacking the Nabam Tuki government on 16 December 2015. Arunachal Pradesh had been under President's Rule since 26 January.
There was no doubt that the Nabam Tuki government had lost the majority, when its 14 legislators rebelled in December last year. But the manner in which the Tuki government used the office of the Assembly speaker to disqualify the rebel legislators was hardly in consonance with the spirit of democracy and the constitution.
The Supreme Courts decision on Wednesday may have corrected the wrong by turning back the clock, and by doing away with the colourable exercise of power by Rajkhowa who holds a constitutional post. But that will only be a partial remedy as Nabam Tuki had also violated the constitutional propriety by using the office of the speaker, in a manner to subserve his own political interests.
The episode in Arunachal was preceded by a similar story of intrigues and conspiracy in Uttarakhand. And in both these cases, the Supreme Court decisions seemed to have diagnosed the problem partially and addressed it in a manner that benefitted the aggrieved party (read the Congress). But thats more like treating the symptoms and ignoring the disease.
The judgment is unlikely to restrain appointments of pliable governors like JP Rajkhova, Romesh Bhandari or Buta Singh who care two hoots about constitutional propriety in order to serve their political masters. Similarly, the verdict is quite inadequate to keep a check on the election of speakers in the Assemblies, an office whose oath of impartiality is observed more in violation than adherence.
Arunchal Pradesh speaker Nabam Rebia had many illustrious predecessors in many other August legislative Assemblies of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Gujarat. Though the SCs decision today is significant, it will not motivate powers-that-be to undertake introspection. Hence, its academic worth will far exceed its political significance.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE ARUNACHAL SAGA:
New Delhi: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Wednesday attacked the Congress for appointing Imran Masood as a senior vice-president of the party in Uttar Pradesh, saying that a person who has used 'venomous language' doesn't deserve a mention.
Masood has triggered controversy earlier for his threat to cut Prime Minister Narendra Modi "into pieces" in the run-up to the 2014 parliamentary elections.
Masood was appointed one of the senior vice-presidents of the Uttar Pradesh Congress along with Rajaram Pal, Rajesh Mishra and Bhagwati Prasad. Congress also appointed actor-turned-politician Raj Babbar as the state party chief.
"The kind of venomous language he (Masood) used can't be talked about in public. We will distribute the CDs to the media. We can't even show it here," BJP national secretary Shrikant Sharma told reporters.
Hitting out at Congress, Sharma said: "Congress party supports terrorism and people who talk about dividing the country."
Sharma also attacked the Samajwadi Party-led government in Uttar Pradesh and said they were working in co-ordination with Congress to "cheat" the people of the state.
"There is no law and order in Uttar Pradesh and the state government has divided the society in the name of religion. The people of UP will not fall into the trap of the understanding between Congress and Samajwadi party to cheat them," said Sharma.
"People have decided to bring in a change. Elections will be held under the plank of development this time. The manner in which SP, BSP and Congress have looted the people of UP will not be tolerated anymore," he added.
Panaji: Congress leaders in Goa have now come out openly in favour of a 'grand alliance' with
like-minded parties for the state Assembly polls next year.
After former state health minister Vishwajit Rane recently threatened to quit the party if Congress wants to go alone in Goa polls due next year, other leaders like former Chief Minister Digambar Kamat, and MLAs Jeniffer Monserratte, Pandurang Madkaikar and Aleixo Reginaldo Lourenco have also voiced their opinion in favour of the grand alliance.
"I have expressed my opinion before the party high command. I feel that all like-minded parties should come together," Kamat told PTI today.
He said the party high command had sought his opinion recently on the matter and he had favoured the grand alliance, rather than going alone in the Goa polls.
The Congress party had earlier announced that it would not have any alliance for the Assembly polls.
All India Congress Committee General Secretary Digvijay Singh, who was in Goa last month to assess the
situation, had refused the possibility of an alliance.
But, the local leaders have strongly expressed that pre-poll alliance is the need of the hour to save the division of votes among secular parties which will give an edge to BJP.
"All attempts should be made to protect the division of votes as it will help BJP. We should join hands with like minded parties. Whoever is like-minded, we should consider being with them," Congress MLA Aleixo Reginaldo Lourenco said.
Responding to a question, Reginaldo said the parties like Goa Forward can be considered for alliance.
"Whatever I have said is my personal opinion, but the final decision has to be taken by high command," said the legislator representing Curtorim constituency.
Another MLA Pandurang Madkaikar said Congress will commit a grave mistake if it does not join forces with like-minded non-BJP parties during the next election.
"BJP will benefit if Congress goes alone. There will be division of votes which will not be in favour of secular forces," Jeniffer Monserratte, the Congress legislator from Taleigao constituency said.
Vishwajit Rane had recently spoken in favour of an alliance for the forthcoming elections.
However, he was criticised by Goa Congress chief Luizinho Faleiro, who had said that the party (Congress) legislators should first show their alliance on the floor of the House along with other independent MLAs.
In a huge setback for the BJP government in Arunachal Pradesh, the Supreme Court on Wednesday restored the Nabam Tuki-led Congress government in the state and quashed Governor Jyoti Prasad Rajkhowa's decision issued on December 2015 to advance the state Assembly session by a month .
In a unanimous judgment, a constitution bench headed by Justice JS Khehar directed the restoration of the status quo as it existed on 15 December, 2015, directed the manner in which the Assembly proceedings had to be conducted and set aside all the steps and decisions the House had taken, describing them as unsustainable.
The Supreme Court ruling is a historical one as the top court rarely has quashed a Governor's order. Justice Dipak Misra and Justice Madan B Lokur pronounced concurring judgments giving their additional reasons to agree with Justice Khehar.
The Supreme Court, turned the clock back to the 15 December status quo in Arunacal Pradesh, when the Congress government was still in power. Arunachal Pradesh had been under President's Rule since 26 January.
On 16 December, the Nabam Tuki government was dismissed in an Assembly session called by Governor JP Rajkhowa. The court said, "All decisions taken by the Arunachal Assembly after 9 December are quashed and unsustainable."
According to CNN-News18, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh has called for a high-level meeting after top court's historic order.
Rajnath is holding the meeting with Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, Union Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad and Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi.
Delhi: HM Rajnath Singh, FM Finance Minister, Law Minister RS Prasad and AG Mukul Rohatgi hold meeting over #ArunchalPradesh issue. ANI (@ANI_news) July 13, 2016
Flash: Supreme Court quashes order by Arunachal Governor, says restore status quo as of Dec 15, 2015 in Arunachal Pradesh
Discretionary powers of Governor: SC says all decisions taken by Arunachal Assembly after 9 December arr unsustainable. ANI (@ANI_news) July 13, 2016
SC quashed direction of Arunachal Guv pursuing to which Assembly was convened on 16th &17th: Vivek Tankha, Advocate pic.twitter.com/cnGTwI7Psx ANI (@ANI_news) July 13, 2016
Speaking to the media, CM Nabam Tuki called it a historic and remarkable verdict, said, "We have got justice from the Supreme Court. The top court has today saved this country and its Constitution," he said. He said this will help protect "healthy democracy" in the country.
"According to the judgment, our government has been restored. I'll go to the state and talk to all the 47 Congress MLAs. We will call a meeting," he added.
We have got justice from SC, Court has today saved this country & its Constitution: Former Arunachal CM Nabam Tuki pic.twitter.com/OFBvlvfMF5 ANI (@ANI_news) July 13, 2016
Speaking to CNN-News 18, Tuki called the BJP vindictive and vengeful and said that the party is dangerous to secular democracy.
Nabam Tuki to @CNNnews18 Bjp is vindictive,revengeful & creating lot of hatred,trying to divide party,it is dangerous to secular democracy Nitisha (@Nitisha_Kashyap) July 13, 2016
He said that the Centre made all efforts to detablise the Congress government in Arunachal Pradesh and on the directions of Modi. Tuki also said that he will meeting the Congress high command and all the MLAs in the party and expressed hope that the rebel MLAs will come back to the party fold.
Congress President Sonia Gandhi welcome the Supreme Court verdict and said those who trampled upon Constitutional and democratic norms have been defeated.
#BREAKING | Welcome Supreme Court's historic verdict reinstating democratically elected govt in Arunachal: Sonia Gandhi #SCRestoresCong News18 (@CNNnews18) July 13, 2016
#SCRestoresCong | Those who trampled upon constitutional propriety and democratic norms have been defeated: Sonia Gandhi News18 (@CNNnews18) July 13, 2016
#SCRestoresCong | Will continue to fight to strengthen democracy and safeguard federal structure of our country: Sonia Gandhi News18 (@CNNnews18) July 13, 2016
Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi reacted to the landmark judgment and said: "Thank you Supreme Court for explaining to the Prime Minister what democracy is."
Thank you Supreme Court for explaining to the Prime Minister what democracy is. #ArunachalPradesh Office of RG (@OfficeOfRG) July 13, 2016
Uttarakhand Chief Minister Harish Rawat said that the Apex Court's decision is a big boost to federalism as Presidential powers were misused in Uttarakhand and Arunachal Pradesh.
#EXCLUSIVE It's a big boost for cooperative federalism.Presidential powers were misused in U'khand & Arunachal: Harish Rawat #SCRestoresCong News18 (@CNNnews18) July 13, 2016
#EXCLUSIVE | Supreme Court has done a great job, it will boost the federal structure: Harish Rawat to CNN-News18 #SCRestoresCong News18 (@CNNnews18) July 13, 2016
Senior Congress leader Kapil Sibal hailed Supreme Court quashing the Governor's order and said that the top court deserved a salute for Wednesday's ruling.
SC has upheld constitutional values, it has upheld concept of constitutional integrity. I must salute SC: Kapil Sibal #ArunachalPradesh ANI (@ANI_news) July 13, 2016
Theres a constitutional authority,the SC, that is going to protect our values,this message should go out:Kapil Sibal pic.twitter.com/NjgSyqMrhR ANI (@ANI_news) July 13, 2016
That message will inform Govt that they shouldn't take steps of this nature and conspire to destabilise constitutionally elected govts:Sibal ANI (@ANI_news) July 13, 2016
Addressing the media on Wednesday, Sibal said, "This day will be remembered as a golden day in history. Judiciary is the only thing that can protect our Constitution. No Governer can order to prepone the Parliament session.Nabam Tuki will remain the Chief Minister of Arunachal Pradesh. We demand that the Governor should be sacked.He should go on a permanant leave. Everyone involved in the decision (to impose President's rule) should clarify and apologise. Never before in the history of this country the Supreme Court has restored status quo ante."
However, BJP denied the fact that it was a "setback" for the party. Speaking to media, BJP national secretary Srikant Sharma, said, "What happened in Arunachal Pradesh was due to internal conflicts. It's wrong to hold BJP responsible for the problems in the North Eastern state." The Centres counsel refused to comment but sources told Hindustan Times said the Union government will likely file a review petition in the top court.
No setback for BJP in #ArunachalPradesh, this crisis occurred due to internal conflicts within Congress: BJP ANI (@ANI_news) July 13, 2016
Discretionary powers of Governor: SC says all decisions taken by Arunachal Assembly after 9 December arr unsustainable. ANI (@ANI_news) July 13, 2016
SC quashed all notifications of 9th December issued by Arunachal Governor, restored status quo ante as on 15th Dec: Vivek Tankha, Advocate ANI (@ANI_news) July 13, 2016
From now on Guvs won't work as Central Govt's agents&will abide by Constitution-KC Mittal,AICC Legal Head #Arunachal pic.twitter.com/NewEdnqtDG ANI (@ANI_news) July 13, 2016
A historic & remarkable judgement which was expected by the people of country:Former #ArunachalPradesh CM Nabam Tuki pic.twitter.com/s41oiMMMaw ANI (@ANI_news) July 13, 2016
Will hold discussions with party MLAs & decide further course of action, we'll do whatever is required legally: Nabam Tuki #ArunachalPradesh ANI (@ANI_news) July 13, 2016
A welcome judgement by SC. We're pleased that our Govt has been reinstated: Ninong Ering, Cong #ArunachalPradesh pic.twitter.com/CCRxQ5Ctu8 ANI (@ANI_news) July 13, 2016
Our friends who've been misled or have some differences should come back&we should once again form Govt-Ninong Ering,Cong #ArunachalPradesh ANI (@ANI_news) July 13, 2016
Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal also reacted to the news and said: "Do baar SC se itna zabardast tamaacha laga hai Modi sarkar ko, pehle Uttarakhand mein aur ab Arunachal Pradesh mein."
Do baar SC se itna zabardast tamaacha laga hai Modi sarkar ko, pehle Uttarakhand mein aur ab #ArunachalPradesh mein: Arvind Kejriwal ANI (@ANI_news) July 13, 2016
Modi ji neither has faith in Constitution nor people's mandate. He wants to run this country with dictatorial attitude-A Kejriwal #Arunachal ANI (@ANI_news) July 13, 2016
Hope Modiji learns from this & respects Govts elected by ppl of nation. Hope he'll let Delhi Govt function: Kejriwal pic.twitter.com/kZIclA7cuP ANI (@ANI_news) July 13, 2016
Appealing to party leaders who 'defected to the other side' to return to Congress, Tuki in a series of tweets, said: "Supreme Court ruling has made it clear that Khaliko Pul was running an illegal, unconstitutional government and the defected party members should realise this."
Khaliko Pul was running an illegal, unconstitutional government that has been made clear by the Supreme Court ruling today. @INCIndia Nabam Tuki (@NabamtukiCM) July 13, 2016
I appeal to my old colleagues to come back to the party and work for the real development of #ArunachalPradesh.@INCIndia Nabam Tuki (@NabamtukiCM) July 13, 2016
As earlier mentioned in his tweet, Tuki arrived at 10 Janpath to meet Congress president Sonia Gandhi and all the Congress MLAs.
Delhi: Nabam Tuki arrives at 10 Janpath to meet Congress President Sonia Gandhi #ArunachalPradesh pic.twitter.com/MA9xuN9dzv ANI (@ANI_news) July 13, 2016
I'll go to the state and talk to all the Congress MLAs. We will call a meeting.@INCIndia @yuvadesh #ArunachalVerdict Nabam Tuki (@NabamtukiCM) July 13, 2016
The Supreme Court decision is a huge embarrassment for the BJP-led Union government as it is the second time in recent months that the party has faced a setback over imposing Presidents Rule. Before Arunachal Pradesh, it was Uttarakhand where the Narendra Modi-led central government ordered Presidents Rule, following which Congress rebels formed the government with support from the saffron party. But the Supreme Court restored the state assembly in Uttarakhand before 9 December when the new session was called which means the dismissal of the Congress government, Presidents Rule and the new administration were declared invalid.
Earlier this year, the Supreme Court clamped central rule in Uttarakhand after nine Congress MLAs rebelled against Chief Minister Harish Rawat, triggering a prolonged court battle. But the courts ruled in favour of the Congress and Rawat won a crucial floor vote.
In Arunachal Pradesh, the Congress, which has 47 MLAs in the 60-member Assembly, suffered a jolt when 21 of them rebelled. Eleven BJP MLAs backed the rebels in a bid to upstage the Nabam Tuki government. Later, 14 rebel Congress MLAs were disqualified.
In the dramatic developments that followed, the Governor advanced the state assembly session, in which opposition legislators, along with the rebels, "removed" Tuki and Speaker Nabam Rebia. The session was held in a community centre and a hotel as the assembly building had been locked on the Speaker's orders.
The Governor had justified his action saying he believed that a "biased" Speaker would act in support of Chief Minister Tuki even though he had lost his majority. The Governor then called Assembly session on 16 December in which Deputy Speaker revoked disqualification of 14 rebel Congress MLAs and removed Rebia from the post of Speaker.
Arunachal Pradesh on 26 January, 2016 came under central rule with President Pranab Mukherjee giving assent to the Union Cabinet's recommendation on such a course following political instability in the state.
With inputs from agencies
One of my neighbours, a nodding acquaintance really, is deeply troubled. Her mother went missing from their village home when she was around eight, her father never bothered to look for her mother but went and got married instead, she was packed off to an uncle who brought her up. My neighbour, now a grandmother, is suddenly determined to find her long-lost mother.
She went to the police who did what they do best, turn a deaf ear. A few days ago she came to me to launch a press campaign. When I pleaded helplessness she brought out her brahmasatra: Then I will go to Didi. Mamata Banerjee will not turn me away.
She could well be right. Just the other day, a young girl who was being forced into marriage by her parents somehow found her way to the chief ministers doorstep. Her wedding plans were cancelled. Mamata Banerjees caring, responsive image was duly burnished and got full publicity from a now-pliant press.
This is the best of times, this is the worst of times for the residents of West Bengal. Things move, problems are solved, at times the impossible is achieved, police take action, citizens get relief but only if you get the chief minister's attention. Otherwise, your fate may well be that of Santosh Kumar Lodh, lying bedridden and almost comatose in a crumbling house.
Lodh had plans to repair his Salt Lake home last winter. Salt Lake has its own municipality but is, for all practical purposes, a part of Kolkata. Work finally began in the Lodh house in March only to be halted within days by the henchmen of local councillor Anindya Chattopadhyay. Then came the demand from the councillor himself: pay Rs 12 lakh if you want work on your house to continue which according to his daughter led to Santosh Lodhs stroke, paralysing him and robbing him of his speech.
Lodh had tried the usual course of invoking help from influential connections including Trinamool MP Sudip Bandopadhyay, getting his powerful allies to write letters on his behalf and, of course, complaining to the police. Nothing happened. His house still awaits the necessary repairs.
After all, Anindya Chattopadhyay was a councillor of the ruling Trinamool Congress. Not just any councillor too. He had earned his fifteen minutes of fame in the 2015 Salt Lake municipal elections when he beat up an elderly voter practically in front of television cameras and still went on to win the elections.
Anindya Chattopadhyays patron saint in the party is (most likely 'was') Sabyasachi Datta who earned his own fifteen minutes of fame before the recent Assembly elections when a sting operation found him saying, on camera, how Calcuttas infamous builders syndicates were his source of strength and how one risked the partys very existence if they tried to put an end to the notorious syndicate raj.
But sometimes the wheels of justice do grind. Anindya Chattopadhyay, for whom no one was too small or too big to extort, demanded Rs 15 lakh from another Salt Lake resident who also wanted to get his house repaired. Unfortunately for Chattopadhyay, the owner of this house happened to be a close friend of Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. Not that that helped, well atleast till some young men went berserk before Eid in Dhaka.
When West Bengals chief minister called up the Prime Minister of Bangladesh to express her sympathies for the tragedy at the Holey Artisan Cafe she learnt some home truths instead. Sheikh Hasina told her about the troubles her friend Arunabha Mukherjee was facing at the hands of Anindya Chattopadhyay.
Mamata Banerjee swung into action only to be stymied by a legal loophole. Sheikh Hasinas friend, who had written letters of complaint to the chief ministers office and other such relevant places, had never lodged a formal police complaint. But if the chief minister wishes, the police can deliver.
They dug up Santosh Lodhs complaint that had been gathering dust for the last four months, marched up to Anindya Chattopadhyays home on Tuesday morning and promptly arrested him on at least six counts, ranging from extortion to murderous threats and conspiracy. Santosh Lodhs daughter cannot make out if her father has been able to comprehend the turn of events.
Party loyalists are on an overdrive to spread the message that this is Mamata Banerjee mark-II, a re-elected (with a thumping majority), rejuvenated, new and improved chief minister who will not let any unfairness, any injustice pass unhindered. I will not tolerate such things, she has reportedly told her party. By letting a party councillor be arrested she has, conveyed to one and all that no one however high or low will be allowed to get away with any wrongdoing.
Of course, only if she gets to hear about it in the first place. But how many of us will be able to reach her ears is the big question. There is no system to fall back upon. Other elected representatives, the administration, the police, no one, nothing moves unless she says so. Even at the panchayat level, fearing a repetition of the CPI(M)s rule of terror and corruption, the chief minister has bypassed elected leaders, preferring to operate through appointed officers.
In practical terms this means constant visits by her and her team of bureaucrats to each and every district where she listens to peoples woes and orders the administration to do what needs to be done. The result: no one, not even the block development officer, moves a finger unless ordered to do so by the chief minister herself. This is how it works all the way up to Nabanna, the state secretariat, itself.
The chief minister is said to have admitted that she has to deal with several letters every day, complaining about the highhandedness and illegal activities of lower-level party functionaries, especially municipality councillors.
Mamata Banerjee would like us to believe that she herself is quite unaware of the perils of the system she has put in place so assiduously and with such determination. According to a report in Bengals largest circulating newspaper, the Anandabazar Patrika, the chief minister has expressed perplexity at how such corrupt councillors and legislators get elected time after time (a la Anindya Chattopadhyay). Does the chief minister really have no clue that people didnt elect Anindya Chattopadhyay, they elected Mamata Banerjee in every elected position in the state. She even asked people to vote for her in all 294 Assembly seats, irrespective of whoever was the candidate. She knows all this too well and acts accordingly she is the state.
Kolkata: Indian Police Service (IPS) officer S.M.H. Meerza, summoned for questioning in connection with the Narada sting probe, appeared at the city police headquarters here on Wednesday.
The sting, conducted by Narada News accused several high profile leaders of West Bengal's ruling Trinamool Congress and also Meerza, a former superintendent of police of Burdwan, of taking bribe.
Chief Minister and Trinamool supremo Mamata Banerjee, had in June ordered a probe headed by city police commissioner to find if there was a "conspiracy" behind the sting.
The city police has also summoned Narada News editor-in-chief Mathew Samuel, who had conducted the sting.The journalist who has been booked for several offences, including defamation and forgery, is yet to appear for questioning and has twice written to the police seeking withdrawal of the summons, as he contended the matter was pending before the Calcutta High Court.
Multiple litigations seeking an independent probe into the sting are pending before the court which has ordered a forensic test of the footage and devices used for the sting.
The BJP government's newly inducted Minister of Social Justice for State, Ramdas Athawale has raked up controversy by reiterating his demand to allow Dalits to possess firearms for self-protection, according to the Hindustan Times.
Athawale on Tuesday said that inter-caste marriages and love affairs were to be blamed for the growing atrocities on Dalits. He said that the upper caste detest inter-caste marriages, which is the reason for the surge in Dalit atrocities. As the Minister of State for Social Justice, he said that his office should look into the matter, but said that the matter should ideally fall under the purview of Home Ministry. The minister, however, added that the firearms should be for self-protection only.
To drive home the point, Athawale took the example of the Sikh community, who in India are allowed to keep a Kripan, a kind of knife, for religious reasons. According to Athawale, "people are afraid to pick up a fight with them (Sikhs)" for this reason, he according to the Hindustan Times report.
Athawale, a prominent Dalit leader, who switched allegiance to BJP after breaking off from Congress and then NCP, has in the past too put forth a demand for such a rule. Earlier in January this year, the backdrop for the demand was the suicide of Dalit scholar Rohith Vemula, while this time he proposed the idea citing atrocities on Dalits, according to a DNA report.
However, when the BJP government was mired in controversy over Vemula's suicide, Athawale had distanced himself from the party's political line stating his alliance was purely political and he did not agree with the BJP on a ideological level, added the report.
Athawale has made headlines with his other populist demands. Soon after taking up office, Athawale had advocated for reservations for Marathas, Jats and Brahmins as well, without harming the present quota, as reported in The Hindu. He also batted for the longstanding demand for reservation for Dalits in the private sector.
Athawale has also sought for a legislation from the Maharashtra government, to ensure that funds allotted for the benefits of Dalits are not diverted to other projects, according to a report in India Today.
The Rajya Sabha MP gained prominence in the news once again when he was inducted as a Minister of State in the Modi government's Cabinet reshuffle. The latest ministerial berth, it is being said, is awarded to him to target the Dalit votes in the upcoming UP Assembly elections.
One can easily recycle all the headlines and phrases that were used for the BJP after the Uttarakhand verdict while talking about the Supreme Court decision to restore the Congress government in Arunachal Pradesh.
Slap on the BJP's face. Tick.
Major embarrassment for Shah-Modi. Tick.
Greed, impatience leads to political faux pas. Tick.
Victory of democracy. Tick.
With the benefit of hindsight, it can be argued that had the Arunachal Pradesh decision come earlier, the BJP may have perhaps not even attempted its misadventure in Uttarakhand, where its script was inspired by its earlier bloodless coup in the North east.
But, the BJP's bad political karma has deservedly got double damnation from the court. Let us hope, now that the Supreme Court has reminded it yet again, the BJP will bear in mind the consequences of constitutional impropriety and won't attempt to usurp power through intrigues and subterfuge again.
When a crime is committed, investigators often ask cui bono, a Latin phrase that seeks to explain who could benefit from the act? The Arunachal verdict is a perfect opportunity for the BJP to introspect on what it aimed to achieve through its backdoor entry into the state assembly.
Did it seek to gain in the Rajya Sabha by forming the government with help from Congress rebels? Did it hope to occupy the high moral ground by encouraging defections and political instability? Did it aim to shower greater moral and ethical legitimacy on the Governor House by using it as a party office?
It is evident that power by any means, at any cost was the defining virtue behind the BJP's hasty imposition of Governor's rule in the state on flimsy grounds including the hilarious argument that cows were under threat and then using the opportunity to install a puppet government. But, its avarice is irrational.
The people of India have given the party, to use a popular Hindi expression, chhapad phad ke. It has a mammoth majority in Parliament and several state assemblies. Its primary aim should be to live up to the expectations, fulfil the promises it has made to the electorate. If it succeeds in delivering the promised and expected results, other states will automatically fall in its basket after the due democratic process. What's the hurry? Cui bono?
Flush in the moral high of victory, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had promised co-operative federalism in the country, he had suggested the Centre would rise about political schisms to give every state a level-playing field in the country. But, the promise now sounds become more and more like a typical BJP jumla because of the Centre's repeated attempts to destabilise governments run by rival parties Arunachal, Uttarakhand and Delhi being prime examples. The SC verdict is a reminder that Modi go back to the spirit of bon homie he had advocated after his May 2014 win.
Recent events in Kashmir have shown that consequences of squeezing the democratic space in sensitive states could be disastrous. Though Arunachal is relatively calm, we should not forget the history of dispute with China over the border state. Beijing has never accepted India's territorial claims over Arunachal, arguing that it has valid claims over the region. The pursuit of petty politics in such sensitive regions and the resultant instability could harm Indian interests in the region.
Thank you Supreme Court for explaining to the Prime Minister what democracy is, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi tweeted after the SC verdict. Though the Congress is justified in exulting after the verdict, it shouldn't forget that the party's initial failures contributed to the drama in Arunachal.
When revolt within the party was brewing, Rahul Gandhi ignored the dissent for a long time, not even finding time to address the grievances of the rebels. The Congress VP took notice of the fire in his backyard only after the rebels joined hands with the BJP and demolished the Congress government. In the end, the root cause of the Arunachal fiasco was the Congress leadership's inability to accommodate the conflicting aspirations of its legislators.
Rahul should remember that the SC will not come to his rescue every time he fails to keep his flock together. Just as the verdict has taught Modi a lesson in democracy, it has pointed at the lacunae in Rahul's leadership.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE ARUNACHAL SAGA:
Guwahati: Union Minister Kiren Rijiju on Wednesday said the Centre had acted only on the suggestion of state Governor Jyoti Prasad Rajkhowa in the Arunachal Pradesh affair and the Supreme Court verdict was not against it.
"It is not our case. It will be total misjudgment if somebody says that it is a judgement against the central government. The central government acted on the basis of the report of the Governor," Rijiju said on the sidelines of the North-East Democratic Alliance's conclave.
"Whatever is the political issue, it is within the Congress party and it is in the state Legislative Assembly. We are not part of the whole problem," he said. The Minister asserted that the Supreme Court verdict was not against the Centre.
Rijiju said the central government would respect and honour the apex court verdict on Arunachal Pradesh. "It's a Supreme Court judgement. When the matter is in the court, we have to respect it. There is no reason to defy or to criticise the ruling of the honourable Supreme Court... The judgement of the honourable court is always binding and final ... We are law-abiding citizen of the country and we will honour the Supreme Court judgement," he said.
Rijiju says the majority of any government has to be proved on the floor of the House and it will decide the fate of the state government.
"Regarding the issue of the strength of the Assembly, these are the internal matters of the Congress party and the strength has to be proved on the floor of the House. There is no point for anybody to speak about strength outside the Assembly. The floor of the Assembly is the proper platform to test the strength of any political group or party," he said.
Delivering a major blow to the BJP government at the Centre, the Supreme Court on Wednesday restored Congress government in Arunachal Pradesh after quashing the Presidents Rule. Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday thanked the Supreme Court for "explaining to the Prime Minister what democracy is".
Gandhi issued the statement after the apex court restored the ousted Congress government in Arunachal Pradesh.
Thank you Supreme Court for explaining to the Prime Minister what democracy is. #ArunachalPradesh Office of RG (@OfficeOfRG) July 13, 2016
The Supreme Court's verdict, which came on Wednesday morning, will mean Governor Jyoti Prasad Rajkhowa's December 2015 decision to advance the state assembly session by one month has been quashed. This will come as a major boost for Nabam Tuli, who has been restored as chief minister.
In a unanimous judgment, a constitutional bench headed by Justice JS Khehar directed the restoration of the status quo as it existed on 15 December, 2015. The court also directed the manner in which the assembly proceedings had to be conducted and set aside all the steps and decisions the house had taken, describing them as unsustainable.
Justices Dipak Misra and Madan B Lokur pronounced concurring judgments, also citing additional reasons to agree with Khehar.
Chief minister Tuki was greatly relieved by the apex court's decision and said justice has been done. "We have got justice from the Supreme Court. The top court has saved this country and its Constitution. The Supreme Court has given a historic verdict," he said.
Tuki added that this would help ensure democracy remains healthy in India. "This is a historic and remarkable judgment. According to the judgment, our government has been restored. I'll go to the state and talk to all the 47 Congress MLAs. We will call a meeting," he said.
However, the BJP denied that it was a "setback" for the party. Speaking to the media, BJP national secretary Srikant Sharma said, "What happened in Arunachal Pradesh was due to internal conflicts. It's wrong to hold BJP responsible for the problems in the Northeastern state."
With inputs from agencies
New Delhi: Ahead of the Monsoon session of Parliament, Congress on Wednesday said there is no change in its stand on the three principal demands on the Goods and Services Tax (GST) bill and it is still awaiting the government's offer on the issue.
"Till the time the government doesn't share with us its offer on the issue, we will not comment. There is status quo on GST bill. There is no change in our stand," party spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi said amid reports of a thaw between Congress and the BJP on the issue.
Ghulam Nabi Azad, Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha where the Constitution Amendment Bill is pending, said though a proposal from the government has come to resolve the pending issues, Congress is yet to decide on it.
"Government has given a proposal for resolving pending issues. We will decide. There is still time for the Parliament session. We will put forth our views and hold discussions with government sitting across the table," he said.
Singhvi was more categorical in stating that Congress is firm on its three demands, two of which had been backed by the government-appointed panel on the tax reform legislation which seeks to bring in uniform tax regime across the country.
"Congress is never dogmatic or unreasonable. It has never practised rigidity on this issue. The government hasn't proposed anything. Till the government spells out its proposal our stand is as it is," he said
Azad and Anand Sharma, the Deputy Leader of Congress in the Rajya Sabha, met party president Sonia Gandhi earlier in the day to discuss the issue. However, Singhvi said the meeting was not limited to a particular issue.
Congress has been demanding a cap of 18 percent as part of the Constitutional Amendment bill to which the government is not agreeing. Insiders say, this very demand has become a sticking point between Congress and the government.
The government plans to push the Constitution Amendment bill in the Rajya Sabha for roll-out of GST in the Monsoon session beginning 18 July. The bill was approved by the Lok Sabha earlier
Since the Congress party's decision to appoint Raj Babbar as chief of its Uttar Pradesh has a filmy connection, let me start by quoting an unforgettable Bollywood dialogue.
"Chinoy seth," says Raj Kumar in Waqt, "Jinke apne ghar sheeshe ke ho, woh doosron par paththar nahin fenka karte." (Those who live in glass houses do not throw stones at others).
Raj Kumar's famous advice to Rahman in that is an apt reminder of the moral outrage of hypocrites, the kind we saw after the Congress and BJP reconstituted their Uttar Pradesh team.
Reacting to Imran Masood's appointment as Congress state unit vice-president, the BJP worked up a tsunami of farcical indignation, saying how could a man accused of hate speech be given an 'important position.
"So Congress rewards the "Boti-Boti" man of Uttar Pradesh, Imran Masood, with the post of UPPC vice-president! Reflects the mind set of Congress," BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra lamented. Around the time Patra was airing his disgust with the Congress for promoting a hate-monger, the BJP was busy giving final touches to its own UP team and reflecting its own mindset.
One of its prominent members: Suresh Rana, the legislator accused of inciting riots in Muzzafarnagar.
Rana, as The Times of India pointed out, is an MLA from Thana Bhawan in Shamli. He had been booked under the NSA for allegedly inciting a mob during the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots. He, along with the other party MLA Sangeet Som, had to spend some time in jail before the NSA was removed. Better credentials than Masood's?
Let me clarify here that I am no fan of Masood's and in no way endorse the Congress decision. Any political party that promotes hate-mongers, bigots, rioters and criminals to positions of importance is guilty of propagating a malign culture in democracy. And the Congress has been one of the principal backers of people with a criminal past in politics right from its support to leaders accused of the Delhi riots in 1984 to its record of fielding and shielding tainted candidates.
Masood is known as a muscleman with huge political and social influence in western Uttar Pradesh. During the Lok Sabha election campaign, he had warned that BJP's PM candidate Narendra Modi would be cut to pieces. Since Rahul Gandhi claims to practice politics of ethics, he should have avoided naming Masood as an important office-bearer. If he really implies what he says, the Congress vice-president should immediately revoke the dubious decision.
But, the BJP's hypocrisy is even more astounding. It is laughable to point fingers at a man accused of hate-speech while using the other hand to pat the back of legislator who has served jail time for inciting communal riots. If Masood's appointment endorses hate, Rana's is a recruitment advert for those accused of bigotry.
Incidentally, Masood's "boti-boti" threat had elicited a hasty response from Rajasthan chief minister Vasundhara Raje, who had retorted by saying, "Wait till polls to see who is chopped to pieces." ( Raje had later claimed the remark was quoted out of context).
The BJP's record on hate-speech is extremely dodgy. It is party that has made silence a virtue while listening to Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti (Raamzaade vs Haramzaade), Sakshi Maharaj (Nathuram Godse was a patriot), Yogi Adityanath, Sadhvi Prachi and Sangeet Som mouth their vitriolic spiel. Some of them are ministers in the Modi government.
A case of casting stone at others while building an entire city of glass, Raj Kumar would have said. Pity there was no BJP in his Waqt.
Unconnected with the arc lights around Raj Babbars sudden elevation as president of UP Congress on Tuesday, here are three different news headlines which may, if read together, give you a glimpse of the dream political jackpot the Congress is trying to hit upon in poll-bound Uttar Pradesh:
Get Varun Gandhi back in Congress, says UP leader The Asian Age, 16 June, 2016 Future uncertain: Which way will Varun swing after the Shah snub The Quint.com, 21 June, 2016 What the signs foretell: Congress is reaching out to Varun Gandhi News18.com, 4 July, 2016
The Asian Age story is based on a statement by Umesh Pandit, general secretary of the UP Pradesh Congress, who didnt mince words to demand that Sanjay Gandhis son, Varun, be brought back into the party fold before the forthcoming state Assembly elections. Pandit is perhaps the first prominent Congress leader to give voice to what many in the partys rank and file want, especially in view of the fact that Priyanka and Varun gel very well. According to sources close to the Gandhi family, the cousins trust each other.
The Quint article discusses Varuns predicament in the wake of Amit Shahs stern warning that the MP from Sultanpur better kept his political activities limited to the confines of the parliamentary constituency. Remember, during the BJP national executive meet last month, Allahabad had witnessed a mushrooming growth of posters and banners pleading for declaration of the Nehru-Gandhi scion as the partys chief ministerial candidate. After Shahs snub, Varun retaliated by boycotting the dinner hosted by the BJP president. As things stand now, Shah and Varun are locked in an edgy relationship that may snap with a thud anytime.
The News18.com story is, in fact, an extension of the line of thinking projected in the first two stories. It talks about two more pointers: First, on 23 June, a tweet from the Congress Partys official handle @incindia paid a tribute to Sanjay Gandhi on his death anniversary. Second, Sonia Gandhi made it a point to visit Sanjays Samadhi for the first time in years. And on their part, the young cousins Rahul, Priyanka and Varun exchanged SMS messages. All this was considered surprising in the backdrop of the historical bitterness between the two Gandhi families who now find themselves placed in the opposite sides of the political spectrum.
But all these signals emanating from the AICC headquarters and the Gandhi household apart, its a fact that Varun Gandhi is feeling stifled under the new regime in the BJP. He knows that the Gandhi surname is no longer an asset in the saffron camp. It is, in fact, a liability in the face of the BJP presidents antipathy towards anything connected with the Gandhis. Gone are the Atal Bihari Vajpayee days when the graceful, dignified family feelings and gestures were understood in the correct perspective. Its significant that Varun has made it clear to the party leadership on more than one occasion that he would desist from attacking Sonia, Priyanka or Rahul publicly.
Barring just one occasion during the run-up to the 2014 election when Priyanka had made the much publicised gone astray remark against Varun, the two cousins have shared common family feeling, warmth. And now thanks to his writings and public statements, Varun is no longer seen as a Hindu zealot. In fact, he is considered to have gravitated back towards 'left of Centre' ideology.
No doubt, Varun Gandhi nurses a feeling that he has been used ruthlessly all these years. And now that his usefulness in the saffron cause is over, he wouldnt be given any further leeway in overall BJP affairs, by the powers that be, in the new scheme of things. The party president, according to insiders, considers him as an unmanageable person. It is no wonder then that the party leadership took strong objection to the pro-Varun show of strength during the national executive meet at Allahabad.
The BJP, which faces 'facelessness' in battleground UP despite the towering presence of Narendra Modi at the central level, has yet to declare its chief ministerial candidate. Chances are that Varun will never figure in the list of probables regardless of the fact that all surveys conducted by different media houses have been projecting Sanjay Gandhis son as the most popular face for chief ministership within the BJP.
The survey conducted by ETV showed that Varun was well in front with 51 percent ratings compared to Rajnath Singhs 28 percent, Yogi Adityanaths 8 percent and Smriti Iranis just 1 percent. Another opinion poll conducted by Assume Research for India Today group reiterated the same trend with Varun scoring 45 percent votes as against 34 percent by Rajnath Singh, 5 percent by Yogi Adityanath and again 1 percent by Smriti Irani. Yet another poll by Amar Ujjala presented more or less the same picture.
Now you know why Varun is feeling subdued. Its not in his nature to take things lying down for long. But we shall have to wait and watch. You never know, the Gandhi family might reunite faster than expected. Politically.
WASHINGTON U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter and senior officials from other countries in the coalition battling Islamic State will meet near Washington, D.C., on July 20 to discuss the ongoing military campaign, the Pentagon said on Tuesday.
Thirty-four nations plus NATO have been invited to participate in the second such meeting of defense ministers from countries contributing forces or bases to the coalition, it said in a statement.
The Pentagon said the meeting at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland was coming at a significant moment in the fight against the militants, following a visit by Carter to Baghdad, where he announced an increase in support to help accelerate the campaign.
(Reporting by David Alexander; Editing by Eric Walsh)
This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
Warsaw: The Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum says it does not allow people to play Pokemon Go on their smartphones during visits to the former German death camp because it is "disrespectful."
Museum spokesman Pawel Sawicki told The Associated Press on Wednesday that its authorities are asking game producers to exclude the site of the former Nazi German death camp from games.
He said allowing such games to be active on the authentic grounds of the former death camp is "disrespectful to the memory of the victims of the German Nazi concentration and extermination camp on many levels and it is absolutely inappropriate."
The museum is a site of commemoration for the estimated 1.1 million people killed in Auschwitz-Birkenau and to the survivors who suffered as camp inmates. Most of the victims were European Jews who perished in the gas chambers, but there were also Poles, Roma, Soviet prisoners of war and others.
Pokemon Go is a hugely popular new reality game that uses GPS and allows players to search locations in the real world to find virtual little creatures.
Earlier in the day the Auschwitz memorial wrote on Twitter: "Do not allow playing #PokemonGO on the site of our Memorial and similar places. It's disrespectful on many levels."
Dhaka: Schools in Bangladesh bearing the name "Peace" came under government scanner on Wednesday following the ban on Mumbai-based controversial Islamic preacher Zakir Naik's Peace TV.
The schools in the country were allegedly being operated in line with Naik's ideology by adding "Peace" to their names, bdnews24 reported.
The government banned Peace TV after allegations that at least two of the assailants in the 1 July terror attack in a cafe in the upscale Gulshan locality were inspired by Naik's speeches.
"Peace TV is not consistent with Muslim society, the Quran, Sunnah, Hadith, Bangladesh's Constitution, our culture, customs and rituals," Information Minister Hasanul Haq Inu said.
Naik, who is a qualified doctor who left his profession and founded the Islamic Research Foundation, which runs the Islamic International School and an NGO United Islamic Aid.
The Bangladesh government does not have any specific information on how many schools were being operated with the word "Peace" in their name, bdnews24 reported.
The Dhaka education board said it only approved temporarily an English-medium school at Lalmatia to operate under the name Peace School. The others do not have any such permission.
"First the authorities establish an educational institution. They apply for government approval after reaching a certain stage. The government then inspects the institution and takes a decision on whether to give it permission to continue operating," the official said.
None of these "Peace Schools" in Dhaka had applied for permission to the ministry or the board, an Education Ministry official said.
Intelligence agencies were asked to inquire into the 20 "Peace Schools" so far detected by the government.
"If these schools actually follow Zakir Naik's ideas, they will face action," the officials said.
Washington: Bernie Sanders' decision to support Hillary Clinton contradicts his stand on issues like H1B visas for highly-skilled workers, and is an example of America's rigged system, one of Donald Trump's senior policy advisers said on Wednesday.
"The candidate who wants to reform H1-B visas is endorsing the candidate who supported lifting the caps on H1-B visas," Stephen Miller, Senior Policy Advisor of the Trump Campaign said in a statement after Sanders endorsed Clinton as the presidential candidate of the Democratic Party.
"Bernie's endorsement becomes Exhibit A in our rigged system - the Democrat Party is disenfranchising its voters to benefit the select and privileged few," Miller said.
"The candidate who wants less war is endorsing the candidate who launched wars in Iraq and Libya and would lead us to a new war in Syria. The candidate who wants to get money out of politics is voting for the candidate who has made a career out of making money from politics," he said in a statement.
A day earlier in an interview to Vox, Clinton said she expressed concern over IT workers being displaced and being asked to train people.
"The many stories of people training their replacements from some foreign country are heartbreaking," she told Vox.
"I want to see companies have to do more to employ already qualified Americans," she said
LONDON Former London mayor Boris Johnson was appointed as British foreign minister in a surprise appointment by the country's new Prime Minister Theresa May on Wednesday.
Johnson was a leading figure in the victorious "Leave" campaign in Britain's European Union membership referendum last month and had been considered the front-runner to become prime minister himself before being sidelined by moves against him within the ruling Conservative Party.
Johnson's role in Britain's negotiations over its future relationship with the EU is likely to be limited because May is expected to create a new ministerial post focused exclusively on Brexit issues.
Nevertheless, as foreign minister, Johnson, who has never previously held a cabinet post, will have to address questions about the country's role in the world after its exit from the EU and he will inherit Britain's often difficult relationship with Russia.
His predecessor in the job was Philip Hammond, who was named finance minister on Wednesday. During his time as foreign minister, Hammond dealt with the Ukraine crisis, Syria's civil war and negotiations that led last year to a six-power agreement with Iran to scale back its nuclear programme.
(Writing by William Schomberg; editing by Stephen Addison and Michael Holden)
This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
Britain: As a new Conservative Prime Minister prepared to take over on Wednesday, Britain's opposition Labour Party was facing an existential crisis, riven by toxic splits over the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn.
At least two Labour MPs will challenge Corbyn in a contest that formally gets under way this week, after Owen Smith joined Angela Eagle in announcing a bid, with the winner expected to be named in September.
Corbyn has been battling to keep his job since Britain's shock vote on 23 June to leave the European Union, holding on despite a vote of no confidence backed by three-quarters of the party's members of parliament.
Efforts to keep him off the leadership ballot paper by forcing him to secure a minimum 51 nominations from Labour MPs and members of the European Parliament a 20 percent support prerequisite for his challengers failed late Tuesday.
He will now be able to campaign over the heads of MPs to trade union backers and grassroots party members who helped propel him to victory just last September and whose numbers have swelled in recent months.
"Whoever wins the leadership contest is almost certainly going to divide the party further," said Brian Klaas, a fellow in comparative politics at the London School of Economics.
"The party faces an existential crisis because one major force in the party the party members cannot reconcile with another major force Labour MPs in parliament," he told AFP.
Some commentators believe a lasting split in the party may now be inevitable.
"Uncivil war could split Labour for ever," headlined the left-wing Daily Mirror tabloid.
"The poison in Labour's veins is so deep, so toxic, that nobody can see a way of this ending harmoniously," it said.
In a sign of the tensions, a brick was thrown through Eagle's constituency office on Tuesday, causing her to demand Corbyn "get control of the people who are supporting him".
"There is hatred now on both sides," wrote Jonathan Freedland in The Guardian newspaper.
Breaking the party apart
Corbyn has been under intense pressure since the referendum amid criticism that he did not do enough to persuade working-class voters to stay in the EU.
But many moderate MPs in the party, which shifted to the centre under former premier Tony Blair, had never reconciled to anti-war campaigner Corbyn's election as leader.
Eagle, a 55-year-old former trade union official, fired the starting gun for the leadership race on Monday when she formally announced her candidacy.
Smith, a 46-year-old member of Corbyn's shadow cabinet, announced on Wednesday that he would join her. The party is due to publish a formal timetable on Thursday.
"If Corbyn wins, he will face the prospect of being a lame duck opposition leader -- a man who is unlikely to be effective given that he has few friends or allies in Westminster," Klaas said.
"That will risk breaking the party apart. But if Corbyn loses, the powerful unions and young activists that form his political base could choose to leave the party."
Wrestling on the Titanic
In his final appearance in the House of Commons, before he hands over to incoming Prime Minister Theresa May, David Cameron drew a contrast between his Conservative Party's orderly transition and Labour's warring.
"We got on with it: we've had resignation, nomination, competition and coronation they haven't even decided what the rules are yet," said Cameron, who stepped down after losing the EU vote.
Facing him over the despatch box for the last time, Corbyn replied with a smile: "Democracy is an exciting and splendid thing and I'm enjoying every moment of it."
But in The Guardian, Freeland warned that the in-fighting risked blinding Labour to its "greatest, gravest problem" its failure to engage millions of working-class voters who defied the party to vote for Brexit last month.
"They could leave Labour forever," he said.
He added: "Next to no one is speaking about that existential threat at all. Instead, Corbyn and Eagle are wrestling on the bridge of the Titanic, fighting for control of the wheel."
LONDON Theresa May became Britain's prime minister on Wednesday with the task of leading it out of the European Union, and quickly named leading 'Brexit' supporters including former London mayor Boris Johnson to key positions in her new government.
The former Conservative interior minister, 59, said after being appointed by Queen Elizabeth that she would champion social justice and carve out a bright new future for Britain after last month's shock referendum vote to quit the EU.
"We will rise to the challenge. As we leave the European Union we will forge a bold new positive role for ourselves in the world, and we will make Britain a country that works not for a privileged few, but for every one of us," she said outside 10 Downing Street, vacated hours earlier by David Cameron.
Cameron stepped down after Britons rejected his entreaties to stay in the EU, a decision that has set back European efforts to forge greater unity and created huge uncertainty in Britain and across the 28-nation bloc.
May faced immediate pressure from EU leaders to serve formal notice of Britain's withdrawal and set the clock ticking on a two-year countdown to its final departure.
In phone calls with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande, May said she needed time.
"On all the phone calls, the prime minister emphasised her commitment to delivering the will of the British people to leave the European Union," a spokeswoman for May said.
"The prime minister explained that we would need some time to prepare for these negotiations and spoke of her hope that these could be conducted in a constructive and positive spirit."
Just over an hour after entering her new office, she started naming ministers, appointing the steady and experienced foreign minister Philip Hammond to take charge of the finance ministry. He replaces George Osborne, whose determination to balance Britain's books made him synonymous with austerity.
In a major surprise, May named Johnson, a leading eurosceptic who had until recently been seen as her main rival for the prime minister's job, to take over as foreign secretary.
Other prominent 'Leave' campaigners were also rewarded. One, David Davis, took the key role of Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union. Another, Liam Fox, was named to head a new international trade department.
May herself had sided with Cameron in trying to keep Britain inside the EU, so needed to reach out to the winning Leave side in order to heal divisions in the ruling party and show her commitment to respecting the popular vote. "Brexit means Brexit" has quickly become her new mantra.
By awarding such a senior job to Johnson, she also showed a conciliatory side. The two had clashed over policing in London while Johnson was serving as mayor. And since last month's vote, for which he campaigned vigorously, Johnson had suffered widespread criticism and ridicule for failing to present a clear Brexit plan and swiftly dropping out of the leadership race.
With his unkempt blonde hair, bumbling humour and penchant for Latin quotations, the man known to Britons simply as 'Boris' will be the government's most colourful figure, but a controversial choice for conducting sensitive diplomacy with world leaders.
Asked by a reporter whether he would apologise to U.S. President Barack Obama for controversially saying the "part-Kenyan" president was biased against Britain because of "an ancestral dislike of the British empire", Johnson said: "The United States of America will be in the front of the queue."
The quip was a reference to a comment by Obama during Britain's EU referendum campaign that the country would be at the back of the queue for trade deals if it voted to leave the bloc.
Among other appointments, rising star Amber Rudd switched from the energy ministry to take May's old job as Home Secretary.
'BURNING INJUSTICE'
May is Queen Elizabeth's 13th prime minister in a line that started with Winston Churchill. An official photograph showed her curtseying to the smiling monarch.
She is also Britain's second female head of government after Margaret Thatcher.
Seen as a tough, competent and intensely private person, already being compared to Germany's Angela Merkel, she must now try to limit the damage to British trade and investment as she renegotiates the country's ties with its 27 EU partners. She will also attempt to unite a fractured nation in which many, on the evidence of the referendum, feel angry with the political elite and left behind by the forces of globalisation.
In comments addressed to ordinary Britons, she spoke of the 'burning injustice' suffered by large sections of society: poor people facing shorter life expectancy; blacks treated more harshly by the criminal justice system; women earning less than men; the mentally ill; and young people struggling to buy homes.
Acknowledging the struggles faced by many, May declared: "The government I lead will be driven not by the interests of the privileged few, but by yours. We will do everything we can to give you more control over your lives."
She spoke of the "precious bond" between the nations of the United Kingdom, implicit recognition of the tensions generated by the referendum in which England and Wales chose to quit the EU, but Scotland and Northern Ireland voted to stay, raising the possibility of a new Scottish vote on independence.
Outside Downing Street, a group of demonstrators chanted: 'What do we want? Brexit! When do we want it? Now!'
The United States congratulated May and said it was confident in her ability to steer Britain through the Brexit negotiations.
"Based on the public comments we've seen from the incoming prime minister, she intends to pursue a course that's consistent with the prescription that President Obama has offered," White House spokesman Josh Earnest said.
May's predecessor Cameron, appearing earlier in Downing Street with his wife Samantha and their three children, delivered his parting remarks to the nation after six years dominated by the Europe question and the aftermath of the global financial crisis.
"It's not been an easy journey and of course we've not got every decision right," he said, "but I do believe that today our country is much stronger."
In his last parliamentary session as leader, Cameron took the opportunity to trumpet his government's achievements in generating one of the fastest growth rates among western economies, chopping the budget deficit, creating 2.5 million jobs and legalising gay marriage.
Yet his legacy will be overshadowed by his failed referendum gamble, which he had hoped would keep Britain at the heart of a reformed EU.
(Additional reporting by Kate Holton, Estelle Shirbon, William Schomberg, Karin Strohecker, Michael Holden, Paul Sandle, Andy Bruce, Steve Addison and Ana Nicolaci da Costa; Editing by Mark Trevelyan, Philippa Fletcher, James Dalgleish and Guy Faulconbridge)
This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
Beijing: China warned its rivals Wednesday against turning the South China Sea into a "cradle of war" and threatened an air defence zone there, after its claims to the strategically vital waters were declared invalid.
The surprisingly strong and sweeping ruling by a UN-backed tribunal in The Hague provided powerful diplomatic ammunition to the Philippines, which filed the challenge, and other claimants in their decades-long disputes with China over the resource-rich waters.
China reacted furiously to Tuesday's decision, insisting on its historical rights over the sea while launching a volley of thinly veiled warnings to the United States and other critical nations.
"Do not turn the South China Sea into a cradle of war," vice foreign minister Liu Zhenmin told reporters in Beijing, as he described the ruling as waste paper.
"China's aim is to turn the South China Sea into a sea of peace, friendship and cooperation."
Liu said China also had "the right" to establish an air defence identification zone (ADIZ) over the sea, which would give the Chinese military authority over foreign aircraft.
A similar zone set up in 2013 in the East China Sea riled Japan, the United States and its allies.
"Whether we need to set up one in the South China Sea depends on the level of threat we receive," he said.
"We hope other countries will not take the chance to blackmail China."
The Chinese ambassador to the United States, Cui Tiankai, was even more blunt over the ramifications of the verdict.
"It will certainly intensify conflicts and even confrontation," Cui said in Washington on Tuesday.
China justifies its sovereignty claims by saying it was the first to have discovered, named and exploited the sea, and outlines its claims for most of the waterway using a vague map made up of nine dashes that emerged in the 1940s.
Those claims overlap with those of the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan.
Manila, under previous president Benigno Aquino, launched the legal case in 2013 after China took control of Scarborough Shoal, a rich fishing ground within the Philippines' exclusive economic zone and far away from the nearest major Chinese landmass.
China has also in recent years built giant artificial islands capable of hosting military installations and airstrips in the Spratlys archipelago, one of the biggest groups of islands in the sea.
No legal basis, unlawful
Aside from stating that China's historical rights were without "legal basis", the tribunal ruled that its artificial island building and the blocking of Filipino fishermen at Scarborough Shoal were unlawful.
However the Philippines, under new President Rodrigo Duterte, declined to celebrate the verdict, saying on Tuesday only that it welcomed the ruling while calling for sobriety and restraint.
Duterte has repeatedly said he wants to improve relations with China, which plummeted under Aquino because of the dispute, and that he would seek Chinese investment for major infrastructure projects such as a railway for the impoverished southern Philippines.
His Foreign Minister, Perfecto Yasay, told AFP in an interview last week that the Philippines would seek to use the verdict as the basis for direct talks with China aimed at achieving a long-awaited code of conduct among rival claimants for the sea.
However China faced immediate pressure from Western powers, which insist they have legitimate interests in the dispute because of the need to maintain "freedom of navigation" in waters that hosts more than $5 trillion in shipping trade annually.
The United States emphasised on Tuesday that China, as a signatory to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, should accept the verdict.
"As provided in the convention, the tribunal's decision is final and legally binding on both China and the Philippines," State Department spokesman John Kirby told reporters in Washington.
Kirby called on all sides "to avoid provocative statements or actions".
Reputational costs
Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop warned China on Wednesday there would be "strong reputational costs" for ignoring the ruling, as she called for an end to Chinese island building.
"China seeks to be a regional and global leader and requires friendly relations with its neighbours. That's crucial to its rise," Bishop told national broadcaster ABC.
Military tensions in the sea had already spiked in the lead-up to the verdict.
China launched naval drills in the northern areas, while the US Pacific Command said it had deployed an aircraft carrier for flights to support "security" in the sea.
Taiwan, which was another loser in the verdict as its claims are very similar to those of China, sent a warship to the sea on Wednesday to protect its claims.
China used deadly force to seize control of the Paracel Islands from South Vietnam in 1974, and Johnson Reef from a united Vietnam in 1988.
Beijing: Chinese official media and think-tanks are worried over a possible "domino effect" with surge in claims by other countries to press for their share of the South China Sea, a day after a UN-backed tribunal dealt a major blow to China's claims over the disputed maritime area.
While the verdict striking down China's historic claims evoked strong comments in the editorials, the sweeping judgement of the tribunal appointed by the Permanent Court of Arbitration made official think-tanks to predict worst case scenarios. Jin Canrong, deputy director of the School of International Studies at the Renmin University of China, said the most important task for China at the moment is to prevent a "domino effect" among claimant states such as Vietnam in the South China Sea (SCS).
"In other words, China should prevent other countries from following the Philippines," he told state-run Global Times.
In order to prevent a "domino effect," China has several options. For example, it should prepare for a potential military conflict by continuing to conduct military drills in the SCS, Beijing-based military expert Song Zhongping was quoted as saying by the paper known for its nationalistic views.
This tough approach can send a message to other countries that suing China at The Hague's "illegal tribunal" will only lead to a tougher response from Beijing, Song said, adding that tensions in the disputed waters will rise, and China should prepare for the worst.
"China must be prepared to reduce the fallout of the arbitration case with other claimant countries," said Gu Xiaosong, an expert on Southeast Asian studies at the Guangxi Academy of Social Sciences.
Experts agreed that among the other claimant countries, including Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei, Hanoi will most likely challenge China's maritime territories. "Vietnam occupies the biggest number of islands or islets in the South China Sea and has the biggest area of overlapping maritime claims with China," Gu said.
"With strong nationalistic sentiment, Vietnam is unlikely to back off on its claims," Gu noted. Ei Sun Oh, principal adviser of Malaysia-based think-tank Pacific Research Centre, also said that he does not rule out the possibility of Vietnam seeking a similar arbitration, emboldened by the favourable ruling the Philippines received.
Pan Guoping, an international law expert at the Southwest University of Political Science and Law, said that since UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) stipulates that any decision rendered by a court or tribunal having jurisdiction
under this section shall be final and shall be complied with by all the parties to the dispute, China can consider leaving
UNCLOS to maintain its rights and claims to the SCS.
If China still remains in UNCLOS, China faces a dilemma between respecting UNCLOS and protecting the legality of China's sovereignty claims in the SCS, Pan said.
London: David Cameron will be appearing before Parliament as prime minister for the last time before handing over to successor Theresa May.
Cameron will step aside on Wednesday after losing the campaign to keep Britain in the European Union. He will take on his final session of prime minister's questions before traveling to Buckingham Palace to formally tender his resignation to Queen Elizabeth II.
Cameron told The Daily Telegraph it had been "a privilege to serve the country I love."
May will seek to calm the country, and the financial markets, after upheaval following the unexpected result in the 23 June referendum.
She will reportedly give priority to appointing a Cabinet minister in charge of implementing Brexit, the decision to leave the EU.
Washington: Donald Trump and key family members visited with Mike Pence Wednesday morning at the Indiana governor's mansion in the final phase of the billionaire's search for a running mate. Trump was directing his staff to prepare for a Friday announcement.
"It's a little bit like The Apprentice," former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, one of Trump's finalists, said in a Tuesday interview with Fox News Channel. "You find out sooner or later who the last one standing is."
Pence, Gingrich and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie were said to be the final contenders to the vice presidential candidate on the Republican ticket less than a week before the GOP meets in Cleveland for the formal nomination. All three have had "auditions" as Trump's partner by opening for the presumed GOP nominee at speeches over the last week. On Wednesday morning, Trump and his children were seen entering and exiting Pence's residence.
Pence is a steady, staunch conservative who would help calm nervous Republican wary of Trump's impulsive style. Gingrich is a boisterous rabble-rouser who has spent decades in Washington, including as House speaker. Christie, a one-time rival, has become one of Trump's most trusted advisers.
That's according to a person familiar with Trump's thinking, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to discuss the vetting process. Trump said in a Tuesday interview with The Wall Street Journal that Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions is also still in the mix.
Trump has spent weeks consulting with friends and family as he weighs the most important decision of his campaign to date. He's also met with the candidates and brought his finalists on tour to test their receptions before his crowds. On Monday, it was Christie's turn in Virginia. On Tuesday, he was joined in Indiana by Pence.
Introducing Trump at a rally in Westfield, Indiana, on Tuesday evening, Pence received an enthusiastic reception as he compared Trump to Republican icon Ronald Reagan and dug into Trump's likely Democrat rival, Hillary Clinton.
Trump told The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday he is looking for a "fighter skilled in hand-to-hand combat" as his second-in-command, but hadn't seen enough of Pence to measure his fight. Pence's speech appeared to be an effort from the former congressman to show Trump he could take on such a role.
While Trump kept his cards close, he spoke playfully of Pence at the rally: "I don't know whether he's going to be your governor or your vice president."
Pence and Gingrich would be welcome picks among anxious Republican officials already gathering in Cleveland for next week's convention. Their governing experience and popularity among the party's conservative base would mark a sharp contrast to Trump, whose brand of politics has alienated hard-line conservatives and establishment Republicans alike.
Former Trump adviser Michael Caputo said Pence fit that bill.
"Not only does he fulfill Trump's requirement for a running mate with political experience, he also is CEO of a company called Indiana," Caputo said. "He's straight out of central casting. He's a communicator. He gets the message, he stays on messages. And he knows how to reach out to a broad range of America."
In an interview with The Associated Press on Monday, Trump said he'd narrowed his list to four contenders. He appeared to have made progress by Tuesday, when he told Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly that he had "a pretty good idea" of his pick.
Still, he appeared to agree with O'Reilly's complaint that his campaign's plans for Friday announcement are ill-conceived, because fewer people tend to watch the news that day.
"When I heard I was doing it on Friday, I was saying, I wonder if those people know me very well," Trump said of his campaign staff.
Trump's team has been building hype for the decision, including in a text message to supporters that urged recipients to sign up to receive an early notification of the choice. Fox News Channel added to the speculation Tuesday when it said it had suspended its contributor agreement with Gingrich "due to the intense media speculation" about his potential to join Trump's ticket.
Less than an hour later, Gingrich appeared on the network and suggested Trump's decision was imminent.
"My guess is you're going to hear either tomorrow or Thursday," Gingrich said. "Certainly no later than Friday, because they're going to want to dominate the weekend news with the new vice presidential selection."
Washington: Donald Trump has reached the final phase of his search for a running mate, narrowing his list to three leading contenders and directing his staff to prepare for a Friday announcement.
"It's a little bit like The Apprentice," former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, one of Trump's finalists, said in a Tuesday interview with Fox News Channel. "You find out sooner or later who the last one standing is."
Along with Gingrich, a boisterous rabble-rouser who has spent decades in Washington, the finalists include Indiana Gov Mike Pence, a steady, staunch conservative who would help to calm nervous Republicans wary of Trump's style. Trump's daughter, Ivanka and her husband, Jared, were among those who visited Pence at his residence on Wednesday. New Jersey Gov Chris Christie, a one-time rival has become one of Trump's most trusted advisers and also is said to be among those Trump is considering as a running mate.
That's according to a person familiar with Trump's thinking, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to discuss the vetting process. Trump said in a Tuesday interview with The Wall Street Journal that Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions is also still in the mix.
Trump has spent weeks consulting with friends and family as he weighs the most important decision of his campaign to date. He's also met with the candidates and brought his finalists on tour to test their receptions before his crowds. On Monday, it was Christie's turn in Virginia. On Tuesday, he was joined in Indiana by Pence.
Introducing Trump at a rally in Westfield, Indiana, on Tuesday evening, Pence received an enthusiastic reception as he compared Trump to Republican icon Ronald Reagan and dug into Trump's likely Democrat rival, Hillary Clinton.
Trump told The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday he is looking for a "fighter skilled in hand-to-hand combat" as his second-in-command, but hadn't seen enough of Pence to measure his fight. Pence's speech appeared to be an effort from the former congressman to show Trump he could take on such a role.
While Trump kept his cards close, he spoke playfully of Pence at the rally: "I don't know whether he's going to be your governor or your vice-president."
Pence and Gingrich would be welcome picks among anxious Republican officials already gathering in Cleveland for next week's convention. Their governing experience and popularity among the party's conservative base would mark a sharp contrast to Trump, whose brand of politics has alienated hard-line conservatives and establishment Republicans alike.
Former Trump adviser Michael Caputo said Pence fit that bill.
"Not only does he fulfill Trump's requirement for a running mate with political experience, he also is CEO of a company called Indiana," Caputo said. "He's straight out of central casting. He's a communicator. He gets the message, he stays on messages. And he knows how to reach out to a broad range of America."
In an interview with The Associated Press on Monday, Trump said he'd narrowed his list to four contenders. He appeared to have made progress by Tuesday, when he told Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly that he had "a pretty good idea" of his pick.
Still, he appeared to agree with O'Reilly's complaint that his campaign's plans for Friday announcement are ill-conceived, because fewer people tend to watch the news that day.
"When I heard I was doing it on Friday, I was saying, I wonder if those people know me very well," Trump said of his campaign staff.
Trump's team has been building hype for the decision, including in a text message to supporters that urged recipients to sign up to receive an early notification of the choice. Fox News Channel added to the speculation Tuesday when it said it had suspended its contributor agreement with Gingrich "due to the intense media speculation" about his potential to join Trump's ticket.
Less than an hour later, Gingrich appeared on the network and suggested Trump's decision was imminent.
"My guess is you're going to hear either tomorrow or Thursday," Gingrich said. "Certainly no later than Friday, because they're going to want to dominate the weekend news with the new vice presidential selection."
As the world watched with baited breath for the ruling by the Hague-based Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) on the territorial claims of the Philippines filed in 2013 against China over disputed areas in the South China Sea with Manila seeking a ruling on its right to exploit waters in its 200-nautical miles EEZ, as allowed under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) the PCA has virtually rebuked China for its illegal activities in the South China Sea. Citing the construction of artificial islands to interference with fishing, the PCA ruled that Beijing's expansive claim to sovereignty over the waters had no legal basis.
The tribunal also said that Beijing had violated international law by causing severe harm to the coral reef environment and by failing to prevent Chinese fishermen from harvesting endangered sea turtles and other species on a substantial scale.
Tensions in the Asia-Pacific rose after China arbitrarily extended its EEZ and drew its nine-dash claim across the South China Sea based on a sketch drawn by the Kuomintang regime China refused to recognise this regime and actually overthrew it in 1948. China stepped beyond its traditional continental land-oriented security paradigms in 1993, having become a net importer of oil for the first time. Now, China claims the entire East China Sea is also a major part of the SCS with scant regard to the EEZ and claims of countries like Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan, Vietnam and Brunei.
Beijing's aggressive activities completely disregarding international norms and laws like UNCLOS include attempts to jostle with US aircraft, and Japanese and Vietnamese naval vessels, thereby preventing oil exploration by Hanoi in Vietnam's own territorial waters, violating Japanese waters particularly of around the Tokyo-controlled Senkaku Islands, to name a few. Illegal acts by China to effectively control the South China Sea are also linked to its nuclear strategy since submarines on a mission can quickly submerge in the deep waters of the South China Sea, secure against attacks, and advance ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs) from the South China Sea to the Pacific Ocean in the future.
Chinas recent moves in the South China Sea included beefing up air defences on Woody Island in the Paracels by positioning additional fighter aircraft and radars, and major construction activities at Scarborough Shoal, raising the suspicion that China was preparing to dynamite Scarborough Shoal to build an artificial island to house military facilities or declare an Air Defence Identification Zone (ADIZ) similar to the ADIZ announced in the East China Sea in November 2013. This seemed a likely measure to take preemptive action in South China Sea in ahead of the verdict by the PCA. By converting Scarborough Shoal into an artificial island with an airfield and harbour, it would not only prevent the Philippines from operating in the waters of Spratly Islands, but also better monitor US Navy's moves in Subic Bay.
The PCA ruling on the claims by the Philippines was crucial since it was to mark a turning point in Chinas future actions in Asia-Pacific, because so far China had only been deflecting international arbitration by merely stating that all issues in the South China Sea were bilateral. The arbitration was also crucial to China since the adverse ruling (as has happened) will lead to its other neighbours seeking international arbitration against illegal Chinese claims. The ruling may have been specific to China and the Philippines but Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, Taiwan and Vietnam, all of which have claims in the South China Sea would have noted what the tribunal said about the nine-dash line within which China asserts sovereignty. The nine-dash line also violates Indonesias EEZ under the UNCLOS.
China had already prepared its response to an adverse ruling by the PCA, as is evident by the Chinas Ministry of Foreign Affairs press release (simultaneous to the PCA ruling) which says,
"With regard to the award rendered on 12 July 2016 by the Arbitral Tribunal in the South China Sea arbitration established at the unilateral request of the Republic of the Philippines (hereinafter referred to as the "Arbitral Tribunal"), the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of China solemnly declares that the award is null and void and has no binding force. China neither accepts nor recognises it.
So, China has literally cocked a snook at the international community, indicating international norms and laws are irrelevant to rising China.
China identified the first quarter of the 21st Century as a period of strategic opportunity and the next for strategic expansion for becoming a Great Power. China under Deng Xiaoping, decided to proliferate nuclear technology to communists and radical Muslims in the Third World based on the strategy that if the West began to get nuked by Muslim terrorists or another communist countries without Chinese fingerprints, it would be good for China. This is how rogue countries like Pakistan and North Korea were transformed into Chinas nuclear talons. President Xi Jinping has optimised the prominence of the PLA to its maximum, taking total charge of it himself as Commander-in-Chief.
The effect is visible with Chinas all-round aggression proceeding along predictable lines: Pooh-poohing the PCA ruling, terming freedom of navigation patrols (FONOPS) by US forces as militarisation to continue reclaiming more reefs and building military facilities on them, including Zhubi Reef, Mischief Reef and Fiery Cross, adding air-strips, hangars, weapon storage facilities and fuel storage tanks.
Whatever is happening in the South China Sea indicates future Chinese actions in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR) with 18 Chinese Strategic Support Bases planned by China and Gwadar being prepared as a Chinese nuclear submarine base. The recent underwater ballistic missile test by North Korea as well as Pyongyang keeping its nuclear test site in readiness (as observed by the US) are in reality Chinas signal to the US and its allies. China has been feverishly piling sand onto reefs in the South China Sea, creating seven new islets in the region and straining already taut geopolitical tensions.
If China goes ahead with converting Scarborough Shoal into an artificial island with an airfield and harbour, it will be a major provocation. Little wonder then that the Philippines signed the Enhanced Defence Cooperation Agreement with the US this year, opened four air bases to US forces and commenced joint sea patrolling in the South China Sea. Indonesian naval warships too are patrolling the South China Sea now. The US has stated it will continue to support its allies. For sure, the South China Sea can expect more turbulence with China perhaps prepared to even cross the red line.
The author is a retired Lieutenant-General
India said on Tuesday that sea lanes of communication passing through the South China Sea are critical for peace, stability, prosperity and development as an international court ruled that China had no historic rights over the waters of the sea.
In a statement, India also urged all parties to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) to show utmost respect for the international agreement.
The Ministry of External Affairs in a statement, said that India supports freedom of navigation and over flight, and unimpeded commerce, based on the principles of international law, as reflected notably in the UNCLOS.
"India believes that states should resolve disputes through peaceful means without threat or use of force and exercise self-restraint in the conduct of activities that could complicate or escalate disputes affecting peace and stability."
The Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague on Tuesday ruled there was no legal basis for China to claim historic rights to resources in the South China Sea.
The US said the International arbitration court's ruling on the South China Sea should be treated as final and binding and hoped that both China and the Philippines would comply with their obligations.
In a statement, after the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague on Tuesday ruled there was no legal basis for China to claim historic rights to resources in the South China Sea, State Department spokesperson John Kirby said, "In the aftermath of this important decision, we urge all claimants to avoid provocative statements or actions."
He said the decision by the Tribunal in the Philippines-China arbitration is an important contribution to the shared goal of a peaceful resolution to disputes in the South China Sea.
"The United States strongly supports the rule of law. A We support efforts to resolve territorial and maritime disputes in the South China Sea peacefully, including through arbitration," Kirby said.
"As provided in the Convention, the Tribunal's decision is final and legally binding on both China and the Philippines. The United States expresses its hope and expectation that both parties will comply with their obligations."
"We encourage claimants to clarify their maritime claims in accordance with international law as reflected in the Law of the Sea Convention and to work together to manage and resolve their disputes," he added.
The Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague accused China of interfering with the Philippines' fishing and petroleum exploration, building artificial islands in the waters and failing to prevent Chinese fishermen from fishing in the zone.
The South China Sea is a resource rich strategic waterway through which more than $5 trillion worth of global trade is shipped each year. Beijing has placed runways and radar facilities on new islets it has created in the disputed sea after piling huge amounts of sand onto reefs.
"There is no legal basis for China to claim historic rights to resources within the sea areas falling within the nine-dash line," the court said.
China reacted angrily the ruling, saying it did not accept or recognize it. "The award is null and void and has no binding force," the Foreign Ministry said.
China's territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests in the South China Sea should under no circumstances be affected by such rulings, it said.
Beijing refused to participate in the case and has denounced it as a plot against China led by the US.
Iraqi government forces advancing on the Islamic State-held city of Mosul retook a village from IS on Tuesday and linked up along the Tigris river with army units pushing from a separate direction, Defence Minister Khalid al-Obeidi said.
The territorial gain, which followed the recapture of a key air base nearby at the weekend, further isolated Mosul in preparation for a government assault to recover Iraq's second largest city 60 km to the north.
"Forces from the 9th Armoured Division and the counter-terrorism service liberated Ajhala village north of Qayara base," Obeidi said on Twitter.
"Our heroes arrived at the riverbank and made contact with Nineveh Liberation Operation units," he added, referring to troops who had set out from Makhmour, 25 km east of the Tigris, in March.
The newly retaken territory still needs to be secured since IS insurgents remain holed up in several towns behind the government's front line, a military spokesman said.
Backed by air support from a U.S.-led military coalition, government forces on Saturday regained Qayara air base, which is to be turned into a logistics hub for the main assault on Mosul.
On Monday, U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter announced the dispatch of 560 additional soldiers to Iraq, most of whom will work from Qayara to assist the Iraqi thrust towards Mosul.
Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has pledged to retake the city, the largest still held by IS, by year-end, but there is still debate in Washington about the timing of any move.
Suicide bombings like the one in Baghdad on 3 July that killed nearly 300 people, one of the largest attacks since the U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein 13 years ago, suggest the group could remain a long-term threat.
IS claimed another car bomb on Wednesday in Baghdad's northern outskirts that left nine people dead, according to medical and security sources.
On Wednesday, Abadi's government urged the postponing of demonstrations called for by powerful Shi'ite Muslim cleric Moqtada al-Sadr later this week to pressure political leaders to implement long-promised reforms.
A statement from Abadi warned the protests could land the country in "chaos --and end up serving the goals of the enemy and its terrorism".
Sadr, whose supporters twice stormed Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone earlier this year, called for a reprieve from protests during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, which ended last week.
BAGHDAD A news agency that supports Islamic State said the group's senior operative Abu Omar al-Shishani (the Chechen) had been killed in combat in the Iraqi city of Shirqat, south of Mosul.
The Pentagon said in March that Shishani, which it described as the group's "minister of war", had likely been killed in a U.S. airstrike in Syria.
Reuters could not independently verify the statement from Amaq, which Islamic State regularly uses to issue news.
(Reporting by Stephen Kalin and Mostafa Hashem in Cairo; editing by Ralph Boulton)
This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
BAGHDAD Abu Omar al-Shishani, who the Pentagon described as Islamic State's "minister of war", was killed in combat in the Iraqi city of Shirqat, south of Mosul, a news agency that supports the militant group said on Wednesday.
The Pentagon said in March that Shishani had likely been killed in a U.S. air strike in Syria, but this was the first time the group appeared to confirm his death.
Reuters could not independently verify the statement from Amaq news agency, which Islamic State regularly uses to issue reports and which denied Shishani's death after the Pentagon's comments in March.
Islamic State supporters exchanged notes of praise and condolence on social media, including pictures of the ginger-bearded fighter, and pledged to launch a fresh offensive in his honour.
Officials at the Pentagon said they were aware of Wednesday's report but could not confirm or deny it.
Hisham al-Hashimi, a Baghdad-based security expert who advises the Iraqi government, said a source in Shirqat confirmed Shishani had been killed there along with several other militants.
Iraqi forces are advancing towards Mosul, the largest city still under the control of Islamic State. They have mostly surrounded Shirqat, 250 km (160 miles) north of Baghdad, and last week retook a major air base from the militants to use in the main push on Mosul, 60 km further north.
CONFLICTING REPORTS
But Rami Abdelrahman, head of the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said Shishani had been wounded in March and died soon after in the countryside east of Raqqa.
"I confirmed from the doctor who went to see him," said Abdelrahman, who tracks the war in Syria through a network of contacts. He told Reuters Islamic State likely delayed announcing his death to allow time to line up a successor.
Shishani, also known as Omar the Chechen, ranked among America's most wanted militants under a U.S. program that offered up to $5 million for information to help remove him from the battlefield.
Born in 1986 in Georgia, then still part of the Soviet Union, Shishani had a reputation as a close military adviser to Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who was said by followers to have relied heavily on him.
Shishani once fought in military operations as a rebel in Chechnya before joining Georgia's military in 2006 and fighting against Russian troops before being discharged two years later for medical reasons, according to U.S. officials.
He was arrested in 2010 for weapons possession and spent more than a year in jail, before leaving Georgia in 2012 for Istanbul and later Syria.
He decided to join Islamic State the following year and pledged his allegiance to Baghdadi. The State Department said Shishani was identified as Islamic State's military commander in a video distributed by the group in 2014.
(Additional reporting by Saif Hameed in Baghdad, Mostafa Hashem in Cairo and David Alexander in Washington; Editing by Janet Lawrence)
This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
The New Black Panther Party, a "black power" movement, will carry firearms for self-defense during rallies in Cleveland ahead of next week's Republican convention, if allowed under Ohio law, the group's chairman said.
The plan by the group this weekend comes as police in Cleveland brace for an influx of groups that plan demonstrations before and during the presidential nominating convention.
During the attack last week in Dallas that killed five police officers, law enforcement officials said demonstrators carrying rifles led them to initially believe they were under attack by multiple shooters.
Several other groups, including some supporters of presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, have said they will carry weapons in Cleveland.
"If it is an open state to carry, we will exercise our second amendment rights because there are other groups threatening to be there that are threatening to do harm to us," Hashim Nzinga, chairman of the New Black Panther Party, told Reuters in a telephone interview.
"If that state allows us to bear arms, the Panthers and the others who can legally bear arms will bear arms."
Nzinga said he condemned the Dallas shootings.
Officials in Ohio have said it will be legal for protesters to carry weapons at demonstrations outside the convention under that states "open carry" law, which allows civilians to carry guns in public.
"Black power" groups promote defense against racial oppression, with some advocating for the establishment of armed self-defense groups, black social institutions and a self-sufficient economy.
The New Black Panther Party has long called for a separate black nation. But Nzinga said the movement was now focused on protecting black Americans' rights.
Academics say the New Black Panther Party remains marginal and largely representative of an older generation, in their 30s and 40s, rather than younger activists drawn to groups such as the anti-racism Black Lives Matter movement.
The New Black Panther Party was founded in 1989 and adopted a more radical approach than the 1960s Black Panther Party. Members of the original group have denounced the New Black Panther Party as racist, but Nzinga says his movement includes original Black Panthers.
The Southern Poverty Law Center, a hate group watchdog, describes the New Black Panther Party as a virulently racist and anti-Semitic organization whose leaders have encouraged violence against whites, Jews and law enforcement officers."
The center tracks years of public statements by the New Black Panther Party and other groups. Nzinga denied the group was racist but said it was a fact that Jews control Hollywood and the U.S. media.
The center said the group is not known to have carried out any violent attacks. The black shooter in the Dallas killings "liked" the New Black Panthers and other black nationalist groups on Facebook but was not a member.
"THERE TO PROTECT"
Nzinga said he expected a couple hundred members of the New Black Panther Party to participate in and protect a black unity rally -- the "National Convention of the Oppressed" -- that is scheduled to begin in Cleveland on Thursday evening and end on Monday morning. Nzinga said he and the Panthers plan to leave Cleveland on Sunday, the day before the convention officially opens.
We are there to protect ... We are not trying to do anything else, he said. "We are going to carry out some of these great legal rights we have -- to assemble, to protest and (to exercise) freedom of speech.
Nzinga says his group has grown amid racial tensions in the wake of a series of high-profile police killings of black men in the past two years. The Southern Poverty Law Center says the number of black militant chapters around the country grew from 113 in 2014 to 180 in 2015.
The center says there are 892 hate groups total nationwide. It says white hate groups, such as the Aryan Brotherhood, have a much longer track record of carrying out violent attacks than black nationalist groups.
Nzinga said his group has 36 chapters nationwide but declined to reveal membership numbers.
I have people literally calling me saying this is the first time in my life I protested and I loved it. Nzinga told Reuters. "They want to be a part of something. They tried to be a part of the system and the system let them down so they want to be part of a rebellion.
(Reporting By Ned Parker; additional reporting by Daniel Trotta; editing by Stuart Grudgings.; Editing by David Rohde and Stuart Grudgings)
This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
London: Outgoing Prime Minister David Cameron on Wednesday urged his successor Theresa May to try to keep Britain close to the EU even while negotiating to leave it, following last month's Brexit vote.
"My advice to my successor, who is a brilliant negotiator, is that we should try to be as close to the European Union as we can be, for the benefits of trade, of co-operation and of security," he told MPs.
"The Channel will not get any wider once we leave the European Union and that is the relationship that we should seek, that would be good for the United Kingdom."
It was "vital" that British businesses continued to have "proper access to the single market," added the prime minister.
Cameron was speaking during his final appearance in parliament as prime minister, before he tenders his resignation to Queen Elizabeth II and May takes over later Wednesday.
Cameron announced he would step down after failing to prevent Britons from voting to leave the EU in the 23 June referendum, a seismic decision that plunged the country's future into uncertainty.
New Delhi: Despite the exit of Britain, the European Union remains committed to its partnership with India, EU Ambassador to India Tomasz Kozlowski said on Wednesday.
My statement is that the EU remains committed to its partnership with India after Brexit, Kozlowski aid in an interaction with the media.
India is an important actor in the international arena, he said.
He said that while India was the EU's 10th trading partner, the EU was India's largest trading partner.
Last year, trade between India and the EU stood at 100 billion euros, he said.
Let me tell you, trade between both sides is very much balanced.
According to Kozlowski, the India-EU summit during Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Brussels in March this year invigorated the partnership.
The summit adopted a number of agreements that are very result-oriented, he said.
We have analysed all Indian flagship programmes.
He said that the EU has made some suggestions regarding the flagship programmes of India but stressed that these were not in the form of assistance but as a partnership.
While the EU-India clean energy and climate partnership has been launched, the EU-India startup partnership would be launched in October this year, the Ambassador, who hails from Poland, said.
He said that the European Investment Bank (EIB) has launched a credit line of 1.2 billion euros for Indian partners.
The EIB has offered 450 million euros to the Lucknow metro, Kozlowski said.
The EIB will also open its branch in India later this year, he stated, while adding that EIB loans were not commercial but concessional.
He said the EU was cooperating with India on international issues, including nuclear non-proliferation, cyber security, anti-terrorism and anti-radicalisation.
Asked about the EU's position on Britain's exit, the Ambassador said: EU regrets but respects Brexit.
Pointing out that Britain was still a member of the EU, he said that it would take two years to negotiate its exit under Article 50 of the EU constitution.
He said the remaining 27 members of the EU were determined to remain united.
Stating that though though the EU faced crises like financial, migration and now Britain's exit, Kozlowski said that it has managed to handle such matters in a better way now.
After the financial crises in Greece, Spain and Iceland, we have introduced a lot of instruments which have made us more resilient, he stated.
The European Central Bank has taken new roles for financial management.
As for migration from hot spots in North Africa and the Middle East, he said that though there were many challenges, now the situation was better.
Last year, we decided to have European border and coast guards, the Ambassador said.
The EU is committed to contribute to world peace, he added.
Islamabad: At least six militants were killed in a clash with the police in Punjab province of Pakistan on Wednesday, an official said.
Two policemen were also injured in the clash which was triggered when a police party raided a militant hideout in Okara district, Xinhua news agency quoted a senior police official as saying.
The police and intelligence personnel conducted a joint operation, he said.
The injured policemen were taken to a nearby hospital.
Police said that during the joint operation with intelligence personnel they recovered arms and ammunition from the hideout of the militants, who are reported to be from Al-Qaeda militant group. The house was sealed for further investigation.
United Nations: UN peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous warned Wednesday that more fighting could break out in South Sudan despite a two-day ceasefire that followed a major flareup of violence in Juba.
"We remain very worried about the potential for the resumption of violence and spillover into other parts of the country, as we have seen in the past," he told the Security Council.
The United Nations is considering an emergency request from regional leaders to send an intervention brigade to Juba that could secure the airport and separate the warring sides.
At least 272 people have been killed during fighting that broke out Friday and resumed on Sunday and Monday after a pause to mark the fifth anniversary of South Sudan's independence on Saturday.
Ladsous said he was convinced the death toll was "only the tip of the iceberg" because many civilians were barred from reaching safer grounds such as UN compounds.
At least 42,000 people have fled their homes in the latest flareup, with 7,000 sheltering in UN peacekeeping bases, while aid groups and churches in the city have taken in 35,000 people.
Government troops appear to be in full control of Juba but opposition forces remain around the west of the city and "further clashes cannot be ruled out," Ladsous said.
Both army and rebel forces are mobilizing around parts of Malakal in Upper Nile region and Leer in Unity state, fuelling worries of fighting there, he added.
The East African IGAD bloc of countries is calling on the United Nations to strengthen the peacekeeping mission in South Sudan with more troops and better equipment, including attack helicopters.
UN officials are leaning on African governments to beef up the mission known as UNMISS ahead of an African Union summit Sunday in Kigali, where the crisis will be discussed.
The Security Council is also considering an appeal from UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon for an arms embargo to be imposed on South Sudan and sanctions targeted against commanders responsible for the violence.
South Sudan descended into war in December 2013 after President Salva Kiir fired his deputy Reik Machar, unleashing a wave of violence that has left tens of thousands dead.
Although Kiir and Machar signed a peace deal in August last year, fighting has continued.
South Sudan's UN Ambassador Akuei Bona Malwal described the latest fighting as "setbacks" that his government considered part of "a learning curve," saying he remained committed to the peace deal.
Islamabad: A special coin will be issued by the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) in honour of celebrated humanitarian Abdul Sattar Edhi who passed on Friday in Karachi.
The denomination, shape and other details regarding the coin will be announced on Saturday at a special condolence reference for Edhi, SBP spokesman Abid Qamar, Dawn News reported.
Revered by many as a national hero, Abdul Sattar Edhi created a charitable empire out of nothing.
He gave birth to Pakistans largest welfare organisation almost single-handedly, entirely with private donations.
He was diagnosed with kidney failure in 2013 but was unable to get a transplant due to frail health and received treatment at the Sindh Institute of Urology and Transplantation.
Thousands of people, including high-profile politicians and government officials, gathered at the National Stadium to attend Edhi's funeral prayers on Saturday.
The iconic social worker was given a guard of honour and a 19-gun salute by the Pakistan Army as his body was taken away from the National Stadium after a state funeral.
His body was then taken to Edhi village, where he was laid to rest.
Baghdad : Iraqi officials say a suicide car bomber has hit a police checkpoint, killing eight people in a Baghdad district that was struck by a deadly attack the day before.
A police officer says the bomber rammed his explosives-laden car into the checkpoint in the Shiite-dominated northeastern al-Rashidiya district Wednesday. He says 20 people were wounded.
A medical official confirmed the casualties. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity as they are not authorized to talk to the media.
On Tuesday, at least 12 people were killed in a suicide car bombing at an outdoor vegetable and fruit market in al-Rashidiya.
No group has claimed responsibility for the attacks, which bore the hallmarks of the Islamic State group. IS was behind two large-scale attacks last week that killed around 300 people.
London: Theresa May, who is set to assume office on Wednesday as British prime minister, is likely to promote a string of female Conservative colleagues into key cabinet positions, the media reported.
Allies including Amber Rudd, currently the Energy Secretary, and Justine Greening, the International Development Secretary, were among those expected to be in line for prominent positions as Britain's second female prime minister assumes office, The Guardian reported.
It was Theresa who set up the campaign to elect more female MPs to parliament, and she has always believed that there should be more women in prominent government positions, an official said.
Speculation in Westminster suggested that a woman could be under consideration for the role of Chancellor for the first time, although the frontrunners so far include Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond and Chris Grayling, leader of the House of Commons.
Officials within the Home Office suggested that Grayling could become Home Secretary, although Rudd was considered a contender to succeed May in taking responsibility for immigration policy.
Grayling might also be offered the position of the "Brexitary of State" an idea Theresa May floated on the "Ministry for Brexit" as a way to ensure "Brexit means Brexit", so this position could be pivotal, The Telegraph said.
Sarah Wollaston, the chair of the Commons Health Select Committee could be offered the job of a Health Secretary. Anna Soubry, a stout backer of May, could be considered for the post of Defence Secretary and former London Mayor Boris Johnson, who was once thought to succeed Cameroon, could be a very likely contender for the Communities Secretary, the newspaper said.
Outgoing Prime Minister David Cameron is to tender his resignation to the Queen on Wednesday.
WASHINGTON Top militant Umar Khalifa, a leader of the Tariq Gidar Group, was killed along with four other fighters in a U.S. air strike in Afghanistan targeting members of the Islamic State-Khorasan Province, the Pentagon said on Wednesday.
Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook said Khalifa had orchestrated several operations in Pakistan, including the January 2016 attack on Bacha Khan University and a December 2014 school attack in Peshawar that killed more than 130 children.
(Reporting by David Alexander; Editing by Eric Walsh)
This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
Britain's new prime minister is a porn star.
No, not really! But for some glorious days, Twitteratti mistook the 49-year-old Teresa May of "Smack My B*tch Up" fame for the 59-year-old Theresa May United Kingdom's home secretary since 2010 and the newly appointed prime minister of UK.
So how did the confusion begin? Well to start with, the names are pretty similar. The H-less May is a 'lingerie model' who has been using the new-found publicity as means to sell autographed underwear, and the other is an Oxford graduate, with the new-found responsibility of stabilising a post-Brexit UK.
Various not-so-news-savvy Twitteratti took to 'congratulating' the new prime minister and bombarding political commentary, mistakenly tagging the May without an H. As a result #TeresaMay was a trending topic on Twitter and the infamous model got a lot of followers.
Wondering if I'll reach 11000 followers today Teresa May (@RealTeresaMay) July 12, 2016
She decided to monetise the moment by selling her autographed underwear to her new followers and fans.
If you want to buy a #Topless signed #Selfie of me email me at info@t-may.co.uk - I'm only doing these for a short while Teresa May (@RealTeresaMay) July 10, 2016
The author of My Body in Your Hands was also forced to change her Twitter bio which now reads "I am a UK Glamour model, not the Prime Minister" (sic).
Despite various clarifications, the model was still mistakenly tagged.
Pretty sure the wording on my contact form makes clear I'm not Theresa May the politician. Excuses excuses #Wankers pic.twitter.com/M2MP74Pm5k Teresa May (@RealTeresaMay) June 30, 2016
However some Britons were keen on the idea of having a sexy prime minister. The idea of a lingerie model sounds laughable but many politicians are just loved more for their good looks (read Justin Trudeau).
@RealTeresaMay I wish you were my Prime Minister, but all we have in America is Hillary Clinton. Buck Zephyr (@BuckZephyr) July 12, 2016
No matter how large the confusion, we can almost count on Teresa May to be a politician some day. She has already started denouncing the media.
Wish I had a pound for every email I've received from a journalist wanting an interview. Oh there's no fee but the publicity for you! Yaaawn Teresa May (@RealTeresaMay) July 12, 2016
Just FYI, if you are looking to tag the new prime minister of UK on Twitter, then her handle is @theresa_may. She is set to move into 10 Downing Street on Wednesday. She will be the UK's second female prime minister after Margaret Thatcher.
Washington: Presumptive Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton called on Tuesday for an end to racism and gun violence in the US during her first joint rally with primary rival Senator Bernie Sanders, D-Vt., in New Hampshire.
Just minutes after Sanders endorsed Clinton, the former secretary of state said trust and respect must be restored between police and communities to avoid more tragedies like the massacre in Dallas.
"Surely, we can agree that weapons of war have no place on the streets of America," the 68-year-old Clinton said, according to EFE news agency.
Clinton said she supported bias training and nationwide use-of-force guidelines for police officers to curb the "tragedy of black men and women and black children being killed in police incidents".
The former first lady called on both the law enforcement community and civilians to "develop national guidelines for the use of force by police officers".
"Our police should never have to face a madman, a racist, a person filled with hatred with an assault weapon. We owe it to every officer who puts his or her life on the line to protect us, so let's protect them," Clinton said.
Five police officers were killed and seven others wounded during last week's shooting in Dallas.
The attack took place during a peaceful Black Lives Matter protest over the fatal police shootings of two African-American men in Louisiana and Minnesota.
Nairobi: The US military in Africa said on Wednesday that it has sent 40 additional soldiers to South Sudan's capital, Juba, to help secure American personnel and facilities in the war-torn city, while South Sudanese trying to flee the country by road reported attacks, killings and robberies by armed men.
Amid a tense ceasefire which has held since Monday night, the US troops deployed at the request of the State Department, said Africom spokeswoman Cpt Jennifer Dyrcz.
In five days of fighting in the capital, President Salva Kiir's forces ousted those loyal to First Vice-President Riek Machar, the former rebel leader in the country's recent civil war, from one of their bases.
The fighting left hundreds dead in the capital, and aid workers said bodies remained in the streets.
The US Embassy in Juba said it was organising flights to evacuate non-essential staff and for all US citizens wishing to leave South Sudan. Commercial flights to Juba remained cancelled, though charter flights were evacuating hundreds of aid workers and other foreign citizens.
Italy's foreign ministry said air force aircraft landed Wednesday in Juba to evacuate 30 Italians who decided to leave. Germany's foreign ministry said its air force was evacuating German, European and other foreign citizens.
The UN said 36,000 South Sudanese civilians have fled their homes due to the fighting.
Some tried to reach neighboring Uganda by road, but an Associated Press reporter spoke to people who had been wounded in attacks by armed men as they tried to flee. Many cars had been shot at or burned. Government forces had erected roadblocks to demand money from those fleeing. Some people were sent back to Juba.
The UN refugee agency has expressed concern about the South Sudan-Uganda crossing, "where security is tightened on the South Sudan side," and it called on all armed parties to allow safe passage.
In Juba, others took shelter in churches, UN bases and aid workers' compounds, but there were reports of government soldiers blocking aid workers from moving to areas where civilians need assistance.
"There is hardly any food in the market, and people are starving. As a result, they are turning to coping mechanisms like looting to survive," said Jeremiah Young, policy adviser for World Vision.
Relief workers should be given freedom of movement, said the UN's humanitarian coordinator for South Sudan, Eugene Owusu.
"We urgently call on all concerned to guarantee safe and unhindered access for humanitarian organizations to ensure that we are able to reach all people in need, including in locations hardest-hit by the fighting," he said.
Meanwhile, fighting continued to spread to other parts of South Sudan. Shantal Persaud, the spokeswoman for the UN mission there, said it had received a report of small-arms fire in Leer town in Unity state Wednesday morning. The town is Machar's birthplace.
Rather than being viewed as pests, pigeons in Pakistan are sometimes considered champions of endurance who evoke a passionate following across the country. Unlike their feral counterparts, these pigeons are cherished athletes.
Flying pigeon breeds were introduced to neighbouring India by the Mughals - the muslim dynasty that used to rule the Subcontinent. When Pakistan was formed in 1947, people brought their pigeons - and a new hobby was born.
WASHINGTON Incumbent Sen. Roy Blunt has turned the tables on his likely Democratic opponent, outraising Jason Kander from April through June.
Blunt reported Tuesday that he raised more than $2.3 million in the second quarter of 2016 and that he had more than $6.8 million in his campaign coffers on July 1.
Kander reported raising about $1.75 million over the same period, and he entered July with more than $3.8 million in cash on hand.
That was in contrast to the first quarter of 2016, when Kander drew national attention for slightly outraising Blunt. But Blunt held a flurry of fundraisers here and in Missouri at the end of June, including one with former President George W. Bush near St. Louis.
Kanders campaign said he received more than 20,500 contributions, about 94 percent of which were $100 or less. He has raised about $6.3 million since announcing his candidacy in February 2015. Blunt has raised more roughly $12.6 million over a longer period; he was raising money before Kander announced and had $2.2 million in the bank at the end of 2014.
Kander raised money at a pace of about $19,000 a day during the second quarter of this year. Blunts came in at a pace of more than $25,000 a day.
Blunt-Kander is one of about a dozen pivotal contests across the country whose outcome will determine control of the Senate in 2017.
Already, outside groups have begun spending on the race, mostly on Blunts behalf. Groups affiliated with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Republican operative Karl Rove have spent $2.2 million on ads praising Blunts Senate work on behalf of veterans. The groups announced recently they intend to spend another $2.5 million in September.
Kanders fundraising has raised his national profile and moved the Missouri Senate race to one to watch. To this point, Senate races in presidential swing states of New Hampshire, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Florida, all also involving Republican incumbents in tough re-election fights, have attracted more national attention.
Democrats improved their odds of taking control of the Senate this week when former Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana said he would run.
Part of those odds involve Illinois, where Sen. Mark Kirk, a Republican, is facing a tough challenge from Rep. Tammy Duckworth, D-Schaumburg.
Duckworth far outraised Kirk the second quarter, pulling in about $2.7 million to Kirks $1 million, the campaigns reported. Duckworth started July with $5.5 million in her campaign account, to Kirks $3.1 million.
The Dallas Police Departments use of a robot to kill a sniper who fatally shot five police officers is apparently the first time U.S. police used a robot to apply lethal force, and it is raising ethical concerns and questions about their future use by local law enforcement agencies.
After negotiations failed on July 7, Dallas police used a remote-controlled robot to deliver an explosive device that killed Micah Johnson, an Army veteran who served in Afghanistan. Johnson killed five police and wounded nine others in a sniper attack as a protest against recent police shootings was ending.
The incident is raising concerns about the increased use of robots in policing, including how and when to deploy them without endangering the lives of innocent bystanders and who should be held accountable if something goes wrong.
This was not an ethical dilemma for me. Id do it again to save our officers lives, Dallas Police Department Chief David Brown told reporters on Monday.
But Brown emphasized his department will not change its approach to policing. We are committed to community policing. In the 21st century, it is the best way to police our country, Brown said.
The robot was not designed to deliver explosives, but rather to handle defensive tasks such as disarming explosive devices.
Out of harm's way
Endeavor Robotics, a Bedford, Massachusetts-based robotics manufacturer, has sold more than 6,000 robots to police and military operations worldwide.
Using a robot this way was, I think, an appropriate use of the technology given the extreme circumstances, said CEO Sean Bielat in an interview with VOA.
I dont think theres anything thats inherently more ethically troubling about using a robot to tele-operate from a distance than there is using another method that can be used from a distance, for instance a sniper. In both cases, youre keeping an individual out of harms way to take on a dangerous and lethal person, added Bielat, a major in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserves.
But others, such as Noel Sharkey, a robotics expert and co-founder of the International Committee for Robot Arms Control, told VOA he has reservations about the use of robots by local police.
It can be argued that this is justifiable given the dangerous events in Dallas with a police killer. And it appears to be legal, but it is a very dangerous precedent to set. It could make it easier to do the next time and easier again in subsequent uses, until it becomes a new norm of policing.
Use spreading
Sharkey cited the Midwestern state of North Dakota as an example of the adoption of robot technologies in policing. Last year North Dakota became the first U.S. state to legalize police use of armed drones.
The original intent of the bill was for police to use drones to look for evidence after search warrants had been obtained. But the final version passed into law permits police to arm the drones with less than lethal weapons such as rubber bullets, tasers and tear gas.
The Dallas event changed the nature of policing and could spread to crowd control and the suppression of protest. We need a much wider public discussion and debate about this and more legal constraints to limit use, Sharkey said.
Sharkey also noted there is the real danger of hackers seizing control of police robots and turning them against citizens or the authorities.
The genie is out of the bottle. Pandoras let out all the sins, said Donald Mazzella, a board member of the National Robotics Education Foundation.
While Mazzella supports limited and non-lethal use of robots in policing, he is concerned about the development and police deployment of more independent robots.
It is the next step. Its a step thats been expected, he told VOA.
Robots currently being deployed are of the remote-controlled variety. And a growing number of the countrys estimated 15,000 police departments have robots in their arsenals.
Endeavor Robotics Bielat said his company has sold robots similar to the one used in Dallas to a couple hundred police departments, including the Massachusetts State Police and the Boston Police Department.
As the price of technology continues to decline, I think you will see more and more police departments take [them] up, Bielat said.
Two Italian commuter trains collided head-on yesterday in the southern region of Puglia, killing at least 20 people and injuring scores more, officials said. At least two passengers were pulled alive from the crumpled wreckage as the rescue operation took place in the scorching heat.
Giuseppe Corrado, vice president of the province of Andria, told Sky TG24 the death toll stood at 20 and that rescue operations were continuing. Another official stressed the final toll would not be known until the wreckage had been pulled apart.
The two trains, each with four cars, collided head-on at midday in an olive grove on flat terrain between the towns of Andria and Corato on a line with just a single track. The accident occurred around 11:30 a.m. some 50 kilometers northeast of the Puglia regional capital, Bari.
Its a disaster as if an airplane fell, local Mayor Massimo Mazzilli said on his Facebook page, where he posted photos of the crash.
Italian Premier Matteo Renzi pledged a thorough investigation and returned to Rome from Milan to monitor the situation.
Some rescue workers seemed overwhelmed by the scene and the heat.
A still photo of the crash showed cars crumpled together like an accordion and forced off the tracks at sharp angles. News reports said rescue workers pulled a small child alive from the rubble. Video images showed ambulances responding to the scene with other rescue workers.
A field hospital was set up in the nearby fields to treat the numerous injured, who were also being transported to hospitals. AP
Chinas state-owned aircraft maker has signed a deal to sell up to 60 of its new regional jets to a leasing company in a deal worth up to USD2.3 billion.
In a joint statement late Monday, Commercial Aircraft Corp. of China Ltd., or COMAC, said the agreement signed with China Aircraft Leasing Group, a Hong Kong-listed company, includes a confirmed order for 30 ARJ21-700 jets and an option to buy 30 more.
The companies said the aircraft will be leased to an unidentified Indonesian airline that one of China Aircraft Leasings shareholders, Friedmann Pacific Asset Management Ltd., plans to invest in.
The ARJ21-700 is part of efforts by China, one of the worlds biggest and fastest-growing air travel markets, to develop a homegrown aviation industry. Its a rival to aircraft made by Bombardier Inc. of Canada and Brazils Embraer SA.
The ARJ21 took its maiden commercial flight last month, which came a decade behind schedule because of technical problems. The deal, which was signed at Britains Farnborough International Airshow, is the biggest single commercial order for the jet since its debut, the companies said.
The aircraft will be delivered over the next five years and the deals value is based on the planes list price. Hong Kong-based Friedmann Pacific, an investment firm specializing in aviation, plans to operate the Indonesian airline solely using ARJ21 planes.
In 2012, China Aircraft Leasing placed an order for another jet COMAC is developing, the C919, a long-range airliner aimed at competing with planes from Boeing and Airbus. The C919, which has also been beset by delays, is due to enter service in 2019. AP
Gaming related crimes and drug trafficking have been on the rise over the past year, the Judiciary Police (PJ) director Chau Wai Kuong, revealed yesterday during an event to mark the Judiciary Police Day at the institutions headquarters.
Chau made a review of the year of the period between June 2015 and May 2016, highlighting the emerging crime types as well as those which have received less media attention during the same period.
The major increase goes to crimes related to the gaming industry, in particular, usury and illegal detentions due to the non-payment of gaming debts, both of which increased as much as 60 and 200 percent, respectively, leading to the detention of a total of 1,887 people.
Although the figures on these crimes continue to rise, the PJ director said there was no reason for social concern. The large majority of the suspects and victims of this type of crimes are not Macau residents therefore the occurrences didnt threaten the community security, he said.
Drug trafficking crimes also increased 15 percent year-on-year during the same period, with particular growth (43 percent) in the period between January and May this year.
Commenting on this trend in drug offenses, the PJ director said: The PJ has been putting efforts to fight drug crimes, improving on the investigation work related to drug trafficking at the airport and at border cross-point, preventing its entry to Macau. [] Thanks to the strengthening of police strategy, the close monitoring carried out by criminal investigation staff and the use of high technology in the police work, several cases related to drugs were uncovered.
Chau highlighted five cross-border cases that have been resolved by the police force in which criminals were trying to smuggle drugs into the territory through the Macau International Airport. He admitted that recently the police had encountered new and increasingly sophisticated ways to conceal drugs, which makes police work harder, as it requires a bigger effort on police forces interlink and a close connection with the community.
According to the official figures released by the PJ, another type of crime that has seen a notable increase over the 12 months were those pertaining to sexual offenses, notably the sexual abuse of children. A total of 11 cases were registered in the latest 12 months, compared to eight recorded in previous 12 months. Crimes of sexual coercion followed a similar trend (12 cases).
Crimes which appear to be on a downward trend are so-called phone scams, a type of crime that has caused more concern in previous years. These crimes reportedly decreased about 70 percent year-on-year. Chau attributes the positive results to the wide awareness-raising campaigns carried out by the PJ that started last year.
On decline are also the crimes of robbery and theft experienced by both people and residences. They decreased year-on-year by six and 10.5 percent respectively.
Regarding priorities for the police force to reduce crime, the director said that the best results are always those achieved by a forward-
looking strategy uniting the prevention and the combat, in order to repress serious crimes in the compliance with the determination of the legal duties.
PJ attributes commendations to highlighted staff members
Taking the opportunity of the commemoration of the 56th Anniversary of the PJ, the police force delivered commendations honoring staff members. In total, 124 commendations were awarded in a ceremony held at the PJ headquarters. Of this number, 111 were individual commendations and 13 were collective commendations. The annually held event on PJ Day, awarded 11 special commendations for exceptional merit to 11 staff members from the police force this year.
A suicide car bomb ripped through an outdoor market in a Shiite-dominated northeastern district of Baghdad on yesterday, killing at least 12 people, officials said, as government forces deployed across much of the Iraqi capital in preparation for a major military parade later this week.
The developments came on the heels of two large-scale attacks claimed by the Islamic State group that killed more than 300 people last week. On Monday, visiting U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said Washington will send 560 more troops to Iraq to help battle IS.
In yesterdays bombing, the explosives-laden pickup truck exploded during the morning rush hour at a vegetable and fruit market in the al-Rashidiya district, a police officer said. The blast killed 12 and wounded up to 37, and also damaged several cars, he added.
A medical official confirmed the casualty figures. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to talk to the media.
No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, but it bore the hallmarks of the Islamic State group. The Sunni extremists, who consider Shiites heretics, swept across northern and western Iraq in the summer of 2014, capturing large chunks of territory and plunging the country into its worst crisis since U.S. troops left at the end of 2011.
Last week, IS killed more than 300 people in two attacks. A massive truck bombing struck a bustling commercial area in a Baghdads predominantly Shiite neighborhood of Karada, killing 292 people one of the deadliest attacks since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. And last week, an attack at a Shiite shrine north of Baghdad killed 37 people. AP
An Air Macau aircraft flying to Bangkok on Monday night returned to the Macau International Airport (MIA) less than one hour into its flight. Contacted by the Times, the Civil Aviation Authority of Macau (AACM) confirmed this.
The airport informed us through a phone call, and no written report has been made yet, said Euphemia Lam, senior officer of public relations of AACM. She added that according to the local aviation regulations, the airline is given 72 hours to send reports in to the AACM after incidents take place.
Some news outlets have reported that the AACM has commenced an investigation into the incident. However, Lam clarified to the Times that no investigation pursued by the AACM is ongoing as no written reports have been delivered yet. She emphasized: We cant investigate until we [have] received the reports.
At the time of the incident, the aircraft was carrying a total of 159 passengers, having departed from the local airport around 10.15 p.m. on Monday night. The aircraft returned to the airport after an abnormal smell was noticed by staff on the plane, according to a report by TDM.
According to Lam, so far the two oral reports received from the related parties indicate that both smoke and an abnormal smell were reported, upon which the captain made the decision to fly back to the city.
After the incident, all passengers were arranged new flights to Bangkok after waiting two hours at the airport.
In April of last year, Air Macau reportedly had a flight carrying 175 passengers flying from Bangkok to Macau which was forced to return to Suvarnabhumi Airport one hour after take-off. Problems in one of the aircrafts engines prevented the plane from climbing to its required cruising altitude. Staff reporter
Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai is spending her 19th birthday in Kenya yesterday visiting the worlds largest refugee camp to draw attention to the global refugee crisis, especially as Dadaab camp faces pressure to close after a quarter-century.
Since last year, Malala has been in contact via Skype with a group of girls in Dadaab refugee camp and is looking forward to meeting them and others, said Taylor Royle, her spokesman.
Kenyas government says Dadaab camp, which hosts more than 300,000 mostly Somali refugees, will be closed in the next year because it has become a security liability. The camp is in eastern Kenya, near its border with Somalia.
The possibility that the camp will be closed brings yet more uncertainty to the refugees, who face the prospect of returning to a Somalia still plagued with conflict. Kenya insists any returns will be voluntary, even as the international community has urged caution and warned against forceful evictions.
Many of Dadaabs refugees have lived most if not all their lives in the sprawling camp, which has been open for 25 years and is a vast settlement of established homes and newcomers improvised huts of thorn branches and other materials.
Malala was expected to be asked about the fate of Dadaab during her visit. She won the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize after militants shot her in 2012 while she was returning home from school in Pakistan, where she was an outspoken advocate for girls education in a highly conservative culture. She now lives in Britain with her family.
Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta has said repatriations from Dadaab will be done in a humane way.
The Kenyan government claims that attacks on Kenya by the Somali extremist group al-Shabab were planned and facilitated in Dadaab camp. Al-Shabab has carried out numerous attacks in Kenya that have killed scores since 2011, when Kenya deployed troops to Somalia against the militants. The Kenyan troops are now part of an African Union peacekeeping force there.
Al-Shabab, which is linked to al-Qaida, has vowed to continue attacking Kenya. Tom Odula, Dadaab, AP
Philippine troops have killed 40 Abu Sayyaf extremists and wounded 25 others in two battlefronts in the first major counterterrorism offensive in the south under the new president, the military said Monday.
Regional military spokesman Maj. Filemon Tan said 22 militants had been killed and 16 others wounded in the assaults that started last week in the jungles of Sulu, a predominantly Muslim province where the ransom-seeking militants are also believed to be holding a number of foreign hostages.
One soldier had been killed in the fighting in impoverished Sulu, about 950 kilometers south of Manila, he said.
On the nearby island province of Basilan, 18 Abu Sayyaf fighters had been killed and nine others wounded in a simultaneous offensive centering in the town of Tipo Tipo, according to Tan.
The thousands of troops waging the assaults were backed by rocket-firing helicopters and artillery fire.
President Rodrigo Duterte, who started his six-year term on June 30, has warned the Abu Sayyaf to stop a wave of ransom kidnappings, saying he would eventually confront them. His military chief said last week a looming offensive would shock and awe the extremists.
While past presidents have regarded Abu Sayyaf militants as bandits thriving on kidnappings for ransom and extortion, Duterte said last week he would not lump them with criminals. These were the guys who were driven to desperation, he said.
The militants, however, have shown no sign of heeding Dutertes call to stop kidnappings, which he said has sullied the countrys image.
Indonesian officials said Monday that suspected Abu Sayyaf gunmen kidnapped three Indonesian fishermen over the weekend off Lahad Datu in the Malaysian part of northern Borneo, the latest among several offshore attacks that have sparked a regional security alarm.
Washington and Manila list the Abu Sayyaf, which has more than 400 armed fighters, as a terrorist organization for deadly bombings, ransom kidnappings and beheadings over the last three decades. AP
The Venetian Macao hosted the inauguration ceremony yesterday for Sands China team members participating in the companys Professionalism Training for Gaming Practitioners.
Co-organized by the Macao Federation of Trade Unions (FAOM), the Labor Affairs Bureau (DSAL), and Sands China Ltd, the training is the first course of its kind in the region for gaming employees.
Six hundred Sands China team members are attending the training that focuses on four core values of professional ethics, professional conduct, professional awareness and professional skills.
The trainees are divided in classes of 30 team members and will undergo 14 hours of training over two full days: which started yesterday and runs through today.
Attending the ceremony, Secretary for Economy and Finance Lionel Leong expressed hope that such trainings would be provided to employees in other industries and enterprises.
The gaming operators should actively create conditions for gaming practitioners to improve their quality and image, he said in his speech.
I hope this program will serve as a pioneer to spearhead other industries and more enterprises toward providing more training courses [] in a bid to optimize the development of Macaus human resources and enhance the overall quality of our local talent, he added.
Sands China Ltd president and chief operating officer, Wilfred Wong, wished the trainees success, adding that training is another way for members to increase and strengthen their caliber, paving an ever-brighter career path ahead of them.
This training initiative is a wonderful opportunity for our team members, he claimed. Professionalism is a critical component for Macaus development as a world center of tourism and leisure.
The president of FAOMs executive board, Chiang Chong Sek, said that the Unions Employment Support Department has held several job fairs in a bid to support employees by incorporating vocational training within job matching sessions.
He added that since the gaming industry structure and employment conditions have changed, they are keen to develop a collaboration between labor, management and the government. Lynzy Valles
Four Bangladeshi workers who allegedly planned attacks linked to the Islamic State group in their own country were sentenced yesterday to jail terms of up to five years.
Prosecutors said the men, who pleaded guilty, had contributed part of their salary to buy food, arms and weapons like knives and pistols to launch attacks in Bangladesh. The amounts ranged from 60 Singapore dollars (USD42) to 1,360 Singapore dollars ($1,000).
They were part of a group detained in April under the countrys Internal Security Act, which allows for detention without trial in cases where public safety is threatened.
The Ministry of Home Affairs has said the groups suspected leader, Rahman Mizanur, possessed guides on making weapons and bombs, as well as radical material from the Islamic State group and al-Qaida that he used to recruit the others.
Rahman, 31, pleaded guilty and was convicted of two charges of financing terrorism by inviting group members to contribute funds and handling the money to facilitate plans.
In sentencing Rahman to five years in jail, District Judge Kessler Soh emphasized that a deterrent sentence and much stiffer punishment is warranted.
He was the mastermind. He was the one who started this whole outfit, the judge said.
Rahman was shackled as he arrived in court and looked down when the sentence was passed, surrounded by heavy police guard.
He had earlier addressed the court in English, putting forth a lengthy plea for mitigation. I wanted to learn my religion. [My friends] showed me the wrong way, the wrong activities, Rahman said. This is my very big mistake sir. I am very remorseful.
The three other men convicted were Miah Rubel, Muhammad Jabath Kysar Haje Norul Islam Sowdagar, and Sohel Hawlader Ismail Hawlader. They were sentenced to 2 years, 2 years, and two years in jail, respectively.
The maximum sentence for financing terrorism is 10 years in jail and a fine of $500,000 Singapore dollars ($370,309).
Two other men have pleaded not guilty and their trial dates have not been set. Two other Bangladeshi men who were detained in April have not been charged and will be dealt with separately, officials have said.
In January, Singapore said it had arrested and deported 26 Bangladeshi construction workers for forming a religious study group that spread the ideologies of al-Qaida and the Islamic State group. Annabelle Liang, Singapore, AP
The refugee crisis and the threat of terrorism in Europe are very much related to one another in the minds of many Europeans, according to a survey conducted across the continent.
Mondays poll by the Pew Research Center found that in eight of the ten European nations surveyed, half or more believe that the influx of migrants increases the likelihood of terrorism in their country. Many Europeans also worry that migrants will become an economic burden and take away their jobs and social benefits.
The survey covered the European countries of Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands, Britain, France, Spain, Italy, Greece, Hungary and Poland. It was conducted from April to May before the British referendum to leave the European Union and the extremist attack at Istanbuls Ataturk Airport last month.
The continent saw an overwhelming influx of more than one million migrants in 2015 with the majority arriving from Muslim countries such as Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. Almost all of them applied for asylum in the EU with Germany and Sweden as their top destinations.
Meanwhile, populist parties all over the continent successfully increased their numbers by campaigning against Muslim migrants, including the National Front in France, the UK Independence Party, the right-
wing Alternative for Germany and Austrias Freedom Party.
Europe has recently suffered several major terrorist attacks, including the assaults by the Islamic State group on Paris and Brussels that killed scores of people. Many of the attackers were European-born, but some are believed to have traveled to Syria to join IS before returning to carry out the attacks a few of them by mixing in with migrant flows to avoid detection on their way home.
Some 76 percent of people surveyed in Hungary said theyre concerned that refugees will increase the likelihood of terrorism in their country, followed by the Polish with 71 percent. Majorities in all other surveyed countries shared this belief with the exception of Spain and France.
Citizens of both Hungary and Poland also worried more than other Europeans that refugees would be a burden to their countries because they would take their jobs and social benefits.
It is important to note that worries about refugees are not necessarily related to the number of migrants coming to the country, the report states.
It said Poland, where 73 percent say refugees are an overall major threat, has had only several thousand asylum applications, while just 31 percent of Germans are generally concerned about refugees after seeing their country register almost 1.1 million asylum seekers last year.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has made the successful handling of the refugee crisis her top priority and has told Germans time and again that we will manage this. The government of Hungary, on the other hand has been an insistent voice against migrants, especially against Muslims.
Germany and Sweden which took in the second most asylum seekers in 2015 are the only countries where at least half say refugees make their nations stronger because of their work and talent.
When asked more generally, whether having an increasing number of people of many different races, ethnic groups and nationalities in their country makes the society a better place to live in, only few Europeans said diversity has a positive impact. At 36 percent, Sweden registers the highest percentage that believes diversity makes their country a better place to live.
The prevailing attitude in France, Germany, the Netherlands and Spain is that diversity is neither a plus nor a minus in term of quality of life. At the same time, 63 percent in Greece and 53 percent in Italy believe that growing diversity makes their country a worse place to live.
These attitudes stand in a stark contrast to the U.S. There, some 58 percent of Americans said having more people of many different races, ethnic groups and nationalities makes the U.S. a better place to live. Only 7 percent said increasing diversity makes life worse, according to a Pew Reserach Center poll conducted in March.
The poll was conducted from April 4 to May 12 among 11,494 people in Europe and the United States. Data from the U.S. was mostly used for comparisons.
The margin of error ranged from 3.1 to 4.6 percent. Kirsten Grieshaber, Berlin, AP
Police in Thailand raided the office of an independent news website yesterday to look for leaflets urging a vote against a draft constitution proposed by the countrys military government. They left empty-
handed without making any arrests.
The raid on the Prachatai websites office in Bangkok was carried out under a search warrant that related it to the arrest two days earlier of one of the websites reporters. Taweesak Kerdpoka had been arrested because he got a ride with three political activists in a vehicle carrying copies of such leaflets. He had been covering their activities in the western province of Ratchaburi.
Prachatai director Chiranuch Premchaiporn said five plainclothes police officers carried out yesterdays office search, while more than 10 military personnel were stationed outside. Police signed a document acknowledging that they found no material they were seeking, she said.
Prachatai often carries stories critical of the government, but the raid seemed more directed at demonstrating the limit of official tolerance for criticism of the charter. Lobbying against the charter is generally prohibited.
The Referendum Act, applicable to the upcoming Aug. 7 vote on the draft charter, calls for a prison term of up to 10 years for anyone who publishes or distributes content about the draft constitution that is deemed to be deviating from the facts, contains rude and violent language, or threateningly discourages voters from participating in the referendum. In practice, it is applied to discourage opponents of the draft.
The army ousted an elected government in May 2014 and has enacted broad measure limiting freedom of expression. The junta has promised to hold an election next year after two postponements. It has not clearly spelled out what will happen if voters reject the draft constitution, which critics call undemocratic.
Chiranuch said the police indicated they suspected the Vote No material they confiscated on Sunday was produced at the Prachatai office.
We have nothing to hide here except for a messy office, so I allowed them to enter after having them identify themselves, she said.
The three activists of the New Democracy Movement and the Prachatai reporter who was with them were freed on bail on Monday.
Arresting peaceful activists is bad enough, but jailing a journalist for reporting on the vote-no campaign is a serious blow to press freedom in Thailand and any hopes that the vote on the constitution will be a fair one, Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said in a news release. With each day the Thai junta is undermining the legitimacy of its own referendum. Natnicha Chuwiruch, Bangkok, AP
A tribunal ruled in a sweeping decision yesterday that China has no legal basis for claiming much of the South China Sea and had aggravated the seething regional dispute with its large-scale land reclamation and construction of artificial islands that destroyed coral reefs and the natural condition of the disputed areas.
Ruling on a variety of disputes the Philippines asked the tribunal to settle between it and China, the five-member panel unanimously concluded that China had violated its obligations to refrain from aggravating the dispute while the settlement process was ongoing.
The tribunal also found that China had interfered with Philippine petroleum exploration at Reed Bank, tried to stop fishing by Philippine vessels within the countrys exclusive economic zone and failed to prevent Chinese fishermen from fishing within the Philippines exclusive economic zone at Mischief Reef and Second Thomas Shoal.
The Philippines, which sought the arbitration ruling, welcomed the decision, and China rejected it outright.
The Philippines strongly affirms its respect for this milestone decision as an important contribution to ongoing efforts in addressing disputes in the South China Sea, Foreign Secretary Perfecto Yasay said in Manila.
He pledged to pursue a peaceful resolution of his countrys territorial disputes withChina.
Chinas state Xinhua news agency said China does not accept or acknowledge the tribunal or the ruling. China has long maintained that the tribunal did not have jurisdiction over the dispute.
The ruling is binding on both countries under a U.N. treaty that both have signed, but there is no policing agency or mechanism to enforce it.
The tribunal said that any historic rights to resources that China may have had were wiped out if they are incompatible with exclusive economic zones established under a U.N. treaty.
It also criticized China for building a large artificial island on Mischief Reef, saying it caused permanent irreparable harm to the coral reef ecosystem and permanently destroyed evidence of the natural conditions of the feature.
China drafted its so-called nine-dash line to demarcate its claims to virtually the entire South China Sea. Manila brought the case because Chinas claims infringe upon its own 200-mile exclusive economic zone.
The dispute centers on waters through which an estimated USD5 trillion in global trade passes through each year and are home to rich fishing stocks and a potential wealth of oil, gas and other resources. The ruling comes as the U.S. has ramped up its military presence in the region.
However a new Philippine leader who appears friendlier to Beijing could also influence the aftermath of the ruling.
China, which boycotted the case, summoned its demobilized sailors and officers for training drills in exercises that apparently started just days ago.
The Peoples Liberation Army Daily newspaper said on social media late Monday that Chinese navy reserves have been called up to perform functional tasks. The post followed online rumors that reservists in central Chinese provinces were called up for an unspecified mission from July 10-22.
In the Philippines, more than 100 left-wing activists marched to the Chinese Consulate in metropolitan Manila, yelling, Philippine territory is ours, China get out. They called their campaign to push China out of the South China Sea, CHexit or China exit now.
Vietnam, meanwhile, accused Chinese vessels of sinking a Vietnamese fishing boat in disputed waters. Nguyen Thanh Hung, a local fisheries executive in the central province of Quang Ngai, said two Chinese vessels chased and sank the Vietnamese boat around midday Saturday as it was fishing near the Paracel islands. The five fishermen were rescued by another trawler around seven hours later.
China has argued that the tribunal has no jurisdiction and says it wont accept the ruling. It has insisted that bilateral talks between Beijing and other claimants is the only way to address the dispute.
Findings of the tribunal are binding on the parties, including China. But the court without police or military forces or a system of sanctions at its disposal cant enforce its ruling, so its potential impact remains unclear. Mike Corder, Jim Gomez, AP
The man who allegedly shot dead a Cambodian government critic over what he claimed was a money dispute is too poor to have loaned the victim USD3,000, his wife said yesterday.
We dont have $3,000 at home. We just have enough for a hand-to-mouth existence, Hoeum Huth, who makes a living selling pork on her bicycle, said in a telephone interview from her village in northwestern Siem Reap province.
Her husband, Oeut Ang, has been in custody in Phnom Penh since Sunday, when he allegedly shot to death Kem Ley, a prominent political analyst and government critic. After he was caught by police in a chase, Oeut Ang said during interrogation that Kem Ley had borrowed $3,000 from him, and that he killed him because he had failed to return the money.
However, opposition parties and Global Witness, a British activist group for which Kem Ley did some work, have suggested a political conspiracy behind the killing.
Asked if she believes that her husband was hired by someone to kill Kem Ley, Hoeum Huth replied: I dont know about this. I am very perplexed as to why he murdered Kem Ley because I have never heard him says that Kem Ley owed him money.
I was shocked when I saw his picture on TV, and they said he was the killer, Hoeum Huth, 45, said.
She said she married Oeut Ang on May 7 after the match was arranged by his mother. She said her husband was a former Khmer Rouge soldier, a former government soldier, a monk for three years and a farm worker in Thailand before joining a local environment nongovernmental organization.
She described Oeut Ang as a good husband who never displayed any violence.
During these two months of our living as husband and wife, he never provoked any problem or used violence against me, she said. He is a quiet man and normally if hes not going to work he stays at home and helps me with housework.
Oeut Ang was brought to a Phnom Penh court yesterday, but the media were kept out. It was not immediately clear whether he had been formally charged.
Kem Leys body is being kept at a Buddhist temple until his funeral on July 19 to allow his admirers and friends to pay their respects.
Prime Minister Hun Sen, often a target of Kem Leys criticism, has promised a thorough investigation into the killing, which came at a time of political tension that began last year with legal and other pressures by the government on the oppositionCambodia National Rescue Party.
Kem Ley was widely known because he was frequently heard on the popular Cambodian-language services of Radio Free Asia and Voice of America, U.S. government-funded services that are among the few independent news sources in Cambodia. He was also frequently quoted in the countrys handful of independent newspapers.
One of his most recent commentaries was about a report issued last week by the London-
based research and advocacy group Global Witness that alleged that Hun Sen and his family have enriched themselves and kept power through corruption.
Kem Ley is the most prominent Cambodian government critic to be killed since trade union leader Chea Vichea in 2004. Sopheng Cheang, Phnom Penh, AP
TWIN FALLS A move by the Planning and Zoning Commission on Tuesday will allow car dealership Wheeler Dealers to expand into the Genghis Khan Mongolian Grill restaurant on Blue Lakes Boulevard.
During a public hearing, commissioners approved the restaurant space for a special use permit to allow the used car dealership to lease and expand into both lots.
Ken Kuntz with Wheeler Dealers said his business plans to occupy both buildings and be able to have more cars on site.
We seem to have hit a goldmine in this area on Blue Lakes, he said.
One of the dealerships two offices would then be used for credit challenged customers, Kuntz said.
No one from the restaurant spoke during the hearing, and a sign on the door noted it would be closed from late June through July 15 and wished customers a happy Fourth of July holiday.
Genghis Khan Mongolian Grill opened in February 2014 after a seven-month delay. The properties are owned by Tony Tse, who became owner of Genghis Khan last year and was developing a plan to attract more customers.
City staff determined there would be no excessive negative impacts to the property. The special use permit was approved unanimously. Commissioner Gerardo Munoz said he believed the lot would work well for that type of business.
Personally, Im going to miss the BBQ, said Chairman Tom Frank.
Also at the meeting, the commission approved proposed changes to a special use permit for a 24-hour daycare center on Eastland Drive.
TWIN FALLS Its been a lengthy process, but a new climbing and fitness facility is nearly ready to break ground in downtown Twin Falls.
Gemstone Climbing, 135 Fifth Ave. S., is hosting a groundbreaking party from 6-8 p.m. Wednesday. The handicapped-accessible, 15,000 square-foot facility will sit on a parcel of ground purchased from the Urban Renewal Agency.
Besides rock climbing, Gemstone Climbing will also facilitate yoga and Pilates classes and on-site physical therapy.
Its been a big project for us, said Hailey Barnes, one of several partners in the locally-owned business.
The Center for Physical Rehabilitation has sought more space for its operations, co-founder Julie Ellis said. It intends to develop specialty classes and programs in a 1,000 square-foot exercise room within the facility. These include its medically-oriented gym, a research-based program that tracks outcomes.
We thought that would be an ideal space to expand, Ellis said.
Barnes said the project has been a long time coming because Gemstone Climbing has coordinated with several companies for design and construction.
Gemstone Climbing anticipates completion by the end of the year, but was still pending a final step in its building permit process as of Tuesday. It plans to officially break ground by the end of the month on a project estimated to cost more than $2.5 million.
JEROME Idaho Fish and Game Commission adopted a fall Chinook salmon fishing season to open Sept. 1 on parts of the Snake, Clearwater and Salmon rivers.
Commissioners approved the fall seasons during their July 7 meeting in Jerome.
The 2016 fall Chinook forecast is 32,000 hatchery and naturally produced fall Chinook returning to the Snake River basin. Last year's actual return was 59,000 fall Chinook.
Fall Chinook fishing on the Snake River will be open from the Washington-Idaho border upstream to Hells Canyon Dam.
Fishing on the Snake River from the Idaho border to Cliff Mountain Rapids (about a mile downstream of Hells Canyon Dam) is scheduled to be open until Oct. 31 but could close sooner depending on the actual number of fish that return and the amount of harvest. The stretch between Hells Canyon Dam and Cliff Mountain Rapids is scheduled to remain open until Nov. 17.
Other areas opening for fall Chinook fishing on Sept. 1:
The Clearwater River, from its mouth upstream to Memorial Bridge. Open until Oct. 31.
Salmon River, from its mouth upstream about three-fourths of a mile to Eye of the Needle Rapids. Open until Oct. 31.
A valid fishing license and salmon permit are required to fish for fall Chinook. Only adipose-clipped salmon may be kept. The daily bag limit is six adult fall Chinook salmon, and the possession limit is 18. There is no season limit on adult fall Chinook.
Only adult fall Chinook (24 inches and longer) must be recorded on the angler's salmon permit. There is no daily, possession or season limits on fall Chinook jacks (those less than 24 inches).
The 2016 Fall Chinook salmon Seasons and Rules brochure will be available at Idfg.idaho.gov/fish/chinook.
TWIN FALLS A jury awarded a Twin Falls couple nearly $4 million in damages after deciding a nurse at St. Lukes Magic Valley Medical Center acted recklessly when she improperly removed a catheter from a womans neck, causing her to have a stroke and permanent brain damage.
According to the original civil complaint filed last February, Joyce Herrett was a patient at the hospital on Christmas Eve in 2013 when a nurse, Marilou Wentz, improperly removed a central venous catheter line which caused Mrs. Herrett to suffer an air embolism and stroke.
The nurses actions were in direct contravention of reasonably safe practices, violated the applicable standard of care and showed reckless disregard for the consequences, the Herretts lawsuit read.
Joyce Herrett was supposed to leave the hospital that Christmas Eve and spend the holidays with family. Instead, the stroke kept her at St. Lukes for more than two months, until Feb. 28, during which time she had to re-learn basic skills like walking and talking.
As a result of the improper removal of the central line, Mrs. Herrett suffered a stroke which caused significant brain damage, the lawsuit said. She has been left disabled and suffering from severe loss of physical and cognitive abilities. Mrs. Herrett spent many weeks hospitalized and endures ongoing rehabilitation and requires round the clock care.
On Friday, following an eight-day civil trial in Twin Falls County District Court, the jury returned its verdict, saying Wentz acted recklessly and that St. Lukes should compensate Joyce Herrett and her husband $3.85 million.
The couples attorney, Jarom Whitehead, said the case was essentially forcing the hospital to pay its own bills after St. Lukes billed the Herretts for the costs they incurred after the stroke.
We feel this was a complete victory and well deserved, Whitehead said. The Herretts have suffered, theyve paid out of their own pockets.
The decision by the jury provided affirmation that (the Herretts) were harmed by reckless conduct, Whitehead said.
St. Lukes was held responsible, the attorney said. Justice was served.
Michelle Bartlome, spokeswoman for St. Lukes Magic Valley, said that based on imaging studies, we realized the stroke was caused by an air embolism, and that more likely than not, a nurse removing the central line did not have Mrs. Herrett positioned flat on her back.
The hospital notified the Herretts of the mistake immediately, Bartlome said.
St. Lukes agrees that Mrs. Herrett is entitled to compensation, Bartlome said. But we believe the jury verdict is excessive, and are preparing to appeal.
Bartlome did not immediately respond to questions of whether the incident led to protocol changes at the hospital or whether Wentz was disciplined.
A Facebook profile for Wentz showed she no longer works at St. Lukes and is now employed as a registered nurse at a dialysis center in Encino, Calif.
As for Fridays verdict, the jury had eight questions to answer about the case after hearing testimony from medical experts and others for a week and a half. They sided with the Herretts on all eight questions.
It was a great result, I cant speak highly enough of the hard work of that jury, Whitehead said. Im very proud of them. They did a good job with a hard set of facts.
First, the jurors had to decide whether Wentz acted recklessly when she removed the catheter from Herretts neck. Out of the 11 jurors, 10 decided her actions were reckless. The same 10 jurors also agreed that a hospitalization in September and October of 2014 was proximately caused by the ... stroke.
The other six questions had to do with specific amounts of money. All 11 jurors agreed St. Lukes should compensate the Herretts $327,520 for past economic damages, which Whitehead said included hospital bills and other medical expenses for things like in-home treatment and rehabilitation.
The jurors awarded the Herretts another $94,484 to cover the costs of the 2014 hospitalization, and $178,000 to make necessary modifications to their home.
Thats basically to make the house handicap accessible, Whitehead said. Joyce was completely independent before the stroke, but now needs constant care.
The biggest sums of money were awarded for future costs. The jury awarded the Herretts $1.4 million for future medical bills, which was a number that took a whole day of testimony to reach, Whitehead said.
As a brain-injury patient, shell require special care for the rest of her life, the attorney said. The jury felt that would cover her bills moving forward.
That dollar figure was reached by considering factors like Herretts life expectancy plus the costs of skilled in-home nursing, care plans and other medical expenses.
The jury also awarded $1.5 million for non-economic damages, which Whitehead explained are the things you cant add up with a calculator, like pain and suffering, disfigurement and the loss of joy in life.
Whats a brain injury worth? How do you put a price on something like that? Whitehead said.
Lastly, the jury awarded Rodney Herrett $350,000 of non-economic damages for loss of consortium, which Whitehead explained is a fancy word for the loss a spouse would suffer in a case like this, like loss of companionship, love or support.
Its putting a price on the priceless, the attorney said. Its the hardest thing a jury has to do.
TWIN FALLS The contract for the regions state-funded mental health crisis center will go to ProActive Behavioral Health, which is run by the chairman of the South Central Behavioral Health Board.
Following the recommendation of a smaller selection committee that reviewed the three applicants, the board voted without opposition Wednesday to give the contract to ProActive, which has offices in Gooding, Twin Falls and Burley. Frank Knight, the SCBH board chairman, is its CEO.
The state of Idaho has funded two crisis centers so far that are already open in Idaho Falls and Coeur dAlene and lawmakers put money in this years budget for one in the Magic Valley and one in the Boise area. The centers take people in who are having mental health crises or substance abuse problems for up to a day, help them out and point them toward resources to get further help. Health care and law enforcement officials have given them credit both with helping people and saving money, since some people who go to the crisis centers would have ended up in jail or the hospital otherwise.
Wednesday, Knight recused himself from the discussion and the vote, and a couple of other board members who will be involved in approving the contract at later stages or overseeing it recused themselves from voting as well. The board voted after almost an hour of discussion, going over the scoring process the selection group used to ensure Knights position didnt bias it.
They didnt go into this with a quick decision, South Central Public Health Director Rene LeBlanc said. They took time on it. They pondered on it.
ProActive scored second on the written portion of its application, with Lifeways, a mental health provider based in Ontario, Ore., coming in first place, but ProActive scored higher on the interview component and had a higher average score overall. 9Cs Inc. scored lowest on both portions.
Knight said after the vote that he kept himself as far from the selection process as possible.
Coming into this meeting, I had no idea what was going to be happening, he said.
The selection committee met several times, and the five people on it scored the applicants on both portions independently, without knowing how the others were scoring them, LeBlanc said. This, he said, ensured peer pressure and group-think didnt enter the scoring process.
We did not know the scoring patterns of our other selection committee members, said Debbie Thomas, who was on the committee.
Scott Rasmussen, with Idaho Department of Health and Welfares Twin Falls office, said that ProActive had the most realistic plan to staff the facility, which he said can be an issue given the shortage of health professionals in the area. Other factors a couple of other board members mentioned were the companys financial stability and location ProActive has an option to buy an old medical office at 560 Shoup Ave. West.
The crisis center here is supposed to open in December.
Knight told the board after the vote that he would strive to provide the best service possible and was confident in his employees.
I know that weve got a lot of work to do, but I want you to know were very, very committed, Knight said.
TWIN FALLS The public comment at Mondays City Council meeting was again dominated by concerns over refugee resettlement, with one speaker accusing council members of failing to keep their oath to uphold the U.S. Constitution and another demanding all their resignations.
Mondays meeting was the fourth in a row where the assault, and Islam and refugee resettlement in general, were pretty much the only topics of public comment.
Lance Earl, a political activist from the Pocatello area who recently started a Magic Valley chapter of his pro-gun rights and gun training group AmendTwo, questioned the Councils dedication to the U.S. Constitution.
What part of the Constitution allows you to allow the federal government to import people into the state, into this city? asked There is none.
Earl said the Constitution does not give the federal government the power to regulate immigration into the states. He also asked the Council why they had not demanded the resignation of police Chief Craig Kingsbury, whose department had been working with the Federal Bureau of Investigation to look in to threats received by some city officials over the case of a 5-year-old girl who was sexually assaulted at the Fawnbrook Apartments on June 2 by three boys from Sudanese and Iraqi families.
The Constitution, Earl said, does not give the federal government policing powers within the states.
If he is going to violate the Constitution of the United States, he is an empty uniform and he should not be here, Earl said.
A movement to shut down the refugee resettlement program in Twin Falls, which is overseen by the federal government and administered locally through the College of Southern Idaho, started last year, and the issue has come again to dominate public comment at City Council meetings since news of the assault came out last month. The two older boys involved, aged 10 and 14, are facing charges in juvenile court.
Mayor Shawn Barigar imposed a five-minute time limit on speakers, with a timer to keep track. While the Council has limited peoples speaking time at hearings before, it doesnt do so as a general practice, or at least hasnt until now.
Barigar said, in response to a question from Terry Edwards, who called on the Council to step down, that he would add the time limit to future Council agendas. While most of the Council members, as is usual during public comment, didnt interact with the speakers, there were some flashes of tension, with people speaking over their allotted time and Barigar and the speakers talking over each other at points.
Edwards said he would continue to call for their resignations.
You need to stand up and resign your position if you cannot justify your oath to office, Edwards said.
Julie Ruf, who like Edwards has spoken against refugee resettlement at previous meetings, invited Council members to attend a talk Brigitte Gabriel, the founder of Act for America, is giving in Twin Falls on Aug. 4.
I would encourage you, as leaders of this community, to listen to the other side, respectfully if youre able, she said.
Shane Brown spoke in favor of refugee resettlement and praised the City Councils handling of things. He condemned people from outside of town who he accused of stirring the pot and using what happened to the girl at Fawnbrook to advance their political agenda.
These people have brought fear and anger and ignorance, he said.
Brown said he was a longtime long gun owner, but was driven to buy a pistol recently due to threats people he knows have received over the Fawnbrook case.
I do not like living in fear, he said. I do not like feeling that I need to own a handgun.
SHOSHONE The Idaho Transportation Department will hold a community advisory committee meeting Thursday to gather additional input about potential future safety improvements for the U.S. 20 and Idaho 75 intersection. Comments from the meeting will be used to further develop safety alternatives for the project.
The meeting is open to the public and will be held at 10 a.m. at the Blaine County Courthouse, 206 1st Ave. South, Suite #300, in Hailey. During the meeting, ITD will present and gather input on potential safety improvements being studied for the Timmerman Junction.
This will be the second meeting of the Timmerman Junction study advisory committee. ITD introduced the study and alternatives at the first advisory meeting in April. A third advisory committee meeting will be held this fall.
Kittelson & Associates Inc. of Boise is leading the study in coordination with staff from ITD District 4 and Blaine County.
To learn more, visit itd.idaho.gov/projects/d4/US20_ID75_IntersectionStudy.
Credit: Natalie MantiniX Ambassadors have teamed up with the Wounded Warrior Project to release a new video for their track "Unsteady." The visual, which is streaming now on YouTube, tells the stories of wounded veterans while the members of X Ambassadors perform their hit single.
"We got our start down in a radio station in Norfolk, Virginia, which is a big naval hub," says frontman Sam Harris in the video. We started off from the very beginning with a very loyal core fan base of veterans and their families. We have received a lot of emails and messages from families whose spouses are overseas or who have been wounded in combat."
"Unsteady" appears on X Ambassadors' debut album, VHS. The band recently released a deluxe version of the album, called VHS 2.0, featuring five bonus tracks.
To find out more about the Wounder Warrior Project, visit WoundedWarriorProject.org.
Copyright 2016, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
From the Idaho-Press Tribune.
OK, members of the Idaho Legislature, this is getting ridiculous.
In previous years, this newspaper has published editorials mocking Idaho law which outlaws the use of aerial fireworks but has a loophole allowing them to be sold here. No attempt, to our knowledge, has been made to do anything about it in the Statehouse. Our calls have been met with yawns and chuckles from your lawmakers.
So whats different about this year? Two houses have burned down.
Thats what.
Oh, sure, there are also those Fourth of July nights where Idahoans lay in their beds until 3 a.m. listening to the sounds of a war zone while they try unsuccessfully to get a little sleep. But thats nothing new.
And sure, there are all of those countless other range fires that have been started because of aerial fireworks. But thats nothing new, either. Happens every year.
And sure, there are all of our pets who are scared witless by the constant sound of explosions for five or six hours straight. But thats nothing new, either.
And lest we forget our valued veterans trying to recover from post traumatic stress disorder who have to endure the sounds of combat right outside their door. Thats nothing new, either.
And what better way to show your patriotism than to scare the living bejeesus out of the folks who have fought for our freedom?
Happy birthday, America!
But those two burned-down houses are the last figurative straw. Ask the families in Boise and Nampa who were kicked out of their homes by inconsiderate lawbreakers just how patriotic they felt as they watched their residences smolder.
Happy birthday, America!
If it hasnt become patently obvious that the Idahoans who are buying those illegal fireworks are taking those waivers they sign promising not to use them here about as seriously as a Bugs Bunny cartoon, you must be blind and deaf.
Breaking news people arent obeying the law.
Lets put it succinctly aerial fireworks are dangerous. Police and firefighters not exactly whom youd call flaming liberals, pardon the pun hate them. And for good reason. Besides the nuisance they cause for neighbors, theyre too big a safety risk.
For those who would try to compare fireworks with firearms and alcohol, theres a major difference. A responsible gun owner who understands his weapon can keep it out of the hands of children and use it safely, with reasonable confidence that nobody will get hurt. You can drink an alcoholic beverage or two without having your senses impaired; just know when to say when.
With aerial fireworks, you have no idea where theyre going to go, where theyre going to land, whether they will have burned out by the time they hit the ground its pure luck. There is no way to safely shoot one off. You simply have no control over what it will do.
And we all know what they do start fires. Not all of them, of course, but enough of them.
Some legislators have indicated hesitance in the past to change Idahos ridiculous loophole because of interstate commerce laws. As consumer fireworks are legal under federal law, interstate commerce allows companies to ship them here.
Still, that hasnt stopped most states from outlawing them. Its time Idaho does the same. Close the loophole, legislators, and close down fireworks stands that sell them here. Make them harder to attain. Increase the legal penalties on those caught setting them off. Law enforcement can make it clear that there will be no more nudge-nudge, wink-wink treatment of violators they will be charged a stiff fine if caught.
And remember, were talking about an Idaho Legislature that loves to defy the feds. Heck, they spend half each session, it seems like, drawing up toothless resolutions telling the feds that they arent the boss of us.
Interstate commerce be darned, ban the aerial fireworks and be done with it.
Yes yes, it will mean a little bit of business wont be done in a business-friendly state. Tough. We dont allow drug pushers to sell dope as long as their customers sign a waver promising they wont smoke it, do we? And arent those drug pushers just trying to feed their families, too?
Perhaps you can help persuade your lawmakers to do something about this. You listened to explosions all night long, so the least your legislator can do is listen to you for a few minutes telling him or her to ban aerial fireworks. Find their numbers in the box above and give em a buzz (some are up for re-election, so you might want to wait until November).
BOISE A federal judge has ruled that the U.S. Forest Service didn't properly consider how exploratory drilling for a potential open-pit molybdenum mine could harm a rare plant found in central Idaho mountains.
U.S. District Judge Edward Lodge in his ruling Monday halting the drilling directed the federal agency to re-evaluate the potential harm to Sacajawea's bitterroot.
About 80 percent of the known population of the small, ground-hugging perennial is in the Boise National Forest where a Canadian mining company says the largest unmined deposit of molybdenum in the world is also located.
The Idaho Conservation League and two other groups that sued welcomed the ruling as a protection for the Boise River watershed.
Vancouver, British Columbia-based American CuMo Mining Corp. didn't return a call from The Associated Press on Tuesday.
President Hassan Rouhani signaled in a televised speech that Iran still has the capability to revive its nuclear program if other parties fail to uphold their part of the deal, signed last year on July 14.
Even though the nuclear agreement is beneficial because it promotes peace and stability, Rouhani said Tehran is completely ready to embark on the program knowing that its violation will harm everyone.
Iran has continuously accused Washington of not honoring its engagement with regards to the nuclear agreement but Hamid Baeidinejad, one of the top Iranian negotiators, said efforts will continue to resolve the remaining issues. Irans supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had warned that they would burn the agreement if the US violates any of its provisions.
Baeidinejad stressed that they will not agree to anything less than the full implementation of the deal while acknowledging that Iran had more expectations on the removal of economic, banking and financial restrictions.
The restrictions, which are yet to be lifted by the US, hamper the flow of foreign investments and business deals.
The nuclear deal has been criticized in several quarters as not fully ending Irans nuclear ambitions, which could lead to a nuclear race in a volatile region. However, US Secretary of State believes that it has helped to change the strategic equation when he recently stated that the deal was reached when Iran was only months away from having enough weapons-grade uranium to build 10 to 12 nuclear weapons, and we were on the cusp of confrontation.
The total process has been relatively satisfactory despite the difficulties that we see in the implementation, Baeidinejad stated.
The nuclear agreement will be a year old on Thursday but it continues to be a fragile agreement with parties tending to have diverse views regarding its interpretation.
Prime Minister Binali Yildirim is pursuing his approach of Turkey needing to increase its friends and decrease its enemies since coming to office in May and his latest statement called for the renewal of ties with Syria.
It is our greatest and irrevocable goal: developing good relations with Syria and Iraq, and all our neighbors that surround the Mediterranean and Black Sea, he stated.
Turkey has been a strong critic of the Syrian regime since the war against President Assads government began in 2011. Ankara severed diplomatic ties with Damascus and has repeatedly stressed that Assad must leave power and cannot be part of a post-war government.
Yildirim argued that to normalize relations with Syria is important because, he said, for the fight against terrorism to succeed, stability needs to return to Syria and Iraq. Turkey has been marred with a wave of terrorist attacks over the past few months some of which having been claimed by rebel Kurdish groups. I am sure that we will return (our) ties with Syria to normal. We need it the prime minister confidently said.
Damascus has not reacted to the Prime Ministers remarks and Turkish officials have claimed that the normalization of ties will not signify a change of policy.
Last week, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced that the path to Turkish citizenship would be open to Syrians who meet several criteria including having no links to terror groups. An estimated 3 million Syrians are living in Turkey, which also serves as a base for Syrian opposition and rebel groups against Assads regime.
Djibouti energy minister on Tuesday said the Horn of Africa nation has inked a $75 million financing agreement with the International Islamic Trade Finance Corporation (IFTC) to buy refined petroleum products.
The deal with IFTC, an offshoot of Saudi Arabia-based Islamic Development Bank, would allow Djibouti to gradually reduce fuel prices and ensure a regular supply of petroleum products, Energy Minister Yacin Houssein said.
The funding is to stabilize and steady prices of refined petroleum products in the event of sharp fluctuations in oil prices on international markets, he said.
The adoption of this project will enable the International Society of Hydrocarbons of Djibouti to accomplish its import mission of oil and oil products at the best prices, he told Reuters.
Last year Djibouti signed an agreement to carry on the construction of a fuel pipeline due to be completed in 2018.
Once completed, the fuel pipeline project, known as Horn of Africa pipeline (HOAP,) will transport diesel, gasoline and jet fuel to the horn of African nation whose annual fuel demand grows every year
The pipeline project is projected to boost energy security and economic development to Djibouti, one of the worlds fast growing economies.
Ugandan opposition leader, Kizza Besigye, was released on bail Tuesday, two months after he was arrested and jailed over treason charges.
A long-standing opponent of President Museveni, Besigye has been repeatedly teargassed, beaten, hospitalized, jailed and accused of rape. He faced treason charges in 2005, but his case was later dropped.
Besigye claims he won the 18 February presidential elections. However, official figures from the Electoral Commission show, veteran leader President Yoweri Museveni won the elections with 60.8% of all the votes cast while Besigye came second after pulling 30.5%.
The vocal opposition leader, who had been under house arrest for much of the time since the poll, was again charged with treason on May 13. Prosecution also alleges that the leader incited people to overthrow the government in Wakiso and Kampala on two occasions (February 18 and May 11).
Besigye requested release on bail on July, 11. Having weighed all the circumstances and factors one after the other, I am inclined to grant bail to the applicant, the High Court judge Wilson Masalu Musene said.
Treason is a capital offence in Uganda, but the death penalty has not been carried out for years.
The London correspondent of critical KBC TV channel was handed Monday two-year prison sentence by an Algiers court for a facebook post deemed offensive towards the Algerian President, Abdelaziz Bouteflika.
Mohamed Talmat, 42, was also fined 1,600 (200,000 Algerian Dinar) for the same charges.
Talmat, who runs a facebook account chiding the regimes deeds and conducts, was reportedly arrested on June 27 in front of his residence in Algiers. Judicial authorities refused to release him on bail.
Talmats lawyer Sidhoum indicated that he would appeal the court decision.
Algerian authorities have been targeting KBC TV for some time. The Director of the channel, Mehdi Benaissa, has been in custody for recording a program at a studio, allegedly outlawed.
Benaissa had been summoned by the state prosecutor for the recording of Ki Hna Ki Nass program; deemed critical of the regime.
KBC TV channel and its owner El Kabar have been under tight scrutiny by authorities who froze last month the purchase of the press group by Algerian business tycoon and regime opponent, Issad Rebrab. The courts final ruling is expected on July 15.
New regulations for labelling milk substitute products in Georgia
Strict rules are being introduced in Georgia which dictate that local producers can no longer label their dairy products with misleading claims such as "with fats similar to cottage cheese or "with fats similar to sour cream and so on.The regulation will come into force from August 1, the Georgian National Food Agency said.Last summer, Georgia announced it was cracking down on misleading labelling of dairy products.From August 2015 the National Food Agency imposed a new norm where dairy products were clearly labelled if they were made from animal by-products.Specifically, food labels on products such as milk, sour cream, yogurt, cottage cheese, butter and other must be clearly labelled if any extra additives were added.If vegetable fats were added to dairy products, producers were obliged to label the products accordingly, such as "with fats similar to cottage cheese or "with fats similar to sour cream and so on.Meanwhile, producers were only allowed to use this type of labelling for a year. From August 2016 producers will be banned from mentioning "milk or "sour cream on their products if it contained anything else other than dairy products.The Georgian National Food Agency said the changes aimed to strengthen food safety and provide the population with more information about what they are eating.Previously, labelling rules were not regulated in Georgia, which meant that dairy food and products with vegetable fats were labelled similarly.
Russia bans transit of European goods imported through Ukraine
In accordance with a presidential decree, a temporary ban has been introduced in Russia effective from July 1 2016, on the transit of Ukrainian goods and on freight traffic from third countries which travel through the territory of Ukraine to Kazakhstan, said the Kazakh National Chamber of Entrepreneurs.The Chamber informed about the decision after a meeting with representatives of Russias Federal Customs Service in Kazakhstan.In particular, the ban is applicable to goods going from Turkey through the territory of Ukraine and goods of some countries of the European Union, with regards to which Russia collects custom duties above zero, as well as the products from the sanctions list.Meanwhile, over the appeal of the Kazakh government, the Russian government may allow the transportation of certain goods for which the ban was introduced.It was previously reported that the decree on the special order of the goods import from Ukraines territory through Russia applies to traffic from Ukraine to Kyrgyzstan.The decree is valid until late 2017.
The News in Brief
Georgia demands an apology from officials who accused Georgian soldiers of involvement in sex abuse Defense Minister
The Ambassador of France to Georgia and representatives of the EU and UN missions to Georgia received a report on the investigative activities carried out by the Georgian side in the Central African Republic. Defence Minister Khidasheli hosted the foreign diplomats together with the members of the investigative team at the MoD. Deputy Defense Minister Besik Loladze and Colonel Nikoloz Agladze, Deputy Chief of General Staff of the GAF, attended the meeting as well, Georgias Defense Ministry reports.
At the meeting, the sides outlined that Georgia is a reliable partner for the EU and makes significant contributions to global security. As Besik Loladze stated, the Georgian government takes pride in the values and standards of the Georgian Armed Forces. In addition, the protection of human rights is a national priority, which is why the Georgian government launched an investigation into the issue in order to ascertain the truth.
We considered the investigation case on allegations of sexual abuse of minors as very important and do our best to be very transparent. Everybody should know the details concerning how inappropriate management may insult in innocent people being accused of serious crimes. Georgia demands an apology from the same officials who accused our troops. It is of the utmost importance that our partners have detailed information on the case and be assured that Georgian soldiers are innocent. This case may become an example that any organization has to act more carefully and not accuse the military of any country without any prior investigation, stated Tinatin Khidasheli.
The investigative team delivered the information to foreign diplomats on the investigative activities in the Central African Republic and negotiations with the local law-enforcement authorities. The team members also familiarized the diplomats with the planned steps in the investigative process.
Ambassador of France to Georgia Pascal Meunier and head of the Political, Press and Information Section of the EU, Dorota Dlouchy-Suliga, expressed their appreciation and thanked the Georgian side for transparency of the investigative process and efforts to ascertain the truth.
It was an important meeting. We appreciate the that the Georgian government conducted the investigation into the issue, because allegations of sexual abuse of minors by soldiers is a very serious problem. This kind of attitude means that the truth had to be put forward. If soldiers are guilty, they should be punished. If they are not guilty, the truth has to be known by everybody, because the reputation of the Armed Forces is at stake. So we are very satisfied to see that the Georgian government is taking this seriously and the transparency with which they are reporting to us, outlined Ambassador Pascal Meunier. (IPN)
CEC rejects referendum bid about gay marriage due to shortfall of signatures
One of the attempts to hold a referendum about same-sex marriage has been rejected by Georgias Central Election Commission (CEC) because the sponsors failed to collect the required 200,000 signatures.
The CECs decision was unanimous. The proposed referendum question was registered on March 28 and the wording was: Do you want to allow same-sex marriage in Georgia?
The sponsors of the proposal were Zurab Toloraia, Giorgi Korganashvili, Kakha Nikabadze, Badri Kvirikashvili, Petre Gogosashvili, Teimuraz Tsiskarishvili and Davit Kuchava. The deadline for collecting signatures was June 30.
CEC has registered another referendum bid related to the same-sex marriage, about whether the Constitution should defined marriage as union between a man and a woman. (df watch)
via @FrancoOrdonez
WASHINGTON -- A group of U.S. lawmakers want to block the Obama administrations efforts to open up the United States airways to flights from Cuba. Citing concerns about Cubas security infrastructure, four members of Congress, including three Republicans and a Democrat, have officially called for a halt to the recently announced commercial flights between the United States and the communist nation until a closer review of security measures at Cubas efforts can be conducted.
"How can this administration guarantee the American people there won't be a security threat on one of those planes? said Rep. Richard Hudson, R-N.C. a former chair of the Transportation Security subcommittee.
U.S. Department of Transportation announced last week that ten cities, including four in Florida, and eight airlines won tentative U.S. government approval to schedule commercial air service between the United States and Havana, Cuba. Last month, the department awarded approval to six airlines to nine other Cuban cities.
The addition of commercial flights to Cuba are seen as one of the biggest steps the White House has taken to loosen the U.S. trade embargo on Cuba since Dec. 17, 2014, when President Barack Obama and Cuban leader Raul Castro announced that they would take steps to normalize relations.
The administration has also eliminated limits on remittances, restored direct mail and allowed American companies to sell to Cuba on credit.
More here.
PABLO Nearly 90 people many sporting shirts reading, restore the range, reserve the resources filled the Johnny Arlee and Victor Charlo Theater in Pablo on Tuesday night for a public meeting on the National Bison Range Transfer and Restoration Act of 2016.
The meeting started with a short lecture on the ground rules of productive conversation and it ended with the public leaving written comments in boxes rather than lining up behind a microphone. Several boxes were placed at various stations where department heads, project managers and legal attorneys were prepared to answer individual questions.
Legal attorneys Shane Morigeau and Brian Upton presented a brief outline of the draft bill, which would restore the management of the bison range to the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes control, while the land would remain under federal trust ownership.
The bison range, currently managed as a National Wildlife Refuge by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, is made up of 18,766 acres located in the center of the Flathead Indian Reservation.
Morigeau said although the bison range was promised to the tribes in the Hellgate Treaty of 1855, it was unlawfully taken after the U.S. government paid $1.56 per acre for the land in 1908. The U.S. Court of Claims later awarded the CSKT more than $230,000 as compensation for the ridiculously small original payment, but Morigeau said tribal members have always believed no amount of money can replace the land taken from their promised home.
Upton said the Restoration Act of 2016 would also require continued public access and would be exclusively managed by tribes solely for the care of bison, wildlife and natural resource conservation purposes. The CSKT also would be given the opportunity to rename the bison range in a way that would reflect its cultural history.
Terry Tanner, a Native American ambassador and Kootenai tribal member, said there shouldnt be any federal attachments to the land at all. It should be turned over fully to the CSKT, Tanner said, because it was taken from them illegally.
Tanner said a lot of people are against the restoration plan for economic and racial reasons.
All people against this are fear driven, Tanner said. Theyre afraid of losing something Congress took and theyre afraid of Native Americans becoming equal socially and economically.
Lake County Commissioner Bill Barron said he isnt against the potential restoration act, but he has concerns, including the loss of tax revenue paid to his county.
Because the bison range is currently managed as a refuge and is located in Lake and Sanders counties, those counties receive tax revenue that they wont get once it is managed by the CSKT. Although the draft bill includes a subsection dedicated to reducing the fiscal impact on the counties by tapering the decrease in payments over five years, Barron said these kinds of reductions add up.
That didnt really make me feel better, Barron said. In five years that money will be gone.
Fish, Wildlife and Services project manager Tom McDonald said FWS will be working closely with the CSKT to broaden partnerships with non-profit organizations dedicated to the kind of habitat protection that isnt allowed under the current management of the bison range.
This bill allows for better, more appropriate and enhanced resources of management, McDonald said.
Public comments are being accepted at bisonrangeworkinggroup.org/ until Friday, July 15, at noon.
Joseph Timothy Kinsey faces a felony charge after prosecutors say he pointed a handgun at another man and threatened to kill him.
Kinsey, 36, was arrested Sunday on a count of assault with a weapon.
According to a court affidavit, a sheriffs deputy responded to a home north of Florence shortly before 3 a.m. on July 10. The homeowner said he and his friends, including Kinseys partner, had been in the yard having drinks around a fire. He said Kinsey drove up to the house, got out of his truck and began to yell, Who is Gavin?
One of the men by the fire eventually said he was Gavin. Kinsey allegedly reached down near his leg and when he raised his hand, he was holding a gun, the home owner said.
Kinsey allegedly chambered a round in the weapon, then told Gavin he was going to kill him. The home owner said he was able to grab the gun and force it down. Kinsey then got back into his vehicle and left.
Kinseys partner told law enforcement that the two are in the process of separating. While she said she did not see the interaction with the gun, she said she was concerned for her safety based on his behavior.
A Montana Highway Patrol trooper found Kinsey near Lolo. He said he didnt want to talk about what had happened. The handgun was found in his truck, and he was arrested. He was released around 9 a.m. Sunday morning after posting his $50,000 bond.
During his initial court appearance on Monday, Justice of the Peace Marie Andersen allowed Kinsey to continue to be released on the bond, but ordered that he stay in Montana, surrender any weapons to law enforcement and have no contact with his alleged victim.
Missoula's fairgrounds belong to the county, but a lot of the city has grown up around them since they opened south of town 102 years ago.
On Wednesday, two weeks before the end of a 60-day public comment period on their future, community conversations will continue on two fronts.
The first session starts at 11 a.m. in front of the Missoula City Council's Committee of the Whole in council chambers on West Pine. At 5:30 p.m., the Missoula Midtown Association is facilitating a discussion in the Home Arts building near the fairgrounds' main entrance.
Both meet to discuss and comment on a preferred alternative to revitalize the 46-acre grounds bounded by South Avenue on the north; Russell Street on the west; Playfair Park and the Missoula Area YMCA on the south; and Stephens Avenue, the University of Montana's Missoula College and Spartan Park on the east.
"I'm pretty unbiased at this point," said Mark Bellon, president of the Midtown Association. "They wanted to present this to our board, and we thought why don't we present it to everybody? Our board will be there, and it'll be the first time they've heard it."
County commissioners Cola Rowley, Stacy Rye and Jean Curtiss received the "guiding concept" plan from the Missoula County Fairgrounds Advisory Committee (McFAC) on May 25 and opened the comment period. That period ends at their Wednesday afternoon public meeting on July 27 technically after 62 days though it's not certain if commissioners will vote on the plan that day.
Wednesday's conversations are part of a six-week blitz to acquaint stakeholders and user groups with the proposal, which lays out the major facilities on the fairgrounds.
Jerry Marks, Missoula county extension agent and chair of the advisory committee, said community councils, livestock groups, service clubs, Glacier Ice Rink administrators and the city's Historic Preservation Committee are among the groups who've heard presentations.
Marks said he'll be meeting with representatives from Missoula County Public Schools, professional rodeo and the YMCA on Wednesday afternoon.
"My style, I guess, is to encourage as much discussion as we can," he said.
The preferred alternative is too general to put a price tag on. It involves changes that would be phased in over a number of years, including construction of a 24,000-square foot livestock center and separate rodeo arena and grandstands, and the destruction of the historic half-mile race track and associated barns and buildings. Open space in the middle of the grounds would create what fairgrounds director Todd Garrett has called a "town square feel."
"Because of (the fairgrounds') location in the center of Missoula, the city and county have a compelling interest to ensure that development ... creates an asset for the entire community an asset that provides service to the community 52 weeks of the year, not just the one week during which the fair is held," city councilman John DiBari wrote in the background report for the Committee of the Whole meeting.
The city and its citizens have "a compelling interest to ensure that development of the fairgrounds reaches its full potential to fit in with and contribute to the surrounding landscape the schools, parks, commercial areas, and residential neighborhoods," the report continued. "Development at the fairgrounds must be sensitive to all the surrounding uses while being able to meet its multiple missions."
The needs include "efficient and effective" circulation through and within the grounds for motorists, cyclists and pedestrians.
"It must be open and inviting for Missoulians to use year-round and not be fenced off from citizens," wrote DiBari, whose Ward 4 includes the fairgrounds.
Bellon, of Territorial Landworks, said all are welcome to the Missoula Midtown Association discussion. Comments will be forwarded to the county commission.
The county invites email comment be made to fairgroundsconcept@missoulacounty.us.
A 28-year-old Missoula man who received a deferral of sentence for dropping and biting a 3-month-old baby in 2013 has been sentenced to 15 years in prison for sexually assaulting a child.
In April, David Vaughan Bruce was charged with felony sexual assault after he told his probation officer he molested a young girl. Bruce told a police officer the behavior started in July 2015, and described several instances between that point and the spring of 2016.
Bruce pleaded guilty to the charge as part of an agreement with prosecutors. Chief Deputy County Attorney Jason Marks said Bruce was set as a tier two sexual offender.
On Tuesday, Missoula County District Court Judge Karen Townsend sentenced Bruce to 25 years in the Montana State Prison with 10 years suspended. He will not be eligible to apply for parole until he completes sexual offender treatment while incarcerated.
When he was charged with the most recent felony, Bruce was already under a deferred sentence for a previous crime involving a child.
In June 2013, Bruce was charged with two felony counts of assault on a minor. According to his court affidavit, Bruce was alone with a three-month-old baby in an apartment when the child started to cry. When he opened the door to put the baby in a crib, Bruce told a detective the child had pushed against him and dropped out of his grasp, landing face-first.
In an attempt to get the baby to stop crying, Bruce said he bit the child on the face. He then informed the childs mother what had happened, and she took the baby to the hospital.
In the 2013 case, Bruce told the detective that he was a person with a monster inside and that he regularly became frustrated when the baby was fussy.
The City Councils Land Use and Planning committee likely will vote Wednesday to decide whether the Historic Preservation Commission erred when it rejected a Bozeman developers demolition permit application for the Missoula Mercantile building.
It could be a pivotal moment for the future of the iconic-yet-vacant downtown structure.
On the agenda for the LUP committees meeting at 1 p.m. is a recommended motion that states:
I move that the City Council find that there were no errors in process or substance on the part of the Historic Preservation Commission relating to its consideration of the demolition historic preservation permit relating to the Missoula Mercantile and affirm the Historic Preservation Commission's findings of fact and conclusions, which denies the demolition permit.
If one of the committee members chooses to make that motion which is likely there will be a vote among the 11 members of the committee, all of whom are also members of the City Council.
If the motion passes, it then would go before the entire City Council at a yet-to-be-determined Monday night meeting.
Because 11 of the 12 council members are on the LUP committee, if at least seven of the members vote to uphold the HPCs decision, it likely would mean the entire council would do the same. (Harlan Wells is the only council member who is not a member of the LUP committee.)
Mayor John Engen has said he would recuse himself from breaking a 6-6 tie because he has advocated on behalf of the developer's proposal. A tie would mean the process would go back to deliberation.
If the motion fails on Wednesday, however, an LUP committee member then can make a motion to allow the committee to begin the process of adopting its own findings of fact. That would mean the City Council members would essentially have to make their own ruling regarding whether the developer has met the criteria for a demolition permit.
The LUP committee has been hearing testimony regarding the developers appeal for the past several months, including a nearly four-hour presentation by HomeBase Montana, the developer, in June.
HomeBase filed for the permit back in March with the goal of deconstructing the historic Merc and building a five-story Custom Residence Inn by Marriott with ground-floor retail space. The HPC denied the permit in early June, saying that, among other things, the owner of the building, Octagon Partners, had not made a "good faith effort" to find an alternative that would result in preserving the building. That is one of the criteria for the demolition permit.
HomeBase immediately appealed the decision to the City Council, saying that the HPC had ignored all findings of fact that showed HomeBase had met the criteria.
One of the major criteria that the LUP has to consider is whether or not denying the application would prevent all reasonable economic use of the property.
JP Williamson, who heads the company that owns the building, Octagon Partners of West Virginia, has argued strenuously that over the past six years, many potential buyers have looked at the building and all have determined that it is not financially feasible to rehab it and still attract a tenant.
The HPC determined in its findings that denying the permit would not prevent all reasonable economic use.
During Monday nights City Council meeting, a public hearing was held to take input on the Mercantile. During the two-hour meeting, the council heard emotional testimony both in support and opposition of the proposal. One man, Daniel Geary, compared HomeBases plan to the land grab that took place against Native Americans during the 1800s.
Jed Zilla, the propertys broker, read a letter on behalf of JP Williamson, the owner of the Merc.
Without approval of the HomeBase plan, the corner of of Front and Higgins will remain vacant, Williamson wrote. Saving the Merc from deconstruction doesnt preserve it. Only a large benefactor or financeable user can do that. If denying the permit is part of a broader community plan to return this location back to active use, no one has told me.
Williamson added that a vote upholding the denial of the demolition permit will only ensure one thing a continued deterioration of the property in the hope that something better comes along.
We can not ignore the fact that no viable option has been presented since Macys moved out of the building over seven years ago, he wrote.
My columns try to call for a common-sense perspective in our government and politics. While I approach things from a progressive or liberal bent, in my comments I try to bring facts and reason to bear. In that vein, I believe the impact of Montanas current medical marijuana legal situation on over 12,000 patients calls for the immediate application of some common sense from our state courts.
First, a brief disclaimer: my daughter and son-in-law own and operate a small medical marijuana dispensary that provides specific help to nearly 100 Montanans just seven-tenths of 1 percent of the 13,640 patients statewide. She tells me that each of their patients has individualized medical needs that are met by use of medical marijuana in specific forms designed to address their individual problems, ranging from glaucoma to rheumatoid arthritis, cancer to epilepsy, Crohns disease to AIDS.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday said that it would not take up a legal appeal of the Montana legal action, just as it does not consider 97-99 percent of the appeals sent its way. That U.S. Supreme Court rejection throws the legal ball totally back into Montanas court system, where some good government common sense needs to be applied.
Earlier this year data from the state Department of Public Health and Human Services showed 13,640 as the statewide number of medical marijuana patients, ranging from 18 to over 90 years old, and an average patient age of 47 years from nearly every county. Those patients were served by 471 medical cannabis providers, ranging from one to over 700 patients. Therein lies the rub and the common sense challenge.
The Feb. 25 Montana Supreme Court decision restricted each provider/dispensary to three patients, effective Aug. 31. The most patients the 471 providers in Montana could provide medication to would then be 1,413 patients, leaving 12,227 patients without a provider. Most likely, many providers will have to close down. What business or medical provider could operate with just three legislatively mandated patients? So the number of unprotected Montanans will likely be even higher more than 12,227 Montanans left hanging, swaying in the wind, come Aug. 31.
That might be the way it is as they say, but there is an intervening fact. Just 70 days later, all Montanans will decide at the ballot box whether or not to reenact a new and improved responsible and accountable administration of our medical marijuana program. Initiative 182 turned in 42,156 signatures to Clerk & Recorders by the deadline, way more than the 24,175 signatures needed and likely to qualify in 40-50 legislative districts (34 districts required). Based upon history (62% voted FOR medical marijuana in 2004) and current strong current support, its likely that every one of those 12,000 plus Montanans ruthlessly thrown off their medicines August 31 will be able to sign up come November.
But, life disruption to what purpose? Thats the common sense challenge. Does this life-altering situation for 12,000 Montanans jolting them in and out of their important medical regimes for 70-90 days seem to be the best way to handle this technical deadline issue. After all, the implementation of this draconian statute has been in limbo for more than five years. Delaying it another 70-90 days to avoid serious disruption in the lives of over 12,000 Montanans seems to be a no-brainer.
Our courts need to enforce the law, but our system has room for the humane administration of justice. District Judge James Reynolds, who now has the case, or the Supreme Court itself, should do the common sense and humane thing and delay the deadline until after the election. Attorney General Tim Fox ought to also apply common sense and compassion not further appeal anything. In fact, he should remove his objection to the current post-election date appeal and show some respect and concern for the 12,000 Montanans who need his help.
In this case, justice delayed will not be justice denied. It will be the demonstration of compassion and common sense by elected officials who ought to know whats right. There is no reason to subject 12,000 of our fellow Montanans with cancer and other debilitating diseases to anything but common sense.
According to political opportunists and anti-public land advocates, good land management is a thing of the past and collaboration has vanished, too. Yet successes exist if you look past the political rhetoric and boondoggle proposals advanced by those whose real effort is to take the public out of public lands. One of those successes is the Blackfoot Clearwater Stewardship Project.
The Blackfoot-Clearwater region is the backyard of western Montana. The public lands surrounding Ovando and Seeley Lake are where countless Montanans go to hunt elk, deer and black bear or fish for native trout. Families have been spending time on these timbered ridges and creek bottoms for generations. Thousands of Montana kids have learned to hunt big game in the wild country of Lolo National Forest and to fish for trout in the waterways of the North Fork of the Blackfoot, Monture Creek and the Clearwater River.
The Blackfoot and Clearwater rivers also provide irrigation water for ranchers and farmers and sustain native cutthroat and bull trout fisheries. The rivers headwaters are located high in the mountains and present some of the best fishing in Montana for anglers hearty enough to reach them. Just last month, thousands of Montanans and tourists flocked to Seeley Lake and Ovando to hit the salmon fly hatch, one of Montanas first chances to sling big bugs at willing trout. Irrigators have collaborated for years with groups like Trout Unlimited to improve fish habitat and water conditions so that traditional family agriculture and native fish both have plenty of room to exist and thrive.
Collaboration is another tradition in the Blackfoot and Clearwater valleys. For more than 10 years, the people who live, work and play here have been working together to end conflict with large carnivores, increase access to public lands and ensure a bright future for the inhabitants of these spectacular valleys people and wildlife alike.
To this end, the Blackfoot Clearwater Stewardship Project is a landscape-driven, locally grown, widely supported tool for sound public lands management. It includes provisions that would permanently conserve important big-game habitat, ensuring that this section of Montanas backyard remains a destination for locals to fill their freezers each fall. Backcountry Hunters & Anglers supports the BCSP for all these reasons. Yet our support is grounded in the fact that the BCSP is the product of diverse interests, including timber, conservation, outfitters, local business, snowmobilers and ranchers, all of whom put aside their differences and forged something that benefits everyone.
A new University of Montana poll shows that 74 percent of Montanans support the Blackfoot-Clearwater Stewardship Project. By joining recreational and timber interests with conservation interests and designating 84,000 acres of public lands as wilderness the BCSP is a proposal that all Montanans can celebrate. Its time for our Montana delegation to finish the good work that was started on the ground in Seeley Lake and Ovando and introduce a BCSP bill in Washington, D.C.
Montanans are tired of gridlock and petty squabbles derailing locally crafted proposals that respect the multiple uses of our shared public lands. The time is now to introduce the Blackfoot Clearwater Stewardship Project and work together toward its passage in 2016. Our fish, wildlife and outdoor heritage all depend on prompt and decisive action.
A business report on Missoula tech companies' frustration with the cost of airfare prompted a chorus of comments on Facebook. Here are a few of the responses to that story:
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Mahlon Manson: It was 50% less out of Spokane when I needed to get to TX last month.
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Lynn Hill Frey: And it's usually cheaper to fly from Billings with better connections, too. I can't believe some of the routing the airlines use for people flying out of Missoula.........you could almost drive faster.
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Nina Alviar: This is also why the major film work is in Bozeman.
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Kristin Page Nei: We desperately need intrastate flights as well especially between Missoula and Billings.
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Todd Stevens: I always want to fly home, but the cost is prohibitive
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Danae Swanson: I couldnt even remotely afford a ticket to go home or anywhere even near it without draining my savings, working 40 hrs a week i might add. So i have to drive 17 hrs every time I want to see my parents. Granted it is from one small town to another, but only 1 state over.
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Pam Johns: I work for a large corporation. Cost of airfare affects willingness to hire in Montana. I travel nationwide. Airfares just don't make sense here.
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Christine M Likes: Please do something about the $$$ not only would it impact the # of companies willing to hire people in MT but increase tourism $$$$ as well.
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Betsy J Eggers: Absolutely!! So expensive!
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Dana Dortch: Try flying out of Bozeman.
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Kay Spencer: Saved enough money flying out of Spokane to New Orleans to pay for one whole ticket!
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Claudia Vogl: Kalispell very pricey too.
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Kristina Tecca: When flying out of MT, I always check surrounding cities that are within about 3 hours from here. Sometime I find Bozeman to be the cheapest and worth the drive. Another time it was Great Falls. When I was living on Bozemen - Missoula was the cheapest. It changes all the time - shop around.
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Jean Faure: No place in MT is inexpensive but fares do vary from city to city by $200-250.
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Rebecca Rohrer: Not just Missoula flying in out of Montana is very difficult
Democrats and Republicans alike are becoming fed up with Hillary Clintons efforts to achieve election to the office of president. Considerable effort is being expended to divert public attention toward charges that, as the Secretary of State, she transmitted thousands of classified messages (100 were classified top secret) over her private, unsecure network.
James Comey, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, has stated on the major TV news networks that, in his opinion, Hillary Clinton is not guilty of criminal conduct (extremely careless behavior) and should not be prosecuted. Comey is quoted by the Associated Press: no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case and no charges are appropriate in this case.
The FBI webpage states that in 1909, Attorney General Joseph Bonaparte issued an order creating an investigative agency in the Department of Justice. Among the FBIs 10 major priorities are: protect the United States from terrorist attack; combat public corruption at all levels; combat major white-collar crime.
The authority to prosecute Hillary Clinton is vested in the attorneys general for the District of Columbia and the grand jury process, which is the procedure that should be followed in this instance. The authority of the FBI and its Director Comey is limited to investigation and reporting. Comey should not taint the grand jury process with a mealy-mouthed and inconsistent opinion.
I believe that all of the fuss over Hillary Clinton's failure to obey our laws regarding protection of top secret information is nothing but a decoy to draw public attention away from her totally incompetent handling of the Bengazi Embassy affair in which she made no effort to prepare the embassy and protect its staff from terrorist attacks, after which she prevaricated all over the map about what she did and did not do.
Charles E. Wright,
Bigfork
BILLINGS - Two volunteers from Billings Animal Rescue Kare are organizing a rally to protest what they view as a light sentence for a Billings man who recently beat a small dog to death.
Anthony James Allen, 21, was sentenced Monday to serve four days in jail the maximum is a year and the maximum fine of $1,000.
He appeared before Billings Municipal Court Judge Sheila Kolar on a charge of cruelty to animals. Kolar also ordered Allen to take an anger management class and banned him from owning an animal for up to a year.
The protest is set for 11 a.m. Wednesday at the Yellowstone County Courthouse. BARK volunteers Nancy Moore and Maggie Sheen are organizing the event, BARK board member Sandy Price said Tuesday.
Price believes there should be stricter punishments for those who abuse animals.
The dog's owner, Katie Viig, said she will be attending the protest. Viig said her dog, Joker, was a Pomeranian, beagle and dachshund mix. Joker was a little more than a year old and was staying at Viig's stepmother's house while Viig searched for a larger home.
Viig said Allen is the older son of her stepfather and was at the house with Joker on Sunday. Allen got angry with Joker after the dog began to bark at him.
Witnesses told investigators that Allen struck the dog at least twice with a cane and then kicked the dog several times while swearing at the dog for barking. Witnesses said they took the dog outside after the attack and it died outside.
When Viig arrived at the house, she said the first thing she saw was Joker lying dead on the porch of the house.
"People should know he did this in front of kids," Viig said. "He shouldn't walk away from it ... I lost my best friend."
Viig said Allen and his girlfriend own their own dog.
Allen must return to court Thursday to arrange payment for restitution to the family, which is to be determined, and for his fine.
GREAT FALLS (AP) The Fort Peck Tribe and Wolf Point-area law enforcement agencies conspired to illegally round up homeless people in July 2013 to prevent them from panhandling during a rodeo and parade weekend, according to a civil complaint filed on behalf of 31 Native Americans.
The lawsuit, filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Great Falls, says up to 50 people including two who are disabled were handcuffed, hauled to jail in crowded vehicles, held in inhumane conditions overnight and released the next day without charges being filed.
The plaintiffs are seeking damages for physical and emotional injuries and civil rights violations resulting from the mass arrest and detention during the Wild Horse Stampede. The complaint names the Wolf Point police chief and city council, two Bureau of Indian Affairs agents, several tribal officials and the Roosevelt County sheriff and county attorney.
"The (tribal) Law and Justice Committee told the police officers. 'Do something about these homeless street people during the Wild Horse Stampede Rodeo,' " Mary Cleland, a tribal court lay advocate who is assisting the plaintiffs, told the Great Falls Tribune. "They didn't even issue any paperwork. They verbally told the captain of the police, 'Get them out of sight. Put them anywhere, and don't charge them.' "
Officers "just went around grabbing people like they were animals," Cleland said.
Floyd Azure, chairman of the Fort Peck Tribal Executive Board, did not immediately return an email from the Associated Press on Wednesday seeking comment on the allegations.
The men and women who were detained were placed into two outdoor recreation areas surrounded by a chain link fence after the jail in Poplar became full, the complaint said.
The detainees did not have adequate food, water, toilet facilities or medical care, the complaint said. The jail's water and sewer system was under repair at the time.
"That day was hot," Cleland said. "People were passing out from heat exhaustion. They were not fed properly and they were not given mattresses or jail uniforms. They went in their street clothes and they just threw them in there like dogs in a chain-linked exercise court exposed to the elements."
Jail staff reportedly tried to mitigate the heat by covering a portion of the exercise yards with large plastic tarps but a thunderstorm tore the tarps and exposed them to rain. The women were eventually held in the detention center overnight while the men were housed in a garage. They were released the next morning.
Cleland said the Bureau of Indian Affairs investigated in April 2014 and found multiple violations, but nothing was done to remedy the abuse. Special Agent Angela King declined to comment on her investigation. BIA spokeswoman Nedra Darling did not immediately respond to an AP request for comment on King's findings.
The complaint said there were people who knew ahead of time of the planned roundup and did nothing to stop it.
Anna Rose Sullivan, city attorney for Wolf Point and the deputy Roosevelt County attorney, told the newspaper she could not comment because she had not seen the lawsuit, but said officials are taking the allegations seriously.
DETROIT Federal investigators looking into electric car maker Tesla Motors' Autopilot system after a fatal crash in Florida are zeroing in on the limitations of the system and how it reacts when obstacles cross its path.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on Tuesday posted a nine-page letter seeking information from Tesla about Autopilot and why it failed to detect a tractor-trailer that crossed in front of a Model S sedan May 7 in Williston, Florida.
Much of the letter seeks information on how the system works at intersections with crossing traffic, but it also asks Tesla to describe how the system detects "compromised or degraded" signals from cameras and other sensors and how such problems are communicated to drivers.
The crash in Williston killed former Navy Seal Joshua Brown, 40, of Canton, Ohio. Tesla, which collects data from its cars via the internet, says the cameras on Brown's Model S sedan failed to distinguish the white side of a turning tractor-trailer from a brightly lit sky and the car didn't automatically brake.
The safety agency also asked Tesla for its reconstruction of the Brown crash, and for details of all known crashes, consumer complaints and lawsuits filed or settled because the Autopilot system didn't brake as expected.
NHTSA said Tesla must comply with its request by Aug. 26 or face penalties of up to $21,000 per day, to a maximum of $105 million.
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The NHTSA letter came as Tesla disclosed that a second crash occurred while at least part of the Autopilot system was operating.
A driver who was heading from Seattle to Yellowstone National Park told a state trooper that his Tesla Model X SUV was on Autopilot when it crashed early Saturday on a rural two-lane road in Montana, the state's Highway Patrol said.
But Tesla said the driver activated autosteer, one of the Autopilot features, and no force was detected on the steering wheel for more than two minutes. If there's no force on the wheel or a sharp turn is detected, the vehicle is programmed to gradually reduce speed, stop and turn on the emergency lights, Tesla said in a statement.
The company said the Model X alerted the driver to put his hands on the wheel, but he didn't do it. "As road conditions became increasingly uncertain, the vehicle again alerted the driver to put his hands on the wheel. He did not do so and shortly thereafter the vehicle collided with a post on the edge of the roadway," the statement said.
It wasn't clear whether the Model X had made a decision to stop at the time of the crash.
Neither the driver nor the passenger was injured in the single-vehicle crash, but there was extensive damage to the passenger side and the car lost a wheel, Montana Highway Patrol trooper Jade Shope said.
The car negotiated a right curve and went off the road, traveling about 200 feet on the narrow shoulder, taking out 13 posts, Shope said.
The trooper did not cite the driver, saying he believed any citation would be voided because of the driver's claim that the car was on Autopilot.
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A spokesman said the agency hasn't determined if a safety defect exists with Autopilot. The information request is a routine step in an investigation, spokesman Bryan Thomas said.
Tesla's Autopilot system uses cameras, radar and computers to detect objects and automatically brake if the car is about to hit something. It also can steer the car to keep it centered in its lane. The company says that before Autopilot can be used, drivers must acknowledge that it's an "assist feature" that requires both hands on the wheel at all times. Drivers also must be prepared to take over at any time, Tesla has said.
Tesla released Autopilot last fall. Some safety advocates have questioned whether the company which says the system is still in "beta" phase, a computer industry term for software testing by customers and NHTSA allowed the public access to the system too soon.
"No safety-significant system should ever use consumers as test drivers on the highways," said Clarence Ditlow, head of the nonprofit Center for Automotive Safety. He said NHTSA lacks the electronic engineers and laboratories needed to keep up with advanced technology such as General Motors air bags or Tesla's Autopilot.
Tesla says Autopilot has been safely used in over 100 million miles of driving by customers and that data shows drivers who use Autopilot are safer than those who don't.
NHTSA's Thomas said he won't comment on specifics of the investigation. The agency does not currently have legal authority to prevent automakers from rolling out features if they meet basic federal motor vehicle safety standards. It is in the process of developing standards for self-driving cars.
The NHTSA investigation, opened June 28, could have broad implications for the auto industry and its path toward self-driving cars. If the probe finds defects with Tesla's system, the agency could seek a recall. Other automakers have or are developing similar systems that may need to be changed due to the probe, which also could affect self-driving car regulations to be unveiled this summer.
In the letter, NHTSA also asked Tesla for details on any modification to the Autopilot system that Tesla has made.
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Matt Volz contributed from Helena.
BILLINGS - At the count of three, classmates and friends of Taeva Hawkins, the 12-year-old girl missing since going swimming Saturday in an irrigation canal, sent their best wishes for their classmates skyward.
About 70 people turned out for a candlelight vigil Tuesday night at Eileen Johnson Middle School organized by Cam James of Lockwood. Taeva's classmates wrote messages on helium-filled balloons, then sent them into the evening sky to honor their friend.
"It's very comforting to know that she had this many friends," said the girl's father, Robert Nelson, who accepted hugs from his daughter's friends and their parents throughout Tuesday's vigil. "So many people have come out to celebrate the beauty of her life."
Hawkins went swimming in the Huntley Project Irrigation District canal Saturday with two other girls. All three attempted to swim through a tunnel in the canal, and the two other girls made it safely through, but Hawkins wasn't seen again.
A search for Hawkins will resume Wednesday morning, Yellowstone County Sheriff Mike Linder said.
"My daughter's light," Nelson told the crowd Tuesday, "will never be extinguished."
Lockwood School Superintendent Tobin Novasio said that counselors were at the middle school Tuesday to meet with about 15 students, along with a handful of staff and parents. Others received help over the phone, he said.
"What's great about Lockwood is that it is part of Billings, but it's a community unto itself," Novasio said.
Novasio attended the vigil along with members of the school board, which had just completed a meeting.
James, the vigil organizer, read from the Bible and prayed for the girl's family and friends.
"We need you now, Lord, to wrap your arms around us so that we will understand," she prayed. "The world seems so unfair right now."
Nelson said he appreciated the community's efforts and its support.
"Taeva had a big faith in Jesus Christ, so this was very encouraging," he said.
Crews from the sheriff's office, the Worden Volunteer Fire Department and employees of the irrigation district began to search for Hawkins on Saturday evening. That same effort, which also included the girl's family and other volunteers, continued Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, Linder said.
"I've got people out there right now. There are still people at the same locations, people walking," Linder said on Tuesday. "We're also working on probably flying on it this morning."
The Wednesday search will be a multi-agency operation that will include rural fire departments, the Department of Natural Resources, Laurel firefighters, K-9 teams, U.S. Water Rescue, the Billings Police Department, Yellowstone County sheriff's deputies, American Medical Response and, possibly, the county's search and rescue team.
Searchers will be staging at the park in Huntley at 8 a.m. Wednesday. Following a briefing and a safety meeting, searchers will be deployed to their respective search areas, Linder said in a Tuesday news release.
"The water is being lowered again, and we will work the tunnel area as well as the entire length of the canal to the clean-out area near Ballantine," Linder said.
The search area is approximately 11 miles long.
"We're going to try to get as much as we can covered tomorrow (Wednesday), and we hope the weather will cooperate," Linder said.
Linder asked that people not involved in the search avoid the area because searchers will be on foot, on ATVs and aboard slow-moving vehicles.
Police reports
WRONG PLATES
Police pulled over a 1993 Buick Century just before noon Tuesday for going 50 mph in a 25 mph zone at Utah and Second streets. Police determined that Adena Stoneman, 52, or Butte, had fictitious tags on her license plates, was driving without current registration or insurance, and had a $10,000 warrant out for her arrest on drug charges out of Lewis County, Idaho. Stoneman was arrested and booked into jail on misdemeanors counts of speeding, driving without insurance and registration, displaying plates belonging to another vehicle, in addition to the Idaho felony drug charge.
DILLON A 49-year-old sheriffs deputy was justified in the shooting death of a Dillon man in November 2015, a jury decided at a coroners inquest Wednesday.
The jury of four women and five men in Dillon district court returned the verdict around 4 p.m., about 10 minutes after testimony from a dozen witnesses including the officer in question: Beaverhead County Sheriffs Deputy Michael Miles.
Andrew Blake, the 22-year-old victim, did not die of criminal means, the jury determined in a unanimous decision.
The jurors saw dramatic body camera and dash camera videos Wednesday morning. The 40-minute-long body-cam video shows Blake telling the deputy who shot him that it wasn't his fault. Miles is seen holding Blake's hand after the shooting and urging him to keep breathing.
Miles shot Blake after stopping him on a frontage road east of Interstate 15 on Nov. 10. Authorities said Blake exited his silver 2010 Chevy Silverado pickup truck, returned to retrieve a rifle and refused to comply with Miles' demands for him to put down the weapon.
Blake died six days later at a hospital in Salt Lake City.
Coroner Ron Briggs presided over the inquest, with evidence presented by County Attorney Jed C. Fitch.
The first witness called to testify was John Sullivan, an agent with the Montana Division of Criminal Investigation, who investigated the deputy-involved shooting. He recalled the late-autumn night was windy, cold and about 7 degrees.
Sullivan showed jurors the bolt-action rifle brandished by Blake.
Utah Assistant Medical Examiner Pamela S. Ulmer testified via remote video link that the bullet's entry wound was to Blake's upper back near the shoulder area. The bullet traveled diagonally from his right side to his left, lodging near the spine. Ulmer testified the bullet "certainly would have" caused immediate paralysis.
Blake's blood alcohol content was three times the legal limit. She said she considered him "intoxicated." The toxicology report also noted caffeine and tobacco-related chemicals in Blake's blood.
Kiel Olson, a friend of Blake's, testified that he visited him the night of the shooting, and said that Blake was very intoxicated. "Basically he said he was going to end his life," Olson testified.
At one point, Olson said, he took Blake's pickup keys and tried to calm him down.
Olson's girlfriend, Niccole Olsen-Epping, said she called 911 to report Blake as a drunken driver after he left in his truck. And a third friend and witness also testified that Blake was drunk and suicidal that evening.
Ryan Otto, 23, a childhood friend of Blake's, had been following the victim out of concern for his well-being. Otto testified that, given the fact that Blake was drunk, it was dark, and he went for his rifle, he thought Miles responded appropriately. "Any officer would have done it," said Otto, whose father is a Great Falls police officer.
During a break in Wednesdays proceedings, Blakes father, Mark Blake of Great Falls, said he was glad Montana has an inquest process and that it brings a level of transparency to the situation. He said it alleviates a lot of concern.
Our family appreciates all the great support and cooperation, he said.
Miles was the final witness called to the stand. The dispatcher had relayed the report of a possible drunken driver who was suicidal. Miles testified that when he saw Blakes parked pickup truck, he had a terrible feeling. After repeated commands to comply, which the young man initially did, Blake returned to his truck and retrieved a rifle.
Ill never forget it, Miles testified, adding that when he saw the rifles barrel things got really real then.
With his back to Miles, Blake began to turn toward the deputy rifle in hand. Miles testified he was out of options and discharged his firearm. He said he thought it was four times, but investigators determined it was seven. One bullet hit Blake.
I desperately wanted him to live, Miles testified. Were helpers and protectors, adding that driving under the influence has a direct impact on public safety.
Audio on the body cam indicates Miles broke down in tears after the shooting, and that he told responding officers he had begged Blake to drop the weapon.
Dillon police officer Joe Horrocks attempted to console Miles saying, its what we do. You did what you had to do. You gotta understand that.
The deputy's job that November night was to stop Blake, Miles told jurors.
Mr. Andrew Blake turned us into something else. I will always wish that he was still here. I know if I could have talked to him I could have helped him, Miles said.
Wednesday, July 13
MILITARY DINNER
The Beaverhead Chapter of Joining Community Forces invites military personnel, veterans and their families to a free spaghetti dinner from 6 to 8 p.m. at St. James Episcopal, 203 E. Glendale, Dillon. Details: Jodie Jolly at 925-3563.
DISASTER PLAN MEETING
Public comments are welcome over the next few weeks on the countys disaster preparation plan and people can weigh in at a meeting set for 10:30 a.m. at the Butte Justice Center, 3619 Wynne Ave. on the Flat.
WAREHOUSE SALE
Habitat for Humanity of Southwest Montana's Donation Warehouse will be open to the public from noon to 4 p.m. The warehouse is across the street from the Uptown Post Office on Galena, on the east side of Dakota St. Look for the big open garage door. Items for sale include: doors, windows, scrap lumber, lighting and plumbing fixtures, cabinets, hardware and more. Cash or check only. Proceeds support local projects of Habitat for Humanity of Southwest Montana.
ANNUAL MEETING
United Way of Butte and Anaconda will hold its annual meeting and appreciation luncheon at noon at the United Way office, 1880 Harrison Ave. (lower level). Details: 406-782-1255 or uwba@bresnan.net.
CONCERT AT SCANDIA
Too Slim and the Taildraggers are celebrating their 30th anniversary this year and will perform in concert at 7:30 p.m. at the Scandia Bar, 537 S. Main in Butte. Tickets are $7.50 and can be purchased at the door.
BROWN BAG LUNCH
The Butte-Silver Bow Public Archives, 17 W. Quartz St., will continue its Brown Bag Lunch series at noon with a presentation by Jim Driscoll on "The Historic and Poetic Prose of Ivan Doig." Bring a sack lunch. Details: 406-782-3280.
KIDS IN THE PARK
The Butte-Silver Bow Parks and Recreation Department's Kids in the Park summer program for kids 7-12 will be at Stodden Park 10 a.m. to noon. Arts and crafts, games, sports, and various children's events will be happening at every session.
CLUBS AND MEETINGS
BUTTE
United Veterans Council meets at 7 p.m. in the American Legion Building.
Butte Sunrise Kiwanis Club meets at 7 a.m. at Perkins Restaurant. Guest speaker will be George Everett, executive director of Mainstreet Uptown Butte.
The Warped Weavers meet 6 to 8 p.m. at the Butte-Silver Bow Public Library, third floor, 226 W. Broadway St. Curious about weaving? Come watch and ask questions; there may be a loom for you to try. Details: 406-782-5784.
Overeaters Anonymous meets at 6:15 p.m. at the Gold Hill Lutheran Church, 934 Placer St. Details: 406-533-5454.
Al-Anon meetings: 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Gold Hill Lutheran Church; 7:30 p.m., Thursday, Sharing and Caring, 1500 Cobban.
DILLON
Dillon Kiwanis meet at noon at the Beaverhead Brewery, 218 S. Montana St., in downtown Dillon. Guest speaker is Rob Micken of the Montana Western TRiO Student Support Services program. Micken, academic advisor and program coordinator of the first-year program, will give a presentation on how the TRiO program helps first-generation college students overcome economic, social and academic boundaries to higher education by assisting with basic college requirements and providing students with needed support.
Combat Veterans, VFW Bill Carroll Post 9040, meet at 7 p.m. at American Legion Hall, 437 E. Glendale, Dillon. Details: Call PJ at 406-683-3590.
Ben Pruchnie/Getty Images(LONDON) -- David Cameron is getting ready to move out.
Outgoing British Prime Minister David Cameron spends his last evening at 10 Downing Street Tuesday night while Home Secretary Theresa May prepares to move in.
Before the official move, Cameron will take his Prime Ministers Questions Wednesday morning and at noon will meet with Queen Elizabeth at Buckingham Palace to tender his resignation.
May, who became the Conservative Party leader after Andrea Leadsom dropped out of the race on Monday, will meet with the Queen who will formally ask her to form a government. She will then give a speech Wednesday afternoon becoming Britains 75th prime minister, the 13th prime minister of Queen Elizabeths reign, and Britain's second female prime minister.
Cameron announced he would be stepping down after the U.K. voted in a referendum to leave the European Union, a campaign he was against. He was originally supposed to remain prime minister for another eight weeks until after the G20 meeting in China in September. His family's London home is currently rented.
Although Cameron's moving out, Number 10's official mouser Larry the Cat is staying. He was adopted by the prime minister in 2011 to address a mouse problem.
Copyright 2016, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
FRUITLAND, Iowa -- The Fruitland Community Lions Club will meet at 7 p.m. Wednesday, July 20, at the Fruitland Community Center.
Susan Day, MCSA Homeless Prevention Navigator, will give a presentation. Agenda items include: Fruitland Fun Day committee report, Fun with Lions update, Summer food program at MCSA update, Donation for MCSA Adopt-a-day, Camp Courageous camperships, and Island United Methodist free books donation.
Anyone interested in learning more about the Lions Club is encouraged to attend. Membership is not limited to Fruitland residents. All area residents are welcome. For more information, contact Wayne Shoultz at 563-264-2373.
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 latest MyBroadband speed test results show that XDSL had the fastest average ADSL download speed over the past month, followed by MTN Business and RSAWEB.
MyBroadbands speed test servers make use of Ooklas platform and are hosted in Teracos vendor-neutral data centres in Johannesburg and Cape Town.
Through NAPAfrica, all network operators at its peering points are provided with a free 1Gbps connection to the MyBroadband speed test platform.
MyBroadband filters speed tests based on network information from Internet service providers to ensure accurate results which reflect real-world conditions.
Test your broadband speed here
Fastest average ADSL speeds
XDSL had the fastest average download speed on ADSL, with an average of 8.19Mbps, followed by MTN Business with 6.09Mbps and RSAWEB with 5.62Mbps.
The table below shows the latest ADSL ISP speed test rankings.
ADSL Speed Test Ranking Rank ISP Download Speed Upload Speed 1 XDSL 8.19Mbps 0.86Mbps 2 MTN Business 6.09Mbps 1.48Mbps 3 RSAWEB 5.62Mbps 0.50Mbps 4 MTN 5.61Mbps 0.54Mbps 5 Internet Solutions 4.27Mbps 0.56Mbps 6 Axxess 3.90Mbps 0.52Mbps 7 Afrihost 3.84Mbps 0.52Mbps 8 Vox Telecom 3.11Mbps 0.53Mbps 9 Telkom 3.08Mbps 0.50Mbps 10 MWEB 3.04Mbps 0.48Mbps
More on ADSL
How much money your ISP really makes from an ADSL account
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Do not do a start-up in South Africa that attempts a combination of: location based, malls, vouchers, and wallet.
That was the warning from Stephen Ballot, chief technology officer for online classifieds site OLX.
Posting on Twitter, Ballot said these start-ups are guaranteed to fail.
It would seem Ballots comment is linked to the recently-announced shopping app MiBrand.
MiBrand is a location-aware app that aims to drive buyers to malls and brick-and-mortar stores.
There have been a number of other apps and businesses that match Ballots description which also fit his prediction.
Most recently is Vodacoms M-Pesa, a mobile wallet service which shut down at the end of June.
Vodacoms location-based social networks and games The GRID and Legend of Echo also didnt gain much traction before being shut down.
More on wallets and location-based apps
WeChat Wallet launched in South Africa
Vodacom shutting down M-Pesa in South Africa
New South African shopping app launched
MXit Wallet details surface
While Tesla vehicles are not currently available in South Africa yet, drivers may be in for a surprise when they see the cars seatbelts.
Thats because none of Elon Muskss cars have red seatbelt buttons instead opting for variants of black, white and tan.
Why have they made the decision to the differentiate from the well-known red? The answer is as simple as because they can, reports Jalopnik.
Red seatbelt buckles are a requirement, but not in America. European seatbelt regulation, in particular ECE R16, states: The buckle release area shall be coloured red. No other part of the buckle shall be of this colour. The corresponding U.S. regulation, FMVSS 209, does not specify a required buckle button color, hence why Tesla is able to use interior color-matched buttons, but only on U.S. spec models.
This means Tesla have likely opted to pay slightly more (as opposed to the cheaper, standard red buckles) to maintain a more elegant interior.
As a result, the Tesla Model 3 may need a bit of spray paint when it eventually makes its way to South Africa.
More gaming news
How to get FTTH to come to your neighbourhood
The best multiplayer PC games of 2016 (so far)
AMD Radeon RX 470 and RX 460 official specifications revealed
WASHINGTON In presenting himself as the "law and order" candidate for president, Donald Trump portrays a nation of lawlessness and disorder.
That grim picture may speak to the visceral fears of voters of a country "out of control," as Trump put it. It does not, though, reflect a trend of declining crime that has been unfolding over 25 years.
Crime figures are a malleable source of information. Depending on what time period is compared, and which crimes are considered, they can be used to tell a tale of progress or setbacks. Here's a look at some of Trump's recent statements, President Barack Obama's very different assertions and how they compare with the facts:
TRUMP: "Crime is out of control, and rapidly getting worse. Look what is going on in Chicago and our inner cities. Not good!" Tweet.
TRUMP: "Violent crime has increased in cities across America." Speech on Monday.
THE FACTS: Violent crime has dropped dramatically since the early 1990s.
According to FBI data , the national violent crime rate last peaked in 1991 at 758 reported violent crimes per 100,000 people. In 2014, the latest year for which full data is available, the rate was 366 per 100,000 people.
Even so, Trump has some statistical support for claiming violent crime is up in big-city America.
The Major Cities Chiefs Association, a nonprofit that works with urban police chiefs, finds that violent crime reported by some urban police departments rose from 2014 to 2015, and homicides alone were up in 44 of the big-city and county police departments, by this count.
One year's results, though, cannot be taken to mean that the overall trend of declining violent crime is changing.
There have been other upticks in violent crime in the past 15 years, even as rates have fallen over the longer period. In both 2005 and 2006, the number of violent crimes reported to the FBI increased 2.3 percent and 3.2 percent respectively. That was followed by five years of declines.
"It is a mistake to say crime is out of control and rapidly getting worse," Darrel Stephens, executive director of the Major Cities Chiefs Association, told AP. "We do have increases in many cities and it should be of concern to people, but the rate is well below the early '90s when it was at its peak."
Said Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum: "I would not say that crime is out of control everywhere or anywhere for that matter, in comparison to where we were 25 years ago."
OBAMA: "It is important to keep in perspective that in places like New York, or Los Angeles, or Dallas, you've seen huge drops in the murder rates." News conference, Saturday.
THE FACTS: He's right about New York but Los Angeles and Dallas saw increases in homicides from 2014 and to 2015, and in the first three months of this year compared with the same period last year, according to the Major Cities Chiefs data. Over time, however, murder rates have fallen drastically in both cities over the past 25 years, FBI data show. Violent crime in those cities also has been on the decline since the early '90s, much like the rest of the country.
Obama did not specify the time period behind his claim.
The FBI's annual Uniform Crime Report, the main source of data on crime, isn't a perfect measure because police departments voluntarily report their numbers and some departments may classify crimes differently. But the decline seen in the FBI's numbers has been mirrored in another nationwide crime measure, the National Crime Victimization Survey published by the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics.
TRUMP: "According to the Chicago Tribune, there has already been more than 2,000 2,000 shooting victims in Chicago alone this year. This epidemic of violence destroys lives, destroys communities and destroys opportunity for young Americans."
OBAMA: "I'm not just talking about mass shootings. I'm talking about the hundreds of people who have already been shot this year in my hometown of Chicago the ones that we just consider routine."
THE FACTS: Trump accurately cited the newspaper's finding that more than 2,100 people have been shot in Chicago this year. Obama appeared to confuse the number of people shot with the number of people who died from shootings more than 240.
But with Chicago homicides starkly rising, Trump and Obama were on solid ground in pointing to the reality that it has been a bloody year in that city.
DALLAS After each fatal shooting of a black man by an officer, President Barack Obama has swiftly spoken out against bad policing, giving voice to the generations of African-Americans who have found themselves at the wrong end of a baton, a snarling dog or a gun.
As much as those words have comforted blacks, they have rankled many of the nation's men and women in blue. Some have described the remarks as a slap in the face, an all-too-quick condemnation before all the facts are in and a failure to acknowledge the thousands of cops who do a good job and routinely risk their lives.
"It would just be nice for him to say 'Hey, I support what you're doing,'" said Scott Hughes, chief of police in Hamilton Township, a suburb of Cincinnati, Ohio. "The president doesn't defend the police. It's very one-sided."
On Tuesday, Obama traveled to Dallas to pay tribute to the five officers who were slain by a sniper at a peaceful protest. The president offered perhaps his strongest words yet of support for law enforcement, calling them heroes who died while preserving a constitutional right.
"Like police officers across the country, these men and their families shared a commitment to something larger than themselves," Obama said.
But for many in law enforcement, Obama's words, while welcome, are greeted with suspicion. Does he really believe it and feel it? They point to perceived slights dating back to his first term, and they believe he has helped stoke the flames of hatred for police.
Soon after Obama took office, police said, they sensed they wouldn't get the same appreciation as shown by his two predecessors, who seemed to have officers' backs.
Under President Bill Clinton, the Crime Bill of 1994 provided money to hire tens of thousands of new police. The image of President George W. Bush gathering with first responders in the rubble of the World Trade Center also sent a powerful message.
Just seven months into Obama's first term, Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates was arrested as he returned home late one night and tried to open his jammed front door. The white officer who responded to a report of a possible break-in arrested him for disorderly conduct.
The incident sparked a debate about racial profiling with Obama saying police had acted "stupidly."
Pinal County (Arizona) Sheriff Paul Babeu, a longtime Obama critic whose jurisdiction sits between Phoenix and Tucson, said the president has undermined law enforcement throughout his tenure by raising issues of race and casting aspersions about officers in highly publicized police encounters.
The Gates incident also irritated Travis Yates, a major with the Tulsa, Oklahoma, police department and editor of lawofficer.com.
"That really was the tell-tale sign of his ideology" against police, Yates said.
The distrust has only deepened with each police shooting of a black man. Officers have seen Obama attend memorial services or send representatives. But until Tuesday, they said, the president had not shown the same outpouring after the death of a police officer.
It's more than just the symbolism that troubles them.
They point to Obama's opposition to providing police with surplus military equipment, which officers generally believe is essential to ensuring their safety and responding effectively to acts of terror or other mass violence. It feels like Obama isn't interested in giving them the tools they need to do their jobs and stay safe.
"His policies, time and time again, put officers back on their heels," Yates said.
For some, the relationship is so frayed that Obama's words of support for law enforcement ring hollow.
"Maybe it's not fair because we look at everything he says and think he's not genuine," Yates said.
FULLERTON Time passes, but there is no closure.
Forty years after a mass shooting at California State University, Fullerton, left seven people dead and two wounded, there is unending grief among the families of the victims.
Paul Paulsen told the Orange County Register that hell never forget smelling gunpowder when he arrived at the campus on July 12, 1976, to learn that his sister Debbie had been killed.
Now 64, Paulson was among speakers set for a Tuesday evening anniversary ceremony at the universitys Memorial Grove.
All of the families of the victims serve life sentences, he said. Were the ones who are suffering. The killer has now lived longer than all of the victims.
Edward Charles Allaway opened fire with a rifle in the Orange County universitys library, killing seven employees and wounding two others. Allaway was found not guilty by reason of insanity and has since been moved around locked mental health facilities across California.
Patricia Almazans father, Frank Teplansky, was among those killed.
You cant have closure, Almazan told the newspaper. It still hurts very much. You cant put a limit on grief.
Paulsen and Almazan said they dont like to refer to Allaway by name. They call him the killer or the mass murderer. They have supported continual efforts by the Orange County District Attorneys Office to keep him locked up.
Allaway is currently held at Patton State Hospital in San Bernardino County, and hes eligible to petition the state for a new sanity hearing. All of his past appeals have been denied.
Paulsen and Almazan vow to be in the audience to represent the killers victims each time his sanity is reviewed.
The 40th anniversary event was organized with help from Orange County Supervisor Todd Spitzer.
Sonoma County Sheriffs deputies have identified two men arrested in Calistoga on suspicion of shooting an armed guard while robbing an armored vehicle at a Chase Bank Tuesday afternoon and confirmed that one of them also allegedly fired at police.
Serge Gutsu, a 24-year-old resident of Antelope, was arrested after a pursuit during which he allegedly fired at an officer with the Calistoga Police Department, Bay City News Service reported.
Gutsu was injured when the vehicle he was in was rammed by Calistoga police, and had to be transported to a hospital after his arrest.
Ivan Morales, a 23-year-old resident of Lakeport, was arrested later Tuesday eveninghiding in a brushy culvert. He was not injured, deputies said.
The search by air and ground officers for the second robbery suspect locked down much of Calistoga for about four hours.
The robbery was first reported around 1:50 p.m. in the area of the Lakewood Shopping Center at 9018 Brooks Road S. in Windsor, according to Sonoma County sheriffs spokeswoman Sgt. Cecile Focha.
Witnesses told responding deputies that an SUV pulled up behind an armored car parked outside of a Chase bank, two masked men got out and shot one of the guards with a long gun. The suspects fled with an undisclosed amount of cash, Focha said.
Deputies were on scene within two minutes, according to the Bay City News report.
The guard was conscious when he was rushed to a hospital, Focha said.
The Sonoma County Sheriffs Office alerted surrounding law enforcement agencies to the suspects description and heard a short time later that Calistoga police had spotted the suspects, Focha said.
Focha said the Sonoma sheriffs helicopter and deputies from the SWAT team responded to assist in the manhunt for the robbery suspects.
The Sonoma County Sheriffs Office is responsible for investigating the armed robbery in Windsor. The Napa County Sheriffs Office is assuming the investigation in Calistoga, Sonoma County deputies said.
The FBI is also assisting in the investigation, Focha said.
Information about the current condition of the guard who was shot will not be disclosed, according to deputies, because that would violate his rights as a patient.
Jamieson Ranch Vineyards Light Horse is more than just a label for wine. It is a metaphor for the winerys unique offering an animal therapy program that has brought light, even magic into the lives of wine lovers, military veterans and children with disabilities.
Visiting Jamieson Ranch, perhaps the Napa Valleys southernmost winery located just north of American Canyon, means getting the chance to meet and pet three miniature horses: Molly, Sweet Jane, and Winnie the Pooh.
The three horses, all rescued from bad homes, are certified therapy animals that shook off the darkness of their early lives to emit a calm, soothing energy that has produced transformational moments for both children and adults.
Their accomplishments include making the catatonic talk and encouraging autistic children to hug.
The horses are at Jamieson Ranch because the owner and president, Bill Leigon, read about someone using miniature horses outside Chicago as therapy animals.
Leigon also had seen with his own eyes how horses helped his son, Christopher, who is autistic, while he was growing up.
I thought, OK, this is cool, were going to do this, said Leigon from his winery office overlooking acres of grape vines and the blonde hills of Jameson Canyon.
He established the Light Horse Foundation, of which the minis, as the horses are commonly known, became a part.
A mutual acquaintance introduced Leigon to Brandy Lipsey, the handler for Molly, Sweet Jane and Winnie the Pooh.
Bill is very big on giving back to the community, said Lipsey. He believes in that. Because of the winerys ranch heritage, he thought it would be good to have miniature horses.
Lipsey was not a specialist in certified therapy minis when they began the program. She did know firsthand about certified therapy animals because her dog, Magnum, a 210-pound English Mastiff, had become one and often visited Vallejos PACE program, an adult day care facility.
She already had Winnie, whom she rescued nearly 20 years ago. But he was not yet a therapy animal, just a longtime part of her farm in Vacaville.
Lipsey knew Winnie, now 27 and blind in one eye, would make an ideal therapy animal due to his unbelievably calm demeanor.
Our little guy, Winnie, Ive actually had people poke him, said Lipsey. Theyre like, Is he real?
Leigon said hes seen Winnie surrounded by clamoring children, little hands all over him, and hes going to sleep.
Its amazing, said Leigon. People light up when they see them. So for me thats what Light Horse is about. Its about bringing light into peoples lives.
From rescue to therapy
Molly and Sweet Jane joined Winnie after Lipsey contacted Angels for Minis Miniature Horse Rescue in Walnut Creek.
She visited the animal rescue organization planning to get just one additional animal for the Light Horse program.
But once she got there, she saw how attached Molly was to Sweet Jane and decided she couldnt separate them by rescuing only one.
Both horses were in need of help and a good home.
They had rot and mold all over them, said Lipsey of Molly and Sweet Jane. They were a mess when we got them.
Angels for Minis would not tell her what had happened to the horses, owing to the confidentiality agreement the organization has with those who turn over the animals.
Their behavior, however, made it clear to Lipsey that they had been abused.
She had to set up cones outside her barn to remind her to walk slowly and quietly before going in to check on Molly. Otherwise, if she entered abruptly, Molly would bolt in the opposite direction and slam herself into the wall out of fear.
Things were different with Sweet Jane, who would get up on her back legs and attack me, said Lipsey. She wasnt afraid. She was downright pissed.
Touching the horses was out of the question at first. But over time, with lots of caring and love, and eventual training provided by Napas LAPS (Loving Animals Providing Smiles), Molly and Sweet Jane were ready to join Winnie at Jamieson Ranch.
When Lipsey first brought the horses to the winery on Friday, Saturday and Sunday afternoons, she kept them outside for visitors to pet.
But then the Jamieson Ranch staff started to complain to Lipsey, telling her they needed therapy as well.
So Lipsey began bringing them inside the three-story winery. The change of scenery proved helpful because it got the horses familiar and comfortable with being indoors and surrounded by lots of noise. They even got adept at riding in elevators so they could reach the tasting room on the second floor.
You kinda get used to seeing a horse come out of the elevator here, Leigon said with a laugh.
From there, and with encouragement from Leigon, Lipsey began taking the horses out into the community, to schools and hospitals throughout the Bay Area as well as the Napa Valley.
Miracle workers
It was at the Veterans Home in Yountville that Lipsey witnessed one of the more remarkable moments that demonstrated how therapeutic the horses can be for people.
One day she walked Molly into the Memory Care Ward, which specializes in patients with Alzheimers or dementia. There, Lipsey spied an elderly man sitting alone on a couch.
She approached him and asked if she could bring Molly over.
The veteran nodded.
Molly came right up to his belly, said Lipsey. The man didnt flinch and began petting the mini.
He was obviously really enjoying this, really enjoying the contact, she said.
Then, Lipsey noticed that all the nurses in the ward were watching, murmuring and pointing in the direction of Molly and the veteran.
Pretty soon he starts talking to Molly, and as soon as he did, I could see four different nurses stations, she said, and theyre popping up. Im thinking, Uh oh. What did I do? Im looking in the back [to see if Molly had had an accident on the floor]. No she hadnt.
The head nurse walked up to Lipsey and whispered in her ear.
The nurse told her that the man had lost the ability to speak years before. When he arrived at the VA hospital, his records showed he hadnt spoken in a very long time.
He talked to this horse for 20 minutes, said Lipsey. He told us all about his childhood, how he and his brother had a horse they rode.
Leigon said the experience revealed the almost magical ability the minis possess to affect people on an emotional, even psychological level.
Theres some kind of communication that goes on there thats pretty amazing, thats pretty special, said Leigon. Its real, and its powerful.
Craig Brown, a recreational therapist who worked nearly five years in the Memory Care Ward, agreed that the minis have had a positive impact on the veterans.
Its pretty powerful the way everyone has some kind of relationship with the horse either from a childhood memory or an experience as an adult, said Brown.
As soon as people see that little horse, they light up, he added. Its pretty evident.
Molly isnt the only horse who has generated magical moments.
Lipsey took her eldest horse Winnie to Jessie Baker Elementary School in Sacramento, which has the distinction of being the first public school in California for children with severe disabilities.
While attending the schools year-end carnival, Winnie attracted the attention of a 6-year-old autistic boy, according to Lipsey.
The boy would walk by the horse, but that was it. His parents kept encouraging him to get closer, but he refused.
Hours later as the event was winding down, Lipsey noticed the boy had returned. This time he approached Winnie, reached out and quickly stroked the horses mane. Then, he darted away.
The brief contact was enough to startle the parents, said Lipsey.
I didnt get it how important it was at first, she said.
The child came back again, and this time to the shock of his mother and father, he embraced Winnie.
The little boy comes up, puts his arms around Winnies neck, Lipsey recalled. The mom starts tearing up, the dad starts tearing up.
He also did something hes never done in his life, the parents told her. He put his face up against Winnies neck.
The parents bawled, said Lipsey.
She asked them why it was so significant.
The mother demonstrated by going up to her son and very gently giving him a hug.
The boy stiffened like a board, according to Lipsey. She said he doesnt want to be touched. He does not like contact.
Jackie Hadley has also seen the positive influence of Molly and Winnie during their visits to Bay Area schools operated by the Anova Center for Education, which specializes in autism.
Hadley, Anovas head of charitable development and community relations, said Lipsey has visited their campuses four different times.
When you see the effect the mini horses have on the kids, said Hadley, its a great thing to watch. Theres so much warmth between them.
They want to hug the horses despite having tactile sensitivities in some cases, she said. I do believe the horse therapy breaks through the barriers. They are very comforting and calming. The kids want to be close to them.
Ive seen how it has transformed kids, and how much they light up, she added. Its so unique, theyre so sweet. They have this unconditional love about them.
In addition to witnessing the horses impact on others, Lipsey herself has enjoyed their warm, invisible wonder. Its one of the benefits that comes from caring for therapy animals.
Its amazing how much stress they can take away from us, and they do it willingly, said Lipsey. If Im upset and I go out to the barn, its like they know. Theyre a little more snuggly. They just know I need them right then.
Napa County voters wont decide the fate of Blakeley Construction near Calistoga this November, but perhaps in 2018.
The county Board of Supervisors on Tuesday declined to create a measure for the November ballot that would allow Blakeley Construction to remain at its long-time site. But Kelly Blakeley said the family would gather signatures itself to create their own measure for June 2018, given there are no 2017 elections.
Were not done, she said after the meeting.
Supervisor Diane Dillon championed the Blakeley cause. But other supervisors had questions, and the deadline for creating a November measure is tight.
Supervisor Mark Luce said the better choice is for the Blakeleys to collect the necessary 3,700-plus signatures to create a measure, rather than the Board of Supervisors doing so.
Blakeley Construction has operated at 310 Franz School Valley Road since the early 1960s. But it doesnt, and never has, conformed with the agriculture zoning on the property, leading to county code enforcement action in 2014.
Last year, Napa County and Blakeley Construction reached an agreement for the business to vacate the Franz Valley School Road site by mid-summer 2018. But Dick and Kelly Blakeley have said theyve been unable to find another Napa County location where they can move the business.
People in Calistoga have expressed concern about the loss of a long-standing family business.
On June 21, Supervisor Diane Dillon asked that the Board consider putting a measure on the Nov. 8 ballot that would allow Blakeley Construction to remain. Only voters in Napa County can make such a decision affecting agricultural land under the countys Measure P land use law.
We did with regard to code enforcement what we had to do, Dillion said. But I think this is the opportunity to do what is the morally correct thing to do.
Dillon said she was a proponent of Measure P and its predecessor, Measure J. But the Blakeleys have become caught by the particulars of the measures, she said.
Others saw it differently. County resident George Caloyannidis said the countys policy of forgiving violators compromises environmental laws.
Napa County continues to be the forgiver, the rewarder, the enabler, he said.
Melissa and Robert Kennedy own land next to Blakeley Construction and previously pressed the county to enforce its zoning laws for the property. Tuesday, Melissa Kennedy opposed the county creating a Blakeley-related ballot measure for November.
Blakeley Construction has been an illegal use since it started, she told supervisors.
What have the neighbors asked Blakeley Construction to do? Melissa Kennedy said. Obey the law.
Dillon said hundreds, if not thousands, of people in Calistoga want to have a voice in the fate of Blakeley Construction.
I feelI knowwhat Im doing here is responding to the community, Dillon said.
County staff recommended against the Board crafting a November ballot measure, saying too little time remains. The Board of Supervisors has until Aug. 12 to place items on the November ballot, but this particular item would also have to go to the Planning Commission.
Dillon made a motion to move ahead with a ballot measure, but the motion received no second and didnt go to a Board vote. But Kelly Blakeley looked upbeat after the meeting.
Were doing it by signatures, she said. We have the community support.
Napa County voters on Nov. 8 will decide whether to approve a quarter-cent sales tax to raise about $8 million annually for watershed and open space protection.
Money would be overseen by the county Regional Park and Open Space District. The tax would have to pass by a two-thirds vote and would expire after 14 years.
On Tuesday, the county Board of Supervisors approved placing what will be called Measure Z on the ballot.
Resident Carol Kunze read to supervisors a list of what the proposed tax is designed to accomplish. She mentioned protecting water quality, preserving open space and biodiversity, maintaining parks and providing open space field trips for school children, among other things.
Whats not to like about this? Kunze said.
Friends of the Napa River President Bernhard Krevet said the group supports the sales tax measure.
I personally have only one comment to make why only a quarter of a cent? Krevet said with a smile.
Representatives from the Napa County Taxpayers Association didnt attend the meeting. But Jack Gray of the group on Wednesday talked about the associations concerns regarding Measure Z.
They (the open space district) have been doing a good job, Gray said. We believe that. But theyve been doing a good job with a limited budget.
To Gray, such fiscal discipline is a good thing. It seems out of line for the district to suddenly bring in $8 million annually with the sales tax, he said.
We dont believe we need to build another separate, bureaucratic empire for the parks and open space people, Gray said.
When seeking a tax hike, government depicts the impact as being small on taxpayers, but for people on limited incomes, these taxes build up and become a burden, Gray said.
Without a tax, the district could still do such thing as manage Bothe-Napa Valley State Park, Moore Creek Park and the Oat Hill Mine Trail, according to a district financial report done last year. But a planned system of county parks, open space and trails could take a century to complete.
With the tax, the district hopes to protect up to 30,000 acres of land. Thats an area twice the size of the city of Napa.
Supervisor Brad Wagenknecht noted the county funds the open space district with a portion of its transient occupancy tax. The county contributes about $800,000 annually.
The district is governed by elected officials from five wards who have dealt responsibly with the county money, Wagenknecht said.
They didnt just decide to wake up in the morning and say, Lets put a tax on, he said. They went through a process and looked at many alternatives on how to continue their good work.
In the June 7 election, Napa County failed to pass a quarter-cent sales tax that would have gone to the county general fund, but had been targeted for a new jail and childrens programs. This general tax needed a majority vote to pass and lost, with 45 percent yes votes and 55 percent no votes.
But the Napa Valley Unified School District passed a property tax for school facilities. This tax needed 55 percent of the vote to pass and received 56 percent yes votes and 44 percent no votes.
A survey done last year for the nonprofit Land Trust of Napa County showed 72.8 percent support for a quarter-cent sales tax measure to fund open space and watershed projects. Thats more than the almost 67 percent thresholdtwo-thirdsneeded to pass such a tax.
Napa County residents and visitors currently pay 8 cents in sales tax for each local dollar spent. The state-wide sales tax of 7.5 cents-per-dollar is bolstered by a local half-cent tax for flood control.
A Measure Z quarter-cent sales tax would raise the local rate to 8.25 percent, though its possible the rate could remain at 8 percent even if Measure Z passes. Thats because a quarter-cent state sales tax passed by California voters in 2012 is scheduled to expire on Dec. 31, barring any last-minute maneuvers by the state.
St. Helena has weighed placing a sales tax on the November ballot to help fund city functions. Such a tax would leave St. Helena with a different sales tax rate than the rest of the county.
Supervisor Mark Luce said the Regional Park and Open Space District has done marvelous and wonderful things since its formation 10 years ago and has more work to do. Encouraging more people go to the countys open spaces creates a greater willingness and collaboration to protect it, he said.
Whats not to like? Luce said.
On Nov. 8, voters will answer that question with regard to Measure Z.
Calistoga Police and the Napa County Sheriffs Office arrested two men suspected in an armed robbery in Sonoma County on Tuesday, one arrest coming after a search that locked down much of Calistoga for about four hours.
Law enforcement officers first located the suspects in Calistoga and detained one man shortly after the reported robbery, which occurred in Windsor in Sonoma County after 1 p.m. But they continued to search for a second man with the help of at least two helicopters, two SWAT teams and dog units until well into the evening.
The second man was found in a creek bed behind Rancho de Calistoga mobile home park just after 7 p.m., police said. He was positively identified by the officer who had the initial confrontation with the suspects in Calistoga.
The Sonoma County Sheriff's Office identified the first suspect as Serge Gutsu, 24, of Antelope. The second man, arrested hours later, was identified as Ivan Morales, 23, of Lakeport
The incident began after a Calistoga police officer located a vehicle on the side of the road matching the description sent out by Sonoma County Sheriffs Office shortly after the robbery, said Capt. Keith Behlmer of the Napa County Sheriffs Office. When the officer pulled up behind the Chevy SUV, Gutsu got out of the vehicle and started shooting rounds at him, Behlmer said. The officer responded by ramming the man with his patrol car.
Gutsu was detained and transported to the hospital. No details on his condition were available.
The officer was not injured, and his identity was not immediately released.
Morales also got out of the vehicle and began running toward the Napa River, Behlmer said.
With helicopters overhead and units on the ground, officers and deputies were seen searching for the suspect with guns drawn.
The men may have been involved with an armed robbery that occurred in the area of the Lakewood Shopping Center at about 1:15 p.m. in Windsor, according Sonoma County Sheriff's spokeswoman Cecile Focha.
Shortly before 3 p.m., after the confrontation with the Calistoga officer, law enforcement set up a perimeter from Tubbs Lane to Petrified Forest Road. Morales was last seen running toward the river., police said
Residents along Mitzi Drive in Calistoga were unable to return home and were offered shelter at the Calistoga Community Center downtown.
Lupe Martinez had gone to the store and was unable get back to her home on Mitzi. She has two daughters, ages 21 and 18, in the house.
"They were scared," she said.
A lot has happened over the last year or so in this area, she said, including a wildfire on Tubbs Lane, the Valley Fire and the resulting flood of evacuees at the Fairgrounds; and a bomb scare at the gas station across the street.
"It seems like everything happens on Mitzi," said Martinez.
Neighbor Lucy Curiel, meanwhile, was at work and was unable to get back home because of the police search. She waited in the parking lot of the nearby Home Plate Cafe for more than three hours before heading to the Community Center.
Police believe the men, masked and armed with a rifle, held up an armored car guard, leaving a security guard wounded and bags of cash gone, The Press Democrat reported.
One man, reportedly a 55yearold, was rushed to Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital with three gunshot wounds, the newspaper said.
The Sonoma County Sheriff's Office said late Tuesday that the man had been released from the hospital, but declined to release his name or detail his condition.
Focha said the arrested men would be booked into custody in Sonoma County. Details of possible charges were not immediately released.
Windsor Police Chief Chris Spallino told the Press Democrat that a Loomis armored car security guard had been shot multiple times while leaving the Chase bank branch. He was carrying at least two bags of money back to the waiting vehicle where one security guard remained inside.
Two men wearing masks jumped from the vehicle, at least one carrying a rifle, and shots were fired, wounding the guard, the chief said. The robbers grabbed the money, got back in the vehicle and drove to the nearby post office where they ditched the vehicle for another vehicle, he told the Press Democrat.
Focha said information from the public was instrumental in locating and identifying the men. She asked anyone with further information to call investigators at 707-565- 2185.
"We grateful for the many citizens who came forward with information and support throughout this rapidly unfolding event," she said in a statement late Tuesday. "From eyewitness tips to bottles of water, the people of Sonoma and Napa Counties were instrumental in bringing these highly dangerous situations to a successful conclusion."
Anne Ward Ernst, editor of The Weekly Calistogan, contributed to this story.
YOUNTVILLE As more than 20 years have come and gone, so have various plans to turn the plain, unremarkable underpass at the south end of Yountville into a work of art and a more inviting gateway for those streaming through the Upvalley resort town.
Those plans will become reality starting this week, when Yountville residents will begin voting on the design of a mural to adorn the twin concrete abutments of Highway 29 over California Drive. A duo of California artists has released four candidates for the art installation, on which locals will cast votes at a public forum Thursday at Town Hall or online at yountvillemural.com from Friday through July 29.
After gaining approval for the artwork from Caltrans, which oversees Highway 29, artists Sofia Lacin and Hennessy Christophel will lay down the twin murals by years end. The installation will be executed in Nova Color, an acrylic paint popular for outdoor artworks because of its light-fast properties, according to Christophel.
Plans for public art at the Highway 29 flyover the main gateway for tourists into town had languished despite the efforts of various Yountville officials and commissions. But in September, the town Arts Commission began recruiting potential mural creators and heard back from more than 40 artists.
After the town selected three finalists from the field, residents at a January open house nominated LC Studio Tutto, a partnership of Lacin and Christophel that has created more than 70 public art installations around the state.
Ahead of the Thursday forum, the Arts Commission on Monday received the first glance at the paintings that may go up below the highway. Although carried out in a range of styles, all of the artworks are meant to reflect the history of the Napa Valleys landscape and vineyards, Lacin told the Arts Commission.
The mural candidates include:
- Influence of the Earth, the most abstract of the designs, with broad horizontal swaths of blue, yellow, red and brown reminiscent of nature bringing us happiness. A quotation by the 19th-century naturalist Henry David Thoreau would appear as a single line on each side of the installation: Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of the earth.
- Vayots Dzor, named for the region of Armenia where a prehistoric cave site has shown evidence of winemaking as early as 4100 BCE. A mix of leaf motifs, earthy colors and reflective metallic lines is intended to show Yountvilles rawness and rugged connection to nature (that) is often hidden behind an elegant and polished presentation.
- The Memory of a Tree, a study in blues and subdued browns depicting the oaks that dominated the Napa Valley when George Yount created the first local Euro-American settlement in the 19th century. The dominance of Yountvilles centuries-old trees is meant to show how many of us are rooted to this land through generations.
- Clay Earth, a pairing of black and red-brown oak and grapevine images reminiscent of ancient Greek black-figure pottery. Reflective gold detailing represents the light patterns created by local landscapes, and the design also includes likenesses of birds native to the valley, according to the artists.
Although arts commissioners had the option of dropping one of the entries and presenting only three to the public this week, they decided to give all of Christophels and Lacins works a full showing. For the people who see these on Thursday, I dont know which way they will lean, but I think theyll be happy, said Commissioner Nancy Gates.
Lacin said Yountvilles commission, which reportedly will pay the duo about $80,000, is rare among their works for the interest and sophistication of the residents who will soon decide on the appearance of their town gateway.
We feel this is a match made in heaven, because this town understands attention to the sensory experience, she said.
david e. brownWe can all be pioneers
Most people familiar with U.S. history recognize that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has a strong connection to pioneer history in the this country.
There are many stories of pioneer families whose tragic situations were met with incredible faith and devotion. There were so many who in their search for opportunities to exercise their religious freedom gave up comforts of homes, friends, and other advantages to seek to live in new communities that could eliminate the discrimination and oppression they felt in Missouri and Illinois.
One such story involves John Linford, his wife, Maria, and their three sons, who made the decision to leave their home in England to journey thousands of miles to join more than 20,000 new members of the church in the valley of the Great Salt Lake.
This couple actually left their fourth son behind, who was serving a mission in Europe. They sold their belongings and took passage in Liverpool aboard the Ship Thornton. Their voyage was difficult, but once they ultimately arrived in Iowa City they joined the ill-fated James G. Willie handcart company.
The harsh weather and difficult travel took their toll on many in the company, including John Lindford. He eventually became so ill and weak that he had to be pulled in a handcart. By the time the company reached Wyoming, his condition had deteriorated significantly. A rescue team from Salt Lake City arrived just hours after Johns mortal journey on this earth ended. He died that same morning the rescue party arrived near the banks of the Sweetwater River in Wyoming.
Was John sorry he had traded comfort and ease from the struggles, privations, and hardships of taking his family to Zion?
No, Maria, he told his wife just before he died. I am glad we came. I shall not live to reach Salt Lake, but you and the boys will, and I do not regret all we have gone through if our boys can grow up and raise their families in Zion. Johns family completed their trek without him. And when Maria passed away nearly 30 years later, she and John left behind a legacy of faith, of service, of devotion and of sacrifice.
Such willingness to suffer, and often die, for ones beliefs is a characteristic of devoted Christians who choose to follow the path of the Savior. To be a pioneer is to be acquainted with sacrifice. Many Christians make significant sacrifices that often are not supported by family members to follow obediently the commitments they make to the Savior to keep his commandments, remember Him, and be forever grateful for the power of the Atonement and His example for all of us.
We of all Christian faiths can all be pioneers in being examples of Christ-like principles, of doing good for others, and by being willing to sacrifice for those things that are both precious and eternal.
Editors note: July 24, 1847 is the day the Mormon pioneers arrived in the Salt Lake Valley in Utah. Dr. David E. Brown is regional Director of Public Affairs, but was formerly the President of the Napa Stake of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
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NSIB seizes $2 million in pot related to county grow
The Napa Special Investigations Bureau confiscated an estimated $2 million worth of marijuana and made two arrests after identifying a large-scale growing operation in Napa County, officials said.
The remote growing operation was found on the 3400 block of Sage Canyon Road between a winery and public lands near Lake Berryessa, NSIB officials said. Agents searching the property on Wednesday found an elaborate set-up including sleeping quarters, a large tractor and nearly 1,000 marijuana plants growing in four large greenhouses, officials said.
The two men who were on the property, Victor Johnsen, 31, of Petaluma and Jared Schuppe, 19, of Wisconsin were arrested and booked at the Napa County jail on suspicion of cultivation of marijuana, possession of marijuana for sale and conspiracy to commit criminal acts.
As the investigation progressed, agents developed information that Johnsen and Schuppe were conspiring with others in San Mateo and Sonoma counties to grow marijuana for profit. NSIB agents served related search warrants at homes near La Honda in San Mateo County and outside of Sebastopol in Sonoma County on Thursday.
Additional evidence of marijuana trafficking was discovered and the potential cash value of the seized marijuana was conservatively estimated at $2 million, officials said.
A few years ago a friend of mine suffered a minor injury at home (quite a bit of blood, but ultimately nothing too serious) and found it necessary to call upon St. Helenas exemplary emergency responders. The fire department was the first to arrive, and afterward my friend marveled at what a pleasure and a relief it was to see so many handsome, competent young men rushing to her aid. Theres something about a man in uniform, she told me the next day, in a dreamy tone of voice.
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Now you or someone you know could become a dashing member of the St. Helena Fire Department, which is seeking a part-time firefighter. The position is paid at an hourly rate of $25, but more important is the opportunity to serve the community. Our firefighters arent technically volunteers, but theyre certainly heroes. Look for the flyer at cityofsthelena.org and email an application, resume and cover letter to mkellog@cityofsthelena.org or to City of St. Helena, 1480 Main St., St. Helena, CA 94574.
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In this weeks local student excels at faraway college file: Joshua Nelson of Angwin was named to the Deans List for the spring semester at Saint Martins University in Lacey, Washington. Joshua earned a GPA of at least 3.5 as he studies business administration. Hats off to Joshua.
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Attention, poetry buffs: Jeremy Cantor will read from his collection Wisteria from Seed at 7 p.m. Thursday, July 21, at the St. Helena Public Library. Jeremy is a native of Connecticut who now lives with his wife in Benicia, where hes working on a second volume of poetry. According to the library, His poems arise from the meeting place of the sounds and rhythms of literature, music, natural history and science. Visit JeremyCantorPoet.com/poems to get a taste of whats in store. Jeremys book will be available for purchase and signing, and the library will serve refreshments. An open mic will follow, so feel free to share your own work.
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Have you ever visited the Louvre, or at least suffered through that insipid Da Vinci Code movie? Remember the famous inverted underground pyramid? Its home to the Carrousel du Louvre, which is where youll soon be able to find paintings by local artist Layla Fanucci. The exhibition opens the weekend of Oct. 22-23. As if thats not enough, Laylas work is also being exhibited at the Walter Wickiser Gallery in New York June 23-Aug. 20. Congratulations to Layla for representing St. Helena on the international art scene.
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In light of last weeks shooting in Dallas, I want to extend my gratitude and warmest regards to the members of the St. Helena Police Department. Its all too easy to forget the risks you face as you carry out your sworn mission to protect us and enforce our laws. Thank you, and may God bless and protect you.
Chinas Bizarre Stereotypes of the United States, Foreign Policy
Carp consumption and Anne Hathaway are not topics one would expect to feature prominently in the worlds most important bilateral relationship. Yet both are among the most common things that Chinese netizens ask about the United States, at least according to the autocomplete feature of Baidu, Chinas most popular search engine. Why doesnt America go back to the moon? This query leads to a few links rooting the decision in the United States evolving national priorities following the end of the space race with the USSR. More common, though, it seems an excuse to indulge in speculation about the presence of alien artifacts on the lunar surface, something common in U.S. conspiracy theory circles as well.
NASA Astronaut Andy Thomas is Still Bashing China On The Job, earlier post
Earlier China posts
An artist who not only knows his audience (USA Today) but also lives, breathes and works right alongside them, Chase Rice is taking the rallying message of his new single Everybody We Know Does to heart and hitting the road this fall to play new music for fans right in their home towns.
Rice, who has headlined four tours and opened for country superstars Kenny Chesney and Dierks Bentley, decided to route his upcoming Everybody We Know Does Tour directly to those who have grown with him and supported him since he was playing dive bars and fields, selecting a number of unconventional tour markets that are home to some of his most rabid fans so he can bring the music to them. The Everybody We Know Does Tour will launch in September, with the first round of dates announced today and more to follow in the coming weeks.
[adinserter block=3] Written by Jeremy Bussey and Travis Denning and set to impact country radio on Monday, July 18, Rices new single has already piqued the ears of fans and critics alike, with Taste of Country calling it a country-rock anthem that grabs you with guitars and keeps you with a unifying message that has the potential to be a career song for Chase Rice.
Fans rallied around Everybody We Know Does en force on social media after the songs June 24 release, with @dabest_11 sharing, @ChaseRiceMusic This is the most excited Ive been in a while for a single & forth coming [sic] album. Sounds like the original Chase Rice. #EWKD and @jennyyernstt declaring, #EverybodyWeKnowDoes is the new small town country anthem @ChaseRiceMusic #ewkd #onrepeat.
When I first heard Everybody We Know Does, I was immediately reminded of all the songs I listened to growing up, the songs my dad and I would listen to out on our farm and it just put me right back at home in those moments, said Rice. Its a message that I needed to hear, and from the feedback weve been getting already, I think fans feel the same way. So thats what this tour is about finding those fans, whether theyve been with me for a while or might be seeing my show for the first time, and experiencing music together in some of those places that mean the most to us.
Rice will launch the Everybody We Know Does Tour in New Haven, Connecticut on September 8, with the first round of dates to be announced as follows:
Thursday, Sept. 8 New Haven, Conn.
Friday, Sept. 9 Jordan, N.Y.
Saturday, Sept. 10 York, Pa.
Thursday, Sept. 15 Jackson, Miss.
Saturday, Sept. 17 Buford, Ga.
Thursday, Sept. 22 St. Petersburg, Fla.
Friday, Sept. 23 Macon, Ga.
Saturday, Sept. 24 Columbia, S.C.
Thursday, Sept. 29 Mescalero, N.M.
Friday, Sept. 30 Flagstaff, Ariz.
Saturday, Oct. 1 Grand Junction, Colo.
Thursday, Oct. 13 Billings, Mont.
Friday, Oct. 14 Missoula, Mont.
Saturday, Oct. 15 Kennewick, Wash.
Thursday, Oct. 20 Huntington, N.Y.
Saturday, Oct. 22 Hampton Beach, N.H.
Friday, Nov. 4 Helotes, Texas
Friday, Nov. 11 Akron, Ohio
Friday, Nov. 18 Dubuque, Iowa
Thursday, Dec. 1 Enid, Okla.
Friday, Dec. 2 Omaha, Neb.
Saturday, Dec. 3 Wichita, Kan.
Thursday, Dec. 8 Springfield, Mo.
For more information or to purchase tickets for the Everybody We Know Does Tour, visit www.chaserice.com or follow on Twitter@ChaseRiceMusic and www.Facebook.com/ chasericemusic.
Come on, folks. Dont you know that you dont mess with Ms. Reba McEntire?
An Oklahoma man learned his lesson when he broke into and stole property from McEntires family ranch last month. Now, Clint Mansell of Lehigh has issued a plea of guilty for theft and was charged with burglary, possession of stolen property, and grand larceny.
Mansell stole approximately $28,000 worth of belongings from McEntires Chockie property, including two air conditioners, an ATV, and tools. The property has been part of the McEntire family for over sixty years, having been purchased by her late father in the 1950s.
[adinserter block=7]
Good afternoon.
We just conducted a meeting of the NATO-Russia Council.
It was a useful meeting with frank and open discussions.
Ukraine was the first item on our agenda. And this is important because Russias actions in Ukraine have undermined Euro-Atlantic security.
Allies and Russia have profound and persistent disagreements on the crisis.
There was not a meeting of minds today.
But it was an opportunity to clarify our positions and to exchange views on the crisis in Ukraine.
Allies expressed the views that they set out at the Summit in Warsaw.
NATO Allies do not and will not recognise Russias illegal and illegitimate annexation of Crimea.
We should all work towards the settlement of the conflict in eastern Ukraine by diplomatic and peaceful means.
Doing this would allow Ukraine to develop free from violent outside interference.
And it would contribute to an overall improvement in relations between NATO and Russia.
We then discussed military activities, transparency and risk reduction.
Everyone around the table today has a responsibility to ensure that our relations are characterised by predictability, confidence and stability.
We have rules for military activities, both bilateral and multilateral.
We have all worked hard to develop them over the years.
We should respect both the letter and the spirit of those rules.
Transparency and risk reduction is particularly important if we are to avoid incidents, accidents and misunderstandings.
So in the spirit of transparency, NATO briefed Russia on the important decisions we took in Warsaw last week to enhance our security.
Russia briefed on the steps they are taking.
Russia also raised a proposal on air safety in the Baltic Sea.
Allies will study this proposal carefully.
I welcome that Russia has signalled that it wants to pursue risk reduction measures.
This is something allies have been advocating for a long time, so I look forward to further discussions on this issue with Russia.
Finally, we discussed the security situation in Afghanistan, including the regional terrorist threat.
Afghan security forces continue to do their job with remarkable resilience and courage.
But challenges remain.
I informed the Council about NATOs decision at the Warsaw Summit to sustain our military presence in Afghanistan beyond 2016 with approximately the current troop levels.
I also reported to the NATO-Russia Council on our commitment to continue to fund the Afghan security forces until 2020.
And I underlined that President Ghani and Chief Executive Abdulla at our Summit in Warsaw reiterated the commitment to reform.
For almost 20-years, the NATO-Russia Council has been an important forum for dialogue.
It is an all-weather forum.
Today we had very useful discussions.
We addressed some of the most important issues on the Euro-Atlantic security agenda.
This shows the value of the NATO-Russia Council.
Dialogue is particularly important in the current circumstances.
Our dialogue will continue.
And with that I am ready to take your questions.
Acting Spokesperson [Carmen Romero]: RIA Novosti.
Q (RIA Novosti): Secretary General, Vladimir [inaudible], Russian News Agency RIA Novosti. What will be the next step in your dialogue, will it be an ambassadorial-level meeting as now or will it be a ministerial one? And will you consider some concrete document in relation to these risk reduction measures? Thank you.
Jens Stoltenberg: We will have new meetings in the NATO-Russia Council and we will address issues like risk reduction transparency, and we will now also look into the proposal put forward by Russia on air safety and also related to transponders in the Baltic Sea region.
We haven't decided a new date for the next meeting and we haven't decided the format of the next meeting. What we decided in 2014, when we suspended the practical cooperation, was that we would maintain the NATO-Russia Council as a platform for political dialogue at ambassadorial level and above, but we haven't made any decisions about the format of the next council meeting.
Acting Spokesperson: Channel One, Russia.
Q (Channel One, Russia): Don't you think it's illogical that NATO pays great attention to unreal Russian threat instead of for example dealing with real danger like ISIS?
Jens Stoltenberg: NATO has to be able to respond to many different challenges at the same time, and at our summit in Warsaw we made important decisions to continue to play a key role in the fight against international terrorism. We've for instance decided to continue our military presence in Afghanistan. Our military operation in Afghanistan is our biggest military operation ever, and the reason why we are in Afghanistan is to fight international terrorism, is to prevent Afghanistan once again becoming a safe haven for international terrorists.
We also decided to step up our support for Iraq, to start to do training inside Iraq to enable Iraq to be stronger in its efforts to stabilize its own country and to fight terrorism. We also decided to do more when it comes to support from NATO to the international coalition fighting ISIL by providing AWACS support to the coalition. And we decided to work more closely with partners in the region like Jordan and Tunisia, building their capacity to fight terrorism and to stabilize their own countries. So NATO is playing a key role in the international efforts to fight terrorism, and we decided to step up our efforts at the Warsaw Summit.
Acting Spokesperson: BBC.
Jonathan Marcus (BBC): Yes, Secretary General, Jonathan Marcus for the BBC. You've mentioned the discussion about the Russian proposals on air safety, transponders and so on, was there any detailed discussion of Russian snap exercises and the need for notification and much greater transparency of short notice Russian military activities?
Jens Stoltenberg: Yes, we addressed exactly those challenges, and the thing is that we already some mechanisms, some documents which ensure transparency and predictability, and one of the main tools is the Vienna Document which regulates how exercises are announced, international observers, and the whole aim of that is to make sure that predictability, transparency is in place when we conduct military exercises, because we have seen that military exercises can be used as an disguise for aggressive actions. For instance, the annexation of Crimea took place in connection with a snap exercise of Russia.
So we strongly support those rules and those guidelines. The important thing is that they have to be respected, both the letter in the agreement but also the spirit. And one of the challenges we have seen recently, or over the past years, is that Russia used some of the loopholes in the Vienna Document to conduct all the snap exercises and thereby they also are able to undermine international inspections of the exercises.
So we are strongly in favour of modernizing the Vienna Document, and NATO allies have put forward in Vienna proposals on how to for instance address snap exercises in the Vienna Document framework. This is of course not negotiated in a NATO framework, this is negotiated in the OSCE framework, but NATO allies are active and they have put forward proposals to strengthen the Vienna Document as a tool for transparency and risk reductions related to military exercises.
Acting Spokesperson: Suddeutsche Zeitung.
Daniel Broessler (Suddeutsche Zeitung): Daniel Broessler, Suddeutsche Zeitung. Could you tell us a little bit more about how the Russian proposals on risk reductions look like regarding for example transponders? And second question, I hear there was a proposal for military-to-military contact, is NATO in a position to agree to that or would decisions have to be changed because this would go beyond political discussions with Russia?
Jens Stoltenberg: Russia proposed a way forward on how we can address issues related to transponders and air safety. We stated clearly that we welcome that Russia is ready to sit down and discuss air safety, transparency, and including transponders, but we also asked for more details, and I think it's up to Russia to describe the details of their proposal but we welcome that Russia is showing more interest in these issues and therefore we will also then look into the proposal and also ask for more details.
I think it is important to understand that transponders of course is important, but it's only one element in the broader picture related to air safety and risk reduction, because the basic thing is of course safe behaviour, is to fly in a safe and professional way, and we have seen some examples of unsafe activity in the air by Russian planes buzzing a US ship in the Baltic, flying close to NATO planes, so the first thing is of course to just address the behaviour of military aircraft in the Baltic Sea.
I would also like to underline that we are constantly looking into how we can make sure that the way we conduct our exercises and our military activities are done in the most predictable and safe way, meaning that NATO planes routinely fly with the transponders on when they fly under NATO command in Europe. Different NATO allies have different practices, partly related also to exercises and some different operational reasons for not always turning the transponders on. Regardless of this, it is important to sit down, to look into the issue, and to find out how we can enhance air safety, especially in the Baltic region.
Acting Spokesperson: Agence France Presse.
Q: [Inaudible].
Acting Spokesperson: Non, Agence France Presse, please.
Q: [Inaudible].
Jens Stoltenberg: Sorry, I forgot, that is also important.
Acting Spokesperson: Okay.
Jens Stoltenberg: Military lines of communication, military-to-military lines of communication, they are open. What we discussed now in a meeting is how we can make sure that they are functioning and that they are used in the best possible way, and there we still have some way to go. So I also welcome that as part of the discussions related to transparency, risk reduction, air safety, also the direct lines of military-to-military communication is now very much on the agenda, and hopefully we can also enhance the way these lines of communication are working and thereby also using them as a tool to increase air safety and transparency.
Acting Spokesperson: So now we move to Agence France Presse.
Q (Agence France Presse): Secretary General, on these lines of communication for the military-to-military contact, what is hampering the efforts to try to revive them and to re-launch these contacts? And were there concrete discussions on how this could be improved? I've heard that the procedures were very heavy, and there's of course the political situation and the military situation, but the procedures are very heavy. Has there been concrete discussions on how this could happen? And would it need another NATO-Russia Council to address the transponders issue, and the air safety, risk reduction issue in the Baltic, or can that be discussed in other fora? Thank you.
Jens Stoltenberg: The issue of air safety, including transponders, which is one element of this broader picture, is something which absolutely can be discussed also in other fora. And I think that it is important to remember that NATO can play a role in Brussels, coordinating our positions, our understanding, related to processes which are taking place for instance in the OSCE context.
So for instance, one of the forums or platforms where it's relevant to discuss issues related to air safety and risk reduction is the OSCE, including the Vienna Document. So therefore NATO can coordinate at least the position of NATO allies related to processes and negotiations that take place in another format in Vienna, in the OSCE framework.
And one of the reasons why that is relevant is that we partly have some tools, some documents and agreements already, and partly because the OSCE framework is broader. For instance, in the Baltic region you have Russia and you have NATO countries which are part of the NATO-Russia Council, but you also have Sweden and Finland, and Sweden and Finland are not part of the NATO-Russia Council, so that underlines the importance of also looking for broader contexts like for instance the OSCE.
Then, ICAO is also an institution which has addressed air safety in different ways and is also relevant. So the issues of where we are going to address it, how we're going to address it, are exactly the issues which we are now looking into to find the best possible way to address the air safety and transponder issue.
Acting Spokesperson: Wall Street Journal.
Q (Wall Street Journal): Mr. Secretary General, the Russian government recently sacked a number of admirals in the Baltic Sea Fleet. Have you seen any change in the dynamics in that region since this change? Did this come up in the meeting at all? And also related, as you're talking about transparency in this region, to what level of access, what level of reporting are you going to do about the battalions to the Russians? What level of transparency on a day-to-day basis might you give them about your actions?
Jens Stoltenberg: The question related to the admirals in the Russian Navy did not come up in the meeting and is not for NATO to comment on that kind of issue. We are transparent on our activities and our presence. We, for instance, briefed on the four battalions we will have in the eastern part of the alliance, in the three Baltic countries and Poland.
The US also briefed on their presence which complement the NATO presence, meaning the US will increase their presence in Europe, and the US briefed on that and increased presence with the European Reassurance Initiative, in addition with what we do in the NATO framework.
We will of course brief and inform and invite international observers, including Russia, to observe our exercises according to all the agreements and standards for inviting international observers, and very often we also them even when we're not obliged to invite when the exercises are not big enough to reach the thresholds, but we also invite very often to even smaller exercises.
So we will be transparent, we strongly advocated this NATO-Russia Council meeting where one of the main items was military activity, transparency and risk reduction, exactly to inform them directly and also be able to answer questions directly on our military presence in the eastern part of the alliance.
Acting Spokesperson: Last question, TV Poland.
Q (TV Poland): Hello, I just wanted to ask you about Russia, especially Russian reaction, especially on your conclusion of NATO Summit, what was the reaction, and how have you, sorry, how have you convinced Russia that it was not against Russia, and was there any discussion after your conclusion about the NATO Summit?
Jens Stoltenberg: We had an open and frank discussion and the atmosphere in the meeting was good, but we didn't agree. Of course, we still see disagreements between Russia and NATO when it comes to the analysis, the assessments of why we are in the situation we are. For NATO it's obvious that the increased or enhanced NATO presence in the eastern part of the alliance is something that is a direct response to the actions of Russia in Ukraine, illegally annexing Crimea. Because before Crimea, before Ukraine, that was not ... an enhanced NATO presence in the eastern part of the alliance was not on our agenda. So there's no doubt that that is something that happens after Ukraine and it was Russia's actions in Ukraine that triggered the presence.
But again, I think especially when we disagree, especially when we see the tensions increase, and especially when we see more military activity, or enhanced or increased risks for incidents and accidents, especially then it is important that we meet, exchange views, explain, clarify, respond to answers, and try to find ways to increase trust and to develop mechanisms, transparency, to avoid incidents and accidents.
Acting Spokesperson: Thank you for coming to this press conference. This is all we have time for.
Jens Stoltenberg: Thank you so much, always a great pleasure.
Olaf Scholz says solution can be found to curb speculative spikes in gas prices
Italy plans to double national gas production to 6 billion cubic meters a year
Mirzoyan and Lavrov discuss preparations for CSTO Collective Security Council
Putin proposes to discuss changing structure of UN and UN Security Council
Pashinyan's wife accompanied in Tavush by mothers of servicemen who died in first and last days of war
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Hungarian PM expresses readiness to buy electricity from Azerbaijan via Georgia
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Armenian Defense Minister and French delegation discuss possibilities of developing defense cooperation
Australia to send 70 soldiers to UK to help train Ukrainian troops
Scholz condemns Turkey's stance questioning Greek sovereignty
Armenian Defense Ministry: Azerbaijan hands over 10 bodies of killed servicemen to Armenian side
Dollar, euro lose value in Armenia
Turkish Central Bank raises inflation forecast for the end of 2022 to 65.2%
U.S. State Department official visits Tsitsernakaberd Memorial Complex in Yerevan
Prime Minister Pashinyan sends letter of condolence to Seyyed Ebrahim Raisi
Secretary of Armenian Security Council and representatives of French Ministry of Defense discuss cooperation prospects
Israel and Turkey to resume defense cooperation
Scholz says solidarity is the only way to deal with the energy crisis
Israeli and Turkish defense ministers meet in Ankara
Turkey to rewrite inflation forecasts again after rate cut
Azerbaijan does not want checkpoint on border with Armenia, it wants only 'corridor'
Putin plans to attend meeting of CSTO leaders
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Estonia urges Rishi Sunak to increase UK defense spending
Moscow perplexed by information about ban to enter Armenia for Konstantin Zatulin and Margarita Simonyan
Armenia PM honors October 27, 1999 parliament tragedy victims
U.S. and Western officials finalize plans to limit Russian oil prices
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Blinken: China has decided that the status quo in Taiwan is no longer acceptable
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Erdogan: We cannot allow 'terrorist organizations' to take the issue of Sweden's membership in NATO hostage
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WASHINGTON, D.C. - The U.S. House Appropriations Committee on Tuesday approved the Fiscal Year (FY) 2017 State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs (SFOPS) Appropriations Bill, which covers assistance to Armenia and the region, the Armenian Assembly of America (Assembly) reported.
The bill maintains Section 907 of the FREEDOM Support Act and includes language for aid to nations hosting Syrian refugees.
The Senate approved version provided $24.1 million in non-military assistance to Armenia as well as called for continued aid to Nagorno-Karabakh.
As Congress finalizes the House and Senate Appropriations Bills, the Armenian Assembly will continue to push for additional assistance to help Armenia cope with the influx of refugees fleeing from violence in Syria, as well as for much needed humanitarian assistance to help Nagorno Karabakh rebuild after the April war launched by Azerbaijan, Assembly Executive Director Bryan Ardouny stated.
Specifically, the SFOPS Report highlighted the need for additional assistance to vulnerable populations in Syria and in neighboring countries, comprised of Syrian refugees, Christians, and other minorities afflicted by the Syrian civil war and persecuted by the Islamic State (ISIS). According to the bill, funds shall be made available for programs in countries affected by significant populations of internally displaced persons or refugees.
The Committee also recommends the expansion of humanitarian programs to ensure services reach these vulnerable populations. In addition, the House has incorporated a section on Genocide Victim Memorial Sites, where funds are appropriated to establish and maintain memorial sites of genocide.
The House Appropriations Bill, similar to the Senate's, maintains Section 907 of the FREEDOM Support Act as well, restating the six customary exemptions for humanitarian and other assistance to Azerbaijan. Section 907 of the 1992 FREEDOM Support Act was enacted to address Azerbaijan's hostile actions against Armenia.
The historic NATO summit in Warsaw will exert a greater influence on global safety, than the current China Sea tensions, Former Australian ambassador to Poland and Cambodia Tony Kevin wrote for The Guardian.
As the author reminded, during the summit the western leaders decided to conduct balanced policy of deterrence and dialogue in relation to aggressive Russia. However, Kevin said that the reality is that they approved the deployment of 4,000 soldiers in the Baltic States and Poland, including possibly in the highly dangerous Suwalki Gap.
According to Kevin, the situation has not been so dangerous for Europe since 1913 or 1939. NATO commanders assure that the situation is under control, but the diplomat has no confidence in this. He fears that hostilities could begin by design or accident, or local provocation by warmongering idiots, that could quickly go nuclear.
Kevin is sure that the West is misled by stories about the Russian aggression. In his opinion, the U.S., the UK and France are now hostage to Polish and Baltic states governments, the maturity and judgment of whose leaders he has no great confidence in.
According to him, the current risky situation is a major failure of foreign policy of U.S. President Barack Obama, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and British PM David Cameron.
Four members of the Armenian Kachotyan family, who were killed in their home on July 9, were laid to rest Wednesday at the cemetery of Vachiani village in the Akhalkalaki Region of the Samtskhe-Javakheti Province of Georgia.
The Armenian News-NEWS.am reporter informed that Armenias Ambassador to Georgia Yuri Vardanyan, representatives of the local governments, and people from several towns and villages in Javakheti attended the burial.
As reported earlier, four members of an Armenian familythe mother, Ofelya, 37, and the three children: Sergey, 5, Asya, 18, and Armine, 13, Kachotyanwere found dead in their home in the aforesaid village in Javakheti, by their neighbors, on July 10.
Javakheti is a predominantly-Armenian-populated part of Georgias southeastern Samtskhe-Javakheti Province.
According to preliminary information, the assailant had killed the mother and her daughters with a blunt instrument, and strangled the boy to death.
The table and chairs of the house were lying on the floor, and the house was sooty with smoke.
The father of the family, Vaghinak Kachotyan, is a migrant worker in Russia.
A newly opened Turkish-Georgian state border runs along the said primarily-Armenian-populated village.
Nodar Akopov, 24, a resident of the same village, is accused of the murder of the Kachotyan family. He confessed to police to having committed the murders, and presented the respective details.
The French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, who is on a two-day visit to Lebanon, met with the leaders of the Christian communities of Lebanon. The Catholicos of the Great House of Cilicia Aram I and the Prelate of the Armenian Prelacy of Lebanon bishop Shahe Panosyan were also at the meeting, reports the Armenian News - NEWS.am based on the information provided by the press service of the Catholicosate of Cilicia.
During the meeting Jean-Marc Ayrault stated that France supports a close relationship with Lebanon, and expressed gratification that Lebanon managed to protect itself from possible dangers. The Minister stressed the importance of more active participation of the Christian communities in the political life of Lebanon.
Aram I noted that Christianity faces serious problems in the region. "Economic challenges, insecurity, terrorism, and emigration began to seriously affect peoples lives. It troubles not only the Christian world. It should be of a concern for the Arab world and Europe as well. The Middle East without Christians will have cultural and economic losses. Moreover, without coexistence of Christianity and Islam, the region will become the center of extremism. Therefore, we expect that France by means of its foreign policy will remind the Arab and Western officials about that danger, " said the Catholicos.
23:29
Authorities in Jammu and Kashmir on Thursday said curfew will be imposed across the Kashmir Valley on Friday as a precautionary measure to maintain law and order.
District Magistrates issued the orders for imposition of curfew in their respective areas of jurisdiction this evening and the order will come into effect from the morning, anofficial spokesman said.
The spokesman said no vehicular movement will be allowed except for medical emergency vans.
The mobile telephone network will also be snapped around this midnight to prevent rumour mongering, a police official said.
The mobile Internet services are already suspended in the Valley since Saturday.
Violent protests erupted in the state after the killing militant Burhan Wani by security forces in an encounter.
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Two policemen were also injured in the clash which was triggered when a police party raided a militant hideout in Okara district, Xinhua news agency quoted a senior police official as saying.
The police and intelligence personnel conducted a joint operation, he said.
The injured policemen were taken to a nearby hospital.
Police said that during the joint operation with intelligence personnel they recovered arms and ammunition from the hideout of the militants, who are reported to be from Al-Qaeda militant group. The house was sealed for further investigation.
--IANS ss/py/dg
( 122 Words)
2016-07-13-14:20:01 (IANS)
Chennai (Tamil Nadu), July 13 (ANI-Newsvoir): SRM University, with their motto 'Learn, Leap and Lead', stays true to that very spirit of innovation. On July 13 and 14, the university is hosting India's first ever technical summit, where some of the brightest minds in the nation will come together to discuss important issues and arrive at solutions for a number of problems the world would be facing in the future. The summit is being held at the Kalyan Hometel in Vandalur. The T Summit would be attended by seventeen of India's top ranked institutions, including various Indian Institutes of Technology such as IIT Kanpur, IIT Hyderabad, IIT Madras and IIT Gandhi Nagar and National Institutes of Technology like NIT Calicut, NIT Rourkela and NIT Raipur. The highly ignited young minds would be deliberating on the topic of'Young Innovation', something which would surely pave the way for a better tomorrow. A summit of this importance could only be overseen by someone who knows the importance of innovation in everyday life. Part of a very special guest panel for the T Summit, Dr. Avinash Chander, former advisor to the Minister of Defence at the DRDO and Prof. Atul Gurtu, head of the Indian team to carry out the LC experiment at CERN, would also be present as the Chief Guest and the Guest of Honour respectively. With the ultimate aim of carrying out vigorous discussions over a span of two days, including a round table conference of idea sharing with invigorating agendas like providing a conducive platform for innovation for all students equally; bridging the gap between industrialists and researchers through the fests; instilling social and environmental responsibility among innovators and creating a platform for effective collaboration between technical fests towards nation building. The opening address was presented by the public relations organizer of the fest Aaruush and the welcome address by the secretary. The inaugural address was given to the participants by the Chief Guest Dr. Avinash Chander whereas Mr. Atul Gurtu presented the key note address.(ANI-Newsvoir)
Wealthy U.S. investors are holding record cash balances out of fear that the U.S. presidential election will wreak havoc on their retirement accounts, a senior UBS Group AG executive said.Bob McCann, who chairs the Swiss bank's Americas division, said in an interview this week that clients are confident about the economy but hesitant to invest because the Nov. 8 election seems so unpredictable. Although the U.S. stock market hit a new high this week, many clients would rather sit on the sidelines than risk the kind of losses they faced in 2008, he said."Historically, individual investors define risk as, 'How much volatility can I live with in my portfolio?'" McCann told Reuters ahead of a UBS event in Hartford, Connecticut, on Monday evening."The definition has changed to, 'How much money can I afford to lose permanently?'"The event, featuring two former U.S. Senate majority leaders, was intended to calm clients' nerves about the election. Unpredictable and sometimes fiery rhetoric from candidates has given them reason to worry.A tweet from presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in September sent biotech stocks crashing.Republican candidate Donald Trump has promised to dismantle financial reform laws, force Canada and Mexico to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, and slap steep tariffs on Chinese and Mexican imports.A UBS survey of 2,200 high net worth investors found that 84 percent of them think the election will have a significant impact on their financial health, McCann said, citing a report due to be released later in July. Individual investors have consistently held an average of 20 percent of their portfolio in cash over the past five years, according to UBS data.At the event, McCann interviewed Trent Lott, a Republican from Mississippi, and George Mitchell, a Democrat from Maine, about candidates' policies and how they might impact the economy.Neither Lott nor Mitchell would say which candidate would be a better economic steward, noting that the United States remains a superpower despite challenges ranging from the Sept. 11 attacks to presidential impeachment."I don't think either one of them is going to be as bad as you now think," Lott told the audience of 300 UBS clients and financial advisers.Mitchell responded: "Trent, no offense, 'He won't be that bad' is not a slogan to inspire."UBS is hoping events like these, which it plans to host in Chicago, Houston and Miami as well, will get clients more comfortable with market volatility. High cash balances can hurt returns over the long term, and weigh on wealth management firms' profits.Many of the wealthiest UBS clients are so scarred by losses from the financial crisis that they insist on having at least 25 percent of their holdings in cash, even when they feel confident about the economy, McCann said."We've seen cash holdings higher than what you would traditionally think ... since 2009 on," he said. "I don't think that's a temporary phenomenon."REUTERS SDR PM1042 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0387-833101.Xml
South Korea is planning to reduce its treasury debt by between 1 trillion won and 2 trillion won ($873.82 million to $1.75 billion) won this year as the government aims to improve the fiscal soundness of its balance sheet, a finance ministry official told Reuters on Wednesday.The decision was made as the government is compiles a draft of the roughly 10 trillion won supplementary budget it plans to announce next week, the official said.To reduce debt, the government plans to either buy back existing bonds ahead of maturity or cancel some planned treasury bond auctions, he said, although a decision has yet to be made.The funds for a possible buy back would be taken from the extra budget, the official said.This year, South Korea is set to sell a net 45.9 trillion won worth of treasury bonds.The bulk of the supplementary budget will be made up of surplus tax receipts the government saw in the first half of the year and the finance ministry has been it would not be issuing new treasury bonds in order to fund the extra budget.Despite these measures, the ministry has been wary of the extra budget possibly crimping spending for next year and reducing some treasury debt this year would take some of the pressure off on a mid-to-long term basis.The government has already said it plans to give around 4 trillion won to provincial governments for regional use. REUTERS AKC 0638 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0432-833007.Xml
Significantly, Mr Sangma , who is the son of late Purno Sangma, has joined hands with BJP by inducting his party National Peoples Party (NPP) in the newly-formed North East Development Alliance (NEDA), a grouping of non-Congress party in the North Eastern states.
"I have decided to raise the matter of sugar scam in state in Parliament as the justification given by the State government is not acceptable", Mr Conrad said.
In fact, since BJP stormed into power in Assam, the saffron brigade has set its eye on politically unstable Meghalaya.
The dissident activities in Congress against the dictatorial functioning of the present Chief Minister Mukul Sangma has gathered momentum with most of the rebel leaders camping in Delhi to meet Congress Chairperson Sonia Gandhi for the ouster of the present chief minister. UNI ABI SV SB 1153
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''Thank you Supreme Court for explaining to the Prime Minister what democracy is,'' Mr Gandhi tweetedsoon after the apex court judgement.
The Congress had described as the murder of democracy, the Governor's decision to advance the Assembly session from January 14, 2016 to December 16, 2015, which led to political unrest and finally to the Central rule.
Now the judgement by a Constitution Bench directing restoration of the status quo ante on December 15, 2015, means virtual ouster of the rebel Congress Government supported by the BJP and reinstatement of the Congress government in the border state.UNI NAZ SVSB 1229
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"I appeal to everybody to restore calm and peace so that further loss of lives is avoided," the Chief Minister said.
She said "the loss of precious lives" in firing by security forces since the killing of a top militant on July 8 was "regretted but nothing can bring them back.
"While I am deeply grieved, my grief cannot match that of the families who have lost their near and dear ones," Mehbooba Mufti said.
Under heavy security, the Peoples Democratic Party leader went to the graveyard at Naqashband Sahib area of Old Srinagar where a guard of honour was presented to her.
An uneasy calm prevails in largely curfew-bound Kashmir Valley where violent street clashes erupted after the killing of a militant commander, Burhan Wani, leaving over 30 people dead and hundreds injured.
Mehbooba Mufti laid a wreath at the graveyard to commemorate those killed by the Dogra Maharaja's soldiers on this day in 1931 outside the Central Jail in Srinagar.
People had stormed the jail during the trial of Abdul Qadeer Khan, an Afghan cook of a British official. Qadeer had been arrested for delivering a fiery speech in support of the Kashmiris.
--IANS sq/py/mr
( 240 Words)
2016-07-13-13:48:01 (IANS)
Some of the relief material was also being sent through these aircraft, official sources said here.
"More aircraft may be pressed into service to help evacuate Indians from South Sudan," said the sources. Around 300 Indian nationals were reported to be stranded in Juba, where fierce fighting is continuing between groups loyal to President Salva Kiir and others supporting Vice-President Riek Machar.
External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj chalked out a detailed plan yesterday for the evacuation of Indians from Juba. UNI MK SV SB 1307
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Private dairy company Kwality Ltd today said it has received capital commitment of upto Rs 520 crore via structured finance from KKR India, PE fund, to fuel its growth plans.The company continues to rapidly shift its business model towards B2C/retail segment. ICICI Securities PD Ltd is the financial advisor to the transaction, said the company. The proceeds shall be utilised to fund Capex to further strengthen milk procurement infrastructure solely for high-margin Value-Added Product categories including Cheese, Paneer, Table Butters, Tetra-Packs, flavoured milk and yogurt among others, it added. The company intends to roll out a series of such products in the near future. Additionally, funds will be deployed for part repayment of debt to improve cash flows and augment brand building activities. The company has engaged reputed advertising and marketing firms for its brand building initiatives, namely McCann for Creative, Zenith Optimedia for Media Planning, and Digital Quotient for Social Media. Mr Sanjay Dhingra, MD, Kwality Ltd, said, "It gives us immense confidence that KKR has believed in our growth story and is backing our expansion plans. We are in a critical stage of growth where we are shifting our business model from B2B to B2C, which encompasses revamp of all business functions across the value chain including procurement, product mix shift to cater to evolving needs of customers ensuring high quality, brand building, extensive distribution network to ensure product availability and boost retail presence, robust IT infrastructure for process integration and strong managerial competencies". The dairy firm has signed Bollywood Actor, Akshay Kumar, as its brand ambassador,and has also roped in Ernst and Young (E&Y) as its IT transformation partner. UNI RN SB 1250 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0311-833292.Xml
iStock/Thinkstock(JUBA, South Sudan) ABC News has confirmed the United States deployed 40 additional troops to protect the embassy in Juba, South Sudan on Tuesday amid the deteriorating security situation there. Clashes that erupted last week have so far killed nearly 300 people, including several dozen civilians, before a ceasefire took effect on Tuesday.
"We brought in a small contingent of U.S. military forces," U.S. Ambassador Molly Phee said in an interview with the United Nations Mission in South Sudan. "They are here to protect the embassy and to help us provide support for those Americans who want to depart from South Sudan at this time."
The State Department announced this week the embassy is under an "ordered departure," meaning that all non-essential personnel have been ordered to leave the region. The additional forces will assist with those departures and provide additional security.
About 40 U.S. service members from U.S. Africa Command's Crisis Response Force deployed to Juba June 12, to "temporarily assist the U.S. Embassy in bolstering its security," a military spokesman told ABC News.
"The reason [the troops] are here is to provide me and my team with support so we can continue to help resolve the crisis and provide humanitarian assistance to the people of South Sudan," Ambassador Phee added.
About 36,000 people have been displaced since the fighting began last week, according to the United Nations. While sporadic clashes have broken out in the country, this is the first time intense fighting has reached the capital, raising fears that larger-scale conflict could return to the troubled African country.
Copyright 2016, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
Actor Manoj Bajpayee, whose earlier movie 'Aligarh' faced trouble from the Censor Board, has said CBFC chief Pahlaj Nihalani's time is over and it's time for him to retire. Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) had demanded 89 cuts in 'Udta Punjab' following which there was a major outrage against the board, especially Nihalani. While most members from the film fraternity asked for Nihalini's ouster from the CBFC, some defended him saying that he was only following guidelines. Bajpayee, who was promoting his film 'Budhi Singh: Born to Run', said, "Guidelines keep getting interpreted by individual chairperson who sits on that chair and handles that position. But this time I think Mr Nihalani took it way too far. I think his time is getting over. Let him retire peacefully." Later, the actor said that after 'Udta Punjab's' triumph in the legal battle in the Bombay High Court against Censor Board, there is a ray of hope for filmmakers. "Today people are talking about 'Udta Punjab' and its victory in the Bombay High Court against the Censor Board, but not many are aware that 'Bandit Queen' was stuck for a very long time and it had to be passed by the Supreme Court. The kind of battle 'Bandit Queen' and its director Shekhar Kapoor had fought is unheard of. There are too many examples of the conflicts between the CBFC and the film industry," he added.UNI SHS SV SB 1350 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0329-833347.Xml
Aiming to skill teachers in pre-school education, EuroKids International, India's NextGen pre-schools, today launched 'EuroVarsity', an online skill development platform.As part of its Skill Development initiative, 'EuroVarsity' will conduct online courses and the first course to be launched on this platform is a program focused on Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCEd),said the statement. This nine-month program in Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCEd) is the first of its kind online course, which will equip learners with the right skill set to educate children up to the age of five years. The course offers complete training through online medium, which includes video, audio tutorials, simulations and the VAK (Visual-Auditory-Kinesthetic) training methodology. In addition to theory, the course offers practical assignments as well as a four-week internship providing hands-on training to those undertaking the program, said the company. Prajodh Rajan, Co-founder and CEO, EuroKids International said, "It is now scientifically proven that maximum brain development of a child takes place from birth to five years. There is a pressing need in India to skill young aspiring early childhood educators with the latest practices in the care, welfare and education of children. EuroKids when it commenced in 2001 led the way in establishing new and high quality benchmarks for educating Pre-School children and now with EuroVarsity, it is our endeavour to equip aspiring educators with the latest knowledge and skills required to work with young ones." "We have leveraged technology to make high quality education more accessible and affordable by offering this online program. The ECCEd curriculum is backed by industry research and our years of experience in nurturing young minds and is in line with the present and future requirements for a Pre-School teaching professional,"he added. Pre-School education is an estimated Rs 4,000-crore market, and is expected to grow at 35 per cent annually. EuroKids Pre-School Industry employs teachers in excess of 6000 across its 900 Pre-Schools, adding hundreds of new job openings with the demand increasing every year. This factor will also help EuroKids to provide complete support to ECCEd holders and also help them with internships and employment opportunities within its own network as well as other Pre-Schools of reputation,the company stated. Anyone with minimum Grade 12 or equivalent can join this course. Existing Pre-School teachers and owners can also take up this course to enhance their knowledge and skills. Individuals looking for a career change or parents intending to spend constructive time with their children at home can also benefit from this program. The course has seven papers that will enable the learner to develop working strategies in early academics, universal readiness, build high standards of quality and assessments and transform Pre-Schools. In addition to E-tutoring, 'EuroVarsity' also has E-library providing research papers, articles, presentations, videos and links to add on to the knowledge given within the course structure. Every student will also be assigned a mentor who will guide them on assignments.UNI RN PR 1545 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0311-833475.Xml
Southern superstar Rajinikanth's Tamil action film 'Kabali' will release in 400 screens in the US, with special premieres planned for a day earlier. The movie is slated to hit the screens worldwide on July 22.US distribution company CineGalaxy will release 'Kabali' ,which will be Thalaiva's biggest release in US.Rajni's fans are worldwide and half of the tickets are already sold with many halls being house full. Directed by Pa Ranjith, the film also stars Radhika Apte, Kishore, Kalaiarasan, Dinesh, Dhansikaa and Taiwanese actor Winston Chao. Rajinikanth will be seen as a don who fights for Tamils in Malaysia.The movie will also be dubbed and released in Hindi and Malayalam.UNI SHS PR 1531 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0329-833594.Xml
Police sources said here today that Mohammad Arif was declared as the candidate of BSP from Budhana area of Muzaffarnagar district. Arif was in Delhi from past two days and had informed his wife that he will be coming back today by 0200 hours.
Sources said that when Arif did not reached till this evening, his relatives started searching for him. On investigation, Police found Arif's car near Dabka village. Later, Arif's followers and relatives jammed Delhi-Haridwar national highway demanding Arif's immediate rescue.
Police sources said that search is on but no clue has been found yet.
Inspector General (IG) of Meerut police Sujeet Pandey and Senior Superintendent of Police (SP) J Ravindra Gaur inspected the crime scene and instructed the officers for fast and safe recovery of BSP leader.
BSP workers have alleged that police and administration both are not serious on matter of Arif's kidnapping.
SSP J Ravindra Gaur informed that several police teams have been formed for the search operations and all teams are working for recovery of missing BSP leader as soon as possible.UNI XC-JDM MB PS PR 1713
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According to prosecution Navin murdered Gopalan on a quotation given by his daughter-in-law Leela to get his property.
However, he later killed the women too on July 3, 2013 for refusing to give the promised money.
He is presently undergoing life imprisonment in this case too.UNI PCH CS 1810
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Ruling Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh today criticised BJP and Congress for their choice of office bearers in the state saying "inclusion of the tainted persons like those accused in communal riots and hate speech only betrays the growing desperation of both the political parties ahead of the crucial 2017 state assembly elections". Suresh Rana, BJP MLA, accused in the 2013 Muzaffarnagar communal riots and Imran Masood from Congress was accused of hate speech, have been included in the state organisation of the BJP and the Congress party. The controversial BJP MLA, who is one of the 15 vice-presidents appointed by the party yesterday, was booked under the stringent National Security Act for allegedly inciting a mob during 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots and was later sent to jail. Imran Masood, who had courted controversy in the run up to the 2014 Lok Sabha elections after he allegedly made a hate speech against the then Prime Ministerial candidate of the BJP Narendra Modi, has been appointed as senior vice-president of Congress. The former MLA from Saharanpur had said earlier "will chop Modi into pieces" which became controversial.Asked specifically about selection of Rana and Masood, Samajwadi Party spokesman Rajendra Chowdhury said, "It's a conspiracy to vitiate the atmosphere in the state. But people understand the reality and will give a befitting reply. "It just reflects the growing desperation within BJP and Congress ahead of the crucial Assembly polls in 2017," he said. "In politics, transparency is needed and office bearers should be of clean image. If political organisations make such a start, what will be their fate?" Mr Chowdhury said. Ahead of the UP Assembly polls, BJP last night had announced a jumbo state executive, which includes 15 vice- presidents, eight general secretaries, one treasurer, one assistant treasurer and 15 secretaries. Senior Samajwadi party leader and PWD Minister Shivpal Yadav dismissed Congress leader Raj Babbar as 'spent force' saying, "Congress can never revive its electoral fortunes by drafting leaders like Raj Babbar who have lost their relevance in politics."More UNI MB PS SW 1938 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0421-834458.Xml
The Supreme Court today ordered the restoration of Congress Government in Arunachal Pradesh in a judgment which was described by the Congress as "historic" but "strange" by the BJP. The judgment is seen as a major setback for the BJP-led NDA government at the Centre by Congress coming within 2 months of ruling of the Uttarakhand which reinstated the Harish Rawat government in the state. However, the BJP has said that it did not see the judgment as a setback as its role was only limited to supporting a majority group that has separated from the Congress in order to save the state from political instability. Congress President Sonia Gandhi while describing the judgment as 'historic' said, "Those who had trampled upon constitutional propriety and democratic norms have been defeated." Reacting over the decision, Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi thanked the Supreme Court for upholding democracy. ''Thank you Supreme Court for explaining to the Prime Minister what democracy is,'' Mr Gandhi tweeted taking a dig at the Prime Minister Narendra Modi soon after the apex court judgment. Meanwhile, the Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Kalikho Pul has said that he will file a review petition against today's Supreme Court judgment.Union Minister of State for Home Kiren Rijiju has made it clear that Central government will abide by the Supreme Court verdict on Arunachal Pradesh. But the State BJP has said that the Congress party will have to prove its majority during floor test in the Assembly to reinstate Congress government in the state where the Chief Minister Mr Pul's camp has the majority. After the judgment, ousted state Chief Minister Nabam Tuki today hailed the order, saying the Apex Court has saved the Constitution and restored his government, which he alleged was destabilised by Governor JP Rajkhowa on the directions of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. On the other hand, the Bharatiya Janata Party termed the Supreme Court decision to restore the Congress government in Arunachal Pradesh as "strange". The party said the apex court verdict had raised a question as to whether democracy has been strengthen or weakened. "It is a strange SC order as it asks the person with a majority to sit in opposition and the one with minority support to run the government," said BJP national secretary Shrikant Sharma at a press conference here today. Mr Sharma said that the Constitutional crisis in Arunachal Pradesh occurred due to internal conflicts within the Congress. "We were only supporting the party from outside and terming it as a setback for the BJP is not correct," Mr Sharma said. However, the other opposition parties refused to buy the BJP arguments saying it was the ruling party at the Centre that engineered defection in the state Congress legislature party. The Communist Party of India (Marxist) while welcoming the judgment demanded that "BJP must stop its growing authoritarian tendency of invoking Central rule in opposition-ruled states." Party Politburo, in a statement, said the five-member Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court has upheld the inviolable federal character of the Indian Constitution. Now the judgment by a Constitution Bench directing restoration of the status quo ante on December 15, 2015, means virtual ouster of the rebel Congress Government supported by the BJP and reinstatement of the Congress government in the border state. Chief Minister Pul and 29 Congress MLAs merged with the Peoples Party of Arunachal (PPA). With the defection, the Congress was reduced to 15 MLAs in the state, which has an effective strength of 58 in the Assembly, after the resignation of two Congress MLAs. Even in case of their disqualification, it will be difficult for Chief Minister Tuki to prove the majority in the state assembly, say BJP leaders. Meanwhile, a five-judge Supreme Court bench quashed the President's rule imposed in Arunachal Pradesh and all the decisions taken by the Governor leading to its imposition. The bench called the actions of Governor J P Rajkhowa as "illegal" and violative of the Constitutional provisions. The apex court ordered status quo ante as prevailing on December 15, 2015, and restored the Nabam Tuki-led government. Even as the top court was hearing the matter, the proclamation was lifted and rebel Congress leader Kalikho Pul was sworn in as the Chief Minister of the new government. This is the first order by the Supreme Court reinstating a government in a state even after it had been replaced by a new government.UNI ADP NAZ SHK 1938 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0429-834409.Xml
Jammu and Kashmir National Panthers Party today reiterated its demand for amendment in article 370 in the interest of the state. Talking to reporters here party chief patron Prof Bhimsingh said "Article 370 needs to be amended without delay so that Parliament can have power to extend all its Central List laws to Jammu and Kashmir''. "Inserting article 370, though temporarily, was a grave blunder committed by Parliament", Mr Singh said., He maintained that the State of Jammu and Kashmir is passing through a phase of crises it required approach and measures for resolving the issues and situation in a peaceful and acceptable democratic manner, shunning violence and use of bullet. The Panthers Party has been working for the implementation and application of all fundamental rights including the right of speech and expression as provided in Chapter III of the Constitution of India relating to the fundamental rights for all citizens, he added. "This is regretted that Chapter III on fundamental rights has not been incorporated in Jammu and Kashmir as J&K constitution has not included fundamental rights of citizens, living in Jammu and Kashmir since 1950,'' He also demanded imposition of the Governor's rule in the state in view of prevailing situation.UNI VBH PS SS -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0421-834518.Xml
South West monsoon today covered the entire country after it advanced into remaining parts of north Arabian Sea, Kutch and West Rajasthan. Met office said heavy rain occurred in Madhya Maharashtra, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Gangetic West Bengal during the past 24 hours.Rain also occurred in Uttarakhand, Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, and East Uttar Pradesh regions. Heavy is likely to occur at isolated places in Assam, Meghalaya, Sub-Himalayan West Bengal, Sikkim, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Gujarat, and west Madhya Pradesh during the next 24 hours. Authorities in Karnataka have issued a flood alert in Bagalkot and Belagavi districts after the release of water from Maharashtra into the Krishna river.According to Karnataka natural disaster monitoring centre, people living in villages along the Krishna river in low-lying areas of the two districts have been put on alert after Maharashtra released water into the river following heavy rains in its catchment areas. Authorities have advised people in Jamkhandi and Bilagi taluks of the district to move to safer places to avoid being affected in the event of flooding.Those living along the river at Chikkodi and Raibag in Belagavi district have also been advised to shift to higher places as heavy rain in the region can cause flash floods. However, for people of Belagavi, there was some respite from the rain today after a week-long heavy shower during which the city receiving 425mm of rain since beginning of July.As many as 561 houses in the District have been damaged and the loss was estimated at Rs 113 lakh, according to an official statement.In neighbouring Maharashtra, a 40-member National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) team arrived in Kolhapur early this morning from Pune. A number of rivers, including the main Panchanganga river, has crossed the danger mark of 43 feet at Rajaram Bandhara in Kasba Bavda, a suburb of Kolhapur following continuous the heavy rainfall in all parts of district since Saturday last. More than 80 villages in Karvir, Panhala, Gaganbavda, Hatkanangale and Chandgad tehsils are cut off from the rest of the state due to flooding.Authorities have sounded a high alert in the district and asked the people to move to safer places. Vehicular traffic from Kolhapur district to Konkan areas including Ratnagiri and Rajapur has been badly affected following disruptions in Kolhapur-Ratnagiri, Kolhapur-Gaganbavda-Rajapur national highway and other 30 main roads in the district following landslide in Kargul ghat. Moderate showers lashed the national capital today. Met Department has predicted cloudy weather and moderate rain in Delhi tomorrow. UNI TEAM SHK 2025 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0430-834685.Xml
After sending his reports on Mathura violence, Kairana exodus and Dadri incident to President Pranab Mukherjee, Uttar Pradesh Governor Ram Naik today met Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home minister Rajnath Singh separately and handed them also the three reports. Mr Naik, who is in New Delhi, today met the Prime Minister and handed him the reports of Mathura, Kairana and Dadri. Later he also met Mr Singh and gave him the copy of the reports. According to Raj Bhavan sources here tonight, the Governor discussed in detail with the Prime Minister and the Home Minister about the prevailing law and order situation in the state besides other matters. During his stay in the national capital, Mr Naik also met Vice President Hamid Ansari, Union HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar and Union Power Minister Piyush Goel. Raj Bhavan had sent its report of Mathura, Kairana and Dadri to the President on July 9 last after Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav gave the same to the Governor in the first week of July.UNI MB PY SW 2226 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0298-834695.Xml
Stating that the Islamic State (IS) was not a threat to the world, New York Archbishop Timothy Cardinal Dolan today said they were a tiny minority of radicals. The Archbishop, who is on a three-day visit to Kerala, told reporters during a press meet here, ''there are incidents of persecution of the church in India too. But I understand that they represent a very tiny tiny minority of extremists and not represent the country.'' However, in the backdrop of the recent developments in Kerala , he he informed that ''this is an issue that I look for want to speak with my bishops friends.'' On the threats to the church, the Cardinal said across the world periodically there were outbursts of religious bigotry. Recalling the rich culture that got to India and her communal harmony with other religions, Timoty Cardinal Dolan saidthe country was blessed with remarkable sense of harmony. ''The Hindus are open to all religions. You have the Islamic presence and of course, you have the Christian presence,'' he added. Regarding the scattered attacks on church he said, ''we worry about the persecution of church through the world. Fortunately, there is no persecution of church in the United States. But the country is facing an erosion of religion and attacks on freedom of religion, which is one of the building principles of the US constitution.'' Pointing out that the Catholic church in the US serves by the bible, the Cardinal replied to a question about gay marriage that ''God has made man and woman differently and all people cannot get married. We don't think that any government can change that.'' "But having said that, the church will protect the rights of the gays if there is a violation of human rights," he added. Regarding on faith practices and intervention of the church in politics, he said religion was very important to the US. ''There is a general perception that US is secular and anti-religion. Contrary to that, in US, people respect and listen to religious leaders. They know how important the role of faith is in our culture. I understand that is true of India also,'' he said adding that in the US, church, faith and religion has a role in values that guide our democracy. "But churches stay away from specific politicians and politics. We leave it to the people. It is difficult as this is the election year. I keep my doors open to all candidates, but I will never endorse a candidate. That's the kind of role Holy Father encourages,'' he further said. "But culture expects us to speak on principles, vision, moral virtues, what makes us great as a nation. Sometimes it is difficult to stay out of politics without getting partisan. I don't know if you use that same distinction here in India," the Archbishop said. Lauding Keralites, he said there were large number of priests and sisters were in the serves in US church and they were a gift to these churches.UNI CGV PY SW2254 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0298-834757.Xml
The Government today held a meeting of senior Cabinet Ministers for legal consultations in the wake of today's judgement of the Supreme Court restoring the Congress government in Arunachal Pradesh. The meeting was attended by Home Minister Rajnath Singh, Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley besides Attorney General Mukul Rohtagi, according to sources. The Ministers later briefed Prime Minister Narendra Modi at his residence. In a landmark judgment seen as a major setback to the BJP-led NDA government at the Centre, the Supreme Court today quashed the imposition of President's Rule in Arunachal Pradesh and also ordered immediate restoration of the Tuki government in the state.The order was passed by a five-judge constitution bench headed by Justice Jagdish Singh Khehar.The court, quashing imposition of President's Rule in Arunachal Pradesh, said in its order that the state government's dismissal was "illegal and unconstitutional". Congress party described the judgment as a victory of democracy and has thanked the Supreme Court while the BJP refused to accept it as a jolt to the Party or the central government. Mr Prasad had earlier in the day avoided any immediate comment on the judgement, saying that the government will come out with a structured response on it after thorough study of the verdict. Mr Prasad said the government is yet to receive the copy of the apex court judgment, which would be carefully studied. He strongly refuted the suggestions that the SC ruling was a failure of the law management of the present government. "We have learnt from media reports the Supreme Court has ordered to restore status quo as it was on December 15. Many developments have taken place since then, including withdrawal of President's rule, new government took, it proved it majority on the floor of the house," he said.UNI NAZ PY SW 2301 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0298-834797.Xml
An Australian court today convicted Sydney man Hamdi Al Qudsi of recruiting six young men to travel overseas and fight alongside Islamic State and al Qaeda affiliates in Syria.Al Qudsi, 42, was found guilty in a unanimous decision by the New South Wales state Supreme Court of aiding the men to fight with extremist groups in 2013, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) reported.The court, in the Sydney suburb of Parramatta, could not immediately be reached by Reuters for comment.Prosecutors alleged that Al Qudsi made arrangements for the men to travel to Syria in 2013 for the purpose of fighting alongside groups listed by the Australian government as terrorist organisations.Under tough new security powers passed in 2014, Australians face up to a decade in prison for overseas travel to areas declared off limits, which includes the province of Raqqa in Syria, a key strategic hub for Islamic State militants.Two of the men Al Qudsi recruited - Tyler Casey and Caner Temel - were killed in Syria, the ABC reported. Two other men, Muhammed Abdul-Karim Musleh and Mehmet Biber, have since returned, it said.About 100 people have left Australia for Syria to fight alongside organisations such as Islamic State, Australia's Immigration Minister said earlier this year.Australia, a staunch US ally, has been on heightened alert for attacks by home-grown radicals since 2014 and authorities say they have thwarted a number of plots.There have been several "lone wolf" assaults, including a 2014 cafe siege in Sydney that left two hostages and the gunman dead. Also in 2014, police shot dead a Melbourne teenager after he stabbed two counter-terrorism officers.In 2015, a 15-year-old boy fired on an accountant at a police headquarters in a Sydney suburb and was then killed in a gunfight with police.REUTERS SDR PM0946 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0431-831223.Xml
Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is expected to announce his choice for running mate at a campaign event on Friday, campaign sources said.Among the possible picks are former US House of Representatives Speaker Newt Gingrich, Indiana Governor Mike Pence, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and retired Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, according to media reports and Republican sources."I have it down to five people," Trump told Fox News yesterday.Pence introduced Trump at a campaign rally in Westfield, Indiana, yesterday evening. Gingrich and Christie have also campaigned with Trump in recent weeks.The Republican National Convention, where Trump is set to be formally nominated as the party's candidate for the November 8 election, begins on Monday in Cleveland. REUTERS AKC 0703 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0432-833012.Xml
Technical hitches limited the death tolls in three suicide attacks in Saudi Arabia but the apparent coordination of the blasts suggests jihadis have the tools to sustain their bombing campaign.Three young Saudis detonated explosive vests near a Shi'ite mosque in Qatif last Monday, killing only themselves, while an attack by another young Saudi suicide bomber at the Prophet's mosque in Medina killed four policemen.Before dawn the same day a 34-year-old Pakistani driver had blown himself up in a car park outside the US consulate in Jeddah but only injured two security guards."Technically these people are poor. Psychologically they are very poor. Training-wise they are poor," said Mustafa Alani, an Iraqi security expert at the Jeddah-based Gulf Research Centre with ties to the Saudi Interior Ministry."Out of five suicide bombers, four killed themselves for nothing."Nevertheless, that five individuals were able to build or acquire explosive vests and to plot three attacks on the same day points to a command chain and supply network that presents a formidable threat, security analysts say.The attacks were not claimed by any group although the government believes Islamic State is responsible after detaining 19 suspects linked to the five attackers.The coordination but poor training appear to be a sign of Islamic State's operational model in Saudi Arabia, recruiting would-be jihadists online and managing plots remotely with minimal involvement in training.An Islamic State recruit inside the kingdom will then seek friends or relatives to join him in an attack, while his handlers in Syria or Iraq suggest a target and help to provide explosives and instructions on how to make a bomb.That low profile makes it very difficult for the security forces to identify networks or uncover attacks before they are carried out, and Islamic State's minimal investment in operations means it has little to lose if a plot goes awry.SLEEPER CELLSUnlike during an al Qaeda campaign a decade ago there is no network of interconnected cells under a central leadership in Saudi Arabia that can be infiltrated or rolled up by the security services."They ask young people to stay in Saudi Arabia and create sleeper cells and this is a very dangerous thing because you do not know who is in a sleeper cell or who is a lone wolf," a senior Saudi security officer told Reuters last year.Traces of nitroglycerine were found at the locations of each of last week's explosions and preliminary investigations suggest the explosives were of a type used by the military.Police at present believe they came from the same source, said Interior Ministry spokesman Major General Mansour Turki."We're talking about highly organised attacks under a central command (outside Saudi Arabia) and with a chain of supply," said Alani.However, he said the lack of an in-country leadership able to carefully select and groom recruits, provide training, centralise bomb making and prepare attackers psychologically meant that many of its operations were ineffective.The attackers in Jeddah and Medina were both approached by police in car parks near their likely targets because their nervous behaviour attracted suspicion. The Jeddah bomber detonated his device too far from the police to kill them.After the attack in Qatif, police found explosive packs intact, Alani said, indicating that only the detonators had exploded, killing the bombers but not causing wider damage. Turki said he was unable to confirm that some devices did not properly explode.CRACKDOWNSaudi Arabia's success in clamping down on al Qaeda since its 2003-06 attacks has forced Islamic State towards its model of remote control for lone wolves or sleeper cells.Western diplomats say the kingdom has developed one of the most formidable counter-terrorism operations in the Middle East under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, the Interior Minister.The security police, known as the Mubahith, closely monitor Saudis with suspected connections to militants and have detained over 15,000 suspects since the al Qaeda campaign began.The rate of arrests slowed near the end of last decade but accelerated again after 2011, when Arab Spring uprisings and civil wars across the Middle East impelled thousands of young Saudis to head overseas to join the fight with many returning home after, officials said."The Saudis have come up with a successful strategy with dealing with this sort of problem and they have mounted a highly effective public education campaign in the mosques," said former U.S. ambassador Chas Freeman."And second, they have very effective internal security mechanisms that have enabled them to spot people in the process of turning to terrorism."Security tactics have been accompanied by softer measures too. So-called "rehab" centres for militants employed Wahhabi clerics to preach that obedience to the king trumped individual decisions to go and fight in defence of Muslims overseas.Meanwhile, Saudi media were given access to young men who had returned from fighting overseas whose stories of the brutal reality of life among jihadist groups were broadcast in an effort to dissuade others from militancy.ONLINE RECRUITSBut sympathy towards fellow Sunni Muslims fighting the war in Syria has created a new generation of young Saudi jihadists.They support the idea of an Islamic State caliphate and view Saudi Arabia's rulers and the army and clergy which back them as infidels who betray true Islam.The government crackdown has forced Islamic State has found new ways to reach potential recruits from a distance, for example through online computer games that are hard for security services to monitor.Mohammed, a 15-year-old in Riyadh, was contacted by jihadists while playing games on his desktop computer and messaging other online players, his father told Reuters earlier this year, asking to keep his anonymity.He was chatting with someone who started to send him messages about the injustice faced by Sunni Muslims in Iraq and Syria. "Come play with us for real," the person said, and sent Mohammed some films showing Islamic State attacks.His parents blocked the contact. Reuters was not able to confirm who had contacted Mohammed."Daesh is trying to be very active in social media, but I think we are winning thanks to their stupid operations. How can you defend somebody who kills innocents in mosques?" said the senior security official.REUTERS SDR PM1331 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0387-833376.Xml
The South Africa that hosts a global AIDS Conference next week has come a long way from the "AIDS pariah" that did so 16 years ago, when then President Thabo Mbeki stunningly dismissed the link between HIV and the disease.At the epicentre of the worldwide AIDS panedmic, South Africa now boasts the largest treatment programme in the world, with 3.4 million people receiving the antiretroviral (ARV) drugs that allow those living with HIV to lead normal lives.The contrast with the Mbeki era, when the health minister touted beetroot and the African potato as AIDS remedies and hundreds of delegates walked out of the conference when the president suggested poverty might be the leading cause of AIDS, could hardly be sharper.During his presidency, Mbeki embraced a fringe movement of HIV deniers and resisted international and domestic pressure to seriously address the AIDS crisis. Instead, he denounced ARVs as Western inventions with poisonous side effects."The patients were dying like flies. We were treating them with tender loving care and vitamins. We had nothing," said Dr. Jean Bassett, who founded the HIV treatment center at the Witkoppen Clinic in Johannesburg in 1996.Patience Ndlovu was one of those who received treatment at the clinic. Diagnosed with HIV in 2002, she received only vitamins as treatment at first."They were difficult times. To raise a child and me being in that status, I was so scared," Ndlovu, now 38, said.Ndlovu said that, at her lowest point, her CD4 count - a measure of how well the immune system is working - had dropped below 200, meaning her condition had progressed to AIDS.She began receiving ARVs in 2004 after the Mbeki government began a reluctant roll-out of the life-saving drugs to the sickest AIDS patients following a 2003 court ruling. She recovered.NEEDLESS DEATHSMany South Africans living with HIV were not so lucky. A 2008 Harvard University study estimated that Mbeki's obstruction resulted in at least 330,000 unnecessary deaths in the first half of the decade."It was a lost decade. We blew the years 2000 to 2008 with political obfuscation," said Mark Heywood, cofounder of the Treatment Action Campaign, an advocacy group that for many years was the leading public voice on HIV in South Africa.Major change did not come until new leadership was in place.Mbeki was ousted in 2008, and the following year Aaron Motsoaledi, a respected doctor, was appointed health minister by new South African president Jacob Zuma.Motsoaledi immediately refocused the government response to the pandemic, launching a nationwide testing campaign and expanding ARV treatment."Motsoaledi has done a remarkable job," said Dr. Chris Beyrer, president of the International AIDS Society, the organiser of the conference in Durban from July 18 to 22."For South Africa to have over three million on antiviral therapy - that is just extraordinary."Today seven million South Africans, 19 per cent of the adult population, live with HIV.The epidemic robbed many families of breadwinners, created an army of orphans and struck down millions in the prime of their working lives. While great progress in providing treatment has been made, the social and economic costs of the delayed response are still being felt."Mbeki was responsible for a huge number of people dying," said Dr. Francois Venter, Deputy Executive Director of the Reproductive Health and HIV Institute at Johannesburg's University of the Witwatersrand."He has a large amount of accounting to do for a huge number of people who are dead and families who are decimated and an economy that could be much stronger," he said.Mbeki remains unphased by such attacks. In a letter posted on his foundation's website in March of this year, he pushed back against critics of his record on HIV, repeating his assertion that a "virus cannot cause a syndrome."For those like Ndlovu, the shift in South Africa's response to the HIV epidemic has saved and changed lives."It is a normal life. You've got this disease, but you're still alive. As long as you take your treatment and follow what your doctors are telling you, everything will be OK," she said. REUTERS SDR AS1408 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0431-833458.Xml
KABUL, July 12, 2016 (Xinhua) -- Afghan President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani (R) and U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter attend a joint press conference in Kabul, capital of Afghanistan, July 12, 2016. U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter who paid a surprise visit to Afghanistan on Tuesday reassured Washington's long-term support to the militancy-plagued country. (Xinhua/Rahmat Alizadah)
KABUL, July 12 (Xinhua) -- U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter who paid a surprise visit to Afghanistan on Tuesday reassured Washington's long-term support to the militancy-plagued country.
Addressing a joint press conference with President Ashraf Ghani, the Pentagon chief said the message of his tour here to the people of Afghanistan is the "U.S. would continue to remain alongside Afghans" to win the war on terror and achieve lasting peace and prosperity.
This is the third visit of the Pentagon chief to Afghanistan since assuming office and the first one since conclusion of NATO summit in Warsaw on July 9, during which the military alliance decided to continue funding Afghan security forces until 2020, besides keeping the Resolute Support mission beyond its already once extended target date at the end of 2016.
Nearly 13,000 foreign forces are currently stationed in Afghanistan for the NATO-led Resolute Support (RS) mission to help Afghan forces in the field of training, advising and backing Afghan troops in the war on insurgents.
However, the U.S. president has already announced to keep 8,400 troops in Afghanistan to help Afghan forces in the war against increasing militancy in the country.
"Maintaining U.S. forces presence in Afghanistan of 8,400 troops will enhance our ability to continue progress on our missions here in Afghanistan, training, advising and assisting Afghan forces, so they can secure their nation," said the Pentagon chief.
Replying a question, the defense secretary described terrorism as a threat to Pakistan, Afghanistan and the world at large and added that the U.S. would continue to track down and target terrorists.
Speaking at the press conference, President Ghani said, "Terrorists and the enemies are deemed to defeat and they cannot win on battle ground."
Image provided by Venezuela's Presidency shows Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro (R) shaking hands with U.S. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, Thomas Shannon, at Miraflores Palace in Caracas, Venezuela, on June 22, 2016. (Xinhua/Venezuela's Presidency)
by Jose Aguiar
CARACAS, July 11 (Xinhua) -- Despite its declared willingness to improve ties with Venezuela, the United States has so far shown no sign of halting its "double agenda" with the South American country, a leading political analyst told Xinhua.
Luis Delgado Arria noted that after U.S. Undersecretary of State Thomas Shannon visited Caracas in June, some local observers were so optimistic as to say that the visit marked a turning point in the two countries' troubled relations.
However, the atmosphere did not last long as the Obama administration soon started a new round of pressure tactics against Caracas, said Arria, a columnist and author interested in politics.
On June 29, Obama told Venezuela to free "political prisoners" and warned against any attempt to derail a referendum on removing President Nicolas Maduro.
On July 6, the U.S. Congress decided to extend sanctions against Venezuelan politicians linked to alleged human rights violations.
Diosdado Cabello (C), Deputy of United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV, for its acronym in Spanish), takes part during the march "Venezuela is Respected", in Caracas, capital of Venezuela, on March 12, 2016. (Xinhua/Gregorio Teran/AVN)
The law, first proposed in 2014 by Senators Marco Rubio and Robert Mendez, suspends visas of certain Venezuelan government officials and freezes their assets in the United States.
The U.S. attacks on Venezuela come from beyond the executive branch, as the Senate shows similar bias, Arria said.
"The United States says it is in favor of dialogue with Venezuela, yet with these political gestures, it is encouraging historically undemocratic and violent segments of the opposition to do anything to sabotage peace and stability," said Arria.
The U.S. State Department on Thursday issued a travel alert against Venezuela, citing increasing "violent crimes" in the Caribbean nation.
For Arria, all these U.S. policies "are blind and all its institutions are at the service of the foreign policy of the State Department ... which seeks to lead a low-intensity war against the government and the people of Venezuela."
Displaced Syrian families gather to collect relief aid from humanitarian organizations at the battered district of Hamadaniyeh, Aleppo, northern Syria, on July 30, 2015. (Xinhua/Abd Fayad)
GENEVA, July 12 (Xinhua) -- A United Nations spokesperson said Tuesday that an upsurge in violence in and around Syria's largest city of Aleppo has blocked the only road providing access to some 300,000 civilians living in eastern parts of the war-torn city.
"Since 7 July, the intensification of hostilities between Government of Syria forces and non-state armed groups has rendered the Castillo road impassable, the only access in and out of eastern Aleppo city," Alessandra Vellucci told reporters in a regular press briefing.
"Given the history of the tensions in the area, most people in eastern Aleppo city rely heavily on humanitarian assistance. Price increases have already been reported in eastern Aleppo city," she added.
Humanitarian actors are also concerned about reports of aerial bombardments and shelling targeting civilian locations in both western and eastern parts of the northern Syrian city, she continued.
The UN official urged all parties to the conflict to protect civilians and facilitate the provision of humanitarian aid.
No date has been set for the resumption of intra-Syrian peace talks seeking to broker an end to the five-year conflict.
Though negotiations have been on hold since April, Vellucci reminded that the UN is striving to reach a political solution as soon as possible, with the target date of August 1 still in play.
THE HAGUE, July 12 (Xinhua) -- The award issued by the South China Sea arbitral tribunal will not resolve any disputes and the court had no authority to accept the case, a Dutch law expert told Xinhua.
"The tribunal should not have accepted jurisdiction," said Tom Zwart, professor of law at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, referring to the court's acceptance of a case involving territorial claims of which it has no authority to issue a ruling.
In January 2013, the Aquino administration in the Philippines unilaterally initiated the arbitral proceedings and asked the tribunal to decide on issues such as China's historical rights and legal status of certain maritime features in the South China Sea.
"From the outset, critics like me said that it would be very difficult to avoid sovereignty issues (when handling the Philippines' claims)," said Professor Zwart.
Under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), the tribunal cannot rule on issues concerning territorial sovereignty. Through a UNCLOS declaration, China has said it won't take part in any third-party arbitration involving maritime delimitation. Dozens of other countries have taken a similar stance.
"Another reason for the tribunal not to accept jurisdiction is that the South China Sea issue is a too complicated matter for them to decide. There are so many issues involved and some of them are outside of that jurisdiction," he explained.
The tribunal ruled in October 2015 that it has jurisdiction over part of the claims submitted by the Philippines and deferred the judgment on jurisdiction over other claims until after further hearings, a decision that sparked widespread scepticism among international law experts.
"The tribunal after having decided it has jurisdiction should have taken a step back, for example by saying 'by having another look we have come to the conclusion that that is not the best way forward' or 'this is a political question which does not belong in a tribunal but should be decided through diplomacy and political discussions'," said the professor.
Professor Zwart, who has repeatedly called on the tribunal to step aside and make way for a negotiated settlement, believed that the ruling "will not solve any disputes but only fan the flames."
On the Philippines' possible reaction to this award, the professor noted that "if they are smart politicians, they will know that is not going to work because China does not agree with the ruling."
"I hope that after a day of celebration perhaps in Manila, they will come to their senses and pick up the phone to contact the leaders in Beijing and say 'we have to resolve this peacefully'."
As to the role played by Washington and Tokyo in the dispute, Professor Zwart said only states directly involved should "solve this problem peacefully and in a harmonious way."
"What I find important ... is that this very legalistic approach which now characterizes international law, perhaps even Western law in general, is not helpful to solve problems in other parts of the world, outside the West," he said.
"In Asia, states have been dealing with the South China Sea for ages in a peaceful and constructive manner," Professor Zwart said. "People should go back to the situation where they tried to find diplomatic solutions."
by Xinhua Writers Gan Chuan, Shuai Rong
THE HAGUE, July 12 (Xinhua) -- The ruling on the South China Sea arbitration issued by a court in The Hague is a disgrace to international law, Chinese Ambassador to the Netherlands Wu Ken told the press on Tuesday.
"Today is a 'black Tuesday' for The Hague, 'the capital of international law'," Wu commented.
"China is deeply dissatisfied and firmly rejects this ruling which dishonors international law and damages regional stability," he said.
On Tuesday, the tribunal set up at the request of the former Philippine administration of President Benigno S. Aquino III sweepingly sided with the Philippines' claims.
Wu said the new Philippine government should understand what damages its predecessor has done to bilateral relations and the interests of the Philippines itself.
"They should abandon the delusion of having the issue resolved through the intervention of external forces, clean up the negativity left by the illegal arbitration, and return to the bilateral and regional consensus of settling disputes through negotiations," he said.
The ambassador also called on "certain countries who do not belong to this region" to give up the thought of containing China by using the dispute as a pretext.
"They should stop sabre rattling and fabricating disputes and leave room for a calm negotiation table in our region," said the Chinese diplomat.
Wu reiterated that the ad hoc arbitral tribunal delivered a null and void award on issues linked to territorial sovereignty and maritime delimitation, which exceed the provisions of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).
The arbitration handled a case outside its jurisdiction and is "a legal monstrosity," said Wu.
"Just like a roll of wastepaper, the ruling has no legal meaning for the settlement of disputes in the South China Sea. What's worse, it severely undermined the integrity and dignity of the UNCLOS," he added.
On the tribunal's ruling on the nine-dash line outlining Chinese territory in the South China Sea, Wu explained that historical rights are not governed by the convention and China's dotted line came into being dozens of years before the creation of UNCLOS. "But the tribunal erroneously applied the Convention to draw unfounded conclusions on China's historical rights and the dotted line."
China's historical rights within the dotted line in the SCS will not under any circumstances be affected by this ruling, he stressed.
Wu also told the press that an increasing number of non-Chinese scholars noted that this arbitration case violated the principle of state consent, which is detrimental to the international rule of law. More and more states have voiced their opposition to ultra vires jurisdiction in favor of settling disputes through negotiation and consultation.
"However, certain countries obsessed with a Cold War mentality still attempt to use the South China Sea issue as a pawn to contain China and to boost their own military presence in the Asia-Pacific region," said Wu.
"A piece of cloud can not cover up the sun. This political farce can by no means deny the sound historical facts and legal evidence supporting China's sovereignty over islands in the Sea," he added.
Wu reiterated that negotiation and consultation are the primary means to settle disputes under the United Nations Charter and UNCLOS, and remain the most effective method under international law.
"China has both the legal basis and the ability to recover islands and reefs illegally occupied by other countries. Nevertheless, in a bid to safeguard peace and stability in the region, we have always sought for a peaceful settlement of disputes and upheld maritime cooperation with maximum restraint," Wu said.
The ambassador reiterated that the arbitration farce will not weaken China's determination to defend its national interests. "It will not change China's foreign policy for a friendly neighborhood," he said, "or China's patience and sincerity in peacefully resolving disputes through direct negotiations."
Related:
Spotlight: Ill-founded award on South China Sea arbitration draws worldwide criticism
THE HAGUE, July 12 (Xinhua) -- An arbitral tribunal on the South China Sea rendered ruling on Tuesday, resulting in a deluge of criticism from China and other countries.
The 479-page award issued by a five-member tribunal is sweepingly in favor of the claims filed by the administration of former Philippine President Benigno S. Aquino III, which unilaterally lodged the arbitration. Full story
Spotlight: Law-abusing tribunal issues ill-founded award on South China Sea arbitration, draws worldwide criticism
THE HAGUE, July 12 (Xinhua) -- The tribunal handling the South China Sea arbitration case unilaterally initiated by the former Philippine government issued its final award on Tuesday, sweepingly siding with Manila's cunningly packaged claims.
The process and outcome of the three-year-long arbitration have drawn criticism from dozens of countries and numerous experts across the world, who pointed out that the panel has no jurisdiction and its decision is naturally null and void. Full story
Chinese foreign minister says South China Sea arbitration a political farce
BEIJING, July 12 (Xinhua) -- The South China Sea arbitration, unilaterally initiated by the Philippines, is a political farce made under the pretext of law, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Tuesday.
Wang made the remarks after an Arbitral Tribunal handling the South China Sea arbitration case issued its final award on Tuesday. Full story
China refutes U.S. statement on South China Sea arbitration award
BEIJING, July 12 (Xinhua) -- China is strongly displeased with a press statement issued by the Spokesperson of the U.S. State Department on Tuesday on the award issued by the South China Sea arbitration tribunal unilaterally initiated by the former Philippine government.
Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lu Kang said in a statement that China is firmly opposed to the U.S. statement and has lodged solemn representations with the U.S. side. Full story
China asks Japan to stop interfering in South China Sea
BEIJING, July 12 (Xinhua) -- China has asked Japan to stop interfering in the South China Sea issue, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said Tuesday.
China hopes Japan will bear in mind the terms of China-Japan relations and of regional peace and stability, and reflect on its position on South China Sea disputes, Lu Kang said. Full story
China resolved to defend territorial sovereignty, maritime interests: People's Daily
BEIJING, July 12 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese people are resolved to defend the country's territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests in the South China Sea, said the People's Daily in a commentary to be carried on Wednesday.
The tribunal handling the South China Sea arbitration case issued its award on Tuesday, amid a global chorus that the panel has no jurisdiction. Full story
Commentary: South China Sea arbitration a scar on international legal system
BEIJING, July 12 (Xinhua) -- Much like a poisoned tree, which will never bear good fruit, the award issued in the South China Sea arbitration was contaminated from the start.
TAIPEI, July 12 (Xinhua) -- Taiwan's major political parties on Tuesday refused to accept the award in the South China Sea arbitration and called for safeguarding China's sovereignty.
Taiwan's Kuomintang party said in a press conference that the South China Sea Islands are the inherent territory of China that China has clear strategic interests there, and should not give up any sovereignty.
The Kuomintang called the arbitration "telling lies and shameful," saying that the Party was absolutely unsatisfied with it, and will not accept or recognize it.
People First Party issued a statement saying that islands and reefs in the South China Sea are China's inherent territory and it will not accept the so-called award.
The statement called for enhanced military preparations in the South China Sea.
New Party chairman Yok Mu-ming said the arbitration award is not legally binding. He said the two sides of the Taiwan Strait should join hands to safeguard China's inherent territory in the South China Sea.
Taiwan authority said it "will not accept" the award.
The tribunal in The Hague issued its decision on Tuesday, despite a global chorus that the panel has no jurisdiction.
The Chinese mainland neither accepts nor recognizes the award.
Related:
Spotlight: Law-abusing tribunal issues ill- founded award on South China Sea arbitration, draws worldwide criticism
THE HAGUE, July 12 (Xinhua) -- The tribunal handling the South China Sea arbitration case unilaterally initiated by the former Philippine government issued its final award on Tuesday, sweepingly siding with Manila's cunningly packaged claims.
The process and outcome of the three-year-long arbitration have drawn criticism from dozens of countries and numerous experts across the world, who pointed out that the panel has no jurisdiction and its decision is naturally null and void. Full story
Spotlight: Ill-founded award on South China Sea arbitration draws worldwide criticism
THE HAGUE, July 12 (Xinhua) -- An arbitral tribunal on the South China Sea rendered ruling on Tuesday, resulting in a deluge of criticism from China and other countries.
The 479-page award issued by a five-member tribunal is sweepingly in favor of the claims filed by the administration of former Philippine President Benigno S. Aquino III, which unilaterally lodged the arbitration. Full story
China refutes U.S. statement on South China Sea arbitration award
BEIJING, July 12 (Xinhua) -- China is strongly displeased with a press statement issued by the Spokesperson of the U.S. State Department on Tuesday on the award issued by the South China Sea arbitration tribunal unilaterally initiated by the former Philippine government.
Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lu Kang said in a statement that China is firmly opposed to the U.S. statement and has lodged solemn representations with the U.S. side. Full story
Chinese foreign minister says South China Sea arbitration a political farce
BEIJING, July 12 (Xinhua) -- The South China Sea arbitration, unilaterally initiated by the Philippines, is a political farce made under the pretext of law, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Tuesday.
Wang made the remarks after an Arbitral Tribunal handling the South China Sea arbitration case issued its final award on Tuesday. Full story
International law dishonored by illegal award on South China Sea arbitration: Chinese diplomat
THE HAGUE, July 12 (Xinhua) -- The ruling on the South China Sea arbitration issued by a court in The Hague is a disgrace to international law, Chinese Ambassador to the Netherlands Wu Ken told the press on Tuesday.
"Today is a 'black Tuesday' for The Hague, 'the capital of international law'," Wu commented. Full story
China asks Japan to stop interfering in South China Sea
BEIJING, July 12 (Xinhua) -- China has asked Japan to stop interfering in the South China Sea issue, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said Tuesday.
China hopes Japan will bear in mind the terms of China-Japan relations and of regional peace and stability, and reflect on its position on South China Sea disputes, Lu Kang said. Full story
China resolved to defend territorial sovereignty, maritime interests: People's Daily
BEIJING, July 12 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese people are resolved to defend the country's territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests in the South China Sea, said the People's Daily in a commentary to be carried on Wednesday.
The tribunal handling the South China Sea arbitration case issued its award on Tuesday, amid a global chorus that the panel has no jurisdiction. Full story
Commentary: South China Sea arbitration a scar on international legal system
BEIJING, July 12 (Xinhua) -- Much like a poisoned tree, which will never bear good fruit, the award issued in the South China Sea arbitration was contaminated from the start.
THE HAGUE, July 12 (Xinhua) -- The tribunal handling the South China Sea arbitration case unilaterally initiated by the former Philippine government issued its final award on Tuesday, sweepingly siding with Manila's cunningly packaged claims.
The process and outcome of the three-year-long arbitration have drawn criticism from dozens of countries and numerous experts across the world, who pointed out that the panel has no jurisdiction and its decision is naturally null and void.
POLITICAL FARCE
Among other conclusions it reached in the 479-page award in blatant disregard of historical facts and general international law, the five-member tribunal denied China's long-standing historical rights in the South China Sea.
Chinese President Xi Jinping, in a meeting with visiting European leaders on Tuesday, said that China will not accept any proposition or action based on the award, and that China's territorial sovereignty and maritime interests in the South China Sea will under no circumstances be affected by it.
China has refused to participate in the proceedings, reiterating that the tribunal has no jurisdiction over the case, which is in essence related to territorial sovereignty and maritime delimitation.
The Chinese government has pointed out that territorial issues are not governed by the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), and that it has -- in line with UNCLOS -- excluded disputes concerning maritime delimitation from mandatory dispute-settlement procedures. Some 30 other countries have also made similar exclusions.
"The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of China solemnly declares that the award is null and void and has no binding force. China neither accepts nor recognizes it," the ministry said in a statement shortly after the award was announced.
Describing the arbitration as a political farce under the pretext of law, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said that by not participating in and not accepting the arbitration, China is upholding international law and regional rules.
The government of former Philippine President Benigno S. Aquino III filed the arbitration against China in 2013, despite the agreement his country had reached with China on resolving their disputes in the South China Sea through bilateral negotiations.
Although Manila asserted that its submissions do not concern territorial sovereignty or maritime delimitation, the Philippine Foreign Ministry, a day after launching the arbitration, described the purpose of the case as to "protect our country's territory and oceanic area."
Xu Liping, a senior research fellow with the National Institute of International Strategy at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), stressed that UNCLOS should never be allowed to serve as a tool for certain interest groups to decide on sovereignty-related disputes.
"The award, a typically unfair and arbitrary verdict, represents a huge blow to the world's confidence in the international legal system and the integrity of arbitration proceedings," he said.
WORLDWIDE CRITICISM
Upon its release, the award, along with the tribunal, prompted a deluge of criticism from many countries and scholars.
A spokesman for the Pakistan's Foreign Ministry said that maritime disputes in the South China Sea should be addressed in accordance with bilateral agreements and the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC), adding that Pakistan opposes any imposition of unilateral will on others.
The DOC calls for states directly involved in territorial and maritime disputes to resolve their differences through peaceful negotiations. It was signed by China and all members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
The Pakistani Foreign Ministry added that it respects the declaration China made in 2006 under UNCLOS not to involve a third party to resolve disputes over maritime delimitation.
The Thai Foreign Ministry, in a statement, also cited the DOC, saying that disputes in the South China Sea should be addressed on the basis of mutual trust to reflect the nature of the long-standing ASEAN-China relations.
Saeed al-Lawindi, a political researcher and expert of international relations at Cairo-based Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, pointed out that the award is completely biased and could result in serious conflict in the region.
Tom Zwart, a professor of law at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, told Xinhua that the award will not resolve any issue in the region because the tribunal lacked jurisdiction in its ruling.
"From the outset, critics like me said that it would be very difficult to avoid sovereignty issues" when handling the Philippines' claims, said the professor.
Zheng Yongnian, director of the East Asian Institute of the National University of Singapore, said the arbitration is a political issue manipulated by the United States which demands a political solution.
In the latest count, more than 70 countries and international organizations, as well as over 230 political parties and groups in more than 90 countries, have voiced support for China's principled position, far outnumbering those backing the assertions of the Aquino administration and the United States, which is widely considered as a primary instigator behind the arbitration case.
The Chinese public has also kept a close eye on the South China Sea issue, standing firmly behind the government's resolve to safeguard China's sovereignty over the South China Sea Islands as well as its call for dialogue to settle the complicated disputes.
NEGOTIATIONS IN LINE WITH INTERNATIONAL LAW
While rejecting the award, the Chinese Foreign Ministry also reiterated that China will continue to work with directly concerned countries to resolve the relevant disputes in the South China Sea through negotiations and consultations.
The new Philippine president, Rodrigo Duterte, recently said that Manila is ready to talk to China even if the South China Sea arbitration tribunal rules in the Philippines' favor.
China has said that the door of China-Philippines dialogue on the South China Sea issue is always open, but it will not negotiate with the Philippines on the basis of any ruling in the arbitration case.
In its statement, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said negotiations and consultations should be carried out "on the basis of respecting historical facts and in accordance with international law."
Noting that China has solved border issues with 12 of its 14 land neighbors with over 20,000 km of borderlines delineated and demarcated, Xu, the CASS scholar, said the record "is solid proof that China has been strictly law-abiding."
China has been dealing with its border disputes on land in a very professional and thorough way, agreed Abraham Sofaer, a former legal adviser to the U.S. State Department, adding that "it is also shortsighted ... to assume that no hope exists for diplomacy on maritime disputes."
Related:
Spotlight: Ill-founded award on South China Sea arbitration draws worldwide criticism
THE HAGUE, July 12 (Xinhua) -- An arbitral tribunal on the South China Sea rendered ruling on Tuesday, resulting in a deluge of criticism from China and other countries.
The 479-page award issued by a five-member tribunal is sweepingly in favor of the claims filed by the administration of former Philippine President Benigno S. Aquino III, which unilaterally lodged the arbitration. Full story
China refutes U.S. statement on South China Sea arbitration award
BEIJING, July 12 (Xinhua) -- China is strongly displeased with a press statement issued by the Spokesperson of the U.S. State Department on Tuesday on the award issued by the South China Sea arbitration tribunal unilaterally initiated by the former Philippine government.
Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lu Kang said in a statement that China is firmly opposed to the U.S. statement and has lodged solemn representations with the U.S. side. Full story
Chinese foreign minister says South China Sea arbitration a political farce
BEIJING, July 12 (Xinhua) -- The South China Sea arbitration, unilaterally initiated by the Philippines, is a political farce made under the pretext of law, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Tuesday.
Wang made the remarks after an Arbitral Tribunal handling the South China Sea arbitration case issued its final award on Tuesday. Full story
International law dishonored by illegal award on South China Sea arbitration: Chinese diplomat
THE HAGUE, July 12 (Xinhua) -- The ruling on the South China Sea arbitration issued by a court in The Hague is a disgrace to international law, Chinese Ambassador to the Netherlands Wu Ken told the press on Tuesday.
"Today is a 'black Tuesday' for The Hague, 'the capital of international law'," Wu commented. Full story
China asks Japan to stop interfering in South China Sea
BEIJING, July 12 (Xinhua) -- China has asked Japan to stop interfering in the South China Sea issue, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said Tuesday.
China hopes Japan will bear in mind the terms of China-Japan relations and of regional peace and stability, and reflect on its position on South China Sea disputes, Lu Kang said. Full story
China resolved to defend territorial sovereignty, maritime interests: People's Daily
BEIJING, July 12 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese people are resolved to defend the country's territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests in the South China Sea, said the People's Daily in a commentary to be carried on Wednesday.
The tribunal handling the South China Sea arbitration case issued its award on Tuesday, amid a global chorus that the panel has no jurisdiction. Full story
Commentary: South China Sea arbitration a scar on international legal system
BEIJING, July 12 (Xinhua) -- Much like a poisoned tree, which will never bear good fruit, the award issued in the South China Sea arbitration was contaminated from the start.
TAIPEI, July 12 (Xinhua) -- Taiwan said Tuesday it "absolutely will not accept" the decision in the South China Sea arbitration.
The island's leader's office said that the award "is not legally binding."
The award, especially its claim that Taiping Island is a rock, seriously damages the rights to the island and surrounding waters, it said. The territory and sovereignty must be protected, it added.
The Kuomintang party in Taiwan said it will not accept the arbitration award, saying it was an out-and-out lie, particularly in denying the island status of Taiping where there is fresh water, chickens are raised and vegetables are cultivated.
Taiwan scholars said the award was absurd and that neither side of the Taiwan Strait would accept it.
"The award is totally nonsense and malicious, a result of political manoeuvreing," said Chang Ya-chung, a political professor at Taiwan University.
The result will inevitably cause tension, he said.
The award is not legally binding as the tribunal has actually no jurisdiction over the disputes, said Gau Sheng-ti, professor in public international law at the Law of the Sea Institute at Taiwan's Ocean University.
In terms of Taiping Island, Philippine scholars, lawyers and members of the tribunal have never visited the island, how can they overturn a research report made by scholars who visited it, Gau questioned.
Related:
Spotlight: Law-abusing tribunal issues ill-founded award on South China Sea arbitration, draws worldwide criticism
THE HAGUE, July 12 (Xinhua) -- The tribunal handling the South China Sea arbitration case unilaterally initiated by the former Philippine government issued its final award on Tuesday, sweepingly siding with Manila's cunningly packaged claims.
The process and outcome of the three-year-long arbitration have drawn criticism from dozens of countries and numerous experts across the world, who pointed out that the panel has no jurisdiction and its decision is naturally null and void. Full story
Spotlight: Ill-founded award on South China Sea arbitration draws worldwide criticism
THE HAGUE, July 12 (Xinhua) -- An arbitral tribunal on the South China Sea rendered ruling on Tuesday, resulting in a deluge of criticism from China and other countries.
The 479-page award issued by a five-member tribunal is sweepingly in favor of the claims filed by the administration of former Philippine President Benigno S. Aquino III, which unilaterally lodged the arbitration. Full story
China refutes U.S. statement on South China Sea arbitration award
BEIJING, July 12 (Xinhua) -- China is strongly displeased with a press statement issued by the Spokesperson of the U.S. State Department on Tuesday on the award issued by the South China Sea arbitration tribunal unilaterally initiated by the former Philippine government.
Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lu Kang said in a statement that China is firmly opposed to the U.S. statement and has lodged solemn representations with the U.S. side. Full story
Chinese foreign minister says South China Sea arbitration a political farce
BEIJING, July 12 (Xinhua) -- The South China Sea arbitration, unilaterally initiated by the Philippines, is a political farce made under the pretext of law, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Tuesday.
Wang made the remarks after an Arbitral Tribunal handling the South China Sea arbitration case issued its final award on Tuesday. Full story
International law dishonored by illegal award on South China Sea arbitration: Chinese diplomat
THE HAGUE, July 12 (Xinhua) -- The ruling on the South China Sea arbitration issued by a court in The Hague is a disgrace to international law, Chinese Ambassador to the Netherlands Wu Ken told the press on Tuesday.
"Today is a 'black Tuesday' for The Hague, 'the capital of international law'," Wu commented. Full story
China asks Japan to stop interfering in South China Sea
BEIJING, July 12 (Xinhua) -- China has asked Japan to stop interfering in the South China Sea issue, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said Tuesday.
China hopes Japan will bear in mind the terms of China-Japan relations and of regional peace and stability, and reflect on its position on South China Sea disputes, Lu Kang said. Full story
China resolved to defend territorial sovereignty, maritime interests: People's Daily
BEIJING, July 12 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese people are resolved to defend the country's territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests in the South China Sea, said the People's Daily in a commentary to be carried on Wednesday.
The tribunal handling the South China Sea arbitration case issued its award on Tuesday, amid a global chorus that the panel has no jurisdiction. Full story
Commentary: South China Sea arbitration a scar on international legal system
BEIJING, July 12 (Xinhua) -- Much like a poisoned tree, which will never bear good fruit, the award issued in the South China Sea arbitration was contaminated from the start.
BEIJING, July 12 (Xinhua) -- A mega-merger in China's tourism sector marks the latest step forward in the country's drive to improve the efficiency of its bloated state-owned enterprises (SOEs).
After approval by the State Council, China International Travel Service Group Corporation is now a wholly-owned subsidiary of the China National Travel Service (HK) Group Corporation, the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission said in a statement late on Monday.
The marriage of the two former competitors will allow for higher SOE efficiency, larger market share and better profit performance of state-owned assets, said Shen Meng, executive director of Chanson Capital, a boutique investment bank.
The new entity, which will register revenues of at least 52 billion yuan (7.8 billion U.S. dollars) and assets of at least 116 billion yuan, will become "one of the largest travel service companies in China, offering diversified products and services," said Lu Chenyi, a Moody's vice president and senior analyst.
The merger will improve the efficiency of the two corporations through business synergies, enhance their competitiveness in terms of scale and global reach in the industry and increase cost savings through shared resources, Lu said.
China is overhauling its SOEs, encouraging mergers and acquisitions between some of its biggest conglomerates while shutting loss-making ones.
The country has seen a mega-merger between its two largest train makers, China CNR Corp. Ltd. and China CSR Corp. Ltd., approved a merger between China Metallurgical Group and China Minmetals Corporation, both of which are Fortune 500 companies, and created the world's fourth-largest container shipper through the merger of China Ocean Shipping Group and China Shipping (Group) Company.
China's hundreds of thousands of SOEs play a pivotal role in bolstering the economy and providing employment, with total assets worth about 125 trillion yuan as of the end of May.
However, an economic slowdown, which trimmed the country's GDP growth to 6.7 percent in the first quarter, has bitten into SOEs' profitability and left many struggling to keep afloat.
The combined profits of these state firms saw a decline of 9.6 percent year on year in the first five months, despite warming signs in the broader economy.
Shen said China's SOE reform has entered a crucial stage and more SOE mergers and acquisitions may be expected in the second half of the year.
The next stage of SOE reform will feature overcapacity reduction, optimal relocation of similar resources and specialized operation, said Li Jin, chief analyst with the China Enterprise Research Institute.
by Xinhua Writers Gan Chuan, Shuai Rong
THE HAGUE, July 12 (Xinhua) -- The ruling on the South China Sea arbitration issued by a court in The Hague is a disgrace to international law, Chinese Ambassador to the Netherlands Wu Ken told the press on Tuesday.
"Today is a 'black Tuesday' for The Hague, 'the capital of international law'," Wu commented.
"China is deeply dissatisfied and firmly rejects this ruling which dishonors international law and damages regional stability," he said.
On Tuesday, the tribunal set up at the request of the former Philippine administration of President Benigno S. Aquino III sweepingly sided with the Philippines' claims.
Wu said the new Philippine government should understand what damages its predecessor has done to bilateral relations and the interests of the Philippines itself.
"They should abandon the delusion of having the issue resolved through the intervention of external forces, clean up the negativity left by the illegal arbitration, and return to the bilateral and regional consensus of settling disputes through negotiations," he said.
The ambassador also called on "certain countries who do not belong to this region" to give up the thought of containing China by using the dispute as a pretext.
"They should stop sabre rattling and fabricating disputes and leave room for a calm negotiation table in our region," said the Chinese diplomat.
Wu reiterated that the ad hoc arbitral tribunal delivered a null and void award on issues linked to territorial sovereignty and maritime delimitation, which exceed the provisions of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).
The arbitration handled a case outside its jurisdiction and is "a legal monstrosity," said Wu.
"Just like a roll of wastepaper, the ruling has no legal meaning for the settlement of disputes in the South China Sea. What's worse, it severely undermined the integrity and dignity of the UNCLOS," he added.
On the tribunal's ruling on the nine-dash line outlining Chinese territory in the South China Sea, Wu explained that historical rights are not governed by the convention and China's dotted line came into being dozens of years before the creation of UNCLOS. "But the tribunal erroneously applied the Convention to draw unfounded conclusions on China's historical rights and the dotted line."
China's historical rights within the dotted line in the SCS will not under any circumstances be affected by this ruling, he stressed.
Wu also told the press that an increasing number of non-Chinese scholars noted that this arbitration case violated the principle of state consent, which is detrimental to the international rule of law. More and more states have voiced their opposition to ultra vires jurisdiction in favor of settling disputes through negotiation and consultation.
"However, certain countries obsessed with a Cold War mentality still attempt to use the South China Sea issue as a pawn to contain China and to boost their own military presence in the Asia-Pacific region," said Wu.
"A piece of cloud can not cover up the sun. This political farce can by no means deny the sound historical facts and legal evidence supporting China's sovereignty over islands in the Sea," he added.
Wu reiterated that negotiation and consultation are the primary means to settle disputes under the United Nations Charter and UNCLOS, and remain the most effective method under international law.
"China has both the legal basis and the ability to recover islands and reefs illegally occupied by other countries. Nevertheless, in a bid to safeguard peace and stability in the region, we have always sought for a peaceful settlement of disputes and upheld maritime cooperation with maximum restraint," Wu said.
The ambassador reiterated that the arbitration farce will not weaken China's determination to defend its national interests. "It will not change China's foreign policy for a friendly neighborhood," he said, "or China's patience and sincerity in peacefully resolving disputes through direct negotiations."
A woman sits beside photos of the slain policemen as U.S. President Barack Obama speaks during a memorial service for the five killed last week in a sniper attack in Dallas, Texas July 12, 2016. (REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque)
HOUSTON, July 12 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Barack Obama on Tuesday called on protesters, police and the public to open their hearts and drop their preconceptions to deal with racism and violence in the country.
At a memorial service held Tuesday in the Texas city of Dallas to honor five police officers killed Thursday by an Army veteran Micah Johnson, Obama lamented a flood of guns in cities, and a glaring and chronic mistrust between police and citizens.
The five police officers was ambushed and killed by Micah Johnson, who was upset about the fatal police shootings of two black men in the U.S. states of Louisiana and Minnesota, at the end of a peaceful Black Lives Matter-organized protest.
Obama called on the country to confront racism and at the mean time support the ordinary Americans.
He encouraged police and the public to acknowledge and confront the implications of entrenched institutional racism, while also demanding respect for police and the role they play.
"The deepest fault lines of our democracy have suddenly been exposed, perhaps even widened," he said. "Faced with such violence, we wonder if racial divides can ever be bridged."
A woman sits beside photos of the slain policemen as U.S. President Barack Obama speaks during a memorial service for the five killed last week in a sniper attack in Dallas, Texas July 12, 2016. (REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque )
Calling the shootings of police an act of demented violence and racial hatred, Obama offered empathy to those who view police with suspicion, and to those who view anti-police protesters as disruptive and disrespectful.
For those who take offense at the "Black Lives Matter" message, the president called on people to open their hearts. "Surely we should be able to hear the pain of Alton Sterling's family," he said, referring to the black man killed earlier this month by police in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Obama said that race relations had improved dramatically in his lifetime, adding that those who deny it were dishonoring the struggles that helped them achieve that progress.
"But America, we know that bias remains. We know it. Don't dismiss peaceful protesters as troublemakers or paranoid."
Meanwhile, former U.S. President George W. Bush, now a Dallas resident, also attended the service and urged Americans to reject the unity of grief and fear.
"At times it feels like the forces pulling us apart are stronger than the forces binding us together," Bush said.
"Too often we judge other groups by their worst examples, while judging ourselves by our best intentions. And this has strained our bonds of understanding and common purpose," he said.
Last Thursday, a sniper named Micah Johnson opened fire on police officers during a Dallas downtown peaceful protest against police's killing of African Americans.
by Cesar Marino Garcia
BOGOTA, July 12 (Xinhua) -- Edison Ortiz Escobar is a rare figure in Colombia. Fourteen years ago, the former guerrilla fighter for the National Liberation Army (ELN) voluntarily gave up his weapons and individually decided to re-enter civilian life.
In the wake of a peace deal between the government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), Escobar believes that those who have demobilized should be listened to in order avoid any risk of future violence.
"I spent 19 years with the ELN and I do not regret it at all. I fought the Colombian army on multiple fronts. However, laying down the arms was the hardest decision of my life," he told Xinhua.
Prior to his surrender, Escobar was captured by the army during a battle and spent eight years in prison. After escaping, he sought to rejoin the ELN but felt victimized by his commanders and decided to abandon the guerrilla movement.
The ELN, which was formed in 1964, around the same time as FARC, remains active along with smaller armed groups.
"While I changed my weapons for ideas, I stopped being a guerrilla fighter but not a revolutionary. My conviction remains the same, my ideas are still those of the ELN. However, I firmly believe there must be peace, the killing must stop," he added.
According to the National Agency for Reintegration, 53,923 people have demobilized in the past 15 years.
Officially, the country maintains reintegration and reincorporation programs to help former fighters enter society again, providing financial and social support.
However, Escobar said this training is incomplete. According to him, while fighters do receive around 4 million pesos (1,370 U.S. dollars) to begin their life anew, they receive no emotional or psychological assistance.
"It was very difficult for me to live in society after the war. I suffered more here than during the conflict. The ELN educated my children and I learned many things. Here, society rejects us as pariahs, but we have much to offer," he said.
For Escobar, in order for the peace treaty with the FARC to work, the government should use the experience of former fighters to bring a message of peace across the country.
"We have lived through the war and we know fully well what can happen if demobilization programs are not carefully implemented," he said.
However, Escobar is optimistic about the peace process in Colombia and is particularly happy that now the FARC is in the final stages of a peace process, the government is beginning to discuss talks with the ELN, Colombia's second-largest rebel movement.
Peace talks between the Colombian government and the ELN have been expected for several months, but the guerilla group has refused to surrender its remaining hostages, delaying the start of negotiations.
Candidates for the post of United Nations Secretary-General:Natalia Gherman of Moldova, Vuk Jeremic, Susana Malcorra of Argentina, Antonio Guterres of Portugal and Vesna Pusic of Croatia attend the global town hall meeting at the UN headquarters in New York, July 12, 2016. (Xinhua/Li Muzi)
UNITED NATIONS, July 12 (Xinhua) -- The first-ever "globally televised" debate on Tuesday kicked off at UN Heqadquarters in New York for 10 of the 12 candidates, who have announced their bid to become the next UN secretary-general, and they will take questions from diplomats and the public at large.
The debate, also known as the townhall meeting at the UN, started at around 6:30 p.m. EDT (2330 GMT) and it is expected to conclude at 9:00 p.m. (0200 Wednesday GMT) and available free from UNTV and Al Jazeera Media Network, producers of the broadcast.
Ten candidates to have confirmed participation, after drawing of lots, have been split into two groups to participate in discussions and answer questions, the president of the 193-member General Assembly, Mogens Lykketoft, said on Monday.
The first group consists of Vesna Pusic of Croatia, Antonio Guterres of Portugal, Susana Malcorra of Argentina, Vuk Jeremic of Serbia and Natalia Gherman of Moldova.
In the second group are Helen Clark of New Zealand, Danilo Turk of Slovenia, Christiana Figueres of Costa Rica, Igor Luksic of Montenegro and Irina Bokova Bulgaria.
Srgjan Kerim of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Slovakia's Miroslav Lajcak were unable to attend, Lykketoft said.
The televised meeting continued a series of "firsts" regarding the selection of the next UN chief to replace Ban Ki-moon, who retires on Dec. 31 after two five-year terms.
The Tuesday event follows the landmark informal briefings that began in mid-April, kicking off the process to select the top UN official.
During those hearings, candidates went before the General Assembly to present their respective "vision statements" on the challenges and opportunities facing the UN and the next secretary-general, and answered questions from the audience.
Photo taken on July 12, 2016 shows the global town hall meeting with the candidates for the post of United Nations Secretary-General at the UNheadquarters in New York, July 12, 2016. The first-ever "globally televised" debate on Tuesday kicked off at UN Headquarters in New York for 10 of the 12 candidates, who have announced their bid to become the next UN secretary-general, and they will take questions from diplomats and the public at large.(Xinhua/Li Muzi)
These first-ever briefings were mandated by the UN General Assembly and are distinct from the townhall-style event taking place here Tuesday. They will continue to be held as further candidates are presented.
The next informal briefing will be held on July 14, when the most recently-nominated candidate, Christiana Figueres from Costa Rica, will take her turn.
On Monday, Lykketoft said UN secretaries-general have been chosen behind closed doors in the past.
"This time, we want to ensure all UN member states, and the entire world, have a chance to know who the candidates are, what their vision is and see how they perform," he said.
"The aim we are looking for is much broader participation in the general (UN) membership and the general public of the world in the selection of the next secretary general," the president said. "This is the town hall of the United Nations."
According to the UN Charter, "The secretary-general shall be appointed by the General Assembly upon the recommendation of the Security Council."
Previously this has resulted in the council secretly choosing a single candidate for recommendation to the General Assembly.
RIO DE JANEIRO, July 12 (Xinhua) -- Sao Paulo and Brazil international midfielder Paulo Henrique Ganso is close to joining Spanish club Sevilla in a deal reportedly worth 9.5 million euros.
The Brazilian outfit said on Tuesday that they were preparing for the departure of the elegant 26-year-old playmaker.
"It's his wish and there's nothing we can do about it," Sao Paulo president Carlos Silva told ESPN. "To keep a player against his wishes is counterproductive."
"I will miss having a guy in our team with such rare talent. We are obliged to accept some things and this is one of them."
The report added that only "bureaucratic issues" were delaying an official announcement.
Ganso was once considered among Brazil's most promising talents, earning 10 international caps before being struck down by injuries.
He has recaptured his best form in recent months and was recalled to Brazil's squad for last month's centenary edition of the Copa America in the US.
SYDNEY, July 13 (Xinhua) -- Australian's have woken up with a chill on Wednesday as an icy freeze hits the nation's southeast, brining with it snow and damaging winds.
The wild weather has already caused havoc in Victoria state with two people being treated for injuries from car crashes related to the snow and wild winds, but the worst is yet to come for New South Wales (NSW) state as the front moves north, causing balmy winter temperatures to plummet from icy winds.
"Sydney, we need to talk about this wind, it's just not on," one commuter complained on social media on Wednesday as the mercury dipped to 10-degree Celsius, but felt like 1-degree Celsius with the wind factor.
"With the progress of this front, we'll have a pretty decent wind chill," Australian Bureau of Meteorology duty forecaster David Grant told Fairfax Media.
"It will feel like it's single digits."
Australia's weather bureau has issued warnings for strong winds and freezing conditions across most of the state, while the nation's prestigious ski slopes are bracing for possible blizzards. Thredbo ski resort in the Snowy Mountains as already reported an "incredible" 70 centimeters of new snow.
Key NSW farming regions and the nation's capital of Canberra have already experienced snow overnight and more is expected to fall further north towards regional centers Bathurst and Orange, and potentially to the outskirts of Sydney in the Blue Mountains.
Authorities across Australia's southeast have responded to numerous calls for help from the wild, chilly weather, though those calls have largely dropped of as people take increased precautions.
But record breaking wind speeds in Tasmania state had left 7,000 homes and businesses without power from falling trees, while a similar situation in South Australia state had 5,000 homes still without power early on Wednesday.
CANBERRA, July 13 (Xinhua) -- A vaccine for the degenerative disease dementia may be just three to five years away according to Australian researchers, following a "breakthrough discovery" which could prevent up to 7.5 million new cases of the condition every year.
Dementia is a syndrome which affects a person's memory, thinking and the ability to perform day-to-day tasks, and is especially prevalent in older people, however researchers from the Flinders University in Adelaide believe they have found a way to prevent it before it strikes, thanks to a collaboration with research teams at the Institute of Molecular Medicine and University of California.
The Australian researchers believe they have successfully created a vaccine formula which targets the irregular beta-amyloid and tau proteins triggering the onset of the disease.
Flinders University medicine professor Nikolai Petrovsky told News Corp Wednesday that if the breakthrough passes human trialing, it could be available for widespread use within five years.
"If we are successful in (human) clinical trials, in three to five years we could be well on the way to one of the most important developments in recent medical history," Petrovsky said.
He said researchers had targeted the offending cells so effectively that the formula was more likely to be used as a preventative vaccine instead of a treatment.
"It is actually our technology we've developed here in Adelaide that is what has transformed the vaccine to make it powerful enough; we have been able to make it dramatically more potent so it could eventually be used as a preventative measure," Petrovsky said.
BEIJING, July 13 (Xinhua) -- The United States is sabotaging international law by violating global rules of conduct and adopting double standards.
The Charter of the United Nations (UN) stipulates that "all Members should refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations."
However, the United States has repeatedly despised and infringed upon international rules.
On Dec. 20, 1989, the U.S. army invaded Panama to topple Panamanian general Manuel Antonio Noriega.
On March 24, 1999, U.S.-led NATO forces, without authorization from the UN Security Council, launched military strikes against a sovereignty state -- the Yugoslav Serb Republic.
On March 20, 2003, the United States along with its allies launched a war against Iraq on the assertion that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction which turned out to be false.
And when international law stands in the way of U.S. interests, it will simply withdraw from any binding agreement.
In 1998 the United States signed the Kyoto Protocol which sought to cut carbon dioxide emissions by 5 percent from 1990 levels by 2012. But in 2001, Washington withdrew from the 128-nation protocol, saying it was too expensive and wrongly excluded developing nations. It also unilaterally withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which it signed with the Soviet Union in 1972.
Furthermore, Washington refused to ratify the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty. Joining both would greatly enhance global peace and reduce the risk of conflict.
All in all, it is hard to find an international rule that was created by the United States and carried out by the country from beginning to end. Uncle Sam gets used to looking down on international law, considering it a hindrance to its hegemony.
Current international law with the UN Charter at its core was formed after the end of World War II and the establishment of the United Nations, and gradually became the rule of conduct for the international community.
However, with the end of the Cold War and arrival of economic globalization and network informatization, international law faces new challenges.
Today, the development and evolution of international law has become an irresistible trend and should be promoted through international agreements, practices and judicial precedents.
Meanwhile, it is time for emerging countries to actively participate in the process, improve on the current mechanisms in place to solve international disputes and reduce the influence of developed countries in dictating the management of international affairs.
BEIJING, July 13 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese government on Wednesday issued a white paper titled "China Adheres to the Position of Settling Through Negotiation the Relevant Disputes Between China and the Philippines in the South China Sea."
Related
Full Text: China Adheres to the Position of Settling Through Negotiation the Relevant Disputes Between China and the Philippines in the South China Sea
BEIJING, July 13 (Xinhua) -- The State Council Information Office of the People's Republic of China on Wednesday published a white paper titled "China Adheres to the Position of Settling Through Negotiation the Relevant Disputes Between China and the Philippines in the South China Sea".
Following is the full text of the white paper: Full story
Spotlight: Law-abusing tribunal issues ill-founded award on South China Sea arbitration, draws worldwide criticism
THE HAGUE, July 12 (Xinhua) -- The tribunal handling the South China Sea arbitration case unilaterally initiated by the former Philippine government issued its final award on Tuesday, sweepingly siding with Manila's cunningly packaged claims.
The process and outcome of the three-year-long arbitration have drawn criticism from dozens of countries and numerous experts across the world, who pointed out that the panel has no jurisdiction and its decision is naturally null and void. Full story
Spotlight: Ill-founded award on South China Sea arbitration draws worldwide criticism
THE HAGUE, July 12 (Xinhua) -- An arbitral tribunal on the South China Sea rendered ruling on Tuesday, resulting in a deluge of criticism from China and other countries.
The 479-page award issued by a five-member tribunal is sweepingly in favor of the claims filed by the administration of former Philippine President Benigno S. Aquino III, which unilaterally lodged the arbitration. Full story
China refutes U.S. statement on South China Sea arbitration award
BEIJING, July 12 (Xinhua) -- China is strongly displeased with a press statement issued by the Spokesperson of the U.S. State Department on Tuesday on the award issued by the South China Sea arbitration tribunal unilaterally initiated by the former Philippine government.
Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lu Kang said in a statement that China is firmly opposed to the U.S. statement and has lodged solemn representations with the U.S. side. Full story
Chinese foreign minister says South China Sea arbitration a political farce
BEIJING, July 12 (Xinhua) -- The South China Sea arbitration, unilaterally initiated by the Philippines, is a political farce made under the pretext of law, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Tuesday.
Wang made the remarks after an Arbitral Tribunal handling the South China Sea arbitration case issued its final award on Tuesday. Full story
International law dishonored by illegal award on South China Sea arbitration: Chinese diplomat
THE HAGUE, July 12 (Xinhua) -- The ruling on the South China Sea arbitration issued by a court in The Hague is a disgrace to international law, Chinese Ambassador to the Netherlands Wu Ken told the press on Tuesday.
"Today is a 'black Tuesday' for The Hague, 'the capital of international law'," Wu commented. Full story
China asks Japan to stop interfering in South China Sea
BEIJING, July 12 (Xinhua) -- China has asked Japan to stop interfering in the South China Sea issue, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said Tuesday.
China hopes Japan will bear in mind the terms of China-Japan relations and of regional peace and stability, and reflect on its position on South China Sea disputes, Lu Kang said. Full story
China resolved to defend territorial sovereignty, maritime interests: People's Daily
BEIJING, July 12 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese people are resolved to defend the country's territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests in the South China Sea, said the People's Daily in a commentary to be carried on Wednesday.
The tribunal handling the South China Sea arbitration case issued its award on Tuesday, amid a global chorus that the panel has no jurisdiction. Full story
Commentary: South China Sea arbitration a scar on international legal system
BEIJING, July 12 (Xinhua) -- Much like a poisoned tree, which will never bear good fruit, the award issued in the South China Sea arbitration was contaminated from the start.
MOSCOW, July 13 (Xinhua) -- The dispute over the South China Sea should not damage the strong relationship between China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), a Russian expert said.
"There is a free trade zone with a turnover of hundreds of billions of dollars between China and ASEAN countries. It is important that the existing mutual interests are not interrupted by the dispute, as any conflict in the Asia-Pacific would affect the regional economy and politics," Vladimir Petrovsky, chief research fellow at the Center for Russian-Chinese Relations Studies and Forecasting at the Moscow-based Institute for Far Eastern Studies, told Xinhua in a recent interview.
The tribunal handling the South China Sea arbitration case issued its award on Tuesday, amid a global chorus that the panel has no jurisdiction.
The five-member tribunal offered a summary of its decisions, which sweepingly side with the claims filed by the administration of former Philippine President Benigno S. Aquino III.
Beijing said Tuesday it neither accepts nor recognizes the award.
This is the only reasonable position from the point of view of international law, the expert said.
There have been few case of a country being dragged into an arbitration over a territorial dispute, he said. He added that if the Philippines recognized the ruling and China did not, the arbitration should not be recognized as legitimate and legal.
Commenting on the U.S. claims of freedom of navigation in the South China Sea, Petrovsky noted that Washington's role is very ambiguous.
The United States says it favors freedom of navigation; however, what that really means is not only free of navigation for commercial fleet but also for its Navy, which is quite a different thing, Petrovsky said.
Although the Philippines would try to use the U.S. military as a lever in its island dispute with China, Petrovsky believes it may not be wise to do so.
"The United States with its system of bilateral military-political alliances in the Asia-Pacific region has found itself in an awkward position: by contract it is supposed to protect its allies, but why should they spoil relations with China for the sake of the Philippines?" Petrovsky said.
Related
Full Text: China Adheres to the Position of Settling Through Negotiation the Relevant Disputes Between China and the Philippines in the South China Sea
BEIJING, July 13 (Xinhua) -- The State Council Information Office of the People's Republic of China on Wednesday published a white paper titled "China Adheres to the Position of Settling Through Negotiation the Relevant Disputes Between China and the Philippines in the South China Sea".
Following is the full text of the white paper: Full story
Spotlight: Law-abusing tribunal issues ill-founded award on South China Sea arbitration, draws worldwide criticism
THE HAGUE, July 12 (Xinhua) -- The tribunal handling the South China Sea arbitration case unilaterally initiated by the former Philippine government issued its final award on Tuesday, sweepingly siding with Manila's cunningly packaged claims.
The process and outcome of the three-year-long arbitration have drawn criticism from dozens of countries and numerous experts across the world, who pointed out that the panel has no jurisdiction and its decision is naturally null and void. Full story
Spotlight: Ill-founded award on South China Sea arbitration draws worldwide criticism
THE HAGUE, July 12 (Xinhua) -- An arbitral tribunal on the South China Sea rendered ruling on Tuesday, resulting in a deluge of criticism from China and other countries.
The 479-page award issued by a five-member tribunal is sweepingly in favor of the claims filed by the administration of former Philippine President Benigno S. Aquino III, which unilaterally lodged the arbitration. Full story
China refutes U.S. statement on South China Sea arbitration award
BEIJING, July 12 (Xinhua) -- China is strongly displeased with a press statement issued by the Spokesperson of the U.S. State Department on Tuesday on the award issued by the South China Sea arbitration tribunal unilaterally initiated by the former Philippine government.
Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lu Kang said in a statement that China is firmly opposed to the U.S. statement and has lodged solemn representations with the U.S. side. Full story
Chinese foreign minister says South China Sea arbitration a political farce
BEIJING, July 12 (Xinhua) -- The South China Sea arbitration, unilaterally initiated by the Philippines, is a political farce made under the pretext of law, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Tuesday.
Wang made the remarks after an Arbitral Tribunal handling the South China Sea arbitration case issued its final award on Tuesday. Full story
International law dishonored by illegal award on South China Sea arbitration: Chinese diplomat
THE HAGUE, July 12 (Xinhua) -- The ruling on the South China Sea arbitration issued by a court in The Hague is a disgrace to international law, Chinese Ambassador to the Netherlands Wu Ken told the press on Tuesday.
"Today is a 'black Tuesday' for The Hague, 'the capital of international law'," Wu commented. Full story
China asks Japan to stop interfering in South China Sea
BEIJING, July 12 (Xinhua) -- China has asked Japan to stop interfering in the South China Sea issue, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said Tuesday.
China hopes Japan will bear in mind the terms of China-Japan relations and of regional peace and stability, and reflect on its position on South China Sea disputes, Lu Kang said. Full story
China resolved to defend territorial sovereignty, maritime interests: People's Daily
BEIJING, July 12 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese people are resolved to defend the country's territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests in the South China Sea, said the People's Daily in a commentary to be carried on Wednesday.
The tribunal handling the South China Sea arbitration case issued its award on Tuesday, amid a global chorus that the panel has no jurisdiction. Full story
Commentary: South China Sea arbitration a scar on international legal system
BEIJING, July 12 (Xinhua) -- Much like a poisoned tree, which will never bear good fruit, the award issued in the South China Sea arbitration was contaminated from the start.
BEIJING, July 13 (Xinhua) -- The Philippines, turning a blind eye to bilateral consensus, has repeatedly taken moves that complicate the relevant disputes, gradually intensified the relevant disputes between China and the Philippines in the South China Sea, said a white paper issued on Wednesday.
The Philippines built military facilities on some islands and reefs of China's Nansha Qundao (the Nansha Islands) it has invaded and illegally occupied, said the document, titled "China Adheres to the Position of Settling Through Negotiation the Relevant Disputes Between China and the Philippines in the South China Sea."
The Philippines deliberately destroyed survey markers set up by China and attempted to illegally occupy China's Ren'ai Jiao by using a military vessel illegally run aground at it, according to the document issued by the State Council Information Office.
The Philippines also has territorial pretensions on China's Huangyan Dao and attempted to occupy it illegally, deliberately causing the Huangyan Dao Incident, it said.
The Philippines has intruded into relevant maritime areas of China's Nansha Qundao to carry out illegal oil and gas exploratory drilling and bidding.
The Philippines has repeatedly harassed and attacked Chinese fishermen and fishing boats conducting routine fishing operations, according to the white paper.
In January 2013, the then government of the Republic of the Philippines unilaterally initiated the South China Sea arbitration.
By doing so, the Philippines has violated its standing agreement with China to settle the relevant disputes through bilateral negotiation, has violated China's right to choose means of dispute settlement of its own will as a State Party to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), and has abused the UNCLOS dispute settlement procedures, it said.
"The Philippines has distorted facts, misinterpreted laws and concocted a pack of lies, in an attempt to deny China's territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests in the South China Sea," it said.
The Arbitral Tribunal established at the Philippines' unilateral request has no jurisdiction over relevant submissions, and awards rendered by it are null and void and have no binding force, according to the white paper.
China's territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests in the South China Sea shall under no circumstances be affected by those awards. China does not accept or recognize those awards. China opposes and will never accept any claim or action based on those awards, it said.
Related:
Full Text: China Adheres to the Position of Settling Through Negotiation the Relevant Disputes Between China and the Philippines in the South China Sea
BEIJING, July 13 (Xinhua) -- The State Council Information Office of the People's Republic of China on Wednesday published a white paper titled "China Adheres to the Position of Settling Through Negotiation the Relevant Disputes Between China and the Philippines in the South China Sea". Following is the full text of the white paper: Full story
Spotlight: Law-abusing tribunal issues ill-founded award on South China Sea arbitration, draws worldwide criticism
THE HAGUE, July 12 (Xinhua) -- The tribunal handling the South China Sea arbitration case unilaterally initiated by the former Philippine government issued its final award on Tuesday, sweepingly siding with Manila's cunningly packaged claims.
The process and outcome of the three-year-long arbitration have drawn criticism from dozens of countries and numerous experts across the world, who pointed out that the panel has no jurisdiction and its decision is naturally null and void. Full story
Spotlight: Ill-founded award on South China Sea arbitration draws worldwide criticism
THE HAGUE, July 12 (Xinhua) -- An arbitral tribunal on the South China Sea rendered ruling on Tuesday, resulting in a deluge of criticism from China and other countries.
The 479-page award issued by a five-member tribunal is sweepingly in favor of the claims filed by the administration of former Philippine President Benigno S. Aquino III, which unilaterally lodged the arbitration. Full story
China refutes U.S. statement on South China Sea arbitration award
BEIJING, July 12 (Xinhua) -- China is strongly displeased with a press statement issued by the Spokesperson of the U.S. State Department on Tuesday on the award issued by the South China Sea arbitration tribunal unilaterally initiated by the former Philippine government.
Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lu Kang said in a statement that China is firmly opposed to the U.S. statement and has lodged solemn representations with the U.S. side. Full story
Chinese foreign minister says South China Sea arbitration a political farce
BEIJING, July 12 (Xinhua) -- The South China Sea arbitration, unilaterally initiated by the Philippines, is a political farce made under the pretext of law, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Tuesday.
Wang made the remarks after an Arbitral Tribunal handling the South China Sea arbitration case issued its final award on Tuesday. Full story
International law dishonored by illegal award on South China Sea arbitration: Chinese diplomat
THE HAGUE, July 12 (Xinhua) -- The ruling on the South China Sea arbitration issued by a court in The Hague is a disgrace to international law, Chinese Ambassador to the Netherlands Wu Ken told the press on Tuesday.
"Today is a 'black Tuesday' for The Hague, 'the capital of international law'," Wu commented. Full story
China asks Japan to stop interfering in South China Sea
BEIJING, July 12 (Xinhua) -- China has asked Japan to stop interfering in the South China Sea issue, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said Tuesday.
China hopes Japan will bear in mind the terms of China-Japan relations and of regional peace and stability, and reflect on its position on South China Sea disputes, Lu Kang said. Full story
China resolved to defend territorial sovereignty, maritime interests: People's Daily
BEIJING, July 12 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese people are resolved to defend the country's territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests in the South China Sea, said the People's Daily in a commentary to be carried on Wednesday.
The tribunal handling the South China Sea arbitration case issued its award on Tuesday, amid a global chorus that the panel has no jurisdiction. Full story
Commentary: South China Sea arbitration a scar on international legal system
BEIJING, July 12 (Xinhua) -- Much like a poisoned tree, which will never bear good fruit, the award issued in the South China Sea arbitration was contaminated from the start.
BEIJING, July 13 (Xinhua) -- The Xinhua News Agency released the full text of a white paper titled "China Adheres to the Position of Settling Through Negotiation the Relevant Disputes Between China and the Philippines in the South China Sea" on Wednesday.
Please visit http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/nhbps2016/2016-07/13/c_129141327.htm for the full text of the white paper.
Xinhua subscribers can also log on http://bj08.xinhua-news.com with the username of bjxhsfb and password of bjxhsfb to download the document.
Related:
Full Text: China Adheres to the Position of Settling Through Negotiation the Relevant Disputes Between China and the Philippines in the South China Sea
BEIJING, July 13 (Xinhua) -- The State Council Information Office of the People's Republic of China on Wednesday published a white paper titled "China Adheres to the Position of Settling Through Negotiation the Relevant Disputes Between China and the Philippines in the South China Sea". Following is the full text of the white paper: Full story Philippines repeatedly take moves that complicate disputes in South China Sea: white paper BEIJING, July 13 (Xinhua) -- The Philippines, turning a blind eye to bilateral consensus, has repeatedly taken moves that complicate the relevant disputes, gradually intensified the relevant disputes between China and the Philippines in the South China Sea, said a white paper issued on Wednesday. The Philippines built military facilities on some islands and reefs of China's Nansha Qundao (the Nansha Islands) it has invaded and illegally occupied, said the document, titled "China Adheres to the Position of Settling Through Negotiation the Relevant Disputes Between China and the Philippines in the South China Sea." Full story China is an important force for maintaining peace, stability in South China Sea: white paper BEIJING, July 13 (Xinhua) -- China is an important force for maintaining peace and stability in the South China Sea, said a white paper issued on Wednesday. While firmly safeguarding its territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests in the South China Sea, China adheres to the position of settling disputes through negotiation and consultation and managing differences through rules and mechanisms, said the document, titled "China Adheres to the Position of Settling Through Negotiation the Relevant Disputes Between China and the Philippines in the South China Sea." Full story South China Sea Islands are China's inherent territory: white paper BEIJING, July 13 (Xinhua) -- Nanhai Zhudao (the South China Sea Islands) are China's inherent territory, said a white paper issued Wednesday. The activities of the Chinese people in the South China Sea dated back to over 2,000 years ago, said the document, titled "China Adheres to the Position of Settling Through Negotiation the Relevant Disputes Between China and the Philippines in the South China Sea." The document was issued by the State Council Information Office. Full story
Philippines' territorial claim over part of Nansha Islands groundless: white paper
BEIJING, July 13 (Xinhua) -- The core of the relevant disputes between China and the Philippines in the South China Sea lies in the territorial issues caused by the Philippines' invasion and illegal occupation by force, starting in the 1970s, of some islands and reefs of China's Nansha Qundao (the Nansha Islands), said a white paper issued Wednesday.
"The Philippines has concocted many excuses to cover up this fact, and to pursue its territorial pretensions," said the document, titled "China Adheres to the Position of Settling Through Negotiation the Relevant Disputes Between China and the Philippines in the South China Sea." Full story
China issues white paper on settling disputes with Philippines
BEIJING, July 13 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese government on Wednesday issued a white paper titled "China Adheres to the Position of Settling Through Negotiation the Relevant Disputes Between China and the Philippines in the South China Sea."
"The Philippines' territorial claim over part of Nansha Qundao is groundless from the perspectives of either history or international law," said the document issued by the State Council Information Office. Full story
Spotlight: Law-abusing tribunal issues ill-founded award on South China Sea arbitration, draws worldwide criticism
THE HAGUE, July 12 (Xinhua) -- The tribunal handling the South China Sea arbitration case unilaterally initiated by the former Philippine government issued its final award on Tuesday, sweepingly siding with Manila's cunningly packaged claims.
The process and outcome of the three-year-long arbitration have drawn criticism from dozens of countries and numerous experts across the world, who pointed out that the panel has no jurisdiction and its decision is naturally null and void. Full story
Spotlight: Ill-founded award on South China Sea arbitration draws worldwide criticism
THE HAGUE, July 12 (Xinhua) -- An arbitral tribunal on the South China Sea rendered ruling on Tuesday, resulting in a deluge of criticism from China and other countries.
The 479-page award issued by a five-member tribunal is sweepingly in favor of the claims filed by the administration of former Philippine President Benigno S. Aquino III, which unilaterally lodged the arbitration. Full story
China refutes U.S. statement on South China Sea arbitration award
BEIJING, July 12 (Xinhua) -- China is strongly displeased with a press statement issued by the Spokesperson of the U.S. State Department on Tuesday on the award issued by the South China Sea arbitration tribunal unilaterally initiated by the former Philippine government.
Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lu Kang said in a statement that China is firmly opposed to the U.S. statement and has lodged solemn representations with the U.S. side. Full story
Chinese foreign minister says South China Sea arbitration a political farce
BEIJING, July 12 (Xinhua) -- The South China Sea arbitration, unilaterally initiated by the Philippines, is a political farce made under the pretext of law, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Tuesday.
Wang made the remarks after an Arbitral Tribunal handling the South China Sea arbitration case issued its final award on Tuesday. Full story
International law dishonored by illegal award on South China Sea arbitration: Chinese diplomat
THE HAGUE, July 12 (Xinhua) -- The ruling on the South China Sea arbitration issued by a court in The Hague is a disgrace to international law, Chinese Ambassador to the Netherlands Wu Ken told the press on Tuesday.
"Today is a 'black Tuesday' for The Hague, 'the capital of international law'," Wu commented. Full story
China asks Japan to stop interfering in South China Sea
BEIJING, July 12 (Xinhua) -- China has asked Japan to stop interfering in the South China Sea issue, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said Tuesday.
China hopes Japan will bear in mind the terms of China-Japan relations and of regional peace and stability, and reflect on its position on South China Sea disputes, Lu Kang said. Full story
China resolved to defend territorial sovereignty, maritime interests: People's Daily
BEIJING, July 12 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese people are resolved to defend the country's territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests in the South China Sea, said the People's Daily in a commentary to be carried on Wednesday.
The tribunal handling the South China Sea arbitration case issued its award on Tuesday, amid a global chorus that the panel has no jurisdiction. Full story
Commentary: South China Sea arbitration a scar on international legal system
BEIJING, July 12 (Xinhua) -- Much like a poisoned tree, which will never bear good fruit, the award issued in the South China Sea arbitration was contaminated from the start.
LONDON, July 13 (Xinhua) -- Two British experts said lately that the arbitral tribunal in The Hague should not have agreed to hear the South China Sea case unilaterally initiated by the Philippines against China.
The government of former Philippine President Benigno Aquino III filed the arbitration against China in 2013, ignoring the agreement his country had reached with China on resolving their South China Sea disputes through bilateral negotiations.
The tribunal issued its final award on Tuesday, sweepingly siding with Manila's cunningly packaged claims.
"There is a current anticipated crisis in the South China Sea prompted by a Court of Arbitration decision to hear a one-party claim to a part of the South China Sea," said Stephen Perry, chairman of the 48 Group Club, in a recent interview with Xinhua.
"Arbitration is defined in the dictionary as a dispute where the parties have agreed to settle it by arbitration. Clearly China does not accept arbitration to settle the dispute, so the Court should not have agreed to hear this dispute presented by only one party," he said.
Noting that the two nations should pursue other means they agreed to settle their dispute, Perry explained that "the dispute cannot be settled ... by a process which only includes one party. It is not an arbitration."
"I have been involved in many hundreds of arbitrations and always both parties agree on arbitration, or there is no arbitration," added the businessman.
Shahid Qureshi, London Post's editor and political analyst, said the fact that "the tribunal has allowed the case to go ahead in spite of its lack of justifiable jurisdiction" poses a big question mark to the tribunal's "intention" and "interest."
"I am of the view that the tribunal must review its position and jurisdiction for the sake of institution it stands for; otherwise it will become a joke in the legal history as they did not follow the due process of law," Qureshi noted.
He pointed out that the Philippines, filing the case without consulting with China, failed to fulfill its obligation stipulated in the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC), a document signed by China and members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations including the Philippines in 2002.
"I think under the terms and conditions stipulated in DOC, the Philippines seems to have jumped higher than necessary and must review its position," he said.
Stressing that "local solutions" are always the best, Qureshi argued that "the Philippines could talk with China about the matters arising about the situation in the South China Sea."
The analyst also said the real reason behind the so-called "militarization" in the South China Sea is the military involvement and "war profiteering" of the United States, which in recent years has sent military jets and warships on close-in reconnaissance in the nearby waters and air space of China's islands and reefs.
"The U.S. has a policy of creating wars or disputes within the countries and also in the neighboring countries of the targets (based on its long term objectives), starting from Vietnam, Korea, Afghanistan, Iraq," he explained.
"One can ask a simple question to U.S. officials: 'What are you doing in my neighborhood in the first place'?" Qureshi said.
WASHINGTON, July 12 (Xinhua) -- U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said on Tuesday that chances for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement to get a vote in Congress this year are "pretty slim".
McConnell told reporters at a weekly press briefing that the U.S. presidential campaign has made it increasingly difficult for Congress to consider the controversial trade deal this year as "both the Democratic and Republican candidates for president" are against it.
McConnell said he hasn't decided on the timing of a TPP vote in the Senate, but suggested that the upper chamber could wait until the next president takes office.
"It's important to remember the Trade Promotion Authority continues through the next President and the agreement doesn't die at the end of this year," he said of the trade legislation passed last summer that would allow the U.S. president to submit trade deals to Congress for an up-or-down vote without amendments.
"It's still out there to be considered or to be modified," McConnell said, referring to the trade deal reached between the United States and 11 other Asia-Pacific countries last year, which covers about 40 percent of the global economic output.
McConnell's comments are in stark contrast to many top officials in the Obama administration, who have urged Congress to approve the TPP as soon as possible.
The TPP involves Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United States and Vietnam.
BELGRADE, July 13 (Xinhua) -- Serbian Foreign Ministry said Tuesday that the country supports parties directly involved in the South China Sea dispute to have dialogue.
"Directly interested parties should peacefully settle the dispute in the South China Sea," Foreign Ministry said in a press release.
"Serbia provides support to directly interested parties to find an acceptable solution within the framework of bilateral relations and rules set by the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC), by fulfilling principles of peaceful resolution of conflicts," the ministry said.
The DOC calls on states directly involved in territorial and maritime disputes to resolve their differences through peaceful negotiations. It was signed by China and all members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
CANBERRA, July 13 (Xinhua) -- Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull will next week meet with New Zealand counterpart John Key, to discuss Britain's controversial exit from the European Union (EU).
Key is expected to return from a diplomatic trip to Europe on July 20, and is keen to set up a meeting with Turnbull to discuss both Australia and New Zealand's plan for dealing with the implications of the vote.
Following the Brexit vote last month, Turnbull ordered Australia's Treasury and other financial regulators to form an array of comprehensive reports on possible Australian responses to the decision, and said he would meet with Key to discuss a joint response.
A spokesperson for the New Zealand prime minister told the Australian Associated Press (AAP) that Key was planning to discuss his findings with Turnbull, who had been too preoccupied with the Australian election to do much of his own research.
"(John Key) is planning to discuss his visit to the EU and UK with Mr Turnbull on his return (on July 20)," the spokesman said on Wednesday.
The spokesperson also told the AAP that both Key and Turnbull believe there are common areas of interest where both nations could collaborate on negotiating better trade access to the UK as well as the EU.
Turnbull is also expected to be briefed by NZ Trade Minister Todd McLay, who also met with officials from both the EU and the UK at a G20 meeting in China.
MELBOURNE, July 13 (Xinhua) -- A police blitz in the Australian state of Tasmania has resulted in a major spike in the arrests of people using, or dealing, the drug methamphetamine also known as "ice."
According to a report released on Wednesday by the Illicit Drug Reporting System, the number of methamphetamine-related arrests in Tasmania jumped from 72 in 2013-14 to 383 in 2014-15, an increase of 430 percent in just one year.
The findings from the report revealed that the majority of those arrested, 266, were drug users, while 117 were dealers.
An annual survey conducted by the National Drug and Alcohol Research Center found methamphetamine was now the most commonly used injected drug in Tasmania.
Tasmania Police's acting assistant commissioner, Mark Mewis, said combatting the rise in "ice" had been a priority for the police force.
"One of the business priorities for Tasmania Police in 2014-15 in reducing crime was the targeting of serious drug offenders," Mewis told News Corp on Wednesday.
"That focus is reflected in the number of charges for serious drug offences and the increase in the amount of drugs seized over the period.
"The impact of illegal drugs on our community, including 'ice,' is a national and international issue, and Tasmania is not immune."
The use of ice among injecting drug users has been on a steady decline in the state, now at 72 percent, down from 95 percent in 2005.
However, Mewis said drug use was still a serious issue within the Tasmanian community.
"Whilst overall drug use in Tasmania does not appear to be increasing ... cannabis, followed by amphetamines are the most frequently used illicit drugs, which follows national trends," he said.
"This is not just an issue for police, it is an opportunity to take responsibility for the issue as a community to address the impact of drugs."
Despite the rising number of arrests, the report revealed that drug users found the crystal form of methamphetamines easy to acquire in Tasmania.
Cannabis, morphine and oxycodone were also readily available, according to the report.
MINSK, July 12 (Xinhua) -- Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko on Tuesday expressed his eagerness to promote relations with China.
"We need a breakthrough in our relations. We need to not only bring the relations with China to the next level, but also onto a new course," said Lukashenko.
He said China-Belarus relations are friendly and strategic, and that "we have been able to convince China that we are a reliable partner."
Lukashenko said this when appointing Kirill Rudy, his economic assistant, as the new Belarusian ambassador to China.
When giving instructions on preparations for his expected visit to Beijing in September, he also demanded ready response to opportunities to promote cooperation with China.
SYDNEY, July 13 (Xinhua) -- Australian social media is going "cray cray for Tay Tay" on Wednesday after global superstar Taylor Swift took photos and sang songs during a low-key visit to sick children.
Hanging out on Australia's Gold Coast while her boyfriend Tom Hiddleston films the latest instalment to the Thor franchise, Swift paid a surprise visit to a Brisbane children's hospital, giving a much needed morale boost to its very sick patients.
"Real life Angel! Can't believe she visited the hospital I sometimes have to go to," one person commented on social media, the Daily Mail Australia reported.
It's believed the world's highest paid celebrity meant to keep the visit low key as press, paparazzi and many of the hospital's staff were not made aware of Swift's plan prior to the star's arrival.
"Thank you Taylor Swift for dropping by the Lady Cilento Children's Hospital to give our patients and families a special surprise they'll never forget," the hospital wrote on Facebook late Tuesday night.
"They'll never 'shake off' the memories you made."
It's not the first time a Hollywood A-lister has dropped in to visit patients at the Lady Cilento Children's hospital.
In July last year, Johnny Depp dropped in dressed as Captain Jack Sparrow to offer his support and much needed joy to the kids while he took time out from filming a squeal to the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise.
BEIJING, July 13 (Xinhua) -- China said on Wednesday that it will decide whether to declare an Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) in the South China Sea in accordance with the extent of threat.
"The ADIZ is not a Chinese invention, but rather that of some big powers. If our security were threatened, of course we have the right. It depends on our comprehensive judgment," said Vice Foreign Minister Liu Zhenmin at a press briefing at the Information Office of the State Council.
A white paper titled "China Adheres to the Position of Settling Through Negotiation the Relevant Disputes Between China and the Philippines in the South China Sea" was published on Wednesday, after an award was issued on Tuesday in the arbitration unilaterally initiated by the former Philippine government.
Liu urged other countries not to "take the opportunity to threaten China," and called on other countries to work with China to jointly maintain peace and stability in the South China Sea.
Liu reiterated that settling relevant disputes between China and the Philippines in the South China Sea through negotiation is the theme of the white paper, as well as the policy of the Chinese government.
"We hope to work with countries surrounding the South China Sea, including ASEAN members, abide by the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC), maintain peace and stability as well as the freedom of navigation and overflight in the South China Sea," Liu said.
He noted such a policy has not changed and will not change.
As for the arbitration award, the vice foreign minister reaffirmed that China will not execute the award. And he called on the Philippines to return to the track of bilateral negotiation.
ISLAMABAD, July 13 (Xinhua) -- At least six militants were killed in an exchange of firing with police in Pakistan's east Okara district on Wednesday morning, officials said.
District Police Officer Faisal Rana said that two policemen were also injured in the shoot out that was triggered off when they raided a hideout of the militants in 28 L-2 village of Okara, a district in the country's east Punjab province.
He said that intelligence officials and police launched a joint search operation at the hideout, after receiving a tip-off regarding the presence of the militants there.
He said that during the operation, the militants opened fire at the police, which lead to the gun battle between the two parties.
The injured policemen were shifted to a nearby hospital.
Police said that they have recovered arms and ammunition from the hide out of the killed militants.
The house was sealed, following the operation, for investigations.
Local Urdu TV channel Samaa quoted unidentified police sources as saying that the militants belonged to Al-Qaeda and were planning a major terrorist attack in the city.
WELLINGTON, July 13 (Xinhua) -- The New Zealand government is to tighten up its lax foreign trust rules after an official inquiry found last month that they could be exploited to hide ill-gotten gains or evade tax.
Finance Minister Bill English and Revenue Minister Michael Woodhouse said Wednesday that acting on all the inquiry's recommendations would strengthen New Zealand's international reputation.
The government intended to introduce legislation to require a register of foreign trusts that was searchable by the Department of Internal Affairs and the police, and annual disclosure requirements in the coming months, English said in a statement.
Woodhouse said in the statement that the government was committed to strengthening New Zealand's anti-money laundering rules, which would bring in more comprehensive requirements for lawyers, accountants, real estate agents and others.
The inquiry by an independent tax expert said there was "a reasonable likelihood" that the country's foreign trust regime "is facilitating the hiding of funds or evasion of tax in some instances."
"The rules are not fit for purpose in the context of preserving New Zealand's reputation as a country that cooperates with other jurisdictions to counter money laundering and aggressive tax practices," said the inquiry report.
The government launched the inquiry into foreign trusts in April amid claims that wealthy foreigners were using foreign trusts to evade taxes in their home countries or to obscure ill-gotten gains.
Critics claimed that New Zealand foreign trusts enable tax avoidance because they have no requirement to disclose either the trust beneficiaries or the source of assets.
The report recommended a significant increase in the information disclosed when a foreign trust sets up, including naming foreign trustees, along with annual reports with details of settlors, beneficiaries, and full financial statements, and increased enforcement to deter foreigners looking to use New Zealand foreign trusts "for illicit purposes."
Opposition lawmakers said the government could go further by making the foreign trust register searchable by the public and foreign tax partners.
"The secrecy and tax-free status of New Zealand foreign trusts have made them an attractive vehicle for tax avoidance and crime, damaging our reputation abroad," opposition Green Party finance spokesperson Julie Anne Genter said in a statement.
SEOUL, July 13 (Xinhua) -- South Korea's defense ministry on Wednesday announced an agreement with the United States to deploy the U.S. missile defense system, called Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD), in its southeastern region despite continued oppositions from neighboring countries.
CANBERRA, July 13 (Xinhua) -- Reports of sexual assault in Australia reached a six-year high in 2015, figures released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) on Wednesday have shown.
The figure represents a 3 percent rise over the previous year, William Milne from the ABS said on Wednesday, with women four times more likely to be the victim compared to men.
"This was an increase of 3 percent on the previous year, and the highest number of sexual assault reports we've seen in six years," Milne said in a statement released on Wednesday.
"Nationally, over four in five sexual assault victims were female."
Milne said teenage girls between the ages of 15 and 19 were most at-risk of being sexually assaulted, with most occurrences happening at a residential location and without use of a weapon.
"Females aged between 15 and 19 years were seven times more likely to have been a victim of sexual assault compared to the overall population," he said.
Other statistics released by the ABS showed that the rate of homicide in Australia fell 2 percent from 2014 to 2015.
This is the fourth consecutive year in which reports of homicide and related offences have fallen, Milne said.
Meanwhile, the use of a firearm in homicides in Australia decreased by 24 percent between 2014 and 2015 (from 75 to 57 victims) while murders involving any other type of weapon did not change over the same period.
According to the ABS, around three in five homicide victims were male.
SEOUL, July 13 (Xinhua) -- South Korea's defense ministry on Wednesday announced an agreement with the United States to deploy the U.S. missile defense system, called Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD), to its southeastern region despite continued oppositions from neighboring countries.
One THAAD battery will be deployed to the Seongsan-ri region of the Seongju county in North Gyeongsang province, where South Korean Air Force's Hawk surface-to-air missile battery is located.
After Friday's decision between Seoul and Washington to deploy U.S. interceptors in the South Korean soil, the decision for the deployment site was announced earlier than expected amid mounting oppositions and controversies at home and abroad.
On Friday, Seoul said the site would be announced within weeks, but nationwide protests against the THAAD deployment had spread especially in candidate sites, prompting the country to announce it just five days after the deployment decision. The two allies aim to deploy the U.S. missile defense system in the site by the end of next year.
HUHHOT, July 13 (Xinhua) -- Mongolian designer Ganchimeg never imagined her clothing store in Inner Mongolia's Erenhot City could be so popular that sometimes she is too busy to stop for a drink of water.
"I came to China two years ago and have seen trade fairs and expos between the two countries rise. I met buyers at these events, and the orders just keep coming," Ganchimeg said.
Ganchimeg has to make 20 Mongolian robes and ten costumes this month. She has hired two tailors from Mongolia's capital Ulan Bator. "But we are still busy," she said.
Ganchimeg used to be a tourist guide in Mongolia. She decided to open a business in China after many Chinese tourists she worked with showed a keen interest in Mongolian culture.
"An increasing number of tourists from China enter Mongolia on their way to Ulan-Ude in Russia," Ganchimeg said.
Many tourists arrive in Mongolia on the the Erenhot-Ulan Bator-Ulan-Ude route, one of the main routes on the China-Mongolia-Russia economic corridor. The trilateral channel aims to boost transportation connectivity and economic cooperation in border regions.
The plan was signed by leaders of the three countries in June, marking a new stage of cooperation. It has already brought benefits to many.
Ubmall, a cross-border e-commerce platform, launched in 2014 by a foreign economic and trade company based in Erenhot, now has over 1,600 registered Chinese shops selling products to Mongolia.
In 2015, the company expanded its business, providing fast customs clearance services for e-business between China and Russia.
Parcels bound for Mongolia and Russia were delivered by train through Erenhot land port, said Li Pengyuan, a co-founder of Ubmall.mn, adding that the route is an effective supplement to the transportation routes between China, Mongolia and Russia, via ports of Manzhouli and Suifenhe.
"We deal over 20,000 packages daily, and the figure is expected to rise in the second half of this year," he said.
According to the frontier inspection station, in the first half of 2016, 58 trains carrying 2,414 cars of goods passed through the Mongolian port of Erenhot, up 1.5 fold year on year.
The economic corridor has also accelerated other cross-border transportation infrastructure projects, said Tumen-Tsetseg, a regional assessment researcher and professor with Inner Mongolia University, adding that it will boost economic cooperation between the three countries to cover more fields, such as culture, tourism and medicine.
"In turn, a better cultural cooperation will further accelerate the construction of the China-Mongolia-Russia economic corridor," she said.
Chinese Premier Li Keqiang will pay an official visit to Mongolia from July 13 to 14. The visit is expected to "inject new impetus into the development of bilateral ties and benefit the people of the two nations," said China's Assistant Minister of Foreign Affairs Kong Xuanyou.
TIRANA, July 13 (Xinhua) -- Albania and Germany on Tuesday signed an agreement to fund the former's development with 41.4 million euros (45.7 million U.S. dollars) in the next two years.
The agreement was signed by Albanian Deputy Prime Minister Niko Peleshi and new German Ambassador to Tirana Susanne Schuetz and covers waste management, water supply, sewerage system and vocational education, Albanian Daily News reported.
Peleshi praised Germany for providing more than 1 billion euros (1106.1 million dollars) in the past 20 years of cooperation, adding that German contribution to Albania's reform agenda promotes the country's development and integration into the European Union (EU).
"Germany welcomes Albania's constructive role in the peaceful development and stabilization of the Western Balkans, as it was emphasized at the conference of the Western Balkan countries on July 4th in Paris," German Ambassador Susanne Schuetz said.
She promised that Germany will continue to support Albania's EU accession and reform drive.
SEOUL, July 13 (Xinhua) -- South Korea's defense ministry on Wednesday announced an agreement with the United States to deploy the U.S. missile defense system, called Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD), in its southeastern region despite continued oppositions from neighboring countries.
One THAAD battery will be deployed in the Seongsan-ri region of the Seongju county in North Gyeongsang province, where South Korean Air Force's Hawk surface-to-air missile battery is located.
Yoo Jeh-seung, deputy defense minister for policy, said at a nationally televised briefing that the county was proposed as the best site to maximize military effectiveness and secure safety of residents in the region, which was approved by defense ministers of South Korea and the United States.
After Friday's decision between Seoul and Washington to deploy U.S. interceptors in the South Korean soil, the decision for the deployment site was announced earlier than expected amid mounting oppositions and controversies at home and abroad.
On Friday, Seoul said the site would be announced within weeks, but nationwide protests against the THAAD deployment had spread especially in candidate sites, prompting the country to announce it just five days after the deployment decision. The two allies aim to deploy the U.S. missile defense system in the site by the end of next year.
China and Russia have expressed strong oppositions to the THAAD deployment in the South Korean soil as its X-band radar can spot Chinese and Russian territories far beyond the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK).
The AN/TPY-2 radar can detect 600-800 km with a terminal mode, which South Korea plans to adopt, but it can be converted at any time, and takes less than a day to change, into a forward-based mode that ranges as far as 2,000 km because the two versions have the same hardware.
The THAAD battery will be operated by the U.S. Forces Korea (USFK) and the radar operation will not be made transparent. The deployment itself indicates South Korea becoming part of the U.S. missile defense program, or the core of the U.S. Pivot-to-Asia strategy.
"Even if (Seoul and Washington) try to politically promise (not to keep watch on Chinese and Russian territories), such pledge has no meaning in technical terms," said Cheong Wooksik, director of Peace Network, a local civic group.
"The terminal and forward-based modes just have difference in software. The conversion takes just several hours," Cheong said at a forum hosted by the People's Solidarity for Participatory Democracy (PSPD), a local civic group.
"What kind of radar mode Seoul will select does not matter. China's military expert cannot be dispatched to the THAAD battery to supervise its operation," said Kim Joon Hyung, professor of international studies at Handong Global University.
The professor said strong opposition from China and Russia came as the THAAD deployment means South Korea entering a part of the colossal U.S. missile defense network.
Related:
DPRK warns of "physical measures" against U.S. deployment of THAAD in S.Korea
PYONGYANG, July 11 (Xinhua) -- The army of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea issued a warning Monday that it will take "physical measures" against the deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) in South Korea by the United States.
Seoul and Washington announced Friday the deployment of the THAAD as part of the U.S. Forces Korea (USFK) stationed in South Korea to better tackle the so-called nuclear and missile threats from the DPRK. Full story
News Analysis: S.Korea seeks to defend THAAD deployment despite oppositions at home, abroad
By Yoo Seungki
SEOUL, July 11 (Xinhua) -- South Korean government officials on Monday sought to tout the need for deploying the U.S. missile defense system, called Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD), in its territory despite oppositions and controversies at home and abroad.
MOSCOW, July 13 (Xinhua) -- Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said Tuesday that Russia's economic indicators have slowed their decline.
"The situation on global financial markets is still unfavorable for us. Though our key economic indicators have narrowed losses, they're still in the negative zone," the Russian news agency TASS quoted Medvedev as saying.
He added that total macroeconomic and budget stability persists, and price growth has slowed down significantly to less than 4 percent since the beginning of this year, which is almost twice as low as in the first half of 2015.
According to Medvedev, the labor market has seen positive changes, and "a number of sectors of the economy are in a fairly good condition."
SEOUL, July 13 (Xinhua) -- South Korea's defense ministry on Wednesday announced an agreement with the United States to deploy the U.S. missile defense system, called Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD), to its southeastern region despite continued opposition from neighboring countries.
One THAAD battery will be deployed to the Seongsan-ri region of the Seongju county in North Gyeongsang province, where South Korean Air Force's Hawk surface-to-air missile battery is located.
Yoo Jeh-seung, deputy defense minister for policy, said at a nationally televised briefing that the county was proposed as the best site to maximize military effectiveness and secure safety of residents in the region, which was approved by defense ministers of South Korea and the United States.
After Friday's decision between Seoul and Washington to deploy U.S. interceptors in the South Korean soil, the decision for the deployment site was announced earlier than expected amid mounting opposition and controversies at home and abroad.
On Friday, Seoul said the site would be announced within weeks, but nationwide protests against the THAAD deployment had spread especially in candidate sites, prompting the country to announce it just five days after the deployment decision. The two countries aim to deploy the U.S. missile defense system in the site by the end of next year.
China and Russia have expressed strong opposition to the THAAD deployment in the South Korean soil as its X-band radar can spot Chinese and Russian territories far beyond the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK).
The AN/TPY-2 radar can detect 600-800 km with a terminal mode, which South Korea plans to adopt, but it can be converted at any time, and takes less than a day to change, into a forward-based mode that ranges as far as 2,000 km because the two versions have the same hardware.
The THAAD battery will be operated by the U.S. Forces Korea (USFK) and the radar operation will not be made transparent.
"Even if (Seoul and Washington) try to politically promise (not to keep watch on Chinese and Russian territories), such pledge has no meaning in technical terms," said Cheong Wooksik, director of Peace Network, a local civic group.
"The terminal and forward-based modes just have difference in software. The conversion takes just several hours," Cheong said at a forum hosted by the People's Solidarity for Participatory Democracy (PSPD), a local civic group.
"What kind of radar mode Seoul will select does not matter. China's military expert cannot be dispatched to the THAAD battery to supervise its operation," said Kim Joon Hyung, professor of international studies at Handong Global University.
The professor said strong opposition from China and Russia came as the THAAD deployment means South Korea entering a part of the colossal U.S. missile defense network.
The deployment decision brought strong backlashes from the public, especially among people living in the site, on deep worries about a super-strong microwave emitted from the X-band radar.
About 5,000 residents in the Seongju county rallied earlier in the day near the site, with some writing in blood to protest against the deployment, according to local media reports. Some of the residents, including the county head, rode buses bound for the defense ministry's headquarters in Seoul to express opposition to the THAAD deployment.
Seoul selected the county as it is sparsely populated. About 45,000 people reside in Seongju, much lower than other candidate sites such as Chilgok in North Gyeongsang province with some 120,000 residents, Yangsan in South Gyeongsang province with 310,000 people and Pyeongtaek in Gyeonggi province where around 460,000 people live.
Near the county, the South Korean Air Force's surface-to-air missile battery is located at an elevation of about 400 meters in which the THAAD battery will be located. The Hawk missiles and some 170 soldiers allegedly would be moved nearby to protect the THAAD battery barracks.
The ministry explained that microwave from the THAAD radar will not affect regions 2.4 km away at an elevation of 210 meters and 5.5 km away at a 483-meter elevation. The county's residential area is located about 1.5 km away from the site and some 300 km southeast of the capital Seoul.
Related:
DPRK warns of "physical measures" against U.S. deployment of THAAD in S.Korea
PYONGYANG, July 11 (Xinhua) -- The army of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea issued a warning Monday that it will take "physical measures" against the deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) in South Korea by the United States.
Seoul and Washington announced Friday the deployment of the THAAD as part of the U.S. Forces Korea (USFK) stationed in South Korea to better tackle the so-called nuclear and missile threats from the DPRK. Full story
News Analysis: S.Korea seeks to defend THAAD deployment despite oppositions at home, abroad
By Yoo Seungki
SEOUL, July 11 (Xinhua) -- South Korean government officials on Monday sought to tout the need for deploying the U.S. missile defense system, called Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD), in its territory despite oppositions and controversies at home and abroad.
BUENOS AIRES, July 12 (Xinhua) -- The award issued by the Arbitral Tribunal in the South China Sea arbitration case is "illegal," and the territorial dispute must be resolved through bilateral dialogue, many Latin American experts have said.
Gustavo Girado, head of the Buenos Aires-based Asia & Argentina Consultancy, told Xinhua recently that "first of all, one major question that must be resolved is how this tribunal can establish an opinion over sovereignty matter in maritime spaces."
"It seems that the Philippines was driven to go to an inadequate institution like the PCA, while going against previous agreements with China, by foreign forces that have a vested stake in the dispute. This has led to a military scaling-up in the region," he said.
Judicial expert Paola de Simone told Xinhua that the PCA's award in favor of the Philippines could hamper future efforts to resolve the dispute through bilateral negotiation.
For her, the Philippines "violated its commitment" as part of the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea.
Arbitration by uninvolved third parties is "an excessive instrument," as "bilateral dialogue" must always be an option, Simone said.
Echoing their views, Evandro Carvalho, a professor of international law at the Getulio Vargas Foundation in Rio de Janeiro, said "it would be very difficult for a nation to admit the jurisdiction of an international tribunal on such a matter."
According to Carvalho, it is the basic rule of international law that allows China to explicitly reject the arbitration process initiated unilaterally by the Philippines.
The expert urged the Philippines to reconsider its action, saying that the complexity of the South China Sea issue deserves a diplomatic solution instead of seeking extra-judicial resolutions.
For Ulises Granados, coordinator of Asia-Pacific Studies at the Autonomous Technology Institute of Mexico (ITAM), the award "does not have much weight."
"In terms of procedure, as long as China has not submitted to the decision of the court, nothing will happen. There will be no consequences from the award," he said.
Granados believed that the arrival of the new Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte opens up a new chance for dialogue.
"It is clear that acting only through a judicial path will not force China to do anything at all," the Granados said.
Related:
China says ADIZ in South China Sea depends on threat
BEIJING, July 13 (Xinhua) -- China said on Wednesday that it will decide whether to declare an Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) in the South China Sea in accordance with the extent of threat.
Chinese naval officers and soldiers work in the control room of missile destroyer Hefei during a military exercise in the water area near south China's Hainan Island and Xisha islands, July 8, 2016.(Xinhua/Zha Chunming)
MOSCOW, July 13 (Xinhua) -- The dispute over the South China Sea should not damage the strong relationship between China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), a Russian expert said.
"There is a free trade zone with a turnover of hundreds of billions of dollars between China and ASEAN countries. It is important that the existing mutual interests are not interrupted by the dispute, as any conflict in the Asia-Pacific would affect the regional economy and politics," Vladimir Petrovsky, chief research fellow at the Center for Russian-Chinese Relations Studies and Forecasting at the Moscow-based Institute for Far Eastern Studies, told Xinhua in a recent interview.
The tribunal handling the South China Sea arbitration case issued its award on Tuesday, amid a global chorus that the panel has no jurisdiction.
The five-member tribunal offered a summary of its decisions, which sweepingly side with the claims filed by the administration of former Philippine President Benigno S. Aquino III.
Beijing said Tuesday it neither accepts nor recognizes the award.
This is the only reasonable position from the point of view of international law, the expert said.
There have been few case of a country being dragged into an arbitration over a territorial dispute, he said. He added that if the Philippines recognized the ruling and China did not, the arbitration should not be recognized as legitimate and legal.
Commenting on the U.S. claims of freedom of navigation in the South China Sea, Petrovsky noted that Washington's role is very ambiguous.
The United States says it favors freedom of navigation; however, what that really means is not only free of navigation for commercial fleet but also for its Navy, which is quite a different thing, Petrovsky said.
Although the Philippines would try to use the U.S. military as a lever in its island dispute with China, Petrovsky believes it may not be wise to do so.
"The United States with its system of bilateral military-political alliances in the Asia-Pacific region has found itself in an awkward position: by contract it is supposed to protect its allies, but why should they spoil relations with China for the sake of the Philippines?" Petrovsky said.
WASHINGTON D.C., July 13, 2016 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Ambassador to the United States Cui Tiankai speaks at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, in Washington D.C., capital of the United States, July 12, 2016. Diplomatic efforts to solve the South China Sea disputes will not be blocked by "a scrap of paper" from an arbitral tribunal nor by "a fleet of aircraft carriers," Chinese Ambassador to the United States Cui Tiankai said Tuesday. (Xinhua/Bao Dandan)
WASHINGTON, July 12 (Xinhua) -- Diplomatic efforts to solve the South China Sea disputes will not be blocked by "a scrap of paper" from an arbitral tribunal nor by "a fleet of aircraft carriers," Chinese Ambassador to the United States Cui Tiankai said Tuesday.
"China remains committed to negotiation and consultations with other parties (in the South China Sea). This position has never changed and will not change," Cui said at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a U.S. think tank.
His remark came after the tribunal handling the South China Sea arbitration unilaterally initiated in 2013 by the former Philippine government issued its award earlier on Tuesday, which sweepingly sided with Manila's claims.
"Such absurd proceedings were taking place in combination with military coercion -- with mounting activities by destroyers, aircraft carriers, strategic bombers, reconnaissance planes and many others," Cui said. "I believe this is an outright manifestation of 'might is right.' "
By opposing and rejecting the arbitration, China is safeguarding its own interests and defending international justice and the true spirit of international law, the ambassador said.
"We will not yield to any pressure, be it in the form of military activities, media criticism or some self-claimed legal bodies," he said. "And we will certainly not make deals with our core interest just for a few words of praise."
The ambassador reiterated that China firmly stands for freedom of navigation in the South China Sea, as sea lanes there are the economic lifelines for China and many other regional countries.
However, he expressed concerns over the assembly of aircraft carriers, airplanes and sophisticated weapons in the region, warning that it could pose a real threat to the freedom of navigation of commercial and civilian vessels.
"Such a concentration of fire power, anywhere in the world, would be a source of concern," he noted.
Cui said the tensions in the South China Sea started to rise about five or six years ago, about the same time when the world began to hear about the U.S. "pivoting to Asia" policy, and the disputes intensified in the last few years.
"If Asia-Pacific is destabilized, if the momentum of regional economic growth is weakened, if armed conflict started, everybody' s interest will be hurt," Cui said.
On the relations between China and the United States, Cui said the territorial issue in the South China Sea should not become an issue between them, nor should it be seen as part of a "strategic rivalry."
A Cold War mentality will not solve the problems of today' s world, Cui said, calling for partnership among countries and new international relationships centered on win-win cooperation.
"We are here to see what kind of choices the U.S. will make: how you see the world today, how you see China' s development, and how you see the relationship between our two countries," he said.
Related:
China says ADIZ in South China Sea depends on threat
BEIJING, July 13 (Xinhua) -- China said on Wednesday that it will decide whether to declare an Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) in the South China Sea in accordance with the extent of threat.
A missile frigate of Chinese navy sails to the venue for the missile launch during a military exercise in the water area near south China's Hainan Island and Xisha islands, July 8, 2016. Chinese navy conducted an annual combat drill in the water area near south China 's Hainan Island and Xisha islands on Friday. (Xinhua/Zha Chunming)
DAMASCUS, July 12 (Xinhua) -- The ruling of the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague against China's right in the South China Sea territories is "politicized," analysts here said on Tuesday.
"The decision taken by the tribunal in the Hague is politicized and has deliberately overlooked the historic facts about China's sovereign right over the South China Sea territory," Omar al-Mekdad, a Syrian expert in the Chinese affairs, told Xinhua.
Earlier in the day, an arbitration tribunal in The Hague rejected China's claims to economic rights across large swathes of the South China Sea, ruling in favor of the Philippines in that maritime dispute.
China rejected the ruling, branding it as null, void and a farce.
Al-Mekdad said the tribunal decision was taken under pressure from the United States on the judges, noting that the pretexts on which the decision was made were "flimsy."
"We all know that the Chinese culture has been prominent in the South China Sea over the period of 6,000 years," he said.
He added that the South China Sea overlooks six countries, among which the United States is trying to foment tension.
"The main goal for Washington is to have a foothold in that sea, which is a hub for a huge global trade," he said.
The crisis in the South China Sea is an old one, but Washington tries to create tension spots in that region to destabilize it.
"The decision that was taken today is politicized and China has all right to undertake whatever it sees proper to respond to this outrageous decision," he concluded.
For his part, Sharif Shehadeh, a former Syrian parliamentarian, said the decision reflects Washington's scheme against Beijing.
"What was decided today is a void and null decision for a simple reason, which is that China overlooks this sea and has full control over it, which means that the tribunal decision is an American one, a politicized move disconnected from geographical reality," he said.
Shehadeh reiterated his conviction that "something is being plotted against China," particularly as the U.S. Navy has been sending ships to the South China Sea recently.
China has recently stressed that the only way out of the dispute is through bilateral talks and friendly dialogue, warning the Philippines that it does not accept or recognize any decision by the tribunal.
Chinese President Xi Jinping rejected the decision on Tuesday, saying that "China will never accept any claim or action based on those awards."
BEIJING, July 13 (Xinhua) -- China will start levying anti-dumping duties on imported acrylic fibers from Japan, the Republic of Korea and Turkey on Thursday, the Ministry of Commerce said on Wednesday.
The move comes after an investigation launched last year showed evidence of dumping that was harming Chinese industry, the ministry said in a statement on its website.
The anti-dumping duties will range from 4.1 percent to 16.1 percent, according to the level of dumping, the statement said.
BRUSSELS, July 12 (Xinhua) -- The award of the South China Sea arbitration solves nothing and the dispute between the Philippines and China can only be solved through bilateral dialogue, a British member of the European Parliament (MEP) said Tuesday.
The arbitration was unilaterally initiated in 2013 by the former Philippine government and its award was issued on Tuesday. China reiterated its stance that it neither accepts nor recognizes the ruling.
"The award is null and void and has no binding force," the Chinese Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
"It is a matter of territorial dispute; I think this issue should not have gone to The Hague," Nirj Deva, vice chairman of the European Parliament's Development Committee and chairman of the EU-China Friendship Group in the European Parliament, told Xinhua.
He noted that sovereignty and territorial disputes are not under the jurisdiction of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.
The lawmaker said former Philippine President Benigno S. Aquino III made "a wrong decision" to go to The Hague. It broke the country' s own commitment made in the 2002 Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC).
According to DOC, China and members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have agreed to settle their regional disputes through consultation and negotiation.
However, by not consulting China about involving a third party, the Philippines walked away from its DOC committments.
By contrast, Deva praised China for abiding by its international commitments.
"On the whole, if you look at China' s history, China has been a very good obeyer of international laws and has kept to all international treaties that it has signed," he said.
It is widely believed that the South China Sea arbitration will only serve to escalate tensions in the region instead of solving disputes. Deva said the award "doesn' t solve anything."
He pointed out that the dispute between the Philippines and China is a bilateral issue, which can only be solved through dialogue and consultation.
Furthermore, he stressed that countries outside the region should respect efforts made by China and ASEAN to safeguard peace and stability in the South China Sea.
The countries meddling in the South China Sea may have concerns about their own interests, in international shipping or aviation. However, the lawmaker stressed there has not been "one single complaint" about any interference from China in international shipping lanes.
"Their concerns are based on hypothetical situations but not on the real facts on the ground," he said.
Noting that the new Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has expressed the desire to engage in dialogue with China, the senior lawmaker called for the European Union (EU) to play a constructive role in the process.
"Firstly, the EU should not interfere in this matter; secondly, we should encourage as much as we can the two sides to come together to the negotiation table, discussing these matters of mutual concerns and interests."
The EU-China Friendship Group in the European Parliament consists of more than 40 lawmakers from at least seven political groups and more than 20 countries.
Related:
China says ADIZ in South China Sea depends on threat
BEIJING, July 13 (Xinhua) -- China said on Wednesday that it will decide whether to declare an Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) in the South China Sea in accordance with the extent of threat.
UNITED NATIONS, July 12 (Xinhua) -- China on Tuesday urged the Israelis and Palestinians to resume peace talks as early as possible to promote peace and stability in the Middle East.
Wu Haitao, China's deputy permanent representative to the United Nations, voiced this opinion at an open meeting of the UN Security Council.
The peace talks should adhere to the land-for-peace principle and the Arab Peace Initiative as well as relevant UN resolutions, Wu said, adding that an early resumption "serves the fundamental interests of the two sides."
"The two sides should exercise restraint and refrain from unilateral actions and use of force against civilians," he said.
"Israel should stop building settlements, abide by international law and lift its blockade against the Palestinians, especially in Gaza. At the same time, its legitimate security concerns must be respected," he said.
He voiced China's support for a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital.
He urged the international community to draw lessons from other hot spots in the region and increase peace efforts on the basis of the work of the Middle East Quartet, which is composed of the United Nations, the European Union, Russia and the United States and seeks a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
In a report released on July 1, the Quartet analyzed the impediments to a lasting solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict and offers recommendations for the way forward, urging Israel to end its settlement policy and Palestine to stop inciting violence.
It reiterated that a negotiated two-state solution is the only way to achieve an enduring peace that meets both Israeli security needs and Palestinian aspirations for statehood and sovereignty.
The two-state solution, envisioning a secure Israel to live in peace with an independent state of Palestine, is widely backed by the international community.
Wu said new peace initiatives must be encouraged, the UN should play a central role in the peace process and any peace outcome must be approved by the UN Security Council, which, under the UN Charter, has the primary responsibility for maintaining peace and security in the world at large.
Wu said China always supports the restoration of legitimate Palestinian rights and welcomes all efforts to ease tensions and achieve a two-state solution.
Sponsored by the United States, the last round of direct Israeli-Palestinian direct peace talks, lasted nine months without resolving their disputes over Israeli settlements, borders of the Palestinian state and security issues.
UNITED NATIONS, July 12 (Xinhua) -- Ten of the 12 publicly announced candidates to succeed from January 2017 retiring UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon were tested on Tuesday in a wide-ranging, first-ever globally-broadcast TV and Internet streaming debate.
There was no clear winner among the six females and four males, seven of them from Eastern Europe believed due for the top UN office. A female successor is also widely expected.
Each was chosen by lots to serve in one of the two groups, standing for an hour behind the podium in the front of the UN General Assembly hall. Questions were fired at them by moderators from Al Jazeera Media Network, producer of the history-making event broadcast, along with President Mogens Lykketoft of the General Assembly.
Correspondents James Bays and Folly Bah Thibault moderated, throwing dozens of questions mixed with sharp queries from UN ambassadors, non-governmental organization representatives and even a fresh-faced student from Brazil, during the fast-paced 90-minute telecast and slightly-longer webcast.
The first group consisted of Vesna Pusic of Croatia, Antonio Guterres of Portugal, Susana Malcorra of Argentina, Vuk Jeremic of Serbia and Natalia Gherman of Moldova.
Pusic, foreign minister of Croatia, responded to the first query saying she seeks the position to counter "deep cynicism or antipathy, resentment" against peace, development and human rights at the United Nations.
Guterres, former Portuguese prime minister and former UN High Commissioner for Refugees, said he seeks to "alleviate humanitarian suffering," fight climate change and xenophobia, adding the next secretary-general "must have solid ethical references."
Malcorra, foreign minister of Argentina and Ban's former Chef de Cabinet, wants to bring the world organization closer to people and to lead the UN "to the next level" by calling on the private sector to assist.
Jeremic, former president of the General Assembly, said he wants to take the helm because "not all is well" at the UN, an organization facing "overwhelming stagnation." Yet he saw the UN as the only entity to tackle most of the global problems.
Gherman, former foreign minister of Moldova, citing her belief in a commitment to a better life for humanity, said she believes only the UN can make it happen.
In the second group were Helen Clark, former prime minister of New Zealand and head of the UN Development Program, Danilo Turk, former president of Slovenia and a former UN assistant secretary-general, Christiana Figueres of Costa Rica who led the Paris climate change conference to a success last December, Igor Luksic, former prime minister of Montenegro and Irina Bokova of Bulgaria, director-general of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.
Srgjan Kerim of Macedonia and Miroslav Lajcak of Slovakia were unable to attend the debate.
"This has been a remarkable evening," general assembly president Lykketoft said when concluding the debate with praises that candidates demonstrated "yet again, their fantastic potential."
They "have allowed us to bring incredible, important global issues into the living rooms of many millions of people across this world," he said. "This is something we should be proud of."
"We have taken another great step forward in our efforts to install further transparency and inclusivity into the process," he said.
"Ultimately I hope we will deliver on our primary objective: to secure the best possible candidate to lead the United Nations in the coming years."
PHNOM PENH, July 13 (Xinhua) -- A prominent Cambodian scholar has warned of regional tensions after an ad hoc arbitral tribunal handling the South China Sea arbitration case issued its final award.
The tribunal handling the South China Sea arbitration case unilaterally initiated by the former Philippine government issued its final award on Tuesday, amid a global chorus that the panel has no jurisdiction.
China, on the same day, said it neither accepts nor recognizes the award, which is "null and void and has no binding force," the Chinese Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
"Regional tensions are going to rise. It would be a mistake to calculate or assume that China will scale down its sovereign claims and activities in the South China Sea after the ruling," Chheang Vannarith, chairman of the Cambodian Institute for Strategic Studies, said in an article published in the Khmer Times newspaper on Wednesday.
He said that the United States and its allies may have calculated that their military presence in the region would deter and restrain China's activities in the region and that the ruling would force China to retreat from asserting sovereignty claims in the South China Sea.
"They are wrong," he said.
"Having said that, the possibility of having a military confrontation between the two major powers remains extremely low," Vannarith said.
China and the United States need to develop a functional mechanism to build trust and confidence and they need to promote an effective channel of communication to avoid misperceptions and miscalculations, he said.
"Deepening economic interdependence is not enough. China and the U.S. must work together to strengthen military-to-military ties," he said.
"In the upcoming ASEAN meetings, the Philippines should not force other ASEAN members to issue a joint statement to support the court ruling, given there is no consensus within ASEAN," said Vannarith.
The viable values of ASEAN are the adherence to the principles of non-interference and consensus-based decision-making, he said, adding that violating these two principles could lead to the destruction of ASEAN.
BEIJING, July 13 (Xinhua) -- China's exports in yuan-denominated terms rose 1.3 percent year on year in June, while imports dropped 2.3 percent, customs data showed on Wednesday.
That led to a monthly trade surplus of 311.2 billion yuan (46.4 billion U.S. dollars), 12.8 percent more than a year before but narrowing slightly from that in May, according to figures from the General Administration of Customs (GAC).
Foreign trade in the first half of the year was 3.3 percent lower than a year earlier at 11.13 trillion yuan, with exports down 2.1 percent and imports down 4.7 percent.
Trade surplus for the first six months widened 5.9 percent from one year earlier to 1.67 trillion yuan.
GAC spokesperson Huang Songping said that according to some leading indicators, China's exports may face "relatively big downward pressure" in the third quarter as global demand looks set to remain sluggish.
Exports to the European Union, China's biggest trade partner, climbed 1.3 percent year on year in the first half, GAC data showed.
In the same period, exports to the United States, China's second-biggest trade partner, declined 4.6 percent and exports to ASEAN, its third-largest trade partner, fell 2.9 percent.
HANOI, July 13 (Xinhua) -- Vietnam's central coastal Da Nang city, a famous tourism destination, welcomed some 211,000 person-times of Chinese visitors in the first half of 2016, said the city's tourism department on Wednesday.
The figure posted an increase of 8.3 percent year-on-year, Da Nang tourism department told Xinhua over phone. Da Nang is located some 600 km south of capital Hanoi.
Chinese visitors accounted for over 26 percent of total foreign arrivals to Da Nang city, which has made contribution to the city's state budget revenue, Nguyen Xuan Anh, Secretary of the Da Nang city party committee, was quoted by local VNExpress online newspaper as saying on Tuesday.
In H1, Vietnam welcomed a total of some 1.204 million person-times of Chinese tourists, up 47.9 percent year-on-year, said Vietnam National Administration of Tourism.
Cairo, July 13 (Xinhua) -- After flying over the landmark Giza Pyramids, the solar-powered aircraft Solar Impulse 2 landed at Cairo Wednesday after a 51-hour flight from Spain, with only one leg ahead to complete its round-the-world tour.
The aircraft, piloted by Swiss aviator Andre Borschbergm, took off from Spain's Seville International Airport on Monday and landed Wednesday morning at Cairo International Airport.
The plane will remain at the airport runway for 15 days, Egypt's official news agency MENA said.
Another Swiss aviator Bertrand Piccard will then fly the plane to Abu Dhabi of the United Arab Emirates, the final leg of it's trip around the world, which began in March 2015.
The aircraft had been in Seville for two weeks after successfully crossing the Atlantic Ocean in three days.
In June 2015, Borschbergm had piloted the plane from Nagoya to Honolulu in a-118-hour non-stop flight, breaking three world records, the longest distance of non-stop flying, the longest solo flight and the longest solar-powered flight without any fuel.
The journey means to encourage people to promote clean and renewable energies.
Solar Impulse 2 has a wingspan of 72 meters, 12 meters longer than that of Boeing 747, but weighs only 2.3 ton. Equipped with 17,248 solar cells, the zero-fuel plane runs on stored energy at night.
ANTANANARIVO, July 13 (Xinhua) -- China was right to reject international court's South China Sea decision, Malagasy experts said on Tuesday.
An international tribunal in The Hague ruled on Tuesday in favor of the Philippines in the South China Sea dispute.
Professor Raniriharinosy Harimanana, a Malagasy political scientist told Xinhua in an exclusive interview Tuesday that "it was decided unilaterally, so this is one more reason for China to reject the decision of the international court."
"China stands ready to continue to resolve the relevant disputes peacefully through negotiation and consultation with the states directly concerned on the basis of respecting historical facts and in accordance with international law," the Chinese government declared Tuesday in its statement on China' s Territorial Sovereignty and Maritime Rights and Interests in the South China Sea.
"Moreover, Nobody can compel a state to appear before an international court without his consent," Raniriharinosy added.
Rabenja Claudio, another Malagasy international relations expert explained to Xinhua that this is a dispute between China and the Philippines.
"Other countries should not interfere, but just stay mediators and non-partisan. International court should judge the case without tilt," Rabenja Claudio added.
The Chinese government issued the statement to reaffirm China' s territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests in the South China Sea, enhance cooperation in the South China Sea with other countries,and uphold peace and stability in the South China Sea.
"I'm not surprised at the decision of the international court because I know that China does not have many representatives in this institution. Also the Philippines are supported by the United States which has a great interest in the dispute, an expert in political sciences, Professor Phillipe Razanajaona said.
"The International Court should swing its decisions to avoid further international scope of problems," Razanajaona added.
"China respects and upholds the freedom of navigation and overflight enjoyed by all states under international law in the South China Sea, and stays ready to work with other coastal states and the international community to ensure the safety of and the unimpeded access to the international shipping lanes in the South China Sea," China concluded in its statement.
TOKYO, July 13 (Xinhua) -- Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party will regain majority in the upper house of the parliament for the first time in 27 years, after an independent lawmaker submitted the application to join the party, the party said Wednesday.
Tatsuo Hirano, a lawmaker who had been reconstruction minister in 2012 under the government led by the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), left the DPJ in 2013 and became an independent. In Sunday's upper house election, he gave his support to a LDP candidate.
Hirano submitted an application to join the LDP after being invited by LDP Secretary General Sadakazu Tanigaki on Tuesday, according to local media.
Hirano's switch to the LDP would bring the seats of the ruling party in the 242-member upper house to 122, which will give Prime Minister Shinzo Abe more power to push for his political agenda.
Abe's ruling LDP and other forces in favor of revising Japan's pacifist Constitution won a two-thirds majority in Sunday's upper house election, bringing the prime minister's goal of constitutional revision closer to fruition.
The solar-powered airplane Solar Impulse 2 finished the second-to-last flight on its round-the-world adventure after a flight from Seville, Spain to Cairo, Egypt on July 13. The tour started in March 2015 in Abu Dhabi, the departure and arrival host city.(Xinhua/Ahmed Gomaa)
CAIRO, July 13 (Xinhua) -- After flying over the landmark Giza Pyramids, the solar-powered aircraft Solar Impulse 2 landed at Cairo Wednesday after a 51-hour flight from Spain, with only one leg ahead to complete its round-the-world tour.
The aircraft, piloted by Swiss aviator Andre Borschbergm, took off from Spain's Seville International Airport on Monday and landed Wednesday morning at Cairo International Airport.
The plane will remain at the airport runway for 15 days, Egypt's official news agency MENA said.
Another Swiss aviator Bertrand Piccard will then fly the plane to Abu Dhabi of the United Arab Emirates, the final leg of it's trip around the world, which began in March 2015.
The aircraft had been in Seville for two weeks after successfully crossing the Atlantic Ocean in three days.
In June 2015, Borschbergm had piloted the plane from Nagoya to Honolulu in a-118-hour non-stop flight, breaking three world records, the longest distance of non-stop flying, the longest solo flight and the longest solar-powered flight without any fuel.
The journey means to encourage people to promote clean and renewable energies.
ULAN BATOR, July 13 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Premier Li Keqiang arrived here Wednesday for an official visit to Mongolia and the 11th Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) summit.
This is Li's first trip to the landlocked Asian country since he took office as Chinese premier in 2013, and the first official visit by a Chinese premier to the country in six years.
During the visit, Li will hold talks with Mongolia's new prime minister, Jargaltulga Erdenebat, and meet with Mongolian President Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj and Chairman Miyegombo Enkhbold of the State Great Hural, Mongolia's parliament.
A series of cooperation deals covering trade, infrastructure, finance and energy, as well as climate change and media exchanges, will be signed during the two-day visit, the first half of Li's stay in Ulan Bator.
On Friday and Saturday, the Chinese premier will attend the 11th summit of ASEM, an intergovernmental forum aimed at fostering political dialogue and boosting cooperation in various areas across Asia and Europe.
He is also expected to hold bilateral meetings with leaders of some ASEM members.
Related:
Interview: Chinese premier's visit to open new chapter for China-Mongolia ties, further ASEM development -- ambassador
ULAN BATOR, July 12 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Premier Li Keqiang's upcoming visit to Mongolia will add momentum to bilateral cooperation and further the development of the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) mechanism, a Chinese diplomat has said.
HANOI, July 13 (Xinhua) -- About 55.4 percent of Vietnamese enterprises expected their production volume to increase in the second half (H2) of 2016, according to the General Statistics Office (GSO) on Wednesday.
At the same time, some 9 percent said production volume would be reduced while around 35 percent predicted stability in production, local Vietnam News, an edition of Vietnam's state-run news agency quoted the GSO as saying on Wednesday.
Regarding production orders, around 48.5 percent of local firms expected orders to increase while 9.5 percent of them estimated reduction in orders.
The office said 48 percent of local businesses expected the processing and manufacturing sector to improve.
In the first six months of 2016, Vietnam witnessed the highest rise of businesses resuming operation over the past few years, according to GSO.
Specifically, from January to June, some 14,902 enterprises resumed their operations, up 75.2 percent year-on-year, said GSO.
BUENOS AIRES, July 12 (Xinhua) -- Argentina has approved agreements with the World Bank for 845 million U.S. dollars in the last two weeks, Argentine Economy Minister Alfonso Pram-Gay announced Tuesday, along with the bank's Managing Director Sri Mulyani Indrawati.
The funds are raised for three projects. First, Argentina will launch the Comprehensive Network Program for Protecting Children and Youths with 600 million dollars to deal with poverty problems and improve living conditions for children in vulnerable situations.
Meanwhile, 200 million dollars will be allocated to mitigate the effects of climate change by preventing possible floods in the Arroyo Vega basin in Buenos Aires.
In addition, 45 million dollars will be used to promote productive projects, such as productive innovation in small- and medium-sized enterprises.
According to Mulyani, the World Bank congratulates "Argentina on its effort to allow a new framework" to be drawn up and pledges to support all the social protection policies and to improve the country's infrastructure.
ISLAMABAD, July 13 (Xinhua) -- The award by an ad hoc arbitral tribunal on the South China Sea issue has drawn wide attention of Pakistan's leading newspapers, most of which gave special coverage to voice support for China's stance on the issue on Wednesday.
Pakistan's major English daily Pakistan Observer published an article on the issue as its super lead at the front page in title "China rejects third-party imposition on South China Sea".
Pakistan Observer also wrote an editorial, pointing out that China's right to the area goes back to centuries, and in 1947 China issued a map detailing its claims.
"Despite all this, China is still in favor of bilateral negotiations to sort out differences, but the United States is encouraging other parties to the conflict to raise the ante," it said, urging all sides to avoid escalating conflict and sit on negotiating table to find a peaceful resolution.
China has established its credentials as a peace-loving country and harbors no aggressive designs against any other state, but the United States is indulging in highly provocative activities in the name of freedom of trade patrolling, making it a flashpoint with potentially serious global consequences, it said.
Pakistan's largest English daily The News published the news with a headline "China vows to protect South China Sea sovereignty after ruling", reporting that China vowed to take all necessary measures to protect its sovereignty and maritime rights and interests in the South China Sea.
Pakistan's most prestigious daily Dawn printed the statement from Chinese foreign ministry, which said "the award is null and void and has no binding force. China neither accepts nor recognizes it."
Another English daily Express Tribune published two articles at its front page in titles "China dismisses the case as farce, reaffirms sovereignty" and "Islamabad threw its weight behind Beijing after an arbitration ruled about South China Sea."
Another English daily Pakistan Today said "China thrashes Hague tribunal's verdict on South China Sea."
English daily The Nation said China does not accept any means of third-party dispute settlement without China's prior consent or any imposed solution.
"China has repeatedly denied the tribunal's authority to rule on the issue, claiming that the court's actions are illegal and biased against it," it said.
One of the top ranking English newspapers Daily Times said the unilateral initiation of arbitration by the Philippines is out of bad faith, which did not aim to resolve the disputes between China and the Philippines or to maintain peace and stability in the South China Sea, but to deny China's territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests in the South China Sea. "The initiation of this arbitration violates international law," it said.
PHNOM PENH, July 13 (Xinhua) -- Cambodia exported products worth 3.66 billion U.S. dollars in the first five months of 2016, an increase of 9 percent over the same period last year, according to the latest figures from the Ministry of Commerce on Wednesday.
Garment and footwear products accounted for about 80 percent of the country's total exports, the figures said.
On the import side, the Southeast Asian nation imported goods in equivalent to 5.25 billion U.S. dollars during the January-May period this year, up 15 percent over the same period last year.
"The continued growth in export shows the broader access of Cambodian products to foreign markets," said Mey Kalyan, a senior adviser at the Supreme National Economic Council.
Cambodian's main trading partners include European countries, the United States, China, South Korea, Japan, Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore and Malaysia.
BEIJING, July 13 (Xinhua) -- Chinese prosecutors have filed separate lawsuits against four senior officials suspected of graft, the Supreme People's Procuratorate announced Wednesday.
Su Rong, former vice chairman of the National Committee of Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, China's top political advisory body, is charged with taking advantage of his positions to seek benefits for others, accepting a huge amount of bribes and abuses of power which caused "great losses" to the state.
Su's property and expenditure obviously exceeded his legal income, and he could not explain how he came by the money. He is also accused of holding a large amount of property with unidentified sources.
Du Shanxue, former vice governor of north China's Shanxi Province, is charged with offering and taking bribes, and holding a large amount of property with unidentified sources.
Sun Zhaoxue, former general manager of the state-owned Aluminum Corporation of China (Chinalco), is accused of accepting a huge amount in bribes and holding a large amount of property with unidentified sources.
Zhao Shaolin, former member of the standing committee of the Communist Party of China Jiangsu provincial committee and secretary-general of the provincial party committee, is charged with bribing others to seek benefits for his son's business and purchasing foreign exchange through deception.
LHASA, July 13 (Xinhua) -- Wei Xiaodong has just left his comfortable post as a school manager in Nanjing and taken up a position as an elementary school vice principle in Lhasa, capital of Tibet Autonomous Region.
As a member of the latest group of volunteers to work in Tibet, Wei arrived in the southwest region with more than 70 education specialists. He will work in Lhasa for about two years.
"Before September, another 700 teachers will come to work in Tibet," he said.
Starting last year, the Organization Department of the CPC Central Committee and Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security decided to transfer teachers and doctors to Tibet, to improve services.
"A single teacher can only teach a few classes, but by coming in groups, we hope to update education in Tibetan schools," said Wei.
Dozens of doctors, too, have started residencies at hospitals across Tibet.
"We different specialists, which will enable us to treat patients with more complicated afflictions, and train more doctors," said Yu Yabin, the leader of a doctors' team from Beijing.
New government cadres are also arriving. By the end of July, the seventh group of officials, about 1,300, will finish their three-year tenure, and return to their posts in other provinces.
Statistics show about 12.8 billion yuan was invested in Tibet in the last three years.
Xu Ke, a geographic survey expert from Liaoning Province, has spent most of his time charting Nagqu. The data he collected was used to build water, irrigation and heating facilities for the locals herders.
"About 90 percent of my time is spent in the wild," the 30-year-old said.
Vegetable and fruit prices are exorbitantly high in Pulan County, Nagri Prefecture, as the area is hard to reach. Strawberries can cost as much as 240 yuan (about 36 U.S. dollars) per kilo.
Gao Baojun, a cadre from Shaanxi Province, has been helping farmers explore new cultivation systems. "Vegetable prices are almost half now than two years ago," he said.
"Volunteers from other provinces have been helping the people in Tibet, improving their lives and their children's future," said Trinley, Tibet religious affairs director.
"Tibet needs skilled people to help it develop, and for the young, working in Tibet is an eye opening experience that they will cherish all their lives," said Deng Shengming, deputy director of the Organization Department of the CPC Central Committee.
ATHENS, July 13 (Xinhua) -- Four people died while their boat carrying refugees and migrants from Turkey to Greece capsized off the coast of Lesvos island, Greek national news agency AMNA reported on Wednesday.
According to Greek Coast Guard sources, the dead bodies of a four-year-old girl, an infant boy, a woman and a man have been retrieved by Greek Navy and Greek Coast Guard vessels. Six people have been rescued, while another one was missing.
Survivors told Greek authorities that a total of 11 people were on board the inflatable dinghy when it capsized under still undetermined conditions.
The nationalities of the victims and the survivors have not been clarified yet.
Greek authorities are assisted by European border agency Frontex forces in the search operation.
The island of Lesvos has been the main entrance point into Europe for more than 1 million refugees and migrants who have boarded such boats since early 2015. Hundreds have perished in the waters.
Following an agreement between Turkey and the European Union to stem the flow, there has been a dramatic decrease in arrivals.
Still people are risking their lives seeking refuge from the war-torn countries.
According to local authorities, another 90 people who were on board two boats landed safely on Lesvos shores on Wednesday.
A fishing fleet returns to Sanya Port in the southernmost province of Hainan, July 29, 2012, concluding its voyage of casting nets in the South China Sea. (Xinhua/Hou Jiansen)
BRUSSELS, July 13 (Xinhua) -- The award of the South China Sea arbitration solves nothing and the dispute between the Philippines and China can only be solved through bilateral dialogue, a British member of the European Parliament (MEP) said Tuesday.
The arbitration was unilaterally initiated in 2013 by the former Philippine government and its award was issued on Tuesday. China reiterated its stance that it neither accepts nor recognizes the ruling.
"The award is null and void and has no binding force," the Chinese Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
"It is a matter of territorial dispute; I think this issue should not have gone to The Hague," Nirj Deva, vice chairman of the European Parliament's Development Committee and chairman of the EU-China Friendship Group in the European Parliament, told Xinhua.
He noted that sovereignty and territorial disputes are not under the jurisdiction of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.
The lawmaker said former Philippine President Benigno S. Aquino III made "a wrong decision" to go to The Hague. It broke the country' s own commitment made in the 2002 Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC).
According to DOC, China and members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have agreed to settle their regional disputes through consultation and negotiation.
However, by not consulting China about involving a third party, the Philippines walked away from its DOC committments.
By contrast, Deva praised China for abiding by its international commitments.
"On the whole, if you look at China' s history, China has been a very good obeyer of international laws and has kept to all international treaties that it has signed," he said.
It is widely believed that the South China Sea arbitration will only serve to escalate tensions in the region instead of solving disputes. Deva said the award "doesn' t solve anything."
He pointed out that the dispute between the Philippines and China is a bilateral issue, which can only be solved through dialogue and consultation.
Furthermore, he stressed that countries outside the region should respect efforts made by China and ASEAN to safeguard peace and stability in the South China Sea.
The countries meddling in the South China Sea may have concerns about their own interests, in international shipping or aviation. However, the lawmaker stressed there has not been "one single complaint" about any interference from China in international shipping lanes.
"Their concerns are based on hypothetical situations but not on the real facts on the ground," he said.
Noting that the new Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has expressed the desire to engage in dialogue with China, the senior lawmaker called for the European Union (EU) to play a constructive role in the process.
"Firstly, the EU should not interfere in this matter; secondly, we should encourage as much as we can the two sides to come together to the negotiation table, discussing these matters of mutual concerns and interests."
The EU-China Friendship Group in the European Parliament consists of more than 40 lawmakers from at least seven political groups and more than 20 countries.
ULAN BATOR, July 13 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Premier Li Keqiang on Wednesday called for closer China-Mongolia ties to bring more benefits to the people of both countries.
Calling China and Mongolia "good neighbors and great partners," Li said in a signed article, published by major Mongolian news outlets ahead of his official visit to the landlocked Asian nation, that friendly collaboration between the two countries has been picking up steam in recent years.
Bilateral ties are currently at the "best ever" level in history, said Li, who arrived in Ulan Bator later on Wednesday, adding that he hopes his visit will serve to further deepen cooperation and forge stronger bonds between the two countries.
In his first trip to Mongolia since taking office in 2013, Li is scheduled to hold talks with Mongolia's new prime minister, Jargaltulga Erdenebat, and meet with Mongolian President Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj and Chairman Miyegombo Enkhbold of the State Great Hural, Mongolia's parliament.
He will also attend the 11th Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) summit in Ulan Bator on Friday and Saturday.
Hailing mutual respect and trust between the two states as well as frequent exchanges and dialogues between their leaders and at governmental-, parliamentary- and party-levels, the Chinese premier said China backs Mongolia in actively taking part in international and regional affairs, and has explicitly voiced support for its efforts to join the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC).
China also supports Mongolia to take part in the China-Japan-South Korea cooperation in an appropriate manner, and adopts an open attitude to Mongolia's participation in the East Asia Summit, Li said.
He said both countries should work together to strengthen coordination in the framework of the United Nations, ASEM and the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA), promote regional peace and prosperity, and give a boost to China-Mongolia relations.
Li noted that over the past two decades, trade between China and Mongolia has expanded 50 times, and that China has for years been Mongolia's largest trading partner and largest source of foreign investment.
The two countries are witnessing increasing cooperation in inter-connectivity, basic industries, environmental protection and other fields, he said, adding that "China is sincere and candid to aid and support Mongolia's development."
He said the two countries have reached a consensus on dovetailing China's Silk Road Economic Belt initiative with Mongolia's Steppe Road program, while calling for enhanced connectivity and stepped-up industrial capacity cooperation in mining, energy, and animal husbandry.
The Chinese premier went on to laud people-to-people and cultural exchanges between his country and Mongolia, and commended the latter's efforts in hosting the 11th ASEM summit.
"As long as we treat each other with sincerity and join hands in our march forward, we would without doubt forge closer ties between China and Mongolia and bring more benefits to the two peoples," Li said.
by Yoo Seungki
SEOUL, July 13 (Xinhua) -- South Korea decided Wednesday to deploy the U.S. missile defense system, namely the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD), to its southeastern region, but it might have limited defense effect against the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK)'s missile attacks, experts said.
Seoul's defense ministry announced a plan to deploy one THAAD battery to the Seongsan-ri region of the Seongju county in North Gyeongsang province by the end of next year. Yoo Jeh-seung, deputy defense minister for policy, told a nationally televised briefing that U.S. interceptors can protect a half to two-thirds of South Korean territory.
According to the ministry, the THAAD system can shield regions as far as southern Gyeonggi province, which surrounds Seoul, from DPRK ballistic missiles as they have a maximum range of 200 km. The protectable range allegedly includes Pyeongtaek and Gunsan.
Pyeongtaek, some 70 km south of Seoul, is home to U.S. Forces Korea (USFK)'s new headquarters, while the U.S. Air Force has a large presence in Gunsan, about 270 km southwest of the capital.
"Claims to be able to shield two-thirds of the territory can be seen in a pamphlet of Lockheed Martin. The higher the intercepting altitude, the smaller the protectable range is," said Cheong Wooksik, director of Peace Network.
The coverage, which South Korea claimed THAAD missiles can protect, was simplistically estimated from a two-dimensional perspective without consideration of the altitude, according to the civic group activist. Therefore, its operational capability is exaggerated.
Cheong said at a forum hosted by the People's Solidarity for Participatory Democracy (PSPD) that there is a clear difference between a maximum intercepting range and an effective coverage of the THAAD missiles. The THAAD's effective range is not known to the public as it would be much lower than the maximum coverage.
The THAAD, developed by the U.S.-based defense company Lockheed Martin, is designed to shoot down missiles at an altitude of 40-150 km using a hit-to-kill approach. It is composed of six mobile launchers, 48 interceptors, radar and fire control system valued at about 1.5 trillion won (1.3 billion U.S. dollars).
Despite Seoul's alleged propaganda that THAAD tests succeeded more than 10 times, such belief is too naive for a government to give a full confidence as the system never proved its intercepting capability transparently and objectively.
"The U.S. THAAD tests are known to have been conducted to shoot down missiles dropped from a large transport aircraft at a pre-arranged time and place. (South Korea's military authorities) may not be fully informed of the test procedures," said Cheong.
As THAAD interceptors use a hit-to-kill approach, they are required to precisely hit a warhead head-on. The missiles without explosive materials inside would easily bounce off the round-tipped warheads of DPRK missiles. The concept is like hitting a bullet with another bullet.
U.S. Patriot missiles, which South Korea's military already held, can intercept ballistic missiles by exploding warhead-carried explosive materials near the incoming missiles, raising possibility for shooting down targets.
Seoul's defense ministry said Seoul and the metropolitan area will be shielded with U.S. Patriot interceptors, which will be reinforced near the regions. It indicated the THAAD system will be deployed to protect U.S. military bases in South Korea, differing from the government's claim that it is aimed at protecting South Korean people.
"The main reason for the THAAD's deployment on the Korean peninsula is to protect U.S. forces and equipments," said Cheong Seong-Chang, a senior researcher at the private Sejong Institute.
The DPRK allegedly owns about 400 Scud missiles, which fly at an altitude of 20-60 km and reach Seoul and the metropolitan area in five minutes. The country also has some 300 Rodong ballistic missiles with a range of 1,300 km and around 50 Musudan intermediate-range ballistic missiles ranging 3,000-3,500 km.
The THAAD system might not be able to intercept nuclear-tipped Rodong or Musudan missiles as the DPRK missiles would travel at a lower altitude that can avoid the THAAD's interception range, said analysts.
NICOSIA, July 13 (Xinhua) -- Workers digging an extension of a sewerage system in the Cypriot city of Larnaca have come upon a gigantic mosaic depicting the Greek mythical hero Hercules, an antiquity department official said on Wednesday.
Giorgos Philotheou, who is overseeing the digging, said the workers came upon the mosaic when they were opening ducts to place sewerage pipes about a month ago.
Archaeologists took over to prevent damage to the mosaic, believed to be dated to the Hellenistic or Roman eras.
Philotheou said the archaeologists were impressed by the size of the mosaic, which they believe formed the floor of a large public building in an area which was known to be the classical Greek city of Kition.
The floor was several feet under the surface of the road where the digging was done.
So far, excavation has partially revealed a mosaic which is about 17 meters long by 7 meters wide. Part of the mosaic floor of the unearthed building extends under the yards of a nearby block of flats and a house.
Philotheou said the mosaic, which is remarkably well-preserved, is a series of squares containing scenes of Herucles' feats or labors.
In Greek mythology, Herucles was seen as powerful enough to lift the weight of the heavens, but who was driven mad by goddess Hera and killed his wife, son and daughter. After recovering sanity, he went to the Oracle of Delphi to inquire as to how he could atone for his deeds.
The myth goes that the Oracle told him to serve his cousin, King Eurystheus of Tyrins, for 12 years. He ordered him to carry out 12 feats. These included killing Hydra, a multi-headed serpentine, stealing the three-headed dog Cerberus who guarded the underworld, killing a man-eating bull, and stealing golden apples from a mythical orchard no one knew how to find, and which was guarded by a fierce dragon.
The finding delighted architects but, as the mosaic takes the entire width of a busy road of downtown Larnaca, the municipality has to build a road by-passing it.
"This finding is too important and precious to cover over, or to remove and set up again in another place," said Larnaca Deputy Mayor Petros Christodoulou.
He said the Town Council would probably decide to construct an alternative section of the road and turn the mosaic into an open air museum.
"This is a priceless piece of cultural heritage...It does not belong only to Larnaca but to all of Cyprus and to the thousands of foreign visitors who would like to enjoy the sight," said Christodoulou.
He said the mosaic was more beautiful than the colorful Roman era mosaics in the city of Paphos, visited by tens of thousands of tourists each year.
SEOUL, July 13 (Xinhua) -- Experts here voiced serious concern about South Korea entering a U.S. missile defense network by deploying the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) to its soil, boosting expectations for escalating regional tensions and arms race amid strong oppositions from neighboring countries.
South Korea's defense ministry on Wednesday announced its agreement with the United States to deploy one THAAD battery to the Seongju county, some 300 km southeast of Seoul, by the end of next year.
The decision came amid repeated expression of resolute oppositions from China and Russia as the THAAD's X-band radar can keep watch on Chinese and Russian territories and negatively affect security interests of the neighbors.
Seoul claimed it will adopt the terminal mode radar with a detectable range of 600-800 km, but it can be converted at any time, and even takes less than a day to change, into a forward-based mode that can range as far as 2,000 km. The THAAD system will be operated by the U.S. Forces Korea (USFK).
"Pandora's box is opened," said Kim Joon Hyung, professor of international studies at Handong Global University. He said at a forum hosted by the People's Solidarity for Participatory Democracy (PSPD) that South Korea entered an irreversible U.S. missile defense network, incapable of slipping out of it once any country enters.
The United States has steadily materialized its Pivot-to-Asia strategy to expand its presence in the Asia-Pacific region. Last year, Washington revised its security guideline with Tokyo, enabling Japan to become a country capable of waging a war.
"Military cooperation between the U.S. and Japan will be completed if Japan revises its pacifist constitution. The last obstacle to the trilateral military alliance between South Korea and the two allies was removed with (South) Korea's decision to deploy the THAAD," said Kim.
The professor said strong oppositions from China and Russia came as the THAAD deployment means South Korea entering a part of the colossal U.S. missile defense network.
USFK commander Curtis Scaparrotti took issue with the need for the THAAD deployment for the first time in June 2014. Seoul had maintained a so-called "Three No" position, which means no request, no consultation and no decision on the U.S. missile defense deployment.
South Korea had adhered to developing its homegrown missile defense system, called the Korea Air and Missile Defense (KAMD), but President Park Geun-hye hinted at the deployment during her New Year's press conference in January, saying that the deployment would be reviewed according to whether it is in national interests.
On Feb. 7, when the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) launched a long-range rocket, which was condemned as a disguised test of ballistic missile technology, Seoul and Washington announced a plan to launch discussion on whether to deploy the THAAD system.
Last Friday, the two allies decided to deploy it in South Korean soil, estimated to have been triggered by the DPRK's successful launch on June 22 of a Musudan intermediate-range ballistic missile that can reach U.S. military bases in Guam and Japan.
The THAAD system might be unable to intercept DPRK missiles targeting South Korea's territory as they travel at a much lower altitude that U.S. interceptors can destroy, according to experts, but Seoul decided to become a part of the U.S. missile defense network, depending on the traditional alliance with the United States that has never prevented the DPRK's nuclear and missile tests.
"It needs to bring up a question about a sort of myth that the U.S.-South Korea alliance can help ease tensions. The THAAD deployment will pose a serious threat to stability in Northeast Asia," said Lee Nam-ju, professor of Chinese Studies at Sungkonghoe University.
Lee said Seoul's compliance with Washington's strategy could bring risk factors to the Korean peninsula and the region. The professor said the deployment is an act to break a regional balance as the THAAD's radar can range Chinese and Russian territories.
"There's a myth spreading among the general public that the THAAD can defend against North Korea (DPRK)'s nuclear weapons," said Kim Yong Hyun, professor of North Korean studies at Dongguk University.
His comments indicated Seoul's military is misleading South Korean people lacking of military information to persuade them to think that their territory cannot be protected without the THAAD system. Kim said it was regrettable that the THAAD is regarded as a cure-all for the DPRK's nuclear and missile threats.
The professor said the THAAD deployment will benefit the United States the most, while South Korea will lose the most, noting that about 23,000 South Korean companies operating in China would be in trouble in the future due to the deployment decision. China is South Korea's largest trading partner.
Related:
S. Korea to deploy THAAD to southeastern region despite neighbors' opposition
SEOUL, July 13 (Xinhua) -- South Korea's defense ministry on Wednesday announced an agreement with the United States to deploy the U.S. missile defense system, called Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD), to its southeastern region despite continued opposition from neighboring countries.
One THAAD battery will be deployed to the Seongsan-ri region of the Seongju county in North Gyeongsang province, where South Korean Air Force's Hawk surface-to-air missile battery is located. Full story
DPRK warns of "physical measures" against U.S. deployment of THAAD in S.Korea
PYONGYANG, July 11 (Xinhua) -- The army of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea issued a warning Monday that it will take "physical measures" against the deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) in South Korea by the United States.
Seoul and Washington announced Friday the deployment of the THAAD as part of the U.S. Forces Korea (USFK) stationed in South Korea to better tackle the so-called nuclear and missile threats from the DPRK. Full story
News Analysis: S.Korea seeks to defend THAAD deployment despite oppositions at home, abroad
By Yoo Seungki
SEOUL, July 11 (Xinhua) -- South Korean government officials on Monday sought to tout the need for deploying the U.S. missile defense system, called Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD), in its territory despite oppositions and controversies at home and abroad.
BEIJING, July 13 (Xinhua) -- Chinese military sent a team to Juba, capital of South Sudan, on Wednesday to recover the bodies of two Chinese peacekeepers killed in Sunday's attack.
Led by a senior Defense Ministry official, the team was joined by Foreign Ministry personnel, military personnel and medical staff.
On Sunday local time, two UN peacekeepers from China were killed and five others injured when the armored vehicle carrying them was hit by a shell in Juba.
ULAN BATOR, July 13, 2016 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Premier Li Keqiang (2nd L front) arrives at Ulan Bator, Mongolia, July 13, 2016. Li arrived here Wednesday for an official visit to Mongolia and the 11th Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) summit.(Xinhua/Pang Xinglei)
ULAN BATOR, July 13 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Premier Li Keqiang arrived here Wednesday for an official visit to Mongolia and the 11th Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) summit.
This is Li's first trip to the landlocked Asian country since he took office as Chinese premier in 2013, and the first official visit by a Chinese premier to the country in six years.
During the visit, Li will hold talks with Mongolia's new prime minister, Jargaltulga Erdenebat, and meet with Mongolian President Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj and Chairman Miyegombo Enkhbold of the State Great Hural, Mongolia's parliament.
A series of cooperation deals covering trade, infrastructure, finance and energy, as well as climate change and media exchanges, will be signed during the two-day visit, the first half of Li's stay in Ulan Bator.
Sharing a 4,710-km-long land borderline, China and Mongolia have witnessed more and more intimate relations in recent years thanks to closer economic links and greater political trust between the two countries.
In 2014, Beijing and Ulan Bator upgraded their ties to a "comprehensive strategic partnership" -- the highest rank in Mongolia's diplomatic relations. A joint statement issued in November last year lauded the China-Mongolia relations as being the "best ever" in history.
In the economic realm, China has for years been Mongolia's largest trading partner and largest source of foreign investment. According to official statistics, two-way trade has expanded 50 times over the past two decades.
Li's visit to Mongolia will inject new vitality into the two countries' already cozy bonds, observers say.
On Friday and Saturday, the Chinese premier will attend the 11th summit of ASEM, an intergovernmental forum aimed at fostering political dialogue and boosting cooperation in various areas across Asia and Europe.
This year marks the 20th anniversary since ASEM was launched in Bangkok, Thailand in 1996.
The Ulan Bator summit, which came on the heels of the 18th summit between China and the European Union (EU) held in Beijing, will see Li deliver keynote speeches on China's proposition on ASEM's future development, Asia-Europe pragmatic cooperation, as well as major international and regional hot issues.
He is also expected to hold bilateral meetings with leaders of some ASEM members.
This will be the second time for the Chinese premier to attend the biannual summit. The last ASEM summit was held in Milan, Italy in 2014.
Related:
Interview: Chinese premier's visit to open new chapter for China-Mongolia ties, further ASEM development -- ambassador
ULAN BATOR, July 12 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Premier Li Keqiang's upcoming visit to Mongolia will add momentum to bilateral cooperation and further the development of the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) mechanism, a Chinese diplomat has said.
KUALA LUMPUR, July 13 (Xinhua) -- The upcoming Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) Summit is expected to boost cooperation in security and economic cooperation between Asian and European countries, a Malaysian expert said on Wednesday.
One significant area for Asia-Europe cooperation would be in the security field, as both Asian and European countries are facing increasing threat from terrorism, said Oh Ei Sun, senior fellow at S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies of Singapore's Nanyang Technological University.
"We have seen terrorist activity in both European countries as well as a number of Asian countries, it appeared that nobody is immune as a victim," he told Xinhua.
"So if we could enhance information exchange and intelligence exchange between the law enforcement authorities between Asian as well as European countries, hopefully we could lower the risk of terrorism."
Another key area for cooperation is the economy. "The spiraling down of the world economy would necessitate closer cooperation between the Asian and European countries," said Oh, pointing out that Asia had seen tremendous growth in recent years while Europe still possesses the technology advantage.
After Britain's decided to leave the European Union, Europe would face challenge to pump up its economy, where Asian countries like China could be its assistance, he said.
The Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) is an informal process of dialogue and cooperation bringing together the 28 European Union member states, two other European countries, and the European Union with 21 Asian countries and the ASEAN Secretariat. The ASEM dialogue addresses political, economic and cultural issues, with the objective of strengthening the relationship between the two regions, in a spirit of mutual respect and equal partnership.
Mongolia will host the 11th ASEM Summit of Heads of State and Government in its capital of Ulan Bator on July 15-16.
Oh said it was particularly important that the summit being held in Ulan Bator, which is part of central Asia with enormous growth potentials among central Asian countries.
The Belt and Road Initiative promoted by China, particularly the Silk Road Economic Belt, could unleash the growth potential of the Central Asian countries, he said.
As for Southeast Asia, the countries in the region would benefit from more trade between Asia and Europe, primarily between China and leading European countries, which inevitably would go through the Malacca Strait and Southeast Asian countries.
"We could be the part of global production chain, which is very important for us, in terms of accelerating world economy growth," Oh said. "We will also see closer cooperation in combating terrorism."
DHAKA, July 13 (Xinhua) -- The inflow of remittances by millions of non-resident Bangladeshis in the 2015-16 fiscal year concluded in June reached 14.93 billion U.S. dollars, an official said Wednesday.
"The flow of inward remittances in the 2015-16 financial year (July 2015-June 2016) fell about 2.55 percent to 14.93 billion U.S. dollars," the Bangladesh Bank (BB) official told Xinhua.
The official who preferred to be unnamed said the inflow of remittance, one of the key sources of foreign exchange for the impoverished country, reached 15.32 billion U.S. dollars in the previous 2014-15 (July 2014-June 2015) fiscal year.
Sources said the decrease in total inflow of remittance were due mainly to sluggish overseas employment in some middle eastern Asian countries and devaluation of the currencies of the United Kingdom, Singapore and Malaysia against the U.S. dollars.
Although remittance inflows from nearly 9 million Bangladeshis, living and working in about 100 foreign countries, recorded a fall in the 2015-16 fiscal year, the growth rates in the final month of the last fiscal showed an upward trend.
According to the official, millions of non-resident Bangladeshis remitted home in June 1.46 billion U.S. dollars, up by 248.21 million U.S. dollars from the level of the previous month, for celebration of the Eid-ul-Fitr festival that marks the Muslims holy month of Ramadan.
Most of the remittances come from he United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Oman, Bahrain, Kuwait, Libya and Iran, he said.
THE HAGUE, July 13 (Xinhua) -- The Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) in The Hague issued a 479-page award over the South China Sea case on Tuesday in support of the Philippine side, setting a dangerous precedent of abusing the arbitration system, and drawing a wide-range of criticism from Chinese and foreign experts.
"Arbitration is defined in the dictionary as a dispute where the parties have agreed to settle it by arbitration," said Stephen Perry, chairman of the 48 Group Club, a British business group.
"Clearly China does not accept arbitration to settle the dispute, so the Court should not have agreed to hear this dispute presented by only one party," he said.
"I have been involved in many hundreds of arbitrations and always both parties agree on arbitration, or there is no arbitration," he added.
Shahid Qureshi, London Post's editor and political analyst, said the fact that "the tribunal has allowed the case to go ahead in spite of its lack of justifiable jurisdiction" poses a big question mark to the tribunal's "intention" and "interest."
"I am of the view that the tribunal must review its position and jurisdiction for the sake of institution it stands for. Otherwise it will become a joke in the legal history as they did not follow the due process of law," he noted.
According to Vladimir Petrovsky, a major researcher at the Moscow-based Institute for Far Eastern Studies, China's non-acceptance stance over the arbitration ruling is the "only reasonable position" from the viewpoint of international law.
If the Philippines recognizes the ruling and China does not, the arbitration should not be recognized as legitimate and legal, he said.
Joseph Matthews, director of ASEAN Education Center, said that from the beginning, the arbitral tribunal was under the sway of the United States and its ally Japan.
"This is a one-sided verdict based on China-phobia, which ultimately creates tension, and confrontational situations in the South China Sea," he said.
"Today's ruling will change nothing in the South China Sea," he emphasized.
Omar al-Mekdad, a Syrian expert on Chinese affairs, told Xinhua, "The decision taken by the tribunal in The Hague is politicized and has deliberately overlooked the historic facts about China's sovereign rights over the South China Sea territory."
"China has every right to take whatever it sees proper to respond to this outrageous decision," he said.
Ashfaqur Rahman, former Bangladeshi ambassador to China, found it very funny to see the work of the tribunal. "What the tribunal has done can never be called an arbitration," he said.
"Arbitration is a process in which both the disputed parties agree to argue their cases and agree to accept verdict whatever it is," he explained. In this case, "we all know that China was not a party. It did not take part in the process. So how can it be called an arbitration?"
"The tribunal should not have accepted jurisdiction," said Tom Zwart, a law professor at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. "In Asia, states have been dealing with the South China Sea for ages in a peaceful and constructive manner. People should go back to the situation where they tried to find diplomatic solutions."
George Tzogopoulos, a lecturer at the European Institute and the Democritus University of Thrace in Greece, warned that Asia must not be divided over the tribunal's decision, as "a potential conflict in the South China Sea will benefit no one."
The PCA in The Hague ruled on Tuesday in sweeping favor of the claims filed by the administration of former Philippine President Benigno S. Aquino III.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry immediately issued a statement saying it "solemnly declares that the award is null and void and has no binding force. China neither accepts nor recognizes it."
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)
NAIROBI, July 13 (Xinhua) -- Many African countries have voiced their support to China over the Philippine-initiated arbitration on the South China Sea dispute, calling for parties involved to resolve disputes through friendly negotiations and consultations.
The Philippines filed a compulsory arbitration against China at The Hague-based Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) in 2013.
China maintains that the tribunal has no jurisdiction over the case, which is in essence about territorial sovereignty and maritime delimitation. China, therefore, has made it clear it will not accept or get involved in those proceedings.
African governments and officials have on different occasions called for the international community to respect efforts made by China and other countries in the Asia-Pacific region in safeguarding peace and stability.
The Kenyan Foreign Ministry said the government believed that any disputes over the South China Sea should be peacefully resolved through consultations and negotiations in accordance with bilateral agreements and the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea, an agreement signed by China and member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in 2002.
The Zimbabwean Foreign Ministry made a similar statement, saying: "This is the only way in which a resolution can be found to this problem, which affects a number of countries in the region."
African nations believe that territorial issues are beyond the scope of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) as China has excluded maritime delimitation from compulsory arbitration in a declaration in 2006 in accordance with Article 298 of UNCLOS.
The Kenyan government said it respects China's declaration of "optional exception in light of Article 298 of UNCLOS."
An aerial photo taken on Jan. 11, 2014 shows the Yide Islands, part of the Xisha Islands in south China's Hainan Province.China established Sansha City on June 21, 2012 to administer the Xisha, Zhongsha and Nansha islands and their surrounding waters in theSouth China Sea. (Xinhua/Zhang Cheng)
In an interview with Xinhua, Sierra Leonean Foreign Minister Samura Kamara emphasized the need for all parties to "exercise respect for the rights of each other as sovereign states and contracting states of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea."
He 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."
The South African Department of International Relations and Cooperation said it has noted with concern the recent trend in the global arena to politicize the situation pertaining to the South China Sea.
"South Africa supports the position that the sovereign states that are directly concerned should resolve their relevant disputes through direct consultations and negotiations, on the basis of respecting historical facts and in accordance with international law, as well as to maintain peace and stability in the South China Sea," it said in a statement.
"South Africa believes that the international community should support all efforts aimed at safeguarding peace and stability in the South China Sea," it added.
Other African countries, including Angola, Malawi, Guinea Bissau, Tanzania, Zambia, Mauritania, Cameroon, Ethiopia, have also voiced support for China's position of dealing with the South China Sea disputes between the directly concerned parties through peaceful negotiations.
HAILIN, July 13, 2016 (Xinhua) -- Siberian tigers rest at the Siberian Tiger Park in Hengdaohezi Township of Hailin City, northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, July 12, 2016. As one of the world's largest artificial breeding center for the Siberian tiger, the park in Hengdaohezi is home to about 400 Siberian tigers. Each year, about 50 baby tigers were born in the park. (Xinhua/Wang Jianwei)
HARBIN, July 13 (Xinhua) -- While torrential rain has wreaked havoc across southern China, the north is in the midst of a heat wave, and while humans can escape to air-conditioned rooms, the endangered Siberian tiger is not so fortunate.
At a Siberian tiger breeding park in Hengdaohezi Township, Hailin City, in northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, more than 400 Siberian tigers must endure temperatures exceeding 30 degrees Celsius, which must be unbearable for the thick-furred species.
The tigers appear despondent and move around very little, said Qiu Hongkun, one of the park keepers. "Some have even lost their appetites," Qiu added.
Around noon, the tigers can be seen panting, and many have taken cover from the baking heat in the shade of trees. They hardly react when their feeders release live chickens in their enclosure, according to Qiu.
Qiu and his colleagues have to bang on the fence and yell at the tigers to wake every noon. "If they fall asleep under the scorching sun, they will likely get sunstroke," said another park employee.
"Siberian tigers with thick layers of fat and fur prefer the cold weather. They really suffer from the heat in summer," said Qiu. "They are much more active during the winter snows."
Tiger cubs are even more vulnerable to the heat. They just stay in their dens on hot days, Qiu said.
Water is a necessity during the peak of the summer, which is expected to last for about half a month in the region. To provide sufficient water for the tigers to drink and bathe, the park has diverted the neighboring river into the park.
"They like to soak in the water and only keep their heads above," Qiu said.
"If a tiger gets heatstroke, we will treat them immediately," said Qiu, who is also one of the park's vet.
The park opened in 1986 with eight Siberian tigers. Now, there are more than 400. Every year, about 50 tiger cubs are born there.
Siberian tigers are among the world's most endangered species. They mostly live in eastern Russia, northeast China and northern parts of the Korean Peninsula. The wild population is about 500 in the region.
by Anthi Pazianou
MYTILENE, Greece, July 13 (Xinhua) -- A family from Syria has drowned on Wednesday after the capsize of a boat carrying refugees from Turkey to Greece off the coasts of Lesvos island, local authorities said.
A girl, 4 years old, and her brother, 3, with their parents drowned during their efforts to reach Lesvos' shores, a Greek Coast Guard officer speaking on condition of anonymity, told Xinhua.
The IDs found in a bag belonging to the family showed that they were from Aleppo, the Greek officer said.
A wide search and rescue operation to locate the refugees and migrants missing was underway.
The polyester motorized boat in which the people were traveling sank and competent services did not receive any distress signal, according to a Greek Ministry of Shipping press release.
A Coast Guard officer who participated in the operation told Xinhua "we didn't see their boat. We saw people swimming."
Greek Navy and Greek Coast Guard vessels have rescued so far six people -- a woman and five men, all of them Kurdish, except a Palestinian.
According to the survivors, there are still three people missing, among them their trafficker.
All the survivors and the family's corpses have been transferred to the Hospital of Lesvos.
Greek Coast Guard sources noted that weather conditions in the area were good and the winds of 4 Beaufort cannot justify the shipwreck. The Greek officers believe that most likely the boat was very old, or overloaded.
TOKYO, July 13 (Xinhua) -- Japanese Emperor Akihito has expressed his intention to end his reign in coming years, said public broadcaster NHK, quoting a government source.
The 82-year-old emperor, who has reigned for over 27 years, has expressed his hope to the Imperial Household Agency.
His 56-year-old son, Crown Prince Naruhito, is expected to succeed to the throne, said NHK.
KAMPALA, July 13 (Xinhua) -- The Ugandan government on Wednesday announced that at least ten of its citizens were killed and over ten others injured in the weekend renewed fighting between South Sudan's rival army factions in the capital Juba, a top foreign affairs official said here.
Henry Okello Oryem, Uganda's state minister for foreign affairs told Xinhua by telephone that the deceased and injured were caught up in the fighting between government troops of President Salva Kiir and forces loyal to Vice President Riek Machar.
"I am going to get a full briefing on the number of people who were killed and injured in the South Sudan fighting. I can confirm we lost ten people and over ten injured," said Okello.
The minister said arrangements are being made to return the remains of the dead and evacuate the injured to the East African country for burial and treatment respectively.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon Monday condemned the killings and renewed fighting in the world's newest nation.
"The renewed fighting is outrageous. It is yet another grievous setback. It deepens the country's suffering," Ban told reporters. "It makes a mockery of commitments to peace."
Oryem said Ugandan military troops on Tuesday evening crossed into Nisitu, about 40 kilometers, east of the capital, Juba to help in evacuation of the country's citizens trapped in the violence.
"UPDF (Uganda People Defense Forces) have crossed into South Sudan to help with the evacuation exercise of our people. The troops will help to clear the road and evacuate Ugandans through the Eastern Route of South Sudan," said Oryem.
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni on Tuesday ordered the country's military to immediately evacuate its citizens trapped in the fighting.
The East African country sent some 30 trucks to transport its citizens caught up in the crossfire exchange between the rival army forces.
There are fears that the war-torn country could descend into civil war again.
President Kiir and former rebel leader Machar have fought a civil war which broke out in December 2013 and left tens of thousands of people dead.
A peace deal signed by the two men last August under UN pressure led to the formation of a national government in April with Machar returning to his old post.
BEIJING, July 13 (Xinhua) -- "Let those who tied the bell on to the tiger be the ones to untie it," runs the Chinese proverb: Trouble is best solved by those who caused it.
Whatever the government of the Philippines was thinking when it decided to put its disputes with China before a kangaroo court, it was surely not that the process would bring peace and harmony to a tranquil tropical sea.
China has stated time and time again that it would not accept the tribunal's opinion and will adhere to settlement of disputes through direct negotiation. That policy stands still, like a rock.
As neighbors facing each other across the sea, China and the Philippines have been friends for generations. There were no territorial disputes between them until the 1970s, when the Philippines suddenly decided that some of China's islands and reefs were in fact theirs and occupied them without so much as a by-your-leave. China's reaction to this affront has been restrained, to say the least. It is not too great a leap of understanding to conclude that China is the encroached upon rather than the encroacher.
In 2013, the government of former Philippine President Benigno S. Aquino III ignored previous agreements with China and went running to The Hague. Aquino has since become a figure of purely historical relevance, and the job of cleaning up his mess has fallen to the new Philippine President, Rodrigo Duterte, who seems ready and willing to talk directly with China.
Even after the absurd arbitration award, China retains its faith in a peaceful solution and would welcome direct talks over the negotiating table.
A statement issued by the Chinese leadership on Tuesday said that China is still ready to resolve disputes peacefully through negotiation and consultation with those states directly concerned. China will make every effort to seek win-win results and maintain the peace that is so vital to stability and prosperity in the region.
Bringing the issue back to the negotiation table, and thereafter to a long-term solution, is in the interests of all parties, and is now down to the Philippines. President Duterte has begun to make positive gestures, but is his country ready to walk his talk?
China has said that the door is always open, but will not welcome any unreasonable demands nor sit idly by if deliberately provoked.
China will now decide whether to declare an Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) in the South China Sea in accordance with the extent of a threat. "If our security were threatened, of course we have the right," Vice Foreign Minister Liu Zhenmin told the press.
Chinese people do not make trouble, but are not cowards when trouble is made for them. Whether the South China Sea becomes a troublesome tempest of confrontation or the peaceful waters of cooperation and common prosperity is up to the Philippines and its friends.
Is it not better to remain friends with a good neighbor than to allow some faraway superpower to stir up conflicts at the doorstep? The destiny of the Philippines is in its own hands.
MADRID, July 13 (Xinhua) -- One in three extremists in Spain form part of cells or networks and are willing to carry out attacks in the country, according to a report published by Spain's prestigious think tank, the Elcano Royal Institute.
The report was drawn up by Fernando Reinares and Carola Garcia Calvo from the profiles of the 150 "jihadists" detained in Spain between 2013 and May of this year.
They discovered 86 percent of those arrested were members of Daesh (the Islamic State) with 94 percent of them working in conjunction with other people and just six percent acting individually as "lone wolves".
The institute's study shows that around three quarters of extremists previously had contact with Daesh, while the remainder were recruited as a result of seeing propaganda.
It also highlighted that although the Internet was an important source of radicalization, it was not the main source as most extremists became radicalized in mosques, cultural centers, and direct contact with other radicals, rather than by the Internet alone.
Perhaps the most worrying statistic is that 35 percent formed part of a "jihadist" cell or network that was willing to carry out attacks in Spain, while 65 percent had either traveled to fight in Syria and Iraq or had taken the decision to do so in the near future.
The study also drew up a profile of the typical "jihadist", describing them as someone who had joined the terrorist jihad due to religious motivation and were convinced they would receive a reward for their actions after they died.
The average extremist detained in Spain are men aged 31.6 years old, married with children and who works in the service sector or is unemployed.
A total of 30 percent have a secondary education while 10 percent have studied at university.
The women arrested are much younger (22.6 years of age) and tend to be single.
A total of 73.8 percent of those arrested became radicalized in Spain with the Spanish North African enclave of Ceuta, Barcelona, and Madrid the main centers of radicalization; 44 percent had a prior criminal record.
KATHMANDU, July 13 (Xinhua)-- Three political parties have filed a no-confidence motion against Prime Minister K. P. Sharma Oli on Wednesday afternoon.
The Nepali Congress, CPN (Maoist-Centre) and Communist Party of Nepal (United) filed the no-confidence motion against the prime minister after he refused to step down from the post, a leader of the Congress, Ram Krishna Yadav, told media.
Oli, on Tuesday, said that he was ready to face the no-confidence motion at the parliament instead of quitting from the power.
The fresh political developments in the Himalayan nation emerged a day after the CPN (Maoist-Centre), a key ally of the Oli-led CPN-UML government, decided to withdraw its support for the government, accusing the prime minister of failing to implement the past accords.
With the CPN (Maoist-Centre) withdrawing from the alliance, Oli does not have a majority vote in the 601-member parliament.
It may take weeks for a new coalition government to be agreed upon by the political parties, according to political analysts here.
The CPN (Maoist-Centre) has already proposed its Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal as the next prime minister.
Krishna Bahadur Mahara, a key leader of the CPN (Maoist-Centre), told media that his party will form the next government under the leadership of Dahal with the backing of the Nepali Congress and other fringe parties.
A meeting of the country's largest political party Nepali Congress, on Wednesday morning, formally decided to lend support to CPN (Maoist-Centre) Chairman Dahal as the candidate for the new prime minister, according to a press release issued by the Nepali Congress Party.
The CPN (Maoist-Centre), third largest party in the parliament, had lent its support to the government under the leadership of the CPN-UML, paving the way for Oli to become the country's prime minister in October last year.
JAKARTA, July 13 (Xinhua) -- Indonesian President Joko Widodo on Wednesday installed Commissioner General Tito Karnavian as the new national police chief at the State Palace.
Karnavian was chief of the National Counter Terrorism Agency and previously posted positions such as Jakarta police chief and the head of the special anti-terror squad of Densus 88.
His reputation started to grow during his term at the anti-terror squad, which successfully paralyzed terrorist top figures in the country, Doctor Azhari Hussin and Noordin M. Top.
After his installment, Karnavian stressed that combating terrorism and rising police working performance are among his priorities.
He promised to capture high-militant profile Santoso, who leads IS network in the country, and his cells.
"The crimes which have implication of contingency such as terrorism is my focus," he said at the palace.
"We will intensify the operation (to capture Santoso) until he is arrested or killed," Karnavian added.
Karnavian joined the police academy in 1987 and graduated from the Exeter University in the United Kingdom and had his master degree in Police Studies in 1993.
In 2013, he got his PhD degree from the Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.
Karnavian succeeded General Badrodin Haiti who will retire in August.
Terrorism, transnational crimes and insurgency are among the main challenges for the Indonesian police.
BEIJING, July 13 (Xinhua) -- China on Wednesday urged the United States and the Republic of Korea (ROK) to halt the the deployment of a U.S. anti-missile system in the ROK.
Earlier in the day, the ROK's defense ministry announced an agreement with the United States to deploy the U.S. missile defense system, called Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD), to its southeastern region despite continued opposition from neighboring countries.
The THAAD deployment would gravely damage the strategic balance in the region as well as the strategic security interests of countries in the region including China, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lu Kang told a routine press briefing.
The move also contravenes efforts to maintain peace and stability in the Korean Peninsula, he said, reaffirming China's strong opposition to it.
He warned that China will take necessary measures to safeguard its own interests if the United States and ROK don't stop the deployment.
According to media reports, one THAAD battery will be deployed to the Seongsan-ri region of Seongju County in North Gyeongsang Province, where the ROK Air Force's Hawk surface-to-air missile battery is located.
Photo taken on July 12, 2016 shows a conference room of the newly-built Kigali Convention Center in Kigali, capital of Rwanda. The complex which hosts the 27th African Union summit is constructed at an estimated 300 million US dollars. (Xinhua/Pan Siwei)
KIGALI, July 13 (Xinhua) -- African Union (AU) permanent representatives have urged the warring factions in South Sudan to end conflict.
They made the remarks on Tuesday at the sidelines of the ongoing 27th African Union (AU) summit in Rwanda's Capital, Kigali.
Rwanda hosts the summit from July 10th to 18th under the theme; "2016: African Year of Human Rights, with particular focus on the Rights of Women."
Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of 32nd ordinary session of the Permanent Representatives Committee (PRC), Cherif Mahamat Zene, Chad's ambassador to Ethiopia and permanent representative to the AU urged South Sudan leaders to find lasting solution to the ongoing conflict.
"We want to see peace and tranquility in South Sudan. We want to see people's suffering in conflict come to an end," he said.
Since Thursday last week, renewed clashes broke out in the South Sudanese capital, Juba between forces of the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) loyal to President Salva Kiir, and the SPLA in Opposition (SPLA-IO) loyal to Vice President Riek Machar.
Hundreds of soldiers have been killed on both sides for the cause none of the two leaders could explain including two Chinese peacekeepers while thousands of civilians fled the capital.
Photo taken on July 12, 2016 shows the exterior of the newly-built Kigali Convention Center in Kigali, capital of Rwanda. (Xinhua/Pan Siwei)
According to Smail Chergui, AU Commissioner for Peace and Security, AU is worried by the heavy fighting between rival factions in South Sudan which threatens regional stability.
"The two leaders should amicably end this conflict in the interests of peace, security and stability of their country. We urge South Sudan leadership in strongest possible terms to end this bloodshed, and focus on the economic and social transformation of the country for a better future of South Sudanese," he stressed.
UN Security Council has also strongly condemned the attack, calling on both parties to "immediately" end all such attacks and fully adhere to 2015 peace agreement.
Since 2013 civil war more than one-third of South Sudan's 12 million population is dependent on humanitarian assistance and about two million have fled, according to UNHCR.
South Sudan conflict is expected to be at the top of the agenda during the 27th African Union (AU) summit that opened on Sunday in Kigali.
by Muhammad Tahir
ISLAMABAD, July 13 (Xinhua) -- Campaigners and families who lost their loved ones in controversial American covert drone missions in Pakistan have strongly disputed the claim by the United States its unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) only killed 116 civilians in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and Libya between January 2009 and the end of 2015.
Shahzad Akbar, a senior lawyer, who is leading the legal battle for the civilians killed in the U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan's tribal regions, says the data collected from the media reports and people on the ground put the civilian death toll at over 3,000.
During exclusive talks with Xinhua, Akbar also mentioned a 2013 court's judgment in the Pakistani city of Peshawar in which the judge mentioned deaths of 1,490 civilians in the U.S. drone attacks in the Waziristan tribal region.
"The figures were shared with the Peshawar High Court by the officials in North and South Waziristan which had been the focus of drone strikes for years," the lawyer said.
Akbar mentioned at least three U.S. drone strikes that had killed many civilians, including nearly 80 children in an attack on a religious school in the Bajaur tribal area in October 2006, 60 more who were killed when drones rained missiles down on a funeral in South Waziristan in June 2009 and 40 who were killed when U.S. missiles struck a "Jirga" or assembly of tribal elders in North Waziristan in March 2011.
"These are just a few of the major U.S. drone strikes which killed hundreds of civilians, including children. So I would say that the latest White House figure of up to 116 civilian casualties is ridiculous and just a political gimmick," said Akbar, who was once denied a U.S. visa, which stopped him from attending an International Drone Summit in Washington in 2012 where he was scheduled to speak on behalf of the family members of civilian victims of drone strikes.
Drone strikes have always been controversial for Pakistani officials, who describe them as a violation of the country's sovereignty. Pakistanis also believe the strikes had always complicated their anti-terror campaign because civilian deaths always incense the local people.
Pakistan has raised the issue at international forums including the United Nations, however the U.S. has never listened to Pakistan's concerns. The U.S. strike that killed the Afghan Taliban Chief Mullah Akhtar Mansour in Balochistan province on May 21, proved to be disastrous for diplomatic efforts to start the peace negotiations between the Taliban and the Afghan government.
Further ambiguities remain even after the U.S. released its erroneous civilian casualties figure as no details have been shared with the media about the identity of the slain people in Pakistan and other countries, and no one knows how exactly the U.S. separate militants from the civilians.
"I think U.S. President Barack Obama is concerned about his legacy because he signed death warrants for the extra-judicial murders of over 4,000 people. The American leader has in fact used armed drones for assassinations," the Pakistani lawyer said.
Families who lost members in the U.S. drone attacks in Pakistan, are also surprised at the White House's incomprehensibly low number of civilian casualties in the highly controversial drone campaign and some offered possible reasons.
Abdul Karim Khan, a native of Mirali in North Waziristan, who lost his son Zahinullah and brother Asif Iqbal, to a December 2009 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) drone strike and has been involved in a legal battle to seek justice, says the casualties figure of 116 could be just "men wanted" by the U.S. but the thousands of others who died were as a result of the covert operations and were civilians.
Both of Khan's family members had died while sitting at home with other family members.
"I strongly believe the American report on the civilian casualties is a lie, as I myself have seen hundreds of deaths of local tribesmen in just my area alone," Khan told Xinhua by the phone from the northwestern city of Mardan, where he lives as an internally displaced person along with his family.
Hundreds of thousands had been displaced in North Waziristan due to the Taliban control and later when the security forces launched a major offensive in 2014 to clear the area of the Taliban and other militant groups. As the area is almost been under the control of the forces, the repatriation of the displaced persons is underway and will be completed this year.
Khan had petitioned the Islamabad High Court for the registration of a murder case against the former CIA station Chief in Pakistan, Jonathan Banks, for his alleged role in a surgical strike that killed the family members of an anti-drone activist.
In April 2015, the High Court had directed the Islamabad police to register the case against the CIA station chief.
"It is regrettable that the U.S. embassy in Islamabad has never submitted any reply to our legal notices, which means American officials cannot defend themselves in a court of law. We have been involved in legal battles since 2010 and will continue," he said.
As the CIA-led drone campaign is shrouded in secrecy, the U.S. officials had long been silent over the issue and it is for the first time the White House issued the number of some of its victims in view of the growing criticism of the drone campaign.
The London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism, which provides a full dataset of all known U.S. drone attacks in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen, says the strikes have also killed more than 400 civilians. In 2015 it also started monitoring international airstrikes in Afghanistan.
"There is no doubt U.S. drone attacks have killed civilians in Pakistan, though it appears from our monitoring that the attacks have killed far fewer in recent years compared with levels seen in 2010 and before," Jack Serle, a reporter for the Bureau, told Xinhua.
"But the trouble is far too often we do not know who has been killed by drones, so we don't know if they're an innocent civilian in the wrong place at the wrong time, if they're a terrorist mastermind plotting attacks in Islamabad, Kabul or the West, or if they're just a driver who had no choice but throw in their lot with some criminal gang in the FATA (Federally Administered Tribal Areas," he said on July 5.
As Pakistan has been critical of the U.S. drone strikes, it has raised the issue at international forums including the United Nations, calling for a halt to the attacks.
On July 2, Pakistan demanded an immediate cessation of drone strikes in its territory, terming them a violation of "territorial integrity and sovereignty of states."
Pakistan's Permanent Representative to United Nations, Maleeha Lodhi, told the UN General Assembly that the extraterritorial use of armed drones or remotely-piloted aircraft is a violation of international and humanitarian laws and also a fuel for violent extremism.
Last month, Pakistan urged the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva to respond to loss of lives, human rights violations and breach of its territorial sovereignty because of drone attacks.
Speaking at a meeting of the council in Geneva, Pakistan's permanent representative Tehmina Janjua pointed out that the drone strikes were also a violation of the UN charter and international law, including human rights and humanitarian law.
ULAN BATOR, July 13, 2016 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Premier Li Keqiang arrives at Ulan Bator, Mongolia, July 13, 2016. Li arrived here Wednesday for an official visit to Mongolia and the 11th Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) summit. (Xinhua/Zhang Duo)
ULAN BATOR, July 13 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Premier Li Keqiang arrived in Ulan Bator on Wednesday to pay an official visit to Mongolia, in a fresh bid to further consolidate mutual trust and boost bilateral cooperation between the two neighboring Asian countries.
In his first trip to Mongolia since taking office in 2013, Li will hold talks with Mongolia's new prime minister, Jargaltulga Erdenebat, and meet with Mongolian President Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj and Chairman Miyegombo Enkhbold of the State Great Hural, Mongolia's parliament.
A series of cooperation deals covering trade, infrastructure, finance and energy, as well as climate change and media exchanges, will be signed during the two-day visit, the first half of Li's stay in Ulan Bator.
Upon arrival at the Chinggis Khaan International Airport, Li, greeted by Mongolian Foreign Minister Lundeg Purevsuren, likened China and Mongolia to two "good friends and partners" that "wish for the best for each other," while expressing his hope that the visit will further cement the two countries' friendly ties, cooperation and development.
Li said China is willing to continue to strengthen cooperation with Mongolia, by advancing the alignment of both sides' development strategies and expanding collaboration and exchanges in various fields, towards a future of common development and prosperity.
Sharing a 4,710-km-long land borderline, China and Mongolia have witnessed more and more intimate relations in recent years thanks to closer economic links and greater political trust between the two countries.
In 2014, Beijing and Ulan Bator upgraded their ties to a "comprehensive strategic partnership" -- the highest rank in Mongolia's diplomatic relations.
In the economic realm, China has for years been Mongolia's largest trading partner and largest source of foreign investment. According to official statistics, two-way trade has expanded 50 times over the past two decades.
In a signed article published by Mongolia's major news outlets on Wednesday, Li lauded the China-Mongolia relations as being the "best ever" in history.
His official visit will inject new vitality into the two countries' already cozy bonds, observers say.
On Friday and Saturday, the Chinese premier will attend the 11th summit of ASEM, an intergovernmental forum aimed at fostering political dialogue and boosting cooperation in various areas across Asia and Europe.
This year marks the 20th anniversary since ASEM was launched in Bangkok, Thailand in 1996.
The Ulan Bator summit, which came on the heels of the 18th summit between China and the European Union (EU) held in Beijing, will see Li deliver keynote speeches on China's proposition on ASEM's future development, Asia-Europe pragmatic cooperation, as well as major international and regional hot issues.
At the airport, Li said China has always attached great importance to Asia-Europe cooperation, and has actively supported Mongolia's efforts in hosting the 11th ASEM summit.
"(China) is willing to work with all parties to make the summit a success, and make positive contributions to peace and cooperation as well as common development between Asia and Europe," he said.
During the summit, Li is also expected to hold bilateral meetings with leaders of some ASEM members.
This will be the second time for the Chinese premier to attend the biannual summit. The last ASEM summit was held in Milan, Italy in 2014.
People pose for a group photo after a passenger jet of China Southern Airlines landing at the airport on Meiji Reef, July 13, 2016. China successfully carried out test flights on two new airports on the Nansha Islands in the South China Sea on Wednesday, further enhancing its capability to provide public services as a responsible player in the region. (Xinhua/Xing Guangli)
KHARTOUM, July 13 (Xinhua) -- The Sudanese parliament on Wednesday declared its support for China's call to resolve the South China Sea dispute through dialogue, reiterating its rejection of any action that may further complicate the crisis.
"Sudan's Parliament stands with justice and right, and we encourage dialogue as a means for resolving international issues," Mohamed Mustafa Al-Daw, head of the external relations committee in the Sudanese parliament, told Xinhua.
"We are advocates of peace and stability, and we oppose any tendency that does not not achieve these goals and regard it as irrational," he noted.
He went on saying that "we back China's call for resolving the South China Sea dispute through dialogue and negotiation as most appropriate means to safeguard the world peace and security."
Al-Daw, meanwhile, criticized what he termed as "endeavors" by some major countries to complicate the issue of the South China Sea via issuance of politically motivated decisions, saying "we condemn any form of instigation of sedition and conflicts which leads to instability."
The Sudanese parliament noticed that Chinese government on Tuesday refused to recognize the award by an arbitral tribunal on the South China Sea, insisting that bilateral negotiations should settle the dispute.
"Also on Tuesday, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi described the arbitration as was "a political farce under the pretext of law."
A passenger jet of Hainan Airlines lands at the airport on Zhubi Reef, July 13, 2016. China successfully carried out test flights on two new airports on the Nansha Islands in the South China Sea on Wednesday, further enhancing its capability to provide public services as a responsible player in the region. (Xinhua/Guo Cheng)
The Philippine government initiated the arbitration in January 2013 and in February, the Chinese government declared that it would neither participate in nor accept any outcome of the process.
Additionally, the Chinese Foreign Ministry the Foreign Ministry said the award "is null and void and has no binding force."
MOSCOW, July 13 (Xinhua) -- Russian President Vladimir Putin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande held a phone conversation on Wednesday, hoping to strengthen trust between Russia and NATO.
Speaking of the latest NATO summit in Warsaw from July 8 to 9, the three leaders "expressed mutual interest in a constructive dialogue and taking concrete measures aimed at strengthening trust between Russia and the alliance," a Kremlin statement said.
The NATO summit has decided on reinforcing its eastern flank by deploying four battalions in Poland and the Baltic states, with a communique accusing Russia of posing "risks and challenges for the security of allies and others."
The communique said, however, that NATO remained open to a periodic, focused and meaningful dialogue with a Russia willing to engage based on reciprocity in the NATO-Russia Council, "with a view to avoiding misunderstanding, miscalculation, and unintended escalation, and increasing transparency and predictability."
A NATO-Russia Council meeting at the level of ambassadors is due to take place later on Wednesday.
BRUSSELS, July 13 (Xinhua) -- Seasonally adjusted industrial production fell by 1.2 percent in the 19-country eurozone in May compared with the previous month, official data showed on Wednesday.
In the wider 28-country European Union (EU), seasonally adjusted industrial production declined by 1.1 percent on a monthly basis, said Eurostat, the bloc's statistical office.
In April 2016, industrial production rose by 1.4 percent in the eurozone and by 1.5 percent in the EU, it added.
Compared with May 2015, industrial production in May this year increased by 0.5 percent in the eurozone and by 1.1 percent in the EU, Eurostat said.
The single-currency's monthly decrease in May 2016 was mainly due to production of energy falling by 4.3 percent and capital goods by 2.3 percent. In the EU, production of energy fell by 3.3 percent and capital goods fell by 2.0 percent.
May's fall in eurozone industrial production reversed almost all of April's strong gain and suggests that industry will probably detract from eurozone gross domestic product (GDP) growth in the second quarter, said Stephen Brown, European economist at Capital Economics, a London-based economic research consultancy.
Survey evidence suggests that industrial firms are struggling to pass on recent commodity price rises to their customers, which implies that demand remains subdued, Brown said.
The negative impact of the United Kingdom's Brexit vote on sentiment is also set to weigh on industrial prospects. That supports the long-held view that eurozone growth will continue to slow and adds to the pressure on the European Central Bank to loosen policy further, Brown added.
Among member states, industrial production in the Netherlands has seen the sharpest contraction of 7.8 percent.
Figures in Germany and France also disappointed with declines of 1.3 percent and 0.5 percent respectively.
"The weakness was broad-based across all the major economies, and production also fell in most of the smaller countries. Across sectors, large falls in energy and capital goods output were the key drivers of the fall, but production fell in all sub-industries," said Claus Vistesen, chief eurozone economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, also an economic research firm.
Vistesen said this poor performance painted a grim picture for industrial production growth in the second quarter.
"Even with our assumption that output bounced back with a 1.1-percent month-to-month gain in June, production still fell 0.3 percent quarterly. This indicates that eurozone GDP growth slowed significantly in the second quarter, from a sizeable rise in the first three months," he said.
KHARTOUM, July 13 (Xinhua) -- Sudanese political forces on Wednesday warned against impacts of the award by the Permanent Court of Arbitration concerning the South China Sea, regarding it as a political game that would not lead to stability of the region or contribute to resolving the standing issue.
The Sudanese political forces, interviewed by Xinhua Wednesday, reiterated their support for the China's stance for settling dispute through dialogue, urging the countries outside the South China Sea region to play a positive role and not to pour oil on the fire of the crisis.
"It is apparent that the ruling of the court reflects stance of some major countries which seek to spark a crisis at the South China Sea region, and directly target China," Abboud Jabir Saeed, Secretary General of Sudan's National Unity Government Parties, told Xinhua Wednesday.
"The award does not have any legal basis, because it was built on false data, where China did not ask for arbitration and did not participate in it, and therefore, it is natural for China to reject the result of the arbitration process," he noted.
He added that "what happened is a clear violation of the rules of arbitration and international laws."
Saeed went on saying "we support China's position as we believe it is compatible with the international law and the international commitments, and we condemn any attempt to politicize the issue of the South China Sea, because such a move would complicate the crisis and lead to instability in the area."
Saeed further commended the white paper, issued by the Chinese government on Wednesday, titled "China Adheres to the Position of Settling Through Negotiation the Relevant Disputes Between China and the Philippines in the South China Sea."
"I read a summary of the paper, and according to my opinion, it contains clear ideas for the solution as it stresses on dialogue and negotiation as proper means for settlement of the dispute. All countries must support this rational Chinese position."
In the meantime, Mohamed Mustafa Al-Daw, head of the external relations committee in the Sudanese parliament, declared the parliament's support for China's call to resolve the South China Sea dispute through dialogue, reiterating rejection of any action that may further complicate the crisis.
"Sudan's Parliament stands with justice and right, and we encourage dialogue as a means for resolving international issues," Mohamed Mustafa Al-Daw, head of the external relations committee in the Sudanese parliament, told Xinhua.
"We are advocates of peace and stability, and we oppose any tendency that does not not achieve these goals and regard it as irrational," he noted.
He went on saying that "we back China's call for resolving the South China Sea dispute through dialogue and negotiation as most appropriate means to safeguard the world peace and security."
Al-Daw, meanwhile, criticized what he termed as "endeavors" by some major countries to complicate the issue of the South China Sea via issuance of politically motivated decisions, saying "we condemn any form of instigation of sedition and conflicts which leads to instability."
It is to be mentioned that Chinese government on Tuesday refused to recognize the award by an arbitral tribunal on the South China Sea, insisting that bilateral negotiations should settle the dispute.
Also on Tuesday, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi described the arbitration as was "a political farce under the pretext of law."
The Philippine government initiated the arbitration in January 2013 and in February, the Chinese government declared that it would neither participate in nor accept any outcome of the process.
Additionally, the Chinese Foreign Ministry, in a statement Tuesday, said the award "is null and void and has no binding force."
"The conduct of the arbitral tribunal and its award are unjust and unlawful," the statement said.
by Chrispinus Omar
JUBA, July 13 (Xinhua) -- Fresh fighting has dealt a major blow to South Sudan's efforts to recover from months of civil unrest, leading to fresh population displacements and the escalation of a humanitarian crisis in the world's newest state, analysts said here on Wednesday.
"This fighting has taken South Sudan back to half a year or maybe more than three months of the Transitional Government of National Unity," James Alic Garang, Associate Professor at the University of Upper Nile in Juba told Xinhua.
Garang, an economic analyst, said the fighting in Juba since July 7, has left the country with an uncertain political and economic future following the destruction of key facilities and installations in the capital.
"The future of investment will be affected because real investors will not have second thought on whether to rush to South Sudan to invest. They will wait and see the political situation stabilized," he added.
The latest flare-up of fighting between the forces loyal to President Salva Kiir and First Vice President Riek Machar, which left scores of people dead, has raised questions about the political stability.
The South Sudanese leaders signed an agreement in August 2015 to form a unity government. The unity government was formed in April to run the country until elections are held within 36 months.
However, the latest fighting, three months into the unity government, has led analysts to believe that the slow implementation of the August peace agreement was leading to tensions.
"More generally, this conflict could be attributed to the lack of implementation of the peace agreement which perhaps led to the violence on Thursday, Friday and the days that followed," Garang said.
The analyst said the fighting has also constrained the government's ability to provide basic services to the citizens who have been severely affected by the past violence in Juba and other provincial towns.
"The ability of the government to provide basic services to the citizens has already been destabilized and shaken," Garang warned.
The conflict severely affected the ability of the international humanitarian agencies to reach people caught up in the crossfire.
Dr. Augustino Ting Mayai, senior political analyst at SUDD Institute, a local government policy think-tank, said the fighting has displaced several people, adding to the existing humanitarian challenges and affected the distribution of food and basic needs in and around the capital.
"There are great and gradual consequences of this violence and so the question is how to deal with it," Mayai said.
The analyst said the South Sudanese leaders have taken the initial steps to declare a ceasefire, which has held in the interim period. The ceasefire has allowed several residents of Juba to venture out in search of basic commodities and food.
However, the consequences of the latest fighting are expected to be felt widely in the coming months.
"The two leaders should be appreciated for going through the need to hand their forces not to fight each other. The second aspect is that there is need for humanitarian interventions," Mayai said.
Mayai said civilians have been newly displaced and the general population is living without food and water. He said the international community and the government should develop a plan to deal with the humanitarian situation.
South Sudanese are witnessing shops run out of essential supplies days immediately after the fierce fighting.
Garang said he visited shops around a place called Jebel-Dinka, where the shelves remained empty because the city residents took leave of the ceasefire to stock up essential supplies.
"I have seen families moving toward Gurei and Gudele in Juba, to look for food. This is one clear impact of the conflict already. There is already displacement of families to places like Lemon-Guba and Jebel-Luri among other areas," Garang told Xinhua in an interview.
The fighting has left Juba uncertain following the destruction of fuel stations in the capital, which is likely to impact the town's transport system, according to Garang.
"There is a lot of uncertainty. The transport is going to disband because some fuel stations have already been destroyed," Garang said.
According to him, transport along the main highway from Uganda to South Sudan has been affected by the fighting, leading to the disruption of the essential food supplies.
The conflict is also a true test to the effectiveness of the unity government formed after the 2013 political crisis between President Kiir and his First Vice President.
Analysts say the declaration of the Monday ceasefire has partly shown the effectiveness of the unity government to restore stability but the reforms are still required to restore political stability.
ISLAMABAD, July 13 (Xinhua) -- Pakistani analysts believe that the verdict of the Permanent Court of Arbitration is unhelpful because it hands down a lopsided interpretation, without taking into account China's position and stance.
"It reads the situation partially, selectively and politically. I am afraid it will complicate the situation in the region and spur escalation. Diplomatic tools should be used to avert a conflict or unintended catastrophe," Director General of the Institute of Strategic Studies Islamabad Masood Khan said on Wednesday.
Masood Khan told Xinhua that China has legitimate claims over its historical territory and it has a right to safeguard its national sovereignty.
"There are disputes in the region which can be resolved in the framework of the 2002 Declaration on the Conduct of Parties for the South China Sea, under which mechanisms are available for engagement and conflict resolution. Had there been no attempt to interfere, this mechanism would have worked. It should be restored," he further said.
Khan said the war of words should not transform into something more disastrous, adding Pakistan, as a friend of China, hopes no attempt would be made to hurt China's security interests.
"It is collective responsibility of all states to pave the way for peaceful settlement of disputes. For its part, China has assured the international community that it would continue to uphold the international rule of law," Khan, who has served as Pakistan ambassador to China said.
The comments came after the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague delivered verdict against China.
The Chinese government has refused to recognize the award by an ad hoc arbitral tribunal on the South China Sea, insisting on settling the dispute through bilateral negotiations.
A senior defence analyst and commentator, Said Nazeer Muhmand, says that it was the United States that has pushed other countries to create this problem.
"On these islands, it was basically America which in fact provoked these countries to opt for arbitration on the South China Sea issue," Muhmand, who has served as Brigadier in the Pakistan army said.
He told Xinhua that American wants to follow the policy of confrontation with sovereign states like China.
"Such policy will not work. The best option for the countries is to find out solution to problems and disputes bilaterally and not through arbitration," he said.
On Tuesday, in response to a question regarding the South China Sea, the spokesperson of the Pakistan Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated that Pakistan maintains that disputes over the South China Sea should be peacefully resolved, through consultations and negotiations by states directly concerned, in accordance with bilateral agreements and the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC).
BEIJING, July 11, 2016 (Xinhua) -- A screenshot shows a local militant opening fire in Juba, capital of South Sudan, on July 10, 2016. (Xinhua)
KIGALI, July 13 (Xinhua) -- The resurgence of the civil war in South Sudan after more than two years of peace talks is totally unacceptable, said Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, chairperson of the African Union Commission, on Wednesday.
Dlamini-Zuma observed that it is unfortunate that instead of the citizens of South Sudancelebrating their five years of independence, they are barricaded in their homes as others flee their country.
"We must begin to respect the lives of the people and should not tolerate leadership that has no regard for the people's lives," Dlamini-Zuma said during the ongoing 27th AU Summit held July 10-18 in Kigali, Rwanda.
She said that governments and leaderships exist to protect the vulnerable, to serve, but not to cause massive suffering to women and children.
"It is sad that this is happening when the cost of conflict management and peace is currently the largest single budget item of the AU yet these resources should be spent on promoting the African skills revolution, supporting young entrepreneurs and women farmers," she noted.
She said that while there is no resources to buy food for the hunger and medicine for children, it's unacceptable that political leaders in the country have resources to buy weapons that they use in causing havoc to the vulnerable citizens.
"We must strive to honor a pledge and stop war and conflicts to future generations of Africans and silence guns by 2020," she noted.
According to the United Nations Human Rights Commission (UNHCR) almost 36,000 people have been displaced since the fighting that flared yet again.
The agency said that some 7,000 internally displaced people have sought shelter in the UN's bases in Juba.
Dlamini-Zuma called on governments to intervene in conflict situations before they escalate into violence and ensure that democracy and human rights are promoted.
Fierce fighting broke out Friday between troops loyal to South Sudan President Salva Kiir and First Vice-President Riek Machar.
More than 300 people were reportedly killed during days of fighting. On Monday evening, Kiir and Machar ordered respective ceasefire which appears to be holding until now.
The AU is holding its 27th ordinary summit in Kigali Rwanda, which is being attended by representatives from the 54 member states.
Missile frigate Yuncheng sails to the water area near south China's Hainan Island and Xisha islands, July 8, 2016. Chinese navy conducted an annual combat drill in the water area near south China 's Hainan Island and Xisha islands on Friday. (Xinhua/Zha Chunming)
KHARTOUM, July 13 (Xinhua) -- Sudanese political forces on Wednesday warned against impacts of the award by the Permanent Court of Arbitration concerning the South China Sea, regarding it as a political game that would not lead to stability of the region or contribute to resolving the standing issue.
The Sudanese political forces, interviewed by Xinhua Wednesday, reiterated their support for the China's stance for settling dispute through dialogue, urging the countries outside the South China Sea region to play a positive role and not to pour oil on the fire of the crisis.
"It is apparent that the ruling of the court reflects stance of some major countries which seek to spark a crisis at the South China Sea region, and directly target China," Abboud Jabir Saeed, Secretary General of Sudan's National Unity Government Parties, told Xinhua Wednesday.
"The award does not have any legal basis, because it was built on false data, where China did not ask for arbitration and did not participate in it, and therefore, it is natural for China to reject the result of the arbitration process," he noted.
He added that "what happened is a clear violation of the rules of arbitration and international laws."
Saeed went on saying "we support China's position as we believe it is compatible with the international law and the international commitments, and we condemn any attempt to politicize the issue of the South China Sea, because such a move would complicate the crisis and lead to instability in the area."
Saeed further commended the white paper, issued by the Chinese government on Wednesday, titled "China Adheres to the Position of Settling Through Negotiation the Relevant Disputes Between China and the Philippines in the South China Sea."
"I read a summary of the paper, and according to my opinion, it contains clear ideas for the solution as it stresses on dialogue and negotiation as proper means for settlement of the dispute. All countries must support this rational Chinese position."
In the meantime, Mohamed Mustafa Al-Daw, head of the external relations committee in the Sudanese parliament, declared the parliament's support for China's call to resolve the South China Sea dispute through dialogue, reiterating rejection of any action that may further complicate the crisis.
"Sudan's Parliament stands with justice and right, and we encourage dialogue as a means for resolving international issues," Mohamed Mustafa Al-Daw, head of the external relations committee in the Sudanese parliament, told Xinhua.
"We are advocates of peace and stability, and we oppose any tendency that does not not achieve these goals and regard it as irrational," he noted.
He went on saying that "we back China's call for resolving the South China Sea dispute through dialogue and negotiation as most appropriate means to safeguard the world peace and security."
Al-Daw, meanwhile, criticized what he termed as "endeavors" by some major countries to complicate the issue of the South China Sea via issuance of politically motivated decisions, saying "we condemn any form of instigation of sedition and conflicts which leads to instability."
It is to be mentioned that Chinese government on Tuesday refused to recognize the award by an arbitral tribunal on the South China Sea, insisting that bilateral negotiations should settle the dispute.
Also on Tuesday, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi described the arbitration as was "a political farce under the pretext of law."
The Philippine government initiated the arbitration in January 2013 and in February, the Chinese government declared that it would neither participate in nor accept any outcome of the process.
Additionally, the Chinese Foreign Ministry, in a statement Tuesday, said the award "is null and void and has no binding force."
"The conduct of the arbitral tribunal and its award are unjust and unlawful," the statement said.
WUHAN, July 13, 2016 (Xinhua) -- Armed police soldiers prepare for the breach of the embankment on the dike of Niushan Lake in central China's Hubei Province, July 13, 2016. The Hubei provincial government Tuesday decided to break the embankment between Liangzi Lake and Niushan Lake, to prevent possible flood overflow over the dike. The operation will be executed on July 14. (Xinhua/Xiao Yijiu)
WUHAN, July 13 (Xinhua) -- Armed police will blow up a dike between two lakes in central China's Hubei Province on Thursday morning to disperse surging floodwater.
They will destroy the 3.7-km-long embankment separating Liangzi Lake and Niushan Lake at 6:30 a.m. with 30 tonnes of explosives, said Ren Zhenhe, vice governor of Hubei, at a press conference on Wednesday afternoon.
Hubei has been among the regions worst hit by the recent deadly downpours in China. Due to persistent rain since mid-June, the water level of Liangzi, the province's second-largest lake, is more than a meter higher than that of Niushan, which is located on the other side of the dike in the southeastern suburbs of Wuhan City.
By 8 a.m. on Tuesday, Liangzi's water level had risen to 21.48 meters, 12 cm above the safe level and 5 cm higher than the record high.
Liangzi's pumping station has been working flat out for 80 days, clearing more than 1.3 billion cubic meters of water out of the lake and into the Yangtze River. The amount is double the average for this time of year, but the effort has only reduced the water level by one cm per day.
Heavy rain is forecast in Hubei up to July 18, which is expected to raise the water level of Liangzi to 22.38 meters and cause severe waterlogging.
Following the explosion, Niushan Lake will be merged into Liangzi, and therefore the surface area of Liangzi will grow by more than 100 square km to about 370 square km.
About 50 million cubic meters of water from Liangzi Lake will flow to the Niushan side, submerging low-lying land around Niushan Lake.
As of noon on Wednesday, 1,658 local residents had been evacuated to make way for the dike explosion and water flow, according to Long Zhengcai, vice mayor of Wuhan.
Among them are 261 employees plus their family members of the Niushan Lake aquatic farm, which will disappear following the operation.
On Wednesday morning, a Xinhua reporter saw dozens of trucks sent by the government of Wuhan's Jiangxia District helping residents flee their homes.
Zhao Yunju, a 66-year-old retiree from the aquatic farm, said her family received the order to leave at 1 a.m. on Wednesday. "We've lived here for nearly 40 years. Of course we're reluctant to go, but the government said that this is for the sake of our safety," Zhao said.
"I'll leave. Just allow me to stay a little longer, for one last look at the lake," said Li Xianming, 62, wiping away tears.
The district government of Jiangxi has promised to build new homes for those relocated and compensate them, said Chen Xiexin, chief of the district's Communist Party of China committee.
Chen said the government would work on getting them new employment and social insurance.
Rain in the Yangtze River basin has left 161 people dead another 61 unaccounted for since China entered the flood season in March, according to the Yangtze River flood control headquarters.
(Xinhua photo)
NANJING, July 13 (Xinhua) -- When Japanese explorer Takeji Miyoshi's expedition dropped anchor near a small island in the South China Sea on Aug. 19, 1933, they were received by three Chinese fishermen.
Takeji's diary entry stated that the fishermen had built houses on Beizi (Northeast Cay), one of the Nansha Islands, which are also known as the Spratly chain. The fishermen offered to show the crew around the island.
Following this first interaction with Chinese residents, Takeji Miyoshi discovered it was not a chance meeting, as he explored the area he found that many of the other islands were home to groups of Chinese fishermen.
He wrote that a large number of fishermen from Hainan had relocated to the small islands in the South China Sea. His team kept detailed records on the daily lives of the fishermen, who called these islands home. Their archives include information on agriculture cultivation and a birth register.
Hu Zhuoran, a member of the Modern History Association in east China's Jiangsu Province, has been researching Miyoshi's documents.
He said that the Japanese had collected lots of details on Chinese inhabitants of the Nansha Islands.
"The archives show that Chinese actually lived on and explored the islands. They were settled," Hu said.
The central government on Tuesday refused to recognize an tribunal award issued on the South China Sea, which denied China's territorial sovereignty on the sea.
The award by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague stated that all of the "features" in the Spratly chain mean the islands are legally "rocks."
The Philippines sought the arbitration from the tribunal on several issues related to its territorial disputes with China.
The Spratly chain is known as the Nansha Islands to China.
The Japanese explorer, in his ledger, said that his expedition team saw anti-Japanese posters across the island of Zhongye.
The posters were related to the Japanese invasion of northeast China in 1931.
Hu Dekun, head of the China Institute of Boundary and Ocean Studies with the Wuhan University, said that records show that in 1939, Japan occupied all of the Xisha and Nansha islands.
After the World War II, China recovered its sovereignty and jurisdiction over the islands in compliance of the Cairo Declaration, which states that "the territories stolen by Japan from China should be returned to China."
In 1948, an official Chinese map of the South China Sea was released to the International Community. None of the countries in the sea area objected to China's nine-dashed line demarcation.
Hu pointed out that before the Philippines gained independence in 1946, America had not recognized Nansha Islands as Philippine territory.
In 1970s, the Philippines illegally occupied the islands. As a smoke screen, it described the largest island, Taiping Island, as a "rock", in a rejection of China's sovereignty over the island and its surrounding waters.
The "rock," however, had six freshwater wells and lush vegetation when China recovered it from Japan.
According to Japanese archives, during its occupation of Taiping Island, Japanese mined phosphate, and it was home to over 600 people.
Hu said there was plenty of evidence showing the Nansha Islands and its adjacent waters to be Chinese territory. The Chinese people were the first to name and develop the islands and it was the Chinese government that first asserted sovereignty over them.
(Front row, L-R) US President Barack Obama, France's President Francois Hollande, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and German Chancellor Angela Merkel chat while posing for a family photo ahead of a working dinner at the Presidential Palace during the NATO Summit in Warsaw on July 8, 2016. (AFP PHOTO)
MOSCOW, July 13 (Xinhua) -- Russian President Vladimir Putin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande held a phone conversation on Wednesday, hoping to strengthen trust between Russia and NATO.
Speaking of the latest NATO summit in Warsaw from July 8 to 9, the three leaders "expressed mutual interest in a constructive dialogue and taking concrete measures aimed at strengthening trust between Russia and the alliance," a Kremlin statement said.
The NATO summit has decided on reinforcing its eastern flank by deploying four battalions in Poland and the Baltic states, with a communique accusing Russia of posing "risks and challenges for the security of allies and others."
The communique said, however, that NATO remained open to a periodic, focused and meaningful dialogue with a Russia willing to engage based on reciprocity in the NATO-Russia Council, "with a view to avoiding misunderstanding, miscalculation, and unintended escalation, and increasing transparency and predictability."
A NATO-Russia Council meeting at the level of ambassadors is due to take place later on Wednesday.
DUBAI, July 13 (Xinhua) -- The Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM) said Wednesday it signed with the Shanghai Free Trade Zone Authority (SHFTZA) a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to foster cooperation and facilitate business development, UAE state news agency WAM reported.
The MoU establishes "a formal framework for further collaboration between the two organisations. It also aims to reinforce ADGM's commitment to building stronger ties with global financial centres, according to the report.
Last week, the ADGM signed an MoU with Paris Europlace, the promotion arm of the French capital as a financial center, for closer cooperation.
Apart from sharing of information and expertise, SHFTZA and ADGM will also consider joint activities to enhance the development of the financial centers of Abu Dhabi and Shanghai Free Trade Zones.
"We are pleased to enter this MoU with our Shanghai partner. Both SHFTZA and ADGM are established to support stakeholders in global expansion and tap growth opportunities in our respective regions," said Richard Teng, chief executive officer of the Financial Services Regulatory Authority of ADGM.
He added that both free zones would work together in bolstering financial services activities, facilitating investment flows and encouraging business innovation in our respective markets.
"The MoU marks another milestone between China and Abu Dhabi in strengthening economic cooperation", he said. Enditem
BUCHAREST, July 13 (Xinhua) -- The Constitutional Court of Romania on Wednesday elected judge Valer Dorneanu as its new chairman for a three-year mandate.
Dorneanu has led the high court ad-interim, after Augustin Zegrean's chairman mandate expired in June. The elections took place behind closed doors,
"I believe that my colleagues took into account my experience, my calm, my conciliatory spirit and the fact that we shall manage together to carry on the prestige of this institution, which is a rule of law pillar," Dorneanu said soon after his election. He said he hoped the high court would cooperate well with other state institutions.
The Constitutional Court, created in 1992, is the institution which rules on whether the laws, decrees or other bills enacted by Romanian authorities are in conformity with the Constitution.
The Court is made up of nine judges serving a nine-year mandate which cannot be extended, with three members each appointed by the president, the senate and the chamber of deputies.
The high court has a chairman elected by secret voting, on a three-year period, by a majority of the judges' votes.
Dorneanu, 71, is a jurist and prominent member of the Social Democratic Party. He was the president of the chamber of deputies between December 2000 and November 2004. In 2013, Dorneanu became a judge in the Constitutional Court. Enditem
By Gao Yuan
CAPE TOWN, July 13 (Xinhua) -- A controversial painting disrespectfully depicting President Jacob Zuma is causing a political storm in South Africa as the country is heading to the August 3 local government elections.
In the painting, artist Ayanda Mabulu depicts Zuma performing analingus on Atul Gupta, a leading member of the Indian Gupta family which allegedly keeps close ties with Zuma. A flag of the ruling African National Congress (ANC) hangs in the scene - a plane's cockpit, a not-so-subtle metaphor for capital flight.
The painting has fuelled debate on social media, with Mabulu receiving plenty of flak for his "disrespectful" and "disgusting" painting from some corners, whereas others praised his bold stand.
Mabulu maintains that the art work is a response to allegations of state capture by the Gupta family which allegedly exerts undue influence on Zuma in the appointment of cabinet ministers and the constitutional court ruling in March which found Zuma having failed to uphold, defend and respect the Constitution in regards to the Nkandla scandal in which Zuma is accused of abusing public funds to pay security upgrades at his private home in Nkandla, KwaZulu-Natal Province.
"Why must I hide the truth when it is as blatant as the sun," Mabulu said in response to a question about his use of sexual scenarios in depicting the political leadership of the country.
On Wednesday, the African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL) added its voice to the debate, saying, "This is no art work, not the one we can be proud about."
The ANCYL whilst is committed to protect the freedom of speech, it wishes to warn Ayanda Mbulu that the recent portrait purported to be an artwork is in fact not artwork but an insult to Zuma, who is also the President of the ANC and the country.
"This is an insult which we must not accept as the society. Artwork should have creativity in it being carried-out but in the work of Ayanda this is not the case," ANCYL national spokesperson Mlondi Mkhize said.
The ANCYL calls upon all citizens to desist from this kind of insult, he said.
"South Africa is the only country where a seating Head of State can be insulted with impunity. As the ANCYL we will not stand for this kind of behavior. We say this with a background that many people have passed on in fighting for democracy not for it to be abused.
"We want everyone to note that this kind of work is provoking and may elicit a response by others to Ayanda. This is not art but an insult and Ayanda should know better than to continue to do the nonsense that is before us now," said Mkhize.
The ANCYL calls upon all to remember that for every right that they enjoy there is a responsibility that they must at all times observe, he said.
"There is no right that is absolute and without responsibility in South Africa. We call upon all young people to protect the President's integrity," Mkhize said.
"We want to caution all that such pictures create anger in some quarters thus this might create confrontational relations between those that continue to create such pictures. We call on Ayanda to halt such pictures regardless of who is involved. These pictures are not only demeaning but also offensive," the spokesperson said.
ANC officials say the display of the painting is designed to tarnish the image of the ANC which is going all out to win the local elections.
The party is facing the most fierce competition from opposition parties since the end of apartheid in 1994. The opposition Democratic Alliance and the Economic Freedom Fighters have vowed to take over major municipalities like Johannesburg, Pretoria and Nelson Mandela Bay from the ANC in the elections.
JAKARTA, July 13 (Xinhua) -- A total of 447 people died in traffic accidents while traveling to their hometowns to celebrate the Eid al-Fitr festival in Indonesia, police revealed here on Wednesday.
The Eid al-Fitr festival was celebrated on July 6 to 7, but travel peaked here from June 30 to July 12 in Indonesia.
Brigadier General Agus Rianto, national police spokesman, said at the police headquarters that the number of fatality decreased by 15.02 percent compared with last year.
The number of people sustaining serious injuries also fell by about 12 percent, to 634, according to data from the police.
However, up to 2,537 people suffered from minor wounds, the highest on record, the data has shown.
The spokesman said that 2,427 traffic accidents took place during this year's festival travel season, 4.07 percent down from last year.
According to the transport ministry, the decline was in part because many passengers have shifted the way of their journey to air transport from land transport, Sugihardjo, secretary general of the ministry, said on Wednesday.
Over 17 million Indonesians returned to their hometowns every year to celebrate the festival with their relatives, data from the ministry has shown. Enditem
by Marian Draganov
SOFIA, July 13 (Xinhua) -- The award issued on Tuesday by a tribunal handling the South China Sea arbitration case unilaterally initiated by the former Philippine government is a "legal nothing", a renowned Bulgarian law expert said on Wednesday.
The tribunal issued its final award on Tuesday, sweepingly siding with Manila's cunningly packaged claims. Among other conclusions it reached in the 479-page award in blatant disregard of historical facts and general international law, the five-member tribunal denied China's long-standing historical rights in the South China Sea. China has refused to participate in the proceedings, reiterating that the tribunal has no jurisdiction over the case.
Velko Valkanov, a professor of law, who had long been a member of the Bulgarian National Assembly and chairman of the Parliamentary Subcommittee on the drafting of the new Bulgarian Constitution, told Xinhua in an interview that the arbitral tribunal is a "very peculiar" institution.
"It can take legitimate decisions binding on the parties only if both parties agree to participate in this arbitration," Valkanov said, adding "If one of the two parties does not participate in, then the tribunal has no right even to hold sessions and take a decision, and its decision is null and void."
"This is the essential difference between the state court and the arbitral tribunal," he said.
"In this particular case with the Arbitral Tribunal's award on South China Sea, I think this whole procedure is a fallacy, an untruth, a lie with no effect. It is, as we lawyers say, a legal nothing. This act is null and void, because one of the parties in this dispute was not involved in it," the law expert stressed.
Valkanov said he had a serious consideration out of the case. He authored seven monographs on legal issues, such as "The Fundamental Rights of Citizens in the People's Republic of Bulgaria and Their Legal Protection", "The Legal Acts of the Council of Ministers" and "The Legal Status of the Member of Parliament."
"The lawyers (with the arbitration) have established something very interesting," Valkanov said. "The law has been created not only by the passing of laws. If one factual relation remains unchanged for a long time, over the time it becomes a legal relation," he added.
"The factual situation that now exists in the South China Sea, where China exercises de facto sovereignty over these islands, ultimately will have to be recognized by the world," the law expert said.
Valkanov, who is now Honorary Chairman of the Bulgarian Anti-Fascist Union and Chairman of the Bulgarian national council for peace, added that China seeks peaceful solution to this dispute, and "this is the right position."
"China is known for its patience. It can endure a year, two, a decade, a century. China did not give up its claims, and wins because of its persistence and perseverance. The time works for China," Valkanov said.
BAGHDAD, July 13 (Xinhua) -- An Iraqi TV cameraman was killed and a reporter of a local TV wounded on Wednesday in a rocket attack by Islamic State (IS) militants in south of the IS stronghold in Mosul in northern Iraq, an Iraqi media freedom watchdog said.
Ali Mahmoud, who works for al-Ghadeer satellite channel, was killed at noon when a rocket struck their position in the newly-freed village of Ich'hala in south of the IS-held town of Qayyara, some 50 km south of Mosul, the Iraqi Observatory for Press Freedoms (IOPF) said in a statement.
The rocket blast also left Ali Jawad, a reporter for the state-run Iraqiya channel, seriously wounded at the scene, the statement said.
The incident occurred while the two media workers were covering the battles against the IS in south of Mosul, as the troops managed the day before from recapturing the villages of Ich'hala and Imam in the south of Qayyara. IOPF said.
The recapture of the villages was seen as significant progress, as the troops severed the supply routes to two towns held by the IS militants in northern Iraq
By retaking control of the two villages on the west side of Tigris River, the troops have cut off the IS supply routes from Mosul to IS-held Shirqat, a town about 30 km south of Mosul, and Hawijah, a town located some 45 km southeast of Shirqat, the source said.
The security forces plan to seize other villages on the east bank of the river to encircle the militants, the source added.
The latest death of cameraman on Wednesday brings the death toll of journalists in the country to seven so far in 2016.
Earlier, a report made by the Iraqi Journalists' Syndicate said that a total of 14 journalists were killed in violence-ridden Iraq in 2015.
Iraq has been hit by a new wave of violence since the IS terrorist group took control of parts of Iraq's northern and western regions in June 2014.
Many blame the current chronic instability, cycle of violence, and the emergence of extremist groups, such as the IS, on the U.S. that invaded and occupied Iraq in March 2003.
An unexploded mortar shell is seen half buried in the ground in Fallujah, 50 kilometres (30 miles) from the Iraqi capital Baghdad, after Iraqi forces retook the embattled city from the Islamic State group on June 26, 2016. (Xinhua/AFP)
BAGHDAD, July 13 (Xinhua) -- An Iraqi TV cameraman was killed and a reporter of a local TV wounded on Wednesday in a rocket attack by Islamic State (IS) militants in south of the IS stronghold in Mosul in northern Iraq, an Iraqi media freedom watchdog said.
Ali Mahmoud, who works for al-Ghadeer satellite channel, was killed at noon when a rocket struck their position in the newly-freed village of Ich'hala in south of the IS-held town of Qayyara, some 50 km south of Mosul, the Iraqi Observatory for Press Freedoms (IOPF) said in a statement.
The rocket blast also left Ali Jawad, a reporter for the state-run Iraqiya channel, seriously wounded at the scene, the statement said.
The incident occurred while the two media workers were covering the battles against the IS in south of Mosul, as the troops managed the day before from recapturing the villages of Ich'hala and Imam in the south of Qayyara. IOPF said.
The recapture of the villages was seen as significant progress, as the troops severed the supply routes to two towns held by the IS militants in northern Iraq
By retaking control of the two villages on the west side of Tigris River, the troops have cut off the IS supply routes from Mosul to IS-held Shirqat, a town about 30 km south of Mosul, and Hawijah, a town located some 45 km southeast of Shirqat, the source said.
The security forces plan to seize other villages on the east bank of the river to encircle the militants, the source added.
The latest death of cameraman on Wednesday brings the death toll of journalists in the country to seven so far in 2016.
Earlier, a report made by the Iraqi Journalists' Syndicate said that a total of 14 journalists were killed in violence-ridden Iraq in 2015.
Iraq has been hit by a new wave of violence since the IS terrorist group took control of parts of Iraq's northern and western regions in June 2014.
Many blame the current chronic instability, cycle of violence, and the emergence of extremist groups, such as the IS, on the U.S. that invaded and occupied Iraq in March 2003.
ROME, July 13 (Xinhua) -- Long-time boss of the Italian mafia Bernardo Provenzano died on Wednesday, local authorities said.
Provenzano, 83, was transferred to a prison hospital ward in Milan in April 2014, due to severe health conditions, according to Italian penitentiary police.
He had been in a maximum security prison in the northern city of Parma since 2006, when he was captured after some 43 years of being a fugitive.
His hiding, during which he never stopped playing a leading role in the criminal organization, was the longest in the history of the mafia in Italy.
Provenzano ruled over the Sicilian mob, or Cosa Nostra, since the early 1990s, replacing boss Salvatore Riina after his arrest.
He had been given three life terms for several murders, including those of major anti-mafia judges Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, both killed in 1992.
He always refused to cooperate with Italy's justice system, and served life under so-called 41-bis prison regime, which is a special provision of the Italian penal code involving tougher jail conditions and semi-isolation for mafia members.
Provenzano's lawyer had asked Italian judiciary authorities to cancel the special prison conditions, and suspend his sentence, due to his deteriorating health condition in recent years, according to Ansa news agency.
The request was always refused.
Director-General of the detainees at the ministry of justice Roberto Piscitello, however, told local media that "the 41-bis regime did not worsen Provenzano's health conditions in any way."
"The two hospitals in Parma and Milan, where he has been imprisoned, provided him with timely and effective care," Ansa cited the magistrate has saying.
Various ongoing trials in which the former mafia boss was still a defendant had been suspended lately, because multiple medical reports stated he was unable to follow proceedings due to severe cognitive impairment.
Provenzano was born in the small town of Corleone, in the heart of Sicily, in 1933, and was believed to have joined the Sicilian mafia when he was in his late teens.
He began climbing the ranks in the 1950s, along with other fellow mobsters also set to become leading figures of the organization: Riina, and Calogero Bagarella.
Between the late 1970s and the 1980s, Provenzano and Riina indisputably became the top two figures of Sicily's mafia.
The former was accredited as "the strategic mind" presiding over Cosa Nostra's business and connections with corrupted politicians, while the latter led its military wing, according to senior Italian mafia reporters.
Provenzano will be buried in Sicily, and no public funeral ceremony will be allowed, La Repubblica newspaper cited the police chief in the regional capital Palermo as saying.
BEIJING, July 13, 2016 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Premier Li Keqiang (L) and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker attend the 11th EU-China Business Summit in Beijing, capital of China, July 13, 2016. (Xinhua/Xie Huanchi)
BEIJING, July 13 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Premier Li Keqiang called for reciprocal opening-up and improved trade and investment liberalization and facilitation between China and the European Union at the 11th China-EU Business Summit in Beijing on Wednesday.
Addressing the meeting, Li said China and Europe can offer more opportunities to each other against the backdrop of a sluggish global economic recovery.
He suggested the two sides implement the China-EU 2020 Strategic Agenda for Cooperation to better align their development strategies, and that they should "properly deal with" trade disputes, oppose trade barriers and speed up negotiations on a China-EU investment treaty.
He encouraged European companies to invest more in China's advanced manufacturing, service industry and the central and western parts of the country, and promised that foreign companies registered in China will enjoy the same treatment as Chinese companies.
China will continue to reform its foreign investment management system and gradually build up the management system for pre-establishment national treatment plus a negative list, according to the premier.
Li said China would continue to ease market access, enhance intellectual property protection, guarantee the legitimate rights of all types of enterprises, and be committed to creating a fair, transparent and expectable investment environment.
He also called on China and Europe to cooperate more in finance, innovation and infrastructure connections.
China has the ability to hit its targets in economic and social development in this year, which will also bring more opportunities for European business, said the premier.
European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said at the business summit that the EU was willing to enhance its partnership with China and accelerate negotiations on the EU-China investment treaty.
Li and Juncker also attended a signing ceremony of cooperation projects under the China-EU urbanization partnership and witnessed the signing of 12 cooperative documents.
Before the summit, Li held talks with Juncker and European Council President Donald Tusk.
The two sides exchanged views on European integration, China-EU economic and trade ties, the EU's fulfillment of its obligations on Article 15 of the protocol on China's accession to the WTO, as well as international and regional issues of common concern.
China hopes the EU will carry out its obligations on Article 15 of the protocol on China's accession to the WTO as scheduled, said Li.
He also suggested the establishment of a special mechanism between China and the EU for in-depth discussion on steel trading.
SINGAPORE, July 13 (Xinhua) -- "I felt worried about the outcome of South China Sea arbitration award, it solves nothing but causes trouble for many countries," Lee Chian Siong, Senior Advisor to Chairman of China-ASEAN Business Association, told Xinhua here on Wednesday.
Lee said he was "shocked" by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague's ruling on Tuesday.
The tribunal concluded all of the "features" in the South China Sea, including Taiping Island, are legally "rocks". Lee thought this is not well sounded.
When the Chinese government recovered Taiping Island after WWII, it found six freshwater wells and lush plants there.
Lee noted that the arbitration award solves nothing, but causes trouble. He added that the ruling may arouse anxiety on what happens next. "Will the current situation of South China Sea become much more complicated?" Lee added that such questions may be put forward.
Meanwhile, Lee felt optimistic about the possibility that China and the Philippines may settle disputes in South China Sea through negotiations.
"Manila is aware that the ruling is in favor of the Philippines, and the new government behaves prudently. Meanwhile, the Chinese government also does the same, acting rationally," Lee said.
He took the issue of the White Paper for settling relevant disputes between China and the Philippines in the South China Sea by the Chinese government on Wednesday as an example.
"The white paper expounded China's position adequately and systematically," said Lee, "China's reactions are not sentimental, or fierce as certain media described."
When asked about the impact of the Hague's ruling on China-ASEAN relations, Lee, who has been with ASEAN Secretariat for nearly four years, believed that the collaboration between China and ASEAN won't be disturbed by the disputes in South China Sea, as the scope of China-ASEAN cooperation is very wide.
"In fields such as trade, infrastructure, programs aimed to enhance interconnectivity, China-ASEAN cooperation enjoys great potential." Lee said.
QINGDAO, July 13 (Xinhua) -- Chinese deep-sea manned submersible Jiaolong came back to its home port in Qingdao on Wednesday after a scientific expedition lasting nearly 100 days to the Yap Trench and Mariana Trench in the west Pacific Ocean.
During the 94-day-expedition, the submersible dived to depths of up to6,796 meters where it acquired substantial geological, biological and deep water samples and took high definition videos.
This is the second time Jiaolong has dived below 6,000 meters in the sea. In 2012, it ventured down to 7,062 meters, the deepest an operation-type submersible has ever reached.
Very little is known about life, the environment and geological conditions so deep in the sea due to limitations in technology enabling its exploration.
"Jiaolong's expedition has brought back first-hand materials for Chinese scientists to contribute to sea abyss studies," said Peng Xiaotong, chief scientist at the Institute of Deep-sea Science and Engineering under the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
During its deep sea exploration, Jiaolong found an active mud volcano on the south slope of the Mariana Trench and shot videos. It also took samples from another mud volcano at the trench's north slope.
It also found that organisms dwelling at the bottom of two seamounts in west Pacific to be largely similar. Such findings will serve as valuable references to the design of deep sea mining, according to Wang Chunsheng, a researcher with the State Oceanic Administration.
Jiaolong also found continuous distribution of cobalt-rich crust in the deep sea area, helping inform China's future decisions in identifying areas for prospecting.
MADRID, July 13 (Xinhua) -- Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE) leader Pedro Sanchez on Tuesday said his party would not support acting Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy.
Rajoy is looking for the Socialists' support as they look to form a coalition or minority government in the wake of the June 26 general election. Sanchez's refusal to cooperate raises the possibility of a third general election being held after seven months of political uncertainty.
"The PSOE are not among his [Rajoy's] potential allies," Sanchez told a press conference in the Spanish Congress building following a 90 minute meeting with Rajoy.
The Socialist leader said his party would do "everything possible" to avoid a third general election, but was not willing to bow to "threats and blackmail."
"The PSOE will be part of the solution to avoid a repeat of the elections," said Sanchez, who failed to rule out his own candidacy to become prime minister.
The second general election saw the People's Party (PP) improve their representation in Congress. However, Sanchez said it was "worrying" that after meeting the leader of every party represented in the house, Rajoy had been unable to "gain one more vote other than the 137 seats he won in the general election."
"They have failed to give him a majority, so they have to open a serious dialogue based on proposals and not on threats," said Sanchez.
The PP's 137 seats in the 350-seat Congress falls short of the 176 needed for an overall majority.
Albert Rivera, the leader of center-right party Ciudadanos, said their 32 representatives would abstain in a second investiture vote to help him form a minority government.
However, should the PSOE and Spain's other parties vote against Rajoy as they have all said they will do, he would not have the support he needs.
NAIROBI, July 13 (Xinhua) -- Health ministers from seven African countries on Wednesday adopted a collective response strategy for the recent outbreak of cholera and other communicable diseases in the region.
The ministers from the seven-member bloc, Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) also agreed to implement a number of measures to prevent a further spread of disease outbreaks in the region by developing a contingency plan with specific strategies aimed at responding, preventing and adequately controlling the emerging epidemics.
Speaking during the meeting in Nairobi, Mohamed Haji Abdinoor, Somalian Minister for Health and Human Services, said his government will support the region's response mechanisms to strengthen the overall integrated surveillance and response systems in the region.
"Somalia has been suffering from a collapsed health system since 1991 when the country lost central authority with lack of central disease control," Abdinoor told ministers from Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan and Uganda.
"It is better to be ready than sorry. Somalia is recovering surely but slowly and our health sector needs funding from partners," he said.
Recent unusual rainfall in parts of the Horn of Africa region, including Somalia and parts of Kenya, have increased the risk for water-borne and vector-borne diseases.
The crisis in Mandera County in northeast Kenya, escalated very rapidly in June, where over 200 cases and 16 deaths have been reported.
Cases have also been reported across the border in Somalia and there is a high risk that the disease could further spread to nearby refugee camps or cross border areas in Ethiopia.
The outbreak has been further compounded by the simultaneous occurrence of Chikungunya, which has affected close to 80 percent of the population in Mandera east sub-county including 50 percent of the health workforce in Mandera town.
Dr. Joyce Moriku, Ugandan Minister for Health, reaffirmed the importance of building strong systems of communicable diseases and emphasized the need to mobilize and sanitize communities about their health.
"With little resources, it's not easy to contain disease outbreaks. We need to demonstrate unity with South Sudan following their latest crisis where her neighbors might be compelled to take in those fleeing the fighting," she said in reference to the fresh outbreak of hostilities in the country.
The ministers tasked the IGAD Secretariat to coordinate with Member States in order to employ a holistic approach to address the frequent outbreaks in the region through involvement of various sectors that have a role to reduce the impact of outbreaks.
El Sadeg Abdalla, IGAD Director of Economic and Social Cooperation, reminded the experts that part of the mandate of IGAD is to "coordinate response against any humanitarian crisis and disasters affecting any member country or a group of member countries".
Thomas Pitaud, the Disaster Risk Reduction Adviser at the United Nations Development Programme, said stakeholders ought to be pro-active and anticipate the risks to make it easy to swiftly and effectively tackle outbreak of epidemics when they occur. Enditem
NAIROBI, July 13 (Xinhua) -- Kenya on Wednesday called on African countries to tap their own wealth and resources to finance the continent's development agenda.
Mwangi Kiunjuri, Cabinet Secretary for Devolution and Planning, said Africans should spearhead their development agenda to ensure that they get possible solutions toward transforming the continent.
"There is also need to develop institutional fabrics and strong worthy mechanisms that allow entities charged with implementation of development agenda and action plans to draw from the resources and receive return on investments," Kiunjuri said during the official opening ceremony of the Third Africa for Results Forum in Nairobi.
The three-day forum, which has been organized by the Africa for Results Initiative has drawn delegates from across the continent.
"The discussions on the state of domestic resource mobilization in the continent, will offer insights and ideas that individual countries have engaged in towards mobilizing domestic resources to finance their respective development," he said.
Kiunjuri said in focusing on domestic resource mobilization, development practitioners will seek to further inculcate the results culture in Africa and acknowledge its contribution to the transformation agenda of the continent, adding that mainstreaming results-based management is significant in supporting key institutional reforms.
According to the World Bank, Africa has seen remarkable economic growth over the past two decades with real Gross Domestic Growth (GDP) averaging 4.5 percent a year between 1995 and 2013.
Despite a slowdown in some of Africa's biggest economies, the GDP in the region is expected to pick up to an average of 4.4 percent and 4.8 percent in 2016 and 2017 respectively.
"This clearly indicates that the continent is one of the world's rapidly growing economic regions. Sustaining such economic growth requires adequate financial resources to allow African governments to increasingly invest in economically and socially productive activities that will improve the living standards of the people," the CS said.
Kiunjuri called on Africa to ponder what real and workable strategies the continent should pursue to encourage domestic resource mobilization to finance development agenda because this is not the first time experts in the continent have initiated a framework for shaping Africa's development agenda.
"One of the initiatives Africans embraced in the early 2000 was the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD), which was welcomed by all quarters but after some time, enthusiasm toward it dwindled as it faced financing and strategic challenges," Kiunjuri lamented.
The Director, Knowledge Monitoring and Evaluation at ACBF, Dr. Thomas Munthali, said illicit financial flow amounting to 60.3 billion U.S. dollars that was lost between 2003 and 2012 if curbed, can retain significant resources for Africa's development.
A number of studies carried out indicate that the continent has unexploited potential for financing development, including mechanisms and instruments through which such resources can be channeled. Enditem
An aerial photo taken on Sept. 25, 2015 from a seaplane of Hainan Maritime Safety Administration shows the Yacheng 13-1 drilling rig during a patrol in south China Sea. (Xinhua/Zhao Yingquan)
by Marian Draganov
SOFIA, July 13 (Xinhua) -- The award issued on Tuesday by a tribunal handling the South China Sea arbitration case unilaterally initiated by the former Philippine government is a "legal nothing", a renowned Bulgarian law expert said on Wednesday.
The tribunal issued its final award on Tuesday, sweepingly siding with Manila's cunningly packaged claims. Among other conclusions it reached in the 479-page award in blatant disregard of historical facts and general international law, the five-member tribunal denied China's long-standing historical rights in the South China Sea. China has refused to participate in the proceedings, reiterating that the tribunal has no jurisdiction over the case.
Velko Valkanov, a professor of law, who had long been a member of the Bulgarian National Assembly and chairman of the Parliamentary Subcommittee on the drafting of the new Bulgarian Constitution, told Xinhua in an interview that the arbitral tribunal is a "very peculiar" institution.
"It can take legitimate decisions binding on the parties only if both parties agree to participate in this arbitration," Valkanov said, adding "If one of the two parties does not participate in, then the tribunal has no right even to hold sessions and take a decision, and its decision is null and void."
"This is the essential difference between the state court and the arbitral tribunal," he said.
"In this particular case with the Arbitral Tribunal's award on South China Sea, I think this whole procedure is a fallacy, an untruth, a lie with no effect. It is, as we lawyers say, a legal nothing. This act is null and void, because one of the parties in this dispute was not involved in it," the law expert stressed.
Valkanov said he had a serious consideration out of the case. He authored seven monographs on legal issues, such as "The Fundamental Rights of Citizens in the People's Republic of Bulgaria and Their Legal Protection", "The Legal Acts of the Council of Ministers" and "The Legal Status of the Member of Parliament."
"The lawyers (with the arbitration) have established something very interesting," Valkanov said. "The law has been created not only by the passing of laws. If one factual relation remains unchanged for a long time, over the time it becomes a legal relation," he added.
"The factual situation that now exists in the South China Sea, where China exercises de facto sovereignty over these islands, ultimately will have to be recognized by the world," the law expert said.
Valkanov, who is now Honorary Chairman of the Bulgarian Anti-Fascist Union and Chairman of the Bulgarian national council for peace, added that China seeks peaceful solution to this dispute, and "this is the right position."
"China is known for its patience. It can endure a year, two, a decade, a century. China did not give up its claims, and wins because of its persistence and perseverance. The time works for China," Valkanov said.
A flight of Kenya Airwayslands at Kisumu International Airport in Kisumu, western Kenya, on Aug. 28th, 2015. (Xinhua/Sun Ruibo)
NAIROBI, July 13 (Xinhua) -- Kenya Airways said on Wednesday that it will resume its flights to South Sudan's capital of Juba on Thursday after four days of suspension following a flare-up of fighting between rival army factions.
The national carrier said the twice daily flights will depart Nairobi for Juba at 07:15 and 13:20 every day following a ceasefire and security stabilization after five days of unrest.
"Kenya Airways will avail a larger capacity aircraft, B737-800, to accommodate more guests and clear the backlog that has been occasioned by the airline suspending flights from Sunday, July 10, following an eruption of unrest in the country," it said in a statement issued in Nairobi.
To clear the backlog by Friday, the airline said it will give priority to guests based on their original return dates.
"Kenya Airways regrets any inconvenience caused during the suspension of flights and wishes to thank its guests for continued support," the airline said.
TOKYO, July 13 (Xinhua) -- Japanese Emperor Akihito has expressed the intention to end his reign in coming years, local media reported, quoting government sources.
The 82-year-old emperor, who has reigned for over 27 years since 1989, has expressed his hope to abdicate to the Imperial Household Agency, said public broadcaster NHK.
His 56-year-old son, Crown Prince Naruhito, is expected to succeed to the throne, said NHK.
But Kyodo News denied the news, quoting Shinichiro Yamamoto, a senior official from the Imperial Household Agency. "I know there are media reports about this, but it is definitely not true," Shinichiro Yamamoto was quoted by Kyodo News as saying.
Emperor Akihito has no health issues requiring immediate abdication, said Kyodo News, quoting another source who said the emperor has been expressing his intention to abdicate to people around him for about a year.
Meanwhile, according to local media, if the emperor is to abdicate, the Imperial House Law might need revision, as the law, enacted in 1947 to rule for imperial affairs, does not include any provision for a reigning emperor to abdicate.
The process of revising the law, involving deliberations by an expert panel to the government, is expected to require a few years, said Kyodo News.
TEHRAN, July 13 (Xinhua) -- National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) and Russian Zarubej Neft's oil refinery have inked an agreement whereby the Russian side will conduct studies on two Iranian oil fields, Managing director of NIOC, Ali Kardor, said on Wednesday.
Under the agreement, Zarubej Neft will soon offer its proposal on increasing oil recovery from two Iranian oil fields, Iran's Petro-Energy Information Network (SHANA) reported without disclosing the names of the fields.
The Russian side agreed to keep information about the two Iranian fields confidential, said Kardor, adding that Zarubej Neft will only avail the results of its studies to NIOC for further consideration.
The two sides have stressed cooperation in various energy areas including oil swap and trading of the commodity, he added.
Iran is also ready to provide crude oil to Zarubej Neft's oil refinery in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kardor was quoted as saying.
TEHRAN, July 13 (Xinhua) -- An Iranian Foreign Ministry official said Wednesday that the Islamic republic's missile program serves the country's national interests and it will not be abandoned, Press TV reported.
Iran's missile program is developed for defensive purposes and "we cannot set the country's national interests based on others' viewpoints," Iran's nuclear negotiator Hamid Ba'eedinejad said in response to recent opposition by some western countries to Iran's missile program
"The foreign opponents of Iran's missile program should not expect Iran to quit its defensive and security interests. Iran's missile program is no threat against regional and other countries," Ba'eedinejad was quoted as saying.
Also, Iran's Foreign Ministry Spokesman Bahram Qasemi on Monday dismissed concerns raised recently by NATO members over Iran's missile tests.
Related:
Iran rejects West's concerns over missile program
TEHRAN, July 11 (Xinhua) -- The Iranian Foreign Ministry on Monday dismissed concerns raised recently by NATO members over its missiles program.
TEHRAN, July 13 (Xinhua) -- Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Bahram Qasemi on Wednesday dismissed as "repetitive and unfounded" the recent intervention allegations by Bahrain, Tasnim news agency reported.
A statement by the Bahraini interior ministry on Monday alleged the links between Iran and two individuals arrested recently in Bahrain on charges of planting a bomb in East Eker, which led to the killing of a woman.
The claims are "repetitive, false and baseless" and Manama is better to address its domestic problems instead of raising allegations against Tehran, Qasemi said.
"Unfortunately, the Bahraini government's objective behind raising such false and fabricated allegations is to divert attentions from its domestic crisis and escape public accountability," he was quoted as saying.
Bahrain severed diplomatic relations with Iran in January, accusing Iran of interference in its domestic affairs. Iran has rejected the accusations. Enditem
HARARE, July 13 (Xinhua) -- Schools opened, commuter omnibuses plied their routes and it was business as usual in Zimbabwe's most cities as a two-day job boycott called for by protester Evan Mawarire through social media failed to materialize.
Last Wednesday's action left most of the country paralyzed as workers and school pupils stayed at home to protest against deteriorating living conditions and perceived corruption in government.
A Harare worker who declined to be named for fear of possible reprisals said the call for another job action had come too soon after last week's strike.
"Strikes take their toll on people and we should have breathing space so that we do not continue to lose money. Also, some of our children are writing mid-year examinations and I don't think it's proper to disturb them again like we did last week," he said.
Mawarire, who was arrested Tuesday and charged with inciting public violence and disturbing the peace, was due to appear in court later on Wednesday.
About 300 hundred people, most of them draped in the Zimbabwean flag, converged at the Harare Magistrate's Court to show solidarity with Mawarire, while a number of police in riot gear stood watch.
Among the demands, at least two are that President Robert Mugabe should fire corrupt ministers, police roadblocks should be minimized, civil servants should be paid on time and that the government should lift import restrictions recently imposed on some goods.
It also does not want the government to circulate bond notes which will be valued at par with the U.S. dollar predominantly being used in the country.
The government suspects a foreign hand in the staging of last week's demonstration and has vowed to deal with anyone found to have broken the law.
Home Affairs Minister Ignatius Chombo assured the nation that there would be security for transporters and business people wishing to carry on with their work.
He warned that instigators of violence would be dealt with and that legitimate concerns should be addressed through the right channels.
"Let me warn the instigators behind the intended protests that they will face the full wrath of the law," he said. Enditem
NAIROBI, July 13 (Xinhua) -- Four East African countries are set to sign economic partnership agreement with the European Union (EU) next week in Nairobi, a senior Kenyan official said on Wednesday.
Kenya's Deputy President William Ruto said Burundi, Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda will ink the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPAs) that allows these countries to export their agricultural products to Europe without attracting tax.
The deal will however be signed without Tanzania which said last week it will not sign the trade pact between East Africa Community (EAC) and EU following Brexit.
The announcement caused shock at the EAC countries. Aziz Mlima, Tanzania's Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said the country had decided to halt the signing because of "turmoil" that the EU is experiencing following Britain's exit.
Mlima said signing the pact would risk exposing young EAC countries to harsh economic conditions given the prevailing conditions in Europe.
The official said Tanzania's Parliament would first peruse and advise the government before committing to the deal.
"Our experts have established that the way it has been crafted, the EPA will not benefit local industries in East Africa. Instead it will lead to their destruction as developed countries are likely to dominate the market," Mlima said.
Ruto had travelled to Burundi to meet President Pierre Nkurunziza on Wednesday over the EPAs deal set to be signed on Monday next week. All four partner states, except Tanzania, participated and agreed to sign the agreement.
A statement issued in Nairobi after the visit to Burundi said the development (Tanzania refusal) poses a great threat to the EAC Customs Union which requires all Partners States to sign the EPA in order to safeguard against the perforation of the Common External Tariff.
"In the event that the EAC does not sign the EPA as a bloc, all EAC partner states stand to lose generous market access terms negotiated under the EU market," Ruto said.
The decision by Tanzania not to sign the agreement leaves the region, and specifically Kenya, at a great risk of losing a lot of revenue when exporting goods to the EU.
This essentially means Kenya's exports to the European Union-mainly flowers and vegetables-will attract tax. Kenya exports produce worth 1.2 billion U.S. dollars to the European market.
The EAC partner states negotiated EPA as a bloc since 2007 and Ruto said Kenya stands to lose more because its exports to the EU will attract import duties thereby threatening jobs, revenue, and relocation of industries to less developed neighboring countries.
According to the statement, Ruto and Nkurunziza said stability of the region was important for economic growth and welfare of the people.
The economic agreement is due for signing by East African countries after the Sectoral Council of Trade, Industry, Finance and Investment (SCTIFI) EAC agreed.
An extra-ordinary council meeting of ministers responsible for East African Affairs met on June 30 and proposed that the countries sign the agreement on July 18. Enditem
VILNIUS, July 13 (Xinhua) -- Lithuanian finance ministry criticized on Wednesday the report from credit agency S&P and called its conclusions about Brexit effects on the Baltic state inaccurate.
According to Lithuanian finance ministry, S&P's analysis which named Lithuania as the most vulnerable Eastern European country to Brexit contains illogic conclusions and inaccurate data.
Lithuanian deputy finance minister Algimantas Rimkunas noted that many assumptions in the analysis are false, and Lithuanian economy is not dependant on the UK economy as much as S&P's analysis claims.
"The currently anticipated effects and risks are minimal, and we currently don't feel direct effects," Rimkunas told a press conference.
He pointed out that remittances from Lithuanian migrants working in the UK are not to decrease at a scale as the agency forecasts. According to S&P, 5.4 percent of Lithuanian population currently lives in the UK, and their remittances to the Baltic state account to 1.2 percent of Lithuania's GDP.
"In 2014, residents' remittances from the UK amounted to 213.5 million euros, or 0.6 percent of GDP, according to the data from the Bank of Lithuania," announced the finance ministry in its press release.
The finance ministry claims that Lithuanians, living in the UK, account to 5.1 percent of the total Lithuanian population. The ministry also disagrees with the agency's forecast on the possible decrease of EU funds to Lithuania.
The direct "effects on Lithuania's exports to the UK would be small," and the motives putting Lithuania among the most exposed countries in terms of trade links "raises doubts," added the ministry.
"Many analysts agree that Ireland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Malta, Cyprus and Luxembourg would feel the biggest negative consequences of Brexit," said Lithuanian finance ministry in the press release.
In a Brexit heat map announced on June 30, S&P suggests that Lithuania, Latvia, Hungary and Poland would be the most exposed Central and Eastern European countries in the UK leaving the EU, given their large migrant populations, remittances, trade links and the importance of EU funds to finance investment. Enditem
A bullet train runs on the Chongqing-Lichuan railway in Lichuan, central China's Hubei Province, Dec. 28, 2013. (Xinhua)
BRUSSELS, July 13 (Xinhua) -- China's ongoing economic reforms which maintain the right direction will profit Europe as well as the whole world, the chairman of the Belgian-Chinese Economic and Commercial Council Bernard Dewit said.
"China's economic reforms are important to the world because of the importance of China's economy. If China's economy goes well, the world economy goes well and vice versa," Dewit, also accredited foreign arbitrator for the China International Economic and Trade Arbitration Commission, told Xinhua in a recent interview.
Noting that China is pushing various reforms to address structural imbalances, Dewit said he is optimistic about China's economic prospects. In his opinion, the temporary slowdown in the Chinese economy is not a bad thing as long as the reforms are maintained.
"China's economic reforms are maintaining in the right direction. We have to see it in a long term," he said.
Dewit stressed that economic reforms will require a process, in which social stability and economic growth should both be taken into account.
"Looking at European countries, for instance, many governments eager to reform their labor market are now facing a growing number of unemployed and retired people. The lack of effective policy-making in the process has caused social instability," he explained.
By contrast, he praised Chinese policy makers for their firm determination to push forward reforms while keeping aware of realities.
China has pledged to foster an atmosphere in which the principles of innovation, coordination, green development, openness and sharing are upheld, Dewit observed.
"These pragmatic reforms are adapting not only to the world economy but also to the reality in China, which keeps me optimistic about the Chinese economy," he noted.
"Thanks to the reform measures, China's economy is getting more dynamic, that will also be profitable for us," he added.
As two of the major economies in the world, China and the European Union are getting more and more economically interdependent, he said.
"If China's economy is going better, China will have more trade with us. That is good for all our companies, for all our industries," Dewit said.
BRUSSELS, July 13 (Xinhua) -- NATO allies and Russia on Wednesday held "useful" discussions on the Ukraine crisis, military transparency and the security situation in Afghanistan, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said following the NATO-Russia Council meeting.
"Today we had very useful discussions. We addressed some of the most important issues on the Euro-Atlantic security agenda. This shows the value of the NATO-Russia Council," he said at the press conference.
Stressing that the NATO-Russia Council remains an important forum for dialogue, Stoltenberg added: "There was not a meeting of the minds today. But it was an important opportunity to clarify our position to each other."
The two sides discussed the crisis in and around Ukraine and the need to fully implement the Minsk agreements, Stoltenberg said. He added that a settlement of the conflict in eastern Ukraine by peaceful means would contribute to an overall improvement in the relations between NATO and Russia.
Transparency and risk reduction was also a topic of discussion. Stoltenberg said that NATO briefed Russia on Warsaw Summit decisions, and Russia briefed NATO Allies on their analysis and the steps they are taking.
He noted that the Russian delegation also raised a proposal on air safety in the Baltic Sea, adding: "I welcome that Russia has signaled that it wants to pursue risk reduction measures."
Regarding the security situation in Afghanistan, Stoltenberg stressed that NATO decided at the Warsaw Summit to sustain the alliance's military presence in Afghanistan beyond 2016. "This is essential, because a stable and secure Afghanistan is in all our interests," he said.
In April, NATO allies and Russia held a "frank and serious" discussion at a meeting of the NATO-Russia Council after it had been suspended for almost two years in light of the Ukraine crisis.
The NATO-Russia Council, established in 2002, was conceived as a mechanism for consultation, consensus-building, cooperation, joint decision and joint action.
Related:
Russian, French, German leaders discuss Russia-NATO relations over phone
MOSCOW, July 13 (Xinhua) -- Russian President Vladimir Putin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande held a phone conversation on Wednesday, hoping to strengthen trust between Russia and NATO.
Speaking of the latest NATO summit in Warsaw from July 8 to 9, the three leaders "expressed mutual interest in a constructive dialogue and taking concrete measures aimed at strengthening trust between Russia and the alliance," a Kremlin statement said. Full story
Russia slams NATO for anti-missile deployment in Europe
MOSCOW, July 10 (Xinhua) -- Russia's Foreign Ministry on Sunday slammed the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) for its anti-missile deployment in Europe, saying the bloc continued to deliberately ignore the action's negative consequences and risks for the entire Euro-Atlantic security system.
JERUSALEM, July 13 (Xinhua) -- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday that Israel is undergoing a "revolution" in its relations with Arab states in the region.
Speaking at a military graduate ceremony in the National Security College on Wednesday evening, Netanyahu said that Israel is witnessing a "revolution in relations with important Arab states," adding the normalization can, in its turn, push forward a peace deal with the Palestinians.
"The Arab countries realize now that Israel is not an enemy but an ally against the threat of Islamist extremism," the prime minister said on Wednesday, according to a statement from his office.
He had also said that unlike the common view up until now, suggesting a peace deal with the Palestinians would advance normalization with Arab states, the order can be reversed.
"We have always said that the moment we reach peace with the Palestinians, we will be able to achieve peaceful relations with the entire Arab world... but I have grown to think this process could also run in the opposite direction," Netanyahu said.
The prime minister had mentioned the close relationship Israel maintains with two of its neighboring Arab countries, Egypt and Jordan, with which Israel signed peace treaties in 1979 and 1994, respectively.
The international community had recently stepped up the pressure on Israel to restart peace talks with the Palestinians, based on the two-state solution. The last round of peace talks between the parties fell apart in April 2014 without results.
The pressure comes amid a 10-month-long wave of violence which had claimed the lives of 34 Israelis and 216 Palestinians.
France had introduced in January its plan to hold an international conference later this year in order to restart peace talks between the parties, with the assistance of the international community.
While Palestinians lauded the initiative, Israel rejected it. Israeli leaders claim international forums would allow Palestinians to refrain from direct talks with Israel.
Netanyahu and other officials have instead reiterated the importance of restarting the peace talks with the active help of Arab states in the region, with Egypt playing a prominent role.
In May, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said there's a "real chance" to resume peace talks and achieve a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians, with the mediation of Arab countries. Netanyahu and Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman repeatedly lauded the comments since. Enditem
LONDON, JULY 13, 2016 (Xinhua) -- Britain's new Prime Minister Theresa May delivers a speech after arriving at 10 Downing Street in London, Britain on July 13, 2016. Britain's new Prime Minister Theresa May arrived at Downing Street on Wednesday after gaining consent from Queen Elizabeth II. (Xinhua/Han Yan)
LONDON, July 13 (Xinhua) -- British Home Secretary Theresa May became prime minister Wednesday after an audience with Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace. She becomes the 13th prime minister of the Queen's reign.
Her audience with the Queen at the palace came just minutes after outgoing prime minister David Cameron arrived at the palace to tender his resignation to the British monarch.
Cameron arrived at the palace in a police-escorted convoy with his wife Samantha and their children. After Cameron's final private audience with the Queen, the monarch said her farewell, again in private, to Cameron's family.
A large crowd gathered at the gates of the palace to watch the transition of power from one prime minister to his successor. May arrived at the palace with her husband Philip for her private audience with Queen Elizabeth II just minutes after the Camerons left.
As soon as Cameron departed from the palace a spokesman for the Queen issued a formal statement stating that the monarch had "graciously accepted the resignation of the prime minister."
Cameron announced his resignation on June 24, just hours after the Britons voted by a 52-48 majority to leave the European Union.
He had intended to carry on at 10 Downing Street until September to enable time for Conservative Party members to vote for his successor. But after the only other candidate for the job, Energy Minister Andrea Leadsom, dropped out of the contest, it left May as the sole candidate, leading to a swift transition.
Earlier Wednesday Cameron performed his final official duty at Prime Minister's Question Time in the House of Commons, earning warm praise from all sides of the house, including from his main adversary, Jeremy Corbyn, leader of main opposition Labour Party.
After the audience at the palace May headed to 10 Downing Street to start the task of choosing her new front bench, with her first appointments expected Wednesday night and Thursday.
KAMPALA, July 13, 2016(Xinhua) -- Photo provided by the Chinese Embassy to Uganda shows a plane carrying Chinese peacekeepers who will receive medical treatment in local hospital arrive at the Entebbe International airport in Kampala, Uganda on July 13, 2016. Three Chinese and one Rwandan peacekeepers who were injured in the weekend renewed fighting between two South Sudan rival army factions in the capital, Juba were airlifted Wednesday to Uganda for treatment. (Xinhua)
By Samuel Okiror, Yuan Qing
ENTEBBE, Uganda, July 13 (Xinhua) -- Three Chinese and one Rwandan peacekeepers who were injured in the weekend renewed fighting between two South Sudan rival army factions in the capital, Juba were airlifted Wednesday to Uganda for treatment.
Rosa Malango, UN Resident Coordinator in Uganda and Chinese Ambassador to Uganda, Zhao Yali received the three Chinese peacekeepers, Huo Yahui, Wu Le, Yao Daoxiang and Rwandan peacekeeper James Habiyakare who were wounded on Sunday after a mortal shell hit their vehicle around the UN compound in Juba.
The four were flown to the East African country abroad a chartered plane that landed at Entebbe International Airport, about 40 kilometers south of the capital, Kampala and rushed to Nakasero Hospital for treatment.
Edward Rukwaro, Chief Executive Officer of Nakasero Hospital said the Chinese peacekeeper Huo Yahui has severe injuries and broken bones, while the three others have minor injuries and need just pain management.
"We have stabilized their conditions. Immediately they arrived we started their management. We have taken the critically injured to the theater for operation. He will be fine. He will take about six weeks to recover," said Rukwaro.
Malango said the UN is securing a specialized plane to evacuate the critically injured Chinese and Ethiopian peacekeepers for specialized treatment in Kampala.
"We have two injured peacekeepers whose conditions are fragile. They can't be flown using ordinary planes. We are working to secure a specialized plane to evacuate them for treatment," said Malango.
Two Chinese peacekeepers under UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) were killed and five others injured on Sunday in renewed fighting between government troops of President Salva Kiir and forces loyal to Vice President Riek Machar in the capital Juba.
Ambassador Zhao while addressing reporters on Wednesday in the capital, Kampala condemned the killing of two Chinese peacekeepers and those injured.
"We are all shocked how these people attacked the peacekeeping forces. We condemn this brutality. We express condolences to the families of the bereaved soldiers," said the ambassador.
South Sudan's Health Ministry says at least 271 people were killed in the latest clashes. The exact number of those killed in fighting since Sunday to Wednesday is not yet known.
There are fears that the war-torn country could descend into civil war again.
President Kiir and former rebel leader Machar have fought a civil war which broke out in December 2013 and left tens of thousands of people dead.
A peace deal signed by the two men last August under UN pressure led to the formation of a national government in April with Machar returning to his old post.
Ambassador Zhao who said his government that has 700 peacekeepers in the country expressed disappointment over the failure by President Kiir and Machar to respect the peace deal.
"We hope the two sides can come down and sit together to find the immediate solution to stop the fighting. The innocent people are dying. We can't allow that. We really hope the ceasefire will be respected for the sake of this young state," said Zhao.
President Kiir and Vice President Machar on Monday evening ordered ceasefire respectively after days of heavy fighting between their forces in the capital Juba.
President Kiir directed all commanders to cease hostilities, control their forces and protect civilians, Information Minister Michael Makuei said in a televised speech on the state broadcaster.
Zhao said the Chinese government and UN are committed to secure peace, stability and protection of civilians in world's newest nation.
"Our mission is to safeguard the peace. That is our commitment. That is why we are there. We shall do all best to ensure peace prevails," said Yali.
LONDON, JULY 13, 2016 (Xinhua) -- Britain's new Prime Minister Theresa May delivers a speech after arriving at 10 Downing Street in London, Britain on July 13, 2016. Britain's new Prime Minister Theresa May arrived at Downing Street on Wednesday after gaining consent from Queen Elizabeth II. (Xinhua/Han Yan)
LONDON, July 13 (Xinhua) -- Britain's new Prime Minister Theresa May said in her first speech as head of the British government Wednesday that her mission will be to lead a 'One Nation' government.
Speaking outside her new home, 10 Downing Street, May delivered a message directed at the British population from all walks of life.
Referring to the recent referendum on EU membership May said: "We are living through uncertain moments in our country's history. Following the referendum we face a time of great national change.
"And I know because this is Great Britain we will rise to the challenge as we leave the European Union we will forge a bold new positive role for ourselves in the world, and we will make Britain a country that works not for a privileged few but for every one of us. That will be the mission of the government I lead and together we will build a better Britain."
May pledged to fight burning injustices saying: "We must make Britain a country that works for everyone. We believe in a union not just between the nations of the UK but between all of our citizens - every one of us.
"I have just been to Buckingham Palace where Her Majesty the Queen has asked me to form a new Government and I accepted. In David Cameron (the outgoing prime minister) I follow in the footsteps of a great modern Prime Minister.
"Under David's leadership the Government stabilized the economy, reduced the budget deficit and helped more people into work than ever before. But David's true legacy is not about the economy but about social justice.
"From the introduction of same sex marriage to taking people on low wages out of income tax altogether, David Cameron has led a One-Nation government and it is in that spirit that I also plan to lead.
"Not everybody knows this but the full title of my party is the Conservative and Unionist Party and that word unionist is very important to me.
"It means we believe in the union, the precious, precious bond between England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, but it means something else that is just as important.
"It means we believe in a union not just between the nations of the United Kingdom but between all of our citizens, every one of us, whoever we are and wherever we're from.
"That means fighting against the burning injustice that if you're born poor you will die on average nine years earlier than others. If you're black you are treated more harshly by the criminal justice system than if you're white."
May said: "The Government I lead will be driven not by the interests of the privileged few but by yours. We will do everything we can to give you more control over your lives."
Britain's new Prime Minister Theresa May delivers a speech after arriving at 10 Downing Street in London, Britain on July 13, 2016. Britain's new Prime Minister Theresa May arrived at Downing Street on Wednesday after gaining consent from Queen Elizabeth II. (Xinhua/Han Yan)
LONDON, July 13 (Xinhua) -- Britain's new Prime Minister Theresa May said in her first speech as head of the British government Wednesday that her mission will be to lead a 'One Nation' government.
Speaking outside her new home, 10 Downing Street, May delivered a message directed at the British population from all walks of life.
Referring to the recent referendum on EU membership May said: "We are living through uncertain moments in our country's history. Following the referendum we face a time of great national change.
"And I know because this is Great Britain we will rise to the challenge as we leave the European Union we will forge a bold new positive role for ourselves in the world, and we will make Britain a country that works not for a privileged few but for every one of us. That will be the mission of the government I lead and together we will build a better Britain."
May pledged to fight burning injustices saying: "We must make Britain a country that works for everyone. We believe in a union not just between the nations of the UK but between all of our citizens - every one of us."
"I have just been to Buckingham Palace where Her Majesty the Queen has asked me to form a new Government and I accepted. In David Cameron (the outgoing prime minister) I follow in the footsteps of a great modern Prime Minister." she said.
Britain's new Prime Minister Theresa May(L) and her husband pose for photos in front of 10 Downing Street in London, Britain on July 13, 2016. Britain's new Prime Minister Theresa May arrived at Downing Street on Wednesday after gaining consent from Queen Elizabeth II. (Xinhua/Han Yan)
"Under David's leadership the Government stabilized the economy, reduced the budget deficit and helped more people into work than ever before. But David's true legacy is not about the economy but about social justice." she noted.
"From the introduction of same sex marriage to taking people on low wages out of income tax altogether, David Cameron has led a One-Nation government and it is in that spirit that I also plan to lead." she said.
"Not everybody knows this but the full title of my party is the Conservative and Unionist Party and that word unionist is very important to me." said May.
"It means we believe in the union, the precious, precious bond between England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, but it means something else that is just as important." she said.
"It means we believe in a union not just between the nations of the United Kingdom but between all of our citizens, every one of us, whoever we are and wherever we're from."
"That means fighting against the burning injustice that if you're born poor you will die on average nine years earlier than others. If you're black you are treated more harshly by the criminal justice system than if you're white."
May said: "The Government I lead will be driven not by the interests of the privileged few but by yours. We will do everything we can to give you more control over your lives."
WASHINGTON, July 13 (Xinhua) -- The deadliest suicide bombing in Iraq in a decade will further test Iraqis' waning faith in Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi and his government, found a Gallup poll Wednesday.
The July 3 attack, which killed more than 250 people in Baghdad, was carried out by the terror group the Islamic State (IS).
In April this year, only 34 percent of Iraqis approved of al-Abadi's job performance -- a sharp contrast from the 72 percent approval ratings when he first took office in 2014 after the departure of Nouri al-Maliki, Gallup found.
The high approval ratings when al-Abadi first took office illustrated the lofty expectations Iraqis had for their prime minister.
Al-Abadi was expected to help bridge the ethnic and sectarian divides in Iraq and wrest control over parts of Iraq from IS. The political honeymoon proved short-lived, however, with al-Abadi's approval rating sinking to 47 percent by late 2015 -- across most, if not all, governorates of Iraq, Gallup said.
Al-Abadi's latest low approval ratings were collected during weeks of political turmoil within the country's parliament that culminated with supporters of Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr storming parliament.
The prime minister's low approval ratings may be symptomatic of Iraqis' low approval of their country's leadership in general -- which now sits at 35 percent -- and their falling confidence in their national government, which stands at 42 percent, Gallup found.
The bombing attack took place just as the Iraqi government celebrated its victory against the IS in the city of Fallujah. Iraq's interior minister later resigned, blaming the bombing on failing security measures around Baghdad and calling for reform.
Iraq has plunged into chaos and sectarian violence that caused widespread displacement and sufferings of civilians since the U.S. invasion and occupation of the country in 2003, especially after the U.S. troop pullout in 2011 that gave rise to the terror groups such as IS.
Between 2006 and 2007, Iraq saw a massive level of sectarian violence caused by sectarian divisions and clashes.
The July 3 attack was the second worst suicide bombing in Iraq after the 2007 bombings in the Yazidi towns of Kahtaniya and Jazeera near Mosul, in which more than 500 people were killed.
While IS is now on the defensive, analysts say it may be lashing out to prove it remains a force to be reckoned with. Enditem
ROME, July 13 (Xinhua) -- The official death toll of Tuesday's head-on crash between two trains in southern Italy was 23 dead and 52 injured, of which eight seriously, local reports said on Wednesday.
Firefighters ended the search of other survivors or victims possibly trapped in the twisted metal of the wreck, which was removed from the single-track railway in the countryside area of Puglia region where the collision happened.
There were several young people among the victims, including a 15-year-old student and a 30-year-old mother, according to ANSA news agency.
The drivers of the two trains, a local vice police commissioner and a farmer who was working at his field close to the railway when the crash occurred also lost their lives. All of the victims were Italian nationals.
State attorney Francesco Giannella, who will be heading a team of five lawyers investigating the accident, told a press conference held in the town of Trani in Puglia region on Wednesday that the probe will be complicated but will look into all possible causes.
"One of the two trains, the one from the town of Andria, should not have left. Scientific evidence, however, will bring us certainty," he said.
The crash may have been triggered by a "human error", according to Rai state television, which said later on Wednesday that some people have already put under investigation for alleged multiple manslaughter. Investigators will reportedly also focus on delays in renovating the security system.
Italian Transport and Infrastructure Minister Graziano Delrio explained in his report before the parliament on Wednesday that a particular stretch of track relies on a telephone alert system used to inform station masters of trains traveling on the single track.
"This system entrusts the circulation management entirely to humans, and is among the less advanced and most risky systems," Delrio stressed.
He added Italy over the past decades has lacked investments in its regional railway system that is used by millions of commuters and students.
Delrio also announced his government's immediate allocation of 1.8 billion euros (1.9 billion U.S. dollars) to modernize the country's regional railways system. The two trains that crashed on Tuesday were run by a private local company named Ferrotramviaria, and works to add an extra line had been reportedly delayed.
On Wednesday, dozens of citizens continued to be on the queue at local hospitals to donate blood, after the local authorities appealed for donors soon after the accident to come forward urgently to help save the lives of passengers. As many as around 3,000 blood sacks were collected over 24 hours.
Later on the same day, local media showed the images of a torchlight procession held in Andria for commemoration of the victims and said that funerals may be held on Saturday in the presence of authorities.
Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi and President Sergio Mattarella both defined the crash as "unacceptable," and called on investigators to quickly shed light on the disaster amid protests from relatives of the victims as well as many common citizens.
BEIRUT, July 13 (Xinhua) -- The Lebanese parliament failed Wednesday for the 42nd consecutive time to elect a new president due to lack of the constitutionally required quorum.
Speaker Nabih Berri called for a new session on Aug. 8.
Lebanon has been without a president since the term of former president Michel Suleiman ended on May 25, 2014 and the sharp political division among the Lebanese parties hindered the elections of an incumbent.
"The political decision blocking the election of a president is still ongoing and history will pin the blame on those who are obstructing this vote," independent MP Butros Harb told reporters after the fruitless session.
Only 37 MPs had arrived at the parliament building to take part in the session, while two thirds of the 128-seat parliament represents the required quorum.
According to the National Pact, the president should be a Christian Maronite while the speaker is a Muslim Shiite and the premier is a Muslim Sunni.
The constitution stipulates that in case of the absence of a president, the Cabinet takes charge of running the country until the election of a president.
Hezbollah, MP Michel Aoun's Change and Reform bloc and some of their allies have been boycotting the electoral sessions, demanding a prior agreement on the president.
Al-Mustaqbal Movement leader ex-PM Saad Hariri, who is close to Saudi Arabia, launched an initiative in late 2015 to nominate Marada Movement Chief MP Suleiman Franjieh for the presidency, but his proposal was met with reservations from the country's main Christian parties as well as Hezbollah. Enditem
UNITED NATIONS, July 13 (Xinhua) -- UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will leave New York on Thursday for Kigali, Rwanda, to start his travel to three African countries, which will also take him to Kenya and South Africa, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters here Wednesday.
In Kigali, the secretary-general will meet with African leaders before flying to Nairobi, Kenya, to attend the fourteenth session of the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD 14) on Sunday, and to Durban, South Africa, for the opening the next day of the 21st International AIDS Conference (AIDS 2016), Dujarric said at a daily news briefing here.
In the Rwandan capital, where the African Union Summit is currently taking place, the secretary-general is scheduled to meet with the leadership of the African Union (AU) and other participating leaders, including members of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), on the situation in South Sudan, he said.
In Nairobi, Ban will speak at the opening of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, on Sunday, the spokesman said. The theme of this session of UNCTAD is "From decision to action: delivering the post-2015 development agenda."
On July 18, the secretary-general will be in Durban, South Africa, for the opening of the AIDS 2016 Conference, he said.
Scientists, policymakers, world leaders, and people living with HIV will discuss together successes and challenges specific to South Africa, as well as current global epidemic trends.
The secretary-general is expected back in New York on July 19, he added. Enditem
Chinese Ambassador to the United States Cui Tiankai speaks at the Center for Strategic and International Studies on July 12, 2016, in Washington D.C., the United States. (Xinhua/Bao Dandan)
WASHINGTON, July 12 (Xinhua) -- Diplomatic efforts to solve the South China Sea disputes will not be blocked by "a scrap of paper" from an arbitral tribunal nor by "a fleet of aircraft carriers," Chinese Ambassador to the United States Cui Tiankai said Tuesday.
"China remains committed to negotiation and consultations with other parties (in the South China Sea). This position has never changed and will not change," Cui said at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a U.S. think tank.
His remark came after the tribunal handling the South China Sea arbitration unilaterally initiated in 2013 by the former Philippine government issued its award earlier on Tuesday, which sweepingly sided with Manila's claims.
"Such absurd proceedings were taking place in combination with military coercion -- with mounting activities by destroyers, aircraft carriers, strategic bombers, reconnaissance planes and many others," Cui said. "I believe this is an outright manifestation of 'might is right.' "
By opposing and rejecting the arbitration, China is safeguarding its own interests and defending international justice and the true spirit of international law, the ambassador said.
"We will not yield to any pressure, be it in the form of military activities, media criticism or some self-claimed legal bodies," he said. "And we will certainly not make deals with our core interest just for a few words of praise."
The ambassador reiterated that China firmly stands for freedom of navigation in the South China Sea, as sea lanes there are the economic lifelines for China and many other regional countries.
However, he expressed concerns over the assembly of aircraft carriers, airplanes and sophisticated weapons in the region, warning that it could pose a real threat to the freedom of navigation of commercial and civilian vessels.
"Such a concentration of fire power, anywhere in the world, would be a source of concern," he noted.
Cui said the tensions in the South China Sea started to rise about five or six years ago, about the same time when the world began to hear about the U.S. "pivoting to Asia" policy, and the disputes intensified in the last few years.
"If Asia-Pacific is destabilized, if the momentum of regional economic growth is weakened, if armed conflict started, everybody' s interest will be hurt," Cui said.
On the relations between China and the United States, Cui said the territorial issue in the South China Sea should not become an issue between them, nor should it be seen as part of a "strategic rivalry."
A Cold War mentality will not solve the problems of today' s world, Cui said, calling for partnership among countries and new international relationships centered on win-win cooperation.
"We are here to see what kind of choices the U.S. will make: how you see the world today, how you see China' s development, and how you see the relationship between our two countries," he said.
UNITED NATIONS, July 13 (Xinhua) -- The UN under-secretary-general for peacekeeping operations, Herve Ladsous, on Wednesday called upon the UN Security Council to give a stronger mandate for the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) against a backdrop of the current unstable security situation in the world's youngest country.
In his briefing to the UN Security Council on South Sudan, Ladsous said that the securing freedom of movement for the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) "remains an uphill battle" as security forces limit the mission's movement every step of the way.
He proposed that the UN Mission there be extended until the end of August to allow a rapid assessment on the need for a stronger mandate. The current mandate of UNMISS will expire on July 31.
The 15-nation UN body is expected to adopt a resolution to renew the mandate of UNMISS later this month.
"The current situation in the country remains fluid and uncertain," Ladsous said. "The secretary-general's recommendation for a technical roll-over of the UNMISS mandate remains valid and necessary, while we conduct an assessment of the requirements to address the situation on the ground."
The temporary arrangement should be for one month to give the UN Secretariat time to do a quick assessment, consult the region and the African Union and make recommendations to the Security Council, he said.
The clashes between government and opposition forces took place in Juba, the capital of South Sudan, leaving some 272 people, including 33 civilians, killed on Friday.
Ladsous said that UNMISS had been able to conduct limited patrolling again to assess the security situation, and the safety and security of personnel and assets at United Nations compounds.
He urged the South Sudanese government to allow UNMISS and humanitarian actors freedom of movement and access to provide vital assistance to the affected civilian population.
Ladsous said that, as of Wednesday, humanitarian partners are estimating that at least 42,000 civilians have been displaced by the fighting in Juba. Seven thousands of those are accounted for at the two UNMISS compounds and the remaining approximately 35,000 are sheltering between the World Food Programme compound, non-governmental organization (NGO) compound and several churches in the city.
Meanwhile, he expressed great concern about the potential for the resumption of violence and spill over into other parts of the war-torn country.
The country again plunged into conflict in December 2013 after President Salva Kiir accused his deputy Riek Machar of plotting a coup, which the latter denied, leading to a cycle of retaliatory killings.
President Salva Kiir and former rebel leader and now First Vice President Machar signed a peace deal in August that paved way for the formation of the transitional unity government to end more than two years of civil conflict. Enditem
BUENOS AIRES, July 13 (Xinhua) -- Argentina is exploring expanded economic, commercial ties with China, the Argentinean Foreign Ministry said Wednesday.
Argentinean and Chinese authorities concluded on July 11-12 a complete revision of the two countries' trade and investment agreements during the 20th meeting of the two countries' Joint Economic and Commercial Commission (COMIXTA) in Beijing.
The two sides "made proposals to build up bilateral exchanges" and "discussed improving access conditions for Argentinean foodstuffs and the incorporation of high value-added products to China," the foreign ministry in a statement.
The two countries concluded sanitary and phytosanitary negotiations to allow access for Argentinean grapes to China, advanced negotiations for new beef and poultry requirements and began talks to export Argentinean cranberries to China.
The Chinese government will soon send an inspection mission to Argentina to set up protocols for beef and poultry exports.
The two sides are also in the process of discussing sanitary regulations for biotechnology, dairy, seeds, and veterinary drugs.
In the statement, Argentinean Secretary of International Economic Relations Maria Cristina Boldorini said "our main interest is to open markets and improve the access conditions for our products. We are optimistic about these successes."
China and Argentina enjoy a comprehensive strategic partnership, with China being Argentina's second-largest trading partner after Brazil.
BEIJING, July 13 (Xinhua) -- The State Council Information Office of the People's Republic of China on Wednesday published a white paper titled "China Adheres to the Position of Settling Through Negotiation the Relevant Disputes Between China and the Philippines in the South China Sea". ( Chinese version ; French version )
Following is the full text of the white paper:
China Adheres to the Position of Settling Through Negotiation
the Relevant Disputes Between China and the Philippines
in the South China Sea
Contents
Introduction
I. Nanhai Zhudao are Chinas Inherent Territory
i. Chinas sovereignty over Nanhai Zhudao is established in the course of history
ii. China has always been resolute in upholding its territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests in the South China Sea
iii. Chinas sovereignty over Nanhai Zhudao is widely acknowledged in the international community
II. Origin of the Relevant Disputes Between China and the Philippines in the South China Sea
i. The Philippines invasion and illegal occupation caused disputes with China over some islands and reefs of Nansha Qundao
ii. The Philippines illegal claim has no historical or legal basis
iii. The development of the international law of the sea gave rise to the dispute between China and the Philippines over maritime delimitation
III. China and the Philippines Have Reached Consensus on Settling Their Relevant Disputes in the South China Sea
i. It is the consensus and commitment of China and the Philippines to settle through negotiation their relevant disputes in the South China Sea
ii. It is the consensus of China and the Philippines to properly manage relevant disputes in the South China Sea
IV. The Philippines Has Repeatedly Taken Moves that Complicate the Relevant Disputes
i. The Philippines attempts to entrench its illegal occupation of some islands and reefs of Chinas Nansha Qundao
ii. The Philippines has increasingly intensified its infringement of Chinas maritime rights and interests
iii. The Philippines also has territorial pretensions on Chinas Huangyan Dao
iv. The Philippines unilateral initiation of arbitration is an act of bad faith
V. Chinas Policy on the South China Sea Issue
i. On the territorial issues concerning Nansha Qundao
ii. On maritime delimitation in the South China Sea
iii. On the ways and means of dispute settlement
iv. On managing differences and engaging in practical maritime cooperation in the South China Sea
v. On freedom and safety of navigation in the South China Sea
vi. On jointly upholding peace and stability in the South China Sea
Introduction
1. Situated to the south of Chinas mainland, and connected by narrow straits and waterways with the Pacific Ocean to the east and the Indian Ocean to the west, the South China Sea is a semi-closed sea extending from northeast to southwest. To its north are the mainland and Taiwan Dao of China, to its south Kalimantan Island and Sumatra Island, to its east the Philippine Islands, and to its west the Indo-China Peninsula and the Malay Peninsula.
2. Chinas Nanhai Zhudao (the South China Sea Islands) consist of Dongsha Qundao (the Dongsha Islands), Xisha Qundao (the Xisha Islands), Zhongsha Qundao (the Zhongsha Islands) and Nansha Qundao (the Nansha Islands). These Islands include, among others, islands, reefs, shoals and cays of various numbers and sizes. Nansha Qundao is the largest in terms of both the number of islands and reefs and the geographical area.
3. The activities of the Chinese people in the South China Sea date back to over 2,000 years ago. China is the first to have discovered, named, and explored and exploited Nanhai Zhudao and relevant waters, and the first to have continuously, peacefully and effectively exercised sovereignty and jurisdiction over them. Chinas sovereignty over Nanhai Zhudao and relevant rights and interests in the South China Sea have been established in the long course of history, and are solidly grounded in history and law.
4. As neighbors facing each other across the sea, China and the Philippines have closely engaged in exchanges, and the two peoples have enjoyed friendship over generations. There had been no territorial or maritime delimitation disputes between the two states until the 1970s when the Philippines started to invade and illegally occupy some islands and reefs of Chinas Nansha Qundao, creating a territorial issue with China over these islands and reefs. In addition, with the development of the international law of the sea, a maritime delimitation dispute also arose between the two states regarding certain maritime areas of the South China Sea.
5. China and the Philippines have not yet had any negotiation designed to settle their relevant disputes in the South China Sea. However, the two countries did hold multiple rounds of consultations on the proper management of disputes at sea and reached consensus on resolving through negotiation and consultation the relevant disputes, which has been repeatedly reaffirmed in a number of bilateral documents. The two countries have also made solemn commitment to settling relevant disputes through negotiation and consultation in the 2002 Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC) that China and the ASEAN Member States jointly signed.
6. In January 2013, the then government of the Republic of the Philippines turned its back on the above-mentioned consensus and commitment, and unilaterally initiated the South China Sea arbitration. The Philippines deliberately mischaracterized and packaged the territorial issue which is not subject to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and the maritime delimitation dispute which has been excluded from the UNCLOS dispute settlement procedures by Chinas 2006 optional exceptions declaration pursuant to Article 298 of UNCLOS. This act is a wanton abuse of the UNCLOS dispute settlement procedures. In doing so, the Philippines attempts to deny Chinas territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests in the South China Sea.
7. This paper aims to clarify the facts and tell the truth behind the relevant disputes between China and the Philippines in the South China Sea, and to reaffirm Chinas consistent position and policy on the South China Sea issue, in order to get to the root of the issue and set the record straight.
BEIJING, July 13 (Xinhuanet) Egypt is willing to play a key role in the construction of the Belt and Road Initiative by encouraging infrastructural investment, said Egyptian Minister of Investment Dalia Khorshid and Minister of Trade and Industry Tarek Kabil in Beijing on Tuesday.
At the same time, they said, Egypt is devoted to developing the "Suez Canal Corridor" which can be well integrated with the Belt and Road Initiative.
The Egyptian officials are attending an Egyptian-Chinese Ministerial Committee meeting for preparation of the upcoming G20 Summit to be held in Hangzhou, China.
On the upcoming summit, they said Egypt is looking forward to driving the development of global economy through infrastructural construction.
The ministers emphasized the importance of launching power plants in Egypt, saying that affected by the turbulent situation in the past few years, Egypt had often suffered from electricity shortages which pose great obstacles to Egypts efforts to reinvigorate economy.
According to Kabil, China has many successful experience that Egypt can draw on, such as techniques in nourishing middle and small sized enterprises, the mature models of establishing industrial zones and so on.
Egypt is safe and trustworthy as a destination for foreign investment, they stressed, adding Egypt expects a GDP growth rate of 5 percent in 2017.
The Egyptian government is also seeking to simplify procedures to issue permits more efficiently for foreign investors and to provide them with better services, they said.
Guilty of manslaughter, out in 27 days
Andy Ramsingh, who was 17 at the time of the murder of Shawn Mohammed, also known as Radesh, of Longden Street, Longdenville, was earlier this week sentenced to 13 years in prison after he pleaded guilty to a lesser count of manslaughter.
Initially on trial for murder, the State agreed to accept the manslaughter plea after Justice Devan Rampersad held a Goodyear hearing, at which he gave the likely maximum sentence which would be imposed on Ramsingh.
Ramsingh, who was represented by attorneys Richard Clarke-Wills and Celeste St Louis, received a one-third discount for his guilty plea and his sentence was reduced to 13 years. After the time he spent awaiting trial was subtracted, it left 29 days for Ramsingh to serve out on his sentence. Ramsingh appeared before Justice Rampersad in the Portof- Spain First Assizes on Monday.
Mohammed was walking along Railway Road, on August 8, 2008, when he had an altercation with a group of men.
Mohammed was beaten, broken bottles thrown at him and was stabbed.
Mom and baby to be cremated
The decomposing bodies of the infant and her mother were found in a bed at the familys one room home off Ralph Narine Trace in South Oropouche on Wednesday morning. According to police reports at about 9am the infants father Wayne Philander, 42, of Rumstill Avenue in Rousillac went to the home of his girl friend when he detected a foul stench emanating from inside the house.
After calling out Gabriels name several times and getting no answer, Philander peered through a louvre pane and saw the bodies on a bed. He contacted the South Oropouche Police Station. The mother was found hugging baby Sidney. Yesterday speaking to Newsday, a close family member said that he is uncertain how the grieving father would hold up at the funeral service on seeing the coffins bearing the bodies of the mother and his four-month-old daughter. The relative said that he was also making arrangements to have Philander speak with a counselor. It is really hard for him. He is trying his best to cope and I am talking with him, but it is not easy to lose your wife and baby in such manner, the relative told Newsday. Adding, the relative said that Philander has not been able to sleep comfortably at nights since he discovered the decomposing bodies of his wife and baby daughter. Philander has an adult son from a previous relationship while Gabriel had six other children. Baby Sidney was her youngest child. Autopsies of the mother and baby daughter performed at the Forensic Science Centre were inconclusive.
Tissue samples have since been taken from the bodies for further tests to determine the cause of deaths.
Sweden's IKEA Group is recalling over 1.66 million drawer units, including the popular Malm line, sold across the Chinese mainland. Provided To China Daily
Swedish home furnishings maker is recalling 1.66 million chests of drawers with potential safety risks that it sold on the Chinese mainland, China's top quality authority announced on Tuesday.
The drawer units were sold between 1999 and this year and involve a variety of types. According to the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, the drawers may tip over and cause death or injury to children if not properly fixed to the wall.
IKEA said on Tuesday it would help Chinese customers anchor the product to the wall. They can also return the furniture to IKEA for a full refund, it said.
The drawers are safe as long as they are properly fixed to the wall, the company said.
When the company initially recalled the drawers in North America, it said the decision was based on international standards applicable in that region and that the recall will not involve other markets, including China, where the same products were sold.
More than 35 million drawer units were recalled in the United States and Canada, according to the US Consumer Product Safety Commission.
After media reports that IKEA did not plan to recall the drawers it sold in China, the Shanghai Municipal Bureau of Quality and Technical Supervision and the Shanghai Entry-Exit Inspection and Quarantine Bureau had discussions with executives at IKEA China and demanded the company assume responsibility and ensure the safety and quality of its products in China.
The Shenzhen Consumers' Association in Guangdong province, said in early July that it demanded that IKEA's branch in Shenzhen cooperate in an investigation of the matter.
The association urged the company not to discriminate against Chinese consumers and to initiate a recall.
On Thursday, IKEA started notifying Chinese consumers who have bought Malm drawers of recall measures.
wangxiaodong@chinadaily.com.cn
Man jailed for Jock Yuh Waists killing
She was passing sentence on a convicted murderer, Lauren Aguillera, 46, whom she sentenced to almost ten years in prison with hard labour having been charged with the murder of Ronald Jock Yuh Waist King, 48.
King was beaten with a piece on wood on his head, tied up and thrown overboard while at sea on an unknown date between May 23, 2005 and June 7, 2005.
Only in February last year, Aguillera was one of four men each convicted and sentenced to 14 years in jail for killing Robert Ramnath, 51, a scrapyard dealer of Penal.
On August 10, 2006, Ramnath was robbed, beaten then chopped and left for dead near an oil pumping jack.
On April 26, Aguillera pleaded guilty to Kings murder under the murder felony rule and on Monday he reappeared in court for sentencing.
In reviewing the summary of facts, Wilson noted that on May 24, 2005, two men, Trevor Harris and Martin Jones, saw King leave for sea in a boat titled Unbelievable.
While in the waters, off the coast of Erin, the men spotted King alone in the boat. The men returned to shore and later realised that King did not.
The following day a report was lodged at the Erin Police Station and under the supervision of Sgt Roopnarinesingh, officers went about two miles off the sea coast and spotted the boats engine Kings body eventually washed ashore at Cedros. Due to the advanced state of decomposition, the cause of death was undetermined.
The court heard that Aguillera subsequently confessed to police that he and another man had gone out to sea in a boat.
The sailed out to where Kings boat was anchored and boarded his boat. They hit King with a piece of wood on the head, tied him and threw him overboard. They took the gas from Unbelievable and put it in theirs as well as the engine.
The judge highlighted some of Aguilleras achievements while in custody such as participating in the ALTA programme, in sporting as well as religious activities. Some of the aggravating factors Wilson highlighted were the prevalence and seriousness of the offence committed and that violence was used in the commission of the crime.
The court heard that during the ordeal, King attempted to negotiate his life as he promised to give the men money which he had by Mr. Jones. She added that aggravating factors to the offender included that he had previous convictions before the date of the murder including larceny in 1991 and assault occasioning a wound in 1994.
In passing her sentence, Wilson referred to several court judgements.
She noted that the appropriate starting point for such offence was at 27 years.
She deducted onethird of the term because he pleaded guilty as well as the eight years, five months and 24 days he spent in custody awaiting trial.
Cpl Raymond Patrick, of the Homicide Bureau (Region III) was the substitute complainant in the case.
Attorney Jason Jackson represented the accused while Hema Soondarsingh represented the State.
Baking to make you go wow
At the end of the recent Course B, held on June 18 and 25, and graduation day on July 2, Newsdays got pictures of the mouth-watering desserts prepared by the students under the watchful eyes of Hoford and her trusted assistant Natasha Rodney.
This course which involved some of the technical aspects of baking, included short crust pastry as well as choux pastry.
Hoford explained: On Day One students learn to make large and small pies as well as puffs and ?clairs along with the fillings. The second day of the course concentration is on desserts such as ice box cakes, mousses, creme caramel and creme brulee. While on the third Saturday students learn the method and decorating of fabulous WOW desserts including charlottes, trifles, pavlovas and tortes. In Course A which will take place on July 31 and August 7 and 14, emphasis will be placed on all the different types of cakes as well as frostings, fillings and decoration of cakes.
Included here are items such as cheesecakes, tiramisu, brownies, muffins, scones, cookies and breads.
Classes are limited to eight students (male and/or female from any age group). Students are encouraged to ask questions, make enquiries and seek any information required, in a very informal atmosphere.
Registration can be made through calling 637-4632. Courses for the rest of year are: Course B September 4, 11 and 18; Course A October 9, 16 and 23, Course B November 6, 13 and 20.
Hoford explained: After this its Christmas cakes for clients so I will take a break until next year.
Do as normal, Garcia tells anxious GATE students
My advice is to continue what they are doing and await the report, the minister said when asked by reporters what advice he would give to students hoping to start or continue studies amid possible reforms of the programme. That is all I can reveal at this time. I am not at liberty to disclose anything else contained in that report. Remember it is a Cabinet decision, it is a Cabinet report and the report has to be presented to Cabinet. The minister added, Thursday the Cabinet is going to receive it. The report is very detailed so I suspect that Cabinet will require some time to really digest the entire report and that might take one to two weeks.
After that, we will release the findings and recommendations to the national community. Garcia said the special task force appointed by Cabinet considered the timing of its report.
I take your point, he told one reporter.
This is a point that was considered by members of the task force, the fact that the academic year begins in September and there will be students who are awaiting anxiously the recommendations that will be contained in that report. So we will do everything to ensure that the report and recommendations are made available long before the opening of school. Yesterday morning, the task force headed by Errol Simms officially handed over its report to Garcia and Minister of State in the Ministry of Education Dr Lovell Francis. Also in attendance at the private ceremony were Permanent Secretaries Lenor Baptiste-Simmons and Angela Sinaswee- Gervais; acting Chief Education Officer Patricia Mc David; Deputy Permanent Secretary Sharon Ashman-John, and adviser to the Minister Cheryl Ann Wilkinson.
UNC election petition ruling on August 19
Justice Mira Dean-Armorer is being asked by the Opposition party to declare the results in the constituencies of Toco/Sangre Grande, Tunapuna, St Joseph, San Fernando West and Moruga/ Tableland null and void because of what they say was an illegal decision by the Elections and Boundaries Commission to grant an additional hour for voting in Trinidad at last September 7 general elections because of bad weather conditions.
At the close of submissions yesterday, Justice Dean-Armorer said she thought long and hard for a date to give her ruling. She will do so on August 19.
The judge began hearing submissions from the UNC, the Peoples National Movement - whose candidates won their seats in the five contested constituencies - and the EBC on June 29.
This followed several victories for the UNC in the appellate court, which, in November, by a majority ruling, gave the approval for the judge to hear the petitions.
A sixth petition, challenging the results in the La Horquetta/ Talparo constituency, held by Public Administration and Communi c at ions Minister Maxie Cuffie, was thrown out by the appellate court in May. The petition challenging Cuffies seat, which he won by a margin of 2,822 votes, was struck out and as there is no right of appeal to the Privy Council on election matters, there was no challenge of the results in that constituency.
In their arguments to support the petitions and the contention that the extension was illegal, British Queens Counsel Timothy Straker, who lead a team for the UNC, in his opening salvo described the September 7 polls as a shambles and shockingly ill-conceived the consideration to extend voting time in the September 7 general election, by an hour. Straker contended that these alleged breach of duties and corrupt practices vitiated the election.
In his submissions, Straker contended that in any election the rule of law prevailed and the Representation of the Peoples Act and the Constitution set out enormous sequence of steps to be taken. He said in the case of TTs general election on September 7 of last year, it could not be sensibly said that it was held in accordance with the law.
Straker pointed t o substantial breaches of election rules and alleged corrupt practices of election officials when the decision was taken to extend the voting time by an hour in Trinidad only.
Straker emphasised that the issue of the polling times - from 6 am to 6 pm - was inexorably linked to the election rules set out in the legislation and passed by the Parliament.
In the five constituencies being challenged, all won by Peoples National Movement candidates, the margin of victory were: 1,633 votes (St Joseph); 3,615 (Tunapuna); 2,822 (La Horquetta/ Talparo); 533 (Moruga/ Tableland); 3,310 (San Fernando West) and 3,904 (Toco/ Sangre Grande).
In their defence of the petitions, the PNMs attorneys urged the judge to reject the petitions , saying the UNC had failed to prove the extension materially affected the outcome of the election.
Douglas Mendes, SC, who lead a team of attorneys for the PNM, said the five candidates would still have won the election even if all the votes cast during the extension were subtracted from their totals.
Mendes also said elections were only invalidated in circumstances where persons intentionally attempt to pervert their outcome.
Lawyers for the Elections and Boundaries Commission argued that the commission had no choice but to extend last years general election by one hour because there was major flooding. Russell Martineau, SC, said it was the mandate of the EBC to ensure that citizens were able to exercise their democratic right to vote. He said the Representation of the Peoples Act as well as the Constitution gave the EBC EBC far reaching powers to manage the conduct of elections in T&T.
The UNC petitioners are represented by Queens Counsel Timothy Straker,former prime minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar,SC, Anand Ramlogan,SC, Kent Samlal, and Jayanti Lutchmedial while while Russell Martineau,SC, Deborah Peake,SC, and Ravi Heffes-Doon appear for the EBCs Returning Officers.
Appearing with Douglas Mendes,SC, for the five PNM MPs are Michael Quamina, Ravi Nanga, Celeste Jules, Vanessa Gopaul and Elena Araujo.
Mom counts blessings after fire
Cyrus, a sales clerk with Fabric Land in Port-of-Spain, told Newsday she was very thankful that her two children were at a vacation camp when she learnt that her home was on fire.
She said her heart began to race but eventually she calmed herself when she remembered that no one in her family was in the apartment at the time.
My daughter and son were at camp and I was with my husband on our way to Courts to purchase a stove and a washing machine. I got a call from one of my neighbours telling me to come home immediately because the place was on fire. I was panicking but calmed myself, only to worry again about what I will face when I reached home, she said.
Cyrus explained that the fire started in the back bedroom, and indicated that they have been having electrical problems in the apartment.
I know it is no fault of mine and I hope they can get it fixed quickly because I dont know what I will do right now. I know we always had a problem with the electrical in the apartment and I always make sure to unplug all my appliances, she said.
Contacted, president of the Fire Service Association, Leo Ramkissoon, said all occupants were accounted for, there were no fatalities, and the fire was confined to the first floor of the building.
The officers were involved in the fire-fighting operation to bring the fire under control. We received the call at about 11.18 am and there were no injuries reported from the fire, Ramkissoon said.
One year later, Costaatt keeps lecturers post vacant
The Costaatt lecturer was last seen in July 2015. Police followed tips relating to ATM transactions and her abandoned car but the case is yet to be closed.
Costaatt President Dr Gillian Paul yesterday said Charles-Harriss post at the institution has not been advertised.
We are keeping in contact with the police about the investigation and they have indicated that it is not for them a cold case, Paul said at a media conference held at the Ministry of Education in St Clair, Port-of-Spain, for the installation of trustees.
For that reason we did not advertise the position of head of department and her position in the college because to do so would be to signal that we have given up on her which was very difficult for us. Paul continued, We have never had anything like this happen to the college and it has traumatised the college for a while. She further said, The choir was brought together because Ms Harris wrote the colleges opening college song and we wanted to pay tribute to her at that graduation ceremony by scoring and singing the college song. And as we move into Chaguanas we are also now looking at ways to pay tribute to what she did for the environmental studies programme The Costaatt president noted moves for a Charles-Harris scholarship fund.
We align ourselves with the position of the police, Paul said.
If it is an open case, it is an open case and we have to treat it as an open case. But the colleges environmental studies programme also is a very big programme. We have had a senior lecturer acting for a while but we will have to take some decisions, as you would understand, going forward. And a new chapter could soon dawn on the institution. Paul disclosed Costaatt was ready to open a brand new $185 million campus in Chaguanas which is meant to cater for 2,250 students.
The project was done substantially within time and under budget which augurs extremely well, she said.
Trustees receiving instruments of appointment signed by President Anthony Carmona yesterday were: Sheldon Cyrus, Dr Rita Pemberton, S Valerie Kelsick, Claudine Sheppard, Kashka St Hillaire, Glen Khan, Jennifer Boucaud-Blake, Walda Dottin, and Professor Edgar Julien Dottin.
Jamie Knaggs and Sanjay Bahadoorsingh will receive their instruments at a subsequent date.
Minister of Education Anthony Garcia and Minister in the Ministry of Education Dr Lovell Francis noted the crucial role Costaatt has to play as a community college.
They thanked the officials for their service.
Police, fire officers want Carmona to act
At a press conference at the FSAs office on Edward Street, Port of Spain yesterday, FSA president, Leo Ramkissoon, said the PSCs inaction undermines the ability of the Prison and Fire services to manage itself.
It ultimately results in the public suffering the consequences, Ramkissoon said.
We are calling on the President of Trinidad and Tobago to review the performance of those Commissioners that he has appointed.
He has a responsibility to ensure the commissioners that function on the Commission fulfil their responsibility under the Public Service Commission regulation. He said when officers are demotivated, it affects their ability to service the public in accordance with the mandate given.
Ramkissoon said his association and the POA, led by its president Cerron Richards, share a common issue where the PSC is concerned.
He explained that they have appliances and equipment issues, and stations still cannot function due to their deplorable condition.
We still have stations which are still unresponsive and cannot respond in vulnerable communities.
We have issue with the managing of the human resources in the services because, again, you have several hundred vacancies existing for various ranks and therefore the service is failing to manage itself and its facilities, he said.
Ramkissoon indicated that they are putting the PSC on notice and intends to intensify their efforts in bringing this issue to light.
He said they will be focusing on the PSC in terms of getting them to resolve the issue to have dialogue and work with them.
British Caribbean Chamber welcomes new UK PM
May succeeds David Cameron, who stepped down after losing the Brexit vote for the UK to leave the European Union.
In a statement issued yesterday, the BCCC said, Mrs May has made an unequivocal statement, for the avoidance of doubt, that her policy is that BREXIT means BREXIT. She has indicated that she will negotiate a fair arrangement for both the UK and the EU, recognising the outcome of the Referendum in Britain last month. So the UK now has stable leadership with a strong message and a clear mandate for a properly negotiated and well-ordered exit from the political structures of the European Union. The BCCC said it believes that as well as challenges, new opportunities lie ahead for the UKs traditional trading partners in the Caribbean, with whom there are long-standing and historic links.
(We are) looking forward to working with business and political leaders in the region in determining these. The BCCC also expressed understanding for the caution expressed by the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) leaders about what these significant changes in the European political structure may mean in terms of the short, medium and long-term. However the BCCC said it was confident that it is within the grasp of European governments to embrace the challenge of BREXIT in a well-ordered manner with no reason for any of us to take a pessimistic view of the future. Our essential message is that Britain is not going away and British tourists will continue to see the Caribbean as an attractive and desirable destination. It is the essential quality of the Caribbean tourist industry, based on targeting those with higher than average disposable incomes, which is its greatest strength. It will continue to have a bright future, the BCCC stated.
More money, but PTSC not moving
The audit report was tabled in Parliament on Friday.
Government has continued to invest more funds into PTSCs operations; however, substantial improvements in the delivery of its services to the travelling public have not been achieved, the department states in the document, dated June 29.
As the only national bus transportation provider, PTSC has an integral role to play in national transportation; however that role has not been clearly defined.
The effective management of PTSCs bus fleet is required in fulfilling its role of public transport provider; however management has not been able to ensure the adequacy and reliability of its fleet. The auditors note the PTSCs governing Act states that the corporation is required to ensure that its revenues are sufficient to cover operating expenses, including taxes, if any, and to provide adequate maintenance and depreciation, and interest payments on borrowings. Yet, for the period 2010-2014, PTSCs income totalled $1.689 billion while expenditure totalled $1.727 billion.
We analysed income and expenditure for the period and found that PTSC has not generated sufficient revenues to cover expenditure in each of the five years, the auditors stated.
Income funds included disbursals allocated by the Government in the form of subventions through its line ministry, the Ministry of Transport.
Over the period 2010-2014, funds allocated by the Government increased from $149 million in 2010 to $289 million in 2014, an increase of $140 million or 94 percent.
However, income earned from operations over the same period showed a continuous decline, from $105 million in 2010 to $81 million in 2014, a decrease of $24 million or 23 percent.
The auditors noted poor record- keeping/storage practices, among other problems.
PTSC has failed to maintain its buses as planned, they remarked.
Space allocated for the repair and maintenance functions was not properly utilised. Also, PTSCs last fare increase was in the 1990s.
PTSC should institute a fare policy to guide its approach to setting of fares, the auditors said.
PTSCs performance has not been monitored nor evaluated.
The Ministry of Works and Transport and the management of PTSC should implement a system to monitor and evaluate the performance of PTSC, the auditors also said.
Franklin Khan, Gopee-Scoon resting comfortably
PNM general secretary, Ashton Forde, in a telephone interview yesterday, rubbished rumours that heart surgery had been performed on Khan saying he (Khan) had been in contact with both Prime Minister, Dr Keith Rowley and himself.
However, well-placed sources told Newsday that following an examination by doctors last week, five blockages were discovered in Khans arteries and veins and five stents had to be placed to relieve the pressure on his circulatory system.
Khan has reportedly been ordered to rest for three weeks by doctors, sources said.
A stent is a small mesh tube that is used to treat narrow or weak arteries.
Arteries are blood vessels that carry blood away from the heart to other parts of your body.
However, Forde described the surgery as minor but noted that he was unsure of when Khan would return to work.
Hes alright, Forde said, adding, He has taken a week off.
Khan was elected Member of Parliament for Ortoire/Mayaro in 2002 under the second Patrick Manning administration and appointed Minister of Works and Transport, a position which he held until May 2004. Following the 2015 General Election, Khan was appointed Rural Development and Local Government Minister in the Dr Keith Rowley Administration.
Meanwhile, Trade Minister, Paula Gopee-Scoon, is expected to return to work tomorrow following an emergency appendectomy which was performed at a private medical institution on July 2nd.
The operation involved the removal of her appendix and was reportedly without any complications.
Gopee-Scoon who served as MP for Point Fortin under the fourth Patrick Manning administration missed the state funeral for Manning at the Holy Trinity Cathedral in Port-of-Spain on Saturday In a telephone interview yesterday, Gopee-Scoon said she was on sick leave and would return to work tomorrow.
I am feeling fine and hopefully by Thursday I will be able to return to work after the all-clear has been given by my doctors, she said.
Suruj: End drugs suffering
The Government should stop fooling around with the lives of citizens requiring healthcare, Rambachan said.
Tewarie wants more police patrols
At a town meeting at the Three Roads Development Centre with central police on Monday, Tewarie and residents raised their concerns with several senior officers in the Central Division, including Supt Paul, Asst Supt Jackson, Insp Bedassie, Sgt James and heads of the Freeport, Brasso and Gran Couva Police Stations.
Several residents told police about their experiences with crime and complained of being disrespected by police officers.
They spoke about police indiscipline, unresponsiveness, inaction in cases of follow-up and the general inefficiency and ineffectiveness of the police.
Tewarie requested that the police implement a Rapid Response Unit or capability in each police station in central to support ongoing police operations and to respond to emergency needs.
He said police in central were aware of criminals in the area and that there was need to keep them under surveillance so their freedom to engage in criminal activity could be curbed.
He said he would work with communities in Caroni Central to build genuine community vigilance teams that could build a genuine partnership with police that can actually work and show results
Students welcome Patrick Manning GATE program
The fund, once set up, is to be managed by the University of the West Indies (UWI) St. Augustine Guild of Students and is geared towards assisting students from low-income backgrounds to access tertiary level education. Gordon, a year two Sociology student at the UWI, like many other working class students, became concerned when earlier this year it was revealed that a Government appointed task-force was assigned to review the Government Assisted Tuition Expenses (GATE) program and its possible future. She says that without GATE she would be unable to afford the tuition necessary for her to complete her degree.
I was very nervous when I heard about that GATE was being reviewed by Parliament.
Both of my parents are labourers but they told me that if they (Parliament) decided to cut GATE funding, they would each take two jobs to help me pay for the tuition. But they are approaching retirement age and I dont want to impose that kind of strain on them. Sherice says that she considered becoming a part-time student at the University, where she would work during the day and attend classes on evenings. However, with her limited experience and qualifications, it is difficult for her to find employment outside of minimum wage.
Also, changing her status as a part-time or evening student would extend her degree program from three years to four years, time she simply does not have.
Coming from a working class family, its difficult to make ends meet at times, thats why I need a degree, I need to join the workforce as quickly as possible but I just dont have the time or the money to remain at the University for four perhaps even five years as some students have. Gordon says that if implemented, the fund would offer new hope to low-income students seeking to enter the University and is confident that it has the potential to break the cycle of crime and poverty which has become the reality for many young people in her community.
I come from what many people may consider to be a crime hotspot in East Port-of- Spain, I have seen many people who I went to school with either gunned down or in prison, because they didnt realise the options that they had. I am happy to be able to try and better myself and the Patrick Manning GATE Fund is a good way to honour the legacy of one of our countrys patriots. Another student echoed the sentiments of Gordon, saying that without GATE, for many lower middle class students, the window of opportunity for accessing a University education would be closed, thrusting many young people into an increasingly competitive job-market without the proper qualifications.
Adding that the former prime ministers legacy lives on through each of the students who benefitted from the GATE program.
Its a tough time for everyone right now, and even though times have changed and the value of an undergraduate degree isnt what it used to be, its still better than having nothing at all. Theres no way we can ever thank Patrick Manning for his years of service, but this gesture would definitely be a step in the right direction. Newsday spoke to a lecturer at the University of the West Indies, who on condition of anonymity said that while she was not opposed to the idea of establishing a Patrick Manning GATE fund, the necessary machinery must be put in place to prevent abuses and to ensure that as many students as possible can benefit from the fund.
I am generally in favour of anything that can help students with their education, however if such a fund really comes into being, there should be proper management on the part of the Universitys Guild of Students to ensure that there is transparency as far as the funding of students and to ensure that as many students as possible can benefit from this program. The lecturer added that such measures are necessary to prevent wastage of funds by students.
What you need to know about the Octagon Art Festival on Sunday in Ames
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Another reason why Congress needs to just legalize marijuana
(BigGovernment.news) The Obama administrations failure to enforce the nations drug laws specifically, the federal ban on recreational use of marijuana is confusing, confounding and frustrating to many. Whats worse, it is also needlessly expensive for the taxpayer, making it high time (pardon the pun) that Congress stepped up and stepped in to either force the administration to enforce the law, or see that the ban is lifted.
As reported by AMI Newswire, the federal agency responsible for eradicating marijuana the Drug Enforcement Agency has actually ramped up its efforts in recent years, even as states like Washington, Colorado and, soon, a raft of others, allow residents to freely smoke it.
The newswire service reported that DEA increased marijuana eradication funding in 25 states between 2014 and 2015, according to newly released figures. The increases, revealed this week in response to a citizen FOIA via MuckRock, came in 10 states that have already legalized medicinal marijuana, including Maine, California, Ohio, and Massachusetts.
The DEA increased its allocation in two other states Florida and Missouri where voters in November will decide on the medicinal use of pot. Pot advocates in two other states, Michigan and Nevada, have submitted petitions to put legalization measures on the November ballot. Eradication expenditures increased in both of those states last year from 2014.
Several states saw drops in federal funds for getting rid of grow operations and plants, including South Carolina, Utah and Arizona. Allocations also dropped in Oregon and Washington, where pot is legal.
Participation in the DEA eradication program is optional and some states have opted out, relying on local and state funding. Eradication allocation for Colorado and Alaska, where recreational pot is also legal, was zero last year after the states received $80,000 and $70,000, respectively, the year before.
North Dakota, Arkansas, Rhode Island, South Dakota and Wyoming received no allocation for 2014 or 2015.
For several years, the DEAs eradication budget has stood at $18 million, funded in part by the assets forfeiture fund of the Department of Justice.
Eradication has been marked by controversy, including the revelation in the mid-2000s that much of the marijuana being discovered and destroyed was so-called ditchweed or wild growing, uncultivated pot that has no psychoactive ingredient.
Critics have pointed also to the low rate of sites discovered according to DEA figures, last year there were 4.2 million plants destroyed, compared with 6.7 million in 2011, a 37 percent drop.
In November, a group of 12 Democrats in Congress sent a letter to leadership asking that half the $18 million budget, or $9 million, for eradication be redirected to social programs and deficit reduction.
There is no justification for spending this kind of money on an antiquated program never shown to be effective, the lawmakers said. The allocation, though, stood.
The DEA, which did not respond to an interview request, has spent money on eradication since 1979, when it devoted all its resources to California and Hawaii. Within six years, the program expanded to include funding for all states.
Drug policy wonks pro and con are watching daily now for a ruling from the DEA on pots lawless status. In an April letter to federal lawmakers, the DEA said it would reconsider the status of marijuana as a Schedule 1 drug, equal in harm to heroin or LSD, in the first six months of the year .
The reclassification would be a major move in the drug war and dramatically affect funding for law enforcement operations, many of which have fought to keep marijuana prohibition alive while also vying for lucrative grants to do so. It would also most likely prompt Congress to address the funding of the eradication allocation.
Steve Miller of AMI Newswire contributed to this report.
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Human genes engineered into GMO rice are being grown in Kansas
If you arent already purchasing organic or GMO-free rice, you should be. Rice that has been engineered with actual human genes is on its way to a supermarket near you. In Junction City, Kansas, this human gene-tainted rice is being grown on 3,200 acres by the biotechnology company Ventria Bioscience.
Ventria began cultivating this rather horrifying product in 2006 with human liver genes. What exactly was the purpose of this, you ask? Their intention was to harvest the artificial enzymes produced by the rice and use them in pharmaceuticals. Ventria has taken one of the most widely grown and consumed crops and turned it into the base for new prescription drugs all with USDA approval, of course.
Their decision to allow plants intended for pharmaceuticals to be grown outdoors has not gone without protest. Ventria initially wanted to plant their crops if you can call them that anymore in Missouri. However, they were met with staunch opposition from Anheuser-Busch and others, who promptly threatened to boycott all rice from the state if the biotechnology planted their GMO rice within the states borders. Eventually though, Ventria found a place to settle in Kansas. In 2007, Jane Rissler from the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) told the Washington Post, It is unwise to produce drugs in plants outdoors.
The threat of contamination and cross-pollination between this genetically-modified rice species and natural rice is of utmost concern. While it may seem rather basic, widespread contamination of unmodified rice could lead to chronic disease.
Bill Freese, Science Policy Analyst at the Center for Food Safety (CFS), who published a report back in 2007 about the dangers of Ventrias GM rice, states, These genetically engineered drugs could exacerbate certain infections, or cause dangerous allergic or immune system reactions.
For our government agencies to allow Big Biotech companies such as Ventria to just do as they please is simply beyond words. The USDA exists not for corporate interests but to protect the American people, though it looks like they may have forgotten that. After all, why else would they allow such a corporation to potentially contaminate our food supply with a crop that will likely make people sick?
Sources:
NaturalNews.com
WorldWatch.org
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The Philippines brought an arbitration case in 2013 over the South China Sea, eventually lodging 15 claims against China related to the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea a critical piece of international law that both countries have ratified.
China claims almost all of the South China Sea, a massive body of water that stretches about 1,200 miles from the Chinese mainland. The sea covers a massive 1.4 million square miles and is abutted by eight countries with a combined population of about 2 billion people. Those waters handle about half of the worlds daily merchant shipping, a third of global oil shipping, two-thirds of all liquid natural gas shipments and more than a 10th of the Earths fish catch.
Many countries object to Chinas claims to the region. The Philippines decided to take China to court over them.
China refused to to participate in the arbitration although a 2014 position paper from Beijing was seen as an unofficial argument in the matter but the convention specifically allows for a tribunal to make legally binding decisions even if one party is absent.
The Permanent Court of Arbitration is the worlds oldest institution for settling international disputes, established at the First Hague Peace Conference in 1899. It has decided a number of high-profile maritime disputes in recent years, including between India and Bangladesh in 2009 and between Russia and the Netherlands in 2013.
The courts decision
The tribunals decision was unanimous, finding that Beijings claims of historical rights to the region were not founded on evidence and were counter to international law.
The judges ruled that the specific portion of the South China Sea claimed by both China and the Philippines belongs to the Philippines alone. None of the small land features claimed by China is sufficiently large to justify maritime exclusive economic zones for any nation, the tribunal said.
The court concluded that Chinese efforts to create man-made islands on top of atolls and reefs, as well as its large-scale fishing in the disputed areas, are illegal. Chinas interference with the Philippines fishing and oil exploration of the region is also unlawful, the tribunal said.
The award is breathtaking in its scope and the degree to which it gives long-needed clarity to the law of the sea, Peter Dutton, professor and director of the China Maritime Studies Institute at the U.S. Naval War College, told CNBC. The so-called law of the sea is a set of global standards that affect every ocean-going country.
That it is a unanimous opinion from five of the most learned and experienced practitioners of international law of the sea is especially important, he added. There has been much speculation that the tribunal would be too careful of the political implications to make such a sweeping ruling. I am proud to see that only considerations of law, and not politics, affected the unanimous ruling.
As expected, China declared that the decision is null and void and has no binding force.
How China upset the Philippines in the first place
Chinas maritime claim is intentionally ambiguous: Although the nation periodically presents maps with sketches of the boundary the so-called nine-dash line it has never explicitly given geographic coordinates, or even explained to what extent it is claiming ownership over the area.
Chinas goal has always been, and remains, to avoid any clarification of its claims, said Greg Poling, director of the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. It doesnt want other claimants or the international community to know what its claiming so it can change it at any point.
Ten more states file suit against Obamas transgender bathroom nonsense
That makes 21.
Question: Lets say a federal court orders the Obama Administration to release funds to states that dont comply with Obamas transgender bathroom nonsense, on the premise that Obama doesnt have the power to make that a condition for receiving federal funds. Lets say Obama just doesnt bother to release the funds.
(Article by Dan Calabrese)
Who can make him?
If you answered no one, then you too have figured out what Obama long ago figured out. Checks on his power are strictly theoretical. Congress can pull back the power of the purse until Obama outlasts them in a media-aided government shutdown fiasco. The FBI can find evidence of a crime until Obama reminds them that the attorney general works for him. A court can order Obama to enforce immigration laws or to send states their money, but anyone who could forcibly cause him to comply works for him.
You see how this works? And states who depend on federal money due in large part to the system of gathering and redistributing taxes that their own congressional representatives helped set up and help maintain will have to do whatever Obama feels like telling them to do. Even if they are successful at suing him, which 10 more of them are now attempting:
Ten states including Nebraska, Michigan and Ohio sued the Obama administration on Friday, saying the federal government does not have the power to tell states that transgender people must be allowed to use public bathrooms that conform with their gender identity.The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Nebraska, takes issue with a May 13 letter sent by the U.S. Department of Justice and U.S. Department of Education to states warning them that they could lose federal funding if they required transgender people to use bathrooms corresponding to their biological sex. The lawsuit says the Obama administrations move was an attempt to rewrite federal civil rights laws that do not apply to transgender people. It was filed by the attorneys general of the 10 states, which also include Arkansas, Kansas, Montana, North Dakota, South Carolina, South Dakota and Wyoming. When a federal agency takes such unilateral action in an attempt to change the meaning of established law, it leaves state and local authorities with no other option than to pursue legal clarity in federal court, Nebraskas attorney general, Doug Peterson, a Republican, said in a statement.
The outcome of the suit probably depends on the judge they draw. Get a Republican-appointed federal judge, theyve got a better-than-even chance. Get one appointed by Obama, Clinton or Carter (I have no idea if any Johnson- or Kennedy-appointed judges are still slinking around the federal courts), and the states are probably going to be told to halt their insolence and let the boys into the girls room post-haste.
But the outcome of the suit scarcely matters, except for use as a Republican talking point that will probably be about as effective as all the other ones Republicans have tried to use against Obama. The limits of Obamas power are only the limits of what Obama decides hes willing to do. Just because a court orders him to release funds doesnt mean hell be in any hurry to do it, or that he wont forget two, three or 97 times. Disobeying an order from a federal court is probably an impeachable offense, but the political class has decided that no president (well, no Democrat president) can ever be impeached for anything, because this would represent Republican overreach resulting in voter backlash which would cause Hillary to not only be elected to one term but would see her also awarded the 2020 election as a penalty for said Republican overreach.
To put it more succinctly, Obama can do whatever he wants. By the way, hes the one who really controls the power of the purpose because Congress can only allocate money. Obamas the one who spends it, or doesnt spend it, as he sees fit. When you know that no one will stand up to you, youve pretty much got absolute power.
So good luck with your lawsuit, states! Yours is a noble pursuit. And a fruitless one, because youre using the law to battle a lawless president that no one has the nerve to really stand up to.
Anyway, I have to find a restroom. Come to think of it, maybe it would be better to just go on a bush. Those are androgynous, right?
Read more at: www.caintv.com
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The long-term effects of Californias drought has led up to a mass migration out of the state
On May 31, 2016 Drought Monitor reported that 84% of the State of California was in drought, compared to 97% two months earlier. Areas of the once Golden State experiencing exceptional drought (ED-4) had fallen from 46% to 21% since October of 2015. But that doesnt necessarily mean that things are getting better. This drought has been in progress since 2011, right around the same time Fukushima began spewing nuclear waste onto California shores. Combine these two environmental catastrophes with government mandated water regulation, increased crime, high tax rates, methane well leaks, explosive fire conditions and the potential for the big one. If California was a movie, those five million folks who packed up and left in the last decade were saying, Thats a wrap.
As families and business leave for greener pastures and fewer taxes, who will buy their homes, or rent their office spaces? As Mike Adams reported in 2014, . . . the value of a home that has no running water and likelihood of ever receiving running water is very close to zero. Many readers may remember that historical phrase, Theres gold in them thar hills! But the shiny metal dreams that triggered the westward move a century ago cannot quench ones thirst nor water ones crops. The Golden State is no longer golden. While there may be pockets of fertility, the color associated with California is now a dusty, reddish cracked and broken brown.
Theres a lot of blame going around. Natural hydrologic cycles. Geo engineering. Unrestrained growth. Government Idiocy. On that note, Americanthinker.com informs us that California allows one third of its system water to escape to the ocean to protect fish. You read that right. And then theres the globalist mantra about how its all mans fault cause he exhales carbon. But thats another story.
Sources:
Droughtmonitor.unl.edu
Naturalnews.com
Americanthinker.com
Science.naturalnews.com
nbcbayarea.com
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Loan applying process might be conducted online and agriculture loan should be provided within scheduled timeframe: Radha Mohan Singh
New Delhi, Wed, 13 Jul 2016 NI Wire
The Union Minister of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, Shri Radha Mohan Singh has asked NABARD to make its agriculture loan process easier along with its banking facilities so that they can grant the required loan on time. The Minister urged this on the valedictory function of one day National Seminar on Doubling of Farmers' Income by 2022" organized by NABARD on its 35th Foundation Day yesterday. Shri Singh further said that they should also work on to standardize the documents concerned for the sanction of loan. He added that we should ensure that loan applying process might be conducted online and agriculture loan should be provided within scheduled timeframe.
The Minister said that a long term irrigation fund has been set up with a cluster fund of Rs. 20,000 crore with the cooperation of NABARD so as to complete some of the larger irrigation projects. Shri Radha Mohan Singh further added that to provide bank loan to landless farmers, Modi Government has provided financial help of Rs. 10,225 crore to 10.49 lakh joint liability groups during the span of 2 years. Whereas previous government had provided financial help of Rs. 6630 crore only to 6.7 lakh such clusters during the span of 7 years. To fulfil the loan needs of farmers, a target of Rs. 9 lakh crore has been earmarked for the year 2016-17 and we hope that this will be achieved.
The Minister observed that digitalization process related to land records in most of the states has been completed so as to sanction loan expeditiously to the farmers. Apart from this, online mortgage is also being facilitated. Simultaneously the schemes related to interest subvention and relaxations on timely repayment of the loan are also continued this year so that farmers might obtain agriculture loan at the rate of 4% interest. Recently a sum of Rs. 18,000 crore has been approved for interest subventions.
The Union Minister of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare said that every possible efforts are being made to make the farmers income as double. To chalk out strategy for this purpose, a committee has been constituted in Ministry of Agriculture under the Chairmanship of Dr. Ashok Dalwai, Additional Secretary. NCAER along with this committee is being associated as a knowledge organization. He while expressing his views said NABARD will develop the programmes and products concerned so as to double the income of the farmers.
Shri Singh said that for the last two years Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare has conducted various programmes one after another to reduce the output incurred on agricultural activities and to provide appropriate return to the farmers for their products. The Union Minister said that under the leadership of Honble Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi, his Ministry has launched Soil Health Card, Neem Coated Urea, Traditional Agriculture Development Scheme as well as Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchai Yojana which triggered positive results. The Minister stated that recently Honble Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi has commenced National Agriculture Market (E- Mandi) Scheme in 21 mandis of 8 states. Thereafter, two more mandis also have been added thereof. In this respect most of the states are rectifying their APMC Acts.
Shri Singh briefed that West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Odisha, Punjab, Jharkhand, Bihar as well as Kerala have been invited for this purpose and they have been stressed that they should participate in E-Mandi process in the interest of the farmers in their states. On this eve the Agriculture Minister briefed that Modi Government has set up a National Climate Adaptation Fund to face the challenges created by the impact of climate change. The Union Minister opined that the outputs received from the states in respect of Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana are encouraging.
Source: PIB
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It's not quite the immortal Ron Burgundy line from the movie Anchorman, but Nokia (News - Alert) is actively working with the City of San Diego to help its residents stay a little safer. This is thanks to some new augmentations in the city's public safety systems. Now, the eighth largest city in the United States will be able to deliver better responses and help keep its citizens safe.
Nokia's new systems should give San Diego public safety a lot more operational capacity, thanks to the use of Internet protocol / Multi-protocol Label Switching (IP / MPLS) systems, along with packet microwave radio systems that will help first responders better connect in emergencies and pass information along accordingly. Meanwhile, San Diego is putting its own data network into the project to provide backhaul services for the P25 digital trunked radio system, allowing for both high-capacity and high-speed connections. There's even sufficient bandwidth for video surveillance and support for supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) operations.
Nokia's also chipping in some hardware, including its:
9500 Microwave Packet Radio
7750 Service Router
7210 Service Access Switch
7705 Service Aggregation Router
In addition, the Nokia's 5620 Service Aware (News - Alert) Manager will oversee the system managing video, time-division multiplexer (TDM) and Ethernet services as San Diego continues moving its networks to being all-IP. And, just to round it all out, Nokia will be providing useful services which include field maintenance, tower construction, network design and engineering, and several others.
Kamal Ballout, who serves as Nokia's head of sales in the global enterprise and public sector for the U.S market, commented Municipal communications networks, particularly in large cities like San Diego, are facing enormous demands as more bandwidth-intensive applications such as video are utilized for public safety and other municipal services. Nokia has the premier end-to-end public safety networking solution to address mission-critical requirements.
Those enormous demands aren't only faced by municipal communications networks. We all know from even casual observation that an increase in streaming video is driving such demands, and that's before we throw in the rise of cloud-based systems and connected appliances that we're seeing every day. Regardless of what direction we look, we know that greater bandwidth demand isn't just on the table today, but will likely be a part of the overall environment for some time to come. Nokia's move to provide more bandwidth, and more highly-specific tools, should go a long way toward improving public safety systems' ability to respond by giving these more to work with that's specifically intended for public safety use.
As frequent visitors to the Next Generation Communications Community are aware, Alcatel-Lucent (News - Alert) which is now part of the new Nokia, has long been a leader in providing public safety organizations purpose-built networking capabilities to enable them to keep up with the intense demands on their networks and allow them to provide enhanced and more responsive services. San Diego is clearly a place for other municipalities to look when they are evaluating their own future networking needs.
Edited by Peter Bernstein
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As everyone in the information and communications technology (ICT) business is aware, the monetization of intellectual property (IP) is crucial to success. And, as recent headlines have proven time and again, what is at stake can run into the billions of dollars and has been the source of extensive contention and litigation. For this reason, when companies agree to cooperate rather than, as the famous phrase from the Godfather movie, go to the mattresses, it is welcome news.
For this reason the announcement that Nokia (News - Alert) and Samsung have agreed on terms to expand their patent cross license agreement is noteworthy. Back in February of this year, as a result of an arbitration agreement between the two companies, certain aspects of their patent portfolios were to be shared. The new agreement extends the items to be covered.
In fact, in making the announcement of the expansion Nokia noted it: expands access for each company to patented technologies of the other and reinforces Nokia's leadership in technologies for the programmable world. With this expansion, Nokia expects a positive impact to the net sales of Nokia Technologies starting from the third quarter of 2016Nokia Technologies' annualized net sales related to patent and brand licensing is expected to grow to a run rate of approximately EUR 950 million by the end of 2016.
Commenting on the expansion, Ramzi Haidamus, president of Nokia Technologies stated: "With intellectual property portfolios from Nokia Technologies, Nokia Networks and Alcatel-Lucent (News - Alert), Nokia has a wealth of technologies relevant to mobile devices and beyond." He added, "We welcome this expanded agreement with Samsung which recognizes the strength of our assets, and we continue to pursue new licensing opportunities across a number of diverse industries."
The key words in the above are about Nokias desire to push into markets beyond those it has traditionally pursued. This includes recent initiative in the area of digital health and virtual reality, just to name a few.
For those unfamiliar, formed in 2014, Nokia Technologies is the companys advanced technology and licensing business which is charged with the monetization of the formidable patent portfolio that has resulted from Nokias acquisition of Alcatel-Lucent combined with Nokias own impressive IP. Why Samsung (News - Alert) and the expansion go to the heart of Nokias stated intentions of being a leader in the connected device area end-to-end. It also speaks to Samsungs need to be able to leverage the networking knowledge and IP of Nokia to enhance its offerings.
To use a much quoted cliche, the bottom line is the bottom line. Both companies have wisely chosen the path of cooperation over litigation which can only benefit their pursuits of going after several major emerging market opportunities. This is particularly of importance as the Internet of Things (IoT), virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) markets explode across a variety of verticals. Indeed, the Pokemon Go phenomenon is just one example of how fast new capabilities can explode, and no solutions provider wants to be a slow follower. This is an agreement to keep an eye on as products and services go from being ideas to realization.
Edited by Alicia Young
In the early 2000s, the former Bell Labs engineer was busy caring for his elderly father and building his own technology business. Thats when he first came up with the idea for a companion robot: a machine that could look after his dad and keep him in touch with the outside world via webcam.
Hines started working on a prototype carebot, but ran into trouble finding financial and legal support for the project. So he gave up, and instead turned his attentions to Roxxxy, a life-size sexbot dressed in filmy black lingerie (always turned on and ready to talk or play!). That gambit was far more successful.
Roxxxy, termed a sex robot is a full-size interactive sex doll. The robot is built by the New Jersey-based company TrueCompanion. Hines worked as an artificial intelligence engineer at the Bell Labs before he founded TrueCompanion. Development of Roxxxy is claimed to have cost between $500,000 and $1 million.
For US $7000 to $9000 (based on customization) and a $40 monthly fee for tech support, Roxxxy offers patrons five preprogrammed preferencesgay, bisexual, lesbian, straight, and sadomasochisticwith such monikers as Wild Wendy, Frigid Farrah, and S and M Susan. Roxxxy is svelte and white, but Hines intends a future line of other races, ethnicities, and body types, not to mention additional faces for Roxxxy. A male version, Rocky, is planned by years end. My wife wants to be a beta tester, which is just desserts for my spending time in the middle of the night with girls covered in silicone, he says.
Hines devised the skin by encasing a womana fine-art modelin silicone and cutting the material away after it solidified. Roxxxy has three inputs and motors where it counts, explains Hines. Theres a lot of heat buildup, so we installed a convection system. Other motors simulate a heartbeat and responsive gestures.
Hines employed a voice-over artist to record the robots vocalssnoring, sleepy talk, and escalating orgasmic yelpsas well as a conversational mode programmed to discuss specific areas of interest. Roxxxys knowledge database starts with a customers answers to a preferences questionnaire of 400 questions.
Sexbots are a segment of the sex doll industry
New materials and technologies for sex dolls
Silicone dolls were at first made from tin-cure silicone but platinum technology has better longevity, less prone to tears and compression marks. For this reason the RealDoll manufacturer reported switching from the tin to the platinum material in June 2009 and all other manufacturers have followed suit.
Since 2012 or so a thermoplastic elastomer alternative known as TPE has come into common use particularly by Chinese manufacturers which has enabled realistic dolls to be made which are cheaper than those composed of the high quality expensive platinum cure silicone.
CybOrgasMatrix dolls used an elastic gel, which they claimed to be superior to silicone in elasticity, shape memory, and durability. Both this company and the company First Androids once offered pelvic thruster motor, audio capability and heated orifices, though these options are no longer available. Several modern doll manufacturers now offer the last option on their silicone dolls, with the addition of an internal heating system.
Germany became Europes Bordello, and the dark side to the countrys booming sex industry
Germany is sticking with real women.
Where are all the care-robots?
Its especially curious that the carebot revolution has not taken place, in light of how direly we need it to. In the UK, the number of citizens over the age of 65 is expected to surge by 12 per cent by 2020; and the number of over-85s by 18 per cent. Reports have identified care for the elderly as one of the fastest-growing roles in healthcare.
Its certainly not a lack of robots thats causing the hold-up. A bevy of recent prototypes includes Toyota Research Labs Robear to lift people out of bed, wheelie bot Zenbo, which can call for help in an emergency, and the seal pup Paro, which takes on the emotional labour of fuzzy companionship. In a demo video for Robot-Era, a project recently piloted in Italy and Sweden, friendly machines pick up groceries and mail, relay video calls, take out the rubbish, provide reminders about medication, and take their owners arms as they stroll down the street.
But how well will these sell? Not very, if you believe surveys. It seems that people dont like the idea of carebots looking after their vulnerable relatives. Of more than 25,000 people questioned in a 2012 survey of attitudes in the European Union, 60 per cent thought robots that care for children, the elderly and the disabled should be banned outright; and 86 per cent said they would be uncomfortable with one caring for their children or parents (though many more were OK with the idea of a robotic assistant and even a surgeon).
In a separate poll of people in the US, 65 per cent of respondents across all ages agreed that it would be a change for the worse if robots became the primary caregivers for the sick and elderly.
In the paper Granny and the Robots, Amanda Sharkey and Noel Sharkey at the University of Sheffield, UK, point out another drawback to life with a robo-caretaker: its lonely. Putting a carebot in place of a human might deprive many of one of their few opportunities for regular social contact. Such isolation is linked to poorer health outcomes, such as a greater risk of developing Alzheimers disease or dementia. It could also make people feel plain dehumanised ripped of their dignity, a vulnerable object to be lifted, fed or prompted at intervals.
Or, as one person put it recently in The Guardian, being left with a carebot is just another way of dying even more miserably.
The future for care robots is looking a lot murkier. Unlike with sex robots, we dont know what we want from them.
SOURCES New Scientist, wikipedia, youtube
Most systems in nature are inherently nonlinear, meaning that their response to any external excitation is not proportional to the strength of the applied stimulus. Nonlinearities are observed, for example, in macroscopic phenomena such as the flow of fluids like water and air or of currents in electronic circuits. Manipulating the nonlinear behavior is therefore inherently interesting for achieving control over several processes. An international team of researchers led by Andrea Cavalleri from the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter at CFEL in Hamburg utilized the nonlinear interaction between a terahertz light field and a superconducting plasma wave in a high temperature cuprate superconductor to amplify the latter. This resulted in a more coherent superconductor, which is less susceptible to thermal fluctuations. Due to the non-dissipative superconducting nature of the plasma wave, the study opens up new avenues for plasmonics, a field of science utilizing plasma waves for transmitting information
Potential Applications
Amplification of Josephson plasma waves, exploiting the nonlinear Josephson relations with THz pulses, falls in the category of the previous works led by Andrea Cavalleri on layered superconductors, wherein THz light was utilized to switch off and on superconductivity between the planes and to generate superconducting solitons. In addition, this work has implications in the control of fluctuations of the superfluid. The possibility to parametrically control the superfluid in layered superconductors might eventually provide a tool to stabilize fluctuating superconductivity, perhaps even for temperatures above the critical temperature, concludes Andrea Cavalleri.
Josephson plasma wave in a layered superconductor, parametrically amplified through a strong terahertz light pulse.
J.M. Harms/MPSD
Arxiv Parametric Amplification of a Terahertz Quantum Plasma Wave (25 pages)
The Josephson effect
The Josephson effect, predicted by Brian D. Josephson in 1962, consists in the tunneling of Cooper pairs across a thin, insulating junction between two superconductors. This superconductor-insulator-superconductor structure is called a Josephson junction. This theory was soon experimentally confirmed and in 1973 Josephson received the Nobel Prize in Physics, as his prediction resulted in the verification of the macroscopic quantum nature of superconductors.
The charge dynamics in Josephson junctions is governed by the Josephson equations, which state that the current associated with the tunneling Cooper pairs is proportional to the sine of the phase difference between the two superconductors. Under an applied voltage, the current oscillates at a frequency that depends on the voltage drop at the junction. The Josephson effect not only resulted in fundamental advances in physics but also in many applications including so-called SQUIDs, i.e. very sensitive magnetometers that are used to measure extremely weak magnetic fields. These are used, for instance, in medicine for mapping brain activity (magnetoencephalography). Moreover, Josephson junctions are nowadays employed as an extremely precise voltage standard, because the Josephson effect is a quantum effect that relates voltages and frequencies (or time) by a proportionality involving only fundamental constants.
Current research topics utilizing the Josephson effect include the realization of qubits for quantum computing and photonic devices in the gigahertz (GHz) and terahertz (THz) frequency regime.
Josephson plasma waves in cuprate superconductors
Layered superconductors like high-Tc cuprates being built of alternating superconducting and insulating planes are a nanoscale version of a stack of Josephson junctions. In these materials, superconducting transport first occurs in the copper-oxygen planes, while three-dimensional superconductivity emerges via Josephson tunneling in the direction perpendicular to the planes.
In analogy to Maxwells equations in electrodynamics, whose temporal and spatial dependence results in electromagnetic waves, the Josephson relations result in the so-called Josephson plasma waves. The frequency of these waves falls into the THz range for cuprate materials and can therefore be observed with conventional THz spectroscopy.
The team around Andrea Cavalleri used THz radiation to probe Josephson plasma waves in barium-doped lanthanum copper oxide (La1.905Ba0.095CuO4). From the reflection of the probe pulse they could detect oscillations at about half a THz frequency. When we irradiated the superconductor with our weak probe pulses, we could observe oscillations of the reflected field at a specific frequency, the so-called Josephson plasma frequency, says Srivats Rajasekaran, first author of the paper and postdoc at the MPSD in Hamburg.
Nonlinearities of Josephson plasma waves and parametric amplification
Since the Josephson plasma waves are governed by the Josephson relations, they are inherently nonlinear. In the current study, these Josephson plasma waves were driven into a highly nonlinear regime using an additional intense THz pump pulse with very large field strengths of up to 100 kV/cm. This was made possible by exploiting the recent advances in THz technology. In this regime, amplification of the Josephson plasma wave was observed experimentally. The reflectivity of the sample became larger than 100% and, on top of that, the absorption coefficient became negative. These are clear indications of amplification occurring inside the material, explains Srivats Rajasekaran.
Parametric amplification in simple oscillating systems, achieved by periodically modulating some specific parameter, is a well-understood phenomenon. For instance, a child on a swing increases its oscillation amplitude by periodically raising and lowering its center of mass. An example from electronics is an LC circuit with periodically varied capacitance or inductance. Parametric amplifiers of this type have applications in the enhancement of weak signals without increasing its noise (used e.g. in radio astronomy). When it comes to parametric amplification, a layered superconductor acts very much like an LC circuit, says Srivats Rajasekaran. The Josephson supercurrent is like a wire connecting the plates of a capacitor the copper oxide layers. The inductance of the supercurrent depends on the phase difference between the layers, and this phase difference varies with time and position on the plane.
When we applied our intense pump pulse, the pump-probe response oscillated at twice the Josephson plasma frequency. This is equivalent to modulating the inductance periodically, which is required for parametric amplification, adds Srivats Rajasekaran. This is the first time that the effect of parametric amplification by light irradiation has been demonstrated for Josephson plasma waves, declares Andrea Cavalleri, director at the MPSD in Hamburg.
Abstract
Many applications in photonics require all-optical manipulation of plasma waves, which can concentrate electromagnetic energy on sub-wavelength length scales. This is difficult in metallic plasmas because of their small optical nonlinearities. Some layered superconductors support weakly damped plasma waves involving oscillatory tunneling of the superfluid between capacitively coupled planes. Such Josephson plasma waves (JPWs) are also highly nonlinear, and exhibit striking phenomena like cooperative emission of coherent terahertz radiation, superconductor-metal oscillations and soliton formation. We show here that terahertz JPWs in cuprate superconductors can be parametrically amplified through the cubic tunneling nonlinearity. Parametric amplification is sensitive to the relative phase between pump and seed waves and may be optimized to achieve squeezing of the order parameter phase fluctuations or single terahertz-photon devices.
SOURCES Arxiv, Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter, Nature Physics
Reaction Engines Ltd. announces today the signing of a 10m Development Contract with the European Space Agency, finalizing the UK Governments 60m commitment.
Reaction Engines Ltd., today announces the signing of a 10m European Space Agency (ESA) contract which will enable the development of a ground based demonstrator of SABRE, a new class of aerospace engine which is highly scalable with multiple potential applications in hypersonic travel and space access.
SABRE is at heart a rocket engine designed to power aircraft directly into space (single-stage to orbit) to allow reliable, responsive and cost effective space access, and in a different configuration to allow aircraft to cruise at high speeds (five times the speed of sound) within the atmosphere.
In the past, attempts to design single stage to orbit propulsion systems have been unsuccessful largely due to the weight of an on-board oxidiser such as liquid oxygen, needed by conventional rocket engines. One possible solution to reduce the quantity of on-board oxidizer required is by using oxygen already present in the atmosphere in the combustion process just like an ordinary jet engine. This weight saving would enable the transition from single-use multi-stage launch vehicles to multi-use single stage launch vehicles.
SABRE is the first engine to achieve this goal by operating in two rocket modes: initially in air-breathing mode and subsequently in conventional rocket mode:
Air breathing mode the rocket engine sucks in atmospheric air as a source of oxygen (as in a typical jet engine) to burn with its liquid hydrogen fuel in the rocket combustion chamber
Conventional rocket mode the engine is above the atmosphere and transitions to using conventional on-board liquid oxygen.
In both modes the thrust is generated using the rocket combustion chamber and nozzles. This is made possible through a synthesis of elements from rocket and gas turbine technology.
This approach enables SABRE-powered vehicles to save carrying over 250 tons of on-board oxidant on their way to orbit, and removes the necessity for massive throw-away first stages that are jettisoned once the oxidant they contain has been used up, allowing the development of the first fully re-usable space access vehicles such as SKYLON.
While this sounds simple, the problem is that in air-breathing mode, the air must be compressed to around 140 atmospheres before injection into the combustion chambers which raises its temperature so high that it would melt any known material. SABRE avoids this by first cooling the air using a Pre-cooler heat exchanger until it is almost a liquid. Then a relatively conventional turbo compressor using jet engine technology can be used to compress the air to the required pressure.
This means when SABRE is in the Earths atmosphere the engine can use air to burn with the hydrogen fuel rather than the liquid oxygen used when in rocket mode, which gives an 8 fold improvement in propellant consumption. The air-breathing mode can be used until the engine has reached over 5 times the speed of sound and an altitude of 25 kilometers which is 20% of the speed and 20% of the altitude needed to reach orbit. The remaining 80% can be achieved using the SABRE engines in rocket mode.
For space access, the thrust during air-breathing ascent is variable but around 200 tonnes per engine. During rocket ascent this rises to 300 tonnes but is then throttled down towards the end of the ascent to limit the longitudinal acceleration to 3.0g.
Todays signing represents the final piece of the British Governments 60 million commitment of grant funding towards the SABRE programme. Within this commitment, 10m is being administered by ESAs Technology Centre (ESTEC), alongside 50 million directly through the UK Space Agency. The terms of the UK Space Agency grant funding were agreed in late December 2015. In November 2015, BAE Systems invested 20.6 million in Reaction Engines to acquire 20 per cent of its share capital and agreed to provide industrial, technology development and project management expertise to support Reaction Engines during its development phase.
The agreements now in place between Reaction Engines, ESA and the UK Space Agency, together with the working partnership with BAE Systems, set the framework for Reaction Engines to deliver the worlds first SABRE ground demonstrator engine by the end of the decade.
SOURCES Reaction Engines, Vimeo
China has plans for the military buildup of Scarborough Shoal and it would put Chinese and US Naval Forces (stationed in the Philippines) within short range missile of each other.
Vice Adm. Yoji Koda, a retired commander-in-chief of Japans Self-Defense Fleet, said in answer to a question that Tuesdays decision by the Permanent Court of Arbitration on the U.N. Convention of the Law of the Sea, presents Washington and Tokyo with a fait accompli.
Militarily, he told an audience at the Center for the Strategic and International Studies, a Washington, D.C., think-tank, if Beijing goes ahead with building up Scarborough Shoal, it could be a game changer.
What he was referring to at the Wednesday event was the creation of a triangle of military facilities on artificial islands allowing China to project power to its claimed nine-dash line, from its coastal mainland.
Im not saying go to war today, but you have to be prepared.
The plan to develop and militarize Scarborough Shoal, however, has set off alarm bells in both the Pentagon and State Department because of the areas proximity to the Philippines, a U.S. treaty ally that recently agreed to enhance defense cooperation in the face of Chinese aggression.
Contrary to Chinas claim, the primary purpose of the reclaimed atolls is strategic. The harbors on the manmade islands will enable PLA-Navy and Chinese Coast Guard (CCG) vessels to conduct round-the-clock presence missions in the South China Sea without the need to return to ports in mainland China. Radar and satellite communications systems will significantly enhance Chinas maritime domain awareness in the South China Sea. The airfield on Fiery Cross Reef is able to accommodate almost every aircraft in the PLAs inventory, including heavy transport and combat aircraft.10 As the PLA currently lacks a fully operational aircraft carrier, and has limited in-flight refuelling capabilities, the atolls should enable Chinas military to base fighter aircraft in the Spratlys on a permanent basis.
China is calling the construction project for Scarborough Shoal its plan for HuangyanYellow RockIsland, where a settlement will be set up.
The shoal is located about 168 miles from Subic Bay in the Philippines, where U.S. warships will be regularly deployed in the future as part of the enhanced defense agreement recently concluded between Washington and Manila.
The website included satellite photographs purportedly based on a construction bid proposed by the Huangyan Island Township, a municipality created under what China claims is its regional authority on Sansha Island, located near Chinas Hainan Island.
A graphic with one photo outlined the development plan, with three Chinese guided-missile frigates at a wharf at the southern opening of the shoal.
From this future base the 400-kilometer range YJ-62 can attack targets in most of the Philippine main island of Luzon, Fisher said. China could also deploy longer range anti-ship ballistic missiles to this base.
The US and the Philippines began joint patrols in the South China Sea in March, US defense chief Ash Carter revealed during his latest visit to the region. US forces will also have access to at least eight military bases in the Philippines, with two air bases in Pampanga, 330km from Scarborough Shoal.
The atoll is a potential flashpoint in the disputed South China Sea and is claimed by Beijing, Manila and Taipei. Chinese coastguard ships took control of the area after a tense stand-off with Philippine vessels in 2012.
SOURCES- South China Morning Post, USNI, Eurasia Review
Here is the press release and videos of supercontroversial Brilliant Light Power aka Blacklight Power. They are like the energy catalyzer. They claim new power. Brilliant Light power claims hydrinos exist. Hydrinos are a new form of hydrogen theoretically predicted by Dr. Mills and produced and characterized by BLP. Hydrinos are produced during the BlackLight Process as energy is released from the hydrogen atom as the electron transitions to a lower-energy state resulting in a smaller radius hydrogen atom. Brilliant Light has solved the theory, confirmed Hydrino reaction products by many analytical techniques, and identified Hydrino as the pervasive dark matter of the universe. Mills claims that Hydronos are fractional orbital hydrogen. This goes against the quantum nature of hydrogen for standard physics.
The SunCell was invented and engineered to harness the clean energy source from the reaction the hydrogen atoms of water molecules to form a non-polluting product, lower-energy state hydrogen called Hydrino wherein the energy release of H2O fuel is 100 times that of an equivalent amount of high-octane gasoline at an unprecedented high power density. The compact power is manifest as tens of thousands of Sun equivalents that can be directly converted to electrical output using commercial photovoltaic cells.
Brilliant Light Power, Inc. (BrLP) announced today that it has continuously generated over a million watts of power from a new primary source until the cell vaporized from the intense heat. The power released by the conversion of hydrogen atoms from water molecules in to a lower energy form called Hydrino or dark matter is manifest as brilliant-light emitting plasma wherein the light is uniquely and extraordinarily essentially all high-energy light in the extreme ultraviolet. Using four cross-confirming methodologies, five validators have confirmed over a million watts of plasma power developed by BrLPs so-called SunCell at power gains of over 100 times the power to ignite the Hydrino reaction, and at power densities higher than any previously known energy source. Dr. Randy Booker, physics professor and former Physics Department Chairman at University of North Carolina-Ashville said, The power was measured using two optical power measurements involving three sophisticated spectrometers calibrated against a National Institute of Science and Technology traceable standard and two thermal methods involving a commercial calorimeter and the rate of the rise of the water coolant temperature of the SunCell. All four methodologies cross-confirmed the production of megawatt scale power that was continuous in the case of the SunCell with spectacular commercial potential. Moreover, the unique and characteristic spectrum from the optical tests of essentially purely high energy light emission over a predicted range confirms the hydrino reaction as the source of the power.
BrLP subsequently held an invitation demonstration event on June 28, 2016 for about 50 guests from industry and academia wherein BrLP presented live demonstrations of the enormous power density and power gain by multiple methods. BrLP also presented an engineered SunCell prototype having no moving parts that it believes is capable of producing 125 kW of electricity. BrLP anticipates having field trials in 2017 supported by several current engineering firm and manufacturer partners. It comprises refractory materials capable of the intense heat wherein the SunCells enormous power density heats a blackbody radiator to incandescent temperatures to produce the effect of thousands of halogen light bulbs, and the light is converted to electricity with so-called concentrator photovoltaic cells that receive the light from the blackbody radiator and operate at incident light intensities of over one thousand times that of sunlight. Details of the SunCell, the BlackLight Process, the video and slide presentation from the June 28, 2016 demonstrations, background theory, journal publications, and other support materials are available on the BrLP webpage (http://brilliantlightpower.com).
BrLP presented live demonstrations of the enormous power density and power gain by multiple methods. BrLP also presented an engineered SunCell prototype having no moving parts that it believes is capable of producing 125 kW of electricity and is planned to be launched for initial commercialization in 2017.
The power is in bursts of millions of watts in a volume of a coffee cup. Cell meltdown including the thick tungsten electrodes can occur in seconds as shown in the above photo. Five independent validators using four cross confirming methodologies, two absolute spectroscopic and two thermal techniques using a commercial calorimeter and a heat exchanger on the SunCell, have established that the power demonstrated in this video is megawatt level with about 8 kW total input. The vapor is boiled off silver metal having a boiling point temperature of 3924 F.
BrLPs safe, non-polluting power-producing system catalytically converts the hydrogen of the H2O-based solid fuel into a non-polluting product, Hydrino, by allowing the electrons to fall to smaller radii around the nucleus. The energy release is over 200 times that of burning the equivalent amount of hydrogen with oxygen. Due to this extraordinary energy release, H2O may serve as the source of hydrogen fuel to form Hydrinos and oxygen. Moreover, the SunCell is compact, light-weight and autonomous with a projected capital cost of 1% to 10% that of any other form of power. The anticipated cost is so low that BrLP intends to provide autonomous individual power for essentially all stationary and motive applications untethered to the grid or any fuels infrastructure. Dr. Mills announced, This is the end of the age of fire, the internal combustion engine, and centralized power and fuels.
The commercial potential for SunCell technology is enormous. The promise of a cheap, clean and unlimited source of electric power is on the verge of commercialization. SunCell components are based on well-known technologies from electrical lighting, photovoltaic, semiconductor, refractory and aerospace industries, and use widely available materials. What is new is Brilliant Light Powers theoretical and experimental breakthroughs, protected by patents and proprietary know-how. Albert Einstein is looking down, smiling: I told you so, He does not play dice, said Former World Bank manager Gerhard Pohl. Dr. Joseph Renick, former Chief Scientist at Applied Research Associates added, It is understandable why even the best of scientists have difficulty taking seriously that which has been accomplished by Dr. Mills and his team at Brilliant Light Power because of how completely it transforms our understanding of atomic and molecular structure, dispels of all the strangeness associated with quantum theory so cherished by quantum physicists and chemists and then to boot delivers to mankind a new source of essentially unlimited inexpensive clean energy. The novel techniques, materials and processes developed by BrLP in the last few years are making this new source of energy a reality for all of mankind. The rest, however painful it will be for many in the natural sciences, will follow.
One of the validators, Bucknell Professor Dr. Peter Mark Jansson PE remarked, An objective review of the progress BrLP has made over the past decade in the development of their proprietary hydrogen-based technology indicates that they have achieved an understanding of the fundamental parameters that must be controlled to create a sustainable and energetic reaction of their atomic hydrogen fuel and catalysts. They have made landmark progress in creating demonstration devices that prove the concept of their generation technology with promise of becoming continuously operating prototypes in the near future. The creation of these consistently replicable experiments where input power is multiplied by 65 to 150 times is a remarkable achievement. The input power for these respective experiments was 8.02 kW and 10.45 kW with corresponding output power peaks reaching as high as 521 kW and 1.56 MW. Although these energy bursts were on the order of 1 to 3 minutes in duration I was able to observe a more continuous, sustainable reaction experiment that lasted over 7 minutes, other validators were able to observe operating SunCells for over 30 minutes in duration. Dr. K.V. Ramanujachary, Rowan University Meritorious Professor of Chemistry and Material Science, added that from his independent tests he finds the developments truly impressive and extremely important. I believe that the technology is amenable for making large-scale devices as easily as a portable one. This is what makes it very attractive.
SOURCE Blacklight power
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London-based human rights group Amnesty International (AI) has sounded the alarm over the spike in forced disappearances occurring in Egypt as authorities strive to silence dissident and outspoken voices criticizing the regimes crackdown policies.
AI reveals in a report released Wednesday that forced disappearances have become a tactic to quash critical voices opposed to Al Sisis regime.
Enforced disappearance has become a key instrument of state policy in Egypt. Anyone who dares to speak out is at risk, said Philip Luther, Amnestys Middle East and North Africa director.
Authorities crackdown also targets children who are often kept in secrete security locations where they are subject to rape and torture.
The report cites 17 cases including cases of five children who were reported missing for periods of between several days to seven months.
The report documents cases of children who were subjected to horrendous abuse including rape with wooden sticks, beatings, electric shocks etc.
The human rights watchdog also revealed that 3 to four people are subjected to forced disappearance every day in Egypt.
Al-Sisis regime has been repeatedly accused of human rights abuses but al-Sisi who came to power via a coup in 2013 before being elected the following year rejects the accusations as baseless.
AI further notes that Egyptian authorities use the fight against terrorism as an excuse to attack anyone opposed to the regime.
The rights group also urges the United States and the EU and other global powers to rein in Cairo so it stops abusing peoples rights.
The International community is tightening the noose around Algeria to enable a census of the population held in the Polsario-run Camps with the latest call by the House of Appropriators on the US Secretary of State to put pressure on Algiers to cooperate with the UN refugee Agency in this regard.
The Secretary of State shall take all practicable steps to secure the cooperation of the Government of Algeria for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to conduct a census of the refugee camps near Tindouf, Algeria, The US House of Representatives said in the pending annual foreign aid spending bill.
The bill also includes a provision on making aid earmarked for Morocco available in the Saharan provinces, a clause that represents a tacit recognition of Moroccos sovereignty over its southern provinces.
Capitol Hill thus deals a heavy blow to Algeria and its puppet the Polisario by echoing calls made previously by Morocco, international rights NGOs and recently by the European Union for a head-count to be conducted.
In a desperate response to the bill, which indirectly upholds Algeria responsible for the ordeal of the population held against their will in Tindouf camps, the Algerian Ambassador in Washington, Madjid Bouguerra, vented his anger in a letter addressed to the House of Representatives Committee on Appropriations, a copy of which was published by the Al-Monitor news website.
In the letter, the Algerian diplomat asked for dropping the provision on the census and warned of consequences on US-Algerian relations. The letters content shows the scale of disappointment and confusion within a decaying Algerian regime on the verge of implosion due to falling oil prices and frail social cohesion.
The bill came following a series of setbacks for the Cold War-minded Algerian diplomacy. The most painful came from the EU which has decided to reduce aid sent to the Polisario-run camps in a bid to curb humanitarian aid diversion. Following a report by the EU anti-fraud office (OLAF) denouncing the embezzlement of humanitarian aid by the Polisario leadership and Algerian officials, the European Commission will cut aid commensurately with the estimated number of 90,000 people instead of the inflated 165,000 people put forward by the Polisario and Algeria in an attempt to sell the idea of the existence of a Sahrawi People with a republic in exile.
According to the Algerian opposition news outlet, Tamurt.info, the number of Moroccan Sahraouis in Tindouf camps does not exceed two thirds of the 90,000 camps inhabitants, with the rest being Mauritanians and Sub-Saharans who were forced to stay in the camps as part of an Algerian scheme to inflate numbers.
Carrying out a head-count of the population held in Tindouf will enable international aid agencies to assess the needs of the population and will also pave the way for the camps dwellers to obtain the refugee status which will grant them the right to return to their homeland Morocco or at least the right to freely choose their country of asylum, such options Algeria and the Polisario dread the most as they continue to trade in the suffering of Sahraouis living in abject conditions.
A member of the UN mission to the Sahara (MINURSO) was recently caught spying on the Moroccan police in the southern city of Laayoune, the Assabah daily reported on July 13.
The MINURSO member was intercepted while secretly filming a sit-in by a bunch of separatists in a small neighborhood in Laayoune, the same source said, adding that the police confiscated his camera in which images of previous sittings were found.
This incident comes at a moment Morocco and the MINURSO are negotiating new terms for the return of the civilian staff of the UN mission, who were expelled by Rabat after the biased statements of the UN Secretary General and his blunt support for the separatist thesis.
This recent case of espionage is vindicating Morocco which has denounced the MINURSO on multiple occasions on grounds of siding with the separatists and derailing from its cease-fire monitoring role.
Forces loyal to the UN-sponsored Libyan unity government have intensified assault on the Islamic State militants in Sirte in an attempt to dislodge the fighters still holding firm in the coastal city.
Air-strikes and shelling resumed sporadically on Tuesday as Misrata powerful militia loyal to the Government of National Accord (GNA) pushes further into late Muammar Gaddafis hometown that the terrorist group turned into its regional command center.
The Tuesday shelling and airstrikes targeted militants positions in the city center and their logistics hideouts, the spokesperson of the militia said.
Our forces havetargeted militants with artillery and air force around Ouagadougou complex, Ghiza Asskariya district, and in the city center, said Rida Issa.
They have targeted ISIS members, vehicles, ammunition stores, and control rooms.
The upsurge in forces attack follows loss of the momentum few weeks ago. The take-over of the town which started in May slowed down after militants resorted to suicide attacks, use of explosives, and snipers to push back the regular forces.
One militia fighter was killed and 20 were wounded in the Tuesday fighting. The IS group lost 13 fighters.
Since the beginning of the campaign, more than 200 fighters were killed while the number of injured is put at more than 500.
IS entered Libyan in 2014 as result of power haggle among Libyan opposed camps. It took control of Sirte last year, manning its airport and port. Western countries fear the terrorist group would smuggle militants among illegal migrants setting off from Libyas coasts to Europe.
UN-backed GNA birthed in December in Morocco has made chase of IS and takeover of the coastal city one of its top priorities.
Photo-Illustration: Daily Intelligencer; Photo: Getty Images
The sexual-harassment investigation of the 76-year-old Fox News chief Roger Ailes is under way. Yesterday, lawyers from Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, the outside law firm hired by 21st Century Fox to conduct the inquiry, began meeting with Fox employees to interview them about sexual harassment at the network. Sources briefed on the investigation say lawyers intend to interview anchors and executives before the Republican National Convention begins next week. We dont want this to linger on, one person close to the Murdochs told me.
The investigation would seem to be a clear sign that Rupert Murdoch, along with his sons James and Lachlan, is taking Gretchen Carlsons lawsuit very seriously. Fox executives are whispering that Ailess days may be numbered even handicapping who might replace him.
But other sources point out that it is in the Murdochs interest to try to limit the damage to Ailes and avoid an outcome where Fox, which generates more than $1 billion a year in profit, is exposed for having a broader culture thats hostile to female employees. These same sources point out that it is difficult to ensure the independence of an independent investigation; Paul, Weiss was criticized by a federal judge for its role in another high-profile investigation Deflategate saying that rather than remaining independent, the firm became an advocate on behalf of the NFL.
Limiting the damage to Ailes may prove difficult. Multiple sources told me that a number of women at Fox, who work both on camera and off, have experienced sexual harassment and are eager to talk about it with investigators. Lots of other women want to come forward, a Fox source briefed on the investigation told me. They wont talk to the press. They want to talk to the outside lawyer because thats safe. Gretchen Carlson, in her recent interview with the Times, also suggested that the harassment was widespread.
Meanwhile, the accusations against Ailes himself continue to pile up. According to sources I spoke with, at least three former Fox anchors have been harassed. One former rising star at the network has said that Ailes approached her during a barbecue at Fox & Friends host Steve Doocys house in New Jersey while she was bouncing on a trampoline with children and said, Are you wearing any panties? I wish you werent. Another recently departed Fox host has claimed Ailes made her turn around in his office to show him her figure.
Meanwhile, more women from Ailess years as a daytime television producer have come forward. This week, I spoke with Judy, a 67-year-old former model who says that during an audition for The Dennis Wholey Show in 1969, when she was 19 years old, Ailes asked her to lift up her skirt and lie facedown on a bed at the Sheraton Gibson Hotel in Cincinnati. I totally freaked, she said, on the condition that I would only use her first name for fear of retribution. I got up and ran to the door. He stood in front of the door and locked it. Judy managed to escape and tell her parents, and they took her to the police. I remember Ailes being manipulative and sweet-talking my parents out of pressing charges, she says. Afterwards, he called my mom and said, If you ever need anything, you call me.
Another former model, now 74 and speaking anonymously because she never told her husband about her experience, said Ailes propositioned her during her interview for The Mike Douglas Show in 1967, promising, If you sleep with me, all these things will happen. She says they did have sex several weeks later at the Bellevue-Stratford Hotel in Philadelphia. Then I started getting calls from an agency I think they got my number from him. I got asked to go on interviews in New York City, but they werent jobs at all. I was sent to different places where youd go into a room and some guy would be there thinking you have to give him a blow job. It was horrifying. I wasnt a prostitute. Later, she said, she tried to kill herself with pills.
Ailes has denied all of the allegations and has been rallying Fox hosts to speak up in his defense, according to sources. In recent days, a dozen female hosts have defended Ailes, and Neil Cavuto called the allegations against Ailes sick. Fox News spokesperson Irena Briganti did not respond to a call for comment.
Barack Obama. Photo: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images
On Tuesday in Dallas, President Obama defined a new center in the debate over race and policing in America and tried to make it hold. After a week of high-profile police killings, national protests, and the murder of five police officers in Dallas by an apparent black nationalist, Obama called on the nation to reject despair and recognize the fundamental unity of the American family.
First, the shootings in Minnesota and Baton Rouge, the protests. Then the targeting of police by the shooter here, an act not just of demented violence, but of racial hatred, Obama said, at a memorial service for the fallen officers. All of it left us wounded and angry. And hurt. The deepest fault lines of our democracy have suddenly been exposed, perhaps even widened.
We know such divisions are not new, Obama continued. And while they have surely been worse, in even the recent past, that offers us little comfort. Faced with this violence, we wonder if the divides of race in America can ever be bridged. We wonder if an African-American community that feels unfairly targeted by police and a police department that feels unfairly maligned for doing their jobs can ever understand each others experience.
But, Dallas, Im here to say, we must reject such despair, Obama said. Im here to insist that we are not as divided as we seem.
The president then argued that the officers killed in Dallas had died protecting the rights of the protesters who critiqued their institution.
They were upholding the constitutional rights of this country, he said. And despite the fact that police conduct was the subject of the protest, despite the fact that there must have been signs or slogans or chants with which they profoundly disagreed, these men and this department did their jobs like the professionals that they were.
But Obama also insisted on the fundamental legitimacy of the Black Lives Matter movements grievances, in one of his most forthright acknowledgements of systemic racism. >
We also know that centuries of racial discrimination, of slavery, and subjugation, and Jim Crow; they didnt simply vanish with the law against segregation. They didnt necessarily stop when a Dr. King speech, or when the Civil Rights Act or Voting Rights Act were signed. Race relations have improved dramatically in my lifetime. Those who deny it are dishonoring the struggles that helped us achieve that progress.
But, America, we know that bias remains. We know it, whether you are black, or white, or Hispanic, or Asian, or Native American, or of Middle Eastern descent, we have all seen this bigotry in our own lives at some point. Weve heard it at times in our own homes. If were honest, perhaps weve heard prejudice in our own heads and felt it in our own hearts. We know that. And while some suffer far more under racisms burden, some feel to a far greater extent discriminations stain. Although most of us do our best to guard against it and teach our children better, none of us is entirely innocent. No institution is entirely immune, and that includes our police departments. We know this. And so when African-Americans from all walks of life, from different communities across the country, voice a growing despair over what they perceive to be unequal treatment, when study after study shows that whites and people of color experience the criminal justice system differently. So that if youre black, youre more likely to be pulled over or searched or arrested; more likely to get longer sentences; more likely to get the death penalty for the same crime. When mothers and fathers raised their kids right, and have the talk about how to respond if stopped by a police officer yes, sir; no, sir but still fear that something terrible may happen when their child walks out the door; still fear that kids being stupid and not quite doing things right might end in tragedy. When all this takes place, more than 50 years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act, we cannot simply turn away and dismiss those in peaceful protest as troublemakers or paranoid.
The president argued that police and those who protest them are mutually victimized by the failures of our political system. Echoing the words of Dallas Police Chief David Brown, Obama argued that we ask police to do too much to compensate for social and economic ills that we fail to address through public policy.
As a society, we choose to under-invest in decent schools. We allow poverty to fester so that entire neighborhoods offer no prospect for gainful employment. We refuse to fund drug treatment and mental health programs. We flood communities with so many guns that it is easier for a teenager to buy a Glock than get his hands on a computer or even a book. And then we tell the police, Youre a social worker; youre the parent; youre the teacher; youre the drug counselor. We tell them to keep those neighborhoods in check at all costs and do so without causing any political blowback or inconvenience; dont make a mistake that might disturb our own peace of mind. And then we feign surprise when periodically the tensions boil over.
Obama then repeated his speechs central refrain, We know those things to be true. Of course, this is, itself, untrue unless we doesnt include Republicans, who (largely) do not believe that our schools and mental health clinics require more federal funding.
But there is no way of unifying law enforcement with a movement premised on the fundamental injustice of the status quo without articulating some vision of how our politics can resolve that injustice. In Dallas, the president argued that if the American people can open [their] hearts to each others suffering, the institutions of American democracy can foster reforms that ease the tension between police and disadvantaged black communities, by ameliorating those communities disadvantages.
Today in this audience, I see people who have protested on behalf of criminal-justice reform grieving alongside police officers. I see people who mourn for the five officers we lost, but also weep for the families of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile. In this audience, I see whats possible, Obama said. I believe our sorrow can make us a better country. I believe our righteous anger can be transformed into more justice and more peace.
More fun than it looks, apparently. Photo: Ander Gillenea/AFP/Getty Images
Twelve people, including four Americans, have been gored in this years running of the bulls during the San Fermin festival in Pamplona, Spain. On Wednesday, a 39-year-old American man was gored in the thigh, and at least one other American and four Spaniards were injured including two who were lifted into the air by the bulls horns after a bull named Ilustrado crashed into a group of runners near a fence. Theres one more day to go in the festival.
This is the actual moment of the goring, if you have the stomach for it; otherwise, just go back and read that book you were supposed to finish in high school:
This years San Fermin festival comes just as Spain is reeling from the goring of Victor Barrio in Teruel, the first matador to die in the ring in about 30 years. (All of the bulls unleashed onto Pamplonas cobblestone streets are fighting bulls and will end up facing the picadors and matadors in the ring during the festival.) Barrios death and the slaughter of the bull and the bulls mother (a ritual after a bull kills someone during a fight) renewed calls from animal-rights activists to end the practice. Spains younger generation has largely turned against the sport.
Photo: Getty Images
Over the past two weeks, Donald Trump has been auditioning potential running mates in a process that many have likened to his old reality show, The Apprentice. But The Bachelor may be a better analogue.
On Tuesday, Trump told The Wall Street Journal that his favorite remaining veepstakes contestants are Indiana governor Mike Pence, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, and nationally recognized man-servant Chris Christie. According to the New York Times, Pence is the consensus choice among the moguls advisers and Washington Republicans working on his campaign. And it isnt hard to see why: Christie and Gingrich are audacious loudmouths shrouded in scandal, picks that would bring redundant strengths and weaknesses to a ticket headlined by Trump.
Pence, by contrast, is a bag of day-old white bread bland and unappetizing, but unlikely to upset anyones stomach, and held in high regard by social conservatives. The Indiana governor boasts congressional experience, a conventional political style, and a resume free of major ethics violations. Hes the running mate Trump knows he should want. Per the Times:
Last weekend, during a fund-raising event in the Hamptons, Mr. Trump praised Mr. Pence as a successful governor who is known and respected in Washington. He had more equivocal words for some other potential running mates: Mr. Gingrich, he said, is a fearless attack dog but has issues, according to people present for Mr. Trumps remarks.
What do you think: will Gov. Mike Pence be Trump's running mate?https://t.co/oDNI0Z8Zwt FOX & friends (@foxandfriends) July 13, 2016
On Tuesday, Trump told The Wall Street Journal that his favorite remaining veepstakes contestants are Indiana governor Mike Pence, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, and nationally recognized man-servant Chris Christie. According to the New York Times, Pence is the consensus choice among the moguls advisers and Washington Republicans working on his campaign. And it isnt hard to see why: Christie and Gingrich are audacious loudmouths shrouded in scandal, picks that would bring redundant strengths and weaknesses to a ticket headlined by Trump.
Pence, by contrast, is a bag of day-old white bread bland and unappetizing, but unlikely to upset anyones stomach, and held in high regard by social conservatives. The Indiana governor boasts congressional experience, a conventional political style, and a resume free of major ethics violations. Hes the running mate Trump knows he should want. Per the Times:
But the mogul doesnt know if hes ready to settle down with Mr. Right. Trump tells the Journal that he wants a partner skilled in hand-to-hand combat, a man who wont be afraid to put up his dukes to defend the Donalds honor. Trump wants a fighter. And for all their faults, the mogul knows that Christie and Gingrich fit that bill, telling the Journal he considers both men extraordinary warriors. Plus, he has chemistry with these bad boys and thats something that cant be faked.
You either have it or you dont, Trump told the paper. I clearly have it with Chris and Newt.
JUST IN: Ivanka, Don Jr. & Jared Kushner meeting with Mike Pence at his Indianapolis home. Vaughn Hillyard (@VaughnHillyard) July 13, 2016
JUST IN: @realDonaldTrump & family leaves meeting with Indiana Gov. Mike Pence at the governor's residence. pic.twitter.com/dmEZuHXu9I CNBC Now (@CNBCnow) July 13, 2016
Hows your governor doing, by the way? Trump asked the crowd. Good? I think so, I think so.
"Fox News Channel has mutually agreed to suspend its contributor agreement" with Newt Gingrich "effective immediately." Story TK. Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) July 12, 2016
On Wednesday, Trump brought his campaign manager, two of his children, and his New York Observer owner to a meeting at Pences residence. They left without making any comment to the media.
Meanwhile, Fox News has suspended Gingrichs role as a contributor. He will resume his post at the network, should he be eliminated from the veepstakes.
There remain a few dark-horse contenders, including Alabama senator Jeff Sessions among the most ideologically Trumpian Republicans on Capitol Hill and pro-choice, pro-Putin retired general Michael Flynn.
But the consensus of current reporting is that Trump is torn between Pence and his pair of scandal-plagued extraordinary warriors which is to say, between his head and his heart.
Just two more days until the final rose ceremony.
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Notorious. Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images
Ruth Bader Ginsburg does not want Donald Trump to make America great again. Not even a little bit.
Asked about the prospect of a Trump presidency by the Associated Press last Friday, Ginsburg replied, I dont want to think about that possibility. Then, in an interview published Sunday, she told the New York Times that she might move to New Zealand if the mogul moves into the White House. Those comments inspired some bipartisan pearl-clutching and not without reason. Supreme Court justices dont typically make de facto presidential endorsements, however obvious their true sympathies might be. But the 83-year-old feminist icon has a penchant for speaking her mind and a high level of job security. So late Monday night, the Notorious RBG tripled down on her norm-defying Trump-bashing.
He is a faker, Ginsburg told CNN, issuing what is, for the moment, a majority opinion. He has no consistency about him. He says whatever comes into his head at the moment. He really has an ego. How has he gotten away with not turning over his tax returns? The press seems to be very gentle with him on that.
Justice Ginsburg of the U.S. Supreme Court has embarrassed all by making very dumb political statements about me. Her mind is shot - resign! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 13, 2016
Trump responded to Ginsburg Tuesday, telling the Times, I think its highly inappropriate that a United States Supreme Court judge gets involved in a political campaign, frankly. I couldnt believe it when I saw it.
On Wednesday morning, the GOP nominee turned that criticism up to 11.
Hard to take seriously court impartiality/Ginsburg furor after 5 GOP-appointed judges stopped vote-counting & made George W. Bush president Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) July 13, 2016
As Glenn Greenwald notes, there is something quaint in the idea that Ginsburgs comments threaten the perception of the Courts impartiality and not, you know, that time the Supreme Court picked the U.S. president by a 54 party-line vote.
Then again, it is precisely a Bush v. Gore scenario that Ginsburgs critics fear.
In the unlikely and horrifying event of Bush-v-Gore-like election litigation, I do not see how Justice Ginsburg could refuse to recuse after these sorts of comments, Jonathan Adler, a law professor at Case Western Reserve University School of Law, told NBC News.
However, a world in which Ginsburg is forced to recuse herself from a Trump v. Clinton case is probably less threatening to our governments democratic legitimacy than one in which she is not. The Supreme Court is currently split 44 between Democrats and Republicans. A deadlocked Court unable to resolve a contested election is unquestionably more dangerous for the republic than a seven-person Court that ensures a majority ruling.
Unless, of course, one sees a Trump presidency as the gravest threat currently facing American democracy. In which case, shouldnt Supreme Court justices have license to sound the alarm?
Following last weeks shooting in Dallas, in which five police officers were killed, police in Detroit arrested four people for making threats against law enforcement on social media. As of Monday, according to the Detroit News, they had not been charged with a crime.
As the Intercept notes, charges related to online threats are a contentious issue, seen as possibly limiting or having a chilling effect on free speech. Those making threats even vague ones have been charged with crimes including disorderly conduct, cyberharassment, and public intimidation. One of the men arrested in Detroit called shooter Micah Johnson Definitely a Black Hero, which is a repugnant stance but not really an actionable threat of violence.
Last year, in a case concerning rap lyrics, the Supreme Court ruled that intent is a major factor in online threats. There is a distinction, the majority ruled, over whether someone transmits a communication for the purpose of issuing a threat, or with knowledge that the communication will be viewed as a threat or whether they are simply being reckless.
There are a few ironies in police arresting people for reckless, heat-of-the-moment social-media behavior in the midst of a national dialogue about reckless police behavior. Alongside that is how law enforcement has, by and large, been dismissive of online threats and harassment, particularly against women. There are countless tales of law enforcement responding with a shrug when it comes to online harassment. But now that police are the target, it seems like theyre finally paying attention.
The Chinese high schoolers were living without their parents. Photo: Getty Images
You could call Californias San Gabriel Valley a real-life Neverland, east of Los Angeles, where a large number of Chinese teens are living without their parents. They are the latest wave of parachute kids, sent by middle- and upper-class Chinese parents to study at American high schools.
Hoping to gain an edge on their U.S. college applications, the teens rent rooms from local families or stay in boardinghouses with other parachute kids. Unfettered by adult supervision or curfews, some drive Mercedes Benz cars to Chinese teahouses or karaoke parlors in town, partying after 2 a.m. on school nights. Others excel while living on their own, leaving for UC Berkeley or UC San Diego after their high-school graduation. Last year, this unique kind of freedom spiraled out of control when a group of high schoolers, all parachute kids, formed a horrifying bullying ring.
It started when a friend refused to pay their bill at a local ice-cream parlor, on March 30, 2015. Three teens argued with the 18-year-old girl and forced her to her knees, making her use her hands to wipe up ice cream smears and cigarette butts on the floor. Other teens joined them. They took the girl to a nearby park in Rowland Heights, where they stripped her naked, burned her nipples with cigarettes, kicked her with high-heeled shoes, and slapped her hundreds of times. They cut off her hair, and then forced her to eat it. One girl paced the torture: Just slow it down and dont hit her so hard, she allegedly told the group, and we can do it a longer stretch of time. Three days before the attack, another teenager had been beaten and burned at a nearby strip mall.
After the attacks, the three teens were arrested and charged with torture, kidnapping, and assault. Last February, Yunyao Helen Zhai, Xinlei John Zhang, and Yuhan Coco Yang (all 19 years old) were sentenced to prison for one or both attacks; theyre currently serving six- to 13-year terms. A fourth Chinese student, 20-year-old man Zheng Lu, pleaded guilty to assault and was sentenced to three years in prison this week, on Tuesday. In juvenile court, two other teens have admitted to assault in one or both attacks. Authorities think others who were involved have left the U.S.
The case sparked widespread media coverage in China, where its become more and more fashionable for parents to send even younger children overseas. Parachute kids first arrived in California in the 1980s and 90s, when affluent Hong Kong and Taiwanese families sent their children to ritzy L.A. suburbs the children lived with relatives or alone, in purchased homes.
In this latest wave, Chinese students are studying in California high schools on the F-1 student visa, which is generally used by international college and graduate students. In 2014, more than 80,000 American high-school students had the F-1 visa; that same year in California, 9,200 of 15,000 foreign high-school students were Chinese, and most of them attended private schools. Some students involved in the Rowland Heights assault attended Oxford School, a hub of portable classrooms behind a strip mall, where 140 international students (most of whom are Chinese) pay $13,000 in tuition every year.
At a preliminary hearing, the judge likened the case to William Goldings 1954 novel Lord of the Flies, about a group of boys stranded on an island with no adults. In court last February, the three defendants urged Chinese parents to reconsider sending their children to the U.S. An attorney read a statement from the attacks alleged ringleader, who described how she became consumed in a culture of materialism, like buying new iPhones and expensive clothes. Now, she realized she owes everything to her parents. They sent me to the U.S. for a better life and a fuller education, she wrote. Along with that came a lot of freedom, in fact too much freedom Here, I became lonely and lost. I didnt tell my parents because I didnt want them to worry about me.
Lena Dunham. Photo: Jason Merritt/Getty Images
Like many in the nation, Lena Dunham seems to be thinking a lot about police brutality, gun violence, and race relations in the United States.
And shes had enough of it. So much, apparently, that shes in favor of tearing out the images of guns in the ads for the new Jason Bourne movies.
Ever since the deaths of Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, and the five Dallas police officers, Dunham has been voicing her thoughts about race and policing on social media.
On Tuesday, Dunham shared a photo originally posted by Tami Sagher, her co-producer on Girls. In the Instagram post, Sagher showed an image of a subway ad for the new Bourne film. The gun that Matt Damon holds has seemingly been torn out. The caption read: Hey New Yorkers, what if we do some peeling & get rid of the guns in the Jason Bourne subway ads.So tired of guns.
Though Dunham doesnt specify in the post why she supports tearing out the gun image in the Bourne ads, her recent postings on social media have referenced the victims of police shootings.
Her most recent Instagram post was a screenshot of a graphic by the New York Times of high-profile police shootings involving black men and women.
Dunham captioned it no caption needed#blacklivesmatter
both totals are tragic but that streaming is taking over so it will get worse from here
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Meghan's longevity is always impressive. Even though Thank You isn't nearly as successful as Title, Thank You is still in the top 10 on Billboard and outlasting and outselling most pop artists.
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Honestly the way Meghan sells overtime is kind of fascinating to me. Ariana and Zayn definitely seem like two artists with bigger and more vocal fanbases but she's surpassed both in the last couple of weeks even though they started with bigger numbers.
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Meghan has more longevity in her albums, honestly. I was still playing the full Title album a year after it was released and I've only ever done that with Bastille's first album.
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I expected Zayn because he did no promo and would fall from the hype of 1D/ztans. I kind of expected Ari since none of her singles were huge like on My Everything, but I expected better streaming numbers. Ari didn't even sell that much for My Everything (695k only), but she had huge streaming numbers (I think it's the most streamed female album on spotify and has like 2 billion or something). But Dangerous Woman's streaming numbers aren't great.
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This is why fanbase doesn't mean much. You need to have the GP's too. It's like when people here are surprised that someone like P!nk is still doing well. She doesn't have a huge fan base like Britney or Beyonce, but the GP like her music.
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zayn didn't promote anything, ariana is barely promoting anything, and meghan is p much doing the same thing ari did with yours truly and my everything -- she barely took a break between eras so she still has a ton of momentum imo. she had four huge singles, and like i'm gonna lose you was still in rotation on pop radio when no dropped.
i'm impressed by how well she's doing tho bc me too is a terrible song yet people are buying it
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do u think it's 'cause of moms? or is it tweens? idk who meghan's audience is even.
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mte I have it on replay everyday everyday.mp3
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omg nnn let me settle in this post for that OP picture alone
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i love these picture choices
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it's a crying shame tbh but i didn't buy anything so i can't talk
been streaming "into you" like it was my damn job though. what are everyone's favorites songs from Dangerous Woman that I should check out??
Edited at 2016-07-13 12:08 am (UTC)
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"Be Alright" and "Knew Better/Forever Boy" are my jams
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greedy, sometimes, touch it, and side to side
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Oh I forgot Touch It
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be alright makes her tolerable for 2 minutes and 59 seconds
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leave me lonely is the best song on the album
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Be Alright and Greedy are my faves rn!
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Leave Me Lonely and Forever Boy.
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greedy is fun
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side to side, let me love you, greedy, everyday, bad decisions and touch it are all p amazing
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Thinking Bout You, Leave Me Lonely, Greedy
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greedy & thinking about you
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Touch It is my life right now. Greedy and Leave Me Lonely are also very good.
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touch it makes me feel emotions
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side to side is the only one i play
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THE ENTIRE FUCKING ALBUM
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MFTE INTO YOU IS SF GOOD
'Touch It'
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everyday, sometimes, touch it
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to be honest, the whole album is good besides dangerous woman, let me love you, and side to side.
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leave me lonely is fucking amazing
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into you and greedy are everything
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leave me lonely is absolutely amazing. into you, knew better/forever boy, and side to side for more poppy songs
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Into You is probably my #1. What a fucking smash.
My other faves include Everyday, Let Me Love You, Sometimes, Bad Decisions, Knew Better/Forever Boy, Thinkin Bout You
dude I love the entire album
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none - i deleted the album off after one play. terrible, she went backwards after the far superior my everything
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Sometimes and Alright
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greedy, leave me lonely, everyday, thinkin bout you
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omg lol I'm cringing at those numbers though.
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always <3
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how exactly is this a win for meghan when those numbers are tragic.
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Ari can sing tho
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so can Demi, what's your point?
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She's so cute!
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i luv her face, she's so pretty
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qt
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ugh. always get heart eyes when I see this gif. DAMN YOU ARIANA.
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I forgot about this gif and I just found it again when i was reorganizing my gifs today lol
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Weird. I hear Dangerous Woman everyday on the radio.
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The sales in music today are tragic.
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Yikes, that really is embarrassing that total garbage outsold actual quality.
What is happening to the world?
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People listen to Meghan Trainor on purpose?
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She's big with soccer moms
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I don't know anyone irl that likes her
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she's still a one hit wonder in my eyes
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I was doing it ironically but if this is what I get in return fuck that shit. Erasing her stuff from my Spotify asap tbh
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lmao sis, it's really not that serious
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You listen to music ironically?
...
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lmao 'NO' was a lowkey bop tho!!! reminded me of old britney or something
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lmao mte
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Honestly, it's not BAD...I bought it. It's just...not amazing? There's only a handful of songs I like and listen to.
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I enjoy that "If I were you I'd wanna be me too" song too much (that's Trainor, right?).
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indeed it is!
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The phrase deepwater well still makes a lot of people shiver, even six years after the Deepwater Horizon disaster that caused the worst oil-related environmental catastrophe in history. That blowout in the Macondo well in April 2010 resulted in 11 human casualties and almost 5 million barrels of crude being released into the water. One of the reasons for the huge spill was a malfunction in the blowout preventer of the well.
Now it has emerged that faulty bolts in offshore oil well equipment are something of an epidemic, threatening another major disaster.
GE was the first to raise the alarm, baffled that the bolts it uses in the equipment it sells to E&Ps for offshore operations corrode and sometimes snap with no apparent reason, threatening to spill oil. An investigation into the matter was launched back in 2013 by the Department of the Interior, and it soon turned out that the problem is not limited to GE equipment. Its not new either evidence of faulty bolts goes back to 2003.
Interior Department officials told The Wall Street Journal that bolts used by GE competitors including Schlumberger and National Oilwell Varco, and like GEs, produced by subcontractors, are also prone to snapping. The bolts in question are thought to be in an estimated 2,400 platforms just in the Gulf alone.
So far, thankfully, no oil spills have occurred, but the faults have cost the companies operating the faulty equipment some serious cash. Carrying out stack pullsa process that is necessary to replace many of the boltsrequires shutting down oil wells, sometimes for weeks is no cheap matter. Related: Has Google Overtaken Tesla In The Self-Driving Car Race?
The problem took a while to surface because, for now, oil well operators are not under any obligation to report faulty equipment unless it leads to a spill. This, however, is about to change very soon.
On 28 July, new safety regulations come into force, prompted by the 2010 disaster. The regulations include stricter design requirements for offshore well equipment as well as more stringent reporting rules. E&Ps will now have to report on bolt failures they discover during regular maintenance sessions.
At the same time, the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement is working with drillers, bolt makers and American Petroleum Institute to raise the quality standards of the hardware used in well equipment. Issues addressed include hardness and coating, as well as assembly and installation guidelines.
Its sheer luck that nothing has happened because of faulty bolts, given that there are 2,400 platforms in the Gulf of Mexico. Nothing, that is, aside from the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe, of course. Now that this greater level of responsibility is being stipulated in official regulations, theres reason to hope the risk of another huge environmental and economic tragedy will be reduced. Related: Iran Aims To Double Oil Exports, These Are The Hurdles
The industry, including ExxonMobil, has complained about the new regulations, saying they will be very costly and will result in a greaterrather than smallerrisk of new blowouts, by wresting decision-making from on-site engineers with decades of experience, Bloomberg reported at the time. BP also argued that some of the rules will increase risk: for instance, the proposal to cement the area around the steel pipe that lines an offshore well could create circumstances conducive to the formation of air pockets that would lead to cracks.
The industrys criticism could be completely legitimate. On the other hand, it could be an attempt to reverse the changes because they will indeed be costly. Though government estimates put these at $1 billion over ten years, Exxon projected the costs to be $25 billion, and an API-commissioned analysis by Quest Offshore and Blade Energy Partners put the figure even higher, at $31.8 billion.
BPs credibility has been seriously compromised after 2010, and Exxons environmental record is also far from crystal clear. Even so, they may have a solid reason to criticize the new regulations. The government, however, cannot just take these criticisms at face value and drop the changes. If the costs turn out to be impossible to handle by the E&Ps and they are forced to curb drilling, then that would be even better from an environmental perspective the risks of an oil spill are lower when there are fewer wells.
By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com:
Why arent oil prices rising faster? The recent recovery in oil prices has largely stalled out and investors looking at historical figures could be forgiven for not understanding why prices cannot move higher for now.
Oil is stuck in neutral despite the fact that even after prices started to crash, many investors once saw $60 as a remarkably cheap threshold. Today, prices remain firmly below that level, and investors will probably have to wait for more positive data before getting close to that level.
The problem is not production or a glut of oil. U.S. oil output is falling slowly but steadily over time. At this point, the U.S. is producing about 8.4 million barrels per day, which is the lowest level since roughly May of 2014. Oil production displays a high degree of serial autocorrelation over time, meaning that production tends to continue in trends. Actions taken to boost or cut production tend to pay off over time giving production levels a high degree of inertia. As a result, its likely that U.S. production will keep falling for the next few months at least.
The Baker Hughes rig count has fallen dramatically versus year ago levels. While rig counts have probably bottomed and may even bounce a bit, it is unlikely that counts will rise sharply any time soon despite the modest increase reported recently.
Part of the reason that oil prices have not responded more quickly to U.S. production cuts is Iran. Iran has been ramping up production at almost the same rate that the U.S. has been cutting production. This wont continue. Realistically, Iran is at the end of its rope in terms of ability to ramp up production. All of the low hanging fruit has been plucked and to materially increase production from here, the country needs billions upon billions in foreign capital investment a prospect that looks unlikely and at a minimum will take several quarters of negotiations.
At current prices, most oil companies are in no hurry to dump money into risky capital investments, and the vast majority of companies are rightly more concerned with maintaining the stability and safety of their balance sheets. Related: Iran Aims To Double Oil Exports, These Are The Hurdles
The other issue for oil prices is that inventories remain high. Oil inventories are significantly elevated in the U.S. thanks to production here along with rebounding Canadian and Russian production. Inventory is so inflated that numerous additional storage containers have been built in places like Cushing to take advantage of the need for storage. Ocean transport and even oil tanker cars are also being used to hold the sea of crude.
While U.S. production is down 12 percent versus its June 2015 peak, it will take time to work through crude inventories. Inventories stand at roughly 524.4 million barrels, which is the highest level in at least a decade. The increase in imports of crude to the U.S. has helped buoy that especially since the U.S. economy is about the only major economy that is functioning even close to potential output. Moreover, some analysts are worried about the slow rise in the Baker Hughes rig count number, which has risen for 5 of the last 6 weeks. Against this backdrop it probably not surprising that a lot of major institutional investors have backed off of bullish oil bets.
Add all of this up, and investors should not be surprised that oil prices may be stuck in neutral for the time being. This situation provides an opportunity to look at which U.S. oil firms are capable of generating profits at current prices. Those are the stocks that investors should look to own.
By Michael McDonald of Oilprice.com
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Embattled U.S. natural gas producers have a reason to perk up: the Energy Information Administration has forecast that natural gas production in the country over the second half of the year will increase, stimulated by a continuing rally in gas prices.
The average spot price of natural gas at Henry Hub in June was US$2.52/mmBtu, up over 30 percent from May. The increase came on the back of greater demand from the power generation sector and lower production. The June price was also the highest monthly average since September last year.
Though the news is good in that it could encourage producers to lift output, higher prices could eventually have a negative effect on demand, with power plants switching to coal to save money. Still, overall consumption is growing persistently, the EIA said, estimating the 2016 average to be 76.5 bcf a day, compared with 75.3 bcf/d last year. The average for 2017 is projected at 77.7 bcf/d. Besides greater demand from power plants, rising gas exports are also a factor contributing to the price rise.
The EIA has projected that the U.S. is on track to become a net natural gas exporter by the second half of 2017, with shipments to Mexico on the rise as well as LNG exports from the Gulf coast. The administration forecast a 700 mcf daily increase in pipeline exports in 2016, which will slow down to 200 mcf in 2017 to reach a daily average of 5.3 bcf. Demand from Mexico will be the key driver of the increase, as power plant gas consumption there is growing, while local production is stalling. Related: Is Chinas Silk Road Fund About To Make A Big Move In Gold?
LNG exports following the start of operation at the Sabine Pass liquefaction plant in Louisiana should rise by an average 500 mcf per day this year, and 1.3 bcf a day next year.
Gas imports, on the other hand, are seen to drop from 2.6 bcf a day last year to 200 mcf in 2017, the EIA also said in its Short-Term Energy Outlook.
By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com
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Officials with PDVSA rejected allegations that the Venezuelan state-owned oil firm plans to lower crude exports to Cuba, according to Xinhua.
There has not been any issue or reduction with the supply of Venezuelan oil to Cuba. There is a technical and engineering difficulty at the Cienfuegos refinery, said Luis Morillo, PDVSA's general manager in Cuba, at a press conference on Tuesday.
Morillo added that production had been cut to minimum levels at PDVSAs jointly run refinery in the Cuban city of Cienfuegos.
"This is a technical problem all refineries are facing. We will close certain areas of the plant for 120 days over the course of the year to fix these issues and update certain processes," he mentioned.
Recent reports alleged that PDVSA in the first half of 2016 slashed oil exports to Cuba by 40 percent to some 53,500 barrels per day. Around 4 percent of Venezuelan oil exports are sent to Cuba, and the island is a member of the Petrocaribe alliance of nations receiving preferential terms for oil. Yet PDVSA has also purportedly lowered total shipments of oil to Cuba by 19.5 percent amid difficulties in the production of Venezuelan oil.
Related: EIA Expects Uptick In U.S. NatGas Production As Prices Soar
Cuban President Raul Castro admitted last Friday his worry over the effects of the weakened Venezuelan financial state on his nation. The islands economy grew at a less-than-anticipated rate of 1 percent in the first six months of this year, partly as a result of a contraction in fuel supplies agreed with Venezuela.
The Cuban government further warned of the likelihood of energy rationing in the upcoming months in order to reduce electricity consumption by 6 percent without affecting residential supply.
We are going to face limitations in the second semester, said Vice President Marino Murillo to the state press though important revenue-generating industries including tourism and nickel production will not see cuts.
By Erwin Cifuentes for Oilprice.com
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The solar-powered plane, the Solar Impulse 2 will soon begin the last leg of its flight around the world. The plane landed in Cairo after leaving Seville, Spain on Monday. The final flight will be to Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates. The planes trip began there in March of last year.
Solar Impulse 2, a zero-fuel plane, landed in Egypt Wednesday morning and was greeted by Egypts ministers of aviation and energy. Aviation Minister Sherif Fathy released a statement on Tuesday that said that everyone in his sector was proud to host the event, and that the plane demonstrated that the Egyptian government endorses the use of solar energy for civil aviation, along with the move toward cleaner energy sources.
Also on hand to greet the crew was Jomaa Mubarak Al Junaibi, the United Arab Emirates Ambassador to Egypt. By the time the plane touched down in Cairo, it had less than 30 percent of its battery power left. According to the mission managers, that was the first time that situation had presented itself.
Related: The Bears Are Back Oil Slides On Negative Sentiment
While the Solar Impulse is wider than a 747, it only weighs 2.3 metric tons. The efficiency of its batteries and fuel cells allows the plane to stay in flight for days and nights. The plane is constructed of carbon fiber and has 17,248 solar cells on its wing. The cells supply the plane with power through four motors. The cells also charge four lithium batteries that allow the aircraft to stay aloft at night.
The two pilots, Andre Borschberg and Bertand Piccard, are only allowed 20 minute catnaps while flying. Each of the pilots has had a chance to fly the plane one last time. Borschberg flew the plane from Spain to Egypt and tweeted The final approach to Cairo was a bit tough but I made it. #futureisclean.
Lincoln Brown for Oilprice.com
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Its a sad day for Washington Heights, as it prepares to bid adieu to a chef and restaurant thats been in the neighborhood for nearly a decade.
Chef Jan Kelly, owner of Meritage, 5921 W. Vliet St., has announced that the last day of service at her restaurant will be Aug. 11, after which she plans to move back to her home state of California to be closer to family.
Kelly, who moved to Milwaukee in 1995, worked at the Delafield House, North Shore Bistro and the Knick before settling in at Barossa, a Walkers Point restaurant that was one of the first to specialize in organic, local food.
"When I moved here two decades ago, I never imagined all the wonderful things that would
happen to me," Kelly said in a statement. "This city and the people in it welcomed me, encouraged me and made me the chef I am today.
Kellys legacy in Milwaukee includes her status as one of the few female chef-owners, one who has gleaned consistent accolades for her work, including making it to the semifinals for the James Beard Best Chef-Midwest award. Kelly was also a trailblazer in the city whose commitment to locally grown foods early on helped to make farm-to-table fare the norm among Milwaukees best dining establishments.
"Im sad to say goodbye to Meritage and Milwaukee, but I really want the last month were open to be a time to truly celebrate what weve created here," Kelly said. "I want my gift to our customers and my adopted city to be the food I cook. The best celebration I can imagine is to share some of our past favorite menu items."
And thats exactly what Kelly plans to do. Stop in to Meritage from now through August 11 for the following specials, along with a Meritage Wine Cellar "Dust-Off," which will feature specials on all the remaining wines at the restaurant.
July 20, July 27 and Aug. 3: Wednesday fried chicken
For three Wednesdays, Meritage customers can enjoy one of their favorite dishes: Kellys buttermilk and Tabasco-brined fried chicken, gravy and chipotle honey, and sour cream biscuits made from her moms recipe.
Menu encores
In lieu of Tapas Tuesdays and Mussel Thursdays, other special dishes will be rolled out on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays between July 14 and Aug. 11, as Kelly pulls out favorites from the more than 100 menu items shes created since opening the restaurant. They will include the stacked enchilada, bison meatloaf and grilled romaine Caesar salad with scallops. Watch the Meritage website and Facebook page for specifics on each weeks encores.
Aug. 10: Chefs Dinner
Kelly loves to cook, and she really loves to cook with friends so shes invited several of her most innovative chef friends to cook a five-course farm-to-table dinner at Meritage Wednesday, August 10 which she calls "a testament to a community of food lovers." Participating chefs will include Justin Aprahamia of Sanford, Nell Benton of The National, Thi Cao of Buckleys, Mike Engel of Pastiche and Joe Muench of Black Shoe Hospitality. The menu will feature local ingredients from area farms (of course!). Additional details, as well as registration information, can be found online at Meritage.us.
Kelly, who credits her sous chef Clayton Cass and craft cocktail bartender Dave Ahlf with acting as the perfect complements to her own culinary creativity, says her work has been her joy.
"My memories and my happiness revolve around making food for people and seeing them enjoy it," she said. "That is the greatest compliment. The joy cooking brings to me is something I cant describe."
I just returned from Poland where I was speaking at a NO TO NATO, NO TO WAR Conference and rally in Warsaw.
Earlier this week I spoke with a young man in Krakow, Poland who described the ironies of holding the 2016 NATO summit in his country. Tomas, a university trained historian and now tour guide, reminded me how Germany, one of the strongest partners in NATO, invaded Poland on September 1, 1939.
As Tomas commented, "Seventy years ago Germany virtually destroyed Europe and ironically now is the most powerful country on the continent -- again. During World War II we in Poland had our land taken, our people murdered and then with the defeat of the Nazis, we were given by the U.S. and the U.K to the Soviet Union and had to endure decades of communist rule while Germany was rebuilt and prospered. Now again, we find ourselves in midst of a military confrontation that will do no one any good."
He added, "I do not believe the Russians want a war and I wish the US missiles would not be on Polish soil as we become a target again. I don't like that we are having big NATO military exercises in Poland -- it's giving our politicians the rationale to reintroduce mandatory military service which I do not want. Where are these NATO countries getting the idea that Russia is going to invade anyone? I just don't see it."
A Little World War II History
During World War II, Nazi Germany wrecked havoc on the people of Poland -- Jews and Poles alike -- as they colonized the whole of Poland, enslaved the entire population and quickly began exterminating minorities in their campaign to eliminate all but the Aryan race. Entire cities were cleansed and given over to German families and many of the cities, such as Warsaw, were destroyed by the Nazis as they fled at the end of the war. Six million Jews from all over Europe were executed, gassed and their bodies burned. 2,400,000 Poles, 3,000,000 Ukrainians, 1,593,000 Russians, and 1,400,000 Byelorussians were killed in Poland during World War II.
The Soviet Union joined Nazi Germany on September 17, 1939. The Soviets killed 22,000 Polish Army officers and intellectuals in May 1940 in the Kaytn forest, a massacre the Soviet Union did not officially acknowledge until 2010. The Nazi-Soviet alliance didn't last long with Germany double-crossing the Soviets by invading the Soviet Union in June 1941.
In 1945, the Soviet Union pushed Nazi Germany first out of their country, then out of Poland and other areas of Eastern Europe at the expense of 27 million Soviet lives. However, Poles will not forget that the Soviet Union waited across the Vistula River to liberate Warsaw until the Nazis had murdered virtually everyone in the Warsaw uprising. Stalin had struck a deal with Roosevelt and Churchill and the Soviet Union was rewarded for its key role in defeating the Nazis by acquiescence of the United States and Great Britain to Soviet control of the Eastern block countries, including Poland. For 60 years, until 1989, Poland was a communist state in the Soviet sphere and the Warsaw Pact, the organization formed by the Soviets to mirror NATO.
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In 2015, the Washington State Supreme Court started fining the state government $100,000 a day for continuing to underfund K-12 public education. In 2011, after a 9-month investigation, the Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice sued the Seattle Police Department for a "pattern of excessive force" that violates the US Constitution and federal law.
This year, Washington has a second chance to address police brutality and in compliance with international human rights laws.
As it currently stands, Washington has some of the most feudal police use-of force-laws in the country. It is essentially impossible to prosecute a police officer for murder. As it is currently written, Washington law states that if a police officer kills someone, as long as the cop acted "without malice and with a good faith belief that such act is justifiable," he or she is immune from prosecution. King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg stated, "This almost perfect defense to a mistaken use of force has kept police officers out of court as defendants."
In fact, according to an analysis done by the SeattleTimes, from 2005 to 2014, 213 people were killed by police officers in Washington only one of whom has been prosecuted.
Earlier this year, House Bill 2907 was considered which would have struck the "malice" clause from the state law, but it wasn't even voted onFrustrated with the lack of action from politicians, an activist group called Washington for Good Policing have proposed Initiative-873, which if passed, will strike the "without malice and with a good faith belief" clause from state law. The initiative will need over 250,000 signatures to get placed on the ballot for general voting.
Ironically, the legislation uses the term "peace officers" to denote law enforcement officers.
While the Black Lives Matter movement has drawn attention to the racism that continues to lead to the murdering of innocent black citizens in this country and the destructive American system of mass incarceration of Black Americans, it must be pointed out that Washington police officers have targeted more than just Black Americans. In 2015, Antoni Zambrano-Montes, an unarmed Mexican man, was shot at 17 times by police officers while running away with his arms raised in the air . He was dead at the scene.
Other particularly egregious events include Che Taylor, a 46-year-old unarmed father who was shot dead despite his having raising his hands and lowered himself to the ground . John T Williams, a Native American, was murdered in 2010 by police officers as he crossed the street. An artist and carver, he was walking across the street with a piece of wood and a carving knife in his hand.
No charges have been filed against any police officers in any of those cases.
Jay Inslee, the governor of Washington, has remained silent on the initiative. Ed Murray, the current mayor of Seattle, recently tentatively endorsed the initiative. While Murray's endorsement is hopeful, he has long been criticized for not taking enough action to reform the Seattle Police Department (SPD). In fact, just before the July 4th holiday, he announced that he would not be reappointing either Director Pierce Murphy or Auditor Anne Levinson to their positions in the Office of Professional Accountability (OPA). Though the OPA is a government-run organization, both the position of director and auditor are civilian positions. The purpose of the OPA is to oversee SPD's Internal Affairs investigations. Anne Levinson has been a longtime vocal critic of not only the use of force in the SPD but also Mayor Murray's refusal to adopt any of her suggested reforms.
With the introduction of Initiative-873 and the change in leadership in the OPA, the direction that Seattle and Washington will take is unclear. Seattle is the largest city in Washington. With close to 700,000 people, it is three times larger then the next largest city, Spokane. As in every other election, the citizens of Seattle have the power to really influence state-wide elections. It's clear that 2016 is a chance for Washington to take a small step in the right direction. What's unclear is whether the city's so-called liberals, a group largely dominated by white folks, will actually step up to the plate.
JESS GUH, MD is a member of ThisCantBeHappening!, the independent, uncompromised, five-time Project Censored Award-winning online alternative news site.
Reprinted from Politico
Even as he leaves the stage after endorsing Hillary on Tuesday, Sanders has taught us the value of relentlessness.
Every aspect of Bernie Sanders' campaign has been remarkable -- he's rewritten the script. Raise money? $27 at a time, from millions of people. Knife your opponent where she's most vulnerable? "We don't care about the damned emails." Angry attack ads? Instead: Simon and Garfunkel singing "America."
But of all the odd and moving aspects of the Sanders run, none says quite as much about the man and his motives as how he's brought it to a close. Ever since it became clear he'd lost by a (wide) whisker against the great political machine of our age, all the various Washington authorities have been explaining to him that it's time to drop out, that he was squandering his credibility by not endorsing Hillary, that he was damaging his brand. Last week, House Democrats literally booed the guy, for daring to say, "The goal isn't to win elections, the goal is to transform America."
To that audience, no greater heresy was possible: most of them have exactly one goal, which is to return yet again to their D.C. offices, or perhaps move up to the Senate. "Transforming America" ranks on their priorities slightly below "flap my arms and fly."
But Sanders actually did mean it. And to a significant degree he has done it -- the platform hammered out over the weekend in Orlando, Florida, is, as he has said, the most progressive of any major party ever, and by a lot. His relentless focus on the issues has meant that the Democratic Party, anyway, has begun to transform itself.
On Tuesday, Sanders is expected to officially endorse Hillary Clinton (having long since made it clear he would vote for her). As he leaves the stage, many Democratic insiders may hope to forget about him. A few of his most fevered backers may even boo him, sad that he won't run an independent candidacy for president. But I imagine it won't make much more difference to his mood than the anger of the people in Congress who booed him. Of course he's going to back her, and of course he's going to struggle to keep reforming the Democratic Party so it can elect the kind of people he's brought to politics this past year; if we can't do those things, the platform will be a dead letter.
Which of course it could be in any event. Nothing in the platform guarantees success -- Clinton could decide to ignore the promises her team made. It will be up to the movement to enforce these promises -- but we're good at doing that, in no small part thanks to the lessons in relentlessness we've learned from Bernie. If she backslides once in office, the words of her platform will be printed on every sign and banner we carry for the next four years.
Sanders' entire campaign, in fact, has been an extended lecture on how a campaign should in fact be about transformation: how you need to get money and corporate power out of politics to make it happen, how you need to make sure everyone can go to college and no one spends their life working for so little money they can't engage as a citizen.
And because he meant it, he was able to do it. His insistence on continuing to push his message meant that when the Democrats met this weekend to wrap up the platform, he still had real leverage. Not enough to completely win every fight--team Hillary was not ready, once and for all, to drive a stake through the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement (though I think he's made it so toxic that if we keep organizing it will be hard to pass, even in a lame-duck Congress). But enough to produce a platform far far more powerful than most of us ever expected.
Take energy and climate, the area that I helped draft. Two weeks ago in St. Louis, we lost most of the crucial votes by a single vote: carbon pricing, a climate test for future federal action, and so on. This weekend in Orlando, we won most of those points and more. Where four years ago the Democratic platform called for an "all-of-the-above" energy strategy, and where the Obama administration focused on fracked gas, the new platform explicitly ranks solar and wind above natural gas as we build new power plants. It explicitly invokes--not once but twice -- the exact words President Barack Obama used to reject the Keystone pipeline, that it would "significantly exacerbate" climate change. That is now the test for all federal policy and projects. The platform acknowledges for the first time what almost every economist has said for decades: Carbon and methane should carry a price to reflect the damage they're doing to the planet.
We didn't win every vote: A total ban on fracking was defeated. But Josh Fox, a great stalwart of the anti-fracking movement, followed up that loss by introducing the grand "unity measure" on energy: He described weeping as he read the first draft of it in the backrooms of the convention center where we were meeting. Among other things, it promises landowners, communities of color and tribal nations a seat at the table going forward and since these are three of the groups that have led the climate justice battle, that's an important concession.
We who stood behind Bernie know how to be steadfast and unruffled, even when the powers that be are begging us to stop. One of the reasons we know is because Sanders has shown us. He campaigned under the lovely slogan #NotMeUs, and the Us have learned a lot about hanging together and making the message stick.
In the dialect of Gaza, where drones buzzed and blew things up for 51 days two years ago, there's an onomatopoetic word for drones: zanana. When Atef Abu Saif's kids would ask him, during that war, to take them out of doors somewhere, and he would refuse, they would then ask: "But you'll take us when the zanana stops?"
Saif has published his diary from that time, with 51 entries, called The Drone Eats With Me. I recommend reading one chapter a day. You're not too late to read most of them on the two-year anniversary of their happening. Reading the book straight through may not properly convey the length of the experience. On the other hand, you may want to finish before the next war on Gaza begins, and I really can't say when that will be.
The 2014 war was the third that Saif's family had been part of in five years. It's not that he or his wife or his little children joined the military. They didn't head off to that mythical land that U.S. journalism calls the "battlefield." No, the wars come right to them. From their point of view beneath the planes and drones, the killing is entirely random. Tonight it's the building next door destroyed, tomorrow some houses just out of sight. Roads are blown up, and orchards, even a cemetery so as not to deny the dead a share in the hell of the living. Long dead bones fly out of the soil in the explosions with as much logical purpose as your cousin's kids are decapitated or your grandmother's home flattened.
When you venture outside during a war in Gaza, the impression is apparently of being toyed with by giants, ferocious and enormous creatures able to pick apart large buildings as if they were made with Legos. And the giants have eyes in the form of ever-watching and ever-buzzing drones:
"A young man who sold kids' food -- sweets, chocolates, crisps -- became, in the eye of the drone operator, a valid target, a danger to Israel." ". . . The operator looks at Gaza the way an unruly boy looks at the screen of a video game. He presses a button that might destroy an entire street. He might decide to terminate the life of someone walking along the pavement, or he might uproot a tree in an orchard that hasn't yet borne fruit."
Saif and his family hide indoors, with mattresses in the hallway, away from windows, day after day. He ventures out against his own better judgment. "I feel more and more stupid each night," he writes,
"walking between the camp and Saftawi with drones whirring above me. Last night, I even saw one: it was glinting in the night sky like a star. If you don't know what to look for, you wouldn't be able to distinguish it from a star. I scanned the sky for about ten minutes as I walked, looking for anything that moved. There are stars and planes up there of course. But a drone is different, the only light it gives off is reflected so it's harder to see than a star or a plane. It's like a satellite, only it's much closer to the ground and therefore moves faster. I spotted one as I turned onto al-Bahar Street, then kept my eyes firmly fixed on it. The missiles are easy to see once they're launched -- they blaze through the sky blindingly -- but keeping my eye on the drone meant I had a second or two more notice than anyone else, should it decide to fire."
Living under the drones, Gazans learn not to make heat, which could be interpreted as a weapon. But they grow accustomed to the ever-present threat, and the explicit threats delivered to their cell phones. When the Israeli army texts everyone in a refugee camp to get out, nobody moves. Where are they to flee to, with their houses destroyed, and having already fled?
If you allow yourself to listen to the drones at night, you'll never sleep, Saif wrote. "So I did my best to ignore them, which was hard. In the dark, you can almost believe they're in your bedroom with you, behind the curtains, above the wardrobe. You imagine that, if you wave your hand above your face, you might catch it in your hand or even swat it as you would a mosquito."
I'm reminded of a line of poetry from, I think, Pakistan, but it could be from any of the drone-warred nations: "My love for you is as constant as a drone." But it isn't love that the drone nations are bestowing on their distant victims, is it?
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Pardon Edward Snowden, now Edward Snowden's goal was to tell the truth about the government spying on all of us, and to create public and judicial pressure on the government to create real changes in the way things are done and to stop the trajectory towards a surveillance state. Wednesday, September 14, 2016Edward Snowden's goal was to tell the truth about the government spying on all of us, and to create public and judicial pressure on the government to create real changes in the way things are done and to stop the trajectory towards a surveillance state.
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A Response to Russian Environmentalists War between the US and Russia is a horrifying prospect that would be disastrous for Americans, Russians, and the planet we share. Yet we seem headed down that dangerous path with the belligerent and hysterical anti-Russian rhetoric we now hear regularly from Clinton and her supporters, both Democrats and Republicans. Tuesday, September 13, 2016War between the US and Russia is a horrifying prospect that would be disastrous for Americans, Russians, and the planet we share. Yet we seem headed down that dangerous path with the belligerent and hysterical anti-Russian rhetoric we now hear regularly from Clinton and her supporters, both Democrats and Republicans.
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It is undemocratic to exclude me and Gary Johnson from presidential debates As de facto leaders of their parties, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton could be champions of democracy. Either (or both of them) could end the monopoly of the elitist Commission on Presidential Debates by demanding four-way debates in 2016. The question is simple: will Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump stand for open debates and American democracy, or not? Wednesday, September 7, 2016As de facto leaders of their parties, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton could be champions of democracy. Either (or both of them) could end the monopoly of the elitist Commission on Presidential Debates by demanding four-way debates in 2016. The question is simple: will Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump stand for open debates and American democracy, or not?
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Transcript of Dr. Jill Stein's Presidential Nomination Acceptance Speech at Green Party National Convention Thank you so much. This is what democracy looks like. This is what political revolution looks like. Saturday, August 6, 2016Thank you so much. This is what democracy looks like. This is what political revolution looks like.
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Jill Stein Response to Sanders' endorsement of Clinton I join millions of Americans who see Hillary Clinton's campaign as the opposite of what they and Bernie Sanders have fought for. Despite her penchant for flip flopping rhetoric, Hillary Clinton has spent decades consistently serving the causes of Wall Street, war and the Walmart economy. Tuesday, July 12, 2016I join millions of Americans who see Hillary Clinton's campaign as the opposite of what they and Bernie Sanders have fought for. Despite her penchant for flip flopping rhetoric, Hillary Clinton has spent decades consistently serving the causes of Wall Street, war and the Walmart economy.
Yes officer, I know I was going 80 miles per hour but I did not intend to violate the law.
TJH (circa 2016)
On last Thursday, the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, James Comey, delivered up a whitewash of the latest Hillary Clinton scandal the use of an unsecured private server and email account to transact State Department business including the sending and receiving of classified documents accompanied by the destruction of records properly belonging to the State Department. While Mr. Comey provided direct and damning testimony about Ms. Clintons conduct, including a litany of the lies told by Ms. Clinton to the public and to the United States Congress the latter being under oath he swept it all under the rug by claiming that Ms. Clinton was merely careless and not criminally liable.
However, in the entirety of Mr. Comeys statement and his Congressional testimony that followed, he failed to deal with the singular question upon which, in perspective, Ms. Clintons conduct cannot be adjudged anything other than criminal. Why did Ms. Clinton create a private email account and server which was housed outside of State Department facilities on which she intended to and did conduct nearly four years of State Department business?
Mens rea criminal intent can be proven by the admission of the accused to the court or others. Given that most criminals, including high-ranking public officials, are loath to admit their guilt or testify against themselves, criminal intent can also be proven by circumstantial evidence, including inference from the act itself. In other words if you are going eighty miles per hour and you know you are going eighty miles per hours, it can be inferred that you intended to violate the law limiting the speed to seventy miles per hour.
Of course there could be alternative explanations as to why you were apparently violating the law. If you were going eighty miles per hour as a result of an emergency (illness, injury, etc.) then you, in fact, did not intend to violate the law. However, the emergency or any other excusable rationale must, in fact, exist and exist in proximity to the event. If you were going eighty miles an hour because your spouse was about to deliver, that could be excusable; however, if you were going eighty miles per hour to visit your spouse in the hospital who delivered eight hours previously, that would not be excusable. If you were going eighty miles per hour because of equipment failure that might be excusable; however, if subsequent testing cannot discover or duplicate the equipment failure, that would not be excusable.
So what of Ms. Clintons excuses for using a private email account and server housed on her property? Well, only one has been offered that it was done for convenience so that she did not have to have multiple devices to differentiate between personal and government business. As a practiced liar, Ms. Clinton made this rationale appear plausible. However, even a practiced liar must yield to the truth. And the truth is that photographic evidence taken during Ms. Clintons tenure at the State Department demonstrated that she continued to use multiple devices constantly. More importantly and frankly one of the dangers for liars Ms. Clinton could not remember to whom she told which lie. In an effort to prove herself cool and tech savvy, Ms. Clinton bragged about the fact that she used multiple devices during her tenure she had computers, tablets, I-phones, and even a Blackberry. By her own acts and admissions, Ms. Clinton demonstrated that the convenience excuse was neither real nor proximate.
So what other excuse might there be? With none other being offered or suggested (how could there be) we are left to deal with the truth. As L. Gordon Crovitz noted in yesterdays edition of the Wall Street Journal:
Lyndon Johnson did his best to block the Freedom of Information Act, but public opinion forced him to make government records available. The question now is how FOIA, which LBJ signed 50 years ago this month, survives the precedent Hillary Clinton set with her basement server intended to keep her emails hidden from public view.
After suffering previous embarrassments based on emails and other public records mandated by state and federal laws, Ms. Clinton was bound and determined to avoid new disclosures. (Wouldnt you if, while you were Secretary of State, various wealthy individuals and nations were plying your spouse and your charity with hundreds of millions of dollars while State Department approval of actions and/or projects were pending?) By using a private email account and placing a private server on her property outside the domain of the State Department Ms. Clinton minimized the scrutiny of her correspondence by government watchdogs, including Congress, and private parties seeking information under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). By subsequently deleting emails and scrubbing the private server, Ms. Clinton increased the likelihood that damaging information would never see the light of day. Mr. Crovitzs article cited language from a recent federal appeals court decision regarding Ms. Clintons illegal efforts:
If a department head can deprive the citizens of their right to know what his department is up to by the simple expedient of maintaining his departmental emails on an account in another domain, that purpose is hardly served, the judges wrote. It would make as much sense to say that the department head could deprive requestors of hard-copy documents by leaving them in a file at his daughters house and then claiming that they are under her control.
That then is precisely the only reason for Ms. Clintons use of the private email account and server to avoid public scrutiny of her acts during her tenure as Secretary of State. That is, in itself, a violation of law. It is contrary to Mr. Comeys suggestion that Ms. Clinton was merely negligent. It was intentional, it was designed to withhold public scrutiny, and it was to shield her actions, including any illegal actions involving Ms. Clinton, former President Bill Clinton (D) and her charitable foundation, from disclosure. While Ms. Clinton and her husband were amassing a $150 Million dollar fortune during her tenure as Secretary of State, without providing any legitimate product or service, the public was, by her actions made ignorant of her actual conduct. And it is not the first time not even the second or third time. It is a pattern of conduct in which Ms. Clinton has been engaged for over four decades beginning with the deliberate sequestration of evidence during the Watergate investigation an act for which she was fired from the Watergate staff.
Ms. Clinton has repeatedly stated that only emails involving personal matters (wedding details for her daughter and yoga classes) were deleted. We know that this too was a lie based on release of emails between Ms. Clinton and Sydney Blumenthal (as a private citizen) involving Libya and the events surrounding the terrorist attack on our embassy in Benghazi. There were also emails from Ms. Clinton to her daughter Chelsea acknowledging that the Benghazi attacks was a terrorist attack while Chelsea may be her daughter, she did not have a need to know and, therefore, the information was not personal but State Department business. What we dont know is the contents of the other 30,000 emails that Ms. Clinton deleted in violation of law.
In the end, Ms. Clintons intent to circumvent the public record laws is the foundation for implying criminal intent. Mens rea is demonstrable, and virtually any court would allow its admission.
Mr. Comey could have recommended a criminal referral but instead he chose to sweep yet another Clinton scandal under the rug. And the weak-kneed Republicans who praised Mr. Comeys integrity in hopes of having someone else do the hard work, are left holding the bag. And while they sputter and fume, demanding yet another investigation, the reality is that no such investigation is going to occur or at least occur on a timely basis and Ms. Clinton is well on her way to being elected President of the United States. That is unless the private lawsuits involving Ms. Clintons withholding of documents and deliberate lies bears additional fruit to demonstrate the proximity of State Department approvals with payments by nations and wealthy individuals to Mr. Clinton and/or the Clinton Foundation.
Or, unless the voters are so disgusted with the rampant corruption that is Washington and is epitomized by the Clintons that they throw the whole bunch (including the leadership of Congress) out at the next election.
But I dream.
Quote
"I will show them (wilful defaulters) what the law is."
- Prime Minister Narendra Modi's warning to wilful defaulters in an interview to an English news channel.
6,40,000 estimated job losses in five years in the Indian IT sector due to automation, according to IT consultancy HFS Research. That translates into a 28 per cent reduction from 2.28 million low-skilled jobs in 2015 to 1.64 million in 2021.
Prima Donna
At a rally, either in Lucknow or Allahabad, the Congress Party is expected to announce Priyanka Gandhi Vadra as the face of the party's campaign for the Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls - a last- ditch effort to turn the fortunes of the party, and a tacit acceptance that brand Rahul isn't working.
US Doubt Fire
Underlining that India's 7.5 per cent growth rate may be "overstated", the US has said the Narendra Modi government has been slow to match its rhetoric in economic reforms. However, the report "Investment Climate Statements for 2016" appreciated measures taken by India in easing bureaucratic red tape and FDI restrictions. Now, will it singe the global economic bright spot?
- Former Union HRD Minister Smriti Irani on her perceived demotion as the Union Textile Minister, and whether she would be BJP's face for the UP assembly polls
Pounding of the Pound
The pound plumbed new depths against the US dollar as financial turmoil intensified in the wake of the UK's Brexit vote, touching $1.28 on July 6, its lowest level in more than 31 years.
New Recipe
Mozambique will produce Indian varieties of pulses, such as arhar and urad, to meet India's growing demand for lentils. The Cabinet approved signing of an MoU with the African nation to double import of pulses from the present 100,000 tonnes by 2020/21.
Ringing in Profits
State-run BSNL will post over three-fold jump in its operating profit at Rs 2,000 crore for 2015/16, former Telecom Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said. The audit results for the telecom company will be out in August.
EC members to be appointed before 25 July
ISLAMABAD: The government and opposition on Tuesday agreed to appoint members of the Election Commission by July 25 and decided to exchange names of members on Thursday (tomorrow).
The decision was taken in a meeting between Finance Minister Ishaq Dar and Opposition Leader Khursheed Shah held at Parliament House for consultation on the appointment of members.
During the meeting, Khursheed Shah sought time from government for appointment of members due to the meeting of opposition parties on Wednesday. Both leaders agreed to share names of new members with each other in the next meeting.
It may be mentioned here that after the ECP was rendered incomplete with the retirement of its four members on June 12, the electoral process has been at halt across the country, including mayoral or deputy mayoral elections, bye-polls in various constituencies and notification of newly elected parliamentarians.
According to the constitution, government and opposition are bound to appoint ECP members within 45 days of their retirement.
Due to the non-appointment of new members, the Election Commission could not hold by-elections in 10 constituencies and local government elections in 22 constituencies of the country,
Talking to media, opposition leader Khursheed Shah said the meeting with Ishaq Dar remained cordial wherein names of members of the Election Commission were discussed. I will convey these names to the government after consensus with other opposition parties, he said, and added that another meeting with the government representative will be held on Friday. He said that he was looking forward to the next meeting to make headway on the matter.
To a question regarding any discussion over the Panama leaks, Shah said that the issue will be discussed at a later stage. He, however, maintained that the opposition wont show any kind of flexibility on inquiry into revelations by Panama Papers.
Finance Minister Ishaq Dar said that the names of members of the Election Commission were discussed during the meeting. According to constitution, we have time until July 25 to announce the names of the members of the Election Commission. Opposition will hopefully shortlist names of the candidates before the deadline, he said.
The meeting took place days after Chief Justice of Pakistan Anwar Zaheer Jamali took notice over the delay in the holding of by elections due to dysfunctionality of the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP). PTI candidate in NA-63 Jhelum Chaudhry Fawad Hussain through his counsel Dr Khalid Ranjha had filed a constitutional petition under Article 184 (3) of the constitution, making the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC), federal government and other contesting candidates respondents. The petitioner contended that both the federal government as well as CEC violated the constitutional duty and instead of putting in genuine efforts to provide opportunity to the citizens, preferred to postpone the elections for an indefinite time period, violating the law and the constitution.
In a related development, PML-Q President and former prime minister Ch Shujat Hussain held telephonic conversation with Jamaat-e-Islami Amir Senator Sirajul Haq and Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf (PTI) leader Shah Mahmood Qureshi.
Qureshi telephoned Shujaat and discussed with him proposed terms of reference (ToRs) for inquiry into Panama leaks. They also exchanged views on expected all-parties conference.
Shujaat telephoned Senator Sirajul Haq and felicitated him on performing of Umrah. Both leaders are expected to meet in Islamabad in next few days.
Shujat also telephoned Majlis Wahdatul Muslameen Secretary Raja Nasir Abbas and expressed concern that the government was not paying any attention to their problems and demands despite such a long sit-in.
Government has described as baseless and inexplicable Nana Akufo-Addos insistence that Ghana needs to emulate Cote dIvoires development and growth model.
The New Patriotic Party (NPP) flagbearer, who has been interacting with Ghanaians as part of his campaign tours across the country, has constantly spoken highly of the developmental strides being made by the countrys West African neighbours Cote dIvoire.
Nana Akufo-Addo has said Cote dIvoire has successfully overcome the effects of its 2011 civil conflict and become an economic powerhouse in Africa due to good leadership.
The NPP flagbearer has promised to chart a similar course if elected president after the November polls.
However, in a sharp rebuttal, government has described Nana Akufo-Addos reference to Cote dIvoire as a perfect development example as a blanket analysis which lacks basis.
Deputy Communications Minister Felix Kwakye Ofosu, who spoke on Class FMs current affairs programme Inside Politics, Monday July 11 argued that Ghana has seen higher growth rates than Cote dIvoire.
He noted: Ghanas economy is much larger than the economy of Cote dIvoire. It is just like saying that because over a brief period of time Ghana has had higher growth than the US economy, the US should model their growth around Ghanas; that is how inexplicable the position Nana Akufo-Addo has taken.
Mr Kwakye Ofosu further stated: The NPP has a penchant for dabbling in sophistry [that] if you are uninitiated, you will believe has merit. But if you delve deeper, you will find out it lacks complete substance. The fact of the matter is that there is not a single human development indicator that Cote dIvoire is doing better than Ghana. If you look at electricity for instance, just 30 per cent of Ivorians have access to electricity. 80.5 per cent of Ghanaians have access to electricity. If you look at water for instance, just about 30 per cent of Ivorians have access to water. At the end of this year, 85 per cent of Ghanaians will have access to water.
If you look at school enrolment, about 90 per cent of Ghanaian children who should be in school are in school. If you look at road network, we are vastly superior to anything that Cote dIvoire can offer. Again, every country has its own peculiar issues that need to be considered when analysing their performance. So, to do the sort of blanket analysis or comparison that Nana Addo doesis a major problem that the electorate of Ghana must be aware of.
Now he constantly refers to growth rate. There is no single growth rate that Cote dIvoire has achieved that Ghana has not achieved before. Not too long ago, we recorded a growth rate of 14.4 per cent. At that time, it made us the country with the highest growth rate, behind Qatar. We have grown at 8.8 per cent before, we have grown at 7 per cent before and we have grown at six per cent before. Indeed in the last seven years, average growth rate has been seven per cent. So, on what basis does Nana Addo claim that we should model ourselves around Cote dIvoire?
Again they create the impression [that] because Cote dIvoire produces cash crops, they have done something extraordinary that Ghana should necessarily emulate. They even create the impression that it is only recently under President Mahama that Cote dIvoire became the worlds leading producer of cocoa. The fact of the matter is that Cote dIvoire since 1976 has been the worlds leading producer of cocoa. In fact, Ghana used to be the worlds second leading producer of cocoa in the world until 2006, under Nana Akufo-Addos NPP government, that Indonesia overtook us.
So the fact that Cote dIvoire is producing more cocoa than Ghana doesnt mean that their economy is necessarily better than ours. Our economy is much bigger, so development in our economy has greater impact on the lives of our people than it is the case in Cote dIvoire.
So if Nana Addo wants a model for Ghana to emulate, he should be talking about an industrialised economy that we can model ourselves around, not countries that have achieved development by being a raw material or a cash crop-producing country. No country can develop on a sustainable basis in that manner.
So, if a man, looking to be president displays such limited vision, it is even inappropriate for us to be having a discussion on such blanket, baseless comparison because what it does is to create the impression that we are a homogenous country and that all conditions in Ghana are the same as the conditions in Cote dIvoire.
Source: Classfmonline
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In late spring 2016, 12-year-old Ola died in Syria. In a place where her death could easily have been caused by barrel bombs, missiles, or mortar fire, she instead suffered a slow and painful death from starvation. This happened because she lived in Madaya, a small town controlled by opposition forces an hours drive from Damascus that the Syrian government has besieged since July 2015. A new report released by Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) and the Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS) highlights the harsh conditions faced by Madayas 40,000 besieged residents. For a year, the population has been forced to survive on the meager supplies and services available inside the towns narrow boundaries. With inadequate food stores and medical care, they have suffered from starvation and malnutrition, and succumbed to disease, traumatic injury, and other life-threatening conditions. The population, roughly four times its original size due to internal displacement in the country prior to the siege, is surrounded by 12,000 landmines and 65 checkpoints manned by snipers.
In December 2015, after nearly six months of siege and only one humanitarian aid delivery that included expired food, reports from Madaya appeared in international news outlets, including graphic images of starving children and adults. This prompted a large-scale effort by the United Nations and humanitarian groups to deliver aid and ease the impact of the siege in Madaya. However, of the four humanitarian aid deliveries to Madaya between January and April 2016, none included adequate food and medical supplies to stave off advanced malnutrition and starvation for all of the towns residents. Syrian government officials only permitted limited quantities and types of food and medicine and stripped out essential aid from convoys, such as kits to treat severe acute childhood malnutrition. UN agencies also failed to deliver some of the aid they promised, including cans of tuna for hundreds of malnourished children suffering from a protein deficiency. These half-measures, lauded by the media and UN officials as progress toward ending the siege, have been far from sufficient to alleviate the immense suffering in Madaya. Now, more than two months since the town last received an aid delivery in late April and more than a month since the International Syria Support Group (ISSG) promised airdrops if government authorities did not grant access to ground convoys, its residents are again on the brink of starvation.
As a result of the tragically inadequate response to Madayas needs, Ola and other residents suffering from the effects of starvation found little relief in the aid. When she died in May 2016, Ola became one of at least 86 people who have perished from siege-related causes since the siege on Madaya began 65 died from malnutrition and starvation, 14 from landmines, six from snipers, and one from a chronic health condition. Almost all 86 could have been saved if they had had access to food, medication, medical equipment, and medical treatment by specialized health workers. But all of those things exist in grossly insufficient numbers in Madaya, and two dentistry students and a veterinarian are left to care for the towns 40,000 residents. With the siege still firmly in place, the lives of Madayas remaining residents hang in the balance, with hundreds suffering the effects of malnutrition, untreated chronic health conditions, infectious diseases, and traumatic injuries.
Dr. Muhammad Darwish was a dentistry student when the conflict broke out. Now he is one of Madayas few remaining health care providers. He explains: What we need in Madaya, and in all besieged areas in Syria, is to lift the siege once and for all. No more beating around the bush and allowing a few convoys in here and there that dont include medication and with aid that doesnt even meet the needs of a quarter of the population.
Madaya is not the only place where siege warfare is being brutally used. Syrian government forces and, to a lesser extent, non-state armed groups are besieging nearly one million people across the country. They have denied deliveries of food, medicine, and other supplies that are indispensable to survival, subjecting entire populations to slow deaths by starvation and lack of health care actions that constitute war crimes. Yet the only action the UN Security Council and other world leaders have taken is to issue toothless statements decrying the violations.
The death toll will only increase the longer the sieges are in place. The UN Security Council, the ISSG, and UN aid agencies have all failed Syrians again and again by refusing to enforce their resolutions, follow through on their promises, and act according to their humanitarian principles to serve those most in need. It is past time that these agencies and world leaders take concrete action to ensure that civilians starving at the hands of the Syrian government are given a chance to live and are not condemned to die because of politics. The first step they can take is to implement air drops as promised to provide short-term relief to those at risk of starvation.
Meilin Temple, built by the monk Pan Shenghua in 1522, is nearly as difficult to reach as enlightenment. For now.
Few make the bone-juddering journey up the rutted dirt road that twists around the Panshan Mountains to reach the holy site - or what's left of it, anyway.
Just two structures remain of the once colossal compound that featured 36 courtyards and 300 houses built according to the style of ancient ethnic Hakka residences.
But Panshan's peak transforms during temple fairs, when thousands of devout Buddhists descend upon this place of pilgrimage tucked away in the wilderness.
The government of Jiangxi province's Huichang county plans to further develop the area to enhance its tourism offerings.
Those who hike along a tiny trail that clings to the cliff near Meilin can discover hidden gems in the forest.
Lore holds that a 1,300-year-old ginkgo tree here sprouted from the hairpin of one of Taoism's Eight Immortals, He Xiangu, who conspired to use it to assassinate Buddha.
Locals call it the "Maiden Hair Tree", because it is said that Buddha foiled He Xiangu's plot and poked the pin into the ground, where it took root and grew leaves.
Despite such a history of ancient antagonism between the two religions, the site today infuses Buddhism with Taoist elements.
A shrine that pious locals erected in the forest in 2009 hosts a Buddhist figure in the main hall and a trio of Taoist statues in the next.
Hikers must practically scramble over the ancient tombs of two monks, colonized by moss and vegetation.
They then reach a rocky outcrop where the woods fade away to offer views of the mountains that are truly breathtaking.
The location offers panoramas of the alpine range and the emerald Xiangshui River that loops 13 miles around the mountains' bases.
Huichang plans to integrate the waterway into its summer tourism festival. Visitors can hop aboard boats to take in views of the mountains rising above bursts of blooming flowers and disembark to stay overnight in Hakka farmhouses.
Yangjiao Water Castle is one of the main sites being developing along the river. The Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) settlement is being reincarnated as a creativity base, film site and tourism destination.
Villagers won't be relocated, and renovations will be minimal, the government says.
The old gingko tree on Panshan. Zhang Xiao /China Daily
(China Daily 07/13/2016 page7)
LEXINGTON, Ky., July 12, 2016 /PRNewswire/ Fazolis, Americas largest fast-casual Italian chain, today announced its partnership with The Catering Institute and MonkeyMedia Software for off-premise sales strategy, education and software services.
Beginning this week, all company locations will have implemented The Catering Institutes business strategies of the 5 Pillars of Successful Restaurant Catering along with a new software solution that will help restaurants grow sales and increase profits through takeout, delivery and catering. By this fall, all franchise locations offering online catering services will have implemented the software.
Our Fazolis franchised restaurants are currently experiencing three times the growth rate of the industry average, said Carl Howard, president and chief executive officer of Fazolis. As we continue to experience tremendous momentum in 2016, we know its imperative to keep our franchisees armed with the latest technology. Supporting our dedicated franchisees with MONKEY, the #1 cloud platform for takeout, delivery and catering along with The Catering Institutes business framework is a key component to our ongoing success, and Im excited to announce this tactical business partnership.
The Catering Institute and MonkeyMedia Software provide turnkey catering strategy, education and software solutions to multi-unit restaurant operators looking to invest and grow their off-premise operations. As part of the agreement, The Catering Institute team is working with Fazolis leadership on the companys strategic alignment for takeout, delivery and catering.
Fazolis has also implemented MONKEY as the leading technology tool to support its existing strategic efforts and has started to launch the software throughout the chain. MONKEY is a comprehensive web-based solution for takeout, delivery and catering channels and includes:
Online / Mobile-Web / Phone-In (Call/Support Center) ordering for Takeout, Delivery, and Catering
Enterprise Order Management
Electronic coordination and acceptance of catering orders
Customer Relation Management
Customer Case Management
Management of Accounting Transactions
Delivery Management Tools
Catering Production Management
MonkeyLeadTracker Sales Team and Lead Management
MonkeySee Data Service
Enterprise and Local Reporting
Credit Card Payment Gateway Interface via Plug n Pay
POS Integration
Fazolis strong performance, combined with an industry-leading new franchisee incentive program, continues to drive the brands expansion. With plans to open 12 new restaurants this year, Fazolis also recently opened in Montgomery, Alabama and Macon, Georgia, where the company set an all time sale record for an opening week. The company is targeting new franchise development in markets including Atlanta, Cincinnati, Dallas, Detroit, Knoxville, Phoenix, Pittsburgh and several other markets to grow and further catapult the brands development nationwide.
New Fazolis franchisees are eligible for discounts of up to $20,000 off the initial $30,000 franchise fee. Royalties have been cut to 2 percent from 4 percent for the first year, and to 3 percent for the second year. Vendor fees also will be discounted for the first 12 months. The incentives are available to franchisees who sign agreements now through July 31, 2016.
With nearly 220 restaurants in 26 states, Fazolis is Americas largest Italian fast-casual chain, serving freshly prepared entrees, Submarinos sandwiches, salads and pizza. Fazolis franchisees are experiencing record sales growth, and the company is currently seeking single- and multi-unit operators to join the brands rapid expansion. For more information about franchise opportunities, connect with Fazolis online at www.fazolis.com, www.ownafazolis.com, @Fazolis, and https://www.facebook.com/Fazolis.
About Fazolis
With approximately 220 restaurants, Fazolis is Americas largest Italian fast-casual chain, serving freshly prepared entrees, Submarinos sandwiches, salads and pizza. One of the New York Posts five breakout fast-casual restaurants and a Fast Casual.com Brand of the Year, Fazolis franchisees are experiencing record sales growth. Visit www.ownafazolis.com for details on development opportunities, including new operator incentives.
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To Detail How Traditional Authentication Methods Are Failing Consumers and Businesses
PORTLAND, OR(Marketwired Jul 12, 2016) iovation, the provider of device intelligence for authentication and fraud prevention, today announced it will host a webinar entitled Balancing Security and Customer Experience on July 19 at 9am PDT. In the webinar iovations Vice President of Global Partnerships, Max Anhoury, will address how more than a billion peoples records have been exposed recently, with many breaches targeting login credentials expanding the landscape of online fraud. With card-not-present fraud on the rise, he will also discuss U.S. retailers and financial institutions need to implement advanced authentication methods to reduce shopping cart abandonment and customer friction.
Researchers have found that 47 percent of people are using a password that is five years old and 73 percent of accounts use duplicate passwords meaning a password breach can pay off for years, said Anhoury. There has to be a better way for businesses to execute customer authentication that strengthens security without impeding the online experience for their valued customers.
In the webinar, Anhoury will detail how using a consumers device for authentication can be used to both make the authentication process easier, and reduce risk for businesses and consumers. Specifically, Anhoury will address:
The best methods to create frictionless security across the consumer journey
The latest fraud and security trends including why iovation recently projected that card-not-present fraud will cost U.S. retailers and financial institutions $7.2 billion by the end of 2020
How using device as a risk indicator can be used to stop fraud rings
The changes in consumer behavior with the recent increase in EMV (Europay, MasterCard, and Visa) chip cards
For more details about and to register for the webinar, go to http://bit.ly/28QoXY4.
About iovation
iovation protects online businesses and their end users against fraud and abuse, and identifies trustworthy customers through a combination of advanced device identification, shared device reputation, device-based authentication and real-time risk evaluation. More than 3,500 fraud managers representing global retail, financial services, insurance, social network, gaming and other companies leverage iovations database of billions of Internet devices and the relationships between them to determine the level of risk associated with online transactions. The companys device reputation database is the worlds largest, used to protect 15 million transactions and stop an average of 300,000 fraudulent activities every day. The worlds foremost fraud experts share intelligence, cybercrime tips and online fraud prevention techniques in iovations Fraud Force Community, an exclusive virtual crime-fighting network. For more information, visit iovation.com.
PLANO, Texas, July 12, 2016 /PRNewswire/ Pizza Hut, recognized as the pizza restaurant which serves and delivers more pizzas than any other pizza restaurant in the world, along with leading SaaS platform tech company Conversable, are announcing today the launch of a new Pizza Hut social ordering platform, or chatbot, to allow for conversational ordering of favorite pizzas and other menu items on Facebook Messenger and Twitter. The platform, which will be available across Pizza Hut social media accounts this fall, is debuting at the 2016 Venturebeat MobileBeat Conference in San Francisco with a demo from Baron Concors, Chief Digital Officer, Pizza Hut.
The new Pizza Hut social ordering platform is another example of making it easy for our customer to order their favorites from Pizza Hut, said Concors. We are constantly pursuing ways to simplify our ordering experience. This platform allows our consumers to quickly order or get information where they are already spending a great deal of their time.
With this service, customers will be able to reorder their favorites or saved orders from any U.S. Pizza Hut location by chatting directly with the Pizza Hut accounts on Facebook Messenger and Twitter, as well as get answers to frequently asked questions and receive the latest deals and promotions.
The idea for integrating social ordering into the Pizza Hut brand experience came from a desire to engage with the brands strong following on social media and to further extend its focus on personalized customer service. The company sees conversational ordering as an opportunity to interact with this audience on the social platforms of which they are already heavy users to provide a quick, easy ordering experience.
We are committed to servicing our customers in the most convenient way and meeting them in the channels they already prefer, said Concors. This launch reinforces our goal of being the most customer-centered pizza company with an emphasis the simplification and personalization of our digital experience.
For initial launch, customers will be able to connect their Facebook messaging account to their Pizza Hut account to dramatically reduce the information required to order. The menus, deals and promotions offered are specific to each restaurant and there is no extra cost to the user to order through Facebook Messenger or Twitter at participating locations. Once an order is confirmed, Pizza Hut will email the customer a receipt and an order confirmation message will be sent in the messenger conversation. From there, picking up the order is no different from the traditional online ordering system or calling into the local restaurant.
Conversables enterprise platform allows for the creation of interactive, automated experiences on messaging and voice platforms. Conversable specializes in conversational commerce, which enables transactions through conversations on messaging and voice interfaces allowing customers to say what they want on Facebook Messenger and Twitter DM. The Conversable powered-platform allows for Pizza Hut to resolve common requests and self-service through automation and machine learning resulting in reduced costs and better service.
We could not be more excited to demo and launch this new Pizza Hut social ordering experience, said Ben Lamm, CEO and Co-Founder, Conversable. Giving instant, conversational access to Pizza Hut lovers in all social channels is pretty amazing and powerful. By enabling those customers to find deals and reorder their favorites all without leaving their messaging channels versus stopping what they are doing and going to download an app is incredibly seamless.
As the first national pizza restaurant to remove artificial flavors and colors from its core pizzas, Pizza Hut is known around the world for its long heritage of breakthrough innovation in food and beyond, including the Original Pan Pizza, Original Stuffed Crust, Cheesy Bites, and more. The pizza restaurant company also has the worlds busiest website in the pizza category at www.pizzahut.com. Nearly 50 percent of the pizza restaurant companys orders come through digital channels, including more than 60 percent of those orders via a mobile device.
For more information, visit blog.pizzahut.com or to order now, visit www.pizzahut.com.
About Pizza Hut
Pizza Hut, a subsidiary of Yum! Brands, Inc. (NYSE: YUM), delivers more pizza, pasta and wings than any other restaurant in the world. The company began 58 years ago in Wichita, Kansas, when two brothers borrowed $600 from their mom to start a pizzeria. What started out small has become the biggest pizza company in the world and today operates more than 16,000 restaurants in more than 100 countries serving innovative pizzas, traditional favorites like the signature Pan Pizza, and much more. Pizza Hut also is the proprietor of the BOOK IT! Program, which is a long-standing childrens literacy program used in more than 630,000 classrooms nationwide. For more information, visit www.pizzahut.com. Follow Pizza Hut on Facebook (www.facebook.com/PizzaHut), Twitter (www.twitter.com/pizzahut) and Instagram (www.instagram.com/pizzahut).
About Conversable:
Conversable is the leading SaaS platform for creating intelligent, automated conversational messaging experiences for customer self-service, conversational commerce, and on-demand content via major messaging and voice applications. Learn more about Conversable at http://conversable.com.
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Two prominent Saratoga County Republicans have transferred campaign funds to the campaign of the party's endorsed candidate in a September primary for state Assembly.
State Sen. Kathy Marchione, R-Halfmoon and Saratoga County Treasurer Andrew Jarosh transferred $100 each to the Assembly campaign of Chris Boyark, according to a new campaign finance report filed with the state Board of Elections.
Boyark, a business owner from Mechanicville, is running against Gerald Mosher of Malta, president of Saratoga Rod & Gun Club, for the Republican nomination to challenge Assemblywoman Carrie Woerner, D-Round Lake, in November.
Boyark had $2,974 in his campaign fund, as of Monday.
He received $3,590 in campaign contributions between Jan. 11 and Monday, and spent $1,675.
His largest contribution was $250 from the New York State Rifle and Pistol Association.
Mosher had not yet field a campaign finance report, due by midnight Friday, as of Wednesday morning.
Woerner reported having nearly $50,000 in her campaign fund, as of Monday.
Mercury chases Venus into the sign of the cat. All this lion energy buzzing about is mighty creative, entertaining even dramatic. Has it started for you yet? If your imagination isnt sparking, its probably because youre too distracted by doing things. Try a little boredom. Its good for you! It leaves space for creativity to rush in and fill the void.
TODAYS BIRTHDAY (July 13). Your birthday wish is a tall order, but its not out of line; nor is it outside the realm of possibility. Strides made in the next 10 weeks will make it so. A deal wraps up favorably next month. September highlights family togetherness. There will be exciting developments in the realm of love and relationships in October. Capricorn and Aries adore you. Your lucky numbers are: 44, 12, 14, 7 and 50.
ARIES (March 21-April 19). What is it called when it seems like the whole world is conspiring to get in the way of your thing? Some call it bad luck; others call it a bad mood. Or maybe its a sign...
TAURUS (April 20-May 20). Even with state-of-the-art tools, it is impossible to chart exactly how you experience the journey. Still, youll be enriched by trying your very best to keep track.
GEMINI (May 21-June 21). Stocking your life with fun people has proven to be a stellar idea. Its part of the reason youre seeing a joke in most things now not everything, mind you. If there were humor in everything, it would cease to be funny.
CANCER (June 22-July 22). Make others feel comfortable, at ease and better about themselves and youve suddenly more clout than the most confident and authoritative person in the room.
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22). The current cosmic lineup is a vitamin shot to your imagination. Use your creative powers to visualize your next incarnation and youll quite naturally find a way out of stale, negative patterns.
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). Some find comfort in knowing the numbers, but even statisticians dont live their lives by statistics. Share a feeling. Its more interesting than knowing and proliferating the cold facts.
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 23). Youre witty. You could impress people with that, but for now let wit be your ace in the hole as you lean on other skills: empathy, listening, compassion, curiosity, the desire to create genuine rapport and more.
SCORPIO (Oct. 24-Nov. 21). There are days when you can casually, lazily hanker for something and actually bring it to hand. Not most days though. Certainly not today. Desire makes things happen. Commit to what you want.
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21). The greedy person is afraid of being overlooked and undernourished by life in some way. Its the same with other things as it is with food: Quantity doesnt equal nutrition. More can often be harmful instead of fortifying.
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19). The magician has to practice very hard to pull off the illusions but once the tricks are learned, executing them is easy. Its the same with humor, which is more magical than magic.
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18). You may have heard the answers already from your current fold, but those answers didnt take hold, because familiarity sometimes causes deafness. Its why you need to talk to new people, too.
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20). Youve a sense of fun burbling up in you now, and you cant help but share it. Kindred spirits will see the sparkle in your eye, and theyll get ready to catch whatever else youre throwing out.
Longtime Glens Falls resident Carrie Bradley recalls being a young girl in a one-room Baptist church on Caroline Street in Queensbury.
Although it was way back in the early 1950s, Bradley had no trouble visualizing the setting.
It had a pot-belly stove in the middle of the room and you had to use an outhouse, she said, her voice rising. I hated that.
We all hated that! laughed fellow church member Joe Williams when told Bradleys story.
Decades later, Bradley is still a member of Faith Tabernacle Missionary Baptist Church, which is celebrating its 65th year this weekend. And, she said, aside from the outhouse, her time with the church has been perfect.
I love it. Its such a huge part of my life, she said. I have wonderful memories. Some of us are still worshipping together 65 years later. We sang in the choir as kids and were still singing in the choir as adults.
Bradley said her parents, who met here when her father was in town from North Carolina working on the Spier Falls Dam and her mother was here from South Carolina babysitting relatives, were charter members of the church.
As a young person, Bradley said, church for her was also a place to connect with other black residents and feel her roots.
There werent a lot of black people in Glens Falls when I grew up. When I went out, I didnt see myself, she said. When I went to church, I saw myself and that meant a lot.
Although black families were welcomed at other churches in Glens Falls at that time, despite a lot of racial tension in other parts of the country, Bradley said they wanted to worship like they did back home.
It meant tradition for them, she said. They wanted to worship in the tradition they had, with the music and the type of preaching.
From the one-room start, men from the congregation in the late 1950s built a larger church on Western Avenue near the plaza that now houses Little Ceasars pizza. That was later torn down, and the congregation has called the church on Nelson Avenue home since 1986.
Roy Thomas, a member of the church since arriving from Mississippi in the 60s, also spoke about it as a place where black residents of the area could meet and discuss issues of the day, including civil rights.
Thats how the NAACP got started (here), he said. The church kept the black people of the community together.
Thomas and others said Faith Tabernacle has never been exclusively for black residents, though, and welcomes all and has several white congregants.
Altheia Williams of Queensbury grew up going to church with Bradley. She said Sundays seem even more special now.
Its someplace I can go to find comfort and to reassure my faith and that Im doing whats required of me by the Lord, she said. As you get older, you want that feeling of security and you know that if something happens, youre going to heaven.
To celebrate the anniversary, Pastor Leonard A. Oates said a dinner is planned for church members at Fort William Henry. Pastor Richard Turpin, from the First Baptist Church in Catskill, will speak.
At Sundays service, Pastor Carl Washington, vice president of the Empire State Missionary Baptist Convention, will give the morning message, Oates said.
Oates, who has been pastor for almost 10 years, said he is proud of his congregation.
I feel blessed that I pastor a great church like Faith Tabernacle, he said. Were not a big church, but we have a great spirit.
He looks forward to building upon what they have, including physical expansion of the church to include classrooms and more facilities. He said succeeding pastor Ernest Hamilton, who was at the church for 30 years, was both exciting and nerve-wracking, but now hes the second-longest serving pastor of the church and couldnt be happier.
Im proud to be their pastor and we have a great legacy to build on, he said.
Bradley said she wishes more young people felt called to attend church the way she and her contemporaries do.
Were an aging congregation, she said. We have people in their 70s, 80s and even 90s, but were missing the 20s and 30s, she said. Its a concern, because no one is going to church anymore.
GRANVILLE Granville Hook & Ladder Co. hopes to be able to respond to fire calls by the end of the week after getting repairs done on a ladder truck and sitting down with village officials to iron out administrative concerns.
Granvilles deputy mayor, however, said Wednesday he did not believe there was a timetable for the Village Board to reinstate the fire department.
Hook & Ladder Co. Chief Dan McClenning said a ladder truck that was out of service for more than three years because of an electrical fire has been repaired and brought back to the Quaker Street station. It was being re-equipped, and McClenning said he hoped it would be ready to respond to fire calls Thursday or Friday at the latest.
The Village Board last month directed the department, one of two in the village, to temporarily stop responding to calls over concerns about firefighter certification paperwork. Board members were also worried that the departments lone remaining ladder truck, a 1980 model, was incapable of responding to calls.
The ladder truck brought back in recent days is a 1999 model that was finally repaired, so the department has one for fire response if needed.
McClenning said progress has been made on the manpower issue as well.
The department has been able to convince some former members to come back aboard, and is processing applications for new members as well, he said. The department is also planning a drive to bring in new members.
Were moving forward. Everything is looking good, he said.
Deputy Mayor Gordon Smith, though, said the Village Board has to hold a special meeting to put the department back in service, and that had not occurred Wednesday. He said progress has been made, though.
Both sides are working hard to get them back to active status, Smith said. They need to have all of their ducks in a row, all of their physicals, certifications and paperwork, but we need to hold a special meeting.
He said no board meeting had been scheduled as of Wednesday afternoon.
The villages other fire department, Granville Engine & Hose Co., was set up to respond as needed in the neighboring companys stead, with a mutual aid plan in place to bring in a ladder truck from Whitehall if needed.
The department will be without one of its more active firefighters for the foreseeable future, however.
McClenning said Wednesday that Justin Martindale, who was arrested twice over the past week for allegedly having sex with underage girls he met at youth dances at the fire station where he served as a chaperone, has been suspended from the department.
He was suspended that day and his keys were taken away, McClenning said.
The alleged sex assaults did not happen at the fire station.
KINGSBURY RWS Manufacturing is facing fresh heat over working conditions at its factory.
The company, which converts wood into animal bedding in the Washington-Warren County Industrial Park, is being taken to task by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration for failing to remedy workplace conditions that could lead to fires or explosions, according to a citation issued Wednesday.
RWS Manufacturing has disregarded its employees safety in failing to correct an obvious fire and explosion hazard and in allowing the existence of new and recurring hazards, said Robert Garvey, OSHAs area director in Albany, in a statement announcing the OSHA action.
The citations, which carry potential fines of up to $197,820, came out of a Jan. 13 follow-up inspection at the plant, which has had at least five fires requiring emergency response since 2010.
The Jan. 13 inspection was done because RWS failed to prove it abated citations issued after an earlier inspection, in November of 2012, that resulted from a complaint.
Jim Lally, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Labor, said the most serious of the citations issued this week the company faces a total of three related to fire prevention measures in the factory charges the company with failing to remedy workplace hazards brought to light during the 2012 inspection.
There has been a serious fire hazard since 2012 that has been uncorrected, and there has been a serious fire since then, Lally said.
The RWS facility had a fire Dec. 22 five fire companies responded to extinguish it that was caused by a hot bearing that ignited combustible material. One of the citations issued this week charges RWS with having conveyors in the shavings room that are not designed, installed and operated to avoid excessive heat buildup from hot bearings.
Other workplace hazards outlined by OSHA include inadequate fire extinguisher maintenance and failure to remove accumulations of combustible wood dust and shavings on rafters and other surfaces.
The citations came as a surprise to RWS Manufacturing manager Don Student.
I had a brief conversation with one of the inspectors yesterday on the phone, and he did not say anything about a fine, Student said Wednesday, adding he had yet to receive the citation documents.
He said he knew a bit about what was in the citations, however, from his conversation with the OSHA representative. And he took particular issue with the fire extinguisher maintenance citation.
That citation claims that, during the January inspection, there were seven fire extinguishers in a to be refilled section of the factory.
Student said the extinguishers had been used during the Dec. 22 fire, and the company RWS pays for fire extinguisher maintenance replaced them, but there were still spent extinguishers in the holding area.
The OSHA citation states that, during the Jan. 13 inspection, the fire extinguishers hadnt been replaced in their mounting locations, however.
RWS Manufacturing has 15 business days from receipt of the notification to decide on a response. It can request a conference with OSHA director Garvey, it can comply with the orders to remedy the citations and pay the fines, or it can contest the findings before the independent Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission.
The plant is owned by Royal Wood Shavings, based in Quebec, Canada.
Student said the company, which employs 26 in Kingsbury, will dispute at least some of the findings in the OSHA report. There will be a battle, he said. Were not going to take this on our knees.
Student said the wood shavings industry is inherently prone to fires, since its product is made by shaving wood into small pieces before heating those pieces to 1,200 degrees to prepare them for use as animal bedding.
He pointed to a fire last August that destroyed the Noble Wood Chip plant in Sherrill, New York, located about 20 miles west of Utica.
That fire came shortly after the owners of the facility invested in a major overhaul, according to a news report in the Oneida Daily Dispatch.
Lally, with OSHA, said the agency does benchmark workplace safety issues within industries, to ensure employers arent held to unrealistic standards. But ultimately, RWS Manufacturing prompted the Jan. 13 inspection by failing to comply with the requirements levied after the 2012 inspection.
Solomon Northup will be alive once again this weekend in many of the same places he knew when he lived in the region in the 1830s and 1840s.
Northup, who was born in Essex County, was kidnapped into slavery and emerged to write his autobiography, 12 Years a Slave, which was published in 1853. The book was the basis for the 2014 Oscar-winning film of the same name.
The 18th annual Solomon Northup Day will be coordinated by the North Country Underground Railroad Historical Association and will begin with an event at 10 a.m. Saturday at the Old Fort House Museum in Fort Edward.
At the museum, located at 29 Broadway, there will be a walking tour of the neighborhood where Northup grew up. Northup himself, portrayed by re-enactor Clifford Oliver, will speak following the tour.
Oliver, a semi-retired photographer who now lives in Greenwich, has been portraying Northup for 20 years. He said his interest began when he first moved to the area 25 years ago and was asked by the local librarian to put together a black history program.
I was not up on black history and the library gave me a first edition of 12 Years a Slave and that did it, Oliver said.
The thing that struck him about Northups story was how anyone could put themselves in his situation, Oliver said.
The story was one I could easily identify with ... he was a free man who was kidnapped.
Oliver said telling Northups story starts a conversation about race in the United States today.
My goal is to open up a dialogue, lets just talk, he said. We have this huge elephant in the room and no one wants to talk.
Peter Slocum, a volunteer with the Underground Railroad Historical Association, which is helping to organize the event, said what organizers hope people get from the program is a sense of their history.
Our goal is to help rediscover our own history here in the Adirondack region, Slocum said.
He is a fascinating character and to think it happened right here, I think its wonderful, Oliver said.
At noon Saturday, a new expanded exhibit on Northup will be opened at the Schroon Lake and North Hudson Historical Society in Schroon Lake. This will coincide with the 47th annual Arts and Crafts Festival there.
At 1 p.m. Sunday, the North Country Underground Railroad Historical Association will host guest speaker Angela Terrell at the Adirondack Architectural Heritage Building at 1745 Main St. in Keeseville in Clinton County.
Terrell is the great-great-granddaughter of Louis Napoleon, a notable New York City Underground Railroad conductor. A retired Washington Post reporter, she only recently learned of her ancestors relationship to the movement. She will be speaking about her research.
The event was founded by Renee Moore in 1998. She said it originally started as a way to draw attention to a part of the regions history that is often overlooked.
It is nice that other organizations have gotten involved, Moore said. It should outgrow its founder, it should go farther.
In the past, the event has been held at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, but Moore said this year the college chose not to host the event.
Moore said remembering Saratoga Springs connection to Solomon Northup is important, as black people are still poorly represented in the city.
Three members of the New York Republican House delegation have co-sponsored Democratic-introduced legislation to continue and increase potential grants in a Federal Environmental Protection Agency program that has been instrumental in downtown Glens Falls redevelopment projects.
Reps. Elise Stefanik, R-Willsboro, Chris Gibson, R-Kinderhook, and John Katko, R-Camillus, have co-sponsored legislation that Rep. Elizabeth Esty, D-Conn., introduced in February to continue the EPA brownfield program, which provides grants to conduct studies of environmental contamination at abandoned or underutilized buildings and grants for cleanup, according to the Library of Congress government information website.
Local government and economic officials have said the study grants provide potential buyers with certainty that there is no contamination or, if there is, the level of expense necessary for cleanup.
The legislation would increase the maximum amount of a grant for cleanup to $300,000.
The proposed increase in the grant would be helpful, said EDC Warren County President Edward Bartholomew, who said he appreciates Stefaniks support.
Bartholomew suggested Congress also consider increasing the maximum amount for local brownfield cleanup job training grants from $200,000 to $300,000 or $400,000.
Glens Falls has received two grants in recent years to offer the training program to unemployed or underemployed individuals.
The legislation HR 4463 had four co-sponsors as of Wednesday all Republicans.
Derrick advances
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee announced it has advanced Democratic congressional candidate Mike Derrick to Red to Blue, the top level status in its campaign assistance program.
Col. Derrick has put together a smart campaign with a strong local backing that has earned him a spot on the Red to Blue program, DCCC Chairman Ben Ray Lujan said in a press release.
Derrick is one of five congressional candidates nationally that the DCCC advanced to the top status on Tuesday.
Derrick, a retired Army colonel, is running in the 21st Congressional District against Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-Willsboro, and Green Party candidate Matt Funiciello, a bread company owner and political activist from Hudson Falls.
Thats a reflection of the interest were getting across the North County, Derrick said in a telephone interview on Wednesday. This means weve got some national recognition for this race. Its all good. Im very, very pleased that this took place.
Funiciello profiled
Mike Mender, assistant to Glens Falls Mayor Jack Diamond, first heard about it from Memphis.
My daughter in Memphis texted me and said, Dad Glens Falls Green Party is on NPR, Mender said.
National Public Radios signature All Things Considered nationally broadcast news program profiled Green Party congressional candidate Matt Funiciello and Warren County Green Party on July 4.
Funiciello, a bread company owner and political activist from Glens Falls, is running in the 21st Congressional District against U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-Willsboro, and Democrat Mike Derrick, a retired Army colonel from Peru, in Clinton County.
Green Party state Assembly candidate Robin Barkenhagen also was interviewed in the segment.Barkenhagen, a retail shop owner and musician, is running against Assemblyman Dan Stec, R-Queensbury, in the 114th Assembly District.
Celebrating 1916
Editors note: This is the latest in a series of posts about the 1916 presidential election between Democratic incumbent Woodrow Wilson and Republican challenger Charles Evans Hughes, a Glens Falls native.
The following quotation from a July 27, 1916 editorial in The Brockport Republican illustrates the timelessness of political debate:
There is a mighty good issue for some candidate that can suggest a scheme for making the Mexicans pay some share of the enormous cost of protecting the border from the Mexicans.
The editorial can be viewed on the New York State Historic Newspapers website, a project of public libraries.
Combining cybercrime with daylight robbery after a typhoon battered greater Taipei, the suspects may have used a cellphone to trigger 41 First Bank ATMs to dispense fat wads of bills, investigators said on Wednesday. In each case, the still-at-large suspects took the money and left quickly, filmed on close-circuit TV cameras.
As Taiwan officials continue to piece together how the crime was committed, the theft shows growing boldness in attacks on ATMs in Asia. In May, a gang stole $13 million from Japanese ATMs in a three-hour, 14,000 withdrawal spree.
Since discovering the theft on Monday, a range of Taiwan's biggest state-run banks have frozen withdrawals from nearly 1,000 ATMs of the kind used in the heist, supplied by Germany's Wincor Nixdorf. About 4 percent of Taiwan's national ATM network of 27,200 machines is affected, leaving customers obliged to use other machines.
The Ministry of Justice's Investigation Bureau on Wednesday said two Russian suspects have been identified, but declined to disclose their names. It said it believed the pair left Taiwan early on Monday, and was still investigating whether a possible third one might have been involved.
"So far we think it could have been done remotely, such as via a cellphone, laptop or hacked First Bank staff PC," said Lin Cheng-hsien, a spokesperson for the bureau.
First Bank reported T$70 million ($2.2 million) was stolen from its ATMs in hits that investigators said took place at various times during both daytime and nightfall.
Investigators have identified three different malware programmes that were used to trigger withdrawals. "After testing the malware, we confirmed hacked ATMs will dispense cash immediately according to the malware," the bureau said in a statement.
The raid on Wincor machines comes as its agreed 1.7 billion euro ($1.88 billion) acquisition by U.S. peer Diebold moves closer to its expected closure this summer, creating a global leader in ATMs with a market share of about 35 percent.
"Attacks follow a similar pattern, irrespective of their make or brand, and we as well as the banks are aware of them," a Wincor official in Germany told Reuters by email. "The details of the attack are being examined by the police, banks as well as experts from Wincor Nixdorf. To support the local teams we have sent security experts."
Officials of Taiwan's banking regulator, the Banking Bureau, declined to comment on the details of the incident, beyond saying First Bank will have to take the loss. It said, however, First Bank's users will not be affected and it will ask local banks to establish monitoring system of their ATMs over the next month.
At least four major state-run financial institutions, including First Bank, Chang Hwa Bank, Taiwan Cooperative Bank and Chunghwa Post Co., suspended cash withdrawals service on their ATMs as a precaution.
This forum is to educate the general public on developmental projects undertaken by the Mahama-led administration.
When we got to the Ministry of Education, teacher absenteeism was 27 percent. The president asked Prof Naana Jane Opoku-Agyemang to declare war on it. I am happy to report to you that we have seen the most drastic reduction in teacher absenteeism ever recorded in this country from 27 percent to 9 percent, Ablakwa said.
He said there are 39,200 teachers on the government payroll. The Minister of Education Prof. Naana Jane Opoku Agyemang in 2014 inaugurated a committee to work and find solutions to teacher absenteeism. The inter-sectorial committee, known as the Zero Tolerance for Teacher Absenteeism, was tasked to reduce this menace in the education sector.
Ablakwa intimated that even though the ministry and the committee have worked hard the target is to record no case of teacher absenteeism at all. He said so yes we have made progress but our target is zero percent. It is not fair to the Ghanaian child to go to school and for a teacher who is being paid not to show up.
To attain this he said the ministry cannot do it alone. He called on all concerned stakeholders to help in attaining this feat the ministry dreams of.
I am convinced we have enough capacity locally to print this material. I have asked the Minister for Education to ensure that domestic printing houses are involved in fulfilling this huge order, the President said.
But five months after the promise has been made the vision is yet to be realised.
Addressing the general public at a public forum titled Government for the People, in the Greater Accra region on Tuesday July 12, Deputy Minister of Communications Felix Kwakye-Ofosu said that even though the move will give the opportunity to print tens of thousands of textbooks for our school children it is yet to start.
He said a huge sum of money is needed for the start of this project, but the move will also cut down on the unemployment levels in the country.
It is estimated that about a GHC100 million will go into that endeavour and already the association of printers has made government aware that up to 4000 young people will have the opportunity to be employed when they begin this project which will start very soon, Kwakye-Ofosu said.
Previously Deputy Minister of Education in charge of tertiary Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa toured some printing houses in Greater Accra where he assured them of making the promise a reality.
Nima Divisional Police Commander, ACP Nuhu Jango, who made this known said the accused persons pleaded guilty to various counts of conspiracy and assault.
He said the police had arrested three persons the lady and the two male assailants, Swallah and Hamza.
All the three pleaded guilty to the charges. They were given five counts of offences they committed and they pleaded guilty to all the court sentenced Hamza and Swallah to 12 months imprisonment with hard labour the Police Commander told Accra-based Citi FM.
He added that the police have launched a manhunt for one other suspect who is currently on the run.
ACP Nuhu Jango added that the female student at the center of the controversy has also been found guilty of conspiring with the convicts, and is yet to be sentenced by a Juvenile Court on Thursday.
Background
The thugs reportedly came to the school and began attacking teachers and pupils with broken bottles, canes and other weapons.
Several of the teachers and pupils were injured in the process and later sought medical attention at a near-by hospital.
You must have also heard of the serious hustle for visas, as well as relationships that were ruined because one partner had a visa and left the other who didn't have one behind.
Well, not only Nigerians have their plans thwarted by immigration and visa requirements.
This Pakistani woman, Huma Mobin, and her husband had plans to spend their honeymoon in Greece, but her husband was denied a visa.
So Huma decided to go on her honeymoon without her husband, accompanied by her in-laws instead.
At first she was distraught, but she eventually enjoyed her trip, making up for it with hilarious photos.
She really misses him, what do you think?
She took most of her pictures with one arm outstretched as if she's hugging her absent husband.
On Tuesday morning, the hashtag #KenMustApologize was trending on Twitter.
In a petition to parliament, the gender group said: By the utterances made by the MP, he does not only bring the honourable house into disrepute but also questions the credibility and position of Parliament in standing against discrimination against women and promoting gender equality. His utterances clearly have damaged the reputation and integrity of his position and that of the House.
Secretary of the concerned women, Hajia Alimatu M. Issah said the comments by Agyapong against Charlotte Osei, the EC boss, was humiliating.
This is disrespectful to all women, their capabilities and intelligence, she noted.
The Leader of the parliamentary women caucus, Hon. Hajia Mary Boforo, who received the petition on behalf of the Speaker of Parliament assure them of support.
We will do as promised and we are sure that Speaker who places women in high esteem will act on your petition, she said.
The Member of Parliament for Assin Central had recently on a campaign platform accused Mrs. Charlotte Osei of having sexual encounters with some bigwigs in the governing NDC to be appointed EC chair.
The comments did not go down well with some sections of the public, including many civil society organisations and women groups.
The Minister of Gender Children and Social Protection subsequently requested an apology from Mr. Kennedy Agyepong on behalf of the Chairperson of the Electoral Commission.
Speaking at the launch of the UN Day Against Human Trafficking in Accra, Ambassador Jackson spoke of his deep passion for ending today's modern-day slavery, which more than one hundred thousand Ghanaian men, women and children fall victim to, he said.
It is just as bad as the slavery we knew 400 years ago.
People were lured with false promises of well-paying work in foreign lands,then arrive to find themselves exploited, and abused in domestic servitude or forced prostitution, and not just women, but men too, he told the audience of Government, media and NGOs workers at the event on Wednesday July 13.
He also spoke of the Kayayei women who come from the North of Ghana to Accra in search of work, but sometimes end up as victims of sex trafficking.
We need to be outraged about it, he said.
He spoke of victims being trapped in a hell of forced labour, forced servitude and many cases prostitution."
The USA was focused on helping NGOs and the Ghana Government to eliminate trafficking, and was particularly focused on the cocoa, fishing and mining industries.
He called on the Ghana Government to do more to combat trafficking, referring to the recent US report on trafficking across the globe where all countries are rated.
Ghana was ranked at tier 2 putting it on a watch list, as it did not meet the minimum standards for combating trafficking - it failed to provide evidence of increasing efforts to combat trafficking.
He said the report found 2015 was irrevocably marred by the lack of prosecutions, and the number of victim identified decreased.
Government inaction could lead Ghana to lose funds from the US, he added, however, he said the US was not threatening Ghana.
I am asking for the Government of Ghana, the NGOs and all of you to work with us and work with one another to address this," Ambassador Jackson said.
Addressing the United States' own history of slavery, Ambassador Jackson said: "Slavery was legal in the United States...it was a shameful period in our history and we are still feeling the repercussions today, he said.
We have modern day slavery, it is as wrong today as it was hundreds of years ago.
Also at the event was Victoria Natsu from the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection. As acting Executive Secretary of the Human Trafficking Secretariat she said women and children make up 75 percent of all trafficked people in the world.
Human trafficking is a lucrative business for traffickers. It is currently the second largest trade in the world after drugs, she said.
Since Ghana implemented the Human Trafficking Act of 2005, Natsu said the Ministry was working to train units in the Ghana police and immigration officers to help identity, prevent and prosecute offenders of trafficking.
She said reducing poverty in Ghana would also protect vulnerable people from falling victim to trafficking and slavery.
She said the tier 2 watch list ranking showed Ghana needed to improve in all areas of prevention, protection, prosecution and partnership to combat trafficking in a decisive manner.
Ebenezer Akuoku Frimpong who also doubles as the District Chief Executive (DCE) for the Sekyere Central District of the Ashanti Region revealed that the president per the 1992 constitution is the only one mandated to hire and fire people who serve in his government.
He added that the pressures brought on him by the Asanteman Traditional Council leading to the resignation of the mayor of the Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly (KMA) Kojo Bonsu defeats this purpose.
This will not augur well for the local governance system. It is only the president who can hire and fire. The president is the appointing authority. The powers of the president are being curtailed here," he said.
He also noted that though traditional authorities wield some form of power following the indirect rule system of governance, such powers have somehow been censored in the post-colonial era.
Akuoku Frimpong who spoke on a Kumasi based radio station emphasised on the significance of traditional authorities indicating that they must be consulted at a large extent in the local governance system.
They play a pivotal role in governance bearing in mind they wield power before the advent of the Whiteman. Even though you are appointed by the president, you need to take their views into consideration in the day-to-day running of your administration," he added.
Read also:Kojo Bonsu
He therefore urged government appointees to consulting traditional authorities on issues of land, budget and developmental projects in their areas of authority but was quick to add that they must not seek their consent when it comes to executive decisions
Traditional authorities perform traditional duties and are custodians of the land. MMDCEs on the other hand are also expected by the law to be act and execute executive decisions. If a representative of the traditional authority was appointed to join a committee it is not out of order," he stressed.
Background
The Chief Executive Officer of the Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly (KMA) turned in his resignation yesterday July 12, 2016 following calls for his removal from the highly influential Asanteman Traditional Council.
The Chief Executive of the Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly (KMA), Kojo Bonsu resigned following calls for his removal by the Asanteman Council.
The Council called on President Mahama to remove him over his decision to unilaterally remove Amoamanhene, Nana Agyenim Boateng from the Kejetia Market project board without informing the Asantehene, Otumfuo Osei Tutu II.
Kojo Bonsu has faced stiff opposition from some residents and traders of the city for his handling of some developmental projects in the area including the redevelopment of the Kejetia transport terminal and market.
But in assessing the situation, Franklin Cudjoe said This is essentially a clash with officialdom within a certain precinct where customs matter.
"I will doubt very much his [Kojo Bonsu] desire to disrespect tradition would rather be his focus when in actual fact it will be much better if he were consultative, Franklin Cudjoe told Accra-based Joy FM.
He believes the issue was a small matter that must have gone bad.
Franklin Cudjoe advised that Kojo Bonsu be brought to Accra to replace the Accra Mayor, Mr Alfred Oko Vanderpuije.
Background
Ghana's decentralization program began in 1988 with the objective to promote effective and accountable local government, which would become autonomous in political administration, planning, development, budgeting and rating.
Many organisations including the Center for Democratic Congress, CDD and the Institute for Democratic Governance (IDEG) have over the years asked that the programme be restructured for progress to be made.
She mentioned this at a public forum dubbed Government for the People, in the Greater Accra region on Tuesday 12 July.
The forum is to provide a platform for the government to showcase what it has accomplished, the policies it has formulated and the impact of all of these on the general public.
Addressing the audience on the developments of the transportation sector in the Greater Accra Region, Mogtari expressed hope that the ministry will fully roll out the bus rapid transit system by end of year. She encouraged the general public to patronise the services of the BRT more and also looked forward to an extension of the areas the routes the ply. She said we expect more people to patronise the BRT and then also hope to extend it to other areas such as Kasoa.
The transport sector will not be complete without the railway playing a key role. The deputy minister said one of the key challenges they face as a sector has been from the railways. The railways have been one of our key challenges, we continue to work on finding the requisite investment for the railway sector she said.
In Accra there are two trains that run a transportation system for passengers plying the Nsawam to Accra and Tema to Accra routes. Mogtari called on the Ghana Ports and Harbours Authority to develop railway lines particularly from Takoradi in the Western region to Tema in the Greater Accra region for the transportation of cargos. She said though we have some very limited services here in Accra, we also look forward to the Ghana Ports and Harbours Authority developing its own railway to improve the movement of cargo from the port of Takoradi to the port of Tema.
Speaking at the opening of the 2016 Annual Meeting of the Association of Power utilities Africa (APUA) in Accra , Vice President Paa Kwesi Amissah Arthur said various interventions by government including the National Electrification Scheme will help in attaining the objective.
The Ghana Grid Company (GRIDco) says the the national access rate to electricity by the end of 2015 increased to 80.5%.
"In line with our National Energy Strategy, we have put in place the mechanisms to ensure that by 2020 there will be universal access to electricity. Interventions including the national electrification scheme (NES) , self help electrification project (SHEP), and the ghana energy development and access project (GEDAP) will assistin attaining the target" , the vice president reiterated .
From data on Sub Saharan Africa, Ghana is behind Gabon and South Africa in terms of access to electricity excluding small island states.
Despite the efforts to expand access to electricity across the country, Ghana has been struggling to solve a three year power crisis that has impacted the economy negatively and led to the collapse of several other businesses.
Vice President Amixsah Arthur conceded that ,"our power sector has had major disruptions because of inadequate power supply that required that consumers exhibited a certain amount of restraint and understanding. Both producers and consumers suffrage during the period ".
Also speaking at the 2016 APUA Annual Meeting the Chief Executive of the Volta River authority Kirk Koffi, said Ghana was on course to address the current power challenges .
"Ghana in the last three years has had its fair share of problems . To avert a future recurrence , we are pursing various rehabilitation and expansion programmes on the generation , transmission and distribution infrastructure as each segment has responsibility to add value to the industry" , he stated
READ MORE: Minority leader asks Mahama to appoint power minister
He told the newspaper that statutory board would collect all electricity bills and pay all stakeholders their share through a cascading waterfall system, will be responsible for disconnection of defaulting consumers, and it would ensure that all government institutions pay their electricity bills.
The interview comes on the heels of plans by government to privatise the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG).
It is unclear how the board will operate since the ECG will be privatise for 25 years and may be performing the same functions as the proposed liquidity management board by the NPP.
Ghana is going through excruciating power supply that is affecting business operations and planning.
READ MORE: Power Ministry explains cause of power interruptions
The power challenges have largely been attributed VRA's indebtedness to the banks and suppliers.
As of March, it owed banks and suppliers $1.53bn.
According to the policy think tank , the current erratic power supply across the country confirms concerns that the more than 3 year power crisis that has rocked the country is more a financial and fuel supply issue than a capacity one.
"We don't need the second karpowership. For what ?" , the deputy executive director of ACEP Ben Boakye quizzed .
The first power barge that arrived in Ghana late 2015 has been adding some 225 megawatts to the national grid since December 18, helping meet the power demand estimated to be increasing between 10 and 12% annually.
However after close to 5 months of relatively stable power supply the country has been experience intermittent power cuts due to challenges with generation.
N Gas of Nigeria has cut gas supply to Ghana to help feed the Asogli and Siemens thermal plants knocking off close to 300 megawatts from the national grid . This is due to the country's continued indebtedness to the company and the West African gas pipeline company (transporters of the gas).
According to reports the electricity company of ghana and the Ghana Grid Company has been shedding between 200 and 300 megawatts in the last few weeks despite government's refusal to sanction the release of loads shedding timetable .
Acep says Ghana's failure to secure enough fuel for the thermal plants is to blame for the current power challenges and so it makes no sense for government to continue concentrating on expanding the country's genrational capacity.
Ben Boakye insists these independent power producers we are bringing into the country have within their contracts capacity charges and so we pay for the contracted megawatts whether we produce power from their machines or not .
Speaking at a press conference Wednesday, Samuel Tettey, the Director of Electoral services at the commission noted the list of NHIS card registrants presented to the Supreme Court has been deleted from the provisional register.
"As such, such persons will be given an opportunity to re-register at the district offices of the Electoral Commission in areas where they registered," he added.
Tettey added that any other NHIS card registrant who is found apart from the list which was presented to the Supreme Court will also be deleted but said the "[EC] is yet to get those ones."
The commission also appealed to public to report to the EC any NHIS card registrants for the names to be deleted from the provisional register.
Explaining further, the Director of Electoral services said "once the deletion is done, the second step is to re-register all those involved."
He asked affected persons to report to the district offices of the EC.
"If you get to the district offices, it is not a straight forward registration, you have to proof your eligibility," including proof of nationality, 18 years of age, proof of sound mind, resident in the particular area, passport and two guarantors.
The re-registration is going to be done online and data exported straight to data center at the head office in Accra, Tettey said.
According to him, list of all persons affected by the Supreme Court deletion order will be published in a national daily newspaper yet to be determined.
In addition to that, Tettey said district officers have been instructed to publish the list in their district at the district offices of the commission in all the affected areas.
"Every district is to do that," he emphasized.
He will hold series of meetings with regional executives, former regional appointees, Members of Parliament (MPs), market women, students and artisans.
Nana Addo is expected to pay courtesy calls on the Asantehene Otumfuo Osei Tutu II at the Manhyia palace, some chiefs and other prominent religious leaders in the region.
According to the regional secretary of the party, Sam Pyne the flagbearer would be given a befitting welcoming ceremony by the people of the Ashanti region
Read also:Election 2016
We dont have a certified register and we have three months to go into the election. We should have finished some of the processes by September. I can assure you on the floor that I will not vouch for November, O.B Amoah told Accra-based Citi FM.
The New Patriotic Party (NPP) Member of Parliament for Akuapem South constituency also urged the Commission to submit a new timetable to parliament for the elections.
If you want to hold your election on November 7, give us up to date calendar for us to know that even if the date has shifted we can still meet the deadline, he added.
O.B. Amoah however tasked the EC to consider the law in producing a new calendar.
...We also need to look at the law. For instance when it comes to proxy voting, special voting, transfer of votes, we should be able to do it 42 days before the elections. When it comes to continuous registration, if you register less than 60 days before elections, your name will be on the register but you cant vote, he said.
Read Also : Install lie detectors in African courts - Rawlings
Rawlings made reference to an incident where two Western Presidents Tony Blair and George Bush in an attempt to topple the reign of Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe used former President John Kufour of Ghana and former president Olusegun Obansajo of Nigeria.
According to Rawlings, Mugabe sacked the two former Heads of State who had gone to convince him to step down.
However a statement from former president Kufour's office has denied this vehemently.
the statement said.
Signed by Kufours spokesperson Frank Agyekum, the statement further said Rawlings has misrepresented the facts of an incident which happened in 2003.
The statement explains that at Commonwealth Heads of State meeting in Nigeria , there were concerns about the heightened political tension in Zimbabwe following the governments decree to seize white lands for blacks, and requested some of the leaders gathered to intervene to help calm tempers.
Thebo Mbeki of South Africa and Obasango volunteered to go on that mission.
Read Also : Nana Addo is incorruptible - Rawlings
Kufour also responded to Rawlings assertion that, after he (Rawlings) left office western media and western governments were desperately whitewashing the image of Ghana in spite of the atrocities and the corruption that was going on in my country after we had left office.
He said his achievements which were widely reported were well deserve due to the result oriented approach to govern the country and the historical, statistical, economic, and social records, for all well-meaning Ghanaians to compare and contrast.
The Blue Mosque was commissioned in the 17th Century by Sultan Ahmet who was so eager to see the mosque finished that he often assisted in the construction work.
The mosque took seven years to complete and the Sultan died just a year after its completion. He and his wife and three sons are buried outside the mosque.
The mosque complex originally included a madrasa, hospital, primary school, market, imaret and the founders tomb, however most of the buildings were torn down in the 19th century.
The magnificent mosque is easily noticeable as it is spotted from far away, the six minarets are a very unique distinguishing feature.
The six reportedly caused uproar as the holiest mosque in the world, located in Mecca also had six minarets. The sultan had to send his architect over to add a seventh minaret, solving the problem.
The name Blue Mosque comes from the 20,000 blue tiles that line the high ceiling inside the mosque.
Another beautiful aesthetic feature of the mosque is the nicely arranged cascade of domes that seem like they spill down from the central dome. Each dome has arcades running beneath them, adding to the beauty of the place.
Non-worshippers use the north entrance of the mosque, to preserve the sanctity of the mosque. The gate has symbolic chains hanging that encourage everyone who enters the premises to bow their heads upon entering.
The Nollywood actor has reportedly moved his divorce case to a High court in a bid to contest his wife's request for a divorce from him.
Ike is reported to have informed a Lagos Island Customary Court that he has filed an application before a High Court restraining the lower court from hearing the divorce suit filed against him by his estranged wife.
Emma has been bent on seeing the dissolution of her 16-year-old marriage over claims of domestic violence.
Ike has continued to deny the claims, pleading with the court to not separate them as he still loves his wife and wants her back.
Ike's defence lawyer, Mr Abdul Labi-Lawal, reportedly informed the court today, July 12, 2016, that his client has filed a stay of proceedings before a High Court in Lagos.
The Nation reports that the application sought the declaration of the High Court that the Lagos Island Customary Court lacked requisite jurisdiction to entertain and determine Ikes divorce suit, noting that the marriage between the since estranged couple was conducted in Enugu State under the Igbo customs and traditions.
Ike went on to ask the High Court to declare all the proceedings already conducted by the Lagos Island Customary Court in respect of couples marriage, null and void.
Emma's defence lawyer, Mr Iheanyi Awa, reportedly opposed the application, stating that it had been aimed at nullifying the courts judgement, and that neither himself nor his client had been served with the said application.
Speaking during the court session, Awa said:
It is an attempt to arrest the judgment of the court, I am aware that the respondent wants to arrest the judgment which is to be delivered today.
The stay of proceedings has been decided for a long time and court has ruled that it has jurisdiction to entertain the matter.
It is a ploy to frustrate my client, they just want to delay the judgment till another day. The court should give its judgment and if they are not satisfied, they can appeal."
ALSO READ: Unknown group says actor is not AGN president
The High court, after listening to both parties went on to grant the stay of the proceedings, as the case was adjourned.
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In 2015, the number of tourists to Saudi Arabia reached 15.4 million, up three percent increase from the previous year, and the number of outbound Saudi tourists reached 6.4 million.
Not unconnected to this rise in the flock of tourists to Saudi Arabia is religious tourism. Saudi Arabia is regarded as the geographical capital of Islam and adherents of the Muslim faith are required to visit the Holy Land on Hajj pilgrimage at least once in their lifetime as long as they can afford it.
Bishop Adeboye visited the family of Mrs Mojisola Elisha Olawale, today, July 12, 2016, following her brutal murder.
Mrs Olawale was hacked to death while preaching during the early hours of Saturday, July 9, 2016, around Gbazango-West area of Kubwa.
Bishop Adeboye is pictured sharing words of encouragement with the family of the deceased as well as signing the condolence register at their residence.
Mr Olawale has been reported to be inconsolable following the news of the murder of his wife, even after the men reportedly behind the murder were arrested.
Reacting to the outcry that followed the boy's detention at the Enugu State Police Command Headquarters, the Commissioner of Police in the state, Emmanuel Ojukwu, has come out to clear the air, saying the primary two pupil was not in detention, stating that the police were holding the boy in order to protect him from jungle justice.
According to CP Ojukwu, an angry mob which gathered after the accidental killing of the 12-year-old victim, Oluebube Boniface, wanted to lynch Chibuike and his mother.
The community wanted to kill the boy; so we had to put him in protective custody. We already lost one person owing to that unfortunate incident, we dont want to lose another person.
We also protected the house because the angry residents wanted to set it ablaze. As we speak, policemen are still guarding the compound. We dont want to lose another life or property. Chibuike would not be charged for any crime. He will be freed in due course, Ojukwu narrated at a press conference.
ALSO READ: Nigerian lady murdered by unknown persons in Oman
The reports also reveal that the Indonesian President, Joko Widodo, has reportedly pledged to increase the number of executions in 2016 as part of his increased efforts to deal with drug trafficking in the country.
When asked by reporters if there would be any foreigners on the list of convicts to be executed this year, Attorney General, Muhammad Prasetyo said:
We have foreigners, among them from Nigeria and Zimbabwe.
Yongxing Island is home to the government of Sansha, China's southernmost city. [Photo/Xinhua ]
The Hague-based arbitral tribunal on Tuesday passed its ruling on the case unilaterally brought by the Philippines in its dispute with China in the South China Sea, but China remains firm on its stance of "non-acceptance, non-recognition and non-compliance". There is enough reason for China to do so, because the ruling, along with the arbitration, is null and void and thus not binding.
The Philippines filed the case three years ago without the consent of China, which since then has been reiterating the reasons for refusing to accept the arbitration and the ruling. Since Manila's unilateral move is a violation of international law and judicial practices, the arbitration and ruling make no difference to China's legal status in the South China Sea.
The issues Manila submitted to the arbitral tribunal were, in fact, beyond the scope of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. There are still disputes over China's maritime claims in the South China Sea, and whether China's legal actions in the waters infringed other neighbors' interests is related to territorial claims and maritime delimitation, which are beyond the realm of UNCLOS.
Besides, the Philippines resorted to the arbitral tribunal when options of peaceful bilateral negotiations had not been exhausted; it also failed to fulfill its obligation to compare notes with China, which exercised its right under Article 298 of UNCLOS by making a declaration excluding compulsory arbitration. Given these facts, among many, the Hague-based tribunal had no ground to accept Manila's case.
Since 1995, "consent" has been repeatedly emphasized in the documents jointly issued by Beijing and Manila, in a bid to make clear their respective obligations in negotiations. The Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea agreed by both sides in 2002, too, highlights the term "promise" in Article 4, to ensure territorial disputes are addressed peacefully by the parties directly involved through consultation and negotiation.
So by hyping up 15 cases that do not define Beijing-Manila ties, the Philippine government led by former president Benigno Aquino III dishonored the bilateral agreements with China. At their earlier talks on bilateral disputes, both sides had focused on emergencies in areas of dispute and the measures needed to reduce frictions, none of which are reflected in Manila's arbitration.
As such, the tribunal's ruling will have no impact on China, because the country's decision to not accept or implement it is in line with UNCLOS, which should be respected by one and all.
In a statement justifying its "jurisdiction" over the Philippines' case, the tribunal separated a country's maritime interests from its sovereignty, while questioning the validity of bilateral or multilateral agreements because they do not rule out the possibility of third-party intervention. Such misinterpretations can harm the legitimacy and authority of UNCLOS, making it difficult for disputing countries to solve their problems through bilateral or multilateral channels.
China's presence in the South China Sea is legal and historical, from administrative management and navigation to salvage operations, and UNCLOS, a relatively modern convention, alone cannot repudiate its interests in these waters.
The Declaration of the Government of the People's Republic of China on the Territorial Sea of 1958 and the Law of the People's Republic of China on the Territorial Sea and the Contiguous Zone of 1992 also make it clear that China's territorial claims are about archipelagos, not single reefs or islets, in the South China Sea. That further nullifies the tribunal's attempt to decide the ownership of certain islands.
The author is director of the China Ocean Strategy Studies Center at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences.
According to a Facebook user, Olayinka Ayodeji Awoyemi, the healthy looking man had gone to an office complex where he told the lady selling the cards that he owned an office inside the complex and wanted to buy all the cards she had available, only to attempt sneaking away when the girl saw him and raised an alarm.
"So this plum middle age man (thief), was caught in my office complex today claiming to a young lady selling recharge cards, he owns an office in the complex and one of the SUVs parked in the complex premises.
He then told the lady to bring all her recharge cards and told her to sit somewhere in the compound to calculate the total money while he informed his secretary to bring her the money estimated to be around N44, 000.
He even sent the security guard to get him 5 pure water (sachet water), that they need water in his office!
After that, he climbed the stairs into the building, returned and tell the young lady that her money is on the way, that she should wait for his secretary."
"Very quickly this same man advanced to the gate and jumped into a Keke Napep but luckily, the lady who was highly observant, grabbed him by his shirt, pulled him off the Keke and screamed on him.
Moeti said this at a press briefing organised by the Minister of Health, Prof. Isaac Adewole, at the end of the visit of the WHO director to Nigeria on Tuesday in Abuja.
She said that the Federal Government was committed to giving quality healthcare to the people, adding that ``I am happy that a certain amount of money will be given to every state, so as to have access to good health.
``I am also happy to know that Nigerians can get assess to quality health care, irrespective of financial status.
``However, we need to have more surveillance system so we need additional resources to sustain it.,' she said.
The Minister of Health, Prof. Adewole, who pledged that the budgetary allocation for health would be properly utilised, added that ``we identify with all WHO projects and we will address the issue of balance between the rich and the poor in terms of accessibility to healthcare.
``We will disburse 1.5 million U.S. dollars to states and each state will get 10 million dollars and if properly utilised, more will be given to them.
``We are waiting for your return next year, to declare Nigeria polio-free," he said.
Malami who refused to appear before the Red Chambers however met with Senate President Bukola Saraki on Tuesday night following threat to withdraw his confirmation.
Speaking on the forgery suit filed against the senate president, his deputy and two others, Malami said the lawsuit predates his appointment as attorney-general of the federation and minister of justice.
Malami explained that the criminal suite with reference number FHC/ABJ/CS/646/ 2015 was filed on July, 23, 2015 alongside a report of the concluded investigation by the police.
"I was appointed on the 12th day of November 2015, that is precisely about four months. As at the time I came to office, the report was already concluded.
"The case was instituted before the court for the sustenance of the rule of law but not in any way to truncate the democratic process. It will be overreaching on my part to make any insinuation on the case," he added.
He maintained that the amendment of the Senate standing orders did not pass through due process thereby constituting a breach of Section 60 of the 1999 Constitution.
The EFCC boss, Ibrahim Magu, stated this during a workshop organised by the Nigeria Bar Association (NBA) in collaboration with the Presidential Advisory Committee against Corruption (PACC) in Abuja on Tuesday, July 12, 2016.
Magu maintained that lawyers have a greater stake in the war against corruption hence the decision to focus on those who helped corrupt officials to escape justice.
"Whether you are EFCC, SAN (Senior Advocates of Nigeria) or whatever, sooner or later we will start going after people who buy properties with stolen funds as well as people who help others to escape justice.
"We will not stop going after people who are involved in laundering money. It doesnt matter who you are, the law is a respecter of nobody especially those who commit crime," he said.
Similarly, the EFCC boss disclosed plans to go after banks and their personnel involved in money laundring.
This is contained in a statement issued on Wednesday by acting Army Spokesman, Col. Sani Usman.
According to the statement, the attack which started at about 6:30 p.m. was successfully repelled after about three hours of exchange of heavy gunfire that inflicted tremendous casualty on the terrorists.
It stated that one gallant soldier paid the supreme price, while 11 others were wounded in action and one of the units Gun truck was badly damaged.
"As at this morning, the troops counted 25 bodies of the Boko Haram terrorists and recovered 2 Rocket Propelled Grenades 7 (RPG 7) tubes, a 60mm Mortar tube, 2 Machine Guns, 12 AK-47 rifles and one Light Machine Gun.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that Kangarwa had been a stronghold of the insurgents in northern Borno until it was recaptured by the Nigerian forces.
According to Sahara Reporters, Melaye, representing Kogi West constituency, had on Tuesday, July 12, harassed the APC leader's wife during a closed-door session of the Senate over the forgery case against the Senate President Bukola Saraki and his deputy, Ike Ekweremadu.
Mrs Tinubu was said to have opposed the lawmaker when he suggested the Senate initiate impeachment process against President Muhammadu Buhari - Melaye hurled abuses on her in reply.
I can f**k you, he was quoted to have said.
Speaking through Sunday Dare, his spokesman, Bola Tinubu described Melaye's misconduct as a "disgrace to the Senate.
And if Dino thinks nothing will happen if he dare beats up another Senator, then he must be living in a fools paradise," Dare wrote on Twitter.
The President request is contained in a letter dated June 30, 2016, addressed to the Speaker, Yakubu Dogara, which was read on the floor of the House on Tuesday in Abuja.
In the letter, Buhari specifically sought the House's approval for the 2016 budget proposals of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), Oil and Gas Free Zones Authority and Nigeria Nuclear Regulatory Authority.
Also in the list were Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), National Broadcasting Commission (NBC), the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), Nigerian Television Authority (NTA), Radio Nigeria, and the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), among others.
``May I please pray the House of Representatives to expeditiously consider and approve the budgets of these agencies and corporations to enable them to effectively execute their mandates,'' the President prayed.
Earlier in the day, the senator representing Kogi west constituency had reportedly ignited the move to impeach President Buhari and threatened to beat and impregnate Senator Oluremi Tinubu, in the process.
In a press statement released late on Tuesday night, July 12, 2016, Dino denied reported unruly behaviour and misconduct during the Tuesday session.
The Chairman of the Senate Committee on Federal Capital Territory, debunked the reports saying, " It is pertinent to note that the incredulously machinated misinformation was orchestrated by forces bent on destabilizing the upper chambers of the Nigerian Parliament for selfish reasons."
Continuing, he said, "One of the mushroom and faceless online platform used to promote the ill-fated, calumnious write-up has been notorious for serving as the propagandist machinery of political commercialists who are pushing for the extension of their fiefdom to the National Assembly .
"While I remain unimpeachably committed to the leadership of the Senate, I believe the respected arm of government charged with the onerous responsibility of law making should be given the independence to conduct its business," he stressed.
Speaking further, Senator Melaye said, "It is untrue and malicious ; the narrative of the attack dogs of demagogues who have decided to turn Nigeria upside down for failing to choose leaders for Senators."
On his character, the controversial Senator stressed that he is a responsible Nigerian and a role model who would not stoop so low to behave in the reported manner.
"I am a responsible Nigerian, role model and a champion of anti-corruption and equity which my party stands for. I therefore urge the general public to discountenance the libellous publication as I will continue to respect the history, culture and excellence of my Kogi West people on the floor of the Senate," he said.
He said the association had dissolved its Board of Trustees and amended its constitution.
Okoronkwo said the decision to call on the Federal Government to reopen the subsidy payment issues was so that the level of IPMANs alleged involvement would be determined.
According to him, individuals found culpable will be brought to book and made to answer for their wrongdoing.
He said that the association unanimously voted to suspend its former president, Alhaji Aminu abdulkadir, and one Lawson Obasa
He said the decision for suspending them and dissolving the board was because of alleged corrupt practices perpetrated by the past president and some members of the board.
Following the dissolution of the board, members of the association present at the meeting constituted a new 21-member Board of Trustees, representing the 21 depots across the country, he said.
Okoronkwo said the new board had responsibility to advise the executive on IPMANs business processes to ensure that marketers enjoyed adequate supply of products and guarantee unhindered supply of products.
Meanwhile, in a communique issued after the meeting, the group mandated the National Executive Committee (NEC) to evolve measures that would further aid the association in strengthening its stake in the downstream sector and diversify where necessary.
The group passed a vote of confidence on the Chinedu Okoronkwo-led NEC and adopted the 2009 amended constitution to reflect changes in the composition of the Board of Trustees.
It said the amendment included automatic succession clause for the office of the National Vice-President as enshrined in Articles 20 and 22 of the 2009 Amended Constitution.
The meeting also mandated members of the board to elect "their chairman which position shall rotate between north and south, five members from each zone and the National President and Secretary as members.
Magu was said to have been departing the Rockview Classic Hotel, in Abuja, on Tuesday, July 12, venue of a one-day workshop on anti-corruption, when he was approached by newsmen for an interview.
According to report, the EFCC boss had positioned to answer questions from the journalists but as soon as the the first question bordering on Buratai was asked, he made a U-turn and jumped into his waiting car.
Earlier at the event, Magu had lamented the level of corruption in the Nigerian system, citing various examples, including that of a civil servant who paid over N800m as legal fee to lawyers - he queried how a civil servant could have legitimately raised that huge sums of the money for legal fee.
Incidentally, Buratai had claimed that he purchased his Dubai assets with his personal savings.
However, some prominent Nigerian groups and individuals, including Femi Falana (SAN), have called on President Muhammadu Buhari to sack the army chief if he fails to voluntary resign.
While speaking at the event which was co-organised by the Nigerian Bar Association and the Presidential Advisory Committee Against Corruption, Magu said the EFCC will start going after lawyers.
I dont want to mention some of our strategies, but we will start going after people now. If you are involved in laundering money, we will go after you it doesnt matter who you are because the law does not respect anybody whether you are the EFCC chairman, whether you are SAN," he said.
Sooner or later we will look at how people assist people to buy properties with stolen funds, how people assist others to escape justice and we will go after them.
But for now, I want to say, please, join us in the fight against corruption to save this country so that our children and grandchildren will have a greater Nigeria."
Mr Nick Dazang, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Deputy Director for Voter Education and Publicity, disclosed this in an interview with NAN on Tuesday in Abuja.
Dazang said the decision to accept Ize-Iyamu, candidate of the PDP National Caretaker Committee, led by Sen. Ahmed Makarfi was informed by the court decision on the matter.``The commission collected the nomination from Makarfi-led faction because he has a court judgment that says INEC should accept his candidate.
``Secondly, you will recall that it is only his own faction of PDP primarily that the commission monitored, Dazang said.
NAN recalls that the Sen. Ali Modu Sheriff faction of the PDP submitted the name of Matthew Iduoriyekwemwen as its candidate for the Sept. 10 polls.
Dazang said the commission had received nominations forms from 19 political parties including the All Progressives Congress (APC).He listed others as: Action Aliance (AA), African Democratic Congress (ACD), Advance Congress of
Democrats ( ACD), Allied Congress Party of Nigeria (ACPN), All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), Citizens Popular Party (CPP), Independent Democrats ( ID) among others.
NAN recalls that INEC had earlier said that it would await final outcome of court cases in deciding on PDPs candidate for the governorship election in Edo.
The Makarfis group, supported by all organs of the party, including the Governors Forum and the Board of Trustees, conducted its primary on June 20 in Benin and elected Osagie Ize-Iyamu as candidate.
On June 29, in another primary also in Benin, but was not supervised by INEC as required by the Electoral Act, Sheriffs faction picked Matthew Iduoriyekwemwen as the partys candidate for the Sept. 10 election.
It will also be recall that a Federal High Court in Port Harcourt on July 4 held that the May 21 national convention that removed Sheriff as chairman and constituted the National Caretaker Committee was duly constituted.
The court also declared that the dissolution of the National Working Committee and the National Executive Committee by that convention was valid.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the bill is an executive bill sponsored by the Leader of the assembly, Mr Ikechukwu Ezugwu.
Ezugwu said that the bill would block all the loopholes in revenue collection and generation, hence the need to use professionals to achieve an improved revenue base.
He explained that the bill would allow for a proper pattern, appropriate location and colours to be used for adverts, depending on their content, information and purpose which would add aesthetics to the environment.
The members of the assembly while lending their opinions on the bill said it would provide new resources for the efficient administration of the state in the face of the current economic realities facing the country at large.
Mr Iloabuchi Aniagu (PDP-Nkanu West) while contributing to the bill, however, reminded the members that it tended to take away an aspect of the functions of the local government.
The Speaker of the assembly, Mr Edward Ubosi, directed the committees on local government, environment, capital territory, information and judiciary to conduct a public hearing on the bill.
The accused, a resident of No.26 Akintayo Str., Iyana-Iyesi, Ota, Ogun, was arraigned on a two-count charge of conspiracy and obtaining money under false pretence.
Mustapha said that the accused and her accomplices conspired among themselves to obtain N457, 000 from Austin on the pretext of procuring travelling visa for him.
He said they failed to fulfil the agreement.
The prosecutor said the offences contravened sections 419 and516 of the Criminal Code Vol.1, Laws of Ogun, 2006.The accused, however, pleaded not guilty to the charges and was granted bail by the court in the sum of N500, 000 with two sureties in like sum.
Adelaja ordered that the sureties must reside within the court's jurisdiction and should be gainfully employed.
She further ordered that the sureties should swear to an affidavit of means and show evidence of tax payment to Ogun Government.
This is contained in a statement signed on Wednesday by Mr Sani Datti, the Public Relations Officer (PRO) of NEMA and made available to news men in Abuja.
According to the statement, the donation is NEMAs humanitarian intervention in the North-East to assist the IDPs.
"In furtherance to NEMAs humanitarian intervention in the North-East, the agency has delivered 13,400 assorted bags of foods items to the Borno State Government.
"These items which include: 8,000 bags of rice, 1,200 bags of maize gritz, 1,000 bags of millet and 3,200 bags of beans are for the IDPs in Maiduguri.
The statement quoted Mr Mohammed Kanar, Zonal Coordinator of NEMA in the North-East as saying, "The items were presented in line with the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed with the Borno State Government.
The statement said that Deputy Gov. Usman Durkwa received the items on behalf of both the Borno State Government and the IDPs.
Iloghalu told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Awka on Wednesday that the governor had mapped out training programmes on the various aspects of farming such as fishery, piggery, poultry and root cropping.
He advised unemployed youths in the state to take advantage of the training to improve on themselves and grow economically rather than search for non-existing white collar jobs.
``A fish village will soon be created in all the 21 local government areas to boost fish farming.
``The essence of the fish village is to create wealth, reduce rural poverty and increase the source of protein for the residents, making it available and affordable.
``Agriculture is being re-positioned as the main revenue earner for Anambra and that is why all efforts are being made to ensure that the state becomes one of the major producer of fish, he said.
The adviser said that the fishing village would be built through public-private-partnership arrangement and modeled differently from the traditional ones, where people depended on natural water like rivers and lakes.
He stated this on Tuesday, July 12, while speaking to the Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Mr Babatunde Fashola (SAN), who visited him at the Government House, Benin.
Right now, I have difficulty going home to my village because of what your predecessor did, Vanguard quoted the Governor as saying.
I have tried to explain it and it is important we explain it, not because anybody believes in what they call blame game, but the truth is that if the road wasnt touched at all, it would have been better than it is now.
I did argue then that what they were doing was going to create more problems. The truth is that they have left the road worse off than it was before the haphazard dualisation which is now creating a lot of problems, he said.
In a recent interview for GQ Australia, Matt Damon who is back as Jason Bourne, shared his thoughts on the popular TV characters, Bourne and Bond.
"I like Bourne better than Bond," he said. "Bourne has today's values, Bond has the values of the 1960s." He went further to describe Bond as a "misogynist who likes swilling martinis and killing people and not giving a s--t.
Describing his character, Damon said "Jason Bourne is a serial monogamist, and he's tortured by the things he's done and feels empathy and compassion for other people. And Bourne would obviously win in a fight."
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Damon is set to return in the fifth film in the Bourne series, which also stars Julia Stiles, Alicia Vikander, Vincent Cassel and Tommy Lee Jones.
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Principal photography on the film kicked off on September 8, 2015, and the title was officially announced as "Jason Bourne" on February 7, 2016 during Super Bowl 50.
The upcoming American action spy thriller film is directed by Paul Greengrass and written by Greengrass and Christopher Rouse.
A summary of the ruling says that access of a protected computer without the authorization of the systems owner is illegal, and can be considered a violation of the US computer rule.
This has been interpreted to mean that you cannot log in to your ex, best friend or even parents' Netflix account for a "House of Cards" chill moment.
If this rule were to exist in Nigeria, it means you cannot access your friend's Netflix or iRoko TV account without authorization from the rightful owner who paid for the account.
While the ruling that password sharing violates federal law is limited to the specific case of a man convicted of using a former colleague's login to access workplace's database, it could set a pattern for future cases in the US.
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Contrary to reports, the ruling has not stated that anyone would go to prison for sharing a password, however, it has some lawyers arguing over the impact it will have on future court cases related to passwords and access.
Arguing the ruling, Circuit Judge Stephen Reinhardt said "People frequently share their passwords, notwithstanding the fact that websites and employers have policies prohibiting it. In my view, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act does not make the millions of people who engage in this ubiquitous, useful, and generally harmless conduct into unwitting federal criminals."
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What do Netflix and HBO think about password sharing? On January 16, 2014, HBO Chief Executive Richard Piepler told Buzzfeed that while password sharing isn't encouraged, it is a terrific marketing tool.
In 2016, Reed Hastings, Netflix CEO said "we love people sharing Netflix. That's a positive thing, not a negative thing." However, Netflix's terms and condition states that only the primary account owner is allowed to have exclusive control of the account.
In a statement issued by the party's national secretary, MaiMala Buni, the party said the move was "laughable and a huge joke taken too far."
The statement reads:
"The attention of the National Secretariat of the All Progressives Congress (APC) has been drawn to media reports of a laughable impeachment plot by some Senators on President Muhammadu Buhari during Tuesdays July 12, 2016 closed session of the Senate. This is a huge joke taken too far.
"The Party advises the Senators in question to stop this huge joke and concentrate on their primary constitutional responsibilities of lawmaking and discharging of their legislative mandates to their constituents at the National Assembly. The Party reiterates that the Senators in question (should) not to allow political shenanigans becloud overall national interest.
"The Party will not join issues on the Senate forgery suit and other court cases concerning some members of the 8th Senate because it will be sub judice. We advise the Senators in question to tow the same line and allow judicial processes run it normal and legitimate course."
Makarfi said this when the PDP North-West leadership paid a solidarity visit to the Committee on Wednesday in Abuja.
He added that reconciliation remained the best option of attaining peace in spite of the ongoing legal cases over the party's leadership crisis.
The chairman of the caretaker committee noted that ``all legal determinations'' on the party's leadership tussle were in favour of the Port Harcourt national convention decision, but there was still need for reconciliation.
``We will do the needful and remain tactical, as well as avoid talking too much with a view to resolving the partys conflict, he said.
He added that the Committee would also organise a national convention within the time frame given to it.
Sen. Ibrahim Kazaure, the PDP National Vice Chairman, North West Zone, who led the delegation, said leaders of all the seven states of the North West were on solidarity visit to the National Caretaker Committee.
He said ``the purpose of this visit is to declare total support for the entire PDP North West to one of our own (Makarfi).
``We are here to identify with you as the only hope for the PDP to move forward.
A statement signed by Wamakko's Media Aide, Malam Abubakar Dangusau, on Wednesday in Sokoto described the rumour as a dastardly and fallacious allegation as well as "obnoxious, unbecoming, lame and treacherous''.
Wamakko was apparently reacting to an online report.
He declared that: "There was never a time that such a fictitious meeting was held to discuss such a weighty issue of the alleged plans to initiate impeachment processes of our dear President at the Senate.
Wamakko, a two-time governor of Sokoto state, reiterated his faith and belief in the masses-oriented All Progressives Congress (APC).
"It is really too impossible for the former Governor to allow such meetings to be conducted in his house, even if such an imaginary plan is being hatched.
"Senator Wamakko, as a true democrat, nationalist, patriot and an ardent believer of the President Buhari presidency cannot be part of such treasonable move.
"I am however challenging the Newspaper to substantiate its claims, and make their source public, if they really have it.''
Wamakko also renewed his belief in the President's ongoing efforts to revamp all sectors of the Nigerian economy.
He expressed his happiness and support to the ongoing anti-corruption war as well as the fight against insurgency.
"The ongoing war against the socio-economic malaise, corruption is legendary, unparalleled and intricate. This is not therefore the time to ditch the president, our dear party, the APC and the most populous black nation, Nigeria.
"Senator Wamakko is an ardent believer in the Nigerian project, more so under the change mantra, as being piously and holistically being commanded by President Muhammadu Buhari.
The Governor speaking during a solidarity visit by members of the Grassroots Development Initiative (GDI) Worldwide said: It is obvious that Nigerians are yearning for the return of the PDP.
The governor who boasted that the PDP would win the rerun elections of July 30, 2016 conducted in the state further said We promised the Ogoni people during the campaigns and today we are dualizing the Sakpwenwa-Bori road and rehabilitating the Birabi Memorial Grammar School, Bori.
"Therefore, the Ogoni people know the political party that is committed to their welfare .
According to numerous sources, the 41-year-old, who is also a pastor at the Redeemed Christian Church of Nigeria, was found dead, in a pool of her blood, along with a Bible and megaphone, on Saturday (July 9, 2016).
In an interview with Vanguard, Olawale's oldest daughter, 15-year-old Jessica, said: "Everybody is just saying it is well, nobody can understand how I feel. She is innocent; she didn't do anybody any harm. She uses just her megaphone and Bible; just preaching. They just killed her like a chicken and left her there."
Her husband, Elisha, told newsmen of his late wife's preaching habits, and how he learnt of her death.
"My wife always goes out early in the morning for 'Morning Cry.' There was a particular day she went out and she told me that there is a mosque at the back where they commented about what she said. So I just cautioned her. This morning (Saturday), she went around 5 a.m. and I was still in bed because we did vigil which she participated in for a while because of the Morning Cry she planned to undertake."
"So, when I heard this, we trekked down in the shorts I was putting on and we didn't see anybody but we saw blood on the ground. I asked a policeman around and he said it is true but that they had taken her to Phase 4 Police Station. I went to the station with my children and when we got there, I saw the lifeless body of my wife at the back of the police van and from there, she was taken to the mortuary," he said.
Olawale's death has resulted in the arrest of some suspects by the Federal Capital Territory police.
"We have made some arrests and they are helping in our investigation. The commissioner of police has ordered the homicide section of the command to take over the investigation of the case," police spokesman, Anjuguri Manzah, said.
In a statement by the CAN General Secretary, Rev. Musa Asake, the latest cases of violence against Christians were highlighted, and a plea, to the Federal Government to do something, was made.
About a month ago in Kano, Mrs. , a 74-year-old Christian was murdered at Market after an altercation with a Muslim man, who came to the front of her shop to perform ablution.
Just last week, a clergyman of the , Reverendwas killed by attackers suspected to be Fulani herdsmen in Local Government Area of State.
They attacked him on his farm, and cut off his limbs and head. Another fresh news reaching us is that of the Fulani herdsmen that is back on rampage, killing 81 people in multiple attacks in and Local Government areas of State.
The recurring murder of innocent Nigerians on the basis of religious intolerance demands specific and relevant response from all concerned citizens in the country. The government in power seems to have adopted an attitude of lukewarm response to the evils being perpetrated in Nigeria in the name of religion.
The discrimination against non-Muslims in Nigeria under the administration is assuming a dangerous dimension that should not be left to the vagaries of time and circumstance to resolve.
Before the situation escalates into an unmanageable crisis, Christian Association of Nigeria, CAN, is calling on authorities at the states and federal levels to do everything possible to bring the perpetrators to justice.
These attacks on Christians and the authoritys inaction is becoming unbearable and may not be tolerated anymore. We pray that in His mercy, shall comfort and strengthen the families of all Nigerians affected in these unwarranted murders unleashed upon the nation by religious extremists, he stated.This accusation comes after the most recent case of religious violence, which is the murder of Eunice Olawale.
The universities to benefits from this are: University of Ilorin, University of Port Harcourt, University of Maiduguri, Ahmadu Bello University, University of Ibadan and University of Nigeria, Nsukka.
According to Thisday, $2 million was invested in each institution for the building and equipping of standard engineering research centre for the advancement of technology in the country.
The chairman of NLNG, Mr. Babs Omotowa, who spoke at the inauguration of the ultra-modern NLNG Engineering Research Centre built for the University of Ilorin, said, with todays commissioning of the multi-million naira engineering research centre, NLNG is supporting the universitys mission of providing a world class environment for learning, research and community service.
The UNILORIN support programme is another chapter in our momentous journey to build an even greater company to bequeath to our successors and to Nigeria.
Omotowa added: It is another feather in NLNGs cap as a socially responsible corporate organisation and as part of our commitment to education; we also award scholarship to thousands of deserving young Nigerians at secondary school, university and postgraduate levels.
We also endow the Nigeria Prize for Science and the Nigeria Prize for Literature worth $100,000 each, and built and run the Bonny Vocational Centre, which awards the International Technical Vocation, level 3 certificate of London City and Guilds and the Nigerian Skills Technical Certificate to graduates.
Faith Adesemowo, CEO at Social Lender, made the announcement at the Barclays Techstars Demo Day presentation in Cape Town, South Africa.
"With over 10,000 users on our platform, Social Lender has been solving real problems for real people. We provide a way of accessing formal credit to users using their social reputation score. You can find several user testimonials on our blog and Facebook page. It is really touching the impact we have had on our users in the past months,"Adesemowo said, according to Innovation Village.
Back in April, the company announced that out of the 10 companies selected to participate in the inaugural African leg of the Barclays Accelerator Programme powered by Techstars, it was the only Nigerian startup.
Since then, Social Lender has undergone a 13-week program which has involved intensive networking, mentoring and development. The company is incubated by Bincom ICT solutions.
"Social Lender is currently licensed to Sterling Bank. We will be announcing an additional partner bank in Nigeria shortly. As we strive to grow quickly, We are very excited at the prospect of showing that our solution can work in well-regulated market like South Africa," says Adesemowo.
In the coming weeks, Adesemowo, representing Social Lender, will be presenting at the Barclays Rise event in London, and will also be part of a panel at the London Fintech Week.
Omani authorities did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on the HRW report, released on Wednesday.
Based on interviews with 59 of at least 130,000 domestic maids working in the Gulf Arab sultanate, HRW said it had concluded that Oman's laws did not adequately protect them and employers often mistreated them without being punished.
"It is clear that abuses are widespread and that they are generally carried out with impunity," the New York-based group said.
"Situations like those described below are at the very least dangerously close to situations of slavery."
A Bangladeshi maid said she left home to work for an employer in the United Arab Emirates before a new employer paid cash for her to be transferred to Oman.
"I was sold," HRW quoted Asma K. as saying.
Under Oman's kafala, or sponsorship, system - used in several Gulf Arab countries - migrant workers' visas are tied to their employers and may not be transferred to a new employer without the previous employer's permission.
Around half of Oman's population of 4.4 million people are foreigners sponsored by their employers to live and work there.
Burundi has been mired in crisis that has killed more than 450 people since President Pierre Nkurunziza pursued and won a third term last year. Opponents said his move violated the constitution and a peace deal that ended a civil war in 2005.
Dialogue in Bujumbura last year between the government and opponents failed to bridge differences, and talks mediated by Uganda earlier this year also swiftly stalled.
The five parties were unhappy over the decision of the mediator, former Tanzanian President Benjamin Mkapa, to invite Burundians accused of human rights violations and involvement in an attempted coup against Nkurunzinza in May 2015.
The five parties, FNL, FROLINA, PIEBU ABANYESHAKA, RADEBU and FRODEBU are concerned by the inclusion of Pacifique Nininahazwe of FOCODE party, Armel Ningoyere from ACT party in Burundi and Minani Jean in the dialogue.
"We are very surprised by their inclusion in the dialogue after all the humanitarian crisis they caused in Burundi," Jean Didier Mutabazi, RADEBU's president, told reporters at the venue of the talks.
"We don't see the point of continuing with the dialogue."
The government in Bujumbura also expressed its unhappiness over the inclusion of some participants with Willy Nyamitwe, Nkurunziza's communications adviser, complaining on Twitter.
"Jean Minani, Nininahazwe Pacifique, Armel Niyongere are being prosecuted and can't be invited in Burundi dialogue in Arusha," Nyamitwe wrote. Earlier in the day, three former presidents of Burundi were seen walking out of a closed session chaired by Mkapa.
Domitien Ndayizeye, Sylvester Ntibatunganya and Pierre Buyoya demanded the arrest of Ninihazwe, and the other two wanted in Burundi, a source in the Burundian delegation said.
Arusha was also the location for negotiations that led to the deal to end the ethnically charged 1993 to 2005 civil war in Burundi.
Renewed violence in Burundi has alarmed a region where memories of the Rwanda's 1994 genocide remain raw. Like Rwanda, Burundi has an ethnic Hutu majority and a Tutsi minority.
Mossi was Burundi's information minister and government spokeswoman between 2005-2007, and was, at the time of her death, a member of the East African Legislative Assembly, a regional parliament.
Mossi, a former journalist in her 50s, was a member of President Pierre Nkurunziza's ruling CNDD-FDD party.
Nkurunziza's controversial but ultimately successful bid for a third term last year triggered a deadly crisis that has killed more than 500 people and driven around 270,000 to leave the country.
Several senior military officers close to the president have been assassinated since the start of the crisis in April 2015, but Mossi, who was not regarded as a party hardliner, is the first senior politician to be killed.
The much delayed appeal expects to address the humanitarian needs of up to 4.6 million people, including tens of thousands of South Sudanese refugees who have entered Sudan to escape the violence and food shortages in their country.
"Women, men, refugees and internally displaced people want us to exert our maximum efforts to provide support to them," said Naeema Al-Gasser, acting UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Sudan.
She said the bulk of the funds would be used to meet the humanitarian needs of people in war-torn Darfur.
Violence erupted there in 2003 when ethnic minority rebels rose up against President Omar al-Bashir, accusing his Arab-dominated government of marginalising the region.
Bashir mounted a brutal counter-insurgency campaign, and at least 300,000 people have been killed in the conflict, the UN says. Another 2.5 million have fled their homes.
Of the $952 million sought for 2016, $581 million would help internally displaced people, $225 million for refugees and $146 million for vulnerable residents.
Officials said they expect to raise more than 50 percent of the total amount sought.
"In the past three to four years we have usually raised about 52 to 55 percent of the funds sought," Ahmed Adam of Sudan's Humanitarian Aid Commission told AFP.
Officials said that even if half of the required amount is raised, it would still be a fair contribution considering the pressures faced by global donors in other conflict zones such as Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Afghanistan and Somalia.
"There remains a fair degree of interest among international donors to help Sudan," said Jean Verheyden of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, or OCHA.
"Most donors have confirmed they remain steadfast in their support for Sudan."
The Hague-based ICC's judges said in a statement "the Republics of Uganda and Djibouti had failed to comply with the request for arrest and surrender of Omar al-Bashir to the ICC".
The world's top criminal court added that it has referred the matter to the UN Security Council as well as the body that oversees its work, the Assembly of States Parties (ASP) which represents the nations that have ratified the court, "to take the measures they deem necessary regarding this matter".
Bashir travelled to Kampala and Djibouti in May to attend the swearing in ceremonies of long-time Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni and his counterpart in Djibouti, President Ismail Omar Guelleh.
African leaders however, has become increasingly resentful of the ICC's authority and accuse the court of targeting only countries on the continent.
Controversy erupted last year when the South African government did not arrest Bashir when he attended an African Union summit in Johannesburg.
Bashir in May also applied for a US visa to attend the next UN General Assembly in September, with his Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Kamal Ismail saying it was Khartoum's right to send a delegation to the UN meeting.
The Sudanese leader faces genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity charges allegedly committed in the Darfur region of western Sudan between 2003 and 2008.
Bashir was indicted by the ICC in 2009 and denies the charges.
Darfur has been gripped by conflict since 2003, when ethnic minority rebels rose up against Bashir, complaining that his Arab-dominated government was marginalising the region.
Bashir launched a brutal counter-insurgency, in which at least 300,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million forced to flee their homes, according to figures released by the United Nations.
Lighting the way to McAfee Pass a waning moon led 21 locals the 10.7 miles that climb almost 3,000 feet to the top of the Silver Peak Range on their way from Fish Lake Valley to the Old School Saloon terminus 34 miles away in Silver Peak for the 22nd annual Silver Peak or Bust hike.
Ask anybody here if a few buckets of paint can make a difference in the Floreciente neighborhood of Moline, and they wont hesitate.
Theyll look around, paint brushes in hand, at the other volunteers, at the nearly finished mural on the ground, at the kids drawing with chalk nearby, and theyll ask if you want to join in.
For the next two weekends, you can.
The Boys and Girls Club building in Moline is getting a colorful makeover, sponsored by Global Communities, a worldwide nonprofit with a chapter in Moline thats known for community building.
Volunteers can help paint a parking lot mural as well as pillars of the building, which previously was a bank.
Its something that people will pass by for years and years and smile because its here, Norma Juarez said, while refilling her stash of yellow paint last week. Something like this can make a place friendlier.
Public art and beautification projects were a number-one request from Floreciente residents in monthly community meetings, according to Annisa Wanat, program director for Global Communities.
Youre trying to do things that instill pride in a neighborhood, Wanat said. So we had all these conversations with people who live here, and we heard What about more murals?
She took that idea to Sarah Robb, a Davenport artist with a passion for public art, who talked with people in the Floreciente neighborhood to get inspiration for designs.
The resulting mural mixes themes of both Hispanic and Quad-City culture, from faith to family to wildlife and food.
Theyre the things we have in common, she said. Anyone walking by or driving by can relate to the images its something pretty to look at, but its also threads of a community.
Robb and Wanat opened the painting process to the public, and people have continued to show up.
This way, its not just one or two people touching it, Robb said. When this mural is done, it will truly be made by the sweat and the effort and time of the community.
That will be true for sisters Georgina and Kassandra Moreno, who walked to the parking lot from their home to lend a hand. Kassandra Moreno, who is 14, said shell feel proud after seeing the finished product, but shes more looking forward to her neighborhood getting a splash of color.
Parts of where we live looks worn-down and needs something new, she said, sprawled out alongside her younger sister. This will make it brighter everyday.
And it represents a lot of things, Georgina, who is 13, said. It shows how everyone is different and has different cultures.
Like these sisters, Brendan McBride, a program assistant with Global Communities, thinks the power of the paint wont fade.
The great thing about a parking lot mural is that its long-lasting, he said. This isnt going away tomorrow or next year, and its a reminder to everyone that passes by.
Still, it's only one piece of the puzzle in Floreciente, he said.
"If you keep doing little things, they're going to add up."
That's how Wanat sees it, too.
People have long memories, she said. If they grew up here, they remember the bad stuff, but its like, that was 20 years ago, and this is an amazing place to live."
And by the looks of this parking lot, it will keeping getting better.
"By working together, we're putting this whole picture together," she said.
What are you doing this weekend? Here are five picks from me to you.
SHEL at Redstone Room
SHEL is made up of four sisters from Fort Collins, Colorado. Named for an acronym of the folky siblings, Sarah, Hannah, Eva and Liza, SHEL returns to Davenport with a recent shout-out from NPR under its belt. Little Tybee and Marah in the Mainsail join them at 6:30 p.m. Thursday. Tickets, $11.50.
Red Rodeo goes on summer break
Red Rodeo, Rock Island's honky-tonk bar, is taking a summer break. It will be closed from July 17 through Aug. 15 for repairs. Before shutting its doors, the venue is throwing a country party, featuring the Natalie Brady Band of Nashville. Music starts at 9 p.m. Saturday at Red Rodeo, 1722 2nd Ave., Rock Island.
Daytrotter block party
Before Lewis Del Mar, a duo from Queens, New York, takes the stage at Daytrotter, 324 Brady St., Davenport, on Saturday, the venue is hosting a neighborhood block party complete with food, drinks and live music. The party starts at 6 p.m. Music from special guests (to be announced) and Lewis Del Mar starts at 8 p.m. Tickets, $10.
Learn and play day
The John Deere Pavilion's biggest event of the year is back again from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday. At this free and for-the-kids event, you'll learn about the world of farming, construction sites and forestry. Indoor and outdoor activities are planned, such as an obstacle course, pedal-powered tractor pull, a petting zoo and a construction zone. The John Deere Pavilion is at 1400 River Road, Moline. For more information, please call 309-765-1000 or refer to visitjohndeere.com.
Home brew festival
Want to taste the best of homemade beer? The Rivers Edge Homebrew Festiv-Ale, located in downtown Rock Island, is the place to be this weekend. With more than 50 homebrews to sample, trying them all is your call. You also can catch tastes from Bent River Brewery, Blue Cat Brewpub, Great River Brewery and Radicle Effect Brewerks. The fest runs from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday in The District in Rock Island. Tickets, $20.
A 29-year-old Davenport man was arrested Monday night on charges of trafficking in crack cocaine, Davenport police said.
Jerry Lee Bomar, 5119 Ripley St., is charged with a controlled substance violation-possession with the intent to deliver 10 grams or less of crack cocaine.
According to an arrest affidavit filed by Davenport Police Officer Robert Myers, officers seized 2.9 grams of crack cocaine in a plastic baggie and $249 in cash from Bomar's right front pocket.
When officers served a search warrant at his house, they seized three digital scales, marijuana and packaging materials.
Bomar also is charged with failure to affix drug tax stamp.
The controlled substance charge is a Class C felony under Iowa law that carries a prison sentence of up to 10 years. The drug tax stamp charge is a Class D felony that carries a prison sentence of up to five years.
According to the arrest affidavit, Police Department's Tactical Operations Bureau was conducting a drug investigation on Bomar at 311 W. 53rd St. when the arrest was made.
Bomar was being held Tuesday night in the Scott County jail on $50,000 bond.
A third person has been charged in the late April shooting death of Rock Island teenager Jescie J. Armstrong, police said Wednesday.
Trey B. Gustafson, 19, was arrested around 1:30 p.m. on a $1 million warrant accusing him of first-degree murder, and he was taken to the Rock Island County Jail.
Prosecutors say Armstrong, 15, was fatally shot on April 27 while Gustafson and co-defendants Kire G. Carr, 18, and Chelsea M. Raker, 21, were committing an armed robbery.
Officers were called just before 2 p.m. to a home in the 500 block of 20th Avenue in Rock Island. They found Armstrong lying on the floor in the kitchen with a gunshot wound to the head.
Officers also found suspected marijuana and a scale on the floor of the dining room, which was adjacent to the kitchen, according to a search warrant affidavit filed in Carr's case.
Armstrong was taken by ambulance to Trinity Rock Island, where he was later pronounced dead.
Officers later found Gustafson, who suffered a gunshot wound to the buttocks, at 29th Street and 6th Avenue.
According to the affidavit, Gustafson told police that Carr was pointing a gun at Armstrong prior to the shooting.
He also said he and Carr struggled with the gun before he was shot in the buttocks, according to affidavit.
Carr is believed to have pulled the trigger that killed Armstrong, while Gustafson and Raker have been charged as accomplices, Rock Island County John McGehee said Wednesday.
McGehee declined to say how the three defendants know each other, but he has said previously that Carr and Raker met while both were in the South.
McGehee said he does not anticipate any other charges at this point but the case remains under investigation.
Carr was arrested April 28 in Columbus, Ohio. He is charged with four counts of first-degree murder. He will be back in court Sept. 30.
Raker was arrested a month later in Chatham County, Georgia. She is charged with two counts of first-degree murder and one count of aiding a fugitive to flee. Prosecutors say she drove Carr away from the scene and out of Rock Island County after the shooting. She will be back in court Aug. 5.
Carr and Raker remain in the Rock Island County Jail on $1 million bond.
Davenports three city administrator finalists were on the hot seat Tuesday.
The 11-member panel wanted to know how much experience each of the three candidates would bring to the city of 103,000 residents.
Whats badly needed is a leader, panelist Caroline Ruhl, president and co-owner of Ruhl & Ruhl, said at one point during five hours of interviews.
With recent vacancies in top posts in administration, the police department and public works, filling Davenports top employee job seems urgent even as the process has dragged on for a year. Corri Spiegel called it unorthodox that she has served as interim city administrator for as long as she has.
Spiegel is one of the finalists, along with Stephen Riley, town manager of Hilton Head, South Carolina, and Kevin Woods, city manager of Stallings, North Carolina.
Tuesdays grilling signaled the end of the process is near. Mayor Frank Klipsch expects a decision within two weeks.
Riley and Woods were in town Monday and Tuesday for meetings and tours. Six aldermen interviewed all three finalists behind closed doors Monday.
Davenports four other aldermen were part of the City Administrator Search Committee that interviewed the finalists Tuesday. The public was allowed to observe the interviews with the committee. Former Mayor Bill Gluba formed the committee last summer when Craig Malin left the city administrator position after 14 years.
Klipsch directed Tuesdays interviews and asked questions along with the other panelists. The mayor and the committee met later on Tuesday in closed session to debrief, he said.
The committee was formed under an ordinance that states that after reviewing applicants, the committee is to submit a list of three finalists to the mayor. The mayor then appoints the administrator from among the three, and his decision is subject to two-thirds majority approval from the city council.
The mayor said Monday he is facilitating a process whereby the council and I will make the decision after receiving all the input from the selection committee coupled with all the community feedback.
We all agreed to it, Klipsch said on Tuesday, adding he wanted the process to be inclusive.
How Spiegels resume was submitted came under scrutiny during her interview. Panelist Karl Rhomberg, a member of the Davenport Levee Improvement Commission, said her curriculum vitae sat on top in a binder of eight candidates information that was supposed to be in alphabetical order. He also said her information was brightly colored with charts and others were in black and white.
Spiegel said she submitted her resume in the same way as all the other applicants.
When it came to the backgrounds of all three, there was no deficit of experience.
Riley has worked 25 years as Hilton Heads town manager, which is similar to the position of city administrator in Davenport.
In addition to her year as interim, Spiegel worked a year as assistant to the city administrator, a position that Klipsch said is vacant and available to Spiegel if she is not chosen. Prior to joining Davenport, Spiegel was project manager in Goodyear, Arizona, from 2003-07 and economic development manager for Centennial, Colorado, from 2007-14.
Woods has been Stallings city manager since 2014. He served in the U.S. Army for 26 years, retiring as commander of U.S. Army South, which oversees all Army operations in Latin America. He also was vice president of Versar Inc., a private global engineering and construction management firm.
All three have Midwestern roots, which factored in their decisions for wanting to take the job in Davenport.
Another feature ties their various backgrounds together. They all played key roles in the development of young communities.
Hilton Head was incorporated in 1983. Centennial was incorporated in 2001. Stallings was incorporated in 1975.
In Davenport, the finalists see an opportunity to reinvigorate an older city with aging infrastructure, historic neighborhoods and plenty of riverfront access.
MUSCATINE, Iowa With more than 15,000 people expected to bicycle into Muscatine on July 30, volunteers will be needed to greet and direct the visitors.
Nichole Sorgenfrey told volunteers their duties for RAGBRAI at the Tuesday night orientation. She said the mission of the volunteers will be to help make visitors feel welcome.
Volunteer positions needed are greeters, bus hosts and hostesses, and information center helpers.
Bus hosts will sit on the air-conditioned buses shuttling riders, and talk with them and guide them if needed. Six information centers will be set up around the community, and volunteers will be stationed at each center to direct incoming and outgoing riders.
Greeters will be concentrated on the riverfront, and Sorgenfrey said if enough volunteers are present, they will be stationed along the RAGBRAI route in Muscatine. Sorgenfrey said greeters should always wear a smile, and be ready to answer questions.
"Most of all we want this to be a fun time for everyone," she said.
Volunteers will be needed from 6 a.m. to 4 p.m., and can sign up for any amount of time they are available.
Although visitors are expected as early as 6 a.m. to dip their tires in the Mississippi River, Sorgenfrey said the majority of the riders will arrive between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m., so for volunteers wanting to sleep in, any time will be helpful.
She also said volunteers of all ages are welcomed.
"If they can walk, we'll take them," she said.
Many residents signed up to volunteer at the Tuesday evening meeting. Elizabeth Hill said she had learned of the orientation on Facebook, and saw an opportunity.
"I've been wanting to get more into volunteering in the community, and thought this might be a good chance to network," Hill said.
Lauren Foxwell recently moved to Muscatine and said she chose to volunteer because she was familiar with the excitement RAGBRAI can bring.
"I've been in different towns when it's gone through before and I've seen how fun it can be, so I think it could be a good way to get to know the new community I'm in but also help other people see it as well," she said.
For some volunteers, the excitement of cheering for the riders as they come to dip their tires after a long ride is reason enough to help.
"I love to volunteer, and who doesn't want to stand and yell at the riverfront," Rhonda Ayers laughed.
More than 75 Muscatine residents have volunteered, but Sorgenfrey said she hopes to reach a goal of 250.
To volunteer for RAGBRAI Muscatine or for more information, visit www.volunteermuscatine.org or contact Nichole Sorgenfrey at volunteers@ragbraimuscatine.com or 563-263-5963.
The available data about police shootings is a veritable information vacuum. And Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, is rightly fighting an uphill battle for truth.
Unfortunately, Grassley's attempt to bring transparency to American policing has been stalled in committee for 10 months.
The FBI's supposed tracking of police shootings isn't working, says numerous analyses. In 2014, The Wall Street Journal, a conservative publication, called federal police shootings "grossly under-reported." Left-leaning The Washington Post reached the same conclusion late last year. By The Post's count, police shot 965 Americans in 2015, far more than the FBI's official tally. Hispanic and black men were substantially more likely to take a police bullet among those shot who weren't directly threatening police, The Post concluded.
Compare those numbers with other developed nations, such as Germany, a nation of more than 80 million. German police, in 2012, shot and killed just 15 people in 2010 and 2011 combined, says German Police University. American police, in a single week, kill more citizens than entire countries do in a year.
And, with cell phones suddenly forcing the issue of dying black men into the faces of white Americans, the inconsistent reporting among too many agencies is indefensible.
Grassley's legislation, the Walter Scott Notification Act of 2015, co-authored with Sen. Tim Scott, R-South Carolina, seeks to end the patchwork reporting system. The Wall Street Journal, for instance, documented a fatal shooting in 2012 that never officially happened, according to the FBI database.
Some police agencies would rather cloak use of force instead of face public scrutiny.
The legislation would mandate reporting among police agencies receiving numerous types of federal funding. The cash is typically important for agency budgets. The bill would essentially end the subjective, poorly regulated system that now skews FBI data. It would inject necessary transparency into a debate that is, far often, based in emotion.
The U.S. isn't Germany. It is four-times more populous. It is more heterogeneous. Its citizens are exponentially more well armed.
American police agencies will, by any reasonable measure, shoot and kill more civilians than European nations. And, on many occasions, those shootings will be wholly justified. But none of those facts justify agencies that fail to report the discharge of firearm bought by the taxpayer. It especially doesn't excuse the dehumanization of those killed when, right or wrong, an officer uses his or her service weapon while doing the public's business.
There's nothing anti-cop about a call for transparency. The vast majority of officers are honorable, hardworking public servants. The work is demanding. Split-second decisions are always easy to question in hindsight. Politicians saddled them under drug laws that specifically target poor communities. But, as the number of dead black men suggest, patterns appear. Subconscious bias exists in everyone, and its effects are particularly striking when it infects an officer with a gun.
Frankly, the fact that all gun violence isn't tracked is an absurdity. Any reasonable person can't deny the value of good data, regardless of where they fall in the gun debate.
Racial and class tensions are boiling. Anti-cop sentiment is on the rise and has already taken lives in Dallas with last week's senseless shooting. Officers feel under assault from the very people they work to protect.
The fact that hundreds of police shootings apparently go unreported every year only exacerbates the distrust between the police and the policed.
Sens. Grassley and Scott have proposed a way to inject much-needed facts into policy debate. But the bill has gone nearly a year untouched in the Senate Judiciary Committee, which Grassley heads, suggesting a lack of support.
Police shootings are problem in the U.S., and a feckless Congress remains a barrier to truth the country needs.
CEDAR RAPIDS Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburgs criticism of Donald Trump was inappropriate and the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee said Wednesday she should apologize.
Ginsberg touched off a firestorm of criticism for her comments about the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, including calling him a faker.
I cant imagine what this place would be I cant imagine what the country would be with Donald Trump as our president, Ginsburg said in a New York Times interview last week.
She went further in a more recent interview with CNN.
He has no consistency about him, said Ginsburg, a Supreme Court justice since 1993. He says whatever comes into his head at the moment. He really has an ego. ... How has he gotten away with not turning over his tax returns? The press seems to be very gentle with him on that.
U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, agreed with Ginsburgs critics who said it was wrong for a Supreme Court justice to insert herself into the presidential campaign.
It hurts the court when she does that, Grassley said.
Well, I think they were very inappropriate, Grassley said. I think Id say she ought to apologize and let it go at that. She ought to stay out of it.
He didnt go as far as Trump, who called for her resignation.
Justice Ginsburg of the U.S. Supreme Court has embarrassed all by making very dumb political statements about me. Her mind is shot - resign! Trump tweeted.
Grassley didnt go as far as to call for Ginsburg, 83, to recuse herself from any Supreme Court cases involving Trump if he should be elected president.
I think they have very precise rules within the Supreme Court of when recusal is necessary, he said. She ought to follow those rules.
Grassley didnt address comments the liberal justice made about his refusal as Judiciary chairman to hold hearings on President Barack Obamas nomination of federal Judge Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court.
Thats their job, she said. Theres nothing in the Constitution that says the president stops being president in his last year.
The nine-member court has been shorthanded since the death of Justice Antonin Scalia in February.
Grassley has said he wont hold hearings on a Supreme Court nominee until after a new president has been elected.
PIERRE | Gov. Dennis Daugaard today (Monday) activated the state Drought Task Force to monitor drought conditions across South Dakota. The task force also held its first meeting today in Pierre.
The latest U.S. Drought Monitor indicates that abnormally dry conditions are scattered in the central and eastern parts of South Dakota. Moderate and severe drought conditions are found in most of western South Dakota as well as in the extreme northeastern part of the state. There are still areas of the state not considered to be in a drought.
While rainfall has been adequate in some areas, the recent hot, dry weather has increased drought conditions in other parts of South Dakota, Gov. Daugaard said. The Drought Task Force gives us a way to share information so we can all respond appropriately. We want to be ready in case drought conditions persist.
Task Force members will coordinate the exchange of drought information among government agencies as well as agriculture, fire and water-supply organizations. Officials say the exchange of information will allow the task force to better monitor the development and seriousness of the drought. The task force also will evaluate the impact of drought on economic sectors of the state.
State government agencies represented on the Drought Task Force include the:
Governors Office
Department of Agriculture
Department of Public Safety
Department of Environment and Natural Resources
Department of Game, Fish and Parks
Department of Health
Department of Social Services
Department of Tourism
Department of Tribal Affairs
South Dakota National Guard
South Dakota State University
Bureau of Information and Telecommunications
South Dakotas drought monitor index can be found at droughtmonitor.unl.edu/Home/StateDroughtMonitor.aspx?SD.
A monument will soon take its place in Belle Fourche to honor Vietnam era veterans, including those who served overseas in Thailand, Laos and Cambodia.
Veteran Services Officer in Butte County Bob Wagner has been working with Veteran of Foreign Wars to gather funds for the project.
The monument will be placed at the Tri State Museum grounds, and the intent is to complete the project by Veterans Day on Nov. 11. The monument is a six-foot piece of granite that will sit on a stand or pedestal.
Wagner, a Vietnam veteran, said the location works because of the current World War II and Korean War memorials at the grounds, but a location could be selected at the courthouse if a conflict occurs.
A community member donated $1,000 to the project, and that accompanies a Belle Fourche Middle School fundraising event to put funds toward the memorial. The total cost for the project will be about 10 times whats been raised, Wagner said.
The $1,000 donation was given in honor of Leland Kahler, a Belle Fourche youth killed in Vietnam.
The memorial has been designed, with minimal changes pending. The stone has also been ordered.
Wagner said there are many Vietnam veterans in the area, and reaching 51 years since Vietnam ended, We thought we should get this done before they pass.
Those who wish to donate to the project can do so by dropping off donations at the Belle Fourche Post Office Box 276.
A severed fiber optic cable left an unknown number of AT&T mobile phone and CenturyLink internet customers without service for several hours on Friday, July 8.
Around 5 p.m. on Friday, AT&T customers in the Black Hills Region noticed a loss of service that lasted until 12:05 a.m., according to AT&T spokesman Mark Giga. Giga would not disclose how many customers were affected or comment on the cause.
CenturyLink spokeswoman Rachel Woodman said the outage occurred when construction between Murdo and Kadoka resulted in a cut to our fiber network.
The cut was made by a third-party contractor around 4:30 p.m., Woodman said. The cable was not fully repaired until 2 a.m. She also declined to say how many customers lost service.
AT&T, along with other wireless network providers, share stretches of fiber optic cable with CenturyLink, which likely accounts for the simultaneous outages. But the representatives of both companies would not confirm nor deny if this was the case in this instance. They said the incident remains under investigation.
The outage was the second of its kind this year. A fiber cut led to extensive service interruptions in western South Dakota and parts of Wyoming in late February.
When cuts like these occur, its really unfortunate, Woodman said, noting similar incidents are more likely during construction in the summertime.
Two new red parking meters have been installed downtown as "giving meters," a way to curb panhandling downtown.
They are located on the northwest and northeast corners of Sixth and Main streets.
The idea is simple: The Giving Meters offer Rapid City residents and visitors an alternative way to help the less fortunate in the community. Money collected at the meters will go to the Cornerstone Rescue Mission.
The goal is to educate the public that feeding the cycle of aggressive panhandling keeps the illegal practice present in the downtown area. The meters will be used in an effort to break what some call an unhealthy cycle.
In many cases, money donated to those who choose to panhandle will ultimately be used to buy alcohol, creating a cycle of problems that strain police and public resources, said Capt. Dan Rud of the Rapid City Police Departments patrol division in a written statement. The RCPD hopes the public will utilize these meters and work with us to create an atmosphere where aggressive panhandling is not tolerated in our city.
We know Rapid City is full of kind-hearted people that want to do the right thing, said Dan Senftner, president of the downtown Destination Rapid City business support group. We just want to offer those folks a resource to best make sure their donations get where they will have the most benefit for the less fortunate of Rapid City.
The suspect in last years murder of a 60-year-old Rapid City woman is now detained at the Pennington County Jail and will appear in court next week.
Brian D. Duncan, 60, has been charged with second-degree murder for the death of Helen Wright in October 2015.
Police found Wright lying dead on a bed at the Western Thrifty Inn, on East North Street, last November 4.
It was apparent Wright had been deceased for at least 48 hours. Preliminary autopsy results indicate injuries on Wright are consistent with an assault, the Rapid City Police Department said in a press release the following day.
Duncan, who authorities said had been living in the motel room with Wright, was sought for questioning. Police described the case at the time as a suspicious death.
This May 25, authorities formally charged Duncan with second-degree murder, which carries a mandatory life sentence. A warrant for his arrest was issued the same day.
On June 18, he was arrested by law enforcement in San Marcos, Texas, according to the Rapid City police. He was extradited to South Dakota and last Wednesday morning was booked at the Pennington County Jail.
Duncan appeared at the Pennington County Courthouse via video from jail Friday morning. His charges were then read and his bond set at $750,000 cash only.
He is scheduled to appear in court next Friday.
PIERRE | A formal plan based on market wages will be used to pay instructors at technical institutes under changes accepted Tuesday by the Legislatures rules review committee.
The Legislature in its teacher-pay and property-tax reduction package this year earmarked $3 million for improving salaries for instructors at the states technical institutes at Rapid City, Watertown, Mitchell, and Sioux Falls.
Tiffany Sanderson, director for the state Division of Career and Technical Education, said the money will be distributed in different ways through 130 programs at the campuses.
The new approach relies upon data from six states to set a regional market value for a specific expertise. The pay range covers entry level, midpoint or market value and maximum rate.
A new instructor likely would receive less than market value, while experienced personnel would receive more, she said. There will be consistency across all four institutes, because the schools presidents agreed on a rubric to use in negotiations.
The data will be reviewed every three years, according to Sanderson.
Sen. Phyllis Heineman, R-Sioux Falls, said performance should be part of the contract negotiations with instructors. She said the Legislatures Joint Committee on Appropriations emphasized performance.
Sen. Heineman brought up an important piece, agreed Rep. Jean Hunhoff, R-Yankton, noting the Legislature will be following up.
We need to pass Constitutional Amendment T, which would create a new legislative redistricting commission in South Dakota. The measure would create a body of nine members, no more than three of whom can be from the same political party, and three of whom cannot be registered with any party.
First off, consider that the ratio of Republican to Democratic registrations in South Dakota is about 6 to 4. That's according to last week's tally by the S.D. Secretary of State. That Republicans outnumber Democrats in this state isn't news, of course, but the way these numbers play out in representation is way out of kilter.
With a legislative edge of 85 Pubs and 20 Dems, the partisan ratio in Pierre favors the GOP by 4.5 to 1. Even if all of S.D.'s 110,00 registered Independents voted Republican, the ratio wouldn't come close to that. There is no way that the legislative split comes close to reflecting the partisan make-up of South Dakota.
Why the disparity? I think it's all about gerrymandering. Under current law, S.D.'s Legislature is required to redraw legislative districts every 10 years after the U.S. Census Bureau releases its findings.
The last redraw occurred in 2011, done by a Republican-dominated Legislature. At the time, GOP representatives on the team that created the map told the Pierre Capital Journal that "this process isn't as partisan as it may appear at times" and that claims of gerrymandering were "bogus." Badly outnumbered, Democrats claimed otherwise, one of them saying that "the map virtually eliminates competitive races in the Sioux Falls area."
My hope, stated here last week, that passage of Constitutional Amendment V, which would eliminate partisan elections in South Dakota altogether, is still intact, of course. That would make the redistricting matter moot.
But given the ferocious responses by S.D.'s leading Republicans, Sen. Thune and Gov. Daugaard, to that ballot measure (more on that in a future column), you can bet that the full weight of South Dakota's GOP will be thrown against it.
Passage of such a revolutionary overhaul of our state's electoral, executive and legislative structures will be tough, considering that self-preservation is at stake for South Dakota Republicans and their longstanding grip on the state's public affairs.
This other redistricting amendment, on the other hand, will be much harder to oppose, given the fairness of its structure and the political distribution of the commission's members. It would certainly eliminate the kind of squabbling that redistricting always engenders.
I look forward to seeing how the GOP will engage this particular amendment, mainly because if they're convinced that the "process isn't as partisan as it may appear at times," they should have no trouble turning the process over to a commission that can't be dominated by their party.
In a state where GOP registrations amount to less than half of the electorate, there's something seriously awry when more than 80 percent of the state's elected representatives are Republicans. An independent, partisan-neutral redistricting commission might not be able to fix it, but at least no one can claim that gerrymandering is to blame.
Ukraines Supreme Economic Court dismisses Gazprom appeal against $3.4 bln fine
MOSCOW, July 13 (RAPSI) The Ukrainian Supreme Economic Court has upheld the lower courts rulings over an 86 billion hryvnia ($3.4 bln) fine issued by the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine (AMCU) against Gazprom, RIA Novosti reported on Wednesday.
Thus, a cassation appeal filed by Russias oil giant was rejected.
Earlier, Gazprom had been fined by the Antimonopoly Committee for abuse of its dominant position on the gas transit market. At that time, the company was ordered to pay the fine until April 12.
According to Gazprom, this fine was unexpected since the firm was not engaged in business activity within the Ukrainian territory. Gazprom states that natural gas is being sold to Naftogaz on the Russian-Ukrainian border.
Russian oil giant appealed the fine in the Kiev Commercial Court but the complaint was returned to the plaintiff without hearing. Later the Kiev Commercial Court of Appeal upheld this decision. Therefore, Gazprom turned to the Supreme Economic Court of Ukraine.
Navalny to be questioned in case against Russian nationalist Potkin
MOSCOW, July 13 (RAPSI) Moscows Meshchansky District Court will question opposition politician Alexei Navalny in the case against Russian nationalist Alexander Potkin, also known as Alexander Belov, who stands charged with embezzlement in Kazakh BTA Bank and organization of an extremist movement, on July 14, RIA Novosti reported on Wednesday.
According to Potkins lawyer Ivan Mironov, Navalny will be examined as a witness for defense. He will be questioned about cooperation with Kazakh opposition figures because he had contacts with them along with Potkin, the agency quoted Mironov as having said.
According to investigators, Mukhtar Ablyazov, former chairman of the bank, who wanted to destabilize the constitutional order in Kazakhstan, asked Potkin to help him with organizing an extremist group. Potkin allegedly agreed and used funds embezzled from BTA Bank to spread the nationalist ideology in Kazakhstan.
Belov was arrested on October 15, 2014 at the Hotel Intourist Kolomenskoe in Moscow on charges related to the embezzlement of $5 billion from BTA Bank. At the time of the arrest, Belov allegedly had documents on him that effectively tied him to the embezzlement.
Investigators believe that Belov (Potkin) was a mastermind in a money laundering operation in 2012-2014. He was also suspected of involvement in laundering money that was embezzled from BTA Bank by its former chairman Mukhtar Ablyazov.
Ablyazov, who allegedly defrauded BTA Bank of more than $6 billion, left Kazakhstan for the UK, where he was granted political asylum in 2011. However, he remained a fugitive from justice since February 2012.
Ablyazovs whereabouts remained unknown until he was detained on July 31, 2015 near Cannes, France. Kazakhstan, Russia, and Ukraine are all seeking his extradition.
In October 2015, French authorities approved Ablyazovs extradition to Russia.
Additional 400,000 hectares to be allocated as free land in Russia
Context Law allowing citizens to get land for free enters into force in Russia
MOSCOW, July 13 (RAPSI) Over 400,000 hectares of land on Kamchatka are going to be additionally allocated in accordance with the Federal law on the so-called Far East hectare, the statement from the press-service of the regional government reads.
This idea was proposed by the regional authorities to the Federal Service for State Registration, Cadastre and Cartography (Rosreestr) and the Ministry for the Development of the Russian Far East.
Initially, newly allocated territories did not fall under the hectare law regulation because of presence of large deposits of peat. However, the change was made because these territories are in close proximity to key settlements and are in high demand.
On June 1, the federal law on the so-called Far East hectare entered into force.
In April, the State Duma, the lower house of the Russian Parliament, adopted a law permitting Russias citizens to get one hectare of land in the Far East, Yakutia, Kamchatka, Primorye, Khabarovsk, Amur, Magadan, and Sakhalin regions, as well as in the Jewish Autonomous Region and Chukotka for free once in their lifetimes. Such plots will be given for a 5-year term on condition they are free and clear of all liens and encumbrances, and are freely tradable.
Those willing to have a hectare (about 2.5 acres) of land for free can choose desirable locations online and fill all necessary registration documents. The procedure envisages a 30-day period to reject, suspend, or agree applications on the part of respective land owners (a municipality or forestry authorities); therefore, first parcels could be allotted by end of July 2016.
After three years users will have to account for the way they have used their plots to an authorized agency, and in case parcels have not been used for the designated business purposes the respective rights should be voided. If account is satisfactory, after the initial term of use (five years), the parcels will be subject to lease or ownership. The land in the forestry fund may only be leased, but converted to ownership rights after 10 years of lease.
The law permits to obtain a hectare of land per each family member and allows collective applications for organization of large-scale businesses.
The land is to be allotted in stages. Residents of certain selected municipalities in the Far East Federal District are the first in line since June 1, 2016; from October 1, plots of land will be available across the whole territory of the District. Only the citizens registered in the District will be entitled to get parcels until February 1, 2017; after this date the land will be available for all citizens.
The Bitterroot River below Stevensville is running a bit cleaner this summer.
While most people floating by wont be able to tell the difference, the amount of ammonia, nitrogen and phosphorus flowing in the river from the towns wastewater treatment has been cut in half as the result of a $4.5 million upgrade.
On other rivers in the state, those nutrients cause algae blooms that can be hard on aquatic life and arent very pleasant to view.
On July 21 at 1 p.m., Lt. Gov. Mike Cooney will join other Stevensville officials to celebrate the completion of the newly constructed headworks and biological nutrient removal facility at the plant.
The ribbon-cutting ceremony is open to the public. The event includes refreshments and a tour to anyone interested in learning more about the upgrade.
Were happy to introduce our latest piece of infrastructure to the public and those who helped bring this project to fruition, said Stevensvilles Community Relations Representative Brandon Dewey. The ribbon-cutting ceremony for the new headworks facilities brings us into a new era of wastewater treatment for the Town of Stevensville.
On Tuesday, the towns wastewater superintendent George Thomas talked about the upgrades to the facility that he believes will position the community to meet future environmental requirements for a decade or more.
Right now, were ahead of the ballgame, Thomas said. We should be set for a long time nowthe funding became available and we jumped on it.
The state and federal focus on addressing nutrient loading in the waterways and the fact the funding became available for the project were the factors driving the decision to move ahead with the project, Thomas said.
The project focused on building a new headworks facility that includes machinery that filters out the kinds of materials that clog pumps vital to the circulation of the wastewater through the plant.
We have found all kinds of things over the years, he said. False teeth, toys, even money. Most of the time its only a $1 bill, but we have found a few twenties.
Amongst the most challenging of materials for the folks working to keep the wastewater plant operating efficiently is dental floss.
You cant believe how strong that material is, he said. It can create some real problems for us.
The upgrade also included converting a portion of the plant into a bio-reactor capable of treating about 80 percent of the sludge that comes into the plant to remove nitrates, ammonia and phosphorous.
That new portion of the plant includes machinery that continually samples the sludge for the nutrients to ensure the natural processes are working at an optimum level.
The entire plant is monitored through a computerized system capable to communicating instantly with operators should something go wrong.
As a result of the upgrade, the town was able to fill in a long open ditch where some of the effluent was treated previously.
This was the third upgrade to the towns wastewater plant since 2000, Thomas said.
Before 2000, the town depended on an open water system built in the 1970s. The core of todays plant was built in 2000. In 2010, a UV light system was added to disinfect the water returned to the river.
We had a choice of the UV system or installing a chlorination system and a de-chlorination system, Thomas said. We chose the UV system.
At one time, the system was all gravity fed. Today, Thomas said they depend on 14 pumps to deliver the wastewater to different treatment systems.
All of the sludge is dried and then recycled by Eko Compost of Missoula.
The total cost of the project was $4.549 million.
The community chipped in $279,000 up front and then borrowed another $1.25 million from the U.S. Department of Agricultures Rural Development program.
Stevensville was awarded a $2.155 million grant from the same federal program as well as $765,000 from the Montana Department of Commerces Treasure State Endowment program and $100,000 from the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservations Renewable Resource program.
Stevensville Mayor Jim Crews said the upgrade was very important for the communitys ability to continue to meet state and federal water quality requirements.
The Asia-Europe Meeting, whose 11th edition will be held in Ulan Bator, Mongolia, on Wednesday, should review its experiences and chart the direction for further development. As the largest inter-governmental cooperative mechanism between Asia and Europe, ASEM has made noticeable achievements since its establishment in 1996. Its members have increased from 26 to 53 and its influence has extended from Northeast, Central, Southeast and South Asia to large parts of Europe and Oceania.
ASEM accounts for more than 60 percent of the world's population, economic output and trade volume and comprises four of the five permanent UN Security Council members, seven of the world's top 10 economies and 12 of the G20 members. And the "mutual respect and equal dialogue" formula adopted by ASEM has been endorsed by the international community.
But despite such achievements, ASEM is yet to resolve a series of issues that may affect its further development. Given the rapid globalization and ever-rising appeals for better global and regional economic governance, ASEM may face a "survival crisis" if it does not define its development direction and promote pragmatic cooperation.
Besides, its biennial meetings have gradually deviated from the original development direction and now face the "diversified agenda" dilemma, making it difficult for ASEM to focus on its top concerns. According to the consensus reached at the first meeting, ASEM should promote the establishment of a new-type of and full partnership aimed at facilitating growth in both continents, strengthening their mutual dialogue, understanding and cooperation, creating favorable conditions for their economic and social development, and maintaining world peace and stability.
However, in practice, it has gradually become entangled in trivial technical issues that have no leading cooperative targets or are a diversion from its original priority. That no new ASEM ministers' meeting has been held after a few such meetings in the initial years best testifies this. Besides, ASEM's original "informal", "non-institutionalized" and "non-binding" framework, designed to better adapt to members' divergent development levels, cultures and priorities, played an important role in expanding its reach and advancing its aims in the initial years.
Such an "open dialogue taking precedence over substantial cooperation" model, however, makes it difficult for members to reach key resolutions, let alone implement them. It also makes it difficult for ASEM to tackle new challenges that need deepened cooperation among members. Due to its failure to effectively make use of its resources and advantages, ASEM is now at the risk of being sidelined in the competition of global and regional governance.
Compared with the expanding presence of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation and G20 in global and regional governance and pragmatic cooperation, ASEM has become less important.
Despite facing such disadvantages, ASEM still has its advantages, and if properly utilized, they could highlight its significance in global governance. With the rise of Asian economies, ASEM is expected to shift from the Europe-dominated agenda to a new stage where Asia and Europe will discuss issues as equals.
The many common challenges Asian and European countries now face have also made them deeply interdependent. For example, after its sovereign debt crisis, Europe urgently needs to strengthen cooperation with Asia for its trade and investment growth while Asian countries need to cooperate with European countries to bolster their sustainable growth.
Thanks to the efforts of Asian countries, a consensus is likely to be reached among ASEM members that interconnectivity is the key development direction of the future. ASEM is expected to return to its original purpose of building a new-type of partnership aimed at promoting growth, and Asian and European countries will bolster their strengths to fend off economic and financial risks by carrying out pragmatic cooperation.
Moreover, China's Belt and Road Initiative, with Asia and Europe as its two engines, offers an important opportunity to ASEM to promote interconnectivity between Asian and European countries and deepen cooperation in policy, trade, infrastructure, finance and cultural exchanges.
The author is director of European Studies at the China Institute of International Studies.
Japanas Emperor Akihito waves to well-wishers who gathered at the Imperial Palace to mark his 82nd birthday in Tokyo, Japan, December 23, 2015. REUTERS/Thomas Peter/File photo
TOKYO: Japanese Emperor Akihito intends to abdicate eventually, public broadcaster NHK said on Wednesday, a step unprecedented in modern Japan.
The 82-year-old monarch has spent much of his 27-year reign working to heal the wounds of a war waged across Asia in his fathers name and helped bring the monarchy closer to ordinary citizens.
Akihito, who has had health problems in recent years, expressed his intention to the Imperial Household Agency, NHK said, adding he wanted to step down in a few years. It did not cite a reason.
Officials at the agency could not immediately be reached for comment.
Born in 1933, he was heir to Emperor Hirohito, in whose name Japan fought World War Two. His heir is Crown Prince Naruhito, 56.
Akihito marked the 70th anniversary of World War Twos end with an expression of deep remorse, a departure from his previous remarks seen by some as an effort to cement a legacy of pacifism under threat from conservative Japanese nationalists.
Looking back at the past, together with deep remorse over the war, I pray that this tragedy of war will not be repeated and together with the people express my deep condolences for those who fell in battle and in the ravages of war, he said on August 15, 2015, the 70th anniversary of the wars end.
A scientist by avocation, Akihito is the first royal heir to have married a commoner. Under the postwar constitution, the emperor is the symbol of the State and of the unity of the People, with little formal power.
His efforts to draw the imperial family closer to the people in image, if not in fact, have played into a carefully crafted picture of a middle-class monarchy that has helped shield it from the harsh criticism suffered by flashier royals abroad.
CHITWAN, July 13: A person accused of murdering a woman three days ago at Kalash Hotel in Narayangadh was arrested on Tuesday.
The District Police Office, Chitwan arrested Hem Bahadur Thapa, 26, of Gumdi VDC 9 of Dhading. He was arrested in Dhading and brought to Chitwan, police said.
Thapa is accused of murdering Rita Bhujel, 27, from Mangalpur of Bharatpur Sub Metropolis 16 at the hotel. Police claim that Thapa murdered Bhujel at the hotel before fleeing.
The accused has confessed to mixing a rat poison in Bhujel's meal at first and strangling her to death with a shawl after she started to quiver in pain, police claim. RSS
sacw.net - 13 July 2016
What we are experiencing today is a militarization of the mindset of civil society all across. And Bhagat Singh bhakts lead the way. Kashmiri rebels cite Bhagat Singh and ask if he is a freedom fighter (like them) or a terrorist (like them). It is actually a redundant question: he is both. And so are they. Holding the gun against someones head or ones own to get things done is same: it is extortion, it is blackmail, it is violence, it is extinction.
But ethical ambiguity / cognitive dissonance arises when something that is considered evil today was also done by some past Hero / Prophet against whom no criticism is allowed. Unless we arrive at a universal and standard definition of evil that we can use at present (which, of course, we may need to be updated tomorrow), we will always have people using relativism to justify almost anything under the sun.
In India, we have a tradition of creating pantheons in which the Preservers as well as the Destroyers are equally great, and so it is the case with the myriad freedom fighters of India (a pantheon in itself) who are conferred equal Greatness / Godship and sung songs of, portraits hung of, and saluted everywhere. This appeal to a particular Great Man that matches our extremist ideology is what has allowed people to justify anything and everything and call it Greatness. No wonder, Kashmiri and Khalistani terrorists, Sanghi terrorists, and Maoists claim the same greatness. This is the main problem afflicting India; there are too many greatnesses pulling it apart. These old habit of seeing good in evil (theodicy) has to be given up, even if it means that some heroes become zeroes. But who is ready for that?
"Our Blessed Homeland," cartoon by Tom Gauld for the Guardian Review (1 March 2015) source: https://twitter.com/tomgauld/status/571994690289061888/photo/1
Come to think of it, in nation states where the influence of institutionalized religion on the state has waned, a new kind of religion has emerged: the religion of nationalism. In theocracies, it was a great achievement to die or kill for religion; in the new secular nations, it is a great achievement to die or kill for the country. Note the similarity in terminology: Shaheed, Amar, Martyrdom, Glory, Praise, Service, Sacrifice, Eternal Reward / Gratitude, The Nation Salutes You, Shaheed Ki Jo Maut Hai Woh Qaum Ki Hayaat Hai ("A martyrs death gives life to the nation"). One can argue till the cows come home the different paradigms of Maqbool Bhat and Bhagat Singh (and there are many), but do you expect kids and uneducated people to discern the difference?
A few years ago, some Kashmiri separatists suggested that they seek help from foreigner anarchists and fascists or whoever will be ready to help in the holy cause. As a justification, they are taking a page out of Subhas Chandra Boses flirtations with Hitler. Which Netaji fan has a moral right to criticize these separatists for fascistic connections? Patriotic movies like Khelein Hum Jee Jaan Sey is another case in point wherein the use of firearms and violence by children is glorified, even as we advise our children in Kashmir not to engage in violence, not to pick up guns, not to pelt stones. Do citizens like Ashutosh Gowariker have no idea how many insurgencies are raging in India, and what message he is sending by glorifying violence among the impressionable youth?
If one were to go by the expansive definitions of terrorism, even mainstream political parties who have at one time or another caused a riot or used methods of intimidation are terror groups. Congress, BJP, Shiv Sena, etc. are are implicated. No wonder violence has become normalized in the sub-continental polity. It is about time we re-evaluate every Great Tom, Dick, and Harry thrust upon us in the name of nationalism, common interest/ greed, or any self-righteous emotional cause. It is time to evolve a universal code of conduct for the entire humanity.
Like many of the so-called National Heroes, Savarkar was a bundle of contradictions. Savarkar as the president of Hindu Mahasabha was not in favour of independence of India and he and his party did not participate in civil disobedience movements, etc. In order to get out of prison, he signed a plea for clemency in which he renounced revolutionary activities, which makes him a Kaayyar (coward) for some, not a Veer (brave). Savarkar opposed partition but strongly endorsed the ideal of India as a Hindu Rashtra (despite his double-talk, his strong Hindutva posturing played a direct role in partition). He was a critic of non-violence and one of those accused in the assassination of Gandhi. Now, tell me: How come Savarkar is considered a freedom fighter at all? How come his portrait is there in the Parliament? How come any sane citizen would accord Savarkar the same stature as that of his adversary Gandhi *at the same time*? Cognitive dissonance in its classic form.
It is not only in Kashmir that shameless double-standards snuggle side by side in the form of the adjacent graves of Mirwaiz Moulvi Farooq and his assassin, Hizbul Mujahideen commander Abdullah Bangroo, with epitaphs dubbing both as the "Shaheed to the Kashmir Cause." It is about time that rest of the Indians audit our list of National Heroes as well, or every Indian has a free license to borrow from the greatnesses of terrorists like Bhagat Singh and fascists like Savarkar and become a terrorist or a fascist, the two scourges destroying peace in India.
Sualeh Keen
Dhaka Tribune, July 11, 2016
aFor you is your religion, and for me is my religiona
by Muktasree Chakma Sathi
Where is the multicultural and multi-religious Bangladesh we grew up in?
I am a thousand miles away from my home. I am at a place where, for the last four days, every non-Bangladeshi I have met has been asking me if I am okay or if I had lost any friend or relative in the horrible killing that happened in Dhaka on July 1 (one of the darkest night in many peopleas lives, including mine).
I answered: aThough none of them was well-known to me, I am in pain. I feel like I have lost family members and close friends.a
I couldnat gather the courage to say: aI am okay. I am fine.a Because I am not.
Bangladesh is mine, though I belong in the minority sex-wise, class-wise, ethnicity-wise. The only way I can connect to my country is either by logging into social media, or scrolling across online news.
And all over my newsfeed and the news media is the horrible, heinous incident which happened in my home country, which once was globally known for its tolerant and welcoming citizens, and for its hospitality.
Yes, once. Not anymore. I am sorry if I offend anyone but please, at least now, letas speak the truth. Our denial has already crippled our country, peopleas lives, and security.
Every explicit and implicit justification in relation to the killing and oppressing of minorities and secularist individuals is guilty for what happened on July 1.
And Bangladesh becoming intolerant, racist, and a non-secular country didnat happen in a single day. Minorities have been facing the wrath of extremism for a long time.
Many of you havenat. Thus, many of you didnat feel the pain until the night of July 1.
Did the night of July 1 hurt a lot? Why? Because 20 wonderful and promising people were killed?
Did it hurt the same when more than 20 people from minority sections were being killed and oppressed in other parts of Bangladesh? Or is it only now that you are shaken?
Because it happened in one of the posh areas which we all thought was comparatively safer than the areas where minoritiesa livelihoods are based?
You might already know, but I want to highlight that even there, in the Gulshan incident, minorities were the prime target. Not the majority, in terms of religion and nationality. In order to explain further, I want to share two experiences.
I was traveling with my elder sister in the late 90s, during Ramadan. At the Manikchari Police Check Post, the police stopped our bus for a regular check-up.
My sister was drinking water, and the police constable, who was about to get down from the bus, came back and asked in a certain tone and attitude: aArenat you a Muslim?a
My sister replied: aNo.a
In a harsher tone, he responded: aThis is Ramadan. You shouldnat be having any food or drink.a
My sister managed to answer: aI told you, we are not Muslim and we are not fasting. So we have the right to have food whenever we are hungry.a
We were shamed publicly for drinking water. We were not supposed to be thirsty and have water because it was Ramadan, even though we were not Muslim.
I wonder how many such moral police are around us nowadays who think it is a duty to shame and blame others who do not belong to his/her own faith?
Who thinks that it is okay to shut the minorities up, to make minorities fast in a way too, to force minorities to change their attire and food habits in Bangladesh, because these attributes belong to the majority peopleas religion? How many such people do you come across daily? Few?
My grandfather from my motheras side was taken by the Pakistani occupational armies on March 25, 1971 when he was serving as a police officer in Comilla. For being a Bengali Hindu. My motheras family never saw him again.
At that time, my mom and her family locked themselves inside their house so that it seemed that all of the family members had left. So that they stayed alive.
Even with limited food, they remained alive. Because a Muslim imam never forgot to supply my momas family food through the tiny hole of their closed door.
My mom and her family stayed alive until the Liberation War ended in December 1971.
My mom has been trying to get the amartyra status for my grandfather. A source in the government office said my grandfather wonat get the status unless my mom dishes out the bribe, and because he was a Hindu and Hindus canat be shahid an Islamic term given to martyrs.
Where is that Muslim Imam now? The one who helped a non-Muslim family when non-Muslims and non-Pakistanis were being executed. How many of such kind-hearted humans do you actually know of nowadays? Many?
You ask yourself which type of people are more visible and dominant now in Bangladesh? Who are you scared of? Do you speak against such force? You might not support what they are doing, but believe me, that is not enough. You are contributing in spreading the culture of intolerance when you donat raise your voice against their moral policing based on religion and nationality.
Now, based on these questions, you decide, whether you and I are guilty for this Bangladesh or not.
I grew up in a multicultural and multi-religious environment. Many days of my childhood, my dad made my siblings and I read pages out of the Holy Quran, the Tripitok, the Bible, and the Gita.
We celebrated Eid, Puja, Christmas, and almost every occasion that we came across, and we still do. And I am pretty sure our family is not the only one.
There are many families who grew up under a single culture, but stayed human, rather than claiming themselves better than others who do not belong to their religion or ethnicity. I am thankful to those kinds of friends and their families.
Sharing what one friend said after the night of July 1: aIf they had asked me to recite a verse of the Holy Quran, as a deciding factor to kill me or not, I would have said: aHere is one for you Lakum di nukum wal ya deen for you is your religion, and for me is my religiona.a
One can always find ways to spread hatred using religion, ideology, and nationality, especially when we fall divided in so many clusters. But we can also get together and help the world and ourselves in cultivating tolerance, peace, and love if we really want to. What do you want to do?
A delegation from the Central American Parliament (PARLACEN) led by the president of this institution, Nicaraguan Jose Antonio Alvarado Correa, held in Laayoune Monday and Tuesday working sessions with members of the Moroccan House of Councilors, lower house of the Parliament, led by the House Speaker, Abdelhakim Benchemas.
Benchemass who described the meeting as historic surveyed before the members of the Latin American delegation the outstanding projects launched in the Moroccan southern provinces and the Kingdoms commitment to promote sustained development in these southern regions.
At a meeting Tuesday with the Moroccan MPs, local elected officials of the Southern provinces and local authorities, the President of PARLACEN hailed the socio-economic development model initiated by Morocco in the Saharan provinces.
He also paid tribute to Moroccos role in preserving peace and stability in the region.
The 14-member PARLACEN delegation, representing El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama and the Dominican Republic, insisted to make the trip to Laayoune, in a gesture of support to Morocco and its Western Sahara.
Through this visit, the Latin American Parliamentary delegation has indeed shown clear support to Morocco in the artificial territorial conflict opposing it to neighboring Algeria and its protege, the separatist Polisario front.
The PARLACEN delegation is expected Wednesday in Rabat for talks with the head of the Government, the speaker of the House of Representatives (Lower House,) the Foreign Minister, and the President of the National Human Rights Council (CNDH.)
It goes without saying that the presence of the Latin American parliamentarians in Western Sahara will irk the Polisario leaders and their Algerian mentor.
With the recent teaser trailer being released for Ringo Lams Sky on Fire, I thought it would be nice to look back at the rest of his On Fire series of films, which include some of his best work. The series began in 1987 with City on Fire. Unlike other Hong Kong gangster movies of the time, Lam established a gritty and realistic look to his films, much removed from the films of John Woo and his many imitators. The series also went on to influence Western filmmakers such as Quentin Tarantino. Most of the films in the On Fire series are thematic sequels, dealing with crime and the lower elements of society. Only Prison on Fire 2 is a direct sequel.
City on Fire 1987
Probably the most famous of the On Fire series, due to its well publicised influence on Tarantino when he was writing Reservoir Dogs. In truth only the last third of City on Fire has any resemblance to Reservoir Dogs, as Lam focuses more on the inner workings of the gang, and the police trying to catch them.
The plot revolves around Ko Chow, played by Chow Yun Fat in a role very different from John Woos A Better Tomorrow which he made the year before. Chow is a cop, who after the death of an undercover cop (Elvis Tsui Kam Kong), is sent by his superiors to infiltrate a gang of Robbers. The robbers are lead by Fu, played by Danny Lee who for a nice change doesnt play his usual role of a police man. Also included in the group is the underrated Tommy Wong Kwong Leung, who would go on to become a Ringo Lam regular.
Similar to Hollywood gangster movie Donnie Brasco, Chow ends up befriending the robbers/gangsters and finds that he is got more in common with them than he does his fellow police officers. The film is very critical in its view of the police. Although there is the kindly Inspector Lau (Sun Yueh), there is also the brutal Inspector John Chan, played be a gleefully sadistic Roy Cheung, another Lam regular.
As the other police arent aware of Chows true allegiances, he is chased and brutalised by the police. There are no black and white areas in City on Fire. The robbers are shown to be killers, but dont go out of their way to be. One of the best scenes is in the first robbery when Danny Lee is forced to kill a guard. The look on Lees face says it all, as he seems sad that he had to do it. The film shows a good deal of Chows home life, with his girlfriend Hung, played by Carrie Ng. This part of the film feels very real, and unlike other films, seems like a real relationship. By that I mean it is doomed from the start.
Although not primarily an action film, there are a number of excellent chase scenes and shootouts throughout the film. Unlike the bullet ballet shown in similar Hong Kong films, these are extremely realistic. They have more in common with the works of William Friedkin, or Kinji Fukasaku than they do with Hong Kong cinema.
Although this was Lams fifth film as Director, it was the first of his films to be truly his, and be shot in the style that he would become famous for. Before this he had made Esprit damour (1983), The Other Side of Gentleman (1984), Cupid One (1985) and Aces go Places 4 (1986). Of these four movies, I can only really recommend the enjoyable Aces go Places. Although nothing like his other movies, there is some excellent action scenes, and if you are a fan of that particular series of films you wont be disappointed. It was also through his collaboration on this film with star/producer Karl Maka that he got to make City on Fire. Maka gave him cart blanche to make his next film, and make any type of film he wanted, which Maka would produce for him.
City on Fire would go on to win Ringo Lam the Best Director Award at the Hong Kong Film Awards.
Prison on Fire 1987
Ringo Lam followed up his smash hit City on Fire with the next in the series Prison on Fire, once again starring Chow Yun Fat. Karl Maka also returned to produce.
The plot concerns Lo Ka-Yiu (Tony Leung Ka-Fai), who has recently been sent to prison, for three years on manslaughter charges. Whilst in prison he befriends Ching Tin-Ching, played by Chow Yun Fat. At first it is not made clear why Ching is in prison, as he seems like a decent guy, but we later find out that he killed his wife in a rage when he found out his wife was working as a prostitute.
Essentially about the day to day life in a Hong Kong prison, what plot there is concerns the issues Ching and Yiu have with inmate Mickey (William Ho), and the sadistic warden Scarface Hung played by the excellent Roy Cheung. The film culminates in the prisoners going on hunger strike due to price rise of cigarettes in the prison, which leads on to a massive prison riot.
Prison on Fire was quite a change from the same years City on Fire. Although still dealing with criminals, the film is mainly limited to the one setting. Other than the opening of the film when Tony Leung Ka-Fai gets into a fight with a man for threatening his father, the film is set in prison. Much more of a drama than a thriller, the film is once again critical of law enforcement, this time the sadistic prison wardens. Although not all the wardens are portrayed as villainous, Roy Cheung as Scarface is one of the worst villains he has ever played. Considering the amount of villains Cheung has portrayed in his career, this gives you an idea what he is like.
On the performance side, Chow Yun Fat is clearly the star. Although Tony Leung Ka-Fai is more the focus of the plot, Chow still runs away with the film. This is not to say Ka-Fai isnt good in the film, as he is his usual excellent self, although his character does come across as somewhat cowardly. As mentioned already, Roy Cheung is great in his trademarked bastard role. Also Lam regular Tommy Wong and Shing Fui On/Big Silly Head also play inmates.
Ringo Lam brings his expected gritty style. Although Prison on Fire is not an action movie, the film climaxes in one Lams best action scenes, with the aforementioned prison riot. This scene is extremely violent and painful looking and ends with a character having their ear chewed off.
Lam was once again nominated as best Director at the Hong Kong Film Awards for his work on Prison on Fire, but did not win this time.
School on Fire 1988
The bleakest of the On Fire films, and possibly of Ringo Lams career. The film was heavily censored upon release in Hong Kong. The uncut version is unfortunately very hard to come by, due to it only ever being released on VHS.
The plot concerns Chu Yuen Fong (Fennie Yuen), witnessing a violent crime being carried out by a group of teenagers. Encouraged to testify in court against them, her life begins to unravel, with her realising that her school is full of young triad members who make her life a misery so that she wont testify.
She is encouraged by local cops Hoi and Chuen Ngor played by the excellent Lam Ching Ying and Tommy Wong Kwong-Leung to testify. She is supported by Damian Laus character Mr Wan, a teacher at her school. On the other side she is threatened by the films villain Brother Smart, played by, you guessed it, Roy Cheung. Its not only her life that is ruined, but everyone she is associated with. The film has a number of extreme scenes and culminates in an orgy of violence.
Unlike the other two On Fire films, which seemed to be critical of law enforcement. School on Fire seems to be made to indict the Triad lifestyle, as there are no honourable gangsters in this movie. The closest I suppose would be the character of Brother Scar played by Terence Fok, who falls in love with Yuens character. You could hardly call him heroic though. Lams main criticism in this film regarding law enforcement is how ineffective it is in dealing with the local triad problem. Not just the police, but the school system and parents are shown to be quite hopeless against the triads, who are shown to be not only running the streets but the local schools. Not being from Hong Kong, I am not sure how close to reality this film is/was at the time. For young peoples sake I really hope that it was over exaggerated for dramatic purposes.
Lams view of law and order, triads and the Hong Kong school system is very pessimistic. The overall atmosphere of the film is of dread, as you pretty much know that the lead characters arent going to have a good ending, and even those who survive the film will be physically and emotionally scarred.
Fans of the first two films in the series will not want to miss this. Out of the four films in the series, School on Fire has the least amount of action, but there are still a number of bone cracking fights, multiple stabbings and a lot of blood, which by this point people had come to expect from Lam.
Unfortunately School on Fire wasnt as financially successful as the previous two movies in the series, which was mainly due to the subject matter of the movie. Actress Sarah Lee Lai Yu, who plays lead character Fongs best friend, won best supporting actress at the Hong Kong film awards.
Prison on Fire 2 1991
After School on Fire, Lam didnt return to the On Fire series for another three years. In that time he directed Wild Search (1989), a more subdued film than usual, heavily inspired by Peter Weirs Witness. He also directed Undeclared War (1990), his attempt at a bigger budget action movie with an international cast. It turned out to be a financial failure. He followed this up with Touch & Go A.K.A. Point of No Return (1991), a grittier than usual Sammo Hung movie. It wasnt until after these he decided to return to his On Fire series.
Once again produced by Karl Maka, Prison on Fire 2 is very similar to the original film. Like in the first film, the main plot follows the friendship between two inmates. This time it is Ching, once again played by Chow Yun Fat, and Brother Dragon, a gangster from the mainland played by Cheng Sung Young. The film also includes the growing tensions between the Hong Kong inmates and the new inclusion of Mainland China prisoners.
Ching escapes from prison this time, in order to visit his son, who is now in care after his grandmother has dies. Because of this, he gets on the wrong side of Officer Zau (Elvis Tsui Kam Kong), making Roy Cheungs Scarface look like a choirboy. He ends up escaping a second time so that he can follow Brother Dragon. This just makes Zau even more determined to destroy Ching.
Like the first film, the majority of the movie takes place in a Hong Kong prison, although the sequel does go outside the prison walls for a time during Chings escape attempts. One of these escapes involves an excellent chase sequence, and is up there with Ringo Lams best action scenes.
The film, also like the first, climaxes with a large prison riot. It tries to outdo the first film, and almost succeeds.
Performance wise, Chow Yun Fat once again is great, and just builds on what we had seen from his character in the first movie. Chen Sung Young is also good as Brother Dragon, but doesnt make as much as an impression as the missing Tony Leung Ka-Fai from the first part. Tommy Wong is also back from the first movie, in what is a sadly underwritten part. It would have been good to have more from him. New addition Elvis Tsui Kam Kong as Officer Zau is terrific. His character of the Prison Warden is a bit over the top compared to the more realistic character Roy Cheung played in the first movie, but if you are a fan of this actor this is what you should expect. His part of Officer Zau is just one more in a line of memorable characters from this underrated actor.
Sadly, this seemed to be the last in the On Fire Series until the recently announced Sky on Fire starring Daniel Wu. Unlike the other four films in the series, this film doesnt appear to deal with street level crime, instead being a more mainstream action movie about chemical weapons. Heres hoping that Lam hasnt lost his touch and gives us a worthy addition to the series.
CHAPTER ONE : I WENT TO HAMILTON TO SEE ABOUT A GIRL
I will be the first to admit that I went to Hamilton this past weekend for Rue Morgues Dark Carnival Horror and Culture Expo for purely selfish reasons. I cannot recall in the twelve years that we have existed that we have covered an event that ends in -Con (save a couple years when someone gave us interview footage from San Diego near our beginnings) or -Expo but I was willing to make the sacrifice and take one for the team this time around. Luchagores Gigi Saul Guerrero was coming to town to represent her brand of MexiCan(ada) horror filmmaking and she wanted a visit. I had not seen her since my trip to Vancouver over the Christmas holidays so I hopped on the nearest bus.
To Hamilton, my good man
Sir. This is the Willowdale Elementary school bus
Why these children are waaay too young for this type thing. For shame, driver. For shame
I will also admit that on the spectrum of horror fandom I do my Dance of the Dead somewhere on its peripheral. Never one to shy away from watching a good horror film Ive always have this apprehension that I am never wearing enough black or have enough tattoos. Immensely talented Mondo artist Gary Pullin chuckled with me when we chatted about this at his table on Sunday, ...we have a uniform.
First impressions on Saturday? I Ducked in ahead of the crowd on Saturday morning (one does not simply yell out Media Pass, bitches!) one of the first people I came across was Dead Glamour Girls model Brittany Bell. As you can see she had dark red horns curling out from her black hair. She had a dark red corset to match to match the horns, black pants and high leather boots. Basically an alt-model dreamgirl. I had to stop her and we took the picture below. Youre gorgeous! I told her. I wanted to take her home to Mom. If nothing but for the shock factor.
But never was my uncertainty about my appearance more evident than when our little crew (ScreenAnarchy, Blood in the Snow, Luchagore and Bloodbath & Beyond represent!) decided to show up fashionably late to the Shocktails party Saturday night with me in khaki shorts and mostly white, striped dress shirt in a sea of a whole lot of blacks and greys, reds and purples, studs and buckles.
Then Brittany Bell (see above) walked by. She was still wearing the horns, but now I (everyone) could see that most of her upper body is adorned with a colorful array of tattoos that would make even a Yakuza boss envious. The corset was gone. Her costume was gore makeup over her breasts. Eep! I looked over at my drinking partner, Pablo Absento, the director of a short film titled Shi. Absento is as elegant and classy as Bell is hardcore and edgy.
What? Im not staring! Honest
CHAPTER TWO : WHEN YOU ARE IN THE PRESENCE OF PEOPLE
WHO EMINENTLY MORE TALENTED THAN YOU ARE!
As stated earlier, I had not been to an Expo of any sort in my time here at ScreenAnarchy. I have to recall one comic book convention in Vancouver when I was a lad. I went to see Jim Lee and get him to sign my Wolverine vs. Punisher issues. But usually if there is a throng of humanity clustered together in a room not built to spec to hold such a throng I will shy away from it.
Those of you who have been to Expos and Cons will know there is no shortage of means by which to part with your money. Distributors like Troma and Raven Banner were selling their wares. Those plucky lads from Black Fawn Films had their own table and we were able to catch up on their latest projects. There was an endless sea of shirts, jewelery, Voorhees masks for every chapter in the series. Mugs, magnets and coasters. And brains.
While all those things are awesome I immediately gravitated to any table that had art on it. Not everything there was of my taste. I do not think I need comic books depicting graphic violence and nudity, at the same time. Personally, I just cannot fathom going up to a table and asking, Do you have something with tits AND sliced throats, please?. I kept a straight face when a middle aged fellow described one of his novels as Supernatural Erotica. There is something for everyone, I guess.
No, what I experienced was the gravitational pull of anyone displaying poster art, prints, or illustrations. That tickles my fancy. I also sat in on two panels featuring very, very good artists from Canada and the U.S.
On Saturday Why Horror? Director Tal Zimmerman led a panel of male artists, some of the best in the business, chitting the chat, shooting the - HEY!
On the panel was Gary Pullin, Jason Edmiston, Justin Erickson, Vincent Marcone and Matt Ryan Tobin. Four out of the five of these guys - Pullin, Edmiston, Erickson and Tobin - have Mondo posters. Here are four Canadian dudes killing it for many of the most popular poster and vinyl companies in the World right now!
Marcone is not no slouch either. Golly, I like his stuff. Really dark stuff that reminded me of work from Dave McKean and he directed a favorite short of ours back in 2011, The Facts in the Case of Mister Hollow. I already had Justins version of a poster for The Void from their Indigogo campaign framed and hanging in my home office. Side note, Justin designed the ScreenAnarchy logo. I missed Edmiston's table somehow.
It was an entertaining panel and Tal was deftly throwing in the jokes to keep it light but there was little time for Q&A at the end. I appreciated that everyone did offer up an idea of what it is like to do commissioned work though. I do not believe that any of them are starving.
On Sunday Rue Morgues April Snelling led a ladies and art panel with Sara Deck, Abigail Carson, Suspiria and Paige Reynolds. This panel was a lot more interactive and we were able to ask the ladies questions throughout.
Abigails table was one of the very first tables that drew me in on Saturday morning. The bulk of her work leaned towards the gothic with some pieces devoted to Poe and Lovecraft. She also had a Penny Dreadful comic book first issue variant cover which I did not know existed. If I did not already have that issue and know that the contents were bunk I would have bought that but I parted with a bunch of stuff of hers.
I tried to buy something from everyone. I got a lovely Psycho print from Deck and a Carrie print from Reynolds. Suspiria had some great stuff at her table but I suppose there were not any pieces that I connected to at that film level.
The experience of going to anyone's tables can be a humbling experience. Every one of the artists at the expo produced amazing work. I bought something from nearly everyone who were on the panels, but not before bugging each of them about the tools they use for their awesome creations. I have always dabbled in scribbles and doodles but nothing at their level or quality. For now everything is conceptual and pre-production based. If my workload ever increases it is good to know that I have been doing it kind of wrong up to this point and I can correct my course with good measure.
There were a lot of really talented artists throughout the expo, yet, as a not-quite horror guy, or more specifically an anything-horror guy, I still found myself gravitating to work that was only film related and none of the stuff that was of an occult, violent, or horrific ilk. I have conservative roots so, yeah, boo Satan?
In fact, I was surprised just how much variety there was, how much creativity was in that convention center room was staggering. We have a little something for everybody. Yes. Yes they did. Some tables and booths were incredible. Then again, a couple were simply a dude with a couple posters and him on his cell phone, which does not elicit an empathy vote, nor is it engaging.
Sorry. Scuse me. I dont want to disturb this vital round of Plants vs Zombies. But, what is... this?
Then you really feel bad for a guy like Aaron Soto who comes all the way from Tijuana, Mexico only to have those fascist bastards at Canada Customs seize his posters for his upcoming film Ratas Del Bordo. Still, we had fun hanging out talking about film in Latin America and the perils of Canadian tourists in Mexico.
CHAPTER THREE : JUST LET ME SADDLE UP NEXT TO THIS
HORROR ICON FOR A FEW MINUTES
It is well understood that when you are at an expo or con you can meet your heroes and idols. While most of this is organized, scheduled and comes with a cost to it, if you are a jerk like me you flash your media pass around and expect to be treated with the same level of respect and allowed access to whomever you want.
(Whispers - media pass, bitches!)
But with all seriousness, the guests in attendance were more than cordial and generous with their time for their fans. Yet, as a Not-Quite Horror Guy I did not feel up to snuff and learned enough to engage with most of them. These are those days where I wish I had fellow Anarchist and Very-Much-So Horror lady Izzy Lee with me and I could follow her lead.
I managed to get a few minutes in the George A. Romero on Sunday afternoon though. He was nothing but a gentleman and I will have a transcribed interview of the few minutes I was allowed to spend with him soon. Then this happened.
Well, I live in Toronto too. Give me your information after and well get together back home.
Guh!
I have friends in Toronto who have met with this icon many times over the years. Another friend who was at the expo confirmed this; he had been over to his home once too. Great. Do I start saving up for a nice bottle of wine or scotch?
CHAPTER FOUR : REVENGE OF THE FAMILY
Finally, with all the warm fuzzies going around as fans met their icons and fellow professionals met on common ground you see how much this community means to its members.
I joked earlier about the school bus of kids going to a horror expo but some parents brought their children with them. There was a darling little girl lined up with her dad first thing Saturday morning. She had on what I can only recall was her rendition of Alices Mad Hatter. Adorably scary. Another youngster was having difficulty processing a collection of zombie babies on one vendors tables. Im not here to judge but thatd have to have ramifications later that day. Heh.
The horror family is a tight-knit community. You could see that as folks bumped into each other that they have met somewhere before. Folks I knew from the festival circuit in Toronto were coming over to hang out with us on Saturday night and they were more familiar with the people in room than I was.
There is a common bond. There is a common purpose. The shared love of horror has brought these folks together more than once before and the opportunity to meet, even if it is just an evening out, is too good to pass up for some of us.
Im able to flirt in and out of an event like this because of ScreenAnarchys relationship with Rue Morgue began many years ago and those folks have been very kind and generous to us. Rodrigo Gudino and I hung out at a Morbido festival in Mexico three years ago. Dave Alexander and I recently discovered a mutual appreciation for fine Scotch this past New Years. Both stopped to say hello and share a few words despite all the running around they had to do that weekend.
I may not be a full fledged, card carrying member of the horror community but being in Hamilton this past weekend opened me up to its creativity, passion and devotion to the horror genre. It also put a sizeable dent in my wallet too. If I keep this up I am going to run out of wall at home.
As I came to understand it the folks in Hamilton were very appreciative for the expo to be in their town for this first time. Some of the artists I spoke to have made the city their home now as well. Hamilton has had a tradition of horror related events over the years and I am not talking about the jokes the rest of the Golden Horseshoe has said at its expense over the years. Horror in Hamilton continues to be on the rise and Rue Morgue's Dark Carnival was evidence of that.
Addendum: ScreenAnarchy's Josh Hurtado has covered Texas Frightmare FIVE times apparently. And they are very much HIS people he said.
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A crash involving an allegedly drunk SFFD firefighter and a motorcyclist could end up costing the city almost $5,000,000, reports the Examiner. While the settlement is not final, the paper reports that it is being presented today to the Board of Supervisors for their approval.
The collision happened on June 29 of 2013 when a ladder truck being driven by 20-year SFFD veteran Michael Quinn struck a motorcyclist around 11:30 p.m. near 5th and Howard. The man on the motorcycle, Jack Frazier, was hospitalized with broken ribs and a punctured lung following the crash. According to reports at the time, Quinn fled the scene and was later seen chugging water at a local bar. He returned to the station two hours later, where a blood-alcohol test registered 0.13 percent.
This is not to be confused with the case of the Hot Cop of the Castro, who was charged with two felonies following his alleged role in a hit-and-run crash where he was the driver. In that incident, however, the officer was not on duty at the time of the collision.
While criminal charges against Quinn are in doubt following the decision by a judge last March to suppress evidence that Quinn was drunk, the Ex notes that the District Attorneys Office will continue to pursue the case.
If approved by the Board of Supervisors, Quinn will contribute $10,000 to the total settlement. He no longer works for the San Francisco Fire Department.
Previously: Fireman Who Injured Motorcyclist While Allegedly Driving Drunk May Be Fired
San Francisco has some of the greatest scenery in the world, but this week much of the city has ignored that scenery and glued its collective noses to smartphones to play Pokemon Go. The suddenly ubiquitous mobile game that requires you to get on your feet and step outside has led to an outbreak of hitherto new behaviors in our citys public sidewalks, streets, and parks. SFist went hunting in the wild to note the curious rash of new habits in our pocket-monster habitat, and how San Franciscans behavior has changed since this past weekend for better and worse.
Wearing Binoculars While Hunting Pokemon
This fellow brought his binoculars with him to hunt Pokemon in Dolores Park. He insisted he was also bird-watching while Pokemon hunting. Theres a hawk over there and a Zubat over there, he told SFist.
Also notice the external battery charger dongle dangling away here. Boy, have I seen a lot of that shit the last few days.
Image: Dave Monk via Flickr
Getting Victimized By Theft And Assault
We have at least one report of a theft and assault of Pokemon-distracted pedestrians in San Francisco, which was a strong-arm theft of two teens' smartphone(s) Sunday in the Excelsior. SFPD has issued Pokemon Go safety tips, which deserve reading during those periods when your games servers have crashed.
As SFist noted this morning, at least six other non-Pokemon-related cell phone thefts went down last weekend. So these crimes are not unique to Pokemon Go players. That said, I played for three hours yesterday and cannot believe the number of ignorantly distracted behaviors in which I engaged just cause I wanted that Staryu I didnt have yet. Catching em can wait, people these are non-virtual monsters and they follow you around!
Image: Joe Kukura
Unromantic Dating
You think dating in San Francisco was bad before? Wait til you endure that special indignity of a date whos more interested in getting another Poliwag than getting into your pants. If you think that romance is still alive, take a walk around Japantown during normal date-night hours and your faith in romance will be brought to a complete halt.
Image: Pokemon Go, Joe Kukura
Finding Fabulously Obscure Landmarks
Were it not for this silly game, I may have never discovered this magnificent mosaic tile tiger tucked away on the Filbert Steps to Coit Tower. Many of the PokeStops are obscure, fantastic little landmarks and secret works of art that really do uncover some hidden spirit to restore our jaded faith in modern-day San Francisco.
#SanFrancisco #PokemonGO fans....
...what are the weirdest Pokestops you've found? Or places to find Pokemon? pic.twitter.com/58pqPihCTV Joe Fitz Rodriguez (@FitzTheReporter) July 11, 2016
Screwing With People On Muni
Two girls were pointing at me and laughing on Muni this morning, a friend told me yesterday. I didnt know why. Turns out I just had a Caterpie on me.
Playing Pokemon Go on Muni is harmless enough, and a fine way to pass the time. This is not OK on all forms of street transit, though....
when you realize your uber swerving cause they tryna catch a pokemon pic.twitter.com/gQ4aVaqtJE The Black DaVinci (@meechonmars) July 10, 2016
Driving While Pokemon Hunting
This alleged incident took place in New York, not San Francisco. But Ive seen a number of similar (albeit unverified) complaints on social media of rideshare drivers engaging in an active Pokemon Go session on their dashboard smartphone mounts. This probably wont end well.
Image: @salmattos via Twitter
Congregating In Parks, Near Bodies Of Water
Just look at the Ocean Beach scene last night, courtesy @salmattos on Twitter. Looks like Rec & Parks just solved their bonfire problem!
Parks, especially those bordering water, are indeed hot spots for Pokemon catching. While my results differed from Curbeds Where to Catch 99 Pokemon in San Francisco map, there is definitely a correlation between aquatic monster occurrence in places like the Ferry Building and Fishermans Wharf, and flocks of feathered flying monsters in high-altitude spots like Coit Tower.
Image: Joe Kukura
Using Nerdishly Specific Lingo
As a child of the 80s who spent the original Pokemon era occupied with drugs and zines instead of Gameboys and cartoons, I call my monsters ostriches, sand armadillos, and little snakes. This never fails to draw a stern rebuke from Pokemon Go players who quickly correct me with the monsters Pokemon-specific names and perhaps do not realize that many of these animals are based on those that occur in actual nature.
Look what's popping up at Lake Merced #PokemonGo pic.twitter.com/IC24OHraFt Stanley Roberts (@SRobertsKRON4) July 13, 2016
Meeting Cool Strangers
Pokemon Go players do actually connect and talk to one another. Well, they do not talk to each other in the classic sense of Whats your name?, What do you do?, or Hope your Aunt Tillys chemo treatments are going okay, instead they just talk about imaginary dragons and seahorses. But its a start. There is eye contact and human speech involved. And they do tend to end their conversations with Have fun or Good luck, so the existential fabric of society may survive this yet.
The Board of Supervisors Tuesday moved to revise the language of some new additions to the so-called 'Airbnb Law' that would fine the company $1,000 per day per illegal unit listed on the site. Amendments to the 2014 law that were approved by the Board of Supervisors in June prompted the vacation rental platform to file a lawsuit against the city claiming that the new fines assessed for publishing listings from unregistered Airbnb hosts violated laws protecting internet companies from liability for the content published by their users.
As the Chronicle reports, progressive Supes David Campos, Aaron Peskin, Eric Mar, and John Avalos jointly introduced the new language for the amendments in the hope of skirting Airbnb's lawsuit. A judge has already put the amendments, which were set to take effect later this month, on pause pending a ruling on Airbnbs request for a temporary injunction, which won't be heard until September.
Primarily, the revision changes when and why Airbnb would be fined rather than being fined simply for publishing listings by hosts who haven't registered with the city, the language now says Airbnb would be fined $1,000 per transaction once an illegal unit has been rented on the site.
As Campos tells the paper, "These commonsense amendments aim to address some of the legal arguments that Airbnb has made in its lawsuit, and they strengthen the citys legal position. I think these amendments make the lawsuit moot."
Airbnb has argued that the city shouldn't be requiring every Airbnb host to go through the arcane and complicated business licensing process at City Hall. Additionally, they've argued, "The new law also violates the federal Stored Communications Act, which creates uniform privacy protections for internet users and prevents cities from simply demanding that platforms turn over user information without a subpoena or other legal process."
To the latter point, the revised amendments now say that the Office of Short-Term Rentals can subpoena records from hosting platforms like Airbnb and Homeaway when it discovers possible violations of the citys law by scofflaw hosts which include people who are renting out entire units full time as short-term hotel rooms, and those who are renting their primary residence on the platform more than the legal 90 days per year.
Regarding yesterday's move to revise the amendments, Airbnb issued a statement remaining staunch in their position, and suggesting that the lawsuit is still on. "The introduction of today's amendment acknowledges the legal infirmities with the city's recent changes to the short-term rental law, Airbnb says. The fact remains that the ordinance as it stands today violates federal law, and these new proposed amendments still wouldn't resolve the legal shortcomings that were raised in our complaint. We remain hopeful that we can work together to find solutions that address our shared policy concerns."
Airbnb has faced pushback in cities across the world because of the issue of housing shortages and gentrification. New Orleans passed a similar ordinance outlawing short-term rentals in the French Quarter altogether, and limiting them in the rest of the city to 30 days or more. In New York, you're currently not allowed to rent an entire unit, even if you own it, if you live in a multi-unit building.
As the Business Times reports, Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky recently said at a Fortune-sponsored tech conference, "My initial instinct was to avoid cities where we would have conflict," but his perspective has evolved through the fights with SF and New York, where he says the company is trying to get the cities to "see people as businesses" and revise their thinking around that.
Previously: Airbnb Sues SF Over Supe-Approved Fines For Scofflaw Hosts
Airbnb Reveals 20% Of SF Listings Are By Hosts Listing Multiple Homes, Vows Crackdown
Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan got booed at the AARP meeting last week while he tried to explain that his plan for Medicareand his desire to repeal Obamas Affordable Care Act (ACA)would actually help seniors.
The crowd wasnt buying it.
Seniors are threatened by Obamacare, a law that would force steep cuts to real benefits in real time for real people, Ryan said at one point.
But his statement is terribly misleading.
Both Ryans plan and Obamas ACA would cut Medicare spending by $716 billion over the next decade. But, as has been reported widely, Ryan would take that sum from recipients benefits, while the ACA would reduce spending on hospitals and insurance companies inefficiencies. Seniors benefits wouldnt be affected.
And what about cutting real benefits in real time? Well, Ryans plan would do exactly thatalthough he didnt mention that fact at the AARP meeting. Its true that Ryans Medicare vouchers wouldnt kick in for another decade. But his cuts to Medicaidthe program that serves low-income people, individuals with disabilities and seniorswould begin immediately. Ryan calls for reducing Medicaid funding by a third in the next 10 years and making deeper cuts thereafter. That would severely slash funding for home health support and nursing home payments, funding that seniors living independently and in long-term care facilities rely on.
Scare Tactics
Ryan also told the crowd to fear the Independent Payment Advisory Board, a 15-member panel that was launched as part of the new health care law. As Medicare spending grows, this board is required to cut it, Ryan said.
But as PolitiFact Florida pointed out when it gave a Ryan statement on the advisory board a mostly false rating, the board cannot ration care, change benefits or eligibility, or increase seniors payments. The board can cut payments to providers, but thats about it. And Congress can override its actions. So if that board does something harmful, Ryan and his fellow members of Congress have the power to stop it.
Ryans ultimate solution for Medicare is to turn it into taxpayer-funded vouchers and allow seniors to shop around for insurance, just like those under 65. Ryan promotes this plan as empowering seniors. But in reality hes delivering millions of seniors into the private insurance market at a time when they need health care coverage the most.
Ryans love of Ayn Rands philosophy could be motivating him to do so. Vincent Miller, writing for the blog of America: The National Catholic Weekly, provided an expanded transcript of a speech Ryan gave at the Atlas Societys Celebration of Ayn Rand. In that speech, Ryan calls Social Security and Medicare collectivist and socialistic programs that transfer wealth. Ryan advocated for privatizing both of them for ideological and political reasons.
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But Ryan may not be totally motivated by his admiration of Ayn Rand. He also could be putting his campaign donors ahead of the needs of seniors. According to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics, those working in finance, insurance and real estateas well as the political action committees representing themare far and away Ryans biggest donors. Since 1998, that sector has contributed $3,115,147 to the Janesville congressmanmore than twice what Ryan has raised from any other sector. It appears that Ryan would like to return the favor by allowing seniors to use government vouchers to purchase policies from private insurance companies and use private savings accounts instead of Social Security.
No wonder why Ryan got booed.
Tha-namite, the sushi and Thai bistro, has opened recently in the Milwaukee Public Market. This is the second location for the Brady Street Thai-namite, and the first Thai restaurant in the Third Ward. The newly renovated spot in the Market is housed between Nehring's Family Market and the St. Paul Fish Co. and features a sushi bar incorporating refurbished bowling alley maple wood that seats seven.
The owners, three woman who are all Thai natives, are celebrating the opening by offering complimentary spring rolls with any lunch plate order during the first month of operation. They also offer delivery service from the market location.
Over the weekend, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton condemned as immoral the recklessness and neglect of the Republican administration of Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder that resulted in the brain-damaging lead contamination of drinking water in the majority African American city of Flint.
Calling it like it is should finally bring to a halt an equally reckless proposal across the lake by Wisconsin Republicans to increase privatization of state water systems and reduce public protection of clean, affordable drinking water in our own cities.
In January, Assembly Republicans passed a water privatization bill by a voice vote as if it were routine, non-controversial legislative business.
It didnt take long for environmentalists and consumer advocates to realize it was a dangerous change, making it easier for private companies to acquire municipal water systems, raise prices to increase their profits and limit public access to one of the necessities of human life.
Of course, passing the bill on a voice vote also makes it more difficult later to identify exactly who supported such a potentially disastrous change.
For the record, the bill now before the state Senate is sponsored by Republican state Sen. Frank Lasee of De Pere and co-sponsored in the Assembly by Republicans Joel Kleefisch (R-Oconomowoc), Joe Sanfelippo (R-West Allis), Tyler August (R-Lake Geneva), David Murphy (R-Greenville), Daniel Knodl (R-Germantown) and Ken Skowronski (R-Franklin) and lone Democratic Rep. Josh Zepnick of Milwaukee.
There are two other disturbing details about the bill that should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with the current ethically challenged Republican legislative leadership.
One is that the bill was largely written by Aqua America, a private company that could reap huge profits from the law the same way Republicans allowed Gogebic Taconite to write its own mining regulations when the Walker administration was promoting an environmentally destructive open pit iron mine in Northern Wisconsin.
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The other is that the chief Wisconsin lobbyist for Aqua America is Steven Foti, the former Republican majority leader of the Assembly who was convicted in 2006 in the legislative caucus scandal. Foti served 60 days in jail for misusing public funds to pay state employees to work on Republican campaigns.
Another important thing to know about Aqua America is it has faced a long list of consumer and state complaints across the country after it has taken over public water systems, according to Food and Water Watch, a nonprofit environmental protection organization that tracks water safety across the country.
After Aqua acquired public water utilities in Pennsylvania, it increased water rates 397% from $153 to $707. In Florida, citizen opposition ultimately drove Aqua out of the state. Food and Water Watch reported Aqua charged counties twice as much as public systems and had serious water quality problems. Customers described Aquas water as smelly, discolored, contaminated and undrinkable.
Other companies privatizing municipal water systems have faced similar complaints of increasing rates and deteriorating water quality.
Indianapolis had to pay $29 million to terminate a long-term contract with Veolia because of widespread citizen complaints. Atlanta residents were forced to boil their water after insufficient treatment by United Water led to orange and brown water spewing from residential taps, according to Corporate Accountability International, a Boston-based nonprofit.
Milwaukee Water Privatization Failed
Food and Water Watch has alerted Wisconsin previously about the dangers of privatizing the water of life. In 2009, the group helped organize opposition to a foolish proposal promoted by the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce to consider an unbelievably long-term private water contract running as long as 99 years.
Comptroller Wally Morics claimed such a sell-off could bring half a billion dollars in revenue to the city upfront, which needless to say politicians would have figured out ways to spend long before a century was up.
Mayor Tom Barrett and the Common Council ultimately rejected the idea that never should have been taken seriously.
But ever since Gov. Scott Walker and Republicans seized total control of state government, theyve been hell bent on repealing political reforms that have given Wisconsin a progressive reputation nationally.
You know, good government practices invented here such as merit hiring under civil service and independent government watchdogs policing corruption.
The ultimate dream of Wisconsin Republicans is to return to the days of unregulated industrial profiteering and government corruption that gave rise to many of our states most important democratic reforms in the first place.
The final straw was the rampant corruption in the early 1900s under Milwaukee Mayor David Rose, who profited from houses of prostitution half a block from City Hall that he publicly championed for turning Milwaukee into a lively city.
It helped usher in squeaky clean, nationally recognized good government under Democratic Socialist Milwaukee mayors and progressive Republican Gov. Fighting Bob La Follette.
The last thing we should ever consider repealing are public protections for safe, clean, affordable drinking water at a time when we see it threatened around the country by negligent politicians and private profiteering.
Are the four days of comedyprovided by the Milwaukee Comedy Festival not enough for you? Well, you're in luck, because The ExtraLaughs pre and post party shows are just what you need. With the help of The Milwaukee Record, the festival will be boasting some awesome pre and post shows.
All of the Extra Laughs shows are free withpaid festival admission or $5. Theschedule of special events kicks off after the Thursday, August 6th show:
Roast of Milwaukee:
Milwaukee is an easy target for a roast, and I can't believe no one has thought of the idea before. Comedians will gather at Bremen Cafe in Riverwest to roast our fair city, with all of their best Milwaukee related material. (Lookout, Bronze Fonz and Milverine!)
With Host Josh Ballew- BremenCafe in Riverwest
Thursday, August 6that 10pm
Music from Piles at 9pm
Featuring: Ryan Mason,Allison Dunne, Sammy Arechar, Damon Millard, Liz Ziner, Dylan Payne, and MikeBerg
Cost: Free
Chuckle-Mania: A WrestlingThemed Show
Wrestling and comedy are like Laverne and Shirley... I'm not sure where I was going with that, but this should be awesome.
With Host Phill Davidson Club Garibaldi in Bay View
Friday, August 7that 11pm
Music from Crappy Dracula andSoup Moat at 9:30
Featuring: Chris Schmidt,Gary Zajackowski, Keith Gaustad, and Brandon Koss
Cost: $5 or free with passfrom any day of Comedy Fest
Var Gallery Comedy Show inWalkers Point
If you've yet to visit Var Gallery, you're missing out. It's a fantastic space for art galleries, and also features stand-up comedy on a pretty routine basis.
With Host Ramie Makhlouf
Saturday, August 8that 4pm
Music from Antler House
Featuring: Jim Zarling, SamIke, Danny Lobell, and Sam Gordon
Cost: $5 or free with passfrom any day of Comedy Fest
42 Lounge Pre Party ComedyShow Downtown
In order to not let downtown feel left out, the 42 Lounge will host a pre party comedy show before headliner Brian Posehn takes the stage at Turner Hall Ballroom on the final night of the festival.
With Host Patrick Tomlinson
Sunday, August 9that 5:30pm
Featuring Tyler Menz, J.J.Harris, Gena Gephart, and Toler Oswald Wolfe
In addition to the ExtraLaughs shows, the festival is also hosting a live recording of the WhormonesPodcast by former adult film star Alia Janine and comedian Jaqi Furbank onSaturday, August 8th. The Whormones podcast is an anti-feministfeminist podcast where two completely different points of view of sexuality,feminism, and life are discussed.
Dont forget to get yourtickets to the Milwaukee Comedy Festival! I will see you there.
In this weeks KO, a classicsketch from the HBO show Mr. Show with Bob and David, featuring MilwaukeeComedy Festival headliner Brian Posehn.
The notorious college psychology experiment dramatized in The Stanford Prison Experiment was one of several scientific tests of the human condition during the 1960s and 70s that found its participants willing to behave with great cruelty to each otherif given license and encouragement. It stars Billy Crudup as the real-life Philip Zimbardo, the Stanford professor whose pursuit of the scientific method pushed several of his student volunteers over the edge in his 1971 experiment.
Recreating a prison environment, Zimbardo hired a cast of students to act as guards and inmates to test the psychological effects of imprisonment. The projected two-week experiment was cut short after six days when Zimbardo realized that the situation had gotten out of hand as the make-believe guards escalated their abuse of the make-believe prisoners.
The film version, directed by Kyle Patrick Alvarez and written by Tim Talbott, simplifies the actual scenario while hewing closely to true events. Crudup plays Zimbardo as the Captain Ahab of the Stanford psychology department, pursuing his objectives despite all perils. He is a sinister figure at the controls of closed-circuit cameras, monitoring the experiment and becoming complicit with its unintended results.
According to the film, the roles of guards and prisoners were chosen with a coin flip; all of the subjects were deemed physically and psychologically fit. And yet, the playacting turned hateful. By the end of day one, the guards were hectoring and harassing the inmates. Day two was worse still as the thrill of power intoxicated the guards. Some of the prisoners fought back, only to be overwhelmed by force (the guards had clubs and fire extinguishers). Others complied through apathy or fear. As hinted in the screenplay, one of the guards modeled himself after the sadistic warden in Paul Newmans Cool Hand Luke.
Zimbardos experiment became a textbook case, yet the results were subject to many interpretations. For some it proved that environment determined behavior. Given uniforms and broad authority over captives already dehumanized by being stripped of their names and identified only by numbers, might anybody behave like those guards? Other authorities accuse Zimbardo of assembling an unstable human Petri dish. The advertisement for a study of prison life might have drawn certain personalities whose latent cruelty was given license to flourish. The arguments were revived during the scandal over the Iraqi captives in Abu Ghraib. Zimbardo was called as an expert witness in the court martial of abusive guards.
The film is edited with swift efficiency, introducing and establishing characters quickly. It revels in the retro accoutermentsthe typewriters, reel-to-reel tape decks and the inevitable ashtray on the conference tablewithout losing sight of the theme of power, abuse and degradation.
In these United States of America, the hamburger is close to an unalienable right. That the burger should be made with 100 percent beef, and the bigger, the better, are truths many hold to be self-evident, especially fast-food advertising agencies.
Can less be more, my fellow Americans? Can we unshackle ourselves from the chains, pull ourselves up by our own burger-bootstraps and make them our own enlightened, forward-thinking way?
We could make them more rarely, for less impact on Gods would-be-green earth. (And medium-rare, to actually taste them.)
We could make them with good meat good, meaning both high-quality and humanely raised.
And we could make them with less meat, substituting some mushrooms for added sustainability, nutrition and tastiness.
Its a controversial proposal, no doubt. But a 2014 joint study by the Culinary Institute of America and UC Davis, published in the Journal of Food Science, found that blending finely chopped mushrooms into ground meat enhances both flavor and nutrition.
Nothing convinces Americans more than science, right? So the good people at the James Beard Foundation embarked upon the Blended Burger Project last year, enlisting hundreds of chefs nationwide to create burgers replacing 25 percent or more of the meat blend with mushrooms.
Now, in year two, 347 restaurants are participating, with 10 in Washington state making Blended Burgers from Seattle to Spokane. The people can choose their candidate in an online election cycle that goes through July 31. (Five winning chefs will be flown to New York in October to cook their burgers at the James Beard House.)
Meanwhile, and in perpetuity, you can join the Blended Burger party on your grill at home with these two recipes from local chefs Luis Brambila, of Bar Dojo in Edmonds, and Maria Hines, of Tilth (and more) in Seattle.
Brambila is going for a new take on the American classic, adding a little serrano pepper for our borderless taste buds. Hines, ever-loyal to the Pacific Northwest, has chosen to forgo beef entirely, opting for salmon.
Depending on the recipe, beef partisans may not even realize theyve crossed the aisle to the fungi side only that their burger has a new level of umami greatness. Its the kind of change we can eat, stronger together.
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STORM LAKE | The Storm Lake Police Department is investigating the passing of counterfeit $100 bills at local businesses this week.
A release from the department said that there have been six reports of the fake bills at three businesses in the community.
The release said citizens and business owners are advised to be vigilant for the bills that are of good quality and are 2006 vintage bills. The bills do have some blemishes and are not as clear as an actual bill, the release said.
Anyone with information on the counterfeit bills is asked to contact the department at 712-732-8010 or 911 if witnessing someone in the act of passing a counterfeit bill.
SIOUX CITY | The Sioux City Economic Development Department is now taking nominations for the Pride of Sioux City: Business Beautification Award, a local award that recognizes local businesses for taking pride in the appearance of their property.
A committee of local business professionals and city staff, will select a company from a list of nominations to receive the award.
Criteria will include neatly trimmed lawns, bushes and trees, property free of litter and weeds, use of sound landscaping practices, originality, condition of flowers, appearance of building facade and signs, sense of community, use of public art and overall appearance from the curb.
Companies selected will receive commendation from the mayor at the beginning of a council meeting. In addition, the company will receive a framed award and yard sign, as well as recognition in the Sioux City Journal, city economic development website and city social media.
All Sioux City businesses are eligible. Nominations are open, and forms are available at www.locatesiouxcity.com.
SIOUX CITY | Trent Bailey felt the emotional tug as he headed into Sioux City Monday evening, making his way from Colorado. The weather reflected his nerves, via storm clouds, lightning, swirling winds.
And then Bailey checked into his motel. Room 232.
"If there was any indication I knew I was in the right place, that was it," said Bailey, an artist/photographer determined one day to create an exhibition of the images, past and present, featuring United Flight 232, the crash that not only marks this community, but marks the Bailey family as well.
Trent Bailey, age 30, was 3 years old when United Flight 232 crashed at Sioux Gateway Airport on July 19, 1989. Bailey and his father, Brownell Bailey, had flown to the East Coast one day earlier.
Trent's mother, Frances Lockwood Bailey, was aboard Flight 232 that fateful day, along with Trent's brothers, his twin Spencer Bailey, age 3, and brother Brandon Bailey, 6. Frances died in the crash. Spencer and Brandon suffered injuries, but survived. Spencer was remembered by tens to hundreds of thousands of people as the child carried from the wreckage, cradled and rushed to safety by Lt. Col. Dennis Nielsen of the 185th Fighter Wing, Iowa Air National Guard.
"My dad left me with other family members and came to Sioux City to try to recover our family," Trent said.
As his father headed west on July 20, 1989, he stopped to purchase a copy of the New York Times. Brownell Bailey read an account of the crash and discovered the main photograph, the image by Gary Anderson of the Sioux City Journal, an image that showed little Spencer Bailey being carried from the scene at Sioux Gateway Airport.
"That was the first sign for my father that one of the people in our family might be alive," Trent Bailey said. "That image had an incredible impact on our family."
Trent Bailey's trip this summer is one of discovery, a hope he finds photos and other media accounts that broaden his exploration of Flight 232 and what Sioux City has become in the decades that followed. Bailey envisions creating an exhibition by 2019, the 30th anniversary of the crash, one in which 112 died, while 184 miraculously survived.
"When I think of Flight 232, I look back on that day as both tragedy and a miracle," Bailey said as he looked through negatives and newspaper clippings. "In response, I would like to intuitively navigate my memory of the event by using found photographs, ephemera, newspaper clippings, and video news footage as source material for making prints.
"Additionally, I will be making trips to present-day Sioux City photographing the region's topography and the Iowans I come in contact with."
Ultimately, this artist/photographer hopes to merge past with present, moving himself and viewers to a place entirely new and unanticipated. Trent Bailey has visited Sioux City on three occasions until now. His fourth trip is his first as an adult, a trip his brothers say is logical for the artist.
"I'm not sure exactly what the end story will be and how it will be framed," he said.
He said his work will definitely be heartfelt. The storm front on his arrival Monday night and his checking in to Room 232 drove that home immediately.
SIOUX CITY | Attorneys inched closer to choosing a jury in Timothy Schroeder's murder trial Wednesday, but jury selection will stretch into a third day.
By late Wednesday afternoon, the process was near the halfway point, court officials said. It will resume Thursday morning.
Lawyers resorted to questioning each potential juror individually at times, rather than as a whole group. After jury selection began on Tuesday, it became apparent through questioning and reviewing juror questionnaires that many of the 105 people called had some prior knowledge of the case or knew some of the witnesses who may be called to testify.
Before jurors were called in Wednesday morning, public defender Jennifer Solberg asked that the trial be moved, saying it would be unlikely that Schroeder could receive a fair trial in Woodbury County.
"Mr. Schroeder cannot receive a fair and impartial jury in Woodbury County and the trial should be moved to a different venue," Solberg said in her motion.
District Judge Jeffrey Neary denied the request, and jury selection continued. An additional 25 jurors were called in Wednesday afternoon because several had already been dismissed from service.
Attorneys must pass 44 jurors before they can begin the process of eliminating them until there are 12 jurors and four alternates.
Schroeder, 30, of Sioux City, has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder, going armed with intent and being a felon in possession of a firearm. He is accused of the Jan. 9, 2015, shooting death of Dustin Wilder, 29, of Sloan, Iowa.
According to court documents, Wilder left the Sloan Tap early in the morning with Schroeder and his wife, Amanda Schroeder, who told investigators that they were in Wilder's house in the 600 block of Buckley Street in Sloan when Timothy Schroeder fired two or three shots with a handgun.
Wilder was found unconscious later that morning by a dog sitter and was declared dead at the scene.
If convicted of first-degree murder, Schroeder would face a mandatory sentence of life in prison without parole.
SIOUX CITY | A system of thunderstorms made for a soggy morning, bringing nickel-sized hail and high winds to some areas around Siouxland.
Several Siouxland counties were placed under severe thunderstorm warnings Wednesday morning as the storm system passed from west to east.
According to the National Weather Service in Sioux Falls, the most severe reports from this morning included nickel-sized hail in several areas and a 62 mph wind gust in Sheldon, Iowa, shortly after 8 a.m.
The NWS reports that more storms may move through the area in the late morning and early afternoon, but thunderstorms are expected to move out by the mid-afternoon. Conditions will gradually become sunny, with today's high reaching 87 degrees.
Tonight will be mostly clear, with a low around 61.
Thursday will be sunny, with a high near 82. Thursday night's low will be 58.
Friday will be mostly sunny, with a high near 79 and a 20 percent chance of rain.
Friday night will be partly cloudy, with a low near 62 and a 30 percent chance of rain.
SIOUX CITY | A Lincoln, Nebraska, man is facing theft and burglary charges after police say he stole a ring valued at $15,000 from a Sioux City residence in May, then sold it to a pawn shop.
According to court documents, at 6:30 p.m. on May 15, Austin James Woockman, 20, threw a concrete brick through the front window of a residence in the 4500 block of Hamilton Boulevard, then entered and stole jewelry from the residence. Stolen items included a ring valued at $15,000.
Documents say Woockman then took the ring to a pawn shop in Lincoln, Nebraska, and sold it for $2,000. The female victim was forced to pay that amount to get the ring back.
Police officers arrested Woockman Tuesday. He was charged with first-degree theft, third-degree burglary and criminal mischief. He was held on $5,000 bond.
Woockman was released on bond Tuesday afternoon.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (3rd L) holds talks with Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi (2nd R) at Quba Palace in Cairo, Egypt, Jan 21, 2016. [Photo/Xinhua]
Egypt wants to become among the top five or top 10 Chinese investment destinations in the next few years. Currently, China ranks 23rd in investment
Egypt's Minister of Investment Dalia Khorshid and Minister of Trade and Industry Tarek Kabil held a joint news conference in Beijing on Tuesday.
Khorshid said that China's Belt and Road Initiative provide a good opportunity for both sides to enhance cooperation. Egypt is now improving its investment policies and environment to attract more Chinese companies.
She said that Chinese investment is very welcomed, particular in sectors such as power, transportation, infrastructure and fiberglass and textile industries.
There are 1,269 Chinese companies established in Egypt with total contributions of $548 million, 68 percent of their capital is in the industrial sector, 15 percent is directed to financing services, while 9 percent is in the ICT sector.
Kabil said that China's capital, loans and financing platforms are also needed in Egypt's development. They also would like to learn from Chinas' experience in economic development, such as how to encourage numerous of small- and medium-sized companies to prosper, and building industrial parks.
He said Egypt has already done a lot in the building of infrastructure. Its economy is recovering, and in the past two years the annual growth was 2.5 percent, and is expected to reach about 5 percent next year.
Moreover, Egypt has a population of about 9 million, which is growing by 2.5 percent every year. Egypt is also an well-placed for Chinese companies to enter Europe and Middle East market, which means, entering Egypt will help Chinese companies reach the total size of market of 1.6 billion people, he said.
As tourism is an important part of economic growth, Egypt would also like to attract more Chinese tourist. They expect the number of 2016 will double that of the 2015, which was about 115,000 Chinese tourists.
Ministry of Investment delegation headed by Khorshid is in Beijing for the Joint Egyptian-Chinese Ministerial Committee meetings held from July 11th to 12th. The Egyptian delegation headed by Kabil will discuss with China's 15 specific capacity-building projects, which are the top priority for both the Egyptian and Chinese governments.
SIOUX CITY | Comprehensive plans will be created for 11 smaller Woodbury County towns within three years, after the County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday picked a consulting firm to complete the work.
The comprehensive plans could make the towns better able to receive governmental funds, and will include data related to infrastructure, transportation, housing and demographics in the towns. The county will pay $112,530 to the Simmering-Cory Inc. firm of Clear Lake, Iowa, after a contract was approved during the weekly supervisors meeting.
The Woodbury County Supervisors want the comprehensive plans for the 11 towns as a means to boost economic development, in the aftermath of changing the focus of the county's Rural Economic Development Department in 2015. The plans will be done in Lawton, Pierson, Correctionville, Cushing, Anthon, Bronson, Sloan, Hornick, Oto, Smithland and Danbury, all towns with less than 1,000 people.
Rural Economic Development Department Director David Gleiser likes the plan, and county supervisor Mark Monson said he "wholeheartedly" approves of the endeavor. All the plans will be different, based on community strengths and holes to fill.
The Simmering-Cory employees will hold kick-off meetings with community members, meet with city council members, hold community vision sessions, draft a plan and hold one-year follow-up meetings. The project timeline will begin with Sloan and Hornick, and Cushing and Correctionville are anticipated as the final towns to be completed by 2019.
Leaving aside Sioux City, the next two largest towns in the county, Sergeant Bluff and Moville, already have comprehensive plans. Additionally, Salix is underway with development of a plan.
Since Sergeant Bluff, Moville and Salix officials took the step of creating comprehensive plans, the supervisors also on Tuesday voted to give them $10,230 each for projects already identified in their plans. That step was taken out of fairness, so between the two strands all 14 towns will receive a benefit of $10,230 each.
The combined moves takes the county's total financial participation to $143,200.
CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa | Other GOP elected officials may be avoiding the Republican National Convention next week, but Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst sees an opening night speech as an opportunity to give Iowans a voice on the national stage.
Right now, Iowans are pretty darned frustrated -- just like when I ran for election, said Ernst, whose 2014 campaign caught fire with a Make em Squeal campaign promise to cut federal spending. National security will be her focus when she addresses the Cleveland convention July 18.
Theres a real pushback against the failed policies we have right now, Ernst said Tuesday. The president has failed to put forward a comprehensive strategy to defeat and destroy (ISIS). He talks all of the time about containing and degrading, but we need to defeat and destroy.
She expects presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton will just continue those failed policies and what a great opportunity to push back on that, Ernst said.
For a time it appeared she might be speaking to the convention as businessman Donald Trumps vice presidential running mate. Ernst met with the presumptive nominee over the July 4 weekend, but withdrew from consideration.
Prime time speaking roles at a national convention are opportunities for politicians to elevate their profiles, according to Drake University political scientist Dennis Goldford. However, theyre rarely break-out moments.
Some may recall that it was at the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston when then first-term Illinois Sen. Barack Obama burst on to the national scene. After his theres not a liberal America and a conservative America; theres the United States of America speech, delegates there to nominate John Kerry and John Edwards immediately began to talk about Obama as a future presidential candidate.
Obama is the exception that proves the rule, Goldford said.
Ernst doesnt anticipate an Obama-like reaction.
I think Ive been breaking out plenty, she said, laughing. Instead her speech will be about what Im hearing from Iowans, who I think are pretty representative of the United States, and represent their voice in calling for a stronger national defense and doing something about terrorism.
Bottom line, its always Iowa and expressing the views of Iowa on a national stage, Ernst said. Thats what Im bringing to the table.
It wont be Ernsts first time in the spotlight. Although a freshman, Ernst was tapped to give the GOP response to the presidents State of the Union in 2015.
Some people noticed, but that sort of went thud afterword, Goldford said. It didnt hurt her, but did it attach a rocket booster to her? No. Shes still unseasoned.
Ernst, 46, who retired as a lieutenant colonel after 23 years in the Iowa Army National Guard including a deployment as commander of a transportation company in Iraq and Kuwait, believes she was invited to speak to the convention because of that experience and her service on the Armed Services and Homeland Security committees.
Thats why they come to me for this particular issue, said Ernst, the first female combat veterans to serve in the Senate.
Ernst understands she will be coordinating her remarks with the RNC and the Trump campaign, but the emphasis will be on concerns she hears from Iowans.
One of the big issues I hear about from Iowans is national security and I feel good about taking their voice and projecting it to the nation, said Ernst.
Goldford will be listening to what tone Ernst strikes. Given her military career, she might be more hawkish than Trump who is a little more isolationist.
People will listen to whether her remarks are consistent with Trump or will she try to put some brakes around him so he cant move too far away from traditional Republican internationalism, Goldford said.
Ernst acknowledged Trump may have a more limited foreign policy view than others, but said hes a little more aggressive when it comes to protecting our homeland, so I think hes a good fit.
SIOUX CITY | Sioux City is the third most expensive place in Iowa to insure a motorcycle, while Yankton is the most costly in South Dakota, according to reports by a national research firm.
Value Penguin, a consumer-centric research firm in New York, published reports in June comparing average annual motorcycle insurance rates for locations in Iowa, South Dakota and Nebraska. The firm is in the process of publishing similar reports for states throughout the country.
Of the 31 locations studied in Iowa, Sioux Citys annual average rate of $355 ranks third highest behind Iowa City ($380) and Dubuque ($356), and falls in at 9.8 percent above the state average of $323. Rounding out the top five in the state are Des Moines ($354) and Cedar Rapids ($353).
Spencer and Carroll top the list of least expensive motorcycle insurance sites, with both cities averaging an annual rate of $276, or 14.5 percent below the state average. Coming in third is Storm Lake, at $278, followed by Oskaloosa ($282) and Boone ($289).
In South Dakota, Yanktons $430 average annual rate is the highest and 11.2 percent above South Dakotas state average of $387. Vermillion is ninth-highest with $391. The lowest average annual rate in the state is $372.
Why are some cities higher? Mike Thrasher, an analyst with Value Penguin, said that's the most popular question he gets.
"Everyone asks and wants to know," Thrasher said. "Really, the biggest thing that companies take into consideration is the claims history for an area. ... They have an amazing wealth and history of numbers of accidents, what caused the accidents and what that costs."
To create the report, researchers analyzed quotes for a Harley-Davidson Street Glide (1690cc) with no anti-theft device. The "sample rider" was a 45-year-old male who was married, had a clean driving record and had completed a motorcycle training course.
The policies were gathered from four major carriers -- Progressive, Nationwide, GEICO and Dairyland -- and included bodily injury protection at $100,000 per person and $300,000 per accident, as well as $50,000 in property damage coverage. Deductibles for both comprehensive and collision coverage were $500. In addition, South Dakota's report added Markel as a fifth insurance provider.
According to Department of Transportation data, Sioux City does have a higher overall motor vehicle crash rate than other large Iowa cities with a similar number of daily miles traveled on their roads.
Jim Goodin, owner of the Goodin Insurance Agency in Sioux City, Sergeant Bluff and Sloan, said he often sees 20 to 30 percent lower rates in Sergeant Bluff and Sloan than in Sioux City.
"They can track how many vehicles in a certain zip code have had automobile accidents, so they actually rate it accordingly," he said. "There's even certain zip codes in Sioux City that are higher than others in Sioux City. Morningside is less than the north side."
Last year, the Iowa Department of Transportation reported 27 motorcycle crashes in Sioux City, seventh-highest in the state.
Heidi Reinking, who has been riding motorcycles since 2003 and teaches the basic motorcycle safety course at Western Iowa Tech Community College, said while Woodbury County has had historically high insurance rates, she hasn't heard much talk about motorcycle insurance rates being too unreasonable.
To save money, Reinking recommended completing motorcycle safety courses like the course at WITCC, which provides riders with a Motorcycle Safety Foundation safety card they can show to their insurers.
"Always shopping around, taking as many safety courses as you can, and showing insurance agents you're dedicated to safety helps," she said.
Jeanne Devine, an agent with Yankton-based Midwest Insurance Agency, said in addition to safety courses, joining motorcycle associations can also net discounts for riders.
Theres some motorcycle groups out there that sometimes companies will offer discounts, she said.
Goodin added that safety features on the motorcycle, such as anti-lock brakes, can also help riders net some discounts.
A Value Penguin report in 2015 also found that Sioux City was the third-highest in the state for average annual car insurance premiums.
SIOUX CITY | Marvis Hendrickson laughs when asked to recall a question that may have stumped her while conducting tours and informational programs at the cabin of Theophile Bruguier in Riverside Park, on Sioux City's western edge.
The log cabin was built in 1849, five years before Sioux City was incorporated, making it Sioux City's oldest structure on record. It was discovered in 1933 by workmen reclaiming wood from old homes. After learning it belonged to Bruguier, who came to Siouxland to settle as early as 1847, officials had the structure moved to its present location in 1934.
Hendrickson and people like Jackie Warnstadt, both members of the Girls of '68, work to preserve the history of this cabin while telling the story of Bruguier, a French fur trader from Canada who befriended Chief War Eagle and eventually married two of War Eagle's daughters.
The question Hendrickson gets: "Do you live here?"
While the answer is a "No," one gets the idea Hendrickson likely could envision herself in this cabin long, long ago, about the time settlers moved west and made this trapping and emerging industrial center their home base.
"Can't you just see Bruguier and War Eagle sitting together right here?" Hendrickson asked on a recent June morning. "This is where our history took place."
Bruguier's cabin contains photos of himself, as well as others, including Dr. John Cook, who is credited with surveying the city for the U.S. government before platting the town. Cook also gave Sioux City its name 152 years ago.
Bruguier was the first white settler on this land. The Canadian trained as a lawyer, but left the trade after the death of his bride-to-be. Rather than practice law, he immersed himself in the trapping industry for the American Fur Company.
He eventually bought furs from the Sioux Indians and sold them to small fur companies. While in this line of work, Bruguier became friends with Chief War Eagle, of the Yankton Sioux.
According to Warnstadt and Hendrickson, War Eagle was never a chief. He did come with 40 followers to settle this area, but he was never formally recognized as a chief by the tribe.
"His name was Little Eagle," Hendrickson said.
The Girls of '68 help maintain and preserve the stories and history surrounding this cabin and the lives of War Eagle and Bruguier. The group opens the cabin to the public from 2-4 p.m. on the second Sunday of each month, from May through October. This site is also a popular draw for some 1,500 Sioux City fourth-graders each year.
"They come here as part of their Iowa history project," said Warnstadt, a retired teacher who, in 2006, earned the Iowa Teacher of the Year award. She was Sioux City Teacher of the Year in 2005.
The Girls of '68 reportedly evolved from a birthday club formed in the 1890s. That, or the group arose as its members were all wed to men who formed the Boys of '68 group at that time. The name may have had something to do with a 50-year Sioux City residential requirement asked of members long ago. Members are now asked to be a Sioux City resident for at least five years before joining.
"We had a membership of more than 1,000 women at one time," Hendrickson said, noting the group now consists of 51 members.
The Girls of '68 worked more than a decade ago to renovate this historic cabin, which is modeled after a French style of tongue-and-groove architecture. The $30,000 effort helped protect the building from the elements, a necessity when considering the structure has met and withstood nearly 170 winters.
Bruguier's home isn't the only Sioux City attraction to which he is attached. He was initially buried at St. Joseph Cemetery in Salix, Iowa, after his death in 1896. But, in 1926, the Junior Pioneers deemed that he should be buried with his Indian wives, Flaming Cloud and Dawn, and their children.
After reaching an agreement with family members, the city and officials within the Sioux City Catholic Diocese, had his body disinterred, as well as that of his third wife, Victoria Turnott, and brought to the bluff overlooking the Missouri River on Sioux City's west side.
It is there, at War Eagle Bluff, that Bruguier found a final resting place, along with his first two wives and two infants.
"Bruguier had his children speak French to him, native language to their mother and English to their doctor," Warnstadt said.
Having a business website is no longer optional. In fact, just having a site isnt enough. You need a site that really works for your customers. And to do that, you need to look at your website from their point of view.
Smartlook is a tool that aims to help businesses achieve that viewpoint. Read about how the company got started and what it offers to businesses in this weeks Small Business Spotlight.
What the Business Does
Provides a website testing service.
CEO Petr Janosik told Small Business Trends, Smartlook is the easiest way to record the screen of your visitors. Well record every visitor movement on your website. Youll get to watch everything and become inspired with ingenious ways on how to improve your website. There are no complicated graphs or numbers. You easily see what happens on your website.
Business Niche
Providing a simple platform with real value.
Janosik says, Our website recorder is absolutely for free with an unlimited number of recording and an unlimited number of websites.
How the Business Got Started
As a spinoff from another company.
Janosik and his team initially launched a live chat service for websites called Smartsupp. And they initially started creating a screen sharing service to integrate into that. But they soon found that it could stand on its own.
Janosik explains, When we thought about it and put all our experience together it occurred to me we could create new service for screen recording only. Several customers wrote to us with the same request as they wanted to use video recording without the live chat support. So we created Smartlook and launched it on February 18, 2016. We used all our previous experience and thanks to that Smartlook grows 50 times faster than Smartsupp did. During first three months we had 18 000 users.
Biggest Win
Gaining customers without using pushy sales tactics.
Janosik says, All job positions, development, marketing and customer care are in-house. That is one of the key elements to our success. We created successful project without any salesmen. I do not like projects that need an army of salesmen to push their product or service. All customers we have we got without any business meetings or phone calls. We focus on marketing and having a quality product.
Biggest Risk
Offering Smartlook for free.
Janosik says, Already we spent tens of thousands of Euro for development and marketing and we plan to spend even more.
How Theyd Spend an Extra $100,000
Speeding things up.
Janosik explains, I would invest it to development for faster updates and marketing, because time is of the essence and it is the most important thing in our project.
What the Business is Known For
Its own alcohol.
Janosik says, Company mascot is our branded Slivovitz (homemade alcohol). We drink a shot of it each time we reach 1,000 new users. In the beginning it was once a couple weeks, lately it is almost daily.
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Find out more about the Small Biz Spotlight program
SEVERN, Md. (July 13, 2016)Police in Anne Arundel county are investigating a double homicide in which one of the men killed is a resident of Huntingtown in Calvert Co. Timothy John Kerr, age 40, resided in the 3000 block of Hollands Cliffs Road, Huntingtown.
The second victim has been identified as Duwayne Thomas Mason, age 42, from the 4000 block of Blue Wing Court, Columbia.
The incident unfolded on Saturday, July 9, at approximately 11:58 p.m. Anne Arundel Co. Western District Patrol Officers responded to the 7600 block of Sandy Farm Road in Severn for a possible residential burglary. Upon arrival officers located a male, later identified as Mason, inside of the residence suffering from apparent gunshot wounds. The male had forced his way into the residence through a window. The male was transported to the Baltimore Washington Medical Center where he was later pronounced deceased.
Officers checked the area and located an occupied white pick-up truck located a short distance from the residence. Inside the truck was a deceased male, later identified as Kerr, suffering from apparent gunshot wounds.
The preliminary investigation has revealed both subjects were shot at another residence located in the 7600 block of Sandy Farm Road during a confrontation with a resident at that location. Both males fled this location after being shot. The male who forced his way into the residence that prompted the initial call apparently entered the home seeking assistance for his gunshot wound. The male found in the pick-up truck apparently entered the vehicle after being shot and attempted to drive out of the area before succumbing to his injuries.
Anne Arundel County Homicide Detectives and Western District Detectives responded to the scene and began their investigation. Several witnesses were located and interviewed in regards to the shooting.
On Monday, July 11, the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner performed autopsies on the deceased males. They ruled the cause of death as gunshot wounds with the manner being homicide for both males.
During the execution of a search warrant where the shooting occurred in the 7600 block of Sandy Farm Road, detectives located the following controlled dangerous substances: Suspected crack cocaine, powder cocaine, marijuana, amphetamine dextroamphetamine pills, alprazolam pills, suboxone film strips, and heroin. Also recovered during the search was a digital scale and $6,140.00 in U.S. currency. Detectives also recovered a loaded 12 gauge Mossberg shotgun.
John Matthew Garrison, a fifty-two year old male who resided at the residence located in the 7600 block of Sandy Farm Road was charged with the following: Possession of Cocaine, Possession of Crack Cocaine, Possession of Amphetamine Dextroamphetamine, Possession with Intent to Distribute Cocaine, Possession with Intent to Distribute Crack Cocaine, Possession with Intent to Distribute Amphetamine Dextroamphetamine, and Possession of a Firearm in relation to a Drug Trafficking Crime. John Garrison was being held at the Anne Arundel County Detention Center on a $350,000.00 bond.
Police officials say the Anne Arundel County Homicide Unit is sorting through all of the evidence in regards to this investigation. They are piecing together the chain of events and circumstances that led to the shooting deaths of Duwayne Mason and Timothy Kerr. The Anne Arundel County Police Department continues to work in conjunction with the Anne Arundel County States Attorney's Office to determine if any other criminal charges apply to this death investigation.
This is a very fluid and active investigation and the Anne Arundel County Police are urging anyone with information to come forward by calling the Anne Arundel County Police Homicide Unit at 410-222-4731. If people with information wish to remain anonymous they can also contact the Anne Arundel County Police Tip Line 410-222-4700 or Metro Crime Stoppers.
UPPER MARLBORO, Md. (July 13, 2016)The Prince George's Co. Police Dept. Homicide Unit is investigating an overnight fatal shooting in Upper Marlboro. The victim is 22-year-old Andre Stocks of Hunterton Street in Upper Marlboro. Preliminarily, detectives do not believe this was a random crime. A reward of up to $25,000 is being offered for information leading to an arrest and indictment in this case.
On July 13th, at about 12:00 am, patrol officers were called to the 12100 block of Hunterton Street for a shooting. When they arrived, officers found the victim outside suffering from gunshot wounds. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
Detectives are working to identify a motive and the suspect(s).
Anyone with information is asked to call the Homicide Unit at 301-772-4925. Callers wishing to remain anonymous may call Crime Solvers at 1-866-411-TIPS (8477), text "PGPD plus your message" to CRIMES (274637) on your cell phone or go to www.pgcrimesolvers.com and submit a tip online.
Sea Scouts present Award of Excellence plaque to CMM. Pictured l to r is Ed Gies, Charter Representative; Sherrod Sturrock, Acting CMM Director; Brenda Renninger, Ship's Boatswain; and Doug Yeckley, Head Skipper.
Left, John Nance, paleontology summer interns Peyton Mills, Amber Hobbs, and Cecily Hein clean and sort shells into their new specimen trays and cabinets, funded by a grant from the RSMIS Foundation.
Join the Calvert Marine Museum in congratulating Sea Scout Ship 548 on receiving the Regional Commodore's Award of Excellence for the Northeast Region.The Commodore's Award of Excellence is given to Sea Scout Ships that show leadership and the best examples of Sea Scouting in New England, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland. The Sea Scout Ship Sea EagleShip 548 is registered in the "Gold" level for increased membership, retention of membership, rank advancement, leadership development, and community service projects.Head Youth Officer, Skipper Douglas Yeckley, has lead the local Sea Scout since starting this National Capital Area Council (NCAC) chapter in 1998. The NCAC is part of the Chesapeake Flotilla Ship and currently meets on Tuesday evenings at the Calvert Marine Museum. The adults that assist the Ship have completed local, regional, and national training.Sea Scouting is a co-educational program for young adults from ages 1421. They have sailed the high seas in search of adventure, while providing assistance to fellow boaters in need since 1912. Sea Scouting builds character and members learn to sail, row, and keep a boat in shape. Scouts can also learn to dive, be active in social events, tours, regattas, excursions, and seamanship contests, along with doing community service activities.If you are interested in becoming a Sea Scout or to receive more information, contact the NCAC Squadron Commodore, Douglas Yeckley at douglas.yeckley@comcast.net.The Calvert Marine Museum has received a grant for $13,500 from the PNC Foundation to fund opportunities for pre-school children in the Southern Maryland region. PNC Grow Up Great initiative is designed to help prepare childrenparticularly underserved childrenfrom birth to age five for success in school and life.Through Grow Up Great, PNC emphasizes the importance of the first five years of life, which research has shown is critical to long-term achievement. The program helps families, educators, and community partners provide innovative opportunities that enhance learning and development in a child's early years.The PNC funding will enable the museum to bring in special guests for the monthly pre-school programs: Sea Squirts for children 18-months to 3 years, and Little Minnows for children 3 to 5 years, and their caregivers. Special topics will include music enrichment, art enrichment, children's authors, and hands on science.In addition to museum-based programming, the grant will subsidize free outreach programs for low-income children at pre-approved sites, such as Headstart. These are 30-minute programs that involve hands-on, active learning. Children will also receive a free pass to the museum to encourage parents to bring them to visit.The museum also presents three special event days designed with young children in mind: Dino Day, Pirate Day, and Otter Mania. The grant provides funding to support these events. There is also funding for an interactive wall map of the Chesapeake Bay Watershed and equipment to be used in educational programming.The PNC Foundation, which receives its principal funding from The PNC Financial Services Group, Inc., actively supports organizations that provide services for the benefit of communities in which it has a significant presence. Through Grow Up Great, its signature cause that began in 2004, PNC has created a $350 million, multi-year initiative to help prepare children from birth to age 5 for success in school and life.The Calvert Marine Museum (CMM) received a world-wide collection of thousands of sea shells in May 2014 donated by Marilyn Silverthorn. This collection was her father-in-law's, Lieutenant General Merwin H. Silverthorn USMC, acquired during his global oceanic travels.Working closely with Marie Silverthorn (Lieutenant General Merwin H. Silverthorn's granddaughter), the Calvert Marine Museum applied and was awarded a grant from the RSMIS Foundation of Houston, Texas. The grant was used to purchase Viking storage cabinets and archival specimen trays (both of which are shown in the attached photo) to properly preserve the Silverthorn collection in perpetuity.Under the direction of John Nance, CMM Department of Paleontology Collections Manager, curation of the Merwin H. Silverthorn seashell collection has begun. CMM staff and Paleontology summer interns have started to organize this large collection to maximize its scientific value and availability for researchers, and for possible use in future exhibits.
LEONARDTOWN, Md.
Disclaimer: In the U.S.A., all persons accused of a crime by the State are presumed to be innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. See: http://so.md/presumed-innocence. Additionally, all of the information provided above is solely from the perspective of the respective law enforcement agency and does not provide any direct input from the accused or persons otherwise mentioned. You can find additional information about the case by searching the Maryland Judiciary Case Search Database using the accused's name and date of birth. The database is online at http://so.md/mdcasesearch . Persons named who have been found innocent or not guilty of all charges in the respective case, and/or have had the case ordered expunged by the court can have their name, age, and city redacted by following the process defined at http://so.md/expungeme.
(July 13, 2016)The Leonardtown Barrack of the Maryland State Police (MSP) today released the following incident and arrest reports.THEFT: On Friday, June 24, 2016 at 6:14 am, TFC Ruth responded to the Wal-Mart for a reported theft. TFC Ruth contacted the manager, who advised that, was concealing miscellaneous items from the electronics department into a plastic Wal-Mart bag. Mr. Peterson was placed under arrest for Theft Less Than $1000 and transported to the St. Mary's County Detention Center. He was held pending a bond review with the District Court Commissioner.ASSAULT, BURGLARY, TRESPASSING, DESTRUCTION OF PROPERTY: On Sunday, July 3, 2016 at 11:25 am, Tpr. Geyer responded to the 29000 block of Three Notch Road in Mechanicsville for a reported assault. Investigation revealed that Orlanda Mohammed Hawkins, 39, of Hughesville, had punched open two apartment doors and entered the apartments. He then began punching a female victim and attempting to strangle her. The victim pushed Mr. Hawkins, causing him to fall down the stairs. Mr. Hawkins was placed under arrest and transported to the St. Mary's County Detention Center. He was charged accordingly and held pending a bond review with the District Court Commissioner. (16-MSP-027998)THEFT: On Tuesday, July 12, 2016 at 3:25 pm, Tpr. Rutkowski responded to the Wal-Mart for a reported theft. Tpr. Rutkowski made contact with the loss prevention officer, who advised that two juvenile females, 13 and 16 years old, had attempted to steal several items. Both juveniles were placed under arrest and transported to the Maryland State Police Leonardtown Barrack. They were charged with Theft Less Than $100 and released to a parent. (16-MSP-027998)
Love really does win. At least it has on the corner of US1 and Oakland Park Blvd. where for years hate filled groups have gathered to protest and rally.
But since the Orlando massacre local activist and lawyer Tom Runyan has turned the corner of the hate into a beacon of love, hosting weekly rallies on Monday evenings.
We wanted to take that corner back and spread a message of love and cooperation. This week had much more importance in light of everything going on in Minneapolis, Baton Rouge and Dallas, Runyan said. Co-founder of the ongoing rally Derek Maingot added, we wanted to bring some happiness and color to that corner, with flags and smiles, and honking horns.
So far its worked. About 250 people gathered at the first Love Always Wins rally this week about 50 showed up.
Related: Twitter Users Respond to Orlando Attack Using Love
This isnt Runyans first brush with activism. He was actively involved with Equality Florida for many years, serving on the organizations board. Currently hes the chair of the Gay and Lesbian Lawyers Networking Group (GLLN) in Broward.
Wed really like everybody to come out and support us, he said. The thing were trying to do is get anybody who feels they are marginalized in society whether it be race or sexual orientation to come out.
Runyan would even like the police to participate.
The response has been great, Maingot added. The crowd has been mixed with a good representation of different communities.
A third person, Michael Tank, also helped launched the weekly rallies. Maingot said the three of them wanted to have something physical, something beyond social media.
Runyan noted that Fast Printz is providing signs for free to attendees.
Well continue until the community doesnt support it any longer, Runyan said.
Search Facebook for Love Always Wins to join their group or visit http://bit.ly/29B7iZS.
The 15th annual A Celebration of Friends returns to Orlando this weekend with former U.S. Congressman Barney Frank scheduled to make a special guest appearance.
We are very honored to have him, said A Celebration of Friends Founder and President Tom Pence. I look at all the rights we have now as gay men and I must say we owe a lot to Barney Frank.
Frank served 23 years in Congress, representing Massachusetts. He was an unyielding advocate for gay rights and is known on Capitol Hill for his quick wit and vast knowledge of parliamentary procedure.
He doesnt tolerate fools lightly, warned Pence.
Related: Barney Frank Talks Life After Congress
Now 76, Frank is slated to participate in a question and answer session on Saturday night at the DoubleTree by Hilton SeaWorld, 10100 International Drive. This is the second year in a row ACOF weekend has featured a high profile public figure. Screen acting legend Ed Asner headlined last years celebration.
Pence said he expects anywhere between 300 to 600 men to attend this year with several activities planned such as a speedo swim suit contest, a performance by the Orlando Gay Mens Chorus and a Village People themed costume contest to kick off the celebration on Thursday evening.
According to its website, A Celebration of Friends serves to provide warm, comfortable, safe and engaging gatherings recognizing and promoting self-worth, dignity, kindness and friendships of and within our senior population.
To register for the celebration or for more information, visit CelebrationOfFriends.org
Transgender procedures are now covered under the City of West Palm Beachs employee health plan.
Our city has always taken equality very seriously and has for a long time moved forward with measures that will equal give consideration to the LGBT community. Even mayors that were here 15 years ago were doing forward thinking things, said West Palm Beach Mayor Jeri Muoio. She added that the city wants to attract the best employees and for the LGBT community to feel like West Palm Beach is a great place to work.
Effective July 1, city employees, who have been diagnosed as having gender dysphoria, are eligible to have certain procedures covered under the citys health plan, provided by Cigna. Included for both male-to-female and female-to-male employees is pre- and post-surgical hormone therapy, orchiectomy, mastectomy, abdominal hysterectomy, vaginoplasty and vaginectomy.
Related: No New Health Benefits For Trans Folks in Wilton Manors
Cosmetic procedures, including breast implants, pectoral implants, calf implants, electrolysis, collagen injections, hair implantation and liposuction are not covered. To be eligible, an employee must have worked for the city for at least a year. Employees must also contribute something for the transgender coverage. The cost to the city, said Muoio, wont fully be known until next year.
In June, Miami Beach became the first city in Florida to cover transgender benefits as part of its health plan. In April, citing cost, the majority of Wilton Manors commissioners declined to add coverage for transgender individuals to their citys health plan. Commissioner Julie Carson proposed adding the benefits and said it was disgraceful the city did not provide benefits. The T is not left behind, said Commissioner Justin Flippen.
In a press release, The Palm Beach County Human Rights Campaign [PBCHRC] said it had been working with Muoio for over a year on adding transgender care.
Related: Letter to the Editor: Transgender Healthcare Discrimination Must End
The City of West Palm Beach is the first public employer in Palm Beach County to offer transition related care benefits for its employees. Once again, Mayor Jeri Muoio has taken the lead on the provision of LGBT healthcare benefits which are often ignored or rejected by employers throughout the United States. When we learned that the city was considering becoming self-insured for health care benefits, the time appeared right to address implementing trans care, wrote Rand Hoch, PBCHRC president and founder of PBCHRC. Rather than waiting for the city's self-insurance program to go into effect, Mayor Muoio persuaded Cigna to include trans care benefits.
Muoio has a history of supporting LGBT individuals, including placing a ban on city employee travel to North Carolina, in response to that states controversial bathroom law, and raising the Pride flag at half-staff to honor the individuals murdered at Pulse nightclub in Orlando last month.
To see the full list of transgender procedures offered by West Palm Beach, visit
http://files.ctctcdn.com/0d783e78001/1abe4a8c-5470-41d7-afd1-b35da6c4ce77.pdf
Orion Nebula ESO
An international team has made use of the power of the HAWK-I infrared instrument on ESOs Very Large Telescope (VLT) to produce the deepest and most comprehensive view of the Orion Nebula to date.
Not only has this led to an image of spectacular beauty, but it has revealed a great abundance of faint brown dwarfs and isolated planetary-mass objects. The very presence of these low-mass bodies provides an exciting insight into the history of star formation within the nebula itself.
The famous Orion Nebula spans about 24 light-years within the constellation of Orion (constellation), and is visible from Earth with the naked eye, as a fuzzy patch in Orions sword. Some nebulae, like Orion, are strongly illuminated by ultraviolet radiation from the many hot stars born within them, such that the gas is ionised and glows brightly.
The relative proximity of the Orion Nebula [2] makes it an ideal testbed to better understand the process and history of star formation, and to determine how many stars of different masses form.
Amelia Bayo (Universidad de Valparaiso, Valparaiso, Chile; Max-Planck Institut fur Astronomie, Konigstuhl, Germany), a co-author of the new paper and member of the research team, explains why this is important: Understanding how many low-mass objects are found in the Orion Nebula is very important to constrain current theories of star formation. We now realise that the way these very low-mass objects form depends on their environment.
This new image has caused excitement because it reveals a unexpected wealth of very-low-mass objects, which in turn suggests that the Orion Nebula may be forming proportionally far more low-mass objects than closer and less active star formation regions.
Astronomers count up how many objects of different masses form in regions like the Orion Nebula to try to understand the star-formation process [3]. Before this research the greatest number of objects were found with masses of about one quarter that of our Sun. The discovery of a plethora of new objects with masses far lower than this in the Orion Nebula has now created a second maximum at a much lower mass in the distribution of star counts.
These observations also hint tantalisingly that the number of planet-sized objects might be far greater than previously thought. Whilst the technology to readily observe these objects does not exist yet, ESOs future European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT), scheduled to begin operations in 2024, is designed to pursue this as one of its goals.
Lead scientist Holger Drass (Astronomisches Institut, Ruhr-Universitat Bochum, Bochum, Germany; Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile, Santiago, Chile) enthuses: Our result feels to me like a glimpse into a new era of planet and star formation science. The huge number of free-floating planets at our current observational limit is giving me hope that we will discover a wealth of smaller Earth-sized planets with the E-ELT.
Notes
[1] Nebulae such as the famous one in Orion are also known as H II regions to indicate that they contain ionised hydrogen. These immense clouds of interstellar gas are sites of star formation throughout the Universe.
[2] The Orion Nebula is estimated to lie about 1350 light-years from Earth.
[3] This information is used to create something called the Initial Mass Function (IMF) a way of describing how many stars of different masses make up a stellar population at its birth. This provides an insight into the stellar populations origins. In other words, determining an accurate IMF, and having a solid theory to explain the origin of the IMF is of fundamental importance in the study of star formation.
More information
This research was presented in a paper entitled The bimodal initial mass function in the Orion Nebula Cloud, by H. Drass et al., published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
The team is composed of H. Drass (Astronomisches Institut, Ruhr-Universitat Bochum, Bochum, Germany; Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile, Santiago, Chile), M. Haas (Astronomisches Institut, Ruhr-Universitat Bochum, Bochum, Germany), R. Chini (Astronomisches Institut, Ruhr-Universitat Bochum, Bochum, Germany; Universidad Catolica del Norte, Antofagasta, Chile), A. Bayo (Universidad de Valparaiso, Valparaiso, Chile; Max-Planck Institut fur Astronomie, Konigstuhl, Germany) , M. Hackstein (Astronomisches Institut, Ruhr-Universitat Bochum, Bochum, Germany), V. Hoffmeister (Astronomisches Institut, Ruhr-Universitat Bochum, Bochum, Germany), N. Godoy (Universidad de Valparaiso, Valparaiso, Chile) and N. Vogt (Universidad de Valparaiso, Valparaiso, Chile).
ESO is the foremost intergovernmental astronomy organisation in Europe and the worlds most productive ground-based astronomical observatory by far. It is supported by 16 countries: Austria, Belgium, Brazil, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, along with the host state of Chile. ESO carries out an ambitious programme focused on the design, construction and operation of powerful ground-based observing facilities enabling astronomers to make important scientific discoveries. ESO also plays a leading role in promoting and organising cooperation in astronomical research. ESO operates three unique world-class observing sites in Chile: La Silla, Paranal and Chajnantor. At Paranal, ESO operates the Very Large Telescope, the worlds most advanced visible-light astronomical observatory and two survey telescopes. VISTA works in the infrared and is the worlds largest survey telescope and the VLT Survey Telescope is the largest telescope designed to exclusively survey the skies in visible light. ESO is a major partner in ALMA, the largest astronomical project in existence. And on Cerro Armazones, close to Paranal, ESO is building the 39-metre European Extremely Large Telescope, the E-ELT, which will become the worlds biggest eye on the sky.
Links
Research paper http://mnras.oxfordjournals.org/content/461/2/1734.full.pdf
BERLIN (Sputnik)The German authorities decided to evacuate 100 German citizens, as well as other nationals from South Sudan, the German Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said Wednesday.
"The Security Council took a decision to evacuate German, European and other citizens from South Sudan," Sawsan Chebli said, adding that there are around 100 German citizens.
She did not specify the citizenship of other people, citing security requirements.
By throwing his support behind Clinton, Sanders had also seriously damaged real hopes for a lasting realignment of US politics, Freeman pointed out.
"There was a real opportunity to break the duopoly of the two big establishment political parties of entrenched privilege in this election. The Democrats are fundamentally a party of capitalism and imperialism just as much as the Republicans," he said.
Sanders decision would lastingly divide his movement, Freeman noted.
"Those who supported Sanders are split now. Some of them will follow him into the Clinton camp. But others have made clear they will not vote for Clinton under any circumstances. They will be looking for other alternatives. Some of those people will not stay in the Democratic Party," he said.
University Pittsburgh Professor of International Affairs Michael Brenner said Sanders had negotiated the best deal he could get with Clinton, who is set to be nominated as the Democratic Partys presidential candidate later this month.
The deal was "a trade-off [in return for] getting the party's commitment to support portions of his program in return for an endorsement," Brenner explained.
Sanders support could prove to be of considerable help to Clinton, Brenner suggested.
However, "The uncertain factor is how many Sanders' supporters will stay home. But given the antipathy felt by most mainstream Democratic and independent progressive voters for [Republican presumptive candidate Donald] Trump, "the calculation is relatively few," he said.
If Clinton was elected, she would rapidly abandon all her Progressive pledges and rhetoric, Brenner concluded.
May said Brexit meant Brexit and there would be no attempts to rejoin the European Union by the back door. But the credibility gap remains as May was a Remainer in the June 23 referendum on UK membership of the European Union.
Oulds expressed hope that May would make the necessary changes and lead the United Kingdom out of the European Union, as even though she might not be the perfect candidate, every step would be scrutinized by think tanks such as the Bruges Group.
"We will watch very closely, and of course every stumbling will be punished," Oulds said.
At the same time, Galloway doubts Mays ability to lead as he does not believe her promises to make sure that London leaves the European Union.
"She doesnt believe it. And I have no doubt that the Conservatives and the Labour majority in parliament are seeking to frustrate the decision of the referendum by a very British coup of kicking it as deep into the long grass as possible, and leaving the European Union with the least aspect of leaving, a bit like a divorce, in which you continue to live in the same house," Galloway said.
What Will Change After May Premiership?
In the context of the June 23 Brexit referendum, it is hard to find any other issue to occupy May as the new UK prime minister. But again, given the history of this politician, her approach is questioned. Galloway notes that what Britain needs is someone "with the imagination to grasp the new opportunities."
On the foreign policy flank, skills of the UK home-secretary-turned-prime-minister are yet again doubted. Oulds hopes that the major achievement of the Leave vote will be represented and the United Kingdom will become a beacon of hope for all other European countries who seek independence from Brussels.
"Hopefully the British interest will be the new foreign policy which will be looking to limit the extending power of the European Union," he said, underlining that while within the European Union, a country cannot diverge its foreign policy course from that of Brussels.
At the same time, Galloway is very much skeptical of the UK foreign policy course given that May "doesn't know anything about foreign policy."
"I think that for the moment she will continue to pursue pro-American, neo-Con, neo-Liberal approach of David Cameron," he concluded.
The Only Candidate
stbakken also pointed out that women are also valuable as reserve labor; part-time jobs among the fair sex were particularly widespread.
"I think it is quite important that both politicians and the general public get it crystal clear that gender equality is important for the Norwegian economy, not to mention that it is a fundamental right," stbakken said.
The figures in the report are believed to be based on a rather conservative estimate, since women in recent years have been more likely to pursue higher education than their male counterparts, which was not taken in to account in the study.
Nevertheless, there is still room for improvement, the study's authors claim, as some sectors of the economy, such as business and industry, remain dominated by men. Four out of five of Norway's top managers at major companies are male, NRK reported. Furthermore, 14 of Norway's 100 largest companies do not have a single woman among their leadership. Children and Equality Minister Solveig Horne was not impressed with the numbers.
"It is important that we recruit from the entire population, which is 50 percent female. There are many capable women out there who should have senior management positions. It is our duty to give them the opportunity," Horne told NRK.
The laws that criminalize 'sex acquisition' have to go, preferably before election next year, youth members of the Conservatives, the Progress Party and the Liberals stated in an opinion piece advocating brothels earlier this week. Now, the youth have garnered support from their respective parties' senior members and members of parliament.
"The Norwegian law puts sex workers in danger. It is time that the liberal parties use the parliament majority they enjoy to abolish laws criminalizing the buying of sex," Bjrn Kristian Svendsrud, leader of the Progress Party Youth, told the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten. "The current debate is characterized by ethics and morality. It's okay to dislike prostitution I don't like it either, as a matter of fact but we must look at the real political consequences of the current law," Svendsrud said.
Tina Bru, MP and leader of the Women Conservatives, voiced her support for the cause, calling for the abolition of the ban on buying sex.
Polish search groups have failed to discover the world-famous Amber Room in a Nazi bunker in the village of Mamerki in northeastern Poland, RIA Novosti reported, citing the Polish news network TVN 24
Like the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, which is located about 60 miles to the north, the village had been part of the German region of Prussia before the war.
Earlier, it was reported that a ground-penetrating radar had allegedly detected an unknown underground room, where the local museum staff suggested the Amber Room could be entombed.
The spotlight on London as 'the' place to live and work is slowly fading. Partly thanks to the majority of people living elsewhere in the UK who voted to leave the European Union, leaving Londoners incensed and even more isolated from the rest of the country and partly because it's just so expensive.
The everyday expense of London is making it unattractive so it's not really surprising that a survey by job site, Glassdoor, pitches Cambridge at number one out of 20 cities and towns for people to work and live in. In fact London doesn't even make the list at all.
Facebook's response came too late; the woman committed suicide due to the social stigma she experienced from the faked naked picture of her.
Salem police are holding Facebook responsible for the woman's death. Senior officials are now considering charging Facebook with abetment to suicide for their failure to remove the image.
If Facebook is found guilty, this will mark the first time the site will have been found complicit in prompting someone to take her own life. The site also faces a legal battle in Israel, where it has been accused of allowing members of Hamas to network and coordinate the murder of several Americans.
India has seen several cases of social media related deaths since the networks became popular. India already holds the dubious distinction having highest number of selfie-related deaths.
New Delhi (Sputnik)Nepal's Prime Minister Khadga Prasad Sharma Oli (K P Oli) of the Unified Marxist-Leninist Communist Party (CPN-UML) is facing a serious constitutional crisis as the ruling party's main ally, the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), has decided to part ways with the nine-month old government. The Maoists cited the Prime Minister's failure to implement past agreements.
The Chairman of the CPN (M), Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda has announced its withdrawal of support from the CPN-UML-led coalition government and blamed Prime Minister Oli for backtracking on the implementation of agreements between the two parties.
Our party saw the need for a national consensus to implement the new statue, complete the remaining tasks of the peace process along with transitional justice, resolve the issues raised by Madhesis, Janajatis and Tharus, and provide relief to the people and carry out the reconstruction of the country in the wake of the last years devastating earthquake, Prachanda said in his letter to the Prime Minister.
TOKYO (Sputnik) Over 300 mm [12 inches] of rain fell on Tsushima island in Nagasaki Prefecture in the last 48 hours. According to weather forecasters, rain this heavy falls on the island less than once in 50 years.
In Kumamoto Prefecture, where two deadly earthquakes took place in April, evacuation of 55,000 people is recommended due to danger of mudslides.
On southwestern Japanese island of Honshu in Yamaguchi Prefecture, the water level in rivers reached a critical point, thus local authorities recommended the evacuation of 10,500 people.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen went aboard the frigate ahead of its departure to urge the crew to "defend Taiwans territory," the South China Morning Post reported.
The permanent arbitration court in the Hague ruled Tuesday on a case brought by the Philippines, saying China had no legal right to claim large swathes of area in the South China Sea. Both China and Taiwan rejected this decision.
Taiwans national news agency CNA said the national government has tasked the defense ministry with thinking of steps in the wake of the Hague courts judgment. According to the outlet, the ministry said it would continue patrolling the sea.
Meanwhile, the Madhesis protest erupted, which was seen by many as an Indian attempt to settle a score with the China-leaning Nepalese Prime Minister. Madhesis are basically Nepalese citizens of Indian origin who settled in foothills of Himalayas generations ago. Madhesis effectively act as an Indian pressure group in Nepal. Capitalizing on the grievances of the Madhesis, India launched a protest against Prime Minister Oli.
The Madhesi protest lasted for more than five months, during which they blocked several India-Nepal routes. Prime Minister Oli's career nevertheless survived.
The Indian government attempted to have Oli ousted again when, on May 5, Maoist leader Prachanda announced that he would withdraw support from the government; however, the move was reversed overnight under pressure from China. India's alleged game plan was foiled again.
This time, however, the Maoists want the Marxist-Leninist Prime Minister to resign. The next government likely to be headed by CPN (M) Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal, or Prachanda', with the support of the Nepali Congress, led by Sher Bahadur Deuba.
A regime change in Nepal will definitely increase India's sphere of influence in the country, which it will try to keep intact at any cost. However, China shouldn't be expected to simply sit and watch, and Nepal's communist conundrum should be expected to further aggravate the rivalry between India and China in the region.
China will not comply with the court decision, which has been written under US pressure, and will continue to have its own way. This might result in a skirmish at sea, in the air or on the ground, suggested the military expert.
The analyst noted that China has not accepted or otherwise recognized the legitimacy of the Philippines claim, which was filed via the Permanent Court of Arbitration. Beijing is convinced that all it has to deal with is a territorial dispute and that such discrepancies should be resolved by negotiations between the interested parties and not by arbitration.
This issue could not be resolved only by the Hague Court. A special commission should be formed, which will include, among others, the historians of the countries involved in the dispute, he said.
Meanwhile, he added, the issue is being dealt with very unprofessionally: the US gives the go-ahead to the court, the court salutes and makes a decision which satisfies the US and does not satisfy China. This is the epicenter of the crisis.
The US, in the meantime, is behaving like the master there, Baranets noted.
ASTANA (Sputnik) Earlier in the day, the foreign ministers of the five states, namely Russia, Azerbaijan, Iran, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan, met in Astana to discuss the draft Convention on the Legal Status of the Caspian Sea and preparations for the 5th Caspian Summit.
"We have confirmed today at a political level that there is a general readiness to move to the signing of the Convention in Astana at the heads of state summit next year," Erlan Idrissov told reporters.
He added that the exact timing of the summit was yet difficult to determine as it would depend on the progress made on certain outstanding issues "that require harmonization and further negotiations."
NEW DELHI (Sputnik) After months of grueling investigations, Indian intelligence agencies, have unearthed the startling fact that Indian Air Force official Ranjith K. K., who was arrested in December last year from Punjab for passing secret information to ISI, had been honey trapped by them.
IAF official Ranjith K.K. was honey-trapped by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and the terror group Jamaat-ud-Dawaaa (JuD) through a fake Facebook profile using the name Damini McNaught.
Damini McNaught, in her Facebook profile, claimed to work as an executive at a UK based media firm and that she required Air Force-related information for an article she was writing for their news magazine.
BANGKOK (Sputnik)On Sunday, Minister of Public Works and Transport Sun Chanthol inspected the construction site in Poipets Stung Bot district where the railway tracks from Cambodia and Thailand would join. The construction of the Cambodian part of the railway is funded by the Asian Development Bank.
"The 6.5-kilometre [4-mile] railway line on the Cambodian side of the border, the junction with the Thai railways will be completed, it could be finished by either November or December and become operational by the end of the year 2016," the ministry said in a statement.
The railway line is part of the link between Singapore and Chinas Kunming province that will connect the whole of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries. The KunmingSingapore Railway, the project formally revived in 2006, is aimed at increasing regional connectivity and economic integration, and is expected to become fully operational in the coming years, according to the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific.
NEW DELHI (Sputnik) The Government of India has announced new measures to grant more relief to minority nationals from neighboring countries who are seeking refuge in India on the grounds of fear of religious persecution.
A meeting of the cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi decided to address the difficulties being faced by Hindus, Sikhs and other religious minorities in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan who had arrived with the intention of settling in India.
The facilities include permission to open bank accounts, purchase property for self-occupation, take up self-employment, as well as obtain a driver's license, Permanent Account Number (PAN) and Aadhar (Unique identification number).
The Swedish firm is planning to build a 400,000 square foot (37,161 m2) store near Mumbai, which will also include a 1,000-seat restaurant serving Swedish meatballs and other Scandinavian food in addition to more familiar Indian dishes, an official said.
"Ikea is starting to invest now. They have bought a big piece of land for 4 billion Rupees (US $59.6 million) in Navi Mumbai for their store," said Apurva Chandra, a principal secretary of the state industries department.
"They are investing almost 15 billion Rupees (US $223.5 million) here. This will be the first retail store in India," Chandra told PTI. "It will take another year or year and half."
On the whole, the analyst noted, the South China Sea dispute is not unique. Similar quarrels of varying intensity have long existed all around the world, from the South Kuril Islands to the Senkaku Islands, the Falklands (Malvinas), Hans Island, Rockall Islet, and over a dozen more.
"What's the point in dividing the seas? In part, it's a question of who its fishing resources, oil, gas and other resources belong to." However, in the case of the South China Sea, Kosyrev suggested that "the dispute is not about resources, but, above all, about how to create a situation for China which is strategically untenable in a region has traditionally been considered key to its development. Beijing considers its northern borders with Russia its rear area. This is a country facing south in all respects. And that is why it was necessary for someone to embroil the country in a quarrel with its southern neighbors."
After the Second World War, the countries of Asia each proposed maps claiming islands, islets and rocks they considered their own, and this was considered normal. The region lost its sense of normalcy, according to the analyst, when external forces, primarily the United States "found these differing maps to be a convenient way to provoke conflicts between China and its neighbors, with the aim of preventing Beijing from becoming the world's number one global power. This was done openly, and was never a secret to anyone; countries involved in a dispute with China were provided with all forms of support."
"And provocations are most interesting when the other party gives in to them," Kosyrev suggested. "China, afraid to show weakness, began to explore the islands, to build military bases and settlements. Moreover, it began to turn shoals into islands, pouring earth on them and thus changing, in full accordance with maritime law, the outlines of economic zones."
"[This will] more firmly secure the safety of our people living in two thirds of South Koreas territory while dramatically increasing the capacity to defend key state facilities like nuclear power plants and oil storages as well as the South Korea-US alliance forces," Ministry of National Defenses deputy minister for policy Yoo Jeh-seung said during a news conference.
Speculation about the location led to mass protests in multiple cities, including Seongju. Nearly 5,000 people took the streets, arguing that the needs of local communities were not being addressed. The countys commissioner went on a hunger strike.
Osborne also argued that prosecution could have "very serious implications for financial and economic stability, particularly in Europe and Asia."
The report indicates that Holder may have lied while addressing Congress months after the HSBC settlement was finalized.
"If we find a bank or a financial institution that has done something wrong, if we can prove it beyond a reasonable doubt, those cases will be brought," Holder said.
"The former Attorney General has been widely panned for not seeking criminal prosecutions of Wall Street executives at the heart of last decades financial meltdown a calamity fueled by a multi-trillion dollar mortgage securities fraud, carried out with the help of just about every major actor in the industry," Sam Knight writes for the DC Sentinel.
Companies have long been attracted to Ireland due to the 12.5 percent corporate tax rate, which was introduced in 2003. Additionally, the English-speaking Republic is a member of the Eurozone. The Republic stands to gain even more from the fallout of Brexit.
"We are a very small economy, and if we get a big increase in assets, this is what happens," Michael Connolly of the CSO, said following the announcement.
Foreign companies move to Ireland mainly through mergers and acquisitions (M&A); they acquire local assets in a process known as "inversion". Many originally American companies, most prominently in the biopharmaceutical sector, such as Allergan, Perrigo Co., and Jazz Pharmaceuticals Plc, changed their domicile to Ireland after facing greater tax and exchange rate pressures elsewhere. The relaxed corporate tax regime in Ireland and the relative weakness of the euro (which has been powering the German economy since at least 2013) have created greater output and export opportunities.
Formerly American companies that are now based in Ireland include medical technology developer Medtronic and security systems manufacturer Tyco. Both had bought insignificant Irish-based assets before moving to Ireland.
Following the CSO announcement, Ireland's Finance Minister Michael Noonan said the accelerated growth and exports have helped reduce debt and deficit figures. However, such a massive influx of investment bears significant risks, such as a possible overheating of the economy, which has undergone a major expansion in a very short period of time.
+ Good thing, with #Irish economy 30% larger now, Michael Noonan can easily write a cheque for E5bn for #EuroBanks Bailout3.0 Constantin Gurdgiev (@GTCost) 12 July 2016
Tax "inversions" result in gains in formal GDP assessment figures but don't necessarily result in comparable gains in jobs, salaries, wages, and the overall quality of life: companies domiciled in Ireland are making profits around the world, yet all this money is accounted for in Ireland's GDP estimates without being physically present in the country.
"I'm not going to stand up and say the economy grew by 26 percent," Jim Power, a non-affiliated economic researcher said. "It's meaningless."
WASHINGTON (Sputnik) The United States filed a case against China in the World Trade Organization, challenging Beijings levy of a 20 percent tax on exports of raw materials to competitors overseas, US Vice President Joe Biden said in a trade promotion speech in San Diego, California.
"When companies in China ship raw materials abroad, they put a tax on the raw material that comes from China," Biden stated on Wednesday. "That drives up the cost of those materials for the buyers in other countries and puts American companies at a disadvantage in competing to sell the products that need those raw materials."
Biden noted that the Obama administration had enforced existing trade laws more aggressively than any administration in the past, filing 22 cases with the World Trade Organization, of which 13 against China.
On a per-student basis, this is more money than Australian public schools receive.
The Yarralinda school receives as much as $11,000 per student. The nearby Rolling Hills public school receives just $8,300 per student annually.
While the Athena branch receives less, it still receives $2,000 less per student annually in taxpayer money than the local public school, an unnecessary public expense, according to many.
Officially, the Scientology organization denies affiliation with the schools.
"[They are a] completely independent secular association which was founded by a group of concerned parents who wanted to educate children," a spokeswoman claimed to the Sydney Morning Herald.
ATHENS (Sputnik) Greek Justice Minister Nikos Paraskevopoulos will urge for the start of a trial on the bribery case of German engineering company Siemens AG on Thursday, the press service of Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras announced.
"Prime Minister Tsipras contacted Justice Minister Nikos Paraskevopoulos, who has put him into details about the judicial investigation of the Siemens case," the Wednesday press release said.
In March 2015, the Greek authorities submitted a court case claiming that Greek officials were being bribed by Siemens. The court has been postponing hearings on the case since then.
These demands are not to be subject to oversight by courts, and the communication companies that serve you are prohibited from telling you that all of your information has been given to the FBI.
US Senators rushed to stick their swords into the Fourth Amendment. John Cornyn slapped an FBI-written amendment on the Electronic Communications Privacy Act Amendments Act of 2015. This caused the American Civil Liberties Union and Amnesty International to withdraw their support for the act, which caused the act to be withdrawn.
Senator John McCain rushed to the aid of the FBI. This Constitution-hating senator proposed an amendment to a criminal justice appropriations bill that would use a provision in the unconstitutional PATRIOT Act to grant the unlimited unaccountable power to the FBI to totally destroy your privacy.
McCains amendment failed, but Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R,KY) changed his vote so that he could negate the Senates vote with a vote to reconsider.
The FBIs senators will continue with amendments to legislation, related or not, until they deliver to the FBI the power it wants.
MOSCOW (Sputnik) France should be held accountable for the fact that it had not prevented a series of terrorist attacks by Daesh militants who had been on police and intelligence services surveillance lists, lawyer representing families of 17 victims of the Paris terrorist attacks Samia Maktouf said Tuesday.
"We will do everything possible to get a conviction of the French government for the fact that they had not prevented the actions of terrorists, some of whom were under judicial monitoring," Maktouf told French BFM TV channel.
She added that the mistakes were made by the people in the intelligence services and judiciary, and that those people now need to be held responsible as their oversights led to death of many innocent people.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)Germany has revised key security policy guidelines for the first time since 2006 in a bid to affirm a stronger role on the global arena.
The defense policy paper is expected to stress Germanys leading role in international efforts to settle crises and defeat terrorism, while acting within a multinational framework. It will also confirm Russia as a challenge to the German security.
The plan will discuss the possibility of allowing EU nationals to serve with the German armed forces to send a message of unity to the rest of the European Union and enhance integration.
There are no doubts that Margaret Thatchers shadow will hover over her for quite a time, Pavel Palazhchenko, the long-time chief English interpreter for the last Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, told RIA Novosti.
However, Theresa May is in a far more difficult situation right now, and it is hard for me to imagine how she is going to deal with it, added Palazhchenko, who used to interpret for Gorbachev during negotiations with Margaret Thatcher, among others.
The former interpreter, who also served as a diplomat for the then-Soviet Foreign Ministry, also noted that, unlike Thatcher, May does not have any explicit program.
MOSCOW (Sputnik) UK shadow cabinets former shadow work and pensions secretary Owen Smith has launched his candidacy in the leadership contest of the Labour Party on Wednesday.
"What Ive done is put my name forward to Labour members," Smith told the Sky News television channel.
@BBCBreaking @OwenSmith_MP anti austerity pro equality opposed Iraq war strong socialist roots very able and a credible @UKLabour leader Peter Hain (@PeterHain) 13 2016 .
The contest comes after last months rebellion against the sitting leader, Jeremy Corbyn, which saw half of the shadow cabinet resign in protest at what they claimed was Corbyns inability to head the main opposition party after Brexit. Labour Partys Angela Eagle also announced she was launching her candidacy for the partys leadership.
MOSCOW (Sputnik) The German cabinet approved on Wednesday a revised security policy "white book" that reflects the countrys new role on the global arena, the government said in a statement.
The White Book on Security Policy and the Future of the Bundeswehr was presented earlier in the day by German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen.
"Our security is based on a strong and committed North Atlantic Alliance as well as a united and resilient European Union," Chancellor Angela Merkel wrote in a foreword to the policy paper.
Nearly 28 years on from the Bruges speech, Theresa May is set to become the prime minister whose major task is to negotiate Britain's exit from the EU. The two women have much in common.
Tough Theresa
May is known to be cool, a tough negotiator and someone who knows her brief. More importantly, having been Home Secretary since 2010, she is well versed in the machinations of Brussels. She is respected as a good listener who looks for consensus but who holds her ground.
Rob Semple, Chairman of the National Convention, welcomes Theresa back to Conservative Campaign HQ as Party Leader pic.twitter.com/rTefCuzu0J Theresa May (@theresa_may) 12 July 2016
Thatcher too was tough. Not for nothing was she known as the 'Iron Lady' famous for 'handbagging' anyone who got in her way. Former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl wrote in his memoirs that Thatcher was "ice cold in pursuit of her interests" when she was negotiating the UK's budget rebate at a European summit in 1984.
Theresa May is also known to be a calculating negotiator with nerves of steel. She was famous for standing in front of the Police Federation conference in 2014 and berating them for corruption. Former Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg once told a colleague:
"You know, I've grown to rather like Theresa May She's a bit of an Ice Maiden and has no small talk whatsoever none."
As May moves into Downing Street and begins the process of negotiating Britain's new relationship with the EU, the words of Margaret Thatcher will be ringing in her ears:
"Certainly we want to see Europe more united and with a greater sense of common purpose. But it must be in a way which preserves the different traditions, parliamentary powers and sense of national pride in one's own country; for these have been the source of Europe's vitality through the centuries."
RIGA (Sputnik)The US Armed Forces will transfer five Black Hawk helicopters to a Latvian airbase on Wednesday and Thursday as a part of the Strong Europe initiative and the Atlantic Resolve operation, the Latvian National Armed Forces said in a statement.
"On July 13 and 14, several US armed forces helicopters will be transferred from the port of Riga to the Latvian Lielvarde air base. Over 60 US soldiers from the 501st aviation battalion and five UH-60 'Black Hawk' helicopters will arrive in Latvia to support the Strong Europe initiative and the Atlantic Resolve operation," the statement reads.
According to the Latvian National Armed Forces, US troops will take part in joint military drills with Latvia.
RIGA (Sputnik) Latvian Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkevics condemned the country's member of the European Parliament Tatjana Zdanoka who visited Syria as part of the group of the EU parliamentarians earlier in July to with Syrian President Bashar Assad.
"The meeting runs contrary to the EU general line imposing sanctions against Assad's regime. This step was unacceptable and blamable," Rinkevics said.
Syria has been mired in civil war since 2011, with government forces loyal to Assad fighting numerous opposition factions and extremist groups.
The HIT team was able to change the look of the inflatable enclosure and what was inside using VR and AR to replicate real life scenarios.
"Enabling those virtual platforms to be deployed in a variety of environments and scenarios is one of the major goals of the research; [also] addressing the different kinds of injuries and casualties the trainees might one day be confronted with" Professor Stone told Sputnik.
A survey carried out by pollster Taloustutkimus on behalf of Finland's Foreign Ministry stated that 84 percent of Finns consider development aid to be very or fairly important, whereas 61 percent agree that it is effective and pays off.
Despite a slight decrease from last year, when 87 percent of Finns lauded the importance of overseas aid, four out of five Finns still believe in development cooperation as a means of staving off migration.
"Finland has therefore already begun to invest more than before in the countries in the Middle East and North Africa. This work will continue in our cooperation with our EU partners," newly tapped Foreign Trade and Development Minister Kai Mykkanen told Finland's national broadcaster Yle.
DONETSK (Sputnik) At least three people were killed and four sustained injuries in the last 24 hours when the Donetsk region of Ukraine was shelled by Kiev forces, the deputy defense minister of the self-proclaimed Donetsk Peoples Republic's (DPR), Eduard Basurin, said Wednesday.
"As a result of the shelling of Donetsk units, two servicemen were killed and two others injured. Civilians were among the victims of the mortar fire by the Ukrainian Armed Forces as well. In Staromykhailivka, a civilian died," Basurin told reporters.
MADRID (Sputnik) The Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) will not support the candidacy of Mariano Rajoy from the Popular Party (PP) for prime minister, PSOE leader Pedro Sanchez said Wednesday.
"The Spanish Socialist Workers' Party is not in the ranks of Rajoy's potential allies. If there are non-aligned politicians, who can support the approval of prime minister, it is necessary to use it. But Rajoy does not have any votes to add them to 137 mandates of the PP. He can not rely on the socialist party for the support. We will vote against [him]," Sanchez said, following negotiations with Rajoy.
MADRID (Sputnik) There is no circumstance under which early parliamentary elections should be called in Spain, acting Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, who leads the Popular Party (PP), said on Wednesday.
In June, Spains center-right PP won the most seats in the parliamentary election, with the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) finishing second. None of the political forces has an absolute majority and thus cannot form a government on their own. Following the elections, Rajoy initiated negotiations to form a government, but they have so far yielded little results.
"In any case, no new elections should be held in Spain. I think there is not a single Spaniard, who would be in favor of new elections. On the contrary, everyone is interested in a solid government being formed as soon as possible New elections would be folly, " Rajoy told reporters.
BERLIN (Sputnik) Crises similar to the armed conflict in eastern Ukraine, allegedly triggered by "Russian actions," are one of nine key challenges to German security, it was claimed in a German security policy paper Wednesday.
The White Book on Security Policy and the Future of the Bundeswehr by German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen was adopted by the national cabinet earlier in the day.
"The renaissance of classic policy from the position of power, which includes a resort to military means to pursue national interests and is coupled with significant efforts in an arms race, increases the risk of violent interstate conflicts, including in Europe and in the neighborhood, as the example of Russian actions in Ukraine shows," the paper outlining Berlin's defense and security policies reads.
Just heard of one MP who's changed her position on #Trident and is now voting against. Good news! Keep lobbying folks @CNDuk #ScrapTrident YFGM vs Trident (@YFGMvsTrident) July 13, 2016
Monday's debate and subsequent vote on Trident is still shrouded in some secrecy, with activists in the dark over whether the vote will specifically apply to renewing Trident or the issue of nuclear deterrence in general.
'Money Should be Spent on Health, Education, Jobs'
While the current Conservative government has pledged to renew Trident, there is growing opposition according to Hudson, with Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and Scottish National party among those against the deterrent's upgrade.
She says apart from the international context, there's a number of domestic issues why people would reject another Trident program.
Hundreds of constituents waiting to tell MPs to vote against 205 billion weapon of mass destruction. #StopTrident pic.twitter.com/kOxHSEvFyN CND (@CNDuk) July 13, 2016
"In terms of Britain itself, there are some very key arguments. One of course is the cost at a time when government spending is facing cutbacks. To replace the system as it currently is, including lifetime costs, would be in region of 205 billion (US$271 billion). That's a very significant amount of money. Many people feel that it's not the best use of taxpayers' money and national resources. They'd rather see it spent on heath, education, jobs and so on."
While the CND believe replacing Trident will cost more than US$270 billion (200 billion), British government estimates are substantially lower, with a review in November suggesting the system's overhaul would cost up to US$54 billion (41 billion), including contingency costs.
At #PMQs, @AngusRobertson attacks Trident but he doesn't speak for all Scots or even most https://t.co/KY1didjCBf pic.twitter.com/qnn0oRIpW5 Tim Montgomerie (@montie) July 13, 2016
Hudson also raised questions over the practical use for such a nuclear submarine system, labelling Trident a Cold War system."
"In technological terms, Trident will be redundant," she told Sputnik.
"The government's own national security strategy last autumn identified terrorism, climate change, pandemics and cyber warfare as the major challenges that Britain faces in terms of its security. Clearly nuclear weapons do nothing to address those challenges, so that's another area of concern."
He also says while the popular vote cant be reversed, a signature collecting campaign could transform the political landscape by revealing a newfound enthusiasm for EU membership.
Interestingly enough, the above article illustrates a surprise change in the mood of the renowned billionaire.
Only in June, he shared with the US media his gloomy forecasts for the economic and political issues facing China and Europe.
There remains a good chance the European Union will collapse under the weight of the migration crisis, continuing challenges in Greece and a potential exit by the United Kingdom from the EU, he then told The Wall Street Journal.
If Britain leaves, it could unleash a general exodus, and the disintegration of the European Union will become practically unavoidable, the newspaper quoted him as saying.
The US media then reported that after a long hiatus, the speculator has returned to trading, getting rid of stocks and buying gold and shares of gold mining companies.
The outlets then speculated that when such men are starting to worry about their investments and wealth, one could only wonder, what could possibly be going on in the markets.
"[The council's] decision constitutes another step in the process of blackmail and external interference against Portugal and its people. It violates the rights and living conditions of our nation and is an affront to national sovereignty, democracy and the will of Portuguese people."
"What's really at stake is political pressure of which sanctions are an instrument to again impose the policies that have caused and continue to cause so much suffering to our people," said Ferreira.
Social Crisis
Spanish MEP Xabier Benito said: "Whilst large countries repeatedly violate official EU rules, they are punishing countries in southern Europe with those very same rules rules which have already been used to impoverish them and will do so again with this decision.
"The richest countries in the EU are clearly exploiting the institutional framework of the EU and the mechanisms to their own advantage such as labor division, market expansion all the while condemning the periphery of Europe to a long recession and economic stagnation," Benito said.
MOSCOW (Sputnik) Mramor said the reasons for his decision to step down were "exclusively personal," as quoted by the Slovenia Times newspaper.
The 62-year-old said he was planning to resume his academic career. He said he was pleased with his legacy, including the country's improved credit rating and reduced budget deficit.
This announcement comes a week after Slovenian police raided the headquarters of the nations central bank on suspicion that it unduly labeled bonds as bad loans in 2013 to avoid making payments on them.
Let's just hope Theresa May is as strong a leader as the last female PM, and doesn't get so much abuse for doing the tough work as she did Paul Anthon Salmon (@RealPaulSalmon) 13 July 2016
"Not everybody knows this, but the full title of my party is the Conservative and Unionist Party. And that word 'Unionist' is very important to me. It means we believe in the union, the precious precious bond between England Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland," May said following the appointment.
Excellent, very inclusive 1st speech by our new Prime Minister @theresa_may.
Augurs well. Good luck Theresa! pic.twitter.com/lVyLP38jzM Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) 13 July 2016
"I will lead 'one nation' government, make Britain a country that works for everyone," May stated.
Well, well, well. There can't be many people in Britain who wouldn't agree with @theresa_may speech. I just hope she means it. Julia Hartley-Brewer (@JuliaHB1) 13 July 2016
Earlier, Queen Elizabeth II appointed Theresa May new Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
Dr. Marcus Papadopoulos, political analyst, publisher and editor of the UK's Politics First magazine, told Radio Sputnik that public discussion about immigration "has been stifled because of political correctness," and that ordinary people are also misled about the root causes of immigration.
"The refugee crisis in Europe, let's be clear, has been caused by Western interference in Libya and in Syria. That's not a reality that has been told to ordinary people in Europe, because ordinary people in Europe are subjected to mainstream media."
Papadopoulos said that in spite of opinion polls suggesting that immigrants take jobs from local people, in reality migrant workers often do work that native residents are unwilling to take, and play a key role in the economy and public services.
"In Britain most of them are either in hospitals, for example cleaners, auxiliary nurses. Or, they're in very low-skilled, low-paid jobs, for example office cleaners, road cleaners."
MADRID (Sputnik) One in three Islamists detained in Spain had prepared terror attacks in the country, a study conducted by the Spanish Royal Institute Elcano showed.
Spanish police have detained more than 150 Islamists over the last four years, of whom 35.4 percent had prepared terrorist attacks in Spain the study found, adding that most of them had links to other extremists.
About 82 percent (124 people) of those detained had linked to the Islamic State (ISIL or Daesh, outlawed in Russia) terrorist group and were in contact with Islamists in Morocco, Belgium, France and Turkey. Around 20 percent had links to the militant organizations Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa, as well as their cells, the study revealed.
Earlier in the day, May, having served as home secretary for the past six years, became the United Kingdoms new prime minister, following David Camerons official resignation.
"I am very optimistic for the coming premiership. Theresa May has been a very capable Home Secretary and I will be supporting her in the negotiations over Brexit. Settling our relationship with the European Union will allow us the perfect springboard for tackling other international problems. I hope we will see more productive cooperation with other countries over Syria and Iraq, for example," Leigh, chairman of a UK Parliament cross-party working group on relations with Russia, said.
The Labour leadership contest comes after last months rebellion against the current leader, Jeremy Corbyn, which saw half of the shadow cabinet resign in protest at what they claimed was Corbyns inability to head the main opposition party after Brexit.
Under UK law, early general elections can only be called if either at least two thirds of the House of Commons vote in favor of the motion or if the Conservatives pass a motion of no confidence in their leadership.
The United Kingdom's new Prime Minister Theresa May will be a pro-NATO leader and will pursue the previous Conservative government's aims of renewing the country's Trident nuclear deterrent program, according Wilson.
"She will be pro-NATO and Cameron triggered the Trident replacement. It is not independent as the US controls the firing codes," Wilson said.
Wilson was the SNP leader between 1979 and 1990, when he was succeeded by Alex Salmond.
The Trident system is deployed at the UK Royal Navys Faslane submarine base in Scotland. The UK Conservative Party, which has been in power under Cameron's leadership since 2010, has been campaigning to renew it despite rising maintenance costs.
The total estimated cost of Trident renewal is 167 billion pounds ($244 billion) over the 32-year lifespan of the system, between 2028 and 2060, according to the International Monetary Fund.
Grusho said that NATO policies threaten to eventually result in a new spiral of an arms race.
"At first, NATO makes a decision to expand, to adopt new members, then it starts to develop the territories of the new members in military and technical terms, to deploy additional potentials under the pretext that they should be protected. This leads to the situation that we could find ourselves in a spiral of an arms race that is unwanted by everyone," Grushko said.
"All members of the NATO-Russia Council have recognized that there is no alternative to political resolution of the Ukrainian crisis and that it is necessary to do everything possible to provide full implementation of the Minsk package [of agreements]," Grushko told reporters after the Russia-NATO Council meeting in Brussels.
According to Grushko, during the Council meeting the Russian side noted that NATO's political and military support to Ukraine was "encouraging the war party in Kiev and warming up revanchist aspirations."
Leaders of the 28 NATO nations agreed last week to deploy four multinational battalions to the countries bordering Russia on a rotational basis. Russia warned this would undermine security in the region.
MEXICO CITY (Sputnik) Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro announced on Tuesday that the country's seaports will be taken under the army's control as part of government's plan to combat the economic crisis marked by severe food and medicine shortages.
"Today we take control of the main five ports Guanta, La Guaira, Puerto Cabello, Maracaibo and Guamache," Maduro said in a speech on the Venezuelan national television.
Earlier on Tuesday, Maduro signed a decree in which he ordered the army to co-ordinate the production and distribution of food by monitoring both food processing plants and ports.
MOSCOW (Sputnik) Airbus has already closed some major deals with the world's major airlines in Farnborough.
"Synergy Aerospace Corporationhas finalized a Purchase Agreement with Airbus for 62 A320neo Family aircraft. These A320neo will be the base of the fleet renewal and network growth strategy for Avianca Brasil, and also marks over 1,000 Airbus aircraft sold in Latin America," Airbus said in a press statement.
On Tuesday, the manufacturer said it sold 100 A321neo aircraft to Malaysia's AirAsia, as well as signing a Memorandum of Understanding for the supply of 72 A320neo planes to India's Go Air.
The authorities have already summoned Lopezs wife and one of the nuns, Sister Celia Ines Aparicio, for questioning, sources in the court told Sputnik.
"The video is clear: Sister Celia Ines Aparicio calmly picked up those bags. Such nonchalance could only be exhibited by and accomplice who tries to conceal a crime," a statement issued by the prosecutors office said.
Prosecutor Federico Delgado said he believes that Lopezs arrival at the monastery was preplanned and that the nuns were awaiting him.
"They (nuns) were expecting him (Lopez), it is known that they had a phone conversation beforehand. The nuns opened a door for him early in the morning and even attempted to prevent the polices arrival," the statement said.
Delgado also said that Lopez and his wife constantly stayed in contact, in person and by phone, several hours prior to his arrest and even after he'd already hid his money.
Argentinas former Minister of Public Works was arrested on Tuesday while trying to bury 8.5 million in dollars and other currencies in a hole dug on the territory of a convent just outside Buenos Aires.
Exfuncionarios kirchneristas imputados en #Argentina por presunto desvio de fondos https://t.co/YBEizwn1zQ Sputnik Mundo (@SputnikMundo) 16 2016 .
Caught red-handed, Jose Lopez attempted to bribe law enforcement officers who had arrived at the scene after being alerted by an anonymous caller about a stranger throwing bags onto the property early Tuesday. After the police officers turned down the bribe, the former Minister of Public Works told the nuns that police had tried to steal the money he was trying to donate to the convent.
CAIRO (Sputnik)Libya's primary task must be the creation of a unified army to fight the Daesh militant group, Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Libya Martin Kobler told Sputnik.
"The first challenge right now is really to establish a united army for the fight against Daesh [Arabic acronym for IS]. This means what also here has to follow the Libyan political agreement. It says very clearly that the supreme commander of an Army is the Presidency Council not the HOR [House of Representatives] or anybody else," Kobler said in an interview.
Libya has been in a state of turmoil since 2011, when a civil war broke out in the country and long-standing leader Muammar Gaddafi was overthrown. The country has been contested by two rival governments the internationally-recognized Council of Deputies based in Tobruk and the Tripoli-based General National Congress since mid-2014.
CAIRO (Sputnik) The humanitarian situation in Libya is "disastrous," Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Libya Martin Kobler told Sputnik.
"Disastrous. The humanitarian situation is really not good. The medical situation, hospitals 60 percent are not working. We have 435,000 internally displaced persons [IDPs] out of the population of six [billion]," Kobler said in an interview.
He recalled that the humanitarian aid was being given to the Libyan people in need by the international community and the UN agencies, but only 25 percent of the agreed humanitarian response plan was funded.
CAIRO (Sputnik) Moscow plays a highly constructive role in bringing about a political settlement for Libya, Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Libya Martin Kobler told Sputnik.
"I really appreciate the constructive line of the Russian government Russia is a very important member of the Security Council. The Security Council said Libyan political agreement is the roadmap ahead. You do not need other plans or alternatives, it is all there. And the Russian government is part of this resolution endorsing the Libyan political agreement and they are very helpful to bring the two parts of the country together again," Kobler said in an interview.
Russia has good relations with eastern Libya, he added, stressing that it is important to use the leverage Moscow has to keep eastern Libya's Torbuk-based Council of Deputies and forces under its control loyal to the political settlement with the government of National Accord.
CAIRO (Sputnik) The UN Security Council must lift its arms embargo against Libya to help the country's regular army fight against Daesh terrorists , the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Libya and head of the UN Support Mission in the country Martin Kobler told Sputnik.
"They can request exemptions from the weapons embargo to the fight against Daesh (ISIS/ISIL) and terrorism in the country. But this necessitates weapons; the whole country has a weapons embargo. And the weapons embargo has to be exempted, has to be lifted but only for those who really follow the Libyan political agreement and have a joint command structure with the regular Libyan united army, comprising elements of east, west and south," Kobler said in an interview.
The UN Security Council imposed the embargo on any arms sales to Libya in February 2011, when an armed uprising broke out against the country's long-time leader Muammar Gaddafi. Libya's Torbuk-based Council of Deputies, and later the government of National Accord, have repeatedly asked to lift the embargo for regular the armed forces commanded by Gen. Khalifa Haftar. The Security Council has so far refused the requests, while allowing exceptions on a case-by-case basis.
MOSCOW (Sputnik) The United Nations is not calling to pull civilians out of Syrias contested northern city of Aleppo amid escalating hostilities, an official at UNs humanitarian agency OCHA told Sputnik.
Aleppo has been split up between the Syrian government in the western districts and opposition fighters in the east. Earthier this week, rebels launched an offensive to seize government-controlled areas, with dozens reportedly hurt by shelling.
"We are not calling to evacuate civilians. However, the UN is deeply alarmed by the escalating violence in and around Aleppo city," the OCHA official said.
MOSCOW (Sputnik) Hundreds of thousands in Syrias Aleppo are now within firing range and risk besiegement after the last road into the eastern part of the city was severed, an official at UNs humanitarian agency OCHA told Sputnik.
The Castello Road was the only way out of militant-dominated eastern Aleppo. Clashes between the rebels and government forces for the control of the supply route erupted last Thursday, shutting it.
"Heavy clashes between the Government of Syria forces and non-state armed groups have rendered the Castello road, the last remaining access road in and out of eastern Aleppo city, impassable and putting an estimated 200,000-300,000 people closer to the line of fire and at risk of besiegement," the official said.
MOSCOW (Sputnik) Egyptian tourism industry has been hit hard after a number of countries, including Russia and the United Kingdom, suspended flights to Egypt over safety concerns after the aircraft crash.
"Approximately 85% of what Russia had demanded, of those guarantees, was fulfilled by Egypt," Abdel Aal said at the meeting with speaker of Russia's upper house of parliament Valentina Matvienko.
MOSCOW(Sputnik) Tuesdays large-scale attack on Islamic State (ISIL or Daesh) jihadist group targets in Syria was part of a routine Russian Aerospace Forces operation and should not be interpreted as retribution for the downing of its military helicopter last week, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Wednesday.
"The Russian Aerospace Forces operation is continuing. All this is carried out in the framework of the Russian Aerospace Forces ongoing operations," Peskov told reporters.
Turkey, he says, was one of the suppliers. For example, he says, a Man-Portable Air-Defense System (MANPADS) Stinger was used by the terrorists to bring down the helicopter carrying the two Russian pilots on July 8 near Palmyra; it was assembled in Turkey under an American license.
Syria's Minister of Information, he says, warned as early as May that the militants had received dozens of MANPADS and that Russia should brace itself for the loss of its aircraft. So here they come.
The analyst warns that it will be more difficult to shut the border crossings and clean up Aleppo. He also says that there are many Turkish professional servicemen fighting alongside the Daesh militants. Already half a year ago the Turkish Special Forces were fighting in the frontier zone, and now they have been noticed near Aleppo.
All of this reminds us of the Plan B the US threatened us with, he said.
The arms supplies to the jihadists have intensified. Let us put in place our mirror-image Plan B, he suggested.
The expert explained that it might include assistance to the military wing of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), the intensification of arms supplies to the Syrian Army and assistance to the Peoples United Revolutionary Movement. The group was only established in May but has already performed well in the fight against Turkish servicemen.
When asked whether these shipments could provoke Ankara's wrath, Bagdasarov replied that it is highly unlikely that Turkey would choose to exacerbate a proxy-conflict with Russia. It itself is nearly on the brink of the civil war and its open interference in Syria might well result in its own collapse, he concluded.
MOSCOW (Sputnik) The company also added that the laying of the foundation stone in Irans Bushehr-2 nuclear power plant was expected to take place this year.
We already have in elaboration several new projects which are important for the industry, Spassky said as quoted by the companys annual review.
In 2014, Iran and Russia agreed on building two new nuclear reactors on the site of Bushehr, starting fall 2015.
MOSCOW (Sputnik) Zeybekci added that representatives of the energy companies continued cooperation and implementation of such projects.
"During the crisis in the relations, neither Russian, nor the Turkish side have scrapped the projects tied to nuclear power industry and to the construction of the ways for transportation of the energy products. There is also no discussion about suspension of such projects," Zeybekci said.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik)The United States has extended the January 7 order, which denied export privileges to 15 individuals and entities involved in supporting Irans missile program, according to a notice by the US Industry and Security Bureau released on Wednesday.
"Renewal of the TDO [Temporary Denial Order] is necessary in the public interest to prevent an imminent violation of the EAR [Export Administration Regulations]," the notice stated.
The sanctioned companies include Iranian Mahan Airways, French Kerman Aviation, British Skyco, Jordanian Al Naser Airlines and Sky Blue Bird Group from the United Arab Emirates, among others.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik) The US-led coalition against the Daesh conducted 27 airstrikes against the terror groups positions in Syria and Iraq on Tuesday, the US Central Command (CENTCOM) said in a press release.
"In Syria, coalition military forces conducted ten strikes using bomber, attack, and remotely piloted aircraft against ISIL [Islamic State] targets," the release stated on Wednesday. "Additionally in Iraq, coalition military forces conducted 17 strikes coordinated with an in support of the Government of Iraq."
The ten airstrikes in Syria hit positions near three cities, including Manbij and Palmyra, destroying three Daeshs oil wellheads, five tactical units, two vehicles and eight fighting positions.
This is the first time that the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) have operated openly on the Syrian side of the border since the beginning of the Syrian civil war some five years ago. No opposition or protest from Syrian President Bashar Assad in Damascus has been offered.
The IDF operation was ongoing as of Wednesday, July 12, on a stretch of terrain facing the Syrian town of Quneitra on one side, and the Israeli Golan village of Ein Zivan on the other. The enclave dividing the Golan between Israel and Syria is defined as a demilitarized zone (DMZ) under the military control of the UN Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) and the Syrian civilian administration, according to the 1974 armistice agreement. The zone is bound by two 10km strips of land to allow each side to maintain military strength. Within a 25km radius, no ground-to-air missiles can be launched from the DMZ.
Both sides agreed that Syrian nationals who were forced to leave their homes as a result of the October 1973 war and its aftermath would be able to return. Quneitra, an area in southwest Syria that was particularly devastated by the war was returned to Syria despite a government commitment to ban terrorist activity. This commitment included Israeli infiltration from the Golan sector, along with plans to repopulate the town.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik) The deployment of the announced additional contingent of US soldiers to support the Iraqi offensive against the Daesh stronghold of Mosul will have little to no effect, former director in the US Secretary of Defenses Office of Strategic Competitiveness Dan Goure told Sputnik on Tuesday.
"The US is playing nickel poker in Iraq," Goure said on Tuesday. "There is no end game, they [US leaders] are praying on their knees to God that nothing goes wrong and that everything returns to the way it was in Iraq in 2011."
Goure was responding to US Secretary of Defense Ashton Carters announcement on Monday that he would send 560 additional US troops to Iraq, to back an Iraqi offensive to retake the city of Mosul from the Islamic State terror group.
Charlotte Strode
In my own casual wayas easy as lifting my phone and tapping the screenI photograph the same people all the timemy boyfriend at the steering wheel of his truck, my sister doing something as inane as brushing her hair. I return to these people time and again, and in an offhand sort of way, they are my muses. On Wednesday, July 20, at CFA Downtown Studio (113 Fourth Street NW), Making Muses opens in conjunction with PhotoSummer and in collaboration with Flash Powder Projects, a retreat-based initiative to explore and expand the photographic medium. A compendium of 27 local and national artists, the show highlights contemporary portrait photography and, as such, it spotlights the muse and the synergistic work between the person in the frame and the one who photographs it. [To have] something that gives you the energy, the drive to make work, that burning thing that says I need to be with that person, I need to make pictures, I need to capture that second, David Bram, who curated the show along with Jennifer Schwartz explained,I think that's important.
For me, it's my partner and my family. For Bram, it's his two small children. For the photographers who are putting their muses on display in the exhibition, the muse takes many shapes. Liz Arenberg, for example, photographs her sister with moving closeness. There's freedom with her sister, who she trusts and loves. I think [in these photographs] the tension of society is gone. I'm me and you love me because of who I am, Bram elaborated of Arenberg's photos and the intimacy that is palpable within them. Alternatively, Nathan Pearce roves the party, camera in hand, honing in on subjects as he passes. He moves back and forth between the quiet and the loud, as Bram put it. Sarah Moore, a photographer who currently resides in Berlin, turns the camera on herself, creating self-portraits infinite in their variety, as changeable as moods. The photographs of Making Muses are as unique and divergent as the faces they represent, each one tempered by the gaze of the photographer and later, the viewer.
No matter where you cull your inspiration from, an unflagging wellspring of encouragement and creativity can be drawn from the exchange of work and ideas between artists. In that way, Making Muses is the perfect place to find insight and vision.
A lot of times as a photographer, I look at a piece and say, 'Oh, I wish I would have made that,' Bram said. And that was the guiding principle for the curation of the showto hang the pictures that made him and Schwartz stop in their tracks, side-by-side in the same gallery space. There are things [in portraiture] that just pull you in For me, it's the gaze. It's the look. That's the thing that grabs me and makes me stop. The relationship between the artist and the musean artist, too, in their own rightis communicated through gestures, expressions, lighting, posture, composition and a multitude of simple, quiet elements that coincide to create a moving whole.
We started making books last year we host retreats. We thought this was the missing part, Bram said of the traveling exhibit, which was shown at the Colorado Photographic Arts Center in Denver before its tenure at CFA, and will next travel to Delaware. Bram, who lives in Albuquerque, will host an opening reception on July 22 from 6-8pm along with several of the artists showcased, some local, some visiting.
No matter where you cull your inspiration from, an unflagging wellspring of encouragement and creativity can be drawn from the exchange of work and ideas between artists. In that way, Making Muses is the perfect place to find insight and vision. There's no politics. There's no drama There's nothing complicated about it. Just really beautiful pictures., Bram posited. And that, no matter how your frame it, is an inarguable fact. Making Muses finds a home in Albuquerque for just two weeks, so find your way Downtown before July 30 to access these undeniably beautiful works of contemporary portrait photography.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik) Five Iranian attack boats closely approached two US warships in the Straits of Hormuz, but the encounter was safe, routine and professional, the US Central Command (CENTCOM) told Sputnik.
"We can confirm that four Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy Fast Inland Attack Craft (FIAC) and one Fast Attack Craft (FAC) approached the USS New Orleans and USS Stout as they transited the Straits of Hormuz," CENTCOM Media Operations Officer Capt. Michelle Rollins told Sputnik in a written statement on Tuesday. "US Naval Forces Central Command deemed the interaction as safe, routine and professional and without incident."
US Navy forces are routinely approached by Iranian maritime forces as they operate in the region, with the majority of all interaction by the Iranians conducted in a safe and professional manner, the statement acknowledged.
TOKYO (Sputnik) According to Yonhap news agency citing sources in the South Korean defense ministry, the exact deployment location of the THAAD system designed to intercept ballistic missiles will be announced at 15:00 local time (06:00 GMT).
Earlier, it was reported that sites in the city of Daegu in the North Gyeongsang Province and the city of Pyeongtaek in the Gyeonggi Province are being considered for the defense system deployment.
On July 8, South Korea and the United States announced they agreed to deploy the THAAD system with the US military stationed in South Korea to counter North Korea's missile threat. The THAAD system is designed to intercept short, medium and intermediate ballistic missiles at the terminal incoming stage.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik) US forces killed in a drone strike the leader of the Tariq Gidar terror group Umar Khalifa in Afghanistan along with four other enemy combatants, US Department of Defense spokesman Peter Cook said in a release on Wednesday.
"While this strike was taken pursuant to US rules of engagement and counter-terrorism interests, the specific relevance it has to Pakistan and Afghanistan's security underscores the common security interests shared by the United States, Afghanistan, and Pakistan on matters of terrorism," the statement noted.
Khalifa orchestrated multiple terrorist operations in Pakistan, including the January 2016 attack on Bacha Khan University and the December 2014 Peshawar school attack that resulted in the deaths of more than 130 children, the release noted.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik) The United States has sent additional military personnel to boost security of the US embassy in the South Sudanese capital of Juba amid ongoing unrest in the country, US President Barack Obama said on Wednesday in a letter to the US House Speaker Paul Ryan.
"The first of these additional personnel, approximately 47 individuals, arrived in South Sudan on July 12, 2016, supported by military aircraft," Obama stated.
The US president noted that some 130 troops stationed in Djibouti are also ready to provide support as necessary.
PARIS (Sputnik) French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle will return to its mission to combat Daesh terrorist group in Persian Gulf, after undergoing technical maintenance in France, French President Francois Hollande said Wednesday.
The head of the country added, that France will boost its assistance to the Iraqi army in the fight for freeing Mosul from terrorists in northern Iraq by sending military instructors to the country.
In 2015, the French aircraft carrier was deployed to the Persian Gulf to back military operations against Daesh militants, outlawed in Russia and numerous other countries. In spring of 2016 it returned to Toulon in southern France, where it underwent technical maintenance.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik) The Netherlands Air Force has received 14 Sniper Advanced Targeting Pods (ATP) for air-to-ground firepower support, defense contractor Lockheed Martin announced in a news release.
"Lockheed Martin recently completed rapid delivery of 14 Sniper Advanced Targeting Pods to the Royal Netherlands Air Force (RNLAF), outfitting a squadron in support of urgent mission requirements," the release stated on Wednesday.
Five of the 14 Sniper ATPs were delivered within 180 days of the contract to be deployed on the RNLAFs US-built F-16s Fighting Falcon jets, Lockheed Martin explained.
Ellehuus noted that the response to the latest developments in NATO is not a surprise, but emphasized that the United States is in favor of "communication" between the military alliance and Russia.
"That is why we supported having the meeting in Brussels", she pointed out.
During the last weeks NATO summit in Warsaw, the alliance agreed to place four combat battalions in Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, and further build up its conventional deterrence against Russia.
The Thursday NRC meeting of diplomatic officials is the second such meeting since June 2014, when NATO suspended the Council as well as military cooperation with Russia as a result of the crisis in Ukraine.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik) The US detention facility for suspected terrorist prisoners at Guantanamo Bay will stay open and be used to maximum capacity if the Republicans win this years presidential election, presumptive party candidate Donald Trump told a rally in Indiana.
"We are not closing Guantanamo," Trump said in the campaign rally in the town of Westfield in the US state of Indiana on Tuesday night. "We are going to fill it up."
Trump gave no further specifics in his remarks though he had been promising to prosecute the war on the Daesh in his preceding comments.
"[The platform] is the statement of our values, and then it is really up to those of us who are progressives to make sure that these values are prioritized once we have, hopefully, Hillary Clinton win the White House," US Congressman Mark Pocan stated.
During a speech on Tuesday, former presidential candidate and US Senator Bernie Sanders praised the Democratic Party platform as "the most progressive" in its history.
After it was clear that Sanders did not have the votes to secure the Democratic Partys presidential nomination, he focused on shaping the party platform to include a number of his widely popular policies, which were more liberal than those advocated by his rival, Hillary Clinton.
Sanders gave his long-awaited endorsement of Clinton after playing a predominant role in the crafting of the Democratic Partys platform.
The platform will be officially unveiled during the week of July 25 at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia.
ASTANA (Sputnik) Foreign Ministers of five littoral countries of the Caspian Sea, namely Russia, Azerbaijan, Iran, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan , are meeting in Kazakh capital to participate in the meeting chaired by Kazakh Foreign Minister Erlan Idrissov.
"The main theme of the upcoming talks is to agree on a draft convention on the legal status of the Caspian Sea, to discuss the progress made in certain areas of cooperation in the Caspian Sea, as well as issues related to the preparations for the fifth Caspian summit, scheduled to take place in Kazakhstan," Kazakh Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
Earlier, it was reported that the agenda of the forthcoming meeting will include questions such as the five-sided cooperation in various spheres, including the economy, transportation, safety and the environment.
Parallels were recently drawn between the US-Led invasion of Iraq and NATO's intervention in Libya. What's more surprising is who suggested them: none other than Thorbjrn Jagland, Secretary General of the Council of Europe. Jagland's excitement over the amount of reproach expressed by the investigating committee headed by John Chilcot towards former British Prime Minister Tony Blair cannot be concealed.
"If the Iraqi war was illegal, which is what Kofi Annan says, what about the bombing of Libya, which went far beyond the UN Security Council mandate?" Jagland asked on Facebook.
The US and Britain went to war in Iraq with the single intention of toppling President Saddam Hussein, which was done without any approval from the UN Security Council. France voted against it, and Russian President Putin called the proposed US-led invasion a "big political mistake." In 2003, the war was justified with "credible" intelligence information, according to which Iraqi had stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. However, none of the promised weapons were found in the subsequent free-for-all, and Iraq has plunged further into terrorist chaos and sectarian violence.
On Monday, the Canadian prime minister paid a visit to Ukraine for the first time. The visit featured many photo opportunities, and the signing of a Canada-Ukraine free trade deal. At the same time, Mr. Trudeau could not reassure Kiev that Canada's 200 military trainers would stay in the country after 2017, when their existing deployment runs out.
According to Globe and Mail senior international correspondent Mark MacKinnon, the visit confirmed that even though Ottawa would not stray from its course supporting Ukraine's post-Maidan government, it would soften its tone toward Moscow.
"Gesture-wise, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's first visit to Ukraine was exactly what his hosts wanted to see," the journalist recalled. "In terms of substance, however, the message to President Petro Poroshenko's government was that Canada is considering a step back from its all-in position of supporting Kiev, in favor perhaps of a defrost in relations with Russia," he added.
MOSCOW (Sputnik) US Secretary of State John Kerry could propose Moscow to share information on terrorists' positions in Syria in exchange for its pressure on the Syrian government to limit the activities of its Air Force, US media reported.
US Department of State announced on Monday that Kerry would visit Moscow on July 14-15 to hold talks on Syria, the Ukrainian crisis and the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict with Russian officials.
The Washington Post reported on Tuesday that Kerry could propose Moscow to exchange the information on the locations of the Nusra Front terrorist group within the framework of "Joint Implementation Group" and to "synchronize" their operations against the Daesh jihadists.
ANKARA (Sputnik)Turkey needs to normalize its relations with Syria in order to effectively combat terrorism, Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said Wednesday.
"We will increase the number of our friends. Turkey has normalized relations with Israel and Russia. I am sure that the same thing will happen on the Syrian track. We need it. It is necessary to provide stability for the successful defeat of terrorism in Syria and Iraq," Yildirim said at a meeting with the heads of Turkey's ruling party's regional departments.
Earlier this week, Yildirim said that Turkey saw no reason for confrontation with neighboring countries, such as Syria, Iraq and Egypt, and expressed Ankara's intention to improve its relations with these states.
Commenting on this state of affairs, Russia's independent online newspaper Svobodnaya Pressa suggested that with its traditional sources cut off, "it's no wonder that Lebanon has begun negotiations with Moscow on the sale of arms." The questions now, according to the paper, include who would sponsor the transaction, "and how the Israelis would react to such a contract."
"It's no secret that the events of recent months have shown very clearly that Moscow's relations with Tel Aviv have reached a new level," the paper recalled. In May, Russian President Vladimir Putin made a gesture of goodwill, ordering the return of an Israeli Magach tank lost in Lebanon during the 1982 Lebanon War. The tank, captured by Syrian forces, was transferred to the USSR, and had long been held on display at a military museum before its return.
Moreover, Israel has pursued its own distinct policy in relation to the anti-Russian sanctions imposed by Western countries over the crisis in Ukraine. Tel Aviv is actively carrying out negotiations on a free trade agreement with the Eurasian Union, which may be signed as soon as 2017.
According to Svobodnaya Pressa, the fact is that militants from Hezbollah, who played a key role in resisting the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 2006, are now playing a key role in defending the country's border from terrorists inside Syria. Their status will likely be a key hurdle to overcome in signing any Russian-Lebanese agreement. Hezbollah's ongoing conflict with Israel, and Tel Aviv's classification of the group as a terrorist entity, means that Moscow will effectively have to walk a tightrope to satisfy both sides.
ASTANA (Sputnik)Russia wants to hear explanations of the decisions taken at the NATO summit on July 8-9, as the public comments are not encouraging, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Wednesday.
"First of all, we would like to understanding the NATO explanation of the decisions taken at the Warsaw summit. What we heard as public comments is not encouraging," Lavrov told a press conference in Astana, Kazakhstan.
According to the minister, Moscow is ready to cooperate with the alliance within the framework of the NATO-Russia Founding Act.
Kiev's concerns are also clear: the Ukrainian elite fears losing billions of dollars in annual transit fees for Russian gas exports.
However, it seems that the EU's Western European member states do not share a similar stance, and with good reason.
The prospective shareholders of Nord Stream 2 project (beside Gazprom, which holds 50 percent of shares), are Germany's Uniper SE and BASF/Wintershall, Anglo-Dutch Royal Dutch Shell, Austria's OMV AG and France's Engie.
Thus, unsurprisingly, Germany, Austria and France have signaled their willingness to implement the project regardless of Washington's position.
"We consider Nord Stream 2 as an economic project which has to be implemented in accordance with the law From a political perspective, it is important that Ukraine and Slovakia's interests are not unnecessarily affected by the project," German Chancellor Angela Merkel told journalists in Berlin in mid-June.
Moreover, there are emerging voices in London supporting the Russia-led Nord Stream 2 project.
In his latest study, "Assessing Nord Stream 2," for the European Centre for Energy and Resource Security (EUCERS), King's College London Professor Andreas Goldthau argues that the concerns voiced by the EC and CEE countries are unjustified.
"Nord Stream 2 will enhance the liquidity of Central European gas hubs in EU gas trading and pricing, and strengthen their role as continental price markers," Professor Goldthau stresses.
Addressing the first "core issue," the professors point out that Washington has been committed to protecting "two sets" of regional partners in the Middle East: Israel and the Gulf States. However, Tel Aviv currently enjoys an "unprecedented security" from external aggression, while the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) boasts "overwhelming conventional military superiority" over its major regional rival Iran.
Therefore, "a large peacetime US military presence in the Gulf, on land or at sea, is neither necessary nor helpful," they stress.
As for "maintaining a free flow of energy" from the Persian Gulf, a motive that has prompted the US to expand its military presence in the region since the 1970s and especially since the 1990s, the professors explain that the situation has changed drastically since then. The crux of the matter is that America has recently become an independent oil producer. So far, "while protecting the free flow of Persian Gulf oil is still necessary, significant [American] onshore military resources are not needed to do so."
The third core issue that motivates the use of US military force in the Middle East is the threat of terrorism. However, "US military forces in the region are neither necessary nor even useful for avoiding terrorist attacks on the US homeland. It is no longer 2001. The United States has become extremely effective at preventing terrorist attacks that emanate from abroad," Sokolsky and Shapiro emphasize.
MOSCOW (Sputnik) Russian President Vladimir Putin has congratulated the United Kingdom's new Prime Minister Theresa May with her new post heading the UK government, expressing the desire for constructive UK-Russian dialogue, the Kremlin said Wednesday.
"Putin sent wires to the member of House of Commons of the United Kingdom David Cameron in regard to the end of his tenure as the UK prime minister, as well as to the UK Prime Minister Theresa May regarding her appointment to the post," the Kremlin said in a statement.
Nevertheless, regular meetings and negotiations are important, according to Ermakov, first and foremost because it means searching for ways to prevent any accidental clashes in areas where NATO and Russian forces meet face-to-face.
Following the alliance's summit in Warsaw, an opinion has formed inside Russia and elsewhere that NATO is preparing for a hot war with Moscow. This, a number of commentators have warned, is evidenced by the alliance's decision to station troops in Poland and the Baltics, by the increasing frequency and scale of exercises held on Russia's borders, by incidents in the Black and Baltic seas involving NATO air and naval power, and by the US missile defense complex being set up in Romania and Poland.
Unfortunately, Ermakov suggested, Russia has every reason to be concerned.
"NATO is a military alliance, with all the attendant implications. As far as a full-scale war with our country is concerned, NATO is not actually ready for this at the moment, but it very well could be in the future. The alliance is deploying very serious, comprehensive military infrastructure on the territory of its newest members. And this of course is not limited to those military forces stationed or deployed directly on the eastern and southern borders of the alliance."
"It is necessary to provide stability for the successful defeat of terrorism in Syria and Iraq."
There have been growing signs that Turkey is interested in improving international relations. Earlier this month, Erdogan formally apologized for the November 2015 downing of a Russian jet operating in Syrian airspace.
Last month, the Turkish and Syrian officials engaged in secret talks mediated by the Algerian government.
"We have been systematically working to normalize relations between Turkey and Syria for a long time, and came up with an initiative to provide the necessary basis for dialogue between the Turkish and Syrian leadership," Turkish mediator Ismail Hakki Pekin told Sputnik.
"In my last trip, I noticed a softening from the Syrian side, and a similar tendency in representatives of the Turkish Foreign Ministry, when I told them about the outcome of our delegations visit. The Foreign Ministry as a whole received my information favorably. They used to reject everything out of hand."
BERLIN (Sputnik) Aleppo has been split up between the Syrian government in the western districts and rebel groups in the east. Earlier this week, militants launched an offensive to seize government-controlled areas, with dozens reportedly hurt by shelling.
"The eastern Aleppo has been almost completely cut off from the outer world for several days The images from Aleppo show that is it necessary to return to the political process. Therefore, we will continue to intensively work to ensure that the reconciliation talks in Geneva are resumed as soon as possible," Sawsan Chebli said.
The spokeswoman added that "now it is necessary to urgently ensure the delivery of humanitarian assistance to all areas of the city, including those besieged by the opposition."
MOSCOW (Sputnik) UK Member of Parliament David Davis has been appointed the Brexit minister in Prime Minister Theresa May's new cabinet, the UK government said Wednesday.
"The Queen has been pleased to approve the appointment of Rt Hon David Davis MP as Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union," Downing street said in a statement.
The newly created post is designed to deal with the United Kingdom's exit from the block.
MOSCOW (Sputnik) UK Member of Parliament and former Defense Secretary Liam Fox has been appointed as the trade secretary in Prime Minister Theresa May's new cabinet, the UK government said Wednesday.
"The Queen has been pleased to approve the appointment of Rt Hon Liam Fox MP as Secretary of State for International Trade," Downing Street said.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik) The US government wants to work more closely with Russia to "disentangle" where terrorist groups in Syria are combining with US-backed opposition forces, State Department spokesperson Mark Toner said on Wednesday.
"We are still talking with Russia on how we can coordinate better against terrorist groups in Syria," Toner told reporters. "We need to work more closely together to disentangle where these groups are combining with terrorist groups."
Toner claimed the Obama administration was eager to cooperate with Russia in exposing genuine terrorist groups that were commingling with other opposition forces in Syria.
WASHINGTON, July 13 (Sputnik) On Monday, the State Department announced that Kerry would visit Moscow on July 14-15 to hold talks on Syria, the Ukrainian crisis and the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict with Russian officials.
"Secretary [Kerry] is traveling to Moscow and he has been very clear about what the goal is and that is to try to resuscitate the cessation of hostilities [in Syria]," Toner stated.
Kerry is also going to Russia to get support for a process that can lead to a nationwide ceasefire in Syria, and to ask Moscow to apply more pressure on Syrian President Bashar Assad to refrain from targeting opposition forces, Toner noted.
BRUSSELS, (Sputnik) The military took part in Wednesday's NATO-Russia Council (NRC) meeting, for the first time after a long time, Russian Permanent Representative to NATO Alexander Grushko said.
"A feature of today's meeting is the fact that it was attended by the military after a long time," Grushko told reporters.
Earlier in the day, the NRC met at the level of ambassadors in the Belgian capital of Brussels. The meeting was the second one since June 2014, the year when NATO suspended civilian and military cooperation with Russia amid strained relations over the Ukrainian crisis. Political dialogue via the NRC, nevertheless, continues, with the previous meeting taking place in April.
PARIS (Sputnik) French President Francois Hollande has congratulated the new UK Prime Minister Theresa May with her appointment as government head, urging her to speed up the process of the country's exit from the European Union, the Elysee Palace said Wednesday.
"The president of the republic has phoned Theresa May, congratulating her with the appointment to the post of the prime minister of the United KingdomThe president reminded [May] about his wish to start talks on the UK exit from the European Union as soon as possible," the French presidency said in a statement.
LONDON (Sputnik) Earlier on Wednesday, Hollande congratulated the new British Prime Minister with her appointment as government head, urging her to speed up the process of the country's exit from the European Union (Brexit).
Mays spokesperson said that preparations for Brexit talks would take time, but expressed hope that they would be constructive.
May held telephone talks with the French leader, as well as with Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny and German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Wednesday.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik) Concerns over genetically altered salmon entering the food supply chain drove lawmakers from the US state of Alaska to reject the recent genetically modified organism (GMO) labeling law, US Senator Dan Sullivan told Sputnik.
"With me and Senator [Lisa] Murkowski, very consistently our vote is very, very focused on the issue of genetically engineered salmon," Sullivan said on Wednesday. "Thats what drives our vote, what we refer to in Alaska derisively as Frankenfish."
On this episode of "By Any Means Necessary" host Eugene Puryear is joined by Jamal Muhammad to talk about the racist reason for why Philando Castile was pulled over in Falcon Heights and President Obama's speech at the funeral in Dallas and by New Orleans journalist Ryan Kailath to talk about his recent arrest in Baton Rouge.
In the final segment Brian Becker, host of Loud and Clear, and Frank Lara, San Francisco activist with the ANSWER Coalition, talk about the failure of the media to properly articulate the Black Lives Matter movement and the lack of coverage of police brutality against Latinos.
First up, during a joint rally by the two candidates in Portsmouth, New Hampshire on Tuesday, Sanders offered his long-anticipated concession and endorsement of Clinton to be the Democratic Party's nominee for President of the United States. The Vermont Senator explained that his full-throated endorsement for the former Sec. of State comes on the heels of progressive policy announcements by Clinton on health care and college education and after the completion of what both of them describe as "the most progressive party platform in history".
In Sanders' remarks he contrasted Clinton's positions with those of Donald Trump's, underscoring where he believes Clinton's positions are largely in line with his own on the expansion of health care, appointments to the U.S. Supreme Court, combating climate change, fighting against income inequality and for a living wage, access to college without the burden of student debt, on immigration and on criminal justice reform and much more.
During her own remarks, Clinton effusively thanked and lauded Sanders for his endorsement and his campaign, spoke to the tragic events in Dallas last week and to the epidemic of both police violence and weapons of war on our streets. She detailed her own plans to combat income inequality, to offer tuition-free college for more than 80% of American families, while vowing to block trade details like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). She described plans to reform the tax code, prevent more tax cuts for the rich, as she argued Trump and the GOP are offering, to expand Social Security, to fight for paid family leave and equal pay for women, reform of our campaign finance system and to fight back against voter suppression with the institution of automatic universal voter registration and other electoral reforms, including the restoration of the federal Voting Rights Act.
MOSCOW (Sputnik) Russia would have a lot to gain from legalizing cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, as well as attracting virtual currency mining operations, Presidential Commissioner for Entrepreneurs Rights Boris Titov said Wednesday.
Russian law currently bans the issue of any currency not approved by the Central Bank of Russia.
"Russia should have the most free system for blockchain operation, which is also rational in terms of the country's interests, so that it is as legal as possible and so our cryptocurrency legislation is all prescribed," Titov, who also heads Russia's pro-business Party of Growth, said at a press conference.
The storm began shortly before midnight. Russia's Emergencies Ministry issued a thunderstorm warning, reporting wind gusts of up to 80 miles per hour.
Dozens of flights were suspended at city airports, including 15 at Sheremetyevo International Airport.
A video posted by Andrey (@ankey888) on Jul 13, 2016 at 1:11pm PDT
# # # # . A photo posted by Vadim (@vaddim) on Jul 13, 2016 at 1:51pm PDT
The storm led to zero-visibility conditions.
#lightning #thunder #night #rain #weather #zelenograd #netall # # # A photo posted by Alexander Schreibikus (@sysan1n) on Jul 13, 2016 at 1:04pm PDT
! A photo posted by Artem Voloschenko (@artem_voloschenko) on Jul 13, 2016 at 1:59pm PDT
Downed power lines and fallen trees, caused major traffic delays and flash flooding.
MOSCOW (Sputnik) According to Domodedovo International Airport data, 11 departure flights were delayed as of 23:40 Moscow time on Wednesday (20:40 GMT). No flights were cancelled at the Domodedovo airport.
At Sheremetyevo International Airport, 15 flights were delayed as of late Wednesday. One departure flight was suspended at Vnukovo International Airport.
"Flight delays were 10-20 minutes at the most, the airport is currently working in normal mode," a Sheremetyevo source told RIA Novosti.
Nakhapetyan, for his part, mentioned a number of jobs that he said robots can handle, giving people the opportunity to focus on more creative, less rote activities.
According to him, robots can do monotonous work which requires no qualifications but demands accuracy and perseverance, as well as work in hazardous environments, including outer space. On the other hand, there is a serious problem related to all this, he warned.
"Imagine, for example, your refrigerator sending you relevant data in online mode and a robot chef cooking you a meal. It means that information about your culinary preferences will be sent to major companies' servers. There will certainly be those who will want to collect this information for analysis. Namely, a person's private life will be exposed to others," he said.
Russian physicist and futurologist Alexei Turchin went even further, warning of a worst-case scenario related to robots replacing human beings. According to him, "these risks, in fact, are closer than anyone can think, given that there are already neural networks and autonomous vehicles."
"As a program, artificial intelligence can quickly exceed human abilities, thus destroying or 'wrongfully favoring' people. This is the so-called 'maximizer clips' scenario which pertains to crazy robots which are not interested in anything other than making staples out of any material," he said.
Turchin also warned of the danger related to self-replicating nanorobots, which he likened to a cross between a mechanism and a living cell.
Eric J. Drexler envisions a world where nanoscaled robots called Nanites manipulate and control matter similar to living cells. #MEMS Glossology (@Glossology) 10 2014 .
He referred to American scientist Eric Drexler, who described a disaster scenario in which the artificial intelligence does not stop. Like a virus, it would continue to break down everything it sees into constituent elements in order to assemble copies of itself.
"Under this scenario, artificial intelligence would use lots of building material, including human bodies and the biosphere. Another scenario is the deployment of a military nanorobot to an enemy's camp, where it would replicate without control," he said.
Even if all this resembles an apocalypse, Turchin said that the nuclear and biological weapons-related risks are much more real than those pertaining to nanorobots and artificial intelligence.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik) A lawsuit has been filed against the city of Baton Rouge Police Department for violating the rights of protestors protected under the First Amendment to the US Constitution, The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Louisiana said in a press release on Wednesday.
"The American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana filed a lawsuit today against the Baton Rouge Police Department for violating the First Amendment rights of demonstrators who were protesting peacefully against the killing of Alton Sterling," the release stated.
The lawsuit claimed Baton Rouge police used excessive force, physical and verbal abuse, and conducted wrongful arrests to get protestors to stop speaking out against the police.
In 2012, Stavridis was cleared after an investigation into his alleged improper use of an aircraft to fly with his wife to a party hosted by winemakers in Burgundy, France. The Pentagon conducted a prolonged inquiry into his expenses and travel records, including trips he took with his mother, daughter and wife. The report furnished by the Pentagon OIG concluded that Stavridis made several bookkeeping errors and failed to employ proper oversight protocols with staff members.
MOSCOW (Sputnik) The government has recently disclosed it was going to station the US Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile defense system in the southern Seongju County.
Some 5,000 people took to the streets of Seongju, saying they had not been consulted, according to the national news agency Yonhap.
The county is expected to host US missiles and a radar. The reports sparked concerns of potential health risks associated with electromagnetic waves coming from the device.
The Hague-based Permanent Court of Arbitration's ruling, which flatly rejected China's claims to large swaths of the South China Sea, may become dangerous, Camilla Nrup Sorensen, assistant professor at Copenhagen University and Chinese security policy researcher, estimated.
The Court ruled that Beijing was not historically entitled to up to 90 percent of the disputed sea, where China in recent years has been busy building artificial islands and military bases. In the meantime, the South China Sea has emerged as a nascent battleground, as a number of countries are vying for maritime dominance in the region.
As China subsequently refused to either recognize or accept the judgment, it will be particularly important to wait for the response of the US and the Philippines, Nrup Srensen pointed out. Basically, the two alternatives are as follows: either the US lets China get away with ignoring the decision or Washington builds up its military presence in the area by sending its fleet to the South China Sea to demonstrate its power.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik) The government of China was likely responsible for breaching US Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) computers in 2010, 2011 and 2013, according to an interim report released by the US House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space and Technology on Wednesday.
In May 2013, then-FDIC Inspector General Jon Rymer informed FDIC Chairman Martin Gruenberg in a memorandum of computer security breaches at the agency.
"[T]he 2013 Memo found that in October 2010, the FDIC's Division of Information Security learned that an FDIC employee's desktop computer had been compromised by an advanced persistent threat," the report stated. "The advanced persistent threat in this case is believed to have been the Chinese government."
WASHINGTON (Sputnik) The US government is providing the city of Chicagos metropolitan area with $30 million over the next five years to wire the densely populated region with detectors for nuclear and radiological weapons, the US Department of Homeland Security announced in a press release on Wednesday.
"The Domestic Nuclear Detection Offices (DNDO) mission is to protect the nation against the malicious use of nuclear and other radioactive materials," Acting DNDO Director Wayne Brasure said in the release. "Expanding the Securing the Cities program to Chicago will bring important capabilities to one more of our countrys largest metropolitan areas."
WASHINGTON (Sputnik) The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)s torture program kept the United States safe after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, CIA Director John Brennan said at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC on Wednesday.
"The [Central Intelligence] Agencys detention interrogation program, I believe, was instrumental in keeping this country safe in the aftermath of 9/11," Brennan stated. "Were mistakes made in it? Absolutely. But the Agency was directed and authorized to carry out this program to the best of its capabilities even though it had never done it before."
WASHINGTON (Sputnik) The genetically modified organisms (GMO) labeling law that passed the US Senate and is set for a vote in the House of Representatives was written by the agro-industrial giant Monsanto, US Senator Jeff Merkley told Sputnik on Wednesday.
"This [bill] is written by and for Monsanto," Merkley said, encouraging the House of Representatives to "thoroughly" reject the bill when it is brought to a vote later this week.
On July 7, the Senate passed the compromise GMO labeling bill to establish national standards regarding GMO labeling. The standards will give food manufacturers a number of options, including a QR code or toll free number, in labeling products with primary ingredients that are genetically modified.
WASHINGTON, (Sputnik) Consumers in the United States are put at a disadvantage by the genetically modified organism (GMO) labeling bill passed by the US Senate and pending approval in the House of Representatives, US Senator Jon Tester told Sputnik on Wednesday.
"I think it is a denial of the consumers right to know," Tester said of the GMO law, which he voted against.
Under the legislation, the US federal government would establish national standards on labeling genetically modified foods. The labeling standards will give food manufacturers options to indirectly label GMO products using a QR code or toll free number.
Radio Sputniks Loud & Clear speaks with Stewart Alexander, the 2012 candidate for the Socialist Party USA and Jane Cutter, an activist with the ANSWER Coalition (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) in Seattle.
In May, Sanders appointed a group of activists and intellectuals to propose progressive amendments and additions to the Democratic Party platform.
Cutter said that a number of critical planks were rejected by the platform committee. "One of them was the $15 an hour minimum wage, which was adopted. However, Rep. Keith Ellison also suggested that $15 minimum wage be indexed to grow over time so that it would truly be more of livable wage. And that was voted down." She added that, "A very important demand by Bill McKibben, one of the most prominent environmentalists in the world today, attempted to put in language on a carbon tax, which is a very well-respected reform to reduce emissions, and a national moratorium on fracking. But both of those proposals were rejected. Similarly, Doctor James Zogby proposed they add a line on ending the occupation in Palestine and called to rebuild Gaza, and this was voted down by the majority Hillary Clinton supporters. Thats just a fraction of the things the Sanders people brought there that were voted down."
Moscow cancelled the travel ban and a number of restrictions for Turkish businessmen. The two countries also agreed to work together on a number of issues, including Syria.
During the interview, Cevikoz referred to "a wide array of painful issues" related to Turkey's policy on the Eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East.
"In this vein, the diplomatic steps toward normalizing ties with Israel and Russia are of great importance. If Ankara continues to bolster these ties, it will help eliminate a number of factors that damage Turkey's regional position and the situation in the Middle East and the Eastern Mediterranean on the whole," he said.
Cevikoz specifically stressed the significance of Turkey resuscitating ties with Russia, whose international clout he said should be reckoned with.
He touted Russia as "Turkey's current neighbor, not only in the Black Sea but also in the south, in view of its strong position in Syria, where Russia took part in the anti-terrorist operation and support of President Bashar Assad."
"Given all this, it is necessary to emphasize the positive aspect of Turkey's normalization of relations with Russia in terms of ensuring stability in the region. I hope that a similar process will also be launched in Turkey's ties with Egypt and Syria," he said.
He also urged Turkey to change its "biased foreign policy" on the Middle East, which Ankara has pursued in recent years. According to him, Turkey is still seen as a country which is building its policy on an ideological basis.
"In order to eradicate this view, Turkey needs to prove once again its impartiality and ability to maintain relations with all international players so as to resolve conflicts," Cevikoz said.
An intrepid Argentinian researcher who specializes in alien life forms has found what he claims is a UFO in the Pacific Ocean, off the coast of Mexico.
Marcelo Irazusta, a ufologist with several discoveries to his name, found his latest unidentified object using Google Earth. In footage of the discovery uploaded to Youtube, it is described as 5.5 km in length, with an appearance similar to that of a plane.
Irazusta has declared that the object is a "UFO underwater," though other ufologists are not so sure that the photograph shows a formerly flying object.
ASTANA (Sputnik)The foreign ministers of five littoral countries of the Caspian Sea, namely Russia, Azerbaijan, Iran, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan, gathered in Kazakh capital of Astana to participate in the meeting chaired by Kazakh Foreign Minister Erlan Idrissov.
"Recognizing the key aspect security, transparency, the use of the sea for peaceful purposes, the rejection of arms race, a guarantee for not using military force, the joint struggle against threats, as well as agreements reached in Astrakhan summit on the rejection of military force by third parties this is what will ensure peace and stability in the region," Zarif said during the meeting in Astana.
Earlier in the day, the Kazakh Foreign Ministry said that the meeting is aimed at discussing a draft convention on the legal status of the Caspian Sea.
BEIJING (Sputnik) According to the customs statistics, exports from China to Russia increased by 10 percent to $16.1 billion, while imports dropped by 5.4 percent to $15.6 billion.
Year-on-year trade between the countries fell by 28.6 percent to $68.06 billion in 2015. In March, Russias trade envoy to China told Sputnik he expected bilateral trade between the two neighboring nations to recover from the slide in 2015 and grow this year.
Chinas total trade fell in 2015 as the yuan lost value and the countrys economic growth slowed to its lowest rate in over 25 years, prompting the national government to announce economic reforms.
BRUSSELS (Sputnik) The European Commission has decided to continue its negotiations with the United States and Canada in order to achieve visa lifting for several EU member states, EU Migration Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos said Wednesday.
"In the past three months, we have intensified contacts with the US and Canada to push for full visa waiver reciprocity. On Monday, I hosted talks with Ministers from Canada, Bulgaria and Romania. What these talks confirmed is a clear perspective of progress in coming months," Avramopoulos said in a statement.
While negotiating with the United States on the issue, it is important to take into account the upcoming presidential elections in the country, the EU commissioner noted.
MOSCOW (Sputnik) In December 2013, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish then Prime Minister and incumbent President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced their plans to boost bilateral trade to $100 billion from about $33 billion in 2013 . The goal has been repeatedly reconfirmed before the deterioration of bilateral relations in 2015.
"Of course, yes. It is impossible to abandon this goal," Zeybekci said, answering a question about the relevance of the plans to boost trade turnover with Russia to $100 billion.
He added that it was necessary to mend ties with Moscow and to fix the inflicted damage in the bilateral relations.
In this regard, the July 13 session of the Russia-NATO Council in Brussels could clarify the alliance's policy on cooperation with Moscow, according to Andrey Kortunov.
"This meeting will be held because apart from the declared strategy of deterrence, NATO will hopefully show its declared willingness to maintain a dialogue. In this sense, experts and politicians wonder whether this dialogue will be developed during the Brussels gathering," he said.
He added that given the current deep differences between NATO and Russia, "the very fact of the development of a bilateral dialogue will mean progress."
For his part, Norbert Rottgen, head of the German parliament's Foreign Policy Committee, said in an interview with Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland that the meeting of the Russia NATO Council should be used in order to convince Moscow of the alliance's non-aggressive position, according to Deutsche Welle.
According to him, "NATO should seize this opportunity so as to directly communicate with the Russian side and elaborate on the decisions taken in Warsaw."
Earlier, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that during a Russia-NATO Council meeting, Moscow expects a detailed explanation from the representatives of NATO on plans for the alliance's expansion.
Two of the key representatives behind the campaign to block the sale, Jeb Hensarling and Peter Roskam, made the astonishing claim that supplying passenger planes to Iran is "weaponizing the Iranian regime."
Mojtaba Jalalzadeh, lecturer in international politics at Tehran's Azad University, told Sputnik Persian that the legislation is a betrayal of last year's nuclear deal.
"That (nuclear) agreement is important because it enshrines the rights of all states to conclude trade agreements with Iran. This bill means a ban on the sale of Boeing aircraft to Iran, and therefore it strikes at the heart of the trust and cooperation that helped to conclude the JCPOA," Jalalzadeh said.
Jalalzadeh warns that the legislation, which has yet to be voted on by the US Senate or signed into force by the US President, puts the whole nuclear deal into question.
"If Iran doesn't receive what is stipulated in the contract with Boeing, then that calls the JCPOA into question. It means that there can't be any kind economic cooperation with the US."
"It seems that the Iranophobia that the US continues to spread across the world is turning into economic reality. This, in turn, prevents Iran from getting economic benefits from the JCPOA, because international banks and economic organizations are afraid to invest in Iran. All this, of course, closes the door to the international market for Iran."
"When planning the implementation of its missile defense program in South Korea, the US proceeded from its globalist schemes related to Russia and China, namely, Washington wanted to undermine the nuclear deterrence of these two countries. And North Korea just became a plausible pretext to justify the THAAD deployment," he said.
He added that even if there was no North Korea, the Americans would have come up with something else, something that Zhebin said has clearly been confirmed by the example of Europe.
"Washington had repeatedly cited the Iranian nuclear issue to justify the deployment of elements of the US missile shield in Europe. Even after the Iranian nuclear dossier was finally closed, Americans continued to implement their plans. In Asia, they will also follow suit regardless of North Korea's actions," he said.
Zhebin also said that Russia currently remains on the horns of a dilemma related to either retain a nuclear North Korea known to be a buffer for US geopolitical ambitions in the region or have the US forces with nuclear weapons and missile defense system on Russia's borders in the East, the Far East, the Chinese-Korean border and the Korean-Russian border.
In this regard, the first option is certainly the best one in terms of Russia's security, according to Zhebin.
Thirty five people were killed during the Domodedovo attack, over 100 others inside Moscows Domodedovo Airport injured, the US State Department said in a press release.
"Byutukaev is the leader for Chechnya of the Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT) the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant-Caucasus ProvinceHe was responsible for directing numerous deadly suicide bombing operations, including the January 2011 attack at the crowded international arrivals hall of Moscows Domodedovo Airport," the release noted on Wednesday.
YEKATERINBURG (Sputnik) The ties between Moscow and Beijing are developing independently of the anti-Russian sanctions imposed by the United States and the European Union, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said on Wednesday.
"Were there no sanctions, we would have cooperated more actively, however, it would be wrong to believe that sanctions are a barrier or a trigger for the development of relations with China," Rogozin said, as he attended the annual Innoprom industrial trade fair in Yekaterinburg.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik) The international community should refrain from competitive devaluation of currencies because the global economy remains weak, US Secretary of the Treasury Jacob Lew said on Wednesday at a joint press conference with European Commission Vice-President Valdis Dombrovskis.
"Given current weaknesses in the global economy, it is also important to maintain our focus on the recommitment made at the last G-20 to consult closely with one another on exchange rate policy, and to refrain from competitive devaluation," Lew stated.
The Treasury secretary noted that the next meeting of G-20 finance ministers and central bank governors should be used as an opportunity to promote global growth.
MOSCOW (Sputnik) Oil prices fell over 4 percent on Wednesday following news of a slower draw from oil stocks in the United States.
Brent crude ICE futures fell from over $47.80 per barrel to $46.19 per barrel in late afternoon trading before recovering slightly to around $41.30 per barrel. WTI crude also fell over 4 percent, falling from nearly $46.60 per barrel to $44.78 per barrel.
Brent September futures were down over 4.5 percent, and are trading at around $46.25 per barrel.
MOSCOW (Sputnik) The Broadcasting Board of Governors is the US federal agency that oversees Voice of America, Radio Free Europe and other government broadcasters, which, in Moscow's view, conduct active anti-Russian propaganda.
"US citizen Jeffry Shell was denied entry to Russia upon arrival to a Moscow airport on July 12. Shell is the chairman of the US Broadcasting Board of Governors," the ministry said in a statement.
"Shell has been recently put on the 'black list' expanded by Moscow in response to visa restrictions against Russian citizens imposed by Washington under far-fetched pretext," the statement said.
Stretch rallies are always exciting. They are certainly exciting when a closer erases a 15-length disadvantage in the homestretch to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.
Minnesota-sired two-year-olds were in the spotlight on Tuesday, July 12 at Running Aces.
WhatitdoBabyBoo (by Voracious Hanover) put in a huge effort to win her $7,500 two-year-old Minnesota Fillies pace. She had made an early break in the mile and another at the three-quarters pole, but she stormed by the entire field in the homestretch to post a one and a quarter-length win in 2:01.3. Steve Wiseman was in the sulky for owners The Van Otterloo Stables and trainer David Flynn. WhatitdoBabyBoo paid $8.80 to win after having made up 15 lengths in the stretch.
Three geldings, two fillies and one colt faced the starting gate in another state-sired event. Simply put, he fillies dominated the contest. Imapixieatmidnight (by SOS Lunar Eclipse) rushed out to a big early lead for Driver Nick Roland and diced the fractions in :30, 1:01.4 and 1:32.1.
Imapixieatmidnight was then challenged by pocket-sitter, Silent Dreams (by Money Talks), who had Dean Magee at the controls. Silent Dreams then pulled away gamely in the homestretch and won by four and a half lengths. Silent Dreams paid $3.00 to win (as the favourite). Imapixieatmidnight was a clear second, while Al Mar FoxyEclipse (who was driven by Adam Hauser) was a distant third.
Silent Dreams 2:03.3 clocking shaved a full five seconds off of her previous lifetime best. She is now a perfect two for two in her career. Silent Dreams is owned by Glen and Jody Wilson and is trained by Brett Ballinger.
DeweyDidDoneGood (by Voracious Hanover) was very sharp in winning his $7,500 two-year-old Minnesota pace for colts and geldings. He drew away from the field after having taken control past the five-eighths pole. He won by four and a quarter lengths in 1:58.1. DeweyDidDoneGood was driven by Dean Magee for owner Richard Davelaar and trainer David Flynn, who had two wins in the two-year-old races on the card. DeweyDidDoneGood paid a solid $18.40 to win.
Drivers Dean Magee and Steve Wiseman both posted driving doubles on the card.
The next card of live racing at Running Aces will head to post at on Saturday night (July 16) at 6:00 p.m. (CDT).
Running Aces will be adding live racing on Wednesdays, starting on July 27, with a 7:00 p.m. first post.
(With files from Running Aces)
Horse racing industry association Ontario Racing is proud to announce that its new executive director is in place.
Rob Cook joins Ontario Racing with a wealth of experience in the leadership of industry associations. With the appointment of Cook, Ontario Racing is continuing to build organizational capacity as they work to represent Ontarios racing industry with a credible and professional voice.
Most recently the CEO of the Ontario Waste Management Association, Cook has also served as president of the Aggregate Producers Association of Ontario.
The policy landscape around horse racing in Ontario is complex, but at the heart of the industry there are elite equine athletes and hardworking professionals, and thats what made this role a compelling opportunity, said Cook.
Horse racing is part of the economic and cultural fabric of Ontario. Im looking forward to playing my part in moving the industry forward to a thriving and sustainable future.
Cook joins Gabrielle Gallant, director of communications and stakeholder relations, and Leslie Campbell, director of finance and administration, on ORs executive team.
Ontario Racing is committed to building new relationships, and new ways of doing things, as they assume responsibility for directing breed improvement programs, setting the racing program and purses, growing the fan base, and interacting with the government and racing enthusiasts.
(Ontario Racing)
Forced Abortion is Illegal in Texas
MEDIA ADVISORY
Contact: Allan E. Parker, The Justice Foundation, 210-614-7157, info@txjf.org
AUSTIN, Texas, July 12, 2016 /Standard Newswire/ -- A press conference will be held on Wednesday, July 13, 2016, 1:30 pm. at The Senate Press Conference Room 2E.9 at the Texas Capitol in Austin, Texas to provide further details on The Justice Foundations awareness campaign to help prevent forced abortions.
The following will be present:
State Representative Molly White
Women Forced to Have Abortions
Allan Parker, Esq., President of The Justice Foundation
Pregnancy Resource Center Directors
The Justice Foundation (TJF) is pleased to announce a new campaign to make everyone aware that forced abortion is illegal in Texas. Coercion, duress, force, violence or threats of violence are unlawful. TJF will be offering free training to police officers, child protective services, and social workers across the state.
Regardless of one's position on abortion, everyone agrees that it is unjust and unlawful to force a pregnant woman to have an abortion against her will. However, most Texans, including law enforcement, don't know this, especially when it concerns minor girls being forced to have an unwanted abortion by their parents. The law is clear and violators can be prosecuted.
There are three common types of forced abortion in Texas.
ALL ARE ILLEGAL
Adult parents forcing, coercing or using duress against a minor teenage daughter to have an abortion
The father of the child forcing his spouse or partner to abort
Human trafficking or prostitution where the pimp forces the woman to abort
Because the law against forced abortions in Texas is not well known, The Justice Foundation is offering free training to police departments and child protective service offices throughout the State on the subject of forced abortion. TJF thanks Attorney General Ken Paxton for expressing his "gratitude to The Justice Foundation for their tireless work on a difficult problem known as forced or coerced abortions. Through their Center Against Forced Abortions they are making it possible for more women to know their rights regarding their ability to protect themselves and their unborn children."
Many teenage daughters and adult women are forced to have an abortion. Lovette says, "My forced abortion left me confused about the value of life. I became suicidal, subsequently had a second abortion and it seriously affected my relationship with my mother." That is why this education campaign is so important.
"According to one published study, sixty-four percent of American women who had abortions felt forced or unduly pressured by someone else to have an unwanted abortion. This must end. I am proud to work alongside The Justice Foundation in their efforts to educate law enforcement about their role in intervening in these situations," said Texas State Representative Molly S. White.
Everyone in Texas needs to know! Abortion is only legal with the voluntary, fully informed consent of the woman. If someone else's will is being imposed on the woman, it is an illegal abortion. It is illegal to force, coerce, use duress or violence to force a woman to have an abortion.
If you have any questions, please contact The Justice Foundation at (210) 614-7157 or visit our website at www.txjf.org/cafa to view the Dear Parent Letter and Dear Father Letter. We look forward to seeing you at the press conference. The Dear Parent Letter is estimated to save at least 1,000 children's lives annually.
Domestic partner violence is a serious issue and can often include coercion, force or duress to have an abortion. Myra Myers says, "As a married woman with children, the fear of abandonment overwhelmed me as I felt verbally and emotionally pushed by my husband to abortion, the only choice."
Contact: Troy Newman, President, 316-683-6790 ext 111; Cheryl Sullenger, Senior Vice President, 316-516-3034; both with Operation Rescue, info.operationrescue@gmail.com
CLEVELAND, Ohio, July 13, 2016 /Standard Newswire/ -- The Republican Party Platform Committee adopted draft language on Tuesday that supports defunding Planned Parenthood and extending the Constitutional "right to life" to pre-born babies.
Troy Newman, President of Operation Rescue, in currently in Cleveland with #OperationRNC, which is a campaign led by Created Equal to ensure the GOP party platform remains pro-life. Newman also served as a founding board member of the Center for Medical Progress, the group that released undercover videos last year showing Planned Parenthood officials haggling over the price of aborted baby parts.
"We are celebrating today on the streets of Cleveland. We got everything we have asked for in the party platform," said Newman. "This shows that the pro-life movement is strong, influential, and here to stay until abortion is banned permanently."
The adopted draft language states:
The Constitution's guarantee that no one can be deprived of life, liberty, or property deliberately echoes the Declaration of Independence's proclamation that "all" are "endowed by their Creator" with the right to life. Accordingly, we assert the sanctity of human life and affirm that the unborn child has a fundamental right to life which cannot be infringed.
We support a human life amendment to the Constitution and legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment's protections apply to children before birth. We oppose the use of public funds to perform or promote abortion or to fund organizations, like Planned Parenthood, that perform or advocate it and will not fund or subsidize health care which includes abortion coverage.
#OperationRNC also plans to fly an aerial tow banner over Cleveland today depicting a 15-week abortion juxtaposed to the words "Rescue Unborn Children." See the airborne banner HERE.
Newman had joined #OperationRNC leaders Mark Harrington, National Director of Created Equal, and Rev. Patrick Mahoney, Director of the Christian Defense Coalition, in Cleveland last month for a statewide tour of Ohio calling for the GOP platform to support the defunding of Planned Parenthood.
About Operation Rescue
Operation Rescue is one of the leading pro-life Christian activist organizations in the nation and has become a strong voice for the pro-life movement in America. Click here to support Operation Rescue.
Longview may soon impose a car tab fee for vehicle owners to help fund transportation projects.
The council members at a regular meeting Thursday will vote on whether to propose a Transportation Benefit District, which would require a seven-step process beginning with a public hearing. The new district would likely mean a $20 vehicle registration fee that funds local transportation projects in the city.
City Manager Dave Campbell said more than 80 cities or counties across the state have implemented a TBDs including Kelso, Kalama and Castle Rock. But he said its not a popular decision.
It takes a while to say, OK, weve gotten enough feedback from people. Maybe our situation is bad enough for us to have a serious discussion about that now, Campbell said. It takes a while for that kind of consensus to develop.
A three-member council subcommittee of Mike Wallin, Chet Makinster and Steve Moon identified $4.4 million worth of priority one street improvement projects earlier this year. They also recommended an additional street crew.
The city currently only has $610,000 in its budget for road repairs, and a 2011 city study recommended Longview spend at least $2.8 million annually on street maintenance.
The city also has a public safety fund. After feedback from citizens, council members said they preferred using the leftover funds specifically for school zones.
The City Council will also vote on using $93,000 of the fund for 28th Avenue sidewalk improvements around Olympic Elementary, Monticello Middle and R.A. Long High schools. The city is applying for a state grant that would allow Longview to repair sidewalks and install ADA ramps.
The council meeting will be held at 7 p.m. Thursday at Longview City Hall.
About 10,000 bike riders on the annual Seattle-to-Portland (STP) bike ride will coast through Cowlitz and Columbia counties Saturday and Sunday, and officials are encouraging drivers to be prepared for delays at the usual choke points.
STP will ride these local roads en route to Portland on both Saturday and Sunday: County roads from Napavine to Winlock and Vader; State Route 506 in Vader; SR 411 from Vader to Longview; SR 432 (Industrial Way) through the Longview industrial area; SR 433 (Lewis and Clark Bridge); and U.S. Highway 30 from Rainier to Portland.
Based on previous experience, the ride will likely cause delays Sunday morning from Castle Rock to Longview and all day Sunday at the Washington side of the Lewis and Clark Bridge.
Drivers on Industrial Way may be delayed as much as 20 minutes from 8:30 to 2:30 p.m., according to the Washington State Department of Transportation. On Sunday, state troopers will stop southbound drivers so the Gold Wing motorcycle club members can escort riders across the Lewis and Clark Bridge.
Riders crossing the bridge on Saturday will not have a bridge escort and will have to ride with vehicular traffic.
Sheldon Pinto
Qualcomm just announced its Snapdragon 821 chipset for mobile devices and PC and smartphone maker Asus also made an announcement that it would adopt the same. Yes, Asus plans to launch a Qualcomm Snapdragon 821-powered Zenfone 3 Deluxe. And this also gives Asus the bragging rights of introducing the world's first smartphone with a beefed-up Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 chipset as well.
No, the Snapdragon 821 will not be another variant of the Zenfone 3 Deluxe. Asus announced at an event that it plans to upgrade the chipset from the earlier announced 820 to the top of the line 821 for the Zenfone 3 Deluxe in general. The Deluxe will also be the company's first step into the premium smartphone segment as the device will not come cheap. Cnet reports that smartphone will launch in just one variant priced at $780 (approximately Rs 52,000) which sure sounds pricey for an Asus-branded smartphone. As for the rest of the range which was earlier announced at Computex, they will be available in 6GB RAM (with 64GB storage) or 3GB RAM (32GB storage) variants. This would include the Zenfone 3 and the Zenfone 3 Ultra which will stick to the Snapdragon 820 chipset.
The Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 is a slight upgrade over the 820, in the sense that it runs a quad-core setup clocked at 2.4GHz. Out of the four Kyro cores, two will be clocked at 2.4GHz, which will be the performance cluster whereas the power cluster will have two Kyro cores clocked above 2GHz.
However, all of this indeed seems beneficial to Asus. Like Xiaomi, Asus too is a relatively new player in the smartphone industry and has been smartly launching value for money smartphones in India. With the brand image that covers many segments it was high time that PC maker, would want to sink its teeth into premium smartphone segment. And with the Zenfone 3 announcement it did just that. Back at Computex, there were already plenty of flagship smartphones readily available with Snapdragon 820 silicon inside, so it was not a big deal. Add the Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 to this equation and you get well packaged smartphone that comes from a well-known brand in the world of consumer electronics, which makes for an interesting buy.
Asus' only premium priced smartphone in India was the Zenfone Zoom. I reviewed the camera focused smartphone and it made for a great camera when used in the Pro Mode. It was priced at Rs 37,999 and even though it was priced high, it had something really unique in the form of an optical zoom lens. It did not protrude, but was squeezed in vertically making it the only camera smartphone offering with an optical lens that was this slim (for the category).
(Also Read: Xiaomis desperation to grasp marketshare could also cost it dear)
The reason why I feel this may work out well for Asus, is because it is an established brand. They build quality gaming PCs, laptops and other devices as well. At Computex, the Taiwanese company even demoed its Zenbo robot which shows that the brand is interested in getting into your living room as well. So with all this brand value already available, it does sound like a good time to jump on to the flagship smartphone bandwagon. And thanks to Qualcomm's announcement which comes months after the MWC 2016 and all the major flagship announcements that came with it, Asus could pick up a its very own slice of the flagship smartphone pie, provided it acts quickly.
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Tesla Motors Inc Chief Executive Elon Musk said the electric car maker has no plans to disable its Autopilot feature in the wake of a fatal accident in which the driver of a Model S car was using the technology, the Wall Street Journal reported. The company, in fact, is planning an explanatory blog post to educate customers on how the feature works, the newspaper reported on Tuesday.
"A lot of people don't understand what it is and how you turn it on," Musk told the Journal in an interview. The company came under regulators' scrutiny after a fatal car crash on May 7 that killed a Model S car owner who was operating it in autopilot mode. In a recent move, the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration sent the company a letter, seeking details of all design changes and updates to Autopilot since it went into use last year.
This comes right after Tesla was implicated in the third crash in so many weeks. Tesla is under probe for the safety that the car provides and basic road safety provided by the feature. Tesla was not immediately available to comment.
Reuters
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The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has drilled holes in a formula government uses to calculate annual spectrum charges payable by mobile phone operators and suggested using value generated by use of the airwaves to be included in the basis for computing levies. It has said that formula in practice may have a significant impact on the revenue payable to the government.
Telecom regulator TRAI identified complications in adopting flat spectrum rate recommended by it earlier but still batted for it to make process simple and transparent in future.
"The over-all SUC rate arrived at by the weighted average formula is also impacted by SUC rate fixed for each band...This may have a significant impact on the overall spectrum usage charge that is payable to the Government," TRAI said in its reply to reference sought by the Department of Telecom. The Cabinet last month approved spectrum auction rules except spectrum usage charges (SUC) recommended by the inter-ministerial panel Telecom Commission. The Cabinet asked telecom ministry to seek Trai's view on SUC before it approves the rule.
According to TRAI, the government considers only quantum of spectrum held by a telecom operator to calculate spectrum usage charge but this may not give correct value as intended under the concept of collecting this charge."While quantum of spectrum will certainly be a factor in any weighted average formula, this may not be the sole factor to estimate the revenue from a given band. It is widely accepted that currently some spectrum bands generate greater revenue than others even if the holding is smaller than in other bands," the telecom regulator said.
It has suggested DoT to take into account benefit that a spectrum band delivers and bid price of the airwaves can be used as one of the factor to determine a close value for calculating spectrum usage charges. A DoT committee has said that it is not possible to segregate revenue that a telecom operator earns from a particular band as various bands can be clubbed to deliver 3G or 4G mobile services. The telecom department (DoT) fixes percentage of amount that it will charge from revenue telecom operators earn by providing services. The percentage was earlier fixed based on slab rate ranging between 3-8 per cent of telecom services revenue while exact percentage was levied based on spectrum holding of the firm.
The government, in January 2014, decided to cap SUC at a flat 5 per cent for spectrum that was to be procured in the future auctions. The government imposed weighted average formula on companies holding spectrum allocated in past and buying spectrum in future. Moving towards lower or flat spectrum regime, the telecom ministry proposed 3 per cent SUC rates from upcoming auction and weighted average for companies holding old spectrum.TRAI said that DoT has neither sought the opinion or recommendation of TRAI on this matter in the past nor has there been any consultation on it.
The regulator has said that the method suggested by it will give only approximate revenue and it is only a temporary solution. TRAI reiterated that "all possible steps should be considered by the DoT to move to a simple, transparent and flat ad valorem SUC regime in accordance with law". TRAI had recommended SUC at a uniform rate of 3 per cent across the industry and gradually bringing it down to 1 per cent of revenues from telecom services. The SUC has been a highly contentious issue of late with the industry. Reliance Jio has opposed levying of uniform SUC rates, as suggested by TRAI, as it pays only 1 per cent on its spectrum in 2300 Mhz band (broadband wireless access).
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had said that the Telecom Commission took the opinion of Attorney General on SUC after recommendation of TRAI was received and hence there was need to consult the regulator again before a final call was taken. The regulator said that DoT has never sought the opinion or recommendation of Trai on this matter in the past nor has there been any consultation on it.
"While the optimal solution in the view of the Authority is to move to a flat rate regime, we are constrained to limit ourselves to examine the weighted average solution as suggested by Ld. AG (Attorney General) and proposed by DoT," TRAI said. Before 2010, there was only 2G spectrum and hence the calculation of revenue was easy. But the process became complex after new frequencies were allocated to companies for services like 3G and 4G.
PTI
Kunal Khullar
A typical smartphone owner keeps his/her handset in a case or probably has a screen protector or even a tempered glass. We love our devices thus, we keep them protected and even though I personally dont like ruining the slim design of my Nexus 6P, I use a case occasionally so that I don't add scuffs or dents to the body.
But what about protection from water, especially if you stay in a city like Mumbai, where dodging the rains is not an option. A case will protect it, unless you have one which is waterproof and covers the entire smartphone, but who wants that?
Before we go ahead, let us tell you the main difference between waterproof and water resistant. If a smartphone OEM tells you that their smartphone is waterproof, it means that it can be submerged in water, however a water resistant smartphone would only be able take a few splashes or maybe survive under light rain.
Waterproofing in smartphones has been around for a few years now and probably the only name that comes to my mind is Sony. The company had waterproof smartphones even when it had a joint venture with Ericsson back in 2011-2012 and continued making smartphones that could withstand water even after it split from the Swedish company. It wasn't until recently, that Sony decided to limit the feature only for its top of the line flagship, the Xperia X Performance. The company says that consumer arent attracted to this feature anymore. Really now? Motorola identified this as an oppurtunity and has started making some phones that can take on a few spills. Even Samsung for that matter made their latest flagship, the Galaxy S7, waterproof.
I went out and asked smartphone users between the age group of 18-35 years whether they would consider waterproofing as a crucial feature if and when they plan on buying a smartphone. Almost 75 per cent of them said that it isn't a crucial feature that they would want, but would definitely like to see it in smartphones priced at and above Rs 15,000.
Easier said than done, adding waterproof coating to a smartphone is not very cost effective as explained by Xiaomis founder, Lei Jun. He says that there are two main reasons why Xiaomi doesn't offer this feature:
If water resistance was added to the product(s) the price would increase roughly 20-30 percent above what Xiaomi devices cost now Ensuring water resistance requires that the handsets themselves are not damaged or compromised in any way
He also said that the company understands what their customers want and that they are considering adding waterproofing if consumers are ready to pay the extra cash needed to add the feature.
So how does a smartphone become waterproof? It involves a special process where a nano-coating is applied on to the smartphone. A vacuum sucks all the air from inside and outside of the device which is replaced with a gas that settles down and binds itself to the device's surfaces and circuits forming a nano-coated layer which is usually made out of super-hydrophobic particles to repel water. This process is either done by the manufacturer or can be done by a third party or aftermarket vendor.
To maintain a standard, the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) takes charge to check if a smartphone can withstand water-related damage. The IEC has defined a set of IP (International Protection) codes which include two digits, for instance the Moto G Turbo edition comes with an IP67 rating. The first digit which is 5 or a 6 usually denotes the phones dust-proofing ability while the second digit denotes the ability to protect itself from water. Smartphones with an IPx7 rating is common and means that it can be dunked in water of up to 1 meter while IPx8 rated devices can go up to 3 meters. Of course they shouldn't be kept there for a long period - 30 mins tops. The tests are for fresh water only and not for any other liquids. The IEC also claims that the tests only suggest whether these smartphones can survive a quick dip in water, they do not suggest if they will be functional while they are submerged.
I think all smartphones should come with a waterproof coating, well at least all the high-end flagships. Every other smartphone features Gorilla Glass protection, similarly a nano-coating should become a norm for all smartphones to give customers a peace of mind. Hopefully the coming years will bring this change.
Dozens dead in air strike on camp for displaced Syrians
Syrian refugees stuck at the Jordanian-Syrian border wait to cross into Jordan in Hadalat.
Al Jazeera News :Air strikes on a camp for Syrian refugees near the country's border with Jordan have killed at least 17 people and wounded at least 40.It is unclear if the strikes on Tuesday at Hadalat, a makeshift camp for internally displaced people in Syria's southern desert, were carried out by Syrian or Russian warplanes.However, a senior Western diplomat confirmed the incident to Reuters news agency and said initial information was that several Russian jets conducted the raids.Activists said that the camp was targeted because some people there have family members who belong to Asoud Al-Sharqiya, a US-backed rebel group operating out of Jordan.Jordanian soldiers killed in Syria border bomb attackThe desolate strip, close to where the borders of Iraq, Syria and Jordan meet, has two major camps with a population of at least 60,000 people who have been stranded there since fleeing central and eastern Syria.Jordanian authorities bar their entry into the country on security grounds.The kingdom declared its border area a closed military zone after a suicide bomber, believed to be from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant group (ISIL, also known as ISIS), last month drove from the Syrian side near one of the two camps and rammed the vehicle into a Jordanian military base, killing seven border guards.The refugees have been running out of food since the Jordanian army sealed the area, international relief workers and refugees said last month.
Panic over elephant attack grips Rangamati people
Rangamati Correspondent :
Panic has gripped people here because of increase in attacks by wild elephants on them and their properties at an alarming rate. Nobody knows when and where the elephants would start invading and attacking.
Earlier the elephants would conduct their atrocities at night, but now they are doing the same on daytime. As a result, people are in constant fear of losing their lives and other assets. Locals informed that the atrocity of the elephants is mostly found at Naval Base, Jibtali Army Cantonment, Sailors' Colony, Forest Colony, Bangladesh Forest Industries Development Corporation (BFIDC) Rest House, Ram Pahar, Kaptai Project Brickfield, Kaptai Lake exit point, Arachhari in Chitmaram, Dongnala in Raikhali union and other areas.
Kaptai Police Station sources said, one Sanatan Chakma Dukhu, 40, was trampled and killed by wild elephants at Bangchhari of the upazila at 9pm on June 19 last. On the other hand, Deputy Forest Officer (DFO) of Kaptai Pulpwood Forest Division A N M Abdul Wadud said, one Hla Thoai Prue Marma, 45, was killed by wild elephants at Dongnala area under Raikhali union in the upazila on the same day.
These two deaths have increased the worries of the locals.
Commander of BNS Shaheed Moazzem Captain S M Moniruzzaman said, "The wild elephant attack has reached an intolerable state. Some days ago, they attacked the Captain's House and Parade Ground, and destroyed electric poles, gas pipelines, and water supply lines. Moreover, they devoured jackfruits from hundreds of trees recently. We remain in constant fear of elephant attack all the time."
Nur Mohammad of Kaptai Forest Colony said, "Several days ago, four elephants entered the colony in the evening. They devoured banana trees, jackfruits and vegetation.
DFO A N M Abdul Wadud visited the spot at 10pm and ordered Assistant Conservator of Forests (ACF) Abu Musa Shamsul Muhit Chowdhury to take necessary steps in this connection. Following this, two forest guards were sent at 11pm. As they fired blank shots, the elephants fled away. Everybody thought that they would not come, but they again invaded and stayed at the colony the whole night."
DFO Abdul Wadud said, "There is no effective method to drive away elephants. But, following administrative permission, wired electric fences can be installed that will drive away the elephants after they come in touch of the live electric wires and get electric shocks. But, it is not also the permanent solution." While asked about the wild elephant attack in localities, some forest officials said, "Wild elephants never come to localities rather human beings are paving their way since the habitation of the animals are becoming extinct following rapid construction of households and destruction of forests. Earlier, there were abundant wild banana trees inside jungles, but now as those trees have reduced, the elephants are invading the localities in large scale."
Meanwhile, plying of vehicles has turned unsafe on the Rangamati-Kaptai new road as wild elephant herds invade the road in the evening regularly, informed drivers of different vehicles plying through the road.
President of Kaptai Press Club Kazi Mosharraf Hossen said, "Since plying of vehicles has stopped on the Ghagra-Boroichhari rout, vehicles are using the Rangamati-Kaptai new road that has increased the plight of commuters."
IBBL is best performing bank: Forbes
Economic Reporter :
Islami Bank Bangladesh Limited is the largest and most profitable bank, and by all accounts one of the best-performing companies in Bangladesh, according to the prestigious Forbes magazine, according to a press release.
The US-based business magazine has also found that the Islami Bank has tapped into what is called the country's "Two Rs" approach: ready-made garments and remittances from workers abroad.
Helping with industrialisation in a labour-intensive sector has generated employment even as millions of migrant workers send wages back home-either way, new customers to be had, the global magazine added.
Small firms that the bank embraced have remained clients as they grow and go into other sectors like steel and power. It notably pushes to help women entrepreneurs, the Forbes said in its article titled 'Islami Bank: Bangladesh's Most-Watched Bankers,' published in July 2016 issue.
Since its inception in 1983 it has grown threefold every five years. It has 10.7 million depositors, 27 per cent of Bangladeshi remittances and 23 per cent of the small and medium enterprises market. Assets, at $9.3 billion, make it nearly the size of AlliedBank in Pakistan or Asia Commercial Bank in Vietnam.
IBBL Managing Director & CEO Mohammad Abdul Mannan said, "According to the central bank's observation, this bank is the most compliant bank in the country". Even as it grew, Islami Bank did not venture into businesses that are considered haraam (off-limits), like smoking. The bank finances the import of fertilizers, for instance, but will not finance what's used to grow tobacco, a big crop in Bangladesh, IBBL MD added.
Bangladesh's former central banker Dr. Atiur Rahman said that in his seven-year tenure scrutiny of Islami Bank's operations he never found a direct link to any terrorism-related activities.
Research director of the Center for Policy Dialogue (CPD) Fahmida Khatun said, while most of the 56 banks in the country are plagued by rising nonperforming loans, poor management and operational inefficiency-Islami Bank is one of the few that isn't.
Copyright 2021 New Nation. All Rights Reserved by thedailynewnation.com
Nusrat Faria in Bollywood`s movie
Sheikh Arif Bulbon :Popular Bangladeshi actress Nusrat Faria Mazhar, who is popularly known as Nusraat Faria, has recently been cast for a Mumbai based movie titled Gawah: The Witness. The 21-year-old model cum actress and also a popular TV host, who gained popularity by hosting reality-show Handsome: The Ultimate Man, has talked to The New Nation about her upcoming projects. Sharing her thoughts about recently released a joint venture movie titled Badshah - The Don, she told this correspondent, I am fully satisfied with the success of the movie, Badshah - The Don, which has earned more than other movies as far as I have heard. Viewers reaction was very positive so far. However, we need to wait for the end of the day; after all it is a good time to observe what matters most to the audiences. While giving to her fans thanks Nusrat Faria said, I am glad and thankful to my fans across Bangladesh and India for coming up with inspiring responses. They are communicating with me through various social media platforms and conveying their greetings. I became very happy after some fans from Kolkata said that no other commercial movie can beat Badshah -The Don. The direction by Bangladeshs Abdul Aziz and Baba Jadev from India was, according to her, the turning point in her career so far. I was very worried about the reactions of the viewers before Eid. Tension and nervousness was always working in me. Now I am very relaxed after receiving positive reaction from viewers, said Nusrat Faria. Born on September 8 in 1983, Nusrat Faria started her showbiz career as a TV presenter and radio jockey, before moving on to modeling in several advertisements. She had first signed with Jaaz Multimedia to appear in two films, Aashiqui and Hero 420 in 2015 before signing Badshah - The Don. She was busy promoting her movie, her tiring schedule switching between Kolkata and Dhaka several times. While talking in this regard she said, I arrived in Dhaka on the morning of Eid day. As I was so busy with promoting the movie, I had no time to spend with my family, but after the release I tried to give them enough time.Nusrat Faria informed that she will return to shooting from July 15 for her role in the movie Premi O Premi, which will be directed by Zakir Hossain Raju in Bandarban.
Case hearing against 9 Jessore Razakars ends today
Hearing in the crimes against humanity case against nine alleged Razakars including former Jamaat lawmaker Mawlana Sakhawat Hossain is scheduled to end today as the International Crimes Tribunal (ICT)-1 has set one hour each to prosecution and defence to conclude their part of arguments on the day.
"The defence will get one more hour to conclude their arguments.
The prosecution too will get one hour after that to place their rebuttal," said Justice Anwarul Haque, chairman of the three-member panel of the ICT-1.
On Tuesday, the prosecution concluded their arguments in the case.
The other eight accused in the case are Billal Hossain, Lutfor Morol, Md Ibrahim Hossain, Sheikh Md Mujibur Rahman, Md Abdul Aziz Sarder, Qazi Ohidul Islam alias Wahidur Salam, Md Aziz Sarder and Abdul Khalek Morol. Of these, Lutfor died of cardiac arrest in police custody on May 6, 2016, leaving only Sakhawat and Billal in jail.
A total of 17 prosecution witnesses including investigation officer Abdur Razzak Khan testified against the accused.
The first tribunal on December 23, 2015, indicted the accused framing five charges of crimes against humanity.
Newly appointed Russian Envoy to Bangladesh Mr. Alexander Ignoatov paid a courtesy call on Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina at the latter\'s office on Wednesday. BSS photo
People must unite to defeat terrorism
Anu Mahmud :
Even before we could barely recover from the grue-some terrorist attack at a Spanish Holey Artisn Bakery restaurant in Gulshan that left 20 hostages, mainly foreigners, dead, we are faced with another attack, this time on an Eid congregation, the largest in the country, at Sholakia, Kishoreganj. That the attackers chose Eid day and targeted such a large number of Muslims, reveal their intention to distort Islam which they claim to be defending. The attack is a direct onslaught on peace-loving Muslims. It is laudable that the on duty policemen managed to prevent higher casualties though the attack left two policemen and a woman (housewife) dead.
Apparently this Eid congregation was targeted because of the actions of the Imam who would have led the Eid prayers. He had previously collected signatures from over 100,000 Islamic scholars and declared terrorism and suicide attacks as haram (or forbidden under Islamic law). We urge the government to provide the required protection to the courageous Imam and the other religious leaders who have pledged allegiance to the anti terrorism cause.
It is clear that these terrorists are not upholders of Islam. Rather they are using a perverted interpretation of religion to annihilate anyone they perceive to be their opponent - they could be foreigners, Sufis, people of other faiths, freethinkers and Muslims who do not endorse their death cult. Investigations have revealed that many members of these death squads are well educated and from fairly well to do families. In such a frightening scenario, we must all stand united, forgetting our differences, to fight a common enemy and make our country safe again. This means the public and the police must develop trust and cooperation with each other to identify the radicalised terrorists who are waiting to carry out their next killing spree.
Thousands of worshippers were caught up in Eidday's incident at Sholakia. The violence had reportedly begun at 8.45am when a group of some seven men attacked the outer police cordon just an hour before the prayers were due to begin. Though there was no immediate claim of responsibility by any of the known groups, but the information minister is reported to have said the attack was carried out by domestic militants attempting to topple the government and establish 'strict Islamic law' in the country. We fail to make out of what form of 'strict Islamic law' inspires to attack and inflict terror on a sacred place like a praying ground while killing other Muslims?
This unanticipated brutal act of terror has shaken the country for being the first major attack directed entirely at Muslims. However, it was particularly satisfying to have been informed about the prompt and fitting response of the police to the attacks. Had security measures were not so effective, the damage and number of death might have taken catastrophic proportions.
The day, timing and the venue for the attacks clearly marks the increasing level of audacious and reckless militant attempts on civilian targets. Those who attempt to cause terror in the name of Islam on a holy and auspicious event like the Eid day should not be anyhow perceived as terrorists who needs to be dealt with ruthlessly.
The country is still reeling from the 13-hour siege of the Holey Artisan Bakery in Dhaka on 1 July and the recent attacks on Sholakia praying grounds have just added another growing fear to our terrorism scenario - Muslims or non-Muslims none are spared from the wrath of militants and extremists in Bangladesh.
More daringly, three Bangladeshis have subsequently appeared on a believed to be an ISI's video threatening to continue the attacks by hinting at more dangerous and big-scale attacks. There is no scope to take these threatening frivolously.
Against the backdrop of such an ominous reality the country must collectively unite to deter any scale of terror attacks. We must also immediately pinpoint what are the factors turning our youths to become radicalised and violent. Lastly, we must ensure safety and protection to our law enforcers. The recent number of their killings has appeared alarming.
The tragedy which occurred at the Sholakia Eid congregation is a warning yet once again of the long and arduous battle we must all wage against these terrorists who in the name of Islam are going around spreading fear all across the country. In light of the terror attack in Dhaka's Gulshan over a week ago, that in the face of such concentrated assaults on the nation, indeed on the secular values we uphold in Bangladesh, we all need to come together. Nothing can be a more powerful defence of values than a people willing and ready to beat back every attempt at a undermining of its culture and heritage. It is that spirit which must now come into play, across political difference as we struggle to keep this country sale from the blood-thirsty barbarians who are desperate about appropriating God to themselves.
The unified and united stand we speak of must be accompanied by determined moves on the part of the state and its security apparatus to thwart all attempts by these terrorists to have their way. They have killed two policemen and a housewife in Sholakia. They could well have caused a lot more casualties had they been able to penetrate the prayer grounds. It is to the credit of the law enforcers that even as they took a hit from these criminals, they were able to prevent a bloodbath from occurring on Eid day. We hardly need to remind ourselves of the grave embarrassment we have suffered owing to what has happened in Gulshan. If anything, as citizens and the government have realized, that assault by terrorists which left twenty plus people dead and now this new instance of terrorism in Sholakia only reinforce the need for more stringent measures at creacking down hard and without mercy on the perpetrators of religion-driven crime.
That crackdown must focus not only on nabbing terrorists and destroying their dens but also on a determined and well-organised operation to locate, identify and nab their patrons. There is certainly a huge need to beat back terrorists, but unless we are able to take out their masterminds as ruthlessly as we can.... and here we need not be overly concerned with such ideas as human rights for the merchants of terror---we will be forced to face such situations as those that have occurred in Gulshan and Sholakia again and again. Let there be no illusion that in these moments of grave crises in our courtyard---- these Islamist criminals are no more at our doorstep but have advanced into our courtyard--- we as a nation must unite behind the government as it tries to restore normal life in the country. For its part, the government should make it a point to reach out, indeed to go beyond the politically partisan, to everyone as it seeks to restore the high moral ground on which we as a people have always sought to carry ourselves as citizens.
Now it is clear that even the solemn occasion of Eid is no deterrent as far as terrorist activities of the misguided elements are concerned. The question is whether they are directly linked to the top global terrors outfits. The government has been consistent in its claim that this terrorism is home-grown. But the terrorists' modus operandi does suggest that they are following the way IS or al-Qaeda operates in the Middle East. Now it is to be seen whether the local terrorists are maintaining only ideological connections with the top terror groups, or getting direct support also.
Another development which must not be ignored is that well educated boys from reputable universities have become terrorists. It was evident after the Gulshan carnage, and a student from a big private university is reported to have taken part in the Solakia attack also. So, something is going terribly wrong somewhere as it is not only the madrasas which are producing terrorists. We must look for an altogether new analysis of the socio-economic factors that tend to push young men towards terrorism.
It is now clear that the attackers are not going to relent. So, the pressure on our security and law enforcement agencies is mounting and they need the support of all and sundry to succeed in their mission of wiping out terrorism.
We must not be oblivious of the truth that some countries have already been ruined by terrorist strikes that always take a heavy toll of human lives and property. People must stand united to face the menace which is a threat to our lives, freedom and democracy.
We have a single option today and that is to defeat terrorism, soundly and decisively. This land is too precious in terms of its heritage, its politics and its history to be commandeered by barbarians wielding medieval terror.
(The writer is an Economic analyst, researcher & columnist, e-mail [email protected])
Bangladeshis punished in Singapore: Evidence scanty
A SINGAPORE anti-terrorism court on Tuesday sentenced four expatriate Bangladeshi workers on charge of floating a clandestine party "Islamic State, Bangladesh to topple the government in Dhaka and replace it by an Islamic government". In fact about a dozen were initially arrested in April but most of them were deported in Bangladesh immediately. The four were working in Singapore as semi-skilled workers and were found guilty for frequently meeting in two local parks of the city-state. The verdict has given various terms from 60 months to 24 months to the convicts however not based on carrying out of attack in their host country but for planning such act to be carried out back in Bangladesh. The court said one of the convicts was found possessing Singapore dollar 1360 which was meant for financing terror attacks. Bangladesh is already in big trouble from target killing of individuals to high profile militant attacks putting a scandalous face of the nation to the global community. University educated youths from wealthy families carried out the two recent attacks killing locals and foreign nationals in huge number. In this situation, conviction of four Bangladeshi nationals in Singapore for planning militant attacks back in Bangladesh is adding a sense of more remorse and frustration at all levels. We don't want to be identified as a nation of criminals and militants where the common people are always peace-loving and hard working. Even our expatriate workers are praised in their host countries for their sincerity and devotion to work but the latest developments at home and abroad are highly damaging to our positive image we earned over the years. Our workers in Singapore are praised by their employers but the scandalous involvement of few is making all our workers suspects. But what makes us unhappy however is how meetings by few Bangladeshi workers in Singapore parks may be the significant evidence of planning militant attacks to topple Bangladesh government. It seems to be too simple. Moreover, possession of few hundred dollars is not also convincing evidence of financing terrorism. Convicts may have made confession in fear of being in foreign country. Our embassy officials in Singapore also did not play a strong role. Our government should go for a judicial review of the verdict to recheck whether some innocent poor workers have become prey to unjust manipulation to harm the job opportunities available for our workers in Singapore. It is also important for our existing helpful relations with Singapore. Any Bangladeshi now visits Singapore feels hesitant.
Gulshan attackers target females
Md Joynal Abedin Khan :The attackers were highly emotional to kill females, as they were angry with fashioned girls for dressing code of Islamic dress, physicians of forensic team said.At first they killed at least six girls and then the other hostages, who were males in the Holey Artisan restaurant in the city's Gulshan, they said. They tortured the women to death more than they did in the case of the male persons, according to investigators. They also commented that the attackers took high-power excited drug to commit the brutal attack. The autopsy reports of 20 hostages showed that they were shot dead and slaughtered except two girls, said Dr Sohel Mahmud, Assistant Professor of the Forensic Department at Dhaka Medical College (DMC). A four-member team of forensic experts led by Sohel Mahmud carried out the autopsies at the Combined Military Hospital (CMH) in Dhaka in presence of police, the doctor said. He said that they had found eight bullets in seven bodies.Dr Sohel Mahmud thought that the hostage people were killed at the beginning of the attack, while the attackers were murdered around 7:00am of the following day. They had found wounds inflicted by sharp weapons and shooting in the two bodies, he said. The bullet injury marks were found in the bodies of six militants, the doctor said. "Some of the attackers had their fingers and wrists blown off by bombs," he said. "All the victims were slaughtered with sharp objects like machete. This was done in the murders of some bloggers and publishers," he said. Earlier, police moved the court for permission to carry out medical tests on the dead bodies of the gunmen from the Gulshan cafe. There were two pleas submitted to Metropolitan Magistrate Noor-un-Nabi on Monday.One sought approval for tests on samples of their blood, hair, stool, skin and clothes besides various organs. The other was for profiling their DNA.To confirm the killers' identities, the police want to collect samples necessary from their family members. Sanowar Hossain, additional deputy commissioner of the Counter Terrorism and Transnational Crime unit, said the investigation was underway and the identities would be revealed once it was completed.A case has been filed with Gulshan police station in connection with the attack, and the Counter Terrorism and Transnational Crime unit is investigating it.On July 1, armed attackers entered the restaurant and took some 33 customers hostage at gunpoint. They later killed at least 17 foreigners and three Bangladeshis. Two police officials were also killed in the attack.
In real life, filmmaker Todd Solondz is probably a perfectly sociable man who hangs out at parties, shops at Barnes & Noble and generally gets along well with his fellow man. But on screen the writer-director exudes a cinematic sense of misanthropy topped only by Danish sourpuss Lars von Trier (Nymphomaniac, Antichrist, Melancholia, Dogville, Dancer in the Dark). Solondz films (Welcome to the Dollhouse, Happiness, Storytelling, Palindromes, Life During Wartime) generally center on miserable people trying (and failing) to live their petty, banal lives. Though he frequently injects his films with an uncomfortable and bitter sense of humor, its rarely enough to distract from the cruel and unrelenting realism of his narratives. Unlike John Waters, whose love for weirdos and social misfits shines, saintlike, from every frame of film he shoots, Solondz seems to glare judgmentally at his characters with all the disappointment of Chris Hansen stepping out from behind the hidden camera on To Catch a Predator. This is not to say Solondz isnt a provocative and original storyteller. But hes definitely a filmmaker for select tastes and certain moods.
Solondz latestfinanced by online innovator Amazon Studiosis an arbitrary collection of vignettes centered around the titular, tubular canine as it passes from one luckless owner to another. In hyperlinked anthologies such as Pulp Fiction, Amores Perros or Crash, all the stories are eventually interconnected. But Wiener-Dog is more of a portmanteau film with random short stories smashed end-to-end with little narrative or stylistic connection, other than a singular object in common. (Think The Yellow Rolls-Royce, The Red Violin, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants or, heck, Heavy Metal).
The film starts out on the wrong foot with a dreary little tale of a 9-year-old cancer survivor (Keaton Nigel Cooke) given a stray dachshund by his mean dad (Tracy Letts) and his even meaner mom (Julie Delpy). The dog gets diarrhea and they send it to the vet to be euthanized. Thats about it for that tale. Not even the usually reliable Delpy can save this mean-spirited segment (in which shes forced to deliver an extended monologue about doggy rape). Fortunately, things improve after that.
Solondz latestfinanced by online innovator Amazon Studiosis an arbitrary collection of vignettes centered around the titular, tubular canine as it passes from one luckless owner to another.
Solondz fans are the most receptive audience here for several reasonsnot the least of which is that this film features the return of Solondz most indelible creation, awkward suburban tween Dawn Wiener from 1995s Welcome to the Dollhouse. If youve been paying attention, this marks the third appearance of the hapless Ms. Wiener (sort of). Solondz wildly experimental 2004 film Palindromes started off with Wieners funeral. Ignoring that untimely end, Wiener-Dogs second and most fleshed-out segment finds Dawn (ubiquitous indie muse du jour Greta Gerwig replacing Heather Matarazzo) working as a veterinary assistant. Sensing some sort of kinship, she rescues the doomed dog and takes it home with her. In short order she crosses paths with her former high school tormenter Brandon McCarthy (Kieran Culkin subbing for Brendan Sexton III). On a whim she agrees to accompany the now-directionless loner on a cross-country road trip. The story crosses oddball images (hitchhiking mariachis) with some more emotional elements (Brandons developmentally disabled brother) for what feels like a complete, if curious, tale about belated connection and understanding. Its not a bad capper to Dawns story, really, and represents the one glimmer of hope in this increasingly bleak journey.
Next up is Danny DeVito, who stops by as a sad sack film professor rapidly losing his ability to coast on that one screenplay he wrote 19 years ago. Despite his aura of world-weariness and desperation, he clings to the ridiculous belief that he can still score big in Hollywood. DeVitos always been great playing marginalized characters like this, and Solondz gets in plenty of very funny digs at the alternate vapidity and pretension of the film industry. Unfortunately, the story kind of fizzles out without giving DeVito the cathartic or comedic payoff he deserves.
Things wrap up well at least with the always excellent Ellen Burstyn snarling her way though the role of a cranky old New Jersey nana whose flaky granddaughter (Zosia Mamet) shows up to pay a visit (and to beg for money). The segment features the films most poetic and inventive twistwhich causes nana to confront the life (or lives) she could have led. More inventiveness like this would certainly have given Wiener-Dog more of a punch.
As it is, the film is a very mixed bag. The tone wanders all over the map. (At one point, were treated to a goofy, musical intermission written by Grammy-, Emmy- and Tony-winning composer Marc Shaiman.) Despite serving as both the title and the sole connective tissue, our stray dachshund doesnt have much impact positively or negatively on the lives of its string of dysfunctional owners. The humor is occasionally biting, but its mostly just uncomfortable. And the drama is positively morose. Its the kind of thing youd get if Woody Allen became suicidally depressed and moved to suburban New Jersey. Lifes a bitch, and then you die, Solondz seems to be telling us, blithely unconcerned whether we side with his sunless outlook or not.
Waste-flowing points must be plugged
UNB, Dhaka :Industrial waste flow through three major points other than Hazaibagh one, need to be plugged to save the Buriganga River, the lifeline of the capital, since the relocation of Hazaribagh tanneries will help improve only 15-20 percent of the river's water quality, said experts.Industrial effluents are now dumped into the Buriganga through four major points-Hazaribagh, Shyampur, Pagla and Dholaikhal. But, the waste flow through Hazaribagh point is going to be checked with the relocation of some 200 tanneries to the designated leather estate in Savar from the bank of Buriganga.According to experts, the government will also have to take effective steps to stop toxic waste flows through the other three points - Shyampur, Pagla and Dholaikhal - to revive the river.Over 80,000 cubic metres of untreated industrial wastes are dumped every day into the Buriganga and about 15-20 percent of that come from 200 tanneries located at Hazaribagh," former additional director general of the Department of Environment (DoE) Engr Md Abdus Sobhan told UNB. "It's urgent to take an initiative for stopping industrial effluent flow from different points, particularly three major ones - Shyampur, Pagla and Dholaikhal-, alongside the relocation of Hazaribagh tanneries, to protect the Buriganga," he said. About the unchecked water pollution, eminent water expert Prof Ainun Nishat said as per the Bangladesh Environment Conservation Act, 1995, no one can pollute a river, but the Buriganga is being polluted everywhere violating the law. Apart from stopping pollution by Hazaribagh's tanneries, he said the government should stop all pollution sources one after another to save all the city rivers, including the Buriganga.Prof Nishat said, the authorities concerned must compel the industry and factory owners to set up Effluent Treatment Plants (ETPs) at their industries and factories to avoid dumping of untreated industrial waste, which is a major cause behind Buriganga's pollution. Household and solid waste disposal into the river must also be checked, he added.Former director general of the Water Resource Planning Organisation (WARPO) Engr M Inamul Haque said about 10 percent of the Buriganga could be protected by checking disposal of wastes from Hazaribagh, but it may pave a way to save the city lifeline from rampant industrial pollution. He said the tannery relocation move will sensitise policymakers to take right policies in restoring the rivers and mobilising people to raise their voice against pollution. According to a study by Poribesh Bachao Andolan (Poba), Hazaribagh tanneries release some 22,000 cubic metres of untreated toxic waste into the Buriganga every day.Abdus Sobhan, also Poba executive general secretary, said the tanneries are largely blamed for polluting the Buriganga by releasing highly toxic wastes for the last 65 years. Citing a Poba study findings, he said around 1,40,000-1,45,000 cubic metres untreated industrial waste are being released every day into four surrounding rivers-Buriganga, Shitalakkhya, Balu and Turag-surrounding Dhaka. But, the Buriganga is the worst victim of toxic effluents.
13 missing youths' list to be sent to Interpol
Police on Wednesday said that they would seek Interpol help to trace the 13 missing youths who were allegedly left the country to join the Middle East-based Jihadist group 'Islamic State' (IS).
These youths remained missing for three months to four years as complained by their parents after the militant attack in an upscale restaurant in Dhaka on July 1.
Twenty two people were killed in the attack, most of them foreigners, when six young men stormed into the restaurant to carry out the bloody shooting claimed by IS.
Those who attacked the restaurant also went missing for months after breaking contact with their families.
When asked, an official of National Central Bureau (NCB) at the Police Headquarters told The New Nation on Wednesday that they have already prepared profiles of the 13 missing youths to be sent to Interpol for issuing wanted notices against them.
He said, the police department had conducted countrywide drive to trace the youths but failed to identify their hideouts.
"As per the intelligence gathering, the missing persons believed to be left the country to join the Middle East-based Jihadist groups. We want to get them back with the help of Interpol," he added. He, however, said that they will send the profiles of 13 missing persons to Interpol as per the demands from the investigators.
Police sources said that the missing youths already become the fighters of the IS and they may now staying at the IS battlefields in Middle East.
"Their return to country could be a potential threat to national security. So, we want to trace them at any cost," another senior police official told The New Nation yesterday.
He said the law enforcement agencies have already sent their photographs and details to all police stations, airports, seaports and river ports in the country so that they can be arrested at their arrival in the country.
The 13 suspected IS fighters are: Mohammad Basharuzzaman from Tejgaon in Dhaka, Zunaid Khan from Badda (Passport No: AF7493378), Nazibullah Ansari from Chanpainawabganj, Ashraf Mohammad Islam from Dhaka (Passport No: 525841625), Tamim Ahmed Chowdhury from Sylhet (Passport No: L0633478), Ibrahim Hasan Khan from Dhaka (Passport No: AF7493378), ATM Tajuddin from Laxmipur (Passport No: F0585568), Ibaidur Rahim from Dhanmondi in Dhaka (Passport No:E1047719), Mohammad Saifullah Ozaki from Sylhet (Passport No:TK8099860) and Junnun Shikder (Passport No: BE0949172), Tahmid Rahman Shafi, a former official of Grameen Phone, Tousif Hasan, a former Dhaka University (IBA) student and Wasiqur Rahman, a former student of Dhaka Dental College.
Khaleda's move for nat'l unity
Sits with intellectuals, journalists today
S M Mizanur Rahman :
In view of the, deadly terror attacks in Dhaka and Sholakia of Kishoreganj district, country's political parties, specially Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) have come forward to find a way out to fight against militancy and extremism.
In this regard, BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia has framed strategies and plans to forge a national consensus. She also plans to give a formula to fight against militancy and extremism.
Senior leaders of the party said that they are always ready to cooperate with the government. As per Khaleda Zia's plan, some senior leaders of the party have already started ground work.
Except ruling Awami League-led 14-party and BNP-led 20-party alliances, they have already talked to the leaders of other like-minded political parties.
Apart from the BNP, Jatiya Party (Ershad) has also urged the government to take an initiative for forging a national unity to eliminate militancy and terrorism from the country with united efforts.
Meanwhile, Road Transport and Bridges Minister Obaidul Quader on Wednesday called upon BNP to join social movement in a bid to fight against the militancy.
"BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia has developed a strategic plan to forge a national unity in combating militancy and extremism from the country. And she will give an outline before the nation in this regard that how and in what way we can defeat terrors and militants," said BNP Standing Committee Member Lt Gen (retd) Mahbubur Rahman.
Talking to The New Nation on Wednesday, he said, as the extremism has appeared in the country as a major problem, BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia is again going to call upon the government to take an initiative with all irrespective of party and opinion to face the crisis.
"We think it's now very crucial to garner a national unity with all concerned, including the political parties and conscious citizens. It is the government who has to take an initiative for that but it remains silence. Observing that the government has failed to suppress extremism and to respond to the other political parties call, BNP Chairperson has taken the initiative," he said.
He added as part of the party's move to unite people to resist militancy, BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia will sit in a meeting with intellectuals, journalists and eminent citizens tonight to discuss the country's latest socio-political situation and seek their opinions to deal with it.
The meeting will be held at BNP Chairperson's Gulshan office around 8:30pm. Issues relating to the country's latest socio-political situation, law and order and recent terror attacks in Gulshan and Sholakia Eidgah may come up for discussion.
At the meeting, Khaleda Zia will seek opinions and guidelines from intellectuals and journalists. Later, she will instruct her party leaders and workers to work for uniting people from all walks of life to resist militancy and extremism, according to a party insider.
Before holding meeting with the intellectuals and journalists, Khaleda Zia on Wednesday night held meeting separately with the leaders of 20-party alliance and members of her party's standing committee.
Meanwhile, Khandaker Mosharraf Hossain, another standing committee member of BNP on Wednesday said there is no alternative but to forge national unity to fight against the militancy and terrorism.
"But the government has rejected our party Chairperson Khaleda Zia's proposal. If good sense does not prevail upon the government, BNP along with people will take to the streets to defeat the militants and terrors from the country," he said while addressing a discussion at National Press Club in city.
Earlier on July 3, Khaleda Zia held a meeting with her party's standing committee members after two days of the country's deadliest terrorist attack at a restaurant in upscale Gulshan.
After the meeting, she at a press conference called upon all, irrespective of party and opinion, to forge unity against terrorism to eliminate militancy from the country.
Twenty-two people, including nine Italians, seven Japanese, one Indian national and two police officials, were killed after terrorists attacked Holey Artisan Bakery at the city's Gulshan diplomatic zone on July 1. Six attackers were shot dead during Army operation.
On July 7, terrorists also attacked a police check-post near Sholakia Eidgah in Kishoreganj only minutes before the Eid prayers, killing two policemen and a housewife. Law enforcers also gunned down one of the attackers.
10 proposals worth Tk 1,494 cr okayed
UNB, Dhaka :
The Cabinet Purchase Committee on Wednesday approved a total of 10 proposals involving Tk 1,494 crore.
The approval was given at a meeting held with Finance Minister AMA Muhith in the chair.
According to the proposals, the Agriculture Ministry awarded a contract to appoint a firm for receiving and transporting 900,000 metric tons of imported MOP fertiliser at a total cost of 291.27 crore. Local firm Proton Traders Limited obtained the job for receiving and transporting the imported fertiliser from Chittagong and Mongla ports. The bulk MOP fertiliser will come from Canada, Belarus and Russia.
A proposal of the Health and Family Welfare Ministry for appointing a consultant firm for setting up a Super Specialised Hospital under the Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University received the approval of the Cabinet body. A South Korean firm obtained the consultancy job at a cost of Tk 135.81 crore.
The consultancy services include preparing detailed design and medical planning, selection of medical equipment and inspection, supervision of construction works, and providing education and training.
The Cabinet body approved a proposal of the Road Transport and Bridges Ministry to award a contract of the Bangladesh Road Transport Authority for collection of motor vehicles tax and fees through online banking for the next five years.
Local firm "Computer Network System" obtained the job at a contract value of Tk 136.78 crore. After appointment of the firm, the people can submit different taxes and fees of motor vehicle registration, ownership transfer, endorsement, duplicate number plate, driving licence renewal through online system. As per the contract, the firm cannot take any additional charge beyond the government-fixed one.
Tightening of JS security ordered
Staff Reporter :
The security personnel have been asked to wear bulletproof jackets and helmets during their duty hours in and around the Parliament Bhaban.
Deputy Speaker Fazle Rabbi Miah gave the above directives when he was inspecting the security system of the Parliament building and its premises on Wednesday.
He asked the concerned authorities to supply bulletproof jackets and helmets to the security personnel posted there.
He himself checked some of the visitors' entry cards and scolded a Parliament official for not wearing his identity card.
The deputy speaker visited the check posts and interacted with security personnel and told them not to allow any unauthorized vehicles and persons in the Parliament building premises.
He asked the Parliament Secretary and Sergeant-at-Arms to increase the number of security personnel at the entry points for VVIPs.
He also asked the authorities to make sure that the security posts are automated.
Missing students being enlisted
M M Jasim :
The government has taken initiative to prepare a list of missing students with the help of intelligence agencies, authorities of educational institutions and guardians. .
According to the report of a high-profile intelligence agency, the militant groups have targeted the brilliant students, who come from well-to-do families and motivated easily.
Some teachers, the officials and even some owners of these universities are directly involved in this process, the report also said, adding that the negligence of field-level officials in performing their duties is also responsible for rise of the militant activities.
The field-level officials are busy for building own fortune, for favourable posting and senior's mercy . They did not care about the militant activities, the report also said.
Director of Intelligence Wing of Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) Lieutenant Colonel Abul Kalam Azad said, the RAB has taken initiative to investigate the activities related to militancy in all the private universities and English medium schools.
Meanwhile, the report also found that some private university campuses and English medium schools across the country have become the dens of militancy and its training centers.
A special team of investigators has found about one hundred students of several private universities missing for a long time and suspect that they have been involved in militant activities.
It also has found that the militant groups run their activities safely in some city's private varsities and English medium schools. Of them, the North South University (NSU) has widely been blamed in this connection.
In this regard, Education Minister Nurul Islam Nahid said, the government is 'alert' about the situation in the NSU, a reputed private university some of whose students have got training in terrorist activities. "Such allegations against NSU teachers and students had been made earlier. We are aware of this university. We also held meetings with them earlier," the Minister said.
On the other hand, the University Grants Commission (UGC) investigators has found the banned militant outfit Hizb-ut Tahrir's printed materials in the NSU library last year. Several teachers and students of the university were sacked and rusticated for having alleged militant ties.
Seven of the eight persons convicted for the February 2013 murder of blogger and Ganajagaran Mancha activist Ahmed Rajib Haider were also NSU students.
Vice-Chancellor of NSU Professor Atiqul Islam said his institution was not the only place grooming militancy.
"A student spends maximum nine to twelve hours on the campus per week. They spend rest of their times at different places. There are Internet and electronic media, which could motivate them to adopt this way," the NSU VC said.
The government has taken the initiative to find out the involvement of private universities' students in militancy after the terrorist attack of Holey Artisan Bakery in Gulshan.
In the latest incident, one of the terrorists who killed two policemen in an attack on a check-post near Sholakia Eidgah ground on July 7 morning, before being shot dead by police, was a student of North South University (NSU).
Two of the five attackers who killed 22 people at an upscale cafe in Dhaka's Gulshan-2 on July 1 night before being shot dead by army commandos the next morning, were students of NSU and BRAC Universities.
City Marshal Brian Pope has asked the Louisiana Board of Ethics to waive a $2,500 late fee levied against him for filing an amended personal financial disclosure form nearly two years late.
The form, known as a Tier 2 Personal Financial Disclosure Report, was supposed to have been filed with Ethics on Aug. 27, 2014 ahead of the Nov. 4, 2014 primary election. Pope was running for his current job of city marshal, a position he would win in a Dec. 6 runoff.
According to the Ethics Board, Pope was sent a notice of delinquency on Jan. 2, 2015 but didnt actually file the report until May 12 of this year 624 days after its original due date.
In April, Pope contacted the board to request a waiver of the fine, which is the maximum allowable by law, arguing that it appears that only the calendar years are the only error and provided information within both reports are accurate for 2013 and 2014.
According to documents associated with the case, board attorney Tracy Barker is recommending the fine be waived based on future compliance with the disclosure requirements under the Code of Ethics.
The board meets Thursday to consider the waiver request.
The late fee levied against Pope is chump change compared to the fee hes facing from District Judge Jules Edwards in Popes ongoing legal battle with this newspaper. On March 24, Edwards imposed on Pope roughly $100,000 in attorneys fees (for The Independents legal counsel) and penalties for failing to provide documents in this newspapers ongoing public records dispute with the marshal. Edwards also ordered Pope to serve a week of house arrest and 173 hours of community service.
Pope appealed and on June 21 the Third Circuit Court of Appeal rejected his appeal. We should find out within the next week whether the Louisiana Supreme Court agrees to take the case. If the justices decline to hear Popes appeal already rejected by the Third Circuit then Edwards judgment against him will become immediately effective.
President Joe Biden has decided to ban Russian oil imports, toughening the toll on Russia's economy in retaliation for its invasion of Ukraine. The United States generally imports about 100,000 barrels a day from Russia, only about 5% of Russia's crude oil exports, according to Rystad Energy. Last year, roughly 8% of U.S. imports of oil and petroleum products came from Russia. Gas prices have been rising for weeks due to the conflict and in anticipation of potential sanctions on the Russian energy sector. The U.S. national average for a gallon of gasoline soared 45 cents a gallon in the past week and topped $4.06 on Monday, according to auto club AAA. Should the US ban Russian oil imports over Ukraine war?
You voted:
The sextoy market is growing quite rapidly in India right now.
Although it is not a big trend, it is a hot topic on the internet as it is secretly expanding its market.
In this article, we will focus on sextoy and introduce recommended sextoy for Indian beginners of sextoy by gender.
India, the birthplace of the Kama Sutra, is very strict about sex.
Also, premarital sex is basically not allowed. Therefore, there are many people who are sexually restricted.
But what happens when you continue to be sexually restricted?
Frustration may build up and you may end up taking your sexual stress out on your partner.
If you are able to adopt sextoy in a timely manner, you can get rid of those problems.
I want to have more exciting sex than Im having now.
I want more variation in masturbation
I want to get even stronger pleasure than I do on my own.
If you have any of these problems, please stay with me until the end.
What is sex toys for Indian?
Sextoy, as the name implies, is a toy used during sex and masturbation.
It is a generic term for vibrators, Egg-vibrators, Electric massagers, dildo, handcuffs and condoms.
They are used to make regular sex more exciting or to make masturbation more pleasurable.
Because sextoy is very stimulating, it can help you to get rid of the problems and frustrations of being in a rut of sex with your partner for a long time, or if you are unhappy with the lack of pleasure in sex with your partner.
The ability to satisfy your desires with movement, texture, and size, which cannot be done by a normal human being, can help you to be satisfied with sex and, as a result, improve your relationship with your partner.
It is also said to help improve sexual dysfunction (inability to get an erection or ejaculate) and difficulty in feeling during sex (insensitivity), which is attracting more attention than in the past.
In recent years, the demand for sextoy has increased due to the spread of smartphones and the Internet and the increasing number of people using online shopping.
Even those who are concerned about the appearance of sextoy (and find it difficult to purchase) can now easily obtain it by using mail order.
In the case of online shopping, most of the stores have taken steps to ensure that the contents of the products delivered to you are not revealed, so you can purchase them without your family members knowing.
Until a while ago, you had to go to the store where the adult goods were sold to buy them, so it was quite a hurdle to overcome.
Also, many people may have an image that sextoy is somehow embarrassing to own.
But nowadays, some of them are so stylish and cute that you cant believe they are sextoy at a glance.
More and more people are using them for travel and outdoor use because they are not too bulky and are suitable for carrying around.
Sextoy situation in India
Before introducing the recommended sextoy for Indians, lets talk about one of the sextoy situations in India in recent years.
In India, due to the high concentration of population, the following six cities have particularly high sales of sextoy in India.
Mumbai
Kolkata
Bangalore
Delhi
Chennai
Hyderabad
These cities account for roughly 70 percent of sextoy sales in India.
In the future, the percentage of sextoy use will gradually increase in other cities in India as well.
If you never talk about sextoy publicly, that girl in your neighborhood might be a sextoy user too.
If you are interested in sextoy, you dont have to suppress your desire for it.
What are Sextoys for beginner?
Among all sextoys, sextoy for beginners are vibrators, dildo, masturbators, Sex Lubricants, and condoms.
Sex Lubricants and condoms, which are familiar to people who have had sex, are also a great beginners sextoy.
I will explain the details of each toy later, but there are many sextoy products that are painful to use and can only be used after some anal expansion.
I assume that the Indian readers of this article are people who have not had much experience with sextoy.
If such people use professional sextoy suddenly, they are at risk of injury or trauma.
Therefore, to introduce sextoy, you need to start with a beginners version and gradually become familiar with it.
Advantages of using sextoy for Indians
There are three advantages of using sextoy for Indians
You can masturbate in a wide variety of ways.
Can have stimulating sex
Can develop new sexual zones
If you try to masturbate with your own fingers or hands, it tends to be a pattern.
However, with sextoy, you can easily masturbate in a variety of ways.
You will definitely be fascinated by the attraction of new stimulation.
Also, your daily sex life will be more exciting than ever.
There are many things in sextoy that are visually stimulating and give you a strong and intense feeling of pleasure.
This allows you to see your partners promiscuity in a way that you wouldnt normally see it.
When you are in a relationship, sex with your partner may become a pattern, but it can also eliminate these problems.
It can also lead to the development of new sexual zones (which is the training of sexual stimulation to allow you to feel orgasms).
For more information on the development of new sexual zones, see the following articles
[Women's Erogenous Zone]How to find and develop, 7 hidden sexual zones !![In India] In this issue, we will dissect the female erogenous zone! ..." Many of you may be like that. Men, in particular, shou...
Thus, the use of sextoy can only be a good thing for the men and women of India.
Sextoy for beginner men in India
So, lets continue with the recommended goods for Indian sextoy beginners.
For ease of understanding, we will introduce them by gender. Lets start with the men!
The following five goods are recommended for novice Indian sextoy men
Masturbator
Cock rings
Love Doll
Sex Lubricants
Toys for the prostate
Lets check each one in detail.
Masturbator
The masturbator is a sextoy for men that elaborately reproduces a womans vagina, mouth, and anus, and is one of the most popular sextoy products.
It is used by men to masturbate, and it is popular because it provides stronger stimulation and pleasure more easily than using hands.
Most are made of good quality silicone, and their softness is something that cannot be achieved with ones own hands.
They can provide stronger pleasure than a real womans vagina, so be careful not to overuse them. (You wont be able to have an orgasm in a womans vagina anymore.)
Again Male masturbators are a wonderful toy. I do not need any favourite timing, bothersome bargaining. You do not have to worry too much.
Revolutionize your masturbation time! ! !
Made in Japan is a wonderful kinky toy.#sextoysindia #SexToyIndia #Japanhttps://t.co/4k70QGzoTP pic.twitter.com/tRVdxTKPpa SEXToys India PR (@SextoysIndia) November 12, 2018
Some of them are disposable, while others can be washed and used over and over again, so its fun to buy a few to use depending on your mood.
If you want to know more about masturbator, please click here
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
INDIANAPOLIS Republican Donald Trump has entered the final phase of his high-profile search for a running mate, arranging last-minute meetings with his finalists and family members as his staff prepares for a Friday announcement.
Trump, his adult children and key staffers huddled with one of the prospects, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, Wednesday morning at the governor's mansion, a day after the pair campaigned together in the state. They were joined by Trump's three adult children, along with his son-and-law and campaign chair Paul Manafort, who were seen leaving the residence. Hours later, Newt Gingrich, another finalist, was spotted with Trump's entourage at a downtown Indianapolis hotel. Sen. Jeff Sessions was spotted arriving at the same hotel not long after Gingrich left.
Trump's family, including Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner, also met privately with New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie Tuesday. The meeting was confirmed by a source with direct knowledge of the meeting, but was not authorized to discuss it publicly.
The meetings have been designed to let Trump's family get to know the candidates better before the presumptive nominee formalizes his decision.
Pence, Chris Christie and Gingrich were said to be the final contenders for vice presidential candidate on the Republican ticket less than a week before the GOP meets in Cleveland for the formal nomination. That's according to a person familiar with Trump's thinking, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to discuss the vetting process. Trump said in a Tuesday interview with The Wall Street Journal that Sessions, Trump's top Senate advocate, is also still in the mix.
Pence is a steady, staunch conservative who would help calm nervous Republican wary of Trump's impulsive style. Gingrich is a boisterous rabble-rouser who has spent decades in Washington, including as House speaker. Christie, a one-time rival, has become one of Trump's most trusted advisers.
Trump has spent weeks consulting with friends and family as he weighs the most important decision of his campaign to date. He's also brought his finalists on tour, having them opening for him at speeches and rallies to test their receptions before his crowds.
"It's a little bit like 'The Apprentice,'" Gingrich, the former House Speaker, said in a Tuesday interview with Fox News Channel. "You find out sooner or later who the last one standing is."
Introducing Trump at a rally in Westfield, Indiana, on Tuesday evening, Pence received an enthusiastic reception as he compared Trump to Republican icon Ronald Reagan and dug into Trump's likely Democrat rival, Hillary Clinton.
Trump told The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday he is looking for a "fighter skilled in hand-to-hand combat" as his second-in-command, but hadn't seen enough of Pence to measure his fight. Pence's speech appeared to be an effort from the former congressman to show Trump he could take on such a role.
While Trump kept his cards close, he spoke playfully of Pence at the rally: "I don't know whether he's going to be your governor or your vice president."
Pence told reporters Wednesday he was "honored by the attention" and the "opportunity to get to know this good man and his family."
"I think he's giving it very careful consideration and we're humbled to be a part of that. There's a number of other and noteworthy Americans that they're considering and I'm just honored to be on that list."
Sen. Dan Coats of Indiana said he spoke with Pence on Tuesday and was told by the governor that Trump had yet to make up his mind.
"I think he's the front runner at least I think he ought to be the front runner," he said, adding that "Reading Donald Trump's mind is not the easiest thing to do"
Pence and Gingrich would be welcome picks among anxious Republican officials already gathering in Cleveland for next week's convention. Their governing experience and popularity among the party's conservative base would mark a sharp contrast to Trump, whose brand of politics has alienated hard-line conservatives and establishment Republicans alike.
In an interview with The Associated Press on Monday, Trump said he'd narrowed his list to four contenders. He appeared to have made progress by Tuesday, when he told Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly that he had "a pretty good idea" of his pick.
Trump's team has been building hype for the decision, including in a text message to supporters that urged recipients to sign up to receive an early notification of the choice. Fox News Channel added to the speculation Tuesday when it said it had suspended its contributor agreement with Gingrich "due to the intense media speculation" about his potential to join Trump's ticket.
Less than an hour later, Gingrich appeared on the network and suggested Trump's decision was imminent.
"My guess is you're going to hear either tomorrow or Thursday," Gingrich said.
A local poet has been recognized nationally for his work, according to a statement from Kathy Cotton of the Illinois State Poetry Society.
David Bond of Carbondale recently received five awards, including the top $1,000 prize, in national poetry competitions sponsored by the National Federation of State Poetry Societies. Awards were announced in June at the federation's convention in Chaska, Minnesota.
In addition to taking first place in the Founders Award, the highest prize of 50 annual contests, Bond also received first place in the Poetry Society of Michigan Award, third in the Illinois State Poetry Society Award, and honorable mentions in the The Brown-Eyed Girl Poetry Contest and Georgia Poetry Society Award.
Bond, a senior library specialist at Southern Illinois University, is the author of three poetry collections, "Colors," "American Chicken," and "The Light That Shatters Darkness: Poems From the Spartan Mine." He is a member of the Illinois State Poetry Society Southern Chapter, Carbondale.
The Southern
A Carterville woman pleaded guilty to a bankruptcy fraud charge Wednesday in federal court, according to U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Illinois Donald Boyce.
The indictment charged Jenny Parks-Smith, 42, with concealing assets in her bankruptcy case. She admitted she concealed a $17,500 settlement she received for a workers compensation claim. She further admitted that she used this money to pay personal and family expenses.
Parks-Smiths sentencing hearing is scheduled at 10:30 a.m. Oct. 19 at the federal courthouse in Benton. The crime of concealing assets in a bankruptcy case is punishable by up to 5 years in federal prison.
-- The Southern
SPRINGFIELD Speaking in the room where Abraham Lincoln delivered his house divided speech, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton on Wednesday called for unity and mutual understanding at a time of deep racial, economic and political divisions.
In the wake of the deaths of two black men last week at the hands of police officers in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and suburban St. Paul, Minnesota, and the fatal shootings of five police officers in Dallas, Clinton said Americans need to come together to address issues of racial injustice, police officer safety and gun control.
And a day after receiving the endorsement of former Democratic rival U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who made income inequality a centerpiece of his campaign, Clinton continued her call for making sure the U.S. economy works for everyone, not just those at the top.
The challenges we face today do not approach those of Lincolns time, Clinton said at the Old State Capitol in downtown Springfield, where Lincoln served as a state representative and delivered his famous speech about a country divided over slavery in 1858 while running for U.S. Senate. Not even close. And we should be very clear about that.
But recent events have left people across America asking hard questions about whether we are still a house divided. Despite our best efforts and highest hopes, Americas long struggle with race is far from finished. And despite being the richest country on earth, we have too much economic inequality, and that also undermines the foundation of our democracy.
The challenges facing the country require a president who can help pull us together, not split us apart, Clinton said, pointing to presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trumps divisive comments about women, Muslims, immigrants and others.
This man is the nominee of the party of Lincoln, Clinton said. We are watching it become the party of Trump. And thats not just a huge loss for our democracy it is a threat to it.
Above all, Clinton said, people need to take the time to listen to others, including those who hold opposing views, and find common ground.
She spoke to an invited audience for about a half-hour before holding a brief private meeting with a smaller group of supporters.
Among that group was state Sen. Andy Manar, D-Bunker Hill, who will attend the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia later this month as an elected Clinton delegate.
Manar said Clintons speech helped define the differences between her and Trump.
She delivered a very strong message of unity, a positive message that I think all Americans from all walks of life, all races, can digest, he said, adding, That is in stark contrast to the message of Mr. Trump and his campaign, which is a daily campaign about division. Its a daily campaign about blaming other people for the challenges we face in the country.
State Rep. Sue Scherer, D-Decatur, was less full-throated in her support of the former first lady, U.S. senator and secretary of state, noting that they disagree on some issues.
But Scherer said she appreciated the somber tone of Clintons speech and backs her because of her strong commitment to middle-class and working-class families.
Im right there with her on that, and I feel like this is the direction our whole country needs to go, Scherer said. We need to look out for our majority of our people.
Also in attendance was the Rev. Thomas Walker, pastor of the Main Street Church of the Living God in Decatur, who said he appreciated Clintons focus on both the shootings of police officers in Dallas and the shootings by police officers elsewhere.
She understands the ills and the plight of the people, Walker said. She understands the hurt and the pain, and she wants to address that.
Bob Flider, former director of the Illinois Department of Agriculture, said Clinton might not be the obvious choice for downstate voters, who have leaned Republican in recent presidential elections.
But he said Trumps opposition to trade agreements could prove disastrous for central Illinois farmers who rely on the North American export market.
His policies would devastate trade for farmers, Flider said. It would hurt agriculture.
Wednesdays speech was Clintons second stop of the campaign season at the Old State Capitol, which is also where Barack Obama officially launched his first presidential campaign in 2007. Clinton came there in March on the eve of the presidential primary in her native state to tape a town hall-style event for MSNBC.
CHICAGO Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner is taking steps to ensure more minority and women-owned businesses receive state contracts.
A 2015 study found the businesses are underrepresented among those awarded state contracts.
Rauner signed an executive order on Wednesday. It requires the state's purchasing office to establish a mentor program to assist minority and women-owned businesses. The office also must review how it sets goals for the number of contracts awarded to those companies.
The state also will study and potentially establish so-called "sheltered markets," in which contracts are set aside specifically for underrepresented businesses.
Sheila Morgan is president and CEO of the Chicago Minority Supplier Development Council. She calls the order "an important step for the minority business community and their ability to compete and grow."
The Associated Press
While supporters of the states medical marijuana pilot program cheered the extension and changes signed into law on June 30, Southern Illinois patients still face more hurdles than people with qualifying conditions living elsewhere in the state.
Thats because the regions major health systems Southern Illinois Healthcare, Heartland Regional Medical Center, and the Southern Illinois University School of Medicine as well as some other smaller providers, have directed the physicians they employ not to participate.
The continued concerns from hospitals, particularly in the Southern Illinois area, is very unfortunate as thousands of patients that are eligible are being held at bay because of physician or health system concerns, said Bob Morgan, a health care regulatory and policy attorney with the Chicago firm Much Shelist, P.C. It puts patients in a horrible situation when none of the physicians available to them are able to certify their conditions.
Rauner signs bill extending medical marijuana program SPRINGFIELD A bill extending Illinois' medical marijuana program by 2 years has been sign
Morgan, who also formerly served as the states first coordinator of the program, said he has heard that it is much more difficult for patients with qualifying conditions in Southern Illinois to gain access compared to other parts of the state. That's because the policies of the major health systems, as well as the fact that there are fewer providers and specialists generally from which to choose.
Further complicating matters, he said, many patients in Southern Illinois are sent to specialists in bordering states Missouri, Kentucky or Indiana but the law only allows physicians practicing in Illinois to certify patients.
Legal vulnerability a concern
In explaining their policies, hospital system administrators in Southern Illinois have cited concerns about legal vulnerability should they allow their physicians to participate, given that marijuana including medical marijuana is still illegal under federal law. Changes to the law were intended to help ease those concerns, but didn't go far enough to make SIH comfortable with it, said SIH communications coordinator Rosslind Rice.
Under the new law, physicians will no longer be asked to sign off that it is their professional opinion that the patient was likely to receive from the medical marijuana a therapeutic or palliative benefit.
Instead, physicians only will be required to attest to the patient having one of the qualifying conditions recognized by the state. Medical marijuana is not prescribed by doctors in the traditional sense. Patients make an application to the Department of Public Health, which includes the physician certification, a background check, and other requirements.
Upon approval, they are given a patient registry ID card, which allows them to purchase marijuana from an approved dispensary. The law allows these individuals to possess 2.5 ounces over a 14-day period, and slightly more via a waiver process.
Morgan, who also is president of the Illinois Cannabis Bar Association, said this change was made specifically to address the concerns of physicians and hospital groups.
The SIU School of Medicine, which sees patients in Carbondale and elsewhere in the region, also is sticking with its decision not to allow physicians to participate at least for now. Lauren Murphy, a spokeswoman for the school, said faculty are reviewing changes that are part of the new law.
Simon poll: Illinois voters overwhelmingly support medical marijuana CARBONDALE Illinois voters overwhelmingly support the use of marijuana for medical purpose
So until that review is complete, our position remains unchanged, she said. SIU does not support the physicians in activities that result in the prescribing or dispensing of any drugs classified as Schedule I by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency.
In the fall, a spokesman for Heartland Regional Medical Center also said its physicians were instructed not to participate in the certification process. A spokesperson for the hospital could not be reached for comment this week to find out if the hospital planned to reconsider its position in light of changes made in the new law.
A slow start, especially here
Illinois medical marijuana law a four-year pilot program was signed into existence by former Gov. Pat Quinn in 2013, though it was rolled out in fits and starts. The first sales didnt happen until November 2015. Without the extension Rauner signed on June 30, the program would have expired at the end of 2017.
At the program's infancy, health systems across the state expressed many of the same concerns noted by those in Southern Illinois, Morgan said. But in other areas, administrators have since taken steps to relax their policies and give physicians the discretion to determine whether it is appropriate for patients on a case-by-case basis, he said.
The new law also added post-traumatic stress disorder and terminal illness, defined as one where the life expectancy is six months or less, to the list of roughly 40 qualifying conditions that can make a person eligible.
Marion doc in hot seat
Meanwhile, because some physicians are declining to or are not allowed to participate in the certification process, a Marion doctor that will has become rather popular.
Pied Pfeifer Compassionate Care, where Dr. Bodo Schneider is the medical director, advertises on its Facebook page that the clinic is sympathetic toward medical cannabis.
Popular Marion doc facing state complaint believes in medical marijuana MARION One of this regions only perhaps its only doctor willing to certify patients i
The clinic opened in Marion in September 2013, four months before the effective date of the states Compassionate Use of Medical Cannabis Pilot Program Act. Schneider, who also operates a clinic in upstate Orland Park, said in a previous interview with the newspaper that he believes in traditional medicine and often prescribes it.
But he also believes that medical marijuana can have benefits for some patients, such as those living with chronic pain, cancer, late-stage HIV or AIDS and other debilitating conditions. Marijuana has been shown to revive an appetite and can also bring pain relief without some of the harsh side effects associated with opioids, he said.
But the dilemma with the number of patients flooding the clinic is the law specifies that only doctors with a bona-fide physician-patient relationship can certify a patient seeking a medical marijuana ID card.
The Department of Public Health defines that as one where the physician has an ongoing responsibility for the assessment, care and treatment of a patients debilitating medical condition. Though the rules do not define a specific time it takes to establish this relationship, Schneider has told the newspaper he was directed by the department that 90 days was a good rule of thumb.
But now he's in the hot seat of another state agency over whether he truly has established that relationship with the clients he's certifying for the medical marijuana program.
The Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation, which oversees doctors, filed a complaint against Schneider in June 2015 alleging that he inappropriately charged patients a fee for pre-certification for medical marijuana without establishing a legitimate physician-patient relationship, and for visits where he did not conduct a physical examination.
For three examinations over 90 days, patients seeking certification were asked to pay the clinic about $300 cash between an intake, evaluation and third meeting to finalize the certification process, according to the regulatory agency's complaint, which states that Schneiders actions are grounds for suspension or revocation of his license.
While the complaints against Schneider are still pending, he said recently that he remains hopeful it will be dismissed. A hearing in Chicago is scheduled for July 25.
Were not getting rich here, Schneider said. Schneider said he believes he is providing a needed service that levels the playing field for people in Southern Illinois. He said some area physicians employed by the large hospital systems tell him they would participate if they could.
Im getting referrals from SIH physicians for patients wanting to participate, and because they feel like they cannot (certify the patients), Im seeing them, he said. The response has been overwhelmingly positive.
Praise for governor's actions
As to the extension of the law that Rauner signed, Schneider said he was pleasantly surprised that the governor acted more than a year in advance of the programs scheduled expiration, as this provides some stability. Ive been very pleased and I have to send out a 'congrats' and a 'thank you' to the governor, he said.
Others involved in the medical marijuana industry in Southern Illinois expressed similar sentiments.
Anna medical cannabis facility shows off new digs ANNA Gorgi and Rosie Naumovski opened the doors of their second medical marijuana dispensa
Its a great day for the patients of Illinois, Paul Montes, managing director of Wellness Group Pharms, a cultivation facility in Anna, said earlier this month. Were excited that the administration is doing whats best for the state and were very happy.
Though the roll out was slow, Montes said he has no complaints. He said the program is poised to absorb many, many patients. All the cultivators are prepared for the expansion, he said. The administration has been great. This will just help things along.
Rosie Naumovski, a co-owner of Thrive Harrisburg and Thrive Anna, marijuana dispensaries, said she was extremely excited the governor listened to the public outcry as far as recognizing PTSD, and for it to be an approved condition.
That helps the program along, she said. Though she also noted the difficulty people with qualifying conditions are having in jumping through that first hoop finding a physician that will certify them for the program. She remains hopeful that may change in the future.
Its been a big struggle in this region for people to find participating doctors, and it shouldnt be that way, she said. The program was not designed that way.
Union County States Attorney Tyler Edmonds announced the following sentences Wednesday:
Alex Pulliam, 21, of Tunnel Hill, was sentenced to three years in prison after pleading guilty to aggravated battery, a Class 3 felony. Pulliam hit a Union County Sheriffs Deputy while in custody in March 2016.
Ashley M. Wilson, 33, of Anna, was sentenced to three years in prison after pleading guilty to three years to aggravated driving while under the influence of drugs, a Class 2 felony. She was arrested in December 2014 following a traffic stop in Cobden.
Kyle Weatherington, 31, of Harrisburg, was sentenced to three years in prison after pleading guilty to burglary, a Class 2 felony. He was arrested in May 2015 when evidence showed he entered an Anna business in February 2015 with the intent to commit a forgery. The sentenced will run consecutively to s six-year sentenced for residential burglary in Saline County.
James Garrett, 47, of Cobden, has been sentenced to three years in prison after pleading guilty to knowingly giving false information, a Class 3 felony. He was arrested in May 2015 after giving false information by failing to report an internet protocol address in his sex offender registration as required.
Joshua Parker, 26, of Cobden, has been sentenced to 18 months in prison after pleading guilty to harassment by telephone, a Class 3 felony. He repeatedly made call to his estranged wife in October 2015 with the intent to harass. He was arrested in December 2015.
Joshua Burton, 20, of Tamms, has been sentenced to three years in prison for methamphetamine manufacturing materials, Class 2 felony. He was arrested in March 2014.
WASHINGTON Horror. Shock. Disbelief. Numbness. Grief. Anger. And terrible sadness.
These fractured thoughts were all I could muster upon waking Friday to news of the ambush on Dallas police. They were still fresh in my mind from the night before when I'd turned in early, exhausted by the images of 32-year-old Philando Castile dying in Minnesota after a police officer shot him.
As we all know by now, Castile was African-American and the officer was not. It started as a routine stop for a broken taillight and ended in what has become a routine shooting followed by a routine headline.
Black man shot by police officer. How many times must we read those words?
Just 24 hours earlier, another black man, Alton Sterling, 37, was shot to death by police while being restrained in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Like Sterling, Castile did have a gun. Castile also had a conceal permit, which he apparently told the officer as soon as he was stopped. Why would someone tell a police officer he had a gun if he intended to use it?
Castile was reaching for his driver's license and registration when the officer opened fire, says his girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds.
Reynolds used her cellphone to film the aftermath of the shooting, careful to address the officer as "sir" and follow his instructions. Over and over I watched the video, trying to imagine being in that car, while at the same time feeling shame about watching a stranger who is mortally wounded.
Nothing is more intimate than death, which we all hope to face with dignity in the comforting presence of loved ones. Castile had no such luck. Instead, he was surrounded by millions of onlookers, most of whom, I feel certain, suffered with and for him.
"[Expletive]!" "[Expletive]!" "[Expletive]!" On the video, we hear the officer repeating the F-word as he realizes what has happened. Reynolds is saying, "Please don't tell me this, Lord. Please, Jesus, don't tell me that he's gone," she said. "Please, officer, don't tell me that you just did this to him."
My God.
Friday morning, Castile's mother bore into the television camera. She said people can look into her eyes, at that point 48 hours without sleep, and know that she's not going away until justice is served. Across the country, protesters had gathered peacefully Thursday evening to demonstrate against the shootings.
Enough.
Then suddenly in Dallas, the peace was shattered when shots were fired from a high vantage point. A shiver. Not again. When it was all over, five officers were dead and another seven were wounded.
A suspected shooter is dead, too, killed by a police bomb robot. Why not. An un-human kills the in-human. Before he died, the man told officers he was upset about Black Lives Matter. He wanted to kill white people, and white policemen, reported Dallas Police Chief David Brown at a news conference.
In Minneapolis, Gov. Mark Dayton said he thinks that if Castile had been white, the officer wouldn't have shot him. A retired New York City police detective wept as he spoke to CNN's Chris Cuomo about the bravery of the Dallas officers who, carrying only pistols, were wearing protective vests they knew couldn't deflect the bullets of the shooter's weapon.
Imagine.
Then, too, imagine being a young black man who is taught early on that he has to be extra careful around the police. The worst will be expected of him.
"He shot his arm off," we hear Castile's girlfriend saying on the video. We see Castile's blood-soaked shirt; we hear him groan and watch his head drop.
Black lives matter. White lives matter. Blue lives matter. Does anything matter anymore? What is happening to this country? A wall-mounted gun manufacturer's video ad welcomes visitors to the Columbia, South Carolina, airport. In Chicago today, no one will be surprised if a child is killed in gang crossfire. Will another black avenger try to kill another white cop? Will police still give black neighborhoods protection? "They're hunting us," said Castile's mother.
Madness.
For now we grieve with the families of the dead and talk of ways to stem the violence. But there's really only one way to stop the killing and it lies in changing our culture, beginning with recognizing every single person's humanity the black youth's, the white officer's, and every other in between. As Charles Blow, the New York Times columnist put it: "Everyone deserves to go home."
Three-hundred bicyclists will pedal into Orangeburg County on Saturday as they take part in the eighth annual, 250-mile Alzheimer's Association-South Carolina Chapter "A Ride to Remember" to raise funds for research into the disease and to support those affected Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia.
The three-day ride begins in Simpsonville on Friday, July 15 and will culminate in Mount Pleasant on Sunday, July 17.
Again this year, the bicyclists are scheduled to stop at North Town Hall in North for a sandwich and water break between 10 and 11 a.m. on Saturday, July 16. Riders will be in gear and stopping in waves to hydrate and refuel.
The next leg of their trek will be from about 11:45 a.m. to 12 p.m. to the group's stop for the night at the Country Inn & Suites on Citadel Road in Orangeburg. Additonal riders will continue to arrive at their own pace until about 2 p.m.
Orangeburg area businesses will provide lunch for the riders on Saturday.
On Saturday evening, the Ride to Remember participants will be the guests of the Orangeburg Rotary Club at a dinner at the First Baptist Church Family Life Center on Columbia Road.
The riders will depart from the Country Inn & Suites in Orangeburg en masse between 6:30 and 7 a.m. on Sunday for the final 99-mile leg of their trek to Mount Pleasant.
According to the Alzheimer's Association, nearly 84,000 South Carolinians are living with Alzheimers or related dementia. Funds raised by A Ride to Remember help the Alzheimers Association raise awareness, advance research and advocate for those affected by the disease. The Alzheimers Association-South Carolina Chapter provides information and referral, support groups, caregiver respite vouchers, care consultation, education and safety services to families affected by Alzheimers disease and related dementia.
To date, this year's A Ride to Remember has already raised $283,000. Donations are accepted online at www.aridetoremember.org.
For more information, visit www.alz.org/sc or call the association's 24-hour Helpline at 800-272-3900.
Hes been president of South Carolina State University just two weeks, but James Clark says hes created a 90-day agenda for himself and his staff.
While Rome wasnt built in one day, due to the focus on the wrong things, it burned down in one night, Clark said.
That means that if we dont focus on the right things, we could lose it all, he said.
Last month, Clark resigned from the S.C. State board of trustees. The board then named him president.
Addressing the board at its Tuesday meeting, Clark said he is focusing on enrollment and financial aid.
There are a short number of days to deal with it, he said.
He said hes also implementing a new style of management that will hold every member of the team responsible for their department or area of expertise.
For example, department heads will own their own budgets, Clark said. They will be given detailed information on how much they can spend.
Clark also said he expects administrators to discover the problems in their areas of expertise and bring them to the table.
Dont expect me to discover your areas issues, he said. Bring the elephant to the table. As a team, weve got to amp up our game significantly to keep the proverbial ox from getting back in the ditch.
Clark said everyone, including himself, will have a scoreboard with ratings of green, yellow or red, or the good, the bad and the ugly the good so youll know of the progress were making, the bad so you know what we are going to change and the ugly so that you know what we are going to fix up.
Having something labeled red doesnt necessarily mean the end of the universe or the end of the world, he said. It means youve got to put attention on it. You want to know what needs attention.
Clark said hes already given himself green and red scores, green because he shared his vision and expectation for the university within the two-day goal he set for himself.
But he gave himself a red score because he failed to reach out to the state government and business community within the same two-day timeframe.
He gave employees a green score for what was accomplished at the first cabinet meeting.
Clark has created 30, 60 and 90-day schedules for himself and administrators. His longer-term plans include development of a strategic plan, implementation of more benchmarks, analyzing the universitys activities and renewing the schools brand.
Clark foresees the need to cut some staff positions and make other budget cuts in order for the university to move forward.
In other business at Tuesdays meeting, trustees unanimously voted to name Milton Irvin as vice chair. He replaces Clark.
Trustees approved changing the universitys generic management degree program. This change will allow management majors to choose options in financial management, human resource management, management information systems and retail management. to include concentrations such as marketing and management.
They also approved changing the universitys English program to include an intersectional concentration, which will focus on race, class, gender and other identities.
This will make it more relevant to issues taken up in the current literature used by the faculty and reflect current themes in society, Public Relations Director Liz Mosely said.
Board Chair Charlie Way reported that the university has received official notification that the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools has lifted its probationary status.
Way also appointed a committee to develop an employment contract with Clark. Trustee Dr. Doris Helms is the chair.
This story has been changed from its original version.
"We (in America) need the iron qualities that go with true manhood." -- President Theodore Roosevelt
As we see the myriad of problems facing America, the shock and confusion as to what's happening to this great nation becomes overwhelming.
We have experienced multiple "lone wolf" jihadist attacks by Americans against Americans on our home soil, from San Bernadino to Orlando.
Overseas, we are experiencing many foreign policy and national security challenges, including a resurgent Russia, barbarism by ISIS and a defiant North Korea.
We are facing possible economic meltdown in the United States with the debt surging beyond 19 trillion and the continued loss of American economic power to overseas competitors.
Finally, we are seeing American police officers being targeted for assassination as they are demeaned by many attempting to cause racial strife.
America previously appeared so strong and secure, and yet we now wonder why we face so many internal issues and loss of respect overseas. What I will propose as the answer is provocative, but I believe the facts will show many of our problems directly and indirectly resulting from the marginalization of the ideal of manhood. Let me explain.
First, statistics from the National Center for Fathering help show the extent of the problem of males not acting as men by being husbands and fathers and results: Of students in grades 1 through 12, 39 percent (17.7 million) live in homes absent their biological fathers (57.6 percent of black children, 31.2 percent of Hispanic children and 20.7 percent of white children are living absent their biological fathers).
Critically important, according to 72.2 percent of the U.S. population, fatherlessness is the most significant family or social problem facing America. Those raised without fathers are exponentially more likely to drop out of school, become incarcerated, live in poverty and continue the cycle of fatherlessness.
Despite the attempts by so many in politics and the media to downplay traditional families and fatherhood, the statistics make clear the importance. As famed Word War II Gen. George S. Patton said: "Duty is the essence of manhood. Being a man means staying true to commitments, most importantly the commitment to lifelong marriage and fatherhood.
Beyond the importance of manhood in encouraging intact families (helping fix the many social problems driving our national debt), manhood is also indirectly tied to national security. Since the late 1970s, the number of women in universities in America has surpassed that of men, and for almost two decades the gap has been almost 60 percent female and 40 percent male in colleges and universities.
During almost the same period of time, the American fertility rate has plunged from 3.7 in the 1960s to under 1.9 today. Males have not been encouraged to succeed in higher education and become leaders of their families (thereby allowing women more opportunity for children raised by two parents).
Virtually all encouragement from media, Hollywood and even primary education has been toward female education and leadership, at the expense of our boys. Strong male role models for boys, depicted as competent and engaged leaders of families (in television, media and movies) are almost non-existent.
From "Married With Children" to the modern version of "Poltergeist, fathers are invariably depicted as weak and incompetent, and not respected by family members who turn to the mothers for leadership. Men are made to appear as practically irrelevant to families, influencing our boys views on their future roles.
The de-emphasis and marginalization of manhood is also a direct threat to national security. The Pentagon recently published a study estimating only 25 percent of American youth are able to serve in the military (that's enlisted service, and officer standards of admission are even more selective).
As U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski, R-Ark., explained about the numbers, "Obesity is the single greatest non-criminal hindrance for our young people seeking to enlist in the armed forces.
This statistic is shocking, but tied directly into the de-emphasis of physical education and traditional rights of passage for men in the area of physical fitness.
Men have, on average, 50 percent more upper body strength than women, and natural physical abilities that must be exercised. Traditionally, military service has been seen as one of the rights of passage for men, and all men were expected to remain fit to military standards.
The concept of "militia" in America has meant every man between 15 and 45 being able to serve militarily if necessary. Many recent Hollywood depictions of heroic protagonist, physically fit characters are solely women (see the Hunger Games series, Divergent series, etc.). Boys are just not encouraged to challenge themselves in physical activities.
In fact, many argue they are drugged with Ritalin to discourage the natural impulse toward physical play. This is having a direct impact on national defense, and even the way competitor nations view America.
The recent decisions in the Department of Defense to integrate women into the infantry and special operations (like SEALs, Special Forces and Rangers), as well as the decision of allow transgender service, are having further impacts on marginalizing manhood.
Throughout all cultures in history, rights of passage for manhood have been critical to the development of men in a society. The Bible makes this clear with a number of references in the Old Testament to this idea of men being warriors with the duty to protect families.
In the New Testament, the Apostle Paul recognizes this inherent distinction of men when he says, "Act like men, be strong" (1 Corinthians 16:13). There is a time in every young man's life when he has the inborn need to prove himself to fellow men on the way to being a man.
Again, enemy nations are watching and likely emboldened to know of possible weaknesses in national defense.
Civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was emphatic in telling his male followers: "Don't let anybody take your manhood. That rhetoric was standard at the time and followed similar statements from John Wayne and others. Now it would likely be considered "politically incorrect" and even sexist to even acknowledge the idea someone could take away manhood.
Dr. King was right. I commend him, and his message transcends the civil rights movement. It is time for introspection about his advice.
We, as a nation, should ask ourselves if we really care about the development of our boys into men. This is not just a question of the next generation of boys, but for the nation as a whole.
Based on the numbers, the answer is clear. Politically incorrect or not, we cannot afford to let anybody take our manhood.
PRINT | EMAIL | PERMALINK Reel World Star Gazing The KiMo Theatres selection of Mother Road Movies continues with John Carpenters much-loved 1984 sci-fi romance Starman. The film stars Jeff Bridges as a peaceful space alien who models himself after the dead husband of a brokenhearted woman (Karen Allen) while the two go on a road trip across the American Southwest. You can catch it Thursday, July 14, starting at 7pm. Tickets are $5 general admission. This film series is being held in partnership with the Albuquerque Museums Route 66: Radiance, Rust and Revival on the Mother Road. KiMo Theatre is located at 423 Central NW.
Jurassic (in the) Park Bernalillo County Parks & Recreations Movies in the Park presents not one but two great family film screenings this weekend. The series touches down this Friday, July 15, at the Los Padillas Community Center (2117 Los Padillas SW) for a screening of the dinosaur-sized 2015 hit Jurassic World. It returns the next night, Saturday, July 16, with a screening of Disneys sci-fi superhero toon Big Hero 6 at Wilson Park (1138 Cardena SE). Both of these events are free and open to the public. The films will be shown outdoors on a large screen beginning at dusk (around 8pm). Bring your own lawn chairs or blankets to sit on. No alcohol, glass or sharp items are allowed. Food vendors will be on hand if you want to purchase drinks and snacks. For more info call 314-0477.
Con Test In addition to all the celebrity guests, panels workshops and vendors, this years Santa Fe Comic Con (Oct. 21 through 23) will feature the Comics in Film Festival. The festival is looking for genre-related films in the following categories: Action/Adventure, Animation, Comics-Oriented, Documentary (Pop Culture), Horror/Suspense, Humor and Sci-Fi/Fantasy. Awards and prizes will be given out at Comic Con by a panel of industry luminaries, with film screenings taking place all three days. Winning films will also have the opportunity to screen at Albuquerque Comic Con in January of 2017. Monday, July 18, is the extended deadline to submit your shorts or features ($35 per submission). For a compete list of rules and an online submission form, go to filmfreeway. com/ festival/ ComicsinFilmFestival.
Its time for perspective.
A Washington Post year-long study found that nearly 1,000 people in the United States in 2015 were killed by law enforcement officers.
The newspaper compiled data about each death, including the race of those killed, whether they were armed and descriptions of the events. The study found the kind of incidents that have ignited protests around the U.S. most often, white police officers killing unarmed black men represent less than 4 percent of fatal police shootings.
The Post found the great majority of people who died at the hands of the police fit at least one of three categories: they were wielding weapons, they were suicidal or mentally troubled, or they ran when officers told them to halt.
Yet race remains the most volatile issue surrounding any police shooting. Although black men make up only 6 percent of the U.S. population, they account for 40 percent of the unarmed men shot to death by police in 2015, The Post found. But in the majority of cases in which police shot and killed a person who had attacked someone with a weapon or brandished a gun, the person who was shot was white. A disproportionate number three in five of those killed after exhibiting less-threatening behavior were black or Hispanic.
Meanwhile, The Officer Down Memorial Page, a website that tracks the number of law enforcement officials killed in the line of duty, recorded 130 deaths in 2015. In those, guns accounted for the most deaths at 39, exceeding auto-related fatalities at 27.
So far in 2016, 59 law officers have died in the line of duty, with 26 (an increase of 63 percent) by gunfire. Twenty-five others are auto-related.
The past weeks events have converged the issues of deaths at the hands of police and deaths of police and, unfortunately, further polarized the national debate.
Scrutiny when people are killed by police is always justified. In the cases from Louisiana and Minnesota, there is ample reason to call into question why two African-American men lost their lives in encounters with police. But those cases and others that gave rise to the Black Lives Matter movement are not justification for the wholesale indictment of police as racially motivated killers of black men and minorities.
No American of any racial or ethnic background can condone police using deadly force without justification, and where criminal conduct by police is suspected, there should always be investigation -- and prosecution if warranted. Police are not above the law.
But police are the sworn enforcers of the law designed to protect all. No American of any racial or ethnic background can dispute that police face great danger. And all should agree law officers are due respect and support. Its unthinkable where we would be just now without those willing to take law enforcement jobs that put their lives at great risk.
The Black Lives Matter movement finds itself at a watershed moment. Protesters around the country are leading Americans to believe they have two key points: Black men are being wrongly killed by police and police are wrongly targeting black men. By ignoring the bigger picture of violence by police and violence against police, they are forfeiting potential support by a majority of Americans. And by the wholesale condemnation of police, they are leading to the inevitable conclusion that the movement can foster violence against police.
No American of any racial or ethnic background should blame Black Lives Matter for the killing of five police officers in Dallas. That was the work of a deranged man who found a reason to carry out a horrific act of violence against police. But it cannot be ignored that media focus on those who would portray police as a whole as killers of black men will inevitably insight some people to violence.
Its time for perspective.
Orangeburg native Rosa Bogar has presented a purple plaque to a school with ties to Prince, the music superstar who died in April.
Bogar has lived in Minneapolis, Minnesota for decades. Prince was a native of the city.
Prince graduated from Central High School in Minneapolis in 1976. The school no longer exists, but Bogar presented a plaque honoring the musician to the Green Central Park Elementary School, which was built on its site, according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune.
The purple plaque is dedicated to the spirit of Prince, Minneapolis-born music legend.
It also says Prince would have celebrated fifty eight years of life today. Happy Birthday Prince, among other things.
Bogar said The principal at Green Central stated that to have the plaque at the school is a great honor.
Last year, Orangeburg Mayor Michael C. Butler proclaimed Oct. 20, 2016 as Rosa Bogar Day in the city of Orangeburg
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An Azerbaijani delegation headed by President of CJSC Azerbaijan Airlines (AZAL), Jahangir Asgarov attended "Farnborough International Airshow - 2016" in Great Britain.
As part of the event, the Azerbaijani side has held negotiations with major aircraft manufacturers as Boeing, Ilyushin, Antonov and others.
At a meeting with Boeing Senior Vice-President Martin Benrott and Sales Director of the Corporation, Serdar Gurz, the possibility of supply of 10 Boeing 737 MAX aircrafts in 2018-2020 was discussed. At the same time the issue of the project financing was discussed at the meeting.
On the same day, the third round of negotiations were held with Mikhail Gvozdev, head of the Board of the Corporation "Ukrainian Aircraft Manufacturing Company" and President of "Antonov" state enterprise, Alexander Kotsuba on the project of organization of manufacture and maintenance of An-178 transport aircrafts on the territory of Azerbaijan.
Also, negotiations were held between President of CJSC Azerbaijan Airlines Jahangir Asgarov and Director General of JSC Ilyushin Finance Co., Alexander Rubtsov on leasing of MC-21 aircrafts. It should be noted that in June the parties signed a letter of intent on leasing of 10 new MC-21 medium-range aircrafts. Delivery is scheduled for 2019-2020.
At this meeting a contract was also signed for financial lease of the world's largest serial cargo aircraft An-124-100 (Ruslan). The contract was signed by Silk Way Holding President Zaur Akhundov and Director General of JSC Ilyushin Finance Co. Alexander Rubtsov with the participation of Jahangir Asgarov and the United Aircraft Corporation (UAC) President Yuri Slusar.
"Purchasing An-124-100 (Ruslan) aircraft will become a new stage of development of Azerbaijani civil aviation, will allow increasing competitive advantage and strengthening our country's position in the world air cargo transportation market. Over the past 10 years, we have turned the Heydar Aliyev International Airport into a major air cargo transportation hub. Today, Azerbaijani civil aviation presented itself as an official airline of the Great Silk Road project connecting East and West. We make every effort to achieve the same success in passenger transportation," Jahangir Asgarov said.
Azerbaijan`s capital Baku will host the 7th International Forum on Energy for Sustainable Development International Conference on Renewable Energy on October 18-21.
It is jointly organized by the government of Azerbaijan, the United Nations Regional Commissions, the International Energy Agency (IEA), the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Office in Azerbaijan, the Copenhagen Centre on Energy Efficiency, and the Renewable Energy Policy Network for the 21st Century.
The Seventh Forum will combine a high-level session with plenary sessions, parallel workshops and site visits over four days.
The Forum will assemble up to 300 international energy experts, government officials, and representatives from the business community, financial sector, academia and civil society to share perspectives on how the SDGs can be implemented. It will also include an International Renewable Energy Conference and the annual sessions of the UNECE Group of Experts on Renewable Energy and Group of Experts on Energy Efficiency for the first time.
Among the planned parallel workshops are the Seminar on Policy Reforms for Renewable Energy Investments, the Workshop on Pathways to Sustainable Energy, the SPECA Thematic Working Group on Energy, Water and Environment, and the Workshop on the Role of Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) in Renewable Energy Planning.
The Seventh Forum provides a unique opportunity to build upon the achievements of previous fora and develop a roadmap for what participants would like to achieve in the short- and medium-term with regards to the energy-related SDGs. Outcome documents from the previous two fora2 in particular called for a deep long-term transition to a sustainable energy future and set out concrete steps the United Nations Regional Commissions could take: Assist member States in developing national sustainable energy action plans; Collaborate with member States to improve their national energy statistics programmes; Provide capacity building to member States in the action areas outlined in the Hammamet; Declaration: Energy Market Reform, Energy Efficiency, Renewable Energy, Energy Access, Energy Security, Finance and Investment, Technology, and Energy Data, Indicators and Analysis; Encourage international dialogue for technological and knowledge exchange on lessons learned and best practices; Develop internationally-recognized minimum energy performance standards in all sectors.
/By Azernews/
By Laman Ismayilova
An open-air exhibition dedicated to Azerbaijan was opened in Poland, Azertac reported. The event organized with support of the Azerbaijani embassy took place at Plac Bankowy (Bank Square) in Warsaw.
Plac Bankowy is one of the most important squares and traffic junctions in the capital. It's a great place of interest which attracts a lot of tourists from different countries.
The exhibition features photos reflecting the historical monuments, contemporary architecture, the unique nature and major tourist destinations of Azerbaijan.
The exhibition will run until the end of July.
Breathtaking landscape, triumphant architecture, thriving cosmopolitan cities -- these are all about beautiful Azerbaijan, the largest republic of the Caucasus.
Calling itself as the 'Land of Fire', the country is a land of contrasts. Neither Europe nor Asia, it's a nexus of ancient historical empires, but also a modern life and nation rapidly transforming itself and keeping pace with rapidly developing countries.
Its cosmopolitan capital, Baku, rings a UNESCO-listed ancient core with dazzling 21st-century architecture and sits on the oil-rich Caspian Sea.
All these and more make the Baku, which is informally called the "City of Winds", as one of the tourist destinations in the region for the past years.
The development of the tourism industry is one of the main economic issues of any state. The most important work on this way is informing future guests about the natural and historical beauties, a high level of security and developed infrastructure of the country.
/By Azernews/
By Rashid Shirinov
International community and mediators recently show more interest in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict settlement, believes Mikhail Neyzhmakov, political expert & head of the Center for International Politics at the Institute of Globalization and Social Movements (IGSM).
Neyzhmakov, talking to Trend, however said that it is early to talk about a noticeable breakthrough in the conflict resolution.
The expert went on to say that the preparation for major international agreements can take much time.
Lets recall the West-Iran talks on lifting the sanctions which successfully completed after a certain period of time. As for the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, various ways of the conflict settlement are being rather discussed, he said.
Earlier, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov stated that Moscow hopes to more clearly define the further steps towards the settlement of the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
Refusing to disclose the details of the meetings on the Nagorno-Karabakh for known reasons, Lavrov said it is necessary to be careful towards those sprouts of hope so that not to hamper the progress.
But there are grounds to presume that currently we are closer to success than ever before, he added.
For over two decades, Azerbaijan and Armenia have been locked in conflict which emerged over Armenia's territorial claims against its South Caucasus neighbor. Since a war in the early 1990s, Armenian armed forces have occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan's territory, including Nagorno-Karabakh and seven surrounding regions.
Over the entire period of its existence, the OSCE Minsk Group, which acted as the only mediator in resolution of the conflict, failed to move forward in resolving the long lasting conflict.
Meanwhile, Sergey Markov, Russian presidents confidant, member of the Russian Public Chamber claimed that the intensification of talks on Nagorno-Karabakh will lead to a serious breakthrough in solving the conflict in the near future.
Markov said that the frequent meetings and negotiations of the world leaders can result in de-occupation of Azerbaijani territories in exchange for unblocking Armenian borders.
Armenia will withdraw from territories around Nagorno-Karabakh and the first Azerbaijani families will be able to return to their ravaged houses this year, Markov said.
The expert stressed that the intensification of diplomatic contacts testifies that real, intensive negotiations are being held. Azerbaijan and Armenia will sign an agreement soon, he said, adding that the details of the reconciliation are being discussed.
While the OSCE Minsk Group acted as the only mediator in resolution of the conflict, the occupation of the territory of the sovereign State with its internationally recognized boundaries has been left out of due attention of the international community for years.
Armenia ignores four UN Security Council resolutions on immediate withdrawal from the occupied territory of Azerbaijan, thus keeping tension high in the region.
/By Azernews/
By Amina Nazarli
Kazakhstans capital Astana will hold Summit of leaders of the Caspian Five in 2017, said Erlan Idrissov, Kazakh Foreign Minister on July 13.
We have confirmed today at political level that there is a common attitude and understanding for the signing of the Convention in Astana at a summit of heads of state next year, Idrissov said.
The Kazakh foreign minister also noted that the working group on the Caspian Sea will meet this September and October in Tehran and Ashgabat, accordingly.
Idrissov further pointed that there are still some outstanding issues in the work on the Convention on the legal status of the Caspian Sea that require additional meeting of the Caspian "five".
He said that in the course of ongoing consultations in Astana [the meeting of the Foreign Ministers of the Caspian- littoral countries], the sides were focused on the coordination of the Convention.
Russias Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, speaking at the press conference in Astana, said that it is quite real to sign the convention on the Caspian Sea in H1 2017.
We have carried out very fruitful work, said Lavrov. We have moved forward in a number of directions.
As for the remaining issues, the Russian foreign minister stressed, that, it is necessary to find proper formulations for the principles agreed by the presidents.
Determining the legal status of the Caspian Sea has become one of the problematic issues among the five littoral states since demise of the Soviet Union.
The legal status have been remained unsolved during the past two decades, preventing development and exploitation of its disputable oil and gas fields and creating obstacles to the realization of major energy projects.
The Caspian states signed the Framework Convention for Protection of Marine Environment of the Caspian Sea in November 2003.
Russia and Kazakhstan signed an agreement on the delimitation of the northern part of the Caspian Sea in order to exercise sovereign rights for subsoil use in July 1998. The two countries signed a protocol to the agreement in May 2002.
Moreover, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan signed an agreement on the delimitation of the Caspian Sea and a protocol to it in 2001, and 2003, respectively.
Additionally, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Russia signed an agreement on the delimitation of adjacent sections of the Caspian Sea in 2003.
A new commercial data pact between the European Union and the US entered into force on Tuesday, ending months of uncertainty over cross-border data flows, and companies such as Google, Facebook and Microsoft can sign up from August 1.
The EU-US Privacy Shield will give businesses moving personal data across the Atlantic - from human resources information to people's browsing histories to hotel bookings - an easy way to do so without falling foul of tough EU data transferral rules.
The previous such framework, Safe Harbour, was struck down by the EU's top court in October on the grounds that it allowed US agents too much access to Europeans' data.
Revelations three years ago from former US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden of mass US surveillance practices caused political outrage in Europe and stoked mistrust of big US tech companies.
In the months that followed the EU ruling companies have had to rely on other more cumbersome mechanisms for legally transferring data to the United States.
The Privacy Shield will underpin over $250 billion dollars of transatlantic trade in digital services annually.
Google and Microsoft said they would sign up to the Privacy Shield and would work with European data protection authorities in case of inquiries.
A person familiar with social network Facebook's thinking said the company had not yet decided whether to sign up.
"It's too early to say as we haven't seen the full text yet but like other companies we will be evaluating the text in the coming weeks," the person said.
The Privacy Shield seeks to strengthen the protection of Europeans whose data is moved to US servers by giving EU citizens greater means to seek redress in case of disputes, including through a new privacy ombudsman within the State Department who will deal with complaints from EU citizens about US spying.
However the framework also faces criticism from privacy advocates for not going far enough in protecting Europeans' data and is widely expected to be challenged in court.
Max Schrems, the Austrian law student who successfully challenged Safe Harbour, said the Privacy Shield was "little more than a little upgrade to Safe Harbour". However he added that he did not have plans to challenge it himself for the time being.
"We are confident the framework will withstand further scrutiny," Penny Pritzker, US Secretary of Commerce, told a news conference.
EU data protection authorities, who had demanded improvements to the Privacy Shield in April, said they were analysing the framework and would finalise a position by July 25. Reuters
UAE-based Zero.1, light fidelity (LiFi) company, is in the final development stages for Healthcare4U, a revolutionary management system for the healthcare sector.
The UAE healthcare market is projected to reach $19.5 billion by 2020, achieving an annual average growth of 12.7 per cent, marginally higher than the GCC growth average1.
LiFi is a wireless optical networking technology that uses light-emitting diodes (LEDs) for data transmission, using a beacon installed in an LED light the LiFi chip modulates light (imperceptibly) for optical data transmission, in a similar way to wi-fi, but with many superior characteristics.
Marc Fleschen, Zero.1 CEO said: LiFi, is particularly suitable for sensitive environments such as clinics and hospitals. Other Wireless technologies such as WiFi and Bluetooth rely on Radio Frequency whereas LiFi does not. In such environments, LiFi provides a safer, faster and more efficient solution for many aspects of hospital management. Those involved in hospital development must consider the role LiFi will play in tomorrows health care centres.
Recent reports suggest that UAE will build more than 20 hospitals to care for the half a million medical tourists that are expected by 2020, with medical revenues to hit $300 million by 2016. In the broader GCC close to 70 mega-hospital projects, each valued at over $100 million are under construction, alongside 280 smaller hospital projects.
LiFi Technology outsmarts wi-fi on a number of criteria; it offers faster downloads, more secure data transmission and is free from electromagnetic smog created by radio frequency technologies such as wi-fi and Bluetooth.
LiFi is a cleaner solution that does not interfere with sensitive equipment or patient well-being. The Healthcare4U also offers practical solutions for hospital managers, Fleschen said.
Healthcare4U provides solutions for the management of patient and staff secure access, through Fingerprint ID or QR codes, patient queue management. The solution has a highly tuned geolocalisation capability, which will mean faster response time for security and emergency teams. Its asset management capability allows for the instant location of equipment, and secure storage and retrieval for patient and staff records.
The patient experience is also a key consideration in developing the Healthcare4U solution. When patients download the APP they will have access to mapping and visitor communications, and parking assistance and payment. They will be able to participate in specific network and feedback channels, and even pre-order food and beverage and other retail.
The Healthcare4U solution is in the final development stages. We expect to be able to demonstrate it capabilities in the last quarter of 2016, Fleschen concluded. TradeArabia News Service
China Aircraft Leasing Group has bought 30 Comac ARJ-21 regional jets and signed options for 30 more in a deal potentially worth $2.3 billion.
The planes would be used by an unnamed Indonesian airline in which CALC's parent, Hong Kong-based investment firm Friedmann Pacific Asset Management, plans to invest in, the leasing company said in a statement late on Monday.
The 78-90 seater jets would be delivered over the next five years, and Chinese state-owned planemaker Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China Ltd (Comac) would set up maintenance and after-sales offices in Indonesia as part of the deal.
The leasing firm, which ordered 20 of Comac's larger C919 narrowbody planes in 2012, said the latest deal reflected its confidence in China-made aircraft, and allowed it more flexibility to provide leasing options for airlines.
CALC has 70 Airbus and Boeing aircraft and says that it has another 103 Airbus planes on order, allowing it to expand its fleet to 173 aircraft by 2022.
In a separate statement, Comac said it had also received another order for 30 ARJ-21 jets from AVIC Leasing, a subsidiary of Aviation Industry Corporation of China. It did not disclose the value of the deal.
The orders are a boost for the ARJ-21, which is more than 10 years behind its original schedule and had its first commercial flight with Chengdu Airlines in end-June.
It competes with similar small passenger jets produced by Brazil's Embraer SA, Canada's Bombardier Inc and the Russian Sukhoi Superjet.
The ARJ-21 has garnered just over 300 orders, mainly from domestic carriers. General Electric Co's aviation arm supplies the engines, and its leasing firm has ordered five planes with options for 20 more.
It has not received certification from other regulators such as the US' Federal Aviation Administration, which means that only airlines in China and those that recognise the Chinese certification process can operate the aircraft.
China is keen to establish itself as a global supplier of aircraft, and hopes that its in-development C919 narrow body jet will compete with the established 737s and A320s. It is also working on a wide body aircraft project with Russia. - Reuters
Crude futures fell on Wednesday as investors took gains after oil prices surged nearly 5 percent in the previous session, partly on the back of a forecast increase in demand next year.
A surprise build in US crude stocks and a stronger US dollar which gained on Wednesday against a basket of currencies weighed on oil prices.
US crude slipped 45 cents to $46.35 a barrel as of 0007 GMT after ending the previous session up $2.06, or 4.6 percent.
Brent futures fell 51 cents to $47.96 a barrel after settling up $2.22, or 4.8 percent.
Those were the biggest daily gains since April 8 and followed Monday's session when oil fell to two-month lows.
Credit Suisse raised its 2016 oil price forecasts on Wednesday for US crude, West Texas Intermediate, and Brent.
It forecast WTI would average $43.59 per barrel this year versus $36.91 in its earlier forecast, and $55.00 per barrel for 2017, versus an earlier forecast of $52.88.
Brent is forecast to average $44.53 a barrel this year, up from an earlier estimate of $37.77, and average $56.25 a barrel in 2017, up from $54.25 earlier.
"We are on the cusp of US weekly production statistics - the market is keeping a close eye on that. There is maybe a little bit of profit taking ahead of the stats," said Ben Le Brun, market analyst at Sydney's OptionsXpress.
The US Department of Energy's Energy Information Administration (EIA) will release official weekly inventory data later on Wednesday.
That would come after oil stocks data from industry group, the American Petroleum Institute on Tuesday showed US crude inventories rose by 2.2 million barrels in the week to July 8 to 523.1 million, compared with analysts' expectations for a decrease of 3 million barrels.
The unexpected increase led oil prices to pare gains in post-settlement trade.
While the EIA on Tuesday cut its US and world oil demand growth forecast for this year, it increased its demand growth estimates for 2017.
That came as the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries was upbeat on the oil market outlook for 2017 saying in its monthly report that global demand for its crude would be higher than its current production.
"The market is running off good vibes from Opec which forecast higher oil demand. That was fundamentally the good news story of the night," Le Brun said.
Oil markets are also eyeing the impact of an international court ruling on Tuesday that China has no historic title over the waters of the South China Sea potentially putting it in conflict with other countries in the region which have rival claims.
Investors are keeping a watchful eye on China trade balance data later on Wednesday, Le Brun said. Reuters
Dubai Municipality launched DM Smart Search, a unified portal that provides access to vital information from across all departments within the organisation.
It aims to streamline existing data management systems and facilitate better town planning through faster decision making and improvement in overall level of customer service.
The idea was fuelled by the need to make operations more flexible and streamlined, and allow for more efficient working while utilising Microsoft cloud tools. Leveraging Microsoft SharePoint, Smart Search has enabled employees of Dubai Municipality to collaborate on tasks as well as create, access and organise information easily to improve work flow.
The Smart Search tool acts as a gateway across all functions of DM, allowing users to access information through a single click by signing in to a Web portal, and extract filtered information through layers of complex data in real time.
AbdulMajid AbdulRahman AbdulRahim Al Mulla, assistant director, IT Department, Dubai Municipality, said: Adoption of Microsoft SharePoint technology has helped Dubai Municipality realise its vision of reinventing the way we work together. By harnessing the power of data and converting it into knowledge for building more sustainable communities, we believe DM Smart Search, supported by SharePoint, will lead Dubai Municipality along the pathway to success. Our long-term mission is to empower our employees and clients to have ease of access to data, and Microsoft SharePoint makes that possible.
We at Microsoft have always believed innovation to be the key driver for future success and growth, said Samer Abu Ltaif, regional general manager, Microsoft Gulf. It is our goal to make technology easily accessible to everyone and to provide the right tools for organisations so they can leverage technology for more intelligent working. With our efforts to support government modernisation, this collaboration between Dubai Municipality and Microsoft sets an example for what technology can do for people, enabling them to harness the power of the latest solutions to their advantage and achieve more.
Dubai Municipalitys collaboration with Microsoft SharePoint to create the Smart Search tool has served as a catalyst for connecting users, and has boosted employee productivity by 40 per cent, decision-making efficiency by 80 per cent, and given rise to innovation for the formation of more sustainable communities. TradeArabia News Service
The Zayed Future Energy Prize, the UAEs international awards for pioneers of a sustainable energy future, exceeded 10,000 entries over its nine cycles when submissions for the ninth annual awards closed recently.
A record 1,678 entries were received this year, an increase of 12 per cent on 2015. Nominations, accepted in the Large Corporation and Lifetime Achievement categories, account for 555 entries, while 1,123 submissions were made in the remaining categories.
Following a record year for global investment in renewable energy, the top-five countries by number of prize entries are the United States, India, Mexico, Colombia and China.
Olafur Ragnar Grimsson, president of the Republic of Iceland and chair of the Zayed Future Energy Prize Jury, said: The extraordinary growth that we see each year from the Zayed Future Energy Prize is a testament to the length and breadth of its reach and influence across the globe. Through this growth we see Sheikh Zayeds continuing legacy inspire and empower pioneers in the industry and improve conditions for communities in every region of the world.
In the Asia region, the UAE contributed the second highest number of Global High School category submissions, behind India. Taking into account all regions, the prizes home nation placed seventh out of 49 countries for entries received in this category, which grew by 50 per cent on 2015. Winning high school projects to date have resulted in a reduction of more than 1,000 tonnes of carbon emissions, benefitting 37,000 people in surrounding communities.
Dr Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, UAE Minister of State and director general of the Zayed Future Energy Prize, said: The prize continues to honour the legacy of our nations founding father Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan through the significant impact it is having on people across the globe. To date, the contributions and actions of the prize winners have improved conditions for more than 202 million people, and this is one of the ways in which the UAE is playing a fundamental role in driving a sustainable development and ensuring energy access for all.
During the ninth cycle, the prize accepted nominations to the Large Corporation category in place of submissions, for the first time. The nomination process is already used in the Lifetime Achievement category.
Of the 555 nominations, 205 were for large corporations and 350 were made for individuals. Submissions, accepted in the remaining categories, increased by 32 per cent to 578 made by small and medium enterprises and by 10 per cent to 260 by non-profit organisations.
Before the winners are announced at an awards ceremony during Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week in January, entries must undergo a four-stage evaluation process. Evaluation begins with due diligence by research and analysis before a shortlist is formed by the Review Committee. From the reduced shortlist, entries are examined by the Selection Committee, where a list of finalists is agreed upon. The process culminates in a meeting of the prize jury to select a winning entry in each category. Submissions in the Global High Schools category are considered by the Global High Schools committee following due diligence, before proceeding directly to the Jury.
International experts from a range of sectors, including energy, government, business and academia, are involved at every stage. The jury counts current and former heads of state, global leaders and world-renowned personalities among its past and present members. TradeArabia News Service
Kempinski Hotel Mall of the Emirates has appointed Michael Payne as its new general manager, a role that marks his return to Dubai.
With almost 30 years of experience in luxury hospitality, Payne joins Kempinski from Emirates One&Only, Wolgan Valley Blue Mountains in Australia.
In Dubai, Payne had previously launched One&Only The Palm as general manager and led the team at the property from pre-opening in 2009 until 2015.
Prior to that, he was general manager of One&Only Reethi Rah in the Maldives from 2005 to 2009. His first stint in Dubai began in 2002, when he spent three years as resident manager at One&Only Royal Mirage.
Commenting on his appointment, Payne said: Im delighted to be joining the team at Kempinski Hotel Mall of the Emirates at such an exciting time, following the completion of its three-year renovation.
The property is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, and I am looking forward to leading the team as we embark on the next decade of serving our loyal guests.
He added: As a general manager, I constantly strive to to set the highest standards at all times and take great pride in building and leading teams that embrace the same business goals, philosophies, strategies and objectives. I thrive on delivering high results in order to be an industry leader in the market and I will ensure that no rock is left unturned in the process.
Payne began his career with Hyatt at the Hyatt Regency Cancun in Mexico and quickly worked his way up the career ladder in numerous food and beverage management positions at Hyatt Hotels in Hong Kong, Seoul, Spain, Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta and Melbourne.
A British National and graduate of the world-famous Ecole Hoteliere de Lausanne, Payne speaks fluent French, German and Spanish. - TradeArabia News Service
Qatar Airways is in advanced talks with Boeing to buy up to 30 narrowbody planes and will not rule out additional cancellations of delayed deliveries from rival Airbus, the airline's chief executive said on Monday.
Qatar earlier this year cancelled its first delivery of the narrowbody Airbus A320neo jet due after delays in delivery and has said it must source alternate planes to meet demand.
"We are quite advanced" in talks with Boeing, Akbar Al Baker told journalists at the Farnborough Airshow. "It's between 25 and 30 aircraft, a combination of the two," he said, referring to the current 737NG model and the successor 737 MAX.
Asked if a deal might be signed this week at the Farnborough Airshow, he said he didn't know. "We still have a few things to iron out."
Al Baker said there had been no progress in the dispute with Airbus on A320s and it was not clear if there would be additional cancellations. He said he hoped to get a second A350 of 11 by the end of the month despite a delay. - Reuters
Airbus bagged deals worth $20 billion to seize the initiative at a rain-soaked Farnborough Airshow on Tuesday, but industry executives said the mostly lacklustre event confirmed a recent boom in aircraft orders was finally fizzling out.
AirAsia chief executive Tony Fernandes flew into the UK to finalise an order for 100 Airbus A321neo jets to support the low-cost airline's expansion, confident of striking a deal at bargain prices as planemakers brace for a slowdown.
The 185-seat A321neo is worth $125.7 million per plane at list prices, but AirAsia is expected to pay a fraction of that after placing orders for hundreds of jets and establishing itself as one of Airbus's largest customers.
Fernandes told a news conference the A321neos were in addition to the A320neos, and not replacements. Some of the new jets would be for the Malaysian-based airline's leasing business, he added.
"With this aircraft we believe we will hit 100 million passengers in the not-too-distant future," Fernandes said, adding negotiations started over a meal in an Iranian restaurant in London last year, for which he said he paid the bill.
People familiar with the matter told Reuters on Sunday that AirAsia was studying a dual listing in Hong Kong and moving towards setting up a joint venture in China as part of plans to become a pan-Asian player.
The company said in a statement earlier on Tuesday that it was not currently pursuing any new joint venture proposals and was not formally considering a dual-listing.
But Fernandes told reporters that if AirAsia had an opportunity to be in China, "we will 100 percent be there."
AirAsia was interested in connecting secondary and tertiary cities in China, he said, adding the company's new head of North Asia had a very clear mandate to build businesses in that area.
The plane order triggered fraught last-minute negotiations for the contract to supply engines, with papers spread out in the corner of an airline award ceremony, but AirAsia was not expected to drop usual supplier CFM for rival Pratt & Whitney.
Separately, India's GoAir said it had signed a preliminary agreement to buy 72 A320neos, worth around $7.7 billion at current list prices and doubling an existing order.
QATAR BUYS INTO LATAM
Europe's Airbus and U.S. rival Boeing have enjoyed years of strong growth thanks to rising air travel and demand for new fuel-efficient models.
On Monday, they both increased their forecasts for aircraft demand over the next 20 years, betting rising wealth in Asia would continue to boost airline passenger numbers.
But analysts are worried growing risks to the global economy, from slowing growth in China to Britain's decision to leave the European Union, could dry up orders or even lead to some cancellations.
Indeed, air show participants report a lower level of dealmaking than in recent years.
Airbus sales chief John Leahy expressed confidence that record production plans would be upheld, thanks in part to a strategy of building up spare orders, but some airlines that have dominated previous events are widely said to be quietly rescheduling their orders for Airbus or Boeing jets.
"For both Boeing and Airbus, the question still isn't whether or not all the aircraft they produce will have a taker, but who this taker will be and at what price," said Bertrand Grabowski, managing director at Germany's DVB Bank.
Fernandes said his airline, which now has ordered a total of 575 Airbus jets, saw brisk growth across the region and could have bought even more. The airline had come through recent share price turbulence and "stuck to its guns," he added.
But several aerospace delegates and analysts expressed concern at what they see as a rush to supply airplanes to the Southeast Asia region and elsewhere, with uncertain implications for investors in manufacturers like Airbus and Boeing.
"They are valued off an optimistic picture of 2019 and 2020, not off a very expensive and underpeforming near term," said Agency Partners Nick Cunningham.
Underscoring the growing clout of Asia and the Middle East in the industry, Qatar Airways meanwhile announced a deal to buy up to 10 percent of Latin America's largest airline LATAM Airlines in a $613 million deal.
That follows the Gulf airline's purchase last year of 15 percent of British Airways owner International Airlines Group , which like Qatar and LATAM is a member of the Oneworld airline alliance.
Boeing said an undisclosed Chinese customer had signed a commitment for 30 of its 737 family of planes, in a deal worth more than $3 billion at list prices, while European travel firm TUI finalised an order for 10 737 MAX 8 jets and one 787-9, worth $1.4 billion at catalogue prices.
Airbus confirmed an order from German airline Germania for 25 A320neos, worth $2.6 billion, confirming a Reuters report. Reuters
Russian troops abandoned a key Ukrainian city so rapidly that they left the bodies of their comrades in the streets. The scene offered more evidence Tuesday of Moscows latest military defeat as it struggles to hang on to four regions of Ukraine that it illegally annexed last week. Russias upper house of parliament rubber-stamped the annexations Tuesday after referendums that Ukraine and its Western allies dismissed as fraudulent. Responding to the move, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy formally ruled out talks with Russia. Meanwhile, the U.S. announced it would provide an additional $625 million in military aid to Ukraine, including more of the advanced rocket systems credited with helping Ukraine's military momentum.
An explosives company that services the coal mines will lay off 15 workers at its Cheyenne plant, the most recent in a wave of job losses as Wyoming's energy sector struggles to make a comeback.
The cuts at Dyno Nobel amount to 10 percent of its Cheyenne workforce. They are the result of a declining market, according to a statement from the company.
The economic downturn has affected Cheyenne differently than parts of the state with closer ties to the energy industry. Wyoming's Capitol City benefits from its proximity to the Front Range, its government workforce and an economy comparatively diverse for Wyoming.
But though layoffs at Dyno Nobel are less severe than the 450 coal mining jobs lost a few months ago in Gillette, the cuts reflect Cheyennes inescapable connection to Wyomings energy industry, said Randy Bruns, CEO of Cheyenne LEADS, a private economic development corporation.
Drilling in Laramie County is less obvious than in other parts of the state, but had experienced an uptick in recent years, he said.
I think the rest of the state likes to view Cheyenne as an exception, for all kinds of reason that I understand but that arent valid, Bruns said. The fact is Wyomings economy is so energy driven, it dominates, even in Cheyenne where we havent had a lot of production until recently.
Moreover, the massive cuts seen in government agencies due to lost oil, gas and coal revenue this year directly affect Cheyenne, Bruns said.
Bruns company was started in the mid-'80s, during Wyoming's last big oil bust, to help the business community in Laramie County cultivate markets outside energy. Theyve enjoyed success, but there is a long way to go, Bruns said.
The Capitol City benefits from the Denver metropolitan area, just 90 miles to the south, and transportation corridors like Interstate 25 and 80, he said. But location alone doesn't insulate the city from the energy environment.
Id like to say all the diversification is due to Cheyenne LEADS and the Cheyenne business community, but the fact is it is also part of geographics and demographics, he said.
Representatives from Dyno Nobel could not be reached by press time. Based in Salt Lake City, the company produces nitrogen-based products for use in agriculture and mining. The Cheyenne site has been operating for more than 50 years.
RIVERTON Authorities have identified the man found dead in a central Wyoming river by a woman playing the popular smartphone game Pokemon Go.
The body of Jeffrey Day, 28, was found floating in the Wind River near the city of Riverton on Friday. Authorities are awaiting the results of an autopsy to determine the cause of the Arapahoe man's death, but say it appears to have been accidental and could be a drowning.
Shayla Wiggens says she had been playing the new game, which sends players to real-world locations to capture virtual creatures, when she spotted the body in the water near a bridge.
The incident comes as police in Missouri say four teens used Pokemon Go to lure victims to a location and rob them.
A crash near Shoshoni left an Illinois man dead, according to the Wyoming Highway Patrol.
Marion Mabry Jr., 45, of Calumet Park, was killed Tuesday afternoon on U.S. Highway 20 about 13 miles north of Shoshoni, a news release said.
According to the release, Mabry was driving a Volvo commercial truck towing a trailer south and failed to negotiate a steep curve at about 12:44 p.m. The truck left the highway to the right and overcorrected to the left. That caused the load in the trailer about 42,000 pounds of bagged bentonite to shift, leading the truck and trailer to roll. The truck came to rest in a section of guardrail; the trailer was left hanging over a 40-foot embankment.
Mabry, who was not wearing his seat belt, was ejected from the vehicle and sustained fatal injuries.
Both lanes of U.S. 20 were closed until almost 3 p.m., when first responders were able to set up a safe path for travel through one lane at a time. Regular traffic flow resumed at 6:09 p.m.
The release says investigators are looking into driver distraction, improperly secured load and failure to wear a seat belt as contributing factors in the crash, which was the 46th highway fatality this year in Wyoming. There were 70 deaths during the same period last year.
The float was one of many on the parade route in Cody, a weathered outhouse attached to a flatbed truck and surrounded by stuffed wildlife and shrubs. A large sign pointing toward the outhouse read transgender bathroom.
It was the first day of the Cody Stampede Parade, an extended weekend celebration that happens every Fourth of July and draws large crowds of tourists and Wyomingites to the small town near Yellowstone National Park.
By that afternoon, news of the float had rippled across social media. Former Cody residents from as far away as Washington, D.C., and Texas called the float bigoted and hateful. Others argued that American culture has become overly sensitive.
The controversy in Cody comes on the heels of a national debate on transgender rights, instigated by a North Carolina bill banning trans people from using the public restrooms of the gender they identify with. The bill and others like it have created fear in the trans community, some say.
The situation in Cody could have escalated, but the opposite appears to have happened, said Sarah Burlingame, education and outreach coordinator for Wyoming Equality.
Within a day of the parade, Burlingame was in conversation with the Cody Stampede Parade Committee, which organizes and approves the floats, and its president, Lee Ann Reiter.
I was just really impressed that [Reiters] first consideration was that peoples feelings were hurt, Burlingame said. She really came from the right place.
Members of the committee did not respond to a request for comment, but the group posted a message on its Facebook page July 4.
While we support everyone who are willing to spend the time and effort to create an entry for the parade, we recognize there was some confusion and even anger about this particular float, the post said. We are going to do what we always do in Wyoming and sit at the table with the folks from Wyoming Equality and the transgender community.
The committees response has been commendable, Burlingame said.
It was clear there were people that used [the float] to mock trans folks, whether that was the creators intention or not, she said. I dont think its helpful to shame that woman. I dont think that is useful at all. We want her to be in fellowship with us.
Cody Mayor Nancy Brown called the incident unfortunate but not surprising.
I dont believe that it was intended to be a malicious statement. It was a poorly-thought-out attempt at humor, Brown said. I think our world does not have much of a sense of humor anymore. Having said that, I am very pleased and proud of the response that the parade committee made to that situation.
Still some in Cody were frustrated by the backlash against the float.
I think it was overblown, said Landon Greer, vice president of the City Council.
The float is not a reflection of Codys treatment of members of the gay community, he said. The joke was that in the Wild West no one needed separate bathrooms. Everyone used the outhouse, he explained.
I dont think there is a culture of bigotry (in Cody). I think its a minority, in fact, he said. You can go anywhere and find people who are going to make fun of, or demean, [the gay community]. I think the majority of people in Cody are pretty understanding. Its a live and let live mentality.
The floats critics are from outside the community, Greer believes. They took offense based on their own assumptions about Wyoming and the West, he said.
Still, perception matters for a town that depends on tourism dollars every year.
We have about five months out of the year that are very important to the economy of Park County and Cody, said Claudia Wade, marketing director for Park County. It starts in May and goes through September.
In January 2015, Cody hotels were at 22 percent occupancy. By July, the busiest month of the year, occupancy shot up to 97 percent, she said.
Brown hopes the issue has been resolved and wont have a negative effect on tourism.
Nobody wants their reputation tarnished in any way, she said. I think it potentially could have been (a bad situation), but because of the way its been handled, hopefully it wont be.
Meanwhile, Wyoming has joined the transgender bathroom debate in regard to public schools. Wyoming filed a lawsuit with nine other states to protest the federal intervention in public school bathrooms via a Department of Education directive in support of transgender students choice of which bathroom to use. That directive does not constitute a law, but schools could still be denied federal funding if they do not comply.
Wyomings schools chief Jillian Balow has said the bathroom debate is a sensitive issue, best handled locally.
There is no shortage of reasons to be concerned about a recent shooting outside a Douglas church.
First is the lack of information the public has been given. Heres what weve been told so far: Jasen Scott Ramirez, the man who was killed, was a Colorado fugitive wanted on drug charges. He was at the St. James Catholic Church for a family members funeral. After the service, U.S. marshals tried to arrest him in the churchs parking lot. He resisted, and a U.S. marshal fatally shot him. Meth and guns were found in a car near where he was shot.
The list of what we dont know is much longer. Was Ramirez armed? Investigators found guns in a car near where the incident took place, but we have no more details than that. Were the guns loaded? Was he reaching for them? Why did authorities choose to approach him during a highly emotionally charged time? Why did they pursue him at a church, which is supposed to be a place of solace and comfort? Bishop Paul Etienne released a statement that said the Diocese of Cheyenne hoped for a speedy explanation of the events that led authorities to try to apprehend Ramirez on church grounds following a funeral service. That question is more than fair. If there was a good reason for this, why hasnt the public been told what it was?
Given we now know methamphetamine and firearms are factors in this incident, we can assume there are logical and defensible reasons the marshal took the actions he did where he did. But the question is: Why do we have to assume? The bigger question is: Why dont we have more answers?
When a peace officer shoots and kills someone, they and agency they work for have a responsibility to explain that decision to the public. Transparency is what allows the public to place our trust in law enforcement agencies. If the shooter hadnt been in law enforcement if anyone else had fatally shot a man at a church after a family members funeral answers would have come quickly, not weeks later.
Thats not to say the follow-up should be rushed or that information should be released before its verified. But how long does it take after a fatal shooting to ascertain whether the victim was armed? And what purpose is served by keeping that fact secret? Failing to inform the public in circumstances like this does not instill trust and respect.
If the Converse County Attorneys Office needs an example of a transparent way for an agency to conduct itself after an incident like this, it doesnt have to look far. The Casper Police Department last month called the media immediately after a Mills police officer shot and killed a man in a Casper neighborhood who was shooting at houses and at police on a city street. In that case, the speedy release of information helped the public understand and support the departments actions. The public had facts instead of innuendo, rumors and questions.
Answers and explanations build bridges. Lingering questions widen the gap between a community and its law enforcement officers. They chip away at trust in a critical relationship. Its unnecessary, and it would be easy to fix.
Gray is right
choice for HD57
Editor:
Im supporting Chuck Gray for state house; hes a voice badly needed in Cheyenne. No matter party affiliation we can all agree that government is broken. Wyomings future. its jobs and economy are increasingly threatened by bloated government.
Gray is a tireless drive in the defense of our Wyoming values and way of life. Ive watched him in action. There are too few candidates with his demonstrated courage in defense of our Constitution.
Unlike his opponent who has exposed his very liberal bend toward Common Core, Chuck points out the danger of selling out parental and Wyoming control of our childrens education. Even your childs private information is being collected by out-of-control government, bypassing your vote.
Gray is intelligent, hardworking, faithful and the only life long true Republican choice for House District 57. Take it from me, your former state representative.
Gray is the proven choice in defense of faith, family and freedom.
Tucson-based Raytheon Missile Systems stands to gain a new production program as it finalizes a deal with Norways Kongsberg Defence Systems to build a naval missile system in the United States.
Production of Kongsbergs Naval Strike Missile, including final assembly, system integration and testing, would take place at Raytheons Tucson missile plants, Raytheon said Tuesday at the Farnborough International Airshow near London.
Launchers would be manufactured at Raytheons site in Louisville, Kentucky, the company said.
We will assemble the missile and launchers in the same Raytheon factories where we produce many of the worlds most advanced missiles and other weapons systems, Raytheon Missile Systems President Taylor Lawrence said.
Harald Annestad, president of Kongsberg Defence Systems, said U.S. production of the NSM will help ramp up production and sustain the program while creating jobs in both nations.
A Raytheon spokesman said it is unclear how many new jobs could be created by the new program. Missile Systems is Southern Arizonas largest private employer and second-largest overall, with an estimated 9,600 employees at the start of the year.
With a range of more than 100 miles, the Naval Strike Missile is capable of striking targets on land as well as sea with a combination of advanced guidance and homing technologies.
It is currently used by Norway, Poland and Malaysia, and the U.S. Navy is testing the Naval Strike Missile to add long-range offensive punch to its new littoral combat vessels.
Kongsberg has also developed a longer-range, multirole version called the Joint Strike Missile to fit internally on the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.
Kongsberg and Raytheon also are teaming up on further development of the Joint Strike Missile to compete for a U.S. Navy offensive anti-surface warfare program, to replace the aging Harpoon anti-ship missile.
In the 1990s, Raytheon and Kongsberg co-developed the Norwegian Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System, a ground-based, medium-range air defense system that uses Raytheons Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile.
NEW DONTS FOR MOTORISTS IN AMENDED TRAFFIC RULES
Spot-Lights Barred and Front Lights Must Be Dimmed Drivers Must Stop Behind Stationary Street Cars No Jay-Walking
The amendment to the traffic ordinance, which is now being published in The Star, became effective upon its passage by virtue of a provision declaring that the ordinance is urgently required for the immediate preservation of the public peace, health and safety. Really it isnt bad as that, but it is as legitimate a use of the emergency provision as the average use to which it has been put in Arizona, so motorists need not feel that they are felons, typhoid-carriers or lunatics at large.
Stripped of its whereases, therefores and other legal verbiage, some of the new restrictions put upon automobilists are given as the ordinance makers say, hereinafter.
The pedestrians need not display untoward signs of satisfaction at these new restrictions put upon the enemy, however, for the law has something to say to them also. That manner of crossing a street called jay-walking is absolutely prohibited so it is up to the jay-walkers to cultivate city ways.
Right of Way For Sixes.
Drivers of slowly moving vehicles are required by the amended ordinance to keep as close as possible to the curb on the right hand side of the street, allowing more swiftly moving vehicles free passage on the left. The driver of the machine on the left is required to sound a signal before passing the slower vehicle, which must thereupon give way to the sixes and other swift carriers that are not so slow or common.
Parenthetically, where the ordinance says shall, it apparently means just that, for failure to do what is required in the premises will result in arrest for committing a misdemeanor, towit, that the motorist did then and there do what is charged with doing, committing, staging or pulling off. The punishment, however, is merely nominal, the maximum being a fine of only $300 and only three months in the city jail.
Incidentally, comfortable quarters have been provided for women at the city jail. Altogether, the council could have dealt with the emergency much more stringently and summarily, such as hanging and burning at the stake.
Subject to police committee traffic rules, the driver approaching a street intersection shall yield the right of way to a driver approaching the intersection from the right of the first named.
Must Give Signals.
The driver of any vehicle who desired to stop his car to change its course must give a signal by raising his hand to indicate in which direction he intends turning. No turn can be made, however, other than at an intersection. The burden of determining whether or not there is sufficient room to execute any operation of the car is on the driver. In crossing a street he must turn to the left so as to head in the direction in which the traffic is moving on the side of the street toward which he is destined. Under no circumstances may a crossing be made in the middle of the block.
Between the hours of seven oclock in the morning and six oclock in the evening, a vehicle is not allowed to stand for a period longer than 60 minutes on the following streets:
The Forbidden Zone.
Congress Street, between Toole Avenue and Main Street.
Stone Avenue, between Pennington and Broadway.
North Church Street, between Pennington and and Congress Streets.
North Scott Street, between Pennington and Congress Streets.
North Meyer Street, between Pennington and Congress Streets.
North Court Street, between Pennington and Congress Streets.
South Meyer, between Congress and McCormick Streets.
No Sidewalk Garages.
Outside of this zone, a vehicle may be allowed to stand four hours in a continuous period between 6 p. m. and 7 a. m. of the next day. This provision is aimed at those who use the sidewalks in front of their homes as an economical and convenient garage. Within a radius of thirty feet from a fire plug vehicles are absolutely prohibited and vehicles may not stop within twenty feet from the entrance to any theater or public building.
Sixteen years of age is made the minimum age limit of any automobile driver.
Drivers of vehicles are required to give an adequate warning or signal when moving from a full stop or crossing a street intersection. Drivers of power propelled vehicles are required to give an indication when approaching an intersection of what direction they will continue in.
Drivers of automobiles or other vehicles approaching a street car which has stopped to discharge or take on passengers, must stop not nearer than ten feet in the rear of the street car until the car proceeds.
Light Dimmers Required.
Light dimmers on front lights are required, the center rays to strike the ground in front of the car not further away than 45 feet from the car. Spotlights are unconditionally prohibited in the city of Tucson.
Due caution is imposed on both drivers and pedestrians at street intersections where safety zones are established and at such intersections pedestrians are prohibited from crossing the street other than at right and left angles and within the chalked lines that will mark the safety zones.
Barring these few restrictions and such others as the police committee may deem it wise to promulgate, joy riding may continue as before.
PHOENIX A Tucson man has pleaded not guilty to charges of plotting an attack on a motor vehicle office in metro Phoenix.
Mahin Khan entered the pleas Tuesday to charges of terrorism, conspiracy to commit terrorism and conspiracy to commit misconduct involving weapons.
Khan is accused of asking a suspected militant for help making a bomb in a plot to blow up a Motor Vehicle Division office in Maricopa County.
Authorities say Khan wrote emails to an alleged Pakistan Taliban member seeking weapons and instructions for a homemade explosive.
It's not clear if Khan was corresponding with an actual member of the group.
Khan will remain jailed pending the outcome of a July 19 bond hearing.
His attorney, Robert Ditsworth, declined to comment on the case outside of court.
Private school scholarship funds made possible by state tax-credit programs were briefly in jeopardy because of a lawsuit stemming from what an organization said was a technical glitch at the Arizona Department of Revenue.
A court order issued in Pima County Superior Court last week put a temporary stop to the revenue departments processing of private school tax-credit program applications. The injunction was lifted during a hearing Tuesday in Tucson.
That benefited dozens of school scholarship organizations that count on those tax credits to reward their corporate donors, who in turn donate money for scholarships for low-income and/or disabled children so they can attend private schools in the coming school year.
The department receives applications for the corporate tax-credits via email and they are processed on a first-come-first-served basis, meaning that applications received first have a better chance of being accepted for tax credits. The tax credits available through these programs for private school tuition total about $67 million and the agency stops processing applications after the cap has been reached.
The court order stems from a Georgia-based organization that sued the Arizona Department of Revenue after the organization said a glitch in the departments email system led to its applications not being received as early as its CEO sent them.
According to the lawsuit, the AAA Scholarship Foundations applications never arrived at midnight July 1, when the application submissions began. But emails re-sent by the organization at about 6:30 a.m. successfully arrived at the state revenue department.
The foundation, which provides scholarships in several states, including Arizona, had applications for $12 million in tax credits on the line. Not getting its emailed applications accepted when the submission period opened left in doubt whether the organization would get the tax credits it was applying for.
Its reputation as a school tuition organization will be irreparably harmed if it is deemed to have failed to deliver the application in a timely manner despite the fact that it did, in fact, submit the applications at midnight, the organizations complaint said.
But leaders of several other organizations also had money on the line, in some cases larger amounts than AAA, and were asking the state to resume processing applications.
More than 20 school tuition organizations wrote a letter to Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich, saying that with the new school year and tax deadlines fast-approaching, families need scholarship funds now to secure their childrens spot in a school and that corporations need an answer on whether theyd receive tax credit for their donations.
The Arizona Leadership Foundation was seeking more than $20 million in corporate tax credits to provide scholarships to disabled and displaced children. Aaron Muth, the president, wrote in his letter, Due to the injunction between AAA Scholarship Foundation and the Arizona Department of Revenue, thousands of students, their families and the private schools we serve throughout the state are forced to wait for scholarship funding.
This injunction is disrupting the whole system, said Kimberly Cygan, an assistant attorney general, at a hearing Tuesday in Tucson.
School tuition scholarship organizations rely on the fast turnaround in these tax-credit programs processing.
James Susa, a Tucson attorney representing AAA, argued during the hearing for the temporary order to be extended, saying there is evidence the foundation had sent the emails, but that the revenue department did not receive them in a timely manner.
On that basis, AAA argued that its applications sent at midnight should be the ones processed by the revenue department, not the re-sent ones from 6:30 a.m., which are less likely to be accepted because dozens of other organizations had sent their applications before then.
This is unprecedented, in my experience, said Tim Keller, managing attorney for the Institute of Justice Arizona Office, which has been litigating school choice for nearly 20 years. To his knowledge, no other organization has tried to sue the revenue department over the processing of applications.
Jerry Fries, tax section chief for the revenue department, said at the hearing after the dissolution of the court injunction that the department would resume processing the applications and disbursing the tax credits.
Three people were displaced following a late-night fire on Tucson's south side on Tuesday, authorities said.
Tucson Fire Department responded to reports of heavy smoke and flames coming from a house near South 11th Avenue and West Utah St., said department spokesman, Capt. Barrett Baker.
A fourth person staying at the home was in the back yard when he heard "weird sounds" and noticed a "wall of fire" from the front yard of the house. He went to investigate and screamed when he saw the fire, waking up the other three occupants, who were able to evacuate before fire crews arrived, Baker said.
Crews encountered a full involved house fire that was so large, a larger hose had to be brought in to battle the blaze. Once the fire was under control, crews were able to enter the house and confirm that all occupants and pets were out safely, as well as extinguish any hot spots in the home, Baker said.
It took nine units consisting of twenty-three firefighters to bring the fire under control within fifteen minutes of arriving.
The major damage from the fire was confined to the front porch area and front rooms of the house. Fire investigators are still determining the cause and origin of the fire, Baker said.
Another local for-profit college is planning to close, the third in less than six months in an industry under mounting federal scrutiny.
Tucson College at 5151 E. Broadway, which has been in business under various owners for more than 50 years, will shut down next year.
Declining enrollment led to the difficult but necessary decision said Chuck Vella, a spokesman for the schools parent firm, Virginia-based Delta Career Education Corp.
The Tucson site is one of eight Delta recently scheduled for closure, including four in Ohio, two in Pennsylvania and one in Tennessee. The firm also announced plans last year to shutter a site in Mississippi.
Tucson College has stopped enrolling new students but will stay open until current students transfer out or finish their studies, Vella said in an email.
The school had 356 students in fall 2014, according to federal enrollment data. It now has around 200, Vella said.
Its most popular offerings were an electrical technician program and training courses for nurses aides, pharmacy technicians and patient care technicians.
Two other Tucson for-profit schools also are slated for shutdown after current students leave.
The Art Institute of Tucsons pending closure was announced in late January, followed in June by a move to shutter Brown Mackie College in Tucson, which was cited last year by the state nursing board for training deficiencies.
Brown Mackie and the Art Institute are owned by Pittsburgh-based Education Management Corp., which agreed to pay more than $95 million last year to settle a federal lawsuit alleging illegal recruiting, consumer fraud and other violations. The firm denies wrongdoing
Tucson College has an A+ rating from the local Better Business Bureau. The school had one complaint against it in 2013 for aggressive solicitation and no complaints during the past year, the bureaus website says.
Enrollment in for-profit educational institutions has been slumping nationwide in the wake of government actions against problem schools and the 2014 collapse of the Corinthian Colleges chain.
All three of the Tucson schools set to close are accredited by the same outfit that oversaw Corinthian, the Washington, D.C.-based Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools.
The council itself is facing a potential shutdown by federal officials who say the accreditor has shirked its duty to oversee the quality of many for-profits. The council said it is taking steps to improve and deserves a chance to show that recent changes can work.
The council also accredits two other Tucson schools ITT Technical Institute and Brookline College.
An ITT official said the Tucson site is operating as usual and has no plans to close. Brookline College did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.
Students at the Tucson schools slated for closure may find their options limited if they try to transfer.
Many public colleges and universities, including Pima Community College, dont accept transfer credits from schools whose sole accreditation is through the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools.
Federal education department officials are expected to decide in the next few months whether to strip the accrediting council of its oversight powers.
About a dozen officers of the Tucson Police Department are in Dallas to attend the funerals of five officers killed by a gunman last Thursday.
"It is important to show the families that we are there to support them," said Sgt. Roland Gutierrez, president of the Tucson Police Officers Association.
"When you have officers who were out there to protect the public, and they were gunned down needlessly, we must show solidarity among each other and support each other through the grieving process," Gutierrez said.
He said officers across the nation are experiencing difficult times.
On July 7, the Dallas officers were killed and seven others wounded when they were ambushed by sniper fire during a peaceful protest over shooting deaths of two African-American men by police in Minnesota and Louisiana.
Ex-Army reservist Micah Johnson, who asked police how many officers he shot, was killed in a standoff after negotiations failed. Johnson was killed by a police robot that was detonated with a bomb.
Gutierrez said in attendance at the weeklong funerals, vigils and memorials, will be TPOA board members Sgt. Tony Archibald and Officer Augustine Lopez. The union also sent Sgt. Deanne Zeis, and Officers Erika Munoz, Ramon Vazquez and Jason Kerns.
Also representing the department are Officers Matt Merz and Travis Carpenter. Merz is with the charity Flags for the Fallen, which raises donations for the families of fallen officers. Carpenter, of the charity Rusted American Metal, crafts metal flags and presents them to fallen officers' families.
Also in Dallas from Tucson are officers Jonathan Alameda and Phil Hengsteler; and Sgts. Jobe Dickinson, Jason Winsky and Brandon Williams.
PHOENIX Officials of the Tohono Oodham Nation were discussing possible sites for a casino in Maricopa County even as tribes were telling voters in 2002 there would be no new tribal gaming in the Phoenix area if they approved a ballot measure.
Officials were already looking at land west of Phoenix before the vote over tribal gaming, documents the tribe was forced to disclose in a pending lawsuit show. And the hand-written minutes of the closed meeting also show there already was interest in moving close to Glendale where, while the land was more expensive, the profits from a casino would be greater.
Attorneys for the state who subpoenaed the documents hope to use them to convince a federal judge that the tribe committed fraud 14 years ago, making it unfit to operate full-blown casino gaming at the site where it already has limited gambling.
But attorneys for the state also shared the documents with lawyers for the Salt River Pima Maricopa Indian Community, which is not a party to the lawsuit. The tribe stands to lose money if gamblers stay closer to home at the new Tohono Oodham site in Glendale.
A public relations firm hired by the Salt River community released the documents, which otherwise would not be public, at least not at this stage of the litigation.
That release embarrassed Daniel Bergin, director of the Arizona Department of Gaming, who is in court with the Tohono Oodham Nation.
State agency spokeswoman Amanda Jacinto noted the Salt River tribe had been part of a prior unsuccessful effort to block gaming in Glendale. She said Bergins lawyers shared the documents to gain a better understanding of how the documents applied to the first lawsuit that all parties were a part of.
It was not the intent of the lawyers representing Director Bergin to have these documents shared beyond the attorneys, Jacinto said.
In a prepared statement, Tohono Oodham Nation Chairman Edward Manuel sought to minimize what was in the notes.
He said some notes were handwritten, by unknown authors who had no involvement in the compacting process.
Manuel also said the tribe wont speculate about either the validity of the notes or the context in which they were created. But it was the nation that produced the documents under subpoena in response to the states request.
Manuel said the documents add nothing to what courts already have considered in prior rulings allowing the tribe to proceed with the Glendale casino.
But the issues in this case are different.
In earlier rulings, federal courts did not dispute that the 2002 ballot measure giving tribes the exclusive right to operate casino gaming was sold to voters with a promise there would be no new casino built in the Phoenix metro area.
But in refusing to block the Glendale casino, they said the actual measure does not say that.
The language is unambiguous and not reasonably susceptible to the plaintiffs interpretation that the compact implicitly bars the nation from gaming in the Phoenix area, wrote Judge Carlos Bea for the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
The earlier lawsuit left one issue unresolved: charges by foes that the tribe committed fraud in hiding its plans. U.S. District Court Judge David Campbell said he could not rule on that issue because of tribal sovereignty.
All that changed last year when Bergin told the tribe he would not provide the necessary certification for full-blown Class III gaming on the site, saying it had engaged in deceptive behavior that made the tribe unfit to operate a new casino.
The tribe opened the casino anyway with Class II gaming meaning only a certain kind of slot machine was allowed and then sued.
That allowed Bergin to countersue. And Campbell said that now makes the allegations of fraud legally relevant.
Thats where the new documents come in.
One set of minutes, dated about a week before the 2002 election, mentions analyzing several locations for a casino, some as far out as Buckeye and Sun Valley Parkway, about 40 miles from downtown Phoenix.
But there was also discussion of a site in Cashion, just 16 miles from downtown, as well as just outside of Glendale. Tribal officials in that meeting specifically discussed buying the land with $30 million received under a 1986 federal law compensating the tribe for the loss of other reservation lands due to a federal dam project.
That is significant: While the compact that went to voters in 2002 specifically prohibited new casinos, there was an exception for property obtained as a result of a land settlement law precisely what was in the 1986 act.
Yet a brochure prepared ahead of the 2002 election to answer voters questions specifically said approval of the measure would mean no additional casinos in Phoenix and only one new one permitted in Tucson.
Help India!
By TCN News,
Civil Liberties Monitoring Committee fact finding team visited localities of old city, Hyderabad namely Talabkatta, Chandrayangutta, Hashimabad and Chattabazar and met the families of recently arrested youth in the allegations of connections to ISIS.
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All these localities are in and around the historic Charminar of Hyderabad and popularly known as old city; these are densely populated areas dominated by Muslim community. These areas are underdeveloped and backward, the residents belong to the lower and middle classes. Politically these localities are dominated by Majlis e Ittehadul Muslimeen (MIM) party; Majlis MLAs represent them in state Assembly and Mr. Asaduddin Owaisi is the Member of Parliament who represents them in the Indian Parliament.
All these youth are in the age group of 20-40 years with different professional backgrounds. Their educational qualifications differ from SSC to Engineering graduates. All these youth belong to the breakaway faction of Markaz Jamaitul Ahle-e-Hadees called Subai Jamait Ahle-e-Hadees which was separated due to ongoing dispute on the construction of a Masjid in the Yakutpura area of old city Hyderabad.
The 11 Muslim youth who were arrested and detained are the residents of these densely populated localities. They are: 1) Syed Nayeemullah Hussain, 42 years resident of Moghalpura. 2) Mohammed Ataullah Rehman aged 33 years resident of Bandlaguda. 3) Abdul Khader Mohsin, aged 32 years, resident of Hashimabad. 4) Azhar 22 years, resident of Talabkatta. 5) Mohammed Arbaz Ahmed, 21 years resident of Bandlaguda. 6) Abdul Habeeb Ibrahim aged 32 years, resident of Yousuf Gulshan colony, Hashimabad. 7) Mohammed Ilyas Yazdani, 24 years resident of Talabkatta, Amaan Nagar B. 8) Mohammed Ibrahim Yazdani, 32 years, resident of Chattabazar, Lakkadkot. 9) Habeeb Mohammed, 32 years, resident of Hashimabad, Chandrayangutta. 10) Abdullah Bin Ahmed Al-Amoudi, 31 years, resident of Panchmohalla, Charminar. 11) Muzaffar Hussain Rizwan, 29 years, resident of Talabkatta.
Facts of the case
In the early hours of 29th June 2016 i.e. after morning prayers (Fajr), different teams of NIA and Hyderabad Task Force police barged into the houses of the above said youth, they were in group of 15-20 people in plain clothes, without number plate vehicles. As they forcefully entered into the houses, family members objected to their behavior and those people started beating and abusing them. Without considering even the women members of the family, they directly entered into the rooms. They did not even declare their identity. When some senior member of the family enquired as to who they are, they just said from NIA; and at some other houses they said they are from Income Tax. They did not show any search warrant nor arrest warrant. After forcefully entering into the houses they separated women and children from men and made them sit in separate rooms with their hands tied at their back. 2-3 people were guarding each family person. If anyone dared to question about their operation and searching of their house, the only reply from the officers was investigation.
Families version
Habeeb Mohammed his residence is located at Hashimabad at Chandrayangutta. From this house two youth were picked up namely Habeeb Mohammed and Abdul Khader, both of them are married and are having small children. His family belongs to the Arab tribe residing in Barkas area of Hyderabad who derive their family name from their city of origin, Baghdad, thus have their surname as Al Baghdadi, which also played a role in doubling their trouble with security agencies.
We met his mother, grandmother, aunt and uncle. The family members were in shock and much afraid of the sensational reports making rounds in the media. The old aged grandmother has brought up Habeeb Mohammed from childhood. Her straight forward question to us was, Are we looking like criminals? Can we kill any Hindu?. While giving us the details they said, on the early hours of 29th June 2016, large number of people suddenly entered into their house, over powered the youth in the house, women were made to sit in separate room and 3-4 officers were guarding each of them.
The family members said when NIA officers entered their house forcefully they went exactly to the room of Habeeb as if they already knew where he was sleeping. Then they took Habeeb Mohammed in a separate room and started beating him. The family was able to listen to his pleadings of not to beat.
NIA started searching the complete house; the family members said NIA officers had come along with some bags and covers. They did not know what was in the bags. But the bags were sealed and packed and the NIA officers asked them to sign on the seizure papers. When they questioned as to what is in the bags as the bags were sealed they said these bags were recovered from their houses. But they did not show them anything. They forced his mother to sign, but his mother said to us that she does not know where the bags came from and what was in the bags. The NIA and local Task Force Policemen went to the Habeebs house in the early hours at 5.30 AM and stayed till 2.30PM.
Abdul Khader brother of Habeeb Mohammed who was released after interrogation told us that NIA detained both of them saying after some interrogation they will be released. He said they were taken to CRPF camp, Ranga Reddy District and was interrogated about his religious learnings. NIA officials questioned him on, why you are a Muslim? What is your opinion on Hindus and Christians? What sect of Islam do you belong to? On that question, when Abdul Khader replied that he is just a common Muslim, NIA officer shot back, No, which sect? Deobandi or Barelvi, which sect? He replied Ahle Hadees, then again they asked Why do you belong to Ahle Hadees sect? Why do you pray at Ahle Hadees mosque? Arent all Ahle Hadees followers of terrorists? What do you know about ISIS? These were some of the frequent questions of their interrogators.
One interesting event which should be noted carefully in this whole episode is the second raid of NIA at Habeeb Mohammeds house on 5th July 2016. According to the family immediately after NIAs firs raid and arrest of their son, their landlord landed at the house along with some locals and started threatening them with an ultimatum to vacate the house in an hour. The traumatized family under pressure from locals and landlord was about to vacate the house, but suddenly help came from an unexpected quarter. NIA officers who got to know about the situation directed local police to detain the landlord who was creating trouble and asked the family members not to vacate the house under any situation. Abdul Khader even informed the fact finding team that NIA officials called for their rent deed to issue a notice to the landlord. Family has a sigh of relief.
But again as the murky nature of things in terror trails, few days later different guests landed at their door steps, this time it was NIA officers. They brought Habeeb to his house. Gullible family members thought that helpful NIA officers have brought Habeeb to meet his family. But their misconception did not last long as NIA officers separated the family members and took Habeeb to some room and announced the discovery of live rounds of bullets. According to section 27 of the Evidence Act, discovery of new evidence is admissible only if the accused leads the police to the place where he has hidden evidence which have been used to commit a crime. From the day one NIA officers were transcripting the scene for the discovery of evidence to solidify their case while the gullible and helpless family members were fallen in the trap of helpful NIA.
Abdullah Bin Ahmed Al Amoudi Fahad He is brother in law of above mentioned Habeeb Mohammed. His residence is at Panchmohalla near Charminar. Abdullah has a workshop of Hydrographic Printing. The liquids and paints used for printing were taken away from the workshop and these were later shown as chemicals to make the bombs. The electrical items, the cables and fiber wires were also taken away. Abdullahs family members denied the charges of NIA and said all the things taken away was material used for their business purpose. Even at Abdullahs house the family said the NIA brought some bags which were sealed and packed and then told the family members that explosives material was recovered from their house.
Ibrahim Yazdani and Ilyas Yazdani The fact finding team then visited the house of Yazdani brothers. The police and media are claiming that Ibrahim Yazdani is the group leader. We spoke to Aslam Yazdani and Ishaq Yazdani, brothers of Ibrahim and Ilyas Yazdani. Their narration of events was also similar to the narration of above two families.
Ibrahim Yazdani, 29 years is B.Tech graduate and works for online sales for Flipkart and Amazon. Ilyas Yazdani is Intermediate pass and was working at Mee Seva centre. According to the brothers of Ibrahim and Ilyas, in the early hours of 29th June, 2016, around 50 men in civil dress forcefully entered into the house with hand guns, revolvers, pistols etc. each and every family member of the house was surrounded by 4-5 men. The family went into a state of shock and after some time, Ishaq enquired, Who are you? How & why you have entered in our House? And why are you behaving like this?. One person named Jalaj Srivastava, introduced himself as Additional SP, NIA New Delhi and Mr. Rauleta introduced himself as Inspector NIA. Ishaq also said that hundreds of policemen were standing outside their home. They also asked him the whereabouts of his elder brother Mohammed Ibrahim Yazdani. He informed them that he is at his in-laws house at Chatta Bazar, Lakkadkot, Hyderabad which is hardly one kilometer from their residence. When he asked them what is the matter, why they were behaving so cruelly and ruthlessly? They did not reply anything and started searching their house. He said they broke open the almirahs, cupboards, did not even spared childrens toys. He further said that they destroyed each and every thing of their house, torn off pillows available in all the rooms. Even Refrigerator, Washing Machine was checked along with Bathroom, Toilets, and Kitchen. They left no place unsearched in the house and left nothing untouched and unturned. They scattered all the house-hold articles.
Ishaq Yazdani said NIA even interrogated family members on basic household items. The NIA officers objected and questioned family members as to why they are freezing ice in the refrigerator? Why a separate slipper pair is used for the toilets? Why the acid, toilet cleaner and phenyl etc is used in the house? While leaving NIA also seized those objectionable materials. Later Yazdani family saw in the news that those toilet cleaners, acid, and frozen ice was shown as explosive preparing materials. They took photographs of each and everything. They took away all the phones and laptops by saying that by evening those items will be returned. They stayed for two hours. They took away left over electric cable bundle and an old voltage tester of his father, who was an electrician, and later it was shown in the news channels that all of it was used for making bombs.
Ishaq further said that while leaving their house, officers forcibly took the signatures of all the family members on various papers, including blank papers and the search list, details of property alleged to have been seized under Section 100 (6) or 165 of Criminal Procedure Code. Later, they got to know through electronic media that NIA have not just raided their house but also Ibrahims in laws house where he was staying at exact same time, so the pressure doubled when the news was broken that not only NIA arrested his younger brother Mohammed Ilyas Yazdani but also arrested his elder brother Mohammed Ibrahim Yazdani, from Chatta Bazar.
According to the statement of Mohammed Ibrahim Yazdanis wife Nadera Parveen she, her husband and children went to their parents house on Iftar party one day before i.e on 28th June 2016 and the next morning the same episode happened at her parents house as well. On enquiring about the sudden raid one officer responded and introduced himself as Vikram Khalate, IPS, SP from NIA, Mumbai. They searched the complete house and they took out rupees 14,99,500 from her fathers Almirah and seized the same, when her father objected saying that amount is for his business purpose, the policemen insisted saying that the amount is of Ibrahim Yazdani. She further said that her father has all the proof including documentary evidence of the cash which belongs to her father. Later in television channels they saw NIA sources claiming that fifteen lakhs were recovered which was generated from Hawala, supposed to be used for terrorist activities. They took away all the mobiles of the family members, one Bajaj Pulsor bike, personal computer of her father and many other house hold electronic and non-electronic items. They took her signature on many plain and printed papers.
Muzaffar Hussain Rizwan He is 29 years old, resident of Talabkatta who resides along with his small family in the rented accommodation of Yazdani family house. He is SSC failed works as salesman in a footwear showroom. He got married just two months back.
His elder brother Mudassir Hussain who works as graphics designer was hesitant and scared to speak with anyone. He said police officers from different departments is visiting his house and interrogating entirely family on one pretext or the other. Mudassir said he has grown suspicious to strangers and shared one incident when some individuals claiming they to be Task Force officers barged into his house and started interrogating on every minute detail of his family members and took mugshot images of the family members, later on his family got to know that those task force officers were in reality local Telugu Media journalists digging personal details of the family members to create another round of sensational and fabricated news items.
Mudassir narrating the events of his younger brothers arrest said at his two room house some 15-20 officers in civil dress raided and stormed the room where Rizwan was asleep along with his wife. Officers started the search and took videos and photographs of very item in the room. He said NIA also seized his Personal Computer, One New External Hard Disk, Three Old Hard Disks, One Pen Drive, and one Graphic Card, mobile phone and tab of Rizwan, and two other mobile phones of his newly wedded wife Mrs. Ayesha Begum, was also seized. NIA also took away some old house hold accounts books of their family. Before taking Rizwan into custody they took his brothers signatures on several blank and printed papers and then left. His brother said NIA told them that they would release Rizwan in 3-4 hours after some interrogation.
The next day they found out that Rizwan has been made A5 in the case by NIA. Mudassir said they have heard wild stories making round in news papers quoting NIA sources. Especially he gave reference to his brothers visit to Anantapur district. Mudassir said Rizwan made the visit to Anantapur district just a week before his arrest by NIA. The purpose of his visit Mudassir said, Rizwan wanted to start a Papaya trade business in Hyderabad by purchasing fruit at cheaper rates in Anantapur. Then he stopped speaking for a while and said with a tearful eyes will all this even matter now my brother has now already been declared a terrorist.
Media Trial
English and Telugu print and electronic media are publishing and telecasting the terror stories by giving NIA source. As per the routine practice media is conducting its own trial and it has already declared these youth as terrorists. The gravity of unfair media reporting can be imagined by this news that these youth were planning to plant beef in religious places. Telugu and English media is in competition, in making, creating and publishing false and sensational stories. It shows that in the eyes of these media, Muslims are terrorists; the anti-Muslim mindset is dominated upon them and through their mediums they are trying maximum to defame and target Muslim community.
Police version
NIA has registered a case vide no. RC-01/2016/NIA/HYD, based on credible information that some youths hailing from Hyderabad and their accomplices have entered into criminal conspiracy to wage war against the Government of India by collecting weapons and explosive materials to commit terrorist acts by targeting public places including religious sites, sensitive government buildings etc. in various parts of the country.
Fabricating case using Informers net
During the course of fact finding visits and meetings this committee found out from different reliable sources that local police informers played a crucial role for the development and shaping of the case.
Family members of the arrested and other youth who were detained and let off after interrogation informed that NIA officers showed pictures of them from different locations and places as if NIA was keeping tab on each and every minute detail of those youths from long time. Pictures taken secretly from past two months were shown during interrogation. One very intriguing incident during this whole episode which needs to be mentioned here is, one person a close companion of those 11 detained youth, whose name is withheld here, and who is nephew of a local body elected member was detained by NIA way back on June 5th but was released after five days of interrogation in their custody. That person did not make an issue out of it and acted in his group of friends as if nothing has happened. Exactly 25 days later NIA raids occurred and most of his companion friends from breakaway faction of Ahle Hadees were picked up but he was untouched.
Findings:
1) This committee by going through the facts, reports from the different sources and after consulting with the family, community and civil society members came to the conclusion that Muslim community is once more under attack and the community is terrorized by the police, media and Hindutva organizations. Because of this terror atmosphere created by the state sponsored agencies there is a threat to the life of Muslim youth; and their human rights and civil liberties is on stake.
2) Earlier Muslims in Hyderabad were targeted in the name of ISI now they are getting targeted in the name of ISIS. There is a long drawn practice of security agencies in Hyderabad to target and label Muslim community as per the current international scenario and hot selling terror terminology available in the international market.
3) The Joint operation of NIA and notorious task force of Hyderabad police is nothing but a part of greater conspiracy to defame the Muslim community and to spoil the future of their youth. Civil Liberties Monitoring Committee finds the direction of investigation by NIA on the basis of concocted stories and arresting of Muslim youth and then spreading false stories through media and conducting the media trial by declaring these youth as terrorists as despicable.
4) There is no doubt that Hyderabad police is notorious in making false stories and implicating the Muslim youth in the fabricated cases with the false allegations. But the matter of concern here is that this time NIAs role is also not beyond suspicion. NIA is following the ruling political party policy to suppress the Muslims and also to give free hands to Hindutva elements by providing them a clean chit in blast cases as it has happened in the case of Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur who is an accused in Malegaon bomb blast.
5) With this act of NIA it is clearly proved that RSS ideology is dominating the national investigating agency; and now it seems that they are getting instructions from the Nagpur head quarters of RSS. NIA and Hyderabad police together who have spun the stories are unimaginable and unbelievable.
6) It is largely believed that the recent NIAs operation can be seen by keeping in view the administration of present Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao, who is working under the collaboration of BJP government at the centre. On the instructions of central government he appointed anti-Muslim officers in the ministry of Home Affairs and the operation done by NIA is on the directions of such officers.
7) A kind of fear complex has developed among the Muslim community about the safety and security of their youth. The community also strongly believes that they are under the target of police terror and for the sake of awards, rewards and promotions, police may arrest more youth as it has earlier happened after the twin blasts in the year 2007. Police is repeating the same kind of tactics and spreading the same type of stories to defame and isolate Muslim youth from the mainstream. We are still receiving information about the arrests of Muslim youth from different parts of Hyderabad old city. No one knows when this chain of arrests will end and with how many arrests of Muslim youth will satisfy the quench of NIA.
Demands
1. Stop targeting Muslim youth
2. Stop the media trial
3. Conduct high level inquiry on NIAs claim on the arrest of Muslim youth
4. Protect the life and liberty of Muslim youth and stop the harassment
5. Remove the anti-Muslim police officers who are working on the tunes of Hindutva
6. The anti-Muslim officers who are appointed in the Ministry of Home of Telangana government on the instructions of central government should be immediately removed.
7. We demand media houses to stop defaming and targeting Muslim community. Fair reporting and journalistic values should be upheld.
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New Delhi : Minority Affairs Minister Najma Heptulla and Minister of State for Heavy Industries G.M. Siddeshwara put in their papers on Tuesday and President Pranab Mukherjee has accepted their resignations.
Union Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, who was Heptullas deputy, was promoted and given independent charge of the Ministry of Minority Affairs.
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The President of India, as advised by the Prime Minister, has accepted the resignation of Najma A. Heptulla and G.M. Siddeshwara, a Rashtrapati Bhawan communique said.
Minister of State for Urban Development and Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation Babul Supriyo has been relieved of his present charge and given the portfolio held by Siddeshwara.
The resignations and new appointments come a week after Prime Minister Narendra Modi reshuffled and expanded his Council of Ministers by inducting 19 new ministers and elevating one to cabinet rank.
Heptulla, 76, had to resign on age grounds as BJP had recently fixed maximum age for ministers at 75.
Earlier, in Madhya Pradesh, two senior ministers Babulal Gaur and Sartaj Singh (both above 75) were forced to resign from Shivraj Singh Chouhan cabinet.
Citing the same criteria, Heptulla was also asked to go, BJP sources said.
Gaur (Home) and Singh (Public Works Department) had tendered their resignations on directive from the Bharatiya Janata Party central leadership. Gaur is 86 years old while Sartaj Singh is 76.
However, Heptulla in a statement said that she has resigned due to personal reasons.
I am extremely thankful to the Prime Minister for giving me the opportunity and honour to be in his Cabinet, where I gained a lot of experience and I have tried to fulfill his expectation towards Sabka Saath Sabka Vikas, she said.
I will always be available for any responsibility given to me in future. I have resigned from my post due to personal reasons, she added.
Siddeshwara was spared and not dropped from the Council of Ministers on July 5 when Modi reshuffled his team as he had requested for more time in view of his birthday which incidently was the same date (July 5).
The five minister who were dropped on July 5 were: Sanwar Lal Jat (Water Resources), Nihalchand (Panchayati Raj), Ram Shankar Katheria (HRD), Mansukh Bhai Vasava (Tribal Affairs), and Mohanbhai Kundaria (Agriculture).
Help India!
By TCN News,
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Several human and civil rights activists have come out in support of the content of an advertisement for sanitation worker by the NGO Human Development and Research Centre (HDRC) St Xaviers Non-Formal Education Society that had courted controversy resulting into miscreants vandalizing the office of NGO.
Last month HDRC issued an advertisement seeking candidates of the general category for sanitation work. The advertisement sought to recruit sweepers, saying the organisation would give preference to candidates from the unreserved category, meaning people from the upper castes.
The job profile included cleaning of the premises, toilets and courtyard of the institute on St. Xaviers College campus in the city. Several upper caste outfits, including the Rajput Shaurya Foundation and the Yuva Shakti Sangathan, vandalised the NGOs office and forced its director Prasad Chacko to apologize. Mumbai based Raza Academy too objected for the inclusion of Syed in the advertisement and threatened Chacko of legal action.
Following is the solidarity note to HDRC and future call for action issued by the activists in the wake of such threats and protests:
We the under signed concerned individual citizens would like to make our position / stand public viz. a viz. recent Human Development and Research Center (HDRC) advertisement to recruit sweepers for their office, stating that preference would be given to applicants from general category, who do not fall under reserved categories.
A series of violent protests were staged by different community groups against HDRC and its Director Mr. Prasad for hurting their individual and community feelings through that advertisement. This has been covered in both print and electronic media; hence it need not be elaborated. Many individuals and groups have filed a complaint against HDRC and Prasad Chacko with Gujarat Police Station under section 153 A of IPC. In addition to that many have given notice for clarification from HDRC and threatened to file legal complaints if HDRC does not provide appropriate clarifications and apologies.
In response to this, HDRC clarified their views on the advertisement clearly stating that it was absolutely not intended to hurt any ones feelings, but to promote constitutional values and provisions and increase access to equal opportunity for all; especially in the occupations which are forced upon specific communities based on their social and caste identity. HDRC also expressed regret for having hurt the feelings of any individuals or community.
We the under signed do share following common views and reflection viz. a viz. the advertisement and incidents which took place in its aftermath:
The advertisement put forward does not violate any law of the land rather it appears to promote the principles of equality guaranteed by the constitution.
The names of communities mentioned in bracket were presented as instances and not specifying that they seek people from those specific communities.
We appreciate the initiative taken up by HDRC and its director to bring up the most pertinent issue into public discourse and challenge the systemic practices of inequality up front.
We firmly stand by HDRC and its Director Mr. Prasad Chacko in this time of anguish they are going through and will continue to support them in fighting for justice.
The protest against the advertisement might have hurt some people`s sentiments as it is claimed. But it also indicates insensitivity on the part of the larger society towards a particular community which has been forced to engage in this occupation for thousands of years. It also highlights how deep-rooted caste system, caste based discrimination exists.
We the undersigned have also come across following views and reflections coming from different people/organizations which are worrisome:
Mr. Prasad has unnecessarily and intentionally invited the ruckus by way of job advertisement.
A number of secular individuals and organizations joined hands in support of HDRC. Barring some, they were predominantly Dalit rights activists and organizations. Hence, the issue remained a Dalit right issue and not an issue of human dignity, equality and rights.
It is sad to note that apart from groups of the so called upper castes, other marginalized and minority community organizations have also imbibed the social evils of caste system and are practicing it especially Muslim, Syrian Christians and Parsi communities in this case (it is evident from the fact that community leaders/ organizations from these communities have joined the protest, made phone calls and sent memoranda / complains to HDRC directly or via different mediums).
In light of the above mentioned views, reflections, experiences and concerns, we would like to put forward following appeal to action to all those concerned and who are struggling to ensure human dignity, equality, rights and unity. It is a call to ponder upon and contribute in whatever ways they can to take it forward:
While continuing our efforts of empowerment and development of the most marginalized; we must stand in solidarity and support any individual/organization who challenges such unjust caste system and takes initiatives towards elimination of unjust systems.
In such situations we should openly come out of our comfort zones and stand firm and united and put aside our individual differences.
We as concerned citizens need to come forward to introspect about this caste based occupation and challenge the connection between occupation and the caste in our own way. So that sweeping and other such occupations are not associated to a particular caste any more.
Thus, it should become just as occupations irrespective of caste, religion or any other ethnic identity.
In solidarity,
Jitendra Rathod, Hozefa Ujjaini, Debarun Dutta, Manan Trivedi, Rohit Prajapati, Hasina Khan, Nayan Patel, Neha Dabhade, Sahiyar (Shtri Sangathan), Vijay Parmar, Sushila Prajapati, Mustaqueali Shaikh, Fr. Cedric Prakash SJ., Johanna Lokhande, Devendra Makwana, Advaita Marathe, K Shrinivas , Brinda Pancholi, Irfan Engineer, Janisar Shaikh, B Chakradhar, Pankaj Zapadiya, Parsottam Vaghela, Mohan Krishna, Robert David, Geeta Oza, Karuppusamy, S. Vishwanathan, Mehul Manguben, Rafi Malek, Vasudev Charupa, Renu Desai, Rajesh Singh, Annie Namala, Indu Prakash, P.L.Mimroth, Harsh Mander, Shabnam Hashmi, Ovais Sultan Khan, Valay Singh, Shweta Tripathi, Sanjeev Kumar, Vimalbhai, Ishwar Vaghela, Franklin Christian
Related:
Raza Academy says cleaning an insulting job, Islamic teachings say otherwise
Can a Savarna apply for a Dalit job? No, says RSS
Help India!
Srinagar : Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti on Wednesday appealed for calm in the Kashmir Valley as she paid tributes to the martyrs of the 1931 struggle against the Dogra rule.
I appeal to everybody to restore calm and peace so that further loss of lives is avoided, the Chief Minister said.
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She said the loss of precious lives in firing by security forces since the killing of a top militant on July 8 was regretted but nothing can bring them back.
While I am deeply grieved, my grief cannot match that of the families who have lost their near and dear ones, Mehbooba Mufti said.
Under heavy security, the Peoples Democratic Party leader went to the graveyard at Naqashband Sahib area of Old Srinagar where a guard of honour was presented to her.
An uneasy calm prevails in largely curfew-bound Kashmir Valley where violent street clashes erupted after the killing of a militant commander, Burhan Wani, leaving over 30 people dead and hundreds injured.
Mehbooba Mufti laid a wreath at the graveyard to commemorate those killed by the Dogra Maharajas soldiers on this day in 1931 outside the Central Jail in Srinagar.
People had stormed the jail during the trial of Abdul Qadeer Khan, an Afghan cook of a British official. Qadeer had been arrested for delivering a fiery speech in support of the Kashmiris.
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Mumbai : Controversial Mumbai-based televangelist and Islamic preacher Zakir Naik, who addresses audiences around the world, has finally found a venue for his media interaction here on Thursday, an aide said here on Wednesday.
Naik will communicate with the Mumbai media via Skype at the Mehfil Hall, in Agripada, south Mumbai, from a venue abroad where he is currently on a lecture tour,
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Earlier today, the Islamic Research Foundation had rued that he was not getting any venue to address the media in Mumbai.
At least four venues, including three five-star hotels and the World Trade Centre (WTC), had declined permission for conducting his press conference via Skype.
The WTC had confirmed the venue for Thursdays media interaction with Naik who is abroad but cancelled it on Wednesday, an official spokesperson of the Islamic Research Foundation (IRF) said.
Its weird and unfair. Whats going on? Apparently, hotels in Mumbai have been told not to give out venues for Naiks press conference, the spokesperson said.
Critics say Naiks Islamic teachings are radicalizing the young.
Earlier, Naiks spokesperson claimed that at least three hotels and WTC had confirmed availability of venue and some even took the bookings but cancelled them at the last minute, the WTC being the latest.
It was the second time in at least four days that Naiks scheduled media interaction via Skype was called off amid speculation about his impending return to India.
Naik at the centre of a storm is on a lecture tour in Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Africa. He is likely to return to Mumbai after some two weeks, the spokesperson said.
While the Shiv Sena and others have called for his arrest, others like the IUML (Indian Union Muslim League) and AIMIM (All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen) have come out in support of Naik, saying he was a victim of a witchhunt.
Almost three weeks after 51.9% of UK voters opted toleave the European Union, pressure within the Labour Party continues to grow; a succession of shadow ministers have resigned, sparked by the dismissal of Hilary Benn on the 26th June. Following this, on 28th June, Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the party since September 2015, lost a vote of no-confidence by 172 votes to 40. Angela Eagle, Member of Parliament for Wallasey, has now formally launched her bid to become the next Labour Party leader, after securing the nomination of at least fifty Labour MPs and MEPs.
However, despite pressure on Corbyn to step down, amidst assertions that he is unelectable and that his current position is now untenable, Labour members should not turn their backs on Corbyn, who is still the right person for the job.
The identity of the Labour Party.
Between the mid-1990s and the late 2000s, under the leadership of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, the Labour Party was rebranded under the slogan New Labour. This primarily involved the alteration of Clause IV, widely seen as the partys commitment to socialism, as Blair announced an abandonment of the partys pursuit of nationalisation and an endorsement of market economics, in his Labour Party Conference Speech in 1994. Although Ed Miliband, prior to being elected party leader in September 2010, declared that the era of New Labour was over, this declaration arguably came to fruition only when Corbyn was elected.
Corbyn represents a return to the founding values of the Labour Party, which grew out of the trade unions and socialist parties of the nineteenth century. As a left-wing socialist, Corbyn represents the ideas of the big men of the Party, perhaps most notably Aneurin Nye Bevan, Minister for Health in the post-war Attlee Government and spearhead of the establishment of the National Health Service, the Labour Partys most profound achievement.
Angela Eagle: the hypocritical challenge
Many call Corbyns left-wing brand of Labour leadership unelectable. Perhaps they are right, which explains why Blair, who shifted the party to the right under New Labour, won a landslide election victory in 1997. However, electoral success shouldnt take precedence over ideological values.
Indeed, the abandonment of Labour principles which allowed Blair to become Prime Minister led to the reckless invasion of Iraq in 2003, an action condemned, albeit indirectly, by Sir John Chilcot and the Iraq Inquiry, which reported to the public on 6th July 2016. And an investigation into the background of Angela Eagle reveals some surprises that move her further to the right than may have been initially perceived; she voted for a rise in tuition fees and the war in Iraq under Tony Blair, parallels with which can be drawn in 2015when she voted for bombing Syria. Jeremy Corbyn was elected leader with an overwhelming vote of 59.5% in the first round of the ballot in September 2015, as Labour Party members gave him a clear mandate to leave.
Now, in the wake of the EU referendum, his position is being challenged from inside the party, by some with a noticeably New Labour record. In the words of Corbyn himself, I [Corbyn] was democratically elected leader of our party for a new kind of politics by 60% of Labour members and supporters, and I will not betray them by resigning.
Jazzed
Its Time for a Jazz Fest!
Annual concert series puts Burque on the map
Photo by Danielle Moir
This Thursday, July 14, is the beginning of the 11th annual New Mexico Jazz Festival, an event hosted by Albuquerques Outpost Performance Space and the Lensic Performing Arts Center in Santa Fe. The two-week-long festival brings jazz acts from all over the world together with local groups to perform at multiple venues in Albuquerque and Santa Fe.
Started as a wandering concert series in 1988, the Outpost has become a truly unique non-profit, member-supported performance space and arts center. Since they got their first permanent concert space in 1990, Outpost has been a respected stop on the national jazz circuit, making an impression on touring musicians with their hospitality and their tireless and passionate (mostly volunteer) staff.
Both Outpost and the New Mexico Jazz Fest have put Albuquerque on the jazz map in the past few decades. Started as a wandering concert series in 1988, the Outpost has become a truly unique non-profit, member-supported performance space and arts center. Since they got their first permanent concert space in 1990, Outpost has been a respected stop on the national jazz circuit, making an impression on touring musicians with their hospitality and their tireless and passionate (mostly volunteer) staff. In addition to hosting concerts, Outpost also has music classes for both teenagers and adults, with several sponsored scholarships made available to youth who couldnt otherwise afford classes.
[Albuquerque is] a community where you can do something like the Outpost, says Tom Guralnick, the Executive Director and Founder of Outpost. The real estate is cheap enough, theres great community supportpeople become members and make donations. And for the Jazz Festival, we get great support from the mayor and the City Council. It all goes together to make it happen.
This years Jazz Fest includes several events that are free and open to the public, meaning youve got no excuse to miss out.
Below is a line up of Albuquerque performances for the Jazz Fest. A complete schedule of events and tickets for each event can be purchased at outpostspace.org or by calling Outpost at (505)268-0044.
Port of LA to demonstrate BYD zero-emission trucks Updated: 2016-07-14 05:54 By LIA ZHU in San Francisco(chinadaily.com.cn)
Two of BYD's zero-emission trucks will be deployed at the Port of Los Angeles as part of a $26 million initiative to reduce emissions by the Southern California goods-movement industry.
The two electric trucks will be designed and built by BYD Auto Co Ltd at its facility in Lancaster, California, and are scheduled for December delivery, according to Andy Swanton, director of business development for electric trucks at BYD.
"It's a true OEM (original equipment manufacturer)-designed and built product," said Swanton. "It will be truly a zero-emission solution because there are no emissions from the generation of electricity and emissions from the vehicles themselves."
Solar panels will be installed on the roof of one of the warehouses at Pasha Stevedoring Green Omni Terminal. The 40-acre cargo terminal at the Port of Los Angeles will transition to solar power and other low- or zero-emission energy sources under the initiative.
Two of BYD's 1.3 megawatt battery storage stations will be installed to store the solar power during the day, and the electric yard tractors from BYD and some other electric terminal equipment provided by another party will charge from the battery storage stations.
Swanton described the yard trucks as off-road vehicles that are used in the terminal for moving and sorting containers; traditional yard tractors use diesel fuel.
"We are providing a solution that's all electric and will run and be used just the same as diesel yard trucks," he said.
Yard trucks operate daily for two shifts and occasional overnight shifts. "All our electric solutions will be able to satisfy up to three shifts," he said.
In goods movement space, BYD Motors focuses on three major markets marine terminals, rail yards and warehouses providing off-road trucks used at each of the three locations and over-the-road trucks delivering goods to the same locations.
"We are also developing a zero-emission on-road tractor-trailer solution that will have about a 100-mile range," Swanton said.
A project announced by the California Air Resources Board in May will provide funds to develop 25 over-the-road drayage trucks. Under this project, BYD will deliver five drayage trucks this year.
Drayage trucks travel short distances over the road and are typically used to move containers from ports to rail yards or warehouses, while the major off-road vehicles moving goods are yard tractors that don't travel on public roads.
The yard tractors and the drayage trucks are the two primary product lines that BYD will focus on in the goods-movement space, Swanton said.
Last month, the state of California announced an award of $9 million to the San Bernardino Associated Governments for 27 zero-emission trucks to replace diesel-powered heavy-duty tractors used in rail yards. In this project, BYD will provide three medium-duty service trucks.
The Port of Los Angeles project and the two previous projects will be the foundation for BYD's goods-movement vehicles, said Swanton.
BYD has orders for electric buses in other states, but the electric truck line has not announced any deployment in another state yet.
liazhu@chinadailyusa.com
China begins crackdown on online IPR infringement Updated: 2016-07-12 21:00 (Xinhua)
BEIJING -- China on Tuesday kicked off a five-month campaign against unlicensed distribution of literature and audio and visual products on the Internet.
The crackdown targets mobile device applications, e-commerce websites, online advertisements, music and video streaming websites, cloud storage services and online news providers, according to a statement released by the National Copyright Administration (NCA).
It urged local police and copyright, Internet and telecom departments to strengthen supervision and "severely crack down on" intellectual property rights infringement on online forums and social-networking platforms.
According to the statement, authorities will also toughen monitoring of app stores and their uploaders.
The action was jointly initiated by the NCA, State Internet Information Office, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the Ministry of Public Security.
Premier to set new course in Mongolia Updated: 2016-07-13 07:58 By Zhao Huanxin(China Daily)
After official visit, he will propose plan for development at the 11th ASEM Summit
Premier Li Keqiang's first foreign trip of the year will land him in Mongolia on Wednesday, where he is expected to add new impetus to Sino-Mongolia relations and unveil plans to ramp up Asia-Europe cooperation.
The first visit to China's northern neighbor by a premier in six years coincides with the recent formation of a new government in Mongolia, lending the Chinese leader a fresh opportunity to refine the relationship for years to come, diplomats and analysts said.
Li is scheduled to meet Jargaltulga Erdenebat, 42, who was appointed as Mongolia's new prime minister last Friday.
"Li's visit is expected to set the direction and lay the foundation for the two countries' all-around cooperation in a variety of areas," Xinhua News Agency quoted Chinese Ambassador to Mongolia Xing Haiming as saying on Tuesday.
Li sent a message earlier to Mongolia's new prime minister saying that the close friendly neighbors are witnessing the sustainable development of their comprehensive strategic partnership and that China is willing to further promote bilateral ties.
The two are expected to exchange views on dovetailing the two countries' economic corridor initiatives - China's Belt and Road Initiative and Mongolia's Steppe Road infrastructure construction program-according to Assistant Minister of Foreign Affairs Kong Xuanyou.
A number of cooperative agreements will be signed during the visit, covering trade, energy, infrastructure construction, finance and climate change, Kong said at a news briefing on Monday.
Ding Yifan, an economist at the Development Research Center of the State Council, said China has advantages in infrastructure construction that could provide major support for Mongolia's economy, which has been beleaguered by a slow growth rate.
China has been Mongolia's biggest trading partner and main source of investment for years, but there has been sluggish development of large-scale projects in the country, according to some industry insiders.
"We expect the premier's visit to help bring some breakthroughs in the infrastructure construction sector," Ding said.
After a day and a half official visit, Li will attend the summit of the 11th ASEM Summit in the Mongolian capital, Ulaanbaatar, on Friday, a gathering of leaders from Asia and Europe. He is scheduled to elaborate on Beijing's proposition for ASEM's future development, Asia-Europe cooperation and major international and regional issues.
During the two-day meeting, the premier is expected to speak with leaders of some ASEM member countries, according to sources in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
China is a founding member of the ASEM, which was launched 20 years ago. This would be the second time Li has attended the biennial meeting.
With Asia-Europe connectivity as the theme of the summit, Cui Hongjian, director of the Department for European Studies of the China Institute of International Studies, said he expected the meeting would produce a working group to steer the work of connectivity between Asia and Europe.
This means members will make connectivity a policy priority and translate it into concrete cooperative projects, he said.
It is also expected the summit will help reinstate regular meetings of economic ministers from the two continents, which were suspended in 2005, Cui said.
"ASEM has since lacked an effective dialogue platform, and it has been difficult for both sides to communicate and align their economic policies and development strategies," he said.
US groups urged to support sea sovereignty Updated: 2016-07-13 11:01 By Lia Zhu in San Francisco and Niu Yue in New York(China Daily USA)
Representatives from Chinese for Peaceful Unification-Northern California, Chinese for Peaceful Unification-West America, and Committee to Promote the Reunification of China-San Francisco gather in San Francisco to support the Chinese government's stance on South China Sea and urge all the Chinese to help defend the nation's sovereignty on South China Sea. Lis Zhu / China Daily
All the Chinese in the world should unite to defend China's sovereignty over the South China Sea in response to the ruling by a tribunal at The Hague, members of three Chinese groups said at a press conference on Tuesday in San Francisco.
In a joint statement, Chinese for Peaceful Unification-Northern California, Chinese for Peaceful Unification-West America, and Committee to Promote the Reunification of China-San Francisco said they firmly uphold the Chinese government's stance on the issue and urge all Chinese, including Chinese overseas and in Taiwan, to help defend the nation's sovereignty over the South China Sea.
The three groups are members of the Association of China Peaceful Reunification of the United States and Federation for the Unification of China in America. A total of 28 affiliated chapters of the two organizations all expressed their stances in different locations in the US on Tuesday.
The spokespersons for the three groups argued that the ruling on Tuesday failed to respect the historical facts, and the Chinese government was right to neither accept nor recognize it.
"We feel angered and oppose to the so-called ruling," said Youyi Wu, president of Chinese for Peaceful Unification-West America. "Chinese people's activities in South China Sea can be dated back to more than 2,000 years ago. Chinese were the first to explore the related waters."
He told the press conference that the ruling ran counter to the historical facts, and the dispute should be resolved by the concerned parties.
China would not allow the other unrelated countries to intervene in the dispute, said James Lee, president of Chinese for Peaceful Unification-Northern California.
"We overseas Chinese should support the Chinese government to seek a peaceful approach to solve the dispute through negotiations and consultations to maintain the peace and stability of the South China Sea," Lee said.
Chinese Council for the Promotion of Peaceful National Reunification-New York issued a statement with other Chinese communities in the New York area, expressing opposition to the ruling.
"Chinese on the East Coast firmly support the Chinese government and Chinese people's attitude towards the dispute over the South China Sea, which is no acceptance and no participation of the arbitration, no recognition and no implementation of the arbitration award; against settling the South China Sea dispute by adopting the method of arbitration," the statement said.
In Washington, the Union of Chinese American Professional Organizations (UCAPO) issued a statement on Tuesday against the arbitration unilaterally initiated by the Philippines, which "over China's objections abuses the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS)".
Contact the writer at liazhu@chinadailyusa.com
Remarks of Ambassador Cui Tiankai at Center for Strategic and International Studies Updated: 2016-07-13 22:58
Thank you, Doctor Hamre,
We are here today to discuss the situation of the South China Sea. For that matter, let me first of all refer all of you to two important statements issued by the Chinese side earlier today. One is the Statement of the Government of China on China's territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests in the South China Sea. The other is a statement issued by China's Foreign Ministry on the award of the Arbitral Tribunal in the South China Sea Arbitration established at the request of the Republic of the Philippines. I think these two statements have outlined China's position with great clarity and authority. I strongly recommend all of you have a careful reading of these two documents.
On that basis, within the framework of these two important documents, let me offer a few comments, and maybe we could discuss these points of views.
First, why does China reject the arbitration?
We believe the submission and initiation of this arbitration violates the general practice that arbitration should be premised on state's consent. China made an optional exceptions declaration back in 2006 in accordance with Article 298 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which excludes issues like maritime delimitation from such processes. This case is done without the consent of China. Also, it exceeds its own jurisdiction. The case was carefully masked. But it is beyond any doubt that the core issues are territorial disputes, and territorial issues are not subject to the UNCLOS.
People may say the tribunal may decide on its own jurisdiction. But it does not have a free hand. It has to make the decision in strict accordance with the provisions of the UNCLOS. Failure to recognize that is a matter of professional incompetence. Deliberate disregard is a matter of questionable integrity.
Also this case was initiated not out of good will or good faith. We all know that the UN Charter calls for development of friendly relations among its members, and the UNCLOS itself starts with a call for the spirit of mutual understanding and cooperation. But this arbitration case was initiated not in such good faith or good will. It was a clear attempt to use the legal instrument for political purposes.
What is more disturbing is that the proceedings will probably do a great deal of damage to the efforts by members of the international community to engage in negotiations and consultation for settlement of any possible disputes. What is astonishing is that this tribunal even belittles the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC). The DOC is an instrument that is the result of a decade-long joint diplomatic efforts by China and ASEAN countries, and it embodies the solemn commitments of all parties concerned. This arbitration case will probably open the door of abusing arbitration procedures. It will certainly undermine or weaken motivation of countries to engage in negotiations and consultations for solving their disputes. It will certainly intensify conflicts and confrontation. In the end, it will undermine the authority and effectiveness of international law.
Such absurd proceedings were taking place in combination with military coercion - with mounting activities by destroyers, aircraft carriers, strategic bombers, reconnaissance planes and many others. I believe this is an outright manifestation of "might is right". Under these circumstances, China has no alternative but to oppose it and reject it. We are doing this to safeguard our own interests, as we have the right to do so. But more importantly, we are doing this to defend international justice and the true spirit of international law, as we have the responsibility to do so. What is happening to China today could probably happen tomorrow to any other member of the international community, and China has to stand up to it and stop it.
China has the firm will to safeguard its own interests and rights, and international justice. We will not yield to any pressure, be it in the form of military actions, media criticism or some self-claimed legal bodies. And we will certainly not make deals on our core interest just for a few words of praise. Indeed, in any country, if a government fails to stand up and defend its own sovereignty and territory, if it fails to defend the core interest of its own people, there is no image to speak of.
Second, what has intensified tensions in the region?
China has longstanding sovereignty over the islands and reefs in the South China Sea. This sovereignty had not been challenged until the 1970s when more and more Chinese islands and reefs were illegally occupied by others. But even so, the situation was under control. China and other countries in the region were able to manage the differences for so many years, and we were able to develop an overall friendly and cooperative relationship with each other. We even succeeded in formulating the DOC, and there have been small but significant progress towards joint development of resources.
But tensions started to rise about five or six years ago, about the same time when we began to hear about "pivoting to Asia". In the last few years, disputes intensified, relations strained and confidence weakened. These issues have taken so much time and energy at so many regional and international fora, and the time and energy should have been spent on promoting cooperation. Have anyone really benefited from this? I don't think so. Not China, not ASEAN countries, not even the U.S. in the long run. If the Asia-Pacific is destabilized, if the momentum of regional economic growth is weakened, if armed conflict started, everybody's interest will be hurt, including our interest, the interest of other countries in the region, and I'm sure the interest of the U.S.
As for those people who might have the illusion that they could have a free ride on the pivoting exercise and gain something from it, please go to countries like Iraq, Libya and Syria and ask the people there. Be careful what you wish. You might actually get it.
Some might put the blame on China's recent reclamation activities. But the fact is that China is the last country to do so, and we are doing so only on the islands and reefs under our own control - islands and reefs where we have people stationed there. We are not trying to take back the islands and reefs that are illegally occupied by others. And speed does not change the nature of the issue. With the completion of the facilities we are building there, I am sure we will be able to offer more international public goods, such as services for civilian use. Of course, the bottom line is that we will be in a position to defend ourselves.
Many things have been done under the name of freedom of navigation. But freedom of navigation for commercial vessels has never been a problem in the South China Sea. "Freedom of Navigation Operations" by the U.S. were originally designed as a counter-measure to the provisions of the UNCLOS. Many contracting parties believe that distinctions should be made between freedom of navigation of commercial and civilian vessels, and freedom of navigation of military vessels.
China firmly stands for freedom of navigation in the South China Sea, because these sea lanes are the economic life lines for China and many countries in the region. We will do everything possible to safeguard the unimpeded flow of commerce and stop any attempt to destabilize the region. But what worries us is that there might be some self-fulfilling prophecies. Such an assembly of aircraft carriers, airplanes and sophisticated weapons could pose a real threat to the freedom of navigation of commercial and civilian vessels. Such a concentration of fire-power would be a source of concern any where in the world.
Third, how should we deal with the disputes now?
I believe negotiations and consultations among parties concerned still offer the most feasible and effective way. Diplomatic efforts should not, and will not be blocked by a scrap of paper or by a fleet of aircraft carriers. China remains committed to negotiations and consultations with other parties. This position has never changed and will not change. In fact, China has an excellent record in this regard. We have already solved boundary issues with 12 neighbors out of 14 on the land. We even have agreed with Vietnam for part of the maritime delimitation in Beibu Bay (Tonkin Gulf). So we are confident that China and other parties concerned, if not disturbed, will be able to solve the disputes over time through negotiations and consultations. This record of China of solving boundary issues with its neighbors is quite unique in the world. I don't think you could give me another example of solving such long-standing border issues with its neighbors in the last few decades.
So the door is always open for negotiations and consultations. We have full confidence in our relations with our neighbors, particularly with ASEAN countries. Maritime or territorial disputes are only part of the relations between China and some ASEAN countries. It certainly does not represent the entirety of the relationship between China and ASEAN countries as a group. We have been neighbors for centuries. We are actually a community of common destiny. All of us have high stakes in regional stability, peace and prosperity. All of us will benefit a great deal from closer cooperation and enhanced mutual confidence, and none of us will ever pivot to anywhere else in the world.
Fourth, What then should we do between China and the U.S.?
First of all, these territorial issues in the South China Sea should not become issues between our two countries. We don't have territorial disputes between us. Still less should they be seen as part of "strategic rivalry" between our two countries. These are just territorial disputes. They should not be magnified or exaggerated. And we should never allow them to define the important relationship between our two countries.
Secondly, cold war mentality will not solve problems of today's world. Today's world needs more than ever before partnership among countries, especially among the major players. Today's world needs more than ever before a set of new international relations centered on win-win cooperation. We in China stand for a new model of relationship with the U.S., characterized by no conflict, no confrontation, mutual respect and win-win cooperation. We want to see constructive and positive interactions in the Asia-Pacific between our two countries. We are here to see what kind of choice the U.S. will make: how you see the world today, how you see China's development, and how you see the relationship between our two countries.
I know that you have important choices to make this year, but this is also an extremely important choice for you to make. Will you make the right choice? Can we go forward with a win-win partnership? I hope you make the right choice, and I hope you do so in a very clear way.
Ruling 'null and void', with no binding force Updated: 2016-07-13 07:57 By An Baijie in Beijing and Fu Jing in The Hague(China Daily USA)
Nation remains committed to resolving maritime disputes through negotiations, President Xi says
China is committed to resolving disputes through direct negotiations, but its national sovereignty and maritime interests will not be influenced under any circumstances by the South China Sea ruling by the Arbitral Tribunal of The Hague, President Xi Jinping said on Tuesday.
"The South China Sea Islands have been China's territory since ancient times," Xi said while meeting in Beijing with European Council President Donald Tusk and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker. "We refuse to accept any claims or activities based on the arbitral ruling," he added.
The Arbitral Tribunal, appointed by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, announced on Tuesday that China has no "historic title" over the South China Sea.
The Foreign Ministry said in a statement that the ruling "is null and void and has no binding force".
China has always respected international laws and justice and kept to a path of peaceful development, Xi said. Maritime disputes should be resolved though direct negotiations on the basis of respecting historical facts and in line with international laws, he added.
Premier Li Keqiang, while meeting with Tusk and Juncker, called on Europeans to insist on justice and remain neutral on the issue.
Beijing issued two statements immediately after the arbitration ruling was announced. Noting that Chinese activities in the South China Sea date back more than 2,000 years, one statement pointed out that China is the first to have discovered, named, explored and exploited the South China Sea Islands and surrounding waters.
Manila said it welcomed the ruling, but it urged "restraint and sobriety" by all parties involved.
Meanwhile, Taiwan said on Tuesday that it does not accept the tribunal's ruling. The decision on Taiping Island of the Nansha Islands has "seriously impaired" its rights, according to a news release from the office of Taiwan leader Tsai Ing-wen.
Taiwan reiterated that the disputes should be resolved through negotiations.
Ma Xiaoguang, the mainland's Taiwan affairs spokesman, said on Tuesday night that those on both sides of the Taiwan Straits share responsibility for safeguarding China's sovereignty and maritime rights in the South China Sea.
Foreign Minister Wang Yi warned on Tuesday that the arbitral ruling has placed the South China Sea "in a dangerous situation of intensifying tension and confrontation".
The unilaterally initiated arbitration case is a "sheer political farce in the disguise of law", through which the Philippines aimed to harm China's sovereignty and maritime interests, Wang said.
"The attempts of any power to harm or deny China's sovereignty and maritime interests in any form will be futile," he said.
Wang said that "the temporarily set" Arbitral Tribunal was filled with controversies and injustice and did not represent international law or global justice.
According to Foreign Ministry statistics, more than 70 countries have expressed support for China's stance that negotiation, and not arbitration, is the only way to resolve South China Sea disputes.
Wang said China has noticed that the new government of the Philippines has expressed a willingness to restart negotiations and dialogue on the maritime disputes. China is glad to see the sincerity of the Philippines' new government in trying to improve bilateral ties through real actions, he added.
In 2002, China and the member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations signed the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea, which stipulates that parties should resolve disputes through dialogue and negotiation.
Yang Yujun, spokesman for China's Defense Ministry, noted on Tuesday that China just concluded a large-scale military drill in the South China Sea. Yang said that regardless of the arbitration ruling, China's military will firmly safeguard national sovereignty, security and maritime interests, maintain regional peace and stability, and cope with any threats or challenges.
Zhao Xiaozhuo, a researcher of China-US defense studies at the Academy of Military Science, said that China should firmly stop warships from the US and its allies from trespassing on China's maritime territory.
Meanwhile, China should also enhance crisis management and keep the situation from going out of control, he added.
Wang Wen, executive dean of the think tank Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at Renmin University of China, said that safeguarding sovereignty does not mean using force, because peace, stability and development are the "main themes" of the South China Sea.
Contact the writers at anbaijie@chinadaily.com.cn
Arguments by Manila, Washington are flawed
Why the Philippines' unilateral initiation of the arbitration case violates international law
"Pacta sunt servanda" (Latin for "agreements must be kept") is a basic principle of international law. China and the Philippines previously reached agreement in bilateral documents on resolving disputes in the South China Sea through bilateral negotiation. Unilaterally initiating the arbitration case and ignoring the previous agreement violated international law.
The unilateral initiation of the arbitration case is a violation of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and an abuse of arbitral procedures provided for by UNCLOS. Given the fact that China and the Philippines made a clear choice on the means and procedures for settling their disputes, third-party settlement procedures provided for in UNCLOS do not apply.
Why the US concept of "freedom of navigation and overflight" is wrong
There has never been any incident affecting freedom of navigation or overflight in the South China Sea, through which 16,000 vessels pass each year.
However, by playing up the issue, the United States is pursuing a hidden agenda.
By alleging that its massive military presence in the South China Sea is essential for freedom of navigation and overflight, the US is attempting to take all the credit on the international stage for ensuring something that is not actually threatened.
The US is portraying China's growing military strength as a major threat to freedom of navigation and overflight in the South China Sea and ratcheting up the bogus "China threat".
The US is creating an excuse to meddle in the South China Sea and bolster US global strategy and maritime hegemony. Politically, the US wants to create and hype up tension in the South China Sea. Militarily, it seeks legal ground for close-in reconnaissance activities.
(China Daily USA 07/13/2016 page1)
China's jumbo presence powers UK airshow Updated: 2016-07-13 07:46 By Chris Peterson And Angus Mcneice In London(China Daily USA)
Leading aviation and avionics firms court global majors even as Airbus, Boeing woo domestic airlines
China's participation in this year's biannual Farnborough International Airshow, one of the most important showcases for the world aviation industry, is the biggest ever, according to the organizers.
The July 11-17 show is featuring a Chinese pavilion hosting some of the country's leading aviation and avionics firms.
Also, Xiamen Airlines signed an agreement to buy up to 30 Boeing 737 MAX 200 aircraft, worth as much as $3.39 billion at current prices.
A bigger deal was between Boeing and Donghai Airlines, which signaled its intention to buy 25 Boeing 737 MAX-8 jets and five 787-9 Dreamliners, potentially worth $4 billion. Cargo carrier Donghai is planning to transition to a passenger airline.
Wong Cho-Bau, chairman of Donghai, said in a statement: "Under the Belt and Road Initiative, we will accelerate our fleet expansion plan to satisfy the rapidly growing air travel market and help build our home base at Shenzhen as the transportation hub for southern China."
On Tuesday, Boeing Co and Kunming Airlines signed an agreement for 10 737 MAX 7 airplanes at the show.
At the airshow on Monday, Airbus China CEO Chen Juming said the economic center of the aviation industry has been "shifting eastward" over the past 20 years.
"Half of our orders are from Asia, and half of Asia's orders come from China," Chen said.
Jetliner giant Airbus SAS, based in France, released its Global Market Forecast on Monday. It predicted the world will need 33,000 new passenger and cargo aircraft worth $5.2 trillion over the next 20 years as Asia's aviation markets expand. China is forecast to have the world's biggest civil aviation market within the next decade.
John Leahy, Airbus chief operating officer for customers, said: "We are ramping up production to meet market demand for our leading aircraft products."
In a separate report, Airbus competitor Boeing predicted that 15,130 new aircraft would be sent to Asia over the next 20 years, making it the leading region in terms of orders.
Among the Chinese firms exhibiting at Farnborough include AviChina Industry and Technology Co, Aviage Systems, Western Superconducting Co, China Aviation Industrial Base, China Aviation News, China General Aviation Industry, Baoji Titanium Industry, Shaanxi China Aero Industry Gas Spring Co, Tipro International Co, Wuxi Blade Co and COMAC, maker of the C919, China's first-ever indigenous medium-haul jetliner.
The C919 made its maiden flight earlier this year, with the first production model due to enter service in 2018. It is powered by two Franco-American CFM International engines.
"Participation (at the Farn-borough show) will open many doors for more commercial trade between the Chinese aerospace supply chain and the many global organizations that attend the show," said Amanda Stainer, the show's commercial director.
The European Project Innovation Center will be hosting a conference during the show on aerospace opportunities for China's Belt and Road Initiative, which envisages maritime and land links with Europe along the lines of the ancient Silk Road.
Chinese firms have doubled the amount of space taken for exhibitions, lining up alongside the two civilian aviation industry giants, Europe's Airbus and Boeing of the United States.
China plans a major expansion, which includes the construction of another 300 airports by 2020, roughly double the existing number.
China is regarded as a major growth area for aviation, and Phil Seymour, chief operating officer at the International Bureau of Aviation, an independent consultancy, said "China's aviation market is looking bright".
Last month, Airbus announced it had signed a contract with a Chinese consortium to manufacture its H135 helicopter in Qingdao, Shandong province.
The twin-engined helicopter will be made by China Aviation Supplies Holding Co and Qingdao United General Industrial Development Co, with Airbus forecasting that China will become one of the largest markets for civil helicopters by 2020.
The airshow, staged at Farnborough in the Surrey countryside 40 kilometers southwest of London, will see a variety of static and flight displays.
Airbus is showing its giant two-deck jumbo the A380, already in service with a variety of airlines including and used mainly on Asia and Australian routes.
Boeing plans to showcase its all-composite 787 Dreamliner.
Farnborough is a major venue for aircraft and engine sales, and at the last show in 2014, aircraft and engine orders worth $204 billion were made.
Wang Mingjie in Farnborough contributed to this story.
Contact the writer at chris@mail.chinadailyuk.com
Chengdu, country's 'aerospace capital'
The Farnborough International Airshow on Tuesday signed a memorandum of understanding with the Chengdu Hi-Tech Zone and EU Project Innovation Center to develop the Sichuan International Airshow. Under the MOU, Farnborough will provide consultancy services to create an aerospace trade exhibition and public airshow in Chengdu in western China.
With a specific focus on civil and commercial aerospace infrastructure, manufacturing, maintenance, repair, overhaul, and support services, the event will demonstrate how companies can become involved in the growing Chinese market.
Originally planned to take place in 2017, the show is now scheduled for September 2019 in order to coincide with the opening of the new Chengdu Tianfu International Airport.
Commenting during the One Belt One Sky conference at the Farnborough International Airshow, Commercial Director, Amanda Stainer, said: "The opportunity to host the Sichuan International Airshow in such a prime location in the heart of Chengdu will make the event even more attractive for international participants."
Fu Yonglin, vice-mayor of Chengdu, said: "Chengdu is already an established aerospace hub. The hi-tech zone and the Sichuan International Airshow will help establish Chengdu as China's aerospace capital. The Farnborough International Airshow has a reputation as a world class trade event and we are looking to working with the organizers to hosting our first show in 2019."
A pilot stands at the entrance to a Gulfstream G280 business jet manufactured by Gulfstream Aerospace Corp, a unit of General Dynamics Corp, on the opening day of the Farnborough International Airshow 2016 in Farnborough, the United Kingdom, on Monday. The airshow, a biannual showcase for the aviation industry, runs until July 17. Bloomberg
Ray Conner, CEO of Boeing Co's commercial aircraft unit, shakes hands with Wong Cho Bau, chairman of Donghai Airlines Co Ltd, at the arnborough International Airshow in Farnborough, UK. Bloomberg
(China Daily USA 07/13/2016 page15)
Bloodshed in the US made for some terribly sad headlines last week. A streaming video on Facebook showed a police officer fatally shoot a black man in Minnesota, sparking national outrage and claims of racial injustice, followed a day later by the killing of five police officers in Dallas by a lone sniper who vowed revenge on white people.
Philando Castile's death also was preceded on July 5 by the fatal shooting of another black man, Alton Sterling, by police in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
"Too many shootings and hatred on the media, no matter if they are traditional or new media," complained a friend of mine. "I'm so fed up with the information bombarding nowadays."
As a journalist who was taught on the first days about gatekeeping and agenda-setting theories, and about media ethics and professionalism, I can't help but wonder what has gone wrong with media today.
In the digital era when anyone can claim to be a "journalist", who should be in charge of news selection and decide what should be told to the public?
First instituted by German-American social psychologist Kurt Lewin in 1943, the gatekeeping theory has provided a solid foundation for traditional media practice and editorial operations worldwide.
Irrespective of social systems and ideology, gatekeeping requires a media practitioner to abide by social and human ethics and safeguard the public's right to know the "right things".
According to scholars Pamela Shoemaker and Tim Vos in the field, gatekeeping is the "process of culling and crafting countless bits of information into the limited number of messages that reach people every day, and it is the center of the media's role in modern public life. This process determines not only which information is selected, but also what the content and nature of the messages, such as news, will be."
At traditional media outlets, reporters usually decide which sources are included in a story, and editors decide what gets published.
Technology and innovation make instant communication a click of a mouse away. Although individuals are expected to act as gatekeepers by filtering information before disseminating it through an e-mail, blog or video, is it asking too much for each social media user to play a more responsible role in producing and distributing content through sites such as Twitter and Facebook?
Consider the video that captured the last moments of the life of Philando Castile, 32, who died when he was shot by an officer in his car on July 6 in Falcon Heights, Minnesota.
When stopped by a police officer for a registration check, Castile told the officer in his car that he had a pistol that he was licensed to carry, and instead of sitting quietly without moving, he "tried to get his wallet out". The officer then shot him numerous times.
In the five-minute video, a woman sitting next to Castile filmed the last minutes of his life. Blood soaked through his shirt, and he seemed to be suffocating.
The policeman, shaking and sobbing in the background, can be heard saying, "I told him not to reach for it. I told him to get his hand out."
The video has caused a widespread reaction, from the president down to the streets in many cities of the US and around the world. However, the damage can be stemmed if society can reach a consensus and move toward establishing a gatekeeping system.
We can't rely on Facebook for information-filtering. We can't expect Mark Zuckerberg to acquire journalism credentials. However, each of us can at least decide what we want to post and to whom we want the information to reach.
Contact the writer at junechang@chinadailyusa.com
Japan trying old tricks to target China Updated: 2016-07-13 07:47 By Cai Hong(China Daily)
This photo taken on Dec. 11, 2015 shows uniquely beautiful winter scenery of the Zhaoshu Island in the South China Sea. [Photo/Xinhua]
On July 1, the first day of Japan's one-month presidency of the 15-member United Nations Security Council, Japanese Ambassador to the UN Koro Bessho voiced "deep concern" about maritime disputes between China and some of its neighbors. He also said the Security Council would take up issues on the request of its members or other UN members. This shows Japan's eagerness to raise the so-called South China Sea issue on the international stage.
Unlike the East China Sea, where Tokyo and Beijing have a dispute over the Diaoyu Islands, Japan has no territorial claims in the South China Sea. Nevertheless, Japan, like the United States, is fueling and exploiting the tensions in the South China Sea to advance its own economic and strategic interests in Southeast Asia.
In January, Japan's Ministry of Defense announced the rerouting of its military aircraft returning from anti-piracy operations in the Horn of Africa. Instead of refueling at their traditional stopovers like Singapore and Thailand, the two P-3 Orion maritime patrol and anti-submarine aircraft landed in countries such as Vietnam, Malaysia and the Philippines. Those aircraft carried highly sophisticated equipment, designed to monitor and track vessels, including submarines.
In April, two Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force warships made a historic port call to Vietnam's strategic Cam Ranh Bay port, which faces the South China Sea. In fact, many US analysts believe the Japanese military's new refueling stopovers are clearly part of a broader plan to establish a more permanent Japanese presence in Southeast Asia.
In March, Tetsuo Kotani, a senior fellow at the Japan Institute of International Affairs, said at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan in Tokyo that Japan and other countries should join the US to carry out freedom-of-navigation patrols in the South China Sea, claiming the rise of China is the most serious challenge for Japan.
In response, speaking at the Japan's National Press Club in Tokyo on June 24, Yu Tiejun, associate professor at the School of International Studies of Peking University, warned that Japan's intervention in the South China Sea will make the issue more complicated and dangerous. That the Chinese and US militaries, according to the Chinese expert, have experienced 10 face-offs from May 2015 to May 2016 gives an idea of the gravity of the situation.
Yu said China and Japan, as well as the US have more important areas to put their efforts and energies in, but the South China Sea is not one of them. Since the South China Sea is not part of China-Japan relations, Tokyo has every reason to stay away from it.
"Japan's involvement in the South China Sea is not in anyone's interests," Yu said. "It is posing new challenges to the strategic mutual trust China and Japan are trying to build." Playing host to the summit of the world's seven most industrialized nations in May, Japan put the South China Sea issue on its agenda and orchestrated a closing statement from G7 that, without mentioning China by name, said countries should refrain from taking "unilateral actions which could increase tensions" and should avoid using "force or coercion in trying to drive their claims".
After assuming the UN Security Council presidency for one month, Japan is once again trying to internationalize the South China Sea issue in the world body. But its efforts will not bear fruit.
The author is China Daily Tokyo bureau chief.
caihong@chinadaily.com.cn
Foreign guests explore heartland of China Updated: 2016-07-13 07:48 By Paige Sheffield, Liu Zhihua And Sun Ruisheng In Shanxi(China Daily)
When Aidana Mukhametgaliyeva saw a notice in China Daily offering writers and photographers the chance to visit Shanxi province, she had no hesitation in applying to go.
Mukhametgaliyeva, 21, from Kazakhstan, who is studying at the China University of Political Science and Law in Beijing, had never been to Shanxi. The capital, Taiyuan, is little more than three hours by high-speed train from Beijing.
"Shanxi is a good place to visit, especially if you live in a big city such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou," she said as she returned from the trip, which ran from June 15 to 19.
"I think it's one of the must-see places in China."
In organizing the trip, China Daily and Shanxi Tourism Bureau sought non-Chinese good at writing and photography who would visit and report on some of the province's many places of interest. Fourteen people were chosen this time. It is the fourth time such trips have been organized since last year.
Among the itineraries were Pingyao ancient town, Mianshan Mountain, and well-preserved courtyards of rich merchants in the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) dynasties.
Hannah Lund, 26, from the US state of Minnesota, says she learned about the program through WeChat, and was impressed by the province's tourist attractions.
Lund, who has visited 21 provinces in China, had not been to Shanxi before.
Zhangbi ancient fortress, especially an underground military defense tunnel, impressed her most, she says.
The fortress, also known as Zhangbi village, was built based on Chinese astrology. Its buildings were used for military, religious, and residential purposes, and some relics date back to more than 1,000 years ago.
For Lund, the trip was also about studying the merchants of Shanxi and their place in history, including looking at the merchants' homes, built during the Ming and Qing dynasties.
Maksim Belov, 31, says he was keen to take part in something through which he could learn about China.
Belov, a Russian who works in the media and has lived in China for eight years, says: "I liked Mianshan. I could feel the energy of nature I was able to understand the spirit of China."
Top: A group of visitors see how handpulled noodles are made. Above: Hannah Lund from the US state of Minnesota is impressed by Shanxi province's tourist attractions during a trip there.
(China Daily 07/13/2016 page19)
China's textile industry puts on show amid woes Updated: 2016-07-13 13:03 By Amy He in New York(chinadaily.com.cn)
The Chinese textile industry was on display at the 17th annual China Textile and Apparel Trade Show in New York on Tuesday amid a slump in the broader textile industry.
The event's organizers the China National Textile and Apparel Council (CNTAC), the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade, Specialized Textile and Apparel and Messe Frankfurt said the exhibition at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in Manhattan is geared toward reinvigorating the industry, which has seen slowing customer demand the past several years.
Gao Yong, the vice-president of CNTAC, said at the opening of the three-day exhibition that as global demand remains sluggish, "it has been no easy task to ensure the growth and success of this trade show".
"The world is changing rapidly. The world economy is encountering complex challenges. The international trade routes are undergoing major transformations. Against this backdrop, the international textile industry is experiencing a historic reshaping in terms of supply chains and purchasing power," he said.
The United States is still China's top textile partner, with those exports accounting for 17.2 percent of China's total exports. The shipments make up 38 percent of the US market, Gao said.
"More than any other country, a high-quality market calls for top suppliers," he said. "The Chinese textile suppliers have always paid attention to the demands of the US market."
The exhibit is running concurrently at the Javits with other trade shows Texworld USA, Apparel Sourcing and Home Textiles Sourcing. It features more than 800 textile and fabric companies from 20 countries, 569 of which are from China.
As labor costs in China grow and many clothing companies shift their workforce to other Asian countries such as Vietnam, Pakistan and Bangladesh, China's textile exports have declined.
Last year, textile exports fell for the first time in six years, dropping 5 percent to $286.8 billion. Exports to the European Union fell 10.6 percent year-on-year and to Japan by 12 percent. Exports to ASEAN countries fell 1.7 percent, according to customs data from China.
The US is the only country where China's textile exports have been steady there was a 1.5 percent increase in exports in 2015 over 2014, according to California Apparel News.
Zhang Qiyue, China's consul general in New York, said that textiles and apparel particularly reflect the "growing business ties between the US and China". In the period from 2000 to 2015, bilateral textile and apparel trade grew from $6.2 billion to $48.5 billion, she said.
25 killed, 50 injured as trains collide in Italy Updated: 2016-07-13 09:46 (Agencies)
Carriages completely destroyed in a head-on collision involving two passenger trains near Andria on July 12, 2016 in Puglia, Italy. 25 people have been killed and dozens more hurt in the collision.The emergency services have been trying to free passengers from the shattered carriages. [Photo/VCG]
BARI, Italy - At least 25 people died and dozens were injured on Tuesday when two passenger trains collided head-on at high speed in southern Italy, sending debris flying into surrounding olive groves.
Three carriages were torn apart by the violence of the impact after the two trains hit each other while travelling down the same stretch of track linking the small towns of Corato and Andria in the southeastern Puglia region.
Rescue operators raised the death toll to 25 on Tuesday evening after a day of frantic rescue operations, and warned that it could climb higher as some of the 50 injured were in serious condition.
Authorities urged blood donors to go to local hospitals.
There was no immediate indication of what had caused one of Italy's worst train disasters in recent years, but the government promised a full and swift investigation.
"Tears and grief for the victims and their families, but also a lot of anger. We demand clarity over what happened in Puglia this morning," Prime Minister Matteo Renzi said on Twitter, before making his way to the region to meet with rescuers and local politicians.
"We will remain at the side of the people of Puglia in this moment of great pain and desperation," he said in the evening, adding that Transport Minister Graziano Delrio would report to parliament on the accident on Wednesday.
10 candidates vying for next UN chief kick off first 'globally televised' debate Updated: 2016-07-13 09:47 (Xinhua)
Former United Nations climate chief Christiana Figueres (C) speaks during a debate in the United Nations General Assembly between candidates vying to be the next UN Secretary General at UN headquarters in Manhattan, New York, US, July 12, 2016. [Photo/Agencies]
UNITED NATIONS - The first-ever "globally televised" debate on Tuesday kicked off at UN Headquarters in New York for 10 of the 12 candidates, who have announced their bid to become the next UN secretary-general, and they will take questions from diplomats and the public at large.
The debate, also known as the townhall meeting at the UN, started at around 6:30 pm EDT (2330 GMT) and it is expected to conclude at 9:00 pm (0200 Wednesday GMT) and available free from UNTV and Al Jazeera Media Network, producers of the broadcast.
Ten candidates to have confirmed participation, after drawing of lots, have been split into two groups to participate in discussions and answer questions, the president of the 193-member General Assembly, Mogens Lykketoft, said on Monday.
The first group consists of Vesna Pusic of Croatia, Antonio Guterres of Portugal, Susana Malcorra of Argentina, Vuk Jeremic of Serbia and Natalia Gherman of Moldova.
In the second group are Helen Clark of New Zealand, Danilo Turk of Slovenia, Christiana Figueres of Costa Rica, Igor Luksic of Montenegro and Irina Bokova Bulgaria.
Srgjan Kerim of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Slovakia's Miroslav Lajcak were unable to attend, Lykketoft said.
The televised meeting continued a series of "firsts" regarding the selection of the next UN chief to replace Ban Ki-moon, who retires on Dec 31 after two five-year terms.
The Tuesday event follows the landmark informal briefings that began in mid-April, kicking off the process to select the top UN official.
During those hearings, candidates went before the General Assembly to present their respective "vision statements" on the challenges and opportunities facing the UN and the next secretary-general, and answered questions from the audience.
These first-ever briefings were mandated by the UN General Assembly and are distinct from the townhall-style event taking place here Tuesday. They will continue to be held as further candidates are presented.
The next informal briefing will be held on July 14, when the most recently-nominated candidate, Christiana Figueres from Costa Rica, will take her turn.
On Monday, Lykketoft said UN secretaries-general have been chosen behind closed doors in the past.
"This time, we want to ensure all UN member states, and the entire world, have a chance to know who the candidates are, what their vision is and see how they perform," he said.
"The aim we are looking for is much broader participation in the general (UN) membership and the general public of the world in the selection of the next secretary general," the president said. "This is the town hall of the United Nations."
According to the UN Charter, "The secretary-general shall be appointed by the General Assembly upon the recommendation of the Security Council."
Previously this has resulted in the council secretly choosing a single candidate for recommendation to the General Assembly.
The current selection process was opened up in the name of transparency and so far nine of the 12 candidates have been publicly interviewed by members in the General Assembly.
Overseas Chinese urged to support sovereignty for South China Sea Updated: 2016-07-13 11:19 By LIA ZHU in San Francisco and NIU YUE in New York(chinadaily.com.cn)
All the Chinese in the world should unite to defend China's sovereignty over the South China Sea in response to the ruling by a tribunal at The Hague, members of three Chinese groups said at a press conference on Tuesday in San Francisco.
In a joint statement, Chinese for Peaceful Unification-Northern California, Chinese for Peaceful Unification-West America, and Committee to Promote the Reunification of China-San Francisco said they firmly uphold the Chinese government's stance on the issue and urge all Chinese, including Chinese overseas and in Taiwan, to help defend the nation's sovereignty over the South China Sea.
The three groups are members of the Association of China Peaceful Reunification of the United States and Federation for the Unification of China in America. A total of 28 affiliated chapters of the two organizations all expressed their stances in different locations in the US on Tuesday.
The spokespersons for the three groups argued that the ruling on Tuesday failed to respect the historical facts, and the Chinese government was right to neither accept nor recognize it.
"We feel angered and oppose to the so-called ruling," said Youyi Wu, president of Chinese for Peaceful Unification-West America. "Chinese people's activities in South China Sea can be dated back to more than 2,000 years ago. Chinese were the first to explore the related waters."
He told the press conference that the ruling ran counter to the historical facts, and the dispute should be resolved by the concerned parties through negotiations.
China would not allow the other unrelated countries to intervene in the dispute, said James Lee, president of Chinese for Peaceful Unification-Northern California.
"We overseas Chinese should support the Chinese government to seek a peaceful approach to solve the dispute through negotiations and consultations to maintain the peace and stability of the South China Sea," Lee said.
Trump expected to make VP announcement on Friday Updated: 2016-07-13 13:09 (Agencies)
Republican US presidential candidate Donald Trump addresses the crowd during a campaign stop at the Grand Park Events Center in Westfield, Indiana, US, July 12, 2016. [Photo/VCG]
WASHINGTON - Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is expected to announce his choice for running mate at a campaign event on Friday, campaign sources said on Tuesday.
Among the possible picks are former US House of Representatives Speaker Newt Gingrich, Indiana Governor Mike Pence, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and retired Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, according to media reports and Republican sources.
"I have it down to five people," Trump told Fox News on Tuesday.
Pence introduced Trump at a campaign rally in Westfield, Indiana, on Tuesday evening. "I don't know if he's going to be your governor or your vice president," Trump told the rally.
Gingrich and Christie have also campaigned with Trump in recent weeks.
The Republican National Convention, where Trump is set to be formally nominated as the party's candidate for the Nov 8 election, begins on Monday in Cleveland.
UK's Theresa May face list of major problems as she becomes PM Updated: 2016-07-14 00:53 By Chris Peterson
Queen Elizabeth II welcomes Theresa May, left, at the start of an audience in Buckingham Palace, London, where she invited the former Home Secretary to become Prime Minister and form a new government, July 13, 2016.[Photo/IC]
Theresa May, the 59-year-old daughter of a Church of England vicar, took over as UK prime minister at one of the most turbulent times in modern British politics.
May, who was the longest-ever holder of the post of Home Secretary, or interior minister, became the only candidate to replace David Cameron after her last rival dropped out on Monday.
In a ceremony that has been repeated 13 times since Queen Elizabeth ascended to the throne in 1952, Cameron drove to Buckingham Palace for a last audience where he formally tendered his resignation and then recommended to the monarch that May be appointed in his place.
Her appointment means an end to six years of the country's top post being held by an Old Etonian, Britain's leading private school. May, from the southern city of Oxford, attended a state secondary school before gaining a place at Oxford University. She is Britain's second female prime minister; the first was Margaret Thatcher, who served from 1979 to 1990.
Top of May's list will be how to handle what has become known as Brexit, the process of Britain leaving the European Union after 51.89 percent of the country's voting population elected to leave the EU in a controversial referendum last month.
Although May herself voted to remain in the EU, she told reporters after winning the prime ministerial race: "Brexit means Brexit."
Although the EU negotiations are top of her list of things to do, the economy is not far behind although stock markets have rallied since plunging on the morning of the referendum result, the pound has yet to regain the losses it made against the US dollar, as it fell to its lowest point in 31 years.
Philip Hammond, the Foreign Secretary, as least as of Wednesday, told reporters: "Until we have served an Article 50 notice, we remain a full, participating member of the EU and our ability to negotiate new trade agreements is restricted by continuing application of EU law until we have negotiated our exit."
He said because of the various procedures involved, Britain's departure from the EU could take as long as five years.
May will also need to maintain cordial relations with Beijing until the uncertainty over Brexit is cleared up. China has made it clear that it will be business as usual, and has indicated it is open to negotiating a new trade deal as soon as is possible.
But it is the uncertainty that May will need to address.
It has become clear in recent days that because Britain's membership of the EU is governed by an act of parliament which accepted the terms of the 2009 Lisbon Treaty which governs the establishment of the EU, only another act of parliament can undo it.
At the last count, 479 members were in favour of remaining in the EU, with 158 committed to leaving. In addition, parliament has said it will debate a petition signed by over 4 million people calling for the results of the June 23 referendum to be examined.
In addition, over 1,000 lawyers have written a joint letter to parliament and the government stressing that under the UK constitution, a referendum is advisory, and not legally binding.
Two separate law suits have been launched in England's High Court challenging the referendum result on the grounds that the Vote Leave campaign based its argument on false or misleading information.
Supporters of Brexit maintain that whatever the constitutional arguments, it would be foolish for a government to go against the wishes of the people as expressed in the referendum.
Much now depends on who May appoints to head up the Brexit negotiating team to deal with Brussels.
To contact the reporter: chris@mail.chinadailyuk.com
Air defense zone called option Updated: 2016-07-14 02:08 By An Baijie(China Daily)
It will depend on 'level of threat' from others, senior diplomat says
Flight attendants of Hainan Airlines arrive at Zhubi Reef in the South China Sea on Wednesday. The airplane was one of two airliners that landed for the first time on runways on Meiji Reef and Zhubi Reef.Feng Yongbin/China Daily
China could set up an air defense identification zone over the South China Sea if it felt threatened, a senior diplomat said on Wednesday amid rising maritime tensions caused by the Philippines' arbitration case.
The declaration of such a zone, which would require aircraft entering the zone to identify themselves to the military, will depend on "the level of threat we receive", said Vice-Foreign Minister Liu Zhenmin.
Liu Zhenmin
"If our security is being threatened, of course we have the right to demarcate a zone. This would depend on our overall assessment," Liu said, adding that other countries should not "take this opportunity to threaten China" and not "let it become the origin of a war".
"China's aim is to turn the South China Sea into a sea of peace, friendship and cooperation," he added.
Liu made the remarks at a news conference during which a white paper was released by the State Council Information Office. The five-chapter white paper elaborated on China's policy of adhering to "the position of settling through negotiation the disputes between China and the Philippines in the South China Sea".
The core of the disputes between China and the Philippines lies in territorial issues caused by the Philippines' invasion and illegal occupation of some islands and reefs of the Nansha Islands, the white paper says.
Liu accused the five judges of the temporary Arbitral Tribunal at The Hague, which announced its ruling in the case on Tuesday, of "making money from the Philippines", adding that "maybe other people gave them money, too".
Guo Weimin
The tribunal, which ruled that China has no "historic title" over the South China Sea, has no jurisdiction over sovereignty issues, Liu said.
A Japanese former president of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, Shunji Yanai, "manipulated the entire proceedings" from behind the scenes, Liu added.
The diplomat also questioned whether the five judges, four from EU countries and the Ghanaian chairman, a longtime resident of Europe, could understand the complex geographic politics of Asia.
"I hope you put this (arbitral) decision in the wastepaper basket, or on the bookshelf, or filing cabinet and keep it there," Liu told reporters.
China hopes that the Philippines' new government, led by President Rodrigo Duterte, will not use the arbitration results, Liu said. He added that China is willing to negotiate with its South China Sea neighbors on jointly exploiting oil and gas resources in the waters.
Guo Weimin, vice-minister of the State Council Information Office, China's top international publicity authority, said during the news conference that Chinese deem the South China Sea as their "ancestors' sea", where arbitration "could not make a wave".
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Deputy Prime Minister Trinh inh Dung delivered this statement during the Viet Nam Romania Business Forum held yesterday in Ha Noi. VNA/VNS Photo Lan Phuong
HA NOI Viet Nam and Romania should foster bilateral relations in potential sectors and accelerate exchanges of high level delegations and business communities in order to draw up new practical measures to increase future two-way trade.
Deputy Prime Minister Trinh inh Dung delivered this statement during the Viet Nam Romania Business Forum held yesterday in the capital.
Despite witnessing significant increases over past years, trade ties between Viet Nam and Romania still lagged behind their potential and expectation from the two nations, he said.
In his speech at the forum, Prime Minister of Romania Dacian Ciolos outlined oil and gas, shipping, technology, agriculture and tourism as promising sectors for bilateral co-operation in the time to come.
Hoang Quang Phong, vice chairman of Viet Nam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI) blamed the unsatisfactory trade relations on inadequate information about each nations enterprises, significant transport costs due to geographic distance as well as on difficulties in customs and payment which firms from the two nations encounter.
The two countries were enjoying huge opportunities to effectively exploit each others potential in order to speed up the forging of commercial ties, Phong told the conference.
Meanwhile, deputy head of the Ministry of Industry and Trades European Market Department Nguyen Khanh Ngoc called on Romanian support in developing domestic suppliers of parts. For example, Romania could assist Viet Nam in establishing centres on supplying components in machinery engineering, and electronics, as well as providing raw materials in textile and garment sector.
Viet Nams trade with Romania reached US$176 million in 2015, with more than $100 million from Vietnamese exports, according to statistics from the General Department of Customs.
The trade reached $57.4 million in the past five months of this year, up 5.6 per cent year-on-year. Of the sum, Viet Nam exported $38.7 worth of goods to Romania including coffee, seafood, clothing, footwear, and electronics products while it spent $18.7 million in importing wheat flour, machines and chemicals from the partner.
As of April, Romania had three projects, worth $2.1 million, in Viet Nam. In return, Viet Nam ranked 70th among foreign investors in Romania with 257 projects capitalised at $4.4 million. VNS
HA NOI Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc urged the industry and trade sectors to accelerate restructuring and renew management towards a market-based economy and strive to maintain export growth at at least 10 percent.
Phuc made his comments at the Ministry of Industry and Trades conference held yesterday to review works in the first half of this year and discuss tasks for the remainder of the year.
Under discussion at the conference were a number of problems including a slowdown in industrial production, rampant food safety violations, weak management towards multi-level marketing and fake fertilizers.
The implementation of development strategies for industries such as steel, automobile and mechanical production were not as efficient as expected while efforts to promote the dynamism of the business community amid rapid international integration remained inadequate, Phuc said.
All of these problems press the Ministry of Industry and Trade to hasten restructuring, especially renewing management approaches towards improving productivity through innovations and application of high technology, Phuc said.
Opportunities from free trade agreements (FTAs) were there, but institutional reforms and policies must be raised timely to enable firms to grab the available opportunities, Phuc said.
Phuc urged the ministry to create favourable conditions to promote the participation of the private sector in business and production.
Most importantly, the sector must strive to maintain export growth at at least 10 percent, Phuc said.
This is a Herculean task amid the slow recovery of the world economy, Minister of Industry and Trade, Tran Tuan Anh said, adding that greater effort and determination were needed.
Tuan Anh said the ministry would focus on trade promotion, dissemination of market information as well as enhancing firms awareness of free trade agreements and eliminating unnecessary business conditions.
The ministrys statistics showed that export value in the first half of this year touched US$82.24 billion, representing a rise of 5.9 percent over the same period last year.
Capital for power projects
At the conference, Minister Tuan Anh proposed to the Prime Minister to allow Viet Nam Electricity (EVN) to use official development assistance (ODA) and preferential loans in developing power projects to ensure stable power supply.
Tuan Anh said this would help reduce credit risks for power development projects. He said a majority of power projects were faced with capital shortage, adding that there were around 40 power generation projects and hundreds of power transmission projects.
A report to the Government by the Ministry of Finance revealed that EVNs Government-backed debts totalled US$9.7 billion as of the end of 2015, accounting for 37 percent of the total Government-backed debts of State-owned enterprises.
Regarding the divestments of State capital out of Saigon Beer-Alcohol-Beverage JSC (Sabeco) in the south and Hanoi Beer-Alcohol-Beverage JSC (Habeco), Minister Tuan Anh said that the two largest brewers in Viet Nam were underway to develop plans for State capital divestments.
He said that the divestments would be based on the principle that the State would hold less than 50 percent of the charter capital or even no stake at all, adding that the ministry would evaluate the divestment plans of Sabeco and Habeco. VNS
PRAGUE Viet Nam and the Czech Republic signed an agreement on bilateral co-operation in the 2016-2020 period during the fifth session of their intergovernmental joint committee in Prague yesterday.
Present at the event were Vietnamese Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade Ho Thi Kim Thoa and Czech Deputy Minister for Industry and Trade Jiri Koliba, both of whom chair their respective sub-committee.
They were accompanied by State and ministry representatives, as also businesses representatives from their countries.
Speaking at the session, the two sides expressed their delight at the development of the long-standing relations between the two nations, particularly in terms of politics.
The regular exchange of high-level visits has laid a solid foundation for the expanding bilateral co-operation in economics, trade and investment.
The Vietnamese delegation highly appreciated the preferential treatment given to Viet Nam by the Czech Republic as part of its international development co-operation policy in the past.
However, the two countries have not yet unleashed the full potential of their economic and trade ties. The Czech Republic currently ranks 40th among more than 150 countries and territories investing in Viet Nam, with only 30 Czech investors and more than US$170 million in investment.
Trade between the two countries totalled more than $800 million in 2015, equivalent to 0.24 per cent of Viet Nams export-import revenue and 0.22 per cent of that of its partner.
The two sides agreed to accelerate co-operation in the fields of mining and energy industries, transportation, education and training and labour, besides environment protection.
The fifth session of the intergovernmental Viet Nam-Czech Republic joint committee closed on a successful note, Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade Ho Thi Kim Thoa said, adding that it not only reviewed agreements reached during the fourth session, but also drew up a detailed plan for future implementation.
Meanwhile, Jiri Koliba said there were obstacles yet to be removed, and said he hoped this meeting would help the two countries reactivate their co-operation process for greater benefits.
The sixth session of the joint committee will be held in Ha Noi in early 2018. VNS
HCM CITY Registration is imperative if businesses want to protect their trademarks, delegates told a seminar in HCM City yesterday (Wednesday).
Nguyen Thi Hoai Thanh of the National Office of Intellectual Property of Viet Nam (noip Vietnam) said trademarks are signs that serve the specific and primary purpose of identifying the goods and services of a producer.
They also help build trust in companies and their reputation, and play an important role in marketing and advertising, she said, adding that because a registered trademark is a form of intellectual property, businesses can license or assign it to others or restrict others from using it.
Vuong uc Tuan of noip Vietnams HCM City office, said with the ongoing integration, the demand to register Vietnamese trade marks abroad and foreign trade marks in Viet Nam has steadily increased.
There are two ways for Vietnamese firms to register their trademark abroad - directly in a country or through the Madrid system of the World Intellectual Property Organization.
The latter offers people the possibility of having their trademarks protected in several countries by submitting an application directly to their own trademark office, he said.
In the past Vietnamese firms like Trung Nguyen Coffee spent a lot of time and money to protect their trademarks that had been appropriated by local and foreign firms, he said.
Therefore, it is vital for businesses, especially producers, to understand the importance of protecting their trademarks, he said.
Thanh said: The protection of a trademark is territorial. This means that the rights of a trademark are enforceable only in the countries where [it] is registered. Therefore, they must register their trademarks in markets they want to penetrate.
Once a trademark is registered, the protection will last 10 years, and businesses can renew.
Viet Nam as well as many ASEAN countries have adopted the first-to-file system, Thanh said.
So businesses should research trademarks before filing to avoid conflicts, she said.
Van Tuyen, head of Nutifoods legal department, said registration to protect trademarks abroad is not only complicated but also costly.
Businesses often do not know how to register in foreign countries or the duties and responsibilities of trademark owners, meaning they could easily lose their ownership rights, he said.
Vietnamese agencies should provide businesses with more information about intellectual property and the trademark application process in other countries, he said.
The seminar was organised by noip Vietnam and the HCM City Intellectual Property Association. -- VNS
HA NOI Vietnamese shares yesterday extended gains for a second session as investors became highly confident after a decision was made by the international tribunal to reject Chinas territorial claim over the South China Sea (East Sea).
The benchmark VN Index on the HCM Stock Exchange advanced 2.5 per cent the highest rise in the last 12 weeks - to finish at a nine-year high of 675.12 points. The southern market index has jumped 3.5 per cent in the last two days.
The HNX Index on the Ha Noi Stock Exchange ended at 87.38 points, up 1.2 per cent from the previous session. The northern market index has climbed 1.6 per cent in two trading days.
Investor confidence was bolstered after the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) on Tuesday rejected Chinas territorial claims in the South China Sea (East Sea).
Investors reacted positively to the PCAs ruling, Sai Gon-Ha Noi Securities Corp (SHS) wrote in its market daily report. Higher investor confidence helped markets rise for a second day.
Banks were the strongest gainers, led by the Joint Stock Commercial Bank for Foreign Trade of Viet Nam (VCB) and Viet Nam Joint Stock Commercial Bank for Industry and Trade (CTG) and the Bank for Investment and Development of Viet Nam (BID) after these three banks announced year-on-year increases in their second-quarter profits, Bao Viet Securities Corp (BVSC) wrote in its daily report.
Foreign purchases also helped boost those bank stocks, BVSC said. Foreign buying accounted for half of the trading volume in VCB and a quarter of the trading volume in CTG.
VCB surged 6.5 per cent to reach the highest-ever price, CTG added 6.8 per cent and BID jumped 3.9 per cent. VCB has soared 24.4 per cent since June 27 and CTG has jumped 14.5 per cent since June 28.
Strong gains in VCB, CTG and BID also dragged other banks up such as Viet Nam Export Import Joint Stock Commercial Bank (EIB) and Asia Commercial Bank (ACB).
Other blue chips also made good gains, including insurer Bao Viet Holdings (BVH), Sai Gon Securities Inc (SSI) and property developer Vingroup JSC (VIC).
Viet Nams central bank yesterday raised its daily reference mid-point rate by VN10 to VN21,879 for a US dollar, totaling a two-day gain of VN24.
Investors exchanged more than 241.6 million shares worth VN4.58 trillion (US$203.6 million), an increase of 13.2 per cent from the previous session. VNS
HOA BINH A copper mining company in the northern Hoa Binh Province faces a fine of VN320 million (US$14,200) for polluting a stream, leading to mass fish deaths in its neighbourhood in early July.
The penalty imposed on An Phu Copper Mineral joint-stock company was proposed on Monday to the provinces leaders by the Department of Natural Resources and Environment, deputy head of the department Nguyen Tran Anh said.
The waste water containing copper ore of the company, located in Yen Thuong Commune in Cao Phong District, was found flowing into the Man stream on July 4.
The incident led to mass fish and shrimp deaths along 5km of the stream. Fish in two ponds of two households in the neighbouring Yen Lap Commune also died.
Nguyen Tran Anh said the company admitted responsibility right after the incident and agreed to pay VN61 million ($2,700) as compensation to the two affected households.
He said the quality of the stream water was safe now, as confirmed by a test carried out on Monday.
People can use the water for their daily activities and for fish culture now, he said.
We are examining soil samples and will publish the information later. VNS
HA NAM Five hundred households in ong Ao and My Tho communes in the northern province of Ha Nams Thanh Thuy District claimed that they have been suffering serious environmental pollution for many years.
Local residents said they were not only affected by dust from the mining and transporting of building materials but also a bad smell from dozens of tonnes of garbage from a nearby dumping ground.
Trinh Thi Hue, a resident from ong Ao Village, said local people had to keep their doors and windows closed all day to avoid the smell and dust, but these measures still werent enough.
On sunny days, the smell of burning wafted over the homes as the open landfill sometimes caught fire, she said.
On rainy days, the black waste water from the landfill flowed into ay River, the source of their daily water.
Nguyen Quang Thanh, chairman of Thanh Thuy Commune, blamed it on the huge amount of waste gathered at Ba An Environmental Joint Stock Company.
For its part, the company management admitted that the untreated garbage left over from the daily collections could sometimes cause an unpleasant smell.
The leaders said that every day it received about 160 tonnes of garbage.
In addition, more than 80,000 tonnes have been left over since the company took over the landfill from Ha Nam Environmental and Urban Works Joint Stock Company eight years ago.
To address the environmental problem, the Peoples Committee of Ha Nam Province has asked Ba An Environmental Joint Stock Company to strictly follow waste treatment processes.
The landfill must be covered and garbage must be sorted for proper treatment and the company should coordinate with relevant agencies to take measures to extinguish fires at the landfill.
The provincial authorities will transfer a part of garbage at the landfill to another company for processing and invest capital in building a second incinerator which can be put into operation by the end of this year.
The authorities has also granted the provincial Natural Resources and Environment to set up plans to deal with the big amount of left over waste ease the concerns of local residents. VNS
CULTURE VULTURE
Composer Ngo Hong Quang is known for his projects that combine Vietnamese traditional music and western one. He is doing a masters course in music composition at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague.
Quang will perform a contemporary dance entitled Non (Conical Hat) with choreographer Vu Ngoc Khai in Ha Noi on July 21. The show will also be held in HCM City on July 26 and 27.
He is also carrying out a new project with musician Nguyen Le.
Quang spoke about Non and his new project.
What makes you confident to participate in a dance programme?
I met choreographer Ngoc Khai at an art show entitled Duyen Dang Viet Nam (Charming Viet Nam) in HCM City in 2014. We talked and shared many things about our careers. And Non was born. It was premiered in HCM City in 2015.
Im very happy because we will perform Non in Ha Noi this time.
Whats new in Non for the Ha Noi show?
The year 2016s Non will be a skillful combination of Khais contemporary movements and my acoustic music. I will play traditional instruments, including an tinh (gourd lute), an moi (Jews harp) and an bau (monochord).
I will sing a complete song at the performance. I sang at the previous show too, but it was an extract. I finished the song after a year. It represents various melodies and colours of nature.
Dances by Khai will include his improvisations.
What is the Hanoi Duo project in which you and musician Nguyen Le are collaborating?
I met Nguyen Le when we performed together in Toulouse, France. I was a guest playing with his trio Saiyuki. My performance made impression on him and he sometimes invites me to perform with his trio or just himself.
Thanks to the several times we have performed together, I can see that my music style suits Nguyen Les fusion style. Hence, the Hanoi Duo project.
The project will provide a wide and diverse panorama of Vietnamese music, from its roots to the future. I like the idea because it focuses on creativity based on Vietnamese folk music. In addition, I will play both traditional and new pieces on Vietnamese instruments in combination with electronic music.
We have finished our recordings. Hanoi Duo is expected to be released in this autumn in Europe.
Do you have your own project?
Im very busy this year. Im working on a quan ho folk music album in the Netherlands. It will be launched in Viet Nam.
What are the opportunities and challenges you are facing in the Netherlands and other European countries?
Im enjoying life because it gives both challenges and opportunities for me to build my music career. I am grateful for the scholarship to study in the Netherlands. It has changed my thoughts about music completely.
Im studying music composition mainly in relation to western instruments. But I also write music for a small orchestra with Vietnamese instruments. I like it because it is related to Vietnamese music.
Over the past two years, I have been studying to compose a music piece and how to access new things in music.
One of the most important benefits I have had is that I get to meet many talented artists in Europe and opportunities to learn from them.
In the initial days, I was worried about facing new situations such as the chilly winter, unfamiliar food and culture shock.
However, these challenges help me to become stronger and gain life experience to overcome difficulties. VNS
An unexpected friendship: Alvaro Cerezo said Ho Van Lang is one of the most endearing people he has ever met. Photo courtesy of Alvaro Cerezo
Viet Nam News HA NOI Short video clips detailing the life of Viet Nams Tarzan, a man who grew up in the jungle after his father fled American bombs, will soon be released on the travel website Docastaway. The websites founder, Spaniard Alvaro Cerezo, told Viet Nam News that each clip will last for two to three minutes and cover an aspect of the life of Ho Van Lang, who is now 44, and his father, Ho Van Thanh, now 85. There will be around 12 short clips, Cerezo said. If the response from the audience is good, then we will make a longer one.
Bonding with nature: They spent five days in the jungle where Ho Van Lang lived for more than 40 years. Photo courtesy of Alvaro Cerezo
Just three years ago, the old man and his son were discovered in the jungle in the central province of Quang Ngai and brought back to civilisation after having lived there for 41 years.In 1972, Ho Van Thanh, an army veteran, fled to the jungle with his baby when his house was bombed by Americans. During this bombing, he lost his mother and two of his children.
Last November, while I was in Viet Nam for work reasons, I was lucky enough to spend a few days with this jungle boy who is now living in a village, adapting to civilisation, Cerezo wrote on the website.
Lang was enthusiastic about the idea of going back, for the first time, to the place in the jungle where he grew up.
They then spent five days in the jungle surviving on natures bounty, just as Lang had done in his youth. They were accompanied by Langs brother, Ho Van Tri, and Cerezos translator.
At the beginning, my intention was to learn new survival techniques from him, but without realising, I unveiled one of the most endearing people I have ever met, Cerezo wrote. For this and other reasons, the survival took a backseat and I decided to relax and enjoy being with him in his environment.
His primitive form of life doesnt just take us directly to the Neolithic Age but, due to the isolation he suffered from birth, it also leads us to better understand the true essence of man, he wrote.
Whats for dinner?: Alvaro Cerezo and Ho Van Lang eat rats together. Photo courtesy of Alvaro Cerezo
The documentary trailer racked up hundreds of thousands of views over the past few weeks, which is accompanied by a descriptive article on the wild life, characteristics and personality of Lang, who has gradually gotten used to civilised society.
At 42 years old, Lang never knew the existence of the female sex, as his father never told him. More surprising still is that today, now being able to distinguish between men and women, he still doesnt know the essential difference between them, Cerezo shared on his website.
When I realised this, I asked myself if he had found out on his own, watching the animals mating for example. However, it wasnt possible because, along with other reasons, if one is not aware of also being an animal then it is impossible to use the necessary rule of three. Lang told me that, opposite to what happens in civilisation, the jungle animals stayed well away from him.
Lang now lives with his family in a recently built house, which was provided by local authorities because his father is considered a disabled war veteran.
Lang works every day on the farm with his brother, who said that the skills his brother learned in the jungle are of great help in the countryside. Langs father stays at home because his hearing and mental capacities have deteriorated.
Lang seems happy with his new life and enjoys the love he receives from Tri and his neighbours, Cerezo wrote. VNS
President Tran ai Quang (R) receives Lao Vice President Phankham Viphavanh in Ha Noi yesterday. VNA/VNS Photo
HA NOI The ongoing official visit to Viet Nam by Lao Vice President Phankham Viphavanh will actively contribute to reinforcing and developing the special rapport and solidarity between Viet Nam and Laos, President Tran ai Quang said at a reception for the guest in Ha Noi yesterday.
The President hailed the outcomes of the talks between Phankham Viphavanh and Politburo member and permanent member of the Communist Party of Viet Nam (CPV) Central Committees Secretariat inh The Huynh and Vice President ang Thi Ngoc Thinh.
He suggested the two countries work together to successfully implement the bilateral co-operation agreement for 2016-2020 and the collaboration plan between the Vietnamese and Lao governments in 2016.
Both nations should continue to carry out effectively agreements reached at the annual meeting of senior officials from the two Politburos in December 2015, as well as the outcomes of the 38th session of the intergovernmental committee on Viet Nam-Laos bilateral co-operation and visits by their top leaders, he said.
President Quang urged the two sides to realise the protocol on defence and security collaboration for 2016-2020 and the bilateral border trade agreement, while promoting energy and transport connectivity.
Viet Nam and Laos were also expected to jointly hold numerous activities to celebrate the 55th anniversary of bilateral diplomatic ties and 40 years of the signing of the Viet NamLaos Amity and Co-operation Treaty, he added.
The State leader congratulated the Lao Party, State and people on their achievements over the past number of years, saying he believed Laos would successfully implement the Resolution adopted at the 10th National Party Congress and the 8th five-year social-economic development plan.
He took this occasion to thank Laos for valuable support to Viet Nam in the past and at present, confirming that the Vietnamese Party, State and people would always attach much importance to preserving and cementing the special relations with Laos.
President Quang highly valued the active contributions of the Laos-Viet Nam Friendship Association, and Phankham Viphavanh in particular as former Chairman of the association, to encouraging Lao people to nurture relations with Viet Nam.
For his part, Phankham Viphavanh, who is also Politburo member and standing member of the Lao Peoples Revolutionary Party Central Committees Secretariat, applauded co-operation achievements between the two nations in the past, saying that they had contributed significantly to the national construction and development of the Lao people.
He confirmed to do his utmost in his new positions to tighten the special amity and solidarity between the two countries for the sake of their people. VNS
HA NOI Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc held talks with his Romanian counterpart Dacian Ciolos following a welcoming ceremony in Ha Noi yesterday, assuring his guest that Viet Nam treasures the development of co-operation with traditional friends like Romania.
Ciolos, who is in Viet Nam July 11-14, affirmed that Viet Nam was Romania s important partner in Southeast Asia , and said he hoped to develop bilateral economic and trade ties to match the potential and demand.
At the talks, the two leaders agreed to effectively implement the Viet Nam-Romania Joint Committee on Economic Co-operation mechanism, boost two-way trade and encourage investment in infrastructure, energy, food processing, pharmaceuticals, environmental protection, water resources management and tourism.
Host and guest pledged to enhance collaboration in education and training, science and technology and defence and security.
The Vietnamese PM thanked the Romanian government for doubling the number of scholarships for Vietnamese students to 20 each year starting in 2017 and for assisting Vietnamese nationals living there.
Discussing regional and global issues of shared concern, the two PMs expressed their pleasure with the close and effective liaison at global forums.
As an active member of the European Union (EU), Romania supported the strengthening of the relationship between Viet Nam and the EU, and called on the EU to recognise Viet Nam as a full market economy, he said.
On the East Sea issue, they expressed concern over recent developments and underscored the need to settle disputes by peaceful means in line with international law, particularly the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the East Sea, considering it an effective way to ensure peace, stability, security, maritime and aviation safety and freedom, and trade in the East Sea.
On this occasion, the Romanian government leader invited his host to visit Romania .
Following the talks, both sides convened a press conference and witnessed the signing of co-operation deals in the fields of culture, education and energy.
The two PMs also issued a Joint Declaration. The full text of the Joint Declaration can be found at vietnamnews.vn.
Top leaders reception
During separate meetings with Romanian PM Ciolos yesterday, Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong and President Tran ai Quang asked that Romania continue supporting the just stance of Viet Nam and ASEAN in addressing the East Sea issue by peaceful means on the basis of international law, particularly the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea 1982.
Thanking Romania for its support for Viet Nams nation-building cause, Trong expressed his hopes of boosting the traditional friendship and multi-faceted cooperation with the European nation, especially in economics and defence.
He praised Romania for supporting the Vietnamese people living and studying there as well as the collaboration between Viet Nam and ASEAN with the European Union.
PM Ciolos emphasised that Romania would do more to develop its time-honoured friendship and cooperation with Viet Nam.
When meeting with President Quang, Ciolos said Romania sees Viet Nam as an example of economic development in the region, adding that his visit, therefore, focused on economic, trade and investment cooperation.
The host and guest shared the view that the two countries current economic, trade and investment cooperation has yet to achieve its potential and expectations.
Two-way trade has maintained a stable growth at 10-15 per cent each year. Trade value reached US$175.6 million in 2015, of which $102.2 million were generated by Viet Nams exports.
The Vietnamese leader expressed his hope that Romania would speed up the European Unions signing of the EU-Vietnam free trade agreement (FTA), saying that once implemented, the agreement will help boost economic, trade and investment ties between Viet Nam and the EU, of which Romania is a member.
He asked the European nation to recognise Viet Nams market economy status soon, facilitate the export of Vietnamese goods, and encourage Romanian enterprises to expand investments in the Southeast Asian country.
The guest confirmed that Romania would swiftly ratify the agreement and push for the EUs official signing of the FTA with Viet Nam.
Both agreed that the two countries would back each other in running for a non-permanent member seat of the UN Security Council in the 2020-2021 tenure.
PM Ciolos reiterated Romanias stance of respecting international principles and law and supporting the settlement of disputes by peaceful measures. VNS
HA NOI Deputy Prime Minister Trinh inh Dung has asked for prompt inspection of reported waste dumping by the Hung Nghiep Formosa Ha Tinh Steel Company, Vietnam News Agency reported yesterday.
The request was made following recent news stories alleging that the company was found burying a huge amount of waste at a farm run by the director of an environmental company in Ky Anh town of central Ha Tinh Province.
Dung urged the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment (MONRE) to co-ordinate with the provincial Peoples Committee to check the information.
If it is true, measures should be taken to strictly address the case following legal regulations.
The outcomes of the inspection must be reported to the Prime Minister, he added.
Ha Tinh environmental police and inspectors on Monday afternoon discovered about 100 tonnes of stinking black waste at a farm in Ky Trinh Ward, Ky Anh District, while conducting a surprise inspection following reports by local residents about the appearance of waste-carrying trucks in the area.
Vo Ta inh, director of Ha Tinh Department of Natural Resources and Environment, said the agency had taken samples of the waste to test.
If the waste is identified as hazardous, the companies and persons involved will face strict punishment, inh said.
Le Nam Son, general inspector of the department, said that Formosa had signed a one-year contract, beginning April 15 this year, with the Urban Environment Company in Ky Anh District to transport and dump waste in that area.
The farm where the waste was found belonged to Le Quang Hoa, director of the Urban Environment Company, he said.
Hoa, meanwhile, told the Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper that the buried waste came from a waste-treatment facility in Formosa.
It is normal black mud, not harmful waste. It can be used to recycle or become fertiliser, he said.
The officials of the department are expected to work with Formosa with regard to this case within this week.
Late last month, the Vietnamese government found the Taiwanese-owned Formosa responsible for massive fish deaths in four central provinces since April after it released toxic wastewater into the sea.
The leaders of the company had officially apologised to the Vietnamese government and people and promised to pay $500 million as compensation to the affected people, and to pay for the clean-up and restoration of the sea environment.
MONRE minister Tran Hong Ha said yesterday that the body will form a council to supervise the anti-pollution commitments made by the corporation.
The minister added that a state-of-the-art marine environment monitoring system would be built to make regular assessments of the marine environment, Vietnam News Agency reported.
The system will enable State environment management bodies to be aware of changes in the marine environment and pollution risks, which would allow for early warning and prevention before incidents occur. VNS
Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc will pay an official visit to Mongolia and attend the 11th Asia-Europe Meeting Summit in Ulan Bator on July 13-16. VNA/VNS Photo
HA NOI Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc will pay an official visit to Mongolia and attend the 11th Asia-Europe Meeting Summit in Ulan Bator on July 13-16, at the invitation of Mongolian President Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj and Prime Minister Jargaltulga Erdenebat.
Viet Nam and Mongolia established diplomatic ties on November 17, 1954. Since then, their traditional friendship and multi-faceted co-operation have been maintained and developed in numerous fields.
In recent years, the two countries have maintained regular exchanges of high-level delegations.
In 1979, they set up their Inter-governmental Committee on Trade, Economic, Scientific and Technological Co-operation, which has organised 15 meetings to date. In the 15th session, both countries agreed to co-operate in implementing projects on planting, to continue negotiations on cattle feed production, and to construct facilities for indoor vegetable cultivation in Mongolia .
In December 2012, the two sides exchanged diplomatic notes on the official recognition of their full economic market regulations.
Two-way trade reached US$34.98 million in 2015, up from the $28.1 million the previous year. Viet Nam mainly exports phones, fruit and vegetables, and consumer products to Mongolia , while importing metals and materials for the garment and footwear sectors from the East Asian nation.
Transportation challenges are hindering trade exchange between the two countries. There is currently no direct air route connecting them.
Viet Nam and Mongolia have also signed co-operation agreements on culture, education, and science and technology. VNS
Fifty per cent of Vietnamese students suffer from short-sightedness, a survey conducted by the Central Eye Hospital has revealed. Photo baogiaothong.vn
HA NOI Fifty per cent of Vietnamese students suffer from short-sightedness, a survey conducted by the Central Eye Hospital has revealed.
The figure rises to 80 per cent in big cities and is expected to increase in the coming years, according to the survey.
The hospital survey that was release last weekend, found that children living in urban areas faced a high risk of eye refractive defects because they spent most of their time indoors.
The doctors have said the main cause was children having little time for outdoor activities, a long educational day with after-school tutoring and an increase in the use of computers, televisions and smart phones.
Long hours of learning, reading and playing games on the internet may lead to eye strain which causes an increase in eye-related diseases and defects, doctors said.
During holidays, children flocked to the hospitals or opticians for examination and to buy glasses.
Le Minh Quoc, a father of a ten year old child, said that it was very crowded when he took his son to Ha Noi Eye Hospital on Saturday for optical treatment.
Today is Saturday, but many parents take their children here for a medical examination. I cant believe so many children nowadays have become short-sighted, Quoc said.
A doctor at a big shop on Giang Vo Street said the number of children coming to the shop increased sharply during the holidays.
The children aged from 7 to 13, are the most likely to be affected, Dr Nguyen uc Cuong said.
Cuong said many told him that they often play games on the internet and spend a lot of time reading, particularly during the summer holidays.
Others said they have to learn so much in school and after-school.
Tran To Uyen, a mother of a seventh-grade student, said her son had to start wearing glasses three years ago.
Besides studying at school, her son attended three extra lessons a week.
I did not detect earlier that my son faced problems with his eyes and when I took him to the hospital, his eyes were affected by serious myopia, Uyen said.
The problem was that many parents are too busy for the early detection of eye diseases.
So many of children suffered serious myopia due to not receiving early examination, doctors warned.
The ambient light in many classrooms is not enough for students and it was also the cause of the high rate of short-sightedness amongst children.
There were also some other factors which led to short-sightedness, among them, genetic factors. To protect childrens eyesight, doctors said, parents should let children play outdoor as much as possible along with limitations on reading, use of computers and mobile phones.
Poor eyesight can be recovered with timely examinations, they said. VNS
BINH DUONG The southern Binh Duong Province is inviting private investors to build schools in an attempt to tackle the acute shortage of classrooms for new students.
Binh Duong, which is home to many industrial zones, experiences a large increase in the number of students every year due to rising numbers of immigrant workers.
Investment in education from the private sector is encouraged because the province is unable to build enough new schools, Duong Le Nhat Nam, deputy director of Binh Duongs Department of Education and Training, said.
The greatest problem we face is that the land fund for education is depleting, whereas the number of students is skyrocketing in some localities, he said.
He said the number of students at all levels, from nursery to high school, in the province was expected to rise by 30,000 in this school year.
With an annual increase of up to 30,000 students, the province needs to build at least 30 to 40 new schools each year, costing about VN3 trillion (US$133 million), he said.
He said many schools had prepared plans to stuff as many as 45 to 50 students into a classroom in this school year, which begins in September, because there was no other solution.
The province has sought several ways to tackle the problem, such as repairing old classrooms and reducing the number of day-boarders, to create more space for students.
Priority in school enrolment is given to children of permanent residents or those having stayed in a locality for more than six months, in order to avoid overloading in localities that have a huge number of immigrants.
Another solution, according to the Department of Education and Training, is that companies can build their own nursery schools in the precinct of their factories to look after workers children.
Twelve private companies in the province have built nursery schools on their land, which were able to accommodate 2,400 children, the department said.
Phan Thi Anh Hong, a worker of Shyang Hung Cheng Company that has built its own nursery school, said the model was very helpful and convenient.
By having a place to take care of our children, we feel secure and have a stronger attachment to our company, she said. VNS
HA NOI Health minister Nguyen Thi Kim Tien has asked central and local medical facilities nationwide to review hospital services offered by private organisations and individuals.
Accordingly, hospitals must punish and terminate contracts with organisations and individuals offering hospital services that cause annoyance to patients as well as affect the quality of medical examination and treatment.
The order comes in the wake of some cases reported recently in which medical facilities chose service providers and gave them certain privileges.
The services, such as those providing security guards, patient transport, canteen services and solid medical waste treatment, besides dead body preservation and funeral organisation, reportedly affected the prestige of doctors and hospitals.
The Health Minister ordered the issue of open public bids for these services as per regulations, and asked health facilities to select service providers that maintain quality and charge reasonable prices.
The rates of these services must also be publicised for the knowledge of patients, relatives of patients and medical staff.
Hospitals must also work with patient transport providers to set up operation regulations, ensuring transparency, and strictly punish those who force patients to use their services
In addition, hospitals need to train and improve the communication and behaviour skills of hospital staff towards patients and their family members.
A hospital unit should be assigned the job of monitoring the services and of strictly punishing those who trouble patients.
Heads of medical units must take the responsibility for any violation that might hurt the legal benefits of patients, and must report the list of services being provided at their facilities to the Health Ministry.
Earlier, the ministry had asked the Ha Noi-based Paediatrics Hospital to quickly send a report regarding a case in which the hospitals security guards prevented an ambulance from leaving the premises, as reported in the media and on social networks recently.
The security guards of the hospital had prevented an ambulance from leaving the hospital on July 3, even though it was carrying a nine-month-old heart patient.
The patients family members had asked the hospital to send the baby home because he was not expected to survive after undergoing surgery last month.
The babys family rented an ambulance from the central Nghe An Province to bring him back from Ha Noi. The baby has died, newspapers report.
Last week, Le Thanh Hai, the hospitals director, apologised to the Vietnamese people for having allowed the incident to occur, and said the three security guards had been dismissed. VNS
PORTSMOUTH, United States After months of bitter campaigning, Bernie Sanders finally endorsed presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton on Tuesday, pledging to work tirelessly to help his former rival defeat Donald Trump and win the White House.
The joint appearance in Portsmouth, New Hampshire -- their first -- was the culmination of weeks of talks between the two campaigns aimed at unifying the party to most effectively take on Republican opponent Trump in November.
"Secretary Clinton has won the Democratic nominating process, and I congratulate her for that," Sanders, 74, told a cheering crowd, with Clinton at his side.
"She will be the Democratic nominee for president and I intend to do everything I can to make certain she will be the next president of the United States."
The US senator from Vermont offered voters a litany of reasons why the 68-year-old former secretary of state is a better choice than the 70-year-old Manhattan real estate mogul.
"If anyone out there thinks that this election is not important, take a moment to think about the Supreme Court justices that Donald Trump will nominate, and what that means to civil liberties, equal rights and the future of our country," Sanders said.
Putting aside the acrimony, Clinton thanked Sanders for his endorsement -- even if their body language did not exude warmth and was downright awkward at times.
"I am proud to be fighting alongside you," she said. "We are stronger together."
Pence as Trumps VP?
Trump, who has proclaimed himself "the law and order candidate" amid rising gun violence, unleashed a barrage of criticism, saying Sanders "abandoned" his grassroots supporters by joining forces with Clinton.
"I want to tell you, a lot of Bernie Sanders people are so upset about it, they are going to be voting for Trump," he said in Westfield, Indiana.
The Republican billionaire campaigned there with Governor Mike Pence, raising speculation that he could pick Indianas chief executive as runningmate.
Trump told The New York Times he expected to make an announcement by Friday, three days before the Republican convention in Cleveland, where he will officially become the nominee.
He called Pence a "good man" during his unscripted remarks, but also teased the crowd.
"I dont know whether hes going to be your governor or your vice president. Who the hell knows?" Trump said to raucous cheers.
Trump had hit the campaign trail on Monday in Virginia Beach with New Jersey Governor Chris Christie -- one of those on the vice presidential shortlist.
Christies experience running a populous state could be seen as critical for Trump, who has acknowledged his own lack of political and government expertise.
Pence also brings executive experience, and the salt-of-the-earth Midwesterner has shown a steady hand that could help counter the narrative that Trump is too incendiary and quick to provoke.
Pence is a 12-year veteran of Congress, well versed in international affairs from his time on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
Former House speaker Newt Gingrich, who ran for president in 2012, is also in the runningmate mix.
He said he expected Trump would announce his pick on Wednesday or Thursday. AFP
BRUSSELS NATO and Russia on Wednesday hold their first talks since the alliance agreed at a summit in Warsaw to beef up its presence in eastern Europe.
The meeting between ambassadors from the 28-nation alliance and Russia is the first since April and just the second since 2014, when the Ukraine crisis plunged relations into a deep freeze.
The alliance said it would brief Moscow on last weeks decision to send four battalions totaling around 4,000 soldiers to Poland and the Baltic states, which have been nervous ever since Crimea joined Russia in 2014.
Moscow said it would discuss the risks of the US missile shield that NATO declared operational at the summit in the Polish capital, as well as improving airspace safety over the Baltic.
"Allies and Russia will discuss three topics - the crisis in Ukraine, military transparency and the security situation in Afghanistan," NATO spokeswoman Carmen Romero said.
"In the spirit of transparency, we will brief Russia on the important decisions we took in Warsaw last week to enhance our security."
Russia has been strongly critical of the NATO decision, accusing the alliance of aggression and warning that it will react to the deployment of forces in its former Soviet backyard.
But NATO said it was acting purely defensively.
"NATO does not pose a threat to Russia. We do not seek confrontation. We continue to aspire to a constructive relationship with Russia, when Russias actions make that possible," Romero said.
"Tomorrows meeting is a sign that NATO is following through on our commitment to political dialogue with Russia."
The last set of talks in Brussels in April ended in "profound disagreements" between NATO and Russia over Ukraine and other issues, despite hopes they could ease years of tensions.
NATO leaders meeting in the Polish capital last week said they had agreed on a twin-track policy of "deterrence and dialogue" with Russia, insisting they would not back down until Moscow abided by the Minsk peace deal for Ukraine.
Alliance chief Jens Stoltenberg said they "stand together" despite signs from some NATO nations like France that they want to focus on a diplomatic solution with Moscow. AFP
NEW YORK Secretary General of the United Nations Ban Ki-moon has called on parties concerned in disputes in the South China Sea (called East Sea in Viet Nam) to abide by international law and avoid taking actions that could fuel tensions.
The UN chief was responding to the final ruling on the Philippiness lawsuit against China over a dispute in the South China Sea issued on Tuesday.
At a regular press conference in the UN headquarters in New York, the US, the spokesperson for the UN Secretary General Stephane Dujarric said the UN chief has repeatedly called on the parties to settle disputes in a peaceful and amicable manner and in conformity with international law, including the UN Charter.
The UN Secretary General stressed that while dialogues are underway, the involved parties should stay away from activities that would provoke tensions.
He expressed his hope that the on-going consultation on a code of conduct in the East Sea (COC) between ASEAN and China that is based on the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the East Sea (DOC) will help promote mutual understanding between the parties.
The State Department of the US on Tuesday affirmed that the ruling made by the PCA on the Philippiness lawsuit against Chinas territorial claims in the South China Sea is an important contribution to the shared goal of a peaceful resolution.
The department spokesperson John Kirby stated that the United States expresses its hope and expectation that both parties will comply with their obligations.
The tribunals decision is final and legally binding on both China and the Philippines, he added, urging all claimants to avoid provocative statements or actions.
The same day, Hillary Clinton, the Democratic Partys 2016 presidential candidate, welcomed the ruling on the Philippiness lawsuit against Chinas claims in the East Sea while emphasising the importance of the waters to the US economy.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump, the Republican Partys candidate, said he urges all parties to respect the tribunals ruling.
In another development, Japans Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida also said that the PCAs decision is final and legally binding and that the two sides should comply with it.
Kishida stated in a statement that Japan persistently supports the compliance with legal regulations and the use of peaceful means in settling disputes at sea.
The PCA in The Hague, the Netherlands, on Tuesday issued the ruling on the case brought by the Philippines against Chinas nine-dash line claim in the South China Sea.
It affirmed that Chinas claims to historic rights over waters within the nine-dash line are contrary to the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).
China has caused permanent and irreparable harm to the coral reef ecosystem at the Spratly (Truong Sa) archipelago, and that it also has no historic title over waters of the South China Sea, the tribunal said.
The Hague Tribunal also finds no legal basis for China to claim historic rights to resources within the nine-dash line.
According to The Hague court, China has no rights to a 200-nautical mile exclusive economic zone (EEZ) surrounding the Mischief and Thomas reefs.
The court defined Ba Binh feature in Viet Nams Truong Sa (Spratly) archipelago as a rock which means it has no EEZ.
The PCA also underlined that China has interfered with the traditional fishing rights of the Philippines in Scarborough Shoal, highlighting that Chinas actions have worsen disputes between the country and the Philippines when efforts have been made to resolve the disputes.
The Philippine government on Tuesday welcomed the issuance the Arbitration on the sea dispute.
Philippine Rodrigo Duterte called for a cabinet meeting after the Philippines won the arbitration case against China over the disputed South China Sea.
Presidential spokesperson Ernesto Abella told reporters that the government would study the decision before making any public statement.
Beijing rejected an international tribunal ruling Tuesday that rendered its claims in the South China Sea
"The award is null and void and has no binding force," Chinas foreign ministry said on its website, reiterating its territorial claims.
President Xi Jinping said the islands have been Chinese territory since ancient times and Beijing will not accept any action based on the decision, according to the official Xinhua news agency.
Taiwan refuses to accept the ruling of the international arbitration tribunal.
The Taipei leader office spokesman Alex Huang said the Republic of China, Taiwan, said that the ROC was not a party in the tribunal case and the tribunal had not sought any input from the ROC.
Responses to PCAs ruling on Philippines-China dispute
Australia said yesterday that China must accept a verdict declaring its South China Sea claims are invalid and needs to halt its artificial island building in the disputed waters.
Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said Beijing risked reputational harm if it ignored the ruling by the UN-backed Permanent Court of Arbitration, on a case brought by Manila, which said China had no title to the waterway.
"We call on both the Philippines and China to respect the ruling, to abide by it. It is final and legally binding on both of them," Bishop told national broadcaster ABC.
Singapores Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) has issued a statement calling on concerned parties to fully respect legal and diplomatic processes following the ruling issued by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague.
The MFA also called on the parties to exercise refrain and avoid taking any activities that could spark tension in the region.
Replying to the media on the PCAs ruling, the Spokesperson for the MFA said Singapore acknowledged the ruling.
The country supported the peaceful settlement of disputes in conformity with recognised principles of international law, including the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, the MFA remarked.
Meanwhile, Thailand said the South China Sea conflict should be addressed through joint efforts and on the basis of mutual trust and confidence as well as equal benefit.
The Foreign Ministry issued a statement a few hours before the PCA made final decision on the case.
Thailand attaches great importance to maintaining peace and stability in Southeast Asia and adjacent areas, as well as restoring trust and confidence among countries in the region, in order to foster and environment conducive to sustainable growth and prosperity through cooperation on all constructive activities.
The Indian Ministry of External Affairs confirmed on its website that it is studying the case carefully. Agencies
Five Indians have made it to the Forbes Asia's annual Heroes of Philanthropy list that highlights some of the region's noteworthy givers.
The list, which included 40 philanthropists from 13 countries in the Asia-Pacific region, includes Vineet and Anupama Nayar, founders of the Sampark Foundation; Adar Poonawalla, CEO of Serum Institute of India and Pune-based billionaire Cyrus Poonawallas son; Bain India CEO Amit Chandra and his wife Archana Chandra, CEO of Jai Vakeel Foundation.
The Sampark Foundation boasts of a USD 100 million outlay funded entirely by the Nayars and represents more than half of their wealth. It is rolling out kits with child-friendly teaching aids to 50,000 government schools and 3 million students across Uttarakhand and Chhattisgarh.
Another notable philanthropist is Adar Poonawalla, CEO of Serum Institute of India, who pledged USD 15 million last year to clean up Pune city with a fleet of 50 garbage trucks and a crew of 70 people.
Amit Chandra, CEO of Bain India, and Archana Chandra, CEO of Jai Vakeel Foundation, are the other two philanthropists from India.
The husband and wife donate 75 per cent of their earnings each year to causes ranging from education to healthcare. Amit was one of the founding donors to Ashoka University and has funded an upcoming children's hospital in Mumbai that will be the country's largest.
Taiwanese mogul Terry Gou, Chairman and CEO of Hon Hai Precision, donated USD 6 million in disaster relief after a devastating earthquake struck southern Taiwan in February and claimed 115 lives.
He also pledged in 2013 to give away 90 per cent of his wealth, which now totals USD 6 billion.
"The list not only features philanthropists who have made news with their donations in the past year, but recognises people who have compiled a long record of supporting worthy causes," Forbes Asia said.
In January, Thomas J Donohue, the feisty chief executive of the US Chamber of Commerce, noted - without naming names - that there were "loud voices" this election season who talked about walling off America from talent and trade. He called that position "morally wrong and politically stupid."
In March, Donohue got a little more blunt. " has very little idea about what trade really is," he told Bloomberg television. And recently, the gloves came off completely. As the presumptive Republican nominee gave a speech, threatening to rip up trade accords and put tariffs on goods from China, the chamber live-tweeted its jabs and counterpunches. "Under Trump's trade plans, we would see higher prices, fewer jobs, and a weaker economy," read one tweet.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who returned Tuesday morning from his first official visit to continental Africa, has now completed 24 international trips in a little over 25 months since he took charge in May 2014. He has been to 42 countries and stayed out of India for 113 days during this period, according to government data.
Australian workers will soon be entitled to paid domestic violence leave More than 11 million Australians will be able to access 10 days of paid domestic violence leave from February 2023 after the Labor government passed a milestone bill on Thursday.
Coalition slams Labor for empowering far-left climate activists The Opposition has slammed Tanya Plibersek's defence of the almost $10 million Labor spent on funding climate groups in Tuesday night's budget, accusing the government of "empowering far-left activists" and inflicting "massive damage on our national economy".
My lifes been publicly scrutinised: Brittany Higgins tearful statement Brittany Higgins has delivered a tearful statement declaring her life has been publicly scrutinised outside court after the judge in the Bruce Lehrmann rape case discharged the jury.
Labor reveals cheaper medicines win The Albanese Government has officially reduced the cost of prescription medicines and revealed how much money millions of Australians can expect to save.
Carroll boy
drowns in pool
CARROLL (AP) A2-year-old western Iowa boy drowned in a backyard swimming pool, according to police.
A 911 call was placed from the home in Carroll just before 9 p.m. Tuesday. Carroll Police Capt. Mark Heino said Eli Rowedder had been found unresponsive in the pool.
Heino said an adult was performing CPR on the boy when paramedics arrived. The child was rushed to an area hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
Police said three adults and other children were at the home at the time of the drowning. An investigation into the death continues.
Iowa City teen
hit by van dies
IOWA CITY (AP) A teen hit by a minivan while playing a game with friends has died.
The Johnson County Sheriffs Office said 16-year-old J.C. Meardon and two others were standing in a road Monday night in southwest Iowa City when two of the boys were hit. Investigators said the boys were playing a game called hostage, in which participants are blindfolded and dropped in a random area. They then call friends, describing their surroundings, asking for a ride.
The boys thought the van was a friend coming to pick them up.
Meardon died at a hospital early Wednesday morning. The other teen hit was not seriously injured.
The vans driver was cited for not having a drivers license.
Des Moines man dies after assault
DES MOINES (AP) An injured man found by police officers on a Des Moines street has died.
Ryan Thompson, 32, was found by police on Southwest 17th Street around 3 p.m. Monday after a report of an assault. Police said Thompson was taken to Iowa Methodist Medical Center, where he died Tuesday of his injuries.
Investigators have identified a suspect in the assault, but no charges had been filed by Wednesday afternoon. Police said they are awaiting autopsy results, conducting interviews and consulting with the Polk County Attorneys Office before filing charges.
Officers cleared
in bank shooting
FORT MADISON (AP) State authorities say the fatal shooting of a suspected bank robber in Fort Madison was justified.
Thirty-seven-year-old Lafayette Evans, of Nashville, Tenn., died of a single gunshot wound to the chest on June 29.
The Office of the Iowa Attorney General said Tuesday Fort Madison police officers David Doyle and Benjamin Brown shot at Evans to protect Lee County Sheriffs Deputy Scott Sproul, who was under fire from Evans.
The office said Evans fired two shots into the bank ceiling during his robbery of Fort Madison Bank and Trust Co. He had more than $224,000 in cash with him when he fled the building.
Officers said they spotted Evans running from the bank and Evans fired several more shots, hitting a patrol car being driven by Sproul.
Parking app reducing tickets
SIOUX CITY (AP) Sioux City has issued fewer parking tickets following the release of an app that lets people feed meters with their smartphones.
The city issued about 1,100 fewer parking tickets between Sept. 21 and July 6 than it did during the same period a year earlier. There were nearly 10,600 app transactions between Sept. 21, 2015, and July 6.
The app is available for iPhone, Android, Windows and Blackberry phones.
The app lets people pay meters by phone app or computer and alerts people when time on their meters is about to expire.
Seventh in a series
CEDAR FALLS Some people know Paul Anderson on a middle-name basis.
To some of his friends and he counts many hes Gene.
I go by either, he said. Call me what you want.
The Boone native and Cedar Falls resident, 84, said he would have been content just to tinker, build or otherwise work with his hands. He did that, after all, in a four-year stint as a machinery repairman 2nd class and noncommissioned officer from 1951 through 1955 in the U.S. Navy.
When I got out of the service, I thought Id use the GI Bill to go to school and become a tool and die maker, because I really enjoyed that work building and fixing things with your hands.
But his older brother, Gary, who was studying mechanical engineering at Iowa State University in the 1950s, talked Paul into following him to school in Ames.
He said, Well, they get to wear a white shirt and a tie and they get to tell the tool and die maker what to do. So, I kind of followed him.
In 1958, Paul Anderson earned a bachelors degree in mechanical engineering from ISU, and he parlayed that into a position at John Deeres Product Engineering Center in 1964.
During his time with Deere, he worked for many years in the applied mechanics department at the Product Engineering Center, where he was responsible for testing and evaluating Deere products.
Anderson retired in 1986. Some would say thats when he really went to work.
He volunteered with United Cerebral Palsy Association for several years, assisting with the horse-riding program the precursor to todays Aspire program and with home computer support for children with cerebral palsy. He also delivered Meals on Wheels for about 20 years in Hudson until the program in that area was phased out.
Over the last seven years, Anderson has served as treasurer of ARC of Cedar Valley, an advocacy organization for people with disabilities.
I am inspired by his enthusiasm; he attributes his motivation and commitment to the satisfaction he gains from seeing how grateful his clients are for the assistance he provides, JoAnna Van Gerpen, District 1 coordinator, AARP/RSVP Tax Project in Cedar Falls, said in nominating Anderson for The Couriers Eight Over 80 Award.
Marie Nitzschke of Waterloo noted Anderson has headed the ARC of Cedar Valleys Gophers, a group of volunteers who do repairs at group homes, while the Gopherettes do sewing repairs for the residents.
Gene became the head Gopher and sends a written report to Exceptional Persons Inc. after every work day, Nitzschke said. Gene is a very dedicated, reliable volunteer who also does not have any relative with disabilities. He has a heart of gold.
At the behest of Bonnie, Pauls wife of 16 years, he tends bar for Cedar Falls Womens Club events.
Paul makes friends wherever he goes, said fellow volunteer Nancy Stevenson, who also nominated Anderson.
Anderson also is a longtime volunteer tax preparer for area seniors.
Paul is a diligent volunteer, carefully preparing each tax return and giving our clients as much time as they need, said Stevenson, who has worked with Anderson for 10 years. Many of our clients are happy to have Paul do their tax return year after year. The other volunteers and I always enjoy working with Paul, and Paul seems to enjoy talking with many of our clients each year.
Stevenson described Anderson as personable, as well as serious and caring and also noted his wry sense of humor.
Mostly, hes dependable.
He comes in early for his afternoon shift to see if we need help completing the tax returns for our morning clients, she said.
Andersons quest for new knowledge continues.
My husband knows Paul because both are longtime members of the Waterloo Technical Society, she said. The members of this group are interested in what is happening in the fields of science and technology, so there is a speaker at every meeting. This shows that Paul continues to be interested in learning about new things, which I believe is an admirable trait in citizens of all ages.
WATERLOO Hawkeye Community College will undergo a comprehensive evaluation visit Nov. 14-16 by The Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools.
The school has been engaged in a process of self-study, addressing the commissions requirements and criteria for accreditation. The evaluation team will visit the institution to gather evidence that the self-study is thorough and accurate and based on evidentiary findings, the team will recommend to the Commission a future accreditation status for the college.
The public is invited to submit comments regarding the college to The Higher Learning Commission, 230 N. LaSalle St., Suite 7-500, Chicago, IL 60604-1411
Comments must address substantive matters related to the quality of the institution or its academic programs. Comments must be in writing, signed and received by Oct. 10.
HAMPTON -- A Hampton man accused of killing his girlfriend last year has been given a change of venue.
District Court Judge James Drew on Monday granted Ronald Rand's motion for a change of venue for the Hampton man's first-degree murder trial, which is scheduled for Aug. 22.
Public Defender Susan Flander, Rand's attorney, had asked that it be moved due to press coverage.
Rand, 61, is accused of killing his girlfriend, Michelle Key, 51, of Waterloo, on Dec. 13 in his house on First Street Northeast.
He has pleaded not guilty.
The location of the trial has not yet been decided.
CEDAR RAPIDS Some GOP officials may avoid the Republican National Convention, but Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst sees her opening night speech as an opportunity to give Iowans a voice on the national stage.
Right now, Iowans are pretty darned frustrated just like when I ran for election, said Ernst.
Her 2014 campaign caught fire with a make em squeal campaign promise to cut federal spending. National security will be her focus when she addresses the Cleveland convention Monday night.
Theres a real pushback against the failed policies we have right now, Ernst said Tuesday. The president has failed to put forward a comprehensive strategy to defeat and destroy (ISIS). He talks all of the time about containing and degrading, but we need to defeat and destroy.
She expects presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton will just continue those failed policies, and what a great opportunity to push back on that, Ernst said.
For a time it appeared she might speak to the convention as businessman Donald Trumps vice presidential running mate. Ernst met with the presumptive nominee over the July 4 weekend but withdrew from consideration.
Prime-time speeches at a national convention elevate a politicians profile, according to Drake University political scientist Dennis Goldford. However, they are rarely break-out moments.
Some may recall the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston, when then first-term Illinois Sen. Barack Obama burst on to the national scene. After his speech, delegates there to nominate John Kerry and John Edwards immediately began to talk about Obama as a future presidential candidate.
Obama is the exception that proves the rule, Goldford said.
Ernst doesnt anticipate an Obama-like reaction.
I think Ive been breaking out plenty, she said, laughing. Her speech will be about what Im hearing from Iowans, who I think are pretty representative of the United States, and represent their voice in calling for a stronger national defense and doing something about terrorism.
Bottom line, its always Iowa and expressing the views of Iowa on a national stage, Ernst said. Thats what Im bringing to the table.
It wont be Ernsts first time in the spotlight. Although a freshman, Ernst, 46, was tapped to give the GOP response to the presidents State of the Union in 2015.
DES MOINES The Isle Casino Hotel Waterloo posted record revenue of $89.6 million in fiscal 2016 despite declining attendance.
With a new casino in Jefferson and a rejuvenated gaming resort in Sioux City, Iowas gambling industry posted a $21.6 million revenue gain and crept closer to the record set three years ago.
Iowas 19 state-licensed gambling operations took in gross adjusted revenue totaling more than $1.437 billion, according to the state Racing and Gaming Commission. That included $26.9 million at the Wild Rose Casino in Jefferson, open nearly one year.
I think what were seeing in Iowa is a very stable gaming market, very predictable, said commission administrator Brian Ohorilko.
Ten casinos posted year-to-year losses while eight reported revenue gains including a $13.1 million surge by the Hard Rock casino resort in Sioux City that replaced the Argosy, closed in July 2014.
Overall admissions slipped, but the average per-capita betting loss rose from $65 to $67, according to commission records.
The Isle Waterloos $89.6 million adjusted gross was a 1 percent increase over fiscal 2015.
Revenues are up 17 percent since fiscal 2008, increasing each year but one, but attendance declined 20 to 30 percent over the same period.
A record $5.1 million went to the Black Hawk County Gaming Association for grants to community projects, commission executive director Beth Knipp said. The association, a nonprofit entity holding the Isles gaming license, receives 5.75 percent of the casinos adjusted gross revenues.
I would give some credit to the Isle for their marketing and their operations, said former Waterloo Mayor Tim Hurley, gaming association president. The fact is, while attendance is down, adjusted gross is up by a like amount.
But he said the association is not over-extending itself.
The temperament of the board is to be careful. If attendance keeps dropping this wont go on forever, Hurley said.
The past year saw the closing of dog tracks at casinos in Council Bluffs and Dubuque. Iowas only remaining racino the Prairie Meadows Racetrack & Casino in Altoona posted a nearly $3.5 million decline in fiscal 2016.
There currently is not a moratorium on gambling license applications in Iowa, but no new requests have been filed with the commission, Ohorilko said.
WATERLOO A final call is going out to nominate the Cedar Valleys best and brightest young leaders for The Couriers annual 20 Under 40 honor.
The deadline for nominations is Friday.
This is the 16th year for 20 Under 40, conferred yearly on 20 young business leaders who are seen as dedicated to giving of themselves for the betterment of the community, as well as those closest to them.
Young leaders from across the Cedar Valley region are eligible.
Recipients will be honored with feature stories in the November issue of the Cedar Valley Business Monthly and at a banquet and awards ceremony and reception in November. The feature stories will be published again in 20 consecutive weekday issues of The Courier, beginning over the Christmas holiday.
Nominees must meet the following criteria to be considered for the award:
Dedication and success in their vocation.
A role model in their career.
Demonstrates leadership in their business/community.
Active community and volunteer participation.
Nominations may be submitted by mail to 20 Under 40, P.O. Box 540, Waterloo 50704; by fax to 234-3297, attn: 20 Under 40 Nomination; or online at www.wcfcourier.com/20under40.
WATERLOO There are more than 2,000 refugees from Burma in Waterloo, and most who are old enough work at Tyson Fresh Meats.
The reason? Tyson is one of the few major employers that hires non-English-speaking recent refugees.
But its fair to say many new arrivals are interested in a variety of jobs. Theres a program to help these people, and now its being expanded.
RefugeeRISE AmeriCorps (Rebuild, Integrate, Serve, Empower) launched late last year through the Iowa Commission on Volunteer Service. Its administered by EMBARC, which has offices in Waterloo as well as Marshalltown and Des Moines.
RefugeeRISE partners new arrivals with other AmeriCorps workers, and that pair then is hired by local businesses and nonprofits as well as at EMBARC.
One of those pairs includes Laldin Liani, who came to Waterloo five years ago from a Burmese refugee camp. She works with Mallory Petsche both are co-coordinators of EMBARCs mentorship program.
When we got (to the U.S.), it was very difficult to find a job, Liani said. We didnt speak English, there was no caseworker thats why most of the people joined Tyson. But they dont know how to find another job.
Liani can speak to other Burmese refugees a valuable skill at EMBARC while Petsche helps Liani improve her English skills and other skills like using email and Google Drive.
A computer Ive never seen in Burma, Liani said. And now I can use it easily.
That job readiness will help Liani down the road she eventually wants to either be a certified interpreter for her community or get her nursing certification and work in a nursing home.
RefugeeRISE is specifically designed to support job readiness, said Alicia Soppe, program manager at EMBARCs Waterloo office. Our emphasis is on addressing workforce shortages.
EMBARCs lobbyist at the state level is the Iowa Refugee Alliance, which represents more than 100 organizations like EMBARC.
That organization backed a bill asking for $300,000 from the state to expand the RefugeeRISE program. If the state didnt promise the money, the federal AmeriCorps wouldnt kick in $650,000 in matching dollars.
Soppe didnt expect it to pass in the divided Legislature. But it did.
We fought really hard, she said.
Once its allocated this fall, that money will go toward 30 full-time RefugeeRISE positions throughout the state.
EMBARC will help distribute the money to get pairs of full-time workers to businesses and nonprofits. And theyre cheap: The $20,000 it would normally cost an organization to hire the AmeriCorps pair full-time for a year is being subsidized -- Meghan Smith, program director in Des Moines, said it's expected to be just $3,000-$5,000 per individual.
They go right into the business. They have direct service hours and training hours, said Chris Apling, who also works in the RefugeeRISE program.
Plus, recent arrivals speak a variety of languages, ostensibly helping organizations reach populations they might not otherwise.
Theyre working together, learning from each other, Soppe said. Theyre teaming up to combine their strengths.
And the partnerships make Waterloo feel more like home to Liani.
I love them, Liani said of EMBARC. I feel like theyre family.
Organizations interested in hiring a RefugeeRISE pair can contact program director Meghan Smith in Des Moines at (641) 752-8658 ext. 308, or at meghan@embarciowa.org.
This story has been updated to adjust the spacing in the name of RefugeeRISE and clarify the amount businesses will pay for each individual.
CEDAR FALLS Bill Bolster is a groundbreaking broadcasting executive. Thats what he is. Waterloo-Cedar Falls is who he is.
Im part of you, Bolster, the now-retired president of CNBC and CNBC International, once dubbed The King of Financial News, said as he looked across a room of friends and former colleagues at the Greater Cedar Valley Alliance & Chamber Legacy Luncheon Wednesday.
Theres a big difference between who you are and what you are. And this is who I am. Thats what I am, Bolster said.
Bolster, a native of Waterloo, cut his teeth as a broadcasting executive at KWWL-TV in Waterloo, where he rose to the position of general manager.
And, he said, the successes he had here were repeated throughout his broadcasting career in St. Louis at Multimedia, and later at NBC and CNBC.
I never wanted to be what I was. I wanted to be who I was, here. Winning here was a big deal.
For example, he said the best hire he ever made, anywhere, was right here in this room, he said former longtime KWWL-TV chief meteorologist Craig Johnson, who in the mid-1970s had been released from what was then WMT-TV in Cedar Rapids following a change in ownership. It quickly put KWWL atop the local ratings.
We went from No. 2 to No. 1 in one rating book. Now, (NBC Today show host) Matt Lauer, none of those guys have ever done that. But by God he (Johnson) did, Bolster said.
Bolster, 72, attended Our Lady of Victory Academy at St. Josephs Catholic Church in Waterloo, now Queen of Peace, and is a 1961 graduate of Columbus High School and Loras College in Dubuque.
He actually began his broadcast career as an announcer and salesman with KDTH Radio in Dubuque in 1965 before coming to KWWL.
He left Waterloo in 1983 for television station KDSK in St. Louis and became president of St. Louis-based Multimedia Inc. before being named president of NBC network flagship station WNBC in New York.
His father, William B. Bolster, who passed away when the young Bolster was 22, was an original investor in KWWL. Values his father told him may have led to his big break, when he stuck to his guns in a philosophical difference with board members at Multimedia.
I would disagree, and they would disagree with my disagreeing, and thats called being fired, Bolster said, drawing laughs. That was the biggest break I ever got because NBC would have never become calling. Plus I felt good about who I was when he left.
Your family teaches you all this. Someones got to walk along and hold your hand, that you respect and care and love. And he did it, he said. None of this happens without my dad.
Bolster said he was always open to innovation. I would embrace anything but the status quo, he said, particularly with enterprises in distress. But they were all lessons learned at KWWL.
Bolster recalled entering the WNBC broadcast booth one night to run a newscast. Ray Smith taught me how to do that, about 1967, at KWWL, Bolster said. Then-anchor Chuck Scarborough said, Bill is this you? And I said, Yes, and were going to do this right now! he said.
On the current pace of change in business and the media, Bolster said, I dont mind change. I mind the incompetency of whats going on in the media right now, with people filling time with sensationalism. Its not a good thing.
Coming back is a very, very emotional for thing, he said later. This is important to me. This brings back every good thing that ever happened to me. Its a combination of love, and dedication and emotion and passion.
Claysons column
RICK JOHNSON WAVERLY People are fed up with politics and power as usual. After that, there is little to agree with in Dennis Claysons column in Sundays edition. Indeed, it would be possible to write 200 words in rebuttal about nearly every paragraph. As that is not possible, let me stick with the most egregious.
Mr. Clayson and others on the far right have been using drank the Kool-Aid as a metaphor for blindly following a leader. (The irony is it probably originated with a single leader and others are blindly following the example.) This reference is to the Jonestown tragedy of many years ago.
Evidence has shown most of those who drank the poison were forced to do so at gunpoint. To use this figure of speech in such an uncaring way for strange political purposes is more disrespectful to the victims and their surviving families than I can express.
In the name of decency, please do not use it ever again.
Legalize drugs
RUTH WALKER
CEDAR FALLS Are our lawmakers all in the deep pockets of the many powerful vested interests that profit from keeping drugs illegal? They should base decisions on evidence. Legalizing drugs is the right thing to do but unpopular because too few understand.
Alcohol ranked most harmful, worse than meth and heroin, both to addicts and to society, in a review published in Lancet Medical Journal in 2010.
Alcohol prohibition (1920-1933) caused problems similar to now:
Undetermined strength and purity increases overdose rates.
Addicts fear calling 911 for help.
Rehab is longer and more difficult because the first step is to remove the stigma so the patient understands its a medical problem (Dr. Thomas Pattee June 8 at an Eastern Iowa Heroin Initiatives town hall).
Its lucrative, but dealers cant use the judicial system to settle differences so they shoot (sometimes hitting bystanders).
The black market feeds international drug cartels, causing additional violence.
Drugs used in surgeries are essentially the same, but rarely cause addiction there. Trauma and isolation correlate with addiction, and research suggests a likely inherited component according to Dr. Pattee.
The moral solution: Stop additional trauma, isolation and stigma, and legalize all drugs (and save taxpayer dollars).
Singin in the Rain
SHERRY ETRINGER WATERLOO Yesterday (July 10), I had the opportunity to use one of my season tickets to the play at the Waterloo Community Playhouse. I thoroughly enjoyed Singin in the Rain and had a smile plastered on my face the entire two-plus hours I was there.
I also enjoyed watching an older gentleman in front of me and could almost see the delight and joy on his face as he perhaps relived some of the great songs and dances of another era. We as a community are so lucky to have that kind of talent and artistry displayed throughout the presentation. I hope you had a chance to see the play as well. We get so caught up in all the terrible things that happen on a daily basis. We need to laugh at the clouds, so dark up above and put the sun in our hearts more than once in awhile.
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By West Kentucky Star Staff
Jul. 12, 2016 | PADUCAH, KY
By West Kentucky Star Staff Jul. 12, 2016 | 12:39 PM | PADUCAH, KY
The Parks Services Department invites everyone to Paducahs riverfront on Thursday for the third of six concerts in the RIVERfront Concert Series. Enjoy sounds, sunset, and summertime with Paducahs own Sleepless Pilgrims hitting the stage from 6:00-7:00 pm, and then The Honey Dewdrops from 7:00 - 8:30 pm.
Baltimore-based The Honey Dewdrops (www.thehoneydewdrops.com) features Laura Wortman and Kagey Parrish, who met in college while playing in a rock band in 2003. Since then, they married and found their musical calling, a mixture of introspective bluegrass and old-time country music, telling stories full of emotions like sadness, loneliness, and struggle.
The concert series, organized by the Parks Services Department, is FREE and features amazing up-and-coming musical artists, both local and nationwide. Bring your lawn chairs or sit on the steps at the riverfront and enjoy the music on Wilson Stage. Concerts are on select Thursdays in June, July, and August. Additional dates for the RIVERfront Concert Series are July 28, August 4, and August 18.
Water, Pepsi products and beverages from local craft beer breweries will also be available for purchase from vendors. The Parks Department worked with Paducah Beer Werks, Dry Ground Brewing Company, Maiden Alley Cinema, and Save the Columbia Theatre to add this amenity to the evening.
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We wanted a website where potential patients would feel welcomed and right at home, where they could easily find answers to their questions.
GREENVILLE, SC, July 13, 2016 /24-7PressRelease/ -- Wood Creek Dental Wednesday announced the launch of its new practice website. The custom design highlights the hospitable environment of this family dental practice through assets such as high-quality photos of the office and an earthy, soothing color scheme.
"For many people, our website will be their first walk through the front door of our practice. We wanted to create an online presence that would truly reflect the genuine friendliness of our team and be as comfortable, inviting and appealing as when they actually do physically walk through our doors," said Dr. Dale Hunt, founder of Wood Creek Dental.
"We wanted a website where potential patients would feel welcomed and right at home, where they could easily find answers to their questions and where they would immediately feel a sense of trust and confidence in who we are, what they can expect and how they will be treated," Dr. Hunt said.
Along with simulating the patient experience through custom photos and video, the new Wood Creek Dental website makes patient education a priority. Custom taglines paired with engaging icons highlight what makes the practice special, while a series of next-step graphics on the home page guide users to helpful information.
The "Our Services" section provides accessible links to pages on dental treatments for the whole family, from children to grandparents. The "Meet Our Doctors" block introduces the dentists of Wood Creek, while visitors can read reviews, learn about financing and discover specials for new patients through convenient calls-to-action.
Users can also download premium content for a more in-depth discussion of popular dental treatments such as:
- Dental Implants
- General Dentistry
- Sedation Dentistry
Dental care is brought to life by the warm and welcoming visuals, as well as through reviews from actual patients. Integrated throughout the practice area content, these testimonials share how Wood Creek Dental has helped individuals and families with a variety of different dental needs achieve their oral health and cosmetic goals.
About Wood Creek Dental
The team at Wood Creek Dental makes patient satisfaction a top priority. Practicing from two convenient South Carolina locations in Greenville and Landrum, Wood Creek Dental provides advanced services including dental implants, sedation dentistry, aesthetic restorations, family dental care and more in a comfortable and relaxing environment.
For more information visit http://www.woodcreekdental.com/
Connect with Wood Creek Dental on social media
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/woodcreekdental
Google+: https://plus.google.com/116473838666114125664/videos
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/woodcreekdentalpa
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Jul 13, 2016 | By Benedict
The Ural Federal University, based in Yekaterinburg, Russia, has demonstrated a robotic 3D printing machine at Innoprom 2016, a trade show taking place in Yekaterinburg. The university has also signed two agreements to develop additive manufacturing technology with Chinese partners.
With Innoprom 2016 in full swing, several Russian businesses and developers have now had a chance to showcase their innovative additive manufacturing technologies to an enthusiastic public. And while weve already taken a virtual peek into the trade show to check out a 3D printed scouting drone and a metal additive manufacturing system, our attentions are now being turned to an unusual machine developed by engineers at the Ural Federal University.
The 3D Printing robot, which was today inspected by Russias Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin and Minister of Industry and Trade Denis Manturov, consists of a 3D printer print head affixed to the end of a large robotic arm, enabling the operator to create 3D printed objects on a much larger scale than would be possible with a typical enclosed printer. The printing volume field is increased to the workspace of the robot, one of the engineers explained. Its print head can also be equipped with nozzles of different diameters.
Although the movement of the large robotic arm adds several extra moving parts and joints to the 3D printing machine, the Ural researchers have programmed the 3D printing robot to automatically wield the arm in accordance with the specifications of the 3D printed object: "The system automatically generates the robots code, which makes it easy to use and able to print even the most complex shapes, they explained.
In other 3D printing news from the Ural Federal University, the institution today announced that it would develop additive manufacturing technologies with two Chinese partners: the University of Heilongjiang and Xinda, a plastics specialist, in order to increase its additive manufacturing expertise and open businesses opportunities in the Far East, such as the production of a planned 3D printed car. Though announced simultaneously, the two deals are not formally connected.
Photo: Edward Nikulnikov
The Ural Federal University will work with the University of Heilongjiang to establish a joint Russian-Chinese 3D printing laboratory, working with both metal and polymers and developing a range of additive manufacturing machines. The two universities will research 3D printing techniques for materials including aluminum, steel, refractory alloys, titanium, bronze, polyamide, polystyrene, metal, ceramic, composites, and plastics.
In its partnership with Xinda, the Ural Federal University will involve cooperation over science and technology, innovations, and educational projects. The two parties have agreed to organize an exchange of experts in the field of additive manufacturingthese may include teachers and scholars, doctoral students, undergraduates, graduate students, and professionals.
We are interested in developing mutually beneficial cooperation with Chinese partners, said Victor A. Koksharov, Rector of the Ural Federal University. This will allow us to carry out studies of the properties of polymeric materials and metal powders to be used in the manufacture of products on 3D printers we have at the Ural Federal University. Our university has developed the first 3D printed car in Russia, and together with our partners we are developing a project to organize its serial production. This will enable the University to quickly and efficiently develop the additive manufacturing industry in Russia.
Posted in 3D Printer
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Shalom Goldman in Tablet:
In 1961 the eminent Muslim scholar Muhammad Asad, then living in Europe, published The Principles of State and Government in Islam. The central question posed in that book is whether Islam is opposed to the mixing of religion and politicsas is the modern West. Though Asads answers to this question are subtle and non-categorical, his overall conclusion is that in majority-Muslim states a mixture of politics and religion is necessary. Society must bind itself to the will of God, Asad stated, and the organization of an Islamic state or states is an indispensable condition of Islamic life in the true sense of the word.
This was not the first time that Asad, who had been publishing books and articles since the mid-1930s, called for the infusion of religion into politics. In his highly influential 1934 essay Islam at the Crossroads, Asad articulated a set of principles about the relationship between the Muslim world and the West that served as the basis of his later conversations with Muhammad Iqbal and other Islamist activists. He envisioned, in Pakistan and elsewhere, the emergence of Muslim states thoroughly modern but inspired and informed by religious principles.
Asads vision of an Islamic state bears little resemblance to the militant, anti-Western version propagated by ISIS today; he conceived of an Islamic state based on modern interpretations of the Quran and the Islamic legal traditions, a state grounded in democratic principles, where women would be treated as equals and the civil rights of non-Muslims respected.
Perhaps thats not surprising, given Asads roots. He was born at the turn of the 20th century in Austria-Hungaryin what is now Ukraineas Leopold (Aryeh) Weiss.
More here.
Neil Shea at The American Scholar:
Few soldiers or Marines I met in Iraq had read the book. Many of them knewDispatches, but they insisted that Iraq was not Vietnam. Their protests revealed how Herrs wisdom, and that of his generation, had been lost. This became apparent to me one day at a press conference. I attended out of boredom and despairbeing there meant I was not somewhere else. The war was slipping past in the distance, and Herr had given me to know that nothing could ever be learned at a media show. The room was large and beige in the way of any official nowhere, with rows of chairs flanking a long aisle. A flock of reporters had taken seats to the right, near the podium at the front of the room. I hung back to the left and sat beside a solitary figure, an older man with a high forehead and long, thinning hair. He was Peter Arnett, a legendary war correspondent who had covered Vietnam. We chatted for a while, and then he noticed I was carryingDispatches. He told me he and Herr had been friends.
Its a wonderful book, he said. But you know he made a lot of it up.
I did not, and was crushed again. How do you know? I blurted.
He laughed. A certain patience in it.
Because I was there.
more here.
Eric Naiman in the TLS:
Late in 2011, Michiko Kakutani opened her New York Times review of Claire Tomalins biography of Charles Dickens with a remarkable account she had found in its pages. In London for a few days in 1862, Fyodor Dostoevsky had dropped in on Dickenss editorial offices and found the writer in an expansive mood. In a letter written by Dostoevsky to an old friend sixteen years later, the writer of so many great confession scenes depicted Dickens baring his creative soul:
All the good simple people in his novels, Little Nell, even the holy simpletons like Barnaby Rudge, are what he wanted to have been, and his villains were what he was (or rather, what he found in himself), his cruelty, his attacks of causeless enmity toward those who were helpless and looked to him for comfort, his shrinking from those whom he ought to love, being used up in what he wrote. There were two people in him, he told me: one who feels as he ought to feel and one who feels the opposite. From the one who feels the opposite I make my evil characters, from the one who feels as a man ought to feel I try to live my life. Only two people? I asked.
I have been teaching courses on Dostoevsky for over two decades, but I had never come across any mention of this encounter. Although Dostoevsky is known to have visited London for a week in 1862, neither his published letters nor any of the numerous biographies contain any hint of such a meeting. Dostoevsky would have been a virtual unknown to Dickens. It isnt clear why Dickens would have opened up to his Russian colleague in this manner, and even if he had wanted to, in what language would the two men have conversed? (It could only have been French, which should lead one to wonder about the eloquence of a remembered remark filtered through two foreign tongues.) Moreover, Dostoevsky was a prickly, often rude interlocutor. He and Turgenev hated each other. He never even met Tolstoy. Would he have sought Dickens out? Would he then have been silent about the encounter for so many years, when it would have provided such wonderful fodder for his polemical journalism?
More here.
Ruled by neutrals, symmetry, and blank canvas interior walls, these retail gems mirror the minimalist products they sell. Step inside these five fabulous Oakland stores, where chic minimalism sets the style rules, and the only thing you'll wonder is: Why didn't I visit sooner?
Hawthorn
For well-made basics with a mix of flowy silhouettes and structured lines, head to Hawthorn in Rockridge, where simple driftwood accents, scattered succulents, and brass clothing racks give the store a casual yet elegant tone. Brand highlights include MOTHER Jeans (which just might be the softest denim ever) and everyday staples from SF-based designers The Podolls and Freda Salvador. For one-of-a-kind, gold-accented rings and necklaces make sure to check out their Jewels section, featuring handcrafted goods from true artisans. // 5854 College Ave. (Rockridge), hawthornboutique.com
(via Yelp)
Alchemy Bottle Shop
Art gallery or liquor store? In this Grand Avenue shop, clean white shelves and neat rows of bottles almost resemble a colorful art installation. Alchemy has a curated assortment of specialty gin, mescal, tequila, single malt whiskey and other liquors from mostly independent producers. Pay attention to the branding and design of the bottle labels, they all have a simple elegance and are as unique as the liquor inside. For a special treat, stop by on Saturday afternoons when Alchemy hosts free tastings, no need to RSVP. Listen to distillers talk about their magic, while enjoying a wee dram too. // 3256 Grand Ave. (Grand Lake), alchemybottleshop.com
(Jen Kay)
Sobu
A recent expansion and remodel earlier this year has made Sobu a showplace for chic, locally designed furniture and home goods. Owners Laleh and Alessandro Latini have backgrounds in graphic design and architecture/furniture design, respectively, and it shows in their amazing designs. With the store's tall bright walls and light-filled space, Sobu's interior is a blank palette for the products they design and source. Covet-worthy items include the custom-made stone tripod stools and an assortment of brass and copper lighting fixtures. And don't miss the wood-slat casita designed by Alessandro at the back of the shop! // 5451 College Ave. (Rockridge), sobusobu.com
(Courtesy of the Consistency Project)
Viscera Studio
Ari Takata-Vasque's neutral-ruled store carries American-made clothing from killer brands including Just Black Denim, Prairie Underground, and Only Child. Look no further for perfect, not-so-basic everyday tops. Viscera has them, so stock up! Don't miss the 3D jewelry they make, and sign up for their cool DIY workshops, such as how to make your own awesome wall hanging. Check out the concrete slab counter that was originally meant to be a bar for candles, iPhone cases, and more things you'll want to purchase by the handful! // 1542 Broadway (Uptown), viscerastudio.com
(Anya Ku)
Esqueleto
This Temescal Alley shop is known for having some of the most beautiful and unique jewelry around, and the store's two large walls of windows and clean layout make it a true gem. Aside from carrying must-have designs from Oakland native Lindsay Olson of Adeline Jewelry, Rebecca Overmann, AILI, and Melissa Joy Manning, Esqueleto's unique decor items alone are worth a visit. Contemporary wood mobiles dance from the ceiling, and MQuan votives plus John Sheppard's porcelain geometric pieces will win any shelfie game. Don't forget to look down at the vintage carpets and shiny pyrite crystals sparkling at your feet. // 482 A 49th St. (Temescal), shopesqueleto.com
Going to the dentist sucksthere's no doubt about it. And if you want to be seen by a modern doctor with concierge-like services, then you better be ready to pay premium fees. At least, that's how it worked before Soothing Dental.
Soothing Dental is making concierge dentistry affordable for everyone. Instead of avoiding the dentist because of their old equipment, long waits, dreaded phone calls, or expensive fees, you can now lie back and rest, knowing that your dentist has entered the modern age. Farid Fadaie and Dr. Sona Saeidi joined forces to create Soothing Dental, using the latest in dental technology and focusing on the patient-dentist relationship. Patients can even watch Netflix on video glasses and be entertained while the work is being done. Drawing inspiration from the Silicon-Valley consumer-focused culture, Soothing Dental is bringing affordable concierge-style dentistry to the masses, making it easy for everyone to have a beautiful smile without going through pain.
Here's how it works: Patients can simply install the app, or visit the website, to book an appointment and get their smile ready for the summer. There is guaranteed no wait-time when you arrive for your appointment. Soothing Dental also offersin-office insurance plans for as low as $20 per month which makes it even easier for patients without insurance (or with bad plans) to receive a premium service in San Francisco's best dental office.
See Also: Social Security in Action
Our plea to the candidates: Tell us more! Tell us how your plan would work, what it would cost, and whether it would adequately protect future generations. How would it affect different slices of the population? Is it fair?
These are the questions real leaders grapple with, and the American people deserve to hear the answers.
Given the divisions in American politics, its easy to see why people may question whether political leaders will rise to the challenge. But American voters expect the candidates to have the answers. In a recent AARP poll, 82 percent of voters 50 and older said a basic threshold for presidential leadership was having a plan for Social Security.
The Social Security trustees recently reaffirmed that the trust fund will run out of money in 2034 if no changes are approved. That means benefits for future retirees would be automatically cut by 25 percent a year. With every day that passes, finding solutions grows more difficult. The time to act is now. If our leaders dont step up, future retirees could lose up to $10,000 a year.
Candidates, thats your cue. As our nation turns its focus to deciding who will lead us for the next four years and perhaps beyond, tell us how you will keep Social Securitys promise for future generations. The 170 million Americans who are paying in to Social Security are eager to hear your answers.
Jo Ann Jenkins is CEO of AARP.
There are plenty of reasons why a part-time job is appealing. Even people who have saved for retirement see continuing to work in some fashion as a financial safety net. It helps stave off dipping into retirement accounts and makes it easier to delay Social Security benefits. There are also psychological and health reasons to consider, including staying engaged with a social network and feeling relevant.
If working on your own terms appeals to you, here are six varieties of part-time work to consider.
1. Self-employment and consulting work
Tap your expertise and skill set to launch a part-time gig as a consultant. These are typically short-term projects. The trick to landing assignments is leveraging your professional network. Past employers are a good first stop to test the waters. Contact former colleagues and clients for help in identifying opportunities. For leads, you might get involved with an association in your industry, an alumni group, a local Rotary Club or a regional small-business association. You might also want to use websites such as PatinaSolutions.com, for those with at least 25 years of experience, or HourlyNerd.com, for those with MBAs or graduate degrees.
2. Seasonal jobs
Plenty of jobs run the course of a season, such as fall, winter, or summer, and can help you pay bills and keep busy. If you like to drive, for instance, limo services provide work year-round, but their dance cards fill up during prom and wedding season, from April to June.
Tax preparers are in hot demand during the first part of the year. Large tax firms, including H&R Block and Jackson Hewitt, hire thousands of tax preparers each year to come on board from January until May 1. You usually need to take the firms income-tax course in the fall to prepare. To fly solo, become an enrolled agent with the Internal Revenue Service. You can gain experience through AARP Foundation Tax-Aide, where volunteers help lower-income seniors do their taxes. AARP trains all volunteers.
Substitute teaching, working as an adjunct professor or doing private tutoring during the school year is another seasonal possibility. If you like the great outdoors, each year the National Park Service, as well as state and local parks, hires temporary and seasonal employees. There are also guest service and hospitality jobs at park stores and restaurants; theyre available through Aramark, a national firm thats authorized by the National Park Service to provide facility and concession management. The holiday season, too, is a great time to land a temporary job. Retailers have a seasonal demand not only for sales clerks but also for customer service helpers, cashiers, stockroom clerks and security guards. You may also find restaurant employment, as a greeter, server, bartender or barista. Package-delivery firms such as UPS and FedEx are inundated with a surge in demand and hire accordingly.
Sheriff-to-be reiterates need for regional jail in Brown County
As Brown County considers the possibility of building a new regional jail, Chief Deputy Dave Lunzman reminded commissioners of why it's needed.
Ironbark Zinc Limited (ASX:IBG) (OTCMKTS:IRBGY) hereby provides an update regarding the development of the world class Citronen zinc project. This is an exciting time for the Company as it progresses toward the major project financing stage of the advanced and high margin, large scale Citronen zinc project at a period of such strong zinc prices.
Zhaojin Mining Industry Company Limited is a leading gold production enterprise in the PRC. The Group is located in Zhaoyuan City in Shandong Province - the 'Gold City' of China, holding 10% of the country's total gold reserves and having the longest history of gold mining in the PRC. The Group is principally engaged in the exploration, mining, ore processing, smelting and sale of gold products, and is the largest gold smelting enterprise in the PRC. The principal products of the Group include standard Au9999 and Au9995 gold bullion. Zhaojin Mining operates five mines in Zhaoyuan City and owns a 75% equity interest in another operating mine. The Group also owns various gold mines throughout the Northern, Northwestern, and Southwestern parts of China. With its abundant gold resources, advanced technology and seasoned management, the Group has attained to a leading position in the industry.
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Bear Head LNG Greenhouse Gas Management Plan Approved
Perth, July 13, 2016 AEST (ABN Newswire) - Liquefied Natural Gas Ltd's ( ASX:LNG ) ( LNGLY:OTCMKTS ) wholly owned subsidiary Bear Head LNG Corporation Inc. (Bear Head LNG) is pleased to announce it has received Nova Scotia Environment's (NSE) approval for its Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Management Plan for its liquefied natural gas (LNG) facility on the Strait of Canso in Richmond County, Nova Scotia.
The GHG Management Plan provides Bear Head LNG's strategy for managing GHG emissions through technology selection, design of the facility, and operations.
"Approval of Bear Head LNG's GHG Management Plan is welcome news," said Greg Vesey, Managing Director and CEO of LNGL and President of Bear Head LNG. "Bear Head LNG is designing a best-in-class LNG facility, utilizing state of the art technology. Nova Scotia Environment's approval of Bear Head LNG's emissions management system is an endorsement of LNGL's optimized single mixed refrigerant (OSMR(R)) liquefaction technology, as one of the lowest emitters of GHG for LNG liquefaction projects. We are confident that our proprietary technology will meet the new GHG performance standards that have been proposed by NSE."
Bear Head's parent company, Liquefied Natural Gas Limited (LNGL), owns the OSMR(R) technology, which is patented in 16 countries/jurisdictions including Canada and the United States. OSMR(R) technology provides a considerably more efficient design arrangement that generates lower emissions and improved project economics.
About Liquefied Natural Gas Ltd
Liquefied Natural Gas Limited ( ASX:LNG) ( OTCMKTS:LNGLY) (LNGL) is an ASX listed company whose portfolio consists of 100% ownership of the following companies:
- Magnolia LNG, LLC (Magnolia LNG), a US-based subsidiary, which is developing an eight mtpa or greater LNG export terminal, in the Port of Lake Charles, Louisiana, USA;
- Bear Head LNG Corporation Inc. (Bear Head LNG), a Canadian-based subsidiary, which is developing an 8 12 mtpa LNG export terminal in Richmond County, Nova Scotia, Canada with potential for further expansion;
- Bear Paw Pipeline Corporation Inc. (Bear Paw), which is proposing to construct and operate a 62.5 km gas pipeline lateral to connect gas supply to Bear Head LNG; and
- LNG Technology Pty Ltd, a subsidiary which owns and develops the Company's OSMR LNG liquefaction process, a midscale LNG business model that plans to deliver lower capital and operating costs, faster construction, and improved efficiency, relative to larger traditional LNG projects.
ACAs library of educational tools help members improve their business practices. ACA also holds the most popular industry conferences and offers credentialing for collectors, attorneys, and more. ACAs Training Zone subscription gives agencies access to almost all of our education for one low cost.
IMGCAP(1)][IMGCAP(2)]Most tax practitioners occasionally find themselves in the position of having to deal with clients who have received penalties for late filing of tax returns or late payment of income taxes.
As both a CPA and attorney, our office always has penalty abatement requests in process. Most penalty provisions of the Internal Revenue Code have reasonable cause language, so the penalty can at least be addressed with a good reasonable cause argument, assuming one exists. Those penalties involving intentional or willful disregard language, with considerably higher dollars at stake, tend to involve a more extensive plan of attack.
Its safe to say most taxpayers who tend to heed the advice of quality preparers dont find themselves in penalty situations very often. But wouldnt it be great if there was a simple streamlined tool to abate penalties for otherwise diligent and responsible taxpayers? Well there is, and its been around since 2001! Its an administrative waiver called First Time Abate.
A while ago, we wrote about Form 8275, Disclosure Memo, as a safety tool to avoid penalties by disclosing a position on a tax return for which the preparer and taxpayer believe they have reasonable basis, but are nonetheless not quite sure (see IRS Penalties: Speak Softly and Carry Form 8275). We were, and continue to be, astonished by the lack of use of this most valuable resource. First Time Abate is another penalty tool that we are surprised hasnt yet become mainstream in tax practice.
In 2001, the Internal Revenue Service began granting penalty relief under an administrative waiver known as First Time Penalty Abate. Its not in the Internal Revenue Code; it comes under the Reasonable Cause Assistant (RCA) of the IRS and its in the Internal Revenue Manual (IRM 20.1.1.3.6.1). Like many provisions of the Internal Revenue Manual (repetitive examination procedures, for example), First Time Penalty Abate availability is not well publicized by the IRS.
Heres how it works. The IRM basically states that First Time Abate applies to penalties for late income tax filings (including partnerships and S corporations) and late income tax payments (including late deposits of tax). Such abatement may be granted as long as the taxpayer has a clean history (no penalty assessments) for the previous three years. The purpose behind First Time Abate relief is to reward past compliance and promote future compliance by utilization of this get out of penalty free card.
A clean history means a clean history, but some areas of the Internal Revenue Manual or other research are worthy of note. For example, the criteria includes if current taxes are paid, or arranged to pay. Well, arranged to pay means the IRS will consider the taxpayer current if an installment agreement is in existence, as long as the payment plan is in good standing. Thus, an installment agreement in good standing does not negate the possibility of relief under the First Time Penalty Abate administrative waiver. In addition, if there was a prior penalty in the previous three years, but it was removed due to reasonable cause, that activity should not count as a prior penalty. Thus the opportunity to be awarded this first time abatement is still applicable in that situation.
Our office simply requests this waiver by responding to the address on the penalty assessment letter, stating the taxpayers good three year history and a request that the penalty be waived under First Time Penalty Abate Administrative Waiver. Frankly, we try it with a whole variety of penalties, not just late filing and late payment of income tax returns, since First Time Abate is not quite the law and clearly discretionary. In addition, if one of the prior three years had an insignificant penalty, there is language in the IRM that suggests consideration, so wed try in that case too, especially if we lack reasonable cause. Try.
In 2012, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration pointed out that the IRS failed to inform about 1.45 million taxpayers that they qualified for this relief, resulting in $181 million in waivable penalties. TIGTA recommended the IRS ensure taxpayers are aware of this potential waiver. However, from what we see, this has not been the case. Most practitioners, as well as the vast majority of taxpayers, are not familiar with this most welcome opportunity.
Paul Mancinone is a CPA and attorney at law, and represents businesses and individuals before the IRS. Alison Walsh is an accountant and manager at his firm, Paul Mancinone Company, P.C., in Springfield, Mass.
A self-styled tax watchdog group has launched an effort to independently audit the Internal Revenue Service, with the help of taxpayers.
The Tax Revolution Institute a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that says it promote "justice and integrity in the tax system"has created a new website, AuditIRS.com, where it hopes to collect personal experiences from taxpayers about their encounters with the IRS.
The group plans to conduct an audit of the IRSs treatment of individual taxpayers and small businesses and the agencys own employees, work culture and finances. It will also examine the taxpayer advice given by the IRS along with IRS policies and enforcement.
"For decades, the IRS has failed to live up to the standards of transparency that it enforces on the American public," Tax Revolution Institute executive director Dan Johnson said in a statement.
The group issued a report in April claiming the IRS lacks independent oversight following the suspension of operations of the IRS Oversight Board after it failed to enlist enough members to make up the necessary quorum.
Nevertheless, the IRSs finance and operations are frequently audited by the Government Accountability Office and the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration. The IRS has also come under fire in recent years from Congress, following revelations in 2013 that the IRS gave extra scrutiny to political groups applying for tax-exempt status, and the agencys expenses, employee bonuses and performance are the subjects of frequent congressional hearings. Lawmakers are currently weighing a possible impeachment resolution against IRS Commissioner John Koskinen.
The Tax Revolution Institute is asking any taxpayers, business owners, government employees to submit information about their experiences with the IRS, either positive or negative, to AuditIRS.com. The group said it will never publish any personally identifying information, unless it is invited to do so by the person who provided it.
TRI plans to research the submissions it receives, file Freedom of Information Act requests, and examine IRS policy to determine how the IRS treats the American people.
(Bloomberg) U.S. Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew is set to meet with European Union antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager this week as she prepares to deliver a final verdict on a probe into Apple Inc.s tax affairs in Ireland.
The showdown comes days after Vestagers team came up with two possible scenarios on how much tax Apple owes in Ireland, according to two people familiar with the case, who asked not to be identified because the matter is private. Lew has contacted Vestager urging her to avoid ordering any collection of back taxes from Apple, according to one of the people.
Conflict over trans-Atlantic tax practices escalated in February as Lew complained to European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker that U.S. firms are unfair targets of state-aid investigations. The Treasury Secretarys letter came after EU enforcement focused on fiscal pacts Apple, Amazon.com Inc. and McDonalds Corp. have with Ireland and Luxembourg. The companies all say they acted within the law.
Vestager has repeatedly denied shes deliberately taking aim at U.S. firms, insisting that probes into tax rulings are part of the watchdogs responsibility to police fair competition within the EU. Clawing back undue advantagesas was the case when Starbucks Corp. was ordered to pay as much as 30 million euros ($33 million) in back taxes to the Netherlandssimply restores equal treatment, she insists.
The commissions press office and the Treasury Department didnt comment beyond confirming the Brussels meeting on Wednesday. Apple declined to comment.
Irish Jobs
The EU opened the Apple probe in 2014, and, in preliminary findings, said its tax arrangements were improperly designed to give the company a financial boost in exchange for jobs in Ireland. The Irish government has said it will vigorously defend any adverse Apple tax decision.
The company told a European Parliament panel earlier this year that it has paid every cent of tax that is due in Ireland.
Irish Finance Minister Michael Noonan said last month the EU decision could come as soon as July, though he also suggested that the U.K. vote to quit the EU may trigger delays. The finance ministry couldnt immediately comment on timing.
Tight-Lipped
Vestager has remained tight-lipped about the possible amount that Apple could be ordered to pay back to Ireland should regulators decide that the company received illegal tax breaks.
In a worst-case scenario, Apple may face a $19 billion bill if the government ultimately loses and is forced to recoup tax from the company, according to JPMorgan Chase & Co. analyst Rod Hall. Matt Larson of Bloomberg Intelligence puts the potential figure at more than $8 billion.
Brussels lawyers speculate that the final amount could be much less, in the hundreds of millions rangelarge enough to send a message to companies like Apple and the countries that dole out tax breaks, but not too large to risk creating havoc in case the decisions get overturned in the EU courts.
With assistance from Dara Doyle, Gaspard Sebag and Saleha Mohsin
Blueair, the global indoor air purification leader, announces the appointment of Herman Pihltrad to the role of Chief Operating Officer. Reporting directly to Blueair founder and chief executive officer BengtRittri, Hermans global brief encompasses China, Blueairs single largest marketplace with a highly efficient local organization, and other core markets in Asia, North America and elsewhere.
Herman brings with him over 11 years of senior management experience within Blueair, in Sweden as former president of Blueair AB and the United States, where he has most recently served as President of Blueair Inc. His role as COO will see him take responsibility for monitoring and developing Blueairs full value chain, including day-to-day management of Blueair, including day-to-day management, production strategy, sourcing, and the product and process quality and supply chain.
His operation experience has been built on a strong academic foundation having gained an engineering degree in thermodynamics from the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm.
Announcing the appointment, BengtRittri said: I am very pleased that we have secured a person of considerable talent with a detailed and proven knowledge of our business category. During his time with Blueair, Herman has helped shape our ambition and culture as we have established ourselves as a central player in the global air purifying industry.
Noting Blueair this year celebrates its 20th anniversary;Bengt said Blueair has grown into the worlds leading independent air purification technologies company supporting millions of private consumer and commercial customers around the world who want to enjoy cleaner, healthier indoor air.
Herman Pihltrad said: I feel honored to be given the opportunity to again be influential at Blueair on a global level. I look forward with great excitement to contributing to Blueairs continued strong growth and helping to ensure we continue to lead in sustainable technologies for health and remain an influential force for positive development for our users, employees and for society as a whole.
Herman will be based out of Stockholm, where Blueairs head office is located.
Outgoing COO NiklasWakeus says he is delighted Herman agreed to take on his new role after a highly successful period heading Blueairs North American operation. Niklas will continue his relationship with Blueair, retaining his current responsibility for international sales with an additional focus on business development.
In a move to increase brand penetration in tier II and III cities and rural areas, ShopClues, Indias first and largest managed marketplace has announced a strategic partnership with StoreKing. StoreKing is a leading assisted e-commerce player with a rural focus. It helps small-town retailers sell more products to walk-in customers without having to invest in working capital stock. The partnership between ShopClues and StoreKing will enable walk-in customers to avail benefits of ShopClues through 16,000 StoreKing franchises which include mobile recharge points, kirana shops, and small shop owners located in good consumer catchment areas.
In this collaboration, ShopClues products will be shown in the digital catalogue on the StoreKing app. Customers can browse through the catalogue at franchisees outlets and can make purchases with the help of an agent i.e. the local shop owners. The delivery of the product is made to the franchisee himself who, then, hands over the product to the end customer. The StoreKing agents ensure that customers get maximum assistance in their order placement as well as in cases of return, replacement, or refund requests.
At present, 50 million users are transacting in the e-commerce space. The partnership aims to target under-served areas in India with low internet penetration. Due to unavailability of digital modes of access, offline consumer touchpoints, payment options, banking services, delivery, and lack of trust in these geographies, the consumer interaction is significantly low as compared to urban areas. The tie-up aims to target the untouched high-potential tier III cities and rural areas, while also increasing ShopClues presence in tier II geographies.
Nitin Kochhar, VP Categories, Shopclues said, The strategic alliance with StoreKing will help us expand our consumer base further to the deeper pockets of India that have a huge number of active franchisees of StoreKing. The walk-in customers will be able to experience a wide range of products with unmatched quality offered by ShopClues at a distinct price point that the brand is famous for. Moreover, assistance provided by StoreKing agents will add a unique touch to the overall consumer experience of ShopClues. With internet and online banking services still under-penetrated in India, agent-assisted models have seen a surge in recent times and we are aiming to leverage its full potential for the benefit of customers pan-India.
Sridhar Gundaiah, Founder & CEO, StoreKing said, We are happy to enter into this association with ShopClues which will give a significant boost to the business of our franchisees. ShopClues and StoreKing together envision a future wherein every Indian, regardless of location or other constraints has access to top quality products at competitive prices.
ShopClues and StoreKing have ironed out several issues with the help of their pilot project and are now rolling-out their services completely in the target areas. The Rural Affiliate program which seeks to find ways to reach out to and bring a larger number of consumers to transact online is a high priority area for ShopClues as well as StoreKing. The association also ties in with the financial inclusion initiative being driven by the Government of India.
The Farnborough International Airshow (FIA) saw the launch of a Eurasia Airshow which will take place from 25th 28th April 2018 in Antalya in Turkey, creating a new business platform for the aerospace industry in the region.
Above: (left to right) Farnborough International CEO, Shaun Ormrod with Hakan Kurt from Medyacity.
Organised by Medyacity under the guidance and consultancy of Farnborough Internationals Airshows business and with the support of the Turkish Government, the show will seek to consolidate the business opportunities for the civil, commercial and defence aerospace markets in the Eurasian economic region.
The event will comprise a three day trade exhibition followed by a one day public show and will seek to attract up to 1000 exhibiting companies plus extensive flying display. Antalya Airport was chosen as the preferred location for the event as the airfield would be large enough to accommodate commercial and military that the show hopes to attract, something that Istanbul for example isnt able to accommodate.
Speaking about the location, Farnborough International CEO, Shaun Ormrod said, There has been a tremendous amount of investment by the civil aviation and airport industries in the Eurasian regions, particularly in Turkey. The Eurasia Airshow will allow the aerospace industry to grow and develop further in the region.
Hakan Kurt from Medyacity further added, The aerospace industry in Eurasian countries is growing exponentially. There are more than 500 civil aviation companies now in Turkey with more aircraft flying to over 200 destinations every day, particularly Turkish Airlines. Furthermore, Turkey is developing its own civil and defense aircraft and the Turkish Air Force will soon be receiving the F-35 later this year. The knowledge and experience of the Farnborough International team alongside our local event organising expertise will go a long way to making the show a success.
Farnborough International is a subsidiary company of ADS, the trade organisation advancing UK Aerospace, Defence, Security and Space industries.
Farnborough International today signed a new contract with the Ministry of Transportation and Telecommunications, Kingdom of Bahrain, to plan and organise the Bahrain International Airshow in 2018 and 2020, with an option for two further shows after that.
Farnborough International has assisted the Kingdom of Bahrain in the planning and organising of the Bahrain International Airshow since 2010, with the 2016 show seeing orders of over $9 billion and a date change to November 2018, to accommodate the growing event.
Speaking about Farnborough Internationals growing business, Chief Executive, Shaun Ormrod (right) said, We are extremely pleased that our expertise is being called-upon. As one of the UK largest and oldest international trade exhibitions and air displays we are well rehearsed on the planning and execution of such events with strong relationships with the many organisations that exhibit at the show.
Farnborough Internationals Commercial Director, Amanda Stainer, further added: The aerospace supply chain is always looking for new technological advancements that will enable it to complete orders quicker. Furthermore, the MRO sector is set to grow with more and more aircraft coming online to satisfy the demand for air travel. As such we are experiencing more enquiries from international event organisers and governments looking to explore the business opportunities in their own geographic region.
Since an Ebola outbreak was declared in Uganda on 20 September, health assistant Nyangoma Kirrungi has been on the frontline of the countrys response day in and day out, working as a contact tracer in Madudu sub-county, one of the areas affected by the outbreak.
The death toll from a high speed train crash in southern Italy rose to 27 on Wednesday after rescuers worked through the night to try to extract bodies from the tangled wreckage and continued their search in the morning.
With Italian media focusing on the antiquated technology on the single-track line, prosecutors have opened an investigation and Prime Minister Matteo Renzi has promised that the cause of Tuesday`s accident will be quickly identified.
Rescuers were still searching for the driver of one of the trains that collided head-on while travelling down the same stretch of track linking the small towns of Corato and Andria in the southeastern Puglia region in Italy`s heel.
The driver of the other train was one of the victims. With dozens of people injured, some seriously, rescuers expected the death toll could rise higher.
It is still unclear whether the accident was due to human error or a technical problem on a stretch of track where safety is dependent on telephone calls rather than computer systems.
Amid allegations that European Union funds available to upgrade the line had been wasted, Transport Minister Graziano Delrio was to address parliament on the accident at 1100 GMT.
While Italy boasts efficient high-speed train links between its main cities of Naples, Rome, Milan and Turin, much of the country is still dependent on slow, outdated and dilapidated services, especially in the undeveloped south.
The party wont be able to contest the BMC election scheduled to be held in February 2017.
The State Election Commission has barred All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) from contesting civic body elections in Maharashtra for its failure to furnish tax returns and audited accounts. Earlier the EC had issued notices to the party asking it to submit the reports failing which its registration will be cancelled. AIMIM was supposed to file the necessary information till 31st December, 2015. Thus party members wont be able to contest election from AIMIMs symbol. The Asaduddin Owaisi led party has two members in the state assembly. In the 2015 municipal elections, AIMIM had made an impressive debut in Aurangabad. The party had emerged as the main opposition party by winning 24 seats.
The state Election Commission in Maharashtra, which conducts local body polls, deregistered 191 local political parties including AIMIM for their failure to submit Income Tax returns and audited accounts. Thus AIMIM wont be able to contest the BMC election scheduled to be held in February 2017.
State Election Commissioner JS Saharia said, Parties which lost their registration also includes RPI-Khobragade faction.
So far, 359 political parties have been registered with the Commission. Of these, 17 are recognised parties, he said.
Notices were served to 326 parties for failure to submit necessary documents. Despite sending reminders to them and extending the deadline on request of some of them, they have allegedly failed to submit any documents, Saharia said.
If the parties want to contest elections in Maharashtra, they have to register, he added.
Imitiaz Jaleel AIMIM, MLA from Central Aurangabad constituency and group leader in Maharashtra Assembly said, We are shocked to hear this news. We had already submitted all the necessary documents to the Election Commission after receiving notice from them. We had furnished three years IT returns to them and had followed transparency. He denied any political pressure from the ruling party on Election Commission as it is an independent body. We will appeal with the Election Commission against the ban. I am confident that the party will contest local body elections due in few months, he added.
Zamir Surme, General Secretary AIMIM Mumbra said, There are possibilities that ruling parties might have pressurised the Election Commission as our party is expanding in Maharashtra. We are the second largest party in Aurangabad.
Hassan Mulani, Secretary AIMIM from Thane district said, We are not alone as the Election Commission had barred 191 parties from contesting election. We had submitted all the documents to EC. We will file an appeal against this in the Bombay High Court.
Odisha is suffering due to three major forces, one is government another is police and third is Maoists. Villagers and security personnel engaged in anti-Maoist operations opened fire at innocent people in Kandhamal district of the state. Police randomly opens fire at villagers and leaves killing many in the name of Maoists. There is almost every day cross fire exchange between policemen and Maoists. The survivors however, claim that their fellow citizens were killed in a cold blood. Panicked villagers demanded that the anti-Maoist operations be stopped in the region. Naveen Patnaik government had ordered a judicial probe into the killing of innocent villagers.
The NaxaliteMaoist insurgency is an ongoing conflict between Maoist groups, known as Naxalites or Naxals, and the Indian government. The conflict in its present form began after the 2004 formation of the CPI (Maoist), a rebel group composed of the PWG (Peoples War Group) and the MCC (Maoist Communist Centre). In January 2005 talks between the Andhra Pradesh state government and the CPI-Maoists broke down and the rebels accused authorities for not addressing their demands for a written truce, release of prisoners and redistribution of land. The ongoing conflict has taken place over a vast territory (around half of Indias 29 states) with hundreds of people being killed annually in clashes between the CPI-Maoists and the government every year since 2005.
The armed wing of the NaxaliteMaoists is called the PLGA (Peoples Liberation Guerrilla Army) and is estimated to have between 6,500 and 9,500 cadres, mostly armed with small guns. The Naxalites control territory throughout Bihar, Jharkhand and Andhra Pradesh states and claim to be supported by the poorest of the rural population, especially the Adivasis. Naxalites have frequently targeted tribal, police and government workers in what they say is a fight for improved land rights and more jobs for neglected agricultural labourers and the poor. They claim that they are following a strategy of rural rebellion similar to a protracted peoples war against the government.
In February 2009, the Indian central government announced a new nationwide initiative, to be called the Integrated Action Plan (IAP) for broad, co-ordinated operations aimed at dealing with the Naxalite problem in all affected states, namely (Karnataka, Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Jharkhand, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, and West Bengal). This plan included funding for grass-roots economic development projects in Naxalite-affected areas, as well as increased special police funding for better containment and reduction of Naxalite influence. In August 2010, after the first full year of implementation of the national IAP program, Karnataka was removed from the list of Naxal-affected states. In July 2011, the number of Naxal-affected areas was reduced to (figure includes proposed addition of 20 districts) 83 districts across nine states. In December 2011, the national government reported that the number of Naxalite related deaths and injuries nationwide had gone down by nearly 50 per cent from 2010 levels.
NaxaliteMaoist insurgency gained international media attention after the 2013 Naxal attack in Darbha valley resulted in the deaths of around 24 Congress leaders including the former state minister Mahendra Karma and the Chhattisgarh Congress chief Nand Kumar Patel. The districts that comprise the Red Corridor are among the poorest in the country. Areas such as Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Telangana (formerly part of Andhra Pradesh), are either impoverished or have significant economic inequality, or both.
A key characteristic of this region is non-diversified economies that are solely primary sector based. Agriculture, sometimes supplemented with mining or forestry, is the mainstay of the economy, which is often unable to support rapid increase in population. The region has significant natural resources, including mineral, forestry and potential hydroelectric generation capacity. Orissa, for example, has 60 per cent of Indias bauxite reserves, 25 per cent of coal, 28 per cent of iron ore, 92 per cent of nickel and 28 per cent of manganese reserves.
The area encompassed by the Red Corridor tends to have stratified societies, with caste and feudal divisions. Much of the area has high indigenous tribal populations (or adivasis), including Santhal and Gond. Bihar and Jharkhand have both caste and tribal divisions and violence associated with friction between these social groups. Telangana similarly has deep caste divides with a strict social hierarchical arrangement. Both Chhattisgarh and Orissa have significant impoverished tribal populations. The CPI (Maoist) believes that the Indian state is being run by a collaboration of imperialists, the comprador bourgeoisie and feudal lords. According to the South Asia Terrorism Portal, the two factions of the Party adhered to differing strands of communism prior to their 2004 merger, although both organisations shared their belief in the annihilation of class enemies and in extreme violence as a means to secure organisational goals. The Peoples War Group (PWG) maintained a Marxist-Leninist stance, while the Maoist Communist Centre of India (MCCI) took a Maoist stance. After the merger, the PWG secretary of Andhra Pradesh announced that the newly formed CPI-Maoist would follow Marxism-Leninism-Maoism as its ideological basis guiding its thinking in all spheres of its activities.
The ideology of the party is contained in a Party Programme. In the document, the Maoists denounce globalization as a war on the people by market fundamentalists and the caste system as a form of social oppression. The CPI (Maoist) claim that they are conducting a peoples war, a strategic approach developed by Mao Zedong during the guerrilla warfare phase of the Communist Party of China. Their eventual objective is to install a peoples government via a New Democratic Revolution. Prepared by the Jharkhand Police, Maoists were using illegal mining as a tool to fund their campaign. At that time, Maoists were involved in illegal mining in 18 districts.
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Paris: The victims of the 2015 Paris attacks, intend to file charges against the French government, their lawyer has said.
Maitre Samia Maktouf, a lawyer defending 17 victims of Paris terror attacks on 13 November last year that left about 130 people dead and over 250 injured, on Tuesday said her clients intended to file charges against the government, Xinhua news agency reported.
We will do everything to obtain the condemnation of the French government for failing to prevent the action of the terrorists, while some of them were under judicial supervision, said the lawyer.
At the same time, the report of the parliamentary committee of inquiry on terrorism was delivered to French President Francois Hollande, the report said.
According to the media, the committees report said one of the suicide bombers of the Bataclan Theatre visited Syria in September despite the judicial supervision put into place after his indictment for a failed attempt to head for Yemen in 2012.
The French government has been condemned for negligence by the administrative court of Nimes (Gard) in the case of master corporal Abel Chennouf who was assassinated in March 2012 by Mohamed Merah in Montauban (Tarn-et-Garonne), France.
French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve expressed his reservation concerning some suggestions of the committees report on Tuesday, namely, the creation of a new intelligence agency and the fusion of some terrorist monitoring systems.
This prudence regarding the creation of new structures results in a will to exempt the intelligence service from undergoing perpetual process of reforms without guaranteed substantial gain in efficiency, said the official.
In fact, these services have already been subject to numerous reorganisations in the past few months to adjust their practice to a particularly high and constantly changing threat. Moreover, in this context, the urgency of the situation drives them to focus on the protection of the French citizens, he said.
Cazeneuve has talked to the president of the association of the attack victims in order to outline French governments position on questions related to counterterrorism efforts.
Top British universities are facing difficulties while working with their European partners after the Brexit vote, with academics are being asked to pull out of leadership roles and leave EU-funded projects.
In a confidential survey of the UKs Russell Group universities, reports of the backlash came from across the natural sciences, the engineering disciplines and social sciences.
British researchers receive about 1 billion pound a year from EU finding programmes such as Horizon 2020, but access to the money must be completely renegotiated under Brexit.
The Russell Group is made up of the UKs 24 leading universities which have a commitment to high-class research. With Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh, University College London and Imperial College among their number, they are renowned for world-class research and academic excellence.
In a historic referendum on June 23, Britishers voted in favour of Britain leaving the 28-member European Union (EU).
Anecdotes reported as part of the survey include an EU project officer recommending that all UK partners be dropped from research group because their share of the funding was not guaranteed, according to the report.
In another case, a university reported that two social science collaborations with Dutch universities had been told partners from the UK were not welcome.
One university said that there had been a substantial increase in definitive evidence that EU projects were reluctant to collaborate with British partners.
Not all universities in the group responded to the survey and not all of those that submitted responses reported discrimination.
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During my last visit to this doctor, I feel that he rushed things up. I thought the doctor would have discussed about the treatment with me a little bit longer but he did not. My meeting with him only did not even last for about 5 minutes before I went out of his office. I thought also he would have showed interest but he did not. I wouldnt recommend this doctor to anyone. This is the exact words of one of the numerous disgruntled patients who have had the unpleasant experience of having met Dr. Jerry Tenenbaum in their quest for medical solutions to their problems.
The care and concern alone that a medical practitioner shows to his or her patients helps in relieving the sick person to some extent. This is therefore something that majority of professionally trained and well mannered doctors do in the course of rendering their services to patients. However, it is very sad to note that Dr. Jerry Tenenbaum really has no room to harbour such care and concern for his patients. This is one of many reports that have been left by patients after encountering this doctor and it all goes to show how he is bent on single-handedly destroying the reputable image that has been carved by other hardworking doctors.
To encounter a human who lacks sympathy for his or her fellow humans is something strange and so when such behaviour is being exhibited by a person who has sworn to put the emotional and physical needs of others above everything else then there is real fire on the mountain. This is why Dr. Jerry Tenenbaums attitude to each and every one of his patients simply defies logic and it is high time something drastic is done about the situation before his actions and in-actions lead to the loss of human life.
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Are you an Ottawa restaurant that wants to apply to become part of group tours sponsored by OttawaRestaurantGoers.com? Apply and then become a sponsor of the OttawaRestaurantGoers.com.
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The Ottawa Restaurant Goers organizes periodic group tours for each and every restaurant that is on their sponsorship list. This simply means that such restaurants are provided with the much needed exposure that helps in getting their services noticed within Ottawa. They also make it a point to ensure that your restaurant becomes part of the organized group tours.
There are many ways and methods that can be used to advertise the services your restaurant provides. However, becoming a sponsor of the Ottawa Restaurant Goers is one of the authentic and guaranteed ways of making sure that your restaurant gets patronized by potential customers. Exposure to the right customers is always what every restaurant needs and that is exactly what the OttawaRestaurantGoers.com does for each and every single one of its highly esteemed sponsors. The people that they bring on their group tours of various restaurants are those who qualify to be referred to as foodies. This means that they make sure anyone who gets to your restaurant as part of the group has the potential to become your customer.
There is more to gain from becoming a sponsor of the OttawaRestaurantGoers.com in terms of the marketing services that they provide for your restaurant and the level of guaranteed results is just beyond the usual internet marketing strategies. This is therefore the time to increase the number of people who visit your restaurant for all the right reasons without having to spend so much on advertising agencies. Restaurants all over the world are seeking for the best ways to market their services and are even willing to pay various exorbitant fees just to increase their number of customers but always end up with very limited success. In deciding to become a sponsor of the OttawaRestaurantGoers.com, you avail your restaurant to the possibility of getting patronized continually and also getting to know what potential customers look out for in a restaurant. This helps you to tailor your services to meet exact needs of customers.
The OttawaRestaurantGoers.com is inviting you to be a part of something big that will help transform how your restaurant gets patronized and it is time to make that right decision by joining their sponsorship team.
WASHINGTON, July 13, 2016 The United Kingdoms decision to pull out of the European Union may have major impacts for both the U.K. and the remaining EU members but isnt likely to have significant effects on the United States or other countries, three experts said here today.
Speaking at a forum convened at the National Press Club by the Farm Foundation, they agreed that farmers in the U.K. (England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland) may lose support payments under the EUs Common Agricultural Policy, but that the impacts will not be wider.
Scary as it is for the British and the Europeans, it poses no real risk for the global food system, said Michael Dwyer, chief economist of the U.S. Grains Council. This will be a ripple. It will barely make a dent in the global food system when you diffuse that across a huge system.
Although the so-called Brexit roiled currency and equity markets for a few days after the U.K. unexpectedly voted to leave the EU, I do not expect this level of chaos to continue much longer, Dwyer said. His biggest concern is that the political climate in Britain could be contagious, encouraging anti-EU forces in other European countries to abandon the union.
Benno van der Laan, a former European Commission executive now at Greenhouse Communications in Washington, said the key question now is what kind of deal the U.K. and EU will negotiate and how the U.K. will strike trade arrangements with non-EU countries.
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U.S. relations with the EU may be affected by the loss of the U.K. voice in EU deliberations, he said, because London has generally been in favor of free markets, new technologies and science-based decision-making. He suggested that, without the U.K., it would become more difficult for market access issues such as new biotech approvals for imports, authorization of crop protection products and import tolerances.
John Dardis, senior vice president for U.S. corporate affairs for the Irish-based dairy and food giant Glanbia, said, The bottom line is nobody knows whats going to happen hereafter.
The effect is a quite scary, he said. A fundamental tenet of the EU internal market is free movement of people and Brexit has said we dont want that.
Dardis suggested that global companies will ask whether the tea leaves of a protest vote could be an omen for the U.S. November election. Investors in new facilities and jobs seek a degree of certainty and may be reluctant to move forward if the outcome is in doubt, he said. Im not sure people get that. The Brexit vote created shock and uncertainty for us in doing business.
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WASHINGTON, July 13, 2016 The Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research (FFAR) today announced its first major initiative and its a doozy: a $100,000 prize to be awarded annually to a mid-career scientist.
FFAR, which was created by the 2014 farm bill, says the National Academy of Sciences prize will recognize an extraordinary contribution to agriculture or to the understanding of the biology of a species fundamentally important to agriculture or food production.
Nominations are being accepted through Oct. 3 for the prize, which is endowed by FFAR and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The prize, which will be awarded for the first time next year, may also be shared by one or more individuals for a collaborative accomplishment.
In a release, FFAR said establishing the NAS Prize in Food and Agriculture Sciences is part of its efforts to elevate food and agriculture research in the scientific arena and highlight the critical need for scientists working toward more productive, sustainable agriculture and better health through nutritious food.
Scientific discovery has the power to transform how we live through the food we eat, said Sally Rockey, FFARs executive director. She said FFAR is proud to partner with the Gates Foundation to establish this important prize at the National Academy of Sciences recognizing food and agricultural scientists for research achievements leading to cutting edge technologies and practices that impact how we produce and deliver nutritious food. I look forward to the first honoree and those that follow as they continue making breakthroughs that feed the world.
The inaugural prize will be the first award dedicated to food and agriculture research to be conferred by NAS, a nonprofit organization of elected members including 500 Nobel Prize winners.
Endless discovery and innovation is essential in the quest to improve the quality of nutrition for all humans while recognizing inherent limitations in land, fresh water, and environmentally safe levels of fertilizer application, said NAS President Marcia McNutt. This new prize allows the National Academy of Sciences to recognize and support scientists whose research has the potential to improve our global food system.
Mid-career researchers at U.S. institutions may be nominated. For the purposes of the prize, areas of science with applications to agriculture include plant and animal sciences, microbiology, nutrition and food science, soil science, entomology, veterinary medicine and agricultural economics.
FFAR said the foundation and its partners aim to complement the visibility brought to the food system by the World Food Prize, which recognizes individuals who have advanced human development by improving the quality, quantity or availability of food in the world.
Kenneth Quinn, president of the World Food Prize, said the man who created that prize, biologist Norman Borlaug, believed it was critical that we recognize and inspire those global breakthrough achievements that will be needed to feed the burgeoning world population in the 21st century." And he added that Borlaug, a Nobel laureate known as the father of the green revolution, would strongly support and welcome the NAS prize.
In an earlier interview with Agri-Pulse, Rockey, who came to FFAR from the National Institutes of Health, says shes very excited about the project and its ability to elevate the importance of agricultural research within the scientific community.
I think agricultural science is very sophisticated and cutting-edge, but it oftentimes is lost in the science world because of all the biomedical and physical science work.
For more about the NAS prize and the nominating process, click here.
WASHINGTON, July 13, 2016 A bipartisan group of five U.S. senators has formed the Senate Broadband Caucus to focus on strengthening broadband infrastructure and deployment across the country.
The senators Republicans Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia and John Boozman of Arkansas, Democrats Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, and Independent Angus King of Maine say the caucus will promote bipartisan discussions about possible solutions to increase connectivity and close the digital divide, especially in rural America, and engage with a broad range of industries and other stakeholders.
As internet access plays an increasingly important role in all sectors of our economy, from education to agriculture, telemedicine to the innovation economy, the Senate Broadband Caucus will serve as a platform to engage in discussions across committee jurisdictions and to inform senators and their staff about emerging broadband issues, the lawmakers said in a release.
The senators said the economic benefits of broadband infrastructure are clear. For every $5 billion invested in broadband infrastructure, 250,000 jobs are created and with every percentage point increase in new broadband distribution, employment expands by 300,000 jobs, they said. Yet, according to the FCCs 2016 Broadband Progress Report, one in 10 Americans lacks access to the Federal Communication Commissions definition of broadband. In rural America, 39 percent of Americans lack access, they said.
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The lawmakers cited a recent study that found that after each megabit per second increase in internet speeds, the unemployment rate dropped, the rate of bachelor degrees earned increased, and the median household income increased. In rural areas, where broadband serves to bridge geographic barriers, these benefits are particularly important, they said.
From online business startups to digital learning and telemedicine, broadband access is critical to the strength of our economy and our communities, Capito said. Unfortunately, the digital divide between rural and urban America is growing as essential broadband infrastructure falls behind in certain parts of the country.
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WASHINGTON, July 13, 2016 The Commodity Futures Trading Commissions efforts to regulate algorithmic trading fall short of practical rulemaking, a panel of experts told the House Agriculture Committee on Wednesday.
When the CFTC unanimously approved the proposed rule (Regulation Automated Trading, or Regulation AT) in November, the commission said the proposed rule contained a series of risk controls, transparency measures, and other safeguards to enhance the U.S. regulatory regime for automated trading. But witnesses at a House Ag Committee hearing said the proposed rule wont accomplish its desired goal and could result in unconstitutional taking of proprietary information.
Perhaps the biggest gripe with the proposal is language that would require CFTC have access to source code, which is essentially the programming language used to execute a computer program, in this case a program making algorithmic trades. Richard Gorelick, CEO of RGM Advisors in Austin, Texas, said the source code is a trading firms secret sauce, and a government entity asking for it without subpoena or other due process is unprecedented and, he said, unnecessary.
Its sort of like taking a car apart and taking all the pieces and studying them in excruciating detail to try and predict traffic patterns, Gorelick said. He noted that a source code can have millions of lines of code and can be written in a variety of computer programming languages. He said with all the complexity at play, he doesnt think CFTC could properly evaluate all the source code it is asking for in Regulation AT.
Committee chair Mike Conaway, R-Texas, agreed, saying he was hard-pressed to envision a circumstance where the CFTC could have on staff a cadre of people who would pick out one of these firms at random, go in, and drag through their source code in enough detail to find that glitch that had been missed. On another note, Conaway says if theres an issue that would allow CFTC to bring enforcement action, the code is not the issue.
If someone has actually caused a disruption in the market, the violation is not going to be that they screwed up the code, the violation is going to be that they manipulated or hammered the market, he said. We dont really care how it happened if we can prove what they did. Its a real head-scratcher for me.
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When asked if the additional information required by Regulation AT would stop an algorithmic trading disruption, Andrew Vrabel with CME Group said no. He said determining issues with that kind of trading requires highly complicated analysis, the type of analysis that wont be gained from routine annual compliance reports that are also required by the proposed rule.
Overall, the theme of the hearing was that Regulation AT would be overly broad and complicate an already complex trading environment. Conaway said the ambiguity in the language conspire(s) to create a rulemaking that is overly complicated, yet still incomplete. Greg Wood, the chair of the Futures Industry Associations Market Access Committee, said CFTC would be better served using rules that are already in place.
Regulation should build on and leverage the very successful risk controls and safeguards currently in place instead of proposing new and untested systems or procedures that would require significant investment by the industry, he said.
The rule has not yet been finalized. In June, CFTC reopened select portions of Regulation AT for public comment for a two-week period.
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While there is broad consensus that foods from genetically engineered crops are safe, we appreciate the bipartisan effort to address consumers interest in knowing more about their food, including whether it includes ingredients from genetically engineered crops, said White House spokeswoman Katie Hill. We look forward to tracking its progress in the House and anticipate the President would sign it in its current form. On Wednesday, the House approved a procedural rule for debating the legislation that will not allow consideration of any amendments. Any changes to the bill would send it back to the Senate, where the compromise was developed. Leaders of the House Agriculture Committee, Chairman Mike Conaway and ranking member Collin Peterson, told Agri-Pulse that they expect a majority of both Republicans and Democrats to vote for the legislation on final passage. The Democrats who will vote for the bill will include Minority Whip Steny Hoyer of Maryland, an aide said. Hoyer voted against a voluntary labeling bill that the House passed, 275-150, a year ago. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack has been an active supporter of settling the GMO labeling issue, and his department has been advising House and Senate aides for more than a year during development of both this bill and the earlier House measure. The Senate compromise that the House will vote on Thursday would mandate that companies provide information on biotech ingredients, but the measure gives firms the option of providing the disclosure digitally rather than through text on labels. The House bill would have left GMO labeling as voluntary. The Food and Drug Administration raised concerns about ambiguous language in the Senate legislation, but the USDAs general counsel has sent separate letters to the House and Senate providing assurances on how the legislation would be interpreted. Following stories about GMO? Sign up for an Agri-Pulse four-week free trial subscription to stay on top of this and other ag, rural policy and energy news.
During debate on the procedural rule Wednesday, Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., called the legislation a very, very weak GMO labeling bill because of the digital disclosure option. It is an intentional measure to deny consumers information, McGovern said. However, Peterson said strong backing for the bill among Senate Democrats will encourage House Democrats to back it. The bill passed the Senate, 63-30, with the support of 21 Democrats. Conaway said a wide margin on final passage would reflect the heavy lobbying from the extensive coalition of agriculture and food interests. More than 1,100 groups and companies signed a letter to the House endorsing the measure. The House approved the rule, 242-185, Wednesday afternoon. The margin was likely not indicative of what may happen with the final GMO bill because the rule also covered a far more controversial abortion-related measure that Democrats broadly oppose. #30
H145 is part-funded by the Libor Fine funds donated by the Treasury
The hoist-equipped and 'night-time flying capable' H145 will help YAA increase life-saving operations by 30%
Farnborough, 13 July 2016 In the presence of Transport Minister, Robert Goodwill MP, Airbus Helicopters formally handed over the second and final H145 to Yorkshire Air Ambulance (YAA) at the Farnborough Air Show 2016. The aircraft, which will go through a completion process at Airbus Helicopters Civil Helicopter Hub at Oxford Airport, will be fitted with a state of the art Bucher medical interior specifically tailored to YAAs requirements.
The hoist-equipped aircraft, part-funded by the 1m Treasury donation from the Libor Fine Funds, will allow the charity to reach patients in remote or inaccessible places, while the increased range, payload and cabin space will enable YAA to provide critical care and transport across Yorkshires 5 million acres of territory. The 4-axis autopilot, full night flying capabilities and availability rates of roughly 95% will help YAA increase life-saving missions by 30% and make the H145 an iconic sight over the skies of Yorkshire.
Yorkshire Air Ambulance will also benefit from a unique long-term, comprehensive support arrangement, specifically tailored to the projected 800+ flying hours per year the charity plans to fly. The agreement, which covers material management and 24/7 Airbus Helicopters support across the UK, will provide value for money over the duration of the contract and help optimise the aircrafts availability.
Transport Minister Robert Goodwill MP said, Air ambulances play a vital role in saving lives. As a Transport Minister and a Yorkshire MP I am delighted to be here today to see Yorkshire Air Ambulance receiving their new state of the art helicopter. The money for this helicopter comes in part from fines levied on banks. Its only right that funds from those who have demonstrated the worst values should go to those, like the brave air ambulance crews, that show the best on a daily basis. This brings the total fund given to air ambulances across the country to over 10 million.
Peter Sunderland, Chairman of YAA, said, We are extremely excited to be formally accepting our second H145 from Airbus, and Farnborough Airshow is an absolutely fitting surrounding to do so. Our new H145s will provide the people of Yorkshire and its visitors with a much enhanced, state-of-the-art medical service, befitting of the support they show towards us. Airbus Helicopters has been a pleasure to deal with during the purchasing process and we are now looking forward to the H145s taking to the skies of Yorkshire and helping us to continue to save more lives.
Colin James, Managing Director of Airbus Helicopters in the UK said, Yorkshire Air Ambulance will benefit from the enhanced capability this innovative and fully supported H145 solution provides. We are proud to be associated with the delivery of such an important mission which touches the lives of people across Yorkshire on a daily basis.
Airbus Helicopters in the UK
Airbus Helicopters has been present in the United Kingdom for 40 years and is the UKs largest civil helicopter company with more than 400 aircraft operating in civil, military and emergency services roles. The companys site at Oxford Airport is home to Britains Civil Helicopter Hub, while sites at Aberdeen, Belfast and Hawarden support our customers across the breadth of the British Isles.
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About Airbus Helicopters
Airbus Helicopters, a division of Airbus Group, provides the most efficient civil and military helicopter solutions worldwide. Its in-service fleet includes nearly 12,000 helicopters operated by more than 3,000 customers in 154 countries. Airbus Helicopters employs more than 22,000 people worldwide and in 2015 generated revenues of 6.8 billion euros.
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Royal Bhutan Helicopter Services Limiteds fleet of two H130s to operate and fulfill the primary mandate of the Royal Government of Bhutan to provide emergency services and other various missions
More than 40 medical patients airlifted from various parts of Bhutan and transferred to capital city, Thimpu for more comprehensive medical facilities
More than 400 passengers transported since start of operations in November last year
H130 of Royal Bhutan Helicopters Services Limited
The Kingdom of Bhutan, (July 13, 2016)- Royal Bhutan Helicopter Services Limited (rbhsl) has received its second H130 on 21 June, after the first has entered the Kingdom end of October last year. The new helicopter will join the first to perform similar missions.
Similar to the first H130, the second helicopter comes equipped with additional optional equipment such as an integrated tracking system, cargo sling, bambi bucket firefighting and an onboard medical stretcher enabling to perform medical evacuations. During the first seven months of operations, RBHSL has developed valuable experience in close to 46 medical evacuations and fire-fighting missions, evacuating about 40 patients and protecting natural forests, aligning environmentally-conscious Bhutans environmental policy of the Royal Government. Within the same period, the first H130 has ferried more than 400 passengers including VIP and tourism flights. Other than these, the H130 has also been deployed to fulfil social mandates such as flying teachers to rural areas to prepare for earlier school opening and providing charter services to the rural population where there are no road connectivities.
With the arrival of the second H130, our reliability in terms of delivering services has increased as opposed to having a single H130 in the fleet. Both helicopters will be deployed for the similar missions as mandated by the Royal Government of Bhutan. The H130 has lived up to our expectations with its multi-mission capabilities, wide versatility and superior flight experience because of the wide passenger cabin and low noise signature, said Mr Chewang Gyeltshen, CEO of the Royal Bhutan Helicopter Services Limited. We have received numerous positive feedback from the various missions performed so far by the H130 that was procured and at the same time, able to meet the mission requirements of the Royal Government of Bhutan.
In addition to its versatility, the H130 has proven its capability to perform in high-altitude conditions. Based at 7,400 feet in Paro International Airport, the H130 demonstrated excellent performance in a country, where temperature is ISA+20C. The Kingdom of Bhutan located in between two giants- China and India, is at the heart of Himalayan mountain range reaching more than 17,000ft, with narrow valleys and rugged terrains. The H130 equipped with the Fenestron adapts excellently to these demanding terrains and regularly landed below 100 feet to as high as 16,000 feet.
We are extremely pleased to see that the H130 is serving the nation well. RBHSL can count on Airbus Helicopters for our commitment to provide the best support and services to their fleet, said Derek Sharples, Managing Director of Airbus Helicopters Southeast Asia. We are amazed by the potential of this country and we look forward to more cooperation opportunities in Bhutan to continue the legacy of Airbus sole presence in Bhutan.
The H130 is a member of the Ecureuil family of light helicopters, renowned for its performance, reliability, safety and multi-mission capability. Currently, more than 5000 Ecureuil helicopters are delivered and in operation, clocking more than 29 million hours of flight time.
About Royal Bhutan Helicopters Services Limited
Royal Bhutan Helicopter Services Limited (rbhsl) is newly-created in August 2015. This is a state-owned company and its core mission is to provide helicopter assistance to the population of the Kingdom of Bhutan. With a starting strength of 20 experienced aviation professionals to kickstart operations, rbhsl is set to become the main and trusted provider for helicopter services in the Kingdom of Bhutan. rbhsl is based in Paro International Airport.
Royal Bhutan Helicopters Services Limited
About Airbus Helicopters
Airbus Helicopters, a division of Airbus Group, provides the most efficient civil and military helicopter solutions worldwide. Its in-service fleet includes nearly 12,000 helicopters operated by more than 3,000 customers in 154 countries. Airbus Helicopters employs more than 22,000 people worldwide and in 2015 generated revenues of 6.8 billion euros.
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July 13, 2016
According to some Turkish and international observers, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is making a U-turn from his confrontational foreign policy these days, moving to a more moderate one. The argument is based on two developments in June. The first is the agreement Turkey reached with Israel after protracted secret negotiations to restore bilateral ties, which had been in a state of a near cold war since the Mavi Marmara crisis in 2010. The second development is the letter Erdogan sent to Russian President Vladimir Putin apologizing for the November shooting down of a Russian fighter jet, which had allegedly violated Turkish airspace along the Syrian border.
Meanwhile, Erdogan is also making overtures toward Abdel Fattah al-Sisi's administration in Egypt, which he had declared "illegitimate" after Sisi's overthrow of President Mohammed Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood government in July 2013, but these efforts have yet to bear fruit.
Erdogan's solutions with Israel and Russia are called "normalization" in the media. Hence, some argue Turkish foreign policy is changing, too, based on the assumption that ties with Israel and Russia have been normalized. But how much do the terms "normalization" and "change" correspond to the actual state of affairs? To make a reality check, let's use the two questions below and see whether one could answer them in the affirmative.
Do Erdogan's steps vis-a-vis Israel and Russia signify a definitive end to his "new foreign policy," which had crystallized in 2009 with Ahmet Davutoglu's appointment as foreign minister?
Now that Erdogan has removed Davutoglu from the prime minister's post and sidelined him from politics, is another "new foreign policy" emerging?
The available facts do not justify a "yes" answer to either question. One simply lacks the grounds to suggest Erdogan has abandoned his old "new foreign policy." The solutions employed to ease tensions with Israel and Russia are devoid of any content that heralds the emergence of "the newest foreign policy."
To use a metaphor, Erdogan's foreign policy today is a ship run aground the result of the reckless adventure he and Davutoglu embarked on with great hopes in 2009. Moreover, the accident is not something new the ship has been stuck for quite some time.
This failed policy Islamized Turkey's Western-oriented, secular and republican political culture, while seeking to reorder the Middle East under the leadership of "new Turkey." It bore the hallmarks of Islamist ideology, both in terms of content and style, and the line separating foreign policy from domestic politics became virtually nonexistent. The new regime was Islamist and pro-Sunni, both at home and abroad, and therefore it was anti-West. Pulling Turkey away from the West was in fact an objective the new foreign policy pursued. In this context, the suspension of reforms needed for EU membership was not a mere coincidence.
After the 2009 Davos incident, anti-Israelism became the engine of the new foreign policy, in which Hamas an ideological ally of Erdogan's Justice and Development Party was accorded the centerpiece. The drive culminated in the Mavi Marmara incident on May 31, 2010, but this climax proved to be also its dead-end.
Then, the Arab Spring came to the rescue. Erdogan and Davutoglu were simply tantalized by the rebellion against Bashar al-Assad's regime in neighboring Syria in the wake of uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. Tempted to topple the regime and replace it with an ideologically friendly Islamist government, the duo embarked on a policy that was well over the head of Turkey's military, economic, diplomatic, academic, institutional and social capacities. The miscalculation stemmed from the false assumption that the Assad regime would crumble in months, if not weeks, which, in turn, was the result of poor knowledge, intelligence and analysis.
In September 2011, while Syria descended into chaos, Erdogan and Davutoglu officially made the lifting of the Gaza blockade a third precondition to resolve the Mavi Marmara crisis with Israel, in addition to apology and compensation. They were well-aware they could never get the blockade lifted, but what they really wanted was something else to tie the solution of the Mavi Marmara crisis to the solution of the Gaza-Hamas problem, and thus make it virtually impossible. This was necessary in order to perpetuate the state of crisis with Israel, which promised political fuel for their dream of leadership in a bloc of Brotherhood-inspired regimes encompassing Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Palestine, Syria and Turkey.
But that's all water under the bridge now. Erdogan no longer needs the crisis with Israel, for Sisi's coup in Egypt has destroyed his dream of a Brotherhood union and his proxy war in Syria has long proved unwinnable. Russia's military intervention in September 2015 was only the proclamation of Erdogan's irreversible defeat.
That's how Erdogan's Turkey ended up lonely and isolated in the Middle East. Deprived of dialogue channels, incapable of developing a new policy and with no room to sustain its existing one, it was immobilized by a self-inflicted paralysis.
So, the Israel and Russia solutions are an attempt to get the ship afloat again. Yet they remain tactical maneuvers aimed at damage control. There is no indication to suggest that a fundamental policy change is under way. Reading the "change" argument through the chain of values, principles and actors leaves no room for any other conclusion.
So what is actually happening? The deal with Israel became possible because Turkey dropped its condition for lifting the naval blockade on Gaza. Technically, it was Erdogan who made a concession. Israel had already extended an apology and will now compensate the victims' families. The two sides will exchange ambassadors. Turkey, meanwhile, has dispatched humanitarian aid to Gaza, via the Israeli port of Ashdod, consisting of items permitted by Israel.
None of these is an indication that Turkish-Israeli ties are on a normalization course. Normalization requires the establishment of a minimum level of mutual trust. Economic, diplomatic and military cooperation needs to be institutionalized and updated. Reining in the anti-Israelism in Turkey, which has become part of the country's new political culture and often borders on anti-Semitism, is also a prerequisite for normalization.
When it comes to Russia, normalization will take more than a Turkish apology and a compensation for the downed jet. That much could secure the return of some Russian tourists, of course, but economic and political ties will remain unsettled. For a true normalization, an explicit and fundamental revision in Turkey's Syria policy is a must, including an unequivocal end to Turkish support for jihadi groups, the restoration of border control and an unconditional struggle against the Islamic State. Turkey's Syria policy was the core cause of the Russian intervention in Syria; hence, no normalization should be expected unless this policy is fully abolished. Though certain signals to that effect have to be acknowledged, there is no indication that Turkey's support for jihadis has been terminated.
In sum, Erdogan is not changing his foreign policy he is resetting it. Getting the foreign policy ship afloat is nothing but an attempt to reset or jump-start his pro-Sunni, Islamist agenda.
What Turkey needs is not a reset but a reformatting of its foreign policy a reprogramming from A to Z. This means the dismantling of an extremely personalized Islamist and sectarian foreign policy and its replacement with a secular one that relies on the Foreign Ministrys institutionalism and projects the classic values of modernity to the Middle East, namely human rights and democracy. With Erdogan in office, none of these can ever materialize.
July 13, 2016
European lawmakers are putting Congress on notice that a bill to allow 9/11 victims to sue Saudi Arabia could inadvertently harm relations with some of Americas closest allies across the Atlantic.
The Dutch parliament wrote to House lawmakers ahead of a July 14 hearing to warn them that the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA) would represent a gross and unwarranted breach of Dutch sovereignty that could result in astronomical damages. The July 12 letter obtained by Al-Monitor endorses the Obama administrations opposition to the bill, and asks that Congress take into account a July 6 motion from the Dutch House of Representatives calling the bill unacceptable.
To the extent the State Department enunciates concerns about JASTAs adverse impact upon sovereign immunity of important US allies, the letter states, the enclosed binding motion associates the Dutch parliament with the expression of those concerns.
The motion is particularly noteworthy because the Netherlands can hardly be accused of any kind of knee-jerk alignment with Saudi Arabia. The Dutch parliament voted to ban arms exports to Riyadh in March out of concern over Saudi actions in Yemen, making the Netherlands the first country to adopt a motion by the European Parliament in February urging an EU-wide Saudi arms embargo.
The July 12 letter was signed by Labor Party member Jeroen Recourt, who also initiated the binding motion opposing the bill. It is addressed to Reps. Trent Franks, R-Ariz., and Steven Cohen, D-Tenn., whose Judiciary Committee subpanel on the Constitution and Civil Rights is scheduled to hold a hearing on the bill following its unanimous passage by the Senate in May.
The House Judiciary Committee believes that it should hear from all sides on the merits of the legislation before advancing it for consideration by the whole House of Representatives, Franks and full committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., said in a statement ahead of the hearing. We look forward to hearing from experts and members of the executive branch on the critical foreign policy issues at play with this legislation.
Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Anne Patterson and State Department legal adviser Brian Egan are scheduled to testify against the bill, while lawyers for terrorism victims families will argue the other side. US officials have warned that weakening the sovereign immunity clause that guides international relations could open up both US and key allies such as Israel to retaliatory lawsuits for their own actions.
Saudi Arabia for its part denies any involvement in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Riyadh strongly objects to the JASTA bill, and has warned that it would sell off $750 billion worth of American assets if it passes.
The Netherlands is believed to be the first European nation to formally weigh in on the bill, but other countries are also debating the merits of getting involved. British parliamentarian Tom Tugendhat, a former adviser to the head of the British armed forces, warned in a June 5 op-ed that the bill could have serious unintended consequences for Britain if, for example, victims of terrorism were to sue over the countrys past tolerance for radical Islamist preachers.
The specific concerns that fueled the Dutch parliamentary action arent clear, but its possible that the failure to apprehend a terrorism suspect who went on to kill two Americans and 13 others at the Brussels airport in March may have played a part. The Dutch Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The bill, as passed by the Senate, would allow a judge to stay action against a foreign state if the secretary of state certifies that the United States is in good faith discussions with that nation over resolution of terrorism-related claims. The bill also prohibits suing foreign nations for mere negligence, but those restrictions havent convinced skeptics.
The act would expose the British government to the possibility of revealing the secrets of intelligence operations in open court, or paying damages over alleged failures to prevent terrorist attacks, Tugendhat wrote in The Telegraph. Either outcome would put the special relationship under severe strain.
July 13, 2016
Baghdad's residents are demanding beefed-up security measures and an international investigation into the gruesome July 3 bombing that rocked Baghdad's busy Karrada district, killing almost 300 people and injuring 200 more. The death toll is expected to rise further, as people are still missing. The bombing was the deadliest in Iraq since 2003, when US-led forces ousted Saddam Hussein.
The Karrada retail hub was packed with shoppers preparing for Eid al-Fitr, a holiday marking the end of the holy month of Ramadan. The Islamic State (IS) claimed responsibility for the attack.
The bombing sparked public outrage, and citizens attacked the convoy of Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, who visited the scene a few hours after the explosion to examine the impact of the bombing and check on the victims. Abadi pronounced three days of mourning and said he understood the citizens distress.
The Karrada bombing had political repercussions. Iraqi Interior Minister Mohammed al-Ghabban resigned July 5 due to disorganization and "lack of coordination" among the security forces. Abadi accepted the resignation, according to information leaked from the Cabinet. Several security officials in Karrada were also dismissed in an attempt to calm the citizens who were demanding accountability from officials, including the chief of the Karrada regiment, who was referred for investigation in the wake of the blast.
Abadi also ordered that pending execution verdicts for convicts be carried out to appease the angry public. The day after the blast, five convicts were executed. The Iraqi people constantly criticize the government for delaying the execution of terrorism convicts, many of whom have escaped and are currently counted among the prominent leaders of IS.
Amid escalated demands for improved security, former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki expressed his desire to return to the position in a BBC interview July 3. He accused the incumbent government of being deficient and said the protests that have been ongoing since last summer to demand reform are wrecking the political process and will deteriorate the situation in Iraq.
In a related development, many members of the Popular Mobilization Units, which includes Shiite militias, demanded the Iraqi government turn over the security investigation in Baghdad to them a move some observers say is designed to increase the organization's power politically and socially. The demand was widely welcomed, as the organization enjoys broad public support in Shiite provinces and Baghdad, thanks to its continual achievements in fighting IS.
Several Iraqi activists launched a petition asking the United Nations to conduct an international investigation into the Karrada bombing. More than 77,000 people have signed the petition so far. The hashtag #international_investigation_karada was also created on Facebook and Twitter for that purpose. The people want an international investigation because of suspicions raised by the nature of the attack, the extent of its damage and the kinds of materials used. Questions are being raised about how the suicide bomber breached the area's supposedly strong security. Also, officials said the resulting fire spread in an exceptionally quick way and charred victims' bodies.
Abadi ordered an increased security perimeter and reorganized checkpoints, and called for strengthening intelligence support.
He acknowledged that one significant lapse in security stemmed from the use of ineffective sonar devices, known as ADE-651, designed to detect explosives. These sonar devices were proved useless years ago and were the subject of a scandal. The British government suspended the work of the company that manufactured them ATSC on the grounds of fraud and referred its owner, Jim McCormick, for criminal investigation in 2010.
Yet this failed bomb detection system, which Iraq had purchased for $85 million, was used at all checkpoints in Iraq and was sometimes the only means of inspection. Several papers were published saying that the deal to buy the devices was fraudulent and corrupt.
After the explosion, Abadi immediately ordered that the device no longer be used, but most checkpoints in the capital are still using it, under the excuse that they did not receive an official notice to remove it. Moreover, withdrawing the device is not enough, as there is no effective alternative. There are currently only suggestions for alternatives, such as installing cameras and deploying dogs, which were proposed July 4 by the parliaments Defense and Security Committee.
Abadi ordered the Ministry of Interior on July 3 to expedite the installation of scanners to inspect cars at all the entrances to Baghdad and its districts. But to legally implement these suggestions, they should be voted on, which takes time. Then, the right equipment should be bought and staff should undergo training. In addition, the problem of corruption and administrative slackening in Iraq does not help which means the idea that an alternative will be implemented in the near future is far-fetched.
July 13, 2016
We havent had water for nearly 40 days, a caller to the Voice of Palestine radio station told the presenter of the show July 8. The caller lives in the picturesque village of Artas, southwest of Bethlehem, which is known for its fertile land and imposing monastery. Residents of the village are the latest victims of this summers extreme water shortage that has hit many parts of Palestine, but especially the Bethlehem governorate.
Not far from Artas, in the village of al-Khader, residents have taken to the streets to protest the water shortage. We have decided to go out into the streets and protest, Ahmad Salah, a Palestinian who spent years in an Israeli jail, told Al-Monitor.
Calling himself a social activist, Salah said that the protest that began July 9 was completely spontaneous. We dont belong to any political party; we are Palestinians who simply want the water problem to be solved, he said. The videos that Salah posted on his Facebook page show young people in the center of the town chanting Bidna may ("We want water").
Salah said that the governor of Bethlehem agreed to meet with the protesters and promised them that water would reach the village by July 11. At exactly 6 p.m. that evening, once it became clear that al-Khader was still without running water, the youth were out protesting once more.
IT expert Jiryes Sadi told Al-Monitor that his home in Bethlehem gets water once every month. He said, Once it reaches us, the pressure is not very strong because everyone is trying to fill their tanks.
Sadi said that his family has to buy at least one water tank a month for 300 Israeli shekels ($77). The problem is not only the cost of the water, but also the danger of climbing to the roof to place the water in the tank.
The shortage of water in Palestine is nothing new, but so far this summer the shortage has been much more acute than usual. The local water companies have been forced to cut the water supplies because the Israeli water companies have not supplied what they agreed to. On the first day of Ramadan, many Palestinian communities were cut off from the water supply network without prior notice.
Israeli journalist Amira Hass reported July 9 in the Israeli daily Haaretz that Israeli politicians had restricted the required increase in water supplies to Palestinians as well as Israeli settlers even though the latter have access to much more water than their Palestinian neighbors. Hass quoted an Israeli Knesset member publicly calling for a priority in access to water to Israelis. She wrote, Knesset member Bezalel Smotrich said that if everyone is suffering from water shortages, Israelis needs should be met first."
The Oslo Accord stipulates that Palestinians are only allowed to use 20% of the natural water aquifers that they have physical access to, while Israel gets to keep the remaining 80% and sell water to the Palestinians based on restricted amounts decided by Israel.
In addition to the problem of the diminished water supply, some Palestinians blame Bethlehem's Water Supply and Sewage Authority of inequality in the distribution process of the water Israel has made available.
In this context, Salah said that people in his village blame the water company for his villages demise. Bethlehem, Beit Sahour, Beit Jala and the Dheisheh refugee camp get the lions share of water [available to Palestinians], and we are left with long delays, he said.
The Water Supply and Sewage Authority denies this. In a statement published June 28 in the local press and online, the water authority explained that it has received from the Israelis so far this year 12,000 cubic meters compared to 15,700 during the same time last year. The water authority insisted that water is distributed fairly and based on a transparent and published schedule.
Despite the denial, Bethlehem Gov. Jibrin al-Bakri issued a statement June 27 calling for a more equitable distribution of the water supply. Bakris statement followed a visit the same day by Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah, where Hamdallah spoke about the need for better management of the water supply.
Water is a precious commodity, and its distribution is perhaps one of the most obvious signs of discrimination between Jewish settlers and the Palestinian population. The water supply agreement that was signed as part of the 1993 Oslo Accord was for a defined interim period that ended in 1999.
Seventeen years later, Palestinians have not been able to gain control over their own water resources or at least adjust this agreement based on population growth. Water distribution is one of the most hot-button issues and the most tangible proof of an apartheid policy in the Palestinian occupied territories. Leaving such an important issue unresolved, especially during the hot summer months, is sure to raise the political temperature even more than it already is.
July 13, 2016
RAMALLAH, West Bank The Palestinian cause has been at a standstill for several years now. More than 22 years after the 1993 Oslo Accord, Palestinians are still unable to establish a state of their own within the 1967 borders, and peace remains elusive as Israel continues to build settlements on the West Bank. The two-state solution seems impossible. Negotiations are at a standstill with the Israeli government rejecting international proposals such as the French and Arab initiatives to end the occupation.
Facing this political situation, Palestinians are calling upon the leadership to change its political strategy. In this context, on June 22, the Palestinian National Initiative proposed the National Alternative Strategy to Achieve Freedom aimed at changing the balance of power in favor of the Palestinian people.
The document, which Al-Monitor reviewed, is built on five pillars. The first pillar is peaceful popular resistance activities, including protests against the separation wall and settlement activities in Bilin and Kafr Qaddum, a local boycott of Israel, the undermining of Israeli interests and normalization activities and finding local alternatives for the main services and products imported from Israel, such as fuel and electricity.
The second pillar is exemplified by the campaign of boycotts, divestment and sanctions against Israel. The third pillar supports so-called "national resilience," which calls for changing economic policies so that Palestinians can develop and thrive on their land.
The fourth pillar is national unity and a unified national leadership, which means the formation of an inclusive framework in which all factions can voice their opinion and take part in any decision at the national level.
The last pillar is the integration of the all the Palestinian components of the West Bank, Gaza, Jerusalem, the diaspora and the occupied territories, who are to unite their efforts under one national political leadership to create a common political program.
The secretary-general of the Palestinian National Initiative, Mustafa Barghouti, told Al-Monitor that the national strategy requires the formation of a unified national leadership to end the differences between Fatah and Hamas, and involves giving priority to the public interest amid the difficult political circumstances plaguing the Palestinian cause.
Having a unified national leadership that includes all of the factions within the framework of the Palestine Liberation Organization is one of the most important conditions and requirements needed to put an end to the Palestinian division, Barghouti added.
According to Barghouti, the strategy put forward is the result of political consultations conducted by the Palestinian National Initiative with the Palestinian factions and popular groups and movements, such as popular resistance committees in towns and villages, since the latest popular uprising began in October last year. The strategy will be presented to the PLO factions and members of the PLOs Executive Committee, and could be amended should these should these choose to adopt it as a political strategy.
The PLO is the unified national leadership and sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. However, given its fading political role and its inability to compel the Palestinian Authority to implement its decisions as some decisions at the PLOs Executive Committee are made unilaterally by President Mahmoud Abbas without reaching consensus with other Palestinian factions as well as its exclusion of Hamas and the Islamic Jihad, the PLO needs empowerment based on the Beach Refugee Camp Agreement signed by the Palestinian factions in al-Shati refugee camp in the Gaza Strip in 2014. This agreement resulted in the formation of the PLOs unified leadership framework.
The role of the PLO has been undermined by its main entities' not fulfilling their missions and its members' not being re-elected in accordance with the PLOs bylaws. This is the case, for example, of the Palestinian National Council, which is the supreme authority of the PLO and drafts the PLOs policy, plans and programs.
The limited capabilities of the PLO are due to the failure to reach a final reconciliation agreement between Fatah and Hamas, the last developments related thereto being the December 2015 talks in Doha. The latest round of these talks, held June 29, was doomed to failure when Hamas and Fatah exchanged accusations of renouncing and breaching earlier agreements on various issues.
Wassel Abu Yousef, a member of the PLOs Executive Committee, told Al-Monitor, The Executive Committee must develop and adopt an inclusive national strategy in light of the significant risks and challenges facing the Palestinian situation.
He said that any national strategy should be based on three pillars. He said, The first pillar consists of fixing the domestic Palestinian situation in order to put an end to division and restore national unity and activating the resistance against the occupation. The second pillar is to continue to work with the international community after bilateral negotiations end, and to internationalize the Palestinian cause at international institutions such as the UN Security Council, the General Assembly and the UN Human Rights Council. The third pillar aims to completely boycott and isolate Israel using all of the domestic boycott tools and mechanisms along with the procedures for the trial of Israel before the International Criminal Court.
Abu Yousef declined to discuss the formation of a unified national leadership, saying, The PLO is the leadership unifying the Palestinian people despite the fact that some factions are not represented in it. He added, We are trying to bring all factions into the PLO institutions, and what we need is a national field leadership, not a political leadership, because this one exists and is consensual.
For his part, writer and political analyst Ahmed Rafik Awad told Al-Monitor, The call to adopt a new political strategy with a new mentality and new tools is essential and very correct, considering that the old political track, with all of its tools and members, failed over the past 22 years. This requires the rehabilitation of the PLO and the empowerment of its roles and members.
Despite the need to adopt this strategy, the current leadership of the PLO, where Abbas monopolizes the decision-making process, is not ready to make changes to the structure or political strategy of that organization.
Awad said, The Palestinian political system is not ready to adopt any new strategy or bring about any change at the level of the leadership due to division, to personal and partisan interests, to the lack of effective leaders capable of bringing about that change and to the absence of popular oversight.
In turn, Barghouti said, Yes, there is difficulty in adopting this strategy and bringing about change. But this is not impossible, especially as the Palestinian parties are starting to be convinced that this step is our only way out, and that the Palestinian cause can only be resolved by uniting our energies and efforts and adopting the ideas that we put forward.
The initiatives put forward by Palestinians to fix the domestic Palestinian situation and redraw the Palestinian political strategy remain ink on paper so long as no pressure is placed on the political regime and the Palestinian leadership to bring about real change.
July 13, 2016
Turkeys recent diplomatic reconciliations with both Israel and Russia came as a pleasant surprise to a country that has lately grown numb to bad news. There are also signs of positive steps with Egypt and even Syria, as signaled this week by Prime Minister Binali Yildirim. Yildirim had promised this shift right after coming to power in late May, when President Recep Tayyip Erdogan replaced former Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu with him. Well increase the number of our friends and well decrease the number of our enemies, Yildirim had said, and apparently he meant it.
Of course, this pragmatic turn in Turkish foreign policy is a positive move that should be welcomed and supported. However, Turkeys rulers Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) should understand why they moved away from pragmatism in the first place. They should also understand that Turkey desperately needs reconciliation within itself as well.
In fact, the lesson that Erdogan needs to draw lies in his own recent past. In his first eight years in power, from 2002 to 2010, he pursued a basically moderate and reformist policy at home and a modest and realist one abroad. At the core of this approach lay the elimination of the concept of enemies. In a 2010 speech that captured the spirit of the time, Erdogan criticized the Old Turkey for seeing itself as a country surrounded by seas from three sides, and enemies from four sides. Whenever the state failed, Erdogan had added, the blame was placed on these imagined enemies, and that was why Turkey could not make progress.
Sadly, soon after fully dominating the state structure and destroying its checks and balances, Erdogan began to adopt the exact same narrative, pumping out a strident mix of nationalism and Islamism. Especially after the Gezi Park protests of June 2013, he began telling his base that the world is full of heinous enemies that conspire against his glorious New Turkey. The opposition forces, he added, are a fifth column of these dark powers. This propaganda has worked very well for consolidating Erdogans religious base, but it did not help the sinking Turkish lira, the decline in foreign investment and tourism or Turkey's diplomatic weakness. After all the brouhaha, it turned out that a country does not live on propaganda alone.
It is a fine thing that today the government seems to get this fact. But it needs to get it with regard to domestic politics as well. It especially needs to realize that what caused the dead end in foreign policy is the same thing that has poisoned the domestic scene: its own trajectory.
In other words, during Gezi Park protests, millions of Turks went out to the streets to protest Erdogan, not because they were the pawns of nefarious cabals, but rather because Erdogan angered them by threatening their lifestyles or ridiculing their values. The movement of Fethullah Gulen built a major presence in the police and judiciary not because the Zionists enlisted its members for a covert mission, but because Erdogan himself gave them everything they wanted while they were helping his cause. The peace talks with the Kurdish militants failed not only because of the militants' ambition and zealotry, but also because Turkish policy in Syria seemed to favor the jihadists over the Kurds. International institutions criticize the lack of press freedom in Turkey not because they are all cunning "Orientalists," but because Erdogan has suffocated the opposition media and created an environment of fear.
Notably, there are some voices in the AKP universe these days that acknowledge at least some of these points and call on the government to facilitate reconciliation within Turkey as well. For example, Cemil Cicek, the former speaker of parliament and an active AKP member, said, Now it is time for making friends at home, reported centrist Hurriyet. Ahmet Tasgetiren, a prominent Islamic writer for the pro-Erdogan Star, also wrote a series of articles calling for moderation and even broad cooperation on vital issues such as education. It took no time, however, for hard-core Erdoganists in the media to slam these moderate voices as naive, spineless or even treacherous. Tasgetiren responded in a sarcastic piece headlined We need enemies!
If there is ever to be a national reconciliation within Turkey, Erdogan first has to dismantle the propaganda machine he built in the past five years with the mission of demonizing and intimidating his opponents, even mere critics. He also has to step back from authoritarianism and give room for plurality instead of trying to dominate Turkey's entire political, judicial, cultural and even economic spaces. In particular, he needs to back off from his ambition of a self-styled presidential system, which many people in the opposition see as transition to full dictatorship. Against the Gulen movement, Erdogan needs to seek justice rather than revenge, and he needs to give the peace process with Kurdish militants another chance.
Personally, I would be very happy to see any of these shifts, but I dont think any are very likely. The shift to moderation in foreign policy is pushed by Erdogan's often shrewdly calculated interests. In the authoritarianism at home, however, the new ruling class has many vested interests, as well as a century of yearning by conservatives to take the country back from more secular Turks. These are very powerful dynamics that are hard to calm.
So, the restoration of Turkish foreign policy could turn out to be merely pragmatic, and replace an authoritarian rule pursuing a combative foreign policy with an authoritarian rule pursuing a moderate foreign policy. That would be a gain in itself, but not a terribly praiseworthy one.
July 13, 2016
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who enjoys surprising the Turkish public, dropped a bombshell earlier this month by proposing citizenship for Syrian refugees in Turkey.
The instant reaction was a rising bias among Turks, who are paying for the country's Syria policy. Some reactions to Erdogans proposal were outright racist. Hate speech peaked on social media. Many asked why Erdogan who recently blackmailed Europe by declaring, We are not dumb. We will put the refugees in buses and ship them to Europe suddenly decided to grant citizenship to millions of refugees.
Others wanted to know why the government, which earlier declined to offer citizenship to Turkish kin from the Caucasus and Balkans, now decided to give the green light to a much larger group.
The best offer for the refugees would be to grant them refugee status. When Turkey signed the 1951 Geneva Convention on refugees, it put in a clause that said it would not be granting refugee status to people coming from non-European countries. This is why today Ankara offers only "temporary protection" to those coming from elsewhere.
The second-best offer Turkey could make would be to provide the refugees with decent education, housing, employment and legal protection. Today, only 256,000 refugees out of 2.7 million are living in official camps. The vast majority of others live in tenements they rent out of their own pockets. According to the International Labor Organization, only about 38% of refugee children are offered schooling.
Legal provisions that give the right of employment to refugees have been much delayed and still face problems being implemented.
It is fair to say there is some serious work to be done to integrate these refugees into Turkish society.
The third-best thing Turkey could do would be to give up its policies that incite war in Syria and instead start supporting efforts for a solution. Returning the refugees to their homes requires an end to clashes. Although there has been some recent talk of Erdogan softening his position on Syria, there are no serious indications that it is about to happen.
So what encouraged Erdogan to skip these three basic steps and directly hop to the fourth?
The prevailing opinion is that Erdogan sees a huge potential voting block among the 2.7 million Syrian refugees. There's no doubt that the 1.5 million who would qualify to vote could alter the country's political balance. Some believe that refugees, out of their sense of self-preservation, would vote for the ruling party that gave them the right of citizenship instead of supporting opposition parties that frequently question their presence.
Some think Erdogans proposal is linked to his intention to improve relations with the European Union. The refugees have been the core of tensions with Europe since the summer of 2015. In Europe, almost everyone believes Erdogan is exploiting the refugee flow. Since Binali Yildirim recently became Turkey's prime minister, there have been efforts to patch up relations with Turkeys neighbors. The government, by taking action on the refugee issue, or at least giving the impression of taking action, may well be seeking a fresh start with the EU.
Europeans might be pleased by the new barrier Turkey would be putting between Europe and the refugees by offering citizenship. But it is not yet clear if Erdogan can achieve the results he hopes for from the Turkish public. All opposition parties have been sternly opposed to Erdogans proposal.
The first argument of those rejecting Erdogans proposal is that he is not motivated by humanitarian concerns, but rather wants to buttress his declining public support by using the Syrian refugees. To realize his ambition of an executive presidency, Erdogan needs stronger popular support. His numbers in that respect are on a slippery slope, even though he has been able to weaken the pro-Kurdish Peoples Democratic Party (HDP).
The opposition also has an economic argument. New citizens would mean a heavy new load on the national budget. The countrys acute unemployment problem would worsen. This is the view not only of the opposition but also of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) voter base. But Erdogan doesnt seem worried. At the risk of provoking outbursts of racism because of the economic burden of refugees, Erdogan did not hesitate to declare that he will have the Syrian refugees move into dwellings built by governments Housing Development Administration.
Erdogan, by attributing a divine meaning to his refugee policies, may help soothe Islamist and conservative segments, but giving priority to the needs of refugees ahead of his own people only inflames the anger of the masses.
Those who object to granting refugees citizenship also emphasize the sociological aspects of the move. According to official figures, on average, 125 Syrian babies are born daily in Turkey. That means there have been 150,000 to 200,000 Syrian babies born in Turkey in the past five years. That kind of birth rate will inevitably affect the demographic and cultural fabric of the society. Language and cultural differences also will hinder social integration.
Another point of objection is the use of settlement policies that were designed to bring about demographic changes. Since Ottoman times, the settlement policy provided for grouping "reliable" population groups in defined areas with appropriate services, while forcibly scattering "unreliable" groups to other parts of the land. For example, the AKP government is plotting to settle Sunni Syrians in Alevi (Shiite) regions of Turkey. The idea of setting up a refugee camp for 25,000 people in an area of 16 Alevi villages drew strong opposition.
Many people also remembered the government's double standards for the refugees. For example, the AKP rule did not grant Turkish citizenship to Meshketian Turks who were exiled from Georgias Javakheti region to Central Asia in 1944 and who were not allowed to return.
Ali Gitmez, chairman of the Association for Solidarity with Migrants and Refugees, thinks the citizenship plan isn't motivated by humanitarianism. The government has varying intentions to grant citizenship to Syrian refugees," he said.
"Its basis is political considerations. According to recent polls, AKPs overall vote has declined by four to five points while the HDPs vote has gone up. AKP needs new voters for its presidential aspirations, he added.
The government must first give refugees the status of refugees before offering them citizenship, Gitmez said.
Citizenship is not a solution. Telling our people that those who were first introduced as our temporary guests will now be sharing their bread on a permanent basis will cause further polarization. The government is only amplifying the problem. You cant give citizenship to people who are on temporary protection status. It is also against UN rules. Europeans want countries like Turkey to serve as a barrier against refugees. [Erdogan] has not changed his policy of threatening Europe by saying, Among these refugees there are doctors, engineers, lawyers, health personnel and teachers; they can be given citizenship.
With that statement, Erdogan is implying that the remaining unskilled refugees can be sent to Europe. This is his tactic in bargaining over refugees.
Whether they are "guests" or have temporary protection status, the refugees are being used as bargaining chips against the Syrian regime or the international community. Those who were once considered "useful cards" now are being promoted to "useful voters." In a nutshell, the dismissive, uncaring approach to the humanitarian aspects of the refugee issue is not changing.
The Pepsi sign won't become the UAB sign - at least, not right now.
The board charged with the fate of the sign on top of the Two North Twentieth Building has denied the new owners' request to replace the Pepsi vinyl with a UAB ad.
84 Outdoor appeared before the Construction Board of Adjustment and Appeals Wednesday morning and asked the committee to overturn the Design Review Committee's disapproval of the sign.
The board voted to uphold the DRC's disapproval on the grounds that a vinyl covering is a different use than an electronic marquee.
Alton Parker, the attorney representing 84 Outdoor, said the company will review its legal options for appeal.
"In our view, there is no legal mechanism for the Design Review Committee to approve simply changing the face of the sign," Parker told the board Wednesday before it voted. "Attempting to do so would yield the city to certain Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment claims."
The 179- by 25-foot sign was built in 1971 atop the 17-story building. The once iconic sign scrolled lighted electronic messages across the Birmingham skyline.
Chervis Isom, who spoke to the DRC on behalf of the John Hand Condo Owners Association, said that allowing a vinyl covering on top of it was a totally different use - and a dangerous one, since if it was established as a billboard, anyone could advertise on it.
"If it's a billboard, the city has no right to tell them what kind of material it can advertise. This could turn into an abomination for the city," Isom said. "This could turn into a Chick-Fil-A cow ... maybe it's an ad for Viagra. Maybe it's an ad for who knows what. Maybe it's an ad for Pearl River Resort, with scantily-clad women. I don't know what it could be."
Isom said he has no objection to UAB or its presented design, but UAB had only committed to the sign for a year.
The sign has a long, controversial history in Birmingham.
Harbert Realty put up the original Pepsi sign in 2014 without approval from the DRC after multiple submissions the committee ultimately rejected. Usually, the city does not give permits for projects until they get DRC approval.
At the time, Harbert said it didn't need a permit for a vinyl covering because the dimensions of the sign did not change. At least one leader in the Department of Planning, Engineering and Permitting disagreed, saying that a permit was not required but DRC approval is.
In late 2014, Harbert sold the sign to 84 Outdoor. The company's position has remained that a permit is not required.
The day after UAB announced its plans for the sign, the city sent a cease and desist letter to 84 Outdoor.
The Southern Living Idea House closed in December. Below are some previously reported details about the project in Mt Laurel
If you're looking for timeless design inspiration for your home, you'll want to take a good look at the next issue of Southern Living.
When the magazine releases its August issue this Friday, the cover will feature the 2016 Southern Living Idea House located in Mt Laurel, a walkable and tree-filled master-planned town right outside of Birmingham.
Southern Living has built or renovated idea houses all over the country for over 20 years, but this house marks a special occasion. This year, the Birmingham-based magazine is celebrating its 50th anniversary and decided to locate the annual idea house right outside its hometown.
The Mt Laurel community was planned to be in concert with nature making it a harmonious location for the 4200 square foot home. Birmingham architect Bill Ingram designed it to fit in with the preserved natural spaces around it. He worked with Town Builders, Inc. to construct it and landscape architect David Brush. It sits elevated on a corner lot and its wide wraparound porches provide a nice view of the surrounding tranquil southern landscape.
Inside, an inviting entrance opens to a wide center hall that welcomes you to explore rooms packed with details, decorating ideas and finishes that are distinctly southern. Think characteristics of traditional southern style updated with modern touches. There's plenty of shiplap too.
To celebrate the magazine's 50th anniversary, five young designers were given clippings of favorite rooms featured in older issues of the magazine. They used the images as inspiration for their designs.
Los Angeles-based designer
Montgomery-based designer
Lauren Liess
Atlanta designer
Dallas-based designer
Arthitect Bill Ingram designed the bold kitchen, family, laundry and powder room areas.
The Idea House is located at 10 Nolen St, Birmingham, Ala, 35242, and will be open through December 18th, 2016. You can tour the home from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Wednesdays through Saturdays and from noon to 4 p.m. on Sundays. Once inside, you're free to tour the home and volunteers will be inside to answer any questions. You can find a planning guide for your visit here. Stick around and check out Mt Laurel's idyllic town center after the tour.
Admission is $15 at the door. Tickets are not available to purchase online in advance. A portion of the proceeds will benefit Children's of Alabama and the Mt Laurel Public Library. For more information visit here.
The town of Mt Laurel is a Southern Living Inspired Community, which means that it is part of a collection of residential developments that exemplify the Southern Living lifestyle.
Oxford police are looking for a man who they say escaped arrest after they detained two in connection with a residential burglary.
Capt. L.G. Owens said the incident happened Monday about 3:30 p.m. A neighbor told police that a suspicious vehicle pulled up at a home in the 2000 block of Sue Drive. The neighbor took down the vehicle's license plate number after it dropped off two men and left the area.
Owens said the vehicle returned and the men began loading property stolen from the residence into the vehicle's trunk. The neighbor called police as the vehicle left the neighborhood, providing the tag number and a description.
An Oxford officer saw the vehicle and tried to stop it on Alabama 21 South, but the men inside fled the vehicle at the intersection of Barry Street and Spring Branch Road. They fled on foot, scattering in all directions.
Police arrested Antoin Martez McCluney, 27, of Anniston, and Anton Michael Johnson, 24, of Jacksonville. The two have been charged with attempting to elude and third degree burglary. They are being held on $81,000 bond, and have a court date of Aug. 11 in Calhoun County District Court.
A search of the area, though, did not turn up the third suspect, Owens said. A handgun stolen out of Anniston was recovered in the area where he was last seen.
Anyone with information is urged to contact the Oxford Police Department at (256) 831-3121 or our Tip Line at (256) 835-6122.
Sylacauga police have announced the department's policy for dispersing large crowds in parking lots.
The announcement comes after a weekend incident where police were called in to break up a crowd of about 100 at Sylacauga High School.
According to the department's Facebook page, the policy affects crowds of juveniles or adults gathering in public parking lots during or after business hours.
During business hours, officers will respond to all calls for service to clear parking lots of crowds. Everyone will be asked to leave when requested by the business, no questions asked. Police will not normally write a ticket in this instance, unless a person gives "no choice but to ticket." If a person who has received an earlier warning to clear the lot has returned to loiter, an officer may issue a citation if necessary.
Officers will usually patrol vacant lots or lots after business hours. If a lot is for a vacant business, and conditions appear peaceful with no trash or fighting among bystanders, police will allow the assembly to continue.
If a lot is not posted with "no loitering" or "no trespassing" signs, the same rules apply. For lots posted "no loitering" or "no trespassing," officers will honor the requests of the property owner and keep crowds from assembling in the lots.
Authorities today released the name of a burglary suspect who died Tuesday night after he was struck by a Birmingham police stun gun.
Danny Morel Cupps Jr., 36, was pronounced dead at St. Vincent's Hospital at 5:42 p.m., according to the Jefferson County Coroner's Office. The cause of death has not yet been determined.
Birmingham police said Cupps was burglarizing the home when the incident happened. Court records show he has previous arrests for burglary and drug possession.
The incident began shortly after 3:30 p.m. at a home in the 5200 block of Lewisburg Road. Birmingham police spokesman Lt. Sean Edwards gave this account of what happened: Birmingham Officers responded to a burglary in progress in the 5200 block of Lewisburg Road about 3:35 p.m. When they arrived, the officers met the homeowner who said he heard glass breakage and someone yelling and growling in his basement.
Additional officers arrived and told the homeowner to go next door for his safety. As officers walked around the house, they observed several windows broken and they entered the home. Once inside, they saw a white male wearing only shorts and wrapped up in material that looked like the air conditioner duct work.
"Officers immediately gave the suspect verbal commands but he did not comply,'' Edwards said. "Officers Tased the suspect several times but suspect continued to resist. Officers closed in on the suspect and handcuffed him."
The suspect was taken outside to await medics. "During the entire incident, the suspect acted extremely irritated and growled at officers,'' Edwards said. The suspect was transported to St. Vincent's South where he was later pronounced dead by the medical staff. The State Bureau of Investigation was notified and responded to the scene.
Cupps, who is from Sterrett, was charged with burglary in Walker County in 2011. That case has not yet been adjudicated, according to court records. In 2005, he was convicted of cocaine possession and received a one-year suspended sentence.
Cupps' family didn't immediately return a call seeking comment.
It could be several weeks before the autopsy results - which include toxicology testing - are final. Birmingham police denied a request for any possible bodycam or dashcam video of the tasing, which is standard procedure during an ongoing investigation.
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Dallas Perkins, 29, was arrested after an overnight standoff at his Mt. Olive home.
(Jefferson County Jail)
A Cropwell man is behind bars this morning after a six-hour standoff with lawmen in Jefferson County.
Jefferson County sheriff's deputies were dispatched just before 1 a.m. on a report of someone shooting outside of a home in the 1400 block of Posey Circle in Mt. Olive, said Chief Deputy Randy Christian. When they got on the scene, no one was outside.
Christian said deputies learned the man who lived at the house was the one doing the shooting but he had gone back inside. His wife was at work, but his two small children were in the home.
Deputies then contacted the man by telephone, but he became irate and refused to come outside to speak with them or let them check on his wife and children, Christian said. Negotiators and SWAT personnel were called to the scene. The man's wife came home and he allowed the children to come out. They were not harmed.
Just after 7 a.m. SWAT entered the home and arrested the man. He has been identified as 29-year-old Dallas Lindsey Perkins. He is charged with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. He is in the Jefferson County Jail with bond set at $600.
"It will surprise no one,'' Christian said, "that alcohol is believed to have been a factor."
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A burglar was killed July 12, 2016 at this Birmingham home on Lewisburg Road shortly after he was hit by a police stun gun.
(Jonece Dunigan/jdunigan@al.com)
A burglary suspect died tonight after he was struck by a Birmingham police stun gun.
The incident began shortly after 3:30 p.m. at a home in the 5200 block of Lewisburg Road. The man, an adult white male, was taken to St. Vincent's South, where he was later pronounced dead, police said.
Birmingham police spokesman Lt. Sean Edwards gave this account of what happened: Birmingham Officers responded to a burglary in progress in the 5200 block of Lewisburg Road about 3:35 p.m. When they arrived, the officers met the homeowner who said he heard glass breakage and someone yelling and growling in his basement.
Additional officers arrived and told the homeowner to go next door for his safety. As officers walked around the house, they observed several windows broken and they entered the home. Once inside, they saw a white male wearing only shorts and wrapped up in material that looked like the air conditioner duct work.
"Officers immediately gave the suspect verbal commands but he did not comply,'' Edwards said. "Officers Tased the suspect several times but suspect continued to resist. Officers closed in on the suspect and handcuffed him."
The suspect was taken outside to await medics. "During the entire incident, the suspect acted extremely irritated and growled at officers,'' Edwards said.
The suspect was transported to St. Vincent's South where he was later pronounced dead by the medical staff. The State Bureau of Investigation was notified and responded to the scene. Crime scene investigators also arrived at the home a short time later to process the scene.
The residents sat on the porch during the investigation but declined to comment.
There have been multiple deaths following Taser use in Jefferson County, in Alabama and beyond over the past decade. Here is a look at just a few of them.
Earlier this year - On February 3 - a mentally-ill patient at Athens-Limestone Hospital was subdued with a stun gun and died five days later. Randy Joe Nelson was 49. Police said two police sergeants responded that day to the hospital, where staff reported that Nelson was struggling as they attempted to give him medication to calm him down. When he continued struggling and throwing things at the officers, one officer used a stun gun on him. Later in February, Athens Police Chief Floyd Johnson released the nine-minute video.
In July 2015, Anthony Ware, 35, died after fleeing from police. An anonymous caller told police that Ware, who was wanted for previously eluding arrest, was sitting on a porch and armed with a pistol. When officers responded, Ware fled the scene and went into a densely wooded area, where he was eventually found and pepper sprayed. After some time, he stopped breathing, and despite rigorous CPR from TPD officers and emergency transport to DCH Regional Medical Center in Northport, Ware died. An autopsy found Ware had recently used cocaine, methamphetamine and alcohol, and died of drug toxicity.
In 2014, A Jefferson County jail inmate died after a sheriff's deputy used a Taser on him when he became combative with officers. Ricky Deangelo Hinkle, 47, of Pleasant Grove fell to the floor and was unresponsive after the deputy used the Taser on him. Efforts were unsuccessful by the jail's on-duty medical personnel and paramedics to revive him. Hinkle was transported to a local hospital where he was pronounced dead. Hinkle had been an inmate at the jail for a parole violation on a previous assault charge. Prior to his death, he had been separated Hinkle from other inmates at about 11:30 a.m. when he threatened other inmates and created a disruption during the lunchtime meal service.
On June 14, 2010, 17-year-old William Owens died after being struck with a Taser. He was struck by a Homewood police officer's Taser after lawmen caught him and three of his cousins, including a 12-year-old, allegedly breaking into cars at Herzing University just before 1 a.m. Police said Owens was struck with the stun gun after the teen repeatedly resisted arrest. Two of the teens with Owens were charged with breaking and entering. The Jefferson County Coroner's Office said Owens suffered from cardiomegaly, or an enlarged heart. The pre-existing condition, combined with the stress of the events including the shock of the stun gun, all worked together to end in his death, officials said at the time. Owens was 6 feet tall and weighed 239 pounds, according to the report. A drug screen showed he had marijuana in his system.
AL.com reporter Jonece Starr Dunigan contributed to this report.
The events that have happened nationwide over the past week, including the massacre of five Dallas police officers, angered Mike Yarbrough.
"It's not so much just about the officers, but the divisiveness and what it's doing to the people I work with, my friends, the people of this country,'' said Yarbrough, a longtime Jefferson County sheriff's lieutenant. "People were taking sides and it just bothered me greatly. I was in a bad place. I was an angry person."
But an unexpected act by his pastor at McCalla's Grace Life Baptist Church on Sunday lifted that darkness in a mighty way. The Rev. Joel Frederick called Yarbrough, Birmingham police Officer J. Logan and church member Adrian Robinson to the altar for a foot washing, a move that surprised the congregation and left not a dry eye in the house.
"I felt on Saturday like God was telling me to do that. It was just heavy,'' Frederick told AL.com. "I told my wife to pray for me, that God was telling me to do something but I didn't even tell her what it was."
"God was speaking to me. I know it's cliche, but it was 'What would Jesus do?'" the pastor said. "We don't live in a world of a lot of doing, just a lot of talking. God wanted to cut through the noise."
Visibly emotional at Sunday's 9 a.m. service, Frederick told the congregation he was hurting over the shootings in Minnesota, Louisiana, Dallas and the fallout that followed. "I'm just heartbroken. I'm heartbroken for where we as a people, as a nation, are,'' he told the congregation. "I don't have a lot to say about it. The Bible says when words are many, sin is present. The best thing I knew to do was to be like Jesus."
Just prior to the Last Supper, Jesus washed the feet of his disciples in a display of humility and servanthood. Frederick first called Yarbrough and Logan to the front, where he performed the foot washing and said this: "We don't pray for them like we should. We don't support them like we should. Thank you gentleman for what you do, striving to make our place safe for our families to live. We repent of not telling you often enough."
Then he called Robinson, one of the church's black members, to the altar. Again Frederick kneeled before Robinson, performed the foot washing and told him, "Adrian, I'm sorry for the injustices that continue in this country toward African Americans. I'm sorry that you have to be concerned about your children in ways that I don't have to be concerned about my own. And I'm sorry I haven't tried hard enough to understand and I want you to know I love you and you're my brother. And you always will be."
"Jesus loved with actions,'' Frederick said in an interview. "I don't know if anybody in the room had ever seen that in a church service. It was unique thing, real intimate."
"I felt like I wanted to speak for a lot of the people in the church who wanted to repent that we have not been grateful enough for those who protect and serve, and repent to African Americans because we have not tried hard enough to really understand where they're coming from and that their experience is not our experience. We need to do better, we want to love you better, and we want to serve you better than we have."
The church put the video on its Facebook page Tuesday, and thousands have already watched the touching ceremony. "I've been told there wasn't a dry eye in the room and it's a room full of diversity,'' Frederick said. "Just to see people of that kind of diversity on the same page reminded everyone that only Christ can do that."
Yarbrough said the experience was humbling and healing. "It's not about me and how I feel, it's not about any one of us,'' the lieutenant said. "It's about Jesus. If everybody realized that, the world would be a whole lot better."
A South Carolina attorney has pleaded guilty to defrauding a University of Alabama sorority - her alma mater - of hundreds of thousands of dollars in a sorority house furnishing scheme.
U.S. Attorney Joyce White Vance today announced 39-year-old Jennifer Elizabeth Meehan entered her plea Tuesday in federal court. Meehan, who was tasked with furnishing the University's new Gamma Phi Beta house, was arrested last year and accused of defrauding the sorority of nearly $400,000 through schemes in which Meehan submitted invoices for a sorority's furniture and equipment and received payment for them without ever actually providing the goods to the house.
Vance said Meehan was president of the House Corporation Board of the Epsilon Lambda Chapter of Gamma Phi Beta Sorority in an unpaid, volunteer capacity and was tasked with furnishing the $14 million sorority house between September 2013 and March 2015. The new house was the largest in the sorority's national history.
According to the plea agreement, Meehan executed a bank fraud scheme to illegally obtain money from First Citizens Bank & Trust Company and the Bank of Tuscaloosa. Gamma Phi Beta's account was at the Bank of Tuscaloosa and Meehan opened an account at First Citizens Bank under a fraudulent business name.
In September and November of 2014, Meehan submitted fraudulent furniture invoices totaling about $375,000 to Greek Resource Services, a contract company that handles the finances for fraternities and sororities at UA. GRS drew money from Gamma Phi Beta's account at Bank of Tuscaloosa and gave Meehan two checks totaling about $375,000. She deposited that money into the newly opened First Citizens account, authorities said.
In January 2015, Meehan entered a First Citizens Bank & Trust branch in Anderson, S.C., and wired $175,000 from the fraudulent business account into her personal business account at Bank of America for her personal use, according to her plea agreement. The U.S. Secret Service and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service investigated the case, which Assistant U.S. Attorney David H. Estes prosecuted.
Under the plea agreement, Meehan agreed to forfeit, as proceeds of illegal activity, $234,648, and to pay additional restitution of $34,815 to Greek Resource Services. Initially charged with eight counts, the government agreed to drop seven other fraud and money laundering counts against Meehan as part of the agreement and agreed to recommend a 20-month prison sentence.
"We are thankful this case has been resolved the right way," John T. Murdock, president of Greek Resource Services, Inc, the company that handled finances for the sorority, stated i a press release issued Wednesday.
"Jennifer Meehan betrayed not only her sorority sisters and the group's solemn sisterhood pledge of loyalty but also her family and her profession. She devised a scheme that put her personal needs above the Gamma Phi Beta sisterhood," Murdock stated.
For months, officials at GRS have been working collaboratively with the Secret Service to investigate and uncover the details of Meehan's fraud, according to the statement from Greek Resource. The firm first discovered these issues, and systems in place exposed her scheme and helped recover all the funds, according to the statement.
"We, like everyone affected by this, have feelings of both anger and relief that these events are coming to a close," Murdock stated. "We are even more resolved to partner with our clients in the protection of fraternity and sorority assets as well as their overall financial health."
Updated at 4:35 p.m. July 13 to include statement from Greek Resource
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Pictured is a wildfire that began over the weekend when two men from Alabama failed to properly put out a campfire in Boulder County, Colorado. (Fox 31 Denver)
Two Cullman County men jailed in Colorado for starting a campfire that spread and ultimately burned nearly 600 acres used the light of their fire to read their Bibles, according to police.
Zackary Ryan Kuykendall, 26, and 28-year-old Jimmy Andrew Suggs, both of Vinemont, are each charged with fourth-degree arson and second-degree trespassing. Suggs is also charged with possession of a weapon, according to the Boulder County Sheriff's Office.
The men are charged with arson for failing to properly extinguish their campfire. The Sheriff's Office said the felony charge is appropriate because lives were endangered by the suspects' actions.
At least eight homes were destroyed by the wildfire, which was still burning as of Tuesday.
The trespassing charges stem from their campsites being located on private property.
Kuykendall and Suggs were actually interviewed at an evacuation site by a reporter with the Boulder Daily Camera newspaper. Suggs described it looking "like the whole mountain range was on fire."
"It was crazy. We'd never seen anything like it," Suggs told the reporter.
About 24 hours later, the men were in handcuffs.
A police report obtained by Denver's ABC affiliate offers more insight into what ignited the weekend fire that ultimately forced thousands of people to evacuate their homes. Witnesses to the wildfire pointed investigators in the direction of three transients they'd spotted camping in the area, later identified as Kuykendall, Suggs and a female friend, 20-year-old Elizabeth Burdeshaw, also of Vinemont.
See the entire police report below.
Burdeshaw has not been charged because she had no part in setting, maintaining or extinguishing the campfire. Kuykendall and Suggs covered the campfire with the rocks they'd rimmed it with, but failed to add the dirt necessary to properly smother the flames.
Zackary Kuykendall, left, and Jimmy Suggs (Boulder County Sheriff's Office)
When questioned by investigators, the trio admitted to camping in three different locations, having started campfires at two of them. They said they were reading their Bibles by the fires.
The group agreed to show investigators their campsites, but could not locate the first one. They located the second one, which Suggs was able to positively identify because he found a machete he'd left behind.
According to the police report, that campfire site was near a river and had not caused any damage to the surrounding area.
The suspects and investigators could not initially get to the third site because there was still active fire in that area. The men pointed to the fire, however, and said that was the general location where they'd camped.
"It had to been us, there was no one else around," Suggs said about the cause of the wildfire, according to the report.
Later, when Suggs and Kuykendall were shown photos of the site firefighters determined was the origin of the wildfire, they identified it as their campsite.
Firefighters continue to keep an eye on the wildfire, which was still burning in some areas on Tuesday. Some residents were being allowed temporary access to their homes to get some of their belongings and check on their property.
Police report in Colorado wildfire caused by Alabama men by c_bonvillian on Scribd
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Members of North Huntsville Community United for Action assembled in front of Hereford Elementary on July 13, 2016, to urge a federal judge to allow new plaintiffs in a 53-year-old school desegregation case. (Challen Stephens/cstephens@al.com)
Black ministers and officials in north Huntsville this morning urged a federal judge to allow new local voices in the city's court dispute over school desegregation.
They'll have a hearing in federal court on Monday to make their case.
The issue, they say, is transparency. They claim the U.S. Department of Justice does not communicate with local residents and that the Huntsville school board has actively shut them out of the ongoing efforts to end the 53-year-old desegregation case.
"It is our belief that this action has become imperative because of the blatant discriminatory actions by Huntsville City Schools that have resulted in failures by Huntsville City Schools to comply with the terms and conditions order by the federal court," said Pastor T.C. Johnson this morning.
Some members of the group also called for a new superintendent and a change in the school board.
"We must insist we have no representation by any of our current board members," said Pastor Oscar Montgomery of Union Hill Primitive Baptist Church. "We have to either change the superintendent or change the board."
Johnson addressed news cameras in front of Hereford Elementary, a school nearing completion in north Huntsville. He was surrounded by about dozen residents of North Huntsville Community United for Action, including City Councilman Richard Showers.
In 2015, a consent decree replaced the original 1970 order to end dual schooling based on race in Huntsville. "We were fairly please with what was decreed, it is the implementation we are concerned with," Johnson said, pointing out the decree increased integration at majority white schools in south Huntsville.
However, he said that since the decree: "All we've gotten is doors closed in our face."
Rev. Gregory Bentley of Fellowship Presbyterian Church in Huntsville is one of three parents to ask to have their children added as new private plaintiffs. (cstephens@al.com)
While updating the case, the court also removed the private plaintiffs. Those would be the parents and children who initially sued in 1963. All have long since grown and have no legal standing in the case.
Among the group this morning were two of the three who petitioned the court on Friday to have their children added as new private plaintiffs. Johnson said three was an arbitrary number of representatives, adding: "It could be 12, it could be 20."
Rev. Gregory Bentley was among the three named in the motion. He asked the court to add his two daughters as plaintiffs. He said they attend the magnet Academy for Academics and Art and that he is happy with their education.
"But it's not just about my daughters," said Bentley this morning. "I pastor in a community where many children are facing academic challenges."
Paul Proctor is also listed in the motion. He appeared with his 10-year-old son Jaden. He said Jaden had attended Highlands Elementary, but lost his transfer after the consent decree was approved. He said Jaden is now transferring to Hampton Cove Elementary, a predominantly white area singled out in the consent decree for increased transfer stduents.
Proctor said he joined the motion due to concerns about "lack of transparency, communication and openness."
Asked about particular issues, the group mentioned several. Alice Sams, vice president of the local chapter of the NAACP, said that the Johnson High PTA has not been allowed to tour the replacement building, Jemison High.
T.C. Johnson said that the school system would not respond to citizens who wanted to preserve the legacy of Johnson High and that alumni were told they could not meet at Johnson.
The 2015 consent decree did create a Desegregation Advisory Committee, a racially diverse group of students and parents and teachers who are charged with monitoring compliance by the city system. But the petition to the court calls the DAC "a servant" of the superintendent.
Montgomery claimed the local monitors were handpicked to cooperate with the superintendent. This morning he said: "Only the people they wanted on the DAC are on the DAC."
A reporter asked how they would know. "We know the people," said Montgomery.
Paul Proctor and his son Jaden in front of the nearly complete Hereford Elementary in northwest Huntsville. Proctor has asked the court to include his son as a new private plaintiff. (cstephens@al.com)
Proctor said he twice applied to be on the DAC and was denied before adding his son's name to the motion to be considered a private plaintiff.
Montgomery and several others also repeated that the Justice Department, the lone entity seeking redress in the case, does not interact with local parents or advocates.
Several also said residents are not welcome in the schools. The group noted that this school board, in practice, does not vote against the recommendations of Superintendent Casey Wardynski. "It ought to be called the superintendent's meeting, instead of the board meeting," said Johnson.
"This intervention, if allowed, would give both transparency and voice to the affected community, while building trust in legal proceedings," said Johnson during his initial address.
The address was held in front of a new school named after Sonnie Hereford III, who was laid to rest on Tuesday. The 53-year-old case, Hereford v Huntsville Board of Education, still bears the name of his son, Sonnie Hereford IV.
After the press conference, Councilman Showers said of the new Hereford Elementary, "The building is nice, but buildings don't produce changes in academics."
U.S. District Judge Madeline Hughes Haikala this morning set a hearing for 1 p.m. on July 18 in the federal courthouse in Huntsville to consider the motion to add new private plaintiffs.
The judge cited her previous ruling in 2014, when she removed the NAACP Legal Defense Fund from the case, and cited a 1973 legal precedent that suggested a standard for her coming decision.
Haikala in her order today indicates parents must bring precise claims and show how desegregation is being impeded. If the court finds the issues were raised before and are being competently addressed, then the court could deny the addition of new plaintiffs.
Update on July 15 at 10 a.m.:
Some members of the Desegregation Advisory Committee, which includes 10 parents and 2 students, called a press conference on Thursday, July 14, at the central official to object to being characterized as "servants" of the superintendent.
"We are not hand-selected," said Isha Greene, a parent of three on the DAC, who said Superintendent Wardynski does not govern the DAC. She called the allegations in the recent motion "slander." She said members of the DAC volunteered and were interviewed by various parties including the Justice Department.
She said the DAC includes six people of color
Pam Hill, a teacher and candidate for school board in west Huntsville, said that teachers were not free to speak with DAC members for fear of retaliation. When Hill then attempted to ask a question, David Driscoll, a public relations consultant for the school board, cut her off and had security usher her to the side. Driscoll said the press conference was for media only.
Asked if the DAC had discovered any areas of non-compliance, Greene declined to answer. She said the full report would be released to the public later.
A Florence man will spend five months in prison for assaulting a female U.S. Army non-commissioned officer who lived on Redstone Arsenal, U.S. Attorney Joyce White Vance announced.
Ronnie Christopher Ricks, 46, was charged with interstate domestic violence after hitting the officer, who was Ricks' girlfriend at the time, on Aug. 5.
The confrontation started when Ricks and another Army officer entered the victim's apartment at the same time, according to government documents. The Army officer was there to pick up his daughter, who the victim was babysitting.
Ricks then started cursing and swung his fists at the male officer, authorities said. The former girlfriend stepped in between the two men. Ricks then threw the woman on the ground, hit her in the face and dragged her along the ground, authorities said.
The case was investigated by Redstone Arsenal Police. Ricks is already in custody. He will be on supervised release for two years following his prison sentence.
A Lauderdale County man has been arrested in connection with a string of serial rapes and kidnappings of women he met over the internet.
Corey Aris Davis, 27, of Florence is charged with two counts of human trafficking, two counts of kidnapping, two counts of rape, two counts of sodomy, sexual torture, sex abuse, two counts of burglary and impersonating a police officer.
His arrest was the result of the work of a multi-jurisdictional task force that included officers and deputies from the Lauderdale County Sheriff's Office, St. Florian Police Department, Florence Police Department, Lauderdale County Drug Task Force and Lauderdale County District Attorney's Office.
The Florence Police Department said in a news release that the alleged crime spree began on June 3 when officers responded to a report of a rape in the area of Chisholm Road. The female victim told officers she was kidnapped by a man she met online and was forced to perform sex acts over several hours.
She was eventually able to escape and call police.
A second incident occurred on June 18, when Lauderdale County deputies responded to the same area on a call of a man dressed in a policeman's uniform trying to assault a woman. The suspect was scared away by the deputies' arrival.
Three days later, a Lauderdale County animal control officer responding to a complaint on County Road 289 noticed a man acting suspiciously. He called St. Florian police for backup, at which point the man fled.
The responding officers found a partially-clothed woman bound in the basement of a nearby abandoned house, the Florence Police said. Her statement to police mirrored that of the first victim - she met the man online and went to a house on Chisholm Road to meet him.
He abducted her at gunpoint and was forced to perform sex acts for hours before officers found her.
The task force was formed and, over a 10-day span, its members gathered evidence and executed search warrants that led to a grand jury indicting Davis for the crimes.
He is being held in the Lauderdale County Jail.
We now make several guns in Alabama, part of a recent Southern surge from North Carolina to Tennessee to Texas.
"It's the first time since the Civil War there has been any major production of firearms in Alabama," said Larry Barnett, long-time owner of the Huntsville landmark Larry's Pistol & Pawn. "We call it the firearms corridor."
And perhaps no gun is more Alabama's own than the RM380 micro pistol, a piece designed for purses and pockets, a piece Barnett says is popular as a backup weapon for police officers.
The first run in Huntsville came with the shape of the state etched into the stainless barrel and the words "Alabama Inaugural Product."
Southern corridor
Beretta recently uprooted from Maryland for Tennessee, cutting the ribbon on a new plant near Nashville this spring. Frank Miniter, author of The Future of the Gun, wrote in 2014 in Forbes: "Like many firearms manufacturers, Beretta couldn't stay in a state that banned some of its popular products and that might soon decide to ban the rest."
In the last few years, several manufacturers have followed suit. Kahr Arms left New York for Pennsylvania. Magpul left Colorado for Texas and Wyoming. "Moving operations to states that support our culture of individual liberties and personal responsibility is important," said Magpul CEO Richard Fitzpatrick in 2014.
But when Barnett talks about the new manufacturing corridor he is mostly talking about companies, like Beretta and Remington, choosing the South. PTR Industries went from Connecticut to South Carolina. Remington has operations in North Carolina. Ruger opened a new plant in North Carolina. Steyr Arms opened a showroom and distribution center in Bessemer.
And of course there is the manufacturing plant in Huntsville. With the celebrated announcement in 2014, Remington began to shut down older plants elsewhere and ship jobs to Alabama.
Guns of Alabama
Today Alabamians assemble three distinct firearms in Huntsville.
There is the 1911 R1 handgun, mainly produced in .45 caliber, more rarely 9 mm -- a weapon whose design has changed little in a century.
Remington says: "America's most trusted pistol, remastered by Remington for peak shootability. And stopping danger in its tracks."
There is the AR platform, the body of a modern sporting rifle. The similar AR-style rifles manufactured in Huntsville, according to Remington, include the Bushmaster modern sporting rifle and the DPMS modern sporting rifle and the Remington modern sporting rifle.
And finally there is the RM380.
Huntsville's pocket pistol
The Remington RM380 is a small gun, fits easily in a hand. The trigger is double action, meaning it's a long trigger pull, and it's not easy for the untrained to hit the target at 25 feet.
At Larry's, a young couple reels in paper targets shaded with comic book armed robbers. "You get progressively lower left, but your first shot is dead on," says the young man, as they tape over the holes and send the target out for more pistol practice.
But there's no need for taping up the target when firing off the RM380. After more than a dozen rounds, there are no holes in the free bullseye, and only two on the cardboard frame around it.
The RM380, according to Larry Barnett, is best handled by holding it in the middle of your body, centering it, and aiming where you point your nose. The sights are minimal. This is not the gun for sharp-shooting.
Remington calls it a fusion of "confidence and concealment," a weapon specially built for unfailing function "in the fight of your life."
Instead, the pistol is marketed online with an image of a female jogger on a lonely, snowy road. But Barnett says the gun is equally popular with men. He says the gun makes sense in Alabama, where it's hot and concealed weapons need to be small enough to fit into pockets in summer clothes.
In Alabama, approximately 1 in 8 adults have a concealed carry permit.
And Barnett said he sold a hundred of the limited run of souvenir models. That's now a collector's item, a two-tone silver and black model. Remington says they sold just 1,000 of the Alabama keepsakes.
The commemorative model sold for $389.99. But normally the RM380 sells for less.
Jessica Kallam, spokesperson for Remington, said the company also makes silencers and some shotguns in Huntsville. She said there are plans to make the R51 in Huntsville and that later the company could move manufacturing of six other makes of rifle from Mayfield to Huntsville.
Those are the Remington 783, 770, and 597 and the Marlin 60, 795 and XT.
Betting on gun jobs
In 2014, Remington announced "a vertical integration initiative" and closed plants in Lawrenceville, Ga., St. Cloud, Minn., Elizabethtown, Ky., West Jordan, Utah, Kalispell, Mon., and Pineville, N.C., and announced plans to ship the jobs to Alabama.
The company said in May that it will also move production lines from Mayfield, Ky., to Huntsville.
While gun manufacturers have been moving to more areas with less restrictive gun laws, tens of millions in state and local incentives also helped make the decision for Remington.
Huntsville effectively bought Remington a new plant, putting up $12.5 million.
The Huntsville's Industrial Development Board bought the former Chrysler plant for $10.5 million. The company then agreed to rent the facility from the city for $1.25 million per year. However, the annual rent payments are waived each year if the company meets its employment and salary targets.
If Remington meets all terms, it will own the factory and grounds after 10 years. Plus, Remington in 2015, according to company disclosure forms, kept the extra $1.9 million from Huntsville that exceeded to cost of the building.
If the company doesn't meet its promises for new jobs, the company will have to start paying rent and interest. If the company closes the plant, then it has to pay back the city in full.
The company's annual statement, same as audit documents provided by the city, show that Remington is meeting its hiring targets. Remington reports: "As of December 31, 2015, the Company had met the criteria for the year preceding and no principal and interest payments are due in 2016."
The company's annual statement for 2015 also lists receipt of another $16.6 million in various state, county and local incentives "restricted for use in connection with the acquisition, construction or improvement of property, plant and equipment."
This may come as a shock to many people - especially parents - but not everyone goes to college just to study. There are times when college students would rather let their hair down and party.
The party scene is apparently bigger at some universities than others, at least according to a recent ranking by Niche. The website ranked the state's top party schools based on each town's number of bars per capita and student reviews on the party scene.
Here are Alabama's top party schools:
University of Alabama Auburn University Alabama State University University of Alabama - Birmingham Birmingham-Southern College Tuskegee University University of South Alabama Spring Hill College Samford University Alabama A&M University University of North Alabama Stillman College Huntingdon College University of West Alabama Auburn University - Montgomery Troy University University of Alabama - Huntsville Miles College University of Mobile Talladega College University of Montevallo Jacksonville State University Faulkner University Oakwood University Athens State University Judson College
Parents can't take heart in this - no Alabama university made Niche's top 50 party schools.
Welcome to Wake Up Call. Let's see what's going on:
Delta flight lands at wrong place
A Delta Air Lines jet with 130 passengers on board landed at the wrong airport in South Dakota last week, according to the National Transportation Safety Board.
The plane was supposed to land at Rapid City Regional Airport; instead it landed at Ellsworth Air Force Base, about 10 miles due north of where it was supposed to be. The two airports have runaways that are oriented nearly identical to the compass from northwest to southeast, officials said.
The crew has been taken off duty and the matter is under investigation.
India introduces fat tax
India is looking to hit people in their pocketbooks to help curb obesity.
Kerala, India has implemented a 14.5 percent "fat tax" on burgers, pizza, tacos, doughnuts, sandwiches and pasta sold at grocery stores and restaurants. The tax is aimed at curbing the state's 4 percent obesity rate.
Just for comparison, the U.S. has 22 states with obesity rates higher than 30 percent.
Family files suit after girl chokes on marshmallow
The family of an 11-year-old Massachusetts girl who died after choking on a marshmallow at a friend's birthday party has filed a wrongful death lawsuit. The family of Azriel Estabrooks is seeking unspecified monetary damages in connection with her April death.
The suit claims the hosts of the birthday party didn't provide adequate supervision for the guests.
Trump won't speak at NAACP convention
Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump will not address the NAACP annual convention set for Ohio next week.
The NAACP's Cornell William Brooks said Trump had declined the group's invitation. Trump's campaign cited the Republican convention that will be going on that week as a reason for not attending the NAACP event.
The GOP is meeting in Cleveland; NAACP is in Cincinnati.
Presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton will address the group.
Until tomorrow.
Robert Aderholt
Robert Aderholt represents the fourth Congressional district in Alabama. (AL.com file)
(Paul Beaudry)
Arguing that not enough emphasis is placed on the plight of non-Muslims threatened in Iraq and Syria, U.S. Rep. Robert Aderholt, R-Haleyville, got language passed through the House Appropriations Committee that would direct aid to Christians, Yazidis and other religious minorities under ISIS control.
"Most of us have seen the images of the thousands of people who are fleeing the Syrian Civil War and escaping from the deadly reach of ISIS," Aderholt said in a statement Tuesday. "While most of the attention has been focused on those of the Muslim faith, Christians and other groups are actually at the top of ISIS' "hit list" in that region and need protection."
Aderholt said a disproportionate amount of Syrian Christians have resettled as refugees in the U.S. since civil war erupted in 2011. Before the war, Syria was 10 percent Christian, but only 70 Christian Syrians were admitted as refugees, the congressman said.
"There are documented reports that Christians and others are targets of violence, rape, and killings, even in the camps run by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR). The people who need help are unable to access it. We must do better," he said. "It is urgent - morally, and also in terms of national security - to ensure that the refugee program protects families whose religious or ethnic background has made them the target of organized persecution and genocide."
Aderholt's language to provide disaster and refugee aid to religious minorities living in ISIS-controlled areas of Iraq and Syria doesn't add to the federal budget, but it "will instead focus our limited resources on those who need it most."
"The language I was able to secure in this legislation will, among other purposes, help provide secure locations where Christians can safely register for refugee resettlement assistance," he said. "As a nation that was founded on Judeo-Christian principles, we are called upon to help our brothers and sisters whose lives and safety are jeopardized. But like you, I strongly believe that taxpayer dollars must be spent responsibly and with strong oversight, especially when these dollars are going overseas for foreign aid."
Dallas, USA Im here again, listening to the US president give a speech after a mass shooting. For the 11th time during his time in office, Barack Obama has travelled to a community that is grieving after such an incident.
This time it is Dallas, Texas. Just a few weeks ago it was Orlando, Florida. This time it was five police officers ambushed by a lone gunman. Last time, it was 49 people simply dancing at a nightclub catering to the LGBT community.
On the latest occasion, a man targeted police officers. He told them he was tired of cops targeting African Americans. He said he was driven by a mobile phone video of two black men being shot dead by white police officers in Louisiana and Minnesota.
READ MORE: Second US police shooting in two days sparks outrage
The Black Lives Matter movement has said he doesnt represent their cause, which they want to pursue in the non-violent manner as it has proved effective in this country in the past.
Wounded, angry and hurt
The latest incident has laid bare the racial divide that still exists in this country.
I think the president summed it up very aptly in his speech when he said: I know that Americans are struggling right now with what weve witnessed over the past week. First, the shootings in Minnesota and Baton Rouge, and the protests, then the targeting of police by the shooter here an act not just of demented violence but of racial hatred.
All of it has left us wounded, and angry, and hurt. Its as if the deepest faultlines of our democracy have suddenly been exposed, perhaps even widened. And although we know that such divisions are not new though they have surely been worse in even the recent past that offers us little comfort.
The president usually comes to these speeches embracing his role as comforter-in-chief.
Not this time.
Obama called for Americans to get uncomfortable. To have tough discussions about race relations in this country.
It has been striking how much time the president has spent over the past few days trying to explain to white America that there is a legitimate problem.
He has talked about the statistics that show African Americans and Latinos are much more likely to be stopped by police, arrested, given longer prison sentences for similar crimes and even given the death penalty more often.
Americas problem
You might be asking why the president thinks he needs to tell people there is a problem.
I can tell you that pretty simply by relaying a conversation I had with my Uber driver on the way to the airport.
He was an African-American man in his 50s. Hes lived in Washington, DC, his entire life. He told me hes had a gun put to his head twice by young punks and twice by police officers. He said he was much more afraid of the police officers.
Take a moment to think about that.
He trusted criminals with his very life more than the people who took an oath to uphold the law and keep him safe. That is central to the debate.
He told me about the two times the police stopped him, guns drawn because he fitted the description of someone who had just committed a violent crime. He described being handcuffed on the ground and thrown into the back of a police car with no explanation.
He told me a tale of police officers blatantly disrespecting him even after he realised they had the wrong man. He told me every single African-American man he knows has a similar story to tell. Every single one.
OPINION: Structural racism in the US wont diminish with time
For the record, I have never had police stop me, guns drawn and order me on the ground. Its hard for me to imagine the fear that would instill.
This is a deeply-rooted problem. I was raised to believe that the police were the good guys. I was never told to suspect them only honour them, listen to them. They were the authorities that kept us all safe. I still believe they have an incredibly hard job that, quite frankly, I couldnt do.
I have a friend who is a cop. He told me that he lives in fear that he will have to make a split-second decision that others will have the benefit of hindsight and days to judge him. He fears his instinct, if wrong, will send him to prison for life. He is a father to two young boys and he only worries about coming home to them. By every measure that is a tough job.
The African-American community is also afraid. My driver says his mother raised him to believe that the police have a licence to kill you. She stressed, even if she thought he was in the right, he needed to swallow his pride and stay quiet. She was afraid that the police would kill her child.
These are two very different experiences. They are real and they are everywhere. The president says that the solution is in having conversations. I have to say after the conversation I just had, I have to agree.
There are two Americas that really need to meet each other.
Na Hyang-wook faces storm of online criticism after saying 99 percent of his countrymen are like dogs and pigs.
A few days ago, Na Hyang-wook would have been getting ready for a convivial evening out with reporters from the Kyunghyang Shinmun, a left-leaning national paper in South Korea.
A chance, perhaps, for this 47-year-old member of the countrys bureaucratic elite to give journalists a steer on coverage, a political tidbit or two, in his capacity as head of policy and planning at South Koreas ministry of education.
Not any more, he isnt.
Whatever the rules of engagement established ahead of their private dinner, the newspaper says its reporters were so outraged by his comments that they felt compelled to report them.
They claim they even gave him the chance to retract them only to be rebuffed.
So just how bad could it have been?
Bad enough for Na to experience a particularly brutal round of online shaming, and a parliamentary grilling on Monday, at which members of ruling and opposition parties lined up to chastise him.
Na told the reporters, in what he now says was a fug of drunkenness and fatigue, just how he viewed the overwhelming majority of the society whose childrens education was his chief responsibility.
Ninety-nine percent, he said, were equivalent to dogs and pigs, requiring only to be fed and kept alive.
Far from encouraging greater social mobility, he argued for a caste system, on the basis that people arent born equal.
He also accused the public of hypocrisy in grieving over the recent death of a 19-year-old subway worker.
This was a young man crushed by an oncoming train while rushing to complete his task seen as representative of overworked, underpaid contract workers around the country.
All that would be bad enough. But it came at a time when the divisions within South Korean society are a major theme of public debate.
Much of it has centred on the distinction between being born with a gold spoon or a dirt spoon in this stratified society described by some online as Hell Korea.
Hardly surprising, then, that Nas comments have provoked a storm of online criticism. One commenter on this article wrote: High-ranking government officials or lawmakers probably think the same way. They just dont say it.
This cartoon depicts what it calls the evolution of Hell Koreas people.
The education minister has been unsparing in his criticism, saying there could be no excuse for inappropriate remarks and promising stern punishment.
But that might not be enough to avert the feeling that a widespread resentment of South Koreas elite class has been entrenched by the shocking, drunken candour of one of its own.
Dont leave me here, take me back home with you, pleaded the 17-year-old Egyptian prisoner of the Northern Alliance.
Egyptian war correspondent Yehia Ghanem continues his series of stories on the wars he has covered and the people he has met along the way with his account of meeting the legendary Afghan leader Ahmad Shah Massoud and interviewing a 17-year-old Egyptian prisoner of the Northern Alliance. Read the rest of his series, Caged, here.
Panjshir Valley, Afghanistan Autumn 1997
Dont leave me here, take me back home with you, the trembling 17-year-old pleaded as he held on to my arm.
I could do nothing other than stare back at him.
We were on a forgotten island in the middle of a river in the Panjshir Valley, 150km north of Kabul in north-central Afghanistan.
The moment Id sat down with him, he had started to cry. Hed learned his lesson, he said, and would never again set foot in this strange land if, that was, he was ever allowed to leave it.
Meeting Ahmad Shah Massoud
Weeks before, I had decided to move locations. For a long time, Id been reporting on the war raging between the Taliban and the Northern Alliance from the Taliban side of that battle. It felt like it was time to cover the Northern Alliance.
Eventually, Id settled in the Panjshir Valley near the Hindu Kush mountain range. It was the bastion of the legendary Northern Alliance leader, Ahmad Shah Massoud. I would often watch him as he walked through the valley. On one of these occasions, he stopped to talk.
During our discussion, I told him about how, during my time with the Taliban, Id had a chance to meet with and talk to some of their prisoners. Among them were members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, who had either been military advisers to the Northern Alliance or had fought alongside them.
He listened to me attentively as I told him of this, and then told me that it was time to sleep.
I was surprised as it was still early. But before we parted to sleep, he promised me that he would answer my questions about whether Iranians had been fighting alongside the Northern Alliance in the morning.
A little before 5am the next day, I found myself sitting beside Massoud in his Humvee as we drove across rough terrain towards the Panjshir River. When we arrived, Massoud instructed his men to take me to a small island we could see from the river bank.
Before he left, Massoud turned around and told me: You can spend the whole day on the island and then we will talk about the Iranians when we meet tonight.
Ismails tears
I couldnt work out what this unexpected trip to an island could possibly have to do with our conversation the night before. But when we reached it, I froze. There were young men scattered all over. Some sat in groups; others on their own. Some looked as young as 16; few could have been older than 20. And most seemed to be Arab.
The guards agreed when I politely asked them if I could speak to their young prisoners in private. The first gestured to me.
Seventeen-year-old Ismail was from Egypt.
You are Egyptian, arent you? he asked me, part excited, part concerned.
I am. How could you tell? I asked him, smiling.
Are you with the security? he asked me without answering my question.
Do I look like security? I replied.
I assured him that I was, in fact, a journalist reporting for the Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram. And then, to reassure him further, I produced my press credentials and showed him my passport, in which my profession and employer was recorded.
He burst into tears. I hugged him as he cried unconsolably.
We sat under a tree together for some time before I was finally able to calm him down.
What brought you to Afghanistan? I asked Ismail.
I swear to God, they are the ones who brought me here, he told me, trembling.
Listen to me, Ismail, I am not against you, although I am against you being here, I said. Fear me not son, I just want you to assist me by answering my questions so that I can try to help you.
I saw the guards treating you with respect. Are you journalists always treated like this? he asked.
Not always, son, I answered. However, I believe they are treating me this way because they saw I am being taken around by their leader, Ahmad Shah Massoud, I laughed.
Are you a friend of the Amr Sahib [a Dari title given to Massoud that means commanding master]? he asked excitedly.
Not really, but I think the man likes me. However, lets not waste time. Which part of Egypt are you from? How did you end up here and what for? I asked him.
It was the beginning of some of the most heartbreaking interviews I have ever conducted during my career as a journalist.
Chronicle of a Caged Journalist is a series of excerpts from a forthcoming book.
The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial policy.
Prevent policy limits freedom of expression in the classroom and leads to Muslims self censoring, rights group says.
The UKs counterterrorism strategy is stifling childrens freedom in school classrooms, infringing young peoples right to privacy and causing Muslim pupils to self-censor out of fear of being reported to authorities, according to a new human rights report.
Rights Watch UK called on Wednesday for the programme known as Prevent, which aims to stop people becoming terrorists or supporting terrorism, to be abolished.
Prevent is leaving a generation of young Britons fearful of exercising their rights to freedom of expression and belief, said Yasmine Ahmed, the NGOs director.
It is also proving counter-productive, driving children to discuss issues related to terrorism, religion, and identity outside the classroom and online where simplistic narratives are promoted and go unchallenged.
Prevent was introduced in British schools in July 2015.
Teachers have a legal duty to try and stop students from being lured into terrorism, and schools are expected to have in place policies that identify children who are at risk and intervene as appropriate.
But the programme has before been criticised for racially profiling young British Muslims.
READ MORE: The legacy of the 7/7 London bombings
Our research has found that Muslim children across the United Kingdom are self-censoring for fear of being reported, said Ahmed.
We have uncovered a number of instances where children have been referred to Prevent for legitimately exercising their right to freedom of expression in situations where they pose no threat to society whatsoever.
Critics say that the programme has seen some teachers misidentify cases where the child is not at risk, leading to an atmosphere of fear and nervousness.
It is completely unacceptable that the government is collecting, retaining and potentially sharing information on children in the United Kingdom without their consent and with no apparent regulation and oversight, particularly in instances where these children are not even accused or suspected of engaging in unlawful activity, Ahmed said.
This is a clear violation of the right to privacy.
During May and June, the NGO carried out 26 interviews with: parents and students; teachers and school governors; serving and retired members of the police; a member of parliament and local councillors; union members; academics and representatives of religious institutions
Nine-year-old questioned
Case studies in the 59-page report include a nine-year-old boy, who was referred by his east-London school for wearing a T-shirt that read: I want to be like Abu Bakr al-Siddique, a figure in the Islamic tradition said to be one of the first converts to the religion.
Social services staff asked the child whether the T-shirt was in reference to the hardline Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) armed group, and questioned whether he thought Muslims or Christians go to hell after they die.
READ MORE: Islamophobia surges amid a politics of fear The childs mother said that social services recorded a caution against her son, but it was not made clear to her what the caution related to.
In another case, two police officers visited 17-year-old Rahmaan Mohammadi, from north London, after his school referred him for expressing solidarity with people in the occupied Palestinian territories by wearing a scarf and badge, and by handing out leaflets about the humanitarian emergency in Gaza.
The officers said they were questioning Mohammadi because of what you have done in school, and asked him whether he was a Sunni or Shia Muslim.
OPINION: UK counterterrorism strategy just does not prevent
If you look at all those people that have gone to ISIS [ISIL], its because they have been withdrawn from society that they found these different societies on the Internet, Mohammadi said.
[Prevent] leads people underground or online, or because they cannot talk [about] stuff freely. [Instead] youre looking stuff up on the internet, where most radicalisation takes place.
In another case, a nursery teacher misheard when a boy, aged four, described what he had drawn and thought he said a cooker-bomb, not cucumber. Instead of consulting the childs parents first, staff contacted his mother to ask for a signature on a formal referral record.
To treat the best interests of the child as a primary consideration, no consideration appears to have been given to any investigation of child safety [such as inquiry with his parents at the relevant time] before moving straight to a referral under the Prevent strategy, said Rights Watch.
Prevent has also ruffled teachers. In March, the largest teachers union called on the government to develop alternative counterterrorism strategies, saying that evidence shows extremist groups recruit on social media, as opposed to on school premises.
Kevin Courtney, the deputy secretary of the National Union of Teachers, told Rights Watch: Prevent isnt doing a good job at keeping children safe because it is not allowing an open discussion, which is crucial for development.
Prevent risks alienating communities
The 40m-a-year programme ($53m) was introduced by the Labour government after the 2005 London bombings and has been continued by successive administrations.
Prevent began as a benign means of enabling those involved in counterterrorism to identify and approach those who had found themselves involved in terrorist activity and possibly regretted it, Peter Carter, a barrister with Doughty Street Chambers specialising in terrorism and international human rights law, told Al Jazeera.
OPINION: Britains counterterror strategy just got worse
It has now developed into a programme which is more extensive, more intrusive and more intimidating. By doing so, it risks alienating sections of our society who would wish to be law abiding. Attempts to suppress ideas will be counterproductive. Attempts to suppress the discussion of ideas which fall short of encouraging or inciting violence are inconsistent with the rule of law.
There is a risk that we revert to a system which seeks out and suppresses heresy. Protecting individuals and society itself from violence is an important part of law enforcement; suppressing ideas which are subversive but not inciting violence is not.
Carter acknowledged that the UK has a terrorism problem.
It includes Islamic terrorism and right-wing racist terrorism. The latter tends to target specific communities and creates general fear in those communities with the risk that confidence in the law is undermined. Sensitive acquisition of intelligence and intelligent use of it is desirable.
Children need to be protected from insidiously violent ideas and images, he said.
READ MORE: Prevent A story of community resentment
That can best be done in safe domestic or educational [including religious education] establishments in which the valid intellectual inquiry can be encouraged and violent propaganda can be exposed and debunked.
Regarding the infringement of privacy, Carter dismissed the argument that if someone has nothing to hide, he should not be afraid.
NEW OFSTED REPORT The analysis from Rights Watch coincided with the release of a report by Ofsted, the UKs education watchdog, that called for better training of staff under the Prevent programme. In one case study highlighted by Oftsed, a college student was able to circumvent computer firewalls and access an ISIS [ISIL] video showing a person being beheaded without intervention by staff or fellow students. The college reported the incident under Prevent but the learner [student] showed no remorse about what she had done, Ofsted said. The learner received no support or counselling from the college and was not reprimanded in any way.
Unless citizens are diligent and fearful about unnecessary infringements on free speech, society is at risk Authority generally likes to reduce individual rights. We must all be vigilant to avoid that, he said.
In a government-issued guide last updated in July 2015, extremism in the Prevent strategy is defined as, vocal or active opposition to fundamental British values, including democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty and mutual respect and tolerance of different faiths and beliefs.
Rachel Robinson, policy officer at the human rights group Liberty, told Al Jazeera: If we want to effectively challenge violent extremism, we should be encouraging inclusion and open debate safe in the knowledge that our values of tolerance and fairness are stronger than those of hatred and violence.
The Prevent programme has targeted innocent children for everything from asking questions and developing political awareness to drawing pictures and chatting to school friends, Robinson said.
By forcing teachers to police childhood, Prevent has damaged the once trusting relationships that play a crucial part in safeguarding. By alienating young people, it increases the risk of radicalisation.
Follow Anealla Safdar on Twitter: @anealla
Srinagar, India-administered Kashmir Despite appeals by rights groups to stop the practice, Indian armed forces have continued to use pellet guns to quell protesters, injuring at least 100 people in the recent violence that broke out in Indiand-administered Kashmir.
Inside the capital Srinagars Shri Maharaja Hari Singh hospital, doctors told Al Jazeera that they had performed 100 eye surgeries in the past four days.
All of them could lose their eyesight, one senior doctor told Al Jazeera on the condition of anonymity.
First introduced to Kashmir by duck-hunting British expeditions, pellet guns send in one shot nearly 600 high velocity ball bearings made of lead.
In Kashmir, pellet guns have been used to quell protests for a long time.
Police say it is a non-lethal weapon that helps breaking protests without casualty, but rights groups reject the assertion, saying it blinds people and must be banned.
In the latest tensions, the youngest victim was a four-year-old girl.
Fearing profiling and reprisals of injured youths by police, hospital officials have assigned serial numbers to pellet gun victims to hide their identity. This development came after it emerged that undercover police officers have been roaming in hospitals hunting for injured protesters.
I was out to get medicine for my mother when a group of soldiers appeared suddenly and fired on me. There were no protests at that time, an 18-year-old student of Budgam district told Al Jazeera.
Nine-year-old Tamana Ashraf of Ganderbal district is another victim being treated at the Srinagar hospital.
She was sitting at the window in her house when pellets whizzed by, hitting her left eye, her mother Shamima told Al Jazeera.
I saw a small iron ball in her eye. When we tried to hospitalise her, police stopped us and beat us up. I was crying to see what they had done to my daughter. Luckily we managed to reach here, she said.
Follow Baba Tamim on Twitter: @babatamim
Beijings loss in the South China Sea arbitration may have impacts on Chinas row with Japan in the East China Sea.
J Berkshire Miller is the director of the Council on International Policy.
On July 12, the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague issued its ruling on the high-profile case brought by the Philippines over its dispute with China regarding the right of Manila to exploit natural resources in the Exclusive Economic Zone extending from territory it claims in the South China Sea.
The ruling awarded to the Philippines has been widely viewed as an objective an authoritative denial of Beijings expansionist territorial claims in the South China Sea based on its so-called nine-dash line.
But while tensions in the South China Sea have been building incrementally over the past several months, there should also be significant attention paid to the simmering row between Japan and China in the East China Sea.
Multifaceted tensions
Tensions in the East China Sea are multifaceted and focus on more than just the territorial spat between Tokyo and Beijing over the disputed Senkaku islands, known as the Diaoyu islands in China.
The two sides are also at loggerheads over resource issues in the East China Sea as Beijing continues to inch closer to Japans Exclusive Economic Zone for natural gas exploration.
ALSO READ: Chinas peripheral diplomacy disaster
Tokyo has levied accusations at Beijing for constructing natural gas projects that, while not technically located within its Exclusive Economic Zone, would likely siphon gas from Japanese seabed nearby the boundary line.
Within the past couple of months, there have been a number of troubling incidents that demonstrate the fragility of situation in the East China Sea. by
Meanwhile, tensions continue to build unabated in the waters surrounding the Senkaku islands. Within the past couple of months, there have been a number of troubling incidents that demonstrate the fragility of situation in the East China Sea.
Last month, a Chinese naval frigate entered the contiguous zone of Japans waters surrounding the Senkaku islands an unprecedented ratcheting up of tensions.
Previously, incursions into the contiguous zone the buffer between a states Exclusive Economic Zone and territorial waters were limited to Chinese coastguard vessels or commercial ships.
Magnifying concern about this incident was the simultaneous incursion by three Russian naval ships and fears of collusion between Moscow and Beijing in order to justify Chinas breaking of the status quo.
Last month, China made another unprecedented move by dispatching one of its naval spy vessels through Japanese territorial waters only the second such move since the end of World War II.
While countries are allowed to traverse through other states territorial waters for innocent passage (as claimed by Beijing), they are not permitted to do so if they are engaging in acts of espionage. The incident occurred in waters near Kagoshima prefecture in Japans south, far from the Senkaku islands.
Despite this, the calculated move by Beijing is linked to the territorial row and is a sign that China wants to introduce a more diverse array of tactics to challenge Japans administration of the Senkaku.
The introduction of Chinese naval vessels to the dispute is a risky move, especially considering that there still is no crisis avoidance mechanism agreed to by both sides. Chinese vessels continue to make repeated and routine incursions both within Japans territorial sea and its contiguous zone surrounding the Senkaku Islands.
Beijing also continues to significantly increase the capabilities of its coastguard and has mastered the art of rebranding its former naval vessels and ushering them into the coastguard.
Moreover, China has plans to construct two mega-ships for its coastguard which have a 10,000 tonne displacement making them the largest such vessels in the world. All of these moves are aimed at forcing Japans hand to make concessions in the East China Sea.
ALSO READ: New dawn for Philippine-China relations?
The potential for an unintended clash or incident continues to build under these conditions. Meanwhile, the crisis management talks focused on the maritime and air domains continue to be held up because of disagreements over the inclusion of the territorial space over the Senkaku Islands.
In November 2013, Beijing unilaterally announced an Air Defence Identification Zone (ADIZ) in the East China Sea, which covered the skies over a significant amount territory including the Senkaku Islands. Chinas ADIZ in the East China Sea also overlapped with a pre-existing Japanese ADIZ.
Tensions in the airspace in the East China Sea have resulted in a record number of scrambles from Japans Air Self-Defence Force (ASDF) over the past several months.
There have also been a few recent troubling incidents that nearly involved clashes between the ASDF and Chinese fighter jets.
There is concern that tensions may increase following the Permanent Court of Arbitration decision in the South China Sea as Beijing looks to apply pressure against Japan and its US ally which is also helping other states in Southeast Asia as they try to resist Chinese encroachment.
In the coming months, it will be critical for Tokyo to both prepare against Chinese provocations and to maintain its focus on reducing the likelihood of a clash with Beijing in the East China Sea.
J Berkshire Miller is the director of the Council on International Policy and is a fellow on East Asia for the EastWest Institute.
The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial policy.
Iran is stronger and more forthright in the region today than it was before the deal was agreed.
Luke Coffey is a research fellow specialising in transatlantic and Eurasian security at a Washington DC based think tank. He previously served as a special adviser to the British defence secretary and was a commissioned officer in the United States army.
This week marks the first anniversary of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, also known as the Iran Deal.
In July 2015, it was a bad deal. In July 2016, its still a bad deal. The only difference now is that Iran is stronger and more forthright in the region today than it was before the deal was agreed.
This deeply flawed deal has bolstered Irans economy, increased the military threat it poses to the region, and will leave future US presidents in a weaker position to confront and roll back Tehrans nuclear weapons programme.
As the months now turn into years it is worth recapping why the deal was so bad in the first place.
A terrible deal
First, it didnt achieve the originally stated goal of the international community, which was to stop Iran from ever getting a nuclear weapon.
Rather than cutting off all paths to a nuclear weapon, the deal signed last July only temporarily slows down Irans progress towards this goal.
Secondly, under the terms of the deal, Iran regained access to about $100bn in unfrozen assets. Its important to note that these unfrozen assets do not include the hundreds of billions of dollars that Iran will receive over time as a result of international economic sanctions being lifted.
ALSO READ: After the nuclear deal Iran eyes S Caucasus
European and United States companies were jumping at the opportunities to do business in Iran before the ink was barely dry on the agreement.
Even US Secretary of State John Kerry admitted that it is likely some of the money will go to funding Irans regional proxy war and terrorism.
Thirdly, important restrictions of the deal end after 10, 15 and 20 years.
For example, restrictions on uranium enrichment expire after 15 years. Restrictions on the production of heavy water expire after 15 years. Restrictions on uranium stockpiles expire after 15 years. Containment and surveillance on centrifuge rotor tubes and bellows expires after 20 years.
Fourthly, the inspections regime is not as strong has it has been suggested. International Atomic Energy Agency only has 24/7 access to Irans declared nuclear sites.
If the IAEA suspects nuclear activity at a location not explicitly stated in the Iran Deal it could take as much as 24 days before inspectors are allowed to visit the site. In fact, using certain delaying tactics, as the Iranians have in the past, it is possible that Tehran could stall access to inspectors for months.
Nothing in the past 12 months has indicated that Iran is becoming a responsible actor in the Middle East because of the deal. In fact, the contrary is true. by
Finally, under the deal the United Nations arms embargo ends in five years and ballistic missile restrictions are lifted in eight years.
This will allow Iran to upgrade its conventional weapons through imports from foreign suppliers and enable it to more easily arm its foreign allies and proxies.
Nothing has changed
Nothing in the past 12 months has indicated that Iran is becoming a responsible actor in the Middle East because of the deal. In fact, the contrary is true.
A week before Adoption Day the day that all sides commit to implement the terms of the deal Iran launched its new long-range ballistic missile called the Emad.
Iran followed that October 2015 launch with another in November during which Iran reportedly tested the medium-range Ghadr-110 missile.
Hardly a sign of goodwill.
ALSO READ: Why the US-Iran talks will succeed
These launches were a violation of Irans obligations under UN Security Council Resolution 1929, which states that Iran shall not undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons.
Iran continues to stoke the war in Yemen. Iranian military officials have threatened to topple the ruling family of Bahrain. Iran still behaves recklessly in the Gulf and threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz as recently as May.
Perhaps it is in Iraq and Syria where Irans nefarious meddling is most pronounced. Hundreds of Iranian soldiers are fighting in Syria to help prop up Bashar al-Assad making a bad situation worse.
Iran has also invested heavily in terms of manpower, money and equipment to help Shia militias in Iraq.
In some cases these militias have been accused of gross human rights abuses against local Sunnis.
A long history
The Iran Deal was driven by a political timeline and not a national security concerns.
There was no reason why the deal had to be finalised in the summer of 2015 other than to help build US President Barack Obamas presidential legacy.
While the Europeans sat by idly and the Russians gleefully, John Kerry did a deal with Tehran that will come to haunt him in the future.
Today, the world faces have a 21st-century Iran longing for the days of the Achaemenid Empire.
It is through the lens of this long history that Iran sees its future this is something the West fails to understand.
If I was an Israeli or a Sunni Arab leader in the Middle East, I would be frightfully scared of what the future holds for Irans activities in the region.
Luke Coffey is a research fellow specialising in transatlantic and Eurasian security at a Washington DC-based think-tank. He previously served as a special adviser to the British defence secretary and was a commissioned officer in the United States Army.
The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial policies.
If you must read Dennis Ross Doomed to Succeed: The US-Israel-Relationship from Truman to Obama, take some sedatives because you are doomed to scream in agony.
A survey of seven decades of US diplomacy towards Israel, the book is a reflection of the authors own mindset as much as it is about the mindset of those who manage, nurture and protect the special relationship between the United States and Israel. And its nauseating.
Ross doesnt hold back. After serving four decades in successive US administrations, he is clearly eager to set the record straight, not only about Washingtons approach to Israel, but about his unshaken loyalty to the Jewish State.
Like Colonel Nathan Jessup in A Few Good Men, Dennis the menace is eager to reveal his role on behalf of Israel, and the book is just a way of leading him to his desired destination.
It surpasses his last book The Missing Peace, to reveal not only his personal experiences but also his inner thinking. It is hypocritical and avowedly one-sided.
Three objectives
The book is set up to demonstrate three main points:
1 Israel is always right.
2 It follows that the US is right only when it sides with Israel, and also defends its belligerence, and rewards it for its aggression and obstruction.
3 American leaders dont learn from the lessons of their predecessors who repeatedly, naively and erroneously give weight to Arab positions on Israel, when according to Ross, Palestine is not the Arabs priority.
ALSO READ: Netanyahu, Sisi and zero problems diplomacy
This is no surprise coming from Ross. After all, he is the head of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committees auxiliary think-tank, The Washington Institute for Near East Studies, and co-chairman of the Iran Task Force of the warmongering Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, a group that promotes relations between the US and Israeli militaries and has been critical of the Obama administrations nuclear negotiations with Iran.
Ross reviews the record of each administration's dealings with Israel to prove the above points, and when the record doesn't support his claim, he distorts it through acrobatic selectivity and subjective interpretations. by
What is shocking is how far he has gone to prove his point.
Ross reviews the record of each administrations dealings with Israel to prove the above points, and when the record doesnt support his claim, he distorts it through acrobatic selectivity and subjective interpretations.
For example, when President Jimmy Carter accuses Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin of deceiving him, Ross insinuates that Carter misrepresents the record, or at best has a poor memory.
When President Ronald Reagan accuses Begin of lying to him, Ross makes the case for lost in translation; the president simply misunderstood the Israeli premier.
Remember, Israel is always right and its leaders are holier than thou.
So when Begins successor, the obstinate, obstructionist and deceiving Yitzhak Shamir lies even more, Ross dances around the issue to show that Reagan was perhaps harsh in his interpretation.
Likewise, when President George HW Bush is angered by a lying Shamir, who is widely known to have done everything in his power to torpedo the convening of the 1991 Madrid International Peace Conference, Ross explains how the Bush administration didnt appreciate the Israeli psyche.
Insensitive to fragile Israel
This line of reasoning is prolific throughout the book: America just doesnt understand the complexity of Israels political psychology and is therefore inconsiderate to its needs.
Apparently this applies to Eisenhower, Nixon, Carter and Bush Senior And it also applies to Clinton and Netanyahu, as well as Obama and Netanyahu.
While they have proved supportive of Israel, they just dont know how to babysit the insecure state.
ALSO READ: On Netanyahu, peace and the West
But Ross is comfortable recalling how American leaders have mistrusted the Palestinians because in his eyes Yasser Arafat was the ultimate liar the missing piece in Rosss equation of peace. No attempt at contextualising or interpreting the psyche of the Palestinians who have been dispossessed and occupied for decades.
Like any book that recounts diplomatic history without the necessary wider strategic context, Doomed to Succeed is doomed to fail in explaining the contradictions between rhetoric and policy. When Ross does contextualise, he is deliberately selective, and notably to push for a dubious point he is making.
Considerate to the undeserving Arabs
For example, Ross argues that the Arabs have generally got their way with Washingtons leaders at Israels expense.
He claims Washington sold the Arabs sophisticated weapons despite Israels objections, while the US repeatedly denied Israel weapons they asked for, jeopardising Israels security.
The delusional Ross doesn't see how regional hostility to US complicity with Israel has been a constant rallying cause for violent extremist groups. by
Nowhere does he explains how, thanks to its European and American backers, Israel has defeated and rolled back its Arab enemies in each and every war.
Or, that the US suspended arms only when Israel used US weapons offensively in contradiction to the conditions of their sale. Or for that matter, that the Arabs buy these expensive weapons, while Israel pockets them.
In one astounding case, Ross recalls how during a National Security Council debate on providing Israel with more sophisticated weapons, one official said that the timing wasnt right (Israel was being bad again) and besides, it already had enough weapons to defeat all its Arab neighbours combined.
But Ross, Israels knight in shining armour, wouldnt have any of it. Furious at his colleagues logic, he reprimanded him for not understanding the Arabs or for that matter, deterrence!
Basically, to deter the Arabs you must make it clear that you can obliterate them beyond defeat, and to scare them shitless in the process, in order to ensure they make no demands.
No such deterrence of Israel is needed even though it basically initiated most of the wars with the exception of the 1973 war when the Arabs tried to roll back Israels 1967 gains. (I realise this point will draw counter arguments, but I shall leave that for another day.)
At any rate, I honestly dont have the nerves or the patience to comb through all of Ross falsehoods, distortions and spins point by point. So flagrant are his claims, refuting them here requires the kind of language that is not publishable.
The strategic assets
In short, it is true that a number of Arab leaders did look for US protection and help in curbing the aggression of its client state, Israel. And yes, Israel was eager to be Americas regional and strategic asset but only on its own terms.
At the end of the day, Israel created far more trouble for the US in the Middle East than it provided solutions and opportunities. Consequently, the US created greater trouble for the region. Ariel Sharons reoccupation of the West Bank in 2002 and Bushs War in Iraq in 2003 are good examples of the Israelification of US policy in the region.
No, not everything can or should be blamed on the US, Israel or their complicity in the Middle East region. But judging from the opinion polls, including the so-called friendly states, the majority of the Arab public, have consistently seen the US and Israel (perhaps less so during the Obama administration) to be the leading menace to regional stability and security.
The delusional Ross doesnt see how regional hostility to US complicity with Israel has been a constant rallying cause for violent extremist groups. And that official policy might reflect the narrow interests of the ruling elites, much of todays problems in the Middle East are caused by neglecting the Arab public opinion.
Thanks to Israel, The US strategic asset, and to Israels own strategic assets in Washington, the likes of Ross and his Zionist pals who have influenced and eventually come to dominate US policy-thinking towards the Middle East beginning with Ronald Reagan, the US-Israel relationship has been elevated to new highs. And why ultimately, for those same reasons, it is doomed to backfire against both.
That is unless other voices, Jewish and other, continue to rise and advance, as did Bernie Sanders and his supporters in recent months. We should all take comfort in the fact that the influence of these moderates within the American establishment and the Jewish community, while modest is also growing.
Marwan Bishara is the senior political analyst at Al Jazeera. Follow him on Facebook.
The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial policy.
Egypt dismisses Amnesty report as biased after being accused of using abduction and torture to crack down on dissent.
Hundreds of Egyptians have been abducted and tortured by the countrys security services as part of a clampdown on dissent since early 2015, according to Amnesty International.
A report released on Wednesday by the UK-based rights watchdog revealed a trend of disappearances at the hands of the state, targeting students, political activists and protesters, including children as young as 14.
Enforced disappearance has become a key instrument of state policy in Egypt. Anyone who dares to speak out is at risk, said Philip Luther, Amnestys Middle East and North Africa director.
READ MORE: UN Disproportionate crackdown on dissent in Egypt
In a statement on its official Facebook page on Wednesday, the Egyptian foreign ministry dismissed Amnestys report, describing the group as biased and driven by political agendas.
Any objective reader can tell instantly that the organisations reports depend on sources that reflect the opinion of one side and people that are in a state of hostility towards the Egyptian government.
It ignores the court rulings on the cases mentioned and does not base its information on materials and clear principals of the Egyptian law and constitution.
Egyptian authorities have previously denied they practise torture, but say there have been isolated incidents of abuse and those responsible have been prosecuted.
In the report, Amnesty says an average of three to four people have been disappearing each day, citing Egyptian non-governmental organisations.
The National Council for Human Rights, the countrys official rights group, said on July 3 it had raised 266 cases of enforced disappearances with the interior ministry between April 2015 and the end of March, according to the report.
Many of them have since been accounted for.
Horrendous abuse
Wael Abbas, an Egyptian blogger speaking to Al Jazeera from Egypts capital, Cairo, said human rights organisations in the country were being targeted.
They have frozen the assets of many organisations working inside Egypt. They have banned the activists managing these organisations from travelling and even frozen their bank accounts, said Abbas.
We have people being stopped in the streets, on the metros. Police officers ask people to hand over their phones and then check their Facebook accounts. If they have anti-regime material, they arrest them.
READ MORE: Egyptian court jails scores for islands protests
Amnestys report documents 17 cases, including those of five children who had disappeared for periods of between several days to seven months.
One of them, who was 14 in September, had been subjected to horrendous abuse, including being repeatedly raped with a wooden stick in order to extract a false confession.
Other Egyptians attested to having been blindfolded, handcuffed, brutally beaten, given electric shocks on their bodies and being suspended naked by their wrists and ankles for hours.
Amnesty also criticised European governments and the US, saying they blindly supply security and police equipment to Egypt, and have appeared overly reluctant to criticise the deteriorating human rights conditions in Egypt.
Reports of a crackdown on dissent have intensified since Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, then head of the armed forces, ousted Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohamed Morsi in July 2013.
China rejects South China Sea tribunal ruling and says it has right to set up air defence zone if threatened.
The Chinese government has vowed to take all necessary measures to protect its sovereignty in the South China Sea and said it reserved the right to set up an air defence zone, a day after an international tribunal ruled China had no legal basis for its expansive claims in the region.
On whether China will set up an air defence zone over the South China Sea, what we have to make clear first is that China has the right to, Liu Zhenmin, the vice foreign minister, told reporters in Beijing on Wednesday.
But whether we need one in the South China Sea depends on the level of of threats we face.
US officials have previously said that they feared China may respond to the ruling by declaring an air defence identification zone (ADIZ) in the South China Sea, a move that would sharply escalate tensions in the disputed territory.
In 2013, China declared an ADIZ in the East China Sea. That zone is not recognised by the US and others.
Liu also said that the Philippines was to blame for stirring up trouble, as he introduced a policy paper calling the islands in the strategic sea lane Chinas inherent territory.
His comments came a day after, the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague rejected Chinas claims to economic rights across large swaths of the South China Sea.
The tribunal also found that Beijing had aggravated the seething regional dispute and violated the Philippines maritime rights by building up artificial islands that destroyed coral reefs, and by disrupting fishing and oil exploration.
There was no legal basis for China to claim historic rights to resources within the sea areas falling within the nine-dash line, the Court said on Tuesday, referring to a demarcation line on a 1947 map of the sea.
The South China Sea is a resource-rich strategic waterway through which more than $5 trillion of world trade is shipped each year.
China, which boycotted the case brought by the Philippines, rejected the ruling, saying its islands had exclusive economic zones and the Chinese people have more than 2,000 years of history of activities there.
Chinese President Xi Jinping said his country will not accept the decision, adding that China under any circumstances, will not be affected by the award, Xinhua state news agency reported.
READ MORE: Tensions ahead of South China Sea ruling
Al Jazeeras Adrian Brown, reporting from Beijing, said: Its fair to assume that the Chinese government knew which way this was going to go.
Within minutes of the decision, the Chinese government released a fairly detailed statement restating why China always believes these islands belong to them, so now the question is really what is going to happen in the coming days.
China has sovereignty over the islands in the South China Sea, including the Spratlys and Paracels, and Beijings position is consistent with international law and practice, the Chinese foreign ministry said.
The United States, which China has accused of fuelling tensions and militarising the region with patrols and exercises, said the ruling should be treated as final and binding.
We certainly would urge all parties not to use this as an opportunity to engage in escalatory or provocative action, White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters in a briefing.
Al Jazeeras Marga Ortigas, reporting from Manila, said the Philippine government has called for calm in terms of how to move forward after the decision despite now having gained leverage with this court ruling.
President Rodrigo Duterte seems to want to retain friendly relationship and open ties with China. However, there is concern among many Filipinos here that its current government might be a little too friendly, Ortigas said.
REPORTERS NOTEBOOK: Taking a cruise to disputed South China Sea islands
Perfecto Yasay, the Philippine foreign secretary, said in Manila that the milestone decision was an important contribution to efforts in addressing disputes in the sea.
The Philippines reiterates its abiding commitment to efforts of pursuing the peaceful resolution and management of disputes with the view of promoting and enhancing peace and stability in the region, he said.
The ruling is expected to further increase tensions in the region, where Chinas increased military assertiveness has spread concern among its smaller neighbours and is a point of confrontation with the US.
It could also spur Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei, which also have overlapping claims in the South China Sea, to file similar claims.
This award represents a devastating legal blow to Chinas jurisdictional claims in the South China Sea, Ian Storey, of Singapores ISEAS Yusof Ishak Institute, told the Reuters news agency.
China will respond with fury, certainly in terms of rhetoric and possibly through more aggressive actions at sea, he said.
US diplomatic, military and intelligence officers told Reuters that Chinas reaction to the courts decision would largely determine how other claimants, as well as the US, respond.
In China, social media users reacted with outrage to the ruling.
It was ours in the past, is now and will remain so in the future, wrote one user on microblogging site Weibo. Those who encroach on our Chinas territory will die no matter how far away they are.
Spreading fast on social media in the Philippines was the use of the term Chexit the publics desire for Chinese vessels to leave nearby waters.
Al Jazeeras Jamela Alindogan, reporting from Northern Luzon, near the disputed Scarborough Shoal, said Filipino fishermen affected by the dispute have welcomed the decision, but are awaiting for Philippine President Dutertes help in improving their livelihood.
Key to lasting peace in Colombia with FARC rebels may lie in the story of chocolate-producing peasant farmers.
Bogota, Colombia A chocolate-producing community of peasant farmers who faced deadly violence after declaring themselves neutral in Colombias five-decades-long civil war could hold the key to a lasting peace as a historic ceasefire approaches this month.
The San Jose de Apartado peace community is the subject of a timely documentary by British anthropologist Gwen Burnyeat.
Timely because Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos and Marxist guerrilla leaders of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) will sign a historic peace deal in a few weeks after four years of talks in Cuba.
The often dirty war between guerrilla groups and government forces and their paramilitary allies has claimed more than 220,000 mostly civilian lives, and displaced six million more since peasant farmers first took up arms over land inequality in the mid-1960s.
War and peace: Colombias unreconciled narratives
Since it was established in 1997, at least a quarter of the 1,200-strong San Jose peace community has been assassinated, mostly by government-backed paramilitary death squads.
Burnyeat, who spent two years living among the cacao farmers, says Chocolate for Peace, her documentary, was inspired by the communitys ability to sustain a cooperative spirit amid such chilling political violence.
Signing a peace deal is one thing, but Colombians are wondering how peace will happen post-conflict, she told Al Jazeera.
The San Jose community has been doing that for 19 years since they declared themselves neutral. Their experience will be essential considering that change is going to take generations to achieve, Burnyeat explained after a showing of the documentary to university students in the capital, Bogota.
Mauricio Rodriguez, the former Colombian ambassador to the UK and a close ally of President Santos, agreed.
Peace, he told Al Jazeera, is much more than signing an agreement. It is a daily task for many years for all citizens and the state rebuilding trust, healing wounds, strengthening institutions, especially in remote areas mostly affected by the conflict.
The community in the northwest region of Uraba has had more recognition abroad for choosing neutrality over flight than at home among war-fatigued Colombians, said Burnyeat. Every Saturday, she helps to run a peace breakfast where Bogotanos listen to the experience of San Jose farmers over a hot chocolate. Santos has promised to attend.
Kirsty Brimelow, chairwoman of the Bar Human Rights Committee, who has just returned from visiting the community, found them in a cautious mood.
The barrister mediated for the community when in 2005 the army and paramilitaries killed eight people, including their outspoken leader and three children, among them Santiago Tuberquia, an 18-month-old boy.
Then Colombian president Alvaro Uribe justified the killings by labeling the San Jose community as guerrillas. Today he is a key far-right opponent of peace talks with the FARC.
However, two years ago Brimelow secured an apology from President Santos, the former defence minister in the Uribe administration, who now praises the communitys good work.
The president said forgiveness must be a condition of peace and I agree, in the same way that an apology by the state can go some way to healing the suffering that Colombians have endured, she said.
Colombia: FARC to remove child soldiers from ranks
Brimelow recognises it is hard for the San Jose community to forgive but said, whilst impunity must not prevail and historical memory is hugely important, so too is the necessity for a change from a victims narrative to a narrative of reconciliation and hope for future generations.
Chocolate for Peace aims to do just that, said Burnyeat, who made the film with a 3,000 ($4,000) donation from a friend of her mother, the poet Ruth Padel, a great, great grand-daughter of Charles Darwin.
The 30-year-old lecturer has spent much of her six years in Colombia defending herself against claims of being a little gringa romanticising the peace process.
But a two-year spell in San Jose de Apartado working for the Peace Brigades has ensured that Burnyeats interviewees go beyond the usual human rights patter, and are insightful about their relationship with the land they refuse to abandon, and the importance of their cooperative approach to processing their harvest for sale.
Lush, the UK cosmetic chain, already buys 100 tonnes of certified organic cacao beans from the community every year and supports the Peace Brigades presence in San Jose.
Maria Gonzalez, who appears in the film, produces paintings depicting a rural paradise blighted by the corpses of macheted farmers. When the Black Hand paramilitaries came, happiness ended, she recalled. We want to build a dignified life and seek justice, not revenge.
When FARC last entered peace talks in 1985 a grassroots leftist political party, the Patriotic Union, emerged. But within a decade, death squads working with politicians, landowners, and the army had assassinated two presidential candidates, and 5,000 members including leaders of San Jose de Apartado farmers cooperative.
Jesus Emilio refused to admit to being a guerrilla when the paramilitaries tortured him. I am unashamed to call myself a campesino [peasant farmer]. My grandparents were campesinos. I have dirt for blood, he said proudly.
There may be talk of peace in Havana, but the San Jose community remains under threat. A paramilitary group recently daubed their walls with graffiti warning: We are coming to finish you off.
President Santos, who is said to be eyeing up a Nobel Peace Prize if he can pull off a deal with guerrilla groups, claimed the paramilitaries have been dismantled and what remain are criminal groups.
His ally, the former diplomat Rodriguez, said: The government has been successfully fighting all illegal and violent groups. One of the points of the peace agreement deals with post-conflict security and retired General Naranjo one of the most admired officers in Colombias history is responsible for the design of these plans, especially in the most affected regions.
Colombia and FARC sign historic ceasefire deal
But Peter Drury, who monitored Colombia over 20 years for Amnesty International, said the paramilitary presence in a region such as San Jose, where the army is strong, points to continued close collusion and a lack of political will to truly dismantle them.
The question is, he said, who is defining peace and for whom? The international community must be alive to the danger that any peace process does not just serve to guarantee the impunity of serious perpetrators of human rights abuses.
Come what may, Jesus Emilio is staying in San Jose. Despite those who want me dead, I cant leave, he said. Id prefer a grave here than asylum in Europe in a luxury apartment.
Vice President Riek Machar urges UN to establish buffer zone between his forces and those of the government.
More fighting could break out in South Sudan despite a two-day ceasefire that followed a major outbreak of violence in the capital, Juba, in which almost 300 people were killed, the United Nations peacekeeping chief has warned.
Herve Ladsous issued the warning on Wednesday, as Germany pulled about 100 of its nationals out of the country, where tensions remain high despite a break in fighting.
We remain very worried about the potential for the resumption of violence and spillover into other parts of the country, as we have seen in the past, Ladsous told the Security Council, in New York.
South Sudan crisis: Renewed fighting in Juba
The UNs worries come as Vice President Riek Machar urged the organisation on Wednesday to establish a buffer zone between his forces and government troops who are loyal to President Salva Kiir.
Machars forces have fled the capital to an undisclosed location. A spokesman told Al Jazeera that the vice president does not feel safe enough to return to Juba.
The UN is considering an emergency request from regional leaders to send an intervention brigade to Juba that could secure the airport and separate the warring sides.
Higher death toll
At least 272 people were killed in fighting on Friday, Sunday and Monday. Saturday saw the two sides pause to mark the fifth anniversary of South Sudans independence.
The UNs Ladsous said he was convinced the death toll was only the tip of the iceberg because many civilians were barred from reaching safer grounds such as UN compounds.
Ray Okech, a local journalist who hid in the bushes to avoid the violence, told the DPA news agency that dead bodies were still strewn on the streets.
At least 42,000 people have fled their homes in the latest flare-up, with 7,000 taking shelter in UN peacekeeping bases. Aid groups and churches in the city have taken in 35,000 people.
Government troops appear to be in full control of Juba but opposition forces remain around the west of the city and further clashes cannot be ruled out, Ladsous said.
Both army and rebel forces are mobilising around parts of Malakal in the Upper Nile region and Leer in Unity state, fuelling worries of fighting there, he added.
On Wednesday, President Kiir issued an amnesty to soldiers who fought government troops.
The East African IGAD trade bloc of eight countries called on the UN to strengthen the peacekeeping mission in South Sudan with more troops and better equipment, including attack helicopters.
UN officials are leaning on African governments to beef up the mission, known as UNMISS, before an African Union summit on Sunday in Kigali, where the crisis will be discussed.
READ MORE: Al Jazeera meets South Sudans Salva Kiir and Riek Machar
The Security Council is also considering an appeal from the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon for an arms embargo to be imposed on South Sudan and sanctions targeted against commanders responsible for violence.
Meanwhile, the White House said on Wednesday that it had deployed 47 troops to South Sudan to protect US citizens and the US embassy.
These deployed personnel will remain in South Sudan until the security situation becomes such that their presence is no longer needed, the White House said in a statement.
South Sudan descended into war in December 2013 after President Kiir fired Machar, unleashing a wave of violence that has left tens of thousands dead.
Although Kiir and Machar signed a peace deal in August last year, fighting has continued.
South Sudans UN Ambassador Akuei Bona Malwal described the latest fighting as a setback that his government considered part of a learning curve, adding that he remained committed to the peace deal.
US president calls for unity and understanding in emotional ceremony for five police officers shot dead in Texas.
US President Barack Obama has implored Americans of all races to show more unity and understanding as he addressed an emotional memorial ceremony for five police officers shot dead in Dallas last week.
I know that Americans are struggling right now with what weve witnessed over the past week, Obama said on Tuesday
Im here to say we must reject such despair. Im here to insist that we are not as divided as we seem.
Obamas speech included a frank admission that his own efforts to tackle violence, guns and racism had come up short.
I have spoken at too many memorials during the course of this presidency, he said with uncommon candour. Ive seen how a spirit of unity born of tragedy can gradually dissipate.
Ive seen how inadequate words can be in bringing about lasting change. Ive seen how inadequate my own words have been.
REPORTERS NOTEBOOK: There are two Americans that need to meet one another
Al Jazeeras Patty Culhane, reporting from in Dallas, said that unlike Obamas previous speeches after other mass shootings, this was not a president hoping to comfort people, just the opposite.
This was an impatient president, Culhane said.
Obama said it was time for the country to start having uncomfortable conversations about race, as well as inequality and gun control, Culhane added.
Prejudice in our heads and hearts
Micah Johnson, 25, a US military veteran, was killed on July 7 by police using an explosive device after he shot dead five police officer in the streets of Dallas following a demonstration over police killings of African-Americans. Nine other officers and two civilians were wounded by Johnson.
Black Americans protesting about police racism, Obama said, must understand how hard the polices job can be.
You know how dangerous some of the communities where these police officers serve are. And you pretend as if theres no context?
Obama also challenged a mostly-white police force and white Americans at large to admit that while the edifice of legalised racism had gone, prejudice remained.
We have all seen this bigotry in our own lives at some point, he said.
Weve heard it at times in our own homes. If were honest, perhaps weve heard prejudice in our own heads and felt it in our own hearts.
OPINION: Structural racism in the US wont diminish with time
Obama also made a call for Republicans to realise the cost of their opposition to gun control and spending on mental health and drug treatment.
We allow poverty to fester so that entire neighbourhoods offer no prospect for gainful employment, Obama said, pointing to a string of causes for violence.
We refuse to fund drug treatment and mental health programmes. We flood communities with so many guns that it is easier for a teenager to buy a Glock than get his hands on a computer or even a book.
Following the service, Obama spent more than an hour with families of the officers killed and wounded.
Fighting intensifies across Syria as air strikes hit a market place in Idlib and shells pound Homs.
A series of air strikes on a market place in Syrias Idlib and shelling and bombings in the central Homs province have killed dozens of Syrians, according to a rights group.
At least 12 people, including three children and a woman, were killed in strikes on Wednesday in the Idlib town of Ariha, the United Kingdom-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
The group added that the death toll is expected to rise because several people were in critical condition.
Al Jazeeras Adham Abu Hossam, reporting from Ariha, said the war planes launched four consecutive air strikes on main areas in the town.
Three of these air strikes targeted main markets inside the town, he said. Many shopkeepers have been killed, and many families are left without providers.
It was not immediately clear if the war planes were the Syrian governments or Russian.
An estimated 20 people were killed by government forces shelling and air strikes on Rastan, a city in the Homs province of central Syria.
READ MORE: Death of Syrias Aleppo
The Syrian Observatory group also reported clashes in Quneitra, as well as air strikes in the southern Damascus countryside and elsewhere.
SANA, the Syrian governments state news agency, said at least one person was killed by rebel shelling and 20 others injured in the government-controlled part of Aleppo on Wednesday.
On Monday, the Syrian government unilaterally extended a 72-hour ceasefire. On the ground, however, fighting continued without pause in many parts of the country.
Syrias uprising started with mostly unarmed protests against President Bashar al-Assad in March 2011, but it quickly grew into a full-scale civil war between rebels and government forces.
An estimated 280,000 have been killed in the five years of bloodshed, according to the Syrian Observatory.
Candidates for UN secretary-general post make calls for UN reform and unity, while also addressing controversies
For the first time in UN history, candidates seeking to replace the organisations secretary-general have held a live debate, presenting the case for their candidacy and taking questions from UN member states on key global issues.
The debate on Tuesday, which was carried out by the Al Jazeera Media Network, offered a rare peek into the personalities who have entered the selection process.
All previous secretary-generals were chosen behind closed doors by the UNs permanent five members: the US, China, Russia, France and Britain.
UN debate: A conversation with candidates hoping to be the next secretary-general
And while the permanent five will still choose the winning candidate, the debate allowed UN member states to see who is running for the post, and hear why the candidates believe they are the best person for the job.
Al Jazeeras James Bays and Folly Bah Thibault hosted the debate, which was split into two panels of five candidates.
A central issue quick to emerge was the need for greater unity within the organisation, Al Jazeeras Mike Hanna, reporting from the UN headquarters in New York, said.
Discussions were wide-ranging, and questions from UN ambassadors on the floor and by the moderators did not shy away from controversial issues, including allegations of sexual abuse by UN peacekeepers, Hanna said.
It was an occasion on which the UN took a hard look at itself, he said.
Held to account
Responding to the issue of alleged sexual abuse by peacekeepers, candidate Christiana Figueres, a Costa Rican career diplomat who served as UN climate chief from 2010-16, said the immunity enjoyed by UN staff cannot be impunity.
All those who have been proven, or would be proven, after a very serious and robust investigation, to be guilty of sexual abuse, must be held to account, she said.
Opening the debate, candidates were given 90 seconds to present their case for being chosen as the person to replace current Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
Vesna Pusic, a former deputy prime minister of Croatia, said her whole life had been concerned with issues related to peace, development and human rights, whether locally or internationally.
Pusic said she was concerned by the wave of cynicism in current national and international politics.
A lot of playing to the gallery without being prepared to look at the issues. And I actually want to counter the cynicism, she said.
Pusic said later in the debate that being a feminist candidate was important, and noted that the UN had been dominated for 50 years by men.
With half of the 12 candidates women, issues related to gender equality were particularly salient, Al Jazeeras Hanna said.
Candidate Natalia Gherman, deputy prime minister of Moldova from 2013-16, said the best proof of showing the UNs commitment to gender equality would be the selection of a woman as the next secretary-general of the United Nations.
Stagnation and failure
Vuk Jeremic, Serbian foreign minister 2007-12 and president of the UN General Assembly from 2012-13, began his pitch for the job stating, bluntly, Not all is well at the United Nations, Im afraid.
There is a growing perception that the historic achievements made by this organisation are becoming more and more overshadowed by the sense of stagnation and failure. Now weve got to do something about it, and do it fast. I believe this is not a time for high rhetoric. I believe this is time for decisive action, he said.
Susana Malcorra, Argentinian foreign minister and chief of staff to Ban Ki-moon from 2008-12, also spoke of the need for UN reform.
The world demands today a United Nations that is closer to the people much closer. That puts people and planet up front, and that is driven by the reality of issues and the need to deliver results, she said.
Really historic
I am not surprised at the answers [candidates gave during the session] but really amazed that this event is taking place at all, Ian Martin, head of the Security Council Report, which seeks transparency and effectiveness of the UN Security Council, told Al Jazeera.
It really is historic and its part of a larger history opening up of the process for selecting the UN Secretary-General, which for 70 years has been something that has gone on exclusively behind closed doors in the Security Council.
Now were seeing candidates subjected to questioning I think this is extremely good for the UN, Martin said.
Leadership and values
Former Prime Minister of Portugal Antonio Guterres, who also served as UN high commissioner for refugees from 2005-15, said he was a candidate because, as secretary-general, he could better help to reduce human suffering and offer better opportunities for people.
We badly need two things at this moment: leadership and values, Guterres said, adding that the next secretary-general must be a solid ethical reference, and must be the symbol of those truly universal values that are enshrined in the UN charter.
There is a need to confront and defeat political populism, xenophobia, racism and violent extremism. And I believe those values are the values Ive served in all my life, he said.
Opening her presentation, former New Zealand Prime Minister and current head of the UN Development Programme Helen Clark responded to a moderators comment saying the secretary-generals role was not a poisoned chalice. She added later that she had the vision, experience and skills to lead the UN.
Addressing an appearance that the UN is falling short in the area of peace and security, Clark said we have to get better at preventing conflict and resolving conflict, which would be achieved by building more inclusive societies that talked their difference out instead of fighting them out.
In the short-term, we have got to get a lot better at anticipating warning signs of what could spill over into serious human rights abuses and conflict, she said.
Renovating the UN
Danilo Turk, former president of Slovenia 2007-12, said the world today needs a renovated United Nations, and he had the experience to take on that responsibility.
Igor Luksic, prime minister of Montenegro between 2010-12, said he came from a country within a region that jonly 20 years ago was engulfed in wars and massacres but was now at peace.
That transitional experience, said Luksic, is a model others can learn from. As well as working towards gender parity, the UN needs to work for the young, who are the generation to come and we have to prepare well for them, he said.
Irina Bokova, director of UNESCO and former acting Bulgarian foreign minister, said she was a deep believer in multilateralism, noting that she came from a multicultural country that was a bridge between the East and the West.
Responding to a question on the Israel-Palestinian conflict, Bokova said it should be a priority for the new secretary-general to rebuild trust between both sides and get peace negotiation re-started.
At least 17 people killed in raids targeting makeshift camp for internally displaced people along Syria-Jordan border.
Air strikes on a camp for Syrian refugees near the countrys border with Jordan have killed at least 17 people and wounded at least 40.
It is unclear if the strikes on Tuesday at Hadalat, a makeshift camp for internally displaced people in Syrias southern desert, were carried out by Syrian or Russian warplanes.
However, a senior Western diplomat confirmed the incident to Reuters news agency and said initial information was that several Russian jets conducted the raids.
REPORTERS NOTEBOOK: Russia in search of a new strategy in Syria
Activists said that the camp was targeted because some people there have family members who belong to Asoud Al-Sharqiya, a US-backed rebel group operating out of Jordan.
The desolate strip, close to where the borders of Iraq, Syria and Jordan meet, has two major camps with a population of at least 60,000 people who have been stranded there since fleeing central and eastern Syria.
Jordanian authorities bar their entry into the country on security grounds.
The kingdom declared its border area a closed military zone after a suicide bomber, believed to be from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant group (ISIL, also known as ISIS), last month drove from the Syrian side near one of the two camps and rammed the vehicle into a Jordanian military base, killing seven border guards.
The refugees have been running out of food since the Jordanian army sealed the area, international relief workers and refugees said last month.
The embassy in Ankara and the consulate-general in Istanbul will be closed until further notice, France says.
France has temporarily shut down its embassy in the Turkish capital Ankara and its consulate in Istanbul, citing security reasons.
The Embassy of France in Ankara, as well as the Consulate-General in Istanbul, will be closed from Wednesday July 13, 1pm (10:00 GMT), until further notice, the embassy said in a statement on Wednesday.
The announcement came a day after France scrapped Bastille Day or French National Day receptions at these missions on security grounds.
French consul to Istanbul Muriel Domenach wrote on Twitter that the events in all three cities had been cancelled for security reasons, and that France was in touch with the Turkish authorities.
The Istanbul consulate had also sent an email message to French citizens in Turkey saying there had been concurring information of a serious threat against the organisation of the July 14 celebrations in Turkey.
It said that the decision had been taken in coordination with the Turkish authorities.
Security alert
Turkey is on a high security alert following the June 28 attack on Istanbuls main airport, which killed 47 people. The attack was blamed on the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS).
At least 37 suspects have been placed under arrest on suspicion of involvement in the attacks. Of these, 15 are Turks and 22 foreigners, according to state media.
Authorities have said that a number of citizens of ex-Soviet republics are among the suspects currently held, raising concerns over the threat to Turkey from the citizens of Central Asia and the Northern Caucasus. There were also suspects from the Middle East among the ones detained.
The bombing at Ataturk International Airport in Istanbul followed a spate of attacks across the country this year blamed on ISIL and Kurdish fighters.
Several foreign missions in Turkey, including the embassies and consulates of Germany and the United States, were shut down for short periods this year owing to a security threat.
Explosion at police checkpoint kills at least eight people in second bombing to strike Rashidiya in as many days.
At least six civilians and two policemen have been killed in a suicide car bomb attack at a police checkpoint north of Iraqs capital, Baghdad, according to security and medical sources.
Wednesdays bombing was the second attack in the al-Rashidiya district to claimed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) in as many days.
Up to 23 people were also wounded, a police officer told the Associated Press news agency, when the attacker detonated his explosives-laden vehicle at the checkpoint.
ISIL, which regularly carries out such bombings in the capital and other parts of Iraq, where it seized large swaths of territory in 2014, said in an online statement it had targeted the army.
The attack came a day after a suicide car bombing at an outdoor vegetable and fruit market in Rashidiya killed at least 12 people.
Baghdad is on high alert for attacks after another ISIL-claimed blast in the central Karada district on July 3 killed more than 300 people.
READ MORE: Baghdad attack Devastating scenes of carnage in Karada
This was the deadliest bombing in Iraq since US-led forces toppled Saddam Hussein 13 years ago.
On Monday, visiting US Defense Secretary Ash Carter said Washington will send 560 more troops to Iraq to help in the fight against ISIL.
Armed group says top commander Omar al-Shishani, considered by US as ISILs defence chief, killed in Iraq.
Omar al-Shishani, a top commander of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), has been killed in Iraq, a website affiliated with the armed group said.
Citing a military source, ISILs website on Wednesday said that Shishani was killed in the town of Sharqat as he took part in repelling the military campaign on the city of Mosul.
Amaq, the ISIL-linked website, did not specify when Shishani was killed, but the loss of the commander is a significant blow to the group, which has suffered a string of setbacks in Iraq this year.
Mosul is the last ISIL-held city in Iraq. Al Jazeera could not independently verify the report.
The Pentagon announced in March that US forces had killed Shishani, saying his death would probably hamper ISILs operations in Iraq, Syria and elsewhere.
READ MORE: Abu Omar al-Shishani: Death of an ISIL commander
Al Jazeeras Tom Ackerman, reporting from Washington, DC, said his death is not necessarily a big development, as far as the US is concerned.
The question here is why is ISIL so willing to admit that he in fact is dead, Ackerman said.
Well have to see exactly what comes out of the Pentagon and also what comes out of the Iraqi command as to what the actual effect of this will be on the fight for Mosul.
But US officials who had previously, prematurely announced Shishanis likely death from an air strike did not specify how or where he was killed.
Detriment to ISIL
Joshua Landis, director of the Centre for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma, said Shishani made a name for himself during the capture of Menagh Airbase from Syrian government forces in 2013.
US-backed rebels teamed up with Shishanis militia, which was mostly foreign fighters, and used suicide bombers to finally capture the airbase after a two-year-long siege in northern Syria.
He then joined ISIS and rose to the top. He was a big personality. Troops liked him, Landis told Al Jazeera.
Its been reported a number of times that hes been killed, most recently in March. The United Stated claimed that it had killed him in a bombing raid. Then they denied it. Some people said that he was brain dead in a hospital. So we dont know yet. There is a lot of fog around this whether this is related to the bombing in March or this is something new, he said.
Anyway, it will be a real detriment to ISIS.
Omar the Chechen
Shishani, whose real name was Tarkhan Batirashvili, was a fierce, battle-hardened fighter with roots in Georgia.
Shishani, whose nom de guerre means Omar the Chechen, was one of the ISIL leaders most wanted by Washington, which had put a multi-million-dollar bounty on his head.
His exact rank was unclear, but US officials had branded him as equivalent of the secretary of defence for ISIL, also known as ISIS.
Shishani came from the former Soviet state of Georgias Pankisi Gorge region, which is populated mainly by ethnic Chechens.
READ MORE: Why Georgians in a remote valley are joining ISIL
He fought as a Chechen rebel against Russian forces before joining the Georgian military in 2006, and battled Russians again in Georgia in 2008.
He later resurfaced in northern Syria as the commander of a group of foreign fighters, and became a senior leader within ISIL.
The hardline group overran large areas north and west of Baghdad in 2014, but has since lost ground to Iraqi forces backed by US-led air strikes and other assistance.
The group has responded to the battlefield setbacks by striking civilians, particularly Shia Muslims, and experts have warned that there may be more bombings as the group continues to lose ground.
At least 43 UN-registered refugees displaced as Israeli bulldozers raze Bedouin community in the occupied West Bank.
Israeli forces have displaced at least 43 United Nations-registered refugees in a large-scale demolition of Bedouin homes and structures in the occupied West Bank, according to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA).
Among the buildings destroyed in the West Banks Anata village were seven homes, four animal shelters and four outdoor washrooms, UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness said in a statement on Wednesday.
Three of the buildings demolished on Tuesday were funded by an international NGO, he said.
Seven Palestinian families comprised of 43 people, including 25 children, were displaced by the demolitions, Gunness said.
They also included a 48-year-old father with Parkinsons disease, a 48-year-old man who is unable to walk, an 84-year-old woman and another woman who is seven months pregnant.
It is heartbreaking to see such shocking disregard for international law and the impact it is having on an entire UN protected community, Gunness said.
While condemning this disregard for international law, we would respectfully remind Israel, the occupying power, that under the Fourth Geneva Convention, it has an obligation to respect family rights, including the dwellings of the protected population not destroy them.
A spokesperson for Israels Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories did not reply to Al Jazeeras request for a comment.
International law violations
During the early morning on Wednesday, Israeli forces also demolished at least three homes in the Jabal al-Mukaber neighbourhood of occupied East Jerusalem, the local Maan news agency reported.
While Israel claims the homes were built without the proper permits, rights groups maintain that Israels ongoing occupation of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, violates international law.
READ MORE: Israels home demolitions court-sanctioned revenge
Mona Sabella, a legal researcher and advocacy coordinator at the Al-Haq human rights group, said the demolitions in Jabal al-Mukaber come at a time when Israel is increasing settlement construction in East Jerusalem and poverty is at an all-time high among Palestinian residents of Jerusalem.
People are finding it more and more difficult to afford living in Jerusalem as a result of Israeli policies and practices towards forcible transfer, both direct and indirect, she told Al Jazeera.
During the first three months of 2016, Israeli forces demolished an average of 165 homes a month, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
The Israeli rights groups BTselem estimates that 530,000 Israelis live in Jewish-only settlements considered illegal under international law across the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.
Earlier this month, Israeli politicians vowed to expand settlements after a Palestinian teenager killed a 13-year-old Israeli in the illegal settlement of Kiryat Arba in the southern West Bank.
Morbid silence
At the girls funeral, Israeli Education Minister Naftali Bennett, a member of the ultra-nationalist Jewish Home party, called for increased settlement construction in the occupied territory, Israeli media reported at the time.
We will build in Sarona and Kiryat Arba, in Jaffa and Jerusalem, in Itamar and Beersheba, Bennett said, referring to areas in both the West Bank and present-day Israel.
Echoing Bennett, Agriculture Minister Uri Ariel, a key figure in the Israeli settlement movement, said the expansion of settlements was needed now more than ever and demanded Israeli sovereignty in the West Bank.
READ MORE: West Bank village anxiously awaits demolition
Nur Arafeh, a policy fellow at Al-Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network, said using attacks as a pretext for settlement expansion is not new.
Israel has always sought to collectively punish Palestinians following every attack, and the expansion of illegal settlements is only one tool of collective punishment, among many, she told Al Jazeera.
And what makes Israel repeatedly take such measures is the morbid silence of the international community and the complicity of some world powers and companies in maintaining this system of injustice.
Follow Patrick Strickland on Twitter: @P_Strickland_
Will billion-dollar listing the biggest tech IPO of the year help fend off rivals in Asia and beyond?
Tokyo, Japan Crowds routinely throng Line Corps two-storey shop in the youth-culture mecca of Harajuku to browse everything from stationery to air purifiers featuring the companys cute animal mascots, or to have their photos taken alongside them.
It might seem unusual for a company whose main product is a mobile messaging app to operate cartoon-themed retail outlets. But Line has delved into all kinds of businesses in its home market, leveraging the 50 million active users it has built up here.
Mobile instant messaging, which offers a free, internet-based alternative to sending conventional text messages, has become big business as more smartphone users spend a greater amount of their time on them.
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And Line is the first such company to go public, hoping to generate as much as $1.3bn through a double listing in Tokyo on Thursday and in New York a day later.
It shows how mature the messaging market has become, and the high engagement rate that smartphone users are showing when it comes to chat applications, Serkan Toto, a mobile and gaming analyst in Tokyo, says of Lines initial public offering.
Messaging apps, the future of news
The move comes two years after rival WhatsApp was acquired by Facebook for $22bn and Viber was bought by Japanese online retail behemoth Rakuten for $900m.
While some rivals have struggled to turn a profit, Line has been buoyed by its ability to generate revenue across a range of products such as downloadable games, and via services that allow users to do everything from hailing taxis to sending money using their smartphones.
The company generated about $1bn in revenue in 2015, up 40 percent from the previous year, according to its filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. It says most of that money came from sales of games and virtual stickers which are similar to emojis as well as from web and mobile advertising.
Line started out humbly as a messaging app to deal with communication problems in the wake of the triple disaster in Japan five years ago earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear plant meltdown. Today, it has nearly 220 million monthly active users worldwide, 70 percent of whom live in Japan, Taiwan, Thailand and Indonesia.
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But many analysts say the company, which is based in Tokyo but owned by South Korean internet giant Naver, faces stiff competition from rivals who are vying for a bigger piece of the global market.
Mobile messaging in South Korea is dominated by KakaoTalk, which has 49 million active users worldwide, according to market research firm Statista. In China, by far the most popular messaging app is WeChat, which has 760 million users globally. Both operate in a similar fashion to Line, having branched out into a variety of online services to make money.
But Toto says the most serious threat may be from Facebook, which has about two billion active users between WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger.
Its going to be very difficult for Line in the coming years to defend themselves against much more scaled, much more international competitors, he says. These geographical silos might also become one day unified by a big company and I would bet my life on Facebook in that case.
Line acknowledges that opening up new markets will be a challenge, saying in its SEC filing that it expects to continue expanding into other countries but that it may be difficult due to the presence of established competitors.
The companys service-based approach also means it isnt as readily able to snap up users in new markets as are some of its competitors, says Neha Dharia, an analyst based in India with technology research and consulting firm Ovum.
Its not just communications. They have payments. They have e-commerce. They have everything connected to their platform, she says.
But to replicate the Japanese model they need to have a whole ecosystem of partners and vendors in each market catering to the local culture. Because of that, it was harder for them to grow in new markets, where WhatsApp could come in with the same vanilla service and grow faster.
Messaging apps also have to conform to the local laws, Dharia notes, which can affect the services they provide in different countries.
Line and WeChat users have faced censorship issues in China, according to a series of reports by researchers at the University of Torontos Citizen Lab. In the case of Line, the researchers were able to compile a list of keywords often relating to sensitive political issues of minority groups that would keep messages from being delivered.
Their findings illustrate that any company, whether domestic or foreign, operating within the Chinese market has to follow Chinese law and regulation around content filtering and information controls, says Masashi Crete-Nishihata, research manager at the Citizen Lab.
China tightens control over instant messaging
A request to Line for comment on the censorship findings went unanswered for this article. But the company issued a statement to the researchers that said in part the company had to conform to local regulations during its expansion into mainland China.
Government pressure on mobile messaging services will likely increase as their user bases continue to grow in new markets, Crete-Nishihata says.
A case in point may be Russia. President Vladimir Putin signed a surveillance bill into law last month that, among other things, demands that messaging apps keep records of all transmitted content for six months or face hefty fines.
The best thing companies can do is be transparent about this and help ensure that users are making informed decisions about their own communications, Crete-Nishihata says.
Nostalgia keeps the telegram going in China
Israeli soldiers kill a Palestinian and wound another after feeling in danger at a checkpoint north of Jerusalem.
Israeli soldiers have shot dead a Palestinian man and wounded another after an alleged car ramming attack in northern Jerusalem.
The incident took place early on Wednesday at a checkpoint in the district of al-Ram.
The Israeli army said in a statement that one of the border guards felt in danger when the driver of the car began to speed near the checkpoint, causing them to open fire.
According to Ali Musilmani, head of the al-Ram municipality, the Palestinian who was shot dead was 22-year-old Anwar al-Salaymeh.
He was a newly-wed; he got married only a month ago, Musilmani told Al Jazeera.
The other youth who is now critically injured is 20 year-old-Fares Khader al-Rishq. He is now being hospitalised at Hadassah hospital in Jerusalem.
A third Palestinian, identified by Musilmani as 20-year-old Mohamed Nassar, was arrested at the scene.
Wave of violence
In the latest cycle of violence since October 2015, Israeli forces have killed more than 200 Palestinians, including unarmed demonstrators, bystanders and attackers.
Meanwhile, more than 30 Israelis have been killed in stabbings and car ramming attacks.
READ MORE: Israel allows lethal force on stone throwers, report says
According to the Palestinian health ministry, nearly 17,000 people have been wounded in the violence, some 6,000 by live or rubber-coated steel bullets.
Palestinians are frustrated by Israels decades-long occupation and with peace talks going nowhere.
Poland has suffered storms, hail, possible tornadoes and flooding since the start of the week.
Thunderstorms followed a hot day on Monday and rain turned torrential again on Tuesday night.
A spokesman for Polands firefighters, Pawel Fratczak, told The Associated Press news agency on Tuesday that some 20,000 households remained without electricity in central and northeastern Poland where falling trees broke power lines the previous day.
Some 70 roofs were torn off or damaged by unusually violent winds. Fallen trees blocked roads and railway tracks. Fratczak said that three firefighters were slightly hurt at three different locations.
These storms were generated as a cold front edged south through northern Europe, dropping temperatures by at least 5C. In addition, it produced heavy rain in a line from Switzerland through the Czech Republic and Poland to Belarus.
This front is still active and has brought hours of rainfall overnight to Poland. Flooded streets and metro stations in the capital, Warsaw, caused significant disruption to commuters on Wednesday morning. Some roads were covered in water several centimetres deep, and tunnels were made impassable.
To the east of Warsaw and the Vistula river, the town of Sulejow recorded a whopping 111mm of rain, most of it falling in only four hours during the night.
In southern Poland, both Krakow and Katowice caught more than 50mm of rain.
At least four refugees, including two children, drown while six others were rescued by the Greek coastguard.
The bodies of at least four refugees, including two children, have been found off the coast of Greeces Lesbos island after a dinghy boat carrying them capsized.
The Greek coastguard said the bodies were retrieved on Wednesday during a search-and-rescue operation, undertaken after survivors told them 11 passengers were missing, local media reported.
The operation, which also rescued six survivors, was assisted by Frontex, the European Unions border agency, according to the Ekathimerini news site.
At least 2,923 refugees and migrants have died in the Mediterranean Sea or are still missing so far in 2016, according to the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR).
An estimated 1.3 million refugees and migrants reached Europe by boat last year, compared with more than 238,000 who have made the perilous journey this year, according to the UNHCR.
In March, the European Union and Turkey struck a deal to halt the flow of refugees and migrants to Europe.
That deal stipulates that rejected asylum seekers in Greece will be deported back to Turkey, while Syrian refugees will continue their asylum process from Turkey with the goal of being relocated to Europe.
READ MORE: Refugees in Greeces Chios fear violence from far-right
As a result of the EU-Turkey agreement, Balkan countries sealed their borders and left at least 57,000 refugees and migrants stuck in Greece, according to government statistics.
On Wednesday, the European Commission proposed more unified EU asylum rules, in an effort to stop people waiting for refugee status moving around the bloc and disrupting its passport-free zone.
The proposal would standardise refugee reception facilities across the bloc and unify the level of state support they can get, setting common rules on residence permits, travel papers, access to jobs, schools, social welfare and healthcare.
It would also grant prospective refugees swifter rights to work, but also put more obligations on them, meaning if they do not cooperate with the authorities or head to an EU state of their choice rather than staying put, their asylum application could be jeopardised.
The five-year waiting period after which refugees are eligible for long-term residence would be restarted if they move from their designated country, the Commission said.
Hungarian police and soldiers have severely beaten some refugees and migrants before sending them back across the border to Serbia, according to a new report by the Human Rights Watch.
Published on Wednesday, the report by the US-based rights group was dismissed by the Hungarian government.
Since July 5, refugees and migrants caught within 8km of the 175-kilometre border with Serbia are being returned to the Serbian side of the razor-wire fence on the border.
The fence was built by Hungary in September 2015 to stem the flow of displaced people passing through the country.
Police said 621 people were sent back to Serbia since the new rules on Hungarys border controls took effect.
The report claims that a group of 30 to 40 refugees and migrants among them women and children were beaten by soldiers for two hours after being held in Hungary.
Fists, kicks and batons
The report quoted an unidentified man as saying: I havent even seen such beating in the movies.
Five or six soldiers took us one by one to beat us. They tied our hands with plastic handcuffs on our backs. They beat us with everything, with fists, kicks and batons. They deliberately gave us bad injuries.
Others interviewed by the rights group said they were beaten by police and then forced back into Serbia through small openings in the razor-wire fence.
Refugees and migrants interviewed Wednesday by The Associated Press news agency in Horgos, Serbia, near one of the Hungarian transit zones, described similar treatment by Hungarian officers.
I went to Hungary three times. It is very difficult, they beat me up, said Wahed Khan, a 24-year-old from Afghanistan.
Hungarian police are beating people. They injured many people by spraying [tear gas], they use a very dangerous sort of spray.
READ MORE: Hungarys border war on refugees
The Human Rights Watch (HRW) report was based on interviews with 41 refugees and migrants as well as officials from a wide range of institutions, including the UN refugee agency, the Hungarian police and the immigration office.
The organisation said that Hungary was also failing to comply with international standards regarding asylum-seekers, by practices such as quickly dismissing most asylum claims from single men, while accepting only 15 claims daily at each of the two transit zones on the Serbian border.
This has led to hundreds of refugees being stranded at the border in precarious conditions.
The goal of the new border protection system introduced along the Hungarian-Serbian and Hungarian-Croatian borders is to prevent illegal immigrants from being in Hungary, but to allow those who wish to submit requests for asylum, Gyorgy Bakondi, chief adviser on homeland security to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, said in a statement earlier in July.
Breaking all the rules
Lydia Gall, HRWs regional researcher, said that the abuse of asylum seekers and migrants runs counter to Hungarys obligations under European Union law, refugee law and human rights law.
The European Commission should use its enforcement powers to press Budapest to comply with its obligation under EU law, to provide meaningful access to asylum and fair procedures for those at its borders and on its territory.
Hungary is breaking all the rules for asylum-seekers, Gall said.
READ MORE: Hungary sentences refugees for breaching border fence
The interior ministry, in charge of border protection with assistance from the army, rejected the HRW report.
Migrants are not harassed on the Hungarian border. Hungary treats those truly in need humanely, the ministry said in a statement.
At the same time, it expects migrants to obey to laws of the European Union and Hungary.
Of the more than 18,000 asylum applications in Hungary, only 76 people were given refugee status between January and May of this year, said Nora Koves, a human rights expert at the Budapest-based Eotvos Karoly Policy Institute, told Al Jazeera.
The interior ministry said this year only eight people out of these 18,000 had filed complaints about police mistreatment. But internal reviews found all the claims to be baseless.
To rule out the possibility of partiality, the reviews were forwarded to prosecutors.
HRW also said Hungary was applying legal fiction at the border transit zones, as people there were not considered to have entered the country even though the zones are in Hungary.
This makes it possible for Hungary to ensure that refugees, whose asylum claims are rejected in the transit zones, do not try to stay in Hungary or pass through the country, as nearly 400,000 people did last year, on their way to Western Europe.
Officials tell Al Jazeera policy towards Syrian regime stays same, after reports suggesting PM intends to mend ties.
Turkish foreign policy remains unchanged towards the Syrian regime and there is no possibility of re-establishing relations as long as President Bashar al-Assad stays in power, two Turkish officials have told Al Jazeera.
The remarks came on Wednesday after various international media outlets reported a shift in Turkish policy, referring to Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirims nationally broadcast comments earlier on the same day.
Turkey has long expressed the staunchest opposition to Assads rule, saying he should leave the office for the country to be stable again.
We have normalised our relations with Israel and Russia. I am sure we will go back to normal relations with Syria as well, Yildirim said.
We need this [because] in order for counterterrorism efforts to succeed, there has to be stability in Syria and Iraq; and [they] need to adopt government[s] that represent all our brothers and sisters [in Syria and Iraq]. This is inevitable.
READ MORE: Erdogan Syrian refugees could become Turkish citizens
Turkish and Israeli governments have recently announced the revival of diplomatic ties after a six-year rupture over an Israeli raid that killed ten activists on an aid flotilla seeking to break the blockade on the Gaza Strip.
Ankara and Moscow have also been normalising general trade and economic ties, starting with the lifting of a Russian ban on flights to Turkey, more than eight months after Turkeys downing of a Russian warplane.
Yildirim has been expressing his intention to end disputes with Turkeys neighbours since he took over the office in May.
Assad government illegitimate
MP Yasin Aktay, a senior member of the ruling Justice and Development Party, told Al Jazeera that Turkey would never establish ties with the illegitimate Assad government.
The prime minister never referred to the Syrian regime or Assad in his speech. He just expressed his intention to eventually re-establish ties when a government representing the will of all Syrian people is formed, he said.
READ MORE: Erdogan plan to make Syrians citizens sparks online debate
Assads rule is the reason why Turkish-Syrian relations and Syria itself are in the current state. This will never change until he is gone and the country will continue to suffer, he said.
Another Turkish official, who asked to remain anonymous, said that Assad does not have the capacity to normalise Syria because he does not represent the Syrian people.
We hope things will get better and we will formalise our ties with the Syrian peoples government. But we dont think Bashar al-Assad has the capacity to represent the Syrian people, he said.
In a surprise move, Theresa May appoints former London mayor and Leave campaigner Boris Johnson as foreign secretary.
After weeks of turmoil in British politics following the EU referendum, Theresa May, a Conservative politician, has become Britains second female prime minister.
May, 59, accepted an invitation from Queen Elizabeth II on Wednesday to form a new government just minutes after David Cameron, the outgoing prime minister, tendered his resignation.
The government Ill lead will be driven not by the interests of the privileged few, but by yours, said May, as she arrived at 10 Downing Street from Buckingham Palace.
READ MORE: Where does Theresa May stand on Brexit and immigration?
In a surprise move, May named Boris Johnson, former London mayor and prominent figure in the victorious Leave campaign in Britains EU referendum as foreign secretary.
Johnsons role in Britains negotiations over its future relationship with the EU is likely to be limited because May is expected to create a new ministerial post focused exclusively on Brexit issues.
Nevertheless, as foreign minister, Johnson, who has never previously held a cabinet post, will have to address questions about the countrys role in the world after its exit from the EU and he will inherit Britains often difficult relationship with Russia.
Meanwhile, Philip Hammond was appointed chancellor, replacing George Osborne.
May is the second female prime minister after Margaret Thatcher, also a Conservative politician, who led the country from 1979 until 1990.
In her first speech as prime minister, May promised to fight against burning injustice, citing difficulties of young white working class men in attending university, black Britons when they need to use the criminal justice system, women in the workplace, mental health patients and young people who hope to own their own homes.
David Camerons true legacy is not about the economy but about social justice, she said. In that spirit, I also plan to lead.
Her appointment comes amid weeks of uncertainty after millions of Britons went against her advice, and that of Cameron, and voted to leave the European Union.
Until Wednesday, May was the home secretary.
Having failed to convince Britons to vote to remain in the EU, Cameron resigned, opening the way for a brief leadership contest.
Cabinet reshuffle
Al Jazeeras Barnaby Phillips, reporting from London, said that May was disadvantaged because she did not have much time to form her cabinet.
The process has been truncated, our correspondent said.
CABINET RESHUFFLE Foreign Secretary: Boris Johnson Home Secretary: Amber Rudd Chancellor: Philip Hammond Sec. of State for Exiting EU: David Davis International Trade Secretary: Liam Fox Defence Secretary: Michael Fallon (kept his job) Chancellor George Osborne, meanwhile, is out of a job
Now that she is prime minister, May will learn the details of Britains nuclear deterrent and has started to receive congratulatory phone calls from fellow world leaders.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel called May and vowed to continue friendly relations. French President Francois Hollande also rang the new leader and said negotiations for Britain leaving the EU should be as quick as possible.
European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker also urged May to swiftly engage in divorce talks with the EU.
The outcome of the UK vote has created a new situation which the United Kingdom and the European Union will have to address soon, Juncker said in a letter to May published on his Twitter account.
I wish you every success in the task ahead, he added.
European Parliament President Martin Schulz also piled on the pressure as he congratulated May.
The White House was quick to congratulate May and said it was confident in her ability to steer Britain through negotiations on leaving the EU.
Based on the public comments weve seen from the incoming prime minister, she intends to pursue a course thats consistent with the course that President Obama has offered, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said at a news briefing.
Earlier, at Prime Ministers Questions a weekly session, Cameron said May was a brilliant negotiator.
His advice to her, regarding the EU, was to be as close to the European Union as we can be for the benefits of trade, cooperation and security The Channel will not get any wider once we leave the European Union, and that is the relationship we should seek.
After weeks of turmoil and party infighting, Theresa May becomes new British prime minister.
Outgoing British Prime Minister David Cameron has attended his last question-and-answer session in parliament in advance of stepping down to make way for his successor, Theresa May.
After Wednesdays question time, Cameron was scheduled to visit Queen Elizabeth at Buckingham Palace to tender his resignation. The Queen will then receive May and call on her to form a new government.
Its a day of some procession, Al Jazeeras Laurence Lee, reporting from London, said.
READ MORE: Where does May stand on EU, migration and human rights?
Theresa May has to formally shake hands with the Queen, as a technical process, to then become prime minister, Lee said.
Following her audience with the Queen, there will be a photo call at Downing Street before May and her husband enter No 10 where, as new prime minister, she will announce her ministerial team, Lee said.
Mays first challenge: EU departure
May, 59, is only the second woman to become prime minister in the UK..
She follows in the path of Margaret Thatcher, who held the post from 1979-90.
Mays appointment as leader of the Conservative Party and prime minister is the culmination of weeks of political turmoil, party infighting and resignations following the UKs vote to leave the European Union.
May is seen as tough on migrants, relatively hostile to EU rules on free movement of workers, and somewhat indifferent to the rights of EU nationals to work and reside in the UK, Lee said.
She is also no fan of the European Court of Human Rights, which she had previously tussled with her as home secretary, he added.
While she might be characterised as socially illiberal, Lee said, May set out on Monday an economic programme as prime minister-in-waiting that was particularly left-leaning.
Mays first challenge as prime minister will be to map out the course of Britains withdrawal from the EU, a process still clouded in uncertainty, and to sort out new terms of trade with the other 27 EU nations.
European leaders have asked the UK government to move quickly to formalise its divorce from the EU but May has indicated that she will not be rushed into triggering the formal procedure for Brexit.
We will have difficult negotiations with Britain, it will not be easy, Germanys Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Monday.
France has called for the rapid execution of the procedures for Britain to leave the EU, with government spokesman Stephane Le Foll telling reporters on Wednesday that Pariss position remained unchanged with the arrival of May as the UKs prime minister.
Move over, Tulum. There's a new luxe hot spot in the travel world, and it's collecting rave reviews from everyone. We're talking about Namibia.
If you're like most of us, you've never been to Africathough it's on your bucket list. Americans don't tend to travel far with our paltry two-week vacations, and a third of us haven't even been abroad yet. Blame the expense, or fear of something new, or general laziness (dealing with passports is no fun). We keep it local and easy. But if you have the chanceand the financeshead to Namibia. (We're a little obsessed with going.) The country is turning it out, offering stunning landscapes, canyons, and the largest conservation area in the world: the Kavango Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (or KAZA TFCA).
CNN and Lonely Planet both recently wrote about the country, days after a travel-writing friend suggested it as a destination. That couldn't be a coincidence.
"To me, there is no country in Africa that inspires such a sense of excitement and peace at the same time," Matt Phillips, destination editor for sub-Saharan Africa at Lonely Planet, raved about Namibia in the Lonely Planet blog post. "Open and empty roads, most of them gravel, meander beautifully through epic landscapes and iconic wildlife."
Namibia is one country over from South Africa (north and west) and to the west of Botswana, if you're having trouble placing it on a map. (No judginggeography was never our forte, either.) The biggest draw is the wildlife and nature. Conservation is an essential part of Namibia, with animal populations rising after they were nearly wiped out in the 1970s and '80s. CNN pointed out that "there are now at least 277 sable, around 350 hippos, 142 red lechwe at the last count, and at least 340 herds of elephants and thousands more that pass through the region."
There are plenty of safari options if you want to see animals close up, but if you're not into that, the landscape itself is something to behold. Luxury eco-lodges abound, offering everything from balloon rides and hikes in the desert to good wine and rhino spotting.
"Climb a dune at Sossusvlei within Namib-Naukluft National Park," Phillips suggested in the Lonely Planet piece. "There is simply no better way to appreciate the mammoth scale of the Namib's dunes than by trudging up one, one sandy step at a time."
2005 ..
Building a digital marketing program around the social media trio of Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn is a popular strategy by banks aiming to heighten their brand's visibility, and ultimately, lure new customers. However, social media's value as a business acquisition tool may be greatly exaggerated.
The most persuasive form of advertising is word of mouth. Endorsements from loved ones, neighbors or even Uber drivers tend to be the most powerful generators of product sales. Some marketers see social media as the electronic version of word of mouth a contemporary substitute for talking to your neighbors. However, the evidence doesn't support that comparison.
Less than 7% of word-of-mouth occurs over social media, according to research by the market research and consulting firm Keller Fay Group. Although people spend an average of two hours a day online, they spend more than eight times that amount offline talking to friends, family members, co-workers and acquaintances.
Facebook and LinkedIn feeds may reach large numbers of people, but the critical component that makes engagements so persuasive face-to-face interaction is missing. When we engage in face-to-face conversations, we curate conversations to meet the specific interests of the other person. We know with whom to discuss camping gear or a new needlepoint pattern, for instance. Conversations in real life provide instant feedback and adjustment, making an endorsement more powerful than a broadly distributed Facebook posting.
[Get recognized: Applications for the 2016 FinTech Forward rankings are now open until July 25, 2016. Each year, FinTech Forward a strategic alliance of American Banker and BAI identifies the top 100 financial technology vendors (by revenues from financial services clients), the top 25 enterprise companies in the space, and 20 companies to watch. Apply here.]
What's more, Facebook likes and Twitter retweets may mean nothing at all. In a 2016 research study, computer scientists at Columbia University and the French National Institute found that 59% of links shared on social media are never clicked. In other words, most people appear to retweet news or share Facebook items without even reading them. They simply make a judgment from the summary and hit the share button.
This isn't the only fallacy bank marketers may accept as fact.
In his best-selling book, "Contagious," Wharton School Professor Joshua Berger suggests there are other reasons to reassess your reliance on social media. Sure, one common marketing notion holds that getting your product endorsed or your message distributed by opinion leaders on social media is the fuel for it going viral. But according to Berger's research, so-called influential people are no more effective in spreading information than the typical web surfer. Yes, an influencer may have a larger network; however, contagious content is so inherently viral that it spreads regardless of who is talking.
Berger also busts the myth that viral messages must be novel. Cats playing with dogs, dancing gorillas or mischievous pranks rack up high YouTube viewership but there's little connection between novelty videos and word of mouth. In fact, videos around boring or mundane products tend to generate more attention; top-of-mind products receive broader exposure.
All of which is to say that building a presence on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn doesn't equal effective marketing. In fact, it sucks resources from the thoughtful analysis and discussion required for creative problem solving.
Although social media is often the first box on a marketing checklist, it's rarely more than an ancillary tool. Social media advocates give it a false air of credibility by touting the number of followers and likes meaningless figures that may justify a budget increase but they rarely provide useful insight into marketing effectiveness.
We need to reject a Kardashian-type focus on fluff and followers and become more discriminating in creating content integrated into a multichannel marketing program designed to achieve specific corporate goals.
Kevin Tynan is senior vice president of marketing at Liberty Bank in Chicago. He can be reached at ktynan@libertybank.com.
Sometimes pioneers are forgotten by the time their idea comes into vogue.
American Banker ran a story last month about a former Comerica executive's plan to launch a nationally chartered digital-only bank. It turns out, there is a precedent. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency approved a national charter for such a bank all the way back in 1999.
During the height of the dot-com boom, Aerofund Financial, a commercial lender in San Jose, Calif., established AeroBank, an institution that planned to offer business banking solely electronically and wanted to eventually move into the consumer space.
In a June 2000 document, the OCC explained that it granted AeroBank a national charter to "deliver small business-oriented loan and deposit products and services through electronic channels such as the internet and telephone." It added that the bank would place "deposit-taking ATMs" in major metropolitan areas. The bank's website would link to financial and nonfinancial products and services considered useful to small businesses.
[Get recognized: Applications for the 2016 FinTech Forward rankings are now open until July 25, 2016. Each year, FinTech Forward a strategic alliance of American Banker and BAI identifies the top 100 financial technology vendors (by revenues from financial services clients), the top 25 enterprise companies in the space, and 20 companies to watch. Apply here.]
While its founders managed to sway regulators, their plans were foiled by an inability to raise the requisite capital. Still, the lessons its founders learned are still relevant to fintech banks seeking a charter today. American Banker talked with AeroBank co-founder Stephen Troy who is still the chief executive of Aerofund Financial about the experiment. The following is an edited transcript of that conversation.
Why did you want to start an internet bank in 1999?
STEPHEN TROY: Back in the late '90s, a lot of the banks started to get into the commercial finance business. They had somewhat of an advantage over us because they could go to businesses and say, "Hey, we're a bank." Now, we were both priced about the same in terms of loan products, but people liked the cachet of dealing with a bank.
I was reading an article about NetBank, a consumer-based bank that only had a state charter. [NetBank was an early internet banking pioneer that failed in 2007.]
The idea of internet banking came in my head. I thought, if banks can go into my business, why can't I go into theirs? I started asking around looking for someone with banking experience to come on board. I was introduced to Scott Racusin [a longtime banking executive who is now the CEO of Merchants Bank in Los Angeles]. He agreed to come on as president of the bank. We all agreed we wanted a national charter, not a state charter; we had customers in 48 of the 50 states. The model we were looking at was something like GE Capital: no branches, with lending all around country.
What were the conversations with regulators like?
We flew out to Washington to meet with the OCC. We told them about our plan and our ideas. One big issue was figuring out how to comply with Community Reinvestment Act. We asked them about the idea of allowing deposit-taking ATMs to be considered branches. [CRA exams today take deposit-taking ATMs into consideration.] Nobody thought of them as being branches as part of a CRA plan. We also talked to the FDIC. We got them all on board to allow deposit-taking ATMs to serve as branches and allowed us to put together a very interesting CRA plan and were given a provisional charter.
We were going to be making and holding our own loans and offering additional services such as cash management. Along with that, we were looking into partnerships to offer our customers things like DSL internet service, office supplies and insurance products. Normally, banks were only allowed to sell products related to banking. But we convinced the regulators it was a new age of banking beyond just the selling of checks, and being an internet bank requires our customers to have telecommunications services and other services to do business with us.
What was it like trying to raise money?
I put the initial idea out to a small group of investors I invited to my house and we gave them a presentation. We got $1 million within an hour. So we hired a team and then set out to raise more capital. We felt the capital we would need based on other banks was around $7 million. But then the OCC kept analyzing the situation and that number eventually went up to $13 million.
We went to individual investors and venture capital firms, but we were drowned out because of the dot-com boom. We had a hard time getting our message out there. We would talk to VCs and investors and they'd say things like, "I can put some money into Pets.com and become a billionaire. Why put it into banks and maybe I make an 8% return?" So they were very focused on dot-com sweethearts. There were also some other financial internet ventures that came along and got a lot of press and attention that took potential investment away from us, such as X.com [a banking venture founded by Elon Musk that became the forerunner to PayPal].
Sometimes it was just timing. We were in talks with one VC and they said to us they liked our idea, but "We're going to invest with these other guys, they're really smart and we want to go with them." It turned out to be Google.
So what happened?
We eventually raised $7.5 million, which was more than our original target but less than the $13 million the OCC said we needed. But we were running out of time. Once you get approval from the OCC, you have one year to get your bank up and running. At the nine-month mark, we had no prospects of raising the rest of the money. The OCC said that instead of letting the charter expire they would give us the opportunity to withdraw the application. So we had to lay everybody off, pay our bills and lick our wounds, and we all moved on.
What would you have done differently?
We made a couple of tactical errors. Aerofund Financial was going to own a big chunk of the bank. The problem with that is people didn't like their investment being diluted by Aerofund. The other issue was we had a buy-in of $100,000 a share for individual investors. Most new banks come out with smaller amounts; $25,000 is typical of new bank offering. I think the $100,000 figure chased off people. And enough people just didn't get the concept at the time. We'd always hear, "Where are the branches?"
Do you think the climate today has changed that a fintech bank will obtain a national charter?
It should technically be easier, but at the same time technology has evolved so much that there may not be as much of a need for it. Anything and more that a customer could have done with AeroBank, I can do right now with my bank. I can have digital, branchless banking now with my bank.
The bigger question is why would anyone want to be in the banking business? The climate for banking is so much tougher now and the competition is so much tougher. It's much harder to get a competitive advantage. But if you did want to do it, I would say the most important thing, more than just the idea you have, is meeting with the regulators and clearly explaining to them what you want to do and the benefit. Anyone who does it has to sit down with them and look them in the eye and explain it directly to the people making the decision. In the end, business is still done with a handshake and a smile.
Jack Kuntz wants people to give him a ring.
Kuntz, president and chief executive of American Savings Bank in Portsmouth, Ohio, recently put his personal cellphone number on a billboard off Interstate 71 in Cincinnati as part of an advertising campaign for his $260 million-asset institution.
"Being ignored by your bank? Call my personal cell," the 20-foot sign declared. His photo is also plastered on the billboard.
The billboard is part of a six-month, $30,000 marketing campaign that American Savings launched on July 1. It includes Kuntz making local radio appearances to promote the bank's services. Kuntz received 20 calls in the four business days after the billboard's unveiling.
"I would put the calls in three categories: potential customers, sales calls, and those who want to see if it's really the CEO and not a call center," Kuntz said in an interview.
The billboard will come down from the heavily trafficked highway within a month; other billboards will be posted on less travelled roads in Cincinnati and Portsmouth.
American Savings has five branches in the Portsmouth region and two others around Cincinnati.
When Kuntz joined American Savings as CEO in October 2013, he was tasked with expanding in Cincinnati. His first significant initiative was a six-month television marketing campaign on New Year's Eve that targeted the city's audience. Those ads also included his cell number; he received about 2,500 calls from that campaign.
"We launched a TV campaign to differentiate us from the many Cincinnati bank competitors by putting my personal cell number on the spot," Kuntz said.
Kuntz said the number of American Savings working in Cincinnati has more than tripled since he joined the bank; most of those new employees are part of the mortgage division.
"We have grown that mortgage operation to generate about $100 million in annual loan closings," he said.
WASHINGTON Lawmakers investigating a slew of cybersecurity breaches at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. have accused agency staff of purposefully muddying the waters in an effort to evade congressional scrutiny.
In a report released Wednesday, the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee claimed that FDIC employees created a false narrative to describe a cybersecurity incident, retaliated against whistleblowers and purposefully dodged congressional inquiries.
"The FDIC's intent to evade congressional oversight is a serious offense," said Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, the committee's chairman. "Major improvements need to be made to the FDIC's cybersecurity mechanisms."
The report came one day before FDIC Chairman Martin Gruenberg was scheduled to testify at a committee hearing on the issue. An FDIC spokesperson declined to comment on the report Wednesday.
After its investigation, the committee claimed the agency misled lawmakers about the extent of an October 2015 cybersecurity breach that involved a departing employee in Florida who downloaded data on a portable media device.
The employee left with information on more than 40,000 individuals and 30,000 banks, the report said. And yet the agency characterized the breach as affecting more than 10,000 individuals.
"The Committee is very concerned that FDIC knowingly made gross misrepresentations regarding the disparity in the number of affected individuals and entities," the report said.
Committee staff also slammed FDIC employees for allegedly creating a "story" to describe the Florida breach incident.
"Testimony obtained by the committee shows that the FDIC staff created a narrative," the report said, "in an effort to deter the committee from pursuing the issue of the agency's cybersecurity breaches further."
During a May hearing before the committee, FDIC Chief Information Officer Lawrence Gross characterized the incident as an accident caused by the former employee's attempts to download personal data.
But it was later revealed that the former employee denied she had downloaded the data, and pretended she did not know about USB drives despite holding a master's degree in information technology management.
In its report, the committee accused Gross of mismanagement and retaliatory tactics.
Panel staff said they were told by FDIC employees that Gross directed the purchase of more than 3,300 laptops, at a total cost of at least $5 million, for cybersecurity reasons. But the FDIC's former chief information security officer, Chris Farrow, and other employees disagreed with that decision, "stating that the initiative would in fact present even greater security risks," the report said.
Further, the committee said that Gross shared only "a limited set of facts" with Gruenberg and "silenced and ignored those who disagree with his viewpoints." Gross plans to roll out the laptops at the end of the month, and yet has not yet submitted a budget request for the computers, the report said.
"Mr. Gross has created a work environment defined largely by vindictiveness and retaliation," the report said. The committee alleged that the CIO even "removed" Farrow from his former position over a disagreement on the gravity of the Florida breach.
Farrow "was adamant [that] the Florida incident should have been reported" to Congress, his special adviser told the committee, according to an excerpt of the transcript provided in the report. He "was given four hours to find another job," the special adviser told the committee. Farrow is still employed at the agency but is no longer chief of information security.
The FDIC purposefully avoided fully responding to lawmakers' document requests, the committee also claimed. The agency's Office of Legislative Affairs explicitly "directed staff to provide a limited response," according to an anonymous current FDIC employee interviewed by the committee.
An email from an FDIC employee shared in the report indicates that staff were also directed to avoid discussing the importance attributed to cybersecurity incidents in electronic communication.
Instead, employees were asked to correspond through "cloak and dagger," with one person asking for correspondence to be brought "like a piece of roadkill back to his unit," according to the email.
The committee's accusations follow the release of two reports last week by the FDIC's Office of Inspector General, in which the independent watchdog found the agency could have taken several precautionary measures to minimize the risk of breaches at the hand of departing employees.
In statements published in the two reports, which together presented 11 cybersecurity recommendations, the FDIC promised to act on each proposal.
The FDIC, which suffered at least eight cybersecurity breaches in the past year involving the use of a portable media device, has already worked to nearly eradicate the use of such hardware among its employees.
Currently only 79 individuals have permission to use removable media devices on FDIC network computers, the agency said including 72 inspector general employees.
The report also said that a cyberattack aimed at former FDIC head Sheila Bair, among others, was coordinated by Chinese hackers.
According to an internal FDIC memo at the time, FDIC computers were the target of a "persistent" threat "believed to have been the Chinese government," the report said. The virus apparently affected 12 FDIC workstations in repeated attacks between 2011 and 2013.
Some Republicans are calling for an open convention in Cleveland whereby the delegates could nominate anyone. Part of the resistance to this movement might be optics: appearances. You see, national party nomination conventions are supposed to be extravaganzas, joyous occasions with plenty of applause and even tears. Primetime speakers are carefully scheduled for certain evenings. An open convention throws that all overboard. Conventions are supposed to have an arc, and end with a climax. An open convention might not end on time. Also, party conventions are supposed to be displays of party unity. How would it look if there were contention, rancor, arguments, threats, and other negatives as delegates wrangled to get their guy nominated? Party elders might not want to televise such a thing, just like they might not want to televise the Rules Committee confabs. In any event, the show must go on.
A party in disarray, however, with floor fights aplenty, might make for some terrific TV ratings. But why should unseemly floor fights doom a nominee? Voters would see that Republican delegates care enough to fight for the best while Democrat delegates coronate crooked Hillary. If a modicum of unity emerged at the end of the convention, and the delegates had nominated a real Republican, a contentious convention might just be a plus.
Open is what all presidential nominating conventions should be. Which means conventions would be work, not hoopla. Conventions would be deliberative bodies and delegates would be very serious and independent people. Open conventions means that the identity of a partys presidential nominee, the person carrying the partys banner into the general election, would be unknown until the convention. Open conventions would also doom the primary election system.
In his July 5 press conference, FBI Director James Comey recited a damning list of Hillary Clintons offenses. Though Comey declined to recommend prosecution, its clear that Mrs. Clinton is guilty as sin and has repeatedly lied about these matters. So heres the question: If we didnt have primaries and therefore had no presumptive nominees and we instead relied on open conventions, would Democrat delegates, given the FBIs findings, still nominate Clinton?
If Democrat delegates were to do so (nominate Hillary despite the FBI findings), what should decent Americans think? If Americans vote for Hillary in the general, they will be putting their stamp of approval on a rigged, two-tiered judicial system; one for the ruling class and one for the rest of us.
But as it is now, Democrat delegates can hide behind the primary voters, the people have spoken, even though it was a tiny minority of eligible voters who voted for Clinton. Given the FBIs report, Democrats are now in greater need of an intervention in an open convention than are Republicans. Delegates need to reject Mrs. Clinton and find someone decent.
If Democrat delegates do nominate Mrs. Clinton, it should serve as the final nail in the coffin of our putrid primary system. Presidential politics in America is held hostage by the primary system. Where is the democracy in dictating to anyone, especially a convention delegate, how they must vote? If you had to do away with one or the other, would you abolish the primaries or the parties nominating conventions? If you think it should be nominating conventions that should go away, then you probably dont think we should have parties.
Donald Trump repeatedly says that the system is rigged. But the rigged system has allowed him, perhaps the most unlikely of Republicans, to be the partys presumptive nominee and perhaps its standard bearer. If the primary system is in fact rigged, its rigged for the Donald. Before he announced his candidacy, would many Republicans think of Mr. Trump, given his past support of Democrats, as a natural fit for being even a delegate to their convention? (Perhaps the Republican Partys system isnt rigged enough.)
On July 8, Yahoo News ran Unconventional #33: How Paul Ryan could decide whether Trump is dumped in Cleveland (and more!) by Andrew Romano, who reported on Eric OKeefe and his group Delegates Unbound. It turns out that unbinding delegates by the Rules Committee is not the only means by which Trump could be trumped delegates could simply abstain from voting.
If 306 Trump delegates dont vote on the first ballot, Trump would probably be denied the nomination. But it would be nice if Trump delegates who are bound by state laws to vote for him voted for someone else. Such faithless voters would set up cases to test the constitutionality of the state laws that bind how a delegate votes. Has a state ever sued a faithless delegate? If states think they can regulate parties in such a highhanded fashion, let the lawsuits fly.
On July 10, National Review ran Whats Next for the Never Trump Camp? by John Fund, who begins by comparing the Never Trump movement to Britains Brexit vote, noting that the smart money is against the insurgents, just as it had been in jolly old England on Brexit. He quotes Eric OKeefe:
Delegates must decide whether they are coming to Cleveland to choose the future course of the Republican party, or to follow orders, OKeefe says. The delegates in convention are the supreme governing body of the Republican party, and they have the authority and duty to guide the Republican party toward the best rules, the best platform, and the best presidential ticket possible.
We recently saw the end of a rather interesting primary season. For more than a year, America has been marinating in politics, and still is. If we didnt have presidential primaries and instead had open conventions, the nation wouldnt have had to undergo the campaigns of the last year. Wouldnt that be a good thing? Many Americans surely tune out of the perpetual politicking, the permanent campaign.
This primary season the parties were invaded by outsiders. It would have been healthy for American politics if Bernie Sanders had won the Democrat primaries, for then we would have had two invaders taking over both major parties. If Sanders had won the primaries, Democrat delegates probably wouldnt have nominated him. That would have taught Republicans how delegates can take control of their partys destiny by overriding the primary voters.
Unfortunately, that lesson would have been taught too late, as the Democrats convention comes after the Republicans. In having their convention first, the GOP is put at a distinct disadvantage. So smart GOP delegates should assume that the Democrats might be of a mind to dump Hillary and draft someone less divisive and polarizing. If the Dems did so, Republicans could be left with their own divisive, polarizing nominee. How do you un-nominate Trump? The missile would have been launched, and there may be no SDI to shoot it down.
Republican delegates should assume that the Dems are going to dump Hillary; Never Been Indicted isnt much of a bumper sticker. In anticipation of that possibility, GOP delegates should ignore the primaries and draft the best nominee they can find. (One year ago, I chimed in on who that could be.)
For Americas sake, the parties must do better. Regardless of the optics, this July both of the major parties need to conduct open conventions.
Jon N. Hall is a programmer/analyst from Kansas City.
The city of Detroit, now famous as an economic disaster, began its decline when it lost jobs. This was accompanied by a loss of population, a rapid rise in poverty, increasing dependence upon federal entitlement programs and an unstoppable downward economic spiral.
Puerto Rico is now undergoing an economic collapse sparked not by population loss but by excessive government spending. Chicago is in the same situation. Government overspending and overtaxation comes first, population loss follows.
Chicago is technically bankrupt. Its expenditures have exceeded its receipts for about ten years. All big rust belt cities in the Midwest, East, and Northeast have been losing population since 1950. Detroits population has dropped from 1.85 million to 800,000.
Chicago was only able to delay its loss of population by becoming the first official sanctuary city in 1985. Since then the only part of its population that has increased is the Hispanic segment. But even adding the illegal immigrants and their children, today Chicagos population has fallen to below where it was in 1920. And the number of white people living in the city has declined to below where it was in 1890. This decline is not just due to white flight: the citys black population is also now less than it was in 1970, according to the Census Bureau.
Today 46% of Chicagos public school students are Hispanic. While these Hispanic students have delayed the depopulation of the overtaxed city, Chicago is still showing clear, irrefutable evidence of population and economic decline.
In 2015, the Chicago area lost an estimated 6,263 residents, the greatest population loss of any metropolitan area in the U.S. But this fact is misleading since its promotion and financial support of illegal immigration, which began in 1985 with an Executive Sanctuary City Order issued by then Mayor Harold Washington, slowed down the citys population losses. However, illegal immigration just adds more teachers and other public union workers to the city, county, and state payrolls, and these increase property taxes.
Illinois Democrats, who have supermajorities in the State House and Senate, refuse to stop raising property taxes, bond debt, and fees on everything consumers buy. Residents can no longer afford their promises. Democrats stubbornness is proven by the fact that faced with a newly-elected Republican governor, who has proposed the novel idea of balancing the state budget, the Speaker of the House has, Obama style, refused to pass a budget. Illinois has now started its second year of operating without an official budget, just as Obama did for four years.
A study by New World Wealthy published in March 2016 found that Chicago had lost more millionaires, 3,000, than any other city in the U.S. The only cities that lost more were European. Rome lost 5,000 and Paris 7,000.
While the wealthiest, those who own businesses, are leaving, the only population growing is Hispanic, and they have a startlingly low education level. The areas of Chicago that are Hispanic are also the areas that have the highest number of households occupied by people with an eighth grade education or less. This does not bode well for the citys future employment outlook.
However, while Chicago has been losing population since 1950, new measures of its population and prosperity prove that Chicagos decline is accelerating. Chicago is part of Illinois and together their economic measures are the worst in the nation. Illinois lost 105,200 persons to outmigration last year, and has the lowest credit rating of all 50 states, some of the largest debt, and the highest unemployment rate of all 48 states. Only Alaska is its equal in unemployment.
Local media prefer, disingenuously, to blame Chicagos population loss on crime. But the crime rate has always been high.
In 2014 SEC Commissioner Daniel Gallagher noted that the average household in Chicago owes the city and state $88,000 for their pension and bond debt, and much of the bond debt was created to paper over the huge demand for money imposed upon residents by public pensioners. The citys pensions are only 50% funded and there is no remedy in sight.
Dont be fooled. Democrats say the budget impasse is over school funding but those are code words for pension funding.
These signs follow other measures of demographic and financial decline. The city has been issuing municipal bonds without restraint for ten years. In fact, of the ten largest cities in the U.S., Chicago is the only one that has no statutory limit on its ability to issue municipal bonds. The result is that Chicagos bonds are now at junk bond status.
The once-almighty Chicago Democrat Machine is out of gas. The Machine was built up since 1932 by a series of Democratic mayors who made huge pension promises to city and county workers they cannot now keep.
No one should be surprised that the junk-bond status city of Chicago was the financial alma mater of President Obama, the first president of the U.S. to force the nations credit rating to be downgraded through overborrowing and overspending.
Chicago has tried to keep its dying city budget alive with skyrocketing taxes on cigarettes, gasoline, cable TV, phone bills, alcoholic beverages, city stickers, parking, and everything else the wonderful city fathers, who are self-proclaimed champions of the middle class, could think of. What added insult to injury was when the Cook County Board raised the county sales tax by one percent and announced that 90% of that raise would go only to the pensions of the patronage workers. So even visitors to the city have to support pensioners in Arizona or Florida.
Today the average Chicago public school teacher will retire with a pension of $73,000 a year. With a normal life expectancy each person will collect two million dollars of other peoples money. Of course, this pension money is well deserved: 40% of Chicagos high school students dont graduate.
The largest employer in Chicago is not U.S. Steel or Motorola but the federal government. And its federal bankruptcy court is hiring. Newspapers wont report how many residents live only on federal entitlement money. That might make the city look bad. Residents already know the citys economy is bad, very bad.
Patronage jobs are expensive and their pensions are far more expensive since they suck an economy dry. Since there is nothing restraining this debt and spending, residents of other Democrat-run cities should take notice before its too late for them.
But of course they wont. History is full of cities and nations that refused to balance budgets, cut back on spending, and live within their means. Psychologically, people are more motivated to keep what they have than they were to work to obtain it in the first place. This predicts that Chicago, like other cities run by Democrats, will follow Detroit to economic disaster. Its already on its way.
Having been on the side of leading several investigations, or as a member of a team charged with conducting them usually aircraft accidents, the accidental death of a service member, or possible criminal activity I found the process relatively uniform.
The real meat of an investigation is the determination of Facts and Findings. These could be a lengthy list of what documents and actions were found during the discovery phase of an investigation.
An example of Fact: A review of the maintenance records determined that the aircraft was released for flight per the applicable maintenance instructions. Finding: After departing controlled flight, the pilot in command failed to regain control of the aircraft using approved recovery procedures. Conclusions and recommendations follow.
A good investigation should leave no doubt in anyone's mind that the template provided and the process followed were thorough and complete.
Having briefed my findings, conclusions, and recommendations to senior leaders, I found FBI director Comey's conclusion statement to be simply bizarre. "Although there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information, our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case." This statement defies logic and the available information in the public domain. There should have been sufficient evidence for any prosecutor to charge Hillary Clinton on violating a number of statutes.
If a real investigation had been performed, the Findings and Facts would have demonstrated clearly which violations of the statutes, directly and tangential, were attributable to her mishandling of classified information. They would have been unambiguous, and the preponderance of the information would have outlined those easily proven and documented violations of the statutes. Having worked in the intelligence community for a few years, with top secret clearances and having to undergo a polygraph, I was naturally drawn to the expected violations of 18 U.S. Code Chapter 37 ESPIONAGE AND CENSORSHIP.
There are multiple instances of Hillary Clinton's violations of 18 U.S. Code 793 Gathering, transmitting or losing defense information, 18 U.S. Code 794 Gathering or delivering defense information to aid foreign government, and 18 U.S. Code 798 Disclosure of classified information. A properly conducted investigation would list the hundreds if not thousands of Hillary Clinton's individual violations of 18 U.S. Code. Over 1,200 classified emails, from confidential up to and including special access program material, were found on Mrs. Clinton's email server.
Then there is 18 U.S. Code Chapter 19 CONSPIRACY. There appeared to be an obvious strategy to violate 18 U.S. Code 372 Conspiracy to impede or injure officer. During a document review and interviews, an investigator should have had no problem determining if the statute was violated. Purposely deleting upwards of 33,000 emails so as to prevent or impede an investigator "in the discharge of his official duties" earns a "fine[] under this title or imprison[ment] not more than six years, or both." The evidence was compelling: in setting up and operating an external email server, Mrs. Clinton, her staff and lawyers, and her computer technician's actions were designed to do whatever was necessary to keep the former secretary's emails away from the public and the government, and from an investigator.
Additionally, there would be thousands of violations of 18 U.S. Code Chapter 93 PUBLIC OFFICERS AND EMPLOYEES. During an interview, MSNBC's Chuck Todd specifically asked Hillary Clinton, "How did your private server where you kept this classified information, some of which was retroactive, I understand, after your term as secretary of state how is that not a violation of this code?"
The rest of FBI director Comey's conclusion statement is not a conclusion or a recommendation, a recapitulation of the Findings and Facts to support the investigator's work, but a non sequitur. "[O]ur judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case." A reasonable recommendation would read: Based on the Findings and Facts, that Hillary Clinton clearly violated, at a minimum, 18 U.S. Code Chapters 19, 37, and 93, an indictment is clearly justified and warranted. The intentional destruction or negligent loss of evidence 33,000 emails suggests that Hillary Clinton believed that her emails were harmful to her, and that consciousness of guilt led her to destroy, hide, or lose them.
The Republican congressmen/lawyers at the FBI director's hearing were understandably distressed and angry at the nation's chief law enforcement officer's blatant prestidigitation, diversion, and disinformation. Findings and Facts were obviously ignored and neutered as "potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information."
Director Comey said during his testimony, "All the cases prosecuted involved some combination of: clearly intentional and willful mishandling of classified information; or vast quantities of materials exposed in such a way as to support an inference of intentional misconduct; or indications of disloyalty to the United States; or efforts to obstruct justice. We do not see those things here."
Really? What is the difference between the cases against Alger Hiss and Hillary Clinton? Hiss lied to the FBI about how he, a Democrat, lawyer, and senior State Department official, used his WOODSTOCK typewriter to move classified material out of the building at Foggy Bottom and push it into the hands of his Soviet handler. Hiss was ultimately charged not with gross negligence or being reckless or even espionage, but with perjury. Hillary Clinton, a Democrat, lawyer, and senior State Department official, used a BlackBerry to move classified material out of the building at Foggy Bottom and push it into the unsecure hard drive of an unprotected email server. If hackers didn't have a field day with that bathroom server, an investigator should have asked, "Who had administrator rights to that server?"
Technology is wonderful when you can remove the middleman. Mrs. Clinton learned a crucial lesson from the old Soviet spy and, apparently, didn't lie to the FBI. When Director Comey informed the Congress the former secretary wasn't deposed formally, that she did not testify under oath, not putting Mrs. Clinton under oath was a Get Out of Jail Free Card. Not to do so was an abrogation of investigative responsibilities. It is a necessary tool to conduct an investigation, so why didn't they do it? No one at the congressional hearing would articulate the obvious Director Comey didn't give her a chance to lie to the hear-no-evil FBI.
Hillary Clinton is the new Houdini. The Department of Justice is as corrupt as her magical support crew at the State Department, since no reasonable prosecutor could find a dripping wet indictable charge even if they used a divining rod while standing in a wading pool. Maybe the ghost of Vince Foster paid them a visit.
Director Comey and his FBI are a joke. Reminds me of the old line: what did the county sheriff say about a robber who had been shot 15 times? "Worst case of suicide I've ever seen." No reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case. Nothing to see here.
Isn't it time we get some reasonable people in these positions?
Mark Hewitt is former Marine Corps officer and the author of the espionage thrillers Special Access, Shoot Down, and No Need to Know.
Today, Theresa May, the present home secretary, became the new leader of the ruling British Conservative Party and the U.K.'s prime minister. Naturally, her main task is to redefine the role of Britain in the world after the Brexit vote to leave the European Union. Yet, though she has been mainly preoccupied in her ministerial position in the Cabinet with British internal problems, she has made known her views on Middle Eastern issues, on Israel, and on anti-Semitism.
Those views emanate from a politician generally regarded as a non-ideological moderate conservative. They contrast sharply with what has increasingly become almost the mainstream view in the British Labour Party on those issues.
Theresa May has long been conscious of the threats to Israel and the pernicious existence of anti-Semitism. In September 2014, she spoke of Israel's right to defend itself against threats, including those from Hamas, Hezb'allah, and Iran. Israel has to maintain a strong defense and security capability and to deploy it if necessary. May realizes that when Israel faces enemies intent on its very destruction, it is impossible to know how to move to a two-state solution with Palestinians.
At the Israeli Independence Day event in London in April 2016, May mentioned her strong support of Israel as "the fulfillment of many generations of struggle." She also spoke of her pleasure in visiting Israel in 2015 and discussing with experts issues of cyber-security and combating modern slavery. She honored the Israeli brave soldiers who had paid the ultimate price to defend their fellow citizens from indiscriminate terrorist attacks and existential threats.
The safety of the Jewish people can never be taken for granted. May remarked that it is a tragic fact of history that the Jewish people have had to protect themselves against repeated attempts to obliterate them.
May, echoing French prime minister Manuel Valls, replied to the increasing number of anti-Semitic utterances in the U.K. that Britain would not be Britain without its Jews. She cherishes the enormous contribution that Jews have made to the U.K. She argued that the U.K. must redouble its efforts to wipe out anti-Semitism. She never thought she would see the day when members of the Jewish community would be feeling vulnerable and fearful of staying in the U.K.
Interestingly, in May 2016, Theresa May, while saying that the Muslims in Britain benefit greatly from guidance of sharia law, also launched plans for an independent inquiry on sharia courts, now numbering 85 in the U.K. The inquiry, headed by Mona Siddiqui, a British Muslim academic born in Pakistan, will investigate whether sharia law is being misused and exploited to discriminate against women on issues such as divorce, child custody, and domestic violence in Islamic courts in the U.K., though not on the broader question of whether Islam itself discriminates against women.
What a difference is the political attitude by May, a liberal conservative, from the present behavior of so many in the British Labour Party. Those leftists in the party have been rife with anti-Israeli condemnations and implicit anti-Semitic utterances. If anti-Semitism is the barometer of the moral health of a country, the chart is below normal in the Labour Party.
Those leftist critics are relentless. Though Ken Livingstone, the former mayor of London, was suspended from the party for saying that Hitler supported Zionism, he continues to insist that his statement is "factual." He explained that he spoke the truth when he said Hitler wanted all the half-million German Jews out of the country. Livingstone also said Israel should be moved to the U.S.
Even more disconcerting was the readmission to the party in May 2016 of a woman named Jackie Walter, vice chairman of the left-wing group Momentum, formed in 2015. She had been briefly suspended for saying Jewish people are the chief financiers of the sugar and slave trades, which explains why there were so many early synagogues in the Caribbean. She complained that the Jewish Holocaust does not allow "Zionists" to do what they want regarding Palestinians. Even more, she complained with sick humor of "Jewish propagandists and their fellow travelers" who used all their working days to uncover "racists as rabid as me and are left to get on with their dirty work."
As a result of considerable criticism of the outrageous statements of some Labour members, and a number of suspensions of the offending individuals, especially Naz Shah, M.P. for Bradford West, and Ken Livingstone, an inquiry was triggered. The leader of the party, Jeremy Corbyn, set up on April 29, 2016 a committee to inquire into the problem, with the considerable concern and controversy leading to suspensions of high-profile and senior individuals from the party.
It was headed by Shami Chakrabarti, a barrister whose parents were of Hindu and Bengali origin, who was the director of Liberty, a human rights campaign group, and who is now chancellor of the University of Essex. Curiously, she claims to be politically independent, but she joined the Labour Party on the very day she was appointed to head the inquiry.
The report issued on June 30, 2016 is short and somewhat self-referential. It concludes with a number of sensible recommendations for change in the working of the party but is fundamentally disappointing for a number of reasons. It fails to be compelling on key issues; it is more general on the issue of discrimination than on the specific issue of anti-Semitism. Admitting that language evolves with events, politics, and identity, the report is overly careful not to offend anyone. It ends with a pointless non sequitur that the party should increase the ethnic diversity of its staff.
It makes sensible suggestions, even if some are banalities. She argues the word "Zio," now being used in colleges to indicate "Zionists," and the word "Paki" have no place in Labour Party discourse. The racial or religious tropes and stereotypes about any group of people also have no place in parlance.
All understand that it is incendiary to compare the actions of Jewish people or institutions anywhere in the world to those of Hitler or Nazis or to the Holocaust. Chakrabarti holds that the party must resist the use of such metaphors as Hitler, Nazis, and the Holocaust, and members should not deny or minimize the Holocaust.
But the report doesn't criticize any individual, and it denies that anti-Semitism is endemic in the party. Chakrabarti concludes that the Labour Party is not overrun by anti-Semitism or other forms of racism, but "occasionally" has a toxic atmosphere.
One can only hope that Prime Minister May will do what she can to dispose of that toxic atmosphere.
During a hearing of the House Judiciary Committee yesterday, Attorney General Loretta Lynch refused to answer specific questions 74 times, angering House Republicans while throwing a smokescreen over the decision-making process regarding the prosecution of Hillary Clinton for mishandling classified information.
Fox News:
Attorney General Loretta Lynch repeatedly dodged and deflected specific questions Tuesday on the FBIs probe of Hillary Clintons email use, referring Republicans to the FBI director instead of answering them herself and leading to heated exchanges with top Republicans over the course of several hours of testimony.
Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., said Lynchs lack of clarity is bad for the republic.
During questioning before the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, also asked about the legality of sharing classified information outside the proper channels and other issues. Lynch said it would be unfair to give a blanket answer.
I think youre sending a terrible message to the world, Chaffetz said. The lack of clarity that you give to this body is pretty stunning.
The exchanges were in keeping with the tense tone of a hearing where Republican lawmakers struggled over and over to draw detailed answers from the nations top law enforcement official regarding the decision not to pursue charges against Clinton over her email use.
She repeatedly deferred to FBI Director James Comeys comments on the case, declining to elaborate herself.
I would refer you to those statements, Lynch said. I, as attorney general, am not able to provide any further comment on the facts or the substance of the investigation.
Even as Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., noted it was her conclusion in the end on whether to act, Lynch would not comment in detail, specifically when pressed on Comey findings that conflicted with Clintons public statements on her email use.
Republicans, though, ramped up their criticism not only of Clinton but of the Justice Departments handling of the case. Goodlatte said the conclusion not to pursue charges defies logic and the law -- and once again criticized her for meeting on a tarmac in Phoenix with former President Bill Clinton just a week before the decision was announced.
The timing of and circumstances surrounding this announcement are particularly troubling, he said.
Goodlatte suggested that and other factors could have been grounds for recusal, but Lynch rebuffed the notion. And she insisted that the discussion with the former president was social and did not pertain to the email investigation.
During a congressional hearing on June 12, Attorney General Loretta Lynch testified before a panel of House Republicans, many of whom expressed frustration with her intentionally opaque answers regarding the Justice Departments investigation of former secretary of state Hillary Clinton. Among the legislators who questioned Lynch was Georgia representative Doug Collins, who grilled the attorney general for her reluctance to give a concrete yes or no answer to even the most basic of questions.
Fed up with Lynchs slippery testimony, Collins asked (40:50) the attorney general whether she would consider it a crime to drive at 65 miles per hour on a highway with a 55 mile per hour speed limit. The attorney general refused to answer even this simple hypothetical in the affirmative:
DC: Ive got a question for you. Riding down the road, the speed limit says 55. Im doing 65. Have I broken the law? LL: Youd have to ask the highway patrol. Theyd likely write you a ticket.
This noncommittal attitude is indicative of the rest of Lynchs testimony the testimony of the U.S. attorney general, a top member of what the president has laughably referred to as the most transparent administration in history. Lynch is particularly exemplary of the Obama administrations lack of transparency, as is demonstrated by her private meeting with former president Bill Clinton only days before FBI director James Comey recommended not to indict Hillary Clinton.
The attorney general refused to discuss her opinion of Comeys recommendation instead claiming that she preferred to defer to his judgment and would not indicate whether she had even read (41:45) the FBIs briefing. Ironically, Lynch has exercised no such restraint when discussing other politically charged topics. As Floridas Rep. Ron DeSantis pointed out (15:50), when responding to the San Bernardino shooting in February of this year, Lynch openly discussed the possibility of bringing criminal action against citizens accused of spreading anti-Muslim rhetoric.
The attorney generals obfuscatory performance at yesterdays hearing speaks to the unprecedented slack that the Obama administration has shown the former secretary of state. Apparently, as far as Loretta Lynch is concerned, even speed limits are negotiable if your last name is Clinton.
Comments made by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg about Donald Trump are making even liberals uncomfortable.
Ginsburg "Just Risked her Legacy to Insult Trump," blares the headline at Slate. Author Mark Joseph Stern says her comments are "unethical" and "dangerous":
There is really very little to debate about the ethics of Ginsburgs comments. They were plainly a violation, the kind of partisan partiality that judicial ethics codes strive to prevent. But Ginsburg, who is a quietly canny judicial and political strategist, surely knows that her comments were an ethical error. That leads to a fascinating question: Why would the justice risk her reputation and good standingand even her power to hear cases involving Trumpfor a few quick jabs at the candidate? The answer, I suspect, is that Ginsburg has decided to sacrifice some of her prestige in order to send as clear a warning signal about Trump as she possibly can. The subtext of Ginsburgs comments, of her willingness to comment, is that Trump poses an unparalleled threat to this countrya threat so great that she will abandon judicial propriety in order to warn against looming disaster. To be clear, what Ginsburg is doing right nowpushing her case against Trump through on-the-record interviewsis not just unethical; its dangerous. As a general rule, justices should refrain from commenting on politics, period. That dictate applies to 83-year-old internet folk heroes as strictly as it applies to anybody else who dons judicial robes. The independence of our judiciaryand just as critically, its appearance of impartialityhinges on a consistent separation between itself and the other branches of government. That means no proclamations of loyalty to any candidate, or admissions of distaste of any other. You dont need to be a judicial ethicist to see the wisdom of this principle. Trump is a litigious man; should he take a campaign-related lawsuit to the court, Ginsburg will now surely be pressed to recuse herself. And of course, more significantly, these calls for recusal would accompany every case involving a possible Trump administration. (Through the Department of Justice, the executive branch is tasked with defending federal laws and presidential actions in court.) Moreover, Ginsburgs comments all but begged Trump to respondwhich he did on Tuesday, with a surprisingly coherent rebuke.
Democratic politicians were equally critical:
We all know that the justices on the Supreme Court have political views. Im not sure were well served by them airing them out in the open, said Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut. Those of who have been concerned about the open political leanings of conservatives like Clarence Thomas also have to be bear the same concerns about judges on the other side of the bench. Murphy has a bill that would force judges to disclose their affiliations with political groups, a measure generally viewed as taking aim at conservative jurists ties to Republican outfits. Liberal lawmakers have often linked conservative justices to Republican politicians; Thomas wife, for example, endorsed Sen. Ted Cruz in the presidential primary. Thats what makes Ginsburgs escalating criticism of Trump unnerving to some Democrats, prompting them to gently criticize Ginsburg, whos beloved on the left. Thats not the ordinary type of thing Supreme Court justices say, but I cant fault her accuracy, said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.). I hesitate to criticize this. Weve had judges attend the Koch brothers donor fest. By those standards it does not seem out of line, but I do think thered be more respect for the court if the public felt it was less politicized. She may have got out over her skis a little bit and [been] more forthright and political than she should have been. Its very unusual, added Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin of Illinois.
Sorry, Dick. There's no such thing as an associate justice of the Supreme Court being "a little bit political." In fact, Ginsburg has placed the entire court in an impossible position. If Trump becomes president, any cases remotely involving the executive branch will be tainted if she is to sit in judgment on them.
The Supreme Court is political. The justices can read the polls as well as anyone, and it's a fantasy to believe that their political biases right and left aren't a part of their decision-making process. They are, after all, human and subject to the same emotions and prejudices as the rest of us.
To say they should rise above that is American folklore. The very good justices are able to hide their biases using sharp, clarifying legal arguments. But Ginsburg is making no attempt to hide anything. She is blatantly partisan and should either be impeached or forced to recuse herself when necessary.
What else can you say about Venezuela? It is a mess!
Years ago, I went to Caracas, and I remember having to buy some things for my trip. I walked over to a small shopping center near the hotel, purchased some things, and that was it. It was like any U.S. city, from the availability of products to number of stores. To say the least, Caracas was a modern city with nice people.
Well, things have changed, and not for the better. In the last couple of days, I saw a report of people crossing into Colombia to purchase groceries:
In just 12 hours, more than 35,000 Venezuelans crossed the border into Colombia on Sunday to buy food and medicines in the city of Cucuta, when the Venezuelan government agreed to opened border crossings for one day only. People began crossing the Simon Bolivar international bridge at 5:00 a.m. to purchase products that are scarce in Venezuela. "We're from here in San Antonio (and), honestly, we don't have any food to give our children, so I don't think it's fair that the border is still closed," a Venezuelan woman told EFE in Cucuta. The woman, who preferred to not give her name, crossed the international bridge with her husband and children ages 5 and 2. The border crossings between Tachira state and Norte de Santander province were closed on Aug. 19, 2015, by Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, who said he took the measure to fight smuggling and prevent members of paramilitary groups from entering Venezuela.
What is the definition of a failed state? In my mind, a failed state is one where people have to cross a border to buy milk and other groceries because their stores are empty.
Sooner rather than later, the U.S. and the OAS will come to terms with the reality that Venezuela is on the verge of a humanitarian crisis previously unseen in Latin America. What else can you say about shelves without foodstuffs, gas stations without gasoline, drug stores without aspirin, and hospitals without medical supplies?
P.S. You can listen to my show (Canto Talk) and follow me on Twitter.
The malignancy of Barack Obamas narcissism was on full display yesterday at the memorial service for five ambushed Dallas Police officers. His address bore all the markers of his cunning self-absorption. As Peter Hasson in the Daily Caller noted, he mentioned himself 45 times and referred to himself twice before mentioning the names of the honorees.
He did play consoler and unifier for the first act. According to the Los Angeles Times, Obama retreated to consult scripture as he wrote most of the address himself. (Full text here.) I believe that account to the extent that I believe Obama told his speechwriters that it would be good to come up with something from the Bible to cite. As a politician who started attending Jeremiah Wrights Trinity United church because he needed the support of black Christians, he might even have purchased a Strongs Concordance in order to search for key words in the text of the Bible. But I dont think he went to the Good Book and started reading some of his favorite passages. If we are to believe that, then why would he misattribute the passage he used?
Whoever came up with the Scripture reference that was finally decided upon failed to footnote carefully. Mollie Hemingway in the Federalist:
First lets look at what he said: OBAMA: I see how easily we slip back into our old notions, because theyre comfortable, were used to them. Ive seen how inadequate words can be in bringing about lasting change. Ive seen how inadequate my own words have been. And so, Im reminded of a passage in Johns Gospel, let us love, not with words or speech, but with actions and in truth. This was from the good and presidential portion of the speech before it rambled into false statements and hyper-politicization. But what is the precise passage from the Gospel of John to which he refers? You wont find it, because its not from the Gospel of John but from an entirely different book of the Bible: The First Epistle of John. It has the same author as the Gospel of John but it is, again, an entirely different book. I know that sounds somewhat challenging, but I teach Sunday School to Junior Kindergarteners and each year I have them memorize the names of the books of the Bible, both Old Testament and New. So my four-year-olds are aware that John and 1 John are different books, placed at opposite ends of the New Testament. There are three epistles of John, so there are four Bible books total with John in their title. Five if you refer to Revelation as the Revelation to John or the Apocalypse of John. In any case, its a great passage that is part of a beautiful, if brief, section (that you should go ahead and read right now, you will thank me later) on loving one another in the face of hatred from the world.
Needless to say, the media are giving Obama a pass, completely opposite the way they behaved when Donald Trump referred to Two Corinthians.
Of course, the body of Obamas speech, once he got past the obligatory sanctimony and pleas for mutual regard, turned to the real purpose: complaining about racism. Thats what will drive black turnout for Hillary in November, and so the United States has got to endure heightened racial tension for the next four months. Neil Munro of Breitbart:
If we are to sustain the unity we need to get through these difficulties, if we are to honor these five outstanding officers who we have lost, then we will need to act on the truths that we know America, we know that bias remains, he said at the Dallas event, without criticizing or demanding anything of his supporters living in violent, undereducated, poor African-American communities. Throughout his speech, Obama insisted hes correct, even to the point of suggesting the murder rate in Dallas is declining The murder rate here has fallen although it has been rising since Obama began supporting the BLM movement and began demanding changes in police practices in 2014. He insisted 25 times times that I know or we know the cause and cure for many political and social problems that are the subject of decades-long arguments by libertarians, conservatives, liberals and progressives.
He started losing the law enforcement part of the audience. Jim Hoft of Gateway Pundit noticed that Obama:
included mentions of Alton Sterling (twice) and Philando Castile (twice). He even mentioned poor black children in hoodies a reference to Trayvon Martin. At one point police officers refused to applaud his defense of Black Lives Matter. When the camera panned on the police officers they were not applauding.
One of the police officers sitting behind Obama appeared to fall asleep:
Dana at Pattericos Pontifications imagined what the families of the deceased officers must have been thinking: The president could not resist crassly using my loved ones memorial service as a political soap box.
The Obama claque in the media are applauding the presidents sentiments. It is as if they saw a different speech.
Why do the Libertarian and Republican parties take their marching orders from the corrupt desideratum of souls in the Democrat ranks of extremists?
Why are those not allied with the leftist extremists who have made a forgotten memory of moderation and true liberalism supposed to make their peace with those schooled on the rancid curdle of platforms that, 20 years ago, would have made the parents of todays donkey-kings blanch and pull the lever for the other side?
There are those who just want to close the book on dissonant views, and just, like Rodney King of L.A. long ago, get along.
If so, if we are to lay down our fuddy-duddian muskets of objection to ideas and slogans and positions that materially affect our world and daily operative function in the country going forward, what is the justification for second, third, or fourth parties?
Why not just create a porridge of one, a single steaming sink of far-out-there postures and positions? And never again go to the polls at all, since it would be an Orwellian exercise in futility wed all be the same, voting to ratify the dark schemes and despotisms of the left we-are-all-one bled bots?
Some have been arguing with increasing fervor that we ought to shut up, accept the inevitable, and think of G-d and country as (our view) we are being rampaged against and raped in most senses of the word.
These despairing citizens feel that most of the country seems to agree on abortion, infinitesimal percentage oddity rights, sieve-borders, bizarrely unproved anthropogenic climate hysterics, negation of fossil fuel benefits, ferocious anti-Israel condemnations, reclaiming guns, blah, blah vociferously argued concerns until the day before yesterday (i.e., the endless-seeming regime of the present hybridized White House), so, again, why not copy the enslaved and ravaged Yazidi women, who either say yes to the vile demands of their ISIS captors or burn to death in a cage in full view of their siblings?
Why not yield, us too, to the inevitable? We are not yet slaves. Not quite yet.
As with so many national surveys and polls purporting to be fair and evenly sourced, taking opinions from a purported even sampling of all, young and old, Dem or Rep, rural and metro, many have been revealed to be skewed and oversampled of just a certain tranche of population. It is thus not clear that everyone is, indeed, on the side of the New Extremo-crats on these issues. As they insist, ignoring the skew.
Many dissidents of the reigning forced order, afraid of contumely and rancor, simply keep their peace rather than invite furious argument from the bankrupt crowd that we have seen eagerly accepting blatant lies; career treachery and treason; hatred of whites; disavowal of scholarship; and now, even a catastrophic murdering of innocent police and fact-free legalistic logic-pretzelizing and jumping to conclusions so long as everyone is on the same page about killing infants in utero and the rights of some to marry a salamander, parade licentiously, and join women in bathrooms in paid for breasts or queen-for-a-day femaledom, insist on billions for demented (but costly) unproved non-science, and the like.
Not everyone is on that page.
There are much more important issues on the plate than those now tired excuses for a fight. Triumphalism lives inside these exhausting arguments.
Fact is, the trajectory of time swings the other way in increments perhaps hard to discern, but sure nonetheless. There is no general reason to join with the evidently corrupt and sell-their-soul Other even what seems at casual glance and without sophisticated sociometric measurement and real science to be majoritarians for a mess of pottage. The table the extremos set may be laid out, but the nourishment is nil. Theres no there there.
The pendulum cannot always hang in perpetuity on that side, patriots. Eventually, it swings back to sanity.
We have no need to throw down that white flag quite so resignedly.
Eric Holder is a bad guy. He is a far-left racist ideologue who never should have been our attorney general. He did significant harm to the nation. He refused to prosecute the Black Panthers, who clearly intimidated white voters during the 2008 election, giving them carte blanche to continue their bad acts. He refused to admit the administration's role in the Fast and Furious gun-running scheme. That plan was apparently purposefully to let thousands of guns be sold illegally to the Mexican cartels via straw purchasers, knowing they would be used to slaughter innocents, and then to blame those deaths on American gun laxity. The ultimate goal? To strip Americans of their guns by convincing voters that our Second Amendment is responsible for gun deaths around the world.
Holder declared that his DOJ would prosecute no blacks for crimes like voter intimidation. His prevailing rule was that blacks could not possibly be racist because they have no institutional power. Threaten voters at a polling place? Go for it. OK with Holder and Obama. That is how racist they are. That scandal was the tip of the Holder iceberg. He was appalling at every turn.
Holder is gone; Loretta Lynch is the new A.G. Many of us hoped that she would be a different kind of A.G. She had a great reputation even though she had been appointed by Bill Clinton as a U.S. attorney. We hoped she would actually adhere to the Constitution.
We were sadly mistaken. She is even more beholden to the far left than Holder. She is putty in the hands of Obama. She will go to the ends of the earth to do his bidding, no matter the cost to her reputation, her ethics, her soul. She has been bought and paid for, her tarmac meeting with Bill Clinton being the ultimate proof. Her appearance on Tuesday before the House Judiciary committee proved this once and for all; she is an agent of the corrupt left. She answered no questions in that silky voice that kept deflecting the questions to Comey. She is a slick piece of work. Whatever her "handlers" require, she will do. She is bereft of character. She is Holder's, and Obama's, handmaiden. She does what she is told and does it well. The country and the Constitution are not her concerns; keeping her job is her aim. She is wholly without honor, a sad commentary on the character of our "betters."
Lynch has mind-numbingly absolved Hillary Clinton of her proven crimes by endlessly deferring to the FBI investigation, and to what end? Everyone knows that Hillary is guilty of numerous national security breaches that have put the nation at risk and that she did it to enrich herself. She sells access and secrets for money. Some people care about her lack of ethics. Too many people do not care one bit. They know she is sleazy but will vote for her anyway. She may well become president, and Lynch will retain her job as A.G. And America will be ten steps farther into banana republic territory.
President Obama chooses his underlings well. He knows who will operate at his behest. He does not need to give them explicit orders. They know what is expected of them. Think Lois Lerner. Lynch knew what she was doing when she refused to answer questions seventy-four times on Tuesday. She knows she will suffer no consequences, that she will likely keep her job.
These are precarious times. With people like Holder, Lynch, Kerry, Jeh Johnson, Jim Hanson, James Clapper, Ash Carter, Samantha Power, Susan Rice, Thomas Perez, Gina McCarthy, Sally Jewel, Penny Pritzker, etc., we are a nation under siege. Each of these people is a totalitarian at heart. If they prevail, America is over.
OPPO is becoming one of Chinas largest smartphone manufacturers. This company had managed to sell a whopping 50 million smartphones last year, which might not seem like a lot compared to Xiaomi and Huawei, but such numbers were certainly unexpected. OPPO is doing really well in terms of sales this year as well, and even though we still dont know how many devices will OPPO sell in 2016 (not even approximately, its too early to tell), it seems like theyre aiming to amaze us in 2017, read on.
According to a China-based analyst, Sun Changxu, OPPO is aiming to sell 120 and 150 million smartphones next year. Now, for comparisons sake, Xiaomi was able to sell around 70 million smartphones last year, while Huawei hit the 108 million mark, and it seems like OPPO is planning to trump both of those companies next year. These numbers might seem a bit exaggerated, and it is possible that they are, at least according to TrendForces recent predictions. The market research company predicted a 60% growth for OPPO in the smartphone department for next year, and is predicting that the company might sell around 78 million units in 2017, which is a far cry from Sun Changxus analysis.
OPPO sure is growing, and fast, but it is hard to expect that the company will be able to sell between 120 and 150 million smartphones in 2017, that would basically mean that theyd sell (almost) three times as much devices in 2017 compared to 2015, and China is OPPOs main market. Having that in mind, the Chinese market is quite saturated at the moment, and has slowed down quite a bit, the competition is fierce, and unless OPPO has some huge expansion plans in mind, we really dont see how they plan to ship out so many devices. OPPO is also selling their phones in India, and some other markets in Asia, while international consumers can also purchase them from various resellers, but OPPOs devices arent exactly available worldwide in the same sense as Huaweis phones, for example. OPPO did not partner up with various carriers around the globe, nor are their devices available in retail stores in Europe or the US. It will certainly going to be interesting to see what happens, OPPO sure is full of optimism, but its hard to expect them to grow that much by the end of 2017.
Google may have just finished up with one high-profile legal issue, thanks to the conclusion of the highly-reported on Google/Oracle/Java case which found in favor of Google. However, that is not the end of their current legal issues around the world. Over the last few months, tensions have heated up in Europe thanks to the EU deciding to take a closer look at the companys practices in Europe and in regards to Android. In fact, the EU are doing more than just taking a closer look as back in April of this year they officially filed antitrust charges against Google for the way in which they make use of Android.
As a consequence of those charges, Google had formerly been set a July 27 deadline to respond to the claims made by the EU. However, as that date was nearing Google had asked for an extension to properly prepare their answer before submitting. An extension which was today approved by the EU. As a result, Google has been granted an additional six weeks to formulate and put their response together. Which means their response will not be due now until September 7, barring any further extensions. According to Ricardo Cardoso, a spokesperson for the Commission, the extension asked for was to allow Google to properly review the case material against them.
Like the recent Oracle case, the outcome of this one could prove quite financially problematic for Google if they are not able to successfully defend their stance, as the antitrust charges are directly relevant to the Android operating system as a whole. What the EU has a problem with, is that Googles Android essentially requires smartphone manufacturers (who want the wider range of Google Services to be included on a smartphone) to include the likes of Google Search and Chrome as pre-installed options. A move which the EU very clearly believes to be one which is anti-competitive in nature as it removes the ability for those services from competitive companies to be included. Either way, it is unlikely any further progress on this particular issue will come through before the new September deadline to respond is reached.
A smartwatch, even more than a smartphone, is a highly personal item, and just about everybody will have a different opinion about each one, let alone the one they wear on a daily basis. While some decry the Apple Watch for a number of reasons, J.D. Powers recent consumer survey places Cupertinos wearable at the top of the smartwatch heap, terming the competition, The Rest. People are immensely satisfied with their Apple Watch units. Though Samsung scores only 10 points out of 1,000 lower, they are grouped into the rest thanks to the Apple Watchs high number pushing the average up. The rankings were from a survey of 2,949 fitness band owners, and 2,696 smartwatch owners, all of whom bought the devices they were being asked about within the past 12 months.
On a 1,000 point percentile based on factors like comfort, satisfaction with display size, and customization, the Apple Watch pulled ahead of the pack and scored a strong 852 points. This brought the average up to 847, relegating all of Apples competitors to the rest, despite relatively small point differences with some of them. Samsung, for example, scored 842, only 5 points below the average. Sony was a very close third, coming in at 840. Fitbit was one point behind that at 839, and LG had a large gap from its nearest competitor, coming in at 827. J.D. Power noted that the rankings were influenced the most by ease of use, then by comfort, then other factors like price, durability, and other features. Consumers biggest issues were generally battery related, and could impact their scores by up to 21 points.
The ranking for fitness trackers went a bit differently, with Samsung taking the crown by a wide margin and sitting pretty at 859. The nearest competitor was Garmin, with 836 points in total. With the average set at 829, everybody but those two fell into the rest. LG scored 827 points, Fitbit was one point behind with 826, and Jawbone got 814 points. Ease of use, price and brand recognition factored highly into the rankings. As for how consumers approached buying fitness bands, most used information from online shopping sites, while slightly fewer consumers went off recommendations from family and friends.
NVIDIAs SHIELD Tablet has been one of the better Android tablet models out there, and with each update it seems to keep getting just a little bit better. Today NVIDIA has just released the most recent version of software for the SHIELD Tablet that went out for the SHIELD Tablet K1 back in June, which should bring users up to version 4.2 for the software build. This update includes the usual bug fixes and improvements to the software and user experience that you tend to see from pretty much any device software update, but it also includes the June security patch level 1 for Android 6.0 Marshmallow so the device is nearly up to date in this particular area.
The update going out to the NVIDIA SHIELD Tablet follows an update which started rolling out to the NVIDIA SHIELD Android TV units on June 29th, which brought those forward to version 3.2 of the software build, and an update to Android 6.0 Marshmallow for the U.S. models of the NVIDIA SHIELD Tablet LTE which started hitting devices back at the end of May. Alongside the June security patch level 1 for the SHIELD Tablet going out today, the update also includes the ability to toggle the location of the navigation button, if thats something youve been wanting. Should you want to access this capability, itll be located in settings, and then personalize settings.
Prior to todays update, some users were reportedly having issues with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, and NVIDIA states that they have addressed these issues with fixes in the update thats beginning to head out to users, so that is something to look forward to if your device has been affected. Recently, the SHIELD Tablet also received support for the Vulkan API, and todays update includes enhancements and fixes to the Vulkan API. There have been some improvements to the responsiveness of the touchscreen as well, so using the display should feel a little bit smoother overall. In addition to what are mostly fixes it seems, NVIDIA has also mentioned that this update includes low latency audio, USB host & peripheral nodes, 24-bit stereo support and support for 7.1 HDMI output, as well as support for MIDI over USB and Bluetooth low energy. These improvements to the audio as NVIDIA states, bring the tablet in line with the requirements for Android 6.0s professional audio standards.
The last few weeks has seen a dramatic rise in the speculation surrounding the upcoming Samsung Galaxy Note 7. This was of course to be expected, as in spite of any firm confirmation from Samsung, all rumors were constantly pointing towards an August 2 unveil date. With that date continually nearing, it was expected to see an influx in the number of rumors coming though. Of course, the speculation surrounding August 2 has now come to an end as Samsung did yesterday finally confirm August 2 as the date in which their next unpacked event will take place and the Galaxy Note 7 will be unveiled.
However, that still does leave much room for speculation on what to actually expect with the latest Galaxy Note smartphone and along with a number of contradictory specs, it is now coming to light that there will be a number of software tweaks coming with the next Note. In particular, ones which are designed to improve the S Pen functionality.
According to a report coming out of The Korea Herald today, Samsung President and head of Samsung Mobile, Koh Dong-jin, has revealed that the next Galaxy Note will come with these S Pen software enhancements. According to the details, Dong-jin was noted specifically stating that We have improved note functions this time, upgrading software for user convenience. Of course, in spite of the seemingly confirmation that there will be software tweaks and new features en route, there were no specific details provided on what those new features will be like or what potential owners of the Galaxy Note 7 can expect from the handset. However, with the software expected to be more Note-oriented than before, it does stand to reason that the S Pen will also likely see some new features or a redesign included as well. So this years model might not only be about the actual specs, which might help to explain the contradictions in specs coming through which suggest that the Galaxy Note 7 will come packing only 4GB RAM instead of the 6GB RAM which had been largely expected. Either way, with only a few weeks until the confirmed unveil date, it wont be long before all the details of the next Samsung Galaxy flagship are known.
In many cases, a new iteration for an existing family of devices brings new features and benefits to customers. The 2016 flagship may offer a faster processor, a brighter, bigger, more colorful display, a better camera and more sensors. And quite often, the manufacturer has attempted to reduce the thickness of the smartphone even further. This trend is seen as one reason why most 2016 smartphones appear to still be designed around providing typical customers with one typical day of battery power. Things have taken a new turn as this year, we have seen a number of manufacturers dropping the 3.5mm headphone jack such as LeEco and Lenovo / Motorola, with rumors that Apple will drop the standard from the next iPhone. Samsung, of course, are not immune from following trends and today a new rumor is emerging that the business has developed a new type of screen technology that will allow it to manufacture a thinner, lighter screen. This in part will help the company manufacturer a thinner Note 7, although with the Galaxy S7 Samsung decided not to pursue the thinner is always better idea and instead gave the device a larger and thicker battery.
The new technology is called Y-OCTA and is a technique of integrating the touch sensitive part of the screen into the unit at the point of assembly, rather than adding the touch sensitive layer afterwards. Current displays as used in Samsung devices work by applying a film-touch layer into the panel. However, Y-OCTA avoids this process and could reduce production costs. The new Y-OCTA display technology has already been linked with the next generation Samsung Galaxy Note, due to be announced in early August. Its not clear if Y-OCTA technology is a successor to the Wacom digitizer units that allow the Galaxy Note to be compatible with the S-Pen, as weve also seen that Samsung could introduce Y-OCTA display technology into later versions of the successful Samsung Galaxy S7 flagship device: although the Wacom digitizer does not require the S-Pen to be operated so it is not inconceivable that Samsung could use similar technology in the Galaxy S7 but without the S-Pen software.
According to reports, Samsung Display was unwilling to discuss the technologies that they or partner businesses use not that it is surprising as most businesses are not keen on revealing technological changes or improvements ahead of time. However, with Galaxy Note 7 announcement a matter of weeks away, there is not too much time to consider how Samsung may have further refined the Notes design. It will be interesting to see if and how the Y-OCTA technology integrates with the new flagship device and if the company does, indeed, roll out Y-OCTA to the Galaxy S7.
Mobile payments seem to be everywhere these days. Not in the sense that you can literally pay for goods and services at any business through a mobile payment system, but in the sense that they seem to be the talk of the town. That said, mobile payment solutions and support for them is expanding. Samsungs option which can be found on numerous Galaxy smartphones like the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge, appropriately named Samsung Pay, has just expanded the support of their mobile payment solution to a new region of the world, as the company has announced that Samsung Pay is now supported in Puerto Rico through the largest bank in the country Banco Popular.
Expansion out to Puerto Rico follows the launch of the service in countries like Spain and Australia as of last month in June, with Spain being the first European country to support the service according to Samsung. The mobile payment solution is also continually adding more support for various banks and cards, with US Bank adding support for Samsung Pay in the beginning of last month for their MasterCard account holders. Its worth noting that US Bank Visa cards were supported in Samsung Pay at launch. Samsung states that from today, those who use want to use Samsung Pay in Puerto Rico will be able to do so with eligible credit cards from Banco Popular, which suggests that not all cards from the bank will support the service, although Samsung does mention that both Visa and MasterCard are part of the bank support.
Samsung also adds that Samsung Pay will be available to use on various services in the region, including T-Mobile, AT&T, Sprint, and Claro. When it comes to which devices will support the service in the country, consumers will be able to use Samsung Pay on the Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge, as well as the variants which includes the Galaxy S6 Active and Galaxy S6 Edge+. Additionally, the service will also support the Galaxy S7, Galaxy S7 Active, Galaxy S7 Edge, and the Galaxy Note 5 in the region. The list of supported devices should be no surprise as these devices support Samsung Pay in other regions where the service is already live.
Although mobile wallet services got off to a bit of a slow start, they are beginning to become more widely adopted as more companies start to implement the hardware required to support them. There is no shortage of mobile wallet solutions at the moment; Android Pay (an evolution of Google Wallet), Apple Pay and Samsung Pay are among the most-used types of mobile payments. While Apple has often shown a knack for fostering adoption of new technology through its strength in branding and product awareness, a new study by Auriemma Consulting Group (ACG) shows that in terms of customer satisfaction, Samsung takes the lead.
According to ACGs study of 2,004 consumers, the 327 users of Samsung Pay compatible devices, such as the Samsung Galaxy S7, showed a satisfaction rating of 92%, while the 1000 users of Apple Pay compatible devices only demonstrated an 84% satisfaction rating. On the other hand, 53% of Apple users said they would recommend Apple Pay, while only 49% of Samsung users would recommend Samsung Pay. Samsung Pay users spend on average $82 per week using the service, while Apple Pay users only spend around $75.
Samsung Pay works a bit differently than most mobile wallets. The most significant difference is that while others rely on near-field communication (NFC), Samsung Pay is actually able to beam a signal into the magnetic reader of most traditional credit card terminals. This gives it a huge advantage over other options because its not dependent on merchants installing special equipment in order to be able to process transactions. Samsung Pay also stores rewards cards. And they also have a much higher level of compatibility than competing apps, because they use a special sensor inside Samsung devices to emit a light beam into barcode scanners that arent capable of reading barcodes and QR codes from the display of a smartphone. Because of this, reward cards stored in the Samsung Pay app can be read almost by just about any barcode scanner. Another advantage Samsung Pay brings to the table is the ability to store credit, debit and reward cards in Simple Pay, a feature of the Samsung Pay app that allows quick access to them from the lock screen, home screen and even while the display is turned off, by swiping up from the physical button. The ability to get to cards quickly, in combination with the nearly universal compatibility, make Samsung Pay stand out from its rivals, and are likely a big part of why consumers find it more enjoyable to use.
Just like with mostly everything else in this world, trends change in the phone industry. Long before smartphones were a thing the hottest ticket item on offer that everyone had to have was a smaller cell phone. Then, of course, things changed when smartphones broke onto the scene. As the interaction was primarily touchscreen-based, it made sense to have a larger screen to interact with. Years had gone by since the first smartphone was introduced before Samsung unveiled their very first Galaxy Note, ushering in an era of large screen smartphones that were certainly bigger than any other out there. Fast forward to today and Samsung is rumored to be preparing for the launch the Galaxy Note 7, its sixth generation device in the lineup, and another smartphone that will join the ranks of the ever popular phablet category.
While the Galaxy Note 7 is shaping up to be Samsungs most advanced and stylish Note of the whole series, the Galaxy Note 7 would be nowhere, of course, without its predecessors. This is true for the Galaxy Note, which started it all, but especially so for the Galaxy Note II which really popularized the idea of the Galaxy Note device and the Phablet in general. While the Galaxy Note was the humble beginning, a device which came with a large display and built-in stylus with advanced functionality to introduce people to the idea of a more portable tablet-esque phone, the second iteration of the Note, the Galaxy Note II, is where things really started to take off. According to a post from Focus Taiwan back in September of 2013, Samsungs Galaxy Note II sales hit over 30 million devices since it launched in 2012. Thats three times as much as the 10 million sold for the original Galaxy Note from 2011, and 40 million total devices between the two models over the course of those two years. Those are pretty decent numbers and they showcase that while people may have still been warming up to the idea of a larger than normal smartphone category with the original Note, consumers the world over were more than ok with a larger display with which to play games, watch video, read emails, and browse the web when it came to the Galaxy Note II.
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Of course, while the Galaxy Note II sales were impressive compared to the original, each subsequent Galaxy Note device has more or less dwarfed the model before it, as the Note series and the phablet category has gotten more and more popular each year. When the Galaxy Note 3 launched in 2013, for example, it ended up reaching 10 million sales in just two months time after it launched in the Fall of that year according to Samsung, which, is much more than mildly impressive to say the very least considering that it took Samsung a whole year to sell 10 million Galaxy Notes. At this point it was safe to say that the phablet had effectively taken root in the industry, and for the consumer things were only getting better as the options for phablet sized devices were growing. 2013 saw more than just the Galaxy Note 3 launch, as that particular device from Samsung was joined by the likes of the LG G2, the Sony Xperia Z Ultra, the ASUS FonePad 7, the LG Optimus G Pro, and Samsungs Galaxy Mega, just to name a few. Some of these were of course, larger than your typical phablet, with devices like the Galaxy Mega, the Xperia Z Ultra, and the FonePad 7 breaching the walls of a whole new category of devices that were larger than 6-inches while the Galaxy Note series and the likes of LGs G series have stayed around the 5.7-inch mark and below. They were still phablets, though. Not all of these phablets shared the same success, but it does illustrate that consumers who were already smartphone owners looking to upgrade or looking to pick up their first smartphone, were interested in devices with a large screen. Naturally, this should make sense, as the larger display is much better for media-related activities, and when it came to productivity on the go, a bigger screen certainly does help. The Galaxy Note added to these elements with layers of productivity tools and software, much it coming from the S Pen features that would allow you to easily drag and drop things as well as handwrite notes. On a broad scale, it just made doing anything a bit more precise.
This popularity leads us to today, perhaps a month or two out from when Samsung will potentially announce and launch the Galaxy Note 7, which, is quite possibly going to be the most popular version of the Galaxy Note. This shouldnt be much of a shock if that rings true, as it will end up coming with the most advanced features, hardware, and specs of any Galaxy Note thus far, and the design (if the leaks prove to be accurate) makes it arguably the best looking Galaxy Note device to date. Best looking may also be a little bit subjective, but its quite likely that a lot of consumers would agree, all the while not forgetting that the Galaxy Note 7 takes plenty of design elements from the Galaxy Note 5, Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge, and this years Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge, all of which look similar due to the use of the glass and metal build. Design aside, the Galaxy Note 7 is rumored to be coming with some new features that werent available on previous models, but one thing has always stayed constant, only ever receiving new and improved functionality with a slight tweak to the design on last years Galaxy Note 5. The S Pen. Throughout each Galaxy Note, the S Pen has always been present, getting touch ups with each release to make it more functional and useful to the user, but never getting major overhauls. As the old saying goes, if it aint broke dont fix it, and Samsung it seems has kept this in mind when designing and refining the S Pen each year. The biggest change, features aside, has been the way the S Pen is removed in the Galaxy Note 5 as it carries a button on the end you can click to remove it, while past S Pen models have simply been something that you pull out when needed. No button to press. The Galaxy Note 7 is likely to continue this design functionality for the S Pen.
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Of course, the S Pen is not the only change that the Galaxy Note series has seen over the years. As mentioned above the design has changed quite a bit over the years too, going from plastic on the Galaxy Note and Galaxy Note II, to a mix of polycarbonate and faux leather on the Galaxy Note 3, to a metal frame and soft touch plastic on the back with a textured feel for grip on the Galaxy Note 4, and finally to the metal and glass that we now see on the most recent Galaxy Note 5, and by the looks of it, the Galaxy Note 7. This change in design showcases the evolutionary path that Samsung has taken with the Galaxy Note series, moving from what was common and popular at the time back during the first few Note devices, to a much more premium look and feel with the most recent model. Make no mistake, the Galaxy Note 5 was Samsungs best yet, and the Galaxy Note 7 looks to surpass it. Other features and hardware have changed as well. Cameras and processors have been updated to newer, faster and more powerful chipsets, while things like the battery and the cameras have seen really noticeable and functional improvements and upgrades compared to older generations of the Galaxy Note. Of course, the fingerprint sensor should not be forgotten as mobile payments are now a big thing, and Samsung will surely want their Galaxy Note 7 to carry the torch from the Galaxy Note 5 to make the most of their homegrown Samsung Pay mobile payment solution.
Although it may seem obvious as to what Samsung will include when it comes to the hardware and build, its entirely unclear what the Galaxy Note 7 will be packing. There have been more than enough rumors to make a good guess, though. The device is thought to be carrying a 5.7-inch or 5.8-inch screen with Samsungs Super AMOLED panel, along with the same QHD resolution that was seen on the Galaxy Note 5. The fingerprint sensor should by all accounts make a return, and it looks like Samsung will be opting for a Qualcomm processor this time around instead of using their in-house Exynos model, at least here in the U.S. The screen is also very much thought to be coming with dual edges like the Galaxy S7 Edge to make use of those edge features. Although it was previously thought that the phone may end up carrying 6GB of RAM, the most recent benchmark leaks suggest otherwise, and paint a picture of a device with a slightly more modest (yet more than enough) 4GB of RAM inside. When it comes to the cameras, rumors peg the Galaxy Note 7 as having a 12MP Dual Pixel setup on the back like the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge, and a 5MP camera up front. Another possible piece of hardware could be the inclusion of an iris scanner judging by patents and rumors, of course, this still remains to be seen. On top of all of this, the Galaxy Note 7 should be running on Android 6.0 Marshmallow, perhaps with a quick upgrade to Android 7.0 Nougat, and itll have Samsungs most up to date version of the TouchWiz UI on top. With all of these advancements, improved functions, and the design evolution, the Galaxy Note 7 is likely to be a hit device in the Galaxy Note lineup and its very possible that it could be the most popular to date. That shouldnt surprise anyone though, and if the Galaxy Note 7 ends up as popular of a device as expected, the phablet will continue to live on with other OEMs looking to make continued attempts at dethroning Samsung in the device category. While none of the specs are official for the Galaxy Note 7 just yet, now that Samsung has sent out invites for the Unpacked event on August 2nd, it wont be long before the details of the device are known.
Samsung is currently the largest smartphone manufacturer in the world, while Xiaomi is number one smartphone manufacturing company in China. Samsung mainly uses Qualcomms Snapdragon SoCs, or their very own Exynos processors, while Xiaomi mainly relies on Snapdragon SoCs, though they are known for using MediaTeks offerings as well. That being said, Xiaomi tends to release a ton of devices a year, and theyre constantly looking how to boost their portfolio. In order to do that, the company might opt to start using AMOLED displays, instead of the IPS LCD panels theyve been using thus far. Such rumors have been roaming around for quite some time now, and it seems like Xiaomi plans to turn to Samsung for help, read on.
According to Korea Herald, Xiaomis CEO, Lei Jun, is visiting South Koreas capital, Seoul, for the first time ever. Now, the companys CEO is there to meet Samsungs executives, and it is quite likely that the two companies will discuss displays and processors during the meeting. The report says that Lei Jun is meeting Jeon Young-hyun, the president of Samsungs memory chip division for Smartphones, and he will also meet Samsung Display executives as well. Now, the following info is only speculation, but based on the aforementioned info, it is quite probable Lei Jun is there to talk about Samsungs OLED panels, and even their Exynos smartphone SoCs. Samsung is the leader in the OLED market at the moment, the company holds the vast majority of the market (90%), so it is definitely not a surprise that Xiaomi is turning to Samsung for smartphone displays. Now, in addition to all this, it is possible Lei Jun is there to talk with Samsung about curved displays, the company is allegedly working on a curved display smartphone, much like the Galaxy S7 Edge, and they might be asking Samsung to supply displays for it.
Samsungs Exynos 8890 64-bit octa-core SoC is perhaps even the most powerful mobile SoC available in the market at the moment, so it wouldnt exactly be surprising if Xiaomi wanted to include it in one of their devices this year, or perhaps even more than one. We expect to get some more info regarding all this after the meetings take place, though who knows how much info will Samsung and Xiaomi share, if any. Either way, stay tuned, well keep you posted.
Eagle tries to carry off boy
To Australia, where a wedge-tailed eagle is wowing the crowds at the Alice Springs Desert Park. Witnesses says the bird swopped for a young onlooker and tried to make off with him like a small animal.
The boy, aged around 7, was running his zipper up and down just before the bird made its play. Keenan Lucas was there:
Were at the bird show in the afternoon, having a great time and looking forward to seeing the wedge-tailed eagle come out for the finale. The bird then flew over the crowd and tried to grab on to a young boys head. He screamed, the mother was distraught and the presenters wrapped up the show very quickly.
The brochure promises: Get up close with Australias largest bird of Prey, the Wedge-tailed Eagle. Discover the interesting lives these magnificent birds live!
Anorak
Posted: 13th, July 2016 | In: Reviews, Strange But True Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
(ANSA) - Rome, July 12 - Over 50 artworks by Venetian Renaissance masters are to go on display in Tokyo and Osaka as part of the celebrations for the 150th anniversary of the friendship and trade treaty between Italy and Japan.
'Venetian Renaissance Paintings from the Gallerie dell'Accademia' presents paintings by Titian, Bellini, Tintoretto, and Carpaccio, but also a masterpiece by Jacopo Dal Ponte, otherwise known as Bassano, that was only rediscovered recently after years of oblivion. In all, over 50 artworks dating from 1450 to 1630 will narrate the great school of the Venetian Renaissance from July 13 to October 10 at the National Art Center in the Japanese capital and then from October 22 to January 15 at the National Museum of Art of Osaka. "It is the first exhibition of this scope on the Venetian School in 150 years of relations between Italy and Japan," Accademia galleries director Paola Marini told ANSA.
"What do the Japanese know about the Renaissance in Veneto? They are very interested. We have already lent them Leonardo's drawings for the Fuji museum." The exhibition, curated by Marini together with Sergio Marinelli from the University Ca' Foscari and Koshikawa Michiaki, brings together "a selection of works representing the full evolution of the School including famous masterpieces and works by less well known authors," Marini said.
It also includes three loans from the Ca' d'Oro.
The show has also provided an opportunity to delve into the museum's storage space, carry out minor restorations and make major rediscoveries. This is the case of Bassano and his San Girolamo (St Jerome), which had been deliberately 'forgotten' for decades. "It was in our collection but not on display, despite being a beautiful painting dating to around 1569, when the artist had reached his full maturity, at the highest moment of his art," Marini said.
"I was responsible for cataloguing it and the further back I went in time the more the ancient sources confirmed its great importance. And yet, at a certain point it was expunged because doubts were raised about its attribution: academics claimed that certain elements did not belong to Bassano's style, but to a later period." However, further investigation cleared up the misunderstanding after it emerged that a monk tried to repair damage to the canvas sustained in the 18th century by asking an artist of the time to repaint a figure near the top, the Madonna with child.
Marini said this portion is only "circumscribed" but that the 'repair' had been sufficient to raise doubts. Now that the mystery has been resolved San Girolamo will travel to Japan with full honours. "And on its return we will find a place for it to be displayed at last.
ROME - Italian student Giulio Regeni was likely tortured and killed while in Egyptian state custody, Amnesty International said in a report out Wednesday.
The humanitarian group said "the similarities between (Regeni's) injuries and those of Egyptians who died in custody suggests that his death is just the tip of the iceberg, and could be part of a wider pattern of enforced disappearances by (Egypt's National Security Agency) NSA and other intelligence agencies across Egypt".
The NSA is abducting, torturing and forcibly disappearing people in an effort to intimidate opponents and wipe out peaceful dissent in the name of counterterrorism, Amnesty said.
Those tortured included children as young as 14 and the disabled, Amnesty said.
Attack on Syrian refugees at Jordanian border kills 10 'Russian aircraft' hit closed military zone
(ANSAmed) - AMMAN, JULY 13 - At least ten Syrian refugees were killed and dozens were injured on Wednesday near the Jordanian border when their makeshift camp was bombed by what appeared to be Russian aircraft, Syrian rebels said.
The attack took place in area of Hadalat, one of several small camps that have been set up to accommodate refugees refused entry to Jordan. Jordanian sources told ANSA that authorities had agreed to allow some of the injured enter for treatment in its hospitals in the north, saying some of the cases are in critical condition. About 60,000 refugees from across Syria have been stranded in the no-man's-land on the border that was declared a closed military zone after a bomb attack claimed by the Islamic State (ISIS) occurred near the informal Rukban camp on June 21.
An explosives-laden truck that was blown up near a Jordanian military post killed four border guards and two personnel from the Civil Defence and Public Security Department. Before the attack, Jordan had allowed in only about 50 to 100 refugees daily from Rukban and another camp at Hadalat.
Now, with the border entirely closed, serious concerns about a humanitarian disaster on the border - where there is no shade, water or vegetation - have been raised.
Human Rights Watch and other organizations have said Jordan is violating human rights accords by closing its borders and preventing thousands of women and children from crossing in search of safety. (ANSAmed)
Jordan puts 21 men with alleged links to ISIS on trial Defendants plead not guilty
(ANSA) - AMMAN, JULY 13 - The military state security court on Wednesday started the trial of 21 men suspected of having ties with the Islamic State (ISIS ) in what is known locally as the "Irbid cell".
The men are charged with planning attacks in the kingdom, Petra news agency said.
The charges include "carrying out terrorist acts that lead to the death of individuals'', manufacturing of explosives and propaganda supporting a terrorist organization, according to a statement provided by the court. The defendants, who were arrested during a major military operation in the northern city of Irbid, pleaded not guilty to the charges. The session was postponed to hear prosecutor witnesses.
The military court is seen by human rights organization as unconstitutional and often rely on evidence taken under duress.
Several human rights group say Jordanian authorities use its anti-terrorism law to clamp down on activists and muzzle freedom of expression.
During the past few months, the kingdom has been witnessing a spike in attacks by ISIS against military targets. The Western-backed kingdom is taking an active role in the fight against ISIS and other jihadist groups fighting in Syria.
(ANSAmed)
Migrants: 4 reported dead, including 2 kids, in Lesvos wreck Six rescued by Greek, Frontex vessels. Arrivals down since March
(ANSAmed) - ISTANBUL, JULY 13 - At least four migrants were reported dead and their bodies found in the Aegean sea by Greek coast guards after a shipwreck off the island of Lesvos. The dinghy carrying the migrants had left from Turkey.
The victims are two children - a boy and a girl - a woman and a man. So far, six passengers have been rescued.
Greek coast guards carrying out rescue operations with Frontex vessels first reported the shipwreck.
The number of migrants reaching the islands of Greece from Turkey and the number of shipwrecks have significantly dropped since a an agreement last March between Ankara and the European Union. (ANSAmed)
BRUSSELS - The EU will pledge 10,000 euros to the host country for each migrant it resettles, according to a proposal Wednesday by the European Commission.
Under the plan, a resettlement system would be set up on an annual basis, with member States deciding how many refugees will be legally hosted and countries of provenance.
''It is a genuine legal window to close the door on irregular arrivals'', said Commissioner Avramopoulos.
Avramopoulos added that ''member states will decide how many people to resettle each year'' and the ''numbers will be communicated'' by the EU Council after consulting and receiving the availability communicated by governments ''based on a proposal'' of the European Commission.
The commissioner for immigration has stressed that countries ''will be free to decide whether to participate'', but the commissioner expressed optimism.
As far as ''reluctant'' countries are concerned on the reallocation plan decided a year ago, the commissioner explained that ''we have a dialogue for the moment'', adding that ''we are not here to punish but to persuade''.
The Commission's proposal is for a new unique asylum system with procedures, timing, criteria and standards that are the same across member States so as to avoid for migrants to pick EU countries according to the best conditions. The Commission thus means to replace the current directive with a regulation so as to cut timing and differences in the processing of asylum requests and to guarantee the same rights to all migrants.
Turkish PM signals future normalization of ties with Syria 'Stability needed in Syria and Iraq for fight against terrorism'
(ANSAmed) - ISTANBUL, JULY 13 - Turkish prime minister Binali Yildirim hinted Wednesday at a normalization of relations with Syria.
''We normalised relations with Russia and Israel. I'm sure we will normalise relations with Syria as well. For the fight against terrorism to succeed stability needs to return to Syria and Iraq,'' he was quoted by state new agency Anadolu as saying.
The Turkish premier, representative of a country that has had a crucial role in the armed rebellion against the Syrian regime under President Bashar Al-Assad underway for over five years, had hinted at the same previously. Following a reconciliation agreement with Israel and a thawing of relations with Russia, he said Tuesday that ''we will continue to improve relations with our neighbors. There are not many reasons to clash with Iraq, Syria and Egypt, while we do have many reason to develop our cooperation.'' ''We will improve our friendship ties,'' he said, ''with all the countries around the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. We will keep our disagreements to a minimum. (ANSAmed).
Under the terms of the agreement signed at the Farnborough Airshow, the companies will collaborate on the design aspects, integration and initial testing phases of a variety of weapons from Roketsans existing product range.
Systems to be integrated onto the market-leading C295W include at least: the 70mm laser-guided missile CIRIT; laser-guided long-range anti-tank Missile LUMTAS; and laser-guided bomb TEBER.
The joint activity will begin in the coming months and will eventually lead to weapons carriage and release trials using Airbus Defence and Spaces development aircraft.
Head of Military Aircraft Fernando Alonso said: We are fully committed to continuing to develop new applications for the C295W and to enhancing its existing systems to ensure it retains its market-leading position. There is a clear opportunity for us to address the global requirement for a cost-effective armed utility aircraft and Roketsans product range and proven expertise make them the obvious partner.
Chairman of the Board of Roketsan Emin Alpman, said: As Roketsan we are ideally position to enhance the air-to-ground capability of the C295W with sophisticated weapons that are at the cutting edge of technology. We stand ready to combine our expertise with our partner Airbus Defence and Space to provide new solutions to the armed forces of allied countries.
The deal is valued at $864 million.
Eight of the aircraft will be financed by Dubai Aerospace Enterprise (DAE), headquartered in Dubai.
The announcement coincides with 50 years of partnership between Boeing and the airline that began with an order for a 707 in 1966. EgyptAir placed its first 737 order in 1975.
"Over the years, Boeing has played an important role in our growth plan," said Safwat Musallam, chairman and CEO, EgyptAir Holding Company. "The Next-Generation 737-800s have earned an excellent reputation for reliability, performance and cost efficiency and has added tremendous value to our operations. The addition of several more of this airplane will definitely enable us to continue with our plans to introduce modern, efficient aircraft on our short to medium haul destination network. We are pleased to be working with Dubai Aerospace Enterprise to finance eight of these airplanes."
Khalifa AlDaboos, managing director of DAE added: "We are delighted to welcome EgyptAir as one of DAE's new clients in the MENA region. We look forward to a mutually rewarding long-term relationship with EgyptAir and to supporting the airlines fleet ambitions."
The SOM-J is a medium range, air-to-surface missile designed for use against heavily defended, high-value land and sea targets, such as surface-to-air missile sites, exposed aircraft, strategic assets, command and control centres, and naval vessels. The missiles modular design supports the required operational flexibility. SOM-J will carry a single 350-pound blast-fragmentation/semi-armor-piercing warhead and have a range exceeding 100 nautical miles.
The two companies announced their partnership on SOM-J initial development in August 2014. The Lockheed Martin/Roketsan team will co-develop and co-produce the SOM-J for F-35 internal bay applications, as well as for various fighter aircraft with smart weapon external carriage capabilities. The contract calls for the two companies to collaborate on final development, integration and test support, with qualification occurring in early 2018.
We foresee that in the changing era of fighter aircrafts F-35 will set a bench with the capabilities and technologies provided within. We provide SOM-J as a weapon of choice for the optimum solution for various missions by enhancing the precision strike capabilities and maintaining the survivability and maneuverability. Our partnership with Lockheed Martin will extend much further with the steps we take today said Emin ALPMAN, chairman of the board at Roketsan.
This partnership between Lockheed Martin and Roketsan will result in a highly effective weapon that will provide a valuable precision strike capability at stand-off ranges, said Frank St. John, vice president of Tactical Missile/Combat Maneuver Systems at Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control. We expect this internal carry capability to appeal to not only F-35 customers, but also as an external carry weapon for other aircraft.
The journey marks the second to last leg of the first Round-The-World Solar Flight, which aims to show how clean technologies can be used in aviation.
Andre Borschberg, his last flight as part of the Round-The-World Solar Flight, piloted the aircraft, and Bertrand Piccard will fly the last leg to Abu Dhabi.
This was an emotional and meaningful leg for me, being able to enjoy once more the incredible sensation of flying day and night thanks only to the energy of the sun and enjoying fully the present moment, said Borschberg.
This landing in Cairo brings Solar Impulse back to the origin of my dream. Egypt is the country where I landed after my non-stop round the world balloon flight in 1999, and its precisely here that I had the idea of an airplane flying around the world on solar power, said Piccard, initiator, chairman and pilot of Si2.
The aircraft will remain in Cairo until the weather is right in order to continue on the last leg to Abu Dhabi.
YEREVAN, JULY 13, ARMENPRESS. The Defense Ministry of Nagorno Karabakh says the Azerbaijani forces violated the ceasefire regime by firing various caliber weapons in the Nagorno Karabakh-Azerbaijani contact line.
The Ministrys announcement reads: Overnight July 12-13 Azerbaijan made 26 ceasefire violations in Nagorno Karabakh-Azerbaijan line of contact.
The Azerbaijani side fired more than 250 shots from various caliber weapons at the Armenian positions, and fired 60mm mortars (2 shells) at the north-eastern direction (Martakert).
The Defense Army forces adhered to the ceasefire maintenance regime and continued confidently fulfilling their military duties.
YEREVAN, JULY 13, ARMENPRESS. Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton extended her lead over Republican rival Donald Trump to 13 percentage points in a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll released on July 12, up from 10 points at the end of last week, reports Reuters.
The July 8-12 poll showed 46 percent of likely voters supported Clinton, the former secretary of state, while 33 percent supported Trump, a celebrity real estate developer. Another 21 percent did not support either candidate.
That compared with 45 percent who supported Clinton and 35 percent who supported Trump in the five days to July 8.
Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee, has mostly led in the national online poll this year. The last time Trump came close to Clinton's popularity was in early May, when his last two rivals for the Republican nomination dropped out of the race and party leaders started to line up behind his campaign.
Trump, who is expected to become the official Republican nominee at the party's convention next week, has since lost ground in the poll as he struggled to refocus his campaign from the Republican nominating contests to the Nov. 8 general election.
Over the past several weeks, Trump has faced criticism for his past business dealings and has quarreled with Republican leaders over his rejection of international trade agreements and his promises to crack down on immigration.
Clinton, meanwhile, has been dogged by criticisms of how she handled classified information as secretary of state.
James Comey, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, said last week that Clinton and her staff were "extremely careless" with sensitive information but recommended that the government not seek criminal charges against her.
Still, Americans have become increasingly positive about Clinton this month, with half of likely voters now saying they have a favorable view of her, according to the poll, up from 46 percent on July 1.
Some 60 percent of likely voters have an unfavorable view of Trump, compared with 58 percent on July 1.
The Reuters/Ipsos poll surveyed 1,146 likely voters across the continental United States, Alaska and Hawaii. It has a credibility interval, a measure of accuracy, of 3 percentage points.
Photo by EPA
YEREVAN, JULY 13, ARMENPRESS. In an interview with Armenpress, the NKR Presidents Spokesman Davit Babayan said there is no alternative to the recognition of the NKRs independence and the restoration of the complete negotiation format.
Azerbaijan insists on the phased option which is a form of delaying the process, seeking to obtain a more advantageous position. If Azerbaijan is trying to show that it is interested in the conflict settlement and doesnt see any option than the phased one, it must recognize the NKRs independence, we will also recognize Azerbaijan and will sit around the negotiation table to discuss various issues. There is no other option. The NKRs independence must be recognized, the complete negotiation format must be restored, and the time will show the rest. At the same time everyone must understand one thing, there cannot be a return to the past, in terms of the borders as well, Davit Babayan said.
Referring to the Russian FM Sergey Lavrovs statement that this time success is closer than ever before, Davit Babayan said probably it is related to the installation of the investigation mechanisms.
Taking into account that currently discussions are being held over the installation of mechanisms, I think that this statement is associated with it since at this stage we do not see any step by Azerbaijan towards the comprehensive settlement, quite the contrary the destructive statements still continue. They hinder the process of the installation of these mechanisms, but they do not openly talk about it. Thus, we should wait and work towards the installation of these mechanisms, Davit Babayan said.
YEREVAN, JULY 13, ARMENPRESS. President of the National Assembly of Armenia Galust Sahakyan addressed condolence letters to the President of the Italian Chamber of Deputies Laura Boldrini and to the President of the Senate Pietro Grasso, Armenpress was informed from the press service of the National Assembly.
We learnt with grief about the train crash in Puglia. On behalf of the National Assembly of the Republic of Armenia and personally me, I express my condolence on the occasion of the tragic accident causing many casualties.
At this tough moment I would like to express our support and solidarity with the families of the victims and the wounded."
YEREVAN, JULY 13, ARMENPRESS. A new centralized national joint facility in Yerevan was opened on July 13, 2016 by Healthcare Minister Armen Muradyan, Minister of Agriculture Sergo Karapetyan, U.S. Ambassador to Armenia Richard Mills, the representative of the U.S. Department of Defenses Defense Threat Reduction Agency Elizabeth George, Armenpress was informed by the U.S. Embassy in Armenia.
The Ministry of Healthcares National Center for Disease Control and Prevention and the Ministry of Agricultures State Service for Food Safety Central Facilities are housed in the two buildings that were built and renovated thanks to funding from the U.S. Department of Defenses Defense Threat Reduction Agency. The construction comes as part of the Agencys Cooperative Biological Engagement Program, designed to track and secure especially dangerous pathogens in Armenia and around the globe. The efforts will strengthen Armenias ability to detect and monitor disease patterns in order to reduce the risk of outbreaks of dangerous diseases, whether human or animal.
The opening of such laboratory in the healthcare field once again highlights that the public healthcare programs are a priority for us, each of these programs gives credence to our approaches for the public. It aims to completely change our understanding about the infectious disease detection, the prevention of pathogens, Armen Muradyan said informing that similar facility will be opened also in Gyumri on July 14.
The opening of this new national central facility and our cooperation with the Ministries of Healthcare and Agriculture benefit not just Armenia, keeping this nation safe, but the larger world by helping fight the spread of disease, U.S. Ambassador Mills said. We know that in todays globalized and interconnected world, diseases have no boundaries. That is why we must all work together to prevent the proliferation of bioweapons.
Along with the two updated national facilities in Yerevan, the U.S. has also recently completed the renovation of the Tavush and Shirak regional laboratories and will complete the construction of three more facilities in Lori, Gegharqunik and Syunik in 2017. All of these regional laboratories will be linked to the national central facility in Yerevan.
In addition to building new labs, renovating existing labs and providing upgrades, the U.S. is providing training and equipment to support the Armenian staff working in these labs.
Elizabeth George informed that $4.1 million has been invested in the facility of the Ministry of Agriculture, and $9.8 million in the Healthcare Ministrys facility.
YEREVAN, JULY 13, ARMENPRESS. Italian mafia boss Bernardo Provenzano has died in a prison hospital, aged 83, BBC reports.
Provenzano, dubbed "The Tractor" for his ruthless trait of mowing people down, was arrested and jailed in 2006 after spending 43 years on the run.
He took over command of the Sicilian Mafia in 1993 after the arrest of ex-boss Salvatore "Toto" Riina.
Provenzano was serving a life term for several murders, including the 1992 killings of top anti-Mafia judges Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino.
He was suffering from bladder cancer and serious cognitive impairment and had spent the last two years in a prison hospital ward, Italian media report.
His illnesses had forced the suspension of ongoing negotiations with the state over unresolved crimes. However, even before his health declined, he had resisted any cooperation with the justice system.
YEREVAN, JULY 13, ARMENPRESS. A delegation from Turkey will travel to Moscow and hold a meeting with their Russian counterparts on July 14 in order to tackle bilateral cooperation in the field of tourism, as well as bilateral relations as a whole, in another step towards normalization between the two countries, Hurriyet reported.
The visit to Moscow will take place upon an invitation by the Russian Federation and the delegation, helmed by the Foreign Ministry, will be composed of authorities from the Culture and Tourism Ministry, the Transport, Maritime and Communications Ministry and the Interior Ministry, as well as representatives from the tourism sector, a written statement released by the Foreign Ministry on July 13 said.
The delegations will exchange their views over preparations to restart charter flights between Russia and Turkey, the security of tourists and measures taken to this aim, said the ministry. The meeting in Moscow will also aim to determine new cooperation areas regarding the future of relations in tourism, it added.
YEREVAN, JULY 13, ARMENPRESS. The Central Bank of Armenia informs that on July 13 the USD exchange rate was 476.62 AMD which is an increase of 0.27 drams compared to the previous day.
Armenpress reports that the Euro decreased by 1.08 drams forming 528.00 drams. British pound increased by 5.65 drams forming 633.62 drams, Russian ruble increased by 0.02 drams reaching 7.47 drams on July 13.
The prices for precious metals are as follows: the price for silver per gram is 311.84 AMD, gold-20,570.52 AMD, and platinum-16,733.47 AMD.
YEREVAN, JULY 13, ARMENPRESS. David Cameron signed off as Prime Minister with a standing ovation from Conservative MPs and applause from some of the opposition, Armenpress reports, citing The Telegraph.
As he ended his last session of Prime Minister's Questions in the House of Commons he told MPs: "I was the future once." The comment alluded to when he address Tony Blair in his first PMQs as Tory leader. He told Mr Blair: "I want to talk about the future. He was the future once."
The outgoing PM will later make a statement in Downing Street setting out what he sees as his legacy, before going to Buckingham Palace to offer his resignation to the Queen.
Mrs May will follow him to the Palace to be formally appointed his successor by "kissing hands" with the head of state, and is expected to make her first speech as PM outside the famous black door to Number 10, outlining her priorities for the new administration.
David Cameron spoke outside Downing Street as he prepares to leave No 10 with his family for the last time.
He said that today the country was "much stronger" as he prepared to travel to Buckingham Palace to tender his resignation to the Queen.
His wife Samantha and three children stood next to him.
"It's not been an easy journey, and we've not got every decision right, but today our country is much stronger", he said.
Mr Cameron said that it had been the "greatest honour of my life to serve our country as prime minister".
Cameron said he believes Theresa May would provide "strong and stable" leadership and wished her well in negotiations over Brexit."
There were cheers and a smattering of boos as David and Samantha Cameron were driven out through the gates of 10 Downing Street.
For the first time, the Sangha Maha Nayaka Committee openly disavows the extremist group. In a statement, Buddhist leaders say they never supported the ideas and statements by ultra-nationalists. For a Ma Ba Tha spokesman, the group is a voluntary organisation that does not require anyones approval.
Bangkok (AsiaNews/Agencies) Myanmars top monks have come out against Ma Ba Tha, distancing itself from the countrys Buddhist extremist movement and its ideology.
The Sangha Maha Nayaka Committee, which represents the upper echelons of the clergy in the overwhelmingly Buddhist country, issued a statement late Tuesday saying it had never endorsed the ultra-nationalist, monk-led Ma Ba Tha (Protection of Race and Religion).
Ma Ba Tha has led anti-Rohingya Muslim protests and promoted sectarian violence. Since its foundation three years ago out of the anti-Islamic 969 movement, it has developed into a nation-wide organisation with offices across the country.
According to human rights groups and international NGOs, the Rohingya are a persecuted minority. Under Myanmars former military-controlled government, they were treated like illegal immigrants and for this reason, suffered repression at the hand of the government.
The statement by the Sangha Maha Nayaka Committee comes hours ahead of a two-day gathering of around 50 of Myanmar's top monks. In the press release, the committee said that Ma Ba Tha was not established according to its rules or approval.
"It was formed with volunteers like other organisations in the country, said a Ma Ba Tha spokesman. Registration is not needed to form this kind of organisation.
The Constitution promulgated in 2008 by the then military-backed government under the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) recognises that " Every citizen is equally entitled to freedom of conscience and the right to freely profess and practise religion subject to public order, morality or health and to the other provisions of this Constitution. ".
After that, the USDP government approved four laws promoted by the Ma Ba Tha as part of a legislative package in defence of race and religion. The rules regulating polygamy and conversions were designed to go against the Muslim minority.
Despite its poor performance in last November's elections, the extremist movement has continued to promote Burmese ethnicity and Buddhist religion against Islam and Muslims, which are seen as a threat.
Ma Ba Tha-promoted protests have led to violence in the past, including the death of Muslims, something that continues to this day. In fact, just last month, two mosques were set on fire in central and norther Myanmar.
by Sandra Awad*
In a letter to AsiaNews, Caritass communications director talks about the message of hope Pope Francis expressed for her country. Small deeds, like preparing a meal together, are a sign that peace is possible, that it is only a matter of time. Tomorrow 175 Caritas workers are set to meet for a training course.
Damascus (AsiaNews) Preparing a meal, together multiplying ones efforts going beyond bread and fishes in order to help many people, understanding that peace is possible, just a matter of time, when mercy and mutual help come together are some of the reasons to hope for Syrias future, says Sandra Awad, head of communication for Caritas Syria in a letter sent to AsiaNews.
The 38-year-old married mother of two knows what war is from her daily experiences. Given the limited resources available to deal with this tragedy, the most important thing is for people in Syria to help each other and support each other more.
Meanwhile, Caritas is putting the final touches to a meeting tomorrow in the coastal city of Tarsus that will bring together 175 charity workers and volunteers for a few days of training.
This effort fits with Pope Franciss peace video message released as part of Caritas Internationaliss peace campaign titled Syria: peace is possible.
As Syrians, Awad writes, we need such a message from such a person to give us strength and hope to be able to continue despite all the bad circumstances we are living under.
Here is the Caritas communication directors letter:
I have always watched Pope Francis visits and activities to support needy people and listened to his messages of love and solidarity on TV and social media, and I have always been touched by his modesty and his closeness to people who love him and respect him a lot, but few days ago when I heard his message supporting Caritas campaign for peace in Syria, it has another impact on me as this time he was talking about my people and about my Syria . . .
I was very touched by his message, and I kept repeating it many times. There is someone whose heart is sad because of the war in my country, and who wants to take an action and encourage others to work for peace, and this person is not anyone, it is the Holy Father who is respected and heard by the whole world. As Syrians, we need such a message from such a person to give us strength and hope to be able to continue despite all the bad circumstances we are living under, and as Christians who stayed in Syria despite all the threats around us from fanatic armed groups, we need some encouragement to stay attached to our country and our oriental roots, and as Caritas Syria workers, who go every day to their work place under the danger of mortar shells, it was very important to us to hear the Holy Father joining us in our campaign and saying with confidence: Peace is possible in Syria . . .
Few days ago, I was attending the mess, when the priest started his sermon explaining about the miracle of the five loaves and two fish that Jesus did and gave food to hundreds of hungry people. Actually I didnt hear anything of his explanation, I found myself thinking of the five years of war in my country, which led to the poverty and hunger of most of my people. I remembered a family who told me how they eat only one meal per day and try to keep some of it for the next day in case they couldnt find anything to eat. I also remembered when I asked a family who was wealthy before the war: When did you eat meat for the last time? The mother and the father looked at each other and laughed, making me feel how naive my question was. Eating meat in my country has become a dream!!!
A lot of sad stories came back to me while I was listening to the priest, but suddenly an idea came to my mind and gave me some hope. The miracle of loaves and fish is still happening in Syria . . . International aid organizations and charities are all active on the ground and are helping poor people. A lot of families are depending on this aid to survive. We are one of these active organizations and we are trying to reduce the impact of war on Syrian families by supporting them in many ways, distribution of food and clothes vouchers, rental support, medical care, elderlies support, education and psychosocial support for children. . . We offer various kind of support, but we always feel that our sources of fund are very limited facing all this tragedy and huge needs around us (poverty inside Syria reached about 84% of the population), but we try our best, with the two fish and five loaves that we have in hands, to help as much people as we can.
Syria is sick now, it needs the support of humanitarian organization and international community to be able to survive, the miracle of the five loaves and two fish to be able to feed thousands of its hungry children and the mercy from the whole world to put an end to this war and start to recover. . .
Pope Francis talked about the year of mercy in his message, which is the most important thing that we are living between each other in Syria. War made us poor, and poverty taught us mercy. People help each other and support each other more. For example, during Ramadan, a lot of charities and young volunteers, Muslim and Christians were cooking in the streets and distributing hot meals on needy people. Caritas workers participated in one of these campaigns near the gate of the Omayyad Mosque in Damascus, It was a food campaign held by Saed Volunteer Group, and together we prepared more than 15000 meals to be distributed at the end of the day on poor families and charities. Despite of the great fatigue, the stress and the high temperature on that day, all the faces were smiling, and the hearts were full of the pleasure of cooperation and the joy of giving . . .
This is our real Syria with its beautiful face, Syria is not only war, it is conviviality and mercy between Muslims and Christians, it is giving away the widows mite to the other in need, it is the multiplication of five loaves and two fish by faith, hope and love.
We appreciate the wonderful message of the Holy Father, which gave us strength, and the big effort, which has been made by Caritas Internationalis to prepare and launch this campaign, some people there were working for this campaign as if Syria was their own country that they love the most. We would like to thank them all and say: With people like you, peace is not just possible in Syria, it is certain, and it is just a matter of time . . .
* Caritas Syria communications director
by Melani Manel Perera
A UN-sponsored international conference on tourism is currently underway in Sri Lanka. Local Catholics, fishermen and activists planned a protest until they were deterred by Sri Lankas CID. Critics bemoan the negative impact on the local population, who were not invited to the event. Tourist development will benefit only big business.
Colombo (AsiaNews) Sri Lankas Tourism Ministry is celebrating its 50th anniversary. Parallel to that, a four-day international conference (11-14 July) is currently underway in Pasikudah, Batticaloa District (Eastern Province) under the auspices of the United Nations World Tourism Organisation.
However, land expropriations for tourist development in Sri Lanka "do not create any kind of development, peace and reconciliation among Sri Lankas Sinhalese and Tamil, say critics who spoke to AsiaNews.
Rights activists, fisher people, and Catholics oppose the conference because it is designed mainly "to attract big investors, businesses and corporations that can finance and develop the tourism sector following the civil war."
What big international institutions and President Maithripala Sirisenas government forget is that people want only one thing: to have their land back.
As the guest of honour, the president himself is scheduled to address the conference tomorrow when it closes.
Various social groups led by the National Solidarity Movement along with the Praja Abhilashi Network and the Peoples' Alliance for Right to Land had organised a number of counter meetings on the margins of the official conference.
Activists wanted to put the spotlight on the conditions of local communities, said Francis Raajan, Praja Abhilashi Network coordinator. However, CID* officials summoned protest leader to the Valachchanai police station and warned them not to demonstrate. The also threatened to stop fishermen from fishing during the conference unless they scrapped their planned protest.
"After the warning, our fishermen were frightened. We were forced to stop everything, said P. Nevil Christy Cooray, a Catholic fisher leader.
It was really painful that Prime Minister Ranil Wickremasignhe came to tell us that we should give up our fishing areas to make room for hotels. Although a leader of the people, he did not inquiry about our pain."
The man is not tender with UN agency as well, since the latter supports this type of "tourist expropriation".
Other people are saying that the government plans to set up elephant corridors to attract tourists.
A. Saleema, a Muslim woman living at Kalpitiya, a group of islands, said that that the previous government under Mahinda Rajapaksa seized her land and destroyed her crops.
Activist Ruki Fernando is also upset that the international conference was organised without any local input.
"No one knew anything, he said. Neither fish industry operators nor restaurant and hotel owners knew anything. Local war victims will get nothing out of this meeting, which will benefit only big business.
* CID: Central Investigation Department.
The documentary is titled "Voice from the ruins - Kandhamal in search of justice", and will be screened July 17 to 19. The director traces the origins of the violence against Christians in Orissa, mostly poor tribal and dalit. The Hindu radicals authors of various waves of persecution since the early 60's. The survivors fight for justice. The violence in numbers.
Thiruvananthapuram (AsiaNews) - In a few days the first documentary film on the violence against the Christian martyrs of Kandhamal (Orissa State) will be screened in three cinema's in Kerala. Father Ajaya Kumar Singh, a noted social activist working among the survivors of the 2008 violence, told Matters India that the film "not only captures the agony of the people, but also tells their journey and the fight for justice" .
The film, titled "Voice from the ruins - Kandhamal in search of justice," is directed by K P Sasi. The feature film lasts about 90 minutes and will be screened on three consecutive evenings, July 17 to 19, in different cities of Kerala:Thrissur, Kozhikode and Thiruvananthapuram, the state capital.
Fr. Singh explained the importance of the documentary, which traces the origins and reasons for the violence against Christians in Orissa. The Kandhamal district, where the most heinous pogroms against India's Christian community took place in August 2008, is mainly inhabited by tribals and Dalits. The hatred against the minority is not new, said the activist, but goes back at least to the sixties, and has manifested itself in successive waves of persecution in the 1980,'s 1990's, and 2000.
The most severe episodes, however, occurred in 2008, following the killing of the swami Laxamananda Saraswati. The Hindu radicals of the VHP (Vishwa Hindu Parishad) blamed the Christians in spite of the Maoist guerrillas claiming responsibility. The massacre of Christians who refused to convert to Hinduism persisted for several months. The exact data on the violence has now been confirmed: nearly 100 people killed; 350 churches and places of worship destroyed; 56 thousand people displaced, forced to flee their homes and take refuge in the forest, where they suffered hunger and poverty; more than 6,500 houses razed; more than 40 women raped, including a nun.
The victims were almost all poor Dalits and tribals, who are still waiting for justice. While the criminals are on the loose, only seven Christians have been imprisoned, detained on false charges. Recently, a group of lawyers, activists, intellectuals and writers have created a website to give their support and prevent the cause of the victims being forgotten.
The director said that the film tries to "show the problems of the survivors, through their voices and scenes dedicated to the analysis of the historical origins of violence. The film shows the impact of violence on the various layers of the community and the struggle of the survivors seeking justice ".
by Nina Achmatova
Mahmoud Velitov is the imam at the Yardyam mosque. His alleged offence dates back to 2013. He is said to have partly admitted to the charges.
Moscow (AsiaNews) Mahmoud Velitov, the imam of Moscow's Yardyam Mosque, has been placed under house arrest until 27 August after he was charged with inciting terrorism, his lawyer Dagir Khasavov told the Interfax news agency on Tuesday.
Under his restraining order, the clergyman cannot use internet or mobile and landline phones. He can however contact medical staff because he is legally disabled and has a medical history that includes a stroke and a heart attack. His lawyers have said that they will appeal against the court decision.
According to investigators, Velitov expressed support at the Yardyam mosque for the actions of a member of the banned Hizb ut-Tahrir terrorist organisation on 23 September 2013.
When his house was searched, police seized literature deemed extremist under Russian law.
The imam has partly admitted to the charges, which carry a prison sentence of between two and five years.
In recent years, Russian authorities have intensified their crackdown against terrorists and those inciting and justifying terrorism
Recently, Russia amended its anti-terrorism legislation (Yarovaya Law) to include restrictions on religious activity and increase the number of crimes with which minors can be charged. (N.A.)
by Piero Gheddo
A journey made almost 40 years ago and the meeting with Father Bede Griffiths. My wish for you all this hot summer, is that you learn how to find, in our hectic days, the time needed for rest, silence and prayer that allows us to encounter God.
Milan (AsiaNews) - Among the more than 80 non-European countries I visited, one of those I love most is India. In 1977 I went to live for a few days in the monastery of the famous guru Father Bede Griffiths (1906-1993), the English Benedictine who for 40 years directed a prayer center on the banks of the sacred Kavery river, southern India in the State of Tamil Nadu, series of mud and straw huts with concrete floors, in a grove along the river bank.
Not far from the village of Thannirpally, there were routes to Madras and Bangalore, it was hidden among the rice paddies, coconut palm trees and the banana plantations. When a guest arrives, he is assigned a hut where he prays, studies, sleeps, contemplates the passing of life and the One who never passes. The guest will also attended church, meetings, lessons, will use the library and refectory, in an atmosphere of serenity and spirituality.
This visit to Father Bede Griffiths, with Father Sandro Sacchi, then a missionary in India, in 1977, nearly 40 years ago. Today India too has changed, but the religious meaning of life remains strong. For example Indian newspapers, both English and local languages, have a religious column. Not to give news about the religious events, but so that every religion can express its beliefs and its responses to the facts of life.
The name of the monastery is Shantivanam, meaning "place of peace" in Tamil. Attracted by Bede Griffiths fame as a holy man politicians, academics, important people in Indian society, are drawn to the retreat centre for an annual period of prayer. The English Benedictine tells me: "In Europe we have all become a little atheist, despite being baptized, we put other things in place of God. As Christians, we have the Revelation, we delude ourselves into believing we have God at hand. As a result we lead a superficial, materialistic life. But it is not possible to know God intellectually, you have to experience Him in love, in prayer, in silence and resignation. It is an intimate life to be lived, He is an Other to be sought, loved and desired. God communicates Himself to those who seek Him with a sincere heart".
"In India - continues Bede Griffiths - Indian gurus who have not received the Revelation seek God for life, offer prayers and sacrifices, read and meditate on sacred texts, respect the natural law, dedicate their lives to seeking God, whom they do not know . In India, the search for God is part of every day life not just for the monks. Those who are sensitive to spiritual things go on pilgrimage, do fasts and one week a year of detach themselves from worldly things. They go to a monastery to do penance, examine their conscience and devote themselves to their relationship with God. " He adds: "The Indian culture is very religious, even people who seem distant from God, devote some time to the search for God and prayer."
Bede Griffiths gave me these rules of life: "God is revealed only in silence and poverty. Renounce what is superfluous, it takes away from the distractions of your life, eat less, pray more. Do not live a superficial life, ask God to help you know His face. If you live in sin and distractions, God eludes you, but if you look for Him by observing the Commandments, in prayer and in the imitation of Christ, God reveals Himself to you too". My wish for you all this hot summer, is that you learn how to find, in our hectic days, the time needed for rest, silence and prayer that allows us to encounter God.
The residents of the area chosen for the installation of the THAAD ask the government to reconsider. Moscow and Beijing "disgruntled" by the decision, Pyongyang threatens' physical response". The system will be operational by the end of 2017.
Seoul (AsiaNews) - The advanced US missile defense system in South Korea will be built in the Seongju region, about 200 kilometers southeast of Seoul. This was confirmed this morning, by the South Korean Defense Ministry, announcing the agreement reached between the Secretary of Defense Ash Carter and his counterpart Han Min-Koo.
The Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system, which aims to counter threats from North Korea, will be completed by the end of 2017, added Seoul, and will have the ability to defend two-thirds of the South Korean peninsula from Pyongyang's missiles. It will also protect industrial zones, nuclear power plants and fuel depots.
North Korea, China and Russia are all against the decision. Pyongyang has threatened a "physical response" to the deployment of the system - which detects impending threats and is activated automatically - while Beijing has expressed "doubts" about the decision, which "could be aimed at also controlling our arsenal." Moscow, for its part, said that the decision "will increase the tension in the area." But many analysts believe that the real motives against the system is a fear of increased American hegemony in East Asia.
There are even protests in South Korea. The inhabitants of the area chosen for the installation, contrary to Thaad and the inevitable presence of Korean and American military personnel, demonstrated in front of government headquarters and outside the US embassy in Seoul demanding the reopening of dialogue between North Korea and South Korea. Among other things, President Park Geun-hye, had promised during the election campaign that he would "do everything" to limit the presence of US soldiers on the peninsula.
James Nadeem, a resident in the Father Colony Gujrat district. The man accused of writing insults against Islam on social networks. Then he fled to save his life. His sisters arrested to induce him to surrender.
Lahore (AsiaNews) - Punjab police are searching for a Christian man accused of writing insults against Islam and the Prophet Muhammad on social media. The man, a resident of the Father Colony in the city of Sraey Alamgir (Gujrat district), has fled for fear of being killed by Muslims.
James Nadeem, a Christian, wrote the offensive remarks about the Prophet and sent them to a friend via the WhatsApp messaging service. Fearing for his life, he disappeared without trace.
According to the Pakistan Christian Post, the local police arrested and abused the sisters of James, to push the man to surrender to authorities. The newspaper also reports that Islamic clerics in the mosques are instigating believers to burn the houses of the Christians of the Father Colony, in the event that the accused is not caught.
The religious leaders' call is reminiscent of other episodes of violence perpetrated against Christians in Gujrat district. Last year the whole community took to the streets to demonstrate in defense of four faithful locked up in prison on charges of blasphemy. According to experts, in Pakistan suspicion of violating the "black law" it is often misused to target religious minorities and for personal vendettas.
The vast majority of the worlds biggest emerging market companies have failed when it comes to transparency, creating an environment for corruption to thrive in their businesses and in the places they operate.
A new report from Transparency International reveals an urgent need for these large multinational firms to do much more to stop corruption.
In the latest edition of Transparency in Corporate Reporting: Assessing Emerging Market Multinationals 100 of the fastest-growing companies based in 15 emerging market countries and operating in 185 countries around the world scored an average of 3.4 out of 10, where 0 is the least transparent and 10 is the most transparent. The average score fell slightly by 0.2 compared to the last time the survey was taken in 2013.
Multi-national corporations colluding with corrupt officials are shielded by a lack of transparency, a new report says. These unscrupulous practices are exacerbating poverty, the document adds.
The study found Chinese companies scored the worst due to having weak or non-existent anti-corruption policies and procedures. India led the way, with all 19 of its companies in the study achieving a score of 75 percent or more in being open about their company structures and holdings, which was attributed to the country's strong legislation.
The TI report follows the "Panama Papers" revelations which exposed the use of shell companies and offshore tax havens, often for illegal purposes such as tax evasion and money-laundering.
The report covered 100 companies in 15 emerging market countries which also included Brazil, Mexico and Russia. The overall score slipped since the last Transparency In Corporate Reporting survey in 2013, falling a fraction to 3.4 out of 10, with three quarters of companies scoring less than half.
The study took into account three different ways in which companies can address corruption. They include the reporting of anti-corruption programs such as policies to ban bribes or "facilitation payments," the disclosure of company structures and holdings, and the disclosure of key financial information for each individual country in which they operate, such as tax payments.
Researchers said this information was gathered from corporate websites and other publicly available sources.
Pathetic levels of transparency in big emerging market companies raises the question of just how much the private sector cares about stopping corruption, stopping poverty where they do business and reducing inequality. Time and again we see huge corruption scandals involving multinationals, such as Odebrecht Group or China Communications Construction Company, doing immense damage to local economies. Through adequate transparency and anti-corruption measures and will from the top this could have been prevented. Although many companies say they want to fight corruption, this is not enough. Action speaks louder than words, said Jose Ugaz, Chair of Transparency International.
Chinese companies, which account for a third of those assessed, had the weakest overall performance, scoring an average of 1.6 out of 10 with just one making it to the top 25. This again underscores the need for China and its business community to take immediate action to raise their standards. This is especially true in places like Africa where the Chinese government recently pledged to invest $60 billion, money that will likely be spent on services from Chinese companies.
The very weak Chinese results stem from weak or non-existent anti-corruption policies and procedures, or a clear failure to disclose them in line with international best practice. Regulation matters, as also the Indian case shows. Indian companies have the highest average score of any country they all score 75 per cent or more in organisational transparency largely due to the Companies Act.
Across emerging markets all companies need to do much more to pursue comprehensive public reporting to address corruption and provide the transparency that is the basis for robust and accountable governance.
Anti-corruption programs that keep a company from using bribery as a tool or provide ways for whistleblowers to report corruption without fear of retribution must be made publicly available to send a clear message to their customers, staff and partners that a company does not accept corrupt practices.
Customers should demand the companies they patronize live up to the highest anti-corruption standards or risk losing their business, Ugaz said.
Exhaustive lists of subsidiaries, affiliates, joint ventures and other entities must be easily accessible, allowing local stakeholders to understand the economic and social impact of multinational business in their societies and communities.
At the same time governments should implement strong anti-bribery laws, like the UK Bribery Act and enforce the laws, like the US does, as well as adopt rules for mandatory reporting on anti-corruption and company structures.
The Philippine government's top lawyer called for police to kill more suspected drug criminals, as he defended President Rodrigo Duterte's brutal war on crime against mounting criticism.
Police have confirmed killing more than 110 suspects since Duterte won elections in May promising a law-and-order crackdown that would claim thousands of lives and fill funeral parlours.
As the official death toll has mounted, and other bodies not confirmed killed by police have been found with placards declaring them drug traffickers, human rights lawyers and some lawmakers have expressed deep concerns about the war on crime spiralling out of control.
In response to the criticism, Solicitor General Jose Calida held a press conference this week at national police headquarters to insist on the legality of the police killings and to encourage more deaths of people suspected of being involved in the drug trade.
"To me, that is not enough," Calida said of the killings so far.
"How many drug addicts or pushers are there in the Philippines? Our villages are almost saturated (with drugs)."
Duterte, who took office on June 30, has repeatedly warned that drastic action is needed to stop the Philippines from becoming a narco-state.
A lawyer and a former prosecutor, Duterte has urged law enforcers to kill those they believe are involved in the drug trade, as well as other criminals.
In one of the deadliest single incidents, police reported killing eight "drug personalities" during a pre-dawn raid on Saturday in a small southern town.
As in the other cases, police insisted they were forced to shoot after encountering resistance.
One of the nation's top human rights lawyers, Jose Manuel Diokno, warned last week that Duterte had "spawned a nuclear explosion of violence that is spiralling out of control and creating a nation without judges".
Former senator Rene Saguisag, a prominent human rights lawyer during the regime of dictator Ferdinand Marcos, also criticised Duterte's statements naming and shaming alleged drug lords and police officers ahead of a formal investigation.
"Do we still probe and have a trial as part of due process? Useless, it seems to me," Saguisag wrote in an online column last week.
Some opposition lawmakers have also called for a congressional investigation into the spate of killings.
Calida, a Duterte appointee, said he would protect police from or during congressional probes, while emphasising it was up to critics to prove allegations of abuse rather than base inquiries on speculation.
"I am here to encourage the (police) not to be afraid of any congressional or senate investigations. We will defend them ... I am the defender of the (police)," he said.
By Catherine A. Sas, QC
Special to The Post
Temporary entry to Canada - whether as a visitor, student, or worker - is a privilege and not a right. Whether you are coming to Canada from a visa exempt country or even if you have been granted a visa, your entry to Canada is not guaranteed and you must be prepared to explain the purpose of your entry to Canada to a border official.
This reality may be particularly perplexing for someone who has already applied for and obtained a visa from overseas. The visa merely allows you to present yourself at Canada's door - it is not assured that you will be able to enter. And do not presume that the information that you presented at the Canadian visa office abroad, will be available to the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) officer at the port of entry.
You need to be prepared that you will be making this application essentially all over again to assure the border official that you are seeking entry to Canada for a valid purpose.
Be sure to bring all the necessary supporting documentation for your proposed stay. The same is true for a student or worker.
A CBSA officer is not a tourist guide - their role is to ensure that persons seeking entry to Canada are doing so for a valid purpose. They are often severe, abrupt and intimidating in their demeanour.
You should expect and be prepared for this. If you are seeking entry as a visitor, you need to explain the purpose of your visit, where you will be staying, how long you will be staying for, the funds that you have for your stay in Canada, who you will be visiting and why. You need to be prepared to explain all aspects of the reason for your visit and you should carry documentation with you to support these reasons.
Think about how you will explain any questions about your proposed visit. The people that you are coming to visit should also be prepared to answer any questions and provide supporting documentation.
Often visitors think that because they have their visa (or don't require one) that they don't need to explain anything further. This is a mistake.
You need to be able to confirm that you are coming to Canada for a reasonable and valid purpose. Many people know that if allowed entry, they are permitted to remain in Canada for up to six months.
But if you state at the outset to a border official that you intend to stay in Canada for six months, they will want to know how you intend to support yourself for such a long period of time without any employment. (The border official will think that you are intending to work illegally in Canada!).
The absence of such financial ability may be a reason for your denied entry and you may wish to seek entry for a shorter period of time at the first instance.
Students and workers face the same circumstances in that they need to be able to reasonably explain the reason for their entry to Canada. In both instances you will need to explain where you are going to work or study, what is your employment or program or study, where will you be staying, where are your remaining family members, and how will you financially support yourself throughout your stay in Canada.
Any hesitation in your ability to be able to provide reasonable answers to these questions may result in you being denied entry to Canada, even with a valid visa to Canada.
There is a presumption in Canadian immigration law that anyone coming to Canada is seeking entry to remain here permanently.
That is the basis upon which border officials ask their probing questions - are you planning to live in Canada without an immigrant visa or are you intending to work or study in Canada without a work or study permit?
They are lawfully permitted to make a full investigation of all of your possessions including your laptop computer, Ipad, IPhone or any other electronic device or any other personal belonging in order to determine the true purpose of your stay.
During this investigative phase, there is no way for an individual to have access to an immigration lawyer or consultant unless you have made previous arrangements for such and you carry this information with you.
Canada's privacy laws prevent any government representative from having any communication with a third party, such as a lawyer, without explicit consent. If you are detained for an examination, there is no way that you can reach a representative by phone, fax or email, unless you have done so in advance.
It is recommended that you make such arrangements before coming to Canada.
Seeking temporary entry to Canada as a visitor, student or worker may seem like a simple affair - especially when you may have already made an extensive application to obtain a visa to come to Canada - however the actual entry to Canada may be anything but simple. Whether your lawyer, employer or family has assisted you with a work, study or visitor permit application the ultimate responsibility remains upon you to explain all aspects of your intended purpose in coming to Canada.
You will need to have documentation to support the reason for your entry to Canada and you will also need to be able to explain why you have this information with you. It is recommended that you have arrangements in place with experienced immigration counsel such that if something goes wrong, you have the necessary authorizations to present to the CBSA officers. Being properly prepared will likely result in you having no difficulties whatsoever upon entry to Canada.
Catherine Sas, Q.C. has over 25 years of legal experience. She provides a full range of immigration services and is a leading immigration practitioner (Lexpert, Whos Who Legal, Best Lawyers in Canada). Go to www.canadian-visa-lawyer.com or email casas@shaw.ca.
SpotMini Robot Dog Performs Household Chores
Trending News: This Robot Dog Is Better Than Your Real One
Why Is This Important?
Because this is a fully functional and real robot dog that can fetch your beer, wash your dirty dishes and take out your garbage.
Long Story Short
SpotMini, a 65-lb robot dog, is an upgrade for man's best friend. The smallest model yet built by Boston Dynamics, SpotMini has the precision to actually perform complex tasks rather than simply carry stuff.
Long Story
This is SpotMini, a 65lbs-all-electric-robot dog that can fetch beer, wash dirty dishes, take out trash and even dance everything ex-gf couldn't do, amirite? (no).
SpotMini was built by Alphabet-owned (formally known as Google) robotics design company Boston Dynamics, a cutting-edge engineering team on mission to build the most advanced robots on Earth. It was acquired by Google X for a cool $500-million back in December 13, 2013.
And yes, the disruptive technology behind robot dog SpotMini is advanced. It can go into your fridge and pick up a soda, maneuver around your man-cave withstanding physical force (like a push) without falling down and even handle delicate wine glasses without breaking them. If it seems cool now, can you imagine what it can do for, say, the elderly or physically challenged.
The Boston Dynamics team originated from a 1992 MIT Lab, a work environment where founder Marc Raibert and his fellow engineers specialized in four-legged locomotion learning technology, leading the way in learning the relationships between motor learning, dynamic control, perception of environments and rough-terrain locomotion.
The design firm caught its first taste of internet fame after releasing their famous BigDog viral videos on YouTube in 2008, which both impressed and frightened many futurists, creating tensions between Google X and Boston Dynamics management.
SpotMini is a spinoff project of BigDog, a 3-foot long, 2.5-feet tall military robot dog weighing at 240 lbs, a project funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) back in 2005.
The DARPA-funded project was supposed to turn BigDog into a robotic military mule, freeing ground soldiers' backs from carry burden. Unfortunately the technology running BigDog was too loud for combat and it was discontinued, setting the baselines for what we see today, a domesticated and insanely cool robot dog, SpotMini.
Own The Conversation
Ask The Big Question
What will humans do with all our free time after robots like SpotMini take over?
Disrupt Your Feed
You really can't go wrong with robot dogs. Cats are soo 2009...
Drop This Fact
The Bank of England believes that machines might take over 80 million American and 15 million British jobs over the next 10 to 20 years.
When one looks at Jack Chens credentials which include computer science degrees from Harvard and Berkeley and a law degree from Fordham they wont be mistaken to think he doesnt look out of place in a Big Law firm or the legal team of a technology industry behemoth.However, theres one thing that sets him apart: Chen was born blind.That has not stopped him, nonetheless, from applying to and getting hired by top law firm Baker Botts in 2007. Now, hes an in-house lawyer at tech giant Google.In an interview with Bloomberg Law , Chen revealed that it was a challenge to join these two organisations but that he actually had different strategies interviewing at both firms.Being blind, Chen has to rely on the assistance of technologies like screen readers to work.When he was applying at Baker Botts, his strategy was to downplay his disability, choosing instead to focus on the things others do that he could too.For Google, however, Chen decided to take a different approach.I actually sent them an article that had been written about me in a local paper: I had just completed the New York City Triathlon, he told Bloomberg.I was upfront with them. I was kind of tired of hiding and downplaying my disability. I made that decision consciously.And he seems to be happier because of that decision.At Baker Botts, he always took it upon himself to be perfect and not show any weakness either in work product or interaction. He also revealed that he was never comfortable revealing to clients that he is blind.At Google, he doesnt put that same pressure on himself, particularly because he feels that as an in-house lawyer, his team cares more about his substantive work. He also greatly appreciates the support he gets in finding solutions to challenges he encounters.If theres anything he wants people to understand about lawyers with disabilities, its that they can offer unique insight and grit.In fact, people with disabilities often bring unique aspects to projects, including outstanding problem solving skills theyve been doing it their whole lives and great tenacity to get things done since, again, theyve been practicing that their whole lives, Chen noted.
A lawyer from Liverpool, England is facing disciplinary action by his seniors after being exposed as the former leader of far right party British Resistance.
However, the lawyer said that he is not a racist and that he will never apologise for his political beliefs, according to a report from the ECHO.
Joe Chiffers was revealed to have headed the party British Resistance when it was set up in March but stepped down in May, the publication notes.
The groups main aim is to reclaim Britain from our oppressors.
The indigenous British have the right to remain a majority in their own homeland, said the lawyer.
One of British Resistances officers, the ECHO reported, is former West Lancs UK Independence Party (UKIP) candidate Jack Sen who later defected to the British National Party.
Sen was previously suspended after his Twitter account was used to broadcast anti-Semitic messages to Wavertree MP Luciana Berger. The controversy was blamed on a party activist.
In the 2015 general election, Chiffers ran under UKIP in Liverpool Riverside. He is also the chairman of the British Renaissance Policy institute, a right-wing think tank.
According to ECHO, Joe Chiffers works at MSB Solicitors Liverpool.
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By Alana Lentin, Associate Professor in Cultural and Social Analysis, Western Sydney University
Twitter
In the aftermath of Brexit in the UK and the success of Pauline Hanson in the Australian Senate elections, racism seems to be a more present threat than ever.
As First Nations people and people of colour in Australia well know, racial violence never went away. But, for others, recent events may serve as a needed reminder that racist attacks and abuses of police power also happen outside the US.
The Brexit fallout has included a sharp rise in racist attacks on people of colour and migrants, including eastern Europeans. Anti-racists in the UK have quickly responded. The iStreetWatch website now allows users to report and map racist incidents across the UK.
People are increasingly using online spaces and digital tools such as anti-racism apps to strategise, challenge racist views and strengthen anti-racist solidarity.
The post-Brexit Twitter handle @PostRefRacism has nearly 10,000 followers. It encourages users to document the increase in racism in the UK following the vote for Brexit.
But as @PreRefRacism observes, far from being new, racism has merely become more visible to white people since Brexit.
Defining, discussing and countering racism
Activists and scholars have always argued race is a complex formation that needs to be set in historical context. However, the popular view is racism is a matter of bad attitudes that anyone can hold.
In online discussions, reductive approaches to racism can be challenged in real time. It is due to the prominence of many black feminists on Twitter, for example, that the term intersectionality has become more widely understood.
Social media provide an important space in which racism is being defined, discussed and countered. These are key sites for observing how discussions of race take shape.
However, as media scholar Gavan Titley notes, this has also led to racism becoming debatable to the detriment of a clear delineation of what racism is and is not.
While cyber-racism is important to challenge, the persistence of street violence and the intertwining of offline and online worlds call for new methods for opposing racism in public.
Mobile apps for anti-racism interventions and education have been around for a number of years and several more are in development. As our research on apps in Australia, the UK and France has shown, they have diverse functions: to report racist incidents; to educate; and as news sources for racialised communities.
The phone in your pocket, with its built-in geolocative and image-capturing capabilities, can be a powerful anti-racism tool, enabling immediate reactions to racist events. As with the recent police shooting of Philando Castile, mobile video live-streamed online can generate almost immediate widespread condemnation and reaction.
Tracking Islamophobic abuse
The Australian Islamophobia Watch is a reporting app modelled on one developed by the French anti-Islamophobia association, the CCIF. The app was launched in reaction to the 2014 police raids on Muslim homes and subsequent attacks on Muslim people in public, women in particular.
Like iStreet Watch, the app allows users to report incidents of Islamophobic abuse. A map is created to visualise these incidents by category such as physical or verbal aggression, discrimination and vandalism. This representation of racial violence is itself a primary purpose of these apps.
The CCIF spokespeople in Paris told us that, in addition to enabling the reporting of racist events, the app-generated data draw attention to the existence of Islamophobia as a category of racism, which is highly contested in France. By cataloguing abusive events, CCIF makes the point that Islamophobia cannot go ignored.
The app includes a feed that provides an alternative news source for an embattled community. Against a backdrop of increased state-sanctioned Islamophobia bans on hijabs and burqas, the imposition of pork on school canteen menus and heightened policing of Muslims in a hyper-securitised landscape the resource generates community solidarity.
In this way, users may experience the app as a more concrete response to racism than fleeting online hashtag campaigns.
What are the risks of these apps?
Our research will now turn to the US and Canada where app development has focused on police violence against the black community. Tools such as the NYCLU Stop and Frisk app allow users to film police violence, report incidents and alert users when others are being stopped and frisked in their area.
While such apps purport to put the power in the hands of those on the receiving end, the rise of formalised digital platforms that capture and store data and evidence of racism also raises legitimate concerns:
As our research shows, the conduit between the reporting of incidents, the police and the courts necessarily appeals to the same systems in which institutionalised racism so often plays out.
Despite the apps we studied providing confidential and anonymised reporting, the real and perceived risks of the technology being used (in the wrong hands) to profile and literally locate and track individual reporters and activists is a genuine concern. This may act as a barrier to take-up and use.
The ease with which incidents can be filmed and uploaded online, while certainly raising awareness, runs the risk of causing people to switch off.
Digital technology can have the dual effect of informing about and banalising racism. As comic Hari Kondabolu tweeted following the US police shootings on successive days of two black men, Alton Sterling and Philando Castile:
As more apps are developed, more questions will emerge. What is clear is that these will be a main player in the fight against racism as it morphs and spreads into online and mobile-mediated everyday spaces.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.
Originally published in The Conversation.
By Omar Mubin, Lecturer in human-centred computing & human-computer interaction, Western Sydney University
Flickr/Mr TinDC, CC BY-NC-ND
Australia is known to be a nation of drinkers with almost 18% having a drink on a daily basis at a level that is considered risky.
But the ill-effects of such behaviour extend to binge drinking, impacts on health and well-being, assaults drink driving with resulting car accidents and many others.
Various governments and organisations have launched campaigns and policies to combat problem drinking, such as Danny Greens Coward Punch Campaign and the lock out laws in New South Wales and Queensland.
Lock out laws have met with some success in reducing alcohol-related serious injuries in some regions. But they have also been criticised with claims the laws are harming businesses or that the cultural image of a high profile and vibrant urban centre such as Sydney is being distorted.
But there might be another way to tackle the problems related to the over-consumption of alcohol that doesnt require large-scale government intervention.
Install an app
When it comes to overcoming bad behavioural habits, such as drinking too much, technology can help by providing a subtle and more personalised solution to the problem.
Smartphone apps can provide real-time intervention on the go. They allow people to get the right information at the right time regarding their drinking habits.
Popular alcohol control apps include examples such as Stop Drinking with Andrew Johnson (for Apple or Android) which relies on relaxation and hypnotism and other apps which simply count the intake of alcohol (Sobriety Counter is one such app for Android).
Such mediated, anonymous and indirect interaction can also help people suffering from a drinking problem who are otherwise reluctant to visit rehabilitation and facility centres.
In this way technology can facilitate a change in behaviour through persuasion but not coercion. This is known as persuasive technology, a term originally coined by Stanford University researcher BJ Fogg.
Such technologies have already helped with other problems, such as obesity, bullying and racism by motivating people, providing knowledge, supporting decision making and ultimately facilitating behaviour change.
There is growing realisation of the importance of persuasive technology in mitigating the harmful side effects of alcohol and other bad habits.
There are a number of web and mobile applications that help people with their alcohol intake. But web-based applications usually cannot be accessed at a users own discretion as they require some form of synchronisation with the users phone.
Which app is best?
While mobile apps may be best suited to tackle drinking problems there isnt much of an understanding as to which are more suitable or what features people prefer.
The National Health Service in the UK does provide a list of apps that can assist in tackling health related problems. But there is no government or other reputable organisation that maintains a similar list in Australia.
There are some online rankings of alcohol control apps, but these are not maintained by official health services.
This motivated us to analyse more than 200 user reviews of apps available on the iTunes store so we could better establish design recommendations for such apps.
We focused on 18 apps, such as Quit That, that were meant to reduce alcohol intake through behavioural change strategies. We specifically excluded apps that were purely for facilitating alcohol intake, such as alcohol recipe apps.
We noticed that there were two main types of strategies that were prevalent in such apps. Some used motivation and others self-control to help reduce or monitor alcohol intake. The former rely on different persuasive strategies such as praise and reward mechanism, social interaction with avatars, competitions, reminders and notifications, etc.
Self-control apps mostly rely on users to monitor and manage their intake by providing information, such as blood alcohol concentration levels. Self-control apps do not explicitly inform the user when their alcohol intake crosses a level of high risk.
What users want
Our results showed that users preferred self-control apps, possibly because they did not want to be controlled by an app that was too insistent or fast in its interaction.
Users not only preferred gradual notifications from the apps but they also wished to have full control over how the app interacted with them. We found that a key design guideline for these apps is the ability to customise the way users interact with them.
We noticed that a number of users preferred apps that provided incremental targets. This allows them to attain positive milestones on each step of the behavioural change process. A number of users also stated the importance of sharing their progress on social media.
Implementing persuasive applications is a fraught with challenges, particularly for contexts such as alcohol intake, where real-time monitoring can be difficult.
But there is great potential to use mobile technology to promote positive alcohol behavioural change, particularly if the apps follow certain design features.
If the appropriate governmental authorities can benchmark and recommend apps based on the proposed guidelines, that will go a long way in assisting many in overcoming their alcohol related problems.
Omar Mubin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.
Originally published in The Conversation.
The election results in Australia are unlikely to affect the jobs outlook, but the decision by the UK to leave the European Union, known as Brexit, could have an effect.The amount of jobs advertised in June saw a dip in the last week of June after the referendum result showed that the UK has voted to leave the EU. Normally numbers would be expected to have increased by around 5% in the month. But the latest data released today by employment firm SEEK shows that there were 3.2% more jobs advertised in June 2016 than 12 months ago.'Market volatility and uncertainty in the wake of the UK's vote to leave the EU, appears to be the likely reason for this unforeseen drop in job ads on SEEK in late June,' said Michael Ilczynski, managing director for SEEK Employment.'During the first week of July we saw job ads on SEEK mostly bounce back to be consistent with the stronger pace of growth evident through most of June, running nearly 5% above the same period in 2015 and some 15% higher than the corresponding period in 2014,' he explained. 'Unlike the Brexit result, the uncertain outcome of the Australian election in the early days of July appeared to have no significant impact to job ads on SEEK,' he added.Overall, for jobseekers it is an encouraging time to be looking for a new role, with the top five largest advertising industries on SEEK all having year on year growth, with information and communication technology being the exception, down 2% year on year.But health and medical saw a rise of 6% year on year, trades and services were up 7%, administration and office support up 13%, and manufacturing, transport and logistics up 11%.A regional breakdown suggests that South Australia is the top jobs market with the number of adverts up 12% year on year. 'This growth comes after a long period of weakness in South Australian job advertising and suggests the South Australian labour market and economy has turned the corner and was probably improving even before the recent positive announcements on defence spending,' Ilczynski said.Last week the South Australian State Government unveiled a $109 million jobs incentives programme as the centre piece of its budget to help stimulate the local economy and encourage business to hire more staff. The government hopes the scheme will create up to 14,000 more jobs.New South Wales, Australia's largest employment market, remains strong with SEEK new job ads up 8.2% year on year in June but this increase is more moderate in comparison to the end of the financial year in 2015 which saw ads lift by 20.9% year on year.Victoria and Tasmania also recorded strong job ad growth compared to 12 months ago, with an uplift of 6% and 8.9% respectively while Western Australia remains the weakest labour market in Australia with job ads falling 19.4% year on year, with all industries across the state, but three, having negative year on year growth this June.At a national level the data shows that there has been a 6.2% increase year on year in the SEEK Employment Index, which points to favourable conditions for job seekers as there are slightly less applications for each role. However, underneath this national figure there is a clear difference in candidate availability at a state and territory level.Year on year in Western Australia, Tasmania and the Northern Territory it's an employer's market. For each job advertised there is a higher than average number of candidates applying, creating more competition for job seekers but providing employers with a larger pool of candidates to choose from.In New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and the ACT, job hunting conditions for candidates are more aligned, with a reasonable balance between jobs advertised and candidates applying.
Hi,
I have 12 years of Experience in SAP FICO and completed IELTS with 8.5.
1. I have doubt in ANZSCO code. Which Code would be suitable for SAP FICO experience.
261111-ICT Business Analysts
261112-System Analyst.
Please provide the correct ANZSCO code, which can help me.
2. I have Bachelor degree in Commerce with Computer application that is not as per ICT units qualification , after my bachelor i did Master in Computer science where i had computer paper and as per ICT units it can be counted as ICT Minor. After my masters i started working and till now have total 12+Year of Experience in SAP FICO( from Junior to now Project Lead).
So Can i apply ACS Skill assessment with my Master degree with my all experience roles and responsibility documents. As my bachelors is not as per ICT so should i submit this to ACS along with masters or only masters is enough.
I discussed with number of Immigration agents and each have different thoughts.
Some agent told me that my 6 years of work experience will be taken as for qualification because my Bachelor is not as per ICT and another six year will be counted for work experience.
so bit confused here. If some faced this problem or expert in immigration, please help me.
Thanks,
Sachin
The replacement for the Renault Fluence is not slated for India, yet.
The Renault Fluence will soon be replaced by the Megane sedan the third member of the Megane family in international markets. The Megane sedans family credentials are instantly recognisable by its familiar front, marked by the C-shaped headlight cluster and the big Renault logo on the grille. In profile, the three-box shape is apparent, leading to a claimed top-level spaciousness in the rear and a large 508-litre boot. The shape of the Megane sedan is quite conservative, though Renault has peppered it with interesting details, such as the indent in the C-pillar and the bottom of the doors, and the subtle integrated spoiler.
Like its siblings, the Megane hatch and estate, the sedan too will come with petrol and diesel engine options. There will be two petrol engines with power ratings of 115hp and 130hp, and three diesel engines with power ratings of 90hp, 110hp and 130hp. Transmission options, dependent on the engine choice, include a five-speed manual, a six-speed manual, a six-speed auto and a seven-speed dual-clutch auto.
In terms of equipment and features, the sedan will get a seven-inch screen for the digital instrument cluster, an 8.7-inch infotainment screen, a heads-up display, the R-Link 2 connectivity system and the hands-free Easy Trunk Access system.
The Megane sedan will be manufactured at and exported from Renaults Turkey plant.
For India, however, the French carmaker has not announced any plans to replace the Fluence with the Megane sedan. The Fluence, while still on sale here, is an extremely slow seller. Renault instead is focusing on its SUV line-up in India. Building on the success of the Duster, it will launch another SUV soon, the Kaptur. Read more about the upcoming crossover here.
New Renault Megane photo gallery
The German developer is offering us a taste of things to come and while this may be a bit of a stretch, we're expecting hypercar levels of performance from the beast.For crying out loud, just look at that rear wing! As those of you following the tuning realm know, people haven't gotten over their ginormous fixed rear wing fetish, despite some of the world's fastest machines, such as the members of the HHHT (Holy Hybrid Hypercar Trinity) going for active wings.As a result, Techart has worked to please the public, delivering one of the most outlandish wings we've seen outside of Rauh-Welt Begriff Neunelfers Then again, using the 2017 Porsche 911 Turbo S as a base, the GTstreet R will need plenty of downforce. The 580 hp Zuffenhausen machine has already proven it is extremely capable in factory form (it dissed a Huracan, remember?), so we can only imagine what happens once the tuning house starts playing with the twin-turbo 3.8-liter flat-six occupying its posterior.With the development coming half a decade after the stellar Techart GTstreet RS, which was based on the 997-generation 911 GT2 RS , it has quite a velocity thirst to quench.The German specialist will unleash the steroids-infused Turbo S by the end of the year, with this fall's Paris Motor Show appearing to be a likely occasion for the rear-engined coupe's debut.Nevertheless, we're still waiting to see what Porsche's GT division has in story for the 991 future of the GT badge (here, have some spyshots ).
We are writing about Clark-Cutler-McDermott Co. (CCM), a supplier for General Motors for the past 45 years, and a 105-year-old company. General Motors is their largest customer, accounting for over 80% of the company's revenue, but an unfortunate chain of unfortunate financial decisions has led to CCM filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.In the wake of this situation, General Motors risks being left without an essential supplier, the only one it used to for dash insulators, wheelhouse liners, fender insulators, floor insulators, and pillar insulation.The parts described above are just some of what General Motors bought from CCM for its North American factories, and the corporation has no other partner for the parts made by this company.General Motors risks shutting down its North American plants until it finds suppliers for these products, as the company works with a just-in-time supply sequence for the components made by CCM.The just-in-time strategy involves avoiding stocking parts, preferring to receive delivery of elements when they are supposed to be used on the production line.Since GM does not have any inventory for the parts manufactured by CCM, the company risks not being able to assemble any new cars until a new supplier provides it with the required elements.The American automaker has already requested relief from the US Bankruptcy Court District of Massachusetts, where it asked to take immediate possession of equipment, tooling, and finished inventory of the Clark-Cutler-McDermott Company.According to Automotive News , CCM notified General Motors this year that it defaulted on a loan, and it required emergency funds. General Motors then provided the company with secured loans, but negotiations later broke down, and the factories operated by CCM were shut down on June 17, 2016.GM won a restraining order, and managed to force the supplier to resume its operations and production, funded directly by the automaker. Unfortunately, this was just a temporary solution, and GM needs a permanent remedy.
The defendants, as revealed by CNBC , are none other than Chairman Shervin Pishevar, CEO Robert Lloyd, board member and investor Hoe Lonsdale, and General Counsel Afshin Pishevar. They are accused of numerous instances of cronyism, nepotism, and, as mentioned before, a death threat.The lawsuit is filed by three plaintiffs who work or have worked at some point for Hyperloop One. The most important voice among them is co-founder and CTO Brogan Bambrogan, the company's former Assistant General Counsel David Pendergast, and former Vice President of Finance William Mulholland.The main complaints raised by Mr. Bambrogan, who was leading the engineering team, are related to the mismanagement of the startup. These missteps ranged from appointing underqualified friends or family members on important positions to wasting the engineer's time for giving tours to celebrities or Mr. Pishevar's friends. While the former bears no excuse, the latter can be explained by Hyperloop One's funding method which relied heavily on outside investors.More to the point, the plaintiffs identify the hiring of Chairman Shervin Pishevar's brother, Afshin, as General Counsel, a position his experience as a personal injury lawyer in Maryland did not qualify him for. Even more obscene was the doubling of the contract value the PR firm Hyperloop used after Shervin Pishevar started dating its representative. To make matters even more transparent, the contract was terminated once the two broke up.But the most scandalous has to be the accusation of making a death threat. It is aimed at Afshin Pishevar who could be seen on security camera footage laying a noose on Bambrogan's chair. The threat came after the engineer had signed a letter on behalf of the engineering team complaining about the management decision, something that somewhat transpired during a meeting with foreign investors.There is very little chance all this commotion will not affect the company's progress, which is really a shame considering it looked as if it was maybe in the leading position compared to the other competitors. But these are some very serious allegations and the definitely need to be investigated, and we doubt that the people who invested in this startup will settle for anything less.
Warming has led the MINI design department since late 2010, and is considered responsible for moving the British brand upmarket. Among his creations are the MINI Vision Next 100 concept, the current generation of the Clubman, the second-generation Countryman, and the Superleggera concept. The very first five-door MINI was launched under his helm, marking a significant change for the British brand.Anders Warming was appointed the head of design for MINI after Gert Hildebrand, his predecessor, stepped down from his position at the end of 2010.The design of MINI models was not Warmings only concern while he worked for the BMW Group, as he had the privilege to work both under Chris Bangle and Adrian van Hooydonk as the lead exterior designer for BMW. In case the names Bangle and van Hooydonk seem unfamiliar, they are two artists that have changed the face of BMW cars at the time.While working with the two famous designers, Warming was involved with the second generation of the BMW X3 and Z4, along with the corresponding 5 Series (E60) and 6 Series (E63/64) of the moment. Previous employments for Warming involved a two-year run at Volkswagen, just after leaving BMWs Californian design studio in 2003.Anders Warming was born in Denmark and educated at the Art Center College of Design in Vevey, Switzerland, as well as the institutions equivalent in Pasadena, California. As GT Spirit notes, his former boss, Gert Hildebrand, left MINI in 2010 to head the design of Qoros , a Chinese brand with global ambitions.The British brand owned by the BMW Group has confirmed the leave of Anders Warming, but has yet to describe his motives. The successor of Anders Warming at the helm of MINIs design department has yet to be revealed, but we expect a press release soon to clarifiy matters.
SOHC
Despite the potential hazards faced by Nissan and Volkswagen in Korea, PSA Peugeot Citroen is 100% confident in its BlueHDi engines. We were surprised to learn today that several models from all three French brands will offer an alternative to the petrol engines.But, considering they've always been at the forefront of exhaust particle filtration, we should give Peugeot a little more credit. So, let's start with them, shell we?According to the press release, two engines will be offered by Peugeot, the 1.6 and 2.0, in several configurations. For Japan, the 1.6-liter will have asetup and produce 120 PS plus 300 Nm of torque. Its only gearbox will be the 6-speed automatic, which helps return a combined consumption of 21.0 km/h. That's the only one that's better than some hybrids.The 1.6 is going to be available on the 308 Alure hatchback and SW wagon. As for the 2.0-liter, its maximum output will be 180 PS and 400 Nm, while fuel consumption is reduced to an acceptable 18 km/l. GT versions of the 308 hatch , 308 SW and 508 will have it, again only with automatics.Next, we have Citroen with the same output for the slightly older but still attractive C4 hatchback. It will supposedly achieve 20.2 km/l while compensating with a slightly lower price.And finally, the newly launched DS brand will offer the DS4 BlueHDI engine, the 2-liter one. There are both regular and off-road oriented models, but power goes only to the front wheels via a 6-speed Aisin automatic gearbox.The premium sub-brand has promised that starting in January 2017, the DS5 Bl
16 mo old has injuries to leg, foot after @StanfordShop security robot knocks him down and runs him over. #paloalto pic.twitter.com/tJdDNeFJq1 Lilian Kim (@liliankim7) July 12, 2016
Like workers in the industrial revolution feared for their livelihood because of steam engines and other machines, humans of the Third Millennium will probably fear being injured by a robot . Robots are programmed never to harm a human willingly, but accidents do happen, and one of them led to a toddler being hit by a 300-pound (136 kilograms) machine.Fortunately, the 16-month-old boy was not seriously hurt by the impact with the five-foot-tall robot (152 centimeters). However, as his parents noted, the robot somehow struck the childs head, and the toddler fell facing the floor, while the robot kept moving forward after running over the kids right foot. This is the first reported injury of a human after being struck by a robot, which was being contracted as a security guard at the Stanford Shopping Center.Luckily, the 16-month-old boy did not suffer any broken bones, but his leg was swollen after the impact, and he also had a scrape on his skin. The childs parents are concerned about the robot, and have reached out to media outlets to prevent others from injury.According to ABC 7 News and Lilian Kim, their reporter on site, the parents were walking behind the child, being just a few feet behind when the impact happened.The robot is manufactured by Knightscope Security, and is being offered to businesses in the USA through a rental program. It costs just $7 an hour to rent a pair of robots, but only one of them will patrol a property while the other recharges.Each of the robots is pre-programmed to follow specific routes or operate in geo-fenced areas, and it comes with video recording and infrared vision. It is designed to alert authorities of unnatural noises, sudden environmental changes, as well as known criminals.The shopping center introduced the robot security guard last year, and no incidents like these have been reported so far. Representatives of the company that developed the robot have yet to comment on the matter, and neither have the mall s spokespersons.
Coming after a so-and-so one that was mainly drawn back by its terrible interior design (with a special mention for the dashboard) and not very good materials, this one almost appears as a revolution. And if we're talking about the sedan version - which replaces the terrible, terrible Fluence - then the new model is nothing short of a quantum leap forward.French cars still have to battle through some largely unjust inferiority complex they have in front of their German counterparts, but the Megane appears to have the right weapons. It comes with a good selection of engines (the 1.6 dCi turbodiesel, in particular, can hold its head up high regardless of its entourage), a bold exterior design that returns to the more manly forms from two generations ago, and a de-cluttered interior with a Tesla-inspired central display. Oh, and Renault s also tend to cost less than, say, Volkswagens.But if the Renault Megane Sedan GT turns out to be just as goog as the French manufacturer says its hatchback sibling is (it claimed to handle better than a Volkswagen GTI or Ford Focus ST, remember?), then success should be guaranteed. The car is supposed to be launched this fall at the Paris Motor Show, but X-Tomi Design didn't feel like putting up with the wait and created one already.Well, it's not like he had that much work to do. With the standard sedan and the GT version of the hatchback already on the loose, it was probably a one-hour job for the Photoshop wiz. Not that you could see that in the final result. The Megane Sedan GT rendering looks like the real deal, and it also presents itself as a very attractive car. Now, if only Renault decided to make an RS version as well...
Yes, boys and girls, theres a new score to beat now if you plan on circumnavigating the planet through each continents longest axis, all thanks to Swiss endurance rider Urs Grizzly Pedraita, who did it in 119 days and 21 hours.Time in the saddle added up to 72 days and 13 hours, the rest being used to sleep and get him and the bike transferred between continents via either plane or boat.Speaking about the bike, Urs didnt just opt for a common adventure model, like the successful BMW R1200GS with huge hard cases mounted to its tail and all sort of technological amenities. Instead, he took a more classic approach to this matter and prepped a custom Victory Cross Country Tour cruiser for the big ride.The stock bike was fitted some large engine guard protectors, a more comfortable seat with a backrest, lots of bags and luggage nets, a handful of GPS devices, some cameras and high-grade quality tires. By the end of the trip, the odometer gained 47,390 miles (76,267 km) and word is it did them without any problems.This record is a testament to the durability, capability, and dependability of our Cross Country Touring platform, said Marketing Manager for Victory Motorcycles Nate Secor.The journey started out on March 11 when Urs departed from Daytona accompanied by dozens of Victory owners. The trip took him 3,971 miles to Panama City done in 6 days and 14 hours. Then went down to Ushuaia and returned to Santiago de Chile, from which he flew to Australia.Six days and 8 hours, translating into 4,604 miles, later and the road from Sydney to Perth was complete. Next was the African continent, doing the 7,509 miles (12,084) from Cape Town to Cairo in 13 days and 23 hours.Next, he took a boat and went across the Mediterranean to Tarragona from where he went south to Gibraltar and then up to North Cape in a 5,447-mile (8,766 km) trip that took 6 days and 23 hours. Another 7,290-mile (11,732 km) trip to cross Russia followed after which he went south again through South Korea, Thailand, and Malaysia.Finally, in Kuala Lumpur, he jumped on a plane and landed in Anchorage, doing the final 6,894 miles (11,094 km) back to Daytona in 9 days and one hour, where family, friends, and enthusiasts were waiting to open a bottle of champagne and celebrate his awesome trip.Oh, and, yes, the journey included riding on sand and snow, all alone without a crew or a fellow rider. So, whats your excuse?
13 July 2016 11:23 (UTC+04:00)
By Rashid Shirinov
Although an economic downturn itself does not cause domestic violence, it can exacerbate the situation. Reported increases in domestic violence and calls to the police suggest that the current recession in Armenia worsens the situation.
Colonel Nelly Duryan, Head of the Criminal Investigation 3-rd Division of the Armenian Police, reported that the country faced a rise in the number of domestic violence in the first half of 2016.
Over the six months of 2016, 31 cases of domestic violence were detected in the country, while 554 families are currently listed in the register. This figure increased by 2.4 times compared to the same period of 2015.
Duryan stressed that the highest rate of domestic violence was registered in Yerevan, followed by Kotayk, Shirac and Lori cities.
The Armenian Coalition to Stop Violence against Women, in turn, announced that over the past five years, 30 women were killed by their partners, which resulted in 45 children left without mothers.
Head of Womens support center NGO Maro Matosyan said there is no political will in adopting the law on Domestic Violence in Armenia, since it requires prevention which implies establishment of shelters.
That is to say the adoption of the legislation is linked to obtaining relevant funds. Consequently, the whole process is delayed, noted Matosyan, pointing to lack of funds.
Overall, 784 cases of domestic violence were registered in the country in 2015, and in 150 of them criminal cases have been initiated, according to iravaban.net. The number has twice increased compared to 2014. In 2015 the cases of violence committed by husbands against the wives were 471, and in 2014 it was 410. There were 15 cases of violence committed by a wife against the husband in 2015, and 6 such cases were registered in 2014.
65 cases of violence against children were registered in 2015, as compared with 62 cases registered in 2014. And 106 cases of violence committed by children against their parents were registered both in 2014 and in 2015.
One of the main reasons for aggression of Armenian men is unemployment, the Yerevan-based Regional Studies Centre (RSC) says in its report.
The unemployment contributed to emergence of frustration and humiliation feelings for many men, tragically manifested in increase of alcohol abuse and gambling, and is also directly connected with violence against their wives, Lilit Simonyan, the author of the RSC report states.
The aggression and domestic violence may rise because of the current economic downturn, experts warn.
The rising tendency of unemployment among Armenias 2.9 million-population has become a pandemic problem which threatens to generate social dysfunction in society.
The share of poor people represents over 30 percent of the country's overall population. Having a direct link with widespread poverty, unemployment mostly affects the poorest and most vulnerable segments of society
Armenia ranks first in the region for the high level of unemployment. Local media reported that the unemployment rate in 2016 would be some 18.3%. For comparison, the level of unemployment in Azerbaijan is 5%, while in Georgia the figure is 12.5% and in Turkey - 11%.
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Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov
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13 July 2016 10:43 (UTC+04:00)
By Laman Ismayilova
Azerbaijan`s capital Baku will host the 7th International Forum on Energy for Sustainable Development International Conference on Renewable Energy on October 18-21.
The event will be jointly organized by the government of Azerbaijan, the United Nations Regional Commissions, the International Energy Agency (IEA), the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Office in Azerbaijan, the Copenhagen Centre on Energy Efficiency, and the Renewable Energy Policy Network for the 21st Century.
The Seventh Forum will combine a high-level session with plenary sessions, parallel workshops and site visits over four days.
The Forum will assemble up to 300 international energy experts, government officials, and representatives from the business community, financial sector, academia and civil society to share perspectives on how the SDGs can be implemented. It will also include an International Renewable Energy Conference and the annual sessions of the UNECE Group of Experts on Renewable Energy and Group of Experts on Energy Efficiency for the first time.
Among the planned parallel workshops are the Seminar on Policy Reforms for Renewable Energy Investments, the Workshop on Pathways to Sustainable Energy, the SPECA Thematic Working Group on Energy, Water and Environment, and the Workshop on the Role of Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) in Renewable Energy Planning.
The Seventh Forum provides a unique opportunity to build upon the achievements of previous fora and develop a roadmap for what participants would like to achieve in the short- and medium-term with regards to the energy-related SDGs.
Outcome documents from the previous two forums in particular called for a deep long-term transition to a sustainable energy future and set out concrete steps the United Nations Regional Commissions could take: Assist member States in developing national sustainable energy action plans; Collaborate with member States to improve their national energy statistics programmes; Provide capacity building to member States in the action areas outlined in the Hammamet; Declaration: Energy Market Reform, Energy Efficiency, Renewable Energy, Energy Access, Energy Security, Finance and Investment, Technology, and Energy Data, Indicators and Analysis; Encourage international dialogue for technological and knowledge exchange on lessons learned and best practices; Develop internationally-recognized minimum energy performance standards in all sectors.
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13 July 2016 11:33 (UTC+04:00)
AZAL, the biggest Azerbaijani airline and national flag carrier, has held negotiations with major aircraft manufacturers as Boeing, Ilyushin, Antonov and others as part of the "Farnborough International Airshow - 2016" in Great Britain.
The Azerbaijani delegation was headed by AZAL President Jahangir Asgarov.
At a meeting with Boeing Senior Vice-President, Martin Benrott and Sales Director of the Corporation, Serdar Gurz the possibility of supply of 10 Boeing 737 MAX aircrafts in 2018-2020 was discussed. The sides also mulled the issue of the project financing .
The Azerbaijani side also held the third round of negotiations with Mikhail Gvozdev, head of the Board of the Corporation "Ukrainian Aircraft Manufacturing Company" and President of "Antonov" state enterprise, Alexander Kotsuba on the project of organization of manufacture and maintenance of An-178 transport aircrafts on the territory of Azerbaijan.
Furthermore, negotiations were held between Jahangir Asgarov and Director General of JSC Ilyushin Finance Co., Alexander Rubtsov on leasing of MC-21 aircrafts. In June the parties signed a letter of intent on leasing of 10 new MC-21 medium-range aircrafts. Delivery is scheduled for 2019-2020.
At this meeting a contract was also signed for financial lease of the world's largest serial cargo aircraft An-124-100 (Ruslan). The contract was signed by Silk Way Holding President Zaur Akhundov and. Alexander Rubtsov with the participation of Jahangir Asgarov and the United Aircraft Corporation (UAC) President Yuri Slusar.
"Purchasing An-124-100 (Ruslan) aircraft will become a new stage of development of Azerbaijani civil aviation, will allow increasing competitive advantage and strengthening our country's position in the world air cargo transportation market.
Over the past 10 years, we have turned the Heydar Aliyev International Airport into a major air cargo transportation hub. Today, Azerbaijani civil aviation presented itself as an official airline of the Great Silk Road project connecting East and West. We make every effort to achieve the same success in passenger transportation," Jahangir Asgarov said.
Azerbaijan Airlines is a major air carrier and one of the leaders of the aviation community of CIS countries. AZAL with the newest airplane fleets, consisting of 25 airplanes, does not have a single old plane.
The total route network of AZAL, one of the aviation community leaders in the CIS area, includes 40 destinations in 19 countries.
Being an important member of the International Civil Aviation Organization Council, for its services AZAL received a prestigious "4 Stars" from the leader in air transport research, the world-famous British consulting company Skytrax last June.
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13 July 2016 14:28 (UTC+04:00)
By Nigar Abbasova
Iran and Azerbaijan have inked a memorandum of understanding (MOU) for cooperation on road transportation.
Mohammad Javad Atrchian, an official with Irans Road Maintenance and Transport Organization (RMTO), has said the members of a joint commission of road transportation of Iran and Azerbaijan agreed to share data and statistics on transit, IRNA reported on July 12.
The sides also agreed to study the issues posing problems for transportation of goods and passengers, the official added.
Under the MOU, Iranian transport vehicles that carry non-dangerous goods will pay $160 as border crossing fee, $80 as road use tax for 14 days, $40 as insurance charges (those who hold insurance green card are excluded), as well as $25 for gaining entry into large cities as Baku, Ganja and Sumgait.
Atrchian further added that the fees for dangerous goods will be clarified considering the ADR convention (the European Agreement concerning the International Carriage of Dangerous Goods by Road).
The trade turnover between Azerbaijan and Iran, the two neighboring countries, boosted by 30 percent in the first quarter of 2016.In 2015, the trade turnover between the two countries amounted to $ 123.786 million.
Currently, the two countries are focused on expanding economic ties in various fields, including industry, agriculture, energy, alternative energy, and transportation.
The Islamic Republic has unilaterally waived visa requirements for Azerbaijanis since 2009 in a move to demonstrate that Tehran is looking forward to fostering closer relations with Baku.
The Iranian government is also making attempts to operate customhouses round the clock at the border with Azerbaijan, so as to facilitate the smooth movement of passengers and goods between the two countries.
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13 July 2016 15:18 (UTC+04:00)
By Amina Nazarli
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev signed a decree on July 12 approving the Rules for VAT refund (Tax Free) for foreigners and persons without citizenship and the associated measures.
The application of Tax Free system is believed to positively affect tourist flow into the country and ensure competitiveness of the tourism sector.
Thus, under the presidential order the Taxes Ministry is commissioned to determine within 15 days in coordination with the Finance Ministry the VAT refund authorized banks and approve the form of contracts and stickers for labeling the TAX FREE system-covered goods.
The Ministry is also tasked to create single e- information database TAX FREE and secure its integration with the systems of other state bodies and authorized banks. Within two months the TAX FREE system should be integrated with automated system entry/departure and registration.
The Finance Ministry should determine within 15 days the minimum advance amount for its transferring to authorized banks accounts and transfer it.
Foreign citizens can benefit from tax free system, if the cost of purchased goods per one e-tax invoice is not less than 300 Azerbaijani manats ($192), including VAT. The goods should be taken out of Azerbaijans territory within 90 days from the date of purchase, according to the rules earlier approved by the Parliament.
Chairman of the State Customs Committee Aydin Aliyev said that Tax Free system will be used at all checkpoints of Azerbaijan.
We are fully ready to apply this system. The tax free system in Azerbaijan will first be applied at international airports, he told reporters on July 13.
He said that foreigners doing shopping in Azerbaijan will be refunded VAT in convertible currency while leaving the country.
Standard VAT rate in Azerbaijan is 18 percent. Regardless of the transfer method, foreign citizens will be refunded the amount of VAT paid for the purchased goods after withholding 20 percent service fee.
This system will make shopping in the Land of Fire more affordable and attractive for foreigners.
To benefit the tax-free service it is necessary to buy tax-free goods at specific Tax Free shops. Then, passport is to be produced for filling an electronic tax invoice. The signed and stamped tax invoice will include the amount of the paid VAT and its last return date.
When leaving the country, a visitor should present to airport customs his electronic tax invoice together with passport. Finally, the customs tax invoice should be presented to an authorized bank. The refund can be made both in cash and non-cash (after 10 days) way.
Tax-free does not apply to the following products: excisable goods; foodstuffs; medicines and medical equipment; items which are of particular value to the preservation of cultural heritage and is considered the country's cultural and historical value; products, the sale of which is exempt from VAT in the country; goods which requires a license for export; frameless, raw or ungraded precious stones; precious metals in the form of ingots; goods exported from Azerbaijan without accompaniment; vehicles and spare parts; goods exported by mail service or Internet.
The system is not applied for Azerbaijani citizens, persons under 14 years, stateless persons and foreigners who have obtained a permit for temporary or permanent residence in Azerbaijan or get a work permit for paid employment as well as persons who are crew members of Air Transport, performing direct duties.
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Amina Nazarli is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @amina_nazarli
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13 July 2016 14:08 (UTC+04:00)
By Amina Nazarli
One of the ancient cities of Azerbaijan -- Sheki, will welcome the 3rd International Festival of National Sweets.
This years festival is scheduled for July 20 and will attract new guest countries. Representatives of the countrys 24 regions, including foreign participants from Turkey, Russia, India, France, Korea, Greece and more will show beautiful sweet samples of their national cuisine.
Co-sponsors of this years aromatic festival are the Culture and Tourism Ministry, Sheki City Executive Authority and Azerbaijan National Culinary Association.
The participants will display their dishes according to national and regional custom. The treats will be placed in special pavilions equipped alongside decorative household items and rugs, relating to the region in which they are produced.
In the inaugural Sheki festival, which took place in 2014 the culinary specialists from Turkey, Korea, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Georgia, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Romania and Russia struggled to be the best.
Last year the event expanded the geography of participants, and saw pastry chefs from 11 countries including Turkey, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, Romania, Indonesia, Korea, France, Russia, Moldova, and Serbia along with confectioners from 21 regions of Azerbaijan.
The number of participants was about 500 people in the previous years. Representatives of Romania, Kazakhstan, and France were awarded top prizes at the festival. Second place was taken by pastry chefs from Serbia and Russia, while third place went to confectioners from Moldova, Kyrgyzstan, and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus.
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Amina Nazarli is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @amina_nazarli
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13 July 2016 15:00 (UTC+04:00)
By Rashid Shirinov
International community and mediators recently show more interest in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict settlement, believes Mikhail Neyzhmakov, political expert & head of the Center for International Politics at the Institute of Globalization and Social Movements (IGSM).
Neyzhmakov, talking to Trend, however said that it is early to talk about a noticeable breakthrough in the conflict resolution.
The expert went on to say that the preparation for major international agreements can take much time.
Lets recall the West-Iran talks on lifting the sanctions which successfully completed after a certain period of time. As for the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, various ways of the conflict settlement are being rather discussed, he said.
Earlier, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov stated that Moscow hopes to more clearly define the further steps towards the settlement of the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
Refusing to disclose the details of the meetings on the Nagorno-Karabakh for known reasons, Lavrov said it is necessary to be careful towards those sprouts of hope so that not to hamper the progress.
But there are grounds to presume that currently we are closer to success than ever before, he added.
For over two decades, Azerbaijan and Armenia have been locked in conflict which emerged over Armenia's territorial claims against its South Caucasus neighbor. Since a war in the early 1990s, Armenian armed forces have occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan's territory, including Nagorno-Karabakh and seven surrounding regions.
Over the entire period of its existence, the OSCE Minsk Group, which acted as the only mediator in resolution of the conflict, failed to move forward in resolving the long lasting conflict.
Meanwhile, Sergey Markov, Russian presidents confidant, member of the Russian Public Chamber claimed that the intensification of talks on Nagorno-Karabakh will lead to a serious breakthrough in solving the conflict in the near future.
Markov said that the frequent meetings and negotiations of the world leaders can result in de-occupation of Azerbaijani territories in exchange for unblocking Armenian borders.
Armenia will withdraw from territories around Nagorno-Karabakh and the first Azerbaijani families will be able to return to their ravaged houses this year, Markov said.
The expert stressed that the intensification of diplomatic contacts testifies that real, intensive negotiations are being held. Azerbaijan and Armenia will sign an agreement soon, he said, adding that the details of the reconciliation are being discussed.
While the OSCE Minsk Group acted as the only mediator in resolution of the conflict, the occupation of the territory of the sovereign State with its internationally recognized boundaries has been left out of due attention of the international community for years.
Armenia ignores four UN Security Council resolutions on immediate withdrawal from the occupied territory of Azerbaijan, thus keeping tension high in the region.
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Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov
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13 July 2016 11:53 (UTC+04:00)
By Rashid Shirinov
Azerbaijans National Agency for Mine Action (ANAMA) detected an anti-personnel mine in Aghdam region of Azerbaijan, the Agency told Trend on July 12.
The mine was found and neutralized in the Afetly village of Aghdam by ANAMAs minesweepers.
Overall, the Agency viewed three acreages, eight shell craters, discovered and defused one anti-personnel mine, inspected and cleansed an area of 14,500 square meters on July 12.
Currently, special rapid response teams of ANAMA with minesweeper dogs continue their operations for detecting UXOs in the border settlements.
Azerbaijan and Armenia fought a lengthy war that ended with signing of a fragile ceasefire in 1994. Since the war, Armenian armed forces have occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan's territory, including Nagorno-Karabakh and seven surrounding regions. More than 20,000 Azerbaijanis were killed and over 1 million were displaced as a result of the large-scale hostilities.
While the OSCE Minsk Group acted as the only mediator in resolution of the conflict, the occupation of the territory of the sovereign State with its internationally recognized boundaries has been left out of due attention of the international community for years.
Armenia ignores four UN Security Council resolutions on immediate withdrawal from the occupied territory of Azerbaijan, thus keeping tension high in the region.
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Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov
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13 July 2016 10:18 (UTC+04:00)
A 44-man group of Azerbaijani servicemen was seen off to Afghanistan to serve on a rotating basis within the NATO-led "Resolute Support" mission, Azerbaijani Defense Ministry said, Azertac reported.
Azerbaijan launched its peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan on November 20, 2002.
It now includes 90 servicemen, 2 medical officers and 2 sappers.
Azerbaijan's military personnel have been part of the ISAF contingent in the peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan. The mission of the armed forces in Afghanistan began on November 20, 2002. The Azerbaijani peacekeeping contingent in Afghanistan doubled in 2009.
Currently, some 90 Azerbaijani servicemen are serving as part of international forces securing safety in Afghanistan.
Azerbaijan is among the eight partner countries that have confirmed their presence in Afghanistan after 2014.
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13 July 2016 10:52 (UTC+04:00)
By Laman Ismayilova
ADA University has hosted an event marking the Day of National Diplomacy.
The event participants included state and government officials, representatives of the diplomatic corps accredited in Baku and MPs, Azertac reported.
Rector of ADA University Hafiz Pashayev noted that the Azerbaijani diplomacy, whose history spanned 97 years, had gone through a difficult but glorious path.
"The formation of modern diplomacy, of course, is connected with the restoration of independence," he said.
The event then featured a documentary entitled "Strive for Independence" made by the university to mark the 150th anniversary of Alimardan bey Topchubashov.
July 9 marked the 97th anniversary of the decree of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic that created Azerbaijans foreign ministry and laid the foundations for its diplomatic service.
When the foreign ministry was created in 1919, it consisted of a council, a chancellery and a department with four subordinate sections internal relations which maintained liaison with other offices of the government and society, external relations, cadres and economics, and an archive.
In 1919 diplomatic missions of 16 foreign countries, including USA, Great Britain, France, Italy, Sweden, Switzerland, Belgium, Iran and Ukraine functioned in Baku. By late 1919, Azerbaijan had diplomatic representatives accredited in Georgia (Farist-bek Vekilov), Armenia (Abdurakhman bek Akkhverdov), Persia (A. Ziyadkhan), Turkey (Yusif bek Vezirov (Chemenzemenli)), and Ukraine (Jamal Sadykhov) as well as additional consular representations in Batumi, Crimea, Enzeli, Tabriz, and Meshkhed.
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13 July 2016 18:02 (UTC+04:00)
By Rashid Shirinov
The forthcoming official visit of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko with a large governmental delegation to Azerbaijan on July 13-14 is expected to give a new impetus to bilateral relations between the two countries.
Alexander Okhrimenko, the President of the Ukrainian Analytical Center, believes that increasing trade relations will be on heart of Baku talks.
"Poroshenko will likely try to negotiate increase of trade relations with Azerbaijan," he told Day.az.
In turn, Director of the Strategic Communications Center, the Ukrainian political analyst Valentin Voitkov shares the view adding that the meeting may be linked to geopolitical cooperation: Kiev looks for reliable allies, and Azerbaijan is among such states.
In this context the experts assume signing of several important agreements during the visit of the Ukrainian President to the country.
Since the collapse of the USSR, Azerbaijan and Ukraine have accumulated strong relations in economic, political, cultural and strategic fields. In 2001, the countries founded the Organization for Democracy and Economic Development (GUAM), along with Georgia and Moldova. After its establishment, the bilateral strategic relations started to develop rapidly.
Currently, Ukraine initiates the creation of a common economic space with the countries of the Eastern partnership (Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, Belarus, Azerbaijan and Armenia). Voitkov believes that the sides will exchange opinions on this matter, and some substantive agreements on the promotion of the project will be reached at the meeting.
At the same he supposes the discussion of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, mentioning that to date, Ukraine has an increased influence on the international agenda. The two countries have always supported territorial integrity of each other in accordance with international law.
Overall, Ukraine is one of the main import partners of Azerbaijan. Main goods imported from the country to Azerbaijan are metallurgy, machine building, agro-industrial and chemical industry products. While Azerbaijan exports to Ukraine products of fuel energy industry, chemical industry and agro-industry products. Moreover, Azerbaijan grants Ukraine exclusive conditions for oil supply.
Ukraine is interested in attracting of Azerbaijani investment and development of cooperation with Azerbaijan in terms of tense relations with Russia. Hence, another topic that could be discussed at the meeting is the creation of a new transportation corridor bypassing Russia through Georgia, Azerbaijan, reaching Kazakhstan through the Caspian sea.
Moreover, the two countries can develop their energy cooperation for the further years -- the Odessa-Brody oil pipeline can be used for transportation of the Azerbaijani oil through Ukraine, passing Poland, to the EU.
Speaking of energy cooperation, Okhrimenko also considered the possibility of constructing a new Ukrainian oil refinery in order to process Azerbaijani oil and sale of petroleum products to the European countries.
Recently, the countries agreed on the delivery of 10 Ukrainian AN-178 military transport planes to Azerbaijan. The delivery of the first two aircraft is expected to be implemented by late 2018 while eight planes will be shipped upon a mutual agreement of the parties.
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Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov
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13 July 2016 18:50 (UTC+04:00)
By Amina Nazali
ASAN service, an innovative Azerbaijani model of public service delivery, will also be established in Afghanistan.
A memorandum on creating a public service delivery mechanism in Afghanistan based on Azerbaijani model was inked as part of the Azerbaijani delegation's visit lead by Chairman of ASAN Inam Karimov on July 12-13.
The document was signed between the ASAN and Finance Ministry of Afghanistan.
The signing ceremony brought together the Afghan ministers, MPs and other high-ranking officials.
After the ceremony Karimov spoke about the friendship and partnership relations between Azerbaijan and Afghanistan. He hailed the recent successful reforms carried out by the Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev in economic, social and public administration areas and the activities of "ASAN Xidmet", which he described as part of these reforms.
Afghan Finance Minister Eklil Ahmad Hakimi, praising their choice of Azerbaijani model in public service delivery, expressed his confidence that it would be successfully implemented in the country. He noted that the organization with the same name (asan.gov.af) had already been established in Afghanistan.
ASAN Service center was established by the presidential decree in 2012. The Service which already has nine centers across the country provides a venues for state agencies to render their services in a uniformed and coordinated manner.
The service could reduce extra expenses and loss of time for many citizens, upgrade the level of professionalism, ensure a larger use of electronic services, increase transparency and strengthen the fight against corruption.
The is becomig more authoritative day by day, thus contributing to the state-citizen relations by quality service to people.
The center has been recently authorized in issuing visa for foreigners. Visas will be issued online within three days without applying to state organizations, which makes life for many foreigners wishing to visit Azerbaijan easier.
Services of ASAN also cover customs procedures, which has recently switched to the electronic declaration of goods and transport.
By means of the Asan Imza mobile e-signature, citizens can promptly convey imported goods and transport means across the customs borders under the institution of customs mediation.
The use of Asan Imza in customs e-declaration of goods and transport means will increase the quality, convenience and accessibility of this service for the citizens. The persons declaring their goods at the customs borders only need to have their mobile phone with inserted SIM card supporting Asan Imza to perform the whole process of customs e-declaration.
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Amina Nazarli is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @amina_nazarli
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13 July 2016 16:39 (UTC+04:00)
Azerbaijans President Ilham Aliyev has extended condolences to Italian President Sergio Mattarella over the recent passenger train crash in the south of Italy, Trend reported.
I was deeply saddened by the news of a heavy loss of life as a result of the passenger train crash in the south of your country, said President Aliyev in his letter of condolence. On behalf of the people of Azerbaijan and on my own behalf, I extend my deepest condolences to you, the families and loved ones of those who died and the people of Italy, and wish the injured the swiftest possible recovery.
President Aliyev also offered condolences to Italys Prime Minister Matteo Renzi over the tragedy.
I was deeply saddened by the news of a heavy loss of life and injuries in a passenger train crash in the south of Italy, said the president. On behalf of the people of Azerbaijan and on my own behalf, I extend my deepest condolences to you, the families and loved ones of those who died, and wish the injured the swiftest possible recovery.
Two passenger trains collided head-on in the Puglia region of southern Italy on Tuesday morning, killing at least 25 people and injuring dozens more, some of them critically.
The crash occurred around 11:30 a.m. on a single track running through an olive grove between the towns of Andria and Ruvo di Puglia.
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13 July 2016 12:10 (UTC+04:00)
By Nigar Abbasova
SOCAR Energy Switzerland and German Wincor Nixdorf AG Company have signed an agreement on the delivery of IT equipment, software and maintenance facilities for SOCAR refueling stations in Switzerland.
The agreement envisages that Wincor Nixdorf will install 200 brand-new Beetle/M point-of-sale systems (POS), the NAMOS software and 149 Fusion 6000 device control units at SOCARs stations.
The contract also covers provision of training services as well as rendering of first, second, and third-level services. As many as 66 stations which are currently operated by SOCAR will be equipped with Wincor Nixdorfs CINEO 6010 cash management system, which ensures high level of security at the POS.
We have chosen Wincor Nixdorf as a strategic partner because it is an innovative solution provider that operates beyond the classic petroleum business, bringing technologies and trends from its leadership in the general retail sector to our service stations and thus meeting SOCARs requirements as a premium brand.
Wincor Nixdorfs POS systems, cash management components will play an important role in making SOCAR stand out in the market, said Edgar Bachmann, CEO of SOCAR Energy Switzerland, Wincor Nixdorf Press reports.
ExxonMobil has agreed to sell its Swiss fuel supply business, Esso Schweiz, to Azerbaijani national oil company in 2011. Following transitional phase which lasted about a year SOCAR Energy Switzerland assumed control over the companys operations in Switzerland.
Wincor Nixdorf is one of the worlds leading providers of IT solutions and services. The parent company has subsidiaries in 42 countries.
Zurich-based SOCAR Energy Switzerland GmbH runs tanker truck, fuel tank, oil, gas and aviation fuel operations alongside its service stations.
Currently, 158 refueling stations are operating in Switzerland under SOCAR brand. Alongside with Switzerland SOCAR operates its stations in Azerbaijan, Georgia, Ukraine and Romania.
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Nigar Abbasova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @nigyar_abbasova
Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
13 July 2016 11:45 (UTC+04:00)
By Laman Ismayilova
Over 2, 489 million tons of Azerbaijani oil was transported via Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan-BTC main export pipeline in June 2016.
SOCAR announced that 14,930 million tons of oil was exported from Ceyhan Port in January-June.
In general, more than 307, 606 million tons of oil have been pumped to BTC since the start of pipeline exploitation until June 1, 2016. In addition, overall 371, 206 tons of Turkmen oil was pumped via BTC in June 2016.
The volume of oil exported from Ceyhan port in January-June of this year totaled 14,774,660 tons.
In general, 305,962 million tons of Azerbaijani oil has been exported from Ceyhan Port to the world market since the start of BTC exploitation.
The BTC pipeline was opened in July 2006. The 1,768km conduit transports oil produced from Azerbaijans Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli (ACG) oil block in the Caspian Sea. Throughput capacity was one million barrels per day from March 2006 to March 2009. Since March 2009 it has been expanded to 1.2 million barrels per day by using drag reducing agents (DRAs).
The Azerbaijan and Georgia sections of the pipeline are operated by BP on behalf of its shareholders in BTC Co. while the Turkish section is operated by BOTAS International Limited (BIL).
The price of a barrel of Azeri Light crude oil increased $1.40 to stand at $48.64 on July 12 on the world markets.
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13 July 2016 10:20 (UTC+04:00)
The 46th meeting of the special working group for drafting a convention on the legal status of the Caspian Sea at the level of deputy foreign ministers of the Caspian-littoral countries was held in Astana, Kazakhstan on July 11-12, the Kazakh foreign ministry reported.
According to the message, the meeting was held on the eve of the meeting of the foreign ministers of the Caspian-littoral countries to be held in Astana on July 13.
Azerbaijani Deputy Foreign Minister Khalaf Khalafov, Iran's Deputy Foreign Minister Ibrahim Rahimpour, Ambassador-at-Large of the Kazakh Foreign Ministry Zulfiya Amanzholova, Ambassador-at-Large of the Russian Foreign Ministry Igor Bratchikov and Chairman of the State Enterprise on the Caspian Sea Issues under the president of Turkmenistan Murat Atajanov attended the meeting, the message said.
The main theme of the meeting was working out of common approaches and formulations on uncoordinated provisions of the draft convention on the legal status of the Caspian Sea and preparation for the meeting of foreign ministers of the Caspian-littoral countries, the message said.
According to the message, the next meeting of the special working group will be held in Iran on the date to be agreed through diplomatic channels.
The five Caspian states signed a Framework Convention for Protection of Marine Environment of the Caspian Sea in November 2003.
Russia and Kazakhstan signed an agreement on delimitation of the northern part of the Caspian seabed in order to exercise sovereign rights for subsoil use in July 1998. The two countries signed a protocol to the agreement in May 2002.
Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan signed an agreement on delimitation of the Caspian seabed and a protocol to it on Nov. 29, 2001 and Feb. 27, 2003, respectively.
Additionally, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Russia signed an agreement on the delimitation of adjacent sections of the Caspian Sea on May 14, 2003.
The summits of the presidents of the Caspian-littoral countries were held in Ashgabat in 2002, in Tehran in 2007, in Baku in 2010 and in Astrakhan in 2014.
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13 July 2016 14:46 (UTC+04:00)
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani says the entire nuclear-related sanctions on his country have been lifted.
Speaking in a cabinet session one year after the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was reached between Iran and the group 5+1 (the US, UK, France, Russia, China and Germany), Rouhani stressed that Iran will always remain faithful to its commitments under the deal, IRIB news agency reported July 13.
He warned, however, that in case the other parties to the JCPOA fail their obligations, Iran will catch up on its nuclear program in full force in a short notice.
The Iranian president hailed the JCPOA as bringing many benefits for global peace and stability.
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13 July 2016 17:52 (UTC+04:00)
By Rashid Shirinov
A Turkish delegation will pay an official visit to Moscow on July 14 for restoration of tourist relations between two countries, Turkish Haberturk newspaper reports.
The delegation of the Turkish Foreign Ministry will be accompanied by the officials of the Ministries of Transport, Shipping and Communications, Internal Affairs and Culture and Tourism, and representatives of Turkish private sector.
The Turkish and Russian officials are expected to discuss issues over restoration of charter flights, tourist security measures and further expansion of cooperation between the states.
Back in June, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has expressed regret for the downing of a Russian military jet to Vladimir Putin.
Later, President Vladimir Putin said Russia is lifting a ban on tourism to Turkey after his first talks with Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan since the downing of a Russian warplane plunged relations into crisis.
The relations between the two countries soured after a Russian SU-24 bomber aircraft trespassed Turkish airspace at the SyriaTurkey border and was shot down by Turkish F-16 fighter jet on November 24, 2015.
After the incident, the friendly relations between the two countries were shattered both politically and economically. Moscow imposed sanctions on food products, cancelled visa-free travel and called Russians citizens to boycott Turkey for tourist flights.
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Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov
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13 July 2016 13:52 (UTC+04:00)
To get in touch with history, gather useful information, and learn historical facts, it is not necessary to travel outside Baku. One can study Azerbaijan's rich history not only in textbooks, but also by visiting historical sites which are of great value, because each ancient building, every corner and every stone, may hold many mysteries and secrets.
If you simply look into the heart of the Baku city - the Old City, which is the oldest part of Azerbaijan's capital-, you will be amazed at the pearl of the country's architecture - the Shirvanshahs Palace.
If stone walls could talk theyd recite praises to Bakus medieval rulers who slowly pieced together this magical collection of stone domes, tombs and pavilions dating back over 500 years.
Construction of the complex, which was held in the period of 13th-16th centuries, has been associated with the transfer of Shirvanshahs' capital from Shamakhi to Baku, famous for its harbor.
The Palace forms a complex, consisting of the residential building of Shirvanshahs, the second residential building (for servants), Divankhana, tomb, palace mosque built in 1441, the remains of the destroyed Key Gubad mosque, Murad's gates, hamam (bath) and mausoleum of famous scientist Seyid Yahya Bakuvi.
Baku was the capital of the country during the rule of the Shirvanshahs Khalilullah I (1417-62) and his son Farrukh Yasar (1462-1500).
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13 July 2016 14:50 (UTC+04:00)
Ismayilli, located north of the country, was once part of Caucasian Albania - IV c. B.C. Here, on top of the highest mountain lay the ruins of a medieval fortress.
Alongside Azerbaijanis there are other nations and ethnic groups living in the area: Lezgins, Russians (malakans), Jews, lahych and hapyts, the descendants of ancient Albans.
One of the biggest Molokans villages in Azerbaijan called Ivanovka, founded in 1847 is located in Ismayilli. Ivanovka was established by the "Molokan" Russians who sought refuge in Azerbaijan after being ousted from Czarist Russia in the mid-19th century due to protesting Orthodox traditions. They have since lived in peace side by side with Azerbaijanis ever since. The village is famous for its fresh dairy products, tasty fruits and vegetables.
The Basgal village of Ismayilli was widely known here as a center of handicrafts and sericulture in the middle ages. To this day, the traditional female headscarf - Kelagayi, which is included in the UNESCO's Representative List of the Intangible Heritage of Humanity has been manufactured in this village.
13 July 2016 15:12 (UTC+04:00)
By Rashid Shirinov
A new beach will open at the coast of Novkhany village in the Absheron peninsula. The main hallmark of the beach is that it will be free of charge for visitors, while the other Absheron beaches ask for certain amount of money for their services.
The opening of the beach will be held on July14-15, said earlier Culture and Tourism Minister Abulfas Garayev .
Aliabbas Bagirov, the spokesperson for the Department of Trade & Services in the Baku City Executive Power, welcomed the opening of the beach.
Baku is growing rapidly, and its tourism infrastructure grows along with it. The free beach will differ by its infrastructure from the other ones. As for tourism, opening such beaches is of great importance, he said.
Bagirov went on to say that free beaches will attract many people including tourists. To properly host guests, the beaches should ensure a decent infrastructure, he said adding that if there is good infrastructure, the number of wishing to visit the beach will be big.
Overall, the most popular beaches of Azerbaijan are located in Mardakan, Shuvalan, Novkhani, Buzovna, Zagulba, Pirshagi, Nardaran, Turkan and Hovsan villages of the Absheron peninsula. All beaches are equipped with changing rooms, loungers, awnings, umbrellas to protect from the sun, warm-water showers, toilets, and drinking water supplies. Furthermore, a number of bus routes make their trips to the beaches every day.
The Ecology and Natural Resources Ministry regularly examines the coastal water of the Absheron peninsula for its fitness for bathing. As a result, almost all the beaches were declared suitable for swimming this year. The Ministry assures that monitoring will be held systematically throughout the whole vacation season to ensure the safety and healthcare of visitors.
Bakus authorities have another surprise for the population special tourist zones can be created at the Caspian Sea soon. This will also contribute to the development of tourism and tourism infrastructure in Azerbaijan. Additionally, such touristic zones can be created outside Baku, in other coastal regions of the country.
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Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov
Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
Teacher shortages continues to be an issue across the state and beyond, but that may not be visibly apparent on school campuses across Kern County.
With five months to go to December, Marks & Spencer (M&S) has unveiled its Christmas range of bakery selections.
Following on from the success of Prosecco crisps last year, the retailer is offering a new selection of boozy snacks, including Bucks Fizz hand-cooked crisps, priced at 2 a bag.
Mini red velvet Santa hat cupcakes, 2 for nine, are decorated with raspberry frosting, cream cheese, and a crunchy biscuit bobble as a finishing touch.
A statement from M&S on the Christmas food collection said: The M&S experts have scoured the globe, taking inspiration from Tokyo to Paris, to create a collection of striking and decadent Christmas desserts.
M&S began selling Christmas cakes and Christmas puddings in 1958 in an effort to improve the quality of its Swiss rolls. At the time, they hired food expert Nat Goldberg, who made a major improvement across the firms entire cake range.
The latest festive food collection is set to hit shelves nationwide in October.
This month, M&S food sales dropped 0.9% in like-for-like sales for the 13 weeks to 2 July.
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Sitting with Syrias struggling families
Life is unspeakably hard for Syrian families sheltering in Lebanon. BMS World Mission worker Philip Halliday recently had the privilege of meeting with some of the refugees and hearing their stories
There are so many kids outside the school system. If our future is built on our children, that future is not looking very bright.
This is what a Syrian taking refuge in Lebanon told Philip Halliday, the BMS Regional Team Leader for Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, when he visited the country at the end of June.
The situation for the estimated 1.5 million Syrian refugees in Lebanon is still dire. The majority of families are living in extreme poverty. According to news reports, forced prostitution, child slavery and early marriage are huge risks for Syrias vulnerable women and children. For the 70 per cent of Syrian refugee children unable to access school in Lebanon, life consists of the endless monotony of hanging around their families one-room tents or working illegally to earn a few dollars a day for food for their parents, brothers and sisters. There is a very real risk that they will fall prey to traffickers or extremists, or that the girls will be married off to older men just so that they and their family can survive. For some of them, this has been life for more than four years.
Its a bleak picture, but BMS is doing something to help. Through partners on the ground, we are supporting the local Church to reach out in love to Syrians. Were helping to provide education for their children. Were helping to provide food for their families. And were listening to their stories and learning about their needs.
You can support our work with Syrian refugees in Lebanon by giving today, and by showing our new resource Syrias Forgotten Families in your church and taking up an offering for the appeal.
The way aid is delivered is important. Some of the Syrians Philip sat with told him how the distribution of aid had at times felt dehumanising something BMS is careful not to do. I was changed from a person into a toy, one twenty-something explained. He felt like his humanity had been lost in his need he had become a number. BMS works through local churches that are building relationships with and getting to know their Syrian neighbours our partners on the ground focus on social and psychological support as well as physical aid and education.
And were helping to empower some of the Syrians affected. The food distribution you will see in our resource Syrias Forgotten Families, for example, is mostly run by Syrians who have fled to Lebanon. And the education project we are supporting in the basement of a church in the Bekaa Valley was set up to equip children to build a better life for the future than the one they currently know.
We dont want to rob people of their dignity or humanity, but we do want to help them and show them Gods love. And we need your help.
The Syrian war has been a long and terrible one, says Philip. While it is understandable that people in other countries may feel fatigued with hearing about it, I would urge readers to stay informed and engaged until there is a resolution and the opportunity to rebuild Syria. The needs are huge, as is the suffering.
Please dont forget Syria or the millions of Syrian refugees who are living in awful conditions today. Stand with us as we support Syrias families, and share our appeal Syrias Forgotten Families with your church and your friends.
Thank you.
This article first appeared on the website of BMS World Mission and is used with permission.
BMS World Mission, 13/07/2016
Baptist World Alliance Annual Gathering
Religious liberty, Baptist-Catholic dialogue and Baptist responses to the growing refugee crisis were among the topics discussed at the recent Annual Gathering of the Baptist World Alliance
More than 300 people from 50 countries met at the gathering in Vancouver, which saw the BWA pass three resolutions.
One called on the United Nations to raise the designated threat level for Nigeria and the Lake Chad Region to Level 3, the most severe large scale humanitarian crisis. Extremists in Nigeria, mainly the violent Islamist group, Boko Haram, and Fulani militants, have led a series of attacks in Nigeria and neighboring countries such as Cameroon, Chad and Niger.
The BWA noted that "people of faith and houses of worship have been intentionally targeted, including the damage or destruction of thousands of churches and numerous mosques."
Samson Ayokunle, president of the Nigerian Baptist Convention, has castigated the international community for ignoring terrorist violence and attacks in the West African country.
Another resolution urged Baptists in affected countries to assist those who are displaced. Baptist groups in Syria, Lebanon and Jordan, as well as in European countries such as Germany, Sweden, Croatia, Serbia and elsewhere, have provided personnel and supplies to assist those who are displaced.
However, in a statement the BWA said it was concerned about those who have not been as engaged, or who have been less than welcoming in their remarks and actions.
The BWA is encouraging "Christian believers to personally engage with all refugees and displaced persons, generously showing God's love and care as we demonstrate the sufficiency of God made known through Jesus Christ."
The gathering also saw the announcement of a third round of Baptist-Catholic dialogue. The first round occurred from 1984-1988 and the second round from 2006-2010. In May this year, preparatory meetings were held between Baptist representatives Frank Rees of Australia, Paul Fiddes from the United Kingdom and Timothy George of the United States and a team from the Catholic Church to consider the focus and methodology for the next phase.
General Secretary the Revd Dr Neville Callam stated, This joint preparatory meeting decided that the next phase of dialogue, which could commence in June 2017, should have clear continuity with the first two phases and should focus on the subject of common witness to Jesus Chris.
Picture: BWA general secretary Neville Callam offers his annual report during the BWA's 2016 annual gathering in Vancouver. Photo by Brian Kaylor / Ethics Daily Pinterest
Baptist Times, 13/07/2016
A bicyclist was killed Wednesday morning along the Courtney Campbell Causeway after he rode over a downed live power line on a bike trail.
He was identified as 47-year-old Gregory Patterson, an active officer with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.
Bicyclist dies after riding over downed power line
Identified as FWC officer
Incident being investigating
According to Tampa Police, the accident happened at 6:40 a.m. on the bike trail adjacent to the roadway in the Rocky Point area of the causeway, near Ben T. Davis Beach.
Hillsborough County Fire Rescue and Tampa Electric utility crews also responded to the scene to assist the male victim and with the downed live power lines. However, emergency personnel could not approach the man until the power was turned off.
Patterson, of Tampa, was killed at the scene.
The incident briefly backed up traffic along the roadway.
TECO officials said the power line may have been knocked down during Tuesday evening's storms, but that hasn't been confirmed.
Although police say it appears that he was electrocuted, the Medical Examiner will make the final determination.
Police say Patterson was recently involved in a lifesaving mission and the Tampa Police Department was nominating him for a department lifesaving award.
Officers say Patterson responded to a jet ski accident near the Gandy Bridge on Sunday, July 10th. Police say he dove into the water to rescue one of the victims.
Hillsborough County deputies are looking for a woman they say battered a mall security guard inside a Victorias Secret store at the Citrus Park Town Center last week.
Woman sought for battery of mall security guard
Guard told woman to leave because store was closing
Deputies say she hit the guard in the face with a pair of pants
On July 7, deputies say the woman gave employees a hard time when they asked her to leave because the store was closing.
A mall security guard responded and told the woman she had to leave.
Deputies say while leaving the store the woman expressed her agitation by using a pair of Victoria's Secret Pink brand pants to hit the guard on the left side of his face. She then fled the mall through the main south exit.
The guard was in full uniform, with a badge, and he was acting in an official capacity at the time of the incident, according to deputies.
The suspect is described as a black female, 5'6", approximately 200 lbs., wearing a white tank top with "USA" on front and blue jean shorts.
Anyone with any information is asked to call the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office at 813-247-8200.
Final goodbyes will be said Wednesday for some of the Dallas police officers killed in the ambush attack last week.
2 officers will be laid to rest Wednesday
Sgt. Michael Smith will have a private mass
President to talk to officers, faith leaders, activists about policing
It comes as President Barack Obama holds a second White House meeting this week on policing. The meeting will involve officers but also mayors, academics and civil rights activists Wednesday, hoping to build trust and reduce disparities between police and the communities they serve.
Thousands of people joined national leaders in mourning the five Dallas officers Tuesday.
On Wednesday, Police Senior Cpl. Lorne Ahrens and Dallas Area Rapid Transit Officer Brent Thompson will be laid to rest. A private mass will also be held for Sgt. Michael J. Smith.
Also happening Wednesday, Obama will convene a town hall on community policing with police officers, faith leaders and civil rights activists. The president has already met privately with law enforcement at the White House.
"I think it was an extraordinary meeting, said Jonathan Thompson with the National Sheriffs Association, who attended the meeting. The president was sincere in listening. I think he understands the difficult task of law enforcement."
Judge Glenda Hatchett is representing the mother of Philando Castile, a black man who was shot by an officer in Minnesota. Hatchett says its time for reform.
"There have to be some national guidelines here, Hatchett said. I think we've got to look at, first of all, hiring, retention, training in these situations, and we have got to be honest that we need to do better than we're doing. Do I have all the answers? I do not."
Also on Wednesday, Alton Sterlings son Camera will speak publicly in front of the convenience store where his father was shot by two Baton Rouge, Louisiana police officers.
Sterling will be laid to rest Friday, and Castiles funeral is tomorrow.
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Galveston has a rich and dramatic history that has produced countless ghost stories.
The island went from being Texas' central place of trade and commerce to being ravaged by the Hurricane of 1900 also known as the 1900 Storm and the Great Galveston Hurricane, among other monikers. The tragedy resulted in thousands some reports indicate tens of thousands of fatalities and vast infrastructure damage. A large percentage of buildings in Galveston were completely wiped out by the powerful storm surge.
HoustonChronicle.com: Historic lighthouse on Bolivar Peninsula needs $2.5M repairs
Some tales involving Galveston's still-thriving medical industry, have amplified the island's flair for haunted sites. Wars, pirates, widespread illnesses and more are at the center of some of Galveston's legends.
Now, scary-story fanatics are monetizing the tales with tours of "haunted Galveston" in various forms. These are some of the most popular annual events:
The "Ghost Bride" of the Hotel Galvez
One of the island's most popular Halloween destinations is the Seawall's Hotel Galvez. The 108-year-old hotel, which has survived hurricanes and fires alike, now capitalizes on its spooky fame.
Those who want to experience the "haunted" site in person without an overnight stay can book a dinner tour at hotelgalvez.com. The year-round attraction provides hour-long tours every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. It includes a walk-through complete with the hotel's folklore, as well as a multi-course meal at the Galvez's dining room.
To give you some backstory on one of the hotel's main stories, here's the tale of Audra, a 1950s Hotel Galvez guest. She's said to have been engaged to a mariner who sailed out of The Port of Galveston.
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Audra would reportedly frequent the west turret where she could get a better view of the Gulf of Mexico. That's where it's said that she would look out for her fiance.
When a storm hit the Gulf Coast, the mariner was lost at sea. Audra continued to visit the turret with the hopes that he'd return. Grief-stricken, she eventually hung herself from the turret.
Since then, guests have reported seeing the ghost of Audra, the "Ghost Bride," on the fifth floor and in room 501, where she stayed.
Other ghosts, including children of historical figures and Victorian-era society, have also been reported by Hotel Galvez guests.
Galveston Historical Foundation's Victorian house tours
Galveston's historic Victorian-style properties are often tourist destinations, no matter what time of year.
Around Halloween, however, these places play up their histories with special events tailored to the holiday. Instead of merely walking around the 1892 Bishop's palace, venture inside at night on the "Lanternlight Tour," for $30 per person. Or, also priced at $30 per person, say hi to Miss Bettie Brown's 1859 house, Ahston Villa, with a "Ghost Tours of Ashton Villa" adventure.
"Many, many people have lived and died by these waters, and perhaps some of the dead still reside here," Dwayne Jones, executive director of the Galveston Historical Foundation, told the Galveston Island CVB. "We invite our guests to listen to the stories and decide for themselves. But you don't have to believe in ghosts to know that the dead are a presence on this island."
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Two Beaumont women were arrested Tuesday afternoon after a fight near the intersection of Washington Boulevard and South 11th Street.
Labriana Coleman, 22, and Kiara Robertson, 23, were arrested for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon - family violence, according to a press release from Beaumont Police Department.
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Congress is finalizing a broad federal bill that would include restrictions on operating drones near petrochemical plants and oil refineries, a provision pushed by U.S. Rep. Brian Babin.
Babin's office on Wednesday said the legislation is expected to obtain Senate passage and head to President Barack Obama's desk.
The Federal Aviation Administration Reauthorization Act would in part allow applicants to petition the Federal Aviation Administration to restrict the operation of drones near refineries and petrochemical plants, critical infrastructure, amusement parks and other locations.
Drones, unmanned aircraft flown remotely, have surged in recreational popularity, raising concerns over collisions with aircrafts and, locally, whether industrial secrets and safety are vulnerable.
Babin has pushed an amendment to restrict the aircraft from flying near the heavy industrial complexes.
"This carefully crafted language will ensure both the protection of our oil and gas facilities and their employees from unauthorized drone activity while also respecting the growing business of public and commercial drone use throughout the United States," Babin said in a prepared statement.
State Rep. Joe Deshotel, D-Port Arthur, sponsored legislation in 2015 that restricts drone flying near refineries and petrochemical plants in Texas.
John Durkay, legal counsel for the Southeast Texas Plant Managers Forum, said in 2015 that plants were concerned freelance photographers may take aerial photographs and try to sell them to competitors.
"The drone business is a tremendous opportunity for industrial espionage, and the plants are very worried about it," Durkay said.
More than 50 such complexes are concentrated in the three-county Southeast Texas area.
Unless renewed, the FAA's authorization would expire Friday.
Reporter Brandon Scott contributed.
The Clergy and Police Partnership of the Beaumont Police Department will host a 7 p.m. forum on Thursday at the West End Baptist Church on 8180 Phelan Rd.
The event, according to Beaumont PD, is in an attempt to promote unity and understanding between law enforcement and their surrounding communities.
Kim Brent
Jefferson County could put its four civil district courts to work one week per month each to hear felony cases transferred from its two criminal district courts to help them reduce its backlog, said District Attorney Bob Wortham.
Wortham said he has agreements from the four civil court judges to hear the cases. Wortham said he will ask Commissioners Court to budget an additional $240,000 in the next budget year to hire two more prosecutors and a clerk to help reduce the backlog, some of which involves cases that are more than two years old.
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Texas General Land Office Commissioner George P. Bush on Wednesday announced Jefferson County Judge Jeff Branick and 14 others have been named inaugural members of the Commissioner's Coastal Resiliency Advisory Group (CCRAG).
This regional advisory group consists of representatives from local government, business and industry leaders, each serving two-year terms, according to a news release from Bush's office.
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Former Beaumont ISD assistant superintendent Patricia Lambert will serve her three-year prison sentence in the same federal facility where another former BISD administrator was sent in 2014, according to court records.
Lambert, 62, who was convicted last month of embezzling $500,000 from the district and encouraging teachers to cheat on benchmark exams, will join former BISD comptroller Sharika Allison at a federal prison camp in Bryan.
Allison, 45, has been incarcerated at the minimum security camp in Bryan since October 2014. She was sentenced to almost four years in federal prison in September 2014 for embezzling more than $1 million from the district.
Her co-defendent, former chief financial officer Devin Wanye McCraney, 37, was sentenced to more than five years in federal prison for stealing $4 million from BISD. He is serving his sentence in a federal facility near West Lake, Louisiana.
Unlike Allison and McCraney, Lambert was taken into federal custody immediately after she was sentenced on June 8. Allison and McCraney were both given a little more than a month to settle their affairs and report to their federal prisons.
It is at the sentencing judge's discretion to set when a non-violent inmate reports to prison, according to U.S. District Judge Ron Clark. The exception is if someone is sentenced to 10 years or more, he said. Those cases are generally considered "mandatory detention" cases, according to Clark.
Clark, who sentenced Allison and McCraney in 2014, found both of them to be non-violent and posing no flight risks.
U.S. District Judge Thad Heartfield, who sentenced Lambert last month and called for her immediate detention, did not respond to requests for comment.
Lambert was visibly upset during her June 8 sentencing hearing, sometimes crying loudly.
"Occasionally, I'll have a case where someone is so upset, I start to worry about whether they are going to commit suicide or hurt themselves," said Clark, who was speaking generally and not directly about the Lambert case. "It doesn't happen very often, but sometimes they are really distraught beyond normal and that could be a reason to not (give them days to report)."
Clark said sentencing judges also consider if the accused seems remorseful for their actions.
"A lot of people realize they're caught and they may not like it, but they can understand they're going to have to do their time," he said. "That's the kind of person that's probably not likely to flee. Another person may still be kicking and screaming, blaming somebody else."
Until she was assigned to the Bryan facility, Lambert had been housed in holding cells in Jefferson and Liberty counties.
It's not an uncommon practice, said U.S. Marshal Robert Hobbs. It usually takes three to six weeks for the prison bureau to place an inmate, he said.
The federal prison camp in Bryanhas 786 inmates, the lowest total of the three female camps in Texas. The other two facilities are in Houston, where the prison bureau houses 905 inmates, and Fort Worth, where there are 1,390 inmates.
Hobbs said typically a judge and the defense attorney will discuss a recommendation for the inmate, but the prison bureau is not bound by it. A number of factors are considered for placement, he said, including the inmate's health conditions, separating co-defendants who may have cooperated against another, and reasonable family visitation.
BScott@BeaumontEnterprise.comTwitter.com/BrandonKScott
Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg turned heads earlier this week when she spoke out against Donald Trump in an interview with CNN.
During the interview, published Tuesday, she called the presumptive Republican presidential nominee a "faker" and said that he lacks "consistency."
"He says whatever comes into his head at the moment. He really has an ego," Ginsburg said.
Trump was quick to respond, saying she is a "disgrace to the court." He asked for her to apologize, according to the New York Times.
But Trump isn't the only one who was put off by Ginsburg's remarks.
Texas Rep. Randy Weber (R-Friendswood), whose district includes Jefferson County joined in the conversation and called for Ginsburg's resignation.
"Lady Justice is blindfolded to represent objectivity without fear or favor," Weber said in a statement released by his office Wednesday morning. "The recent comments of Supreme Court Justice Ginsburg on Republican Presidential nominee Donald Trump are the antithesis of Lady Justice and in direct violation for what the highest court in the land states. Justice Ginsburg's actions must be met with consequences. I agree with Donald Trump that she should resign."
Do you agree with Weber's sentiment? Leave us a comment and let us know.
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On July 1 the Texas-based brand Yeti filed paperwork with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to take the company public, according to Forbes.
Once the application is approved, the brand will be known on the New York Stock Exchange as the stock symbol YETI.
RELATED: Yeti finds no lid on the high end of coolers
The companys Rambler mug has been a hot seller across the board with hunters, fishermen and everyday commuters alike. Its coolers remain highly popular, even with prices ranging from $249 to $1,200.
Call it a status symbol, a totem Texas pride or both -- the brand reported in its initial public offering, or IPO, filing that it had a net sales growth from $89.9 million in 2013 to $468.9 million in 2015. The companys net income increased from $7.3 million in 2013 to $74.2 million in 2015.
Thats a lot of coolers and drinkware.
RELATED: Texas couple credits a Yeti cooler for saving their lives after boat trouble
None of the advertising materials Yeti uses shows the Rambler in two settings that we know to be common: held by a harried commuter white-knuckling it on the way to work in rush hour hell or filled with a mixed drink at a family function.
Most of the time were seeing Yeti's products used by guys relaxing on boats, at campsites or next to babbling streams without a care in the world.
We need to hang out with those people more.
Having filed the application to go public, the company is in a quiet period that's heavily regulated by the securities commission, so it was unable to comment or participate in this story.
More police officers have died in the line of duty in Texas during the last 18 months than any other state, a number bolstered by the downtown Dallas ambush last week that left five officers dead.
At least 23 law enforcement officers in Texas, including 11 this year, have died in Texas since Jan. 1, 2015, according to data compiled by the Officers Down Memorial Page, which tracks officer fatalities in real time. Before the Dallas ambush July 7, Texas had the most officer fatalities with six in 2016.
In 2015, Texas also had more officers killed in the line of duty than any other state with 12 fatalities.
Those deaths stemmed from eight incidents involving gunfire, six of which happened this year, including the five in Dallas. Most of the other deaths involved a vehicle.
RELATED: Obama pays tribute to Dallas officers shot in racial attack
Since the July 7 ambush in Dallas, four officers across the country have died including one in Texas bringing the year's total halfway through 2016 to 62 fatalities in the U.S.
Four officers died in Louisiana, which has been riddled with protests since the death of Alton Sterling, making it the second-deadliest state in the country for police officers.
The gallery above features images of officers who died in the line of duty since last August in Texas.
Fatalities include employees from local police department, sheriff's offices and state police.
Last year, Texas saw 12 officer fatalities, making up nine percent of the total 130 deaths across the country.
The Lone Star State was followed by New York, which had 11 officer fatalities. And since 2015, gunfire deaths involving officers are up 75 percent in the U.S., data shows.
RELATED: San Antonio police officers honor slain Harris County deputy Darren Goforth in somber ceremony
In 2014, 26 officers died in the line of duty in New York, the most of any state that year, followed by California and Texas, which had 16 and 11 deaths, respectively. Sixteen of the deaths of New York officers in 2014 were associated with injuries sustained during the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
The violence and threats toward police has continued since the Dallas ambush, reports show, even though, according to the Washington Post, the average number of police intentionally killed each year under Obama is 62 annually through 2015, the lowest its ever been.
Under President George W. Bush, the average was 72, and 81 deaths before that under President Bill Clinton.
On Tuesday, the same day President Barack Obama visited Dallas to speak at the police memorial honoring the five who lost their lives trying to stop shooter Micah Johnson, Austin Police Chief Art Acevedo declared a staffing emergency, enabling the department to force officers to work overtime for the next two weeks, after a threat to kill officers on 6th Street was made on social media.
"We know there is evil in this world," Obama said Tuesday. "That's why we need police departments."
Two days after Johnson, 25, killed five police officers, the Dallas Police Department received a threat against law enforcement across the city. That same day, a Bexar County Sheriff's Office spokesperson was followed to her car, a brick was thrown at a BCSO Tahoe and shots were fired at the San Antonio Police Department headquarters in three separate incidents.
Outside of Texas on Saturday, two people made threats to police officers via social media.
A Wisconsin man was arrested after he allegedly posted calls on social media for black men to kill white police officers. And in Waveland, Mississippi, police received threats via phone and social media involving possible gunfire attacks Saturday night and Sunday.
RELATED: Manifesto found at the home of Dallas gunman
One day after the Dallas attack, the Fayetteville Police in North Carolina said they received more than 60 threats during a 6-hour period and a Connecticut man was arrested for allegedly telling a gas station clerk he wanted to "snipe" police officers.
Additionally, a Chicago woman was arrested at her home after she allegedly posted a threat to Facebook to shoot any police officer who pulls her over and asks her to get out of her car.
A Louisiana man was jailed Friday after he allegedly posted a video to social media showing a police unit in front of him at a fast-food drive thru where he says he wants to shoot and kill an officer.
MORE: Two bailiffs were shot dead in Michigan.
Detroit police arrested four men who allegedly made threatening Facebook posts toward officers.
Three were arrested in North Carolina after police said they ran into the Bryson City Police Department yelling "let's kill us a cop."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
kbradshaw@express-news.net
Twitter: @kbrad5
Sen. Bernie Sanders endorsed fellow Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, creating a united front behind a healthcare plan that does not likely include Sen. Sander's "Medicare for All" health plan, according to Kaiser Health News.
Here are seven things to know:
1. Hillary Clinton recently unveiled a healthcare plan to expand community healthcare center investments, an area that Sen. Bernie Sanders has prioritized throughout his political career. She also supported a "public option" insurance plan, which is a single federal insurnace plan that operates in the marketplace against private insurance companies.
2. However, Ms. Clinton did not delve into details as to whether her healthcare plan would feature Medicare for All, the backbone behind Sen. Sander's healthcare plan.
3. Officials say it is unlikely Ms. Clinton will support Medicare for All as the plan would be "massively disruptive," Paul Starr, a former health policy adviser to Ms. Clinton explained.
4. Sen. Sanders' Medicare for All plan was projected to increase federal medical spending by $32 trillion, including $2.9 trillion in long-term care costs.
https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/hospital-management-administration/sanders-programs-to-add-18t-to-debt-largely-due-to-healthcare-plan-4-things-to-know.html
5. While some argue a single-payer system would simplify the existing convoluted healthcare system, others say those in favor of such a plan have not worked out the details. For instance, Harold Pollack, PhD, a professor at the University of Chicago, said the plan will not be beneficial for all Americans and would be detrimental for private payers. Dr. Pollack said, "Precisely the thing that is a feature for single-payer proponents is a bug for everyone who provides goods and services for the medical economy.
6. Medicare for All may also disproportionately impact rural hospitals that depend on private payers since Medicare reimburses them so little.
7. Dr. Pollack also noted those who are well off would fund most of the single-payer system, claiming "The major value of a single-payer system would be to help the bottom third of the income distribution, and that means the top 20 percent of the population will have to pay more. I'm actually in favor of that, but let's not kid ourselves. That's a knife fight that's going to be had."
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Ascension Wisconsin, part of St. Louis-based Ascension Health, has named leaders for its northern and southern regions.
Here are 11 things to know about the leaders.
Travis Andersen will serve as president of the south region, effective Aug. 1.
1. Mr. Andersen will lead a region that includes Columbia St. Mary's Health System in Milwaukee, Wheaton Franciscan Healthcare in Glendale, Wis., and Affinity Health System in the Fox Valley, a region centered on the Fox River of Northern Illinois.
2. Since 2014, Mr. Andersen has served as president and CEO of Columbia St. Mary's.
3. During his tenure at Columbia St. Mary's, he has established key relationships across the Milwaukee market, overseen the new women's hospital renovation and made significant investments in the cancer program, Ascension said.
4. Prior to joining Columbia St. Mary's, Mr. Andersen was president of St. Elizabeth Hospital in Appleton, Wis.
5. Mr. Andersen earned a master's degree in hospital and health administration from the University of Iowa in Iowa City.
6. He currently participates in the Ascension Leadership Academy and is also chairman of the Milwaukee Health Care Partnership.
Debra Standridge will serve as president of the north region, effective Aug. 1.
7. She will lead a region that includes the central and northern regions of Milwaukee-based Ministry Health Care.
8. Since 2008, Ms. Standridge has served as president of Wheaton Franciscan Healthcare's North Market with responsibility for Elmbrook Memorial, St. Joseph, Wauwatosa, and Brown Deer campuses, as well as Wheaton Franciscan Medical Group in the North Market.
9. Previously, she was vice president of operations for Wheaton Franciscan Healthcare St. Francis Hospital in Milwaukee and was appointed president in 2003.
10. Ms. Standridge also previously served as the service line administrator for cardiology and intensive care, internal medicine and family practice, geriatrics as well as oncology at Hurley Medical Center in Flint, Mich.
11. She earned a master's degree in public health and healthcare administration from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.
The following hospital and health system CEO moves were reported by Becker's Hospital Review in the last week. They are listed below, beginning with the most recent.
1. Dan Griess, CEO of Box Butte General Hospital in Alliance, Neb., will leave the organization at the end of July.
2. University Medical Center of El Paso (Texas), named Jacob Cintron president and CEO, effective July 25.
3. St. Charles Parish Hospital in Luling, La., named Ritchie J. Dupre CEO.
4. Patrick Gavin was appointed CEO of Springfield, Pa.-based Crozer-Keystone Health System.
5. Pipeline Health COO Luke Tharasri will serve as interim CEO of Sebastopol, Calif.-based Sonoma West Medical Center. The change comes as SWMC signed an agreement with Pipeline for Pipeline to manage the hospital's operations.
6. The Vermont Association of Hospitals and Health Systems named Jeffrey Tieman president and CEO, effective in August.
7. NYC Health + Hospitals named Israel Rocha Jr. as the new CEO of Elmhurst Hospital Center in Queens, N.Y.
8. Andrew L. Davis, interim CEO of United Medical Center in Washington, D.C., will retire from his position, effective July 15.
9. Current Merit Health Biloxi (Miss.) CEO Monte Bostwick is set to resign from his position at the end of July.
Scarsdale, N.Y.-based National Home Health Care officials names Stan Dennis as the organization's new CEO.
Here are four things to know about Mr. Dennis:
1. He succeeds former CEO Steven Fialkow, who is retiring after 33 years with the company.
2. Prior to joining National Home Health, Mr. Dennis was a senior operating executive at Welsh, Carson, Anderson and Stowe, a private equity firm based in New York City.
3. In addition to his executive management position with National Home Health, Mr. Dennis has also served as the executive vice president of Optum in Eden Prarie, Minn.
4. Mr. Dennis received a bachelor's in business administration from Bowling Green (Ohio) State University. He also obtained an MBA from Rivier College in Nashua, N.H.
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St. Charles Parish Hospital names new CEO: 5 things to know
Sonoma West Medical Center names interim CEO, CFO
Thomas Frieden, MD, director of the CDC, has been noticeably silent on the issue of gun violence but African-American health officials are saying it's time for the nation's top health official to speak up.
In interviews with CNN, experts like Georges Benjamin, MD, executive director of the American Public Health Association; Swannie Jett, DrPH, president of the National Association of County and City Health Officials; and Lovell Jones, PhD, executive director of the Health Disparities, Education, Awareness, Research and Training Consortium called attention to the CDC's silence on gun violence.
"It's time to speak up," Dr. Benjamin told CNN. "The CDC is a trusted organization, and the white coat is a very powerful tool."
Many of Dr. Frieden's supporters say his silence is a strategy to protect CDC funding from being cut by members of Congress aligned with the National Rifle Association, according to CNN. The report indicates the threat is not baseless lawmakers in the 1990s threatened to shut down the CDC's National Injury Prevention and Control Center.
However, public health leaders like Dr. Benjamin, Dr. Jett and Dr. Jones say its time to question that 20-year-old threat. "Dr. Frieden needs to call their bluff," Dr. Jones told CNN.
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On June 12, 49 people were killed and 53 were injured when a shooter opened fire inside the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Fla., less than half a mile from Orlando Regional Medical Center. Suddenly, nurses at ORMC found themselves on the front lines of responding to the largest mass shooting in American history as they cared for dozens of victims and comforted patients' families.
Roughly a month after the shooting, ORMC CNO Jayne Willis, MSN, RN, and two ORMC patient care administrators Alicia Bechtel, RN, and Louise Philp, RN spoke with Becker's about their hospital's response to the tragedy.
Note: This conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Question: What was the nursing response like at Orlando Regional Medical Center directly after the shooting?
Louise Philp: Right away, extra nursing staff came to the emergency room. Arnold Palmer [Hospital for Children, a sister hospital of ORMC] sent staff over after the event. Additional staff from the intensive care unit were also deployed to the ER. We had to quickly mobilize resources to areas of greatest need.
Alicia Bechtel: We implemented HICS [Hospital Incident Command System]. We still had 450 patients [unrelated to the shooting] to take care of. We had to make sure staffing was appropriate in those units and we had to move patients that were currently in the nursing department to other units. My first response was transferring patients out of the Emergency Department to make room for the victims.
Q: What were the biggest challenges to the nursing department in dealing with this tragedy?
Jayne Willis: We are a Level I trauma center, so the nursing staff is very used to dealing with trauma. The number of patients dealing with these injuries at one time was challenging. The biggest challenge was dealing with the large influx of families and visitors. We had to support families, visitors and each other. We had to bring in counselors as well. We had to be advocates for the patients. It was the nurses' responsibility to speak on the patients' behalf.
LP: We felt it was our obligation to care for all the families that arrived at the hospital both those that had patients here in our care or those families still waiting to have their love one identified at the club. The toughest part was to try to get them information as fast as we could and meet their needs.
AB: The number of families that were grieving was overwhelming. We also had to work with the law enforcement to figure out which patient was where, and to identify patients and match them with their loved ones. Our guest services team did an outstanding job at managing the situation.
Q: What are you most proud of regarding ORMC's response?
JW: I was physically out of the country. To not physically be present in the beginning was very, very difficult. The thing I was most proud of is how well the team performed. I did not receive one complaint from a patient. I've never seen such collaboration and such teamwork. People just did what they were supposed to do. For years, we drilled for emergency response. The Pulse nightclub is just around the corner. Because they were so close we had police officers transporting victims, we had civilians carrying in patients. We had to triage them as soon as they hit the emergency department. By 9:45 the next morning, you wouldn't have even known there was a mass tragedy.
LP: I'm proud of the extraordinary care that was given to the patients. Everybody received the emotional support they deserved. As Alicia mentioned, guest services did an outstanding job. The ED looked normal. We did this without canceling any elective surgeries. The hospital kept right on running.
Q: How has this experience changed you?
AB: I'm just very proud of the team. We've always drilled for something like this, and I think when we run through these drills in the future, I'll take them even more seriously.
LP: I think it just reenergized me. It reminded me why I became a nurse. As an administrator, you can lose sight of that. This brought me back to my nursing roots to be there for people when they need it the most.
JW: I was absolutely overwhelmed with the outpouring of support. Not only our local community but nationally. We received banners and food from administrators at other hospitals. That level of support gave us the encouragement we needed to prevail. I am committed to share the same level of support to other hospitals facing tragedy. I have really learned the importance of being ever-ready. We had decades of developing infrastructure and processes to respond and my continuing responsibility is making sure that we are ever-ready.
(Front, center, back: Alicia Bechtel, RN, Jayne Willis, MSN, RN, Louise Philp, RN)
St. Vincent Healthcare in Billings, Mont., plans to lay off 49 employees and close its child care center, eliminating what equates to nearly 84 full-time equivalent jobs, according to a Billings Gazette report.
Here are four things to know about the layoffs.
1. Forty-nine employees will be laid off, 24 open positions will be left unfilled and roughly 15 people will transition to other roles at the hospital, according to the report.
2. Included in the layoffs are 22 employees who work in the hospital's child care center, which will close in 90 days.
3. Steve Loveless, the hospital's president and CEO, told the Billings Gazette the decision to make the cuts came after St. Vincent evaluated where it focuses its resources. He noted that the hospital and healthcare in general is investing more on improving patient care quality and outcomes and shorter hospital stays while growing care-related services and programs.
4. The layoffs could begin as soon as this week and will continue throughout the year, according to the report.
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Four people were charged in a superseding indictment for allegedly participating in a scheme that submitted nearly $50 million in fraudulent claims to California's Drug Medi-Cal program, according to the Department of Justice.
Two of the defendants worked for the now-defunct Long Beach, Calif.-based Atlantic Health Services, including former President and CEO Richard Mark Ciampa and an associate.
The superseding indictment charges the defendants with healthcare fraud and aggravated identity theft. It also charges Mr. Ciampa with money laundering.
DOJ officials allege that Atlantic Health Services was paid more than $46 million after it submitted false and fraudulent claims to the Medi-Cal program for group and individual substance abuse counseling services during a 10-year period through April 2013.
The indictment also alleges Atlantic Health billed for services provided to students who did not have substance abuse issues and did not qualify for Medi-Cal, billed for counseling sessions that had not been conducted and falsified documents and forged student signatures on documents, among other allegations.
If convicted, Mr. Ciampa faces a maximum sentence of 194 years in federal prison. The three other defendants face anywhere from 32 to 134 years in prison.
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The University of Chicago Medical Center failed to obtain a mistrial in a medical malpractice lawsuit with a $53 million verdict, according to a Chicago Tribune report.
Cook County Circuit Judge John Kirby dismissed nearly half a dozen reasons hospital lawyers cited to grant a mistrial. The majority of the reasons centered around what hospital lawyers characterized as inflammatory statements made by the plaintiffs' lawyer, according to the Tribune.
Lisa Ewing filed the 2013 lawsuit against the hospital on behalf of 12-year-old Isaiah Ewing, who was born with a serious a serious brain injury. It outlined the 20 alleged mistakes physicians and nurses made after mother Lisa Ewing arrived at the hospital to deliver Isaiah. The mistakes, the lawsuit alleged, included failures to perform a timely cesarean, follow a chain of command and diagnose heart rate patterns that indicated distress to the baby.
The hospital filed for a mistrial before the case went to the jury.
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Gabina VOA is designed to be an infotainment youth radio show broadcasting to Ethiopia and Eritrea in the Amharic language. The show brings varied perspectives on issues concerning young people in the Horn of Africa region. Gabina in the Amharic language is a front row taxi ridesymbolic of the shows content as a fun ride that takes audiences from point A to point B. Gabina VOAs main goal is Enlightening young people, introducing them to cutting-edge technological innovations, exposing them to new processes and ideas so they can be productive, informed and self-governing citizens.
An inmate has been caught after fleeing from Fort Hamilton (Ohio) Hospital, according to a Journal-News report.
The Butler County Sheriff's Office told the publication that Bradley Brooks Jr., 30, was found in a creek bed near a road in Hamilton at about 8 p.m. Tuesday.
Mr. Brooks, an inmate of the Butler County Jail, escaped custody shortly after 1 p.m. while at a medical appointment at the hospital. The sheriff's office told the Journal-News Mr. Brooks said he needed to use the restroom then slipped out a partially open door at FHH.
Mr. Brooks was being held on charges including receiving stolen property and having weapons while under disability. He will face additional charges for this incident, according to the report.
Chicago-based Land of Lincoln Health will be placed under state control and shut down leaving 49,000 uninsured in light of the $31.8 million it owes under the Affordable Care Act's Risk Adjustment program, the Chicago Tribune reported.
ACA's Risk Adjustment Program aims to temporarily level the financial playing field for payers absorbing newly insured, costlier members. The Illinois Department of Insurance determined the $31.8 million fee, in addition to $90 million in losses last year, made future operations unfeasible.
"It's a bad day for the marketplace in Illinois and our consumers," Land of Lincoln President and interim CEO Jason Montrie told the Chicago Tribune. "This is the end."
Last week, the insurance department's Acting Director Anne Melissa Dowling ordered Land of Lincoln to hold the payment until the insurer received $70 million it is owed through the risk adjustment program. CMS ultimately did not agree with Ms. Dowling's request, the Chicago Tribune reported. Land of Lincoln sued the government in June for withholding the risk adjustment payment.
Tuesday Ms. Dowling requested the Illinois attorney general petition an order of rehabilitation to Cook County Circuit Court requiring healthcare providers to honor contracts with the insurer. Ms. Dowling would oversee the insurer and its claim payments if the petition is granted.
Illinois said policyholders will be able to purchase alternative coverage before their plans terminate. Though the exact termination date is unclear, policyholders will need to find a new plan by year's end. Ms. Dowling said she will help establish a special enrollment period through the Illinois exchange.
Seven of the original 23 co-ops created under the ACA remain. Portland, Ore.-based Oregon's Health Co-op went into receivership status Friday and will close its doors in light of $900,000 it owes in risk adjustment payments. Last week Wallingford, Conn.-based HealthyCT was placed under an order of supervision by the Connecticut Insurance Department, immediately prohibiting its sale or renewal of health plans and leaving 40,000 uninsured.
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Insider: NY regulators conditionally OK Aetna-Humana deal
Hartford, Conn.-based Aetna received one of the final state sign-offs for its $37 billion acquisition of Louisville, Ky.-based Humana Monday after New York's insurance regulator granted conditional approval, an insider told Bloomberg.
State regulators determined the deal would not curb health insurance market competition, though New York is mandating the insurers still offer private Medicare products and avoid cutting benefits. The New York Department of Financial Services outlined the conditions in a letter to Aetna Monday.
Aetna now has 90 percent of required state approvals, an Aetna spokesperson told Bloomberg. New York's conditional approval hinges on a sign-off from the U.S. Department of Justice.
Aetna met with top DOJ officials Friday to present the auction of its Medicare Advantage assets in hopes of pacifying antitrust concerns. The DOJ is currently reviewing the deal.
Delegates at the 2016 Republican National Convention subcommittee unanimously approved an amendment to their draft platform that called pornography a "public menace," according to CNN.
Mary Forrester, a delegate from N.C., suggested the amendment during the RNC subcommittee meeting on healthcare, education and crime.
In an interview with Yahoo News, Ms. Forrester said she worked closely with the conservative Christian group Concerned Women for America who also believe children can easily become addicted to porn.
The draft platform criticizes reforms passed by the Obama administration allowing schools to allow transgender students to use restrooms and locker rooms that correspond to their gender identity. It also calls on the Supreme Court to overturn the decision regarding same-sex marriage.
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Letting patients choose between different medications that offer the same outcomes may increase the effectiveness of the preferred drug and reduce possible side effects, according to a new study published in the journal Annals of Behavioral Medicine.
The study included 60 students between the age of 18 and 30 years old at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. Researchers briefed the participants on two different formulations of fast acting beta-blockers used to reduce stress. They then allowed participants to write down which drug they would prefer to take, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Half of the participants received their chosen drug, while the other half were randomly assigned one of the two drugs. The study participants were then asked to perform three cognitive tests designed to simulate exam stress.
After the test, the group that got its drug of choice reported an average of 3.5 drug-related side effects. The no-choice group reported 3.8 side effects. After 24 hours, the group that did not have a choice over which drug to take had an average of 3.9 side effects while the group that received their chosen drug reported 1.9 side effects.
Giving patients a say in drug treatment may cause them to focus on information that supports their decision or on sensations that demonstrate the drug is working. People who don't have the option to choose may become more skeptical about the drug they take or put a spotlight on the negative side effects, researchers said.
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A Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family review of University of Louisville Hospital (Ky.) found overloaded nurses and intensive care deficiencies endangered three patients, Louisville Business First reported.
The agency conducted the review from June 14 to 21, following complaints the vice chair of surgery sent in an email to university officials. J. David Richardson, MD, said ULH presented "unsafe working conditions" and serious patient safety concerns after management was turned over to Englewood, Colo.-based Catholic Health Initiatives and Louisville-based KentuckyOne Health.
The state agency reviewed the care of 24 patients and found deficiencies in three cases. In one case, a critically ill patient requiring access to intensive care was treated in an emergency department room. When the patient began vomiting during intubation, no suction equipment was available in the room, and a nurse had to search for equipment in other rooms.
KentuckyOne's COO Lisa Shannon told the Courier-Journal the hospital is safe and KentuckyOne has made "tremendous improvements," according to Louisville Business First.
In 2014, KentuckyOne Hospital and Catholic Health Initiatives laid off 500 employees in Louisville and eliminated 200 vacant positions in an effort to cut costs. Then, in January of this year, the Joint Commission found 31 problems within the hospital, according to the Courier-Journal. Other physicians told the Courier-Journal of issues with traveling nurses, who the physicians feel are not well-trained.
Ms. Shannon told the Courier-Journal problems at the hospital are linked to a nationwide nursing shortage and to unintended consequences of the aforementioned reduction in force.
The states report hasnt been publicly disclosed yet. KentuckyOne released it to the Courier-Journal.
KentuckyOne Health reached out to Becker's and provided a statement. The statement reads:
"On Monday, July 11, University of Louisville Hospital leaders submitted a draft action plan and response to the Office of the Inspector General report that was issued following its recent on-site survey at ULH.
We respect and appreciate the OIG report findings. We are taking the report and our actions for improvement very seriously, particularly to address the three of 24 patient cases reviewed by the OIG, which identified areas for improvement to prevent the non-life threatening issues cited.
Our working group (made up of physicians, nurses and leaders from UofL, ULH and KentuckyOne Health) developed the draft response to address specific findings in the report and comments, and to help accelerate our ongoing efforts to support our physicians, nurses, employees and patients. Proposed responses include:
- Process improvements, technology investment and increased communication to support patient care.
- New recruitment and retention initiatives to increase the support for nurses, physicians and all employees in their roles.
ULH is an important part of healthcare in our community; we are proud of the role all our physicians, nurses and employees play in the health of this city. The community should be confident in the safety and quality of care delivered at ULH. We acknowledge that challenges and position eliminations in 2014 increased staff concerns and are focused on future actions to increase staff levels and improve retention.
Implementation of our proposed actions will take place over the coming weeks in collaboration with OIG, nurses, physicians and leadership across ULH, UofL and KentuckyOne Health. As the largest and most comprehensive health system in the Commonwealth, with more than 200 locations including the ULH Academic Medical Center, hospitals, physician groups, clinics, primary care centers, specialty institutes and home health agencies in Kentucky and southern Indiana, we are confident in our ability to effectively implement our action plans. Our partnership with University of Louisville and facilities across Kentucky reinforces this ability to deliver on our mission for wellness, healing and hope to all."
This article was updated to include a statement from KentuckyOne Health. The original did not have the statement.
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Spine surgeons around the world have come together to create the International Society of Endoscopic Spine Surgery.
Here are six key points:
1. In June, Frederick, Md.-based American Spine surgeons attended the The 5th World Congress of Minimally Invasive Spine Surgery & Techniques, 15th Annual Meeting of Korean Minimally Invasive Spine Surgery Society and the 5th Asian Congress of MISS. American Spine attendees included Said Osman, MD, Atif Malik, MD, and Sandeep Sherlekar, MD.
2. While attending these meetings, the surgeons discussed the creation of ISESS with other leading spine surgeons around the world. The spine surgeons envisioned a society that did not favor any person, company or country.
3. ISESS' mission involves offering fellow surgeons the knowledge and training required to successfully perform endoscopic spine surgery.
4. The society will welcome a plethora of ideas and concepts related to endoscopic spine surgery, extending the technique's availability to underserved areas around the world.
5. Endoscopic spine surgery has been slow to gain traction in the United States, with only a few surgeons performing the minimally invasive procedure in the mid 1980s to 1990s.
6. Currently, U.S. surgeons perform 1 percent of global endoscopic spine surgeries, compared to Asian surgeons performing 40 percent of global endoscopic spine surgeries.
"If we can organize to bring endoscopic spine surgery to lesser developed countries, this could have a huge impact on those populations as back pain is one of the most common symptoms that afflicts us all," said Dr. Malik, co-founder of American Spine.
Official figures on the economy of the Republic of Ireland - Northern Ireland's biggest trading partner - have been branded a farce.
Ireland's Finance Minister Michael Noonan said the phenomenal growth numbers - 26.3% last year - combined with rising employment and strong consumer spending showed the signs of "real growth". The Central Statistics Office (CSO) said the numbers were down to a surge in aircraft leasing business being recorded in Ireland, a 300bn (251bn) increase in company assets being transferred and a 200% jump in intangible assets such as patents being recorded.
But it refused to divulge the true extent of each, citing confidentiality clauses with companies. It also said multinationals were continuing to use so-called inversions to base their businesses in Ireland and reclassify balance sheets which gives the appearance of more work being done in the Republic.
And it accepted that "employment has not changed greatly as a result".
Economists lined up to dismiss the numbers, with John Simpson saying the growth figure was "misleading".
"It does represent a distortion because they were due to large capital transfers which were largely paperless, so it's not what you would term a real increase."
But he added that the Republic's strong growth - even if closer to the Central Statistics Office (CSO) original estimate of 7.8% - demonstrated the importance of establishing new terms of trade.
"Now is the time when we should be giving very serious consideration to what we can do to minimise the disruption to trade in a post-Brexit era."
Aidan Regan, assistant professor in the School of Politics and International Relations at University College Dublin, called on the Irish Government to make a public statement on the confusion created by the report.
"The 26.3% makes for a great media headline. But if the media want to go find this growth, they might as well go plane-watching at Dublin airport," he said.
"It's a farce. There is simply no credibility to the national accounts.
"Most serious observers looking in at Ireland already know this. And this is what should really concern the government and civil servants."
The CSO report for 2015 said GDP, which calculates the value of all business - including multinationals - grew by 26.3%. Gross national product (GNP) - which reflects Irish-owned companies - was up 18.7%.
Global oil cartel Opec cut its forecast for world growth this year and said demand for crude from Europe would slow in the wake of last month's Brexit referendum.
The Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, which controls more than a third of the world's oil supply, warned over the impact of "economic uncertainty" following the referendum decision.
But it said the over supply glut that has sent crude prices tumbling would begin to ease in 2017.
In its monthly oil market report, Opec trimmed its forecast for world growth in 2016 to 3% from 3.1% and said the global economy would also be "impacted by the dampening effect of the UK vote".
It said: "After the UK's referendum to leave the EU, economic uncertainty has increased.
"Potential negative effects have led to a downward revision of global economic growth."
It added: "Among the numerous challenges for global economic growth in the second half of 2016 and in the coming year, the outcome of the UK's decision to leave the EU will be of great importance."
Opec's report urged the Government to begin the Brexit process swiftly, saying "the earlier this starts, the better it could be for the economy".
It is forecasting growth of 1.5% in the UK this year against 2.1% a month earlier, while it believes it will slow sharply to 0.4% in 2017.
Opec held its overall forecast of oil demand growth in 2017 "broadly unchanged" - forecasting new demand of 1.2 million barrels a day, which is the same as 2016.
But it cautioned that European oil demand "faces substantial downside risks ... as a result of uncertainties related to the region's economy, resulting from the UK referendum, among other challenges".
Oil prices have halved over the past two years, with falls fuelled by Opec's refusal to cut production in the hope that it would hit demand for rival US shale.
Brent crude has plunged from 115 US dollars a barrel in June 2014 to below 30 dollars earlier this year, although it has since bounced back to almost 50 dollars a barrel.
Despite its concerns over the Brexit referendum, Opec said the oil market would largely be resilient in 2017, adding that "market conditions will help remove overall excess oil stocks", thanks largely to growing Asian economies.
The Entertainer will begin trading in CastleCourt next month
A UK toy shop chain which doesn't open on a Sunday due to its owner's Christian faith is set to open its first store in Northern Ireland.
The Entertainer, which was founded by Gary Grant in Buckinghamshire in 1981, will begin trading from CastleCourt Shopping Centre in Belfast on August 13.
Its Christian ethos means it doesn't sell Harry Potter merchandise or Halloween paraphernalia.
Belfast will be its first store on the island of Ireland. It has around 115 in Great Britain.
Paul McMahon, centre director at CastleCourt Shopping Centre, said: "CastleCourt is delighted to welcome The Entertainer to our expanding portfolio of strong retail tenants in the centre. The Entertainer is a new brand to Northern Ireland and so we're particularly pleased they have chosen CastleCourt to launch their brand here."
A fit-out has begun of the new 3,400 sq ft premises on the first floor of CastleCourt.
It will be the second toy shop in CastleCourt, joining US giant Toys 'R Us.
Mr Grant said: "After experiencing such solid growth across the rest of the UK, we are really excited to be extending our brand and introducing our first store to Northern Ireland.
"The CastleCourt shopping centre offers a strong retail position for this flagship store as it attracts large numbers of family shoppers who are demanding more toy shopping choice.
"The Entertainer also has a tradition of charitable donations and will raise funds for Autism NI through a trolley dash on its first day of trading in Belfast."
The Commons Administration Committee has supported the principle of allowing photography across the parliamentary estate
Parliament on the big screen is expected to be easier for film companies to recreate after MPs backed plans to give them greater access.
The Commons Administration Committee has supported the principle of allowing photography across the parliamentary estate to help with the design of film sets or development of computer generated imagery (CGI) of the House of Commons.
As the drama in British politics continues to flow, parliamentary officials are exploring how the extra photography can be allowed without disrupting the work of MPs and peers.
Visitors to the Palace of Westminster are restricted in where they can take photographs for personal use, including Westminster Hall and St Stephen's Hall or in certain rooms with the permission of their host.
Requests for filming in Parliament can also be submitted with the historic venue being used as a movie set for the first time by Suffragette, which tracks the struggle for women to get the vote.
New Palace Yard - under the shadow of Big Ben - was used as a setting along with Central Lobby and a committee room as the Commons authorities allowed commercial filming for the first time in 2014.
Under the latest proposals being considered, production companies would need permission from the Serjeant at Arms and Administration Committee to be allowed to photograph pre-agreed areas of the parliamentary estate in exchange for a fee.
Tory MP Michael Fabricant, who was an adviser and appeared as an extra in the original BBC House Of Cards series, backed the idea of allowing access to the Commons to ensure it is accurately represented in films.
The Administration Committee member told the Press Association: "If it generates income for the House of Commons I support this initiative, provided that it doesn't disrupt the daily workings of Parliament.
"The fact is, TV production companies use film sets which accurately or inaccurately depict the House of Commons, and I see no problem in them using the real thing.
"When I worked in the British House Of Cards TV series some years ago now, the BBC used the set for the chamber of the House of Commons up at Granada Television in Manchester.
"It looked pretty authentic though it had one row of benches less than the real thing and I might add the benches were less comfy and padded than the real thing."
The Administration Committee noted in the minutes of a recent meeting: "Resolved, that the committee agree to support the principle of allowing photography on the parliamentary estate in order to create film sets depicting Parliament."
A parliamentary spokeswoman said: "The Palace of Westminster is an iconic building and commercial filming offers the public a unique opportunity to see Parliament on the big screen and learn about its history and important role in society.
"All requests are considered on a case-by-case basis and seek to balance access for cameras with the need to minimise disruption to Parliament's core work.
"The option to explore allowing photography - on a case-by-case basis - to facilitate set design provides a non-intrusive means to meet production requests."
Arriving at the Star Trek Beyond premiere in Leicester Square, London, last night was Karl Urban
Arriving at the Star Trek Beyond premiere in Leicester Square, London, last night was Laura Whitmore
Arriving at the Star Trek Beyond premiere in Leicester Square, London, last night was Chris Pine
Star Trek actor and writer Simon Pegg urged Theresa May to consider "What would Kirk do?" when she takes over as Prime Minister.
Pegg, who plays Scotty in the rebooted franchise, said he hopes Mrs May follows the example of the captain of the starship USS Enterprise after she takes up residency in 10 Downing Street.
Arriving at the UK premiere of Star Trek Beyond, which he co-wrote, Pegg urged: "Lead for the people, don't forget anybody. Don't just protect the people who are well off, look after everybody. There are a lot of people in this country who need to be looked after, who are so often forgotten."
Pegg said the film, which sees the USS Enterprise crew face a new enemy, has messages which could benefit the British people following the vote to leave the EU.
He said: "Ironically, the message is it's better together, unity is strength. It's about co-operation and breaking down the boundaries between races and species and types, and working together, and it seems incredibly apposite at the moment considering the decision this country has just made, which feels a little bit to me like a retrograde step.
Star Trek Beyond is released in UK cinemas on July 22.
Gerry Adams has repeated calls for a border poll following the vote to leave the EU and has called on America's leaders to help "safeguard the political progress" in Northern Ireland.
In an article for the New York Times, he said that the solution to any possible blocks on trade, services and free movement and the loss of funding for peace programs would be for a referendum about a united Ireland.
He said: "The Brexit vote provides both a reason and an opportunity to enable this democratic decision. The British government should respect the popular vote in the North for European Union membership by bringing forward a referendum on Irish unity. The Irish government, too, should act on this.
"The people of the North could then choose whether they wanted to be part of a Britain outside the European Union or belong to a unified Irish state in Europe. For the Irish after Brexit, that is the democratic way forward."
Although the UK voted to leave the EU, Northern Ireland voted to remain.
As the results were announced, Sinn Fein called for a border poll as they said "the north is going to be dragged out on the tails of a vote in England".
Adams added that the "achievement and legacy" of the Good Friday Agreement has been put "at risk" by Brexit.
He said: "By its reckless action, the British government has set aside the democratic consent that was central to the Good Friday Agreement and set a course that would fundamentally alter the relationships between the North and South of Ireland, and between Ireland and Britain."
He has called on America's leaders to act to "safeguard the political progress" in Northern Ireland.
He said: "Successive presidents of the United States, with the support of Irish-Americans, have played a central role in promoting political progress in the North of Ireland.
"Given its investment in the peace process, Americas leaders must act to safeguard it, insisting that the British government honor its obligations under the agreements and give effect to the Norths choice to remain."
Two men take shelter from the falling ashes
The extent of the damage can be clearly seen in daylight the following morning
Lily Turtle at her Hopewell Square home, which was badly damaged by Monday nights bonfire
A pensioner and a young family have been left homeless after a bonfire in the Shankill Road area ignited a row of terraced houses.
Three of the properties were significantly damaged as burning embers from the huge pyre caught by the wind rained down on their rooftops.
Pensioner Lily Turtle was in bed in the first house that was set alight.
The 72-year-old and her two-year-old great granddaughter had been asleep.
A local man attempted to save the house by climbing up on the roof in a bid to extinguish the flames but then slipped as he tried to put it out.
He steadied himself and did not appear to be injured as he climbed down.
Ms Turtle's daughter described how she and other family members had been "hammering the door" and even considering breaking a window to get her out.
Mrs Turtle said: "My hearing isn't that good so I didn't hear them at the start, I am so shocked about what happened. I have been living here for more than 20 years.
"My grandson got me out."
Mrs Turtle said her neighbours have rallied around her.
Yesterday many gathered at her home to help her salvage whatever furniture she could from the wreckage.
She is currently staying with a family member nearby.
A young family lived in the second house to catch fire.
The father - who did not wish to be named - said his daughter was asleep upstairs in the property when he heard "crackling sounds".
"I heard what sounded like rustling up the stairs," he said.
"So I went up into the attic to see what was happening and I saw the smoke."
He said he woke his daughter and then ran next door to help his neighbour.
"The house is destroyed," he said."My bedroom ceiling is bulging like it's about to come in. It's not safe to be in."
A community fundraising effort has been set up to help the families to replace their lost belongings.
Last night it had already raised more than 500.
Organiser Stephen Paul said: "It's times like this that we need to pull together as a community to show are support for these families."
Belfast Lord Mayor Brian Kingston visited the families yesterday morning and expressed his sadness at the incident.
"We are very lucky we are not looking at a death or injury," he said.
"I have spoken to the relatives of one of the families affected and they say they are angry and alarmed at what has happened."
He said the bonfire was part of Belfast City Council's protocol, and organisers had taken advice on the location of the pyre from the Housing Executive and the Fire Service.
"There will have to be a review and possibly statutory measures," Mr Kingston said.
Assistant chief fire officer Alan Walmsley said the fire would have had the potential to destroy the entire row of homes had it not been for the speedy action of fire crews.
"When we received a 999 call, the roof of one of the properties had already been ignited," he said.
Filmed this at Coolfin street beside City Hospital just now pic.twitter.com/lj9HitPCh6 Declan Lawn (@DecLawn) July 11, 2016
Crowd being moved back at Chobham St bonfire in case it falls forward pic.twitter.com/FReywn0TID Maria McCann (@journomaria) July 11, 2016
Flames getting higher at Sandy Row pic.twitter.com/TIwwKwQSS2 Damien Edgar (@damien_utv) July 11, 2016
Here's hoping for a quiet 11th night, I really hope everyone will take care and come safe. Dale Ashford (@NIFRSAshford) July 11, 2016
Lord St bonfire and party in full swing #EleventhNight pic.twitter.com/jzHro6nwjF john kyle (@cllrjohnkyle) July 11, 2016
Looking forward to having a tour of the bonfires across Belfast later #Eleventhnight #Bonies @Kscott_94 Rebecca Black (@RBlackBT) July 11, 2016
Depressing to still see Irish flags burned on bonfires for #EleventhNight. Celebrating your culture doesn't require disrespecting others'. Christine Quigley (@c_quigley) July 11, 2016
Well done Ladyhill Bonfire Group .. Donation to Meningitis NI .. & great turnout from families and local groups pic.twitter.com/tsQug6nPp5 Danny Kinahan (@DdeBK) July 11, 2016
Disappointing to see Danny Kinahan,a credit to NI in the commons,with bonfire group going to burn Irish flag @DdeBK https://t.co/4GbJi9bVxj Gabe Doran (@GPDoran) July 11, 2016
If your bonfire gets out of control, call 999 immediately and ask for Fire & Rescue Service #protectingourcommunity pic.twitter.com/PSeCXGHQ5a NIFRSSouth (@nifrssouth) July 11, 2016
Chobham Street Bonfire
east Belfast pic.twitter.com/1HuRSS1s7g Gary (@UlstersNo1) July 11, 2016
Praying for a peaceful & enjoyable #EleventhNight and #Twelfth for all! Have a good one! pic.twitter.com/Vawm2HqHDd RangersLinfieldFC (@bluesbrothers86) July 11, 2016
Just the standard Cluan Place bonfire, on a road, damaging public property and burning flags. pic.twitter.com/5AQb0HPIRL Kris Nixon (@belfastbarman) July 11, 2016
Everyone welcome. All inclusive event we're told. Even "Taigs" like me? pic.twitter.com/hdqOX7o0tI Orla Boyle (@The__Boyler) July 11, 2016
Oh joy, I can hear the pipes and drums in the distance #EleventhNight Rachel (@rmoomin84) July 11, 2016
A few Bonfire photos all set for the main event #Bonfire pic.twitter.com/0D5ibHK03s Gary (@UlstersNo1) July 11, 2016
I could have written an essay, but I'll keep it short and sweet...for now! #EleventhNight #TwelfthOfJuly pic.twitter.com/oyhVDDxh6m Emma Wheatley (@EmmaAWheatley) July 11, 2016
Happy 11/12th July. Bangor's finest bonfire now completed and ready for our celebrations. #Remember1690 pic.twitter.com/Mrl85poN42 Jamie Bryson (@JamieBrysonCPNI) July 11, 2016
You couldn't move for the Prime Time specials and liberal think pieces if this was somehow a Republican bonfire. pic.twitter.com/7kSFu4jOpW Paul Reynolds (@PaulFedayn) July 11, 2016
The only bonfire our wee one is bigger than is last yearspic.twitter.com/B1HcXwqmL5 Izzy (@Izzy_Giles) July 11, 2016
Disgusting act by so-called loyalists. Posters of SDLP's Joe Boyle & Alliance's @Kelmba on Killyleagh #bonfire . pic.twitter.com/XVxnLtpt1n Yvette Shapiro (@yvetteshapiro) July 11, 2016
1st call from a constituent telling me my posters are on Bonfire in Ballymena area.
I ran for election in 2014.
What idiot kept my posters? Patrice Hardy (@MisssPatrice) July 11, 2016
Bonfire before it gets lit pic.twitter.com/21PBzBxRev Kacey :)) (@kaceylovessam) July 11, 2016
Responsible adults should look after lighting bonfires - before lighting the fire, check that no children or pets are hiding inside it NIFRS (@NIFRSOFFICIAL) July 11, 2016
Oh my God Belfast is thick with smoke already! It's not midnight yet people #BonfireNight #EleventhNight Joanne (@JoSamberdoodle) July 11, 2016
"I'd like to praise the efforts of our crews who were there extremely quickly. We had four appliances and an aerial appliance there putting water on the fire to try to prevent further damage within five to six minutes.
"Unfortunately three houses were significantly damaged last night and obviously my thoughts are with the families today who have been displaced because of last night's fire."
Overnight between the Eleventh and Twelfth, the Fire Service handled 123 emergency calls, which was an increase in last year.
Of those incidents, 42 were bonfire-related and 16 of these required intervention by fire crews.
During the evening the Fire Service attended bonfire-related incidents in Bangor, Coleraine, Banbridge, Rathfriland, Dungannon, Londonderry, Portadown, Ballyhalbert and Limavady.
On the Albert Bridge Road in east Belfast fire crews were called to dampen down buildings next to a bonfire.
Arlene Foster has been appointed to the Privy Council
Northern Ireland First Minister Arlene Foster has been appointed to the Privy Council.
The Council's historic role was to advise monarchs in carrying out their duties. It obtains formal approval for measures already ordered by ministers.
It is also the court of final appeal for the UK's overseas territories and crown dependencies.
DUP deputy leader Nigel Dodds said: " Today's appointment is a testament to the fact that Arlene, as our First Minister and party leader, is held in high esteem not only in Northern Ireland but throughout the United Kingdom.
"It is right and proper that the First Minister of Northern Ireland is a member of the Privy Council, alongside her counterparts in Wales and Scotland.
"Arlene Foster is recognised as the undisputed leader of unionism in Northern Ireland following the Assembly election in May and today's elevation again highlights the fact she is recognised throughout the UK as the leader of our province."
Italy has warned of the "dangerous consequence" of hardening the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic.
Paolo Gentiloni, Rome's foreign affairs minister, has also called for an orderly and timely withdrawal of Britain from the EU that will leave no room for a "domino effect".
Speaking in central Dublin, where he was holding talks with his Irish counterpart, Mr Gentiloni cautioned against any moves to impose new border controls between Northern Ireland and the Republic.
"We do hope and are confident that the British referendum will not have as a consequence to raise new frontiers, new barriers, new borders in Ireland," he said.
"This would be a really very, very negative and dangerous consequence of the referendum, and I am confident that together we can avoid this kind of consequence."
The 310-mile frontier that separates the island is the only land border between the UK and the rest of the EU.
Although heavily militarised with checkpoints and road closures during the Troubles, the peace process has opened up a seamless crossing between both jurisdictions.
Hundreds of thousands pass over the border every day on their way to work, for shopping or on day trips.
Incoming prime minister Theresa May said during the EU referendum debate it was "inconceivable" that there would not be any changes to border arrangements in the event of a Brexit.
But Mr Gentiloni said the imminent "redefinition" of the relationships between Britain and the EU should not impact on a pre-existing agreement allowing free travel between Ireland and the UK.
The Common Travel Area deal has been in effect since the 1920s.
"I think it can be absolutely maintained, but it is an issue between Ireland and the UK - it is not an EU issue," said Mr Gentiloni, adding: "It is a concern of all of Europe to avoid negative consequences in this particular aspect."
The Italian foreign affairs minister said his country would approach the UK's withdrawal process with an attitude of friendship towards an ally and "very close friend of Italy".
But he added that it must be an orderly process that did not take too long.
"We cannot leave any room for a domino effect or ideas of Europe a la carte," he said.
Ulster Unionist MP Danny Kinahan has apologised for posting a photograph on Twitter which showed him standing in front of a Co Antrim bonfire with an Irish tricolour placed on top of it
Ulster Unionist MP Danny Kinahan has apologised for posting a photograph on Twitter which showed him standing in front of a Co Antrim bonfire with an Irish tricolour placed on top of it.
The South Antrim representative posed for the photograph while holding a cheque for charity. Mr Kinahan said it had been an error of judgment.
He said: "What I wanted to get across was here was a family, rural bonfire scene and they'd raised 600 for meningitis.
"They were having fun and this is Protestant culture - let's recognise each other's cultures and get on with it."
Mr Kinahan attended a ceremony in Dublin last weekend recognising the Irish men who died at the battle of the Somme 100 years ago.
Alliance leader David Ford tweeted: "On Saturday you showed respect for the Irish flag, as the State respected those who died at the Somme.
"Do you approve of this hate?"
A number of Irish flags and Sinn Fein election posters were burned during other Eleventh Night bonfires.
David Cameron says he has strengthened Northern Ireland during his time as prime minister
David Cameron has said Northern Ireland is stronger now than when he came to power.
He attended his final Prime Minister's Question Time in Parliament after a six-year period in Downing Street.
As Conservative leader he oversaw the consolidation of political power-sharing, devolution of corporation tax powers and rescue of Presbyterian Mutual Society (PMS) savers but also a clampdown on public spending which his opponents branded austerity.
Mr Cameron said: "I do believe Northern Ireland is stronger than it was six years ago. 58,000 more people in work, the full devolution of justice and home affairs delivered under this Government, the Saville report published and record inward investment and creating jobs in Northern Ireland."
He was asked about the impact of Brexit on Northern Ireland by Ulster Unionist MP Danny Kinahan.
The premier said as the UK leaves the EU decision makers needed to work out how to keep the benefits of the common travel area between the UK and Ireland.
"Hard work is being done now with civil servants in Northern Ireland, in Whitehall but also in the Republic of Ireland and that work ... the pace needs to quicken."
Mr Cameron signed off as Prime Minister with advice for successor Theresa May to keep the UK "as close to the European Union as possible".
After being forced out of the premiership by last month's referendum vote to quit the EU, Mr Cameron won a standing ovation from Conservative MPs and applause from some of the opposition as he ended his last session of Prime Minister's Questions in the House of Commons by telling them: "I was the future once."
David Barry was last seen in the Parkmore area of Craigavon.
Police are appealing for a man who fled after he was stabbed on the evening of the Twelfth of July.
David Barry was stabbed on Tuesday night in the Parkmore, Craigavon.
Police are holding a man in custody but David Barry left the scene as the 999 call was being made.
Police said: "Whilst we don't believe at this stage that his injuries are too serious or life threatening, we cannot say that for certain until a medical professional checks him. David was last seen in Parkmore, Craigavon, around midnight.
"David, if you're reading this, our primary concern is your health. Take yourself to a hospital, come to your nearest police station, or call us to let us know you're OK."
David has links in Newtownabbey, Larne, Belfast and Lisburn.
If you see David, know where he is, or hear where he is, please cal police immediately on 101 quoting incident 1735 of 12/07/16.
Orange Order members march on Woodvale Road in Belfast as part of the annual Twelfth of July parades across Northern Ireland
A police commander has described a major security operation around traditional Twelfth of July loyal order parades in Northern Ireland as the most successful in years.
Assistant Chief Constable Stephen Martin's assessment came after a number of flashpoint marches went without any major incidents.
"We have seen over 600 parades right across Northern Ireland go very well indeed," said the senior Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) officer.
"They have been overwhelmingly peaceful and any tensions that have existed have been minor."
A police officer was injured when he was knocked down in Co Tyrone and there was a tense stand-off between loyalists and republicans at a notorious interface in north Belfast, but in comparison with the serious rioting that has marred previous Twelfths, the day was largely trouble-free.
Mr Martin passed his best wishes to the injured officer and giving an overall view of the day, he added: "Undoubtedly, from a policing perspective this has been one of the most successful Twelfths in recent years."
Marches near Catholic churches in east Belfast and the city centre were largely uneventful while the blocking of a contentious Orange Order parade at the Ardoyne/Woodvale interface in north Belfast prompted only a low-key protest by around a dozen Orangemen.
One of the most serious developments unfolded long before the parades got under way, in the early hours of Tuesday morning, when embers from an "Eleventh Night" bonfire on Belfast's Shankill Road ignited a blaze in an adjacent row of terraced homes, gutting two of the properties.
In other bonfire-related incidents, a pet owner in Antrim said his cat sustained serious burns after it climbed on to a bonfire that was then lit, while Ulster Unionist MP Danny Kinahan apologised after being pictured posing in front of a bonfire which had an Irish tricolour placed on top.
Loyalists have faced criticism in recent years for putting items linked with the nationalist/republican tradition on bonfires and lighting them.
Mr Martin, who oversaw the PSNI's Twelfth operations, said over the coming days police would be examining evidence relating to any alleged criminal offences committed over the period, including 'hate crimes' linked to placement of items on bonfires.
The vast majority of the 600 parades on the Twelfth commemorating the anniversary of King William III's victory over James II at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690 are free of trouble each year.
But the threat of disorder at a small number of sectarian junctions between Catholic and Protestant residents always has the potential to overshadow the day.
More than 3,000 police officers were on duty across Northern Ireland throughout the day.
During recent Twelfths, police have come under attack at a temporary barrier on Belfast's Woodvale Road as they enforced a determination by the Parades Commission - the body which adjudicates on contentious marches - to prevent three Orange lodges and their supporters from passing the nationalist Ardoyne neighbourhood.
Last month, a deal between the Orange Order and Ardoyne residents to resolve the bitter impasse fell through, but community workers on both sides of the divide have expressed hope the work can be salvaged in the future.
This year, in what was apparently a pre-planned move, only a dozen members of one of the lodges approached the barrier, with a small number of supporters watching.
After handing a letter of protest to the police officer co-ordinating the operation, the members of the Ballysillan lodge stood with their backs to the railings for over an hour before dispersing.
The intention was for the other two lodges to also walk to the barricade, but they did not arrive because a timing issue with the main Belfast parade, which they were taking part in, meant they missed a deadline set by the Parades Commission for Orangemen to leave the contested stretch of road.
Ballysillan was the only one of the three restricted lodges that opposed the mooted deal with the residents.
After its members left the barrier and the Woodvale Road reopened, focus quickly shifted to the nearby community interface where crowds of loyalists and republicans had gathered on either side of the roundabout at the Ardoyne shops.
A number of minor incidents unfolded during a two hour stand-off, with riot police stepping in on more than one occasion to prevent trouble developing, but the tension eventually dissipated and the crowds left the scene.
Earlier, the main Belfast parade had passed St Patrick's Catholic Church on Donegall Street in the city centre without major incident.
There has been a long confrontation between bandsmen and residents over songs played outside and tight restrictions were imposed.
Bands were told to play only a single drumbeat near the church. While most abided by the Parades Commission ruling, some musicians breached the restriction.
A parade past St Matthew's Catholic Church on the Lower Newtownards Road in east Belfast - the scene of disorder in previous years - also passed without incident.
The chairman of the Police Federation for Northern Ireland, Mark Lindsay, said that, from the perspective of his members, it was one of the most successful Twelfth days in recent years.
"We didn't have officers hurt in street confrontations or stand-offs, and that's what we have been working to achieve," he said.
"Loyal orders, community groups, local politicians and statutory bodies worked alongside the police to achieve this result, and it is one I would like to see built upon.
"We can achieve much more as a society if we work for common goals."
A fresh investigation into the disappearance of a six-year-old girl from Donegal will be launched with all evidence and suspects to be re-examined.
The Irish Daily Star reported that senior Garda officers have confirmed that the cold case unit of the force is launching a new investigation into the mystery surrounding the disappearance on Mary Boyle.
Serial child-killer Robert Black has long been considered the prime suspect in the Boyle disappearance.
Black died in Maghaberry in January of this year where he was serving a life sentence for the murder of Ballinderry schoolgirl Jennifer Cardy.
Detective Superintendent Walter O'Sullivan said the investigation will be launched in the next few weeks and will last up to six months.
"The first thing that will happen is that the team will go to Donegal (where Mary disappeared) to get a feel for the area," a source told the newspaper.
The source also revealed that the detectives would draw up a list of all serving and retired gardai who investigated Mary's disappearance in 1977.
The source said that the new cold case team would have no pre-conceived ideas of who was or wasn't a suspect and that all evidence would be followed.
At the end of the new investigation a report with the findings will be given to Garda Commissioner Noirin O'Sullivan.
After a documentary into the investigation earlier this month called Mary Boyle: The Untold Story, there were claims of political interference by two former officers involved in the case.
Retired sergeant Martin Collins claimed a political figure rang Garda at the height of the probe and said: "The gist was that none of a particular family should be made suspect for Mary's interference."
Former detective Aidan Murray told the documentary he believed he was close to getting a suspect to confess to murdering Mary but was told to "ease-off" on the suspect by a senior officer.
Mary's twin sister Ann said she believed that Mary was being sexually abused and was killed to cover "the secret". The six-year-old had been at her grandparents' house in Cashelard, a remote and boggy townland outside Ballyshannon, where the extended family had lunch.
Her uncle, Gerry Gallagher, was the last person to see her alive after she walked back to her grandparent's house but never made it there.
Garda, family and scores of neighbours scoured the 450-yard stretch of land between the only two houses in the area in a search that escalated over the following weeks into a trawl of bog holes, lakes, streams and the countryside beyond. Not a trace of Mary was ever found.
The main suspect in the case still remains Scottish serial killer Black, who began attacking young girls when still in his teens and went on to become the worst paedophile and child killer in British history.
One of his victims was nine-year-old Jennifer, who he killed in August 1981.
Her body was found in an old flax dam six days after she disappeared from her home in Ballinderry.
Police established that Black regularly travelled to Northern Ireland and the Republic as part of his job as a delivery driver.
Jennifer had been sexually assaulted and an attempt was made to burn her remains prior to being dumped in the dam.
It would take nearly 30 years and advances in DNA science to finally link Black to her murder. He was sentenced to a minimum 25 years imprisonment at Armagh Crown Court in October 2011.
The PSNI investigation into Jennifer's murder drew Black into the investigation into the disappearance of Mary.
Garda discovered that Black was a reasonably regular visitor to Donegal, delivering commercial posters, and may have visited and stayed in Annagry, not far from the Boyle home at Kincasslagh on the coast.
The Irish Government has urged more effective dialogue around bonfires.
A Belfast pensioner and a family were left homeless after embers from an Eleventh night blaze near the Shankill Road set fire to a row of terraced houses.
Irish Foreign Affairs Minister Charlie Flanagan said: "This, together with burning of flags and election posters at certain bonfires, as well as the environmental damage caused by burning tyres, is a reminder of the need for effective dialogue around bonfires - so that this important cultural expression can be enjoyed by all."
Mr Flanagan said a new commission on identity and tradition established as part of Stormont's Fresh Start Agreement should consider the issue.
A senior police officer has defended his force's handling of a practice lauded by some as cultural expression but condemned by others as sectarian.
Police Service of Northern Ireland assistant chief constable Stephen Martin responded to criticism that the organisation failed to act against potential law breakers and called f or a collective approach to tackling the annual problem.
He said: "The best way to improve the situation is through consultation; through dialogue and through partnership between the police, the other agencies, political and civic leaders and, critically, communities must be at the heart of this."
More than 300 bonfires were lit on Monday night, kick-starting the annual Twelfth of July celebrations.
Two terraced houses in the Shankill area of west Belfast were destroyed and another was badly damaged after embers blew on to the roofs, causing a fire.
There was also controversy around the burning of tyres, election posters and Irish tricolours while the height and location of some of the towering structures caused outrage in some areas, with at least one bonfire being built close to a new children's play park in east Belfast.
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PA PA A man dampens down a building as a bonfire is lit on the Shankill Road in Belfast on the "Eleventh night" to usher in the Twelfth commemorations. PA PA A man dampens down a building as a bonfire is lit on the Shankill Road in Belfast on the "Eleventh night" to usher in the Twelfth commemorations. PA PA A bonfire is lit on the Shankill Road in Belfast on the "Eleventh night" to usher in the Twelfth commemorations. PA PA A bonfire is lit on the Shankill Road in Belfast on the "Eleventh night" to usher in the Twelfth commemorations. PA PA A man uses petrol to light a bonfire on the Shankill Road in Belfast on the "Eleventh night" to usher in the Twelfth commemorations. PA PA Bonfire at Tennent Street in west Belfast. 11th July 2016. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye Highfield Estate bonfire in west Belfast. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye Bonfire at Tennent Street in west Belfast. 11th July 2016. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye Bonfire at Tennent Street in west Belfast. 11th July 2016. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye Eleventh night bonfire in the Highfield Estate in west Belfast July 11 2016. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Eleventh night bonfire in the Highfield Estate in west Belfast July 11 2016. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Eleventh night bonfire in the Highfield Estate in west Belfast July 11 2016. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Eleventh night bonfire in the Highfield Estate in west Belfast July 11 2016. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. A huge bonfire in Tigers Bay area of Belfast before it is lit on the "Eleventh night" to usher in the Twelfth commemorations. PA PA An 11th Night bonfire at Edgarstown, Portadown, covered in at leat 30 Sinn Fein and SDLP election posters. This follows a complaint to police about another bonfire in Portadown's Corcrain Estate as a hate crime by Sinn Fein. A huge bonfire in Tigers Bay area of Belfast before it is lit on the "Eleventh night" to usher in the Twelfth commemorations. PA PA A huge bonfire in Tigers Bay area of Belfast before it is lit on the "Eleventh night" to usher in the Twelfth commemorations. PA PA Loyalists climb up one of the largest 11th night Bonfires with Irish tricolour flags in the lower Shankill road area of Belfast, Northern Ireland on July 11, 2016, ahead of the lighting of the traditional 11th night bonfires. The Eleventh Night refers to the night before the Twelfth of July, an annual Protestant commemoration of the famous battle were Protestant King William III of Orange defeated Catholic King James II at the battle of the Boyne on July 12, 1690. / AFP PHOTO / PAUL FAITHPAUL FAITH/AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images Two women take photographs of one of the largest 11th night Bonfires in the lower Shankill road area of Belfast, Northern Ireland on July 11, 2016, ahead of the lighting of the traditional 11th night bonfires. AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images Children atop the huge bonfire in Sandy Row, Belfast with a banner displaying an offensive message directed at SDLP MLA Clare Hanna. PA Loyalists gesture at the foot of one of the largest 11th night Bonfires after raising Irish tricolour flags in the lower Shankill road area of Belfast, Northern Ireland on July 11, 2016, ahead of the lighting of the traditional 11th night bonfires. The Eleventh Night refers to the night before the Twelfth of July, an annual Protestant commemoration of the famous battle were Protestant King William III of Orange defeated Catholic King James II at the battle of the Boyne on July 12, 1690. / AFP PHOTO / PAUL FAITHPAUL FAITH/AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images Loyalists gesture from the top of one of the largest 11th night Bonfires after raising Irish tricolour flags in the lower Shankill road area of Belfast, Northern Ireland on July 11, 2016, ahead of the lighting of the traditional 11th night bonfires. The Eleventh Night refers to the night before the Twelfth of July, an annual Protestant commemoration of the famous battle were Protestant King William III of Orange defeated Catholic King James II at the battle of the Boyne on July 12, 1690. / AFP PHOTO / PAUL FAITHPAUL FAITH/AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images A youth balances on a fence as Union flags flutter in the breeze beside one of the largest 11th night Bonfires in the lower Shankill road area of Belfast, Northern Ireland on July 11, 2016, ahead of the lighting of the traditional 11th night bonfires. The Eleventh Night refers to the night before the Twelfth of July, an annual Protestant commemoration of the famous battle were Protestant King William III of Orange defeated Catholic King James II at the battle of the Boyne on July 12, 1690. / AFP PHOTO / PAUL FAITHPAUL FAITH/AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images Loyalists climb up one of the largest 11th night Bonfires with Irish tricolour flags in the lower Shankill road area of Belfast, Northern Ireland on July 11, 2016, ahead of the lighting of the traditional 11th night bonfires. The Eleventh Night refers to the night before the Twelfth of July, an annual Protestant commemoration of the famous battle were Protestant King William III of Orange defeated Catholic King James II at the battle of the Boyne on July 12, 1690. / AFP PHOTO / PAUL FAITHPAUL FAITH/AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images A youth balances on a fence beside one of the largest 11th night Bonfires in the lower Shankill road area of Belfast, Northern Ireland on July 11, 2016, ahead of the lighting of the traditional 11th night bonfires. The Eleventh Night refers to the night before the Twelfth of July, an annual Protestant commemoration of the famous battle were Protestant King William III of Orange defeated Catholic King James II at the battle of the Boyne on July 12, 1690. / AFP PHOTO / PAUL FAITHPAUL FAITH/AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images A youth balances on a fence as Union flags flutter in the breeze beside one of the largest 11th night Bonfires in the lower Shankill road area of Belfast, Northern Ireland on July 11, 2016, ahead of the lighting of the traditional 11th night bonfires. The Eleventh Night refers to the night before the Twelfth of July, an annual Protestant commemoration of the famous battle were Protestant King William III of Orange defeated Catholic King James II at the battle of the Boyne on July 12, 1690. / AFP PHOTO / PAUL FAITHPAUL FAITH/AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images Foreign tourists take a tour past one of the largest 11th night Bonfires in the lower Shankill road area of Belfast, Northern Ireland on July 11, 2016, ahead of the lighting of the traditional 11th night bonfires. The Eleventh Night refers to the night before the Twelfth of July, an annual Protestant commemoration of the famous battle were Protestant King William III of Orange defeated Catholic King James II at the battle of the Boyne on July 12, 1690. / AFP PHOTO / PAUL FAITHPAUL FAITH/AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images A man climbs up one of the largest 11th night Bonfires in the lower Shankill road area of Belfast, Northern Ireland on July 11, 2016, ahead of the lighting of the traditional 11th night bonfires. The Eleventh Night refers to the night before the Twelfth of July, an annual Protestant commemoration of the famous battle were Protestant King William III of Orange defeated Catholic King James II at the battle of the Boyne on July 12, 1690. / AFP PHOTO / PAUL FAITHPAUL FAITH/AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images A woman steps out of a taxi to take a photograph of one of the largest 11th night Bonfires in the lower Shankill road area of Belfast, Northern Ireland on July 11, 2016, ahead of the lighting of the traditional 11th night bonfires. The Eleventh Night refers to the night before the Twelfth of July, an annual Protestant commemoration of the famous battle were Protestant King William III of Orange defeated Catholic King James II at the battle of the Boyne on July 12, 1690. / AFP PHOTO / PAUL FAITHPAUL FAITH/AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images BELFAST, NORTHERN IRELAND - JULY 11: Loyalists make final preparations to their bonfire on the Newtownards road on July 11, 2016 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. The lighting of the bonfires at midnight on the eleventh night marks the start of the annual twelfth of July celebrations within the protestant community. The Orange marches and demonstrations celebrate the Battle of the Boyne in 1690 when the Protestant King William of Orange defeated the Catholic King James II on the banks of the river Boyne. (Photo by Charles McQuillan/Getty Images) Getty Images BELFAST, NORTHERN IRELAND - JULY 11: A woman walks past tables stacked with sweets, fizzy drinks and crisps as Loyalists make final preparations to their bonfire on the Newtownards road on July 11, 2016 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. The lighting of the bonfires at midnight on the eleventh night marks the start of the annual twelfth of July celebrations within the protestant community. The Orange marches and demonstrations celebrate the Battle of the Boyne in 1690 when the Protestant King William of Orange defeated the Catholic King James II on the banks of the river Boyne. (Photo by Charles McQuillan/Getty Images) Getty Images BELFAST, NORTHERN IRELAND - JULY 11: Loyalists make final preparations to their bonfire on the Newtownards road on July 11, 2016 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. The lighting of the bonfires at midnight on the eleventh night marks the start of the annual twelfth of July celebrations within the protestant community. The Orange marches and demonstrations celebrate the Battle of the Boyne in 1690 when the Protestant King William of Orange defeated the Catholic King James II on the banks of the river Boyne. (Photo by Charles McQuillan/Getty Images) Getty Images BELFAST, NORTHERN IRELAND - JULY 11: A Loyalist poses for a drone as he is filmed making final preparations to a huge bonfire on the Ballymacash estate on July 11, 2016 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. The Ballymacash bonfire is reported as the largest bonfire construct in the province. The lighting of the bonfires at midnight on the eleventh night marks the start of the annual twelfth of July celebrations within the protestant community. The Orange marches and demonstrations celebrate the Battle of the Boyne in 1690 when the Protestant King William of Orange defeated the Catholic King James II on the banks of the river Boyne. (Photo by Charles McQuillan/Getty Images) Getty Images BELFAST, NORTHERN IRELAND - JULY 11: Loyalist Peter Stenhouse carries a wooden pallet as he makes final preparations to a bonfire on the Ballymacash estate on July 11, 2016 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. The lighting of the bonfires at midnight on the eleventh night marks the start of the annual twelfth of July celebrations within the protestant community. The Orange marches and demonstrations celebrate the Battle of the Boyne in 1690 when the Protestant King William of Orange defeated the Catholic King James II on the banks of the river Boyne. (Photo by Charles McQuillan/Getty Images) Getty Images BELFAST, NORTHERN IRELAND - JULY 11: A Loyalist poses for a drone as he is filmed making final preparations to a huge bonfire on the Ballymacash estate on July 11, 2016 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. The Ballymacash bonfire is reported as the largest bonfire construct in the province. The lighting of the bonfires at midnight on the eleventh night marks the start of the annual twelfth of July celebrations within the protestant community. The Orange marches and demonstrations celebrate the Battle of the Boyne in 1690 when the Protestant King William of Orange defeated the Catholic King James II on the banks of the river Boyne. (Photo by Charles McQuillan/Getty Images) Getty Images BELFAST, NORTHERN IRELAND - JULY 11: A Loyalist poses for a drone as he is filmed making final preparations to a huge bonfire on the Ballymacash estate on July 11, 2016 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. The Ballymacash bonfire is reported as the largest bonfire construct in the province. The lighting of the bonfires at midnight on the eleventh night marks the start of the annual twelfth of July celebrations within the protestant community. The Orange marches and demonstrations celebrate the Battle of the Boyne in 1690 when the Protestant King William of Orange defeated the Catholic King James II on the banks of the river Boyne. (Photo by Charles McQuillan/Getty Images) Getty Images BELFAST, NORTHERN IRELAND - JULY 11: A Loyalist poses for a drone as he is filmed making final preparations to a huge bonfire on the Ballymacash estate on July 11, 2016 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. The Ballymacash bonfire is reported as the largest bonfire construct in the province. The lighting of the bonfires at midnight on the eleventh night marks the start of the annual twelfth of July celebrations within the protestant community. The Orange marches and demonstrations celebrate the Battle of the Boyne in 1690 when the Protestant King William of Orange defeated the Catholic King James II on the banks of the river Boyne. (Photo by Charles McQuillan/Getty Images) Getty Images Men construct a bonfire in the Ballymacash area of Lisburn, as building continues on huge loyalist bonfires, which are traditionally lit on the "Eleventh night" to usher in the Twelfth commemorations. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Sunday July 10, 2016. Authorities in Northern Ireland are cautiously optimistic the main fixture in the loyal order parading season can pass off peacefully, but have a major policing operation planned to deal with any unrest. See PA story ULSTER Twelfth. Photo credit should read: Brian Lawless/PA Wire PA File photo dated 10/07/16 of a completed bonfire in the Hopewell area in the Lower Shankill, Belfast, as huge bonfires, are to be lit in loyalist communities across Northern Ireland ahead of the main date in the loyal order parading season - the Twelfth of July. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo.Issue date: Monday July 11, 2016. Authorities in Northern Ireland are cautiously optimistic the main fixture in the loyal order parading season can pass off peacefully, but have a major policing operation planned to deal with any unrest. See PA story ULSTER Twelfth. Photo credit should read: Brian Lawless/PA Wire PA An bonfire under construction in the Ballymacash area of Lisburn, as building continues on huge loyalist bonfires, which are traditionally lit on the "Eleventh night" to usher in the Twelfth commemorations. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Sunday July 10, 2016. Authorities in Northern Ireland are cautiously optimistic the main fixture in the loyal order parading season can pass off peacefully, but have a major policing operation planned to deal with any unrest. See PA story ULSTER Twelfth. Photo credit should read: Brian Lawless/PA Wire PA An bonfire under construction in the Ballymacash area of Lisburn, as building continues on huge loyalist bonfires, which are traditionally lit on the "Eleventh night" to usher in the Twelfth commemorations. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Sunday July 10, 2016. Authorities in Northern Ireland are cautiously optimistic the main fixture in the loyal order parading season can pass off peacefully, but have a major policing operation planned to deal with any unrest. See PA story ULSTER Twelfth. Photo credit should read: Brian Lawless/PA Wire PA Men construct a bonfire in the Ballymacash area of Lisburn, as building continues on huge loyalist bonfires, which are traditionally lit on the "Eleventh night" to usher in the Twelfth commemorations. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Sunday July 10, 2016. Authorities in Northern Ireland are cautiously optimistic the main fixture in the loyal order parading season can pass off peacefully, but have a major policing operation planned to deal with any unrest. See PA story ULSTER Twelfth. Photo credit should read: Brian Lawless/PA Wire PA Men stand on a bonfire under construction in the Ballymacash area of Lisburn, as building continues on huge loyalist bonfires, which are traditionally lit on the "Eleventh night" to usher in the Twelfth commemorations. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Sunday July 10, 2016. Authorities in Northern Ireland are cautiously optimistic the main fixture in the loyal order parading season can pass off peacefully, but have a major policing operation planned to deal with any unrest. See PA story ULSTER Twelfth. Photo credit should read: Brian Lawless/PA Wire PA A completed bonfire in the Hopewell area in the Lower Shankill, Belfast, as building continues on huge loyalist bonfires, which are traditionally lit on the "Eleventh night" to usher in the Twelfth commemorations. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Sunday July 10, 2016. Authorities in Northern Ireland are cautiously optimistic the main fixture in the loyal order parading season can pass off peacefully, but have a major policing operation planned to deal with any unrest. See PA story ULSTER Twelfth. Photo credit should read: Brian Lawless/PA Wire PA A completed bonfire in the Hopewell area in the Lower Shankill, Belfast, as building continues on huge loyalist bonfires, which are traditionally lit on the "Eleventh night" to usher in the Twelfth commemorations. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Sunday July 10, 2016. Authorities in Northern Ireland are cautiously optimistic the main fixture in the loyal order parading season can pass off peacefully, but have a major policing operation planned to deal with any unrest. See PA story ULSTER Twelfth. Photo credit should read: Brian Lawless/PA Wire PA A bonfire under construction near Chobam Street, Belfast, as building continues on huge loyalist bonfires, which are traditionally lit on the "Eleventh night" to usher in the Twelfth commemorations. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Sunday July 10, 2016. Authorities in Northern Ireland are cautiously optimistic the main fixture in the loyal order parading season can pass off peacefully, but have a major policing operation planned to deal with any unrest. See PA story ULSTER Twelfth. Photo credit should read: Brian Lawless/PA Wire PA Men construct a bonfire in the Ballymacash area of Lisburn, as building continues on huge loyalist bonfires, which are traditionally lit on the "Eleventh night" to usher in the Twelfth commemorations. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Sunday July 10, 2016. Authorities in Northern Ireland are cautiously optimistic the main fixture in the loyal order parading season can pass off peacefully, but have a major policing operation planned to deal with any unrest. See PA story ULSTER Twelfth. Photo credit should read: Brian Lawless/PA Wire PA A completed bonfire in the Hopewell area in the Lower Shankill, Belfast, as building continues on huge loyalist bonfires, which are traditionally lit on the "Eleventh night" to usher in the Twelfth commemorations. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Sunday July 10, 2016. Authorities in Northern Ireland are cautiously optimistic the main fixture in the loyal order parading season can pass off peacefully, but have a major policing operation planned to deal with any unrest. See PA story ULSTER Twelfth. Photo credit should read: Brian Lawless/PA Wire PA A completed bonfire in the Hopewell area in the Lower Shankill, Belfast, as building continues on huge loyalist bonfires, which are traditionally lit on the "Eleventh night" to usher in the Twelfth commemorations. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Sunday July 10, 2016. Authorities in Northern Ireland are cautiously optimistic the main fixture in the loyal order parading season can pass off peacefully, but have a major policing operation planned to deal with any unrest. See PA story ULSTER Twelfth. Photo credit should read: Brian Lawless/PA Wire PA A completed bonfire in the Hopewell area in the Lower Shankill, Belfast, as building continues on huge loyalist bonfires, which are traditionally lit on the "Eleventh night" to usher in the Twelfth commemorations. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Sunday July 10, 2016. Authorities in Northern Ireland are cautiously optimistic the main fixture in the loyal order parading season can pass off peacefully, but have a major policing operation planned to deal with any unrest. See PA story ULSTER Twelfth. Photo credit should read: Brian Lawless/PA Wire PA Pacemaker Press 11/7/2016 A on looker watches on at the preparations the for 11th night Bonfire at Ballymacash in Lisburn, ahead of the 12th of July celebration across Northern Ireland. Pic Colm Lenaghan/ Pacemaker Pacemaker Press 11/7/2016 Preparations the for 11th night Bonfire at Donegall Road in Belfast, ahead of the 12th of July celebration across Northern Ireland. Pic Colm Lenaghan/ Pacemaker Pacemaker Press Belfast 11-07-2016: Pallets for a bonfire are stacked near Sandy Row in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Picture By: Pacemaker. Pacemaker Press Belfast 11-07-2016: Pallets for a bonfire are stacked near the Comber Greenway in east Belfast, blocking a cycle path leading into the city Swings and a climbing frame have been removed from a 250,000 playground next to the Comber Greenway in east Belfast because of the dangers posed by an Eleventh Night bonfire. Homes and windows are being boarded up near the bonfire. Picture By: Pacemaker. Press Eye - Northern Ireland - 10th July 2016 Ballymacash bonfire in Lisburn in the final stages of preparation for the 11th July celebrations. Picture: Philip Magowan / PressEye Philip Magowan Ballymacash bonfire in Lisburn in the final stages of preparation for the 11th July celebrations. Picture: Philip Magowan / PressEye Philip Magowan Press Eye - Northern Ireland - 10th July 2016 Ballymacash bonfire in Lisburn in the final stages of preparation for the 11th July celebrations. Picture: Philip Magowan / PressEye Philip Magowan Pacemaker Press Belfast 11-07-2016: Pallets for a bonfire are stacked near the Comber Greenway in east Belfast, blocking a cycle path leading into the city Swings and a climbing frame have been removed from a 250,000 playground next to the Comber Greenway in east Belfast because of the dangers posed by an Eleventh Night bonfire. Homes and windows are being boarded up near the bonfire. Picture By: Pacemaker. Press Eye - Northern Ireland - 10th July 2016 Ballymacash bonfire in Lisburn in the final stages of preparation for the 11th July celebrations. Picture: Philip Magowan / PressEye Philip Magowan Press Eye - Northern Ireland - 10th July 2016 Ballymacash bonfire in Lisburn in the final stages of preparation for the 11th July celebrations. Picture: Philip Magowan / PressEye Philip Magowan Press Eye - Northern Ireland - 10th July 2016 Ballymacash bonfire in Lisburn in the final stages of preparation for the 11th July celebrations. Picture: Philip Magowan / PressEye Philip Magowan Press Eye - Northern Ireland - 10th July 2016 Ballymacash bonfire in Lisburn in the final stages of preparation for the 11th July celebrations. Picture: Philip Magowan / PressEye Philip Magowan Press Eye - Northern Ireland - 10th July 2016 Ballymacash bonfire in Lisburn in the final stages of preparation for the 11th July celebrations. Picture: Philip Magowan / PressEye Philip Magowan Press Eye - Northern Ireland - 10th July 2016 Ballymacash bonfire in Lisburn in the final stages of preparation for the 11th July celebrations. Picture: Philip Magowan / PressEye Philip Magowan Mandatory Credit - Picture by Freddie Parkinson/Press Eye Sunday 10th July 2016 The Bonfire at Drumtara, Ballee, in Ballymena which is stacked with tyres. Press Eye - Belfast - Norther The Edgarstown bonfire in Portadown in the final stages of preparation for the 11th July celebrations. Photo: PressEye Philip Magowan The Edgarstown bonfire in Portadown in the final stages of preparation for the 11th July celebrations. Photo: PressEye Philip Magowan Ballycraigy bonfire in Antrim Pacemaker Press Belfast 08-07-2016: Bonfire in the Loyalist Ballybeen estate in Dundonald, close the Parliament buidlings, Stormont. Picture By: Pacemaker. Pacemaker Press Belfast 08-07-2016: Bonfire in the Loyalist Ballybeen estate in Dundonald, close the Parliament buidlings, Stormont. Picture By: Pacemaker. Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 8th July A bonfire is prepared on the Milltown Road in south Belfast ahead of the 11th night bonfire celebrations which will take place across Northern Ireland this Monday night. Picture by Jonathan Porter/PressEye Credit - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast, UK - July 07 , Tyres on the Ballybeen Bonfire in Dundonald on July 07, 2016 ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph) Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Credit - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast, UK - July 07 , Tyres on the Ballybeen Bonfire in Dundonald on July 07, 2016 ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph) Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Pacemaker Press 5/7/2016 Preparations get well under way at Chobham Street Bonfire in East Belfast, on the run up to The 12th of July. Pic Pacemaker / Facebook
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Whatsapp A house catches fire at the Lower Shankill bonfire as it is lit during July 12th celebrations in Belfast , 2016 ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph)
Mr Martin, who has responsibility for overseeing operations around bonfires and parading, added: "I am required in law to consider the necessity and proportionality of my actions.
"Often I take a view that enforcement action is not proportionate in the circumstances, albeit I fully recognise that is what some people would want.
"Police deal with crimes and some of the crimes involved would be extremely difficult to prove.
"For example, whilst putting an election poster on a bonfire might be very distressful to the person whose image is on it, and the political party involved might hold very strong feelings about it, the offence in reality is likely to be the theft of a piece of paper.
"In considering enforcement action, I have to think about the consequences of police action.
"I have to balance the benefits of recovering the poster to prove an offence of theft that would be very difficult to identify someone for, against the risk that police intervening would create increased tension and risk of disorder and then correspondingly the increased risk of police having to use force to quell that disorder.
"Added to that, the law around hate crimes and incidents in Northern Ireland differs from other UK regions.
"The hate element must accompany a specific substantive criminal offence for example theft or criminal damage.
"The PSNI is on record as calling for a discussion on the need for specific hate crime legislation in Northern Ireland.
"I can assure the public that we take all hate incidents and crimes extremely seriously and will ensure they are investigated appropriately."
A warrant has been issued for the arrest of Father Ted actor Gerard McSorley.
Mr McSorley - who is originally from Co Tyrone - is accused of damaging a banks flowerpots. However gardai have two months in which to serve the warrant before the case is called again.
Dungloe District Court in Co Donegal was told Mr McSorley is charged with damaging two flowerpots at the Bank of Ireland in Bunbeg.
Omagh-born Mr McSorley (66), who now lives in Bunbeg, is accused of the criminal damage offence on June 16.
McSorley played the character of Fr Todd Unctuous in the Father Ted series. The actor was not present in court yesterday when the case was first called.
As Inspector David Murphy said he was applying for a warrant for the actors arrest, defence solicitor Jacqui Sharkey asked Judge Kelly to put the case back for a second call.
When the case was called later, Ms Sharkey told the court she had been unable to contact Mr McSorley. Judge Paul Kelly issued a warrant for the actors arrest and told Ms Sharkey she could arrange with gardai for it to be served with discretion.
He adjourned the hearing to September 13.
George Osborne has resigned from Government after Philip Hammond was named as next Chancellor of the Exchequer.
In Theresa May's first appointment as Prime Minister, the former Foreign Secretary was promoted to the job he has long been tipped to want.
The announcement comes less than two hours after Mrs May succeeded David Cameron in No 10 with a promise to create "a country that works for everyone".
Hammond has risen to some of the highest offices in Government while leaving little trace in the public imagination.
His reputation - within Westminster at least - has been as a highly articulate and effective "safe pair of hands" who can plough a steady course without causing drama, upset or excitement.
It is exactly those qualities which have made him the "reassuringly boring" choice for successive promotions to Transport Secretary, Defence Secretary, Foreign Secretary and now Chancellor.
Despite being a permanent fixture in David Cameron's shadow frontbench team and Cabinet throughout his time as leader, he was rarely mentioned as a possible successor - and that is probably the way he liked it.
The Treasury has always been his goal, and he is understood to have been disappointed to miss out on the number two job there in 2010 when the necessities of coalition gave Liberal Democrats the Chief Secretary's post - a role he had shadowed for three years in opposition. Sent instead to the Department for Transport, he was swiftly moved on to Defence in the aftermath of the exit of Liam Fox amid a public furore over his special adviser.
With a reputation forged in the shadow Treasury team as the Tories' public spending "axeman", he was ideally placed to preside over a big spending squeeze to close the "black hole" in Ministry of Defence budgets.
His installation as Foreign Secretary in 2014 was hailed by Eurosceptics, who detected signs of a fellow spirit in comments which appeared to suggest he was ready to contemplate withdrawal from the EU if the Government was unable to negotiate a better deal.
Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Previous Next Close Britain's new Prime Minister Theresa May (L) and her husband Philip John (R) wave outside 10 Downing Street in central London on July 13, 2016 on the day she takes office following the formal resignation of David Cameron. AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images EDITORS NOTE ALTERNATE CROP David Cameron leaves 10 Downing Street in London, with wife Samantha and children Nancy, 12, Elwen, 10, and Florence, 5, for Buckingham Palace for an audience with Queen Elizabeth II to formally resign as Prime Minister. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Wednesday July 13, 2016. See PA story POLITICS Conservatives. Photo credit should read: Stefan Rousseau/PA Wire PA Britain's new Prime Minister Theresa May (L) and her husband Philip John May (R) laugh together outside the door of 10 Downing Street in central London on July 13, 2016 on the day that Theresa May takes office following the formal resignation of David Cameron. AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images Staff applaud as new British Prime Minister Theresa May and her husband Philip John walk into 10 Downing Street in London, on July 13, 2016 after meeting Queen Elizabeth II and accepting her invitation to become Prime Minister and form a new government. Theresa May took office as Britain's second female prime minister on July 13 charged with guiding the UK out of the European Union after a deeply devisive referendum campaign ended with Britain voting to leave and David Cameron resigning. / AFP PHOTO / POOL / Stefan RousseauSTEFAN ROUSSEAU/AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images Pro-Brexit supporters holds up placards as they demonstrate outside Downing street in central London on July 13, 2016, on the day new British Prime Minister Theresa May takes over at number 10. Theresa May took office as Britain's second female prime minister on July 13 charged with guiding the UK out of the European Union after a deeply devisive referendum campaign ended with Britain voting to leave and David Cameron resigning. / AFP PHOTO / NIKLAS HALLE'NNIKLAS HALLE'N/AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images Former mayor of London Boris Johnson walks to 10 Downing Street in central London on July 13, 2016 after New British Prime Minister Theresa May takes office following the formal resignation of David Cameron. Theresa May took office as Britain's second female prime minister on July 13 charged with guiding the UK out of the European Union after a deeply devisive referendum campaign ended with Britain voting to leave and David Cameron resigning. / AFP PHOTO / OLI SCARFFOLI SCARFF/AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images Brexit supporters protest outside 10 Downing Street in London, after new Prime Minister Theresa May, accepted Queen Elizabeth II's invitation to become Prime Minister and form a new government. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Wednesday July 13, 2016. See PA story POLITICS Conservatives. Photo credit should read: Gareth Fuller/PA Wire PA David Davis who will become Secretary of State for Brexit, leaves 10 Downing Street, central London, as new Prime Minister Theresa May begins a Cabinet reshuffle. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Wednesday July 13, 2016. See PA story POLITICS Conservatives. Photo credit should read: Gareth Fuller/PA Wire PA Amber Rudd, leaves 10 Downing Street, central London, after being appointed as Home Secretary following a Cabinet reshuffle by new Prime Minister Theresa May. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Issue date: Wednesday July 13, 2016. See PA story POLITICS Conservatives. Photo credit should read: Gareth Fuller/PA Wire PA LONDON, ENGLAND - JULY 13: (EDITORS NOTE: Retransmission of image #547088848 with alternate crop.) Newly appointed Prime Minister Theresa May, shoe detail, speaks at 10 Downing Street on July 13, 2016 in London, England. Former Home Secretary Theresa May becomes the UK's second female Prime Minister after she was selected unopposed by Conservative MPs to be their new party leader. She is currently MP for Maidenhead. (Photo by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images) Getty Images LONDON, ENGLAND - JULY 13: British Energy Secretary and Climate Change Secretary Amber Rudd arrives at Downing Street on July 13, 2016 in London, England. The UK's New Prime Minister Theresa May began appointing the key Ministerial positions in her cabinet shortly after taking up residence at Number 10 Downing Street. She has appointed Philip Hammond as Chancellor and George Osborne has resigned. (Photo by Jack Taylor/Getty Images) Getty Images Newly appointed Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson leaves 10 Downing Street in central London on July 13, 2016 after new British Prime Minister Theresa May took office. Theresa May took office as Britain's second female prime minister on July 13 charged with guiding the UK out of the European Union after a deeply devisive referendum campaign ended with Britain voting to leave and David Cameron resigning. / AFP PHOTO / JUSTIN TALLISJUSTIN TALLIS/AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images British Conservative party member of parliament Liam Fox arrives at 10 Downing Street in central London on July 13, 2016 after new British Prime Minister Theresa May took office. Theresa May took office as Britain's second female prime minister on July 13 charged with guiding the UK out of the European Union after a deeply devisive referendum campaign ended with Britain voting to leave and David Cameron resigning. / AFP PHOTO / OLI SCARFFOLI SCARFF/AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images LONDON, ENGLAND - JULY 13: Newly appointed Defence Secretary Michael Fallon gives a thumbs up as he leaves Downing Street on July 13, 2016 in London, England. The UK's New Prime Minister Theresa May began appointing the key Ministerial positions in her cabinet shortly after taking up residence at Number 10 Downing Street. She has appointed Philip Hammond as Chancellor and George Osborne has resigned. (Photo by Carl Court/Getty Images) Getty Images LONDON, ENGLAND - JULY 13: British Prime Minister Theresa May and husband Philip May wave outside 10 Downing Street on July 13, 2016 in London, England. Former Home Secretary Theresa May becomes the UK's second female Prime Minister after she was selected unopposed by Conservative MPs to be their new party leader. She is currently MP for Maidenhead. (Photo by Carl Court/Getty Images) *** BESTPIX *** LONDON, ENGLAND - JULY 13: Prime Minister David Cameron with his wife Samantha leave 10 Downing Street for the last time after speaking to the press to visit Buckingham Palace to formally tender his resignation to the Queen on July 13, 2016 in London, England. David Cameron leaves Downing Street today having been Prime Minister of the United Kingdom since May 2010 and Leader of the Conservative Party since December 2005. He is succeeded by former Home Secretary Theresa May and will remain as Member of Parliament for Witney in Oxfordshire. (Photo by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images) *** BESTPIX *** Britain's new Prime Minister Theresa May (L) and her husband Philip John May (R) wave outside the door of 10 Downing Street in central London on July 13, 2016 on the day that Theresa May takes office following the formal resignation of David Cameron. AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images Britain's new Prime Minister Theresa May (L) and her husband Philip John May (R) wave outside the door of 10 Downing Street in central London on July 13, 2016 on the day that Theresa May takes office following the formal resignation of David Cameron. AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images New Prime Minister Theresa May makes a speech outside 10 Downing Street, London, after meeting Queen Elizabeth II and accepting her invitation to become Prime Minister and form a new government. PA PA Outgoing British prime minister David Cameron (L) speaks outside 10 Downing Street beside (L-R) his daughter Nancy Gwen, his wife Samantha Cameron and son Arthur Elwen in central London on July 13, 2016 before going to Buckingham Palace to tender his resignation to Queen Elizabeth II. AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images A demonstrator displays a painting depicting former British Prime minister David Cameron in central London on July 13, 2016, on the day new British Prime Minister Theresa May takes over at number 10. Theresa May took office as Britain's second female prime minister on July 13 charged with guiding the UK out of the European Union after a deeply devisive referendum campaign ended with Britain voting to leave and David Cameron resigning. / AFP PHOTO / NIKLAS HALLE'NNIKLAS HALLE'N/AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images Britain's new Prime Minister Theresa May waves outside 10 Downing Street in central London on July 13, 2016 on the day she takes office following the formal resignation of David Cameron. Theresa May took office as Britain's second female prime minister on July 13 charged with guiding the UK out of the European Union after a deeply devisive referendum campaign ended with Britain voting to leave and David Cameron resigning. / AFP PHOTO / JUSTIN TALLISJUSTIN TALLIS/AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images Britain's new Prime Minister Theresa May laughs on the step outside 10 Downing Street in central London on July 13, 2016 on the day she takes office following the formal resignation of David Cameron. Theresa May took office as Britain's second female prime minister on July 13 charged with guiding the UK out of the European Union after a deeply devisive referendum campaign ended with Britain voting to leave and David Cameron resigning. / AFP PHOTO / JUSTIN TALLISJUSTIN TALLIS/AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images Queen Elizabeth II welcomes Theresa May at the start of an audience in Buckingham Palace, London, where she invited the former Home Secretary to become Prime Minister and form a new government. PA PA LONDON, ENGLAND - JULY 13: David Cameron leaves Downing Street for the last time with his wife Samantha Cameron and children Nancy Cameron (C), Arthur Cameron and Florence Cameron on his way to Buckingham Palace on July 13, 2016 in London, England. David Cameron leaves Downing Street today having been Prime Minister of the United Kingdom since May 2010 and Leader of the Conservative Party since December 2005. He is succeeded by former Home Secretary Theresa May and will remain as Member of Parliament for Witney in Oxfordshire. (Photo by Dan Kitwood/Getty Images) Getty Images Outgoing British prime minister David Cameron (L) waves outside 10 Downing Street with his family (L-R) his daughter Nancy Gwen, son Arthur Elwen, daughter Florence Rose Endellion and his wife Samantha Cameron in central London on July 13, 2016 before going to Buckingham Palace to tender his resignation to Queen Elizabeth II. Outgoing British prime minister David Cameron urged his successor Theresa May on Wednesday to maintain close ties with the EU even while negotiating to leave it, as he paid a fond farewell to MPs hours before leaving office. Cameron will tender his resignation on July 13 to Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace, after which the monarch will task the new leader of the Conservative Party Theresa May with forming a government. / AFP PHOTO / OLI SCARFFOLI SCARFF/AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images David Cameron after making a speech outside 10 Downing Street in London, with wife Samantha and children Nancy, 12, Elwyn, 10, and Florence, 5, before leaving for Buckingham Palace for an audience with Queen Elizabeth II to formally resign as Prime Minister. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Wednesday July 13, 2016. See PA story POLITICS Conservatives. Photo credit should read: Gareth Fuller/PA Wire PA LONDON, ENGLAND - JULY 13: Prime Minister David Cameron with his wife Samantha Cameron and family speaks to press before leaving 10 Downing Street to visit Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace to formally resign as Prime Minister on July 13, 2016 in London, England. David Cameron leaves Downing Street today having been Prime Minister of the United Kingdom since May 2010 and Leader of the Conservative Party since December 2005. He is succeeded by former Home Secretary Theresa May and will remain as Member of Parliament for Witney in Oxfordshire. (Photo by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images) Getty Images David Cameron makes a speech outside 10 Downing Street in London, before leaving for Buckingham Palace for an audience with Queen Elizabeth II to formally resign as Prime Minister. PA PA LONDON, ENGLAND - JULY 13: Prime Minister David Cameron speaks as he leaves Downing Street for the last time on July 13, 2016 in London, England. David Cameron leaves Downing Street today having been Prime Minister of the United Kingdom since May 2010 and Leader of the Conservative Party since December 2005. He is succeeded by former Home Secretary Theresa May and will remain as Member of Parliament for Witney in Oxfordshire. (Photo by Carl Court/Getty Images) Getty Images LONDON, ENGLAND - JULY 13: Prime Minister David Cameron speaks as he leaves Downing Street for the last time with his wife Samantha Cameron and children Nancy Cameron, Arthur Cameron and Florence Cameron on July 13, 2016 in London, England. David Cameron leaves Downing Street today having been Prime Minister of the United Kingdom since May 2010 and Leader of the Conservative Party since December 2005. He is succeeded by former Home Secretary Theresa May and will remain as Member of Parliament for Witney in Oxfordshire. (Photo by Carl Court/Getty Images) Getty Images David Cameron makes a speech outside 10 Downing Street in London, with wife Samantha and children Nancy, 12, Elwen, 10, and Florence, 5, before leaving for Buckingham Palace for an audience with Queen Elizabeth II to formally resign as Prime Minister. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Wednesday July 13, 2016. See PA story POLITICS Conservatives. Photo credit should read: Hannah McKay/PA Wire PA LONDON, ENGLAND - JULY 13: Prime Minister David Cameron leaves Downing Street for the last time with his wife Samantha Cameron and children Nancy Cameron, Arthur Cameron and Florence Cameron on July 13, 2016 in London, England. David Cameron leaves Downing Street today having been Prime Minister of the United Kingdom since May 2010 and Leader of the Conservative Party since December 2005. He is succeeded by former Home Secretary Theresa May and will remain as Member of Parliament for Witney in Oxfordshire. (Photo by Carl Court/Getty Images) Getty Images David Cameron with wife Samantha and children Nancy, 12, Elwen, 10, and Florence, 5, outside 10 Downing Street in London before leaving for Buckingham Palace for an audience with Queen Elizabeth II to formally resign as Prime Minister. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Wednesday July 13, 2016. See PA story POLITICS Conservatives. Photo credit should read: Hannah McKay/PA Wire PA David Cameron after making a speech outside 10 Downing Street in London, with wife Samantha and children Nancy, 12, Elwyn, 10, and Florence, 5, before leaving for Buckingham Palace for an audience with Queen Elizabeth II to formally resign as Prime Minister. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Wednesday July 13, 2016. See PA story POLITICS Conservatives. Photo credit should read: Gareth Fuller/PA Wire PA A car carrying outgoing British prime minister David Cameron enters the gates at Buckingham Palace in central London on July 13, 2016 for Cameron to have an audience with Queen Elizabeth II to tender his resignation as prime minister. Outgoing British prime minister David Cameron urged his successor Theresa May on Wednesday to maintain close ties with the EU even while negotiating to leave it, as he paid a fond farewell to MPs hours before leaving office. Cameron will tender his resignation on July 13 to Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace, after which the monarch will task the new leader of the Conservative Party Theresa May with forming a government. / AFP PHOTO / DANIEL LEAL-OLIVASDANIEL LEAL-OLIVAS/AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images LONDON, ENGLAND - JULY 13: Prime Minister David Cameron's child Florence Cameron is seen as he speaks for the last time as he leaves Downing Street on July 13, 2016 in London, England. David Cameron leaves Downing Street today having been Prime Minister of the United Kingdom since May 2010 and Leader of the Conservative Party since December 2005. He is succeeded by former Home Secretary Theresa May and will remain as Member of Parliament for Witney in Oxfordshire. (Photo by Carl Court/Getty Images) Getty Images David Cameron leaves 10 Downing Street in London, with wife Samantha and children Nancy, 12, Elwyn, 10, and Florence, 5, for Buckingham Palace for an audience with Queen Elizabeth II to formally resign as Prime Minister. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Wednesday July 13, 2016. See PA story POLITICS Conservatives. Photo credit should read: Gareth Fuller/PA Wire PA David Cameron makes a speech outside 10 Downing Street in London, with wife Samantha and children Nancy, 12, Elwen, 10, and Florence, 5, before leaving for Buckingham Palace for an audience with Queen Elizabeth II to formally resign as Prime Minister. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Wednesday July 13, 2016. See PA story POLITICS Conservatives. Photo credit should read: Hannah McKay/PA Wire PA David Cameron after making a speech outside 10 Downing Street in London, with wife Samantha and children Nancy, 12, Elwyn, 10, and Florence, 5, before leaving for Buckingham Palace for an audience with Queen Elizabeth II to formally resign as Prime Minister. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Wednesday July 13, 2016. See PA story POLITICS Conservatives. Photo credit should read: Gareth Fuller/PA Wire PA LONDON, ENGLAND - JULY 13: People look out of the windows of the Home Office over looking Downing Street ahead of the departure of Prime Minister David Cameron on July 13, 2016 in London, England. David Cameron leaves Downing Street today having been Prime Minister of the United Kingdom since May 2010 and Leader of the Conservative Party since December 2005. He is succeeded by former Home Secretary Theresa May and will remain as Member of Parliament for Witney in Oxfordshire. (Photo by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images) Getty Images LONDON, ENGLAND - JULY 13: A protestor wearing a Theresa May mask takes part in small demonstration outside Downing Street on July 13, 2016 in London, England. Former Home Secretary Theresa May becomes the UK's second female Prime Minister after she was selected unopposed by Conservative MPs to be their new party leader. She is currently MP for Maidenhead. (Photo by Carl Court/Getty Images) Getty Images LONDON, ENGLAND - JULY 13: A protestor dressed as new Prime Minister Theresa May is seen outside Downing Street on July 13, 2016 in London, England. Former Home Secretary Theresa May becomes the UK's second female Prime Minister after she was selected unopposed by Conservative MPs to be their new party leader. She is currently MP for Maidenhead. (Photo by Carl Court/Getty Images) Getty Images Britain's out-going Prime Minister David Cameron gets a standing ovation from members of parliament at the end of his last Prime Minister's Questions at the House of Commons in central London on July 13, 2016. Theresa May becomes Britain's second female prime minister on July 13, taking over from David Cameron whose career was ended by the seismic Brexit referendum, with the daunting task of leading the country out of the EU. Cameron, who has been premier for six years, will say his goodbyes at his last question-and-answer session in parliament before tendering his resignation to Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace. / AFP PHOTO / PRU / PRU / RESTRICTED TO EDITORIAL USE - MANDATORY CREDIT " AFP PHOTO / PRU " - NO MARKETING NO ADVERTISING CAMPAIGNS - NO RESALE - NO DISTRIBUTION TO THIRD PARTIES - 24 HOURS USE - NO ARCHIVESPRU/AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images Britain's out-going Prime Minister David Cameron gets a standing ovation from members of parliament at the end of his last Prime Minister's Questions at the House of Commons in central London on July 13, 2016. Theresa May becomes Britain's second female prime minister on July 13, taking over from David Cameron whose career was ended by the seismic Brexit referendum, with the daunting task of leading the country out of the EU. Cameron, who has been premier for six years, will say his goodbyes at his last question-and-answer session in parliament before tendering his resignation to Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace. / AFP PHOTO / PRU / PRU / RESTRICTED TO EDITORIAL USE - MANDATORY CREDIT " AFP PHOTO / PRU " - NO MARKETING NO ADVERTISING CAMPAIGNS - NO RESALE - NO DISTRIBUTION TO THIRD PARTIES - 24 HOURS USE - NO ARCHIVESPRU/AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images Britain's out-going Prime Minister David Cameron (L) speaks at the dispatch box with new leader of the Conservative Party and incoming prime minister Theresa May (C) and British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond (R) on the front bench during his last Prime Minister's Questions at the House of Commons in central London on July 13, 2016. Theresa May becomes Britain's second female prime minister on July 13, taking over from David Cameron whose career was ended by the seismic Brexit referendum, with the daunting task of leading the country out of the EU. Cameron, who has been premier for six years, will say his goodbyes at his last question-and-answer session in parliament before tendering his resignation to Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace. / AFP PHOTO / PRU AND AFP PHOTO / PRU / RESTRICTED TO EDITORIAL USE - MANDATORY CREDIT " AFP PHOTO / PRU " - NO MARKETING NO ADVERTISING CAMPAIGNS - NO RESALE - NO DISTRIBUTION TO THIRD PARTIES - 24 HOURS USE - NO ARCHIVESPRU/AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images Britain's opposition Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn (C) speaks at the dispatch box during British Prime Minister David Cameron's last Prime Minister's Questions at the House of Commons in central London on July 13, 2016. Theresa May becomes Britain's second female prime minister on July 13, taking over from David Cameron whose career was ended by the seismic Brexit referendum, with the daunting task of leading the country out of the EU. Cameron, who has been premier for six years, will say his goodbyes at his last question-and-answer session in parliament before tendering his resignation to Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace. / AFP PHOTO / PRU / PRU / RESTRICTED TO EDITORIAL USE - MANDATORY CREDIT " AFP PHOTO / PRU " - NO MARKETING NO ADVERTISING CAMPAIGNS - NO RESALE - NO DISTRIBUTION TO THIRD PARTIES - 24 HOURS USE - NO ARCHIVESPRU/AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images / Facebook
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Whatsapp Britain's new Prime Minister Theresa May (L) and her husband Philip John (R) wave outside 10 Downing Street in central London on July 13, 2016 on the day she takes office following the formal resignation of David Cameron. AFP/Getty Images
But when the referendum came, he remained true to his practice of never rocking the boat, loyally backing Mr Cameron's renegotiation and backing the Remain side during the campaign.
After the result came in, Mr Hammond, 60, did not demur from Theresa May's insistence that "Brexit means Brexit" but left little doubt that he thought voters had handed the new Prime Minister a thankless task, warning that the process of leaving the EU could take six years.
As Foreign Secretary, he played a key role in the 2015 agreement for Iran to give up its military nuclear ambitions.
And he was the minister who tabled the fateful European Union Referendum Bill in the House of Commons.
State-educated in his native Essex, Philip Anthony Hammond arrived at Oxford University to study philosophy, politics and economics on the day Labour won the second general election of 1974.
His devout belief in economic stability and prudent public finances were forged in the turbulent years that followed, culminating in Margaret Thatcher sweeping to power in 1979.
Mr Hammond made his first steps in party politics during that campaign as a volunteer in Westminster, going on to be chair of the Lewisham East Conservative Association for several years.
After a failed 1994 by-election bid, his entry to the Commons came on another day of victory for Labour - Tony Blair's 1997 landslide when he secured the Surrey seat of Runnymede and Weybridge which he has held ever since.
Quickly promoted to William Hague's opposition front bench at health, he held several other positions and moved into the shadow cabinet as chief secretary under Michael Howard in 2005.
Married with three children, he faced some criticism during the expenses scandal for claiming almost the full second home allowance despite living in the commuter town of Woking.
He is reported to be one of the richest individuals in the Cabinet with the success of the property company he co-founded said to have netted him an 8 million fortune.
Former Defence Secretary Liam Fox arrives at Downing Street on July 13, 2016 in London, England. (Photo by Carl Court/Getty Images)
Liam Fox has been appointed Secretary of State for International Trade in Prime Minister Theresa May's new Cabinet.
Dr Fox rejoins the ranks of Conservative heavyweights after years of being out in the cold.
The right-wing Brexiteer backed Theresa May after he was eliminated in the first round of the race for the Tory crown.
In backing the new Prime Minister Dr Fox stressed it was essential for the new leader to "have an understanding at the top levels of government and of international affairs and how the process in Whitehall operates".
The former defence secretary was cast into the margins of his party five years ago - forced to resign from the front benches in disgrace in 2011 after allowing his friend and best man Adam Werritty to take on an unofficial and undeclared role as his adviser.
Dr Fox, the MP for North Somerset, was the architect of his own political downfall by blurring the lines between his personal friendships and professional responsibilities.
He allowed Mr Werritty, a man 17 years his junior, to attend meetings at the Ministry of Defence without obtaining the necessary security clearance and join him for meetings with foreign dignitaries.
The pair even lived together for a short while in Dr Fox's taxpayer-funded London flat.
An inquiry was launched over concerns about the nature of their relationship, and in October 2011 Dr Fox resigned after admitting errors of judgment.
In 2012 he was ordered to repay 3,000 of expenses for allowing Mr Werritty to live rent-free at the London home for a year.
In 2013 he claimed 3p of taxpayers' cash for a car journey of less than 100m, one of 15 claims of under 1 for car travel approved in 2012/13. He said that his office submitted his expense claims, all done correctly according to rules.
The Scots-born doctor has often raised eyebrows at Westminster with his colourful personal and professional life.
A hardline right-winger, his relationship with No 10 has at times been strained, particularly after two highly-critical letters he wrote to Prime Minister David Cameron found their way into the press.
His traditional right-wing views have secured him a strong powerbase within the party but he failed in his bid to become party leader in December 2005.
A Brexit-backer, two years ago he urged David Cameron to ditch the promise of bringing net migration down to the tens of thousands and instead focus on curbing the number of low-skilled workers entering the UK.
Dr Fox voted against gay marriage, and in 2013 called for the Guardian to be prosecuted over its role in the Edward Snowden leaks, accusing the newspaper of collaborating in "indiscriminate publication" of material which damaged national security.
Before becoming an MP, Dr Fox worked both in the NHS and as a civilian army medical officer. He has credited his military work with convincing him of the Government's need to look after the armed forces.
Born and raised in East Kilbride, Scotland, he attended the local comprehensive school before going on to study medicine at Glasgow University.
After working as a GP in Somerset and Buckinghamshire, he successfully contested the rural Somerset seat of Woodspring, now North Somerset, in 1992.
The newly-elected MP soon became a polished Westminster performer thanks to his prize-winning debating skills, rising quickly through the ranks of Tory MPs and arriving at the Foreign Office in 1995.
In opposition, the anti-devolutionist was given charge of the constitutional affairs brief before taking over responsibility for health from Ann Widdecombe.
He was made party chairman in 2003 under then-leader Michael Howard, and his slick, reliable performances often saw him named as a potential successor.
In 2005 he married long-term girlfriend Jesme, a fellow doctor from the same area south of Glasgow.
In an interview shortly before the big day, he said: "I know that some people use smears and I have heard them for years. They'd say 'Why are you not married? You must be a playboy or a wild man or gay', or whatever. Well, I'm getting married in December and I'm perfectly happy with my private life."
Few middle-aged Tory men can claim to be friends with a glamorous Australian pop star but Dr Fox counts Natalie Imbruglia among his close pals.
Home Secretary Theresa May officially launches her campaign to become prime minister at Austin Court in Birmingham. PA
The relatively unknown investment fund where Theresa Mays husband Philip works as a senior executive is one of the worlds largest and most powerful financial institutions, controlling $1.4 trillion in assets.
Its portfolio also includes $20 billion of shares in Amazon and Starbucks, both of which were cited by the Prime Minister-designate in her pledge to crack down on tax avoidance on Tuesday.
Latest filings to US authorities show that Los Angeles based Capital Group owns huge stakes in a variety of companies, including investment bank JP Morgan Chase, defence giant Lockheed Martin, tobacco company Philip Morris International, the pharmaceutical sectors Merck & Co, and also Ryanair.
The company, which has a low profile outside the financial sector, has confirmed that Mr May, a pension fund expert, works out of its Mayfair office in London, with a spokeswoman telling The Independent: Philip is a client relationship manager who stays in contact with organisations and institutions in the UK to ensure they are happy with the service being delivered by Capital Group and that we understand their goals. Philip is not involved with our investment research or portfolio management activities.
However, the company he works for has benefited from its investments in the likes of Amazon and Starbucks, both of which have been criticised for tax avoidance structures and which were mentioned by Ms May as she outlined her manifesto for Downing Street yesterday.
She said: We need to talk about tax. It doesnt matter to me whether youre Amazon, Google or Starbucks: you have a duty to put something back, you have a debt to your fellow citizens, you have a responsibility to pay your taxes. So as Prime Minister, I will crack down on individual and corporate tax avoidance and evasion.
It is not clear whether she was aware that her husbands company was such a significant investor in the Amazon and Starbucks.
According to latest filings on 31 March this year, Capital Group, through its various divisions and funds, including Capital World Investors and Capital Research Global Investors, owned at least 32 million shares in Amazon, worth about $20bn.
Its 6 per cent stake made it one of Amazons biggest shareholders.
It also owned about $2bn of Starbuck shares at the end of March when the total assets under its management was $1.4 trillion.
Expand Close Britain's new Prime Minister Theresa May (L) and her husband Philip John May (R) laugh together outside the door of 10 Downing Street in central London on July 13, 2016 on the day that Theresa May takes office following the formal resignation of David Cameron. AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images / Facebook
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Whatsapp Britain's new Prime Minister Theresa May (L) and her husband Philip John May (R) laugh together outside the door of 10 Downing Street in central London on July 13, 2016 on the day that Theresa May takes office following the formal resignation of David Cameron. AFP/Getty Images
Other shareholdings included at least $7bn in JP Morgan Chase, $9bn in Philip Morris International, $5bn in McDonalds, $6.6bn in Lockheed Martin, and $1.5bn in Ryanair.
A source close to Ms May said: 'She said in her speech that these companies have a duty to put something back. That is her strong view and it remains her strong view.'
It is not clear which clients Mr May deals with on behalf of Capital Group, but his name has been mentioned in the minutes for Norfolk County Councils pension committee reports, where he has appeared on behalf of his company as a pension manager.
A spokesman for Starbucks said: We pay all our taxes in the UK and in 2014 we moved our European Headquarters to London. Last year we paid 18m in corporation tax.
Independent
Poundland accepted the 222p-a-share bid after rejecting an undisclosed offer from Steinhoff last month
Discount chain Poundland is to be snapped up by South African retailer Steinhoff International after agreeing a 597 million takeover deal.
Poundland accepted the 222p-a-share bid after rejecting a cash offer from Steinhoff last month for an undisclosed sum.
The deal comes after Steinhoff - which owns UK furniture firm Harveys and Bensons For Beds - recently lost out in a battle with Sainsbury's to buy Argos owner Home Retail Group in March and was outbid for London-listed white goods retailer Darty.
The sale price, which also includes a 2p-a-share final dividend on top of the 220p-a-share bid, marks around a 40% premium to the value of Poundland's shares in mid-June.
It follows a hefty slump in Poundland's shares over the past year after tough trading and a difficult takeover of rival 99p Stores.
Annual results recently laid bare Poundland's sales woes as underlying pre-tax profits fell 13.5% to 37.8 million in the year to March 27, while bottom-line pre-tax profits crashed 83.7% to 5.9 million, including converted 99p Stores.
Steinhoff had already built up a 23.6% stake in Poundland in recent weeks as it stepped up its pursuit of the set-price retailer.
Darren Shapland, chairman of Poundland, said the deal gives investors an "opportunity to realise their shareholding at a certain and attractive price".
He said it achieved the share price value targeted under its turnaround plan earlier than could be expected "against a background of increasing economic uncertainty in the UK and a more challenging trading environment".
Steinhoff chief executive Markus Jooste said: "The board of Steinhoff and its management team are enthusiastic about the opportunities that this transaction brings: we believe that there is significant merit in bringing Poundland into Steinhoff's global network.
"Steinhoff is developing a fast-growing, price-led retail business across the UK and the rest of Europe. Poundland would be a complementary fit to this growth story."
He added that management at Poundland would continue to play a "key role" after the takeover and said he looked forward to "welcoming" the chain's employees.
Poundland has around 18,000 staff across more than 900 stores and is headquartered in Willenhall, near Wolverhampton.
Steinhoff said it had no plans to change the group's head office or employment conditions for staff.
It marks an eventful start at the top for Poundland's new boss, Kevin O'Byrne, after he took the reins earlier this month.
The former B&Q UK and Ireland head took over from predecessor Jim McCarthy on July 1, having joined as chief executive-designate in April.
Retail analysts at Liberum said Steinhoff had offered a "knock-out price".
They added: "The recommended cash offer is a good result for Poundland shareholders and comes at a time when there was more downside risk than upside in our view."
Steinhoff has been determined to expand further across Europe, having tried and failed to gatecrash two deals in recent months.
It is backed by South African retail billionaire Christo Wiese, whose Brait investment group also owns controlling stakes in Virgin Active, New Look and food chain Iceland.
Steinhoff also owns Conforama in France, as well as a number of retailers across Europe, Australasia and Africa.
Mr Shapland told the Press Association that Steinhoff's bid was an "attractive offer", in particular since the EU referendum result has sent retail stocks plunging.
But the 222p-a-share total offer is far below the 421p level shares hit in early 2015, before its trading woes weighed heavy on the stock.
Mr Shapland said: "You can only go with what's in front of you and w e think it's attractive in terms of what's been going on in the market."
Mr Shapland added that Steinhoff has a good track record of investing and growing businesses and is expected to keep the Poundland brand on the high street.
"They keep well-loved brands and Poundland is a well-loved brand," he said.
Shares in Poundland leapt 12% higher after the takeover announcement.
Mr McCarthy, who clocked up a 10-year tenure as chief executive, is in line for a 22 million windfall for his 3.7% stake in Poundland.
The group listed for 750 million or 300p a share i n March 2014, with the stock surging by nearly a fifth on flotation day.
But its shares have plunged in value over the last year due to trading woes, competition from discounters such as Aldi and Lidl and its 55 million takeover of 99p Stores, which has also proved to be far from smooth.
It 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.
Britain's decision to leave the European Union offers an opportunity to press ahead with greater military cooperation in the bloc, Germany's defence minister said.
Ursula von der Leyen said that for years Britain has "consistently blocked everything that had Europe written on it," citing the example of a mobile European hospital some countries wanted to deploy to crisis regions.
Speaking at the presentation of a defence policy paper on Wednesday, Ms Von der Leyen said Germany and France plan to take the initiative on future military cooperation.
She said the two countries will start talks with other EU members about creating permanent military structures. Germany already operates joint military units with France and the Netherlands on a bilateral basis.
Ms Von der Leyen said greater security and military cooperation is possible under existing EU treaties.
AP
Japan's Emperor Akihito has expressed his intention to abdicate in the next few years, the country's public television station reported.
The 82-year-old has in recent years referred to his old age and admitted to making small mistakes at ceremonies, and the Imperial Household Agency has suggested reducing his duties while giving more responsibility to Crown Prince Naruhito.
The NHK report, citing unidentified agency sources, said Akihito did not wish to remain emperor if he had to reduce his official duties.
He has told palace officials that he does not wish to cling to his title with drastically reduced responsibility or by arranging a substitute, the report said, adding that Akihito has been mulling over the possibility over the past few years.
Despite his age, the emperor has maintained a busy schedule and attended ceremonies, greeted foreign dignitaries and travelled to northern and southern Japan to comfort residents following deadly earthquakes.
Akihito has also attempted to soothe some of the wounds from World War Two, travelling to China early in his reign and visiting major battlefields. He visited the western Pacific nation of Palau last year and the Philippines, one of the victims of Japan's wartime aggression, earlier this year.
It was not known if he had a timeline to relinquish his title to Naruhito, 56, the elder of his two sons and first in line of succession. Naruhito's wife, Crown Princess Masako, a former diplomat, is still recovering from a stress-induced mental condition.
Kyodo News agency carried a report similar to NHK's that quoted government officials. The Imperial Household Agency declined to comment and denied any speculation about Akihito's health.
The imperial law does not specify rules about a living succession, including what happens to his post-retirement status. Kyodo quoted unidentified government sources that a succession while he is alive requires a revision to the law.
The last succession from a living emperor was about 200 years ago.
According to the traditional count, Akihito is 125th in a line of emperors that began with Jimmu in 660 BC. Historical records suggest the throne dates to at least the fifth century, making it the oldest surviving hereditary monarchy.
AP
Your correspondent TMK is correct to point out that the war in Iraq, and the situation in the Middle East in general, should by no means be laid solely on the shoulders of Tony Blair.
However, I strongly disagree with TMK, who says "... it was only by Tony Blair's tenacity that the peace process we now enjoy ever took place".
Tony Blair's Government, with the connivance of many unionist politicians and an Irish Government with an eye to the main chance, brokered the Good Friday Agreement, which was then presented to the Northern Ireland electorate in a referendum.
The terror-weary electorate had to vote while staring down the barrels of IRA/UVF guns. The voters can be forgiven under the circumstances for agreeing to the Agreement. Those who brokered it cannot.
The result has been institutionalised separation of the community on sectarian grounds on a scale never experienced before the Agreement and total stagnation in devolved administration.
Today paramilitary bands - whether republican or loyalist - have a tighter grip than ever on the poorest communities in our country and our governments at all levels and our security force leaders are loath to properly control this.
After all, the hard-working people who are crushed by these gangs are not thought important enough to be bothered about - as long as yet more time can be bought by bartering with these thugs for another cobbled-together deal.
Tony Blair's legacy in Northern Ireland is instability, deepening sectarian division and constant appeasement of terrorism.
ALAN LOVE
Lisburn, Co Antrim
This year's concerns over the size and position of the monster bonfire at Chobham Street in east Belfast is a bizarre repeat of the concerns expressed last year. Despite the fact that the bonfire in 2015 was monstrously high and posed an obvious danger to the surrounding properties - and, more importantly, the local residents - no significant action was taken by any public authority to intervene and deal with this problem in the first instance.
I acknowledge that remedial action was taken by the Fire Service to hose down the surrounding houses to prevent physical damage and to deal with the fire once it inevitably toppled over. In all, six fire appliances and 35 firemen were required on the Eleventh Night last year. The Housing Executive also boarded up homes and evacuated some local residents to provide them with safety.
But all of these actions - laudable as they were - could not be described as preventative, or seriously addressing the kernel of the problem of uncontrolled, anarchic and lawless bonfire-building and burning.
This year we had a repeat of last year; this time with Belfast City Council removing children's play equipment from a playground close to the new monster bonfire site. All this, of course, at the expense to the public purse - as was the case last year.
The PSNI, council, Housing Executive and relevant Government departments have all failed or avoided making any effective public intervention and have washed their collective hands of any responsibility, citing an inadequacy in the law. All the relevant public bodies which might have some input into preventing such a reoccurrence have remarkably sought refuge in a legal vacuum. But surely this can't be an acceptable or responsible position in a civilised society?
Where else in the civilised world would there be such a civic paralysis? Where else in the world would a Government or its agencies, particularly its police service, become a mere spectator on the sidelines of a potentially very dangerous fire becoming an actual risk to life and property?
Where else would the public become helpless witnesses to outrageous defiance by self-appointed groups of young people in the loyalist community who, according to Jim Wilson, himself a loyalist community worker in east Belfast, are "putting two fingers up to loyalism"?
Even if no serious injury or damage to property occurred, can we as a society continue to tolerate such lawlessness? This raises the whole question of political responsibility and the failure of our Government to take action to fill the legislative vacuum that clearly exists in the regulation of bonfires. It is not as if this is a new problem as it occurs - and recurs - on an annual basis.
The only serious initiative was the Belfast City Council-led bonfire management scheme to give activity grants for good management around bonfires. This voluntary scheme - good though it is - has only been partially successful and does not in any event address the totality of the problem. For years we have seen the excesses which have occurred around bonfires on the Eleventh Night.
These range from the danger posed by the bonfires themselves to drunkenness, hooliganism, even rioting. The accident and emergency departments of our hospitals routinely anticipate an annual stream of injuries on the Eleventh Night, ranging from burns to violent injuries.
Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Previous Next Close A house catches fire at the Lower Shankill bonfire as it is lit during July 12th celebrations in Belfast , 2016 ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph) Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph The Lower Shankill bonfire is lit during July 12th celebrations in Belfast , 2016 ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph) Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph A house catches fire at the Lower Shankill bonfire as it is lit during July 12th celebrations in Belfast , 2016 ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph) Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph The Lower Shankill bonfire is lit during July 12th celebrations in Belfast , 2016 ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph) Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph The Lower Shankill bonfire is lit during July 12th celebrations in Belfast , 2016 ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph) Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph The Lower Shankill bonfire is lit during July 12th celebrations in Belfast , 2016 ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph) Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph The Lower Shankill bonfire is lit during July 12th celebrations in Belfast , 2016 ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph) Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph The Lower Shankill bonfire is lit during July 12th celebrations in Belfast , 2016 ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph) Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph The Lower Shankill bonfire is lit during July 12th celebrations in Belfast , 2016 ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph) Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph The Lower Shankill bonfire is lit during July 12th celebrations in Belfast , 2016 ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph) Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph The Lower Shankill bonfire is lit during July 12th celebrations in Belfast , 2016 ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph) Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph The Lower Shankill bonfire is lit during July 12th celebrations in Belfast , 2016 ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph) Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph The Lower Shankill bonfire is lit during July 12th celebrations in Belfast , 2016 ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph) Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph A bonfire is lit on the Shankill Road in Belfast on the "Eleventh night" to usher in the Twelfth commemorations. PA PA A man dampens down a building as a bonfire is lit on the Shankill Road in Belfast on the "Eleventh night" to usher in the Twelfth commemorations. PA PA A man dampens down a building as a bonfire is lit on the Shankill Road in Belfast on the "Eleventh night" to usher in the Twelfth commemorations. PA PA A bonfire is lit on the Shankill Road in Belfast on the "Eleventh night" to usher in the Twelfth commemorations. PA PA A bonfire is lit on the Shankill Road in Belfast on the "Eleventh night" to usher in the Twelfth commemorations. PA PA A man uses petrol to light a bonfire on the Shankill Road in Belfast on the "Eleventh night" to usher in the Twelfth commemorations. PA PA Bonfire at Tennent Street in west Belfast. 11th July 2016. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye Highfield Estate bonfire in west Belfast. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye Bonfire at Tennent Street in west Belfast. 11th July 2016. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye Bonfire at Tennent Street in west Belfast. 11th July 2016. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye Eleventh night bonfire in the Highfield Estate in west Belfast July 11 2016. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Eleventh night bonfire in the Highfield Estate in west Belfast July 11 2016. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Eleventh night bonfire in the Highfield Estate in west Belfast July 11 2016. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Eleventh night bonfire in the Highfield Estate in west Belfast July 11 2016. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. A huge bonfire in Tigers Bay area of Belfast before it is lit on the "Eleventh night" to usher in the Twelfth commemorations. PA PA An 11th Night bonfire at Edgarstown, Portadown, covered in at leat 30 Sinn Fein and SDLP election posters. This follows a complaint to police about another bonfire in Portadown's Corcrain Estate as a hate crime by Sinn Fein. A huge bonfire in Tigers Bay area of Belfast before it is lit on the "Eleventh night" to usher in the Twelfth commemorations. PA PA A huge bonfire in Tigers Bay area of Belfast before it is lit on the "Eleventh night" to usher in the Twelfth commemorations. PA PA Loyalists climb up one of the largest 11th night Bonfires with Irish tricolour flags in the lower Shankill road area of Belfast, Northern Ireland on July 11, 2016, ahead of the lighting of the traditional 11th night bonfires. The Eleventh Night refers to the night before the Twelfth of July, an annual Protestant commemoration of the famous battle were Protestant King William III of Orange defeated Catholic King James II at the battle of the Boyne on July 12, 1690. / AFP PHOTO / PAUL FAITHPAUL FAITH/AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images Two women take photographs of one of the largest 11th night Bonfires in the lower Shankill road area of Belfast, Northern Ireland on July 11, 2016, ahead of the lighting of the traditional 11th night bonfires. AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images Children atop the huge bonfire in Sandy Row, Belfast with a banner displaying an offensive message directed at SDLP MLA Clare Hanna. PA Loyalists gesture at the foot of one of the largest 11th night Bonfires after raising Irish tricolour flags in the lower Shankill road area of Belfast, Northern Ireland on July 11, 2016, ahead of the lighting of the traditional 11th night bonfires. The Eleventh Night refers to the night before the Twelfth of July, an annual Protestant commemoration of the famous battle were Protestant King William III of Orange defeated Catholic King James II at the battle of the Boyne on July 12, 1690. / AFP PHOTO / PAUL FAITHPAUL FAITH/AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images Loyalists gesture from the top of one of the largest 11th night Bonfires after raising Irish tricolour flags in the lower Shankill road area of Belfast, Northern Ireland on July 11, 2016, ahead of the lighting of the traditional 11th night bonfires. The Eleventh Night refers to the night before the Twelfth of July, an annual Protestant commemoration of the famous battle were Protestant King William III of Orange defeated Catholic King James II at the battle of the Boyne on July 12, 1690. / AFP PHOTO / PAUL FAITHPAUL FAITH/AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images A youth balances on a fence as Union flags flutter in the breeze beside one of the largest 11th night Bonfires in the lower Shankill road area of Belfast, Northern Ireland on July 11, 2016, ahead of the lighting of the traditional 11th night bonfires. The Eleventh Night refers to the night before the Twelfth of July, an annual Protestant commemoration of the famous battle were Protestant King William III of Orange defeated Catholic King James II at the battle of the Boyne on July 12, 1690. / AFP PHOTO / PAUL FAITHPAUL FAITH/AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images Loyalists climb up one of the largest 11th night Bonfires with Irish tricolour flags in the lower Shankill road area of Belfast, Northern Ireland on July 11, 2016, ahead of the lighting of the traditional 11th night bonfires. The Eleventh Night refers to the night before the Twelfth of July, an annual Protestant commemoration of the famous battle were Protestant King William III of Orange defeated Catholic King James II at the battle of the Boyne on July 12, 1690. / AFP PHOTO / PAUL FAITHPAUL FAITH/AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images A youth balances on a fence beside one of the largest 11th night Bonfires in the lower Shankill road area of Belfast, Northern Ireland on July 11, 2016, ahead of the lighting of the traditional 11th night bonfires. The Eleventh Night refers to the night before the Twelfth of July, an annual Protestant commemoration of the famous battle were Protestant King William III of Orange defeated Catholic King James II at the battle of the Boyne on July 12, 1690. / AFP PHOTO / PAUL FAITHPAUL FAITH/AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images A youth balances on a fence as Union flags flutter in the breeze beside one of the largest 11th night Bonfires in the lower Shankill road area of Belfast, Northern Ireland on July 11, 2016, ahead of the lighting of the traditional 11th night bonfires. The Eleventh Night refers to the night before the Twelfth of July, an annual Protestant commemoration of the famous battle were Protestant King William III of Orange defeated Catholic King James II at the battle of the Boyne on July 12, 1690. / AFP PHOTO / PAUL FAITHPAUL FAITH/AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images Foreign tourists take a tour past one of the largest 11th night Bonfires in the lower Shankill road area of Belfast, Northern Ireland on July 11, 2016, ahead of the lighting of the traditional 11th night bonfires. The Eleventh Night refers to the night before the Twelfth of July, an annual Protestant commemoration of the famous battle were Protestant King William III of Orange defeated Catholic King James II at the battle of the Boyne on July 12, 1690. / AFP PHOTO / PAUL FAITHPAUL FAITH/AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images A man climbs up one of the largest 11th night Bonfires in the lower Shankill road area of Belfast, Northern Ireland on July 11, 2016, ahead of the lighting of the traditional 11th night bonfires. The Eleventh Night refers to the night before the Twelfth of July, an annual Protestant commemoration of the famous battle were Protestant King William III of Orange defeated Catholic King James II at the battle of the Boyne on July 12, 1690. / AFP PHOTO / PAUL FAITHPAUL FAITH/AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images A woman steps out of a taxi to take a photograph of one of the largest 11th night Bonfires in the lower Shankill road area of Belfast, Northern Ireland on July 11, 2016, ahead of the lighting of the traditional 11th night bonfires. The Eleventh Night refers to the night before the Twelfth of July, an annual Protestant commemoration of the famous battle were Protestant King William III of Orange defeated Catholic King James II at the battle of the Boyne on July 12, 1690. / AFP PHOTO / PAUL FAITHPAUL FAITH/AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images BELFAST, NORTHERN IRELAND - JULY 11: Loyalists make final preparations to their bonfire on the Newtownards road on July 11, 2016 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. The lighting of the bonfires at midnight on the eleventh night marks the start of the annual twelfth of July celebrations within the protestant community. The Orange marches and demonstrations celebrate the Battle of the Boyne in 1690 when the Protestant King William of Orange defeated the Catholic King James II on the banks of the river Boyne. (Photo by Charles McQuillan/Getty Images) Getty Images BELFAST, NORTHERN IRELAND - JULY 11: A woman walks past tables stacked with sweets, fizzy drinks and crisps as Loyalists make final preparations to their bonfire on the Newtownards road on July 11, 2016 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. The lighting of the bonfires at midnight on the eleventh night marks the start of the annual twelfth of July celebrations within the protestant community. The Orange marches and demonstrations celebrate the Battle of the Boyne in 1690 when the Protestant King William of Orange defeated the Catholic King James II on the banks of the river Boyne. (Photo by Charles McQuillan/Getty Images) Getty Images BELFAST, NORTHERN IRELAND - JULY 11: Loyalists make final preparations to their bonfire on the Newtownards road on July 11, 2016 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. The lighting of the bonfires at midnight on the eleventh night marks the start of the annual twelfth of July celebrations within the protestant community. The Orange marches and demonstrations celebrate the Battle of the Boyne in 1690 when the Protestant King William of Orange defeated the Catholic King James II on the banks of the river Boyne. (Photo by Charles McQuillan/Getty Images) Getty Images BELFAST, NORTHERN IRELAND - JULY 11: A Loyalist poses for a drone as he is filmed making final preparations to a huge bonfire on the Ballymacash estate on July 11, 2016 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. The Ballymacash bonfire is reported as the largest bonfire construct in the province. The lighting of the bonfires at midnight on the eleventh night marks the start of the annual twelfth of July celebrations within the protestant community. The Orange marches and demonstrations celebrate the Battle of the Boyne in 1690 when the Protestant King William of Orange defeated the Catholic King James II on the banks of the river Boyne. (Photo by Charles McQuillan/Getty Images) Getty Images BELFAST, NORTHERN IRELAND - JULY 11: Loyalist Peter Stenhouse carries a wooden pallet as he makes final preparations to a bonfire on the Ballymacash estate on July 11, 2016 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. The lighting of the bonfires at midnight on the eleventh night marks the start of the annual twelfth of July celebrations within the protestant community. The Orange marches and demonstrations celebrate the Battle of the Boyne in 1690 when the Protestant King William of Orange defeated the Catholic King James II on the banks of the river Boyne. (Photo by Charles McQuillan/Getty Images) Getty Images BELFAST, NORTHERN IRELAND - JULY 11: A Loyalist poses for a drone as he is filmed making final preparations to a huge bonfire on the Ballymacash estate on July 11, 2016 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. The Ballymacash bonfire is reported as the largest bonfire construct in the province. The lighting of the bonfires at midnight on the eleventh night marks the start of the annual twelfth of July celebrations within the protestant community. The Orange marches and demonstrations celebrate the Battle of the Boyne in 1690 when the Protestant King William of Orange defeated the Catholic King James II on the banks of the river Boyne. (Photo by Charles McQuillan/Getty Images) Getty Images BELFAST, NORTHERN IRELAND - JULY 11: A Loyalist poses for a drone as he is filmed making final preparations to a huge bonfire on the Ballymacash estate on July 11, 2016 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. The Ballymacash bonfire is reported as the largest bonfire construct in the province. The lighting of the bonfires at midnight on the eleventh night marks the start of the annual twelfth of July celebrations within the protestant community. The Orange marches and demonstrations celebrate the Battle of the Boyne in 1690 when the Protestant King William of Orange defeated the Catholic King James II on the banks of the river Boyne. (Photo by Charles McQuillan/Getty Images) Getty Images BELFAST, NORTHERN IRELAND - JULY 11: A Loyalist poses for a drone as he is filmed making final preparations to a huge bonfire on the Ballymacash estate on July 11, 2016 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. The Ballymacash bonfire is reported as the largest bonfire construct in the province. The lighting of the bonfires at midnight on the eleventh night marks the start of the annual twelfth of July celebrations within the protestant community. The Orange marches and demonstrations celebrate the Battle of the Boyne in 1690 when the Protestant King William of Orange defeated the Catholic King James II on the banks of the river Boyne. (Photo by Charles McQuillan/Getty Images) Getty Images Men construct a bonfire in the Ballymacash area of Lisburn, as building continues on huge loyalist bonfires, which are traditionally lit on the "Eleventh night" to usher in the Twelfth commemorations. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Sunday July 10, 2016. Authorities in Northern Ireland are cautiously optimistic the main fixture in the loyal order parading season can pass off peacefully, but have a major policing operation planned to deal with any unrest. See PA story ULSTER Twelfth. Photo credit should read: Brian Lawless/PA Wire PA File photo dated 10/07/16 of a completed bonfire in the Hopewell area in the Lower Shankill, Belfast, as huge bonfires, are to be lit in loyalist communities across Northern Ireland ahead of the main date in the loyal order parading season - the Twelfth of July. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo.Issue date: Monday July 11, 2016. Authorities in Northern Ireland are cautiously optimistic the main fixture in the loyal order parading season can pass off peacefully, but have a major policing operation planned to deal with any unrest. See PA story ULSTER Twelfth. Photo credit should read: Brian Lawless/PA Wire PA An bonfire under construction in the Ballymacash area of Lisburn, as building continues on huge loyalist bonfires, which are traditionally lit on the "Eleventh night" to usher in the Twelfth commemorations. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Sunday July 10, 2016. Authorities in Northern Ireland are cautiously optimistic the main fixture in the loyal order parading season can pass off peacefully, but have a major policing operation planned to deal with any unrest. See PA story ULSTER Twelfth. Photo credit should read: Brian Lawless/PA Wire PA An bonfire under construction in the Ballymacash area of Lisburn, as building continues on huge loyalist bonfires, which are traditionally lit on the "Eleventh night" to usher in the Twelfth commemorations. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Sunday July 10, 2016. Authorities in Northern Ireland are cautiously optimistic the main fixture in the loyal order parading season can pass off peacefully, but have a major policing operation planned to deal with any unrest. See PA story ULSTER Twelfth. Photo credit should read: Brian Lawless/PA Wire PA Men construct a bonfire in the Ballymacash area of Lisburn, as building continues on huge loyalist bonfires, which are traditionally lit on the "Eleventh night" to usher in the Twelfth commemorations. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Sunday July 10, 2016. Authorities in Northern Ireland are cautiously optimistic the main fixture in the loyal order parading season can pass off peacefully, but have a major policing operation planned to deal with any unrest. See PA story ULSTER Twelfth. Photo credit should read: Brian Lawless/PA Wire PA Men stand on a bonfire under construction in the Ballymacash area of Lisburn, as building continues on huge loyalist bonfires, which are traditionally lit on the "Eleventh night" to usher in the Twelfth commemorations. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Sunday July 10, 2016. Authorities in Northern Ireland are cautiously optimistic the main fixture in the loyal order parading season can pass off peacefully, but have a major policing operation planned to deal with any unrest. See PA story ULSTER Twelfth. Photo credit should read: Brian Lawless/PA Wire PA A completed bonfire in the Hopewell area in the Lower Shankill, Belfast, as building continues on huge loyalist bonfires, which are traditionally lit on the "Eleventh night" to usher in the Twelfth commemorations. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Sunday July 10, 2016. Authorities in Northern Ireland are cautiously optimistic the main fixture in the loyal order parading season can pass off peacefully, but have a major policing operation planned to deal with any unrest. See PA story ULSTER Twelfth. Photo credit should read: Brian Lawless/PA Wire PA A completed bonfire in the Hopewell area in the Lower Shankill, Belfast, as building continues on huge loyalist bonfires, which are traditionally lit on the "Eleventh night" to usher in the Twelfth commemorations. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Sunday July 10, 2016. Authorities in Northern Ireland are cautiously optimistic the main fixture in the loyal order parading season can pass off peacefully, but have a major policing operation planned to deal with any unrest. See PA story ULSTER Twelfth. Photo credit should read: Brian Lawless/PA Wire PA A bonfire under construction near Chobam Street, Belfast, as building continues on huge loyalist bonfires, which are traditionally lit on the "Eleventh night" to usher in the Twelfth commemorations. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Sunday July 10, 2016. Authorities in Northern Ireland are cautiously optimistic the main fixture in the loyal order parading season can pass off peacefully, but have a major policing operation planned to deal with any unrest. See PA story ULSTER Twelfth. Photo credit should read: Brian Lawless/PA Wire PA Men construct a bonfire in the Ballymacash area of Lisburn, as building continues on huge loyalist bonfires, which are traditionally lit on the "Eleventh night" to usher in the Twelfth commemorations. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Sunday July 10, 2016. Authorities in Northern Ireland are cautiously optimistic the main fixture in the loyal order parading season can pass off peacefully, but have a major policing operation planned to deal with any unrest. See PA story ULSTER Twelfth. Photo credit should read: Brian Lawless/PA Wire PA A completed bonfire in the Hopewell area in the Lower Shankill, Belfast, as building continues on huge loyalist bonfires, which are traditionally lit on the "Eleventh night" to usher in the Twelfth commemorations. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Sunday July 10, 2016. Authorities in Northern Ireland are cautiously optimistic the main fixture in the loyal order parading season can pass off peacefully, but have a major policing operation planned to deal with any unrest. See PA story ULSTER Twelfth. Photo credit should read: Brian Lawless/PA Wire PA A completed bonfire in the Hopewell area in the Lower Shankill, Belfast, as building continues on huge loyalist bonfires, which are traditionally lit on the "Eleventh night" to usher in the Twelfth commemorations. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Sunday July 10, 2016. Authorities in Northern Ireland are cautiously optimistic the main fixture in the loyal order parading season can pass off peacefully, but have a major policing operation planned to deal with any unrest. See PA story ULSTER Twelfth. Photo credit should read: Brian Lawless/PA Wire PA A completed bonfire in the Hopewell area in the Lower Shankill, Belfast, as building continues on huge loyalist bonfires, which are traditionally lit on the "Eleventh night" to usher in the Twelfth commemorations. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Sunday July 10, 2016. Authorities in Northern Ireland are cautiously optimistic the main fixture in the loyal order parading season can pass off peacefully, but have a major policing operation planned to deal with any unrest. See PA story ULSTER Twelfth. Photo credit should read: Brian Lawless/PA Wire PA Pacemaker Press 11/7/2016 A on looker watches on at the preparations the for 11th night Bonfire at Ballymacash in Lisburn, ahead of the 12th of July celebration across Northern Ireland. Pic Colm Lenaghan/ Pacemaker Pacemaker Press 11/7/2016 Preparations the for 11th night Bonfire at Donegall Road in Belfast, ahead of the 12th of July celebration across Northern Ireland. Pic Colm Lenaghan/ Pacemaker Pacemaker Press Belfast 11-07-2016: Pallets for a bonfire are stacked near Sandy Row in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Picture By: Pacemaker. Pacemaker Press Belfast 11-07-2016: Pallets for a bonfire are stacked near the Comber Greenway in east Belfast, blocking a cycle path leading into the city Swings and a climbing frame have been removed from a 250,000 playground next to the Comber Greenway in east Belfast because of the dangers posed by an Eleventh Night bonfire. Homes and windows are being boarded up near the bonfire. Picture By: Pacemaker. Press Eye - Northern Ireland - 10th July 2016 Ballymacash bonfire in Lisburn in the final stages of preparation for the 11th July celebrations. Picture: Philip Magowan / PressEye Philip Magowan Ballymacash bonfire in Lisburn in the final stages of preparation for the 11th July celebrations. Picture: Philip Magowan / PressEye Philip Magowan Press Eye - Northern Ireland - 10th July 2016 Ballymacash bonfire in Lisburn in the final stages of preparation for the 11th July celebrations. Picture: Philip Magowan / PressEye Philip Magowan Pacemaker Press Belfast 11-07-2016: Pallets for a bonfire are stacked near the Comber Greenway in east Belfast, blocking a cycle path leading into the city Swings and a climbing frame have been removed from a 250,000 playground next to the Comber Greenway in east Belfast because of the dangers posed by an Eleventh Night bonfire. Homes and windows are being boarded up near the bonfire. Picture By: Pacemaker. Press Eye - Northern Ireland - 10th July 2016 Ballymacash bonfire in Lisburn in the final stages of preparation for the 11th July celebrations. Picture: Philip Magowan / PressEye Philip Magowan Press Eye - Northern Ireland - 10th July 2016 Ballymacash bonfire in Lisburn in the final stages of preparation for the 11th July celebrations. Picture: Philip Magowan / PressEye Philip Magowan Press Eye - Northern Ireland - 10th July 2016 Ballymacash bonfire in Lisburn in the final stages of preparation for the 11th July celebrations. Picture: Philip Magowan / PressEye Philip Magowan Press Eye - Northern Ireland - 10th July 2016 Ballymacash bonfire in Lisburn in the final stages of preparation for the 11th July celebrations. Picture: Philip Magowan / PressEye Philip Magowan Press Eye - Northern Ireland - 10th July 2016 Ballymacash bonfire in Lisburn in the final stages of preparation for the 11th July celebrations. Picture: Philip Magowan / PressEye Philip Magowan Press Eye - Northern Ireland - 10th July 2016 Ballymacash bonfire in Lisburn in the final stages of preparation for the 11th July celebrations. Picture: Philip Magowan / PressEye Philip Magowan Mandatory Credit - Picture by Freddie Parkinson/Press Eye Sunday 10th July 2016 The Bonfire at Drumtara, Ballee, in Ballymena which is stacked with tyres. Press Eye - Belfast - Norther The Edgarstown bonfire in Portadown in the final stages of preparation for the 11th July celebrations. Photo: PressEye Philip Magowan The Edgarstown bonfire in Portadown in the final stages of preparation for the 11th July celebrations. Photo: PressEye Philip Magowan Ballycraigy bonfire in Antrim Pacemaker Press Belfast 08-07-2016: Bonfire in the Loyalist Ballybeen estate in Dundonald, close the Parliament buidlings, Stormont. Picture By: Pacemaker. Pacemaker Press Belfast 08-07-2016: Bonfire in the Loyalist Ballybeen estate in Dundonald, close the Parliament buidlings, Stormont. Picture By: Pacemaker. Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 8th July A bonfire is prepared on the Milltown Road in south Belfast ahead of the 11th night bonfire celebrations which will take place across Northern Ireland this Monday night. Picture by Jonathan Porter/PressEye Credit - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast, UK - July 07 , Tyres on the Ballybeen Bonfire in Dundonald on July 07, 2016 ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph) Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Credit - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Belfast, UK - July 07 , Tyres on the Ballybeen Bonfire in Dundonald on July 07, 2016 ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph) Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph Pacemaker Press 5/7/2016 Preparations get well under way at Chobham Street Bonfire in East Belfast, on the run up to The 12th of July. Pic Pacemaker / Facebook
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Whatsapp A house catches fire at the Lower Shankill bonfire as it is lit during July 12th celebrations in Belfast , 2016 ( Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph)
The bonfire sites are too often excuses for the flagrant display of sectarian and political hatred, with offensive racist signs, the burning of Irish tricolours, or the burning of nationalist or republican election posters.
I myself have had the indignity of seeing my own election posters elevated onto bonfires, much to the disgust and annoyance of friends and family.
The outrageous painting last week of 'Foreigners out at a bonfire site on the Newtownards Road is yet another example of uninhibited racism and a shameful indictment of loyalist bonfire culture.
Those loyalists who promptly removed it are to be congratulated. But there is a failure by unionist politicians to unequivocally condemn, or even acknowledge, the problems surrounding bonfires.
This failure by them encourages the excesses which we regularly have to endure.
All of us are losers in this situation, but the biggest losers of all are, ultimately, the loyalist community, which will become even more marginalised.
However, it is now primarily up to the Executive to legislate and to regulate a long-term problem that has steadily got worse because of political avoidance and denial.
Unless this problem is urgently - and imaginatively - addressed it will proliferate... and the consequences could be very grave.
Many Rathlin islanders would be happy to cede and become Scottish
Some say, half-seriously, that Rathlin Island should be part of Scotland now. On a clear day, there are other islands, too, in view from the north coast. From Ballintoy you can see Islay and even make out the cliff face serrations in the evening light.
Much more easy to see is the Mull of Kintyre from Ballycastle. On a clear day there you can make out individual houses and wave back to wind farm pillars with their swooping blades. In short, you are already almost in Scotland.
There are signs of it in the language. Portballintrae ends with the Scottish Gaelic word for a beach, as distinct from Ballintra in south Donegal.
And there must have been a time when the islands and coasts of Scotland and Ulster seemed to people trading by sea to be the one region, as far removed from Dublin as from Edinburgh, from Belfast as from Glasgow.
So, even if the idea is only raised in mischief that Rathlin Island might be counted part of Scotland and follow it back into the EU through independence, the joke still reflects a reality.
And that reality is that identity doesn't begin and end at the boundaries of the nation, but bleeds across borders and seeps across channels.
It is quite reassuring that some people on Rathlin can be so blithe and pragmatic about citizenship that they make the case for going with Scotland. It's an example to us all of a flexibility about identity that might have saved us a lot of trouble over the years.
It syncs with an idea mooted closer to home in the past fortnight, certainly in some conversations that I have been part of both on social media and in pubs: couldn't we all go with Scotland? Or would we be better off in a united Ireland? A question that has even been voiced by the scrupulously apolitical Rory McIlroy.
Or maybe we could have a new Union or federation of Ireland and Scotland, even inside the Commonwealth - if that makes some people happier about it.
These ideas rise from a sense that we have been bounced out of a union in which we had a veto by our neighbours in a smaller Union, the UK, which allows us no veto at all. What follows from that is the humiliating confirmation that the UK isn't a Union in the sense that Europe is; that the big decisions are taken by the biggest partner, England, and that we might as well be a colony.
Okay, we pay our taxes and get our health service - a far better deal than Kenya or India ever got as colonies. But we are passengers on the England bus and we don't get to say where it goes or does not go.
And, if people are discussing impossible ideas about how we might get out of a UK that, for once, looks like it could be dragging us down, then that is because they are now uncomfortable with the Union in ways they did not foresee.
And why not entertain crazy ideas in crazy times? The past two weeks have seen upheavals in British politics which were not even imagined before the referendum.
What was supposed to happen was that the Remain vote would win, but that the Leave vote would have been strong enough to so unnerve David Cameron that he would make room for Boris Johnson in the Cabinet as a successor-in-waiting.
Now, so many heads have rolled that nothing would be particularly surprising.
Northern Ireland is the only polity in the UK that is actually boring right now.
Of course, the radical new ideas would also have their uncomfortable consequences. Scottish independence will produce a hard border between Scotland and England.
Throw Rathlin Island into the Scottish cluster and suddenly people coming across to Ballycastle for their shopping would have to show their passports at the harbour.
As, of course, would those in what is currently called Great Britain when moving between Scotland and England.
That people are contemplating such radical change, unsure whether they are indulging a fantasy or airing a tenable proposal, shows how unnerved they are by Brexit.
University of Ulster academic and former Alliance candidate Duncan Morrow articulated the dislocated feeling among the Northern Irish in a recent article.
He wrote: "Unlike Scotland, the divided nature of Northern Ireland's politics means that there is no champion in its Government for majority opinion and no clear articulation of the existential implications for Northern Ireland of leaving the EU."
Like Scotland we have a majority that wants to stay in the EU. We have a First Minister who regards that majority as irrelevant, given that the referendum was conducted on an all-UK context. It seems not to bother her that she doesn't speak for the region, but then she never did. No one ever did.
So, we have no one to speak for the feelings of the Remain majority as Scotland has in Nicola Sturgeon.
If political thinking has turned almost loopy then that is, in part, because the concern for the usurpation of the popular will is not being expressed in the formal political arena.
And the eccentric ideas being bandied about seem no dafter than the real politics at a time when leadership across the board seems unnervingly incompetent.
Mrs Foster regards Brexit as a done deal. The onus on the rest of us is to get used to that and learn to live with it. But that's no answer.
Sinn Fein, similarly, has no credibility as a pro-EU party, having opposed all past progress, urged No votes in all past referenda. Its conception of the Republic of a united Ireland is entirely different from the quaint pragmatism of those Rathlin islanders who would be happy to switch tomorrow from being British or Irish to being Scottish.
In the republican tradition identity is a holy thing, a given. It was paid for in blood. It is right because it is right.
Others are discovering a fluidity in the whole concept of identity, feeling it shift - despite all past conditioning.
Therefore they dream of a Scottish Rathlin, or a united Ireland, or a federation of Scotland and Ireland. Yet all the ferment is below the surface. One indicator of it is the rush to get Irish passports.
Those passports will not make much practical difference for people. They'll do little more than get them into the shorter queues in European airports.
But people want a tangible symbol of their refusal of the new, post-referendum way of being British.
The last thing they want to be now is British in a Britain in which England makes all the calls.
Over the past decade we have seen a rise in websites and phone apps that are dedicated to helping us find love and connect with those were best matched with, based on a number of personality questions and so-called compatibility formulas. In more recent years, a number of e-dating websites have been created that cater to particular religious communities. Today, we have J-Date, a website for Jewish people, Muslima, a site helping connect Muslims to future spouses, and Christian Mingle, a site for followers of Jesus to connect with fellow Christians, to name just a few. These religiously-based dating sites have become an important tool that help individuals more easily match with other people who hold their same worldview and values, which can be a difficult task in general using more mainstream dating sites.
But recently, one religious dating site has faced legal backlash for its apparent discrimination against the LGBT+ community. Spark Networks, the owner of the popular religious dating websites J-Date and Christian Mingle, were recently sued focusing on a California anti-discrimination law which requires business establishments to offer full and equal accommodations to people regardless of their sexual orientation. The lawsuit focused on website Christian Mingle, which did not have options for LGBT+ people to join the site, requiring that men match with women and vice versa. Spark Networks agreed to pay the legal fees and $9,000 to each plaintiff and committed to adjust their services over the next two years to give gays and lesbian singles a more tailored experience.
As soon as the verdict was released, religious commentators from across the country began speaking out against the ruling. Kate Shellnut of Christianity Today wrote, Advocates for traditional marriage consider the ChristianMingle lawsuit settlement an infringement on religious liberty, grouping the decision with broader societal and legal pressure on those opposed to gay marriage. Ben Shapiro of The Daily Wire wrote, In the latest sign that the judiciary has gone completely off the rails, a judge has now forced the owners of ChristianMingle.com, Spark, to include same-sex matches on their website. Two gay men decided that there simply werent enough gay dating websites on the internet, and sued ChristianMingle.com The concern that almost all conservative commentators have brought up in light of this ruling is that the religious liberties of conservative Christians who believe in so-called traditional marriage are under attack. This, they say, is just another sign of the radical agenda of the LGBT+ left that seeks to undermine Christianity in the United States as we know it.
However, when one examines this situation more closely, a much less dramatic and nuanced perspective emerges. The lawsuit against ChristianMingle had little to do with gay men deciding that there werent enough gay dating sites on the web. It had little to do with the LGBT+ community seeking to shove our agendas down the throats of conservatives, as commentator Michael Brown suggested. Instead, what if this situation is truly about what the plaintiffs said it was about: equality. The United States constitution guarantees protections from discrimination as a fundamental right of every person living in the United States of America. Furthermore, Californias Unruh Civil Rights Act clearly states that business establishments must have full and equal accommodations for everyone, regardless of their sexual orientation. Enshrined in these same civil rights laws are protections for religious institutions from ever being forced into silence or to be prevented from practicing their faith openly. These laws also protect the individuals right to practice and preach their religious convictions privately as well, without fear of government silencing or oppression. However, the judge in the ChristianMingle case ruled that based on the Unruh Civil Rights Act, Spark Networks decision to prevent LGBT+ people from using their service was a clear violation of basic civil rights. As a company offering services to the general public, they must at very least allow LGBT+ people to use their site, in the same way they must allow people of all races and yes, even religions to use their site.
When conservative religious leaders are outraged at simple ruling that require them to live by the same laws that protect them, a deeper problem is revealed. For far too long, religious leaders and institutions, particularly those of the conservative Christian variety, have held a deeply unconstitutional position of privilege and influence in our country. Their beliefs and worldview has been disproportionally honored by our politicians, who vowed to uphold and defend the constitution which clearly states that no law shall be created respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof Yet, it is undeniable that the over the past century, the United States government has treated Christianity as the preferred religion, giving religious leaders unprecedented access to power and influence over the political process. But as Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedoms, Our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions any more than our opinions in physics or geometry. In other words, the basic civil rights of citizens supersede any and all religious beliefs and opinions. When one enters into the public sphere, civil rights become the chief and highest authority, and those civil rights demand that public businesses be extended to all people, regardless of race, religion, or sexuality.
If we begin to allow businesses to discriminate against sexual and gender minorities, then what is to stop them from being able to discriminate based on race, religion, political affiliation, or any other aspect of a person which we disagree with? Is that the society we want to live in? The world that we want to create? The scales of civil rights will either lean towards total protection from discrimination or the total embracing of discrimination- there is no middle ground. If we allow business owners to discriminate against the LGBT+ community, then they should be allowed to discriminate against any community, which sets our country back hundreds of years by undoing the vital work of the civil rights movement. If we demand that all public businesses respect and serve all people, regardless of sexuality, gender identity, race, or religion, we will move nearer to the vision of a truly just and equal society that our founding fathers dreamed of and that lay at the core of the Christian gospel.
"In a pluralistic society, we must be willing to accommodate even those we disagree with the most."
Many conservatives have made this case about LGBT+ peoples secret agenda to stamp out conservative Christianity. In reality, this case is about LGBT+ Christians rights to exist and function with equality in every realm of our society. Many Christians may not believe, on a theological level, that someone can be both LGBT+ and Christian, and they have the right to hold that belief. But when they begin to deny people access to goods and services who identify as both LGBT+ and Christian based on those beliefs, they have crossed the legal lines and violated the values that make our democracy so strong. In a pluralistic society, we must be willing to accommodate even those we disagree with the most. In the case of ChristianMingle, individuals have the ability to opt-in to a religiously based service based on their religious affiliation, which is well within the rights of ChristianMingle to do. It is, after all, a dating site specifically for Christians. But when the site begins to discriminate based on the fundamental, inherent, and unchangeable features of a person, such as race, gender, or sexuality, they have moved firmly into the realm of discrimination.
In the words of President John F. Kennedy, speaking on the topic of discrimination: The heart of the question is whether all Americans are to be afforded equal rights and equal opportunities; whether we are going to treat our fellow Americans as we want to be treated.
Brandan Robertson is a progressive Christian author, activist, and commentator, working at the intersections of spirituality, sexuality, and social renewal. He is the author of Nomad: A Spirituality For Travelling Light and is a frequent commentator on current events on national and international outlets such as NPR, Huffington Post, MSNBC, The Washington Post, and many others.
This is the question conservative Christians and many other people of faith must continue to wrestle with. We must ask whether or not we believe that discrimination based on one religious communities beliefs be forced on to society or should the government protect society from any one religions ideologies in support of a set of inherent and unalienable human rights? If the former, then we must be okay living in a society where discrimination is acceptable, where shop owners place signs in their windows saying No Gays or No Muslims allowed. We must be okay with a society that is no longer a democracy, where all voices are welcomed, all people protected, and robust debate is encouraged. If this is where our society is heading, we can hardly be called a pluralistic or just society. This is the question at the heart of the ChristianMingle ruling, and only time will tell which way our country chooses to go. May we choose wisely.
Twelve years have passed since Doren Thangjam, a resident of Manipur state in northeastern India, laid eyes on the bullet-ridden body of his sister, who was allegedly raped and killed by Indian security forces.
Now, he says he can finally see a glimmer of hope for justice after the Indian Supreme Court on Friday ordered a probe into more than 1,500 suspected extra-judicial killings, including that of his sister, Thangjam Manorama, under a decades-old military emergency law in force in Manipur.
It has been [a] long 12 years. No one responsible for the brutality committed on my sister has been punished. But now, I am happy that the judiciary has taken note of the extra-judicial executions in Manipur in the name of AFSPA [Armed Forces Special Powers Act], Thangjam told BenarNews on Monday, the anniversary of his sisters death.
The AFSPA of 1958 in force in Jammu & Kashmir state as well as the conflict-torn northeastern states of Assam, Manipur, Mizoram, Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya and Nagaland gives security forces sweeping powers, including allowing personnel to make warrantless arrests, to enter and search any premises and to shoot any suspect.
The controversial law, which has faced criticism over human rights violations, also provides immunity from prosecution for soldiers involved in counter-terror operations.
I have no hope that my sisters killers will be brought to book. But the recent court ruling will hopefully prevent more such atrocities in the future, Thangjam, 33, said during a phone interview from Imphal, Manipurs capital.
We are all Manoramas mothers
Thangjam (pictured) said six uniformed personnel of the 17th Assam Rifles, a paramilitary unit, barged into his familys Imphal home on July 10, 2004, and dragged away his sister.
The next morning, Manoramas corpse was found in a nearby field, he said. An autopsy revealed semen marks on her clothes, suggesting that she was gang-raped before being shot.
The Assam Rifles claimed she was shot while trying to escape, but no soldier involved in the operation has been identified.
Days after her killing, which sparked widespread protests in Manipur and New Delhi, dozens of middle-aged women marched naked in Imphal, shouting, Indian Army, rape us too. We are all Manoramas mothers.
While ordering a probe into Manoramas death and 1,527 other alleged encounter-killings in Manipur between 2000 and 2012, the apex court said, It is necessary to know the truth so that law is tempered with justice.
The exercise for knowing the truth mandates ascertaining whether fake encounters or extra-judicial executions have taken place and if so, who are the perpetrators of the human rights violations and how can the next of kin be commiserated with and what further steps ought to be taken.
If members of our armed forces are deployed and employed to kill citizens of our country on the mere allegation or suspicion that they are enemy, not only the rule of law but our democracy would be in grave danger, it said, while setting a hearing date for early next month.
Judges M.B. Lokur and U.U. Lalit also noted that the situation in Manipur, where the AFSPA has remained in force for nearly six decades, was at best an internal disturbance and there is no threat to the security of the country or a part thereof either by war or an external aggression or an armed rebellion.
But army sources say that more than 50 separatist groups are active in Manipur.
Necessary law?
Advocate Babloo Loitongbam, director of Human Rights Alert, who is fighting the case on behalf of the Extra Judicial Execution Victims Families Association of Manipur (EEVFAM), said he was partly satisfied with the courts observation.
We shall have to wait and see what the court decides on our demand for a special investigation team to probe all 1,528 cases individually. The real sting has yet to come on the nature of investigations of these cases, Loitongbam said in a statement on Saturday.
Loitongbam is the official spokesman for Manipur-based activist Irom Sharmila, who has staged a hunger strike of nearly 16 years to protest the AFSPA and faces charges of attempted suicide a crime in India.
Sharmila, 44, began her protest two days after members of the Assam Rifles allegedly shot and killed 10 civilians waiting at a bus stop on the outskirts of Imphal on Nov. 2, 2000. She has since refused solid food or water but has been force-fed through her nose at a hospital in Imphal, where she is jailed.
Sharmila had blamed the AFSPA for an attack on an army convoy in Manipurs Chandel district in June 2015 when 20 soldiers were killed.
Only when the AFSPA is repealed will such attacks stop. If the government removes excessive forces from the region, there wont be any targets or reason for such attacks, Sharmila, known as the Iron lady of Manipur, had told BenarNews following the June attack.
However, a top official of Assam Rifles, which is deployed in the northeastern states, said the AFSPA should remain in force across Manipur.
Even though the situation today may be better, continuation of the AFSPA is necessary to enable security forces to operate freely and thereby keep the insurgency in check, Lt. Gen. Harminderjit Singh Sachdev, director of the paramilitary unit, told BenarNews.
At the same time, Assam Rifles has over a period sensitized its troops regarding human rights and exercising restraint, he said.
A Chinese Coast Guard ship approaches as an Indonesia Navy ship attempts to capture a foreign fishing boat in waters near the Natuna islands, June 17, 2016.
Southeast Asian nations called for a peaceful resolution to the South China Sea dispute following a U.N. tribunal decision rejecting Chinas vast claims over the strategic and resource-rich waters.
In delivering its ruling Tuesday on a suit brought by the Philippines in 2013, the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PAC) in The Hague unanimously dismissed Chinese claims delineated by a nine-dash line on a 1940s-era Chinese map.
[T]he Tribunal concluded that there was no legal basis for China to claim historic rights to resources, in excess of the rights provided for by the Convention, within the sea areas falling within the nine-dash line, a press release by the PAC stated Tuesday.
The court ruled that China had violated the Philippines sovereign rights by interfering with fishing and oil exploration, constructing artificial islands and failing to prevent Chinese boats from fishing in exclusive economic zones (EEZs) extending 200 nautical miles from shorelines, as established under the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).
It also took China to task for physically obstructing Philippine boats within those zones and causing severe harm to fragile ecosystems through its reclamation and construction projects.
In Manila, the new government of President Rodrigo Duterte reacted in measured tones.
The Philippines strongly affirms its respect for this milestone decision as an important contribution to ongoing efforts in addressing disputes in the South China Sea, Foreign Minister Perfecto Yasay said Tuesday in Manila.
The Philippines reiterates its abiding commitment to efforts to pursue the peaceful resolution and management of disputes with a view to promoting and enhancing peace and stability in the region, he added.
China, which refused to participate in the tribunal proceedings, said it would ignore the unjust and unlawful ruling, which is legally binding under international law but has no enforcement mechanism.
Chinas territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests in the South China Sea shall under no circumstances be affected by those awards. China opposes and will never accept any claim or action based on those awards, it said in a statement.
Drawn into the fray
The ruling has implications for several small countries in the region which have helplessly witnessed Chinas expansion into areas such as the Spratly Islands, which are claimed by Malaysia, Vietnam, Brunei and Taiwan as well as the Philippines and China.
Malaysia believes that all relevant parties can peacefully resolve disputes by full respect for diplomatic and legal processes; and relevant international law and 1982 UNCLOS, its Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement.
Malaysia believes that it is important to maintain peace, security and stability through the exercise of self-restraint in the conduct of activities that may further complicate disputes or escalate tension, and avoid the threat or use of force in the South China Sea, it said.
Indonesia, for its part, has maintained a neutral stance for years on the simmering territorial disputes but has been drawn closer to the fray in recent months following repeated incursions by Chinese fishermen near the Natuna islands.
In late June, Indonesian navy ships fired warning shots as they chased 12 foreign fishing boats from the area, northwest of southern Borneo. A Chinese-flagged boat was captured and its seven-member crew detained, leading China to lodge a protest, according to reports.
Indonesia once again calls on all parties to exercise self-restraint and to refrain from any actions that could escalate tensions, as well as to protect Southeast Asia region particularly from any military activity that could pose a threat to peace and stability, and to respect international law including UNCLOS, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement.
Melda Kamil Ariadno, an expert of international law at the University of Indonesia, said the ruling could set the stage for instability if China does not respect it.
China has rejected it, the country has the right to do so, and will defend its views with any possible way. This can lead to a potential conflict. The region will not be safe anymore, Melda told BenarNews on Tuesday.
As the largest country within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Indonesia should push the regional bloc to take a role in resolving such problems.
Indonesia is the largest country in ASEAN, and whats more it has a stake in the matter because Natuna waters are frequently infringed, so it should be more active and daring, she said.
Mohd Azizuddin Mohd Sani, an international relations analyst at Universiti Utara Malaysia, said Tuesdays ruling could have little impact since there is no enforcement mechanism.
So the Philippines would not be able to do anything and China knows the decision will not affect the country in any way, he said.
Tia Asmara in Jakarta, Hata Wahari and Melati Amalina in Kuala Lumpur contributed to this report.
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For Immediate Release, July 13, 2016 Contact: Eleanor Bravo, Food & Water Watch, (505) 730 8474, Ebravo@fwwatch.org
Rebecca Sobel, WildEarth Guardians, (267) 402-0724, rsobel@wildearthguardians.org
Taylor McKinnon, Center for Biological Diversity, (801) 300-2414, tmckinnon@biologicaldiversity.org Facing Climate Protests, Feds Abruptly Relocate New Mexico Fossil Fuel Auction SANTA FE, N.M. Facing growing climate protests, the Bureau of Land Management has abruptly relocated its July 20 oil and gas lease sale from Santa Fe to Roswell, N.M. For two weeks the only public notice of the change appeared as an obscure link on the BLM website; simultaneously, the agency mailed letters to notify former oil and gas bidders of the location change. The BLMs sudden and unannounced change of venue for the lease auction is a thinly veiled attempt to keep the public out of the process which promises to squander public lands for the benefit of the fossil fuel industry. Increased drilling and fracking on top of the 10,000,000 acres of public land already leased will add to global warming and cause irrevocable damage to what should be a responsible legacy for generations to come, said Eleanor Bravo, Southwest organizer for Food & Water Watch. The agency will offer more than 13,000 acres of publicly owned oil and gas in the July auction. More than 200 climate demonstrators protested the agencys April fossil fuel auction in Santa Fe, calling for an end to the federal fossil fuel leasing program and an immediate moratorium on fracking in Greater Chaco. "The Obama Administration is doing everything they can to divert attention from public lands oil and gas lease sales," said Rebecca Sobel, Senior Campaigner with WildEarth Guardians. "With 10 million acres of public land leased for oil and gas since he took office, a president trying to look like a climate champion is right to be embarrassed." The move comes as the Obama administration and the fossil fuel industry advocate moving fossil fuel auctions online to avoid climate protests at auction locations. The first online auction for onshore oil and gas is slated for September. Thousands of people across the country, part of the growing Keep it in the Ground movement, have protested auctions in recent months, causing some to be cancelled or postponed. Relocating fossil fuel auctions to remote places or websites still doesnt hide the dangerous disconnect between the administrations climate rhetoric and its fossil fuel leasing, said Taylor McKinnon with the Center for Biological Diversity. The clock is ticking on the climate crisis, and each new lease makes a bad problem worse. Its time for the president to shut the federal carbon pollution spigot for good. Background
The American public owns nearly 650 million acres of federal public land and more than 1.7 billion acres of Outer Continental Shelf and the fossil fuels beneath them. This includes federal public land, which makes up about a third of the U.S. land area, and oceans like Alaskas Chukchi Sea, the Gulf of Mexico and the Eastern Seaboard. These places and the fossil fuels beneath them are held in trust for the public by the federal government; federal fossil fuel leasing is administered by the Department of the Interior. Over the past decade, the combustion of federal fossil fuels has resulted in nearly a quarter of all U.S. energy-related emissions. An 2015 report by EcoShift Consulting, commissioned by the Center for Biological Diversity and Friends of the Earth, found that remaining federal oil, gas, coal, oil shale and tar sands that have not been leased to industry contain up to 450 billion tons of potential greenhouse gas pollution. As of earlier this year, 67 million acres of federal fossil fuel were already leased to industry, an area more than 55 times larger than Grand Canyon National Park containing up to 43 billion tons of potential greenhouse gas pollution. Last year Sens. Merkley (D-Ore.), Sanders (I-Vt.) and others introduced the Keep It In the Ground Act (S. 2238) legislation to end new federal fossil fuel leases and cancel non-producing federal fossil fuel leases. Days later President Obama canceled the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, saying, Because ultimately, if were going to prevent large parts of this Earth from becoming not only inhospitable but uninhabitable in our lifetimes, were going to have to keep some fossil fuels in the ground rather than burn them and release more dangerous pollution into the sky. Download the September Keep It in the Ground letter to President Obama. Download Grounded: The Presidents Power to Fight Climate Change, Protect Public Lands by Keeping Publicly Owned Fossil Fuels in the Ground (this report details the legal authorities with which a president can halt new federal fossil fuel leases). Download The Potential Greenhouse Gas Emissions of U.S. Federal Fossil Fuels (this report quantifies the volume and potential greenhouse gas emissions of remaining federal fossil fuels) and The Potential Greenhouse Gas Emissions fact sheet. Download Over-leased: How Production Horizons of Already Leased Federal Fossil Fuels Outlast Global Carbon Budgets Download Public Lands, Private Profits, a report about the corporations that are profiting from climate-destroying fossil fuel extraction on public lands. Download the Center for Biological Diversitys formal petition calling on the Obama administration to halt all new offshore fossil fuel leasing. Download WildEarth Guardians formal petition calling on the Department of the Interior to analyze the climate impacts of the federal oil and gas leasing program and to place a moratorium on new leasing until that study is completed. Download the Center for Biological Diversitys legal petition with 264 other groups calling for a halt to all new onshore fossil fuel leasing.
For Immediate Release, July 13, 2016 Contacts: Marissa Knodel, Friends of the Earth, (202) 222-0729, mknodel@foe.org
Blake Kopcho, Center for Biological Diversity, (805) 708-3435, bkopcho@biologicaldiversity.org Legislation Would Marginalize Public Input on Offshore Fossil Fuel Leases WASHINGTON The U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Natural Resources will vote on a bill today that could alter the longstanding practice of holding offshore fossil fuel lease sales in person and instead relegate them to an internet-based system. Proposed under the guise of efficiency, the switch will marginalize public input and comes amid rising public pressure to end new oil and gas leasing on public lands and oceans in the face of the growing climate crisis.
The House Committee on Natural Resources is scheduled to vote on House Resolution 5577 at 10 a.m. today. A coalition of community-based groups from the Gulf Coast and Alaska, supported by national allies, sent a letter strongly opposing the bill, warning that the change would threaten wildlife, coastal communities and the climate. Government leasing decisions must be as transparent and accountable to the American people as possible. This can only be ensured by allowing the public to openly and directly participate in every step of the leasing process, from the environmental review to the sale itself, reads the letter from 23 groups. Gulf Coast residents this year launched an unprecedented effort to demand no new leases in the Gulf of Mexico. They were joined by groups who have been waging a national Keep It in the Ground campaign calling for an end to new fossil fuels leases on federal lands and waters at a large demonstration on March 23 in New Orleans. At the Superdome hundreds joined a boisterous demonstration against expanding offshore drilling. Another offshore lease sale is scheduled for New Orleans on Aug. 24, and significant protests are being organized. If Representative Graves and other congressmen were acting on behalf of regular people, they would introduce a bill to make the oil industry pay for its century of destruction along the Gulf Coast, said Anne Rolfes, founding director of the Louisiana Bucket Brigade. Instead its business as usual protecting Big Oil at the expense of the public. The people of the Gulf South who live, work and play along the Gulf of Mexico are ready to transition into clean energy sources that lessen impacts to the environment, create a sustainable job market, and protect human and non-human health, said Mary Gutierrez, executive director of Earth Ethics, Inc. We will no longer allow big industry or the government to dictate the type of energy source we want for our communities. We want our voices heard. We have a responsibility to advocate for and implement changes. We are ready to accept those responsibilities. We are ready for action. How are indigenous communities closest to federal oil and gas land leases going to participate in whats supposed to be a public process? The answer is: They wont be able to, said Dallas Goldtooth of the Indigenous Environmental Network. This bill is nothing but a farce pandering to the interests of Big Oil and Gas. All dealings of federal land leases must remain physically public to ensure transparency and equity for remote indigenous communities. People are demanding climate action and an end to offshore drilling, fracking, oil spills, and treating coastal communities like sacrifice zones. This is a vibrant, growing movement that deserves to be heard, said Blake Kopcho, a Center for Biological Diversity organizer who has been working with groups in the Gulf. If were going to sell off public resources and worsen the climate crisis, the decisions should be made out in the open, in the bright light of day and with the full participation of the American public. New fossil fuel leasing is wrong for people and the planet. Moving lease sales online will only make it easier for fossil fuel companies to get away with turning our public lands and waters into energy sacrifice zones, said Marissa Knodel, climate campaigner at Friends of the Earth. Across the nation, the movement to keep fossil fuels in the ground is gaining strength and momentum. Congress must listen to the voices of the people calling for a safe climate future and just transition to a renewable energy economy, not the fossil fuel industry. The Center for Biological Diversity is a national, nonprofit conservation organization with more than 1 million members and online activists dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places.
Friends of the Earth fights to create a more healthy and just world. Our current campaigns focus on promoting clean energy and solutions to climate change, ensuring the food we eat and products we use are safe and sustainable, and protecting marine ecosystems and the people who live and work near them.
For Immediate Release, July 13, 2016 Contact: Jamie Pang, (858) 699-4153, jpang@biologicaldiversity.org
Aaron Viles, (225) 615-0346, Aaronv@care2team.com
Amey Owen, (202) 446-2128, amey@awionline.org
Leda Huta, (202) 320-6467, lhuta@endangered.org
Ron Sutherland, (919) 641-0060, ron@wildlandsnetwork.org Half a Million People Urge U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Not to Abandon Red Wolves With Only 45 Remaining, Species Is One of World's Most Endangered Mammals WASHINGTON A petition including nearly half a million signatures was delivered to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service today, urging the agency to fulfill its legal duty under the Endangered Species Act to recover the critically endangered red wolf. The petition organized by the Animal Welfare Institute, Care2, the Center for Biological Diversity, Endangered Species Coalition, Wildlands Network, and several local North Carolina high school students urges the agency to resume efforts to save a species now reduced to an estimated wild population of only 45. Delivery of the petition comes a little over a year after the Service officially announced it was suspending red wolf releases into the wild. Its shameful how the Service has bowed to political pressure and deliberately undermined the success of its program to recover red wolves, said Jamie Pang, endangered species campaigner at the Center for Biological Diversity. The agencys inaction is condemning this species to extinction. Red wolves were declared extinct in the wild until a successful reintroduction program was established in North Carolinas Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge in 1987. By 2006, the program had enabled the population to expand to more than 130. The program enjoyed ample support from conservationists, the public, and even private landowners who live within the red wolf recovery area. "Until recently, the Service operated a successful red wolf recovery program with widespread public support for saving the wolves, said Tara Zuardo, wildlife attorney with the Animal Welfare Institute. "However, without a valid reason, the agency has now turned its back on the species and, instead, is sitting idly by as red wolf numbers plummet. Its simply jaw-dropping that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is consciously deciding to issue a death sentence knowingly allowing a wolf found only in the United States to go extinct. The red wolf has been one of our greatest wildlife success stories and could be again, said Leda Huta, executive director of the Endangered Species Coalition. It is a day I never thought Id see. Following a lawsuit by nonprofit groups to limit coyote hunting once a threat to the red wolfs survival the Service faced increased political pressure from a small, but very vocal group of individuals opposed to red wolves to curtail the recovery program. In 2014, the Service eliminated the programs recovery coordinator position. In 2015, it stopped the introduction of new red wolves into the wild. The agency also ended its coyote-sterilization program, which was helping to prevent hybrid animals from compromising the red wolfs gene pool, curtailed law enforcement investigations of wolf deaths to help bring poachers to justice, and allowed for both the lethal and nonlethal removal of wolves from private lands, arguably causing the population to sink. The red wolf is now one of the world's most endangered mammal species. There are 37 times as many giant pandas, 100 times as many snow leopards, and 400 times as many African lions in the wild as there are red wolves left in eastern North Carolina," said Ron Sutherland, a conservation scientist at Wildlands Network. "We hope Fish and Wildlife Service Director Dan Ashe and Interior Secretary Sally Jewell will listen to the public and prevent the red wolf from going extinct in the wild again." "Hundreds of thousands of members of the Care2 community are speaking up for red wolves, demanding the howls of these amazing animals continue to sound through North Carolina. We hope our federal wildlife leaders hear this call and reverse course immediately, said Aaron Viles, senior grassroots organizer with Care2. The Center for Biological Diversity is a national, nonprofit conservation organization with more than 1 million members and online activists dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places. The Animal Welfare Institute is a nonprofit charitable organization founded in 1951 to reduce animal suffering caused by people. AWI engages policymakers, scientists, industry, and the public to achieve better treatment of animals everywherein the laboratory, on the farm, in commerce, at home, and in the wild. Care2 is a community of 36 million standing together for good. People are making world-changing impact with Care2, starting petitions and supporting each others campaigns to help individuals, animals and the environment. A pioneer of online advocacy since 1998, Care2 is a B Corporation, or social enterprise, using the power of business as a force for good. The Endangered Species Coalition is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to stop the human-caused extinction of our nations at-risk species, to protect and restore their habitats, and to guide these fragile populations along the road to recovery. The Endangered Species Coalition works to safeguard and strengthen the Endangered Species Act, a law that enables every citizen to act on behalf of threatened and endangered wildlifeanimals, fish, plants, and insectsand the wild places they call home. Wildlands Network is a nonprofit organization that works to reconnect and rewild nature in North America. With offices in the United States and Mexico, Wildlands Network advocates for continental-scale wildlife corridors and for the recovery of top carnivores such as wolves and cougar.
Having recently announced the key management changes to the Vizeum South Africa office, it is with great excitement to announce the appointment of Eben Gewers to the Vizeum team, coming on board as Media Director Cape Town from 6 July.
From left to right: Kelvin Storie (Group MD), Shihaam Abrahams (Media Director: JHB), Eben Gewers (Media Director: CT).
Eben joins the team with over 20 years media experience from the media owner side. Eben has worked across the print, TV and radio industry and joins with a wealth of experience bringing a different dimension to the Vizeum SA team.
Kelvin Storie, Group Managing Director for Vizeum SA, explains further, Im hugely excited and pleased with the appointment of Eben to the team. When we embarked on finding a suitable candidate we were mindful of three key factors in our selection. Kelvin continues, firstly, Vizeums strength is built around its key asset, its people. We needed someone who would easily carry the mantle and illustrate the unique Vizeum DNA. Secondly, our clients we seek someone who is trusted, shows a high level of integrity and gravitas. Thirdly, someone who could tap in and contribute to the overall management team (Shihaam and myself). Eben possesses all of these qualities and more.
On Vizeums vision moving forward, Kelvin continues, Vizeum South Africa has had a considerable growth spurt over the past few years with 2015s culmination of being awarded Financial Mail Annual AdFocus Awards Media Agency of the Year. This was based on a concrete foundation developed by previous Joint MDs Tanya Schreuder (now Group Managing Director Media Brands: DAN SA) and Richard Procter (currently on sabbatical and due to return to a DAN SA role in 2017). The current state of the media agency market is tough and in flux, the key strategy for us is to continuously evolve our business offering. Eben brings a new and fresh element to the team which is going to further complement our growth plan.
With Shihaam Abrahams and Eben Gewers giving me support to the overall management of Vizeum SA; we are poised to take Vizeum SA to the next level in this market with many more exciting developments, concludes Kelvin Storie.
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Mr Delivery, a home-grown delivery service that began operating in 1992, says it is ready for the increased competition in the home delivery and takeaway food sector.
After shaking up the taxi industry, internet ride-sharing service Uber looks set to add its mark on the restaurant business in SA with its UberEats app, which is likely to eat into Mr Deliverys market share. Mr Delivery has dominated the South African home delivery and takeaway food sector in recent times.
"UberEats impending arrival in SA will mean an increase in competition in the local market, but this is something we at Mr Delivery had anticipated and have been quietly preparing for over the past 18 months," Devin Sinclair, the head of Mr Delivery Food, said on Tuesday.
"We dont see the arrival of UberEats as quite as revolutionary to the food delivery industry as the arrival of Uber was to the transport industry. There is a strong chance that UberEats will face the same challenges locally that they have faced abroad, when they have come up against more established competitors," said Sinclair.
"We have had the opportunity over the past 23 years to hone our relationships with restaurant partners, customers and drivers, which is a crucial head start." Sinclair said Mr Delivery had been through a process of completely overhauling its business and had developed a new Mr D app, which will provide customers the same "tap to order" convenience as UberEats. The app is currently live in select areas in the Western Cape and the company will be rolling it out regionally throughout SA over the remainder of 2016, he said.
The UberEats app debuted in various cities across the world in 2015 and earlier in 2016, promising to make "getting great food from hundreds of restaurants as easy as requesting a ride". On the UberEats platform customers can order food from any of the dozens of restaurants listed on the app, and Uber then facilitates the delivery.
"Our curated menus feature dishes from the local spots you love and the ones youve always wanted to try. Its the same cashless payment as an Uber ride. So just tap the app, get your food delivered right to your doorstep and enjoy," a recent UberEats job advertisement reads.
Uber spokesperson Samantha Allenberg said on Monday there was no fixed date for the launch of UberEats in SA.
Responding to questions about the fact that the company had advertised key positions for the UberEats platform, including those of marketing manager, GM and restaurant operations manager in Johannesburg and Cape Town, Allenberg said: "We are always exploring our options and looking for the best talent to join our team. So no news yet to report." The advertisement for UberEats GM for Johannesburg states that the successful candidate will have the "unique opportunity to scale and develop our food platform in one of our major cities globally".
#MandelaMonth: Unilever uses the most powerful weapon to change the world
Unilever hosted a celebration of South African youth at Shine Studios in Braamfontein on Tuesday 5 July 2016, where CEO Peter Cowan revealed how they plan to tackle some of the tough challenges facing young learners.
Unilevers Brands with Purpose have already touched the lives of millions of people across the globe. Locally, Domestos has reached over 480,000 South African scholars through the Cleaner Toilets, Brighter Future and Germ Busters Club programmes, and over 2m children and 10m South Africans through Lifebuoys School of 5 programme. However, it believes that there is still a long journey ahead that cannot be done alone. That is why it has partnered with UNICEF and the Department of Basic Education to launch a holistic schools programme that will integrate its portfolio of programmes, including a new oral hygiene programme from Pepsodent and the popular Omo Fast Kids Maths programme. Called the brightFuture Schools Programme, it will incorporate health and hygiene education, and maths skills. Sibonile Dube Sibonile Dube, corporate affairs director South and Central Africa at Unilever South Africa, unpacks the brightFuture campaign and Unilevers philosophy that when you bring people and brands together under the banner of purpose, ordinary people can achieve some extraordinary things What are some of the challenges facing young learners in South Africa, and how does Unilever plan to tackle these? What are some of the challenges facing young learners in South Africa, and how does Unilever plan to tackle these? We believe education is a huge contributor towards the continued success of South Africa and for Unilever, we see two areas where we can help to create a brighter future for all. The first area is in the actual environment that learning takes place in, specifically when it comes to health and hygiene.
Over the past five years, through the Domestos brand, Unilever has been embarking on its Cleaner Toilets, Brighter Future project, which involves the refurbishment of toilets across schools in South Africa with the aim of providing better conditions for 1.4m learners by 2020. What we have seen in schools that have been involved with the programme is that diseases and infections related to sanitation have reduced by nearly 70%, with attendance increasing to around 80%. These are fantastic statistics, which show the opportunity for us to contribute in the education space and make a difference in the life of young learners through our brands.
The second area of opportunity is in the employability space. We know that youth unemployment is a major issue in South Africa and we think we can make a meaningful contribution in this space. There are three pillars to our youth employability strategy providing skills; providing experience; and providing jobs.
In the providing skills pillar, we have begun to run youth employability workshops across South Africa, which gives learners the opportunity to engage with some of the companys world-class training materials in the areas of leadership development; digital capability and career development. This is supplemented by our Unilever Africa Idea Trophy student business competition, which is open to all university students across South Africa and provides them with access to Unilever case studies, mentors, the chance to learn from our partners such as Google and Facebook, as well as the opportunity to travel internationally.
In providing experience, we are continuing to expand our internship programme, which trains students through robust and challenging business projects that allow them to develop a range of critical professional and leadership skills. We have also recently launched our new campus brand ambassador programme across six universities in South Africa and these provide students with continuous work experience opportunities throughout the year.
Finally, in providing jobs, we are continuing to expand on our Future Leaders graduate programme with our largest intake of graduates this year. Furthermore, we continue to employ talented young South Africans through our external partnerships with Harambee and TSIBA (Tertiary School in Business Administration). In addition, we also invest in our own entrepreneurial initiatives such as the Ola Vendor Project, which has helped to create over 2,200 jobs to date.
Unilever is committed to creating a Unilever is committed to creating a brightFuture for all people, especially the future leaders of South Africa. What is the brightFuture initiative about, and why a specific focus on the youth?
The purpose of the campaign is to create a bright future for future generations and show the possibilities of a better world. The brightFuture campaign gives people, especially the youth, the tools that will enable them to create that better world. Overall, we want to engage with our future leaders.
The campaign hopes to achieve the following objectives:
Create a brighter future where every child in South Africa can grow up healthy and happy.
Where healthy hearts are stimulated and confident minds flourish.
Where no child goes to bed hungry and every parent has the opportunity to provide a warm meal.
Where preventable diseases are prevented and every child lives past their 5th birthday.
We believe we can live well without stealing resources from future generations.
We do not have all the answers, but we have started a journey and we invite everyone to join us.
What do you mean by Brands with Purpose? How are they making a difference externally (in South Africa and globally), and internally (in the business)? What do you mean by Brands with Purpose? How are they making a difference externally (in South Africa and globally), and internally (in the business)?
For the past five years, Unilever has been committed to growing its sustainable business practice. It has put some definition and measurement behind brands with purpose meaning brands that contribute to one or more of Unilevers Sustainable Living Plan goals and have a sustainable living purpose and has seen positive results in each of those markets.
Sustainable innovation is a key growth driver for Unilever. By putting sustainability at the heart of our brands, we are able to show that brands have integrated sustainability into our purpose and products by delivering strong and faster growth. This also makes our employees brand ambassadors as they feel like they are contributing towards creating a brighter future for all South Africans.
What is the consumers response to brands that contribute to society? What is the consumers response to brands that contribute to society?
Research shows that people are making a shift from focusing solely on their needs and their immediate family to caring more about the environment as well as the negative impacts facing the world today. The new generation do not just want brands to do no evil; they want them to do more good. Therefore, they are more likely to purchase products and support brands that embed a social purpose. This helps the youth feel that they are fulfilling a social responsibility and helping to reduce the effects of climate change.
How do you plan to get others (consumers, businesses, etc.) on board? How do you plan to get others (consumers, businesses, etc.) on board?
This year, Unilever has embarked on a drive for collective action from various stakeholders to help us support the UNs Sustainable Development Goals and make a tangible difference. At a recent business breakfast held in Johannesburg, nearly 200 leaders across business, national and local government, NGOs, academia, media and top local influencers gathered to discuss how implementation of meaningful sustainability measures could positively benefit business and society.
Elaborate on Unilevers philosophy that when you bring people and brands together under the banner of purpose, ordinary people can achieve some extraordinary things. Elaborate on Unilevers philosophy that when you bring people and brands together under the banner of purpose, ordinary people can achieve some extraordinary things.
We believe that brands have an incredible ability to change the way we live and change the world. Brands with purpose help drive society to move forward and it is for this reason that Unilever has put sustainability at the heart of its business.
Following the launch of the UN Sustainable Development Goals last year, to end extreme poverty, fight inequality and injustice and fix climate change, over seven days, seven billion people across the world were asked to #TellEveryone about the global goals.
We saw people around South Africa pledging their commitment towards any one of the 17 UN Sustainable Living Goals, which they identified with. By doing so, you could see how Unilevers philosophy of bringing people together under the banner of purpose motivates them to achieve extraordinary things.
For Unilever, working towards a greater purpose revolves around sustainable living. Comment on the progress of the sustainability living plan created in 2010. For Unilever, working towards a greater purpose revolves around sustainable living. Comment on the progress of the sustainability living plan created in 2010.
Since the launch of the plan five years ago, Unilever is making great strides towards realising key commitments across the markets they operate in, including South Africa:
Local investments : close to R4bn invested in new and refurbished manufacturing facilities in South Africa. These factories will enable Unilever to serve its consumers better with innovation and green technology, while simultaneously producing some of the companys brands with a social mission such as Lifebuoy and Domestos.
: close to R4bn invested in new and refurbished manufacturing facilities in South Africa. These factories will enable Unilever to serve its consumers better with innovation and green technology, while simultaneously producing some of the companys brands with a social mission such as Lifebuoy and Domestos. Improving health and wellbeing : 483,000 South African schoolchildren reached through the Domestos Cleaner Toilets. Brighter Future and germ-busters club programmes; 8.8m South Africans reached through the Lifebuoy School of 5 programme.
: 483,000 South African schoolchildren reached through the Domestos Cleaner Toilets. Brighter Future and germ-busters club programmes; 8.8m South Africans reached through the Lifebuoy School of 5 programme. Reducing environmental impact : the companys South African manufacturing operations have reduced CO emissions from energy by 19%, water use by 30% and waste by 17%.
: the companys South African manufacturing operations have reduced CO emissions from energy by 19%, water use by 30% and waste by 17%. Enhancing livelihoods: 2,200 jobs have been created through the OLA vending programme, which has positively affected the lives of over 8,800 South Africans and 2,500 South African jobs have been created through the Unilever and Wildlands partnership.
What does Unilever SA have planned to celebrate Mandela Day this month? What does Unilever SA have planned to celebrate Mandela Day this month?
We have various community initiatives taking place pre and post Mandela Day they do not only take place once a year; this ensures that the initiatives we drive are for the long-term, and that a real difference in these communities can be felt.
The Engineering Council of South Africa (ECSA) has embarked on a countrywide roadshow to discuss revisions to its governing instruments with stakeholders in the profession.
The three frameworks the council is looking to revise are: recognition of voluntary associations (VAs), the continuing professional development (CPD) policy and its commitment and undertaking guidelines for establishing accords with employer body.
Sipho Madonsela
Regulatory framework cannot be stagnant
The current consultation process resulted from feedback from the previous roadshow, as well as independent requests from government (though the CBE) and from the VAs, to publically discuss the compilation of the revision of these documents. To make the process more efficient, ECSA has therefore drafted one revision, which it has made available for comment.
ECSA chief executive officer, Sipho Madonsela, stresses the need for the revision of these frameworks is to align the measure of responsibility of all involved engineering practitioners with the accountability that is required of every professional engineer, and which all engineers understand.
Our regulatory framework cannot be seen to be stagnant, especially when the needs of our stakeholders are changing at a dynamic pace. This is why we have chosen to take such a bold step in response to the needs of the profession in order to strike a balance between ECSAs role as the custodian and regulator of the profession, and the engineering profession at large.
Three output arms
He highlights that ECSAs broader mandate is carried out by three output arms. Firstly, an administratively which is the day-to-day operation of council through policy standards and procedures development; registration, accreditation and quality assurance; professional conduct management through the legal support team; and through the CPD programme.
Secondly, ECSA functions through the voluntary support of engineering professionals who sit on different ECSA committees.
And thirdly, through the VAs, which are delegated functions by the ECSA council comprising 50 individuals appointed by government.
Accountability
Where inefficiencies had been detected in the administrative output arm of which I am CEO, staff found to be working beneath ECSAs standards have been disciplined, with some losing their jobs, Madonsela says.
He explains that the council has taken accountability for the service it offers to our constituents, being the engineering professionals. It should therefore stand to reason that any inefficiencies in the operation of the ECSA committees and VAs should also be approached in a similar manner, to ensure that standardised operations are maintained across all three output arms.
I cannot stress enough, the need for the introduction of accountability that matches responsibility. In the past, ECSA has absorbed all accountability for the regulation of the profession, even where VAs and committees were seen to be clearly functioning under the standards that they would expect ECSA to uphold.
We must match the responsibility of the administrative, committees and VA operation outputs, with appropriate accountability, he added. It would be unfair that some parties go undisciplined, even when there is evidence of inefficiencies across all arms, he adds.
Two mandates
Madonsela explains that ECSA as a regulatory body has a hard and a soft mandate. The former would be the legislative operations of ECSA, which are outlined in The Engineering Profession Act No 46 of 2000 (EPA), while the latter concerns corporate governance responsibilities such as a clear transformation agenda in the profession; the aligning of ECSAs mandate with governments vision. Our revision of the frameworks is also influenced by this soft mandate.
There is the need to demystify the perception that ECSA is the gate-keeper of the profession, and the level of transparency that ECSA is expected to uphold should also be required of the voluntary associations (VAs) and there needs to be collaboration and clear service level agreements as this affects the primary constituents of both ECSA and the VAs.
The consultative process will visit all nine provinces in South Africa, with three sessions scheduled for Gauteng, which has the largest concentration of engineers and VAs in the country. The schedule runs from 4 July, and be concluded in Johannesburg on 19 August 2016.
LinkedIn, Sony, the Clinton Foundation and tons of other companies have all been in the headlines for the past few years because they have been hacked - and users' details disseminated. The usual response to this sort of attack is for companies to increase security, put in more firewalls, and hire white hats to test their perimeters.
Yet, says Sarel Lamprecht, MD of Phishield, cyber fraud insurance company, this sort of response is no longer enough. In just the same way you secure your home with burglar bars and electric fencing, but still get insurance, so you need to insure against the chances of a breach.
Cyber insurance is a fairly new concept in SA, but as Lamprecht points out, some reports have estimated the cost of breaches to companies in SA as high as R5.8 billion just in 2014 and individuals are being targeted even more frequently than companies.
Calculating the cost
Graham Oates, CEO of Norrie Johnston Recruitment, points out that just one study by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington DC policy research group, and McAfee, the technology security firm, puts the annual cost of cybercrime to the world economy at more than $400 billion. This, he notes, is even before the wider impact on the victims personal lives is taken into account.
Gartner estimates that there are over 500,000 cyber attacks globally every day and that cyber spending will hit $86 billion this year. As a result, businesses and individuals are fast waking up to the need to protect their cyber presence. Criminals are getting more sophisticated every day, and its getting harder to stay a step ahead of them, Lamprecht notes.
He adds the risk grows as more and more devices become connected to the internet the so-called Internet of Things world.
Personal protection
Cyber insurance is gaining ground in SA among the larger companies, but individuals are just as if not more vulnerable, he says. They cant afford a team of IT specialists, but tend to have just as much sensitive information in their devices as large companies. Unless you want to run your life offline, youre at risk.
Lamprecht explains that the benefits of cyber insurance include covering you if you are hacked and someone used their card to make online purchases, and then got taken for thousands. It also includes card fraud, in app purchase fraud, phishing and ETF breaches.
These are the areas in which individuals are most vulnerable, because they dont have an IT team protecting them. This is why we focus on protecting the most used transactions. Having cyber insurance means youre protected when something goes wrong. Its no longer a grudge purchase, he concludes.
The Deloitte 2016 Human Capital Trends Report for South Africa highlights how global changes, such as the expanding generation gap, technological advancements and new employer-employee social contracts, are disrupting traditional business models.
The top five trends identified by South African participants related to organisational design, shape culture, engagement, leadership awakened and learning. This differs slightly from the global report where organisational design was also the number one trend, with leadership awakened second, shape culture third, engagement fourth and learning fifth. The report shows that many of them are not well prepared for the challenges they face.
Globally, the Deloitte survey garnered feedback from over 7,000 business and HR leaders in 130 countries, with 213 of the responses from South African respondents across all industry groups.
92% of the global survey participants rated organisational design as very important. The new organisation, as it has been termed, is built around empowered teams that are driven by a new model of management and led by a breed of younger, more globally diverse leaders.
South African respondents mirrored this result, with 91% of participants rating organisational design as very important or important. However, 54% say that they are not ready for the trend, which has two main drivers, namely the need to get products to market quickly and the digital technologies that help teams to stay connected.
Restructuring
Globally, for the first time, nearly half of respondent companies (45%) either are in the middle of restructuring (39%) or are planning to restructure (6%). In South Africa, 41% are busy restructuring, while the same number do not have any plans to do so in the next 18 months.
Human capital leader for Deloitte South Africa, Werner Nieuwoudt, concurs that organisational design is an important focus for organisations to become more agile and customer-focused, but he is concerned that few know how to achieve this goal. Most South African respondents feel that they are weakest at creating cross-functional teams and only 15% believe that the company they work for is ready to effectively redesign itself.
Culture
Notably, 82% of executives globally believe culture is a potential competitive advantage, while only 69% of South African leaders feel the same way - 90% of South Africans rate culture as very important or important but only 47% is ready to deal with this issue.
Culture, the way things work around here and engagement, how people feel about the way things work around here, are rated as more important than leadership in South Africa, as they form the glue that holds organisations together. If the culture is not well developed in an organisation, then the network of teams cannot operate well together.
The concept of creating unified organisational cultures in South African organisations becomes even more complex when we consider that South Africa has a diverse population and 11 official languages. These may result in cultural and employee engagement differences across provinces, which would ultimately also impact on organisational design.
Leadership
Leadership is the second most important issue facing organisations worldwide and the fourth most important issue for South African survey respondents. The report shows that leadership models are changing, with companies dismantling the classic management pyramid.
The South African responses regarding leadership indicate that only 13% of organisations are making substantial investments in female leaders and 28% in top corporate leaders. In addition, 29% of respondents say they have no employee engagement programmes for millennials where only 31% globally do not have such programmes in place.
Learning
Nieuwoudt says the world of learning is another rapidly changing area for organisations. While employees are keen to learn, grow and increase their income, the way in which they learn is changing, as is the amount of time they spend on learning. Traditional training is the least desirable way they want to learn. Employees are now looking for learning materials on demand, which they can consult when they need the information. Only 8% of South African companies are excellent at the use of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), where globally the 13% of companies are excellent at this.
Nearly one-quarter (22%) of South African respondents see learning as the primary driver of employee development. The majority (87%) rate learning as very important or important, while 59% report that they are not ready for it.
Design thinking
Importantly, a new trend in 2016 design thinking is shifting HRs focus from programmes and processes to designing solutions that drive employee satisfaction, productivity and enjoyment. Companies are now putting employees in charge of their own learning experience.
As HR departments work to upgrade their skills, they should incorporate key design thinking concepts such as digital, mobile app, user experience design and behavioural economics. Our research indicates that companies that deliver the highest levels of value from HR are three times more likely to be using design thinking in their programmes, concludes Nieuwoudt.
In their journey to acquaint South Africans with local travel, the TOMSA/Sunday Times Finders Keepers team have reached the North West province - Bokone Bophirima.
There, Sunday Times travel editor Paul Ash visited the Ann van Dyk Cheetah Centre near Brits. The world-renowned centre has bred some 600 cheetahs, successfully contributing to the animals removal from the list of endangered species in South Africa.
Cheetah Centre
A trip up the Harties Cableway provided spectacular panoramic views of the Magaliesberg Mountains and the Hartebeespoort Dam. By visiting a number of cultural hot spots during the day, the team learnt more about the local peoples cultures, while the evening was spent singing, dancing and feasting at the Lesedi Cultural Village. At the Moruleng Cultural Precinct, the team visited the Mphebatho Museum, the Dutch Reformed Mission Church and ancient settlement patterns, catching a glimpse into Bakgatla-ba-Kgafela traditions and a worldview before the arrival of Christianity and capitalism.
Harties Cableway
While the North West is rich in gold, arguably its greatest treasure is its wildlife, being home to the world famous Pilanesburg National Park. The team visited and stayed over at a number of TOMSA levy contributor establishments in the area, including Bakubung (place of the hippo) Bush Lodge, the Thakadu River Camp - a game lodge on the banks of the Marico River, the Madikwe Game Reserve, and Thaba Legae Guest Lodge.
The CEO of the TBCSA/TOMSA, Mmatsatsi Ramawela joined the Sunday Times team on their visit of the Paul Kruger Country museum inside Kedar lodge just outside Rustenburg and Pilanesberg National Park where the team enjoyed a game drive and bush braai experience courtesy of Bakubung Game Lodge located inside the park. The Paul Kruger Country Museum is a national monument that gives insight into the life of South Africas first state president during a time of struggle for sovereignty against the British Empire.
Of course, no visit to North West is complete without stopping in at the world renowned Sun City resort. While no one could call Sun City a hidden gem, it is perhaps the provinces most sparkly one, where the team had the opportunity to indulge in fun, fantasy and a bit of gaming. They finished off the exciting days activities by spending the night at Sun Citys luxurious Palace of the Lost City courtesy of Sun International.
For more on the Finders Keepers teams adventures and destinations, as well as the chance to win R1 million and holiday prizes sponsored by TOMSA levy contributors, visit Finders Keepers.
While the transport industry has seen some necessary change in the past two decades, road transport remains the dominant way to move large volumes of goods in Southern Africa. Transport is an essential service that drives the economy and affects everyday life.
flok85 via pixabay
But it is a tough industry that often struggles with poor public perception. It is both capital- and labour-intensive, and - unless you are passionate about trucks - there is nothing glamorous about it.
Trucking has entered the information age
Sections of the industry have undergone radical transformation. Increased innovation has made transport smarter, more efficient, and, critically, safer. Modern commercial vehicles have advanced telematics, tracking systems, on-board computers, dynamic routing and scheduling, in-cab cameras, and driver monitoring and management systems.
Transport has entered the information age in which technological advancement, mobile data, and analytics enable a new connected world. Data from telematics helps to monitor and analyse our fleet and our drivers in real time, providing superior journey management for greater efficiencies, enhanced safety, and, ultimately, cost savings for the customer.
It's all about people
While innovation is critical to modern transport, people and risk management remain as important as ever.
Transport is all about people: those we employ, those we serve by transporting goods and those communities in which we operate.
Drivers are a central cog in the transport industry machine and even though modern trucks are technologically advanced, they still require professional drivers with the skills and experience to operate them. Professional transport operators have to ensure that drivers are properly trained, competent, and medically fit. Looking after drivers and protecting the lives of all road users is not negotiable.
Customer collaboration and supply chain integration is another positive aspect of the industry today. With the amount of real-time information now available, there is greater data sharing and collaboration with customers, making supply chains more transparent and efficient.
Risk management
The industry has opened itself to much-needed innovation to improve operational efficiencies and to better serve customers. But, aside from vehicle innovation and technology changes, we are also confronted daily by change-inducing risk. The road statistics are shocking. In 2015 there were close to 1-million accidents, which means that one in 10 vehicles on South African roads was in an accident.
Unroadworthy vehicles and illegal operators are commonplace, and unlicensed drivers and fraudulently obtained licences are a real problem. About 43% of professional drivers in SA have expired professional driving permits.
This scenario is compounded by a serious driver skills shortage and a complex labour context. Labour unrest is expected in a labour-intensive climate and can emerge either from within the industry or in an associated industry where a largescale strike at a client can have a knock-on effect for the transporter.
Lost productivity hurts drivers, transporters, customers, and the economy. But this is a reality that needs to be considered and managed every day. Anticipating risks and having appropriate contingency plans in place is essential. Through a combination of foresight and planning, we are able to mitigate a number of known risks, maintain productivity, and ensure a safe work environment.
Smart trucking is predicated on increased focus on risk management, integrated transport solutions rather than "basic transport services", and innovation and payload optimisation. The focus on risk management was initially driven by customer-side demands, particularly from mining, oil, and forestry companies, which insist on best practice in risk management from service providers.
Self-regulation is as important to risk management. Many transport companies adopt good risk-management practices of their own accord because they realise the benefits and long-term value derived from proactively managing risk. An investment in technology and transport innovation would be wasted if not used as a preemptive means for risk management.
Best practice
Everything in business comes back to people, so best practice is more than just ticking compliance boxes. It is about equipping and preserving the lives of drivers and other road users.
The more risk averse a company is, and the better the innovation in use, the more efficient and safe the operations will be. However, to survive and grow in the transport industry, solutions are needed - not just "one-size-fits-all" transport services. Integrated transport solutions are crucial to tackling a customer's full transport requirements.
While these are all important aspects of the transport industry, an uncomfortable reality still remains: loss of life and goods, damage to vehicles, noncompliance, illegal operators, and unroadworthy vehicles. It is essential that the industry and the government collaborate to keep unroadworthy vehicles off the roads and ensure that the drivers of commercial vehicles are well-trained, have the necessary experience, and are medically fit.
While accepting the status quo may mean resisting change, which hampers innovation, it entirely depends on what companies define as the status quo. We believe a combination of embracing innovation and being driver-centric in the transport industry is a status quo that should always remain. It is a pivotal means of ensuring safety on roads.
Source: Business Day
On the next Biz Takeouts Marketing & Media radio show on Thursday, 14 July 2016, from 9-10am, show host Warren Harding is joined by Andrew Brand ( @99cbrand ), managing director of 99c.
Started in 2008, Ninety9cents (99c) is one of South Africa's largest independently owned full-service advertising agencies, and has also recently opened a new office in Lusaka, Zambia. Andrew joins us to chat about the agency history, why the expansion into Zambia, the agency values and what the future holds.
We're also joined in studio by Ben Wagner, partner and head of Native VML (@Native) Cape Town, to look at the anatomy of a successful campaign. We discuss what goes into successful advertising and what are the separate parts required for a good campaign.
Tune into Biz Takeouts every Thursday from 9am-10am live from the 2oceansVibe Radio studio in Cape Town as we discuss the topics that matter in Marketing & Media.
How to listen
Comments or questions
Podcast
A podcast of the show will be available in the Biz Takeouts special section on Biz later during the week.
Umfolozi river, which courses through much of KwaZulu-Natal has dried up, as the drought in the province worsens.
This is having a huge effect on areas such as St Lucia, the home of iSimangaliso Wetlands Park - a 332,000ha park and a World Heritage Site - Mtubatuba, Hluhluwe, Umhlabuyalingana, Jozini and Hlabisa.
The drought is centred on Umkhanyakude District which the provincial government declared a disaster area in January.
However, the situation is getting worse.
On Monday, 11 July, a spokesperson for the Umkhanyakude district municipality, Mduduzi Dlamini, said dry conditions had led to the Umfolozi river drying up.
"This is affecting the supply of water to the areas of Mtubatuba, St Lucia and Nkolokotho. The municipality urges all residents within the district to use water sparingly. The district municipality will again start the rationing programme to all the areas that are affected such as Hluhluwe Town, Mtubatuba Town, Kwa-Msane and St Lucia areas," he said.
He also said water levels in the Jozini dam were very low. As a result the municipality had contracted water tankers to fetch water from eMpangeni dams to supply local communities.
"It must be noted that uMkhanyakude has hired a contractor, which will be drilling wells on the uMfolozi river beds. Whilst several bulk water supply schemes are constructed and upgraded, we urge communities to conserve water," Dlamini said.
Mandla Buthelezi, a farmer and deputy president of the National African Farmers Union, said farmers were initially pleased when the government announced a sum of R352m to assist farmers affected by the drought, but that they now wonder if the money will trickle down to farmers who have lost livestock.
"We doubt whether the government will help those whose livestock have died during the current drought. We have people here who had invested their whole life's savings on cows and other livestock. With this drought they have lost everything," he said.
Spokesperson for Ezemvelo Wildlife, Musa Mntambo, said the drought threatened to undo efforts to build a solid tourism industry in the region. However, so far, wild animals have been largely unaffected.
"The animals in our game reserves have not been affected so far because we have enlisted the services of water tankers to bring water to our game reserves and we have also built our own boreholes. We have been on an educational drive to tell our communities and people who visit our game parks to use water sparingly," Mntambo said.
Local lodges and B&Bs have also resorted to drilling their own boreholes after municipal taps ran dry.
Said Johan van der Merwe, the GM of the Sodwana Bay Lodge: "Our guest cannot stay in our facilities if there is no water. That is why we invested in building our own boreholes. Now water supply is fine and none of our clients have cancelled due to water shortages."
Source: Business Day
ALGIERS - An Algerian journalist and blogger was sentenced to two years in jail and ordered to pay a fine for insulting President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, a defence lawyer said on Monday.
Image by 123RF
Mohamed Tamalt's lawyer, Amine Sidhoum, said that he would lodge an appeal against the prison sentence and the fine of 200,000 dinars ($1,800, 1,630 euros).
Tamalt, who lives in London, was arrested in June during a visit to Algiers on charges of "offending the president of the republic" and Algeria's constitutional bodies, under articles of the penal code, the lawyer said.
The 42-year-old also runs a website and reportedly posted on Facebook allegations about the president, Algerian officials and members of their families.
He was liable to a fine under the penal code but not a prison term, according to the lawyer.
There was no immediate official confirmation of the ruling.
Source: AFP
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia - Ahead of the meeting of the AU Summit in Kigali, which is taking place this week, member state experts meeting in Ndjamena last week deliberated on the key fast track actions to end AIDS, TB and Malaria by 2030.
Image by 123RF
This meeting follows the adoption of the Africa Health Strategy and the Catalytic Framework to End AIDS, TB and Eliminate Malaria in Africa by 2030. The meeting deliberated on the AIDS Watch Africa progress report for consideration by Africas Heads of State and Government.
AIDS, TB and Malaria remain key challenges for the development of our continent. The Africa Health Strategy and the Catalytic Framework to end AIDS, TB and Eliminate Malaria by 2030 provides a clear policy direction for the continent. Our countries should continue on the path set by the Abuja Declaration to increase the budget allocated to health, said Assane Ngueadoum, minister of health of the Republic of Chad.
The meeting briefed the experts on Africas new health policy architecture that will be endorsed by the Kigali Summit. The revised African Health Strategy provides the overarching superstructure to address Africas broad health and development agenda in the next 15 years. To strengthen health systems, the strategy addresses issues related to health financing, governance and improved multi-sectoral partnerships. The framework also refocuses service delivery, community empowerment and seeks to expand social protection to address equity. The blueprint also prioritises human resources for health, commodity security, regulatory and support environment for provision of quality medicines and technologies, disease surveillance and disaster management.
Catalytic Framework
We set the tone in Abuja to end AIDS, TB and Malaria by 2030. The Catalytic Framework adopted by ministers of health provides a roadmap to achieve this. Now we have the task of proper implementation, said Ambassador Olawale Maiyegun, director for social affairs of the African Union Commission.
The Catalytic Framework provides a business model for investing for the impact to end AIDS, TB and Eliminate Malaria in Africa by 2030. The framework focusses on three strategic investment areas, each with clear catalytic actions. These areas are: strengthening health systems; generation and use of evidence for policy and programme interventions; and advocacy and capacity building.
The Framework provides bold and ambitious targets to end the three diseases by 2030. However meeting the Catalytic Framework targets will require significant investment in health.
The world is already witnessing a period of plateauing development partner support against the backdrop of many pressing global priorities. Significant new revenue from domestic sources for Africa to achieve the set targets is a key priority for the continent. Africas long-term development framework, Agenda 2063 commits Member States to overcome the dwindling and unpredictability of development assistance by looking inwards and mobilising internal resources for the promotion of her health.
Africa is already building on the remarkable economic growth, resilient over the previous two decades to fund some of its health programmes.
Africa Scorecard
According to various estimates, countries should spend between $75 and $100 per person on health. It is in this context that the African Union has developed the Africa Scorecard on Domestic Financing for Health as a management tool for governments. The scorecard, adopted by the member states experts, will help with financial planning for the health sector and with monitoring performance. The scorecard that will be prepared annually, includes five indicators that measure progress towards meeting domestic and external health financing commitments.
The accuracy of the data on the scorecard will require countries to update the National Health Accounts regularly. African Heads of State committed in the Maputo Plan of Action (2006) to institutionalise the System of National Health Accounts (NHA). Progress has been slow in implementing this commitment. However, 34 AU Member States have adopted the latest System of Health Accounts (SHA 2011) and begun collecting data annually while an additional 11 AU Member States have signed up.
Health finance
The experts meeting also reviewed an AU commissioned study on Innovative and Domestic Financing for Health. According to the study, while innovative financing can provide a steady, sustainable and equitable way of generating small amounts of additional resources, it is not a panacea for Africas health financing resource challenges. The study points out that innovative health financing can be useful where it is able to create room in the budget for additional spending while not jeopardising the fiscal stability of the economy. Overall, innovative health financing complement traditional government revenue generation and only as a short-term solution to funding needs while governments work to expand the tax base.
The best practices included examples from the Zimbabwe AIDS Levy, Social Health Insurance in Tunisia, Fiscal Space and Innovative Financing Options for Health in Tanzania, Cote d'Ivoire's Debt2Health Debt Swap Agreement, Benins airline levy and concessional borrowing to finance the health sector in Botswana, Swaziland and Lesotho. The meeting further discussed the integration of health considerations by improving the costing, allocation and monitoring of health mitigation measures in Environmental and Social Impact Assessments.
The experts meeting also took the opportunity to discuss the implementation of International Health Regulations in Africa in the context of the increasing public health events and recurrent epidemics on the continent and their huge socio-economic impact. The discussion noted the progress made so far in improving the health security of Africa in general and in particular controlling the Ebola outbreak in West Africa and other disease emergencies on the continent.
The meeting noted the efforts of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) in disease surveillance, detection and response including emergency preparedness, as well as its important role in further supporting Member States in the implementation of the core capacities of the International Health Regulations. The meeting also discussed the African Health Volunteers Corps that will strengthen the Africa CDCs capability to assemble, equip, and mobilise a deployable roster of volunteer medical and public health professionals.
This year, as part of its Madiba Month celebration, Jam Media will share knowledge and skills in PR, marketing and social media with ten SMEs in a free workshop on Monday 18 July from 8am to 10am in Cape Town.
The free workshop will give participants the opportunity to network with other smallish business owners and learn the five biggest and most effective trends that will dominate the SME space over the next 12 months. They will mingle with other like-minded business owners, learn marketing tips and tricks currently trending worldwide and receive personal insight into their business and its strategy.
As space is limited to ten people, please respond to Count Me In! or email az.oc.aidemmaj@ssej.
At a press conference of a UNFC emergency meeting last week in northern Thai city Chiang Mai, Vice Chairman Nai Hongsar told reporters: They [the Burma government] invited us to attend the 21st Century Panglong [Conference]. We are not clear whether all [UNFC] members can attend it. Even if all of us can attend it, will we have the same rights? For example to discuss and make decisions? We want this to be clear.
Dr Zaw Min Oo, of the 21st Century Panglong Preparatory Committee, reportedly has stated that all of the groups can attend the conference and submit their views but only those that signed nationwide ceasefire agreement (NCA) last October are allowed to vote on decisions.
Zaw Min Oo formerly with the Myanmar Peace centre is now part of the committee transforming it into the National Reconciliation and Peace Centre (NRPC) in Nay Pyi Taw. The former Myanmar Peace centre in Yangon will be maintained as a second NRPC office.
The NCA, which was introduced by the former Thein Sein government, has been strongly criticised for including some groups while excluding others. Mainly those that started fighting with the Burma Army after reforms were started.
Only eight of the fifteen groups that were invited signed the NCA. Of the seven that didnt all are UNFC members that refused to sign mainly because the Taang National Liberation Army/ Palaung State Liberation Front, Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army and Arakan Army (AA) were excluded.
There are twenty-one non-state armed groups in the country. Of the thirteen that didn't join the NCA, nine are UNFC members.
UNFC members that will meet Aung San Suu Kyi are: Lt. Gen NBan La; Kachin Independence Organisation; Nai Htaw Mon, chairman of New Mon State Party; Abel Tweed, chairman of Karenni National Progress Party, Maj.Gen. Say Htin, patron of Shan State Progress Party.
Reporting by MNA
Translated by Thida Linn
Edited by BNI staff
A Timeline Of Princess Charlotte's Fashionably Royal Appearances Fashion Debanjali Halder
Born on May 2nd 2015, Princess Charlotte Elizabeth Diana is the great-granddaughter of the Queen of England and the second born child of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. She is also a fashion icon in her own right at 1 year of age.
Following the footsteps of her stylish mother and adorable elder brother Prince George, the Princess seems to have made all the parents across the globe look up to her for fashion inspiration to dress their children up. Though the Princess has made less than a dozen appearances, she seems to have had an impact on the masses.
Princess Charlotte is the epitome of cuteness and toddler fashion too. The media and people wait for the Duke and Duchess to make an appearance with their adorably fashionable children.
So today we made a timeline of Princess Charlotte's appearances and stylish outfits ever since her birth.
First Glimpse Of The Princess The Duke and the Duchess gave the world its first glimpse of the new-born princess a few hours after her birth on the same day. The Princess was wrapped in a white knit blanket and wore a cream coloured woolen cap. Prince George With Princess Charlotte These images were taken by their mother, Kate Middleton at their home. The Princess is seen wearing a Irulea knit sweater teamed up with a ruffle neck top. Princess Charlotte Christening The next time we got to see the Princess was at her christening where she wore the historic honiton lace gown. The princess was seventh in line to wear this beautiful lace gown that was passed down within the family. The Princess' First Christmas The Princess donned a floral dress with a frilly white collar which was from a Spanish brand that makes handmade outfits for children. The dress was teamed up with a frilly knit cardigan. This was also around the time she turned 6 months old. First Overseas Trip The royal family visited the French Alps and went skiing on this trip when the Princess was 10 months old. The Princess was dressed in John Lewis baby wadded snowsuit teamed up with a Cashmere baby hat in pink and baby booties in the same shade of pink. Queen's 90th Birthday The Princess was the youngest in the portrait and was seated on her Great Grandmother's lap. She wore a printed dress similar to the one from her 6-month portrait and looked adorable, to say the least. She also wore a pretty pink bow and white shoes. 1st Birthday Outfit Kensington Palace released images of Princess Charlotte the day before her birthday where she was pictured in a pink liberty print dress and a knit cardigan, pushing an alaphabet blocks walker. Her second outfit was a blue dress teamed with a cream coloured cardigan with blue accessories. First Event The family was seen at Houghton Horse Trials over a month ago and it also happened to be Princess Charlotte's first event. The Princess was dressed in a blue outfit and a blue cardigan with a cute little blue bow. Balcony Debut Outfit Princess was seen for the first time on the iconic balcony along with her extended family for Troping the Colour event. The Princess wore a pretty smocked frock along with a pink bow and pink leather shoes.
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Traffic at Cork Airport increased by 19.1% in June 2016 compared with the same month last year, latest figures released by the Irish Aviation Authority (IAA) show.
It represents the biggest monthly increase of any Irish airport for the month.
Enda Kenny has admitted official figures for the Irish economy are inaccurate.
As experts lined up to dismiss a claimed 26% spurt in the economy last year, the Taoiseach said the numbers can be exaggerated.
"They don't reflect accurately what is happening in the Irish economy," he told the Dail.
But he said the latest Central Statistics Office figures were unprecedented and down to a number of "exceptional" factors during 2015.
Critics say a better system for gauging the economy is needed to allow the government to best plan how it spends public money and imposes taxes.
Nobel prize-winning economist Paul Krugman has branded the latest official Irish figures as "leprechaun economics".
Concerns have also been raised about Ireland's international reputation regarding widely-derided official figures.
Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin said the official economic growth rate does not reflect what is happening to real people around the country.
"Nobody believes the figures," he said.
The "absolutely farcical" nature of the figures are also "damaging Ireland's international reputation", Mr Martin told the Dail.
Citing comparisons to Soviet Russia and China, Mr Martin called for a new system to be devised that better reflected what is actually happening in the country.
Mr Kenny said the relocation of multinationals to Ireland, aircraft leasing and developments in the manufacturing sector last year skewed the latest figures.
But he insisted a growth in jobs, rising consumer spending and taxes "confirm a strong recovery rooted in the domestic economy here in Ireland".
A major recruitment firm here has said it is seeing more inquiries from UK jobseekers in the wake of the Brexit vote.
Moran McKinley also said it expected recruitment demands in the coming months from international firms relocating to Ireland to have a 'landing point' within the EU.
One third of parents get into debt preparing their children to return to school.
The annual Credit Union Back to School Costs survey reveals that two thirds of parents say the costs negatively impact on household bills and family plans.
Although spending on books and uniforms is down, voluntary contributions and the cost of school trips are up.
Extra-curricular activities are the highest spend, showing a significant increase from 133 in 2015 to 185 this year.
The survey found it costs on average of 967 to send a child back to primary school and 1,474 for secondary school, with more than one in 10 parents cutting food bills in order to cover the costs.
The credit union research also found escalating price tags are run up on new uniforms and gym gear at an average of 257 a child, the so-called voluntary contribution to the school at about 113 and books at 145.
The most expensive items on the list were uniforms for secondary school children at an average of 234.
On average, parents borrowed 357, down slightly from last year by 3. And 14% of the mothers and fathers in debt over back-to-school costs said they have used a moneylender at one time to get the cash.
The survey of 1,000 adults in June also examined the knock-on effect, with two thirds of parents saying they sacrifice a family holiday to meet the costs.
CEO of Dundrum Credit Union in Dublin Gerry McConville advised parents to avoid moneylenders and to shop around for uniforms and other school necessities.
Opposition TD Mick Wallace has alleged a former Nama portfolio manager used "insider knowledge" to help a "vulture fund" he held a 30% stake in to buy An Garda Siochana's Dublin headquarters from the State body, writes Fiachra O Cionnaith Political Reporter.
The claim was last night strongly disputed by the firm involved, which said the allegations were "ill-informed, inaccurate and without foundation".
Speaking during the latest leaders questions debate yesterday, Independents4Change TD Mr Wallace told Taoiseach Enda Kenny he must open an investigation into the Nama claims.
Using Dail privilege, the Wexford TD said he has been informed a "big player" in Nama was central to the sale of the gardai's Harcourt Street headquarters to investment fund Hibernia REIT.
Mr Wallace said the "vulture fund" was set up by a former Nama portfolio manager, and alleged this individual had moved his 30% shareholding in the firm to an offshore trust when he joined the State body.
Between 2009 and 2012, when he worked at Nama, the Wexford TD said this person used "insider knowledge" to help the company purchase a number of properties, including the controversial sale of the Harcourt Street garda site.
"The majority of people in Ireland think it [Nama] is rotten to the core," he said.
In a statement last night, Hibernia REIT said the claims were "without foundation" and hit out at Mr Wallace's use of Dail privilege to detail the situation.
"Hibernia REIT did not purchase Harcourt Square from Nama. Harcourt Square was sold by Nama to Starwood Capital in 2013, as part of a large portfolio of assets called Project Aspen.
"Hibernia acquired the property from Starwood Capital in February 2015," it said.
However, before the statement was released, Taoiseach Enda Kenny said any allegations should be brought to the immediate attention of the gardai, adding: "A lot of rumour is going around, a lot of speculation, a lot of allegations."
In separate claims during the same Dail debate, Mr Wallace also outlined "back handers" involving Nama deals.
He said it has been more than a year since he gave the name of an individual to gardai who the TD claimed had handed over 15,000 in a bag to ensure favourable treatment from the property body, a position Mr Kenny said is a matter for the gardai.
Let Me Tell You is a new bespoke podcast series from
Hosts Daniel McConnell and Paul Hosford take a look back at some of the most dramatic moments in recent Irish political history from the unique perspective of one of the key players involved.
By Audrey Ellard Walsh
Update 12.11pm: A spokesperson for the Garda Siochana confirmed that the cause of a fire at a Mallow school last night "would not appear to be suspicious."
"A technical examination will establish whether any criminality occurred."
Earlier:
A secondary school in north Cork has been left badly damaged following a serious fire which erupted in the early hours of this morning.
Five units of Cork City and County Fire Services worked through the night to control the blaze at Mallow's Patrician Academy, which engulfed the local secondary school from about 3am.
Fire brigades from the city, Mallow, Charleville and Kanturk stations responded to the dramatic fire, battling for hours to bring the flames under control.
Video of intense nature of the Patricia Academy Fire in #Mallow Last Night pic.twitter.com/RaUyxbwwwe Patrick Hogan (@CorkBizPatrick) July 13, 2016
It is understood that an older section of the school was not affected by the fire, but that an extension built in the 1990s was heavily damaged.
The boys secondary school, which dates back to the 1880s, is located on Fair Street in the town, close to many residential properties.
Residents were woken by the sound of the blaze and by emergency services who worked to evacuate properties close to the fire.
A view of last night's fire. Picture: Giedre Klovaite
Michael Sullivan, a resident of Courtview, New Road, was one of the first to wake and described the scene as horrifying to watch.
Fair Street remained closed until late morning between the New Road junction and the Lisseen Road junction following the incident.
Flashpoint Orange Order parades marking the Twelfth of July across Belfast have passed off virtually without incident.
Marches near Catholic churches in the east and city centre were largely uneventful while the most volatile sectarian interface at the nationalist Ardoyne remained calm amid claims a deal to end the long-running dispute had been close.
However, several families near the staunchly loyalist Shankill Road were left facing homelessness after their properties were burned beside an Eleventh Night bonfire marking the start of festivities on Monday. And a normally liberal Ulster Unionist MP apologised after tweeting a photograph of him standing in front of a bonfire with the Irish flag on top.
The huge bonfire in Shankill Road. Picture: PA
The vast majority of the 600 parades on the Twelfth commemorating the anniversary of King William III's victory over James II at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690 are free of trouble each year.
But the threat of disorder at a small number of sectarian junctions between Catholic and Protestant residents always has the potential to mar the day.
More than 3,000 police officers were on duty but the situation remained peaceful and low key.
During recent Twelfths, police have come under attack at a temporary barrier on the Woodvale Road as they prevented three Orange lodges and their supporters from reaching Ardoyne.
In recent days a deal between the Orange Order and residents fell through but community workers on both sides of the divide have expressed hope the work can be salvaged.
This year, in what was apparently a pre-planned move, only a dozen members of one of the lodges approached the barrier, with a small number of supporters watching on.
After handing a letter of protest to the police officer co-ordinating the operation, they stood with their backs to the railings for over an hour before dispersing.
The intention was for the other two lodges to also walk to the barricade, but they did not arrive because a timing issue meant they missed a deadline set by the Parades Commission for loyal order members to leave.
Afterwards there was a minor incident on the nearby Crumlin Road when loyalist and nationalist youths shouted abuse at each other but police moved in swiftly to prevent trouble. Republicans tried to set fire to Union flags while some children threw a couple of bottles at police.
The main Belfast parade, the longest, had passed St Patrick's Catholic Church on Donegall Street without major incident. There has been a long-running confrontation between bandsmen and residents over songs played outside and tight restrictions were imposed.
Bands were told to only play a single drumbeat near the church, and most abided by the Parades Commission ruling.
Later a stand-off developed at Ardoyne between around 200 loyalists and republicans after the parade had passed without incident.
Riot police moved in among members of the republican crowd. The road was later reopened and the police operation stepped down.
The Unite trade union today announced that workers at Waterford Regional Airport will take indefinite strike action from next Wednesday.
The strike will comprise full withdrawal of labour and placing of pickets, and will be of indefinite duration.
US president Barack Obama has met elected officials, law enforcement leaders and members of the Black Lives Matter movement with the goal of getting them to work together to curb violence and build trust.
Mr Obama has devoted much of the week to the issue of violence by and against police, days after a black Army veteran killed five officers in Dallas, Texas, in revenge for the police shooting of black men in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and the Minneapolis suburbs.
On Tuesday the president attended a memorial service for the five Dallas officers and called the families of Alton Sterling in Louisiana and Philando Castile in Minnesota to offer condolences.
On Monday, Mr Obama and vice president Joe Biden met police officers at the White House and Wednesday's session, which lasted more than two hours, was expanded to include mayors, academics and civil rights activists, including some from the Black Lives Matter movement, which has focused on police shootings of African-Americans.
"We'll share solutions from communities that have already found ways to build trust and reduce disparities," Mr Obama said on Facebook.
"Going forward, I want to hear ideas from even more Americans about how we can address these challenges together as one nation. That means you."
He called on people to submit their stories and ideas to go.wh.gov/VDPvKz
White House spokesman Josh Earnest said there would be law enforcement officers in the room who were deeply troubled by Black Lives Matter activists. But he reiterated that Mr Obama has cautioned against judging any one group by the actions of some members.
"Resisting that impulse and keeping open our hearts will be necessary to make some progress on this challenge," Mr Earnest said.
Those attending the meeting included Louisiana governor John Bel Edwards and mayor of St Paul, Minnesota, Chris Coleman , the two locations where police shootings sparked protests around the country.
Also on the list were Mica Grimm, with Black Lives Matter Minnesota, and DeRay Mckesson, who was arrested on Saturday in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on a charge of obstructing a highway.
Police said Mr Mckesson "intentionally" placed himself in the road after protesters were repeatedly warned to remain on private property or the kerb. Mr Mckesson was released from jail on Sunday. The Rev Al Sharpton also attended.
Mr Biden told CNN after Monday's meeting that a couple of the police groups criticised the president while others told him he was "doing it just right" with his comments.
He did not offer detail about the complaints, but said Mr Obama stressed how he had repeatedly voiced support for law enforcement and offered to send critics a list of when he had done so.
Mr Biden said Mr Obama asked the police officials at the meeting: "Fellas, what do you think I'm not doing? What have you not heard me say?"
Mr Biden also said some of the police groups voiced concerns for the safety of their members.
"It's the first time I've ever heard police organisations say, 'My guys are frightened'," Mr Biden said.
Egyptian authorities have been accused of using abductions, torture and other shocking tactics as a tool to stifle dissent.
Amnesty International urged the Egyptian president to acknowledge and investigate serious human rights violations.
But Egypt's Foreign Ministry hit back at Amnesty, saying the group was "biased" and that it seeks to "tarnish Egypt's image".
The exchange came as Amnesty released a new report that says there has been an "unprecedented spike" in enforced disappearances since early 2015 in Egypt under the pretext of fighting terrorism.
International human rights law defines enforced disappearance as the secret abduction or imprisonment of a person, followed by the state's refusal to acknowledge that person's fate.
Amnesty's report entitled 'Egypt: Officially, You Do Not Exist' documents 17 cases that the London-based group says reveal "the shocking and ruthless tactics" of the Egyptian authorities to crack down on government opponents.
Rape, electric shocks and arrests of other family members were also used to force victims to give false confessions, it said.
Victims range from political activists to children as young as 14, the group said, adding that its report is based on more than 70 interviews with lawyers, non-government organisations, released detainees and family members of victims of torture and enforced disappearance.
Philip Luther, director of the Middle East and North Africa Programme at Amnesty International, said that "the report exposes not only the brutality faced by those disappeared but also the collusion between national security forces and judicial authorities, who have been prepared to lie to cover their tracks or failed to investigate torture allegations, making them complicit in serious human rights violations".
Egypt's Foreign Ministry rejected the report, saying in a statement that Amnesty is "biased, politicised and has special interest in tarnishing Egypt's image".
The ministry also said that the group depends on one-sided sources of information and on those who are in a state of "animosity toward the Egyptian state".
Mr Luther noted that Egyptian authorities "have repeatedly denied that enforced disappearances exist in the country".
After abductions, security authorities use torture to extract confessions, in sessions that last up to seven hours, Amnesty said.
The report refers to a case of a 14-year-old boy whose name is provided by Amnesty, describing it as one of the most shocking cases of torture. It recounted the repeated rape and abuse of the teenager, which Amnesty said was intended to extract confessions.
The boy was among five children whose cases Amnesty documented in the report.
Mr Luther urged Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sissi to "order all state security agencies to stop enforced disappearances, torture and other forms of ill-treatment and make clear that anyone who orders, commits or is complicit in such violations will be brought to justice".
Police abuses were among the complaints that fuelled the 2011 uprising that ousted autocrat Hosni Mubarak. His elected successor, Islamist Mohammad Morsi, was removed by the military in 2013 after massive protests against Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood. Then military chief El-Sissi was subsequently elected president in a landslide.
Since Morsi's removal, authorities have cracked down heavily on pro-democracy advocates, as well as Islamist supporters of Morsi.
Egypt's prisons and detention centres are packed with political opponents, and courts have issued heavy prison sentences, often with little evidence or due process. Prosecutors have vigorously applied vague charges such as endangering security or stability, while turning a blind eye to police abuses ranging from torture and forced disappearances to long detentions without charge.
Official records put the number of arrests at over 30,000 from 2013 to 2015. Hundreds more are held facing the death sentence, including Morsi, his supporters and leaders of the Brotherhood, which Mr El-Sissi's government has declared a terrorist organisation.
Some rights groups estimate that as many as 60,000 people have been detained for political reasons in Egypt since July 2013, according to Amnesty.
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The Canberra Liberals have promised a much expanded city loop bus service that goes further than the new government route, including the museum and the Parliamentary Triangle.
The government began its own free city loop bus on July 4, but the Liberals say the route is too narrow, covering only the inner city, an area quite easily traversed on foot.
The government began its own free city loop bus on July 4. Credit:Jeffrey Chan
Liberals transport spokesman Alistair Coe said his plan was for a bus every 20 minutes, seven days a week, rather than the government's five days, and taking in the National Museum, the university and the War Memorial, as well as Parliament House.
"The city loop is not meeting the government's nor community expectations, primarily because of the route that they've chosen," Mr Coe said. "Many people that have seen the service would have noticed that the buses are mostly empty."
A Canberra man has been arrested and stopped from flying to Britain where police say he allegedly planned to sexually abuse children.
The 35-year-old man was arrested at Sydney International Airport on Tuesday night after INTERPOL tipped off the Australian Federal Police child protection unit and it began investigating him.
He was charged with several offences, including two changes of planning to have sex with a child outside Australia and one charge of possessing child pornography.
The offences carry a maximum 15-year jail term.
The Canberra man was due to face court in Sydney on Wednesday afternoon.
While The Hague tribunal has made it clear that China is mounting a dangerous provocation in the South China Sea, it is also clear that countries including Australia and the US risk escalating that provocation by asserting the right of passage through or over the disputed waters with military aircraft or warships. When will nations recognise the folly of such gunboat diplomacy, especially resonant with Chinese history? Murray Scott Heathcote Australians, we are hypocrites. We are assuming the moral high ground over China's maritime claims in the South China Sea despite Australia withdrawing in 2002 from compulsory jurisdiction by international courts in relation to maritime borders. We did so to protect our oil interests off East Timor. Len Richardson Hawkes Nest
Alarm bells should be ringing loudly in the Australian Parliament with the Chinese ignoring the ruling by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague regarding the South China Sea, and then going on to indicate that its armed forces will defend its sovereignty and maritime interests. Australia's huge gas resource is mostly sold internationally by foreign corporations. There are also massive shale oil reserves, most of which is controlled by multinational corporations that refuse to process them. These arrangements leave Australia vulnerable to serious disruption of the majority of our fuel supplies which travel through these troubled sea lanes. It is incumbent on the federal government to establish policies that ensure Australia's fuel supplies are secure and self-sufficient as the obvious creeping expansionism by China within the South China Sea occurs. It will be too late to establish appropriate secure and self-sufficient fuel policies when our fuel supplies are cut off and the country is in a state of chaos. Keith Askew Hornsby Heights If the Chinese government lays historical claim to the South China Sea, then it will presumably concede the historical claims of its Tibetan and Uighur populations for independence from China?
Rod Matthews Fairfield (Vic) As new parliament assembles, policy challenges loom Now that the dust is settling and we come to terms with the composition of the new parliament, perhaps we should reflect on what we have just achieved. We will now get the NBN a year or so earlier than if we had elected the ALP. If we believe the experts, the cost will be comparable, but the multi-technology version will be out of date and overloaded in a few years a severe constraint on Australian business and especially on rural communities. We have abandoned the Gonski funding and are probably facing further cuts to the education budget at all levels, reducing the skills available in the future workforce and thus our ability to innovate and compete. The coal industry will continue to receive generous subsidies and the Barrier Reef will continue its death by a thousand bleaches. While the wholesale privatisation of Medicare is clearly off the table, we can expect rebate freezes which will hit the most vulnerable the hardest, as will any tightening of the welfare budget. On the positive side, we will have gradual cuts in company tax, which should increase GDP by about one per cent over 10 years, an insignificant improvement.
Meanwhile the deficit continues to grow. Nobody believes either major party on this issue and most thinking economists agree that the systemic cause is the Howard tax cuts and the other vote-buying measures of 2007 (all endorsed by Labor). Neither side has the will to tackle this, so Labor vacillates and the Coalition hits the most vulnerable. Perhaps worst of all, there are still hundreds of genuine refugees and asylum seekers marooned illegally on Nauru and Manus Island, in conditions that the government does not want us to see. After this election, Australia is still an international pariah when it comes to human rights. George Rosier Carlingford Good urban design allows trees to grow Kathryn Wicks' argument seems to be that just because public transport investment is substandard across Sydney, eastern suburbs residents should be grateful that they have it so good ("Keep your trees, we'll take the tram", July 13). This is even though the new light rail project has been badly mismanaged from the start and has been designed to focus on maximising profits for developers and the private sector partners at the expense of valued community assets.
As a former long-term resident of Randwick, I am not saying that light rail is a bad idea it is an investment that is decades overdue. But Wicks seems to assume that effective transportation planning and good urban design that protects local heritage and ecological assets are somehow mutually exclusive. This is an incorrect assumption that masks the real issues at stake. The problem is not one of ungrateful local residents it is the relentless pursuit of a profit-driven and unnecessarily destructive and wasteful urban governance model by a state executive that remains unaccountable. And that should be of concern to all residents of the city. Chris Brown Molong Kathryn Wicks seems to have fallen into the same mindset as the Baird government that you can't have infrastructure and save the environment. Mature trees were destroyed in Alison Road, not so a tram line could be built, but so a hotel could be built on the racecourse. Baird's headlong rush to build infrastructure has blinded him so much he can't see the trees. You can have both.
Geoff Wannan Dawes Point Windfall in wrong direction I was under the impression that Mike Baird was a good economic manager but after the report "Clubs get a $13.5b pokie tax windfall," (July 13) obviously he is not. Rather than give the clubs millions to expand, think of what this money should have been used for: improve public schools, upgrade hospitals, build more public housing and improve the lives of the homeless, rather than give the clubs a tax break. Mr Baird represents the voters of NSW, not the club industry. Robert Pallister Punchbowl Clubs NSW's assessment of their social benefit seems to be at odds with the independent assessment published by the Productivity Commission a few years back. In defending their favourable tax regime, Clubs NSW made the claim that they made "an annual social contribution of $1.2 billion to our community as well as an annual economic contribution of $3.2 billion". In stark contrast, the Australian government's own Productivity Commission report into gambling in 2010 asserted that the "social cost of problem gambling is around $4.7 billion a year ... For every problem gambler up to 10 more people suffer". There is no social benefit from robbing the disadvantaged because we all pay one way or the other for their misery.
Chris Andrew Turramurra Gender irrelevant Steve Barrett (Letters, July 13), in tones of apprehension, rushes to compare Theresa May with Margaret Thatcher, rather than any of the numerous other, more recent British prime ministers, in response to an article that didn't mention Thatcher with regards to policy. He appears to see both leaders as females first, and politicians second. Thea Gumbert-Jourjon Alexandria Behind the times
Ben Aveling (Letters, July 12) warns against electronic voting on the grounds that it will be hacked within three years. But encryption algorithms, which underpin secure online voting, are based on exactly that premise that it will take years to crack the encryptions and hence the codes are changed hourly or even by the minute. He hopes that electronic voting won't eventuate at Australian elections. Too late. NSW already uses iVote online voting for state elections and it is a great success. John Edwards Ryde Hitting a sour note ABC Classic FM, since its birth in 1975, has developed into one of this country's most valuable and beneficial cultural assets, and its excellence has inspired countless present and past artists and music lovers here and abroad (Letters, July 13). What's more, its unique dissemination of fine music throughout Australia, and more recently overseas, due to the miracle of the digital age, has been the envy of many larger countries. While music itself remains its raison d'etre, input from its roster of charismatic and knowledgeable presenters has made the ABC's Classic FM network one of the finest in the world. Without those components, its attraction and eminence would lessen. Any such move is surely motivated by ill-informed and short-sighted policy. Classic FM's excellent presentersshould be valued by management and politicians.
Patrick Thomas Wahroonga Rudd doesn't deserve attacks In response to Mokhles Sidden (Letters, July 13), Kevin Rudd undoubtedly had his faults as has every prime minister before and since. But we know that he worked himself harder than any in attempting to obtain action on climate change both here and at the Copenhagen Summit, to have a proper return for the Australian people for their resources and on taxation reform in general. His sincerity on social issues such as Indigenous affairs, compassion for the unfortunate, often unpublicised, cannot be doubted as was his desire for improved education and health systems. All prime ministers face personal denigration and that on Julia Gillard was outrageous but they pale into insignificance against the continuing, often vicious attacks on Rudd. Brian Milton Avalon Cranes search for sanctuary
How wonderful that the new Parramatta Square has, for the moment, cranes dotting the skyline as they fly off in search of a sanctuary with fewer great buildings and less contrived, urban spaces. ("It's Parramatta's time to shine", July 13). Sometimes less development achieves a more satisfactory answer, one that can work as well for the high fliers, as for those with their feet on the ground. Joy Cooksey Harrington With the loss of greyhound racing (Letters, July 13) another colourful term is likely to disappear from our language. And if 'dish lickers' goes, can 'chaff bandits' and the 'red hots' be far behind?Garth Clarke North Sydney Dubious school funding When is some brave politician going to stand up and demand that governments stop funding private schools with dubious religious affiliations ("Schools linked to Scientology reap funding," July 13)? When are we going to demand a proper screening of organisations wanting to establish private schools and receive public monies.We have already had the corruption of some of the private colleges' exposed in your paper. It's time for a closer look at just which organisations are running private schools and how much taxpayers are funding them.
Roseanne Bonney Leichhardt An old excuse When bear baiting was banned in England in 1835, the papers of the day carried the line that interfering with a man's leisure was tyranny. Sound familiar? Joe Weller Lewisham Cold, hairy situation
Mr Shorten described Mr Georganas - who held the seat for Labor between 2004 and 2013 - as a "fighter" and the type of candidate who "makes politics worthwhile".
Candidate Steve Georganas declared victory over the Liberals' Matt Williams as he prepared for a street walk with Opposition Leader Bill Shorten in the western Adelaide seat on Wednesday morning.
Labor has claimed victory in the South Australian seat of Hindmarsh , giving it 68 seats and leaving only one - Herbert in north Queensland - in the "too close to call" pile.
"Character is not necessarily tested on the good days, it's tested on the hard days, and it's your ability to get up and try again," the Labor leader said.
Hindmarsh Labour candidate Steve Georganas.
"Steve Georganas has seen success in this seat and he's seen disappointment. Today he's enjoying some well-earned success."
Mr Georganas said it was a privilege to have been re-elected to represent the seat in which he worked and was born. He said victory was always appreciated when it came by a thin margin (in 2004 he won by just 108 votes).
Hindmarsh was one of two remaining seats that had been too close to call on Tuesday night, more than a week after the July 2 election. Mr Georganas was ahead by 582 votes - but with most of the votes still to be counted favouring Labor, he now has it in the bag.
The owner of a private college that allegedly signed up illiterate, disabled students in Aboriginal missions to tens of thousands of dollars worth of debt transferred $22 million to his family's account in one day, the federal court has heard.
Amarjit Singh, the owner of Unique International College in Granville, told the court he was "giving the gift" of education to the 3600 students the college signed up between 2014 and 2015.
Unique International College - owned by Sydney businessman Amarjit Singh - is one of four providers the ACCC is taking to the Federal Court for alleged consumer law breaches. Credit:Janie Barrett
But the court heard that 3138 students, some of whom were allegedly induced through free laptops, never completed a single unit of any of the college's management or marketing courses, costing taxpayers more than $47 million in VET FEE Help student loans.
In his defence, Mr Singh said that a transfer from one online learning management system to another was the reason for the limited contact with students.
A breakdown of the health checks for Queensland's 5500 coal miners was identified in a report into black lung disease by Monash University handed down on Wednesday.
"It is clear the focus of the respiratory component of the scheme is on fitness for work, rather than the detection and management of coal miners' black lung disease," the report states.
There are now 11 confirmed cases of potentially fatal, coal miner's "black lung" disease after the disease had been eradicated from Queensland.
At the report's release in Brisbane politicians, miners, radiographers and mining unions all agreed a slew of problems had been unearthed by the review.
The key to boosting Queensland's economic future could be an industry sitting right under its nose.
Speaking at a Committee for Economic Development of Australia lunch, Communities Minister Shannon Fentiman said the communities sector, combined with investing in human capital, had the ability to boost revenue and grow the economy, but had been largely ignored as a growth industry by successive governments.
Communities Minister Shannon Fentiman said the communities sector, combined with investing in human capital, had the ability to boost revenue. Credit:Chris Hyde
Until, she said, now.
"A decline in manufacturing, cyclical downturns and a workforce reliant on casual employment poses a great challenge to Queensland's economic future, as well as the promise of a fairer and more equal society," she said.
The equivalent of 2491 people are keeping Queenslanders safe from fires.
That's 40 more personnel than 2015 and 150 more than 2012.
Firefighter numbers have increased since last year but the union says more are needed. Credit:File/Queensland Fire and Emergency
But United Firefighters Union state secretary John Oliver said while the increase was encouraging, it was only the start of what was needed.
"In the last budget that came through money was made available for 44 additional firefighters," he said.
An East Brisbane property owner has hit back at Lord Mayor Graham Quirk over the demolition of a pre-1946 home, claiming he was the victim of bullying by Brisbane City Council.
On Tuesday, Cr Quirk vowed to pursue Duncan Bourne through the courts over the demolition, which he said was done illegally.
Brisbane City Council alleges the character home at 10 Stafford Street, East Brisbane, was demolished. Credit:Google Street View
But Mr Bourne on Wednesday said he would not take that lying down and maintained he had done the right thing.
"I've never demolished a place before in my life and I would have tried to renovate it if we could have saved it," he said.
Apple is in preliminary talks to buy Tidal, the music-streaming service largely owned by musician Jay Z, the Wall Street Journal reported recently, citing unidentified people familiar with the discussions.
The newspaper said the talks may not result in a deal. Representatives of Apple and Tidal declined to comment on the report.
Jay Z and Beyonce: Hubby set to sell his $74 million streaming service? Credit:Getty Images
If it goes ahead, however, some industry observers see it as a worrying decline in the competitive vigour of the music streaming sector.
Acquiring the smaller competitor might give Apple access to exclusive music from high-profile artists ranging from Beyonce to Rihanna, and help attract subscribers to its own service.
One of Victoria's top private schools has been accused by a whistleblower of "systematic cheating" after it granted students an extra year to complete the high stakes International Baccalaureate, an alternative to the VCE.
The schools regulator, the Victorian Registration and Qualifications Authority, investigated Carey Baptist Grammar School in March after a whistleblower raised concerns about the school's conduct.
It was alleged that Carey students were given an unfair advantage over those undertaking the IB and VCE at other schools.
In a letter to the watchdog the whistleblower said: "I am writing to inform you of systematic cheating by an independent Victorian school ... Carey Baptist Grammar School has been allowing its students to complete the IB diploma program over three years."
Security at Matthew Guy's electorate office has been beefed up after a man with possible links to a far-right organisation trashed the room. The incident, which happened in May, was one of several serious threats believed to have been directed at the Opposition Leader. Matthew Guy: predictably wants to get tough on crime. Credit:Ken Irwin It is understood the man demanded a meeting with Mr Guy. After being told by shaken staff that he was not there, the furious man smashed up the entrance to the office and put his fist through a glass door. He then ripped the door off its hinges, before threatening to go on a shooting spree.
Contacted by Fairfax Media about the alleged incident, Mr Guy said he was sad that Australian politics had changed, forcing politicians to take their security more seriously. "All politicians do their job to the best of their ability to talk to as many of their constituents as possible, and it is a shame that real security threats are changing the way politicians do their jobs," Mr Guy said. As a result of the incident, the Department of Parliamentary Services is understood to have taken action to improve security for Mr Guy, including installing CCTV cameras and changing the layout of his Bulleen Plaza electorate office to include an alternative exit for emergency escapes. It is believed the man comes from a far-right group that rails against multiculturalism, among other things. He is understood to have claimed Mr Guy, a vocal supporter of multiculturalism, had betrayed Australia. He is believed to have been arrested and is facing charges in relation to several incidents. Mr Guy's spokeswoman said: "Security issues are taken seriously by all members of Parliament and are dealt with in conjunction with Department of Parliamentary Services to ensure the safety of staff and members of Parliament."
Perth lawnmower shop owner Craig Alford has driven around Australia on - you guessed it - a lawnmower.
He mowed into Elizabeth Quay on Wednesday afternoon, as he finished his almost 15,000 km journey, which was all in an effort for charity.
"I just really wanted to make a difference," he said.
I'm fortunate to be in a position where I'm healthy enough I can do things, so to be able to do something for someone else makes it great."
Prominent Perth child psychiatrist Aaron Voon faces fresh child pornography charges in relation to another alleged offence, this time in New Zealand.
Canadian police first arrested Dr Voon in May after he allegedly filmed a boy in a public toilet.
He was granted bail to fly home on June 9 but was arrested on arrival over electronics Australian detectives had in the meantime seized from his clinic and home.
They allege these contained more than 400 pictures and 12 videos of young boys urinating in public toilets.
Latest News Westpac predicts another RBA double hike If it is correct, an average borrower with a $500k loan could be paying an additional $800 a month, expert says
Properties listed for sale in Australia down significantly Just two capital cities have experienced spring growth, says PropTrack
A Sydney-based chiropractor is helping mortgage brokers fight back against the big advertising dollars of the big banks.Dr Steven Lockstone, founder of chiropractic network HealthPros, has launched a crowd-funded marketing campaign for mortgage brokers, which allows brokers to pool their resources to run a national marketing campaign.I thought about it like this: you can buy shares in a company or shares in a boat; why not buy shares in an advertising campaign? Dr Lockstone told Australian Broker.The initiative works like this: there are 100 equal shares in the marketing campaign which will cost a broker $1,500 a month for three months which Lockstone said is much more cost effective than an AdWords campaign which can cost up to $55 per click, or a one-off local newspaper advertisement which could cost up to $2,000.The more shares a broker buyers in the campaign, the more kick-back from the campaign the broker will receive. For example, if a broker purchases 20% of the shares in the campaign, then visitors will land on their website 20% of the time.Lockstone said it will also appear to the consumer that the individual broker is the one running the campaign. He explained that prospective clients who respond to the advertising will be sent directly to the brokers own website, rather than an external landing page, so it will look as if they are running the advertising campaign themselves.He told Australian Broker he is offering this to mortgage brokers after a successful campaign in the chiropractic industry which battles the same David and Goliath story.I was frustrated as a chiropractor with the inability of individual chiropractors to compete against the pharmaceutical companies for patients with back pain.I put together a network of chiropractors and we ran a campaign in September last year. We got 130 chiropractors across Australia together and we ran a national marketing campaign for a month.We were running display adverts online across the News Corp network and we managed to get the Australian Medical Association complaining that chiropractors are now advertising in mainstream media.Due to its success, he said he is about the launch part two of the campaign for chiropractors, which will involve an extensive PR push.It will involve reaching out to the media to push articles about the benefits of chiropractic and get as much exposure and media as possible, he told Australian Broker. He will do the same with mortgage brokers if part one of the campaign the digital advertising goes well.My intention [with mortgage brokers] is to run a three-month campaign and if we get a successful outcome then there will be an on-going nine-month campaign on the back of it. It will start in Sydney Metro and then we will expand it out into other states, he said.We chose mortgage broking because the principal it is based on is the story of David and Goliath the big guys versus the little guys. I see a real trend in Australia with the big bad banks versus the little guys.The majority of mortgage brokers are independent and non-affiliated, so I thought that if an independent mortgage broker could have a voice and have access to the public, then everybody else can access the service and relationship that individual mortgage brokers have with their clients that creates them business, he said.The campaign is titled ReduceTheMortgage.com.au.
Latest News Westpac predicts another RBA double hike If it is correct, an average borrower with a $500k loan could be paying an additional $800 a month, expert says
Properties listed for sale in Australia down significantly Just two capital cities have experienced spring growth, says PropTrack
Buyers priced out of certain locales in Melboune may not have to look to far to find something that fits their price range, with figures showing large price discrepancies between neighbouring suburbs in the Victorian capital.Figures released this week by the Real Estate Institute of Victoria (REIV) show that those who shift their buying focus a small distance could stand to save hundreds of thousands of dollars.In inner city Melbourne, the REIV puts South Yarras median house price at $1.7m, however if buyers cross Yarra river into the neighbouring Cremorne they will be presented with a median house price that is $700,000 lower.Moving to the northwest of the city, buyers put off by Essendon and its $1.3m median house price could save just over $500,000 if they turned their attention to the next-door suburb of Pasco Vale South where the median house price currently sits at $791,250.To west of the CBD, those who cant stretch their finances to the $1.26m median price tag carried by houses in West Melbourne may have better luck in the adjacent suburb of Footscray where the median is $791,250.In the east, Mt Waverley carries a hefty median house price of $1.3m, while its neighbour Notting Hill is home to a median house price of $850,000.Along Melbournes coastline, the pair of Mornington ($663,500) and Mount Eliza ($880,000) also has large discrepancies in their median prices.At the more affordable end of the citys market, Melton boasts a median house price of $261,000, more than $60,000 less than that of Melton West and its median price of $322,500.REIV chief executive officer Geoff White said the figures show Melbournes suburbs that may have been considered bridesmaids in the past are now becoming pockets of value.In the past 18 months weve seen significant capital growth in what have always been these neighbouring suburbs. Buyers are increasingly looking for value and these new growth areas continue to offer that as well as first class amenities, White said.The ripple effect is pushing up the price in these suburbs, which remain considerably more affordable than their neighbouring counterparts, he said.For buyers priced out of their chosen area, its worthwhile looking at next-door suburbs which may offer similar lifestyle and amenities without the premium price tag.
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This exhibit is gonna be huge!
One of Donald Trumps former presidential campaign buses is heading for Dumbos Smack Mellon gallery on July 30, but the two people behind the wheel are not supporters of the billionaire Republican they have turned the bus into the countrys biggest, classiest rolling art installation against the candidate. Artists Mary Mihelic and David Gleeson are circling the country on a mission to foster dialogue with Trump supporters and Trump opponents, and both camps are giving the contentious project plenty of attention, they said.
Every time we stop we get people that come up and talk to us both for and against Trump, Gleeson said. Yesterday we were walking back to the bus at a gas station in Tuscon [Arizona] and this bearded hippy motorcycle-looking guy came up and got really close and in my face and said So this is an anti-Trump bus? Well then f you!
Gleeson and Mihelic, who use the artistic name t.Rutt, have painted a period in between the T and R of Trumps name on the side of the bus and changed the painted slogan into Lets Make Fruit Punch Great Again, but many people still mistake the bus for the original thing. Anti-Trump drivers frequently give the pair strong middle fingers while on the highway, and vandals have attacked the bus with eggs, ketchup, and spray paint so many times that they now camouflage the sides of the bus overnight.
But also acts as a magnet for supporters of the New York billionaire who believe they are finding fellow Trump-ers, they said.
If we said we hate Trump wed never talk to any Trump people, Mihelic said. The emotional flip that people have when they realize its anti-Trump, that moment when they change, you realize you can change peoples thinking through art.
Mihelic and Gleeson purchased the bus for $14,000 on Craigslist. The Donalds campaign bought the former bachelor party bus with the stripper pole still installed when the candidate was stumping across Iowa before the Feb. 1 caucuses, then returned it to its previous owners, who sold it on.
The artistic pair have driven the bus to primary election states across the country, performing provocative pieces at each stop, including waterboarding the bus in response to Trumps claims he will reinstate the practice if he makes it to the Oval Office.
We tie it down with cinder blocks and water, put a towel over the front, get on top, and dribble water over it, Gleeson said. As funny as it sounds, its a little off-putting to see the water pouring down like that, because thats what really happens.
The pair hope to meet a welcoming crowd at Smack Mellon at the end of the month. The appearance will be just nine days after the bus rolls Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio assuming the bus makes it out in one piece.
T.RUMP Bus at Smack Mellon [92 Plymouth Street between Main and Washington streets, (718) 8348761, www.smack mello n.org ]. July 30 at noon, July 31 at 3 pm. Free.
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78th Precinct
Park Slope
Meltdown
Some guy went ballistic on the front door of a Second Street day care center on June 26.
The gent was outside the center between Fourth and Fifth avenues at 8 pm, when something snapped and he started swinging, according to police.
The day care ultimately suffered several hundred dollars worth of damage in the form of a broken window before the rampage was over, officials said.
Cell off
Cops are hunting a sticky-fingered phone thief who ripped off a Flatbush Avenue cell store on June 26.
An employee told police that the crook waltzed into the retailer between Prospect Place and Carlton Avenue at 3:45 pm, then snatched a pricey $700 iPhone 6S off the shelf and fled.
Soap-a-dope
A stinky sleaze stole $250 worth of soap from a Ninth Street Pharmacy on June 28.
The foul felon stalked into the store between Fifth and Sixth avenues at 4:35 pm, collected two baskets stuffed with suds, and skipped past the register without paying a dime, cops said.
Mini thief
Cops busted a 14-year-old kid for allegedly snatching a $200 Samsung cell out the hands of a 56-year-old man on Eighth Avenue on June 28.
The victim told police that he was yapping on his phone near Fourth Street at 7:43 pm, when the pint-sized perp allegedly ripped it from his hands and fled.
Do you swipe pina coladas?
Cops arrested two foodies for allegedly treating themselves to a feast using a bogus credit card at a Fifth Avenue eatery on June 30.
A restaurant worker told police the suspects along with another diner who was not apprehended entered the Latin joint between Dean and Bergen streets at 8 pm, then proceeded to gorge themselves on $117 worth of Hennessy, chicken fingers, and pina coladas, before paying with a fraudulent card.
Colin Mixson
Three nursing faculty named to second cohort of Dimitriadis Fellows
The Gregory J. Dimitriadis Research Mentoring Fellows. From left to right: Ellen Volpe, Kafuli Agbemenu, Darryl Somayaji, and Adrian Juarez, assistant professors in the School of Nursing; Lucia A. Leone, assistant professor in the School of Public Health and Health Professions.
Through fellowship, researchers will explore how stress affects health of transgender community, immigrant mothers and people with PTSD
The type of training and support provided through the mentorship make grant funding possible, which makes advancing the science possible.
BUFFALO, N.Y. Three faculty members in the University at Buffalo School of Nursing have been named to the second cohort of the Gregory J. Dimitriadis Research Mentoring Fellows.
The one-year fellowship, which honors the legacy of Gregory Dimitriadis, a professor of educational leadership and policy in the UB Graduate School of Education who died in 2015, provides mentorship support to UB faculty pursuing community-based research that confronts issues of social justice, equity and public policy.
The awards are supported by the Civic Engagement Research Fellowship Program under the Civic Engagement and Public Policy (CEPP) research initiative.
Greg Dimitriadis understood the value of advancing community-based research, listening to people embedded in the topic youre interested in researching, and partnering with them to help address issues of justice, equity and public policy, says Laura Mangan, CEPP coordinator.
Naming the research mentoring fellowship after him has been a small way to pay tribute to his life and work. We think he would be pleased to have such interesting, collaborative research being conducted by this School of Nursing research team, supported by a renowned mentor who will share her expertise with the whole community in September.
The recipients include Ellen Volpe, PhD, Kafuli Agbemenu, PhD, and Adrian Juarez, PhD, assistant professors in the School of Nursing, and all members of the schools Promoting Health and Reducing Risk in Psychiatric Mental Health and Addictions Scholarship Team.
The researchers are collaborating on the joint project, Mentorship in Biomarkers for Stress: Applications in Vulnerable Populations. Each will complete a separate study that aims to understand how stress affects at-risk populations.
The faculty member will receive training and mentorship on how to measure stress using biomarkers such as cortisol, a hormone released during stress that is found in sweat, saliva, hair and urine.
Agbemenu, whose research focuses on reproductive health in African immigrant and refugee populations, will study if the stress of moving to a refugee camp or to a new country can impact pregnancy and lead to premature births. The results will help identify the greatest causes of stress and how it affects the body, and may lead to the creation of interventions. She will partner with the Somali Bantu Community Organization to complete the research.
Juarez, who also received the first CEPP Community-Based Health Disparities Research Fellowship, studies health in the transgender community and HIV disparities. His research will investigate the relationship between high-risk behavior and substance abuse as a coping mechanism for stress, and inform interventions aimed at lowering HIV risk. The research is done in collaboration with the Latino Commission on AIDS, Community Access Services of WNY and Evergreen Health Services.
Volpe, who specializes in health disparities, adolescent mental health and risk behaviors, will examine the effect of psychotherapy on stress in populations experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder. Her findings could help improve treatment outcomes. The study is done in partnership with The Center for Youth.
The researchers will complete the project under the mentorship of Marilyn Sommers, PhD, Lillian S. Brunner Professor of Medical-Surgical Nursing and director of the Center for Global Womens Health in the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing.
The project will culminate in three literature review manuscripts and a grant proposal in the fall for funding to expand research.
The type of training and support provided through the mentorship make grant funding possible, which makes advancing the science possible, says Volpe.
The Dimitriadis Fellowship is one of several fellowships for community-based research that were offered by CEPP. Others are the Civic Engagement Research Fellowship, the Civic Engagement Research Fellowship for Grant Development, the Civic Engagement Research Dissemination Fellowship and the Community Scholar-in-Residence Fellowship.
The fellows in the first cohort of Dimitriadis Research Mentoring Fellows were Darryl Somayaji, assistant professor in the School of Nursing and adjunct assistant professor of cancer prevention and population science at Roswell Park Cancer Institute, and Lucia A. Leone, assistant professor of community health and health behavior in the School of Public Health and Health Professions.
Dimitriadis was a founding member of the CEPP faculty advisory committee, an accomplished scholar and a caring mentor who was dedicated to research, scholarship and social activism.
For more information about the fellowship, contact Mangan at lmangan@buffalo.edu or 645-5376.
Your Colleagues
Humanities Institute names faculty fellows for 2016-17
By BERT GAMBINI
The promise of these projects and the many others that comprised this years pool attests to the health of the humanities at UB. David Castillo, incoming director UB Humanities Institute
UBs Humanities Institute (HI), an internationally noted center for innovative cross-disciplinary research and community programs, has announced the recipients of its 2016-17 faculty fellowships. The fellowships were awarded following a competitive process that provides eight faculty members with a full semester teaching release, allowing them to concentrate on their individual projects. The fellows departments, meantime, are provided with course replacement funds to cover classes while the fellows are on leave. These pioneering HI-funded projects represent but a sample of the original and broadminded research thats the trademark of the humanities, arts and social sciences at UB, says David Castillo, professor of Romance languages and literatures and incoming director of the Humanities Institute. The promise of these projects and the many others that comprised this years pool attests to the health of the humanities at UB. This is HIs eleventh class of recipients. All of the fellows will deliver presentations this academic year as part of HIs free Scholars@Hallwalls series. Castillo notes his predecessor as HI director, history professor Erik Seeman, tells him that this years applicant cycle was the strongest under Seemans leadership. I will certainly keep this in mind the next time I hear about an alleged crisis of the humanities, he says. In addition to HI funding, Jaume Franquesa, assistant professor of anthropology, and Elizabeth Mazzolini, assistant professor of English, will be funded in collaboration with the Office of the Vice President for Research and Economic Development, for they singularly represent the interdisciplinary mission of both HI and OVPRED, according to Castillo. Executive Director Libby Otto and I very much look forward to the vibrant conversations that this scholarly collective will no doubt spark around the UB campus and the Buffalo community at large, Castillo says. This years fellows, and their research projects:
Susan Cahn
Susan Cahn, professor, Department of History
Borderlines of Power: Women and Borderline Personality Disorder
This is a study of borderline personality disorder (BPD) as a historically and socially constructed mental illness in the modern United States. Psychiatric professionals characterize and often disparage BPD as a female illness unresponsive to psychopharmacology or psychotherapy. Cahn argues that the highly volatile borderline has helped stabilize psychiatric knowledge and authority in the face of psychiatrys own instabilities. She stresses the importance of listening to womens articulations of mental suffering and expressed need for a coherent self, even in an era of post-structuralist doubt about the existence of a unified self. By making psychiatry central to womens social and political history, Cahn teases out relationships between gender, feminism and mental illness.
James Currie
James Currie, associate professor, Department of Music
When Said Met Genet: Music in a Troubled Time
Curries project is focused on the figure of music in the later life and work of the Palestinian critic, political activist and musician Edward Said, from 1989 to his death in 2003. In particular, it spirals out from a series of meditations, close-readings and micro-historical reconstructions centered on an evening in Beirut in 1972 when Said met the great French author Jean Genet. Said was struggling against the leukemia that would eventually kill him when he set about founding the now famous West-Eastern Divan Orchestra with the conductor Daniel Barenboim, whom he randomly met in a hotel lobby. The two meetings, with Genet and Barenboim respectively, are seemingly unrelated. Yet by making recourse to the language and practice of ghosts and haunting, Currie demonstrates an uncanny resonance between them. Genet thus becomes one of the secret origins of the orchestra and how its as-yet-unfulfilled challenge to activate a fully transformative potential for human being through musical practice is passed on now to us.
Dana Fields
Dana Fields, assistant professor, Department of Classics
Speaking Freely: Frankness, Greek Culture and the Roman Empire
During the Roman domination of the Greek-speaking world, developments in the Greek concept of free and frank speech (parrhesia) reveal the continued political and ethical significance of frankness, which belies the putative de-politicization of later Greek culture. Under the Roman Empire, frank speaking might take place in a number of public and private contexts, including the emperors court, a civic assembly, a meeting between friends and a satirical screed. In each of these venues, frankness is distinct from modern protected speech in that it presupposes a certain danger in speaking, which in turn elevates the speakers status. The frequent references to frankness in Greek literature of the Roman Empire show the political, philosophical, social and cultural importance of the practice of frank speaking, as well as how it is closely connected with Greek identity and freedom at a time when the actions of the Greek cities were constrained by Rome.
Jaume Franquesa
Jaume Franquesa, assistant professor, Department of Anthropology, OVPRED/HI fellow
Dignity and Power: Energy, Nature and Conflict in Contemporary Spain
Franquesas project aims to contribute to the comprehension of energy transitions through a historically informed, socially situated study of the development of renewable energy in Spain. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Southern Catalonia, he analyzes the institutional arrangements, cultural mediations and relations of production through which the energy from wind is harnessed. While dominant narratives adopt a technology-centered approach presenting renewable energy as involving, in itself, a rupture with the existing patterns of energy use, Franquesas research shows that energy transitions are complex, multilayered processes that open possibilities for new social arrangements, while also highlighting the ways that such social arrangements rework inherited relationships of power.
Ruth Mack
Ruth Mack, associate professor, Department of English
Habitual Knowledge: Theory and the Everyday in Enlightenment Britain
Mack offers a new prehistory of cultural anthropology through a wide range of 18th-century texts, from novels to devotional manuals and pattern books. She argues that while habit is usually understood as the obverse of enlightenment, the writers of the period were instead focused on rethinking the habitual in relation to modernity. In so doing, they asked probing questions about topics we now associate with the discipline of anthropology: about the relationship between the observer and the observed, for instance, and about the social status of material objects and beliefs. The project focuses on 18th-century Britain, but its larger questions are wide-ranging and intersect with current debates about the relation between literary studies and the social sciences, and about the relation between academic theory and everyday practice.
Elizabeth Mazzolini
Elizabeth Mazzolini, assistant professor, Department of English, OVPRED/HI fellow
Environmentalism without Guilt
Mazzolinis book project investigates and critiques the centrality of the singularly guilty human as the primary site of environmental responsibility within ecocriticism. After providing a genealogy of guilty subjectivity via the underlying conception of the anthro of the Anthropocene Age, the book goes on to investigate other affects associated with guilt, with one chapter each devoted to parsimony, shame and pessimism. In the individual chapters, she links each affect to a particular site of environmental engagement.
Christina Milletti
Christina Milletti, associate professor, Department of English
Room in Hotel America
Milletti will be working on her second novel, Room in Hotel America, which fully elaborates a brief anecdote discovered in Carl Sifakis Great American Eccentrics: Strange and Peculiar People. The narrative, called The Guests Who Wouldnt Check Out, recounts the story of the Romero de Cainas family a wealthy Cuban family who immigrated to the U.S. in 1924, then withdrew into the posh, opportunely named Hotel America, outside Times Square in New York City. The familys resistance to leaving their rooms becomes a source of inquiry in the novel a storyline about patriarchal power, wealth and troubled pasts even as it becomes a mechanism for discussing more broadly the issue of American insularity (the different kinds of rooms we inhabit) within the realm of global politics.
Fernanda Negrete
Fernanda Negrete, assistant professor, Department of Romance Languages and Literatures
Symptom and Sensation: Post-Freudian Experiments in Literature and Art
The chief executive of Selco Builders Warehouse has revealed that it will continue its strong expansion strategy after unveiling its latest branch.
Speaking at the opening of the new branch on the Compass Business Park on Davis Road in Chessington, Chris Cunliffe, chief executive officer of Selco Builders Warehouse, said the business will open at least five more branches before the end of the year.
He said: We are delighted to be launching our latest branch in Chessington, which has created more than 50 jobs in the area. This opening also signals our intention for Selco to grow in the South East and beyond.
2016 is shaping up to be a great year for Selco. We are an ambitious business and we wont rest on our laurels. We are currently working on new locations for 2017, 2018, 2019 and beyond to ensure we maintain our momentum.
We plan to open up the company to more customers in new locations, giving our suppliers more opportunities and creating hundreds of jobs, all while maintaining our core value of putting the customer first.
Selco is also enjoying organic growth, with Selco Direct boosting the companys offering. Mr Cunliffe added: Selco Direct means that customers who dont have a local branch can choose from over 5,000 lines and can click, pay and receive their products by courier the next day.
We have tens of thousands of customers daily purchasing through our network, equating to one transaction every three seconds across the business. Its no surprise to us that our entire branch network is growing its customer base, as well as the average basket value, as we offer something unique in the industry.
At the Chessington opening, Selco split a charity donation of 2,000 between two local causes, Epsom and Ewell Foodbank and KIDS SEND Information, Advice and Support Service.
Free legal clinics to help clear criminal records Friday in Burlco
The events run from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., one in Burlington City and the other in Browns Mills. Both will also feature free food and a job fair.
THE GREAT DERANGEMENT
Climate Change and the Unthinkable
Amitav Ghosh
Penguin Random House
275 pages; Rs 399
Prime Minister Narendra Modis government celebrated the fact that India secured the principle of climate justice in the Paris climate change agreement. Few people chose to fact-check that chest-beating statement. It must be said, though, that most of those who are paid to either decipher or build the conversation on climate change can be declared innocent of the act of reading the text of the global agreement. Most of those who did appear to have eschewed the need to scrutinise such bold statements or comment on it.
Weeks after the London Court of International Arbitration awarded $1.17 billion in favour of NTT against Tata Sons, the Japanese telecom giant has moved the high court here to enforce it.
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Gazematic, a start-up based here, has built an application that allows smartphone users with a virtual reality (VR) headset to get a virtual experience of tourist locations such as Goa and Paris.
S K Goenka-promoted Limited (JRIL) has proposed to set up a 1 million tonne per annum capacity steel plant in Mahboobnagar district in Telangana at an investment close to Rs 3,000 crore. The company Executive Director Siddhartha Jain on Wednesday met with Telangana Industries Minister K T Rama Rao and sought clearances for the same.
JRIL is a closely held company, which currently produces direct reduced iron (DRI) and thermo-mechanical treated (TMT) rebars.The company's sponge iron division is located in Bellary in Karnataka while the steel melt shop division and rolling mill division is in Hyderabad.
The company officials informed the minister that they will start the work on first phase project as soon as the necessary clearances were in place, according to a statement. It had earlier proposed to set up a 0.5 million tonne TMT bars and alloy steel bars plant at Orvakal in Andhra Pradesh.
New Delhi Television Ltd (NDTV) informed the BSE that it has got partial relief on a case filed by the Income Tax Department. The I-T department had earlier appealed in the Delhi HC against an Income Tax Appellate Tribunal (ITAT) order giving clean chit to the company on certain expenditures made during the assessment year (AY) 2006-07.
The rising online business, combined with multiple portals, is driving the traffic to meta-search businesses in this space. Meta-search engines such as Ixigo and TripAdvisor not only allow price comparison across sites but also have an option of doing transactions. As for online portals, the list is long the big ones include MakeMyTrip, Yatra, Cleartrip, Expedia, and then there are smaller ones like EaseMyTrip and Big Breaks.
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) has released a consultation paper, seeking views on making broadband available through public Wi-Fi networks that would make data available at a tenth of mobile networks costs. The regulator has also asked if non-telecom should be allowed to participate in setting up public Wi-Fi hotspots.
has expressed concern over the "increasingly fragile and unpredictable" situation in the Middle East, saying the growing threat of terrorism and radicalism has added to the complexities in the region.
Participating in a UN Security Council debate on 'The Situation in the Middle East', India's Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN Tanmaya Lal said the situation in the Middle East remains of serious concern and is getting increasingly fragile and unpredictable.
"The growing threat of terrorism and radicalism has added to the complexities of the situation in the region, which is mired with protracted conflicts," he said.
Lal said the most longstanding of the conflicts involving Israel and Palestine, remains strained with the peace talks suspended for more than two years now and with no signs of resumption at least in the near future.
"The situation appears to be getting worse with escalating violence on both sides and absence of restraint and moderation. The dire humanitarian situation in Palestinian territories and violence in Israel demands urgent and sustained efforts on part of the global community to resume peace talks," he said.
He supported UN's Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's position that "courageous steps" are necessary for a negotiated two-State solution in order to bring lasting peace, security and dignity for the people of both Israel and Palestine.
"A two-State solution is the only viable option for sustainable peace in the region. It is the responsibility of the two sides to ensure that they move closer to a solution rather than away from it," he said, adding that the international community must be firm in its resolve to assist the people on both sides and the Security Council must take a lead in this endeavour.
welcomed the first report of the Middle East Quartet on the impediments to a lasting resolution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and its recommendations to advance the two-state solution through negotiations.
"We hope that the efforts by the international community can lead to building some common ground, generate mutual understanding and a common political horizon, on which the two sides can start the talks again," he said.
Lal reiterated India's support to the Palestinian cause and assistance for Palestine's nation building, human resource development and capacity building efforts.
On Yemen, welcomed the announcement of Secretary-General's Special Envoy Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed last week about an agreement on the guiding principles for the Yemen peace talks.
On Syria, Lal said India hopes for a comprehensive political resolution of the conflict with the participation of all parties.
"We further hope that the intra-Syrian talks under UN auspices will ensure a Syrian-led and Syrian-owned inclusive political transition, bringing an end to the violence in Syria and contribute to stabilising the country and the region," he said.
A flood alert has been issued in many villages of two border districts of after excess rain water was released from Maharashtra into the Krishna river that flows through the state as downstream, an official said on Wednesday.
"People living in villages on the banks of Krishna and low-lying areas in Bagalkot and Belagavi districts have been put on alert after Maharashtra released excess water into the river following heavy rains in its catchment areas," the official from the state natural disaster monitoring centre told IANS here.
Bagalkot Deputy Commissioner PA Meghannavar advised the people in Jamkhandi and Bilagi taluks of the district to move to safer places from the river banks to avoid being affected in the event of flooding.
"As 1.7 lakh cusecs of water has been released from Koyna Dam in Satara district in the neighbouing state into the river, measures are being taken to prevent any untoward incident if more water is released," Meghannavar said in a statement from Bagalkot.
As the fourth biggest river (1,300 km) in terms of water inflows and river basin area in the country, Krishna originates in the rich biodiversity hotspot Western Ghats near Mahabaleshwar in Maharashtra and passes through Karnataka, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, flowing out into the Bay of Bengal.
It is also a major source of irrigation in the four southern states.
"Residents in villages along the river course at Chikkodi and Raibag in Belagavi district have been advised to move away from the banks to safer places, as heavy rains in the region can cause flash floods due to rising water level in the tributaries," the official pointed out.
Bridges across the river and its tributaries in low-laying areas are overflowing with rain water, disrupting vehicular traffic in the districts.
Though heavy rains receded in coastal and south interior areas of the state since Tuesday, moderate to light rains are likely to occur in northern interior parts of the state during the next 24 hours, while one or two spells of rain have been forecast for Bengaluru and its neighbourhood, with strong surface winds under cloudy sky.
Chikkodi recorded 11 cm rainfall, followed by 7 cm each in Kadra in Uttara Kannada district and Kudachi in Belagavi district.
One more youth was killed on Wednesday in a clash between a stone-pelting mob and security forces in Kashmir, taking the toll in the five-day unrest to 35, even as Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti expressed "great sadness and sorrow" over the deaths and promised a "healing touch".
Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister on Wednesday paid tributes to the martyrs of the 1931 struggle against the Dogra rule and appealed for calm in the violence-gripped Kashmir Valley.
Under heavy security, went to the graveyard at Naqashband Sahib area of Old Srinagar where a guard of honour was presented to her.
The Chief Minister appealed for peace in the troubled valley where street clashes since the killing of a top militant, Burhan Wani, on July 8 has left over 30 people dead and hundreds injured.
She laid a wreath at the graveyard to commemorate those killed by the Dogra Maharaja's soldiers on this day in 1931 outside the Central Jail in Srinagar.
People had stormed the jail during the trial of Abdul Qadeer Khan, an Afghan cook of a British official. Qadeer had been arrested for delivering a fiery speech in support of the Kashmiris.
President on Wednesday extended his greetings and felicitations to the government and people of France on the eve of their Day, July 14.
In a message to President Francois Hollande, Mukherjee extended best wishes for his "good health and personal well-being, as well as for the continued progress and prosperity of the people of France."
The President said Indian-French strategic ties will continue to grow from strength to strength in the coming years.
"It is a matter of satisfaction that the bilateral relations between our two countries and our strategic partnership have gained fresh momentum since your fruitful recent State Visit to India," he said.
government on Wednesday tabled the first supplementary budget for the financial year 2016-17 with focus on shaping the state capital as smart city.
The central government has proposed that all unapproved marketed in the country would have to be licensed within six months of the draft rules, announced on Wednesday, being notified.
Gujarat State Corporation (GSPC) has written to the Union ministry of and to Bharat (BPC), its joint venture partner in Sabarmati Gas (SGL) to make the latter's management more active.
Customers will now find it much easier to buy motor insurance policies or renew their existing ones on the go as the Insurance Regulatory Authority of India (Irdai) has allowed more touch points and prevented insurers from discriminating between dealers.Irdai also said it might consider relaxing agency norms to ease distribution of simple policies including motor third-party policies through agencies such as pollution-check centres. It is, however, not clear if there will be any mandatory training requirement. According to senior insurance executives, basic training in the products and how the premium is calculated, among others, should be provided to these new players.The Insurance Laws (Amendment) Act passed in 2015 says nobody can be refused a motor insurance policy. According to the Motor Vehicles Act, all vehicles running on Indian roads should have a third-party motor insurance policy, which covers owners from third-party liabilities arising from accidents.Irdai is also encouraging insurers to bring out over-the-counter products that can be sold easily through shops, and medical stores, among others.Earlier this year, the regulator had said all agents should have an equal opportunity to source motor business. Under existing rules, policyholders have a right to choose any agent, intermediary or insurer to avail of insurance services.Irdai recently said that some general insurance companies having tie-ups with a particular motor dealer were not accepting motor business, if it was sourced by any other agent or intermediary. The regulator clarified there shall be no restriction whatsoever on sourcing or servicing motor insurance business (including personal accident policies) by any agent, intermediary or insurer on the grounds that they have a tie-up with a motor dealer or manufacturer.
Further, it has to ensured that no clause/agreement/tie-up in variation with the above directions shall be entered into by any insurer with any motor dealers/ manufacturers etc. It should also be ensured that all existing agreements confirm with the above direction.
Shri Babul Supriyo today took charge as Minister of State for Heavy Industry & Public Enterprises here in New Delhi. He first called on the senior Minister Shri Anant G. Geete and sought his guidance. Shri Anant Geete expressed the hope that Shri Babul Supriyo being a young, energetic and enthusiastic person will strengthen his hands in achieving the developmental targets envisioned by the Prime Minister. .
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Speaking to the media persons after assuming office, Shri Babul Supriyo said that he will strive to live up to the performance doctrine of Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi. The Minister observed that he expects new horizons and challenges in the M/o Heavy Industry & Public Enterprises in the direction of making India a manufacturing hub. On being asked about his contribution to the state of West Bengal as a union minister Shri Babul Supriyo said that in the company of Shri Anant Geete ji it will be a fine opportunity for the overall development of country as a whole. He said a lot needs to be done for his home state and he will also try to work for the strengthening Public Sector Enterprises in West Bengal..
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Born on December 15, 1970, Shri Supriyo hails from Uttarapara in Hooghly district of West Bengal. Elected to the Lok Sabha for the first time from Asansol, Shri Baral holds B.Com(Hons) degree from Calcutta University. He worked for a multinational bank before deciding to pursue his passion..
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A National Conference of State Principal Secretaries/Secretaries in charge of Women & Child Development was held in New Delhi today. The meeting was called by the Union Ministry of Women and Child Development to review Integrated Child Development Scheme as well as other schemes including those related to women, child care and child protection. Representatives of Women & Child Development departments of 29 States/UTs attended the meeting. .
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Addressing the participants, the Minister of Women & Child Development, Smt Maneka Sanjay Gandhi said that the Ministry is undertaking a complete revamp of the ICDS Program as the level of malnutrition in the country continues to be high. The Ministry is working in a convergence mode with NITI Ayog, Ministries of Health and Education and other stakeholders to deal with the problem of malnutrition on a war footing, the Minister added. Smt Maneka Gandhi said that the digitization of anganwadis is being taken up and both hardware well as is software is being provided for real time monitoring of every child and every pregnant and lactating mother. The anganwadi workers will be given smartphones and the supervisors will be given tablets for which the State government should provide training to anganwadi workers to help shift to the new IT-based system. .
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Smt Maneka Gandhi said that the Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi has given utmost priority of Beti Bacho Beti Padhao and Nutrition programme which are to be implemented in mission mode. The Beti Bacho Beti Padhao scheme has shown tremendous success due to active involvement of states, the Minister said, and urged the states to exhibit the same for ICDS. .
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The WCD Minister issued strict instructions to the states to comply with the directives of the WCD Ministry pertaining to clean food, prepared untouched by hand with sufficient availability of micro nutrients. We are also looking at further standardizing the supplementary nutrition so that hygienic, nutritious and locally acceptable food is given to the children and mothers through a standardized process of manufacturing and distribution. This is warranted as the current systems of adhoc procurement and preparation have not succeeded in reducing malnutrition" the Minister explained. Smt Gandhi said that the WCD Ministry is making efforts to get the cost norms increased from the current levels so that better food can be provided to the beneficiaries. .
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Secretary WCD, Ms Leena Nair urged the states to ensure proper utilization of funds for various schemes specially those provided for nutrition and ICDS. Highlighting the role of technical interventions, she said that they can help the states in speedy and effective implementation of schemes of women and child development. .
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China's exports stabilised in June - the latest indicator to show the world's second - biggest economy is steadying. Overseas shipments rose 1.3 per cent in yuan terms from a year earlier, the customs administration saidon Wednesday. Imports fell 2.3 per cent to leave a trade surplus of 311.2 billion yuan ($46.5 billion). Trade in dollar terms typically is posted shortly after yuan data. The yuan posted a fifth straight drop last week, the longest losing streak this year, signalling policy makers are more tolerant of further weakening. A weaker yuan may give a boost to export ...
Grappling with the tribunal's verdict quashing its claims over the South China Sea, China on Wednesday turned down US advise to follow India's example of settling its maritime row with Bangladesh by implementing the judgement saying that there is "no comparison" between the two cases.
"There is a premise for the settlement of the relevant territorial dispute between India and Bangladesh through arbitration, that is, the two respected each other's sovereign wills and reached an agreement on the arbitration request through consultation," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang told PTI here.
"It is not like imposing one party's will on the other" unlike the Philippines which "unilaterally" filed the petition in Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA), he said in response to question over US Assistant Secretary of Defence for East Asia. Denmark's recent comments that China should follow India's example of resolving its maritime boundary dispute with Bangladesh by implementing the award by a similar tribunal appointed by the PCA.
India accepted the award which was given in favour of Bangladesh to resolve the over 40-year maritime row.
The tribunal awarded Bangladesh 19,467 sq km of area in Bay of Bengal in 2014.
"To India's great credit, it accepted the decision and has abided by it, noting at the time that settlement of the issue would enhance mutual understanding and good will between the two countries. This is an example we would encourage China to follow," Denmark told lawmakers at a Congressional hearing in Washington last week.
"The arbitral tribunal's upcoming ruling will present an opportunity for those in the region to determine whether the Asia-Pacific's future will be defined by adherence to laws and norms that have helped keep the peace and enabled it to prosper, or whether the region's future will be determined by raw calculations of power," Denmark said.
China however emphatically rejected the verdict questioning the legality of the tribunal.
Lu said previous Philippines President Benigno S Aquino unilaterally opted for arbitration and "imposed" it on China.
"By doing that the Aquino administration severely violated the agreement between China and Philippines and the consensus in the region, breached relevant provisions under UN Convention on Law of Seas (UNCLOS), infringed upon China's right as a sovereign state and state party to UNCLOS to resolve disputes by means of its own choice and went against law," he said.
"Therefore there is no comparison between the two things," he said.
China claims almost all of the but its claims are fiercely contested by the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan.
China faced a piquant situation as the PCA tribunal completely struck down its claims over 90% of the based on historic rights and upheld the Philippines' maritime right to have Exclusive Economic Zone.
For decades China, which boycotted the tribunal questioning its legality, has been asserting that the islands and reefs in the were discovered 2,000 years ago and administered by its emperors.
But its claims came into conflict with the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan as they have exclusive economic zones provided by UNCLOS which Beijing declined to recognise.
Testifying before the same committee, Colin Willett, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Multilateral Affairs Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, also praised India for peacefully resolving its maritime dispute with Bangladesh.
"The region abounds with examples of neighbours finding peaceful ways to resolve difference over overlapping maritime zones.
"Indonesia's and the Philippines' successful conclusion of negotiations to delimit the boundary between their respective exclusive economic zones (EEZs) and India's and Bangladesh's acceptance of the decision from an arbitral tribunal with regard to their overlapping EEZ in the Bay of Bengal are just a couple that come to mind," he said.
China vowed to take all necessary measures to protect its sovereignty over the South China Sea and said it had the right to set up an air defence zone, after rejecting an international tribunal's ruling denying its claims to the energy-rich waters. Chinese state media called the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague a "puppet" of external forces, after it ruled that China had breached the Philippines' sovereign rights by endangering its ships and fishing and oil projects. Beijing has repeatedly blamed the United States for stirring up trouble in the South China Sea, where its territorial claims overlap in parts with Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan.
Government research into finding a vaccine to protect against the is likely to be delayed if Congress exits Washington through Labor Day without approving new money to battle the virus, a top government research scientist said.
The delay in funding vaccine development is perhaps the most damaging result of a divided Washington's inability to agree on an anti-Zika funding bill five months after President Barack Obama's request.
"It's going to take that much longer to prove that the vaccine works," said Dr. Anthony Fauci yestertday, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health, who says testing next January on a promising vaccine faces delays.
"If it takes that much longer to prove that it works then you take that much longer to get it out to the people who need it."
The impasse on Zika shows no signs of softening, even though taking a seven-week vacation without addressing the problem could be politically perilous for both Republicans controlling Congress and Democrats blocking Republicans' $1.1 billion take-it-or-leave-it measure to battle the virus.
Congress will also exit Washington with no action on gun control and little success in its efforts to open up and revive the process of passing the 12 annual spending bills.
House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., following the killing of five police officers in Dallas and protests by activists after police killed black men in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and St. Paul, Minnesota, officially shelved efforts to move bitterly contested legislation that would let federal authorities block gun sales to suspected terrorists.
"The action is to go back to our communities and have a candid conversation about the challenges we face as a country," Rep. Bill Flores, R-Texas, said, adding that "there's no need for us to try to cram a majority position down at this point."
Partisan tensions over guns have been high since a mass shooting in Orlando, Florida, last month.
House Democrats staged a lengthy House floor sit-in two weeks ago to demand gun control votes. Ryan said he feels it is the wrong time to further inflame the situation.
On Zika, however, the blame game was full on. Democrats last month filibustered a GOP-drafted Zika measure, largely over provisions in the bill to block Planned Parenthood from receiving money.
A revote is expected to produce the same result this week, but Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has rejected efforts to reopen the measure, which faces a veto threat from the White House.
Obama requested $1.9 billion in February to battle Zika, but Congress has moved slowly in response.
At least seven Taliban militants have been killed and three injured as clash erupted in Afghanistan's Kunduz province on Wednesday, an army spokesman said on Wednesday.
The clash, according to Brigadier Abdul Khalil, flared up early Wednesday in Atmanzai village. After hours of fighting, seven militants were killed and three were injured, Xinhua news agency reported.
Taliban militants who are active in Char Dara district of Kunduz province over the past couple of years are yet to make comment on the situation there.
The Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) in The Hague ruled on Tuesday that China has no historical title over the waters of the (SCS) and that it has breached the sovereign rights of the Philippines with its actions.
In what should have been a setback for China, an tribunal in The Hague stated that the nation had no claim over the and ruled in favour of Philippines. However, China rejected the Permanent Court of Arbitrations decision, stating that the order had no legal binding on it.
Theresa May replaced David Cameron as Britain's prime minister on Wednesday. May assumed office after an audience with Queen Elizabeth. An official photograph showed her curtseying and shaking hands with the smiling monarch, for whom she is the 13th prime minister in a line that started with Winston Churchill.
Japan will send its Vice Foreign Minister Shinsuke Sugiyama to China next week to discuss improving bilateral ties and the recent ruling of an tribunal in The Hague against Chinese claims on the South China Sea, a media report said on Wednesday.
Sugiyama is expected to arrive next Monday in Beijing, where he will meet Executive Deputy Foreign Minister Zhang Yesui and other officials of the Chinese government, EFE news reported.
Sugiyama's visit is an effort to improve bilateral relations and is also expected to include discussions about the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague's ruling on Tuesday in a case brought by the Philippines, which saw it reject China's claims to parts of the .
The judgement concluded that all elements of the Spratly Islands, whose sovereignty are claimed by China, the Philippines and other neighbouring countries, "are legally rocks that do not generate an exclusive economic zone or continental shelf."
Tokyo was quick to support the court's decision and "expects that the parties' compliance with this award will eventually lead to the peaceful settlement of disputes in the ."
Japan also has another territorial dispute with China over the Senkaku islands, a group of uninhabited small islands controlled by Japan in the East China Sea.
An increase in Chinese military activities in the area, including recent naval operations near the Senkakus, has been reported.
Despite the existing tension, Sugiyama intends to lay the groundwork for talks between Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Chinese President Xi Jinping, within the framework of the G20 summit, to be held in September in the Chinese city of Hangzhou.
Abe and Xi have met only twice during their mandates thanks to the worsening of bilateral ties caused by the dispute over the Senkaku islands, known in China as "Diaoyu", in 2012.
Toronto's Archbishop joined several other prominent clergymen who say they will bless same-sex marriages in defiance of a narrow vote by the Anglican Church of Canada not to authorise gay unions.
More than 200 delegates attending the six-day General Synod 2016 narrowly rejected the resolution Monday night after hearing from more than 60 speakers, most of them in favor of gay marriage.
Archbishop Colin Johnson yesterday said that he wanted his gay and lesbian colleagues "to share the joy."
Johnson said blessing same-sex marriages "at the discretion of the bishop and with agreement of local clergy" a logical step in the evolution of the church that he said he would be considering in the coming weeks.
"I am advised that this option would not contravene the marriage canon," Johnson said. "I am confident it would be supported by the majority, even if not all of our bishops, clergy, laity and the wider community."
Same-sex marriage has been legal in Canada since 2005, and Monday's vote puts the Anglican Church "the third largest in Canada" out of step with most Canadians, including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who recently took part in a gay pride parade in Toronto.
In order for the resolution to have passed, it required two-thirds support from each of three orders" the lay, clergy and bishops.
Meghan Kilty, the director of communications for the Anglican Church of Canada said yesterday that 155 delegates voted in favor of the resolution and 68 against it, with three members abstaining from the vote. The result was one vote short of what was needed to pass the measure.
Bishop John Chapman in Ottawa, Ontario, said in a statement that he planned to proceed immediately with such unions in his diocese, although no one would be forced to officiate at such a ceremony.
"It is time my friends," Chapman said. "It is past time." "Take heart," said Rev. Melissa Skelton, bishop of New Westminster, British Columbia. "This is not over."
The General Synod is held every three years, and the vote was the culmination of work that began when the last General Synod, the church's legislative body, asked a panel to come up with a draft motion.
About 1.6 million Canadians identify themselves as Anglican, according to Statistics Canada.
The US Episcopal Church, the Anglican body in the United States, is alone among Anglican bodies in approving gay marriage and has faced a backlash for its support of same-sex unions.
ABC Pacific Beat
PAPUA New Guinea's Supreme Court has ordered the recall of Parliament in five days to hear a no-confidence motion in prime minister Peter O'Neill.
Parliament has not reconvened since a rally by University of Papua New Guinea students turned violent when police shot into a crowd of students on 8 June.
The government had intended not to resume until August, which would have avoided a vote of no-confidence.
With the court win, the Opposition will be further emboldened in its bid to oust Mr O'Neill as groups move to disrupt essential services in Papua New Guinea and former leaders renew their attacks on the prime minister.
The Obama administration says it will provide another $439 million in humanitarian aid to refugees and affected by the ongoing conflict in .
Secretary of State John Kerry announced the additional assistance yesterday at a State Department reception to mark the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
The new contribution will bring total US Humanitarian aid for to $5.6 billion since the start of the crisis in 2012.
The money will go to fund programs run by the U.N. And other relief agencies in at least six nations, including Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, Iraq and Egypt.
Presumptive Democratic presidential candidate called on Tuesday for an end to racism and gun violence in the US during her first joint rally with primary rival Senator Bernie Sanders, D-Vt., in New Hampshire.
Just minutes after Sanders endorsed Clinton, the former secretary of state said trust and respect must be restored between police and communities to avoid more tragedies like the massacre in Dallas.
"Surely, we can agree that weapons of war have no place on the streets of America," the 68-year-old Clinton said, according to EFE news agency.
Clinton said she supported bias training and nationwide use-of-force guidelines for police officers to curb the "tragedy of black men and women and black children being killed in police incidents".
The former first lady called on both the law enforcement community and civilians to "develop national guidelines for the use of force by police officers".
"Our police should never have to face a madman, a racist, a person filled with hatred with an assault weapon. We owe it to every officer who puts his or her life on the line to protect us, so let's protect them," Clinton said.
Five police officers were killed and seven wounded during last week's shooting in Dallas.
The attack took place during a peaceful Black Lives Matter protest over the fatal police shootings of two African-American men in Louisiana and Minnesota.
Ameyo Emerge, a cloud based contact centre software built on the award winning platform Ameyo; has migrated to Microsoft Azure to enhance its customer service capabilities.
With this, Ameyo, which accounts for a significant market share in the APAC region, is aiming for a dominant position in the rapidly emerging space with its SaaS based customer support offering through Ameyo Emerge.
Ameyo Emerge helps businesses improve their customer experience across multiple channels such as voice, e-mail, chat, social media and SMS. Managing and growing these multiple platforms would have required significant investments in both CAPEX and OPEX.
By migrating to Microsoft cloud, Ameyo Emerge will not only enable faster deployment but also reduce cost of ownership while enhancing scalability and supervision irrespective of location.
"We are committed towards enabling our customers with modern capabilities to scale-up and remain competitive in a dynamic environment. The availability of Ameyo Emerge on Microsoft Azure reiterates our efforts in realizing the same. It will equip us in building a process-driven and technology-driven model," said CEO Ameyo Emerge, Bishal Lachhiramka.
Ameyo's omni-channel strategy reduces an organization's customer support budget by up to 30 percent. Alongside guaranteed uptime on the cloud infrastructure for continuity, Microsoft Azure will empower Ameyo Emerge to build applications at a faster rate, thus reducing time to market.
"Cloud is enabling businesses across sizes and verticals to increase business growth and create seamless customer experience across channels. With Microsoft Azure, we are happy to provide Ameyo Emerge the hyper-scalability and flexibility required to offer newer, richer, timely and secure experiences, perfectly suited to meet the specific business needs," said Director - Independent Software Vendor Programs Microsoft India, Harish Vaidyanathan.
Ameyo has already been successful in strengthening its global presence in the emerging as well as developed markets. The integration of its cloud variant 'Ameyo Emerge' with Microsoft Azure will further enhance the organization's market presence.
Microsoft Azure is an open and flexible cloud platform that enables customers to quickly build, deploy and manage applications across a global network of Microsoft-managed data centres.
The platform today hosts large-scale mission-critical applications for businesses across verticals, with seamless integration with existing infrastructure and financially backed SLAs.
The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) on Wednesday decided to disinvest 15 percent of its stake from Building Construction Corporation (NBCC), which is expected to generate a capital of Rs. 1,706 crores for the government.
Briefing the media for the first time after assuming charge as Law and Justice Minister, Ravi Shankar Prasad said the cabinet committee took two important decisions today.
"In the Building Construction Corporation (NBCC), it has been decided to disinvest 15 % paid-up capital out of the Government of India's shareholding of 90 %," he said.
"We will also give 5% shares to the employees at discount. Then government hopes that an estimated receipt of 1,706 crores could come from this (disinvestment)," he added.
NBCC , a Navratna company, is a public sector undertaking which trades publicly in the market and is largely owned by Government of India. It engages in the real estate development and construction business, and also provides project management consultancy.
Prasad said that some shares of ITI, under Department of Telecommunications (DoT), would also be transferred to SNIF.
"There was a decision to transfer shares of ITI. Requisite number of shares of ITIs, under the ministry of telecommunications, would be transferred to special investment fund (SNIF)," he said.
He said the cabinet has also approved revised cost estimates of Rs.7, 290 crores for ongoing 1020 MW for Punatsangchhu-II Hydroelectric project in Bhutan.
Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL) is currently executing two projects in Bhutan, called Punatsangchhu and Mangdechhu .
Among other decisions, the cabinet has also approved setting up of facilities for persons from minority communities from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan.
Criticising UN tribunal's ruling rejecting Beijing's territorial claims in the South China Sea, Communist party-controlled newspapers have warned of military escalation in response to what they denounced as a U.S. ploy to thwart China's rise.
China in a 13,900-word white paper rebuffed the UN tribunal's verdict and called it "a piece of paper that is destined to come to naught", reports the Guardian.
It claimed the Philippines which brought the case, had "distorted facts, misinterpreted laws and concocted a pack of lies" in order to undermine Chinese interests.
According to a copy of the text published by Xinhua, Beijing's official news agency, the ruling against China had been based on "woefully weak pieces of evidence", the white paper fumed.
Even in a front page commentary in the Communist party's official mouthpiece, the People's Daily dismissed the ruling as "a lackey of some outside forces" that would be remembered "as a laughing stock in human history".
"We do not claim an inch of land that does not belong to us, but we won't give up any patch that is ours," the Guardian quoted People's Daily newspaper as saying.
"China, of course, will not accept such downright political provocations," the newspaper added.
Beijing's English-language mouthpiece, the China Daily also claimed the "outrageously one-sided ruling" meant military confrontation in the region had become more likely.
"With military activity reaching unprecedented levels in the South China Sea, there is no guarantee that an escalating war of words will not transform into something more," it said.
The Global Times, a nationalist tabloid that is reportedly controlled by the People's Daily was even was even more direct in its opinion.
It warned that further political or military pressure from Washington which Beijing has accused of masterminding the case against its claims in the South China Sea would lead the people of China to firmly support its government in launching a tit-for-tat counterpunch.
China's vice-foreign minister, Liu Zhenmin said that Beijing reserved the right to declare an air defence identification zone over the South China Sea.
The Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, Netherlands, on Tuesday ruled that China has no "historic title" over the waters of the South China Sea.
In its ruling, it also said that China has interfered with traditional Philippine fishing rights at Scarborough Shoal, even as Beijing claimed historic rights to the waters under nine-dash line, which the tribunal said is contrary to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea that determines which countries can claim economic exploitation rights, based on geographic features.
Hailing the Supreme Court's verdict on Arunachal Pradesh as a great day for Indian democracy, Congress leader Kabil Sibal on Wednesday demanded the resignation of Governor Jyoti Prasad Rajkhowa.
"The Supreme Court has upheld constitutional values and the concept of constitutional integrity. I must salute the Supreme Court. It's a great day for Indian democracy," Sibal told a press conference here.
"No Governor can advance any state assembly. We call for the resignation of Arunachal Pradesh Governor Jyoti Prasad Rajkhowa," he added.
Stating that the day will be "written in golden words in the history of India", Sibal said, "The Supreme Court's decision will result in Nabam Tuki being the CM in Arunachal Pradesh."
Sibal also demanded an apology from the central ministers responsible for the political crisis in the Congress-ruled state.
"The Centre ministers, who were involved in this decision, they must clarify and apologise," he said.
Continuing his tirade against the ruling dispensation at the Centre, Sibal said the BJP's modus operandi is to topple the Cong-ruled elected governments.
"The BJP's aim is Congress-mukt Bharat. They operate by enforcing President's Rule and take advantage of it and change the government," he added.
In a major setback to the BJP-ruled Centre, the apex court earlier today quashed "message and direction" issued by the Arunachal Pradesh Governor and restored status quo as on December 15 when Congress' Nabam Tuki was the chief minister.
A five-judge constitution bench pronounced the verdict on a bunch of petitions dealing with discretionary powers of the governor to summon or advance the assembly session.
Stating the governor's direction on conducting assembly proceedings is unconstitutional, the apex court set aside all steps and decision taken by the legislative assembly pursuant to the governor's December 9th last year order and said they are unsustainable.
The Supreme Court had earlier in February reserved its judgement in the case for today. The apex court had said the verdict will not only have its effect on Arunachal Pradesh, but affect every state.
Just before the court had reserved its verdict, rebel Congress leader Kalikho Pul was sworn-in as the ninth chief minister of the state. He got the support of 18 dissident Congress MLAs and two independents, with 11 BJP MLAs giving him outside support.
Arunachal Pradesh had been under President's Rule since January 26.
Tuki-led Congress government was dismissed following days of turmoil after 21 of its 47 lawmakers rebelled against the chief minister.
The Congress, which had 47 MLAs seats in the 60-member assembly, suffered a jolt when 21 of its lawmakers rebelled. Eleven BJP MLAs backed the rebels in the bid to upstage the government. Later, 14 rebel Congress MLAs were disqualified.
The Federal Alliance in Nepal has said on Wednesday that it will also help the Nepali Congress and Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist Centre) to unseat the UML-led coalition government led by Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli.
Alliance coordinator Upendra Yadav said his party and other constituents will not join the new government.
"The base for working together with the new government will depend upon the way the Nepali Congress and Maoists will handle our demands," said Yadav.
There are about four dozen lawmakers in the Federal Alliance, which is a coalition of many regional based Nepalese political parties that are demanding the identity based autonomy states in Nepal and the equal representation in Nepalese parliament.
The Nepali Congress today extended its support to CPN (Maoist Centre) Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal in his bid to form a majority government after the Maoist centre withdrew its support from Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli led coalition government on Tuesday.
Freshmen's Valley is all set to revolutionise the Indian dairy industry with its premium dairy products.
At the inauguration of its plant today in Bahjoi, the brand also announced the launch of Freshmen's Valley Milk across Uttrakhand and Western UP as part of first phase of operations.
India is one of the largest milk producing country and Freshmen's Valley has seen immense growth in the dairy segment. Combining traditional values and high-end cutting-edge technology, the company has today introduced pure and premium dairy milk, in keeping with international quality standards.
This first product offering will be pouch milk, which will be available in 5 variants - Full Cream Milk, Standardized Milk, Toned Milk, Double Toned Milk and Skimmed Milk. Freshman's Valley will also offer an assortment of other dairy products like Fresh Curd, Chaach, Masala Chaach and Malai Paneer.
In the following months, the brand is also set to add Ghee, Flavoured Milk and Fruit Yoghurt to its portfolio.
Speaking at the launch, Mr. Anant Choudhary, Director, Freshmen's Valley said, "Freshmen's Valley dairy products are being introduced to the market to bridge the quality and standards divide that persists in the dairy industry today. Our products and packaging are in keeping with international parameters. Our aim is to provide the most hygienic and purest dairy produce to our end consumers. Our stringent quality guidelines are an amalgamation of cutting edge technology and conventional insights.
He added further, "We have entered the premium branded dairy segment with a commitment towards inclusive sustainable development of the local dairy communities. Our investments in Sambhal region are first of its kind, aiming to provide better livelihood mechanisms to the locals. It is our token of gratitude."
Freshmen's Valley was incorporated in 2015 with an aim to transform the dairy production processes in India by breathing a new lease of life into staid and conventional methods of operations. With an investment of Rs. 50 crores, the company has created a sustainable model which not only delivers quality product to the consumers but also benefit it's most important stakeholder; the farmer. The company in the next few years aspires to increase its footprint across Northern India and reach out to more than 5,00,000 farmers to develop the dairy farming industry in Uttar Pradesh and Western UP.
Freshmen's Valley through its CSR initiatives is focusing on resolute skill development of the dairy farming community it operates in. The company is also committed to give back to its local communities, where by it has dedicated programs to help the community create new avenues for income generation thereby helping enhance their quality of life. The CSR program includes IT training, periodic medical and health camps by vet doctors and nutritionist, regular workshop to impart education on cattle welfare and personal hygienic. The CSR initiative will also focus on women empowerment.
GirnarSoft, the parent company to India's top auto portals such as CarDekho.com, Gaadi.com and Zigwheels.com announced acquiring Valueserve Management Consultants Pvt. Ltd in a cash deal.
The move marks a diversification of the company to cater to the public sector by providing e-governance solutions, consulting and management support services.
Valueserve was founded by Yatendra Garg, who graduated from IIT Madras alumni and a consultant with over ten years of experience with several e-governance and ICT initiatives.
The company has been empanelled with leading consulting firms such as Grant Thornton, Ernst and Young, KPMG and Deloitte. Garg will report to GirnarSoft co-founder Anurag Jain.
"GirnarSoft is an internet conglomerate and a house of innovations with proven successful consumer portals in the auto sector amongst others. We have been creating world class portals for various consumers and with this new initiative we want to apply all the learning we have had over the years in the public sector," said Co-founder GirnarSoft, Anurag Jain.
"Given the push to create a digital India, e-Governance solution development and consultation appealed to us as a viable option. We are confident that the acquisition of Valueserve will allow us to add great value to various e-Governance and ICT initiatives," added Jain.
"In a day and age when the boundaries between public and private endeavors are shrinking rapidly, we are witnessing an increasing number of private entities venturing into the public sector," said Founder Valueserve, Yatendra Garg.
"GirnarSoft is renowned for its expertise in delivering consumer-oriented solutions, and there were plenty of synergies between the company and Valueserve. This development holds a lot of promise for the public sector," added Yatendra Garg.
Valueserve Consulting is GirnarSoft's ninth deal in the last two years. Earlier it made a strategic investment in Advanced Structures India. It also acquired Volob, Connecto, Help on Wheels, Zigwheels.com, Gaadi.com and BuyingIQ.
Japan's Defence Minister General Nakatani is on three-day official visit to India from July 13 to July 15.
General Nakatani will begin his visit by laying a wreath at the Amar Jawan Jyoti, India Gate at 11.30 a.m. on Thursday. He will then be accorded a tri-services guard of honour on the South Block lawns outside Gate No. 2 at 11.40 a.m.
He will be meeting his Indian counterpart Manohar Parrikar at Kota House at 12 p.m.
The visit is aimed at reviewing existing defence ties between the two countries and the way forward.
Opposition leader Don Polye was forced to take the matter to the court as reconvening in August would not allow another no-confidence vote against O'Neill.
PNG's national parliament was suspended only moments before a vote of no confidence against O'Neill was to be heard on 8 June following clashes between student protesters and police.
TENSIONS are set to crescendo in Papua New Guinea in the coming week after the supreme court ordered parliament to hear a vote of no confidence motion against prime minister Peter O'Neill.
A vote must be heard before 27 July due to laws stipulating votes of no confidence cannot be conducted within 12 months of the national election.
Local television station EMTV reported the court ruled in Polye's favour yesterday, ordering parliament be recalled within five days to debate the motion of no confidence against O'Neill.
The Supreme Court justices said acting parliamentary speaker Aide Ganasi acted in an unconstitutional manner and denied the rights of fellow members of parliament in adjourning parliament, the broadcaster reported.
O'Neill's office did not immediately respond to Xinhua's request for comment.
Pressure has been mounting on O'Neill to step down and face corruption allegations over his role in authorising a $31 million payment to local law firm Paul Paraka Lawyers for fraudulent invoices.
Anti-corruption officers have been attempting to arrest O'Neill for questioning since 2014, however O'Neill has labelled the allegations politically motivated and has refused to step aside. He is still challenging the warrant through the courts.
O'Neill's political opposition also claims there has been a deliberate and criminal mismanagement of the country whose economy is suffering from the downturn in global commodities.
Essential services in health and education have been cut to limit the budgetary impact, however that's caused some unrest and political grandstanding due to impact of the worst El Nino induced drought on record.
Meanwhile officials are discussing the 48-hour ultimatum given by civic and business leaders for O'Neill to resign or risk widespread civil disobedience and the halting of essential services.
It's believed the government will use emergency powers to declare martial law in a bid to call out police and military personnel to quell any demonstrations and halt the strike.
"(By) invoking the Internal Security Act... means that police will have the ultimate power, or full powers, to arrest anyone who incites public violence and disrupt government services or threaten public property," PNG Chief Secretary Isaac Lupari told the Post Courier newspaper.
"These are criminal acts so that is why the National Security Advisory Council will revoke the Internal Security Act and Essential Services Act. Police are also looking into the matter."
The lingering question among Australian PNG watchers is who will take over if O'Neill was to step down.
Ranked 139 out of 167 countries in Transparency International's global corruption perception index, PNG has a history of conducting inquiries and referring people for prosecution only for further action to subside.
On the occasion of 86th Kashmir Martyr's Day, Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti on Wednesday appealed to the people of the Valley to maintain peace.
"We should take into consideration that many jawans have sacrificed their lives for us. We must protect the legacy for which martyrs sacrificed their lives in 1931. We must protect and preserve that. We should maintain peace. I appeal to the people of Jammu and Kashmir to maintain peace in the Kashmir Valley," she told the media here.
"There are some elements here who want to disrupt peace and want to destroy the atmosphere. We shouldn't give in to them and maintain peace," she added.
Mehbooba and former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Omar Abdullah paid tributes to the martyrs of 1931.
The Kashmir Martyrs Day is observed on this day every year on both sides of the LoC to commemorate the supreme sacrifices of Kashmiri martyrs they gave this day in 1931 when the Dogra troops shot dead 22 Kashmiris in front of the Central Jail Srinagar.
Mehbooba's appeal comes at a time when the valley is boiling over protest against the killing of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Muzaffar Wani.
The death toll in the clashes between protesters and security forces in Kashmir crossed 30, while normal life remained paralysed due to curfew-like restrictions and separatists-sponsored strike .
Prime Minister Narendra Modi yesterday chaired a high-level meeting in the capital where he appealed to maintain peace and calm in the valley.
"The Prime Minister has hoped for peace and appealed that innocent lives are not disturbed," Minister of State in Prime Minister's Office Jitendra Singh told the media after the meeting.
Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp revealed that he has informed Mario Balotelli to start looking for another club in order to revive his flagging career.
The 25-year-old maverick forward, who endured an unsuccessful loan spell at Milan last season, returned to Anfield for pre-season training but faces huge competition from several first-choice players like Daniel Sturridge, Christian Benteke, Divock Origi and Danny Ings.
Reflecting on the matter, Klopp said the Italian international was not at the stage of his career where he could be battling with four or five other players to find himself in the playing XI, the Guardian reported.
Italian Serie A club Sampdoria have expressed their interest in Balotelli, who scored just three goals in his 23 appearances for Milan.
The Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist Centre) has decided to file a 'no-confidence motion' against Prime Minister K. P. Sharma Oli in Parliament if he does not resign at the earliest, as his party is now a minority after withdrawal of the CPN's support.
Party spokesperson Pampha Bhusal said a meeting of the Maoist party held on Wednesday has decided to block the fiscal budget in Parliament and challenge Prime Minister Oli through no-confidence motion if he did not yield to the Maoist pressure and step down, reports the Himalayan Times.
The Maoists party withdrew its support from Prime Minister Oli-led coalition government yesterday, charging the ruling party with failure to implement the past agreements, including gentlemen's agreement to hand over the leadership to them, made with them in the past.
As per the constitutional provisions, the Prime Minister would be relieved from his post if he resigned or if no-confidence motion was passed by a majority of the total existing members of the Parliament.
The Maoist centre also bagged support of the Nepali Congress, the largest party in Parliament which holds 207 seats, in its bid to form a majority government under Maoist Centre Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal.
Matt Damon is ready to slip into a superhero suit, but he has a condition - Ben Affleck has to be there.
The 45-year-old actor, who will soon be returning to the Bourne franchise as the lead in fifth film Jason Bourne, can be tempted by a stint with Marvel or DC only if Affleck sits on the director's chair, reports the Independent.
"I'd consider anything with the right director, but I can't imagine there are any superheroes left, I think they're all taken at the moment. If [Ben] was directing me, I'd jump on it in a New York minute. I'd love to work with Ben," he said at the Jason Bourne premiere.
Affleck, who recently starred as Batman in 'Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice' has written his own solo Batman movie and will be both starring in it and directing.
The Congress Party on Wednesday welcomed the Delhi High Court's decision to set aside a trial court order of summoning documents from the Finance Ministry and other agencies in connection with the Herald case.
Speaking to ANI, senior Congress leader Salman Khurshid said that this was something they expected.
"This is something that we thought will happen. It was only a matter of time that all the celebrations that the BJP and Mr. Swamy were doing, I hope will now come to an end," Khurshid said.
"It takes time for the courts to act and finally they have acted and I think it is a wonderful thing," he added.
In a huge relief to the Congress, the High Court had yesterday set aside a trial court order summoning documents from Ministries of Finance and Corporate Affairs and balance sheet of the party for 2010-11 in the Herald case.
The trial court had earlier this year summoned various documents from the Finance Ministry and other agencies, including the Congress Party's balance sheet for the year 2010-11.
The High Court had earlier on April 18 reserved its order on the pleas of Congress leaders challenging summoning of documents from different ministries in connection with this case filed by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Subramanian Swamy.
A Delhi Court had on March 11 given its nod to Swamy's plea, seeking the balance sheets of the Indian Congress (INC) and Associated Journals Pvt Limited (AJL) for the purpose of investigation in this case.
Swamy had on March 1 approached a Delhi Court seeking summoning of certain documents related to the financial details of Congress, AJL and Young Indian Pvt. Ltd.
In an application moved before Metropolitan Magistrate Lovleen, Swamy sought to summon the balance sheet, receipts, income and expenditure statements for assessment years 2010- 11, 2011-12 and 2012-13 of the INC, AJL and Young Indian Pvt. Ltd.
Besides the Congress president and her son, Motilal Vora, Oscar Fernandes, Suman Dubey and Sam Pitroda are the other accused in this case.
Swamy had accused Sonia, Rahul and others of conspiring to cheat and misappropriate funds by just paying Rs. 50 lakh by which YI obtained the right to recover Rs. 90.25 crore which the AJL had owed to the Congress.
A monk of a Rakhain temple was attacked by unknown miscreants in Bangladesh's Cox's Bazar town on Wednesday.
The monk identified as 75- year-old Open Bita, hailed from Arakan state of Myanmar.
Bakhtiar Uddin Chowdhury, officer-in-charge (Investigation) of Cox's Bazar Sadar Model Police Station confirmed that a gang of unidentified miscreants stormed into the temple at Maillapar around 5:30 a.m. local time and attacked the monk indiscriminately, leaving him injured.
Bita was immediately rushed to Cox Bazar's Sadar Hospital.
Meanwhile, the police said that additional police force have been deployed in and around the temple to ward off any further trouble.
At least seven Taliban insurgents were killed and three others wounded in a military operation in Afghanistan's northern Kunduz province.
The 20th Pamir Army Division in a statement today said the operation was launched in Chahardara district in the province against the insurgents where the security forces recovered weapons, reports Tolo News.
The statement did not provide further details about the operation.
The operation comes two days after, twelve Taliban fighters were arrested in a joint military operation conducted by Afghan and foreign troops in Chahardara.
SRM University, with their motto 'Learn, Leap and Lead', stays true to that very spirit of innovation. On July 13 and 14, the university is hosting India's first ever technical summit, where some of the brightest minds in the nation will come together to discuss important issues and arrive at solutions for a number of problems the world would be facing in the future.
The summit is being held at the Kalyan Hometel in Vandalur.
The T Summit would be attended by seventeen of India's top ranked institutions, including various Indian Institutes of Technology such as IIT Kanpur, IIT Hyderabad, IIT Madras and IIT Gandhi Nagar and National Institutes of Technology like NIT Calicut, NIT Rourkela and NIT Raipur.
The highly ignited young minds would be deliberating on the topic of'Young Innovation', something which would surely pave the way for a better tomorrow.
A summit of this importance could only be overseen by someone who knows the importance of innovation in everyday life.
Part of a very special guest panel for the T Summit, Dr. Avinash Chander, former advisor to the Minister of Defence at the DRDO and Prof. Atul Gurtu, head of the Indian team to carry out the LC experiment at CERN, would also be present as the Chief Guest and the Guest of Honour respectively.
With the ultimate aim of carrying out vigorous discussions over a span of two days, including a round table conference of idea sharing with invigorating agendas like providing a conducive platform for innovation for all students equally; bridging the gap between industrialists and researchers through the fests; instilling social and environmental responsibility among innovators and creating a platform for effective collaboration between technical fests towards nation building.
The opening address was presented by the public relations organizer of the fest Aaruush and the welcome address by the secretary. The inaugural address was given to the participants by the Chief Guest Dr. Avinash Chander whereas Mr. Atul Gurtu presented the key note address.
David Cameron will resign today and Britain will get its first female prime minister since Margaret Thatcher, as British Home Secretary will take over the post.
After failing to convince UK to remain in the European Union in a shocking referendum, Cameron had announced in June that he would step down by October,
May's only remaining rival to replace Cameron -- Energy Minister Andrea Leadsom -- pulled out of the race following controversy over comments she made about motherhood and leadership.
"Obviously, with these changes, we now don't need to have a prolonged period of transition. And so tomorrow I will chair my last cabinet meeting. On Wednesday I will attend the House of Commons for prime minister's questions. And then after that I expect to go to the palace and offer my resignation. So we will have a new prime minister in that building behind me by Wednesday evening," Cameron told reporters outside 10 Downing Street on Monday.
May, who actually supported Britain remaining in the EU, reiterated her commitment to Brexit on Monday.
"Brexit means Brexit, and we're going to make a success of it. There will be no attempts to remain inside the EU. No attempts to rejoin it by the back door. No second referendum. The country voted to leave the European Union, and as prime minister, I will make sure we leave the European Union," she said.
Theresa May emerged from the Buckingham Palace today as United Kingdom's second female Prime Minister, shortly after David Cameron tendered his resignation.
According to the Guardian, May paid the traditional visit to the Queen to be invited to form a government and went to the palace to "kiss hands" with the Queen, as the ceremony is known.
Cameron, had earlier congratulated May as he left 10 Downing Street for the last time with his wife and children.
Addressing the waiting media outside No 10 before heading to Buckingham Palace to formally resign, Cameron said, "It's not been easy journey, and of course we've not got every decision right," he said, alongside his wife, Samantha, and children Nancy, Elwen and Florence.
Meanwhile, in her first address as Prime Minister, May said that the mission of her government is to forge a positive role for UK in the as it leaves the European Union.
"When we take the big calls, we will not listen to the mighty but you. We will do everything we can to help everyone. We'll make Britain a country that doesn't work for privileged few but everyone of us. And together we'll build a better Britain. When it comes to taxes, we'll prioritise not the wealthy, but you. When it comes to opportunity, we won't entrench the advantages of the fortunate few, we will do everything we can to help anybody, whatever your background, to go as far as your talents will take you," she said.
The James A. FitzPatrick Nuclear Power Plant may not close after all.
Entergy, which owns the Oswego County facility, revealed Wednesday that it's discussing the potential sale of FitzPatrick to Chicago-based Exelon.
Bill Mohl, Entergy's president of wholesale commodities, said the sale of the plant is dependent upon the terms between Entergy and Exelon and the "timeliness of the New York State Clean Energy Standard," which requires that 50 percent of electricity consumed in the state by 2030 comes from clean, renewable energy sources.
In November, Entergy announced its intent to shut down FitzPatrick, which has more than 600 employees and is a major source of tax revenue for local governments and school districts. The company cited market conditions, particularly low energy prices, as a main reason why it would close the plant.
Earlier this year, Entergy officials said the plant would close in January 2017.
If an agreement with Exelon can't be reached, Entergy said it will continue with its plans to close and decommission the plant.
"Our focus remains on providing employees and the community the best opportunity we can to prepare for either a transition to a new owner or a shutdown and decommissioning," said Brian Sullivan, site vice president at FitzPatrick.
Entergy said negotiations with Exelon are ongoing and the company expects the talks to be completed in mid-August.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo said the potential sale to Exelon is "welcome news" to New York.
"Over the past several months, my administration has been working closely with both companies to find a way to keep this vital energy resource operating," Cuomo said in a statement. "While there remains much work to be done, I am pleased that significant process is being made."
Before Entergy and Exelon entered into discussions, the state attempted to prevent FitzPatrick's closure. No agreement was reached between Entergy and New York, so the company decided to move forward with its plans to close the plant.
Now that there's interest from Exelon in acquiring FitzPatrick, U.S. Rep. John Katko, who represents Scriba and the western portion of Oswego County, echoed Cuomo's sentiment.
"While this proposal is far from certain, I will remain in close contact with company and state officials as it moves forward," Katko, R-Camillus, said.
Commending Sri Lanka for taking measures in compliance with the UN resolution to address the human rights issues, the United States has vowed that it will continue to support the government in all the challenges towards development.
The United States Assistant Secretary for South Asian Affairs Nisha Biswal said that Lanka has been on a remarkable trajectory of addressing not only the internal issues, but also engaging in with the broader international community in a spirit of partnership and dialogue.
"As the Government of Sri Lanka moves ahead with its plans for constitutional reform, for justice and reconciliation, the United States will continue to partner with the government to foster economic development and encourage foreign investment, to work to advance opportunities for all Sri Lankans," she said.
Briefing media in Colombo after a meeting with the Foreign Affairs Minister Mangala Samaraweera yesterday, she said that Washington welcomes the deepening of ties between both two countries
"We are partners, and today our relations are at an all-time high,"
she added.
Recalling that Washington has been partner with Colombo over the past 60 years, she assured that her country will continue to make substantial investments in multiple sectors including agriculture, education, health care, energy and natural resources.
She also said that the U.S. will continue to support Sri Lankan government in its "meaningful and concrete" steps in response to concerns of its people related to democratic governance and advancing respect for human rights, for reconciliation, for justice and accountability.
"We can envision a future which brings benefits to both countries, and to peace and prosperity and security across the Indian Ocean as Sri Lanka assumes a greater role as a key partner in this region," she said.
Cairn India and Vedanta rallied at 11:13 IST on BSE, extending recent rally on media reports that the Life Insurance Corporation of India has given its informal acceptance for the proposed merger of Cairn India with Vedanta.
Shares of Cairn India were up 5.75% at Rs 171.90. The stock had surged 8.33% to settle at Rs 162.55 yesterday, 12 July 2016.
Shares of Vedanta were up 6.18% at Rs 169.35. The stock had rallied 7.34% to settle at Rs 159.50 yesterday, 12 July 2016.
Meanwhile, the S&P BSE Sensex was down 2.72 points or 0.01% at 27,805.42.
Reports suggested that the Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) has given its informal acceptance for the proposed merger of Cairn India with Vedanta. LIC holds 9.06% stake in Cairn India as per the shareholding pattern as on 30 June 2016. It may be recalled that the Indian government had in April this year said that it won't allow the merger of Cairn India with Vedanta unless Cairn India resolves its tax issue of Rs 10247 crore. Vedanta had in June 2015 announced merger of Cairn India in a $2.3 billion all-share deal to create India's largest diversified natural resources firm.
Cairn India, a part of the Vedanta group, is one of the largest independent oil and gas exploration and production companies in India.
On consolidated basis, Cairn India reported net loss of Rs 10948.22 crore in Q4 March 2016, higher than net loss of Rs 240.82 crore in Q4 March 2015. Net sales declined 35.9% to Rs 1716.83 crore in Q4 March 2016 over Q4 March 2015.
Vedanta is a diversified natural resources company, whose business primarily involves producing oil & gas, zinc, lead, silver, copper, iron ore, aluminium and commercial power. The company has a presence across India, South Africa, Namibia, Australia, Ireland, Liberia and Sri Lanka. Vedanta, formerly Sesa Sterlite is the Indian subsidiary of Vedanta Resources Plc, a London-listed company.
On consolidated basis, Vedanta reported net loss of Rs 11181.26 crore in Q4 March 2016, lower than net loss of Rs 19228.12 crore in Q4 March 2015. Net sales declined 10.7% to Rs 15829.13 crore in Q4 March 2016 over Q4 March 2015.
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Jubilant FoodWorks before market hours today, 13 July 2016, announced a significant new innovation for the Indian market - the BurgerPizza. The new BurgerPizza is an exciting innovation from Domino's and is a result of the company's focus on innovation and growth, Jubilant FoodWorks said. With BurgerPizza, the company aims to grow its share in the 'all day, individual consumption' occasion and further grow its share of the chained Indian Food Service Industry that is pegged to grow three-fold to Rs 25000 crore within five years, the company said. Starting at Rs 89, the BurgerPizza range is available in two vegetarian and two non-vegetarian variants at the 100 plus Domino's Pizza restaurants across India, Jubilant FoodWorks said. The BurgerPizza is also available for ordering on the Domino's online ordering website and the Domino's Pizza mobile app, the company said.
Tata Motors announced that a duly constituted committee of the board of directors of the company will meet on 15 July 2016, for issuing rated, listed, unsecured, redeemable, non-convertible debentures (NCDs) aggregating to Rs 400 crore. This issuance is pursuant to the approval of the shareholders on 13 August 2015 and the board of directors' resolution passed at its meeting held on 30 March 2016. The announcement was made after market hours yesterday, 12 July 2016.
Sun Pharmaceutical Industries (Sun Pharma) announced before market hours today, 13 July 2016 that effective August 2016, Abhay Gandhi currently CEO - India and Sub-continent business will take over as CEO - North America business of Sun Pharma subject to necessary approvals and will be based in USA. In his new role, Abhay Gandhi will spear-head the growth of Sun Pharma's business in North America, the company said in a statement. Additionally, effective January 2017, Kal Sundaram, currently CEO - North America business will assume the position of CEO - India Business & Emerging Markets, subject to necessary approvals. He will be based in Mumbai. Backed by his rich experience, growth mind-set and visionary qualities Kal will lead Sun Pharma's growth agenda for India and Emerging Markets business, the company said in a statement.
Great Eastern Shipping Company (GE Shipping) announced after market hours yesterday, 12 July 2016 that it has signed a contract to buy a medium range product tanker of about 48,539 dwt. The 2005 Japanese built vessel is expected to join the company's fleet in Q2 September 2016, GE Shipping said.
Cupid, Network18 Media Investments, Reliance Industrial Infrastructure and TV18 Broadcast will announce their quarterly results today, 13 July 2016.
Andhra Bank turns ex-dividend today, 13 July 2016 for dividend of Rs 0.50 per share for the year ended 31 March 2016 (FY 2016).
Ashok Leyland turns ex-dividend today, 13 July 2016 for dividend of Rs 0.95 per share for the year ended 31 March 2016 (FY 2016).
R S Software (India) turns ex-dividend today, 13 July 2016 for dividend of Rs 1 per share for the year ended 31 March 2016 (FY 2016).
Philips Carbon Black turns ex-dividend today, 13 July 2016 for dividend of Rs 2.50 per share for the year ended 31 March 2016 (FY 2016).
Hatsun Agro Product turns ex-bonus today, 13 July 2016 for bonus issue of 2 shares for every 5 shares held.
BPCL turns ex-bonus today, 13 July 2016 for 1:1 bonus issue.
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MOIL was up 0.93% to Rs 244.25 at 12:55 IST on BSE after the Minister of Steel Birender Singh advised the company to fast-track the ongoing projects and target completion of the projects in the pipeline before the scheduled time.
Meanwhile, the S&P BSE Sensex was down 23.34 points or 0.08% at 27,784.80.
On BSE, so far 23,000 shares were traded in the counter as against average daily volume of 17,976 shares in the past one quarter. The stock hit a high of Rs 249.40 and a low of Rs 241.90 so far during the day. The stock had hit a 52-week high of Rs 255 on 3 June 2016. The stock had hit a record low of Rs 180.10 on 12 February 2016. The stock had underperformed the market over the past one month till 12 July 2016, gaining 2.67% compared with the Sensex's 4.4% rise. The scrip had also underperformed the market in past one quarter, advancing 3.46% as against Sensex's 10.59% rise.
The mid-cap company has equity capital of Rs 168 crore. Face value per share is Rs 10.
Steel minister Birender Singh during a review meeting with top management of MOIL yesterday, 12 July 2016, exhorted the company to expand its manganese resource base as a long-term strategy. He appreciated MOIL's mid-term plans of diversification by sharing its mining expertise and downstream production on availability of captive power facilities. The minister discussed at length the challenges and opportunities in exploration and extraction of mineral resources like iron ore and manganese, a government statement released after market hours yesterday, 12 July 2016 said.
MOIL's net profit declined 79.1% to Rs 21.38 crore on 29.9% growth in net sales to Rs 209.62 crore in Q4 March 2016 over Q4 March 2015.
MOIL produces and sells different grades of manganese ore. It currently operates 10 mines, six located in the Nagpur and Bhandara districts of Maharashtra and four in the Balaghat district of Madhya Pradesh.
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Tata Motors rose 0.61% to Rs 487.15 at 9:21 IST on BSE after the company said that a special committee will meet on 15 July 2016 to issue bonds worth Rs 400 crore.
The announcement was made after market hours yesterday, 12 July 2016.
Meanwhile, the BSE Sensex was up 37.53 points, or 0.13%, to 27,845.67.
On BSE, so far 28,000 shares were traded in the counter, compared with an average volume of 8.63 lakh shares in the past one quarter. The stock hit a high of Rs 487.85 and a low of Rs 484.80 so far during the day. The stock hit a 52-week high of Rs 489.60 on 23 June 2016. The stock hit a 52-week low of Rs 266 on 11 February 2016. The stock had outperformed the market over the past one month till 12 July 2016, rising 5.91% compared with 4.40% rise in the Sensex. The scrip had also outperformed the market in past one quarter, rising 22.55% as against Sensex's 10.59% rise.
The large-cap company has an equity capital of Rs 577.44 crore. Face value per share is Rs 2.
Tata Motors announced that a duly constituted committee of the board of directors of the company will meet on 15 July 2016, for issuing rated, listed, unsecured, redeemable, non-convertible debentures (NCDs) aggregating to Rs 400 crore. This issuance is pursuant to the approval of the shareholders on 13 August 2015 and the board of directors' resolution passed at its meeting held on 30 March 2016.
Tata Motors' consolidated net profit jumped 201.6% to Rs 5177.06 crore on 18.8% growth in net sales to Rs 79926.12 crore in Q4 March 2016 over Q4 March 2015.
Tata Motors is a market leader in commercial vehicles in India. The company's British unit JLR sells premium luxury cars.
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Andhra Pradesh has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Russia's State Marine Technical University to promote marine education and technology.
The agreement was signed at the port city of St. Petersburg on the first day of Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu's visit to Russia on Wednesday.
The university works in close connection with United Shipbuilding Corporation and Rosoboronexport.
Companies involved in the marine segment in India and Andhra Pradesh will benefit from this collaboration, said a government statement here on Wednesday.
Rakhmanov Alexey, President of United Shipbuilding Corporation said that the university is considering to make Andhra Pradesh the headquarters of the company in India as the state has unique marine activity.
Highlighting the opportunities available, Naidu said that Andhra is set to become a logistics hub in India.
"We want to promote inland navigation and also the commercial usage of water transport. Water-based transport is cheaper when compared to other forms of transport," the Chief Minister said.
Naidu said the state would soon set up maritime university.
--IANS
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Hollywood icons like Gwyneth Paltrow, Brian Grazer, Ashton Kutcher and many others will talk at the third Airbnb Open festival in downtown Los Angeles in November, discussing the future of travel and hospitality business.
Last year, Airbnb, one of the the world's leading community-driven hospitality company, welcomed over 5,000 hosts from 110 countries at Paris, France. This year, Airbnb on Wednesday announced, it plans to expand the scope of the Airbnb Open, welcoming both hosts and guests from its community as well as localities of Los Angeles and others to explore the future of travel and hospitality.
"This year's Airbnb Open will be a seminal moment for our community as we announce our vision for the future of hosting and travel" said Brian Chesky, Airbnb co-founder and CEO.
Some of the other confirmed key speakers for the three-day Airbnb Open, that will start from, November 17, include Elizabeth Gilbert, author of "Eat Pray Love", Blake Mycoskie, the founder, Toms shoes, and restaurateur Danny Meyer as well as Airbnb's founders, executives and more, said a statement.
The annual Airbnb Open is an opportunity for Airbnb's community to gather in one place and make meaningful connections with each other and learn tips for successful hosting, as well as hearing the latest news from their respective companies with important product updates.
"As the first ever global festival of hosting, the Open will bring together hosts and guests from across the globe in one of the most creative places in the world, Los Angeles. The city will be an open canvas for them to explore for three days of education, connection and celebration," he added.
This year's Airbnb Open will highlight the thriving downtown area of LA, taking place across four historic theatres and involving many local restaurants, cafes and other small businesses. Attendees will have the chance to engage with locals and a diverse range of communities, immersing themselves in the energy of the city and experiencing what it would be like to live there.
--IANS
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Indian Police Service (IPS) officer S.M.H. Meerza, summoned for questioning in connection with the Narada sting probe, appeared before the police and recorded his statement on Wednesday.
The sting, conducted by Narada News, accused several high profile leaders of West Bengal's ruling Trinamool Congress and also Meerza, a former superintendent of police of Burdwan, of taking bribes.
Currently posted as Commandant of Special Striking Force, Barrackpore, Meerza was in the city police headquarters for nearly three hours.
"He came and his statement was recorded by the investigating officer in the case," Joint Commissioner of Kolkata Police Vishal Garg said.
Chief Minister and Trinamool supremo Mamata Banerjee had in June ordered a probe headed by city police commissioner to find if there was a "conspiracy" behind the sting.
The city police have also twice summoned Narada News editor-in-chief Mathew Samuel, who had conducted the sting.
But the journalist, who has been booked for several offences, including defamation and forgery, is yet to appear for questioning and has twice written to the police seeking withdrawal of the summons, as he contended the matter was pending before the Calcutta High Court.
Multiple litigations seeking an independent probe into the sting are pending before the court which has ordered a forensic test of the footage and devices used for the sting.
--IANS
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In a bid to provide financial help to those suffering from kala azar, the Bihar government has decided to hike the patients' assistance money during their treatment in hospital, officials said on Wednesday.
"Unlike in the past, the government will now provide assistance money to kala azar patients for 30 days," state health department Principal Secretary R.K. Mahajan said.
Besides, one of the patient's attendants will be provided an assistance of Rs 200 for two days. At present, the government provides only Rs 200 to kala azar patients for two days.
Visceral leishmaniasis or kala azar is known as the poor man's disease because it affects the poorest.
The disease, transmitted by the sand fly, has killed 74 people in the state last year. Over 750 people have died of kala azar in the past five years.
The worst kala azar-hit areas of Bihar are the districts of Vaishali, Muzaffarpur, Sitamarhi, Saran, Gopalganj, Saharsa, Araria, Sitamarhi, Madhepura and East and West Champaran.
--IANS
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Ruby Rai, an accused in Bihar toppers' scam, was denied bail by a juvenile court here on Wednesday, a government lawyer said.
Ruby had pleaded that she should be granted bail as she is a minor.
Last week, she was shifted from Beur jail to a remand home after the court accepted Ruby's age on the basis of her matriculation certificate stating her date of birth as November 15, 1998.
Ruby had topped the class 12 examination conducted by the Bihar School Examination Board (BSEB), in humanities stream.
She got into trouble after after a sting by a news channel showed her giving ludicrous answers to basic questions related to her subjects.
Class 12 science stream topper Saurabh Shreshtha was also caught giving wrong answers to basic science questions on camera.
The sting suggested that the toppers might have used cheating and fraud to achieve the top ranks.
Both Ruby and Saurabh belonged to V.R. College in Vaishali district.
The Special Investigation Team (SIT) of Bihar Police then lodged an FIR against Ruby, Saurabh and two other toppers.
At least 20 people have so far been arrested in connection with what has come to be known as the "toppers' scam".
--IANS
ik/lok/vm
The owner of a Cortland County farm is facing numerous charges related to the death of a 14-year-old worker last year.
The state attorney general's office has charged Luke Park, who owns Park Family Farm in Homer, with eight felony counts of falsifying business records and filing false unemployment insurance contribution returns with the state.
Park has also been charged with seven misdemeanor counts, including endangering the welfare of a child, illegal hours of work for minors and prohibited employment of minors.
The charges stem from the death of Alex Smith, a 14-year-old who worked on Park's farm. According to state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, Smith was allegedly using a skidloader with a hydraulic lift and fork attachment to prepare bales of hay for cow feed.
Child labor laws prohibit minors from using such heavy equipment.
Schneiderman said Park admitted to authorities that he found Smith pinned under the lift and a bale of hay with the engine of the skidloader running.
An autopsy revealed that Smith died of mechanical asphyxiation after his chest and abdomen were crushed.
"Child labor laws were enacted to protect the safety of our children and to avoid terrible yet foreseeable tragedies like the one alleged in this case," Schneiderman said. "Adults have a responsibility to protect our children, and when an employer places a minor in harm's way, that employer will be held responsible and prosecuted."
Park is also accused of requiring minors to work approximately 60 hours a week on the farm more than the 48-hour maximum in place for 16- and 17-year-olds when school isn't in session.
Schneiderman's office also alleges that many farm employees were paid "off-the-books," which led the farm to underpay its unemployment insurance contributions by more than $9,000.
Park was arraigned in Homer Town Court and released. He's due to return to court on Aug. 16.
In a bid to ease the lives of the foreign minority migrants in India living on Long Term Visa (LTV), the Union cabinet on Wednesday amended Citizenship Rules 2009.
The Cabinet meeting here was chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
"The Union Cabinet approved facilities being extended to persons from minority communities of Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan, namely Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians staying on Long Term Visa (LTV) in India," an official statement said.
The move is aimed at easing out the difficulties being faced by foreign migrants.
Now the foreign migrants living in the country on the LTV can open bank accounts, get PAN card, Aadhaar card and driving licence.
It also allows the migrants to purchase property for self-occupation and suitable accommodation for carrying out self-employment.
The decision would also "allow free movement within the State or Union Territory where they are staying, permission to take self-employment, transfer of LTV papers from one State to other, waiver of penalty on non-extension of short-term Visa/LTV on time, permission to apply for LTV from the place of present residence when the applicants have moved to the place without permission".
The government also clarified that the Collector or District Megistrate would be empowered to authorise an officer not below the rank of Sub-Divisional Magistrate for administering the oath of allegiance to the applicant.
--IANS
aks/lok/vt
The Congress on Wednesday hailed the Supreme Court decision restoring the ousted government and demanded the sacking of Governor Jyoti Prasad Rajkhowa.
Talking to reporters here, Congress leader Kapil Sibal said the central ministers involved in taking the decision concerning "should apologise".
He also demanded a probe into the alleged tape recording of some Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders with a businessman for conspiring to topple the Arunachal government.
"I have heard that Rajkhowa is on leave, he should go on long leave," Sibal said. He said if the government does not quit, he should be sacked.
"I also demand an apology of the central government ministers who were part of the conspiracy to topple the government. My third demand is for a probe into the alleged taped conversations of BJP leaders with a businessman," he added.
Sibal's remarks came after the apex court restored ousted Chief Minister Nabam Tuki after it quashed Rajkhowa's decision of preponing the state assembly session in December 2015.
"Today, it has been proved that judiciary can save democracy," Sibal said.
The apex court decision was also a clear warning to all Governors.
"It is a clear cut indication and warning from the court to all the Governors that don't help the party with whom you are associated to topple an elected government or else we will cancel your decision.
"The court cancelled the Governor's order saying it violated Articles 174, 175 and 163 of the Constitution," Sibal added.
The leaders of the estranged Greek and Turkish Cypriot communities tackled yet another issue on Tuesday in their quest for a solution reunifying their partitioned island-country.
Cyprus' President Nicos Anastasiades said that in a meeting with Turkish Cypriot leader Mustafa Akinci they made inroads in discussing the economy and the relations of a reunified state with the European Union, Xinhua reported.
Anastasiades said that the two leaders instructed a joint committee of technocrats to work on the issue with a view of striking absolute convergence on all points.
"We have to reach concrete results, so that we get to convergences. I wouldn't say that I am not optimistic that we can agree. I see an intention on both sides to make efforts to eliminate any divergences," he said.
Anastasiades and Akinci are scheduled to start discussing perhaps the most complicated chapter of the 4-decade old Cyprus problem - territorial adjustments, withdrawal of occupation troops, repatriation of tens of thousands of Turkish settlers and security arrangements.
Actual decisions on the issue have to be made by the Turkish government, which has said that it supported a Cyprus solution but did not yet give any indication how far it is prepared to go to reach this target.
A solution to the Cyprus problem will unlock Turkey's negotiations for accession to the European Union.
Anastasiades met on Tuesday with visiting US Assistant Secretary of State in charge of European affairs Victoria Nuland, saying he requested an intervention by the American government towards Turkey to respond positively to moves required for a solution.
"There are problems which exist because of the Turkish stand on the problem," said Anastasiades.
--IANS
vr
A special court here on Wednesday sent LIC agent Anand Singh, accused of investing Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh's "tainted" money worth Rs 5 crore in Life Insurance Corporation policies, to judicial custody till July 25.
Special Judge Vinod Kumar remanded Chauhan in judicial custody after Enforcement Directorate (ED) told him that it did not require his further custodial interrogation.
He was presented before the court after expiry of his four-day custody of the ED.
The ED arrested Chauhan on Friday from Chandigarh under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).
Chauhan is accused of investing Virbhadra Singh's "tainted" money of Rs 5 crore in LIC policies purchased in Virbhadra's name and those of his family members, including wife Pratibha Singh.
This is the first arrest by the ED in the money laundering case against the Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister.
The ED reportedly found that Virbhadra Singh had accumulated assets worth Rs 6.03 crore in his name and in the name of his family members, which were disproportionate to his known sources of income, during his tenure as the Union Steel Minister from 2009 to 2011.
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) is also investigating the case.
--IANS
akk/pgh/vt
The Supreme Court on Wednesday dismissed a petition demanding a judicial inquiry into Gurgaon gangster Sandeep Gadoli's "killing" by a Gurgaon police Crime Branch team in Mumbai on February 7.
Gadoli's brother Kuldeep Singh had filed a petition demanding a judicial inquiry into his brother's alleged "planned killing" by the Gurgaon police.
The Mumbai police's advocate told a bench of Justice Gopal Gowda and Justice Adarsh Kumar Goel that an FIR against Gurgaon police has been registered under relevant sections of IPC.
During the hearing, the advocate informed court that SIT of Mumbai police is probing the case and three Gurgaon police personnel involved in the alleged encounter have been already arrested.
After hearing the plea, the court said that there was no need of judicial inquiry.
Mumbai SIT has arrested Sub Inspector Pradhuman Yadav, who led the alleged encounter, constable Vikram Singh and Jitender, member of team.
The trio are on police remand.
Gadoli, a Gurgaon-based gangster, was shot dead by a Gurgaon police team inside Hotel Airport Metro, near Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport, on February 7.
While the Gurgaon police team claimed it fired in self-defence, the Mumbai police SIT concluded the encounter was fake.
Accordingly, an FIR was registered against the five Gurgaon police personnel and three others, including Divya Pahuja.
According to the SIT, Divya was with Gadoli when she was shot, which makes her an important but high-risk witness.
Gurgaon Police Commissioner has announced out of term promotion for the team which eliminated Gadoli but suspended all five policemen in the last week of June.
Meanwhile, Gadoli's family has dismissed claims of Divya having gone 'missing'.
Gadoli's has refused to accept body of gangster which is lying in the Mumbai mortuary until arrest of all accused.
The family alleged that Gadoli was killed on the demand of another Gurgaon gangster Binder Gujjar allegedly supported by few senior Gurgaon police officers.
An ACP rank officer has been already asked by SIT to join the investigation.
--IANS
pradeep/pgh/vm
The Delhi High Court on Wednesday deferred the hearing of a PIL challenging the Aam Aadmi Party government's decision to appoint 21 legislators as parliamentary secretaries.
A division bench of Chief Justice G. Rohini and Sangita Dhingra Sehgal posted the matter for September 8, after the Arvind Kejriwal-led Delhi government said a plea will come up for hearing on Thursday before the Election Commission on disqualification of these MLAs and this PIL be heard after four weeks.
President Pranab Mukherjee in June refused to sign a bill that allowed the 21 AAP MLAs to hold a second paying position as parliamentary secretary, leaving their fate hanging in balance.
The Election Commission has summoned the legislators to clarify their position on July 14.
The AAP had earlier defended its decision in high court, saying the move does not amount to creation of a "public office".
"The provision of parliamentary secretary is merely to assist the minister in connection with the public and the rest of the assembly and ensuring a harmonious functioning," it had said in an affidavit.
After coming to power in February 2015, the AAP government appointed the parliamentary secretaries, saying this would facilitate smooth functioning but made it clear that they would not receive any remuneration or perk from the government, that is, no burden on the exchequer.
The order, however, permitted them to use government transport for official purposes and earmarked space in the ministers' offices to help them in the official work.
A public interest litigation filed by NGO Rashtriya Mukti Morcha had sought scrapping of the appointments as these were "unconstitutional, illegal and without jurisdiction".
The PIL said Kejriwal had "no power, jurisdiction or authority" to administer the oath of office to parliamentary secretaries.
The bench earlier refused to stay the government order, saying it required further consideration.
--IANS
gt/py/dg
The international tribunal's ruling against China in its dispute with Philippines related to the South China Sea was a "rebuke" to Beijing, a US expert said on Wednesday and noted that it was also an opportunity for better negotiations between the parties concerned.
Peter Dutton, Director of China Maritime Studies Institute at the US Naval War College, said the decision should have sweeping effects and other countries will begin to reflect on their own claims in respect of the South China Sea.
"In my view it is a rebuke of the way the Chinese have behaved in the South China Sea. It is a major rebuke of power politics and major strengthening of the international system," Dutton said through video-conferencing from the US.
He said there will be temptation to view the decision as some form of crisis, but "it is also an opportunity for better negotiations for parties".
"Now there is a clear yardstick. Every party's actions in South China Sea will be judged against it."
China on Tuesday suffered a major diplomatic blow when The Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague ruled that it violated the Philippines' rights in the South China Sea. Beijing refused to accept the verdict, calling it "null and void".
The tribunal accused China of interfering with the Philippines' fishing and petroleum exploration, building artificial islands in the waters and failing to prevent Chinese fishermen from fishing in the zone.
China's expansive claims over South China Sea have been contested by several countries including the Philippines, Brunei, Vietnam, Malaysia and Taiwan. Ties between China and Japan were strained by a territorial row over a group of islands in the East China Sea.
Dutton, who is also a professor of strategic studies, said the tribunal's decision had created a rift between China and international community and it was not easy for China to build the bridge.
He said China has to factor in international opinion as also domestic opinion.
"We have to see what China will do, give time to see how China will behave. The ball is in China's court," he said, adding, that efforts should be made to find common ground and bring China back to full participation in the international system.
Asked about possibility of increased militarisation in the region by China, Dutton said he will be surprised if Beijing did so as it will essentially mean confrontation with the whole world.
Answering another query, he said at least two US ships were in the South China Sea on any given day.
"It is a sign that the US wants to make sure that conflict is off the table in South China Sea."
Answering queries about the possibility of China imposing an air defence identification zone in South China Sea, Dutton said he did not think it would be done in the near future.
Dutton hoped there will be better lines of communication between China and Philippines.
He said countries had common interest in open order at sea and free flow of trade, commerce, finance and information.
Answering a query about imposing economic sanctions against China, Dutton said it was a possibility.
He said countries should be prepared to use sanctions to safeguard international order. "Countries need to have discussion. Don't think we should be quick to impose them. We need to encourage them to behave in the right direction. Only if we see a more bellicose China, then think of sanctions," he said.
To another query, he said there was more room for direct naval cooperation between the US and India in the Indian Ocean.
--IANS
ps/rn/vm
Japanese Emperor Akihito has expressed his intention to end his reign in the coming years, the country's public broadcaster NHK said on Wednesday quoting a government source.
The 82-year-old emperor, who has reigned for over 27 years, has expressed his desire to the Imperial Household Agency, Xinhua news agency reported.
His 56-year-old son, Crown Prince Naruhito, is expected to succeed to the throne.
--IANS
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Superstar Rajinikanth-starrer Tamil actioner "Kabali", which is slated to hit the screens worldwide on July 22, will release in 400 screens in the US, with special premieres planned for a day earlier.
In the US, distribution company CineGalaxy, which had released "Theri" and "24" earlier this year, will release "Kabali".
"It will be the biggest release for a Rajinikanth-starrer in the US. The Tamil as well as Telugu version of the film will release in 400 screens," Madhu Garlapati of CineGalaxy told IANS.
According to Madhu, there's unprecedented pre-release buzz for the film.
"We opened bookings on Tuesday and in less than two hours tickets were sold out at Towne 3 cinemas, San Jose. The tickets for premieres are priced at $25, and there's huge demand for tickets," she said.
Directed by Pa. Ranjith, the film also stars Radhika Apte, Kishore, Kalaiarasan, Dinesh, Dhansikaa and Taiwanese actor Winston Chao.
Rajinikanth will be seen as a don who fights for Tamils in Malaysia in "Kabali", which will also dubbed and released in Hindi and Malay.
--IANS
hp/rb/vt
The agitating Madhesi Morcha in Nepal will support the new power-sharing deal reached between the Nepali Congress and CPN (Maoist Centre) to topple the K.P. Sharma Oli-led government and will support Pushpa Kamal Dahal "Prachanda" as the country's next prime minister, a top Madhesi leader said on Wednesday.
After the CPN (Maoist Centre) withdrew support to Oli on Tuesday, the government has been reduced to minority and will be facing no trust motion in parliament.
"We support the bid to pull down the government but will not be part of the next government," said Upendra Yadav, one of the Morcha leaders.
Prachanda is all set to become Nepal's next prime minister after toppling Oli as per an agreement reached between the opposition Nepali Congress and the Maoists.
The NC and the Maoist alliance is comparatively positive in addressing the demands raised by the Morcha which spearheaded a five-month-long agitation after the promulgation of the new constitution in September last year.
Despite 36 rounds of talks with the Oli government, the demands raised by the Morcha, including change in demarcation of proposed seven provinces and making the new constitution more inclusive and Madhes-friendly, remain in limbo.
A seven-point agreement reached between NC and Maoist ahead of the pulling out of support to Oli clearly states that once the new government is formed, the demands of the agitating Madhesi Morcha will be looked into seriously and the government will address them with all seriousness.
"We will look into what kind of approach the new alliance will have towards us," said Yadav, adding that "accordingly we will extend support or join the government".
The first point of the deal reached between the NC and Maoist that is considered as the cornerstone for the new political alliance was committed to addressing the dissatisfaction in the Madhes region of the country.
"Dissatisfactions seen in various issues of the new constitution and reservation put by Madhesis, Tharu and other communities will be sought a political understanding to resolve them. In this context, all acceptability in constitution will be sought through the political understanding," said the No.1 point of the NC-Maoist agreement paper.
A meeting of the Morcha on Wednesday decided to cast its vote in favour of the no trust motion registered jointly by the NC and Maoists at the parliament secretariat.
"The Oli government was never responsible towards the nation and our grievances... so we have decided to cast our vote against him," said Yadav.
(Anil Giri can be contacted at girianil@gmail.com)
--IANS
giri/py/dg
July 13, 1936
The United States Olympic equestrian team, with Captain Carl Raguse, son of Mr. and Mrs. Albert O. Raguse of 410 South Seward Avenue, as one of its members, finished third Saturday as the Irish Free State team won the Prize of Nations trophy in the international horse show held at Lucerne, Switzerland.
One of the outstanding performances of the show was the brilliant riding of Captain Raguse in the Meggenhorn event. While he gave a perfect exhibition in riding Ugly, the time was 1 minute and 7 2/5 seconds, giving him fourth place. Captain Raguse will compete soon with the United States equestrian team in the Olympics at Berlin, Germany.
July 13, 1961
Lawrence T. Failey, son of Mr. and Mrs. Harold T. Failey of 90 Orchard Street, has been named an expert rifleman at the Reserve Officers Training Corps Camp, Fort Devens, Mass.
Cadet Failey, a student of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, is attending the six-week training program encampment at Ft. Devens with 1,080 other students, most of whom come from colleges and universities in New England and New York. Upon successful completion of summer camp and graduation from college, he will become eligible for a commission as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army Reserve.
July 13, 2006
When the band DamDog plays, listeners, diners and dancers alike have no choice but to stop and listen to their charismatic tunes. With years of experience, brothers Larry, Craig and Dave Kyle keep the crowd moving with more than a dash of soul.
The band began in 1978 in a garage in Sterling Valley. Throughout the years, the siblings came to love their work together, pouring their hearts into the project. Through endless practices and performances, they became the polished musicians they are today.
July 13, 2011
Cayuga County is hoping that a few more custody officers and a sentencing tweak will open the door for more federal inmates, in turn giving the sheriffs department budget a shot in the arm. Most, but not all, of the inmates at the jail come from Cayuga County. When there are open beds, the county can solicit federal inmates from the U.S. Marshals to fill them.
Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti on Wednesday appealed for calm in the Kashmir Valley as she paid tributes to the martyrs of the 1931 struggle against the Dogra rule.
"I appeal to everybody to restore calm and peace so that further loss of lives is avoided," the Chief Minister said.
She said "the loss of precious lives" in firing by security forces since the killing of a top militant on July 8 was "regretted but nothing can bring them back.
"While I am deeply grieved, my grief cannot match that of the families who have lost their near and dear ones," Mehbooba Mufti said.
Under heavy security, the Peoples Democratic Party leader went to the graveyard at Naqashband Sahib area of Old Srinagar where a guard of honour was presented to her.
An uneasy calm prevails in largely curfew-bound Kashmir Valley where violent street clashes erupted after the killing of a militant commander, Burhan Wani, leaving over 30 people dead and hundreds injured.
Mehbooba Mufti laid a wreath at the graveyard to commemorate those killed by the Dogra Maharaja's soldiers on this day in 1931 outside the Central Jail in Srinagar.
People had stormed the jail during the trial of Abdul Qadeer Khan, an Afghan cook of a British official. Qadeer had been arrested for delivering a fiery speech in support of the Kashmiris.
--IANS
sq/py/mr
Following the successful India Africa Forum Summit hosted by New Delhi last October in which all 54 African countries participated, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's four-nation visit to the continent from July 7 to 11 have given a pronounced leg-up to India-Africa ties.
Modi's five-day tour to Mozambique, South Africa, Tanzania and Kenya came after President Pranab Mukherjee's trips to Ghana, Cote d'Ivore and Namibia and Vice President Hamid Ansari's visits to Morocco and Tunisia in May and June.
Modi's trips to Mozambique and Kenya were the first prime ministerial visits to these two countries in 34 and 35 years respectively. The visit has given a fresh dimension to India's outreach to Africa in terms of food and energy security and defence and maritime cooperation.
The agreements signed with Mozambique and Tanzania for import of pulses have given a significant boost to India's food security as well as to the welfare of African farmers.
"The long-term agreement with Mozambique on import of pulses is an excellent win-win situation," Rajiv Bhatia, who has served as India's Ambassador to South Africa and Kenya, told IANS.
"The people of Mozambique don't consume dal that much, so in India they have found a readymade market," he said.
While India signed a long-term agreement, lasting up to 10 years, with Mozambique for import of pulses, Modi and Tanzanian President John Magufuli agreed to "deepen our partnership in agriculture and food security, including through enhanced export of pulses from Tanzania to India".
According to Malancha Chakrabarty, associate fellow in the Observer Research Foundation (ORF), India's latest agricultural deals with Africa are a departure from the earlier model.
"As against earlier when farmers from Punjab and Andhra Pradesh used to go to African countries, India now gives the opportunity and security to African farmers by offering minimum support price (MSP) to sell to India," Chakrabarty said.
"At the same time we are ensuring that the quality suits Indian preferences," she added.
With India gifting a Bhabhatron, a state-of-the-art cancer therapy machine, to Tanzania and Kenya, health care is another area of India's engagement with Africa.
"India is concentrating on building cancer hospitals and contributing medical equipment," Chakrabarty said.
In his joint press conference with Modi on Monday, Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta also said that India would help set up a pharmaceutical company in Kenya to manufacture drugs.
Energy security is another area where India will look to Africa with Mozambique being the third biggest supplier of natural gas after Qatar and Australia and Tanzania emerging as a gas giant with a series of finds since 2011.
"East African countries are found to have gas reserves and India is speeding up its (gas import) diversification process," Bhatia said.
Chakrabarty explained that unlike in the case of the on-the-cards Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) gas pipeline, African countries were friendly to India and there were no security issues in terms of gas imports.
Maritime cooperation is another area which was a common theme with all the four countries Modi visited.
"I am very gratified that India is extending maritime cooperation with Africa," strategic affairs expert C Uday Bhaskar, director, Society for Policy Studies, said.
"This is a logical extension of Modi's island tours (of Seychelles and Mauritius) on SAGAR (Security and Growth for All in the Region policy of India). We should see this as a logical security enabler in the region."
Bhatia said that the memorandum of understanding (MoU) in defence cooperation that India signed with Kenya was important.
"It is not everyday that India signs defence MoUs with countries," he pointed out.
As for the China versus India debate on the African continent, Chakrabarty was very clear: India cannot compete with China but concentrating on niche areas and cooperative engagement will help in the long run.
(Aroonim Bhuyan can be contacted at aroonim.b@ians.in)
--IANS
ab/vm/tb
Big news organisations who first embraced social use at workplace are now seeing more risks than benefits in employees' use of Facebook and Twitter, reveals an interesting study.
Realising the risks of social media, major news organisations have created guidelines for employees on how to use these outlets, separate from the companies' existing codes of conduct.
Jayeon Lee, assistant professor of journalism at Pennsylvania-based Lehigh University, found that news organisations are more concerned about the current social environment than excited about it at least when it comes to their employees.
"I was wondering what approaches news organisations take when it comes to their own employees' social uses," Lee said.
"In particular, knowing both positive and negative implications of journalists' social media uses, I wanted to see if their guidelines were dominantly positive, negative, or neutral in their framing of the implications," she added.
Overall, Lee found that the guidelines focus primarily on the risks and challenges presented by the use of social media rather than the opportunities and advantages for media.
"As some media critics point out, overreaching rules can stifle creativity and morale and even discourage overall social media use itself," she explained in a paper set to be published in the journal The Communication Review.
The study looked at eight US news organisations - The New York Times, The Associated Press, Bloomberg, Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, CNN, and NPR - and three British news outlets - BBC, The Times and The Daily Telegraph.According to the findings, news organisations are most concerned about: accuracy, breaking objectivity, inappropriate online behaviours and harming their principles and credibility.
Accuracy - sourcing or redistributing false information from social media without sufficient fact verification - was the most frequently raised topic and accounted for 17.8 percent of the total sentences studied.
"The results show that the prevention-focused approach is more common than I would have predicted," Lee said.
"Although I expected that the guidelines would include various warnings related to risky social media activities, I was surprised to find little comment about how to use social media wisely or effectively to derive full benefit from it," she commented.
Lee recognised that news organizations are actively utilizing various social media to reach a wider audience and build brand loyalty.
"However, it seems they are keen on keeping their own employees from actively engaging in social media," she added.
--IANS
na/vt
US President on Tuesday called on protesters, police and the public to open their hearts and drop their preconceptions to deal with racism and violence in the country.
At a memorial service held in the Texas city of Dallas to honour five police officials killed on Thursday by a lone gunmen Micah Johnson, Obama lamented a flood of guns in cities, and a glaring and chronic mistrust between the police and citizens, Xinhua news agency reported.
The five officials were killed because Johnson was upset about the fatal police shootings of two black men in the states of Louisiana and Minnesota. The gunmen opened fire at the end of a peaceful Black Lives Matter-organised protest in Dallas.
Obama called on the country to confront racism and at the mean time support the ordinary Americans.
He encouraged police and the public to acknowledge and confront the implications of entrenched institutional racism, while also demanding respect for police and the role they play.
"The deepest fault lines of our democracy have suddenly been exposed, perhaps even widened," he said. "Faced with such violence, we wonder if racial divides can ever be bridged."
Calling the shootings of the police officials an act of demented violence and racial hatred, Obama offered empathy to those who view police with suspicion, and to those who view anti-police protesters as disruptive and disrespectful.
Obama said race relations had improved dramatically in his lifetime, adding that those who deny it were dishonouring the struggles that helped them achieve that progress.
"But America, we know that bias remains. We know it. Don't dismiss peaceful protesters as troublemakers or paranoid."
Meanwhile, former US President George W. Bush, now a Dallas resident, also attended the service and urged Americans to reject the unity of grief and fear.
"At times it feels like the forces pulling us apart are stronger than the forces binding us together," Bush said.
"Too often we judge other groups by their worst examples, while judging ourselves by our best intentions. And this has strained our bonds of understanding and common purpose," he said.
Last Thursday, a sniper named Micah Johnson opened fire on police officers during a Dallas downtown peaceful protest against police's killing of African Americans.
As many as seven officers and two civilians were also wounded in the attack, which marked the deadliest day for US law enforcement since the September 11, 2001 terror attacks.
The victims of the Paris attacks last year, intended to file charges against the French government, their lawyer has said.
Maitre Samia Maktouf, a lawyer defending 17 victims of Paris terror attacks on November 13 last year that left about 130 people dead and over 250 injured, on Tuesday said her clients intended to file charges against the government, Xinhua news agency reported.
"We will do everything to obtain the condemnation of the French government for failing to prevent the action of the terrorists, while some of them were under judicial supervision," said the lawyer.
At the same time, the report of the parliamentary committee of inquiry on terrorism was delivered to French President Francois Hollande, the report said.
According to the media, the committee's report said one of the suicide bomber of the Bataclan Theatre visited Syria in September despite the judicial supervision put into place after his indictment for a failed attempt to head for Yemen in 2012.
The French government has been condemned for negligence by the administrative court of Nimes (Gard) in the case of master corporal Abel Chennouf who was assassinated in March 2012 by Mohamed Merah in Montauban (Tarn-et-Garonne), France.
French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve expressed his reservation concerning some suggestions of the committee's report on Tuesday, namely, the creation of a new intelligence agency and the fusion of some terrorist monitoring systems.
"This prudence regarding the creation of new structures results in a will to exempt the intelligence service from undergoing perpetual process of reforms without guaranteed substantial gain in efficiency," said the official.
"In fact, these services have already been subject to numerous reorganisations in the past few months to adjust their practice to a particularly high and constantly changing threat. Moreover, in this context, the urgency of the situation drives them to focus on the protection of the French citizens," he said.
Cazeneuve has talked to the president of the association of the attack victims in order to outline French government's position on questions related to counter-terrorism efforts.
--IANS
py/
Schools in bearing the name "Peace" came under government scanner on Wednesday following the ban on Mumbai-based controversial Islamic preacher Zakir Naik's Peace TV.
The schools in the country were allegedly being operated in line with Naik's ideology by adding "Peace" to their names, bdnews24 reported.
The government banned Peace TV after allegations that at least two of the assailants in the July 1 terror attack in a cafe in the upscale Gulshan locality were inspired by Naik's speeches.
"Peace TV is not consistent with Muslim society, the Quran, Sunnah, Hadith, Bangladesh's Constitution, our culture, customs and rituals," Information Minister Hasanul Haq Inu said.
Naik, 50, is a qualified doctor who left his profession and founded the Islamic Research Foundation, which runs the Islamic School and an NGO United Islamic Aid.
The government does not have any specific information on how many schools were being operated with the word "Peace" in their name, bdnews24 reported.
The Dhaka education board said it only approved temporarily an English-medium school at Lalmatia to operate under the name Peace School. The do not have any such permission.
"First the authorities establish an educational institution. They apply for government approval after reaching a certain stage. The government then inspects the institution and takes a decision on whether to give it permission to continue operating," the official said.
None of these "Peace Schools" in Dhaka had applied for permission to the ministry or the board, an Education Ministry official said.
Intelligence agencies were asked to inquire into the 20 "Peace Schools" so far detected by the government.
"If these schools actually follow Zakir Naik's ideas, they will face action," the officials said.
Despite the exit of Britain, the European Union remains committed to its partnership with India, EU Ambassador to India Tomasz Kozlowski said on Wednesday.
"My statement is that the EU remains committed to its partnership with India after Brexit," Kozlowski aid in an interaction with the media here.
"India is an important actor in the international arena," he said.
He said that while India was the EU's 10th trading partner, the EU was India's largest trading partner.
"Last year, trade between India and the EU stood at 100 billion euros," he said.
"Let me tell you, trade between both sides is very much balanced."
According to Kozlowski, the India-EU summit during Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Brussels in March this year invigorated the partnership.
"The summit adopted a number of agreements that are very result-oriented," he said.
"We have analysed all Indian flagship programmes."
He said that the EU has made some suggestions regarding the flagship programmes of India but stressed that these were not in the form of assistance but as a partnership.
While the EU-India clean energy and climate partnership has been launched, the EU-India startup partnership would be launched in October this year, the Ambassador, who hails from Poland, said.
He said that the European Investment Bank (EIB) has launched a credit line of 1.2 billion euros for Indian partners.
"The EIB has offered 450 million euros to the Lucknow metro," Kozlowski said.
"The EIB will also open its branch in India later this year," he stated, while adding that EIB loans were not commercial but concessional.
He said the EU was cooperating with India on international issues, including nuclear non-proliferation, cyber security, anti-terrorism and anti-radicalisation.
Asked about the EU's position on Britain's exit, the Ambassador said: "EU regrets but respects Brexit."
Pointing out that Britain was still a member of the EU, he said that it would take two years to negotiate its exit under Article 50 of the EU constitution.
He said the remaining 27 members of the EU were determined to remain united.
Stating that though though the EU faced crises like financial, migration and now Britain's exit, Kozlowski said that it has managed to handle such matters in a better way now.
"After the financial crises in Greece, Spain and Iceland, we have introduced a lot of instruments which have made us more resilient," he stated.
"The European Central Bank has taken new roles for financial management."
As for migration from hot spots in North Africa and the Middle East, he said that though there were many challenges, now the situation was better.
"Last year, we decided to have European border and coast guards," the Ambassador said.
"The EU is committed to contribute to world peace," he added.
--IANS
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President Pranab Mukherjee on Wednesday greeted the Republic of Iraq on the eve of its National Day, July 14, saying that India will stand with the country in the struggle against terrorism.
"India strongly supports the Iraqi people and government in your efforts against terrorism, in upholding national sovereignty and preserving your territorial integrity," the President said in his message to Fuad Masum, the President of the Republic of Iraq.
President Mukherjee said that the close and friendly relations of India and Iran are deeply rooted in our ancient trade and cultural links and people-to-people contacts.
"We greatly value our mutually beneficial bilateral ties and are confident that with our strong commitment and endeavours, these will strengthen and broaden further in the years to come," Mukherjee added.
--IANS
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Actor Rana Daggubati participated in the Telangana government's Haritha Haram campaign and planted saplings here at Ramoji Film City.
Haritha Haram is an initiative by the government of Telangana to increase the number of trees across the state.
"Rana took time off his busy schedule and planted saplings along with the crew of 'Baahubali 2' as part of the green drive," said a source.
Rana is currently busy filming the climax portion of "Baahubali 2", which is slated to hit the screens next year.
--IANS
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Noting recent positive trends in the Indian highways sector, American investment banking firm Jefferies on Wednesday said there was an increase in bids under the government's hybrid annuity model for roads building.
"Macro developments suggest positive trends in the sector with pickup in execution. Recent bids in Hybrid Annuity model (HAM) in May-June has seen participation increasing from two-four players to seven-eight players as risk-reward is favourable," the Jefferies India said in a report.
"Consequently, bids have become slightly aggressive as competition is becoming cognizant of the favourable risk-reward scenario in HAM versus EPC (engineering, procurement and construction) versus BOT (build-operate-transfer) model," it said.
"Execution was strong in May at a 22 km per day completion run-rate, and will be closely watched for in the coming months," it added.
Under HAM approved earlier this year, the government commits up to 40 per cent of the project cost over a period and hands the project to the developer to start work, clearing the way for restarting work on stalled road projects.
Noting that non-performing assets (NPAs), or bad loans, have come down in the construction equipment segment suggesting borrower cash flows are improving, the report said construction gear growth was exponential during January-June this year due to public spending in the road sector and improvement in National Highway Authority of India's (NHAI) payment cycle.
The NHAI in March invited bids for five projects under the hybrid annuity model.
"A total of six projects extending up to 209 km and worth Rs 41 billion were awarded by NHAI in May 2016. Of this, five have been on HAM and only one on EPC mode.
"This is in line with ministry's commentary on awarding close to 85-90 per cent of the projects on HAM and EPC mode," Jefferies said.
"Media reports suggest that the ministry is working on a complete list of projects which it intends to award to achieve the 25,000 km overall FY17 target to lend more credibility to the target," it added.
The government has set a target of constructing 25,000 km of national highways during 2016-17 -- up from 10,000 km in 2015-16.
According to the Road Transport and Highways Ministry, of the total length of national highways targeted for award, 15,000 km would fall under NHAI, while the remaining 10,000 km will be under the purview of the ministry and National Highways and Infrastructure Development Corporation.
The ministry said the last fiscal had many positive outcomes such as construction of 6,000 km of national highways, which marked a year-on-year increase of nearly 36 per cent.
"The speeding up of road projects has been made possible due to several policy interventions which include the ministry being empowered to decide mode of delivery, increased threshold for project approval, enhanced inter-ministerial coordination exit policy," an official statement said.
--IANS
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AUBURN Imagine this: It's a weeknight in downtown Auburn and you're locked in an office. Trapped with a small group of strangers, you're told there is a bomb hidden somewhere within the room. And you only have 60 minutes before it explodes.
One hour to escape.
"You're with people you don't know and you're immediately forced to work together and become a team," local business owner Dennis Guzalak said. "You have to go through the clues to find a way out."
Guzalak recently began building so-called "escape rooms" with his nephew Todd Fedyshyn. And now, the dynamic duo is preparing to open three of them in downtown Auburn.
It's called "Mind Games Escape Rooms," and it's part of the latest craze spreading across the country. According to Guzalak, while escape rooms have been popular in Europe and Asia for many years, the concept is relatively new to the United States, especially in central New York.
"(Escape rooms) just started in the U.S. about six or eight months ago, and they've been widely successful," he said. "It's like living a game where you get put into a scenario with a group of people, you get locked into a room for a certain amount of time and you have to work together to escape."
Serious Halloween enthusiasts, Guzalak and Fedyshyn got the idea to build their own escape rooms after a convention in St. Louis, Missouri, last winter. Every year, Guzalak said, the two attend the National Haunters Convention and this time the event featured the newest attraction: escape rooms.
"As soon as we came back from (the convention) we said, 'We've got to do this,'" he recalled. "We both became engrossed in it ... and having that Halloween background, we were used to designing and building some pretty cool things."
The Auburn natives immediately began building an escape room business in Binghamton, where the pair have successfully run a haunted house attraction for a nonprofit organization the last seven years. Choosing an Egyptian theme, they opened the "Valley of the Kings" escape rooms there in May.
"It's very elaborate and very highly detailed," Guzalak said, explaining that a group of people is locked in an Egyptian tomb with a dead pharaoh who shares clues on how to escape. "It's been very, very successful."
Next, the uncle and nephew opened "Pulse," another location in Binghamton centered on shutting down a machine that will destroy all electronic communication in the U.S.
But Guzalak didn't stop there.
"Being from Auburn, I always wanted to be here and I think Auburn can use something like this," he said.
So in April, he and Fedyshyn started working on another set of escape rooms, this time in their hometown.
"Mind Games Escape Rooms" is located in the Genesee Center downtown. Spread along the South Street side of the mall will be three escape rooms the Office of Secret Agent 22, the Missing Starlet's dressing room and the Mysterious Potion Room.
Each room is assigned a game master who digitally monitors the groups from a control room, occasionally providing clues as a red timer counts down in the corner.
"It can be challenging," Guzalak said, adding that even with help from a game master groups will only be 60 to 65 percent successful in escaping. "That's why we watch them (and) help them. Our goal is to get everybody close. Not everyone is going to get out, but if they get close they're going to be happy."
In general, groups will consist of eight to 10 people; however, the Missing Starlet's dressing room will only hold two to four, making it the perfect "date room" for couples.
And for companies interested in corporate team building, Guzalak noted the secret agent's office was designed specifically with that in mind.
"A big part of escape rooms now has been companies using them for their management teams," he said. "It's perfect because you have to work together in these rooms to figure things out, and it's fun."
Guzalak and Fedyshyn plan to start taking bookings via their website and Facebook page by the end of the month. And although there is still talk of time and cost, they will likely hold corporate events during the day followed by traditional groups in the evenings for around $20 a person.
I'm excited about it," Guzalak said. "I think when people hear about it they'll want to try it. And hopefully it's something that not only works but is fun.
Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Wednesday described the Supreme Court ruling restoring the Congress government in Arunachal Pradesh as a "tight slap on dictatorial Modi government".
"Supreme Court judgment yet another tight slap on dictatorial (Narendra) Modi government. Hope Modiji would learn and now stop interfering in democratically elected governments," the AAP leader tweeted.
Another Aam Aadmi Party leader, Ashutosh, said the ruling was a "defeat of dictatorship and victory of democracy". He added: "Modiji, learn to respect people's mandate."
--IANS
mr-py/
Former Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister on Wednesday hailed the Supreme Court judgment restoring his government and called it a "historic" ruling.
The apex court directed the restoration of the ousted Chief Minister Tuki as it quashed the decision of Governor Jyoti Prasad Rajkhowa preponing the assembly session in December 2015.
"The Supreme Court has today given a historic verdict," he said.
He said this will help protect "healthy democracy" in the country. "This is a historic and remarkable judgment."
The court nullified the decision of Governor Rajkhowa on December 9 to advance the assembly session.
"According to the judgment, our government has been restored," Tuki added.
"I'll go to the state and talk to all the 47 Congress MLAs. We will call a meeting," he said.
--IANS
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Theresa May on Wednesday became Britain's second female Prime Minister, and declared that her government would not be led by the "interests of the privileged few" and strive to fight "burning injustice".
May's appointment at the Buckingham Palace, to "kiss hands" with the Queen, as the ceremony is known, came shortly after David Cameron went to the Palace to tender his resignation, the Guardian reported.
Speaking as British Prime Minister in Downing Street, May, 59, praised Cameron and said she will plan to lead in the same spirit that he did - praising his legacy on social justice.
She said: "In David Cameron, I follow in the footsteps of a great modern Prime Minister."
She highlighted the full name of her party was the "Conservative and Unionist party" and pledged to maintain the "precious bond" of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, The Independent reported.
"It means we believe in a Union, not just between the nations of the United Kingdom, but between all of our citizens, whoever we are, and wherever we're from."
"That means fighting against the burning injustice that if you're born poor you will die, on average, nine years earlier than others," she said.
"We will do everything we can to help everyone to go as far as your talents will take you," she asserted.
"The government will not be led by the interests of the privileged few, it will be you," she noted.
"If you are in one of the those families I want to address you directly," The Independent quoted her as saying.
"If you are in a working class family your life is much harder than many in Westminster realise," she said.
She also said she wanted to tackle the inequalities in modern Britain.
"As we leave the European Union, we will forge a new, bold, positive role for ourselves in the world, and we will make Britain a country that works, not for the privileged few, but for every one of us.
"That will be the mission of the government I lead, and together, we will build a better Britain," The Independent quoted her as saying.
Cameron, who stepped down after the electorate rejected his pleas to vote to remain in the European Union in June referendum, had earlier congratulated May as he left 10 Downing Street for the last time with his wife and children.
May swept to her party's leadership, when her final opponent, the pro-Brexit Andrea Leadsom, dropped out this week after making controversial comments about motherhood. May had served Cameron as Home Secretary throughout his six years in government.
The new Prime Minister was expected to make the first senior appointments to her government on Wednesday evening, including a minister for Brexit, the Guardian added.
A few minutes earlier, Cameron had ranked a stronger economy, gay marriage and free schools as the heart of his legacy in a final and emotional farewell speech in Downing Street. Standing with his family, he said being Prime Minister had been "the greatest honour of my life".
"It's not been easy journey, and of course we've not got every decision right," the Guardian quoted him as saying, alongside his wife, Samantha, and children Nancy, Elwen and Florence.
--IANS
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Britain's new Prime Minister Theresa May said in her first speech as head of the British government on Wednesday that her mission will be to lead a 'One Nation' government.
Speaking outside her new home, 10 Downing Street, May delivered a message directed at the British population from all walks of life.
Referring to the recent referendum on European Union membership May said: "We are living through uncertain moments in our country's history. Following the referendum we face a time of great national change.
"And I know because this is Great Britain we will rise to the challenge as we leave the European Union we will forge a bold new positive role for ourselves in the world, and we will make Britain a country that works not for a privileged few but for every one of us. That will be the mission of the government I lead and together we will build a better Britain."
May pledged to fight burning injustices saying: "We must make Britain a country that works for everyone. We believe in a union not just between the nations of the UK but between all of our citizens - every one of us.
"I have just been to Buckingham Palace where Her Majesty the Queen has asked me to form a new Government and I accepted. In David Cameron (the outgoing prime minister) I follow in the footsteps of a great modern Prime Minister.
"Under David's leadership the government stabilised the economy, reduced the budget deficit and helped more people into work than ever before. But David's true legacy is not about the economy but about social justice.
"From the introduction of same sex marriage to taking people on low wages out of income tax altogether, David Cameron has led a One-Nation government and it is in that spirit that I also plan to lead.
"Not everybody knows this but the full title of my party is the Conservative and Unionist Party and that word unionist is very important to me.
"It means we believe in the union, the precious, precious bond between England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, but it means something else that is just as important.
"It means we believe in a union not just between the nations of the United Kingdom but between all of our citizens, every one of us, whoever we are and wherever we're from.
"That means fighting against the burning injustice that if you' re born poor you will die on average nine years earlier than others. If you're black you are treated more harshly by the criminal justice system than if you're white."
May said: "The Government I lead will be driven not by the interests of the privileged few but by yours. We will do everything we can to give you more control over your lives."
--IANS
vr
If you're willing to open up to a palate other than typical north Indian dishes, try stopping over at Asia Seven in this suburb of the national capital to sample piping hot crystal clear dumplings, tempura rolls, sushi and more.
My feast began with a pomegranate and ginger-infused chilled drink that helped me unwind after a hectic day at work. These offerings are a part of Asia Seven's new Pan Asian menu.
"We have introduced some very exciting and innovative items to the menu. Our latest additions include watermelon and Daikon salads (Japanese salad) and a wonderful selection of traditional dishes from Pan-Asian countries of China, Thailand, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Vietnam and Myanmar," corporate chef Vineet Manocha told IANS.
Out of an array of scrumptious dumplings, I tried their prawn hargow which is a traditional Cantonese dumpling served in dim sum.
The soft texture of the dumpling and the perfectly-cooked prawn set an example of what to expect from the restaurant.
Of the other dumplings that I tried were the chive and water chestnut dumplings, chicken and pokchoy, vegetable basket, vegetable and peanuts.
For the non-vegetarians, a highlight is the lip-smacking red snapper. The presentation of the fish transports you to the scene in the Bollywood film "Queen", where Kangana Ranaut's character accidentally orders a snapper with its eyes intact and a cherry tomato holding up the roof of the fish's mouth.
No matter how delightful the fish tasted, it's a little difficult to shake the image of the fish off the mind. But, of course, relishing the red snapper is an acquired taste.
The other offerings in the interestingly designed menu were duck pancakes, chicken and mushroom bao, chicken lollies in yuzu sauce, corn cakes, pork in chu hu sauce, Asia Seven Panang curry, lamb chop, pomfret, seafood platter and more.
However, not everyone enjoys sushi, sashimi and tempuras.
To which, Manocha said: "The evolution of sushi and tempura in the country is primarily a result of Indians travelling a lot more and hence being more adventurous with their palate."
"The number of Pan-Asian food consumers in India has increased phenomenally. Sushi and tempura are a strong representation of the Japanese culture. Though tempura is an important part of Japanese cuisine, sushi is pretty versatile and healthy.
"One can play around with sushi and use creativity, which makes it really popular amongst the people," Manocha added.
After the healthy yet heavy meal, the coconut ice cream, which the restaurant churns out in its own kitchen, turned out to be refreshing. It left a long lasting taste of pure coconut.
But if you're not a coconut lover, choose from a New York cheesecake and a host of other sweet delicacies for your sweet tooth.
Asia Seven has a fine dining restaurant here and also a kiosk in Aerocity. They also deliver their delicacies in the Gurgaon vicinity.
FAQs:
Where: Ambience Mall, Delhi-Gurgaon Express Highway, Gurgaon.
Meal for two: Rs.1,800 plus taxes without alcohol and Rs. 1295/- Sunday Brunch Menu with IMFL.
Timings: 10:00 a.m to 11:00 p.m
(The writer's visit was at the invitation of Asia Seven. Kishori Sud can be contacted at kishori.s@ians.in)
--IANS
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Two IAF C-17 Globemasters will take off for Juba in South Sudan on Thursday to evacuate around 500 Indian nationals from the violence-hit African nation, the MEA said on Wednesday.
Minister of State for External Affairs is to lead the evacuation.
"Two C-17s proceeding to Juba tomorrow with @Gen_VKSingh leading evacuation from South Sudan," Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Vikas Swarup tweeted.
Embassies and aid organisations in South Sudan are moving to evacuate staff from the capital, Juba, amid a tenuous ceasefire declared on Monday night after days of fighting between forces loyal to longtime rivals Vice President Riek Machar and President Salva Kiir.
South Sudan's government has said at least 272 have been killed, including 33 civilians, in five days of fighting that has raised fears of a return to civil war.
The Indian embassy in Juba in a statement said the flight is expected to reach Juba at 11 am local time and Indian nationals with valid travel documents will be allowed to board.
The flight will be only up to New Delhi, the statement said.
The UN said 36,000 South Sudanese civilians have fled their homes due to the fighting.
The Jammu and Kashmir government on Wednesday sought eye surgeons from New Delhi and other cities to treat scores of Kashmiris hit by pellet guns in the deadly unrest across the valley.
An official spokesperson said Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti spoke to Union Health Minister J.P. Nadda requesting him to send a specialized team of doctors, including retina surgeons.
They will take care of the injured who have suffered ophthalmic trauma in the last five days of violent unrest in the Kashmir Valley.
"We are expecting these specialized doctors to arrive (soon) and get down to the job immediately," a health department official said.
The official said the government was also facilitating shifting outside the state any injured who may need super-specialized treatment.
According to doctors at Srinagar's SMHS Hospital, more than 100 people, including some minors, with pellet bullet wounds in their eyes have been treated.
Doctors at the hospital have conducted more than 80 eye surgeries in the last four days. Other hospitals in the valley have also received hundreds of injured hit by pellets.
Pellet guns have been used by security forces as a tool to control unruly mobs since 2010 when more than 100 people were killed in firing by security forces following street protests.
Human rights groups have criticized the use of pellet because it can leave a victim maimed or blind for life.
The cartridge of pellet gun is different from a bullet. A pellet gun sprays small iron ball bearings towards a target with high velocity. These bearing can pierce a human body at dozens of spots.
--IANS
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Controversial Mumbai-based televangelist and Islamic preacher Zakir Naik, who addresses audiences around the world, has finally found a venue for his interaction here on Thursday, an aide said here on Wednesday.
Naik will communicate with the Mumbai via Skype at the Mehfil Hall, in Agripada, south Mumbai, from a venue abroad where he is currently on a lecture tour,
Earlier today, the Islamic Research Foundation had rued that he was not getting any venue to address the in Mumbai.
At least four venues, including three five-star hotels and the World Trade Centre (WTC), had declined permission for conducting his press conference via Skype.
The WTC had confirmed the venue for Thursday's media interaction with Naik who is abroad but cancelled it on Wednesday, an official spokesperson of the Islamic Research Foundation (IRF) said.
"It's weird and unfair. What's going on? Apparently, hotels in Mumbai have been told not to give out venues for Naik's press conference," the spokesperson said.
Critics say Naik's Islamic teachings are radicalizing the young.
Earlier, Naik's spokesperson claimed that at least three hotels and WTC had confirmed availability of venue and some even took the bookings but cancelled them at the last minute, the WTC being the latest.
It was the second time in at least four days that Naik's scheduled media interaction via Skype was called off amid speculation about his impending return to India.
Naik -- at the centre of a storm -- is on a lecture tour in Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Africa. He is likely to return to Mumbai after some two weeks, the spokesperson said.
While the Shiv Sena and others have called for his arrest, others like the IUML (Indian Union Muslim League) and AIMIM (All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen) have come out in support of Naik, saying he was a victim of a witchhunt.
--IANS
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Controversial Mumbai-based televangelist and Islamic preacher Zakir Naik, who addresses audiences around the world, has no place to speak in Mumbai -- now.
At least four venues, including three five star hotels and the World Trade Centre (WTC), have declined permission to conduct Naik's press conference via Skype.
The WTC had confirmed the venue for Thursday's interaction with Naik who is abroad but cancelled it today, an official spokesperson of the Islamic Research Foundation (IRF) said.
"It's weird and unfair. What's going on? Apparently, hotels in Mumbai have been told not to give out venues for Naik's press conference," the spokesperson said.
Critics say Naik's Islamic teachings are radicalizing the young.
Earlier, Naik's spokesperson claimed at least four hotels had confirmed availability of venue and some even took the bookings but suddently cancelled them at the last minute.
"The latest is the WTC who called on Wednesday to cancel the booking." He said the IRF was trying to organize an alternate venue on a fresh date.
This is the second time in at least four days that Naik's scheduled interaction via Skype was called off amid speculation about his impending return to India.
Naik - at the centre of a storm - is on a lecture tour in Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Africa. He is likely to return to Mumbai after some two weeks, the spokesperson said.
While the Shiv Sena and others have called for his arrest, others like the AIMIM have come out in support of Naik, saying he was a victim of witchhunt.
--IANS
qn/mr
With eight Ford Model T's of their own, Dan and Ellen Killecut are more than just car enthusiasts. They've toured the country together for the past 12 years (Dan more than 20), as part of the Model T Ford Club International Annual Tour.
"Once you get a Model T, it's just a wonderful feeling," Ellen said. "You slow down. You enjoy the sights. We've been to so many beautiful areas, and we do a lot of driving, my husband and I, and I said, 'We really have to host a tour.'"
So for the past two years, the Hannibal couple has driven up and down the back country roads of the Finger Lakes, mapping and planning. The preparation is all building up for a nearly 300-car gathering in Auburn, with leisurely drives and tourist stops starting July 17 and ending on the 22nd.
This is the first time the club is making its annual stop in New York state, and the Killecuts are thrilled to be its hosts. For the occasion, they will be driving around their 1914 For Model T.
About 650 people are expected to come in their antique cars, some coming as far as the United Kingdom. Others, more nationally, are coming from California and Texas, Ellen said.
Meg Vanek, executive director of the Cayuga County Office of Tourism, said that the area hotels have been filling up for the upcoming week, due in part to the turnout of the Model T Tour. The office has also helped out by providing maps and visitor information for the tour.
"Because the Finger Lakes region is so picturesque, they're really gotten a great response for this gathering," Vanek said.
The office will have more information next month, Vanek said, about what sort of economic impact the event will have on the area.
Ellen said she has set up several back country road drives for the Model T's to take. They won't necessarily all leave at once, but she said to expect groups of 20 or so cars driving together.
Also planned are several events including a car show at Emerson Park on Sunday, July 17 and a car display outside The Wonderful Life Museum in Seneca Falls Monday. Karolyn Grimes, who played Zuzu in the movie, "It's a Wonderful Life," will be at the event, and Dan will drive her in his Model T across the bridge that inspired the holiday classic.
"There's just so many beautiful drives, no matter where you go," Ellen said.
For more information on the tour and where to see some Model T's, visit modelt.org.
Nivedita Mookerjee's report, "PM Modi makes 24 foreign trips, visits 42 countries, stays out 113 days" (July 13) made for some interesting reading. However, it would be naive to compare the number and duration of his foreign visits during the first 25 months of his government with those of his predecessors, Manmohan Singh and Atal Bihari Vajpayee because of the very different situations that prevailed in the country during their time in power.
A Xerox-RR Donnelley merger would be an epic paper shuffle. Binding together the iconic photocopier maker and the 150-year-old commercial printer would create a $14-billion giant - which Xerox would then presumably break up. That would increase integration risk and wouldn't necessarily solve each company's dilemma of being print-heavy in an ever-more digital world.
India has lots of good economists. And quite a few good ones in government too. Right? Wrong! On both counts.
The Supreme Court on Wednesday restored the Congress' rule in and quashed all the orders given by the state's governor last year.
The apex court was hearing a petition on dealing with discretionary powers of the Governor to summon or advance Assembly sessions in the state. Governor JP Rajkhowa had in December advanced the Winter Session of the Assembly without consulting the then chief minister, Nabam Tuki.
Eventually, President Pranab Mukherjee gave his assent to the Union Cabinets recommendation to impose Presidents Rule in . The recommendation, made by the Cabinet after its January 24 meeting, was given the Presidents assent through a Proclamation under article 356(1) of the Constitution.
The sequence of events:
1) An October 4, 2015, report, published in a national daily, claimed that 37 Congress legislators, including six ministers, had joined hands to try and topple then Chief Minister Nabam Tuki. According to the report, the dissident group was believed to be headed by the states former finance minister Kalikho Pul, who was dropped as the states health minister and expelled from the Congress for six years in April last year amid allegations of financial mismanagement. The Congress Committee had dismissed the report.
2) Last November, troubles mounted for the Congress in Arunachal Pradesh as 21 MLAs, who were opposed to the leadership of Tuki, decided to skip a Congress Legislature Party (CLP) meeting to resolve the crisis in the state unit. Striking a blow to Tuki's legitimacy as the CLP leader, the 21 MLAs had said that "any meeting called under his leadership does not carry any substance and holds no water".
3) In December, Governor Jyoti Prasad Rajkhowa advanced the Assembly session from January 14, 2016, to December 16, 2015. Rajkhowa took the decision without consulting Tuki. The governor had also directed the House to consider a motion to replace the Speaker. Speaking on the matter, Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad said, "It is a matter of regret that unconstitutional actions are being taken by the Arunachal Pradesh governor on the directions of the central government."
4) On December 16, 20 dissident MLAs from the Congress, along with 11 from the BJP and two Independents, impeached Speaker, Nabam Rebia.
5) On December 17, a no-confidence motion was brought by BJP legislators against the Tuki-led government and the motion was adopted. Kalikho Pul was elected the leader of the legislative party. The impeachment of the Speaker and the no-confidence motion took place on makeshift premises after the government, sensing trouble, had locked the gates of the Assembly.
6) The Gauhati High Court provided the government a breather and stayed all actions of the Assembly till February 2, 2016, and passed strictures against the governor.
7) The Gauhati High Court upheld the directives of Governor Rajkhowa on January 13, 2016. According to The Asian Age, Justice B K Sharma observed, If in the kind of situation that was prevailing in the Arunachal Pradesh, as highlighted in the petition, the governor took the impugned action, it cannot be said to be unconstitutional so as to warrant interference by the existing power of judicial review under Article 226 of the Constitution of India.
8) The Supreme Court, on January 14, referred to a constitution Bench a number of petitions arising out of certain orders passed by the Gauhati High Court in the matter.
ALSO READ: SC to hear Congress' plea challenging President's rule in Arunachal Pradesh
9) Taking cognisance of the turmoil in the state, the Union Cabinet, in its meeting held on January 24, recommended to the President of India that Presidents Rule be imposed in the state.
10) The Congress rebel leader Kalikho Pul was sworn in as chief minister of Arunachal Pradesh with the support of 20 rebel legislators of the Congress and 11 of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in February 2016.
Implications of Presidents Rule:
1) All functions of the Arunachal Pradesh government and all powers vested in the governor under the Constitution or under any law in force in the state, which have been assumed by the President by virtue of the Proclamation of Presidents Rule, shall, subject to the superintendence, direction and control of the President, also be exercisable by the governor of Arunachal Pradesh.
2) The state Assembly will cease to function and be put in suspended animation. The powers of the Assembly are exercised by Parliament or under its authority.
3) The imposition of Presidents Rule has to be ratified by Parliament within two months. The proclamation is valid for a period of six months, unless Parliament decides to extend it.
In a major blow to the Narendra Modi government, a 5-judge constitution bench of the Supreme Court on Wednesday unanimously restored the Congress government in and quashed the Governors orders which had advanced the session of Arunachals legislative assembly from January 14 to December 16 last year. The apex court also quashed all of the directions of the Governor that had precipitated the constitutional crisis in the northeastern border state.
The Modi government had in December recommended that Presidents rule be imposed in the state.
The order is unprecedented since it has called for restoring a government even after a subsequent government has taken the oath of office. Earlier this year, first the Nainital High Court and then the Supreme Court had quashed central rule in Uttarakhand and paved the way for the Harish Rawat-government to be reinstated.
Today's judgment by Justice J S Khehar, joined by Justice Pinaki Chandra Ghose and Justice N V Ramana, was severely critical of the Arunachal Governor. It said that it wasnt within the realm of the Governor to embroil himself in a political thicket.
In the wake of the Uttarakhand order, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, himself a noted constitutional lawyer, said in Parliament that step by step, brick by brick, the edifice of Indias legislature is being destroyed due to judicial activism. At a press conference a few days later, Jaitley advised the judiciary that it needed to blend activism with restrain and not interfere in the sphere of executive.
The order on Arunachal is yet another development that would add to the Modi governments frictional relationship with the judiciary in its term so far. In October 2015, the Supreme Court struck down a law pushed by the Modi government and enacted by Parliament that was aimed at taking away the power of judges appointing judges and investing it instead in the Judicial Appointments Commission.
Earlier, the Modi government had rejected then Chief Justice R M Lodhas recommendation as the head of the collegium that selected judges in the higher judiciary to appoint former solicitor general and reputed lawyer Gopal Subramanium as a Supreme Court justice. An upset Subramanium withdrew his candidature but Lodha cautioned that the government shouldnt interfere in the independence of the judiciary.
Most recently, Chief Justice T S Thakur, in an emotional outburst at a function on April 24, criticised the current and previous governments for pointing an accusatory finger at the judiciary for the nearly 3.3 crore pending cases but doing little to improve the judge-population ratio and increasing the number of courts.
Todays order on Arunachal by the 5-judge bench was welcomed by opposition parties. Reinstated Chief Minister Nabam Tuki termed the order historic and said democracy has been protected. Current CM Kalikho Pul said he will file a review petition.
Congress President Sonia Gandhi said Those who had trampled upon constitutional propriety and democratic norms have been defeated today. She hoped the decision would deter the government from further misuse of power. Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said the order was a tight slap on the dictatorial Modi government.
In its defence, BJP secretary Shrikant Sharma said the political crisis in the state was an outcome of Congress' internal fight. The Congress government was reduced to minority after a faction within the party rebelled. We only supported the faction's bid for power from the outside. The party said that it would respond to the apex court's judgment after studying its order in detail and claimed the verdict was not a setback.
The events in Arunachal started on December 9 last year when a group of rebel Congress MLAs approached Governor J P Rajkhowa seeking to impeach Speaker Nabam Rebia. They said that the Speaker was trying to get them disqualified from the Assembly. The Governor responded by calling an emergency session on December 16 to take up the impeachment motion. Amidst Congress protests, the Centre imposed Presidents Rule in the state. In the special session attended by 20 rebel Congress MLAs, 11 BJP MLAs and 2 Independents at a community hall, the impeachment motion was passed and Kalikho Pul became the new chief minister.
Separatist leaders and Mirwaiz Umar Farooq were on Wednesday arrested when they tried to march to the Martyrs' graveyard breaking their house detention, police said.
However, both were released after a few hours and were put back in house detention at their respective residences.
The Hurriyat leadership had called for a march on Wednesday to the graveyard at Naqshbandh Sahib in Srinagar.
Geelani, 87, was arrested when he came out of his barricaded Hyderpora residence and tried to walk towards the graveyard.
Mirwaiz, who tried to jump over the fence of his residence at Nigeen in Srinagar, was also arrested.
The Hurriyat leadership has been issuing joint programmes since unrest broke out in the Kashmir Valley after the July 8 killing of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani.
Martyrs' Day in Kashmir is observed on July 13 to mark the martyrdom of 21 people killed on July 13, 1931.
Earlier, Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti and her predecessor Omar Abdullah visited the graveyard to pay tributes to the people killed in 1931.
Minority Affairs Minister and G M Siddeswara, Minister of State for Heavy Industries and Public Enterprises, have been dropped from the Union council of ministers. Heptulla is the first Cabinet minister to have been dropped in the two-year term of Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led council of ministers. A statement from the President said Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, Heptullas junior at the minority affairs ministry, would now have independent charge of the ministry. Babul Supriyo, a minister of state, has been shifted from the ministry of urban development to heavy industries and public enterprises.
Heptulla, an aspirant for the post of the Vice President of India, could get a gubernatorial assignment. Governors to a few states are likely to be announced later this week. Vice Presidential elections are due for August 2017. Heptullas Rajya Sabha term ends in April 2018, which she would need to quit if she were to take up any gubernatorial role. I am extremely thankful to the PM for giving me the honour to be in his Cabinet and I tried best to fulfil his expectations towards Sabka Sath, Sabka Vikas, Heptulla tweeted.
With these two resignations, the strength of the council of ministers is now 76. The number of ministers cannot exceed 82. Government sources claimed both Heptulla and Siddeswara had been asked to quit as part of the Cabinet expansion and reshuffle on July 5, but they could not do so as they were out of Delhi. And, the two submitted their resignations as soon as the PM returned after his four-nation Africa tour. However, other sources say Siddeswara was asked to quit as his performance was found to be poor. After three decades in the Congress, Heptulla, who holds a PhD in cardiac anatomy, had joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in 2004 is a known L K Advani acolyte. I will always be available for any responsibility given to me in future. I have resigned from my post due to personal reasons, said Heptulla.With these two resignations, the strength of the council of ministers is now 76. The number of ministers cannot exceed 82. Government sources claimed both Heptulla and Siddeswara had been asked to quit as part of the Cabinet expansion and reshuffle on July 5, but they could not do so as they were out of Delhi. And, the two submitted their resignations as soon as the PM returned after his four-nation Africa tour.However, other sources say Siddeswara was asked to quit as his performance was found to be poor. But, the 64-year-old Lok Sabha member from Karnatakas Devangere had organised a public rally in his constituency on July 5, also his birthday, and requested the leadership that he be spared the ignominy of being dropped on the day of his birthday. Heptullas case is a more curious. She had turned 76 on April 13 this year. In constituting his council of ministers in May 2014, Modi had kept out all party leaders above 75 years of age. Now, Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises Minister Kalraj Mishra, who is 75, is the oldest minister. He is an important Brahmin leader of Uttar Pradesh, which is slated to go to polls in early 2017. Sources close to Heptulla told Business Standard she was very much in New Delhi on the eve of the reshuffle. She had not only heaved a sigh of relief that she wasnt dropped but had started planning projects that she thought her ministry should take up with renewed vigour. After the reshuffle, Heptulla went to Chicago to celebrate Eid with her daughter. The sources said Heptulla considers it a betrayal that she was dropped now in such a manner, although senior leaders have phoned her indicating remaining out of the government for a year would be tactically good for her Vice Presidential bid.
Heptulla is a veteran Rajya Sabha member. A Dawoodi Bohra Muslim from Bhopal, Heptulla was handpicked by the then PM Indira Gandhi in the 1980s and served in key positions in the Congress party and as Deputy Chairperson of the Rajya Sabha in the 1980s and 1990s. She quit the Congress in 2004 and was accepted in the BJP with open arms. Her being a known Advani camp follower - although she read the tea leaves early enough to become a Modi supporter in 2013 - is remembered by the current leadership.
India will send two C-17 military transport aircraft to war torn South Sudan's capital city Juba tomorrow to evacuate over 300 Indians stranded there, an exercise which will be led by Minister of State for External Affairs V K Singh.
"The General takes charge again! 2 C-17s proceeding to Juba tomorrow with @Gen_VKSingh leading evacuation from South Sudan," MEA Spokesperson Vikas Swarup tweeted. Singh had also supervised evacuation of nearly 4,000 Indians from conflict- ridden Yemen last year.
The relief flight is expected to reach Juba tomorrow morning, an official advisory said, adding only Indian nationals with valid Indian travel document will be allowed boarding with maximum five kg cabin baggage and no check-in pieces.
It also said that women and children will be accommodated on priority.
Apart from Singh, Amar Sinha, Secretary (Economic Relations) will also travel to Juba.
India has been closely monitoring developments in South Sudan, which is witnessing heavy fighting between former rebels and government soldiers in several parts of the city. A task force has been set up for the purpose.
According to the ministry, there are around 600 Indians in South Sudan, of them 450 are in Juba and nearly 150 are outside the capital.
According to official sources, so far nearly 300 Indians have registered with the Indian embassy for evacuation.
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Later, in a series of tweets on evacuation, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj said, "We are launching Operation #SankatMochan to evacuate Indian nationals from South Sudan. My colleague @Gen_VKSingh is leading this operation."
"He will be accompanied by Secretary Amar Sinha, JS Satbir Singh and Director Anjani Kumar. Our Ambassador in South Sudan Srikumar Menon and his team is organising this operation on the ground.
"Thanks to my colleague @manoharparrikar and my best wishes to the brave Indian Air force who are carrying out OP #SankatMochan".
RealtyUSA will merge into Howard Hanna Real Estate Services, according to a release on Wednesday. The merger results in the third largest real estate company in the United States, and the largest real estate broker in New York.
The combined performance makes Howard Hanna a $16.2 billion company in closed sales volume last year, with 89,737 closed transactions. There will be no name change, but RealtyUSA logos and Nothnagle logos will feature the tagline, "A Howard Hanna Company."
RealtyUSA itself has 65 office locations covering western and central New York, northern New York, the capital region and the southern tier. Howard Hanna Real Estate Services currently covers eight states including Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York, Virginia, Michigan, West Virginia, North Caroline and Maryland. Combined the company will have 9,000 sales associates and employees covering 270 offices.
"I have known and respected the Hanna family for years," said Merle L. Whitehead, president and CEO of RealtyUSA, in a release. "Their growth in the last decade has been amazing. A common theme of commitment to our agents by developing the best in products and services for customers and clients will assure our combined success."
Whitehead will become the chairman of the combined company in New York state. Howard Hanna plans to expand its joint reach into the Buffalo area, as well as parts of Syracuse and Albany.
The company also plans to introduce an 100 percent money back guarantee, in addition to expanding its insurance company, adding 15 to 20 new positions and increasing marketing and technology systems with another 20 positions.
"We always look to move forward," said Helen Hanna Casey, president and CEO of Howard Hanna, in a release. "We made the decision in the mid-1980s to remain independent, with the goal of always being a large regional broker in the Mid-Atlantic, Midwest and Great Lakes regions. And when you find a prominent company that is run with the utmost integrity and is so like-minded with complementary management styles and great managers, it makes sense to come together."
For more information on the company visit realtyusa.com, howardhanna.com or nothnagle.com.
Three persons including two girls were killed when the vehicle they were travelling on hit an electric pole before it mowed down a dwelling near Khairantoli in Simdega district today, police said.
The victims were all returning home in the car when the driver lost control in an attempt to save a cattle and hit against an electric pole before it rammed into a house, police said.
One Vinod Singh was killed on the spot while three others including two girls sustained injured seriously, sources said adding that the injured were rushed to Sadar Hospital, where doctors referred the two girls, Mamta Kumari, a resident of Palkot, and Sumar Kumari of Baighma, to Rajendra Institutue of Medical Science, Ranchi.
However, both girls succumbed to their injuries near Torpa on way to RIMS, sources said.
The victims were all returning to Simdega from Banstoli, TukuPani early in the morning after attending a marriage ceremony when the mishap occurred.
Fierce bombardment of two opposition-held Syrian towns killed at least 31 civilians including children today, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor said.
Most were killed in air raids likely carried out by either President Bashar al-Assad's regime or its Russian ally, the Observatory said.
The attacks come despite the army's extension of a nationwide truce until early Friday. The freeze in fighting has yet to produce any respite in violence.
Bombing raids killed at least 16 civilians and wounded dozens more in the rebel-controlled town of Rastan in central Homs province the Observatory said.
Another three civilians were killed in government shelling on the town earlier in the day.
Rastan -- one of the last rebel strongholds in Homs province -- has suffered a devastating siege by government forces in 2012.
In northwest Syria, 12 civilians including three children were killed in raids on the opposition-held town of Ariha.
The town is controlled by the Army of Conquest, a rebel alliance of mainly Islamist groups including Al-Qaeda affiliate Al-Nusra Front that holds almost all of Idlib province.
An AFP journalist saw civil defence workers using a large bulldozer to clear debris away from a crumbling building.
Some rescue workers wearing face masks used small plastic buckets to clear rubble so they could pull a thin man covered in dust out of a destroyed structure.
"We came to the site of the air strike and there was a huge fire, many corpses, human flesh everywhere," said Ahmad Qurbay, head of Ariha's civil defence service.
"The areas that were hit are all residential buildings, near Ariha's main market," he added.
Footage uploaded to Facebook by local activists showed men crying over what appeared to be the bodies of victims wrapped in thick, bloodied rugs.
A rescue worker guided one shell-shocked man covered in blood out of a building and into a large ambulance.
Idlib has regularly been targeted by both Syrian government air strikes and raids carried out by its Russian ally.
A longtime backer of the government in Damascus, Moscow stepped up its support for Assad on September 30, when it began an air campaign aimed at bolstering regime positions.
More than 280,000 people have been killed and millions displaced since Syria's civil war erupted with the brutal repression of anti-government protests in 2011.
In a bid to accelerate the disposal of cases in lower courts, Madhya Pradesh government has sanctioned 4,354 posts, including those of 231 district judges and 325 civil judges.
The decision was taken in a Cabinet meeting chaired by Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan here yesterday, a senior state government official said today.
"A total number of 231 posts of district judges (entry level) and 1,848 posts of their staffers have been sanctioned. Similarly, 325 posts of civil judges (entry level) and 1,950 posts of their staff members have been approved," he added.
Besides, the Cabinet approved the proposal of creating 62 additional posts in Madhya Pradesh Road Development Corporation (MPRDC).
The Cabinet decided to allot nine acres of land for construction of houses for army officers and employees at Khejda Baramad village in Bhopal. It also cleared a proposal to allot 131 hectares of land for a defence project to the Union government at village Mohana in Gwalior district, he added.
Apart of these two pieces of land, the government allotted two other tracts of land measuring five acres for defence satellite project in Bhopal, the officer said.
At least six militants were killed today in a shootout with police in Pakistan's Punjab province.
The shootout took place in the province's Okara city, about 120 kms from here.
District Police Officer (DPO) Faisal Rana said that police raided the area following a tip-off that six suspected militants were hiding in the area, Radio Pakistan reported.
An encounter occurred when police officials reached the spot. Six militants were killed and two security personnel injured in the exchange of fire, Rana added.
Police claimed to have recovered a cache of explosives and detonators along with a map of the DPO's office from the militants' hideout.
In April, the Pakistan Army launched a targeted operation against militants in Punjab, days after a deadly attack in Lahore in which at least 70 people were killed and over 200 injured when a suicide bomb ripped through a crowded park in Lahore where Christians were celebrating Easter in March.
With "Language as Public Action" as its theme this year, the 6th edition of Indian Languages Festivals (ILF)- Samanvay is set to explore the idea of language beyond the purview of the literary word.
"It is a complex theme because we are not talking about just one aspect of language. When you put language in public, you not only look at language itself, but also its various forms of expression in public," says Rizio Yohannan Raj, Creative Director, ILF Samanvay.
"When you talk about languages, it is not just the literature that you are talking about, it is not just the literary idiom. There are also other idioms like the language of performance, art and social sciences," she says.
Unlike its previous editions, the festival this edition is set to be an extended affair over the next few months before culminating into the main event in November this year.
Separate sessions will be organised every month as part of the festival that will focus on stimulating the audience to think of "language in a broader and deeper manner."
"We want to explore the theme over the months to build up to the festival. We also want to build audiences through different perspectives, so that when we come to the final event, the public and the media have a larger understanding of what we are talking about.
"We don't want it to be a single odd event but a larger discourse that we are trying to create," says Rizio.
According to her, the objective of the festival is also to blur the existing distinctions between a "major and a minor language," which she says, in a way ends up marginalising the communities that practise the less spoken tongue.
"It is very important for us as a festival because we do not want to distinguish between a major and a minor language, because it is not your fault or mine that I am born into a particular language.
"But because the language is considered minor and not given enough importance, we end up marginalising the voices of the people who speak that language. As a result, they don't have a way of expressing themselves in the mainstream," she says.
Delhi being the host city, it is only fair that the
"movement" begins at home, and therefore the first session today titled, "No Tongues Barred" will focus on the city's languages.
"The theme for today is 'Languages of Delhi' where we are going to trace the evolution of Hindustani which developed in Delhi," says heritage activist Sohail Hashmi.
A curtain raiser today revists the language's journey out of Delhi to Gujarat and the Deccan region in the 13th and 14th centuries and its expansion to areas now known as Hyderabad; how it absorbed words from languages like Telugu and Marathi before coming back to the Capital in the late 17th and 18th centuries to evolve as a language that would soon become the medium of literary discourse.
The session will also trace the trajectory of Hindustani's downfall as Hindi and Urdu were culled out of it as two separate tongues, as a consequence of "nationalist politics," giving rise to new languages that continue to be part of Delhi's cacophony even today.
"This is not going to be a 3-day literary festival with a lot of high profile people making significant statements but it is going to be a protracted engagement with language and expression," says Sohail.
The discussion will be illustrated with readings by Fouzia Dastango.
The first ILF Samanvay Project, "Langscaping Delhi: Mapping a city's linguistic routes" is also set to take shape.
"The idea is to look at Delhi's space and its languages; to look at its historicity; how different languages have come to the city, how they are surving and what are their dynamics," says Rizio.
As part of this project, the team at ILF is looking to make an audio-visual documentation out of the idea and make it a "people's movement for languages." The announcement will also seek to invite stakeholders into the project, she says.
Meera Vashisht, an Indian origin girl living in the US, has raised around Rs 1.4 lakh through crowd funding to distribute LED bulbs to underprivileged sections in India.
Vashisht, who learnt about India's 'Unnat Jyoti by Affordable LEDs for all' (UJALA) programme while working on her 7th class science project, collected USD 2,079.51 with the help of her parents and reached out to 500 people in her vicinity in Houston, Texas (US), the Power Ministry said.
She purchased LED bulbs from the Energy Efficiency Services Ltd (EESL), the implementing agency for UJALA, and distributed them to residents of JJ clusters in Keshavpuram in New Delhi today, it added.
Six hundred families will benefit from 1,800 LED bulbs to be provided under the UJALA scheme from the funds collected by Vashisht.
"LED bulbs use less than half the energy of an incandescent bulb and runs for over 7-8 years. I am very happy to have been able to carry out the distribution of LED bulbs and hope to inspire young minds across the globe for working towards energy efficiency," she said.
Vashisht also believes that her effort will result in lighting up 46 houses for one year, reducing electricity bills by Rs 2,500 and most importantly there will be significant reduction in CO2 emissions every year, the Ministry said.
Under UJALA, over 12.60 crore LED bulbs have already been distributed across India, which is leading to a daily energy savings of about 4.48 crore kWh and resulting in avoidance of about 3,278 MW of peak demand, it added.
Through the scheme, the estimated cumulative cost reduction of bills of consumers, per day, is Rs 17.94 crore and is part of the governments efforts to spread the message of energy efficiency in the country.
Project Manager of UJALA scheme in Delhi Jitender Kohli said: "It is inspiring to see the young generation taking lead in conserving the environment."
The UJALA scheme will play a key role in huge energy savings in the state by use of energy efficient LEDs. LEDs, in long term, serve as a cost effective and a safe alternative to the traditional lighting, he added.
The Appointments Committee of the Cabinet (ACC) which is headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi has rejected the candidate forwarded by the HRD Ministry for the post of CBSE chief.
According to officials, the name of Sarvendra Vikram Bahadur Singh had been forwarded by HRD Ministry when Smriti Irani was at the helm but the ACC has not accepted the proposal.
"The ACC has not accepted the proposal to appoint Sarvendra Vikram Bahadur Singh as the CBSE chief. It has also been decided that the post will be filled under the Central Staffing Scheme," a spokesperson of the HRD ministry said.
Officials said the ministry received a letter from the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) today in this regard.
Singh was Irani's top choice for the position and the HRD Ministry had earlier this year forwarded his name to DoPT.
After the recent Cabinet reshuffle, Irani is now the Textiles Minister while Prakash Javadekar has joined as the new HRD minister.
The post of CBSE chairman has been lying vacant since December 2014.
The country's agriculture sector cannot be strengthened if agri-schemes like Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchai Yojana are implemented in BJP-ruled states alone, Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh said today.
The schemes are meant for all states. The Centre will make efforts to speed up implementation of schemes such as Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bhima Yojana and Soil Health Card Scheme in all states irrespective of party affiliation, he said.
He also said that farmers suicide was a concern and it was due to non-implementation of agri-schemes at state level.
"The Prime Minister and I believe that all agricultural schemes are for all states. The country's agriculture sector will not be strengthened if agri-schemes are implemented in BJP-ruled states alone," Singh said at an interactive session organised by PHD Chamber of Commerce here.
The sector cannot grow if farmers benefit from the schemes in BJP-ruled states alone. "Be it Congress or BJP, our aim is to speed up implementation of all schemes in all states," he noted.
Noting that the Centre is not keeping quite thinking that the agricutlure is a state subject, he said: "We are reaching out to states and sitting with state officials to address their concern and ensure speedy implementation all schemes."
The results of the new schemes rolled out in the last two and half years will be seen in the coming years, he added.
He was replying to a query that why the central government was not pursuading BJP-ruled states to implement agri-schemes at the earliest.
To another query if the government can ensure that no farmers commit suicide after 2020, Singh said, "It is a cause of concern even if one farmer commits suicide. Farmers suicide is mainly due to non-implementation of schemes meant for welfare of farmers at state level."
He also said that the centre is working on a policy to ensure farmers' income double by 2022, while several schemes have already been launched to address the farming risk.
The Minister also said that efforts would be made to dissiminate information related to agri-schemes in regional language too in the coming days.
Singh also said that he will not rely only on social media to interact with farmers and said he is travelling all states to resolve the problems being faced by farmers.
An Amarnath pilgrim and a local driver were killed and 23 others injured when their bus collided with a truck on Srinagar-Jammu National Highway today, officials said.
A CRPF jawan, posted at Chandanwari, died of cardiac arrest, raising the death toll related to ongoing yatra to 10, they said.
A bus, carrying Amarnath pilgrims, collided with the truck at Sangam near Bijbehara, 45 kms from here, in the wee hours today, killing two persons-Pramod Kumar of Meerut, Uttar Pradesh and driver Bilal Ahmad Mir of Kangan, Ganderbal, the officials said.
23 pilgrims also received injuries in the accident which took place when the bus was on the way to Jammu from Baltal base camp in Ganderbal district.
Soon after the accident, the people in Bijbehara, who are mourning the death of two youths, including a Delhi University student in the widespread violence following the killing of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani last week, rushed to the scene despite the curfew and evacuated the injured to the hospital.
Constable Rajinder Kumar of 115th Battalion CRPF died at Chandanwari, along the traditional Pahalgam-cave route in Anantnag district of south Kashmir, last night. The CRPF jawan, who was posted on security duty, suffered a massive heart attack, the officials said.
Meanwhile, a pilgrim Mukesh Kumar of Delhi suffered injuries when he fell down from his motorcycle at Qazigund, 80 kms from here, on Srinagar-Jammu national highway, the officials said, adding he was shifted to the hospital.
27 persons, including 25 yatris and a 'ponywalla' also suffered injuries mostly due to the fall while trekking the arduous 3,880 metre-high route to holy cave which houses the naturally formed ice-shivlingam, they said.
Despite the unrest in the Valley in the wake of the killing of the young militant commander which has claimed 34 lives in the clashes between protestors and security forces, the yatra was going on smoothly from the twin routes.
Nearly 1.40 lakh pilgrims have visited the cave shrine and had 'darshan' of the ice-lingam so far, the officials added.
Claiming that around 30 million dogs are killed annually for meat across Asia, an animal rights body today launched a campaign to end the "brutal and illegal" trade.
Humane Society International-India released a video showing gruesome killings of canines for meat in Nagaland and also shot off a letter to Chief Minister T R Zeliang urging his government to implement the existing ban on dog meat consumption.
The body said trade of dogs for human consumption is prevalent in Nagaland and a few other north-eastern states despite the practice being illegal.
It is estimated that more than 30,000 stray and stolen pets are smuggled every year and sold in live markets and beaten to death with wooden clubs.
"HSI/India has written to the Nagaland Chief Minister to urge the government to implement the existing ban on dog meat consumption, patrol trade routes and shut down markets.
"The organisation launched an online petition calling on the authorities to enforce the dog meat ban immediately," it said.
The "disturbing" footage taken during visits to the local markets of Kohima and Dimapur show that the laws are being blatantly flouted with dogs packed in sacks with just their heads poking out, their mouth either stitched closed or bound tight with rope to keep them quiet, it said.
During transport and display in the markets, the animals are denied movement, food or water, before finally being clubbed to death, it said.
"In launching our campaign today, HSI-India is determined to end this trade, starting with working with the authorities to see that the ban is properly enforced," HSI-India Director N G Jayasimha said.
The campaign plans to work closely with the government and law enforcement agencies in Assam and other neighbouring states of Nagaland to shut down the trade and spare the lives of thousands of dogs.
The body said across Asia an estimated 30 million dogs are killed annually for human consumption, with the trade most prevalent in China, South Korea, Vietnam, the Philippines, Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia.
The body said it is encouraged by reports that the Nagaland government has sent a letter to the municipal affairs department regarding a policy to stop the capture and slaughter of dogs.
Traders at the Agricultural Produce Marketing Committees (APMCs) in Maharashtra today called off their strike following a meeting with the government.
Ashok Hande, leader of traders from Navi Mumbai APMC, announced the decision. However, the traders in Nashik district said they would continue their strike.
This will provide relief to the consumers as the prices of vegetables had skyrocketed due to the strike.
Government assured that there will be no discrimination between the traders who want to sell the fruits and vegetables in the open market and those who want to sell through APMCs.
After Monday's meeting failed, representatives of APMC traders from Navi Mumbai, Nashik, Aurangabad, Pune, etc., and the ministers of concerned departments met again today.
The state cabinet last week decided to de-list vegetables and fruits from the APMCs and allowed farmers to sell their produce directly in the open market.
The decision was welcomed by farmers and farmer leaders including the newly inducted minister of state Sadabhau Khot and MP Raju Shetty of the Swabhimani Shetkari Sanghatna.
Hande demanded there should be an equal law for all traders -- those who operate in APMC and others.
Subhash Deshmukh, minister for cooperation and marketing, MoS for marketing Sadabhau Khot, and revenue minister Chandrakant Patil attended today's meeting.
Sources said that Patil and Deshmukh assured that there would be no discrimination. Patil also warned that if traders continue to be adamant, strict action would be taken.
The traders eventually agreed to call off the strike. They also accepted government's statement that it would bring a fresh ordinance to incorporate traders' demands on August 6.
"Till the new ordinance is issued next month, APMC will start functioning. They will not collect any tax from farmers," Patil said.
Hande later announced that strike was off. However, a leader of traders from Nashik said the decision was not acceptable and the strike at Nashik APMC would continue.
Under attack following the Supreme Court's order on Arunachal Pradesh, BJP on Wednesday sought to deflect the criticism saying the political crisis in the state was an outcome of Congress' internal fight and that it supported the new government only from outside.
The party maintained that it will respond to the apex court's judgement after studying its order in detail and claimed the verdict was not a setback to it.
It targeted Congress after its Vice-President Rahul Gandhi took potshots at Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Gandhi thanked the court for "explaining" to Modi what democracy is.
"What happened in Arunachal was an outcome of internal fight within Congress. Its government was reduced to minority after a faction within the party rebelled. We only supported the faction's bid for power from the outside. Congress should not blame us for its internal problems.
"Rahul Gandhi is talking about democracy but he should know that past Congress governments have made a century of the use of Article 356 (of the Constitution) to dismiss state governments," BJP national secretary Shrikant Sharma said.
The Supreme Court has ordered restoration of the Congress government, headed by Nabam Tuki, in by quashing all decisions of the Governor that had precipitated its fall in January, holding them "violative" of the Constitution.
Meanwhile, BJP national spokesperson Nalin Kohli told reporters in Guwahati that the party would decide on the future course of action on only after a thorough study of the Supreme Court judgement.
"The order has to be studied in detail and whatever structured response will come, it will be thereafter, because there will be various aspects to it," he said on the sidelines of the first conclave of Democratic Alliance (NEDA).
"Why is the Congress rejoicing so much? Why are they saying as if BJP is not a democratic party? If anyone murdered democracy in this country, then it has always been the Congress.They don't even have a democratically elected leader," Kohli said.
He questioned Congress as to why many of its leaders, MLAs and grassroots workers were leaving the party.
"As of today, the factual position is that Nabam Tuki is a leader without any MLA. Congress party is without any karyakarta and workers. If Tuki is democratic, then why did MLAs leave him?" he asked.
"What happened in in terms of locking Assembly gate, law and order outside Assembly, if that's the democratic tradition Congress party is proud of, then I'm sure people of Arunachal will give a befitting reply," Kohli said.
"Congress misused the Article 356 many times. Emergency is again an example," he said.
Opposition today hit out at the Modi government over the Supreme Court's verdict on Arunachal Pradesh with Congress President Sonia Gandhi saying it will deter it from "misuse of power" and AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal calling the order a "tight slap" on its "dictatorial tendencies".
Congress also demanded the immediate sacking of Governor Jyoti Prasad Rajkhowa and demanded an apology from all those involved in the decision of toppling the government.
Government said it will do a "structured examination" of the order and its implications before making a detailed response.
Putting up a brave front, BJP tried to deflect the criticism saying the political crisis in the state was an outcome of Congress' internal fight and claimed that the order is not a setback to the party.
Top Congress leaders Sonia and Rahul Gandhi targeted Prime Minister Narendra Modi with the party president asserting that those who trampled upon constitutional propriety and democratic norms stand defeated today.
Rahul Gandhi took a dig at Modi as he thanked the apex court for "explaining to him (PM) what democracy is".
"Those who had trampled upon constitutional propriety and democratic norms have been defeated today. This judgement, that firmly establishes the democratic values enshrined in our constitution, will deter the Union Government from any further misuse of power," Sonia said in a statement.
She also welcomed the "historic" verdict reinstating the "democratically elected and unconstitutionally removed" government.
Former Chief Minister and Congress leader Nabam Tuki, whose government was dismissed, said the order has protected democracy and ensured that justice prevails.
"It paves the way to protect healthy democracy in the country," Tuki said.
Delhi Chief Minister and AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal also hit out at the government.
"SC judgement is yet another tight slap on dictatorial Modi govt. Hope Modi ji would learn and now stop interfering in democratically elected governments," Kejriwal tweeted.
The apex court ordered that status quo ante that prevailed on December 15, 2015 be restored in Arunachal Pradesh Assembly.
The judgement is seen as a major setback to the central government and the BJP, which is extending outside support to the Pul government.
Trying to play down the impact on BJP, party's national secretary Shrikant Sharma said,"What happened in Arunachal was an outcome of internal fight within Congress. Its government was reduced to minority after a faction within the party rebelled. We only supported the faction's bid for power from the outside. Congress should not blame us for its internal problems.
"Rahul Gandhi is talking about democracy but he should know that past Congress governments have made a century of the use of Article 356 (of the Constitution) to dismiss state governments."
Uttarakhand Chief Minister Harish Rawat, who had also got relief from the apex court, lauded the verdict.
"My heartfelt gratitude to the Supreme Court for restoring Cong government in Arunachal Pradesh. Judiciary has restored faith of people in democracy," Rawat said in a social media post.
Buoyed by its success in winning Rs 450-crore bus orders from state transport undertakings in the June quarter, Hinduja flagship Ashok Leyland is looking to step up its market share this year.
The Chennai-based firm has bagged orders for 3,566 buses from various STUs (state transport undertakings) so far this fiscal and these are to be executed within this year.
"Sales to STUs account for about 30 per cent of our total volume. Last fiscal, we had a market share of 44 per cent in the overall domestic bus market, which was around 41,000 units. With the orders that we have bagged from STUs, we are looking to enhance our market share further," Ashok Leyland Senior Vice-President (Buses) T Venkataraman told PTI.
The company said in the first quarter of 2016-17, its share in the domestic bus market went up to 35.9 per cent as against 33.2 per cent in the same quarter a year ago.
On growth prospects, he said: "The industry is expected to grow around 6-8 per cent. In the first quarter, it grew 6 per cent, but Ashok Leyland grew faster at 12 per cent."
Besides, the company has to deliver 2,000-odd buses under the JNNURM scheme by March 2017 as per government instructions to STUs, he added.
The demand from STUs comes on the back of the central government providing support through schemes like JNNURM, fleet modernisation programmes and their partnerships with private operators, he added.
An attack killed an Iraqi journalist and wounded two others today in the Qayyarah area to the north of Baghdad, a journalist and an official said.
A roadside bomb hit the vehicle carrying the journalists in Qayyarah, said Hisham al-Baidhani, a colleague of the two wounded journalists at Iraqiya state television.
A heat-seeking missile also struck the Humvee armoured vehicle, said Muhannad al-Aqabi, the head of the media office for pro-government paramilitary forces.
The attack comes only days after Iraq announced the recapture of a key airbase from the Islamic State group jihadists in the area of Qayyarah, about 60 kilometres (35 miles) south of Iraq's jihadist-held second city Mosul.
Aqabi named the slain journalist as Al-Ghadeer television cameraman Ali Mahmud.
Those wounded were identified as Ali Jawad and Ali Muftin of Iraqiya state television.
The latest death comes after a photographer was killed by a mortar round in June during the battle to reclaim Fallujah from the Islamic State group.
Iraq announced the recapture of the Qayyarah airbase on Saturday, which the Pentagon has said will serve as a "springboard" for retaking Mosul from the jihadists.
Pentagon chief Ashton Carter said Monday an additional 560 US troops would be sent to Iraq, and a senior US officer said most of them would go to the Qayyarah base.
But while the base has been recaptured, the nearby town of Qayyarah is still held by IS.
The jihadists overran large areas north and west of Baghdad in 2014, but have since lost significant ground to Iraqi forces backed by US-led air strikes and training.
A day after being appointed new Congress chief in Uttar Pradesh, Raj Babbar today met party president Sonia Gandhi and her deputy Rahul Gandhi who told him to work unitedly as a team and consider the responsibility as a mission and not a challenge.
"Their message to me is to take this responsibility not as a challenge but as a mission. They told me to work as a united team and steer it to victory. We will move together as a team," he told reporters after meeting the top party leaders.
Entrusted with the big responsibility in the crucial state where Congress has been in political wilderness for more than 26 years that saw emergence of 'Mandal' and 'Mandir' issues and the rise of BSP, he said he will help strengthen the party.
"We will form the government and will reach out to everyone. Our main opposition is 'loot-tantra' and the people of Uttar Pradesh are great who know everything.
"We believe that people of Uttar Pradsh will do a 'chamatkar' (miracle) and when they decide they will elect us with a bigger majority," he said.
Asked how he felt after being entrusted with the new responsibility, he said, "I am very happy and have got fresh energy to take Congress forward with everyone along. I will work together along with the team and not alone."
On Priyanka Gandhi's role in the state, he said she is a prominent member of an important family, which has given supreme sacrifices for the country.
"Where Congress is today, it is due to the Gandhi family," he said.
Babbar said Congress is a family and a pillar that is everywhere and one cannot re-build it as it is there in every city, block and mohalla.
"Our fight is against corruption and the 'loot-trantra' in Uttar Pradesh. On one side, there are people who want to burn Uttar Pradesh, while on the other there are those who want to loot the state and divide it on caste lines. Our fight is against 'loot-tantra' and those who want to divide society," he said.
Asked if Congress had prepared a game-plan, he denied so and said, "We cannot go to society with a plan. There is no plan in politics."
He, however, skirted questions on whether they will align with other parties like BSP in Uttar Pradesh.
Babbar was appointed yesterday, along with four senior vice presidents, including Imran Masood, who had courted controversy and was arrested with his hate speech against BJP's prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi in 2014.
Reaching out to Dalits, Babbar lauded Kanshi Ram and referred to him as a "saint" and said Mayawati is "a respectable woman whom I respect a lot".
"I have always called Kanshi Ram ji, a saint. I have great respect for Mayawati. She is my senior colleague in Rajya Sabha and I stand in her honour every time I meet her.
Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal today dubbed as "political gimmickry" Congress leader Sunil Jakhar's proposed agitation on the Sutlej Yamuna Link (SYL) canal issue and accused his party of depriving the state of its water by conceiving the controversial project.
Speaking on the sidelines of a Sangat Darshan programme in Garhshankar assembly segment here, he said he failed to understand why the Congress was protesting over the SYL issue when the party itself had approved of the project in the 1980s.
"Jakhar is now shedding crocodile tears on the issue while forgetting that incumbent Punjab Congress president Amarinder Singh had welcomed (the then Prime Minister) Indira Gandhi to lay foundation of this canal in 1980s," said Badal.
Alleging that the Congress government had planned SYL to rob the waters of state, he said Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) had opposed it tooth and nail.
He said the Sangat Darshan was a transparent programme aimed at ensuring the well being of common man and added that he could not be deterred from carrying out this flagship programme of SAD-BJP alliance.
Badal also slammed the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leadership for "misleading" the people of Punjab on emotive issues, as he termed the Arvind Kejriwal-led party as "a flock of enemies of state in the garb of 'Aam Aadmi' (common man)".
He said AAP, like Congress, was suffering from "anti-Punjab syndrome" which has been exposed by the policies pursued by it in Delhi.
He said AAP government in Delhi had discontinued teaching of Punjabi language in schools, didn't observe a holiday on sacred Baisakhi festival, demolished the Piau sahib outside Gurdwara Sisganjh Sahib and has submitted an affidavit against the Punjab in Supreme Court on SYL issue.
"These people (AAP) are working overtime against the interests of the state," Badal alleged.
The Chief Minister said the state government was working on a master plan to provide potable water and irrigation facilities to the residents of 'beet' or semi hilly areas in the state.
A determined Manas Bhuniya, senior Congress leader, today wrote to party MLAs explaining why he was not resigning from the post of chairman of the PAC.
Bhuniya's letter is in response to the resolution that 39 Congress MLAs had adopted appealing to Bhuniya to step down from the post of PAC chairman, an issue which has rocked the party since the past one week.
The Congress wants CPI-M's Sujan Chakraborty appointed for the post.
Bhuniya accused Opposition Leader Abdul Mannan and state party president Adhir Chowdhury of "conspiring against him".
"Mannan had deliberately misguided the party. His intentions were to humiliate and insult me. Both Adhir and Mannan are conspiring against me and trying to project me as a 'anti-party' activist. I am a loyal soldier of the party for last 46 years," Bhuniya told PTI.
In the letter, which he had sent individually to 39 Congress MLAs, he had explained his side of the story by giving the details of the series of events that took place in the last one month.
A BJP leader died today while addressing a protest meeting against ruling Samajwadi Party here at Bhimpura.
The BJP supporters had gheraoed Bhimpura police station as
party of the campaign to gherao police stations across the state to protest against the "goondaraj" by Samajwadi Party when Tribhuvan Gupta (50) during an enthusiastic speech collapsed, District President, BJP, Vinod Dubey said.
Gupta was rushed to the hospital where doctors declared him brought dead due to cardiac arrest, he said.
The district administration of Bokaro today held a meeting in Maoist-affected Jhumra Pahar to review the implementation of government schemes.
The meeting was chaired by the Deputy Commissioner Rai Mahimapat Ray, who directed the concerned officials to provide electricity in 66 schools in the rural belt of the district.
Besides, he also asked the officials to expedite schemes implementing process while directing them to construction of important roads.
The Superintendent of Police, Y S Ramesh has assured to provide adequate security for implementing the schemes as well as the villagers, District Public Relation Officer, Ravi Kumar said.
Kumar said the MLA of Gomia and officials of all the departments have taken part in the meeting.
Many of the original Hindu scriptures are now widely available on the Internet thanks to the efforts of the British, who brought these granths to libraries which made their translations and printed and online versions possible, says mythologist Devdutt Pattanaik.
Devdutt tries to answer all possible questions related to mythology in modern times in his new book 'Devlok with Devdutt', a collection of easy-going conversations based on the popular television show on EPIC TV channel.
The book, published by Penguin Random House India, covers many relevant topics such as holy trees, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, colour, Shiva, Ganesha and Gita, and is an English translation of the Hindi conversations on the show.
Written in a Q&A format, the author's responses are simplified versions of mythological tales, taken from various versions found in different scriptures and in folklore.
"Although we criticise the British, it is because of them that the written texts, the granths, were brought into libraries from which translations, commentaries, printed versions became available. Libraries in India, the United States and Europe have put all these on the Internet. As a result, many of our original scriptures are widely available," the author of over 25 books on relevance of mythology in modern times says.
He says it may be surprising but all the original texts of the Vedas, Puranas and the Upanishads, which existed only in the oral tradition until about 2000 years ago, are easily available online.
"Use your phone, computer, type 'sacred texts of India' in Google and search them. We don't realise that there are translations, original formats, scanned material from libraries, etc., all accessible through the Internet," he says.
According to him, poets, rishis and Brahmins of the time thought of ways to integrate spiritual values in everyday life and as a solution, they composed the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, which talk about family values.
"These epics are basically property disputes. The Ramayana is about whose son will ascend the throne and the Mahabharata is about a fight between cousins over Kurukshetra. The story of every family! Through Rama in the Ramayana and through Krishna in the Mahabharata, there is discussion over familial issues - how much is to be shared, what is one's own, what belongs to the other, and so on," he argues.
"These stories communicated the knowledge of the Vedas, and that's why they became so popular. These stories came into being almost 2000 years ago and are said to have evolved over 400-500 years.
"In the period between the Maurya (2300 years ago) and
Gupta (1700 years ago) dynasties, these texts were formalised in Sanskrit. Before this, they existed in the oral tradition, and emerged from different places. These stories may be much older. We don't know," he says.
On why Hindu gods and goddesses are always ready for war, armed with weapons though it is said that we should follow the path of nonviolence, Devdutt says when the idols of gods and goddesses were made thousands of years ago, weapons had a different meaning from the one today, when we associate them with violence.
For the primitive man, his weapon was a means for survival, for hunting and gathering food. Seen in that light, weapons are actually instruments or tools, they needed to survive, he argues.
"We gradually moved from a primitive to an agrarian society; we grew crops, built houses, amassed grain and wealth. To safeguard our food from theft, we built granaries and fortresses, and began carrying weapons for our own protection. Weapons and tools are important in any culture. That's why all gods and goddesses have some weapon or the other. Shiva has the trident, Hanuman has the mace, and Vishnu has various weapons," he says.
Speaking about the significance of the colour saffron, Devdutt says these days it is associated with Hinduism.
"The significance of saffron suddenly increased perhaps because the world of the sanyasis, mahants and their maths gained in power over the last 1000 years...
"Saffron is also the tiger's colour and represents power. During the freedom struggle, Lokmanya Tilak gave it importance. Kesari also means tiger, and it is linked with strength and virility. So, saffron is associated with asceticism as well as masculinity. There's another possible reason: turmeric and red pigment are often used in pujas. On mixing, you get orange," he reasons.
Asked about the most interesting concept he finds in the Gita, he says, "For me it is the concept of yog, that is, connections. How human beings connect to each other. In the Mahabharata, there is no hero or villain. They are all human beings, acting out of their insecurities. There are some good actions, some condemnable. But when you think along the concept of yog, connect with them, you will not judge them, rather you will see through their failings. This is the knowledge you gain.
The Cabinet today approved amendment to a bill for changing the name of Rajendra Central Agricultural University to 'Dr. Rajendra Prasad Central Agricultural University'.
"The Union Cabinet has given its ex-post facto approval for the Official amendment to the Rajendra Central Agricultural University Bill, 2015 for change of name from 'Rajendra Central Agricultural University' to 'Dr. Rajendra Prasad Central Agricultural University'," an official statement said.
The bill to upgrade this university in Bihar into a central university was passed by Parliament in May.
Law and IT Minister Ravi Shankar told reporters that while the intention behind naming the university earlier was surely the memory of the first President of India, but the essence and spirit were not being conveyed.
Therefore, he said, the government has changed the name to Dr. Rajendra Prasad Central Agricultural University.
"Dr. Rajendra Prasad Central Agricultural University, Pusa is to fulfill the desired goal and achieve excellence in teaching and produce the much-needed manpower educated in agriculture and allied sciences.
"This would help in getting over the shortage of technical manpower and infrastructural facilities and would contribute to the development of agriculture, including animal husbandry, horticulture and fisheries in the region," the statement said.
The existing colleges would help familiarise farmers with new techniques, thereby contributing to the production and productivity of agriculture in the region, it added.
California Lt Gov and a group of 40 top academicians have sought "accurate and fair" representation of Hinduism in school text books in the US state, which is currently in the process of revising.
"I strongly encourage you to consider the perspective of young Indian-American and Hindu-American students and whether the proposed framework accurately and fairly portrays that students history. If you agree that it does not, I hope you will consider making the appropriate modification," California Lt Gov Gavin Newsom said in a letter to the California State Board of Education.
Newsom's letter is considered to be big boost for the cause of Hindu-American parents who are seeking fair and accurate representation of Hinduism and removal of negative portrayal of the religion.
The California Board is scheduled to have its last meeting later this week ahead of revising and updating the K-12 History-Social Science Framework for public schools.
In another letter, 40 top academicians complained to the California State Board of Education that the balanced, age-appropriate approach for which they advocate has been largely achieved for the other religions, while the treatment of Hinduism is unduly negative and, as a result, presents Hinduism as being especially prone to historical wrongs and social problems compared with other religions - which is wholly inaccurate.
"However, to make the negative the main focus of India-Hinduism and to suppress the positive, while barely referencing other religions' negatives and promoting their positives, is not only inequitable, but also does not fulfill the Board's Standards for Evaluating Instructional Materials for Social Content," they wrote.
"We should all be working for a representation of India and Hinduism that is consistent with the manner in which other civilisations and religions are portrayed and is age appropriate, rather than singling out India and Hinduism for especially critical treatment," the academicians wrote.
The convener of the academicians who has written the letter is Barbara A McGraw, Professor, Social Ethics, Law, and Public Life Saint Mary's College of California.
In another letter, Hindu American Foundation (HAF) expressed concern that sections of the proposed text books portray Hinduism "inaccurately, unobjectively, and in a prejudicial manner", and if adopted, will promote misrepresentations of fact and a discriminatory bias against Hindu students in instructional materials and in the classroom.
Yesterday, Tulsi Gabbard, the first ever Hindu elected to the US House of Representatives, had asked the Californian educational board to give Hinduism its due place in school text books and not to describe it inaccurately as 'religions of ancient India'.
Britain's outgoing Prime Minister David Cameron spiced up his 'last supper' at his 10 Downing Street office-cum-home with some spicy Indian food such as Hyderabadi Saffron Chicken, Kashmiri Rogan Josh and Samosas.
Kennington Tandoori in central London tweeted last evening that it had delivered the soon-to-be-former-prime-minister's "last supper".
"The dishes include Hyderabadi Saffron Chicken, Kashmiri Rogan Josh, Nasheeli Gost, KT Mixed Grill (Lamb and Chicken), Chiecken Zalfrazi, Saag Alloo, Saag Paneer, Palak Gost, Veg Samosas, Naan bread and Rice among other dishes," restaurant Manager Dr Kowsar Hoque told PTI.
"The restaurant is a firm favourite with politicians across all parties. The residents of No. 10 Downing Street have enjoyed meals from the Kennington Tandoori since the restaurant opened in 1985 and the KT would hope that they continue to do so," the restaurant said.
"It's been a pleasure Prime Minister," said the restaurant which claims to offer modern Indian cuisine and is popular among MPs based in the Westminster area near Parliament.
Cameron has often spoken of his love for Indian food which he says he likes "pretty hot" and it would seem he went for the spicy option once again as one of his last takeaway meals as Prime Minister.
It ended a day of moving vans, boxes and bubble wrap as the Cameron family wrapped up their lives living above 11 Downing Street.
Over the years, the Prime Minister's office has been at 10 Downing Street but the family home has been next door as it is more spacious.
UK Chancellor George Osborne currently occupies No 10's upstairs living quarters but may soon have to move if new Prime Minister Theresa May decides to shuffle him out of the post.
This evening, Cameron will be joined by wife Samantha Sheffield, daughters Nancy Gwen and Florence Rose Endellion, and son Arthur Elwen as the family leave for their new privately rented home in central London as their own home in Notting Hill area of the city is not yet vacant.
They also have a home in Oxford but are unlikely to move there while all three children are at school in London.
The son of a stockbroker, 49-year-old Cameron enjoyed an upper-middle class upbringing and studied philosophy, politics and economics at Oxford University.
He began working for former prime minister John Major from 1988-93 and gradually rose up the ranks of the Conservative party. He briefly quit politics in 1994 to work for media company Carlton Communications as director of corporate affairs.
He concluded his final day as Prime Minister after six years in office today on a light note, exchanging banter with fellow MPs and Opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn in the House of Commons.
Reeling under a huge setback, the government today said a structured examination of the Supreme Court order restoring the Nabam Tuki-led Congress government in Arunachal Pradesh will be carried out while considering that a new dispensation was ruling the state after proving majority in the assembly.
Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, answering a barrage of questions at a media briefing, at the same time said the judgement by the apex court was "supreme" and that government was studying the "implications" of the verdict.
Prasad, who assumed charge of the Law Ministry last week for a second time in the present government, said government will go for a detailed examination of the order and "thereafter we can take a call."
The Supreme Court's order on Arunachal calling sacking of the Tuki government "unconstitutional" came two months after the apex court had restored the Congress dispensation in Uttarakhand.
When asked whether the government will approach the apex court for a review of the verdict, he said "we will have to undertake a very structured examination of the entire direction and thereafter we can take a call."
Prasad said government was yet to get a copy of the order.
"From the media reports, I have seen that the Supreme Court has dircted status quo ante as in December 2015. I can very safely recall that lot of developments had taken place post December, namely the President's Rule was withdrawn, a new government was sworn in and the new government had proved majority on the floor of the House.
"Now in the light of all these, what is required to be done in terms of Supreme Court's direction -- that is paramount, and requires detail consideration," he said.
He further said, "We will study the judgement in detail and go for its implications. Obviously, the Supreme Court judgement is supreme," he said.
Asked whether the government had failed to learn lessons
from the Uttarakhand episode, Prasad said the matter pertaining to Arunachal Pradesh was pending before the Constitution Bench even before the Uttarakhand issue came up.
To a poser whether it was a "failure of law management" on the part of the government, Prasad retorted, "I completely disagree with your comment on law management. Supreme Court is completely independent and free."
On Congress' criticism of the NDA government on the issue, he said the party should look at its past before commenting on such matters.
Earlier in the day, the Supreme Court ordered restoration of the Congress government in Arunachal by quashing all decisions of the Governor that had precipitated its fall in January, holding them "violative" of the Constitution.
The landmark unanimous judgement by a five-judge bench set aside among other things Governor Jyoti Prasad Rajkhowa's message directing the preponing of the session and the manner of holding the proceedings of sixth session of the Assembly scheduled from January 14, 2016, to December 16-18, 2015.
The constitution bench, headed by Justice J S Khehar, ordered that status quo ante as prevailed on December 15, 2015 be restored in Arunachal Pradesh Assembly.
Arunachal Pradesh was placed under President's Rule in January after the Congress faced dissidence.
A criminal case has been lodged against the vice chancellor of Haridwar's Gurukul Kangdi Vishwavidyalaya for allegedly submitting fake certificates to get the job, a charge denied by him.
The case was filed against vice-chancellor Surendra Kumar at Haridwar's Kankhal police station a couple of days back by a man from Uttar Pradesh's Saharanpur.
The complainant alleged that Kumar landed this job on the basis of fake degrees.
Though Kumar denied the charges and said he is ready to face any probe, Kankhal police station SHO Ritesh Shah said they have procured his certificates from the registrar of the university concerned considering the seriousness of the charges.
A team of police officials will soon visit different institutions in Haryana's Jhajjar and other cities where the V-C had studied to examine the veracity of his documents.
Gurukul Kangdi Vishwavidyalaya is run by Arya Samaj.
On being contacted, the V-C said it was a "conspiracy" to malign him. He attributed the "conspiracy" to the rivalry between different Arya Samaj's representative organisations based in Haryana, Punjab and Delhi.
He said he had been educated in the Guru-Shishya tradition in the ancient Ashram system of education.
No stranger to controversies, the Gurukul Kangdi Vishwavidyalaya had earlier been in the for its land being sold to private parties and appointments allegedly being made in the university on the basis of fake degrees.
A private company has been booked by CBI for allegedly causing a loss of nearly Rs 34 crore to State Bank of India by not making loan payments, even as the agency conducted searches at multiple locations of officials related to the firm.
CBI sources said Vardhman Life Sciences Private Ltd had allegedly taken a loan of around Rs 175 crore from four national banks --Rs 40 crore from SBI, Rs 40 crore from State Bank of Hyderabad, Rs 40 crore from State Bank of Patiala and Rs 55 crore from Exim Bank.
Of the four banks, only SBI has complained of loan default to the tune of Rs 34 crore by the company, they said.
The sources said it has been alleged that the loan was taken by the Chandigarh-based company to set up a plant in Cuddalore, Tamil Nadu, but the money was diverted to personal accounts. The complaint alleged that inspection of plant was also manipulated by installing used machinery etc.
CBI spokesperson R K Gaur said a case has been registered against the company, its promoter directors, unknown officials of the bank has been registered under IPC sections of criminal conspiracy, cheating, forgery among others besides provisions of Prevention of Corruption Act.
Promoter directors Suyog Jain, R S Gujral, Vivek Gupta, former directors S K Singla, R K Goya, Pramod Jain, Sandeep Agrawal and two employees, Sandeep Agrawal and Akshat Rana, have been named in the FIR.
"It was alleged in the complaint that the accused persons in connivance and criminal conspiracy with the branch officials had siphoned off the bank funds by misrepresentation, fabrication and forgery of documents and falsification of financial records. An alleged loss of Rs 33.79 crore (approx) was caused to the bank," Gaur said.
He said searches were conducted at eight locations in Delhi, Chandigarh and Cuddalore (Tamil Nadu) at the premises of accused persons and others which led to recovery of incriminating documents.
After a hiatus, the CBI probe into National Rural Health Mission scam in Uttar Pradesh has picked up steam with the agency registering three separate cases of corruption against health officials of the state.
The first case was registered against then Chief Medical Officer (Family Welfare), Sitapur Vijay Shankar Rai. The second and third cases were registered against then Additional Chief Medical Officers--M L Arya and Rajendra Singh respectively--in the office of CMO Lakhimpur Kheri, CBI sources said, adding several private firms have also been named in these cases.
"It was alleged that the then CMO (Family Welfare), Sitapur entered into a criminal conspiracy with a Himachal Pradesh based private firm and other unknown public servants working in the office of Health and Family Welfare Department, District Sitapur (UP) and unknown private persons with the intention to cheat the government," CBI spokesperson R K Gaur said while giving details of the first case.
He said in furtherance to the conspiracy, the public servant had allegedly split the indents to forgo the process of tendering and used fake quotation of different firms with Tubectomy Operation Kit and Tubectomy operation follow-up kits being purchased on exorbitant rates.
"An alleged loss of Rs 7.12 lakh was caused to the Uttar Pradesh government," he said.
In the second case, it was alleged that the public servant and others entered into a criminal conspiracy with two firms of Varanasi to cheat the Health department.
"In pursuance thereof, the accused allegedly utilised fake authority letters of manufacturing firms to show supply and receipt of medicines which were deficit. The accused also allegedly connived with the supplying firms to legalise their financial claim of having supplied the medicines as per the indents raised by the office of CMO Lakhimpur Kheri," he said.
Gaur said an alleged loss of Rs 16.64 lakh was caused to the state government.
He said in the third case, it has been alleged that then Additional CMO and others entered into a criminal conspiracy with three firms of Varanasi to cheat the Health department.
"Similar to the previous case, the accused in the third case also allegedly utilised fake authority letters of manufacturing firms to show receipt of medicines which were deficit. They connived with the supplying firms to legalise their financial claim of having supplied the medicines as per the indents raised by the office of CMO Lakhimpur Kheri," he said.
An alleged loss of Rs 15.84 lakh was caused to the Health department of the state in the case, Gaur added.
The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs today approved transfer of shares by sick PSU ITI Ltd to Special National Investment Fund to meet the Sebi's minimum public shareholding requirement.
"ITI Limited will be allowed to transfer the requisite number of shares from President of India to SNIF as and when Capital grant is released in the form of equity infusion to ITI Limited as part of revival plan approved by Cabinet in February, 2014 to meet for SEBI's minimum 10 per cent Public Shareholding requirement," an official statement said.
ITI will be allowed to meet SEBI's requirement of minimum 25 per cent public shareholding by August 2017. The PSU incurred accumulated losses to the tune of Rs 5,166 crore in financial year ended March 31, 2015.
The financial position of ITI is not very sound. CCEA in its meeting held in February, 2014 approved the proposal to provide financial assistance of Rs 4,156.79 crore for revival of the telecom equipment maker.
An amount of Rs 192 crore was provided to ITI during 2014-15 for meeting its capital expenditure requirements for implementing revival plan.
With this equity infusion, government's shareholding will go beyond 90 per cent.
"In order to fulfil Sebi's requirement of minimum public shareholding for listed companies, equity stake of government will have to be disinvested to bring its stake back to 90 per cent," the statement said.
Apart from this, ITI is required to comply with SEBI's requirement of minimum 25 per cent public shareholding by August 2017.
"However, ITI Limited is currently a sick company and, therefore, may not get proper valuation if it is disinvested at this stage. It is hoped that with the implementation of revival plan, the company's position will improve and the value of the shares of the company may also increase," the statement said.
Shares of ITI closed at Rs 34.15 a piece, up by 18.78 per cent compared to previous close, at BSE today.
A day after a constable posted at the surveillance cell at IG office in Kanpur was arrested in connection with the CDR racket busted here, Delhi Police are looking out for his senior -- a sub-inspector posted at the same office.
The alleged role of the UP Police sub-inspector came to light during interrogation of constable Narendra, who was brought here on transit remand and arrested yesterday after several rounds of interrogation, an official privy to the investigation said.
Later, when Delhi Police contacted their counterparts in UP enquiring about the sub-inspector, it turned out that he has not reported for duty in the past few days. When a team was sent to his home, they found that he was absconding, he said.
During investigation it emerged that at times Narendra allegedly used to procure call detail records (CDRs) giving the reference of his senior without his knowledge of the same.
When the sub-inspector came to know about it, Narendra allegedly threatened to frame him and later offered him to join the racket, following which the sub-inspector allegedly became a part of the racket, he said.
Meanwhile, Narendra was today confronted with Jaiveer Singh, believed to be the conduit of the racket, in connection with which five persons have been arrested so far, a senior official said.
Delhi Police had last week busted the CDR racket, involving several private detective agencies, that supplied clients with CDRs wanted by them after charging high rates.
Sleuths are also going through the bank account details of Narendra to establish money transactions between him and Jaiveer. It has been found that Narendra had earned nearly Rs 25 lakh through selling CDRs.
The four persons previously arrested include Jaiveer, Pankaj Tiwari who reportedly owns a media company and a detective agency, Aditya Sharma, a freelance detective and Sanjeev Chaudhary, a sales manager of a management consultancy company.
The three top officials of the management consultancy company are also at large and police are conducting raids to track them down.
A ceasefire in South Sudan's capital appeared to hold for a second straight day today after intense fighting that killed hundreds of people and forced tens of thousands to flee their homes.
No gunfire or artillery was heard in Juba and evacuation flights for foreign nationals were able to leave the international airport, although commercial flights were yet to resume.
"No gunshots today. I have seen no tank, no helicopter," said a city resident who did not want to be named. "There are a lot of soldiers and policemen in the streets patrolling."
More people emerged but many remain cautious after four days of heavy fighting that began in earnest on Friday evening, took a pause on Saturday - the young country's fifth independence anniversary - and resumed Sunday and Monday.
The death toll from Sunday's and Monday's battles is not yet known but around 300 were killed in just a few hours on Friday.
Adama Dieng, the UN Special Advisor on the Prevention of Genocide, said some civilians "were reportedly targeted based on their ethnicity".
African Union Commission chairwoman Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma called the situation in South Sudan "totally unacceptable".
The United Nations said around 36,000 people had fled their homes for the perceived safety of UN bases, churches and aid agency compounds.
Two Chinese UN peacekeepers were killed and others wounded.
The fighting was heaviest in an area called Jebel to the west of the city where ex-rebels had a military base close to a UN camp for people previously uprooted in the civil war.
The violence marks a fresh blow to last year's deal for ending the conflict, which erupted in December 2013 when President Salva Kiir accused Vice President Riek Machar of plotting a coup.
Kiir is a member of the Dinka tribe, while Machar is a Nuer, and the dispute has split the country along ethnic lines.
The August 2015 agreement paved the way for Machar's return to the capital in late April to take up the deputy post again in a so-called unity government.
Machar was permitted to return with around 1,400 lightly- armed former rebel soldiers and Kiir was supposed to retain no more than 3,400 armed forces, with the city being otherwise "demilitarised".
However, during fighting on Sunday and Monday tanks, helicopter gunships and anti-aircraft guns were all deployed to bombard Machar's positions.
Channing Tatum and his wife Jenna Dewan-Tatum have marked their seventh wedding anniversary with gushing posts on social media.
The couple began dating after they met on the set of 2006 dance movie "Step Up", and they tied the knot on July 11, 2009 at the Church Estates Vineyards in Malibu, California.
To celebrate seven years as man and wife, they shared pictures of each other on Twitter and wrote sweet messages, with Channing posting a photograph showing Jenna, who seems to be topless, as a silhouette facing away from him.
"This woman, 11 years together, 7 married," he wrote in the Twitter caption.
"Happy anniversary Cake. Thank you baby I love you. Plus you look daaaaaaaaanmm!!! (sic)"
Jenna shared two strips of photo booth snaps which show the couple laughing, kissing or poking their tongues out for the camera.
In her picture, she has drawn love hearts in red and simply written in the caption, "7 years" following by a heart emoji.
A defiant China today said the UN-backed tribunal's verdict should be "dumped into garbage" and asserted that it has the right to declare a unilateral air-defence zone over the strategic South China Sea after its expansive maritime claims in the region was shunned by a five- member international jury.
Rejecting international appeals to implement the verdict, Defence Minister General Chang Wanquan said China will not accept any proposition or action based on the decision by the arbitral tribunal.
"China's territorial sovereignty and maritime interests in the South China Sea will not be affected by the ruling under any circumstances," Chang said here.
China has refused to abide by the ruling of the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) tribunal in The Hague. It has said the Philippines' claim over parts of the SCS is groundless from the perspectives of either history or international law.
"The Chinese navy can operate in South China Sea at any time as the area belongs to China. Certain country has sent aircraft carrier fleet to the South China Sea," Assistant Foreign Minister Liu Zhenmin said.
"We do not recognise or implement the award. We hope it is only a white paper and it will not be enforced. Just dump it into garbage or put it in a shelf or put it in archives and let us come back to the track of negotiations," he said.
He said that China hopes to go back to the negotiating table with the Philippines.
"This is the policy of the Chinese government and hope that neighbouring countries in the South China Sea and ASEAN countries jointly uphold peace and stability of the South China Sea and freedom of navigation and over flights," he told reporters.
As to whether China will set up an Air Defence Identification Zone over the SCS to force aircraft flying in the area to seek permissions from Beijing, the assistant foreign minister said China "has the right to do so."
"We have set up one over the East China Sea (close to Japan) and whether we will set up another in South China Sea will depend on the degree of threat we are facing. If threatened enough, we will do so but it will depend on a host of factors," Liu said at the nationally televised conference.
"Do not make it a region of war," he warned.
A defiant China today successfully tested two new airfields in the disputed islands in the South China Sea, a day after an international tribunal struck down Beijing claims over the area.
With this the number of airfields open to civil aircraft in the archipelago to three, state-run Xinhua agency reported.
The flight tests were held after a tribunal formed by the Permanent Court of Arbitration, (PCA) hearing a petition from the Philippines quashed China's claims of historic rights over South China Sea.
Besides the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan challenged China's claims.
China which has boycotted the tribunal has rejected the verdict saying it is null and void.
A flight took off from Haikou, capital of south China's Hainan Province, at 8:30 am and landed on Meiji Reef two hours later, while another took off from Haikou at 8:40 am and landed on Zhubi Reef at 10:28 am.
The two flights, an Airbus A319 chartered by China Southern Airlines and a Boeing 737 by Hainan Airlines, both returned to Haikou after a short stay on the reefs.
The round trips came one day after a Cessna CE-680 flew to the two reefs to ensure that both airfields are prepared for civil flights.
A state-run Chinese newspaper today included India among the nations which supported China's stand on the strategic South China Sea after Beijing rejected the verdict of a UN-backed tribunal that struck down the Communist giant's claims of "historical rights" in the disputed area.
State-run China Daily showed a world map in its website showing India among the countries supporting China's stand.
"More than 70 countries have publicly voiced support for China's position that South China Sea disputes should be resolved through negotiations and not arbitration. In contrast, just several countries, mainly the United States and its close allies, have publicly supported the Philippines and called for observing the ruling as legally binding," according to the text displayed above the map.
Within hours of the tribunal's ruling, India's External Affairs Ministry in New Delhi asked all parties involved in the SCS row to resolve the maritime dispute through peaceful means without threat or use of force and "show utmost respect" to the verdict by Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague.
India's reaction came after the tribunal ruled that China has no legal basis to its claims of "historic rights" to islands in South China Sea, through which USD 3 trillion passes in trade annually.
China asserts sovereignty over almost all of the South China Sea waters in the face of rival claims from its southeast Asian neighbours.
Top Indian Coast Guard officials today held a meeting with their Pakistani counterparts in Islamabad and discussed key operational issues, including release of fishermen and boats.
This is the first visit by an Indian agency to Pakistan since the Pathankot airbase attack in January this year.
The fifth meeting of officials of Indian Coast Guard and Pakistan Maritime Security Agency was held in the Pakistani capital.
The Indian delegation was led by Coast Guard chief Rajendra Singh.
The meeting comes amid a fresh war of words between India and Pakistan over the killing of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani and subsequent violence that claimed 34 lives in Jammu and Kashmir.
Though there was no official word on what transpired in the meeting, the Indian High Commission in Pakistan tweeted, "Indian Coast Guard, Pak Maritime Security Agency discussed operational matters including release of fishermen & boats.
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Official sources said a host of issues ranging from
information sharing on fishermen, search and rescue operations and pollution response were discussed at the meeting.
The meeting of the heads of the two maritime security agencies is held every year alternately in India and Pakistan.
A hotline was also established between the two sides in 2006 to discuss the maritime security issues on a regular basis.
Highlighting the efforts taken by the government to improve ease of doing business in India, Labour Minister Bandaru Dattatreya today said that compliance cost should not act as a demotivator for businesses.
Dattatreya was speaking at a session at the G20 Labour and Employment Ministerial Meeting in Beijing, the Labour Ministry said in a statement.
The concept of decent work covers the fundamental and principal right of workers, employment, social protection and dialogue, Dattatreya was quoted as saying in the statement.
To ensure these rights, India has a robust legislative framework including in it plenty of labour laws and a strong institutional mechanism for their implementation and enforcement, he added.
"At the same time, the compliance cost should be such that it does not become a demotivator for businesses to flourish," Dattatreya said.
To make the system more relevant in the present work environment, India is in the process of simplification through effective use of technology, he said.
The idea is to improve the service delivery to promote the ease of doing business, which is an essential prerequisite for creating jobs that are decent and empower the workers while raising their overall well-being, he added.
He further said that provision and enhancement of social security to the workers in unorganised sector as well as the deprived and vulnerable segments of the population has been the corner stone of the Indian government, he said.
"Our policies aim at preventing deprivation, assuring basic minimum income and providing protection from uncertainties. We are moving from scheme-based approach to rights-based entitlements in the area of social security," he explained.
Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY) and Pradhan Mantri Suraksha Yojana (PMSY) are two such initiatives that aim to provide universal social cover, the Minister noted.
PMJDY is the biggest step to ensure financial inclusion and Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) of government subsidies and other entitlements through opening of bank accounts, he said.
Pradhan Mantri Suraksha Yojana is providing insurance coverage for life, old age pension and accidents including permanent disablement to all, Dattatreya added.
"We are strengthening the service delivery system for our already robust institutional mechanism available to organised workforce. New reforms under the health reforms agenda aims at improving medical care for beneficiaries through technological interventions such as IT and mobile," he said.
The portability of social security benefits has been extended to 6.57 million people through universal account number, the Minister said.
"We are progressively bringing the new categories of workers from informal sector into the fold of institutional framework available to formal sector workers," he added.
Thousands of people wrote to South Carolina Gov Nikki Haley after she said the Confederate flag must come down in response to last year's church shootings.
Many were angered by her call, but some said the massacre changed their minds.
The Associated Press reached out to the writers of these emails and letters after the Republican governor's office released 10,000 pages of documents last week in response to requests for public records from last summer's flag debate.
Among them are poignant notes from flag supporters explaining how their thoughts evolved after a white man who celebrated the symbol was charged with gunning down nine black people at a Bible study.
The AP found Justin Hough in North Carolina, where he expanded on his feelings now that reactions to police killings threaten to provoke even more violence.
"It's a tarnished, tattered image of the South," Hough said. Southerners who don't acknowledge that either don't understand the impact, or are "just lying about what it says to other people."
In his letter, Hough said he was a graduate of The Citadel military academy who once loved "the Confederate flag, singing Dixie and defending our right to say the N-word." "I came to understand," he wrote, that "attaching southern pride to these relics of the past only served to solidify that the true beliefs of the south are the stereotypes of hatred, bigotry and racism."
Describing himself as a white descendant of Confederate veterans, Hough told the AP that when he was growing up in rural Georgia, everyone used racial epithets and thought nothing of it. The Confederate flag was seen as part of their regional heritage, not a symbol of hate.
"It wasn't the rebel flag," he said. "It was southern culture."
He said the hazing of a black Citadel cadet in the late 1980s made him realize that the symbol he respected could be harmful to others, and the church shootings made him even more convinced that it was time to let it go.
Many letter writers castigated Haley for trying to erase the memory of Confederate soldiers. Many others praised her decision as courageous.
Hailing the Supreme Court verdict restoring the Congress government in Arunachal Pradesh as "historic", the Congress today demanded the immediate sacking of Governor Jyoti Prasad Rajkhowa and apology from all those involved in the decision.
Congress also demanded a probe into a tape-recorded conversation of some BJP leaders and a businessmen, handed over as proof to the court, for toppling the Arunachal Government.
"We want the Governor to submit his resignation immediately and if he does not do so, we will ask for him to be dismissed both outside and inside Parliament," senior Congress leader Kapil Sibal said.
"I have heard that Rajkhowa is on leave, he should go on long leave," he further said.
Sibal also demanded an apology from Union Ministers who were involved in the decision of imposition of President's Rule in the state.
"I also demand an apology from Central government ministers who were part of the conspiracy to topple the government," he said.
Sibal also demanded that there be a thorough probe into the alleged taped conversations of BJP leaders with a businessman conspiring to topple the Congress government in the state with the same "alacrity" as one initiated against Harish Rawat in Uttarakhand.
He said "this particular decision of the Supreme Court is historic in every sense of the word, because never before in the history of this country has the Supreme Court restored the status quo ante, having stuck down actions of Constitutional authorities by using unconstitutional means to bring down governments".
Saluting the Supreme Court verdict, Sibal said, "I believe that their attempt at a 'Congress-Mukt Bharat' has not succeeded, will not succeed because there is somebody out there who is looking after the values of the Constitution to save democracy, to protect it and we salute that authority which is the Supreme Court of India."
"I salute the Supreme Court for having upheld constitutional values on the basis of which only democracy can survive," he said.
Sibal also said this is a message to this Government and also to Governors holding constitutional positions not to use the constitution "for the benefit of the party ruling in India i.E. The BJP and if unfortunately the Governors start doing this, then it is a real threat to democracy".
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Sibal said Congress would raise the issue in Parliament during its upcoming Monsoon Session starting July 18 and would demand a debate and Prime Minister Narendra Modi to speak on the issue.
He alleged that the taped conversations into which the Congress is seeking a probe "points a needle of suspicion" towards the Prime Minister of India as well as the Home Minister."
"We would like both these authorities to explain their position in Parliament," he said, adding that "They would have to answer those questions in Parliament."
Sibal, however, refused to comment on the role of the President in imposing President's Rule in Arunachal Pradesh, but merely said, that "President's Rule was imposed in the state on January 26, that is on Republic Day".
Sibal said he was "deeply disturbed by the machinations" of this government to use "unconstitutional means" to bring down elected governments in this country in which the Congress is in power.
The Congress leader alleged that the modus operandi of the ruling party is to first "wean away" people by "foul means", then impose President's Rule by telling the Governor that the government has lost majority and install another government in the meantime, allowing the matter to be taken up by courts over a period of time.
"But in Uttarakhand it didn't work, because the decision came in immediately. In Arunachal Pradesh, they thought the consequent events will overtake the earlier decisions, but the Supreme Court has said no, we will restore the status-quo-ante as on December 15."
Saibal also sought a thorough investigation on how members of Congress Party in Arunachal Pradesh were weaned away from the Legislative Party to support a new formulation within Arunachal Pradesh.
"There is a tape-recorded conversation which we produced both in the High Court and the Supreme Court which points a needle of suspicion towards the Prime Minister of India as well as the Home Minister and we would like both these authorities to explain their position in Parliament.
"We would also like an immediate investigation in to this tape-recorded conversation considering the alacrity with which the BJP started investigating an alleged sting operation in Uttarakhand in respect of Mr Rawat. I am sure that they should with the same alacrity investigate the taped conversations that I have referred to," he said.
The Supreme Court today ordered restoration of the Congress government in Arunachal Pradesh by quashing all the Governor's decisions that had precipitated its fall in January, holding them "violative" of the Constitution.
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Sibal also attacked rebel Congress member Kalikho Pul for claiming that he still has the numbers with him, saying this "shows the lack of respect for the Court".
"If the Supreme Court of India has rendered a verdict and that also 5 Judge-bench of the Supreme Court, in a historical hearing, then I think all parties concerned must respect that verdict.
"If someone says Governments are formed by majority and not by court verdicts, I think it is very unfortunate comment and I am sure that those who are supporting Kalikho Pul, the BJP, will actually reprimand him for this comment," he said.
To a question that in the wake of today's judgement, what will be the Congress Party's message to rebel MLAs who have been running the Government, Sibal said situation reverts back to that of December 15.
"Everything thereafter, therefore, is irrelevant. When the Session meets, then we will see what happens. Political message to them will be that you are part of our family," he said.
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Meanwhile, Haryana Congress Legislature Party leader Kiran Choudhry described the judgment as "a slap on the face of the BJP-led NDA government."
In a statement issued in Chandigarh, the former excise and taxation minister thanked the Supreme Court.
"It is a rap on the knuckles of both the Central government and the Governor and a lesson the BJP-led NDA can't afford not to learn," Choudhry remarked.
Buoyed by the Supreme Court verdict on Arunachal Pradesh, Congress plans to corner the government in Parliament during the first week of the Monsoon session starting July 18.
Sources said the party intends to demand a reply from the government on the Arunachal Pradesh issue and press for the dismissal of Governor Jyoti Prasad Rajkhowa in the wake of the Supreme Court verdict.
Top Congress leaders today discussed the strategy with party president Sonia Gandhi at her residence, where they are also learnt to have discussed its strategy on GST.
Congress has been pressing for a cap of 18 per cent as part of the Constitutional Amendment bill to which government is not agreeing.
Insiders say this very demand has become a sticking point between Congress and the government but Congress may relent on its rigid stand by agreeing to a cap in the statues and not as part of the Constitution bill.
Government has also proposed a meeting with senior Congress leaders on the issue to iron out differences and this meeting is likely to take place in a day or two between senior Congress leaders Ghulam Nabi Azad, Anand Sharma and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley.
The government plans to push the Constitution Amendment bill in the Rajya Sabha for roll-out of GST in the Monsoon session beginning July 18. The bill was approved by the Lok Sabha earlier.
In a major blow to the BJP earlier in the day, a five- judge Constitution bench of Supreme Court ordered restoration of Congress government in Arunachal Pradesh by quashing all decisions of the Governor that had precipitated its fall in January, holding them "violative" of the Constitution.
The apex court's verdict came as a shot in the arm for the Congress, paving the way for the return of its dismissed government headed by Nabam Tuki.
Tuki hailed the verdict as a victory of democracy and met Sonia and Rahul Gandhi and discussed the situation.
He said he would soon hold a meeting of the Congress Legislature Party in Arunachal to chalk out further strategy and convene a session of the state assembly.
He also appealed to the rebels to come back to the party fold as the Supreme Court had restored his government.
Cotton production is estimated to drop to 338 lakh bales in the 2015-16 season from 386 lakh bales in the previous year as farmers are shifting to other crops like pulses due to higher incentives, a senior official said today.
Cotton output during 2014-15 stood at 386 lakh bales of 170 kg each, Textile Commissioner Kavita Gupta told reporters here.
"Cotton production is estimated to be 338 lakh bales in the 2015-16 season (which began on October 1)," she added.
The third meeting of Cotton Advisory Board for 2015-16 was held today where state-wise area, production, import, export and consumption of cotton were discussed.
"The area under cotton has decreased to 119.10 lakh hectares during 2015-16, compared to 128.46 in the previous year.
"This is mainly as farmers are shifting to other crops, like pulses, where they are getting better incentives, especially in the central and the southern zone," Gupta added.
She said as the international cotton prices are weak compared to the domestic rates, imports are expected to go up to 15 lakh bales during the year compared to 14.39 lakh bales in the previous year.
"The international cotton prices may weaken further due to more stocks coming in the market from October," she added.
Gupta said exports are likely to grow as China, which is low on stocks, will improve its inventory.
"China has recently said that its inventory is down, so their import will go up. They have said they will buy from India," she added.
The total exports is expected to go up to 68 lakh bales in 2015-16, from 57.72 lakh bales in 2014-15, she said.
A court here has taken strong objection to Gujarat Police's failure to produce Kartik Halder, alleged henchman of Asaram, in connection with the Akhil Gupta murder case and directed it to do so on August 8.
Chief Judicial Magistrate Garima Choudhry issued the order on the request of the local police that it is necessary to interrogate Haldar to proceed in the investigation in the murder of Gupta, a prime witness in a rape case against self-styled godman Asaram.
The court had earlier directed Gujarat Police to produce before it Haldar, who is lodged in Ahmedabad jail after his arrest from Raipur in Chhattisgarh in March.
35-year-old Akhil was shot at by unidentified persons on January 11, last year. Subsequently, he was taken to a nearby hospital where doctors declared him brought dead.
He was a cook and personal aide of Asaram, who has been in jail since August 2013, for allegedly sexually assaulting a 16-year-old schoolgirl.
Private equity firm Creador plans to invest Rs 118 crore in pharmaceutical firm Corona Remedies.
Cydista Ltd, an affiliate of Creador III L.P., has committed Rs 118 crore (USD 17.6 million) for a minority stake in Corona Remedies Private Ltd, Creador said in a statement.
Creador Founder and CEO Brahmal Vasudevan said: "Creador is delighted to have this opportunity to partner with Dr Kirtibhai, Nirav and Ankur in shaping Corona's next phase of growth."
With Creador's support, Corona plans to expand presence across India within next two years and also enter into new therapy areas through a combination of organic and inorganic routes, Corona Director Nirav Mehta said.
Incorporated in 2004, Corona currently operates across multiple therapeutic areas and dosage formats with distribution presence in 21 states across the country.
A day after the sudden removal of a statue of police horse Shaktiman by authorities kicked up a row, Chief Minister Harish Rawat today said the decision to install the statue at Rispana chawk and renaming the place after the horse was final.
A statue designed in a better way will be installed at an appropriate time, he told reporters here, asking people not to read too much into the removal of the statue within a few days after being installed at the place where the police horse was injured during a BJP demonstration near state Assembly in March.
Removal of Shaktiman statue had sparked a buzz that Rawat, who was to unveil it shortly, had decided otherwise after being advised by soothsayers that the statue of a horse without a rider could bring bad luck to his government.
Terming the decision to withdraw the horse's statue as personal, Rawat said it will be done at an appropriate time.
BJP reacted by saying the abrupt removal of the statue on the advice of pundits proves the CM is "superstitious".
"A superstitious CM cannot do anything for the development of his state," Pradesh BJP president Ajay Bhatt said.
Shaktiman who died of injuries sustained during a BJP protest had led to a political crisis in the state in March with a BJP MLA arrested in connection with the incident and nine rebel Congress MLAs revolting against the CM.
US Secretary of Defence Aston Carter will host defence ministers from 34 nations along with senior leaders from countries part of the counter-ISIL coalition and NATO next week to discuss the ongoing military campaign against the Islamic State terror group.
The meeting will discuss progress to date, the essential next steps in the campaign and how the nations of the coalition can accelerate the drive to deal ISIL a lasting defeat, the Pentagon said.
"The Secretary of Defence Ashton Carter will host ministers of defence and other senior leaders from nations of the counter-ISIL coalition and from NATO at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, on July 20 to discuss the ongoing military campaign against ISIL," the Pentagon said.
For this, 34 nations have been invited to attend the second meeting of defence ministers contributing forces or basing to the counter-ISIL coalition.
"The meeting comes at a significant moment in the counter-ISIL campaign," the Pentagon said.
It follows Carter's visit to Iraq this week, in which he congratulated Iraq forces for recent progress against ISIL forces in Fallujah and Qayyarah and announced the latest support to help accelerate the campaign.
The Delhi government's Transport Department has directed all motor licensing officers (MLOs) to "immediately" dispose of pending applications for PSV badges filed by auto-rickshaw and e-rickshaw drivers.
Several applications for Public Service Vehicles (PSV) badges are pending with Regional Transport Offices (RTOs).
The department today issued an order asking MLOs to forward all pending applications, especially those from e-rickshaw drivers, to Delhi Police for their verification at the earliest.
The move comes days after a group of autorickshaw and e-rickshaw drivers complained of their applications for PSV badges pending at RTOs for months.
"The Motor Licensing Officers are directed to forward all the applications of PSV badges specially...(those from) e-rickshaw drivers pending at their zonal offices to the Special Branch of Delhi Office, immediately through CVR web application. No PSV Badge application should be pending at any zonal office," stated transport department order.
According to rules, PSV badge is required for drivers of those vehicles which ferry passengers in the national capital.
A senior government official said once the verification of applications is done, PSV badges will be issued by the department.
The Delhi government has formed a panel to suggest ways to tackle the drug menace and expand de-addiction facilities.
The four-member committee, comprising the secretaries of Social Welfare department, Health department, one doctor from AIIMS and representative of an NGO, that was formed last week, has been asked to submit a report.
The panel, that has already held a meeting, has also been asked it to reach out to vulnerable groups such as street children found in and around Connaught Place and Nizamuddin among other areas and suggest ways to rehabilitate them.
"The panel will also chart ways on expanding medical facilities for addicts - in terms of outpatient as well as inpatient departments in hospitals and health care centres. Its focus will also be on sensitising teachers across schools to nip the menace in the bud," a senior government official said.
The Social Welfare department is the nodal agency that coordinates the measures undertaken by various governmental and non-governmental agencies in this regard.
The government runs a de-addiction centre at its shelter for beggars at Lampur, located in the northern outskirts of the national capital.
This assumes importance as Delhi's ruling AAP has repeatedly targeted the BJP-SAD alliance in Punjab over its "failure" to handle the widespread use of drugs, especially among the youth. Punjab is going to poll early next year.
After rejecting their bail petitions, a local court today remanded the Deputy Mayor of Dhanbad Municipal orporation Aklavya Singh and his associate to 14 days judicial custody on extortion and other charges.
The other charges include intimidation and attempt to abduct an executive engineer of the civic body.
Singh and his associate Anand Raj, who were on the run since July 3 after an FIR was lodged against them, had surrendered in the court of CJM Rajiv Ranjan at around 12.30 PM today.
While the two applied for bail, the complainant Arun Kumar Singh, an executive engineer of DMC, filed a compromise petition in the court simultaneously.
The CJM rejected both the petitions saying that since the statement was recorded under section 164 CrPC and charges were serious, bail could not be granted.
The DMC executive engineer Arun Kumar Singh had on July 3 last filed an FIR in Bank More police station of Dhanbad stating that the Deputy Mayor had taken him in his car from the civic body office at gun point on July 1 demanding Rs 2 lakh.
The Deputy Mayor also threatened him with dire consequences if he failed to pay, Singh had mentioned in the FIR.
Singh had taken him to a lonely place showing the spot where he would be dumped if he did not pay up. After one hour, Anand Raj dropped him at his office, the FIR stated.
The police charged him with intimidating the engineer, demanding extortion, preventing a government employee from discharging duty and attempt of abduction.
Since then the two had been absconding.
The police had raided the Deputy Mayor'sn house in Dhanbad and other possible places in Kolkata, Delhi, Balia (Uttar Pradesh).
The police had also sought a court order on property attachment to mount pressure on the Deputy Mayor.
Disqualified Deputy Speaker of Arunachal Pradesh Legislative Assembly had "no authority" to set aside the Speaker's decision of disqualifying 14 rebel Congress MLAs including him, Justice M B Lokur said today.
Justice Lokur, who concurred with Justice J S Khehar but wrote a separate judgement, gave some different and additional reasons for arriving at the same conclusions and dealt with five questions in the verdict.
The judge, who set aside the Gauhati High Court order dismissing the petition of Speaker and others challenging the Governor's order preponing the assembly session and the order of Deputy Speaker quashing the Speaker's order disqualifying 14 rebel Congress MLAs, said that under the Tenth schedule of the Constitution, Deputy Speaker has no authority to tamper with the order of the Speaker.
"It is also important to note that the Deputy Speaker was himself disqualified from the membership of the Legislative Assembly by the Speaker and he could certainly not have set aside the order passed against him and in respect of which he would be the beneficiary.
"There is no doubt that the Deputy Speaker had no authority at all to set aside the decision of the Speaker passed under the Tenth Schedule of the Constitution. The fifth question is answered in the negative," he said.
Justice Lokur gave the findings while answering the question as to "whether the Deputy Speaker of the Legislative Assembly of Arunachal Pradesh was entitled at law to set aside the order of the Speaker... By which the Speaker had disqualified 14 members of the Legislative Assembly of Arunachal Pradesh (including the Deputy Speaker) under the Tenth Schedule of the Constitution."
While allowing the appeals of Speaker Nabam Rebia and state Congress chief whip Bamang Felix, Justice Lokur said the January 13 verdict of the Gauhati High Court is set aside.
"The modification order of December 9, 2015 passed by the Governor of Arunachal Pradesh is unconstitutional and is set aside and the order of the Deputy Speaker dated December 15, 2015, setting aside the order of the Speaker of the same date is also set aside," he said.
Justice Lokur said the issue before the apex court was
not whether the disqualification of 14 MLAs was valid as it had already been decided by the Gauhati High Court. It was also not concerned with the decision of the High Court or the power or propriety of the decision of the Speaker.
Discussing the sequence of events, the judge noted that Speaker Nabam Rebia had given a show cause notice to 14 rebel Congress MLAs on December 7, 2015 asking why they should not be disqualified under the Tenth Schedule.
Thereafter, the Speaker disqualified the 14 MLAs by his December 15 last year's order.
Justice Lokur noted that Deputy Speaker Tenzing Norbu Thongdok passed an order on the same day, saying the Speaker lacked competence to pass the disqualification order and that he had not followed constitutional and legal procedures.
The Deputy Speaker had said the Speaker had lost his competence to pass the disqualification order since a notice of November 19, 2015, for his removal was pending and was to come up before the Legislative Assembly on December 16, 2015.
The judge said that "In passing his order of December 15, 2015, the Deputy Speaker purported to derive his power from the message given by the Governor to the Legislative Assembly on December 9, 2015 requiring the Deputy Speaker to conduct the proceedings of the House on the resolution for removal of the Speaker."
"What is important to note is that the Deputy Speaker was to preside over the House on December 16, 2015. He certainly had no derivative power from the message of the Governor dated December 9, 2015 to take over the functions of the Speaker or to sit in judgment over the decision of the Speaker of December 15, 2015," Justice Lokur said.
"In the view that I have taken, I am of opinion that the view expressed by my learned Brothers relating to the power or propriety of the Speaker taking a decision under 10th Schedule of the Constitution with regard to the 14 members of the Legislative Assembly does not at all arise in these appeals."
Regarding the fourth question that whether the message sent by Arunachal Governor on December 9, 2015 under Article 175(2) of the Constitution was a constitutionally valid message that ought to have been and was acted upon by the Legislative Assembly, Justice Lokur said it "does not arise in the circumstances of the case".
A Flagstaff Police Department officer shot and killed a man Wednesday morning while trying to take him into custody on a warrant.
According to information from FPD, officers responded to the 1500 block of East Route 66 at approximately 4 a.m. to investigate a 911 call. The person who had dialed 911 left the line open and did not speak.
When the officers arrived in the area, they contacted a Caucasian man identified as Donald S. Myers, 32, of Flagstaff, who had a warrant for his arrest after failing to pay his fines in a 2014 domestic violence disorderly conduct case in Coconino County Superior Court. He fled from the officers.
The officers followed Myers on foot into a mobile home park off North Switzer Canyon Drive.
"They pursued and attempted to take him into custody," said FPD Sgt. Cory Runge.
At that point, one officer fired multiple shots at Myers. He was struck an undisclosed number of times and died at the scene. No officers or other civilians were injured.
FPD officers noted that Myers had a firearm. However, Runge was unable to say if Myers pointed the gun or fired it at the officers. He also could not confirm whether the firearm was recovered from the scene.
"That is under investigation at this time," Runge said.
The FPD officers were wearing body cameras during the fatal shooting. Runge said FPD is reviewing the footage to determine what can be released based on Arizona's public records laws.
The Coconino County Sheriff's Office is leading a multi-agency officer-involved shooting investigation team. More information is expected to be released as it becomes available.
This marks the 10th time Flagstaff police officers have exchanged gunfire with suspects. In five cases, suspects were killed by the police. The most recent was Verl Bedonie, a 26-year-old Kaibeto man who died in a shootout after he pointed a gun at officers twice and attempted to carjack a vehicle at gunpoint in the Plaza Vieja neighborhood May 23.
Two police officers have also been shot to death in the line of duty. In 2000, FPD Officer Jeff Moritz died in a shootout with a schizophrenic suspect during a traffic stop in the University Heights neighborhood. The shooter was later convicted of murder. Officer Tyler Stewart was gunned down while investigating a domestic violence case in the Plaza Vieja neighborhood in 2014. The gunman committed suicide.
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10:45 a.m.: Flagstaff police shot and killed a man following a foot pursuit at about 4 a.m. Wednesday in the 1300 block of East Circle View Drive near North Switzer Canyon Drive.
The deceased has been identified as 32-year-old Donald S. Myers of Flagstaff. He was pronounced dead at the scene. No officers or other civilians were injured.
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8:37 a.m.: There was an officer-involved shooting in Flagstaff Wednesday morning.
The shooting occurred before 5 a.m. in the 1300 block of East Circle View Drive. The Flagstaff Police Department said a multiagency officer-involved shooting team is investigating.
Tommy Rock lives on top of McMillan Mesa. He said he woke at about 5 a.m. to the sound of sirens. At one point, he said he heard three to four gunshots. About 30 minutes later Rock said he heard one last shot. Another local resident Eugene Office also estimated he heard five shots.
Rock said it is usually quiet in the area around his home.
"I've never seen anything like this before, especially in this neighborhood," he said. "It's a wake up call that anything can happen, even in a good neighborhood."
More details to follow.
Hillary Clinton said today that the Republican Party of Abraham Lincoln has been transformed into "the party of Trump," declaring her GOP presidential opponent a polarizing figure who is deepening the divisions in America.
Clinton embraced the symbolism of Lincoln's "House Divided" speech, using the Illinois Old State House chamber as the backdrop to argue that the nation needs to repair its divisions after a series of high-profile police shootings.
A week before the Republican convention, Clinton said presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump would do little to heal the country.
"This man is the nominee of the party of Lincoln. We are watching it become the party of Trump. And that's not just a huge loss for our democracy it is a threat to it," Clinton said, speaking from the black walnut wooden dais in the Old State Capitol. "Because Donald Trump's campaign adds up to an ugly, dangerous message to America."
Clinton, a polarizing figure for nearly three decades in national political life, acknowledged that she, too, must contribute to the healing.
"As someone in the middle of a hotly fought political campaign, I cannot stand here and claim that my words and actions haven't sometimes fueled the partisanship that often stands in the way of our progress," Clinton said a week after she faced criticism from the FBI director over her handling of classified materials at the State Department. "So I recognize I have to do better, too."
The Democratic presidential candidate picked the symbolic location where Lincoln delivered his famous address about the perils of slavery in June 1858 to the state Republican convention. Elected the first Republican president two years later, Lincoln declared that "a house divided against itself cannot stand."
Clinton is not the first to reach for Lincoln's legacy. President Barack Obama launched his first presidential campaign in 2007 in a chilly outdoor rally on the steps of the Old State Capitol, echoing Lincoln's calls for unity before the Civil War.
She said the recent shootings had left many Americans asking "whether we are still a house divided." Clinton said the nation, including herself, needs to listen more rather than fueling political and other divisions after the high-profile shootings in Texas, Louisiana and Minnesota.
She reiterated her calls to address gun violence, criminal justice reform and ways of supporting police departments.
European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker urged new British Prime Minister to swiftly engage divorce talks with the European Union.
The outcome of the UK vote to leave the EU "has created a new situation which the United Kingdom and the European Union will have to address soon," Juncker said in a letter to May published on his Twitter account.
"I wish you every success in the task ahead," he added.
European Parliament President Martin Schulz also piled on the pressure as he congratulated May.
"Leadership issue settled, now I expect we work quickly to deliver certainty," he said.
EU president Donald Tusk meanwhile said he looked forward to a "fruitful working relationship" with the incoming May.
"I look forward... To welcoming you to the European Council" of European Union leaders, Tusk added in a brief letter.
May's first meeting with key EU leaders could be at the G20 summit in China on September 4, but her first encounter with all of the other 27 EU leaders will be at the next European Council summit on October 20-21.
Since Britons narrowly voted for Britain to leave the bloc in June 23 referendum, European leaders have asked London to quickly formalise its divorce but May has indicated she will not be rushed.
On a visit to Brussels today, US Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew urged Britain and the EU to remain "highly integrated" after Brexit.
The European Union today criticised a new Israeli law that increases regulation of many human rights organisations, saying it risks "undermining" Israel's democratic ideals.
The law, passed late yesterday, imposes new reporting requirements on non-profit groups that receive more than half of their funding from foreign governments.
While its supporters, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, say the law is meant to increase transparency, it applies almost exclusively to liberal groups, often funded by the EU, that are critical of Israeli policies toward the Palestinians.
More hawkish groups are largely exempt because they tend to receive funding from private individuals. Members of Israel's hard-line coalition have long accused the EU of meddling in Israeli affairs by funding such groups.
European officials say it supports groups that promote democracy or help the Palestinians to develop their economy and governing institutions as a step toward establishing an independent state at peace with .
In a statement today, the EU said the new law goes "beyond the legitimate need for transparency," and seems "aimed at constraining the activities of these civil society organisations working in ."
" enjoys a vibrant democracy, freedom of speech and a diverse civil society which are an integral part of the values which Israel and the EU both hold dear," it added.
"This new legislation risks undermining these values," it added.
In Washington, State Department spokesman John Kirby said the US was concerned the legislation could have a "chilling effect" on the activities of non-governmental organisations.
He said President Barack Obama has made clear that "a free and functioning civil society is essential and governments must protect freedoms of expression including dissent, association and create an atmosphere where all voices can be heard."
Israeli nonprofits were already required to report their sources of funding to a state registrar, and such information appears on their websites.
The new law requires them to state that they rely on foreign funding in all communication with public officials and on TV, newspapers, billboards and online. Representatives of these groups must also declare they depend on foreign contributions to the heads of parliamentary committees when participating in meetings.
An additional proposal that would have required their representatives to wear special badges in the parliament building was dropped.
Israeli nonprofit groups reacted angrily today. Adalah, a group that promotes the rights of Arab citizens of Israel, said the law "is intended to persecute and incite against human rights organisations, a practice which is characteristic of dark regimes both past and present".
Exim Bank has extended a loan of USD 44.95 million to Kenya for a textile factory and development of small and medium enterprises.
The loan, known as line of credit, has been granted on behalf of the Indian government.
The Export-Import Bank of India said in a press release that it has "extended Lines of Credit to the Government of of USD 29.95 million and USD 15 million for financing the upgrade of Rift Valley Textile Factory (RIVATEX East Africa Ltd) and for development of various small and medium enterprises in Kenya respectively".
The loan agreements were signed in Nairobi, Kenya on Monday, by Exim Bank CMD Yaduvendra Mathur and Henry K Rotich, Cabinet Secretary, The National Treasury, Kenya in the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Kenyian President Uhuru Kenyatta.
With this loan agreement, Exim Bank has now placed 207 Lines of Credit, covering 63 countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America, Europe, Oceania and the CIS, with credit commitments of over USD 14.95 billion.
These credit are used to finance exports from India.
Under the LOCs, Exim Bank will reimburse 100 per cent of contract value to the Indian exporters.
Besides promoting India's exports, Exim Bank loans enable demonstration of Indian expertise and project execution capabilities in emerging markets.
Claiming that land of peasants is being "forcibly" acquired particularly in BJP-ruled states despite withdrawal of the ordinanceby Centre, a farmers' body today asked the government to implement the Land Acquisition Act 2013.
The All India Kisan Sabha, with links to CPI(M), said the issue will be taken up during a convention of farmers' outfits, to be held later this month in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's home state Gujarat, to "expose his fake model" of development by highlighting the plight of peasants there.
"Government should have had restored the 2013 Act after the defeat of the Land Acquisition Ordinance. But instead, states, particularly those ruled by BJP and its allies like Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Odisha...These are acquiring lands through draconian state acts forcibly, without consent of peasants," AIKS General Secretary Hannan Mollah said.
Briefing reporters about the decisions taken by the council of AIKS after its meeting in Bangalore earlier this month, Mollah said around 500 delegates representing various farmers' organisations are expected to attend the convention to be held between July 16 and July 18 in Ahmedabad.
Two papers will be presented during the meet. One on the status of peasants in Gujarat and other on the "forcible" land acquisition by states in parts of the country.
Mollah asked the government to protect rights of tenant farmers through "strict" implementation of Forest Rights Act and by stopping alleged indiscriminate snatching of tribal land by corporate companies.
In its 14-point charters of demands the AIKS asked the government to implement "progressive" land reforms across the country.
It claimed there has been a rise in farmers' suicides during BJP's rule at Centre with 52 farmers committing suicide everyday as against last decade's average of 42 suicides per day.
He alleged that the Modi government has allegedly failed in providing relief to peasants and asked it to implement comprehensive package of loan waiver for poor, marginal and middle peasants.
"Reverse the anti-people neo-liberal economic policies to stop farmer suicides. The government should provide Rs 10 lakh compensation for families of farmers who commit suicide," he added.
Mollah also asked the government to offer farmers minimum support price at the rate of 50 per cent in addition to cost of production as recommended by MS Swaminathan Commission and ensure direct procurement by Food Corporation of India from peasants.
The AIKS will also organise four jathas (foot marches) from Kanyakumari, Virudhnagar, Jammu and Kolkata raising agrarian issues which will culminate into a rally in Delhi on November 24, he said.
BSF has seized five Pakistani fishing boats, abandoned in Indian territory near the Indo-Pak border, in Kutch district.
However, no fisherman was nabbed.
Two boats were found by the patrolling party of Border Security Force last morning at Harami Nala area here, while three were found abandoned in the same area, which is near Lakhpat, early today, a BSF release said.
The BSF has started a search operation in the narrow Nala creek after they found two boats. During the search operation, the BSF found three more boats early this morning, the release said.
According to BSF, no fisherman has been arrested, as all the occupants of these mechanised fishing boats having Pakistan origin fled into their territory before the patrolling party spotted the boats.
About four kg of fish, 50 fishing hooks, an ice box and a plastic can were recovered from the two boats seized yesterday.
A detailed search of the three other seized boats is yet to be carried out, the release added.
Air passengers have a reason to smile as the revised norms that caps ticket cancellation charges and bars airlines from levying additional amount for refund process are coming into force from August 1.
"Cancellation amount not to exceed basic fare plus fuel surcharge; all statutory levies and taxes to be refunded under all circumstances," Civil Aviation Minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju said today as he announced that the new cancellation norms for fare refund would become effective from August 1.
Issuing the revised regulations, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) also made it clear that airlines cannot levy additional charge to process the refund.
The move would come as a relief to air passengers against the backdrop of many carriers hiking the cancellation charges in recent times.
The regulator said carriers should refund all statutory taxes and User Development Fee (UDF)/Airport Development Fee (ADF)/Passenger Service Fee (PSF) to the passengers in case of "cancellation/ non-utilisation of tickets/no show".
"This provision shall also be applicable for all types of fares offered including promos/special fares and where the basic fare is non-refundable," DGCA noted.
The changes were first proposed by the Civil Aviation Ministry in June as part of putting in place passenger friendly measures.
These norms would be effective from August 1, according to the Civil Aviation Requirement (CAR) issued by DGCA chief M Sathiyavathy on Tuesday.
In a tweet, Raju said the process of refund would be completed within 30 days even when booked through travel agents or online portals.
"Cancellation charges to be clearly displayed on every ticket. The policy to be prominently displayed on the website of the airline," Raju said in another tweet.
No charges can now be levied by airlines for corrections in errors of names of the passengers, he added.
Separately, DGCA has also revised the rules with respect to persons with disability and reduced mobility whereby airport operators should make provision for such people to embark or disembark from a flight without inconvenience.
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Carriers would be required to indicate the refund amount in case of ticket cancellations.
The amount and its break-up may be indicated on the ticket itself or through separate form used for the purpose. Also, the policy and amount of refund shall be displayed by the airlines on their respective websites, DGCA noted.
Further, passengers can choose whether the refund money should be kept in the airline's credit shell or not.
"Airline shall not levy any additional charge for correction in name of the same person, when error in his name spelling is pointed out by the passenger to the airline after booking of his ticket," the regulator said.
For tickets booked through travel agents or portal, the onus of refund would be on the airlines.
"In case of purchase of ticket through travel agent/ portal, onus of refund shall lie with the airlines, as agents are their appointed representatives. The airlines shall ensure that the refund process is completed within 30 working days," the regulator said.
At present, in cases of ticket purchases from travel agents, the arrangement for refund is left to the passenger and the travel agent.
"The option of holding the refund amount in credit shell by the airlines shall be the prerogative of the passenger and not a default practice of the airline," it noted.
In the case of foreign carriers operating to and from India, the refund process would be in accordance with regulations of their country of origin.
The latest CAR prescribes minimum requirements for refund of ticket purchased by persons with respect to air transport undertakings including scheduled and non-scheduled domestic operators as well as foreign carriers operating to/from India.
As per the revised the rules with respect to persons with disability and reduced mobility, airlines, upon advance request, have to make provisions for carriage of stretchers and associated equipment for passengers who cannot use the standard airline seat in a sitting/reclining position.
"Such a request shall be made at least 48 hours prior to the scheduled departure of the flight. Airlines shall develop a procedure for making advance request of stretcher and the same should be displayed on airline's website," DGCA said.
Under the new norms, airport operators should make
provision for ambulift at the aerodrome for people with disability or reduced mobility to embark/disembark the aircraft without inconvenience.
"Such provision may be made in coordination with Ground Handling Agencies (GHAs), if required. Airport where ambulift or aerobridge facility is not available, provision of towable ramp should be made," the revised CAR (Civil Aviation Requirments) in this regard said.
Further, the watchdog said the airport operator should ensure that persons with disability or reduced mobility are transported "within the airport in the same condition, comfort and safety as those available for other passengers".
DGCA also noted that airlines, airport operators, security, customs, and immigration bureau organisations at airports should conduct training programme for personnel engaged in passenger services.
This is for "sensitisation and developing awareness for assisting persons with disability or reduced mobility and to ensure they are well briefed about their responsibilities," it added.
A Delhi court was today told by city police that forensic report of JNUSU President Kanhaiya Kumar's mobile phone, seized during investigation in the sedition case, was still awaited.
The submission was made by the Special Cell of Delhi Police before Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Sumit Dass in reply to Kanhaiya's plea seeking release of his cell phone and other belongings.
After hearing the submissions, the court granted till July 26 to the police to file its reply on the plea and posted the matter for further hearing.
In its reply, the agency told the court that the mobile phone was sent to Central Forensic Science Laboratory (CFSL) and the report was still awaited.
The mobile phone and some other belongings were seized at the time of Kanhaiya's arrest on February 12 on sedition charges in connection with an event in JNU campus on February 8 where anti-national slogans were allegedly raised.
He was granted interim conditional bail for six months by the Delhi High Court on March 2.
Besides Kanhaiya, two other JNU students - Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya - were also arrested in the case and later granted interim bail for six months by a Delhi court on March 18.
Former Burundian government minister and spokeswoman Hafsa Mossi was shot dead by unknown assailants in the capital Bujumbura today, police said.
"Hon. Mossi assassinated 10.30 in Gihosha", in the east of Bujumbura by, "two criminals in a vehicle," police spokesman Pierre Nkurikiye said on Twitter.
Mossi, a former journalist in her 50s who previously worked for the BBC's Swahili Service, was a member of President Pierre Nkurunziza's ruling CNDD-FDD party.
"The assassination of Hafsa Mossi is a despicable and cowardly act," Nkurunziza tweeted.
"This is an inestimable loss for Burundi, her family and the whole EAC (East African Community)," he added.
Mossi was Burundi's information minister and government spokeswoman between 2005-2007, and at the time of her death was a member of the East African Legislative Assembly, a regional parliament.
Foreign Minister Alain-Aime Nyamitwe called her death "a great loss for the nation".
Nkurunziza's controversial but ultimately successful bid for a third term last year triggered a deadly crisis that has left more than 500 people dead and driven around 270,000 to leave the country.
Several senior military officers close to the president have been assassinated since the start of the crisis in April 2015, but Mossi, who was not regarded as a party hardliner, is the first senior politician to be killed.
She had stayed very quiet since the beginning of the crisis and the motive for her murder remained unclear.
An investigation was swiftly opened.
Louise Mushikiwabo, the foreign minister of neighbouring Rwanda, which has difficult relations with Burundi, spoke on Twitter of a "good woman and a dedicated politician. Rest in Peace my sister!"
France condemned the assassination in a statement, adding that Paris was monitoring closely the "continued violence and human rights abuses in Burundi".
The statement also called for an "extensive dialogue" to help bring about an end to the crisis engulfing the country.
Amnesty International called for an independent enquiry into Mossi's assassination.
France today said it had closed its embassy in the Turkish capital Ankara and its consulate in Istanbul until further notice, after cancelling events to mark the July 14 Bastille Day holiday due to a "real and concrete" security threat.
The sudden closures of the missions came with Turkey on edge after the triple suicide attack last month on Istanbul's main airport which was blamed on Islamic State (IS) jihadists.
"The Embassy of France in Ankara, as well as the Consulate General in Istanbul will be closed from today July 13, 1.00 PM (1000 GMT), until further notice," the embassy said in a statement after scrapping the July 14 receptions at the missions on security grounds.
The doors of its premises were shut with a sign in French and Turkish saying the mission was closed for security reasons. Armed police patrolled outside.
France's consulate in Istanbul, its embassy in Ankara and its mission in the Aegean city of Izmir were all to have held celebrations marking the July 14 French national day.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said he had personally taken the decision to cancel the receptions after receiving information about a "real and concrete threat".
"The information which we received, and was confirmed by an exchange with the Turkish services, showed that there was a real and concrete threat," he told reporters in Paris, without giving any details.
Earlier, the Istanbul consulate sent an email message to French citizens in Turkey saying there had been "concurring information of a serious threat against the organisation of the July 14 celebrations in Turkey".
Turkey's Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus suggested, in an interview with the A Haber TV channel, the threat could be from IS as the jihadists have previously targeted France and could do so again,
"It is known France is a target for Daesh. Across the world, there is a potential for attacks against French targets. I hope we do not face this in Turkey but all precautions are being taken," he said, using the Arabic acronym for IS.
However, he said he did not know what specific threat France was referring to. He vowed that Turkish authorities would always protect French officials in the country.
The June 28 attack on Ataturk International Airport raised new alarm over the security of foreigners in Turkey after a spate of attacks this year blamed on jihadists and Kurdish militants.
With worsening traffic situation in in its metro cities, India wants to set up an intelligent traffic system that will provide detailed and accurate information for road management, Union Minister for Road and Surface Transportation Nitin Gadkari has said.
Gadkari, who is in the city for the second leg of his week-long official visit to the US, visited the New York City and State Departments of Transportation to discuss intelligent traffic system with the officials here.
The focus of the meeting was on intelligent traffic system that is in place in the city and through which officials are able to monitor and streamline traffic conditions and manage traffic in cases of accidents and congestion, Gadkari told PTI yesterday.
"With the traffic situation in metros such as Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Hyderabad and Bangalore, we want to set up an intelligent traffic system in such cities that will provide detailed and accurate information for road management," Gadkari said.
Gadkari said he noted that police and road departments as well as municipal corporations work in coordination for traffic management and use technology to not only monitor traffic but also to record violations and ensure enforcement of laws and rules.
"Such a system is not possible by just one department. We have to work with all the departments and adopt an integrated approach to ensure its successful implementation," he said.
He said all stakeholders, including state governments, police and traffic control departments as well as municipal corporations, will have to coordinate together and adopt an integrated approach to ensure success of such a system.
He also discussed with officials several aspects of intelligent transport management, city traffic management and control centre and other technology- based transport solutions.
"We have garnered the necessary information and will begin work to implement the intelligent traffic system in our country," he said, adding that use of information technology will also help in identifying solutions to various traffic problems in the country.
He expressed concern over the increase in the number of road accidents in India, saying it reflects "failure of my department" and underscored that "road safety is an important agenda for us".
In India, more than 150,000 people are killed in five lakh road accidents every year.
"If we put such enhanced measures in place, I feel we will be able to safe the lives of many more people," he said.
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Gadkari, who had met American Transport Secretary Anthony Foxx in Washington yesterday,said the US has assured of providing full support and sharing technical expertise with India to help in the development of its infrastructure sector.
At 5.23 million km, India has the world's second largest road network.
Of this the National Highways comprise a mere 0.1 million km or two per cent of the total road network that carry about 40 per cent of the road traffic.
Gadkari said the government plans to take up the aggregate National Highway length in the country to 0.2 million km in phases.
Priority will also be made on development of inland waterways that will be economical, cost effective and pollution-free in meeting the transport needs of the country, he said, adding that the government has decided to convert about 111 rivers into inland waterways and work has already started on the Ganga.
"We are looking at various ways to reform the country's infrastructure. There is huge potential for coastal transport and the growing manufacturing sector needs effective logistics," he said.
Gadkari also said that transportation and logistics cost is 18 per cent in India while it is 8 per cent in China.
"My target is to bring the logistic cost down to 12 per cent," he said, adding that this will help boost economic growth.
Gadkari pointed out that there are tremendous opportunities for investment in India's maritime sector, particularly in building new ports, hinterland connectivity and evacuation infrastructure and development of inland waterways and water transport.
Congress leaders in Goa have now come out openly in favour of a 'grand alliance' with like-minded parties for the state Assembly polls next year.
After former state health minister Vishwajit Rane recently threatened to quit the party if Congress wants to go alone in Goa polls due next year, other leaders like former Chief Minister Digambar Kamat, and MLAs Jeniffer Monserratte, Pandurang Madkaikar and Aleixo Reginaldo Lourenco have also voiced their opinion in favour of the grand alliance.
"I have expressed my opinion before the party high command. I feel that all like-minded parties should come together," Kamat told PTI today.
He said the party high command had sought his opinion recently on the matter and he had favoured the grand alliance, rather than going alone in the Goa polls.
The Congress party had earlier announced that it would not have any alliance for the Assembly polls.
All India Congress Committee General Secretary Digvijay Singh, who was in Goa last month to assess the situation, had refused the possibility of an alliance.
But, the local leaders have strongly expressed that pre-poll alliance is the need of the hour to save the division of votes among secular parties which will give an edge to BJP.
"All attempts should be made to protect the division of votes as it will help BJP. We should join hands with like minded parties. Whoever is like-minded, we should consider being with them," Congress MLA Aleixo Reginaldo Lourenco said.
Responding to a question, Reginaldo said the parties like Goa Forward can be considered for alliance.
"Whatever I have said is my personal opinion, but the final decision has to be taken by high command," said the legislator representing Curtorim constituency.
Another MLA Pandurang Madkaikar said Congress will commit a grave mistake if it does not join forces with like-minded non-BJP parties during the next election.
"BJP will benefit if Congress goes alone. There will be division of votes which will not be in favour of secular forces," Jeniffer Monserratte, the Congress legislator from Taleigao constituency said.
Vishwajit Rane had recently spoken in favour of an alliance for the forthcoming elections.
However, he was criticised by Goa Congress chief Luizinho Faleiro, who had said that the party (Congress) legislators should first show their alliance on the floor of the House along with other independent MLAs.
Government today approved revival of three closed fertiliser plants at Gorakhpur, Sindri and Barauni, at an estimated cost of Rs 18,000 crore, as part of its efforts to meet demand of eastern states and make India self-sufficient in urea output.
The Union Cabinet, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, approved the revival of three defunct fertiliser units with a capacity of 1.27 million tonnes per annum each.
Fertiliser Corporation India Ltd (FCIL) has two closed urea plants at Sindri (Jharkhand) and Gorakhpur (Uttar Pradesh), while Hindustan Fertilisers Corporation Ltd (HFCL) has one closed factory at Barauni (Bihar).
"These three fertilisers units would be revived by means of Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) of Public Sector Units (PSUs) namely, National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC), Coal India Ltd (CIL), Indian Oil Corporation Ltd (IOCL) and FCIL/HFCL, through 'nomination route'," an official statement said.
"Today's decision is a game changer in economy of eastern India," Law and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad told reporters here today.
Earlier in 2015, the government had approved revival of these three units through 'bidding route'.
However, the bidding process could not be carried forward due to receipt of only one application each against 'Request for Qualifications' (RFQs) for revival of Gorakhpur and Sindri units of FCIL, the statement said.
In April this year, Prime Minister's Office (PMO) had held a meeting to chalk out the revival plan of these plants. Cash- rich public sector firms ONGC, NTPC and Coal India were asked to adopt one shut urea plant for revival which would cost about Rs 18,000 crore over the next four years.
The government said that the setting-up of new units at Sindri, Gorakhpur and Barauni would help in meeting the growing demand of urea of Bihar, West Bengal and Jharkhand.
The revival of these plants would ease the pressure on rail-road infrastructure due to long distance transportation of urea from western and central regions and thereby saving in government subsidy on freight.
Moreover, this would accelerate the economic development of the eastern region and create opportunities for 1,200 direct and 4,500 indirect employments.
"GAIL has planned to lay a gas pipeline from Jagdishpur to Haldia. These units will serve as anchor customer for this pipeline and ensure its viability," Prasad said.
The government had approved gas pooling for urea sector which will enable these units to get gas at pooled price making them globally competitive.
Stating that these units were lying defunct since their closure during 1990-2002, the government said that there is no functional urea unit in the eastern part of the country except two small units at Namrup (Assam).
India's annual demand of urea is about 32 million tonnes, out of which 24.5 million tonnes is produced indigenously and the rest is imported.
To enhance the domestic urea output, the government had earlier approved the revival of Talcher (Odisha) and Ramagundam (Telangana) units of FCIL by PSUs through 'nomination route'.
Urea is a controlled fertiliser and its selling price is fixed at Rs 5,360 per tonne. Government pays the difference between cost of production and selling price as subsidy to the manufacturers.
Bharatiya Bhasha Suraksha Manch (BBSM) today termed as a "time bargaining technique", the Laxmikant Parsekar-led government's announcement of formation of an advisory committee to decide on the issue of Medium of Instruction (MOI) in primary schools in Goa.
"We have absolutely no trust on the BJP-led government as far as this issue is concerned. In the past, they had formed a similar committee, which favoured mother-tongue as MOI and stopping of grants to English medium schools. But the then Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar did not pay any heed to the recommendations," BBSM convenor and RSS Goa Chief Subhash Velingkar told PTI today.
He recalled that the advisory council then formed by Parrikar had received 2,000 suggestions from various educational institutes, of which 1,600 had favoured mother tongue as MOI.
"Moreover, out of the 220 educational experts, 179 had opined that the elementary education should be in mother-tongue. Parrikar ignored the entire suggestions and report of the Advisory Council," Velingkar said.
The BBSM leader said the chief minister's announcement yesterday to form Advisory Committee and seek report within four months is a technique to "bargain time".
"In the last one year, the Parsekar government has been mocking BBSM's agitation. Now suddenly, the Chief Minister has woken up and decided to provide a solution through advisory committee.
"Why do you require any advisory committee to decide on the universal concept that elementary education should be in mother-tongue?" he asked.
Velingkar said the BBSM will continue their agitation in the aggressive way in future.
Yesterday, Parsekar had announced formation of Advisory Committee headed by Educationist Bhaskar Nayak to decide on the MOI issue.
Government has extended for the second time the additional charge of senior bureaucrat Bharthi S Sihag as the Chairman and Managing Director (CMD) of India's largest iron ore miner, NMDC, for three months till September.
Sihag is an Additional Secretary and Financial Adviser in the Steel Ministry, which governs the Navratna firm, and was first given the additional charge of CMD NMDC in January after its then Chairman Narendra Kothari retired in December 2015.
"In terms of order dated July 13 of Steel Ministry, the additional charge of the post of CMD NMDC is assigned to Sihag for a further period of three months with effect from July 1, 2016," NMDC said in a regulatory filing.
She will hold the post for a period of three months or till the appointment of a regular incumbent to the post, or until further orders, whichever is the earliest, it added.
In April, the government had extended Sihag's tenure as CMD of the Public Sector undertaking (PSU) by three months, effective from April 1, 2016.
Government's head hunter Public Enterprises Selection Board (PESB) has so far not been able to find a full-time successor to Kothari.
Earlier, PESB had recommended Gopal Singh for the top post, but sources said the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet has still not given its nod on the same. Singh has been heading Central Coalfields Ltd (CCL) since March 2012.
On May 17, PESB again initiated the process for selection of NMDC CMD, for which the last date of receipt of application was July 7.
With pulses still ruling as high as Rs 200 per kg, the government today said it is taking several measures to boost domestic output and imports, besides taking action against hoarders to control rates.
"The central government is taking several measures to control the price rise of pulses," Agriculture Ministry said in a statement.
"On one hand, the government is trying to give relief to citizens by importing pulses from foreign countries or taking action against hoarders, on the other hand the government has taken several steps to increase pulses production and to incentivise pulses growing farmers," it added.
Dal prices have soared up to Rs 198 per kg in the retail markets due to fall of production in last two crop years at about 17 million tonnes in view of drought.
The government has recently announced a sharp increase in MSP of kharif pulses for the 2016-17 crop year to encourage farmers to grow lentils, the ministry said, adding that a committee under the Chief Economic Advisor has been set up to frame a long-term policy and review MSP and bonus for farmers.
The ministry said that the size of buffer stock has been raised to 20 lakh tonnes from the earlier 8 lakh tonnes.
Stating that the government is procuring pulses from local market to build buffer stock, the ministry said that 69,000 tonnes of pulses have been procured so far against a target of 1 lakh tonnes.
"Chana and masoor were procured at the rate of Rs 4,900- 7,000 and Rs 5,400-8,500 per quintal, respectively. The purchase of pulses is still in progress," the release said.
The government procured more than 50,000 tonnes of pulses in Kharif season last year.
To boost pulses production, the ministry said that all 638 districts of 29 states have been included in the National Food security Mission plan. "Goa, Kerala and 8 north eastern states and 3 hilly states have now been included in this mission."
The government has also enhanced allocation under this mission to boost pulses production, the ministry said.
To meet the demand of fertiliser in the ongoing kharif season, the government has contracted 2 million tonnes of urea import for delivery by the end of this month.
India is dependent on urea imports as domestic output is lower than the demand. Overseas purchase is being done via three state trading enterprises - STC, MMTC and IPL.
"Our urea requirement is 2.5 million tonnes for this kharif season. We have finalised imports for 2 million tonnes of urea which will reach Indian ports by the end of this month," a senior Fertiliser Ministry official told PTI.
The third import tender has been floated to procure the balance 5,00,000 tonnes of urea, the official said.
Till last week, farmers had sown kharif crops like paddy and pulses in 40.6 million hectare. Though the acreage was down compared to the year-ago period, good rains in most parts have boosted planting operations.
Once the kharif season is over, the government will assess the urea requirement for the rabi (winter) season after discussing with the states and then place tenders for imports.
Normally, urea requirement is around 3.5 million tonnes for the rabi season beginning October.
Stating that country's total urea imports could come down this year, the official said, "overall, urea import is estimated to be around 7 million tonnes in the 2016-17 fiscal, much lower than 8.5 million tonnes in the last year."
The imports are expected to be lower on likely increase in the domestic output of the fertiliser this year and if the demand remains at last year's level of 31 million tonnes, the official added.
Much of the urea imports is procured from open market, India also has an offtake agreement with Oman-based fertiliser firm OMIFCO, which is a joint venture between domestic cooperatives IFFCO, Kribhco and Oman Oil company SAOC.
Last month, Fertiliser Minister Ananth Kumar had said the domestic urea output could touch a new record at 25.5 million tonnes in 2016-17 fiscal, up by 1 million tonnes from the last year.
Urea is a controlled fertiliser and sold at a fixed selling price of Rs 5,360 per tonne. The difference between cost of production and selling price is paid as subsidy to manufacturers.
has become Britain's new finance minister, Downing Street announced, replacing George Osborne who quit the government after Theresa May was appointed prime minister.
Hammond had been the foreign minister in the outgoing government of David Cameron since 2014.
"The queen has been pleased to approve the appointment of MP as chancellor of the exchequer," Downing Street said in a statement.
As the second lord of the Treasury the prime minister is the first he takes over 11 Downing Street, the office next door to the prime minister at Number 10.
The flat above Number 11 is bigger than the flat above number 10. Prime ministers Cameron and Tony Blair opted to take the Number 11 flat and May could well follow suit, leaving Hammond living above Number 10.
"George Osborne MP has resigned from government. Further ministerial appointments will be announced this evening," the statement added.
Osborne was Cameron's closest minister and, before the referendum, had been widely viewed as a likely successor.
However, his aggressive campaigning for Britain to stay in the EU riled Conservative party colleagues and members, and when Cameron stepped down after the vote for Brexit, he declined to run.
Observing that controversial preacher Zakir Naik is spreading "contempt" towards other religions through his speeches, some Muslim activists today demanded that such "hate-mongers" be prosecuted for promoting enmity between religious groups.
Addressing a joint press conference here, activists including Javed Anand, Feroze Mithiborwala, Noorjehan Niaz and Zeenat Ali said that "Naik preaches contempt, though not hatred, towards other religious".
Mithiborwala said, "all such hate-mongers, including Naik, should be probed and prosecuted for promoting enmity between religious groups".
Anand said the main question regarding Naik and his preachings on his channel is "whether he is aiding and abetting terrorism?"
Demanding probe against the tele-evangelist, he said Naik is not a messenger of peace "but he has been spreading prejudice against other religions, especially contempt, for past several years".
Zeenat Ali said, "Naik's understanding is very puritanical and several Muslim organisations have joined hands against Naik".
However, we are more concerned about the fact that certain sections of Muslim leaders are supporting Naik, she added.
The activists unanimously condemned Naik's speeches.
Naik, who runs Peace TV which has millions of followers in various countries, is currently under scanner of various agencies after at least one of the terrorists involved in Dhaka attack had posted that he was influenced by Naik's sermons.
Delhi High Court today held the National Zoological Park here liable to pay compensation to the kin of a youth who died after being mauled by a white tiger in 2014, saying the zoo had not taken adequate precautions to stop anyone from climbing into the enclosure despite knowing that the feline was a dangerous animal.
A bench of Chief Justice G Rohini and Justice Jayant Nath awarded compensation of Rs six lakh, minus Rs one lakh already paid, to the kin of 22-year-old Maqsood, who had climbed into the tiger's enclosure on September 23, 2014 and was mauled to death by it.
The court said the zoo was in clear breach of statutory duties provided under the Wild Life (Protection) Act 1972, and other regulations.
"In our opinion, there were inadequate precautions taken by respondent 1 (zoo) to guard against any visitor climbing the stand-off barrier which is not very high. Further, there was enough time, which as per the zoo authority was five minutes, during which the zoo authority could have reacted to rescue and save the life of Maqsood after he fell in the moat.
"A collapsible rope ladder could have been dropped to help Maqsood climb up the moat wall. There was none available. A trained rescue if available could have taken other steps to rescue the victim.
"There is clear breach of statutory duties by respondent 1 as provided under the Wild Life (Protection) Act and other regulations enacted thereunder as stated above," the bench said in its verdict.
The court further said it was a fit case to hold the zoo liable under principles of absolute liability as it was aware that a tiger is a dangerous animal capable of causing injuries or death to a visitor.
"The zoo would be liable for any injury or death caused to a visitor by a tiger under principles of strict liability. Respondent 1 is, in these facts, liable to compensate the petitioner (Maqsood's wife) for the unfortunate death of Maqsood and monetary loss as a consequence thereof," it said.
Noting that the zoo would not normally be a profitable organisation and in light of the facts on record, the court awarded Rs six lakh as compensation, as opposed to Rs 50 lakh sought by the deceased's wife on the ground that he was the only earning member in the family.
The woman, in her plea, had claimed that the government was liable to pay compensation for their "act of negligence and safety and security lapses which resulted in the tragic death of 22-year-old Maqsood".
The Madras High Court today dismissed a petition seeking approval of and recognition to Tamil Nadu Police Constabulary Association.
Justice M Jaichandren, who dismissed the petition by Grade 1 constable M Senthil Kumar, said it is a well known position of law that the freedom to form associations, recognized by Article 19(1)(c) of the Constitution, is not an absolute right even though it is fundamental in nature.
It is open to the state to impose reasonable restrictions based on the grounds mentioned in the Article. While this was so, the relief prayed for by the petitioner cannot be claimed as a matter of right, the court said.
The matter relates to refusal of permission by the Director General of Police to grant permission to form the Association.
The petitioner submitted that Article 19(1)(c) of the Constitution recognizes the rights of citizens of India to form associations with certain limitations, prescribed in Clause (4) of the Article.
He submitted that as per Article 33 of the Constitution, some restrictions have been imposed for enjoyment of the freedom of Association and that the DGP does not have any power to prevent the constabulary from forming it.
Kumar said that in spite of several representations to the DGP, he had refused to recognize the Association, following which he moved the High Court.
In his counter, the DGP submitted that the High Court had on earlier occasions, while passing orders on various petitions filed, including one by Subramanian Swamy, directed the government to consider and dispose of representations by the petitioners.
The counter also said that as per the HC orders, the DGP had passed a detailed order on the representations as per powers vested with him under Rule 8 of the Police Forces (Restriction of Rights) Rules 1966 rejecting the request for formation of the Police Association.
The DGP said that even the Special Leave Petition filed by some petitioners before the Supreme Court had been dismissed.
He submitted that grievance cells have been formed by the state government to redress problems of police personnel and so there was no need for grant of approval or recognition.
The DGP said police personnel in Tamil Nadu have been provided various benefits and their grievances are redressed.
The counter submitted that the DGP, who is the authority to grant approval, is vested with necessary powers.
"It is for the authority concerned to exercise the discretion, conferred on such authority by Rule 8 of the Police Force (Restriction of Rights) Rules, 1966. As such, this court is of the considered view that the present writ petition filed by the petitioner is devoid of merits. Therefore, it is liable to be dismissed," the court said.
In a setback to Pankaj Bhujbal, son of former Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Chhagan Bhujbal, the Bombay High court today rejected his plea challenging the non-bailable warrant issued against him by a lower court in a money laundering case.
A division bench headed by Justice Abhay Oka said the warrant was properly issued.
Advocate Hiten Venegaonkar of Enforcement Directorate, which has filed a money laundering case against Chhagan Bhujbal and others, justified the NBW against Pankaj.
Pankaj had earlier approached the Supreme Court to challenge the NBW but it asked him to move the HC.
The special court for Prevention of Money Laundering Act cases issued the NBW against Pankaj and others on April 27 after taking cognisance of the charge-sheet filed by ED in the Maharashtra Sadan scam and some other cases.
The agency arrested Chhagan Bhujbal, a senior NCP leader, in the Maharashtra Sadan case relating to alleged corruption in awarding of contract for the construction of the state guest house in Delhi, earlier this year. He is now in judicial custody.
French President Francois Hollande congratulated Britain's new Prime Minister Theresa May on her appointment and urged her to quickly begin talks on the country's divorce from the EU, the Elysee Palace said.
Hollande "reiterated his wish for the negotiations on Britain's departure from the European Union to be undertaken as soon as possible", the president's office said yesterday in a statement after the two leaders spoke by phone.
Both also expressed their commitment to the further development of the amicable ties between their countries, it added.
One of May's first decisions will be when she plans to trigger Article 50 -- the formal procedure for withdrawal from the EU -- which would set a two-year deadline for completing exit negotiations.
While she supported Britain staying in the bloc, she maintained a low profile during the referendum campaign and insists she will honour the popular vote, stressing repeatedly: "Brexit means Brexit".
May said last month that if she became prime minister she would not invoke Article 50 this year, despite pressure from EU leaders to do so swiftly.
Earlier yesterday, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and European Parliament President Martin Schulz also urged May not to delay the Brexit divorce proceedings.
May's first meeting with key EU leaders could be at the G20 summit in China on September 4, but her first encounter with all of the other 27 EU leaders will be at the next European Council summit on October 20-21.
Delhi High Court today asked aviation regulator DGCA how the figure of Rs 100 per kg for checked-in excess baggage between 15-20 kgs was reasonable as was contended by it.
"You have not said what is the basis for the figure of Rs 100 per kg," Justice Sanjeev Sachdeva asked.
"How do you call it reasonable? Why not Rs 75 or Rs 150," the judge asked after Additional Solicitor General (ASG) P S Patwalia, appearing for DGCA and the Ministry of Civil Aviation, said the Rs 100 figure was chosen as it was "reasonable".
ASG Patwalia, in response to the queries, also said the Director General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), as an expert body, was competent to arrive at the figure and if the airlines were aggrieved by it, they should have approached it.
He also said that only four airlines had approached the court, all members of the Federation of Indian Airlines (FIA), against DGCA's regulation which came into effect from July 1.
As per the new regulation, airlines have been asked to charge Rs 100 per extra kg till 20 kg as against their current rates, ranging from Rs 220 to Rs 350. Currently, all domestic carriers allow free checked-in baggage up to 15 kgs. Only Air India allows free baggage up to 23 kg.
During the arguments, the ASG said the different rates charged for excess checked-in baggage by the airlines was discriminatory and warranted interference by DGCA.
The court, however, observed that discrimination would have to be seen vis-a-vis passengers and not airlines and asked what was the material considered by DGCA to come to the conclusion that there was discriminatory pricing.
The ASG said DGCA relied on complaints received by it from passengers to come to the finding relating to discriminatory pricing.
Patwalia also argued that DGCA had the power under the rules to regulate air tariff and it can regulate unbundled services, like selection of seats, booking meals etc, by way of its April 30, 2013 circular under which the services were unbundled and that circular has not been challenged.
The ASG said the services were unbundled to benefit the
airlines for whom it was an additional source of revenue and added that it has not led to ticket prices going down.
"They (airlines) have taken advantage of the unbundling," he said, adding it was left to the carriers to decide who wants to unbundle services.
He further said that DGCA was empowered to revise the charges and revising can be done by fixing something.
The ASG also said that DGCA's regulation was not an act of delegated legislation as the aviation regulator has the power to issue such directives.
On the last date of hearing, FIA had said that DGCA did not have the jurisdiction to fix tariff as this power lay with the airlines and the fares were determined by market forces.
It had said that DGCA can interfere only when there are specific instances of discriminatory practice and such circulars cannot be issued in a general manner.
The court had earlier refused to stay the June 10 circular fixing the Rs 100 per kg fee for excess checked-in baggage between 15-20 kg or defer the date of implementation. It had said the amounts charged by the airlines would be restored, if the FIA succeeded.
As per the DGCA, airlines will be free to charge any fee on baggage beyond 20 kgs of excess baggage.
Human rights group Amnesty International has claimed that "abusive laws and the poor enforcement of safeguards" at coal mines is leading tribal communities to oppose expansion of these blocks.
The NGO in a report on mining of dry fuel and violations of tribal rights has alleged that the Centre and the states "don't seem to care to speak or listen to the vulnerable Adivasi communities whose lands are acquired and forest is destroyed for coal mining".
"Abusive laws, poor enforcement of existing safeguards and corporate neglect of human rights are now leading Adivasi communities to oppose the expansion of the very mines they once thought would bring employment and prosperity, until they receive remedy for violations," Amnesty International Executive Director Aakar Patel said.
Though, government plans to double coal output by 2020 and Coal India (CIL) wants to mine a billion tonnes annually, yet the Centre and the states do not seem to talk to or to listen to tribals living in coal mining areas, he added.
CIL, which accounts for over 80 per cent of the domestic coal production, is eying an output of 598 MT this fiscal. It is targeting an output of one billion tonnes by 2020.
When contacted, the Coal Ministry said: "We strongly object to the baseless canards being spread, which are part of a conspiracy to derail the development and progress of India and efforts to provide livelihood for people deprived of fruits of development for nearly seven decades after independence."
It is always easy to provide few stray cases and exaggerate the findings instead of looking at the structural reforms which are sustainably improving the lives of 125 crore Indians, it added.
"India constitutes 17 per cent of the world's population and is contributing less than 2.5 per cent of Green House Gas (GHG) emissions. In fact our coal consumption today is less than what the Western countries were consuming 150 years ago," the Ministry said.
The report claims to expose a "pattern of human rights violations" in open cast mines run by CIL subsidiaries -- South Eastern Coalfields Ltd's (SECL) Kusmunda mine in Chhattisgarh, Central Coalfields Ltd's (CCL) Tetariakhar mine in Jharkhand and Mahanadi Coalfields Ltd's (MCL) Basundhara- West mine in Odisha.
The report is based interviews with 124 affected tribals across three mining areas; village, district and state officials from Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Odisha; state forest and pollution control boards; and local journalists, activists and lawyers.
It also includes interviews with the representatives of CIL subsidiaries -- SECL, MCL and CCL.
Former Tribal Affairs Minister V Kishore Chandra Deo said: "Mineral reserves are not the property of any government. Development that does not include the Adivasi and that leaves out the poorest of the poor is not development, but exploitation.
On claims of neglecting development in mining areas, Coal
Ministry said: "Under Pradhan Mantri Khanij Kshetra Kalyan Yojana, the government has dedicated funds for the welfare of local people in mining areas which will generate USD 1 billion annually to support clean water, healthcare, sanitation, education, skill development, women and child care."
The scheme will also focus on the welfare of aged and disabled people, skill development, environment conservation and sustainable livelihoods. This is an unprecedented step for which no country in the world has ever provided such large sums of money, it added.
"Also India is the only country in the world to levy USD 6 per tonne of environment cess on every tonne of coal, which provides funds for supporting clean energy and clean water programmes," the ministry said.
It is to be noted that India has embarked on the world's largest renewable energy programme, a strong message reflecting the commitment of Indian government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to balance development imperatives with concern for the environment, the Coal Ministry said.
The main findings of the Amnesty International's report were shared with relevant state authorities and companies, but no response was received.
In the three Coal India mines examined, THE Centre acquired land without directly informing the affected families, or consulting them about their rehabilitation and resettlement, the report claimed.
"Frequently, the only official notice given was a declaration of the government's 'intention to acquire' land in an official government gazette, which is virtually impossible to access for affected communities," it further alleged.
Land acquisition for CIL mines is carried out under Coal Bearing Areas (Acquisition and Development) (CBA) Act, which does not require authorities to consult affected communities, or seek prior and informed consent of Indigenous people, as stipulated by international law, it said.
A new land acquisition law enacted in 2014 specifically exempts acquisition under the CBA Act from seeking the consent of affected families or carrying out social impact assessments, it added.
"CBA Act undermines communities' security of tenure. Any eviction resulting from acquisition under the Act is likely to amount to a forced eviction, which is prohibited under international law," Senior Researcher at Amnesty International India Aruna Chandrasekhar said.
India's environmental laws require state pollution control authorities to set up public consultations with local communities likely to be affected by industrial projects. However public consultations conduced in the three mining areas suffered from serious flaws, the report revealed.
"In these three mines, authorities and companies appear to have seen public hearings more as a bureaucratic hurdle to overcome than a genuine opportunity to hear and address community concerns," Chandrasekhar said.
"CIL knowingly benefited from land acquisition processes
that violated the human rights of thousands of people," Chandrasekhar said adding "it cannot point to the failure of the government as a defence for its own failure to respect the rights of communities."
Under global standards on business and human rights, CIL and its subsidiaries have a responsibility to respect human rights, including by carrying out due diligence to ensure that government agencies had conducted proper consultation with regard to coal mining operations, Amnesty said.
This responsibility exists over and above compliance with national laws, it added.
However the companies appeared to have taken little or no action to either consult communities themselves or to ensure that government consultations were adequate and met human rights standards, it claimed.
Often, the companies and government authorities worked together to remove people from land identified for coal mining, the organisation alleged.
"Human rights violations that seem to accompany mining by CIL call into question the central government's promises of inclusive development, with far-reaching impacts in the future," Patel said.
CIL must urgently address the human rights impacts of the expansion of the Kusmunda, Tetariakhar and Basundhara-West mines, in full consultation with project-affected communities. It should ensure that these expansions do not go ahead until existing human rights concerns are resolved, Amnesty said.
The Centre must ensure that any land acquisition for coal mining involves human rights impact assessments and the seeking of the free prior and informed consent of Adivasi communities, it added.
"Coal mining is described as being integral to India's economic progress. But development is hollow without dialogue and respect for human rights," Amnesty International said.
Punjab Congress chief Amarinder Singh today accused the Income Tax department of unleashing a 'malicious campaign' to harass him at the behest of its boss and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley by doing selective leaks with the intent of maligning him.
Defending his replies to the IT queries, he said he was within his legal rights to defend himself and give the replies in his defence.
He said how he could reply to certain queries which were related to particular documents that were not in his possession and the IT was still trying to make hue and cry.
"The IT authorities are deliberately putting up certain queries knowing well that the documents related to these were not in my possession," he said in a statement, adding, "how can I reply to queries when I am not in possession of the documents."
He said, "My replies framed in legal parlance were being selectively leaked out of context to the media to create deliberate confusion."
The former Punjab chief minister said, "I have said it time and again that I have nothing to hide and would voluntarily face and fully cooperate in every lawful investigation conducted by a lawful authority."
"However, it is now apparent that this is not a bona fide lawful investigation but is a mala fide enquiry being guided and controlled by the central government at the obvious behest of Finance Minister Arun Jaitley," he alleged.
Amarinder said some of the queries have been deliberately framed in a form and manner to harass him and are beyond any logical answer.
"The legal replies and documentation in an ongoing investigation are being distributed to members of the press allowing for verbatim quotations from such letters of shows how this investigation is being guided and controlled, in such a systematic manner by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley," he said.
Amarinder's son Raninder has been issued fresh summons to appear before ED in Punjab in connection with its probe against him for alleged forex contraventions and holding of untaxed foreign assets.
Raninder has been asked to appear before the investigating officer in the case on July 14 at the ED zonal office in Jalandhar. He has also been asked to bring personal financial documents with him, sources said.
This is the second summons to Raninder after he had sought exemption from personal appearance last month, citing health reasons. Raninder has been summoned to explain the alleged movement of funds to Switzerland and creation of a trust and a few subsidiaries in the tax haven of British Virgin Islands.
A 34 year-old woman research scholar at the IIT Madras allegedly committed suicide in her hostel room today, police said.
P Maheswari's body was found hanging in her hostel room, police said, adding the motive behind her taking the extreme step was being probed.
Condoling the scholar's death, IIT-M announced full cooperation to officials in the case.
"IIT, Madras, reports with deep sadness the death of a post-doctoral research scholar in the campus. The scholar's family has been informed. The institute is taking necessary action and extending full cooperation to civil authorities," it said in a statement.
"The institute extends its deep felt condolences to the family and the near and dear ones of the scholar for the unfortunate, untimely and devastating loss," it said without divulging any further detail.
IIT-M had witnessed suicide of two students in September and October last year.
World's largest furniture retailer Ikea is investing Rs 1,500 crore here as part of plans to have 25 stores across India by 2025 and its first store is likely to come up within 18 months in Navi Mumbai, an official said.
It is among the several companies including Amazon, Microsoft, Owens Corning and Emerson which have committed investments in Maharashtra, he said.
"Ikea is starting to invest now. They have bought a big piece of land for Rs 400 crore in Navi Mumbai for their store," said Apurva Chandra, Principal Secretary - Industries, Maharashtra government.
Ikea plans to build a 400,000 sq ft store on the land.
"They are investing almost Rs 1,500 crore here. This will be the first retail store in India," Chandra told PTI.
The Swedish firm had previously announced it will open a store in Hyderabad in second half of 2017.
"Now they have taken the land, the first store will take another year or year and half," Chandra said.
The privately-owned firm expects the Mumbai store to get more than 5 million visitors a year.
Ikea is also scouting for land to set up stores in Bengaluru, Delhi and the NCR region.
Chandra said Amazon is also investing in Maharashtra.
"They (Amazon) are launching their first web services from Mumbai. They are also going to set up a data centre here which will entail big investment," he said.
Besides, he added, Microsoft is planning to set up data centre here.
"Then there is an American company, Owens Corning. They came in recently. They have taken approval for Rs 1,000 crore. They have already started, they have got land," he said.
Owens Corning develops and produces insulation, roofing, and fiberglass composites.
Chandra added: "(US firm) Emerson, which is into process engineering and automation, has come here and is investing Rs 2,000 crore."
Ikea, which has been sourcing from India for its stores worldwide for three decades, plans to add suppliers and double its sourcing volumes by 2020.
Its store in Hyderabad will be a massive 4 lakh square feet in size and will include all features of a global Ikea store, including restaurant, play and development area.
In July last year, the company had announced purchase of 13 acre land close to the IT hub in Hyderabad's HITEC city.
Each store may employ 500 to 700 workers directly and 1,500 indirectly.
At present, Ikea sources products worth 300 million euro for its global operations from India.
Rating agency India Ratings today affirmed the long-term issuer ratings on four state-owned banks at AAA, apart from maintaining stable outlook on them.
The agency affirmed ratings of SBI, Bank of Baroda, Union Bank of India and Canara Bank.
"The ratings is driven by expectations of continued strong support from the government," it said in a report.
For SBI, it said the expected support from the government is backed by the bank's quasi-sovereign risk status and huge systemic importance. The government owned 60.18 per cent in SBI as of March 2016.
The bank has been the beneficiary of steady capital injections as it has received Rs 5,393 crore as a part of the Indradhanush programme in 2015-16.
"Although SBI's asset quality has deteriorated over the past few quarters, the bank continues to be better placed than almost all of its peers," the agency said.
The report further said in the case of a merger of SBI with its associate banks and Bhartiya Mahila Bank, the lender would receive Rs 1,000 crore in equity through BMB along with a further benefit from asset revaluation.
Asset quality along with the elevated operating expenses of the merged entity would be a key monitorable.
The agency, however, downgraded ratings of IDBI Bank's additional tier 1 bond and upper tier II subordinate debt.
"The rating downgrade of IDBI Bank reflects the weakening of the standalone profile of the bank in the last few quarters on account of falling loan growth as well as increasing credit costs," it said.
IDBI Bank reported a decline of 0.9 per cent in the loan market share in FY16. Its stressed assets to total loan ratio reached about 18 per cent in FY16 from 13.6 per cent in FY15.
"Although the bank has been making efforts towards reducing the concentration and increasing the diversity of its loan portfolio, the legacy concentrations will take time to be addressed," the report said.
IDBI will need to raise fresh equity from the capital markets by diluting some of the government's shareholding, and plan for the significant capital raising requirements under Basel III norms.
The report estimates IDBI will need Rs 15,300 crore of tier-I capital to maintain a tier-I ratio of 10 per cent by FY19.
India ranks second after Indonesia on the global list of shark fishing nations as fishing of the species in the country has progressed from being "incidental" to "targeted", World Wildlife Fund (WWF) India on Wednesday said.
"Shark fishing in India has progressed from being incidental to targeted over the years. The transformation occurred only during the 1990s due to increasing demand in the international market which has caused serious concerns about the sustainability of these catches... Mechanised trawl nets, gills nets and line gear operations contribute to maximum exploitation," WWF India said on the eve of Shark Awareness Day.
WWF India said under India's Wildlife Protection Act of India 1972, of the 88 shark species found in Indian waters, four have been listed as protected under Schedule I.
It said hunting, exploitation and trade of these four species - whale shark (Rhincodon typus), Pondicherry shark (Carcharhinus hemiodon), Ganges shark (Glyphis gangeticus) and the speartooth shark (Glyphis glyphis) is banned.
It said in an effort to promote sustainable shark fisheries and better monitor how many and what species were being caught, India announced a ban on the practice of shark finning by issuing the 'Fins Naturally Attached' policy requiring fishers to land with their fins attached.
"Globally, finning is a common practice of removal of shark fins for export purpose to nations, particularly China, for its use in soups and other delicacies. The remaining shark body is discarded into the sea.
"Unable to move effectively without their fins, most times these animals sink to the bottom of the ocean and die either through suffocation or attacked by other predators. In India the shark fish is fully used and follows a 'zero waste' policy," WWF India said.
It said according to its report released last year, around one in four species of sharks, rays and skates is now considered to be "threatened" globally, primarily due to overfishing. The international trade in is further regulated through CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna) to which India has been party since 1976. In 2013, four species of found in Indian waters were listed in Appendix II of CITES.
"This highlights the need for strict regulation of commercial international trade in these species, requiring appropriate permits and documentation," it said.
Globally, July 14 is observed as Shark Awareness Day to promote conservation of the species, a better understanding and to address some of the threats facing sharks in oceans across the world.
Globally, out of the 450+ species of sharks, only a few have been known to attack humans and these attacks are very rare while humans kill millions of sharks each year, it said. "Shark species worldwide are dwindling under mounting fishing pressures. They are also often accidentally caught and killed in the course of fishing operations targeting other species."
"Given their slow growth, maturity and small brood, they are intrinsically vulnerable to overfishing. The killing of sharks is on the rise for commercial purposes including local consumption of meat, fins for export (used in shark and rays fin soup) and industrial use of skin and cartilage," the body said adding that many species are being pushed to the brink of extinction.
"A scoping study has been initiated in one of the major shark trading centres in southern India, with plans to expand the scope of work to other major shark landing centres, to assess the status and extent of exploitation of different species in India's shark fishery," it said.
Editor's note: Second in a series of profiles on the candidates for Flagstaff City Council and mayor.
Charlie Odegaard:
Conserve water,
help local business
Small business owner Charlie Odegaard is making a second attempt at a seat on Flagstaff City Council this year. He ran once before in 2014 and lost by a very small margin, finishing fourth just behind incumbent Scott Overton.
Odegaards focus on the economy and local small business has not changed from his previous run two years ago. He hopes to change policies that make it appear as though outside businesses, such as Core Campus, the developer of The Hub, get the fast track while small business owners such as the owner of Fat Olives have to jump through a number of hoops to put in a parking lot.
Simplifying the citys Zoning Code could help, he said. It would give both local and outside developers a greater idea of what to expect and make the process easier.
Water conservation is another big concern for Odegaard. Hes served two years on the citys Water Commission and believes that the city needs to prepare for the day that it has to tap into its resources at Red Gap Ranch. However, the city can postpone that day by continuing to encourage residents and businesses to conserve as much water as possible.
Councils recent approval of increased water, sewer and stormwater rates sets aside a small percentage of the increase to go toward a conservation fund that can be used to help educate the public and provide rebates for water saving tools such as low-flow toilets.
The Commission has started two new programs -- one allows residents to schedule a water audit of their property with city staff. The audit gives residents an idea of how and where they can save more water. The program has been so successful that the city has had to call a halt because staff cant keep up with public demand.
The second program is also education-based and is supported by local groups such as Friends of Flagstaffs Future, Friends of the Rio and the Northern Arizona Home Owners Association. The program is just getting off the ground, but will focus on way to encourage residents to change their water habits and use less water.
Roads are another infrastructure need of the city, according to Odegaard. Something needs to be done about Milton Road, for example. Odegaard believes there is room to widen the road if the city works with the Arizona Department of Transportation.
We need to be thinking long-term, he said. Council has to have the nerve to take on the Regional Transportation Plan.
The Regional Transportation Plan is approved and revised by the Flagstaff Metropolitan Planning Organization every five years. The plan is designed to give the city, state and federal government an idea of where the greatest need for street improvements in the city will be needed in the next few years.
Finding a way to attract industries that provide better paying jobs and dont take up too many resources, such as call centers, is another necessity, Odegaard said.
Jeff Oravits:
Work with ADOT to
expand road capacity
Fixing the citys infrastructure is still a top priority for Councilmember Jeff Oravits, who is running for a second, four-year term on Flagstaff City Council.
Oravits campaigned during his first run for office on getting funding to repair city streets. He said the passage of Proposition 406, the citys Road Repair and Street Safety sales tax, in 2014 was a big step in the right direction but the city has other infrastructure needs that must be met.
The citys water and sewer systems are aging, and even though the roads have been improved in many parts of the city, traffic is still a problem.
Most of the traffic problems occur on roads such as Milton Road, Route 66 and Highway 180, which are all owned by the Arizona Department of Transportation.
Flagstaff has to have a greater coordination with ADOT, Oravits said, citing the proposed project to widen Humphreys Street where it meets Route 66. The city was able to purchase right of way from the new Marriott hotel, which is currently under construction. That purchase allowed ADOT to push for funding for a study and possible construction funds to widen Humphreys from Route 66 to Aspen Avenue to accommodate two right turn lanes from Humphreys onto Route 66. ADOT is expected to get funding for the design of the project in 2017 and the department hopes to start construction in 2019.
Milton Road is the next traffic snarl Oravits hopes to tackle with ADOT.
Milton looks the same as when I went to high school, he said.
Oravits would like to see better control of the center left turn lane. Perhaps a median similar to what the city installed on Route 66 near the Flagstaff Mall and Country Club Drive.
It wont relieve the traffic on Milton, but it would help, Oravits said.
In order to move traffic off Milton, Oravits would like to connect Fourth Street with J.W. Powell Boulevard and build the Lone Tree/Interstate 40 interchange. The connection would not only provide an alternative route into and around the city, but would open up private land for development for possible workforce housing.
The city is in a housing crisis, according to Oravits. The population of Flagstaff is growing by about 2.5 to 3 percent each year, he said. There aren't enough homes to rent or buy for Flagstaffs employees. The few that are available have such high rental rates that its hard for a family to afford a unit.
One possible way to fix the problem might be to move students out of workforce housing and into apartments that are geared toward them, such as The Hub and The Standard, Oravits said. Taking a look at the citys Zoning Code and making changes might be another solution to encourage more workforce and student housing.
President Pranab Mukherjee today greeted the Iraq government and its people on the eve of its National Day, while extending India's support to the country for putting up a resolute fight against the terrorist organisation ISIS.
"India strongly supports the Iraqi people and the Government in your efforts against terrorism, in upholding national sovereignty and preserving your territorial integrity," he said in his message to President of Iraq, Fuad Masum.
Mukherjee said close and friendly bilateral relations between the two countries are deeply rooted in ancient trade and cultural links and people-to-people contacts.
The President said India greatly values mutually beneficial bilateral ties and is confident that with strong commitment and endeavours, these will strengthen and broaden further in the years to come.
"On behalf of the Government, the people of India and on my own behalf, it is with immense pleasure that I extend warm greetings and felicitations to Your Excellency and to the friendly people of the Republic of Iraq on the occasion of your National Day," he said.
On the occasion of eve of the National Day of France, the President sent warm greetings and felicitations to President Francois Hollande and the French people.
"It is a matter of satisfaction that the bilateral relations between the two countries and our strategic partnership have gained fresh momentum since your fruitful recent State Visit to India. I am confident that our close collaboration across a wide range of areas of mutual interest will continue to grow from strength to strength in the coming years," Mukherjee said in his message.
India will promote bidding of 67 discovered small oil fields in two international roadshows here which will be attended by Minister of State for Petroleum and Natural Gas Dharmendra Pradhan.
Pradhan will pay an official visit to Houston, known for its oil and gas industries, and Washington between July 13 and 18, during which he will launch the international road show for the 67 DSF in Houston.
"The two-day road show in Houston from July 14 will be held to promote the 67 Discovered Small Fields (DSF) Bid Round 2016," a Petroleum Ministry source here told PTI.
Pradhan will also hold meetings with various think-tanks working in hydrocarbon sector both, in Houston and Washington.
He will also visit technology centres working in oil and gas spheres, petroleum ministry said in a statement.
Pradhan will be accompanied by K D Tripathi, Secretary, Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas, Senior officers and Chairman and Managing Directors of leading Oil companies ONGC, IOCL, GAIL, HPCL and MD-BPRL.
During the Interactive meet scheduled to take place on July 14 and 15, the delegation of senior government officials and leaders of Indian oil & gas companies, led by Pradhan will interact with CEO's of US-based E&P companies, group of Indian scientists from the field of Hydrocarbon research, members of US India Business Council (USIBC) and group of investors.
Pradhan will also inaugurate the 'Data Centre' in Houston on July 13 which can be accessed by all interested investors to view the technical data related to the small fields being offered under the upcoming bid round.
These DSF of the Oil and Natural Gas Commission and Oil India could not be monetised during the previous years and are being offered for international bidding now.
Bidding will open between July 15 and October 31.
The offered fields hold 625 million barrels of oil and gas reserves. Of the 46 small fields, 26 are on land, 18 offshore in shallow water and two in deep water.
While 28 discoveries are in the Mumbai offshore, 14 others are in the east coast's Krishna-Godavari basin.
Eventual operators will be issued a single licence for exploration of conventional and non-conventional hydrocarbons and will have the freedom to sell oil and gas at "arms length" market prices.
The auction will be under the new Hydrocarbon Exploration and Licensing Policy (HELP) approved in March, based on a revenue-sharing model as opposed to cost-and- output-based norms earlier.
Pradhan is also likely to visit Washington on July 18 where he may meet US Secretary of Energy Ernest Jeffrey Moniz to review issues of bilateral hydrocarbon cooperation.
An Indian was found murdered with his throat slit under mysterious circumstances at his apartment in Oman, a media report said today.
The body of Sathyan, who hailed from Kerala's capital city Thiruvananthapuram, worked as a collection agent for a private firm in Jibroo area.
He was found with his throat slit in Muttrah district last evening, according to his neighbours.
According to Times of Oman, primary investigations suggest robbery as the motive behind the murder, Royal Oman Police said in a tweet.
The body was discovered by Sathyan's neighbours.
Riding on the growing popularity of Indian cuisine across the globe, Indian Culinary Institute, under the Tourism Ministry, plans to make its Noida centre operational from the next session even as it starts a three-year degree course at new Tirupati branch this year.
"Indian Culinary Institute (ICI) is our new venture. We plan to start the course next year at the Noida centre which is under construction now," Tourism Secretary Vinod Zutshi said.
He said the three-year Bachelor of Science (Culinary Arts) programme will begin from August 16, this year at Tirupati in Andhra Pradesh with a batch of 30 students.
Last year, state-run National Buildings Construction Corporation Ltd (NBCC) had bagged the contract to construct Indian Culinary Institute in Noida for Rs 98.5 crore and at Tirupati for Rs 89.42 crore.
Students of the Tirupati centre will attend classes at the state's Institute of Hotel Management. It will later shift to the new campus which is being set up on a 14-acre site at Renigunta near Tirupati.
"Once the campus is ready within two years, we will shift to the new campus and then we will think of increasing the number of students as well," Zutshi said.
Another official said the move is in line with the Indian cuisine getting "immensely popular" all over the world.
"The market for culinary tourism to India is growing as our culinary traditions continue to draw increasing international attention.
"To tap this potential, there is need for an institutional mechanism to promote culinary tourism and to preserve and document the thousands of recipes which have evolved over the ages, mostly by tradition and which vary greatly from region to region," he said.
Although the Tourism Ministry has a wide network of Institutes of Hotel Management (IHMs) and Food Craft Institutes (FCIs) under its aegis, these institutions primarily meet the requirement of trained manpower for managerial levels.
ICI will fill this void of grooming chefs of international standards in India, the official said.
Company (IHC), a Tata Group firm, has completed sale of its Taj Boston hotel for $125 million (about Rs 839 crore).
"United Overseas Holdings effected on July 12 the divestment of Taj Boston Hotel through sale of the entire issued and outstanding LLC interests of IHMS (Boston) LLC held by UOH to AS Holding LLC, Boston for an aggregate consideration of $125 million," IHC said in a BSE filing.
United Overseas Holdings (UOH) is an indirect wholly-owned subsidiary of IHC and IHMS (Boston) LLC is a direct subsidiary of UOH.
IHC, which runs Taj group of hotels, said net sale proceeds will be utilised largely to retire outstanding debt.
"The hotel will continue to be operated and managed by IHMS (USA) LLC, which has entered into a management services agreement with the new owning company, thus ensuring continuity of Taj's presence in the Boston market," it added.
In May this year, IHC said its board has also authorised the present management of the company for sale of Taj Boston.
Net loss before tax for the Boston-based property widened to $7.3 million in 2015-16 as against $6.7 million in 2014-15.
Taj Boston's total revenue in 2015-16 dipped 1.15% to $34.1 million from $34.5 million in 2014-15.
IHC had acquired Taj Boston Hotel in 2006, recognising the importance of the need of presence of brand Taj in the US, which is the single largest source market for the company.
However, global economic recession impacted fortunes of the hospitality sector around the world and its profitability as well.
(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
An Indian-origin doctor who died in a car crash after working three long night shifts is believed to have fallen asleep behind the wheel just a couple of kilometres away from home, a British court has heard.
Ronak Patel, 33, a trainee anaesthetist from Ixworth village, Suffolk county, had been singing on the phone to his wife to help keep him awake, an inquest heard this week.
He had been working three long night shifts when his car hit a lorry in August last year, his inquest heard this week.
Patel is believed to have fallen asleep on the highway at Honington in Suffolk, about five kilometres from his home.
"The most plausible explanation for the collision was that Dr Patel fell asleep," local police accident investigator Mark Webb told the hearing.
The doctor was declared dead at the scene after he sustained a broken neck and other injuries.
Yvonne Blake, Suffolk assistant coroner, concluded that he died as a result of his car being involved in a collision with a heavy goods vehicle, The Times reported.
Patel's wife Helen had earlier told police that he had been keen to get back home and they had been singing to each other over his hands-free phone to keep him awake.
But he was cut off while driving home from the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital and she tried to call him back 14 times without getting any reply before getting into her car to find him.
The inquest at Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk heard that she was met by police on the way, who told her that there had been an accident.
"He was a highly regarded and capable doctor and was extremely popular within the department," a spokesperson from Patel's workplace said.
His mother Mina Patel said her son "was an inspiration to everyone he met".
Recent research in the UK has indicated that the medical professions have the worst road accident rates.
Local GPs have the highest rate, with 13 per cent having made an "at-fault" claim in the past three years, compared with the 6 per cent average for British workers.
An Indian offshore ship has been detained in the UK for three offences including non-payment of wages to its crew, British officials said.
'Malaviya Seven' owned by Mumbai's GOL Offshore Limited was held at the coast of Aberdeen in Scotland over "missing" wages for its staff members and a lack of "calculation and payment of wages" record. Its "seafarers employment agreement" was also invalid, making it a total of three offences that provided the grounds for detention.
'Malaviya Seven' is among seven foreign flagged ships under detention in UK ports after failing a Port State Control (PSC) inspection last month.
The vessel was detained by the International Transport Workers' Federation (ITF) union with the support of the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) on June 15, the MCA said in a statement yesterday.
"When a ship is found to be not in compliance with applicable convention requirements, a deficiency may be raised. If any of their deficiencies are so serious they have to be rectified before departure, then the ship will be detained," the statement said.
The 'Malaviya Seven' is understood to have been chartered to carry out work for a number of companies, including BP, Dana Petroleum and Premier Oil.
"They (workers) just want to get paid and go home. However, we fear that their ordeal could drag on for weeks if not months because of the huge amount of money involved," said a spokesperson for seafarers' charity Apostleship of the Sea.
The UK is part of a regional agreement known as the Paris Memorandum of Understanding on Port State Control under which information on all ships inspected is held centrally in an electronic database.
Iran has summoned the French ambassador and lodged a formal protest over a rally outside Paris held by an exiled opposition group last weekend, a diplomatic source said today.
The National Council of Resistance in Iran (NCRI), which includes the former rebel People's Mujahedeen of Iran (MEK), claimed that 100,000 Iranians attended the annual rally at Le Bourget, near Paris, on Saturday.
"The holding of this rally by those whose hands are stained with the blood of the Iranian people... Is unacceptable," said the message handed to French ambassador Francois Senemaud by senior foreign ministry official Abolqassem Delfi, state media reported.
The MEK is reviled by Tehran for siding with Saddam Hussein's regime during the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-88.
The US State Department listed it as a "terrorist organisation" in 1997.
After the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, its remaining fighters were disarmed and placed in camps where many of them remain with their families to this day.
It was removed from terrorist watch lists by the European Union in 2008 and the United States in 2012.
Delfi said NCRI was linked to radical jihadist organisations such as "the Taliban, Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State" group.
He also dismissed as "inappropriate" comments made in France against Iran, without elaborating.
A French foreign ministry spokesman distanced his country from MEK, the main group within the NCRI.
"The French government has no contact whatsoever with the People's Mujahedeen of Iran," said the spokesman, noting that the group held "violent and un-democratic" positions.
On Tuesday, Iranian government spokesman Mohammad Bagher Nobakht described the NCRI as an "annihilated terrorist group" and a "stinking corpse".
"The Islamic Republic of Iran will continue to confront this hypocritical little group and will condemn any government" that supports it, he told the official IRNA agency.
And Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has called the rally a "political game" where attendees "take part every year and support terrorists".
South Eastern Railway (SER) has launched a 'Janani Sewa' service at major stations to benefit travelling children by providing them hot milk, hot water and baby food items.
The initiative was being implemented on the line of Union Minister for Railways, Suresh Prabhu's 2016-17 Railway Budget Commitment, an SER release said today.
The service is now available at Santragachi and Shalimar stations of Kharagpur Division; Tatanagar, Rourkela and Jharsuguda of Chakradharpur Division, and Ranchi and Hatia stations of Ranchi Division.
The service would soon be available at major stations of Adra Division, the release said.
'Janani Sewa' has been implemented all over India and people travelling in train can buy baby food from authorised station outlets for nominal charges.
Japanese Defence Minister Gen Nakatani, who is scheduled to arrive here tomorrow, has cut short his trip from three days to just one day.
Though there was no official word on the reasons for the Japanese side curtailing the visit, the move comes amid increasing tension in the South China Sea region following a UN-backed international tribunal ruling against China's claims over the troubled waters.
Gen Nakatani will hold talks with his counterpart Manohar Parrikar at his South Block office tomorrow afternoon.
The two sides could issue a joint statement after the talks, defence sources said.
The talks will focus on greater defence cooperation, including defence manufacturing.
During Parrikar's visit to Japan last year, Japanese leaders had emphasised on the commonality of strategic interests between the two countries and conveyed Japan's desire to enhance bilateral defence and security cooperation, including in the field of maritime security.
They had also said Japan would like to further enhance economic cooperation with India and work jointly to enhance regional connectivity.
India and Japan are looking at deepening bilateral defence cooperation amid Tokyo's ongoing tussle with Beijing.
Japan has been witnessing conflict with China over control of private islands in South China Sea. A territorial dispute even exists between China and Japan over the Senkaku Islands, which Beijing refers to as the Diaoyu Islands.
India considers relations with Japan very important, which is evident from the fact that Parrikar chose Japan as the first country to visit after assuming office of Defence Minister.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe had had told Parrikar that "a strong" India-Japan partnership was not only in the "national interest of the two" but also "important for peace and security in the region".
Tempe, Arizona- David Lee Snyder, 72 of Gold Canyon, Arizona passed away peacefully with his family by his side, on July 10, 2016, after a long battle with lung and heart disease.
Dave is survived by his wife of 43 years, Connie and their four children, David Anthony, Brett Dennis, Phillip William and Jill Snyder Gammill. He also leaves behind 10 grandchildren, a younger brother, Peter Whitford Snyder (Dollie), and many close relatives and friends. He is preceded in death by his older brother, Clark Larry Snyder (Peggy).
Dave was a Captain in the United States Army and a veteran of the Vietnam War. While serving in Vietnam he received the Bronze Star for bravery and saved many lives. He grew up in Los Altos, California, a son to Clark Lester and Olive Whitford Snyder. As a child he enjoyed his membership in Troop 33 of the Pacific Skyline Council of the Boy Scouts of America. He also cherished his time spent as a camp counselor at the Bob Mathias Sierra Boys Camp located near Kings Canyon National Park. Dave excelled in diving during his high school and college years attending Foothill Jr. College and California State University at Long Beach eventually receiving a degree in Psychology and Physical Education. He and his family were exceedingly proud that he was selected as an alternate for the 1964 Olympic Diving Team.
After the war years, Dave worked in the automobile and banking industries until his retirement to Gold Canyon, Arizona in 2005. His success in his career and his life can be directly attributed to his strong work ethic and his ability to create lasting personal relationships. Dave had always been known to be a loyal and steadfast friend, husband and father. He will be forever remembered for his genuine devotion to his family and resolute passion for his country.
The celebration of Dave's Life will be held on Thursday, July 14th at 11:30 AM at Shadow Mountain Mortuary 2350 E. Greenway Rd. Phoenix, AZ 85022 to be followed by a lunch reception at Aunt Chilada's Squaw Peak Restaurant 7330 N. Dreamy Draw Drive Phoenix, AZ 85020.
In lieu of flowers, donations can be made in memory of David Lee Snyder to the Wounded Warriors Project at www.woundedwarriorsproject.org or Wounded Warriors Project P.O Box 758517 Topeka, Kansas 66675. Please go to www.ShadowMountainMrtuary.com to share condolences with the family.
Actor John Abraham has compared his upcoming film "Dishoom", where he will be seen with Varun Dhawan and Jacqueline Fernandez, to the American 'cop-buddy' films.
"We both are partners and we do everything together in the film. We have a lot of fun. It's an action-thriller-comedy film and it has romance as well. After a long time you will see a buddy cop film like 'Bad Boys', 'Lethal Weapon'," John said at an event here.
John and the star boxer Vijender Singh visited Jamnabai Narsee School in suburban Vile Parle to promote the July 16 fight in Delhi between Vijender and the Australian Kerry Hope.
"Lethal Weapon" is a series of buddy cop action films starring Mel Gibson and Danny Glover. "Bad Boys" is an American buddy cop action-comedy film directed by Michael Bay.
The 43-year-old actor is hopeful that the audience will like "Dishoom", set to release on July 29. It is directed by Rohit Dhawan.
The "Madras Cafe" actor wants to attend the Rio Olympics. "I will be shooting for "Force 2" soon, but even if get five days off I will go (to the Olympics). I wish the Indian contingent all the best. I am overtly patriotic... Country comes first to me," he added.
John also told the students about his daily routine.
"I wake up at 4 am and do training between 5.30 to 7 am, depends on what training I want to do. Then I start shooting 9 am to 9 pm, sleep at 10 and wake up at 4 am. So there is no party, it's all work," he added.
Union Textile Minister Smriti Irani today appealed to textile industry to join 'Pradhan Mantri Suraksha Bima Yojana' (PMSBY) for the benefit of workers.
"I congratulate the Clothing Manufacturers Association of India (CMAI) for organising largest ever apparel trade show and urge the industry to take part in the 'Pradhan Mantri Suraksha Bima Yojana' in which by paying a premium of Rs 1 per month, the worker will get an insurance cover of Rs 2 lakh," Irani said after inaugurating the 63rd National Garment Fair here.
The PMSBY will benefit garment workers immensely, as largest number of people work in the textile sector in the country after agriculture, she said.
CMAI president Rahul Mehta said the total size of the domestic apparel industry is estimated at around Rs 2,50,000 crore.
"Out of this, the (size of) organised market is Rs 74,250 crore (30 per cent) whereas (size of) unorganised market is Rs 175,750 crore (70 per cent). The domestic apparel industry's size is estimated to double within next 7 years," he said.
The garment B2B Fair, said to be the largest ever so far in country, has 742 stalls displaying 812 brands.
Approximately, 40,000 retailers from across the country are expected to visit the three-day expo.
"For the first time, an Iranian delegation with 12 members belonging to Tehran Garment Union will visit the fair. The Iranian garment market is estimated at USD 16 billion, of which, 40 per cent comes from domestic sources and rest through imports.
"India has been absent from there due to an extremely high import tax by Iranian government - 55 per cent on apparel and 32 per cent on textiles," Mehta said.
He said Iran has agreed to reduce import duty to 20 to 25 per cent in 2 years.
"Iran offers immense opportunities for Indian export with a combination of western, traditional taste, he added.
Textile Commissioner Kavita Gupta said the draft National Textile Policy is ready and it would be presented to the Cabinet for approval.
Kashmir, which has seen violence over the last few days, today witnessed a display of humanity and religious brotherhood when local people in Bijbehara rushed to the help of a group of Amarnath pilgrims after their bus met with an accident in which two persons were killed.
The bus, en eroute from Baltal to Jammu, collided with a truck at Sangam in Bijbehara, killing a pilgrim Pramod Kumar of Meerut in Uttar Pradesh and local driver Bilal Ahmad Mir of Kangan and injuring 23 others.
When the of the accident reached the locals, they defied curfew and reached the spot and began evacuating the injured pilgrims.
The yeoman's service of the local Muslims found praise from the rescued yatris.
Around 50 local people came to evacuate the injured after the accident, said A K Arora from Meerut in a two-minute video, which has gone viral on social networking sites.
"If anyone wants to understand humanity, learn it from people of Kashmir. I felt the true value of humanity from the people of Kashmir. They came to our rescue at a time when we were abandoned by even fellow pilgrims and army," he said.
He said he has "witnessed humanity for the first time".
The development comes at a time when the valley has been witnessing violent protests that have claimed 34 lives, including a policeman, and leaving hundreds injured.
Bijbehara, the home town of Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti, witnessed two deaths, including a Delhi University student, who had come to celebrate Eid with his family.
The area has witnessed violent protests and remains under curfew for the past five days.
"I had come for Amarnath yatra on July 6. We had come in a group and after having 'darshan' at the 3,880 metre-high holy cave we returned through Baltal and were moving in a convoy. The bus, which was carrying us, met with an accident but the other vehicles in the convoy did not stop to help. I somehow managed to come out of the ill-fated bus and sought help from the fellow yatris and the passing army vehicles repeatedly, but nobody paid any heed," Arora said.
"Locals arranged vehicles and shifted us to the hospital where we are being provided best possible treatment. I am saying if you want to learn humanity, learn it from the people of Kashmir. Don't demonise them," the pilgrim said.
Meanwhile, the gesture of the locals caught the eye of the Chief Minister, who hailed the the residents of Bijbehara and the adjoining areas for helping and evacuating the injured pilgrims.
While expressing grief and sorrow over the death of a local driver and a pilgrim in the accident, she said "keeping in with Kashmir's glorious tradition of communal harmony and brotherhood, the locals of Bijbehara, who themselves were mourning the tragic deaths in recent law and order situation, ignored their personal grief and rushed to the accident spot to rescue the injured pilgrims and shift them to the hospitals.
"This is the uniqueness of Kashmir's distinct and valued culture. We must all fight to protect it."
She said, "It has been seen over the years that while Kashmiris have themselves underwent countless tragedies, they have upheld the traditions of brotherhood and amity. I salute my people for this humanitarianism and compassion.
A frustrated US Secretary of State John Kerry is heading back to Moscow once again to meet President Vladimir Putin and test his commitment to the stalled Syrian peace process.
Russia and the United States are nominally co-chairs of international efforts to bring Bashar al-Assad's regime to the negotiating table with armed opposition groups.
But ferocious bloodshed continues in defiance of a series of failed ceasefires, and the odd couple heading the peace effort appear increasingly at odds over the way forward.
Kerry told diners at a delayed Eid al-Fitr supper yesterday that he would meet Putin "to see if we can somehow advance this in the important ways that people want us to."
And he told the State Department guests: "You have my word -- all of you -- that we will continue doing everything that we can to alleviate the suffering in Syria."
But, as Kerry's spokesman John Kirby said of his boss to reporters earlier: "I'd say he's extremely frustrated, and we want to see real change in what's been going on.
"I believe he meant every molecule of what he said when he said that his patience was growing thin," Kirby said.
In Washington, many observers have criticized Kerry's outreach to Russia on Syria, arguing he has been strung along by a Putin seeking only to protect his client Assad.
But Kirby insisted the administration is not being naive, and that tomorrow's visit to Moscow, Kerry's third this year, would "probe the sincerity" of Putin's promises.
Hopes for the existing peace process rest on the UN-backed blueprint sketched out by the 22-nation, US and Russian-led International Syria Support Group (ISSG).
Under this road map, signed by both Syria's ally Iran and Assad's pro-rebel foe Saudi Arabia, a nationwide ceasefire will precede Geneva-based talks on "political transition."
Substantial political talks were once supposed to start on August 1, although Kerry has sought to underline that this is a "target" and not a "drop dead date" nor deadline.
Before leaving today with Kerry for Paris, from where he was due to fly on to Moscow, the spokesman said "we're mindful of the clock. We're mindful of the calendar."
Kirby said talk of the August 1 target date "underscores the importance of the secretary's trip to Moscow and the conversations that he intends to have there."
But he added "clearly, we are not ignorant to the fact that achieving some sort of groundbreaking political development in two weeks is not likely."
Previously, Kerry has suggested that if there is no breakthrough by the target date then Washington might resort to an undefined "Plan B" to deal with Assad.
Punjab Congress chief Amarinder Singh today criticised the state cabinet's decision to set up Khalsa University in Amritsar, saying it virtually "demolishes" a historic institution like Khalsa College.
"It is part of our Khalsa history and heritage and I promise, the day Congress forms the government (in the state), we will restore back its status," he said, warning, "it may prove to be the last nail in the Badals' coffin".
Urging Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal not to pass the bill in the Assembly, Amarinder, who has also served as the Chancellor of Khalsa College, Amritsar, said, "Despite resentment among the people, if he (Badal) still goes ahead and misuses his brute majority in the Assembly to pass the bill, the Congress government will repeal it and restore the original status of Khalsa College, Amritsar."
"Given the greed the Majithia (state Revenue Minister Bikram Singh Majithia) family has shown to grab the historic institution, they have only proved that they are just a greedy reflection of the Badals," he said, adding, "apparently inspired by the Badals, Majithias have done to Khalsa College, what the Badals have done to SGPC".
Questioning the logic behind setting up the university that will share its boundary wall with Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar, the former chief minister suggested that if the Badals and Majithias were really serious about setting up an institution of higher learning, they should better have set it up in southern Punjab around Mansa, Barnala or Sangrur where there is no university.
There are not even enough colleges in that area, he added.
Referring to the history and heritage of Khalsa College, Amritsar, Amarinder said it was set up by the leading families of the Sikh community of that time with huge contributions.
He said his own Patiala family had also made a substantial contribution in setting up of Khalsa College, Amritsar.
Two senior doctors of Apollo Hospital have been questioned in connection with the kidney trading racket unearthed in the national capital last month, police said today.
The doctors and few others were issued notices under CrPC Section 160, with the investigators asking them to join the probe into the matter at the earliest.
A Special Investigation Team questioned Ashok Sarin and D K Aggarwal, both nephrologists at Apollo Hospital, in connection with kidney transplants facilitated by the racket, yesterday evening. They were asked to come for another round of questioning today as well, a senior police official said.
Meanwhile, the police are also in the process of sending notices to three other senior doctors, who are members of the hospital's committee for verifying documents pertaining to transplants.
They too will be asked to join investigation into the case in connection with which the police have so far registered 2 FIRs and arrested 13 persons, including doctor's assistants, middlemen, the kingpin Rajkumar Rao, few donors and one recipient.
In a statement, Apollo Hospital said, "Indraprastha Medical Corporation Limited (Indraprastha Apollo Hospitals) has been a victim of a well-orchestrated operation carried out by a few individuals with malafide intent who deliberately committed forgery and fraud.
"The matter is under investigation by the Delhi Police and as in the past, the hospital continues to extend full cooperation to the investigating team. Additionally, we have advised the doctor, who has been asked to join the investigation, to extend full cooperation with the police.
"The hospital reiterates that it has the highest regard for the law and its processes and urges the Delhi Police to take their investigation to its logical conclusion.
Dairy firm Kwality Ltd has raised Rs 300 crore from private equity firm KKR India and secured an additional capital commitment of Rs 220 crore to fund its expansion plan and repay debt.
"Kwality Ltd has received capital commitment of up to Rs 520 crore via structured finance from KKR India...To fuel its aggressive growth plans as the company continues to rapidly shift its business model towards B2C/retail segment," the company said in a BSE filing.
When contacted, Kwality Director Sidhant Gupta said the company has already raised Rs 300 crore from KKR India and the remaining amount would come into the company at later stage.
The funds raised would be used for expansion and part repayment of debt, he added.
"We are at a critical stage of growth where we are shifting our business model from B2B to B2C, which encompasses revamp of all business functions across the value chain... This investment would support a giant leap in this direction, enabling faster growth and achieving high profitability," Kwality MD Sanjay Dhingra said.
The proceeds would be used to strengthen milk procurement infrastructure solely for high-margin value-added product categories including cheese and paneer among others, Dhingra said, adding that the company would roll out a series of such products in the near future.
Commenting on the development, Sanjay Nayar, member of KKR and CEO of KKR India, said Kwality has robust business model and extensive expansion plans. "
"We believe that Kwality is well positioned to shape the future of the dairy industry in India and it holds immense potential to deliver to all its stakeholders," he added.
Incorporated in 1992, Kwality has six milk processing units in Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Uttarakhand, and Rajasthan with capacity of over 3.2 million litres/day. It sells products under different brands including 'Dairy Best'.
The company has signed Bollywood actor Akshay Kumar as its brand ambassador.
Kwality's share price rose by 3 per cent to Rs 114.60 apiece on the BSE.
Sri Lanka's main Tamil party today raised concerns over release of political prisoners and lands in the Tamil north with US officials visiting the country.
US Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs Nisha Biswal and Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor Tom Malinowski are on tour here for political engagements with the Sri Lankan government.
Tamil National Alliance (TNA) sources said they met Biswal and discussed the issue of political prisoners and release of lands in the Tamil-dominated north.
They had also discussed the lapses in implementing the UN Human Rights Council resolution of October last year which US had cosponsored with Sri Lanka.
The resolution in the main called for the setting up a war crimes inquiry into alleged rights abuses during the final phase of the civil war that ended in May, 2009.
Sri Lanka since its adoption have resisted calls to accommodate foreign judges in the tribunal which the TNA insists must be implemented in order to have a fair trial and delivering justice to the conflict affected.
Biswal told the TNA the US will help the government to meet challenges it faces in implementing the Geneva resolution.
Both Biswal and Malinowski during their talks with foreign minister Mangala Samaraweera had expressed their commitment to partner with Sri Lanka in the island's post-war reconciliation process.
"The US has welcomed the deepening of the ties between our two countries. The US and Sri Lanka share common goals. We are partners and today our relations are at an all time high," Biswal said.
Malinowski while noting the concrete steps made by Sri Lanka in its reform and reconciliation agenda said that the US will give Sri Lanka economic support which will help the reconciliation process.
"What is happening in Sri Lanka is so important to people around the world," he added noting the conflicts taking place in other countries at a time Sri Lanka is rebuilding after over 30 years of civil war.
Philip Hammond today became Britain's new finance minister while Boris Johnson, the former London mayor who spearheaded the 'Leave' campaign in EU referendum, was appointed foreign secretary in Prime Minister Theresa May's new government.
May hit the ground running and had announced some of her key frontline Cabinet posts within minutes of walking into her new Downing Street office.
In her first move, she replaced UK Chancellor George Osborne with close friend Hammond, whose role as foreign secretary in David Cameron's Cabinet will be taken over by Johnson.
"The Queen has been pleased to approve the appointment of Rt Hon Philip Hammond MP as Chancellor of the Exchequer. The Rt Hon George Osborne MP has resigned from government," a Downing Street statement said on Wednesday evening.
Osborne will have to vacate his 11 Downing Street office after six years as well as his living quarters above 10 Downing Street - which has been traditionally occupied by the UK's finance minister to give the Prime Minister of the day the larger apartment of the two.
While Osborne's exit came as less of a surprise, being a close Cameron aide, Johnson's appointment as foreign secretary was more unexpected. He had led the charge for the Brexit camp in last month's European Union referendum and had been widely expected to step into Cameron's shoes as Prime Minister.
He had also come out strongly in support of Andrea Leadsom, May's last remaining opponent to the post of Conservative party leader before she withdrew on Monday.
"The Queen has been pleased to approve the appointment of Boris Johnson MP as Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs," said the official statement, which indicates he will be working closely with India as his role involves Commonwealth countries.
As was expected, May also created a new portfolio of so-called "Brexit secretary" and appointed David Davis, a former shadow home minister, to head the new department in charge of Brexit.
Another new department is that of international trade, indicating the importance of striking new trade agreements in the wake of Brexit, and the man in charge will be Liam Fox - who had also been among the contenders for the post of Conservative party leadership.
With many of the Cabinet announcements still being finalised, May's new frontline team so far is being described as the rise of the Brexitiers and indicates her attempt to bring together MPs from different sides of the Conservative party divide.
became Britain's second woman prime minister after Margaret Thatcher, vowing to forge "a bold new positive role" for the UK in the world post-Brexit.
May, 59, took charge after she had her audience with Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace.
She spoke outside No 10 Downing Street shortly after emerging from the palace, having paid the traditional visit to the British monarch to be invited to form a government.
"We face a time of great national change...As we leave the European Union we will forge a bold new positive world for ourselves, and we will make Britain a country that works for everyone of us.
"That will be the mission of the government I lead, and together we will build a better Britain," she said, in reference to Britain's recent vote to leave the European Union (EU) that brought her to power.
May becomes the second-ever woman Prime Minister of Britain, the 13th PM to be officially appointed by the Queen and the 54th holder of the office of British prime minister since it was created in the 18th century.
May was accompanied by husband, Philip May, as she addressed the world's media waiting at Downing Street since her predecessor David Cameron had departed just over an hour earlier.
"In David Cameron, I follow in the footsteps of a great, modern prime minister... Heled a one-nation government and it is in that spirit I also plan to lead," she said in her first speech as PM, wearing a black and yellow coat and her trademark leopard print kitten-heel shoes.
A heavy workload already waiting for her in-tray after the Brexit vote.
She addressed the working classes directly, saying she would give them more control and put "social justice" at the heart of her government and pledged to stand up against "the privileged few" and fight "burning injustice".
"The government I lead will not be driven by the interests of the privileged few, but by yours. We will do everything we can to give you more control over your lives. When we take the big calls, we'll think not of the powerful, but you.
"When we pass new laws we'll listen not to the mighty, but to you. When it comes to taxes we'll prioritise not the wealthy but you.
"When it comes to opportunity we won't entrench the advantages of the fortunate few. We will do everything we can to help anybody, whatever your background, to go as far as your talents will take you."
May also made a reference to the Conservative party's complete name, which is the Conservative and Unionist Party, saying the word "unionist" was very important to her as it highlights the "precious, precious bond" between all parts of the United Kingdom England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
The following editorial appeared in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on Wednesday, July 6:
On the Fourth of July, NASAs Juno spacecraft was the source of a light show that put to shame anything happening on the planet of its origin.
After Junos five-year, 1.8 billion-mile trek, NASA scientists initiated a 35-minute engine burn to slow the solar-powered spacecraft from its 40 miles- per-second trajectory to one that would allow it to be captured by Jupiters gravity.
Some engineers have described it as the trickiest maneuver NASA has ever attempted with any mission. Jupiter has the most formidable magnetic fields and radiation belts human technology has ever encountered, so there was a high probability of failure for the $1.1 billion mission. NASA prepared as best it could for the maneuver by encasing Junos most important instruments behind titanium-reinforced walls designed to hold up for the length of the mission.
At Mission Control, nervousness gave way to celebration once Juno confirmed it had survived the high-speed rendezvous with the oldest and largest planet in our solar system. Juno slowed its speed from 165,000 mph to a manageable 130,000 mph. Eventually it will maintain an elliptical orbit 3,000 miles above clouds that could dwarf Earths continents in size. Jupiter is 300 times more massive than Earth.
Once all of Junos instruments are back online, its main job will be to map the world beneath those mysterious clouds. Scientists want to find out if the gas giant has a solid core and whether its atmosphere contains water. NASA also wants to know why Jupiters northern and southern lights are so active above the poles.
Because of Jupiters status in the birth order of our solar system, we are finally in a position to learn things about conditions that led to the formation of Earth and its neighboring planets. Beginning in August, Juno will provide scientists with the closest encounters weve ever had with Jupiter thanks to multiple flybys.
But all good things must come to an end. On Feb. 20, 2018, Juno will end its mission by diving directly into Jupiter. After 37 orbits, it will have fulfilled its primary mission and surveyed Earths oldest sibling as best it could without actually landing. Jupiters radiation will have taken its toll and fried much of the crafts sensors.
Still, it is expected to perform heroically until the end, willingly sacrificing itself to transmit secrets about a world that continues to defy expectations hundreds of years after it was discovered.
The Juno mission may be one of NASAs finest hours yet.
Jammu and Kashmir government today directed the Consumer Affairs and Public Distribution (CAPD) department to open all the sales outlets and fair-price shops to ensure distribution of ration in the Valley.
"The field functionaries of the department are directed to open all the sales outlets and fair-price shops to ensure distribution of ration," CAPD Minister Chowdhary Zulfikar Ali said at a meeting convened here to review the stock-and-supply position of essential commodities in the Valley.
"Strict action will be taken against storekeepers, fair-price shop dealers and Tehsil Supply Officers failing to report to duty," he added.
Directing those concerned to lift the remaining stock of foodgrains from Food Corporation of India (FCI) forthwith for distribution among the outlets, the minister asked Director, CAPD, Kashmir Peerzada Mushtaq to coordinate with the FCI authorities and ensure that godowns and PEGs are functional with immediate effect.
Seeking cooperation of the people during distribution of foodgrains, Ali appealed to them to allow movement of vehicles carrying foodgrains and other essential commodities.
He also asked the field staff to coordinate with the mohalla and masjid committees and seek their assistance during distribution of ration.
Kashmir is on the boil since Friday following the killing of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani in an encounter with the security forces.
Asking the Director, CAPD to maintain liaison with the divisional and district administrations to ensure availability of essential items and LPG cylinders for consumers, the minister said petrol pumps should also remain open.
Giving a brief account of the stock-and-supply position of essential commodities, Mushtaq told the meeting that about 7.8 lakh quintals of rice, 1.5 lakh quintals of wheat and 22,000 quintals of sugar are available at the FCI and department godowns.
"So far, 2.15 lakh quintals of foodgrains have been dispatched to various districts while 2.8 lakh LPG cylinders are in stocks in the Kashmir division which are sufficient for 22 days," he said, adding that 2,900 kls of petrol, 11,012 kls of diesel and 5,060 kls of kerosene oil are also available with the oil companies in Kashmir.
"The department is keeping a proper track of vehicles carrying essential commodities from Jammu to Kashmir and in the last two days, 485 trucks carrying essential items, petrol and poultry products have reached the Valley," he said.
Mizoram government today instructed the police, para-military forces and the intelligence agencies to maintain strict vigil in view of the recent terrorist attacks in neighbouring Bangladesh.
An official statement said a meeting on internal security, chaired by chief minister Lal Thanhawla, state home minister R. Lalzirliana, chief secretary Lalmalsawma and senior officers deliberated on beefing up security in the border areas.
"Though there has been no specific threat following Dhaka terror attacks, there should not be complacency about the internal security of the state," participants in the meeting said.
Better coordination among the security agencies was also given utmost importance at the meeting.
Life is limping back to normalcy in flood-ravaged parts of Madhya Pradesh even as heavy rains lashed some places in Rajasthan, central Maharashtra, and New Delhi as the southwest monsoon advanced in remaining parts of the Arabian sea and the Kutch area to cover the entire country.
At least six places in Rajasthan received precipitation in excess of 13 cm (centimetre). Rains also lashed the national capital, which kept the mercury within comfortable range but pushed humidity levels up (between 63 and 91 per cent).
The Safdarjung observatory recorded 16.3 mm (millimetre) of rainfall between 8.30 am and 5.30 pm while weather stations at Palam, Lodhi Road, Ayanagar, and Ridge recorded 10 mm, 21.6 mm, 38 mm and rain, respectively, during the same period.
The flood situation in Assam remained unchanged in the deluge hit Lakhimpur, Golaghat, Morigaon, Barpeta, Biswanath and Jorhat districts where 1.11 lakh people are affected.
An IMD bulletin said the southwest monsoon has advanced into remaining parts of north Arabian Sea, Kutch and West Rajasthan thus it has covered the entire country today.
The MeT department in Uttarakhand has issued a heavy rain alert for one or two places in Uttarkashi, Dehradun, Rudraprayag, Chamoli, Pithoragarh, Bageshwar, Almora, Nainital and Champawat district and asked chardham yatris to remain watchful during the 72-hour period beginning tomorrow evening.
In Rajasthan, Galiakot town of Dungarpur district recorded 20 cm rainfall in the 24 hours ending this morning.
Dungarpur town recorded 15 cm rains while Arnod (Pratapgarh), Arthuna (Banswara), Chikali (Dungarpur), Dungla (Chittorgarh) and Railmagra (Rajsamand) recorded 13 cm each during that period, according to Met department in the state.
In Punjab and Haryana, the monsoon, which has been subdued after its onset in the two states about 10 days back, is likely to pick up the pace and good rains are expected in the next two-three days.
In the absence of widespread rains so far, the maximum temperatures have been settling in the range of 35-37 degrees Celsius at most places in the two states.
The MeT department in Himachal Pradesh has warned of heavy rains in several parts of the state during next three days as the axis of monsoon trough is likely to shift northwards close to foothills of Himalayas during in the next two days.
In Bihar, though cloudy sky prevailed, rain gave a miss to all parts of the state but Purnea received 13.3 mm of rainfall during the day. Patna remained the hottest place with maximum temperature at 35.1 degrees Celsius.
West Bengal today witnessed a generally overcast sky with rainfalls in some places including in Birbhum district (82.6mm), Bankura (33.7 mm) and Asansol (33.3 mm). In Kolkata, the day temperature rose up to 33.1 degrees Celsius.
Ministers in the previous Congress-led UDF government in Kerala including the then Chief Minister Oommen Chandy went on more than 200 foreign trips in the five-year regime.
This was stated by Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan in the Assembly during the question hour today.
Chandy made six foreign trips while the lone woman minister in the previous UDF cabinet P K Jayalakshmi made only one trip to Nepal.
IUML leader and former Minister for Social Welfare and Panchayats M K Muneer topped the list with 33 trips followed by RSP leader and Labour Minister Shibu Baby John with 26.
Foreign trips by the other ministers included P K Kunjalikutty (25), K C Joseph (20), A P Anilkumar (21), K P Mohanan (15), Thiruvanchoor Radhakrishnan (11), Anoob Jacob (9), Adoor Prakesh and P K Abdu Rabb 10 trips each and seven each for V S Sivakumar and Ramesh Chennithala.
A city square where noted journalist Jyotirmoy Dey was shot dead over five years ago, was today named after him.
Mumbai Mayor Snehal Ambekar unveiled the plaque for the 'J Dey Chowk' this morning just across the road where he was gunned down on June 11, 2011.
The naming of the square after the journalist was an initiative of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) and the Mumbai Press Club.
The unveiling of the plaque was followed by a commemoration ceremony to mark Dey's 5th death anniversary.
His former colleagues and Press Club members remembered the "brave and self-less reportage" of the fearless journalist on the occasion.
Addressing the gathering, Dey's wife Shubha said, "He (Dey) was an exemplary human being. He was not just a good journalist, but a man who would go out of his way to help others. Selflessness was the core quality of his."
The Mayor described Dey as a "fearless journalist" and said it was his habit to report the truth.
"He used to do fearless journalism and bring out truth, much to the dislike of many people. It was his habit to speak and report truth," she said.
Dey, known to be a fearless journalist, often wrote on Mumbai underworld's activities and gang-wars. The 56-year-old crime reporter worked with leading publications like Mid-Day and Hindustan Times.
Local corporatror Chandan Sharma, MLA Naseem Khan, Mumbai Press Club chairman Gurbir Singh were among others present on the occasion.
Dutch painter Vincent Van Gogh's infamous act of cutting off his ear is well documented but a new book has published definitive evidence and has for the first time identified the woman to whom he presented the "grisly" package.
"Van Gogh's Ear: The True Story", authored by UK-born writer Bernadette Murphy, "reveals previously unpublished evidence about the painter's notorious breakdown," publishers Penguin India said.
According to existing theories, the post-impressionist artist who painted the iconic "Starry Night," cut off his ear with a blade on a cold December night in 1888 and sent the severed organ to a prostitute named Rachel, frequented by him and French colleague Paul Gauguin.
However, Murphy debunks the 'Rachel Myth' in the book.
"Long presumed to be a prostitute, Murphy has discovered that Rachel was in fact Gabrielle, a maid in the red-light district of Arles in France and working at the brothel Vincent went to that night," publishers said.
"After seven years of meticulous research, Murphy has reconstructed Van Gogh's time in Arles, and casts new light not only on why he committed such a brutal act but also on how we view him, his art and his madness," they said.
As part of the research, the author examined the lives of all the local prostitutes in Arles to uncover the story of this "mysterious girl, who was not a prostitute as has long been assumed, suggesting why the painter chose to give her his gruesome gift."
The book also brings to the readers a previously unpublished diagram showing exactly how much of his ear the artist really cut off.
The sketch by Dr Felix Rey, who treated Van Gogh the day after his breakdown is currently housed in the Bancroft Library of University of California in Berkeley.
"This investigation has been an incredible adventure and discovering the document was an extraordinary moment. From my little house in Provence I couldn't believe I had found something new and important about Vincent van Gogh, but it was a vital detail in my complete re-examination of this most famous of artists, the key people he met in Arles and his tragic end," Murphy said.
After his breakdown, Van Gogh painted two self-portraits
with a bandaged ear. One is in a private collection and the other - "Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear by Vincent van Gogh, 1889" - is held at the Courtauld Gallery in London. Both artworks were painted shortly after Van Gogh returned home from hospital.
"Through painstaking detective work, using her local knowledge and delving deep into Provencal archives, the author constructed a database of the inhabitants of Arles in the late 1880s, eventually building a record of dates and occupations for 15,000 people, many of whom Van Gogh would have known during his time there," publishers said.
A BBC documentary with the same name as the book is scheduled for broadcast in August this year, in which English journalist Jeremy Paxman is set to join Murphy as she solves one of the most perplexing art mysteries of all times.
Former Arunachal Pradesh chief minister Nabam Tuki today welcomed the verdict of the Supreme Court which paved way for reinstating the Congress government in the state.
Tuki, who is presently camping in the national capital, told PTI over phone that he has full faith in the judiciary.
"I have full faith in the judiciary and would act as per the constitutional provisions," Tuki said, adding as per the court's verdict, the decision of former Governor to prepone the Assembly session was "unconstitutional" and the status of his government would remain unchanged.
Hailing the apex court's verdict, Arunachal Pradesh Congress Committee (APCC) President Padi Richo said, "It was the victory of the Constitution and the people".
The apex court in its order said Governor Jyoti Prasad Rajkhowa's decision advancing the state Assembly session by a month is violative of the Constitution and liable to be quashed. All the five judges of the Supreme Court bench were unanimous in setting aside the Governor's orders.
The verdict restores the political status quo in the northeastern state as of December 15, 2015. The bench headed by Justice J S Khehar said the "clock should be turned back" in Arunachal Pradesh.
The Congress government led by Tuki was dismissed after 21 MLAs rebelled against him. The leader of the dissident faction, Kalikho Pul, was sworn in as Chief Minister on February 19 with the support of Congress rebels and 11 BJP lawmakers.
Chief Minister Kalikho Pul was away at Guwahati in Assam
to attend the North East Democratic Alliance (NEDA) meeting and was not immediately available for comment.
Following is the sequence of events that led the then Speaker Nabam Redia to approach the Supreme Court.
December 9, 2015: Governor J P Rajkhowa fixed the resolution removing the Speaker from the office as the first item of business in the advanced Assembly session, which was held on December 16.
December 15, 2015: Speaker disqualifies 14 MLAs of the ruling Congress.
December 16, 2015: Deputy Speaker Tenzing Norbu Thongdok orders the removal of the Speaker, pursuant to the resolution adopted by the Assembly, held outside the Assembly hall.
On December 16 last year a special session of the assembly was held in a make-shift venue as the government and Speaker prevented the session from being held in the assembly.
Deputy Speaker T N Thongdok presided over the special session that was attended by 20 rebel Congress MLAs (of the total 42), 11 BJP MLAs and two Independents.
The rebels, along with the 13 others, passed the impeachment motion. The special session also moved a no-confidence motion against Tuki. At the end of the session, Tuki was "defeated" in a floor test and the "House" "elected" Kalikho Pul as the new leader of the House.
December 17, 2015: Speaker Rebia moves High Court.
January 5, 2016: Justice B K Sarma of the Gauhati High Court stayed the disqualification of 14 Congress MLAs. The Speaker's plea for his case to be heard in another court was turned down, prompting him to approach the Supreme Court.
Kolkata police today recorded the statement of IPS officer Saiyaad Mustafa Hussain Mirza in connection with its probe into the Narada sting operation after a four-hour-long interrogation.
According to top sources in the Kolkata Police, questions on Mirza's links to Narada CEO Mathew Samuel were asked among others.
Kolkata police has again summoned Mirza and asked him to appear before it tomorrow.
The controversial Narada sting operation, which surfaced ahead of the Assembly elections in the state, purportedly showed several Trinamool Congress leaders and Mirza accepting money for consideration.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had on June 17 ordered a probe by the police into the sting operation and asserted that her party had not taken "a single penny" from anyone in the Saradha chit fund scam and the Narada sting operation.
A Special Investigation Team (SIT) under Kolkata Police Commissioner Rajeev Kumar comprising senior officers of the Detective Department, Cyber Crime Cell and Economic Offence Wing, was formed to conduct the probe.
The next day Kolkata Mayor and Fire and Emergency Services Minister Sovan Chattopadhyay's wife Ratna Chattopadhyay filed a complaint at the New Market Police Station against Samuel.
Samuel was then booked under IPC sections 469 (forgery for purpose of harming reputation), 500 (defamation), 505 (statements conducing to public mischief), 171 (G) (false statement in connection with an election) and 120(B) (criminal conspiracy).
The Kolkata Police had issued the first summon to Samuel on June 23. Four days later, Samuel requested Kolkata Police to withdraw its summon, saying the matter was sub-judice.
However, that did not cut any ice with the authorities as a second summon was issued soon after. The Narada CEO again requested them to withdraw the summon.
An investigation into the Narada sting operation is presently on by the Lok Sabha Ethics Committee, while a case is pending on the issue in the Calcutta High Court.
JunoCam - the camera aboard NASA's Juno mission - has sent back some of the first images of Jupiter along with three of its four largest moons taken after the spacecraft entered orbit around the king of planets on July 4.
Juno's visible-light camera was turned on six days after Juno fired its main engine and placed itself into orbit around the largest planetary inhabitant of our solar system.
The first high-resolution images of the gas giant Jupiter are still a few weeks away.
"This scene from JunoCam indicates it survived its first pass through Jupiter's extreme radiation environment without any degradation and is ready to take on Jupiter," said Scott Bolton, from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio.
The new view was obtained when the spacecraft was 4.3 million kilometres from Jupiter on the outbound leg of its initial 53.5-day capture orbit.
The colour image shows atmospheric features on Jupiter, including the famous Great Red Spot, and three of the massive planet's four largest moons - Io, Europa and Ganymede, from left to right in the image.
"JunoCam will continue to take images as we go around in this first orbit," said Candy Hansen, Juno co-investigator from the Planetary Science Institute in the US.
"The first high-resolution images of the planet will be taken on August 27 when Juno makes its next close pass to Jupiter," Hansen said.
JunoCam is a colour, visible-light camera designed to capture remarkable pictures of Jupiter's poles and cloud tops.
As Juno's eyes, it will provide a wide view, helping to provide context for the spacecraft's other instruments.
JunoCam was included on the spacecraft specifically for purposes of public engagement; although its images will be helpful to the science team, it is not considered one of the mission's science instruments.
The Juno team is currently working to place all images taken by JunoCam on the mission's website, where the public can access them.
During its mission of exploration, Juno will circle the Jovian world 37 times, soaring low over the planet's cloud tops - as close as about 4,100 kilometres.
During these flybys, Juno will probe beneath the obscuring cloud cover of Jupiter and study its auroras to learn more about the planet's origins, structure, atmosphere and magnetosphere.
Shares of construction company NBCC tumbled nearly 11 per cent today after the Centre approved 15 per cent disinvestment in the state-owned firm.
The stock tanked 10.72 per cent to end at Rs 229.80 on BSE. During the day, it plunged 12 per cent to Rs 226.40.
On NSE, shares of the company slumped 10.91 per cent to close at Rs 229.75.
In terms of volume, 20.87 lakh shares of the company were traded on BSE and over one crore shares changed hands at NSE during the day.
The Centre today approved 15 per cent disinvestment in NBCC, hoping to garner Rs 1,706 crore from the stake sale.
The decision to divest stake was taken by the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA).
Government holds 90 per cent stake in the company.
"The government hopes an estimated receipt of Rs 1,706 crore from this (disinvestment). But it is just estimation," Law and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad told reporters in New Delhi after the CCEA meeting.
National Buildings Construction Corporation Limited (NBCC) was listed on the bourses in 2012 when the government diluted 10 per cent stake to raise Rs 124.97 crore.
BJP president Amit Shah today expressed optimism over the newly formed North East Democratic Alliance, saying it will bring the region closer to mainland India during Prime Minister Narendra Modi's governance.
"North East Democratic Alliance (NEDA) will play an important role in attaching northeast to mainland India. NEDA's contribution will be written in golden letters in changing the history of NE," he said at the first conclave of the alliance here.
The foundation of NEDA is a history in itself as it was set up with the formation of the new government in Assam, he said.
"Although BJP is the largest party in the country at present, but the importance of the other smaller regional parties, which NEDA comprises of, is always equal to the largest party. So, BJP's importance in NEDA is never above the regional parties," Shah said.
The BJP chief said the region is full of potentials with rich natural resources, which can attract tourists in huge numbers.
"But even after 68 years of Independence, northeast is not developed, while many areas in India have developed. Problems like infiltration, insurgency and the Centre not giving enough attention are to be blamed for this," Shah said.
He said the Modi government is giving top priority to the region and issued instruction that at least one union minister visits the region in every 15 days.
Assam Finance Minister and NEDA Convener Himanta Biswa Sarma said the organisation will play crucial role in having a Congress-free northeast.
"In 2019 Lok Sabha polls, there will be no Congress MP from northeast. All the 25 MPs from the region will be from NEDA," he said adding NEDA will also come to power in Meghalaya and Manipur after the coming Assembly polls.
Sarma also unveiled the draft 'Guwahati Declaration', which will highlight the plans of programmes of NEDA, and circulated it among members so that it can be finalised within this week.
Union Minister of State for Home Kiren Rijiju said the overall security scenario of the region has improved since 2014, when the Modi government came to power.
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"Except Sikkim, almost entire northeast is affected by militancy problem. Only two per cent of it is connected to the mainland and the rest 98 per cent is attached to neighbouring countries. So security on border is very important," he added.
Rijiju announced that fencing work along the Indo-Bangla border in Assam, Meghalaya and Mizoram will be over by 2017.
"We will issue a booklet within two months on what we have done for people of North East," he said.
Rijiju also appealed to all the northeast states not to engage in inter-border disputes among themselves.
DoNER Minister Jitendra Singh said the government is working to improve connectivity in the region's eight states.
The conclave was also addressed by Nagaland Chief Minister T R Zeliang, Sikkim Chief Minister Pawan Chamling, Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Kalikho Pul, Mizo National Front President Zoramthanga, AGP President Atul Bora, United Democratic Party President Donkupar Roy and Bodoland People's Party Chief Hagrama Mohilary.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has said he wants "an attack dog" as a running mate, days ahead of announcing his vice presidential pick which has now come down to a few.
Trump, 70, said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal that his top picks included Indiana Governor Mike Pence, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and a couple politicians who haven't gotten as much attention, including Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions.
"The New York businessman has said he wanted a seasoned government leader as a running mate. But in the interview, on the way to events with Pence in Indiana, Trump added a new criterion: He wants an attack dog," Trump said yesterday.
"I'm getting attacked from all sides," Trump told the daily in the interview in which he called Christies and Gingrich "two extraordinary warriors."
Personal chemistry is also important, he said.
"You either have it or you don't. I clearly have it with Chris and Newt," he said, indicating that his choice has narrowed down to two.
US media reported that Trump might announce his vice presidential pick later this week - Thursday or Friday.
In another interview to Fox News, Trump said announcing the vice presidential pick was not about surprises.
"I'm not doing this for surprises. I'm not doing this for games," Trump said.
"I'm doing this because I want to pick somebody that's going to help me get elected, that's going to be good, but also that can serve," he added.
S N Sinha, a member of the Press Council of India, today stressed the need for a law to protect journalists against attacks.
"In the wake of attacks on journalists in the country, the demand for a law to protect journalists has gathered steam," Sinha said at the Indore Press Club.
"A law should be passed to facilitate high-level probes into the attacks on journalists within a fixed timeframe," he said.
Also, cases related to such attacks should be tried by fast-track courts, and if a journalist dies in an attack, the government should provide compensation to the family, Sinha said.
"Such a law is necessary not only for journalists but also for the democracy and the country. Therefore, pressure should be put on the government," he said.
PCI's Journalists' Safety Committee had prepared a report proposing such a law and submitted it to the Union government in 2015, he said.
Realising the risks of social media, major global organisations have framed new guidelines for employees regarding how to use popular sites like Facebook and Twitter, separate from the companies' existing codes of conduct, according to a new study.
Jayeon Lee, assistant professor at Lehigh University in the US, analysed the guidelines and found that organisations are more concerned about the current social media environment than excited about it at least when it comes to their employees.
The study, a content analysis of the social media guidelines of nine American organisations - The New York Times, The Associated Press, Bloomberg, Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, CNN, and NPR - and three British news organisations - BBC, The Times, and The Daily Telegraph - investigates how these employers frame messages about employee social media usage.
"I was wondering what approaches news organisations take when it comes to their own employees' social media uses," Lee said.
"In particular, knowing both positive and negative implications of journalists' social media uses, I wanted to see if their guidelines were dominantly positive, negative, or neutral in their framing of the implications," she said.
Overall, Lee found that the guidelines focus primarily on the risks and challenges presented by the use of social media rather than the opportunities and advantages for media.
"As some media critics point out, overreaching rules can stifle creativity and morale and even discourage overall social media use itself," she said.
According to the study, news organisations are most concerned about - accuracy, breaking objectivity, inappropriate online behaviours, and harming news organisations' principles and credibility.
Accuracy - sourcing or redistributing false information from social media without sufficient fact verification - was the most frequently raised topic and accounted for 17.8 per cent of the total sentences studied.
"The results show that the prevention-focused approach is more common than I would have predicted," Lee said.
"Although I expected that the guidelines would include various warnings related to risky social media activities, I was surprised to find little comment about how to use social media wisely or effectively to derive full benefit from it," she said.
Lee recognised that news organisations are actively utilising various social media to reach a wider audience and build brand loyalty.
"However, it seems they are keen on keeping their own employees from actively engaging in social media," she added.
The study appears in The Communication Review journal.
Opposing the appointment of 21 parliamentary secretaries by the Aam Aadmi Party government, the Centre today told Delhi High Court that it could have only one attached to Chief Minister of Delhi as per the existing provisions of law.
"That the post of parliamentary secretaries neither finds place in the Constitution of India, nor does it find place in the Delhi Members of Legislative Assembly (Removal of Disqualification) Act of 1997, except for the post of Parliamentary Secretary to the Chief Minister.
"Therefore, appointment of 21 parliamentary secretaries vide the impugned order dated March 13, 2015, is not covered by the law," the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) told a bench of Chief Justice G Rohini and Justice Sangita Dhingra Sehgal.
The MHA, represented by Central Government standing counsel Jasmeet Singh, made the submission in an affidavit filed in response to the court's notice to the Centre on an NGO's PIL seeking quashing of Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal's March 13 order appointing 21 Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) MLAs as Parliamentary Secretaries.
In its affidavit, MHA also said that Delhi government had tried to legalise the appointment of the 21 parliamentary secretaries by amending the Delhi Members of Legislative Assembly (Removal of Disqualification) Act, but the President has withheld his assent to the amendment bill.
The high court did not hear arguments in the matter today after the Delhi government said that a petition has been moved before Election Commission for disqualification of the 21 MLAs and the poll panel has issued notice in that.
The bench, thereafter, listed the matter for hearing on September 8.
On October 7 last year, the AAP government had defended its order 21 AAP MLAs as Parliamentary Secretaries, saying this was done to assist the ministers and ensure harmonious functioning.
The AAP government had told the court that no office akin
to the Council of Ministers has been created and no additional hierarchy imposed upon the legislative assembly.
It had also stated that the parliamentary secretaries were not given any access to confidential documents which are exclusively within the domain of the Minister.
The NGO Rashtriya Mukti Morcha had claimed in its plea that the Chief Minister had issued "unconstitutional and illegal order" in gross violation of the constitutional provisions and the Transaction of Business of the Government of the National Capital Territory of Delhi rules, 1993.
Denying the NGO's allegation, the Delhi government had said it was not bypassing the statutory functions of the LG.
The CPI(M)-led LDF government in Kerala, facing a severe financial crisis, today made it clear that there would be no ban on recruitments.
This was announced by Kerala Finance Minister T M Thomas Issac while speaking at the concluding debate on the general discussion on the 2016-17 state budget.
This clarification comes in the wake of some confusion following his statement during the budget presentation that new appointments would be allowed only in the health sector.
The minister said new posts would be permitted in the health, education and other sectors, as per norms.
On a day when the Supreme Court restored the Congress government in Arunachal Pradesh, senior BJP leader and Assam Finance Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma today said northeastern India would be free from Congress.
Sarma said North East Democratic Alliance (NEDA) will play a crucial role in having a Congress-free northeast.
"In 2019 Lok Sabha polls, there will be no Congress MP from northeast. All the 25 MPs from the region will be from NEDA," he said adding NEDA will also come to power in Meghalaya and Manipur after the coming Assembly polls.
Sarma was speaking at the first conclave of NEDA where BJP president Amit Shah expressed optimism over NEDA will bring the region closer to mainland India during Prime Minister Narendra Modi's governance.
"Even after 68 years of Independence, northeast is not developed while many areas in India have developed. Problems like infiltration, insurgency and the Centre not giving enough attention are to be blamed for this," Shah said.
A court here today remanded FTIL founder Jignesh Shah, arrested in the Rs 5,600-crore National Spot Exchange Limited scam, in the custody of Enforcement Directorate till July 18.
ED yesterday arrested Shah under Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), saying that he was not cooperating with the investigation.
Shah has been named in the first charge-sheet filed by ED in the case last year.
ED's lawyer Hiten Venegaonkar argued that new material had come to light indicating that Shah indulged in money laundering. Therefore, ED intended to file a fresh complaint of money laundering for which it needed his custody for eight days, he said.
Advocate Abad Ponda, Shah's lawyer, opposed the plea for ED custody saying Shah had been earlier arrested in the NSEL case and later granted bail. The investigation was over and the facts which may have come to light are not new.
Shah had spent more than 100 days in custody and was granted bail by the High Court, Ponda pointed out.
However, the ED lawyer said that Shah did not answer several questions during the interrogation and the investigation officer stopped questioning him. For further probe, his custodial interrogation was necessary.
Ponda cited a Supreme Court judgement saying that a suspect cannot be compelled to answer questions which may incriminate him/her.
ED had recently informed the Union Finance Ministry that
it was going to initiate fresh action for attachment of assets against the accused in the NSEL case and would also question many of them.
The agency registered a case in the NSEL scam under PMLA in 2013 along with the Economic Offences Wing of Mumbai police.
The agency filed a 20,000-page charge-sheet against NSEL and 67 others in the court here in March 2015. According to the charge-sheet, NSEL funds were laundered and "illegally ploughed into purchase of private properties".
It traces a money trail of Rs 3,721.22 crore.
After a high-level meeting chaired by the Economic Affairs Secretary Shaktikanta Das last month, the Centre directed Maharashtra government to expedite the resolution of the case by quickly auctioning assets worth Rs 6,116 crore attached so far and refund investors at the earliest.
NSEL's payment troubles started after it was ordered by the Forward Markets Commission in July 2013 to suspend the spot trade in most of its contracts due to suspected trading violations.
The exchange could not settle the outstanding trades, sparking an investigation as to whether the exchange had defrauded traders by not enforcing rules requiring sufficient collateral.
Financial Technologies India Ltd blamed NSEL executives and the trading parties for the default. There were 24 members who defaulted payment to about 13,000 investors.
Iran's nuclear deal with world powers is holding a year after it was agreed but more needs to be done to ensure its full implementation, a top Iranian negotiator said today.
"The total process has been relatively satisfactory despite the difficulties that we see in the implementation," Hamid Baeidinejad told a press conference in Tehran for the first anniversary of the agreement.
"We belive that the deal has not been violated so far and efforts continue to resolve the remaining issues," Baeidinejad said.
The deal between Iran and the P5+1 group of powers (Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States) limited Tehran's atomic programme in return for the lifting of some international sanctions, which took effect in January.
There has been some disappointment in Iran that the lifting of the sanctions has not yet led to significant investments, with many international investors and banks still wary of doing business with the Islamic republic.
Despite the lifting of nuclear-related penalties, Washington and the European Union maintain some sanctions on Iran over its human rights record and ballistic missile testing.
Asked if Iran had oversold the deal to its people, Baeidinejad said: "We knew exactly what was agreed upon in the deal and what was not."
He said Tehran "had more expectations on the removal of economic, banking and financial restrictions, but despite all these deficiencies there is a feeling of hope inside our country to remove these obstacles" through more talks.
"We will not agree to anything less than the full implementation of the JCPOA," he said, referring to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the official name of the agreement.
The agreement caused "great optimism" in Iran on "unrelated issues", Baeidinejad said, but those expectations are "fortunately being balanced and adjusted to reality".
President Hassan Rouhani today also praised the "new atmosphere" created by the accord, saying it can lead to "better economic, defence, and technological activity" for Iran.
"In some fields, including banking, we still haven't reached the expected level, although good steps have been taken in this regard and some connections have been made with big international banks," Rouhani was quoted as saying by official agency IRNA.
Peeved over a campaign against it by AAP, the Centre today dismissed the suggestion that it has withheld 14 bills sent by the Delhi government, saying just one legislation was rejected by the President.
A senior Home Ministry official said Lieutenant Governor Najeeb Jung had "reserved" 11 bills passed by the Delhi Assembly and sent to the central government for Presidential approval.
Of these, only one Bill, a legislation that sought to protect 21 Aam Aadmi Party MLAs, who have been appointed Parliamentary Secretaries, from disqualification for holding office of profit, was withheld by the President.
Two bills -- Minimum Wages (Delhi Amendment) Bill 2015 and a bill to upgrade the Netaji Subhash Institute of Technology to a state university -- were sent back to the Delhi government for further clarifications.
Six other bills were received by the Home Ministry on April 1, 2015. One bill was received in December 2015 and another in August 2015.
"Of all the 11 bills, only two bills are under considerations for more than six months," the officer said.
The officer explained that since Delhi is a Union Territory, any bill it wants to adopt in the assembly has to be first sent to the central government for approval.
If the nod is given, only then can it be moved for legislative approval.
When the assembly passes the bill, then it has to go to the Lieutenant Governor and again to the central government for Presidential assent.
In most of the bills, the Delhi government did not take prior approval from the central government and straightway passed them in the assembly.
Since proper procedures were not followed, the Home Ministry is bound to examine thoroughly all bills before taking a view, the official said.
The bills in contention include Delhi School (Verification Of Accounts and Refund of Excess Fee) Bill 2015, Delhi School Education (Amendment) Bill 2015, Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (Delhi Amendment) Bill 2015 and a bill related to working journalists.
The AAP government has launched a media campaign saying the central government has withheld approvals to 14 bills passed by the Delhi Assembly and a few of them are more than six months old.
Global rating agencies Moody's and S&P today assigned low investment grade ratings to a US dollar bond issue of ONGC Videsh Ltd to fund its acquisition of 15 per cent stake in Russia's Vankor oilfield.
"Moody's Investors Service has assigned a Baa2 rating to the proposed foreign currency senior unsecured bonds to be issued by ONGC Videsh Vankorneft Pte Ltd (OVVPL), a wholly owned subsidiary of Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC)," the rating agency said in a statement.
S&P Global Ratings assigned its 'BBB-' long-term issue rating.
The state-owned firm will "unconditionally and irrevocably guarantee the notes," it said. "We consider the proposed notes as ONGC's debt obligation because the notes are issued by a 100 per cent-owned subsidiary set up to raise funds for ONGC."
ONGC Videsh, the overseas arm of ONGC, expects to use the proceeds of the proposed notes to refinance existing bridge loans incurred to acquire a 15 per cent stake in CJSC Vankorneft for USD 1.26 billion.
"The ratings outlook is stable," Moody's said. "The proposed foreign currency bonds are rated at the same level as ONGC's foreign currency issuer ratings because the bonds are unconditionally and irrevocably guaranteed by ONGC and the guarantee is pari passu to all senior unsecured obligations of ONGC."
S&P said the rating on ONGC reflects the company's strong competitive position as one of Asia's largest oil exploration and production companies with a long reserve life, stable production and good profitability.
However, ONGC's production is concentrated in India, particularly the Mumbai basin, and its expansion outside India is in higher-risk countries, it said adding the company is also exposed to negative government intervention, such as the sharing of oil subsidies.
Secured consolidated debt at ONGC accounted for about 4.3 per cent of its consolidated assets as of March 2016.
"Even though the guaranteed amount has been restricted to 109 per cent of the principal amount of the bonds outstanding, we view it as sufficient to cover the amounts due to bond holders.
"The restriction of a guarantee to a finite amount is driven by regulations in India, which do not allow open-ended guarantees for obligations of offshore subsidiaries, rather than an actual intention on ONGC's part to restrict its liability under the bonds," said Vikas Halan, Moody's Vice President and Senior Credit Officer.
Moody's said ONGC's issuer ratings incorporate expectation that the impact of declining oil prices on the company's cash flows will remain low, as the company benefits from a lowering of fuel subsidies, a reduction in taxes, and improved contributions from its downstream business.
While the company's cash flow from operations will
decline and its credit metrics will weaken, ONGC's financial metrics will remain at a level that is within the tolerance levels for its current ratings, Halan said.
ONGC's retained cash flow (RCF) to debt was 63 per cent in the fiscal year ended March 31, 2016.
"Even if we incorporate the Vankor acquisition (including the 11 per cent stake yet to completed) we expect ONGC's RCF to debt ratio to remain in excess of 50 per cent over the next 12-18 months, a level that is well within our tolerance level for the company's Baa1 ratings," says Halan.
Moody's noted that ONGC's liquidity position is strong, with cash and cash equivalents of Rs 25,800 crore against debt of Rs 9,600 crore maturing over the next 12 months.
In addition, the company has access to other sources of liquidity on its balance sheet.
For instance, the company's investments in listed entities can realise at least Rs 8,000-10,000 crore without any disruption to its ongoing business.
"ONGC's Baa1 local currency issuer rating is constrained to within two notches of India's sovereign rating (Baa3 positive) and its Baa2 foreign currency issuer rating is constrained by the country ceiling for foreign currency bonds," Moody's said.
The stable ratings outlook reflects Moody's expectation that the company will continue to roll out its growth plan within the tolerance level of its current ratings.
"An upgrade of the company's local currency issuer ratings is unlikely in the next two to three years given the low oil price environment," Moody's said adding an upgrade of local currency ratings will require a combination of continued strength in financial metrics and an upgrade of the sovereign rating.
S&P said it expects ONGC to sustain its financial position amid the current oil price environment, with a debt- to-EBITDA ratio of 1.5x-1.7x and a ratio of funds from operations to debt of 35-40 pe cent for the fiscal years ending March 31, 2017 and 2018.
"At the same time, we expect the company to continue to pursue aggressive organic and inorganic investments along with dividend distributions," it said.
S&P said it continues to assess ONGC's stand-alone credit profile as 'a-'. "Our rating on the company is constrained by the sovereign credit rating on India (BBB-/Stable/A-3) on the basis of our view that ONGC could face extraordinary negative government intervention.
"Under our criteria for government-related entities, we believe there is a very high likelihood of extraordinary government support to the company," it added.
Pakistan's powerful army chief General Raheel Sharif today condemned the "brutal killings" of youths in Kashmir, joining the rhetorics of Prime Minister Nawaz Sahrif's government on the issue.
"Condemning Indian brutal killings of innocent Kashmiri youth, Chief of Army Staff (Gen Sharif) reiterated that the world needs to recognise the aspirations of Kashmiri people, their struggle for freedom and help resolve the long standing dispute for lasting amity in Kashmir and enduring peace in the region," said an army statement.
The statement was issued after the monthly Corps Commander Conference at the General Headquarters in Rawalpindi to review the internal security situation.
External security situation was also discussed with particular emphasis on the situation in Afghanistan, it said.
Earlier, Prime Minister Sharif convened a special Cabinet meeting in Lahore on Friday to discuss the "deteriorating situation" in the violence-hit Kashmir and chalk out "future course of action" on the issue.
India had asked Pakistan to refrain from interfering in its internal affairs after Sharif issued a statement expressing "shock" at the killing of Hizbul commander Burhan Wani.
Meanwhile, in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir's Muzaffarabad Hizbul Mujahideen chief Sayed Salahuddin, who also heads the umbrella group of militants - the United Jihad Council, accused India of "genocide" in Kashmir, according to AFP.
If India's "occupation" troops continue "with the genocide of Kashmiris then along with armed struggle we will also start a civil disobedience movement in Kashmir," Salahuddin told a gathering, amid calls for jihad.
A Pakistani Christian man's both hands were chopped off allegedly by some Muslim men for refusing to convert to Islam, media reports said today.
Police, however, have dismissed the victim's allegation, claiming he lost his hands in a train accident.
Aqeel Masih, 25, complained to police, yesterday alleging that the unidentifed Muslim men chopped his hands off with an axe for not converting to Islam on June 24, the Dawn reported.
"Some people came to me and asked me to convert to Islam. On my refusal, they attacked me with an axe and cut my both hands off," said Masih, who was treated at Jinnah Hospital.
He said he did not know the name of the attackers and could only recognise them if he saw them.
Lahore police senior officer Amara Ather, however, said that according to a medical report submitted by a doctor, Masih had lost his hands in a train accident near a beverage factory in Gulberg.
Quoting eyewitnesses, Athar said Masih was lying unconscious on the track near a railway track when a train engine crushed his hands up to the elbows.
"Some people rushed to the railway track after hearing his cries and shifted him to Jinnah Hospital," she was quoted as saying by the daily.
She said some four to five people were present on the spot.
The police officer said evidence was being collected and a case would be registered against unidentified people after recording Masih's statement.
A man's nose and an ear have been brutally chopped off for eloping with a girl related to him against her family's wish in Pakistan's Punjab province, the latest incident of 'family honour' in the country.
According to police, the 20-year-old girl, who lives in Jhang district, some 160 kms from here, had eloped with her relative Imran Ali sometime ago.
The girl was later brought back to her home through a village jury (Panchayat).
"The parents of the girl forced her to call Ali to her village and upon reaching there on last Monday, they along with other relatives overpowered him and severely tortured him. They also chopped off his nose and an ear," a senior police officer Maqbool Ahmed said.
He said the injured youth was later shifted to hospital where he recorded his statement to the police.
Ali told police that the girl asked him to visit her home on the pretext of arranging a meeting with her family members, saying they had pardoned him and agreed on their marriage.
"But when I reached their house, they tied me with a rope and severely thrashed me before cutting off my nose and left ear with a knife," he said.
Police said efforts are on to arrest the suspects.
Honour killing and related crimes are on the rise in Pakistan. Nearly 1,100 women and 800 men have been killed in the country in the name of honour last year.
Pakistan today said it has an "unwavering commitment" to eliminate terrorism from its soil, a day after Islamabad was slammed by top American lawmakers and experts for allegedly playing a double game when it comes to war against terrorism.
"We need not remind the skeptics that no country has suffered more from terrorism than Pakistan. Pakistan's resolve to fight back the menace of terrorism is, therefore, second to none," Nadeem Hotiana, spokesman of the Embassy of Pakistan here, said in a statement.
"The extra-ordinary success of operation Zarb-e-Azb is a testimony to Pakistan's unwavering commitment to eliminate terrorism from the Pakistani soil," he said.
Earlier, US lawmakers during a Congressional hearing called for cutting financial aid to Pakistan and experts sought looking into the possibility of putting it in the list of State Sponsor of Terrorism.
"Pakistan and the US are long time partners and allies in their shared goal of defeating terrorism. Positive CT (counter-terrorism) cooperation between the two countries has been widely acknowledged by the leadership of the two countries," Hotiana said.
In the October 2015 Joint Statement, President Barack Obama affirmed Pakistan's role as a key counterterrorism partner and recognised the sacrifices that its civilians, military and law enforcement personnel have made over the years as they confront terrorism and militants, he asserted.
"Both leaders also renewed their common resolve to promote peace and stability throughout the region and to counter all forms of extremism and terrorism," he said.
"Chairman Armed Services Committee, Senator John McCain, after a recent visit to Pakistan and seeing first hand the results of military operations in North Waziristan, said 'he was impressed by the progress on ground'," Hotiana added.
A manipulative Pakistan which supports terrorist elements has been treating the US like chumps, American lawmakers and experts have said while calling for cutting off aid to the country and listing it as a state sponsoring terrorism.
"They are making chumps out of us. They see us we are being so stupid. It seems like paying the mafia," said Congressman Matt Salmon, Chairman of the Asia and Pacific subcommittee of House Foreign Affairs Committee.
"If I may use an undiplomatic term. We have been patsies," said former Bush era top diplomat Zalmay Khalilzad told lawmakers along with others how Pakistani leadership had gamed the American system for decades.
"Patsies chumps. Most Americans see out of this and yet our so called leaders do not really get it," Salmon added.
Bill Roggio, senior editor of the Long War Journal Foundation for Defense of Democracies along with Khalilzad called for cutting aid to Pakistan and put them in the list of State Sponsor of terrorism.
"At the end they are treating us like chumps. And we are more than willing to keep on handing out money to Pakistan," Roggio said as he Khalilzad and other experts testified before on "Pakistan: A Friend of Foe in the Fight Against Terrorism," during a Congressional hearing.
"Pakistanis are very clever in manipulating us. I have to say that," said Khalilzad, sharing his experience of dealing with the Pakistani leadership when he served in various diplomatic position in the Bush era including the US ambassador to Afghanistan and the Permanent Representative of the US to the UN.
They reach out to distinguished members of the Congress, they invite them for visits, they charm them, they promise once again and they extract statements from us that are "surprising" in the face of facts, he said.
Asked why the US continued with its same policy, Khalilzad said that Pakistani ability to manipulate by their actions in part had been a factor.
"My experience in dealing with Pakistan is that they will only give you something, when they know that they are going to get something," the former top American diplomat said.
Congressman Dana Rohrabacher said the Pakistani government and the Saudi Arabia created the Taliban and the Haqqani network.
Rohrabacher said the US' aid giving to Pakistan was "ridiculous".
"People of Baluchistan are being slaughtered by this corrupt oppressive regime. People of Baluchistan should understand that the US is on their side for their independence and self-determination from a corrupt, viscous terrorist supporting regime," Rohrabacher said.
"Same with the Sindhis. Same with other groups in Pakistan. So we got a regime that murders and represses and is corrupt with their own people and yet we still continue to give them some type of support... Absolutely absurd," Rohrabacher said during the Congressional hearing.
Fliers will soon have a reason to smile, as the revised norms that cap ticket cancellation charges and bar airlines from levying an additional amount for refund are coming into force from August 1.
Besides, carriers would have to indicate in an unambiguous manner the amount of refund admissible on cancellation of a ticket. Under no circumstances, the airline shall levy cancellation charge more than the basic fare plus fuel surcharge, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) said.
The aviation regulator has also made it clear that airlines cannot levy additional charge to process the refund. The move would come as a relief to air passengers against the backdrop of many carriers raising the cancellation charges in recent times.
Coming out with the fresh set of rules, the watchdog said carriers should refund all statutory taxes and user development fee (UDF)/airport development fee (ADF)/passenger service fee (PSF) to the passengers in case of "cancellation/non-utilisation of tickets/no show".
"This provision shall also be applicable for all types of fares offered including promos/special fares and where the basic fare is non-refundable," the DGCA said.
The changes were first proposed by the civil aviation ministry in June as part of putting in place passenger friendly measures. These norms would be effective from August 1, according to the civil aviation requirement (CAR) issued by DGCA chief M Sathiyavathy on Tuesday.
To ensure more transparency, carriers would be required to indicate the refund amount in case of ticket cancellations. The amount and its break-up may be indicated on the ticket itself or through separate form used for the purpose. Also, the policy and amount of refund shall be displayed by the airlines on their respective websites, DGCA noted. Further, passengers can choose whether the refund money should be kept in the airline's credit shell or not.
"Airline shall not levy any additional charge for correction in name of the same person, when error in his name spelling is pointed out by the passenger to the airline after booking of his ticket," the regulator said.
For tickets booked through travel agents or portal, the onus of refund would be on the airlines."In case of purchase of ticket through travel agent/ portal, onus of refund shall lie with the airlines, as agents are their appointed representatives. The airlines shall ensure that the refund process is completed within 30 working days," the regulator said.
At present, in cases of ticket purchases from travel agents, the arrangement for refund is left to the passenger and the travel agent."The option of holding the refund amount in credit shell by the airlines shall be the prerogative of the passenger and not a default practice of the airline," it noted. In the case of foreign carriers operating to and from India, the refund process would be in accordance with regulations of their country of origin. The latest CAR prescribes minimum requirements for refund of ticket purchased by persons with respect to air transport undertakings including scheduled and non-scheduled domestic operators as well as foreign carriers operating to/from India.
Accusing the Mehbooba Mufti government of failing to assess the situation after Hizbul commander Burhan Wani's killing, NC leader Omar Abdullah today said the PDP-BJP combine had "forgotten" the lessons of 2008 and 2010 when the Valley witnessed largescale protests.
The former chief minister also charged that Mehbooba Mufti was "shamelessly" trying to convey message of normalcy in the state hit by violence.
"I will not go into whether the situation is worse or not than 2008 or 2010. That is something you people have to decide. However, I feel that unfortunately, the lessons which we learnt in 2008 and 2010, the present government has forgotten them for some reasons," Omar told reporters here.
The former chief minister was speaking to media after paying tributes to the martyrs of 1931 at Martyrs graveyard in Khawaja Bazar in downtown area of the city here.
Omar, who is the working president of the opposition National Conference (NC), said either the government's assessment of the situation after Wani's killing was wrong or their preparations were not right.
"Either the present government exhibited negligence in assessing the situation after Burhan's killing or they did not prepare for the situation. Some reason out of the two is true that either their assessment was wrong or their preparations were not right.So, it is the responsibility of the government to restore normalcy," he said.
The NC leader said it was the time to reach out to the Valley with a healing touch and requested Prime Minister Narendra Modi to send specialist doctors to the Valley for treating the injured.
"Hon (Honourable) @narendramodi ji. After Kerala fire you carried a plane load of burn specialists with you.Please send eye/trauma specialists to Kashmir," he said.
"Please don't let the fact that these youngsters people have been injured in protests stop us from giving the best care possible.Thank you jenab," he said.
The NC leader also appealed to the Centre to order the forces to show restraint while dealing with the protests.
"I appeal the Centre to order the forces for exercising restraint and if people and forces can be ferried in planes, then what is the problem in getting medicine here.The about dearth of emergency medicine is coming out of the hospitals.I request them to bring medicines and other such things in the planes in which forces are being brought.
"Our doctors must be tired now, how many hours can they work? Our operation theatres are overflowing, so I appeal them that normalcy cannot be restored by ferrying people in buses, we need some concrete steps like restraint and immediate assistance to hospitals," he said.
(REOPENS DEL15)
The former chief minister said he conveyed to Home Minister Rajnath Singh, who called him on Monday, that his party's political role to restore normalcy in the Valley would only start once the killings are stopped.
"I told the Home Minister that whatever our role would be in restoring normalcy, we would do that, but before that the spate of killings has to be stopped.Same statement of restraint has come from the UN secretary general as well.
"I told him (the Home Minister) that once there is restraint and killings stop, then we will lend our hand in playing a political role to create normalcy, but if anyone has played a role for the situation to reach this point, it is the present government and the biggest responsibility for restoring normalcy is of the government as well," he said.
Omar also said that normalcy cannot be restored by having the forces "attack" ambulances and the patients inside the hospitals.
"I told the Home Minister that the visual images that we get from social media or other ways which show that ambulances are attacked, patients are attacked in hospitals, the situation will not get better by such things but would rather get worse," he said.
He said the violence and the spate of killings was now shifting to other areas of the Valley and the government, rather than trying to restore normalcy, was allegedly staging a drama to give a semblance of normalcy.
"Every day there is about killing of people from new areas. When it started, it was in south Kashmir only. Yesterday, such came from Kupwara in north Kashmir. It is shameful that rather than using the police administration to restore peace, you saw in the morning how people were ferried here in police buses just to show to the chief minister that people had attended. While coming here, I was surprised to see people in police buses leaving the spot," he said.
Omar said if the government feels the need to stage a "drama of normalcy", then they cannot restore normalcy in the Valley.
"If in this situation, these people feel the need to stage a drama and if they do not learn even in such a situation and just to create an atmosphere of normalcy, they brought people in civil to the function, then, I feel, how can this government restore normalcy if they want to keep themselves oblivious of the ground realities," he said.
Later on Twitter, the NC leader charged that the government had misplaced priorities and was shamelessly trying to convey message of normalcy.
"Brazen shamelessness of the @MehboobaMufti #BJPDP Govt, ferrying people in police buses to state function to convey normalcy has returned," Omar wrote on Twitter.
The former chief minister said more than 30 people have died and all Mehbooba and her party want to do is put up party flags and get police to ferry people to her function.
Misplaced priorities that put theatrics and falsified public participation over and above the ground realities so as to befool bosses in Delhi, Omar charged.
The NC working president said the government should have rather focused on restoring calm in the Valley.
"Shameless Government should have been focused on restoring calm and on helping our doctors who are struggling to treat 1200+ injured people," he said.
The Gujarati edition of former Indian Ambassador Pascal Alan Nazareth's widely acclaimed book 'Gandhi's Outstanding leadership' was today presented to Prime Minister Narendra Modi by the author.
The book, published by Navjivan Trust, Ahmedabad, analyses various facets of Gandhi's life, his leadership and how he was still an inspirational figure in the global scenario.
Nazareth briefed Modi about the book already published in 12 Indian and 10 foreign language editions. The book will be available in six more languages by the end of the year.
The Prime Minister, the former Ambassador said, complimented him for the work in promoting Gandhi's ideals internationally through his research, lectures and books.
"It was a very good meeting with the Prime Minister. He complimented me for my work..He also talked about his train journey to Pietermaritzburg railway station during his recent visit to South Africa," said Nazareth.
Modi had undertaken a train journey to Pietermaritzburg where an young Gandhi was evicted from a train in 1893 for refusing to obey an order to move from a first-class compartment because of his race.
Vivek Desai, Managing Trustee of Navjivcan Trust and Shobit Arya of Wisdom Tree, which is publishing the former Ambassador's next book "Gandhi: Soul Force Warrior who Revolutionised Revolution and Spiritualised It', also met Modi.
Nazareth had served in a number of diplomatic missions including in Tokyo, Lima , London and New York. He was also High Commissioner of India to Ghana and Ambassador to Liberia, Togo, Egypt, Mexico, Guatemala and El Salvador.
India should conduct an impartial probe into the use of lethal force by police during the violent protests followingthe killing of Hizbul commander Burhan Wani in Kashmir and ensure that basic human rights are protected, a leading human rights body has said.
"A major grievance of those protesting in Kashmir is the failure of authorities to respect basic human rights," Human Rights Watch (HRW) South Asia director Meenakshi Ganguly said in a statement.
"Ensuring that rights are protected and prosecuting those responsible for abuses would be an important first step," she said.
HRW said Indian authorities should credibly and impartially investigate police use of lethal force during the violent protests in Jammu and Kashmir that ensued since the killing of Hizb-ul-Mujahedin militant Wani last week.
"Rock-throwing at demonstrations is serious but does not provide police a free pass to use force against protesters," Ganguly said in a statement.
"The Indian authorities need to send a clear message that lethal force is only an option when a life is at imminent risk, and those misusing force will be held accountable," she said.
Ganguly also called on protest organisers to take steps to deter supporters from engaging in violence, including attacks on law enforcement officers.
The HRW said in a statement while law enforcement officials have a duty to protect lives and property, they should use non-violent means as far as possible and use lethal force only when absolutely necessary to save lives.
The authorities should not only investigate the use of firearms that resulted in death and injury, but also the use of pellet guns, which can cause serious injury when fired at close range or at an individual's eyes, it said.
The findings of the investigation should be public and result in appropriate disciplinary action or prosecution.
After spending nine months behind bars, quota agitation leader Hardik Patel is all set to walk out of Lajpore jail in Surat on Friday morning, days after the Gujarat High Court granted him bail in cases of sedition and violence pertaining to Patidar stir last year.
The Patidar Anamant Andolan Samiti (PAAS), of which Hardik is the convener, has planned to felicitate their leader outside Lajpore jail at around 10 AM on July 15.
As per the schedule released by PAAS today, Hardik will travel to several places during 48 hours after his release before leaving Gujarat for six months.
Last week, the HC paved the way for Hardik's release after granting him bail in two cases of sedition and a case related to violence at Visnagar MLA's office.
While granting him bail in sedition cases, the HC set a condition that Hardik will have to stay outside Gujarat for the next six months.
As per the HC direction, Hardik will have to leave Gujarat within 48 hours after his release from jail.
PAAS said that the quota leader will travel to many parts of the state during 48 hours which end before July 17 midnight.
According to PAAS, no decision is taken yet on the place where Hardik will spend six months.
After coming out of jail, Hardik's caravan will pass by different parts of Surat city, including Bhestan, Ring Road, Kapodra, Mini Bazar, and Varachha area, which are mostly dominated by Patels.
"He will then garland Sardar Patel's statues in Bhestan and Mini Bazar areas in the city," PAAS leader Dinesh Bambhaniya said while releasing the schedule.
PAAS has also planned a public gathering at Laxminarayan farm on the outskirts of Surat, subject to permission by police.
"We will arrange our programme as per the law and the instructions of the high court. We will arrange the public gathering only if the police grants us permission" said Bambhaniya, a close aide of Hardik.
From Suart, Hardik would reach Vastral area of Ahmedabad city for night stay.
"On the morning of July 16, he will go to his native place Viramgam to meet his parents. He will be welcomed by a large number of supporters. Hardik will then come back here to complete a formality in city sessions court during afternoon. Then, he will embark on a journey to Botad where he will visit Sarangpur Hanuman temple," said Bambhaniya.
After a road show in Botad, Hardik and his supporters will visit Khodaldham temple in Rajkot district and then Umiyadham temple in Jamnagar district in evening.
Both these temples are supreme bodies of Patel community.
"From Umiyadham, Hardik will come back to Viramgam via
Morbi at night. On July 17, Hardik will visit some north Gujarat towns such as Chanasma, Patan, Siddhapur, Palanpur, Idar and Vadgam. His journey will finally end at Himmatnagar. Hardik will be felicitated by Patels during his entire journey," said Bambhaniya.
When asked about where Hardik will put up for the next six months, he said, "As of now, no decision is taken about where Hardik will stay after July 17, as we are getting invitation from our supporters from across the country. It will be clear only after Hardik comes out and takes a decision about it."
Meanwhile, senior minister and the Gujarat government spokesperson Nitin Patel said, "I hope that Hardik and his supporters will keep in mind the conditions set by high court while granting bail. They should be careful in organising programmes which could create trouble".
Hardik, who had spearheaded agitation for quota for the Patidar community, was arrested in October 2015. He was accused of inciting violence to put pressure on the government to accept the demand for granting reservation to Patels under the OBC category.
Hardik's mega rally on reservation held in Ahmedabad on August 25 last year had sparked violence, in which 10 people, including one policeman, were killed and public properties and vehicles were destroyed across Gujarat.
Hardik was booked in two cases of sedition in Surat and Ahmedabad, besides under various sections of IPC along with his supporters.
In Visnagar case, Hardik and 17 others were accused of ransacking the office of Visnagar MLA Rishikesh Patel during one of the Patidar community's reservation rallies.
The much hyped multi-billion dollar Rafale deal could see some forward movement tomorrow as the top acquisition body of the Defence Ministry is set to take a review of the negotiations held so far into the purchase of the French fighters.
Defence sources said the Rafale fighter jet deal is one of the issues that will be discussed during the meeting of the Defence Acquisition Council tomorrow at the South Block.
As per the normal process, once the deal is cleared by Defence Ministry, the file will go to the Finance Ministry and then to the Cabinet Committee on Security for final clearance.
In an interview to PTI in May, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar had said he was looking at wrapping up the deal soon and this could mean by end of June or July.
Rejecting suggestions that there has been a delay in signing the contract for nearly 7.89 Billion Euros to procure the French fighter planes, the Minister said any such process takes at least 6-8 months.
The deal was announced by Modi in April last year during his visit to France when he said India would purchase 36 Rafales in a government-to-government contract.
Soon after the announcement, the Defence Ministry scrapped a separate process that was on to purchase 126 Rafales, built by French defence giant Dassault Aviation.
The current deal comes with the clause of delivering 50 per cent offsets, creating business worth at least 3 billion Euros for smaller Indian companies and generating thousands of new jobs in India through the offsets.
The commercial negotiations, as in the pricing of the planes, equipment and other issues, actually began only in mid-January this year.
Delhi's Anti-Corruption Branch today raided offices of PWD and transport departments acting on city BJP's allegations of irregularities in dismantling of the BRT corridor, triggering angry protest from Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia who dared the Centre to put Delhi government functionaries in jail.
The ACB's surprise action came two days after BJP's controversial MLA O P Sharma along with party worker and advocate Vivek Garg, lodged a complaint with ACB alleging a scam of nearly Rs 15 crore in the project.
Taking strong exception to the raids, Sisodia targeted Prime Minister Narendra Modi, saying he has not learnt any lesson from the Supreme Court's ruling restoring Congress government in Arunachal Pradesh.
"I had initiated dismantling of BRT following people's demand. We will proudly go to jail for public duty.
"You do not understand people's sentiment, you do not understand slap by courts. Modiji, put all of us into jail. Still you will not be able to stop the truth to come out," Sisodia said in a series of tweets.
ACB chief M K Meena said, "Teams have been sent to procure certain documents on the basis of the complaint.
Delhi Transport Minister, Satyendar Jain, refuted the allegation and said the tender was worth Rs 3.91 crore and the payment made to contractor amounted to Rs 3.1 crore.
Sisodia said "ACB has raided the office of PWD in connection with the dismantling of BRT corridor."
Referring to the Supreme Court order restoring the Congress government in Arunachal Pradesh, he said, "It seems that the Centre has not learnt its lesson from the Arunachal setback."
The dismantling of the 6.20-km-long BRT corridor started this January. Scrapping of the Rs 180-crore traffic project built in 2008 was one of the poll promises of Aam Aadmi Party which took a dig at the Sheila Dikshit-government for alleged copy-paste work.
The AAP government has been alleging that the ACB has been targeting AAP leaders with vindictive attitude and was putting hurdles in implementation of various welfare projects.
The AAP government has been severely critical of LG- appointed Meena whose transfer order was recently stayed.
A memorial to police in Richmond, Virginia has been vandalized with a message referring to the police killing of a black man in Louisiana.
A large red "X'' was spray-painted on the torso of the statue of an officer carrying a child, and "Justice for Alton" is written on the stones below, an apparent reference to 37-year-old Alton Sterling of Baton Rouge.
Richmond Police Deputy Chief Steve Drew told the Richmond Times-Dispatch (http://bit.Ly/29DOvJE) that people have left bouquets of flowers at the statue in Byrd Park in the memory of the five police officers killed by a black sniper in Dallas.
The chief says the statue is expected to be restored within 24 hours.
Hollywood star Robert De Niro's upcoming family comedy, "The War with Grandpa", will hit the US theatres on April 21, 2017.
The film, which will be helmed by Tim Hill, is a feature adaptation of Robert Kimmel Smith's novel of the same name, reported Variety.
The movie is being written by Lisa Addario, Joe Syracuse, Matt Ember and Tom Astle.
The story revolves around a young boy who is forced to quit his room for his Grandfather named Jack played by De Niro, the boy also carries out various pranks to get his grandpa out of his room.
Seoul said today an advanced US missile defence system will be deployed in a remote southern county and will have the capacity to protect two thirds of the country against feared attacks from the North.
The plan to deploy the powerful system, which fires projectiles to smash into enemy missiles, came last week after the United States placed North Korea's "Supreme Leader" Kim Jong-Un on its sanctions blacklist for the first time.
The move prompted objections from Russia and China, who accused Washington of flexing its military muscle in the region.
Tensions have soared since Pyongyang carried out its fourth nuclear test in January, followed by a series of missile launches that analysts say show the North is making progress toward being able to strike the US mainland.
The Terminal High Altitude Area Defence system, or THAAD, will be deployed in Seongju county about 200 kilometres southeast of Seoul, as agreed by US Secretary of Defence Ash Carter and his South Korean counterpart Han Min-Koo, according to the defence ministry in Seoul.
The deployment will be completed by the end of next year and will be able to cover up to two thirds of South Korea from North Korean missiles. It will also protect key industrial facilities, including nuclear power plants and oil depots, the ministry added.
US military bases in the South will also be protected by the missile system, but Seoul and its surrounding areas will be left out. This could mean the military deploying more US Patriot anti-air and missile defence systems in these areas, Yonhap agency reported.
There have been protests about the system's location, with residents fearing harmful economic and environmental effects.
"We hope the people and residents in Seongju... Render support" for the decision, the ministry said in a statement.
But thousands took to the streets today in Seongju town, carrying banners reading "We absolutely oppose THAAD deployment", Yonhap agency reported.
The head of the county Kim Hang-Gon and some 10 others staged a hunger strike, cut their fingers and wrote slogans in blood on banners at today's rally.
"The THAAD deployment threatens the livelihood of the country's 45,000 residents, 60 percent of whom are engaged in watermelon agriculture", a group against the deployment said in a statement.
North Korea threatened Monday to take "physical action" against the planned deployment of the powerful anti-missile system.
AAP today termed the Supreme Court order on Arunachal Pradesh as a "tight slap" on the Narendra Modi dispensation and said the Centre should take a lesson from the judgement and "stop" interfering in affairs of Delhi government and misusing agencies.
Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, a bitter critic of Modi, accused the BJP-led Centre of "subverting" the Constitution and attempting to impose "dictatorship" in the country. He chastised Modi for having "no faith" in democracy and Constitution.
"SC judgment yet another tight slap on dictatorial Modi govt. Hope Modi ji wud learn n now stop interfering in democratically elected govts," (sic) Kejriwal tweeted.
"Since coming to power, he has been trying to run the country through dictatorship by breaking opposition governments. It (government) has received two slaps from the court. One on Uttarakhand and the other on Arunachal Pradesh. I hope now Modi ji will learn to respect democracy and Constitution," he said.
Senior Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Ashutosh said the judgement would prove to be a lesson for the Centre and hoped that it will clear the bills passed by the Delhi Legislative Assembly.
"We hope the Modi government will learn lessons from the Supreme Court judgement. They are trying to create an atmosphere of fear, not allowing the Delhi government to function. We hope that they will stop interfering in the affairs of the Delhi government.
"We also hope the 23 Bills (of Delhi) which have not been given assent by the President will now be cleared," Ashutosh said.
Taking a jibe at Delhi Lt Governor Najeeb Jung, with whom the AAP has been at loggerheads over various issues, Ashutosh said he must take a lesson from the judgement and understand that he is accountable to the Constitution and not the Prime Minister's Office.
In a blow to BJP and the Centre, the apex court today ordered restoration of Congress government in Arunachal Pradesh by quashing as "unconstitutional" the Governor's decision to advance the Legislative Assembly session by a month in December last.
Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia also chose the
occasion to hit out at the Centre demanding the removal of Arunachal Pradesh Governor Jyoti Prasad Rajkhowa.
"If you have minimum prestige left, then immediately remove the Governor whose action has been deemed unconstitutional. Modi ji, learn to respect democracy. Stop punishing people of a state that elects government of another party," Sisodia tweeted.
AAP leader Sanjay Singh said the judgement is a testimony that the country can only run on the basis of Constitution and the Supreme Court is the watchdog if there is any violation.
"Those who murder democracy and the Constitution will be more cautious now. The government will now be compelled to give a serious thought that misuse of government agencies has to be stopped," Singh said.
In a major setback to BJP and the government headed by it at the Centre, the Supreme Court today ordered restoration of the Congress government in Arunachal Pradesh by quashing all decisions of the Governor that had precipitated its fall in January, holding them "violative" of the Constitution.
The apex court's verdict came as a shot in the arm for the Congress, paving the way for the return of its dismissed government headed by Nabam Tuki.
The landmark unanimous judgement by a five-judge bench set aside among other things Governor Jyoti Prasad Rajkhowa's message directing the preponing of the session and the manner of holding the proceedings of sixth session of the Assembly scheduled from January 14, 2016, to December 16-18, 2015.
The constitution bench, headed by Justice J S Khehar, ordered that status quo ante as prevailed on December 15, 2015 be restored in Arunachal Pradesh Assembly.
This is the second major blow for the Centre from the Supreme Court which had only in May ordered a fresh floor test in Uttarakhand Assembly that led to the return of the Congress government headed by Harish Rawat and lifting of the President's Rule imposed on March 27.
Reading out the operative portions of the main judgement, Justice Khehar said the order of the Governor dated December 9, 2015, preponing the session of Legislative Assembly from January 14, 2016, to December 16, 2015, is violative of Article 163 read with Article 174 of the Constitution and as such is liable to be quashed and the same is quashed.
"Secondly, the message of governor directing the manner of conducting the proceedings of the sixth session of Legislative Assembly of Arunachal Pradesh from December 16-18, 2015, is violative of Article 163 read with Article 175 of the Constitution and as such is liable to be quashed and the same is quashed," the bench said.
Thirdly, the bench said "all steps and decisions taken by the Legislative Assembly of Arunachal Pradesh in pursuant to Governor's order of December 9, 2015, are unsustainable and liable to be set aside and as such it is set aside."
Finally, the bench observed, "In view of the decision from one to three, status quo ante as it prevailed on December 15, 2015, is ordered to be restored.
Justices Dipak Misra and Madan B Lokur read a separate
and concurrent judgement stating that they do not disagree with the view of Justice Khehar but added that the conduct of the Governor should not only be impartial but should appear to be perceptibly impartial.
The court today held that all steps and decisions taken by Arunachal Pradesh Legislative Assembly in pursuance to the Governor's order of December 9, 2015, are unsustainable.
Welcoming the verdict, Tuki said it was "historic" and that it has protected democracy and ensured justice.
"The Supreme Court verdict today is a historic. It paves way to protect healthy democracy in the country," Tuki, who was the Chief Minister of Arunachal before his government was brought down, said.
The Nabam Tuki-led government was dismissed following days of turmoil after 21 of the 47 Congress MLAs rebelled against the chief minister. Arunachal Pradesh was placed under President's Rule on January 26.
Just before the apex court had reserved its verdict on February 20 this year, rebel Congress leader Kalikho Pul was sworn in as Chief Minister of Arunachal Pradesh with the support of 18 dissident Congress MLAs and two independents and 11 BJP MLAs who gave outside support in the 60-member Assembly.
The bench had earlier segregated two other sets of petitions which were filed against the subsequent promulgation of President's Rule in the state and its revocation thereafter, which had led to formation of a new government.
It had fixed these pleas for hearing after pronouncement of verdict on petitions dealing with Governor's discretionary powers in advancing the assembly session and setting the agenda of the House.
On the day the verdict was reserved in February, the bench had refused to pass an interim order on a fervent plea of Congress against the "illegal" swearing-in of Pul-led government and had said that it can "set the clock back" if the Governor's actions are found unconstitutional.
Congress had suffered a jolt when 21 of its lawmakers rebelled. Eleven BJP MLAs backed the rebels in the bid to upstage the government. Later, 14 rebel Congress MLAs were disqualified.
Hours after the Union Cabinet had decided to recommend revocation of President's Rule in Arunachal Pradesh, the apex court had on February 17 ordered maintenance of status quo in the politically fragile state till it examined judicial and assembly records on disqualification of the 14 rebel Congress MLAs by former Speaker Nabam Rebia.
On February 16, the court had also refused to pass an interim order on a plea of Congress leaders that Rajkhowa be restrained from swearing in a new government in Arunachal Pradesh.
Chinese official media and think- tanks are worried over a possible "domino effect" with surge in claims by other countries to press for their share of the South China Sea, a day after a UN-backed tribunal dealt a major blow to China's claims over the disputed maritime area.
While the verdict striking down China's historic claims evoked strong comments in the editorials, the sweeping judgement of the tribunal appointed by the Permanent Court of Arbitration made official think-tanks to predict worst case scenarios.
Jin Canrong, deputy director of the School of International Studies at the Renmin University of China, said the most important task for China at the moment is to prevent a "domino effect" among claimant states such as Vietnam in the South China Sea (SCS).
"In other words, China should prevent other countries from following the Philippines," he told state-run Global Times.
In order to prevent a "domino effect," China has several options. For example, it should prepare for a potential military conflict by continuing to conduct military drills in the SCS, Beijing-based military expert Song Zhongping was quoted as saying by the paper known for its nationalistic views.
This tough approach can send a message to other countries that suing China at The Hague's "illegal tribunal" will only lead to a tougher response from Beijing, Song said, adding that tensions in the disputed waters will rise, and China should prepare for the worst.
"China must be prepared to reduce the fallout of the arbitration case with other claimant countries," said Gu Xiaosong, an expert on Southeast Asian studies at the Guangxi Academy of Social Sciences.
Experts agreed that among the other claimant countries, including Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei, Hanoi will most likely challenge China's maritime territories.
"Vietnam occupies the biggest number of islands or islets in the South China Sea and has the biggest area of overlapping maritime claims with China," Gu said.
"With strong nationalistic sentiment, Vietnam is unlikely to back off on its claims," Gu noted.
Ei Sun Oh, principal adviser of Malaysia-based think-tank Pacific Research Centre, also said that he does not rule out the possibility of Vietnam seeking a similar arbitration, emboldened by the favourable ruling the Philippines received.
Pan Guoping, an international law expert at the Southwest University of Political Science and Law, said that since UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) stipulates that any decision rendered by a court or tribunal having jurisdiction under this section shall be final and shall be complied with by all the parties to the dispute, China can consider leaving UNCLOS to maintain its rights and claims to the SCS.
If China still remains in UNCLOS, China faces a dilemma between respecting UNCLOS and protecting the legality of China's sovereignty claims in the SCS, Pan said.
(Reopens FGN 16)
However, Jin Canrong, deputy director of the School of International Studies at the Renmin University of China, said that China still needs to use UNCLOS to protect its legal rights in other areas, such as the East China Sea dispute with Japan, because China's claim in the area is based on the principle of the "continental nature extension" in UNCLOS.
Jin stressed that China opposes the tribunal and the illegal arbitration, rather than the whole UNCLOS.
The Philippines may elevate the verdict to the UN Security Council for "law enforcement," and Japan, as the rotating president of the Security Council and another country which also has a dispute with China, will help the country place it on the agenda, said Pan.
Pan said China should use its veto power as a permanent Security Council member to prevent this illegal arbitration from taking effect.
In its editorial, the Global Times said that arbitration award is more shameless than worst predictions.
It said the final verdict is "more radical and shameless" than many people had ever expected.
"All Chinese people are outraged by this illegal verdict and the world's peace-loving public is astonished by the biased decision that may escalate regional tensions," it said.
"If the award were to be followed, China would be left with only a few isolated spots in the Nansha Islands without entitlement to any EEZ and could even be deprived of sovereignty of the waters surrounding the islands and islets," it said.
"The majority of the Nansha Islands waters would be taken up by the EEZs claimed by the Philippines and Vietnam. Besides, China could not continue with its island construction. The existing facilities might be dismantled by these two countries if they could. With the related resources being owned by Manila and Hanoi in the future, China would have to withdraw its business and other activities from the area," it said.
"This not only outrageously denies China's historic rights in the Nansha area and its legitimate maritime interests, but also overthrows the state of de facto control in the region including the Huangyan Island waters. This is ridiculous," it said.
Terming the verdict as "outrageously one-sided", China Daily said, "while preparing itself for the possibly endless 'lawfare', Beijing certainly should, and has to, ready itself for worst-case scenarios, including potential military collisions".
"The test now for Beijing is whether it can realise the pragmatic provisional arrangements it proposed. That entails proposing attractive options, and a positive response from other claimants," it added.
Making the investor account opening process easier for stock brokers, regulator has allowed them to provide certain standard documents in the electronic format after obtaining the client's consent. These bulky documents, including Rights and Obligations of stock broker, sub-broker and clients, as also that of beneficial owner and depository participant, the Uniform Risk Disclosure Documents and Guidance Note detailing Do's and Don'ts for trading on stock exchanges, need to be mandatory provided in the physical format.
The move would also help investors as it could be easier for them to store and refer to these documents in electronic format. However, the brokers would have to provide physical copies of these documents if the investors desire so.
The new direction would come into effect for all new clients from August 1, 2016.
In a circular, said: "In consultation with market participants, with a view to simplify the account opening kit, it has been decided that, stock broker/depository participant shall make available these standard documents to the clients, either in electronic or physical form, depending upon the preference of the client as part of account opening kit.
"The preference of the client shall be sought as part of the account opening form. In case the documents are made available in electronic form, stock broker/ depository participant shall maintain logs of the same."
said the stock exchanges, depositories, stock brokers and depository participants would continue to make these documents available on their website and keep the clients informed about the same.
Alleging that BJP's and RSS' agenda was to create a "Hindutva-based" nation, CPI(M) General Secretary Sitaram Yechury today said all secular and democratic forces should unite to fight their "communal onslaught".
"All secular and democratic forces should unite to fight the communal onslaught of BJP and RSS. Their agenda is to create a Hindutva-based rashtra (nation) and to fight it, we need to unite all secular and democratic forces of the country," Yechury said during an event here.
Asked if it would welcome Congress in such a group, Yechury said, "On such issues, we will cooperate with all."
"On the issue of land ordinance and on many other issues such as JNU, where Rahul Gandhi and I were on the same platform. On such issues, all the forces can come together," he said.
On terror attacks in Bangladesh, Yechury said, "West Bengal should be careful as it has the potential to affect the communal harmony in the state."
Asked about the controversy over Islamic preacher Zakir Naik, Yechury said, "There should be a proper inquiry into the matter.
After remaining in Intelligence Bureau(IB) for over 28 years, senior IPS officer A K Patnaik, who is son-in-law of former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, has been appointed as CEO of Natgrid, an integrated intelligence grid.
Patnaik, a 1983 batch IPS officer from Gujarat, was appointed as the new Chief Executive Officer of Natgrid till December 31, 2018, the date of his retirement from the service, according to an official order issued today.
The post had been lying vacant since the contract of Raghu Raman, the first CEO of Natgrid, was not renewed by the NDA government. The post was under the additional charge of former Special Secretary Ashok Prasad till January this year.
With his appointment, Patnaik, who is number three in the Intelligence Bureau, is unlikely to be in the race for the post of IB Director in 2018.
Patnaik, a 1983-batch Gujarat cadre officer, currently posted as Additional Director in the Intelligence Bureau, will be responsible for taking forward the government's efforts to set up the Natgrid, an organisation created after the 26/11 Mumbai attack.
The NATGRID, which is still in nascent stage, in different phases, will connect data providing organisations and users besides developing a legal structure through which information can be accessed by the law enforcement agencies.
In the first phase, 10 user agencies and 21 service providers will be connected, while in later phases about 950 additional organisations will be linked and another over 1,000 organisations in the subsequent years.
These data sources include records related to immigration entry and exit, banking and financial transactions and telecommunications. The agencies include the Intelligence Bureau, local police and revenue and customs departments.
While the clearance for Rs 3,400 crore project from the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) came in 2011, execution of the project slowed down after the exit of Home Minister P Chidambaram in July 2012.
There are around 70 personnel, drawn from both the government and private sectors, in NATGRID.
Separatist groups today extended the shutdown call in Kashmir till July 15 to protest against the killing of civilians in the aftermath of gunning down of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani last Friday.
"People are appealed to observe a complete strike on July 14 and 15," said a joint statement issued by Hurriyat Conference factions led by Syed Ali Shah Geelani and Mirwaiz Umar Farooq as also JKLF headed by Mohammad Yasin Malik.
The separatists had initially called for shutdown till July 11 and then they extended it by two days till today.
The statement also condemned the detention of Geelani and Mirwaiz who tried to lead separate marches towards 'Martyrs Graveyard' from their respective residences today.
Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has convened a special Cabinet meeting in Lahore on Friday to discuss the "deteriorating situation" in the violence-hit Kashmir and chalk out "future course of action" on the issue.
"The Cabinet will discuss the oppressive actions of Indian security forces against innocent civilians and the over all situation in Kashmir after the brutal assassination of Burhan Wani," the Prime Minister's Office said in a statement.
The meeting at the Governor House in Lahore will discuss the "rapidly deteriorating situation" in Kashmir and the Prime Minister will chalk out "future course of action" on the issue, it said.
The statement also noted that on the directions of the Prime Minister, the foreign office summoned Indian high commissioner to the foreign office and conveyed "strong concerns of the Pakistani government and people on rapidly deteriorating human rights situation in Kashmir and increasing oppression by Indian security forces."
It said that a detailed briefing was also given to ambassadors of all permanent members of UN security council of UN "regarding atrocities of the security forces."
India had asked Pakistan to refrain from interfering in its internal affairs after Sharif issued a statement expressing "shock" at the killing of Hizbul commander Burhan Wani.
Sharif today said the "voice and struggle" of the people of Kashmir cannot be suppressed through use of "brutal force and human rights abuses".
He said this during a meeting with PoK Parliament Special Committee Chairman and Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam Fazal (JUI-F) President Maulana Fazlur Rehman in Lahore.
During the meeting, Rehman apprised the Prime Minister on his recent talks with separatist leaders over the "human rights violations" by Indian military and paramilitary forces in Jammu and Kashmir.
Rehman said the "Kashmiri leadership looks towards Pakistan in difficult times", according to an official statement.
Sharif said, "The government and people of Pakistan respect the sentiments of their Kashmiri brethren and will continue to support the Kashmir cause at each and every forum internationally come what may."
"The resolution of the Jammu and Kashmir dispute is only possible by the realisation of the right to self-determination of the people of Jammu and Kashmir, as per the UNSC resolutions, through a fair and impartial plebiscite under UN auspices," Sharif said.
Meanwhile, Foreign Secretary also briefed the Islamabad-based Ambassadors of the member countries of the OIC Contact Group on Jammu and Kashmir (Azerbaijan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Niger) over the situation in the Valley.
In the meeting, Pakistan called on the OIC member states to raise their voice against "the blatant human rights violations" of Kashmiri Muslims.
The Foreign Secretary also briefed the Ambassadors of the European Union over the situation and emphasised the need for a fair and transparent inquiry against individuals responsible for these killings.
At least two people have died in flooding caused by powerful storms that damaged homes, washed out roads and stranded motorists in Wisconsin, Minnesota and Michigan.
In northern Wisconsin, an 84-year-old Illinois man died yesterday when his vehicle became submerged in a flooded ditch, according to Bayfield County sheriff's officials, who identified the victim as Delmar Johnson of Tower Lakes, Illinois.
A firefighter was able to rescue the man's wife, also 84, who was a passenger. The firefighter went back in the water and pulled Delmar Johnson from the vehicle, but couldn't resuscitate him, officials said.
Also in Wisconsin, the Iron County Sheriff Tony Furyk said today that Montreal firefighter Mitchell Koski died in the flooding, but the sheriff declined to provide details. Furyk said the 56-year-old Koski was also a former county board member and was once mayor of Montreal, a city of about 800 near Hurley.
In southern Michigan, a woman and her 2-year-old son were rescued yesterday evening in Jackson after lightning struck and toppled a tree onto their car, trapping them for about an hour. Storms that hit the state yesterday flooded roads and left several thousand homes and businesses without power in Jackson County.
The Michigan Emergency Operations Center was activated to provide assistance to those affected by the storms.
In Minnesota, Gov. Mark Dayton planned to travel today to Litchfield and Watkins, where in Monday's tornadoes flattened homes and uprooted trees. No serious injuries were reported.
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker declared a state of emergency on yesterday in eight northern counties, including Bayfield and Iron, where sections of major highways and secondary roads remained flooded.
The governor instructed the Wisconsin National Guard and all state agencies to help those affected by the storms.
Shiv Sena (Bal Thackeray) Punjab today said its activists will leave for Jammu and Kashmir on July 15 to interact with Amarnath yatris there in order to get first hand information on their problems.
After a meeting at Hanumangarhi temple here today, the outfit said its 'Jatha' will leave from Pathankot.
Presided jointly by state vice president Inderjit Karwal and General Secretary Gurdip Saini, the meeting asked BJP to withdraw its support to the Mehbooba Mufti government in J&K.
Karwal said Sena's state president Yog Raj Sharma will lead the 'Jatha'.
He alleged "Pakistan-sponsored terrorists" disrupt Amarnath Yatra every year.
"Under the pretext of the death of a terrorist (Hizbul commander Burhan Wani), they have once again disrupted it this year and Sena won't take it lying down," he said.
Scores of students, rights activists and lawyers on Wednesday took out a silent march at Jantar Mantar against the recent killings of civilians and a policeman in clashes between protesters and security forces in .
The participants carried placards denouncing pellet injuries caused to several youths in the Valley. They urged the government to initiate dialogue and repeal Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) to find a peaceful political solution to the issue.
turned restive following the gunning down of Hizbul poster boy Burhan Wani by security forces last week.
The demonstrators, wearing black bands, held placards bearing names of each of those killed in the streets of Kashmir. The toll in the violence has gone up to 34.
JNUSU Vice-President Shehla Rashid, who also took part in the march, said unless the government works for a long-term political solution to the Kashmir issue in keeping with the wishes of the Kashmiri people, such events will keep happening.
Secretary of All India Progressive Women's Association, Kavita Krishnan, appealed to people to open their hearts and minds to the voices of the Kashmiri people.
Several filmmakers, writers, mediapersons, activists and a large number of students of Delhi University and JNU participated in the protest.
A court here today remanded Ram Kumar, accused in the June 24 murder of young woman IT professional Swathi, to three days police custody.
While the prosecution sought five days police custody, the defence strongly objected to it, citing Ram Kumar's health condition.
He had slashed his neck when police surrounded him in their effort to arrest him. He was later treated at government hospitals in Tirunelveli and Chennai amid police protection.
Countering defence claims, the prosecution produced medical reports and a government medical doctor deposed in court stating that the accused is in a fit physical condition.
After hearing both sides, Metropolitan Magistrate, Egmore, Gopinath (he is 13th court magistrate now holding additional charge of 14th court) remanded Ram Kumar to three days police custody.
Speaking to reporters later, Assistant Public Prosecutor R Kolanchinathan said the custody was sought to question Ramkumar about issues like his antecedents and motive.
24-year old techie Swathi was murdered allegedly by Ram Kumar at Nungambakkam railway station on June 24. He was arrested on July 1 from his residence in T Meenakshipuram in Tirunelveli district.
Choreographer Terence Lewis has written a script about conflicts in a married couple's life and is looking for a right producer to bring the story on-screen.
"It is a highly sensible film, with a beautiful story. It is about the relationship of husband and wife, both choreographers, and the complications they have. I want dance to be in the background of the movie, and not on the foreground," Terence told PTI.
"I want the focus to be on the emotional aspect. I am waiting to get everything on board, the producer, actors and everyone. There is many a slip between the cup and the lip so let's wait and see," the 41-year-old choreographer said.
Terence, currently seen judging &TV's "So You Think You Can Dance", said he has been consistently getting acting offers but nothing has excited him so far.
"Since the last two years I was getting a lot of offers for acting, but nothing really excited me. I met many directors but the stories were either too cliched or looked like a copy of Hollywood," he said.
In a step to make it free of congestion, Thane has come up with a citywide hybrid simulation model for managing vehicular traffic.
Under the system, the entire traffic network of the city will be mapped and modelled digitally. This would help agencies to plan, execute and monitor traffic more efficiently, Thane Municipal Corporation said in an official release here today.
It is also a major step to make Thane congestion free and a city with smart traffic network, it said.
The model has been jointly developed by Medulla Soft Technologies Pvt Ltd India (MST) and Transport Simulation Systems Spain (TSS).
MST-TSS CEO Shantanu Sharma today submitted the final report of the model to Thane Municipal Commissioner Sanjeev Jaiswal and Mayor Sanjay More.
"The base model for the city is now ready along with various interventions and future scenarios analysed, but it will be used continuously in future for upcoming projects that will affect traffic network of the city," Sharma said.
In addition to this, a pedestrian simulation model will also be developed for safer and more efficient pedestrian mobility, the TMC said.
On the occasion, Jaiswal said this will help in realising the dream of a walkable Thane and smart mobility in the city.
The Mayor said that such exercises will help Thane to be recognised as a world class city.
Home secretary is all set to take charge as Britain's second ever woman Prime Minister on Wednesday and begin the work of taking the country out of the EU.
She succeeds David Cameron, who resigned in the wake of Brexit referendum that ended his six-year-long stint as the prime minister of Britain.
May, 59, will become the UK's second female Prime Minister (PM) after Margaret Thatcher, also known as Iron Lady, with whom May is often compared. May is also expected to boost the number of women in her frontline Cabinet team.
Indian-origin junior minister, Priti Patel, is likely to bag a promotion after she had come out strongly in favour of May as the best candidate for the top job.
May emerged as the prime minister designate on Monday after her only rival, Andrea Leadsom, withdrew from the Conservative party leadership race triggered by the UK's referendum last month in favour of Brexit.
May's spokesperson said work is already under way to set up a new department dedicated to negotiating Britain's exit from the 28-member European Union.
"Civil servants have already been charged with finding a building to house the Brexit department an indication of May's commitment to get on with delivering the verdict of the EU referendum. Brexit means Brexit and we're going to make a success of it," the spokesperson said.
Cameron, 49, who had campaigned for Britain to remain a part of the economic bloc, had announced he will be stepping down for a new prime minister to handle the Brexit negotiations.
"I came into Downing Street to confront our problems as a country and lead people through difficult decisions so that together we could reach better times. As I leave today, I hope that people will see a stronger country, a thriving economy, and more chances to get on in life," he told The Daily Telegraph in one of his farewell interviews.
Today, he will start the day with his weekly Prime Minister's Questions in the House of Commons for the 182nd and final time as prime minister.
He will be then driven up to Buckingham Palace to tender his resignation to Queen Elizabeth II after which May will have her own audience at the palace when she will accept the monarch's offer to form a new government.
She will return to No 10 Downing Street as the new prime minister and is set to move in with her husband, Philip May, later in the evening.
The Camerons, meanwhile, are all packed and ready to move into a temporary rental accommodation in central London as their own home in Notting Hill area of the city is still occupied by tenants.
They had not expected to have to move out quite so quickly and had expected to have time until September, which was the initial timeline set for the Tory leadership contest.
Tough-talking May is expected to bring a very different flavour to Downing Street, with her penchant for flambouyant shoes and no-nonsense attitude.
A toll plaza employee was today injured after some unidentified men opened fired at him following a scuffle over paying toll tax at Sohna Road in Ballabhgarh here, police said.
The injured was admitted to a hospital in sector 21 here and his condition is stated to be out of danger, they said, adding the accused had fled from the spot.
According to a police spokesman, Jogindra, a resident of Pakhal village, works at the toll plaza. This morning, he had reported to duty as usual.
In the afternoon, a car arrived at the toll plaza and on being asked to pay toll tax, the passengers refused and got into a scuffle with Jogindra and his colleagues.
Suddenly, one of them pulled out a gun and fired at Jogindra injuring him in the leg. In the ensuing melee, the miscreants managed to flee from the spot in the car, said the spokesman.
On being alerted, police arrived at the spot and launched a probe.
According to Satyanarayan, ASI, Dhauj police station, a hunt is on to nab the accused.
Telecom regulator Trai today sought public views on allowing non-telecom companies to participate in setting up public wifi hotspots, and said low- cost Wi-Fi access infrastructure could slash internet rates by up to 90 per cent, while offering faster speeds.
The regulator has sought public views by August 10 on slew of issues including regulatory hurdles, licensing restrictions, business models, interoperability between wifi networks and delicensing of more mobile airwaves.
"In this paper, 'public Wi-Fi networks' has broader meaning and not limited to the Wi-Fi hotspot created by licensed TSP/ISP at public places. There could be small entrepreneurs or even a very small entity which would like to participate in common and shared Wi-Fi network for larger public use," Trai said in its paper on Proliferation of Broadband through Public Wi-Fi Networks.
Other issues that would be deliberated by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India include policy measures to encourage policy measures required to encourage the deployment of commercial models for city-wide Wi-Fi networks as well as expansion of Wi-Fi networks in remote or rural areas.
The public views have also been sought on adoption of a "hub-based model" where a central third party Authentication, Authorization and Accounting hub will facilitate interconnection, authentication and payments and who should own and control such hub.
The regulator said that it is estimated that cost per MB in Wi-Fi Network could be less than 2 paise per MB while consumers on an average are paying around 23 paise per MB for the data usage in the cellular network like 2G, 3G and 4G.
"This shows that the consumer tariff for data may reduce as much as one-tenth in Wi-Fi compared to mobile data. From the above, it is obvious that deployment of Wi-Fi network will not only enhance the speed of internet but also it will make data affordable to consumers," Trai said.
The regulator said that status of Wi-Fi hotspots in India is not encouraging as while the country represents one-sixth of the world population but its share in Wi-Fi hotspots is less than one-thousandth.
Globally, the increase in number of Wi-Fi hotspots from 2013 to 2016 has been 568 per cent whereas India has an increase of 12 per cent only.
At present, there are only 31,518 with 13,967 installed in cafes, Trai said.
A Hague arbitration tribunal's decision rejecting China's claims of 'historic right' on South China Sea (SCS) was a "breathtaking and sweeping decision" and the parties concerned should abide by the ruling, an American expert on China said today.
The verdict also reinforced that "law, and not politics, is the basis of decision-making at sea", Peter Dutton, director of China Maritime Studies Institute, US Naval War College, Washington, said.
Sharing his "personal views" on this matter from the US over a Skype interaction with audiences here and in Delhi, he said the arbitration process was UN-backed and therefore it was 'mandatory' that it be respected.
"It's a pretty breathtaking and sweeping decision. It is very important that it was unanimous decision, by very learned scholars of (laws of) international seas and judges of international tribunal. All are unanimous in supporting this decision," he said.
"They reinforced that law and not politics is the basis of decision-making at sea. It is a strong reinforcement of international law over power politics," he said.
Further, it was a 'rebuke' of China's 'behaviour' over SCS, he added.
Dutton was of the opinion that the verdict had paved the way for other countries like Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei to pursue their Exclusive Economic Zones.
The Hague-based tribunal had yesterday concluded that there was no legal basis for China to claim historic rights within the sea areas falling within the 'nine-dash line', a verdict rejected by China and welcomed by Philippines.
The US had said the verdict gave a new opportunity to address maritime disputes peacefully, while India had urged all concerned to show "utmost respect" to the verdict.
UK has offered technical support and cooperation to Haryana to set up medical colleges, training of paramedics and other supporting staff posted in government hospitals in the state.
British High Commissioner Sir Dominic Asquith, who held a meeting with Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar here today also evinced keen interest in mutual collaboration in other key areas of Smart city project, aero-space, defence skill education, health care, agro-industries, textile, bio-energy and food processing.
Khattar said that a scheme has been prepared to open a medical college in each district of the State to provide quality medical education to the students and prepare sufficient number of new doctors to meet future requirement.
He said that UK could lend its support in raising infrastructure of these colleges and also in introducing training programmes for paramedics and other supporting staff posted in government hospitals.
"Apart from this, it could also share its expertise with Haryana in the field of primary health care," Khattar said.
Referring to the offer made by the High Commissioner to introduce english training programmes in Haryana, the CM appreciated this, saying that the State government would look forward to implement it in selected government schools on pilot basis.
Dominic Asquith informed Khattar that British Council, Chandigarh was already running various english training programmes for teachers and students to further enhance their skills.
Referring to the Smart City project of central government, Khattar said that two cities of Haryana--Karnal and Faridabad--have been selected in the list of 100 cities to be developed as Smart Cities in the country.
He said though Gurgaon could not find place in the list of Smart Cities, yet it would be developed as a smart city for which funds would be provided by the State government.
The High Commissioner said that it could be a good opportunity for British companies having specialisation in project design management to partner Haryana in developing such cities, the release quoting him said.
It was informed in the meeting that keeping in view the space crunch in Delhi for government buildings including embassies of various foreign countries, two towers namely India Tower and International Tower were proposed to be constructed in the 'Global City' being developed in Gurgaon.
It was also informed that the state government has a
plan to develop a series of sector-specific theme parks along the 135 km long Kundli-Manesar-Palwal Expressway to ensure systematic economic development along the highway.
The expressway passes through six districts of Sonepat, Rohtak, Jhajjar, Gurgaon, Mewat and Palwal. The Palwal-Manesar stretch of the Kundli-Manesar-Palwal (KMP) Expressway has already been completed and made operational.
Further, it was also informed in the meeting that an aviation hub is being developed in Hisar, which will also have Maintenance Repair and Overhaul (MRO) facility. About 3000 acres of land is available with the government for this project.
"Many leading companies, including the Pratt and Whitney, which is an American aerospace manufacturer, have shown keen interest in this project," it said.
It was informed that the CM also held special meetings with Defence Minister and other Ministers concerned for getting early clearance of this project.
The United Nations warned today of the risk of fresh fighting in South Sudan after days of deadly gun battles that have sent thousands of people fleeing and prompted the urgent evacuation of foreign nationals.
Fears of a humanitarian crisis were growing with aid agencies -- themselves forced to restrict their work because of the security situation -- saying there were shortages of food and water.
A fragile ceasefire nevertheless appeared to be holding in the capital Juba for the second day after a sudden flare-up in fighting last week that threatened to drive the world's newest country back into all-out civil war.
As the guns remained silent, President Salva Kiir said he was granting an amnesty, with effect from today, to the ex-rebels loyal to longtime rival Riek Machar who battled government troops in Juba over four days.
But the situation remains precarious, UN peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous told the Security Council.
"We remain very worried about the potential for the resumption of violence and spill-over into other parts of the country, as we have seen in the past," he said.
Thousands of South Sudanese were clamouring to cross the border into Uganda, while Germany and Italy said they were evacuating their nationals and other foreigners.
The United Nations said around 36,000 people had fled their homes for the perceived safety of UN bases, churches and aid agency compounds since the unrest erupted on Friday.
"There are bodies in the streets, shops have been looted, markets closed, people are queueing for food and families are desperately trying to leave the city," said Peter Walsh, South Sudan country director for charity Save the Children.
In Nimule, the closest border point 200 kilometres (120 miles) to the south of Juba, UN refugee agency officials estimated as many as 20,000 people may be seeking to cross into Uganda.
Those who made it across said South Sudanese soldiers were preventing people from crossing, or relieving them of their possessions before allowing them to pass.
"I only kept two cooking pots, the clothes the children and I were wearing, and one change each, and my handbag," said Mary Modo, a 40-year-old mother of five.
Evacuation flights for foreign nationals were able to leave the international airport in Juba, although commercial flights were not expected to resume until Thursday.
More people ventured on to the streets of the capital, which lies on the banks of the White Nile, but many remained cautious.
"No gunshots today. I have seen no tank, no helicopter," said a resident who did not want to be named. "There are a lot of soldiers and policemen in the streets patrolling.
The United Nations warned of fresh fighting in South Sudan, after days of deadly gun battles that have sent thousands fleeing and sparked the evacuation of foreign nationals.
Fears of a humanitarian crisis were growing with aid agencies -- themselves forced to restrict their work because of the security situation -- saying there were shortages of food and water.
A fragile ceasefire nevertheless appeared to be holding in the capital Juba for the second day after a sudden flare-up in fighting last week that threatened to drive the world's newest country back into all-out civil war.
As the guns remained silent, President Salva Kiir said, he was granting an amnesty, with effect from Wednesday, to the ex-rebels loyal to longtime rival Riek Machar who battled government troops in Juba over four days.
But the situation remains precarious, UN peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous told the Security Council.
"We remain very worried about the potential for the resumption of violence and spill-over into other parts of the country, as we have seen in the past," he said yesterday.
Thousands of South Sudanese were clamouring to cross the border into Uganda.
President Barack Obama on Wednesday announced the deployment of 47 troops to protect the US embassy and its staff.
"Although equipped for combat, these additional personnel are deployed for the purpose of protecting US citizens and property," Obama wrote in a letter to Congress released by the White House.
Obama also said that 130 more personnel were positioned in Djibouti and ready to deploy if necessary.
While US troops will not have a combat role, their presence will not go unnoticed by rival factions.
Meanwhile Germany and Italy said they were evacuating their nationals and other foreigners, although commercial flights were not expected to resume until today.
Around 200 people, including the hundred or so Germans living in South Sudan, were evacuated to Uganda by the German air force, the foreign ministry in Berlin said.
Residents from Britain, France Australia, the United States, Poland and elsewhere were also on the German flights, as well as three Chinese UN peacekeepers.
The United Nations said around 36,000 people had fled their homes for the perceived safety of UN bases, churches and aid agency compounds since the unrest erupted on Friday.
Uttar Pradesh Governor Ram Naik today met Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh and discussed with him various issues concerning the state.
Sources said the Governor is said to have conveyed to the Home Minister about his assessment on prevailing political and law and order situation in Uttar Pradesh.
The Governor's visit to Delhi came a week after he had sent a "special" report, prepared by the state government, to President Pranab Mukherjee on the alleged migration of Hindus from Kairana, Mathura's Jawahar Bagh incident as well as the Dadri lynching.
The report was submitted by state Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav to the Governor on June 26.
A controversy erupted over BJP MP Hukum Singh's claim that Hindus were forced to 'migrate' from Kairana, which was affected in the 2013 riots in Muzaffarnagar and its surrounding areas, due to law and order issues.
Ruling Samajwadi Party, however, trashed charges of "exodus", accusing the BJP of vitiating the communal atmosphere in the state ahead of the 2017 Assembly polls.
Mohammad Akhlaq, 52, was beaten to death on September 28 last year in Bisahra village of Dadri by a mob infuriated by rumours that he and his family had stored and consumed beef, triggering a fierce debate over intolerance in the country.
Violent clashes broke out between the police and illegal encroachers during an anti-encroachment drive at Jawahar Bagh on June 2 leaving 29 people dead including two police officers.
In his report, Yadav had apprised Naik on action taken on his directive over the grabbing of government land and encroachments in Mathura, sources said.
The US today said it has launched a new trade enforcement action at World Trade Organisation against China's export duties on nine different raw materials.
When China joined the WTO, China agreed to eliminate its export duties on these products, but it has failed to follow through on this commitment, US Trade Representatives (USTR) Mike Froman said.
The latest action is the 13th trade enforcement case the Obama Administration has launched against China at the WTO - more than any other WTO country over the same period.
The US has won every case that has been decided so far.
USTR said the export duties imposed by China provide substantial competitive advantages for Chinese manufacturers by making them more expensive for US manufacturers that rely on these raw materials to produce their downstream goods.
These nine raw materials - antimony, cobalt, copper, graphite, lead, magnesia, talc, tantalum, and tin - are key inputs into high-value Made-in-America products in vital industrial sectors, including aerospace, automotive, electronics and chemicals.
China's export duties provide an unfair competitive advantage to China at the expense of American workers and manufacturers, USTR alleged.
"It all comes down to fair competition-a notion that is fundamental to who we are as Americans," Vice President Biden said in a statement.
"One of the most important ways we have done that is by enforcing our trade laws-more aggressively than any previous Administration in history. Because here's what I know-given a level playing field, American businesses and American workers will out-compete anyone. Period," he said.
"These duties are China's attempt to game the system so that raw materials are cheaper for their manufacturers and more expensive for ours," said Froman.
"This scheme is directly at odds with WTO commitments China has made, and as we've shown time and again, we will hold them accountable to their commitments. This case is part of the Administration's continuing work to level playing field for American workers and manufacturers in order to grow our economy and support quality jobs here at home," Froman added.
A prominent Catholic priest from the United States today expressed concern over "persecution" of the church across the world but praised India for its remarkable sense of harmony and friendship among religions.
Timothy Cardinal Dolan, Cardinal Archbishop of New York, said he has heard from the head of Syro-Malabar Church, Cardinal George Alencherry, that India's ancient Hindu culture is open to all religions.
"We are much worried about the persecution of church around the world," the Church leader said when asked about his views on Islamic State.
"What I hear...India is vast with a remarkable sense of harmony, friendship among religions. You have the ancient Hindu culture, which is really open to other religions. You have Islamic presence and of course you have Christian presence," Dolan, currently on a visit to Kerala, told reporters here.
Referring to incidents of attacks on churches in India, he said those who indulge in such violent acts are a "tiny tiny" section of extremists.
"They do not represent the country," he said.
Dolan said he was told that there are incidents of "some harassment and some persecution" but the climate in India is one of amity, friendship and respect.
He also said there is freedom of religion in the US.
"We don't have persecution," he said, adding, the United States was built on the principle of freedom of religion.
Asked about his views on gay marriages, the Cardinal Archbishop of New York said, "The Catholic Church in United States, we stay with the Bible.
The US has urged countries in the Asia Pacific region not to engage in "escalatory or provocative" actions in the following a decisive ruling by an tribunal over the disputed region.
The Hague-based Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) in its order invalidated China's expansive sea claims surrounding disputed areas of the .
In 2013, the Philippines challenged China's attempts to establish control over an area encompassing nearly 90% of the .
China has refused to accept or implement the order.
"We certainly would encourage all parties to acknowledge the final and binding nature of this tribunal. We certainly would urge all parties not to use this as an opportunity to engage in escalatory or provocative actions," White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest told reporters yesterday while travelling with US President Barack Obama to Dallas.
Earnest said the US was not a claimant to any land features in the South China Sea.
"Our interest lies in a desire for a peaceful resolution to disputes and competing claims in that region," he said.
Earnest said the US wanted to preserve the freedom of navigation and free flow of commerce in that region of the world.
Noting that the South China Sea is a strategically important region of the world, he said, it is also is a route for billions of dollars in commerce.
"It is important to the US economy that that flow of commerce not be significantly disrupted. That's why we have gone to great lengths to make clear that we're not a claimant, Earnest said.
"We're not taking sides in the claims, but we do strongly urge all parties with relevant claims - many of which are competing - to resolve their differences peacefully and through established processes like arbitration," he said.
State Department Spokesman John Kirby said if China failed to abide by the ruling, it would be in breach of law.
"The world is watching now to see what these claimants will do. The world is watching to see if China is really the global power it professes itself to be and the responsible power that it professes itself to be. The world's watching this," Kirby said.
"I understand that the Chinese have made an argument that they're not going to abide by it. I've heard that loud and clear. But that doesn't change the fact that it's still a legally binding obligation. It is the world's expectation that China will abide by its obligations under this legally binding decision," he said in response to a question.
Daniel J Kritenbrink, Senior Director for Asian Affairs, National Security Council at the White House said the US believed that claimants in the South China Sea can and should use the Tribunal's decision as a new opportunity to renew efforts to address their maritime disputes peacefully.
"We encourage claimants to clarify their maritime claims in accordance with law, as reflected in the Law of the Sea Convention, and to work together to creatively manage and resolve their disputes," Kritenbrink said.
He said the US viewed the South China Sea in the context of the global rules-based international order America seeks to uphold, both in the Asia-Pacific region and worldwide.
"Our strategy is guided by sustaining the principles at the heart of the rules-based international order:namely, customary international law, unimpeded lawful commerce, freedom of navigation and overflight for civilian and military assets, and peaceful resolution of disputes," he said.
Kritenbrink said the US was not prepared to accept the emergence of a different set of rules in the South China Sea relative to the rest of the world.
"We believe such a development would lead to breakdowns in the rules-based international order. Over time, such a trend could unravel the international legal order - and therefore the peace and stability - that we and the rest of the international community have enjoyed over the past 70-plus years," Kritenbrink asserted.
"That is the logic underpinning why the US takes such a strong position on upholding the rights, freedoms, and lawful uses of the sea and airspace guaranteed to all countries, and in ensuring that these same rights and freedoms apply in the South China Sea the same as they do in every other part of the world" he said.
"We see these efforts as linked to our broader national security interest in preserving and strengthening order globally," Kritenbrink said.
During a conference call with reporters, a State Department official said the decision announced by the Law of the Sea Tribunal in The Hague was a "very sweeping and decisive ruling."
"Four key elements from our point of view are, first, the invalidation of the nine-dash line claim; secondly, the determination that the features in the Spratly Islands and the Scarborough Reef are entitled to no more than 12 nautical miles by way of maritime space; that the construction of artificial islands by China and the conduct of Chinese fishing fleets violated the rights of the Philippines; and that the large-scale reclamation and constructing these military outposts in the Spratlys damage the environment," the official said.
The official said the US strongly believed that once the dust settles and the rhetoric subsides, this decision opens the door to some very practical and potentially productive discussions among the various claimants in the South China Sea, in part because the ruling significantly narrows the geographic scope of the areas in question.
"So we are working diplomatically with each of the parties to try to encourage them to use this decision as the basis for discussions and potentially the basis for agreement on what constitutes acceptable behaviour in the disputed areas and to explore the potential down the road for things like joint development," the official said on condition of anonymity.
Congress in Uttarakhand today hailed the Supreme Court verdict quashing President's Rule in Arunachal Pradesh and paving the way for reinduction of the party's government in the northeastern state saying the historic ruling will increase people's faith in democracy and the judicial system.
The historic judgement by the Supreme Court proves that imposition of President's Rule in Arunachal Pradesh by the BJP government at the Centre was undemocratic and uncalled for. It was a murder of the spirit of democracy, Pradesh Congress President Kishor Upadhyay said.
Accusing BJP of tainting the country's politics by toppling or seeking to topple democratically elected opposition governments in Arunachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Orissa, Bihar and Delhi, Upadhyay said the country's enlightened masses will take cognisance of the sins committed by the party in times to come and teach it a befitting lesson.
Describing the apex court's verdict as "historic" as it symbolised the victory of Indian democracy and the Constitution, Upadhyay congratulated the people of Arunachal Pradesh and his party colleagues in that state for their triumph over undemocratic forces.
In a major blow to the BJP government at the Centre, the Supreme Court today quashed President's rule in Arunachal Pradesh and ordered reinstatement of the Congress government there.
A veteran Communist leader today accused India of attempting to topple Prime Minister K P Oli-led government to derail growing Nepal-China ties.
Talking to reporters in Bhaktapur near here, Nepal Workers and Peasants Party Chairman Narayan Man Bijukchhe said Nepali Congress President Sher Bahadur Deuba and CPN Maoist Centre Chairman Prachanda were trying to topple the CPN-UML Chairman Oli-led government under the direction of the southern neighbour.
He said that India wanted to topple the Oli government which was planning to ensure an early visit of Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Xi's visit could be a significant achievement for Nepal, he said.
"If the new government would not move ahead toward implementing various agreements signed with China, it could be disastrous for Nepal," warned Bijukchhe.
Bijukchhe said that a new government would complicate implementation of the new Constitution and could not resolve the issue relating to Madhesi people, mostly of Indian-origin.
The task of post-earthquake reconstruction and distribution of relief material to the flood affected people could be hamper due to the change in government, he said.
Omni channel online travel network Via.Com has partnered with taxi aggregator Ola, to allow over 75,000 of its customers, that include travel agents, to book Ola rides for local and outstation travel on the Via.Com platform.
The integration will in-turn give Ola customers access to availability, booking, estimation and tracking across categories, directly on the Via.Com app and website.
With this integration, Via.Com will now provide solutions from flights and hotel bookings to cab bookings for local as well as outstation mobility needs, a joint statement from Via and Ola said.
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Vistara, Axis launch co-branded credit cards * Full service carrier Vistara and leading private sector lender Axis Bank today entered into a partnership to launch co-branded premium credit cards.
While Axis Bank already has a similar tie-up with the German carrier Lufthansa, this is first of its kind with a domestic carrier for it.
Under the partnership,the bank will offer three variants of contactless cards to its existing banking customers.
The cards come with an annual fee of Rs 1,500, Rs 3,000 and Rs 10,000 for the top-end variety and are aimed at corporate and leisure travellers and the members get free upgrades and other loyalty benefits on buying tickets with this cobranded card.
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ISBM collaborates with Pearson Education * Indian School of Business Management and Administration (ISBM) has joined hands with British multinational publishing company Pearson Education.
ISBM and Pearson will give the students access to their learning resources online. The content provided will include videos, powerpoint presentations and PDFs. Also, it will include mock tests and questionnaires.
"ISBM and Pearson together will be committed to provide educational services in all available media spanning the learning curve from birth through university and beyond," ISBM Executive Director Vinay M Agarwal said.
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L&T Mutual Fund launches investor education initiative * L&T Mutual Fund has launched an investor education initiative, in collaboration with The Learning Curve Academy.
The initiative titled 'Finance GYM' aims to reach out to around 1,500 students across some of the top colleges in Mumbai.
The initiative aims to connect with students through various mediums such as an online simulation game, interactive in-classroom activities and physical collaterals for reference.
Prasad inaugurates NKN-GEANT collaboration in Latvia
* IT and Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad today innaugurated NKN-GEANT peering at Tallinn University of Technology in North European country Latvia.
"Collaboration with counterparts in Europe via GEANT and within Asia via TEIN has opened new doors for NKN connected institutions across India. I believe that the high-speed data exchange among the participating institutions will be of immense mutual benefit for researchers from both India and Europe," a statement quoted Prasad as saying.
GEANT is the leading collaboration on network and related infrastructure and services for the benefit of research and education. It serves the research and education networking community in Europe, helping them to deliver innovative networks, technologies and services for research and education.
Prasad's visit to the University in Latvia is part of Modi Government outreach programme to foreign countries. Latvia is one among the 68 countries not visited by any minister in the Modi government.
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Dredging Corp posts Rs 4 cr profit for Apr-Jun * Dredging Corporation of India today said its net profit plunged by 82.9 per cent to Rs 4 crore for the quarter ended June 30, 2016.
The company had posted a net profit of Rs 23.51 crore in the year-ago period, Dredging Corporation of India Ltd said in a filing to BSE.
Total income from operations declined to Rs 142.53 crore, over Rs 167.83 crore in the corresponding quarter of previous fiscal.
The total expenses declined to Rs 135.65 crore, over Rs 142.83 crore in the year-ago period.
Vistara, which was in the forefront to get the 5/20 rule partially scrapped, today said it "will not be rushing into international operations" and that something towards this is "unlikely before June 2018", when it will get the delivery of the 20th aircraft.
"We are not rushing into international operations. It's not a race for us. But we will definitely do it. We will get the delivery of our 20th plane by the first half of 2018.
"So, with the government retaining the 20-plane clause for international operations, I think we will be able to take a call only after that. Of course, we are reviewing and refining our international strategy," Vistara chief strategy and commercial officer Sanjiv Kapoor told PTI today.
Kapoor, who joined the Tata Sons and Singapore Airlines promoted Vistara only recently, further said their international operations will begin with the Saarc markets and the Gulf as their present set of planes (A320s) could serve short-haul markets the best.
Kapoor, who was here to launch a co-branded credit card with Axis Bank, also said the airline, which has only 11 aircraft at present, will get the delivery of two more A320s by October.
"The first set of routes that we will launch internationally, will be the routes that can be flown by our existing aircraft (A320s which are narrow body planes by Airbus) which will be routes within three, three-and-a-half hours from our Delhi hub," Kapoor said.
"So, that means South Asian nations will be our first focus international destinations along with the Gulf," he said, adding markets like Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, the Maldives, Sri Lanka and even Afghanistan have great potential.
He said Pakistan is of course the largest market, but that is not likely to happen given the relations between the two nations.
Last month, the government had partially scrapped the contentious 5/20 rule, which mandated an airline to have five years of domestic operational experience and 20 planes to become eligible for international operations, by removing the five years of domestic operational experience clause.
The new rules came in despite strong opposition and hectic lobbying by older rivals such as Jet Airways, Spicejet and Indigo.
Under the new rules, domestic airlines can fly overseas
provided they deploy 20 aircraft or 20 per cent of their capacity in the domestic market, whichever is higher.
It can be noted that the newest airline Vistara and the budget carrier AirAsia India were behind the campaign to end the 5/20 rule. Now they are speeding up their fleet expansion so they can fly overseas sooner and compete with local rivals Jet Airways and state-owned Air India.
Earlier this month, Vistara chief executive Phee Teik Yeoh had said that the airline was readying a long-term plan for starting international operations and that he would meet the board with a plan within the next two months.
"There is no stopping us from preponing our aircraft deliveries, but we would like to go overseas only when we are ready. It's not about to be the first, or the earliest, and not so much about how fast we go. I don't see how all this can be done in the next 9-12 months. Easily, it's a minimum one-year affair," Yeoh had said earlier this month.
Yeoh had also said advancing the plane delivery is something that he would not rule out. "Advancing just to go overseas is not good enough. We should not lose sight of the fact that we have domestic operations to run," he had said.
He had further said that the airline would induct wide-bodied, long-haul planes and consider starting direct flights to Britain and the US.
Vistara, which started operations on January 9, 2015, connects 17 cities now and Port Blair will be the 18th destination from October, Kapoor said today.
Kapoor also said the airline has been witnessing steady increase in its loads factor, which is amongst the highest now at 90 per cent economy class and 80 per cent for overall three seating configuration.
Vistara is the only airline in the country that offers a three-class configuration with the economy, the premium economy and the business class, he said.
The Delhi Waqf Board today said it will soon file police complaints against persons and organisations who have encroached upon its properties in the national capital.
"Earlier, police did not register cases on the complaints of the Waqf Board against encroachers of its properties but now a court order has directed the police to register cases in such matters," a Delhi Waqf Board official said in a statement.
The Rohini court, in its July 1 order, has directed Delhi Police to register FIR against five accused encroachers for forging documents of the Waqf Board properties. This order has paved way for registering cases against others who have been encroaching upon Board's properties, he said.
The order came in a case of encroachment on Waqf properties in Narela by the accused persons.
Despite several attempts, local police did not register the FIRs after which Waqf board approached a Rohini court which directed police to register cases, he said.
"The court order has strengthened Delhi Waqf Board's view that FIRs must be immediately registered in cases of encroachment. Board is now preparing to lodge cases against the encroachers of its properties," said the official.
Delhi Waqf Board has a total of 1,964 properties and its list includes the names of more than 1,100 encroachers against whom it now plans to register cases.
The Gujarat government today told the High Court that the data related to missing children from the state posted on the website managed by the Union Women and Child Development Ministry had not been updated since 2007.
The government gave this information in an affidavit filed before a division bench of chief justice R Subhash Reddy and justice Vipul M Pancholi.
Last month, the Gujarat High Court had directed the state government to file an affidavit on the number of missing children in the state. The direction had been given based on a PIL which claimed that over 22,000 children had gone missing in the state in last one year.
"The total figure of missing children from 2007 till date has been put up on the website without regularly revising it, which is why the number appears large," the government said in the affidavit.
However, the affidavit did not provide any specific number of missing children.
The PIL, filed by Girish Das, had said that according to a website on missing children managed by the Union Ministry of Women and Child Development, more than 22,000 children went missing in Gujarat between May 2015 and May 2016, of whom only 11,066 were found.
Das had raised a question on the "staggering high number of children missing in the state" and sought the court's direction to the police to file FIR for each missing child complaint. He had also sought the court's direction to Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to restart the missing children cell.
The cell was started some years ago by CBI on the direction of the Delhi High Court but was stopped as the government failed to provide the right infrastructure, the PIL states.
Notwithstanding an NCRB report which stated that Madhya Pradesh recorded highest number of rapes in the country, DGP Rishi Kumar Shukla today said women feel secure in the state.
"Women feel secure in the state. As far as the crimes against them are concerned, we are continuously taking action against criminals," said Shukla, who took the charge as top cop on June 30.
Recently, Crime Record Bureau (NCRB) in its report "Crime in India 2014" stated that the highest number of rapes (5,076) were committed in MP.
However, the Director General of Police said the NCRB figures were not a cause of worry but a challenge for state police. "These figures give us an account of the trend in crime and suggest us the area to focus on," he added.
To a query, Shukla said, "We register cases promptly and due to which the figures of crime appears drastically high sometimes."
"My daughters stayed in a hostel and studied for four years in MP. I was never worried about their safety. But if they had studied in other state, I would have been a worried man thinking whether they return to their hostel after 9 PM or not?," he said.
Shukla said nearly 500 people die in road accidents in Indore every year, which he said was much higher than the number of murders.
He said efforts will be launched to improve traffic system to check road mishaps.
The DGP said many brutal crimes are the fallout of alcohol consumption and that police will work to address the issue.
AirAsia Chief Executive Tony Fernandes flew into the UK to finalise an order for 100 Airbus A321neo jets to support the low-cost airline's expansion, confident of striking a deal at bargain prices as planemakers brace for a slowdown.
The 185-seat A321neo is worth $125.7 million per plane at list prices, but AirAsia is expected to pay a fraction of that after placing orders for hundreds of jets and establishing itself as one of Airbus's largest customers.
Fernandes told a conference the A321neos were in addition to the A320neos, and not replacements. Some of the new jets would be for the Malaysian-based airline's leasing business, he added.
"With this aircraft we believe we will hit 100 million passengers in the not-too-distant future," Fernandes said, adding negotiations started over a meal in an Iranian restaurant in London last year, for which he said he paid the bill.
People familiar with the matter told on Sunday that AirAsia was studying a dual listing in Hong Kong and moving toward setting up a joint venture in China as part of plans to become a pan-Asian player.
The company said in a statement earlier on Tuesday that it was not currently pursuing any new joint venture proposals and was not formally considering a dual-listing.
But Fernandes told reporters that if AirAsia had an opportunity to be in China, "we will 100 percent be there."
AirAsia was interested in connecting secondary and tertiary cities in China, he said, adding the company's new head of North Asia had a very clear mandate to build businesses in that area.
The plane order triggered fraught last-minute negotiations for the contract to supply engines, with papers spread out in the corner of an airline award ceremony, but AirAsia was not expected to drop usual supplier CFM for rival Pratt & Whitney.
Separately, India's GoAir said it had signed a preliminary agreement to buy 72 A320neos, worth around $7.7 billion at current list prices and doubling an existing order.
QATAR BUYS INTO LATAM
Europe's Airbus and U.S. rival Boeing have enjoyed years of strong growth thanks to rising air travel and demand for new fuel-efficient models.
On Monday, they both increased their forecasts for aircraft demand over the next 20 years, betting rising wealth in Asia would continue to boost airline passenger numbers.
But analysts are worried growing risks to the global economy, from slowing growth in China to Britain's decision to leave the European Union, could dry up orders or even lead to some cancellations.
Indeed, air show participants report a lower level of dealmaking than in recent years.
Airbus sales chief John Leahy expressed confidence that record production plans would be upheld, thanks in part to a strategy of building up spare orders, but some airlines that have dominated previous events are widely said to be quietly rescheduling their orders for Airbus or Boeing jets.
"For both Boeing and Airbus, the question still isn't whether or not all the aircraft they produce will have a taker, but who this taker will be and at what price," said Bertrand Grabowski, managing director at Germany's DVB Bank.
Fernandes said his airline, which now has ordered a total of 575 Airbus jets, saw brisk growth across the region and could have bought even more. The airline had come through recent share price turbulence and "stuck to its guns," he added.
But several aerospace delegates and analysts expressed concern at what they see as a rush to supply airplanes to the Southeast Asia region and elsewhere, with uncertain implications for investors in manufacturers like Airbus and Boeing.
"They are valued off an optimistic picture of 2019 and 2020, not off a very expensive and underpeforming near term," said Agency Partners Nick Cunningham.
Underscoring the growing clout of Asia and the Middle East in the industry, Qatar Airways meanwhile announced a deal to buy up to 10 percent of Latin America's largest airline LATAM Airlines in a $613 million deal.
That follows the Gulf airline's purchase last year of 15 percent of British Airways owner International Airlines Group , which like Qatar and LATAM is a member of the Oneworld airline alliance.
Boeing said an undisclosed Chinese customer had signed a commitment for 30 of its 737 family of planes, in a deal worth more than $3 billion at list prices, while European travel firm TUI finalised an order for 10 737 MAX 8 jets and one 787-9, worth $1.4 billion at catalog prices.
Airbus confirmed an order from German airline Germania for 25 A320neos, worth $2.6 billion, confirming a report.
(Additional reporting by Sarah Young, Andrea Shalal and Cyril Altmeyer; Editing by Mark Potter)
MUMBAI (Reuters) - Indian airline Vistara will feature South Asian nations among its first international destinations, a senior executive said on Wednesday, as it devises its strategy after the government eased restrictions on flights abroad last month.
Vistara, a venture of the Tata group and Singapore Airlines Ltd, is "reviewing and refining" its plan for overseas routes and will decide on aircraft orders afterwards, Chief Strategy and Commercial Officer Sanjiv Kapoor said at an event.
"The first set of routes that we will launch internationally will be the routes that can be flown by our existing aircraft, the A320s, which will be routes within three, three-and-a-half hours of India," Kapoor said, referring to narrow-body aeroplanes built by Airbus Group SE.
"Regional routes and SAARC, essentially," he said, referring to member countries of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation.
Under new rules, domestic airlines can fly overseas as long as they deploy 20 aircraft or 20 percent of capacity in India, whichever is higher. Airlines previously had to wait five years before they were permitted to fly international routes.
Vistara and AirAsia India - a budget carrier also owned by Tata and Malaysia's AirAsia Bhd - are speeding up fleet expansion so they can fly overseas sooner and compete with local rivals such as Jet Airways (India) Ltd and state-owned Air India Ltd which already fly internationally.
Vistara has leased 11 A320s and will add two more this year. It originally targeted 20 planes by June 2018 but a person familiar with the company's plan said last month the carrier would seek more.
The airline may also consider wide-body aircraft, the person said.
Low-cost carriers (LCCs) in India such as SpiceJet Ltd and InterGlobe Aviation Ltd's IndiGo also fly overseas but mainly on short-haul routes.
"LCCs thus far have not been able to really make the business model work on long-haul international routes. And that is the segment that we are very keen on, along with medium- and short-haul international," said Vistara's Kapoor.
(Reporting by Devidutta Tripathy; Writing by Aditi Shah; Editing by Christopher Cushing)
Cairn Energy's decision to seek compensation from Indian government at an international tribunal for the loss due to retrospective taxation may 'encourage' other companies to take a similar course, feel tax and legal experts.
Experts feel that Cairn Energy's argument that when the company conducted restructuring there was no capital gains applicable on such activities, and had they known that there could be any tax applicable, they would have acted differently is a 'good' argument and the international tribunal may give an favourable award to the company.
"It is a very good argument, and something which may move the tribunal in Cairn Energy's favour. If tomorrow there is an award against India, the government would have no option but to pay the company, because international reputation also matters. Such an award would encourage companies who are waiting in the wings," says Naresh Thacker, partner and head, litigations and dispute resolution, Economic Laws Practice.
Citing violation of India-UK investment treaty, Cairn Energy has filed a settlement of claim with an international tribunal seeking withdrawal of tax demand and a compensation of $5.6 billion for loss in value due to the retrospective taxation. The move came despite the Indian government's offer to the company to only pay the tax amount and it would waive the interest and penalties.
However, going by Cairn Energy's stance, it looks like they are not in a mood to go for settlement and pay the tax. The government has raised a tax demand of Rs 10,247 crore on Cairn Energy on 'capital gains' it made when it transferred its India assets to its subsidiary Cairn India in 2006.
"The move by Cairn Energy suggest that they don't want to settle the tax dispute with India on conditions put down by the Indian government," says Neha Malhotra, Senior Member, Nangia & Co. Neha also feels that companies like Vodafone, which is also suffering from the impact of retrospective taxation, may take cue from Cairn Energy.
Vodafone has also moved the Hague-based International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the Rs14,200-crore tax case. The tax demand on Vodafone is related to its acquisition of 67 per cent stake in Hutchison Whampoa in 2007. The tax department has argued that Vodafone should have withhold the tax on capital gains made by the owners of Hutchison Whampoa.
When contacted a Vodafone spokesperson said it is not possible for us to make any comment at this stage whether they could go for such an option as the matter is still sub judice.
In 2011, an international tribunal had found India guilty of violating the India-Australia investment treaty in case of White Industries and given an award against India. Though this case was not related to retrospective taxation, the company concerned (White Industries) had also invoked the investment treaty as Cairn Energy has done in its plea.
Financial powerhouse and largest domestic investor LIC on Wednesday denied having given its nod to the long-pending merger of Cairn India with the parent Vedanta Resources.
LIC, which had expressed concerns over valuation and debt situation of the entity post-merger, owns 9.06 per cent shares in Cairn India as of June quarter and 3.9 per cent in Vedanta as of March.
LIC's denial came after some media reports said the insurance giant has given nod to the proposed merger of Cairn with Vedanta.
"No approval has been given by LIC and such news is factually incorrect," the government-run insurance behemoth said in a statement today.
Under the proposed merger, pending since last year, a Cairn India shareholder will get one Vedanta equity share and 7.5 preference shares for every share one holds.
The company needs to muster approval of at least half of the minority shareholders and LIC being the single largest domestic minority shareholder in the oil giant, its approval is crucial for the plan to get through.
A senior LIC official had earlier told PTI that they were not comfortable with the merger proposal on the valuation as well as debt fronts.
The Edinburgh, UK-based Cairn Energy sold Cairn India to Anil Agarwal-led Vedanta for USD 8.67 billion in 2011. The British firm still holds 9.82 per cent stake in Cairn India.
Through the merger, Agarwal plans to use Rs 16,867 crore cash lying with Cairn to pay off part of Vedanta's debt. This has led to concern among minority shareholders about the cash that will become part of the new entity.
Vedanta is the largest producer of aluminium and copper in the country, and is the most indebted metals company.
As of June 2015, Vedanta had debt pile of Rs 77,752 crore, excluding a USD 1.25 billion inter-company loan from Cairn India, which had Rs 16,867 crore cash on its books.
Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar has ordered a fresh probe into the gold scam involving the officials of Shri Mata Mansa Devi Shrine Board, which runs the famous Hindu Shrine Mata Mansa Devi in Panchkula.
The shrine officials had allegedly sold the gold coins and pendants -minted from the gold offerings made by the followers -at throwaway prices to unknown persons, believed to be their relatives which caused a huge loss to the temple trust.
The then Bhupinder-Singh-Hooda government is in the dock again as Hooda besides being a Chief Minister was also Chairman of the board.
The issue rocked the shrine board meeting held recently. the probe will be done by the principal secretary, urban department who will submit its report to the state government within three months.
"The gold coins and pendants were sold at a time when the gold prices were going up. most of the coins were sold within two days .the followers did not get the coins. the corrupt temple officials caused huge loss to the board. surprisingly, there is no record about the buyers. this is a big scam," Minister of State and Panchkula MLA, Gian chand gupta said.
The scandalous scale took place between 2006 and 2007. The then Congress government had ordered a probe in 2008 after the issue rocked the state. the vigilance and Anti-corruption Bureau which had registered a case in 2008 submitted its report after three years in 2011 in which role of two top temple officials was found suspicious. The Chief Executive officers neither maintained the accounts nor got them audited to find out the irregularities. The vigilance probe had found that while the market price of a 10 gram gold was rs 9200, the temple officials sold the gold at rs 5420 caused a loss of rs 2730 per 10 gram to the temple. In 2007 the market price for the 10 gram gold was rs 8500 but the temple officials sold at rs 6420. the temple authorities had sold 257 pendants (four grams) and 213 coins weighting eight grams in 2006. The board also sold 39 pendants weighing four grams each and five pendants weighing eight grams Khattar digs deeper into gold scam each. A total 2732 grams and 196 grams of gold were sold in 2006 and 2007 respectively.
"The board had melted 5 kg gold to mint coins and pendants containing photos of goddess. While the temple officials were reporting sales, the followers were complaining about the non availability of coins and pendants.the then Congress government had ordered a vigilance probe which found that the coins and pendants were sold to unknown people at throwaway prices .the temple had no recorabout the buyers who were the near and dear one of the Board officials. this caused huge loss to the temple," Chief Executive Officer, Shri Mata Mansa Devi Shrine Board, Panchkula, V G Goel said.
While the temple authorities had got melted nearly 5 kg gold , received as offerings made by the followers, during the tenure of Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda, 9.551 kg gold was melted to mint coins and pendants during the tenure of Om Prakash Chautala. Investigations done by Mail Today revealed that as much as 9.551 kg gold was melted on December 12,1991, May 28,1995, May 14,1998 and September 4, 2001.
Interestingly the Shri Mata Mansa Devi Shrine Board in its meeting held on in 2003 had decided that the gold coins and pendants will only be sold at the rates approved by it as it was not possible for it to change the prices as the gold prices were fluctuating. While the 8 grams pendant was priced at Rs 5100, the pendant weighing 4 grams was priced at Rs 3100. The then state government had reduced the price of the coin weighing 4 grams from Rs 3100 to Rs 2600 as the boards was not able to sell the coins. The total offerings being made at Kalka and Mansa Devi temples is around 20 crore per annum. Most of the offerings come from Mansa Devi temple.
Low-profile member of David Cameron's cabinet, Theresa May, is all set to become UK's second woman Prime Minister after the Iron Lady, Margaret Thatcher.
May will assume the post of PM and take up residence at No. 10 Downing Street on Wednesday following the event of David Cameron stepping down as PM post the UK's referendum to exit the European Union.
Theresa May, who has been an interior minister for six years, backed the Remain camp. She is seen as a fit candidate by her supporters to steer Britain through these tumultuous times.
May will be reshuffling her cabinet after she meets the Queen at Buckingham Palace where the monarch will formally invite her to take over as Prime Minister. May is preparing to include a line of women Conservative colleagues to assume prominent positions in the cabinet which she will announce later on Wednesday.
First speech as PM
After meeting the Queen at the Buckingham Palace, Theresa May will be escorted to No. 10 Downing street, her new residence, where she will address the public for the first time.
It will be an important speech to look out for post Brexit.
Cabinet of Ministers and Whip
May's first task would be to appoint her Whip who is an MP she trusts completely.
Following this, she will also need to announce her cabinet, which is expected to have more female representation. Names like Amber Rudd, Justine Greening and Priti Patel are some on the list.
May's to-do list
A lot of mess lies ahead for May as she steers the Britain out of European Union. Some of the challenges include:
1.Immigration and her promise of dealing with free movement.
2.Social reforms to help the working class
3.Dealing with Scotland's possibility of leaving the EU
Other issues include Renewing the Trident, Boosting and expanding railway and airway growth and tackling tax evasion and the "fat cat" culture of corporate in UK.
Last but not the least, May will have to renew and harness political and economic relations with many world leaders like US President Barack Obama, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, etc. to regain UK's stand in the international sphere.
Sandeep Aggarwal doesn't let go of anything that has worked. He announced the launch of Droom on November 21, 2014, the same day he launched e-commerce marketplace ShopClues in 2011, now India's youngest unicorn. Droom started from the same building in Gurgaon's Sector 15 where ShopClues began. Every time Aggarwal went for investor meetings, he wore the same T-shirt - a green-coloured Hugo Boss. "There's an old Wall Street saying: 'It is better to be lucky than smart'," Aggarwal, Founder and CEO of Droom, says, chuckling. You cannot argue that his luck has worked.
He has raised four rounds of capital, totalling nearly $46 million. The last round, its biggest at an estimated $30 million, came in June this year amid the doom and gloom in India's e-commerce industry. Investors, including the likes of Singapore's BEENEXT, Digital Garage from Japan, Beenos and Indian VC firm Lightbox, saw great execution. After ShopClues, Aggarwal was keen on building a second marketplace, one that connects buyers and sellers of used vehicles. But back in 2014, when there were no numbers to validate his business plan, Aggarwal managed to convince some that he can make money organising what is largely an unorganised market.
One of the earliest investors to back Droom was Sid Talwar of Lightbox. He knew Aggarwal well. "There are very few successful marketplaces in the world. Sandeep understood how to build a marketplace," he says. What also convinced him was the fact that marketplaces for transactions in India's online automobile world did not exist in 2014. "People were doing classifieds (OLX and Quikr) and discovery (CarWale and CarDekho). The lacuna was trust and transparency. America had created an efficient market for used cars, but India didn't have that," Talwar explains.
Of course, the market itself is like an eight-lane highway. India is the third largest automobile economy in the world after China and the US, with transactions worth $100 billion each year. According to data from SIAM, domestic sales of two-wheelers grew 3 per cent to 16,455,911 units in 2015/16, while passenger vehicles rose 7 per cent to 2,789,678 units. The used vehicles market is even bigger in terms of volumes. About 1.3 used cars are sold for every new car, and 1.6 used two-wheelers are sold for every new one. Besides vehicle sales, there is the automobile services market worth about $25 billion.
"India now has a sizeable installed base. Plus, people are changing their vehicles more often. But then the experience of buying a used automobile is ancient. This industry could benefit from new innovations," Aggarwal says, animatedly, sitting in his conference room adorned with car models.
Droom's innovations have led to an upward ratchet of impressive numbers. The company, today, has an annualised GMV of $175 million, by mostly aiding two-wheeler transactions (65 per cent), cars (30 per cent) and services such as warranty, repair and maintenance, and roadside assistance (5 per cent). The start-up is targeting $500 million in GMV by 2017. Its website lists everything that has a wheel and a motor - from bicycles and super bikes to luxury cars, planes and yachts. It charges a commission of 1.5 per cent to 2.5 per cent from the seller for transactions, a 12 per cent commission for services, and a premium subscription from professional sellers. The firm has 47,000 dealers listed. These numbers, which wowed even the jury of Business Today's Coolest Start-ups edition, were garnered because Droom was able to solve the lacuna that Talwar of Lightbox mentioned, that of trust and transparency.
"Unlike the US, Western Europe or Japan, India is a low-trust market. We saw this as an opportunity," Aggarwal states. He along with his team devised five pillars to answer typical questions that concern buyers and sellers. The company launched Eco, a way of inspecting a vehicle. Both the seller and buyer may want to buy an Eco report of a vehicle before transacting - the seller to improve his chances of selling and the buyer to avoid unpleasant surprises. Once the demand for a report is generated, an independent auto mechanic is tasked by Droom to inspect.
Along with Eco, Droom also built the 'Full Circle Trust Score' that uses data science to rate a listing. The score, between 1 and 10, is arrived at by considering different metrics - the pictures uploaded, the quality of pictures, whether the seller is verified, if he is offering auto inspection and warranty, and also the pricing. Like most online auto portals, Droom, too, has a pricing engine. Its third pillar, the Orange Book Value, is an algorithmic pricing engine.The last two pillars are about self declaration from the seller about any known problems.
While consumer-to-consumer sales happen, the presence of dealers adds impetus. Business Today spoke to Shyam Trehan, whose family owns Rahul Motors, a bike dealer, in Delhi's Karol Bagh. He has been listing on Droom for over a year. "We were previously dependent on walk-in customers. However, Karol Bagh is congested. Walk-in customers dropped over time," he says. Online listing is now generating additional business for him. "We sold around 80 vehicles per month. Now, after listing on Droom, our sales have doubled."
Droom is not alone on the race track; there is growing competition. Apart from the older classified sites and the likes of CarTrade (which acquired CarWale), newer start-ups, too, are offering used auto transactions. There is Spinny promising "200-point, fully inspected used cars", GoZoomo that claims to have "the largest cluster of verified listings", Truebil which is into simplified car trading, Cars24 that assures you can "sell your car in 30 minutes" and CredR that only deals in used bikes.
Aggarwal believes Droom is ahead on the track. The company's innovations around trust, transparency, its focus on engineering and use of data science as well as analytics to measure everything are making it a winner. "We are five years ahead of the market," he asserts.
Someone knocks on the glass door of his conference room. It is time for his next meeting. He must speed off.
ALSO READ: We want to be the mkt place for anything that has a wheel or motor and transports human beings: Droom founder Sandeep Aggarwal
Anybody following business news would not have failed to note the giddy rise of Indian start-ups in the past couple of years, or the fact that some cold water has been poured on them this year by venture capitalists (VCs). While India has always had a start-up culture - think Dhirubhai Ambani and Reliance or, later, Infosys, to name just two famous examples - the advent of VC-funded start-ups, especially in the area of e-commerce and digital economy, really started in 1998/99. However, the first dotcom crash of 2000/01 saw a lot of entrepreneurs scurrying for cover, and VC funds suddenly dried up.
It was over a decade before the next wave of digital/e-commerce start-ups came up, and VCs again started putting big money behind the ideas of untested, 20-something entrepreneurs. Many of today's big e-commerce companies started out between 2007 and 2010. VC funding was still relatively scarce then, as were the number of competitors. But by 2012 or so, Flipkart, Snapdeal and InMobi started gaining traction, and new entrepreneurs were jumping into the fray, trying to create the next Internet or e-commerce giant.
By 2014, hundreds of them were starting out each month, and VCs were knocking down doors to give them money. Valuations of new companies with huge losses and low revenues went through the roof. The madness peaked in 2015, before realism crept back. In 2016, companies are still getting funded, but at far more conservative valuations. More important, the path to profitability has become as important as revenue growth.
BT has been tracking start-ups and entrepreneurs for many years before it started its Coolest Start-ups survey in 2007. In our issues, we have chronicled the rise, fall and rise of the start-up culture. Every year, we look at identifying India's best start-ups, and a jury of VCs, senior entrepreneurs and consultants pick out the most promising ideas and the most effective teams.
Why do some entrepreneurs succeed while others fail? In his 1965 book Innovation and Entrepreneurship, management guru Peter Drucker pointed out that all successful entrepreneurs seemed to follow one of four strategies. These strategies are not mutually exclusive and many start-ups follow a combination of two or more. But almost all winning strategies could be boiled down to one of these four approaches, he said.
The first strategy saw an entrepreneur getting into a new market with the goal of being the dominant player as soon as possible. This is a no-holds-barred approach where considerable resources are devoted right up front. You can understand how it works when you see how Jeff Bezos relentlessly pursued the goal of making Amazon the world's biggest retailer. Or what Jack Ma did with Alibaba. The second strategy was when an entrepreneur identified an area that the big players were ignoring, and moved to quickly stake claim. The third one - a variation of the second - involved identifying a small niche and becoming the dominant player in it. The fourth strategy would see an entrepreneur or start-up find a way of packaging and providing a service without actually coming up with a brand new idea. In essence, the entrepreneur would add a twist to the service to make it more relevant to consumers.
When you look at the winners of this year's Coolest Start-ups survey, you will see how all of them fall into one of these four categories. Some of them are brand new ideas, while others are simply executing an old idea better. Some are discovering new niches in markets that already existed, while others are changing the dynamics of a market through innovations.
"Bots are the new apps," Microsoft's CEO Satya Nadella declared during a conference in San Francisco in March. While most tech giants have been leveraging the power of chatbots - Apple with Siri, Amazon with Alexa, Google with Google Assistant, Microsoft with Cortana and Tay - Facebook, too, joined in by opening up its Messenger APIs (application program interface), for brands to deploy chatbots on its app. It has been a runaway success - within just three months of launch around 11,000 chatbots have been developed by businesses on Facebook Messenger. Other platforms such as Slack and Telegram host around 1,000 bots.
A chatbot is a chat-based interface that can stimulate conversations with humans, and deliver information or services on demand. According to cloud messaging service platform Gupshup, 350+ Indian developers are using its site to develop bots. Some of the early movers are Meru Cabs, Lybrate, FactorDaily, YES Bank, Voonik, Naptol, Railyatri, HDFC Bank and Yatra.com. Niki.ai and MagicX are new bot-only start-ups offering taxi hailing, food delivery and bill payment services on a single platform.
What does a chatbot do? Beerud Sheth, Founder and CEO of Gupshup, says, "Bots can be used by businesses to communicate with their customers and employees, for e-commerce, customer support, business processes, and more." For instance, Falcon Control System, a start-up, has developed a bot to operate home appliances, while companies such as Meru Cabs, Voonik (online fashion start-up) and Lybrate (online doctor consultation platform) have launched chatbots to help them deliver primary functions. Meru claims about 400 users interact with its chatbot daily on Facebook Messenger. FactorDaily, a tech website, has a bot that gets you stories based on certain topics. "We will probably move away from that as there is no value in throwing web page links at users coming on bots. The value is in summarising the content you have and making it engaging," says Titash Neogi, CTO, FactorDaily. Its bot engaged in over 250 conversations on Facebook Messenger within a month.
What gives chatbots an upper hand over apps? Nimesh Shah, Founder of Windchimes Communications, says, "The regular app takes a lot of space. Also, every app has a different UI and learning each is time consuming. With a chatbot, you are doing away with all of that, because your bots reside within a messaging system. They are faster and easy to load."
Creating bots on a platform like Facebook Messenger is a great proposition for businesses because of its enviable 900 million active user base. Besides, while smartphone apps are ruling the roost today, they are reaching a saturation point. Nilesh Sangoi, CTO, Meru Cabs, says, "Newer apps are finding it difficult to get discovered on the app store amidst millions of other apps." With reports suggesting that 80 per cent of a user's time is spent on the top five apps and that younger audiences prefer texting to making calls, how can brands ignore chatbots?
However, this technology is still a work in progress. Chatbots' inability to understand languages and the lack of speech recognition makes chatting with them difficult at times. CNN and the US-based 1-800-Flowers have had to bear the brunt of this on Facebook Messenger. "Problems arise when inputs have not been structured. If you write something that the bot does not understand, it will give you funny responses. So, it is not a platform problem, but that of artificial intelligence," informs Saurabh Arora, Founder and CEO, Lybrate.
Bots also pose security risks. With every conversation, they gather new information about the user, which is not necessarily confidential. It will be a while before bots can truly become a 'friend' we can trust.
Listening Post
Coming of Age
Image sharing app Snapchat, which is known for its popularity among teenagers, is now gaining fans among older millennials (25-34) and people above 35 years of age. According to a research report by comScore, only 5 per cent of smartphone users between the ages of 25 and 34 were using Snapchat three years ago; now, the share has increased to an impressive 38 per cent. Similarly, three years ago, only 2 per cent of the 35-plus smartphone users were active on Snapchat; today, 14 per cent of them are on the app. As per the report, this rise in adult users has not deterred teenagers and younger people from using the app. Snapchat saw a 69 per cent increase in usage among the 8-24 age group of smartphone users - its all-time high. The report credits the introduction of new product features by Snapchat for this rise in age diversity.
News in Check
Chinas Internet censorship body has warned online media companies against using social media as a source of news without approval in, what it claims to be, a bid to counter fake news and rumours. "It is forbidden to use hearsay to create news or use conjecture and imagination to distort the facts," the warning states. It has also listed a number of fake news stories that were recently circulated on the Internet. The development comes days after Chinas censorship Internet chief Xu Lin stepped down. China has already banned social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr.
The $25-billion Indian pharma industry is going through intense regulatory scrutiny. Foreign drug regulators such as the US Food and Drug Adminis-tration (FDA) and EU's European Medicines Agency have increased their inspections of Indian drug manufacturing plants that export medicines to those geographies. Individuals and civil society groups - both within the country and outside - are seeking better regulatory mechanism for Indian drugs manufacturers. In an exclusive interview with Business Today's Joe C. Mathew, Drugs Controller General of India G.N. Singh says that Indias drug regulatory mechanism is not as bad as it is often made out to be, though it may not mirror the systems that exist in the developed world. Edited excerpts:
A US citizen had recently approached Indian courts to re-draw the 'archaic' domestic drug regulatory rules. The complaint was that Indian regulatory system is in shambles. Do you agree?
It is true that the Drugs and Cosmetics Act was framed in 1940, but that does not mean that it is inadequate to take care of issues related to safety, effectiveness and quality of the drugs. The overall governance of drug regulation is based on the rules under the Act. The Drugs and Cosmetics Rules are dynamic in nature. So the over- arching framework may not have changed, but the rules are up to date. If you see our country in totality, and look at our regulatory system in an overall integrated fashion, you will find that our regulatory system is competent enough to meet the issues of quality, assess the overall effectiveness and overall patient safety. The issue, which people often flag, is the gap that exists between the USFDA and our drug regulatory system. It is a different issue. Depending on the social, economic and other factors, each country will have its own set of regulatory system. The fundamental thing that we need to look at is whether we compromise the safety and quality of medicines or not. We don't compromise.
The complaint is not only against the law. It is also against the level of enforcement?
Traditionally, the enforcement in this country has been weak. That was because our regulatory institutions were seen as licence giving institutions for a long time. Enforcements were there, but not in the manner it should have been. None of the stakeholders - be it industry, or the patient, were ready for that at that time. But now, things have improved. In the last decade or so, there has been a paradigm shift in this approach. Each state is strengthening its regulatory mechanism, so is the Centre. In 2011, we had only 33 people in the central drug administration system. Today we have more than 300 and we are planning to add another 200 shortly. So, that is the overall approach today. And it is need based. The industry has matured, and the regulator is becoming well equipped and knowledge-intensive. The focus now is on enforcement.
Indian companies are being accused of following double standards when it comes to quality. Is it true that the medicines they export to the US are far superior than what they make for India?
The US regulator inspects the services, practices (of USFDA approved Indian manufacturing facilities) from the lens of their regulatory perspective. We see it on the basis of our statute. But the fundamentals remain the same. Both of us look at it from the point of safety and efficacy. As I have already mentioned, we look at it from the affordability angle, too. In that sense, we ensure that all basic WHO (World Health Organization prescribed) quality requirements are followed. We want to pick up a number of good things that USFDA follows. But we don't want to follow it blindly. Our issues are different. This is the reason behind this complaint that Indian companies have double standards and they are giving good medicines to US and bad medicines to India. Obviously, the people who make such allegations have some vested interests.
But still, isn't it a valid question?
The question is, quality at what cost? As I said, there is no compromise on safety and efficacy. Quality is a dynamic thing for both products as well as services. Quality means different for different persons and locations. For medicines that are manufactured for consumption by Indian population, affordability is important. Someone might want the medicine in blister pack, someone might want it in a bottle. Someone would be very particular of its appearance, and they want it completely white. Someone will allow some colour variation if it meets all quality and safety specifications. As regulators we need to keep a balance, without compromising the quality, efficacy and safety.
Your recent decision to ban a significant number of fixed dose combinations (FDCs) has been criticised by the industry. They say that they were not consulted before banning time-tested drug combinations. Your comments.
When two or more drugs are mixed together, its overall pharmacological and therapeutic claim gets changed. It will have an impact on the overall effectiveness of the medicine. Four years ago, we started a massive exercise to weed out the combination drugs that have got no therapeutic impact or use on Indian population. In 2012 itself we had a meeting with the industry representatives in Mumbai where I sought their help to shortlist such FDCs. A government appointed high-powered committee (which recommended the list of FDCs that requires to be banned) had also sought industry views before giving its recommendations. So, I don't agree that industry was not consulted.
Is there a plan to strengthen the regulatory system for medical devices?
Medical device is an untapped area where we see huge potential. India has to take the lead here as most of the medical devices we use today are imported. How long, with such a huge population, will we depend on imports? The government is thinking to ease regulations in medical devices. Unfortunately, some of the medical devices were made part of drugs. And that created confusion within and outside the country. We are trying to sort this out. Government is going to classify medical devices as per the international practices soon. Globally, medical devices fall under the jurisdiction of drug regulators. Similar system will be in place here also.
Will it be governed by Drugs and Cosmetics Act, or will there be a separate Act?
That will be decided by the Parliament. We feel there should be separate verticals to handle medical devices, cosmetics and biologics in the regulatory department.
The government has come out with a draft biosimilar guideline. Will it be aligned with international best practices?
The future lies with biologics products and inventions. India is having huge skilled manpower that needs to be trained in this field. We need to recreate the success we had in chemical drugs in biologics also. Thats why we have come out with the draft biosimilar guidelines. They are guiding documents. They will guide us while we assess the fundamental issues of quality and safety and effectiveness of biosimilars. As in the case of our generics, in biosimilars also the regulation will keep in mind the overall safety and quality factor, and affordability. The guideline is India specific.
India had a booming clinical trial industry some years ago. The sector lost its sheen due to regulatory interventions. Is a revival possible?
The 2012 period and before was a very troublesome phase for the country as a whole in conducting clinical trials. The rights, safety and the well-being of the subjects of the clinical trials were denied at that time. We did not have a proper regulatory mechanism in place. That was the cause of all the problems. It took some time to build that expertise. I can tell you with certainty that India is ready to do extremely good work in clinical trials now. Our share in global clinical trials today is just 1.46 per cent. We have created a platform through which India will become a preferred destination for clinical trials. In the next eight to 10 years our contribution to the global clinical trial industry should be at least 10 per cent. That's the plan. That will create a huge job opportunity. It will also result in huge skilled manpower for drug discovery research, where exactly India's true strengths lie.
E-commerce has become a reality. What is wrong in allowing online medicine sales?
The existing statute does not permit online sales of drugs. A high-powered committee of experts is examining this issue. We are awaiting their recommendations. The issue is very complex. The Europe, the US and other countries are struggling with this. We want to use this technology, but only after complying with all regulatory requirements.
Navin Kumar, Chairman of GST Network, a not-for-profit company set up to provide IT infrastructure and services for the proposed Goods and Services Tax, or GST, looks calm and composed. The calmness hides the difficult nature of the task he has on his hands.
Kumar and his team, working from the fourth floor of an office complex in Delhi's Aerocity, are racing against time to build the IT platform on which businesses will register themselves, pay taxes and file returns after the GST comes into force. His team as well as the IT vendor, Infosys, are, in a way, shooting in the dark - they are writing the software without knowing the final shape the GST law and rules will take. All they have to work with is a model law released on June 14 this year, which, too, will go through changes after suggestions from stakeholders.
"The release of the model GST law has meant more work for us. If the law had been finalised before the work was commissioned, it would have been easier for us. Since the two things are running parallel, it becomes a little difficult to incorporate the changes (in the software) as and when they are made," say Kumar.
The implementation of GST, India's most ambitious effort to simplify the indirect tax system, has been a work in progress for close to a decade. The law, supposed to be implemented from April 1, 2010, but delayed due to fighting between India's two biggest political parties, got a new lease of life recently when the empowered committee of state finance ministers gave it an approval in principle. Now, with recent elections changing the numbers in the Rajya Sabha in favour of the ruling National Democratic Alliance, there is a chance that the GST Bill may be passed in the monsoon session of Parliament.
However, the next question - the first being the passage of the Bill itself - is the government's ability to implement the law from the targeted date of April 1, 2017. With just nine months to go, no rules in place yet, writing of the software a work in progress, and no movement on purchase of hardware, it will require the Centre and states to do some heavy lifting if they are to meet the ambitious deadline.
A Maharashtra commercial tax officer, for instance, says it will take not less than six months to get the system in place after the rules are finalised. "If the rules are not finalised by September, it will be difficult to get the system ready by April next year," he says. This, when Maharashtra has a robust and automated commercial tax system. Some states do not even have a fully-computerised tax system.
Nuts & Bolts
The backbone of the entire GST system, the IT infrastructure, is being developed by Infosys, which won the Rs 1,380-crore contract in October 2015. It includes a common platform that will provide services such as PAN-based registration, return filing and issue of challans. It will be operated by GST Network and allow taxpayers to upload information that will be accessible to the different tax authorities - state tax departments as well as the Central Board of Excise and Customs (CBEC) - for which they will need to have their own back-end IT solutions up and ready as soon as possible. Are these stakeholders ready?
GSTN's Progress
According to Kumar of GSTN, they gave the contract to build the front-end application to Infosys in October 2015 in the hope that the GST Bill would be passed in the winter session of Parliament. That did not happen. But they decided to go ahead with the application development.
"The entire system consists of hardware (servers, network equipment, etc.) and software. We held back the procurement of hardware but decided to start work on the software. We have made good progress on that," he says. GSTN is hoping that the Rajya Sabha passes the Bill in July so that Infosys can place the order for the hardware, too. It has selected two locations to house the servers and data centres. In Noida, it will rent space at Tata Communications' data centre, while in Bangalore it will take space at Bharti Airtel's data centre.
Kumar is hoping that the main system, or the front end, will be ready by January. The testing of the application may take another month, after which GSTN will get it certified by Standardisation Testing and Quality Certification, a government body that provides quality assurance services in electronics and IT.
In fact, getting Infosys on board itself was a challenge for GSTN. This is because IT companies were reluctant to participate in the project due to fear over delayed payments. "We held many interactions with the industry around 2014, asked them about their concerns and promised to resolve the issues. These interactions helped and finally big companies such as TCS, Infosys, Wipro, Tech Mahindra and Microsoft bid for the project," says Kumar.
Has GSTN addressed the issue of payments? Kumar says they have already made two payments to Infosys. Though Kumar did not disclose the exact amount paid, he said of the `315 crore sanctioned by the government at the time of the company's incorporation in March 2013, they have been able to spend only `150 crore in the past three years. The two payments to Infosys are from this `150 crore.
Infosys declined to comment on the progress of the project and issues related to payments.
Preparation By Others
The GST is a dual tax with states and the Centre sharing the proceeds. So, while it is important to ensure that the common platform is ready in time, it is equally important for states and the CBEC to get their back-end systems up and running. "What we have gathered from our interactions with tax officials is that the states can be put into two buckets - states that are ready with both front-end and back-end and states that are ready with the front-end and are likely to develop the back-end in the next five-six months. So, if the question is whether the IT infrastructure is ready, then the answer is that we are probably ready," says Prashant Raizada, Partner, Indirect Tax, BDO India LLP.
States' preparedness can be credited to the lead taken by GSTN. When it started out in 2014, it realised that it was not enough to do its own work. It asked states about the level of computerisation of their tax systems. It found that half the states were not prepared and offered them help. A total of 19 states and union territories agreed. The states were categorised into two - Model 1 states, which decided to build the back-end on their own, and Model 2 states, which sought GSTN's help. However, GSTN made it clear that it would create just one application and states would have to agree to a common process for using the platform. "I am happy to note that most (Model 2 states) have made good progress. If the GST Bill is passed (in the monsoon session), all of them will take up the work in all seriousness and go full steam. I think they will be able to do it on time," says Kumar of GSTN.
For instance, Delhi, one of the Model 2 states, is comfortably placed. A special commissioner of the Delhi Commercial Tax Department says, "The network issue has been resolved with GSTN helping us build the infrastructure."
Kumar says states have not paid them any money for building the back-end. The user charge will be decided based on the funding cost (GSTN plans to borrow Rs 500 crore from banks this financial year) and the number of taxpayers using the system.
Maharashtra is developing its own back-end system. It has given the work to NIIT Technologies. "We are getting our systems newly automated. The GST back-end is part of the exercise. The contract is worth Rs 150 crore, including the development of the GST back-end," says Dhananjay M. Akhade, Joint Commissioner, Sales Tax, Department of Sales Tax, Maharashtra. But he says that unless the GST rules are finalised, they cannot close the back-end project. Once the rules are in place, the department will take at least six months to build the complete system.
Efforts to reach out to the CBEC, which is building its own back-end, did not elicit any response.
The roll-out of the GST will also depend on how quickly taxpayers update their systems. "The preparedness of organisations varies. Many large organisations have been proactively following the changes, including dissecting the latest model GST law," says Arun Subramanian, Vice President, Globalization Services, SAP India. He says shifting to the GST does not mean changing the entire IT system. "Software development has evolved over the years and most ERP solutions are based on configuration and switches. There will not be any significant costs for complying with the GST regime from the point of view of IT," he says.
Training of Officials
While the common IT platform, the interface and the back-end are the core of the GST system, training of tax officials from the Centre and states is equally important for seamless transition from the current value-added tax, or VAT system, to the new regime.
"Though VAT and GST are not very different, the processes are different. So, you have to train the officers," says Kumar of GSTN.
The work for training officials has started. The department of revenue has started a programme for training state and CBEC officers in the legal aspects of the GST law. For new technology, GSTN has drawn up a training programme and hopes to start from August. There are around 100,000 tax officers in states and at the Centre. GSTN alone can't train them all. So, it plans to teach some master trainers. These trainers - 300 in total - will then train 1,500 officers of states and the CBEC. For taxpayers, GSTN will work with trade associations.
For now, it's over to the Rajya Sabha.
If you think India is a corrupt country, the latest Transparency International (TI) report on transparency in corporate reporting may make you think otherwise.
In a stark contrast to general perception about the 'acute corruption' in India, nine Indian companies have made it to the list of top 10 most transparent companies in the emerging markets with Bharti Airtel topping the chart. The six among these nine include Tata Group companies.
The report revealed that all the 19 Indian firms picked (of total 100 emerging market firms) scored 75 per cent or more in the organisational transparency.
They say transparency pays well, but Dalal Street has its own ways of dealing with stocks.
Bharti Airtel may have topped the chart on the transparency index, it has offered no return to Dalal Street investors in the past five years, In fact the stock has lost 7 per cent during the period. The scrip has fallen 14 per cent in the last one year. The company has scored full points on the Organisational transparency (OT) report.
Among the Tata Group firms, Tata Steel has lost 42 per cent in the last five years, while Tata Chemicals and Tata Global Beverages could add mere 17 per cent, and 33 per cent, respectively.
Three other Tata group firms Tata Consultancy Services (115 per cent), Tata Motors (139 per cent) and Tata Communications (141 per cent), meanwhile, rallied over 100 per cent in the last five years.
Infosys and Larsen & Toubro, widely touted for being transparent and maintaining high governance, could not make their way among the top 10, but surged 68 per cent and 31 per cent, respectively, in the last five years.
While the Dalal Street does take note of healthy management practices, it is predominantly growth prospects of a company that drives its stock value.
"Improvement in topline numbers, signs of capex revival and especially private companies getting more confident about the underlying demand outlook is what, in our view, will be a 'make or break' situation for the markets over the next 12-18 years after the tepid FY15 and FY16," said Pankaj Sharma, Head of research (Equities) at Equirus Securities.
Earnings of companies are bottoming out, said Atul Kumar of Quantum Long Term Equity Fund, adding there could be a sharp jump in listed companies' profits around the corner.
"This will result in better fundamentals for equities, which has been lacking so far. We see the risk reward situation attractive for Indian equities."
TI report considered anti-corruption programmes (ACP), organisational transparency (OT) and country-by-country (CBC) reporting to make its top 100 list of transparent firms.
On the transparency index, Bharti was followed by Tata Communications (7.0), Mahindra & Mahindra (6.7), Tata Motors (6.5), Tata Global Beverages (6.5), TCS (6.4), Tata Steel (6.4), Wipro (6.4) and Tata Chemicals (6.3).
Companies like Infosys (5.8), Vedanta Resources (5.8), Suzlon Energy (5.8), Lupin (5.1) and Hindalco (5.0) have figured among the top 25 most transparent companies.
March 19, 2010 was probably a day Delhi-based automotive parts businessman Deepak Mangal will never forget. That day, he won a landmark ruling against Toyota Motor Corp, world's largest car maker, for the use of its brand name Prius.
Mangal's company Prius Auto Industries was incorporated in 2002 and ironically is in the business of supplying spare parts to consumers including those of Toyota.
The point of contention was the name of Mangal's firm that was the same as Toyota's largest-selling hybrid vehicle till date, one for which it has patents in many markets.
However, the car was launched in India only in 2010 and by then the registration of the brand rested with Mangal. It presented a curious puzzle to the Japanese company and on that fateful Friday, the Delhi High Court set aside an earlier December 2009, ex parte interim injunction order in favour of Toyota.
Ever hungry for a story where a David triumphs over a Goliath, the local media lapped it up. Mangal was all over the newsprint and airwaves over that March weekend. Toyota India had an unnecessary distraction in their hands. One that has continued to haunt for a good six years.
Earlier this week, the High Court delivered its final verdict in favour of Toyota ordering Mangal to give up using Prius as a trading name within two months.
Further the court also ordered Mangal to pay Rs 10 lakh as compensation for the loss of goodwill through the years. It is a sobering indictment for Mangal with the court quashing all his arguments.
The brand's existence since the mid 90s and its success world over with around 6 million cars were enough to convince the court that Mangal was aware of the brand and used its name in India only to benefit from it.
In an earlier order, the court had already retrained Mangal from using patented names like Toyota and Innova. That precedent may have helped the Japanese company's case.
"Negating the defendants' claims that the trademark had no reputation and goodwill in India, the court held that the reputation of the world's first hybrid car in India was not only stellar, but undeniable. This principle called the judicial notice principle of evidence law has rarely been put to use in trademark law in India. Hence, the Court held that PRIUS was a well-known trademark in India, warranting the highest form of protection," law firm Anand and Anand that represented Toyota in the case said in a detailed statement.
"This finding will have a far reaching impact since it is rare for unregistered trademarks to be bestowed with such recognition. The Court went on to hold that the Defendants failed to provide any justification for their reason for using PRIUS for their automobile-parts business. In absence of sound reasoning, the Court held it certain for the Defendants to use the trademark only to benefit from the extensive goodwill of Toyota PRIUS. Re-visiting trademark basics, the Court held that Toyota's first use of Prius in 1995 globally was sufficient to trump the defendants' Indian use since 2002," the statement adds.
Trademark and patent laws in India are relatively lax compared to the developed world and is still evolving in nature with each precedent.
The automobile and consumer durables industry are replete with examples where companies have been forced to alter the names of their global products in India as the trademark for it rested with somebody else.
Car market leader Maruti Suzuki for example had to change the name of its global small car Splash to Ritz in India as that name was already registered with Ford India. That the American company has not used the nameplate in India yet is equally ironical.
In the end, it took Toyota more than 7 years in India to call Prius its own, while Deepak Mangal's luck and two minutes of spotlight has finally run out.
India will promote bidding of 67 discovered small oil fields in two international roadshows in Houston which will be attended by Minister of State for Petroleum and Natural Gas Dharmendra Pradhan.
Pradhan will pay an official visit to Houston, known for its oil and gas industries, and Washington between July 13 and 18, during which he will launch the international road show for the 67 DSF in Houston.
"The two-day road show in Houston from July 14 will be held to promote the 67 Discovered Small Fields (DSF) Bid Round 2016," a Petroleum Ministry source told PTI.
Pradhan will also hold meetings with various think-tanks working in hydrocarbon sector both, in Houston and Washington.
He will also visit technology centres working in oil and gas spheres, petroleum ministry said in a statement.
Pradhan will be accompanied by K D Tripathi, Secretary, Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas, Senior officers and Chairman and Managing Directors of leading Oil companies ONGC, IOCL, GAIL, HPCL and MD-BPRL.
During the Interactive meet scheduled to take place on July 14 and 15, the delegation of senior government officials and leaders of Indian oil & gas companies, led by Pradhan will interact with CEO's of US-based E&P companies, group of Indian scientists from the field of Hydrocarbon research, members of US India Business Council (USIBC) and group of investors.
Pradhan will also inaugurate the 'Data Centre' in Houston on July 13 which can be accessed by all interested investors to view the technical data related to the small fields being offered under the upcoming bid round.
These DSF of the Oil and Natural Gas Commission and Oil India could not be monetised during the previous years and are being offered for international bidding now.
Bidding will open between July 15 and October 31.
The offered fields hold 625 million barrels of oil and gas reserves. Of the 46 small fields, 26 are on land, 18 offshore in shallow water and two in deep water.
While 28 discoveries are in the Mumbai offshore, 14 others are in the east coast's Krishna-Godavari basin.
Eventual operators will be issued a single licence for exploration of conventional and non-conventional hydrocarbons and will have the freedom to sell oil and gas at "arms length" market prices.
The auction will be under the new Hydrocarbon Exploration and Licensing Policy (HELP) approved in March, based on a revenue-sharing model as opposed to cost-and- output-based norms earlier.
Pradhan is also likely to visit Washington on July 18 where he may meet US Secretary of Energy Ernest Jeffrey Moniz to review issues of bilateral hydrocarbon cooperation.
All bank loans to small businesses would in future be eligible for a reduction in capital charges, not just loans of up to 1.5 million euros, under a proposal made by the EU's outgoing financial services chief on Tuesday.
Capital charges - capital that banks must hold against loans in case of a default - were reduced for lending to smaller firms from January 2014 as part of efforts to lift the bloc's sluggish growth, but only for loans up to 1.5 million euros.
That ceiling would now be scrapped, said Jonathan Hill who resigned as Britain's member of the EU's executive Commission following last month's British vote to leave the EU.
"There will be no upper limit, and a capital charge reduction of 15 percent above 1.5 million euros," Hill told the Bruegel thinktank in Brussels in a valedictory speech.
Changes in EU bank capital rules would need approval from EU states and the European Parliament but countries like Germany have already been calling for measures to boost lending to businesses.
Hill was setting out what were likely to be his final decisions before he steps down on July 16.
He has won plaudits from industry for his root and branch review of EU rules rushed through since the 2007-09 financial crisis.
Many of the financial rules being applied by the EU were agreed in principle at the global level first, such as by the Basel Committee of banking regulators.
Hill said several key reforms now needed a rethink.
"I believe that these sorts of issues are best addressed upstream with our international partners," Hill said.
Trade finance loans should be excluded from calculations for the new leverage ratio for banks, he said.
The ratio is a broad measure of capital to a bank's assets on a non-risk-weighted basis, but lenders say including all assets creates a disincentive to hold some assets.
"Trade finance loans are typically less risky than standard corporate loans," Hill said.
The leverage ratio should also be changed to avoid a disincentive to clear financial derivatives that banks hold on their books, he added.
Regulators are putting pressure on banks to clear more of their derivatives to make markets safer and Hill's comments echo concerns last week from the Bank of England, a Basel member.
"Again we've asked for these concerns to be raised with the Basel Committee," Hill said.
His comments signal a growing determination in the EU to tweak rules that could crimp the flow of credit from banks and markets to the bloc's economy - even at the risk of diverging from globally agreed norms. (Reuters)
Source: www.businessworld.ie
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The latest figures released by the Irish Aviation Authority (IAA) today show that traffic is continuing to soar at Cork Airport with terminal flights up by 19.1% compared with the same month last year, the strongest performance of any Irish airport for the month.
While the amount of traffic handled by air traffic control nationally climbed 8.1% in June, traffic at Cork Airport grew by more than twice as fast.
Year-to-date passenger numbers at Irelands best connected and fastest growing international airport outside Dublin continue to rise with figures to the end of June showing an 8.5% increase.
Growth is projected to continue through the summer months into the autumn as Cork Airport benefits from additional traffic on several new summer services including Dusseldorf with Aer Lingus, Madrid with Iberia Express and Leeds and Southampton with Aer Lingus Regional.
Head of Communications at Cork Airport, Kevin Cullinane says, "This months figures are further evidence that 2016 is proving to be a very strong year of growth at Cork Airport. I am very pleased to see we are leading the way nationally in terms of traffic growth to ensure our place as Irelands fastest growing and best connected airport outside of Dublin is maintained. We are projecting an increase of 8% overall for this year which we are well on target to meet."
Source: www.businessworld.ie
The Global Startup Gathering 2016 was launched in Cork yesterday.
Driven by Cork innovates and Startup Ireland, the Global Startup Gathering 2016 was officially launched at Cork Airport by Minister for European Affairs, Dara Murphy, T.D.
Taking place over 3 days, the initiative aims to attract hundreds of international and national business people, entrepreneurs and those thinking of starting up across a number of sectors from biotech to food, manufacturing, ehealth, nutrition and technology.
Cork was chosen by GEN as a location for the Startup Nations Summit due to the "cohesive vision" of local authorities, business support agencies and educational institutions in the Region.
For the last number of years, through the Cork Innovates Partnership, the agencies have been working together to drive and nurture entrepreneurship and innovation in Cork.
Previously, the Startup Nations Summit has been held in Ottawa (Canada), Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia), Seoul (Korea) and Monterrey (Mexico). The 2016 Startup Nations Summit will be held in Cork from the 18th 20th November as part of the 2016 Global Startup Gathering.
Speaking at the launch, Minister for European Affairs, Dara Murphy said, "I am delighted to officially launch the 2016 Global Startup Gathering today in Cork Airport. The 2016 Gathering will build on the success of Irelands national celebration Startup Gathering 2015 which engaged over 18,000 individuals across 22 counties in five days."
He added, "In addition, Cork is the first location in Europe to host the international Startup Nations Summit which brings together policy makers, influencers and leaders in the startup arena. The startup spotlight will certainly be focused on Ireland, and particularly Cork, in November 2016."
Source: www.businessworld.ie
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It was announced yesterday that Gourmet Food Parlour will create 15 new jobs in Swords with an investment of 500,000 in store expansion due for completion in August.
Gourmet Food Parlour own branches in Swords, Malahide and Dun Laoghaire and run successful kitchen partnerships with House on Leeson St and 37 Dawson St.
Their catering division works with several large corporations, providing catering to industry giants such as AIG, Google, Universal, Alltech & Special Olympics among others.
The restaurant & catering group are celebrating their 10th year in business today. The first Gourmet Food Parlour premises was opened in Dun Laoghaire, Co. Dublin in July 2006 by Lorraine Heskin and Lorraine Byrne.
As part of the 10 year celebrations, Gourmet Food Parlour are giving away a chance to win dinner for ten people in their private dining room in the newly revamped Swords restaurant.
Managing Director of Gourmet Food Parlour, Lorraine Heskin said, "With a newly revamped premises on the horizon, a logo re-brand and a new website, we are alive and kicking more than ever this year. We hope to continue to grow and build on an exciting future for the Gourmet Food Parlour team into the next 10 years."
Source: www.businessworld.ie
Britain's top share index edged lower on Wednesday after climbing to an 11-month high in the previous session, with housebuilders giving up some of their recent gains and energy shares dragged lower by weaker oil prices.
The FTSE real estate index fell nearly 1% after rising for four straight sessions. Shares in Taylor Wimpey , Berkeley Group and Persimmon fell 2.9 to 5.9%.
Barratt Developments dropped 5%, also after Britain's biggest housebuilder said it might slow the pace of construction and rethink its land buying programme to prepare itself for an expected slowdown sparked by the Brexit vote.
"The market is concerned the house building sector could be in the firing line as a result of the Brexit vote, and while Barratt have plans in place to reduce risk, it's unlikely these could fully insulate the group from a nasty downturn," George Salmon, equity analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, said.
The UK oil & gas index fell 0.8%, tracking a fall in crude oil prices partly on forecasts from the U.S. government and OPEC that demand would increase next year. Shares in both BP and Royal Dutch Shell were down around 1%.
The internationally-exposed FTSE 100 index was down 0.3% by 0800 GMT, while the mid-cap index, dominated by domestically-focused companies, fell 0.2%.
The blue-chip FTSE 100 is still up about 15% since its post-Brexit low on June 24 after the result came through that Britain had voted to quit the European Union. Mid-cap companies, which are more sensitive to domestic policies and economic conditions, are up 10%.
However, the FTSE 100 index, which is dominated by global companies, is up only 11% in U.S. dollar terms in that period due to the sharp fall in sterling on concerns that the Brexit vote could lead the country into recession.
On the positive side, shares in small-cap retailer Poundland surged more than 12% after South Africa's Steinhoff agreed to buy the British company for 597 million pound in cash.
"The recommended cash offer is a good result for Poundland shareholders and comes at a time when there was more downside risk than upside in our view. The cash offer of 222 pence is highly attractive and we would advise shareholders to accept," Liberum analysts said in a note.
Basic resources stocks were also in demand, with the UK mining index up 1.7% on the back of a rally in copper prices. Antofagasta, Glencore, Anglo American and BHP Billiton rose 1.9 to 3.9%. (Reuters)
Source: www.businessworld.ie
Britain's economic prospects will improve after Brexit, the founder of pubs group JD Wetherspoon said on Wednesday, lashing out at the "irresponsible doom-mongering" of politicians, banks and company bosses in the run up to the referendum.
Tim Martin, who chairs the company, was a prominent campaigner for Britain to leave the European Union, appearing in television debates before the June 23 vote and distributing half a million beer mats challenging statistics used by the government.
In comments in a trading statement on Wednesday, Martin hit out at the "extremely negative" forecasts for the British economy, including from UK finance minister George Osborne, Christine Lagarde, the head of the International Monetary Fund, Bank of England Governor Mark Carney, the Confederation of British Industry and many of the bosses of Britain's biggest businesses.
"(These) individuals and organisations are either dishonest, or they have a poor understanding of economics, since democracy and prosperity are closely linked and the EU is clearly undemocratic," he said.
"By voting to restore democracy in the UK, I believe the UK's economic prospects will improve, although it is quite possible that the unprecedented and irresponsible doom-mongering ... may lead to some kind of slowdown."
The vote for Brexit caused turmoil in financial markets and has hit consumer confidence in Britain. The boss of British supermarket group Sainsbury's Mike Coupe last week highlighted the danger of Britain talking itself into a recession.
A survey published last week showed British consumer confidence suffered one of its biggest drops in 21 years in the wake of vote, though many British firms have said it is too soon to predict the consequences of Brexit.
Martin said Wetherspoon's trade had actually strengthened slightly in recent weeks and he anticipated a "modestly improved outcome" for the current financial year.
British luxury brand Burberry and online fashion retailer ASOS have both said they expect to benefit from the depreciation of the pound versus sterling in the wake of the Brexit vote.
Shares in Wetherspoon, up 9% over the last three months, were up 2.6% at 761 pence by 0856 GMT, valuing the business at 853 million pounds.
For the 11 weeks to 10 July sales at Wetherspoon's pubs open over a year increased by 4.0%, while total sales were up 3.8%.
The full-year operating margin before exceptional items and before a 3.8 million pounds gain on property was forecast at 6.8%, compared to 7.4% last year. (Reuters)
Source: www.businessworld.ie
Utah has been named Americas top state for business by CNBC.
With a sweet economy and an industrious workforce, the Beehive State is Americas Top State for Business, says the report about Utah.
The business channel scored each state in the country on numerous criteria, using publicly-available data on more than 60 different measures of competitiveness.
In 2015 Utah ranked 3rd overall nationally and improved to #1 this year due to large gains in Workforce, Infrastructure, Education and Quality of Life, to name a few. The Utah workforce improved from 29th nationally last year to 12th this year while infrastructure improvements launched Utah from 30th in 2015 to 13th. Last year Utah Economy was #1 but in 2016 it remains high at #3 overall.
Utah did see some declines in other categories, including an 11 point drop in Cost of Living, a six point drop in Cost of Doing Business and a five point drop in Business Friendliness. Utahs lowest score overall was Access to Capital, ranked 24th nationally.
The other states that rounded out the top 10 include Texas, Colorado, Minnesota, North Carolina, Washington, Michigan, Georgia, Iowa and Florida. Idaho ranked 15th while Wyoming was tied for 13th.
Each state received points for each ranking by using metrics. The categories Workforce, Cost of Doing Business, Infrastructure, and Economy received the most points while Access to Capital, Cost of Living and Business Friendliness received the lowest points. The report says categories are weighted based on how frequently each is used as a selling point in state economic development marketing materials.
Data was used from the U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Federation of Tax Administrators, American Petroleum Institute, Moodys Investor Service, and S&P Global Market Intelligence.
LOGAN Bail has been set for 36-year-old James B. Brown who was arrested after fleeing from a Logan house fire Friday.
Brown appeared in 1st District Court Tuesday morning and was arraigned on three counts of misdemeanor drug offenses.
State attorney Barbara Lachmar told the court she hadnt received all of the information from police on Browns arrest. She noted, though, he has a lengthy criminal history and should not be released unless bail was set at $5,000.
Judge Brian Cannell set bail at $4,500 and ordered Brown to appear again in court July 26.
Brown was arrested by Logan City Police officers after witnesses said they saw him and another man running from the early morning house fire at 500 S. Main. The fire was reported by a neighbor at 6:20 a.m.
The fire completely destroyed the home and an attached garage that had been vacant for several months.
Brown told officers that the fire started from a candle that he was using for light inside the home.
Police had been monitoring the residence for a while because of possible drug activity, and immediately considered the fire suspicious.
will@cvradio.com
Behind the Numbers: Orban's refugee referendum
Published on July 13, 2016
Story by Ana Valiente Translation by: Cafebabel
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The Hungarian Prime Minister, Viktor Orban, is looking for a way to ignore the refugee crisis. Thats why, encouraged by his wariness of Brussels, he's called his own referendum on the 2nd of October. On this date, Hungarians will have their say on whether or not they want to host refugees within their borders.
Hungary is once again causing controversy. The government has already built a barbed wire fence along its Serbian and Croatian borders, to prevent refugees from entering the country. Now, they have called an anti-immigration referendum next October. "Do you want the EU to enforce compulsory resettlement of non-Hungarian citizens in the country without the consent of Parliament?" is the question that conservative Prime Minister Viktor Orban is addressing to his citizens.
The point of contention? The quotas being imposed by the European Commission calling for each member state to play its part in hosting 160,000 refugees currently stuck in Greece and Italy, as well as the suggestion that the EU fine those states refusing to adhere to the arrangement. Orban, who supported Brexit and whose Euroscepticism seems to grow day by day, has firmly pinned his contempt for the European directives to the mast, hoping that his country achieves "independence" from Brussels.
It comes at a moment of great uncertainty for the EU thanks to the upcoming departure of the United Kingdom, and at a time when the far-right political party "Movement for a better Hungary" (better known as Jobbik) is seeing growing support. The results of the referendum, even if it remains consultative, could start a chain reaction. Might Brexit be followed by an eventual "Huxit" Lets hope not, eh?
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This article is part of our Behind the Numbers series, illustrating newsworthy stats with artistic design and a brief analysis.
Story by Ana Valiente Spanish freelance journalist based in Madrid. Currently exploring the boundless world of documentary filmmaking.
Translated from Orban y los refugiados
Nebraska farmers are expected to reap the states largest wheat harvest on record.
Forecasters say the state's producers will bring in 60 million bushels this year based on conditions as of July 1, according to the U.S. Department of Agricultures National Agricultural Statistics Service.
Thats an average yield of 50 bushels an acre, an increase of 12 bushels per acre over last year. That increase in productivity more than makes up for the fact that Nebraskas farmers planted 10,000 fewer acres than a year ago. The USDA said 1.2 million acres of wheat are expected to be harvested for grain this year in the state.
Nebraska's previous record average yield was 49 bushels an acre set in 2014.
The state statistics follow the national trend, with U.S. farmers expected to produce 1.63 billion bushels of wheat this year, according to USDA projections released Tuesday.
The latest national wheat forecast is 8 percent higher than the governments previous June 1 report and would be 19 percent up from the 2015 harvest. Nationally, the wheat yield is expected to be a record 53.9 bushels per acre, which would be 11.4 bushels more than last year.
The area expected to be harvested for grain or seed totals 30.2 million acres, down 6 percent from last year.
Overflowing grain bins could spell trouble for farmers. Caroline Brauer of the Nebraska Wheat Board said some Nebraska producers are reporting it's costing them more to grow wheat than they can sell it for.
USDA also boosted the number of corn and soybeans expected to be harvested this fall because more were planted than initially estimated.
The agency said in its monthly update Tuesday that farmers are expected to bring in 14.5 billion bushels of corn, which would break 2014's record of 14.2 billion bushels. Farmers planted 94.1 million acres of corn, about a half-million acres more than first projected.
The soybean harvest is estimated at 3.88 billion bushels on a record 83.7 million acres planted, 1.5 million more acres than projected.
Prices for both crops are up compared to earlier this month, because the USDA says soybean exports are higher than expected and corn exports will rise since drought-stricken Brazil produced less than projected.
Nebraskas winter wheat harvest was 38 percent done as of Sunday. It was rated 11 percent poor to very poor, 25 percent fair, 51 percent good and 13 percent excellent.
Wided Bouchamaoui: "A Nobel Prize for Europe? Why not?"
Published on July 13, 2016
Story by Matthieu Amare Translation by: Catherine Combes
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Wided Bouchamaoui is no less than one of the most influential women in the Arab world. As the President of the Tunisian Confederation of Industry, Trade and Handicrafts (UTICA), she received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2015, as part of the Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet. A Big Fish with prestige.
cafebabel: The modern world can be complex for some people. How would you explain to a child what you do?
Wided Bouchamaoui: I would explain to them that national dialogue was the only solution for the country. We had no other choice.
cafebabel: We can all be heroes, just for one day. What's one other thing you've always dreamed of doing?
Wided Bouchamaoui: I've always wanted to give back to my country.
cafebabel: Democracy isn't a recent phenomenon in Europe. You've said that, in Tunisia, "people [were] beginning to learn it." How do you picture the country, 10 years from now?
Wided Bouchamaoui: We're learning, but we're learning fast, because now, things have changed. Digital technologies have saved us centuries. We'll catch up pretty quickly, never you fear.
cafebabel: What's the thing that outrages you most about today's world?
Wided Bouchamaoui: The lack of understanding of our religion. People don't understand Islam, and confuse what is a religion of tolerance with extremism. That causes us a lot of pain.
cafebabel: Our world demands perfection, but what's the one fault you're most tolerant of?
Wided Bouchamaoui: Stubbornness, maybe (laughs). Because people don't want to change, and it took a lot of stubborness to achieve what we did in Tunisia.
cafebabel: Congratulations! You have been chosen as the major representative for the youth of the world. What was your campaign slogan?
Wided Bouchamaoui: Hope, never give up, and believe in yourself. Because young people today represent hope.
cafebabel: Nowadays it seems the Internet knows everything, but what's one thing Google doesn't know about you?
Wided Bouchamaoui: You should ask my son, he's more updated than I am! (laughs) But to be honest, I really don't have a clue.
cafebabel: If you could invent one thing that no one has ever thought of before, what would it be?
Wided Bouchamaoui: I'd reinvent tolerance, because it seems nearly non-existent these days.
cafebabel: Whats the first thing you do in the morning, no matter what?
Wided Bouchamaoui: I make an effort to plan out my day, and then try to stick to it. That, and drink a lot of water.
cafebabel: Between you and me, do you think Europe deserves a Nobel Peace Prize?
Wided Bouchamaoui: Why not? It depends on the reasons why it receives it. But if Europe achieved something exceptional, then what's the problem? To really answer that question you would have to ask Europeans what they think the continent has done for them. One thing is sure, we need more help from Europe. It would benefit from getting closer to Tunisia. I'm not blaming anyone for anything, but I would have liked it if Europe had stronger and deeper relations with Tunisia.
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There are plenty of Big Fish in Europe's not-so-small pond. Introducing our new series of interviews delving deeper into the lives of some of the continent's biggest names.
Story by Matthieu Amare Je viens du sud de la France. J'aime les traditions. Mon pere a ete traumatise par Seville 82 contre les Allemands au foot. J'ai du mal avec les Anglais au rugby. J'adore le jambon-beurre. Je n'ai jamais fait Erasmus. Autant vous dire que c'etait mal barre. Et pourtant, je suis redacteur en chef du meilleur magazine sur l'Europe du monde.
Translated from Wided Bouchamaoui : Le prix Nobel a l'Europe ? Pourquoi pas
Wednesday:
At 7:00 AM ET, The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) will release the results for the mortgage purchase applications index.
At 2:00 PM, the Federal Reserve Beige Book, an informal review by the Federal Reserve Banks of current economic conditions in their Districts.
From Matthew Graham at Mortgage News Daily: Long-Term Rate Lows Fighting For Survival
Mortgage rates are on the move, heading noticeably higher after a more subtle increase yesterday. With that, this week now stands as the first major push back against the impressive run to near-record lows that's taken place since the UK voted to leave the European Union in late June. Whereas lenders had increasingly been quoting 3.25% on top tier 30yr fixed scenarios, most have moved back up to 3.375%. Some of the more conservatively-priced crowd is even higher.
emphasis added
Here is a table from Mortgage News Daily:
An unfinished street in the Gage County Industrial Park is being renamed to honor one of Beatrice's most successful community members.
Freeman Lane, an unfinished road in the far north side of the industrial area, will now be called Dick Tegtmeier Lane. The proposal to rename the road was approved at Wednesdays Beatrice Board of Public Works meeting.
The street is platted but has not been built, BPW General Manager Tobias Tempelmeyer said, adding that he and the rest of BPW would like to see its name change before its finished.
We are looking to rename Freeman Lane in west Industrial Park, which currently does not exist, Tempelmeyer told the board. If everything keeps moving forward, hopefully in the next six months it will be there.
The original plan to name the incoming street Freeman Lane was reconsidered when a review highlighted another Freeman Lane that already exists in the Beatrice area.
We noticed that there is also a Freeman Lane out near Pioneer Acres, which also uses Beatrice 68310 as their address, Tempelmeyer explained. Rather than having two separate addresses with Freeman Lane in Beatrice, Nebraska, we thought it would be best if we renamed one of the streets.
Dick Tegtmeier Lane was chosen as a potential name because of everything the former CEO, president and owner of Encore Mfg. Co. Inc. did for the city and its residents, he said. Tegtmeier moved to Beatrice in 1961 and was a highly successful businessman, as well as an engaged community member. He was the co-founder of Exmark Mfg. Co. Inc. and was an active member of St. Paul Lutheran Church, Beatrice Optimists, Gage County Economic Development and the Nebraska Diplomats.
I think the reason for the name selection was because of his involvement in economic development for so long and his absolute desire to see Beatrice grow, said Mayor Stan Wirth.
The name change has been recommended to the City Council for approval. The council will make an ordinance to officially change the streets name to Dick Tegtmeier Lane at its next meeting Monday, July 18. The meeting will begin at 7 p.m. in the BPS Administration Building.
As soon as word spread last Friday about the shooting going on in downtown Dallas, how many of us got on the phone to contact a loved one in the Metroplex area?
I've already heard of several local residents who called daughters, sons, parents, anyone who they hold dear.
The chances they might be in the immediate area of the shooting, which wound up with five dead police officers, might have been slim. No matter. We had to reach out to assure ourselves that they were OK.
That's the same reaction I had on Sunday morning, June 12, when the morning shows were full of the Orlando mass shooting. Our oldest son lives in Orlando. We told ourselves that he was probably fine. Orlando is a big place. But the Dallas-Fort Worth area is a big place, too.
He was fine. But for a few hours, until he called back, there was a slight question.
We think we're protected from these episodes of violence. But we're so connected, we may be only a phone call away at any moment from being part of these eruptions of seemingly irrational acts of violence. Yet as these acts of violence reach out to touch us more, they seem to unify us less.
In the wake of the Orlando shootings, the divisions immediately presented themselves.
Within days of the slaughter in Orlando, the Congress was immersed, again, in an intractable standoff about gun control. Republicans, almost reflexively, shrugging off any suggestions that the ridiculously easy acquisition of firearms, high powered firearms, might have made any contribution to the killings in Orlando.
Democrats went so quickly to the gun control argument that approaches such as bolstering mental health, security improvements, monitoring of juvenile records Omar Mateen, the shooter, had cheered in school during the 9/11 attacks were never advanced. They left themselves no space for negotiation.
But even in Corpus Christi, division over the Orlando attack was present. Certain local clergy objected to lighting the Harbor Bridge in the rainbow colors, a symbol of the gay community. The lighting display had been paid for out of the pockets of Mayor Nelda Martinez and Councilwoman Colleen McIntyre.
A tragedy that had quickly unified the nation soon was fissured.
The Dallas killings of five police officers and the wounding of several others during a peaceful protest against the wave of police killings has left the nation stunned. But it has also brought its own divisions.
Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick called the demonstrators "hypocrites" for seeking protection from the shooting from the very police they were protesting against. He later tried to walk back the comment, but it was clear that Patrick had chosen a side and it wasn't with the demonstrators.
But there are no "sides" in the wave of police shootings, the latest happening on Wednesday in Minnesota and the other on Thursday in Baton Rouge, the second just one day before the Dallas shootings.
The only "side" is one that supports professional policing that carries out its duties while protecting the public, the people they take into custody and themselves.
No doubt the advent of cellphone video has made the job of police that much tougher. Cellphone video captured the take down and subsequent death of Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge as well as the street side killing of Philando Castile. But the police, a government agency, must be transparent in their actions and expect that video is being taken at all times.
Some, such as former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, believe the Black Lives Matter movement is inherently racist because it focuses only on the black men who have died in police custody.
But that ignores the fact that while, according to The Washington Post, more white people have been killed by police since January 2015, the 381 black people killed come from a much smaller black population. In short, blacks are 2.5 times more likely to be shot dead by police than a white person.
The pace of tragic events seem to have its own rationale, which is no rationale at all. The Fourth of July celebrations had barely subsided when terrorists killed more than 40 people at Istanbul's main airport.
I have good friends who live in Turkey and in Istanbul. The daughter of a good friend is spending the summer in Istanbul. Everyone is fine, but again a violent event seemed to reach out and touch us. When will it stop?
Nick Jimenez has worked as a reporter, city editor and editorial page editor for more than 40 years in Corpus Christi. He is currently the editorial page editor emeritus for the Caller-Times. His commentary column appears on Wednesdays and Sundays.
SHARE CALLER-TIMES file The San Antonio Spurs' Danny Green will meet kids during the free meet and greet hosted by the Corpus Christi Parks & Recreation. The meet and greet will be from 6-7 p.m. Wednesday, July 13, in advance of Green's weeklong basketball clinic at the Incarnate Word Academy. Green will sign autographs at the meet and greet, but only for youth fans. Find out more about the free meet and greet and the $149 clinic online at DannyGreenNBA.com. Esther Hackleman
Wednesday
NBA: San Antonio Spurs guard-forward Danny Green will meet and greet fans from 6-7 p.m. at the Corpus Christi Gym, 3202 Cabaniss Parkway. Autographs only for youth. Parents are encouraged to register their children at the meet-and-greet event for the clinic for kids in grades 2-12 from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Thursday at Incarnate Word Academy. Cost: Meet and greet is free; $149, clinic. Information: DannyGreenNBA.com
THURSDAY
COMEDY: Jester's Comedy Club presents Michael Blackson at 5858 S. Padre Island Drive. Information: www.jesters.cc, 361-906-6225.
MOVIES: The Aquarium at Rockport Harbor will show "Ice Age 4: Continental Drift" at 7 p.m. at 706 Navigation Circle. Cost: Free to Aransas County students, must preregister. Information: 361-727-0016.
CONCERT: John Cortez Band will perform from 8-10 p.m. at Cole Park Amphitheater, 1526 Ocean Drive, as part of the Bay Jammin' Concert series. Cost: Free. Information: www.facebook.com/BayJamminConcertandCinemaSeries, 361-826-7259.
For more events check Caller.com/vivacc
SHARE Jeremy Cuellar Nathalle Jones
By Jamil Oakford, jamil.oakford@caller.com
Tossing litter out of a car window ended with two arrests, Corpus Christi police said.
About 1:15 a.m. Tuesday, officers watched as a passenger in the front seat of a 2003 Mitsubishi Lancer threw trash out the window near Ayers Street and Gollihar Road. Officers stopped the car and found four men inside. The 18-year-old driver didn't have a license and had an arrest warrant for contempt of court, according to a police news release.
An 18-year-old back seat passenger also was searched and police found synthetic marijuana in his front pocket. They also found a 380 caliber handgun stolen in a July 8 burglary under the passenger's seat.
The driver, Nathalle Jones, was arrested on suspicion of possession of a controlled substance and the Nueces County warrant. As of Tuesday morning he remained in the Nueces County Jail.
One of the back seat passengers, Jeremy Cuellar, 18, was arrested on suspicion of unlawful carry of a weapon, theft of a firearm, possession of a controlled substance and tampering or fabricating physical evidence. He remained in Nueces County Jail as of Tuesday morning with bail set at $9,000, according to jail officials.
The two other men weren't arrested.
Twitter: @Caller_Jamil
SHARE Priscilla Alvarez GABE HERNANDEZ/CALLER-TIMES
By Jamil Oakford, jamil.oakford@caller.com
Corpus Christi police arrested a woman after she stole $2,500 worth of clothing from a department store, according to a police news release.
Around 7:35 p.m. Monday, officers responded to a department store in La Palmera mall. Store employees told police they saw the female putting items into a mesh bag as she looked, according to the police news release.
They watched as she pushed the baby stroller into a fitting room and when she left she placed the empty mesh bag on a clothing display. The news release states the employees said they saw her push the baby stroller toward the mall entrance and she left the store without paying.
Police caught up to the woman and found assorted clothing in the baby stroller.
Priscilla Alvarez, 32, was arrested under suspicion of felony theft. She was no longer in Nueces County Jail Tuesday morning after facing a $2,500 bail, according to jail officials.
Twitter: @Caller_Jamil
Fares Sabawi contributed to this report.
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By Krista M. Torralva of the Caller-Times
The families of some people injured or killed as a result of a General Motors Co. vehicle's faulty ignition switch can sue the company after a federal appeals court ruling Wednesday.
The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan reversed part of a bankruptcy court ruling that protected GM from some lawsuits.
More than 2.6 million GM vehicles were recalled in 2014 and the company admitted to knowing about the faulty switches for at least a decade.
Corpus Christi-based lawyer Robert Hilliard, who is colead counsel for the plaintiffs, praised the latest court ruling.
"The 2nd Circuit, in a sound and substantive way, called GM out for its cover-up, its lies and its attempts to use bankruptcy as a way to hide from the victims," Hilliard said in a statement.
GM spokesman James Cain told Reuters the company is reviewing the decision.
"Even if some claims are ultimately allowed to proceed, the plaintiffs must still prove their cases," Cain told the news organization.
Twitter: @CallerKMT
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By Staff Reports of the Corpus Christi Caller-Times
The Service for Peace and Unity, scheduled for 7:30 p.m. tonight, will be held at Heritage Park instead of Cole Park.
The change of venue is due to a water main break at Cole Park, according to City Councilwoman Colleen McIntyre.
The service is intended to bring together community and faith leaders to speak against violence and pray for those who have been affected by it. The community is encouraged to attend.
The service follows a recent series of high-profile, fatal incidents: a mass-shooting at a gay night club in Orlando that killed 49 and wounded 53; police-involved shootings that killed a black man in Minnesota and a black man in Louisiana; and the ambush in Dallas that left five police officers dead and several others wounded.
"This is not who we are called to be as a nation," the Rev. Sean Maloney told the Caller-Times earlier this week. "The level of violence has gotten epidemic and it just has to stop. This is not who God called us to be."
Guest speakers include Mayor Nelda Martinez, Councilwoman Colleen McIntyre, Corpus Christi Police Chief Mike Markle, Rabbi Ilan Emanuel of Congregation Beth Israel and representatives from the Islamic Society of South Texas.
Caller-Times reporter Natalia Contreras contributed to this report.
COURTNEY SACCO/CALLER-TIMES
Poll booths during a training session at the Nueces County court house, Monday, May 23, 2016.
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By Matt Woolbright of the Caller-Times
Nueces County commissioners want to do away with precinct-based voting requirements when it comes to where residents can actually cast a ballot. Now the county must wait to see if the Secretary of State approves.
The Commissioners Court voted unanimously Wednesday to authorize 91 polling locations around the county for the November election.
If approved by the state, residents would be allowed to vote at any polling location as long as they're registered to vote in Nueces County.
"The idea here is less locations but equally saturated across the county," County Commissioner Brent Chesney said. "If you're stuck downtown and you can't get home in time (to vote), then you don't have to and you can still vote."
The county's plan will likely be submitted early next month, County Clerk Kara Sands told commissioners.
"This has been a great exercise in democracy, and let's hope it works," County Judge Loyd Neal said after the vote.
State officials are expected to approve six Texas counties with at least 100,000 residents in November to do away with requiring residents to vote in their precincts. It's no guarantee Nueces County will be approved as one of those, Neal said.
If the county is not selected or the commissioners had rejected the plan the county would have been forced to produce new polling locations in 27 precincts after previous locations were no longer available for use due to federal requirements or unwilling property owners, Sands said.
No members of the public opposed the plan, but some said the county wouldn't be able to notify residents of the change in time. Others said the county should gradually reduce the number of polling locations rather than dropping to 90 or so in year 1.
Sands pointed to entities that have volunteered to help spread the word namely, the local Democratic and Republican parties and the League of Women Voters and said the county doesn't have many options.
"If we do not do this, then y'all are going to have to produce 27 polling locations," Sands told the court. "This is a 'Hail Mary,' but this is all we got."
The proposal also earned the support of Jennifer Ellis, chair of the Nueces County Democratic Party. She described it as a step in the right direction for voter turnout. Nueces County is among the worst counties in Texas in terms of voter turnout, and Texas is one of the worst states in the nation for the same statistic.
"They help minimize voter confusion and that helps increase voter turnout and voter access," she said of voting centers. "Those are two key issues."
Twitter: @reportermatt
| BY Lynchy |
Tourism New Zealand, Whybin\TBWA Sydney and Eleven today unveils a new global video fronted by Oscar-winning filmmaker James Cameron.
The video, which was filmed in New Zealands South Island, sees James share his passion for the destination he has chosen to call his second home. The filmmaker describes New Zealand as my kind of country, and the video clip offers the world a glimpse of what it is that captivates him like nowhere else.
Cameron has a personal connection to New Zealand stemming from a visit in the mid nineties in which he fell in love with the countrys beauty.
Filmed alongside his wife Suzy Amis Cameron, the video sees James taking in the natural wonders of New Zealands spectacular South Island, from walking the Tasman Glacier and hiking the Routeburn Track to kayaking through the Dart River.
Says Craig Brooks, creative director at Whybin\TBWA, Sydney: Inspiring people to travel and experience the larger world is one of the most rewarding briefs a creative can get. Combined with the opportunity to work with one of the worlds best storytellers made this project particularly special. New Zealand is a place that feeds James Camerons curious spirit, and his passion for and connection to New Zealand is immediately apparent both in person and this work. I hope more people get to be inspired by a visit to this wonderful place.
The video will roll-out in Tourism New Zealands key markets to inspire travellers to follow in the footsteps of James Cameron and visit New Zealand.
Whybin\TBWA Sydney
Executive Creative Director: Gary McCreadie
Executive Creative Director: Wesley Hawes
Creative Director: Craig Brooks
Creative Director: Ian Williamson
Group Head: Justin Cox
Senior Account Director: Erin Kelly
Account Manager: Cosmo Haskard
Executive Planning Director: Hristos Varouhas
Broadcast Content Director: Christina Wilmot
Production Director: Jonathan Pitcher
Sound: Beau Silvester
Eleven
Senior Account Director: Fiona Milliken
Senior Account Manager: Claire Verlander
Senior Account Executive: Jade Barringer
Robbers Dog
Production Company: Robbers Dog
Director: Daniel Borgman
Managing Director: George Mackenzie
Producer: Loren Bradley
DOP: Shelley Farthing-Dawe
Editor: Dave Whitaker
Photography
Photographer: Alistair Guthrie
Assistant: Gavin McGregor
Tourism New Zealand
Chief Executive: Kevin Bowler
Director of Marketing: Andrew Fraser
General Manager Global Marketing Communications: Kate Necklen
Global Brand Manager: Jodi Redden
Do other migrants, those who didn't arrive in this promised land until they were at least in their teens, find it impossible to take kangaroos for granted? Perhaps it was because I was a rural pommy and grew up in a world of run-of-the-mill hedgehogs, commonplace badgers and unremarkable voles, that somehow the sheer strangeness of kangaroos never lessens. It is no wonder that the best poem ever written about kangaroos was written not by an Australian but by 'roo-bedazzled pommy novelist and poet D.H. Lawrence. He met and knew kangaroos at Thirroul during his brief (three months) sojourn in Australia in 1922.
Mrs O'Mara is more concerned still at the possibility of contamination spreading well beyond her house. During an extension of the home, soil from under the home had been spread over the backyard, she said. The soil should be considered contaminated with asbestos, and she had informed the taskforce, but the demolition rules only require soil testing around the house footprint, with the taskforce not testing soil in backyards and not pursuing an early plan to scrape blocks clean.
Telebras is presently constructing a submarine cable that could potentially connect with both the station and data centre.
Angola Cables and Telebras previously partnered in South Atlantic Cable System (SACS) but the latter pulled out as a result of a limited budget as well as a change in its strategic priority moving from Africa to Europe.
Angola Cables CEO Antonio Nunes said: "It was a natural process of financial prioritisation [by Telebras]. They pulled out from the Brazil-US and the Brazil-Africa projects, prioritising the route to Europe. We carried on with our own project. There was no incompatibility, nor does this means we cannot work with Telebras again.
Nunes added that its offer to co-share with Telebras is presently under review and a deal has yet to be confirmed.
When Laura Poppy Grace Wanamakers films are shown at the Chatham Orpheum Theater next week, dont expect to get a front row seat. Those seats will be taken up by Lauras Moms Ginny Nickerson, Karen McPherson, Nina Schuessler, Jennifer Sexton, Jamie Niethold Nash, Lynette Walker, Carrie Fahle, Erica DeZitter, Tamara Harper and myself.
When Robin Goellner, Wanamakers mother, passed away from breast cancer her daughter was just 16 years old and a student at Walnut Hill School for the Arts in Natick. Goellners friends banded together to send Wanamaker care packages. Since then Lauras Moms have continued to be an active part of her life, meeting for dinner and celebrating milestones whenever Wanamaker was home from school.
You light up our lives, Ms. Laura! And are so easy to be proud of! said McPherson when Wanamaker was awarded one of the United Kingdoms Foyle Young Poets of the Year awards in 2011. (Her winning entry was a poem titled Chatham, and she was one of the top 15 winners out of over 7,500 entries.)
This year the Hampshire College graduate won both Best Experimental and Best of Festival at the Five College Film Festival with her entry, a short feature film titled Descent. Following that she completed a year-long project, her first feature film, The Tiny World, as her senior thesis. Both will be screened in the Orpheums Joan Kent Dillon Theater on Sunday, July 17 through Wednesday, July 20 at 9 a.m.
A quote from Gina Lopezs article in The Massachusetts Daily Collegian on Descent stated, The film focuses on the inward, simultaneous struggle of understanding a family members descent into Alzheimers disease and a fragile to nonexistent memory, and the understanding of oneself during young adulthood. The film is 20 minutes long.
The Tiny World is over 60 minutes long and has only been seen by my Hampshire College professors and other people in the school, said Wanamaker. So far. At the Orpheum next week, anyone can view the film.
We are so happy to be in the position to give film students this opportunity, said Kevin McLain, the Orpheums executive director.
The Tiny World is a semi-autobiographical story of what Wanamaker felt like when she returned to the Cape on school breaks.
The central characters name is Connie. Connie is a college freshman who comes home to Harwich on spring break, she said. When Connie begins to interact with her old friends, she notices that things have changed. She finds it hard to connect with them. Connie is the only one in the group who is going to school off-Cape. Could this be the reason? She then takes the drastic step of recording conversations with her friends via a concealed voice recorder so she can listen and analyze them later to possibly get a different prospective on the rift. She does, but instead of getting closer to her friends, she now feels even more isolated.
Wanamaker began the filming process in spring 2015 with an advertisement in The Chronicle and social media looking for actors.
Most of the actors who applied were from 4Cs (Cape Cod Community College), said Wanamaker. The auditions were very important. I wanted to find actors who not only could relate to the role but feel an emotional connection to it too. She cast 12 actors, and with an assist from Laura Lee on costumes and make-up began the filming last summer in a couple different Harwich locations. One of her location sites was the basement at our house.
Wanamaker said some of her school associates were brought to tears when they saw the film. That made me feel that I got my message across. On a personal level, I feel the decisions we make about taking care of each other has a generational effect. The longer we put off addressing the drug use and racism on the Cape, the more negative the impact will be on the world around us. Cape Cod is a microcosm of a bigger problem; its a tiny world.
Wanamaker is 22 years old and grew up in Chatham, but presently lives in Harwich. She has been involved in the arts from an early age, and has a new film idea in the works.
DETAILS:
Descent and The Tiny World
At The Chatham Orpheum Theater
July 17 to 20, 9 a.m.
Admission is free
Outgoing ex officio member Zack King says protesters who insult board and make impossible demands never will be taken seriously
Students gather outside an April 15 meeting of the UNC Board of Governors to protest against university system President Margaret Spellings, N.C. House Bill 2, and other causes. (CJ photo by Kari Travis)
CHAPEL HILL As student protesters continue to wreak havoc at public meetings and expand their list of complaints against the University of North Carolina system's leadership, they will do nothing but hurt their chances of being taken seriously, said student Zack King, outgoing president of UNC's Association of Student Governments and ex-officio member of the Board of Governors.Those demonstrators, who have attended every BOG meeting since October to contest the controversial hiring of new UNC system President Margaret Spellings - causing chaos at some points - now have added environmental complaints, concerns about UNC's Historically Black Colleges and Universities, and outrage over the General Assembly's recent passage of House Bill 2 to their list of issues.Enacted March 23 by a special session of the General Assembly, H.B. 2, known as "the bathroom bill," overturned a Charlotte nondiscrimination ordinance that would have allowed transgendered individuals to use the public bathrooms and changing rooms of the sexual identity they chose.Under the new legislation, public schools and agencies must offer single-sex multiple-occupancy bathrooms, and students are required to use those facilities based on their biological sex, rather than their self-proclaimed gender.Spellings, who has been at the center of heated protest since her election last year on April 5 released a memo stating that the university would comply with H.B. 2, an announcement that fueled outrage among students and faculty alike.While King said he sees problems with H.B. 2 - and supports peaceful, organized protest from students - he doesn't think that students who interrupt meetings or yell expletives at members of the board are being smart or effective.King said.King, who will this summer relinquish his role on the BOG to incoming ASG president Madeline Finnegan, was present for an April 15 board meeting during which students staged yet another disruptive protest.The interruption began during a speech from Spellings, when several students in the back of the room stood up and began to chant, drowning out her voice.The shouting continued for several minutes until board members called a recess and security officers asked the students to leave. The students initially refused, but then complied, yelling vulgarities as they exited the meeting room.The meeting soon reconvened, but protests continued outside, with students yelling loudly enough to cause continued disruption.In an interview with Carolina Journal, protester Femi Shittu, a senior from UNC Greensboro who was arrested during a January demonstration against the BOG , said that her fight is about the protection of students against a system that refuses to listen to those it serves.Shittu said.But outrage over H.B. 2 is misdirected, and only confuses the issues that protesters say they want to impact, King said.he added.King said.In an effort to encourage civil dialogue, future BOG meetings will include a public forum where individuals can voice concerns or complaints directly to the board, said board Chairman Lou Bissette.Bissette said.Bissette said he is skeptical about whether such a conversation actually could happen with groups like Shittu's, but hopes that an understanding can be reached. A part of that understanding, he said, must be for protesters to recognize that the BOG isn't responsible for passing H.B. 2, and therefore cannot do anything to change the law itself.Bissette said.Bissette said.But protesters say that, given the board's failure to heed their demands, they will continue to voice their complaints using the same tactics they have over the past several months.Shittu concluded.
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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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In light of continued developments, primarily since 2008, there exists in these United States a Legal System which operates on a proved Two Tiered approach to justice rendered, which primarily benefits Democratic Elites and Woke Ideological Virtue Signalers, representing their co-dependent wards, to the expressed exclusion of normal hardworking American citizens: What is your suggestion in remedying this widespread injustice and, if not corrected, its existential outcome for our Constitutional Republic?
Complete overhaul of the Department of Justice and their enforcers - the FBI - to reflect a far more honest justice system to keep patriots remaining calm.
Disband the FBI, and request that congress investigate all unethical and non patriotic practices to partially right the wrongs of a distrusted and politically weaponized "Department of Justice."
RiverStone Health plans to break ground on a new and larger clinic in August, addressing what employees have for years described as cramped and crowded conditions in its current clinic.
In its current facility, RiverStone has resorted to measures such as converting a bathroom into a meeting room and using a small space under a stairway as an employee work space to address the cramped conditions.
The new clinic is aimed at permanently addressing the county health agency's space concerns.
RiverStone will break ground on the new 25,000-square-foot clinic on Aug. 9 at 12:30 p.m. in a public ceremony.
Since a handful of public announcements beginning September 2015 unveiled major donations, the county health agency has been steadily working to finish out the fundraising in its $11 million capital campaign. Nearly $8 million has been raised to date.
"It's going to be an incredibly patient-friendly, staff- friendly, process-friendly facility," said John Felton, RiverStone president and CEO. "It's going to be incredibly efficient."
The new clinic, designed by CTA Architects, will be built just to the south of RiverStone's current clinic, at 123 S. 27th St.
After initial announcements of a $1 million federal grant and a $1 million donation from the Billings philanthropists Bill and Merilyn Ballard, the fundraising efforts received another boost Monday afternoon with the announcement of a $150,000 donation from First Interstate Bank and the First Interstate BancSystem Foundation.
With that donation, the capital campaign has raised $7.8 million of its $11 million goal. In late 2015, RiverStone officials were confident construction on the new clinic could start once they reached the $7 million mark.
"First Interstate Bank and First Interstate BancSystem Foundation have made strategic investments in the community for a number of years, and we are grateful for their generosity in contributing to our capital campaign," said Rob Hunter, Building a Health Community volunteer campaign chairman, in a prepared statement. "The financial support of First Interstate on this important public-private project is much appreciated."
Kristie Asay, executive director of the RiverStone Health Foundation, said that the total raised so far includes donations from RiverStone's board of directors.
In addition, 230 RiverStone employees have pledged a total of $388,000 of their own money to the project.
"I knew it would be generous," Asay said. "I was not surprised at all they were this generous."
As RiverStone has grown and expanded over the years, including by moving to a more comprehensive medical home model and adding medical teaching programs, it has outgrown the old building.
Today, it serves about 20,000 patients and processes 90,000 visits annually. When the clinic was built in 1995 the agency saw around 9,000 patients and 20,000 annual visits.
"This is being designed as a patient-centered medical home and to be a teaching facility," Felton said.
That will include adding 17 exam rooms for a total of 48. Those rooms will be divided into four "pods" of 12 rooms each and will be built around a central teaching area for resident physicians and others learning at RiverStone.
Throughout the design process CTA Architects in Billings is in charge of the design, while Dick Anderson Construction will build the clinic employees have been providing input and suggestions.
That includes focus groups, emailed ideas and tours of exam room mock-ups, gathering input on every aspect, from the layout of the entryway all the way down to the location of coat hangers.
"The people that will actually work in the building will have a huge influence on what the building looks like ... " Felton said. "When you engage people in a process like this, you're going to get the best they have to offer."
Both Felton and Asay also praised the effort as strong public-private partnership, with significant financial contributions from the government, businesses and private citizens, citing a recognition that it helps provide health care for some of Billings' most in-need patients and those who often wouldn't be able to afford it elsewhere.
The first phase of construction on the new clinic is expected to take about a year at a cost of around $8 million. A second phase, for about $3 million, will began after that to connect the new and old clinics. The old building will, among other things, be used to add supportive and therapy services.
RIVERTON Authorities have identified the man found dead in a central Wyoming river by a woman playing the popular smartphone game Pokemon Go.
The body of Jeffrey Day, 28, was found floating in the Wind River near the city of Riverton on Friday. Authorities are awaiting the results of an autopsy to determine the cause of the Arapahoe man's death, but say it appears to have been accidental and could be a drowning.
Shayla Wiggens said she had been playing the new game, which sends players to real-world locations to capture virtual creatures, when she spotted the body in the water near a bridge.
The incident comes as police in Missouri say four teens used Pokemon Go to lure victims to a location and rob them.
The 24 Hours of Le Mans tends to be dominated by one manufacturer or another in eras. Audi reigned supreme in the first decade of the 2000s, Porsche in the 1970s, 80s and 90s, and Ferrari in the early 1960s. But in the 50s, it was all about Jaguar. And now one of the most important of its race winners is going up for auction.
What you see here is an exceptional specimen of the D-Type, the model Jaguar developed to succeed the C-Type that had won the race in 1953. This particular example was the first sold to a private team, campaigned by Ecurie Ecosse and emblazoned in the deep blue and St. Andrews cross of the Scottish flag.
Entered in the 1956 running of the French endurance race, chassis number XKD 501 crossed the finish line first, ahead of the factory D-Types and the Aston Martin DB3S driven by Stirling Moss and Peter Collins. Only 14 of the 49 entrants finished the race that year, and this D-Type took top honors.
That makes it not only one of the most significant Jaguars ever made, but one of the most important racing cars of any make. That means it will likely fetch big bucks when it crosses the auction block at RM Sothebys sale in Monterey on August 19-20.
If, like the rest of us, you dont have the means to place a competitive bid, you can still check it out in the video and extensive image gallery below (captured by Patrick Ernzen for RM Sothebys). You may want to put a towel down to catch the drool, though, because aside from its historical significance, this classic racing Jag is also one of the most beautiful.
Photo Gallery
Video
Its been over a year since Hyundai was supposed to announce a pick-up based on the Santa-Cruz concept, but new reports suggest that nothing will be launched before 2020.
Back in January 2015, Hyundai Motor America president and chief executive Dave Zuchowski said in an interview with Car Advice that the project had passed the approval stage, and was waiting to be announced:
Whats the easiest way to say that? Were waiting more for an announcement than we are for an approval, right? It hasnt been officially announced yet. Our timing is not crossing our fingers and waiting for approval, its trying to figure out when were going to announce it, said Zuchowski at the time.
However, a new update from the Australian magazine has Scott Grant, HMCA chief operating officer, saying that the messages from Korea have changed regarding the light commercial vehicle. In other words, the project wasnt scrapped, but it was postponed.
Its been advanced as we understand it. it wont be anything this side of 2020. Weve got a planning horizon in place where theyre looking at the vehicle quite seriously, but there is yet to be a commitment to produce.
I cant confirm what or when, but its a slightly different message. Not any time soon but its starting to feel like theres some movement, said Grant
So, there you go, no Hyundai pick-up for the near future, although the Koreans seem open to enter the niche, with a worthy competitor for the Ford Ranger, and Toyota Hilux.
PHOTO GALLERY
Ever wonder why NASCAR racers dont dance in the rain?
Almost every form of motorsport running exclusively on slick tires is at Mother Natures mercy, because when it starts raining, drivers can easily become passengers, especially in NASCAR.
Most tracks in NASCARs Sprint Cup Series are counter-clockwise orientated ovals, with turns in only one direction: Left. NASCAR jokes aside, a Sprint Cup Series vehicle is developed and tailored, beginning with spring rates, suspension geometry, brake proportioning and ending with aerodynamic components, to turn left with various pending setups on each individual track, depending on the turns and banking size.
So, due to the specific setup and tight configuration, a NASCAR racer doesnt leave too much room for correction, even in damp conditions, more so if it snaps at ~170 mph (273 km/h). Still, Kyle Busch could state otherwise.
While running through Fridays practice at Kentucky Speedway, the 31-year old drivers Toyota snapped after losing rear tire grip. Even so, Busch reacted immediately, catching the car in a drift, but heres where things get interesting. In similar scenarios, it is easy to over-correct cars and make them spin the opposite direction, but Kyle Busch skillfully timed the entire maneuver perfectly, avoiding crashing into the wall.
VIDEO
Photo: Getty Images
Youve waited for your day in traffic court, and its drawing near.
Trouble is, you cant be there. What to do now?
Send an agent, of course.
The Offence Act provides for appearance by an agent, who is not a lawyer, instead of the driver who was issued the traffic ticket. This is at the discretion of the justice presiding, who could choose to require the driver to appear instead of allowing the agent to conduct the defence.
In general, I have seen the justice allow the agent to enter a plea. The agents advice was accepted for a guilty plea, but the matter was usually adjourned if the plea was not guilty.
I have also seen the justice flatly refuse to hear from an agent and set the matter over for a new date.
The most common difficulty with having an agent represent you seems to be with assuring the justice that this person does have the authority to act on your behalf. It would be prudent to send written instructions that can be shown to the justice.
If you chose to sign the violation ticket, the justice can compare the signature and details in your authorization with their copy and more easily satisfy themselves of your intentions.
Using an agent is not the same as appearing for the trial yourself. The agent will be able to enter your plea of not guilty, cross examine any prosecution witnesses, examine any defence witnesses, summarize the defence position and if you are found guilty, speak to the penalty.
What they cannot do is give your evidence to the court. You are the only one who can do that and must appear in person.
This is a responsibility that should not be taken lightly if granted by the court. You and your agent should work together prior to the trial so he has a complete picture of the incident, your exact wishes for the conduct of the trial and have a good idea of the applicable law.
Ideally, they should also attend a traffic court session as a spectator so that they know what to expect. Proper preparation is always critical to doing anything well.
Unfortunately, there is no way to check ahead of time to see if a judicial justice will accept an agent acting in place of a defendant.
The court registries that I contacted did say that it was much more common to see an agent attend with the defendant to provide advice, but not participate otherwise in the trial.
Unless your agent is also a lawyer qualified to practise law in B.C., you cannot pay them a fee, gain or reward, direct or indirect for helping you. To do so would mean that they are practising law and could face consequences from the Law Society of BC.
Is it a wise decision to be represented by an agent instead of asking for an adjournment and conducting your own trial? You will have to decide that for yourself before the fact because after the verdict has been made it will be very difficult to change the outcome.
To comment or learn more, please visit DriveSmartBC.ca.
This article is written by or on behalf of an outsourced columnist and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet.
Photo: File photo
If you heard a loud noise overhead of Kelowna in the last two days, you werent alone.
Many readers contacted Castanet to find out why there seemed to be military planes flying over the city.
Jasmine Patrick, with the Kelowna International Airport, says six CF-18s landed at the airport on Monday and took off today.
There were six students here for flight training for two days. They were here from Cold Lake (Alberta), Patrick said. They werent here long but I did hear that they were excited to be in Kelowna. They dont get to come down here often.
The military isnt required to tell YLW how many fly-bys they are conducting, although readers say they heard the planes pass by a few times.
There were also two Snowbirds at the airport on Tuesday as well. However, Patrick wasnt sure what the stop over was for.
Photo: Contributed
Pioneer Park got a facelift and new playground funded by provincial grant.
In April 2015, Kelowna-Lake Country MLA Norm Letnick delivered a $35,000 grant to the District of Lake Country in support of playground improvements for Pioneer Park in Oyama.
On Tuesday, he joined Mayor James Baker and Lake Country council members, staff and community members to celebrate the completion of the park upgrades.
The infrastructure services staff worked together to deliver an outstanding playground for families in Oyama, said Baker. The location at the south end of Kalamalka Lake is beautiful and now the park is more animated for use by families with young children.
By prudently managing the province's finances, we were able to identify funds from within existing budgets that could provide this one-time support, said Letnick. Pioneer Park is enjoyed by many local families, and its important that we maintain a fun, safe play area for kids.
Two local businesses are on the water raising money for the Upper Room Mission and the Women's Transition House.
Called Floating for a Cause, Pat Loehndorf, general manager and partner at Bannister Honda, and Stan Morris, owner of Papa Murphy's in Vernon, have been out on a boat selling pizza by donation.
This has been a year in the works, making this happen, said Morris. Our first day was Canada Day and we had a great reception on (Kalamalka) lake and sold over $600 for the Upper Room Mission.
In fact, the two sold out of pizza in less than two hours.
It's fresh, we cook (the pizza) on the boat, said Loehndorf, pointing at two pizza ovens on the vessel. It's by donation, we don't have a set price. It's a charity thing so give as much as you feel comfortable with.
The summer event is raising awareness of the Mission as well as funds, said Lisa Anderson, spokesperson for the URM. We're getting the funds donated for the month of July so that is awesome.
In August, donations will go to the transition house.
Anderson called it a unique event.
The boat will be floating on Kal Lake:
George Takei on Tuesday stepped into an original barrack at a Wyoming internment camp that housed some of the 14,000 Japanese-Americans that were detained there during World War II.
This looks like the inside, he said, comparing it to a similar barrack he grew up in at an internment camp in the Arkansas swamp. It was wider than he remembered, and the cracks in the wall were covered up better than when he moved in.
(My father) covered it up so we didnt get the wind or the dust coming in, he said.
Takei, an internet celebrity and "Star Trek" actor who portrayed Hikaru Sulu in the original series, visited the Heart Mountain Interpretive Center near Cody for the first time Tuesday at age 79, exploring the museum and grounds at the national historic landmark.
His family was locked away by the U.S. government along with more than 100,000 Japanese-Americans spread across 10 camps during World War II. Takei moved to the easternmost camp in the swamps of Arkansas at 5 years old and was later moved to the Tule Lake camp in California.
Takei recently produced a musical, Allegiance, that played on Broadway, fictionalizing the story of internees at Heart Mountain. The play takes some liberties with history, mixing events that occurred in different camps. It's described as "inspired by" true events.
Takashi Hoshizaki, 90, knows the story exactly as it happened.
'Barbed wire, guard towers'
Hoshizaki, who was imprisoned at Heart Mountain with his family, is now a member of the Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation, which operates the museum and works to preserve the camp.
His family of eight of lived in two of the six rooms their barrack was split into. Initially, he enjoyed life at the camp Boy Scouts, playing with other kids, working on model airplanes.
I was 16, he said. I didnt know much about anything. I realized that something was amiss.
When his draft notice came, I had already decided that if they tried to draft me, I wouldnt be going, he said.
He and 62 other men refused to join the U.S. military after being drafted, but it wasn't to object to fighting. They were fighting for their rights, he said.
(It was) a means of bringing this to the forefront, in a court of law, what had happened to us, he said. Give us our civil rights back, get our family back to where they came from and we will gladly serve.
He was initially shuttled between Cody and Heart Mountain as a detainee among detainees before he ended up in jail in Casper.
We ended up basically filling up the county jails in Wyoming, Hoshizaki said.
Hoshizaki and others were sentenced to three years in federal prison. It was the harshest penalty handed down to any internees at any camp who refused their draft notice, he said.
We were sort of the forerunners, Hoshizaki said. They wanted to make sure we didnt start up a groundswell of resistance.
He was sent to a prison in Washington, while others were sent to Texas. But prison didnt perturb him.
It was the same thing barbed wire, guard towers, he said. I would miss my family of course, but otherwise it was the same.
Heroics
Hoshizaki was released for good behavior after serving two years, as were most internees. He rejoined his family in Los Angeles; his father had been able to rent out their house while the family was imprisoned, and they moved back in after.
In 1947, President Harry Truman pardoned more than 1,500 draft resistors. When another letter in the mail told Hoshizaki that he needed to fight for his country, this time in Korea, he answered the call and served two years in the military.
More than 800 Japanese-Americans detained at Heart Mountain answered their call in World War II, going on to fight in the 442nd Infantry Regiment. Fifteen of them died.
Those that went were heroes, Takei said, swapping camp stories with Hoshizaki and former internee Sam Mihara, who's also on the foundation board of directors.
Later, he told Hoshizaki, Youre a hero You guys resisted on American principles.
Hoshizaki is proud of the stand he took, but he declined to call his actions heroic in an earlier conversation.
No, not in a way, he said, not finishing his thought. He recalled his mother being upset at the prospect of him going to jail, and that his family never really talked about it.
Many families never really talked about the complicated decisions internment forced upon them. The museums exhibits note that many Japanese-Americans initially considered internment their duty as Americans, and that differences in opinion were often divided on generational lines.
Only those who were kids in the camps are left to tell the stories today.
Mihara recalled bathroom arrangements in his own barrack, which became more difficult on cold winter nights.
We only had one choice at night, and that was to have a chamber pot, he said. The alternative was trekking outside.
My mother had one, Takei said.
The actor often lingered at exhibits after others moved on. He paused at a placard about places where internees were assembled before they were shipped to camps, calling to his husband, Brad.
This is where we were, he said, pointing to the section about Santa Anita, where his family briefly lived in a horse stable.
'Telling the story'
Ten years ago, I would say, hes the guy from 'Star Trek,' Brad Takei said.
But long after George Takei was done playing Sulu, he found fame again as a social media maven. His influence has become so pervasive that a recent Taco Bell commercial casts him as the internet embodied. Pages representing Takei are known for posting punchy memes and articles that often carry a liberal tilt; Takei advocates from several progressive causes.
Thats been an important thing for George, to be able to reach younger people, Brad Takei said. The younger people have to keep telling the story.
An entourage filmed Takei for a Facebook Live video as he walked out to the barrack and viewed the interior. Takei also plugs Allegiance frequently on his pages.
Part of the mission of the Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation is to make sure the story of Japanese Internment remains relevant in modern times. The foundation has spoke out increasingly over the last year, as election-year rhetoric has targeted Muslims and refugees from the middle east.
Were facing the same type of situation, Hoshizaki said. I dont have a new answer for that. Were trying to get the story out so that it wont happen to any other group.
Photo: Google Street View
The City of Vernon will be completing annual ditch maintenance on Tronson Road, Bella Vista Road and surrounding areas over the next six weeks.
Ditch maintenance involves the excavation and removal of built-up material in ditch lines and is required to ensure proper roadway drainage and to reduce the risk of flooding during storms.
Property owners should be aware landscaping features including grass, shrubs, landscape rock or other features that have encroached within the ditch line may be removed as part of the maintenance process.
Although every reasonable effort will be made to minimize the disruption to traffic, motorists should be prepared for minor delays. Roadways may be reduced to single-lane alternating traffic directly adjacent to working crews.
There are some empty shelves at the Salvation Army food bank in Vernon and efforts are being made to fill them.
The Sally Ann's summer food drive takes place all day Thursday at Save-on-Foods at the Village Green mall.
Feed the Need is one of our biggest fundraisers of the year, said Lt. Stefan Reid of the Salvation Army.
Reid said Century 21 is sponsoring the event and will have a large van in place by the grocery store. It's hoped people will bring foodstuff and other needed items to the venue between 6 a.m.-6 p.m on July 14th.
We need a lot of canned goods. Recently we've gone through a lot, said Reid. We do about probably about 1,000 hampers a week.
Other necessary items the food bank is running low on include:
diapers
baby formula
baby wipes
dry pasta
tuna
cheese & crackers
We need monetary donations but, more importantly food donations, so we can pack our hampers.
Reid said that sometimes families of ten and 11 people were relying on the hampers.
He said farmers donated fresh produce and bakeries donated bread.
The need is great here in this city, Reid said. Thirty-five per cent of clientele, we're feeding children, and I believe 48 per cent of our clientele is under the age of 18.
Anything that anyone can help us with, they're more than welcome to drop it off (at the House of Hope downtown) or at our food bank near 24th Avenue (in the north end).
Photo: Flickr/BC gov't Revelstoke Dam
By David Suzuki
People have harnessed energy from moving water for thousands of years.
Greeks used various types of water wheels to grind grain in mills more than 2,000 years ago. In the late 1800s, people figured out how to harness the power to produce electricity. Throughout the 20th century and into the 21st, hydro power has expanded, producing about 17 per cent of the worlds electricity by 2014 and about 85 per cent of renewable energy.
And it shows no signs of slowing.
According to the online magazine WaterWorld, An expected 3,700 major dams may more than double the total electricity capacity of hydropower to 1,700 GW within the next two decades including in B.C., where the government has started a third dam on the Peace River at Site C.
Hydro power is the most important and widely used renewable source of energy, the U.S. Geological Survey says.
But how green is hydro power, and how viable is it in a warming world with increasing water fluctuations and shortages? To some extent, it depends on the type of facility.
The Center for Climate and Energy Solutions notes some large dams are used mainly for water storage or flood control with power generation an additional function, while some are used primarily to generate electricity. Small hydro such as run-of-river is installed on running water and doesnt use water stored in reservoirs.
Pumped storage facilities dont generate additional energy, but store energy by pumping water from a lower reservoir to a higher one when demand and price are low, sometimes using renewable energy, and release water through turbines when price and demand are high.
All have varying environmental impacts.
One of the biggest trade-offs with large-scale hydro facilities is that building them often means flooding land used for farming and human communities. Damming rivers also impedes fish even with technologies like fish ladders and can harm wildlife habitat and alter river temperatures, dissolved oxygen levels and flows.
And while hydro power creates fewer pollution and climate problems than fossil fuel power, it isnt entirely clean. Clearing vegetation to build a dam and flood land can release greenhouse gases. And as vegetation decays and water levels fluctuate, methane a greenhouse gas far more potent than carbon dioxide can build up and escape from reservoirs.
Ironically, although hydro power is seen as an energy source that helps slow global warming, in many areas its viability is threatened by climate change. Rising greenhouse gas emissions and a warming world affect the entire hydrological cycle surface and ground water, glaciers, precipitation, runoff and evaporation. Shifting precipitation patterns and increased droughts are changing water levels in rivers and behind hydro dams.
The massive Hoover Dam on the Colorado River is operating at 30 per cent capacity, and new turbines have to be installed at lower elevation because of low precipitation and drought. In Nepal, low water levels rendered a brand-new dam project ineffective and cut off the water supply farther downstream, said John Matthews, director of fresh water and adaptation at Conservation International, in Scientific American.
Matthews and co-authors of a study in the journal PLoS Biology wrote that climate change puts 40 per cent of hydro development investments at risk. They recommend an approach to dams and hydro that takes climate change into account, by building projects in stages so adjustments can be made as more is known about climate patterns, or by building with nature rather than on top of it.
Meanwhile, as more environmentally benign power technologies become increasingly cost-effective and viable, the U.S. is removing older dams, many of which dont have fish ladders, because costs to maintain and repair them are too high, as are environmental impacts.
Hydro power will remain part of the clean-energy equation, but we need to find the least disruptive, most efficient methods.
Scientist Peter Gleick, president and co-founder of Californias Pacific Institute, says the key to supplying energy to growing populations in a warming world will be to use a diversity of power sources. We need to design our energy systems to be resilient in the face of growing uncertainty about technology and climate and national security and all of the factors that affect energy, Gleick told online magazine Slate.
David Suzuki is a scientist, broadcaster, author and co-founder of the David Suzuki Foundation. Written with contributions from David Suzuki Foundation Senior Editor Ian Hanington.
Photo: Getty Images
Police are on the lookout and more security has been added up at Silver Star after a rash of thefts.
Brad Baker, director of operations for Silver Star Mountain Resort, said the thefts are not happening in the village proper, but in the surrounding condos and townhouses.
From last Thursday evening to Sunday morning, four high-end mountain bikes were stolen along with thousands of dollars worth of tools and other items.
Baker said one bike was lifted from the back of a pickup truck and another from a patio. He said they seem to be opportunistic thefts.
Two bikes were stolen three weeks ago. Then there has been this little rash of thefts, he said. Police have stepped up patrols I know that for a fact and we have more security staff on.
Officials are also reviewing security footage from the area.
This is not happening during the day. It's overnight break-ins, said Baker, adding it appears the culprits are skilled at what they are doing.
In some cases, metal posts have been cut to allow access to items.
It's a bit organized and a bit planned, he said.
Vernon RCMP did not respond to requests for information on the thefts.
Photo: Getty Images
Most people are wrong about the mentally ill.
Many believe that people with psychiatric disorders are likely to be violent and dangerous.
When they hear about schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, they believe violence is a probable symptom.
Unfortunately, this assumption is the result of misinformation and excessive media coverage of violent crimes. Few people with mental illness even untreated illness are violent.
A 2014 study in the Annals of Epidemiology looks at mental illness, gun violence and suicide and discusses evidence-based policy changes that may lead to a reduction in both gun violence and suicide.
Most people believe violence is largely the result of untreated mental illness. However, as noted by this studys author, even if schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and depression were all cured, the rate of violence in the U.S. would only diminish by approximately four per cent.
When we factor suicide into the statistics for gun violence, mental illness is, of course, responsible for a much larger portion of the blame. In the U.S., 61 per cent of all gun fatalities is the result of suicide and the most suicide is the result of mental illness.
Substance abuse is a strong risk factor for both violence and suicide and access to a gun is also considered an independent risk factor for suicide.
Our policies dealing with mental illness and violence, both here in Canada and elsewhere, should focus on evidence rather than fear.
We must deal with preventing the social and behavioural causes of violence. This means addressing substance abuse, reducing access to weapons such as firearms and working on suicide prevention.
We also need to work to change public perception of mental illness. Not only do stigma and misinformation lead to people being fearful of those with psychiatric conditions, but they also lead to individuals being hesitant to seek help when it is needed.
Mental illness is a serious problem and we need to work harder to provide access to mental health services for all affected.
Our goal should be to provide compassionate, effective and timely care and to restore daily functioning as much as possible.
In order to do this, all levels of government need to be proactive and cooperative in creating an environment conducive to care and support rather than one of protectionism and fear.
This article is written by or on behalf of an outsourced columnist and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet.
Photo: Facebook
The drowning death of an Alberta man in Kalamalka Lake last summer was the result of a suicide pact with his friend, according to a B.C. coroner's report. The body of the other man has not been found.
On June 28, 2015, emergency personnel were summoned to the Cosens Bay area of the lake after a paddle boarder reported seeing a body floating face down just off the shoreline.
The body was recovered and identified as Shane Allan Letkeman, 32, of Lethbridge, Alta.
Letkeman's friend, 24-year-old Curtis Wilson, has been missing since that date and his body has not been found despite a number of searches.
Investigation revealed that Mr. Letkeman and another male had formed a suicide pact, said coroner Margaret Janzen in her report.
The coroner stated the two men sent messages to family and friends a day before the drowning, alluding to suicide, saying goodbye and stating that they loved them. Family members reported the messages to the RCMP.
Police also found a cell phone at a camp, set up by a car rented by the two men, that also revealed messages indicating their intention to kill themselves in a suicide pact, said Janzen's report.
An autopsy on Letkeman's body confirmed the cause of death as drowning. Toxicology analysis revealed high levels of methamphetamine and fentanyl.
Photo: splatsin.ca Vote to take place at Splatsin community centre.
Splatsin First Nation elders have gone over the heads of Chief Wayne Christian and their council, appealing to chiefs across the province to stop a proposed land settlement.
A referendum on the proposed settlement is expected to be held at the Splatsin community centre in Enderby on July 16th, between 8 a.m.-9 p.m., on whether to accept a $300,000 federal government offer in exchange for land that the band claims was illegally taken from them.
Band elders are adamantly opposed, stating that a sacred ancestral burial ground lies beneath the orchard.
The government is trying to hide the history of the small pox, said Nathan Kinbasket, a Splatsin elder.
Senior indigenous leaders, including Grand Chief Stewart Phillip of the Union of B.C. Indian Chief and B.C. regional Chief Shane Gottfriedson of the Assembly of First Nations, have been urged to intervene in the dispute.
The elders are fearful that an agreement to sell the land will set a precedent that could be used in other land claims involving ancestral remains.
Without this help from B.C. chiefs we will immediately be the first B.C. band to lose our ancestors through this process and set an ugly precedent for all indigenous people, said Jody Leon, spokesperson for the elders.
The group is also calling on people to be a presence during the vote at the community centre on Saturday.
Photo: The Canadian Press
A Minnesota law firm may have "potentially relevant" information for determining who should inherit Prince's estate, a judge said in an order released Wednesday that didn't hint at what that information might be, though one expert said it's probably not a will.
Carver County Judge Kevin Eide gave permission to Minneapolis law firm Henson & Efron, which formerly represented Prince, to privately share its information with Bremer Trust, the special administrator overseeing Prince's estate.
The order, dated July 6 but not released until Wednesday, said Henson & Efron "might possess confidential information potentially relevant to the determination of the appropriate beneficiaries" of the musician's estate. It gave no details about that information.
Prince died in April of an accidental drug overdose. No will has surfaced for how to divide his fortune, which the special administrator has said could be worth up to $300 million. The court hasn't ruled on whether his siblings and half-siblings or other potential relatives should be designated as his heirs, or whether a handful of people who've made unverified claims that Prince might be their father have valid claims to his estate.
Attorneys for Bremer Trust and Henson & Efron didn't immediately return calls seeking comment.
Judith Younger, an estate law professor at the University of Minnesota Law School who isn't involved in the case, said whatever the new information is, "it's probably something less than a will." Any lawyer holding a valid will for Prince would have been legally obligated to produce it sooner, assuming they knew they had it, she said.
It's possible that Prince once had a will but revoked it, it could be a draft will that was never executed or it could have been something as simple as a conversation involving Prince's lawyers, Younger said. But she added that it's hard to see how anything like that could have a legal effect if it wasn't properly written and executed.
"It's very strange, isn't it? Very mysterious," she said with a laugh.
Eide's order allows the trust company and the law firm to discuss the information, which Eide said is considered confidential under attorney-client privilege and other protections, but any resulting submissions to the court must be filed under seal.
It wasn't immediately clear how long Henson & Efron represented Prince, who changed lawyers frequently throughout his career. But the firm represented him in his 2006 divorce from Manuela Testolini Nelson.
Photo: The Canadian Press
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is seeking $10 million in damages from a former senior campaign consultant, Sam Nunberg, alleging that Nunberg leaked confidential information to reporters in violation of a nondisclosure agreement.
In a court filing obtained by The Associated Press, Nunberg accused Trump of trying to silence him "in a misguided attempt to cover up media coverage of an apparent affair" between two senior campaign staffers.
The highly unusual legal dispute reflects Trump's efforts to aggressively protect the secrecy of his campaign's inner workings.
The AP reported last month that Trump requires nearly everyone in his campaign and businesses to sign legally binding nondisclosure agreements prohibiting them from releasing any confidential or disparaging information about the real estate mogul, his family or his companies. Trump has also said he would consider requiring such agreements in the White House.
In the court filings, Nunberg denied disparaging Trump and accused the presumptive GOP nominee of attempting to "bully" him into silence after Nunberg decided to publicly support Texas Sen. Ted Cruz's presidential bid.
"Mr. Trump's actions in starting a $10 million arbitration, seeking to silence Mr. Nunberg and have the proceedings sealed, are a cautionary tale of what the American people face if Mr. Trump is elected president," said Andrew Miltenberg, Nunberg's attorney. Miltenberg said Trump's attorney argued for the documents to be sealed in a hearing Wednesday morning.
Trump attorney Alan Garten did not respond to AP calls and emails. Nunberg declined to comment Wednesday.
In particular, Nunberg said Trump filed a $10 million arbitration claim against him and falsely accused him of being a source of a New York Post story from mid-May that recounted a public quarrel between former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski and campaign spokeswoman Hope Hicks. Lewandowski was fired from the campaign in June after months of tension with other senior Trump advisers.
Nunberg denied being the source of the article, but in court papers referred to the quarrel as being part of an "apparent affair."
Hicks did not respond to detailed requests to respond to the allegations sent via email and text, as well as a voicemail.
Nunberg's filed the court documents in an attempt to block private arbitration proceedings initiated by Trump in May.
In addition to asserting a right to discuss the campaign on free speech grounds, Nunberg's lawsuit also argued that the campaign's arbitration claim was invalid because it was brought by an exploratory group Trump formed for his 2012 campaign, "which has nothing to do with the Trump Campaign's activities in the 2016 presidential campaign cycle."
"The Trump Campaign was not in existence prior to or at the time of the agreement, and Mr. Nunberg did not agree or intend that it apply to any future entity such as the Trump Campaign," Nunberg's complaint said.
An affidavit filed by Sam Nunberg's mother, Rebecca Citron Nunberg, said the Trump entity bringing the claim against Sam Numberg is not registered in the state of New York, depriving it of its ability to pursue legal claims against him.
Photo: Darren Handschuh Tyler Dyk, Okanagan Spirits Craft Distillery, shows Premier Christy Clark around the Okanagan facility.
All Tyler Dyck wants for the craft distillery industry is parity with the wine industry.
The CEO of Okanagan Spirits Craft Distillery said the industry has grown in leaps and bounds since the Liberals made changes to the liquor laws three years ago, but more needs to be done.
Dyck likened the industry to a toddler that needs nurturing to grow. The industry needs to be given more freedom from the B.C. Liberal government, something he mentioned to the premier who visited the Vernon facility Wednesday morning.
Christy Clark said she was impressed with what she saw.
I see jobs for British Columbians; that's what I see, said Clark during the brief stop in Vernon.
Clark noted the products used at the distillery that makes gin, whisky and vodka, are from B.C. and thus support local industries such as agriculture.
Clark agreed the craft industry is ready to grow.
We have more changes to make, said Clark, who pointed out it was the Liberals that changed the rules in the first place to open the door for craft distilleries.
Here, it's turned out to be a great success, let's build on that success, said Clark, adding the government could look at taxes, pricing and other aspects of the industry to help it grow.
Creating jobs is sometimes better than getting money in taxes, she told those in attendance, noting the B.C. wine industry generates tax revenue for the province.
Dyck said one thing distilleries would like is the ability to make more product.
Distilleries produce a fraction of what the wine industry generates and Dyck said since 2004, when there was one craft distillery in B.C., the number has grown to 31 with more than 20 applications for distilleries in the queue.
Dyck said he would like to see a VQA-style system put in place similar to that of the wine industry.
Dyck said the Liberals have put procedures and rules in place to allow the industry to start, but we could massage it to make it better.
All we want is parity with the wine industry. I am very hopeful this year we will see a substantial change.
An attempt by outgoing Yellowstone County Commission Chairman Bill Kennedy to place a 2 cents per gallon gas tax before voters in Novembers general election failed on Tuesday.
A proposed resolution of intent, which would have set a public hearing on July 26, died for lack of a second by the commission. The journey of the resolution itself to the board meeting also did not comply with the countys public notice policies.
Kennedy, a Democrat, has been the lone commissioner supporting the idea, while Commissioners John Ostlund and Jim Reno, both Republicans, have opposed it. Reno was absent from Tuesdays meeting.
Kennedy is leaving office Aug. 1 to become the president of the Montana State University Billings Foundation. Reno lost his re-election bid in the primary and will be leaving office at the end of the year.
Kennedy had placed the resolution on the boards Tuesday agenda and sought a motion for approval. Ostlund declined, and he did not second a motion by Kennedy, effectively killing the matter.
People who attended the board meeting expecting to comment on the resolution had to wait until the general public comment period at the end of the meeting and after the measure had died.
Ten people said they either supported a vote on a gas tax option or wanted more discussion on the issue. No one spoke against it.
Before the resolution died, both commissioners asked Deputy County Attorney Kevin Gillen whether public comment on the resolution was proper.
Ostlund maintained public comment was inappropriate because the issue had not been properly noticed before going to the commission.
Kennedy said the resolution was a notice for a public hearing and that the commission could ask for comment.
Gillen agreed with Ostlund, saying the resolution had not been properly noticed. However, he said the public was welcome to comment during the regular public comment period available at the end of every board meeting.
Kennedy and Ostlund also exchanged words over the noticing process.
Ostlund told Kennedy he was disappointed that he didnt follow the countys public process, one Kennedy has been harping on, for bringing items to board meetings.
Instead, Ostlund said, Kennedy brought up the gas tax option at a discussion meeting when he and Reno were gone.
The discussion meeting occurred on June 23, when Ostlund and Reno were attending a meeting of the Montana Association of Counties. Although it was not on the agenda, Kennedy brought up the gas tax issue at the end of the meeting and asked Chief Deputy County Attorney Dan Schwarz and Public Works Director Tim Miller to provide him more information about it.
Kennedy said at that time he wanted to have a formal discussion about the matter.
In January, to comply with new state laws and to be more transparent about county business, the commission adopted changes to meeting schedules. The changes included recording all meetings and having detailed agendas posted publicly in advance of meetings, including the commissions twice weekly discussion meetings.
Previously, the discussion meetings had no printed agenda and county officials wanting to discuss something simply showed up.
Kennedy responded to Ostlund saying issues of public interest die before they ever get out. It happens time and time again, he said.
Kennedy also said the problem with the commission is that it stifles whatever you can stifle.
Kennedy said he supported putting a 2 cents per gallon gas tax option to the voters as a way to raise money to pay for roads and improve safety as the community grows. A local tax on gas would spread road costs to all users and take the burden off of property tax payers, he said.
Ostlund said he had no interest having the highest priced gas in Montana.
To place the measure on the November ballot, the commission would have to have approved it by Aug. 15.
State law allows for communities to adopt gas tax options by initiative or by county commissions placing it on the ballot. The law allows for revenue to be allocated among the county and its municipalities.
The Billing City Council on Monday night declined to ask the commission to place the gas tax issue on the ballot.
Photo: Contributed - Denis Dupuis Flames take over the top apartment on Franklyn Road in Rutland.
Raw video by Castanet readers: Lindsay Fletcher, Denis Dupuis and Seychelle McArthur.
1:15 pm update: Two people were transported to Kelowna General Hospital this morning as a result of the fire at 445 Franklyn Road in Rutland. One man suffered smoke inhalation, but the extent of his injuries are not known. We do not have an update on the second individual.
Two suites suffered extensive fire damage and several others were damaged during the fire.
Emergency services was called and is assisting the residents as no one will be allowed back into the building today.
Initial response by the Kelowna Fire Department included four engines, two ladders, one rescue vehicle, and one command vehicle along with 24 personnel.
A second response included 20 more personnel, both professional and volunteer.
Cause of the fire is being investigated at this time.
There will be a meeting for displaced residents at the Salvation Army on Sutherland Ave. Sunday
The residents of an apartment block at 445 Franklyn Road in Rutland were jolted awake on a beautiful Saturday morning by a living nightmare as a major fire forced the immediate evacuation of the premises.
By the time Kelowna Fire Department arrived on the scene, about 7:45 a.m., the entire upper northeast section of the four-storey block was engulfed and more than an hour later, smoke and flame were still visible as the stubborn blaze refused to surrender easily.
At press time, police and fire officials had still not managed to account for all residents of the building, but the rest, as well as hundreds of onlookers from among the dozens of apartment blocks in the heavily -populated area, were standing outside, literally mesmerized by the scene which was developing in front of them.
"I just grabbed my kids and got the heck out of there, right off my back deck, I didn't even go through the front door," explained Ashley Mitchell, a resident on the first floor of the block. Mitchell has two young children ages three and 10 1/2 months.
Meanwhile, Eric Reite, who along with his roommate, lives in unit 401 - right above unit 301 where it is assumed the fire originated.
"We were just yapping and it sounded like someone was climbing on the balcony," said Reite who lost everything he owned and only just got out with a pair of pants - no shirt, no shoes.
"Man, it went up quick," he noted. "That's how fast it was.... I mean I just got my pants on and got out of there in time."
Reite also mentioned that his roommate, Dave, who had triggered the alarm in the building, was eventually taken to Kelowna General Hospital, suffering from smoke inhalation.
By the time the smoke had begun to settle, it was evident that the entire upper, northeast section of the block had been destroyed.
Reite says it was only a few years ago he watched from his balcony as the apartment block beside his was gutted by fire, yet chose not to purchase fire insurance for his own belongings.
"I mean, it's just stuff," he said, noting that he has "lots of friends" who will help provide for him, though he did lose his phone in the blaze.
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At the count of three, classmates and friends of Taeva Hawkins, the 12-year-old girl missing since going swimming Saturday in an irrigation canal, sent their best wishes for their classmates skyward.
About 70 people turned out for a candlelight vigil Tuesday night at Eileen Johnson Middle School organized by Cam James of Lockwood. Taeva's classmates wrote messages on helium-filled balloons, then sent them into the evening sky to honor their friend.
"It's very comforting to know that she had this many friends," said the girl's father, Robert Nelson, who accepted hugs from his daughter's friends and their parents throughout Tuesday's vigil. "So many people have come out to celebrate the beauty of her life."
Hawkins went swimming in the Huntley Project Irrigation District canal Saturday with two other girls. All three attempted to swim through a tunnel in the canal, and the two other girls made it safely through, but Hawkins wasn't seen again.
A search for Hawkins will resume Wednesday morning, Yellowstone County Sheriff Mike Linder said.
"My daughter's light," Nelson told the crowd Tuesday, "will never be extinguished."
Lockwood School Superintendent Tobin Novasio said that counselors were at the middle school Tuesday to meet with about 15 students, along with a handful of staff and parents. Others received help over the phone, he said.
"What's great about Lockwood is that it is part of Billings, but it's a community unto itself," Novasio said.
Novasio attended the vigil along with members of the school board, which had just completed a meeting.
James, the vigil organizer, read from the Bible and prayed for the girl's family and friends.
"We need you now, Lord, to wrap your arms around us so that we will understand," she prayed. "The world seems so unfair right now."
Nelson said he appreciated the community's efforts and its support.
"Taeva had a big faith in Jesus Christ, so this was very encouraging," he said.
Crews from the sheriff's office, the Worden Volunteer Fire Department and employees of the irrigation district began to search for Hawkins on Saturday evening. That same effort, which also included the girl's family and other volunteers, continued Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, Linder said.
"I've got people out there right now. There are still people at the same locations, people walking," Linder said on Tuesday. "We're also working on probably flying on it this morning."
The Wednesday search will be a multi-agency operation that will include rural fire departments, the Department of Natural Resources, Laurel firefighters, K-9 teams, U.S. Water Rescue, the Billings Police Department, Yellowstone County sheriff's deputies, American Medical Response and, possibly, the county's search and rescue team.
Searchers will be staging at the park in Huntley at 8 a.m. Wednesday. Following a briefing and a safety meeting, searchers will be deployed to their respective search areas, Linder said in a Tuesday news release.
"The water is being lowered again, and we will work the tunnel area as well as the entire length of the canal to the clean-out area near Ballantine," Linder said.
The search area is approximately 11 miles long.
"We're going to try to get as much as we can covered tomorrow (Wednesday), and we hope the weather will cooperate," Linder said.
Linder asked that people not involved in the search avoid the area because searchers will be on foot, on ATVs and aboard slow-moving vehicles.
I was sickened to see what I feel are lawmakers' hypocritical television appearances condemning the horrific violence that was committed in Dallas. My disgust stems from the fact that I hold each and every member of Congress responsible for the continuing violence, more than any other persons except the perpetrators themselves. As a group, members of Congress have been models of hatred and intolerance for the last eight-plus years. They have been unable to work together effectively (or even civilly) in a country that is crying out for leadership.
PetroCem 2016
ICR Research By
Published 13 July 2016
The 9th PetroCem was held at the Astoria Hotel, St Petersburg between 24-26 April 2016. Some 500 delegates listened to a comprehensive programme that included leading cement producers and analysts as well as equipment suppliers, while a 50-stand exhibition provided expert knowledge and support. By ICR Research, UK.
Mila German, conference organiser and editor of Journal Cement, opened the proceedings and remarked on how the conference had grown since its first event back in 2000 when there were just 170 guests attending.
Since then the Russian cement industry has seen a fantastic rise, but today it is facing more turbulent times. While the domestic cement industry is holding back on capacity expansions, significant projects are currently being undertaken, transforming existing capacity into modern dry-process works and reducing production costs.
Taking place in St Petersburg, PetroCem delegates were welcomed by Dr Ivan N Borisov of the Belgorod State University of Technologies. He explained that the city was one of the most stable centres of activity for the construction sector.
To continue reading this story and get access to all News, Articles and Video sections of the CemNet.com website, please Register for a subscription to International Cement Review or Login
Lafarge Canada set for next phase of AF project
ICR Newsroom By 13 July 2016
Lafarge Canada is about to commence the next phase of a project to test the suitability of a variety of alternative fuels, the Kingston Whig-Standard reports.
In conjunction with researchers from Queen's University, Ontario, the company has already examined the use of a number of materials, including railway ties, telephone poles, construction and demolition debris, shingles, paper sludge and coated cardboard.
In the next phase, tests will be carried out with household goods, non-recyclable packaging, textiles, carpet and disposable cups and lids, including beverage pods.
Robert Cumming, environmental director for Lafarge Canada, said: "It's all part of a retooling of the cement industry. We've been using fossil fuels for 100 years. We know how to use coal and coke. This is all new and it has been a more challenging process than we could have imagined at the beginning two years ago.
"All the fuel types we've been looking at, to be honest with you, have been used elsewhere, whether it is shingles or construction and demolition debris or, more recently, non-recyclable packaging. What has not been done is the degree of analysis, before and after emission testing with a statistical analysis to look for effects."
Published under
CASPER, Wyo. The float was one of many on the parade route in Cody, a weathered outhouse attached to a flatbed truck and surrounded by stuffed wildlife and shrubs. A large sign pointing toward the outhouse read transgender bathroom.
It was the first day of the Cody Stampede Parade, an extended weekend celebration that happens every Fourth of July and draws large crowds of tourists and Wyomingites to the small town near Yellowstone National Park.
By that afternoon, news of the float had rippled across social media. Former Cody residents from as far away as Washington, D.C., and Texas called the float bigoted and hateful. Others argued that American culture has become overly sensitive.
The controversy in Cody comes on the heels of a national debate on transgender rights, instigated by a North Carolina bill banning trans people from using the public restrooms of the gender they identify with. The bill and others like it have created fear in the trans community, some say.
The situation in Cody could have escalated, but the opposite appears to have happened, said Sarah Burlingame, education and outreach coordinator for Wyoming Equality.
Within a day of the parade, Burlingame was in conversation with the Cody Stampede Parade Committee, which organizes and approves the floats, and its president, Lee Ann Reiter.
I was just really impressed that (Reiters) first consideration was that peoples feelings were hurt, Burlingame said. She really came from the right place.
Members of the committee did not respond to a request for comment, but the group posted a message on its Facebook page July 4.
While we support everyone who are willing to spend the time and effort to create an entry for the parade, we recognize there was some confusion and even anger about this particular float, the post said. We are going to do what we always do in Wyoming and sit at the table with the folks from Wyoming Equality and the transgender community.
The committees response has been commendable, Burlingame said.
It was clear there were people that used (the float) to mock trans folks, whether that was the creators intention or not, she said. I dont think its helpful to shame that woman. I dont think that is useful at all. We want her to be in fellowship with us.
Cody Mayor Nancy Brown called the incident unfortunate but not surprising.
I dont believe that it was intended to be a malicious statement. It was a poorly thought-out attempt at humor, Brown said. I think our world does not have much of a sense of humor anymore. Having said that, I am very pleased and proud of the response that the parade committee made to that situation.
Still some in Cody were frustrated by the backlash against the float.
I think it was overblown, said Landon Greer, vice president of the City Council.
The float is not a reflection of Codys treatment of members of the gay community, he said. The joke was that in the Wild West no one needed separate bathrooms. Everyone used the outhouse, he explained.
I dont think there is a culture of bigotry (in Cody). I think its a minority, in fact, he said. You can go anywhere and find people who are going to make fun of, or demean, (the gay community). I think the majority of people in Cody are pretty understanding. Its a live and let live mentality.
The floats critics are from outside the community, Greer believes. They took offense based on their own assumptions about Wyoming and the West, he said.
Still, perception matters for a town that depends on tourism dollars every year.
We have about five months out of the year that are very important to the economy of Park County and Cody," said Claudia Wade, marketing director for Park County. "It starts in May and goes through September.
In January 2015, Cody hotels were at 22 percent occupancy. By July, the busiest month of the year, occupancy shot up to 97 percent, she said.
Brown hopes the issue has been resolved and wont have a negative effect on tourism.
Nobody wants their reputation tarnished in any way, she said. I think it potentially could have been (a bad situation), but because of the way its been handled, hopefully it wont be.
Meanwhile, Wyoming has joined the transgender bathroom debate in regard to public schools. Wyoming filed a lawsuit with nine other states to protest the federal intervention in public school bathrooms via a Department of Education directive in support of transgender students choice of which bathroom to use. That directive does not constitute a law, but schools could still be denied federal funding if they do not comply.
Wyomings schools chief Jillian Balow has said the bathroom debate is a sensitive issue, best handled locally.
North Dakota Securities Commissioner Karen Tyler has issued a cease-and-desist order to Douglas Arends, of Richardton.
Arends is accused of "selling unregistered securities, acting as an unregistered securities agent and engaging in fraudulent practices in connection with the offer and sale of securities."
Arends allegedly sold an investment contract in a hydraulic fracturing waste water disposal well to two North Dakota residents. Arends then used the $40,000 investment for personal expenses.
The North Dakota Securities Department said consumers should be aware of red flags in fraud in oil and gas-related investments, including: promise of a high, guaranteed return; promise of a guaranteed investment buy-back; high-pressure sales tactics; unsubstantiated claims by the promoter of extensive industry expertise and success in previous projects; resistance to providing offering documents or lack of substantive information in offering documents; and claims or warnings that there is no need to contact regulators.
Contact the North Dakota Securities Department before making any investment to determine if a securities offering or solicitor is registered.
Draft revisions to the metro area's para-transit and fixed bus routes were sent back to the officials that oversee it Tuesday for more changes.
After nearly three hours of testimony -- those opposed to reducing service for those with disabilities -- all five Bismarck City Commissioners voted that the plan lacked enough feedback from the service's riders and needed to be redone.
The new plan for the local para-transit and fixed route bus system elicited complaints from multiple users, many who had used the same service to arrive at the City/County Building where they testified.
Bis-Man Transit Director Roy Rickert's plan to cut fixed routes from 12 to six, eliminating 24-hour service for para-transit curbside service and striking healthy seniors from the para-transit service met a packed crowd that spilled outside the steps of the meeting room. At least a dozen people operating wheelchairs were among those attending.
Riders voiced that the 24-hour bus service was essential to keeping jobs, shopping, socializing, holiday visits and even volunteering.
The plan proposes that early morning to early evening curbside service replace around the clock service for disabilities and a special third shift service will be provided for people working third shifts from 7 p.m. to midnight for a fee of $5 from Monday through Saturday. A special Sunday bus service would be offered to riders through early afternoon.
Ben Ehreth, president of the board for Bis-Man Transit Board, said the board pushed Rickert for changes because the service risks running out of enough money to operate as it stands. "We're doing this to try and enhance service to as many folks as we can by first putting ourselves in a stronger financial footing.
He said by removing para-transit riders who qualify for the service by age only, the para-transit bus will better serve those with disabilities with more timely service. After 7 p.m., he said para-transit bus service drops off significantly and they only average six riders from midnight to 6 a.m. per night.
Chris Jones, speaking on behalf of CHI St. Alexius Health, said the medical facility relies on the transit for both volunteers and patients. "We would lose 2,000 volunteer hours and it would impact the patients and it would impact the volunteers. ... We have great concern that people (needing) chronic care ... If they can't get there, they will bypass that care."
Underused bus routes in northeast Bismarck will be eliminated until studies suggest there is more need.
Riders ages 65 and older and those with disabilities that can reasonably reach a fixed bus route, can ride it for free, according to Rickert.
Rickert and Ehreth said the metro bus systems lost $350,000 in federal funds and $150,000 in state funds because of the system to meet the criteria for providing a more balanced bus service. Despite the metro area's growth of thousands, the bus service showed an 8 percent decrease in ridership between 2014 and 2015.
Fixed route service also would be provided to the University of Mary campus under the plan, but para-transit would be dropped from Lincoln.
Some of the rural gap will be picked up and served by the fringe area eliminated would be covered by West River Transit, according to Rickert and Ehreth.
"My main concern is not being able to visit my families on holidays," said Trevor Vannett who uses a wheel chair. "Some people can't get around. They need the para-transit. I would encourage you take this back to the transit board."
Robin Werre, the founder of the original Bis-Man Transit 26 years ago, also protested the changes, asking they be returned to the Transit Board.
"I do think saying no changes is not legitimate. My concern is what changes should be looked at in this setting without getting a chance to take it back to the user groups," said Commissioner Josh Askvig.
Commissioner Shawn Oban noted that maybe the service needs to be better if enough riders aren't using it. "We need to find a different way to ask the riders and collect that information so we meet the needs of those groups."
Mayor Mike Seminary said there will still be changes to the service and warned federal funding may be tighter in the future. "We have one proposal in front of us and that was not well-received. So we'll toss it back. ... They are trying to do their best with the tools they have in the time frame they have."
A second person has tested positive for the Zika virus in North Dakota.
A woman, who is not pregnant, tested positive for the virus after traveling to Jamaica, according to a news release from the North Dakota Department of Health.
The woman did have symptoms, but was not hospitalized and has since recovered, according to Michelle Feist, an epidemiologist with the Health Department.
The second infection in the state should serve as a reminder to people to protect themselves against mosquito bites when traveling to areas where there is Zika transmission, Feist said.
Were really trying to get messages across to women who are pregnant not to travel to areas where there is currently the Zika virus being transmitted, and those areas are changing. So if people are planning trips, they should frequently be checking the (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's) travel website," she said.
The first Zika infection in North Dakota was reported in April. A pregnant woman without any symptoms tested positive for the virus. She gave birth to the baby before any test results were returned, and the baby did not test positive for Zika or microcephaly, a rare neurological condition that causes babies to have smaller than normal heads and can cause incomplete brain development.
The Health Department will continue to track the infant throughout the first year of its life to monitor developmental characteristics and milestones.
Because the two North Dakota women infected with the Zika virus did not present any severe illnesses, health officials won't need to follow up with them, Feist said.
If there was a case of local transmission, there'd be extensive follow up, but that's likely not going to happen, Feist said.
Officials representing charities say granting North Dakotas five American Indian tribes exclusive rights to host online gambling could effectively end charitable gambling in the state. The tribes want Gov. Doug Burgum to approve the idea under tribal-state agreements known as compacts. The current compacts expire at the end of this year and only Burgum can approve them. The tribes argue that their casinos have been hurt by the explosion of the charities Las Vegas-style pull tab machines. Burgum heard arguments from the charities and tribes on Friday. He says the terms of the compacts are still being negotiated and should be completed next month.
Ballot measures will likely overshadow state candidates in the Nov. 8 election. Races for state offices arent shaping up as particularly close, but three measures should draw the interest of voters.
The measures arent as many or as intriguing as two years ago, but they certainly would have impact on the state.
Already approved for the ballot is a victims rights proposal, Marsy's Law, that would allow for notification of victims when hearings are set in the judicial process and if the accused person escapes custody. It also calls for taking the welfare of victims and their families into consideration when setting bail for the criminals. When supporters first announced their plans for Marsy's Law they received a fairly warm reception. Since then, opposition to the measure has been increasing.
Signatures for two other measures have been submitted to the secretary of state and are awaiting approval.
One measure, if placed on the ballot and approved by voters, would increase the tobacco tax for cigarettes in North Dakota from 44 cents per pack to $2.20. The measure also raises taxes on all other tobacco products from 28 percent of the wholesale purchase price to 56 percent. North Dakota hasnt raised the tobacco tax since 1993. The national average tax on a pack of cigarettes is $1.61. Tax revenues created through the measure, estimated at about $200 million per biennium, would be split between health-related programs in the state's Community Health Trust Fund as well as a newly created Veterans Tobacco Tax Trust Fund.
Supporters argue the higher tax will discourage young people from smoking. They plan an educational campaign in an effort to get the measure passed. Opponents, including the North Dakota Retail Association, plan to organize.
On Monday, supporters of a medical marijuana measure delivered petitions to the secretary of states office. If it gets on the ballot and is approved, it would allow people to have up to 3 ounces of medical marijuana for treatment of nearly a dozen medical conditions. Medical marijuana distribution facilities would be licensed by the state and be operated by nonprofit organizations.
The measure, called the North Dakota Compassionate Care Act, is the only marijuana measure with a chance of getting on the fall ballot. An effort to have voters decide whether to legalize marijuana failed to get enough signatures by the filing deadline. Supporters are now hoping to get it on the ballot for 2018. The medical measure might benefit by being the only marijuana issue on the ballot. Opposition to legalizing marijuana might have carried over to the medical measure.
The 2015 Legislature also placed two items on the ballot. One relates to legislative residency requirements and the other to the states Foundation Aid Stabilization Fund.
Theres a long tradition in North Dakota of voters taking matters in their own hands and putting measures on the ballot. Its a good process, one that sparks a lot of debate and drives interest in voting. Those drawn to the polls by the measures also are more likely to take an interest in the candidates. The states initiative and referral process provides a voice for the people. It often results in more lively elections and benefits everyone.
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Loggerhead sea turtles have crawled their way to a conservation milestone in Georgia.
As of Tuesday, the hard-shell giants with log-sized heads had laid more than 2,810 nests on the states barrier island beaches this nesting season, according to the Georgia Department of Natural Resources. A key recovery goal for loggerheads, listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, is 2,800 nests annually in Georgia.
And while sea turtle nesting winds down in mid-July, its far from over.
DNR Sea Turtle Program Coordinator Mark Dodd expects 3,000-plus nests, about a third more than last years 2,335 nests, the previous high since comprehensive surveys began on Georgia beaches in 1989.
When you think about the fact that for many years we averaged about 1,000 nests and this year we may be beyond 3,000 it suggests an exponential increase, said Mr. Dodd, a senior wildlife biologist with DNRs Nongame Conservation Section.
Loggerheads are Georgias main nesting sea turtle. Weighing as much as 400 pounds, females crawl onto beaches from late spring into August to lay eggs in nests dug on the dry-sand beach. Hatchlings begin emerging in July, scrambling for the surf to begin their lives at sea.
Sea turtles face threats varying from habitat loss to nest predation, boat strikes and incidental catch in commercial fishing. All have reduced loggerhead numbers, leading to legal protections and large-scale conservation efforts protections and efforts that apparently are paying off.
While loggerhead nesting can vary widely year to year, statistical analysis shows an annual increase of about 3 percent in Georgia, not counting 2016. Nesting in Florida and the Carolinas is also trending upward. One of the recovery goals set in a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries plan for the unit including Georgia and the Carolinas is a 2 percent annual nesting increase for 50 years.
That equates to 2,800 nests a year in Georgia, a mark the state had been on track to hit in about 2020.
Mr. Dodd cautioned, however, that the recovery of loggerheads still has a long way to go. He stressed the need for continued conservation, and emphasized the partnerships from grassroots groups to government agencies forged to monitor nesting, restore habitats and protect sea turtles.
He also said the health of these iconic turtles effects coastal environments and economies. That impact is heightened in a state where more than 2 million residents take part in wildlife-watching activities.
Our goal is to recover loggerheads in the state and make sure the population is stable, Mr. Dodd said. At 2,800 nests and counting, were reaching one of the milestones set to achieve that.
DNRs Nongame Conservation Section works to conserve sea turtles and other rare wildlife not legally fished for or hunted, as well as rare plants and natural habitats. The agency does this largely through public support from fundraisers, grants and contributions.
A key fundraiser is the sale and renewals of eagle and hummingbird license plates. DNR wildlife plates cost only $25 more than a standard plate to buy or renew, and up to $20 of that fee goes to help restore species such as loggerhead sea turtles. Details are at www.georgiawildlife.com/ conservation/support .
Key Georgia DNR partners involved in sea turtle conservation and recovery. Many are part of the Georgia Sea Turtle Cooperative, a DNR-coordinated network of about 200 volunteers, researchers and agency employees who patrol beaches daily during nesting season to mark, monitor and protect nests.
Caretta Foundation: nesting surveys and stranding response on Little Cumberland Island.
Caretta Research Project: nesting surveys on Wassaw Island and stranding response.
Commercial shrimp trawl fishery: use of TEDs has significantly reduced sea turtle mortality.
Cumberland Island National Seashore: nesting surveys and stranding response.
Georgia Ports Authority: modifications to port facility lighting to minimize effects on sea turtles, and support for Caretta Research Project.
Georgia Southern University: nesting surveys and research.
Grays Reef Marine Sanctuary: assistance with stranding response and education.
Jekyll Island Authority/Georgia Sea Turtle Center: nesting surveys and stranding response.
National Marine Fisheries Service: provides funds for stranding response, law enforcement for turtle excluder device (TED) compliance (in concert with DNR Law Enforcement Division) and technical support for TED compliance.
St. Catherines Island Foundation: nesting surveys and stranding response.
St. Simons Island Sea Turtle Project: nesting surveys and stranding response.
Sea Island Company: nesting surveys and stranding response.
The Environmental Resource Network (TERN): DNR Nongame Conservation Section friends group raises money for sea turtle conservation activities.
The Lodge at Little St. Simons Island: nesting surveys and stranding response.
Tybee Island Marine Science Center: nesting surveys on Tybee.
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Savannah and Jacksonville districts): channel dredging in winter to avoid sea turtle mortality.
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Savannah Coastal Refuges: nesting surveys on Blackbeard Island and logistical support for Caretta Research Project on Wassaw Island.
U.S. Navy: channel dredging in winter to avoid sea turtle mortality.
University of Georgia and Marine Extension Service: research and education.
What you can do:
All marine turtles in Georgia are protected by state and federal law. To help conserve these species:
- Minimize beachfront lighting during sea turtle nesting season. Turn off, shield or redirect lights.
- When walking the beach at night, dont use flashlights and flash photography. They can deter turtles from coming ashore or disturb nesting turtles. .
- If you encounter a sea turtle on the beach, observe at a distance.
- Dont disturb turtle tracks. Researchers use them to identify species and mark nests for protection.
- Do not touch or disturb nests or hatchlings.
- Properly dispose of your garbage. Turtles may mistake plastic bags, Styrofoam and trash floating in the water as food.
- Remove recreational equipment such as lounge chairs and umbrellas from the beach at night. They can deter nesting attempts and interfere with the seaward journey of hatchlings.
- Protect beach vegetation that stabilizes sand and the natural coastline.
- When boating, stay alert and avoid turtles. About 28 percent of the sea turtles found dead or hurt in Georgia in 2015 suffered injuries consistent with being hit by a boat. Boaters who hit a sea turtle are urged to stand-by and contact DNR at 800-2-SAVE-ME (800-272-8363).
- Also report any dead or injured sea turtles seen at 800-272-8363. (If the turtle is tagged, include the tag color and number in the report if possible.)
Sources: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Georgia DNR
LOGGERHEADS AT A GLANCE
Caretta caretta: Most common sea turtle on Georgias coast; found off coast year-round. Also one of the worlds largest turtles, topping 350 pounds and sporting a carapace up to 44 inches long. How long loggerheads live is not known.
About that name: Loggerhead refers to the species large head.
Range: The Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans, and the Mediterranean Sea. Nests in the U.S. from Virginia to Texas.
Nesting: Females reach sexual maturity at 30-35 years. From May through September, they crawl ashore at night, dig a hole in the face of dunes along barrier island beaches, and deposit and cover eggs.
Pilgrimage: Eggs hatch in 55-65 days. (The first recorded emergence this year happened the night of July 5 on St. Catherines Island.) The young scramble for the water, beginning a journey that can take them from sargassum weed off Georgias shores to a current-fed loop that circles to the Azores and the eastern Atlantic Ocean, south to west Africa and back to the western Atlantic.
Eats: Fish eggs and small invertebrates when small. As adults, they eat mainly crabs and mollusks, but also forage items like jellyfish and dead fish.
Status: Federally listed as threatened since 1978. Georgia DNR reclassified loggerheads in the state from threatened to endangered in 2006.
Threats: Primarily mortality associated with commercial fishing activities, but also nest predation by raccoons and feral hogs, poaching, loss of habitat, boat strikes, and even ingestion of plastic litter mistaken as food.
Nesting in Georgia
Annual loggerhead nest totals since comprehensive surveys began in 1989.
1989 675
1990 1,031
1991 1,101
1992 1,048
1993 470
1994 1,360
1995 1,022
1996 1,096
1997 789
1998 1,055
1999 1,406
2000 1,060
2001 852
2002 1,028
2003 1,504
2004 358
2005 1,187
2006 1,389
2007 689
2008 1,649
2009 997
2010 1,761
2011 1,992
2012 2,241
2013 2,289
2014 1,201
2015 2,335
MORE ON THE NET
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Groupon will pay $45 million to early shareholders in a settlement agreement, following a judge's approval Wednesday morning.
Shareholders of the Chicago-based tech company brought the class-action lawsuit in 2012, alleging that stock in the company had been damaged by securities fraud.
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Judge Charles Norgle approved the proposed settlement in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. Groupon had agreed to the settlement in February.
The settlement represents almost 35 percent of the class members' estimate of damages for all claims, according to a final approval memorandum filed by the shareholders' counsel.
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"The settlement is an excellent result, achieved after extensive and hard-fought litigation and arm's-length negotiation by experienced counsel," the motion said. "The settlement amount is not only fair and reasonable, but far above standard securities class action recoveries."
Shareholders who meet the requirements can file claim documents by Aug. 26.
A Groupon spokesman said the company did not wish to comment on the settlement agreement.
Groupon stock traded down less than 1 percent Wednesday morning at about $3.44.
mgraham@tribpub.com
Twitter @megancgraham
London Low-cost Chinese carrier Ruili Airlines is buying six 787-9 Dreamliners from Boeing in a deal that is valued at $1.59 billion at current list prices. The Chicago-based company also sealed a deal to send nine planes to EgyptAir.
The purchase, confirmed Wednesday at the Farnborough International Airshow in southern England, is part of Ruili's strategy to make its base in the Yunnan province the gateway from southwest China to rest of the world.
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Ma Zhanwei, the chairman of Ruili Airlines said in a statement that the planes are the right size and have the long range to "make it an ideal fit in facilitating our international expansion plans."
The carrier was established in February 2014 and operates nine Boeing 737 airplanes on 16 domestic routes with 46 daily departures.
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It plans to expand its fleet to 70 airplanes by the end of 2025.
Additionally, EgyptAir says it has purchased nine Boeing planes in an $864 million deal mostly financed by the United Arab Emirates.
The airline said in a statement Wednesday that Dubai Aerospace Enterprise, which is partly owned by the investment arm of the Dubai government, will finance eight of the new planes. It did not provide further details.
EgyptAir chief Safwat Musallam says the "next generation 700-800s" have "an excellent reputation for reliability, performance and cost efficiency."
EgyptAir suffered a tragic loss in May when Flight 804, an Airbus A320 flying from Paris to Cairo, plunged into the Mediterranean Sea, killing all 66 people on board. The cause of the crash remains unknown.
Associated Press
Jason Montrie, president and interim CEO of Land of Lincoln Health, says it's "frustrating that our consumers are being put in harms way. (Nancy Stone / Chicago Tribune)
Illinois moved Tuesday to take control of Land of Lincoln Health to begin an orderly shutdown of the insurance company, meaning about 49,000 people will lose their health coverage in the coming months.
The state said it will allow policyholders to buy coverage from a different insurer before their Land of Lincoln plans are terminated, but it's unclear when the policies will lapse.
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"It's a bad day for the marketplace in Illinois and our consumers," said Jason Montrie, president and interim CEO of Chicago-based Land of Lincoln. "This is the end."
The Department of Insurance said the decision was based on the startup company's deteriorating financial condition. Land of Lincoln is required to pay $31.8 million to other insurers under a complex formula in the Affordable Care Act, which aims to keep premiums stable by balancing risks among insurers.
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But the payment placed too much financial stress on Land of Lincoln after it lost more than $90 million last year.
Acting agency Director Anne Melissa Dowling tried to intercede on the company's behalf by suspending the payment until Land of Lincoln received promised federal financial assistance under the health-care law, known as Obamacare. But the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services didn't agree with Dowling's plan.
"It's frustrating that our consumers are being put in harm's way," Montrie said. "Nobody feels worse about this than me and my employees. We are so disappointed in the decision from CMS."
A spokesman at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services declined to comment.
Dowling was unavailable for comment.
Nationally, Land of Lincoln was one of 23 nonprofit health insurers co-ops, as they are commonly known that started in 2014 thanks to $2.4 billion in loans provided under the health law. In Illinois, the Metropolitan Chicago HealthCare Council, a hospital trade association, received $160 million in funding to start a health plan.
The goal of the co-op program was to give consumers an alternative to the big insurance companies such as Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Illinois that could potentially lower the cost of health plans. More than 1 million Americans were insured through these plans.
But many co-ops struggled early. Some grew too fast and couldn't keep up with the health costs of their members, many of whom had not had insurance in years.
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Then they were blindsided last year when federal money they counted on to offset their losses didn't come through.
Land of Lincoln tried to survive by curtailing sales of new policies in the group and individual markets. The co-op also sued the federal government in an effort to recoup more than $70 million under one federal program.
But the lawsuit won't save the company. Dowling has asked the Illinois attorney general to petition Cook County Circuit Court for an "order of rehabilitation" to protect the co-op's policyholders. During that process, health care providers must continue to honor their contracts with the company.
If granted, the company will operate under Dowling's supervision to ensure that policyholder claims are paid. In order to maintain their health coverage during this time, policyholders must continue to pay their premiums.
Customers will have to find new coverage before the year ends. Dowling will work with the federal government to establish a special enrollment period so policyholders can purchase another health plan on the Illinois exchange.
asachdev@chicagotribune.com
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Twitter @ameetsachdev
Richard Price, chairman and chief executive of Mesirow Financial at company's office in Chicago in 2011. (Zbigniew Bzdak/ Chicago Tribune)
Employee-owned Mesirow Financial is selling off a big chunk of itself.
The Chicago-based company's insurance business, which accounts for 22 percent of revenues and a third of its workforce, is being bought by Alliant Insurance Services of Newport Beach, Calif. It's also the division at which Mesirow Financial Chief Executive Richard Price worked his way up the corporate ladder.
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In an industry that has been consolidating, Alliant will be able to fill a void it has had in the Midwest, particularly with midsized businesses, through the Mesirow acquisition. In turn, Mesirow clients with nationwide operations will now have offices on the East and West coasts that they can go to with concerns about, say, claims.
Alliant has 80 offices and 2,300 workers. Mesirow's insurance business has three offices.
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Founded in 1972, Mesirow's insurance services business has 350 workers and serves publicly traded companies, middle-market businesses, nonprofits, public entities and rich people. It consists of an insurance brokerage and consulting services specializing in property and casualty insurance, employee benefits, life and disability, private client insurance and structured settlements.
The parent, Mesirow Financial, was founded in 1937 and will now focus on its investment management, capital markets and investment banking divisions, which combined have about 700 workers.
Terms of the agreement with Alliant were not disclosed, though Mesirow Financial will get an equity stake in Alliant.
More than 40 percent of Alliant is owned by its employees. An additional 43 percent of Alliant is owned by private equity firms KKR and Stone Point Capital.
Mesirow Insurance Services will continue to operate under its existing leadership and will remain in Mesirow Financial's headquarters in Chicago's River North neighborhood, but its employees will now work for Alliant. It will retain the Mesirow name for now but might at some point be co-branded with the Alliant name.
Alliant Insurance Services dates to 1925. It provides property and casualty insurance, workers' compensation, employee benefits, and other financial products and services nationwide, including to public entities, tribal nations, law firms and health care, energy, real estate and construction businesses.
The deal is expected to close at the end of the month.
byerak@tribpub.com
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AP Headline on Israeli Law Breaks Journalistic Rule | Main | Christian Group Accuses WCCs Peace Activists of Violating Israeli Law
July 13, 2016
Los Angeles Times' Fuzzy Figures on Gaza Patients
See July 14 update appended to this post: LA Times Corrects on Gaza Permits
In his article today about Gazan men receiving medical treatment in Turkey, freelance reporter Umar Farooq errs ("Residents of impoverished Gaza Strip turn to Turkey for lifesaving medical care"):
According to the World Health Organization, about 3,000 patients from Gaza with life-threatening illnesses apply each month to get treatment at Israeli hospitals, but fewer than two-thirds receive security clearance to pass through the Erez crossing.
According to monthly World Health Organization data, Farooq is wrong on two points.
1) During the most recent one-year period for which data is available (June 2015 to May 2016), about 2,000 patients from Gaza with life-threatening illnesses apply each month to get treatment at Israeli hospitals, not 3,000. In fact, the precise average number of monthly applicants during that time period is 2,048. The most applicants in any given month in the last year was 2,275 (October 2015).
2) Farooq also errs about the number of applicants who receive security clearance, stating: "fewer than two-thirds receive security clearance to pass through the Erez crossing." In the same 12 month period, the approval rate dipped below two-thirds just one time -- to 65.81 percent in May 2016. The average approval rating over the last most recent year for which data is available is 72.59 percent, or "fewer than three-quarters," not fewer than "two-thirds."
In a separate issue, the article notes that the 40 Gazan men seeking medical treatment "said they have no ties to the militant [sic] group Hamas, which rules Gaza." Then, interestingly, the end of the article notes that, in their apartment, "a television is tuned to Al Aqsa TV, broadcast from the Gaza Strip." Unfortunately, Farooq omitted to note that Al Aqsa TV is Hamas' official TV station.
July 14 Update: LA Times Issues Stealth Correction
Following communication from CAMERA, editors have amended the online article. The article now correctly reports:
According to the World Health Organization, about 2,000 patients from Gaza with life-threatening illnesses apply each month to get treatment at Israeli hospitals, but fewer than three-quarters on average receive security clearance to pass through the Erez crossing.
Contrary to standard journalistic practice, the editors have not appended a note to the article alerting readers to the correction.
For more Los Angeles Times corrections prompted by CAMERA, please see here.
Posted by TS at July 13, 2016 07:14 AM
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Over the years, R.R. Donnelley has printed everything from the Encyclopaedia Britannica to the Sears catalog. Here, an R.R. Donnelley worker prepares the Sears catalog for mailing on Dec. 28, 1988. (Don Casper / Chicago Tribune)
If Xerox, which is planning to split into two companies, acquires R.R. Donnelley, which announced last year it would separate into three companies, it would add up to one big deal for Chicago.
R.R. Donnelley, the printing company best known for producing the Yellow Pages the bulky, pre-internet search directory of choice has been a Chicago business institution for 152 years. It has evolved from a local printer to a diversified, international "communications services" company valued at $3.95 billion, whose holdings include EDGAR Online, a leading financial disclosures platform.
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Merger discussions, first reported by Bloomberg on Monday citing unnamed sources, would join two venerable, publicly traded companies with roots in paper. Founded in 1906 as a photographic paper and equipment manufacturer, Norwalk, Conn.-based Xerox became synonymous with making copies, and remains a leader in document management with a market cap of nearly $9.9 billion.
In an email Tuesday, Xerox spokesman Carl Langsenkamp said the company doesn't comment on "market speculation." An R.R. Donnelley spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.
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In January, Xerox announced it would split into two companies document management and business process outsourcing by year's end. Meanwhile, R.R. Donnelley announced in August it would split into three companies financial services, print services and multichannel communications. The split was expected to take effect in October.
It is unclear how the pieces would fit together, but R.R. Donnelley, which has more than 68,000 employees and generated nearly $11.3 billion in sales in 2015, remains a force in the Chicago business community, and a long way from its modest origins as a family-owned printer.
The son of Irish immigrants, Canadian native Richard Robert Donnelley arrived in Chicago in 1864 after acquiring an interest in Chicago printer Church, Goodman & Cushing. The former newspaper print foreman managed operations and added his name to the sign, which also touted the company's steam printing technology.
Donnelley's first printing project was "Proceedings of the Cook County Sabbath School Convention," an event held in November 1864 at the Second Presbyterian Church in Chicago. The business grew rapidly from there, presciently staking out turf as the ubiquitous companion directory to the telephone.
In 1874, Donnelley produced the Lakeside City Directory, a precursor to the Yellow Pages two years before phones were invented. The company began printing Chicago telephone directories in 1886.
R.R. Donnelley expanded its offerings in 1895, when it began to produce the Montgomery Ward catalog. In 1909, it printed the influential Plan of Chicago, where the "make no little plans" vision of architect Daniel Burnham shaped the development of the city and its open lakefront for more than a century.
Over the years, R.R. Donnelley has printed everything from the Encyclopaedia Britannica to the Sears catalog. In 1929, the company completed its massive flagship facility at 350 E. Cermak Road, a monument to its stature as a printing powerhouse. The landmarked building, located near McCormick Center, now houses the Lakeside Technology Center, a multitenant data hub.
R.R. Donnelley opened its New York office in 1973 as the center of its growing financial services division. The company has since expanded into everything from logistics to digital content services, but printing remains its core business, just as Chicago has remained its home.
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rchannick@tribpub.com
Twitter @RobertChannick
Eric Scott Hunsader is a leading critic of high-frequency trading and a pioneer of supplying real-time market data to investors through his North Shore-based firm Nanex. (Ting Shen / Chicago Tribune)
In less time than it takes you to read this sentence, Michael Coscia could make more money than most Americans earn in an 8-hour day.
If you blinked, you miss it.
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But if you slowed down time, sliced a second into a thousand tiny parts, and looked at a span of just 65 milliseconds about as long as it takes a hummingbird to flap its wings once you'd see the unmistakable evidence of a sophisticated criminal at work, the feds say.
That's because Coscia, 53, was allegedly a "spoofer," a high-frequency trader who used computer algorithms to rip off rivals in markets where business is conducted at the speed of light.
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His scam using huge spoof orders for commodities futures contracts to goose prices on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange netted him $1.6 million in just three months, according to a federal indictment, helping fund an anonymous but comfortable lifestyle that included a waterfront New Jersey mansion.
Coscia, of Rumson, N.J., is due to find himself thrust into the public eye Monday when he becomes the first criminal defendant tried under anti-spoofing legislation included in the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act.
Expected to be closely watched on both Wall Street and LaSalle Street, the weeklong trial scheduled to start in federal court in Chicago is an important test of that law, which was also used to charge Navinder Sarao, the alleged spoofer authorities say is to blame for 2010's "flash crash." That episode temporarily wiped nearly $1 trillion off the value of U.S. equities in a matter of minutes.
Coscia's trial comes at a time of increased public scrutiny of high-frequency traders. Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton's campaign earlier this month said some traders are engaged in a "harmful" practice that threatens the wider economy and should be subjected to additional taxes.
The case also promises to shine a light on a secret world, one that accounts for about 50 percent of all trading volume and has helped mint the fortunes of some of Chicago's wealthiest and most generous political campaign donors.
Among the purported victims expected to testify against Coscia is a representative of Citadel, the giant hedge fund founded by Illinois' richest person, Ken Griffin.
Chicago where derivatives trading was born in the 19th century as a form of insurance for farmers has become a center for such cases. In one of his first acts as U.S. attorney, Zachary Fardon in late 2013 created a financial fraud unit in part to help protect the city's fast-moving futures markets.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel has also made it a priority to protect high-frequency traders on the CME, a group he has described as vital to Chicago's economy. Earlier this year, the Tribune documented how he flew to Washington, D.C., in 2011 to lobby the Commodity Futures Trading Commission against rule changes affecting high-frequency traders, including three trading firms that also attended the meeting and were major donors to his campaign fund.
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The high-speed trading world is not short on ego. Pending civil spoofing cases filed by regulators include one against Chicago-based 3Red Trading co-founder Igor Oystacher, who describes himself as a "clinical observer of human carnival" on his LinkedIn profile and allegedly tried to silence a concerned colleague from speaking to authorities. Another recently settled case targeted a New York firm whose traders posed lounging on their office rooftop for a Wall Street Journal profile in which they boasted that their unusual trading hours allowed them to spend most of the day loafing at the movies and eating pizza.
And Sarao, who allegedly made $40 million spoofing from his parents' home in suburban London, named his business "Nav Sarao Milking Markets Ltd." Sarao is fighting extradition to Chicago, but court papers state that when he was quizzed about his actions by the CME in 2010, he told them to "kiss my ass."
Investors have sought a competitive advantage through speed ever since Nathan Mayer Rothschild reputedly used carrier pigeons to learn of Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo in 1815. According to the legend, by buying up British bonds before his pigeon-less London rivals had heard the news, Rothschild scored big.
Today, competing computer algorithms hunt for a smaller edge, making and canceling hundreds of orders for stocks, bonds and derivatives in a fraction of the time it takes a human to shout into a phone or click a mouse.
Stocks trade simultaneously on multiple exchanges, meaning the fastest traders can take advantage of the minuscule lags that can occur between exchanges. By trading thousands of times a day and holding for only short periods, successful high-frequency traders can shave off tiny profits that quickly add up.
Coscia, who faces up to 25 years behind bars on each of multiple counts if convicted, is accused of developing an algorithm that gamed the system by placing huge "spoof" orders to buy and sell contracts for soybean meal, soybean oil, high-grade copper, gold, Euro FX and pound FX currency futures at the CME and on the London-based ICE Futures Europe exchange. The spoof orders, all just above and below the market price, were automatically canceled and were never intended to be filled, prosecutors allege. They say the orders caused rival algorithms to make orders that temporarily moved the market price in a direction benefiting Coscia and his New Jersey-based firm Panther Energy Trading.
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The fraud allowed Coscia to trick competitors into selling him contracts more cheaply and buying from him at higher prices than they otherwise would have, earning Coscia profits of more than $1 million in a few months, according to a criminal indictment filed in October 2014.
Walking a jury millisecond by millisecond through six alleged price manipulations during a two-week period in September 2011 that form the basis of the indictment is expected to take the government about a week.
Since there is nothing illegal about canceling large numbers of orders, a routine part of high-frequency trading, the case is likely to turn on whether prosecutors can prove that emails and instructions in Coscia's algorithm prove he intended to manipulate the market, according to Trace Schmeltz, an attorney specializing in white-collar crime at law firm Barnes & Thornburg. Coscia, in turn, may try to argue that "everyone was doing it" or that the canceled orders were a legitimate tool of price discovery, said Schmeltz, who is not involved in the case.
Steven R. Peikin, a New York attorney representing Coscia, declined to comment.
Opinion on how widespread cases like Coscia's alleged spoofing are tends to coincide with views on whether the technological leaps have benefited society or simply made a handful of traders very rich.
High-frequency trading firm Tradeworx founder Manoj Narang, an outspoken defender of his colleagues and competitors, argues that society benefits from the liquidity that high-frequency traders provide.
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Narang sniffs that what Coscia allegedly did wasn't even high-frequency trading but an unsophisticated form of "day trading like they did in the late 1990s" and that by confounding the two, prosecutors and media are misleading the public and tacitly encouraging unhelpful political intervention.
Tradeworx, which Narang left earlier this year, operated in the same building as Panther in Red Bank, N.J. Anyone who looked in Panther's offices "would have seen traders looking at screens deciding when to trade," he said. "If you looked in our office you wouldn't have seen a single market chart, just people looking at code."
"The markets are well policed," he added. "This isn't widespread."
Eric Scott Hunsader begs to differ.
A leading critic of high-frequency trading and a pioneer of supplying real-time market data to investors through his North Shore-based firm Nanex, Hunsader has amassed more than 70,000 Twitter followers by sharing details of what he says is evidence of endemic market manipulation.
"There's nothing unusual about the Panther case," he said. "It happens every day and it's easy to spot."
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Sitting in a small office above a nail salon in downtown Winnetka, Hunsader monitors a bank of four computer displays, tracking the real-time movements of the markets on a series of colorful and kinetic geometric charts that bear a striking resemblance to modern art. He frequently posts images of what he says are obvious signs of spoofing that have yet to attract any visible regulatory attention.
"Chaos" is his one-word description for how today's markets work. In Hunsader's view, Coscia and Sarao are at worst small-time nuisances to larger firms like Virtu Financial and Citadel, who he says continue to benefit from markets rigged in their favor.
"Technology and the Internet has opened up and democratized so many areas of society, but this is one area where it has had the opposite effect," he said. "The laws needed to tackle this are already on the books, but they are not being enforced."
The spoofing problem could quickly be solved without lengthy court battles that threaten a trader's liberty if the exchanges started issuing large fines "like traffic tickets" for every transgression and suspended serial offenders from the exchanges, he said. But the exchanges are reluctant to do anything to upset high-frequency traders, whose methods rack up substantial fees, he believes.
That allegation was rejected by CME spokeswoman Anita Liskey, who said the CME has a "strong and long-standing record of not only monitoring for this behavior but also prosecuting that behavior when we find it." Liskey added that "nobody has a more vested interest" in protecting the integrity of the market than the CME.
Hunsader, though, remains unconvinced.
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And he doesn't believe that the political attention on high-frequency trading inspired in part by Bernie Sanders' anti-Wall Street presidential campaign will have any impact. Citadel and other firms that benefit from high-frequency trading are major political donors, Hunsader noted.
High-frequency traders have mocked Hunsader as a conspiracy theorist who sees what his colleague jokingly dubbed "crop circles" in market data.
Hunsader, though, welcomes a fight. He says he has published 3,000 papers that are all supported by data "and I have never had to retract one of them." He's found a willing audience for his analysis, briefing U.S. regulators, law enforcement and even the British prime minister's office, he says.
His view that high-frequency trading does not provide real liquidity was supported by a recent paper published by economists at the New York Fed, which found that high-frequency trading contributed to a "liquidity mirage."
Some academics say Hunsader's conclusions aren't always supported by the startling patterns he unearths. "Reasonable people can look at the same data and come to different conclusions," said James Angel, a finance professor at Georgetown University. "But he provides a great service, and he does draw attention to some of the more interesting phenomena in the market."
Terrence Hendershott, a finance professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who is acting as an expert witness for the government in the Sarao case, added that "we don't really know" how widespread high-frequency fraud is, but that "there are no measures that I have seen that have shown that (other) investors are really suffering."
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Both Hendershott and Angel said that high-frequency trading is a broad term that, like anything else, contains both people who play by the rules and those who do not.
The public, though, is rightly concerned about market regulation, given that wholesale fraud in the mortgage securities market leading up to the Great Recession has not resulted in significant criminal prosecutions, Angel said.
"Certainly there were many people with dirty hands who walked away with millions," he added.
Whether fraud on a comparable scale exists among high-frequency traders is "the billion-dollar question," Angel said.
"Obviously the regulators don't want to go around, saying, 'go-ahead and spoof, we have no idea what's going on.' ... What we need is regulators who are smart enough to tell the good from the bad."
kjanssen@tribpub.com
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The following items were taken from the official reports and press releases of the Winnetka Police Department. An arrest does not constitute a finding of guilt.
Winnetka
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Theft
An unsecured vehicle with the keys inside was taken from a driveway in the 500 block of Cherry Street, according to a July 4 report. The amount of loss is in excess of $10,000. The investigation continues.
An unsecured yellow "Bianchi" Cortina bicycle was taken from the front of a building in the 500 block of Chestnut Street, according to a July 5 report. The amount of loss is $666.
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An unsecured "Briria" bicycle was taken from the backyard of a residence in the 400 block of Willow Road, according to a July 6 report. The amount of loss is $550.
A resident of the 200 block of Church Road reported on July 6 that a check was taken from his residence and cashed without permission. The amount of loss is $1,047.
An unsecured vehicle was taken from a driveway in the 200 block of White Oak Lane, according to a July 6 report. A briefcase, a movie projector and car key fobs left inside the vehicle were also stolen, according to police. The amount of loss is in excess of $10,000.
A man left a salon in the 1000 block of Gage Street on July 8 without paying for a haircut, according to police. The amount of loss is $18.
An unsecured bicycle left against a fence in the 800 block of Oak Street was taken on July 10 but was located later that day in the area, according to reports.
Someone entered a vehicle in the 900 block of Ravine Road and rummaged through the contents, according to a July 9 report. There is no reported loss at this time.
DUI
Marcos Gutierrez, 53, of the 2300 block of Tripp Avenue in Chicago, was charged with driving under the influence of alcohol in the 100 block of Sheridan Road on July 4, according to reports. He was also cited for no valid driver's license and speeding, the reports said.
Criminal Damage
Rocks were thrown at a building in the 800 block of Gordon Terrace on July 5 and windows were damaged, police said. Repair costs were estimated at $1,400.
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Flowers and a flowerpot in the 1000 block of Tower Court were reported damaged on July 5. The amount of loss is $300.
Two planters on the walkway of a residence in the 1000 block of Tower Road were reported damaged on July 6. The amount of loss is $75.
A construction company sign in the 800 block of Gordon Terrace was damaged, according to a July 7 report. Repair costs were estimated at $350.
Fraud
A resident of the 300 block of Chestnut Street reported on July 6 that someone illegally used their private information to obtain a driver's license and open up a Chase credit card account. There is no reported loss at this time.
Traffic
Scott Edward Vancura, 25, of the 3000 block of N. Oketo Avenue in Chicago, was charged with driving with a suspended driver's license, operating an uninsured motor vehicle, failure to reduce speed to avoid an accident and leaving the scene of an accident in the 1300 block of Trapp Lane, according to a July 8 report.
Brian Cox is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.
Deepest brown color, low and dimpled. Smells artificial, sweet and bland. Plain, tasteless, a bit of an off taste; does not hold up to burger. 8 count, $1.99 (Michael Tercha / Chicago Tribune)
For all the burger recipes out there that detail the kinds and cuts of protein, ratios of lean to fat, and so many hacks, almost all focus on the patty but say nothing on what can make up much of your burger: the bun.
Available in just about any neighborhood grocery store, sold in eight or four packs, they're beckoningly beautiful, bakery fragrant, slightly sweet, soft yet sturdy, and meld your burger elements together as one.
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But what's the best?
We challenged the chefs behind some of Chicago's biggest, craziest, messiest burgers to eat the monsters they've created. Read the story behind the video here. (Chicago Tribune)
We picked eight locally available brands of what I call plain Jane burger buns (as opposed to fancy Nancy buns). Plain Jane buns have no seeds, are made of white bread and label themselves as burger or hamburger buns (instead of, say, pretzel or brioche buns). In alphabetical order, they were: Aunt Millie's, Bimbo, Butternut, Rudi's, S. Rosen's Mary Ann, Udi's Gluten Free, Whole Foods Market and Wonder.
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Purchased at Mariano's, Whole Foods and Pete's Fresh Market in Chicago, they were all rushed into our test kitchen the same afternoon to make sure they were fresh.
I then invited our Food & Dining team to taste test the buns straight out of the bag and what I call "burgerfied" to test their "burgerbility," that is, how well they hold up as burgers. Our test kitchen chef made classic home-style burgers according to the following specifications: bun bottom (toasted in a regular toaster, light), then onion (raw, sliced thin), beef patties (grilled on a stove-top, double-burner cast-iron griddle to medium rare), American cheese, yellow mustard, dill pickles and mayo spread under the burger top.
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We found that as different as they looked side by side, they all smelled similar, and most had good flavor and burgerbility.
The worst plain Jane bun we tasted was by Bimbo, baked locally by the Mexico-based multinational company Grupo Bimbo.
Our best plain Jane bun was by a brand you may never have heard of, if you're like me: Aunt Millie's. The company is based in Fort Wayne, Ind., but the buns we bought and tasted in Chicago were baked in Sidney, Ohio.
We did discover some big surprises, most notably with the Wonder buns. One tester ranked them second best, writing in tasting notes "perfect McDonald's clone" for the very same reason that another tester ranked them second worst, "like a McDonald's replica."
So remember, your own taste memory may rank the best burger bun for you. See our final rankings in the photo gallery above, from worst to best, with tasting notes.
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lchu@tribpub.com
Twitter @louisachu
Chicago metal band Disturbed announced Monday it will embark on a fall tour with Grayslake rock band Chevelle.
The tour is slated to kick off Sept. 23 in Las Vegas and wrap up Oct. 21 in Glendale, Ariz. Texas band Nothing More is set to perform as well.
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VIP and general tour tickets are scheduled to go on sale on Disturbed's website Wednesday and Friday, respectively.
Fall tour with @ChevelleInc and @nothingmorerock! VIP tix on sale this Wednesday and general on sale this Friday. pic.twitter.com/Lcj6Y8TXdp Disturbed (@Disturbed) July 11, 2016
Disturbed is set to perform Saturday at the Chicago Open Air Festival at Toyota Park in Bridgeview. The band dropped its "Immortalized" album in August.
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Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 126 Woody introduces the gang to a homemade spork toy with self-esteem issues in "Toy Story 4." Read the review. (Pixar / AP)
(L to R): Lily Mojekwu and Eamonn Walker in Steppenwolf Theatre Companys production of "Between Riverside and Crazy." (Michael Brosilow)
Watching Stephen Adly Guirgis' very beautiful play "Between Riverside and Crazy" at the Steppenwolf Theater on Saturday night so soon after America seemed to collapse under the weight of myriad incidents of gun violence was a bizarre but profound experience. Not least because the play seemed so prophetic.
Although penned in 2014, the drama, a just winner of the Pulitzer Prize the following spring, revolves around a retired African-American police officer who, while in the job, was shot by one of his fellow officers. At the time, Walter "Pops" Washington was off-duty, hanging out in a sleazy bar infested by felons a poor choice for a police officer but not one that should be accompanied by a hail of cop-fired bullets headed his way.
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Guirgis could not have anticipated that all in a matter of days police officers would be captured on video shooting and killing two black men, in Minnesota and Louisiana, nor that an Army veteran would shoot and kill five on-duty police officers during a protest in Dallas.
Or maybe he could, given the nation's seemingly unstoppable scourge of gun violence.
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By focusing on an African-American police officer this play seemed to walk right down the middle of the controversies that consumed the nation in the preceding days. Pops, played by "Chicago Fire" actor Eamonn Walker, not only seemed to understand both sides of the Black Lives Matter/Blue Lives Matter dichotomy if that's what it is he'd been hit by both sides.
Right in his gut.
I'm always hyper-aware of over-emphasizing the timeliness of plays. Great drama tends to resonate with something every time it is revived, being as humans tend to repeat their mistakes. That's why it's great drama a category, by the way, in which this particular play absolutely belongs.
But this somehow went further.
A play written from the officer's point of view, himself the victim of a police shooting, seemed so precisely to fit the needs of the moment it was positively shocking.
In my review, I noted that some in the audience had seemed flabbergasted by the timeliness of the work open-mouthed, even, in places. In some instances, I felt like there was a resistance, as if the play was an intrusion on a nice Saturday night out.
I'm never critical of people who go to the theater to escape the difficulties of the week; it is a crucial reason why Chicago remains so lucky to have its vibrant theater scene. And it's fair to say that many of the city's most passionate and socially conscious theater artists sometimes wish that they did not have to deal with audience members preferring to have a relaxed, enjoyable experience. But there are social benefits in the de-escalation of tension and in fun experiences, enjoyed together.
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Still, I felt that frisson of resistance in the room and it perplexed and annoyed me for a moment.
But the following morning, a reader pointed out the way that Steppenwolf had described the play to its subscribers:
"In a twisty plot that is as surprising as it is hilarious, ex-cop 'Pops' fights to keep his spacious rent-controlled apartment because there's no place like home."
Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 11 (L to R): Victor Almanzar and Eamonn Walker in Steppenwolf Theatre Companys production of "Between Riverside and Crazy." (Michael Brosilow)
Ah. Perhaps that explains it. There was, in fact, nothing whatsoever hilarious about "Between Riverside and Crazy" on Saturday. Nothing whatsoever.
But then and I mean this without any irony I do not think there is any way that Steppenwolf marketers could have anticipated that. Events overtook the billing, but a great, wise, moving American play then rose up and stared them down without fear.
Chris Jones is a Tribune critic.
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Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 126 Woody introduces the gang to a homemade spork toy with self-esteem issues in "Toy Story 4." Read the review. (Pixar / AP)
"A Charlie Brown Christmas" at the Broadway Playhouse in Nov. 2015. (Austin D. Oie Photography / Chicago Tribune)
The Peanuts gang will once again search for the true meaning of Christmas this holiday season in "A Charlie Brown Christmas," Broadway in Chicago and Emerald City Theatre announced Tuesday.
Charles M. Schulz's festive musical, based on the television special by Bill Melendez and Lee Mendelson and adapted for the stage by Eric Schaeffer, will return to the Broadway Playhouse at Water Tower Place from Nov. 11 through Jan. 8.
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The newly staged production will be directed by Ann Filmer. Casting has not yet been announced.
The Broadway Playhouse is located at 175 E. Chestnut St.
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Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 122 Sophie Turner as Jean Grey, anger management student, in "Dark Phoenix." The film, the latest in the "X-Men" franchise, costars James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender and Jessica Chastain. Read the review. (Twentieth Century Fox)
A man passes a column of replica Chinese terra cotta warriors at Daley Plaza, on July 13, 2016. The Field Museum is giving out clues on Twitter on where to spot them. (Antonio Perez / Chicago Tribune)
While many are obsessed with tracking down Pokemon creatures, the Field Museum has created its own treasure hunt.
The museum began giving out clues Wednesday on Twitter about the best spots in Chicago to spy life-size replicas of the real-deal terra cotta statues commissioned by Chinese Emporer Qin Shihuang thousands of years ago. He wanted "warrior" statutes to guard his tomb after he died. The treasure hunt is a promotion for the Field Museum's special exhibit "China's First Emperor and His Terracotta Warriors," where some of the original terra cotta figures and two painted replicas are on display.
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The first clue to find them marching around the city: "Where can the warriors get their 'Daley' dose of #Chicago culture?"
If you guessed Daley Plaza, you're correct. A group of six warrior replicas were found near the Picasso statue. They each weigh 450 pounds and are 5 feet 8 inches tall, standing atop a 3-inch base, a museum spokesman said.
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The Pokemon Go game has people walking around streets seeking cartoons displayed on a smartphone, but the Field's photos posted to Facebook and Instagram show the replicas have been spotted around the city posing outside the Shedd Aquarium and the Adler Planetarium, getting photobombed by Sue the T. rex inside the museum, standing on the grass at Soldier Field, staring face-to-face with the bronze lion at the Art Institute, admiring his own reflection on the Bean in Millennium Park and ready to play ping pong at Parson's Chicken & Fish. Who knew the warriors were such foodies? Photos also show the replicas with two deep dish pizzas and a Chicago-style hot dog in hand.
The replicas will be exploring the city through the end of July, according to the museum. The warriors won't be marching to a new location every day. There will be clues the day before the warriors are on the move.
Ten of the original terra cotta warriors who guarded the mausoleum of Qin Shihuang have been on display to the public since March at the museum, where they will stay until Jan. 8. The terra cotta army was intended to protect the emperor's tomb in the afterlife by guarding a burial complex built more than 2,000 years ago. A farmer digging a well in 1974 discovered a buried statue. It is estimated about 8,000 figures were buried at the site, according to the museum.
lvivanco@chicagotribune.com
Twitter @lvivanco
Chantell Brooks, left, and Gloria Pinex speak July 12, 2016, about their sons being killed by Chicago police. The U.S. Department of Justice had a public forum as part of its investigation into the Chicago Police Department. (Chris Sweda / Chicago Tribune)
About 200 people took part in a forum Tuesday evening in Uptown that is part of the U.S. Department of Justice's wide-ranging civil rights investigation into Chicago police.
"We need to hear from you to understand what is happening here in Chicago," Emily Gunston, a Justice Department attorney, told the crowd in the gymnasium at Truman College.
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Gunston said the department is aware that Chicagoans have been "angry" with police for "generations."
"We need to understand why these problems are happening," she said, "and that's the hard part of the investigation."
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The federal investigation was announced in December after the release of Chicago police video showing a white officer's fatal shooting of 17-year-old African-American, Laquan McDonald. In addition to the shocking nature of the video, police reports from the officers on the scene conflict with what can be seen in the footage.
McDonald was shot 16 times by Officer Jason Van Dyke, who has been charged with first-degree murder.
A few dozen community members stepped to the microphone to speak at Tuesday's meeting. Many made allegations of police brutality, and told stories of residents being treated with hostility by police officers.
Pamela Hunt, who said she lives in West Humboldt Park, was loudly applauded when she criticized Mayor Rahm Emanuel. The mayor has borne the brunt of criticism over the city's failure to release the video until November, more than 13 months after McDonald was shot.
"Rahm Emanuel, to me, is a racist," Hunt said. "Rahm wouldn't cover up the murder of a Jewish youth."
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Hunt said citizens are "terrorized" by the Police Department. She said an elderly friend had once asked police to help rid her West Side community of its drug problem, only to be told by an officer, "Well, I thought you all liked that."
Justice Department attorneys said Tuesday that they're focused on investigating the Police Department's use of force, including racial or ethnic disparities in their use of force, and current police accountability systems. The federal investigators are examining how police conduct their internal investigations of wayward officers and respond to citizen complaints.
Two previous forums have taken place in the past month, and a fourth is set for Thursday evening at the Kroc Center in the West Pullman neighborhood.
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Attorneys said they anticipate a lengthy investigation, though they did not offer a time frame for when it will be concluded. Experts have told the Tribune that if a pattern of legal violations emerges, the city could be forced to pay even more to carry out reforms in areas such as police staffing, training, policies and oversight.
If a pattern of violations is found, city officials and the Justice Department will put together a lengthy legal agreement over how to reform the department, experts have said.
meltagouri@chicagotribune.com
Twitter @marwaeltagouri
A Cook County judge delayed a decision Tuesday on whether to give lawyers for a Chicago police officer charged in the fatal shooting of Laquan McDonald access to his juvenile records, saying they must first notify all pertinent parties of the request.
That led Steven "Randy" Rueckert, an attorney for Officer Jason Van Dyke, to question if McDonald's mother really needed to be notified since the teen was not living with her at the time of his death.
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Judge Patricia Martin held the matter over until later this month to allow more time for the mother or her attorneys to be given notice of the legal proceedings so they can object if they so choose.
The officer's legal team has said little about its request for the typically confidential records, citing a "gag order" they said a judge presiding over the high-profile murder case at the Leighton Criminal Court Building had imposed on them.
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A recent front-page Tribune article detailed the unusual request by Van Dyke's lawyers for the voluminous records chronicling the 17-year-old boy's often turbulent childhood growing up in state care. Some child advocates cried foul, saying the defense team was preparing to unfairly make the teen the bad guy. But other veteran criminal defense lawyers defended the attorneys' actions as fulfilling their duty to fully prepare for trial.
Martin's insistence that all parties with an interest in the case be notified appeared to frustrate Rueckert. He told the judge he had been unable to find McDonald's mother, Tina Hunter, and that the lawyers who handled the family's $5 million out-of-court settlement with the city had not responded to his calls seeking to notify them about the records' request.
"I don't know what interest they would have," Rueckert said of the lawyers, noting the settlement. "If they don't return my phone calls, I don't know what good sending notice would do?"
And he can't serve notice directly to Hunter "because I don't know where she lives," he said. "I have no way of knowing where she is."
Rueckert said he would be the only member of Van Dyke's legal team to review the juvenile court records and that the defense had a duty to pursue all possible evidence in preparation for trial.
"If there's nothing we can use (at trial), then who's been harmed by this?" he asked. "If there's something we can use, then I have a right to (review the records)."
In continuing the proceedings, Martin said, "I need to make sure everyone has an opportunity to tell you their position."
Warning: This video contains graphic content. Chicago officials released the police dash-cam video of the October 2014 fatal shooting of Laquan McDonald, 17, by a Chicago police officer. The Chicago Tribune edited this version only for length. (Chicago Police Dept./Handout)
The officer's defense team already has inspected juvenile delinquency records detailing McDonald's seven drug-related arrests. But the records held in the court's child-protection division often delve deeper into a child's mental health, education and family history. The state's Juvenile Court Act governs who may review these typically confidential court files and requires proper notice be given to all interested parties.
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At the time of his October 2014 death, McDonald and his younger sister were in protective custody due to allegations of abuse and neglect that arose several years earlier. The Illinois Department of Children and Family Services had most recently placed the siblings in an uncle's care.
Hunter completed several court-recommended services, including therapy, and was working toward getting both of her children back, according to court records. Her parental rights were never terminated, the records said. McDonald's father, a convicted felon, was not involved in his life.
The Tribune was granted access to read McDonald's juvenile delinquency and child-protection records several months ago for a lengthy story published on his life. But it is rare for nonjournalists, particularly defendants in criminal cases, to seek access to another person's juvenile records, according to several child welfare advocates who were critical of the defense's records request.
The court-ordered release last November of a video showing Van Dyke shooting McDonald 16 times caused a firestorm of protests in Chicago and led to calls for major police reforms amid a U.S. Justice Department investigation of the Police Department's practices.
His defense team has said Van Dyke feared for his safety and that of others when he opened fire at the knife-wielding teen that night. At issue at trial will be whether that fear was reasonable. Although Van Dyke did not know McDonald's identity until after the fatal encounter, the judge presiding over his criminal case has the discretion to allow some of the teenager's history into evidence at trial if it is deemed relevant.
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The documents previously reviewed by the Tribune detailed McDonald's difficult childhood as well as his arrests. He became a second-generation state ward at a young age. He found stability in his great-grandmother's home, but McDonald often got into trouble as an adolescent in school and admitted using and selling drugs, as well as gang activity, while growing up in a rough West Side neighborhood, the records showed. His great-grandmother died in summer 2013.
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Police have said that McDonald, who had PCP in his system, ignored repeated commands over several minutes to stop walking and drop the knife after officers responded to complaints that the teen had broken into vehicles in a South Side trucking yard. Within seconds of arriving at the scene, Van Dyke opened fire, emptying his weapon.
More than a year passed before the officer was charged last November, hours before a judge ordered the release of police dashboard camera video that showed Van Dyke shoot McDonald as the teen walked briskly away from police.
The video contained no discernible audio but belied the written accounts of other officers at the scene that McDonald had lunged with the knife before Van Dyke opened fire.
Van Dyke, 38, a married father of two, has been suspended without pay. In an exclusive interview a few months ago, his wife told the Tribune her husband is traumatized that he took a life, especially of a boy who had just turned 17 weeks earlier.
cmgutowski@tribpub.com
Twitter @christygutowsk1
Chicago Public Schools' principals will have to make it through a full year with budget cuts made in February, though officials said the district expects to avoid teacher layoffs and any reduction to academic programs.
Principals received budgets Wednesday that they will use to prepare spending plans for their schools by July 22. Still to come is a district operating budget, which CPS CEO Forrest Claypool indicated will require concessions from the Chicago Teachers Union and a follow-through by state lawmakers on funding measures approved last month.
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Claypool said CPS would be able to present a balanced budget that will allow the district to regain access to capital markets for short- and long-term credit. Claypool said a balanced budget is "important to make it clear to the credit markets that we were a worthy credit risk."
He also again promised there will be no cuts to the classroom.
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"These (individual school) budgets are final. These budgets you can count on, and the teachers and principals can be assured and parents can know that they will not receive a cut in their resources," said Claypool, standing alongside two school principals and the district's chief education officer at a news conference.
Student-based funding forms the backbone of each school's budget, and the district will carry over the roughly 5 percent cut it made to that rate in the middle of the last school year. That cut was expected to save the district $120 million in the fiscal year that began July 1.
CPS said it was unable to release more detailed information about school budgets Wednesday.
Claypool said CPS would save money through changes in how schools can budget for art, physical education, music and counselor positions. In addition, Claypool said the district plans to implement new scheduling guidelines and negotiate "steep discounts' with the large list of vendors it relies on for supplies and other products.
CPS also expects to save $45 million in this budget year from positions, some of them vacant, cut last year.
The district has backed off dire warnings of massive reductions to school budgets after lawmakers approved an education spending plan and measures to ease some of the district's financial pressures last month.
"Receiving our budgets today, we were lucky to see that while we do have cuts, we're going to be able to maintain the same level of education and progress for our students," Megan Thole, principal of Ray Elementary School in the Hyde Park neighborhood, said as she stood by Claypool.
Principals will get a base amount of $4,087 for each student. As it did when the per-pupil budget cuts were made in February, the district plans to redirect federal funds to soften the effects of the reduction.
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Claypool said the district would disclose "everything we've done to bring our budget into balance" when a full spending plan is presented in August.
"We will devote ourselves in the coming year to turning temporary funding streams into permanent, structural fixes," Claypool said. "We need to get past stopgap budget measures. We need to close the chapter on one-time solutions."
The district at this point is planning a budget while still in talks with the CTU on a contract. The union was quick to criticize the individual school budgets issued Wednesday. CTU Vice President Jesse Sharkey, in a statement released Wednesday, said "these fiscal decisions hurt our students," and he repeated calls for the city to institute new taxes to fund education.
"There have been hundreds of millions in cuts that CPS claims are 'away from the classroom' but that have cut essential programming from transportation, counseling, after-school programs and even school libraries," Sharkey said.
Claypool called on the union to "step up" to help resolve the district's deficit. The two sides have been working for well longer than a year to replace a contract that expired at the end of June 2015. A key point of contention remains the future of the district's longstanding practice of paying for the bulk of teachers' required contributions to their pension fund.
Claypool sidestepped a question about whether the district's forthcoming budget would count on the union to give up the so-called pension pickup.
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"We are making certain assumptions, of course," Claypool said. "But it's an ongoing, fluid negotiating process.
"When we put out the final budget in August, we'll have greater detail on what assumptions are made and not made. But, you know, as I've said, we need everybody to be part of the solution when it comes to deficit reduction."
Among the actions on education funding taken by the state was a measure allowing the school board to authorize a property tax levy that officials say will generate $250 million for CPS contributions to the city's teacher pension fund.
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Cook County Clerk David Orr's office has said CPS would not see the additional tax revenue until at least July or August 2017. Claypool said "we believe that we can budget and rely on those funds."
Other funding measures approved by Springfield lawmakers include $250 million in grants that would be distributed based on the number of high-poverty students in each of the state's school districts. CPS said it expects to get about $130 million of that total.
There's less of a guarantee that money from a crucial third measure will arrive in time to help the school system before the conclusion of the fiscal year.
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That measure, which would have the state send about $205 million to help cover the district's forthcoming pension payment, is contingent on lawmakers' approval of broader pension reforms that are still to be negotiated.
"If we can't count on that, I don't know what we can count on," Claypool said. "So obviously we are counting on the legislature and the governor to be good to their word and that the law in the legislation is good too, it's enforceable, it's going to be agreed on."
jjperez@chicagotribune.com
Twitter @perezjr
Darius Johnson, 22, who graduated from Morehouse College and was accepted to Columbia University, is embraced by his grandmother, Irene Vassel, as Cook County Board members honor him July 13, 2016. (Antonio Perez / Chicago Tribune)
It might have been the smiling faces of his family members, the reflective shine of the TV cameras or the kind words from elected officials calling him a role model that had South Side native Darius Johnson reconsidering whether he would return to his hometown to help steer more young people toward a college education.
Months after speaking with the Tribune about his intentions to move outside of Chicago permanently amid daily reports of crime and violence in and around his South Side neighborhood, Johnson said he is rethinking his path after the Cook County Board honored him Wednesday for his academic success.
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Johnson, 22, received two standing ovations from a large audience during Wednesday's board meeting, where commissioners lavished praise on the King College Prep graduate for his perseverance over the early violence that could have derailed his future.
While completing his English degree at Morehouse College, Johnson interned at CNN; both are in Atlanta. He limited visits home, but he's in Chicago for the summer, between college stints. Later this month, he leaves Chicago for New York City's Columbia University and its prestigious journalism graduate program, where he will be one of six African-Americans and the only black man.
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Johnson was featured in a March Tribune story highlighting how crime and dwindling job prospects had many African-Americans, from college grads to baby boomers, fleeing the city. The article preceded the release of U.S. Census data confirming a population loss in Chicago, largely attributed to a decline in the black population.
"Now with this resolution I feel like I have to come back," he said after Wednesday's meeting, referring to the county board's resolution honoring him. "And that doesn't mean I have to come back to live, or come back to stay, but I have to at least come back to get a few more people from my community, or from this city to attend college and then to proceed into grad school just so that they can achieve all of their hopes and dreams the same way that I've done."
Johnson was only 5 weeks old when his 21-year-old mother, Sonja, was fatally struck by a stray bullet outside the family home in the Burnside neighborhood. Since then, his grandparents and extended family helped raise him, keeping his focus on education while sheltering him from the violence in the community.
Surrounded by a dozen relatives, including his grandparents, Hattie and McKinley, Johnson was embraced by Cook County President Toni Preckwinkle and received a kiss on the cheek from Commissioner Deborah Sims.
"Young man, I am so proud of you," Sims said.
Darius Johnson's mother, Sonja F. Johnson, was killed in Chicago on August 22, 1994. (Family photo )
Commissioner Stanley Moore, who sponsored the resolution, said, "I understand that he has had some very serious obstacles that he's had to overcome in his personal life, but through it all he has survived and he has taken big strides to achieve big dreams."
Commissioner Richard Boykin said: "Against all odds you've been able to accomplish some tremendous things and you've never given up on hope. That's what we need most of all in our communities hope."
Johnson, who hopes to continue working with CNN, said he was overwhelmed by the attention.
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"It felt amazing. It also felt surreal. It's still unbelievable what just happened. It's just a lot to take in, but I know that my work isn't done," he said.
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Some of the unfinished work includes finding scholarship cash to help finance the one-year, $100,000 master's program.
Johnson expects some belt-tightening now that his grandmother, a longtime social worker with an agency affiliated with the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, recently had her position phased out, a casualty of the state budget impasse in Springfield.
"Right now I have enough to go ahead and go for my first semester so I'm just hoping that the money comes in order for me to finish my entire year," Johnson said.
But the financial hardship couldn't wipe the smile from the face of Hattie Johnson, who described raising her grandson as tough but rewarding.
"It was hard but we made it. I did what I could do, all I could do for him," Hattie Johnson said. "I didn't have a son, but I gained one. I lost a daughter and gained a son."
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Twitter @MidNoirCowboy
Hillary Clinton greets members of the audience after delivering a speech at the Old State Capitol in Springfield on July 13, 2016. (Zbigniew Bzdak / Chicago Tribune)
SPRINGFIELD With the historical site of Abraham Lincoln's "House Divided" speech as a backdrop, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton on Wednesday criticized Republican rival Donald Trump for divisively exploiting fear in labeling him a "threat" to democracy.
Clinton delivered a largely somber speech on respecting racial and ethnic differences amid escalating gun violence in accusing the GOP candidate of turning the Party of Lincoln into the "Party of Trump."
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Clinton hits Springfield, Trump meet with VP finalists. July 13, 2016. (CBS Miami)
While she sought to strike a presidential tone, Clinton also did something of a political pivot. The former secretary of state noted her own involvement as a divisive political character, vowing to "do better." Moments later, in attacking her opponent as "so dangerous," Clinton said the country needs a president who can bring people together, contending Trump is focused on "stoking mistrust and pitting American against American."
Clinton also acknowledged the real-world concern of Trump supporters fueled by an economy that has "stripped too many people of their sense of security and dignity."
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"It's about something deeper a sense of dislocation, even a pessimism about whether America still holds anything for them or cares about them at all," Clinton said.
During previous speeches, Clinton tried to associate Republicans with the controversial Trump. But in Springfield, she attempted to navigate a finer point in making an appeal for unity regardless of political support.
"Let's put ourselves in the shoes of Donald Trump's supporters. We may disagree on the causes and the solutions to the challenges we face, but I believe like anyone else, they're trying to figure out their place in a fast-changing America," Clinton said.
"They want to know how to make a good living and how to give their kids better futures and opportunities. That's why we've got to reclaim the promise of America for all our people no matter who they vote for," she said.
Clinton spoke to 150 invited guests at the Old State Capitol, the historic landmark where Lincoln gave his "House Divided" speech in 1858. It's also where President Barack Obama launched his bid for the White House, outside on a frigid day in February 2007.
Clinton quoted from Lincoln's famous speech and said the turmoil surrounding police and their interaction with minority communities has made it clear that "America's long struggle with race is far from finished."
"The challenges we face today do not approach those of Lincoln's time, not even close, and we should be clear about that," Clinton said. "But recent events across America have left people asking if we are still a house divided."
"I believe that our future peace and prosperity depends on whether we meet this moment with honesty and courage," Clinton said.
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She said that requires "a better job of listening to others," saying the opinions of those affected by police violence are just as important as those from law enforcement officials who put their lives on the line each day. She then called for changes in policing policies, tighter restrictions on access to guns and assault weapons.
"Now I understand that just saying these things together may upset some people," Clinton said. "But all these things can be true at the same time."
Clinton also called for tough but necessary conversations to heal deep divisions across the nation following last week's fatal shootings of black men by police in Minnesota and Louisiana, and the subsequent attack on police by a black Army veteran in Dallas that left five officers dead.
The former U.S. senator also mentioned the shooting of black teen Laquan McDonald by white Chicago police Officer Jason Van Dyke, who was charged with murder in the October 2014 shooting just before the release of video last November. And Clinton mentioned Sandra Bland, a former Naperville woman who died a year ago Wednesday in a Texas jail cell after she was pulled over in a controversial arrest by a state trooper.
Clinton said the conversations about race and policing are happening against a bigger economic backdrop that's created a gulf between the wealthy and working class, which has only been exacerbated by partisan divisions that have blocked possible changes.
She noted her involvement in that process, before launching into an offensive against the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.
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"His campaign is as divisive as any we have seen in our lifetimes," Clinton said. "It's there in everything he says and everything he promises to do as president."
Clinton cited Trump's comments against Muslims, Mexicans and women, before recounting an interview he gave to Fox News' Bill O'Reilly on Tuesday in which the real estate mogul born into wealth said he can relate to the struggles of black Americans because "even against me, the system is rigged."
Responded Clinton: "Even this, the killing of people, is somehow all about him."
"We need a president who can pull us together, not split us apart," Clinton said to cheers. "This man is the nominee of the Party of Lincoln. We are watching it become the Party of Trump. And that's not just a huge loss for our democracy, it is a threat to it."
Clinton also raised campaign cash Wednesday in a private Wilmette event hosted by Laura Ricketts, who is part of the family that owns the Cubs.
A day earlier, Trump was in Chicago raising more than $1 million at a campaign event inside his namesake tower along the Chicago River, attracting a smattering of protesters who held a news conference promoted by the Democratic National Committee.
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On Wednesday, Trump was in neighboring Indiana where he and his family met separately with Gov. Mike Pence and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich with a potential pick for running mate to occur as early as Friday. Trump also spoke by phone to New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a potential running mate, who also heads the Republican's transition team.
mcgarcia@chicagotribune.com
Twitter @moniquegarcia
Welcome to Clout Street: Morning Spin, our weekday feature to catch you up with what's going on in government and politics from Chicago to Springfield.
Topspin
Put 'em in the octagon?
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Mayor Rahm Emanuel famously grew up in a family with two brothers, constantly vying for parental attention and sniping at each other. So perhaps it's no surprise that the mayor couldn't help but take a bit of a swat at his younger, super-agent brother Ari Emanuel on Tuesday, the day after his WME/IMG agency acquired the mixed martial arts promotion UFC for a reported $4 billion.
Emanuel's swipe about his brother's new purchase came after he toured 2112, a music and technology business incubator in a former warehouse space in Portage Park. Emanuel celebrated the operation's one-year anniversary by cutting the ribbon on a film and video production and photography expansion.
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"I know I'm going to get in trouble for this: I hope Ari, my brother, doesn't find out about it, or he will be buying this thing in no time," Emanuel said of the music incubator. "It's a joke. I know I'm going to get in trouble now. It's a joke, guys, he spent all his money on UFC. He asked my parents for whatever they had. That's a joke too."
If nothing else, it's a change of pace from the mayor having to defend himself against allegations he was going soft on city ride-sharing rules because Ari Emanuel has a stake in Uber. (Bill Ruthhart)
What's on tap
*Mayor Emanuel is in Washington, D.C. in private meetings.
*Gov. Bruce Rauner is scheduled to sign business legislation on the Near Southwest Side.
*Hillary Clinton is in Springfield for a mid-morning speech at the Old State Capitol. Then she comes to Wilmette for a private fundraiser hosted by Laura Ricketts, who's part of the Cubs ownership family.
*The Cook County Board meets at 11 a.m. They'll approve Dr. Ponni Arunkumar as the new medical examiner. Commissioner Jesus "Chuy" Garcia's mandatory paid sick leave for county businesses won't come up for a vote. It's still being worked on.
*Interest groups will hold an event outside the Thompson Center aimed at pressuring Gov. Rauner into signing a "bill of rights" measure for domestic workers.
*House Republicans will hold a news conference to talk about Auditor General Frank Mautino, a former Democratic House lawmaker who's under fire for questions about his campaign expenses.
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*Chicago Park District youth boxers will put on a few exhibition bouts from noon to 1 p.m. at Daley Plaza. Unlike the aldermen who duke it out across the street, we assume the young pugilists will be wearing headgear.
What we're writing
*Rauner repositions on education funding with new panel.
*Democrats muster small protest as Trump raises campaign cash in Chicago.
*Pro-Blagojevich letters portray him as model prisoner.
*U. of I. looks to freeze tuition again.
What we're reading
*Vox tries to explain "the gap" between public, private image of Hillary Clinton.
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*Brexit, pffft. Dow Jones closes at record high.
*Laugh along with the common people, sing along and it just might get you through.
From the notebook
*Rauner stays mum on Trump: Republican Gov. Rauner once again tried to sidestep his party's controversial presidential campaign, even as he staged a news conference about education funding as the GOP's presumptive nominee gathered blocks away for a fundraiser at Trump Tower.
Anticipating that reporters might ask about the Trump visit, Rauner attempted to instruct them to not to ask about other "topics" during the question-and-answer portion of his news conference. You can imagine how well that went.
ABC-Ch. 7's Charles Thomas was first to press the governor. Noting that protesters were filling the street outside Trump's property, Thomas reasoned, "You can't really not address that."
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Rauner chuckled. "I love you, Charles. I'm not going to comment."
"We need to hear you say something," pressed Mary Ann Ahern, of NBC-Ch. 5.
"I've said everything I'm going to say about the presidential race," Rauner said.
Rauner repeatedly has refused to weigh in on Trump's candidacy. Despite vowing in March that he'd support his party's eventual nominee and "do everything I can to work with that nominee," Rauner has since decided to skip the Republican National Convention, and aides have said he won't be making a formal endorsement of Trump.
When asked about the presidential race, Rauner routinely refuses to answer. His most candid comments about the campaign came during a March chat with schoolchildren in Wilmette, when he said he was "horrified" by the rhetoric in the campaign, saying "it's ugly and it's nasty and it's weird." (Kim Geiger)
*Mayoral yoga, part 5,690: Mayor Emanuel's moves to keep a potentially embarrassing referendum question off the November ballot again hit a snag Tuesday when his aldermanic allies couldn't line up enough votes to get a question they prefer through a City Council committee.
The Rules Committee tied on the question of whether to ask Chicago voters whether the city should work with state and federal agencies to prioritize funding for infrastructure projects in the city, preventing it from immediately passing to the full council. It's a question that would obviously get strong support from voters citywide, but the mayor's supporters are more concerned with the referendum question it would help keep off the ballot.
Voting against the new question Tuesday were aldermen who would prefer to ask voters whether Chicago's airports should be overseen by an independent oversight board. After the tie vote, Rules Committee Chairman Ald. Michelle Harris, 8th, recessed the meeting. Harris said she plans to call the infrastructure question again at another Rules Committee hearing later this month. "It will pass then," she said, in that decades-old, confident City Hall way of an alderman aligned with whoever is mayor.
Mayoral critic Ald. Scott Waguespack, 32nd, supports the airport question. He said Tuesday's tie vote means the infrastructure question failed. Harris can't simply call it again, Waguespack argued, though he acknowledged mayoral supporters could likely "mess with the rules" to tweak the language of the question just a bit and then bring it in for another try on a day with more mayoral allies in attendance.
But Waguespack ridiculed the infrastructure question, since the state is too broke now to make any serious new investments in Chicago projects, regardless of how many voters check "yes" on their ballots. "I joked maybe we should include the Galactic Empire in the question, too, since we're just as likely to get additional infrastructure money from them as from the state," he said after the meeting.
While the referendums are advisory and carry no actual weight, Emanuel doesn't want to deal with a possible strong show of support for the idea to strip him of some of his control at the airport. So, with just three referendums allowed on the ballot, he's engaging in the pre-election mayoral tradition of trying to prevent any that could make him look bad from coming before voters.
The political chicanery hasn't gone as smoothly as usual this year. While two ballot referendums are in place, the mayor's people are having trouble with the third. Originally, they wanted to ask whether the city should issue ID cards to help those who can't otherwise get one receive government services. But immigrant advocates opposed that, since people in the country illegally can't vote.
Then, mayoral allies pushed a question about whether the city should stop investing in companies that produce fossil fuels. That one was met with resistance too. Now the infrastructure question has stalled in committee, at least for the moment. (John Byrne)
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*Warden threw a party in the (federal) jail: Imprisoned ex-Gov. Rod Blagojevich was nothing if not charismatic. We can remember throwing him one softball question during a fall 2002 profile interview when he was running for Illinois governor the first time. It was along the lines of "Young Elvis or Fat Elvis?"
The then-congressman's response was basically, "All Elvis." During campaign rallies, his entrance music was the remix version of Elvis Presley's "A Little Less Conversation."
And so it was with great amusement that we read Tribune reporter Jason Meisner's story about the ex-gov's attorneys trying to sway notoriously tough U.S. District Judge James Zagel during Blagojevich's upcoming re-sentencing. Blagojevich apparently formed a band while serving 14-plus years in a federal lockup in Colorado. The name? The Jailhouse Rockers.
Follow the money
*The Illinois Sunshine folks have launched a page tracking contributions in contested Illinois House and Senate races, plus state comptroller.
*Track campaign contribution reports in real time with this Tribune Twitter account: https://twitter.com/ILCampaignCash
Beyond Chicago
*Sanders endorses Clinton, but how unified are they?
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*Obama in Dallas: We are not so divided.
*Democrats chide Ginsburg over Trump barbs.
*Head-on train collision in Italy leaves 22 dead.
Rising tensions after the deadly ambush of police officers in Dallas and subsequent protests nationwide have led Cleveland and Philadelphia to adjust security plans for the national political conventions this month.
Cleveland, where the Republican National Convention is to begin Monday, has moved up by a week the activation of a tip line for reporting suspicious activity, Police Chief Calvin Williams said. Security plans have been "ramped up" because of the Dallas shootings last week, which killed five officers and wounded nine others at the end of a march to protest the fatal shooting of black men by police in Louisiana and Minnesota, he said.
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"We're going to make sure we stay vigilant," Williams said. "But we also want to make sure that we ask the community to remain vigilant."
There have been no credible reports of threats against officers in Cleveland or the surrounding region, Williams said. But adding to concerns over security is Ohio's status as an "open carry" state, meaning it's legal to carry a gun in the open without a permit. One supporter of the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump, has already asked Cleveland march participants to be mindful of the message that openly carrying might convey.
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"We really don't want people to bring long guns," said Tim Selaty Sr., lead organizer for Citizens for Trump.
In Philadelphia, where the Democratic convention begins July 25, Police Commissioner Richard Ross said Monday that his agency won't change its general approach for policing protesters at the Democratic convention. He said the Dallas shootings have "required that we do things different tactically," although, like Cleveland's police chief, he declined to elaborate on specific strategies.
With Philadelphia police already on heightened alert because of Dallas, an incident at a downtown high-rise hotel late Monday rang alarm bells. Two people were found on the rooftop with smoke bombs and camera equipment and taken into custody. There was no immediate word on what they were doing.
One Philadelphia group's police protests grew hostile in recent days, with anti-police chants and at least one speaker praising the Dallas gunman. That group, the Philly Coalition for REAL Justice, has sought a permit for a march in downtown Philadelphia on the second day of the convention. It's pending.
But a lack of official permission to demonstrate will not stop them or anyone else from protesting; police say the lack of a permit alone will not result in arrests.
The U.S. Secret Service, which is in charge of security planning for both conventions, didn't return a message Monday seeking comment.
Even before Dallas, Cleveland's convention raised concerns about the potential for violent clashes between Trump supporters and opponents. And on Monday, Trump predicted more violence.
"I mean, you were having big, big trouble in many cities," he said. "And I think that might be just the beginning for this summer."
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The convention will be a test for police in Cleveland, which last year began operating under a reform-minded agreement called a consent decree after a U.S. Justice Department investigation concluded officers had shown a pattern of using excessive force and violating people's civil rights.
Cleveland and Cuyahoga County plan to have hundreds of jail cells available to house arrested protesters. Police and the FBI also interviewed several protesters over the past month to ask about their protest plans.
At least one group has already canceled a Cleveland march following the Dallas shootings.
"In the current uncertain environment nationwide, we are concerned for police officers who would be charged with protecting our marchers and advocates as well as for the safety and well-being of our march participants," Michael Weinstein and Tracy Jones, with the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, said in a statement. The group still plans a rally on the campus of Cleveland State University Sunday.
Philadelphia's police approach includes having on-scene leadership at every level to "remind men and women in uniform to remain patient, professional and maintain their resolve," Ross, the police commissioner, said.
"This is not an easy to thing to do when people are an inch away from your nose calling you the most vile, despicable things you've ever heard," Ross said. "We have to be flexible, and willing to adapt. We will allow people to protest and exercise their First Amendment right."
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Associated Press
This undated artist' sketch shows the skyjacker known as D.B. Cooper from recollections of the passengers and crew of a Northwest Airlines jet he hijacked between Portland and Seattle on Thanksgiving eve in 1971. (AP)
SEATTLE The FBI said Tuesday it is no longer investigating the enduring mystery of the skyjacker known as D.B. Cooper, nearly 45 years after he vanished out the back of a Boeing 727 into a freezing Northwest rain wearing a business suit, a parachute and a pack with $200,000 in cash.
Calling the investigation one of the longest and most exhaustive in the agency's history, the FBI Seattle field office said in an email it was time to focus on other cases. The agency said it will preserve evidence from the case at its Washington, D.C., headquarters, but it doesn't want further tips unless people find parachutes or Cooper's money.
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"The mystery surrounding the hijacking of a Northwest Orient Airlines flight in November 1971 by a still-unknown individual resulted in significant international attention and a decades-long manhunt," the FBI said. "Although the FBI appreciated the immense number of tips provided by members of the public, none to date have resulted in a definitive identification of the hijacker."
On Nov. 24, 1971, the night before Thanksgiving, a man described as being in his mid-40s with dark sunglasses and an olive complexion boarded a flight from Portland, Oregon, to Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. He bought his $20 ticket under the name "Dan Cooper," but an early wire-service report misidentified him as "D.B. Cooper," and the name stuck.
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Sitting in the rear of the plane, he handed a note to a flight attendant after takeoff. "Miss, I have a bomb and would like you to sit by me," it said.
The FBI pulled the plug on its nearly 45-year investigation into the D.B. Cooper skyjacking case after failing to identify and find Cooper. July 13, 2016. (CBS Miami)
The man demanded $200,000 in cash plus four parachutes. He received them at Sea-Tac, where he released the 36 passengers and two of the flight attendants. The plane took off again at his direction, heading slowly to Reno, Nevada, at the low height of 10,000 feet. Somewhere, apparently over southwestern Washington, Cooper lowered the aircraft's rear stairs and jumped.
He was never found, but a boy digging on a Columbia River beach in 1980 discovered three bundles of weathered $20 bills nearly $6,000 in all. It was Cooper's cash, according to the serial numbers.
Over the years, the FBI and amateur sleuths have examined innumerable theories about Cooper's identity and fate, from accounts of unexplained wealth to purported discoveries of his parachute to potential matches of the agency's composite sketch of the suspect.
The FBI's announcement coincided with the airing of a new History Channel special this week suggesting a 72-year-old California man, Robert W. Rackstraw, might have been Cooper.
Rackstraw, a Vietnam veteran who had parachute training, was questioned about the skyjacking in 1978, after authorities found explosives in a Stockton warehouse he leased. But he denied being Cooper, and the FBI said in 1979 he was no longer a suspect, according to an Associated Press report at the time.
The FBI declined to comment about Rackstraw on Tuesday. Rackstraw's former lawyer, Dennis Roberts, of Oakland, said the documentary's allegations about his client were false.
"He's not D.B. Cooper, but nobody wants to listen," Roberts said. "It's the stupidest thing I've ever heard."
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The 40th anniversary of the case in 2011 brought a wave of attention. An Oklahoma woman told the FBI about a late uncle who showed up to Thanksgiving dinner in Oregon that year with serious injuries. A team that included a paleontologist from Seattle's Burke Museum announced that particles of pure titanium found in the hijacker's clip-on tie suggest he worked in the chemical industry or at a company that manufactured titanium.
A book that year, "Skyjack: The Hunt for D.B. Cooper," by Geoffrey Gray, posited several theories, including that Cooper might have been a transgender mechanic from Washington state.
The most promising leads in recent years have come from amateurs, Gray said including a notion put forth by a scientific illustrator at the University of Chicago that Cooper might have taken his persona from a French comic called "Dan Cooper," a series about a test pilot in the Royal Canadian Air Force.
"The fascination with Cooper has survived not because of the FBI investigation, but because he was able to do something that not only captured the public imagination, but also maintained a sense of mystery in the world," Gray said.
Associated Press
RICHMOND, Va. A Virginia school board asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday to block a transgender male from using the boys restroom when he returns to school in September until the high court decides whether to review the case.
The Gloucester County School Board filed an emergency appeal with Chief Justice John Roberts in an attempt to prevent Gavin Grimm from using the bathroom that matches his gender identity when school resumes this fall, saying it will "put parents' constitutional rights in jeopardy."
"Depriving parents of any say over whether their children should be exposed to members of the opposite biological sex, possibly in a state of full or complete undress, in intimate settings deprives parents of their right to direct the education and upbringing of their children," attorneys for the school board wrote.
They added that it would be "natural to assume" that parents may decide to pull their children out of school because of it.
Josh Block, an attorney with the ACLU who's representing Grimm, said his legal team is prepared to file a response if and when the Supreme Court requests one.
Grimm was born female but identifies as male. He was allowed to use the boys restrooms at the school for several weeks in 2014. But after some parents complained, the school board adopted a policy requiring students to use either the restroom that corresponds with their biological gender or a private, single-stall restroom.
Grimm sued the school board, arguing that it violated federal education discrimination laws by forbidding him from using the boys bathroom.
The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals sided with Grimm in April, saying the federal judge who previously rejected Grimm's Title IX discrimination claim ignored a U.S. Department of Education rule that transgender students in public schools must be allowed to use restrooms that correspond with their gender identity. The court reinstated Grimm's Title IX claim and sent it back to the district court for further consideration.
The school board wants the Supreme Court to put Grimm's district court case on hold until the justices decide whether to review the appeals court decision. The board says it plans to file its petition for Supreme Court review by late August.
Chief Justice Roberts can act on the school board's request alone or ask the full court to consider it. If he chooses the latter, the school board must convince five justices to be successful.
Grimm's case has been closely watched since North Carolina enacted a law banning transgender people from using public restrooms that correspond to their gender identity. Several cases over the law are pending in federal courts in North Carolina.
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Associated Press
Former Indiana Gov. Evan Bayh talks about Hillary Clinton at a rally on April 30, 2016, in Gary. He is running for his old Senate seat in Indiana in 2016. (Jim Karczewski / Chicago Tribune)
INDIANAPOLIS Democrat Evan Bayh launched a bid Wednesday to recapture the Indiana Senate seat he left six years ago, a move that boosts his party's chances to pick up the Republican-held seat in their effort to regain control of the chamber this fall.
Bayh, 60, cited frustration with Washington gridlock when he retired in 2010 after two Senate terms. He said a recruitment push by national Democrats didn't sway his decision to seek a political comeback.
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"The dysfunction in Washington has gotten even worse over the last six years," he told The Associated Press. "We have challenges that face our country and our families that aren't being met. I want to be a part of the solution to the challenges that we face by helping to bring people together, bridging some of the partisan divides that have separated our country."
Bayh's announcement came two days after former U.S. Rep. Baron Hill cleared the way by withdrawing as the Democratic nominee for the seat held by Republican Sen. Dan Coats, who is retiring.
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"If he thought it was dysfunctional and partisan then, welcome back, it was nothing like it is today," Coats said.
Hill was not considered a strong candidate to take on GOP nominee U.S. Rep. Todd Young, who was backed by Republican establishment figures in the state's May primary against a tea party favorite.
National Democrats pushed for Bayh to enter the race, where he will have advantages of name identification and campaign cash over Young.
Since word of Bayh's candidacy emerged on Monday, Republicans have attacked Bayh for remaining in Washington, where he has been a partner at the McGuireWoods law firm and joined several corporate boards since leaving the Senate.
Young said Bayh, whose father, Birch Bayh, was a three-term senator, is a member of the political elite and the "fortunate son" of Indiana Democratic politics.
"Changing the system does not benefit Evan Bayh," Young said. "Evan Bayh looks out for one one individual, not one party. The name of that individual is Evan Bayh, Washington lobbyist."
Bayh, who was a two-term governor before winning his first Senate election in 1998, said he's never been a lobbyist and shifted away from questions about his post-Senate career.
"This election needs to be about middle class families and what we can do to meet their challenges," Bayh said. "Not about a bunch of politicians tearing each other down."
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Democrats need to net four or five seats to win back Senate control four if they hang onto the White House and can send the vice president to break ties in the Senate; five if they don't. With a handful of competitive races around the country, one seat can make all the difference, and putting Indiana in play could be crucial.
Even if Bayh can't win his old seat back, his candidacy would force Republicans to spend money in a state they had no plans to invest in. The latest federal reports show that Bayh had nearly $9.3 million in his campaign account at the end of March, while Young's campaign announced Monday that he had about $1.2 million in the bank on June 30.
Bayh's absence from politics won't hurt him much despite the Indiana trending Republican in recent years, said former Fort Wayne Mayor Paul Helmke, a Republican who lost to Bayh in the 1998 Senate race.
"All the sudden Todd Young has gone from being the favorite to being the underdog," said Helmke, an Indiana University public affairs professor. "All the sudden, rather than being in a positon where they have a money advantage, they have a disadvantage."
While Republicans are attacking Bayh for living and working in Washington after leaving the Senate, Helmke pointed out that Coats survived similar criticism from Democrats in 2010 when he made his own Senate comeback after 12 years out of office.
Associated Press
Activists clash with police as they attempt to block traffic on Michigan Avenue at Jackson Street before taking their protests inside the annual Taste of Chicago festival on July 10, 2016. (Michael Tercha / Chicago Tribune)
The June 10, 1966, cover of Life magazine is a gauge of how much America has changed and how much it hasn't. It featured a photo of Elizabeth Taylor from her movie "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" which it described as a "shocker" that "shatters the rules of censorship." Today the film wouldn't shock a fifth-grader.
The other story mentioned on the cover was "Plot to Get 'Whitey': Red-hot young Negroes plan a ghetto war." That coverline could run on the popular Drudge Report website, which after the murder of five police officers in Dallas had such headlines as "Black Lives Kill," "He wanted to kill white people" and "'Black Power group' warns of more assassinations."
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Fifty years ago, the specter of black revolt haunted many whites. Demonstrations and riots by African-Americans induced widespread fear. They still do.
You may think whites have reason to be scared after the black gunman in Dallas carried out his shocking act of racial vengeance. But blacks would have been equally justified being scared last year after Dylann Roof killed nine black people at a South Carolina church in what he said was an attempt to start a race war. But Drudge didn't hype that fear.
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Americans of all races were horrified by what happened in Dallas. But it stirred a different response among some whites than it did among other people, raising the old stereotype of African-Americans as a constant threat to white safety and prosperity.
People gather at Federal Plaza to protest police brutality on July 11, 2016. (Brandon Chew/Chicago Tribune) (Chicago Tribune)
Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani denounced Black Lives Matter, which organized the protest that ended in deadly gunfire. He said the group is anti-American and racist and "puts a target on" police officers' backs. Rep. Roger Williams, R-Texas, accused President Barack Obama of inciting "hostility" toward cops.
Donald Trump, meanwhile, proclaimed himself the "law and order candidate" echoing a phrase used by Richard Nixon and George Wallace in the 1968 presidential race to attract voters frightened by urban riots, crime and Black Power activists.
Trump has poked racial nerves by portraying Mexican immigrants as "rapists," disputing whether Obama was born in America and falsely claiming blacks commit 81 percent of the murders of whites.
A recent Reuters/Ipsos poll found that compared with supporters of any other Republican or Democratic candidate, Trump supporters "are more likely to describe African-Americans as 'criminal,' 'unintelligent,' 'lazy' and 'violent.' "Most of them also think discrimination against whites is a bigger problem than discrimination against blacks."
While most African-Americans believe Black Lives Matter is a nonviolent civil rights movement, most whites see it as violent and a distraction from problems like discrimination. But resentment of those demanding racial progress is nothing new. Martin Luther King Jr. is almost universally revered today but on the eve of his legendary 1963 March on Washington, most whites opposed it. In 1965, only 36 percent had a favorable opinion of him.
The critics fault Black Lives Matter for its disruptive marches, angry rhetoric, denunciations of police conduct and supposed incitement of violence. But the same critics have no use for Obama, who has pursued change through peaceful legal channels, from community organizing to law to elected office.
Despite his restrained rhetoric and cautious policies, many conservatives insist on seeing the president as an angry militant. Bill O'Reilly has charged him with "passive racism," and Glenn Beck said Obama harbors "a deep-seated hatred for white people." A Rasmussen poll last year found that 54 percent of whites "believe Obama has driven the races further apart, a view shared by only 21 percent of blacks and 38 percent of other minority voters."
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In the minds of many whites, Obama is dangerous, hostile and anti-white Karl Rove once called him a "political thug" not because he behaves that way but because that is a common racist stereotype of blacks. No amount of effort to show his understanding of the concerns of whites or police can make up for the color of his skin.
When blacks pursue change, some whites always feel they are doing it the wrong way at the wrong pace, thus worsening race relations. These people believe that if blacks gain, they will lose. And they fear that if blacks gain more power, they will use it to exact retribution against whites.
The truth is that today, just as in 1966, the vast majority of blacks don't want to "get whitey." They just want and demand the same rights, opportunities and protections that whites take for granted. For some people, that's scary enough.
Steve Chapman, a member of the Tribune Editorial Board, blogs at www.chicagotribune.com/chapman.
schapman@chicagotribune.com
Follow Steve Chapman on Twitter @SteveChapman13 and Facebook.
Washington To no one's surprise aside from some deluded Trumpkins Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., delivered a robust endorsement of Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire Tuesday:
"I have come here to make it as clear as possible as to why I am endorsing Hillary Clinton ... This campaign is not really about Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump or Bernie Sanders ... This campaign is about the needs of the American people and addressing the very serious crises that we face. And there is no doubt in my mind that, as we head into November, Hillary Clinton is far and away the best candidate to do that."
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That message was deftly crafted make the race about bigger issues and remind Democrats they may not love Clinton but she is "far and away" the best choice for his former followers. He preserves his principles by slyly reminding voters that it's virtually inconceivable liberals would prefer Trump to Clinton.
The amateurish Trump camp then exploded with a series of news releases (they hired a rapid response staffer, so I suppose he needs to show he's working) to remind voters Sanders said mean things about Clinton in the race. Shocking, I know. Whom is this aimed at? Surely the Sanders people are not going to be wooed by Trump's nasty accusation that Sanders' endorsement is now "Exhibit A in our rigged system the Democrat Party is disenfranchising its voters to benefit the select and privileged few." Calling Sanders a hypocrite is no way to make friends, but then, Trump cannot manage to solidify his GOP support as Clinton has now accomplished. Moreover, the Trump adviser's description of Clinton bizarrely accusing her of launching a war in Iraq (!?!) should suffice to remind us that if conservative, internationalist, pro-free-trade Republicans are looking for a candidate, they'd do better with Clinton than Trump.
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It was ludicrous from the get-go to think Sanders' followers pro-gay rights, pro-choice, pro-immigration, pro-environmentalist, pro-nationalized health care supporters, pro-Black Lives Matter would rush to the candidate who has insulted women, minorities and the disabled, wants to build a wall and deport millions (while keeping all Muslims out) and has suggested women should be punished for abortions. Indeed, as The Washington Post's Greg Sargent details, the pro-Clinton super PAC has a series of ads highlighting many of those stark differences (e.g., on minimum wage, education, immigration).
"Bernie voters will choose Trump" is another morsel of self-delusion the Trumpkins have been munching on as they head toward electoral defeat. Other lies they tell themselves Trump will rewrite the map; Hispanics love him; he'll self-fund; he hires the best people have likewise evaporated. You wonder how they imagine he's going to win the election. More important, you wonder if the Republican National Committee delegates seeing Trump's electoral "plan" (if he ever had more than "go on TV") fizzle will start wondering just how big a loss the GOP would suffer with Trump at the head of the ticket. Could they lose both houses of Congress? Would he drag down GOP gubernatorial candidates as well?
In short, Sanders' endorsement should remind onlookers that for all her faults, Clinton is running a comparatively competent campaign and successfully unifying her party. That's more than Trump can say. Sad!
Washington Post
Jennifer Rubin writes the Right Turn blog for The Post, offering reported opinion from a conservative perspective.
A view of vials of blood donated by Orlando residents in support to the victims of the mass shooting at Pulse nightclub, are collected at a blood donation center on June 12, 2016. (Cristobal Herrera, EPA)
As scores lay injured in Florida hospitals after the Orlando shooting, potential donors inundated blood banks, offering what they could. For some, however, the hourslong wait ended in disappointment. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has strict guidelines about who can donate blood; among those restricted are people who have had certain diseases, those who have traveled to certain countries and men who have slept with men, or as the FDA refers to them, MSM, within the past year.
An unfortunate paradox comes to mind that the shooting victims belonged to a community effectively banned from showing its solidarity through blood donation. Although Orlando received more than enough blood, unhappy advocates demanded the ban's elimination, disparaging what they saw as a discriminatory policy.
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But calling it discrimination obscures the science behind the policy. The lifetime ban on men who have sex with men began during the 1980s, when the AIDS crisis threatened the blood supply. Blood banks weren't able to screen donations for the HIV virus until 1985.
HIV tests, though, have always had a flaw: A window exists between the time of initial infection and when the virus can be detected. Scientific advances have shortened this window to about 10 days. But in that period of time, someone could donate infected blood. That's where two controversial screens donor deferrals and questionnaires come in.
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Questionnaires given prior to a blood donation allow blood banks to defer high-risk donors whose infection might be missed by the test. Without this step, the FDA estimates a possible fourfold increase in HIV transmissions from blood transfusions. Anyone can get HIV, but in the U.S., men who have sex with men are the unfortunate majority. Although members of this group make up between 4 and 7 percent of the population, they make up about 63 percent of people with new HIV infections.
Advocates are right to question the policy. It doesn't make sense to defer a healthy, monogamous homosexual man while allowing a heterosexual man with multiple partners to donate. But it's the best, if unpopular, balance the FDA can strike at the moment.
Although 4 to 7 percent of the male population is a significant number, that group's absence from the blood donor pool doesn't markedly constrict the number of actual donors. The share of the MSM subset (or any other demographic subset) that could and would donate to the blood supply is much lower: Among the 38 percent of the American population eligible to donate, only 10 percent choose to do so, according to the American Association of Blood Banks.
And loosening restrictions on these men is tricky. A blood surveillance survey run from 2011-13 collected data on more than 50 percent of the blood supply. It found that the two leading risk factors for donating HIV-infected blood were sex with an HIV-positive partner and a history of male-to-male sexual contact.
Members of Congress, including Rep. Mike Quigley, D-Ill., have been pressing for changes to the policy. Ideally, their letter to the FDA says, "The FDA questionnaire should reflect risk-based behaviors as opposed to sexual orientation."
But this requires an evaluation of specific sexual activities that individuals may be reluctant to reveal. When the lifetime deferral was in place, a study found that 2.6 percent of male blood donors had engaged in sex with a man, despite the questionnaire screen. Adding even more intrusive questions about sexual practices for all donors could cause further compliance issues with people who are unwilling to reveal these personal details. And although advocates say ending the ban would increase the blood supply, in-depth interviews about sexual acts could cause regular donors to take a pass on contributing.
Opponents of current blood policy have a right to demand further research, but they do not have the right to demand a decision now. Donating blood is inherently a recipient-centric transaction all attempts to change blood policy should be made out of concern for the recipient.
Changing this policy will take data, not emotional appeals. It's not enough to say that allowing this population to donate seems safe theoretically; the FDA needs irrefutable proof. It dragged its feet for 10 years until it got enough data to convince it of a one-year ban. According to Dr. Louis Katz, chief medical officer at America's Blood Centers, one condition of the change was the establishment of the Transfusion Transmitted Infection Monitoring System. TTIMS monitors a majority of the U.S. blood supply for different transfusion-transmitted infections, including HIV. Katz also noted that the FDA will consider this data in any policy change.
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If LGBT supporters want to see a different policy, their elbow grease would be better spent on funding further studies. Analyzing the data will take time and money. In seeking funds, advocates also will be competing to show the importance of their cause in comparison to other issues in blood banking, such as bacterial contamination of platelets and acute lung injuries.
Advocates should continue to advocate, but with the mindset of showing that science is on their side. If their case is as clear-cut as it seems, the only obstacle remaining is to prove it to the FDA.
Kayla Simon is a 2016 graduate of the University of Nebraska at Lincoln and the Tribune's editorial board intern.
Gov. Bruce Rauner speaks in front of his office at the Illinois State Capitol on June 30, 2016, in Springfield, Ill. Rauner on Tuesday announced the creation of the Illinois School Funding Reform Commission. (Seth Perlman, AP)
Gov. Bruce Rauner on Tuesday announced the formation of a bipartisan commission to revamp the school funding formula.
He should not have bothered.
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Illinois does not need another panel, task force or symposium to explore how the state funds schools. Take your pick of any previous task force report the 1996 Ikenberry report, numerous reports from the Education Funding Advisory Board, state Sen. Andy Manar's bipartisan task force or the findings from any previous governor's blue ribbon panel. Yes, all of them since Jim Edgar have appointed task forces or advisers to recommend changes to education funding.
You also could yank from the shelf the research of Advance Illinois or Stand for Children or Save our Schools or Metro Equalities Task Force or Chicago School Leadership Conference or any of the dozens of organizations that formed during the past 20 years with the goal of changing the school funding formula, which relies too heavily on property taxes.
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The research is there. Rauner and legislative leaders could start working on a bill today. Instead, their emissaries will spend the next seven months in meeting rooms ordering sandwiches and getting nowhere.
Twenty-one years ago, then-Gov. Edgar named Stanley Ikenberry, a former University of Illinois president, to lead an education funding task force and report its recommendations in time for the legislature's spring session. Edgar called the appointment of Ikenberry "perhaps the most important assignment I have made during my years as governor."
Then the GOP-controlled Senate ignored the most meaningful recommendations of Ikenberry's report, which included an income tax hike in exchange for property tax relief.
Former Gov. George Ryan followed up with his own advisory group to work toward closing the gap between what wealthy and low-income districts can spend. Nothing happened. Rod Blagojevich partnered with then-Sen. James Meeks to push for school funding changes and a voucher program for kids in failing Chicago schools. Nothing happened. Gov. Pat Quinn repeatedly called the school funding formula broken and immoral for its over-reliance on property taxes. Nothing happened.
Manar, who spent two years working on an overhaul of the funding formula with a bipartisan working group, got his bill through the Senate this spring. It promptly died in the House under the thumb of Speaker Michael Madigan, who has ignored the problem for decades.
Why? Perhaps because Madigan's schools don't need a change in state law to access more money. They have him. Last year in the midst of the ongoing budget crisis, the state cut a check for $35 million for schools in Madigan's district and other projects he sought. He had been stowing the money in Secretary of State Jesse White's budget surreptitiously.
Rauner says his commission up to 30 members with a report due in February will look at what other states have done. He says he would prefer that the recommendations of his commission, once they emerge, do not suggest shifting money from wealthier districts to poorer ones. That proposed shift always prompts a battle cry from suburban Republicans.
But so far, Rauner, who ran for office on a more radical education platform expanded school choice, fortifying charter schools and exploring a state-sponsored scholarship program for students in low-performing schools has taken the safe route. No mention of school choice, only a continuation of the status quo. Dump more money into a broken system. It's easier.
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As Rauner partly explained during a meeting with the Tribune Editorial Board in June, he has been preoccupied with a nasty state budget impasse and stubborn Democratic leaders who undermine him at every turn. He can't fix everything at once, and education funding reform has not been the top priority.
But forgive my lack of excitement over yet another task force. To expect something meaningful to come of it would require a lavish and mythical dose of suspended disbelief.
Kristen McQueary is a member of the Tribune Editorial Board.
kmcqueary@chicagotribune.com
Twitter @statehousechick
D.B. Cooper, once the FBI's most wanted man, is seen in this photo of drawings made from witness accounts. The infamous 1971 hijacker jumped out of a plane with $200,000 in ransom money. The FBI announced it would close the book on the case on July 13, 2016. (AP / AP)
He disappeared with the money. That's why the legend of D.B. Cooper endures.
He jumped out the back of a passenger jet with $200,000 the money strapped to his body and if he didn't cackle as he leaped ("So long, suckers!"), well, he should have. He deserved that moment of satisfaction as he bailed out on civilization somewhere over the northwestern U.S. in 1971.
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Raise your hand if a version of the D.B. Cooper moment exists in the recesses of your imagination, to be accessed, if only once and for a second, during trying times. Nothing criminal, of course, or dangerous, or even permanent. But plotting your well-funded escape and leaving them all to wonder? Could feel pretty good, if only for an hour or two. So long, suckers!
The FBI has spent these 45 years searching in vain for D.B. Cooper long enough to finally acknowledge that the mystery may never be solved. As of this week, the agency announced Wednesday, it has "redirected resources allocated to the D.B. Cooper case to focus on other investigative priorities."
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You can't blame investigators for giving up. Cooper would be about 90 today if alive. There are no new leads to follow. Decide for yourself what may have happened on Nov. 24, 1971:
That afternoon, a man in his mid-40s wearing a dark suit and black tie settled into his seat on a Northwest Orient Airlines flight from Portland, Ore., to Seattle. He ordered a bourbon and soda and then, after takeoff, hijacked the plane, claiming he had a bomb in his attache case. He demanded $200,000 in $20 bills and four parachutes. After landing in Seattle to exchange the passengers for his loot and chutes, he ordered the plane to fly to Mexico City. Somewhere between Seattle and Reno he jumped.
The crew of a Northwest Airlines jet, hijacked Nov. 24, 1971, is seen in this Nov. 25, 1971 file photo as they appear at a news conferences at the Reno International Airport, about two and one-half hours after the jet landed in Reno. From left are Capt. William Scott, First Officer Robert Rataczak, stewardess Tina Mucklow and Second Officer Harold Anderson. (AP)
In all likelihood, Cooper he bought his ticket as Dan Cooper, but who was he? did not survive his plot. He appeared to be an inexperienced sky diver: He made a foolhardy night jump into freezing wilderness in a business suit and loafers using a parachute that couldn't be steered. In 1980, a young boy unearthed a package of the money $5,800 with serial numbers matching the ransom loot on the banks of the Columbia River near the Oregon-Washington border. No trace of a body was found, but likely it's out there, in the river or at the bottom of a lake.
Ah, but Cooper was clever: He hijacked a Boeing 727, whose rear retractable door could be opened in flight. He ordered the pilot to fly slowly, below 10,000 feet in altitude, along flat terrain west of the Cascades. As for the stash of found $20 bills: Had Cooper been dead on arrival and the cash was mere debris, a relic? Or did Cooper shrewdly place this fraction of his haul there to confuse investigators?
At most, one person has firsthand knowledge. The feds looked at more than 800 suspects over the years and eliminated them all.
News accounts, T-shirts, public events and such have kept the spirit of D.B. Cooper alive. Last year, fans of the TV series "Mad Men" noticed that Don Draper, the show's slippery protagonist, was the right age to be Cooper. He dressed, smoked and drank like Cooper, too. As the series finale approached, some viewers speculated that the New York ad man would be revealed to be D.B. Cooper. Alas, the Draper character turned out to be nothing more mysterious than the creator of a famous Coke commercial.
As for D.B. Cooper, he was the real thing: not a hero, but a criminal whose crazy, daring story appealed to many people's escapist fantasies. He's allowed a place in American mythology because he didn't hurt anyone and got away. The FBI says the trail ran cold. True, but who knows?
Maybe he's still out there all these years later, cackling, enjoying another D.B. Cooper moment.
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Join the discussion on Twitter @Trib_Ed_Board and on Facebook.
A west suburban school district that relies on parent fundraising to buy basic school supplies managed to scrape together more than $20,000 to send the superintendent and several school board members on vacations recently.
Did we say "on vacations"? Oops. We meant "to conferences." They just happened to take place in coveted sabbatical spots such as Nashville, Tenn.; Las Vegas; Phoenix; Washington D.C.; and Savannah, Ga. all within less than a year.
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Taxpayers of Bellwood School District 88 also paid $8,300 for dining expenses and extras at the conferences. And that's not all.
As the Tribune's Angela Caputo reported, the indebted elementary school district struggled to get off the state's financial watch list yet managed to set aside more than $100,000 to replenish a pension fund that Superintendent Rosemary Hendricks had cashed out years earlier. The district also paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal settlements and contract payouts, and put Hendricks' two daughters and board President Marilyn Thurman's son and daughter on the district payroll. Hendricks' daughter also traveled to Phoenix and New Orleans on the taxpayers' dime.
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Meanwhile, the PTA is stuck raising money for paper towels, hand sanitizer and copy paper.
If you think the public deserves some clearer answers on the spending practices, you might try contacting the district yourself. The superintendent, most of the elected school board members and the district's attorney also paid by taxpayers declined comment.
One brave school board member, Patricia Crawford, who joined the board a year ago, admitted the financial discoveries taught her "you have to do your research."
Indeed. School board members are supposed to be stewards of taxpayer money, steering resources to classrooms, not jet-setting. There's more to the job than going on junkets and rubber-stamping the administration's agenda. But overspending continues to plague school districts statewide.
While Chicago Public Schools seem to grab the most frequent headlines for financial troubles the district was unsure it could open its schools for the fall without help from the state plenty of suburban districts are landing on the state's financial warning lists. The Illinois State Board of Education reported this year that 61 districts were on the early warning list and 32 were on the watch list, the most serious rating.
That watch list includes Lincoln-Way Community High School District 210, with headquarters in southwest suburban New Lenox. A pattern of questionable spending caught the attention of federal investigators this spring. Records showed that now-retired Superintendent Lawrence Wyllie used his district-issued credit card for roughly $30,000 in expenses that included books, gifts and meals. The school board also signed off on $45,000 for a dog obedience program housed on school property. Meanwhile, the district is facing debts so steep it closed one of its newly built high schools.
New Superintendent Scott Tingley admitted the district for years lacked an experienced finance director to oversee the books. The former longtime finance official for Lincoln-Way was a math teacher who moved through administrative ranks. Too often, school districts promote an insider into a finance role instead of a professional with experience overseeing a massive district budget. That needs to stop.
Look no further than the College of DuPage in Glen Ellyn. Voters ousted the board majority in April 2015 after learning that the former school president and board members spent roughly $350,000 in tuition and taxpayer money on meals at a fancy on-campus restaurant. It wasn't the school's finance team that uncovered questionable spending. It was the Tribune.
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Examples of lavish and unchecked spending at school districts are, unfortunately, plentiful.
Accountability, unfortunately, is not.
All of these districts are required to undergo regular audits. Why aren't auditors catching all the mismanagement? Why aren't elected school board members asking more questions? They're supposed to be watchdogs, not lap dogs.
Memo to school board members throughout this state: Don't run for the office unless you take seriously your responsibility to protect taxpayers. You're not there to make friends. You're there as a check on the administration.
Join the discussion on Twitter @Trib_Ed_Board and on Facebook.
This parking lot at Colorado and Palace Avenues could soon be a park. The city of Aurora and the Fox Valley Park District will work together to turn it into a neighborhood park. (Steve Lord / The Beacon-News)
The city of Aurora is getting ready to buy two parking lots behind the Carson's store in the Northgate Shopping Center so they can become a park.
The City Council Finance Committee has unanimously recommended a contract to purchase the parking lots bounded by Colorado, Palace and Michigan avenues. After the city buys the lots, it will deed the property to the Fox Valley Park District, which has budgeted money yet this year to begin developing the old parking lots into a park.
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The City Council has actually already approved the intergovernmental agreement with the Park District to deed the properties over, along with some other property.
The parking lots were once overflow parking for Carson's, and are owned by the store's parent company, Bon Ton. But they haven't been used for years, and have fallen into disrepair. Alderman Michael Saville, who represents the 6th Ward where the parking lots are, said he began talking with Carson's as far back as 2004 about the lots.
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Meanwhile, nearby residents have been pushing to turn the lots into what would be the first real neighborhood park for the area. At one time, residents presented the city with a petition of more than 500 people supporting the park.
"The residents are very excited about this," Saville said Tuesday. "There's been a lot of buzz ... about it."
The city would pay a total of $15,700 a parcel for the parking lots, which are divided into six parcels. So the total would be $94,200. Saville is using his 6th Ward money to pay for the purchase.
"This is a good use of what has been sitting there vacant, ugly for a long time," said Alderman Robert O'Connor, at large, Finance Committee chairman.
slord@tribpub.com
Aurora Police Patrol Lt. Mark Weeks bows his head with fellow officers in prayer during the vigil at the Aurora Police Department. (Sean King / The Beacon-News)
More than 100 people came out for a prayer vigil Tuesday at the Aurora Police Department, held in the wake of the recent shooting deaths of five police officers in Dallas and other violence around the country.
Standing near the front of the crowd, Christian Trujillo put his right hand on the left shoulder of his dad, Aurora Police Det. Guillermo Trujillo, who was fresh off a shift.
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Christian, who is 20 years old, wants to be a police officer like his dad some day.
"It's hard being aware of everything that's going on and knowing he still has to go out there," Christian said. "Everyone plays the 'What if?' game. All of these officers have targets on their backs."
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Half of the police department parking lot was reserved for the vigil. The other half overflowed with cars. Officers directed late-comers to a church parking lot nearby.
During the service, officials and local clergy prayed for peace, guidance and unity. They prayed for everyone, and they prayed specifically for police, for the victims of violence and for the families that survived them.
Aurora Police Chief Kristen Ziman wondered aloud if more respect had been given in first encounters, would so many interactions between police and citizens have ended in deadly force?
"What if we gave away respect freely?" she asked.
In Aurora, Ziman said she is proud of the relationship police officers have with people in the community.
"There is no us and there is no them in our city," Ziman said. "There is only we."
Aurora Police Cmdr. Keith Cross called the Dallas shootings a "senseless act" that should not be tolerated.
Cross has been a police officer for 23 years, he said. He is also an African-American male.
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"Because of this, I see things from both perspectives," Cross said.
Regardless of any details that emerge in the coming weeks, it is important for everyone to address the underlying themes that have led to the recent acts of violence, Cross said.
When it was over, Det. Trujillo said the vigil was important to him because police need the support of the community, and it was evident Tuesday night that many Aurorans are there for their officers in blue.
"You don't get called to an area based on race," Trujillo said. "You go because someone needs help."
Lidia Garcia brought her sons, who are 9 and 12, to the vigil Tuesday.
"The thee of us are a mix of races, Hispanic and black, so I thought it would be good to come here," Garcia said, "as part of the grieving process."
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Surrounded by a diverse group of fellow citizens, Garcia felt a sense of closure, she said.
"I'm going home with a smile on my face," Garcia said.
For Ziman, though, the purpose wasn't closure, which implies an ending.
"It's the opposite," Ziman said after the vigil. "I feel like it's kind of the beginning of conversations that probably have needed to happen for a really long time I think that we've been scratching the surface of them and being polite about it."
Now, it's time to have the harder conversations about uncomfortable topics related to race, Ziman said
"You can't wait for people to come to you and that's what we keep doing," Ziman said. "Everybody just sits in their respective corners and judges the other side so I think this was a way of us trying to go to everyone else and start the conversation."
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Since the shooting in Dallas, Trujillo has noticed an increase in camaraderie around the department. People have been checking in with each other more, he said.
It's sad that it takes a crisis to bring people together, but the tragedy in Dallas has brought the department closer, Ziman said.
"It's so real, because it could happen to any single one of our people," Ziman said. "That's what worries me is that I have almost 300 police officers. I go to bed at night thinking about them and I think 'What if it was one of ours?'"
hleone@tribpub.com
Twitter @hannahmleone
An Aurora man has been charged with hiding the body of a woman who died of a heroin overdose in a wooded area in the city.
Bruno Muro, 21, of the 300 block of Beach Street, was arrested Monday for his alleged involvement in the overdose death of 20-year-old Marisa MacDuff of Yorkville, according to Aurora police reports and sources. He was booked into Kane County Jail shortly after 7 a.m. Wednesday, according to the jail's online inmate records. He is charged with concealment of death.
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A man collecting cans near an empty parking lot in the 900 block of North Lake Street found MacDuff's body lying among weeds at about 10:30 a.m. May 11, and reported it to police, said Aurora Police Sgt. Matthew Ziman. The toxicology results indicated heroin overdose as the cause of death, he said.
Police started to investigate, and an anonymous source lead them to Muro as a person of interest, Ziman said. Police received the tip through Aurora Area Crime Stoppers, according to a news release issued Wednesday afternoon. Muro, described as an acquaintance of MacDuff, was the only person of interest in the case, Ziman said.
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A charging document states that Muro "knowingly concealed the death of Marisa MacDuff, who died by other than homicidal means." A complaint alleges that Bruno drove MacDuff around the Near East Side of Aurora while she ingested illegal narcotics. After MacDuff overdosed, Bruno allegedly drove her to the 900 block of North Lake Street and placed her body in a wooded area behind an abandoned business, according to a news release from the Aurora Police Department.
Muro is not accused or suspected of providing the drugs, according to police.
MacDuff's family could not be immediately reached for comment.
In addition to a long line of traffic-related offenses, Muro's criminal history dates back to when he was a juvenile.
Muro was found guilty in 2010 of being a pedestrian under the influence of drugs and was sentenced to supervision after waiving a jury trial, according to Kane County court records.
Muro pleaded guilty in 2014 to possession of less than 2.5 grams of marijuana and was sentenced to four days in Kane County jail, records show.
In April 2014, Muro pleaded guilty to domestic battery involving physical contact and sentenced to 12 days in county jail plus 12 months of conditional discharge and domestic violence counseling, Kane County records show. His sentence was modified by trial court in April 2015 to 16 days in county jail plus five months of conditional discharge after violating probation, records show.
This April 1, Muro pleaded guilty to possession of between 2.5 and 10 grams of marijuana and driving although he was never issued a license, and was sentenced to 48 days concurrent in county jail with credit for 28 days already served, Kane County records show.
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Most recently, on June 20, Muro pleaded guilty to possession of between 10 and 30 grams of marijuana and was sentenced to 18 days in county jail with credit for nine days already served plus 12 months of conditional discharge, according to court records.
Muro was taken into custody at his home without incident and is currently in the Kane County Correction Center in Geneva in lieu of $20,000 bond, according to Aurora police. Muro is next scheduled to appear for a status hearing at 9 a.m. Aug. 5 in Kane County Circuit Court.
hleone@tribpub.com
Twitter @hannahmleone
Some Aurora area school officials say they are in favor of the state's recent decision to end the PARCC exam for high school students and instead give the SAT college entrance exam.
Administrators in West Aurora School District 129 and nearby Indian Prairie School District 204 said ending the exam will help streamline a crowded spring testing season.
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"We're just happy to see the elimination of that redundant component so we can put that time back into the classes," said Liz Wendel, West Aurora director of assessment.
The Illinois State Board of Education announced the shift after two years of the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers exam. Statewide, students tended to score low on PARCC and thousands skipped altogether.
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In 2015 the only year for which district PARCC data is available -- East Aurora School District 131 saw less than a quarter of students who took the exam meet or exceed expectations, while many who were supposed to didn't take the assessment at all. Fewer West Aurora students met or exceeded expectations than students statewide, while Oswego-based Community Unit School District 308 saw more students meet those marks than state averages for each grade. More than half of students tested in Indian Prairie School District 204 earned high marks, a proportion significantly higher than the number of students who met those measures statewide.
Third- through eighth-graders will continue to take PARCC. In a statement, state officials said PARCC is aligned to state standards and the results can be used to help schools provide support to students to prepare them to master the standards.
High school juniors, meanwhile, will instead take the revamped SAT college entrance exam. The state for years paid for the ACT exam, but the company's contract expired. There was no state-funded college entrance exam in spring 2016, though some districts, including East Aurora, District 308 and Indian Prairie, paid on their own to give either the SAT or the ACT.
While students took the ACT, the state also paid for juniors to take a separate writing test, and reportedly expects to do so again. High-schoolers also take a science exam that is separate from PARCC or any college entrance exam.
"District and school administrators overwhelmingly agree with (the State Board of Education) that every high school junior should have access to a college entrance exam, a policy that promotes equity and access and that provides each and every student with greater opportunities in higher education," state Superintendent Tony Smith said in a statement. "The SAT is aligned with the Illinois Learning Standards and will continue to empower educators to measure college and career readiness."
District 308 officials did not respond to a request for comment, and an East Aurora administrator could not be reached.
In Indian Prairie, Louis Lee, assistant superintendent for high school teaching and learning, said the district was "pleasantly surprised and also enthused" about the switch from PARCC to the SAT. The move didn't come as a surprise, he said, but the quickness of some of the changes did.
PARCC is not universally accepted at colleges, he said, while the SAT is and will provide useful data to the district. And the spring, when high-schoolers took PARCC, is already filled with Advanced Placement exams, honors tests and other assessments.
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"To sort of lift some of the stress that was along with that is really going to be beneficial to the students," he said.
PARCC will continue to be beneficial at the elementary- and middle-school levels, and will help assess student learning, Lee said.
Like Indian Prairie students, those in West Aurora take a variety of other exams, and ending PARCC will allow students to regain some class time, Wendel said.
The district is planning to use an SAT suite of exams for grades eight, nine and 10, which will provide continuity in the district, she said.
She called the switch "extremely helpful."
sfreishtat@tribpub.com
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Twitter @srfreish
The Plush Horse has served homemade ice cream in Palos Park for nearly 80 years. Wednesday, June 29th, 2016, at the Plush Horse in Palos Park. | Gary Middendorf-Chicago Tribune Media Group (Gary Middendorf / Daily Southtown)
National Ice Cream Day, the third Sunday in July, is upon us.
Right, like we need a reason.
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According to the International Dairy Foods Association, the average American consumes almost 22 pounds of ice cream per year, with or without a spoon.
Of the many ways to indulge, from cones to sundaes to whole cakes, the most memory inducing is at an old-fashioned parlor.
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For this story, we're focusing on the two Southland establishments that have been scooping up frozen deliciousness for decades.
Original Rainbow Cone in Chicago's Beverly neighborhood opened in 1926.
Plush Horse in Palos Park opened in 1937.
Not only have these privately owned parlors stood the test of time, they continue to expand and see lines out the door.
Eat a rainbow
Lynn Sapp, owner of Original Rainbow Cone, 9233 S. Western Ave., said ice cream is serious on the South Side because tradition is serious on the South Side.
"People are very loyal," she said.
And, by nature, nostalgic, she added.
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Enjoying an ice cream cone is comforting, she added.
Enjoying an original five-flavored Rainbow cone chocolate, strawberry, pistachio, Palmer House and orange sherbet is also time-consuming, which can compel patrons to slow down.
"With all of the computers and busy schedules, it seems the more advanced we get, the more things come back to basics," she said. "The more stressed and crazy things get, the more you want to go to your local ice cream parlor, sit down, lick that cone, relax and just visit with your kids or your friends or your grandparents."
Original Rainbow Cone was opened as a side job by mechanic Joseph Sapp and his wife Katherine. According to the shop's website, Sapp grew up an orphan who enjoyed eating ice cream, although longed for a cone that offered variety. Unable to find it elsewhere, he invented the rainbow cone.
His son, Robert Sapp, took over in the 1960s, and then Robert's daughter, Lynn Sapp, bought it in 1986.
Lynn Sapp said she expects the business to stay in the family through its 100th anniversary in 2026.
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Sapp brought the business to the Taste of Chicago, where it was named among the top five vendors several times.
Sapp recently opened an Original Rainbow Cone kiosk at Navy Pier.
"I had a couple from England the other day. They left and came back and I asked if anything was wrong and they said, 'That's the best thing we've ever eaten.'"
Plush scoops at the Horse
Over at Plush Horse, 12301 S. 86th Ave. in Palos Park, the story is the same.
"We serve memories," manager Anita Nolan said. "The ice cream is just part of the reason people come here. It's very much the experience, too."
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Back in the late 1800s, Palos Park was a vacation destination. City folks would take the train out to the forested town to spend time communing with nature. Back then, the two-story Plush Horse building, the longest standing commercial establishment in the village, was a farmhouse.
Then it was used as a storefront, then it was a butcher shop, then a convenience store, and then a justice of the peace, Nolan said.
"We actually had a couple come in and say their grandparents had been married here," Nolan said.
In 1937 the Itzel family started to sell ice cream as an added feature to their general store. In 1951 the then-named Hobby House was renamed Plush Horse. Neither Nolan nor current owner Sheri Chiappetti know why.
But the name stuck. And so did a lot of the accoutrements. The lifesize plush horse is still there. So is a carousel pony from the 1933 World's Fair.
Similarly, the generous scoop size has a history, too. It can be traced all the way back to Sophie Itzel, sister of the first owner.
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"She worked here and a customer who knew her personally told me every time he and his friends would come in, Sophie would give them just a little bit more," Nolan said. Apparently, she did that for a lot of the kids, until the oversize scoops became the standard.
Newcomers should not, however, be intimidated by the scoop size, Chiappetti said. Plush Horse also offers smaller pony and baby cones.
The establishment sells more than 30,000 gallons of ice cream a year, Nolan said. Each bucket holds about 3 gallons. With 65 flavors available almost daily.
Chiappetti said flavors of the homemade treat run the gamut, from the most popular mint chocolate chip to standards like butter pecan, rum raisin and vanilla. And then there are the more unusual flavors Red Bull, Nutella, chocolate cake shake.
Seasonal favorites include pumpkin and egg nog are big sellers, Chiappetti said. She hopes to soon be able to offer them year round the way she offers peppermint.
Chiappetti, who grew up in Palos Park and has owned the parlor for the past 28 years, said, "Sure it's a lot of work. But it can be fun. There's a lot of prep so we start about 3 a.m."
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They do send some ice cream out to select boutique type shops, including Cone Gourmet Ice Cream on Madison Street in Chicago, Muffins Ice Cream Shoppe in Lemont. Raffy's Candy Store in New Lenox and Stix and Stones in Burr Ridge.
Chiappetti said the secret to Plush Horse's longevity lies in its ability to both stay the same and change.
They don't mess with the charm, the philosophy and the welcoming spirit that invites patrons to relax in one of the parlor's various outdoor vignettes on a summer evening.
But they will experiment with flavors. They've introduced gelatos and sorbets as well as new ice creams like Frozen Pony, a blue raspberry sorbet, and Dark Horse, which is in between mild and dark chocolate.
And in June, July and August, Plush Horse offers a summer mix, which is two flavors paired, Chiappetti said.
"This week we have Dark Horse with raspberry," she said.
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Plush Horse hosts an annual fundraiser (Aug. 28) for Julia's Legacy, which donates money to the Cure It Foundation in memory of cancer patient Julia Janes. It also recently started offering parties and showers on the second floor and it can supply upscale treats for weddings.
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Nolan recalled one man who came in recently and told her he was in town three days for a wedding.
"He'd grown up in the area and said he had to get his Plush Horse fix. He ordered a shake and headed back to his parents' house down the road, she said. "The next day I was serving at a wedding in Frankfort and, lo and behold, he was there. It was his friend's wedding. He came up to me and said, 'No way. Twice in three days?'"
"A lot of people want to share memories of their visits to Plush Horse," Nolan said. "Because it's as much about the experience as the ice cream."
For more information on Plush Horse, go to www.theplushhorse.com
For more information on Original Rainbow Cone, go to www.rainbowcone.com
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dvickroy@tribpub.com
Twitter @dvickroy
Bill Miller, a handler for Disaster Dogs of Illinois, and Lilly, a German shepherd, search for Brenda Gonzalez Jackson, 31, who has been missing since January, on July 13, 2016, at the intersection of Holly and South streets in an industrial area of Park Forest. (Jose M. Osorio / Chicago Tribune)
Park Forest police joined the family of a missing Park Forest woman Wednesday to search overgrown vacant, village-owned lots in an industrial park, in hopes of finding her.
Brenda Jackson, the mother of six, has not been seen since the night of Jan. 3 when her father dropped her off at her house in the 200 block of Arcadia Street. She was reported missing two days later.
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Police Chief Pete Green said the search which included canine units turned up nothing. Family and police focused on an area along the block-long Holly Street, from North Street to South Street, which is overgrown with scrub trees, bushes and tall grasses, and just a little over a mile from Jackson's home.
Jackson's mother, Maria Gonzalez said she got an anonymous call from someone who told her she might find her daughter there, and she shared that information with police.
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Brenda Jackson was last seen Jan. 3 when her father dropped her off at her house in the 200 block of Arcadia Street. (Park Forest Police Department / Handout)
Gonzalez said the area was not searched in January, but family members subsequently noticed it in the background of a photo of Jackson.
The village owns several vacant parcels in that industrial park, totaling 10 acres, and has had them listed for sale since 2014, said Sandra Zoellner, economic development coordinator.
The largest chunk from Orchard Street east to Holly, and from North Street south to the railroad tracks is 2.7 acres, and across the street, between North and South Streets on the east side of Holly is another 2 acre parcel, she said, adding that a portion of the property is in a wetland and a popular bird habitat.
"We are in constant communication with the family. Any time they want to search an area, we are right there with them," Police Chief Pete Green said. "With all the vacant fields in the Southland, it's impossible to check all areas."
He said Jackson's family has been "very cooperative," and is trying to keep their daughter's face out in the public. There is a detective assigned to the case, who stays in contact with the family and "jumps on any idea" they have, he said.
"We're stumped. We have no hot leads," Green said. "We are hoping a citizen will come forward with information, or say they saw her at a bus stop."
When Jackson went missing in January, police searched her subdivision and the nearby forest preserves, he said.
It remains an open missing person investigation, not a homicide case, Chief Green said.
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"We have no information to lead us to believe that (it's a homicide)," he said. "Those drastic thoughts loom in your head, but we're hopeful she will be found. There are many cases where the people were found years later and eventually come home."
Gonzalez, however, suspects foul play.
"You don't leave home in the middle of winter with no coat, no shoes and no ID," she said.
Jackson is an Iraq War, "a very strong girl," who would never run from anything, and it was "highly unlikely" she would leave her children, she said.
Daily Southtown Twice-weekly News updates from the south suburbs delivered every Monday and Wednesday >
Her daughter worked in food service at Rich Central High School.
According to Gonzalez, five of Jackson's six children are in the custody of the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services. The sixth child lives with his father in Texas.
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After searching for her daughter Wednesday morning, Gonzalez spent the day with the five grandchildren, celebrating a birthday, she said. "We don't get to see them often," she said.
Police described Jackson as Hispanic, in her early 30s, about 5 feet tall and 125 pounds, with a scar on her upper chest. Her tattoos include stars on both sides of her neck, a heart on her ring finger and the name "Michael" on her left inner wrist.
Anyone with information is asked to call Park Forest police at (708) 748-1309.
Dennis Sullivan is a freelance reporter.
slafferty@tribpub.com
A 23-year-old Tinley Park man died Tuesday after witnesses say he jumped in front of a Metra train, officials said.
The man was sitting on a bench at the Tinley Park station, 6700 South St., when the outbound Rock Island District Metra train No. 413 passed through the station, according to Meg Reile, Metra spokeswoman.
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"He wasn't sitting on the side where you catch the train," Reile said. "It doesn't appear he was running to catch the train. It does appear intentional."
The train was not scheduled to stop at that station. Two witnesses and the train engineer said they saw the man leave the bench, walk down the platform on the opposite side, then jump in front of the train, Reile said.
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The engineer saw him, started blowing his horn as a warning before the man jumped, but then "went into emergency braking procedures," the spokeswoman said.
The train sat for a little over three hours before it could move back into the station, she said.
"The impact occurred at about 77 mph," she said.
Ten trains, in addition to the one that was involved, were impacted by the incident. During rush hour traffic, each train held approximately 1,000 to 1,300 people.
"About five to seven were at a dead stop for an hour to an hour and a half" which "impacted service the rest of the evening," she said.
The engineer is being offered counseling and trauma days off. During a crash, the engineer is not allowed to leave his cab until released by authorities.
Erin Gallagher is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown.
In this June 30, 2016 photo, Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner speaks to reporters in front of his office at the Illinois State Capitol in Springfield, Ill. (Seth Perlman / AP)
Gov. Bruce Rauner this week showed he's learning how to be a politician in Illinois. Then again, it may have been just for show.
Rauner on Tuesday said he was tasking a commission of lawmakers with solving the state's school-funding inequity problem.
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The south suburbs will have a big voice in the process. House Speaker Michael Madigan named to the 25-member panel state Rep. Will Davis, who chairs the House Appropriations Elementary and Secondary Education Committee.
His 30th District includes all or portions of Blue Island, Dixmoor, Dolton, East Hazel Crest, Flossmoor, Harvey, Hazel Crest, Homewood, Markham, Midlothian, Oak Forest, Phoenix, Posen, Riverdale and Robbins.
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Children in these communities are among those most negatively impacted by school-funding inequity. The system relies too heavily on property taxes to fund schools, and towns served by Davis are among those most lacking in wealth and economic opportunities.
"Communities in the south suburbs have always had to fight for more state funding," Davis said by phone Wednesday.
A key reason a solution to the school-funding inequity problem has eluded lawmakers for so long is that attempts to bring more balance to the system have been thwarted by lawmakers whose districts would lose state money.
Someone like 19th District state Sen. Michael Hastings can't support any measure that decreases state funding for schools attended by his constituent voters in New Lenox, Mokena, Tinley Park, Orland Park, Homer Glen, Homewood, Flossmoor, Olympia Fields and other towns.
"The minute the wealthier school districts would say, 'I'm losing,' their representatives would say they can't support (the solution). That just derails the entire conversation. We need to take us out of the conversation of winners and losers," Davis said.
Rauner said something similar about winners and losers not long ago. He admits the panel's work won't be easy. But he wants the group of legislators and other advisors to complete their task by Feb. 1 so the General Assembly can act during the 2017 session.
I give Rauner credit for at least saying the right things on Tuesday. He said the goal of the Illinois School Funding Reform Commission is to fundamentally improve the way Illinois citizens pay for public education.
He made three points, the first being that state funding for public schools is worse in Illinois than any other state.
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"Illinois is dead last we are number 50 out of 50 among all the states for the percentage of education funding that comes from the state. We are the worst state in America for funding our schools. We overly rely on local property taxes. That's wrong," Rauner said during a press conference in Chicago.
Acknowledging the problem shows Rauner is learning from the political damage he's suffered during the prolonged budget impasse. He's talking about a longtime legislative concern for a change, rather than stubbornly insisting on the goals of his "Turnaround Agenda."
Second, Rauner directly addressed why school-funding inequity is a serious concern that detrimentally impacts many communities, especially in the Southland.
"It denies the American dream to low-income families because they don't get the same level of resources as higher-income families," he said.
That's important. Opportunities for future generations should be equal. Which led to his third point, that the gap in funding between haves and have-nots in Illinois is the worst in the nation.
Thanks to the over-reliance on property taxes, per-pupil spending can range between $6,000 and $30,000. Children from privileged backgrounds who live in affluent communities are afforded better public-education opportunities than children from poor ones, which perpetuates a generations-long cycle of poverty.
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While it's commendable that the governor recognizes the seriousness of this problem and says this issue is now a priority, forgive me for remaining skeptical. I've heard this before. I recall many blue-ribbon panels and expert solutions dating back several administrations, all charged with the same task.
A well-researched solution many years ago proposed "swapping" property taxes for increased income taxes that would then be distributed to schools based on need. Just last year, state Sen. Andy Manar sponsored legislation to address the issue, resulting from a working group much like the commission announced by the governor.
Daily Southtown Twice-weekly News updates from the south suburbs delivered every Monday and Wednesday >
But Madigan gave it a lukewarm reception and assembled his own group in the House. The result the Davis-sponsored House Bill 828 sits in Madigan's Rules Committee, where all good legislation goes to die.
The skeptic in me says Rauner's formation of the commission is nothing more than a stunt. Critics noted he held his press conference Tuesday at the same time presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump spoke at a fundraiser in Chicago. The timing of Rauner's announcement is suspect because the governor wants to avoid having to answer questions about why he's not endorsing his party's nominee or attending next week's Republican National Convention.
But I'll give Rauner the benefit of the doubt in this instance. Politically, announcing the commission is a good move for him. School-funding reform is the legislature's problem to solve. In my view, a solution won't emerge without the support of Madigan, the state's most powerful lawmaker.
Madigan didn't appear at Rauner's press conference, nor did any other Democrats. His spokesman, Steve Brown, said the House speaker would provide the commission with the record on legislation proposing a new tax on millionaires and a resolution to amend the state Constitution to define education as a fundamental right and declaring funding as the state's paramount duty.
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Score one for Rauner. The ball's in Madigan's court.
tslowik@tribpub.com
Twitter @tedslowik
Located toward the west end of town, McCarthy Farms stand at 9700 W. 167th St. in Orland Park is now open! Fresh fruits, vegetables, and other produce are available daily.
On a very rainy Thursday morning, I met with owner and first generation farmer Jerry McCarthy and his aunt, Rose Broniarczyk, who is the bookkeeper for McCarthy Farms in Peotone. A midst ample land was a neat and orderly trailer, where the business of the farm is conducted.
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Just over Broniarczyk's shoulder was a computer screen that was tracking the impending storms. The juxtaposition of the simple stand with the modern weather tracking technology was curious in that as much as the growing of plants is reliant on natural occurrences like soil conditions, rain, and the amount of sun (even the farm stand opening dates are tied to the weather) modern technology can provide insight into upcoming weather events.
Daughter Meghan McCarthy provided information on the history of the farm. Currently owned by Jerry and Ann McCarthy, this family owned farm was originally on 104th Avenue between 179th and 167th streets in Orland Park. That land was purchased in 1931 by Jerry's maternal grandparents, Jerry and Clara Chiak. Jerry McCarthy was raised on the original 104th Avenue farm, along with his four younger sisters. The road that leads to the Swallow Ridge subdivision on 104th Avenue (at around 174th) was the original driveway for the property.
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The property was not originally used as a farm. In 1968, then high school sophomore Jerry McCarthy tilled the land so he could farm on it. The land also was used for raising dairy cows, ducks, chickens, sheep, and pigs. The livestock was phased out and the farm became more focused on grain farming and produce (vegetables). Jerry currently farms 1,000 acres of grain a year.
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The land was family owned until 2000, when the property was sold and the farm moved to 29608 Scheer Road in Peotone. The Peotone location, which is 12 acres, has two buildings. The produce sold at the Orland Park stand is: sweet corn, tomatoes, bell peppers, cucumbers, squash, pickles, green beans, zucchini, and other seasonal vegetables. The fruit available at the farm stand comes from various farms in Michigan. Fruit available at the farm stand is: peaches, plums, strawberries, blueberries, apples, concord grapes, nectarines, watermelon, and muskmelon.
The farm stand always has been family owned and managed. Various family members, including daughters, Meghan McCarthy and Kristen Trenkamp, have worked at the farm stand over the years. The stand is now managed by son-in-law Arnold Gonzalez. Son-in-law Craig Trenkamp manages all of the advertising (visit their Facebook page at McCarthy Farms).
The original farm stand, which started in 1981, was located at the corner of 179th and LaGrange Road in Orland Park. A second stand opened on 159th Street, just east of 104th Avenue in Orland Park, in 1986 until 2013 when it moved to the current 167th street site.
The farm stand is open through October; and then re-opens the day after Thanksgiving for the sale of fresh Christmas trees and wreaths.
McCarthy Farms hours are: 10 a.m. - 6 p.m. Monday through Friday; 10 a.m. 5 p.m. Saturday; and 10 a.m. 4 p.m. Sunday.
McCarthy Farms also sells fresh produce Fridays 8 a.m. 1 p.m. at the Orland Park Farmers Market at the Orland Park Village Center, 14700 S. Ravinia Ave., Orland Park.
Laura Hinderman is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown.
Lee Goodman, (yellow shirt), organizer of Peaceful Communities, talks about why the group is protesting. (Erin Sauder / The Courier-News)
It was a group divided during a demonstration outside East Dundee's GAT Guns Wednesday.
On one side of the store's sign fronting Route 25 stood about a dozen people wielding signs against gun violence.
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The crowd on the other side was made up of gun advocates who said they were there to defend the Second Amendment while also standing up for the other group's First Amendment rights.
GAT Guns was the 11th stop for members of the Peaceful Communities volunteer community organization on its campaign called the "Merchants of Death Protest Tour." They plan to continue to visit gun stores throughout the summer in response to the shooting of police officers in Dallas and recent controversial shootings by police officers in Minnesota and Louisiana.
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Lee Goodman, organizer of Peaceful Communities, said he and his fellow members "have had it."
"This gun shop, which is located down the street from Santa's Village (Azoosement Park), teaches 7- to 14-year-old children to shoot handguns, and it opposes all proposals to improve the regulations of guns," Goodman said. "At a time when the country is stunned by incidents of gun violence, this shop continues to promote increasing use of guns, even by children who are in second grade. This is outrageously irresponsible."
Fellow group member Chester Kulis said he was a classmate of Carpentersville attorney Timothy McNamee, who was murdered outside his law office in 1987.
"Whenever I come through Dundee I'm reminded of Tim," he said.
Mike Weisman, a member of the board of directors of the Illinois State Rifle Association, was at GAT Guns during Wednesday's protest. He said he did not know what the group was protesting.
"(GAT Guns) sell a legal product and they stand behind the right to keep and bear arms," he said. "They don't want illegal uses."
Weisman was joined by Rhonda Ezelle, a recruiter for the Illinois State Rifle Association as well as lead plaintiff against the city of Chicago's prohibition on gun stores and ranges.
"I'm here because I believe in my Constitutional right to keep and bear arms," she said. "And I'm here to make sure in the future my granddaughter has those same rights and doesn't have to go through this."
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Some passersby during the hour-long protest would honk their horns while others stuck out their middle fingers or yelled obscenities.
The protest seemed to do little to deter customers, many who came for the GAT Guns' First Amendment Flash Sale held that day.
"I'm buying a 12-gauge shotgun as part of the sale today," said Chicago resident Joshua Potts.
A manager at GAT Guns said the store began hosting classes for kids to educate them on gun safety.
"We offer gun safety classes for the parents to take their children to so that their kids will be responsible around guns in the home and should they find a gun while outside of the home," she said.
Erin Sauder is a freelance reporter for The Courier-News.
Kane County Department of Transportations Longmeadow Parkway Bridge Corridor projects Phase 1 construction is under way at Huntley and Boyer roads. (Gloria Casas / The Courier-News)
The first phase of construction of the $105 million Longmeadow Parkway Bridge Corridor project is moving along as Kane County begins putting together the financial infrastructure.
Board members voted to authorize the creation of funds needed to "properly budget, forecast and account for bond proceeds and debt service of the anticipated Longmeadow bond issue," according to county documents.
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County board member John Hoscheit, chairman of the county's Finance Committee, said creating the funds are like creating a financial infrastructure.
Longmeadow Parkway Bridge Corridor project is a 5.6 mile four-lane roadway and bridge over the Fox River. It crosses portions of Algonquin, Carpentersville, Barrington Hills and unincorporated Kane County beginning at Huntley and Boyer roads, continuing to Illinois 62.
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Kane County Department of Transportation has $39 million funding from the state of Illinois along with $14.5 million in federal funding. The department is continuing to seek other funding but the county will likely need to seek bonds to complete the project, said Carl Schoedel, KDOT executive director. The bond estimate, as of now, is about $30 million, he said.
A bond issue remains a few years away, he said.
However, Tuesday's vote sets the financial infrastructure for the eventual bond issue by creating a separate fund to "allow for proper budgeting and forecasting of the bond proceeds and related debt service," documents show.
The vote did not go unnoticed by opponents to Longmeadow Parkway. Janis Jasper, of Algonquin, asked board members to keep actions regarding a bond issue very transparent because the residents of Kane County have the right to know how the bond issue will affect them.
Gloria Casas is a freelance reporter for The Courier-News.
The Hinsdale District 86 High School Board has its assignment: Add classrooms and instructional space at Hinsdale Central High School; update the cafeteria at Hinsdale South; repair, not replace, the pool at Hinsdale Central; and at both schools, improve accessibility, the special education space and the libraries. And do it for under $90 million.
The district also needs to close the gap in the number of projects and its budget proposed for Central, compared with South. Of the $94.2 million worth of projects proposed, more than $70 million would be at Central.
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The referendum would need "some sense of equity and parity," between the two schools, said Steve Cashman, a member of the task force.
Those are the key points in the report from the 35-member citizens task force formed to review the list of projects the school board identified as priorities, and to digest the results of community mail and phone surveys.
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Cashman, who lives in Hinsdale, and Bill Durkin of Darien presented the report to the board Monday evening.
The community seems willing to support "anything that's going to equip students to be 21st century learners," Durkin said.
But the additional direction Durkin gave to the board will be a harder pill to swallow.
Once the board whittles down the list of projects and approves the amount of the referendum, the entire board must support the decision, whether or not they like everything it includes.
That decision must be made by Aug. 22, District 86 Superintendent Bruce Law said.
The surveys proposed two scenarios to raise the $94 million: A 20-year bond issue that would raise annual property taxes by $183 on a home with a fair market value of $500,000; or a 15-year bond issue that would raise annual taxes by $222 for the same house.
More people favored a lower annual tax hike paid over a longer period, so the families that would benefit from the upgrades now and in the future would pay for them, Cashman said.
The task force, which held three meetings, agreed the referendum should be part of the November election, and it should fund part of the district's master plan, not everything in the plan.
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But the group did not know what the ideal referendum amount should be.
That will be for the school board to determine. The board will meet again July 18 or July 25 to continue that discussion. The date was not set at the July 11 meeting.
The representatives of the task force advised it was critically important the school board work as a team to support the referendum.
"Debate all you want," Durkin said. "If the board is not committed to supporting it, it will die."
School board members Claudia Manley and Edward Corcoran said they did not like the way some of the questions in the survey were phrased.
"I think the questions were biased and they were not technical enough for me," Corcoran said.
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Corcoran continues to believe the Central pool needs to be replaced and should be part of a $40 million referendum he devised.
Public Opinion Strategies conducted the phone survey June 14-18. The pollsters continued calling probable voters until they had 300 completed surveys from a sample of people who represented the range of demographics in the district, such as age, gender, town of residence, whether they had school-age children and political affiliation.
The people who took the phone survey were asked what are the main reasons they are likely to accept or reject a referendum to raise taxes to pay for District 86 improvements.
Those who said they are likely to vote yes stressed the importance of education, have children in the high schools or who will attend in the future, are a District 86 graduate, and/or believe the improvements are needed and would increase property values.
People who said they expect to vote no gave the following reasons: The cost of the projects is too much; the tax increase would be too high; they do not have children in the district; the improvements are not necessary; the teachers are overpaid; or they need more information.
kfornek@pioneerlocal.com
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An Antioch man sparked a five-hour standoff with police Wednesday after he allegedly hit his girlfriend and threatened to shoot her and her dog, authorities said.
Jacobi Marotta, 37, of the 700 block of Highview Court, was charged with two counts of aggravated battery, two counts of enhanced domestic battery and one count of aggravated assault, Antioch Police Chief Steve Huffman said. Marotta is being held on $500,000 bail, police said.
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"He held the gun to the back of her head and threatened to shoot her and her dog," Huffman said. "He struck her several times with the frame of the firearm."
Police from Departments throughout Lake County, and a SWAT team responded to the call that came in just before noon.
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Antioch police Sgt. Geoff Guttschow said police responded to the 700 block of Highview Drive at 11:59 a.m. for a report of a domestic disturbance involving a man with a gun. Responding officers met with Marotta's girlfriend and saw him retreat back into the house, Huffman said.
Police closed Tiffany Road and activated the Northern Illinois Police Alarm System, which brought SWAT members, Huffman said. The officers repeatedly used a bullhorn to urge Marotta to come out. When he refused, police fired pepper gas into the home through windows and a sliding glass door.
"He then surrendered without incident," Huffman said.
Marotta has pending cases in Lake County court for driving under the influence and felony theft, according to court records. He was sentenced to 12 months probation for felony theft in 2013, 18 months in prison for possession of a controlled substance in 2011, four years in prison for possession of a controlled substance in 2009, five years in prison for residential burglary in 2006, two years in prison for forgery in 2005, two years in prison for retail theft in 2004, 18 months in prison for possession of a controlled substance in 2002 and three years in prison for burglary in 2001.
The woman was treated at the scene and nobody else was injured, police said.
Tiffany Road was closed for five hours during the operation, which brought officers from a dozen departments.
During the standoff, police used robocalls to tell Highview Court residents to lock their doors and stay inside, Guttschow said.
Kerry Spera, who said she lives in the Tiffany Farms subdivision "kitty corner" from the standoff, was home when police arrived. Spera said she was stuck at her subdivision all afternoon and watched helicopters fly above her home.
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She said her daughter tried to come home from volleyball practice, but found the roads blocked and went to a friend's home instead.
Despite the large police presence, Spera said she was not scared.
"I was out watering the garden because I knew the police had it under control," Spera said. "I feel like it's contained, and I know the police are doing their job. From what I've heard, there are many jurisdictions out there, so I feel confident in the police."
Frank Abderholden is a staff reporter and Angelica LaVito is a freelance reporter for the News-Sun
fabderholden@tribpub.com
Twitter @abderholden
Local school districts in Illinois almost never know exactly how much the state will send to educate local kids until the cash shows up.
That mystery formula and how it inequitably distributes state cash for schools endures as one of the two giant roadblocks in Illinois government. The other is a perpetually unresolved public employee pension.
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The only sure part of the school question is that money some portion of it anyway eventually does come. But reliability was tested to its outer limits this summer.
You'd presume the deep thinkers in Springfield would not risk shutting down all of public education in Illinois. But they did.
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Imagine a state gripped by general election paralysis, while simultaneously tossing two million students into the streets. Came close.
Then came an emergency reprieve. As they invariably do, state nabobs played kick-the-bomb down the road for another year and passed an emergency-spending plan. The measure does almost nothing but prevent imminent disaster.
But, hey, you get the state government you vote for.
The stopgap budget guarantees public schools will open on time and guarantees districts receive the same amount (called "hold harmless") or more in funding than in fiscal year 2016.
But the big smelly buffalo stays sitting on the sofa the formula that punishes poor districts because they are short of property taxes. It sits there as smelly and awful as ever.
Before the temporary patch, local schools had to budget as if they knew the money would arrive, although no one was sure how much.
Because the budget fisticuffs in Springfield have made it complicated to predict if any money was coming, local districts have some right to request Dramamine seasickness medicine.
But good news.
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When Gov. Bruce Rauner and the State Legislature decreed this month that bankrupting and shuttering public schools in Illinois would be a bad idea, the new temporary state formula made some districts flush with extra money.
But the big smelly buffalo stays sitting on the sofa the formula that punishes poor districts because they are short of property taxes. It sits there as smelly and awful as ever.
Chicago, naturally, always stands at the lead position near the trough, because it bears the heaviest financial burden with the most students. So Chicago gets $102.44 million more this coming year than it would have gotten under the old rules. The state is divvying $361 million more in total for K-12 public schools than it did in 2015-16.
Some Lake County districts have as much reason to smile as Chicago does. (Do Chicago public schools ever have a reason to smile?)
According to reworked budgetary numbers from the Illinois State Board of Education, Waukegan District 60 will get $5.28 million more, which translates into $373 additional for each of its 17,000 students. The formula assumes that districts with higher proportions of students from needier families need more educational support. In short, more money to get the same job done.
For a district with a new reform-minded superintendent, the money means a financial wallop for what has become an announced strategic goal shifting resources away from management toward shoulder-to-the-wheel educational performance. "Shoulder to the wheel" is an ancient cliche suggesting District 60 will focus on demonstrated educational achievement, less than the management perpetual motion machine.
Does the state produce a sound educational product regardless how much money is spent? The answer to that is no.
But Waukegan isn't the only beneficiary.
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In fact, in relatively smaller districts, the formula change can have even more profound effect. Among the Top 25 recipients of extra money, Antioch District 117 is No. 18 in the state with $2.03 million more.
That sounds precipitously lower than Waukegan, but the infusion translates into $783 more per year for each of its students.
Wauconda District 118 gets $1.83 million more, which is $416 per student.
Round Lake District 116 lands $1.74 million extra, which is $254 per student.
Lake County News Sun Twice-weekly News updates from Lake County delivered every Monday and Wednesday >
Shuffling new money after old begs the larger question for Illinois education: Does the state produce a sound educational product regardless how much money is spent?
The answer to that is no.
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Though educators say the amount now spent is too little, no one can promise that juicing up the mixture could make schools work efficiently up to some defined standard.
Student achievement in Illinois has not changed much in 20 years, even though total spending inches up five percent a year. In real terms, Illinois spends 60 percent more now than it did in 1994, according to the Illinois Policy Institute.
While the state teetered on the precipice of budget disaster this spring, the glacial disaster of failed student achievement inches along so slowly and so unaltered as to seem invisible.
Illinois did not repair its school system or its underlying decrepitude. That disaster has never been addressed.
David.Rutter@live.com
Geneva Middle School North student Milosh Lisznianski uses Touch ID in the school cafeteria. Geneva District 304 was one of the first school districts in the Chicago area to use fingerprinting technology. (PushCoin / Handout)
This fall, at Lake Zurich Community Unit School District 95, students will be able to check out lunch items with just a scan of their fingerprints, no longer having to bother with wallets or ID cards, under a new system that relies on biometrics, school officials have said.
Joining the few area school districts that have embraced the emerging technology, District 95 officials believe the optional fingerprint-payment system will add efficiencies and help students check out at the cafeteria quicker.
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But civil liberty groups have warned the new technological system could threaten students' privacy at a time when some companies in the private sector deal with lawsuits concerning the use of biometrics, a concept that involves scanning fingerprints, retinas, facial and voice recognition to identify an individual.
"The option of using biometric is being implemented as a convenience to avoid issues with the need to carry and retain a payment card," said district board President Doug Goldberg. "It is one option of the payment system and is not mandatory to use."
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Before approving the change in February, officials at District 95 assessed various cost-effective options with an eye toward simplifying lunch payments for students and making it easier on parents who fund their accounts, Goldberg said. They decided on fingerprinting technology from the Geneva-based startup PushCoin after the district moved to phase out its current food-service software.
Anna Lisznianski, co-founder and CEO of PushCoin, said her technology is a cloud-based centralized payment system that offers a school webstore, parent portal, administrative site and a point-of-sale app. More than 5,600 Lake Zurich students and their families will have the option to enroll in the new service once the new school year starts.
A copy of a March 18 letter sent to District 95 parents informing them of the move to PushCoin highlights the new system's mobile-friendly website, email notifications about low account balances and ability to check transaction histories, and transfer funds from one child to another.
The one paragraph on the use of TouchIDs describes how students can use the fingerprinting system to record purchases without a card or manual entry, as well as how the system allows for faster checkouts and added account protection against fraudulent activity.
Civil liberty experts remain cautious about the emerging fingerprinting technology, already employed at Geneva Community Unit School District 304 and a couple other school districts in the Chicago area.
Ed Yohnka, director of communications and public policy at the Illinois chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, said school officials usually tout how the use of biometrics adds convenience, but they often have little discussions on the implications to students' privacy. Even if the programs provide an opt-out, Yohnka questioned how meaningful that would be.
"The fact is students are being funneled into these programs either through some reduced pricing or some efficiency, like being able to move through lines quicker," he said. "There are also larger implications whether parents are given ample information about what the privacy ramifications are to be able to make a meaningful decision for their families."
As a Geneva District 304 parent of students using the system daily, Lisznianski said PushCoin pays significant attention to protecting students' privacy. She said the system does not store or transmit images of fingerprints. Biometric student data older than 120 days also are deleted.
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The company, so far, has worked with nearly 100 schools on using the PushCoin system, she said.
Lake Zurich High School students mingle as they wait for the bell to ring at the end of their lunch period. Next school year, Lake Zurich District 95 students will have the option to use fingerprinting technology to pay for lunch items. (Dan Waters / Chicago Tribune)
Biometrics at other districts
Geneva District 304 started using the PushCoin service as a point-of-sale system for food services in 2014 and later added webstore options in 2015, said Todd Latham, the business services coordinator for the district.
After the webstore was added, the number of transactions increased dramatically, going from 65,605 in 2014 to 491,886 in 2015. The webstore addition allowed parents to pay for almost anything, from registration fees and field trips to school apparel, he said.
Aside from quicker processing, the program offers parents flexibility who can deposit funds on computers, tablets or smartphones, Latham said. Parents also have access to more information, having the option to see what their children purchased and what they ate for lunch.
Of the 5,668 students at District 304, less than 15 percent currently opted out of the program. The district also hasn't dealt with privacy or security issues involving the handling of students' fingerprints.
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The thumbprint scans, Latham said, identify and match five points of a student's fingerprint rather than copy the whole fingerprint.
"Truthfully, it really hasn't been an issue," he said.
Other districts in Lake County are holding off use of biometrics for various reasons. At Barrington School District 220, Superintendent Brian Harris said the district simply is happy with their system, where students can pay for lunches with cash or ID cards through an electronic payment system.
Stevenson High School spokesman Jim Conrey said the topic of biometric lunch payments has not come up in the district, which has about 4,000 students.
"Because of our size, we typically are not first-adopters with new technology," he said. "If we're going to adopt certain technologies on a large scale, then we need to be certain all the rough spots have been worked out due to the cost involved."
Privacy concerns
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While many are concerned about the "extensive nature of biometric information," the public also needs to consider what could happen to the information if it was hacked or compromised, said Alexandra Franco, a research associate specializing in privacy in emerging technologies at the Institute for Science, Law and Technology at Chicago-Kent College of Law.
Once compromised, the biometric data cannot be changed like a Social Security number, she said.
"You can change your number, but you can't change your fingerprint," Franco said.
In the private sector, technology companies Facebook, Shutterfly and most recently, Google, all have been faced with lawsuits regarding the use of facial-recognition technology.
Illinois also only is one of two states, along with Texas, that regulate biometrics in the private sector. Illinois passed the Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA) in 2008, prohibiting private companies from collecting or storing biometric information, such as fingerprints and facial recognition, without obtaining informed, written consent first.
Franco and Yohnka also questioned why school districts would even need to convert to fingerprinting technology, especially when the potential risks of the technology may outweigh the benefits of convenience and efficiency.
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"How necessary is it to have a fingerprint reader at a school cafeteria?" Franco said.
Christine Won is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press
DuPage County Board approved some improvements to the intersection of 75th Street and Book Road in south Naperville. (Gary Gibula / Naperville Sun)
DuPage County Board members this week approved some improvements to the intersection of 75th Street and Book Road in south Naperville.
On Tuesday, commissioners approved a $590,208 project that will add a new dedicated right-turn lane to southbound Book Road where it meets 75th Street. The plan also includes traffic signal modernization and the relocation of a crossing path.
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"This has been badly needed for a long time," said District 5 County Board member Jim Healy. "Book Road is a major feeder to some of the residential subdivisions both north and south of 75th Street."
Officials said DuPage County will contribute $59,021 of the project cost and the Illinois Department of Transportation will provide $531,187.
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In addition to the new right-turn lane, the existing left-turn lanes on 75th Street will be lengthened and the traffic signal phasing changed to a left-turn on arrow only from 75th Street onto Book Road.
One prior impediment to the project was the need to access Springbrook Forest Preserve property south of 75th Street on either side of Book Road. The intersection improvement project was made possible by a new intergovernmental agreement for the county to temporarily use two small sections of forest preserve ground in the area.
"The forest preserve does not grant easements very easily, and we've been asking about this for quite some time," said Healy. "We're very grateful for their cooperation."
Healy said the forest preserve previously had been concerned about a ground-dwelling species of black wren in the eastern part of Springbrook Forest Preserve but "they now feel the birds are far enough away that the construction will not adversely affect them."
In addition to a path that crosses Book Road north of the intersection, the Southern DuPage County Regional Trail goes across Book Road south of 75th Street. The approved project includes relocating that crossing to a point closer to the intersection.
"Now we'll be able to get the work done and improve the traffic flow," said Healy. "You've got to remember that all the subdivisions, not only from DuPage, but ones further south in Will County feed not onto Route 59 but Book Road."
There was no word on the construction timeline for the intersection improvements.
Gary Gibula is a freelance reporter.
Two people have been hospitalized with what a Naperville police official characterized as being life-threatening injuries, following a traffic crash near Chicago Avenue and Naper Boulevard on the city's border with Lisle.
Police Sgt. Steve Schindlbeck confirmed police remained on the scene late Tuesday of a "multi-vehicle crash involving a motorcycle." He said two people were transported to an unidentified hospital or hospitals with what appeared to be "life-threatening injuries."
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"Traffic is blocked in all four directions while the (police) traffic unit investigates," Schindlbeck said. Naper Boulevard runs north-south, while Chicago Avenue becomes Maple Avenue on the east side of Naper Boulevard leading into and out of Lisle.
Schindlbeck had no further information about the crash, which occurred about 2 p.m. Tuesday.
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Lisle police did not immediately return a telephone message that sought additional information.
This is a developing story. Check back later for further information.
wbird@tribpub.com
A woman with a poster bearing Sandra Bland's image during a Michael Brown memorial rally in New York on Sunday. (Kena Betancur / AFP-Getty Images)
A spate of protests against police violence toward African-Americans is a chilling reminder that the circumstances surrounding the death of Sandra Bland a year ago this week continues today, a local church leader said.
The woman who lived in Naperville and Aurora died July 13, 2015, in a Texas jail cell following a July 10 traffic stop in which she was pulled over by a Texas state trooper for failure to use a turn signal. Escalations led to Bland's arrest on suspicion of assaulting a public servant and her eventual death, which was ruled a suicide.
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The church where Bland grew up - DuPage African Methodist Episcopal Church in Lisle - will mark the anniversary of the tragedy and celebrate the 28-year-old's life during a special candle-lighting ceremony at the 8:15 a.m. and 11:15 a.m. services Sunday, said the Rev. James Miller, pastor of the Lisle church.
Miller, who is in Philadelphia attending the general conference of the 200-year-old African Methodist Episcopal Church in the America, said the ceremony at the Lisle church is designed to not only bring hope and healing for Bland's family but to congregants who knew and supported Bland.
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Miller said the current state of affairs in the United States is proof social inequities continue to exist.
"We need to continue to intentionally work toward equity," he said.
"Our faith is in God," Miller said. "Our faith moves us to push for standards and goals that are far beyond what is imaginable and personal benefit."
Miller warns that protests as well as violent acts of disobedience will continue until people take advantage of the opportunity to move from tolerance to embrace in unity.
"What we're seeing is a disease, and disease is progressive. It's only going to get worse," Miller said.
And it could happen locally, said Miller, who urges DuPage county officials to foster partnerships with members of the African American community.
"DuPage County in its representation is ignorant of diversity and sensitivity. It is in a state of denial," he said.
The pastor said he is thankful for rapport the church has developed with the Lisle mayor and police chief, who both were quick to offer their support after the Bland incident a year ago.
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"We need to have those types of relationships throughout DuPage County," he said.
Members of Bland's family could not be reached for comment this week.
"The African-American community cannot be the only ones talking about civil rights and equity. It's when white people start talking about it that real action can take place," he said.
In addition to Sunday's candle-lighting service, the church is hosting other events to keep Bland's memory alive.
Bland's mother, Geneva Bland Veal, will speak at DuPage AME the second Sunday in August, and a trip to Prairie View, Texas, is arranged Nov. 9-12.
In Texas, members plan to hold a peaceful prayer meeting outside the Waller County Jail where Bland died. In addition, they'll tour Bland's alma mater Prairie View A&M University and celebrate services with Hope AME Church, a church that has hosted multiple rallies and prayer gatherings in Bland's memory.
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Miller said it was on the street out in front of Hope AME where Bland was pulled over by the trooper.
In January, the church will continue to open its doors on Martin Luther King Jr. Day for the Sandra A. Bland Diversity Institute, renamed in Bland's honor to celebrate her spirit, faith and activism and inspire a new generation to stand up for social justice and civil rights.
subaker@tribpub.com
Twitter @SBakerSun1
Park Ridge resident Tracy Samantha Schmidt said success for the Dominican University GOLD award is not about how high she has climbed but how she has elevated her community.
"At Dominican, we learned the importance of community," Schmidt said. "I learned how to build deep relationships. We didn't need Facebook to meet people. I learned strong online relationships need strong offline relationships."
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The GOLD award, which stands for graduate of the last decade, is given to alumni who are living out the mission of the university, said Alysha Biehl, director of development.
"We look for those who are giving of themselves," she said. "Not only people who have made exceptional strides in their professional lives, but those who have given back to the community and the university. We look for alumni who are supporters of alumni activity and future leaders of the world."
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Dominican University's guiding principle is to create a more just and more humane world, Biehl said.
"What you do with the knowledge you've been given and how to live a good life in the world is a big part of the award," Biehl said. "And Tracy has done that. Her remarks at the award ceremony were very compelling because she's a journalist. She spoke about watching veteran journalists get laid off and how she survived. Because she came (to Dominican University) she learned to care about people as a whole, and it affected her differently and affected her work. She gives back and thinks about living by a moral standard when she is doing her work, and that is impressive."
Last year, Schmidt established her own company, Socially Authentic, a social media education consultancy that empowers clients to use social media to achieve business goals. The evolution of journalism through social media has been one of the main themes of Schmidt's career. In 2008, Schmidt helped create, and was the editorial director, of ChicagoNow.com. ChicagoNow.com is a sister site to the Chicago Tribune and Pioneer Press. She also serves as an adjunct instructor at the University of Chicago.
"We're fortunate to count her as one of our alumni," Biehl said. "The career environment looks different than it did from 50 years ago, but what endures are values. (Schmidt) is an example of how times change, but humane values stay the same.
Mario Bartoletti is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.
The Pick, which opened in September 2015, served its last meal on July 10. (Jennifer Johnson / Pioneer Press)
Just two months shy of its first anniversary, a once highly-anticipated Park Ridge restaurant that hosted presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton during her recent visit to the city has shut its doors.
The Pick, 1 S. Prospect, served its last meal on Sunday, said Dino Vlahakis, owner of the Pickwick building in which the restaurant was located.
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"The Pick is officially closed," Vlahakis said this week.
On Tuesday, tables inside the darkened restaurant were set with glassware, dishes and silverware, and the menu remained taped to the front entrance. The Pick's website and Facebook page gave no indication that the restaurant is no longer open, but a call to the restaurant is answered by a recording saying the phone number has been "temporarily disconnected."
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Park Ridge resident Tim Griffin, who managed popular Chicago hot spots like Carnivale, N9NE Steakhouse and Drink, opened The Pick in September 2015 to much fanfare following a compete remodeling and upgrade of the space. Last summer, as construction was going on, Griffin told the Park Ridge Herald-Advocate that the question he heard several times a day from citizens was, "When are you going to open?"
But mixed online reviews from customers followed the opening of the eatery, which Griffin described as "upscale casual."
"The concept didn't work, I guess," said Vlahakis, noting that the previous tenant, The Pickwick Restaurant, was in business for more than 50 years.
The Pickwick Restaurant closed in December 2014. Owner George Paziotopoulos told the Park Ridge Herald-Advocate last year that he did not want to close the establishment, but a proposal for a sleek, modern restaurant with a higher rent attached won out, and The Pick was born.
Attempts to reach Griffin for comment Tuesday were unsuccessful.
Vlahakis, who credited Griffin with trying his best to make The Pick a success, said he hopes to find a new restaurateur for the space.
"It's going to get rented; somebody will rent it," he said.
The Pick was most recently in the news as the restaurant where Hillary Clinton dined with top campaign contributors during a return visit to her hometown of Park Ridge in May. In March, the establishment also hosted Heidi Cruz, wife of former Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz.
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The Pick's closure comes on the heels of two new restaurants that opened within the last month in Uptown Park Ridge: The Harp and Fiddle, an Irish-themed, pub-style eatery at 110 Main St., and Shakou, a modern Japanese restaurant, at 130 S. Prospect Ave.
jjohnson@pioneerlocal.com
Twitter: @Jen_Pioneer
Taking Chinese classes at Bishop Noll Institute started three alums on an international journey that eventually brought them to China.
Two members of the Noll class of 2014 interning in China this summer said their introduction to Chinese while in high school and inspiration from their Noll Chinese teacher, Julie Niu, helped make these opportunities possible.
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Sienna Gonzalez, from East Chicago, is studying biology (pre-veterinarian) and Mandarin Chinese at Indiana University. For her internship at the Bifengxia Panda Breeding Research Center in the Ya'an Provence of Sichuan, China, she managed the nutrition and cleanliness of panda bears and recorded their behavior.
She worked with seven out of 30 bears at the site, which is one of only four panda bear conservation sites in China.
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"The main panda bears I worked with were Yibao, a 1-year-old male, and Ying Hua, a mother of a 10-month-old cub I enjoyed working with the panda bears. They are very sweet animals and very well trained to work with.
"I am currently studying to become an international veterinarian and knowing Chinese helped me the entire internship. My supervisors spoke Chinese and the panda bears only understood Chinese so I was able to use my Chinese knowledge in a professional work environment."
Gonzalez began speaking Chinese at age 12 in the Bishop Noll Prep Academy, the former Bishop Noll middle school.
"The Chinese program at Bishop Noll has prepared me for my internship," she said. "My instructor, Mrs. Niu, is one of the most inspirational teachers I have ever had as a student."
Following her internship, Gonzalez began to study year four Chinese at Minzu University in Beijing, China.
"If it wasn't for the Chinese Language program at Bishop Noll and Julie Niu I would not have been able to live my dream this summer. I encourage current and future Chinese language students to see there is more to Chinese than just the language," she said.
"I am the first veterbrate international intern at my university so I encourage you to make new paths and follow your dreams."
Daniel King, of Gary, attends Butler University where he has a double major in international business and Chinese language and culture.
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This summer, he worked as a marketing and development intern for Connoisseur Group/ACC, a Luxury Brand Company in Shanghai, China.
"This experience has been amazing," he said. "Being able to intern in China has solidified my dreams of someday living and working here. While the Chinese business environment is very different, I have been preparing for it since my days at Noll."
He enjoyed using his Chinese communication skills in a new way.
"Being in China really helped with my listening comprehension, which made life at the office much easier. If it wasn't for my Chinese language background that I received at Noll, I never would have pursued Chinese as a second major at Butler, and I wouldn't be in this position at all."
He encourages anyone who is considering learning Chinese or any language to do it. "Learning Chinese has opened so many doors for me. Also, anyone who is considering studying/interning abroad, you should do it! It's definitely possible, and it really sets you apart in the eyes of any employer."
Thomas Abbott, a 2013 Noll grad who interned in China last year, also encourages others to travel abroad.
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"The things that I was able to witness and learn while in China will remain with me for my entire life. It was truly a life-changing opportunity and I am extremely glad and grateful that I was able to partake in this summer trip. Going abroad is a great chance to be on your own, which forces you to grow and adapt in many different ways."
He said his studies at Noll and Valparaiso University paved the way.
"The solid foundation that I was able to build while in high school served as a launch pad for my Chinese studies in college, putting me ahead of my classmates especially in my speaking and writing skills," he said. "My Chinese skills that I acquired at Bishop Noll were able to place me in an upper level Chinese class at Valpo my freshmen year, which really pushed me and greatly improved my Chinese."
Abbott, a Whiting native and double major in electrical engineering and Chinese and Japanese studies, interned at Yu Yang King Technologies in Hangzhou, China.
"My favorite part of the internship was being able to converse with the other employees and learn about the office culture and business ideas of the Chinese Overall, the internship was a very positive experience and I still keep in touch with some of the people I met at the company."
Bishop Noll Institute will be starting its 96th school year in August. Families seeking information on applying for admission can learn more at www.bishopnoll.org or call (219) 932-9058.
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Community contribution
The Gary Community School Corp. is considering a second try at an operating referendum.
A new report from state-appointed financial manager Jack Martin suggests the school district may not meet payroll in September, which could delay the start of school in August, and another 120 staff members may need to be laid off before the school year begins.
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School board members say this dire situation points to the necessity of passing an operating referendum this fall.
The referendum would seek a property tax increase of 47.5 cents per each $100 of assessed valuation in the city. With a 75 percent collection rate, that could yield $7.5 million annually. In order to go on the November ballot, however, the question must be approved by the Indiana Department of Local Government Finance, the Lake County Auditor and Clerk of the Circuit Court by Aug. 1.
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"We are in a tough situation," said board president Antuwan Clemons. "This is no bluff or threat. We understand that we need help, which is forcing us to go before the community. It needs to act and bail out Gary (schools)."
The district is struggling to climb out of a $75 million budget deficit caused by a combination of factors including declining enrollment, less revenue under state-mandated property tax caps, changes in the school funding formula and low property tax collections in the city of Gary.
Last fall, Martin said the district was "beyond bankruptcy" and the state auditors questioned the district's future as a "going concern." Martin has advised the district that layoffs need to happen because they are overstaffed.
On Tuesday, the board approved a contract for referendum legal services with Taft Stettinius & Hollister LLP, with a cap of $2,500.
In an interview before the meeting, board member Nellie Moore said the staff cuts proposed by Martin at a lengthy meeting of the budget and finance committee Monday would potentially free up $8 million, but she's not sure than many more cuts can be made.
"We've contended all along we cannot cut our way out of debt," Moore said. "We've reduced schools by large numbers, reduced staff and expenses including our health insurance a great amount. The debt we have is primarily due to the funding formula, which is inadequate to the needs of our students.
"We're in that bind not because of the mismanagement of school district, but because the state has not fulfilled their obligation of adequately funding the school district, and you can quote me on that," she said.
But Carlos Tolliver, a former Gary teacher, doubts a referendum would help the district get out of its financial hole.
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"I've seen this board pass so many no-bid contracts in the areas of food service, Title I and maintenance," Tolliver said. "It's symptomatic of what we're seeing in this district. We need to have an honest discussion. This (referendum) is not a one-shot deal. That means after seven years, they can come back and ask for another."
The district previously tried to pass a general fund referendum in May 2015, but about 56 percent of voters rejected the request for $51.8 million over seven years. Clemons said the margin was close enough last time that he hopes that parents and community members effectively campaign for the measure this time. Districts are barred from using public money to support referendum campaigns.
"We've carried the ball as much as we can, but there's no way we can cut our way out of this without help from the governor, the mayor, the council and others," Clemons said. "We're saying, 'Can you help us?'"
Bus contract remains unsettled
The district's bus service for the upcoming school year is still up in the air as a proposed contract with Illinois Central was taken off the agenda at the start of the meeting Tuesday.
Superintendent Cheryl Pruitt said she has tried to speak with Illinois Central representatives since Friday about some additional changes sought by Gary board members, but her calls have gone unreturned.
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Pruitt said the board will likely approve the amended contract which includes a $4.2 million base rate for bus service during the 2016-2017 school year later this week, with a handful of changes yet to be worked out.
cnance@post-trib.com
Gary municipal officials hope to complete an agreement with a Chicago-based company that will assist the city in clearing land for development.
Officials with the Redevelopment Commission informed Common Council members Tuesday of progress reaching an agreement with MaiaCo, a company that responded to a request for proposal by the city.
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Redevelopment Executive Director Joseph Van Dyk said that while his agency has been active in acquiring plots of land and clearing them, the small size of the typical Gary residential lot makes them unlikely to be usable for future development.
As Gary officials see it, they would have MaiaCo officials advise them on ways to clear larger tracts of land that combine multiple city plots. MaiaCo also would help the city find outside interests to develop the land.
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Van Dyk appeared before the council's Ways & Means and Planning committees at the request of Councilwoman Ragen Hatcher, D-at large.
Van Dyk reiterated claims made previously by Redevelopment board President Kenya Jones and Mayor Karen Freeman-Wilson that no deal with MaiaCo has been finalized. Van Dyk, however, confirmed that talks have been taking place for the past month, and that he has been instructed by Freeman-Wilson to try to reach an agreement by September.
Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 22 U.S. Steel Corp. now rests on the site where three men started laying out the industry April 18, 1906. They are, from left, A.F. Knotts, the mayor's brother who bought the land, a digger named Gaskell and Thomas Knotts, the first mayor of Gary, Ind. (Gary Historical Society photo)
Van Dyk said city officials need the outside help because the current means of acquiring individual plots takes too long to complete and is costly it takes about $96,000 to acquire a full block of land in Gary.
"It is expensive, and we need to find a better way to do this," Van Dyk said, adding that whichever consultant ultimately is hired to handle the project will be expected to pay the costs of acquiring the land and combining the tiny plots into large parcels.
In exchange, the city is willing to give a significant share of ownership to the developer.
"Gary is willing to give up at the back end of the deal," he said. "We're still trying to figure out how this will work."
Van Dyk added that he, Jones and Freeman-Wilson are the officials negotiating on behalf of Gary.
Common Council President Ronald Brewer, who thinks the deal is a "good idea," said the outside help is essential. "We don't have the funds to do this ourselves."
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The mayor has said city officials ultimately will retain control of land in Gary, even though outside help is being sought. "This is something we cannot do alone as a community," she said.
Van Dyk confirmed that former Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley has a financial interest in MaiaCo and will have some involvement in trying to get developers interested in building projects in Gary, but will not be a leader of the project.
Van Dyk also said the deal is far from complete.
"We are more than willing to walk away from this if we can't reach something that benefits the city," he said.
Gregory Tejeda is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
Two people light candles which have the names written on them of each Orlando shooting victim. The Town of Merrillville will hold a vigil for all recent victims of gun violence across the country next week. (Jim Karczewski / Post-Tribune)
The Town of Merrillville will hold a vigil for all recent victims of gun violence across the country next week.
"The vigil is for everyone. All lives matter," Council President Richard Hardaway, D-2nd, said at Tuesday's Town Council meeting. "We've had so many tragedies in this country. We as a community have never spoken out against what's going on. ... we need to make our voices heard."
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Clerk-Treasurer Eugene Guernsey said the town officials would like to see people in the community come together against gun violence.
The vigil comes in the wake of the shooting deaths of two black men by police, one in Minnesota and one in Louisiana, as well as an ambush in Dallas during a peaceful Black Lives Matter march in which five police officers were killed and nine others were wounded.
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In a fourth incident two bailiffs were killed and a deputy sheriff shot and wounded by an inmate in a Southwest Michigan court house earlier this week.
Hardaway said he's invited Lake County Sheriff John Buncich, Lake County Prosecutor Bernard Carter, Lake County Commissioner Kyle Allen, state Rep. Vernon Smith, D-Gary, and several pastors of local churches to attend the vigil.
The vigil was announced at the same meeting in which three new Merrillville police officers were sworn in by Guernsey as friends and family watched.
The new officers are Brad Ervin, 23, of Crown Point, Samantha Jordan, 27, of Valparaiso, and Alex Van Rite, 24, of Lowell.
Karen Caffarini is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
Vigil planned
A community vigil against gun violence will take place at 6:30 p.m. July 21 at the Merrillville Municipal Complex parking lot, 7820 Broadway, Merrillville.
On Tuesday afternoon, the Portage police department received edible gifts from a church pastor and Town & Country Market employees to show their appreciation for their efforts. (Jerry Davich / Post-Tribune)
Along with a handful of other police officers across Northwest Indiana, former East Chicago police Chief Mark Becker disagreed with a specific line in my earlier column.
Becker, however, was the only one who agreed to go on the record with his comment.
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In my Sunday column, I wrote about the ambush shootings of police officers in Dallas and a volatile 10-minute video regarding the fatal police shooting of a 32-year-old black man in Minnesota.
I wrote, "The video is disturbing. Not only because it captures what appears to be another unwarranted shooting of a black man by a cop. But because it simultaneously captures the point of view of both the victim's loved one, Reynolds, and the police officer."
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Becker, who also once served as police chief in Portage as well as a former FBI agent, asked, "Other than capturing the aftermath of a shooting, how did it 'capture what appears to be another unwarranted shooting'?"
"I missed the evidence of that in the video," he said.
Alvin McClain, pastor of Christ Truth and Deliverance Church in Portage, leads a prayer for Portage police officers Tuesday afternoon after helping deliver to the station edible treats, a donation from Town & Country market, whose employees joined in. (Jerry Davich / Post-Tribune)
There is no evidence in that video to prove the police officer wrongly shot and killed Philando Castile, Becker said.
"How come all of the people being shot at are presumed to be innocent while the police officers the ones who guard our quality of life and protect our families are somehow automatically labeled as guilty or, in your own words, involved in in unwarranted shooting?"
I asked Becker what he thought may have happened at that routine traffic stop.
"I don't know," he replied. "That is the point."
"I don't know and neither does the White House, the governor in Minnesota or the man who took aim with a rifle and killed five police officers in Dallas."
"If we are to be a civilized society and one that stands behind our concept of justice, then both the officer and the deceased are entitled to their due process," Becker said.
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"When politicians, community activists, the faith-based community and, for that matter, the media, make these statements inferring that one is guilty before knowing the facts they are in part responsible for what follows," he added.
Regarding the lone gunman in Dallas, Becker asked, "Do you really believe he did it because two black guys were shot? Or did he do it because the leaders in our country were quoted in our media, indicating the officers were wrong?"
"Apparently," Becker concluded sarcastically, "the only one who knew the real truth of those shootings were the White House, the Minnesota governor and the killer in Dallas."
Last week, before the shooting ambush in Dallas, I passed an Indiana State Trooper pulling over a motorist on the highway.
I had no idea why the motorist was pulled over, but I watched the officer approach the vehicle with apprehension.
Alvin McClain, pastor of Christ Truth and Deliverance Church in Portage, applauds Portage police officers Tuesday afternoon after helping deliver to the station edible treats, a donation from Town & Country market, whose employees joined in the applause. (Jerry Davich / Post-Tribune)
After passing that scene, I thought to myself there is no way I would ever want that job. There's no way I could approach a motorist knowing full well that he or she could be armed, mentally unstable or possibly dangerous.
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There's not enough training to teach me how to properly react every time for every situation, in just a matter of seconds.
I certainly wouldn't view every motorist in the same light of fairness. I'd be distrustful of nearly every motorist or potential suspect. And I'd be fearful for my life on duty while in uniform and, possibly, off duty too.
My conclusion: I could never be a cop. Period.
Fast forward a few days to the tragedy in Dallas and I feel even stronger about my conclusion.
It was sobering to learn that the fatal shootings in Dallas turned out to be the deadliest day for U.S. law enforcement since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Nonetheless, being a cop on any given day in this gun-packing, racially explosive country is sobering enough.
Lately, there are daily Black Lives Matter protests across the country. Each one is being shadowed by a relatively calm, controlled police presence for the demonstrators' protection and public safety.
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Could you perform that job in the climate of today's social volatility? Is this what cops also signed up for, to be insulted or assaulted by angry mobs who are closing down major thoroughfares? No, thank you, the rest of us say while watching the TV news.
Dallas police Chief David O. Brown has offered an emotional plea for our country's "silent majority" to express appreciation for police in every community. In Portage, among other area communities, the silent majority is becoming more visible.
"We have received a dozen thank you cards, a box of doughnuts, numerous supportive messages and emails, and two girls brought in lucky pennies for every officer," said Portage police Chief Troy Williams.
Post Tribune Twice-weekly News updates from Northwest Indiana delivered every Monday and Wednesday >
Tuesday afternoon, the police department received more edible gifts, compliments of Town & Country Market in Portage and Alvin McClain, pastor of Christ Truth and Deliverance Church in the city.
"We just want to let Portage police know how much we appreciate you and your hard work every day," said McClain, who speaks like a Sunday morning preacher. "We love you, and we need you."
After leading a prayer with the officers, McClain told me, "With all the negativity going on in communities around this country these days, we want them to know we're praying for them as they patrol our streets."
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Williams told me, "We are honored and humbled by the outpouring of support. Portage residents are thoughtful and kind, and we are fortunate to be able to serve them."
These days, even Becker and I agree that such visible efforts of appreciation are more warranted than ever.
jdavich@post-trib.com
Twitter@jdavich
What's Quickly? It's where readers sound off on the issues of the day. Have a quote, question or quip? Call Quickly at 312-222-2426 or email quickly@post-trib.com.
It looks like presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump now is going to have the possibility of taking old Gov. Mike "No Sense, Nonsense" Pence to be vice president. The only thing that'd be good for is that would be a way to get him out of this state.
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The politicians want a wheel tax. If you own a lot, there's a tax. They forget we already pay real estate taxes on it. It's an honor to be a politician so they ought to pay tax according to how much money they make a year. Fair is fair.
There are only three things that always tell the truth: small children, drunk people and yoga pants.
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I agree with the person that wrote about the schools in Gary. It's not how much money you get. It's about how you do the job. The grass is half cut. They don't cut it neat and make it look nice. Sometimes you judge the inside by what the outside looks like. If they're half doing the outside, you know they're not doing what they're supposed to do inside so I agree with the old adage "If you have a job to do, do it with all your might." Do it with pride. I hope that whoever reads this will get the message.
Post Tribune Twice-weekly News updates from Northwest Indiana delivered every Monday and Wednesday >
The British majority who voted to leave the European Union told both President Barack Obama and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton to keep their noses out of their business. Ha, that was funny. Sorry, folks.
I don't understand why it's murder if you murder another person but when you have an abortion you're murdering a baby that was created by God so why is that not counted as murder? When a child is conceived, it's a human being according to God so that doesn't make sense if these mothers can murder their babies like that and not have to pay a price for it.
Even more from a die-hard Chicago Cubs fan: I don't believe in the jinx, but humans create the jinx. That's what it is. Manager Joe Maddon's going to have to be smarter like he's doing by sending pitcher Adam Warren down to the minors to prepare for starting in the major leagues. Also, Maddon's going to go with the six-pitcher rotation, which hopefully will help. But the bullpen has collapsed over what it was before. They need to trade. They need to get pitcher Aroldis Chapman even if they have to dangle two big prospects in front of the New York Yankees. The Cubs need to get Chapman. They need somebody that is going to be overwhelming as a closer.
Donald Trump is not a politician. He is a deeply insecure, egomaniac with a dangerously unstable personality. Much like North Korea's Kim Jung-un.
I read in Quickly a comment from someone that doesn't understand the difference between former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's private email server and former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell's private emails. They didn't do the same thing that Clinton did. They're two totally different things. They did not do the same thing so this person that keeps saying that doesn't know what they're talking about or else they don't know what they're asking about. There is a difference from what Hillary Clinton did vs. anybody else. They really need to understand that so why don't you straighten them out with all your advice at the Post-Tribune?
The only reason you don't follow a policeman's order is you have something to hide.
Read more at www.post-trib.com/quickly
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Employees at this Shelby, N.C., Zaxby's restaurant reportedly mistreated two local sheriff's deputies by taunting them and tampering with their food.
(WJXY)
SHELBY, North Carolina -- Two North Carolina sheriff's deputies say they were taunted and served inedible food at a restaurant in Shelby, N.C.
Cleveland County Sheriff's Capt. Joel Shores told CBS affiliate WBTV he was angry, but not surprised by what happened at the Zaxby's restaurant Sunday.
Shores posted a message on Facebook on behalf of the wife of one of the deputies, who were not identified.
"Years ago, this profession was respected, it was honored. Now to get ridiculed, to be a target, to possibly get shot at, for little pay... what's the motivation to be a police officer other than do it because your heart's in it to help the community?" Shores said.
She said cooks yelled at the deputies and called them names. She said her husband and his partner ignored the insults and ordered anyway. The woman said her husband realized they had put the hottest sauce possible on his wings and he could not eat them.
Since news of the incident went viral, there has been tremendous backlash from the local community, with many residents calling for a boycott of the Zaxby's until the employees involved are fired.
Shores later posted that Zaxby's had apologized.
Restaurant owner Neal Glezen told The Star of Shelby he's trying to figure out what happened.
Domestic demand is a key pillar of Chinese economy as the second quarter saw smooth growth and China will continue to promote the new economy to foster growth, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang said on Monday.
Chinese Premier Li Keqiang (L) presides over a symposium studying the current economic situation with experts and entrepreneurs, in Beijing, capital of China, July 12, 2016. (Xinhua/Li Tao)
The Chinese economy is going on within a proper range with an increasingly balanced structure thanks to effective macro-economic policies, Li said during a meeting with experts and entrepreneurs.
The new economy created over seven million people in Q2 and many traditional enterprises started to embrace new technologies or business models, according to Li.
However, the global economy and market still remain weak, with growing uncertainties and unpredictable follow-up effects. China must keep its macro-economic policy consistent and enhance timely finetuning to avoid risks, promote reforms and keep economic growth within a proper range, Li said.
China will push ahead with the upgrading of its economy, with focus put on supply-side structural reforms. It will streamline administration and improve services to enterprises, reduce tax and leverage ratio, cultivate new economic drivers via innovation to boost growth and employment, according to the premier.
The government will promote new urbanization to unleash domestic demand and beef up infrastructure development such as flood-prevention and city utility tunnel projects, Li added.
Organizers of the UK's biggest military and civil aviation event signed an agreement with representatives from Chengdu to launch a new airshow in China in late 2019.
The Sichuan International Airshow will bring together 300 to 400 exhibitors from within the civil and commercial aerospace industry and help demonstrate how companies can become involved in the Chinese market. Farnborough International, organizers of Britain's largest biennial air show, will supply consultancy services along with the EU Project Innovation Centre (EUPIC).
"The opportunity to host the Sichuan International Airshow in such a prime location in the heart Chengdu will make the event even more attractive for international participants," Farnborough International Airshow (FIA) Commercial Director Amanda Stainer said from the One Belt One Sky conference at the FIA 2016, running this month from July 11-17.
Plans for a biennial air show in Sichuan were first announced at the International Paris Airshow last year and the inaugural event was originally scheduled for 2017. However, organizers now aim to bring the event in line with the completion of a new international airport in Chengdu in 2019. The air show will take place at the two-terminal six-runway Chengdu Tianfu International Airport, which is scheduled to begin operations the following year.
Farnborough International signed a memorandum of understanding on Monday with the EUPIC and the Chengdu Hi-Tech Zone on Monday, detailing the event will showcase COMAC, AVIC and Sichuan Airlines, Haite group, Sigma Components and other state representatives' supply chains.
"Chengdu is already an established aerospace hub," Fu Yonglin, deputy mayor of Chengdu, said. "The Hi-Tech Zone and the Sichuan International Airshow will help put Chengdu as China's aerospace capital. The Farnborough International Airshow has a reputation as a world class trade event and we are looking to working with the organizers to hosting our first show in 2019."
The airshow will take place over five days in September organizers aim to welcome 30,000 visitors to three trade days and 100,000 visitors over two days open to the public. Between 60 and 70 aircraft will take part in flying displays while 60 will be on static display.
The airshow will offer an opportunity for industry players looking to enter or expand in the growing Chinese market.
China is currently the world's second largest aviation market and will become the largest within the next decade, according to a report released by aircraft manufacturing giant Airbus on Monday. Boeing predicts that Chinese airlines will need nearly 6,000 new aircraft over the next 20 years, and plans are in place for the addition of 56 new airports countrywide.
At a breakfast roundtable at the FIA 2016 on Tuesday, Rolls-Royce Chief Executive Warren East said the UK-based jet engine manufacturer will see three quarters of its business come from outside the European Union over the next ten years and that: "Most growth over the next decade is from Asia and the Middle East."
Boeing forecasts that just under 40 percent of all new aircraft made over the next two decades will be sent to Asia, and Airbus China CEO Chen Juming said half of Airbus's current orders are from Asia, with half of Asia's orders coming from China. Chen said the economic center of the aviation industry has been "shifting eastward" over the last 20 years.
The owner of Room 103 on No.165-A Changshu Road dug a 2-meter-deep basement beneath the apartment in April 2015.
A landlord in Xuhui District has been barred from selling or leasing his downtown apartment after illegally digging a 50-square-meter basement that damaged the foundation of the residential building.
The owner of Room 103 on No.165-A Changshu Road dug a 2-meter-deep basement beneath the apartment in April 2015 that damaged the walls of other apartments.
The illegal basement is at least 50 square meters and covers two bedrooms and the kitchen, a neighbor surnamed Chen said.
He said the owner had disappeared for over six months after residents complained and expressed concerns over the safety of the building to the district government.
Another resident surnamed Qin who lives above Room 103, said she noticed workers taking away large pieces of concrete and mud out from the room after 8pm every day in April.
She reported the matter to the property management company which discovered the under-construction basement. The company also found that part of the load-bearing walls had been torn down.
The Yongfu property management company then issued notices to the owner, who was not identified, thrice to tell him to restore the structure, but he simply vanished, said Wang Yancheng, general manager of the company.
Wang said the district's housing authority had come to evaluate the structure of the building and found that the load structure had been damaged by the illegal basement construction.
The Xuhui District urban management authority has now ordered the owner to rebuild it to the original layout as the structure posed risks to the 20 households living in the six-floor building.
The owner has been given a time of two weeks, failing which, law enforcement officers will forcibly fill up the basement with the bill given to him.
"The owner has been trying to sell the apartment with the basement for profit. We have seen real estate agents taking customers to see the apartment," Qin said.
"The average price of the community is over 80,000 yuan per square meter," she claimed.
Qin's own apartment walls have been damaged and a deep 2-meter-long crack can be clearly seen.
Three members of a gang who offered prostitution service via a website were sentenced to up to 11 years in jail, the Xuhui District People's Court said.
The trio had set up the website with a server in the US and operated it from Thailand. The site had more than 3 million people as members.
Prosecutors said Xuhui District police spotted the pop-up ads about prostitution last year. Investigation showed that a man, surnamed Chen, set up the website in 2011 on a US server. He then hired people to run the site.
Besides porn pictures and videos, the website also provided a large amount of information and services related to prostitution, which were only available to its paid members. Some venues offering prostitution service paid the website for posting ads on it.
To attract customers, Chen took pictures of prostitutes dressed in lingerie and costumes. His employees, pretending to be clients, posted comments on the site.
Chen was sentenced to 11 years and fined 60,000 yuan (US$9,000), while his two accomplices got six years.
Environmental activists in China's eastern city of Nanjing are jointly boycotting a planned event to set free 100,000 fireflies at a theme park, the Modern Express reported on Wednesday.
The Huaxi Valley park is home to 500 species of flowers over an area of 20 hectares at the foot of Niushou Mountain. The park plans to release 100,000 fireflies from July 22 to 24 and also on Qixi Festival, Chinese Valentine's Day.
The festival celebrates the annual meeting of the cowherd and weaver girl in Chinese mythology on the seventh day of the seventh month on the Chinese calendar, which is August 9 this year.
Two local environmental protection organizations - Qinghuan Volunteer Service Center and Baidieyuan Ecological Development Center - have led the online protest against the plan.
Zhu Xiangyu with Qinghuan said the park's activity is a promotion designed to appeal to tourists, but the insects glow to attract mates, so there's nothing romantic about it and it's harmful to release a large amount of fireflies into the air.
An expert also said it's highly possible that the result will be a massive number of dead fireflies or an invasion of an exotic species that is harmful to the local variety.
It will cause great damage if the natural balance is disrupted by an invasive species, the expert added.
Nanjing's Zijin Shan, or Purple Mountain, is a city landmark famous for fireflies that have attracted many visitors from across the country. In 2014, the city also built China's first protection zone for fireflies.
Even if Anthony had a year to analyze and dissect each piece...(he couldn't tell if it would)... stand the harsh light of public exposure.
WUWT insider Willis Eschenbach tells you all you need to know about Anthony Watts and his blog, WattsUpWithThat (WUWT). As part of his scathing commentary , Wondering Willis accuses Anthony Watts of being clueless about the blog articles he posts. To paraphrase: Click here to read more.
In his recent visit to Finland, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that it was up to Finland whether the country would choose to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) or not. At the same time, he suggested that his country would adjust its military deployment if it does.
This statement has been read by some as a warning to Finland. Since the breakout of the Ukraine crisis in 2013, the relations between Russia and the European Union have been at a low point, including the EU member Finland. President Putin's remarks, despite being tough, showcased the great attention he gives to Russian-Finnish relations and brought to light again the special relations between the two countries.
"So far from God and so close to Russia?"
Finland began its civilization only in the 12th century when Swedish people ruled the region, but it's Russia that has played a decisive role in the formation of Finland. Russia and Sweden fought against each other in the Great Northern War (1700 to 1721), which led to the transfer of Vyborg, a Finnish town then, to Russia by the defeated Sweden. Russia later occupied a large part of Finland from 1721 to 1743. The disintegration of Finland in effect spurred the national consciousness of its people, and Swedish law practiced in Finland set the region apart from other parts of Russia, reinforcing again its national awareness. In 1809, Russian Emperor Alexander I occupied all of Finland, which led to the formation of the Grand Duchy of Finland, the predecessor of modern Finland. In 1835, the Kalevala, an epic written in Finnish and compiled from Karelian (located between Finland and Russia) and Finnish oral folklore, was published, vaulting the status of the Finnish language into equal status of the Swedish language in the country. Therefore, it is not far-fetched to say that modern Finland was created by Russia.
Finland won independence during Russia's revolution in 1917, but the victory was soon undermined by the upper force of Russia and Finland. Finland adopted an anti-communist policy before World War II, for instance the Lapua movement from 1929 to 1932. The Soviet Union retaliated by banning Finnish ships between Lake Ladoga and the Gulf of Finland, which hurt the Finnish economy. The scuffles between the two sides escalated to a full-fledged war from 1940 to 1944, which made Finland return all the land it took from the Soviet Union and cede Petsamo and lease Porkkala to the Soviet Union. But the victory did not come easy on the Soviet Union side as tens of thousands of soldiers were killed during the wars. This made the Soviet Union realize that taking control of Finland may do more harm than good.
Therefore, the two countries established a special relationship featuring neither alliance nor confrontation. The two signed a slew of agreements in 1947 and 1948 which stipulated that the Soviet Union could be somewhat involved in Finland's internal affairs, that there should be no anti-Soviet Union activities in Finland, and that Finland should stayaway from NATO and the Marshall Plan. In return, the Soviet Union would not change the social systems in Finland, and returned the Porkkala area in advance. The relations between the two were seen as a role model of the peaceful coexistence of countries of different systems in Europe, which was quite unusual in tension-filled Europe at that time.
In the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union, some said that Finland was "so far from God and so close to the Soviet Union (Russia)," implying that the Soviet Union sat on top of Finland. But it was just because of the "neutral" ties that Finland did not have to spend much on military, nor handle the presence of foreign troops. Moreover, Finland was able to reach out economically to both the East and the West and reinforce its presence in the world. The country was not too close to the Soviet Union to be away from God, but was instead one of the most developed economies in the world at that time. To some extent, Finland was the greater winner of the two.
Is it sensible to give up neutrality?
Finland did not join the EU until 1995, and has so far remained outside NATO. But since the Ukraine crisis in 2013, Finland, along with other EU countries, has levied sanctions on Russia. The country has now shown signs of joining NATO, suggesting an intention of giving up neutrality.
The move does not come as a wayward one. Due to the historically complicated ties between the two countries, it's natural that Finnish people do not want to stay under Russia. Russia, on the other hand, has lost the power it used to have during the time of the Soviet Union. Moreover, as the Ukraine crisis has escalated into a local war, it is increasingly possible that a war may break out between Europe and Russia. With a great expanse of land bordering Russia, Finland is naturally concerned about its own security, which prompted its attempts of seeking closer ties with European countries.
However, I'd argue that it is not sensible for Finland to give up its neutrality and join NATO now.
First of all, if Finland joins NATO and allows its troops to be stationed at the Finnish-Russian border, it means that Russia will need to watch out for additional thousands of kilometers of border, not to say that the strategically important cities St. Petersburg and Murmansk are behind the border. If conflicts occur, it's possible that Russia will disrupt the order in Finland as it did in Ukraine.
Second, the Finnish economy is dependent on its good relations with both the West and Russia. Its trade and economic ties with Russia and the real estate investment and tourism brought by Russians to Finland has always been an important economic source. Thus, if it becomes a NATO member, it will take a toll on its economy, which is already sluggish given the depression in Europe. Moreover, the country would have to increase its military costs to tackle Russia's threats.
Lastly, Finland is not confronted with military threats currently, and Russia won't be powerful enough to threaten it like it did in the time of the Soviet Union. But if Finland joins NATO, it would jeopardize the strategic balance in northern Europe and add more tension in Europe and the world.
In a word, the neutrality of Finland will not only benefit the country itself and Russia, but also the peace in northern Europe. It should learn from the lessons in Ukraine and stick to its peaceful policies so that it can maintain security and prosperity.
Yuan Quan is a Candidate of Sciences () in international relations at the Peoples' Friendship University of Russia.
The article was written in Chinese and translated by Zhang Lulu.
Opinion articles reflect the views of their authors only, not necessarily those of China.org.cn.
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President Xi Jinping said on Tuesday that China will not change its policy of support for European integration and is glad to see a prosperous and stable EU as well as a prosperous and stable Britain.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (2nd R, front) meets with European Council President Donald Tusk (3rd L, front) and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker (2nd L, front) in Beijing, capital of China, July 12, 2016. [Photo/Xinhua]
Xi made the remarks when meeting with visiting European Council President Donald Tusk and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in central Beijing.
China hopes European countries will actively participate in the Belt and Road initiative, Xi said, with better docking of development strategies and mutual learning.
Xi also called on China and the EU to enhance coordination and collaboration under the G20, IMF and other multilateral frameworks.
China hopes the EU will carry out its obligations on Article 15 of the protocol on China's accession to the WTO as scheduled, he said.
In addition, Xi urged both sides to work for the success of the 2016 G20 summit, scheduled for Sept. 4-5 in China's Hangzhou.
The EU leaders said the EU side will cooperate with China in a wide range of areas to contribute more to world peace, security and prosperity.
Britain's exit from the EU will not affect EU-China relations, they said.
The EU wants to remain China's largest trading partner, they said, and both sides can do more in innovation, the environment, digital economy, green growth and other fields.
The EU will work to fulfill its obligations to the WTO, they said.
Earlier on Tuesday, Premier Li Keqiang co-chaired the 18th China-EU summit with the two EU leaders.
Li said China wants a high-level investment agreement at an early date and a feasibility study on a China-EU FTA.
Li called on both sides to enhance cooperation in infrastructure construction, 5G, network security, maritime sectors and people-to-people exchanges.
Both sides exchanged views on climate change, global development and other affairs of shared interest.
The EU leaders expressed condolences to the two Chinese UN peacekeepers killed in South Sudan.
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Jordan called for the international community to exert more efforts to help the Syrian refugees on Tuesday, the state-run Petra news agency reported.
The remarks were made by Jordan's Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh at a meeting with Ertharin Cousin, executive director of the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP).
Judeh called for more aid to the Syrian refugees, and also discussed with Cousin the cooperation between the two sides in this regard.
Stressing the key role the WFP plays in helping Syrian refugees, the minister called for more coordination among international agencies.
The two sides also urged the international community to boost aid to countries that host Syrian refugees including Jordan, when Judeh reviewed pressure on the country by hosting some 1.3 million Syrian refugees.
Flash
Kenya's security apparatus are pursuing suspected Al-Shabaab militants after a foiled ambush on a security convoy at Baure in the coastal town of Lamu on Tuesday.
A search has so far been mounted by Kenya Defence Forces (KDF) and the rest of security units on the ground following the spate of attempted Al-Shabaab attacks on military vehicles in the past one month.
According to security reports the militants had planted Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) along the roads targeting police and military vehicles.
Lamu County Commissioner Joseph Kanyiri said more 50 heavily armed men suspected to be Al-Shabaab militants were spotted along the Kiangwe-Majengo road in the coastal region.
"They had targeted the convoy but our security officers acting on intelligence information managed to detonate the IEDs and they are currently pursuing the militants. Nobody was injured," Kanyiri said.
Lamu County security team has warned locals in Mangai, Baure, Kiangwe and Milimani areas against collaborating with militants by hiding them in their houses and even giving them food.
Kanyiri has called on locals to report such individuals harbouring the group to the nearest police station for appropriate action to be taken. He said police and military personnel have mounted patrols in the area as a result.
The incident comes weeks after four al-Shabaab militants were gunned down by KDF in the same area on June 29.
A KDF soldier was injured in the altercation during which four AK-47 riffles, a rocket propelled grenade, an IED and two hand grenades were seized by the soldiers.
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The special representative of the UN secretary-general for South Sudan, Ellen Margrethe Loj, strongly urged all parties to adhere to a ceasefire called by both President Salva Kiir and Vice President Riek Machar in South Sudan's capital Juba.
The UN envoy called on South Sudanese leaders to ensure that the ceasefire order is conveyed through all security forces chains of command so that soldiers return to their barracks, a UN spokesman told reporters here Tuesday.
Loj also urged security forces in Juba to allow unhindered access to patrols by the UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) to protect the civilian population and called on the parties to allow civilians to move freely to places of refuge, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.
"She urged the government to open up corridors to allow UN and humanitarian actors to provide vital supplies and other assistance to the affected civilians, as well as access for medical evacuations," he said.
Also on Tuesday, UNMISS welcomed the ceasefire ordered respectively by South Sudanese President Kiir and Vice President Machar on Monday evening after days of heavy fighting between their forces in Juba.
The ceasefire order took effect from 18:00 local time and any member of the Machar-led forces who surrender must be protected as well. The ceasefire orders came after the UN Security Council called for both sides to end fighting.
Heavy fighting between the rival factions erupted again on Monday. Local residents told Xinhua that heavy artillery shelling and mortars were heard in parts of Juba. It followed deadly clashes on Friday and Sunday in the capital city.
The Health Ministry said at least 271 people were killed in Friday's clashes, while the number of casualties in fighting since Sunday was not yet known.
"UNMISS also reported that the ceasefire seemed to be largely holding, barring sporadic gunfire, and that the airport in the capital had reopened although commercial flights remained suspended," Dujarric said. "Peacekeepers were able to conduct a limited number of short patrols in Juba today."
Since fighting began on July 8, some 5,000 additional internally displaced people have sought protection in the UN's Tomping compound in the capital.
Another 3,000 internally displaced people who arrived at the UN House premise have been relocated to the protection of civilians site nearby.
UNMISS said more than 7,000 people had sought protection in its compounds. UN peacekeepers have been protecting the UN compounds and Protection of Civilian sites, which house internally displaced people.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) also reported that preliminary estimates indicate that at least 36,000 people have been displaced by the fighting, the spokesman noted. "Most of the affected people are women and children."
"The humanitarian situation is grave and the needs are immense, made worse by heavy rains," he said. "Humanitarian partners are assisting wounded civilians within the UN sites and providing health services at the clinic in the ADRA compound. However, the prevailing security situation has severely limited their ability to reach populations in need."
Earlier Tuesday, the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) issued a statement calling on all armed parties to ensure safe passage for people fleeing the fighting and urging neighbouring countries to keep borders open to people seeking asylum.
In a statement issued on Monday, the UN special adviser on the prevention of genocide, Adama Dieng, expressed deep concern at the threat the renewed fighting posed to the population of South Sudan.
Dieng reminded the South Sudanese government of its responsibility to protect its populations, irrespective of their ethnicity or political affiliation.
He also stressed the urgent need to end impunity in South Sudan and to bring to justice all those responsible for violations of international human rights and humanitarian law.
The renewed fighting raised fears that the war-torn country could descend into civil war again.
Kiir and former rebel leader Machar have fought a civil war which broke out in December 2013 and left tens of thousands of people dead.
The peace deal signed by the two men last August under UN pressure led to the formation of a national government in April.
Flash
South Korea's defense ministry on Wednesday announced an agreement with the United States to deploy the U.S. missile defense system, called Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD), to its southeastern region despite continued opposition from neighboring countries.
One THAAD battery will be deployed to the Seongsan-ri region of the Seongju county in North Gyeongsang province, where South Korean Air Force's Hawk surface-to-air missile battery is located.
Yoo Jeh-seung, deputy defense minister for policy, said at a nationally televised briefing that the county was proposed as the best site to maximize military effectiveness and secure safety of residents in the region, which was approved by defense ministers of South Korea and the United States.
After Friday's decision between Seoul and Washington to deploy U.S. interceptors in the South Korean soil, the decision for the deployment site was announced earlier than expected amid mounting opposition and controversies at home and abroad.
On Friday, Seoul said the site would be announced within weeks, but nationwide protests against the THAAD deployment had spread especially in candidate sites, prompting the country to announce it just five days after the deployment decision. The two countries aim to deploy the U.S. missile defense system in the site by the end of next year.
China and Russia have expressed strong opposition to the THAAD deployment in the South Korean soil as its X-band radar can spot Chinese and Russian territories far beyond the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK).
The AN/TPY-2 radar can detect 600-800 km with a terminal mode, which South Korea plans to adopt, but it can be converted at any time, and takes less than a day to change, into a forward-based mode that ranges as far as 2,000 km because the two versions have the same hardware.
The THAAD battery will be operated by the U.S. Forces Korea (USFK) and the radar operation will not be made transparent.
"Even if (Seoul and Washington) try to politically promise (not to keep watch on Chinese and Russian territories), such pledge has no meaning in technical terms," said Cheong Wooksik, director of Peace Network, a local civic group.
"The terminal and forward-based modes just have difference in software. The conversion takes just several hours," Cheong said at a forum hosted by the People's Solidarity for Participatory Democracy (PSPD), a local civic group.
"What kind of radar mode Seoul will select does not matter. China's military expert cannot be dispatched to the THAAD battery to supervise its operation," said Kim Joon Hyung, professor of international studies at Handong Global University.
The professor said strong opposition from China and Russia came as the THAAD deployment means South Korea entering a part of the colossal U.S. missile defense network.
The deployment decision brought strong backlashes from the public, especially among people living in the site, on deep worries about a super-strong microwave emitted from the X-band radar.
About 5,000 residents in the Seongju county rallied earlier in the day near the site, with some writing in blood to protest against the deployment, according to local media reports. Some of the residents, including the county head, rode buses bound for the defense ministry's headquarters in Seoul to express opposition to the THAAD deployment.
Seoul selected the county as it is sparsely populated. About 45,000 people reside in Seongju, much lower than other candidate sites such as Chilgok in North Gyeongsang province with some 120,000 residents, Yangsan in South Gyeongsang province with 310,000 people and Pyeongtaek in Gyeonggi province where around 460,000 people live.
Near the county, the South Korean Air Force's surface-to-air missile battery is located at an elevation of about 400 meters in which the THAAD battery will be located. The Hawk missiles and some 170 soldiers allegedly would be moved nearby to protect the THAAD battery barracks.
The ministry explained that microwave from the THAAD radar will not affect regions 2.4 km away at an elevation of 210 meters and 5.5 km away at a 483-meter elevation. The county's residential area is located about 1.5 km away from the site and some 300 km southeast of the capital Seoul.
Flash
Ten of the 12 publicly announced candidates to succeed from January 2017 retiring UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon were tested on Tuesday in a wide-ranging, first-ever globally-broadcast TV and Internet streaming debate.
There was no clear winner among the six females and four males, seven of them from Eastern Europe believed due for the top UN office. A female successor is also widely expected.
Each was chosen by lots to serve in one of the two groups, standing for an hour behind the podium in the front of the UN General Assembly hall. Questions were fired at them by moderators from Al Jazeera Media Network, producer of the history-making event broadcast, along with President Mogens Lykketoft of the General Assembly.
Correspondents James Bays and Folly Bah Thibault moderated, throwing dozens of questions mixed with sharp queries from UN ambassadors, non-governmental organization representatives and even a fresh-faced student from Brazil, during the fast-paced 90-minute telecast and slightly-longer webcast.
The first group consisted of Vesna Pusic of Croatia, Antonio Guterres of Portugal, Susana Malcorra of Argentina, Vuk Jeremic of Serbia and Natalia Gherman of Moldova.
Pusic, foreign minister of Croatia, responded to the first query saying she seeks the position to counter "deep cynicism or antipathy, resentment" against peace, development and human rights at the United Nations.
Guterres, former Portuguese prime minister and former UN High Commissioner for Refugees, said he seeks to "alleviate humanitarian suffering," fight climate change and xenophobia, adding the next secretary-general "must have solid ethical references."
Malcorra, foreign minister of Argentina and Ban's former Chef de Cabinet, wants to bring the world organization closer to people and to lead the UN "to the next level" by calling on the private sector to assist.
Jeremic, former president of the General Assembly, said he wants to take the helm because "not all is well" at the UN, an organization facing "overwhelming stagnation." Yet he saw the UN as the only entity to tackle most of the global problems.
Gherman, former foreign minister of Moldova, citing her belief in a commitment to a better life for humanity, said she believes only the UN can make it happen.
In the second group were Helen Clark, former prime minister of New Zealand and head of the UN Development Program, Danilo Turk, former president of Slovenia and a former UN assistant secretary-general, Christiana Figueres of Costa Rica who led the Paris climate change conference to a success last December, Igor Luksic, former prime minister of Montenegro and Irina Bokova of Bulgaria, director-general of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.
Srgjan Kerim of Macedonia and Miroslav Lajcak of Slovakia were unable to attend the debate.
"This has been a remarkable evening," general assembly president Lykketoft said when concluding the debate with praises that candidates demonstrated "yet again, their fantastic potential."
They "have allowed us to bring incredible, important global issues into the living rooms of many millions of people across this world," he said. "This is something we should be proud of."
"We have taken another great step forward in our efforts to install further transparency and inclusivity into the process," he said.
"Ultimately I hope we will deliver on our primary objective: to secure the best possible candidate to lead the United Nations in the coming years."
Our countless raids of substandard mills, with law enforcement, show that we have a simmering problem throughout the nation. The current set of state and federal guidelines arent enough to protect dogs. Photo by Shannon Johnstone
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The U.S. Department of Agriculture has been charged by Congress to license and inspect commercial pet breeders that sell puppies to pet stores or via the Internet. While weve lauded some recent actions of the USDA to crack down on the worst breeders, weve long recognized that the underlying regulations that set standards of care are too weak making it legal for breeders to keep animals in deficient, even dangerous environments, and to entirely sidestep issues related to genetic and psychological health. In fact, current regulations dont even require that breeding dogs have access to the outdoors, room to run, regular hands-on veterinary exams, or daily positive human attention.
Last September, The HSUS submitted a legal petition to the USDA, urging the agency to improve its standards of care for dogs in commercial breeding operations. In short, weve proposed upgrading the minimum standards to drive out the worst actors so that people who cannot provide the basics for dogs are precluded from conducting business. Weve been encouraged that several players in the industry supported this petition.
The USDA and other regulators must know that there is growing momentum among citizens to end the suffering and abuse of dogs at puppy mills. More than 160 local governments have enacted ordinances banning the sale of commercially-raised puppies in pet stores and our lawyers have defeated at least six industry challenges to those ordinances. Louisiana just enacted a state law on the issue, and New Jersey lawmakers are poised to pass one, too.
The USDA has not moved fast enough to strengthen its standards on puppy mills, and its up to the American public to make sure that the agency acts. Given the administrative procedures that drag out any rulemaking process, this issue wont be settled this year, even if the USDA were to demonstrate more serious resolve. The next president will likely determine whether new standards are put in place to assure the health of dogs bred for commerce. But the USDA shouldnt use that as an excuse to wait.
What we do know for certain is that industry self-regulation has been a dismal failure. When questioned about their stores alleged links to puppy mills, store owners routinely tell customers that they purchase only from USDA licensed breeders, as if thats some kind of ironclad assurance. The average shopper doesnt understand that the USDAs housing rules are best described as survival standards rather than humane standards. Its not illegal under the law to allow hundreds of dogs to live their entire lives in small, stacked wire cages, with very little protection from extremes of heat or cold. Theres no requirement that an animal ever has to leave a cage or see a veterinarian. And the USDA readily admits that its inspection process inadequately enforces even these bare minimum standards.
Our countless raids of substandard mills, with law enforcement, show that we have a simmering problem throughout the nation. The current set of state and federal guidelines arent enough, and frankly, a patchwork of state rules and regulations for a national industry is not the most efficient or reliable way to tackle a decades-long problem involving hundreds of thousands of animals.
The USDA has made advances in recent years to better regulate commercial dog breeders, adopting rules to ban imports of dogs from foreign puppy mills and to require inspections of internet sellers of puppies. But were overdue for lifting the standards, and even people in the industry know its time. If you havent already written to the USDA asking the agency to act on this petition, please do so now. We will ensure that your letter is presented to the USDA in person.
The new rule will create a financial incentive for producers to treat all calves better to avoid creating downers, and take away any incentive to use cruel methods to force the calves through the slaughter process. Photo by iStockphoto
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Today, in yet another pro-animal rulemaking action, the Obama Administration made final a rule banning the slaughter of downer calves an issue The HSUS put on the national radar screen with a pair of damning undercover investigations that threw back the curtain on the mistreatment of juvenile animals too sick or injured or weakened to walk to their own slaughter. The rule closes a loophole in a 2009 federal regulation that banned killing downed cattle for human consumption but did not include downer calves, leaving them vulnerable to abuse and suffering. The 2009 and now the 2016 rules go a long way toward addressing the abuse of these animals, but more work remains, perhaps with the next administration, to address the widespread abuse of downer pigs.
The HSUS filed a legal petition after an undercover investigation at Bushway Packing, Inc., a veal calf slaughter plant in Vermont, found workers kicking, slapping, and shocking infant calves with electric prods. Another HSUS undercover investigation in 2014 at Catelli Bros., a veal calf slaughter facility in New Jersey, showed more abuse of downer calves. Workers were recorded trying to lift calves by their tails, dragging them with chains, and spraying them with water to force them to stand up so that they could be inspected and slaughtered.
We estimate that thousands of veal calves, most of them only a few days or weeks old, collapse on their way to slaughter every year. The very youngest calves, slaughtered to be sold as bob veal, are extremely vulnerable: theyre far more likely to collapse and become downers than mature cattle. A heartbreaking combination of mistreatment, genetic frailties, denial of sustenance, and the stress of being taken from their mothers mere hours after theyre born causes the calves to break down.
Animal scientist and meat industry consultant Dr. Temple Grandin has noted that ninety percent of all downers are preventable and that dairy producers create downers by denying calves their mothers colostrum and selling them at auction before they can walk. The USDA recognized in the proposed rule that the loophole allowing downer calves to be slaughtered may have created an incentive for some establishments to inhumanely attempt to force these animals to rise. The new rule will create a financial incentive for producers to treat all calves better to avoid creating downers, and take away any incentive to use cruel methods to force the calves through the slaughter process. Slaughterhouses will now be required to promptly and humanely euthanize all downer calves, just as they are already required to do for adult cattle. The agency also revised its regulations to make clear that humane handling requirements apply as soon as calves and other animals arrive at the slaughter establishment.
HSUS backers were instrumental in this outcome. They joined more than 150,000 Americans who wrote to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack to urge him to stop the slaughter of downer calves. Federal lawmakers also weighed in, with 92 representatives led by Reps. Chris Smith, R-N.J., and Grace Meng, D-N.Y., and 14 senators led by Sens. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, and Cory Booker, D-N.J., sending letters to the USDA to urge final action on the rule. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., played a key role too, offering strong support. Dr. Dean Wyatt, a USDA veterinarian who tipped us off to the abuse of downer calves in slaughterhouses and gave powerful testimony to Congress about it, was a major force as well in bringing about this reform. We are grateful to the Obama Administration, which continues to take very meaningful steps forward to protect farm animals, horses, and wildlife and is cementing its record as the most pro-animal administration in our nations history.
Attendees make their way past an Airbus A380 aircraft on display at the Farnborough airshow in Farnborough, UK. [Photo/Agencies]
Asian airlines are providing a boost for Airbus SAS and Boeing Co at the July 11-17 Farnborough Airshow near London in the United Kingdom.
Carriers from China, India, Malaysia, Indonesia and other Asian countries are seeking to stock up on revamped versions of the manufacturers' workhorse single-aisle jets.
Standard Chartered Plc's leasing arm also ordered 10 current-generation 737-800s worth $960 million that will be deployed in northeast Asia.
Malaysian discount giant AirAsia Bhd is poised to order as many as 100 Airbus A321neos valued at $12.6 billion.
India's Go Airlines is examining the purchase of 70 smaller A320neos worth about $7.5 billion that could also come at the show, according to people familiar with their plans.
In the wide-body sector, billionaire entrepreneur Richard Branson's Virgin Atlantic Airways Ltd announced a long-awaited deal for Airbus's largest A350 model as it seeks to replace aging A340s and Boeing 747 jumbos.
But it is the Asian carriers that are making the running in Farnborough. Economic growth in Asia is spurring demand for new routes and extra frequencies across the continent.
The trend is prompting low-cost operators that have already amassed large order backlogs to add even more planes.
For instance, India's SpiceJet Ltd is weighing an order for as many as 100 737s or A320s, though it is not certain to reach a decision this week.
John Leahy, Airbus's chief salesman, said at the show that a growing middle class in China, India and other emerging economies such as Indonesia will become increasingly central in driving demand for jetliners.
"When you have greater discretionary spending it's been proven that you buy airline tickets with it," Leahy said, adding that by 2035, 75 percent of people in what are currently viewed as emerging economies will be taking at least one flight a year. "That's an awful lot of demand for seats in an awful lot of planes."
Boeing and Airbus were united in suggesting that recent economic turmoil, from Britain's vote to leave the European Union to a commodities crash, will do nothing to dent long-term sales prospects.
Boeing lifted its 20-year forecast 4.1 percent from a year earlier, predicting demand for 39,620 new jetliners worth $5.9 trillion across the industry, with slightly more than half of that value coming from planes in the 737 and A320 category.
Airbus sees a need for 33,000 more planes, with the overall in-service fleet more than doubling from 19,500 to almost 40,000.
While a slowing of China's economy has made headlines, travel has continued to expand at double-digit rates as the country undergoes a fundamental shift to consumption and services and away from industrial production, said Randy Tinseth, a Boeing vice-president for marketing. "The part that's growing above expectations is where aviation falls."
The AirAsia deal may be announced by Wednesday morning (Beijing time), with at least some of the A321s set to provide a stepped-up service to India, said one of the people, who asked not to be identified because talks are ongoing.
Indian passenger demand grew 20 percent last year, versus 10 percent in China and less than 5 percent in the US, International Air Transport Association figures showed.
AirAsia is already the top Airbus customer by aircraft numbers. At the 2014 Farnborough show, it bought 50 A330-900neos in one of the year's biggest deals.
Go Airlines, among eight budget airlines operating in India, is one of only three carriers worldwide that have begun using the Neo upgrade of the A320, so that a follow-on order would provide a vote of confidence in a model dogged by issues with its Pratt & Whitney turbines since last year.
Even with Asia sales, analysts don't expect an order rush at this week's expo since neither Boeing nor Airbus is offering new planes. The 2015 Paris show, with which the UK event alternates, ran up more than $100 billion of deals.
Top-up deals for upgraded narrow-body planes aside, the Airbus A350 and Boeing's competing 777X and 787 wide-body jetliners should help swell backlogs that have already reached record levels and pose a major manufacturing challenge.
Virgin Atlantic's agreement to take 12 A350-1000s worth $4.4 billion includes eight planes purchased outright and four to be sourced from Air Lease Corp, according to the UK airline.
Bloomberg
An employee checks the fit of a bolt on a H-class turbine on the assembly line of Siemens AG's gas turbine factory, in Berlin, Germany.[Photo/Agencies]
Suzhou set to host new hub, total staff to exceed 300 researchers by the end of this year
Siemens AG will build an innovation center in Suzhou, Jiangsu province, in September to develop digitalization-focused technologies, products and solutions, company officials said on Tuesday.
Zhu Xiaoxun, head of Siemens Corporate Technology China, said the center will deploy resources for technical innovation and application in the fields of intelligent manufacturing, robotics, modern logistics, big data, information security and smart city, with a strong focus on digitalization.
The company didn't disclose the cost of the new center, which it said will service the company's various divisions. The German engineering and electronics conglomerate established its first innovation center in intelligent manufacturing outside Germany in February in Qingdao, in eastern China's Shandong province.
The group said the combined staff numbers of the two innovation centers will exceed 300 researchers by the end of this year.
Keen on boosting its earning potential, Siemens said it will also deepen partnerships this year with State-owned enterprises, to jointly deploy intelligent manufacturing in the iron and steel, shipbuilding and aerospace industries.
Siemens signed a number of cooperation deals with SOEs including China Shipbuilding Industry Corp, Baosteel Group, China Electronics Corp and China Aerospace Science and Industry Corp last month. The deals aimed at developing modern manufacturing, another step forward toward the strategic alignment of German industrial strategy "Industry 4.0" with "Made in China 2025".
Lothar Herrmann, Siemens China president.
Siemens China President Lothar Herrmann said that his group will focus on the electrification, automation and digitalization growth areas, as well as form partnerships with more local companies to retain stable growth.
"In the manufacturing industry, interlinked and intelligent machines can communicate with each other via digital technologies and autonomously determine the best possible production path," Herrmann said.
"This means a fundamental improvement on traditional ways of manufacturing," he added.
Siemens said it will increase investments for research and development by 300 million euros ($326 million) to a total of 4.8 billion euros globally this year, as well as deploy more resources and technologies in the Pearl River Delta region, one of China's traditional manufacturing bases.
"Investment in the right technologies makes digital transformation possible. Enterprises at various stages of development should follow pragmatic technical road maps based on their real situation," said Shi Yong, vice-president of Beijing-based China Machinery Industry Information Research Institute.
Wang Shi, chairman of China Vanke Co, attends the SEE Foundation World Water Day Forum at Guangzhou Tower on March 22, 2016 in Guangzhou, China.[Photo/VCG]
China Vanke Co Ltd, the country's largest residential developer, and its partners are planning to acquire a commercial property unit from US firm Blackstone Group LP, triggering speculation about whether the move is linked with the current power struggle within the developer.
In a filing to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on Monday, the developer said that it and its partners have agreed to set up an acquisition fund to acquire 96.55 percent stake of a commercial property company affiliated with Blackstone at a price of 12.87 billion yuan ($1.92 billion).
Vanke will contribute 3.89 billion yuan to the acquisition and no securities will be issued to fund the deal, according to the statement.
While the deal has gained approval from the board of directors, the developer said it has not entered into any legally binding agreement with the involved parties. It did not identify its partners either.
The announcement of the deal came amid the corporate power struggle between its largest shareholder Baoneng Group, a private insurer, and its management team led by its founder and Chairman Wang Shi. Their confrontation has put the company in the spotlight since last year.
Some speculated that the deal may be leveraged by the management team to prevent its founder and Chairman Wang from losing control of the company.
Vanke said in the statement that the deal with Blackstone is aimed at strengthening the company's operations and management capability for commercial properties.
Gao Jianfeng, a property analyst at Nomura Securities in Hong Kong, said that there may not be any direct connection between the deal and the corporate power struggle within Vanke.
"The transaction looks like a normal one judging from the available information. It is in line with Vanke's business strategy," Gao said.
Both Blackstone and Vanke did not immediately reply to the request for comment.
Vanke's A shares declined 0.82 percent on Tuesday to close at 18.12 yuan. The decline extended total losses to 25 percent since its stock resumed trading last week after a six-month suspension.
The deal with Blackstone first attracted attention after an independent board member of Vanke abstained from a key vote, citing conflict of interest on an asset restructuring plan with subway builder Shenzhen Metro Group.
The plan will allow Vanke to acquire assets from the latter through new share issuance and will make Shenzhen Metro the largest shareholder of the developer.
The deal has faced strong opposition from Baoneng Group and State-owned conglomerate China Resources (Holdings) Co Ltd, the second-largest shareholder of Vanke, as it will significantly dilute its shareholding.
The Farnborough International Airshow on Tuesday signed a memorandum of understanding with the Chengdu Hi-Tech Zone and EU Project Innovation Center to develop the Sichuan International Airshow. Under the MOU, Farnborough will provide consultancy services to create an aerospace trade exhibition and public airshow in Chengdu in western China.
With a specific focus on civil and commercial aerospace infrastructure, manufacturing, maintenance, repair, overhaul, and support services, the event will demonstrate how companies can become involved in the growing Chinese market.
Originally planned to take place in 2017, the show is now scheduled for September 2019 in order to coincide with the opening of the new Chengdu Tianfu International Airport.
Commenting during the One Belt One Sky conference at the Farnborough International Airshow, Commercial Director, Amanda Stainer, said: "The opportunity to host the Sichuan International Airshow in such a prime location in the heart of Chengdu will make the event even more attractive for international participants."
Fu Yonglin, vice-mayor of Chengdu, said: "Chengdu is already an established aerospace hub. The hi-tech zone and the Sichuan International Airshow will help establish Chengdu as China's aerospace capital. The Farnborough International Airshow has a reputation as a world class trade event and we are looking to working with the organizers to hosting our first show in 2019."
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Sing for America's production of "The Little Mermaid" continues July 14-17 at Zoellner Arts Center's Diamond Theatre.
(Special to Lehighvalleylive.com)
Sing for America's production of "The Little Mermaid" continues July 14-16 at Zoellner Arts Center's Diamond Theater, in Bethlehem.
Showtimes are 7:30 p.m., Thursday; 7:30 p.m. and 11 a.m. Friday; 7:30 p.m. and 2 p.m. Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday.
Sing for America raising funds for military families. This is the group's 14th production.
"The Little Mermaid" is based on one of Hans Christian Andersen's stories and the classic animated film.
Tickets cost $18 for adults, $12 for students and seniors; and $9 for children 6 and under. Call 610-758-2787 or visit SingforAmerica.com.
A pilot stands at the entrance to a Gulfstream G280 business jet manufactured by Gulfstream Aerospace Corp, a unit of General Dynamics Corp, on the opening day of the Farnborough International Airshow 2016 in Farnborough, the United Kingdom, on Monday. The airshow, a biannual showcase for the aviation industry, runs until July 17.[Photo/Agencies]
Leading aviation and avionics firms court global majors even as Airbus, Boeing woo domestic airlines
China's participation in this year's biannual Farnborough International Airshow, one of the most important showcases for the world aviation industry, is the biggest ever, according to the organizers.
The July 11-17 show is featuring a Chinese pavilion hosting some of the country's leading aviation and avionics firms.
Also, Xiamen Airlines signed an agreement to buy up to 30 Boeing 737 MAX 200 aircraft, worth as much as $3.39 billion at current prices.
A bigger deal was between Boeing and Donghai Airlines, which signaled its intention to buy 25 Boeing 737 MAX-8 jets and five 787-9 Dreamliners, potentially worth $4 billion. Cargo carrier Donghai is planning to transition to a passenger airline.
Wong Cho-Bau, chairman of Donghai, said in a statement: "Under the Belt and Road Initiative, we will accelerate our fleet expansion plan to satisfy the rapidly growing air travel market and help build our home base at Shenzhen as the transportation hub for southern China."
On Tuesday, Boeing Co and Kunming Airlines signed an agreement for 10 737 MAX 7 airplanes at the show.
At the airshow on Monday, Airbus China CEO Chen Juming said the economic center of the aviation industry has been "shifting eastward" over the past 20 years.
"Half of our orders are from Asia, and half of Asia's orders come from China," Chen said.
Jetliner giant Airbus SAS, based in France, released its Global Market Forecast on Monday. It predicted the world will need 33,000 new passenger and cargo aircraft worth $5.2 trillion over the next 20 years as Asia's aviation markets expand. China is forecast to have the world's biggest civil aviation market within the next decade.
John Leahy, Airbus chief operating officer for customers, said: "We are ramping up production to meet market demand for our leading aircraft products."
In a separate report, Airbus competitor Boeing predicted that 15,130 new aircraft would be sent to Asia over the next 20 years, making it the leading region in terms of orders.
Among the Chinese firms exhibiting at Farnborough include AviChina Industry and Technology Co, Aviage Systems, Western Superconducting Co, China Aviation Industrial Base, China Aviation News, China General Aviation Industry, Baoji Titanium Industry, Shaanxi China Aero Industry Gas Spring Co, Tipro International Co, Wuxi Blade Co and COMAC, maker of the C919, China's first-ever indigenous medium-haul jetliner.
Ray Conner, CEO of Boeing Co's commercial aircraft unit, shakes hands with Wong Cho Bau, chairman of Donghai Airlines Co Ltd, at the Farnborough International Airshow in Farnborough, UK.[Photo/Agencies]
The C919 is set to make its maiden flight later this year, with the first production model due to enter service in 2018. It is powered by two Franco-American CFM International engines.
"Participation (at the Farn-borough show) will open many doors for more commercial trade between the Chinese aerospace supply chain and the many global organizations that attend the show," said Amanda Stainer, the show's commercial director.
The European Project Innovation Center will be hosting a conference during the show on aerospace opportunities for China's Belt and Road Initiative, which envisages maritime and land links with Europe along the lines of the ancient Silk Road.
Chinese firms have doubled the amount of space taken for exhibitions, lining up alongside the two civilian aviation industry giants, Europe's Airbus and Boeing of the United States.
China plans a major expansion, which includes the construction of another 300 airports by 2020, roughly double the existing number.
China is regarded as a major growth area for aviation, and Phil Seymour, chief operating officer at the International Bureau of Aviation, an independent consultancy, said "China's aviation market is looking bright".
Last month, Airbus announced it had signed a contract with a Chinese consortium to manufacture its H135 helicopter in Qingdao, Shandong province.
The twin-engined helicopter will be made by China Aviation Supplies Holding Co and Qingdao United General Industrial Development Co, with Airbus forecasting that China will become one of the largest markets for civil helicopters by 2020.
The airshow, staged at Farnborough in the Surrey countryside 40 kilometers southwest of London, will see a variety of static and flight displays.
Airbus is showing its giant two-deck jumbo the A380, already in service with a variety of airlines including and used mainly on Asia and Australian routes.
Boeing plans to showcase its all-composite 787 Dreamliner.
Farnborough is a major venue for aircraft and engine sales, and at the last show in 2014, aircraft and engine orders worth $204 billion were made.
Wang Mingjie in Farnborough contributed to this story.
Ships for specific purposes are the future of the shipbuilding industry, said a top executive of a Fuzhou-based shipbuilder.
Fujian Mawei Shipbuilding Ltd, the largest shipbuilder in Fujian province, is building the world's first oceanic mining ship.
The 227-meter ship is to be used for mining at a level of 1,600 meters beneath the surface of the sea. It will be delivered to a British ship leasing firm in December 2017, which is going to lease it to Canadian company Nautilus Minerals for mining in oceanic regions near Papua New Guinea.
"Ships for special purposes are a major part of our portfolio," said Zhang Zhitong, chairman of Mawei Shipbuilding.
"Such ships, which require complex technology, have become our competitive edge in a time when the global shipping industry is experiencing a tough time." The total cost of the oceanic mining ship is around $600 million. It will generate an annual revenue of nearly $200 million, with gross profit rate between 10 to 20 percent, said Zhang.
Founded in 1866 and one of the nation's first shipbuilders, Mawei Shipbuilding pioneered China's modern shipbuilding, marine military force development and air-craft manufacturing.
The mining ship is equipped with three robots, each weighing 200, 300 and 350 tons, that dig up and crush the earth at the sea floor. The mud will be transported to the hulk of the boat to be dehydrated and loaded onto cargo ships.
"The water dehydrated from the mud will be transported down back to the bottom of the sea through a shaft due to environmental concerns," said Guan Changqing, chief engineer of the oceanographic engineering institute of Fujian Shipbuilding Industry Group Co Ltd, the parent company of Mawei Shipbuilding.
"China's advantages in shipbuilding lie in the fact that it is able to deliver the same quality of ships at lower costs. We are more inclined to accept orders for high-end ships from Europe in an effort to upgrade our production capacity. The successful delivery of this mining ship will greatly boost our reputation as a high-end and high-tech ship builder," said Zhang.
Mawei Shipbuilding is constructing a modern ship building yard that will be equipped with more intelligent manufacturing capacity with investment of more than 1 billion yuan, according to Zhang.
Zhang Yongfeng, director of the international shipping research department at the Shanghai International Shipping Institute, said that more than 40 percent of shipbuilding capacity in China currently lies idle. "Building large and high-end ships is the wise move for shipbuilders at the moment," he said.
PARIS - French energy company EDF announced its first wind power development project in China on Tuesday, after the acquisition of the Chinese firm UPC Asia Wind Management (AWM) by its renewable energy subsidiary EDF Energies Nouvelles.
According to the French renewable energy company, China is a priority market that has a strong growth potential in the coming years. In this regard, the Chinese government intends to attain 200 gigawatts (GW) in installed wind energy capacity by 2020, which represents an average increase of 15 GW per year.
Through this acquisition, EDF Energies Nouvelles now holds 80 percent of the shares of the Hong Kong-based company UPC AWM, which develops and builds wind projects in China. The remaining 20 percent of the shares remain in the hands of its partners, the local developer UPC China and the US-based investment fund Global Environment Fund (GEF).
EDF is Europe's first major energy company to move into the Chinese renewable energy market. According to the French company, their new partnership with China in the wind energy sector is backed by EDF's strong roots in the country, with over 30 years of joint activities in nuclear, thermal, hydro generation, and energy services.
Jean-Bernard Levy, chairman and chief executive officer of EDF Group, stated: "Our goal is to accelerate our low-carbon generation, with a diversified energy mix where nuclear and renewable energy balance each other. Our development in high-potential markets, such as China is a full part of this dynamic process."
EDF now operates more than 10 GW in installed wind capacity in the world through this new project in China. In fact, development, construction or operation in the country helps increase its wind energy portfolio by over 1.3 GW.
EDF has developed a diversified generation mix based on nuclear power, hydro, new renewable energies and thermal energy. The group generated consolidated sales of 75 billion euros ($83 billion) in 2015, of which 47.2 percent was outside France.
CITS Group Corp employees dress as pandas at the travel agency's stand at the Beijing International Tourism Expo in 2016.[Photo/VCG]
Share prices rise on the announcement
The merger of two major State-owned travel companies will create China's largest tourism group. The new merged company is expected to better strengthen resources and services.
The State Council has approved the combination of CITS Group Corp and China National Travel Service (HK) Group Corp.
Experts said the merger will help the industry better integrate upstream and downstream companies, and further improve the functions of the tourism industry. The combination of similar assets and resources will help enterprises to enhance their competitive advantages.
CITS will become a fully owned subsidiary of CTS. The State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission will be the controlling shareholder of CTS and will no longer supervise CITS, according to the statement by CITS.
Share prices of Hong Kong-listed CTS surged 7.42 percent on Tuesday, and closed at HK$2.46 (32 cents). Besides, shares of CTS jumped 3.73 percent on Feb 24, in the wake of announcement a day earlier that the two groups were planning the restructuring.
Dai Bin, head of the China Tourism Academy, said earlier that the tourism market in China is expected to form a pattern, with one State-owned tourism group and three major local private tourism groups.
In fact, the market has expected the integration of the two State-owned tourism groups. Since last year, CTS started to strip off its steel and iron business and gradually focused on the tourism industry.
Founded in 1928, CTS has been one of the four major State-owned enterprises based in Hong Kong. By the end of last year, the group achieved sales revenues of 33.5 billion yuan ($5 billion), and profits of 2.37 billion yuan.
The assets of the new conglomerate will exceed 120 billion yuan.
Meanwhile, founded in 2004, CITS has been the largest Chinese travel agency with the strongest business operations covering travel services, sales of duty free products, transportation, and e-commerce.
The latest move is part of the ongoing trend of mergers between major State-owned companies across various industries, as the government aims to combine the core resources of State-owned enterprises and reduce their management costs.
HUHHOT - Mongolian designer Ganchimeg never imagined her clothing store in Inner Mongolia's Erenhot City could be so popular that sometimes she is too busy to stop for a drink of water.
"I came to China two years ago and have seen trade fairs and expos between the two countries rise. I met buyers at these events, and the orders just keep coming," Ganchimeg said.
Ganchimeg has to make 20 Mongolian robes and ten costumes this month. She has hired two tailors from Mongolia's capital Ulan Bator. "But we are still busy," she said.
Ganchimeg used to be a tourist guide in Mongolia. She decided to open a business in China after many Chinese tourists she worked with showed a keen interest in Mongolian culture.
"An increasing number of tourists from China enter Mongolia on their way to Ulan-Ude in Russia," Ganchimeg said.
Many tourists arrive in Mongolia on the the Erenhot-Ulan Bator-Ulan-Ude route, one of the main routes on the China-Mongolia-Russia economic corridor. The trilateral channel aims to boost transportation connectivity and economic cooperation in border regions.
The plan was signed by leaders of the three countries in June, marking a new stage of cooperation. It has already brought benefits to many.
Ubmall, a cross-border e-commerce platform, launched in 2014 by a foreign economic and trade company based in Erenhot, now has over 1,600 registered Chinese shops selling products to Mongolia.
In 2015, the company expanded its business, providing fast customs clearance services for e-business between China and Russia.
Parcels bound for Mongolia and Russia were delivered by train through Erenhot land port, said Li Pengyuan, a co-founder of Ubmall.mn, adding that the route is an effective supplement to the transportation routes between China, Mongolia and Russia, via ports of Manzhouli and Suifenhe.
"We deal over 20,000 packages daily, and the figure is expected to rise in the second half of this year," he said.
According to the frontier inspection station, in the first half of 2016, 58 trains carrying 2,414 cars of goods passed through the Mongolian port of Erenhot, up 1.5 fold year on year.
The economic corridor has also accelerated other cross-border transportation infrastructure projects, said Tumen-Tsetseg, a regional assessment researcher and professor with Inner Mongolia University, adding that it will boost economic cooperation between the three countries to cover more fields, such as culture, tourism and medicine.
"In turn, a better cultural cooperation will further accelerate the construction of the China-Mongolia-Russia economic corridor," she said.
Products of the Inspur Group Ltd are on display at an exhibition in Beijing. [Photo/China Daily ]
China's largest server maker Inspur Group Co Ltd teamed up with Ericsson AB on Wednesday, to tap into opportunities brought by cloud computing and Internet of Things (IoT).
Under the deal, the two sides will jointly design and build internet data centers and telecom equipment for countries along the "One Belt and One Road" initiative, which was proposed by China to promote trade and communications with Asian and European countries.
Inspur will combine its edge in cloud computing with Ericsson's 5G technology to help build smart city projects, with focus on smart parking, green energy, smart home and other areas.
Sun Pishu, chairman of Inspur, said: "Our two companies' businesses are highly complementary and the tie-up will help deliver better technological solutions."
The move is also another sign that an increasing number of foreign tech giants choose to partner with local companies to expand presence in China, so as to ease the central government's concern over national security.
Qingdao of Shandong province topped the list of most livable cities in China, according to a report by the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
The report, which studied 40 municipalities and cities, was based on 29 indicators in six categories, including urban security, public service infrastructure, natural environment, social environment, transportation convenience and environmental health.
The respondents gave high scores for public service infrastructure whereas air pollution, noise pollution, parking problems and traffic jam were the main negative factors.
Here are the 10 most livable Chinese cities.
No 10 Chongqing
A clerk of ICBC bank counts Chinese one hundred Yuan at its branch in Beijing, China, April 13, 2016.[Photo/Agencies]
BEIJING - Foreign direct investment (FDI) into the Chinese mainland rose 9.7 percent year on year to $15.23 billion in June, the Ministry of Commerce said on Tuesday.
This compared with a 1-percent decline registered in May.
In the first half of 2016, FDI, which excludes investment in the financial sector, rose 5.1 percent year on year to $69.42 billion, with the growth rate accelerating from 3.8 percent registered in the first five months, the ministry said.
The service sector attracted $48.94 billion of FDI in H1, 8 percent more than in the same period of last year and representing 70.4 percent of the total.
FDI into the manufacturing sector declined 2.8 percent during the same period to $19.53 billion, accounting for 28.3 percent of the total.
Among China's major investors, FDI from the United States soared 136 percent year on year in the first half, while that from Britain rose 105.3 percent.
BEIJING - China's exports in yuan-denominated terms rose 1.3 percent year on year in June, while imports went down 2.3 percent, customs data showed on Wednesday.
That led to a monthly trade surplus of 311.2 billion yuan ($46.4 billion), 12.8 percent more than a year before but narrowing slightly from that in May, according to figures from the General Administration of Customs (GAC).
Foreign trade in the first half of the year was 3.3 percent lower than a year earlier at 11.13 trillion yuan, with exports down 2.1 percent and imports down 4.7 percent.
Trade surplus for the first six months widened 5.9 percent from one year earlier to 1.67 trillion yuan.
GAC spokesperson Huang Songping said that according to some leading indicators, China's exports may face "relatively big downward pressure" in the third quarter as global demand looks set to remain sluggish.
Exports to the European Union, China's biggest trade partner, climbed 1.3 percent year on year in the first half, GAC data showed.
In the same period, exports to the United States, China's second-biggest trade partner, declined 4.6 percent and exports to ASEAN, its third-largest trade partner, fell 2.9 percent.
Trump Clinton
Good Wednesday Morning, Fellow Seekers.
Republican Donald Trump has leapfrogged Hillary Clinton in the critical battleground of Pennsylvania, taking a 43 to 41 percent lead just two weeks ahead of the Democratic National Convention and days before Republicans gather for their conclave in Cleveland.
Buffeted by revelations about her email and the release of a long-awaited Benghazi report, Clinton saw her support dip after a June poll gave her a statistically meaningless 42-41 percent lead over Trump in Pennsylvania.
With third-party candidates in the race, the new Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday gives Trump a 40-34 percent edge.
Libertarian Gary Johnson gets 9 percent support and Green party nominee Jill Stein takes 3 percent, the poll of 982 Pennsylvania voters indicates. The canvass had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.2 percentage points.
That puts Trump within the margin in the two-way match, but outside it when the third party candidates are added to the mix.
In other Pennsylvania results:
Clinton leads 43-39 percent among women, down from 50-34 percent in June, while Trump leads 48-37 percent among men, compared to 50-33 percent last month.
Independent voters are divided with 39 percent for Trump and 36 percent for Clinton.
White voters go Republican 51-33 percent, while non-white voters go Democratic 72-12 percent.
Pennsylvania voters gave Clinton a negative 31-65 percent favorability rating, and give Trump a negative 38-57 percent.
Looking at the candidates' character traits, Pennsylvania voters said:
56-36 percent that Clinton is better prepared to be president;
43-41 percent that Clinton has higher moral standards;
51-37 percent that Clinton is more intelligent;
49-34 percent that Trump is more honest and trustworthy.
59-34 percent that Trump would be better at creating jobs
49-46 percent that Clinton would better on immigration
52-40 percent that Trump would be more effective at fighting ISIS
52-43 percent that Clinton would be better at handling an international crisis.
The results were included in a three-state poll of critical swing states that also included Florida and Ohio. Trump led Clinton 42-39 percent in Florida in a two-way match and they were tied at 41 percent each in Ohio.
"Donald Trump enters the Republican Convention on a small roll in the three most important swing states in the country. He has wiped out Hillary Clinton's lead in Florida; is on the upside of too-close to call races in Florida and Pennsylvania and is locked in a dead heat in Ohio," Quinnipiac pollster Peter A. Brown said in a statement.
Elsewhere ...
As they look for $1.3 billion in new revenue to pay for that $31.5 billion budget that Gov. Tom Wolf allowed to lapse into law on Monday, state lawmakers are eyeing a tax on digital downloads to balance the books.
As our friends at The Tribune-Review report, items ranging from Taylor Swift MP3s, "Game of Thrones" eBooks to "Pokemon Go" smartphone apps could be subject to Pennsylvania's 6 percent sales tax.
But whether lawmakers will agree that those items are what they've been looking for along is another matter entirely.
The proposed download levy is one item on a menu of options now under consideration that also includes a higher cigarette tax; a new tax on eCigarettes and smokeless tobacco products; expanded gambling and other levies.
Right now, it's up to the Republican-controlled House, where revenue bills begin both a matter of custom and procedure, to cobble together the 102 votes needed to send a bill to the majority-GOP Senate and Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf.
Observers have said a revenue vote would require at least 30 Republican votes and 72 Democratic votes to win passage. But with historic baaaddd bloooddd and not mad for taxes among conservative House Republicans, that could be a toughie.
House Majority Leader Dave Reed, R-Indiana, tells the Trib "a lot of progress" had been made on a mutually agreeable revenue package.
But then there's this:
"The decision by our leadership to work with Wolf and the Democrats certainly violates the trust put in them by most members of our caucus," Rep. Daryl Metcalfe, R-Butler, told the newspaper. "This is not the path Republicans expected them to take" when the GOP won large House and Senate majorities in 2014, Metcalfe told the Trib.
We knew they were trouble the minute they walked in the room ...
The rest of the day's news starts now.
The state House and Senate have joined together on a measure bringing accountability to the ICA in Pittsburgh, The Post-Gazette reports.
Temple University's trustees are expected to bounce university President Neil Theobald later this month, PhillyMag reports. The panel took a no-confidence vote on Tuesday.
So this should be fun -- Philly Airport workers will walk off the job during the DNC. Welcome, tourists ... The Inquirer has the story.
Philly's Kensington neighborhood just got that much loonier ... (via BillyPenn)
A debate over charter school funding and reform is now part of state budget discussions, Keystone Crossroads reports.
Pennsylvania overdose deaths are up by 24 percent in a year, NewsWorks/WHYY-FM reports.
An Allentown barber shop owner has been shot to death, The Morning Call reports.
The D-Trip has given a helping hand in 16th CD race between Democrat Christina Hartman and Republican Llloyd Smucker, PoliticsPA reports.
Do welfare caps do more harm than good? Stateline.org considers the question.
And now you're up to date. See you all back here in a bit.
The radar technology of a Tesla Model S containing Autopilot features is pointed out during a Tesla event in Palo Alto, California, US, October 14, 2015. [Photo/Agencies]
Tesla Motors Inc's Autopilot technology continues to draw scrutiny, with drivers claiming it was engaged during accidents and a news report that federal regulators are probing a possible securities law violation.
The federal Securities and Exchange Commission is reviewing whether Tesla, which sold $1.4 billion in stock in mid-May to pay for expanded production, withheld material information about a fatal crash in Florida earlier in the month, the Wall Street Journal reported Monday, citing a person familiar with the matter.
Pennsylvania State Police cited the driver of a Tesla Model X sport utility vehicle involved in a July 1 crash that may have involved Autopilot technology for careless driving, according to a report released on Monday.
Meanwhile, another Tesla driver has told Montana police that Autopilot was engaged during an accident that occurred on Saturday.
Tesla's Autopilot features, which are available on more than 70,000 vehicles worldwide, have come under intense scrutiny in the wake of a fatal accident in Florida.
In May, 40-year-old Joshua Brown of Ohio was killed when his Tesla Model S drove under the trailer of an 18-wheeler on a highway near Williston, Florida.
In a blog post, Tesla stressed that the crash was the first known fatality in more than 130 million miles (209 million kilometers) of Autopilot driving, compared with a death every 94 million miles for all cars.
Bloomberg
BEIJING - China on Tuesday kicked off a five-month campaign against unlicensed distribution of literature and audio and visual products on the internet.
The crackdown targets mobile device applications, e-commerce websites, online advertisements, music and video streaming websites, cloud storage services and online news providers, according to a statement released by the National Copyright Administration (NCA).
It urged local police and copyright, internet and telecom departments to strengthen supervision and "severely crack down on" intellectual property rights infringement on online forums and social-networking platforms.
According to the statement, authorities will also toughen monitoring of app stores and their uploaders.
The action was jointly initiated by the NCA, State Internet Information Office, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the Ministry of Public Security.
DUBAI - China's Huawei said Tuesday it has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Dubai South to bring future-city capabilities and services to Dubai South's Business Park Free Zone in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
Huawei said in an e-mailed statement the Dubai South Business Park Free Zone comprises 11 buildings and offers commercial space to support diverse sectors including aviation, logistics, general trading, finance, business consultancies, training institutions, retail, fitness and food and beverages.
"The MoU between Dubai South and Huawei will see the deployment of Huawei's Smart City and Safe City Solutions to provide enhanced services to residents and businesses in the Park," said Colin Hu, Managing Director of Huawei Enterprise (UAE).
He added that Huawei will provide strategic counsel to support the development of a blueprint for Dubai South's smart initiatives.
"Huawei will also share its global expertise through training sessions, expert workshops and guided visits to other key customer sites where Huawei Smart City solutions have been implemented," said Hu.
Dubai South, formerly called Dubai World Central, is a development which is partly ready, but mainly under construction and located on 145 million square kilometers in the south-west of the emirate of Dubai.
It engulfs the new Al Maktoum International Airport that is poised to become the biggest airport in the world, capable of hosting 160 million passengers per year after 2025.
Dubai South also includes the expo site that will be the center of the World Expo 2020 which Dubai will host as the first Arab metropolis.
China said on Tuesday it has successfully flight-tested routes to two new airfields on the Nansha Islands in the South China Sea.
A Cessna CE-680 corporate jet from the Civil Aviation Administration's Flight Inspection Center conducted the flights to airfields on Meiji Reef and Zhubi Reef, the administration announced on its website.
"Data acquired from the flights show that the two new airfields are able to guarantee safe flights for commercial airliners," the administration notice said.
"This will facilitate the transport of personnel, emergency rescue and medical aid on the Nansha Islands, and will provide new alternate airports to flights over the South China Sea."
So far, Beijing has announced building three airfields on the Nansha Islands, as well as one on Yongxing of the Xisha Islands.
Tuesday's flights came a half-year after successful test flights of two commercial airliners landing on Jan 6 at a new airfield on Yongshu Reef in the Nansha Islands.
On April 17, a Navy patrol aircraft landed on Yongshu Reef to transport three seriously ill workers to Sanya, Hainan, for treatment.
Yin Zhuo, director of the Navy's Expert Consultation Committee of the People's Liberation Army, said the Nansha Islands airfields will be useful in helping China conduct rescues in the South China Sea.
"China will berth large rescue ships and have rescue planes on the Nansha Islands. When there is a maritime disaster, rescue forces will quickly be on hand."
Huang Renwei, vice-president of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, said in a dialogue between Chinese and US think tanks on the South China Sea issue in Washington on July 6 that the sea has to be fully covered by radar to ensure the safety of navigation by air or sea.
The Chinese airports will serve as safe havens for international planes when storms approach, he said.
"China's efforts to provide public infrastructure that protects safety in the South China Sea cannot be matched by any other country," Huang said.
Premier Li Keqiang co-chaired the 18th China-EU Leaders' Meeting with European Council President Donald Tusk (left) and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker in Beijing on Tuesday. [Photo by Wu Zhiyi/China Daily]
Premier Li Keqiang urged the European Union to keep its commitment under the World Trade Organization framework and stop imposing unfair anti-dumping investigations against Chinese exporters.
Li called on the EU to follow Article 15 of the Accession Protocol of China's entry into the WTO, which says all WTO members should stop following subrogate country measures in anti-dumping cases against China by Dec 11, 2016.
Under such measures, importers can use production costs in a third country to define the value of exports from a nonmarket economy when calculating the dumping margin.
Many anti-dumping investigations on Chinese exports were conducted under this mechanism despite China having successfully built a market economy after decades of reform and opening-up, Xinhua reported.
Li co-chaired the 18th China-EU Leaders' Meeting with European Council President Donald Tusk and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker on Tuesday in Beijing, where the EU leaders expressed condolences over the two Chinese UN peacekeepers killed in South Sudan.
Li said that China and the EU, as important powers in maintaining global peace and development, sent a positive signal through close contact and consultations.
He said China firmly supports Europe's integration process and wants to see a stable, flourishing and strong EU.
China is willing to work with the EU to reach a high-level investment agreement and initiate feasibility research of a free-trade zone, both aiming to boost liberalization and facilitation of trade and investment, Li said.
Li called on both sides to enhance cooperation in infrastructure construction, 5G, network security, maritime sectors and people-to-people exchanges.
The premier also called for further cooperation with Central, East and South Europe to enhance balanced development of the continent. He said China is willing to cooperate in fields such as infrastructure, third-party markets, innovation and research, and cybersecurity.
Both sides signed an agreement on energy cooperation at the Great Hall of the People after a meeting lasting an hour and a half.
Last year, China and the EU decided to link up China's Belt and Road Initiative with the EU's investment plan, as well as establish a China-EU mutual investment fund and a China-EU connectivity platform.
huyongqi@chinadaily.com.cn
Nearly 100 monks and lay buddhists from Guangde temple gather in Suining, Sichuan province, to meditate and practice Zen amid a large pond of full-bloomed lotus on July 12. In Buddhism culture, the lotus has been portrayed as a symbol of purity and tranquility for thousands of years. [Photo/IC]
Expert says increase partly due to changes in property law; divorce 'should not be demonized'
Increasing numbers of married couples have sought divorce in China in recent years, according to the Ministry of Civil Affairs.
The ministry published China's divorce rates from the past eight years in its latest bulletin on the development of social services in 2015. The index has been steadily climbing each year. In 2008, 1.71 couples per 1,000 population got a divorce. But in 2015, 2.79 couples per 1,000 population divorced, a 63 percent surge in less than a decade.
The measurement per 1,000 population is used by the United Nations and others to identify trends.
In 2015, 3.84 million couples got divorced in China, up 5.6 percent from 2014. Among them, 693,000 couples went to court.
Meanwhile, 12.25 million couples registered for marriage at civil affairs bureaus, down 6.3 percent from the previous year. In the newlywed group, 39.4 percent were between age 25 and 29.
Li Mingshun, a professor of law at China Women's University, attributed the increase in part to changes in property laws affecting husbands and wives.
"The property relationship, which was not the most important in marriage in the past, is now getting priority," Li said. "A married couple used to be closely united, with most properties jointly possessed. But now the tie has been weakened."
However, Li also said that the increase in divorces should not be interpreted solely as a bad sign.
"In the past, Chinese people said a good person will never get divorced. That mentality has been discarded." Li said. "Divorce itself should not be demonized."
In 2011, China set up a love-themed post office in Beijing, the first of its kind, in an effort to remind young people of the value of a stable marriage amid booming divorce rates. It has a unique postal code - 100099 - which sounds similar to "forever" in Chinese. The office allows newlyweds to send sealed love letters to each other but with delivery delayed for seven years.
It may help alleviate the so-called seven-year-itch, which refers to the boredom and weariness some couples acquire about seven years into a marriage.
Website divorcescience.org, which is dedicated to the scientific study of divorce and support for families, cited the latest divorce rates from the United Nations World Demographic Report and ranked 71 countries and regions. Guam topped the chart with 4.6 divorces per 1,000 population, while Bosnia-Herzegovina has the lowest rate at 0.4.
chenmengwei@chinadaily.com.cn
Nearly 6,000 newborns are the latest victims of leaked personal information, as video clips were spread online showing them lying in incubators.
The babies' faces, names, ages, diseases and admission dates were clearly visible in the videos, which were taken at the neonatal intensive care unit of Anhui Provincial Women and Child Health Care Hospital, Beijing News reported.
The hospital said the infants in the videos were admitted from early 2014 to early 2015.
"Parents of the infants could watch the videos to check their situation in the unit by logging onto a website authorized by the hospital with their username and password. We thought it was a hacker attack and made a police report," the hospital said on its website.
A mother using the alias Su Jin was the first to report the leak to police after she found a 15-second clip of her son on the video sharing website 56.com, according to Beijing News.
The screenshots provided by Su showed the uploader's name as "BBS of Anhui Women and Child Website", which had uploaded 5,793 such clips that had been played 139,000 times. The video clips on 56.com have been removed.
The hospital did not respond to calls seeking comment.
Although the hospital claimed that the video clips were provided to parents for free and there was no economic interest for it to sell the data, lawyers said the hospital is jointly liable for the privacy breach and parents can request civil compensation.
Theft of personal information has been ubiquitous. Roughly 80 percent of the population has experienced leaks of information, such as names, home addresses and ID numbers, and they receive spam calls almost every day, according to the Investigation Report on the Protection of the Rights and Interests of Chinese Netizens (2015) conducted by the Internet Society of China.
"Since the second day after giving birth to my daughter, I got numerous phone calls for infant formula, hair-shaving services, shower services, photography, the baby's 100-day feast, insurance and early education. They knew everything about our family and the baby," said Tang Ying, a mother of an 8-month-old girl in Shanghai.
"Although laws bar government workers and employees in finance, education, medical treatment and telecommunications from selling personal information, it's exploited by some as a method of obtaining money," said Yi Shenghua, a lawyer at Yingke Law Firm.
zhouwenting@chinadaily.com.cn
Editor's Note: From undulating topography to Ming Dynasty settlements, Huichang has it all. In our final issue of the series of reports on Huichang, we focus on the county's rich natural and historic interests.
Hanxianyan offers visitors nearly 100 attractions along a 42-square-km swathe of unique landscape. Li Jianping / For China Daily
Scenic spot was home to at least one of the Eight Immortals, according to legend
Hanxianyan's stories are set in stone - in every sense of the word.
It is a place where mythology meets geology, where unusual rock formations form the backdrop for the legend of Han Zhongli becoming one of Taoism's Eight Immortals. The other seven were also said to have partied in the area.
Nearly 100 attractions are scattered along the 42-square-km swathe of undulating topography in Jiangxi province's Huichang county, each taking a zoomorphic name - Herd of Elephants Coming Out, Two Pythons Jumping out of the Water, and God of Longevity Admiring Apes Watching the Sky. (Apparently, even deities find primates fascinating - especially fascinated primates.)
Yet some appellations given to formations arguably take more than a smidgen of imagination.
Entering through Fairy Bridge leads to the Praying Hands Gate. The rocks at the gate are shaped like celestial beings clasping hands. Pilgrims do the same at the site to demonstrate piety.
The path then leads past a boulder said to be cleaved by the immortal Lyu Dongbing, who spent years refining the perfect sword and declared his mission accomplished upon slicing the stone in two with a mighty thwack.
Hikers then arrive at the San Kong Divine Spot, a cave created by mountainsides that touch overhead rather than a hole in the Earth.
Notches that pockmark the sheer rock face of a narrow gully between two vertical cliffs were chiseled to support crossbeams of a temple complex that filled the cracks between the formations.
Indeed, the place does seem to almost supernaturally produce its own rain. From here, visitors must crawl on their hands and knees through Immortal Cave, also perhaps more accurately known as Rolling-Over Cave, since that's virtually what you have to do to pass through it.
Those who clear this obstacle course are rewarded with good fortune, as it empties down steep stairs into the Immortals Are Very Happy Pavilion, where Han Zhongli is said to have achieved immortality via the Tao and partied with his peers in the immortal pantheon.
Visitors can sip hot beverages here, since the spot is furnished with tables and a counter offering tea.
Yet Hanxianyan's most pious place - despite being a party pad for deities and then for us mere mortals - is smack dab next to the site of a sacred sex scandal.
According to legend, the deity Tie Guali asked a land spirit to make love to a mountain spirit in front of Han Zhongli to test his devotion to spiritual purification. He passed.
But the stunt enraged the Jade Emperor, Taoism's supreme being, who is said to have turned the spirits to stone on the spot.
This tryst took place next to the Fairy Spring - a well Han Zhongli supposedly excavated while practicing alchemy.
He is believed to have shared the water with the other seven immortals when they gathered for celebrations at the aptly named Immortals Are Very Happy Pavilion. Visitors still swill from the spring for good luck.
erik_nilsson@chinadaily.com.cn
The old gingko tree on Panshan. Zhang Xiao /China Daily
Meilin Temple, built by the monk Pan Shenghua in 1522, is nearly as difficult to reach as enlightenment. For now.
Few make the bone-juddering journey up the rutted dirt road that twists around the Panshan Mountains to reach the holy site - or what's left of it, anyway.
Just two structures remain of the once colossal compound that featured 36 courtyards and 300 houses built according to the style of ancient ethnic Hakka residences.
But Panshan's peak transforms during temple fairs, when thousands of devout Buddhists descend upon this place of pilgrimage tucked away in the wilderness.
The government of Jiangxi province's Huichang county plans to further develop the area to enhance its tourism offerings.
Those who hike along a tiny trail that clings to the cliff near Meilin can discover hidden gems in the forest.
Lore holds that a 1,300-year-old ginkgo tree here sprouted from the hairpin of one of Taoism's Eight Immortals, He Xiangu, who conspired to use it to assassinate Buddha.
Locals call it the "Maiden Hair Tree", because it is said that Buddha foiled He Xiangu's plot and poked the pin into the ground, where it took root and grew leaves.
Despite such a history of ancient antagonism between the two religions, the site today infuses Buddhism with Taoist elements.
A shrine that pious locals erected in the forest in 2009 hosts a Buddhist figure in the main hall and a trio of Taoist statues in the next.
Hikers must practically scramble over the ancient tombs of two monks, colonized by moss and vegetation.
They then reach a rocky outcrop where the woods fade away to offer views of the mountains that are truly breathtaking.
The location offers panoramas of the alpine range and the emerald Xiangshui River that loops 13 miles around the mountains' bases.
Huichang plans to integrate the waterway into its summer tourism festival. Visitors can hop aboard boats to take in views of the mountains rising above bursts of blooming flowers and disembark to stay overnight in Hakka farmhouses.
Yangjiao Water Castle is one of the main sites being developing along the river. The Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) settlement is being reincarnated as a creativity base, film site and tourism destination.
Villagers won't be relocated, and renovations will be minimal, the government says.
Clover Hill Vineyards & Winery
A bird's-eye view of Clover Hill Vineyards & Winery, in Breinigsville. The winery is part of the Lehigh Valley Wine Trail.
(Jim Gavenus/Clover Hill Winery)
The Italian grape called Dolcetto is not one seen much around the region. And those who do grow and make it, such as Clover Hill Vineyard & Winery in Breinigsville, Lehigh County, understand why the grape is unique around here.
"It can be fussy," Kari Skrip Gavenus said by phone earlier this week. One of her roles at one of Pennsylvania's biggest wineries is handling marketing and the media. "Dolcetto has been a little bit of a challenge for us. Sometimes with the humidity, molds and mildews can get in there and [the grape] can really go from absolutely gorgeous to terrible looking overnight. So we've been doing some different things in the vineyard" to try to reduce the frequency. One of those strategies has been to trellis the vines differently in an attempt to spread out the grapes on the vines and allow for more circulation and air flow. "It's too soon to tell, but we are seeing more positive results," she said of their attempts to stabilize the quality of the grape.
As one of their "summer" wines, Dolcetto is a grape they'd love to attain more consistency with in the vineyard. Always a dry rose, this year the winery has followed a trend of adding some bubbles to a few of its wines and produced it with a bit of carbonation. "It's not like our Vidal Verde, but it does have a little bit of spritz to it, which has been nice. I always like it when we make it. You know it's fruity, bright cherry characteristics to it, almost a little bit of green apple type of finish and a little bit of sparkle, so I thinks it's a very good summertime wine."
It joins Vidal Verde and Chambourcin Frizzante as two newer Clover Hill wines that offer fruit and fizz, ideal companions for long days with heat and humidity. Wines with fizz, she noted, have become something of a trend in the industry, something easy enough to find when shopping in a Fine Wine & Good Spirits Store or stopping by one of the regional wineries.
Gavenus noted that while she's excited about the recent release of their vintage 2015 red wines, some are appropriate for summer while others might be a couple months ahead of the consumer interest she said that she thinks they deserve.
"We've released so many of 2015 reds and they are awesome," Gavenus said, then admitting that while a few are perfect for summer, others are better suited for fall and winter. "All I can think is that this is the worst time to release some of them. You know, it's just not what you do. Even if you're grilling burgers or steaks of things, it's hot, and you don't want to reach for something like [a fuller-bodied red]."
Here's the full list of their newest wines, available for sale and complimentary tasting at all Clover Hill locations.
2015 Dolcetto: a dry rose' that is light, fresh, and fruity with a green apple finish. This release of Dolcetto has just a slight bit of fizz. Wonderful summertime wine! $13.99
2015 Sangiovese: a medium bodied dry red wine. Sangiovese shows rich flavors of black cherry and ripe plum with toasty American (PA) oak undertones. $16.99.
2015 Pinot Noir: This vintage of Pinot a bit fuller bodied that previous years and it is truly a superstar! The wine is full of classic strawberry characteristics and soft oak notes. $16.99.
2015 Cabernet Sauvignon: This Cabernet is packed with rich oak flavors of vanilla and spice from French oak ageing and ripe fruit flavors of raspberry, blackberry and cherry. $17.99.
Here's what else Clover Hill has released and available for sale at all locations while supplies last. These are ONLY available for tasting on a regular basis at the winery in Breinigsville.
Sparkling Vidal Blanc: Welcome Clover Hill's newest sparkling wine. This bubbly is made from 100% Vidal Blanc with crisp flavors of lemon and grapefruit with soft, yeasty undertones. $16.99/bottle. $3 for 1 oz./tasting fee.
2016 Vidal Ice Wine: This Ice Wine was hand harvested in January 2016. The berries were dehydrated, frozen solid and rich in flavor and sweetness. The harvest was basket pressed and yielded 1,500 bottles of Vidal Ice Wine; or as we like to call it...liquid gold. The flavors are complex and rich including honeycomb, orange blossom and bright acidity. $32/bottle (187ml). $6 for 1 oz./ tasting fee.
Ships for specific purposes are the future of the shipbuilding industry, said a top executive of a Fuzhou-based shipbuilder.
Fujian Mawei Shipbuilding Ltd, the largest shipbuilder in Fujian province, is building the world's first oceanic mining ship.
The 227-meter ship is to be used for mining at a level of 1,600 meters beneath the surface of the sea. It will be delivered to a British ship leasing firm in December 2017, which is going to lease it to Canadian company Nautilus Minerals for mining in oceanic regions near Papua New Guinea.
After official visit, he will propose plan for development at the 11th ASEM Summit
Premier Li Keqiang's first foreign trip of the year will land him in Mongolia on Wednesday, where he is expected to add new impetus to Sino-Mongolia relations and unveil plans to ramp up Asia-Europe cooperation.
The first visit to China's northern neighbor by a premier in six years coincides with the recent formation of a new government in Mongolia, lending the Chinese leader a fresh opportunity to refine the relationship for years to come, diplomats and analysts said.
The United States will send 560 more troops to Iraq to transform a freshly retaken air base into a staging hub for the long-awaited battle to recapture Mosul from Islamic State militants, Defense Secretary Ash Carter said on Monday. The new US forces should arrive in the coming weeks.
Most of the engineers, logistics personnel, security and communications forces will concentrate on building up Qayara air base, about 40 kilometers south of Mosul. They will assist Iraqi forces planning to encircle and eventually retake the biggest city anywhere that has fallen under IS' control.
The extremist group captured Mosul in the summer of 2014. It has used the city as a main headquarters since.
The black woman in the photograph stands in calm protest, her long dress fluttering in the breeze as two policemen clad in the heavy black padding and helmets of riot gear rush to remove her from a roadway in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Officers took about 180 people into custody over the weekend in the state capital, mostly on misdemeanor charges accusing them of blocking traffic on a major thoroughfare during protests over recent police shootings of black men.
But the standoff with one woman, identified by friends as Ieshia Evans, has encapsulated for some the spirit of demonstrators across the country protesting in the past week what they decry as unjust treatment of minorities by police.
Barthelemy Courmont attends the 2016 Young Sinologists Program in Beijing.[Photo provided to Chinaculture.org]
Barthelemy Courmont is the professor at Catholic University in Lille, France, and senior research-fellow at the Paris-based Institute of International and Strategic Relations (IRIS). He is a member of the 2016 Young Sinologists Program in Beijing.
As a European child, my interest for China, Chinese history and civilization naturally started with the discovery of Marco Polos 13th Century travels. Although I didnt have any particular chance of exploring Asia yet, I developed a fascination for what was then a completely different world to me, with customs, religions and social organization totally different from what I have been growing with.
At that time, back in the 1980s, China was still a mystery for most Europeans, a country just engaged in its economic development, and still facing major problems. Traveling in China was also a dream more than a possibility. Yet, I slowly developed my interest through readings, and by learning Chinese history, as a student in Paris. I also learned about other Asian countries and societies. This fascination kept growing, to the point that it has become a basis of my academic research. Interactions between China and its neighbors, as well as with the rest of the world, are a crucial subject of contemporary international relations.
It is only years later, after visiting several Asian countries, that I finally had a chance to enter China for the first time. My second trip was rather personal and unforgettable, as I backpacked with my wife, whose mother is from Hunan province, on our honeymoon. Discovering South China, from Guangdong to Sichuan, meeting with the minorities in Guizhou and Yunnan, visiting some highlights and marvels of China. Several trips also gave me the opportunity to discover another vision of the world, based on cultural specificities that I slowly came to encounter. Later, I had the opportunity to explore most Chinese provinces, while working on a tourist book for a French publisher, which has been one of my activities parallel to my academic career for the past two decades.
Throughout my research, I have developed a deep interest in the relationship between China and the world, its emergence as a great power and its implications at the regional level, as well as its strategy in other continents. This research led me to question issues such as Chinas economic development; its military modernization; its assertiveness and its diplomacy, as well its relations with other great powers and developing countries. These questions, although mostly covered in the field of political science and international relations, relate to historic and cultural backgrounds, as essential parameters to understand Chinas rise and its consequences. I have particularly focused on Chinas soft power strategy, publishing several books and academic papers on the subject.
Sangjijia's Fragile Beauty will be staged during the Beijing Dance Festival. [Photo provided to China Daily]
An ethnic Tibetan's production is just one highlight as 15 contemporary dance works are staged by professional troupes from 10 countries, plus other 47 choreographed works, starting Wednesday. Chen Nan reports.
In 1999, Sangjijia arrived in Hong Kong and worked as a dancer at the City Contemporary Dance Company of Hong Kong. As an ethnic Tibetan from Northwest China's Gansu province, who spent his childhood herding on the grasslands and listening to monks chanting mantras, Sangjijia found himself in a totally different worldCantonese pop songs and high-rise architecture.
"I have two favorite things when it comes to Hong Kong. One is the fireworks, which illuminate the sky over Victoria Harbour during holidays, and the other is Stephen Chow's comic movies, especially the sound of his laughter," he says.
Last year, Sangjijia returned to the Hong Kong dance company as its resident choreographer.
His new work Fragile Beauty is a tribute to the city.
Premiered in Hong Kong on June 3, the production will be staged in the capital on July 22 during the upcoming Beijing Dance Festival.
"I have lived in many cities. Whenever I return to those places, I go back to where I lived and worked. When I returned to Hong Kong, I did the same thing," says Sangjijia, 42, who studied at the Minzu University of China and became a professional dancer with the Guangdong Modern Dance Company in 1993.
He moved to Paris in 1996 after winning the gold medal at the Paris International Modern Dance Competition, and began his career there as a star dancer/choreographer.
In 1998, Sangjijia lived in New York for a year after winning the Asian Cultural Council fellowship and the American Dance Festival Scholarship.
Sanjay Pulipaka attends the opening ceremony of the 2016 Visiting Program for Young Sinologists at the National Library of China on July 6, 2016. [Photo/Chinaculture.org]
Sanjay Pulipaka is a senior consultant of the East-Asian research program with the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations. His research areas include India's foreign policy and his country's relationship with China. He shared his China story and views on the two countries' relationship as he took part in the 2016 Visiting Program for Young Sinologists in Beijing.
It was in school when I heard of China for the first time. Our school text books had references about Chinese travelers visiting India. I used to wonder as to how these travelers traversed mighty mountains the Himalayas.
Little did I know that some of these travelers came into India via Central Asia and Afghanistan. Buddhism also travelled from India to China and there was movement of scholars and pilgrims such as Fa-Hein.
This movement of people resulted in enrichment of philosophies and creation of knowledge systems between the two countries. Further, they established civilization connections between the two and such connections continue to impact the interactions between these two countries.
During India's freedom struggle many Indian leaders looked at China as important country to collaborate in the fight against European colonialism in Asia.
Noted poet Rabindranath Tagore visited China and through his writings China became an intimate cultural space for many Indians. If one visits Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan, one can see the Cheena Bhavana (Institute of Chinese Language and Culture), a physical manifestation of Tagore's interest in China.
To celebrate its 4th anniversary, leading online food supplier Benlai.com has released a report on consumption habits of Chinese people, together with Yidianzixun, an internet news service.
The report is based on analysis of behaviors of the online food supplier's customers and news service users.
Chinese people are increasingly aware of healthy eating and healthy foods, as "healthy", "organic", "sugar-free" and "nutritious" are among the top 10 key words in people's search histories, according to the report.
The report also maps out the most attention-grabbing foods in each of China's different provinces. For instance, people in Heilongjiang province searched for and read about Harbin sausage news most, while people in Guangdong favored information about dim sum.
Chicken wings with Coke, beef stewed with potato, and eggs fried with tomato were among the most frequently searched dishes.
Beijing and Tianjin are among the cities where people buy most vegetables and fruits, while consumers in Beijing and Jiaxing in Zhejiang province buy more meat, eggs and seafood online.
Zhongshan in Guangdong province and Beijing buy the most imported food.
Benlai.com also announced its development strategies for the coming years, including updating its supply line, and supplying goods to offline shops.
The online platform also announced cooperation with Kweichow Moutai, producers of Moutai, the nation's most famous luxury liquor.
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This photo taken on Dec. 11, 2015 shows uniquely beautiful winter scenery of the Zhaoshu Island in the South China Sea. [Photo/Xinhua]
On July 1, the first day of Japan's one-month presidency of the 15-member United Nations Security Council, Japanese Ambassador to the UN Koro Bessho voiced "deep concern" about maritime disputes between China and some of its neighbors. He also said the Security Council would take up issues on the request of its members or other UN members. This shows Japan's eagerness to raise the so-called South China Sea issue on the international stage.
Unlike the East China Sea, where Tokyo and Beijing have a dispute over the Diaoyu Islands, Japan has no territorial claims in the South China Sea. Nevertheless, Japan, like the United States, is fueling and exploiting the tensions in the South China Sea to advance its own economic and strategic interests in Southeast Asia.
In January, Japan's Ministry of Defense announced the rerouting of its military aircraft returning from anti-piracy operations in the Horn of Africa. Instead of refueling at their traditional stopovers like Singapore and Thailand, the two P-3 Orion maritime patrol and anti-submarine aircraft landed in countries such as Vietnam, Malaysia and the Philippines. Those aircraft carried highly sophisticated equipment, designed to monitor and track vessels, including submarines.
In April, two Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force warships made a historic port call to Vietnam's strategic Cam Ranh Bay port, which faces the South China Sea. In fact, many US analysts believe the Japanese military's new refueling stopovers are clearly part of a broader plan to establish a more permanent Japanese presence in Southeast Asia.
In March, Tetsuo Kotani, a senior fellow at the Japan Institute of International Affairs, said at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan in Tokyo that Japan and other countries should join the US to carry out freedom-of-navigation patrols in the South China Sea, claiming the rise of China is the most serious challenge for Japan.
In response, speaking at the Japan's National Press Club in Tokyo on June 24, Yu Tiejun, associate professor at the School of International Studies of Peking University, warned that Japan's intervention in the South China Sea will make the issue more complicated and dangerous. That the Chinese and US militaries, according to the Chinese expert, have experienced 10 face-offs from May 2015 to May 2016 gives an idea of the gravity of the situation.
Yu said China and Japan, as well as the US have more important areas to put their efforts and energies in, but the South China Sea is not one of them. Since the South China Sea is not part of China-Japan relations, Tokyo has every reason to stay away from it.
"Japan's involvement in the South China Sea is not in anyone's interests," Yu said. "It is posing new challenges to the strategic mutual trust China and Japan are trying to build." Playing host to the summit of the world's seven most industrialized nations in May, Japan put the South China Sea issue on its agenda and orchestrated a closing statement from G7 that, without mentioning China by name, said countries should refrain from taking "unilateral actions which could increase tensions" and should avoid using "force or coercion in trying to drive their claims".
After assuming the UN Security Council presidency for one month, Japan is once again trying to internationalize the South China Sea issue in the world body. But its efforts will not bear fruit.
The author is China Daily Tokyo bureau chief.
caihong@chinadaily.com.cn
It's a strange phenomenon, but the video game which spawned the Internet tales has taken on a strange new life: as a possibly believable coverup. At least, that's what some folks seem to have thought, as they've deluged a pizza parlor in New Jersey with calls investigating the potential reality of the murderous animatronic-filled pizza lair.The pizza place in question, Freddie's Restaurant and Pizzaria in Long Branch, has been hit with hundreds of callers not in search of pizza, but in search of a certain set of characters. The volume of calls has required some changes at Freddie's, including several new phone lines and shifted employee rosters in a bid to address all the callers. Still, Freddie's soldiers on, unwilling to change its number for fear of losing even more business than would have been lost to all the people calling in looking for animatronics.Reports suggest that the pizzeria now handles up to 200 calls in an hour, and what's worse is it's not the only one. Fast Freddie's Pizza and Pasta in Roseville, California is also hit with calls routinely.It's kind of a shame that this is happening; these businesses have had their names for quite some time, and now all of a sudden here comes some game about killer robots at a kid's pizza joint and now everyone thinks you're hiding bodies in the back room, in a manner of speaking.Though it might be an opportunity as well; these various Freddy's out there might do well to offer a Fazbear Special or the like, or perhaps bring in a new animatronic statue, one that doesn't look like the originals or the newcomers, of course. But instead of lamenting the unnatural popularity, why not hitch a wagon to that star? The possibilities are there, the question is just how to take advantage of it.
LI FENG/CHINA DAILY
The floods in South and Central China continue making headlines. Photographs of soldiers trying to protect embankments against the floods have been splashed across newspapers. But the cameras seem to be trained on the main stream of the Yangtze River. The threat from the Yangtze is real yet the cameras (and reports) should not ignore the dangers posed by small and medium-sized rivers.
According to official data, water at 51 points in 39 small rivers in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River had risen above the danger levels on July 10at three points the levels were the highest in recorded history. Once an embankment breaks, the gushing waters could pose a serious threat to lives and properties. The threat to embankments on smaller rivers is more serious because they have been made with earth, not cement, and cannot withstand massive floods.
Rivers in China fall into different grades, with the upkeep of only the top ones, such as the Yangtze River and Yellow River, being the responsibility of the State. The upkeep of the other rivers is the responsibility of various levels of local governments.
The first problem with such governance is insufficient funds, because local governments don't have enough money to build or bolster embankments. Until the 1990s, this didn't pose a big problem because villagers, desperate to protect their homes, crops and other properties, could be recruited to work for free on the embankments. But the rapid pace of urbanization and migration from village to cities have made that arrangement unviable.
Some provinces tried out a new model to build embankments. For example, in East China's Zhejiang province, some local governments invested funds to build the embankments with cement and then sold the land nearby to realty developers to get their investments back. This arrangement worked when the real estate market was flourishing, but with the property market withering it is no longer sustainable.
Also, since local governments in flood-prone areas have to regularly strengthen the embankments, which becomes difficult when the land nearby is turned into a residential area and the residents face high risk of flooding during the rainy season.
In 2013, a high-end housing community in Chengdu, Southwest China's Sichuan province, was reportedly flooded. The houses built near the Jiang'an River fetched very high prices because they offered a grand view of the river. Yet they suffered during floods.
Another problem with the current river governance is lack of coordination among neighboring areas. For example, neighboring areas don't coordinate on which part of an embankment should be strengthened and which part should be designed as a flood-discharge area. Such decisions have to be made after conducting a thorough study of a river. But the current governance system "divides" smaller rivers into small parts and puts them under the governance of separate villages, which unfortunately do not coordinate on flood-control measures.
Residents of a village tend to strengthen the parts of an embankment that are vital to their own safety. As a result, floods breach the weaker parts in other areas, and economically weak villages suffer the most during floods because they cannot afford to build strong embankments.
Realizing both problems, the central government has been investing heavily since 2009 to build strong embankments. In 2012, it completed the work of strengthening key parts of embankments on small and medium-sized rivers. Although more needs to be done, the move raises hopes that first problem, of lack of funds, can be solved.
But the second problemlack of coordinationis yet to be fully addressed. It is impossible to put all rivers under State governance, but at least coordinating committees should be set up for small rivers, so that their embankments are built in an orderly way to prevent and control floods.
Cheng Xiaotao is associate engineer-in-chief at China Institute of Water Resources and Hydropower Research. This article is an excerpt from his interview with China Daily's Zhang Zhouxiang.
Missile destroyer Yuncheng launches an air-defense missile during a military exercise in the water area near south China's Hainan Island and Xisha islands, July 8, 2016. Chinese navy conducted an annual combat drill in the water area near south China's Hainan Island and Xisha islands on Friday. [Photo/Xinhua]
Just as anticipated, the South China Sea arbitral tribunal in The Hague delivered an outrageously one-sided ruling in the case initiated by the Philippines.
The Philippines, along with some other countries, may rejoice over the tribunal's de facto overthrowing of Beijing's core territorial claims. But there is no moral high ground to claim here, because the ruling is inherently biased, unjust, and thus not executable.
The ruling is "a piece of paper" that is destined to come to naught, since it does nothing except reveal the tribunal's degeneration into a political instrument.
The ruling's stillbirth was predestined, not just because of Beijing's stance of no participation and no acceptance, which it stated from the very beginning, and which it reiterated on Tuesday after the ruling was announced.
But, more importantly, because Beijing is correct in claiming that it is safeguarding international law by basing its position in strict accordance with international law and on solid jurisprudential foundations.
The tribunal's decision is guaranteed to escalate tense exchanges. Washington, which has been trampling over the law in the name of "respecting" it, will surely not let slip the opportunity the ruling offers to vilify Beijing, its own contempt for customary international law and reluctance to ratify the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea notwithstanding.
But with military activity reaching unprecedented levels in the South China Sea, there is no guarantee that an escalating war of words will not transform into something more.
While preparing itself for the possibly endless "lawfare", Beijing certainly should, and has to, ready itself for worst-case scenarios, including potential military collisions.
However, it knows peace best serves its long-term interests, and the interests of all in the region.
The test now for Beijing is whether it can realize the "pragmatic provisional arrangements" it proposed. That entails proposing attractive options, and a positive response from other claimants.
The US can rest assured, however, that its naval operations are still unnecessary, for in spite of its understandable anger, Beijing has again promised to "respect and support" freedom of navigation and overflight for all countries, and to protect international transport channels through the South China Sea.
At this point, at least, Beijing is willing to "make every effort to make pragmatic provisional arrangements, including jointly developing corresponding areas".
So while enthusiastic third parties may provide them with all ammunition they need to confront China, if the parties concerned are truly seeking peaceful solutions to the disputes, they should not miss out before Beijing has to close the door to negotiations.
In a move to gear up for a long-term standoff with Russia, NATO recently held its largest-ever summit in Warsaw, Poland, with nearly 2,000 participants from its 28 members and also more than 30 other countries and international organizations.
The summit communique cited "Russia's aggressive actions, including provocative military activities in the periphery of NATO territory and its demonstrated willingness to attain political goals by the threat and use of force" as a source of instability, a fundamental challenge to NATO, and damage to Euro-Atlantic security.
And according to NATO's Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, the summit's key agenda was to deploy new NATO units to central and eastern Europe and strengthen cooperation with partner countries and the European Union.
Moreover the measures announced for security cooperation with West Asian and North African countries indicate the bloc's intention to contain Russia's influence in these regions.
From its own perspective, NATO does want to make use of available chances to enhance its weakened cohesion after the disintegration of the Warsaw Treaty Organization and the Soviet Union.
However, different motives among different members pose a challenge to NATO's cohesion. The United States has been demanding that European allies play a bigger role and contribute more to NATO, while European members still expect the US to undertake their security responsibilities.
Such kind of policy divergences will take time to be ironed out, but NATO members' open expression of their desire to strengthen it, offers a rare opportunity for its build-up in the post-Cold War era.
The Warsaw gathering to some extent symbolizes a US order of NATO's military remobilization in Europe, which is supposed to complement Washington's rebalancing to the Asia-Pacific strategy.
UNAUTHORIZED video clips of 5,793 newly born babies in Hefei, East China's Anhui province, appeared in an online forum recently. The videos also contained personal information of the parents. China urgently needs a law to protect people's privacy, said Beijing News on Tuesday. Excerpts:
Su Jin, a resident in Hefei, found a video shot by the hospital where his son was born was available on a commercial website.
The video clips directly name the babies' parents, and include information such as the babies' gender, birth dates and the admission dates of their mothers. The video answered a question that puzzled Su, that he repetitively receives advertising phone calls from baby-related industries, from photographers to rehabilitation massage masters for new mothers.
Reporters found his son is one of 5,793 babies whose videos were uploaded on the internet, and all the videos had been leaked from the Anhui Provincial Maternal and Child Care Center in Hefei. The care center said hackers broke into its database and stole these videos, and it had already reported the case to the cyber security administration authority. But the public still suggest there are insiders involved in stealing the videos and selling them to commercial websites.
The underground market for personal information has prospered along with the spread of the internet and related businesses. The personal information dealers are unscrupulous because there is not yet a law to arm the judicial and security authorities to prohibit the lucrative business. China should not wait any longer to pass a law on personal information protection to safeguard people's privacy.
CHINA BECAME THE 165TH MEMBER of the International Organization for Migration, after its application to join the organization was approved on June 30. Beijing News commented on Tuesday:
The International Organization for Migration was founded in 1951 to help manage global migration issues, including providing training and accommodation to immigrants around the world. Joining the international organization will strengthen China's management of refugee affairs and help the country's socioeconomic development, according to Hong Lei, spokesperson for China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
In effect, China has been contributing to global immigration affairs for decades. It signed both the 1951 Refugee Convention and the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees in 1982, and has since then been accommodating refugees. At least 310,000 refugees, whose origins range from Vietnam, Afghanistan, and India to Sri Lanka and Myanmar, have managed to resettle in China.
Why China has fulfilled its humanitarian duty to take in international refugees, without falling victim to a refugee crisis like the one Europe is facing, is not difficult to explain. The endless unrest and volatile regional order in the Middle East have created a large number of people seeking refuge in nearby Europe.
Of course, most countries have very strict requirements that all asylum-seekers have to meet in order to stay. Besides, refugees normally have to find employment if they want to stay permanently.
However, China is yet to allow refugees to work for local employers, which is something that needs to be changed.
File photo of South China Sea. [Photo/Xinhua]
The long awaited, though illegal, ruling of the Arbitration Panel of the Permanent Court is out finally. In response, the Chinese government has issued a strong statement reiterating Chinas position that it will defend its territorial integrity in the South China Sea. The Filipino government sought the ruling of the Arbitration Panel of the Permanent Court to gain some advantage in its dispute over the South China Sea. Now it seems that the ruling will backfire in the end, and will only stiffen the Chinese governments will and determination to defend its territorial integrity in the South China Sea.
The ruling has violated the established practice of the international law from the very beginning. When China expressed its opposition that it would not participate or accept its ruling, the panel lost all legal basis to exist, let alone make the ruling.
The reason that the panel dared to continue its existence and make the ruling, and challenge the territorial integrity of China, a permanent member of the UN Security Council, despite Chinas repeated announcement of its position of non-participating and non-accepting its ruling, is because it served the strategic interests of the United States in the region.
Ever since the end of the Cold War, the US has been trying to undermine Chinas rise in the region and in the world by encouraging the Philippines and other countries to challenge Chinas long-established sovereignty over the South China Sea and occupy some of the islands claimed by China. The Philippines decision to seek the ruling through the panel would prove counter-productive. Apparently, it underestimated Chinas determination to defend its territorial integrity, and at the same time overestimated the US ability to help Philippines gain territorial advantage. It is in the US strategic interests to see Philippines challenge China and cause trouble for China. But it is not in the US national interests to fight for Manilas territorial gain. Philippines cannot count on the US support in its disputes with China in the long run.
The US instigation of Philippines and others to challenge Chinas territorial integrity will become a case of lifting a stone to strike its own foot in the end as well. The US hoped to intimidate China into submission by sending gunboats and carriers to the South China Sea to challenge Chinas territorial claims there. But US threatening activities at Chinas front door has aroused Chinese peoples anger and indignation. The Chinese people want the government to respond firmly to the American threat. In response to the popular demand, Chinese government has been building its military capabilities in the South China Sea ever since Philippines unilaterally sought arbitration on the South China Sea disputes.
Apparently, the US also underestimated Chinas determination to defend its own territorial integrity. The current Chinese government under President Xi Jinping will not allow the US to blackmail Chinese people through its policies of sending gunboats and carriers to the South China Sea. As Dai Bingguo, the head of the Chinese government delegate to Washington, said recently that US policy of sending gunboats and carriers to the South China Sea will not intimidate China. Even if the US sends all its ten carriers to the South China Sea, it will not be able to scare China into submission.
Now the ball is back in Philippines and US court. What can Philippines and US do in face of Chinas strong defiance? In todays world, a country can only claim a territory when it can effectively defend it. As China builds up its military capability in South China Sea, Chinas will and ability to defend what it considers its territory will force any country, including the US, to think twice before they take any action. The age of using gunboats and carriers to scare China and the Chinese people is over. The ruling of arbitration panel of the Permanent Count will go down in history, as Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi stated, simply as a joke, and inadvertently strengthen Chinas position in the South China Sea.
The author is a professor at Warren Wilson College, North Carolina, and a guest professor at Hebei University.
The opinions expressed here are those of the writer and don't represent views of China Daily website.
Australia, Canada, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States beware: A number of the islands you claim as your islands may not be islands at all in the legal sense, because the South China Sea arbitral tribunal in The Hague takes them as just rocks!
You may take it as a joke, like some Chinese on both sides of the Taiwan Straits do.
But certainly the five judges of the tribunal on the South China Sea Arbitration (The Republic of the Philippines v. the Peoples Republic of the China), formed upon unilateral initiation of the arbitration by the Philippines, should be serious in writing down their arbitral award and showing it off to the world on Tuesday, after years of scrutinized preparations. And at least the Japanese government did announce on Tuesday it will follow the tribunal.
Listen to what the tribunal claims: the Tribunal concluded that all of the high-tide features in the Spratly Islands (including, for example, Itu Aba, Thitu, West York Island, Spratly Island, North-East Cay, South-West Cay) are legally rocks that do not generate an exclusive economic zone or continental shelf.
Among the high-tide features hereby cited, Itu Aba Island, or Taiping Island in current Chinese writings, is the largest and now hosting hundreds of people under Taiwans administration. It is about 0.44 square kilometers and 3.8 meters above sea level.
And why the islands are not islands any more legally? The judges said: The Tribunal concluded that temporary use of the features by fishermen did not amount to inhabitation by a stable community and that all of the historical economic activity had been extractive in nature.
So indeed the five judges of the tribunal have their opinion, and unanimously.
But the judges are not answering to the voices of the Chinese fishermen who have been fishing for generations in the South China Sea, and are ignoring historical facts.
Chinese fishermen had long named Itu Aba feature as Huangshan Mazhi, used it as a base for livelihood, dwelling in own houses, catching sea turtles, sea cucumbers and fish for a living and raising families for long. Of course they would sometimes leave the island, but their living there could not be forgotten simply because there was no apparent physical evidence that satisfied the judges mind. They in fact sacrificed lives, not to mention any belongings, when the Japanese took Itu Aba away in 1907.
Then by 1933 the French forced the Japanese out of the island, only to find Japanese retaking it in 1939. After World War II, the occupants of the island changed a couple of times until the Chinese successfully returned in 1946 in accordance with Cairo Declaration inked by the allied countries.
And certainly the judges of the tribunal are defying the definition of island in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. The first clause of article 121 of UNCLOS says: An island is a naturally formed area of land, surrounded by water, which is above water at high tide.
Moreover, Clause 3 specifies on rocks: Rocks which cannot sustain human habitation or economic life of their own shall have no exclusive economic zone or continental shelf.
Now things are clear. By depriving Itu Aba and other islands the status of islands, the tribunal intends to authorize no legal status for its right to either exclusive economic zone or continental shelf! How political the whole farce is!
Yet worldwide, if this award is to be observed, many similar islands in a number of countries will be turned into legal rocks as well, unable to enjoy the rights to either exclusive economic zone or continental shelf.
So countries from Australia to the United States will have to think twice about this tribunals award before they decide to declare a yes to its legality.
The author is a writer with China Daily.
Shanxi province boasts rich cultural heritage and natural beauty, including the ancient town of Pingyao, grand residences of famous merchant families and the scenic Mianshan Mountain. [Photo provided to China Daily]
A visit to Shanxi province takes you back through Chinese dynasties, and you will lap up the exquisite scenery along the way. Liu Zhihua, Paige Sheffield and Sun Ruisheng report in Shanxi.
One of the first things Chinese are apt to think of when talk turns to Shanxi is coal. That's because the province is full of the stuff, and for many a year its economic prosperity has been intricately intertwined with what comes out of the ground.
However, anyone thinking about visiting Shanxi should quickly disabuse themselves of the idea that what awaits them is kilometer after kilometer of bleak coal fields.
Instead prepare yourself for an adventure of discovery that will take you back to various Chinese dynasties even as you lap up the scenerymuch of it cloaked not in black but sumptuous green. For those traveling from Beijing the added beauty of all this is that it is a mere three and a half hours away by high-speed train.
The province's name literally translates as west of the mountains, reflecting its proximity to the Taihang Mountains. To the province's east lies Hebei, to its south Henan, to its west Shaanxi and to its north the Inner Mongolia autonomous region.
The province has a population of 36 million living within its 156,000 square kilometers, whose diversity takes in its sprawling natural beauty and rich cultural heritage as well as its modernity and industrial firepower, epitomized by the capital, Taiyuan. This city has a special place in Chinese history, having been an important region in northern China during many dynasties.
For those looking for a touch of the old, one place to go is the ancient town of Pingyao, 80 km to the south, which was listed as a World Cultural Heritage Site in 1997.
A group of visitors see how handpulled noodles are made. Photos provided to China Daily
When Aidana Mukhametgaliyeva saw a notice in China Daily offering writers and photographers the chance to visit Shanxi province, she had no hesitation in applying to go.
Mukhametgaliyeva, 21, from Kazakhstan, who is studying at the China University of Political Science and Law in Beijing, had never been to Shanxi. The capital, Taiyuan, is little more than three hours by high-speed train from Beijing.
"Shanxi is a good place to visit, especially if you live in a big city such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou," she said as she returned from the trip, which ran from June 15 to 19.
"I think it's one of the must-see places in China."
In organizing the trip, China Daily and Shanxi Tourism Bureau sought non-Chinese good at writing and photography who would visit and report on some of the province's many places of interest. Fourteen people were chosen this time. It is the fourth time such trips have been organized since last year.
Among the itineraries were Pingyao ancient town, Mianshan Mountain, and well-preserved courtyards of rich merchants in the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) dynasties.
The United States was behind the Philippines, trying to stir up matters in the South China Sea in order to block China and thus improve its regional military and diplomatic presence, experts said.
They made the remark as the tribunal in The Hague issued its ruling on Tuesday in the arbitration case unilaterally initiated by the former Philippine government.
The administration of former Philippine president Benigno Aquino was used as a pawn by the US to aid its Asia-Pacific rebalancing strategy, they said.
Tao Wenzhao, a researcher of US studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said the arbitration was not solely the business of the Philippines.
"We can see that Washington, which never ratified the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, encouraged and supported Manila to initiate the arbitration case from the very beginning," Tao said, adding that top lawyers Manila hired were US citizens.
Myron Nordquist, associate director of the Center for Oceans Law and Policy at the University of Virginia School of Law, said: "Now the Filipinos are having such fun making faces at China, hiding behind the US military, thinking they are really doing something wonderful.
"If the US ever became a party to this agreement, we would have opted out, as the Chinese did."
In fact, the US established the precedent of "nonparticipation and nonacceptance" of a ruling by a third party to settle an international dispute in the Nicaragua case of the 1980s.
Recently, seven US warships have been patrolling the South China Sea, including the aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan as well as three destroyers sailing close to Chinese reefs and islands.
Oskar Krejci, director of the Institute of Global Studies at the University of Jan Amos Komensky Prague, said what the US is doing in the region is not acting as someone trying to restore balance would act.
Instead, it acts as a purveyor of "a military presence strategy, and therefore is making an effort to maintain US hegemony in the region", Krejci said.
If the situation in the South China Sea intensifies, the US will have more excuses to increase its military deployment in the Asia-Pacific, an important part of its rebalancing policy, Tao said.
Wang Shaopu, director of the Japan Study Center at Shanghai Jiaotong University, told Xinhua News Agency that Japan has adapted itself to Washington's Asia-Pacific rebalancing strategy to counter China, and its interference in the South China Sea is an example.
Jia Xiudong, a senior research fellow at the China Institute of International Studies, said the impartiality of the ruling itself is questionable since four of the five arbitrators responsible for the case were picked by a Japanese rightist Shunji Yanai, former president of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea.
Rescuers stand at the site where two passenger trains collided in the middle of an olive grove in the southern village of Corato, near Bari, Italy, July 12, 2016. [Photo/Agencies]
ROME -- A dramatic head-on crash between two trains, one the most serious accidents in Italy in recent years, has left at least 25 victims and more than 50 injured, according to local press.
The accident happened at around 11:30 a.m. local time on Tuesday, when one train hit another going the other way on a single-track railway in a countryside area between the towns of Ruvo di Puglia and Corato in Puglia region.
Both trains had four carriages. The first aerial photograph from firefighters showed the twisted metal of the first two carriages on each train, with wreckage strewn across a large area.
"It was a frightful, unbelievable scene," one of the first police officers who rushed to the spot was quoted as saying by ANSA news agency. "I saw dead people, others asking for help, people crying. It was the most terrible scene in my life," he added.
The bodies of a mother and her daughter were found holding onto each other in the debris, according to ANSA sources.
"My daughter also was on that train, she was here on a holiday," a woman in tears told Rai state television. "Her cellphone has been disconnected for three hours. I do not know anything about her," she said.
"I was about to irrigate my field when I first heard a siren from the trains, but it was useless because immediately after there was the crash. I saw some girls shouting and crying, and other people coming out of the trains with parts of their body missing," said one of the first witnesses on the scene.
A six-year-old child was the first passenger rescued by firefighters who pulled him out of the debris. The child, named Samuele, was brought to hospital in helicopter and was not in life peril.
Rescue activities were in full swing until late in the evening, but the operations were very complicated because the crash happened in a remote rural area.
Egypt wants to become among the top five or top 10 Chinese investment destinations in the next few years. Currently, China ranks 23rd in investment
Egypt's Minister of Investment Dalia Khorshid and Minister of Trade and Industry Tarek Kabil held a joint news conference in Beijing on Tuesday.
Khorshid said that China's Belt and Road Initiative provide a good opportunity for both sides to enhance cooperation. Egypt is now improving its investment policies and environment to attract more Chinese companies.
She said that Chinese investment is very welcomed, particular in sectors such as power, transportation, infrastructure and fiberglass and textile industries.
There are 1,269 Chinese companies established in Egypt with total contributions of $548 million, 68 percent of their capital is in the industrial sector, 15 percent is directed to financing services, while 9 percent is in the ICT sector.
Kabil said that China's capital, loans and financing platforms are also needed in Egypt's development. They also would like to learn from Chinas' experience in economic development, such as how to encourage numerous of small- and medium-sized companies to prosper, and building industrial parks.
He said Egypt has already done a lot in the building of infrastructure. Its economy is recovering, and in the past two years the annual growth was 2.5 percent, and is expected to reach about 5 percent next year.
Moreover, Egypt has a population of about 9 million, which is growing by 2.5 percent every year. Egypt is also an well-placed for Chinese companies to enter Europe and Middle East market, which means, entering Egypt will help Chinese companies reach the total size of market of 1.6 billion people, he said.
As tourism is an important part of economic growth, Egypt would also like to attract more Chinese tourist. They expect the number of 2016 will double that of the 2015, which was about 115,000 Chinese tourists.
Ministry of Investment delegation headed by Khorshid is in Beijing for the Joint Egyptian-Chinese Ministerial Committee meetings held from July 11th to 12th. The Egyptian delegation headed by Kabil will discuss with China's 15 specific capacity-building projects, which are the top priority for both the Egyptian and Chinese governments.
The United Nations said on Wednesday it has nothing to do with the Permanent Court of Arbitration.
In a post posted on its official Sina Weibo account, the UN said that the PCA is a "tenant" of the Peace Palace in The Hague, "but has nothing to do with the UN".
The UN said the International Court of Justice, its principal judicial organ set up according to the charter of the UN, is also located in the Peace Palace.
The construction of the palace was managed by the Carnegie Foundation, which is still the building's the owner and manager, according to the palace's official website.
The UN said in its weibo account that it needs to make an annual donation to the foundation for using the palace.
LONDON - Two British experts said lately that the arbitral tribunal in The Hague should not have agreed to hear the South China Sea case unilaterally initiated by the Philippines against China.
The government of former Philippine President Benigno Aquino III filed the arbitration against China in 2013, ignoring the agreement his country had reached with China on resolving their South China Sea disputes through bilateral negotiations.
The tribunal issued its final award on Tuesday, sweepingly siding with Manila's cunningly packaged claims.
"There is a current anticipated crisis in the South China Sea prompted by a Court of Arbitration decision to hear a one-party claim to a part of the South China Sea," said Stephen Perry, chairman of the 48 Group Club, in a recent interview with Xinhua.
"Arbitration is defined in the dictionary as a dispute where the parties have agreed to settle it by arbitration. Clearly China does not accept arbitration to settle the dispute, so the Court should not have agreed to hear this dispute presented by only one party," he said.
Noting that the two nations should pursue other means they agreed to settle their dispute, Perry explained that "the dispute cannot be settled ... by a process which only includes one party. It is not an arbitration."
"I have been involved in many hundreds of arbitrations and always both parties agree on arbitration, or there is no arbitration," added the businessman.
Shahid Qureshi, London Post's editor and political analyst, said the fact that "the tribunal has allowed the case to go ahead in spite of its lack of justifiable jurisdiction" poses a big question mark to the tribunal's "intention" and "interest."
"I am of the view that the tribunal must review its position and jurisdiction for the sake of institution it stands for; otherwise it will become a joke in the legal history as they did not follow the due process of law," Qureshi noted.
He pointed out that the Philippines, filing the case without consulting with China, failed to fulfill its obligation stipulated in the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC), a document signed by China and members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations including the Philippines in 2002.
"I think under the terms and conditions stipulated in DOC, the Philippines seems to have jumped higher than necessary and must review its position," he said.
Stressing that "local solutions" are always the best, Qureshi argued that "the Philippines could talk with China about the matters arising about the situation in the South China Sea."
The analyst also said the real reason behind the so-called "militarization" in the South China Sea is the military involvement and "war profiteering" of the United States, which in recent years has sent military jets and warships on close-in reconnaissance in the nearby waters and air space of China's islands and reefs.
"The US has a policy of creating wars or disputes within the countries and also in the neighboring countries of the targets (based on its long term objectives), starting from Vietnam, Korea, Afghanistan, Iraq," he explained.
"One can ask a simple question to US officials: 'What are you doing in my neighborhood in the first place'?" Qureshi said.
SEOUL -- South Korea's defense ministry on Wednesday announced an agreement with the United States to deploy the US missile defense system, called Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD), to its southeastern region despite continued opposition from neighboring countries.
One THAAD battery will be deployed to the Seongsan-ri region of the Seongju county in North Gyeongsang province, where South Korean Air Force's Hawk surface-to-air missile battery is located.
Yoo Jeh-seung, deputy defense minister for policy, said at a nationally televised briefing that the county was proposed as the best site to maximize military effectiveness and secure safety of residents in the region, which was approved by defense ministers of South Korea and the United States.
After Friday's decision between Seoul and Washington to deploy US interceptors in the South Korean soil, the decision for the deployment site was announced earlier than expected amid mounting opposition and controversies at home and abroad.
On Friday, Seoul said the site would be announced within weeks, but nationwide protests against the THAAD deployment had spread especially in candidate sites, prompting the country to announce it just five days after the deployment decision. The two countries aim to deploy the US missile defense system in the site by the end of next year.
China and Russia have expressed strong opposition to the THAAD deployment in the South Korean soil as its X-band radar can spot Chinese and Russian territories far beyond the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK).
The AN/TPY-2 radar can detect 600-800 km with a terminal mode, which South Korea plans to adopt, but it can be converted at any time, and takes less than a day to change, into a forward-based mode that ranges as far as 2,000 km because the two versions have the same hardware.
The THAAD battery will be operated by the US Forces Korea (USFK) and the radar operation will not be made transparent.
"Even if (Seoul and Washington) try to politically promise (not to keep watch on Chinese and Russian territories), such pledge has no meaning in technical terms," said Cheong Wooksik, director of Peace Network, a local civic group.
Britain's Home Secretary Theresa May, who is due to take over as prime minister on Wednesday, waves as she leaves after a cabinet meeting at number 10 Downing Street, in central London, Britain July 12, 2016. [Photo/VCG]
LONDON - Theresa May will take over the job of British prime minister from David Cameron on Wednesday after a series of political shocks caused by Britain's vote to leave the European Union.
May, who has been interior minister for six years and is seen by her supporters as a safe pair of hands to steer Britain through the disruptive process of leaving the EU, will become Britain's second woman prime minister, after Margaret Thatcher.
Cameron, who led the campaign to remain in the 28-member bloc Britain had joined in 1973, announced the morning after the June 23 referendum that he would stand down, triggering a leadership contest in the ruling Conservative Party.
The contest had been due to last until September but ended unexpectedly on Monday when junior energy minister Andrea Leadsom, May's last rival candidate after others were eliminated, abruptly pulled out.
After taking part in his last weekly session of Prime Minister's Questions (PMQs) in parliament's House of Commons at lunchtime, Cameron will make his way to Buckingham Palace to tender his resignation to Queen Elizabeth.
May will then enter Number 10 Downing Street as prime minister before the end of the day.
She is expected to immediately start putting together a new cabinet, a complex political balancing act in which she will try and satisfy opposing camps in her party, which was bitterly split over the EU issue.
Before the referendum, May had campaigned for Britain to remain in the EU, albeit in a low-key fashion. Since the vote, she has repeatedly said that "Brexit means Brexit" and her backers say she is determined to make the exit a success.
It will depend on 'level of threat' from others, senior diplomat says
Flight attendants of Hainan Airlines arrive at Zhubi Reef in the South China Sea on Wednesday. The airplane was one of two airliners that landed for the first time on runways on Meiji Reef and Zhubi Reef.Feng Yongbin/China Daily
China could set up an air defense identification zone over the South China Sea if it felt threatened, a senior diplomat said on Wednesday amid rising maritime tensions caused by the Philippines' arbitration case.
Liu Zhenmin
The declaration of such a zone, which would require aircraft entering the zone to identify themselves to the military, will depend on "the level of threat we receive", said Vice-Foreign Minister Liu Zhenmin.
"If our security is being threatened, of course we have the right to demarcate a zone. This would depend on our overall assessment," Liu said, adding that other countries should not "take this opportunity to threaten China" and not "let it become the origin of a war".
"China's aim is to turn the South China Sea into a sea of peace, friendship and cooperation," he added.
Liu made the remarks at a news conference during which a white paper was released by the State Council Information Office. The five-chapter white paper elaborated on China's policy of adhering to "the position of settling through negotiation the disputes between China and the Philippines in the South China Sea".
Guo Weimin
The core of the disputes between China and the Philippines lies in territorial issues caused by the Philippines' invasion and illegal occupation of some islands and reefs of the Nansha Islands, the white paper says.
Liu accused the five judges of the temporary Arbitral Tribunal at The Hague, which announced its ruling in the case on Tuesday, of "making money from the Philippines", adding that "maybe other people gave them money, too".
The tribunal, which ruled that China has no "historic title" over the South China Sea, has no jurisdiction over sovereignty issues, Liu said.
A Japanese former president of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, Shunji Yanai, "manipulated the entire proceedings" from behind the scenes, Liu added.
The diplomat also questioned whether the five judges, four from EU countries and the Ghanaian chairman, a longtime resident of Europe, could understand the complex geographic politics of Asia.
Mr. Qian and MS. Mwinzi unveils the SAISUC. Photo/Liu Hongjie
China and Kenya on Tuesday promoted the building of skills needed by young people for employment.
Aviation Industry of China International (AVIC INTL) held the opening ceremony of the third Africa Tech Challenge (ATC) on Tuesday in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi and the Sino-Africa Industrial Skill Upgrading Center (SAISUC) was unveiled.
"As one of the successful overseas Chinese state-owned companies, AVIC is responsible for contributing to African society and local people through enhancing local human capacity building, which is also helping Kenya to develop its own manufacturing industry," said Qian Rong, deputy president of AVIC-INTL Project Engineering Company, during the opening ceremony.
Mr. Qian speaks during the ceremony. Photo/Liu Hongjie
Aiming at empowering innovation and creativity, ATC inspires the African youth through intensive training programs.
AVIC INTL in Kenya develops the competition under one of their corporate social responsibility projects. The first ATC competition was launched onJune 10, 2014 by AVIC INTL and the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (MoEST) in Kenya. In the past two years, seven students received full scholarship for post-graduate study in China through ATC and the finalist teams had opportunities to work as interns with technical companies.
Dinah Jerotich Mwinzi, principal secretary of MoEST, said that when she saw machinery to be exported with the logo "Made in Kenya", it made her very proud of her country. The machinery was manufactured at two technical schools, the Kabete National Polytechnic and the Nyeri National Polytechnic, whose students won the manufacturing contract in the first ATC in 2014. Now their products are even exported to China.
Qian, the deputy president, said AVIC INTL is also looking forward to helping more African youth build their competitive technical skills in other African countries like Uganda and Zambia, while also establishing another training center in the west African country of Ghana.
In a move that could help tip the balance of power in the U.S. Senate to the Democrats next year, former Democratic Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh is expected to campaign for a Senate seat representing the Hoosier State, the Associated Press reported Monday. The seat is currently held by GOP Sen. Dan Coats, who is retiring after this session of Congress. If Bayh officially re-enters the race, and if he wins in November, here are a few tidbits for you based on his previous K-12 record in Congress.
Bayh, who left the Senate in 2011, joined a fight to help save Race to the Top, the federal competitive-grant program that was one of the early, signature education initiatives from President Barack Obamas administration. Back in July 2010, for example, he joined 12 of his then-colleagues in the Senate in opposing budget cuts that would have stripped money out of Race to the Top and other administration priorities.
The cuts approved by the House of Representatives and opposed by Bayh and fellow senators aimed to eliminate $800 million in federal spending$500 million would have come from the $4.35 billion Race to the Top program, $200 million from the Teacher Incentive Fund (which backed teacher pay-for-performance programs), and $100 million from the charter school program. He was an ally of Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., during this budget fight , in which Race to the Top funding ultimately prevailed.
Based on this record, its fair to guess that Bayh would fight against proposed K-12 cuts in future sessions of Congressespecially if former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, for whom Bayh was a top surrogate during her 2008 presidential run, becomes the next president and gets into scraps with a GOP-controlled House of Representatives about the budget. But its unclear if Bayh feels as strongly about Race to the Top as he did six years agoafter all, the programs overall popularity has declined.
And back in 2009, following the death of Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., a longtime K-12 policy leader, Bayh was mentioned a senator who could step in and fill the void on education issues. Kennedys death came at a time when reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act was on peoples minds. (Ultimately, of course, it took another six years for ESEA to be reauthorized.)
Photo: In this photo taken May 1, 2016, former Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh speaks in Indianapolis. Bayh is expected to make another run for Senate in Indiana, Democratic officials said Monday, July 11, 2016, a development that would dramatically improve the partys chances to win back the vacant seat, and Senate control along with it. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)
Follow us on Twitter at @PoliticsK12 .
A civil rights organization has filed a lawsuit in Mississippi arguing that charter schools there are unconstitutionally funded.
Charter schools are public schoolsin that they receive public moneybut they are run by individuals or groups and overseen by appointed nonprofit boards separate from the traditional district system.
The Southern Poverty Law Center filed the lawsuit on behalf of seven parents from Jackson. It says that because charter schools are not overseen by either local or state boards of education, they are constitutionally prohibited from receiving public money.
In some ways this argument echoes one that was made successfully in Washington State, when its supreme court struck down the states charter law last September. (Lawmakers have since passed a retooled law so charters are back up and running there for the time being.)
I would expect to see more of these lawsuits in the future, said Todd Ziebarth, the senior vice president for state advocacy and support for the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. I think [Washington] will inspire people to reexamine litigation to stop charters and inform the arguments they make. The big question is whether they can make those arguments fit the state theyre in.
The Mississippi suit further claims that its unconstitutional to require local districts to share property tax money with schools they dont run.
Although Mississippi has had a charter law on the books since 2010, the first charter school wasnt approved to open until after lawmakers revamped the law in 2013. Two schools have since opened in Jackson with more on their way.
In addition to other things, the 2013 law created a specialized statewide board to approve and oversee charters. Its members are appointed, not elected. Such boards have been pushed as a best practice by the National Association of Charter School Authorizers (authorizer being the term used for groups that have been given authority under state law to approve the opening of new charter schools and close poorly performing schools).
Washington is another state that adopted a single, statewide authorizing board, although traditional districts can also become authorizers under state law.
Washingtons charter law was also challenged on the grounds that charter schools were not entitled to public money they were receiving because they were not overseen directly by elected boards. The Washington State Supreme Court ruled in favor of the challengers last September, effectively outlawing charter schools until the legislature passed a bill to change the funding source for charters and to include a tad more elected oversight of charters, among other things.
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A recent study found that giving middle school math teachers access to inquiry-based lesson plans and online support significantly improved student achievement and benefited weaker teachers the most.
The effect on learning was about the same as moving from an average-performing teacher to one at the 80th percentile.
The authors, C. Kirabo Jackson, an associate professor of human development and social policy at Northwestern University, and Alexey Makarin, a Ph.D. student in economics at the university, conducted the study with about 360 teachers in three Virginia school districts. Teachers were randomly assigned to one of three groups: a control group that maintained business as usual, a group that received a login for the online curriculum, and a group that received both a login and some online supports for using the lesson plans.
The teachers had access to seven lesson plans, which revolved around real-world situations and were intended to be used over two to five class periods. The lessons directly talk about things like the XBox , McDonalds , the NBA students are interested in those topics, said Kirabo in a phone interview. In these inquiry-based lessons, the teacher is really more of a facilitator, he added. Shes certainly guiding them toward a goal but not telling them what to do.
Least effective teachers see most benefit
Use of the lesson plans, all created by the company Mathalicious, was voluntary. On average, teachers taught about two or three of the lesson plans.
Even so, the authors saw some noteworthy effects. Giving teachers both the lesson plans and support had a positive, significant effect on students end-of-year math test scores, according to the study, which was published as a working paper by the National Bureau of Economic Research. (These teachers increased their students test scores by about 10 percent of a standard deviation relative to the control group.) Only giving teachers access to the lesson plans also had a positive effect, though it was not statistically significant.
The weaker teachers, those who were generally less effective at improving student performance, saw the greatest benefits from being given the off-the-shelf lessons. For these teachers who are not that strong, its allowing them to use that lesson instead of their efforts at teaching these topics and [giving students a] deep understanding, said Jackson. They also dont have to spend time coming up with lessons so it frees them up to do other things.
A much better investment
Jackson noted that the intervention is also very low costonly about $430 per teacher.
A bunch of studies that look at professional development find the effect is zero , he said. This is a much better investment than a lot of the PD thats currently being implemented by schools. (A 2014 review of 600 studies on math professional development for K-12 teachers found just two studies showing positive effects on students math proficiency, as weve written.)
Giving teachers lesson plans is also cheaper and easier to scale than other interventions aimed at improving student achievement, such as removing ineffective teachers and giving teachers incentives to put in greater effort, the study notes.
The results of the study are likely somewhat generalizable, said Jackson, but a key takeaway is that the lesson plans given to teachers must be well-designed and promote deep understanding. The difference here would be the quality of the lessons, not that you have a lesson per se, he said.
However, its important to note that determinations about which instructional materials are high quality have caused many a feud . Recently, such debates have centered around whether both textbooks and materials that are freely available on the Internet are aligned to the Common Core State Standards .
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For more information on this topic, read Education Weeks special report, Navigating New Curriculum Choices .
An increasing number of public school districts are recruiting area home-school students to their online course offerings in a practice that secures per-student state funding, according to experts that have tracked the trend.
The Lexington Herald Leader reports that school districts across Kentucky are hoping to recruit from an estimated pool of more than 20,000 home-schooled students to enroll in online offerings. The advantage for districts, local officials told the Herald Leader, is that once a student is enrolled, the district can count the student towards its overall enrollment, thus expanding the per-pupil funding it receives from the state.
At least one district in the commonwealth, Wayne County Public Schools, is offering free access to online courses for area home-schooled students, saying the move actually makes sense for the district financially.
For their part, home-schooled students who take online courses may be able to earn a diploma from their district, while still satisfying their preference for off-campus instruction.
The financial implications remain a point of confusion for some. Heres how state officials said it should work: Overall, districts receive $3,200 in state funds for students who are enrolled full-time. For home-school students who are enrolled part-time in online courses, districts will receive a pro-rated portion of that total amount.
In Wayne County, it costs districts an estimated $100 to provide a single student with a single online course, making the arrangement profitable for the school district.
Rachel Coleman, the executive director of the Coalition for Responsible Home Education, spoke to Education Week by phone about what she sees as a trend toward a similar dynamic of incentive structures emerging in states across the country.
Its a gray area, she said, in part because a student who enrolls in a public school system, even if only online, isnt really being home-schooled any longer.
Furthermore, while many home-schooling providers (generally parents) welcome the idea of additional support and resources from local districtssuch as a teacher who checks in on their childs progress periodicallyother parents chafe at the idea of the regulatory strings that are often attached to such programs.
Overall, Coleman, whose group advocates for greater oversight of home schools as well as for more flexibility and openness towards homeschooling on behalf of local school districts, cautiously supports programs like the ones pushed by Wayne County schools.
Im O.K. with programs like that, providing that students are getting more than a token level of services, she said. Among the added supports she hopes to see are options to participate in social events and extracurricular activities.
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North China University of Water Conservancy and Electric Power's "toilet building" and the Beijing Daxing International Airport with its vagina-shaped runways.
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A new building at a government university in Zhengzhou, Henan clearly resembles a gigantic toilet and is drawing humorous and scathing commentary on Chinese social media.
Pundits surmise the resemblance to a toilet bowl is intentional since the building belongs to the appropriately named the North China University of Water Conservancy and Electric Power (NCWU). NCWU is a public university and construction of the toilet-shaped building was fully funded by the government.
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The building remains unopened but is going to be used for student employment services. University officials claim the building's resemblance to a toilet is unintentional but skeptics question this citing the university's educational focus.
NCWU is a full-time public university specializing in water resources and hydropower, with engineering as a key program.
China's government-run newspaper, the People's Daily, also reported the building looks like a huge toilet. Some netizens even praised the architect for his wry sense of humor. Others questioned why the university even approved the insulting design.
The eye-catching architectural marvel, situated at the North China University of Water Conservancy and Electric Power in Heinan, China, is fully funded by the Chinese government because NCWU is a public university.
"From a fengshui standpoint, the design is very auspicious. We should give it some time," said a social media comment.
The construction of the "crappy" building, however, comes almost two years since President Xi Jinping called for less ostentatious or weird buildings in China. Xi made the comment in October 2014 after an unending flood of comments on Weibo and other social media poking fun at some of China's new buildings and infrastructure that resemble private parts of the human anatomy.
Special derision was levied at the Beijing Daxing International Airport, which is currently being built, whose design resembles a giant vagina or "vajayjay" as Chinese netizens say. The airport was designed by the late British architect, Zaha Hadid, who became famous for her flamboyant architecture.
A scale model of the airport triggered the social commentary on its unfortunate shape. Construction of the new airport is scheduled to be completed by September 2019.
When completed and if the vagina-shaped design remains unchanged (which it probably will), the new airport will join other Chinese architectural embarrassments such as the penis-shaped People's Daily Building in Beijing and the CCTV building, also in Beijing, that's been nicknamed "big pants."
The Beijing Daxing International Airport doesn't yet have an official name and netizens on Weibo should have a grand time inventing an appropriate name for its appropriate shape.
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TagsNorth China University of Water Conservancy and Electric Power, Beijing Daxing International Airport, Beijing, china, Henan, People's Daily Building
(Photo : Reuters) Jia Yueting, co-founder and head of LeEco. The Chinese company is seeking to establish a foothold in India.
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LeEco has appointed Qualcomms Jaiteerth Patwari to head its e-commerce platform LeMall in India.
Patwari was with Qualcomm for past 14 years, where he developed patents for innovations related to content monetization and distribution. He is known for rolling out the world's first Qualcomm mobile application store and messaging products. He will head the R&D department and will be responsible for developing and supporting LeEco's e-commerce business in India, according to ET Telecom.
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We are very delighted to bring Jaiteerth on board, who will bring with him a wealth of experience which were sure will be fruitful for us in our India journey, said Atul Jain, COO of Smart Electronics Business, LeEco India, in a statement.
Jain said that the company is hiring top-notch talent for its leadership team to fortify its presence in India.
Meanwhile, Patwari has said that he is delighted to join the LeEco family at such a critical junction of its growth journey in India. He said that the team would aggressively scale up the operations of the LeMall and strengthen its presence in India.
The Chinese Internet company is planning to employ 50 more engineers with the talent of building a highly scalable e-commerce platform, The Economic Times reported. It is also considering setting up 5-10 flagship stores in key cities within the next 3-6 months of getting the necessary government approvals. The company has already filed an application with the Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) seeking approval to open single brand retail shops in the country.
LeEco Indias has its headquarter in Bengaluru. It has been operating in India for over six months with more than 200 employees and plans to hire over 1000 people by the end of 2016.
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TagsLeeco, LeMall, Qualcomm, Jaiteerth Patwari, LeEco India, LeEco R&D, LeEco e-commerce
(Photo : YouTube) The Uhans S1 is being sold with a free silicone case and protective glass.
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To attract consumers and boost sales, the Uhans S1 now comes with a free silicone case and protective glass. The new Uhans S1 package has two extra set of silicone cases and protective glass included.
The Uhans S1 protective glass is coated with an oleophobic layer, which would protect the device from smudges, according to GizChina. It also has a 2.5D curving.
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These kinds of accessories usually sell for about $15 a piece, making it a great addition to the Uhans S1 package. As the smartphone market gets more and more crowded, manufacturers are making their products more appealing by incorporating free accessories such as the ones added by Uhans.
Uhans is a relatively new player in the smartphone market. The company has released only a handful of products like the Uhans U100 and the U200.
Looking at its specs, the Uhans S1 is not exactly built to be a flagship killer. The device is geared towards the mid- to lower- tiered market.
According to Android Headlines, the Uhans S1 has a decent 5-inch display with 1280 x 720 resolution. It has 3GB of memory and 32GB of expandable storage space. Its body is made of glass and metal. At the heart of the Uhans S1 is a 64-bit MT6753 octa-core processor with a 2,200mAh battery pack. It runs on Android 6.0 Marshmallow and has a 13-megapixel main camera and 5-megapixel front facing camera.
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Chinese HQ-9 surface-to-air missile battery.
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Short of declaring war on the Philippines or imposing a unilateral air defense identification zone (ADIZ) that might trigger a war, China is left with few options to peacefully enforce its claims to own most of the disputed South China Sea.
The July 12 ruling of the United Nations' Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) in The Hague nullified China's "nine-dash line" China says proves its ownership of the South China Sea based on "historical rights."
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This adverse ruling also extinguishes any semblance of legitimacy of China's now unlawful claim. Legal experts said China risks violating international law if it continues to ignore the ruling.
Under the United Nations Convention of the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which the Philippines used as the basis for its lawsuit and which China also signed, China is supposed to withdraw from the disputed areas and pay the Philippines compensation for the economic damage its "nine-dash line" policy caused.
None of these punitive measures will come to pass, however, since China has declared the court's decision "null and void."
On the other hand, Washington is warning China has kept adding military hardware and weapons to its man-made islands in the South China Sea. U.S. State Department spokesman John Kirby said Washington has seen signs of continued militarization by China in the South China Sea over the past few weeks.
The arbitral court's ruling declared large areas of the South China Sea as neutral international waters or the exclusive economic zones of other countries such as the Philippines, and not owned solely by China based on specious historical arguments with no basis in modern international law. China boycotted the tribunal's proceedings.
The PCA upheld practically all the points raised by the Philippines, which filed the case against China in 2013.
"The Tribunal concluded that there was no legal basis for China to claim historic rights to resources within the sea areas falling within the 'nine-dash line'," it declared in a statement.
It said there was no legal basis for China to claim historic rights to resources within its "nine-dash line" covering almost 90 percent of the South China Sea. It ruled none of China's reefs and holdings in the Spratly Islands entitle China to a 200 mile exclusive economic zone.
The court also ruled China had breached the Philippines' sovereign rights by endangering Philippine ships and fishing and oil projects.
With the ruling, China is being painted an outlaw state for refusing to heed the findings of the PCA.
This perception isn't being helped by China's President Xi Jinping rejecting the tribunal's ruling and affirming China's "territorial sovereignty and marine rights" in the seas will not be affected.
"China will never accept any claim or action based on those awards," Xi said.
China's ambassador to the United States was even more bellicose, declaring the ruling makes war against the U.S. more possible. Cui Tiankai said the tribunal's decision will "intensify conflict and even confrontation."
He blamed the rise in tensions in Asia on the United States' "pivot" to Asia announced by President Barack Obama in 2012. Cui said the arbitration case "will probably open the door of abusing arbitration procedures."
"It will certainly undermine and weaken the motivation of states to engage in negotiations and consultations for solving their disputes," said Cui.
"It will certainly intensify conflict and even confrontation."
The United States, which China has accused of stoking tensions and militarizing the South China Sea with patrols and exercises, said the ruling should be treated as final and binding.
"We certainly would urge all parties not to use this as an opportunity to engage in escalatory or provocative action," said White House spokesman Josh Earnest.
The South China Sea is believed to hold a massive wealth of untapped oil and gas reserves. In addition, some $4.5 trillion in trade transits the South China Sea every year.
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TagsPermanent Court of Arbitration, Philippines, china, United Nations Convention of the Law of the Sea, nine dash line, Xi Jinping, South China Sea
(Photo : Getty Images.) IKEA has announced that it would recall all of its problematic Malm dressers sold in China between 1999 and 2016.
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After two weeks of unrelenting pressure from the Chinese government, Swedish furniture giant IKEA on Tuesday announced that it would recall its Malm series sets of drawers in China.
According to a statement published on official website of China's General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection, and Quarantine (AQSIQ), IKEA would recall all its Malm dressers and chests that were sold between 1999 and 2016 in China.
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According to CNBC, AQSIQ said on its official website that any Chinese customer who wishes to return IKEA's Malm dressers and chests will be offered complete compensation, or could demand IKEA to fit their existing Malm furniture to the wall. The installation will be done completely free of charge.
The New York Times reported that Xian Jiaxin, IKEA's spokeswoman, said in an interview that Consumer safety is very important for the company, which is the reason why it made the decision to also issue the recall order in China.
Last month, the Swedish furniture maker announced that it would recall 36 million chests and dressers from US and Canada over safety concerns. The announcement came after the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) warned that Malm-branded chests and dressers could topple from the wall if not installed properly, which could prove dangerous especially for young children.
IKEA's decision to recall the drawer set immediately resulted in a backlash in China, as the company had excluded the Chinese market from its recall. China's state-owned media news agency, Xinhua, criticized the Swedish company for its apparent double standard.
"The behavior shown contradicts the 'IKEA spirit' that founder Ingvar Kamprad talks about, being helpful and responsible," Xinhua wrote in its editorial. "China is a huge market, and should not be deprived of the high standards that the brand promises."
Chinese consumers had also expressed their frustration about the decision of the Swedish company to exclude China from the recall. Hordes of Chinese consumers criticized IKEA on Chinese social media Weibo, describing the company's decision to exclude China from recall decision as "discriminatory."
Experts have noted that IKEA's announcement on Tuesday to include China in its recall decision clearly shows growing power of Chinese consumers. China has helped many global multinational companies to keep a tab on their declining profits and revenues and the expectations of Chinese customers for safety and quality have increased.
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(Photo : Getty Images) Qualcomm President Derek Aberle speaks at a press event at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center for the 2015 International CES in Las Vegas, Nevada.
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While tech giants Verizon Communications and chipmaker Qualcomm have been pushing to introduce 5G wireless technology as early as next year, they are looking at China for global-standard processes, a Bernstein Research report revealed.
According to the research, China plays a significant role in 5G standards. Unlike AT&T and Verizon, the country has concentrated less on residential broadband. Chinese smartphone maker Huawei plans to become an exporter of 5G technology.
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"China has a strong vested interest in insuring a significant amount of Chinese technology is embedded in the 5G standard - finally freeing them of their dependency on foreign technology and the need to pay royalties," the Bernstein Report revealed. "Their vision of 5G is the most revolutionary; China Mobile's chief scientists of wireless technology is calling to 'rethink the fundamentals' of mobile technology."
On Monday, Verizon claimed its 5G radio specifications have been finalized and its plans to kick off 5G commercially next year, although plans are still vague. Qualcomm, on the other hand, has started introducing 5G technology to a slate of applications.
5G is known not only going to increase wireless speeds but also boost the Internet of Things, where applications require always-on, low-data-rate connections.
"5G standardization will happen in a more concentrated industry than 3G or 4G," the research said, adding that the main network contributors would be Ericsson, Nokia, and Huawei, while Qualcomm will continue to become the chip leader. Furthermore, there will be a restricted list of leaders, namely, China Mobile, Japan's NTT DoCoMo, AT&T, and Verizon as well as Vodafone and Deutsche Telecom.
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(Photo : Getty Images) Beijing has rejected a Hague-based court ruling dismissing China's claims to the South China Sea as a violation of the provisions of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).
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Chinese President Xi Jinping on Tuesday dismissed the Hague arbitral court ruling rejecting China's claims to the South China Sea as "illegal" and "null and void" saying that Beijing would not accept any future proposition or action based on the ruling.
President Xi said the ruling issued by the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) in the case which the Philippines unilaterally initiated is not binding on China. He said that Beijing would continue to uphold its sovereignty to its territories in the South China Sea and defend its rights to its controlled-islands despite the ruling.
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"China's territorial sovereignty and maritime interests in the South China Sea, under any circumstances, will not be affected by the award," he said.
Xi issued his statement at a meeting with European Commission delegates after the Hague court verdict was released in the Netherlands.
Peace and Stability
"China is firmly committed to peace and stability in the South China Sea, and to settling the disputes with countries directly involved, through peaceful negotiations based on the recognition of historical facts and in accordance with international law," he stated.
There are speculations that the Philippines plans to start negotiations with China armed with the arbitral court ruling. However, Beijing has insisted that it would not hold any talks based on the Permanent Court of Arbitration verdict.
China's Defense Ministry spokesperson Yang Yujun, in a press conference convened after the release of the verdict, said the Chinese military is prepared for any eventualities that may erupt after the ruling.
People's Liberation Army
"The People's Liberation Army resolutely protects the country's national sovereignty, security and maritime rights and interests, and will address threats and challenges," Yang said.
The five-member tribunal ruled that China has no legal basis in invoking its "historical rights" to the reefs and islands in the South China Sea. The court added that Beijing's claims under the nine-dash line run counter to the provisions of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).
The arbitral court also ruled that China violated the sovereign rights of the Philippines by cutting into Manila's exclusive economic zone. It further said that Beijing has no right to an exclusive economic zone 200 miles of Mischief Reef or Thomas Shoal.
Major setback
The PCA verdict is a major setback for China. Political experts believe that Beijing might be pushed to defend its rights to the South China Sea region by force.
Besides the Philippines, China is locked in bitter disputes in the South China Sea with Vietnam, Taiwan, Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei.
The PCA released its verdict on Tuesday. However, it might not serve its purpose since the court has no police powers to enforce the decision.
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TagsPresident Xi Jinping, Permanent Court of Arbitration ruling, People's Liberation Army, Philippines, china
(Photo : Reuters) HTC 10 is now $599 in the U.S. for the month of July.
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HTC is slashing down the price of the HTC 10 in the United States for the month of July.
The Taiwanese tech company is slashing $100 off the HTC10s original $699 price for direct purchases from its web store. The company is also offering customers who get the phone elsewhere a $100 credit to acquiring accessories from htc.com.
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At $599, the HTC 10 is a good bargain. The new discount makes the HTC 10 cheaper than the Galaxy S7 variants sold by carriers or unlocked. Consumers have the option of picking up a carrier version of the HTC 10 or the unlocked version. AT&T is not offering the device, but potential buyers can get it from Sprint, Verizon, or T-Mobile. The unlocked phone is GSM/LTE, and buyers can get it from Tmo or AT&T at the same price.
On top of the new phone that the buyers will get, HTC appears to be throwing in $100 of credit towards HTC accessories, Droid Life reported. The credit is not limited to buyers from htc.com. HTC said that if the buyer can provide proof-of-purchase from any other retailer or channel, they can receive the $100 as well. This credit can be spent on cases, extra chargers, or anything else they are listed on the HTC site as a phone accessory - excluding Vive accessories.
In addition, the deal also includes a warranty for the phone called Uh-Oh protection, which covers a cracked screen and water damage for the first year, according to CNet.
Currently, HTC is offering all the models of the HTC 10 for purchase in Silver and the Unlocked model in Silver and Charcoal.
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TagsHTC, HTC 10, U.S., HTC AT&T, HTC Verizon, HTC Sprint, HTC T-Mobile, HTC 10 $100 Off, HTC Vive, china, Taiwan
(Photo : Getty Images) China's first self-developed large passenger jetliner C919 is presented after it rolled off the production line at Shanghai Aircraft Manufacturing Co., Ltd in Shanghai, China.
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China's Commercial Aircraft Corp. of China (COMAC) has won a deal to sell 60 ARJ21 regional jets valuing up to $2.3 billion to China Aircraft Leasing Group.
In a joint statement on Monday, COMAC confirmed that it had signed an agreement with the Hong Kong-listed firm to order 30 ARJ21-700 jets and an option to purchase 30 more.
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The aircrafts would reportedly be leased to an Indonesian airline. Although the airline has not been named, Friedmann Pacific Asset Management Ltd. would invest in the Indonesian aircraft operator as part of the deal, China Aircraft Leasing said in a statement.
The deal was officially inked at Britain's Farnborough International Airshow. COMAC will deliver the planes over the next five year. The planes' value was based on its list price.
COMAC's ARJ21-700 took its maiden commercial flight last month flying 70 passengers from Chengdu to Shanghai.
COMAC's ARJ21 will compete with Bombardier Inc. and Embraer SA aircraft. It is equipped with General Electric Co. engines and has a maximum range of 2,225 kilometers (1,400 miles) for its standard model.
Meanwhile, Shanghai-based COMAC is also planning to build a larger C919 single-aisle jet to compete with overseas plane manufacturers in the market for planes with over 150 seats. The C919 is scheduled to enter service in 2019.
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TagsCommercial Aircraft Corp. of China, Comac, ARJ21, China Aircraft Leasing Group
(Photo : Getty Images.) ChemChina has extended its deadline to complete the acquisition of Syngenta to September.
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China National Chemical Corp, better known as ChemChina, has once again extended the deadline of its $43 billion acquisition of Swiss seed and pesticide company Syngenta Inc.
ChemChina has now set a new deadline of September 13 to acquire the giant Swiss agricultural company, South China Morning Post reported. The latest extension in the deadline is reportedly due to non-fulfillment of many important conditions that are part of the acquisition deal, including regulatory approvals.
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The Syngenta deal, touted as largest foreign acquisition by a Chinese company, has already been extended twice. The first deadline was set on May 23, and it was later extended to July 18.
The deal can be "extended at any time and from time to time ... until such time [that] all conditions to the offers are satisfied," the offer's shareholders prospectus said, adding that any extension beyond November 23 would require Swiss regulator's approval.
ChemChina on Monday issued a statement on its official website with regards to the latest extension in the acquisition deadline. "All of the other terms and conditions of the tender offers remain unchanged, and ChemChina continues to expect to conclude the transaction by the end of the year," the statement said.
One of the important conditions for the successful completion of the deal is that about 67 percent of Syngenta shares ought to be tendered by its shareholders in response to the offer. Additionally, the deal requires approval by anti-monopoly regulators in Europe and other markets where Syngenta is running its operations.
Experts claim that acquisition of Syngenta would help ChemChina in gaining technology for genetically modified (GMO) seeds. The GMO technology is considered critical for enhancing production of major oilseed including soybeans, corn, and cotton.
Syngenta is widely considered among rare agricultural company that posses advanced GMO technology. The popular US-based agricultural company Monsanto, which also posses advanced GMO technology, was in the fray to acquire Syngenta. However, Syngenta management snubbed Monsanto's offer, citing that the deal would have faced difficulty in getting the approval of regulators.
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TagsChemChina, syngenta, ChemChina Syngenta Deal, ChemChina Acquires Syngenta, china
The Republican Partys platform committee has added language that opposes public prekindergarten , in preparation for the upcoming GOP convention in Cleveland, The Dallas Morning News is reporting.
One of the 112 members of the committee said the partys opposition comes because pre-K inserts the state in the family relationship in the very early stages of a childs life.
The committee language would have to be approved by the full convention when it meets July 18-21. Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, has not addressed early-childhood education on his campaign website or on Twitter, one of his primary methods for sharing his views. Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee, has said she supports expanding Early Head Start-Child Care partnerships, and that she would provide federal money to help states increase enrollment in high-quality preschool .
The Republican Party platform adopted in 2012 did not mention early-childhood education, other than a brief reference to supporting children in pre-literacy skills so that they are not later referred for special education services.
In rejecting government-funded prekindergarten, the platform committee finds itself in opposition to many Trump supporters, according to a poll released Tuesday from the First Five Years Fund , an advocacy group that supports early-learning programs. That poll, which was conducted in May, found that 78 percent of Trump supporters and 97 percent of Clinton supporters believe that Congress and the president should work together to expand access to early-childhood education.
Support is more split when it comes to making specific policy investments in early-childhood education, however. When asked about a hypothetical federal program that would disburse $10 billion a year over 10 years to states for early-childhood programs such as preschool and home visiting , the poll found that 54 percent of Republicans, 70 percent of independents and 91 percent of Democrats say they would support such a program.
Save the Children Action Network, another advocacy organization that supports greater investments in education , said in a press release that the draft platform is deeply disappointing.
While we all agree that parents have the ultimate responsibility to raise their children, high-quality early-childhood education programs assist families so all children have an equal opportunity to succeed, said Mark Shriver, the organizations president.
File Photo: Students in Maciel Martinezs class read before nap time at the Pre-K Center at Bishop Ford in Brooklyn, N.Y. in 2015. New Yorks expanded public program has tripled the number of prekindergarten seats in two years.Mark Abramson for Education Week.
Among the contenders to replace the A-10: the A-29 Embraer EMB Super Tucano (top) and the Alenia Aermacchi M-346 Master.
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The U.S. Air Force is currently reviewing draft requirements for a new close air support (CAS) aircraft that might not be as tough or as deadly as the legendary Fairchild Republic A-10 Thunderbolt II first flown in 1972. But the replacement aircraft will certainly be cheaper.
The new "A-10"-like aircraft isn't expected to have all of the specs that made the A-10 famous: superior armor protection for the pilot; a massive rotary cannon; a heavy weapons load and unrelenting reliability. The Air Force intends to retire the A-10 "Warthog" in 2022 and replace it with F-35s on a squadron-by-squadron basis.
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The F-35, however, is far too expensive to be sent on daily missions so the need arises for a cheaper CAS aircraft, especially for low intensity conflicts; counterterrorism and regional stability operations.
Among the operational aircraft being considered as the A-10 replacement are the Embraer EMB 314/A-29 Super Tucano from Brazil and the Raytheon T-100 / Alenia Aermacchi M-346 Master from Italy that's competing in the Air Force's T-X Program.
The Super Tucano is a turboprop aircraft designed for light attack, counter insurgency (COIN) and close air support. The M-346 Master was originally designed as a military twin-engine transonic trainer aircraft but can conduct CAS missions, anti-shipping and aerial combat missions.
"We are developing that draft requirements document. We are staffing it around the Air Force now," said Lt. Gen. James Holmes, Deputy Chief of Staff for Strategic Plans and Requirements.
"When it's ready, then we will compare that to what we have available, compare it to keeping the A-10, compare it to what it would take to replace it with another airplane, and we will work through that process."
He said the Air Force was exploring ways to achieve, preserve and sustain air superiority in future long-term, high-end combat engagements. He revealed that considerations about a CAS replacement aircraft figured prominently in the strategic calculus surrounding these issues.
Cost and affordability will, therefore, be a very large part of the equation when it comes to making the decision about an A-10 replacement, said Gen. Holmes.
"The question is exactly where is the sweet spot as we talked about between what's available now and what the optimum CAS replacement would be. We are working along that continuum to see exactly what the requirement is that we can afford and the numbers that we need to be able to do the mission."
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TagsFairchild Republic A-10 Thunderbolt II f, U.S. Air Force, Embraer EMB 314/A-29 Super Tucano, Raytheon T-100 / Alenia Aermacchi M-346 Master
Researcher predicts end of 'white Christian America' 13 July, 2016 by Gregory Tomlin , |
NEW YORK (Christian Examiner) White Christians are in panic mode and likely fearing their loss of influence in politics, the leader of the Public Religion Research Institute claims in new editorial in The Atlantic.
Robert P. Jones, whose book, The End of White Christian America, hits bookstore shelves this weekend, writes that the "cultural and political edifice" of the United States was built primarily by white, Protestant Christians. Today, he says, "many white Christian Americans feel profoundly anxious as their numbers and influences are waning."
That decline in influence whether in Mainline or Evangelical Protestantism is largely the result of demographic changes in America, a nation turning decidedly more brown and black.
White Christians now make up less than half of the religious populace in America, at only 47 percent. Together, non-white Christians, the religiously unaffiliated and those who follow other religions make up the remainder of Americans. White Christians are now the minority, Jones writes.
Still, racial changes alone, however "dramatic" they are, don't explain the decline of influence by themselves. According to Jones, young people in traditionally white Protestant denominations are walking away from their parents' faith.
Only 29 percent of young people age 18-29 are "white Christians." Thirty-four percent, of various races, classify themselves as "unaffiliated," PRRI said in a recent survey.
"Like an archaeological excavation, the chart sorts Americans by religious affiliation and race, stratified by agedemonstrating at a glance the decline of white Christians among each successive generation. This snapshot uncovers a striking finding: Today, young adults, ages 18 to 29, are less than half as likely to be white Christians as seniors. Nearly seven in 10 American seniors are white Christians, compared to fewer than three in 10 young adults. Although the declining proportion of white Christians is due in part to large-scale demographic shifts, this chart also highlights the other major force of change in the religious landscape: young adults' rejection of organized religion," Jones writes.
It stands to reason then, that as older, predominately white Protestants die off, there is little chance their numbers will be replaced by younger churchgoers.
Even among the nation's largest evangelical Protestant denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention, the decline is precipitous. Growth rates have fallen from 4.15 percent annually in 1950 to -1.5 percent today according to the denomination's own figures.
According to Jones, white Christian voters made up 74 percent of the voting public in 1994. By 2014, the number had fallen to 58 percent.
"A linear forecast line based on these trends demonstrates that what might be called a 'white Christian strategy'relying on supermajorities of white Christian votes to offset demographic changeswill yield diminishing returns in each successive national election cycle. White Christians will likely make up 55 percent of voters in 2016 and drop to 52 percent of voters by the following presidential campaign in 2020. If current trends hold steady, 2024 will be a watershed yearthe first American election in which white Christians do not constitute a majority of voters," Jones writes.
Jones says these changes are driving "strong, sometimes apocalyptic reactions" on the part of whites because the decline in religion and the majority causes white Christians to question the "national mythos." That is to say, the changes supposedly threaten the demographic's understanding of America's purpose, mission, and identity.
To read the full article in The Atlantic, click here. To weigh in, comment below.
Texas governor misses memorial because of severe burns, infection 13 July, 2016 by Gregory Tomlin , |
SAN ANTONIO (Christian Examiner) Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is undergoing treatment for second and third degree burns on his legs and feet at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio.
Abbott was noticeably absent from the platform during a memorial service for five Dallas police officers yesterday. The absence, however, wasn't for a lack of desire of being there.
Abbott reportedly suffered extensive burns during an accident while vacationing with his family in Wyoming last week. It is unclear how the accident occurred, but Abbott himself was reportedly not aware of the seriousness of the burns until recently. The governor is paralyzed from the waist down and has been confined to wheelchair since he was involved in an accident in 1984.
Immediately after gunman Micah Xavier Johnson opened fire on officers July 7, Abbott told his aides that he had to return to Dallas immediately in spite of his injuries. He was already being treated at St. John's Medical Center in Jackson, Wyoming. Abbott spoke to the public in Dallas with his legs and feet bandaged.
Matt Hirsch, spokesman for Gov. Abbott, said the governor had come into contact with scalding water and was burned, but insisted on returning to Dallas. Since then, however, the governor's injuries have been complicated by infection.
The governor's office issued a statement Tuesday saying that the governor had undergone a successful skin grafting procedure at the Army hospital to help repair his feet.
"On the recommendation of doctors, Governor Abbott will extend his stay at Brooke Army Medical Center to allow for further healing and to ensure a prompt recovery. Governor Abbott has continued to communicate with staff, and our office will continue to provide updates on the Governor's well-being. The Governor and the First Lady appreciate all of the thoughts, prayers and well-wishes they have continued to receive from the public," the statement said.
Abbott wrote in an open letter to Texans after the Dallas attack that the state mourned for its fallen officers.
"Respect for our law enforcement officers must be restored in our nation," he wrote. "The badge every officer wears over his or her heart is a reminder of a sacred trust, a commitment, a contract with each of us. For law enforcement officers to stand in front of us and all that threatens, we must stand behind them. Every life matters."
Abbott also asked in the letter for God to comfort the families and heal the nation.
Eight Christians have been arrested in Nepal for distributing Bibles to schoolchildren, according to ChristianToday.com.
The accused, who were arrested on June 8, are facing a trial for allegedly attempting to convert the schoolchildren to Christianity.
Under Nepals Constitution, proselytizing is forbidden. Article 26, paragraph 3 of the document states, no person shall act or make others act in a manner which is contrary to public health, decency and morality, or...convert a person of one religion to another religion.
The eight Christians who were arrested and accused say that they did not break any law, but were simply giving the children materials that they asked for.
Those accused include a pastor and activists for Teach Nepal.
The Federation of National Christian Nepal is calling for the eight Christians to be released.
"Accusations against them are false and designed to create fear among other Christians," said the Federation.
Publication date: July 13, 2016
Russian Christians are extremely worried about their religious freedom after Russian president Vladimir Putin signed a law banning all evangelism outside of churches.
The Christian Post reports that the new law comes as a heavy blow to Russian Christians. It restricts all religious preaching and teaching outside of church buildings and makes breaking this restriction a punishable offense.
The law is ostensibly aimed at protecting the country from terrorism. However, many have equated it to Soviet-era measures. Hannu Haukka, president of Great Commission Media Ministries, told National Religious Broadcasters (NRB) that "This new situation resembles the Soviet Union in 1929. At that time confession of faith was permitted only in church. Practically speaking, we are back in the same situation. These anti-terrorist laws are some of the most restrictive laws in post-Soviet history."
Thousands of churches in Russia are coming together to fast and pray that the law would be repealed. Some have even stated that they intend to defy the law and keep evangelizing. Haukka asked Christians worldwide to join their Russian brothers and sisters in prayer.
"Russia is closing down in an awful way, said Haukka. The new law is in total conflict with the purpose and the task given to the church by the Lord.
Photo: A street sweeper walks past St. Basil's Cathedral at Red Square in Moscow on Jan. 15, 2016.
Photo courtesy: REUTERS/Maxim Zmeyev
Publication date: July 13, 2016
One day after the Anglican Church of Canada rejected a proposal to authorize same-sex marriage, the church reversed its decision after discovering a miscount during the voting process.
In order for the resolution to pass, it required approval from two-thirds of the laity, clergy, and bishops. On Monday, it was announced that the resolution did not pass after the clergy did not receive required two-thirds vote by one vote.
On Tuesday, the last day of the churchs triennial General Synod, a few delegates said their votes had not been recorded. After examining the hard copy of the electronic voting records, an error was discovered which resulted from misattributing a clergys vote as that of a lay member.
Primate of the Canadian Church Archbishop Fred Hiltz declared that the resolution to approve same-sex marriage had passed.
In order for the resolution to become law and change the churchs marriage canon, the resolution must be reviewed and affirmed at the next General Synod in 2019.
Seeds of Worship (SOW), the Korean American musical and body worship team consisting of children and teens, hosted its annual performance on June 25 at Nachimban Church. About 500 people gathered, and the performance garnered large interest from the community.
The theme of the performance was, 'New Day,' signifying gratitude that God allows each person a new day every day, and to encourage the audience to embrace a new hope as they live out their lives.
"We were so happy and thankful that so many young people, who will be carrying the weight of the future, came and that we were able to spend that time together with them," Esther Park, one of the heads of the SOW team, said.
SOW consists of some 80 elementary, middle, and high school students, and performs body worship numbers as well as theatrical musical performances. SOW will be visiting South Korea for two weeks starting July 18 to visit orphanages and various churches to perform.
This article has been translated. For the original in Korean, visit kr.christianitydaily.com.
Using new data by the National Institute for Early Education Research, The Hechinger Report built an interactive map that shows where preschool access and quality intersect.
Of states offering a public preschool program, the largest category, with 18, are states that have a high-quality program but only offer it to a small percentage (less than 30 percent) of their 4-year-old population. Another five states offer preschool to more than 46 percent of their 4-year-old population, but at a fairly low-quality standard.
Fourteen states and the District of Columbia offer high-quality preschool to more than 30 percent of their 4-year-olds. And just four statesVermont, West Virginia, Georgia and Oklahomaand the District of Columbia offer high-quality programs to more than half of their 4-year-olds.
For more than a decade, the National Institute for Early Education Research has used 10 quality benchmarks, including things like class size and teacher qualification requirements, to judge state preschool program quality. The Institute has faced criticism for setting the bar too low with its benchmarks, which it has repeatedly called a mere baseline for quality. The new data looked at a broader set of 15 elements that included how much money was being spent per child, how much support was offered to dual-language learners, and other measures Institute researchers hope tie more directly to high quality, rather than just being a baseline for basic sufficiency. What did they find?
Access to real quality is pretty darn low, Steven Barnett, director of the National Institute for Early Education Research, told me for an article I wrote about the state of preschool in the U.S. that accompanied the map.
From the article:
The chance that parents without a high school diploma will be able to place their child in a high-quality preschool program is one in 10, Barnett said. For parents with graduate degrees, the odds are slightly better: one in three.
Not everyone agrees that expanding public preschool is the best use, or even an appropriate use , of federal funds. A look at the data makes it clear that were we to undertake such a project, wed have a very long way to go.
Graphic courtesy The Hechinger Report.
Russia's new legislation to counter terrorism is being seen as extraordinarily restrictive and is expected to have an adverse effect on citizen freedom.
The law increases internet and telecom surveillance, and threatens freedom of expression and speech. It also effectively bans proselytizing outside of government recognized churches.
The legislation is named the "Yarovaya Law" after its author and lawmaker Irina Yarovaya.
Scheduled to be implemented in July 2018, the laws will give broad powers in the hands of the enforcement, which critics fear will be used to censure disagreements and political activism as in the communist era.
The restrictions "will make it easier for Russian authorities to repress religious communities, stifle peaceful dissent, and detain and imprison people," said Thomas J. Reese, Chair of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom.
"Neither these measures nor the currently existing anti-extremism law meet international human rights and religious freedom standards," he added.
The telecom companies will now be required to retain communications of users for the last six months, and metadata up to three years.
According to RBTH, telecom companies will now be required to install expensive equipment to comply with the new regulation, which is estimated to be around $2 billion for big companies such as Ru Group, with complementary annual costs of around $80-$100 million.
The internet service providers will also be asked to disclose all the communications and encryption keys which decode electronic messages to government on request.
"Russia's new counterterrorism law takes Big Brother surveillance to a whole new level," said Cynthia Wong of Human Rights Watch. "No digital communication would be safe from government snooping, no matter how innocuous or unrelated to terrorism."
The other amendments of the law include lowering of criminal responsibility to 14 years, and seven years of prison sentence for promotion of "extremism," which includes internet or media statements.
Religious groups, especially smaller denominations, are going to bear a huge portion of the brunt of the new laws which impose limiting conditions such as banning worshiping and praying in presence of unbelievers, preaching the Gospel in homes, sending emails to friends inviting them to attend church, evangelizing on streets, and talking about faith to a stranger in a bus. If any foreigner attends an unregistered church, he is liable to be deported to his country.
Violators will be required to pay a fine of $780 for individuals, and up to $15,000 for organizations, according to a Religion News Service report.
The mainline Christian denominations such as Russian Orthodox Church, and Roman Catholic Church are allowed a public space in the country without substantial government restrictions, but smaller churches including Protestants have a minuscule presence (1%) in the country.
Reverend Franklin Graham will organize two prayer events for the Republican and Democratic National Conventions.
The prayer events are scheduled right before each of the conventions.
"Our country is in a huge mess. Shootings, riots, and protests now claim the headlines about America, and that's heartbreaking. We are in desperate need of Divine intervention. We need healing. Prayer is what can make a difference in America," he wrote on his Facebook page.
"We will pray for our broken nation and for America's future. We will pray for these political conventions and the upcoming election. God's Word tells us that if we humble ourselves, confess our sins, and turn from our wicked ways, God will heal our land (2 Chronicles 7:14). He's the only one who can."
America was grieved by a series of violent incidents including the recent Orlando shooting which claimed 50 lives, two shootings of black men by police, and retaliatory shootings on police officers in Georgia, Tennessee, Missouri, and Dallas.
He said that the first of the prayer events will be held on "July 18, at 12:00 Noon Eastern-I'm asking you to pray with me live on Facebook just before the Republican National Convention opens... Then the following Monday, July 25, before the opening of the Democratic National Convention, we will pray together again."
His post received 1.4 million views, 120,000 likes, and 81,000 shares.
Graham has held many prayer rallies interceding for America before, including an ongoing Decision America Tour, which has its stops around the country until October.
"Franklin Graham is traveling to all 50 states in 2016 to hold prayer rallies, to preach the Gospel, and to challenge believers to take a stand and take action," according to the Decision America website.
He urged the Americans to come to his Facebook page for the prayers, and to set reminders on their phones and laptops so that they do not miss being a part of the online gathering: "The Bible says that the prayers of one righteous person avails much (James 5:16). So if there are thousands of us calling out to God on behalf of our nation, can you imagine what He might do?"
Last Thursday, Russian president Vladimir Putin signed a new anti-terrorism law, which, among other things, restricts missionary activities in Russia significantly. As was the case in the Soviet Union, believers will be able to evangelize only on property that belongs to their religious organizations and affiliated institutions. Violators may be subjected to steep fines. In addition, the law would tighten government control over Russian Internet providers.
While it would be easy to blame these events on the history of communism in Russia, the relationship between church and the state has a longer and more influential history in Russia.
A Harmonious Relationship Between Church and State
In contrast to the cherished ideals of religious liberty and the separation of church and state held in the United States, a major contributing factor to the recent events in Russia is the concept of symphonia, or institutionalized harmonious relations, between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Russian state. This intentional connection between church and state allows the Orthodox Church to enjoy all the attendant privileges of political preference and feeds into a uniquely Russian national identity. This recently signed legislation goes a long way toward preserving this status quo by massively restricting non-Orthodox Christian congregations and organizations in Russia, making their missionary activities effectively illegal and subject to constant surveillance.
While such a law would be unthinkable in the United States, this sort of measure stems from a long and complex relationship between the Russian Church and the Russian state. The late Max Stackhouse, a preeminent authority on faith in the age of globalization, ...
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More than three-quarters of self-identified white evangelicals plan to vote for Donald Trump in the fall (78%). But they arent happy about it.
According to a Pew Research Center survey of 1,655 registered voters released today, more than half of white evangelicals said they werent satisfied with their ballot options (55%), reflecting the feeling of Americans at large (58%).
And 45 percent of white evangelicals said they meant their vote as opposition to Hillary Clinton, not as an endorsement of Trump.
In stark contrast are black Protestants, two-thirds of whom are evangelicals (according to Pew). Almost 90 percent said they would be casting a vote for Clinton in the fall (89%), and 60 percent said they were satisfied with their choices.
Half of black Protestant voters said their vote was in support of Clinton (53%), while one-third said they were voting against Trump (34%). This preference lines up with African Americans at large, who favor Clinton.
Black Protestant voters diverge from the much larger group of white evangelicals, who make up one out of five registered voters and one out of three Republicans.
Despite the professed wariness toward Trump among many high-profile evangelical Christian leaders, evangelicals as a whole are, if anything, even more strongly supportive of Trump than they were of Mitt Romney at a similar point in the 2012 campaign, Pew stated. At that time, nearly three-quarters of white evangelical Protestant registered voters said they planned to vote for Romney, including one-quarter who strongly supported him. Now, fully 78 percent of white evangelical voters say they would vote for Trump if the election were held today, including about a third who strongly back his campaign.
The two-thirds who dont strongly favor Trump backed other candidates in the primaries, Pew stated. But left with only Trump or Clinton as options, 93 percent of Republican or Republican-leaning white evangelicals said they will vote for Trump.
While many evangelical voters say they strongly support Trump over Clinton, this does not necessarily mean Trump is their ideal choice for president or that they are convinced he shares their religious convictions, Pew stated. In the current survey, 42 percent of white evangelicals say it will be difficult to choose between Trump and Clinton because neither one would make a good president. And a January Pew Research Center poll found that 44 percent of white evangelical Republicans view Trump as not too or not at all religious.
While those who regularly attend church were more likely to support someone other than Trump in the primaries, that distinction has disappeared, Pew found. Three-quarters of those who attend church weekly or more (and also of those who attend less often) would vote for Trump. About a third of those who attend (and dont) strongly support him.
Evangelicals arent the only ones dissatisfied with the ballot options. Religious nones, who essentially act as the white evangelical counterpart in the Democratic party, are also unhappy. Like evangelicals, the nones make up about one in five registered voters and 20 percent of the Democratic party.
More than a third of nones are planning to cast their vote against Trump (36%), more than those voting for Clinton (30%), against Clinton (12%), or for Trump (10%).
Overall satisfaction with the nominees is at its lowest point since 1992, when Bill Clinton won over George H. W. Bush. Two out of five voters dont think Trump or Clinton would be a good president; half say theyre voting against a candidate rather than in support of one. In the 2012 election, only a third voted against Barack Obama or Mitt Romney.
Among white evangelicals, dissatisfaction is also up: about 36 percent voted in support of a candidate in 2012, the same as 2016. But while 49 percent voted against a candidate in 2012, 55 percent are voting against one in 2016.
The trend is the same for black Protestants: 76 percent voted in support of a candidate in 2012, compared to 56 percent in 2016. And 14 percent voted against a candidate in 2012, compared to 38 percent in 2016.
Besides that, the 2012 numbers look a lot like this election. About 73 percent of white evangelical voters said they would vote for Romney in 2012, while 78 percent stand behind Trump today. Romney ended up with almost 8 in 10 white evangelical votes in 2012, according to exit polls.
Black Protestant voters in 2012 again stuck with the African American voting bloc. Nearly all black Protestants (95%) in 2012 voted for Obama.
Even though voter satisfaction is down, voter engagement is up. White evangelicals and black Protestants are more likely to say that it really matters who wins the election and to follow the news about the candidates closely. More white evangelicals are also thinking quite a lot about the election, while the number of black Protestants doing likewise is the same as 2012.
The majority of Americans want a president with strong religious convictions, though fewer than did so in the past, Pew found. Just 62 percent of adults said it was important to them to have a president with strong religious beliefs, down from 67 percent in 2012 and 72 percent in 2008.
However, white evangelicals (89%) and black Protestants (84%) buck the trend, and are actually more likely to want a candidate that shares their faith than they did four years ago.
More American adults believe Clinton is religious (48%) than believe Trump is (30%).
Even if they wish there was another choice, white evangelicals do like Trumps position on the issues, or at least they like his positions more than Clintons. White evangelicals (52%) consider abortion a very important issue when deciding who to vote for, but more consider issues such as terrorism (89%), the economy (87%), and foreign policy (78%) crucial when choosing a candidate.
The report also found:
Most white evangelicals (63%) and black Protestants (67%) said churches should express views on social and political matters, but fewer (37% white evangelicals, 45% black Protestants) thought churches should endorse candidates.
Seven in ten white evangelicals said churches, synagogues, and other houses of worship contribute to solving social problems (70%), down from 86 percent in 2008. Six in ten black Protestants believe the same, down from 75 percent in 2008.
Almost half of white evangelical Protestants (46%) report that its become more difficult to be a Christian in America today, compared to one-third of non-white evangelicals (31%). White evangelicals that find life as a Christian to be harder are more likely to support Trump (84%) than those who dont (72%).
More white evangelicals (27%) than black Protestants (18%) think of themselves in 2016 as a member of a minority because of their religious beliefs. In 2014, 30 percent of white evangelicals and 26 percent of black Protestants felt that way.
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home Entertainment Creationist Ken Ham shares gospel with Bill Nye on Ark Encounter Tour
Creationist Ken Ham shared a gospel and even prayed for Bill Nye "The Science Guy" who took up his invitation of an Ark Encounter Tour.
The president and CEO of the creationist organization Answers in Genesis (AiG) excitedly shared an update on Nye's visit Friday, July 8, a day after the official launch of the Ark Encounter, which features a life-size replica of the biblical Noah's Ark.
"As we walked through the Ark, we had a very passionate discussion," Ham shared on his AiG blog. "It was like the debate all over again but more intense at times. Though it did get tense due to our differences in worldviews, it was an amicable visit."
Ham referred to the 2014 debate held at the Creation Museum, only 45 minutes away from Ark Encounter in northern Kentucky, wherein he and Nye appeared at opposing ends on the theory of creationism. Being debate foes didn't hinder Ham to consider Nye as his friend and even publicly invited him in May to join the tour. Days before its scheduled launch, Ham shared that Nye gave a positive response to his invitation.
So in front of a crowd of youngsters on the first deck of the Ark, Ham asked Nye for permission to pray with him and Nye obliged.
"Our prayer is that what he saw will have an impact on him and that he will be drawn to the gospel of Jesus Christ that is clearly presented at the Ark," stated Ham.
Ham's Ark project cost more than $102 million and has an equally colossal size spanning 510 feet long, 85 feet wide and 51 feet tall. It also captures a belief among young earth creationists that humans and dinosaurs co-existed in the early times, something which Nye finds "completely unreasonable."
A week before his anticipated visit, Nye declared in a phone interview with The New York Times, "We're going to raise a generation of kids who are scientifically illiterate."
home World Islamic End Times' ideology meaning behind ISIS' real name, says terrorism expert
Counterterrorism expert Sebastian Gorka believes understanding the real meaning behind the Islamic State terrorist group's name is crucial as this translates to the Islamic End Times' ideology.
The chair of Military Theory at the Marine Corps University shared his thoughts during this year's The Bridge conference for the persecuted church, which was held Saturday, July 9 and hosted by Christian watchdog International Christian Concern.
Gorka pointed out the relevance of what the terrorist group calls themselves and ruled out confining the group to its Western name of "Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS)" or "Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL)."
The New York Times bestselling author, who wrote "Defeating Jihad: The Winnable War" and also teaches at Joint Special Operations University and at Georgetown University for national security, said that the Islamic State militants call themselves the "Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham," referred to in the Arabic acronym of DAESH.
In this name, Gorka focuses on the term "al-Sham" which does not only point to the geographical territories of greater Syria and the Levant but also, more importantly, to the Islamic End Times belief of a "final jihad."
"Prior to that judgment, there will be a series of battles in al-Sham. The pivotal jihad, the last jihad will occur in this territory," said Gorka, as reported by The Christian Post.
He explained further, "They are sending a simple message: 'Have you ever wanted to be a jihadi? Have you toyed with the idea of salvation? Guess what? Look where we are a on the site of the final jihad. If you don't come now, you are going to miss guaranteed salvation.'"
This is what the intelligence community don't understand, observed Gorka, and also what 86,000 found appealing among jihadist groups, with 36,000 originating from outside the states of Iraq and Syria and 6,000 from the West.
The professor also commented on the Orlando terror attack in June to stress the significance of the jihadi ideology.
"It's not about guns, it's about jihadi ideology," he said during an interview with "Sunday Morning Futures."
He added, "You can ban every gun in America, and jihadis will still get them and they'll still kill Americans. Let's focus on what the threat is."
home US Massachusetts signs transgender bathroom bill into law
Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker signed into law a bill that gives transgender people the right to use public bathrooms according to their gender identity.
The new law, called "an Act relative to transgender anti-discrimination," states that owners of restaurants, resorts and other public places including locker rooms "shall grant all persons admission to, and the full enjoyment of, such place of public accommodation or portion thereof consistent with the person's gender identity."
The law will take effect on Oct. 1.
Defending his decision, Baker said no person in the state should be discriminated against based on their gender identity. The new law provides "additional protections" to transgender people, he explained.
Sen. Sonia Chang-Diaz praised the new law, saying it is an important step for the state.
"Public accommodations are fundamental to equal rights in America," the senator said.
LGBT activists also hailed the decision. Human Rights Campaign president Chad Griffin said Baker has joined other Republicans who are speaking up for equal rights.
However, some people are criticizing the law. Andrew Beckwith from the Massachusetts Family Institute said the definition of "gender identity" specified in the bill is broad and can be abused even by sex offenders, who can freely access public bathrooms and locker rooms.
Beckwith also found it "disturbing" that through the law, parents who choose to protect their kids can be charged. And that's not all.
"Business owners could be fined or even jailed just for putting up a sign deemed offensive to transgender activists," Beckwith said, according to LifeSite News.
Beckwith emphasized that an individual's biological sex matters, and requiring females to share bathrooms and locker rooms with biological males is a "bad idea" regardless of the males' gender identity.
He also expressed disappointment in Baker for not delivering the promise he gave during the campaign by signing the bill into law.
home US Transgender bathroom fight reaches Supreme Court
The legal fight over transgender bathroom rights reached the U.S. Supreme Court for the first time on Wednesday as a Virginia county school board sought to block an order that lets a student who was born a girl but now identifies as male use the boys' bathroom.
Transgender rights have become an increasing divisive issue in the United States, and the use of public bathrooms has been a key part of the controversy.
The Gloucester County School Board filed an emergency application with the Supreme Court in a bid to prevent high school student Gavin Grimm, 17, from using the boys' bathroom when school resumes in September while litigation in the case continues.
The American Civil Liberties Union sued on behalf of Grimm to challenge the school board's bathroom policy, which requires transgender students to use alternative restroom facilities.
A federal appeals court on Tuesday refused to put on hold a district court's injunction favoring Grimm.
The school board's application was directed to Chief Justice John Roberts, who has responsibility for emergency actions that arise from the regional federal appeals court that covers Virginia. Roberts could act alone or refer the matter to all eight justices. Five votes are need to grant a stay application.
The school board's lawyers said in their court filing that the lower court had given too much deference to President Barack Obama's administration's view that prohibitions on sex discrimination under federal law also apply to gender identity.
For decades "our nation's schools have structured their facilities and programs around the sensible idea that in certain intimate settings men and women may be separated," they added. The lower court decision in favor of Grimm "turns that longstanding expectation upside down," the lawyers wrote.
Some conservative states have sought to require people to use bathrooms that reflect their gender at birth.
The Obama administration issued a directive in May telling public schools to allow transgender students to use bathrooms that correspond to their gender identity or risk losing federal funding. So far, 23 states have sued to block the directive.
Separately, the Justice Department sued North Carolina in May over a state law requiring people to use public bathrooms that correspond to the sex on their birth certificates.
An April ruling by the Richmond, Virginia-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in favor of Grimm was the first by an appeals court to find that transgender students are protected under federal laws that bar sex-based discrimination.
home World America is ignoring Christians in the Middle East for fear of 'crusader army' label, says rights lawyer
The U.S. is wary of being perceived as a "crusader army" so it continues to ignore the plight of Middle Eastern Christians, said rights activist Nina Shea.
Shea, the director of the Hudson Institute's Center for Religious Freedom in Washington, shared her critical observation of the U.S. during the International Christian Concern's (ICC) first annual conference on the persecuted church held last week.
Shea grabbed the opportunity to share the "complex" she perceived the U.S. government has when it comes to helping Iraqi Christians.
"This was true under the [George W.] Bush administration and more so now that the United States is desperate to avoid the label that we're a 'crusader army,'" the publication quoted her as saying.
To prove her point, Shea compared the U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry's approach toward another religious minority that is also highly persecuted, the Yazidi community. Kerry declared the atrocities carried out by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) terrorist group against the Yazidi people as genocide. However, Shea claimed that signed petitions lodged at Kerry to recognize the same for the oppressed Christian communities only fell on deaf ears.
"In fact, he went to Iraq and gave two speeches a month later and never mentioned the genocide issue," added Shea. "This is Secretary Kerry, he gave a speech on the anniversary of the Holocaust and said 'never again must we forget' and never mentioned the ongoing genocide in Iraq and Syria right now."
She also highlighted the U.S. response to Syrian refugee resettlement program, where she noted that only about 60 Christians from Syria resettled in the U.S. in the past five years. She said that Christians constituted 10 percent of the Syrian population five years prior the war, yet they comprise less than one percent of the Syrian refugees in America.
"The United States as a government is absolutely indifferent and keeps its distance from oppressed Christian minorities," Shea declared.
The degree of suffering and the imminent threat suffered by Middle Eastern Christians particularly in Iraq and Syria are well known as several rights groups released studies that revealed alarming reports. Only recently, Minority Rights Group reported that Christian minorities in Iraq face real threats of extinction as the Christian population drastically dropped to under 250,000 currently.
North Carolina lawmakers want to give Tar Heel teachers their second pay raises since 2014. But just as with the salary increases of two years ago, the states most experienced teachers are set to be largely left out.
Lawmakers say teachers would see, on average, 4.7 percent pay bumps, as a result of the new budget bill. Officials estimate that the move would bring the states average teachers salary to $50,000, when local contributions are included, reports the Associated Press . But teachers who have been in the classroom for 25 or more years would see little or no pay increases, with the state salary schedules maximum barely nudging from $50,000 to $51,000.
From year 25 to retirement veteran teachers will receive the same pay, whether they retire at 30 years or 45 years,' Debi Beckman, a veteran teacher in Buncombe County, told the Citizen-Times of Ashville. No raise. Nothing. In 2010 a teacher with 33 years experience made $52,550. Today a teacher with 33 years experience makes $51,000. How did salaries go down for our most experienced educators.
Lawmakers expect the new salary schedule to move the state from ninth to seventh among 12 southeastern states in terms of teacher pay, reports the Citizen-Times. While starting salaries arent changing, every step in the ladder is slotted a pay increase.
Again, experienced teachers in North Carolina get shortchanged, North Carolina Association of Educators (NACE) president Mark Jewell told the Associated Press .
This echoes what former NACE president Rodney Ellis told my co-blogger Stephen Sawchuk after the 2014 budget deal.
Veteran educators who in my opinion deserve far greater consideration than they received, are quite disappointed in this budget, said Ellis.
The new budget, which takes effect in January, also places a heavy emphasis on bonuses for teachers based on their students test scores. Teachers can earn as much as $50 for every student who passes a Advanced Placement , International Baccalaureate, or Career and Technical Education certification tests. Third grade teachers, meanwhile, would be able to earn as much as $6,800 in bonuses based on a value-added formula for students reading scores, part of a larger effort in the state to ensure that all students can read at grade level by the end of third grade . The budget also introduces a three-year performance-pay pilot program, which would run in 10 districts.
The News & Observer reports that Gov. Pat McCrory, a Republican, is expected to sign the budget later this month.
Anglican Church in Canada passes same-sex marriage after embarrassing vote miscount
The Anglican Church of Canada has voted to approve same-sex marriage after all after church leaders confessed to an embarrassing error when counting the votes.
The General Synod, meeting in Ottawa, had appeared on Tuesday to reject by one vote in the house of clergy a resolution to allow gay marriage.
After delegates complained that they believed their votes had not been counted accurately, the Archbishop Fred Hiltz, primate of the church, demanded the "confusion" be cleared up.
A hard copy of the electronic voting records was ordered and it emerged that the vote in favour by synod general secretary Ven Michael Thompson had been counted for the House of Laity instead of the House of Clergy. When it was reassigned to the correct house, the resolution then passed by one vote.
Archbishop Hiltz told 200 surprised delegates: "That is our reality, that the motion is in fact carried in all three orders."
Thompson then released a statement and YouTube video explaining the mix-up: "Today we discovered that the electronic voting system we were using miscoded my electronic file. I was listed, and my vote was counted, as a lay person instead of a priest. This one vote changed the outcome of resolution A051-R2the resolution to amend the marriage canon.
"This vote has been difficult for many, and no outcome can address all of our church's need to live and work together. We have a long road ahead to restore our common life. In the meantime, the whole church has three years to consider and comment on this matter. In 2019, the resolution will come to the General Synod for second reading."
The resolution will need to be passed at its second reading when the synod next meets in 2019 before it becomes law.
Quebec Bishop Dennis Drainville said there was "no great slapping of backs" when the news broke. Instead, some people were feeling shaken.
"I've been in favour of for years, but there's no joy in Mudville today. Everybody is upset," he told CBC.
The church tweeted an apology:
General Secretary has apologized to #GS2016 about the error: "the confusion wasn't just about a matter." Anglican ChurchACC (@generalsynod) July 12, 2016
The result let to wide celebrations and congratulations from outside as well as in the church.
Green Party leader Elizabeth May tweeted:
Winnipeg chaplain Allison Courey tweeted:
Some months ago, I made a commitment not to participate in any sacraments until I could participate in all of them. Today I can. #GS2016 Allison Courey (@AllisonRev) July 12, 2016
There was also praise for the leadership of Archbishop Hiltz:
Cameron bows out of Number Ten as May takes over
David Cameron is standing down after six years as British prime minister after his final one-to-one audience with the Queen at Buckingham Palace.
Theresa May will tonight arrive at Number Ten Downing Street as Cameron's successor after her own meeting with Her Majesty. She is expected to form her first Cabinet overnight and tomorrow.
Earlier, Cameron bowed out of British politics with his final round of prime minister's questions, after which he received applause from around the House of Commons and a standing ovation on his own side.
After a colourful session, Cameron said he would be "willing on" all politicians and Parliament.
"I will watch these exchanges from the back benches. I will miss the roar of the crowd, I will miss the barbs from the opposition, but I will be willing you on," he said.
"And when I say willing you on, I don't just mean willing on the new prime minister at this despatch box, or indeed just willing on the front bench defending the manifesto that I helped put together. But I mean willing all of you on, because people come here with huge passion for the issues they are about. They come here with great love for the constituencies that they represent. And also willing on this place. Because, yes, we can be pretty tough and test and challenge our leaders - perhaps more than some other countries but that is something we should be proud of and we should keep at it, and I hope you will all keep at it, and I will will you on as you do.
Veteran Tory MP Kenneth Clarke, who ran against Cameron to be leader in 2005, asked the outgoing prime minister his final question, praising his "statesmanlike" leadership and pleading with him to stay on the green benches at a time when "no two people know what Brexit means".
Cameron pointed out that Clarke's first achievement on becoming Chancellor was to fire Cameron as a special advisor and joked about Clarke being notoriously difficult to get hold of. "Tory modernisation never quite got as far as getting Ken Clarke to have a mobile phone," he said.
Cameron began by saying that after his audience with the Queen, "the diary for the rest of my day is remarkably light".
Then in a boisterous and humourous PMQs, Jeremy Corbyn, the embattled Labour leader, thanked Cameron "for his service" and thanked his mother for advice relayed by Cameron earlier this year on how Corbyn should smarten up. Cameron said Corbyn looked "splendid" today.
On Corbyn's leadership, Cameron who has previously told Corbyn "for God's sake man, go" said he was "beginning to admire [Corbyn's] tenacity".
Cameron at one point took the opportunity to deny rumours that he did not "love" Larry the Downing Street cat, producing a photograph of himself with the cat.
He also joked that when he was leader of the Opposition while in New York no-one recognised him until someone came up to him and said "Hey Cameron, PMQs, love your show".
Cameron ended the session by saying: "The last thing I would say is that you can achieve a lot of things in politics. You can get a lot of things done. And that in the end, the public service, the national interest, that is what it is all about. Nothing is really impossible if you put your mind to it. After all, as I once said, I was the future once."
The Speaker, John Bercow led the applause for Cameron despite the two men having a testing relationship over the years.
Church of England defends its handling of Bishop George Bell abuse case
The Church of England today defended its approach to the case of Bishop George Bell, who was accused of being a paedophile 37 years after his death.
Despite demands to publish the evidence against him, the Church cannot do this because of a "moral duty" to safeguard the victim, it says.
Supporters of Bishop Bell, who achieved international recognition for his opposition to the Nazis and his work on behalf of the Jews during the war, have protested repeatedly at the damage caused to his reputation by allegations that have not been proven in court.
The Chichester diocese paid compensation to the complainant, Carol, in September 2015. The Bishop of Chichester Martin Warner also formally apologised to her.
Bell's condemnation as a paedophile was then challenged by a group of lawyers, academics, politicians and senior Church figures. They wrote to the Archbishop of Canterbury earlier this year, and also circulated a document in defence of Bell to members of the General Synod meeting in York last weekend.
Peter Hitchens of the Mail on Sunday has been among the most vocal defenders of Bell.
In a letter today to those objecting, Bishop Paul Butler, Church of England lead bishop on safeguarding, says the Church was right to settle the claim.
He writes: "I am aware that as a group you have found our decision to settle a civil claim - and publicly say so - very difficult and have articulated your reasons for this both in various statements and other public forums including your website."
The Church of England recently announced a review of lessons learned from how it handled the case, he says.
The Church recognises the "immense frustration" the protestors feel about not being able to review the primary evidence relied on in reaching the settlement.
But it disputes the legal opinions obtained by the group that it should disclose the evidence.
The Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act 1992 protects those alleging non-statutory offences as well as statutory offences and also protects against "jigsaw identification" where members of the public can piece together clues about a complainant's identity.
Butler says: "As you will understand, extreme caution is required, particularly in view of the information already in the public domain. It worth stressing that although Carol has shared some details publicly, she has not waived confidentiality in those she has not shared."
Butler says he is "mystified" how the group can believe the Church can disclose documents provided by Carol's solicitor. "On a wider point, it is singularly unattractive to suggest that because there might be no legal consequences to breaching Carol's confidence, the Church should simply provide sensitive material to a group of individuals with a keen interest in but no connection with the case."
Carol has already expressed herself hurt by the campaign to "clear his name" as it implies that she has not been believed, Butler says.
"It would be quite wrong for us to breach the complainant's confidentiality.
"She has chosen to speak (anonymously, and without giving away a significant number of details) to a journalist following a number of public statements by members of the Bell group and others which she felt questioned her credibility.
"She has found this very hurtful. The question of transparency (or rather the complaint that we are not being transparent) has to be balanced both with the fact we cannot give details which would enable anyone to identify Carol as it would be unlawful for us to do so and with the moral duties we have to safeguard the deeply personal information which survivors of abuse share in confidence."
He adds: "It is clear from the analysis in your review and in other documents that you and other members of the public are labouring under a number of misconceptions which we cannot correct without risking disclosure of Carol's identity."
The case of George Bell will be among those examined by the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, chaired by the New Zealand High Court judge Dame Lowell Goddard.
Dallas memorial service: Obama quotes Scripture heavily, urges America to hold on to hope
As US President Barack Obama addressed on Tuesday an interfaith memorial service for the five Dallas police officers slain in the line of duty last week, he quoted the Bible extensively and urged American citizens to hold on to hope.
Expressing condolences to the families of the officers as well as Alton Sterling and Philando Castile two black Americans who were killed by police officers last week Obama said it was vital the US remained united in the face of difficulty.
"I see what's possible when we recognise that we are one American family, all deserving of equal treatment, all deserving of equal respect, all children of God. That's the America that I know," he said.
"Dallas, I'm here to say we must reject such despair. I'm here to insist that we are not as divided as we seem. And I know that because I know America. I know how far we've come against impossible odds."
A committed Christian though his faith is contented heavily by some opponents Obama quoted four Bible verses:
1 John 3:18
"And so I'm reminded of a passage in John's Gospel [First John]: Let us love not with words or speech, but with actions and in truth. If we're to sustain the unity we need to get through these difficult times, if we are to honor these five outstanding officers who we've lost, then we will need to act on the truths that we know. And that's not easy. It makes us uncomfortable. But we're going to have to be honest with each other and ourselves."
Ezekiel 36:26
"I've been to too many of these things. I've seen too many families go through this. But then I am reminded of what the Lord tells Ezekiel: I will give you a new heart, the Lord says, and put a new spirit in you. I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.
"That's what we must pray for, each of us: a new heart. Not a heart of stone, but a heart open to the fears and hopes and challenges of our fellow citizens. That's what we've seen in Dallas these past few days. That's what we must sustain."
Romans 5:3-4
"Scripture tells us that in our sufferings there is glory, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. Sometimes the truths of these words are hard to see. Right now, those words test us. Because the people of Dallas, people across the country, are suffering."
"But as Americans, we can decide that people like this killer will ultimately fail. They will not drive us apart. We can decide to come together and make our country reflect the good inside us, the hopes and simple dreams we share. 'We also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.'
"For all of us, life presents challenges and suffering accidents, illnesses, the loss of loved ones. There are times when we are overwhelmed by sudden calamity, natural or man-made. All of us, we make mistakes. And at times we are lost. And as we get older, we learn we don't always have control of things not even a President does. But we do have control over how we respond to the world. We do have control over how we treat one another."
Psalm 30:5
"And that's what I take away from the lives of these outstanding men. The pain we feel may not soon pass, but my faith tells me that they did not die in vain. I believe our sorrow can make us a better country. I believe our righteous anger can be transformed into more justice and more peace. Weeping may endure for a night, but I'm convinced joy comes in the morning."
Obama ended his address with a call for all Americans to devote themselves to building a better future.
"We cannot match the sacrifices made by Officers Zamarripa and Ahrens, Krol, Smith, and Thompson, but surely we can try to match their sense of service. We cannot match their courage, but we can strive to match their devotion," he said.
"May God bless their memory. May God bless this country that we love."
Fear of being called 'crusader army' stops U.S. from helping Christians in Iraq and Syria, says leading rights lawyer
What's preventing America from helping persecuted Iraqi and Syrian Christians?
Answer: Being a labelled a "crusader army," according to prominent human rights lawyer and religious freedom advocate Nina Shea.
During a panel discussion on global persecution at International Christian Concern's first annual conference on the persecuted church on Friday in Silver Spring, Maryland, Shea said the U.S. government is afraid to work directly with the Christian communities in Iraq and Syria because it fears such action would only further inflame the Muslim world since it would bolster the narrative that America is out to destroy Islam.
Shea, the director of the Washington-based Hudson Institute's Center for Religious Freedom, provided details of the U.S government's troubling pattern of indifference toward persecuted Christians not only in the Middle East but elsewhere in the world, The Christian Post reports.
"The day before [Secretary of State John] Kerry designated [ISIS' atrocities against Christians and other religious minorities] as genocide officially, the [State Department] were announcing they were only going to name Yazidis as victims of genocide," Shea disclosed, adding that it's clear the U.S. government is "so unsympathetic" to the plight of Christians.
"We signed petitions and put enough pressure on them with facts and arguments that [Kerry] listened but he hasn't done anything since then," she said.
"In fact, he went to Iraq and gave two speeches a month later and never mentioned the genocide issue," Shea said. "This is Secretary Kerry, he gave a speech on the anniversary of the Holocaust and said 'never again must we forget' and never mentioned the ongoing genocide in Iraq and Syria right now."
Shea also highlighted the fact that Syria's Christian population has not been fairly represented in U.S.' Syrian refugee resettlement programme.
"Christians comprised 10 percent of the population of Syria before the war five years ago. They constitute less than 1 percent of the refugee resettlement in the United States. The United States has resettled about 60 Christians in five years from Syria," Shea said.
She said the U.S. is also rejecting calls for its forces to train Assyrian and Chaldean Christians and other religious minorities defend their own province because Washington has a "complex" when it comes to working directly with Christians.
"This was true under the [George W.] Bush administration and more so now that the United States is desperate to avoid the label that we're a 'crusader army,'" Shea said.
India: two Christians and a baby among the dead in police shoot-out
Two Pentecostal Christians are believed to be among five Indian villagers including a five-month-old baby who were killed on July 8 during a shoot-out between security officers and Maoists in the eastern state of Odisha.
Reports said that the villagers were returning from a local market by car when it was hit by crossfire in a nearby forest, which was the site of a police operation.
Officials insisted the shooting was a mistake, but the website Crux said that Christian locals are sceptical because of a history of anti-Christian violence in the area.
In 2008, riots led by militant Hindu nationalists in Kandhamal left 100 Christians dead. Thousands of others were injured and left homeless, while hundreds of churches and other Christian properties were destroyed.
Of the incident last week, Pinak Mishra, the Superintendent of Police for Kandhamal said: "The local police had information that some Maoists would be passing on the route late in the evening. Along with the Central Reserve Police Force, the security personnel had positioned themselves for an ambush on the rebels. During an exchange of fire between the security personnel, the auto-rickshaw came under the firing line. Since the spot where the exchange of fire took place happens to be an inaccessible pocket and there is no mobile network, we are still not clear about the details of the casualties. Our men are in touch with the local villagers. We will surely probe if the people were killed in the firing by security personnel or Maoists."
Mishra added that a search operation was under way.
Ajaya Kumar Singh, a Catholic Priest and Director of the Odisha Forum for Social Action in Bhubaneswar, expressed fears over a "conspiracy". He said: "I feel it is a conspiracy to create terror and to keep...minorities under fear." He recalled that during the 2008 riots, "the state government also claimed it was intelligence failures". Sing added: "I believe the intelligence agencies as well as the state administration have succumbed to caste-communal forces, which feed well-calculated rumors of Maoists to ensure a security presence, so they can continue to reign in the area without being challenged...For the intelligence agencies, it's [a matter of] pay and perks, while for the state it is huge business."
Iraqi Christians 'feel nobody cares for us', says Baghdad bishop
Christians persecuted by Islamic State in the Middle East believe the world has forgotten them, but remain convinced that God is near, an Iraqi bishop has said.
Speaking to East County Magazine, Bishop Mar Shlemon Warduni, who has been working in San Diego but before that served in Baghdad, said: "our people are suffering too much".
"Nobody loves them, nobody takes care of them," he added. "The children, the young people, they have no future. They finish studying and they have no job. Always, we cry, all over the world, for those children."
Hundreds of thousands of Christians have fled the Middle East since the rise of ISIS, though some have remained behind. Both groups "sometimes... feel that nobody cares for us," the bishop said.
"Sometimes when we are in difficulties, we feel desperation, [but] we are all sons and daughters of hope... Our Lord tells us...'I am with you until the end of the war'."
He urged world leaders to do more to help those who have fled war and persecution in Iraq and Syria. "This is a very difficult issue," he said. "Presidents, ministries, they talk, but in reality what have the done? Those whom made it out of Iraq, they don't even give them exit visas; some have no food.
"For this I cry, I supplicate, I pray for everyone to do something. Where are human rights?"
Bishop Warduni will soon return to Iraq and, along with a number of church leaders in the region, has underlined the importance of Christianity being preserved in the Middle East.
Chaldean Archbishop of Erbil, Bashar Warda, last year said ISIS would not destroy the faith of his community.
"They've destroyed walls and historical sites, but they were unable to destroy the faith of the community," he said.
"And that's the good news, that our people are strong enough to leave everything behind and just stay Christians."
ISIS real name revealed: Expert explains apocalyptic word that's drawing Muslims to terror group's cause
People in the West have apparently got it all wrong.
The name of the terrorist group that is trying to set the world on fire is not the Islamic State (IS), not the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and not the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL) as U.S. President Barack Obama and other top U.S. officials prefer to call it.
According to renowned counterterrorism expert Sebastian Gorka, the terrorist group, before they declared a caliphate, called itself the "Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham," which is where its Arabic acronym DAESH comes from, The Christian Post reports.
Gorka said it is the "al-Sham" part of the name that is troubling and the one that's attracting many Muslims in the world to its purported cause.
He said al-Sham connotes a geographic area of the world where "land rises from the sea." In particular, it connotes greater Syria and the Levant, which refers to a region stretching from southern Turkey to Egypt on the eastern Mediterranean, including Israel, Jordan, Lebanon and Palestine, according to Fox News.
However, Gorka stressed al-Sham has a much "deeper" theological meaning in Islam's eschatology or its version of the End Times.
"Just as in Christian eschatology, the talks of a final period of tribulation or judgment day and a series of battles between the believers and non-believers, Islam has the same," Gorka said.
"Everybody will be resurrected and judged by Allah at the End Times. But prior to that judgment, there will be a series of battles in al-Sham. The pivotal jihad, the last jihad, will occur in this territory," he explained.
Gorka said this is the reason why the jihadist group has been successful in recruiting Muslims from all over the world to come and fight in Iraq and Syria and to carry out terrorist attacks in their own lands.
He said when ISIS announces to the Muslim world, "We are the Islamic State of al-Sham," the group is sending a simple message: "Have you ever wanted to be a jihadi? Have you toyed with the idea of salvation? Guess what? Look where we are on the site of the final jihad. If you don't come now, you are going to miss guaranteed salvation," Gorka said.
He said this was the message picked up by the Pakistani immigrant in San Bernardino, the Afghan descent in Orlando and the other terrorists who launched their attacks in Paris, Istanbul and Brussels.
Gorka said over 86,000 recruits have joined jihad groups in Iraq and Syria in the last five years, with as many as 36,000 of them coming from outside of Iraq and Syria and as many as 6,000 Westerners.
Labour rules Corbyn has automatic right to be on leadership ballot
The Labour Party ruled on Tuesday that its leader Jeremy Corbyn had the automatic right to stand in a new leadership contest, setting the stage for a struggle between the veteran socialist's supporters in the country and party MPs who want to oust him.
The turmoil engulfing the 116-year-old party, which governed Britain for 13 years until 2010 under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, comes as the country's political landscape is changing fast following a June 23 vote to leave the European Union.
While the ruling Conservative Party has quickly appointed a new leader, Theresa May, to take over from Prime Minister David Cameron on Wednesday and pilot the 'Brexit' process, Labour's left-wing leadership is locked in a bitter internal power struggle with its more moderate MPs.
As Labour looks to define its priorities for the upcoming Brexit negotiations, Angela Eagle has challenged Corbyn to a leadership contest, saying he has failed to connect with voters and is not capable of winning a national election.
But Corbyn's chances of holding on to control won a boost when Labour's National Executive Committee (NEC) ruled that he should automatically appear on the ballot paper rather than have to find 51 MPs to nominate him, a task that he would struggle to achieve.
"The NEC has agreed that as the incumbent leader Jeremy Corbyn will go forward onto the ballot without requiring nominations from the Parliamentary Labour Party and the European Parliamentary Labour Party," a party spokesman said in a statement.
EU referendum
The EU referendum sparked a wave of resignations from Corbyn's policy team, with many saying he didn't campaign hard enough to prevent Brexit, and culminated in the passing of a motion of no-confidence in him by a margin of 172 to 40.
But Corbyn retains strong support among the party's more left-leaning rank-and-file members, meaning that he could hold on to power and prolong the stand-off with MPs.
The NEC ruling could still trigger a legal challenge from opponents who insist he too should have to garner support from 51 MPs, but Corbyn played down such a possibility.
"There's been a very long legal discussion this afternoon, there were very well qualified lawyers on hand to advise, so I think we are fine," he told reporters after the NEC decision.
Corbyn said his re-election campaign would be based on tackling inequality and poverty in Britain, adding that he would be reaching out to everyone in the party.
"I am sure Labour MPs will understand that the party has to come together in order to present to the British people the option of a different and better way of doing things," he said.
Eagle said she was pleased the NEC had reached a decision.
"I welcome the contest ahead," she said on Twitter. "And I am determined to win it."
In defying the pressure to resign, Corbyn has cited the overwhelming mandate he won from the party's grassroots members when they elected him leader last September. That has sparked fears that the party could split, as it did in the 1980s, and dilute the centre-left influence over Brexit negotiations.
Labour's internal strife has also fuelled tensions among its supporters. Police said on Tuesday that Eagle's constituency office in northern England had been vandalised. Corbyn said he and other lawmakers had received death threats.
"It is extremely concerning that Angela Eagle has been the victim of a threatening act and that other MPs are receiving abuse and threats," Corbyn said in a statement.
Eagle blamed the vandalism and threats on Corbyn.
"They are being done in his name and he needs to get control of the people who are supporting him and make certain that this behaviour stops and stops now," she told the BBC.
"It is bullying. It has absolutely no place in politics in the UK and it needs to end."
Nepal: Eight Christians face trial for distributing Bibles
Seven Protestant Christians and a pastor could be tried for proselytising after being found distributing Bibles to school-children, Asia News reported.
A trial date has not yet been set but a court is preparing to charge the suspects, according to local sources.
The seven were arrested on 8 June after being caught handing out the Bibles to children at a school in the northern district of Dolakha, which was devastated by last year's major earthquake.
Then, on 14 June police also arrested Rev Shakti Pakhrin over his alleged ties to those under investigation for proselytising.
A few days later the group which includes two teachers and activists for Teach Nepal, which is involved in post-quake reconstruction was released but ordered to appear in court.
There have been claims that the group was tortured in custody as well as unjustifiably detained.
The indictment against them is that of distributing Bibles for the purpose of converting students, Asia News said.
The group is reportedly alleged to have violated Article 26, paragraph 3, of the Constitution of Nepal, which regulates religious freedom and states that "no person shall act or make others act in a manner which is contrary to public health, decency and morality, or...convert a person of one religion to another religion".
The group rejects the accusations and claims to have only distributed the materials to Christian children who asked for them. "We only gave it to them," said Prakash Pradhan, principal of Mount Valley Academy, a local private school.
The Federation of National Christian Nepal submitted a memorandum of defence to the Home Affairs Minister Shakti Bahadur Basnet, calling for the accused to be released immediately. "Accusations against them are false and designed to create fear among other Christians," he said.
New film 'The Fight Within' combines cage fighting and faith, shares message of hope and salvation
Cage fighting and Christianity are two things that normally don't go together. But the new faith-based film "The Fight Within" hopes to explore that combination.
Jim Davis, executive producer and screenwriter of the movie, tells The Christian Post that a cage and a fight are actually "spot-on metaphors to show a young man coming to terms with who he is and what life brings."
"Bare-knuckled mixed martial arts action film is not a traditional faith-based film, but we hope to engage a more diverse audience and share a message of hope and salvation through our story," he says. "This movie should also engage people with no sense of faith because inner struggle is universal."
However, Davis knows there will be some fans who will watch it not for the faith aspect but for the fight realism. "For authentic action, we've had viewers rank it far above a certain more well-known cage-fight movie," he says.
The movie will follow the story of Logan Chandler (John Major Davis), a young MMA fighter who is struggling to overcome a troubled past and build a new life based on his newfound faith in God and a new love. However, his past is determined to cling on to him as Hayden Dressler, a local MMA professional, pushes him back to the world of fighting.
The movie is directed by Michael William Gordon and shot mostly in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Aside from Davis, the cast includes Lelia Symington and Matt Leddo. MMA veteran and fight choreographer Mike Taylor, UFC Heavyweight champion Dan Severn, and Wesley Williams also appear in the film.
Davis hopes that those who watch the movie will be inspired to reflect on their life choices and God's calling in their lives. "People don't think about why they make the choices they make. We want them to leave the theatres asking what if: What if I did it God's way?" he says.
"The Fight Within" will be released on Aug. 12, 2016.
Nigeria: Buhari regime condemned after killing of female Christian preacher
The Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) has condemned the Muhammadu Buhari administration over increasing violence against non-Muslims and warned Christians to defend themselves following the killing at the weekend of a female Christian preacher.
Eunice Elisha, a pastor for the Redeemed Christian Church of God, was hacked to death in the Gbazango area of Kubwa, Abuja, by suspected Muslim fanatics, while preaching on the morning on 9 July.
Premium Times reported that shocking photos of the attack show Elisha's battered body lying in a pool of blood, next to her megaphone.
No group has claimed responsibility for the murder, but police said they had arrested suspects.
On Monday, the wife of Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, Dolapo, visited Elisha's family.
CAN said the attack was "yet another religious, hatred-motivated gruesome murder" that was growing under the Buhari administration.
"The discrimination against non-Muslims in Nigeria under the Buhari Administration is assuming a dangerous dimension that should not be left to the vagaries of time and circumstance to resolve," the statement warned.
"Nigeria is dancing a macabre dance of death, both for the nation and for its citizens," the organisation added.
"The Christian Association of Nigeria commiserates with the families affected by these mindless orgies of death and destruction as well as with the entire Christian community in Nigeria," it went on. "We pray that God in His mercy shall comfort and strengthen the families of all the Nigerians affected in these unwarranted murders unleashed upon the nation by religious extremists. The recurring decimal of violence and murder of innocent Nigerian citizens on the basis of religious intolerance demands specific and relevant response from all concerned citizens in the country more so when the government in power seems to have adopted an attitude of lukewarm response to the evils being perpetrated in Nigeria in the name of religion."
Outrage at Russia's 'unconstitutional' crackdown on religion, evangelism
Russia's President Vladmir Putin has signed a package of new anti-terrorism measures into law amid protests that they will be used to crack down on religious freedom.
Among Christians in Russia, Protestant leaders are particularly fearful as the legislation dubbed the Yarovaya law after one of its two sponsors, United Russia deputy Irina Yarovaya targets unregistered congregations and house groups.
According to Forum 18, which monitors religious freedom in Russia and former Soviet republics, the amendments to the Religion Law restrict those who can share beliefs to people with permission from members of state-registered religious groups and organisations.
This excludes people from "underground" churches which have chosen to operate without state permission. They also prohibit even the informal sharing of beliefs, for example responding to questions or comments.
The amendments also restrict the beliefs that can be shared and specify a restricted list of places where beliefs may be shared. They ban any beliefs from being shared in residential buildings, and bar the conversion of residential property to religious use. There are heavy financial penalties for breaching the law.
The new laws, which come into effect on July 20, represent the culmination of attempts by anti-religion campaigners to limit religious expression. Previous attempts by politicians to introduce bills on missionary activity were not supported by the government, according to Forum 18, but the restrictions were added at the last minute to the anti-terrorism legislation. Human Rights Watch has documented its chaotic passage, which included the last-minute withdrawal of a proposal to remove Russian citizenship from anyone who "worked for an international organisation" in whose creation Russia did not take part.
The new laws have drawn fierce protests from within Russia and abroad. Forum 18 cites lawyer Vladimir Ryakhovsky of the Slavic Centre for Law and Justice, who wrote on Facebook when President Putin signed the bill into law: "Today is indeed a black day on the calendar. Hope was that Vladimir Putin would not in the end sign this law. A law which openly contradicts the gospel command 'go and make disciples' and, in addition, violates the constitutional rights of citizens." He said that the amendments been drafted by "people who were absolutely not professionals and who didn't understand religious practice".
However, he indicated that the law would be challenged in Russia's Constitutional Court. Until then, he said: "Let's work out how to get round it, and then we'll seek to get it amended. Don't succumb to panic when they threaten you with all kinds of horror stories."
Deputy Bishop Konstantin Bendas of the Pentecostal Union said he hoped that deputies in the Duma to be elected in September will amend the law. He highlighted the need to change the provisions on "missionary activity" and the use of homes for meetings for worship.
A spokeswoman for the Council of Churches-Baptists told Forum 18: "We are distressed by the Law and see it as repressive for believers in our country, because the Law contradicts the Bible." She added that "we must assume there will be repression and persecution".
The new laws have also drawn international protests. The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) said they would grant authorities "sweeping powers to curtail civil liberties, including setting broad restrictions on religious practices that would make it very difficult for religious groups to operate".
USCIRF chair Thomas Reese said: "These deeply flawed anti-terrorism measures will buttress the Russian government's war against human rights and religious freedom.
"They will make it easier for Russian authorities to repress religious communities, stifle peaceful dissent, and detain and imprison people. Neither these measures nor the currently existing anti-extremism law meet international human rights and religious freedom standards."
According to the Gospel Coalition, "The new law will impede the spread of the gospel and threatens to curtail the expression of our Christian brothers and sisters in that country. For this reason alone we should strongly oppose the totalitarian policy."
Pope Francis expresses grief over Puglia train crash
Pope Francis has expressed his grief over yesterday's train collision which killed 23 people in the southern Italian region of Puglia.
The Pope said he was praying for the injured and the families of the victims. "His Holiness Pope Francis expresses his heartfelt and genuine participation in the sorrow striking so many families," said the Vatican secretary of state Archbishop Pietro Paroli.
"He assures his fervent prayers of repose for those who tragically died and, while invoking the Lord for a swift recovery for the injured, entrusts to the maternal protection of the Virgin Mary the many who are affected by dramatic grief, and sends the comfort of his Apostolic Blessing."
The comments came after at least 23 people died and dozens more were injured in the crash, which happened around 11:30 local time yesterday. Two trains appeared to collide with one another between the coastal towns of Bari and Barletta.
Italy's Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, who was in Milan during the accident, said he had ordered an investigation.
"I want to express my condolences to the families and I have ordered, with no holding-back, [an inquiry] to find who is responsible," he said.
"I think we must have absolute clarity on this. We will not stop until we understand what happened."
The Mayor of Corato, Massimo Mazzilli said the damage was so extensive it was as if a plane had crashed, the BBC reported.
A policeman told reporters: "I saw dead people, others who were begging for help, people crying. The worst scene of my life."
Priest headteacher banned from teaching for life after giving 7-year-olds extra tests
A priest has been banned for life from teaching after it emerged that he had been giving seven-year-olds extra reading tests that could have boosted his own reputation and that of the school.
Rev Paul Lock was the headteacher of Willow Tree Primary School in St Helens, Merseyside when he gave extra key stage one phonics tests in which children read out a list of words while a teacher listens to their pronunciation.
Lock, 51, admitted to carrying out extra tests in the corridor after classes after he was spotted by colleagues. The exams for up to 40 children formed part of their SATs (Standard Assessment Tests) which in turn measure the school's progress in boosting pupils' performance.
After the local council launched an investigation, Lock a former director of the Blackburn Diocese Board of Education was suspended and all 40 of the pupils' test results were declared void.
Before qualifying as a teacher, Lock served as a priest in Liverpool and London. He was appointed head of Willow Tree Primary School in 2014 after working for a number of schools in the Church of England Diocese of Blackburn.
According to a report of the investigation, which was held in private, Lock admitted he had behaved dishonestly and unprofessionally by testing the children on more than the one occasion permitted under the SATs regime.
The panel concluded: "Mr Lock's conduct was dishonest according to the ordinary standards of a reasonable and honest headteacher and that Mr Lock must have known that what he was doing was dishonest".
It added that his actions had fallen "significantly short of the standards expected of the profession" and constituted "fraud and serious dishonesty".
The Daily Mail pointed out that while artificially boosting pupils' results would not have led to any financial gain for Mr Lock or the school, it could have led to misleading comparisons with neighbouring schools based on SATs results as well as enhancing his reputation as a headteacher.
An official at the Department for Education, Jayne Millions, said: "This was a very serious case of maladministration. Mr Lock's conduct has had a serious impact on pupils and fundamentally affected the education of pupils by undermining the integrity of the testing regime."
Shared Conversations: Why the Church of England still has a long way to go on sexuality
The Church of England has concluded its Shared Conversations on human sexuality with a two-day session at the York Synod.
That was the culmination of a process lasting nearly two years and also involving the College of Bishops and regional meetings. It sprang from a recommendation from the bishops in November 2013 that: "The subject of sexuality, with its history of deeply entrenched views, would be best addressed by facilitated conversations or a similar process to which the Church of England needs to commit itself at national and diocesan level."
In other words, according to the Shared Conversations website, rather than try to thrash everything out in a parliamentary-style showdown in which one side wins and the other side loses, conversations would "create safe spaces in which questions of difference and disagreement can be explored in relation to questions of scripture, mission and human sexuality". The conversations weren't aimed at reaching a decision. Neither were they aimed at changing people's minds: rather, the hope was that participants would "come to discern that which is of Christ in those with whom they profoundly disagree". So, "The conversations are intended to help us find out how much we can agree on, how much difference we can accept in fellow Christians without agreeing, and where we find the limits of agreement to lie."
Avoiding the issue?
Will the Conversations help the Church of England avoid utter shipwreck over the issue of human sexuality, or are they just a way of avoiding hard theological thinking in favour of feelgood encounters?
The conversations at the General Synod were held under the St Michael's House Protocols, which included not using social media during the discussions and not, frustratingly for a journalist, talking to anyone not directly involved in them. However, participants were encouraged to share "any learning that you have acquired" after the sessions were over, while being careful not to identify anyone else. And, as Christian Today revealed, some participants in the synod refused to take part in the Shared Conversations section altogether.
Did it work? Opinions on the synod sessions were mixed. Rev Andrew Dotchin, Vicar of Felixstowe, wrote on Facebook of the "brooding looks of disagreement and distaste from non-participants to others as the days proceeded". He thought his group had become more open-minded as discussions proceeded, but questioned whether they had really listened to the experience of LGBT people. He was scathing about "theologically illiterate" contributions from the front and generally thought things were moving in the direction of acceptance.
Christian Today contributor Rev Dr Ian Paul also contributed reflections, from elsewhere on the theological spectrum. He wrote of "good moments, and some genuinely helpful results", and was moved by the stories of LGBT people. But he was unimpressed by the quality of contributions from the front during the session on what Scripture says and how we interpret it, and by the organisers' response to criticisms; they were just wrong, the critics were told.
The Church Times collated other responses in a useful compendium, to which various members contributed. Generally the process was seen as well-managed and helpful, providing many new insights and inspiring some hope that a catastrophic split might be avoided.
The Shared Conversations at the synod were only part of the process, however. There were also regional events following a similar pattern of discussions in small groups. Responses from them are available in various places, including Changing Attitude, which works for the full inclusion of LGBT people in the Church. Many of these responses, from both sides, reflect on how their encounters have enabled them to understand more of "the other", to use the language of the project. Many others, including a painful one from Dan Grayson, say it just didn't work and they felt worse than ever. Still others, like one from Martin Saxby, indicate that while the experience might have been enjoyable and helpful, "this has not brought us any closer to a solution as positions are still firmly held on both sides, and people quickly revert to type".
The responses to the Shared Conversations, both those held at the synod and those held earlier, indicate two things: how far the Church has come in being able to talk about these things, and how far it has yet to go. It's indisputable that the initiative from Justin Welby and his chief of staff, David Porter, has been a hugely valuable exercise. It has brought people together face to face, so that those on both sides have had the chance to listen to each other's stories. They have not always done so, and they have certainly not always changed their minds, but at least they have been in the same room rather than writing angry social media posts. Arguably, this opportunity for encounter was essential before substantive talks could begin.
However, at some point they must, and there are questions that can scarcely be fudged. They are: will the CofE allow its priests to marry same-sex couples? Will it allow them to contract such marriages themselves? Will it permit clergy married to people of the same sex to be consecrated as bishops?
Dependent on these questions there are others, around whether the Church can live with the inevitable strains from the large number of clergy and lay people who just don't believe in gay marriage. It's inconceivable that clergy could be required to conduct same-sex marriages against their will, any more than they are required to marry divorced people. That might not be such a problem, but the question of episcopal oversight from, say, a married gay bishop or one who has been consecrated by a married gay bishop is far more difficult.
Agreeing to disagree?
These, however, are at the level of practical problems which it is not beyond the wit of the Church of England to solve. The fundamental question of human sexuality is whether it counts as one of the adiaphora, on which Anglicans can agree to disagree, or whether its theological significance is such that disagreement inevitably leads to schism. To put it another way: can Christians with traditional beliefs about sexuality continue to remain a member of a Church that marries same-sex couples, or do they have to leave?
For many not all on the evangelical wing, it is a simple matter of biblical faithfulness and the historical witness of the Church. And while theology cannot be divorced from the lived experience of God's people and for some, this is homosexual rather than heterosexual neither can it be dictated by it. For many elsewhere on the spectrum, the Bible is not so clear, and the experiences of LGBT people must themselves be allowed to carry some weight. How much, and how far this experience should modify our understanding of the Bible, is moot.
So while the conversations might have prepared the ground in terms of personal encounters, the real work of theological encounter remains to be done. So far, the indications are that positions remain entrenched, and the Shared Conversations may prove to be nothing more than a 1914 Christmas Truce nice to look back on, but only a temporary break in hostilities.
Follow Mark Woods on Twitter: @RevMarkWoods
Vigils for missing seminarian presumed dead after saving drowning woman
Vigils are being held for a young seminarian who was swept away after trying to save a drowning woman.
Brian Bergkamp, 24, was kayaking in the Arkansas River with four friends when they encountered turbulent waters on July 9. One of his female friends fell in, and Bergkamp who wasn't wearing a life jacket entered the water to save her.
The woman and three others were able to reach the shore, but Bergkamp remains missing and is believed dead.
He had just finished his second year at the Mount St Mary's Seminary in Emmitsburg, Maryland, where he was studying theology. He was due to be ordained as a priest in 2018.
Wichita Bishop Carl Kemme said in an email to his diocesan newspaper that Bergkamp was "an exceptional seminarian, well on his way to demonstrating so many of the qualities needed to be a good and faithful priest".
"I personally looked forward to the day when I might be able to ordain him," Kemme added. "I was looking forward to how God would use him as a priest in the Diocese of Wichita. Now, we must all mourn his much anticipated ministry and the many fruits we all knew would be abundant by his priestly life and ministry."
Fellow seminarian, Jimmy Schibi, told KSN News Bergkamp was "one of the most selfless individuals I ever met".
"He gave up his life to be a priest, but before he could do that, he gave up his life for another," he added.
"He would go out of his way to help someone and forget about his own, probably, self in the process," said vice rector of Mount St Mary's, Fr Kenneth Brighenti. "So what he did was a very natural thing for him".
In a profile on the Catholic Diocese of Wichita's website, Bergkamp said he had wanted to become a priest since a very young age. "I want to say I first heard the call when I was really young, like 8 years old young. I don't know though if I would quite consider this a calling or just my first time I had the desire to become a priest. I remember in 2nd grade, my close friend and I would argue back and forth on who would be a priest first. And as time would tell, it looks like we will both be priests at the same time, for we are now both entering the seminary."
Prayer services are being held every day until Bergkamp's body is found.
Would-be assassin of Pope John Paul II 'wants to become a priest'
The Turkish would-be assassin of Pope John Paul II has said he would like to become a Catholic priest, the website Crux reports.
Mehmet Ali Agca, who shot and injured the Pope in 1981, says he is "wasting my time " in Turkey after being released by a pontifical pardon in the jubilee year of 2000. He had served 19 years in an Italian prison and a decade in a Turkish jail.
Ali Agca told the Italian TV network Canale 5: "Here in Turkey, I live as a pensioner wasting my time. That's why I want to make an appeal to Pope Francis: Welcome me in the Vatican, and I will become a priest."
John Paul II visited Ali Agca in 1983, two years after the assassination attempt in St Peter's Square. Ali Agca said he has since been studying scripture. "After John Paul II visited me in prison, I thought about it, and I studied the Gospel at length," Ali Agca said. "I know the sacred books better than many others. If the pope welcomes me, I'll be a priest and I will celebrate Mass, if he wants me!"
Ali Agca, a former member of the Turkish nationalist group the 'Grey Wolves', has made a series of bizarre statements including about his motives over the years.
In 2005, as John Paul II struggled with Parkinson's disease, Ali Agca wrote the then Pope a letter to tell him the world would soon end.
In 2010, he released a statement that appeared to suggest he regards himself as Jesus. "I will meet you in the next three days. In the name of God Almighty, I proclaim the end of the world in this century," it said. "All the world will be destroyed, every human being will die. I am not God, I am not son of God, I am Christ eternal."
Sai Sai, an SNLD member in Hsipaw Township, said that families from Wan Loi village had been leaving their homes since July 8. He said they were currently staying at Yadana Shwegu Monastery in the main town of Hsipaw.
On July 8, 217 persons from 57 households took shelter at the Yadana Shwegu temple. On July 9 another 122 persons from 35 households, and yesterday 39 villagers sought refuge at the temple, he said on Monday. So, within three days, at least 378 persons have been displaced from their homes.
According to a resident in Hsipaw, who wished to remain anonymous, the villagers ran away because they were afraid of being recruited as soldiers.
Fighting between the two ethnic militias broke out last week in northern Shan States Hsipaw Township, some 200 kilometers northeast of Mandalay. It is a disputed area where several armed groups are active: the RCSS/SSA; the TNLA; the Shan State Progress Party/Shan State Army (SSPP/SSA); and Burmas government forces. Skirmishes between each of the armed groups have been reported in recent months.
On Monday, the TNLAs news and information department posted on its Facebook page details of a clash that it said happened that morning at 9:30 when RCSS/SSA troops entered into their territory.
The first clash between the TNLA, sometimes called the Palaung Army, and the RCSS/SSA broke out in November 2015, only a month after the so-called Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement was signed between the Burmese government and eight ethnic armed groups, including the RCSS/SSA. Hostilities have since broken out frequently.
In late May, residents in the Hsipaw area were also forced to leave their homes because of conflicts between the two armies.
At the time of reporting, Shan Herald was unable to reach either TNLA or RCSS/SSA representatives for comment.
Zimbabwean pastor arrested after campaigning against Mugabe
A Zimbabwean pastor has been arrested and charged with inciting public violence after leading a campaign against President Robert Mugabe's regime.
Evan Mawarire has championed the #ThisFlag protest movement at the government's handling of the economy. On Tuesday he was summoned by police for questioning ahead of a two-day "stay-at-home" strike. But hours later the #ThisFlag twitter account posted: "Pastor Evan Mawarire is being charged with section 36 for inciting public violence and disturbing peace."
Pastor Evan Mawarire is being charged with section 36 for inciting public violence and disturbing peace. #ThisFlag pic.twitter.com/peCIdIF8Iu #ThisFlag (@ThisFlag1980) 12 July 2016
The tweet shared a pre-recorded video where the pastor and protest leader said: "You are watching this video because I have either been arrested or have been abducted. It's a video we had pre-recorded for a day like this one."
He finishes with a rallying cry to his supporters: "Hold this government to account. Never let them get away with anything," he said.
"Remember this flag is our flag, no-one else loves Zimbabwe more than a Zimbabwean."
The arrest is part of a "well-calculated plan" to crush the protests, according to the advocacy group Amnesty International.
Amnesty's Southern Africa deputy director Muleya Mwananyanda said it was an "attempt to suppress the rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly" and called on the government to listen to Mawarire.
Authorities have tried to trace who has been organising recent national shutdowns as it involves several activist groups, including Mawarire's. His accidental movement began when he posted an angry rant at the state of his nation wearing a Zimbabwean flag around his neck. A nationwide trend was sparked around the hashtag #ThisFlag and has led to Mawarire receiving death threats and now arrest.
The country saw its biggest strike action since 2005 last Wednesday and led to a complete shutdown of schools, businesses and shops. Civil servants had not been paid their June salaries but were paid in foreign currency in the wake of the strike.
As well as Mawarire about 300 people were arrested in protests across Zimbabwe after similar protests last week.
This is the original video that sparked the campaign:
WASHINGTON Responding to last week's shootings in Dallas that killed five uniformed officers, a trio of U.S. senators including Texas Republicans John Cornyn and Ted Cruz introduced legislation Wednesday increasing penalties against violent criminals who intentionally target law enforcement officers.
Called the "Back the Blue Act," the bill also would provide new tools to help law enforcement protect themselves, and open up grant funding to strengthen relationships between law enforcement and their communities.
"Law enforcement officers selflessly put their lives on the line every day to protect our communities, and in return they deserve our unparalleled support for the irreplaceable role they serve," Cornyn said. "The Back the Blue Act sends a clear message that our criminal justice system simply will not tolerate those who viciously and deliberately target our law enforcement. As our country continues to grieve following last week's tragedy in Dallas, we must come together in support of those who risk everything to keep us safe."
The Texans, joined by North Carolina Republican Thom Tillis, expect bipartisan support for the legislation, though it remains unclear if both the House and Senate will act on it before Congress breaks for the summer at the end of this week.
"We must stand in solidarity with our police officers, firefighters, first responders, and federal officers who selflessly run into harm's way to protect our families and our communities," Cruz said. "This should not be a partisan issue.This should be an issue that brings us together, united as Americans."
Among other provisions, the bill would create a new federal crime for killing, attempting to kill, or conspiring to kill a federal judge, federal law enforcement officer, or federally-funded public safety officer. Conviction could carry the death penalty and a mandatory minimum sentence of 30 years for murder, plus a minimum sentence of 10 years for attempted murder.
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This is why she's a legend, folks.
Goldie Hawn was recently spotted looking flawless, even in workout gear, with her smiling partner Kurt Russell in the background.
You see her in the photograph above, but one place you haven't seen her lately is on the big screen.
Though Hawn is a fixture in Hollywood, you might be surprised to learn that the last movie she starred in was 2002's "The Banger Sisters." Yup, that was 14 years ago.
That was the same year Kelly Clarkson won "American Idol," and the first time a woman of color, Halle Berry, would win an Academy Award. It was also the same year you were jamming Nelly's "Hot In Herre" on repeat in your car. Admit it.
But that is all about to change.
Hawn is currently filming an untitled mother-daughter action comedy alongside Amy Schumer. Not much is known about the project, other than it's being filmed in Hawaii and it stars two of the funniest blonds in the industry. Movies.com reports that was written by Katie Dippold, who also cowrote "Ghostbusters." Dippold reportedly told the site that the movie stars Schumer as a daughter who takes her mother (Hawn) on a road trip.
The movie is set to debut next year. While we're waiting for Hawn to take to the big screen, check out the gallery above to see other stars who were hot in the 1970s who are now in their 70s.
Police are looking for a person of interest concerning a fatal traffic crash late last month in southeast Houston.
Investigators want to speak with Martin Ayala Sanchez, 31, about the two-vehicle wreck which happened about 10 p.m. June 23 in the 7800 block of Galveston Road near Coronation, according to the Houston Police Department.
Professors at the University of Texas at Austin will be allowed to ban guns from their offices, the UT regents said Wednesday.
Under a new state law, concealed license holders will be able to carry handguns throughout public college campuses in Texas beginning in August. The law allowed each university to carve out gun-free zones. At the UT flagship, dormitories will be gun-free and faculty will be able to ban guns from their offices, under policies given the green light by regents.
RELATED: What Texas' Open Carry law actually says
The regents made just one tweak to the policies during Wednesday's meeting, doing away with a controversial proposed rule that would require people carrying semi-automatic handguns to remove bullets from the guns before bringing them on campus. The regents who voted to strike the rule said they heard from numerous experts who said it would be safer to just leave the guns loaded, rather than trying to take the ammunition out before heading onto campus.
"The body of evidence we've received shows it is inherently safer...to not allow guns to be chambered, un-chambered on campus," said Jeffrey Hildebrand, a regent from Houston who proposed the motion to strike the rule. "The less that one manipulates a gun...the better, and the safer it is."
That faculty will be able to keep guns out of their offices may provide a little relief to professors who have fought against the new campus carry law since it was approved last year. UT professors Jennifer Lynn Glass, Lisa Moore and Mia Carter last week filed a lawsuit asking a federal judge to block the law. They are suing Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, UT Austin President Gregory Fenves and the UT regents to do so.
Also at the meeting, UT Chancellor William McRaven gave the regents an update on UT's purchase of more than 300 acres of land in Houston. McRaven said a task force of Houstonians is working on a plan for the land, which they will have to give him by December.
"We have an opportunity to do something grand, something bold, something of substance for the state of Texas and the city of Houston," McRaven said.
An influential state senator last week asked the Texas auditor to investigate the land purchase. Paul Foster, the chairman of UT's board of regents, acknowledged Wednesday that the Houston deal is controversial.
"This is admittedly a controversial process," Foster, the only regent to speak on the matter, told McRaven at the meeting. "We want to be sure we get it right. I appreciate the way you've approached this and look forward to hearing from the task force later."
Christopher Simcox, who co-founded the now-disbanded Minuteman Civil Defense Corps white supremacist militia group, received a prison sentence of over 19 years today from an Arizona court.
He was charged with the sexual abuse of multiple children and convicted of sexually molesting a girl who was five at the time. He was also convicted of showing the 5-year-old pornography.
The case drew the Supreme Court's attention when Simcox, acting as his own attorney, demanded to interrogate the child victim himself in court. He was denied, for obvious reasons.
Simcox is 55, and was found guilty last month. The child he molested was a friend of his 6-year-old daughter. He was divorced, and the acts he was charged with took place in 2012 and 2013, during scheduled visits at his apartment. The 5-year-old girl told her mother what had happened to her, and mom called law enforcement.
Before and after his high-profile career as a freelance white supremacist hate militia leader, Simcox worked as a school teacher with children around that age. How many other victims might there be?
His conviction followed a four-week trial in which all three of his daughters by two different marriages testified against him, and claimed he had either molested them or had attempted to while caring for them.
From May coverage of that portion of the trial by the Phoenix New Times:
Two of the daughters who took the stand are under the age of 10. Both are his children with ex-wife Alena Simcox; one of them alleges sexual abuse. The third daughter is an adult, his child from a previous marriage, who alleges that Simcox molested her on three different occasions when she was young. In addition, the jury heard from another girl under 10: a playmate of Simcox's younger daughters, who alleges that Simcox bribed her with candy to show him her privates.
What a guy.
Speaking to reporters after today's sentencing, this victim's mother said the girl has not talked much about the abuse, but is supported by her family. She recently asked her daughter if she wanted to make a victim impact statement for the sentencing.
"The only thing she said was, 'He messed with the wrong family,' " the victim's mother said.
Asked of her thoughts on Simcox, the mother said she viewed him "in the same way I would view anybody who did what he did to my child. I'm glad he's gone."
Simcox first became publicly known in the mid-2000s, as a voice against the immigration of Mexican and Central Americans into Arizona, a state with many predominantly Latino and Native American communities.
With other white supremacists and militant white nativists, he co-founded the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps. The Minutemen urged fellow white Americans to form armed civilian defense squads to militarily defend the southern border of the United States. He later ran a brief campaign to unseat senator John McCain (R-AZ).
Minuteman Project leaders said their volunteers are "white Martin Luther Kings," but their anti-immigration campaigns were marked by weaponry, military maneuvers and racist talk, as the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) reported ten years ago, when Simcox was at the height of his fame and power.
From the New York Times:
In a statement on Monday, the Maricopa County attorney, Bill Montgomery, said the 19-and-a-half-year sentence involved two counts of molestation of a child and one count of furnishing obscene materials to a minor. "The defendant committed unconscionable acts against a young child, the emotional and psychological effects of which she'll have to deal with her entire life," Mr. Montgomery said. He added that the sentence "won't take back the harm he has done, but it removes the opportunity for him to prey on another child."
Simcox was also charged with sexually abusing another girl, who was five, but was found not guilty of those charges.
From the Arizona Republic:
Maricopa County prosecutor Yigael Cohen was the only one to make a statement before the sentencing. Cohen had asked for the sentences to run consecutive to each other, which would have tacked on another 17 years. It was clear from Simcox's pre-sentence report that he wasn't willing to take responsibility for what he had done, Cohen said. Instead, Simcox "made up a story" to explain why the victim was upset with him and would have motive to implicate him, Cohen said. "He is not to be trusted within society. He is not to be trusted with children," Cohen said. "He should be kept away from children for as long as possible."
Again, from the Times:
Simcox was a high-profile advocate of tougher control of borders and undocumented day laborers. He was a founder of a volunteer armed watch group, Civil Homeland Defense, which was created after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and which intercepted undocumented immigrants crossing into Arizona, turning them over to the authorities. Later, he helped form the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, which stepped into the national spotlight in 2005 with its border patrols. In 2012, Mr. Simcox told the Southern Poverty Law Center, which was investigating the possible involvement of extremist groups in the killings of Mexicans crossing the Arizona border, that he had left the movement and was living a quiet life tutoring schoolchildren in suburban Phoenix.
From the SPLC's reporting on the Minutemen, back in 2005:
The Minuteman Project was the brainchild of two fathers: Jim Gilchrist, a retired accountant and Vietnam veteran from Orange County, California, and Chris Simcox, a former kindergarten teacher at a private school in Brentwood, Calif., who left his job and his family, moved to Tombstone, Ariz., and refashioned himself into a brash anti-immigration militant following the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Before the Minuteman Project began, Gilchrist and Simcox repeatedly claimed they had recruited more than 1,300 volunteers. But when their plan lurched into action on April Fool's Day in Tombstone, fewer than 150 volunteers actually showed up, and they were clearly outnumbered on the Wild West movie-set streets by a swarm of reporters, photographers, camera crews, anti-Minuteman protesters, American Civil Liberties Union legal observers, and costumed gunfight show actors. On the whole, the Minuteman Project's enlistees were nearly all white. This wasn't surprising, except that Gilchrist and Simcox also claimed prior to April 1 that a full 40% of their volunteers would be minorities, including, according to their Web site, "American-Africans," "American-Mexicans," "American-Armenians," four paraplegics and six amputees.
The Minutemen were legitimized by the vocal political support of anti-immigrant politicians, long before a wall on the US-Mexico border was a twinkle in Donald Trump's squinty little eyes.
Speaking at a Minutemen gathering a decade ago, former Congressman Tom Tancredo (R-CO) once told the militia members that each of them stood for 100,000 likeminded Americans who couldn't afford to participate. He applauded Gilchrist and Simcox as "two good men who understand we must never surrender our right as citizens to do our patriotic duty and defend our country and stop this invasion ourselves."
Tom Tancredo is a big fan of GOP Presidential nominee Donald Trump.
U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agents seized more than 70 pounds of cocaine over the weekend near the U.S.-Mexico border in south Texas in two separate incidents.
According to the agency, an 18-year-old female Mexican citizen tried to drive across the Hidalgo International Bridge near McAllen on Saturday with 15 packages allegedly containing cocaine. Agents used a canine team on the woman's silver 2008 Dodge Caliber and found nearly 35 pounds of cocaine in her car.
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GALVESTON Gay Smither acknowledges that "forgiveness is a journey," but she said that one day she'd like to sit down and look into the eyes of William Reece, the admitted serial killer linked to the death of her 12-year-old daughter Laura.
"I don't know if he'll agree to that," Smither, 56, told reporters after a court hearing Wednesday. "I would like to share my faith and talk to him about his soul and the only path to redemption is to, really, come forward with the truth of his life if he has any hope of saving his soul. I'd like to share that with him."
Smither made her comments after Reece, a convicted kidnapper and rapist, agreed during a court hearing Wednesday to be returned to Oklahoma to be tried for capital murder in the 1997 death of another young woman.
Reece, who is serving a 60-year prison sentence in Texas for kidnapping, recently led police to the remains of Jessica Cain and Kelli Cox, who vanished in Texas in 1997. His attorney says he has admitted responsibility for their deaths and for the slaying of Laura Smither, who disappeared while jogging in her Friendswood neighborhood that same year. Her body was found two weeks later in Pasadena.
READ MORE: Who is William Lewis Reece? A history of the convicted felon who keeps leading police to new bodies
Accompanied by her husband Bob outside the court hearing, Gay Smither said Wednesday she realized that a meeting with Reece would not be possible until after he had been convicted and sentenced in Laura Smither's death.
"Forgiveness is a journey," she said, "but one day I would like mediation."
Such a meeting would require the agreement of Reece and his attorney, according to Kevin Petroff, an assistant district attorney in Galveston County.
RELATED: Accused serial killer moved to Oklahoma
Earlier Wednesday, a bearded Reece, 57, entered the courtroom of Galveston County District Judge Kerry Neves wearing a blue polo shirt, faded jeans and beige high-topped boots.
Neves asked Reece if he agreed to be transferred to Oklahoma County, Okla., to be tried for the 1997 kidnapping, rape and strangulation of newlywed Tiffany Johnston in 1997.
"Yes sir," Reece said. A Galveston County sheriff's deputy brought Reece a document on a clip board and held it as Reece scrawled his signature.
Watching the proceedings from the gallery were the Smithers.
Before the hearing, Galveston County District Attorney Jack Roady had assured the couple that Reece would be sent back to Texas after the Oklahoma trial, even if a death sentence were handed down there, to face trial for the killing of their daughter.
Reece's attorney, who was not present Wednesday, had previously said his client hoped his cooperation with Texas investigators would help him avoid the death penalty in the Oklahoma case.
Oklahoma prosecutors have refused Reece's request to rule out the death penalty, but have not decided whether to seek it.
Gay Smither said she hopes prosecutors don't do so. "I don't believe in the death penalty," she said, adding that she thought life imprisonment was punishment enough.
Even if Reese is convicted and sentenced to death in Oklahoma, the Smithers want Reece to face charges in their daughter's death.
"We want him to be tried here," said Bob Smither, 71.
Gay Smither said she was grateful to Oklahoma prosecutors for allowing Reece to remain in Texas to assist investigators.
"The wheels of justice grind slow and we have learned to be patient," Gay Smither said.
Reese was identified years ago by police as the "prime suspect" in the killing of Laura Smither.
After her disappearance, a massive search was mounted through boggy swamps and woods for the aspiring ballerina, among a select few who had been accepted into the Houston Ballet Academy the year before. Her face was flashed over the nightly news for 17 days until her body, clad only in a pair of socks, was found 12 miles from her home in a Pasadena retention pond on April 20, 1997.
Reese became a suspect after investigators learned he was a registered sex offender working off Moore Ranch Road, where the child was last seen jogging. On that particular day, Reece had been let go from work early because of rain.
However, Reece was never charged, and he even got a judge to restrict officers from interviewing him again without his permission in 1999.
At that time, he told the Chronicle, "Hey, look. Enough is enough. Either file the (expletive) murder charges ... or get off me."
The girl's parents later won a $110 million wrongful death lawsuit against Reece, who chose not to participate.
Reece, a former truck driver, had spent almost 10 years in an Oklahoma prison for two rapes in that state before being released on Oct. 5, 1996. He has been linked to five attacks on young women, four of which were fatal, over a five-month span in 1997.
The sole survivor, Sandra Sapaugh, then 19, escaped by leaping from Reece's truck on Interstate 45. Reece was convicted the following year in her kidnapping and received the 60-month prison term in Texas.
Investigators began to zero in on Reece as a possible suspect in some of the other cold cases after advances in DNA testing connected him last year to the death of Johnston, who was abducted from the Sunshine Car Wash in Bethany, Okla. on July 26, 1997. Her body was found the following day.
Oklahoma authorities agreed to let Reece remain in Texas to assist in the investigation of the other young women's deaths on the condition that he would be returned to Oklahoma to stand trial before charges were brought in Texas.
Reece was transferred from a Texas prison to the Friendswood city jail. He led investigators to the remains of Cain and Cox, who vanished in the summer of 1997.
Cox, a 20-year-old University of North Texas student and mother, went missing down the street from the Denton Police Department after touring the station for a criminology class on July 15, 1997. Her remains were found this past spring in Brazoria County. Cain, a Galveston teenager, disappeared on Aug. 17, 1997, as she was driving home from a high school musical cast party at a Clear Lake restaurant. Her truck was later found on the shoulder of I-45, with her purse locked inside. Her remains were found this past spring in a horse pasture near Hobby airport.
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San Jacinto College is preparing to launch a general studies associate degree program that will provide significant cost savings to students who will not have to buy traditional course materials like textbooks.
In lieu of traditional print textbooks, which can cost as much as $300 per copy, participants will use digital open educational resources, or OER, course materials that are free and accessible online. San Jacinto College full-time students pay about $700 each semester for printed textbooks, or nearly one-third of the total spent on tuition, fees and textbooks per term.
The college will pilot the courses during the spring 2017 semester, and the full OER general studies associate degree program is tentatively scheduled to start in fall 2017. For information, visit www.sanjac.edu or call 281-998-6150.
TCISD seeks Hall of Honor nominations
The Texas City Independent School District Foundation for the Future has opened the nomination process for its 2016 Hall of Honor.
Ideal candidates are graduates of Wolvin, Central, Texas City or Booker T. Washington high schools who have made significant contributions through outstanding service to their community or accomplishments in their chosen profession.
Nominations close Aug. 1, and selected individuals will be recognized Oct. 13 at the Charles T. Doyle Convention Center. Visit www.tcisd.org for an application.
Future peace officers graduate, win awards
Seventeen cadets graduated from the College of the Mainland Basic Peace Officer Academy May 26. Five students received awards for excellence in leadership, academics and marksmanship.
Class Cpl. Jillian Basilone and Class Sgt. Adrian Herrera, elected officers by their classmates, won Director's Appreciation Awards. Students Shonna Bellow and Clifford Wood each won an Academic Achievement Award. Brian Tandy received the Lem Powell Memorial Top Gun Award for marksmanship.
For information, visit www.com.edu/law-enforcement or call 409-933-8285.
UH workshops offer career guidance
Find the perfect career through workshops from University of Houston-Clear Lake's Career Services in July.
College freshmen, sophomores or others deciding a college major or career direction can participate in the Career Discovery Workshop, which offers personal insights and guidance.
The two-session workshops meets 3-6 p.m., July 19 and 26, in the university's Student Services and Classroom Building, room 3109, 2700 Bay Area Blvd., Houston. Cost is $20 for current UHCL students and $30 for non-students, and all participants will also have an appointment with a counselor beforehand.
For professionals looking to change careers, return to the workforce or clarify personal goals, the Career Transition Workshop can help. The two-session workshop meets 9 a.m. 1 p.m., July 15 and 22, also in the Student Services and Classroom Building, room 3109, 2700 Bay Area Blvd., Houston.
To set an appointment with a counselor to register for the workshops, call 281-283-2590. To learn more about the workshops, visit http://www.uhcl.edu/careerservices
Learn about OSHA going electronic
OSHA record keeping is going electronic and a free lunch-and-learn will share how any organization can prepare.
The Small Business Safety and Health Center at the Gulf Coast Safety Institute will host a free lunch and learn on how to comply with a new Occupational Safety and Health Administration ruling from 11 a.m.-1 p.m. Thursday, July 28.
The guest speaker is James Shelton, who has been with the OSHA Houston North Area Office since 1996.
The Small Business Safety and Health Center is one of three centers of the Gulf Coast Safety Institute of College of the Mainland. The New Recordkeeping Rule session will be held in Room 112 of the Gulf Coast Safety Institute, 320 Delany Road in La Marque.
To register, contact Guinn Sharpe at smallbusiness_safety@com.edu or 409-933-8338.
Gallery exhibit highlights local artists
Discover local artists during the 2016 Bay Area Juried Exhibition on display through Aug. 11 at the University of Houston-Clear Lake Art Gallery, 2700 Bay Area Blvd., Houston.
All featured artists in the exhibit live within a 30-mile radius of the university, and the work on display includes sculpture, photography, digital painting and more.
Entrance to the gallery is free, and the gallery is open Monday Thursday, 9 a.m. 6 p.m., and Friday, 9 a.m. noon, except during university closures.
To learn more about the exhibit, contact the Coordinator of Audience Development Jeff Bowen at 281-283-3376 or visit http://www.uhcl.edu/artgallery.
SJC student wins Gates scholarship
Galena Park High School graduate Jocelyn Yanez recently became the first San Jacinto College Upward Bound Math & Science Academy student to earn a Gates Millennium Scholarship from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
More than 53,000 high school students applied for the scholarship this year, and Yanez said she feels more than fortunate to be one of the 1,000 students selected.
"Being awarded the Gates Millennium Scholarship is a blessing and is one of the best things that has ever happened for me, my family and my academic journey," said Yanez. "Now I have a sense of security that my future is set, and that I no longer need to worry about finances"
Yanez plans to attend Texas A&M University in the fall. For information about San Jacinto College, call 281-998-6150 or visit www.sanjac.edu.
UHCL trip examines London, Houston ties
University of Houston-Clear Lake students and faculty made a series of cross-cultural connections in London during a recent short-term study abroad trip.
A stop in Baitul Futuh mosque in London, one of the largest mosques in Europe, featured a discussion with a local imam about how immigration has shaped British and American society.
The group also visited St. Ethelburga's Centre for Reconciliation and Peace, founded in the wake of the Irish Republican Army Bishopsgate bomb explosion in 1993.
"The goal was for students to discover the history and diversity of Europe's most multicultural city, and then compare it with Houston, which the Kinder Institute for Urban Research says is America's most diverse city," UHCL sociology professor Mike McMullen said.
Following the trip, students expanded their discussions and experiences in McMullen's class "Selected Topics in Sociology: Sociology of London."
To learn more about UHCL, visit www.uhcl.edu.
Credit union awards 4 scholarships
Amoco Federal Credit Union recently gave four scholarships to exemplary high school and college students in Galveston County and surrounding areas.
Winners of the Amoco Scholarship include Kameron Hypolite, Pearland High School; Brook Beanland, Texas City High School; and Chloe Mark, The University of Texas at Austin. Each will receive $1,000 and a paid summer internship. Santa Fe High School's Colin Lamb received the George F. Ballis Scholarship, which includes $2,000 and a paid summer internship.
For information, contact Jerica McClain, 281-534-5515 or jmcclain@amocofcu.org.
Admissions Preview set for transfer students
UH-Clear Lake invites transfer and graduate students to find out more about educational opportunities at UHCL at an Admissions Preview event, 6-7:30 p.m., July 21, in the university's Student Services and Classroom Building, 2700 Bay Area Blvd., Houston.
To learn more about the event or to RSVP, email OpenHouseRSVP@uhcl.edu or visit http://www.uhcl.edu/admissionspreview.
ACC LVN grads post 100 percent pass rate
The 2016 Alvin Community College Licensed Vocational Nursing graduates posted a 100 percent pass rate on their recent license exams.
All 25 graduates passed the National Council Licensure Examination to obtain their nursing license.
"This is the fifth consecutive year for a 100 percent pass rate," ACC President Christal M. Albrecht said.
For more information about the LVN program, call 281-756-5630 or visit www.alvincollege.edu/Vocational-Nursing.
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Soroptimist International of Alvin members gave grants, scholarships and awards during their end-of-year luncheon on June 21.
The group awarded a total of $10,800 in grants to the Alvin High School Close Up, ARC Gulf Coast, Brazoria County Alliance for Children, Communities in Schools, Crossover in Christ Mission, Hand in Hand Child Development, Hope Dental Clinic, Imagine Enterprises Thelma Ley Anderson Family of YMCA, ACC Upward Bound and Cornerstone Of Alvin Texas.
"These organizations provide needed services to women and children in our community," SIOA President Lorilyn Wynn said. "We are pleased we can provide that assistance."
SIOA helps women by supporting educational endeavors that foster economic independence and stability and a higher quality of life, said Wynn.
The $700 Live Your Dream Award went to Alvin Community College student Crystal Correa of Alvin. Correa was also awarded District III scholarship for $1,500 and then won a $6,000 scholarship during the South Central Regional Soroptimist conference.
The four runners-up in the Alvin Soroptimist Live Your Dream competition are Neisha Pander of Alvin, Mandy Jordan of Santa Fe, Megan Brewer of Alvin and Ma Vega Campos of Webster. Each received $500.
The $500 PathFinder scholarships for ACC students were awarded to Bridget Moore, Pander and Correa. High School recipients included Kyli Bingham, Bridget Byrd, Joyce Ellis, Anna Rader and LeAnn Thai.
During the event, the group also recognized local women who have made a significant impact on the organization and community.
This year's award recipients include Ann McGilvray, who was named Volunteer of the Year, and Gay Williams, who was honored as the Woman of Distinction for 2016.
SIOA participates in Men Who Cook in order to provide grants for local groups and help women directly with scholarships and resources for other needs.
Chartered in 1984, SIOA is part of an international volunteer group and composed of local business and professional women with the desire to help improve the lives of women and children. Email Lorilyn@texasadvantagecommunitybank.com for information.
Synagogue garage sale set for July 17
Congregation Shaar Hashalom's Sisterhood invites the community to its annual garage sale, 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. July 17 at 16020 El Camino Real.
Clothing, books, artwork, kitchen goods and more will be available. For information, visit www.shaarhashalom.org, call 281-488-5861 or email csh@shaarhashalom.org.
Friendswood Drive project underway
The Friendswood Drive median makeover, funded by a $210,000 Governor's Community Achievement Award from the Texas Department of Transportation, has begun.
The work stretches from the Pearland city limit to Stevenson Park. Once the work is complete, medians will have new vegetation, decorative rock and irrigation.
The street's crepe myrtles will be replanted at the Cpl. Steven Schulz Sportspark and Centennial Park, according to Keep Friendswood Beautiful volunteers.
Local photographer stages library exhibit
Katie Gillis, Seabrook native and nature photographer, will showcase some of her coastal photography at the Evelyn Meador Branch Library, 2400 N Meyer Ave., Seabrook, this month.
For more information, visit www.kgphotographs.net, email kgphotography16@gmail.com or call 832-244-8055.
Book examines cotton's impact on Texas
Andrew J. Torget will discuss his latest book, "Seeds of Empire: Cotton, Slavery, and the Transformation of the Texas Borderlands 1800-1850," at 6:30 p.m. July 14 at the Brazoria County Historical Museum, 100 E. Cedar in Angleton.
Admission is free, and limited quantities of the book will be available for purchase. For information, call 979-864-1208 or visit www.bchm.org.
Pasadena to host rain barrel workshop
A rain barrel workshop will be held from 9:30-11:30 a.m. July 16 at the Pasadena Convention Center and Fairgrounds, 7902 Fairmont Parkway.
The cost is $35 (1 barrel & 1 kit, includes admission to the workshop). Visit www.galvbay.org to register.
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A suspected shoplifter linked to the deadly crash of a Bellaire police officer during a chase earlier this week has been arrested on a charge of murder, according to the Harris County District Clerk's office.
Late Wednesday, Dante Moore, 28, was in custody at the Houston Police Department jail in lieu of $100,000 bond. He is expected to appear in court on Friday.
Moore turned himself in Wednesday afternoon to the Bellaire Police Department.
Bellaire Officer Anthony Zarate, 52, crashed his motorcycle into a trailer while he was pursuing the suspected shoplifters Tuesday in the Meyerland area.
RELATED: Motorcycle crash kills Bellaire officer pursuing suspects
Zarate, a seven-year veteran of the Bellaire Police Department, was pronounced dead at Memorial Hermann Hospital in the Texas Medical Center.
Moore was escorted into the police department by Quanell X, a local community activist. Moore and his family turned to Quanell X to help negotiate with authorities.
Quanell X said he felt it was vital that Moore come forward because of tensions between the black community and law enforcement.
"I explained to him that it was extremely, extremely necessary, of the utmost importance that we get him turned in safely," he said.
Moore walked up to the station with no shirt on and with his hands up, because police officers in the U.S. are "on edge," Quanell X said. Moore also told Quanell X he was scared the police would shoot him.
"We're talking about a police officer who is dead," he said. "I wanted to make sure that there was no suspicion, no room for battle, that this young man was posing no threat and that he was not armed."
Moore's twin brother was also in the car with him during the chase and is working with Quanell X to possibly turn himself in as well.
Bellaire Police Chief Byron Holloway said the Houston police department will handle the case. The crash occurred in a residential area along the 8500 block of Ferris.
Holloway said he doesn't want the public to make the assumption that Moore intentionally caused the death of an officer.
Under Texas law, a person fleeing from police can be charged with murder or manslaughter if the pursuit leads to a death.
"The fact that he (Moore) is cooperating, I don't know what that will mean for him in future prosecution," Holloway said. "What it means to me is that he wants to resolve the issue and he is trying to do what he sees is the right thing."
Andrew Kragie contributed to this report
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Teens in foster care recently visited more than 12 area businesses as part of Child Advocates of Fort Bend's Wings summer program.
"Wings focuses on helping youth in foster care acquire life skills, plan educational goals, develop a transitional living plan and create a support system of positive adults outside of the foster care system," program director Metoyer Martin said.
The program began with a visit to the Houston Alumni and Youth Center and Preparation for Adult Living program. Youths also visited the University of Houston to learn about college opportunities.
Visits to AT&T, Nan Ya Plastics and Nalco offered information on career opportunities, resume writing and interviewing. Dr. Ivan Mefford and representatives from the Fort Bend County Sheriff's Office talked to the teens about careers in the medical field and law enforcement, respectively.
Visits to Wells Fargo and CarMax addressed financial literacy and car buying, leasing and maintenance. In addition, the youth visited Depelchin to learn about the agency's transitional living housing program and Darling Homes to learn about home buying and leasing.
They learned how to plan, budget, shop and prepare a meal at the H-E-B in Telfair.
For information or to become a volunteer, visit www.cafb.org or contact Karen Jordin, kjordin@cafb.org or 281-344-5258.
Fort Bend, residents connect with new app
Fort Bend County has partnered with PublicStuff to create a mobile app that allows residents to submit, track and view nearby nonemergency service requests through their smart phones and online.
By simply snapping a picture, residents can report damaged street signs, potholes, drainage problems and similar issues. Once requests are submitted, the relevant staff redirects and responds to requests through a customized workflow management system.
Residents also can use the app to find information about events, public facilities and polling locations, as well as receive alerts of emergencies and county activities.
The app is available for download through Apple and Google.
Local vet inducted into ROTC Hall of Fame
Retired Brig. Gen. Richard W. Mills of Damon-a graduate of Sam Houston State University-has been inducted into the U.S. Army National ROTC Hall of Fame at Fort Knox, Kentucky.
The Hall of Fame honors graduates of the Army ROTC who have distinguished themselves in military or civilian pursuits. The ceremony took place in connection with the U.S. Army Cadet Command's 100th anniversary.
Clothing drive needs volunteers
Common Threads, 710 Houston St., Richmond, helps provide clothing to LCISD students in need and is seeking volunteers to sign up for its annual Hope on the Brazos back to school event on July 30. A mandatory meeting for volunteers will be July 29 at 6:30 p.m.
Call 832-223-0342.
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Achieve Fort Bend County's Summer Reading Program for At-Risk First-Graders recently distributed almost 9,000 books to students in 31 area elementary schools.
Some 742 students with reading deficiencies in Fort Bend, Lamar Consolidated, Needville and Stafford Municipal school districts received personalized literacy packets with 12 books chosen to match their interests and reading level.
"We know that students lose some traction during the summer months, and for struggling students, the break from school only puts them further behind," Achieve board member and educator Rebecca Deurlein said. "Most of these kids would never have access to books otherwise, and we have just provided them with the key resource they need for future success."
Shared Dreams wins $5,000 supplies grant
Fort Bend Cares recently presented Fort Bend Independent School District's Shared Dreams program with a $5,000 Founders Grant to provide clothing, shoes, toiletries and school supplies to students in need of assistance.
"The grant will fund the purchase of much-needed supplies to help families provide their children with a positive school experience," said Pamela Shaw, Fort Bend ISD director of parent and community engagement.
FBISD congratulates Project Search grads
Fort Bend Independent School District recently recognized seven 2016 Project Search graduates and named 11 participants for the coming school year.
Project Search works in partnership with Fort Bend ISD, UnitedHealthcare Community Plan, Texas Department of Assistive and Rehabilitative Services and Texana to provide students with work experience.
The 2016 graduates-Yasin Bennet, Sammy Gregus, Gheori Taylor, Billeh Tubea, Avory Washington, Jarred Wittmann and Bryan Xu-completed a year-long internship with UnitedHealthcare.
Interns for the 2016-17 school year are: Damion August, Alexandra Earl, Danial Farooque, Gustavo Garcia, James George, Mauricio Gonzalez, Joshna Joy, Clinton Nwachukwu, Damilola Samuel, Alexis Soliz and Tan Tran.
Adults ages 18-22 living with disabilities who were enrolled in Fort Bend ISD are eligible to apply for the program. Visit www.projectsearch.us for details.
Workshop previews FBISD bond program
Fort Bend Independent School District's Business Opportunity Services Team will host a kick-off event for Phase 2 of the 2014 Bond Program 2-4 p.m. July 14 at 555 Julie Rivers Drive in Sugar Land.
Contractors, subcontractors and other interested businesses are invited to learn more about the projects included in the second phase, which will go out for bid this fall.
"The Small Business Opportunity Services Team has been busy this year as we work to educate businesses about the Small Business Enterprise Program. Through monthly workshops hosted by Fort Bend ISD and its partners, businesses have learned how to obtain certification as a small business, as well as the services and supports that are available to them," said Robert Fazakerly, director of the Business Opportunity Services Team.
For information, contact Jeanette Boleware, 281-327-7697; Bill Garner, 281-634-4673; or Fazakerly, 281-634-1841.
Stafford MSD names teacher of the year
Stafford Municipal School District recently selected Stafford Elementary School fourth-grade teacher Carolina Sievers as its 2015-16 Teacher of the Year.
Sievers also is the Stafford Elementary School Teacher of the Year.
Thanks to a partnership between the district and Group One Automotive, Sievers received a free lease on a car of her choice from David Taylor Cadillac for the summer.
She is a bilingual math/science/technology teacher who has a master's degree in engineering management from The Catholic University of America in Washington D.C.
Approximately one out of three SMSD teachers has a master's degree.
"I can truly say that I am where I belong," Sievers said. "I enjoy teaching math but it's not just about the academics, it's helping my bilingual kids in so many other ways. I understand where they are coming from."
Sievers belongs to the Texas Association of Bilingual Educators and is the Stafford Elementary fourth-grade math team leader.
The daughter of two educators, Sievers grew up in Merida, Venezuela, and taught at two Houston area community colleges, before deciding to become an elementary school teacher.
Stafford MSD offers dual-credit courses
Through a partnership with Houston Community College-Stafford Campus, Stafford Municipal School District high school students can take college courses, free of charge, while earning college credit.
Students could earn enough credits at SMSD to begin college as sophomores. The number of SMSD students enrolled in dual-credit courses has doubled from 150 in 2013 to 300 in 2016.
To schedule a tour of the Stafford College & Career Center, contact Deborah Nordt, 281-261-9207.or dnordt@staffordmsd.org.
FBISD unveils technology plan
Representatives from Fort Bend Independent School District and the community recently shared an update to the Educational Technology Master Plan with district leaders.
The plan provides strategies to establish a classroom technology standard across the district during the next five years.
"Educational technology is an extension of the curriculum," said Phillys Hill, chief academic officer. "We must have the toolsets in place so that all Fort Bend ISD teachers have greater access to aligned technology resources, and we must be intentional about this effort."
Key components of the plan include a network infrastructure upgrade, a learning management system, standard classroom technology configurations, teacher training and a "lending library" for devices.
A program of St. Joseph Medical Center offers a new 15-minute noninvasive mobile health screening to provide information about vascular health and risk of heart disease or stroke.
Staffed by a team of health care professionals, the AngioScreen mobile program utilizes imaging equipment to gather information about a person's heart rhythm, neck and leg arteries, blood pressure and fitness to compare to normal levels within the participant's age group. Those who undergo the screening receive a printed report and digital record along with educational materials and a nondiagnostic consultation. Participants can share the information with their physicians for an assessment of their vascular health.
St. Joseph Medical Center is located in downtown Houston and in the Heights community. The AngioScreen program is available throughout the greater Houston area and is available for scheduling by corporations, health fairs and organizations. Additionally, because the equipment is portable, the system can be moved inside and be hosted in areas such as conference rooms.
"Vascular disease is the leading cause of heart attack and stroke," said Sheila Coogan, a vascular surgeon at St. Joseph Medical Center, in a news release. "Most people don't realize that every 30 seconds an American has a heart attack. Participants (in the AngioScreen program) can take the integrated vascular information provided by our team to a physician so that a preventive action plan can be discussed."
For more information and scheduling the SJMC AngioScreen mobile unit, call 713-757-7575 or visit www.sjmctx.com/angioscreen.
washington avenue
Velvet Taco given 'Hot Concepts' award by group
One of the restaurant industry's most prestigious award programs recently called Velvet Taco one of its "Hot Concepts" winners for 2016.
The taco restaurant chain operates its Houston location at 4819 Washington Avenue. Velvet Taco has additional locations in Dallas, Fort Worth and Chicago.
The award recognizes the taco chain as among "forward-thinking restaurant brands at the leading edge of foodservice" and as being "poised for significant growth," according to a statement issued by Velvet Taco.
In its 22nd year, Hot Concepts is hosted by Nation's Restaurant News. Winners were selected by NRN's Editorial Board.
To be considered for the award, restaurant chains must have opened first restaurant units less than seven years before the award recognition. Recognized businesses also had to have a minimum of three restaurant units in different market areas or a minimum of five units in one market area, display an entrepreneurial spirit, incite strong consumer appeal and have a sound financial position as determined by commercial data generator Dun and Bradstreet and other financial benchmarks.
Velvet Taco's Houston location serves multicultural tacos in a fast-causal setting. The menu features made-from-scratch corn tortillas, slow-roasted rotisserie meats and corn, fresh fruit, margaritas and housemade red velvet cake.
To learn more about the restaurant chain, visit www.velvettaco.com.
spring branch
Education foundation issues grants
More than $128,500 in grants will fund educational projects within the Spring Branch Independent School District.
The grants are being provided by the Spring Branch Education Foundation, which raises money each year to help Spring Branch ISD faculty and volunteers offset the costs of educational programs they propose through an application process. Applicants from any of the school district's 46 campuses can request up to $5,000 each to fund projects. District-wide grants also are made available.
The foundation requests grant applications twice each year. Projects impact a significant portion of the school district's students and staff in some form.
"Through these grants, Spring Branch Education Foundation provides students and staff with opportunities for innovative projects," said Donnie Roseman, a member of the foundation's board of directors and chair of the Program and Assessment Committee.
"Community members make these grants possible by donating to the foundation and by supporting its fundraisers."
The organization approved the grants during its May board meeting.
During the meeting, the foundation awarded six district-wide grants. Among the programs being funded by the grants is an art program called Road Shows, which take the Altharetta Yeargin Art Museum to first-grade classrooms. Also funded are Study Trips for second graders who travel to the museum.
Other district-wide grants are being used to fund a substance abuse prevention curriculum, the creation of smaller grants for district educators who want to enrich standard curricula activities and materials and to support seven freshman students in a summer communication-enhancement program sponsored by the National Hispanic Institute.
Other grants were designated for campus projects, such as an iPad program at Bendwood Elementary School that will help upper-classmen engage with each other through a digital classroom resource called TodaysMeet. Among other projects being funded through the foundation grants, the Restorative Archive will allow students to document their written autobiographical stories while gaining technology and public speaking skills.
The foundation's next call for grants is in September, and the recipients will be announced in December. PTAs, principals and teachers may apply for grants.
Community members who wish to support a particular program at a designated campus can make a tax-deductible donation to the foundation and earmark it for that school by calling 713-251-2381 or visiting www.springbrancheducationfoundation.com.
Since 1993, the foundation has donated more than $9 million to the Spring Branch Independent School District.
When Texas Democrats met at their state convention this June in San Antonio, they elected a slate of delegates to attend the national convention in Philadelphia, including the first permanent Asian-American superdelegate in the state party's history.
A.J. Durrani, a Katy community activist and retired petroleum engineer, fills the newly created position through 2020.
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More than $128,500 in grants will fund educational projects within the Spring Branch Independent School District.
The grants are being provided by the Spring Branch Education Foundation, which raises money each year to help Spring Branch ISD faculty and volunteers offset the costs of educational programs they propose through an application process. Applicants from any of the school district's 46 campuses can request up to $5,000 each to fund projects. District-wide grants also are made available.
The foundation requests grant applications twice each year. Projects impact a significant portion of the school district's students and staff in some form.
"Through these grants, Spring Branch Education Foundation provides students and staff with opportunities for innovative projects," said Donnie Roseman, a member of the foundation's board of directors and chair of the Program and Assessment Committee.
"Community members make these grants possible by donating to the foundation and by supporting its fundraisers."
The organization approved the grants during its May board meeting.
During the meeting, the foundation awarded six district-wide grants. Among the programs being funded by the grants is an art program called Road Shows, which take the Altharetta Yeargin Art Museum to first-grade classrooms. Also funded are Study Trips for second graders who travel to the museum.
Other district-wide grants are being used to fund a substance abuse prevention curriculum, the creation of smaller grants for district educators who want to enrich standard curricula activities and materials and to support seven freshman students in a summer communication-enhancement program sponsored by the National Hispanic Institute.
Other grants were designated for campus projects, such as an iPad program at Bendwood Elementary School that will help upperclassmen engage with each other through a digital classroom resource called TodaysMeet.
Among other projects being funded through the foundation grants, the Restorative Archive will allow students to document their written autobiographical stories while gaining technology and public speaking skills.
The foundation's next call for grants is in September, and the recipients will be announced in December. PTAs, principals and teachers may apply for grants.
Community members who wish to support a particular program at a designated campus can make a tax-deductible donation to the foundation and earmark it for that school by calling 713-251-2381 or visiting www.springbrancheducationfoundation.com.
Since 1993, the foundation has donated more than $9 million to the Spring Branch Independent School District.
downtown, heights
Mobile screening detects chances of heart disease
A program of St. Joseph Medical Center offers a new 15-minute noninvasive mobile health screening to provide information about vascular health and risk of heart disease or stroke.
Staffed by a team of health care professionals, the AngioScreen mobile program utilizes imaging equipment to gather information about a person's heart rhythm, neck and leg arteries, blood pressure and fitness to compare to normal levels within the participant's age group.
Those who undergo the screening receive a printed report and digital record along with educational materials and a nondiagnostic consultation.
Participants can share the information with their physicians for an assessment of their vascular health.
St. Joseph Medical Center is located in downtown Houston and in the Heights community.
The AngioScreen program is available throughout the greater Houston area and is available for scheduling by corporations, health fairs and organizations.
Additionally, because the equipment is portable, the system can be moved inside and be hosted in areas such as conference rooms.
"Vascular disease is the leading cause of heart attack and stroke," said Sheila Coogan, a vascular surgeon at St. Joseph Medical Center, in a news release.
"Most people don't realize that every 30 seconds an American has a heart attack.
"Participants (in the AngioScreen program) can take the integrated vascular information provided by our team to a physician so that a preventive action plan can be discussed."
For more information and scheduling the SJMC AngioScreen mobile unit, call 713-757-7575 or visit www.sjmctx.com/angioscreen.
washington avenue
Velvet Taco given 'Hot Concepts' award by group
One of the restaurant industry's award programs recently called Velvet Taco one of its "Hot Concepts" winners for 2016.
The taco restaurant chain operates its Houston location at 4819 Washington Avenue.
Velvet Taco has additional locations in Dallas, Fort Worth and Chicago.
The award recognizes the taco chain as among "forward-thinking restaurant brands at the leading edge of foodservice" and as being "poised for significant growth," according to a statement issued by Velvet Taco.
In its 22nd year, Hot Concepts is hosted by Nation's Restaurant News. Winners were selected by NRN's Editorial Board.
To be considered for the award, restaurant chains must have opened first restaurant units less than seven years before the award recognition.
Recognized businesses also had to have a minimum of three restaurant units in different market areas or a minimum of five units in one market area, display an entrepreneurial spirit, incite strong consumer appeal and have a sound financial position as determined by commercial data generator Dun and Bradstreet and other financial benchmarks.
Velvet Taco's Houston location serves multicultural tacos in a fast-causal setting.
The menu features made-from-scratch corn tortillas, slow-roasted rotisserie meats and corn, fresh fruit, margaritas and housemade red velvet cake.
To learn more about the restaurant chain, visit www.velvettaco.com.
Albert Einstein's very cool leather jacket sold at auction today for 110,500 ($144,424). The coat came complete with the pungent odor of the scientist's pipe. Also on the block were Einstein's pocket watch and toy blocks from his childhood. From Christie's:
'The jacket first appears in a number of photographs of Einstein, taken at the height of his fame in the mid-1930s,' (said Christie's specialist Thomas Venning). A shot from 1935 shows the scientist wearing it upon his arrival for a holiday in the Bahamas 'improbably paired,' adds Venning, 'with a rather natty wing collar'
Over several years, the jacket aged visibly. 'Einstein wore it all the time a fact mentioned in the memoirs of fellow scientist Leopold Infeld, who worked with him at Princeton. Infeld explained that Einstein tried to keep material restrictions to a minimum. Long hair reduced the need for a barber and, he wrote, "one leather jacket solved the coat problem for years."'
Stingrays the trade name for an "IMSI catcher," a fake cellphone tower that tricks cellphones into emitting their unique ID numbers and sometimes harvests SMSes, calls, and other data are the most controversial and secretive law-enforcement tools in modern American policing. Harris, the company that manufactures the devices, swears police departments to silence about their use, a situation that's led to cops lying to judges and even a federal raid on a Florida police department to steal stingray records before they could be introduced in open court.
On Tuesday, US District Judge William Paule of the Second Federal Circuit threw out the DEA's stingray evidence against Raymond Lambis, ruling that using the device without a warrant was an improper search, in violation of the Fourth Amendment.
This is the first time a US federal judge has thrown out evidence gathered by stingray.
"This opinion strongly reinforces the strength of our constitutional privacy rights in the digital age," ACLU attorney Nathan Freed Wessler said in a statement. It was unclear whether prosecutors would seek to appeal. A spokeswoman for Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, whose office was prosecuting the case, declined to comment.
Federal judge throws out evidence gathered with 'stingray' cell phone tracker
[Nate Raymond/Raw Story]
(Thanks, Pterryxx!)
Wilfred Santiago and Sanlida Cheng are comics pros who've worked for the likes of Marvel, DC and Fantagraphics, but for "Thunderbolt: An American Tale," their dramatization of the life of John Brown and the militant abolitionist uprising at Harper's Ferry, they've decided to go indie and take it to Kickstarter.
The early previews look great, the team has experience bringing comics to market, and Brown's story is one of the most important and controversial in American history. $12 gets you a PDF and $23 gets a hardcover.
Our collective experience in working with different types of publishers has been, for the most part, reasonable. Thunderbolt is a graphic novel with rich drama, rough, violent clashes, cleverly layered plot, and a visual feast. The story literally expands beyond the pages of a book, and the historical significance of the work cannot be ignored. Thunderbolt: An American Tale is not your typical graphic novel, and so closer oversight of the project is naturally desired. This Kickstarter venture needs backing and generous support from readers like you to finally bring the astonishing story of Captain John Brown to life, in Wilfred's bold and visionary way.
THUNDERBOLT: An American Tale Vol. 1 [Fog Dog/Kickstarter]
Less than a week after an officer from a nearby force shot and killed Philando Castile during a traffic stop, leaving him to die in front of his child and girlfriend (and the world on livestream) the Minneapolis Police Department has perjured itself in issuing a copyright takedown notice to Youtube in order to suppress a controversial recruiting video that depicted the jobs of MPD officers as being a firearms-heavy shoot-em-up.
The video had attracted alarm and criticism by officials and the public, who saw it as indicative of a deep culture of violent, shoot-first policing in the Minneapolis police.
The MPD sent a copyright takedown notice to Youtube claiming, on penalty of perjury, that it believed the video was infringing. The video is clearly a fair use, directly commenting on public affairs, not undermining any revenue stream, and is itself a largely factual work it was also a work produced at public expense, which, in the USA generally carries the presumption of free public re-use. The fact that the work was reproduced in full does not disqualify it from being a fair use, as a string of recent rulings in multiple circuits has shown.
Furthermore, a recent federal appeals court decision held that rightsholders have a duty to consider fair use before sending takedown notices.
The video has been reposted to Vimeo. The Wedge Live news site that uploaded the video now has one of Youtube's notorious Copyright Strikes against it, which could eventually cost it the right to publish on the platform.
The @MinneapolisPD sent DMCA takedown to get a copy of their controversial militarized recruiting video taken down.
[Tony Webster/Twitter]
More than 71 US agencies mostly under the DoD and State Department run expensive, unaudited, chaotic, overlapping military and police training programs in more than 150 countries on every continent except Antarctica, with no real oversight and only pro-forma checks on the recipients of this training to ensure that they aren't human rights abusers or war criminals.
The State Department clears training recipients through a process that takes as little as two minutes and 23 seconds per person, and over 200,000 people have been trained after this cursory clearance process in at least 471 training locations, at a cost of more than $122 billion since 2001.
There is virtually no oversight on these programs. They have only ever been documented once, in an Obama administration report to Congress in 2012, which is sealed from public scrutiny.
Investigators from The Intercept and 100Reporters mined the Cablegate trove that Chelsea Manning provided to Wikileaks to get the only systematic public analysis look at these programs. The programs themselves have to comply with the "Leahy law," which requires them to vet recipients of training, but which operates on a $2.75M budget to service programs worth $15B/year.
"When you say we have to look at every individual and every unit and you actually have to do the vetting, you get far too many people who are technically vetted, but who we actually know very little about," said Kleinfeld of the Carnegie Endowment. "So you build a haystack where you're looking for a needle. And as you build that haystack, the vetting necessarily becomes worse." Questions about the vetting process are accompanied by concerns about the effectiveness of the training programs. Last year, a $500 million Pentagon effort to train and equip Syrian rebels, slated to produce 15,000 fighters over three years, yielded just a few dozen before being scrapped by the Obama administration. A 13-year effort in Afghanistan has resulted in an army filled with "ghost" soldiers, wracked by desertions and continuing to suffer setbacks and lose territory to a relatively unpopular insurgency. And then there was the spectacular collapse of the Iraqi army in 2014 to the much smaller forces of the Islamic State (though the territory lost at the time is beginning to be won back). These failures call into question whether these far-flung programs "can ever achieve their desired effects," according to a 2015 report by the Congressional Research Service. "Despite the increasing emphasis on, and centrality of, BPC in national security strategy and military operations, the assumption that building foreign security forces will have tangible U.S. national security benefits remains a relatively untested proposition." A 2015 report by the Center for a New American Security similarly concluded that many "security assistance and cooperation interventions fail to accomplish U.S. objectives as a result of both strategic and structural deficiencies." It found that training goals are often poorly articulated and sometimes in conflict with each other. In 2013, a State Department advisory panel also found that American security aid had no coherent system of planning or evaluation and no overall strategy. It compared the "baffling" array of federal funding sources to "a philanthropic grant-making process by an assemblage of different foundations with different agendas."
THE NETWORK:
Leaked Data Reveals How the U.S. Trains Vast Numbers of Foreign Soldiers and Police With Little Oversight [Douglas Gillison, Nick Turse, Moiz Syed/The Intercept]
(Image: U.S. Special Forces members advise and assist soldiers assigned to the Belize Special Assignment Group during a marksmanship range exercise near Belize City, Belize, April 12, 2010, DoD)
US Senator Al Franken doesn't think Niantic, the creators of Pokemon GO, need all your personal information. He sent Niantic CEO John Hanke the following letter:
Dear Mr. Hanke:
I am writing to request information about Niantic s recently released augmented reality app, Pokemon GO, which in less than a week's time has been downloaded approximately 7.5 million times in the United States alone. While this release is undoubtedly impressive, I am concerned about the extent to which Niantic may be unnecessarily collecting, using, and sharing a wide range of users' personal information without their appropriate consent. I believe Americans have a fundamental right to privacy, and that right includes an individual's access to information, as well as the ability to make meaningful choices, about what data are being collected about them and how the data are being used. As the augmented reality market evolves,
I ask that you provide greater clarity on how Niantic is addressing issues of user privacy and security, particularly that of its younger players.
Recent reports, as well as Pokemon GO s own privacy policy, suggest that Niantic can collect a broad swath of personal information from its players. From a user's general profile information to their precise location data and device identifiers, Niantic has access to a significant amount of information, unless users many of whom are children opt-out of this collection. Pokemon GO'S privacy policy states that all of this information can then be shared with The Pokemon Company and "third party service providers", details for which are not provided, and farther indicates that Pokemon GO may share de-identified or aggregated data with other third parties for a non-exhaustive list of purposes. Finally, Pokemon GO s privacy policy specifically states that any information collected including a child's "is considered to be a business asset" and will thus be disclosed or transferred to a third party in the event that Niantic is party to a merger, acquisition, or other business transaction.
Media reports have also highlighted that Pokemon GO has full access to some users' Google accounts, which includes their Gmail services. We recognize and commend Niantic for quickly responding to these specific concerns, and ask for continued assurance that a fix will be implemented swiftly. When done appropriately, the collection and use of personal information may enhance consumers' augmented reality experience, but we must ensure that Americans' especially children's very sensitive information is protected.
In light of these uncertainties, I respectfully request that you respond to the following questions by August 12, 2016:
1. Pokemon GO has stated that it collects a broad array of users' personal information, including but not limited to a user's profile and account information, their precise location data, and information obtained through Cookies and Web Beacons. Can you explain exactly which information collected by Pokemon GO is necessary for the provision or improvement of services? Are there any other purposes for which Pokemon GO collects all of this information?
2. According to reports, Pokemon GO also requests permission to access a number of mobile capabilities, including but not limited to the ability to control vibration on a phone, prevent the phone from sleeping, and find contact accounts on the device. Can you explain exactly which features and capabilities are necessary for Pokemon GO to access for the provision or improvement of services? Are there any other purposes for which Pokemon GO has access to all of these features and capabilities?
3. If, in fact, some of the information collected and/or permissions requested by Pokemon GO are unnecessary for the provision of services, would Niantic consider making this collection/access opf-in, as opposed to requiring a user to opt-out of the collection/access?
4. Pokemon GO has stated that users' information can be shared with The Pokemon Company and "third party service providers". Can you provide a list of current service providers? Does Pokemon GO also share users' information with investors in Pokemon GO?
5. Pokemon GO has further indicated that it shares de-identified and aggregate data with other third parties for a multitude of purposes. Can you more exhaustively describe the purposes for which Pokemon GO would share or sell such data?
6. Can you describe how Niantic ensures parents provide meaningful consent for their child's use ofPokemon GO and thus the collection of their child's personal information? Apart from publicly available privacy policies, how does Niantic inform parents about how their child's information is collected and used?
7. According to reports, signing into Pokemon GO on iOS through a user's Google account gives Niantic full access to an individual's Google account without the user's knowledge. Niantic has since recognized that it erroneously asked for more permissions than it intended. Can you provide an update on any fix Niantic is seeking to correct this mistake? Also, please confirm that Niantic never collected or stored any information it gained access to as a result of this mistake.
Thank you for your prompt attention to this important matter, and please do not hesitate to contact me, or Leslie Hylton on my staff, at (202) 224-5641.
Sincerely,
Al Franken
U.S. Senator
Dallas will on Wednesday begin the process of laying to rest the five officers killed by a 25-year-old Army veteran during a protest last week.
Wednesday' memorials will be for Dallas Police Officer Lorne Ahrens and Brent Thompson, a Dallas Area Rapid Transit officer.
Both men were helping guard a protest against police brutality Thursday night. As the protest was winding down, a gunman - since identified as Micah X. Johnson - open fired on officers, killing five, wounding more than half a dozen officers and civilians.
Dallas Police Chief David Brown told reporters after the attack that Johnson had been angry about the killing of black men by law enforcement and wanted to kill officers and white people as retaliation.
The massacre was the worst attack on law enforcement in the United States since at least the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
The memorials come a day after President Barack Obama traveled to Dallas - at the invitation of Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings - to comfort mourners at a joint, interfaith memorial service and to challenge them to "reject despair" and to pray for each other.
"When the bullets started flying, the men and women of the Dallas police, they did not flinch and they did not react recklessly," he said, praising the officers. "They showed incredible restraint. Helped in some cases by protesters, they evacuated the injured, isolated the shooter, and saved more lives than we will ever know."
Obama also called for greater understanding between police and the community they serve.
"Can we find the character, as Americans, to open our hearts to each other?" he said. Can we see in each other a common humanity and a shared dignity, and recognize how our different experiences have shaped us?"
Thompson's memorial will take place at 10 a.m. at The Potter's House Church, a popular Dallas megachurch.
Ahren's memorial will take place at 11 a.m. in Plano's Prestonwood Baptist Church.
Mike Smith, a 25-year-veteran of the Dallas Police Department, will be laid to rest on Thursday, at the Watermark Community Church, in north Dallas, where he worked an extra job as a security guard.
A funeral will be held for Michael Krol on Friday at Prestonwood at 11 a.m.
The final funeral will be held for Patrick Zamarripa at the Wilkerson-Greines Activity Center, in Fort Worth at 11 a.m. Saturday.
Facing significant turnover of Child Protective Services caseworkers, a state agency this year waived the requirement that applicants have bachelor's degrees from college.
"We just have to try new things," CPS spokesman Patrick Crimmins told the Dallas Morning News. "Many individuals out there without college degrees have direct and varied and practical work experience working with children, young adults, and people with disabilities and the passion to do it."
But that decision won't help the children that the state is trying to protect, say the leaders of Harris County Protective Services, which for 50 years has helped CPS address child welfare in the county. The leaders conveyed their concerns in a recent letter to DFPS.
HCPS executive director George Ford and board president Jerry LeVias are among those who said the reduction of the educational requirement "threatens the quality of CPS casework."
"It is imperative that Texas has a strong child welfare work force in order to ensure that safety and successful outcomes for children in care are maintained at the highest level possible," Ford and LeVias wrote.
The requirement now is an associate's degree and two years of "relevant work experience," or 60 college credit hours with two years of relevant work experience.
"This was just such a move that we did not think was the right direction, we shouldn't be silent," Ford said in an interview Wednesday.
Ford's and LeVias's letter comes as DFPS is mired in turmoil. In December, a judge who found the state's foster care system to be unconstitutional ordered an overhaul. The Dallas Morning News has also published a series of reports this year highlighting how caseworker turnover, high case loads, and low pay have hampered CPS workers' ability to do their jobs.
Many media reports have focused on a number of children sleeping in CPS offices as well as on deaths and abuse of children on CPS's radar.
Those topics have drawn significant legislative scrutiny, including testimony by new DFPS Commissioner Hank Whitman, a former Texas Ranger, before the House Human Services Committee this past Tuesday.
Whitman said at the hearing that he's trying to turn CPS around and has presented a plan that includes regional directors reapplying for their jobs, ensuring all CPS investigators are provided forensic training by September and collaborating with the Department of Public Safety.
Ford and LeVias's letter is at least the second time in recent days that a county agency has called on the state to raise its support for caseworkers or risk a decrease in quality of services.
On July 7, at a House County Affairs Committee hearing in downtown Houston, officials from the county attorney's office called on the state to improve pay for caseworkers, who get paid an entry-level wage of roughly $34,000 per year.
The officials from the county attorney's office, which represents CPS in court proceedings, also warned that lack of training, high turnover, high case loads
The joint letter also calls for increase in salaries.
"Without higher salaries, manageable caseloads and supervisor support, the high turnover rate will continue," they wrote.
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While the nation stood in shock as a sniper opened fire on Dallas police officers, killing five on Thursday, many people vented on social media.
But a Facebook post by the University of Houston's student body vice president sparked a hashtag demanding that she resign or be removed from office.
#RemoveRohini was trending in Houston this week after Rohini Sethi reportedly posted on Thursday night: "Forget #BlackLivesMatter; more like #AllLivesMatter".
Many outraged students and supporters of the University of Houston took to social media in response. Here are just a few of them:
Sethi posted an apology on Facebook early Tuesday:
"I took to Facebook and shared in a way that was inappropriate given the context and my position. In that moment, I did not act as your Vice President, I acted, in my own flawed way, as many do when presented with a tragedy from afar.
"My response has caused enormous pain for many members of our community ... Let's all come together through conversations to reach unity."
However, some students weren't swayed.
UH Student Government Association President Shane Smith told the Daily Cougar, the UH newspaper, that Sethi's opinion was not SGA's official position.
RELATED: Obama leads tribute to fallen Dallas officers
"SGA believes that the diversity of our student body is what has led to our success as a university. While we value each other's differences, there are racial injustices throughout our country that prevent true equality. We all need to work together to be part of the solution."
Sethi again apologized in an interview with KTRK on Tuesday, saying: ""I definitely think the words that I used and the verbiage could have definitely been better."
The SGA says it will lead a town hall meeting. A date and time was not announced on the group's Facebook page.
Texas Congressman Ted Poe announced Wednesday that he has been diagnosed with leukemia and will be undergoing treatment at M. D. Anderson Cancer Center during the summer recess.
"I am fortunate enough to be treated by the finest physicians in the world," Poe says, in a statement. "It is my intention to beat cancer and have a full recovery and continue to represent the people of Texas."
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Divert your eyes, puritans.
In late August, Houston will be visited by a cadre of male and female porn stars and a sex-toy company showing off its wares.
The TEXXXAS fan event kicks off Aug. 17 and runs through Aug. 20, centered around the Hilton Houston Southwest in the Galleria area.
RELATED: Pornhub now offers porn for the blind
Female porn stars Cherie Deville, Olivia Austin, Dillion Harper, Brett Rossi, plus male star Mick Blue and others will be on hand meeting fans and signing autographs.
Rossi is likely best known to mainstream audiences as a former fiancee of actor Charlie Sheen.
Stars from porn's past, such as Ron Jeremy and Nina Hartley, are also scheduled to appear.
Kendra Sunderland, the former college student arrested last year for posting an explicit sex video of herself in the Oregon State University campus library, will also be in attendance. As of late she's been touring as a featured dancer at strip clubs and has done more films.
John Gray, event organizer and president of TEXXXAS, told the Houston Chronicle on Wednesday that he's glad to bring back a convention of this kind to the area.
He was the man behind Pornutopia, which had a brief run in Houston starting in 2006 and also featured actors and actresses from the adult industry. For a time before that, he presided over a regional strip-club-guide empire of sorts.
Gray got out of the adult industry in 2012 and only recently got back into publishing and promotion.
RELATED: Porn site insists $25,000 college scholarship offer won't require 'sex video'
"Houston needs something like this, I think, and there is a market for it," Gray says. "The industry has gone mainstream."
His recent return came about when club industry locals asked him to come back.
As for the expo side of next month's event, one of the major sponsors is adult toy outlet Adam & Eve, which is due to have a strong presence, along with a handful of Houston-area strip clubs.
There will be after-parties at area clubs throughout the convention.
RELATED: Porn legend Jenna Jameson accused of cyberbullying
On a related note it was earlier this year that a Dallas judge sided with the city government in regards to kicking a similar sex expo, eXXXotica, out of city limits. Mayor Mike Rawlings had fought to keep the convention out of the city, pointing to video shot at a previous event featuring what was described as "nearly-nude women in lingerie" playing with whipped cream.
The event was slated for late May at a convention center owned by the city of Dallas.
Dallas Police Chief David Brown told officials that his department didn't observe any laws broken at that event in years past.
In Houston, Gray doesn't anticipate any blow-back to his event. He thinks that where eXXXotica went wrong was attempting to use a city-owned building.
"I don't foresee any trouble here in Houston," Gray says. "It's behind closed doors and we're not outdoors bothering anyone."
Gray recounted that one of his earlier events drew some picketers outside, but some of the women who were appearing at the convention ordered coffee and doughnuts for the small group as a friendship offering.
RELATED: Hustler releasing a Donald Trump porn parody
Gray promises no nudity at TEXXXAS. The event will be 18 and up and IDs will be checked at the door.
"Things like this used to be 80 percent male but these days we're looking at 60 percent male and 40 percent female," Gray says. "People forget that women are also interested in things like this, too."
Tickets for the Houston event are $20 per person, with local Adam & Eve stores offering slight discounts.
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A secret casino hiding in what seemed to be an abandoned building near the U.S.-Mexico border in southern Texas had nearly 50 illegal gambling machines in four rooms when authorities executed search warrants.
Two people, one of whom was armed with a handgun, were arrested in the raid Tuesday evening on the Brownsville building. The two-story structure had overgrown grass, an abandoned pool and boarded up windows, according to the Cameron County District Attorney's Office.
A newly constructed privacy fence at the dilapidated two-story structure tipped authorities off to possible illegal operations. Investigators said they believed the new fence was installed so passersby would not see parked vehicles.
SEE ALSO: Falfurrias mayor pro tem pleads guilty in illegal gambling business operation
The raid was conducted by investigators with the Cameron County District Attorney's Office Special Investigations Unit, along with special agents from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and task force officers, according to a news release.
Hugo Muniz, 35, and Abel Chapa, 33, were arrested. The two men face both misdemeanor and felony charges, according to the District Attorney's Office, which did not specify the charges.
SEE ALSO: Brownsville-area officials raid three illegal gambling operations
Muniz admitted to being in charge of paying out cash to patrons. He was armed with a Glock-22 .40 caliber pistol at the time of his arrest.
An unspecified number of casino patrons were also cited.
The Cameron County Sheriff's Office and Customs and Border Protection assisted in the operation.
Calls to the District Attorney's Office were not immediately returned.
The bust was part of Operation Bishop, which started in April 2013 to keep illegal gambling out of the community and since then has conducted more than 70 raids, officials said.
Under Texas law, 8-liners and other businesses that give out cash prizes or gifts valued at $5 or more qualify as illegal-gambling operations.
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A woman was arrested on Friday in Palm Beach County, Fla., after she allegedly ran her car into her boyfriend's truck while wearing nothing but a bra, reports say.
WPLG reports that Brianda Ramirez, 25, faces a charges of aggravated battery with a deadly weapon.
MUGSHOTS: 39-year-old Florida man arrested for 34th time after high-speed chase
The boyfriend, Grabiel Sandoval, 38, tried to break up with Ramirez after their one-year relationship, WPLG reports.
After his attempted break-up, a friend picked up Sandoval so he could get his truck at his aunt's home. Ramirez allegedly followed and tried to talk to Sandoval at the aunt's home, but he quickly drove off in his truck, a report says.
Ramirez continued her pursuit but told detectives that she believed he "slammed on his brakes," causing her to rear-end his truck with her Ford Fusion. The truck overturned and landed on its roof.
Ramirez was seen fleeing the scene, according to WPLG.
OTHER CRIMES: Florida man charged with shooting pregnant ex-girlfriend
When the deputies caught up to her, she told them that she and Sandoval had sex, hence her lack of clothes, and she was headed back to her place to get dressed before turning herself in, according to the Palm Beach Post.
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.
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With its decision to leave the European Union, the United Kingdom has a rare opportunity to turn away from isolationism and strengthen world trade. The Brexit vote was widely seen as a narrow choice between European collectivism and British nationalism. But a third choice exists for the U.K.: creating an alliance of northern European nations.
A new Northern Union trade and security alliance would include nations that, like the U.K., bristle at the E.U.s suffocating bureaucracy and its endless demands for cash. Finland, for example, bleeds money to subsidize the E. U.s spendthrift southern members and Brusselss never-ending schemes for rescuing the Euro. The nearby Scandinavian countries wonder why they should stay in the E.U. if the U.K. is no longer in the club. In fact, one Scandinavian country already goes it alone: Norway has unrestricted free trade via the European Economic Area (EEA) and maintains its own currency, in high demand worldwide. Iceland followed Norways path until beginning negotiations to enter the E.U. in 2010, but the tiny island republic, just emerging from bankruptcy, has wisely broken off negotiations with Brussels. Iceland isnt averse, however, to forming a security partnershipespecially one that offers an alternative to joining a 27-state behemoth. The Dutch, like the Finns, grudgingly pay their ever-rising dues to the E.U. But what if the Dutch could find a way out of the Brussels trap? What if this new way were free of national chauvinism and consistent with a constructive strategy of global outreach?
Even Scotlands separatist movement would lose much of its escapist appeal if Edinburgh were to join with Dublin, Belfast, Cardiff, and London in a Northern Union. Fresh courage is being felt in Ireland. American firms continue to take root there as they seek to avoid the high taxes back home that put them at a disadvantage against their East Asian competitors. Though Dublin has never been shy about pocketing European funds, Ireland fears that Brussels might wipe out its tax advantages.
Small nations, such as Estonia, along with regions of existing countries, such as Flanders in Belgium, might also find reason to join a Northern Union. How much more hopeful would Flanders be about its future if it could break away from the Belgian federation (and from clueless Wallonia) and join a new economic and security union?
The German state of Hamburg would also be a candidate for membership. Today, Hamburg not only must pay taxes to Brussels; it also dishes out hefty sums to other German states such as Bremen and Saarland to help pay for their wasteful spending. Residents of this city-state at the mouth of the Elbe feel a mixture of anger and despondency. However, if Hamburg were to become the Northern Unions gateway to Europe, its new position might rekindle the citys Hanseatic spirit. From 1664 to 1864, Hamburgs westernmost borough, Altona (population 250,000), served as Denmarks continental port. If Hamburg joined a Northern Union, the citys north German neighbor, Schleswig-Holstein, would quickly follow suit. With its Danish minority (plus its highly prized dowry, the Kiel Canal), Schleswig-Holstein would be warmly welcomed.
And no one would accuse Hamburg and Schleswig-Holsteins 4.5 million Germans of heading back into a dark and dangerous past. With independence from Germany, they would be a minority within a larger federation, with no nationalist ambitions. They could pursue their dreams of economic success and prosperity without being shamed or slandered by the nomenklatura who rule in Brussels. Though historical comparisons have their limits, one cant help but think of the ethnically German Baltic cities of Danzig, Elbing, and Thorn that, in 1454and for nearly 350 years thereaftertook shelter under the crown of the Polish-Lithuanian Rzeczpospolita to escape the exploitation and violence of their compatriots, the Teutonic Knights.
No region should be forced to remain part of a suffocating, undemocratic European Union whose intrusive controls they firmly reject. The U.K.s breakaway wont cause the long-term chaos that many predict. On the contrary, it will, I believe, reenergize much of the global economy that has been stagnating under the E.U.s rigid influence. The Brexit vote has a clear explanation. Its not only that the U.K. dislikes pouring money into Brusselss bottomless barrels; its that the E.U. bureaucratic monster has proved resistant to any reasonable change of course. Internationally minded Brits resent that keen competitors such as Switzerland, Australia, or Canada can import talented people from anywhere around the globe, while at the same time retaining the power to defend their borders. In short, the U.K. wanted its sovereignty back.
Could a Northern Union of the U.K., Ireland, Flanders, the Netherlands, Denmark, Greenland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Estonia, along with the German states of Schleswig-Holstein and Hamburg, have any hope of succeeding? Sure. The multicultural Northern Union would stretch across a land area of 3.83 million square kilometers (the worlds eleventh-largest political entity) with a population of 120 million (the worlds seventh largest, most of whom speak English as a first or second language). This population is the demographic equal of three Canadas or five Australias, whose economic effectiveness and smart immigration policies the Northern Union would seek to emulate. The N.U. would have a $5.7 trillion economy, the worlds fourth largest.
With the exception of Sweden and Finland, all prospective members of the Northern Union belong to NATO. With British nuclear arms as its backbone, the N.U. wouldnt be intimidated easily. Two N.U. aircraft carrier groups, for assuring the freedom of the seas, would be affordable, too. With a common currency and its wealth of oil, gas, and hydropower, along with abundant shale gas, the N.U. 11 would vie with Japan for the global economys bronze medal, behind the United States and China.
The formation of a Northern Union would create a friendlybut determinedrival for the Brussels regime. The E.U. would lose 7 billion a year in contributions. The northern rebels could run their own lean administration with a fraction of that outlay and use the remainder to improve their global competitiveness. Forced to compete themselves, E.U. nations would thus begin to implement real economic reforms. Instead of vengeance from an abandoned E.U.feared by those who opposed BrexitEurope would see real progress in regaining the self-healing power of economic advancement, which has long been crippled by endless subventions and E.U. bailouts.
With the formation of a Northern Union, a significant number of European nations may come together again, not under an undemocratic mega-bureaucracy, but as a union of free and prosperous states. This new union will have learned an important lesson: a divided continent of former enemies does not necessarily have to be governed by a Europa uber alles in Brussels. Little Switzerlandrich and secure, with four distinct language cultureshas known this secret for centuries.
Photo by fpdress/iStock
As day turns into night, the young mothers routine proceeds as usual. Her husband, who works the evening shift as a police officer, left home hours earlier, leaving it to her to prepare dinner and feed the children, then see to it that they are bathed and put to bed. These things are done, and its almost nine oclock. She has a little time to relax and watch some television.
Near the television set are family photographs, some featuring her husband in his uniform: this one on his police academy graduation day; another of the two of them, younger and still childless; others of him and the kids as they grow. She occasionally may glance at the pictures as she watches television, but only rarely does she pause to consider what that uniform means and the danger it signifies. She has done so more often lately, but she has shared this only with her closest friends, not with her husband. She trustsfor she must trustthat he will go off to work in the afternoon and come home sometime after midnight, often to rise early the next day to appear in court. It sometimes seems to her that she is a single mother. Her friends sometimes ask if she worries. Not often, she tells them. Yes, it can be difficult at times, but this is who, and what, she married.
She knows her husband is working downtown tonight, where a Black Lives Matter protest is being held. These events can be emotionally fraught, he has told her, but he and his coworkers are well prepared and expect no trouble. He has sent her a few texts, letting her know that things have gone smoothly and are winding down. She turns on the news to see it for herself.
And then it happens.
Suddenly on her television is a report from downtown. She recognizes the streets and the buildings, but the scene is one of chaos. Sirens are wailing, people are screaming, protesters and police officers are runningthe protesters in one direction, the police in the other. The first reports are sketchy, but whats clear is that people have been shot.
Her first impulse is to reach for the phone and call her husband, but she quickly reconsiders. He will be busy dealing with this. He wont be able to answer the call. And when he doesnt, she will worry all the more. She opts to send a text instead. How to word it? She considers, Are you okay? This is the question she most immediately needs answered. But no, she doesnt want to convey her worry. She wants her husband to remain focused on his work, not on her. She settles on Watching the news. Call when you can. She doesnt include I love you, as she might otherwise, for to do so in this moment would suggest the desperation in her yearning for contact. No, best to keep it simple, just a routine request for an update, as she has made of him a number of times before.
Clutching the phone as she continues to watch the news, she hopes to hear it ring with a call from him or chime with a text. Neither comes. She edges closer to the television, straining to see if her husband is among the officers running or taking cover behind a building or a police car. Is that him? Or that one? She cant be sure. And then comes the news that police officers have been shot. She says a prayer that it isnt her husband, then feels a pang of guilt that in doing so she is praying that its someone elses.
She is friends with some of the wives of her husbands coworkers. Should she call or text one of them? She decides against it. What would it mean if her friends have already heard from their husbands while she hasnt?
She looks at her phone. Maybe the battery is drained. Maybe she was so distracted by the television that she missed his call or his text. But, no, the phone is working; he has neither called nor texted. She is thrilled at last to hear the phone ring, but the elation is dashed into dread when she sees the call has come from an unfamiliar number. Her hand trembles as she answers and puts the phone to her ear.
The caller is a police sergeant from her husbands station, a man she has met but doesnt know well. Her husband has been hurt, he tells her. He apologizes for not being able to say more and tells her an officer will be there shortly to take her and her children to the hospital. And now, with a million thoughts racing through her head, she must wake the children and get them dressed.
Daddy needs us, she says as she nudges them awake, trying to sound calm, trying not to alarm them, trying not to let on that what she has always feared has now happened. She hears a siren in the distance, and it gets closer and closer. It cuts off a block or two away. The children are dressed. Theres a knock at the door.
She opens the door to reveal an officer in uniform, one just like her husbands. She knows some of her husbands coworkers, but not this one, who like her is trying to be calm, but also like her, isnt fooling anyone. She stops to think of what she should bring, deciding only on some toys and blankets for the kidsit may be a long night. They all walk to the police car at the curb, but before getting in her motherly instincts are aroused: she asks the officer about car seats for the children.
There isnt time for car seats, he tells her. She can ride in front with him and the children can ride in the back. But this she wont allow. She will not have her kids back there on the cold hard plastic seat separated from her by the cars partition. She climbs into the back with them and they all huddle togetherseatbelts be damnedas the officer speeds off toward the hospital.
Between the noise of the wailing siren and the hindrance of the partition, conversation with the officer is all but impossible. He can offer no more information than the sergeant did on the phone, save for the fact that several police officers have been shot, and that he is only one of many who have been dispatched all over townand beyondto bring family members to the hospital.
The ride is interminably long, but at last the officer slows the car and cuts the siren. The woman holds her children even more tightly as the hospital comes into view.
She has visited this hospital before, but never seen it like this. Police cars are parked here and there for as far as she can see, and there are dozens of officers near the entrance to the emergency room, some holding rifles and posted up like sentries expecting an attack. The officers are gathered in small knots talking among themselves, but they all fall silent and step to one side or another to clear a path to the doors as the woman and her children step from the car. The officer who drove them now escorts them through the doors.
Once inside, she sees more officers lining the walls and trying to stay out of the way as doctors, nurses, and technicians move from here to there and back again. The emergency room is in a state of barely controlled frenzy. There are several peopleother police officers, the woman realizesbeing attended to at once. Looking around further, she sees there are others like her mixed in among the police and the medical staff: women, some with children in tow, waiting for news of their own loved ones. Where is my husband? she asks.
She is told he has already gone upstairs to surgery, and she doesnt know whether to interpret this as a good sign or a bad one. She is now joined by others, including a social worker from the hospital staff, a chaplain from the police department, and a few police officers who are friends with her husband. Some of them were off duty tonight, but they have rushed into town to contribute what they can. They usher her into an elevator and up to a private lounge outside the operating rooms. She is told that the paramedics, the doctors, and the nursesevery last person who has had a hand in her husbands careis the best, and that everything that can be done for him will be. She appreciates their words, but she just wants to know: How is he, and when can I see him?
She cant fully express the dread she feels, for her children are with her and she must be strong for them. They are tired, of course, so she uses the blankets she has brought and fashions makeshift beds for them on the waiting rooms couches, then tucks them in and watches them fall asleep. Their world, she fears, will be much different when they wake. Now there is only one chair available in the room, which she offers to the people surrounding her. They decline, so she sits down to wait. And wait, and wait, and wait.
Periodically, members of the entourage step out of the room to answer phone calls. She tries to read their faces when they return. Do they know something they cant tell her? Word comes that the suspect has been killed, but she finds no solace in this even as she sees that the officers in the room do.
Then comes a soft knock on the door. When it opens, she can see a doctor dressed in surgical scrubs outside in the hallway. She knows this mans next words will save her or crush her, so she steps out of the room so her children wont hear what is about to be said. The doctors expression tells her at once that the news is not good. In that moment, she actually feels sympathy for him, for she knows he is pained by the news he brings. But bring it he must, so he tells her that he is very sorry, they did everything they could, but they couldnt save her husband.
She doesnt want to cry in front of her children, so instead she sinks into a chair in the hallway, where the chaplain places a hand on her shoulder and the others huddle loosely around her. She is surrounded by people, but in this moment she is alone. She sobs until she can sob no more. When she stops, someone asks about her children: Should they be woken up?
No, she says. Let them sleep. And while they sleep, she must think of a way to tell them that their father is dead.
Photo by Andrew Burton/Getty Images
Audio Transcript
Brian Anderson: Affordable housing policies become a divisive issue in New York's Westchester County, just as it has in other municipalities across the country. The Federal Department of Housing and Urban Development has pushed Westchester to finance hundreds of subsidized housing units and market them to poor minorities. While the goal of deconcentrating poverty has merit, is the way the Feds are going about it going to do more harm than good? Joining me to discuss what's going on in Westchester and how it could affect other communities is Howard Husock, Vice President for Research and Publications at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal. His article from City Journal Spring issue is entitled "Unfair 'Fair Housing.'" Howard, thank you for joining.
Howard Husock: Good to be with you, Brian.
Brian Anderson: Your piece opens up in Chappaqua, the wealthy Westchester town where Bill and Hillary Clinton have a home. Describe for listeners exactly what's happening there with regard to this affordable housing policy battle.
Howard Husock: Chappaqua is a village in the County of Westchester, which is a relatively affluent, but not uniformly affluent, county in New York State, just north of New York City. And the Department of Housing and Urban Development is pushing, as you put it, Westchester, because of a lawsuit, to locate subsidized housing, low-income housing, in affluent parts of the county. And you don't get a lot more affluent than Chappaqua. It's leafy, it's tony, its semi-rural. And the idea that HUD has is that these sorts of places would be good homes for poorer people who would benefit from the good schools and good public facilities in a place like Chappaqua. And Chappaqua is just one front, a front line of this happening all over Westchester County, and the idea is to build a complex near the train station there that would include some low-income housing. HUD's idea is this ought to be a norm across the country. As HUD would put it, that no child should have his fate decided by virtue of the zip code in which he lives, so it's a small example of a larger philosophical movement, if you will.
Brian Anderson: And behind that philosophical movement is this idea of deconcentrating poverty. What's your view of that and perhaps you could explain a little bit what that means.
Howard Husock: Deconcentrating poverty, I think, is an idea that has sprung up from the failure of public housing, and the idea that public housing failed because it was a concentration of poverty where all sorts of bad things happened and couldn't be controlled. And so if the poor were dispersed among better off people who would be role models and would allow the poor to benefit from better schools and public accommodations, parks, recreation programs, that this deconcentration would benefit both the wealthy and the poor, I guess you would say. It's an extraordinary change, however, from the original missionand one has to wonder whether the officials at HUD in Washington even take this on boardit's an extraordinary change from the original mission of HUD, which was to improve urban neighborhoods. In effect HUD is now giving up on the idea that poor neighborhoods can be good neighborhoods and we have to spread out the poor, and by this they certainly largely mean the minority poor, because that's to whom there's going to be a special outreach, at least in Westchester County, rather than taking the steps necessary to make sure that poor neighborhoods can be okay places to live. So this deconcentration movement is a big change and should be appreciated as such.
Brian Anderson: How much of this, though, is also about the fact that places like Chappaqua don't have large minority populations? In other words, is part of the policy aimed at making these tony suburbs more diverse?
Howard Husock: I think there's no doubt that there's a sense that there's something unjust about what you might call the American de facto system of housing, that there are poor neighborhoods, rich neighborhoods, and neighborhoods in between, but there are certainly enclaves of the quite wealthy where there are very low numbers of minorities, although in Westchester County the numbers of minorities in some of the most famous, wealthy places thereChappaqua, Scarsdaleare in proportion to the number of very well-off minorities, there just aren't that many well-off minorities. In other words, there's not really evidence that if a black potential homebuyer wants to buy in Chappaqua that he or she could expect to be turned away on the basis of race. In fact there's no expectation of that. But, there is something about that picture that rubs HUD, I think, and the Obama administration, the wrong way.
Brian Anderson: How have the black residents of towns in Westchester, like Chappaqua, the ones already living there, reacted to the idea that there will be these subsidized units being constructed?
Howard Husock: Well, I think, Brian, we have to put that in the content of how one becomes upwardly mobile in America. And I like to think of housing as a kind of a ladder of neighborhoods and one goes from poorer, to better off, to slightly even better off, and maybe beyond that by making a series of good life decisions. That could include being employed, it could include being married, it could include saving one's money and deferring certain gratifications. And anybody, black or white, who makes the effort and takes the steps necessary to buy a home, to save the money and make the life decisions necessary to buy that home, is quite protective of what one has achieved, and proud of it. And so when this Westchester decision was originally reported on by The New York Times, there was a flood of postings by African-American, self-identified African-American residents in the county, I should say, fromnot from Chappaqua itself, but from some other places, who said, well, wait a minute. I did what I had to do to get here and now others are going to be, in effect, given the same thing that I had to work very hard to achieve for myself. And so what they are saying is their achievement is, in effect, being devalued by the government. And I think they are quite concerned, especially minority residents, that there will be a potential for tension amongst residents because classically, in the sociological literature, Americans get along on the basis of their economic and educational commonalities. If you have minority residents who share educational backgrounds and socioeconomic status with their neighbors, the chances of everybody getting along well are quite high. If you introduce much poorer residents, there's the chance for tension, and I think that's what those minority residents are quite concerned about.
Brian Anderson: You say in the piece that you'd like to see policymakers encourage upward mobility rather than trying to deconcentrate poverty by forcing people to live in certain neighborhoods. What do you mean by that and how should policymakers go about improving chances for mobility?
Howard Husock: Well, I think we have to circle back to at least the goal, perhaps not some of the means that were chosen historically that HUD originally had and, repeating myself, to make poor neighborhoods good neighborhoods. But what do I meant by that? That means that, first of all, you need public safety in poor neighborhoods, so that those who work hard, play by the rules, save money, don't have to worry about robbery and home invasions and the other things that in addition to terrorizing people deplete their wealth, makes it harder for them to get ahead. We are also saying that there are ways to improve public education which has to be at the bedrock of marking poor neighborhoods good neighborhoods and encouraging upward mobility. And we're seeing charter schools and poor neighborhoods can work very well. It's a sort of divisiveness in policy circles right now, which is quite unfortunate. It doesn't have to be only charter schools. We need schools that work well and we need goodpublic good, as the economists say. That means the parks have to be good, the streets have to be clean. Just because you have a low-income neighborhood doesn't mean it has to be a bad neighborhood. It can be the launching point for upward mobility. And let me just speak for a moment about what's practical. Right now we spend about $19 billion dollars on housing vouchers that allow low-income residents, like those who would be moving into these subsidized units in Westchester, in all likelihood, 2.4 million, roughly, households get these vouchers. Well, there's about 45 million Americans living in poverty. We can't, as a practical matter, conceive of giving all those people housing vouchers. In fact there's a new book called Eviction, which urges that as a policy. It seems impractical in our current fiscal climate in Washington, and I think ill advised as well, for some of the reasons that I've been mentioning. But therefore, if our goal is to help as many of the poor advance as possible, we have to return to the idea of giving people the ways, means, incentives to advance on their own.
Brian Anderson: The final question. Here we are at the end of the Obama years, and this is related to what you just said, I think. What is the current state of public housing and the public housing debate in America?
Howard Husock: Well, public housingpeople think of public housing as physical public housing projects. They've not been growing. In fact their ranks have been diminished by being torn down. And housing vouchers have been increasing in number.
Brian Anderson: And the housing vouchers are now a great portion of public housing? Or...
Howard Husock: Yes. There are more receiving housing vouchers. In fact we spend more on housing vouchers than we spend on traditional cash public assistance. It's become a really large safety net program, if you will. The public housing, itselfphysical public housing continues to be in declining physical condition. So, for instance, here in New York there are 178,000 public housing units and an estimated $18 billion dollars in capital repairs that need to be done. In fact, the U.S. Attorney's office is on the verge of suing the city because of the poor conditions of public housing. These are tremendous ironies, just tremendous ironies. Public housing was meant to replace slums, and it's become our most persistent slum. That said, in terms of your question, I think there's very little focus on this. And we see long-term poverty among single parents and their children concentrated in public housing. Median stay in New York public housing is almost 17 years. Median housing voucher stay is almost nine years. So we see long-term poverty being supported, in effect, by the Public Housing and Housing Subsidy Program. And you know, frankly, if you're on a housing subsidy, it doesn't even pay you to earn more. You pay 30% of your income in rent and the more your income goes up the more rent you pay. So we've got a dependency trap going, and I wish there were more attention being paid to it.
Brian Anderson: If you enjoyed today's discussion, check out Howard Husock's latest essay, "Unfair 'Fair Housing.'" It's on our website, www.City-Journal.org, and it's in our latest issue. Additionally, we'd love to hear your thoughts on today's episode. Tweet your comments and questions to @CityJournal with the hashtag #10Blocks. You can also make suggestions for other City Journal editors and other topics you'd like to hear from in future podcasts. Thanks for listening and thanks, Howard, for joining us.
Howard Husock: Thank you, Brian.
Business / Economy
by Leonorah Nkomo
THE Centre for Public Engagement deputy director, Butler Tambo, has urged the government to join the Rand Monetary Union to alleviate Zimbabwe's cash crisis.The Union consists of South Africa, Lesotho, Swaziland and Namibia and these countries use the South African Rand as their main currency.Tambo said joining the Rand Union will be ideal for the country, as the cash crisis is getting out of hand.He said the multi-currency policy has been unsuccessful and its now time for the government to consider using the rand."It's high time the government admitted that using a multi-currency is not possible. It should consider negotiating with the South African Reserve Bank to use the rand as the main currency. Using the rand would be an advantage because South Africa is our largest trading partner," he said.Tambo said the rand will be a better solution as compared to the use of plastic money recently suggested by the government.He said plastic money is not a solution because people are not benefiting from it."Using plastic money is a challenge because most people do not have bank accounts especially in the informal sector. Some people cannot use it because they are unemployed."If people are to use plastic money for now, we need a simpler way of banking, a way that accommodates everyone," said Tambo.He said requirements for opening bank accounts are too demanding and some people cannot meet them."Charges for opening a bank account are expensive and a person selling tomatoes cannot afford to pay an amount of $50 just to open an account."This simply means that plastic money can only be used by a few employed people who have bank accounts and those who can afford opening them now," he said.Tambo said using plastic money is difficult especially in an informalised environment like Zimbabwe.He said most people are not banking their money because they no longer trust the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe."We have between $4 and $7 billion circulating in the informal sector which includes people such vendors. After what happened during the Gideon Gono era people are now afraid to bank their cash," said Tambo."Zimbabwe needs a permanent solution to end the cash crisis and introducing the rand might be one," he said.Tambo said when Zimbabwe adopts the rand, South Africa and other countries might start considering Zimbabwe as a tourist destination and investors may also be attracted.In 2014 economists once urged the country to join the Rand Union but the deputy governor Dr Kupikile Mlambo turned down the idea saying the Rand is the most volatile currency in the world.
Achizitie de Servicii Tehnice de creare a plantatiilor forestiere de protectie din cadrul primariei Andrusul de Jos si a primariei Vadul lui Isac, r. Cahul
Donald Trump isnt just a thoroughbred of horse race journalism. Hes Secretariat. The reality TV star built his campaign on wall-to-wall media coverage that Trump himself propelled with constant interviews, unscripted political rallies, and exclamation-filled tweeting. Not a day seemed to go by in the first half of the year without Trump using these platforms to boast of his latest poll numbers or electoral victories over a confounded Republican fieldand lets be honest, it was a viscerally irresistible storyline. Trump set the pace for the GOP primary horse race, even if he alienated countless onlookers.
A new report from Harvards Shorenstein Center suggests this media strategy was particularly effective at captivating mainstream news organizations during the early stages of the primary season, when political journalists focused overwhelmingly on the competitive aspects of the campaign. Trump, the reality star, was winning; professional politicians were losing. As the GOP field narrowed and media attention shifted toward Trumps character and policy positions, the tenor of coverage turned more negative.
The trends point to what is emerging as a major fault line for the Trump campaign in the general election contest. With no voting until November, there are simply fewer data points for horse race narratives. Thats bad news for Secretariat.
[The horse race] is at its peak during the primaries because you have all these contests going on, all of them piled on top of each other, report author Thomas E. Patterson, a professor of government and the press at Harvards Kennedy School, tells CJR. Its generally less of a focus during the general, though it tends to peak again around the debates, when you have the whos-going-to-win narrative going in and coming out.
Patterson analyzed stories from eight major news outlets between January and early Junea rough proxy for all coverage, to be sure. He found a correlation between overall press focus on the horse race and the collective favorability of the GOP front-runners coverage. The charts below illustrate those trends:
Patterson explains more in his writeup:
Sign up for CJR 's daily email The primary victories that moved [Trump] ever closer to a delegate majority were a source of positive news. But victories in the absence of competitors are less newsworthy, opening up news time and space for other subjects. In the campaigns final month, journalists increasingly probed Trumps character and policy positions, framing them through the lens of Trump as a possible president rather than Trump as a striving candidate. News references to Trumps character and policies, which in earlier stages had never accounted for even as much as 10 percent of his coverage, jumped to 19 percent of it. The tone was cutting. Negative statements outpaced positive ones by 10 to 1.
Since effectively securing the GOP nomination two months ago, Trump has indeed weathered a slew of bad press. To name a few major storylines: Trumps reportedly poor treatment of women; Trumps dubious claims of charitable giving; Trump University as a fraud factory; Trumps racist criticism of a federal judge; Trumps praise of Saddam Hussein; Trumps sharing of anti-Semitic imagery; and, through it all, the cavernous rift between Trump and the Republican Party. Coverage of his poor poll numbers against presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton have only accentuated these narratives.
In response, it now appears that the Trump campaign is finally re-evaluating its spray-and-pray media strategy. An anonymously sourced weekend report by Fox News Howard Kurtz suggests that Trumps aides have begun weeding out many [media] requests without consulting himwhich could either be viewed as a mark of professionalization or an attempt to restrain Trump from being Trump. Kurtz continues:
Several weeks ago, high-level staffers concluded at a meeting that the boss should be limited to no more than three interviews a week, print reporters included. He wound up meeting that quota in just half a day. But aides now vet whether certain reporters can ride on his plane, which used to be a snap decision by Trump.
Analyses of Trumps recent media appearances seem to bear out this shift. In March, the GOP standard-bearer gave nearly 14 hours of interviews across the major cable and broadcast networks, according to the liberal watchdog Media Matters for America. More than half of that was spent outside the relatively friendly confines of Fox News. Media Matters counted just over five hours of Trump interviews on the same channels in June, however, and Fox garnered a clear majority of that time on air.
Trumps appearances still outpace those of the notoriously press-averse Clinton, whose primary media coverage likewise leaned negative in tone, per the Shorenstein study. But his relative curtailing of press access makes political sense for the moment. While the glut of polling assures that the horse race will continue, reporters have turned at least some of their attention toward more substantive issues.
Whats the added value, at this point, of visibility? asks Patterson, the Harvard professor. Theres less to be gained. [Trump] doesnt need the volume that he needed to stand out in a field of more than a dozen several months back.
Of course, political journalists will continue probing Trumps record and character regardless of access, even if more is generally better. Luckily for them, the candidate himself seems predisposed to fighting fire with fireby responding to press criticism with his own media blitzes. The fundamental question going forward will be whether Trump can maintain his newfound discipline, or whether hell revert to primary-season muscle memory in responding to general-election heat.
@VoteTrumpMAGA: The media attack on @realDonaldTrump is relentless. They are desperate. But, they keep #Trump in the news a good thing. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 17, 2016
Has America ever needed a media watchdog more than now? Help us by joining CJR today
David Uberti is a writer in New York. He was previously a media reporter for Gizmodo Media Group and a staff writer for CJR. Follow him on Twitter @DavidUberti.
Ryan Kailath, a reporter for WWNO New Orleans Public Radio on assignment for NPR, was arrested during protests in Baton Rouge Saturday. The arrest took place as protesters clashed with riot police near the Baton Rouge Police Department. Kailath, who normally covers the environment, was booked and charged with simple obstruction of a highway. Two other journalists, WAFB-TVs Chris Slaughter and Breitbarts Lee Stranahan, were also arrested at protests in Baton Rouge, where more than 100 people were taken into custody.
Kailath says he arrived on the scene around 5pm and was covering members of the New Black Panthers and other protesters as they demonstrated over the death of Alton Sterling at the hands of police. Kailath was standing with several journalists and hundreds of others on a grassy area beside the road. Kailath recorded the action as some 30 protesters faced off in the street with about 50 riot police. The clash led to several arrests, including his own.
Kailath said he repeatedly identified himself as a journalist to police during the arrest and booking process, but his words fell on deaf ears. Kailaths experience was in stark contrast with that of two journalists who police briefly handcuffed during protests in Rochester, New York over the weekend. Carlet Cleare and Justin Carter of WHAM-TV were briefly detained before being released with a public apology from the mayor and chief of police. The Society of Professional Journalists Louisiana on Tuesday called for charges against Kailath and other journalists arrested in Baton Rouge to be dropped.
Kailath spoke with CJR about his arrest and night in jail. Below are excerpts of our conversation, which have been edited for clarity.
Tell me about what happened.
Protesters were walking back and forth in front of the Baton Rouge Police Department. Cops warned them to leave. They didnt leave. A contingent of riot police came out, and it turned into sort of a face-off in the street. Ive got my recording gear, Im filming with my iPhone, Ive got my audio gear, and unbeknownst to us, a line of city cops kind of fanned out behind us on the grass.
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The showdown came to a head, and the riot police charged into the group of Panthers, started wrestling them to the ground, started taking their shotguns away from them. At this point, instinctively, everybody on the lawn, myself included, just started to back away from this violent situation. Im filming it, but Im also backing away. At a certain point the action gets too intense. I turned around to walk down the grass to get away as quickly as possible and encountered this line of police behind me. As I tried to get through saying, Excuse me, Im a journalist, they grabbed me and pushed me back towards the riot police. The riot police tackled me to the ground and the city cops arrested me. I was repeating that I was a journalist the entire time.
1. Thank you SO much everyone for your concern. Heres the last 13 seconds before I was arrested on Saturday. pic.twitter.com/aFkr6ZwBaj Ryan Kailath (@ryankailath) July 11, 2016
You werent on the street at any stage?
No, at no point and as the longer version of the videowhich Ive posted on my website showsat no point did I touch the street. At no point did my foot even touch the curb that borders the street.
What was the police response when you identified yourself as a journalist? Did you have press identification?
I did. There was no response. It seemed like once the cuffs were on, that didnt matter. It seemed like the polices job was to arrest me. For two hours, throughout the whole process of booking, I kept repeating to anyone who would listen, which was nobody, that I was a journalist. But it seemed very much like, Hey, take it to the judge buddy. Hey, thats not for me to decide. That doesnt matter to me. That doesnt make a difference. At one point an officer got almost angry with me for saying I was a journalist, and he said, direct quote, Im tired of yall saying youre journalists.
What happened when you got to the police station? What were you charged with?
I was never told what I was charged with. [Kailath only learned about the charge Sunday morning when the local paper was delivered to his cellblock.] I was never told that I was under arrest. I was never read my rights. It was just: sign your name here, squat and cough, change into these clothes, heres a TB shot. It was what I assume are all the normal parts of being arrested and processed through the system. I can say that I was arrested a little after 6pm, and I wasnt done with the process until close to 1:30 in the morning. The interim is just different cells, different stations, different people checking your name and taking your number and, you know, just all kinds of different things that happen in between.
It was reported that police identified you as black. Thats not true, right?
No. Both my parents are from the south of India, and I have got sort of light brown skin and nappy black hair. Ive got a black barber, but Im not black.
Did you ask them to correct that?
That is interesting. I didnt ask them to correct it. I didnt even notice until I was already in my cell and the bars were closed for the night. Then thats only when I closely examined my name tag and realized they had my race as B. So no, I didnt bother to ask anybody to correct it. We all had a good laugh about it. I was in the cell with only black people, and you know actually a bunch of them thought I was white. We had a good laugh.
Do you think race played a role in your arrest?
I cant speculate. Im not in the head of the officers who arrested me or anybody else in the process. I can say that I was probably six or eight feet from another journalist at the moment of my arrest. You can see him in the video, hes a reporter for The Advocate Baton Rouge, hes wearing a purple T-shirt. He was not arrested, and he happens to be white.
Have you covered stories in the past where youve been arrested or in danger of arrest, and was there anything different about this occasion?
Ive covered many rallies and protests, some less violent than this, some more violent than this. In none of those situations, nor in this one did it ever even occur to me that I might possibly be arrested. Ive always followed the rules, obeyed the law, and clearly identified myself as a journalist, and in every other situation in my career thats been sufficient. In this instance it was not.
What has the response been to your arrest from your employer and on social media?
From my employer first, very supportive. WWNO New Orleans Public Radio has been great about this, about bail, about lawyers, if I need them. Were hoping and perhaps foolishly assuming that the charges will be dropped, but theyve been very supportive. And then on social media, mostly a great response as well. Ive gotten a lot of support. Im not really a read the comments type of guy, so I havent gone through and looked at every response. I know that theres a couple in there that are, Oh this guy. He was probably breaking the law. He probably did something wrong. But mostly its been very supportive. Edward Snowden mentioned it on Twitter.
Do you have any suggestions for how police can keep everyone safe while still allowing journalists to do their jobs?
Oh gosh. I dont. I mean Im sure theres somebody who gets paid very well to train police for these situations. Again, Ive been in many situations like this, some that were hairier, and its always been enough to obey the law and clearly identify myself. In this situation, I did that. I obeyed the law, and I very clearly identified myself as a journalist. Getting outside of what I know, it is interesting that in protests these days youve got a lot more amateur media makers [and] documentarians. Somebody might say, Hey Im filming this. Im shooting a documentary about Black Lives Matter. Im sure that does make it more difficult for the police to make a call about who they believe is an official authorized journalist. But you know, I had my press badge from Louisiana Association of Broadcasters. I had everything you might reasonably need.
Has America ever needed a media watchdog more than now? Help us by joining CJR today
Shelley Hepworth , formerly a CJR Delacorte Fellow, is Technology Editor at The Conversation in Australia. Follow her on Twitter @shelleymiranda.
GEICO names Burklin SVP; Ottman Head Claims Operations for Florida Region
GEICO recently named Shawn Burklin senior vice president to oversee its regional operations offices in Lakeland, Fla., and Macon, Ga. The regions serve nearly 5 million customers in 16 states. Burklins previous assignment was regional vice president of GEICOs West Coast operations in San Diego. Burklin will relocate to Lakeland, to succeed George Rogers who retired after 48 years with the company.
In addition, Kim Ottman was promoted to assistant vice president of claims for GEICOs Florida operations. Ottman previously served as the regions liability director.
Burklin joined GEICO in 1995 in the claims department in the Fredericksburg, Va., regional office, and soon after entered the companys management intern program. Two years later, Burklin was promoted to claims attorney, and by 2000 he was named managing senior attorney.
He went on to serve as assistant vice president for the companys Lakeland regional office, before moving to the companys headquarters in Chevy Chase, Md., in 2007 as vice president of claims. He was later named vice president of GEICOs Southeast operations, at the companys Macon, Ga., regional office. In 2010, Burklin was named to head the San Diego regional office as vice president, where he was responsible for customer operations in California, Hawaii and Alaska.
Before joining GEICO, Burklin was a private-practice attorney.
Ottman has been with the company for 18 years, taking on additional responsibilities in Lakelands claims department.
Ottman began her GEICO career in 1998 as a claims examiner in Lakeland, and soon advanced into supervision overseeing claims service representatives, personal injury protection claims and telephone claims representatives. In 2008, Ottman worked as planning manager and later served as claims manager and branch manager, responsible for Miami and Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., operations. In 2010, Ottman transitioned to GEICOs headquarters where she worked as director of performance review prior to becoming the liability director in Lakeland in 2012.
AXIS Insurance Appoints Paccione Executive Vice President of Commercial Management Liability
Bermuda-based AXIS Capital Holdings Limited named Mark Paccione executive vice president of Commercial Management Solutions (CMS) at AXIS Insurance. The CMS team specializes in commercial public and private D&O, Employment Practices, Fiduciary Liability and Crime products. Based in New York, he will report directly to John Van Decker, president, North American Professional Lines for AXIS Insurance.
Paccione has more than 25 years of experience in the insurance industry, most recently serving as senior vice president with AXIS Insurance, leading its northeast region for CMS over the past five years. Previously, Paccione worked for Everest Re, where he helped establish its commercial management liability group. Before that, he spent 18 years at Chubb & Son in various management and executive roles.
Brentwood Services Administrators Inc. Promotes Roberts To Claim Representative
Tenn.-based Brentwood Services Administrators Inc. (BSA), recently promoted LaTronya Roberts on its Tennessee Claims Department team to the position of claim representative, according to Jeff Pettus, president and chief executive officer of BSA.
Working under Shirley Mahorney, BSA claims supervisor, Roberts has increased responsibility for managing medical-only claims, loss-time, subrogation and settlements in an expanding client base of hospitals and clinics.
Previously, Roberts joined the company as a claim assistant supporting adjusters in the BSA Occupational Accident Department in April 2013. She was promoted to claim examiner II in July 2014, handling medical-only claims loss-time, subrogation and settlements. Before coming to BSA, she worked for Amerigroup as a customer services representative.
Pauli Joins Strategy Meets Action as Principal
Strategy Meets Action (SMA), an insurance strategic advisory firm, named Karen Pauli principal. Pauli will support the expansion of SMAs advisory business and provide advice, guidance, and thought leadership to insurers and solution providers. With her vast experience in digital transformation, underwriting, claims and business intelligence, Pauli has a great sense of the impact and opportunities resulting from the emerging new requirements of the digital connected world, changing customer experience and emerging technologies.
Pauli joined SMA from CEB TowerGroup, where she led the P&C insurance advisory practice for over 10 years. Prior to her position at CEB TowerGroup, she held various roles in underwriting and claims at various insurers.
News / Local
by Stephen Jakes
Mthwakazi Liberation Front has blasted the police for their brutality on the Shutdown protestors last week a development which is said to have caused the death of some youth in Makokoba in Bulawayo following their brutal assault.Party's Bulawayo spokesperson Ndabezinhle Fuyane said the acts by the security agents in Makokoba and other related areas of a door-door exercise of arrests cannot go a long way before they can challenge it as a state whose mandate is to free them from "this regime.""If the perpetrators were known why then is the exercise conducted. That is pure insanity which will not be tolerated. That was pure gukurahundism,the moment of madness as may be described by other philosophers," he said."Citizens conducting peaceful demonstrations are arrested,the violent ones are also arrested, so what kind of approach does this government want to be used to address our plight as an endangered nation,a defenceless nation.""We never heard such act in other parts of Zimbabwe but alas here in the middle of Mthwakazi," xola mthakathi,imizamo yakho ngiyibhekile," this is not a threat, but where are we going to get peace? When are going to be peaceful. How are we supposed be peaceful when there is no peace in our land. Cry my beloved Mthwakazi !!!" he added.
In April, some 1,200 homebuilders, inspectors, architects and engineers gathered in Louisville, Kentucky, to debate the standards that should guide construction of the next wave of U.S. houses. Engineers had a seemingly unobjectionable proposal: Make roofs in coastal areas less likely to fly off in a hurricane.
The American Society of Civil Engineers estimates the shift would increase the cost of a home by less than 1 percent. The measures sponsor, an engineer at a research group backed by the insurance industry, told me the new standard could usually be met simply by changing the way a roofs components are nailed together.
None of that mattered. The homebuilding industry wouldnt support it.
Roofing costs in high-wind regions would increase significantly, the National Association of Home Builders wrote to its members in advance of the meeting. Requested final action: Disapprove. It worked: The committee responsible for residential building codes, part of the Washington-based nonprofit International Code Council, voted down the proposal. It may have helped that four of the committees 12 members also represented the homebuilders association.
As climate change leaves Americans exposed to more extreme weather, the federal government, insurers and safety groups are pushing for building codes that will make homes more resilient. But those efforts are being slowed by homebuilders, through the byzantine system of developing and adopting new building codes.
Only 6 percent of the proposals that NAHB opposed made it through the committee hearings intact, the homebuilders association boasted on its blog after a similar event last year.
That leaves future homeowners at increased risk from stronger and more frequent hurricanes, storm surges, floods and other extreme weather events. From 2002 to 2015, presidentially declared natural disasters have destroyed more than 147,000 U.S. homes and damaged another 3.6 million. And thats just the number of homes whose owners got individual assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The full scale of harm is almost certainly greater.
Climate Change
Adapting to global warming can seem boring perhaps nowhere more so than when it comes to building codes. Every three years, the International Code Council publishes updated model building codes for homes, approaching five pounds in weight, which states and cities can then choose to adopt.
But the politics of building codes, which shape the $500 billion residential construction industry, are anything but dull. In theory, power over ICC building codes is held by the roughly 27,000 government employees around the country who vote on the measures. Before those votes are held, however, new proposals are debated at meetings like those in Louisville, where committees decide whether the proposals are worthwhile; changes the committees vote down are less likely to make the final ballot. And on those committees, the industry enjoys far more influence.
Among the proposals that homebuilders have opposed are a requirement that houses built in certain flood plains stop using unreinforced masonry foundation walls less than four feet high, and that homes at risk of hailstorms use tougher roof coverings. The homebuilders association has even used the ICC to block proposals from FEMA, including one this year that would have made homes in high-risk zones more flood-resistant.
The NAHB stresses the importance of keeping prices low to attract buyers. Fewer buyers would mean less revenue and less work for the associations 140,000 members.
They will invariably hide behind the skirts of whats called affordability. What that really means is profitability, says Ron Jones, an NAHB board member since the 1990s and critic of its approach. To represent themselves as the protector of the American homebuyer is pure hypocrisy.
The pushback is also cultural. Its the most conservative industry there is, mainly because doing something new involves risk, said Peter Keyes, a professor of architecture at the University of Oregon.
Inside NAHB headquarters in Washington, the dominant motifs are tradition and influence. The atrium holds the National Housing Hall of Fame, honoring leaders of the homebuilding industry going back to the 1930s. In the conference room where I met Neil Burning, vice president of codes and standards, hung a plaque: Dedicated to the American ideal of better living through private building.
Burning was unapologetic about opposing new code proposals, listing the hurdles each must clear to win the associations support: Among other things, the proposed change must reflect the associations existing policies, use readily available methods or materials, and have information about costs that the association finds acceptable. Finally: We always look to make sure it does not negatively impact housing affordability.
Its not always clear which proposals make the cut. The association opposed 505 of the 1,994 proposed changes to the 2018 residential building code but wont release the full list. And the NAHB refused to tell me what position it had taken on the 12 proposals FEMA failed to get passed in Louisville.
Still, Burning wasnt shy about his views on the agency. The reason why most of FEMAs were defeated at the hearings was because they were unprepared with substantiating data to support their positions, he said.
The agency, not surprisingly, disagrees. Our proposals to improve building codes across America are driven by the latest science and research available, FEMA spokesman Rafael Lemaitre said in an e-mail. These science-based code improvements can literally save lives, make our communities more resilient, and help families recover more quickly when disaster strikes.
When I asked why the NAHB opposed the proposed rules for better protecting homes against hurricanes, floods and hail, it sent me a long list of arguments, ranging from the impact on construction costs to problems with compliance and enforcement. The NAHB also gave me a list of proposals it has endorsed even though they raise costs.
Yet when I asked Burning what code changes the NAHB was pushing to adapt to the increase in extreme weather, if not those proposed by FEMA and others, he dismissed the premise that new codes were necessary at all.
The current codes already resist these loads, he said. So what everybody should be pushing for is the adoption of the current codes we already have.
In the complicated ethical universe of lobbying, its debatable whether the homebuilders association deserves scorn or praise. Its true that not every proposed building code is in homeowners best interests. Moreover, the NAHBs only explicit obligation is to its members; if homebuilders want to prevent tighter building codes, then the association is just doing its job.
The same defense cant be claimed by the International Code Council, which says its mandate is ensuring safe, sustainable, affordable and resilient structures. I asked Trey Hughes, an ICC spokesman, whether it made sense to give homebuilders so much weight on the committee that decides the rules for new homes. He said part of it comes down to time and interest.
Some of the challenges are getting people to actually serve, he said. These committees, they do a great deal of work.
To what degree should homeowners also bear responsibility? Theres a laziness on the part of the consumer about demanding a more resilient housing stock, said Jones. But expecting the average buyer to consider the wind load of a homes roof may be unrealistic.
Homeowners assume, incorrectly, that the home is already being built to a high standard, said Leslie Chapman-Henderson, president of the Federal Alliance for Safe Homes, an advocacy group in Florida. Because why wouldnt it be?
This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
Copyright 2022 Bloomberg.
In a partial trade-off, a U.S. District Court in California ruled that a series of storage facility thefts, all committed as part of one criminal scheme, qualified as a claim for a single occurrence property insurance policy limit, but that the scheme made the loss payment subject to reduction by only one policy deductible. The decision, filed June 9, 2016, is entitled Patterson v. American Economy Insurance Company, and is reported at 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 75538.
Plaintiffs maintained a storage facility in Fresno with inventory from their former gift store, which they intended to operate again. Christopher Ramage was arrested and convicted of the theft. He admitted that he broke into the storage facility and stole plaintiffs property on at least three different occasions between July 6-19, 2012, without interruption from the proprietor or changes in the building or property. As a result of the theft, Ramage owed plaintiffs $351,330 for their loss, the amount of their insurance claim.
American Economy Insurance Company issued plaintiffs an insurance policy stating, the most we will pay for the loss or damage in any one occurrence is the applicable Limit of Insurance of Selection 1. The insurer paid plaintiffs $103,000, the policy limit for one occurrence, but refused to pay the $248,330 balance of their loss. Plaintiffs sued the insurer for the rest of their loss. Each side of the litigation moved for summary judgment based on whether or not the claim triggered the policy limit for a single occurrence or for three occurrence limits based on at least three separate thefts. The court found that the scheme to steal property was one continuing cause of loss, which was one occurrence under the policy. Accordingly, the court granted the motion of the insurance company and denied that of the policyholders.
Plaintiffs contention that there were multiple occurrences was supported by Ramages sentencing hearing admission that the heist required at least two, 16 feet moving vans to haul the stolen property away from the building. So, according to the plaintiffs, the loss had to involve multiple thefts, taking place on different occasions, using different tools and perhaps perpetrated by multiple thieves.
Defendant insurer, on the other hand, argued that the single cause of plaintiffs loss was Ramages scheme to break into the plaintiffs building to steal their merchandise. Defendants argued that this conduct constituted but one continuing criminal plan to steal plaintiffs property, constituting a single occurrence under the policy. Defendant contended that it made no difference whether Ramage entered the building three times or more over the course of thirteen days, as the loss of property resulted from a single cause, the scheme to commit theft. Furthermore, the insurer contended, it made no difference whether Ramage acted alone or as part of a group of thieves, so long as they worked together as part of a common plan to carry out the thefts. Accordingly, defendant argued, as a matter of law all of the theft events were no more than a single occurrence under the policy. Under the policy language quoted above, defendant insisted, only $103,000 was payable to plaintiffs for their loss less a single occurrence deductible of $2,500.
For guidance, the court examined three leading cases that had presented courts in California with related issues. The first and most important case was EEOT Energy Corp. v. Storebrand Intl, Ins. Co. (1996) 45 Cal.App. 4th 563. In that case the Court of Appeal considered whether a $1.5 million loss suffered as a result of over 650 thefts of gasoline constituted one or 650 occurrences under the deductible clause of the policy. The value of the property taken in any single theft did not exceed the policys $100,000 deductible. There was evidence of a systematic and organized scheme to steal the fuel, so that the term occurrence as used in the deductible clause of the policy could encompass multiple claims all due to the same or related causes.
The court in EEOT Energy Corp, in turn, reviewed a number of cases considering the issue and adopted the following rule: [W]hen a scheme to steal property is the proximate and continuing cause of a series or combinations of thefts, the losses for liability insurance purposes constitute part of a single occurrence. (The court in EEOT Energy Corp clarified that the same principle applies to first party property policies, too.) Thus, the court in EEOT Energy Corp stated that, provided EEOT, the plaintiff, could establish that it was the victim of a single, systematic and organized scheme to steal its fuel products, and that that scheme was the proximate cause of EEOTs $1.5 million loss, there would be only one occurrence under the policy, subject to a single deductible of $100,000.
Another decision applying a similar standard was Budway Enterprises, Inc. v. Federal Ins. Co., 2009 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 31584. The court in Budway dismissed an insureds breach of contract claim against its insurer for failure to allege at least two separate causes of theft from a freight yard of two tractors and trailers filled with aluminum shipments. The insurance policy indemnified the policyholder up to $100,000 per occurrence for loss or damage to freight being transported by the insured, a common carrier. The policyholder submitted a loss and damage claim totaling $150,000. It was unknown whether the thefts occurred at the same or different times. In limiting the claim recovery to $100,000 for a single occurrence, the court adopted the cause standard which holds that occurrence means the cause of the injury, not the injury or claim itself.
Applying the cause standard to multiple thefts can lead to contradictory results, however. Thus, the court in B.H.D, Inc. v. Nippon Ins. Co. of Europe, LTD. (1996) 46 Cal.App. 4th 1137, 1141-1143 attempted unconvincingly to explain its multiple occurrence holding in a jewelry theft case. The B.H.D. court applied the cause standard, but the court found that theft of $117,280 in merchandise from a jewelry store over a three month period by one person constituted multiple occurrences. In that case the thief visited the store two or three times a week. Each time she stole items by dropping them into her purse when the salesperson was distracted. The Court of Appeal in B.H.D. affirmed summary judgment for the insurer, holding that each time the thief stole jewelry, it counted as a separate occurrence under the deductible clause. The court tried explaining:
While the thefts were similar [to each other], each was a completed crime that would have supported a separate count in a criminal proceeding and separate punishment. This is not a case in which the thief had a general overall plan to steal a particular item or amount, or where he or she took advantage of a position of trust to embezzle an aggregate amount over an extended period. [The thief] clearly intended to steal jewelry from [the policyholder], but each time she entered its store, purloined items displayed to her while the salespersons'[sic] attention was distracted, and left the premises with stolen merchandise, she completed a separate crime. (46 Cal.App.4th at p. 1142.)
Of course, in the Patterson case each time Ramage entered the storage facility and removed property, he completed a separate crime.
The court in B.H.D., the jewelry case, distinguished EEOT, the petroleum case, on two separate grounds. First, unlike B.H.D., there was evidence in EEOT of a systematic, organized scheme. Secondly, but begging the question of the number of occurrences that took place, the policy in EEOT contained a provision suggesting aggregation of multiple claims into one occurrence. The EEOT policy stated, all claims. . . arising out of any one occurrence shall be adjusted as one claim. In B.H.D. no such clause was contained in the policy.
The court in Patterson started with dictionary definitions of the term occurrence but found that led to no definitive result. The court next looked to the reasonable expectation of the parties, which it found provided greater insight when evaluated in the context of the deductible. In discussing deductible, the court found that it would be more reasonable for an insured to expect to pay a single deductible for the Pattersons aggregate loss than to pay multiple deductibles. To hold that the insured must suffer the loss of additional deductibles, based on the number of trips made by the thief, and perhaps those of his confederates, would not fall within the reasonable expectations of the parties. If each deductible were equated with removal of a different item of property, or with a different type of burglary tools, the insureds recovery could be eroded to the vanishing point.
In discussing the B.H.D. decision, the court in Patterson observed that the parties had not submitted evidence of whether Ramage, the thief in Patterson, was charged with one crime or multiple crimes. The court then noted a number of factual differences between the cases. First, the thief in B.H.D. stole a few items each time she visited the store over a three month period. The thief in Patterson with or without assistance stole a large amount of property over a brief time period ranging between 11 and 13 days. Secondly, in B.H.D., the thief improvised her actions rather than following a set plan: She interacted with jewelry sales personnel and took advantage of their distraction to steal merchandise. The thief in Patterson stole goods without any personal interaction with the victim while the storage facility was unoccupied. Finally, in B.H.D. the thiefs method was to steal whatever jewelry she could when a sales person looked away, and then to repeat that method when the circumstances permitted, until she was caught. The thief in Patterson, by contrast, attempted to take as much property as possible over a short period of time before his plan was detected. These differences led the court to conclude that the B.H.D. thief committed multiple burglaries, while the Patterson burglary amounted to only one long occurrence.
At the end of its decision, the court ruled that the insureds cause of action against their insurer for breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing was without merit. There could be no bad faith liability to the extent that plaintiffs loss exceeded the occurrence policy limit, since such liability arises from an insurer withholding without proper cause policy proceeds that are in fact due to be paid under the terms of the policy. Here there was proper cause to withhold amounts exceeding the $103,000 single limit of liability.
Miroslav Vitous Is the Perfect Bassist for 'The Music of Weather Report,' ECM Records [REVIEW]
Weather Report co-founder Miroslav Vitous (Photo : Robert Zlatohlavek)
The Music Of Weather Report (ECM) lives on through its original bass player Miroslav Vitous who, with his new sextet, reprises six of his former band's glories -- "Scarlet Woman," "Seventh Arrow," "Birdland," "Pinocchio," "Acrobat Issues" and "Morning Lake" -- adding "Variations" to their tone, color, time signature, rhythmic thrust and title.
In-between each variation are short haunting existential blues moments. Do not expect them, considering Miroslav's mindset and Weather Report's propensity to break rules, to sound anything like the pioneering template set down by this most courageous of 1970s jazz-rock fusion bands.
Joe Zawinal's "Birdland" has two drummers -- Nasheet Waits and Gerald Cleaver -- acting at cross odds with each other as one plays in 3/4 time and the other in 4/4 or common time. Thus, the combination of two different time signatures, as Vitous says in the liner notes, "creates a kind of tunnel where one can play any phrase in any tempo and it swings amazingly."
Oftentimes, that Vitous bass is in the forefront as a lead instrument right alongside the front line of the twin sax men Gary Campbell and Roberto Bonisolo. Original sax man Wayne Shorter's "Pinocchio," which he wrote when in the band of Miles Davis, used on the classic 1967 Miles album Nefertiti, and reused on Weather Report's 1978 Mr. Gone, is a rather "theatrical" take, according to Vitous, which features a complete overhaul and re-harmonization by Turkish pianist Aydin Esen. It is here where, as he says, "everyone solos and no one solos."
Vitous wrote "Seventh Arrow" and "Morning Lake" for that startling 1971 self-titled debut. The former features a surprising early climax but keeps afloat with Oriental motifs which recall the band's 1972 Japanese trailblazing which, ultimately, led to the release of Live In Tokyo. Here, though, the cloudy atmosphere and skeletal approach to the melodies transform these classic tracks into their own rather nebulous and surreal universe, ephemeral like spirals of cigarette smoke wafting through the air before disappearing entirely.
Born in 1947 Prague, Vitous came to Boston on a Berklee scholarship and immediately made a stateside splash with Miles, Chick Corea, Stan Getz and Herbie Mann. He co-founded Weather Report before being replaced by Alphonso Johnson after two years. His 1990s hiatus saw him developing, marketing and cashing in on symphonic orchestra software. After running his own studio in Northern Italy, he returned to the Czech Republic where he remains today.
2016 The Classical Art, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
TagsMiroslav Vitous, REVIEW, Weather Report, ECM Records
News / National
by Stephen Jakes
Social media users have poured messages of solidarity towards Pastor Evan Mawarire following his arrest for inciting violence.The users said the police were doing the wrong thing as it is on record that Mawarire never called for violence but always advised people to restrain from it.Ivy's kitchenette said of all Evan Mawarire's videos that he has watched he never recalled at any point, he encouraged people to be violent!!"His words are always 'No To Violence', We Do Not Accept Violence, We Will Not Use Violence but we will stand together as one and speak up until the Zimbabwean Government has heard our grievances!! I am so saddened and appalled by our own people how they treat us as the citizens of Zimbabwe. May everyone rise up and Speak Up until Pastor Evan has been Released!! We will not stop, we will not fear, we are tired and we want Change!!!" he said.The social media then called for his freedom slagging their calls as #freeEvanMawarire #FreePastorEvan #enoughisenoughwill participate
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- They're called French fries, but Americans have perfected and embraced the starchy treat, to the extent that July 13 is National French Fry Day.
If you're looking to mark the occasion, I have good news for you: cleveland.com has already done the hard work of narrowing down the best French Fry places in town.
Last fall, cleveland.com held an exhaustive search for the very best fries Northeast Ohio has to offer. There was an overall winner among eight finalists, a people's choice winner, and fries that topped several other categories.
Click through the photo gallery above to see the nine best places to get fries in Northeast Ohio.
Whether you like them curly or straight, with salt and pepper or just plain doused in ketchup, here are the nine french fry places that most impressed cleveland.com reporters' and readers' taste buds.
Tommy's on Coventry (1824 Coventry Road, Cleveland Heights; 216-321-7757)
The fries at Tommy's on Coventry took home both the East Side regional contest and the Grand Prize that was picked by cleveland.com food critic Joe Crea. Crea traveled to multiple restaurants to sample their fries before declaring his winner.
"Tommy's fries are so seductive, you don't feel guilty for polishing off the plate," he wrote.
Hot Dog Heaven (493 Cleveland Ave., Amherst; 440-988-7404)
Hot Dog Heaven in Amherst was the People's Choice Winner, racking up 43 percent of the votes cast over a two-week period. It also won top honors in the Lorain-Medina counties category. You can get your fries plain or topped with a cheese sauce or chili, or just go all the way and order the Chili Cheese Bacon Fries.
B Spot (locations in Woodmere, Strongsville, Westlake, Horseshoe Casino, FirstEnergy Stadium and The Q)
B Spot's fries are fried in molten lard "laced with garlic," as Crea put it. They are then salted and garnished with a hint of rosemary, giving them a distinctive flavor that'll hit the spot every time. They won last year's "Best french fries in a chain" category, since Michael Symon has opened several B Spots in the area.
Deagan's Kitchen (14810 Detroit Ave., Lakewood; 216-767-5775)
Deagan's Kitchen's "House Fries" aren't your typical fries, they are topped with white truffle oil, shredded parmesan, salt and pepper, and chopped scallions.
Hot Dog Diner (5494 Pearl Road, Parma; 440-886-3647)
The Hot Dog Diner in Parma was declared the best fries in the Cleveland South category last year. The diner doesn't use heat lamps with its fries, instead using a "twice-cooked approach" that makes sure they taste fresh every time they're ordered.
Lola (2058 East 4th St., Cleveland; 216-621-5652)
Michael Symon makes the list again, this time with downtown eatery Lola. It's no surprise, since Symon told Crea last year he's passionate about fries.
"I love french fries," he said. "Even when I'm being healthy, I order a salad with a side of fries!"
Lola finished first place in the Downtown Cleveland category in the contest.
Whitey's Booze N' Burgers (3600 Brecksville Road, Richfield; 330-659-3600)
Whitey's Booze N' Burgers came in first in the Portage and Summit counties category. The fries here aren't flavored in any way, in fact they're not even salted, they're so confident that the fried spuds on their own will stand their ground with your discerning taste buds.
Scooter's Dawg House (9600 Blackbrook Road, Mentor; 440-354-8480)
Scooter's Dawg House was a finalist in last year's best fries competition. The shop goes through 5,500 pounds of potatoes a week, and the potatoes are soaked in cold water overnight to prevent them from soaking up a lot of grease when they're fried.
Five Guys Burgers and Fries (multiple locations nationwide)
If you're not near any of these outstanding local restaurants, you can always celebrate at your nearest Five Guys Burgers and Fries. Five Guys ran away with the vote for the best fries at a nationwide chain, winning 42 percent of the total votes.
Let us know in the comments section below where you're headed today to celebrate National French Fry Day, or if you know of a spot with amazing fries that isn't listed above.
Oh, and for the record, while they are called French fries, Belgians claim the correct name would be "Belgian Fries." According to them, fries were invented in the 17th century in a fishing village in Belgium during winter when people couldn't fish, and instead cut potatoes into long, thin slices to resemble fish and fried them up.
Then again, the French claim they did in fact invent fries, and sold them first on the Pont Neuf bridge in Paris in the 1780s.
And then there was that time Americans tried to rename them into Freedom Fries.
Whatever you call them, they're delicious.
Isaiah Crowell
Isaiah Crowell is taking positive steps to try to atone for his Instagram post.
(Charlie Riedel, Associated Press)
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Browns running back Isaiah Crowell posted a video on his Facebook account early this morning apologizing for his Instagram post and vowing to donate his first game check to the Dallas Fallen Office police fund.
One game is worth $35,294.12. He's in the final year of a three-year, $1.54 million deal that pays him $600,000 this year.
Crowell also promised to be part of the solution and not the problem after posting an illustration of a police officer being stabbed in the neck by a hooded figure on Wednesday. The post was in response to the fatal shootings of two black men by police last week and came a day before the sniper attack that left five police officers in Dallas dead.
Crowell has drawn the wrath of Browns fans, some media and Cleveland Police Patrolmen's Association President Steve Loomis, who called for Crowell to apologize in person to the families of officers killed in Dallas in person and to donate to them.
"If that man needs to make this right, he needs to make a grand gesture," Loomis told cleveland.com.
Loomis threatened that if Crowell did not do so, his officers would not work security detail for Browns games.
"If the Browns don't think I can get this done, I've got some swamp land in Florida to sell them," Loomis said.
A source said Crowell was already in the process of making restitution to the families and taping his video before Loomis' remarks.
Here is the full transcript of Crowell's video:
"Last week like so many others I was frustrated and upset about what is going on in our country. I have friends and family members dealing with violence, I've seen violence throughout the country and I'm really emotional about it. And during that emotion, I did something I wish I could take back. I posted a really disgusting, bad picture and I took it down immediately because I knew I was wrong. Nobody had to tell me to take it down... not my PR, agent or the Browns had to tell me to take it down because I knew I was wrong. I'm sorry, and I hope you understand that that's not who I am. I would never wish violence on anyone, especially a police officer. I'm sorry to all the Browns fans, all the people who support my career, all the kids out there who look up to me, and most of all the good police officers that are out there protecting us everyday.
"By posting that picture, I became part of the problem. I don't want to be part of the problem, I want to be part of the solution. And to back that up my first game check is going to the Dallas Fallen Officer Foundation. Also, I'm committed to doing whatever I can to create open dialogue between my communities and the police who serve us.
"I know this might not change your mind about me and I know I can't take the post back, but I'm sorry. And moving forward I'm committed to being part of the solution."
city hall.JPG
Cleveland officials appear to recognize that it is necessary, otherwise the city would be forced to make cuts to staff and services.
(File photo)
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Cleveland's mayor has insisted that court-mandated reforms to the city's police department are not the only reason he is asking voters for a municipal income tax increase, but officials appear to recognize that it is necessary, otherwise the city would be forced to make cuts to staff and services.
The reforms are mandatory, and if the city doesn't have more money, something will likely have to give.
The head of the team monitoring the city's reforms says his goal is to not force the city to pay for things it doesn't need. At the same time, he said the team must hold the city to a settlement it reached with the U.S. Justice Department, known as a consent decree, and make the necessary changes to the police department.
The City Council will vote Wednesday on whether to put the proposed tax increase, which would raise the municipal rate from 2 percent to 2.5 percent, in front of the voters. If passed, it is expected to generate more than $80 million in additional revenue the first year.
It remains unclear whether the council's approval would put the measure on a ballot in November or May.
The costs associated with the police department reforms became more clear last week during a Committee of the Whole meeting, when police administrators presented a staffing request that asked for 120 additional officers over the next four years at a cost of more than $11.7 million. It was the first time the department gave a glimpse into what a reformed department could look like.
Police Chief Calvin Williams said that about half those positions are directly related to the consent decree. Many of the additional officers are geared toward community-oriented policing.
Williams and his administrators are asking for less than 10 percent of the money out of the money that would be generated by the tax increase in the first year. But councilmen have noted that cuts would need to be made in other departments -- which could mean layoffs and reductions in city services such as plowing and keeping up maintenance in city properties -- to pay for the consent decree, should the tax increase not pass.
And the amount discussed at Thursday's hearing also does not account for the money the city must pay the monitoring team, as well as the cost of updating the police department's aging technology.
To be sure, much of the discussion during Williams' presentation involved city councilmembers telling police officials what they needed to see in order to vote to put the tax increase on the ballot.
Councilman Matt Zone recognized this the urgency of paying for the consent decree with tax-increase money an interview Friday saying "there are certain benchmarks we have to meet."
Zone, who heads the City Council's public safety committee, continued, "If this income tax does not pass, we still are required to meet those benchmarks, since we are required to do that. Other city services are going to severely be scaled back and hurt as a result of that."
Jackson's office did not directly respond to questions sent by cleveland.com. Spokesman Dan Williams said in a voicemail that the "intentionally this is not about the consent decree." in an email, he said that consent decree costs are "only a small portion of the increase.
"We would have sought the .5 (percent) increase whether or not we were under the consent decree," Williams wrote in the email.
But Jackson said in an interview with the cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer editorial board in February that that a vote against the income tax would mean the city has a $40 million budget hole, which would result in mass layoffs and a decline in city services.
"The choice people will have is, do you want a structurally balanced budget that increases capacity to deliver services, or do you want a budget that is balanced but reduces service and lays off people?" Jackson told the editorial board. "... It's a very clear choice. Either way it will not be as it is today."
It was not immediately clear whether the city has discussed the proposed increase with the Justice Department and team monitoring the city's consent decree. U.S. Attorney's Office spokesman Mike Tobin declined to comment.
Matthew Barge, the head of the monitoring team, said in an emailed statement that his team is reviewing the city's staffing plan, and that an it will try to develop requirements that use the police department's current resources more efficiently.
As for Cleveland's budgetary woes, he said members of the monitoring team have experience dealing with cash-strapped cities.
"Accordingly, our determination of what is adequate for purposes of the (consent decree) will not be tied to unrealistic, unduly, or unnecessary expenditures," Barge wrote in an email. "At the same time, as we oversee implementation of the Consent Decree on behalf of the Court, our goal is to ensure that the provisions to which the Decree that the City and United States previously agreed are substantially and effectively implemented."
Zone said that he has not yet had discussions on what the city would do to pay for the consent decree. He said he is aware of the city administration's plans to create budgets that would increase city services, decrease them and keep them at the same level.
Councilman Zack Reed also said those discussions, if necessary, would be held after the vote. He said it is important to tell voters what other services and improvements they will see in order to get support for the increase.
The Committee of the Whole is expected to again discuss the staffing study in August.
An earlier version of this story inaccurately reported how much revenue would be generated by raising Cleveland's income tax from 2 percent to 2.5 percent.
AKRON, Ohio -- A northeast Ohio man who fled to Peru more than a decade ago in the midst of an investigation into a $65 million investment scheme, only to be brought back last year, pleaded guilty to federal charges Wednesday.
Eric Bartoli, 61, pleaded guilty to conspiracy, securities fraud, sale of unregistered securities, wire fraud, mail fraud and three counts attempted tax evasion. Under a plea agreement, he faces a likely prison sentence of between 97 and 121 months, prosecutors said.
U.S. District Judge John Adams will sentence him Nov. 9.
Bartoli, originally of Marshallville in Wayne County, was charged in 2003 with defrauding as many as 800 investors in Northeast Ohio and Latin America.
The Internal Revenue Service and the FBI said his company, Cyprus Funds, promised investors high yields in conservative blue-chip stocks and raised about $65 million in 1995-99, when dividend checks stopped being mailed to Ohio investors.
Shareholders received about half of the money raised.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission sued Bartoli in 1999. He was arrested in New Hampshire that year but was released.
He left the United States in 2000, before he was charged, and lived in Lima, Peru for most of the past 15 years. He worked as an investment adviser. He also wrote hundreds of blog entries after 2003 under the name Enrico Orlandini for websites selling gold and silver.
Peruvian police arrested him in 2013. He will likely get credit for the 686 days he spent in custody in Peru when Adams sentences him.
Two men who ran Cyprus Funds along with Bartoli, Douglas Shisler of Doylestown and Peter Esposito of Middleburg Heights, served less than three years in prison for their roles in the scheme.
A message left for Barry Ward, Bartoli's attorney, was not immediately returned.
If you would like to comment. on this story, please visit Wednesday's crime and courts comments section.
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A 21-year-old Lorain man drowned in the water near the Sheffield Lake Boat Launch on Lake Road on Tuesday night, fire officials said.
(Google maps)
SHEFFIELD LAKE, Ohio -- A 21-year-old Lorain man drowned near the Sheffield Lake boat launch on Lake Road on Tuesday night, authorities said.
The man was swimming near the boat dock with friends, Sheffield Lake police Chief Anthony Campo said. He was jumping off rocks into the water and didn't come back up.
A dive team pulled his body from the water after about an hour-long search. The man's identity had not been released Wednesday morning.
Firefighters received a report of a possible drowning in the 4000 block of Lake Road at 10:22 p.m. Sheffield Lake police were already searching the water from the shore when they arrived two minutes later, according to a Sheffield Lake Fire Department news release.
Fire and police crews searched the water from the shore until divers with Coast Guard, Avon Lake and Sheffield Lake fire departments and Lorain County Dive Team entered the water at 11:39 p.m. They found the victim at 11:41 pm.
Fire officials said the water is about 6 to 8 feet deep where the man was swimming.
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Local arts activists will protest the RNC at Public Square.
(Mary Kilpatrick, cleveland.com)
CLEVELAND, Ohio - Cleveland arts activist James Levin believes the Republican National Convention is no laughing matter.
So the founder of Cleveland Public Theatre, IngenuityFest and the Cleveland World Festival has banded together with other local arts community members to form a guerrilla theater protest group they're calling "#notfunny."
Organizers of the group of cultural workers, theater artists, musicians and visual artists also includes Cathleen O'Malley of Cleveland Public Theatre and performance artist Dan McNamara.
"We met and decided several weeks ago since the Republicans are bringing their show to our city, we had to do something," says Levin. "We couldn't just ignore them and leave town. It demands a response."
Levin says they came up with the #notfunny concept based on the media coverage of presumptive nominee Donald Trump.
"When Trump announced he was running, it was a real boost to the late-night shows and comedians. They were in a feeding frenzy, thinking, 'Hey, we can fire all of our writers and just follow Trump around and show video of what he said that day.' And it was often really funny.
"But now that he's the apparent nominee and you look at his positions, you realize, 'Wow, this is not funny.' "
#notfunny will consist of small skits performed by the group, who will be dressed up like clowns. The idea is that "the clowns are resentful the good name of clownhood has been trashed by the current slate of Republicans."
The group will use skits and music in a "comedic and ironic way."
Levin says they'll be taking their show to Public Square between 4 and 6 p.m. daily during the convention, and "maybe we'll hop on a RTA bus and perform there or go into the Terminal Tower. We're not laden with props and costumes, so we can move around and do this anywhere."
Levin is also applying for a spot on the Public Square speaker's platform, where anyone in the public can register to speak in half-hour increments from 9:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. each day.
The group will be updating its activities on Twitter: Follow
@NotFunnyCLE
and #notfunnycleveland.
wine-restaurants
Several Northeast Ohio restaurants and wine bars are included in Wine Spectator's annual awards honoring wine programs throughout the world.
(Marc Bona, cleveland.com)
CLEVELAND, Ohio - The Wine Spectator is out with The List - a massive compilation of 3,595 restaurants and wine bars that the magazine says deserve attention for their wine programs.
Restaurants in 72 countries are included. The issue hits newsstands Tuesday, July 19.
Wine Spectator began its program to recognize the world's best wine lists in 1981. It covers three levels: Award of Excellence, Best of Award of Excellence and the Grand Award. The online list allows searches by location, restaurant and award.
The Northeast Ohio winners had an average inventory of 340 selections on their menus or in their wine shops.
They averaged having 2,574 total bottles, though quantity was not the overriding factor in determining quality programs. That number is a bit skewed by Chez Francois' inventory of 14,000 bottles.
Here are Northeast Ohio honorees:
Cellar 59 Wine Bar
3984 Kent Road, Stow
Selections: 410
Inventory: 1,000
Chez Francois
555 Main St., Vermilion
Selections: 670
Inventory: 14,000
Corleone's
5669 Broadview Road, Parma
Selections: 150
Inventory: 800
Crop Bistro
2537 Lorain Ave., Cleveland
Selections: 200
Inventory: 1,000
Dante
2247 Professor Ave., Cleveland
Selections: 480
Inventory: 1,640
Edwins Restaurant
13101 Shaker Square, Cleveland
Selections: 220
Inventory: 1,000
Fleming's Prime Steakhouse
4000 Medina Road, Akron
Selections: 190
Inventory: 1,200
Galaxy Restaurant
201 Park Centre Dr., Wadsworth
Selections: 425
Inventory: 4,350
Johnny's on Fulton
3164 Fulton Road, Cleveland
Selections: 200
Inventory: 370
L'Albatros
11401 Bellflower Road, Cleveland
Selections: 305
Inventory: 1,700
Lockkeepers
8001 Rockside Road, Valley View
Selections: 650
Inventory: 2,500
Lola
2058 E. Fourth St., Cleveland
Selections: 350
Inventory: 1,400
Morton's
1600 W. Second St., Cleveland
Selections: 275
Inventory: 1,500
Nemo Grille
36976 Detroit Road, Avon
Selections: 105
Inventory: 1,200
Pier W
12700 Lake Ave., Lakewood
Selections: 300
Inventory: 3,000
750ml Wines
2287 W. Market St., Akron
Selections: 675
Inventory: 4,500
Wood & Wine
38790 Chester Road, Avon
Selections: 170
Inventory: 2,600
PREVIEW
Power and Politics
What: Exhibit on history of politics in Cleveland and Ohio.
When: Through January 2017.
Where: Cleveland History Center, 10825 East Blvd., Cleveland.
Info: Call 216-721-5722 or www.wrhs.org.
Also: The Cleveland History Center will host a History on Tap Happy Hour to celebrate the event opening from 5 to 8 p.m. Thursday, July 14; $5-$10.
Free: C-Span has set-up a display on all U.S. presidents in the lobby through the convention. It will then move to Philadelphia for the DNC.
CLEVELAND, Ohio - "As Ohio goes, so goes the nation."
We've all heard the saying before.
The Cleveland History Center has the proof.
Just in time for the world's political focus to turn to Cleveland for the Republican National Convention, the University Circle museum's new "Power and Politics" exhibit details the rich and fascinating role the Buckeye state has played in national politics.
"Once we heard Cleveland was hosting the convention, we knew we wanted to be a part of that," says Angie Lowrie, director of operations for the museum. "We put together a team to start brainstorming on what we could do to make use of our extensive political collection for the community, and also raise visibility for our institution.
There's a special emphasis on Cleveland's role in national politics, especially the previous two RNCs held in town, in 1924 and '36.
"Cleveland has had a prominent role in national history, and so we're placing the local history in larger context of America," says Lowrie. "We're looking at the significant role we've had over time. Our collection is on a national scale."
In addition to exhibits on the Cleveland conventions that include buttons, tickets, brochures, photos and even an Alf Landon sunflower button, the "Power and Politics" four-gallery exhibit that dates back to the Revolutionary War era includes:
"Power & Politics in Cleveland" in the Hay-McKinney Reception Hall: Besides past convention memorabilia, this gallery includes a display on the 1896 presidential campaign of William McKinley, orchestrated by Clevelander power broker Marcus Hanna and funded in part by John Hay, whose widow built the Hay-McKinney Mansion. Artifacts on display include tickets, programs, and a souvenir book from the 1924 convention; Cleveland's application to host the 1936 convention; portraits of John Hay and Marcus Hanna; campaign ephemera from the 1896 campaign; and selections from the museum's extensive collection of political campaign pins and buttons.
"Road to Freedom," Central Lobby: "We have the largest political button collection in the world," says Lowrie. "We started collecting them in the 1960s, when former employee Kermit Pike really took an interest. Most people are really surprised by the size and scope of the exhibit."
That collection, which ranges from the Revolutionary War era to today, will be on display in the Central Lobby, along with political campaign buttons and ephemera from each of the eight presidential campaigns won by Ohio politicians. The gallery also includes one of the original copies of Archibald Willard's "Spirit of '76" painting and a portrait of Abraham Lincoln, who served as a model for the seven Republican presidents from Ohio that succeeded him.
"Power & Politics in Ohio," Norton Gallery: The focus turns to Ohio in the Norton Gallery, which features items from the museum's collection related to each of the eight Ohio presidents (only Virginia also had that many Oval Office leaders) and their home state's role in national politics. The exhibit includes portraits or photographs of each of the presidents, along with artifacts. These include a version of the revolver used to assassinate James A. Garfield, and Garfield's Civil War cap.
"Political Fashion Statements," Chisholm Halle Costume Wing: This fascinating exhibit includes "politically charged garments" from the mid-1800s to today centered around six themes:
The Campaign: Whimsical political wear from George Romney dresses to an "I Like Ike" poodle skirt and a silk necktie emblazoned with an image of Thomas Dewey.
The Inaugural Ball: Formal gowns that local women have worn to the ball in Washington, D.C., - such as Mary Kirtland Mansfield of Poland, Ohio, who wore the latest style to Ulysses S. Grant's inaugural ball.
Life in the White House: First lady fashion from Ohio's own tradition-minded Lucretia Garfield to Michelle Obama.
Celebrating the Nation: Historically inspired ensembles from Colonial-revival garments worn during the 1876 Centennial to patriotic shorts created during the 1976 Bicentennial.
War and Fashion: A look at how World War II profoundly affected fashion through rationing, limited access to European designers and changing roles for women.
Fighting for Change: A feminist-minded look at how fashion reflected the fight for women's rights.
Lowrie says at first the History Center hoped to do the exhibit in the convention area, "but there were a number of challenges we faced ... it limited accessibility."
So they decided to do it on-site, but make video exhibits accessible to convention-goers on their website and YouTube.
The "Power and Politics Video Series" uses the Center's collection to tell stories that are unique to Ohio, including the story of Marcus A. Hanna and "The Birth of the Modern Political Campaign."
Guests to town will also get to see a little bit of Cleveland history in action, even if they don't make it to "Power and Politics." The History Center has installed a local aviation-history-themed exhibit near the baggage carousels at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport.
"With all the people coming in, we worked with the airport to set this up in the baggage claim area," says Lowrie. "We're bringing history to the people."
Prophets Of Rage Perform At The Whisky
Musicians Chuck D, Brad Wilk, B-Real and Tom Morello of Prophets of Rage perform onstage at Whisky a Go Go on May 31, 2016 in West Hollywood, California.
(Kevin Winter)
CLEVELAND, Ohio - In case you're somehow still wondering what side of the political fence supergroup Prophets of Rage sits on, let the live intro to its new song remove all doubt.
"This is dedicated to Donald Trump - Mr. Comb over," shouts rapper B-Real. "Your party is f****** over!"
What proceeds is rap metal onslaught fueled by names you probably recognize: B-Real (Cypress Hill), Chuck D and DJ Lord (Public Enemy), and Rage Against the Machine members Tom Morello, Brad Wilk and Tim Commerford.
Prophets of Rage formed under the mantra, "Dangerous times demand dangerous songs." And the band will bring that mentality to Cleveland's Agora on July 19 -- the second day of the Republican National Convention.
"We wanted to be there to represent people who need a cultural voice to express their displeasure with the coronation that's going to be happening in the good working class town of Cleveland," says Morello.
The Rage guitarist would neither confirm nor deny a potential protest taking place earlier in the day on July 19. But one is expected.
The members of Prophets of Rage come from three of the most revolutionary acts of the last 25 years. Morello admits hip-hop legends Cypress Hill and Public Enemy were major influences on Rage Against the Machine, a band that emerged as a major political and musical force throughout the 1990s.
Prophets announced its formation and intentions in late May and played its first show in early June, highlighted by Rage Against the Machine, Cypress Hill and Public Enemy classics (the group's name comes from a PE song).
Of course, one major piece was missing -- Rage Against the Machine lyricist Zack de la Rocha, who has spent much of the past decade working on other political and musical endeavors.
"I think the music of Rage Against the Machine is more relevant today than it was when it was written," says Morello. "And we give a lot of credit and honor to Zack at every show because his lyrics are brilliant."
The message behind groups like Rage Against the Machine and Prophets of Rage hits close to home for Morello, who worked as a scheduling secretary California Senator Alan Cranston during the late 1980s.
Morello has participated in several political causes over the years. In fact, he and de la Rocha led protests at both parties' conventions back in 2008. But the current election cycle has struck a different kind of nerve.
"I got sick of the Trump and Sanders campaigns being referred to as raging against the machine," admits Morello. "If you want to know what raging against the machine sounds like, I'll see you in the mosh pit."
The main target of Morello's rage is, not surprisingly, Donald Trump. Interestingly enough, Rage Against the Machine, along with director Michael Moore, unintentionally predicted a Trump presidential run in its 2000 video for "Sleep Now in the Fire."
"We are pulling the mask off of the chicanery that Trump is claiming to speak for the disenfranchised. We're calling bull****," says Morello. "Trump is the wrong answer to a number of legitimate questions: Do we actually have a democracy or do the banks decide? Is Washington owned by Wall Street? These are questions Trump has cynically exploited and injected a dangerous dose of division and racism into."
Morello doesn't put all of it on Trump, however. He admits part of the problem is people not willing to do more than just pull a lever or push a button come election day.
"It's not enough just to vote," Morello insists. "People say they want change, but change doesn't come from picking one of two candidates. That's a false choice between the lesser of two evils."
Morello hopes Prophets of Rage's sold out show at the Agora not only offers fans a chance to jump in the mosh pit, but an opportunity to express their frustration from the right, center or left.
"Our show in Cleveland are non denominational," Morello proclaims. "These are very dangerous times. Fortunately we have a collection of very dangerous songs to deliver in Cleveland. What better place than here? What better time than now?"
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The Washington Post will set up shop in Butcher and Brewer on East Fourth during the RNC. (The Plain Dealer)
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Jeff Bezos won't need Amazon Prime drones to transport his Washington Post reporters around Cleveland during the Republican National Convention.
The Washington Post will set up shop a short walk from The Q -- at the Butcher and the Brewer, 2043 East Fourth St. The bar-eatery will serve as the headquarters for the Post, which is owned by Bezos -- the multi-billionaire founder and CEO of Amazon.com.
Bezos and the paper have had an uneasy relationship with presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump, who revoked the credentials for the paper after it ran a story headlined "Donald Trump Suggests President Obama Was Involved With Orlando Shooting."
The Washington Post has also had a bit of uneasiness with the Butcher and the Brewer. Well, at least its food critic Tom Sietsema, who complained about the service:
"At the trendy Butcher and the Brewer, I sat for several long minutes before any of the five faces behind the epic but unbusy bar bothered to make eye contact."
Keep in mind, Sietsema seemed to have the same problem with Cleveland in general. In another post, he warned foodies:
"I've just returned from Cleveland, where I had some of the worst restaurant service in recent years: no eye contact, no curiosity when plates were returned barely touched -- most workers seemed to be going through the motions. Good luck next month, GOP! Cleveland isn't ready for a crowd."
(Hey, he even bagged on a cab driver in the same article.)
The Post critic did follow up by praising the food and beer at the Butcher and the Brewer and naming it a top spot for visitors to check out.
Visitors won't have a chance to experience either. The Butcher and the Brewer will be closed to the public during the convention.
But at least the Post and the Butcher and the Brewer are on the same page... As the Prussian statesman Otto van Bismark once said, "Politics is the art of the possible."
News / National
by Stephen Jakes
Zanu PF youth member Fidelis Fengu has provoked calls for President Robert Mugabe to go after he asked on Facebook how many people would want the nonagenarian leader to rest.Fengu posted on the social media platform asking the users as to how many of them would want Mugabe to rest much to the contribution of many calling him to go."How many Zimbabweans feel that President Mugabe must rest who should replace him and when? 2018 ??" Fengu asked. "Anything outside 2018 isn't it illegal?"Angela Lilian Mabuda said "I don't think he should rest but rather #MugabeMustFall asap!"Mutandwa Donald Mukwasi said "He must just go, he has nothing to offer this generation except to leave a legacy of greed and corruption."Henrico Zhanje said, "Shame the old man must rest he has failed the nation what can we expect from a 92 year old like seriously guys."Baba Tinaye Matutu said, "Surely he must rest then allow transitional government to run the country for 90 days, then elections again."Morgan Nyikadzino Kunyenya said, "(VP Emmerson) Mnangagwa is my choice and must takeover asap."Trymore Mpiliso Mpofu said MDC-T leader Morgan Tsvangirai must take over. Jones Musara said the law allows recall of state president. "My choice is E.D.Mnangagwa," he said.Jameson Timba said, "He must not rest. He must just go because he has failed the citizens in more ways than one. His replacement must be decided in a free and fair election."
Funding allows 2 health centers to expand, serve more patients
Neighborhood Family Practice Center's nurse practitioner, Brandi Dobbs talks with patient, Gina Scarbro during a clinic visit July 15, 2014 in Cleveland. The Neighborhood Family Practice Center's expansion in Cleveland was made possible through a sizable federal grant it received in 2012 through the Affordable Care Act. The medical center on Puritas Avenue and West 140th Street has had its doors open for two years. (John Kuntz / The Plain Dealer)
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- At Cleveland Clinic, the onset of the Affordable Care Act prompted a massive cost-cutting effort that has trimmed $600 million in expenses over the last three years.
University Hospitals has responded to the law by re-engineering the way it does everything from hip replacement surgeries to appointment booking.
And MetroHealth Systems is shifting its entire model of care, delivering more preventive care to outpatients to keep them, whenever possible, from becoming hospital inpatients.
Since its major provisions took effect in 2014, the Affordable Care Act has spurred a vast change in the way health care is delivered and paid for at Cleveland's largest hospitals and other medical clinics across the state. In addition to penalizing providers for lapses in quality, the law is forcing them to cut waste and focus on delivering care more effectively.
"Even though the law has had many challenges in its implementation...it has forced health care providers to look at the value they provide instead of just the volume of procedures," said Dr. Akram Boutros, chief executive of The MetroHealth System.
However, that doesn't mean everything is working perfectly. Medical providers, consumer advocates, and health care specialists also note that costs are still rising, the system of paying for hospital care is getting more complicated -- not less -- and patients are still struggling to navigate a disjointed health care system without accurate information about how much services cost.
"It's not a system where all these entities - hospitals, insurers, laboratories - are working in concert necessarily," said Steve Wagner, director of the Universal Health Care Action Network of Ohio. "It's difficult for a consumer to know what's going on or understand the real cost of medical services."
The law's expansion of insurance coverage - it has cut Ohio's rate of uninsured in half during the last three years - has resulted in more patients with the ability to pay and less uncompensated care by providers.
That has helped the bottom lines of some hospitals, and it has offered a major boost to neighborhood health centers that serve low-income populations. But the expansion of coverage to 600,000 Medicaid recipients has also created additional complexities, hospital executives said.
For example, government reimbursements for those patients generally do not cover the cost of caring for them, so the resulting financial gap must be made up through cost savings or other lines of business.
On top of that, hospitals with large populations of Medicaid patients often face federal quality penalties, due to higher rates of readmission among those patients. Some administrators argue the law, designed to be an equalizing force, is blind to social and economic factors that make it harder for low-income patients to follow doctor's instruction and avert repeated hospital stays.
The federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is developing a new way of accounting for social factors that contribute to higher re-admissions in those hospitals. But over the last several years, the penalties have already cost local providers millions of dollars for caring for vulnerable patients the law delivered to their doorsteps.
"We have patients who can't afford medications, can't afford a cell phone and can't afford to come to their appointments," said Dr. William Annable, chief quality officer at University Hospitals. "The underlying assumption with the re-admission program seems to be that if they get re-admitted within 30 days, then you must have done something wrong. We know that's not true."
Far from gleaming hospital towers, a neighborhood clinic thrives
In financial terms, the law's expansion of Medicaid has been a mixed blessing for the region's largest hospitals. But for a small clinic on Cleveland's west side, it has laid the groundwork for a major expansion.
Neighborhood Family Practice, a nonprofit health center that focuses on caring for low-income Clevelanders, is renovating its main building and expanding to other locations to help care for a 55-percent increase in its patient load since passage of the Affordable Care Act.
Today, only about 7 percent of its 17,000 patients are uninsured, compared to about 25 percent before the law's passage. And because of its status as a federally qualified health center, Neighborhood Family Practice gets a better reimbursement rate for providing care to Medicaid patients than hospitals.
"The Medicaid expansion has been huge for us," said Jean Polster, chief executive of Neighborhood Family Practice. In 2012, the health clinic opened a new facility in Detroit-Shoreway, and another in the Puritas neighborhood in 2014. It also opened a physician's office in the Cudell-Jefferson neighborhood in 2015. And by the end of 2017, Polster said, Neighborhood Family Practice expects to use those and other locations to put another 4,000 patients under its care.
"We're trying to be on the corner for our patients," she said, adding that the health center partners with MetroHealth and Cleveland Clinic to provide hospital care. "Once you come in, we'll make those referrals. If you're having trouble getting there, then we'll arrange for the transportation. If you're non-English speaking, we'll get on the phone with them."
While its presence is expanding under the Affordable Care Act, so are the challenges facing Neighborhood Family Practice. About 40 percent of the population around its West End headquarters is living below 100 percent of the poverty level, which is about $20,000 for a family of three.
Last year, it saw an uptick in low-birth weight babies, Polster said. And although the Affordable Care Act has expanded insurance coverage, making sure that people are staying connected to health care is a constant challenge.
"Life is happening to the folks that we serve, and health is often way down the list of priorities," Polster said. "The safety net has to adapt."
Affordable Care Act spurs hospitals to innovate, retool
Earlier this summer, University Hospitals' effort to deliver care more efficiently to patients resulted in a major business deal: General Electric agreed to send employees to UH for hip replacement surgeries.
The arrangement guarantees General Electric a fixed cost for the procedure in exchange for giving UH its business. Though not a direct result of the Affordable Care Act, the deal underscores the broader shakeup in business practices that has resulted from the law, health care specialists said.
"The ACA created real motivation on the part of the necessary players to try things like that," said Catherine Livingston, an attorney for Jones Day who helped craft tax provisions of the law in a prior legal post at the IRS.
Today, about 30 percent of Medicare payments are tied to so-called alternative payment models that reimburse providers based on the quality -- not quantity -- of their care.
Livingston cited another partnership between Lowe's and the Cleveland Clinic in cardiac care. In both arrangements, the employers agreed to pick up the employees' out of pocket costs and travel expenses in order to get a guaranteed price at hospitals with strong track records in a particular area of care.
After the law was passed, both the Clinic and UH launched programs to standardize care - and eliminate waste - in all of their departments and specialties. The effort was spurred by 15 to 20 percent reimbursement cuts expected under the law. In order to preserve their businesses, the hospitals simply had to become more efficient.
Steven Glass, the Clinic's chief financial officer, said the hospital network cut $600 million in expenses over the last three years. Its efficiency program examined everything from the most effective implants to use in joint replacements to cases in which surgeons should use sutures - instead of more expensive staples - to close wounds.
"One of the most important things is really making sure people in the organization start to understand the cost associated with delivering the care," Glass said. "There are plenty of examples where we can more efficient in how we do things and it doesn't impact the quality of care."
The hospitals are not just focused on rooting out waste, but coordinating care for patients in a way that limits their need for costly medical services.
In 2013, MetroHealth launched a program with oversight from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to deliver more intensive care to low-income patients. The effort, which unfolded before Medicaid expansion, was meant to examine whether those patients could be cared for effectively on a fixed budget.
MetroHealth and local medical clinics, including Neighborhood Family Practice, used the same electronic record-keeping system to track each patient and coordinated the delivery of services through their primary care physicians.
At the program's conclusion, MetroHealth's expense came in $41 million under budget. The outcome offered support for a new model of paying for medical care that reimburses providers based on the effectiveness of their care, rather than the amount of care they provide.
While the Affordable Care Act supported that approach, hospital administrators said, the underlying system of paying for care remains misaligned and overly complex. There is little sharing of claims data between the providers of care and the government entities that pay for it, and patients are often left struggling to understand how services are priced and how much they should owe.
"You have to have an alignment of incentives with the patient, the provider and the payer," said Boutros, the MetroHealth chief executive. "Right now they are at odds."
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(File)
Cuyahoga County's influential role in determining which presidential candidate wins Ohio is the motivation for Battleground Cuyahoga, a new kind of voter poll and research being introduced this season by cleveland.com, Advance Ohio and the Community Research Institute at Baldwin Wallace University.
The partners will develop questions for the polls, in part, based on an analysis by Advance Ohio of audience interests on cleveland.com, the biggest news website in the state.
The state of Ohio has long played an important role in presidential elections. Ohio is but one of a handful of the nation's swing states, where the outcome of the presidential election is difficult to predict. Since 1960, no one has been elected president without capturing a plurality of the vote in Ohio.
However, much less attention has been paid to Cuyahoga County. Mitt Romney surely understands the value of Cuyahoga County. He lost to Barack Obama by more than 256,000 votes there, but he lost Ohio by 166,000. If he could have persuaded just 83,000 of those Cuyahoga County Obama voters to go with him - cutting Obama's margin of victory in the county by a third -- he would have won Ohio.
Although pollsters pay attention to Ohio, no one focuses exclusively on Cuyahoga County itself, and that is the motivation for the Battleground Cuyahoga project. The project will query registered voters likely to cast a ballot beginning in August and provide analysis of issues as they gain and lose traction and drive voter attitudes in this bellwether county.
For the August survey, The Community Research Institute will conduct such a survey, specific to Cuyahoga County voters. Concurrently, cleveland.com will create an anonymous panel of cleveland.com readers and conduct an identical survey.
By administering identical surveys to two separate sets of respondents, cleveland.com, Advance Ohio and Baldwin Wallace will be able to determine whether forming panels from the cleveland.com audience yields results that are representative of Cuyahoga County as a whole. If this works as well as we hope, we'll use cleveland.com volunteers for a lot more polling in the future.
Of particular interest will be gauging whether people who voted in the last couple of presidential elections might be opting to sit this one out because of dissatisfaction with the candidates.
The polling experts at Baldwin Wallace have been conducting regional surveys of voter attitudes for years. They do so using a variety of methods, including the use of random digit dialing and online panels with quotas in place for key demographic variables.
Cleveland.com will build a panel by asking interested participants from the online audience to provide email addresses. When the panel is large enough to generate a representative sample of likely, registered voters, cleveland.com will send respondents an email with an invitation to participate via an anonymous link. The staff at cleveland.com will have no idea who the respondents are.
Battleground Cuyahoga partners will take advantage of Advance Ohio's data analysis skills to study audience engagement trends on cleveland.com and help guide the design of the polls. Advance Ohio is a marketing, sales, information and data analysis company that operates cleveland.com.
Is anything to be gleaned, for example, if many more Democrats read stories about Donald Trump than Republicans read about Hillary Clinton? By using Advance Ohio's detailed analysis of audience trends to form questions, the partners hope to find correlations between what various audience segments are reading read and how they might vote.
CLEVELAND, Ohio - After two months of hearings on a proposal to set Cleveland's minimum wage at $15 an hour, City Council took a step toward rejecting it Wednesday.
Members of council's Workforce and Community Benefits Committee and Finance Committee issued a recommendation that the council as a whole vote no on the proposal next month.
And Cleveland Law Director Barbara Langhenry articulated her opinion at the committee table that the city cannot legally set its own minimum wage -- a conclusion also recently reached by Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine.
But controversy erupted at the hearing over the fact that Langhenry did not put her opinion in writing, and the debate that followed was the most contentious on the issue, to date.
Councilman Jeffrey Johnson, who is a member of the workforce committee, formally submitted his own alternative plan that would phase in a $15 minimum wage over five years, beginning with an $11-an-hour wage in January.
Council members Zack Reed, Kevin Conwell, Mike Polensek and Mamie Mitchell expressed their support for Johnson's amendment, in the hopes that it would spur a statewide movement.
But Council President Kevin Kelley reiterated his firmly held position that a proposal seeking to raise the minimum wage in Cleveland alone would hurt employers and employees alike, prompting layoffs or an exodus of businesses from the city.
"(The amendment) fails to deal with the fatal flaw of this petition, which is the Cleveland-only effect," Kelley said. " I ask my colleagues to think about the business owners who have come before us and ask what that would do to their businesses and investment in the city. ... And we're not talking about CEOs sitting in their Wall Street office, looking at workers as widgets. We're talking small business owners, who see their employees as family."
Johnson's amendment failed to pass through either the workforce or finance committees -- leaving council to continue considering the ordinance as originally written.
Backers of the initiative, who had packed the committee room, filed out after the vote, singing "We Shall Overcome."
How the debate began ...
The Service Employees International Union, through the newly formed local group Raise Up Cleveland, had collected enough signatures of Cleveland voters in support of a $15 citywide minimum wage starting in January 2017 to compel council to introduce legislation on the issue in May.
The legislation was referred to the committees, which had 60 days after the proposal was introduced to hold hearings on the issue and make a recommendation on passage.
Now, council will have another 30 days to arrive at a final decision.
If council votes down the ordinance or adopts an amended version, the petitioners have the option, under the City Charter, of putting the original language on the ballot for Cleveland voters.
Members of Raise Up Cleveland put up this inflatable "fat cat" outside of Cleveland City Hall Wednesday.
Dozens of Raise Up Cleveland protesters marched through the streets Wednesday morning from Public Square to City Hall to attend the committee meeting. They packed the committee room, the hallways and the lawns of City Hall, waiting for the issue to come up on council's agenda. And in Willard Park, near the Free Stamp, they erected a giant inflatable "fat cat," wearing a suit and diamond jewelry and holding what appears to be a service worker by the neck.
Will it make the November ballot?
The group brought with them several boxes containing thousands of additional signatures in support of putting the issue on the November ballot.
Questions arose last month over whether Raise Up Cleveland had turned in its initial pile of signatures in time to guarantee a shot at the November ballot. If council runs out the clock and decides not to pass the ordinance as written, the initiative would miss the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections' Aug. 10 deadline to make the ballot for the general election.
The City Charter, however, outlines a different timeline -- giving council until Sept. 9 -- 60 days before the November election -- to certify the issue to the board of elections. And sources on both sides of the issue agree that the charter trumps the election board's schedule.
But the charter offers another remedy for the petitioners, too: Collecting an additional 5,000 signatures, as the petitioners say they have done, could force a special election.
The Rev. Kyle Earley, a spokesman for Raise Up Cleveland, said Wednesday that, in this case, the group hopes the extra signatures will get the issue on the ballot for the general election.
Council leaders have not yet said whether they will accept the additional signatures. Council Clerk Pat Britt was not in the office when the petitions were delivered.
The voices of opposition
Mayor Frank Jackson, Kelley and most council members have said they oppose any measure that seeks to raise the minimum wage in Cleveland alone.
Restaurateurs, construction industry leaders, grocers and other business owners have echoed that argument during a series of council hearings. Some have said the wage increase would be so devastating to their bottom lines that they would be forced to close their doors.
Ohio Attorney General DeWine last month issued an opinion stating that municipalities cannot legally set their own minimum wage, and that the Ohio Constitution dictates that the matter be handled on the state level. The opinion signals that, if the citywide minimum wage comes to pass - either by ballot initiative or council vote - the state could sue the city, challenging the constitutionality of the new ordinance.
Raise Up Cleveland quickly issued a news release calling DeWine's opinion "only an opinion" and announcing that the movement would move "full speed ahead" with its campaign.
"We, the Cleveland voters, believe that we have the right to decide the minimum wage for our community," the release stated. "Although Attorney General Mike DeWine is entitled to his personal opinion, ultimately we the Cleveland voters will be the deciding voice in making sure that working families have a living wage."
Cleveland NAACP calls for compromise
Cleveland NAACP President Michael Nelson said in an interview Wednesday that after sponsoring a standing-room only forum on the issue Tuesday night, NAACP board members expressed overwhelming support for a phased-in approach to a higher minimum wage in Cleveland.
In a letter to Kelley sent Wednesday afternoon, Nelson acknowledged that a $15 minimum wage beginning in January would hurt the city's economy, and said that City Council is acting irresponsibly by refusing to negotiate with the petitioners toward a reasonable proposal.
"Instead of putting up a wall of resistance and refusing to negotiate, we believe that it is in the best interest of the community for Council to propose a phased in wage increase over a five year period," Nelson wrote. "Your failure to sit with representatives from Raise Up Cleveland would be irresponsible and expose the Cleveland business community to the worst case as opposed to best case scenario. For once, let's do something for the people, supported by the people."
At another forum, sponsored earlier this week by the Urban League of Greater Cleveland, Kelley said that he would be willing to participate in a coalition seeking to raise the statewide minimum wage. But if the proposal imposes a higher wage only on Cleveland -- "I'm out."
Inner-ring divide: Cleveland Heights-University Heights schools vs. Lakewood Schools
Inner-ring divide: Cleveland Heights-University Heights schools vs. Lakewood Schools While Cleveland Heights and Lakewood schools are strikingly similar statistically, they vary widely in results and how much money they spend to do so. The information in this chart has been taken from each district's Ohio Board of Education state report cards for the 2014-2015 school year, though district officials dispute the number of economically disadvantaged students. The chart above reflects the numbers reported by the districts.(Brenda Cain, cleveland.com)
CLEVELAND HEIGHTS, Ohio -- While the Cleveland Heights-University Heights and Lakewood school systems have statistically similar student bodies, the education they provide is vastly different.
A recent study by the education site NICHE ranked the best schools - public and private - in the nation. Lakewood ranked 1,716th nationally, while Cleveland Heights-University Heights ranked 5,734th.
In the state's 2016 rankings of its 612 school districts, Lakewood was 168, with Cleveland Heights 308.
Lakewood has newer buildings, a higher graduation rate and lower cost per student.
These numbers carry a huge weight, and not just for residents with kids. The quality of a school district affects nearly all facets of community life: housing prices, tax burden, a sense of community and the ability to attract new residents.
As cleveland.com explores Lakewood and Cleveland Heights in its Inner-ring Divide series, take a look at six key metrics for each district.
State report cards
Neither district ranked high on the state's 2015-2016 assessment of the state's 612 districts.
Lakewood's report card scored only one A out of six major categories. The progress score measures students' progress in math and English. The district received the following other scores.
C -- performance (test results)
C -- indicators met (the percentage of students who passed the tests)
C -- K-3 literacy rankings (are students learning to read)
F -- closing the gap (is every student succeeding regardless of income, race, ethnicity or disability)
D -- 82.7 percent of students graduating within four years of their entrance to high school
Cleveland Heights-University Heights also received an A in progress. It also received:
D -- performance
F -- indicators met
F -- K-3 literacy
F -- closing the gap
D -- graduation rate
D -- 81.3 percent of students graduate within four years of their entrance to high school.
CH-UH excelled in the "value added" category, which measures how much students improved over the course of the school year, regardless of where they started. The district received an A.
"Some of our metrics are not good, and we are working on improving those, but some of those less-heralded numbers are turning around," said Cleveland Heights-University Heights Superintendent Talisa Dixon.
Poverty
Students in both districts live in poverty. That, according to the Ohio Education Tax Policy Institute, inflates the number of dollars a school district spends by as much as $3,800 for each student, to address socioeconomic issues.
About 47 percent of Lakewood's students are economically disadvantaged, according to the district. In CH-UH, school officials say that number is 67 percent. Both districts say about half of their students receive free or reduced lunches.
Diversity
Cleveland Heights is about half black and half white, and University Heights is about 72 percent white, according the 2016 United States Census. The schools are 72 percent black.
While there have been no serious racial clashes in the Heights school district, both parents and district leaders say they're concerned that white families in the district are less likely to send children to public schools.
Some people see the district's diversity as a strength, but steps should be taken to bring students of different races and religions together.
Lakewood, Cleveland's second largest suburb, is 87.4 percent white and 6 percent black, according to the Census. It has 37 nationalities represented and is a hot spot for immigrants from the Middle East, Albania and Myanmar.
In Lakewood, "supporting these students is a big issue for our district," said Lakewood Superintendent Jeff Patterson. "They are trying to acclimate to a new culture and at the same time learn basic literacy skills and a new language."
Lakewood schools, which rank 54th in size statewide, rank 12th in English as a Second Language (ESL) enrollment. There were 429 ESL students enrolled during the 2015-2016 school year.
Patterson said as much as 8 percent of the student population had no formal education before enrolling at Lakewood; most don't speak English at all or have only a rudimentary understanding of the language.
Lakewood offers an eight-week summer program so those students don't lose momentum over the break.
Finances
Lakewood spends an average of $10,633 per student. Cleveland Heights spends $16,161.
Part of that cost is in teacher salaries. Cleveland Heights' median teacher salary is $79,155, while the median salary in Lakewood is $68,209.
Dixon blames the high cost on the number of students attending private schools.
In Cleveland Heights, there are 10 private schools - one all-male, three all-female, two co-ed, a Montessori and three religious schools - within a 7-mile radius of the CH-UH district offices.
"Families have a lot of good choices when it comes to educating their children," Dixon said. "The perception of our schools is that there is something better out there. Perhaps the biggest challenge we face as a district is that our families feel their children deserve better, and while they are paying a lot of taxes to get that, they are willing to still pay tuition as well."
While each of those families pays property taxes toward the public school system, the private school students cost the district money, too.
While Ohio pays the district $1,800 for each school-aged child living in its borders, according to Dixon, the state also collects $4,650 for each K-8 student and $5,900 for each high school student who receives a voucher to attend a private school - costing the district $4,100. Vouchers are available to students who would otherwise attend "underperforming" public schools.
Districts that provide busing for students must also bus private school students in their boundaries. And the public schools must provide learning assessments for students in the district who need them, regardless of whether they go to public school.
The exodus over the last decade has taken its toll. Dixon announced in March that 52 teachers would lose their jobs at the end of the 2016 school year due to declining enrollment. Since 2007, the district has lost about 900 students and expects 800 fewer to enroll over the next 10 years.
Thanks to the cuts, Cleveland Heights will have a 22:1 student/teacher ratio in 2016-2017, while Lakewood schools have a 17:1 student/teacher ratio.
Lakewood, on the other hand, is home to five private schools, all religious based. Lakewood Superintendent Jeff Patterson said families choose private options specifically for religious beliefs.
Patterson said the district keeps costs down in part because of a "strong literacy intervention model for students not reading at grade level." Volunteer reading mentors help kids learn to read.
Community support
Lakewood enjoys a healthy support at the ballot box.
The last time the district asked residents for help with a $100 million building project, more than 70 percent of voters said yes.
And thanks to what Patterson called a "favorable financial report" at the end of last school year, the school board decided to delay an ask for a tax increase for at least another year.
Even though Lakewood's population is in large part aging homeowners, renters and young professionals without children, Patterson says "it's great the community still sees us as an asset, and even though they may not have kids in our schools, they still feel they have a stake in what we are doing here."
Still Patterson projects the district could be operating at a deficit by the end of 2018.
Across town, Cleveland Heights-University Heights - which also has its share of aging homeowners, plus medical interns and college students -- had its latest tax request rejected in May by 57 percent. It will be back on the ballot in November with a 5.5-mill tax that would generate about $5.8 million for school operations.
School board member James Posch said the "district is under attack financially. If we don't pass a levy soon, there's going to be more cuts." Two-time school board President Kal Zucker said it is "very difficult to get the community to link the need with better results."
After a defeat in May of last year, the district cut teaching positions and cut $1.3 million in supplies, another $700,000 by cutting informational technology and lowering energy costs and almost $200,000 in supplemental contracts. (link)
Despite the cuts, the district anticipates a $1.1 million shortfall in fiscal year 2018.
Facilities overhaul
With the start of the 2017 school year, all of Lakewood's school buildings will be newly constructed or heavily rehabbed.
Cleveland Heights, whose buildings were deemed "at best borderline" in 2010, has just begun its building program.
The district passed a $134-million bond in 2013 for Phase 1 -- allowing it to completely restore the 1923-built high school. In addition, the two middle schools in the district will be rehabbed once the work at the high school is complete.
Phase 2 o focuses on rehabilitating four existing elementary schools and rebuilding another. In order to begin, voters would have to approve another $80 million bond issue; that won't happen anytime soon.
Future Goals
Patterson's hope is to make his district among the Top 20 statewide by 2020.
"We have to remain flexible in how we achieve this goal," Patterson said. "It isn't enough to enough to say 'Its all about the kids,' we have to find a way to balance all the unique needs we have with the finite resources we have to meet those needs and still provide a comprehensive program."
To reach the goal, Patterson hopes to:
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have all graduating Lakewood students take freshman college classes without remediation
increase world language offerings by 70 percent
increase the number of National Merit finalists, semi-finalists and commended students by 50 percent
have 35 percent of high school students enrolled is AP courses
reduce the number of school suspensions by 50 percent
be a state recognized career-tech district
For Dixon, the challenge is a bit tougher. She is the fifth superintendent to lead the district in the last seven years.
At the end of her second year at the helm, she instituted a five-year strategic plan aimed at being better stewards of the district's finances; making operations more transparent to the community; achieving a 90-percent graduation rate; establishing more advanced courses; upgrading the district's aging facilities and establishing better communications between the classroom and home.
"Our district cannot succeed without some kind of continuity," she said. "We have to make a commitment and be dedicated for the long haul."
Editor's note: An earlier version of this story included incorrect numbers for the percentage of economically disadvantaged students in each district, due to an erroneous reading of state data.
Also an anonymous quote about the racial makeup of the CH-UH student body has been removed because it could be construed as criticism of diversity. We regret it detracted from the story's purpose.
cleveland police tape 2
Cleveland police are investigating the fatal shooting of a 22-year-old man.
(File photo)
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- A Cleveland man crashed into another car after he suffered a fatal gunshot wound, police said.
Jervon Campbell, 22, died in what the Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner has called a suspected homicide. Campbell suffered a gunshot wound to the back, police reports say.
Campbell was sitting in his Ford Explorer SUV about 4 p.m. at Gas USA St. Clair gas station when a man in a car drove up to him. The other man drove away, then returned, police said.
Someone fired at least 15 shots at Campbell as he left the gas station. He kept driving and crashed into another car at the intersection of East 123rd and Superior Avenue, police said.
Police found Campbell unconscious in the SUV. He was taken to University Hospitals, where he died.
Cleveland police collected 15 shell casings from a Smith and Wesson .40-caliber gun at the scene, along with shards of glass from the SUV's windows and Campbell's cellphone.
To comment on this story, please visit our crime and courts comments section.
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U.S. Secret Service Director Joseph P. Clancy and Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson talk to the media about RNC security.
Joseph P. Clancy, director of the U.S. Secret Service, talked with cleveland.com Tuesday about Republican National Convention security and why firearms are prohibited in the Q during the event, the assessment of threats to Cleveland, getting to know the city and the security playbook his agency uses.
He also talked about his impressions of Cleveland Police Chief Calvin Williams, which you can read about here, and the importance of using tabletop exercises in preparing for National Special Security Events, which you can find here.
cleveland.com : You talk about how your agency's responsibility is for the hard zone around the Q, and city police are responsible for the area outside that zone. But you have the real possibility of armed groups lining up outside of the security zone, in sight of the people you protect. How do you deal with that potential threat?
Clancy: We get real-time information on those things, and we have alternate arrival and departure routes to get people away from those threats. "We have to be very flexible and adapt to whatever the scene is out there. You're constantly evaluating."
cleveland.com: People can legally carry firearms outside the zone you protect, but in the area you are responsible for, you've banned guns. What's the philosophy?
Clancy: "We are mandated to protect, in this case the candidates, and so we can take control of that site to ensure a safe environment for those candidates." Having armed people in proximity to the candidates poses a potential threat.
cleveland.com: When you made the decision to close Interstate 90 near the Q at night and severely restrict traffic during the day, how much of the decision was based on the security playbook your agency uses and how much of it was based on intelligence about a potential threat?
Clancy: "I think it's affected more by the possibilities. If you have a roadway that is close to the Quicken Loan center, we close down a road not based on intelligence that we've received but based on the possibilities that, hey if we allow a vehicle or a truck in close proximity, the studies that we do show that damage could be done or there could be some people injured. So it's more of going back to the playbook based on research we've done over years."
cleveland.com: You said you are not aware of any specific threats involving the RNC. But you do have the potential for many protesters, some armed. Could you explain a bit?
Clancy: "As of today, there's no specific credible threat... We're not aware of a group or individual planning specifically to come to Cleveland to do harm." The agency constantly re-evaluates potential threats. "You have to, again, prepare for the worst. You always 'what if' this thing to death."
cleveland.com: Your agency is responsible for the hard security zone, but you also have to protect candidates when they venture out of that zone into neighborhoods, like University Circle. How do you prepare for scenarios there?
Clancy: "Our field office worked very closely with the Cleveland Police Department... For example, our limo drivers, they have to be aware of all the routes. They have to know the route to the hospital. They have to spend some time here to get familiar with the city." The Secret Service relies on local police to provide advice on the best routes. "We know what we want for a safe motorcade, but they will have some specifics to areas of the city."
cleveland.com: A lot in America has changed since the last conventions four years ago. The nation has seen unrest, some of it originating in Cleveland. Did that change your approach as you arrived in Cleveland a year ago to begin planning for next week?
Clancy: "We really do learn from previous events... We do have a playbook that gives us a model, a framework to move forward in these large events..." The Secret Service has coordinated 52 National Special Security Events since 9/11. "What's important here, in my view is that the Secret Service has been in some ways the glue because we've done all of these stops, so we can bring that expertise into these events."
Hashim Nzinga
Hashim Nzinga, left, on June 23, 2015.
(AP Photo / Mic Smith)
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- The leader of the New Black Panther Party tweeted on Wednesday that a Reuters article that said he encouraged his members to carry guns during protests in Cleveland is "disingenuous."
Hashim Nzinga wrote in a Tweet:
The #Reuters article is disingenuous, I have not told anyone to bring any type of weapons to the Republican National Convention.
Reuters reported that Nzinga told the news agency that members would carry guns in self-defense and to protect other protesters.
"If it is an open state to carry, we will exercise our second amendment rights because there are other groups threatening to be there that are threatening to do harm to us," Nzinga told Reuters.
"If that state allows us to bear arms, the Panthers and the others who can legally bear arms will bear arms."
Attempts to reach Nzinga on Tuesday and Wednesday were unsuccessful.
It is legal for people to carry guns outside the convention as long as they're complying with the state's open carry law.
Nzinga told Reuters he expected "a couple hundred" members of the New Black Panther Party to join black unity rallies and protests Thursday through Sunday in Cleveland.
The group plans to provide security for a black unity event scheduled for Thursday.
"We are there to protect... (the black unity) event. We are not trying to do anything else," he told the news agency. "We are going to carry out some of these great legal rights we have -- to assemble, to protest and (to exercise) freedom of speech."
Reuters reported that Nzinga said the group plans to leave on Sunday, the day before the convention begins.
CLEVELAND, Ohio - Raise Up Cleveland, a group pushing for a $15 minimum wage for the city, organized a community rally and meal Tuesday night at an East Side park.
Nearly 400 workers and supporters of the initiative arrived about 5 p.m. Tuesday at Luke Easter Park in Cleveland's Woodland Hills neighborhood. Many of them marched together into the park, chanting, "I want my $15!"
Minimum wage workers, their families and general supporters of the initiative to raise Cleveland's minimum wage to $15 per hour gathered Tuesday night for a community meal at Luke Easter Park on the city's East Side.
There were no speakers at Tuesday's rally; instead, some chants continued from the march. The group then ate a community meal in the park.
After the rally, several of the organizers planned to attend the monthly meeting of the Cleveland branch of the NAACP.
Raise Up Cleveland representatives planned to present their case for an increased minimum wage, and the NAACP intended to vote on whether to endorse the campaign.
Watch some of the highlights of Tuesday's rally, as well as why one woman wants a $15 minimum wage, in the video above.
WASHINGTON - The conservative House Freedom Caucus is intent on impeaching IRS chief John Koskinen this year and passing bills to address abortion, immigration, gay marriage and welfare reform, group chairman Jim Jordan, a Champaign County Republican, declared Wednesday.
"We have been very clear that we think Mr. Koskinen should go," said Jordan, who accuses Koskinen of trying to cover up efforts by others in his agency to target conservative groups for improper tax scrutiny. Members of his group have threatened to bring a resolution to remove Koskinen directly to the House floor, circumventing the committee process and House Speaker Paul Ryan.
Jordan's roughly 40-member group also announced it will prioritize passage of the following five bills:
1. Welfare Reform and Upward Mobility Act
The bill authored authored by Jordan would improve reporting of means-tested welfare spending, create state-run work activation programs to help food stamp recipients find work, and reinforce an 80-hour per month work activation program to help able-bodied food stamp recipients without dependents "rise out of poverty." He says welfare programs that are supposed to be temporary "have become a permanent way of life for millions of Americans." The program, he says, "penalizes steps towards self-sufficiency."
2. First Amendment Defense Act
Authored by Idaho Republican Rep. Raul Labrador, the proposal would keep the federal government from revoking grants, contracts, accreditation, or licenses from individuals or institutions based on their opinions of same-sex marriage. Gay rights advocates say it invokes religion to promote discrimination against gay people.
3. Conscience Protection Act of 2016
The measure authored by Louisiana's John Fleming would prevent health care workers and others from being forced to assist or fund abortions against their will. Fleming said he forwarded the bill because the state of California is forcing everyone in the state - even people who work for religious organizations - to pay for "the destruction of preborn life" through their premiums. The House of Representatives is scheduled to vote Wednesday on the proposal
4. Resettlement Accountability National Security Act
If passed, the measure proposed by Texan Brian Babin would halt admission of immigrants to the United States under the refugee resettlement program until the Government Accountability Office thoroughly examines immigration's costs to federal, state and local governments.
5) Agency Accountability Act of 2016
The proposed legislation by Alabama's Gary Palmer would require that all fines, fees, penalties and other unappropriated funds collected by federal agencies be transferred to the Treasury Department and be subjected to congressional oversight. It exempts money collected by the post office and U.S. Patent and Trade Office.
"They help address the concerns we hear every single day when we're back in our districts talking to the American people," Jordan said of the legislative proposals.
After months of speculation about whether Cleveland police and the city are prepared to host the 2016 Republican National Convention, officials from multiple agencies on Tuesday stressed that the convention will be safe for protesters, dignitaries and the people of Cleveland.
Officers will keep training into the weekend. The equipment is bought. They have more police from around the country coming than what they originally planned for, and have plans in place for every "what-if" scenario they can imagine, the officials said.
Officials' intended message from the news conference is clear: the city is poised to host a safe and successful convention.
Six reasons Cleveland says it's confident in RNC security plan
by Cory Shaffer
cleveland.com
July 12, 20016
Officials from the U.S. Secret Service, Cleveland FBI and Cleveland police on Tuesday affirmed that the city is prepared for the massive security undertaking in next weeks 2016 Republican National Convention.
"Our number one priority is everyones safety, be it conventioneer, protester, or the average person on the streets of Cleveland," Cleveland Police Chief Calvin Williams said.
Williams, spoke at a joint press conference at the Secret Service's Multi-Agency Communications Center, alongside U.S. Secret Service Director Joseph Clancy, Special Agent in Charge Ronald Rowe, FBI director Stephen Anthony and Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson.
The briefing elicited few specifics about the plan, but officials stressed that they are where they need to be to keep the convention safe.
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How do the attacks in Dallas affect security planning?
Planning for the convention, which is expected to bring tens of thousands of delegates, dignitaries and protesters to Cleveland from July 18-21, began last year.
But events in the past several months, including Thursday's sniper attack that left five Dallas-area police officers dead, thrust the issue of RNC security to the forefront of many people's minds.
Williams said the slayings "definitely" impacted planning for the event.
"But we have planned, what-iffed, table-topped this from day one, to yesterday. Everything that can and will happen, we have planned for," Williams said.
Photo: Tony Gutierrez
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How many officers will be here?
But to carry out their plan, Cleveland needs the help of thousands of police officers from agencies around the country.
Recent reports that departments in Cincinnati, Columbus and even Greensboro, North Carolina had decided not to send police officers to help out added doubt that the city would meet its goal.
Williams on Tuesday announced that all of the agreements with outside departments had been finalized, and there are actually more officers slated to come here than what the original plan called for.
Williams declined to provide the number, but said there were 500 Cleveland officers dedicated to working the RNC, and more officers "on the periphery" that can be deployed if necessary.
Police officials at a hearing over an officer's grievance earlier this year estimated that it would bring 2,100 officers in from outside agencies, according to the arbitrator's decision.
Photo: Lisa DeJong, The Plain Dealer
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Aren't rank-and-file officers concerned?
Williams comments came after months of cries from Cleveland Police Patrolmen's Association President Steve Loomis that the city was not ready, that officers were not properly prepared and that the city was having trouble getting officers committed.
A reporter asked Williams how he could have confidence in the safety plan, if the rank-and-file officers don't seem to share that confidence?
"I don't think rank-and-file officers share the union president's sentiment," Williams said. "I'll leave it at that."
Photo: Joshua Gunter, cleveland.com
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How will they deal with open-carry advocates?
Another area of concern is Second Amendment advocates who will be openly carrying firearms, including long-guns and rifles.
Dallas Police Chief David Brown said in the aftermath of Thursday's shootings, protesters who were open-carrying made it difficult for officers to locate the shooter.
"It is increasingly challenging when people have AR-15s slung over, and shootings occur in a crowd. And they begin running, and we dont know if they are a shooter or not," Dallas Police Chief David Brown said in the aftermath of the shootings there. "We dont know who the 'good guy' versus who the 'bad guy' is, if everybody starts shooting.
Like Texas, Ohio is an open-carry state, meaning people have the Constitutional right to carry guns and rifles without a holster in public places. Guns are banned in the "secure zone" immediately around the Quicken Loans Arena, but guns will be allowed in the larger event zone, which includes the protest route and Public Square.
Williams pointed out that open-carry advocates have held rallies in Public Square in the past and police have had no issues. When asked if he had considered banning weapons in the event zone in the wake of Dallas, he said he could not usurp state and federal laws.
"Theres a Second Amendment to the constitution. Our officers understand that," he said. "We have a process in place that we've used in the past for open-carry, and we'll use that process.
He added, "were not going to restrict anybodys constitutional rights.
Photo: Lynn Ischay, The Plain Dealer
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How many video cameras will there be downtown?
This convention could be one of the most recorded political conventions in history, according to experts.
In addition to protesters and bystanders recording video on their cellphones and police body and helicopter cameras, surveillance cameras are mounted around downtown, and police have a plan to station even more cameras and video surveillance.
But Williams would not go into specifics.
He pointed out many of the cameras are visible from the street. He also said police will have observation platforms set up that the public "will never see.
"The city will be covered. There will be enough video coverage," Williams said.
Photo: Jeremy Pelzer, cleveland.com
News / National
by Stephen Jake
The ZimPF senior official Methuseli Moyo has said the Zimbabwe government might end up locking up 14 million citizens.Moyo said by the look of things where people who make genuine demands to the government and get arrested, the whole population of Zimbabwe will end up confronting the Mugabe led government and asking to be locked up once and for all."The situation in Zimbabwe is fast moving towards one where soon we will all demand to be put behind bars. The country has literally been turned into a huge open-prison system."The regime will have to lock up all the 14 million of us, or give us back our power. Sikhathele mani! Taneta nemi! We are fed up with you. Freedom is coming tomorrow!" he said.
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Homestead police officer Chuck Thomas is one of four officers who paid a restaurant tab for a couple that refused to be seated next to them at an Eat n' Park restaurant.
(From wtae.com video)
HOMESTEAD, Pennsylvania -- A group of police officers eating at a restaurant didn't get angry when a couple refused to be seated next to them.
Instead, the officers decided to pick up the tab for the couple's meal at an Eat n'Park, and left them a note as well.
"Sir, your check was paid for by the police officers that you didn't want to sit next to," the officers wrote on the receipt. "Thank you for your support. I left a $10.00 tip too."
With the tip, the tab came to $38.58.
"It just dawned on me, I should do this real quick just to show this guy look, I don't know if you had bad experience with the police in the past -- you may have you may have not -- but I just want you to know I never had an experience with you and I'm not here to do anything to you. And neither will my partners," Homestead police officer Chuck Thomas tells wtae.com.
Thomas was dining with three other officers on Saturday when the incident occurred. According to wtae.com, the couple walked in and told a server they did not want to be seated at a table near the officers.
"I looked over and said, 'It's OK sir. You won't have to worry about it, we won't hurt you," Thomas tells wtae.com. "He looked at me hard again and said he's not sitting here and walked away."
Another officer came up with the idea to pay the couple's tab, Thomas says.
"Essentially the whole goal of it was to let him know that we're not here to hurt you, we're not here for that," Thomas says. "We're here for you. We work for the public. And we just want to better the relationship between the community and the police."
A server later told Thomas that the couple was taken by surprise by the gesture and ended up chuckling about it.
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With five days to go before the Republican National Convention, Cardboard Donald Trump stops by the 5th Street Arcades in downtown Cleveland.
(Robin Goist, cleveland.com)
Bernie Sanders endorses Hillary Clinton, though not all of Sanders' supporters are ready for Hillary. The FBI says there are no credible threats to next week's Republican National Convention. And the head of the U.S. Secret Service says Cleveland police are ready for the convention. Today's Ohio Politics Roundup is brought to you by Jeremy Pelzer.
Bernie Sanders endorses Hillary Clinton: Sen. Bernie Sanders endorsed longtime Democratic presidential primary rival Hillary Clinton on Tuesday, "clearing away the last major obstacle to a united front for the party heading into its convention this month and the fall election," according to Amy Chozick, Patrick Healy and Yamiche Alcindor of the New York Times.
Tough crowd: Speaking alongside Clinton in Portsmouth, N.H., Sanders called for unity and vowed to do everything he could to help Clinton beat presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump. But "Clinton's next challenge was on vivid display as some Sanders supporters jeered her name and held signs saying 'Won't Vote Hillary' while Clinton partisans hissed 'shhhh' and others chanted 'unity.'"
Building unity in Ohio...sort of: Many Sanders leaders in Ohio are getting behind Clinton and say Clinton campaign officials have reached out to them to build unity. But, as I write, a number of Bernie fans in the Buckeye State still refuse to switch loyalties to Clinton (though few indicated they intend to vote for Donald Trump). With polls showing Clinton running neck and neck with Trump in Ohio, Clinton will need all the Bernie votes she can get.
Senate confirms Rendon as new U.S. attorney: Carole Rendon was approved by a voice vote in the U.S. Senate Tuesday to be the U.S. attorney for northern Ohio, writes cleveland.com's Eric Heisig. Rendon, 53, has been the acting U.S. attorney since February, when Steven Dettelbach stepped down after 6 1/2 years to take a job at the BakerHostetler law firm.
FBI says no credible security threats to RNC: While the FBI has "learned some protest groups plan to disrupt events at the convention," federal authorities "have uncovered no specific, credible threats to security for next week's Republican National Convention," reports cleveland.com's Cory Shaffer. Shaffer adds the FBI is particularly concerned about a "lone-wolf" style attack reminiscent of recent mass shootings in Dallas, Orlando, and San Bernardino, California.
Secret Service head says Cleveland police are ready: In an exclusive interview, U.S. Secret Service Director Joseph P. Clancy tells cleveland.com's Chris Quinn that Cleveland police are ready to handle the RNC next week. The reason? Chief Calvin Williams. "He's confident, and he's worked very well with us," Clancy said of Williams. "He's a great communicator and he listens well, too. And that's what gives me the confidence certainly in the Cleveland Police Department and the success of this event."
Role playing: Clancy also told Quinn that police agencies have prepared for the RNC by meeting together to conduct tabletop exercises of possible danger scenarios, from horrifying attacks to protesters blocking a motorcade. Clancy: "You think about, okay what if an individual comes to a garage and starts firing down on the crowd. What if that happens? Who's going to respond to that?"
On guns and road closures: Clancy further said to Quinn, among other things, that the decision to restrict Interstate 90 near Quicken Loans Arena during the convention was "affected more by the possibilities" of an attack than intelligence about a specific threat. As for banning guns within the convention's security zone, Clancy said the Secret Service's mandate to protect political candidates means "we can take control of that site to ensure a safe environment."
Asked about the potential of armed groups outside the RNC security zone, Clancy said the Secret Service gets real-time information on such things and has alternate arrival and departure routes to get people away from those threats.
Black Panther leader says members will be armed during RNC protests: "The chairman of the New Black Panthers Party said members will carry guns this week during protests and demonstrations" leading up to the RNC, writes cleveland.com's Adam Ferrise. Hashim Nzinga told Reuters he expects " a couple hundred" party members to join black unity rallies and protests Thursday through Sunday in Cleveland.
Blues' clues: While officials have refused to discuss details of RNC security efforts, how Cleveland has handled other recent protests "presents some clues as to how the city is poised to avoid many of the pitfalls faced by others that have hosted conventions," Shaffer explains.
Six reasons: Shaffer shares why Cleveland officials believe that their security plan for the Republican National Convention is solid.
RNC panel rejects proposed safeguard for Trump's nomination: The RNC's rules committee Tuesday voted down a proposal to block rogue convention delegates from rewriting the rules and rejecting Donald Trump as the nominee, reports cleveland.com's Henry J. Gomez. The measure, pushed by Solomon Yue, a GOP national committeeman from Oregon, would keep any new rules from taking effect until after next week's convention - thus shutting down attempts to replace Trump with another candidate.
Before you think the GOP is dumping Trump: Gomez writes the committee shot down the proposal not because of anti-Trump feelings, but rather because it wants to allow the separate convention rules panel, which meets later this week, to make its own decision.
No big changes: The Republican Party platform will remain conservative on social issues, cleveland.com's Andrew J. Tobias writes after the platform committee wrapped up its work on Tuesday. The committee beat back a continued challenge from a vocal minority in favor of same-sex marriage.
Cleveland may allow some RNC camping: The City of Cleveland's Board of Control is expected to vote Wednesday to allow out-of-town demonstrators to camp overnight in one city park, Kirtland Park, during the RNC, reports cleveland.com's Mark Naymik. According to a draft ordinance, camping would be allowed in the park on a first-come-first-serve basis between 9 p.m. and 9 a.m. during the convention.
School's out: Case Western Reserve University has decided to essentially shut down during next week's Republican National Convention, cleveland.com's Karen Farkas reports. "The action, announced late Monday, was taken to ease ongoing concerns over housing 1,700 police officers and 200 members of the Ohio National Guard during the four-day event," especially after the killings of five Dallas police officers and two black men by police in Louisiana and Minnesota.
CWRU won't be entirely devoid of activity, though. Conservative commentator Ann Coulter is scheduled to sign books and answer questions next Wednesday, July 20, at the university's bookstore, Farkas writes. Also slated to attend: Milo Yiannopoulos, Breitbart News' London associate editor.
RNC rental market isn't meeting locals' expectations: Demand for short-term rentals during the RNC has been "much smaller - and cheaper - than many aspiring short-term landlords hoped for," reports The Plain Dealer's Michelle Jarboe. Would-be landlords have posted ads for homes as far away as Huron - about an hour from the convention - but the bulk of rental activity took place in downtown Cleveland and nearby neighborhoods.
In case you're still shopping around, bookings ranged from $3,500 to $20,000, with the average weekly rental - an entire house or condo - going for $6,000 to $8,000, Jarboe explains. Airbnb hosts in Northeast Ohio are seeing a median nightly booking price of $260, which adds up to a relatively modest payout of $611 for the week.
It's a bird, it's a plane... Created Equal, a Columbus-based anti-abortion organization, plans to fly banners above Cleveland with a graphic photo of a 15-week aborted fetus starting Wednesday through July 21, cleveland.com's Emily Bamforth reports. The organization arranged to fly the banners -- which it says don't need city approval -- after being denied a permit for sidewalk space near the convention.
Josh Mandel, ethics instructor: Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel will teach an ethics course on Wednesday. "Let that sink in for a minute," writes the Columbus Dispatch's Alan Johnson. The Republican has agreed to be an instructor at Ethics - Practical Thoughts on Professionalism, a three-hour continuing education course for insurance agents held at an Upper Arlington restaurant. Democrats "immediately used the announcement to fire away" at some of Mandel's past ethics controversies.
Obergefell testifies against First Amendment Defense Act: Cincinnati's Jim Obergefell, the plaintiff in the U.S. Supreme Court that legalized gay marriage nationwide, told a congressional committee Tuesday that a bill called the First Amendment Defense Act would "authorize sweeping, taxpayer-funded discrimination," writes cleveland.com's Sabrina Eaton. Bill supporters say it would protect religious universities' same-sex marriage policies and ensure faith-based agencies can insist that children they put up for adoption "need both a father and mother."
Obergefell also "chided legislators for holding the hearing on the one-month anniversary of a shooting spree in Orlando, Florida, that killed 49 people at a gay nightclub."
Pros and cons of a Cleveland minimum wage hike, summarized: Not sure whether to support a proposal to raise Cleveland's minimum wage to $15 per hour? Cleveland.com's Leila Atassi has two short videos in which a proponent and a critic of the idea each lay out their arguments.
Activists press parties for paid leave: Advocates for paid parental, family and medical leave called on the Republican and Democrat parties Tuesday to support such policies in their platforms, reports cleveland.com's Jackie Borchardt. Advocates of paid leave said they intend to deliver a petition with more than 50,000 signatures to GOP platform drafters this week in Cleveland. The petition was started by Columbus City Councilwoman Elizabeth Brown and sponsored by MTV's "Elect This" campaign.
Busy Highway Patrol granted millions more: With the RNC looming, the Ohio Controlling Board on Monday granted an additional $7.2 million to the Ohio State Highway Patrol for "security and investigations," including dignitary protection and responding to potential "civil unrest," writes Columbus Dispatch's Randy Ludlow. According to Ludlow, "the patrol will have a large presence in Cleveland during the convention but has declined to provide details about the added security." State troopers are also needed for Ohio State Fair security and next year's presidential inauguration in Washington, D.C.
Send in the clowns: Cleveland arts activist James Levin and others have formed a guerrilla theater group called "#notfunny" to protest the RNC, writes The Plain Dealer's Laura Demarco. The group plans to perform small skits while dressed up like clowns between 4 and 6 p.m. daily during the convention. The idea, Levin explains, is that "the clowns are resentful the good name of clownhood has been trashed by the current slate of Republicans."
Why convention speakers are important: As the RNC speakers' list is being finalized, cleveland.com's Dave Andersen speaks with Baldwin Wallace University political science professor Tom Sutton in an illuminating video about what's so important about convention speakers.
Crowd-counting for dummies: Cleveland.com's Rich Exner takes a look at how to gauge crowd sizes during the RNC - a task that's usually difficult and often controversial. Aerial photography is one good technique. Another is to measure how much ground a crowd takes up and divide it by the average space needed for each demonstrator (10 square feet each for loose crowds; 2.5 square feet for packed crowds). Exner helpfully provides a number of examples for practice.
Will Hillary or Donald be top dog? Banter, the restaurant-bar on Cleveland's West Side, is having an RNC "Wurst Off" -- allowing the public to vote for a hot dog named after Trump or Clinton, cleveland.com's Marc Bona writes. The Trumpwurst includes a "super-classy potato bird's nest, the best ketchup, the greatest nacho cheese, and not-a-loser jalapeno relish." The Hillarywurst has "Benghazi BBQ sauce, razorback pulled pork and Big Apple slaw."
Bona's wine calendar also includes a $10 tasting at the Olde Wine Cellar this weekend for the RNC. The folks at the shop guessed that visiting politicos would like wines with patriotic labels. "Unlike many of our elected, you can trust these wines to be good!"
RBG calls Trump a 'faker': Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is continuing her criticism of Trump, telling CNN's Joan Biskupic that the presumptive GOP nominee is "a faker" who "really has an ego" and "has no consistency about him. Ginsburg: "How has he gotten away with not turning over his tax returns? The press seems to be very gentle with him on that."
Gentle criticism from Democrats: Even some Democrats are suggesting that Ginsburg is "coming dangerously close to crossing the line separating the judicial system and politics," according to Politico's Burgess Everett and Seung Min Kim. One Democrat is U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut, who said, "We all know that the justices on the Supreme Court have political views. I'm not sure we're well-served by them airing them out in the open."
Why so anxious, Ohio? The Cincinnati Enquirer has launched a three-part series called "Anxious Ohio," featuring 50 interviews with Ohioans in an attempt to figure out why people feel that life isn't as good as it used to be. In the first segment, the Enquirer's Jeremy Fugleberg talks to, among others, disillusioned small-town voters in southern Ohio, a young Bernie Sanders supporter from the Cincinnati area, and the executive director of the Corporation for Ohio Appalachian Development.
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WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Congress took the final step Wednesday to approve spending millions of dollars to fight the heroin and opioid epidemic claiming thousands of lives across America.
The Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act, calling for $181 million a year in new spending for addiction and recovery programs, was steered through Congress with heavy lifting by Ohio Republican U.S. Sen. Rob Portman. It now goes to President Barack Obama for his signature.
But funding fights lie ahead, and the White House said that without more money, the bill falls short.
Portman called the bill's passage "a historic moment, the first time in decades that Congress has passed comprehensive addiction legislation, and the first time Congress has ever supported long-term addiction recovery."
But Obama and congressional Democrats had hoped the bill would provide even more money, and the president's 2017 budget proposal sought $1.1 billion for anti-opioid spending over the next two years.
"The Administration has consistently said that turning the tide of the prescription opioid and heroin epidemic requires real resources to help those Americans seeking treatment get the care that they need," the White House said in a statement. "We continue to believe this bill falls far short... While the President will sign this bill once it reaches his desk because some action is better than none, he won't stop fighting to secure the resources this public health crisis demands."
Seventy-eight Americans die each day from opioid overdoses, the White House added.
The bill was able to secure overwhelming congressional support, despite misgivings, after a conference of House and Senate members in recent weeks pushed up the bill's authorized spending levels more than $100 million higher than the previous $78 million annual proposal.
The House voted 407-5 on July 8 to pass this final version of the bill, and the Senate followed today, voting 92-2.
This doesn't guarantee that even these sums will actually go out. But it gives the strongest signal possible of Congress's intent, following a three-year effort. We'll explain.
What's the bill do?
The bill authorizes more spending by the Justice Department and Department of Health and Human Services on grants to help state and local agencies deal with addiction and recovery in the epidemic, which Portman says kills 2,000 Ohioans a year.
In Akron this month, first responders treated 17 opiate overdose patients, one of whom died, in a 24-hour period.
Some examples:
Emergency responders will be able to get more access to powerful drugs used to reverse opioid overdoses.
States and local agencies will have more federal grant money available for programs that help recovering users kick their addictions.
Specialized attention will go to students, veterans, pregnant women and families, to deal with their particular addiction issues.
Police will have more options to send certain drug users to treatment and recovery programs rather than jail.
The Controlled Substances Act will be amended to expand the use of buprenorphine in treatment. Buprenorphine is itself an opioid, but one that authorities say has been proven to cut addiction under proper supervision. If you have heard Portman talk about "evidence-based" treatment, this is partly what he meant.
What about the money?
We won't get into the weeds. But it's important to know this: The bill that passed today says the government is authorized to do all of the things mentioned above and more, at a cost of $181 million a year over the next five years.
It doesn't actually provide the money.
Think of this as congressional authorization, which is exactly what this bill is -- an authorization bill -- versus congressional appropriations or spending bills, nearly all of which are still to come.
Democrats tried earlier this year to get an immediate $600 million in emergency funding attached to the opioid bill, and Portman joined them. But they could not overcome objections from a majority of Republicans who cited increases in drug-prevention and treatment funding already passed over the last two years, though those were not near the levels Democrats wanted.
You can read some of the previous proposals for anti-opioid authorization here:
So you're saying there's another spending battle ahead?
At least one, if not for each of the next five years. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration confirmed to cleveland.com that before it can solicit grant applications from states and local agencies for this bill's programs, it needs to be sure that Congress will actually appropriate the money for the applicable fiscal year, which starts each Oct. 1.
You might say fine, it's only July. But Congress later this week will take a break until just after Labor Day, which will only give it a few weeks to deal with spending bills before the 2017 fiscal year begins.
Congress will probably pass a continuing resolution instead of rushing when it returns. That would keep spending at today's levels. As for new levels -- levels that take into account the authorization bill passed today -- Congress will put off those decisions.
The only real debate right now is whether Congress will put off decisions until after the November elections, or January or even later, depending on whether there's a shift in political power.
"The bipartisan passage of CARA is certainly a positive step," said U.S. Rep. Marcy Kaptur, a Toledo Democrat who voted for it but has concerns about its funding. "But let's not oversell it as a panacea. It is not.
"Unlike other legislative responses to similar national emergencies, CARA contains no emergency funds, which can be spent right away. That delays funding for months, perhaps years."
U.S. Sen Sherrod Brown Brown, a Democrat, agreed. While he praised the measure, he added that "this bill alone is not enough. We must recognize the opioid epidemic for what it is - a public health emergency - and invest the real dollars it takes to combat it."
This, by the way, has little to do with underlying sentiment about the opioid bill. It has everything to do with partisan divisions over spending.
But didn't Portman already get some money for this year?
He did -- about $80 million, appropriated through a last-minute spending bill last December. That money is now out in communities but mostly unspent, Portman says, so he says it can go to addiction and recovery programs right away.
But this is a trick question, because Democrats note that Portman actually voted against this very spending, despite his role in making sure it got in the last-minute 2016 omnibus bill.
You can decide which side has more legitimacy; it's a bit of a political game we've been over before and it's bound to keep playing out now. Read about it here:
Today's passage is nevertheless a big deal for Portman. He didn't get this bill passed alone; fellow Republican Sen. Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire and Democratic Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota also played leading roles.
Yet no other bill in his five-plus years in the Senate has received this level of personal passion from Portman. He talked about it almost nonstop.
Passage marks "the first time that we've treated addiction like the disease that it is, which will help put an end to the stigma that has surrounded addiction for too long," Portman said today.
This "will help save lives, and help more Americans achieve their God-given potential."
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Donald Trump, left, seen at a campaign rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan in December and Hillary Clinton, right, seen during a town hall meeting at Keota High School in Keota, Iowa in December.
(Carlos Osorio and Charlie Neibergall, Associated Press)
CLEVELAND, Ohio - Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are tied among Ohio voters, according to a new poll.
However, both candidates have high unfavorability ratings in the Buckeye state, as well as Pennsylvania and Florida - other key swing states.
The poll, released Wednesday by Quinnipiac University, found Clinton and Trump both at 41 percent. This compares to a June 21 swing state poll that found them tied at 40 percent.
When asked about third parties, Trump takes a small lead in Ohio with 37 percent compared to Clinton at 36 percent, while Libertarian Gary Johnson is at 7 percent and the Green Party's Jill Stein is at 6 percent.
Gender and racial gaps divide Ohio voters, with 47 percent of men supporting Trump and 33 percent backing Clinton, while 48 percent of women support Clinton and 35 percent support Trump.
White voters are more likely, 46 percent to 35 percent, to go Republican while non-white voters are going Democratic, 69 percent to 15 percent.
Ohio voters gave Clinton a 60 percent unfavorability rating, but Trump was not too far behind at 59 percent. When it comes to the economy, 54 percent said that Trump would be better at creating jobs, while 39 percent said the same about Clinton.
Trump would be more effective against ISIS, 51 percent of voters said, but Clinton would be better at responding to an international crisis, 50 percent said.
"A majority of Ohio voters, 53 - 44 percent, say the 'government has gone too far in assisting minority groups,'" Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac Poll, said in a statement. "The same voters agree 72 - 25 percent that 'Prejudice against minority groups is a big problem in the United States today.'"
Trump has narrow leads in the two other battleground states surveyed. Florida voters swing toward the presumptive GOP nominee, 42 percent compared to Clinton at 39 percent. This is a much smaller lead compared to the June 21 poll, when he led Clinton in the Sunshine State 47 percent to 39 percent.
In Pennsylvania, Trump is at 43 percent compared to Clinton at 41 percent. When asked about third party candidates, Florida and Pennsylvania voters still went for Trump.
The poll surveyed 955 Ohio voters from June 30 to July 11 and the stated margin of error is plus or minus 3.2 percentage points. It also surveyed 1,015 Florida voters with a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points, and 982 Pennsylvania voters with a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.
Howard Dean
Former Vermont governor Howard Dean is set to campaign with Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Ted Strickland in Columbus on Thursday.
(AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)
Howard Dean to appear with Ted Strickland: Former Democratic National Committee chair and ex-Vermont Gov. Howard Dean is slated to join Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Ted Strickland for a campaign event in downtown Columbus at 11 a.m.
RNC Rules Committee convenes: The RNC Rules Committee plans to meet at 8 a.m. in Cleveland. Anti-Donald Trump delegates are likely to try to get the committee to pass a rule releasing delegates from their commitments to vote for Trump as the GOP presidential nominee.
AARP to hold summit on Social Security and African Americans: AARP Ohio is scheduled to hold a policy discussion on Social Security and African Americans at the Vern Riffe Center in Columbus at 6 p.m. Slated to attend: Former Ohio Minority Leader Tracy Maxwell Heard, as well as experts from AARP, the Heritage Foundation, and the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare.
DeWine to unveil new DNA testing technology: Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine intends to announce a groundbreaking Next Generation Sequencing Project, designed to help test DNA in missing persons cases, during a 10 a.m. news conference at the Bureau of Criminal Investigation Laboratory in London.
Activists to urge GOP action on Supreme Court pick: former state Sen. Nina Turner and others have scheduled an 11 a.m. news conference in Cleveland to urge Republicans to confirm U.S. Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland. They also plan to unveil a new visibility campaign featuring former President Ronald Reagan on a billboard truck.
Redistricting reformers plan birthday party for the father of gerrymandering: The Fair Districts = Fair Elections Coalition is set to commemorate the 272nd birthday of Elbridge Gerry with birthday cake and activist speeches about the need for redistricting reform. The event is set to begin at 11 a.m. at ProgressOhio's office in Columbus.
Environmental group to launch voter reg drive: NextGen Climate Ohio to kick off canvassing effort: NextGen Climate Ohio, a pro-environment super PAC, is slated to begin its voter registration drive at 3 p.m. on the banks of the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland. Scheduled attendees include Cuyahoga County Council Member Sunny Simon and South Euclid City Council President Jane Goodman.
Akron Democrat to highlight distracted driving dangers: State Rep. Greta Johnson and representatives from AT&T, Akron police, and Akron Children's Hospital have called a 9 a.m. news conference at Akron Children's Hospital to discuss the dangers of distracted driving as part of AT&T's 'It Can Wait' campaign.
Democratic legislative hopefuls to open office: State Senate candidate Emily Hagan and state representative candidate Tommy Greene intend to open a campaign office together at 5:30 p.m. in Rocky River.
Others to watch: Hillary Clinton is scheduled to campaign in northern Virginia with U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine.
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In this March file photo, Patty Farrell holds a photo of her daughter, Laree Farrell-Lincoln, near her home in Colonie, New York. Farrell-Lincoln, 18, fatally overdosed on heroin in 2013. In June, the New York State Senate passed a bill named "Laree's Law" that would enable prosecutors to charge heroin dealers with homicide if their product can be linked to a death. Federal and state prosecutors in Ohio are securing enhanced sentences for drug dealers who sell fatal doses, writes acting U.S. Attorney Carole S. Rendon in Cleveland.
(Heather Ainsworth, The Washington Post.)
Four years ago, a 7-year-old girl found her mother unresponsive. The girl poured cold water on her mother and called 9-1-1. Emergency workers did everything they could, but the Ashtabula woman died from a heroin overdose.
Police and federal agents traced the fatal dose of heroin back to Jamarce Miller, who peddled dope brought to Northeast Ohio from Mexico through Chicago.
Miller is serving 13 years in federal prison. We got a longer prison sentence by asking for a "death specification" enhancement - proving Miller sold the drugs that killed the Ashtabula mother.
The opioid epidemic has caused an unprecedented wave of death and destruction throughout Northeast Ohio. Law enforcement is working together to vigorously prosecute drug dealers who we can prove sold fatal doses of heroin and fentanyl.
Several county prosecutors, including Tim McGinty and Sherry Bevan Walsh, have successfully pursued manslaughter charges against dealers.
In the U.S. Attorney's office, we have filed nearly a dozen drug indictments with a "death specification" enhancement, obtaining sentences of up to 20 years for dealers who sold drugs that killed people in Ashtabula, Elyria, Akron, Cleveland, Marion, and elsewhere.
But law enforcement is only one part of the solution. We can turn the tide on this epidemic only if we all work together. That is why we created the Northeast Ohio Heroin and Opioid Task Force. The task force brings together law enforcement, doctors, educators, treatment providers, recovering addicts, and many others, to work together to find solutions to this crisis.
Carole S. Rendon is the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Ohio.
Doctors and patients need more education about the dangers of prescribing too many pain pills and prescribing them too often. The unused Vicodin and Percocet in the medicine cabinet is often the gateway drug to heroin addiction. Heroin and fentanyl use and prescription drug misuse are intertwined and both must be addressed.
Treatment programs need be available when people battling addiction decide they've had enough and want help. It's not good enough to tell someone to come back in two weeks when there is a bed available. Many won't make it that long.
And we need to come together as a community to talk to our kids, our neighbors, and our co-workers about the dangers of opioid addiction. Opioids are an equal-opportunity killer. They don't discriminate based on age, race, gender, ethnicity, or socioeconomic background. We are all at risk.
It will take what we have come to call the "all of the above approach," everyone working together in concert, to push back on what appears to be, at least in our corner of the world, a public health and law enforcement crisis the likes of which we have rarely seen before.
Carole S. Rendon is the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Ohio.
About this package: With the opioid crisis in Ohio already at epidemic levels and still growing, touching all strata of society, the editorial board of cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer reached out to key officials on the front lines of trying to mitigate the scourge for their ideas on how best to stop, contain or moderate it. This op-ed is one of eight reflecting the wisdom, insights and experience of some who spend almost every day treating, prosecuting, legislating, judging or just trying to help those who fall into the maw of this addiction.
This was updated to reflect that Carole Rendon was confirmed as U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Ohio.
A man addicted to heroin and the opioid fentanyl, in a tent city along the Merrimack River in Lawrence, Mass., in March.
A man addicted to heroin and the opioid fentanyl, in a tent city along the Merrimack River in Lawrence, Massachusetts in March. Bill Bachelder of the Ohio State Medical Association writes that Ohio doctors have reformed their opioid prescribing practices and that fentanyl street sales are fueling growth in addiction.
(Katherine Taylor, The New York Times)
Let's face it: Part of Ohio's prescription drug abuse and addiction issues can be directly attributable to years of prescribing habits of physicians who relied on misguided U.S. Food and Drug Administration-approved protocols for managing pain. Fortunately, newer, updated protocols are in place to help assure patients are only prescribed drugs that are medically necessary.
Now, as we make significant progress limiting the number of opioid prescriptions and more readily look to non-pharmacological options for helping patients treat pain, a newer painkilling drug in the name of fentanyl has emerged and is more readily available illegally on the streets than it is from a physician.
The Ohio State Medical Association, the state's largest physician-led organization, has taken steps in recent years to successfully address the prescription opioid problem in the best way we know: by becoming more aware of Ohio's problem; making more conscientious prescribing decisions, including not offering opioids to treat pain in some cases; and staying in regular contact with patients who need help with managing their pain.
And it is working: The number of opioid doses dispensed in Ohio has dropped every year since 2014. The number of physicians who check a patient's pill history through a state database has increased more than five-fold since 2010. The number of people addicted to prescription opioids is significantly down. And fewer patients are leaving their doctor's offices with prescriptions for heavy doses of highly-addictive painkilling drugs.
Dr. Brian Bachelder is president of the Ohio State Medical Association.
Fentanyl, however, poses a different challenge. This drug, when combined with heroin, is significantly more addictive and it is killing Ohioans. While Ohio's prescription drug figures are trending in the right direction, the number of people dying from opioids is still holding steady, mainly because of fentanyl.
But these deaths are not from fentanyl prescriptions prescribed by a physician. They are from illegally produced clandestine cartels in South America and China. And it is killing more Ohioans than Oxycontin, Percocet and other prescribed painkillers combined.
Ohio physicians are seeing more patients addicted to fentanyl and, as with prescribed painkillers, we want to do more to help patients. The solution is for physicians to continue prescribing fewer painkillers, consider non-pharmacological options for treating pain so that a patient never starts on a pill, and support law enforcement efforts when possible to address illegal drug activity.
Dr. Brian Bachelder is president of the Ohio State Medical Association.
About this package: With the opioid crisis in Ohio already at epidemic levels and still growing, touching all strata of society, the editorial board of cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer reached out to key officials on the front lines of trying to mitigate the scourge for their ideas on how best to stop, contain or moderate it. This op-ed is one of eight reflecting the wisdom, insights and experience of some who spend almost every day treating, prosecuting, legislating, judging or just trying to help those who fall into the maw of this addiction.
This op-ed was updated at 8:07 a.m. to correct Dr. Bachelder's first name.
arguing, two angry mouths
(iStock by Getty Images)
Hana Callaghan, Santa Clara University in California
Sick of angry campaign ads invading your living room? Dismayed by the vulgarity and poisonous political messages of the primary season? Don't change the channel quite yet.
As we head into the general election, there are things to learn from political communications, and it is our duty as voters to cut through the rhetoric in order to vet these applicants for the most important job in the country.
The American process for electing public officials is born out of the ethical ideal of creating an informed electorate. It is the campaign's task to introduce the candidate and inform the voters about the candidate's background, his or her positions on the issues, and how the candidate is different from the opponent.
Political communications serve to inform the electorate, as long as the content of the communication is true, fair, and relevant. It is our task as voters to analyze all political communications to make sure that they meet this standard.
It should be of no surprise to anyone that campaign communications often distort the truth.
For example, who can forget Donald Trump's television ad showing hundreds of immigrants streaming across the border. The only problem was that the video was taken in Morocco. Bernie Sanders came under fire when an ad about endorsements quoted favorable comments about him from a newspaper that had actually endorsed Clinton.
Frequent visits to fact-checking websites such as factcheck.org and politifact.com can help us separate fact from fiction.
Truth is the first task of campaign communications, but something true can still be unfair. We need to be wary of statements or facts which, while true, are being used out of context.
Clinton was recently criticized for taking Sanders' voting record out of context when she claimed in Michigan that he had voted against the auto bailout. Sanders had in fact supported a stand-alone bill bailing out the auto industry, but voted against the larger bill that not only included support for the auto industry but the banking and insurance industries as well. Whenever a candidate is criticized for casting a vote, we need to make sure we know the whole story.
Not only should political communications be truthful, and fair, but they should also be relevant to the issues in the race.
We have all seen political attacks that talk about a candidate's youthful indiscretions, private marital troubles, or about problematic behavior on the part of a candidate's family member or associate. The question of whether these types of attacks are relevant to the issues in the campaign can only be decided by the individual voter.
For example, was the fact that Melania Trump posed for a risque "British GQ" photo shoot 15 years ago, before she was married to Donald Trump, really relevant to the issues facing our country today? Is Bill Clinton's past infidelity relevant to Hillary Clinton's ability to govern?
We must question whether a spot is designed purely to appeal to our base emotions (such as disgust at a family member's behavior) or whether the content of the ad is pertinent to a legitimate interest in the race.
In this day and age of the 24-hour television news cycle, the Internet, and Twitter, the ability to broadcast vitriol immediately to millions of voters has created what political commentator Peggy Noonan has called the "Golden Age of mudslinging."
The problem is that how a person campaigns is an indicator of how he or she will govern. We need to keep that in mind as we dodge the mud this campaign season and try to determine which candidate is communicating ethically with the voters.
Hana Callaghan directs the government ethics program at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University in California and teaches the free online short course, "How to Run an Ethical Campaign--And Win!"
SHAKER HEIGHTS, Ohio -- Bond is set at $1 million for a former employee accused of sexually assaulting a child at a Shaker Heights daycare.
Michael J. Ferricci, 20, of Cleveland Heights, is charged with rape in the incident at Children's Center of First Baptist Church.
Ferricci waived his right to a preliminary hearing Tuesday in Shaker Heights Municipal Court. The case has been bound over to Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court.
Children's Center of First Baptist Church fired Ferricci after learning of his arrest, director Jane Pernicone said in a statement.
"We are devastated by this horrible news," she said in the statement. "We are appalled that one of our employees may have taken advantage of his position to harm a vulnerable child. We have spoken with the child's parents and we will do everything we can to support the family during this time."
Neither investigators nor the daycare center provided details of the incident that resulted in criminal charges.
The child's parent contacted the Shaker Heights Police Department on June 27. The daycare center suspended Ferricci the following day.
Ferricci held part-time and volunteer positions for five years before becoming a full-time employee in January, Pernicone said.
Background checks conducted by the FBI and Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation"did not indicate any concerns," Pernicone said.
The center has contacted other parents to discuss safety. Counselors from the Cleveland Rape Crisis Center have attended meetings with parents and employees.
"The safety of every child in our care is of the utmost importance," Pernicone said in the statement. "We are carefully reviewing our policies and procedures in light of this incident to make sure we are doing everything possible to provide a safe and nurturing environment for all of the children in our care."
To comment on this story, please visit our crime and courts comments section.
Editor's note: Today we conclude a months-long series of travel stories focusing on Ohio presidents, their homes, burial sites and other important places. Later this morning: "Touring tiny North Bend, Ohio, home to two presidents, William Henry Harrison and Benjamin Harrison"
MORELAND HILLS, Ohio - Just 13 miles separate James A. Garfield's humble birthplace and his elaborate, final resting place.
The symbolic journey is much longer - from dirt-poor and fatherless to college president and commander in chief. It's quite a contrast, these two images of Garfield, the nation's 20th president.
He served just 200 days in office, killed by an assassin's bullet less than a year into his first term.
His short tenure in the White House, however, doesn't make his story any less compelling. Perhaps it makes it more so: We can only look back at his 49 years and wonder what might have been.
Toured together, these three sites in Northeast Ohio offer a well-rounded picture of Garfield's life and legacy: his re-created birthplace in Moreland Hills, the farmhouse he shared with his wife and children in Mentor, and the grand memorial at Lake View Cemetery in Cleveland.
We'll start at the beginning.
Moreland Hills: Garfield birthplace
This was the western frontier in the early 1800s, when Garfield's parents built their log cabin not far from the Chagrin River in what was then Orange Township. Garfield was less than 2 years old when his father died after battling a fire in the woods.
After her husband's death, Eliza Garfield had three choices, according to Sandra Vodanoff, a volunteer tour guide at the site: She could send her kids to live with relatives, find someone to marry, or seek help from the state.
"She decides she's going to stay here and do it herself," said Vodanoff. "They couldn't afford candles. They had no tea, no coffee, no sugar. They lived a rough life."
But she added: "It may look primitive, but those were happy days."
Garfield, the youngest of four children, formed a tight bond with his mother in those difficult years. Decades later, she became the first woman to see her son inaugurated president and the first mother to live in the White House.
At age 16, he walked to Cleveland and got hired on a canal boat, where he contracted malaria and was sent home. His mother gave him her life savings -- $17 - and sent him to school.
"He studies so hard that after one semester, he becomes the teacher," said Vodanoff.
Garfield was educated at the Geauga Academy in Chester, the Western Reserve Eclectic Institute (later Hiram College) and Williams College in Massachusetts. After receiving his degree at Williams in 1856, he returned to Ohio, got married, taught and served as president of Hiram, and then commenced his long career in politics.
A Republican, he served 18 years in the U.S. House of Representatives. He was the first (and is still the only) member of the House to move directly to the White House.
His first house, meanwhile, was re-created in 1999, about a quarter-mile from its original location (closer to the road and more accessible for visitors, according to Vodanoff).
The cabin, 20 feet by 30 feet, has three windows, a loft and a ladder, just as Garfield described.
A Garfield tour of Northeast Ohio
Birthplace home: Garfield's re-created log cabin is located adjacent to Moreland Hills Village Hall, 4350 SOM Center Road in Moreland Hills. Regular hours are 10 a.m.-1 p.m. Saturdays, June through September (and by appointment: 440-248-1188). Admission is free.
The cabin will be open additional hours from Sunday, July 17, through Sunday, July 24: noon to 3 p.m. daily, and 5-7 p.m. Tuesday and Thursday, July 19 and July 21. For information: 440-248-1188
Garfield's Mentor home, 8095 Mentor Ave., is open daily 10 a.m.-5 p.m.. Admission to the home, by guided tour, is $7. The site has several special events planned for the week of the Republican National Convention, including an outdoor showing of "Murder of a President," with a talk by director Rob Rapley. The free event starts at 7:30 p.m. Also: Evening tours on Wednesday, July 20; and a special "Garfield and the 1880 Presidential Campaign Tour" on Saturday, July 23. For details:
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James A. Garfield Memorial,
is located within
, 12316 Euclid Ave. in Cleveland. The monument is open daily 9 a.m.-4 p.m.
Hiram:
Garfield fans may also want to make the trip to Hiram, in northern Portage County, where Garfield taught and lived for many years. Hiram College recently acquired the house where the Garfields lived, on Hinsdale Street, although it is not yet open to the public. Also on campus: Koritansky Hall, a former church where Garfield is believed to have preached, and the campus library, which is home to a collection of Garfield photos and memorabilia.
Mentor: James A. Garfield National Historic Site
Garfield lived in Hiram, on and off, for nearly two decades before moving his family to Mentor in 1876 (his Hiram house still stands, recently purchased by the college).
It was from his Mentor home that Garfield ran his campaign for the presidency in 1880. (History students will remember it was not a contest he sought - he won the nomination on the 36th ballot at the Republican National Convention in Chicago).
Garfield ran the nation's first front-porch campaign, a new method of electioneering that brought an estimated 17,000 interested constituents to his house from July through September. Reporters, camped out on the lawn, gave the property its nickname, Lawnfield.
The family lived in the house until 1934, when it was donated to the Western Reserve Historical Society. They left everything inside.
"About 85 percent of the content is original," said Todd Arrington, site manager for the National Park Service, which now operates the property. Among its original contents: furniture, artwork, books - even correspondence.
It's like you've stepped back in time to 1885, four years after Garfield's death, and shortly after his widow, Lucretia, completed a second major addition onto the house.
Among the centerpieces of that second addition: a grand memorial library, the first of its kind for a former president, where important documents could be stored and accessed. "She wanted to make sure it was all in one place," said Jessica Beam, a tour guide at the home. "This is where the idea for presidential libraries came from. She worried that he would be forgotten."
Located within the library is a small Memory Room, incased in concrete, where Lucretia Garfield stored her husband's papers. Most of the documents have been moved to the Library of Congress; a dried wreath remains, sent from Queen Victoria for Garfield's casket.
Another sad reminder of Garfield's untimely passing: His mother Eliza's bedroom, with portraits of her son on every wall.
"She wanted to see him first thing in the morning and at the end of every day," said Beam. In a hand-written letter framed near her bed, written a week before he died, Garfield told his mother he believed he was recovering from his gunshot wound.
Outside, visitors can take a look inside the former bunkhouse, which Garfield turned into his 1880 campaign office; and tour the former carriage house, which was turned into the park visitor center.
A small museum in the center offers an overview of Garfield's life, with exhibits on his Civil War years, his accomplishments in Congress, his campaign for the White House and his assassination.
Cleveland: James A. Garfield Memorial, Lake View Cemetery
Shot by a disgruntled jobseeker (who was also likely mentally ill) on July 2, 1881, Garfield died 11 weeks later, likely the result of infection spread by unsanitary medical care at the time. His body lay in state for two days in the U.S. Capitol, and then was transported to Cleveland.
A committee led by local industrialist Jeptha Wade started a campaign to raise money for a memorial at Lake View Cemetery (over the objections of some in Mentor, who wanted the martyred president buried there).
Connecticut architect George Keller won a memorial design contest with his imposing castle-like structure, 180 feet tall, made of Ohio sandstone. Terra cotta panels on the exterior walls depict the many stages of Garfield's life - teacher, general, orator, president.
Inside, rich mosaics line the dome and 16 stained-glass windows circle the tower, one for each of the 13 original colonies, plus War, Peace and Ohio (and the in the hands of Ohio: a log cabin).
(In the memorial's foyer, there's also, curiously, a painting featuring Garfield assassin Charles Guiteau lunging for the president in the Washington train station where he was shot. The painting was a controversial addition to the monument in the 1950s, according to guide Robert Hook.)
Below ground are caskets holding the bodies of Garfield and his wife, plus urns with the remains of their daughter, Molly, and her husband.
And above ground: a balcony, 64 steps up, that provides stellar views of Northeast Ohio -- to University Circle, downtown Cleveland, Lake Erie and more.
It seems a fitting place to end a Garfield tour, 13 miles from where he started. What a journey.
Editor's note: This is the last in a series of travel stories on Ohio presidents, published in the months leading up to the Republican National Convention, which begins next week in Cleveland.
NORTH BEND, Ohio - There are just two towns in the United States that claim two U.S. presidents: Quincy, Massachusetts, the birthplace of John Adams and his son, John Quincy Adams; and tiny North Bend, Ohio, where ninth president William Henry Harrison is buried, and where his grandson, 23rd president Benjamin Harrison, was born.
North Bend, population 861, is 15 miles west of downtown Cincinnati and just 6 miles from the border of Indiana - where both Harrisons built grand homes that are open for public tours.
In Ohio, the public remembrances are more modest: a limestone monument at the burial site of the elder, a historical marker noting the birthplace location of the younger, and a small historical museum that offers some perspective on this early American political dynasty.
Both of these presidents also are claimed by other states - William by Virginia, where he was born, and Benjamin by Indiana, where he is buried.
But they both spent dozens of formative years in Ohio; Harrison, the elder, as a general and U.S. senator; and Harrison, the younger, as a student at Miami University and lawyer in Cincinnati.
The modest Harrison-Symmes Museum, in downtown Cleves, just north of North Bend, offers an overview of both Harrisons, as well as the legacy of John Cleves Symmes, a land developer and judge whose daughter, Anna, eloped with William Harrison in 1795.
"The judge did not like William Henry Harrison because he was a soldier," said Terry Simpson, director of the Harrison-Symmes Museum and a former mayor of North Bend. "He would rather him have been a farmer."
Before serving as president, Harrison (the elder) earned fame for battling Native Americans on the frontier. His victory at the Battle of Tippecanoe earned him his nickname during the 1840 campaign ("Tippecanoe and Tyler, Too"). That election is often referred to as the first modern presidential campaign - when Harrison, an aristocrat from Virginia, was portrayed as a hard-cider drinking man of the people.
His presidency wasn't as successful as the campaign - he served just 32 days, the shortest tenure of any commander in chief, falling ill after a lengthy inaugural address in bad weather.
His grandson, a general in the Civil War, was elected in 1888, beating Grover Cleveland (who then reclaimed the job four years later). He is known for, among other things, his activist foreign policy and bringing the first Christmas tree into the White House.
Among the artifacts on display at the museum: some early campaign materials, photographs and a large cabinet from the Harrisons' North Bend homestead.
Visiting the Harrisons
William Henry Harrison Tomb, located at 2 Cliff Road in North Bend, is open year-round during daylight hours; the first gate (of two) into the tomb is open daily 9 a.m.-6 p.m. (closed during the winter).
The
, 112 S. Miami Ave. in Cleves, is open 9 a.m.-noon Saturday, 1-4 p.m. Sunday. It's free. An Ohio Historical Marker noting the birthplace location of Benjamin Harrison is at Symmes and Washington avenues in North Bend. And in Indiana: Grouseland in Vincennes was the home of William Henry Harrison during his years as governor of the Indiana Territory (1800-1812). For tour information:
. The Benjamin Harrison Presidential Site is in Indianapolis. Information:
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About a mile south of the museum, on a bluff overlooking a curve ("north bend") in the Ohio River, stands a 60-foot high monument to Harrison (the elder), who is buried here, along with his wife, son John Scott Harrison, and several other family members. (Benjamin Harrison, however, is buried in Indianapolis.)
The views from here are lovely.
The state took over the site in the early 20th century, and the limestone obelisk was added in the 1920s. "There was a feeling that the burial site of a president needed to be more important-looking," said Simpson.
In recent years, the state has added a series of signs that offer a primer on Harrison's legacy, covering life in North Bend, the campaign of 1840 and his short -lived presidency.
lester holt cropB.jpg
Lester Holt anchors "NBC Nightly News" live from Cleveland during the Republican National Convention, July 18-21 at Quicken Loans Arena.
(NBC)
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- The Republican National Convention will be a homecoming for former WJW Channel 8 reporter Kelly O'Donnell, who will be part of the NBC news team reporting live from Quicken Loans Arena.
O'Donnell, a graduate of Villa Angela Academy, began her broadcast career at Channel 8 during the 1990s. During her years at NBC, O'Donnell has covered national stories from presidential campaigns to the Oklahoma City bombing, according to her NBC bio. She has been NBC's Capitol Hill correspondent since 2007.
MSNBC anchor Chris Jansing, who is from Fairport Harbor, also will cover the convention for NBC News and MSNBC. Jansing, who joined NBC News in 1998, hosts the MSNBC weekday show "Jansing and Co.," and has extensively covered past presidential campaigns, according to her MSNBC bio.
O'Donnell and Jansing will be among nearly 50 NBC News and MSNBC anchors and correspondents in the networks' newsgathering operation during the convention, July 18-21 at The Q. NBC programming is seen locally on the affiliate station WKYC Channel 3.
The key broadcast will be NBC's hourlong specials at 10 p.m. every night of the convention, when Lester Holt, Matt Laurer, Savannah Guthrie and Chuck Todd will sum up the day's proceedings, according to an NBC news release.
The 10 p.m. specials will be streamed live on NBCNews.com.
Holt also anchors "NBC Nightly News" live from Cleveland starting Sunday, July 17. "Today" and "Meet the Press" will broadcast live from Cleveland with Holt, Laurer, Guthrie and Todd providing interviews and analysis.
NBC veteran Tom Brokaw, who has covered every presidential election since 1968, will provide analysis and insights on NBC and MSNBC.
Brian Williams and Rachel Maddow anchor MSNBC's prime-time coverage, based in New York, with Chris Matthews live in Cleveland.
Other NBC and MSNBC personalities reporting from Cleveland include Peter Alexander, Gabe Gutierrez, Hallie Jackson, Cal Perry, Joy Reid and more.
Here are other highlights of coverage on NBC and MSNBC:
MSNBC will offer more than 20 hours of live reporting each day of the convention.
"Meet the Press" broadcasts live from Cleveland at 2 p.m. on Sunday, July 17.
The "Today" show will feature live segments from Quicken Loans Arena during convention week. "Today" airs locally from 7 to 11 a.m. on Channel 3.
MSNBC daytime reports from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. will come live from Cleveland. Evening coverage begins with "MTP Daily," with Todd as host, at 5 p.m. each night of the convention.
RNC TV Coverage: Television will provide the world a ringside seat for the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. Each day, we'll be spotlighting a major national and/or local TV news organization's plans for convention coverage. Next up, Comedy Central.
univ. hts. pol. car (1).jpg
University Heights responded to a call of an overdose in a Cedar Road lot.
(file photo)
Drug overdose, Cedar Road: At 6:15 p.m. July 9, a caller reported that his friend was possibly overdosing on heroin in a lot at 14490 Cedar Road.
The man who overdosed, 27, of Boynton Beach, Fla., was administered Narcan and was taken to Ahuja Medical Center in Beachwood. There is no further update on the man's condition.
Property damage, Warrensville Center Road: Someone broke a window at Dollar Bank, 2200 Warrensville Center Road. The damage is believed to have been done between June 30 and July 5.
Theft, Cedar Road: At 12:50 p.m. July 5, security at Target, 14070 Cedar Road, detained for shoplifting a Streetsboro man, 35. The man stole $126 worth of electronics goods.
Arson, Cedar Road: At 8:35 p.m. July 5, police assisted the University Heights Fire Department when two teens, believed to be 18-19 years of age, set fire to a garbage can at the University Heights Library, 13866 Cedar Road.
The men were gone upon police arrival.
Missing person, Fairmount Boulevard: At 4:45 p.m. July 6, it was reported that a 17-year-old client ran away from Bellefaire JCB, 22001 Fairmount Blvd.
Harassing communication, Meadowbrook Road: A resident reported on July 8 that someone used his phone number to post a false ad on Craigslist. The man has received several calls since the ad was posted. Police are investigating.
Theft, Warrensville Center Road: At 5:05 p.m. July 8, officers were dispatched to Macy's, 2201 Warrensville Center Road, where a Cleveland man, 42, was being held for the theft of cologne worth $88.
There was also an active warrant for the man issued by the Ohio Adult Parole Authority.
Psychiatric situation, Fairmount Boulevard:
At 10:50 p.m. July 10, police were dispatched to Bellefaire JCB where a girl, 17, had consumed shards of glass.
The girl was combative with rescue workers and attempted to flee. She was taken to the hospital for evaluation.
If you would like to discuss the police blotter, please visit our crime and courts comments page.
News / National
by Staff reporter
A 28-YEAR-OLD Gokwe man has been sentenced to death after he was convicted of killing a motorist he had hired on the pretext he wanted to go and pay lobola to his in-laws.High Court judge, Justice Tawanda Chitapi sent Patrick Moyo to the gallows after convicting him of murdering Keniard Doro with actual intent.The court heard Doro went missing in January last year, but his remains were recovered in August after Moyo volunteered and made indications to the police, leading them to a cave, where he had buried his victim's body.Doro was killed in a gruesome manner and Justice Chitapi failed to find any extenuating circumstances warranting Moyo to serve a prison term.According to evidence presented in court, much of which was volunteered by the condemned convict, Doro was last seen on January 20, 2015 after he was hired at St Alberts business centre by Moyo on the pretext that he wanted to be driven to Mount Darwin.The court heard, Moyo lied to Doro he wanted to go and pay lobola, but would have to pick up his father and colleagues along the way.Justice Chitapi heard, after picking up his friends, Moyo instructed Doro to drive through Hereford Farm in Centenary claiming he wanted to pick up his father at a certain plot.However, upon getting to Riva Stream, Doro failed to cross using his vehicle, a Toyota Ipsum, and they all agreed to go on foot, but along the way, Moyo's accomplice, still at large, knocked down the now deceased with a knobkerrie.Realising he was unconscious, they carried him to a nearby bush, where they tied his hands to a tree and the legs to the other, leaving him suspended, as they proceeded to steal his car, which they drove to Centenary.Some days later, Moyo and his hired driver, Evans Mapundu, were arrested at a police roadblock and upon being ordered to produce the registration book, they failed and the vehicle was impounded.Determined to get the vehicle back, Moyo returned to where he had left Doro, found him still alive, and asked him for the vehicle registration book and was directed to collect it from his (Doro) home.The court heard, Moyo stole a police uniform, and proceeded to Doro's house, but was denied the registration book, with the relatives saying their family member was missing. A few days later, Moyo returned to where he had left Doro and found him dead and he carried his body to a nearby cave and covered it with stones.He was later arrested when police recovered the vehicle with his hired driver.
Beijing gave up its rights to the South China Sea after signing up to a United Nations convention, a former U.S. Defense Secretary said Wednesday, a day after an international tribunal ruled that China's claims of historical rights over the disputed waters were not founded on evidence.
A tribunal at the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, Netherlands, decided on Tuesday that China's claims to the disputed waters were counter to international law.
The Philippines had contested China's expansive territorial claims in the South China Sea, which Manila contended were invalid under international law.
China, however, said its historic rights predated the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and were not at odds with the provisions of the treaty , to which both countries were signatories.
But the East Asian giant relinquished those rights when it signed the UNCLOS, former U.S. Secretary of Defense, Chuck Hagel said.
"(It) explicitly states in that treaty and when you sign that treaty, you would and do relinquish all previous historical rights to any contested territory. So China essentially put itself in this position to be part of whatever the international tribunal comes down with," Hagel told CNBC's "Squawk Box".
"(The tribunal) is one of the most important post World War II institutions that has been set up to try to bring some order to a world that had gone without any order which lead to two world wars. I think it's important that we continue not only to maintain, but to support the force of those international tribunals," he added.
The Philippines wasn't the only big winner in a legal decision on rights to the resource-rich South China Sea, according to experts.
Malaysia, Vietnam and Indonesia are also set to benefit from the ruling, which dealt a painful blow to China's national pride
The Hague found the so-called 'nine-dash line' a rough demarcation that China uses to set out what it believes is its territorywas illegal when applied to the Philippines, that meant it was also illegal when applied to other countries, added Paul Reichler, a partner at Foley Hoag and lead lawyer for the Philippines in the case.
"They are big winners as well," Reichler told CNBC's "The Rundown."
News / National
by Staff reporter
THE rights body Amnesty International has lambasted Zimbabwe's government over the arrest of Pastor Mawarire, who is one of the people behind the two-day stay-away."The arrest of Pastor Evan Mawarire appears to be a well calculated plan to intimidate him and other activists ahead of the national shutdown organised for tomorrow in an attempt to supress the rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly," said Muleya Mwananyanda, Amnesty International's Deputy Director for Southern Africa.Last week Zimbabweans responded to Mawarire's call to stay away from work and all major cities including Harare and Bulawayo were significantly affected.The call to stay away coincided with protests over the governments unilateral decision to ban imports of basic food stuffs and other commodities from South Africa. The strike by teachers over delayed salaries exacerbated the unrest in Zimbabwe.
Josh James remembers it like yesterday. At a business event in Silicon Valley a decade ago, he struck up a conversation with a venture capitalist about Omniture, the web analytics company James co-founded in 1996. Today, Omniture is the quintessential start-up success story: After going public in 2006, the company was acquired by Adobe three years later for $1.8 billion. But a decade ago Omniture was just another tech company in Utah, evidently the least likely state a venture capitalist expected a public company to be. "He said he wanted to come visit me and the team and asked, 'Where are you guys at?' When I answered Utah, he immediately turned around and walked away without saying another word," James recalled.
Utah's Silicon Slopes is buzzing with potential. John Pulsipher | Getty Images
An investor would be crazy to ignore Utah today, where the Silicon Slopes a stretch of cities along the Rocky Mountains, from Ogden in the north to Provo in the south and Salt Lake City in between has emerged this decade as a hotbed of tech entrepreneurship, plucky start-ups and impressive software companies worth at least $1 billion on paper. Low taxes; cheap real estate; a pool of young engineering talent from the University of Utah, Utah State and Brigham Young; and a business-friendly environment have all converged to make Utah the top location for tech start-ups, right up there with founding teams in Boston and New York in the East or Seattle and Silicon Valley in the West. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce recently ranked Utah No.1 in innovation and entrepreneurship, No. 2 in high-tech performance and No. 3 in economic performance in a study of all 50 states. The state also topped CNBC's America's Top States for Business list this year. "It's not surprising to see start-up formation in Utah," said Ben Veghte, vice president of communications and marketing at the National Venture Capital Association. "There's a natural progression that's been happening over the last 10 to 15 years." The state, in other words, has a record of successful tech businesses. Among tech founders, investors and observers, the consensus is that the Beehive State's Silicon Slopes are buzzing with potential.
It was Utah that gave birth to software companies Novell and WordPerfect in the late 1970s, followed in the 1990s by companies such as Ancestry.com, Omniture and Vivint Smart Home first founded as APX Alarm Security Solutions in 1999. By the early 2000s a new crop of software companies would start up and grow big. Last year four such companies joined the unicorn club, including Domo, the business intelligence platform James founded in 2010. Even established tech giants have moved to Utah. Adobe opened a 680,000-square-foot office campus in Lehi, between Salt Lake City and Provo, four years ago. Three years ago eBay opened a 241,000-square-foot facility in the suburbs of Salt Lake City and staffed it with 1,800 employees.
Venture capital funding, once sparse in Utah, has skyrocketed, from $299 million across 34 deals in 2013 to $732 million across 55 deals in 2015, according to the National Venture Capital Association. Most of that money goes to software companies in categories like sales, education technology, and smart home services, with the next highest portion of funding making its way to medical-device companies. "It's exploded in the last five years," said Alex Dunn, president of Vivint, a Provo-based smart home technology service provider. "The amount of calls that I get from people I know, in Silicon Valley or Boston or New York, to be introduced to a company in Utah happens now every week."
(From left to right) SimpleCitizen co-founders Brady Stoddard, CMO; Ayde Soto, CTO; and Sam Stoddard, CEO Source: SimpleCitizen
Vivint, which made $653 million in revenue last year and counts more than 1 million people as customers, raised $100 million in its first round of funding this past April. Contributing to the round were Solamere Capital, the firm co-founded by former presidential candidate Mitt Romney, as well as Facebook board member, PayPal co-founder and Hulk Hogan-lawsuit backer Peter Thiel. "Utah has a long history of tech innovation across software, networking and internet infrastructure, but it's probably in the last decade when all this started to take shape," said Nick Efstratis, managing director of Epic Ventures, a Salt Lake City-based venture capital firm that has been doing deals in state for 16 years. Among its investments: Ancestry.com, InsideSales and AllianceHealth Networks. "Now Silicon Valley VCs look at this as a market where people know how to build big outcomes," said Efstratis. California is still king, however, with Silicon Valley and the San Francisco and Los Angeles metropolitan areas alone pulling in some $30 billion across more than 1,000 funding deals in 2015, according to data from the National Venture Capital Association. The venture capital markets in Boston and New York City also eclipse the size of the funding market in Utah. "Obviously, it's smaller than some of those really big markets," said Sam Stoddard, co-founder of Provo-based SimpleCitizen. "But there's just this entrepreneurial spirit in Utah. It was really, really easy setting up a company, because there was already this network of successful entrepreneurs who had been through this before."
Vivint's Innovation Center in Lehi, Utah Weston Colton | Vivint Smart Home
That's a point of pride for companies like Vivint and Omniture, who were operating for years without venture capital before taking funding or being acquired. In the Silicon Slopes, bigger companies operate for years, pulling in customers and revenues, before taking a dime of funding or being recognized as a good candidate for venture money. For instance, research software company Qualtrics, one of the newest unicorn companies in Utah, was chugging along for a decade before taking $70 million in Series A funding in 2012.
New co-working spaces, such as Camp 4 in Provo, that have popped up over the last five years provide business support and cheap early office space for incubating that entrepreneurial spirit. And big companies, either homegrown giants like Vivint or other tech companies, with satellite offices in the state, now provide the career opportunities many people in the tech industry look for. "I think the perception was, in order to really achieve a high level in your career, you have to go outside of Utah, and that is what has changed now," Dunn said. "Now we're able to get people from Boston and California and New York because now they have an opportunity to be involved in tech and reach the pinnacle of their professions." The cultural amenities aren't half bad, either. Dunn said the region is ideal for people who love to camp, ski and mountain-bike and are interested in raising a family.
Local talent pool
The Mormon religion also plays a part in the state's start-up success. The religion's influence in the state has helped concentrate entrepreneurial talent, since graduates aren't inclined to move far from where they have grown up. And while a culture that emphasizes family life over business priorities say, being home for dinner every night creates some conflict in the fast-paced world of tech, entrepreneurs and start-up boosters said the Mormon Church is a great proving ground for would-be tech founders.
"Our religion is very well known for its self-reliance and its focus on being self-reliant and providing for yourself when you can't rely on other sources to help that," said Jeff Brown, assistant director of the Rollins Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology at Brigham Young University. "We have this built into our DNA a little bit this need to kind of push forward and push the envelope." Take SimpleCitizen's Stoddard, who is Mormon and co-founded his company before graduating from Brigham Young University in 2015. Still, start-ups in Utah have been flirting with Silicon Valley more and more. SimpleCitizen, which is trying to streamline the application process for obtaining a green card, is now spending the summer at Silicon Valley-based accelerator Y Combinator, although the company plans to stay put in Provo. "Raising the capital's obviously important, but at the end, it just so happens that Utah was a great place for the business," he said.
Utah has a long history of tech innovation across software, networking and internet infrastructure, but it's probably in the last decade when all this started to take shape. Nick Efstratis managing director, Epic Ventures
The parent company of KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell posted earnings of 75 cents per share, adjusted, on revenues of $3.01 billion. Analysts had expected earnings of 74 cents per share on sales of $3.09 billion, according to Thomson Reuters consensus estimates.
Check out the companies making headlines after the bell Wednesday:
Phillips 66 shares dipped briefly in light volume after an analyst at Barclays downgraded the stock earlier in the day.
"Although we think the stock will continue to trade at a premium to the group and that its well-diversified business is capable of weathering cyclical volatility better than other pure play refiners, we see limited upside," Paul Cheng wrote in a Wednesday research note.
Phillips 66 also announced a 63 cent per share quarterly dividend, payable Sept. 1. The energy manufacturing company's shares are down over the past year, as oil has struggled to recover from historic lows.
Agricultural company Monsanto 's stock edged higher in light trading volume after unconfirmed reports that it would revive talks with BASF over a Bayer alternative. Bloomberg reported the news, building on prior reports this spring that Bayer and BASF wanted to buy Monsanto. Bayer declined to comment on the report, citing a policy against commenting on market rumors.
CNBC has reached out to Monsanto and BASF for comment.
Meanwhile, Congress is considering a for food containing genetically-modified organisms, which could affect the food industry.
CSX' s shares pared some gains after hours, ticking slightly lower after its earnings were released unexpectedly before the closing bell. The railroad and transportation company's stock rose 4.4 percent in the regular trading session after the company posted its earnings earlier than expected.
CSX reported earnings of 47 cents per share, compared to Wall Street expectations of 44 cents, according to a Thomson Reuters consensus estimate. CSX posted revenue of $2.7 billion for the quarter, slightly above expectations for $2.69 billion.
North America may be losing its lucrative appeal in the multi-trillion dollar travel industry.
Digital travel sales in Asia-Pacific will surpass North America in 2017, making it the largest region in the world, according to a new eMarketer report. Customers in Asia-Pacific will spend a projected $216 billion next year, compared to North America's $200 billion, representing growth of 23 percent and 5 percent, respectively.
Digital travel includes everything from booking online flights to hotels and tours.
Companies are taking note. Airbnb received funding to expand in India recently, while Ctrip, a travel services company, bought stake in Indian online travel agency, MakeMyTrip.
"The biggest opportunities for companies and startups will be in mobile and online travel agencies, as both will expand their share of online bookings," Chris Bendtsen, an eMarketer analyst told CNBC. "For China in particular, the growing number of international travelers will allow travel-related companies all over the world to benefit from increased digital sales."
The largest trend driving the shift is Chinese consumers spending more overall on travel, combined with its continued mobile phone growth.
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Spend a decade or so evaluating the states and you begin to notice some patterns states that perform consistently well in good times and bad, and states so competitive, businesses can't afford to ignore them. In honor of our 10th annual America's Top States for Business study, we decided to put those apparent patterns to the test by calculating the cumulative scores of all 50 states, both overall and in each of our 10 categories of competitiveness. Under our methodology, those categories have remained constant since our first study in 2007; only the weights of the categories have shifted to reflect the changing competitive landscape. So this analysis represents some 30,000 pieces of data and a possible 1.25 million Top States points across 50 states over 10 years. Perform well here and you have truly earned the title we're calling "Top of the Tops."
For our first decade, there is almost no contest. Texas which has never finished below second place and has three Top States titles under its belt also has the best cumulative score, with 15,029 out of a possible 25,000 points. Texas isn't just the Top of the Tops overall. It also dominates two key categories, with first-place cumulative wins in Economy and Infrastructure. Texas comes in fifth for Technology and Innovation and notches top 10 finishes in Business Friendliness and Access to Capital.
A winning success formula
For as long as we have been keeping track, Texas has held firm to the formula outlined by then Gov. Rick Perry after his state captured its first Top States title in 2008. "We've got low taxes, we've got a balanced regulatory climate, we've got a fair legal system, and we continue to fund an accountable school system so that we have a good, skilled workforce," Gov. Perry told us then. The state has not always practiced what it preached, however. Even the Top of the Tops bottoms out in a few places. For example, in Education one of the main ingredients in Perry's formula Texas has managed just one top 10 finish (in 2013) but otherwise has never finished better than 27th. The state's cumulative Education rank is 28th. Texas finishes 40th in Education this year, reflecting a serious funding gap. While enrollment at Texas public colleges and universities has surged 23 percent since the Great Recession and 15 percent in just the last five years state support for higher education has not kept pace, according to the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association. In fact, the organization says, funding has dropped nearly 20 percent in the past five years, one of the worst records in the country. It's not just higher education. The National Education Association estimates Texas is spending about $8,900 per K12 student this school year. That's one of the lowest rates in the nation. And while higher per-student spending particularly in a populous state doesn't necessarily translate to better education, Texas test scores lag the rest of the country.
Texas also suffers from nagging quality-of-life issues. On a cumulative basis, Texas ranks 34th in our Quality of Life category. It has never finished better than 22nd (back in 2008) and this year comes in tied for 37th. It is not that there are no lovely places to live in Texas, but we also look at other factors, such as health. Texas has the largest percentage of uninsured residents of any state. Like many Republican-led states, Texas opted out of the federal Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act. But the state has done little else to promote increased coverage, leaving it to residents to fend for themselves. Our Quality of Life category also considers inclusiveness. The National Conference of State Legislatures says Texas is one of only five states with no public accommodation law protecting non-disabled individuals from discrimination (the others are Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi and North Carolina). At a time when businesses are calling on states to remove any barriers that limit the attraction of skilled workers, Texas' policies cost the state points. Those weak spots help explain why, despite its inherent strengths, Texas has had a four-year drought of Top States titles, last capturing first place in 2012.
The runners-up
Another example is Virginia, which comes in second in our cumulative rankings, with 14,686 out of 25,000 points, even though it has faded from contention since it captured the last of its three Top States titles in 2011. The Old Dominion shows how the competitive landscape can quickly shift on a state and render some of its inherent advantages less effective. In the early years of our study, Virginia benefited from its proximity to Washington, D.C. But government spending cuts and the collapse of the housing market hit Virginia where it lived. The state finishes tied for 13th this year, down from 12th in 2015. Other Top of the Tops winners include third-place Utah, which takes its first annual title this year, followed by perennial contenders Colorado and North Carolina.
We also calculated the cumulative winners in our 10 categories of competitiveness. For Workforce, Georgia takes the top spot. Year after year the state has offered an ample supply of skilled workers increasingly important to business these days. The fact that the recession hit Georgia hard, boosting the supply even more during the leanest years, helped the state's cumulative Workforce score. In Cost of Doing Business, it's South Dakota, which rode that important category to its sole overall Top States win in 2013. But as the economy improved and the skills gap widened, low cost is much less of a path to victory than it once was. Texas packs the one-two punch of Infrastructure and Economy, winning both of those categories handily. Even now, with the price of oil depressed, Texas' economic prowess is on full display.
For Quality of Life, there's just no beating Hawaii. And this has little to do with beautiful beaches and gorgeous scenery. Hawaii's environment is pristine, its people are healthy, and its laws are inclusive. All that, plus it is Hawaii. California leads the way for Technology and Innovation an example of how America's most populous state is a study in contrasts. Entrepreneurs and innovators still flock to the state, even if it means paying some of the highest costs in the nation. Money also flows to California, which is Top of the Tops in our Access to Capital category. Massachusetts is the cumulative winner for Education, a category it typically dominates. Students in the Bay State excel from kindergarten through college, and the state tends to provide the resources to make that happen. South Dakota is tops for Business Friendliness, and Oklahoma clinches Cost of Living, as it offers the lowest for that category.
Bottom-rung states
The luxury goods group said a positive 3 percent contribution from new stores resulted in flat retail sales of 423 million pounds ($562 million), slightly better than analysts' expectations.
Britain's Burberry reported a 3 percent drop in like-for-like sales in a "challenging" first quarter, underlining the size of the task facing Marco Gobbetti when he takes over chief executive duties from Christopher Bailey next year.
Burberry announced the appointment of Gobbetti, the Italian boss of LVMH brand Celine, on Monday. Bailey will become president as well as retaining his creative role.
The firm is struggling to counter a sales downturn in mainland China and Hong Kong and fewer tourists in Europe after attacks in Paris and Brussels.
However, it is benefiting from a drop in the value of the pound after Britain voted to leave the European Union last month, saying its adjusted profit would be boosted by about 90 million pounds if exchange rates remain at current level.
If you'd randomly turned on a TV in Manila early evening yesterday, you'd probably have caught a rather dour gentleman named Perfecto Yasay telling viewers "restraint and sobriety" were the most important requirements of the moment.
Without any other context, you might have thought he was delivering a eulogy. Maybe after some kind of upsetting murder, or after the country's notorious death squads ran amok.
But Yasay is the Philippine Foreign Secretary, and he was delivering his country's first official response to a ruling on his country's challenge of China's claim to pretty much all of the South China Sea.
The ruling from a tribunal of the International Court of Arbitration in The Hague, was the end result of a bold test case, on which the judges found overwhelmingly in favor of the Philippines. Three years in the waiting, and filed by the only Southeast Asian claimant to the South China Sea with the guts to do so.
So, you might have expected a victory parade through downtown Manila. Maybe even Carnival, Philippine-style.
But in the event, as often happens with small states, it seems the Philippines is content with a careful, modest acknowledgment of victory, rather than bombastic public chest-beating.
And the Philippines is probably wise to be so.
Privately, the reaction is very different. In the Twittersphere, for example, Filipinos were feeling pretty nationalistic. The hashtag #chexit, short for "China exit," is the new appellation du jour.
Meanwhile back at Malacanang, other than Yasay's grave, measured tones...conspicuous silence.
As of this writing, President Rodrigo Duterte hadn't actually even commented on The Hague's landmark ruling. Odd, you might think, for someone who's rarely short of things to say, and who proffers opinions many people would prefer he kept to himself.
But Duterte, I believe, is being careful rather than coy.
Remember, this is actually not his fight. Benigno Aquino, Duterte's immediate predecessor, was the one who brought the case three years ago. He took the issue to the world's highest court after direct negotiations with China hit what he felt were a dead end. The case was well into play when Duterte was still comfortably ensconced in his Davao fiefdom down in Mindinao, and coming close to its end when "The Punisher" was only just beginning to register in the national consciousness.
In other words, this case may not have made it to The Hague under Duterte. And the result may not be what Duterte would have wanted.
Though he is formally legally trained, Duterte is a man who more easily understands the law of the street. Natural law. So he knows when you've roundly thrashed a much more powerful opponent who's used to throwing his weight around successfully, you don't stand over him and perform the haka. And he knows while China may be on the back foot right now, it's certainly neither down nor out.
The risk is, China could easily get back up angrier than ever, and won't have to look too far for payback. And the Philippines won't have anywhere to hide.
In any case, you could argue that while The Hague's ruling gives some people comfort and a sense of justice, others might feel it's totally the wrong approach. Former U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel told CNBC the ruling gives the Philippines and other Southeast-Asian countries aggrieved by China's assertiveness the moral high ground. The ruling is final, and legally binding.
True. But the problem is, it's also not enforceable. We won't see blue-helmeted U.N. peace-keepers swarming around any atolls in the South China Sea anytime soon. It's not that kind of situation. Instead, this global and very public censure of China is a name-and-shame approach.
But modern historical precedents show China does not react positively or constructively to that kind of handling. It backs them even more into a tight corner.
David Cameron's last appearance in parliament as British Prime Minister ended in a standing ovation after a bravura 36-minute performance that taunted his rivals, reflected on his legacy and confessed his love for the office cat.
After six years as leader, Cameron formally handed in his resignation to Queen Elizabeth on Wednesday, passing control of the country to fellow Conservative Theresa May, who will be in charge of negotiating Britain's exit from the European Union. The Queen accepted his resignation.
Queen accepts Cameron's resignation
Speaking in a packed parliament, with lawmakers, media, aides and spectators jammed into every corner of the ornate debating chamber, Cameron answered questions with the air of a man looking forward to an afternoon off.
"This morning I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others," he said. "Other than one meeting this afternoon with her majesty the Queen, the diary for the rest of my day is remarkably light," he said to laughter, as his wife Samantha and their children looked on from the public gallery.
Cameron, often praised for his statesman-like demeanor, cut a more relaxed figure as he laid into his political rival Jeremy Corbyn, whose own future is subject to a protracted and acrimonious battle within the opposition Labour Party.
"We've both been having these leadership elections. We (Conservatives) got on with it: we've had resignation, nomination, competition and coronation. They haven't even decided what the rules are yet," he said, drawing roars of support from his side of the chamber.
"If they ever got into power it would take them about a year to work out who would sit where."
Check out which companies are making headlines before the bell:
Valeant Pharmaceuticals The Sequoia Fund, which had been the drugmaker's largest shareholders, told clients it has completely exited its position in Valeant.
Williams Companies The pipeline operator is rated "buy" in reinstated coverage at Goldman Sachs. Goldman said Williams has a strong fundamental positioning in natural gas and has good, visible growth prospects.
Teva Pharmaceutical The drugmaker increased its second-quarter profit and revenue guidance. Teva now expects to earn an adjusted $1.19 to $1.22 per share, compared to its prior forecast of $1.16 to $1.20 a share. The current consensus estimate is $1.17 a share.
Pandora The online radio service was upgraded to "overweight" from "neutral" at Piper Jaffray, which points to improving profit margins, an upcoming new on-demand platform, and better prospects for a positive outcome from music label negotiations.
MetLife The insurance company's stock was downgraded to "hold" from "buy" at Deutsche Bank, which cites a lack of near-term catalysts and the potentially negative impact of lower 10-year Treasury yields.
Juno Therapeutics Juno said the Food and Drug Administration has removed a clinical hold on a cancer drug trial that had been put in place last week following the death of three patients. Juno had said the deaths occurred after a chemotherapy agent was added to the trial that agent has now been removed.
Fiat Chrysler The automaker has unveiled a rewards program which will pay so-called ethical hackers up to $1,500 if they identify data security weaknesses in its vehicles.
Amazon.com The automaker is on watch today as results from its second annual Prime Day are tallied. Preliminary indications are that U.S. sales were flat compared to a year ago, although they were stronger in certain international markets.
Tiffany Tiffany and other luxury goods sellers could be under some pressure in U.S. trading following a drop in comparable-store sales reported by London luxury fashion house Burberry.
Nokia Nokia announced an expansion of its intellectual property cross licensing agreement with Samsung. Nokia said it expects a positive impact for net sales as a result of the new agreement.
Time Inc . Time could announce a restructuring as soon as today, according to the New York Post. As part of the change, the paper said Fortune editor Alan Murray would be named as the publisher's new chief content officer.
McDonald's McDonald's is not getting strong bids for its franchise rights in China, according to a report in the Financial Times.
Adtran Adtran reported quarterly profit of 25 cents per share, beating estimates by four cents a share. The maker of networking and communications equipment's revenue was slightly above forecasts, as well.
European stocks closed mostly lower on Wednesday as equity markets struggled to hold gains, despite hopes of further monetary easing around the world. The U.K.'s FTSE 100 closed roughly 0.2 percent lower and the German DAX closed provisionally 0.3 percent lower.
However, the French DAX ended unofficially 0.1 percent higher.
European markets
Investors anticipate further economic policy easing around the world, including a possible interest rate cut from the Bank of England on Thursday, fiscal and monetary stimulus in Japan and a delayed rate hike from the U.S. Federal Reserve.
U.K. Home Secretary Theresa May is set to be installed as prime minister on Wednesday evening, replacing David Cameron who tendered his resignation after the Brexit vote last month. It remains unclear when May will trigger Article 50, which initiates the withdrawal process from the European Union; she has signaled it could be later this year or 2017. U.S. stock indexes traded roughly flat on Wednesday. The Dow Jones industrial average and the S&P 500 hit all-time intraday highs once again, before paring gains.
Burberry warns on weak outlook
Luxury fashion brand Burberry reported retail revenues that were flat in the three months to June 30 and warned wholesale revenue would be weaker than previously expected. However, shares rallied to the top of the FTSE 100, closing up 6.3 percent.
In other U.K. business news, Steinhoff agreed a 597 million ($794 million) takeover of the U.K.'s Poundland . Shares of the budget retailer leaped to close up 12.6 percent. Elsewhere, France's Airbus is slashing production of its A380 superjumbo, which has struggled to win new customers amid a lacklustre market for widebody aircraft. Shares fell on the news, before closing 1.7 percent higher.
Meanwhile, shares of Nokia rallied to close 4.8 percent up after it expanded its patent licensing deal with South Korea's Samsung.
Italian banks in focus
News / National
by Staff reporter
BULAWAYO East MP Thabitha Khumalo was yesterday summoned to Bulawayo Central Police Station in the morning and quizzed over driving a vehicle without number plates, which they suspected was being used by the MP to co-ordinate anti-government protests on behalf of pressure group Tajamuka/Sesijikile.Khumalo yesterday told NewsDay that she was interrogated and afterwards ordered to stay indoors today and stop driving around Bulawayo in her unmarked car, as she was being suspected of co-ordinating the stayaways.Earlier, the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR) provided a lawyer to represent Khumalo when she reported to the police."In Bulawayo, ZLHR lawyers accompanied Khumalo to Bulawayo Central Police Station after she was summoned by the police around 9.30am today. Police questioned her over her involvement with the planned protests, and after exercising her right to remain silent, Khumalo was released before noon," ZLHR said in a statement.Khumalo told NewsDay that the police officers, who summoned her, whom she identified as Moyo, Nkomo and Nyanhete, were the same ones who, in August 2015, had ordered her to report to the Zimbabwe Republic Police Law and Order Section, while she was on a visit to the United Kingdom."I did not go there because I was in the UK, but surprisingly, yesterday the same police officers summoned me and I went there with a ZLHR lawyer, Lizwe Jamela. He was, however, chased away and they interrogated me alone."They asked me why I was driving a car without number plates, and I said I had been doing that for the past 10 years and I was surprised that it became an issue now. They said I was one of the organisers of tomorrow (today's) protests, adding I was the co-ordinator of Tajamuka/Sesijikile."The police then put me on a curfew and ordered that tomorrow (today) I should stay at my premises and must not be seen anywhere driving my car without number plates. They did not charge me with anything, but they placed me on a curfew," she said.The MP said she felt intimidated, as she was a legislator doing her duties and had nothing to do with organising the protests.
An employee secures customers' orders with bubble wrap before they are shipped at the Amazon Fulfillment Center in Tracy, Calif.
Amazon's global headquarters in Luxembourg and meetings with then-prime minister Jean-Claude Juncker are at the heart of the cozy tax arrangement for the world's largest retailer, Newsweek reported. Juncker has denied taking a position on individual tax dossiers, but court documents uncovered a meeting between Juncker and with four senior Amazon tax officials, according to Newsweek.
Amazon's IRS case in the U.S. could force it to pay more than $1.5 billion in unpaid taxes, Newsweek said, after audits of Amazon's 2005 and 2006 tax filings. Still, Amazon told Newsweek that its corporate tax payments are based on the company's profits, which have been low: "Amazon pays all the taxes we are required to pay in every country where we operate."
Amazon responded to CNBC, adding: "We've invested over 15 billion in Europe since 2010 and last year alone created over 10,000 new jobs, bringing our direct employment in Europe to over 40,000 people. Finally, we disagree with the IRS position and are contesting the matter."
The e-commerce giant's case is not unusual and gets at the core of a heated political issue both in the U.S. and abroad. Indeed, companies like Apple and Facebook have also faced scrutiny and stirred controversy with their corporate tax schemes.
In related news, Amazon said that the company's July 12 Prime Day was the biggest for sales in its history.
For Marks' complete coverage, see the full story at Europe.Newsweek.com.
SAN FRANCISCO Intel CEO Brian Krzanich never intended to hold a fundraiser when he canceled an appearance by presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump at his home in the Bay Area last month.
"I'll tell you what really happened." Krzanich said at Fortune's Brainstorm Tech 2016 conference in Aspen, Colo., on Tuesday.
Krzanich said the Trump event was never supposed to be a fundraiser. Originally, the Intel head and a small group of people planned to meet with Trump to discuss issues within the United States that were connected to the tech sector.
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"I am passionate about these issues." Krzanich said. "The issues of diversity, the issues of making America strong in manufacturing (and) making us competitive in tax."
Once Krzanich realized it was being turned into a fundraiser, he called it off.
The event was cancelled the day before it was supposed to take place, shortly after The New York Times began asking questions. After receiving criticism, Krzanich took to Twitter to explain that he was not endorsing Trump.
Instead, Morgan Stanley's analysts envision the most likely scenario being "policy incrementalism," where either candidate will be hard-pressed to push major reforms through a divided Congress.
The firm's analysts, though, aren't buying it, despite the contentious tone and a raft of proposals from both candidates that would, if enacted, cause significant shifts in fiscal policy.
Morgan Stanley specifically reports that 70 percent of 650 investors it surveyed say markets are "too sanguine about election risk," believing that the outcome could alter the landscape substantially.
Up until now, investors have been focused primarily on three issues: global economic weakness, Britain's vote to leave the European Union and unpredictable Fed policy in which the U.S. central bank has backed away from its stated intentions to raise rates. However, the focus toward politics is growing.
Surveys from multiple Wall Street firms show growing concern over how the race between presumptive nominees Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump will play out. By large numbers, Morgan Stanley clients believe the market is far too apathetic about the contest. UBS says its high net worth customers are hoarding cash , while Credit Suisse clients view the election as having "broad-based" market implications.
After wrestling with a multitude of thorny issues this year, investors finally are getting around to thinking about the presidential election. They may not get good news for the markets.
"Not all election consequences are transformational, and current evidence suggests the U.S. elections in November won't yield outcomes that substantially change market fundamentals in the near term," the firm wrote in a 51-page analysis. "This may seem a surprising statement given the campaign season has heretofore featured a mix of vitriol and policy proposals that likely feel radical to investors."
As reflected in multiple surveys and prediction markets, Morgan Stanley says its clients expect Clinton to emerge victorious.
Taking that outcome a step further, Morgan said the most likely outcome is that the Democrat presides over a divided Congress, with the Republicans holding the House but losing the Senate. The next most likely outcome listed is Clinton winning, with the GOP holding Congress, while a Republican sweep is third most likely. Trump winning and presiding over a Democratic Congress is the least likely of four scenarios Morgan Stanley considers possible.
Weighing the respective possibilities, the firm sees little chance of meaningful change in Washington.
"Fiscal stimulus, for example, may pick up modestly given bipartisan support for infrastructure spending, but, absent a recession to motivate lawmakers, a stimulus that is meaningful to the economic outlook is unlikely given the difficulties of reaching agreement on either tax cuts or spending increases in a divided government," the report said.
That means more of the same "sluggish" economic growth, a Fed in no hurry to boost rates, and what could be a tricky investment landscape.
The only scenario where substantial change is more likely is if Trump should win. The Republican has proposed sweeping changes to trade and immigration policies, and his fiscal stimulus plans that he says will shock growth also are projected by most economists to add to the nation's debt and deficit.
"Substantial hurdles to making policy changes would remain, but this scenario holds the greatest possibility for near term, transformational policy change," Morgan Stanley said. "The uncertainty created by that dynamic could amplify market anxiety."
While Wall Street continues to expect a Clinton victory, the polling is close. The Real Clear Politics average gives Clinton a 4 percentage point edge, even when including third-party candidates. However, a Quinnipiac poll this week gives Trump the edge in Florida, Pennsylvania and Ohio three swing states critical to a Trump win.
Wall Street is putting its money where its mouth is. The securities and investment sector has contributed $32.5 million to Clinton's campaign, while giving just $63,559 to Trump, according to nonpartisan political finance site Open Secrets.
Credit Suisse analysts said in a report for clients that it considers the election "a potential source of stock market volatility in the second half given wide-ranging interest in the event among our analysts amid uncertainty over the candidates' policy priorities."
A previous Credit Suisse survey found that 78 percent of investors believed Clinton would win, and recent conversations indicate that still is the case. However, evaluating the market implications is difficult because candidate priorities "could shift" during the general election campaign, when candidates typically alter the rhetoric they used to placate the base during their primary contests.
Speaking in more general terms and addressing near-term concerns, Credit Suisse notes that election years are generally good for stocks, with returns "meaningfully above trend." In sector terms, consumer discretionary spending usually lags heading into elections and outperforms afterward, while utilities do just the opposite.
Elsewhere on Wall Street, UBS reports that its deep-pocketed clients are nervous. Wealthy investors are holding record cash balances due to election fears, even though they are confident about the economy. Some 84 percent believe that the election will impact their finances, according to Reuters.
Jamie Dimon is helping redirect the conversation about value. The JPMorgan boss on Tuesday unveiled a plan to lift the hourly wage for 18,000 lower-level workers, including bank tellers, by almost a fifth at a minimum. The move follows similar ones by Gap, Wal-Mart Stores, Starbucks and others. Helping shrink the income inequality gap is a good public policy step, especially by sharing the spoils so often reserved for Wall Street dealmakers and shareholders. It may also be good for business.
With median household incomes stagnant for so long and salaries shrinking as a percentage of GDP, paying people more is "the right thing to do," as Dimon acknowledged. It has taken a long time for Corporate America to make that call, however. Instead, they have used years of cheap credit and record profits mainly to reward investors. Companies in the S&P 500 Index spent $166 billion on share buybacks in the first quarter, a new post-recession high, according to FactSet.
For JPMorgan, the salary decision which comes on the heels of additional investment in employee benefits and training is relatively inexpensive. If all 18,000 workers saw their pay increased from $10.15 an hour to the maximum $16.50 rate, and they worked 40 hours every week of the year, it would cost an extra $240 million. JPMorgan spent almost $10 billion last year on compensation expenses in its retail bank alone.
There will be selfish reasons for the wage decision, too. It should reduce turnover at JPMorgan and might help create a better crop of staff who could one day be promoted as salespeople or wealth managers. It should enable JPMorgan to compete better for new hires. Some smaller rivals already have jacked up their minimum wages. Amalgamated Bank last year raised its own to $15 an hour.
Beyond the corridors of banking, however, there is growing momentum for companies to stray from Milton Friedman's dogma about businesses exclusively marshaling resources for the purpose of maximizing profit. Britain's next prime minister, Theresa May, for example, wants to put workers on corporate boards. Pressure, including from investors, has been mounting for companies to undertake practices that benefit a more stable society. By paying his employees more, a highly visible executive like Dimon also can ensure that value beyond just shareholders gets the necessary attention paid.
Commentary by Jeffrey Goldfarb, contributor, Reuters BreakingViews.
For more insight from CNBC contributors, follow @CNBCopinion on Twitter.
Japanese messaging app Line is about to test Wall Street's appetite for tech IPOs this year, as the company prepares to go public Thursday. What many don't know is that the Tokyo-based chat app launched in 2011, following a catastrophic earthquake and tsunami in Japan, to be used in place of downed communications. Line amassed 50 million users in a little more than a year, while it took Facebook over three years to hit 58 million users.
The app's creator, NHN Japan, later announced a decision to spin off the messaging app into its own division, Line Corp., in 2013. Line is now a Japanese subsidiary of the South Korean internet search giant Naver, which first talked of taking the business public immediately following the spin off. The parent company halted its plans for Line to test the public markets in hopes of garnering stronger interest from investors. At that time, the idea of free chat apps was only beginning to catch on with smartphone users.
Naver currently owns 100 percent of Line's outstanding shares of capital stock, according to Line's latest filing with the SEC, and will control approximately 83.3 percent of stock following the IPO. Some analysts are saying this should be a red flag for investors, considering Line's board of directors is composed of many individuals with ties back to the Korean company.
"Japan and Korea don't always see eye to eye on business issues," founding partner of Palo Alto's CrossPacific Capital, Greg Tarr, said in an interview. There's some potential animosity there, Tarr said, because Line came into Japan, wiped out multiple telecom companies, and took a significant amount of money out of the country.
Tarr said "cronyism" among the executive officers and board members should also be a top concern for investors. "People from Naver who don't have the right background could be forced into Line," Tarr said. "Corporate governance is not up to speed here."
"I think of Iceland as a small-scale model for what we could accomplish if we stopped believing only two political parties are capable of running our country. I don't know who started that philosophy, but it's pathetically stupid."
Yes, Iceland's president is the head of state and although he doesn't hold the same position as ours does, he is the only elected position chosen by the entire country. The president appoints the prime minister, who is the head of government, and the president does have a form of vetoing power. The point is this: The position is important enough for the fact that Johannesson ran without any party affiliation whatsoever to really matter.
To this day, president-elect Guni Johannesson says he does not support any particular political party. What are his qualifications? He is an expert on political history, diplomacy, and Iceland's constitution. That's all it took for him to win with 39.1 percent of the vote, and he wasn't the only person running for president without party affiliation. Halla Tomasdottir, a businesswoman, came in second place with 27.9 percent, and she also ran independent, without any party affiliation.
Imagine that! The people of Iceland actually had to become educated about what their presidential candidates stood for prior to voting for them.
Folks, Iceland's presidential elections took place on June 25, 2016, and there were 10 people on the ballot running for president! And in previous years, there have never been more than six presidential candidates on the ballot. Iceland has a population of 330,000 people and they've had as many as six people running for president prior to 2016? Yet here we are, the supposed leaders of the free world, limiting ourselves to two corrupt political parties because we don't believe a third option could win? In Iceland, there are so many political parties that the parliament has no choice but to compromise and work together. They have to form alliances in order to get anything done!
Granted, I know Iceland is a smaller country than the U.S. and I know their population demographics are much different, but wouldn't it make more sense that, in a smaller country, there would be far less choices than in a larger one? You could easily say why on earth would Iceland need that many political parties? Wouldn't that just divide the small country unnecessarily? Yet the divisions cause them to come together to find common ground.
Could you imagine if there were so many political parties in the U.S. that Congress saw a benefit in coming together to pass legislation and that legislation would therefore represent what all the people actually wanted? Well, if We the People start to vote for third parties, then this will actually happen. I think of Iceland as a small-scale model for what we could accomplish if we stopped believing only two political parties are capable of running our country. I don't know who started that philosophy, but it's pathetically stupid. And for the record, I'm case in point as to how a third party can win: I ran for governor of Minnesota under the Reform Party against the Democrats and the Republicans. They both outspent me and they both were beating me in the polls, but enough people showed up and voted for me and I was elected. It's really that simple.
And how will the new president of Iceland, who has no party affiliation, be able to work with the system as a complete outsider?
He says that since he has no political bias, he'll be able work with everyone equally to do what's best for Iceland! So maybe we should really be working to abolish all political parties completely. If you don't go into office with an agenda an agenda that is dictated to you by the special interest groups that got you elected in the first place then you do what's best for the people. But first thing's first: This November, the time has come to vote for the third option.
Commentary by Jesse Ventura, the former governor of Minnesota and the author of several books including "Sh*t Politicians Say: The Funniest, Dumbest, Most Outrageous Things Ever Uttered by Our Leaders" (July 12, 2016) and "Jesse Ventura's Marijuana Manifesto" (Sept. 6, 2016). He was a Navy SEAL and is a Vietnam veteran. He was also a professional wrestler from 1975 to 1986 under the ring name Jesse "The Body" Ventura. Follow him on Twitter@GovJVentura.
For more insight from CNBC contributors, follow @CNBCopinion on Twitter.
Estimates published by global consulting agency Synechron say banks looking to relocate 1000 roles would have to shell out, on average, 50,000 ($66,252) per employee.
London-based banks looking to pack up after Brexit could end up spending as much as 50 million ($66.5 million) to relocate to the European Union (EU), a new report says.
The analysis considered the financial burden of hiring and redundancy, new building, infrastructure and rent costs, and well as contingencies.
Financial services are expected to consider setting up shop in European cities like Amsterdam, Dublin, Paris and Frankfurt, where they would be able to maintain passporting rights which allow financial services to do business across EU member states without needing to obtain licensing in each individual country.
"Financial 'passporting' is vital to the work many banks undertake across Europe and they will have to think carefully about which city within the EU their interests and their clients' interests will be best served," Tim Cuddeford, a London-based member of Synechron's Business Consulting Practice said, according to the report.
While incoming financial regulations like MIFID II may provide London-based banks an opportunity to still access the single market, fears of losing those passporting rights may be enough to spook London banks into leaving the U.K.
"Other cities may be just as competitive and worth considering as long as there is access to (a) similar talent pool and infrastructure," Cuddeford explained.
Main Street investors are feeling upbeat about their finances ahead of the Presidential election, even as the wealthy are hoarding cash, two new surveys show.
Eighty-four percent of wealthy investors said that the upcoming election will have a significant impact on their financial health, according to a soon-to-be-released UBS survey.
Though high-net-worth investors usually keep an average of 20 percent of their portfolios in cash, now many of the wealthiest UBS clients have at least 25 percent in cash because of the election, Bob McCann, who chairs the Americas division of UBS, told Reuters. The bank surveyed more than 2,200 high-net-worth investors.
Meanwhile, average American investors are feeling more optimistic about their future. To that point, 46 percent said their finances will stay the same and 39 percent expect their lot to improve over the next year, according to the Heartland Monitor Poll released on Wednesday by Allstate and Atlantic Media.
That positive attitude contrasts with 92 percent of those surveyed in the Heartland poll who said they believe the nation's political system is not working well enough to solve the country's problems. (See chart below.)
"This dichotomy between the dour view of the direction of the country and how people see their finances is a picture that hasn't changed," said Bill Cullo, managing director for FTI, the research firm that conducted the survey of 1,000 individuals. Only 4 percent of those surveyed made $200,000 or more.
As home prices and rents continue to rise, confidence in the housing market is starting to wane. It is showing up in weaker traffic at open houses and less interest in taking on a mortgage as some worry about their student debt loads. The numbers are dropping, and a new survey from the National Association of Realtors only adds fodder to the current market's failings. While three-quarters of Americans surveyed in the second quarter of this year still think now is a good time to buy a home, the numbers are slipping, especially among renters. Just 62 percent of renters said now is the time to move to homeownership, down from 68 percent at the end of last year. Those under the age of 35 were the least confident. Millennials today have the lowest homeownership rate of their age group in recorded history. On the flip side, nearly 4 out of 5 people who currently own a home, as well as respondents over the age of 55, said now is a good time to buy. That is likely because homeowners have seen their equity increase dramatically in just the past year, as prices rise. In fact, home equity jumped by a collective $260 billion in just the first quarter of this year, according to Black Knight Financial Services.
Newscast | UIG | Getty Images
"Existing-home prices surpassed their all-time peak this spring and have climbed on average over 5 percent nationally through the first five months of the year and even faster in areas with severe supply shortages," said Lawrence Yun, chief economist of the Realtors. "Most homeowners appear to realize that if they're ready to sell, they'll likely find a buyer rather quickly and be able to use the sizable equity they've accumulated in recent years towards their next home purchase. Meanwhile, renters interested in buying continue to face minimal choices, strong competition and home prices growing faster than their incomes."
Those with student debt, according to the Realtors' report, are far less likely to want to take on a home loan. Half of respondents with student debt and under the age of 35 said that not only did they not want a mortgage, they doubted they would qualify. "The financial and emotional impact of repaying student debt is contributing to a delay in purchasing a home for many would-be buyers," wrote Yun. "At a time of quickly rising rents, mortgage rates at all-time lows and increasing housing wealth, a lot of young adults in their prime buying years are struggling to enter the market and are ultimately missing out on the stability and wealth accumulation that owning a home can provide."
Jorge Alborta, 32, rented in northern Virginia for seven years before finally buying a home this spring. He and his sister own a restaurant, and his income is below $100,000 annually. He did not have student loan debt, and that played a role in helping him become a homeowner. Still, it was a long and arduous process. "It was a little bit too pricey, all I could afford was an efficiency, one-bedroom apartment, so I started looking in different places, also in D.C. and it was a very long process, and it took a long time," said Alborta.
He also found the mortgage process long and tedious. Alborta wouldn't have been able to afford to buy, but for a low-income housing program in D.C. that helped with closing costs and allowed him to qualify for a lower price in the townhouse community where he purchased. Still, saving for the down payment was arduous "Yes, it was very hard," he said.
News / National
by Staff reporter
PDP leader, Tendai Biti, has called for the arrest of President Robert Mugabe and finance minister Patrick Chinamasa after #ThisFlag pastor's arrest.If there was anyone to be arrested for inciting public violence in Zimbabwe, then it should be President Robert Mugabe and Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa, and not activists who were being persecuted by the government, opposition PDP leader Tendai Biti said Tuesday.Biti was responding to the arrest on allegations of inciting public violence of #ThisFlag Pastor Evan Mawarire by the police in Harare after he handed himself over on Tuesday afternoon. Several other activists were also arrested on similar charges."The person who should be arrested for inciting public violence in Zimbabwe is Patrick Chinamasa who has deliberately failed to pay civil servants their dues and therefore created anger and disaffection," Biti said."The person who should be arrested for causing public violence or creating the potential for public violence is Robert Mugabe who for 36 years has presided over what essentially is a carcass, a corpse of an economy where four million of our people left the country to look for greener pastures," Biti said during a press conference at his party offices in Harare.Biti said 76% of Zimbabweans were living in abject poverty, surviving on less than a dollar a day."Robert Mugabe is responsible for thousands of school leavers graduating from polytechnics and universities without jobs. The person who should be arrested for causing public disaffection is Zanu PF which has created a multitude of homeless people, 60% of our people who are homeless or are living in ill built homes," he added.Biti called for the unconditional release of all the activists arrested as a result of the July 6 protests, saying they had not engaged in any acts of violence as alleged by the police."There must be an unconditional release of activists who are organising peaceful activities, and as far as I am concerned there was no incident of violence on the 6th of July."If there was any violence, it was the much publicised violence when we saw fascist police elements beating citizens, including women and children. There can't be selective application of the rule of law. There can't be rule by the law," he said.He said it was not acceptable that for the first time in the history of the country, the government had failed to pay its workers, which was the elementary responsibility of the minister of finance."Where workers provide labour and are not paid, that is classical definition of slavery and we find it unacceptable that Patrick Chinamasa and Robert Mugabe are subjecting the workers of Zimbabwe to slavery in this century and in this day and age," he said.Biti said that as the PDP, they did not believe that the government did not have money to pay its workers, saying the government was simply not getting its priorities right."We do not accept that the government has no money. The basic challenge here is we are dealing with a profligate, indisciplined government that has no respect of the basic rule of economics that say you do not eat that you do not have and that you should live within your means," he said.He added that the government was a rogue regime that had no fiscal discipline, as evidenced by the millions of dollars spent on travels by the first family and the purchase of top of the range vehicles for ministers worth more than $400 million."It is ironic that a government as poor as this one has government ministers driving some of the most expensive SUVs across the continent," he said.
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There are warning signs that global oil demand is ebbing while oil stocks remain at "elevated levels," threatening a rebalancing act in oil markets, the International Energy Agency (IEA) warned on Wednesday. With oil prices rising since the lows seen at the start of the year, hopes have risen that a "balancing act" between supply and demand in oil markets was finally taking place after two years of declining prices due to a supply glut. But the IEA warned in its latest report that there were warning signs that demand momentum could be ebbing while oil stocks remain high. "After the drama we saw at the beginning of this year when prices were sliding daily, the fact that crude oil has in the past two months moved within a range in the high $40s per barrel should be a relief for some producers. For some time now this Report has signaled a return to balance as being the big picture direction in which the market is heading," the IEA said.
Tyler Stableford | Getty Images
The IEA said that while its data this month suggest that "little has changed with the market showing an extraordinary transformation from a major surplus in the first quarter of 2016 to near-balance in the second quarter of 2016" there were signs of potential instability. "In mid-summer 2016, although market balance is upon us, the existence of very high oil stocks is a threat to the recent stability of oil prices: in the first quarter of 2016 refinery runs growth (referring to the amount of oil a refinery can produce) was 60 percent higher than refined product demand growth," the IEA said. "Despite the regular upwards revisions to demand that we have seen in recent Reports there are signs that momentum is easing; and, although stocks are close to topping out, they are at such elevated levels, especially for products for which demand growth is slackening, that they remain a major dampener on oil prices." With global refinery runs expected to fall by 800,000 barrels a day (b/d) in the second quarter of 2016 before surging by 2.4 mb/d in the third quarter, the IEA said that "we may well see crude oil stocks fall back but there is a risk that, unless demand turns out to be stronger than we currently anticipate, products stocks could rise still further and threaten the whole price structure." Neil Atkinson, head of the Oil Industry and Markets Division at the IEA, summarized the report when speaking to CNBC on Wednesday. "The main point of the report is that although the oil market is coming close to balance in the second half of 2016, it is doing so against a background of very, very high level of oil stocks which have been building up remorselessly over the last three years or so. These high stocks are a major dampener on oil prices," he said, "so I think we're rather range-bound for the time being."
Emerging trends
House Speaker Paul Ryan said his decision to endorse Republican presumptive nominee Donald Trump was a "binary choice ... It's either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton."
Speaking to CNN's Jake Tapper at a town hall, Ryan said that he disagreed with Trump's call to ban immigration by Muslims to the U.S. but didn't directly address a question on how he could support an "openly racist" presidential candidate.
The real estate mogul-turned-politician has drawn ire over his remarks about Mexicans and Muslims, and Ryan himself called Trump's derogatory comments about a Hispanic judge who was presiding over a legal case involving his company "the textbook definition of a racist comment."
"In the balance of things, the good clearly outweighs the things I don't agree with," Ryan told the CNN town hall. "We don't have people who run for office who 100 percent reflect all of our views. It doesn't work like that."
The Speaker also said that he hoped Trump would choose a conservative as his running mate. Trump is reportedly due to reveal his choice of vice president on Friday.
To read the full CNN report, click here:
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News / National
by Staff reporter
The Constitutional Court has ruled that inmates sentenced to life in prison must be considered for presidential pardon.In a landmark judgment handed down this morning, Justice Bharat Patel sitting with eight other judges of the Constitutional Court declared it unconstitutional to sentence convicted murderers to life without any hope for parole or release on licence.The court described it as a violation of human dignity and amounts to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment in breach of Sections 51 and 53 of the Constitution.In the past, inmates were not considered when others with lesser sentences were freed on presidential amnesty.Details to follow
Markets are surging, with the posting a record high on Tuesday. But Cantor Fitzgerald's Bill Nichols cautioned that "within a rising tide, it doesn't necessarily lift all boats."
Nichols, head of Cantor Fitzgerald's U.S. equity trading, told CNBC's "Squawk on the Street" on Wednesday that investors must be nimble given that while the market may generally be trending upward, it has not shown uniform growth. Bank stocks have dipped recently, while other groups like industrials have risen.
However, more broadly Nichols characterized the current market as "in a pendulum," with stocks dropping significantly during the Brexit before rallying back up again. With the U.S. presidential election just months away and uncertainty surrounding the outcome, Nichols said utilities could be attractive on any type of pullback.
"The concerns are still there, you have to look at these big percentage moves," Nichols said. "With the election coming up, certainly a lot of question marks two to three months out."
As the markets rally, bond yields have dropped, with German and Japanese bonds even posting negative yields. BlackRock's Chief Investment Strategist for Fixed Income Jeff Rosenberg told "Squawk on the Street" that investors are facing a scarcity of safer assets, which presents opportunities in fixed income such as investment-grade corporate bonds.
The lower yields are a reminder for investors that bonds are most valuable for their "insurance policy" as providing ballast and diversification, Rosenberg said. Rosenberg added he does not see any signs of change soon.
"The sovereign debt markets are greatly influenced by the behavior of central banks," Rosenberg said. "[Central banks] are in no signs and no panic of trying to unwind any of this kind of distortion."
According to the RNC delegate list obtained by CNBC, North Dakota's Curly Haugland, an RNC member and a member of the rules committee, invited several members of the Delegates Unbound super PAC to attend the RNC meetings. Included on his sponsored delegate list were Gary Emineth, who like Haugland is an unbound North Dakota delegate; former New Hampshire Sen. Gordon Humphrey; and Regina Thompson, a Delegates Unbound co-founder and Colorado delegate and Sen. Ted Cruz supporter.
The RNC did not respond to CNBC's request for a comment on the meeting.
Diana Orrock, RNC Nevada chairwoman and member of the convention rules committee, said Ryder told the meeting the requirement to keep delegates bound to the candidates they had promised to back will stand, as will rules for those designated as unbound delegates. For example, states like North Dakota where delegates are unbound will continue to be unbound, said Orrock. "These are the rules and they have always been the rules and they should be applied," she said.
RNC General Counsel John Ryder presented committee members with a "legal opinion" on why the delegates should be bound on the first ballot. RNC members told CNBC attendees erupted in applause after the presentation. Ryder told members his staff would be distributing the legal opinion this week.
The Republican National Committee has privately laid out its first move to counter the #nevertrump movement.
Humphrey said earlier this week that presumptive presidential nominee Donald Trump needs to be dumped because "he is a sociopath ... and has a personality disorder that would make him unfit to be president."
"None of those individuals Curly sponsored are RNC members, said Orrock. "That was why they needed to be sponsored, because they would have never have been allowed in that meeting. By Curly sponsoring them, everyone in the room knows he is for delegate divide and dissension."
Haugland said he did so as "a courtesy ... for people who want to attend RNC meetings." He added that he also sponsored two members of the Trump campaign to recent RNC meetings.
Orrock said she hopes to receive the official legal opinion by Ryder's office before she attends the first conference rules committee meeting Wednesday. "His opinion was sound. We must obey by the rules," she said.
Kendal Unruh, who declares herself an unbound delegate and was a Cruz supporter, is a leader of the Delegates Unbound. She is expected to present the group's "vote your conscience" rule to the rules committee this week. Her proposal reminds delegates they are "unbound" and can vote for whomever they want either at the convention. That, of course, runs contrary to Ryder's position.
According to RNC rules, delegates have always been able to vote their conscience. Unruh has acknowledged the group knows this but she said it wants to prove a point that the delegates don't want Trump. Delegates Unbound is made up of supporters of Jeb Bush, John Kasich, Marco Rubio and Cruz. Humphrey said earlier if the "vote-your-conscience" rule is passed, Delegates Unbound will disband and then support their candidate.
"Any attempt by the establishment to bind delegates is irrelevant.," Unruh said. "Neither a rule by the RNC to bind or unbind determines whether or not the delegates can exercise their God- given right to vote their free will and conscience.
She said he's confident the minority report will pass onto the floor for the delegates to vote.
Humphrey has said he believes the rule will pass on the floor of the convention because Trump doesn't have the support.
Boeing's 737 Max made its international debut this week at the Farnborough airshow while Airbus was talking up the capabilities of its single-aisle rival the A320neo. But lurking in the wings are upstarts from China and Russia aiming to take on the U.S. and European giants in the narrowbody plane segment, the most popular type of aircraft for carriers. Irkut, a subsidiary of the Russian state-controlled United Aircraft Corporation (UAC) launched the MC-21 single-aisle jet last month in a ceremony attended by the country's Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. The company attended Farnborough, Europe's biggest airshow, as it looks to drum up international business for its jet, which currently has 175 firm orders but mainly in Russia.
Irkut
Irkut touted the design of its plane and fuel efficiency as its biggest selling point, giving customers a comfort level similar to wide-bodied aircraft like the Boeing 787. Speaking to CNBC at the Farnborough airshow on Tuesday, Irkut's marketing chief touted the MC-21's key features such as low cabin pressure and larger width. "The 737 has a fuselage width of 3.75 meters. We have more than 4. And this additional space gives you additional personal space. You could increase the cushion width, you could increase the width of the aisle which could speed up the turnaround time because people can pass each other on the plane," Kirill Budaev, vice president of sales and marketing at Irkut, told CNBC during an interview. Irkut still needs to take its jet on a test-flight to get approved and it said it hopes to be able to deliver the planes at the end of 2018 or beginning of 2019.
China challenge
China has also been making a major play in the global aerospace industry. The state-owned Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (Comac) rolled out its C919 jet in 2015, another single-aisle aircraft to challenge Boeing, Airbus and Irkut. But it has faced severe delays. Comac originally said its first flight would be conducted in 2014, but this is unlikely to happen until 2017 now. It's another aircraft aimed at appealing to airlines due to its fuel efficiency and greater customer experience within the cabin. The C919 has 517 firm orders so far. The upstarts will face a number of challenges dislodging Airbus and Boeing however. One major issue is that these are untried aircraft. "They are coming up against established manufacturers with worldwide networks in terms of spares and support," John Strickland, director of JLS Consulting, told CNBC in a phone interview on Wednesday. "If there is not easy access to spares and support where you are operating that would make airlines more reluctant to buy."
The Comac C919 aircraft. VCG | Getty Images
The analyst added that Comac has a big domestic market which it could exploit. Also airlines will need to find a way to trust Russian and Chinese manufacturers, something that Irkut's sales boss acknowledges. "We accept we have a negative image to the past and we need to do something. Because of that, we have attracted international suppliers to this program, very well-known and the same as Boeing and Airbus have attracted," Budaev said. "MC-21 is not a Russian plane, it's an international plane with Russian brains," he added, explaining that the company's international suppliers such as Pratt & Whitney, Zodiac and Honeywell, will help the aircraft get global appeal.
$3 trillion market
In its annual market forecast, Boeing estimates demand for 39,620 new airplanes over the next 20 years, 28,140 or 71 percent of which will be single-aisle aircraft. The narrowbody segment will be worth $3 trillion alone, and while Boeing and Airbus remain dominant, both are aware of the competition. "What we have to avoid is any kind of hubris as these competitors emerge," Keith Leverkuhn, vice president and general manager of Boeing's 737 Max project, told CNBC on Tuesday.
A Boeing 737 MAX sits outside the hangar during a media tour at the Boeing plant in Renton, Washington. Matt Mills McKnight | Reuters
Nokia 's shares climbed more than 5 percent on Wednesday after it announced an agreement that's likely to boost sales.
Nokia, a Finnish telecom company, will have expanded access to Samsung's patented technologies under an intellectual property agreement. It is expected to boost Nokia's net sales starting in the third quarter, according to a statement.
In particular, Nokia's patent and brand licensing sales are expected to grow at a run rate of 950 million euros by the end of this year, the company said.
"With intellectual property portfolios from Nokia Technologies, Nokia Networks and Alcatel-Lucent, Nokia has a wealth of technologies relevant to mobile devices and beyond," Ramzi Haidamus, president of Nokia Technologies, said in a statement.
Nokia's shares are down nearly 16 percent so far this year.
The Associated Press contributed to this report
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An international tribunal sent a pointed message to China on Tuesday just because you say something is yours doesn't mean it is. This week's binding decision from the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague, Netherlands, dealt a serious blow to China's claim to most of the South China Sea, a 1.4 million-square-mile body of water that contains the world's busiest shipping lanes. The ruling was rejected immediately by the Chinese Foreign Ministry as expected but it has left Beijing in an exceedingly difficult position where it has to balance an angry, nationalistic population against an international community that expects it to back down.
"What's at stake here is the question of China's image and China's future what kind of nation, what kind of country will China be? And how will it be regarded by its neighbors as well as by its people?" Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Daniel Russel told CNBC. A fear of losing territory, which dates to China's bitter and bloody war with Japan in the 20th century, permeates both the leadership in Beijing and the general population in China. In the eyes of the Chinese, a majority of the South China Sea belongs to them backed by what Beijing claims are historical documents that support its sovereignty there. The Hague ruling specifically invalidated those historical claims. So now, the world is watching closely at what President Xi Jinping's course of action will be. "The Chinese won't be happy," said James Keith, a former U.S. ambassador to Malaysia and former National Security Council director for China.
What the Chinese media will say
Experts say it's likely that in the short term, Chinese leadership will use bold and in some cases hostile commentary to demonstrate the country's power and alleviate anxiety among citizens who may start to question China's ability to maintain influence at a time when it's already dealing with a slowing domestic economy.
"China will respond at different levels to the ruling of the ... tribunal, ranging from crude propaganda to highly sophisticated," said Wim Muller of the International Law Programme at policy institute Chatham House in London. Chinese state media over the past three weeks have tried to shape the conversation around the South China Sea dispute, running op-eds and cartoons that dismiss the Hague ruling as either meaningless or part of a conspiracy against China. "It will be tempting for the official press to spin it into the old narrative in which a U.S.- and Western-dominated tribunal is rigged against China and therefore lacks any legitimacy," added Muller.
The military picture
Military confrontation in the South China Sea, in particular in the vicinity of man-made islands that China is building, continues to be an ongoing threat. The U.S. Navy and warships from China both patrol the region, and political strategists stress that the chances of an unintended conflict are rising.
As tensions have worsened, Washington has steadily expanded its presence in Asia-Pacific waters. Other countries with South China Sea claims, especially the Philippines, Vietnam and Indonesia, have taken an increasingly vigilant naval stance. Assistant Secretary Russel stressed the importance of diplomatic engagement and respect for the rule of law. "I do believe China is faced with some important questions regarding its future and its intentions. The United States, China's neighbors, the world, wants to see a responsible neighbor who abides by the rule of law, who honors its commitments under a treaty, and who will work with its neighbors big and small to promote regional stability and regional prosperity," he said. "No good will come for anyone let alone China particularly, as it struggles with a slowing economy from any kind of military clash. I truly do not believe that China seeks that kind of military confrontation," Russel said.
How China's economy comes into play
Aside from the potential military threat, there is also growing speculation around whether China will lash out against international partners by depriving them of the economic benefits they get from doing business in China.
However, most experts who spoke to CNBC said the world's second-largest economy will not allow this particular geopolitical event to impede its economic goals. "While it is embarrassing for President Xi's regime, domestic considerations such as the state of the economy are more important to ordinary Chinese," said Muller. NSBO Bank, a think tank in Beijing, agrees: "If the Chinese use economic policy to protest this ruling, it would be very strange. I don't think they would do it because it wouldn't be productive," said Duncan Wrigley, who specializes in Chinese macro research at NSBO. Ambassador Keith pointed out that there are two important international meetings coming up this fall that China does not want to jeopardize. The first is a scheduled G-20 meeting hosted by China in Hangzhou, where President Barack Obama is scheduled to attend. In October, the IMF is widely expected to formally add the Chinese yuan to its globally recognized basket of reserve currencies. "The Chinese do not want to overreact, because it would undermine their economic goals," Keith said. Shan Huang, a reporter who has worked extensively in China, told CNBC that the country hopes the G-20 meeting will be successful and wants to avoid exacerbating tensions while the global economic recovery faces strong headwinds such as uncertainty around the U.K.'s Brexit vote and a slump in commodities prices. It's "important that all parties show prudence and take no action to raise tensions," Russel said.
As China continues to ignore The Hague's ruling, strategists are warning of heightened tensions that could endanger Beijing's ties with Southeast Asia and hurt President Xi Jinping's international credibility.
Mainland officials have repeatedly publicized their disregard for The Hague's Tuesday court ruling, begging the question of what China's next move will be.
In an official statement, Beijing said it was ready for more diplomatic negotiations to resolve the matter, a move that Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte is also open to. But should diplomatic talks fail, of which there is a high probability of given China's stubborn position, Beijing may resort to military action.
On Wednesday, Vice Foreign Minister Liu Zhenmin said China has the right to set up an air defense zone in the South China Sea, but added that such a move depends on "the level of threats" the country faced. Meanwhile, Chinese ambassador to the U.S. Cui Tiankai said the case could intensify conflict and confrontation in the region, Reuters reported.
Experts largely expect China's response in the coming weeks to consist of strong diplomatic condemnation of the ruling combined with continued steady increase in its regional military presence.
"No state seeks conflict, but any sense that the decision is being used to roll-back China's territorial position will likely lead to an escalation in confrontations with the U.S. and its allies," explained Malcolm Jorgensen, senior lecturer at the University of Sydney.
He said direct negotiations with the Philippines and some form of the 2002 ASEAN provisional code of conduct, in which states agree to suspend sovereignty claims in favor of joint economic activity, remain the most plausible courses of action.
"The ruling won't change anything in the short-term ... China will continue its occupation of the islands and building them up," said James Nolt, senior fellow at World Policy Institute.
The South China Sea is a strategic zone for Southeast Asian nations given its operate profitable fishing and shipping businesses, so it's in the best interest of all parties to avoid the use of force, Nolt added.
Having already wound the populace up to fever pitch with a barrage of nationalist propaganda, China was expected to pull out the rhetorical big guns when it reacted to The Hague's decision on rights to the South China Sea.
And it didn't disappoint. Barely 50 minutes after a tribunal at the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) in the Netherlands ruled that China had no claim to the valuable region, the People's Daily had published an editorial headlined: S. China Sea Arbitration: A U.S.-led conspiracy behind the farce.
The editorial criticized the U.S. for four major "wrong-doings": colluding with its allies to "rubbish China," showing off its military force and putting pressure on China, playing China and Association of South East Asian Nations countries against one other, and manipulating the international arbitration tribunal. Adding to that, the U.S. had complicated the South China Sea issues into a "dead knot," the People's Daily said.
"We do not claim an inch of land that does not belong to us, but we won't give up anything that is ours," Wu Chengliang, an editor at Communist Party-run newspaper, added.
Jiang Li, a writer at state-run Xinhua news agency, also suspected an international plot, in which the Philippines, which brought the case against China to The Hague, and the U.S. were in cahoots.
"The former Philippine government and the United States behind it have conspired for a long time to blackmail China regarding its historic rights to the South China Sea, but to do it through a tribunal that tramples on international justice goes too far," Jiang wrote.
The Global Times newspaper, which is also run by the Communist Party, said the finding by the tribunal's five senior maritime judges was "more shameless than worst prediction," which was relatively measured given the same news outlet wrote earlier this week in an editorial that China should be prepared for "military confrontation" over the issue.
The tone of media coverage was in keeping with the statements from Beijing officialdom.
On Wednesday, China released a white paper reasserting its position that the disputed territories belonged the country, and that the Philippines had no legal claim to the territories.
With Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton expected to announce their vice presidential nominees in the next week or two, the media is frantically speculating about whether their picks will help or hurt their electoral prospects.
Will Trump try to shore up his support among evangelical conservatives? Or will he pick an "attack dog" who will tear into Clinton? Will Clinton want a progressive firebrand to win over Bernie Sanders die-hards? Or will she attempt to cut into Trump's big lead among white men?
What everyone takes for granted is that both Clinton and Trump aren't thinking all that much about who would be a good successor should they die in office. Instead, they're at least partially thinking about who will best help them win this fall.
Vox's Matt Yglesias has a good critique of this line of thinking, and makes the case that the VP pick should be done with governing in mind, rather than short-term electoral politics. All this got me thinking, though why should we force presidential nominees to choose their successors in the heat of an election?
More from Vox:
Understanding Hillary: Why the Clinton America sees isn't the Clinton colleagues know
Stephen Colbert gives Bernie Sanders's campaign a bizarre Hunger Gamesstyle sendoff
The controversy over Ruth Bader Ginsburg attacking Donald Trump, explained
One obvious argument for keeping the VPs on the ballot is that it gives voters a possible veto over particularly objectionable choices. But given that voters don't seem to factor the VP nominees into their choices very much, why shouldn't the winner of the presidency make his or her pick after rather than during the heat of the race? Do we really want to risk letting the country fall into unsteady hands simply because Iowa looked like a battleground state one year?
On Tuesday, I talked to six political scientists who have studied the vice presidency in search of an answer for this question. It turns out there's actually a pretty good defense for keeping things as they are just not the one I had expected.
Current retirees may have worked tirelessly to ensure that their retirement is financially bulletproof, yet for today's typical worker to achieve the same status, they're expecting to save for an additional seven years, new HSBC research suggests. Having interviewed over 18,200 people across 17 countries either online or face-to-face, the leading lender discovered that workers now expect to save for an average of three decades to feel financially secure for retirement seven years more than the previous generation, on average worldwide.
A young couple going through financial problems Geber86 | E+ | Getty Images
"We are seeing, I think, a meaningful change in how investors think about retirement," Michael Schweitzer, HSBC's global head of sales and distribution, told CNBC over the phone.
"Awareness has risen. People have either witnessed or experienced the challenges of people around them who have retired or haven't planned effectively for retirement." "Many people, particularly those in their forties are supporting others such as their children and their parents. So people see that and experience that, and there's a recognition there, that they need to take a more active role in planning for retirement and doing all they can to pad their nest egg for the future," Schweitzer added. The news comes as U.K. citizens become increasingly concerned over their own economic future and savings, following the country's decision to leave the European Union. When asked about how this would impact U.K. retirement plans, Schweitzer said it was too early to determine what the long-term impact would be, but it was best for pre-retirees to always be ready for financial ups and downs. In fact, concerns over global growth and an ageing population in general, make both governments and workers worldwide deliberate over what retirement will look like for future generations.
watch now
According to the researchconducted prior to the Brexit votethe U.K. isn't the worst off however, with pre-retirees in both Britain and the U.S. expecting to save for an additional seven years to each country's current saving average. China's working community is expected to take on the biggest hurdle, with pre-retirees expecting to now save for an additional 14 years, bringing their average saving total up to 23 years, compared to the nine years that current retirees had saved for.
The United Arab Emirates, Australia, France and Hong Kong are also worse off, with each average citizen looking to save for an additional 10 years or more on top of their current average, to feel financially ready for retirement. Meanwhile, Indonesia was the only country surveyed that doesn't expect to save for longer than its current average, as many pre-retirees started saving earlier, but expect to retire earlier too, according to the "Generations and journeys" report.
News / National
by Moses Chamboko
Team ZUNDE unreservedly condemns the persecution of Pastor Evan Mawarire and other protestors disguised as a prosecution on clearly trumped up allegations that have no legal or factual justification whatsoever. However, we are not surprised by what this recalcitrant regime has done to the man of God and a fighter for justice.They have done this before whenever they want to silence the people who challenge the evil they do. Parading Pastor Mawarire in handcuffs before the world and his family is despicable especially at a time when ZANU PF "chefs" continue to roam the streets freely despite known cases of corruption. They desperately want to silence him but he is not the only voice.The only thing that is surprising about the arrest of Pastor Evan Mawarire is that it has not happened sooner. ZANU PF reaction was entirely predictable. We expected nothing else from a rogue regime that has terribly lost its way.They can persecute Evan Mawarire but they cannot silence the people of Zimbabwe. Just as we saw in March 2007 when MDC leaders were brutalised by the evil regime which provoked international condemnation and precipitated the 2008 electoral defeat, there is clearly a replay of that episode, only that the players are different.This is the time for genuine democrats to rally behind and support Evan Mawarire, regardless of where they are.Through its careless but predictable response to protests, ZANU PF is expediting the coming together of Zimbabweans in our quest for justice, freedom, equality and wellbeing.Mufundisi Mawarire, we are with you.Moses ChambokoOn behalf of Team ZUNDEwww.zunde.org; info@zunde.org13 July 2016
News / National
by Staff Reporter
President Robert Mugabe says the government targets to deliver 313 368 housing units and/or serviced stands, which is over and above the ZIMASSET target of 125 000 by 2018, under this National Housing delivery programme.He said this today when he officially launched the National Housing Expo, which is being hosted by the Ministry of Local Government, Public Works and National Housing, in conjunction with Event Manager Greeyps Pvt Ltd, at the Harare International Conference Centre (HICC).The conference runs from the 12th to the 15th July.President Mugabe said for this goal to be achieved it needs an active involvement of all housing stakeholders to pool in resources and investment for sustainable national housing delivery.On account of overstretched off-site and on-site services in existing major towns and cities, the President said the government approved the concept of the creation and development of self-sustaining new urban settlements near major urban centers."The principle is not just to create dormitory or satellite towns but rather create self-contained and sustainable towns that will assist to decongest our conventional cities and towns," said Mugabe.President Mugabe also reiterated that in this endeavor, the government has already identified readily available sites to pilot the concept, that is Chishawasha, Nyatsime, Knock Malloch and Umvutcha and the concept will be replicated in all the other provinces nationwide.The conference's objectives include the promotion of private and public partnership in housing sector and self-sustaining new urban settlements, housing policy direction and implementation and low cost housing technologies and strategies sharing, among others.
Types of obituaries
The Missourian publishes two types of obituaries family obituaries and life stories.
A family obituary is the version submitted by a funeral home or family. Please see the submission form for details on cost and deadlines. Family obituaries
A life story is a closer look at a person's life and involves a reporter contacting family and friends. Life stories are based on newsworthiness and consent of the family. Life stories.
'Wendell & Wild' is great to look at, not much fun to watch
News / National
by Staff reporter
President Robert Mugabe has urged youths to be hardworking, trustworthy and principled, and young couples to persevere in marriage even in the face of challenges so that they build a strong family unity which makes the core of society.He made the remarks at Warren Hills cemetery today during the burial of his sister, Getrude Mutaisi who died on Monday after a long battle with cancer.Mrs Mutaisi was one of the pioneers of the Zanu PF Women's League and during the war, she took care of freedom fighters in her home in Mbare.President Mugabe described Mrs Mutaisi as a principled, trustworthy, hardworking and well mannered woman whose behaviour should be emulated by the youths and young couples.A friend of Mrs Mutaisi, Mai Fungisai Marere revealed that during the war of liberation, party members used to hold secret planning meetings at Mrs Mutaisi's house in Mbare, adding that the young generation must guard against detractors burnt on destroying the nation.Brother-in-law to the late Mrs Mutaisi, Mr Elisha Sinyoro said the family has lost a hero, a counsellor and an advisor, who united the family.The two Vice Presidents; Emmerson Mngangwa and Phelekezela Mphoko, other senior government officials, friends and relatives joined President Mugabe during the burial of Mrs Mutaisi.
News / National
by Staff reporter
Johannesburg - Labour federation Cosatu on Wednesday broke ranks with the African National Congress on the protests in Zimbabwe, by expressing its support for the protesters, News24 reported."Cosatu urges the people of Zimbabwe to continue with the struggle and not to watch idly while the government tramples upon the rights of workers and ordinary citizens," Cosatu international relations secretary Bongani Masuku said.Zimbabweans had tolerated their government's violation of their rights for too long, he said."Such co-ordinated mass action is the only language that unresponsive regimes understand," Masuku said.The labour federation met its Zimbabwean counterpart, the Zimbabwean Congress of Trade Unions, in Johannesburg on Wednesday.Cosatu asked that those detained during the protests be released. They included pastor Evan Mwarire, one of the main drivers of the #ThisFlag movement. Mwarire appeared in court on Wednesday and was charged with inciting public violence.ANC secretary general Gwede Mantashe said on Tuesday that "sponsored elements" were trying to effect regime change at work in Zimbabwe.Zimbabwe's ruling Zanu-PF party, which the ANC considered a fraternal liberation movement, had attributed the #ThisFlag and #ZimShutDown2016 protests to foreign interference.The protests are aimed at getting the government to act on the dire economic situation in the country, which have resulted in some civil servants not getting paid.Masuku said Cosatu was still considering its options about any actions of solidarity.'Serious socio-economic atrocities'Zimbabwe's government had committed "serious socio-economic atrocities" against its people for years, with the latest being the cutting off of people's livelihoods. This was due to the ban on imports of basic commodities, and attempts to bring valueless bond notes into circulation.Masuku said the current "heavy-handedness of the Zanu-PF regime in dealing with perceived enemies" was similar to that of Operation Restore Order/Murambatsvina in 2005."Houses were demolished, people were displaced and thousands were rendered jobless as a result of company closures instigated by poor investment policies and a generalised crisis of poor economic management."Cosatu urged trade unions, civil society and pressure groups in Zimbabwe to stand up against public injustice and corruption.The Zanu-PF government should attend to the issues raised, instead of resorting to populist rhetoric. The masses had the power and right to determine how they should be ruled.Cosatu said, due to the unemployment in Zimbabwe, its citizens were "scattered around the region", a clear sign of its government's failure to serve its people.Zimbabwe's government had to create employment and meet the basic needs of its citizens to stop civil strife.
Explore Six Vintage Buildings That Have Found New Life as Hotels
Methodist University Hospital is located near Downtown Memphis. (Yalonda M. James/The Commercial Appeal)
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By Kevin McKenzie of The Commercial Appeal
Mary L. Brace has had no problem collecting her monthly $670 pension checks from Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare since she retired as a registered nurse in 2009.
Still, a newspaper advertisement and an attorney from a Pennsylvania law firm have led Brace to be the lead name on a federal lawsuit claiming the Memphis health care systems pension fund has been chronically underfunded.
Methodist officials disagree.
The Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare pension plan is in good health, Dawn Ray, director of strategic communications, said by e-mail.
The Pennsylvania law firm of Kessler Topaz Meltzer & Check LLP in May ran a local ad seeking participants in Methodists defined benefit pension plan, which in 2009 was closed to newcomers.
When Brace answered the ad, a lawyer arrived at her Shelby Forest home and convinced here that the pension plan was underfunded by $118.5 million in 2014, as the lawsuit contends.
That was a jump from a year earlier, when the plan had been underfunded by about $49 million, claims the suit, filed in federal district court in Memphis on June 11.
It also claims that Methodists pension is not a church plan and should be subject to funding and reporting requirements of the federal Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974.
Im furious about it, said Brace, who will turn 70 in August. When both people are on pensions and they lose one of them, thats like losing your income.
Brace worked for Methodist for about 17 years. Her husband also is retired
The pension plan includes about 12,000 people, of which about 5,000 are active employees, Methodist officials said.
With the pension plan closed to new entrants in 2009, Methodist offers defined contribution plans such as a 401(k) matching every dollar that an employee contributes up to the limit set by the IRS, Ray said.
Methodist is committed to following best practices for pension plan funding and we work with external retirement plan experts to carefully oversee and monitor our plans to ensure we will continue to meet obligations to our associates in the future, Ray said.
The health care system, including six acute-care hospitals in the Memphis area, has the necessary IRS approval to be granted church plan status, she said. For more than 100 years, the system has been guided by the mission and ministry of the United Methodist Church, with three bishops of the Memphis, Mississippi and Arkansas United Methodist Conference sitting on the board of directors, officials said.
The lawsuit maintains that Methodist is a healthcare conglomerate, not a church, and has a board of directors not controlled by a church. Only three of the 24 directors appear to members of the clergy, it contends.
It also maintains that Methodist receives a competitive advantage over other nonprofit healthcare entities that comply with ERISA.
The federal lawsuits seek class-action status to represent Methodist pensioners. Kessler Topaz Meltzer & Check specializes in class-action lawsuits and has been listed before on a consulting groups honor roll of most feared law firms, according to the firms website.
The Bramlett law offices in Nashville and Izard Nobel LLP in West Hartford, Connecticut also are listed as lawyers representing plaintiffs in the lawsuit.
Attorneys with the firms did not respond to requests for comment.
Stan Carroll/The Commercial Appeal July 12, 2016 Keith Goldberg has been named Executive Creative Director by Sullivan Branding. Goldberg comes to the Memphis based agency from Seattle, Washington, where he was co-founder and executive creative director of Bureau155.
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By Sydney Neely, sydney.neely@commercialappeal.com
Keith Goldberg, the award-winning creator of one of advertising's most iconic taglines, has joined Sullivan Branding as the executive creative director.
Goldberg, who helped create the "What's in your wallet?" television campaign for credit card issuer Capital One, has the potential to bring national accounts to the 60-employee agency in Memphis.
"We wanted to hire somebody bigger than we are," said Brian Sullivan, chief executive at Sullivan Branding.
Originally from New York City, Goldberg moved to Memphis from Bureau155 in Seattle, where his clients included Cracker Jack'D, Fiji Water, 7-Eleven, Frito Lay, Mr. Coffee, Slurpee, Target and a Memphis restaurant chain, Lyfe Kitchens. He is credited with writing the tagline "Feed Yourself" for Lyfe.
Visiting Memphis to work on the Lyfe campaign, Goldberg was charmed by the city and when Sullivan Branding cast about the country for a top creative director, he was among the 50 applicants. "The response we had was phenomenal," Sullivan said, adding, "We are stunned ... to get him."
Goldberg was executive creative director for Bureau155, which he co-founded in 2011. Sullivan Branding appealed to him, he said, because the agency shares his passion and vision for small-to mid-sized independent agencies. The Memphis agency considers its largest account to be Methodist LeBonheur Healthcare in Memphis.
"Memphis is a city and Sullivan is an agency that is on the cusps of what's next," Goldberg said. "It's about coming to a place and a city that's on the rise with an agency that's been on the rise."
His campaign for major brands have been honored at the National Addys, Cannes Lions, Mobile Marketing Association and the Webby awards. He is also a New York Advertising Walk of Famer.
The Capital One campaign has brought the most media attention. Pointed out USA Today's advertising writer: "There are the TV commercials that seem to air continuously. They pound their message into a consumer's brain, like the famous Anacin ads of the 1950s depicting a headache as a hammer inside a skull ... The winner of this year's "Ring-Around-the-Collar" award for repetition could be ... Capital (One's) several variations of its 'What's in your wallet?' campaign. One shows a rampaging group of Vikings/Visigoths/Huns it's hard to tell who represent high rates and fees on rival credit cards. They stop dead in their tracks at the sight of a consumer pulling out a Capital One card.''
Goldberg, who said he is in his 40s and has been in the marketing business for more than 20 years, described Memphis itself as inspirational.
"One of the things that's really interesting about this market from a creative perspective is that I really believe that the soul of Memphis really is the engine for what advertising should be," Goldberg said. "Memphis has the soul of a place that we can reach out and touch people and that's what we want to happen here."
He expects his experience working on national accounts will help Sullivan Branding expand, he said, although his short period with the Memphis firm has taught him to better do his job.
"I'm here to grow," Goldberg said.
SHARE Alice Cooper Welcome to My Nightmare Grand Funk Railroad Phoenix Black Sabbath "Sabbath Bloody Sabbath" Alice Cooper at the Palace Promo Poster.
By Bob Mehr of The Commercial Appeal
Next week, the Memphis Rock 'n' Soul Museum will shine a light on a often neglected art form: the album cover.
The Rock 'n' Soul's new exhibit, "The Fine Art of Rock," features original paintings, pen-and-inks and drawings of some of the most familiar and iconic album covers of all time: from Aerosmith to Black Sabbath, Jefferson Airplane to the Turtles.
The exhibit presented by Radian Partners with FedEx is curated by Ernie Cefalu. The Grammy- nominated Cefalu has enjoyed a 40-plus-year career as a designer. For almost 15 years, through the '70s and '80s, he served as creative director for the noted album design firm Pacific Eye & Ear personally creating about 189 covers during those years, and supervising hundreds more. In addition, the California-bred Cefalu helped create iconic logos and work on campaigns for "Jesus Christ Superstar" and the Rolling Stones, among others.
At Pacific Eye & Ear, Cefalu worked with a roster of talented artists whose work is featured in the exhibit, including Bill Garland, Joe Patagno, and Drew Struzan. "Drew Struzan went on to do all the 'Star Wars' and 'Raiders of the Lost Ark' posters," says Cefalu. "He's now the most collected illustrator in the world."
Cefalu is highlighting the work of Struzan and others as part of a 46-piece collection that will be on display at the Rock 'n' Soul through Nov. 20. The original pieces include covers for the Bee Gees, Black Oak Arkansas, Canned Heat, Alice Cooper, Earth, Wind & Fire, Grand Funk Railroad, Iron Butterfly, and more. On Thursday, Cefalu be in Memphis for a 6 p.m. lecture and Q&A session at the Rock 'n' Soul (the event is free and open to the general public).
For Cefalu, putting together the biggest collection of original album art in the world came about almost by accident.
"I'm a pack rat, and I never throw anything away," Cefalu said of how "The Fine Art of Rock" initially came about. "I had Alice Cooper's 'Welcome to My Nightmare' painting, the original oil painting that Drew Struzan did, hanging in my place. And this friend of mine was over, and he said to me, 'How many of those pieces do you have?' I said, 'I don't know maybe 30, or 40.'"
The exchange got Cefalu thinking and, more important, looking through his house and storage facilities. "It was like an Easter egg hunt," he recalls. "I searched everywhere, and when I gathered everything together, I ended up with about 350 pieces. I thought I had a few things; I didn't realize I had an entire collection."
Looking back on the work that he and the others had done, Cefalu was struck by just how good the craft was, and how famous some of the imagery would become.
"At the time, when we were working, we never stepped back and thought this stuff is going to be huge or iconic 40 or 50 years down the line. You're just doing it and don't consider those things. And now looking back on it, the original artwork itself is really impressive and does hold up."
"Something like the Black Sabbath 'Sunday Bloody Sabbath' cover, which is in the Rock 'n' Soul, it's (30-inch-by-40-inch) piece, which is huge most people don't realize the scale of the original art that ends up on an album. But some of the pieces are really breathtaking."
Much of the material done by Pacific Eye & Ear was album design work, though the company also did a lot of inventive corporate work. Some of those pieces are being displayed around Memphis at Radian Partners, Disciple Gallery and the Art & Speed Classic Car Gallery.
Says Cefalu: "Commercial work was helpful because it helped me understand marketing and packaging and branding. In a way, when you look at these band logos or album covers, that's what we were doing: We were branding, before we knew what 'branding' was."
In addition to the 350-plus finished pieces of album art, Cefalu's search produced another 200 sketches and more than 3,000 music-related photographs. He says has talked to the Rock 'N' Soul about possibly partnering with the Memphis museum in hopes that it might serve as a long-term home for his archive.
"We're taking this exhibit and going to Canada later this year, and back to the Morrison Gallery in Los Angeles in early 2017," says Cefalu. "What started out as a collection has turned into a traveling show but I'd love for it to find a home. I think album artwork is so overlooked. When you go to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame or other places like that, album art doesn't have a real presence. It would be great for this stuff to have a real place at the Rock 'n' Soul."
The Fine Art of Rock Through Nov. 20 at the Memphis Rock n Soul Museum, 191 Beale. Open 7 days a week from 10 a.m. until 7 p.m. Regular admission is $12 for adults; $9 for youths 5-17. fOR more information, call (901) 205-2533, or go to memphisrocknsoul.org.
Rapper Marco Pave was among the local artists supporting the Black Lives Matters protests in Memphis this past week.
SHARE Lost Sounds reborn: The Sweet Knives. Johnny Valiant (from left), Rich Crook, Alicja Trout, and John Garland. (Photo by Dan Ball)
By Bob Mehr of The Commercial Appeal
Over the past couple of years, Marco Pave has emerged as one of the progressive and political hip-hop voices in Memphis. His debut EP, "Perception" released last fall was born out of the turbulent racial climate of 2014. Its centerpiece, "Black Tux," was a tribute to Mike Brown, the black 18-year-old killed by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. "'Black Tux' is a metaphor for how America views black bodies and treats black lives," Pave wrote at the time. "I considered it my offering to the Black Lives Matter movement."
No surprise then that this past Sunday amid nationwide protests of police violence against African-Americans Pave was one of many activists on the Hernando DeSoto Bridge in support of the Black Lives Matter shutdown of Interstate 40.
"Artists are always on the forefront; artists are always a part of these movements," says Pave. "I've been watching the (local) news channels the last couple days, and been seeing different groups of friends, artists I work with, who were on the bridge with their hands up refusing to leave. Everyone is motivated and upset, and striving for something collectively right now."
Pave says the national racial climate has had, and continues to have, a deepening impact on the kind of music local artists are making. "I think so. It's definitely getting there. When I first dropped 'Black Tux,' people thought that's not going to do well, that's not what folks want to hear," he says. "But now a lot of artists are moving to that kind of (topical material) because they know art is the way to save these moments to save it and put it on wax, and it'll be a testimony to that history, showing what we were going through."
Just before the latest round of protests erupted, Pave released a single, "Gangsta Party Reloaded," that actually had a more personal meaning than a political one. "I haven't even been focused on it, given recent events," he says.
The song is a reworking of "Gangsta Party" a 2006 track by veteran Memphis rapper Yo Gotti. The record finds Pave reworking and rhyming over the original beat which was produced by Gotti's and Pave's mutual collaborator Carlos Broady. Both North Memphians, Pave and Gotti met this past March at the South by Southwest music conference in Austin, introduced at an Apple Music party.
"It was 10 years on from when I was skipping school to go to his 'Gangsta Party' video shoot," recalls Pave. "A few weeks ago, I was going through some North Memphis-style beats, and said I should actually rap on this. It's a big connection and big lineage there."
Since then, Pave has moved on to his next single, one he says is a return to topical form, called "Best Believe." It will come out in September, along with an accompanying video.
In the next couple of months, Pave will tour the South paired with New Orleans rapper Alfred Banks ("We're calling it the River Kings tour since we're both from cities on the Mississippi") before an October slot opening for Tech N9NE at the New Daisy Theatre.
July 13, 2016 - Black Lives Matter supporters gather along Union Avenue to protest The Commercial Appeal.
(Brad Vest/The Commercial Appeal)
By Kayleigh Skinner and Yolanda Jones of The Commercial Appeal
Protesters gathered in front of The Commercial Appeal offices Wednesday to voice their disappointment in the newspaper for its coverage historically.
Kim Hill said she canceled her subscription because she felt the newspaper didnt cover the African-American community properly.
I feel like black people have been represented in an unfavorable light by The Commercial Appeal, Hill said.
Rev. Earle Fisher announced the protest Tuesday via Facebook Live. He called for people to gather at the newspaper at 495 Union Avenue to protest what he called an incendiary headline published on the front page of Saturdays newspaper.
The headline he referenced reads Gunman targeted whites, referring to last weeks fatal shooting of five police officers and wounding of others during a Black Lives Matter protest in Dallas. The Commercial Appeal Editor Louis Graham responded Tuesday with a column, writing Simply put, we got it wrong.
I wanted us to gather to let the Commercial Appeal know that there are bodies attached to some of our angst and frustrations, Fisher said.
At about 12:15 p.m., about 30 people had gathered in the front of the building. Memphis police were parked across the street.
We are here because we deserve better from every mainstream media outlet. We are going to make our demands, we are going to be fair and reasonable and hold people accountable, Fisher said.
About 50 protesters gathered in front of The Commercial Appeal offices Wednesday to voice their disappointment in the newspaper for its coverage historically.
Kim Hill said she canceled her subscription because she felt the newspaper didnt cover the African-American community properly.
I feel like black people have been represented in an unfavorable light by The Commercial Appeal, Hill said.
Rev. Earle Fisher announced the protest Tuesday via Facebook Live. He called for people to gather at the newspaper at 495 Union Avenue to protest what he called an incendiary headline published on the front page of Saturdays newspaper.
The headline he referenced reads Gunman targeted whites, referring to last weeks fatal shooting of five police officers and wounding of others during a Black Lives Matter protest in Dallas.
The Commercial Appeal Editor Louis Graham responded Tuesday with a column, writing Simply put, we got it wrong.
I wanted us to gather to let The Commercial Appeal know that there are bodies attached to some of our angst and frustrations, Fisher said.
At about 12:15 p.m., about 30 people had gathered in the front of the building. Memphis police were parked across the street. We are here because we deserve better from every mainstream media outlet. We are going to make our demands, we are going to be fair and reasonable and hold people accountable, Fisher said.
Members of the Memphis Newspaper Guild gave out water and staffers talked to protesters about their concerns. Memphis police directed traffic along Union in front of the office.
Shahidah Jones said that The Commercial Appeal has too often taken a side, but other Memphis media outlets are guilty as well. Its not a personal attack, its not about the individual writers, but it is about making sure that we can hold ourselves accountable too, Jones said.
While protesters held Black Lives Matter signs and cars honked as they drove by on Union Avenue, Fisher and four of his peers left the crowd to have a closed meeting with The Commercial Appeal executives.
Meanwhile, the family and attorneys for Darrius Stewart, the black teen who was killed a year ago by a white Memphis police officer, arrived at the newspaper to announce they had filed a $17 million lawsuit against the city, former police director Toney Armstrong and former MPD officer Connor Schilling.
A Shelby County grand jury declined to indict Schilling in Stewarts death, but a Justice Department investigation is ongoing. Fisher asked his fellow protesters to support them.
George Cogswell, president and publisher of The Commercial Appeal, editor Louis Graham, managing editor Mark Russell and editorial page editor and columnist Jerome Wright met with Fisher, Faye London, Shahidah Jones, Rev. Andre Johnson and Ben Short.
Cogswell said the discussion revolved around increasing diversity at the newspaper and the events it covers. Our organization, like many others, does not reflect the makeup of our community, which in this city is 65 percent African-American and like many others, we dont reflect that, Cogswell said.
Fisher said his group requested The Commercial Appeal staff receive cultural sensitivity training and actively work to increase the number of minority reporters employed. He added that there was not adequate gender representation in their meeting because no female executive was present.
We didnt come here thinking there was going to be some kind of kumbaya moment after 90 minutes, Fisher said. We knew that the issues have been comprehensive and structural and they required that type of response.
Fisher and Cogswell said the groups will meet monthly to continue the conversation.
We appreciate them hearing us out and I think I can speak for all of us when I say the conversation was frank, it was robust and it was sincere, and it will bear much fruit in the months and in the years to come, Fisher said.
Black Lives Matter demonstrators gather at Fox Run Square on Mt. Moriah Road Tuesday evening. Protesters began protesting around lunchtime at Graceland and moved to various locations around the city through the evening. (Brad Vest/Commercial Appeal)
By Kayleigh Skinner and Katie Fretland of The Commercial Appeal
After blocking Elvis Presley Boulevard in front of Graceland earlier Tuesday afternoon, members of Black Lives Matter continued their protests around the city starting around 5 p.m.
Demonstrators protested briefly outside a convenience store in which one the owners or employees allegedly made a posted a disparaging remark online about the protesters who walked onto the Hernando DeSoto bridge across the Mississippi River Sunday, effectively shutting it down for hours.
After leaving the grocery store Tuesday night, the protesters headed to Southland Mall, where mall security told them to protest on the sidewalk because the parking lot was private property.
By 7:30 p.m., about 40 protesters had moved to a barber shop on Mt. Moriah Road. Police arrived asking demonstrators for a permit to gather. In response, protesters spread out along the sidewalk into smaller groups.
July 12, 2016 - Protesters with the Black Lives Matter movement march through the crosswalk outside Graceland on Elvis Presley Blvd Tuesday afternoon. Roughly 60-70 people gathered peacefully outside the gates of the famous tourist destination. (Mike Brown/The Commercial Appeal)
By Kayleigh Skinner of The Commercial Appeal
Abyssinian Missionary Baptist Church Pastor Earle Fisher urged the Memphis community to remain involved in the city's social justice movement, beginning with a protest at The Commercial Appeal on Wednesday.
Fisher made a series of announcements via Facebook Live Tuesday morning.
He called for the community to gather at the newspaper located at 495 Union Avenue to protest an "incendiary headline" published on the front page of Saturday's newspaper.
Those who gather at noon Wednesday will "challenge the newspaper to explain their rationale for what they printed on Saturday," he said.
The headline in question reads "Gunman targeted whites," referring to last week's shooting spree in which five police officers were killed and others were injured in Dallas, Texas at a Black Lives Matter protest.
"We deserve better from our mainstream media," he said.
Fisher also announced a gathering at 6 p.m. Friday at New Direction Christian Church's youth campus, 5777 Winchester, to honor slain teen Darrius Stewart. Stewart, 19, was shot and killed during a traffic stop by former Memphis Police officer Connor Schilling in July 2015.
There will be a "social justice fair" from 12 p.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday at Abyssinian Missionary Baptist Church. At 2 p.m. There will be a Black Lives Matter panel discussion, he said.
Fisher's announcement can be viewed here.
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By Jody Callahan of The Commercial Appeal
A Memphis man has been sentenced to more than eight years in federal prison for distributing child pornography, the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Tennessee said Wednesday.
Julius Ford, 26, was sentenced to to 97 months in prison as well as 10 years of supervised release after his March guilty plea to one count of distribution of child pornography.
According to officials, Ford sent images and videos of children engaged in sexual conduct to others. In September 2014, Homeland Security agents in Memphis received a tip about someone in Memphis using a flagged email account to send and receive emails containing child pornography. The investigation pointed to Ford; he later confessed his involvement, officials said.
July 12, 2016 Interim Police Director Rallings speaks at a press conference at 201 Poplar. (Brad Vest/The Commercial Appeal)
By Jody Callahan of The Commercial Appeal
Memphis Police Department Interim Director Mike Rallings said six people were issued misdemeanor citations for blocking parts of Elvis Presley Boulevard outside Graceland Tuesday as part of the continuing Black Lives Matter protests.
All six were physically removed from the road, issued those citations and later released, Rallings said in a late press conference at police headquarters Tuesday night.
Such a citation means they will be due in court at some point, but none of them were actually processed into the jail. Protesters also rallied at three other locations around the city Tuesday the 4800 block of Getwell, the 1200 block of E. Shelby Drive and the 5700 block of Mt. Moriah but there were no incidents at those locations.
"As I've said many times, there's no problem with conducting a protest. However, it must remain peaceful and it must remain lawful," Rallings said.
News / Press Release
by Zimvigil
Feelings ran high as Zimbabwean exiles demonstrated outside the Zimbabwe Embassy in London today in support of thetwo-day #ShutdownZimbabwe called by Pastor Evan Mawarire of the #ThisFlag protest movement.Demonstrators - some draped in the Zimbabwe flag - demanded that charges be dropped against Pastor Mawarire, who was arrested in Harare on Tuesday accused of inciting violence.One poster read: '36 years of freedom: no free speech, no freedom. Free Evan Mawarire'. Another poster read 'No more injustice, no more corruption, no more poverty, no more Mugabe'.About 150 people were there to hear a demand that there should be no western aid to prop up the Mugabe regime. The demand was made by Ephraim Tapa of the Zimbabwe Vigil who is also president of ROHR (Restoration of Human Rights in Zimbabwe).Tapa said 'We say no to money for Mugabe and Zanu PF. We don't trust them. They will buy more tear gas, more water cannons, more military weapons, more helicopters.'Any loans from the west must be given only to a legitimate regime or they will not be honoured. We want politicalreforms, economic reforms. We want Mugabe to go and a transitional authority to organise free and fair elections monitored by the international community'.Tapa called for the release of all those arrested in the ongoing unrest informed by social media such as #ThisFlag , Tajamuka (we have arisen), Occupy Africa Unity Square, Hatichada (enough is enough) and others including Linda Masarire of ROHR and those arrested in Beit Bridge and elsewhere.Among the demonstrators were many women banging pots and pans with sticks ahead of the 'Beat the pot' protest to be held on Saturday which will be observed by the Vigil.During the protest which went on for more than two hours, a black Mercedes with the number plate ZIM 1 remained stationary outside the Embassy. Perhaps the Ambassador 'stayed away'.
July 13, 2016 - DeVante Hill (right) embraces Darrius Stewart's father Henry Williams on the courthouse steps to show support for the family. Attorneys for Stewart's family announced they have filed a $17 million wrongful death lawsuit against former police director Toney Armstrong and former MPD officer Connor Schilling as well as the City of Memphis. Stewart was killed during a traffic stop on July 17, 2015. (Mike Brown/The Commercial Appeal)
SHARE July 13, 2016 - Mary Stewart (right) holds a photo of her son, Darrius Stewart, before a press conference outside The Commercial Appeal. Attorneys for the family of Darrius Stewart announced they have filed a $17 million wrongful death lawsuit against former police director Toney Armstrong and former MPD officer Connor Schilling as well as the City of Memphis. Stewart was killed during a traffic stop on July 17, 2015. (Mike Brown/The Commercial Appeal) July 13, 2016 - Darrius Stewart's father Henry Williams talks under the statue of Authority on the courthouse steps. Attorneys for the family of Darrius Stewart announced they have filed a $17 million wrongful death lawsuit against former police director Toney Armstrong and former MPD officer Connor Schilling as well as the City of Memphis. Stewart was killed during a traffic stop on July 17, 2015. (Mike Brown/The Commercial Appeal) Related Coverage Department of Justice declines to prosecute officer in Darrius Stewart case
By Katie Fretland of The Commercial Appeal
Attorneys for the family of Darrius Stewart announced a multi-million-dollar federal civil rights lawsuit Wednesday against the city, former police director Toney Armstrong and the officer who killed Stewart nearly one year ago.
The timing of the lawsuit this week and the amount of damages sought $17.1 million is symbolic as Stewart was killed July 17, said attorney Arthur Horne. Stewart, a black 19-year-old, was fatally shot by Schilling, a white officer, after a traffic stop in Hickory Hill, sparking protests in Memphis.
There was a grave injustice here at the hands of someone sworn to protect and serve, said attorney Carlos Moore. He was an employee of the city of Memphis. He utilized excessive force, killing an unarmed young black man. Thats unacceptable. The citys policies and procedures and the total atmosphere at the Memphis Police Department led him to do this.
The lawsuit was filed amid days of protests in Memphis where demonstrators took to streets chanting Black lives matter and No justice, peace, no racist police. On Sunday, protesters shut down both sides of Interstate 40 over the Mississippi River.
Attorneys for the family of Darrius Stewart announced a multi-million-dollar federal civil rights lawsuit Wednesday against the city, former police director Toney Armstrong and the officer who killed Stewart nearly one year ago.
The timing of the lawsuit this week and the amount of damages sought $17.1 million is symbolic as Stewart was killed July 17, said attorney Arthur Horne. Stewart, a black 19-year-old, was fatally shot by Connor Schilling, a white officer, after a traffic stop in Hickory Hill, sparking protests in Memphis.
There was a grave injustice here at the hands of someone sworn to protect and serve, said attorney Carlos Moore. He was an employee of the city of Memphis. He utilized excessive force, killing an unarmed young black man. Thats unacceptable. The citys policies and procedures and the total atmosphere at the Memphis Police Department led him to do this.
The lawsuit was filed amid days of protests in Memphis where demonstrators took to streets chanting Black lives matter and No justice, no peace, no racist police. On Sunday, protesters shut down both sides of Interstate 40 over the Mississippi River.
In the federal complaint, attorneys for Stewarts parents allege that Memphis police check young black males for warrants disproportionately.
The city and former police director also failed to punish officers for unconstitutional conduct and sent a clear message to police officers that it is OK to shoot first and ask questions second if the officer thinks that there is any chance that a potential suspect or future victim may have a weapon or may pose a threat to the officer, according to the lawsuit submitted by Horne, Moore, Murray Wells, and Black Lawyers for Justice president Malik Shabazz, who is a former New Black Panther Party chairman.
According to a report by the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation on the shooting, a friend of Stewart said he picked up Stewart that night and they drove on Winchester. Schilling said he pulled them over because a headlight was out and asked for identification from the occupants of the car, the friend said.
Stewart was placed in the police car without handcuffs, and Schilling allowed Stewart to overhear radio transmissions that he would be held on outstanding warrants, the attorneys wrote in the lawsuit. Stewart had a warrant in Iowa for a sexual abuse charge from 2009, when he was 13. Another warrant was filed in Illinois for failure to appear in court.
Schilling also failed to call for backup, the attorneys wrote.
After Schilling ran warrants, police said the officer opened a door to the car to handcuff Stewart. Police said Stewart kicked the door and attacked Schilling.
Schilling said Stewart clawed his shirt and grabbed at everything on my belt, seeming to grab for anything he could use to hurt me, according to the TBI report. Stewart got his handcuffs and struck the officer in his arms, face and nose, Schilling said.
He also said he felt pressure on his duty weapon. The officer said he realized that if Stewart hit him into unconsciousness, Stewart could kill or seriously injure him. I planted my right foot in a kneeling position and took out my duty weapon and shot him twice in the chest, Schilling said.
Some witnesses to the shooting said Stewart was fleeing or turning away when he was shot. One witness said Stewart stumbled as if he couldnt use his hand. It seemed as if his hands were restricted. I couldnt tell if his hands were handcuffed or not. The suspect stood up and began to turn away and looked as if he was gonna run when I saw the second gun shot.
A grand jury declined to indict Schilling despite the Shelby County District Attorney Generals recommendation for charges of voluntary manslaughter and using a firearm during the commission of a dangerous felony. Attorney General Loretta Lynch said Tuesday that a U.S. Department of Justice investigation into Stewarts death is still under review.
My son Darrius was an outgoing young man whose life was just stolen, his mother Mary Stewart said Wednesday. Darrius always had a dream of becoming a doctor. That dream was just shattered by officer Connor Schilling.
She said Schilling should be charged with first-degree murder and should receive the death penalty.
If a black person killed someone theyre immediately charged with first-degree murder, she said. They dont take their time and allow them to retire off a pension and lifetime benefit. He had PTSD? How do they think I feel? I cant even get my life back together. Everybody else out here living. I cant even sleep.
The city released a statement Wednesday by Chief Legal Officer Bruce McMullen, who said the case was presented to the grand jury after a lengthy investigation.
The grand jury, which has a very low standard for proceeding to prosecution, issued a no true bill, McMullen said. In other words, the grand jury reviewed the specific facts of this case, determined that there was insufficient evidence to indict the officer, and declined to prosecute.
McMullen expressed confidence in the policies, training and procedures in place under Armstrong.
Attorney Arthur Quinn, who has been Schillings point of contact with the federal authorities, said he does not plan to comment until the Department of Justice finishes its inquiry.
The Commercial Appeal reporter Wayne Risher contributed to this report.
Marsha Blackburn (Mike Brown/The Commercial Appeal)
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By Michael Collins of The Commercial Appeal
WASHINGTON Rep. Marsha Blackburn is asking the FBI and other federal agencies to open a "public corruption" investigation into the activities of the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation.
In a letter she is circulating to other House members, the Brentwood Republican says media reports have raised significant questions about the foundation's practices and their intersection with American foreign policy.
"These reports, along with recently discovered information about the foundation's initial tax exempt filings, portray a lawless 'Pay to Play' enterprise that has been operating under a cloak of philanthropy for years and should be investigated," the letter says.
The letter will be sent Friday to FBI Director James Comey, IRS Commissioner John Koskinen and Edith Ramirez, chairwoman of the Federal Trade Commission. Blackburn asks all three agencies to investigate the foundation's practices.
A spokesman for the Clinton Foundation did not respond to a request for comment.
In the letter, Blackburn suggests the foundation's international activities are illegal. In its initial filings with the IRS, the foundation said its activities would involve constructing a presidential library, maintaining a historical site with records and engaging in study and research.
"No mention is made of conducting activities outside of the United States, which is one of the codes included in the IRS 'Application for Recognition of Exemption' in effect at that time," the letter says.
The letter also raises questions about the foundation's dealings with two companies, Laureate International Universities and Uranium One.
The International Youth Fund, whose board members include Laureate's founder, Douglas Becker, received more than $55 million in grants from the U.S. Agency for International Development while Hillary Clinton was secretary of State, the letter says. Laureate has given between $1 million and $5 million to the Clinton Foundation and paid Bill Clinton $16.5 million to serve as honorary chairman.
As for Uranium One, Hillary Clinton, now the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, was one of several Obama administration officials who approved the sale of uranium to the Russian-operated company, whose chairman also has donated $2.35 million to the Clinton Foundation, according to the letter.
"The appearance of 'Pay to Play' transactions involving Laureate and Uranium One also raise serious allegations of criminal conduct requiring further examination," the letter says.
Blackburn sent letters to the IRS and the Federal Trade Commission earlier this year asking them to investigate the foundation's activities. Her office said Wednesday that at least 40 House members have signed the new letter.
Appearing before a congressional committee last week, Comey declined to say whether the FBI looked into the Clinton Foundation's activities as part of its investigation into Hillary Clinton's emails.
"I'm not going to comment on the existence or non-existence of any other investigations," Comey said in response to a question from Republican Rep. Jason Chaffetz of Utah, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
Yemeni women's rights activist and 2011 Nobel peace laureate Tawakkol Karman (left) and Sixth Circuit United States Court of Appeals Judge Damon Keith are among those being honored with Freedom Awards by the National Civil Rights Museum. (AP Photos)
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By Kayleigh Skinner of The Commercial Appeal
Civil Rights attorney Benjamin Crump, journalist Soledad OBrien and Yemeni human rights activist Tawakkol Karman are among the recipients of the National Civil Rights Museums 2016 Freedom Award, the museum announced Wednesday.
Museum president Terri Lee Freeman also said U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Damon Jerome Keith and attorney and social justice activist Bryan Stevenson would receive the Freedom award this year.
The 25th Freedom Award will recognize individuals who have dedicated their lives to ensuring justice for all in disenfranchised communities, Freeman said.
Each year, the award honors outstanding contributions to civil and human rights. This years award theme: And Justice for All.
The museum will also present a special tribute to the Memphis 13, a group of black first graders who first desegregated Memphis City Schools in 1961.
Crump is well known for taking on high profile, pro-bono cases. He provided representation for the families of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown and Tamir Rice.
Karman was awarded with a Nobel Peace Prize in 2011 for her work in Yemen pushing for the safety of women and womens rights.
Detroit-based Keith is the longest serving judge in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit Court and presided over multiple cases which resulted in historic rulings on wire-tappings, privacy, segregation and more.
OBrien is chairman of Starfish Media Group and also works as a journalist and executive producer. OBrien also worked with CNN, where she helped produce the documentaries Black in America and Latino in America, which show the trials, successes and complexities of being black or Latino.
Stevenson is an attorney, author, social justice activist and clinical professor at New York Universitys School of Law. He is well known for his work highlighting the challenges poor and minority people face in the criminal justice system.
The event will take place Oct. 20 at the Memphis Cook Convention Center.
Last year, film director Ava DuVernay and civil rights activists Ruby Bridges-Hall and Joan Trumpauer Mulholland were honored.
July 10, 2016 - Black Lives Matter protesters face Memphis police officers on the off ramp for I-240. (Yalonda M. James/The Commercial Appeal)
By Adam Tamburin, USA TODAY NETWORK Tennessee
In Tennessee over the past week, Black Lives Matter marches have had a lot in common with others across the nation: activists chanting, waving signs and blocking traffic as they decry police shootings and allegations of racism.
Some of the marches that erupted after black men in Louisiana and Minnesota were killed by police have been marred by violence and arrests and the added tension of a deadly attack on police in Dallas. In Tennessee, the events have been mostly peaceful with only a handful of arrests, although signs of a complicated and fractious relationship between protesters and police remain.
Law enforcement officials in Nashville, Memphis, Knoxville and Chattanooga have indicated they are taking intentional steps to avoid arrests, maintain peace and build on sometimes tenuous relationships in black communities.
Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland said his city "set an example for the world" Sunday night after police there avoided arrests and violence when protesters blocked both sides of the Interstate 40 bridge over the Mississippi River for more than four hours.
Interim Memphis Police Director Michael Rallings walked onto I-40 in a Kevlar vest and locked arms with the some protesters. Officers in riot gear arrived later to clear out a smaller group after most of the others had left, but police still avoided major problems.
But another demonstration Monday outside of Graceland hinted that simmering tensions with police would stretch well beyond a few days of demonstrations. Police arrested, cuffed and cited six protesters who they said were blocking the road. Officers dragged one woman away as an onlooker called to "let her walk."
Earlier on Monday, protesters released a letter slamming Rallings for betraying their trust during a town hall meeting. The letter suggested city officials did not honor an agreement related to the meeting, although it did not describe the agreement. Strickland said city officials have followed through on their agreement to talk with protesters, and he promised on Wednesday to continue the conversation with further meetings.
Nashville police 'here to serve everybody'
Police in Nashville have long been praised for their accommodating attitude toward those affiliated with the Black Lives Matter movement officers served water and hot chocolate to protesters in 2014.
The department followed a similar model during marches over the weekend. Police helped eight people who were overheated Saturday get back to their meeting point in Centennial Park. And the department has shared photos of police praying and smiling alongside protesters over the weekend.
Metro Police Chief Steve Anderson has taken a leading role in setting the city's tone.
"We're here to serve everybody," Anderson said during an interview this week. "As much as possible, we want to allow that to occur."
That includes allowing protesters to shut down busy thoroughfares, an action that has been met by tear gas and handcuffs in other cities. Anderson has taken a practical approach when justifying the decision not to make arrests for blocking roads.
"What do we intend to accomplish?" Anderson said. "If we swoop in and start making arrests, are we going to block the street longer than the protesters want to block it? We just have to weigh those sorts of things."
But even as Anderson has stood up for protesters in public statements, there are signs that strains might exist in his department. Two officers were decommissioned in recent days for Facebook posts that drew criticism in the wake of the police shootings and the attack in Dallas.
Joshua Crutchfield, an organizer for the Nashville chapter of Black Lives Matter, said he wasn't surprised Metro police projected such an accepting and helpful tone during the marches.
While he acknowledged Nashville police had been friendlier to protesters than departments in other cities, he challenged the idea that a peaceful protest was indicative of fair day-to-day police work. He said traffic stops and other police interactions in Nashville still unfairly target racial minorities.
"It doesn't match what's actually going on in the city," Crutchfield said. Racial inequality "is also a problem here," he said.
For his part, Anderson seemed hopeful that positive interactions during marches could lay the groundwork for improved relationships.
"We try to be as tolerant as possible, we try to be as accommodating as possible," he said. "Along the way, maybe we build some mutual respect."
Knoxville, Chattanooga take friendly approach
In Knoxville, where about 100 protesters blocked a major intersection for about 15 minutes Friday, police also directed traffic around the them.
Knoxville Police Chief David Rausch said collaboration between his officers and protesters has helped keep the peace.
"The experience here so far has been that if we feel there's a safety issue, we have a conversation with those who are engaged in the protest and let them know," said Rausch, who also serves as president of the Tennessee Association of Police Chiefs. "They have been very good at adjusting with us."
The interactions between police and protesters were all congenial which wasn't anything new, he said.
"Those who were engaged in the protests were thanking the officers for being there, for protecting them," Rausch said. "There have been issues that we have seen throughout the country where there have been some disparity questions, and so we get it. We understand why the questions are being asked."
Knoxville Mayor Madeline Rogero agreed and lauded the mutual respect between officers and the community they serve.
"You have the police who approach it in a very respectful way, recognizing the rights of the individuals to protest," she said. "Likewise, the folks who have shown up to protest have also been, by and large, very respectful. That goes hand-in-hand and has really helped to have significant protests for people to send a very clear message about their anguish and their concern, but at the same time, do it a way that everyone stays safe."
Chattanooga police worked with protesters during demonstrations on Saturday, Sunday and Monday without any problems. In a statement, the department vowed to "supply activists, marchers, organizers and citizens with a safe environment to express their views."
"We support protesters and proponents alike," Chief Fred Fletcher said in a statement. "It's our job to keep everyone safe."
Dave Boucher of The Tennessean; Megan Boehnke of the Knoxville News Sentinel; and Ryan Poe, Jody Callahan, Katie Fretland and Kayleigh Skinner of The Commercial Appeal contributed to this report.
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By Associated Press
LUCEDALE, Miss. The Mississippi man accused of killing a transgender teen pleaded guilty Tuesday in George County Circuit Court.
Josh Vallum, 28, entered the plea before Judge Robert Krebs to murder in the 2015 beating death of 17-year-old Mercedes Williamson of Theodore, Alabama, who once considered him a boyfriend.
Williamson, born Michael Christopher Wilkins, was killed and buried on property owned by Vallum's father in the Rocky Creek community.
Vallum's attorney, David Futch, told The Sun Herald he could not comment further because of an ongoing federal investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice to determine whether the killing was a hate crime. Federal agents were in the courtroom for the plea hearing.
Krebs sentenced Vallum, a member of the Latin Kings street gang, to life in prison.
Vallum could have gone to trial next week for Williamson's death. He told authorities previously that he used a hammer to beat Williamson to death while they were in Vallum's car on his father's property. He claimed he killed Williamson after he reached between her legs and realized she had a penis.
But other witnesses say Williamson dated Vallum and the two had an active sex life. They said Vallum knew Williamson was a transgender girl.
After the murder, Williamson's killing made national headlines when Caitlyn Jenner remembered her during an acceptance speech for the 2015 Arthur Ashe Award at the ESPY Awards.
Williamson's former roommate testified that Williamson spoke openly about how she and Vallum would be killed if members of his gang found out about the homosexual relationship.
She said the two stayed at her trailer and didn't go out much, though she said she remembered one instance when Vallum took Williamson to a Latin Kings beach party in Biloxi.
Williamson, she said, thought she was safe and said "she didn't have anything to worry about."
Prosecutors believe the testimony showed that "fear of exposure" is what led Vallum to kill Williamson.
Former George County Sheriff's investigator Ben Brown said Vallum readily admitted killing Williamson, but claimed he didn't know she was transgender.
By Ron Maxey of The Commercial Appeal
Confusion over a notice to report to authorities has attorneys for former Southaven Mayor Greg Davis unclear on whether an appeals decision is imminent in Davis' criminal conviction for defrauding the city.
Steve Farese, Davis' attorney, said Tuesday a notice for the former mayor to turn himself in to local law enforcement by July 19 was recalled by the Mississippi Court of Appeals. Such notices are issued when a decision is about to come down, Farese said, but don't necessarily indicate that the appeal to overturn a conviction has been denied.
"They issue them for everyone who is free on bond," Farese said, "so it isn't an indication of how the court will rule. It does mean, though, that the decision is about to be released."
The July 19 report date in the notice coincides with the next date the appeals court will release decisions, said Beverly Kraft, public information officer for the Administrative Office of Courts in Jackson.
However, since the notice was recalled and the court didn't indicate a new notice would be issued, Farese said he now doesn't know where things stand. He isn't sure if the ruling will be coming next week or not.
"It's very confusing, even to us," Farese said.
The appeal stems from Davis' 2014 conviction by a DeSoto County circuit court jury on two felony charges. Davis was found guilty of illegally purchasing a city-leased SUV without approval from aldermen in 2009. He bought the $25,000 vehicle for $11,000 before the city had the option to buy it. Davis also was found guilty of getting mileage reimbursement for gas charged to a city-issued card.
Farese argued to the appeals court in February that the conviction should be thrown out, largely because of the perception Davis didn't get a fair trial.
Davis was sentenced to 15 years but would only serve 2.5 years if the appeals court upholds the decision.
The appeals court recently upheld a separate civil ruling against Davis, ordering him to repay more than $70,000 to the city as ordered by state Auditor Stacey Pickering.
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By Ron Maxey of The Commercial Appeal
Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood said Wednesday he won't join Governor Phil Bryant in appealing the state's "Religious Freedom" law, saying he was convinced an appeal would be "divisive and expensive" and not in the best interest of the state or taxpayers.
The decision means Bryant will move forward without the backing of the state's top legal officer in attempting to enact the controversial measure, which supporters say is designed to protect strongly held religious beliefs. Opponents say it unfairly targets same-sex couples and others whose lifestyles might be objectionable to business owners or some public officials, such as local clerks who issue marriage licenses.
The split between Bryant and Hood on the law, a reaction to last year's U.S. Supreme Court ruling legalizing same-sex marriage, underscores the philosophical rift between the Republican governor and a Democrat often touted as a 2019 gubernatorial candidate.
Hood, in a lengthy statement explaining his position, said Wednesday the law would do nothing to change existing state or federal law that already protects religious beliefs. He also noted that both supporters and critics recognize the measure cannot overturn or pre-empt federal law.
"Simply stated," Hood said, "all HB 1523 has done is tarnish Mississippi's image while distracting us from the more pressing issues of decaying roads and bridges, underfunding of public education, the plight of the mentally ill and the need to solve our state's financial mess."
A backlash after the law's signing by Bryant included cancellations by entertainers as well as cancellation of this summer's annual Mississippi Picnic in New York City's Central Park, along with decisions by several states to not travel to Mississippi on official business.
Bryant, an ardent supporter of the law from its inception, filed notice July 7 that he would appeal U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves' decision striking down the measure minutes before it was to go into effect July 1.
Bryant also asked Reeves to lift the temporary injunction against the law's implementation while the case is on appeal. Having gotten no response from Reeves, attorneys for Bryant went directly the Fifth Circuit Appeals Court Monday to ask that the injunction be lifted.
Monday's filing with the appeals court also asked for an expedited hearing of the appeal, regardless of whether the appeals court agrees to lift the injunction.
Despite Bryant's contention in Monday's appellate filing that Mississippi is "suffering irreparable injury" by having the law blocked during appeal, Hood characterized HB 1523 as "an empty bill." He said the law, approved easily by legislators earlier this year, "dupes one segment of our population into believing it has merit while discriminating against another" something Hood said "is just plain wrong."
Hood said his office will, however, protect religious freedoms and defend First Amendment rights "if and when the facts so justify in future cases."
It was unclear Wednesday how long it might be before the appeals court acts on the request to lift the temporary injunction or on the appeal of Reeves' ruling.
Even before Hood's decision to not throw the weight of his office behind the appeal, constitutional law expert Matt Steffey said he thought the law was unconstitutional and wouldn't survive an appeals review.
"If this were my money," Steffey said, "there's no way I'd take on appeal."
July 12, 2016 A shocked and surprised Farmington Elementary fourth-grade teacher Joy Lustig (left) with help from Germantown Municipal School District's Superintendent Jason Manuel (right) sees her revamped state-of-the-art 21st century classroom Tuesday afternoon. Lustig, with the help of last year's students, submitted a proposal, including a video by the students, that would make her classroom more technology-friendly for interactive learning. The Germantown School District, as part of its "Classroom Crashers" project, updated two teachers' classrooms. (Mark Weber/The Commercial Appeal)
SHARE July 12, 2016 Farmington Elementary fourth-grade teacher Joy Lustig (left) hugs former students, including Cooper Lowrance (middle), who helped submit the proposal, including a video, that would bring her classroom into the 21st century with state-of-the-art technology. The new classroom has several upgraded features such as an Apple TV connected to new iPads that will be furnished to each student as well as rolling desk chairs to help students move from group to group seamlessly. (Mark Weber/The Commercial Appeal)
By Jane Roberts of The Commercial Appeal
Crash My Classroom produces palpable 'wow' for Germantown teacher
Joy Lustig slashed through the paper over the door of her classroom at Farmington Elementary in Germantown Tuesday and stood with her hands over her mouth like a Showcase winner on The Price Is Right.
For the next few seconds, all she could do smile through her hands as she took in the $25,000 in furnishings, including the most obvious rolling desks for every student and an enormous large-screen TV, mounted and ready to go.
"It's awesome," Lustig said, wandering from one wonder to the next while colleagues and parents caught her delirium on camera phones across the room.
"Everything we asked for, we got. Do you see anything we didn't?" she asked a cluster of students seated on what looked like giant red-cushioned puzzle pieces. Technically, they are a "cloud formation couch system," forming a tidy and upscale seating around the Promethean touch screen.
Lustig is the first winner of Germantown Municipal School District's "Crash My Classroom" contest, an inventive way to get teachers to dream big about 21st Century learning and an admission, perhaps, that it's not financially possible to upgrade every classroom at once. The upgrades came out of the general fund.
Last winter, the district asked its teachers to apply by submitting the way-out, new technology that would amp up what happens in their classrooms.
"They had to research what it out there," said Mason Grace, head of district communications and instructional technology. "And tell us the rationale behind what they chose."
Lustig had her students put their heads together. They noted rather quickly that they frequently had to hunt for their desks because Lustig is forever rearranging seats for small group work.
"Now, you will never have to hunt for your desk," she said, laughing with students who came in with their parents to see the spectacle, many of them seated in the Steelcase Nodes. The Nodes allow them to rotate 360 degrees in place, plus roll across the room, if that's what learning takes.
GMSD awarded two teachers. The other is Michael Robinson, human geography teacher at Houston High, now visiting Holocaust sites in Poland as part of the $2,000 he received from Humanities Tennessee as one of six of its honored teachers.
A week after school was out for the summer, about 25 volunteers began transforming Lustig's room, including school board member Lisa Parker, who with Principal Zac Percoski, wrestled old chalkboards off the walls and out the door. Board chairwoman Linda Fisher sewed the curtains.
The walls are light blue with thick, light-hued stripe, hand-painted by volunteers (research shows light blue add positive vibes to learning environments). Although she didn't ask for it, Lustig's own desk now also has wheels. And if she tires of that, there is a standing desk for her, plus a handful of them for the children (sitting, after all is the new smoking), plus glass boards, one rolling and one stationary (easier to wipe off than porcelain white boards), and 25 iPads that will be used in the classroom only with electronic textbooks and other digital learning.
The 2,222 books in the classroom library are now cataloged and electronically tagged (students can access the list on their iPads) and stored in neat bins.
"I told my family, I think this is the best thing that has happened to me since my son was born," Lustig said. "That was 19 years ago."
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A big change, thanks to the South City project, is about to take place in an area where stately mansions were the norm and urban decay has taken root.
The focus of this renaissance is the Foote Homes public housing project, which has been a fixture in the community since it opened in 1940 as part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal to help citizens weather the economic ravages of the Great Depression.
It is scheduled to be razed and replaced with 600 modern apartments and other amenities that go along with a quality neighborhood, such as a fitness trail.
The trick now is for officials involved in the project to make sure that Foote Homes residents displaced by the new construction have a realistic chance of coming back, or help those who choose not to return find a better life.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the area was the home of some of Memphis' richest citizens. Over the decades, though, the demographics changed, sending the area into decline. Foote Homes nurtured some of the city's leading African-American citizens.
On the other side of Foote's Lauderdale Street border, Cleaborn Homes public housing was built in 1955. The demolition of Cleaborn began in 2011, and it was replaced with a new, modern apartment development with a single-family-home feel called Cleaborn Pointe.
The face of public housing began to change in the late 1960s. It devolved from a place where families could live in a clean, safe environment until they could afford to own a home to enclaves of poverty, crime and hopelessness.
Memphis Housing Authority, led by Robert Lipscomb, moved to change that dynamic, using federal HOPE 6 grants, leveraged with private investment, to demolish the older projects and transform them into modern rental units with a single-family housing neighborhood ambience.
Foote, which underwent a renovation and restoration in the mid-1990s, is the last of its kind in Memphis. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), however, has ended the Hope 6 program, replacing it with Choice Neighborhoods Initiative grants. Memphis and MHA were awarded a Choice Neighborhoods grant last year.
Choice Neighborhoods has been described as Hope 6 on steroids. Cities that win the grants have to go beyond simply replacing rundown public housing projects. They have to rebuild neighborhoods, providing residents in the new housing with the services they need to climb out of poverty from good schools to health and transportation services.
That is what the $210 million South City project aims to do, with Foote being the focal point. The project's budget includes $167 million for housing, about $25 million for neighborhood improvements and $18 million for social support programs.
But this development will not reach its full potential if a strong effort is not made to provide the original tenants with a chance to come back and reap the benefits if they desire.
It is also important that the South City plan includes programs to help South City residents and others in the area improve their lives.
The Women's Foundation for a Greater Memphis already has signed on to that task with its Vision 2020 Strategic Plan to reduce poverty by 5 percent over five years in the 38126 ZIP code (in which Foote is located), where 62 percent of adults and 76 percent of children live at or below the poverty line.
Those kinds of efforts are what will make South City a success.
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Lana Shelton
Memphis
Dallas Police Chief David Brown, in a press briefing July 11, said the following: Were asking cops to do too much in this country. Every societal failure, we put it off on the cops to solve. Not enough mental health funding, let the cops handle it. Not enough drug addiction funding, lets give it to the cops. Here in Dallas we have a loose dog problem. Lets have the cops chase loose dogs. Schools fail, give it to the cops. Seventy percent of the African-American community is being raised by single women, lets give it to the cops to solve that as well. Thats too much to ask. Policing was never meant to solve all those problems.
Truer words were never spoken, and Memphis is a parallel city to Dallas in this regard. Mayor Jim Strickland is planning to put animal control officers into the Police Department to get better oversight and to make responding to calls about wild dogs more efficient. I was in favor of this idea. Now, Im not sure.
However, I am sure that adequate funding for our police should be our first budgeting priority. Everything else should take a back seat.
Opinion / Columnist
The increased adoption of social media platforms as a means of real time communication can be, to a greater extent, be directly linked to the exponential adoption of mobile smart phones and improved broadband (3G and Wi-Fi) access.A decade ago not so many people that I know, had Internet access let alone an e-mail account. But as we all know the availability of high speed data circuits connecting land locked Zimbabwe to undersea fibre optics cables has greatly reduced the cost Internet access (bandwidth) over the years.Around 1998 to 2000, during the "dial up" days social media was not widely used as it is now. Few people had a computer and Internet access.There was Yahoo chat, MSN Messenger, AOL and many more. The only difference then was that these tools were mainly used by academics, tech geeks and the corporate world.Today millions of people have mobile data access thanks to 2G then 3G mobile and thus social media platforms have mushroomed.This was a necessary and great leap in technological development for poorer countries. While social media adoption grew by day and night very little attention was paid to security and privacy matters. But this is natural and 10 years from today, it will be a social norm.About 65 percent of Africa's population is under 35 years. The writing is on the wall as to where we are heading.We have always been caught flat-footed because in Africa we believe in banning some technological innovations that we don't fully understand. I will give you a very personal example to drive this point home. In 2003, I left Zimbabwe for US basically because VoIP (Internet telephony) was illegal in Zimbabwe then. Only in 2007 did the regulator legalise it.So what? As a result it should not come as a surprise to anyone when we see authorities reacting to the social media frenzy by way of calling for its regulation and or its total ban.Recently in Uganda the regulator ordered all data providers to block access to social media platforms during the election period. The authorities cited security concerns as a reason.Most corporations in Zimbabwe ban access of social media platforms during working hours. Some of the organisations claim that use of social media and chat apps in the country is a hindrance to development as more workers were spending more time on the applications with the increase in phone penetration and cheaper mobile and fixed broadband data. Well, I will not dwell much on the rightness or lack thereof on part of those concerned, but focus on what is needed as a way forward. Every parent is aware of the annoyance social media brings into the home. Even church pastors have this challenge during sermons.But does blocking of access to social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, Skype, Telegram, Instagram, IMO and many more really work? Yes and NO. Blocking is done by the data provider at a switch level where access to specific protocols and ports can be closed and or opened. The same applies for private organisations they can block access to social platforms in line with their internal regulations at a router or proxy level.This is neither here nor there. Several VPN (Virtual Private Network) tools are available to bypass blocked access. But with the use of freely available tools like TOR browser and Onion for smart phones this is not an issue at all. I am NOT saying break your company rules and then quote me, I certainly will not be responsible.If you post something illegal online, being anonymous does not make it legal. Hate speech, stalking, inciting violence is an example of abuse of the platforms. When people are anonymous, they can effectively say things with no repercussions.Just look at the damages of online bullying and trolling. In the same way a company's name can be slandered, false and libellous allegations can be made with the sense of security that anonymity brings. People are conned day in day out.Their excitement over the "free" communication tool often leaves people very vulnerable and they tend to overlook a lot of personal privacy issues. I am sure you have seen text messages (hoaxes) purporting that a company XYZ is hiring and applications are in progress. Ever wonder why more than 200 women were stranded in Kuwait? These are a few examples of scenarios in Zimbabwe which give social media a bad name.Established institutions face an uphill task when disruptive technologies straddle into their terrain. A serious paradigm shift is needed to understand new and disruptive technologies. Because of the inherent lack of capacity to deal with the unknown, it has therefore become routine for establishments and authorities to make very ill advised and uniformed blanket decisions when it comes to dealing new technologies.We must bear with those mostly 40+ years who never had access to any computing power and or data services in their lives until GPRS and Android came. During college days very few students had access to a computer mainly engineering and computing science students did.That was 2 decades ago. Today a 16-year-old Ordinary Level student based in Gwanda or Marondera has a computer in her hand and has access to a high speed data network (3G).This technically means that she has immediate access to all social media platforms. The question whether to regulate or censor social media access may remain hanging, but investing in research and development of sustainable usage of social media is part of the answer.The role of hard-and-fast regulation needs to give way to the provision of guidance on codes of acceptable behaviour. This applies to all sectors of the economy and social fabric literally.It does take a rocket scientist to figure out that the next generation of digital users will be social media friendly. There is lot of drama during the adoption and growth phases of any new technology. The best companies, organisations and authorities can do is to get involved in educating themselves and users on the pros and cons of social media tools.The fact that one can run WhatsApp on a laptop or PC should send a clear message to those dreaming of banning its use at a mobile operator level.Too bad we have network operators crying for the regulator and Ministry of ICT to regulate OTT (over the top services) that ride on their network. Wake up and smell the fish.Innovate or die. I do not want to narrate the story of the postman and his postage stamp. What these companies need to do is to invest in R&D. We never learn do we?It might not be a bad idea at all for the ICT and The Higher Education Ministries to introduce social media as a subject at schools and tertiary institutions. I can assure you we will have straight As from our youth - just a fact.
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By Paul Woodruff
My brother and I both hate fireworks, because they sound like combat. He served in the Marines in Vietnam and I was in the Army. Explosions still make us jumpy. So we spent the Fourth of July deep in a national park where such explosions are forbidden.
When we returned to so-called civilization, we were horrified to learn of real-life combat in Dallas. A veteran had used his military skills to assassinate innocent policemen, and the police, in turn, used a robot to blow up the veteran.
Should the police have used a robot to kill the sniper? The robot is a military device. It's a shame that the police are more and more arming themselves like the military, but we should not blame them for that. Our society is now so heavily armed that the police have no alternative: Keeping the peace in a militarized culture requires a militarized police force. That is a shame, but get used to it. That's the world we live in. We can only dream of an America in which civilians are never armed like soldiers.
As a veteran, I care deeply about these issues. I take some pride in my service, and I believe that military training and equipment should never be used unethically. As a university philosopher, I don't claim to have the authority to judge the police or anyone else. But I do have strong views about what questions should be asked in a case like this and what questions to ignore.
We do not need to ask about drones. This robot operation was not at all like what the drones are doing. Drones are being used for assassinations; recourse to assassination in warfare is controversial. Drones are especially controversial because of the damage they can do to innocent people.
Also, we do not need to ask about self-defense. The sniper claimed also to be a bomber, and as such, he presented a major threat to the people of Dallas. The police were not only acting to save themselves. Self-defense in a military context is a difficult issue, because in combat no one is totally innocent. But this was not a typical combat mission. These police officers were totally innocent, and they were there to protect lives other than their own. As for the many killings of innocent African-Americans by police officers, these cannot count as self-defense. They are not even pre-emptive killings, because the victims posed no threat. Such actions cannot be justified by any principle.
So what are the ethical questions that do matter for this case that we need to ask?
Did the sniper remain a threat to the lives of innocent people, including police officers? Apparently yes.
Was there no other way to remove the threat, short of killing the sniper? Had negotiations failed? Apparently yes.
Was it safe to send a live attacker against the sniper? Apparently no.
Did using the robot create the danger of collateral damage of killing innocent people along with the sniper? Apparently no.
Apparently the police answered all of these questions to the best of their knowledge. If so, they did the right thing.
After we talked, my brother said, "After seeing 'Star Wars,' I want to know whether the robot was OK at the end of the day." But he knew as well as I that what matters is saving human lives.
Paul Woodruff is a distinguished teaching professor of philosophy at The University of Texas at Austin. He served in the U.S. Army in Vietnam in 1969-70 and has written on military ethics. He wrote this for the Dallas Morning News. Contact him at paul.woodruff@austin.utexas.edu.
If you are worried about your online privacy, it might be of interest to you that Google has quietly brought its Google forget program to the U.S. It has made it quite simple, for the most part. Simply go to myactivity.google.com to see the history of your searches, YouTube viewing and everything else you do on Google platforms, and then be guided through the process of trimming that history.
But be careful. Privacy restrictions bring with them good and bad, and some consumers who become gung ho about deleting activity may find the usefulness of their web surfing drop off. Ads will become much more generic and annoying, as will searches and other web research. Your Chrome browser wont autofill URLs of sites you often visit, and other background activities may become more difficult.
Also, the forgetting process can be painstaking. If you are going to be selective about what is forgotten, you will have to review places youve visited and make deletions one at a time. If you want to clean up a lot of history, youll need to clear your schedule first.
But the process, even if you opt to not delete a thing, is eye-opening. Seeing every search youve performed and every site youve visited is a powerful wakeup call if you hadnt realized how much is retained.
It also raises questions about whether your security and privacy are actually compromised by Google making all of this data available to you. At the top of the My Activity page, youll see this unconvincing promise: Only you can see this data. Google protects your privacy and security. Really? No Google employee can see this data? No Google advertiser can, even in aggregated form? That statement coming from Google is akin to a politician saying, Trust me. But if you are concerned about your online privacy, you probably already knew Google had a lot of data about your online life. The thing thats different is that Google, in making that information available to you, is placing it on the public internet. Password-protected, yes, but the effectiveness of that protection varies widely with the person devising the password.
Googles point, presumably, is that your neighbor, ex-spouse or employer cannot view your personal search history by calling up this page. Maybe it should add, Depending, of course, on their hacking skills.
Not that a hacker would need great skills if a user has weak credentials, writes them down and leaves them next to the computer, or just lets that neighbor, ex-spouse or employer look over his shoulder as he keys them in.
This is yet another reason for people to use complex passwords that are unique (meaning never used in more than one place) and for Google to go with more stringent multifactor authentication. If Google is going to allow consumers to see everything being retained about them, it should at the very least increase the perception of its security measures.
Theres something else to consider here, though, and this has societal implications. Googles forget policy has some key right-to-know overlaps with its takedown policy. The takedown policy allows people to request that stories about or images of them be removed from the database. The forget policy allows the user to decide on his own to delete something.
Should everyone have the right to delete his online history? What about terrorists who want to shield from law enforcement history about sites they have visited? What if its a CEO or elected or appointed government official who wants to hide activity thats embarrassing or hints at illegality?
Sure, terrorist is an emotionally charged term that I included to feed fear and paranoia. Maybe the right to delete is similar to free speech, though: Its only as strong as the degree to which it protects the most vile among us. I like being able to edit my history, but I am painfully aware that allowing the worst among us to do the same can have undesired consequences.
That all said, this is a powerful privacy tool. Use it as you choose, but be mindful of the bigger implications of what Google has done.
Last October, the U.S. government began hiring 6,500 new cybersecurity IT professionals. It has hired 3,000 so far, and plans to hire another 3,500 by January 2017, the White House said Tuesday.
The government is now trying to improve its recruiting and retention of cybersecurity professionals. This includes finding ways to improve government pay, which can be well below the private sector.
This strategy was detailed Tuesday in a White House memo. In it, officials called for expanded job recruiting campaigns "in order to raise awareness of employment opportunities and compete for top cybersecurity talent," Shaun Donovan, the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, Beth Cobert, the acting director of the Office of Personnel Management and federal CIO Tony Scott wrote in the memo.
This hiring is intended to improve the nation's response to "increasingly sophisticated and persistent cyber threats that pose strategic, economic, and security challenges to our nation," the White House officials said.
The U.S. faces ongoing attacks from a wide range of people and organizations, including nation-states -- China in particular.
The government cybersecurity move seeks everyone from recent college graduates to experienced professionals.
Government wages can be low relative to the sector. For instance, a job ad for an "IT specialist INFOSEC" sets a salary floor of $55,670. The wages can rise to just over $100,000, and a master's degree is needed.
In the private sector, a cybersecurity specialist with three-plus years of experience has a national average salary of $99,000, with a range between $83,000 and $117,000. For someone with five-plus years of experience, the national average is $118,000, said David Foote, chief analyst at Foote Partners, an IT salary research and consulting firm.
Demand for cybersecurity professionals has been high generally, said Foote. "There just isn't enough talent to go around," he said, and in a scarce market "the private sector usually wins because they can pay more."
The U.S. plans to do more to reach women, in particular, who comprise less than 25% of the government's cybersecurity workforce.
The White House, in its memo, said it will explore ways, either under existing laws or new ones, "to offer prospective employees more competitive compensation" as well as provide "meaningful work" and a "clear career path."
The government's plan envisions creating a rewarding environment, one that empowers workers but acknowledges "that some of the cybersecurity employees the federal government hopes to attract may only wish to stay for a short period of service," wrote Donovan. "This is a different way of thinking about the federal workforce and requires new programs, initiatives, and ways of approaching recruitment and retention efforts."
Foote said the government can't simply throw bodies at the problem and expect to succeed. Where the government has its strongest recruiting presence is in the universities, where feds are "better connected," he said.
But the private sector is focused on hiring people with some experience, and hiring people out of school has its limits, said Foote. "How much experience can you have if you are that young?" he said.
While the government hiring will affect an already tight market for cybersecurity professionals, in hiring "the private sector usually wins because they can pay more," said Foote.
President Barack Obama's administration has been seeking to boost federal cybersecurity spending. Its 2017 IT budget calls for a 35% increase in cybersecurity spending to $19 billion.
Victor Janulaitis, CEO of Janco Associates, a research firm that analyzes IT labor trends, said the "government is not always the solution.
"Rather the solution needs to be in the private sector where what can be done will be done and real jobs will be created," said Janulaitis. "The solution of 'thousands' of new government employees only adds to our deficit and governmental bloat," he said.
This story, "Feds to hire 3,500 cybersecurity pros by year's end" was originally published by Computerworld .
I think that we were all hoping for a boring Patch Tuesday for this July update cycle. With only 11 updates, six rated as critical and the remaining patches rated as important, this month does provide some relief from the very large releases seen in the past few months.
However, although there are no zero-day vulnerabilities reported so far from Microsoft, there is an urgent Patch Now update in the form of MS16-093, wrapping a huge update from Adobe that resolves a whopping 52 issues in Adobe Flash Player. In addition, we all need to deploy MS16-087 as a priority due to a relatively easily exploitable drive-by attack on the Windows Spooler print sub-system.
Shavlik has published a great infographic of this month's patch release which can be found here. Next month we will see the release of the Windows 10 Anniversary update (expected August 2nd) and with it a number of Windows 10 specific updates.
MS16-084 Critical
The first update rated as critical for July Patch Tuesday is MS16-084 -- it attempts to address 15 vulnerabilities in Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) related to memory corruption and JScript and VBScript handling issues. This update, and the following two, essentially address similar issues. There do not appear to be any zero-day IE vulnerabilities for this Patch Tuesday release cycle, so add this update to your standard patch deployment effort.
MS16-085 Critical
MS16-085 is the Edge update paired with IE update MS16-084, which attempts to resolve another 13 privately reported vulnerabilities, most relating to memory corruption issues and security vulnerabilities in JScript and VBScript. Add this update to your standard desktop deployment effort.
MS16-086 Critical
The third critical update for this Patch Tuesday release cycle is MS16-086 which addresses a single privately reported vulnerability in the core Windows components: JScript and VBScript. This update only applies to Windows Vista and Server 2008, and so you are unlikely to have to deploy it as you will have already resolved some of the key vulnerabilities in these two venerable scripting languages with this months patches to IE and Microsoft Edge. Add this update to your standard desktop deployment effort.
MS16-087 Critical
MS16-087 is a critical update to the Windows Print Spooler sub-system. If you have ever had problems printing on a Windows system over the past decade or so, one of the primary remedies was to stop and then restart this print spooler service, which was faster than a reboot.
This months patch addresses a man-in-the-middle attack which could allow a remote attacker complete control of the target system, by loading malicious code at the same time as the printer driver. This was made possible because Microsoft relaxed installation security controls (UAC) so that neither administrator level access or a digitally signed driver was required to load printer drivers and their associated software (EXEs and DLLs). If your printer is connected to the network, it could be a security watering-hole for groups of attackers. This is a "Patch Now" update from Microsoft.
MS16-088 Critical
MS16-088 is this months update to Microsoft Office. This patch addresses seven privately reported memory corruption vulnerabilities, which if left unaddressed could lead to a remote code execution scenario. One of the primary culprits in this collection of vulnerabilities relates to how Microsoft handles RTF document files. Microsoft has offered a mitigation approach of blocking Office from loading these RTF files.
I suggest stronger medicine: backup and convert all of your legacy RTF files to PDF. Please note that this update will affect all Microsoft servers (running Web Apps and SharePoint) and so you will need to manage both desktop and server patch deployment efforts.
MS16-093 Critical
MS16-093 is the Microsoft wrapper to the enormous security patch APSB16-25 from Adobe that resolves 52 security issues in Adobe Flash Player that could lead to an attacker taking complete control of the compromised system. There are several mitigating factors that could reduce the risk as all Windows Servers will run Flash content (any ActiveX controls) in restricted mode and Windows 8 and later systems will only load Flash content that has been approved (white listed) using the Microsoft Compatibility View list. These vulnerabilities are a major concern. Please deploy MS16-093 immediately. And, please could everyone stop using Flash.
MS16-089 Important
MS16-089 is one of the early Windows-10-only updates from Microsoft and the first patch rated as important for this Patch Tuesday. This patch addresses a single privately reported issue that could lead to information disclosure. Microsoft has not published any workarounds or mitigating factors, so you can deploy this patch with all of the other Windows 10 cumulative updates.
MS16-090 Important
MS16-090 is an update to the Windows Kernel Mode driver sub-system that addresses six privately reported vulnerabilities that left unpatched could led to an elevation of privilege scenario on a compromised system. The published exploitability ratings for these vulnerabilities are relatively high. However, updating the kernel has caused a number of issues in the past. Add this to your standard deployment schedule, but test all core workstation builds before deployment.
MS16-091 Important
MS16-091 is an important update from Microsoft for all currently supported versions of the Microsoft .NET development framework. The single, privately reported vulnerability that Microsoft has attempted to resolve in this update could lead to an information disclosure event through the improper parsing of an attackers specially crafted XML file included in a web application. Add this update to your standard patch deployment effort.
MS16-092 Important
MS16-092 is an update to the Windows kernel (not to be confused with the kernel driver mode update in MS16-090) that addresses two privately reported lower-risk vulnerabilities that affect all currently supported versions of Windows desktop and server platforms. Add this update to your standard patch effort.
MS16-094 Important
MS16-094 addresses a single reported vulnerability in the Windows Secure Boot system that if left unpatched could let an attacker bypass security restrictions on a compromised machine. This exploit has a lower risk rating as the attacker would require physical access to the machine and also have administrative privileges. Add this update to your standard patch effort.
Chinese government hackers were the likely attackers in three breaches in recent years at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the U.S. agency that insures bank accounts, according to a congressional audit.
Breaches at the FDIC in 2010, 2011, and 2013 were caused by an "advanced persistent threat ... believed to have been the Chinese government," according to an interim report on the agency's cybersecurity from the House of Representatives Science, Space, and Technology Committee.
In the 2013 breach, hackers gained access to the computers of 12 staff computers, including the former chairman, chief of staff and general counsel of the agency, the House report said.
FDIC staffers were instructed not to report the 2013 breach because news of it could hurt agency Chairman Martin Gruenberg's confirmation, one witness told House investigators.
The agency also delayed reporting two late 2015 breaches to Congress until 2016, even though the personal data of more than 115,000 people was potentially compromised, the report said. The agency has "purposefully evaded" congressional oversight and has a "long-standing history of a lack of transparency" related to cybersecurity issues, the report said.
"The FDICs intent to evade congressional oversight is a serious offense," Committee Chairman Lamar Smith, a Texas Republican, said in an emailed statement. "Major improvements need to be made to the FDICs cybersecurity mechanisms."
Representatives of the FDIC and the Chinese Embassy in Washington, D.C., didn't immediately return messages seeking comment on the committee investigation.
The House report rips FDIC security practices and the culture inside the agency. The agency's CIO office is a "toxic work environment," where employees who disagree with leadership are punished, the report said.
In addition, the agency has failed to stop employee use of USB thumbdrives and other portable storage devices, despite two 2015 breaches related to those devices, the report said. "The FDIC has still not implemented sufficient precautionary measures to ensure that additional breaches do not occur," the report said.
Gruenberg is scheduled to testify before the committee about cybersecurity issues on Thursday morning.
Opinion / Columnist
At her Masvingo rally held recently, Zimbabwe People First (ZimPF) leader, Joice Mujuru told the world that she intended to serve one term as President of Zimbabwe if elected to the position in the 2018 general elections.Mujuru further said that she just needed one term in office as President of this country in order to solve the economic problems currently bedevilling the country. She went on to call upon President Mugabe to resign, citing his age. Her sidekick, Dzikamai Mavhaire, also weighed in at the same rally, blaming all the economic difficulties the country is facing on Zanu-PF. Mavhaire went further and called for elections date to be brought forward to 2017 instead of 2018.As none other than the former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said: "Look at the day when you are supremely satisfied at the end. It's not a day when you lounge around doing nothing; it's when you have had everything to do, and you have done it."Mujuru served as a Zanu-PF Minister for more than 20 years and then as Vice President for more than a decade. If Zanu-PF failed, then it is a direct indictment on Mujuru for she was number two in the revolutionary party. What were her achievements during that long period as a leader in government? What did Mujuru achieve as a member of parliament for 35 years? The only achievement' to her credit is her refusal to issue Strive Masiiwa an operating licence for a mobile telecommunication network, which has ironically contributed immensely to the economic development of this country today. Mujuru even snubbed a directive, to issue the licence, from the late Father Zimbabwe, Dr Joshua Nkomo who was then her Vice President. She even described Dr Nkomo, as senile, a remark that earned her a sharp rebuke from President Mugabe.So what miracle will Mujuru deliver to Zimbabwe if she becomes President for a single five-year term after failing to achieve anything in more than 35 years she served as one of the country's leaders? People of Zimbabwe will not be fooled by such cheap politicking.Mujuru further tells us that after serving one term as President, she will resort to international politics at the United Nations where Zimbabweans will flock to her for advice. There it is; Mujuru's ambitions know no bounds. Yesterday she wanted to muscle out President Mugabe so that she could land the presidency. Now she sees herself as a future President who will serve for one term before capturing a powerful post at the United Nations, probably becoming the Secretary General. It's her democratic right to dream, so let her dream on. If wishes were horses beggars will ride.What did Mavhaire achieve in the various ministries he was lucky to be minister? In most cases his appointments were a case of a square peg in a round hole. Is it not the same Mavhaire who allegedly flouted ZESA tender procedures and siphoned money from the power utility to sponsor activities of his faction? Now he is calling for early elections, dreaming that he might once again be a cabinet minister under Joice Mujuru, as early as possible, so that he can resume his looting of government funds.When they were part of Zanu-PF, ZimPF leaders never told us about the imagined failures of Zanu-PF. Now that they were booted out of the Party, they are now telling us that they are holier than thou. The honourable thing this misguided elements could have done, that is if they were sincere enough, was to resign from Zanu-PF and government rather than to stay with an organisation which they perceived as failing. Is it a case of sour grapes or is it that if one is used to abuse Zanu-PF in order to loot the country' s resources and then get booted from the party, the cold becomes freezing.Mavhaire should wait for 2018 for his party to contest in a democratic dispensation rather than to call for early elections just to serve his greediness. People are very aware of the characteristics of the leaders of ZimPF, hence, they will not be fooled so easily. The majority of these ZimPF leaders use politics to acquire personal wealth, mostly through looting of the country's resources.---------------Chadzimura Mhute
David Cameron knew how to arrive, and how to leave. There wasnt too much of that awkward standing about on the platform, when everything has been said and the train wont go.
I was the future once, he remarked, winding things up by using against himself the jibe he flung at Tony Blair when first confronting him across the Dispatch Box.
The Tory benches rose as one and clapped. Sir Nicholas Soames, and other Tories who had decided on this most crowded of days to sit in the gallery, rose and clapped too.
The Labour Party, with very few exceptions, did not rise and clap. Some will see this as ungracious indeed it was ungracious but perhaps it also showed, unintentionally, how that party is receding into the past, when clapping was not at all the done thing in the Chamber.
And Cameron has not made life easy for them. By continuing since 2010 to run an enormous deficit, the Tory-dominated Government made it impossible for Labour to promise with credibility to run an even larger one.
Cameron remarked today that in the time it has taken the Tories to get rid of one leader and choose another, Labour havent even decided what the rules are yet.
Jeremy Corbyn made one admirably graceful remark, sending his thanks via Cameron to the Prime Ministers mother for her advice about ties and suits and socks.
But the day belonged to Cameron, whose wife and children were watching from the public gallery, behind the glass screen installed in a fit of panic after a protester with a good aim managed to hit the then Prime Minister, Blair, on the shoulder with a flour-filled condom.
Theresa May was greeted, as she entered the Chamber six minutes before PMQs, with a tremendously solid cheer from the Tory benches. The tribe has united behind her, after slaying various other contenders.
A minute later, David Cameron was greeted with an even louder cheer as he took his place, flushed and smiling, on the front bench, and waited for Welsh Questions to draw to a close.
Boris Johnson stood at the far end of the House for a minute or two, contriving to look perfectly cheerful, before retiring to an inconspicuous seat. He was the future once, and may be again, but this half hour belonged to Cameron, and May now stretches before us.
During the 2005 Conservative leadership election, David Cameron originally trailed the field. But he came from behind to win the contest, aided by a brilliant campaign, superb presentation, and a vulnerable opponent.
In 2007, Gordon Brown threatened to call a snap election which he might have won, but Cameron and his unshakeable friend and ally, George Osborne, turned the opinion polls round by pledging tax cuts.
In 2010, Cameron failed to win the general election outright, but got into Downing Street via a coalition with the Liberal Democrats.
In 2011, it looked at one point as though a referendum might endorse AV a result which would have pitched him out of Number Ten but he put his back into opposing it and the proposal was voted down.
In 2014, a late poll showed Scotland on the verge of voting to leave the United Kingdom, but on the day Scots chose to stay, and a calamity for Cameron (not to mention the rest of us) was averted.
In 2015, the consensus of the polls and the pundits was that the Conservatives couldnt win the general election. Cameron was returned at the head of the first majority Tory Government for over 20 years.
If you or I had a record like that, dear reader, would we not begin to believe our own propaganda? I cant blame Cameron for a moment if he started to think he was immortal.
Camerons tragedy is that he was one leap away from winning the political equivalent of the Grand National, but fell at the final fence. He was on the verge of not losing any general election hed fought, and winning three referendums.
Historians will record that he was the most successful Conservative leader at the polls in a hundred years, with the exception of three-times election-winning Margaret Thatcher.
They will also write that he bet the house on calling an EU referendum and then winning it, relying on his presentational talents, the disarray of opponents, and the natural caution of the British people.
But he lost the vote and lost the house literally. Today, he exits Downing Street as Prime Minister and Theresa May enters.
The confluence of this buoyant election record and late referendum disaster for him, that is confirms, as Andrew Gimson wrote yesterday on this site, that Cameron is a very hard Prime Minister to get right.
My own punt is that those historians will judge his foreign policy to have failed (it never fully recovered from the rebuff of the Syria vote) and his economic policy to have succeeded in terms of rescuing Britain from recession, anyway.
It didnt transform the economy into a high-productivity, high-export, deficit-free success story, but much sweat and spadework was expended on trying to ensure that we get there.
The schools reforms, the welfare overhaul, the drive for apprenticeships, the start of Osbornes Northern Powerhouse all these helped to lay the foundations for long-term change.
Iain Duncan Smith, Michael Gove, Francis Maude and May herself: these were reformers of real substance, often assisted by bloody-minded SpAds who learned from experience to keep Downing Street in the dark.
But it was Cameron who appointed these Ministers, Cameron who had enough self-confidence not to seek to control them (all the time, anyway) and Cameron who can thus take credit for a record of radical reform.
His handling of his Party has been rather poor. He never quite recovered from his self-proclaimed start as the heir to Blair. Ian Birrell recalls being asked: Have you not got anything that will annoy the right a bit more?
This modernisation drive had its origins not only in three successive election defeats, but a deep nervousness at the heart of the Cameron project about what voters would make of another Old Etonian Tory leader.
At any rate, modernisation led some of his critics to claim that he isnt a Conservative at all; others that he put style ahead of substance. The first charge is risible. Cameron is a classic One Nation Tory in the Macmillian mode.
The second is worth pondering. It is true that he morphed from the heir to Blair via the voice of Lynton to the Life Chances Prime Minister. It is a loss for him and for Britain that he wasnt able to further this last phase.
But if Cameron was in a chameleon in one sense, he was consistent in another, deeper one. Heres a way I put it before and it may be worth repeating:
His frantic paddling below the water is matched by an unruffled elegance above it. Cameron is not exactly serene. He can be hot-tempered hence his outburst about terrorist sympathisers last week. He bears grudges: no colleague who supported another candidate in 2005 has been admitted to his circle. He gets himself into trouble as over Syria in 2013: indeed, his EU referendum gambit is regarded by some of his friends as a gamble too far. But his character is solid and his judgement sound when it comes to tactical escapology, at any rate. His family life is settled and he has known real pain, in the form of the life and death of his disabled son, Ivan. He is highly intelligent without being gripped by ideas. He can cook. His tastes are middlebrow. Though revengeful in particular instances, he is decent in general outlook. Though he can lose his temper, he never loses his head. The voters pick all this up and like it
and
Cameron has been a Steve Hilton-type optimist, the stern overseer of austerity and a persuasive voice for Lynton Crosbys plain values. Since the election, his One Nation bias has revived. Before it and since 2010, intervention-scepticism abroad has given way to a more activist stance, and a real grasp of the menace of Islamist extremism. High marks to him for that. But it may be a mistake to search for consistency. Being human, we seek it: to unearth patterns where none perhaps exist. If Cameron has unity, it is one not so much of ideas and beliefs as of instinct, reflex and tone. He is a power-politician in the classic establishment mode. His presentational powers, detachment, cunning and lightness on his feet come together in a coherence of character and purpose. The electorate knows it and knows him. Knowing someone can be halfway to trusting them. Which is why, after ten years as leader, hes still here.
Except he isnt for much longer, at any rate. He deserves to be honoured as a great reforming domestic Prime Minister, undertaking even more public service change than Margaret Thatcher. There hasnt been such sweeping change in the public services since Atlee.
But memories often deal in shorthand, and he is more likely to have a Mary Tudor legacy. Except that the word engraved on his heart will not be the name of a French coastal town. It will instead be that of the continent in which that port is located: Europe.
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Opinion / Columnist
"This is a year of great harvest as there will be no depression and sorrows," the United Families International Church leader, Emmanuel Makandiwa predicted this statement at the beginning of 2016 and gave people the much needed optimism after a difficult 2015. Halfway through the year whilst people are still waiting for the fulfilment of that prophecy, the man of God is at it again this time he sees Zimbabwe as being "on a verge of an implosion" and has gone as far as wading into the succession politics of the country by "seeing a person coming from outside, who was running towards the people of Zimbabwe". Forgive many a Zimbabweans for being sceptical, are these prophecies from the Almighty or fabrications from religious leaders who have their own agendas and have of late cast the die by clamouring for the removal of a duly elected leader.Religious leaders especially of the Christian denomination have of late been in the spotlight for the wrong reasons. One would actually think religious leaders have taken over the place of opposition politics in the country to the spiritual detriment of their congregants. A Kariba pastor Patrick Mugadza, was arrested in Victoria Falls last year for demonstrating against President Robert Mugabe's alleged misrule, Shingi Munyeza, a senior pastor Faith Ministries in Harare has been making a nuisance of himself wading into the unchartered territory of politics and "pastor" Evan Mawarire has gone a step further in calling for a revolt against the ruling government. Whilst a little-known Christian Voice International-Zimbabwe (CVI-Z) has been calling for the coalition of opposition political parties to form " a formidable force" in a bid to push the ZANU PF government from power. It has real been a flurry of activities amongst the men of the cloth trying to outdo each other in influencing the politics of the day.Which begs the question, what is the role of the church in society. Many agree that religion is a valuable asset for society; it encourages healthier lifestyles which resultantly leads to higher life expectancies; its followers are less likely to suffer from depression, have more stable marriages, are less likely to engage in criminal activity, and are more generous in contributing to the common good. For Christians, their exemplar Christ, left a model for his followers to follow his footsteps (1 Peter 3:21). Jesus was never involved in the politics of his day, his purpose was to preach about the Kingdom of God as the means to human salvation. Have the pastors who have been dubbing in the politics of the country following Jesus's example. I think NOT. I would like to believe these are the "wolves in sheep clothing" that Jesus spoke of. These men of God should be encouraging people to "continue . to be in subjection and to be obedient to governments and authorities" (Titus 3:1). Instead they have lost their way and would like Zimbabweans to follow them to the precipice.Instead of bringing religion into disrepute these people should quit and join fulltime political activism and leave people with a calling to give people of God their spiritual food, which has been overshadowed by preaching politics. I would to believe these purported pastors have turned the pulpit into political stages depriving genuine Christians with a thirst for the word of God.Christians in Zimbabwe should say no to these rogue pastors who have done nothing but cause populace despondent by their out-of-this-world prophecies and political activism. They should be helping build Zimbabwe and not help the country' enemies tear it down. In these difficult times people seek religion to have a message of hope but if political pastors have filled the clergy where are the people going to find their resting place.The country have plenty of opposition parties, numerous to even mention who can challenge government come election time. Zimbabwe remains a democratic country where freedom of association with any political outfit is enjoyed. What people won't tolerate are fly-by night pastors who abuse their position in society to influence the outcome of politics in the country. These "pastors" should quit short-changing congregates by dubbing into political activism, the door is open for them to join any political party of their choice and leave pastorhood to men with a genuine calling.--------------Mandla Nsingo
Opinion / Columnist
Zimbabwe is open for business 24/7 and shall never shut down. No amount of propaganda, vilification and demonization can change that fact. Not even by the devil himself. We are a discerning lot. We understand that it is only a fool that will reduce their home to rubble, only to rebuild it to the same specifications that it previously had. Otherwise, besides unnecessary labour and incidental expenses, what would be the point? This explains why the country rejected the insane call by anarchist megalomaniacs in opposition political circles, pressure group community including fly by night clergy as well as detractor sections of the private press, for civil disobedience but chose instead to pursue productive causes such as reporting for work.That opposition political activists such as Evan Mawarire , Stern Zvorwadza and Promise Mkwananzi were gleefully contemplating windfalls of donor funding they expected to accrue by way of having supposedly delivered on the regime change agenda, a feat that the MDC-T had fallen short on, has never been in doubt. This is informed by the fact that countries that fund opposition parties in the region, such as USA, Britain and France, have previously made it crystal clear to their local poodles that they have to earn every penny of funding, a situation that has seen opposition parties and their pressure group acolytes literally falling on each other in coming up with ludicrous projects to milk their gullible foreign masters.Equally unsurprising have been ridiculous demonstrations at a handful of the country's embassies organised and orchestrated by a pitiful rented crowd of opposition activists in self-imposed exile that are trying to make a name for themselves understandably in preparation for supplanting the otherwise clueless local leaders. These are the same individuals that have tried and failed to incite disaffection and even violence against Government in neighbouring countries and abroad by their malicious interpretation of Statutory Instrument 64. Under normal circumstances, one would think that such a move by Government to protect local industries and jobs would be applauded but, alas, no! They would rather protect foreign interests, including sacrificing local jobs as well as exporting scarce foreign currency so long as it fits into their quest to assume power through hook or crook. The ill-advised Students Solidarity March in Tshwane, otherwise known as Pretoria, is an indictment of our collective conscience, for how is it that such young people could easily embrace a culture of violence directed at their own kith and kin? Rather than pursue studies for the purpose of meaningfully contributing towards the country in future, there appears to be an obsession with hooliganism. That is the reason I sometimes query the authenticity of some of the so-called diaspora students, since these could be nothing but a cacophony of opposition activists with a criminal fantasy.More perplexing is the attempt by an otherwise insignificant and hitherto unknown group of adults with too much time on their hands and little else to do going by the moniker UK Diaspora Zimbabweans to call for anarchy at Zimbabwe House in Britain. Genuine Zimbabweans in that country have serious progressive issues to deal with and will not listen to lunatics howling loud and long about tissues. Mind you, the monster called Immigration Policy that has been sired by the so-called Brexit spells doom and gloom for opposition political activists as most of these owe their stay in that country to asylum statuses. It is thus not so surprising after all to see such a circus unfolding for these people have to continue to justify their stay. In fact, if you ask me, most of them would rather the country sunk into the abyss because any improvement in the country's economy would pose colossal question marks and risks about their statuses, which could be so easily revoked, resulting in deportation.At the risk of being deemed arrogant, I will state this fact. Recently, I told Mkwananzi, as he was extolling the vices of Mawarire in his Facebook page, that Zimbabwe would not baulk because her resilience is legendary. I pointed out that his infantile impotence lay in his careless assumption that a handful of followers, most of whom are desk personnel at the MDC-T information department, could possibly translate into an avalanche of protesters on the appointed day."You want to sail on the blood of innocent Zimbabweans by promoting anarchy in the name of exercising civil liberties. You take democracy too for granted. No country that has undergone illegitimate regime change has lived to tell its story. Iraq is aflame. They are also burning Syria. Egypt and Tunisia are plagued by sectarian violence. For what? Spill your own blood and leave Zimbos alone."Boy was I on point! Zimbabweans want to better themselves and they know how to put across their genuine grievances to their receptive Government without recourse to violence.------------sambulo vuma
Aimee Blume / Special to The Courier & Press Illya Williams, center, is the owner of the new Spice Cafe, with his partner Taleha Johnson, left, and daughter Illyasa Williams.
SHARE Aimee Blume / Special to The Courier & Press The Jamaican jerk chicken served at Spice Cafe is traditionally flavored with thyme and allspice but not too much chile heat. Enjoyed with rice and "peas" cooked with coconut milk and slow-cooked collard greens. Aimee Blume / Special to The Courier & Press Williams serves his jambalaya as a flavorful Creole meat and vegetable mixture over white rice. This helps keep the rice from overcooking and gives the dish a fresh, colorful appearance.
By Aimee Blume
Add another winner to Evansville's lineup of new, interesting and delicious restaurants.
Spice Cafe is serving up flavorful southern, Creole, Caribbean and even a couple Moroccan dishes prepared from recipes owner Illya Williams has gathered from friends and family throughout a lifetime of travel.
"I've traveled and lived all around the world," Williams said. "I was born in California, but I spent the first five years of my life in Israel. I grew up and graduated from high school in Memphis and lived in Chicago. My parents still live there. I have family members from the Caribbean, Louisiana and New Orleans, so I've always been exposed to those types of food. That's what I wanted to bring to Evansville."
The restaurant is a family affair, staffed by Williams, his daughter Illyasa Williams and partner Taleha Johnson.
"A lot of my cooking influences came from my grandfather who lived in the south and taught me the southern styles," Williams said. "The collard greens and the green beans are a tribute to him. He grew up down south and used to hobo train between Memphis and Chicago, but he ended up retiring as a post office executive in Chicago. There was a full kitchen downstairs at the post office, and he'd be down there cooking greens and sweet potato casserole. The food just came out so delicious, so I took those recipes. But it was never an exact amount of this or that; it was a process, the result."
Williams' menu leans heavily toward the cooking of New Orleans, with offerings from po'boy sandwiches to gumbo.
"My aunt Beverly taught me how to make jambalaya and gumbo, which are two of the staples of Louisiana cooking," he said. "True jambalaya and gumbo are centered around the Creole holy trinity of celery, onion and bell peppers, and I was taught it's all about melding these flavors together. The result of those vegetables together is greater than the sum of the parts."
Williams' aunt cooked jambalaya the traditional way with the vegetables, tomatoes and meats mixed and slowly cooked with rice. Williams found, however, that the stew didn't hold well warm, because the rice tended to break down. He modified the recipe a bit and serves the stewed vegetables and meat over white rice.
Two more New Orleans favorites Williams cooks are etouffee (shrimp or crawfish) and seafood gumbo. The gumbo is available only for Saturday dinner.
"Gumbo has always been made with what you have in the fridge and cupboards," said Williams. "People here are most familiar with seafood gumbo, but there are all kinds, with chicken or meat. Gumbo and etouffee are actually very similar; they both start off with the roux. Etouffee means to smother, so you're adding less water to the etouffee. You're building flavors, adding flavors on top of one another."
More of Williams' southern food includes staples such as southern fried chicken, slow-braised collard greens with ham, fried okra and sweet potato casserole.
Continuing on this southerly course, you'll find some Jamaican and Cuban recipes on the menu as well. The Jerk chicken is straight from the Island, piquant but not overly hot, layered with the flavors of fresh thyme and allspice. To the side enjoy authentic rice and peas, a Jamaican specialty of rice and kidney beans cooked with a touch of coconut milk.
"The Caribbean tradition is more about marinating food," said Williams. "There are many practical reason for it. The Carib and Arawak Indians would kill a deer or pig, and then they would take a bone and jerk holes into the meat and apply this weave of spices. It would act as a preservative. The Cuban chicken also is marinated."
The Moroccan chicken and short ribs dishes on Spice Cafe's weekend menus have a different flair from the rest of the menu, but the recipes were come by just as honestly.
"I have a friend who's from Casablanca, Morocco, and I spent some time with him and his family," said Williams. "His mother taught me how to make these dishes, or at any rate I observed her when she was cooking. I watched her weave together these spices: turmeric, cinnamon, garlic, things we might not think to combine. She used lamb, but I adapted the recipe for short ribs and took the chef's creativity and adapted the spices a little to use with chicken."
For dessert, try fresh fried beignets or a slice of the 7-UP pound cake that Williams' aunt Mildred used to make. He has added a bit of glaze containing Bailey's Irish Cream that soaks into the cake and keeps it moist and flavorful.
In the future, expect to see Williams prepare special menus for special occasions such as Valentine's Day and Mother's Day brunch. During Mardi Gras, he plans to head down to the gulf coast and return with a truckload of crawfish and shrimp for seafood boils.
"I was working in I.T., but I've always dreamed of opening a restaurant," said Williams. "I wanted to bring something different to Evansville. My goal is to offer authentic dishes at a competitive price."
Keep your eye on Spice Cafe's Facebook page at for future events including a grand opening festival in mid-August.
Spice Cafe is located at 6840 Logan Drive, phone 812-602-5050
Hours;
Monday-Friday 11 a.m. 2 p.m. for lunch
5 p.m. 8 p.m. for dinner
Saturday 11 a.m. 8 p.m.
Sunday noon 6 p.m.
Illya Williams generously shared with us his recipe for etouffee, a Creole favorite that can be made with crawfish or shrimp.
"Etouffee simply means 'to smother' in French," said Williams. "Etouffee can be described as a shellfish stew or gravy served over a hot bed of rice. This dish is a prime example of Creole/Cajun cuisine that creates a complex flavor by layering and adding key ingredients in the correct sequence."
Spice Cafe Etouffee Recipe (Crawfish or Shrimp)
Serves 4-6
INGREDIENTS
The Roux:
cup (1 stick) salted butter
2/3 cup flour
The Creole Holy Trinity:
3-4 medium (approx. 1-1 cup) stalks celery, chopped
1 medium green bell pepper (approx. 1 cup) chopped
cup green onion, green and white parts, chopped
The Gravy and Spice:
1 cup chicken broth
1 cup water
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1 bay leaf
cup fresh minced parsley
teaspoon salt
teaspoon black pepper
teaspoon cayenne pepper
The Shellfish:
1 pound cooked crawfish tailmeat or medium cooked shrimp
The Staple:
Hot cooked long grain rice to serve
Parsley or green onion to garnish, (optional)
DIRECTIONS
1 In large skillet, melt the butter over low heat. This is one of the few times that you do not want to heat your skillet before adding your fat or oil. Butter will char or burn very quickly, so it's essential to control your heat.
2 Once the butter has melted, add in the flour. Cook and occasionally stir the flour over low heat until the mixture or roux is a caramel color. Pay close attention not to burn your flour or butter. If done correctly this should take 10-20 minutes, depending on the heat and the desired darkness of your roux. The color of your roux is a personal taste preference; the darker the roux, the stronger a flavor it will produce.
3 Once your desired roux darkness is achieved, add the elements of the Creole Holy Trinity (celery, bell pepper, onion) and stir until the vegetables are beginning to soften.
4 Next add chicken broth, water, tomato paste, bay leaf, parsley, salt, black pepper and cayenne pepper.
5 Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer covered for 20-25 minutes while stirring occasionally.
6 Now you're ready to add your shellfish and plate your dish. This can be done two different ways: You may add a pound of cooked crawfish tails or shrimp directly to the roux mixture in the pot and continue to simmer for 5-10 minutes until shellfish is hot. Serve on top of bed of rice. OR Sprinkle crawfish tails or shrimp with Cajun seasoning (I prefer Zatarain's or Tony Chachere's) and steam for 5-7 minutes. Add a portion of shellfish on top of bed of rice and spoon a helping of the roux mixture on top of shellfish and rice.
7 Optionally, you can garnish with either fresh parsley or diced green onion.
SHARE Sergio Montenegro
By Richard Gootee of the Courier and Press
An Evansville man has been charged with battery after being accused of stabbing a 64-year-old family member over the weekend.
Sergio Q. Montenegro, 27, has been jailed since the alleged incident on Sunday afternoon. Montenegro is charged with aggravated, and is lodged in Vanderburgh County jail without bound, according to court records.
Montenegro is accused of stabbing his uncle, identified as William Boles, during a fight on West Eichel Avenue Sunday afternoon. According to the arrest affidavit, Boles required surgery for a stab wound to the neck but is expected to survive.
Multiple witnesses told police that the two men started fighting in the street before Montenegro grabbed a knife and stabbed his uncle. The fight started because Boles told Montenegro he was not welcome at his residence, another family member told police, according to the affidavit.
In an interview with police, Montenegro reportedly told investigators that Boles pulled a box cutter on him before the stabbing. However, after police said multiple people disputed that account, Montenegro stopped talking about the incident, the affidavit states.
The knife allegedly used in the incident was not recovered, but Montenegro said he knew where it was before he stopped talking to police, investigators said.
SHARE Mathew McCallister
By Mark Wilson of the Courier and Press
BOONVILLE Not much was said between the four men riding with Jade Stigall through the twists and turns of Warrick County's back roads in the predawn blackness on Feb. 17, 2014.
However, Stigall testified Tuesday in the murder trial of her half-brother, Mathew McCallister, that she heard two things clearly.
Sitting between McCallister and Shawn Grigsby (one of several co-conspirators charged in the case) 35-year-old Joseph Nelson apparently stayed quiet. Stigall testified she heard McCallister tell Nelson that he didn't know what God he believed in, but that he should start making amends now.
Then, Stigall said, she heard McCallister ask Grigsby, " do you have that clip?"
Earlier in her testimony, Stigall said Grigsby had been showing off and passing around a semiautomatic pistol among the group as they smoked meth in an Evansville hotel room.
"I was terrified," Stigall said, describing the ride that eventually brought them to where McCallister allegedly shot Nelson.
McCallister, 34, is charged with murder and conspiracy to commit murder in Nelson's death. Prosecutors are seeking a life without parole sentence for McCallister if he is convicted. The trial in Warrick Superior Court No. 1 is expected to last all week.
Nelson's body was discovered by employees at the Alcoa Warrick Operation's coal yard after it jammed in chute on a conveyor belt of coal destined for the company's power plant, according to court testimony.
Warrick County Prosecutor Mike Perry is arguing that McCallister shot Nelson by the railroad track at Liberty Mine, which supplies coal to Alcoa by rail.
McCallister is the only one of the four people charged in Nelson's death to stand trial. Codefendants Grigsby, Stigall and David Lackey Jr. have already pleaded guilty and been sentenced.
Grigsby pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit murder and received a 20-year sentence in September 2014. Lackey and Stigall who are now married received four-year sentences after pleading guilty to charges of assisting a criminal in return for their cooperation in the investigation.
Stigall testified Tuesday that she saw McCallister shoot Nelson, a Martinsville, Indiana, resident who was an acquaintance of McCallister.
She testified that the shooting came at the end of a four-day methamphetamine binge during which the group bounced around between numerous Evansville-area motels, hanging out with others and using drugs.
Stigall said she had been using meth, and other drugs, almost daily for a year at that point.
She said Nelson made a sexual advance toward her while they smoked meth on the night before the killing when they were alone in a room at the Fairfield Inn on Evansville's East Side while the rest of the group were out getting more drugs.
She said Nelson never touched her but made her feel disrespected and angry, so she sent Lackey, her boyfriend at the time, a Facebook message telling him about it and he told McCallister, who then asked her about it.
At McCallister's instructions, the group drove Nelson to a gas station on Green River Road where McCallister entered the vehicle, Stigall said. He then instructed her where to drive.
Stigall said she stopped the vehicle and the group exited. She said she saw McCallister leading the way with his hand on Nelson's shoulder; and that she saw Grigsby hand McCallister the gun.
It was dark and she and Lackey were trailing behind the others, Stigall said.
"I rounded the corner and I seen Joe on his knees and that's when I seen sparks go off from the gun," Stigall said.
Opinion / Columnist
I READ these excerpts: "The Zimbabwe government itself is conceding liability for the perpetration of gross human rights violations"; "State agents fingered in human rights abuse".The Human Rights Forum said it would send its report to the United Nations to press for further action against the government. Police were cited as the most common perpetrators."People in detention are generally at a much greater risk of abuse unless there are extremely strong safeguards in place governing the process of detaining people," reads the report."People in custody are likely to be beaten irrespective of their alleged crime, political or criminal, and are commonly subjected to falanga - the excruciatingly painful practice of beating the soles of the feet, which leaves little obvious bruising."Police had "adopted torture as a means to eliciting confessions on a widespread basis", the report says.Harare Central police station was cited as the worst station where people have suffered severe torture.At first I thought this was an exaggeration by a non-governmental organisation until I saw a police officer at Mzilikazi Police Station, Bulawayo, beat up two young ladies in full view of his colleagues and the public on June 29 at precisely 13:50hrs in the charge office.I had gone there with my daughter to have copies of her school certificates stamped. Funnily enough, my daughter wants to join the ZRP and what she saw that day shocked her.I heard another plain-clothes officer refer to an alleged thug as Marabishi (trash) as the terrified girls were led up the stairs to a first floor office. In the office, whose windows face 6th Avenue Extension, and in full view of officers in the courtyard, Marabishi slapped and kicked the two hapless girls, branding them prostitutes.The fact that Marabishi had started assaulting the girls in the charge office showed that it is normal procedure at the station. And to think that not even one police officer, including the female officers present, lifted a finger in defence of the two poor girls, is appalling. Not suprisingly, my daughter no longer wants to join the force.
Donald Trump waves goodbye at Michael Pence's side as he leaves the governor's residence on Thursday.
SHARE
By IndyStar Report
Updated 12:30 p.m.
Indianas reputation as the crossroads of America apparently holds true for Donald Trumps vice presidential search.
Now, U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama is also on his way to Indianapolis today. Sessions, who is often mentioned as a possible running mate for Trump, said he plans to visit with the Republican presidential candidate, CNNs Sunlen Serfaty said on Twitter.
Former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich, considered another V.P. finalist, is also in Indianapolis today to meet with Trump and his family.
The meetings follow Trump and his family's visit with Gov. Mike Pence at the governor's residence this morning and a joint rally in Westfield last night that was widely considered an audition for Pence.
The flurry of activity comes as Trump is expected to announce a running mate this week.
Updated 11:55 a.m.
Newt Gingrich, one of Gov. Mike Pence's competitors to become Donald Trump's running mate, is in Indianapolis today to meet with Trump and his family, according to several news reports.
IndyStar partner Fox59 is reporting that Trump and Gingrich are meeting at the Conrad Hotel Downtown.
Gingrich, a former U.S. House speaker, is traveling to Indianapolis to meet with Trump's children, according to Kelly O'Donnell of NBC News. They met with a third finalist, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, yesterday, O'Donnell said on MSNBC.
Trump and his family met with Pence earlier in the morning at the governor's residence.
Earlier
Donald Trump spent the morning at the official residence of Gov. Mike Pence Wednesday.
Trump and members of his family including his sons Donald Jr. and Eric were seen leaving the residence at 46th and Meridian street in a motorcade at about 10:30 a.m. The meeting concluded without a statement.
Trump had planned to fly back to New York after a rally last night, but ended up spending the night at the Conrad Hotel in Downtown Indianapolis after his plane experienced mechanical problems, a source told the IndyStar.
Trump and Pence also had an unplanned dinner together last night at the Capitol Grill. They were joined by Pence's wife, Karen, and Trump's son, Eric.
The meetings follow what was widely seen as an audition Tuesday night when Pence introduced Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, at a rally in suburban Westfield, Ind.
Pence, who is locked in a tough re-election battle with Democrat John Gregg in Indiana, has campaign stops scheduled in Muncie and Fort Wayne later today. Follow IndyStar for updates from those events.
Furnished photo Emerald ash borer
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By Zach Evans of the Courier and Press
The emerald ash borer is here.
In fact, the invasive pest that infects and kills ash trees has probably been along the Evansville Riverfront for several years.
The Indiana Department of Natural Resources announced its findings Wednesday.
The borer was confirmed in ash trees along the Ohio River in Pigeon Township, which is in an area west of U.S. 41.
Natural tree decline and the damage from the early years of a borer infestation are similar, according to a city news release. That means emerald ash borers have been in the area for several years and have infected area trees already.
The Evansville infestation leaves Gibson County as the only county in Indiana that doesn't officially have infected trees.
City Arborist Shawn Dickerson said in May the borer was likely to hit Vanderburgh County this year.
Ash borers dig into a tree and unload their larvae underneath the bark. Within a few years, the ash borers will have killed the tree.
Emerald ash borers are an insect native to Asia first discovered in the U.S. in 2002. In the last 14 years the bug has spread to 23 states, and in its wake destroyed hundreds of millions of trees.
Ash borers were first found in Indiana in 2004.
The city has approximately 12,000 trees, not including the 3,000 acres of forest areas. About 7 percent of the city's trees are ash trees.
Dickerson said for residents to either have their ash trees removed or treated. If property owners wait until ash trees start to show symptoms of infestation, it will likely be too late to save them, he said.
The Indiana Department of Natural Resources advises anyone who sees tree damage the borers leave D-shaped holes in bark or spots the small, green beetles to call their office immediately at 317-232-4120.
Indiana Gov. Mike Pence speaks during a rally for Republican presidential candidate Donald TrumpTuesday, July 12, 2016, in Westfield, Ind. (AP Photo/Darron Cummings)
By Zach Osowski, zach.osowski@courierpress.com
WESTFIELD, Ind. Gov. Mike Pence may be on the short list for Donald Trump's running mate but some voters in his own state are wary that a Trump/Pence ticket could scare away more voters than it brings on.
The thousands in attendance at Trump's Tuesday night rally were all excited to see the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. Many said they don't care who Trump picks, but the idea of adding Indiana's governor to the ticket left some with heartburn, and others scratching their heads.
Jenni Bolen, a Whitestown native, said she thinks adding Pence could present a real problem for Republicans in November.
"I'm a Trump supporter," Bolen said. "But I would not vote for Pence."
Bolen specifically mentioned the RFRA debacle that she said could be used as ammo by the Democrats. Bolen said when a race is down to just two candidates, extra care needs to be given to who gets added to the ticket.
"Pence has proven to be a bit archaic when it comes to some issues," Bolen said. "Would he secure the Christian vote? Yes. Would he win the LGBT vote? No. And I think there's some other groups as well."
Brandon Ruth, from Cayuga, said he didn't think Pence made much sense as a vice presidential pick.
"I doesn't seem like Pence really has a home right now," Ruth said. "The Republicans here seem to want him to go and the Democrats don't like him. I was actually surprised he's being vetted."
Some Trump campaign officials have cited Pence's stint in Congress as a plus, but Ruth said someone like Newt Gingrich made more sense to him as a running mate if Trump is looking for someone with congressional experience.
Other Trump supporters said Pence makes sense as a counter-balance to Trump.
"Pence seems to be a pretty cool and collected guy," Dave Schmalz, a Carmel resident, said. "I think he would be a smart pick."
Lynn Alder, who drove to the Trump rally from Logansport, said it might be a good idea for Trump to bring in somebody with political experience. Alder said he was voting for Trump because he isn't a politician, but admitted some experience in getting bills passed would be a good thing.
Alder said regardless of who the vice presidential pick is, he wouldn't be changing his vote.
Pence gave the introduction for Trump at Tuesday's rally in what many political experts think is a final audition for the VP role.
Trump is expected to make his pick by Friday the deadline for Pence to remove himself from the governor's race.
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By Jill Disis, USA TODAY NETWORK The Indianapolis Star
A move by Indiana lawmakers to govern the use of police body-worn cameras is creating concern among some law enforcement agencies.
At least two police departments in Southern Indiana have suspended their body camera programs because they say they can't afford to pay for the amount of digital storage the new law requires. Others said they'll make due but caution that the cost of implementing the new regulations may cause unintended consequences.
The legislation, which went into effect July 1, sets guidelines for footage, including retention limits and when and how such video should be released publicly. The law sought to balance police transparency and accountability with the privacy of citizens captured on video.
Video footage can provide objective evidence, supporters say, particularly in situations where police use deadly force. Some studies show that departments that use body cameras use force less often, and the cameras are increasingly seen as a way to build public trust.
"The new law is putting a large burden on the taxpayers and us," Evansville Police Department Capt. Andy Chandler said. In March 2014, Evansville became one of the first departments in the state to equip its officers with body-worn cameras. "It's requiring us to do so much more."
Although there is no mandate in the law for departments to buy body cameras, Chandler, who said he did not believe his department was consulted about the law, pointed to many new requirements that will significantly raise the cost of such programs. One provision that requires agencies to obscure private information, such as the identities of minors and victims of sexual crimes, means police will have to spend money on image-altering software and training for officers to use it.
"Most of these body cam manufacturers made their software tamper-proof so when it was introduced into court and evidence, you couldn't say that we had tampered it or altered it in any way," Chandler said. "Now, the law is requiring us to do just that.
"I don't think that our legislature was very smart in what they did, and I don't think they consulted with police departments that were utilizing body cams before they initiated the law."
Officials from the Clarksville Police Department which, along with Jeffersonville, recently suspended its program projected a cost of about $100,000 for expanded storage had they kept the cameras.
The new law requires local departments to store all footage for 190 days, or enough time for a citizen to file a tort claim. Clarksville stored footage for 30 days.
"Even looking at going twice that amount, we figured we could work that out," Clarksville Police Chief Mark Palmer told the Louisville Courier-Journal last month.
State Rep. Kevin Mahan, a Hartford City Republican, defended the law he authored in this year's legislative session. Mahan said he was surprised by the recent reaction and added that his bill had been supported by the Indiana Sheriffs' Association and the Indiana Association of Chiefs of Police. Both agencies testified before committee meetings about the legislation.
"I was not aware of any police agency that was looking to discontinue their program," Mahan told IndyStar last week. "And quite frankly, I was a little shocked by it. And I don't really get shocked by much."
Mahan bristled at the suggestion that the bill was not well thought-out, calling the legislation "one of the most vetted bills that went through this legislative session."
Mahan suggested that departments worried about the cost of cameras look at opportunities to partner with private companies to implement some of the requirements, such as obscuring sensitive information shown on video. He also asked police agencies to consider potential cost savings that could come from having body-worn cameras.
"They say a picture's worth a thousand words, and I think a video is worth even more than that," he said, adding that the amount of money departments could save on litigation and court time likely would outweigh the costs of the cameras.
Other departments say they're committed to eventually providing body cameras, but the legislation has given them some pause. The Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department, for example, was approved for about $250,000 for an introductory camera program by the City-County Council last fall, but the new storage requirements are forcing it to take a look at how much equipment it can buy.
IMPD Chief Troy Riggs said the department hopes to introduce cameras by the end of 2016 after it finishes its bidding process for a camera vendor.
Elkhart Police Department officials say their guidelines are already in line with what the new law requires. The agency has had body cameras since late 2015.
Steve Key, executive director of the Hoosier State Press Association, which supported the final version of the law, said it's not unusual to see clashes between different agencies on such matters, especially when emerging technology comes into play.
"I think you're hearing from some of the police departments now because now is when the rubber hits the road," Key said. "Until it becomes law, a lot of people don't realize exactly what the implications are."
Chandler, meanwhile, said Evansville won't suspend its camera program, but he warned that the department might have to curtail other services.
"It's definitely a hardship," he said. "We are already scrambling trying to figure out how we're going to pay and cover these."
Chandler said his department also expects to require a $150 fee, the maximum allowed under the law, to produce video for people who request it a significant increase from the $25 charged now. Last week, Lafayette council members approved the same fee for that city's police department.
Showing just how tricky the balance is for lawmakers, Key said the $150 fee will be a deterrent to citizens, civil rights groups and media outlets attempting to obtain copies of potentially questionable video. He said that concern is amplified by other stipulations built into the law, such as a rule that says a person's only recourse is to file a lawsuit if a police department initially says no to releasing video.
"All those things are conspiring to make public access to police body cameras not a very strong reality," Key said.
Advocates of police reform argue that releasing camera footage is necessary for government transparency and accountability. But even while lawmakers and police departments navigate the use of body camera footage, technology has made it easier for citizens to record controversial uses of force such as the fatal police shootings of men in Louisiana and Minnesota last week. In Louisiana, the officers involved were wearing body cameras, but officials said the cameras fell off during a struggle.
Chandler said he understands concerns about the financial obstacles that may hinder citizens from obtaining video, and he added that the department expects to show video from high-profile cases to the media for free. But in the rest of the cases, he said, the fee does not cover the department's cost to prepare the video for release.
"It's a legitimate complaint," Chandler said. "I would tell them to contact your legislators. Have the legislators provide funding for this."
Evan Bayh
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The late Southern writer Thomas Wolfe once wrote a novel called "You Can't Go Home Again."
Evan Bayh, it appears, wants to prove Wolfe wrong.
Bayh's re-emergence as a political candidate a few days ago took much of Indiana by surprise. Just a few months ago, when speculation and Indiana Democrats' hopes soared that Bayh might run for governor again, he seemed to slam the door shut on running for office again.
When he talked with me about it at the time, he seemed definite, if a bit wistful.
He said he wasn't sure people would respond to "my style of leadership" his centrist approach to governing, which sought to keep people at the table and find areas of consensus.
Perhaps we were asking Bayh about the wrong office. We often forget just how large a part the U.S. Senate has played in Evan Bayh's life.
He was just 6 years old when his father, Birch Bayh, was first elected to the Senate. The elder Bayh served three terms 18 years in the Senate. Evan Bayh lived much of his childhood, all of his adolescence and a good part of his early manhood in rhythm with the rituals of that august legislative body.
In those days, senators were fond of referring to their chamber as a club, an intimate enclave in the political world in which party affiliations mattered but not as much as personal relationships did.
I remember talking with Evan Bayh years ago about how small that world was. It was 1992, the year Bill Clinton was challenging President George H.W. Bush for the presidency.
Bayh supported Clinton, who was a fellow Democrat, a fellow governor and a good friend.
But Bayh said he had a hard time summoning up partisan rancor even in a hotly contested race for the nation's highest office.
"Barbara Bush used to babysit me when I was a kid," he said. "I know they're good people and a good family."
When Bayh left the Senate six years ago, his rationale for doing so was dismissed by many political observers as a cover for frustrated personal ambition. Because it was clear he wasn't going to be Barack Obama's vice president or even have a strong voice in the Obama administration, he chose to leave.
Doubtless there was truth to that Bayh's gaze never wandered far from the White House but I don't think it was the whole truth.
Because Evan Bayh has spent most of his life in the public eye, reticence is almost a reflex with him. I cannot claim to know him well, but I've been interviewing him for more than 30 years. I've always found him to be a more complicated figure than he lets on.
He's told me and others that he never would have left the Senate if that chamber were still what it had been his father's time, a collegial body that worked to resolve rather than exacerbate differences, a place where personal friendships trumped party labels.
What many of us missed when Bayh left the Senate six years ago was the emotional quality of his lament. He struck tones of bitterness and deep personal sorrow that were and are rare for a man who is reluctant to show his feeling publicly. He seemed to take what had happened to the Senate personally, as if his childhood home had been transformed into a crack house.
It's fair to ask: What's changed? If anything, the atmosphere in the Senate these days seems to be even more partisan and rancorous than it was when Bayh left. Why would he return now?
Well, perhaps because an old friend, Hillary Clinton, asked him to come back and assured him that his voice his counsel to seek common ground would be heard.
Perhaps it's because there are signs, amid all the shouting and screaming that define our current political debates, that many Hoosiers and Americans have grown weary of leaders and a system that seem to prefer fights to solutions.
And maybe, just maybe, Evan Bayh himself has changed.
It's possible in his time away that he has come to realize that a home is not just something we think of fondly, but something we have to build.
That home is what we make it.
Opinion / Columnist
Some opposition political parties in the country are always eager to see this country put in the international community spotlight even in situations where there is nothing to talk about. For the past few days, Zimbabweans have witnessed some sporadic demonstrations and stay aways triggered by the recent promulgation and implementation of the Statutory Instrument Number 64 of 2016 by government through the Ministry of Industry and Commerce.The implementation of the SI number 64 which sought to regulate the importation of basic commodities and building materials was hardly received by some cross border traders who thought that the government has plugged off their means of survival. Some of the cross border traders were known for importing basic commodities for resale in the country with them not paying tax to the government. So the SI number 64 was implemented as a measure to make sure that all importers of basic commodities and building materials can do that when licensed to do.So such disgruntlement by the cross border traders over the implementation of the SI number 64 of 2016 coupled by government's failure to timeously pay some civil servants their June 2016 salaries triggered those demonstrations and stay aways in the recent days. Some pseudo political activists led by Evan Mawarire with his #ThisFlag campaign and Promise Mkwananzi also with his #Tajamuka /Sesijikile campaign highjacked those demonstrations and then began inciting Zimbabweans to stay away from work. The two suggested that Zimbabweans should stay away from work until government acts against corruption as well as fixing the economy as to create employment for the unemployed youths in the country.Those two political activists began posting their videos on the social media inciting Zimbabweans to stay away from work as well as to demonstrate against the government over those plethora of economic problems which the government is said to be failing to solve. So Zimbabweans who have now mastered the art of using social media as their means of communications received the two's messages and on Wednesday 6 July 2016, there was a partial job stay away in the country as a result for that.As if to spruce up the image of Mawarire and Mkwananzi, the opposition political activists rushed to come up with their favourable analysis of that partial stay away. Some said that it was a success as the message was sent to the government with others saying that such a stay away should invite the intervention of the SADC and the AU to mediate on the crisis that the country is reeling under. The Dailynews of 12 July 2016 came up with a screaming headline: SADC, AU must heed early warnings from Zim. Reading such a headline from afar one can be forgiven to believe that Zimbabwe is in turmoil.Such a headline might make those in the diaspora to think that Zimbabwe is now burning with a possibility of a civil war ensuing. What a fallacy from such a learned journalist who fails to analyse the situation in the country. Coming up with a story calling for the intervention of either the SADC or the AU in the internal affairs of Zimbabwe reveals that some people live with no reality on what is on the ground. Zimbabwe has not reached a situation where a foreign mediation is welcome. It is naive and uncalled for people to rush to the international community to have mediation being carried out in country where demonstrations and stay aways are people's rights.The Constitution of Zimbabwe allows people to demonstrate and a stay away from work is not a crime. Zimbabwe is not in any crisis that warrant foreign intervention as espoused by the Dailynews. So there is no need to press panic button over some mere demonstration by some political malcontents.Actually the opposition political groups especially the Coalition Crisis in Zimbabwe should urge the SADC region to intervene in the Mozambican crisis where the Renamo rebels are fighting the legally elected government of Mozambique. Since April 2013, Mozambique has been experiencing political clashes between government forces and the rebels but the so called human rights defenders are silent over such calamities taking place there. They only rush to wish for the SADC bloc to intervene in Zimbabwe where no guns are not being fired. What a hypocrisy.May be the opposition political groups are rushing to long for either the SADC or the AU to intervene in the country in the belief that another Government of National Unity (GNU) would be formed. Being outside government has stifled the opposition political groups for a long time. They feel that if they make a lot of noise calling for the intervention of the SADC bloc in the country's internal affairs they would be smuggled into government again like what happened in 2009. Some opposition political parties where part and parcel of the Zimbabwean government brought about by the mediation of the SADC region after the disputed 2008 presidential runoff elections, so the opposition political parties miss that time in government hence the wish for SADC to intervene.It is surprising that those political opposition groups were silent when in 2008 South Africa experienced one of her worst xenophobia attacks with foreign nationals being killed and their businesses burnt down. The similar violence occurred in 2013 as well as in April 2015 up to October of the same year with the so called human rights defenders keeping quiet. Why was there no call for the SADC bloc to intervene? Do the Coalition Crisis of Zimbabwe think that the butchering of foreigners in South Africa was a minor act which did not warrant either the SADC or the AU attention? Why rush into thinking that some mere demonstrations and stay aways in Zimbabwe could warranty either SADCor AU intervention.In Kenya, since May 2016, there has been some violent demonstrations against that country's Independent electoral and Boundaries Commission led by that country's main opposition political party, the Coalition Reforms and Democracy (Cord) which alleges that the IEBC is not impartial and cannot oversee the impending 2017 presidential and parliamentary elections. Such demonstrations have led to the arrest of some of those involved in such disturbances and they are currently behind bars. But the same so called human rights defenders are silent over that and one wonders why the issue of Zimbabwe is drawing international attention. So the conclusion by the Zimbabwean government that some recent demonstrations and stay aways that gripped the country were the act of a third force could not be wished away.For the record some different African countries have been having some political and economic problems but the so called human rights defenders tended to give a blind eye over there but in Zimbabwe they rush here with an eagle's eye whenever there is a problem even if that problem does not need foreign attention. For over a decade Zimbabwe has been put under economic sanctions by the western countries claiming that the 2000 elections were not free and fair. But then since 2000 a lot of African and even non-African countries held their elections with some of those elections becoming contested ones but no sanctions were imposed on such countries by the western world. So one wonders why Zimbabwe is always under the spotlight in the international community.------------kazamulamatilaya@yahoo.com
Opinion / Columnist
The people of Zimbabwe have been told many types of lies about Zapu. In Bulawayo it has been said by some political parties that ZAPU is an extension of Zanupf. Even the so called Independent Press that is largely anti Zanupf has been taking giant steps to always link ZAPU and its leader Dr Dabengwa to ZanuPF. These lies left many people confused about Zapu.When Dr Dabengwa visited the victims of police brutality in Makokoba and Burombo, the people could not believe it. The victims were not members of Zapu. There is no election for which Dr Dabengwa could have been doing it in order to get votes like many politicians who run around making petty donations including beer to get the people's vote during election times. This was during a difficult time when the state had caused the deaths of two people and according to the residents themselves the state had tortured hundreds of them, humiliating both the young and old. This included the deliberate erosion of the people's culture and identity when they were made to sing the National anthem in Shona, rejecting the same national anthem in Ndebele. A sick old man sleeping in his room cannot be a rowdy youth and burning beds and the entire furniture in a house is not dispersing gangs of potential looters in streets.While consoling the people the ZAPU president did not mince his words in denouncing the barbarism of those who torture fellow citizens in the name of combating hooliganism. He made it quite clear to the people of Makokoba that the objective of the struggle for freedom in which he participated is being systematically and practically soiled by government and its state machinery.The residents who heard this were somehow surprised to hear these words from DD. They have been told that he is still ZANU PF. He never condemns the evils of Zanupf. They have been told that opposition to Zanupf belongs to certain organisations. Some elderly people openly said that they remember the bravery of the sixties and seventies against white supremacy and its vicious state machinery. It was only the brave who could stand up. Dr Dabengwa did exactly that once more when he drove around the suburb that is infested with armed riot police comforting the bereaved and the wounded.The ZAPU province of Bulawayo is inspired by such a humble but no doubt a brave leader. This move by the president has indeed propelled all wings of the party to be more resolute and more committed to the ideals of our party.
Opinion / Letters
Also attention
CC; His Excellency Oh Joon President of the Economic and Social council
CC Former Secretary General: Eminent African leader Hon Kofi Annan
CC President Jacob Zuma of SA and the EEF President Mr.Julius Malema
CC. The Heads of the Zimbabwean Council of Churches
CC The Chiefs and all Traditional leaders
CC The Political Parties in Zimbabwe: Mr. Morgan Tsvangirai and Mr. Emerson Munangagwa ZanuPF Chairperson) Mr Dumiso Dabengwa Mr. Tendai Biti. Mr Welshman Ncube,Dr Joice Mujuru.
CC.The heads Human rights groups
CC. Bishop Desmond Tutu
CC. The Elders council
CC. All Socio-economic Humanitarian stakeholders on Zimbabwe and Africa.
CC.The Zimbabwean Business leaders
CC All the philanthropists in Zimbabwe
CC.The top Zimbabwean Entrepreneurs : Strive Masiyiwa Mutumwa Mawere Shighi ,Mutasa Nigel Chanakira, Shingi Munyeza Gideon Gono, Phillip Chiyangwa and many others etc
His Excellency Mr. Ban Ki MoonUrgent UN meeting to address the emerging political crisis and the socio-economic crisis that has been for a decade in Zimbabwe- President Robert Mugabe needs to be retired now.https://www.youtube.com/edit?o=U&video_id=2ZnFIk1PLPIhttps://www.un.org/ecosoc/en/content/ecosoc-special-meetings-emergency-situationsOur global partner NationsThe Chairperson of SADC President Ian Khama.The Africa Union Commission Chairperson Dr.Nkosazana Dhlamini ZumaFrom Evangelist Hannington MubaiwaThis letter serves to inform the Secretary General of The United Nations Hon Ban Ki Moon of the United Nations to address the situation socio-economic and Humanitarian crisis and the threat to peace and stability in Zimbabwe today. The country is sedentary on political distraction that has destroyed the economy.I have taken this subjective stand because there is no system for such a move in the country and as an independent religious political activist, of the people, I and many others dislike the unlawful activities in Zimbabwe but we the people have no way of fixing it except to wait for another uncertain set of electionsThere is a threat to peace and security and socio- crisis in Zimbabwe.I specifically ask Hon Ban Ki Moon to engage The UN President of the Economic and Social council to set up an urgent committee to discuss the emerging threat to peace and stability in Zimbabwe today. I would like to recommend Former Secretary General Kofi Annan to lead this discussion platform to save time.There is need for regional and global intervention to reign in the political system so that the community can quickly get back to the business of creative enterprise to meet their field of needs in peace and liberty: A sense of urgency is of utmost importance-the political system as it stands is incapable of it.The opposition is waiting for elections and has no means overshadow Mugabe and ZANUPF leadership to change things urgently.1. The people have risen in our country because of the failure of President Gabriel Robert Mugabe to lead and manage the economic space to the extent that the country is broke.The country is sedentary on political distraction that has destroyed the economy. His Party and government system has tried and failed and is no longer capable of creating a dynamic industrial space that has a scope big enough to empower all the Zimbabweans. His political Party ZanuPF is dysfunctional to a major broken state, a sign of bad leadership or lack of it.The people have risen against President Gabriel Robert Mugabe's not only because of bad but non leadership. The people have risen to protest against the economic performance, his abrogation of the constitution and Judiciary and the law in ZimbabweAs a custodian of the law and the constitution he should not by any means be allowed to continue to rule: That would be not only be an oxymoron and a typical antithesis not only to the constitution but to everything that any government stands and democracy stands for2.Hon Robert Gabriel Mugabe has failed to secure strategies to move our country from the revolutionary political inertia, from the old colonial legacy paradigm; to a n new paradigm the unhooks various Zimbabwean networks from political thinking to Socio-Economic thinking that is pertinent for a transformation process that we need.The democratic system as it is structured is easily abuse-able and I think the time has come for the UN secretary to take initiative to fix this universal socio-economic nemesis that is binding our society.3. He has broken every intent and extent of every article of the human rights charter and failed to uphold the constitution in Zimbabwe. He should not be allowed to govern anymore-he has serious overdoses over ethical and moral values on the political stage. Social science says "followers do what their leaders do": he has created a legacy of an administration that does not respect nor honor the rights of the people. He has turned civil servants in government leadership into irate bosses who are the judge and the jury.4. A sense of urgency and intimacy with the suffering of the people are not and have never been on President Mugabe's agenda-his vision for the country is nothing else but to rule it and pass it on to whom he pleases5 It is clear him and his people have no idea how to get our country back on track in time with the kind of overdue sense of urgency that the matter requires neither do they wish to engage others.ZanuPF top leadership as of whom RG Mugabe is their direct expression have no solutions to help the country in the foreseeable future. They are a political organization that finds itself within an "inadvertent "economic space that overwhelms their capacity competence but will rather stay in power and impede growth. Economics is a nuisance of no major importance. Succession has absorbed all their energy.According to the UN charter the United Nation is first and foremost a socio-economic organization and not a bandage and coffin carrier that it tends to be by watching crisis grow.We have an emergency-social suffering which has become a humanitarian problem so much that we wish to launch:1. A Zimbabwe Strategic Humanitarian Program ZI-(SHIP). We have people suffering at home and in the diaspora with the xenophobia on their minds daily and the economy needs to be redeemed quickly. We can fix this in a fairly quick time.2.3. Launch a "Reinvent Zimbabwe process to masterplan our country into the future:Hon Robert Mugabe won't allow it. He has stood Zimbabwe still in an anti- colonial revolutionary inertia that is impeding transformation in Zimbabwe and is failing to usher neither the resources nor the political climate that can empower the citizens to survive and thrive. Without any shadow of Doubt, He has become the ultimate nemesis on the industrial place.Zimbabweans should be allowed not to focus at individuals but at effective systems that empower the nation. A leader should not be honored and elevated to the extent that his presence becomes a nemesis instead of a legacy! A country should be free enough to allow new leadership to emerge-he has even closed off the Politburo to the youth in ZanuPF.It is very clear that Hon Robert Gabriel has failed to maintain order in his party and failed to create a succession plan that has caused major dysfunction not only in his party but in the country. He has created a state of fear that suppresses progressive ideas to move the country ahead.In this day and age the situation in my country should not be allowed to carry on especially in a democratic republic that has a constitution.Politicians should be fully aware and act as such to the effect that the conduct of a party has an economic effect on the table of the citizens and in the community.Hon. Robert Gabriel Mugabe has not only failed to lead but on the 26th of June he expressed his desire to take over the country completely at the so called Million man march:His people waved placards that said "100% control-an open abrogation of the Constitution and all its instruments of power, let alone the agreement He is an wearied and sick old man whose presence is impeding progress and distracting the nation to focus on politics instead of the pressing issue of a broke economy and hunger and a multitude of socio-economic problems.He interferes with the freedom of conference of parties. Recently a political activist Itai Dzamara and Evan Mawarire a Pastor who has peacefully protested as is his right has been abducted and arrested respectively.Pastor Mawarire has demonstrated peacefully and has never advocated for violence or the disrespect of Government.President Mugabe has been ruling for too long, has not led Zimbabwe nor his party and has become too old to address the tough situation we have in Zimbabwe but he insists on hanging on despite the progressive impedance his presence is causing. He has no will nor desire to let go, despite the destitution that he has allowed to take place in Zimbabwe.The people have risen against President Gabriel Robert Mugabe's not only bad but non leadership. Zimbabwean People have risen to protest against the economic performance, his abrogation of the constitution and Judiciary in Zimbabwe.The role of Politics is the improvement of the quality of life of the individual, its primary objective is to create an environment where the society can be creative and enterprising at the highest level with the capacities of the day. The president has repeatedly failedI invite all the Zimbabwean groups to unite under a We the people Zimbabweans platform with this proposed Interim committee. Itai Dzamara the Patron, Evan Mawarire the, publicity Director ,the Tajamuka leader, the organizing secretary, Vincent Musewe as The Spokesman We can make a leading Industrialist ,the interim Chairman. We quickly get all organizations together to create an interim Committee to discus with SADC, the UN and AU and create our way forward.Hanningtobn Mubaiwa wezims2024@gmail.com
VALENCIA, Calif.The always stylish and provocative director B. Skow is set to release the sequel to Contrast, his spring 2016 interracial movie. The new release from the BSkow label, Contrast 2, is now available on the Girlfriends Films Distribution website and will be released in stores nationwide July 15.
In the first volume of Contrast, Skow took IR to the visual extreme by casting four very fair all-natural blonde women opposite four hunky dark-skinned males. The movie received thumbs up from both fans and critics for Skow's aesthetically pleasing brand of IR shot from his standpoint as not only a filmmaker but also a photographer of fine art.
This time Skow has once again switched things up, taking his original concept but moving the exposure to a different setting. In Contrast 2 the director has paired four lovely dark-skinned women against four pale male counterparts.
For me it was a no-brainer, Skow said. When I set out to make Contrast 2, I knew I wanted it to be the opposite of the first moviethis time with black girls and white guys. As a director who relishes in the visual aspect, I mean, it was pure selfishness. And when we shot it, it was amazing.
With more than 4 hours of footage, viewers are in for an eyeful: Ana Foxxx, Monique Symone, Nadia Jay and cover girl Chanell Heart perform dynamic lead-in tease shots prior to their scene pairings with Anthony Rosano, Tony Ribas, Kurt Lockwood and Bill Bailey. In addition to the four scenes of hardcore interracial action, the two-disc set contains two bonus scenes from earlier Skow movies that fit the theme: Disc 1 features Contrast 2 star Ana Foxxx in a scene with Billy Glide from Silhouette. And on Disc 2 is an added bonus scene from Control starring Scott Lyons and Skin Diamond.
Contrast 2 is now available on DVD at the Girlfriends Films distribution website and will be in stores nationwide beginning July 15. For more information about BSkow original productions, visit director B. Skows official blog at SkowVisual.com and follow him on Twitter (@DirectorSkow). Movie titles can be found in DVD format on the Girlfriends Films distribution website, and are available for download at BSkow.com.
Bush-Blair-Howard
War crimes come home
The release of the British Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war has brought the role played by the government of John Howard involving Australia in the coalition of the willing in that murderous and criminal conflict back into the spotlight.
Instead of being asked puerile questions about Malcolm Turnbulls election tactics John Howard should be brought before an international tribunal, along with then US President George W Bush and British PM Tony Blair, to answer charges in relation to crimes against humanity. The upshot of the Iraq war is an estimated million and more deaths of innocent Iraqis and the resultant deaths and traumas of Australian and other coalition military personnel and their families.
The ongoing death and destruction in the Middle East and the rise of terrorist organisations such as ISIS are part of the legacy of that conflict begun in March 2003 based on the lie of weapons of mass destruction and the arrogant rejection of the mass demonstrations and clear public opposition to the war (see Iraq and beyond and Redrawing the map).
As the current war preparations, with the US military build-up in Australias north testifies, the subservient commitment to the US-Australian alliance by successive Australian governments, both Liberal and Labor, means a continued commitment to criminal, US-led wars.
In February 2003, Mike Salvaris, Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Social Research, Swinburne University of Technology, (Melbourne) warned: Australias participation in an armed invasion of Iraq without explicit UN Security Council authority will be illegal under international and Australian law. It will render the Prime Minister and his government liable to be prosecuted as war criminals, and expose our servicemen and women to the same action.
Australia is signatory to the UN Charter and the Australian government is constitutionally bound to obey it. The main purpose and effect of the Charter is to outlaw war and the use of force, except in narrow and explicitly prescribed circumstances: when a country is acting in individual or collective self-defence against an actual or imminent armed attack; and when the UN Security Council has authorised the use of force to maintain or restore international peace and security.
Neither of these circumstances now exists. Iraq has not attacked Australia or any other State and is not immediately threatening to do so. UN Security Council resolution 1441, requiring [Iraqi president] Saddam Hussein to cooperate with weapons inspections, does not include any automatic authorisation for force against Iraq in the event of a breach of the resolution, either by the UNSC or any Member State.
He noted: Australia is now also a signatory to the International Criminal Court (ICC).
This means that Australians participating in an illegal war in which many civilians are killed and excessive violence is used may be tried and imprisoned by the Court for crimes against humanity, war crimes, the crime of aggression or even genocide.
The Courts statute specifically applies to Heads of State, Ministers and bureaucrats, as well as military officers merely obeying orders. The extent or nature of any crimes that may be committed by Australians will of course depend on the course of the war itself and the role actually played by Australia.
It seems likely that the impending war will be largely based on bombing, including the deliberate bombing of civilian infrastructure (water, power, transport etc), which caused massive civilian suffering during and after the last Gulf War. Close fighting in cities is also likely. Nuclear weapons may be used.
He continued:
The moral and logical fallacies of the US and Australian governments case for war are obvious enough, whether the supposed justifications are the prevention of terrorism, upholding the UN, promoting democracy, regime change or reducing weapons of mass destruction. On many of these issues the US itself has very dirty hands.
However, until recently, arguments about the legality of the war seemed to have taken a back seat.
Over the past 50 years, the international legal and human rights system has been built up slowly and painfully, through many failures, and occasional success. It is now facing one of its greatest tests.
To succeed, it must be shown to be as tough on the most powerful and assured transgressors as it is upon outcast and despised members of the international community: exactly the same principle of equality that applies to national legal systems.
Australia was one of the key builders of this system, but our record recently has not been a proud one. Will it take Australian war crimes trials to wake us up?
In February 2003 John Howard declared he would not be moved. My charge as Prime Minister is to make whatever decisions are in the interest of this country, he said, at the same time railing about Saddam Hussein being a dictator.
He rejected the reports of the weapons inspectors, who, after three months in Iraq had found not a skerrick of evidence that Iraq possessed any weapons of mass destruction.
He rejected the opposition to war coming from the governments representing the majority of the people of the world.
He dismissed the fact that the worlds people simply did not believe the succession of lies coming from Tony Blair, George Bush and himself in an attempt to whip up support for war.
Howard and his warmongering cohorts were lying.
Their war plans had nothing to do with Saddam Husseins record. It had nothing to do with weapons of mass destruction. It had nothing to do with the allegation that Iraq could provide terrorist groups with weapons of mass destruction.
Their arguments were diversions to cover up the truth: that the US war drive was motivated by the dire need of the US corporations to control the oil resources of the whole of the Middle East and, thereby, control the economic and political life of all other countries.
It was about US world hegemony and Howard was totally in support of that.
As one placard at the mass demonstrations against the war read: If Johnny comes marching home, he will come with blood on his hands.
Editorial
No mandate
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull set out to rid the Senate of cross-benchers and gain absolute control of both Houses of Parliament. He now faces the prospect of a record number of cross-benchers in the Senate possibly as many as 20 or more. Almost 65 percent of the electorate gave their primary vote to a non-Coalition party in the Senate ballot. The vote was a big NO to the Coalitions pro-big business policies.
There is absolutely no way that the Coalition can claim to have a mandate for its policies, including the two union-busting bills that were used to trigger the double dissolution of Parliament. That will not stop them claiming a mandate if they get a clear majority of 76 seats in the House of Representatives.
There is no room for complacency. As counting of votes continues, the possibility of a joint sitting of the two Houses of Parliament passing these two bills cannot be ruled out. A number of far right candidates, including from One Nation, have been elected.
The two bills, the Australian Building and Construction Commission and the Registered Organisation bills, were hardly mentioned during the eight-week election campaign. That does not mean the Coalition has abandoned them or its broader anti-union agenda. Quite the contrary.
Turnbulls days as leader are numbered. He must deliver the Coalitions anti-worker agenda, and deliver quickly if he is to hold onto the top job. He leads a Liberal Party which is bitterly divided, full of hatred and anger and leaking like a sieve. Retribution is in the wind amongst the far right Abbott supporters. His task has not been made easier by the larger number of cross-benchers in the Senate and the expected slim majority in the Lower House.
Right-wing columnist in the Financial Review, Jennifer Hewett, drew the conclusion that the combination of this Coalition government and their own advocacy skills failed to persuade enough people that whats good for business is also good for ordinary Australians, including 10 million employees. (Business adds up real cost of election, FR, 06-07-2016) The result also reflects a widespread resentment that politics-as-usual, business-as-usual are no longer delivering for ordinary people, Hewett said.
On both counts she is correct. Neo-liberal policies are not delivering for ordinary people. The wealth gap is widening, jobs are being casualised, hospital queues mounting, housing unaffordable, social security payments under attack and workers being made redundant and wages and working conditions eroded. The economic interests of workers and businesses are diametrically opposed. Every increase in wages results in a corresponding decrease in profits. Likewise, every cut in wages or other labour costs results in a corresponding increase in profits. This is the nature of capitalism, of class society, which Hewett falsely claims can be dispensed with using advocacy skills, promoting myths about common interests.
The promised corporate tax cuts would not create jobs. They would increase profits to be pocketed by bosses and shareholders. They would be funded by cuts to social security payments and to education and health. The loss of this income to the economy would have a negative impact on economic growth and jobs.
The electorate was not fooled by the monotonous chanting of growth and jobs and the plan without policy content. Industrial relations policy lacked credibility. It spoke in generalities about being the party of fairness and honesty in the workplace! There were no details of the Coalitions union-busting, anti-worker agenda - written by big business for big business - or the draconian measures in the ABCC legislation. There are already claims coming from government ranks that they have a mandate.
Big business has a huge war chest and is ready to take on the union movement, confident it has a government that will back their every move. The union movement faces the fight of its life, a fight for survival against a ruthless government aimed at achieving results for the ruling class it serves.
Organisations push for post-election summit
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander organisations met in Sydney prior to the federal election to map out the first steps towards a new relationship between Australias First Peoples and the federal government no matter who wins government on July 2.
The meeting, coordinated by the National Congress of Australias First Peoples, builds on the Redfern Statement, a series of demands of government by peak Indigenous organisations released earlier this month.
Congress co-chair Jackie Huggins said that regardless of the election result, it was an opportunity to reset the relationship Indigenous people and organisations have with government.
As we pointed out a few weeks ago, we have barely seen a mention of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander policy or issues this election campaign, she said. There have been some positive commitments made in some areas by some of the contesting parties, but otherwise the needs of our people tend to be pushed even further to the margins during election campaigns.
Congress co-chair Rod Little said last weeks discussions had resulted in some proposed steps for the incoming federal government to help establish a new relationship with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander leaders.
We have an opportunity to start some new positive norms in the relationship between government and Australias First Peoples, he said.
Built on trust
Ultimately, we want a strong relationship built on trust that delivers outcomes for our people.
The first two steps the group came up with were a meeting with the prime minister and a coalition of Indigenous leaders within a month of the new government, and for the government to commit to a First Peoples summit within 100 days. At the planned meeting with the prime minister, the Indigenous leaders will present the signed Redfern Statement and discuss priority steps they say must be taken to reset the relationship.
They are calling for the establishment of:
a senior Cabinet minister with overall responsibility for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs; and
a Department of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs.
A national summit will establish the overarching framework for how governments and Australias First Peoples work together to solve the critical challenges we face together, the group said in a statement.
Following a national summit and after beginning the series of meetings with the prime minister and relevant ministers, an ongoing plan for engagement at all levels will be agreed.
We look forward to the 45th Parliament becoming the basis for relations between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and all governments.
Koori Mail
Taking Issue Nick Schadegg
Whats next for the Xenophon Team?
For Nick Xenophon, turning his personal political success into a commanding, pluralistic presence in the federal Senate always seemed assured. His primary vote at the federal election in South Australia rivalled that of the two major parties. He will probably receive three seats in the Senate and, in spectacular fashion, managed to beat Jamie Briggs in the safe Liberal seat of Mayo. However, if you voted for the Nick Xenophon Team (NXT) to represent you in federal Parliament then its highly possible that you wont end up with the sort of representation you were expecting.
Former dairy farmer and NXT member James Stacey (second from right) is at odds with the partys leader on plummeting milk prices.
For many voters in the electorates of Mayo and Grey who have lived in safe seats for many years, a vote for NXT seemed like the best way to upset the traditional balance and topple long-standing members. Nick presented himself as the underdog; the only viable opponent to the Coles and Woolies of politics, as Nick likes to refer to the Coalition and Labor parties.
He takes jabs at both parties, aiming at easy targets like politicians entitlements and corruption. But when it comes to divisive issues he characteristically goes into hiding, and the media seem compliant in giving him a wide berth for political hot potatoes like asylum seekers and negative gearing.
Until now, hes been able to make up his own mind about these issues and vote accordingly in the Senate. Hes had the comfort of being his own man of not having to consult colleagues and determine party policy via compromise and debate. This will all change now.
Nick walked into this election with guaranteed success despite very little policy, other than being a political disruptor. The new government will introduce new policies in the coming years that we dont even know about yet, and with the added pressure of being among the cross benchers who will hold the balance of power in the Senate it will be up to Xenophon and his party to agree on pieces of legislation amongst themselves and vote as a single block. It is here that theyll find their differences.
Without the advantage of having an ideological starting point (as they are neither classically left nor right, conservative nor progressive), the X-Team will take each issue as it comes. Opinions will differ. Personalities will emerge and clash.
The public will come to know these new NXT members and theyll become political pseudo-celebrities. Theyll possibly even find themselves in a position where theyll no longer have to rely on the Xenophon brand name to maintain their political success, and the threat of disendorsement for disloyalty or crossing the floor will no longer be a force of unity. This happened very publicly to the Palmer United Party who strode into Parliament after the 2013 election as a four-strong team (with Ricky Muir tagging along behind), and exited as a broken, fragmented fizzle three years later.
This wouldnt be the first time that Xenophon has attempted to build an electoral team around himself. At the South Australian 2006 state election he pulled a far greater number of votes than anyone anticipated, and subsequently Ann Bressington, his number two Legislative Chamber candidate under his No Pokies ticket, emerged from nowhere to claim her seat in state Parliament.
It wasnt long before she used her position to push crackpot theories about vaccinations, new world order, fluoride in tap water, chemtrails, and wind turbine syndrome (which, oddly enough, Xenophon himself believes is real). Ultimately, the duo had a falling-out. He allegedly demanded that she contribute $50,000 of her own money to his 2013 federal campaign which almost sent her broke, and she eventually defected to the Katter Australia Party where she faded into obscurity. Bressington recently commented that she has unhappy memories from her time as Xenophons colleague.
If history is anything to go by, then the X-Team of political super friends will probably become foes by the time the 2019 election rolls around. Political parties with weak ideological bonds (and, once gain, the Palmer United Party springs to mind) may come across as anti-establishment heroes for the disillusioned at first, but these weak bonds will almost certainly develop into obstacles for their longevity.
Taking Issue Don Wilson
The real undercurrent to this election
What should be stated is the illusory nature of these elections. This election is manipulated by the one percent of rich capitalists and their corporations that really control Australia. There is Democracy for an insignificant minority, democracy for the rich. It is true we might get some crumbs that fall from the table, but the struggle at the basis of this election is wound up with the struggle for imperialist domination of Australia, Asia and the world.
Mostly the chatter in the corporate press is irrelevant to the real events affecting the lives of the Australian people and our history. However sometimes, little comments from our political masters tell us more about Australias political situation than all of our current affairs programs. Such a comment was made during the G20 Summit in 2014, by Tony Abbott, in private conversation with Germanys Angela Merkel.
Abbott was answering a surprise question from Merkel about what drives Australias China policy. Abbott replied that Australias policies towards China are driven by two emotions: fear and greed. This offhand response captured the bipolar nature of Australias attitude to China. The public airing of this caused discomfort in foreign affairs circles but it also reveals the strategic divisions within the ranks of the born to rule elite.
On the one hand the Liberal party has to cater to the demands of China-reliant tycoons, led by Andrew Forrest, James Packer and Kerry Stokes, and the accept economic reality of trade with China. On the other hand, the liberal Party has to tug its locks to the United States Alliance and respond to intelligence directors, military chiefs and Asia-Pacific partners and allies.
A similar rare leak of a sensitive leader-to-leader conversation occurred when Kevin Rudd made his brutal realist response to secretary of state Hillary Clinton in 2009, prompting recriminations from China and a personal apology from Clinton when it was broadcast by WikiLeaks.
Hillary Clinton revealed Americas deep anxiety over Chinas growing economic power and hold on US finances by asking Australias then prime minister: How do you deal toughly with your banker? Rudd responded by calling himself a brutal realist on China, arguing for a policy of integrating China effectively into the international community and allowing it to demonstrate greater responsibility, all while also preparing to deploy force if everything goes wrong.
He described Chinese leaders as subrational and deeply emotional on Taiwan. Rudd also revealed that the thinking behind his ambitious Asia-Pacific Community was mostly to ensure Chinese dominance in the region did not result in an Asia without the United States. Many Australians were startled and Beijing was angry when it was reported via WikiLeaks, but it underscored the evolving difficulties the United States is having responding to an increasingly mighty China.
The question underlying these elections is the role of China in world affairs, and what are the implications for Australia? Promoting her recent memoir, Hillary Clinton observed that the push for more trade with China makes [Australia] dependent, to an extent that can undermine [Australian] freedom of movement and [Australian] sovereignty, economic and political.
She went on to say, Its a mistake whether youre a country, or a company or an individual to put, as we say in the vernacular, all your eggs in the one basket.
Her comments brought a brisk response from Malcolm Turnbull, who said that, Im sure that wed love to export vast quantities of iron ore to the United States but theyve never shown any enthusiasm in buying them.
Professor Wu Xinbo, Executive Dean of the Institute of International Studies at Fudan University in Shanghai, addressed the question from the other side. He said there were limits to the extent to which Australia could tighten strategic cooperation with the United States without putting its relationship with China at risk.
Australias ruling class is divided between the pragmatists, such as Turnbull and the idealists such as all the way with the USA Tony Abbott who some in the Liberal Party are urging that he returns as Defence Minister.
Bob Carr made a very interesting comment when he visited China as Foreign Minister in the Gillard Labor government.
I recall in my first visit to Beijing being challenged by then Foreign Minister Yang over the Australian governments 2011 decision to have US marines rotate through the Northern Territory. My response was Australians have always aligned themselves with the dominant maritime power of our region and of the world. This is a grandiose way of saying we were happily part of the British Empire never contemplated a declaration of independence from it and, after the Second World War, settled on a security treaty with the United States. Or, as an irreverent left-wing acquaintance of mine joked back in the 1960s, We went from being crown colony to banana republic he seemed to imply, without skipping a heartbeat.
Iraq and beyond
The worlds people demanded peace
Beginning in January 2003, from Washington to Tokyo, from Melbourne to Moscow, across Europe and the Middle East, in Asia and Latin America there was one common demand coming from the streets and public opinion polls NO WAR ON IRAQ!
Sydney 2003 Howard echoed the strategic plan of the United States when attempting to justify a war against Iraq.
One of the largest demonstrations took place in Washington demanding No blood for oil. In Paris 200,000 people demonstrated.
A poll commissioned by the Sydney Morning Herald revealed an overwhelming rejection of war by the Australian people. Only six percent supported an American first strike. A massive 30 percent were opposed to a war under any circumstances. In a poll conducted by the ABC in which over 17,900 responded, 88 percent answered No to the question: Do you believe there is a case for war against Iraq?
Despite the worldwide calls for peace, the warmongers of Washington, London and Canberra did not drop their war plans. Australias then Minister of Defence, Robert Hill, bluntly declared, when confronted with the massive opposition revealed by the NewsPoll, that Australia would be taking part.
The dispatch of aircraft and SAS troops to the Middle East and the hosting of US navy vessels in WA confirmed that the Howard government had decided to take part in the monstrous, unwanted and illegal war. Statements by leading government figures from Prime Minister John Howard down that no decision has been made was the first lie.
The most bellicose statements were being made by US President George W Bush and British PM Tony Blair, indicating their desperation to get a war going as quickly as possible in the face of the growing and already mass opposition. Blair emerged as one of the most unconscionable warmongers, claiming that war can be launched by the US and Britain without UN Security Council endorsement.
He declared that once the world had dealt with Iraqs weapons of mass destruction, other recalcitrant states such as North Korea would be next. We must send a signal to the rest of the world that this trade [in arms] will not be tolerated, he said.
In the dirty game of war preparations, some of the UN weapons inspectors and, in particular, Hans Blix and the International Atomic Energy Agency chief, El Baradei, also revealed themselves as tools of the warmongers prepared to provide evidence of Iraqi non-compliance and, thereby, unleash a new terrible war.
At the same time the governments of France, Russia and China, which collectively had the power to stop the US and British war plans in the UN Security Council, were playing backroom games.
Clear statements of principle and opposition to the warmongers, on the side of the people of the world, were required. They were not forthcoming.
Stop war before it starts
The Howard government was intent on launching Australia into an aggressive and illegal war against another member of the United Nations, an act of invasion; a monstrous, illegal and immoral war waged by the most powerful military force in the world against a small power that has already been largely disarmed. It was a war to impose the occupation of an independent nation by others for many years to come. It would be a war bringing immense death and destruction to the people of Iraq.
Essentially, Britain, the US and Australia carried out a pre-emptive strike without the approval of the United Nations. Such an action was not only a violation of the Charter of the United Nations but ripped up long-established norms of international relations, endangering the very existence of the United Nations.
It would be a war in disregard of the strong opposition of the majority of the people in Australia and Britain.
In criminal disregard of the future of the people of the world both the US and Britain refused to rule out the use of nuclear weapons. The Voice of America propaganda broadcaster declared that US war plans are laid out for the complete annihilation of Iraq via conventional weapons, or if needed, via nuclear weapons. Tony Blair also refuses to rule out the use of nuclear weapons.
Such actions constituted war crimes and should be taken up by the International Criminal Court. Bush, Blair, Howard and others responsible for this monstrous violation of international law should be arraigned and tried for their crimes.
Howard echoed the strategic plan of the United States when attempting to justify a war against Iraq. He claimed that if Iraq was not disarmed (as though it wasnt already disarmed) other rogue states would be encouraged to accumulate weapons of mass destruction and use then against the US, ignoring the fact that the US has more weapons of mass destruction than all other countries put together.
Howard clearly supported the concept of a continuing war against other states Iran, Libya, Cuba, North Korea, Syria. And then the bigger powers Russia, China, India, Pakistan. Iraq was the beginning of endless war.
Australia was and is already deeply enmeshed in the long-range plans of the United States for world domination. The sending of Australian troops to Iraq was not the miniscule or token involvement that some in the media at the time suggested.
The US spy station at Pine Gap that was directly involved in the preparations for war against Iraq and other countries made a very significant contribution. This is probably more important to the USs war plans than even the sending of troops. An increasing number of US warships are now making use of Cockburn Sound (in WA) and other Australian ports. US forces are at present steadily taking over Australias north. Australian territory has been turned into a bombing range by US warplanes.
HOLLYWOOD, Calif.Adult performer Christiana Cinn, who was the featured Penthouse Pet in January, will be appearing at Gold Club Centerfolds in Rancho Cordova this week. She will give multiple shows July 13-16 on the following schedule:
Wednesday: 10 p.m., 12:30 a.m.
Thursday: 10 p.m., 12:30 a.m.
Friday: noon, 9:30 p.m., 11:30 p.m., 1:30 a.m.
Saturday: 9:30 p.m., 11:30 p.m., 1:30 a.m.
Fans also have a chance to meet the sexy starlet Friday and Saturday from 6 to 8 p.m. in Gold Club Centerfolds Video Boutique Couples Superstore. Entry to the superstore is free, and Cinn will be there signing autographs.
After each show Cinn will be available to sign photos and DVDs and provide some very private VIP lap dances.
This is like the best of both worlds combined, Cinn said. I get to strut my stuff on the main stage first, then head over to the Superstore and meet all my Cinners.
Gold Club Centerfolds is located at 11363 Folsom Blvd., Rancho Cordova, California. For more details, visit GoldClubCenterfolds.com or call (916) 858-0444.
Follow Christiana Cinn on Twitter (@christianacinn) for up-to-the-minute information.
Culture & Life
Air power run amok
In WW2, the USA at the urging of President Franklin D Roosevelt made itself the arsenal of democracy. Ever since, the US economy (contrary to FDRs wishes) has been inextricably geared to and dependent on war for its well being. Not surprisingly, the US has waged virtually non-stop, continuous war from the end of WW2 to today.
They successfully intervened on the side of reaction in the civil wars in Greece and the Philippines. Emboldened, they sought to roll back Communism by provoking a full-scale war in Korea. During the Korean War, the US dropped 635,000 tons of bombs on tiny North Korea, as well as 32,557 tons of napalm. Retired US Air Force lieutenant colonel William J Astore, writing in TomDispatch, notes that this is equivalent in explosive yield to 40 Hiroshima bombs.
But although the US bombing campaign levelled North Koreas cities and destroyed the dams on the Yalu River that provided the country (and northern China) with hydro-electricity, it failed to win the war against determined Korean and Chinese ground troops. Even more importantly, all those thousands of tons of bombs and napalm were paid for out of the US public purse. The richest nation on Earth was now ensnared in a process of impoverishment brought on by an arms race of its own devising.
Fought to an ignominious stalemate in Korea, agreeing to a truce at roughly the position where the war had begun, the US desperate for more sources of war expenditure shifted its attention to the conflict in Indo-China, where the forces of French imperialism had just been soundly whipped. US intervention saw the Vietnam War steadily escalate year by year until it too was consuming vast amounts of money and materiel.
Lieutenant Colonel Astore again: American air power bombed, strafed, and sprayed with defoliants virtually everything that moved (and much that didnt) in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. A staggering seven million tons of bombs, the equivalent in explosive yield to more than 450 Hiroshimas, were dropped in the name of defeating Communism. ... The North Vietnamese, with modest ground-fire defences, limited surface-to-air missiles (SAMs), and a few fighter jets, were hopelessly outclassed in the air. Nonetheless, just as in Korea, widespread American bombing and air superiority, while generating plenty of death and destruction, didnt translate into victory. In fact, US imperialism ultimately suffered an utterly ignominious defeat in Vietnam.
Since then, as the planes have become faster and the payloads bigger, the US air force has laid waste whole countries, from the Middle East to Central America, but except against small defenceless countries, victory continues to elude it. The US military was able to invade tiny Grenada and crush its progressive government, but elsewhere eg in Ukraine and Moldova it has had to rely on subversion and corruption (as in Brazil) for even partial success.
In fact, contrary to the almost non-stop propaganda about the might of the American military, in Astores words: Somethings gone terribly wrong with Washingtons soaring dreams of air power and what it can accomplish. This should not come as a surprise, however. After all, its happened before. In the 1950s, US air force General Curtis LeMay and other dedicated anti-communists created the Strategic Air Command (SAC) made up of long-range bombers armed with city-busting thermonuclear weapons.
They ringed the USSR with these nuclear bombers constantly on high alert to attack and destroy the USAs socialist enemy. Building and maintaining this fleet of giant bombers cost the US economy a fortune which was justified by an avalanche of propaganda about a supposed Soviet threat. Fortunately for us all, Soviet diplomacy was able to forestall the rush to nuclear war until they had developed the means to render long-range nuclear bombers obsolete: the inter-continental ballistic missile (ICBM).
The threat contained in the global US bomber fleet and its aggressive deployment was replaced by the delicate balance encompassed within the acronym, MAD (mutually assured destruction). Starting a nuclear war was no longer such a good bet.
However, the USAs military industrial complex was and remains committed to a constant massive arms build-up. Much of the countrys economy depends on it, despite the draining impact of such waste. If the money spent on the military was applied to peaceful production and services, the US standard of living would really become the envy of the world.
However, instead of building prefabricated houses for the hordes of homeless people in the US, or electric cars and busses to cut the production of greenhouse gasses, or showing the world how to go over to green energy while phasing out the use of fossil fuels, the US war-oriented economy maintains at least three active production lines just for the manufacture of jet fighters (one solely for export).
US propagandists tell their people (and the rest of the world) that US air power keeps the American people safe. A cynic might say that its prime purpose is to keep American investments safe, but that would surely be unkind. True, US air power has devastated countries from Libya to Syria to Afghanistan and beyond, but the American people are less safe now than they ever were.
In fact, the devastation and suffering inflicted on countries the US perceived as standing in the way of its global economic dominance has bred a generation of desperate young people devoid of hope for the future. They are fertile recruiting grounds for religious extremists looking for potential suicide bombers.
Nevertheless, as Astore notes: From Ronald Reagan to Barack Obama, dropping bombs and firing missiles has been the presidentially favoured way of doing something against an enemy. Air power is, in a sense, the easiest thing for a [US] president to resort to and, in our world, has the added allure of the high-tech. It looks good back home.
But as air power has become ever more hideously expensive, the USAs bloated military budget continues to impoverish the country while it seeks an illusory military advantage.
But thats capitalism really, isnt it: destructive, greedy and ultimately bad for you.
I. Overview
The huge public expectations raised by devolved government on Kenyas coast have turned into disappointment. Patronage politics that marked the former centralised system has been replicated in the new counties, making government even more inefficient and expensive. Though political leadership is now local, power is closely held, and leaders are suspicious of both national and local rivals. Certain regions, communities and many youth still feel marginalised. Political devolution has deflected but not resolved grievances that fuel militancy, which continues to be met by hard security measures driven from Nairobi. Greater inclusion and cooperation within and between county governments, as well as national-county dialogue, is needed to maximise devolutions potential and ensure militant groups, like Al-Shabaab, have fewer grievances to exploit.
The 2010 constitution prescribes partnership between national and county institutions; instead there is competition and confrontation (at least for now peaceful). The former Coast province is divided into six new coastal county governments. They are caught between the popular and still potent idea of majimbo greater political and economic autonomy and authority devolved to the regions and a central government that expects them to focus on service delivery and only play a parochial political role that many dismiss in frustration as vijimbo (little regions). National government (including the president) have undertaken a number of high-profile, if piecemeal, initiatives that the coastal county elite has interpreted as a challenge to the spirit of devolution and its local political primacy. In response, leading coastal politicians are stirring up local discontent and threatening unilateral takeover of key revenue resources such as Mombasa port. However, the coastal retreat into defensive regionalism is likely only to exacerbate county-capital frictions, not extract concessions from the national government.
The tension between national and county government is not unique to the coast, but coastal grievances, historical and current, are particularly acute and have fuelled the recent rise in nativist and Islamist-inspired militancy. Militant networks, though damaged and presently dormant, are by no means dismantled, and parallel networks of urban youth gangs and armed political entourages make for a still combustible mix. The coastal counties also remain an opposition stronghold into which the ruling party would like to make inroads. This risks a convergence of national and local political competition in the 2017 elections of a sort that in the past has produced communal tensions and localised violence.
The gulf of mistrust exploited by all sides not only limits the full delivery of devolutions benefits; in the case of the coastal counties, it also undermines efforts to combat militancy and attendant violence now subsumed under a countering violent extremism (CVE) agenda that is a priority of both Nairobi and its international partners. Rather than focus solely on building the capacity of the security and intelligence services, international assistance to counter radicalisation should give equal and increasing emphasis to outreach and reconciliation, so as to find political common ground and articulate and address the regions grievances within the coasts newly devolved political structures.
A renewed civic education campaign to underline the potential gains of devolution, as well as the responsibilities and roles of county government and its elected representatives, is urgently needed. Promising initiatives like the Commonwealth of Coast Counties (Jumiya Ya Kaunti Za Pwani, JKP), which aim to amplify the benefits of county government through regional (cross-county) projects, need to be depoliticised and given technical support by relevant national ministries and authorities and multilateral institutions (eg, the World Bank). There should be greater institutionalisation of welcome, but currently ad hoc, interventions toward resolving long-term land grievances, specifically the regularisation rather than wholesale redistribution of land titles.
Overall, renewed reconciliation work is needed at all levels in the coastal counties ahead of elections; specifically, national and county governments and donors need to reach a renewed understanding of the role and limits of civil society and community-based organisations (CSOs and CBOs), which are still best placed to identify and diffuse potential conflict flashpoints at local levels. The promotion of greater partnership between national and county governments (even as a regional bloc) should be a security and developmental priority for Kenya and its partners.
Nairobi/Brussels, 13 July 2016
Storage News
StorageCraft Unveils Cloud-To-Cloud Data Protection Solution
Joseph F. Kovar
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Data protection technology developer StorageCraft Technology this week expanded its capabilities with the introduction of a new solution that allows data to be backed up from one cloud to another.
The new StorageCraft cloud-to-cloud solution, which was unveiled at this week's Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference, initially supports backup and recovery of data from such applications as Microsoft Office 365, Google Apps, Salesforce.com and Box.
It represents an expansion of StorageCraft's Shadow Protect, an on-premises solution that protects data on servers, and the StorageCraft Recovery Solution, which sends data to a cloud for recovery, said Scott Barnes, chief technology officer of the Draper, Utah-based vendor.
[Related: Q&A: StorageCraft's New CEO Matt Medeiros Discusses Plans After $187M Equity Investment]
"But customers are more and more migrating to cloud applications like Office 365," Barnes told CRN. "They are less and less looking at how to protect Microsoft Exchange, and more at Microsoft Office, Google, Box and other applications. And while those applications have their own good backup technology, they all have occasional issues, and none of them do versioning of their backups."
The new cloud-to-cloud solution is also an opportunity for StorageCraft and its partners to shift from an SMB-only focus toward enterprises that are adopting hosted applications, said Curt James, the vendor's vice president of marketing and business development.
However, StorageCraft, which provides its data protection solution to several storage vendors as an OEM, does not plan to offer the new cloud-to-cloud solution to its OEM partners, James told CRN.
"Our OEM partners are not a key market for this technology," he said. "And some of our partners, like [Norwalk, Conn.-based] Datto, with its Backupify solution, have their own offerings which already compete with it."
The new StorageCraft cloud-to-cloud solution seems to be a mature disaster recovery solution with a good price point, said Dave Patel, chief technology officer at CompuTech City, a Lake Mary, Fla.-based solution provider and StorageCraft partner with a strong focus on the health care market.
CompuTech City has already tested the solution against several vendors' offerings, and is in the process of deploying it with a health care customer to protect 3 TBs of data and 10 virtual machines, Patel told CRN.
Setting up disaster recovery for any other application is easy when compared to what's needed in the health care market, he said. "Calling a disaster recovery situation is probably the toughest call anyone can make," he said. "Everyone is impacted. And in health care, there are so many more variables to consider. A 10-user accounting or legal customer is ridiculously easier than a 10-user health care practice. Health care is always complicated."
VALENCIA, Calif.Things get ever creepier in new Girlfriends Films release Lesbian PsychoDramas 22: Messed Up 3, now available on the Girlfriends website and coming to DVD this Friday, July 15.
"This series has the highest creep factor of anything Girlfriends Films has ever put out," director Dan O'Connell asserted.
This latest volume, which continues the Messed Up series-within-a-series that Girlfriends reports has received high praise from fans, contains such fringe elements as pregnancy, lactation and even some religious aspects.
"I don't believe in denigrating religion," O'Connell said, "but it does work its way into some of our stories, as it very much plays into the everyday life of being gay or lesbian, especially for a woman who is grappling with her moral compass when she is about to have sex with another woman for her very first time. There are a number of religious references in this movie series, but we don't poke a stick at religion."
The story finds Chanel Preson and Vanessa Veracruz reprising their roles from Messed Up 2, in which Preston and her sister Aaliyah Love work together to clandestinely get the virginal Veracruz pregnant using a squirting strap-on dildo filled with their father's DNA, in the hopes of perpetuating their family's dynasty.
As Messed Up 3 opens, the now pregnant Veracruz and others are under the illusion she will be giving birth to the Second Coming of Christ. Love and Preston use Veracruz's illusion and psychosis as a means of conspiring to take the baby away as soon as it is born and have her institutionalized. "She'll need to be kept in a straight-jacket in the meantime, of course," O'Connell noted.
Preston and Love proceed to procure the lactation services of a pregnant Shauna Skye to feed the baby once it's born. However, Preston's Girlfriend Mercedes Carrera is lured by Skye's big belly to indulge in a cheating rendezvous with the expecting milk provider. Meanwhile, Sister Mary Margaret, played by India Summer, indulges in some carousing of her own with Veracruz. The movie also stars Stella Cox and Jenna Sativa.
Last week, Girlfriends posted a photo to Twitter of Veracruz in a straight-jacket with the caption, "When she looks like this, it's bound to get Messed Up!"
"Much consideration went into the casting of this movie," O'Connell said. "Everyone has been fantastic with their roles and a lot of fun to work with. There is something dementedly fun about writing a script and shooting a movie where a psycho Chanel Preston does everything she can do to ruin the life of the character played by Vanessa Veracruz."
For more information on Lesbian PsychoDramas 22: Messed Up 3, visit the movie's detail page at Girlfriends Films Distribution.
My heart broke as I read the news about Perry Noble, his struggle with alcoholism, and his subsequent removal as senior pastor of NewSpring Church in South Carolina. But its not the first time my heart has broken over the last few years; it seems its happened enough to count on two hands and each one more than I would have liked to have heard.
Why do the seemingly mightiest fall? How come those we look to as the spiritual giants tumble so far? These questions rattle our minds when we hear stories like these. There was a time I wondered how it was even possible, but then I became one of those stories.
I became a Christian at 16 years old and dived head first into ministry upon graduating high school. I was optimistic and bright eyed about ministry, fully convinced I would always be above reproach. As I served with passion and commitment whenever and wherever, it wasnt long before I was a leader in the the mega-church I worked at.
At 25 years old I began what was my first serious relationship and had the firm rule of no sex before marriage. But all the good intentions in the world were not enough for what came next. Not long into the relationship my boyfriend and I let temptation rule over us and we did the very thing we said wed never do. Ive transparently shared this story many times on my personal website so I wont go into it here, but the aftermath and next five years were the darkest and most challenging of my life. The confession, church correction, shame, disappointment of letting those I cared about down, and much more seemed too much to bare at times. My boyfriend and I broke up, I went through a season of restoration, and I began to watch God weave together the broken pieces of my life into a beautiful redemptive story.
For a long time, I thought God would not want to use me in ministry again; I had failed horribly the first time so why would He want to use me again? Although I struggled with these thoughts for a while Im so thankful that He was, and is, so much more than I thought.
I share this because having gone through a moral failure--not to the degree of some you can think of--I dont judge as I once did. In fact, I know it happens easier than we would like to believe and its those spiritual giants (as we call them) that are most vulnerable. The long hours, emotional outpouring, constant attention to others, and so on begin to weigh on a soul. But what I believe to be the biggest contributing factor is what I call the untouchable myth.
Much like Peter in his story of betraying Jesus before the crucifixion, we convince ourselves that we will never do a list of sins; acts so beneath or unlike us that we completely put them out of mind. Its because we avoid accepting that they are even a possibility we become vulnerable to the very things we said wed never do. No pastor goes into ministry believing they will steal from their congregation, or turn to alcohol, or fall into an affair. Its that they dont accept it as a possibility at all and dont put the proper guardrails in place.
As much as I want to continue to dig deeper into this idea, its not what this article is about. Because what I felt second to my sympathy for Noble, his family, and the church was an overwhelming concern for the coming generations into ministry. What are we doing to prepare them for the weight that comes with shepherding people?
What I absolutely loved about the church I grew up in as it relates to vocational ministry is that they were all about equipping the next generation the best they could. Along with the college-aged discipleship and education they provided, what perhaps was the greatest lesson imparted was servant leadership. We didnt start out preaching to hundreds or leading worship in the main service. We started out cleaning toilets, stuffing envelopes, and even massaging ladies feet at a womens event! Even then, it took years of doing what nobody else wanted to do, without ever being noticed, to even get to the place our dreams envisioned we would be.
It wasnt perfect because no program or organization is. I still fell but it was because I hadnt learned to properly guard myself. This was perhaps a lesson I could have used.
No matter where you are in ministry--perhaps new to working in a church, a pastor overseeing a team, or someone who feels like youve been in ministry so long you have it figured out--know that we are all vulnerable to falling. What we need to do is one of two things:
1. For Yourself
First accept that you are not untouchable and that in your own strength you are vulnerable. Then, learn where you need to establish guardrails. Even if you think youll never have an affair, put up guardrails that will help protect you regardless, such as including an assistant or spouse as a bcc on all emails or never being alone with someone of the opposite sex. Whatever your vice may be, learn how to establish boundaries in order to protect your relationship with God, your family, and your ministry.
2. For Those You Lead
This is the part I am most passionate about. As a seasoned leader ushering in the next generation into vocational ministry, you have a responsibility to steward these opportunities well. I love that churches across the world are embracing discipleship programs, leadership colleges, and internships for those passionate about building the Church--it was this that changed so much of the trajectory of my life! However, I cant help but be a bit nervous.
Noble expressed that it was the weight of growing the church that contributed to his alcoholism. He had been in ministry at NewSpring for 20 years and he still wasnt prepared for what came his way. Yet, we open up a platform to hundreds or thousands of people to our late-teen and early-twenty something students.
How does this compare to what we see in the Bible? Moses needed 40 years in the wilderness for God to remove the 40 years of the world in him. Elisha served for years as a servant to Elijah before taking his place as a prophet in Israel. The disciples were taught with great emphasis to serve others with priority as they followed Jesus for 3 years. Jesus himself lived in obscurity for 30 years before starting his public ministry, and he is the Son of God!
My hope as a leader of leaders would be for you to carefully shepherd these next generation leaders well. May keeping focus and reliance on Jesus be your greatest wisdom imparted to them. Let the aim be for servant leadership rather than platform. Instead of passing over the microphone too early, teach them the importance of guardrails and how to establish them.
What if this had been shared early on in the ministry of these fallen pastors and instead of an aim for numbers or notoriety, they had focused on relying on God and maintaining health in all areas.
My hope is that well stop glorifying a platform and elevating those who use it to celebrity status, focusing on numbers and approval instead of health and obedience. Maybe, just maybe if we start doing this we will see less leaders falling and more influence given to them for the sake of the Gospel.
Jesus said to be first one must be last.
Brittany Rust is a writer, speaker, and has the privilege of serving on staff at Red Rocks Church in Denver, CO. She and her husband Ryan make their home in the Rocky Mountains, pursuing outdoor adventures, great food, and memorable stories together. Her website brittanyrust.com aims to supply encouraging resources for the world-wearied believer.
Publication date: July 13, 2016
Scripture is chock full of power and truth that reminds us: despite current circumstances or difficulties, the LORD reigns! Whether you or a friend are in need of peace concerning national events, encouragement, hope, recognizing worth, or grace, here are 20 verses to remind you of Gods incredible promises.
FOR A FRIEND IN NEED OF PEACE CONCERNING NATIONAL EVENTS
1. Truth: We require the Lords leading in government.
Lamentations 4:17, ESV - "Our eyes failed, ever watching vainly for help; in our watching we watched for a nation which could not save... (5:21) Restore us to yourself, O Lord, that we may be restored!"
2. Truth: To see national restoration, we must pray for our fellow citizens to know the love of Christ.
2 Chronicles 7:14, NIV - If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.
3. Truth: Jesus is the true hope of the world.
Isaiah 40:3-4, ESV - A voice cries, In the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord: make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain. And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.
4. Truth: Jesus mercy drove Him to act. The daughters of Zion were viewed as second class citizens, outcasts and not good enough. Yet these are the ones rescued by Gods immense compassion.
Zechariah 9:9-10, MSG - Shout and cheer, Daughter Zion! Raise the roof, Daughter Jerusalem! Your king is coming! a good king who makes all things right, a humble king riding a donkey, a mere colt of a donkey. Ive had it with warno more chariots in Ephraim, no more war horses in Jerusalem, no more swords and spears, bows and arrows. He will offer peace to the nations, a peaceful rule worldwide, from the four winds to the seven seas.
FOR A FRIEND IN NEED OF ENCOURAGEMENT
5. Truth: You may feel in despair and abandoned, but the Lord has not forgotten your plight.
Psalm 38:9-10, ESV - Oh Lord, all my longing is before you my sighing is not hidden from you. My heart throbs; my strength fails me, and the light of my eyes - it also has gone from me (15) But for you, O Lord, do I wait; it is you, O Lord my God, who will answer.
6. Truth: The Lord Himself will comfort you in your sorrow.
Isaiah 49:13, ESV - Sing for joy, O heavens, and exult, O earth; break forth, O mountains, into singing! For the Lord has comforted His people and will have compassion on His afflicted.
7. Truth: The Lord will produce signposts of His coming Kingdom by fighting specifically for those seemingly forgotten by society.
Psalm 82:3-4, ESV - Give justice to the weak and the fatherless; maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute. Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked (8) Arise, O God, judge the earth, for you shall inherit all the nations.
8. Truth: We may wish to cry, scream, or become unhinged in our emotions, mind or spirit, but we can trust that His love will bring comfort.
Zephaniah 3:17 ,ESV - 'He will quiet you with his love.
FOR A FRIEND IN NEED OF HOPE
9. Truth: The text states sit rather than lie. This is not one who is dead, with no hope of life, but rather one sitting helpless, unable to restore herself, waiting for the Lord to rescue. The one true God discovers His children sitting in dark obscurity and brings them into His marvelous light of Truth.
Micah 7:8-9, ESV - Rejoice not over me, O my enemy; when I fall, I shall rise; when I sit in darkness, the Lord will be a light to me. I will bear the indignation of the Lord because I have sinned against Him, until He pleads my cause and executes judgment for me. He will bring me out to the light; I shall look upon His vindication.
10. Truth: Declare the Lord your impenetrable fortress against any difficulty. Consider your heart and spirit locked securely in hope, surrounded completely by Gods truth.
Zechariah 9:12, ESV - Return to your stronghold, O prisoners of hope.
11. Truth: The Lord is victorious; He will produce justice and joy in and through you.
Isaiah 29:19, MSG - The castoffs of society will be laughing and dancing in God, the down-and-outs shouting praise to The Holy of Israel.
12. Truth: Salvation is not found within ourselves and our strength, but only through Gods grace.
Jonah 2:6, ESV - Yet you brought my life up from the pit Salvation belongs to the Lord.
13. Truth: Releasing your struggles to the Lord is absolutely freeing.
Psalm 73:21-28, MSG - When I was beleaguered and bitter, totally consumed by envy, I was totally ignorant, a dumb ox in your very presence. Im still in your presence, but Youve taken my hand. You wisely and tenderly lead me, and then You bless me. Youre all I want in heaven! Youre all I want on earth! When my skin sags and my bones get brittle, God is rock-firm and faithful. Look! Those who left You are falling apart! Deserters, theyll never be heard from again. But Im in the very presence of God - oh, how refreshing it is! Ive made Lord God my home. God, Im telling the world what you do!
FOR A FRIEND IN NEED OF RECOGNIZING WORTH
14. Truth: We are unique individuals, designed and known by an incredible Master Creator. Rather than spending our days comparing, we must get to thriving in the gifts God has granted us.
Galatians 5:25-26, MSG - Since this is the kind of life we have chose, the life of the Spirit, let us make sure that we do not just hold it as an idea in our heads or a sentiment in our hearts, but work out its implications in every detail of our lives. That means we will not compare ourselves with each other as if one of us were better and another worse. We have far more interesting things to do with our lives. Each of us is an original.
15. Truth: The Christian life is not a strict moral code to which we must adhere, but rather a lifestyle that produces freedom and joy as we fully receive the grace Jesus has offered us.
Galatians 6:18, MSG - May what our Master Jesus Christ gives freely be deeply and personally yours, my friends. Oh, yes!
16. Truth: The Lord is aware of our needs and is engaged with our desires. He carries those pregnant with a dream, and provides them nourishment to fulfill that which they carry within them (purpose, desire to do His will, etc.).
Isaiah 40:10-11, ESV - Behold, the Lord God comes with might, and His arm rules for Him; behold, His reward is with Him, and His recompense before Him. He will tend His flock like a shepherd; He will gather the lambs in His arms; he will carry them in His bosom, and gently lead those that are with young.
17. Truth: When you face disappointment or concern, enter His presence, present your struggles, and give Him glory in your current season, even as you entrust Him with your future.
1 Samuel 1:9-11 MSG, So Hannah ate. Then she pulled herself together, slipped away quietly, and entered the sanctuary. The priest Eli was on duty at the entrance to Gods Temple in the customary seat. Crushed in soul, Hannah prayed to God and cried and criedinconsolably. Then she made a vow: Oh, God-of-the-Angel-Armies, if youll take a good, hard look at my pain, if youll quit neglecting me and go into action for me by giving me a son, Ill give him completely, unreservedly to you. Ill set him apart for a life of holy discipline.
FOR A FRIEND IN NEED OF GRACE
18. Truth: Rather like a captain throwing items overboard to lighten or rid the ship of a load, the Lord is faithful to forgive your wrongdoings, ridding you of the weight, and setting your spirit and mind free to thrive in His gift of grace.
Micah 7:19, ESV - You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea.
19. Truth: Despite unworthiness you may feel, there is Real Life to be had in Jesus Christ. Through His grace, you can experience the beauty that comes with being in relationship with Him.
Ephesians 3:14-19, MSG - My response is to get down on my knees before the Father, this magnificent Father who parcels out all heaven and earth. I ask him to strengthen you by His Spiritnot a brute strength but a glorious inner strengththat Christ will live in you as you open the door and invite Him in. And I ask Him that with both feet planted firmly on love, youll be able to take in with all followers of Jesus the extravagant dimensions of Christs love. Reach out and experience the breadth! Test its length! Plumb the depths! Rise to the heights! Live full lives, full in the fullness of God.
20. Truth: We cannot save ourselves; however, He invites us to do the journey with Him. As we walk with Him, He will teach us to work not out of a checkmarked list to qualify for grace, but rather out of a heart submitted to His character. We will become like Him, and soon find ourselves passionate for doing Kingdom work such as loving our neighbor.
Ephesians 2:7-10, MSG - Now God has us where he wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus. Saving is all his idea, and all his work. All we do is trust him enough to let him do it. Its Gods gift from start to finish! We dont play the major role. If we did, wed probably go around bragging that wed done the whole thing! No, we neither make nor save ourselves. God does both the making and saving. He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing.
Julie Langford and her best friend (and husband) Andrew love living in Portland, Oregon where she enjoys practicing ballet, exploring outdoor adventures, and inventing a new kind of wheel (or enjoying reinventing the old one). You can learn more about her and Learning to Become at www.learningtobecome.com.
Publication date: July 13, 2016
Europe: Flat Year-Over-Year: This year, the total number of passengers expected on European sailings is expected to stay flat from last year at an estimated 6.4 million, according to the 2016-2017 Cruise Industry News Annual Report. The Mediterranean is seeing a decline, while in Northern Europe traffic is up.
Meanwhile, Europes percentage share of the global cruise market has been shrinking to 27 percent this year from more than 31 percent four years ago.
These numbers are driven by several factors, including the instability in the Eastern Mediterranean, combined with the growth of new markets elsewhere, such as China.
At the same time, the numbers are not static, they can easily swing back in favor of Europe, pending market changes and political developments. And the record orderbook suggests a steady introduction of new tonnage into Europe that will maintain market growth. Besides, new external markets are expected to feed into European cruises, such as China, once more Chinese discover cruising at home.
Notable New Ships: Among the several cruise ships that were introduced this spring, two stand out: the AIDAprima, because of her use of new technology and for taking AIDAs unique ship concept to the next level, and the Harmony of the Seas for literally reinventing the Oasis class, making the ship seem new and exciting.
The AIDAprima is the first true dual-fuel ship, burning traditional fuel at sea and LNG in port. She offers a number of new guest venues, while literally bursting with colors, lighting and modern styling.
By making the Harmony of the Seas a little wider than her previous sister ships, at 227,000 tons she is the largest cruise ship in the world, while 20 percent more energy efficient and faster. She has an energy management system that continuously monitors all energy producers and users and brings any deviations from set targets to officers attention for adjustment.
We are eagerly looking forward to the next generation of AIDA ships, as well as the fourth and fifth Oasis-class ships, as these companies continue to innovate and push the technological bar higher.
Bon Voyage!
Angela Reale Mathisen and Oivind Mathisen
Publishers
Excerpt from Cruise Industry News Quarterly Magazine: Summer 2016
Norwegian ports are busy working to promote their offerings to the cruise industry, with Cruise Norway leading an ambitious homeporting project with hopes to attract more turnaround business.
Elsewhere, Oslo has become a key stop for cruise lines, and Alesund is working to build up its shore excursions.
Meanwhile, Telemark has charged onto the port scene in Norway as an attractive new transit destination for cruise ships.
Read the Cruise Industry News Summer Magazine Norway section here.
Stratford Spirit Shop, at 200 Ferry Blvd. in Stratford, was one of 25 businesses across the town that passed recent alcohol compliance inspections held by Stratford Police in collaboration with the Stratford Partnership for Youth and Families and the State of Connecticut Liquor Commission.
The inspections were performed without the prior knowledge of the businesses and were conducted to make sure businesses were not selling alcohol to minors. Vipul Gandhi, owner of Stratford Spirit Shop, said the store considers it a responsibility not to serve to minors.
Servicing alcohol to anyone underage is not the right thing to do, Gandhi said.
Inspections also ensure businesses are checking identification properly and have the correct system in place to identfy a valid ID. According to Gandhi, You can really see the difference between a real and a fake ID.
Tammy Trojanowski, the drug-free community program director, worked closely with Stratford Police on behalf of a coalition effort to reduce youth substance abuse within the town. She said that operations like liquor store stings come from evidence-based strategies.
Punishments for failed tests can vary. According to John Suchy, director of Liquor Control for the Department of Consumer Protection, each violation is reviewed at the discretion of a liquor control agent with multiple offenders typically facing progressive discipline.
First-time offenses come with a $750 fine. The business are then also put on a probation period that includes random spot checks. The operation in Stratford was one of about 300 routine compliance inspections done around the state each year, according to Suchy.
Trojanowski said that the collaboration has had a positive impact on the people in the town.
I believe it has a really powerful effect on the community, she said. When you bring everyone together theres work to be done.
Stratfords 100 percent compliance on inspections shows the liquor stores are cooperating with the effort, according to Trojanowski.
I think they showed us that theyre doing their part, she said. And we all appreciate it.
AJohnson@hearstmediact.com
LOS ANGELESSelena Santana and Simone Danalustrous will join host James Bartholet and co-host Lauren Phillips on this weeks installment of Inside The Industry.
Santana is an adult performer, while Danalustrous is Miss Nude North America and Entertainer of the Year at Nudes A Poppin. The ladies will be calling in to the show, which airs live 7-9 p.m. Wednesday, July 13 on LA Talk Radio.
The guests will discuss their new projects and take calls live from the listening audience.
Inside the Industry is continuing its series of weekly on-air contests, including one where four lucky winners can get a free pass to attend Exxxotica in Columbus (Ohio) in August.
This week contestants can also win a free signed DVD or a free promotional item from Pipedream Products.
Fans can call in live to (323) 203-0815 during the broadcast, or join the conversations in the chat room at InsideTheIndustry.net or AdultDVDTalk.com.
The program is heard and rebroadcast daily on LATalkRadio.com and InsideTheIndustry.net. Inside the Industry is also available on iTunes and Stitcher.
Inside the Industry is sponsored by Streamate, AVN, 1amdollusa.com, Pipedream Products, Adam & Eve and Black Tie Limousines.
Fans can enter weekly contest giveaways that include DVDs or an autographed 8-by-10 photos. To submit an entry, email [email protected]
Producers who would like to send information to be discussed on the air, performers who want to be booked as guests on the program, or companies that wish to advertise on the program can email [email protected]
STAMFORD A state housing authority expects to complete its initial review of management practices at the Parkside Gables affordable housing complex by the end of the month.
Nine Parkside Gables residents went before the Connecticut Housing Finance Authority last month to request an official review of building managers and Mutual Housing Association of Southwestern Connecticut, the affordable housing organization that owns the West Side property.
CHFA spokeswoman Lisa Kidder said its unlikely the review will end the authoritys intervention.
Details of CHFAs investigations at Parkside Gables will not be released until the review is completed.
Kidder said CHFA likely will move forward once the review is completed with possible solutions on-site and among Mutual Housing management.
This is a big project ... there is a lot here to unravel, Kidder said. Staff will give a report to the board at its next meeting, but this will continue to be an ongoing process after that.
CHFA and staff members met with concerned Parkside Gables residents after the June 30 board meeting to wade through a laundry list of complaints, including questionable rent charges and unaddressed quality-of-life issues.
Given the seriousness of some of the complaints, CHFA immediately launched a review and visited Parkside Gables the following day.
This is an important property to us, Kidder said. We want to make sure it is well-run, well-maintained and that its residents are being served in the best way possible.
Renee Dobos, CEO of Mutual Housings Southwestern Connecticut chapter, said the July 1 visit was planned months in advance as part of the annual review process. She said resident complaints were addressed during the site visit.
I am certainly complying with what was requested of me, but I am not aware of anything more heightened or extraordinary in nature, she said.
Curtis Miller, president of the Parkside Gables residents association, said he is pleased with CHFAs commitment to Parkside Gables. He is eager to see how the review might spur changes in his community.
Weve already gone through a lot of stuff with them, but (CHFA) has a lot more to do, he said.
nora.naughton@scni.com; twitter.com/noranaughton
Contributed Photo / Contributed Photo
BRIDGEPORT - Members of the Connecticut State Police Statewide Narcotics Task Force, along with the Bridgeport Police Emergency Services Unit raided a home on Bell Street Wednesday morning seizing , hundreds of prescription pills, dozens of rounds of ammunition, two rifles, a shotgun, and six handguns, police said.
The homeowner, Miriam Almourtada-Cotto, 49, was charged with sale of narcotics, sale of a controlled substance, sale of narcotics within 1,500 feet of a school, possession of narcotics with the intent to sell, and failure to keep prescriptions in their proper containers.
FBI Will No Longer Investigate DB Coopers Infamous 1971 Heist, Escape
Trending News: Americas Weirdest Cold Case Has Been Closed
Why Is This Important?
Because its one of the oddest cases in the history of American law enforcement and its never been solved. And now, it never will be.
Long Story Short
Law enforcement may never ultimately solve the case of DB Cooper. The lone agent assigned to the case has been assigned to other duties, effectively ending the 45-year investigation into his disappearance.
Long Story
They dont make crimes like DB Coopers anymore. And unfortunately, with the FBI's announcement that they're closing the case, we'll never know if he got away with it.
On the afternoon of November 24, 1971Thanksgiving Evea man at Portland International Airport purchased a one-way ticket for the 30-minute Northwest Orient Airlines flight to Seattle. The man identified himself as Dan Cooper (media miscommunication would later identify him as DB Cooper). Once aboard, the man took a seat near the rear of the plane, lit a cigarette and ordered a bourbon and soda. Shortly after take-off, the man passed a note to a flight attendant informing her that he had a bomb and the plane was being hijacked.
Cooper told the flight attendant to inform the captain, who informed Seattle-Tacoma airport of his demands: $200,000 in cash, four parachutes and a refueling truck standing by when they landed. He remained calm and polite throughout the ordeal, even ordering another bourbon and soda and tipping the flight attendant.
Ultimately, the airline gave in to his demands. A bag of cash was delivered to the airplane on the Seattle airports tarmac and the passengers and most flight attendants were released. The plane was refuelled and took off, bound for Mexico City, but under strict conditions: it must fly at the slowest possible speed and at the lowest possible altitude. Somewhere between Seattle and Reno, Nevada, its believed Cooper opened the planes aft stairway and jumped out. He was never seen again.
A spirited investigation followed, but revealed very little. Despite tips from the public and a number of deathbed confessions, no satisfactory or convincing evidence regarding Coopers true identity or his ultimate end has ever been found. The case sparked an estimated copycat hijackings the following year, until universal luggage searches were implemented in 1973.
The lone remaining agent assigned to the case has been reassigned, the FBI announced, meaning that there will no longer be any sort of active investigation. While it's unlikely that the same agent worked the case for 45 straight years, it's interesting to imagine that he did that man's life would be nearly as movie-worthy as the crime itself.
A spokesman for the Bureau said that although it is no longer actively investigating the case, it will still field tips related to it.
Own The Conversation
Ask The Big Question
Can anybody ever pull something like this off again?
Disrupt Your Feed
Is it bad to secretly hope that he got away with it and lived out the rest of his days in a tropical paradise sipping drinks on the beach?
Drop This Fact
One of the more absurd (but kind of fascinating) Mad Men fan theories speculated that the series would end with Don Draper assuming the identity of DB Cooper and disappearing forever.
Windber-Portage renew rivalry in Week 10 Heritage-WestPAC crossover
Check out what to watch on Friday night in Somerset County as the high school football regular season comes to a close in Week 10.
Check it out: Fun things to do this weekend in Lake County
This list of weekend entertainment includes festivals, Vet Fest and the premiere of 'The Diary of Anne Frank' on a local stage.
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.
The Queen will be relieved by the swift conclusion to the Tory leadership election. The original timetable indicated a new PM wouldn't be named until September 9, meaning the monarch would have had to return to London in the middle of her three-month summer break at Balmoral.
The Queen (pictured) will be relieved by the swift conclusion to the Tory leadership election, writes Ephraim Hardcastle
How will our head of state get on with Theresa May? On a few occasions, Margaret Thatcher fainted in her presence. The Queen is said once to have remarked: 'Oh, she's gone again.' Mrs May doesn't seem the fainting type. And a royal source says: 'With the UK leaving the EU, the Queen might feel able to promote the Commonwealth now, which she could never do with Thatcher.'
Apropos the Queen and Mrs May, their mutual interest is the Church of England, so they'll be able to discuss episcopal appointments. Also, both enjoy the gossipy world of the Anglican communion. If they get on, will HM a talented impressionist perhaps entertain Mrs May with her 'take' on favourite clerics?
When Theresa May (pictured) moves into No 10 it will be the building's first child-free period since Tony Blair's brood arrived in 1997
When Mrs May moves into No 10 it will be the building's first child-free period since Tony Blair's brood arrived in 1997. The moment is foreshadowed in the 2003 Richard Curtis film, Love Actually. The bachelor PM (played by almost forgotten Hugh Grant) tells the housekeeper: 'Should be a lot easier with me. No nappies. No teenagers. No scary wife.'
Now fronted occasionally by former Aquascutum suit salesman James O'Brien, BBC2's Newsnight isn't considered to have shone during the recent political events. Even the noted femme serieuse, Tory MP Nadine Dorries, complains: 'Seriously, Newsnight, just how boring are you trying to be?'
Elizabeth Hurley, pictured, discloses a complex relationship with her 50-year-old teddy bear, Edward, telling The Spectator: 'I never touched him, apart from to brush his hair and give him a goodnight kiss. I tried to give Edward to my baby son but when he started to get covered in dribble my nerves couldn't take it, and he had to go back on a high shelf.' Ms Hurley adds: 'Paging Dr Freud' a reference, presumably, to the sex expert's strange theories on 'infantile sexuality'.
Elizabeth Hurley (pictured) discloses a complex relationship with her 50-year-old teddy bear, Edward, telling The Spectator: 'I never touched him, apart from to brush his hair and give him a goodnight kiss'
Tory MP Sir Nicholas Soames comments on fellow Old Etonian David Cameron's replacement as PM: 'A distraught Old Etonian Association to announce very shortly Theresa May to be an Honorary OE for the sake of tradition and completeness!' Shouldn't the OEA seek to restrain loudmouth Soames for the sake of preserving its reputation?
As David Cameron walks away from Downing Street today, he can look back with a sense of pride
As David Cameron walks away from Downing Street today, he can look back with a sense of pride on six years as Prime Minister and more than a decade at the head of his party.
When he took over the Tory leadership in 2005, it was a party deep in the doldrums, having just suffered a third election humiliation at the hands of Tony Blair and with little sign of regeneration. Yet to his successor Theresa May, he bequeaths a majority government with four years to run and an economy which, after Germany, is the strongest in Europe.
It should not be forgotten that when Mr Cameron became PM in 2010, 13 years of profligate Labour government and the global financial crash had left Britain on the brink of ruin. Today, stability has returned and there are more people in work than ever before.
He has made a significant contribution to recalibrating the economy cutting the cost of the state, creating private sector jobs and reducing the size of Whitehall though there is still far to go. Public spending will still rise from 756billion this year to 821billion by 2020 and our national debt, currently a terrifying 1.5 TRILLION, continues to soar.
Mr Cameron takes pride in being a progressive, one-nation Tory and that has sometimes brought him into conflict with his partys more traditional grassroots. He stuck to his guns on gay marriage (even though few were calling for it and it was not in the election manifesto) despite strong opposition from the membership.
His attempt to detoxify the Tory brand by committing 12billion a year to foreign aid also brought bitter criticism from the ranks especially after much of it was shown to be going to the worlds despots.
And though his raising of the minimum wage to 9 an hour by 2020 is laudable, there are fears it may ultimately cost jobs and become a magnet for migrants.
In education there has been good progress, with a huge increase in academies and free schools and a passionate campaign by former education secretary Michael Gove to drive up standards. Meanwhile, thanks to Iain Duncan Smith, much-needed welfare reform is well under way.
When he took over the Tory leadership in 2005, it was a party deep in the doldrums, having just suffered a third election humiliation. He is pictured during Prime Minister's Questions in 2005
And of course, Mr Cameron delivered on his promise of an EU referendum.
But along with the achievements, there are inevitably some entries in the debit column.
In his mission to modernise the party, Mr Cameron sometimes chose gimmickry over substance. Who could forget his toe-curling hug-a-husky trip to the Arctic to highlight climate change? Equally, his style of sofa government where major decisions were taken within a small clique who became known as the chumocracy frustrated ministers and backbenchers alike.
Decisions on infrastructure projects such as Heathrow and HS2 were deferred. The British Bill of Rights never materialised.
Mr Camerons achievements far outweigh his disappointments. He is an engaging and thoroughly decent politician. He is pictured with Nick Clegg in 2010
And Mr Cameron never really understood the concerns of ordinary people about the impact of migration, or the depth of their anger at his failure to reduce it. That anger was arguably the driving force behind the Brexit victory.
On foreign affairs too, there were miscalculations. Intervention in Libya left that country virtually ungovernable and he was stopped only by Parliament from bombing Syrias President Assad now effectively our ally against Islamic State.
But Mr Camerons achievements far outweigh his disappointments. He is an engaging and thoroughly decent politician who always looked and sounded like a leader, representing Britain at home and abroad with confidence and poise.
He came to power in truly precarious times and has left the nation immeasurably stronger than he found it. That is his legacy to Theresa May.
Philip Hammond, a former robust Eurosceptic, caught a severe bout of Foreign Office-itis, writes STEPHEN GLOVER
Will Britain ever leave the European Union? Despite the appointment last night of leading Brexiteers to the Cabinet, I am still not certain that we will.
My doubts first stirred almost as soon as the referendum result was announced. I wondered whether our passionately pro-EU political Establishment would discover a way of frustrating or, at any rate, of watering down the democratically expressed will of the British people.
These worries gained a bit more traction when I saw that photograph of a triumphant, soon-to-be Prime Minister Theresa May surrounded by her happy supporters outside the House of Commons. Seraphic smiles covered the previously gloomy faces of Amber Rudd and Sir Alan Duncan, two leading Tories who, during the campaign, were lynchpins of Remain. Why were they so deliriously happy?
And then I read the comments of Philip Hammond, a former robust Eurosceptic who, as Foreign Secretary, caught a severe bout of Foreign Office-itis (symptoms: a limpet-like attraction to the EU and all its works) from which he may struggle to recover.
In a strikingly downbeat statement to MPs on Tuesday, Mr Hammond suggested it could take six years for Britain to leave the EU. Six years! This does not sound to me the observation of a man gung-ho to get on with the job.
According to Mr Hammond, whose appointment as the new Chancellor of the Exchequer was announced last night, once Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty has been triggered by Mrs May, there will be two years of exit negotiations, which could well be followed by a further four.
He foresees each national parliament of the other 27 members states having to be consulted before agreement is reached. Until such power-houses as Malta, Latvia and Luxembourg are satisfied with every jot and tittle of all the provisions for our withdrawal, we will be left dangling in limbo.
If this happened, it would not be good news for the British economy. For until the future terms of trade with the EU are known, there is likely to be economic uncertainty and an absence of inward investment. We need to work out a new relationship as soon as is practicable primarily for our own interests, but also for the European Union's.
It seems to me that Mr Hammond was searching for obstacles. He was trying to make what should be a challenging, complex and inevitably detailed process into the political equivalent of trying to climb the north face of the Eiger with a yard of frayed rope and a pair of plimsolls.
Could it be his lack of determination to get on with negotiations, and conclude them speedily, indicate a want of purpose and conviction? If Mr Hammond were the new Culture Secretary or in charge of the Department of the Environment, such a laid-back attitude to our withdrawal from the EU would hardly matter.
As it is, this unapologetic shilly-shallier now occupies the second most important position in the Government, and he might, if he chose to, help drag out the exit talks until the referendum had become a distant memory.
Theresa May arrives with her husband Philip at Downing Street after taking over the reins of the Government following David Cameron's resignation
Am I being too suspicious? Possibly. Those of a more trusting disposition will rightly point out that Theresa May is a woman of her word who has endlessly repeated the slogan that 'Brexit is Brexit', and confidently declared that we will emerge from our present difficulties into a 'better, brighter future'.
It all sounds fine until one reflects that 'Brexit is Brexit' is actually a pretty meaningless statement. It would make about as much sense to say 'Blue is Blue'. But what sort of blue? Cambridge or Oxford? Cobalt or sapphire? There is a world of difference; an almost infinite number of variations.
Brexit might mean trading with our former EU partners with minimal tariffs, while regaining complete control of our own borders and not paying a penny into EU coffers. I suspect this is what most people who voted Leave want and expect.
But Brexit might just as well involve signing up to all the rules and regulations of the single market, paying a hefty wodge of money to Brussels every year, and having only a limited say (or even none at all) as to how many migrants come to work in this country from the EU.
It might even mean maintaining a sort of associate membership of the European Union, so that there could be two competing schools of thought about whether we had really left it at all.
Of course, I appreciate that until Article 50 is triggered and talks begin, no one can say which of these outcomes (or any of the alternatives you might be able to think of) is going to come to pass.
Philip Hammond, the new Chancellor after George Osborne was sacked, arrives at Downing Street in London
Presumably, Theresa May and Philip Hammond and Amber Rudd and the rest of them all have a pretty clear idea in their minds of what they really want, but they are not going to share it with us at the moment, or with their negotiating partners in Europe.
My only observation is that a Government led by a former Remainer and with an ex-Remainer Chancellor (who, unlike Mrs May, indulged in some pretty blood-curdling speculations during the campaign about the consequences of seceding) is likely to have a more flexible view of what leaving the EU should entail than one run by fully-fledged Brexiteers.
Last night's appointments have done a little to allay my fears. Boris Johnson's surprising appointment as Foreign Secretary should bring comfort to the Brexit cause so long as he remains loyal to the arguments which he made so successfully during the referendum campaign. David Davis, whose track record as a robust Eurosceptic cannot be gainsaid, should make an effective Cabinet minister in charge of Brexit negotiations. However, both men should be aware that the argument has not been irrevocably won, and there will be siren voices.
Other Brexiteers have been appointed to important jobs as Mrs May strives to maintain a balance of opinion. Optimists will say that their presence at the Cabinet table will serve to keep her honest, and prevent any backsliding by her or Mr Hammond.
But the prospect of a stitch-up will increase if negotiations are absurdly drawn-out, as the new Chancellor evidently envisages. The more time that passes, the greater the scope for arguing that, as circumstances have changed, the result of the referendum should no longer be respected, and a new one may be necessary.
Amber Rudd, the new Home Secretary, arrived at 10 Downing Street after Theresa May had been sworn in
If talks really did last six years, our relationship with the EU would not have been settled by the time of the 2020 election (assuming one is not called earlier). Although it is impossible to foresee the state of the Labour Party in four years' time, one can imagine Brexit if the outcome had not been resolved becoming the central and divisive issue of an election campaign. It would effectively become a second referendum.
Would there be a general outcry if the issue were forced down the throats of the British people again? Maybe. But it is possible that an accumulation of bad economic news, and the renewal of Remain scare stories, could induce public opinion to accept some sort of reappraisal.
So I am not counting my chickens. I shall give Mrs May the benefit of the doubt, and accept that she honestly does want to take Britain out of the EU on the best possible terms.
Ask most teenage boys if their mother embarrasses them and you're likely to get the answer, 'yes'.
But brothers Jem and Janer have been left red faced by their mother Jill's addiction to social media - and her rather raunchy career path.
Jill, 40, from South East London is a glamour-model-turned-housewife who has now ventured into selling sex toys online and has no plans to slow down.
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Jill, 40 from South East London appears on Channel 5 show Mums Gone Wild: Embarrassing Parents thanks to her cringeworthy selfie habit. Pictured: Jill with sons Janer (left) and Jem (right)
Jill appears alongside other cringeworthy mothers on Channel 5 show Mums Gone Wild: Embarrassing Parents.
She says: 'I know I'm getting on now. I should probably be boring and just sit there and do nothing but I'm not like that. I'm proper addicted to social media, it's like a drug I'm addicted to it.'
However, Jill's zest for life has left her two sons cringing, especially when her low-cut tops have led their friends to describe her as a 'MILF'.
Jem explains: 'Every bit of the day there's a selfie. At night, in the bathroom, in the toilet, in the kitchen. She's a 40-year-old woman, she needs to step back a little bit.
'She acts like she's still in her mid-20s. She's dressed like she's going on a catwalk which isn't the appropriate dress for coming to pick her boys up from school.'
Jill says that although she has some regrets from her life as a high-flying glamour model, she says that she has overcome them to become a better mother.
Much to her son's horror Jill has also set up her very own online sex toy business with her partner
She continued: 'I think I'm a bloody cool mum, I think they should be proud of me.
'I went through a pretty bad patch in my life and I've done some kiss and tells which is absolutely disgusting, I'm disgusted in myself.
'But you know what? You learn by your mistakes and that will never happen again, I'm nothing like that now. Those pictures are still on the Internet. Those stories are still out there I can't get them off.'
Much to her sons' horror, during the programme the mother-of-three reveals that she and her husband have launched their very own sex toy company.
However, Jill hopes that her sons will come round to the idea to the point where they will wish to partake in the company.
She said: 'My dream is for it to be a long-running family business so that when the boys are old enough they can take over.'
Jill's news leaves her younger son Janer more than embarrassed and the schoolboy appears visibly distressed by the news.
He says: 'I can't really say anything. It's just my mother's business but I hate it.'
The former glamour model says she has plenty of regrets but thinks she is a good mum
Speaking to his mother he adds: 'I am embarrassed because people are disrespecting you. It's just really weird, I feel embarrassed but if that's what you wanna do it's what you wanna do.
'I just don't like that she's doing this, I know that she's doing it for us but I still think it's embarrassing'.
Surprisingly Jem, who is often quick to pull his mum up on her selfie addiction is supportive of her new venture.
He says: 'I am proud of my mum because at the end of the day at least she's trying something. It's better than her just sitting there not trying anything.'
Later on in the programme we meet 47-year-old Fran from Basingstoke who is determined to keep her sex appeal strong in later life.
The mother-of-two is the two-time winner of Britain's Sexiest MILF under her alter-ego Fanny Fox, much to the horror of her daughter Amy, 21.
Fran explains: 'I was on my own and I felt I lost myself, my confidence went so I saw this competition and I thought, 'maybe I've still got what it takes'.
'There were 1,000 girls. It was quite easy for me, I just walked in there and said, "give us the crown because I'm gorgeous".'
Following her win Fran says that she lost a few friends, and family members deleted her from Facebook calling her a 'prostitute'.
The model reveals that her desire to find a new outlet in life followed a painful past which began when she was discovered she was expecting a son 12 years ago.
She said: 'I found out after the second scan that my son had a lump on his back so he was really really poorly.'
Also on the show is 47-year-old Fran who is the two time winner of the UK's sexiest MILF under the alter-ego Fanny Fox
The lump was teratoma, a form of tumour that is usually benign. Consultants warned Fran that the lump could be a threat to her as well as her unborn child.
She continued: 'The consultant said "you know you could die do you want to take that risk?" but I desperately wanted a son so I decided to carry him.
'I had a caesarean. It took three people to pick that little boy up because he was three pounds and the tumour was 6lbs.
'He was still my son and I thought to myself I've got a lot of work, a lot of agony and I've got to kick arse to give this boy a life.
Doctors were eventually able to remove her son Alex's tumour who survived and is now a happy 12-year-old.
Fran added: 'That ten-year journey was so hard for me being left with little one with all his problems.'
Fran reveals that her desire to reinvent herself came from a painful past when her second child develop a tumour in the womb
Following her difficult journey Fran decided to try and help other and now sells off some of her raunchy pictures in aid of charity.
She said: 'I think I had 56,000 followers at the time and I used to sell my pictures. Most of my fans used to give 10 or 20 quid. I think I raised over 100,000. If you got it flaunt it. It's no harm, it's just a bit of fun.'
Single mother Natalie, 46, from Suffolk, is another mother who says that her sex appeal has given her a new lease of life as an exotic dancer.
Natalie says her children are proud of her profession and she even practised for the role by performing her first lap dance for her son, Brett, 22.
'I am not embarrassed for my children to see me half naked, I gave birth to them,' said Natalie, who is also a mother to Sonny, 20, and 13-year-old Poppy.
Mother-of-three Natalie, 46, has become an exotic dancer and said she 'isn't embarrassed for my children to see me half naked, I gave birth to them'
'When I got my first pole dance gig I said to Brett "I am going to have to practice on you". He said "go on, just do it".'
She explains (and demonstrates) that she loves to party with her older offspring, joining them as they down shots and go on the pull.
'The situation that my kids are there never feels weird as we are all best friends,' she explains.
Her sons say they are not at all embarrassed by their mother's 'wild' behaviour.
Sonny is even grateful when Natalie takes his new love interest off to bed with her to stop him committing the sin of having sex on a first date.
He said: 'It is just one of those things, your mum looking out for you. Mum has taught me everything about life I need to know, how to treat women.
'I think all mums should be like mine, they should all let their hair down, go out and have fun.'
Natalie said when Poppy is older, if she wants to go to university but can't afford the fees, she would suggest she takes up pole dancing to fund her studies
In contrast, teenager Poppy confesses she does find her mother's outrageous and flirty behaviour a little embarrassing on occasion.
She said: 'My mum is crazy, she doesn't care what people think. I don't mind being the one who isn't drunk as I am used to it now.
'Sometimes she does embarrass me as she kisses all the girls, she just kisses anyone to be honest.'
As well as sharing partners and getting matching tattoos with her children, Natalie said she wouldn't mind if her daughter followed in her footsteps and one day became a pole dancer in order to earn an extra income.
She said: 'I told Poppy if you want to go to university and I can't afford your fees, you may have to dance but that is your choice.'
Natalie explained that it was a tragic event - the death of Poppy's father - that led to her taking up the risque activity. Now she wishes she had done it years ago as it has given her a new lease of life.
She said: 'I never thought I would dance for a living but I thought I have to take the positives from this and do all the things in life I never had the confidence to do.
'Dancing was one and it makes me feel great, life does begin at 40. I wish I had done it 20 years ago. It has made me feel sexy and I have learnt to love myself.'
She said she doesn't care i anyone disapproves of her antics.
'People say I am crazy and off the rails. I think I am normal and everyone else is a bit boring,' she said.
A woman has filmed her entire caesarean section and birth of her third child on a mobile phone, ensuring the experience is one she will never forget.
The Sydney mother, Jacqueline, took the touching step to capture each stage of the little girl's birth as the operation unfolded.
The decision to record the incredible moments was made by the brave mother when faced with a medical emergency, after being informed she would need an urgent angeogram following the caesarean. The brain scan became necessary after the mother was thought to be at serious risk of a stroke.
Later, the proud mum took to Facebook to share the touching behind-the-scenes video with her friends and family.
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Nearly there: A Sydney mother has ensured the birth of her third baby is one she'll never forget, by having her entire caesarean procedure filmed on her mobile phone
Welcome to the world: The emotional mother, Jacqueline, had each delicate stage of the little girl's birth captured and was brought to tears when she saw her newborn for the very first time
The footage allows viewers to watch the birth from Jacqueline's perspective and hear the doctors give various instructions and update her on what is happening.
As the video progresses, the baby girl's tiny head appears before doctors pull her out of the womb and she begins to wail.
The doctors congratulate Jacqueline on a successful birth before the nurse who filmed the incredible experience for Jacqueline, pans the camera down and films the mother crying with joy.
Meeting for the first time: Later that day, the proud mum took to Facebook to share the touching behind-the-scenes video with her friends and family
Raw footage: The footage allows viewers to watch the birth from Jacqueline's perspective and hear the doctors give various instructions and update her on their progress
HOW DOES A C-SECTION PROCEDURE WORK? 1. A screen is put up over your chest so that you can't see the operation - in most hospitals it will lowered as your baby is born - and your anaesthetist will check that your painkiller is working properly. 2. Once you're numb, your doctor will make a straight cut, called a bikini cut, into the skin of your belly. It's usually two to three fingers width above your pubic bone, at the top of your pubic hair 3. Layers of tissue and muscle are opened so the surgeon can reach your uterus. Your tummy muscles are parted, rather than cut. Your bladder will be moved down to expose the lower part of your uterus. 4. You may hear and sense fluid whooshing out through the opening, and feel the surgeons assistant pressing on your belly to help your baby be born. 5. Your obstetrician will lift out your baby. If your baby is breech he/she will be born bottom first. 6. If you're having twins the lower twin is born first, just as if you'd given birth vaginally. Source: Baby Center Advertisement
While Jacqueline was unable to see the exact moment her newborn was pulled from her womb, the nurse held her phone up high so viewers could see each stage of the procedure.
In most C-sections, a screen is placed in front of the mother to block their vision of their abdomen to both ensure the area remains sterile and to prevent them from seeing themselves being cut.
Once the baby emerged, doctors held her up for Jacqueline to see before they whisked the newborn away to clean her up.
Cutting the cord: While Jacqueline was unable to see the exact moment her newborn was pulled from her womb, the nurse held her phone up high so viewers could see each stage of the procedure
While some women are able to nurse on the operating table, doctors usually cut the umbilical cord and remove the placenta before women meet their baby properly.
They also need to stitch up the uterus, administer antibiotics and oxytocin to control bleeding and help to contract the uterus.
Jacqueline, a mother-of-three, told Daily Mail Australia that she was well following the procedure, and has been praised on social media for sharing such an intimate moment.
She said parents should base what they tell their kids on their reactions
How do you tell your children that you have cancer?
This heart-wrenching question is one Roxy Jacenko was forced to face head-on after the mother-of-two was diagnosed with breast cancer.
The PR queen today revealed that she made the extremely difficult decision to tell her daughter Pixie, four, about her diagnosis - but chose not to tell her son Hunter, two.
Jacenko said the toddler is too young to understand, and all he knows is that his mother is going to hospital.
Speaking to Daily Mail Australia, Cancer Council Australia CEO, Professor Sanchia Aranda, said it was important that a cancer diagnosis was not hidden from children.
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Roxy Jacenko, 36, has been diagnosed with breast cancer, and revealed she had made the decision to tell her daughter Pixie, four (right), but not her two-year-old son Hunter (front)
The mother-of-two said Pixie cried when she told her she would be gone for two nights because she would be in hospital
The PR queen said she felt that Hunter is too young to understand his mother's diagnosis, but does know that she was in hospital
She said children should be given an explanation based on their age and ability to understand the situation.
Children of all ages are sensitive to whats going on in the household and the things that are happening, she said.
For children as young as Pixie, Professor Aranda said an explanation could be as simple as saying their mother is not well and she has a lump in her breast that needs to come out.
For children even younger, like two-year-old Hunter, she said it was still important to say that their mother will undergo a procedure to have a lump removed and she will be going away for a little while.
Ms Jacenko has adhered to expert advice by telling her daughter Pixie, four, about her diagnoses
Cancer Council CEO Professor Professor Sanchia Aranda (pictured) said it was important that a cancer diagnosis was not hidden from children
Inevitably children will ask questions, and Professor Aranda said parents should base what they tell their children on their behavioural response.
Children who are a bit older may have heard the term cancer and be scared by that, she said.
Professor Aranda said that it is important to try and stay positive about treatment and tell children the goal is for the cancer to be cured.
It is also important to be up front about how their routines will be disrupted due to the diagnosis, and what will happen in terms of who will look after them when their mother is in hospital.
Those explanations become more important again if you have to have chemotherapy or something that will change your physical appearance, she said.
Prof Aranda said it was important to tell children, like Pixie and Hunter (pictured), how their routines will change and who will look after them when their mother is in hospital
Ms Jacenko's diagnosis came weeks after her husband, Oliver Curtis, was jailed for insider trading. Here she is pictured with her children Pixie and Hunter
Ms Jacenko told The Daily Telegraph Pixie is 'inquisitive' and she could not 'go home with cuts on me and lie, I have to tell her'.
'She cried last night because I said I wasn't going to come home for two nights because I would be in hospital,' she said.
'She got sad because obviously to a child when they watch cartoons, they see someone go to hospital and they know it is because something is wrong.'
The diagnosis came just weeks after Ms Jacenko's husband, Oliver Curtis, was jailed for insider trading and will spend at least one year, and a maximum of two, in prison.
Oliver Curtis (left) will spend at least one year, and a maximum of two, in prison. Mr Curtis is pictured with his wife Ms Jacenko and their two young children - Pixie and Hunter
Ms Jacenko told The Daily Telegraph she found a lump in her left breast while showering 10 days ago.
She was due to undergo a 'partial removal' of the lump but the cancer was larger than suspected and surgery has been delayed while she awaits further testing.
Ms Jacenko has been left to care for her two young children while her husband is in jail, and previously said she has been struggling to put them to bed and care for them without him.
She took to social media to post her frustration at bed time, writing: 'Been trying since 7.12pm. 9.41pm don't know that I'm doing too well'.
Ms Jacenko (right) said she has been struggling to put the children to bed now her husband (left) is in jail
Ms Jacenko's mother Doreen Davis, who has battled breast cancer herself, said she believes her daughter will beat it
Ms Jacenko said Pixie had shown great sensitivity throughout the tumultuous time, and even comforted her after she was left 'heartbroken and devastated' by her husband's sentencing.
Ms Jacenko said breast cancer runs in her family.
Her mother, Doreen Davis, was struck by the disease 10 years ago, and said she believes her daughter can beat it.
Ms Jacenko will know in 10 days how far the cancer has progressed.
Professor Aranda from Cancer Council Australia said parents battling cancer should ensure they have the support they need around them so they able to support their children.
There are cancer support services available for parents and children who might not be coping with the diagnoses.
How much do you value yourself at work? When you really think about this question, and relate it to how much you are paid, does it add up?
We know that in Australia there is still a gender pay gap of 17.9 per cent. And research also tells us that women generally ask four times less frequently for pay rises and negotiate salaries of 30 per cent less.
So if youre thinking that its time to be paid what youre worth, perhaps its also time to ask for that pay rise you have been longing for. Megan Dalla-Camina, Sydney-based career strategist and creator of the online program The Career Toolkit, gives us her expert tips.
Listen up: Megan Dalla-Campa (above) is a career expert who has given her top tips for how women can ask for and ask for a pay rise
DO YOUR RESEARCH
Its always important to start with the facts. Research the market rate for the type of role you are in.
For most jobs you can find this by digging around on the Internet, and asking your colleagues or peers in other companies in your industry. Make sure you also try and ascertain what your male colleagues are earning as well so you have a gender benchmark.
BUILD YOUR BUSINESS CASE
Do your homework and build your evidence as to why you deserve the pay rise. There is nothing worse than asking for more money with nothing to back it up.
Glowing performance reviews, praise from colleagues, a list of achievements and the market information will all give you the right ammunition for a powerful discussion.
And know what your ideal target number would be, as well as other ways you could be compensated like extra annual leave days, study funds or more flexible work.
Do your research: Ms Dalla-Campa says that researching salaries in the industry and having a business plan is key
GET YOUR TIMING RIGHT
Most employers have an annual schedule of when pay increases and compensation is decided. Understand what this is.
It doesnt mean that you cant ask outside of this time, but you need to understand the cycle that you are in. It is typically better and more effective to make a request inside the bi-annual or annual review periods.
SET A FORMAL MEETING
Send an email and request a meeting with your boss, letting them know that you want to discuss a pay rise so they are not blindsided.
You want your request to be taken seriously so dont bring it up casually. Take yourself seriously and they are likely to as well.
Make the time: Setting a formal meeting is also important to ensure your request will be taken seriously
KNOW YOUR WORTH
If you are armed with your research, comparative information and strong performance data, then stand your ground and know your worth.
Most 21-year-olds are scraping by on entry level salaries as they enter the workforce.
But one savvy young woman is cashing in, earning staggering $250,000 in just 10 months after starting up her own business straight out of university.
Nina Perera, from Manly on Sydney's northern beaches, has found huge success pairing social media 'influencers' with big brands.
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Online sensations! Nina Perera started her own model agency in September 2015 and has already worked with more than 320 models including Hannah Perera (pictured)
'I wanted to create something new and innovative - a niche in the fashion and modelling industry,' Ms Perera told Daily Mail Australia of her business, Neon Model Management.
'I didnt want to work in my fathers coffee-roasting business which I had done since being a teenager and I wanted to put the knowledge I gained from university into practise.
'And that's when I saw a business opportunity.'
Despite her inexperience in the business world, the young entrepreneur has clearly found the 'niche' she desired.
Big business! Instagram sensation Gabby Epstein (pictured), who has more than 1.4 million followers, is among the models Ms Perera has worked with
Providing opportunity: 'I wanted to create something new and innovative - a niche in the fashion and modelling industry,' Ms Perera told Daily Mail Australia
Worldwide appeal: Ms Perera has paired her models, like Jessica Ashley (pictured), with well known companies including Sephora, Jay Jays, Best and Less and The Iconic
Instant success! Ms Perera (pictured) from Sydney, has made more than $250,000 in 10 months
In less than a year Ms Perera has already amassed around 120 models, more than 200 social media models and has worked with well known companies including Sephora, The Iconic, Jay Jays, Pepper Mayo and David Jones.
And she's made a cool $250,000 profit in the process.
'The pitch to these companies is that they are hiring a Neon Model with a new, young, energetic social media presence,' she said.
'We're giving companies amazing free marketing and promotions opportunities.'
With advice from family, friends and business personnel Ms Perera has turned a start-up into a success.
Her clients include Gabby Epstein, from the Gold Coast, who with more than 1.4 million Instagram followers can command upwards of $3,000 for a single post.
And with social media sites growing in popularity by the day, she expects the next few years to be just as big as her first period in business.
'The last 10 months has been hectic. Im making a profit all of which Im using to develop my business,' Ms Perera said.
'The social media industry is rapidly growing and evolving. I want to be part of it - its really exciting.'
Ideal career: Ms Perera didn't want to work in her father's coffee-roasting business and so began managing models such as Kaily Emma Smith (pictured)
Online enterprise: 'The pitch to these companies is that they are hiring a Neon Model with a new, young, energetic social media presence,' Ms Perera said
The adorable picture has drawn attention for melting people's hearts
The politician was apologising on TV for claiming money in expenses
The tears are from Japanese politician, Ryutaro Nonomura
The photo shows a Japanese girl wiping away tears on a TV screen
A photograph has gone viral because it shows a child's sweet nature
While adults can often rush to laugh, criticise, or dismiss a politician who cries live on air, one anonymous little girl had a rather more endearing reaction.
The toddler was captured on camera lifting a tissue to the Japanese politician's eyes, in an attempt to wipe away his tears in a photo that has gone viral around the world.
It's a sight that will more than likely melt your heart and bring a smile to your face.
Endearing reaction: This little girl was captured wiping away the tears of a Japanese politician on the TV
The notorious incident occurred when former Hyogo Prefectural Assemblyman, Ryutaro Nonomura, tried to explain to the media about the three million yen ($37,828 AUD dollars) he had claimed in travel expenses for 2013-2014.
After the politician descended into a sobbing mess, the viral clip of him crying made waves globally.
It became news-worthy again some 510 days later in 2015, when this little girl was pictured wiping away Mr Nonomura's tears.
Man in question: The politician was Ryutaro Nonomura, who was trying to explain to the media the details of the three million yen ($37,828 AUD dollars) he had claimed in travel expenses for 2013-2014
For someone so small, the Internet fell in love with the Japanese girl's innocent compassion.
Many commenters posted about their hopes that she remained as empathetic to people, in a world where many people mistrust politicians.
Meanwhile, the adorable photograph reminded people of the jabbering nonsensical wreck Mr Nonomura became when he apologised live on TV.
Crying shame: For someone so small, the Internet fell in love with the little girl's compassion towards the politician
The photos show the little girl stood in a crowded room before a TV screen, holding up a tissue to Mr Nonomura's expressive sobbing face.
She proceeds to wipe his eyelids, as if to get rid of his tears.
It's a reaction only a child could have.
Lady Kitty Spencer has ably put a body-shamer in her place with a sweet but scathing response to a cruel comment on Instagram.
The socialite has been sharing snaps from her break in the South of France with her 33,000 Instagram fans, but a photo of her in the pool wearing a pink bandeau bikini prompted one follower, Lutizefa, to say: 'Lay off the cake, darling. You're too fat.'
Princess Diana's niece, 24, hit back at Lutizefa, saying: 'I'm sorry that you feel the need to post nasty comments under photographs of people you don't know.
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Lady Kitty Spencer (second right) has hit back at a body shamer who told her she looked fat and needed to lay off the cake after she posted this holiday snap at Nikki Beach in Saint Tropez on Instagram
'I've yet to see unkind behaviour do any good in the world,' she said, finishing with a kiss to show there were no hard feelings.
The daughter of Princess Diana's brother Earl Spencer didn't let the troll spoil her holiday fun as she hopped around the South of France.
Indeed the comment was unlikely to bother her as she's previously spoken about her relaxed attitude to body image.
'Weve no scales in our house I couldnt tell you what I weigh. I dont even know my dress size, she said.
Kitty was pictured sipping on a raspberry cocktail at the exclusive La Guerite seafood restaurant, wearing a Melissa Odabash kaftan, which was complimented by the designer herself on Instagram
Naturally the heiress couldn't resist a dip in the azure blue waters around Ile St Marguerite
Kitty shared a funny sign post that detailed how far away worries such as cellulite, politics, stress, traffic, pollution and cholesterol were
During their jaunt at Nikki Beach in Saint Tropez Kitty and her friends were treated to a live performance by a saxophonist and she was seen enjoying the music as she leaned against the edge of the pool.
From there it was on to Ile Sainte-Marguerite, where she sipped on a raspberry cocktail at the exclusive La Guerite seafood restaurant.
The 24-year-old looked the picture of summery perfection in a straw hat with pom pom detailing and a Melissa Odabash kaftan, which was complimented by the designer herself who told Kitty she was 'looking stunning'.
'Thank you so much,' Kitty replied. 'Literally living in it at the moment.'
Naturally she took the opportunity to go for a dip in the azure blue waters, and shared a snap of a funny sign post that detailed how far away worries such as cellulite, politics, stress, traffic, pollution and cholesterol were.
The summer break was no doubt a welcome escape for the Cape Town University graduate, who studied psychology, politics and literature business followed by a masters degree at Regents College.
A stunning student has slammed web trolls who say her bikini selfies are unprofessional - because she wants to be a lawyer.
Clarity Engel, 19, was told if she was serious about fulfilling her dream to become a humanitarian lawyer, she should never post photos of herself in swimwear online.
But the determined beauty, studying international affairs and Spanish at the University of Colorado Boulder said she is sick of people judging her 'racier' photos.
Angry: Clarity Engel has spoken out against the cruel online trolls who leave comments on her social media pictures telling her she will never get a job because her 'racy' bikini selfies make her look 'unprofessional'
Hitting back: The 19-year-old, who is a student at the University of Colorado Boulder, hopes to one day forge a career as a humanitarian lawyer. She also dreams of working in politics
Proud: 'I've always been proud of my femininity,' Clarity said of her saucier social media snaps, adding, 'It bothered me when people made comparisons between my social media presence and my professionalism'
Clarity, who has just shy of 7,000 followers on Instagram, explained that she is confident enough in her own intelligence to know that she can get a job and still be proud of her appearance at the same time.
Speaking to student newspaper The Tab, she said: 'I've always been very proud of my femininity, I feel confident enough to embrace and express myself through my physical appearance, and I do this at times with photos.
'It began to truly bother me when people would make comparisons between my social media presence and my professionalism and ability to get a job.
'I pride myself on being intelligent, open-minded, and well versed in many academic fields, as well as being a constant contributor to my community and non-profit organisations, and so these comments confused and hurt me.'
Cheeky: The college student regularly shares images of herself in swimwear with her 6,900 Instagram followers, as well as numerous pictures of her day-to-day life at school
Hurt: Clarity explained that she 'prides herself on being intelligent, open-minded, and well versed in many academic fields' and she was therefore hurt that people made such cruel assumptions based on her photos
Cruel words: The budding lawyer admitted that she has also been branded a 'whore' on social media
One of the messages she's endured said: 'If you're really serious about having a career, you won't post pictures like that.'
Clarity, who hopes to enter politics in the future, also received a comment which said: 'Didn't you want to be a politician? Not with that photo!'
Clarity, who lives in Colorado in the United States said she's also been branded a 'whore'.
The comments come from not only online trolls but family members and friends close to Clarity.
She believes that there is a double standard between men and woman - as men who post similar photos face little to no backlash - and felt as a confident woman she should speak out for others.
Close to home: Clarity admitted that some of her friends and family members have also told her that her bikini pictures will hamper her ability to find a job when she graduates
Don't judge a book... 'The photos I post on social media are not an indicator of my intelligence nor of my professionalism,' she added
Double standard: Clarity believes it is unfair that men are able to post similar images of themselves showing off their bodies, they face no backlash, while so many women are criticized
She said: 'As I began to further look into this controversial topic, I found that men mostly, were the ones making the degrading comments to women, even though they faced no backlash when posting pictures of themselves in Speedos or, in many male celebrities cases, nude for magazines.
'I felt a duty to my fellow women to speak out against this issue and common double standard.'
Clarity said she mostly ignores people who try to put her down.
She said: 'The photos I post on social media are not an indicator of my intelligence nor of my professionalism. I thank everyone, literally everyone, who supports my work and reaches out to me with kind words.
She's a keen cook who owns more than 100 recipe books, so when Theresa May takes up residence in the Camerons' apartment above number 11 Downing Street, the kitchen is likely to be first on her list for a makeover.
While they spent 25,000 renovating the kitchen, the Camerons' minimalist, industrial-style decor is unlikely to please Mrs May who is known for her love of a bold, colourful pattern.
Now renowned interior designer Maurizio Pellizzoni has predicted changes such as bright kitchen cupboards, leopard print crockery and ditching the current marble dining table for a warmer wood.
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While they spent 25,000 renovating the kitchen, the Camerons' minimalist, industrial-style decor is unlikely to please Mrs May who is known for her love of a bold, colourful pattern
The new PM wore an eye-catching Amanda Wakeley coat with her trademark kitten heels as she and her husband Philip moved into their new home in Downing Street
The incoming Prime Minister is known for her love of leopard print and is likely to add a splash of her penchant for colour and pattern to the Downing Street interior
Mrs May was treated to a private tour of Mr Cameron's Downing Street flat over number 11 last night and the outgoing Prime Minister took the opportunity to show off his luxury kitchen, and no doubt she cast an appraising eye over the surroundings, making a note of the changes she'd like to make.
Maurizio Pellizzoni told FEMAIL: 'Knowing Theresa May and her love of cookery, colour and pattern, there will certainly be some changes implemented to the interior scheme at Downing Street.
'Camerons kitchen is very industrial in style and has a contemporary feel to it. Looking at the colours and the design, for example, the open shelving, it has been designed with little of their personalities,' Maurizio explained.
'I strongly believe Mrs May will want to upgrade the existing kitchen to something that will reflect more of her personality and her lifestyle, particularly her passion for cookery.
The Camerons turned number the kithcen at number 11 into a contemporary, industrial style space but Theresa May is expected to make it much more colourful
'Her passion for food, cooking and cook books will determine the new style and design of the kitchen as she will need to have a large units and shelves to accommodate all of her books.'
HOW THERESA MAY WILL DECORATE DOWNING STREET Brand expert developer Sara Tye predicts the new PM will fuse UK and international decor, but won't spend too much. Theresa May loves the UK and is traditionally British, so will create a homely environment with an international European twist.
She is very frugal so will bring items from her own home to create a 'home from home'. Mrs May is likely to make only small changes due to the current economy and it being so fragile.
But she will choose the best bookcase for all of her recipe books
Theresa loves accessories so will add small items reflecting herself in the same way she adds a nice shoes or pearl necklaces to a traditional suit.
Quality over quantity: She will choose items that will last, as she will stay in No.10 for a long time.
She is an advocate for integration and loves cooking recipes from across the world. The style will be of a traditional eclectic UK home with a fusion mix. She will add small details from different countries to a traditional UK theme.
She's likely to have wine rack full of various wines from different locations.
As she will have to juggle work and home life, she is likely to have tech gadgets so she can work and cook simultaneously.
The overall style will be a balance between masculine and feminine, as she has both attributes
Outlets to expect Theresa to shop from include Denby, as it is British, Selfridges, as its down the road and Conran its simple but stylish Advertisement
One of the most significant changes is likely to be the addition of colour, and it's unlikely Mrs May will be drinking her tea and coffee out of the black Whittard Barista mugs favoured by David and Samantha.
'She will definitely add colour and she could go about this by displaying colourful china and vibrant accessories or go for a complete overhaul and replace the kitchen cupboards or give them an upgrade in a brighter colour,' Maurizio explained.
'Knowing her love for leopard print, she could choose her accessories or crockery in this print or perhaps layer the scheme by adding textures in this pattern.'
Mrs May is likely to unwind from the stress of running the country by whipping up a few dishes by her favourite chef, Yotam Ottolenghi who combines Middle Eastern and Italian flavours in unusual creations such as pork chops with pineapple and coconut; tempura elderflower and gooseberry slaw.
The new head of state tries a new recipe every week from the likes of Jamie Oliver, Giorgio Locatelli, Angela Hartnett or Nigella but she's not likely to use the Jamie Oliver stainless steel saucepans her predecessors opted for.
'Colours are very important for Mrs May so she will most probably swap those stainless steel, contemporary pans with something more classical but in a colourful tone that will complement the overall scheme,' Maurizio explained.
'She clearly enjoys cooking from home and entertaining, which I imagine she will want to do on a personal level,' Maurizio said.
Her favourite restaurant is a high end Indian called Malik's in Cookham, Berkshire but she rarely goes there as she prefers cooking at home.
And if Mrs May is entertaining guests, they're likely to find themselves sitting around a more cosy table than SamCam's 795 Modern World marble dining table.
'The marble table is fairly cold,' Maurizio said. 'Again, its very contemporary and very far apart from her tastes and lifestyle.
'She could change this by opting for warmer tones in wood or perhaps something ornate with a marble top.
The Camerons' pristine kitchen played a prominent role in the photos of Michelle Obama visiting Samantha Cameron in May 2011. Experts predict Mrs May will swap the four-shelf bookcase to a bigger, better model to accommodate her huge collection of recipe books
David Cameron giving an interview at the kitchen table at Number 11. The Flos Arco floor lamp was one of the modern design features of the Camerons' makeover
'This will give the space a feel of something more luxurious and classical, but also create an area thats warm and inviting to complement any injections of vibrant colour.'
A Habitat flap wall clock added to the industrial feel during the Cameron era, but Maurizio sees Theresa going for something more design-led.
'Accessories are a great way to extend your personality into your home interior scheme,' he said.
'So, the clock will probably be swapped over for something a bit more adventurous, with less formal lines, something that features a bit of texture, colour and pattern.'
The incoming head of state's love of colour may prompt her to add brighter kitchen units, pots and pans in warmer hues and warm and vibrant decor throughout 11 Downing Street
Cherie Blair previously admitted that when she saw the kitchen at No 11, her heart sank because it was so outdated.
So when SamCam took up residence in May 2010, she wasted no time in creating her own impression on the flat, with reports suggesting they had spent more than 600,000 making it look more modern in the Scandanavian, 'minimalist' style she was said to favour.
Photos which later emerged of the interior showed 25,000 kitchen with a 1,615 Flos Arco floor lamp, a 799 hood cooker by Sigma and a 250 Hemnes black wooden dresser from IKEA.
Mrs May is a fan of Yotam Ottolenghi who is known for his Middle Eastern-Italian fusion food with unusual dishes including Hawaiin pork with pineapple and coconut and gooseberry coleslaw
A glimpse inside the flat when the US First Lady Michelle Obama arrived in 2011 showed the Camerons had also installed a 500 coffee machine, a 299 Magimix food processor and a smart 3,799 Britannia Sigma range oven.
However, property developer Monika Slowikowska, who is the founder and director of Golden Houses Developments said that the incoming leader of the country is unlikely to splash out too much on her renovations.
'As Theresa is frugal, Im sure shes conscious that since Brexit, the price of all kitchen appliances, such as extractor fans, has already gone up,' she explained. 'The majority of refrigerators are produced overseas, have also risen in price.'
Mrs May is a keen cook who owns more than 100 recipe books and makes a point of trying out a new dish every week
However, one element she might splash out on is imported tiles to go with an Italian theme.
'I'm expecting a more traditional look and feel to the kitchen perhaps a with country focus or with an Italian angle. She may opt for hanging garlic and chilli for decoration,' she said.
'She will want to have more traditional handles to the cupboard doors rather than those at 45 degrees.
'If Theresa goes with the Italian theme, the tiles will more than likely be imported from Europe, creating an additional spend.
'No doubt that the kitchen will be very welcoming - the heart of the home. It will be very vibrant, open and alive.
'I'd anticipate colours to be matte finish rather than gloss and see more open shelves for books and decorations.
A young woman who was nicknamed 'Dalmatian' by cruel bullies because of the moles covering her skin is now inspiring thousands with her body confident posts on Instagram.
Yulianna Yussef, 26, who is based in Warsaw, Poland, suffers from a rare genetic condition called congenital melanocytic nevus, which affects less than one percent of the population worldwide.
Despite being badly bullied throughout her childhood, Yulianna - who is Ukrainian-Lebanese descent - has learned to embrace her differences by posting daily photographs with the hashtag #bareyourbirthmark.
Body confidence: Yulianna Yussef, 26, who is half Ukrainian, half Lebanese but based in Warsaw, Poland, suffers from a rare genetic condition called congenital melanocytic nevus
One of a kind: The condition affects less than one percent of the population worldwide
Putting it on show: Yulianna is inspiring thousands of social media users with her positive outlook towards life
To date Yulianna has amassed more than 16,000 Instagram followers, with hundreds of commenters applauding her sunny attitude.
In response to one image of the brunette posing with her birthmarks centre stage, @tessyrth wrote: 'Wow!!!! You're a beautiful and special girl. Respect.'
And @san_lleide added: 'You're just like your skin great. People have different skin are unique and must not be ashamed.'
@kiiirrra, whose daughter was born with a large birthmark, thanked Yulianna for cheering her up.
Globetotter: To date Yulianna has more than 16,000 Instagram followers, with hundreds of commenters applauding her sunny attitude
Growing pains: Despite being badly bullied throughout her childhood, the stunning blonde has learned to embrace her differences
Always wearing a smile: Daily Instagram posts show Yulianna confidently putting her body on show, with her go-to hashtag being #bareyourbirthmark
'You are extremely beautiful and very inspiring.
'My five-month-old daughter was born with a large birthmark and is continuing to get small ones. Some days I feel sad but your posts make me feel better... Thank you for sharing.'
Yulianna said she was continually teased growing up, with peers taunting her with a plethora of nicknames including 'Dalmatian dog', 'cow' and 'giraffe'.
However, the social media starlet said she was 'optimistic' and 'learned not to pay too much attention to it.'
She captioned one photograph: 'I'm alive! I'm a happy person, I have a friends, a family which supports me, a job I like... So... I'm almost just like you...;)'
This photo, taken in 2013, shows Yulianna when she was working as yacht stewardess over Christmas - she said her co-workers were nice and she felt comfortable wearing a bikini
Street chic: Yulianna's big passions include design and fashion
Cruel taunts: Yulianna said she was continually teased growing up, with students taunting her with a plethora of nicknames including 'Dalmatian dog', 'cow' and 'giraffe'
Opening up about her condition, Yulianna admits that her family were once very worried about her chances of survival.
Apparently when she was born, it was immediately clear that something was wrong with her skin.
'Doctors were shocked because they had never seen such an extreme case,' Yulianna revealed.
'There were lots of moles all over my small body and they said to my family that they didn't know how much time I would stay alive.'
Yulianna said at the time doctors gave her just hours to live.
When she was born, it was immediately clear that something was wrong with Yulianna's skin
'Doctors were shocked because they had never seen such an extreme case,' Yulianna revealed
Inspiring: The keen traveller is now focusing her attention on being an ambassador for others suffering from congenital melanocytic nevus
But the Ukrainian said she was 'stubborn' and continued to live for 'days which then turned into weeks, then months and then years and I'm still here'.
The keen traveller, who has previously worked as a photographer, restaurateur and yacht stewardess, has now focused her attention on being an ambassador for others suffering from congenital melanocytic nevus.
She concluded: 'I'm trying to show people with CMN that we can live normal life with this and it's no need to hide from other people.
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David Cameron paid tribute to wife Samantha calling her 'the love of my life' as he thanked his family for their support during his premiership on his departure from Downing Street.
The former Prime Minister was supported by his spouse of 20 years and their children Nancy, 12, Elwyn, nine, and five-year-old Florence - who has lived in Number 10 her whole life - as he stood down as the leader of the country.
Turning to Mrs Cameron, he described her as the most 'amazing wife, mother and businesswoman' who had kept him 'vaguely sane' during his six years in charge.
After stating his gratitude to all those with whom he worked as Prime Minister, he said: 'I want to thank Samantha, the love of my life. You have kept me vaguely sane and as well as being an amazing wife, mother and businesswoman, you have done something every week in that building behind me to celebrate the best of voluntary service in our country.'
The decision to pose for photos in front of the world's media was an unprecedented first for the Camerons and their children stole the show as they tried to put a brave face on an emotional occasion.
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Samantha Cameron gives her husband a loving smile after he described her as the most 'amazing wife, mother and businesswoman' in his final speech outside 10 Downing Street this afternoon
Mrs Cameron planted a loving kiss on her husbands cheek before he headed to Buckingham Palace to officially tender his resignation
David and Samantha Cameron are pictured outside the iconic black door, posing for a family shot with their children Nancy, Elwyn and Florence for the first time
Samantha grips her children's hands during David's parting speech, as Nancy and Florence trying their best to maintain brave faces
The family then climbed into two different cars and left Britain's most famous address.
She looked elegant in a block 1,495 Roksanda dress as she comforted her children and held their hands as they prepared to leave their home for the last time.
Both Cameron girls looked charming in floral dresses from online retailer ilovegorgeous.com but while Nancy was in a blue and green print smock dress worth 48.30, Florence's 32.50 frock had a pink print.
Elwen was dressed in a white shirt, jeans and a pair of trendy high top Vans sneakers as he watched his father's historic speech.
Florence clutched on to her big sister and clung on to her mother's dress.
The supportive family embraced their father as he prepared to give his final words as Britain's Prime Minister
Mrs Cameron looked elegant in a graphic print block coloured 1,495 Roksanda dress with a zip front and a slim belt around the waist
The family could hardly have imagined the events of today when they celebrated the Conservative victory just over a year ago.
They began the day with Mr Cameron's final PMQs at the House of Commons, before making their last trip to Downing Street ahead of Number 10's new tenant, Prime Minister Theresa May.
Although Mrs Cameron has admitted to being 'daunted' about moving in six years ago, she could not help but look sombre as her family left the famous address for pastures new.
During her time as chatelaine of Britain's most famous address, the 45-year-old has managed to turn it into a family home that has seen her host charity events as well as VIP guests, including royalty and the Obamas.
Florence, who is just five years old, appeared to be a little camera shy this afternoon as she was pictured clinging to her mother
Samantha Cameron was prepared to give her daughter a supportive arm as she faced the world's media this afternoon
David Cameron gave his eldest child Nancy a supportive squeeze and a kiss on her head as she left her home today
The family then climbed into two cars and left Britain's most famous address - that Sam Cam admitted to being 'terrified' of before they moved in - for the last time
The husband and wife took one last look at their home of six years as they prepared to leave Downing Street
Samantha Cameron travelled with her husband to Buckingham Palace where the former Prime Minister officially resigned as Prime Minister to the Queen
A formerly shy Florence appeared to be a little more excited however when she and her siblings arrived at the palace
Last year, in an interview with ITV's Tom Bradbury, she said: 'When we moved here it was incredibly daunting. I was terrified of the impact it was going to have on the children, on us as a family, on our marriage.
'But it's been much easier than I expected it to be.'
Their arrival at the famous address came at a time of huge change for their family. Just a year before their beloved son Ivan, who had cerebral palsy and epilepsy, died aged just six.
Mrs Cameron previously recalled the shock of moving into Number 10, saying: I remember day one, I was doing Nancys homework with her at home in W10 [their house in North Kensington] and suddenly Dave rings, 'Youd better get a dress on because were about to go and see the Queen.
I thought, 'Oh my gosh, what am I going to wear?' I was five months pregnant at the time. We zoomed off to the palace so surreal.'
Samantha Cameron looked contemplative this morning as she made her final trip to Number 10 Downing Street with husband David following his final PMQs
She was seen offering her husband a supportive hand to hold as they made their final trip to the iconic building
She gave birth to their second daughter Florence Rose Endellion during a family holiday in Cornwall just three months later and the Camerons moved into the flat at Number 11, which became a family home as well as a political residence.
She famously told Mail On Sunday: The truth is I am not a very hands-on political wife; I dont get involved in day-to-day Downing Street life.
'They dont need me interfering, but in the evening we will talk about each others day. I try to stay out of the Westminster village. There are times when I will be surprised and curious about whats been announced.'
Her aim was to create a happy well-organised family environment that David could retreat to - to keep him sane and keep things in perspective.
Theresa May will now benefit from the changes made by the former Smythson creative director, but the Camerons have no worries about going without a roof over their head.
They still have a 1.3million cottage in Oxfordshire and the 3.5million west London townhouse they left six years ago.
They're expected to stay in London until their children's schools break up over the next few days: Nancy goes to the Grey Coat Hospital state school, in Westminster, where the term ends on Friday, July 15.
Elwen and Florence, attend Kensingston's St Mary Abbots primary school, which breaks up for summer on Wednesday, July 20.
They are thought to be making Mr Cameron's Witney constituency their base as he has said he will continue to serve as MP for the area until at least the next election scheduled for 2020.
Tess Holliday is loving breastfeeding so much that she seems to be sharing every moment of it with her fans.
This time, the 31-year-old plus-size model was snapped by her fiancee Nick Holliday while she was being set upon by a pair of stylists, all the while with her one-month-old son Bowie Juniper nursing at her breast.
The star was preparing to shoot her latest installment for brand Penningtons, for whom she designs plus-size clothing, when she was snapped.
Getting glam: Tess Holliday, 31, has posted yet another image of herself breastfeeding her one-month-old son Bowie Juniper, this time from the set of a photo shoot
Mom and son time: Tess shared another sweet image of herself nursing Bowie on Saturday
The photo shows Tess in a a black kimono and what appears to be a black bodysuit, looking into the distance while a woman works on her face and a man lifts up a section of her wavy auburn locks.
At her breast is little Bowie, wrapped in a yellow blanket covered in tiny pineapples.
'[Nick] captured this photo of me getting ready yesterday to shoot the next installment of my #mblmxtess @penningtons collection, and it reminded me of @gisele's iconic photo breastfeeding on set,' Tess wrote in the caption for the image. 'Working moms come in all shapes, sizes, colors & creeds!'
It's just the latest photo in a series of shared breastfeeding moments by Tess, with the last one being posted on Saturday.
'My friend @jackiedunnsmith snapped this photo of me breastfeeding Bowie today & it makes my heart swell #normalizebreastfeeding #bowiejuniper,' the proud mom wrote in the caption for the image.
The photo shows Tess sitting at a table with her hair back, sporting gold hoop earrings and an army green top which is unbuttoned, baring her right breast.
She is holding her tiny boy up to her chest in the photo with both arms, and looks down on him lovingly.
In another post on Saturday, the mom also praised The Pearl Hotel in San Diego, posting a photo of noted made on papers below a set of bottles marked 'drinks for Bowie' and another note saying 'drinks for the parents'.
Iconic: Tess said that the photo reminded her of this famous image of model Gisele Bundchen getting styled while breastfeeding
Not the only one: Actress Alyssa Milano also snapped her own breastfeeding-while-primping shot
Giving thanks: Tess also shared this image, praising The Pearl Hotel in San Diego for making her and her family 'feel like we're staying with friends'
A mother's love: The mother-of-two posted this photo of Bowie nursing to celebrate being able to breastfeed while lying down for the first time
'We feel like we're staying with friends!' Tess wrote.
Tess frequently shares candid photos of her family on social media, and last month, she posted another intimate photo of herself nursing her newborn son.
'I had to capture this moment because today was the first time I was successful at feeding lil Bowie laying down #normalizebreastfeeding #motherhoodrising,' she captioned the black and white image, which sees her holding her son's head while he suckles her breast during his feeding.
The photo was taken by Nick, who couldn't help but gush about his fiancee when sharing the snapshot on his Instagram page.
'A lot of people seemed to get upset that @tessholliday posted a photo hashtagged "#normalizebreastfeeding" which didn't actually feature the act of breastfeeding,' he wrote. 'So here you go. She actually looks really sexy here but it isn't always like that.
'Sometimes it's stressful and messy and nothing goes how you want it to. But sometimes it's bliss. Don't let anyone make you feel bad about feeding your child, wherever that may be, and for the women out there who can't breastfeed, don't let anyone make you feel bad about that either.'
He later returned to the post to add: 'Finding a plus size mother (two groups robbed of all sexuality) with whom I am in a relationship "sexy" for being a good mum is not the same as objectifying strangers body parts in public.'
Tess and Nick welcomed their son on June 6, and at the time of his birth, Bowie weighed 8lbs, 10oz and measured 22 inches long.
Sleepy baby: Tess has been actively sharing photos of Bowie since welcoming him into the world
'Wave of sadness': Tess took to Instagram on Friday to share this precious photo of her fiance Nick asleep with their one-month-old son as she paid tribute to the recent police shooting victims
The baby's name is presumably inspired by the late musician David Bowie, whom Tess publicly mourned on social media after his death in January.
Although Tess may be relishing in motherhood as she enjoys her time with Bowie, but she also has admitted her 'heart is so heavy' thinking about the recent deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile.
The 31-year-old took to Instagram on Friday afternoon to share a precious black and white photo of her fiance Nick Holliday sleeping next to their one-month-old son while paying tribute to the police shooting victims, who were killed within days of each other.
'After I took this photo I was hit with a wave of sadness,' she captioned the image. 'My heart is so heavy, it has been for quite sometime. I look at this photo of my boys, (one missing) & know that a lot of my friends live in fear that moments like this may be ripped them because of the color of their skin.'
Tess, who has a 10-year-old son Rylee with an ex-boyfriend she no longer speaks to, added: 'As a white woman, I have no clue what that kind of fear feels like. All I can do is use my voice & platform to show solidarity against injustices & let my congressmen & women know we need reform. Non POC please stand up right now, stand up & fight for change.
'I think everyone is holding their family a little closer today #blacklivesmatter #Dallas.'
Tess and Nick and currently staying at The Pearl Hotel in New York City, and the heartwarming picture sees their little boy cuddled under the covers while sleeping soundlessly next to his day.
Nick took to Instagram on Thursday to share a photo of himself holding his little boy during his first shower.
'Took advantage of the rain shower at @thepearlhotel to give Bo his first (careful) shower,' Nick wrote. 'He loved it! Happy 1 month little dude xx #bowiejuniper #pearlhotel.'
Fun times: Last week, Tess shared a Snapchat video of her and her 10-year-old son Rylee using the app's dog filter
The heartwarming image sees Nick looking down lovingly at Bowie as he cradles him with both of his hands.
Last week, the couple was enjoying Fourth of July weekend at a rooftop pool in Los Angeles where Tess slipped back into a bikini for the first time since giving birth.
The size 22 model took to Instagram on Monday to share photos of herself donning a two-piece, posting the playful snapshots along with a brief message about body positivity.
Tess captioned an image of herself holding an inflatable doughnut with the hashtags '#MILF, #4thofjuly, and #effyourbeautystandards'.
In the photo, which was taken just one day before her 31st birthday, Tess can be seen giving the peace sign with one hand while holding the pool toy in another.
Another picture sees the mom sitting on top of an inflatable flamingo with her legs wrapped around the neck of the pool float.
Nick also took to his Instagram account on Monday to share a heartwarming photo of him and Tess floating on the raft together, writing: 'Pink flamingos.'
Tess is laughing in the playful snapshot, which sees her sitting in between Nick's open legs on the inflatable toy.
A few days before her Fourth of July celebration, she shared a Snapchat video of her and her eldest son Rylee using the app's dog filter.
'My oldest pup. His smile is infectious,' she captioned the clip, which sees them happily sticking out their tongues.
Her daughters also put on a charming display in floral
For her last appearance outside Downing Street as the wife of the Prime Minister, the ever immaculate and stylish Samantha Cameron no doubt wanted to leave a lasting impression.
So it's no surprise she took inspiration from two other leading ladies on the world stage, opting for a 1,490 graphic print dress by Roksanda, the Serbian-born designer beloved of Michelle Obama and the Duchess of Cambridge.
Mrs Cameron wore the elegant dress with a zip front from the designer's 10 year anniversary capsule collection, to accompany her husband to Buckingham Palace as he officially tendered his resignation yesterday.
And the 45-year-old pulled off the bold print with aplomb, pairing it with black suede pointed court shoes and a patent black belt.
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Samantha looked elegant in a graphic print block coloured 1,495 Roksanda dress as she left Downing Street for the final time this afternoon
Roksanda's colourful designs are also a favourite of the Duchess of Cambridge who only last week recycled a yellow and white dress to ensure she stood out from the crowds at Wimbledon.
She first sported the frock on a visit to the Sydney Opera House on the official royal tour of Australia and New Zealand in 2014.
On the same trip, she chose one of the designer's more understated creations - a dove grey dress with an asymmetric neckline as she arrived at Ayers Rock airport.
Michelle Obama is also a fan of the Central St Martin graduate's outfits, choosing a striking geometric print dress for her final farewell to Cambodia after a five-day visit last year.
The Duchess of Cambridge chose a yellow and white Roksanda dress for a visit to the Sydney Opera House in 2014
Michelle Obama is also a fan of the Central St Martin graduate's outfits, choosing a striking geometric print dress for her final farewell to Cambodia after a five-day visit last year
Michelle Obama wearing Roksanda on a visit to Westminster Abbey in 2011
On a tour of Westminster Abbey in 2011, the First Lady wore a purple wool cowl neck dress with a jewelled belt by Roksanda.
As the Camerons exited Downing Street yesterday, Sam Cam also made sure her two young daughters Nancy, 12, and Florence, five, were impeccably turned out.
Both Cameron girls looked charming in floral dresses from the Notting Hill boutique I Love Gorgeous but while Nancy was in a blue and green print smock dress worth 48.30, Florence's 32.50 frock had a pink print.
Florence's outfit was finished with a pair of gold Mary Jane T-bar shoes also from the same shop, priced at 65.
Elwen, 10, was dressed in a white shirt, jeans and a pair of trendy high top Vans sneakers priced at 52 as he watched his father's historic speech.
The elegant dress comes from the Central St Martin graduate's 10 year anniversary capsule collection. Pictured: Samantha Cameron arriving at Buckingham Palace for her husbands resignation to the Queen
Taking after their mother in the style stakes were the Cameron's two young daughters, Nancy, 12 and Florence, five (pictured with their brother Elwen)
David Cameron paid an emotional tribute to his family as he bid farewell to Downing Street tonight, describing Samantha as 'the love of my life'.
The former Prime Minister took to the podium while his 45-year-old wife stood to the side with their children.
As he gave his final speech outside Number 10, Cameron said it's been the 'greatest honour of my life to serve our country as prime minister'.
He also said of Samantha - his spouse of 20 years - that she was the most 'amazing wife, mother and businesswoman'.
The decision to pose for photos in front of the world's media was an unprecedented first for the Camerons and their children stole the show as they tried to put a brave face on an emotional occasion.
Both Cameron girls looked charming in floral dresses from boutique I Love Gorgeous but while Nancy was in a blue and green print smock dress worth 48.30, Florence's 32.50 frock had a pink print
Elwen was dressed in a white shirt, jeans and a pair of trendy high top Vans sneakers priced at 52 as he watched his father's historic speech
Samantha Cameron gives her husband a loving smile after he described her as the most 'amazing wife, mother and businesswoman' in his final speech outside 10 Downing Street this afternoon
Samantha planted a loving kiss on Cameron's cheek before he headed to Buckingham Palace to officially tender his resignation
Florence clutched on to her big sister and clung on to her mother's dress.
The family then climbed into two different cars and left Britain's most famous address - that Sam Cam admitted to being 'terrified' of before they moved in - for the last time.
The Camerons could hardly have imagined the events of today when they celebrated the Conservative victory just over a year ago.
They began the day with the couple going to David's final PMQs at the House of Commons, before making their final trip to Downing Street before the arrival of its new tenant Theresa May.
Samantha grips her children's hands during David's parting speech, as Nancy and Florence trying their best to maintain brave faces
The supportive family embraced their father as he prepared to give his final words as Britain's Prime Minister
Florence, who is just five years old, appeared to be a little camera shy this afternoon as she was pictured clinging to her mother
Samantha Cameron was prepared to give her daughter a supportive arm as she faced the world's media this afternoon
Although Samantha has admitted to being 'daunted' about moving in six years ago, as the bittersweet moment arrived, she looked sombre.
As during her time as chateleine of Britain's most famous address, the 45-year-old has managed to turn it into a family home that has seen her host charity events as well as VIP guests including royalty and the Obamas.
Last year Samantha admitted to ITV's Tom Bradbury: 'When we moved here it was incredibly daunting. I was terrified of the impact it was going to have on the children, on us as a family, on our marriage.
David Cameron gave his eldest child Nancy a supportive squeeze and a kiss on her head as she left her home today
The family then climbed into two cars and left Britain's most famous address - that Sam Cam admitted to being 'terrified' of before they moved in - for the last time
The husband and wife took one last look at their home of six years as they prepared to leave Downing Street
'But it's been much easier than I expected it to be.'
Their arrival at the famous address came at a time of huge change for their family. Just a year before their beloved son Ivan, who had cerebral palsy and epilepsy, died aged just six.
Mrs Cameron recalled the shock of moving into Number 10. I remember day one, I was doing Nancys homework with her at home in W10 [their house in North Kensington] and suddenly Dave rings, 'Youd better get a dress on because were about to go and see the Queen.
I thought, 'Oh my gosh, what am I going to wear?' I was five months pregnant at the time. We zoomed off to the palace so surreal.'
She gave birth to their second daughter Florence Rose Endellion during a family holiday in Cornwall just three months later and the Camerons moved into the flat at Number 11, which became a family home as well as a political residence.
She famously told Mail On Sunday:The truth is I am not a very hands-on political wife; I dont get involved in day-to-day Downing Street life.
'They dont need me interfering, but in the evening we will talk about each others day. I try to stay out of the Westminster village. There are times when I will be surprised and curious about whats been announced.
Her aim was to create a happy well-organised family environment that David could retreat to - to keep him sane and keep things in perspective.
Lack of programmes are fuelling rates of complications, Diabetes UK says
19% of type 1 sufferers meet their targets for blood pressure and glucose
Thousands of diabetics are dying prematurely each year after not being taught how to effectively manage their condition, a leading charity warns.
Up to 24,000 early deaths could be avoided if the NHS educated people how to keep on top of their illness, a new report claims.
Diabetes UKs State of the Nation report says poor delivery of education programmes is fuelling rates of life-threatening complications among sufferers - costing the NHS too much.
Only 2 per cent of newly diagnosed people with type 1 diabetes and 6 per cent with type 2 in England and Wales attended a diabetes education course in 2014-15, the charity says.
Poor delivery of education programmes is fuelling rates of life-threatening complications among sufferers - costing the NHS too much, says a new report by Diabetes UK
It comes as another report found more than half of people at high risk for diabetes are missed under current US screening guidelines.
The figures are a huge cause of concern as poor management of diabetes can lead to heart attacks, amputations and strokes.
Diabetes UK is calling for improvements to the delivery of diabetes education courses so that at least half of sufferers will receive help over the next five years.
The report also found just 19 per cent of people with type 1 are meeting their targets for blood pressure, blood glucose and cholesterol, which are essential in keeping complications at bay.
While 59 per cent of type 2 sufferers are failing to meet their same targets potentially as a result of not having received proper education.
Chris Askew, Diabetes UK chief executive, said: Diabetes is a very serious and complex health condition that requires constant self-management.
This can be extremely overwhelming, yet people with diabetes may only see their GPs and nurses a few times year, and if they fail to manage their diabetes effectively the results can be devastating.
This is why it is essential that everyone with diabetes has a chance to learn about how to manage their condition well.
In some areas thousands of people with diabetes have attended education courses that give them the confidence and skills to take control of their condition.
They can be life-saving. So it is galling that in most places these courses have reached a fraction of those who could benefit.
Nearly 10 billion is spent every year on diabetes by the NHS, around 10 per cent of their entire budget.
Data published by Public Health England in 2015 found there were more than 7,000 diabetes-related amputations a year - the equivalent of 135 a week.
US government guidelines missed 55 percent of people with prediabetes or diabetes including many ethnic minorities and people who arent overweight, a report claims
Diabetes UK has praised NHS Englands new rating system which will see local bodies be assessed on the number of newly-diagnosed diabetics attending education programmes.
Mr Askew added: The new NHS ratings system for diabetes will help to drive improvements and reduce variation in access to education so it is essential that health leaders give it full priority.
TYPE 2 EDUCATION COURSES People at high risk of developing Type 2 diabetes can reduce their chances of getting the condition by more than 80 per cent by attending a new education programme, a new study claims. The new group education programme called Lets Prevent Diabetes, developed by the Leicester Diabetes Centre, could lead to 'large reductions in cases of type 2 diabetes' Full attendance of the programme results in an 88 per cent risk reduction, while people who only missed one follow up session were 60 per cent less likely to develop type 2 diabetes. Professor Melanie Davies CBE, director of the Leicester Diabetes Centre, said: 'These types of programmes, if applied correctly, are powerful and has the ability to enhance and improve peoples lifestyle. 'This programme has the potential to bring large reductions in cases of type 2 diabetes. 'Prevention of type 2 diabetes is a global priority in healthcare, but there is a lack of evidence investigating how to effectively translate prevention research into a UK primary care setting.' Advertisement
Diabetes is the fastest-growing health threat facing our nation and if we dont get better at supporting people with diabetes to stay healthy we will continue to see high rates of debilitating complications and early death for many people with the condition as well as rising costs to the NHS.
Since 2013, The National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (NICE) has recommended all diabetics be offered education courses to help them better understand the condition.
US government guidelines missed 55 percent of people with prediabetes or diabetes, including many ethnic minorities and people who arent overweight, a study by Northwestern Medicine claims.
The 2015 guidelines, which were authored by the United States Preventive Service Task Force (USPSTF), recommend people undergo screening for diabetes if they are between 40 and 70 years old and are overweight or obese.
Under President Barack Obama's health care law, the Affordable Care Act, all services recommended by the USPSTF must be fully covered by insurers.
But if a patient does not meet the guidelines' criteria, they may have to pay out of their own pocket for a diabetes test.
The report said: By reporting on the limited effectiveness of this screening program, this study raises concerns about the program's broad utility, particularly among racial and ethnic minority groups.
Zahra Zulfiqar, two, was born without her calf bone in her right leg, meaning it is 15cm shorter than her left
A mother whose daughter has one leg half the length of the other has vowed to save the two-year-old's limb, vowing 'amputation is not an option.'
Zahra Zulfiqar was born without her calf bone in her right leg, meaning it is 15cm shorter than her left one.
This makes it difficult for her to walk and instead, she crawls like a baby to get around.
Over the past two years, as she has grown, she has worn prosthetics of increasing lengths to bridge the growing difference in the size of her limbs.
Doctors say by the time she stops growing her right leg will be 30cm shorter than her left, and that amputating it is recommended so she can wear a prosthetic.
But her mother Rehana Qadir, 27, refuses to accept this option.
Mrs Qadir, from Dagenham, east London, said: 'Due to Zahra's condition being so rare and severe, doctors say there's no treatment available.
'They've all said their only option is to amputate her leg and for her to wear a prosthetic.'
But Mrs Qadir refuses to accept this drastic solution.
She said: 'Amputation is not an option for us. If her leg can be fixed, it will be.
'Zahra is a very cheerful, happy and easy going child. She hides her pain behind her laughs and smiles.
'But she's growing up and she's started to lose confidence.
'She wants to join in and play with her sister, Emaan, but she can't keep up.'
Zahra was a surprise baby for stay-at-home mother Mrs Qadir, who didn't realise she was pregnant for five months.
The implant had caused her to gain weight, so her pregnancy bump was hidden by her tummy.
It wasn't until Mrs Qadir needed the loo every 10 minutes that she realised she might be pregnant.
Despite the shock, she and her husband, Zulfiqar Majeed, 31, were thrilled.
But at Mrs Qadir's first scan, at 20 weeks, the sonographer spotted that their baby was missing her calf bone - or fibula - a condition known as fibula hemimelia.
Zahra was also diagnosed with a second condition called proximal femoral focal deficiency when she was around eight months old, after doctors initially thought she had a dislocated hip.
This rare condition meant the end of the thigh bone closest to her hip was too short, and her hip was deformed.
Doctors said as she grew, this would cause her foot to turn out.
Zahra was also diagnosed with a second condition called proximal femoral focal deficiency (PFFD). This rare condition meant the end of the thigh bone closest to her hip was too short, and her hip was deformed (pictured after surgery to improve her hip joint)
The two-year-old struggles to walk and crawls on the floor like a baby to get around. She wears a prosthetic leg, but finds it hard wearing it as her ankle and foot are turned out (right)
When Zahra was born at Queen's Hospital in Romford, in October 2013, weighing 8.5lbs (almost 4kg), the difference between her limbs wasn't especially obvious.
But as she grew the gap increased until she had to tiptoe on her shorter leg.
Then, at six months old, she was fitted with prosthetics which she has worn ever since.
In November 2015, Zahra had surgery to put a metal plate into her hip in order to fix the deformed ball and socket joint.
The surgery was successful but the metal plate began to slice through the bones and pins, causing her great pain.
So, In April 2016, she had another operation to have the plate removed.
Her mother said: 'At first she was managing well on prosthetics, when the difference in the length of her legs wasn't so much.
'Now she doesn't like them and finds it easier getting around crawling.
'She finds it hard wearing them with her ankle and foot turned out.'
Virtually out of options in the UK, the family began to look for help further afield.
In April this year, they found a doctor in Florida called Dr Dror Paley, who has helped other children like Zahra and could potentially lengthen her leg.
Over the past two years, Zahra has worn prosthetics of increasing lengths to bridge the growing difference in the size of her limbs
Doctors say by the time she is fully grown, there will be a 30cm difference in Zahra's legs and they recommend amputation so she can wear a prosthetic. She is pictured with her family, mother Rehana Qadir, father Zulfiqar Majeed and sister Emaan
In the UK, doctors said they could lengthen it by 15cm, but Dr Paley claims he can make it even longer.
The process will involve splitting the tibia - the shin bone - and fitting it with pins that pierce through her skin.
Then, twice a day, her mother will need to turn these to pull the bones apart.
With time, new bone, muscle and skin will grow in place, lengthening the limb.
Doctors are also hoping to be able to correct her hip and realign her foot and ankle so they no longer turn out.
Determined for Zahra to have the operation, her parents have set up a GoFundMe page to help gather costs.
Mrs Quadir is determined that her daughter's leg will not be amputated and has launched a fundraising page to raise 150,000 to take Zahra to the US for leg-lengthening surgery
In total, they are hoping to raise 150,000 to pay for surgery and a three month stay in the US.
Mrs Qadir said: 'Dr Paley is an expert in limb lengthening. Even doctors we've spoken to in the UK know him and they say, if anybody could take Zahra's case on, it's him, he's amazing.
'And we've contacted other parents on Facebook and know of one child who had his leg lengthened by 45cms.
'Zahra's prosthetic leg hurts her, it isn't comfortable to wear, and she takes it off every ten minutes.
'We want to take her to America to save her leg so she can lead a normal life.'
For more information visit Zahra's GoFundMe page: https://www.gofundme.com/jdy5zrr8
Government health advisers have rejected calls for all children to be given the meningitis B jab.
The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) said extending the meningitis B programme to all children under two would put current stocks of the vaccine at risk.
It also ruled that older children should not receive the jab, saying this was not a 'cost-effective' use of NHS cash.
Meningitis charities blasted the ruling and said the Government had 'missed the opportunity to save vulnerable young people's lives'.
Government health advisers have rejected calls for all children to be given the meningitis B jab. A petition calling for the vaccination programme to be extended gathered momentum following the death of two-year-old Faye Burdett, from Maidstone, who died on Valentine's Day after fighting the infection for 11 days
The petition gathered momentum after Faye Burdett's harrowing pictures were shared by her parents. It was signed by 823,341 people - the most in Parliament history
The JCVI's decision follows an announcement by the Government in March that it would not support the meningitis B vaccine being given to all children, saying it would be a waste of money.
More than 820,000 people have signed a petition on the parliament website calling for the Bexsero jab to be given children of all ages rather than just babies - the most in Parliament history.
The petition gathered momentum following the death of two-year-old Faye Burdett, from Maidstone, who died on Valentine's Day after fighting the infection for 11 days.
The Bexsero vaccine is available on the NHS for babies aged two months, followed by a second dose at four months and a booster at 12 months.
Parents of older children were able to pay privately for the treatment at prices which have risen to up to 750 for a course of three jabs.
However, for the past few three months supplies have been exhausted, meaningno child over the age of one could get the jab in Britain for three months.
But at the beginning of July, Boots and Superdrug announced they have the vaccine back in stock, with the treatment costing about 95.
In its latest meeting, the JCVI considered a catch-up programme to capture all under-twos.
WHAT ARE THE SYMPTOMS OF MENINGITIS? Meningitis can affect any age group, but is more common in babies and young children If the bacteria invades their body, their immune system cannot provide resistance to fight off infection Symptoms of meningitis develop suddenly and can include: - A high temperature over 37.5C (99.5F) - Vomiting and headache - A blotchy rash that doesn't fade when a glass is rolled over it (this won't always develop) - A stiff neck - A dislike of bright lights - Drowsiness or unresponsiveness Babies may also: - refuse feeds be agitated and not want to be picked up - have a bulging soft spot on their head (fontanelle) - be floppy or unresponsive - have an unusual high-pitched cry have a stiff body Source: NHS Choices Advertisement
While it agreed this would be cost-effective, it said there was a risk to current stocks of Bexsero and noted a long lead time to procure new stock.
The report from the JCVI meeting said: 'The committee noted there was unlikely to be any vaccine available to deliver any programme to those aged 12 to 23 months of age before the 2016/17 meningococcal season.
'The committee were also concerned about the serious risks to the infant programme that the use of Public Health England's buffer stock could present. Given these concerns, the committee agreed that they could not advise the Department of Health to consider such a catch-up programme.'
The JCVI said that, by December 1, all children aged between two and 19 months should have been offered Bexsero as part of the routine programme.
It added: 'Programmes to vaccinate older children, up to four years and 11 years of age (are) unlikely to be cost-effective.'
Vinny Smith, chief executive of the Meningitis Research Foundation, said: 'Vaccinating children under two years old against men B meningitis and septicaemia would have made a significant, life-saving difference to vulnerable members of our families, so we are extremely disappointed with the JCVI's conclusion.
'This is a significant opportunity missed to save young lives from this dreadful disease this winter.
'It is regrettable that vaccine supplies to protect these children cannot be secured in time for this year's meningitis season without jeopardising men B vaccinations for younger children who run an even greater risk, despite the renewed availability of vaccine for the private market.'
Liz Brown, chief executive of Meningitis Now, added: 'We are hugely dismayed by today's decision, but will continue to campaign passionately for all children under the age of five to receive this lifesaving vaccine.
'We stand for the many thousands of families who are unable to protect their children from this devastating disease because they cannot afford to buy the vaccine privately.
The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) said extending the meningitis B programme to all children under two would put current stocks of the vaccine at risk and would be a waste of NHS cash
'We will continue to fight against a system that discriminates against the health of the nation's children on an ability to pay basis.'
Professor John Watso, the Government's Deputy Chief Medical Officer said: 'Under-ones are the most at risk from men B - we must do everything we can to make sure all babies are vaccinated.
'There is not enough vaccine to give to older children without putting the infant programme at risk.
'Men B is a terrible disease that can be devastating for families. This is why we look so carefully at the evidence for this vaccination programme, and we will continue to be guided by expert advice.'
Professor Andrew Pollard, JCVI chairman, said: 'The JCVI continually reviews vaccination programmes - including men B - and considers changes based on current scientific evidence.
'At our latest meeting, the committee concluded that a catch-up programme for older children cannot currently be advised.
'Offering a catch-up programme to children aged one to two years could be cost effective, but doing so could put the routine programme - and those babies with the highest rate of disease - at risk.
A dementia gene can affect the brains of children as young as three years old, scientists have found.
Young children with an inherited gene linked to Alzheimers disease have smaller memory centres and do up to half as well in thinking and memory tests as those without it.
The discovery could enable doctors in future to identify which people are most at risk of developing the condition and intervene at an early stage.
An inherited gene - APOE4 - linked to Alzheimers can affect the brains of children as young as three as they have smaller memory centres making them perform worse in memory tests
For the study, published in the online journal Neurology, researchers carried out memory tests and brain scans on 1,187 children aged three to 20.
None of the participants had brain disorders or other problems that would affect their brain development, such as exposure to drugs in the womb.
The children were tested to see which version of the gene known as APOE they had.
One variant called APOE4 has been linked to a higher risk of developing Alzheimers disease and can be passed on by one or both parents.
Scientists found that children with the APOE4 gene had differences in their brain development in areas often affected by Alzheimers disease, compared to those with other forms of the gene.
The hippocampus the part of the brain associated with memory was around 5 per cent smaller in children with the APOE4 gene version.
Scans of children who had inherited APOE4 from both parents and who were younger than eight years old also showed the hippocampus was less structurally sound.
Younger children with the gene did worse in the memory and thinking skills tests, with those who had inherited the gene from both parents performing half as well in attention tests.
But this pattern disappeared once children aged past eight years old when even those with two parents passing on the gene had normal test scores.
Dr Linda Chang, of the University of Hawaii in Honolulu, said the results mirrored similar effects in elderly people who had the high-risk gene. These patients tended to have a smaller hippocampus which deteriorated more quickly.
She added: Studying these genes in young children may ultimately give us early indications of who may be at risk for dementia in the future and possibly even help us develop ways to prevent the disease from occurring or to delay the start of the disease.
The study only examined the children at one stage in their lives so it did not monitor whether the childrens memory worsened or went on to improve.
Although more than 1,000 children were involved, there were only 30 with the rarest gene combination where both parents had passed on APOE4.
The part of the brain associated with memory was around 5 per cent smaller in children with the gene
Commenting on the research, Dr Simon Ridley of Alzheimers Research UK said: This research suggests that the APOE4 risk gene may have an impact on the brain from childhood, but as the study only presents one snap-shot in time, its hard to know how these brain differences in childhood may play out as these children develop during their lives.
Its important to remember that the risk factors for Alzheimers are varied and complex, and are likely to act at different time points during of a persons life.
Ian Le Guillou, of the Alzheimers Society, said the results should be interpreted cautiously.
He said: We would need to see these results replicated in a larger group, as well as having longer term follow-ups to better understand how the changes in the brain progress with age.
Everyone's brain is slightly different and the trends found here could only be seen by taking the average across many people.
We cannot say who will go on to develop dementia and having the APOE4 gene does not mean that you will.
While it is known people with the APOE4 gene are at increased risk of dementia, there is no guarantee they will develop it.
People can guard against the risk by keeping healthy including exercising regularly, not smoking and keeping blood pressure in check.
Scores of millennials could be deaf by the time they reach 40 - because they're listening to music too loud, a new study claims.
Soaring numbers of teenagers are being diagnosed with tinnitus, a permanent ringing or hissing sound in your ear that is a key symptom of hearing loss.
It is normally common among older people.
But a new paper published in Scientific Reports says the condition is becoming more prevalent in younger groups due to long spells of listening to loud music using earbuds.
Worryingly, however, teens seem unfussed about getting the condition checked out by a doctor.
Soaring numbers of teenagers are being diagnosed with tinnitus, a ringing or hissing sound in your ear that is a key symptom of hearing loss. And experts say it is the result of listening to music on headphones (file image)
Following reports and studies into teenage tinnitus, a team at the University of Sao Paulo's Medical School used an otoscope to examine the ears of 170 students aged 11 to 17.
They also interviewed the students about tinnitus, asking whether they had experienced it in the last 12 months, and if so what was the volume, duration and frequency.
Over half (54.7 per cent) had experienced it, and the majority of them reported listening to loud music on a regular basis.
'This level of prevalence is alarming,' Tanit Ganz Sanchez, associate professor of otolaryngology at the school, said.
'If this teen generation continue to expose themselves to very high noise levels, they'll probably suffer from hearing loss by the time they're 30 or 40.'
Tinnitus is caused by damage to cochlear hair cells in the inner ear, which stretch and contract in accordance with sound-induced vibrations. The damage forces other parts of the ear to overwork to compensate
WHAT IS TINNITUS? Tinnitus is caused by damage to cochlear hair cells in the inner ear, which stretch and contract in accordance with sound-induced vibrations. Very loud noises - at a club or played over headphones - overload these cells, leaving them temporarily or permanently damages. The damage forces other parts of the ear to overwork to compensate for the loss of function, causing tinnitus and eventually chronic hearing loss. Dr Sanchez warns that these teenagers will permanently damage their cochlear hair cell synapses if they continue blasting music from now until the age of 20 or 25. Advertisement
Tinnitus is caused by damage to cochlear hair cells in the inner ear, which stretch and contract in accordance with sound-induced vibrations.
Very loud noises - at a club or played over headphones - overload these cells, leaving them temporarily or permanently damages.
The damage forces other parts of the ear to overwork to compensate for the loss of function, causing tinnitus and eventually chronic hearing loss.
Dr Sanchez warns that these teenagers will permanently damage their cochlear hair cell synapses if they continue blasting music from now until the age of 20 or 25.
But the increasing rate of diagnoses shows no sign of letting up as teenagers do not seem as concerned about the condition as adults.
'We found that adolescents perceive tinnitus very often but unlike adults don't worry about it and don't complain to parents or teachers, for example,' Dr Sanchez said.
Former Delhi CM Sheila Dikshit has her sights set on the same job in UP
Former Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit will be the Congress's chief ministerial candidate for the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections, to be held next year, a top Congress source confirmed to India Today.
The party today appointed actor-turned-politician Raj Babbar as the party president in Uttar Pradesh, replacing Nirmal Khatri.
I am a bahu of Uttar Pradesh and theres no retirement age in politics, Dikhsit, 78, had told journalists earlier.
The source also confirmed that Priyanka Gandhi has still not taken any decision on leading the election campaign beyond family pocket borough Amethi, represented in Lok Sabha by Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi, and Rae Bareli, represented by Congress president Sonia Gandhi.
She is unlikely to join active politics at least for next two years, says the source.
Interestingly, former Amethi MP Sanjay Singh, who is now a Rajya Sabha member from Assam, will play a key role in the election campaign committee along with Dikshit.
Babbar is party's new chief Months ahead of the Assembly elections, the Congress has named actor-turned-politician Raj Babbar as the chief of its Uttar Pradesh unit. The former Agra MP will replace Nirmal Khatri, who had resigned from the post a few days ago. The announcement was made by party general secretaries Ghulam Nabi Azad and Janardan Dwivedi at a press conference at the AICC headquarters in New Delhi. Babbar had contested the 2014 Lok Sabha polls from Ghaziabad, but was defeated by BJP's General VK Singh. Raj Babbar, a three-term Lok Sabha MP, is currently a Rajya Sabha member from Uttarakhand. He is also spokesperson of the party. Babbar (64), born in Tundla near Agra in UP, belongs to the Viswabrahmin community which is considered an OBC. Advertisement
However, there is bad news for Prashant Kishor, who had been hired to manage the election campaign for the party in Uttar Pradesh and Punjab.
Kishor was recently reprimanded by the party high command for leaking minutes of a meeting he had with Sonia Gandhi and Congress general secretary in-charge of Uttar Pradesh, Ghulam Nabi Azad.
It was Kishor who had insisted on making Dikshit the CM candidate. She will be projected as a pro-development leader because of her achievements as chief minister of Delhi for three successive terms.
The party is expecting that her Brahmin status will also play a key role in the state, which has over 10 per cent Brahmin voters.
But several Congress leaders also believe that another Brahmin and former union minister, Jitin Prasad, could have been a better choice as the 42-year-old leader could have connected better with the young voters.
Some leaders in the party are also apprehensive that allegations of corruption and an FIR against her in connection with the water-tanker scandal of Delhi will go against Dikhsit.
Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar has ordered a fresh probe into the gold scam involving the officials of Shri Mata Mansa Devi Shrine Board, which runs the famous Hindu shrine Mata Mansa Devi in Panchkula.
The shrine officials allegedly sold gold coins and pendants - minted from the gold offerings made by followers - at throwaway prices to people believed to be their relatives, which caused a huge loss to the temple trust.
The then Bhupinder-Singh-Hooda government is in the dock again as Hooda, besides being a Chief Minister, was also Chairman of the board.
Officials at Shri Mata Mansa Devi Shrine had allegedly sold gold coins and pendants to their relatives at throwaway prices - causing the temple trust a huge financial loss
The issue surfaced at the shrine board meeting, held recently.
The probe will be done by the Principal Secretary, Urban Department, who will submit its report to the state government within three months.
Gian Chand Gupta, Minister of State and Panchkula MLA, alleged: The gold coins and pendants were sold at a time when the gold prices were going up. Most of the coins were sold within two days. The followers did not get the coins. The corrupt temple officials caused huge loss to the board. Surprisingly, there is no record about the buyers. This is a big scam.
The scandalous sales took place between 2006 and 2007. The then Congress government had ordered a probe in 2008 after the issue rocked the state.
The Vigilance and Anti-corruption Bureau which had registered a case in 2008 submitted its report after three years in 2011, and said the role of two top temple officials was found to be suspicious.
Panchkula MLA Gian Chand Gupta described the dubious gold sales as "a big scam".
The Chief Executive Officers neither maintained the accounts nor got them audited to find out the irregularities.
The vigilance probe found that while the market price of 10 grams of gold was Rs 9200, the temple officials sold the gold at Rs 5420, causing a loss of Rs 2730 per 10 grams to the temple.
The temple authorities had sold 257 pendants (four grams) and 213 coins weighting eight grams in 2006.
The board also sold 39 pendants weighing four grams each, and five pendants weighing eight grams each.
A total of 2732 grams and 196 grams of gold were sold in 2006 and 2007 respectively.
The board had melted 5 kg of gold to mint coins and pendants containing photos of goddess. While the temple officials were reporting sales, the followers were complaining about the non availability of coins and pendants.
"The then Congress government had ordered a vigilance probe, which found that the coins and pendants were sold to unknown people at throwaway prices. The temple had no record about the buyers, who were the near and dear ones of the board officials. This caused huge loss to the temple, said V G Goel, Chief Executive Officer, Shri Mata Mansa Devi Shrine Board, Panchkula.
While the temple authorities had melted nearly 5 Kg gold, received as offerings from followers, during the tenure of Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda, 9.551 kg of gold was melted to mint coins and pendants during the tenure of Om Prakash Chautala.
In a meeting held in 2003, the Shri Mata Mansa Devi Shrine Board had decided that the gold coins and pendants would only be sold at approved rates as it was not possible to change the prices when gold prices were fluctuating.
While the 8 gram pendant was priced at Rs 5100, the pendant weighing 4 grams was priced at Rs 3100. The then state government had reduced the price of the coin weighing 4 grams from Rs 3100 to Rs 2600, as the boards were not able to sell the coins.
Payal Abdullah, the estranged wife of National Conference President Omar Abdullah
A 2,300 square foot apartment in New Delhi cannot accommodate the roughly 100 security men deployed to guard Payal Abdullah and her two sons, she has said.
The estranged wife of Omar Abdullah, former Chief Minister of J&K, made this claim to the Delhi High Court while seeking to stay an order evicting her from her sprawling bungalow on Akbar Road.
Justice Indermeet Kaur was hearing the matter.
Payal, 53, has been given Z category security, and her two sons Zahir (17) and Zamin (18) have Z + security.
Payal was asked to leave her present accommodation at 7, Akbar Road on June 30 this year.
Through her counsel Amit Khemka, Payal told the court that if her family are evicted from their present residence, they will have to move to their 2,300 square feet apartment - which cannot accommodate her security.
This flat is insufficient for making elaborate security arrangements for the three members which includes setting up guard posts, accommodation of 41 security personnel who are permanently stationed there, police posts, and space for 10 security vehicles as provided to all Z+ security without causing any harassment and trouble to the neighbours, said the petition.
Payal told the court that she still hopes that despite her estranged relationship with her husband, her sons should be secure.
However, the court asked the Centre not to take any coercive steps against Payal till the next date pursuant to the eviction order of June 30.
Sanjay Jain, Additional Solicitor General, told the court that Payal and her sons have no right to stay in this accommodation as it was allotted to Omar Abdullah during his term as a Union minister.
After the term ended, his family had no further right to continue living there.
The counsel for the petitioner argued that various individuals, including Priyanka Gandhi, Subramanian Swamy, Lt. General KS Brar, former Punjab Police chief KPS Gill, former youth Congress leader MS Bitta, and Buta Singh have been allotted government accommodation along with security because of imminent threats to their lives.
Rolls-Royce is drawing up a cost cutting plan that could result in a fresh wave of job cuts.
Chief executive Warren East said the business could save more than 1billion through making its engines in a more efficient way as well as further savings.
He wants to remove unnecessary parts of the business and that may bring about more redundancies.
East, who was parachuted in last July following a string of profit warnings, is trying to reduce costs by 200million by 2017.
Jobs threat: A Rolls-Royce worker worker scrubs the turbine of an aircraft jet engine
The business has been undergoing a radical restructure to get it back on track.
We are pleased and confident about the transformation programme, he said at the Farnborough Airshow. We are exploring how we can take that forward beyond 2017. We are making sure we can get the cost out by removing unnecessary activities.
He added: I do not want to come out with some sort of vague hand-wavy its a billion pounds... sometime... never until we have set ourselves another target.
The business axed around 150 management roles in March.
That was on top of 50 senior managers who went at the beginning of the year and a further 3,600 staff who have already left or are in the process of leaving its civil aerospace division and marine business.
Asked about further job cuts East said there may be some.
On the EU referendum result, he said he had already held talks with government ministers to seek assurances on the free movement of labour, guarantees over environmental standards and no additional regulation.
Three quarters of our business takes place outside of Europe, he said. Being in Europe or out of Europe is not going to cause a lot of difference.
Things may well play out in an advantageous way but it will be some years before we know.
Plane maker Airbus said yesterday it would review its investment decisions post Brexit.
HM Revenue & Customs is setting debt collectors on unsuspecting taxpayers without any prior warning, a Money Mail investigation has found.
Pensioners and families are receiving threatening letters out of the blue from debt recovery agents demanding immediate payment.
In what seems to be a cack-handed drive to collect missing taxes, elderly people are being hounded for debts that are more than a decade old.
Without warning: Pensioners and families are receiving threatening letters out of the blue from debt recovery agents demanding immediate payment
And other diligent taxpayers are being wrongly harassed after the tax office botched some of its calculations.
HMRC has been scouring its books to claw back tax credits mistakenly dished out to families years ago.
The amounts are usually small, and those affected often have no idea that they owe a penny. But instead of a polite letter advising taxpayers they need to make a payment, officials are calling in debt collectors.
Taxpayers say theyve been left feeling vulnerable and scared, fearing bailiffs might turn up on their doorsteps at any moment.
Elaine Clark, managing director of CheapAccounting, says: HMRC should be going after big firms who have failed to pay their tax, not pensioners over 200 dating back from years ago that they didnt realise they owed.
HMRC has been scouring its books to claw back tax credits mistakenly dished out to families years ago
HMRC is on a drive to collect more of the 34 billion in tax that goes unpaid each year. The situation is being exacerbated as its own mistakes have left around three million people paying the wrong amount of tax, according to the National Audit Office.
Now, complaints are soaring about the way HMRC tries to recover missing cash.
Citizens Advice says that, in 2006, it fielded 200,000 gripes about tax debts. This has now doubled to 400,000. And the charity reckons taxes account for an astonishing 1 in every 5 of the debts it helps people deal with every year.
Money Mail has received a stream of letters from those targeted by HMRC for tax credit overpayments. This is a benefit worth up to 3,800 a year to low-income workers.
But the system is so complicated that claimants regularly receive too much money and are asked to hand some back.
Usually, HMRC issues the taxpayer with a notice at the end of the year. But if something goes wrong such as a lost letter or failed payment people can be left in the dark for years.
Then comes the shock letter from a debt collector.
In April, Ken and Mary Miles, of St Helens in Merseyside, received a letter from LCS, a Leeds-based firm. They thought it was a scam.
LCS said the Mileses owed 208.59 in overpaid tax credits dating from 2010. It threatened formal debt collection activity unless they paid immediately.
When a second letter arrived, the Mileses contacted HMRC, who said it was genuine. The couple had claimed tax credits for a short while six years earlier when Ken, a former print manager, lost his job.
They say they had no idea theyd received too much. When they then tried to pay, HMRC refused to deal with them. It said the pensioners should call the debt collection firm.
Mary, 72, says: This has caused real shock and sleepless nights. We have lived in this house for 40 years its impossible the taxman has written to us without us noticing.
Taxpayers are being wrongly harassed for money after HMRC botched its own calculations
Army veteran Julian Harley, 69, also received a letter from debt collectors, saying that he and his wife Kathleen owed hundreds of pounds in overpaid tax credits.
The Harleys, of Crook in Northumberland, claimed tax credits throughout 2006 after Kathleen was told to sign up by an adviser at the job centre. The couple say they queried at the time whether Kathleen, now 67, was entitled, as her husband had an Army pension but say they were assured by HMRC that they should both put in a claim.
A year later, HMRC told the couple that they should not have received the credits after all and they had to repay every penny.
The couple paid off 125 a month and believed they had repaid in full. Then, in April a decade after claiming tax credits they got a demand from LCS for 260.
Furious at the heavy-handed tactics, Julian asked his MP to intervene. In its response to the MPs query, HMRC admits it did not contact the Harleys before calling in LCS.
The letter said it was up to the couple to have worked out they owed the cash.
Julian says: The taxman should try as hard to get money back from big firms that avoid tax as it does to claw back a few hundred pounds from pensioners.
Shop worker Joanne Cohen, 44, of Borehamwood, Hertfordshire, was sent a letter by LCS demanding 255 in tax credit repayments dating back from 2010.
Not only was this the first shed heard about it, but the blundering taxman sent the letter to the home of her ex-husbands mother Joanne had never lived there.
She says: I take pride in paying all my bills, and it made me feel vulnerable and scared.
The taxman later admitted Joanne did not owe a penny, and paid her 100 compensation.
An HMRC spokesman said: HMRC will always contact the person to let them know there is an overpayment to be repaid, so they can talk to us before any kind of recovery process begins.
Hammond looks nailed-on as our next Chancellor
How will the City react to Philip Hammond, who looks nailed-on as our next Chancellor?
Sinister-looking Hammond, 60, has made his own wonga 8million, they say selling medical supplies.
But bankers still reel at his doom-laden comments that the day of reckoning has come during the 2008 financial crisis.
His pre-Oxford university days as a Guardian-reading, leather trenchcoat-wearing goth might also rattle boardroom crockery.
Burberry designer Christopher Baileys removal as chief executive is embarrassing for the firms softly spoken chairman Sir John Peace, 67, who rubber-stamped the tousled northerners disastrous appointment two years ago.
City types are always troubled by Sir Johns determination to combine his Burberry role with another chairmans perch at Standard Chartered bank.
The son of a blood-red socialist coalminer, Peace, 67, also acts as Lord Lieutenant of Nottinghamshire, where he lives and keeps a string of eventing horses.
Might Burberry shareholders soon feel its time to put this grand poobah out to pasture?
Former Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) boss Martin Wheatley is revealed to have been paid 396,000 over the past ten months, despite being ousted from the regulator by George Osborne last July.
Scant consolation, Im sure. Im told that when stroppy, Essex-born Wheatley, 57, informed FCA colleagues of his departure last summer, he broke into an inconsolable sob.
Marks and Spencers AGM at Wembley yesterday was interrupted by a voice over the public-address system, which squawked: Paging Mr Green, paging Mr Green.
The retailers newish boss Steve Rowe, 48, joked: I think he is picking up a yacht today.
Very droll. Steely-eyed M&S shareholders were less amused by priggish Rowes stagnant trading performance.
US bank JP Morgan has announced plans to give 18,000 workers a raise. A pay increase is the right thing to do, growls bourbon-voiced chief, Jamie Dimon, 60.
In February, I made out some cheques to a care company on behalf of my 94-year-old mum, for whom I hold power of attorney. However, I mistakenly used an out-of-date cheque book.
All amounts were taken from my mum's Lloyds bank account. But the care company says the cheques amounting to 735 were returned as unpaid. I have since reimbursed the firm.
Lloyds says the money has been paid to the care company's bank, but would not give me any proof to give to the company. It has now handed my case to the complaints department.
Mrs V. W., Essex.
In February, I made out some cheques to a care company on behalf of my 94-year-old mum, for whom I hold power of attorney. However, I mistakenly used an out-of-date cheque book
The problem initially arose while you were moving your mother's account from TSB to Lloyds.
You wrote the cheques from a TSB chequebook, but there was not enough money in that account, so TSB told Lloyds to pay them.
TSB was, of course, formerly part of Lloyds and you wished your mother's account to be with Lloyds.
Lloyds traced the cheques and confirmed that the money was debited from your mother's account and received by the care company's bank.
Lloyds promised to send copies of the cheques, but sent only five of them.
So I chased again. This time Lloyds apologised fulsomely for the way it had handled your complaint. While the errors over the missing money do not lie at its door, it does admit it should have handled your complaint far better.
In order to apologise and in recognition of how stressful it can be dealing with this sort of situation, it will be refunding you the whole 735 for the cheques, plus 100 as a goodwill gesture.
It had also already paid the 135 travel costs you incurred travelling to the branch.
While you are very pleased with this, you tell me that all you ever wanted was the proof that the cheques had, indeed, been paid and the money had gone to the care company's bank.
As you realise, the real problem is with the care company and its bank. You are now dealing directly with its staff over the issue.
YOU HAVE YOUR SAY - CARE HOME CRISIS Every week Money Mail receives hundreds of your letters and emails. Heres what you had to say about our investigation into the care home crisis, where beds cost up to 1,000 a week. I am a retired care home manager. I have never had a catering budget of 5 per head. My last position was managing 47 beds with a budget of around 500 a week less than 2 per day. The care is deteriorating and staff are disillusioned because they are not respected by the higher management. J. E., via email. My 90-year-old mother has just had her care home fees increased by more than 4 per cent. There are 28 residents some are bed-bound and almost all cant walk. Theres only one nurse and three carers. My mother is often distressed as no one is available when she needs the toilet, and has fallen trying to move herself. The staff are lovely, but there are not enough of them. I was amazed to discover there is no ratio of staff to residents laid down in law. This should be the first step in improving care homes. C. H., Birmingham. One of the problems is staff levels. Ideally, it would be better to have one member of staff for every two patients, but who could afford the cost of 3,000 a week? V. R., Middlesbrough. It was shocking to read your excellent but poignant article about the care home debt crisis. But from personal experience I think it is the entire care system that is broken the councils and social services as well as the care homes themselves. J. K., Crawley, W. Sussex. It is an abuse of the elderly and long-term sick and disabled when residents can be charged in excess of 5,000 a month. These are people who went through such hard times, many served in World War II, and they are not being cared for adequately. This is a national disgrace. When are we going to honour the elderly who gave so much for our democracy? J. V., via email. I was involved in the care home industry. Believe me everyone is being ripped off by the greedy owners and investors. The balance sheets are doctored to show losses or minimise profits. Legislation is needed, but the political elite have their cash invested, so nothing will happen. Name and address supplied.
I had a pension due from my previous employer, Newsquest, with an additional voluntary contribution (AVC) with BlackRock.
I received a pension option form, which states I can take 20,428.88 as a lump sum, but the remaining 2,982 must be taken as an annuity. I phoned the pension administrator JLT and was informed it could not pay this balance directly to me.
I received a letter in February advising me my pension would start in April. I phoned, again asking if I could receive the 2,982 as a lump sum, and was told that I must take an annuity.
T. H., Brighton.
There's more to your pension than you explained in your letter.
Your AVC runs alongside a defined benefit scheme pension that will pay out 2,914 a year.
You were offered two options for the AVC.
One was to take the amount as an 'open market option'. This basically means you could transfer the money elsewhere and use it to buy an annuity or take as cash.
If you opted for cash, then 25 per cent would be tax-free and the rest would be taxable. If you are a basic-rate taxpayer, you might walk away with about 19,896.
The second option was to use it as the tax-free lump sum element of your main defined benefit pension. This would give you 20,425 tax-free with the remaining 2,982 available as your open market option to be taken as an annuity.
The pension retirement guide was sent to you in September and you returned it in January, electing to take the second option.
You spoke to a lead administrator at the pension scheme on February 29, who discussed your AVCs and confirmed that with this type of final-salary pension arrangement legislation requires the benefits to be paid in this manner.
You have also been advised that you can use your own independent financial adviser or Hargreaves Lansdown, which is Newsquest's selected annuity provider.
You tell me that you have chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. You should make this clear to Hargreaves Lansdown, with whom I believe you are dealing, as you would doubtless get a far better annuity rate.
I understand you are now receiving your scheme pension.
STRAIGHT TO THE POINT I took my eye off my energy bills when my husband passed away suddenly in May last year. In March I realised I hadn't been sent a bill. Scottish Power finally got back to me in May and said I owe more than 600. I can't afford to pay 156 a month to clear this debt. J. W., Coventry. Your account had been set up as an online one using your granddaughter's email address. As a result, Scottish Power didn't issue any paper bills. On top of this, the last electricity meter reading you gave was wrong, which contributed to such an excessive bill. Your account has now been updated and the direct debit payment reset at 75. Scottish Power has also credited your account with 100 as a gesture of goodwill. We bought a house five years ago to rent out and renovated the property. Can the expenses we incurred doing this be used to reduce our capital gains tax bill when we sell it? S. W., Walmer, Kent. Yes. Generally speaking, you can knock off the cost of renovations from the proceeds of the sale. Capital gains tax of 18 per cent (28 per cent if you're a higher-rate taxpayer) is applied to the difference between that and the price you bought at. However, this doesn't apply if you've offset the renovation costs against the income tax paid on the rent, according to accountancy firm RSM. I visited a charity attraction that had two different prices for admission a standard price and another 'with Gift Aid' that cost a few pounds more. Why? J. J., Newton Longville, Bucks. Gift Aid simply means a charity can claim back the income tax you paid on your donation. Under the rules, charities such as the National Trust can't claim Gift Aid on standard admission prices. But if they add a 'voluntary donation' of at least 10 per cent of the usual ticket price say 1 on top of the 10 they can claim the tax you paid on the entire price.
I put an advert on online selling site Gumtree offering a dining room table for 75.
I received a response within a few hours. But the woman said she could buy the table only through online payment system Paypal and not with cash.
I agreed to this. But then she told me to transfer 250 to an address in Nigeria. She said I would be later be refunded, but it was needed as part of Paypal's terms and conditions. I refused.
I later received an email, supposedly from Paypal, telling me the company was going to sue me if I did not pay up. I am 77 and incredibly worried about this.
P. D., Doncaster.
Do not send any money and do not spend another moment worrying about this.
Paypal, which provides a method for customers to pay for items online without revealing their financial details, confirmed that this is a scam. It has no intention of taking you through the courts and did not send the email.
The corner of the underground car park in Malaga airport is swelteringly hot, buzzing with mosquitoes and stinks of exhaust fumes.
Teenagers and small children slump in plastic chairs, while red-faced, sweating parents admonish them. Everyone wants to be anywhere else but here.
This waiting area, which belongs to car hire firm Firefly, is where a stream of families are being forced to wait to start their holidays.
All eyes are fixed on a tiny screen on the wall everyone has been given a ticket with their position in the queue.
I've been waiting for half-an-hour already.
Welcome to the cash-grabbing world of car hire, where firms use every trick in the book to milk extra money from customers
When your number flashes up, you're allowed to enter the small, glass-fronted office and begin a lengthy registration process, before finally picking up the key to a rental car.
Firefly, which is owned by giant hire firm Hertz, must know its waiting area is stiflingly uncomfortable because a sign on the wall says customers can jump the queue for what it calls a 'small fee' of 40 (around 34).
Even though Hertz raked in 210 million in profit last year, the temptation to line its pockets further is clearly impossible to resist.
Welcome to the cash-grabbing world of car hire, where firms use every trick in the book to milk extra money from customers.
HAND OVER YOUR CREDIT CARD TO GET A QUOTE
Finally, my number appears and I enter the booth. The woman behind the counter finds my reservation for an Opel Meriva a small family car for which I paid 76 for the day.
She asks if I need an additional driver to be added to the cover for another 10.20 the first add-on of many she'll try to flog me. Next, she asks whether I need insurance.
Firefly operates a similar policy to the vast majority of car hire firms. The car has basic cover included in the upfront cost, but if you have a crash or get even a tiny scratch, you could be forced to stump up for the cost of the excess. With Firefly, it's around 1,000.
To avoid these eye-watering sums, customers are encouraged by staff to pay for an alternative policy, known as 'excess waiver', which can cause the cost of car hire to balloon.
BEFORE YOU SET OFF Holidaymakers hiring cars abroad this summer need to obtain a special driving licence code. Last year, the Government scrapped the paper version of the UK driving licence, meaning motorists only need to hold a photo card. Details of any penalty points and traffic violations are held on the DVLA database. Foreign hire companies have to log into this database to access your driving record, which some like to see before handing over the keys. Crucially, you must apply for this and print it out before you travel. Click here and enter your driver number, postcode and National Insurance number. The code will be valid for up to 21 days. You can also call the DVLA on 0300 083 0013.
Luckily, I've come prepared, having bought my own extra policy from an independent firm, iCarhireinsurance. For 8, it promises to cover the excess on any insurance claim for the entire three days I'm staying in Spain.
I show the Firefly representative the printout of my iCarhireinsurance policy, but she bats it aside with an appalled expression.
'This is not insurance. What can you get for 8?' she says. Instead, she tells me I must stump up 917 as a deposit if I don't take the extra Firefly cover.
It's a stand-off. I either pay for the additional insurance or allow Firefly to charge me 917 and pray I get it back when I return the car.
Faced with this choice, I reluctantly ask how much Firefly's cover costs.
The woman seems to sense I'm wavering, but says she can't tell me the price until I give her my credit card. But I don't want to pay for anything until I know the price.
'Give me your card,' she demands. 'The computer is prompting me that I must take it first.'
I'm about to walk off when she relents and reveals the price is 51 for the day nearly 20 times the daily cost of my iCarhireinsurance policy.
All in all, it means in the 15 minutes I've been at the desk, the cost of hiring a car has rocketed by 80 per cent.
I decide to call it a day.
COST OF A SIMPLE BOOKING ERROR
Back in the main airport building, I queue to pick up my keys at another hire firm popular with British holidaymakers, Spanish company Goldcar.
Again, you must take a ticket with a number and wait your turn.
When I approach the counter, a Scottish woman rushes at me. She is near to tears and begs me to let her go first. 'I had to leave the queue and lost my place and now I have to start again,' she says. 'I've been waiting hours.'
At the desk, the sales pitch starts immediately. First, there's an additional 6.80 for a second driver. There is also a 59 upfront charge for fuel but I'm told I will be refunded for any petrol left in the vehicle when I return it.
Next, we're on to insurance. Leaflets spread over the desk advertise Goldcar's so-called Super Relax Cover.
They quote relieved tourists who have taken out the policy and suffered an accident that often wasn't their fault.
Eric, from Cork, writes: 'The purchase of Super Relax Cover saved me 255 for a mirror that was broken when I was outside a supermarket.'
Beatriz, from Malaga, describes how she is 'relieved' not to have been made to pay 510 for a broken window.
Again, my 8 iCarhireinsurance policy is rejected with a smirk by the man behind the counter.
This time, the salesman has an additional weapon. He whips out a list of every possible incident I could have in the car. It states I could be on the hook for an excess of up to 3,000 (2,530).
It's a scary thought but before I can make a decision, the whole deal is off. The assistant is staring at my forms and says there's something wrong with my booking.
It turns out that when I booked the car online, instead of saying I'd return it at 6pm, the website selected 12pm the same time as I was collecting the car. It seemed like an honest mistake, and I had no idea how it happened.
But the representative calls out a manager and he says my booking is void. My only option is to reserve a car again at the desk at a higher price.
And when I ask whether I will get back the 22 I've already paid, I'm told it's 'unrefundable'.
Drive carefully: The costs can begin to spiral after you check in at the hire firm's airport office
SCARE STORIES TO EXTRACT MORE CASH
Compared with the chaos elsewhere, Europcar's desk is calm. Is this what helped the French firm clock up sales worth 1.7 billion last year?
The sales representative is efficient, polite and speaks impeccable English. He quickly finds the booking and types my details into his computer. It's all going so smoothly but then begins the most cynical sales pitch of all.
I've ordered a Fiat 500, one of the smallest cars on offer. It costs 91 for three days. But the price tag soon starts to rise.
The man asks where I'm heading, and I tell him it's around the local area. He says: 'For 34 more a day, I can upgrade you to a bigger car. You will have lots more room for your things.'
When I say I'm happy with a small car, he offers me a Mini Cooper for an extra 17 a day.
I refuse and the shadow of a scowl crosses his face.
'Well, I have to tell you the car you've chosen is unstable on the highway,' he says. 'I don't recommend it.' Now I feel angry. I don't believe for a second that a Fiat 500 is 'unstable'.
So is this just a crafty attempt to play on customers' insecurities to convince them to part with more cash?
And he's at it again when it comes to insurance. Europcar wants me to fork out 68 for excess cover for the three days to avoid being hit with an excess 732 penalty if I crash the car.
Again, I hand over my policy from iCarhireinsurance. The man scrutinises it in silence. 'Honestly, this policy costs 8,' he says. 'Do you really think it's going to pay out 800 if you crash?'
I should know better, but I've been beaten down and, full of doubts and confusion, I take the insurance.
My only excuse is that I'm tired after getting up at the crack of dawn and enduring a two-hour flight delay. And I'm nervous about driving abroad, too.
The man quickly takes me through a form and hands me my keys, and I can't help but feel a little bit exploited.
Just when you think it's over, there's one final trick. I'm given the option of paying in pounds, rather than euros.
It's tempting to think that paying in pounds is cheaper after all, that's what is in our bank accounts. But it isn't. Through a process known as dynamic currency conversion, retailers give you poor exchange rates and often levy fees that can add 6 per cent to the cost.
I later check the invoice the firm has handed me and there's a host of other charges listed as well.
None of them has been mentioned to me previously by the counter staff although when I rifle through my paperwork, I find them on the contract.
There's a mystery 8.91 listed on my bill, which does not appear to be for anything at all plus another 8.91 for roadside assistance.
When I ask at the Europcar desk for an explanation, I'm told to call a phone number on my contract.
When I ring up, I'm told the mystery fee is something called a fine waiver a charge to cover Europcar's admin costs in the event I'm fined for speeding.
This was never explained to me at the desk and is not even on the invoice.
I ask about the roadside assistance charge and I'm told it is optional. But I don't remember it being mentioned.
Other customers also say they've had to fight tooth and nail to resist the hard sell. Peter Murphy, an account manager from Hamilton, near Glasgow, who has booked through another Malaga airport hire firm, says he is relying on his own excess waiver policy.
Peter, 42, who has spent three weeks with his family at Nerja, a Costa del Sol resort, says: 'When I showed the sales staff my own policy, they said that I would have to put down a 1,010 deposit. It's worrying handing over so much money, especially when they said it would take eight days to refund me.'
TIPS TO BEAT THE RENTAL SHARKS AVOID PAYING FOR EXTRA INSURANCE: Dont fork out for hire firms pricey excess cover. Buy before you go. ReduceMyExcess.co.uk charges 41.99 for an annual policy, covering up to 7,000 in excess costs. Most firms demand a hefty deposit if you dont take their insurance, so take a card with a big credit limit. GET PHOTOGRAPHIC EVIDENCE: Take snaps of any marks or scratches on the car before you set off to avoid wrongly being accused of causing damage. Pictures must be dated, so use a smartphone that registers these details. FILL UP: Firms will charge a fee if they have to refuel the car, so fill up before you return. Avoid full-to-empty policies, where you pay for a tank upfront (normally at a high price). STEER CLEAR OF SATNAVS: These can add up to 12 a day to hire costs. Instead, download free phone app Here, which works offline. TAKE YOUR OWN CHILD SEAT: Europcar charges 73.30 for a child seat for eight days in Spain, so try to take your own. Trunki sells portable car seats that fold into rucksacks for 32.
STING WHEN YOU RETURN YOUR CAR
When I return my faithful Fiat 500 after two days' driving round the Costa del Sol, I fear more drama. I've heard the horror stories of innocent customers accused of scratches and crashes.
The Europcar staff member examines the car for what seems an age.
I breathe a sigh of relief when he says it's in perfect condition.
But because I've rushed back to the airport and didn't go via the petrol station, the tank is only two-thirds full.
Europcar says I must pay the refuelling fee of 22.79 (19.21), plus another 26.22 (22.10) for the petrol. The fuel seems reasonably priced but, with plenty of petrol stations nearby, the refuelling cost does seem unnecessary.
Outside another of the car return offices in the airport car park, a young Scandinavian couple are battling with the counter assistants.
The staff insist that extra scratches appeared on the car after it was rented out. But the couple say the marks were there to start with.
Fortunately, the couple are able to produce a dated photograph on their mobile phone, which shows the scratches on the car when they took it out, and they avoid charges. It's a good lesson in gathering evidence.
Waiting for my flight, I analyse my bill. The wholly reasonable 91 cost of my car hire with Europcar has nearly tripled to 255, once extras and VAT at 21 per cent have been added to the bill.
Then there's a 450 (379) deposit taken from my credit card. I'm told it will take a few days to be refunded.
I've taken out the most basic car and have been a careful driver. I've made no mistakes, bar returning without fully refuelling and being a little nervous.
I dread to think what the bill would have been if I'd had a real problem.
A Firefly spokesman says it is hoping to improve its airport facilities from November. It is also speaking to senior management in Spain to ensure staff properly explain what independent collision waiver policies are to customers.
A Goldcar spokesman says my policy was cancelled due to a computer system failure and has now refunded my cash. He also says the firm does accept third party insurance cover, but customers must also leave a deposit.
A Europcar spokesman says it is investigating the case. He adds: 'When a customer arrives at a Europcar location, an agent will make them aware of offers that are available, such as upgrades, and explain the additional protection products they can purchase.
SLOW DOWN PageGroup said profits rose but its performance has slowed in Britain due to uncertainty over the EU referendum.
The recruiter reported gross profit of 299.2m in the six months to June 30, up 6.5 per cent from 280.9million a year earlier. But in the UK profits fell by 1.5 per cent to 74.8million from 75.7million.
Shares rose 2.65 per cent, or 8.2p to 318p.
SIEMENS STAYS Siemens stays Siemens wont turn its back on the UK despite claims before the referendum that the engineer could pull back investment in the event of a Leave vote.
Siemens boss Joe Kaeser has said the company remained fully committed to manufacturing in the UK.
PAY ROW TalkTalk shareholders should oppose the 2.8million pay deal of chief executive Dido Harding, an advisory group has urged.
Pirc described Hardings earnings as excessive ahead of the telecoms companys AGM next Wednesday.
Shares rose 2.2 per cent, or 4.7p to 217.9p.
CONFIDENCE BUILDER Galliford Trys shares jumped nearly 8 per cent as it reported sales soaring by more than a quarter.
It also expressed confidence it can weather uncertainty caused by Brexit. Sales of 380million at its housebuilding division were recorded in the year to June 30, up 27 per cent.
Its Galliford Try Partnerships division has orders worth 850million and its construction division 3.5billion.
SWEET NEWS Hotel Chocolat will open four more stores after seeing sales rise 12 per cent in the last year.
In its first trading update since floating in May, the luxury chocolatier posted revenues of 92.6million for the 12 months to June 26. Shares rose 1.4 per cent, or 2.5p to 178p.
BEEFING UP Trendy burger chain Byron has secured 12million of funding to increase the number of restaurants from 66 to 100.
The cash will allow the chain to open more stores outside London.
FAT CATS The bosses of big banks saw their pay jump by 7.6 per cent in 2015 more than ten times faster than a year earlier.
These top financial chiefs pocketed an average of 9.9million each, according to analysis by the Financial Times and compensation firm Equilar.
FARMS SHUT Almost one in ten dairy farms in England and Wales has shut in the last three years.
The Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board said more than 1,000 had closed since June 2013. Farmers have complained of a squeeze on profits driven by supermarket price wars.
DAMP SQUIB Retail sales dropped 0.5 per cent in June as wet weather drove shoppers off the High Street.
The boss of pubs group JD Wetherspoon has described Brexit as a modern Magna Carta for Britain and hit out irresponsible doom-mongering over the impact of the UK leaving the EU.
Tim Martin, who campaigned vehemently for a Brexit vote, said the Chancellor George Osborne, Bank of England Governor Mark Carney and the International Monetary Fund were either dishonest, or they have a poor understanding of economics, since democracy and prosperity are closely linked and the EU is clearly undemocratic.
The chairman and founder of Wetherspoons said: By voting to restore democracy in the UK, I believe the UK's economic prospects will improve, although it is quite possible that the unprecedented and irresponsible doom-mongering, outlined above, may lead to some kind of slowdown.
Brexiteer: JD Wetherspoon's chairman and founder Tim Martin said Brexit was a 'modern Magna Carta'
Mr Martin's colourful comments came as the pubs group updated the City on trading for its final quarter ahead of full year results due on September 9.
Like-for-like sales rose by 4 per cent in the three months to 10 July and were 3.4 per cent higher in the year to that date, JD Wetherspoon said.
Following the update, Wetherspoons shares on the FTSE 250 index were 2.4 per cent, or 18.0p higher at 760.5p in late morning trading.
Mr Martin added: In spite of the dire warnings above, Wetherspoon trade strengthened slightly in recent weeks and we consequently anticipate a modestly improved outcome for this financial year. Caution should be exercised in extrapolating current levels of sales growth for future years.
In the run up to the referendum, the Wetherspoons boss made a tour of 100 of his pubs to discuss arguments for leaving the EU.
The firm also printed 280,000 copies of its Wetherspoon News magazine featuring an EU special, as well as 500,000 copies of an EU magazine, offering the views of leading Remain and Leave campaigners.
In demand: The pubs operator said like-for-like sales rose by 4 per cent in its final quarter
Continuing his support of the Leave vote, Mr Martin said: Brexit is a modern Magna Carta, reasserting democratic control in the UK. It is up to UK citizens now to participate in formulating policies based on free trade with Europe and the world, an enterprise economy and sensible immigration policies, with parliamentary control.
Wetherspoons said it had opened 13 new pubs and closed 11 since the start of the financial year. It has also sold 29 pubs as the group tries to offset the impact of rising staff costs following the introduction of the National Living Wage by the Government earlier this year.
The firm, which runs almost 1,000 pubs in the UK, had warned earlier this year that its profits would come in lower than expected amid rising staff costs.
In his Summer Budget in July last year, Osborne announced the introduction of the National Living Wage, which was set at 7.20 an hour for over 25s from April this year, and will rise to 9 an hour by 2020.
Paul Hickman, analyst at Edison Investment Research, said: 'Wetherspoon has been the best performing pubco share since the Brexit vote, down only 2 per cent compared with others that have seen double-digit decline.
'We would attribute this to expectations that as the prominent low-price operator, Wetherspoon is expected to trade relatively well in a recessionary consumer economy.'
Theresa May has been urged to block a German takeover of the London Stock Exchange as one of her first acts as Prime Minister.
The power-grab by Frankfurt-based Deutsche Boerse will see the 215-year-old British institution come under foreign control.
Both sides insist it is a merger of equals but Deutsche shareholders will get a 54.4 per cent controlling stake, profits will be reported in euros and German boss Carsten Kengeter will take the helm at the new company.
In charge: Theresa May has pledged to introduce a proper industrial strategy which could block foreign takeovers
Deutsches intentions have become increasingly predatory since Britain voted to leave the EU, with MPs are now calling on May to stand up for UK finance.
In a speech on Monday before she learned she would be Prime Minister, the new Conservative leader pledged to introduce a proper industrial strategy which could block foreign takeovers.
Tory MP Sir Bill Cash said: The new Prime Minister hopefully will exercise her powers to block this deal.
Since the Brexit referendum pitched their takeover into chaos, Deutsche sources have begun talking of a desire to strip the City of one of its key assets. A cast-iron promise was made to base the merged companys headquarters in London but the Mail understands secret talks with German regulators have begun over a move to Frankfurt, likely to happen after the deal is completed by June 30 next year.
It would fly in the face of the terms agreed by the two parties but is thought to be the only way German watchdogs can be persuaded to give their support.
Deutsche insiders are also briefing that the Germans will seek to snatch away Londons prized euro trading business, which could cost the City hundreds or even thousands of jobs.
The comments are thought to have sparked a row with bosses at LSE. Shareholder approval and the backing of 75 per cent of the companys directors would be needed to move the headquarters to Germany.
Figures at Deutsche are confident that is achievable.
War Hero: Dennis Wilson won an honorary degree for his World War II poetry
In the past 18 years, Dennis Wilson has won fame, praise and an honorary degree for his World War II poetry. He's even met the Queen and discovered four long-lost brothers.
He was the first male in his family to live beyond the age of 80.
So turning 95 last month, having enjoyed many more wonderful years, has been an unexpected blessing.
He has just one regret: paying 24 a month for an insurance plan that will provide his family with a 1,757 lump sum when he dies.
In just under two decades, he has forked out 4,876 almost three times as much as his family will eventually receive. And if he stops paying in, he'll lose the lot.
Like thousands of people in their 60s and 70s, when Dennis turned 78 he started to get his affairs in order to make life easier for those he would eventually leave behind.
He saw a TV advert for a Senior Security Plan with Cornhill Insurance.
This type of policy known as over-50s insurance promises to pay out a one-off chunk of cash to the policyholder's loved ones when they die.
In the past decade, around 2.8 million of these plans have been sold. Customers are lured in by promises that the money will stop their family being lumbered with, for example, a big funeral bill.
To Dennis, the plan seemed like a great deal. His brother, Adrian, had a policy when he died in 1998. The lump sum covered his funeral and some small debts and meant Dennis was not out of pocket during the nine months it took to clear and sell Adrian's bungalow.
Dennis, a retired World War II veteran who worked for Encyclopaedia Britannica for 49 years after the war, says: 'Aged 78, and with my family history, it seemed a reasonable gamble.
'At the time, some star was featured in the adverts, so I signed up. But it's turned out to be the worst financial decision of my life.'
These policies are fantastic value if you die soon after taking them out. If Dennis had paid into the policy for two years and died aged 80, it would have cost him just 576 to get the full 1,757 payout.
But if you live into your 80s or 90s which is becoming more common as healthcare improves the policies are poor value for money.
Six years and two months after taking out his policy, Dennis had already paid in more than his family was due to receive.
He's gone on to live a longer and fuller life than he could have dreamed including becoming a published poet at the age of 91.
Aged 22 in the trenches, Dennis had scribbled verse in his official Field Service Pocket Book about the horrors of war and the shrapnel injury to his arm that later saw him sent home.
Ambushed: Dennis, 95, says he has just one regret: paying 24 a month for an insurance plan that will provide his family with a 1,757 lump sum when he dies
Some 69 years later, his words were finally printed after a researcher at Goldsmiths College, University of London, discovered his work, describing him as 'the Wilfred Owen of World War II'.
He later attended a reception for contemporary poets at Buckingham Palace, where he was presented to the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh, and awarded an honorary fellowship by the University of Southampton.
Dennis also discovered four halfbrothers, each with large families of their own.
His wife, Hannah-May, whom he'd met in Scotland after the war, had died in 1999 aged 74, so he was overjoyed to surround himself with more family.
Throughout those times, Dennis dutifully paid the 24-a-month insurance premiums. He's now paid in 3,119 more than his family will eventually get out and that figure is rising.
The terms and conditions mean that, if Dennis stops paying in, Phoenix Life, which has taken over the policy from Cornhill, will cancel it and it'll all have been for nothing.
Insurers argue that the extra premiums paid by customers who live longer are used to fund payouts to those who die early, having put little in: that's how insurance works.
But Dennis feels he has paid his fair share.
'I don't bemoan the fact I've lived so much longer than expected, particularly as so many incredible events have occurred in that time,' he says.
'And I wasn't duped in any way I knew what I was agreeing to. But could Phoenix Life not perhaps consider the policy to be paid up at this stage?'
And while 1,757 might have been enough to pay for Dennis's funeral in 1998, today it won't come close to the average 3,702 bill.
Some insurers agree with Dennis and have introduced maximum payment terms. Aviva, for example, will stop collecting premiums after 30 years or on your 90th birthday, whichever comes first.
And British Seniors Insurance, part of Scottish Friendly Life Assurance Society, has launched a new policy that guarantees your payout will never be less than what you pay in.
Its minimum payout is 2,350. Once you've paid in this amount, the sum you're promised starts to rise. Live to 90, for example, and you'll get 4,500 the same as you paid in.
But Phoenix Life has refused to back down. A spokesman says: 'These plans were designed to insure a customer's life and provide a lump sum to a next of kin, providing that all premiums were fully paid until death; they were never designed as a savings vehicle and do not have a cash-in value.
Complaints about the Post Office have soared this year to make it Britain's most complained about landline provider.
Between January 1 and March 31, it received 29 complaints for every 100,000 customers nearly double the industry average of 15, according to industry regulator Ofcom.
TalkTalk, with the most disgruntled landline customers in the previous three months, received 28 complaints per 100,000 and was the second-worst provider.
Between January 1 and March 31 the Post Office received 29 complaints per 100,000 customers
While EE was shortly behind with 22 complaints per 100,000 customers.
Virgin Media and Sky had the fewest complains for landline services and each received six complaints per 100,000 customers in the same time period.
The Post Office blames the gripes on a marketing push that left it struggling to cope with an influx of customers.
Its HomePhone service is one of the cheapest, at 16 a month.
Rising complaints about the Post Office were blamed on a marketing push leaving it struggling to cope with an influx of customers
A Post Office spokesman says: 'We are very sorry this has led to us not meeting the expectations of some customers.'
For mobile phone customers, Vodafone was the worst provider for complaints with 29 per 100,000 customers.
This figure was significantly higher than other providers.
Talk Mobile was the second-worst provider, with eight complaints per 100,000 customers while EE was in third place with six complaints per 100,000 customers.
We have received scores of emails from disgruntled readers who have had bad experiences with Vodafone.
In June Ofcom said it had cause to believe the provider had failed to handle customer complaints properly between January 2014 and November 2015.
Tesco Mobile had the smallest number of complaints in the same period with just one complaint per 100,000 customers.
Staff at a flagship Royal Bank of Scotland branch in the heart of the City of London are being pressured to flog loans and mortgages, according to claims made by whistleblowers.
They say branch staff have to cold call customers every day and are bullied into filling managers' diaries failure to do so means staying late and eventually the stress of being put on a performance contract that puts their job under scrutiny.
Insiders claim it is happening at its Threadneedle Street branch, in the shadow of the Bank of England and right under the noses of some of the most influential financial players in the country.
Financial heart: The Threadneedle Street branch of RBS is in the shadow of the Bank of England, as shown here
This particular branch is set to be re-branded as Williams & Glyn, a bank which is yet to receive its licence from regulators.
It means any customers who open a loan or mortgage or other product via this branch will be shifted over to Williams & Glyn once the re-brand happens.
The whistleblower says the pressure has started in the past couple of months and believes it could be to make the branches look good ahead of the move over to the Williams & Glyn brand.
RBS has been forced to break away part of its business as part of its bail out in the aftermath of the financial crisis.
The whistleblower said: 'Staff are being heavily pressured to push mortgages and loans as part of their commitments and are incentivised with quarterly bonuses.
'Account managers and private managers have a cold calling session every day to as many customers as they can, especially to sell mortgages and loans.
'The customer service team also have to call one hour every day to book as many appointments as they can into the account managers diaries - if they don't fill their diaries they are forced to stay till late evenings.
'Staff are very stressed and scared to say anything as the managers will put them on a performance contract and eventually drive them out.'
Prime location: This map also shows just how close the branch is to some of the most influential financial decision makers in the country
Confidential e-mails seen by This is Money show an area director who looks after the Threadneedle Street branch along with other London locations such as Blackfriars, Islington, Mayfair and Camden, which are also soon to come under the Williams & Glyn banner urging branch managers to ask why staff don't have enough customers booked in to be sold products.
In one e-mail from April, the area director takes a stern tone, saying: 'We have the best branches in our region in terms of potential growth locations yet not all appear to be using this to our advantage.
'To be really clear every customer adviser should be seeing a minimum of 20 customers per week and meeting at least 4 needs per week.
'For next week only I want you to e-mail me at the end of any day where your customer adviser has not seen 4 customers to explain why and also what they did with the free hours in their day.'
The 'needs' referred to in the e-mail are a familiar piece of industry jargon which can often amount to code for customers opening new products.
Two weeks later and clearly incensed that branches are not meeting targets, the area director asks why only 37 per cent of diaries are filled.
The area director adds: 'By close of today everyone should be at least 60 per cent of capacity for next week.'
She then lists how branches are performing, with St Paul's seeing just two in 25 appointment slots filled up and Mayfair six in 23.
RBS said in November last year that it had scrapped sales targets for staff, in a move designed to ensure customers know they are only being sold products in their best interests.
Retail banks in general have cracked down on sales targets, after the industry was stung to the tune of billions of pounds for selling payment protection insurance to customers who did not need it.
The whistleblower says RBS has not learned its lesson from its previous lending binge, which they argue caused damage to the group and a deluge of complaints from customers.
They also add that they are 'sure the Financial Conduct Authority would be interested in this sales culture.'
At the end of last year, the FCA quietly shelved plans for an inquiry into the culture, pay and behaviour of staff in banking.
It had planned to look at whether pay, promotion and other incentives had contributed to scandals involving banks in the past.
DO YOU WORK AT NATWEST/RBS? Are you a staff member at an RBS or NatWest branch soon to be rebranded as a Williams & Glyn? Have you seen sales tactics seemingly re-emerge, or is it a different case in your branch? Contact me in confidence: lee.boyce@thisismoney.co.uk
In a jargon heavy response, the FCA said it had decided a 'traditional thematic review' would not help it achieve its 'desired outcomes', promising instead to encourage the 'delivery of cultural change'.
Other experts suggested it was politically motivated, while the Treasury denied involvement in the decision.
The whistleblower also says staff have to listen to an audio every day and e-mail back the activity they have done for the day, especially focused on loans and mortgages.
They add: 'This is very conflicting as [RBS chief executive] Ross McEwan announced in November 2015 that bonuses for staff will be scrapped in an attempt to avoid future mis-selling scandals and there will be no sales targets for staff.
'The sales culture is coming from the regional directors and area directors to gain their bonuses. Staff are extremely stressed.'
RBS said it changed its incentive schemes in 2012, so that any reward staff received on top of their basic pay depended on them meeting certain customer satisfaction standards.
A further change in January 2016 was meant to remove any sort of incentive, so staff will now have a set salary.
A spokesman from RBS told This is Money: 'We want all of our employees to be focused on doing the right thing for our customers.
'None of our customer-facing staff receive product-related incentives. We take these allegations very seriously and will of course investigate all of the matters raised here.'
Last month it was revealed that RBS has delayed spinning off 300 branches set to be under the Williams & Glyn banner.
It's not clear if staff nationwide in branches set to be re-branded as Williams & Glyn are also being put under the same pressure.
The 1.2billion project has faced a string of difficulties and is now costing an estimated 50million a month.
The banking giant shocked the City in April by admitting an EU-imposed deadline of December 31 next year could be missed.
Spread-eagle, off duty Air Force lieutenant Brian Williams was instructed to put his hands on the hood of the police cruiser.
He had been pulled over by cops after running a red light and was terrified by the overly aggressive nature of the routine stop.
Sadly, the young black man grew to realize it was the color of his skin behind the harsh treatment and the first of many such encounters to come.
Today, Dr Brian Williams, 47, is a trauma surgeon at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas and is one of the physicians who treated the wounded and dying police officers shot in the sniper attacks last week.
Brian Williams, a staff surgeon at Parkland Hospital in Dallas who treated the wounded and dying police officers shot in the sniper attacks last week, admitted that, as a black man in Texas, he felt conflicted about police
Dr. Williams, with his wife and five-year-old daughter, denounced the shooting and insisted that people of all races need to come together to 'end all this'
Dr. Williams says he has encountered the police many times during his life, mainly through routine traffic stops, and claims his experience is typical of most black men in America
On Monday he made a powerful and emotional speech during a press conference at Parkland which aired across America.
Welling up with tears he said: 'This killing, it has to stop. Black men dying, it has to stop.'
Dr. Williams denounced the shooting and insisted that people of all races need to come together to 'end all this'.
But live on air he also admitted that, as a black man in Texas, he felt conflicted.
'I understand the anger and the frustration and distrust of law enforcement, but they are not the problem,' he said as he wrestled with his emotions.
'The problem is open discussions about the impact of race relations in this country.'
In an exclusive interview with Daily Mail Online Dr. Williams details the reason he feels so conflicted, and he reveals a string of bad experiences that have led to an inherent fear of law enforcement.
Dr. Williams points out that police havent ever used racist or pejorative language towards him
Dr. Williams became a surgeon after a short career in the US Air Force following in the foot steps of his father
Dr. Williams says he has encountered the police many times during his life, mainly through routine traffic stops, and claims his experience is typical of most black men in America.
Speaking from inside the state-of-the-art Level I Trauma Center where he tended to the shooting victims last week, he told Daily Mail Online: My experiences they go back decades, one after the other, they become internalized.
And its a combination of my own experiences and an oral history I receive from my friends and family members that have gone through the same thing, we dont just make this up, this happens.
I remember running a red light when I was in the Air Force.
I was in civilian clothes and I was pulled over and the officer made me get out and I was spread-eagle and made to put my hands on the hood of the car.
Most other people just get to sit in their car. I definitely did wrong, but it was a minor traffic thing, it didnt merit the response.
On another occasion Dr. Williams was stopped by police for speeding and inexplicably he had to wait until a second officer arrived before he was given a ticket.
With each experience and regularly seeing news reports of black men killed by police, Dr. Williams said he grew to believe he too could be shot by a nervy officer.
Portraits of the five fallen police officers sit in front of a stage after a candle light vigil in front of city hall honoring them, on Monday, in Dallas. Four Dallas police officers and one DART officer were killed and several injured during a shooting in downtown Dallas last Thursday night
Police officers take part in a candlelight vigil at City Hall in Dallas, Texas, on Monday following Thursday's shooting
He said: I became mindful each time that I must act and speak in a way that doesn't seem threatening. I must remain respectful, compliant and dont make any sudden moves.
Just a couple of years ago, Dr. Williams recalls being stopped by an officer and questioned as he stood outside his Dallas apartment complex waiting for someone to pick him up and drive him to the airport.
Someone called in a report and police questioned me and asked me why I was there. I had to prove to them that I actually lived there, he said.
It did not become physically violent but my initial reaction was visceral, I was like I need to watch what I say here because this could turn bad.
The doctor concedes that the officers were just doing their job, but the experience and the general behavior of the police made him fear for his safety.
He added that such encounters had a strong impact on him personally.
I'm always just praying for the encounter to end, he said.
Dr. Williams points out that police havent ever used racist or pejorative language towards him, but he says: There are subtle things, micro-aggressions, they are not overt but make you fearful. Their actions leave room for plausible deniability.
Whats worse is that when hes walking down the street in his white doctors coat and blue scrubs Dr. Williams sees a marked difference in how hes treated by law enforcement.
The medic doesnt want to blame individual officers - many of whom are colleagues and friends - but feels theres a wider problem.
There are systemic issues of racism that exist in this country that are not being addressed appropriately, he explains.
I dont know that we can fix everything but we can certainly have an open discussion and acknowledge that, yes this does exist.
On Thursday the killer, black US Army veteran Micah Johnson, opened fire at police during a peaceful protest.
Speaking from inside the state-of-the-art Level I Trauma Center where he tended to the shooting victims last week, Dr. Willaims told Daily Mail Online: My experiences they go back decades, one after the other, they become internalized
Johnson told officers he was carrying out the horrific attack because he wanted to kill white people, 'especially white officers', in the wake of last week's fatal shootings of black men by officers in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and outside St Paul, Minnesota.
The first call about an officer being shot came in to Parkland Hospital at around 9pm, moments later, there was a flurry of notifications about more victims.
It quickly became clear that something catastrophic had happened.
Five officers were killed, nine others were injured as well as two civilians - the deadliest attack on police since 9/11.
The hospital's 12 trauma bays quickly filled up and the hallways were abuzz with activity and lines of concerned officers praying for their downed colleagues.
Dr. Williams reckons he walked past the crowd of officers dozens of times.
He says: I certainly during that time felt the despair they were going through. I knew that they were angry at this assailant. It was palpable and I felt it.
But I also had an understanding of where that anger against police came from. Not that I condone what happened. I certainly abhor the results. But I can see where the roots of that have been laid.
Overwhelmed by the loss of life and the conflict preying on his mind, Dr. Williams says he became very emotional and had to take himself off to a quiet hallway.
His voice faltering, he said: We worked feverishly for a long time that night. All I wanted to do was save those police officers. And we did everything but we couldn't do it.
The moment (breaking point) for me was after I spoke to all the families and gave them this bad news, it wasnt until then that the emotions really interfered with my ability to do my job.
I went in to one of the back hallways. I wanted to be by myself, I didnt want to be seen by anybody because I didnt know what kind of impact that would have on people doing their jobs because we still had a lot of work to do.
Black veteran Micah Johnson opened fire at a peaceful protest on Thursday, killing five cops and injuring 12
Johnson told police he was carrying out the horrific attack because he wanted to kill white people, 'especially white officers' in the wake of last week's fatal shootings of black men by officers in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and outside St. Paul, Minnesota
Ive done this for a long time and thats the first time I had to stop to gather myself.
Dr. Williams explained that it wasnt simply because of the volume of wounded police officers who had arrived at the trauma center or the level of suffering he was witnessing, he said it was something more.
He says: For me all those emotions from my past came to bear.
My own personal experiences with law enforcement where Ive feared for my safety and my understanding of how the protesters feel.
But I work with police officers on a daily basis, they are my colleagues, they are my friends.
And I could not understand why someone thought it was okay to shoot police officers because of this.
On the morning after the attack Dr. Williams says he discussed his fear of law enforcement with a cop at the hospital.
He came up to me and he apologized, on behalf of all police officers, for my experience. I didnt know how to respond, its not his fault but he felt like he had to apologize, he said.
The doctor says he now wants to track that officer down to thank him and vocalize that he doesnt blame him for anything.
Williams says he felt very proud of his trauma team following a hellish shift Friday.
The team responded with incredible professionalism and talents and I knew there was no other hospital I wanted to work at, he says.
Williams, who is married with a five-year-old daughter, became a surgeon after a short career in the US Air Force following in the foot steps of his father.
He graduated from the USAF Academy in 1991 and served six years as an aeronautical engineer mainly doing flight tests.
I became mindful each time that I must act and speak in a way that doesn't seem threatening. I must remain respectful, compliant and dont make any sudden moves,' the doctor said
An honor guard procession marches to a "Dallas Strong" candlelight vigil outside City Hall in Dallas, Texas, on Monday in honor of the five slain police officers
He went to the University of South Florida Medical School from 1997 to 2001, before his residency in general surgery at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Womens Hospital from 2001 to 2008.
He also completed a fellowship program in trauma and surgical critical care at Emory University School of Medicine from 2008 to 2010.
Dr. Williams has been at Parkland - the same hospital where President John F Kennedy was brought after he was shot - as an acute care surgeon since 2010.
He is also an assistant professor of surgery at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.
The senior medic now feels like the suffering of the families of the dead and injured officers has been somewhat diminished by the wave of Black Lives Matter protests happening across America.
Holding back tears, he added: I want them to all know that I think about them, I think about those officers every day.
Dr. Williams describes the current situation as toxic and destructive.
But while he doesnt claim to have a solution, he says there needs to be open and honest discussion about the issues that face the nation.
Black men are dying at the hands of police and they are quickly forgotten,' he says. That has to be addressed. Protesters are attacking law enforcement, that has to be addressed.
Law enforcement I assume are becoming apprehensive about doing their job, you cant keep blaming the other side, at some point we have to acknowledge that this is an issue that permeates our society.
Parkland Health & Hospital System is one of the largest public hospital systems in the country.
Services include a Level I Trauma Center, the second largest civilian burn center in the US and a Level III Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.
The new 2.8million square foot hospital campus averages about 65,000 discharges and one million outpatient visits annually.
Winston Churchill, Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair - they all have a certain amount of name recognition globally.
Theresa May takes over today as the new British prime minister and whether she will ever that sort of cachet is open to doubt.
There are inevitably going to be comparisons made with Britain's first woman prime minister, who was known in many parts of the world as the Iron Lady, especially after Argentinian soldiers were chased out of the Falkland Islands in 1982.
The USA Today newspaper seems keen to dub her the Steel Lady, as an homage to the Iron Lady, who had long been deposed as prime minister by the time Mrs May was first elected as an MP in 1997
The Financial Times said a German official had compared Mrs May to the 'rubble women' (trummerfrauen) who cleared debris from bomb sites in the late 1940s as West Germany rose from the ashes of war to become a mighty economy.
It may not sound like a compliment but it was apparently meant to imply that she had the ability to help mend the fractures with Europe caused by the Brexit vote.
Mrs May reportedly had a good relationship with French interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve - a Socialist - a French diplomat told the FT: 'She is extremely respected on the French side'.
Mrs May (right) looking statesmanlike as she visits Sousse, Tunisia, last year after 30 British tourists and eight others were gunned down on the beach by an jihadist terrorist
The Australian newspaper dubbed her the 'new Iron Lady' and said: 'Understated and underrated, Theresa May was the last woman standing after the flashier contenders to become Britains new prime minister fell away one by one, allowing her to seize the prize.'
It said the Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, who himself only just survived after the recent general election, was expected to offer his congratulations to Mrs May this week after she had officially moved into 10 Downing Street.
Paolo Levi of Italian news agency Ansa welcomed May taking over as prime minister because 'there is nothing worse than staying in instability'.
Theresa May in a huddle with (left to right) German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere, French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve and Luxembourg Internal Security Minister Etienne Schneider in Brussels last year
BBC World Service reporter Kerry Allen says China's main TV news channel described her as 'another Iron Lady'
China's state broadcaster CCTV described May as "another Iron Lady", while GBTimes reports that on social media Chinese students expressed their dismay at May becoming Prime Minister, reportedly nicknaming May "the devil" for her tough policies as Home Secretary restricting the time foreign students can remain in Britain after completing their studies.
Los Angeles Times journalist Laura King wrote: 'A clergymans daughter known for her calm, common-sense demeanor has emerged from the unholy political scrum that erupted after the Brexit referendum, poised to become Britains prime minister as the onetime empire weathers financial fallout, social schism and deepening angst over its place on the world stage.
The Clarin newspaper in Buenos Aires showed special interest in the story because of Argentina's claims on the Falkland Islands
The NRC newspaper in the Netherlands says: 'Her agenda: unity, unity, unity'
The French business paper La Tribune said Theresa May was set to be the 'Iron Lady'
A Florida woman crashed into a home after missing a stop sign because she was praying with her eyes closed, the driver told police.
Okaloosa County Sheriff's deputies say the 28-year-old woman ran the stop sign and went through an intersection before plowing into someone's front yard and hitting their home.
The woman who hit the house has not been identified.
A Florida woman crashed into a home after missing a stop sign because she was praying with her eyes closed, the driver told police
The driver was cited for reckless driving with property damage.
Luckily, the red sedan the woman was driving and the home only suffered minor damages, according to photos taken of the accident.
The pictures show a small crack in the red brick house and a muddied front yard where her tires left marks.
The tires also appear to be sunken deep into the mud where they came to a stop after impact.
The woman was taken to the hospital for evaluation after Thursday's crash.
Okaloosa County Sheriff's deputies say the 28-year-old woman ran the stop sign and went through an intersection before plowing into someone's front yard and hitting their home
Nathan Rogers, a member of surf gang the Bra Boys has pleaded guilty to drugs charges alongside Middle Eastern crime figures.
Rogers and the two others will be sentenced on Thursday in the New South Wales District Court on Thursday for the charges, two years after he was arrested for his part in an international drug ring.
He had been sourcing cocaine from importers and on-selling it.
As a member of the Bra Boys, a gang from Maroubra in eastern Sydney, Rogers became one of a small number of the group to enter organised crime including drug trafficking, the Sydney Morning Herald reported.
Nathan Rogers of the Maroubra surf gang dubbed the Bra Boys pictured at Maroubra beach in December 2005
A Bra Boys member sporting a distinctive gang tattoo. Many also have a tattoo across their chests from shoulder-to-shoulder reading 'My Brother's Keeper'
The back of Koby Abberton showing his Bra Boys tattoos, pictured when he was 25 years old
He was arrested in 2014 after police began targeting him in February that year during an operation dubbed 'Taipan'.
When arrested, Rogers was one of more than 30 people from across Sydney taken into custody, including Lebanese gangsters, Iranian heroin importers and bikies.
Operation Taipan had discovered the network from which Rogers got his drugs involved cocaine from South America, opium and heroin from Iran and ecstasy and ice from Asia.
Rogers had used an encrypted Blackberry device so his conversations couldn't be tracked and it took and undercover officer to help bust him.
Professional surfers and Bra Boys leaders, brothers Sunny Abberton and Koby Abberton attend a press conference for the 'Bra Boys' movie in 2008
In March 2014, he and an undercover agent were followed a McDonald's fast food restaurant in south-west Sydney where police expected him to meet surfers, but instead they met the two Middle Eastern crime figures Rogers has pleaded guilty with.
Their crime organisation is alleged to be responsible for a number of underworld murders, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.
The men agreed to sell Rogers and the officer a kilogram of cocaine for $235,000, it was reported.
Police investigations into Rogers also found a connection between him and a federal police officer in Sydney who has since left police and moved to Queensland.
Other police operations targeting waterfront trafficking in Sydney have resulted in criminals with links to the Bra Boys being arrested, according to the report.
Mahin Khan (above) has pleaded not guilty to charges of plotting a terrorist attack on a motor vehicle office in metro Phoenix
A Tucson man has pleaded not guilty to charges of plotting a terrorist attack on a motor vehicle office in metro Phoenix.
Mahin Khan is accused of asking a suspected militant for help making a pipe bomb in a plot to blow up a Motor Vehicle Division office in Maricopa County.
In court on Tuesday, Khan was dressed in a jail uniform, wore glasses and sported a five o'clock shadow.
His only comments consisted of affirming his correct name and recognizing that he understood his legal rights.
Khan was charged with terrorism, conspiracy to commit terrorism and conspiracy to commit misconduct involving weapons.
His attorney, Robert Ditsworth, opposed a request by media organizations to film the hearing.
He said doing so could taint the jury pool and put Khan's family at risk as his face appears in broadcasts. 'It's a very touchy subject,' Ditsworth said.
Outside of court, Ditsworth declined to comment on the case against Khan.
Superior Court Judge Sam Myers said Khan will remain jailed pending the outcome of a July 19 bond hearing.
Authorities said Khan had written emails to a suspected member of the Pakistan Taliban seeking weapons and instructions for a homemade explosive.
It's not clear if Khan was corresponding with an actual member of the group, but court records show that the FBI examined the emails.
In the emails, Khan said he backed the Islamic State terrorist group and was looking to carry out an attack.
Superior Court Judge Sam Myers said Khan will remain at Maricopa County Jail (above) pending the outcome of a July 19 bond hearing
Court records show the person responded that he would have to pay for two rifles and a pistol he requested, so Khan said he wanted instructions for a bomb itself.
The FBI began investigating Khan after someone reported him for suspicious activity; and agents were tracking him as he asked someone else on April 16 about targeting Mission Bay, California, and an Air Force recruitment center in Tucson, according to the probable cause statement filed into court records.
The identity of that person was redacted, but it was not the suspected Taliban member.
The statement was written before Khan's arrest, and the plot against the motor vehicle office came to light after authorities searched his home.
An incredible video has emerged showing Chinese truck drivers deliberately crashing their trucks into floodwaters after a levee burst threatening the homes of 23,000 people.
A 10-metre-long breach of a levee in Huarong county, in Chinas Hunan Province, was discovered last Sunday morning after heavy rainfall.
More than 23,000 residents living in the Xinhua flood basin area had been evacuated by 9pm on Sunday.
The video shows local authorities trying to restore the levee using trucks full of large rocks.
The drivers drove their trucks towards the breach before jumping out of their cabins at the last moment.
Thirteen trucks were driven into the breach in total to reinforce the levee.
Internet commentators questioned the unusual method of repairing the levee with some calling it a waste of the trucks.
An incredible video has emerged showing Chinese truck drivers deliberately crashing their trucks into floodwaters after a levee burst threatening the homes of 23,000 people
A 10-metre-long breach of a levee in Huarong county, in Chinas Hunan Province, was discovered last Sunday morning after heavy rainfall
More than 23,000 residents living in the Xinhua flood basin area had been evacuated by 9pm on Sunday
The video shows local authorities trying to restore the levee using trucks full of large rocks
One user joked: 'Maybe they should build a great wall of sandbags.'
Another user commented: 'I think it's mostly a time issue, that dirt erodes incredibly fast once the levee is broken.
'Plus adding the truck is basically like throwing in a massive boulder.'
The drivers, apparently attached to safety wires, drove their trucks towards the breach before jumping out of their cabins at the last moment
Thirteen trucks were driven into the breach to reinforce the levee with tons of rocks thrown into the water
Eventually the novelty wears off and pair call police in order to be rescued
Duo shoot a documentary and pretend they have been trapped for days
The lights turn off after an hour and they entertain themselves by singing
Two men found themselves locked inside St Michael's Cave after closing time and decided to pass their time by recording a humorous documentary.
The duo were visiting the natural grotto located within the Upper Rock Nature Reserve in the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar when they failed to keep an eye on the time.
As a result they were locked inside the natural limestone cave after it was closed for the night at 5pm - but instead of panicking they decided to shoot a documentary.
Lock in: The humorous documentary shows the pair making the most of their peculiar situation by singing (left) and 'hunting for food' (right)
The series of short videos, which were posted to Snapchat, show the pair making the most of their peculiar situation as the action picks up around one hour after the doors were first closed.
According to the two men - who apparently discovered this the hard way - the lights inside the cave are switched off at around this time in the evening.
Keeping themselves occupied in the dark, the men listen to some Taylor Swift on their phone and even duet on the chorus to I Knew You Were Trouble before one begins narrating.
He pretends they have been trapped for a number of days and jokes: 'Day three, we are still in St Michael's Cave. I have started to think about cannibalism.'
On their 'fourth' day the men attempt to escape the cave before they both admit that they need to use the toilet - something they are unable to do because they are locked inside.
The documentary goes on to show the duo 'hunting for food' before coming across what they believe is a light switch hanging from the ceiling - but having no luck.
In the dark: The action picks up after an hour when the lights inside the cave switch off (left). In the video the duo attempt to turn the lights back on (right) but have no luck
Time to get out of here: After a while the novelty wears off and the duo call the police in order to be rescued (left). They pose for one last selfie together inside the cave before escaping (right)
Later in the clip the novelty of being stuck inside the cave without much hope of getting out anytime soon appears to wear off for the duo and they decide to do something about it.
The extended version of the video, which is 12 minutes long in total, shows the pair calling the police and waiting to be rescued.
Eventually someone comes to their aid and after two hours and twenty minutes the hydraulic doors open and sunlight fills the dark grotto.
The humorous but slightly bizarre video concludes with the duo cheering before heading down the street together, away from the cave.
St Michael's Cave is one of Gibraltar's most popular tourist attractions and is visited by around one million people every year - though not quite so many overstay their welcome.
Stunning: The cave is based within the Upper Rock Nature Reserve in Gibraltar and is popular with tourists
Queensland politician Robbie Katter, who launched a social media campaign to find him a wife two years ago, is engaged to ABC rural reporter Daisy Hatfield.
Mr Katter, 39, the Mount Isa MP and son of Bob Katter, announced this week that he had proposed to the 26-year-old journalist.
'It's love,' he told the Courier Mail this week. 'We're going to Brisbane to shop for an engagement ring and have a bit of a family celebration this weekend.'
Queensland politician Robbie Katter, (left) who became the subject of a matchmaker social media campaign last year, announced this week that he is engaged to ABC reporter Daisy Hatfield, 26 (right)
The Mount Isa MP (left) said he and Ms Hatfield (right) will travel to Brisbane this weekend to buy an engagement ring and celebrate with family
The Mount Isa MP is the son of politician Bob Katter (pictured), who founded Katter's Australian Party
Bob Katter played a large role in this month's federal election when he threw his support behind Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.
Bob Katter told ABC that he would support Mr Turnbull in the event of a hung jury, but only if the Coalition does not 'union bash.'
His son, Robbie, is now making headlines for a very different reason.
Robbie said last year that finding love hadn't been a smooth ride and he quickly became the target of a matchmaking Twitter campaign called #catchakatter after posing for for the Men of Mount Isa charity calendar in 2014.
Commentors online have begun to congratulate the couple using the hashtag #kattercaught.
Ms Hatfield, who moved to Mount Isa in March for her rural reporter position, used the new hashtag to talk about the moment Mr Katter popped the question.
The Stuartholme School graduate said she was more surprised than the horse she was riding at the time, according to the Courier Mail.
The pair met while Ms Hatfield, who grew up in Kingaroy about 210 kms north-west of Brisbane, was working at the Townsville bureau of WIN and was sent out to interview him.
Mr Katter became interested in Ms Hatfield and phoned her after their interview, but she remained oblivious to his pursuit.
Eventually the pair started dating and moved in together earlier this year.
Mr Katter said Ms Hatfield's parents have welcomed him into the family.
'Her dad didn't chase me with a shotgun, put it that way,' he told Courier Mail.
Mr Katter became the target of a matchmaking Twitter campaign called #catchakatter after posing for for the Men of Mount Isa charity calendar in 2014 (pictured)
The pair met while Ms Hatfield (right), who grew up in Kingaroy about 210 kms north-west of Brisbane, was working at the Townsville bureau of WIN and was sent out to interview him
The pair met while Ms Hatfield (right), who grew up in Kingaroy about 210 kms north-west of Brisbane, was working at the Townsville bureau of WIN and was sent out to interview him
A French hitchhiker on a year-long trip around Australia has been killed in Queensland after she was run over by a truck as she tried to retrieve her bag which she dropped under the vehicle.
Alixe Stoffel hitched a ride with a truck driver to Nudgee when the freak accident occurred.
The 19-year-old's bag fell under the truck as she was getting out of and when she tried to retrieve it she stumbled underneath and was dragged to her death along the ground.
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Alixe Stoffel, 19, (pictured) died at a service station in Nudgee, north Brisbane after she was hit by a truck
Ms Stoffel flew to Australia after completing her university degree in July 2015
Ms Stoffel arrived in Australia in October for a a year-long solo adventure
The accident happened at a service station in Nudgee, north Brisbane, about 6.20 pm on Monday, Queensland Police said.
CCTV footage from the service station shows the moment people ran to the woman's aid before she died at the scene.
A Facebook tribute page was started on Wednesday and friends have posted memories of working and travelling with her.
'In memory of Alixe, a fallen angel that was taken long before her time is due,' one person wrote.
Another said: 'You are a beautiful woman Alixe, so sure of yourself. It was a pleasure working with you and spending time with you.'
Ms Stoffel wrote on her travel blog last October that she was embarking on a year-long solo adventure in Australia after completing her degree in July.
She arrived in Melbourne midway through October and, in intermittent blog posts, described trips to the Grampians in Victoria, finding a job and enjoying Melbournes inner-city suburbs.
Ms Stoffel's parents are enroute to Australia, 7News has reported.
A Queensland Police spokesperson said initial investigations appear to show the driver was not at fault.
Police believe one of the 19-year-old's bags fell under a truck. When she tried to retrieve it she fell underneath the moving vehicle
Ms Stoffel died at this service station. CCTV footage shows several witnesses coming to the woman's aid, but she was pronounced dead at the scene
Ms Stoffel wrote of her Australian adventures and her passion for the country in a travel blog
Not everyone was so impressed with President Obama's speech today in Dallas, where he talked about the difficulties police face and racial bias that still exists in the United States.
One blonde female police officer, sitting right behind the president's right shoulder, looked to be snoozing through portions of his long-winded address.
Obama, along with his predecessor George W. Bush, was paying tribute to the five police officers who were killed overnight Thursday in a racist sniper attack.
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SNOOZE: A female police officer closed her eyes and looked to be napping as President Obama droned on today at a memorial for the five Dallas cops who were killed
'God bless her,' one Twitter user wrote about the sleeping policewoman, while other online comments were more harsh
President Obama spoke broadly today in Dallas about the difficulties of modern day police work and the challenges facing communities of color - a conversation that lulled a police office to sleep
Through the beginning of his remarks the officer remained alert and clapped along with the audience, slapping together her white gloves.
But then as Obama got into the meat of the speech he talked at length about policing communities of color her eyes began to close.
Obama spoke about how racial bias clearly still exists in the United States and black and white citizens have had different experiences within the criminal justice system.
'When more than 50 years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act, we cannot simply turn away and dismiss those in peaceful protests as troublemakers, or paranoid,' Obama said.
'We can't simply dismiss it as a symptom of political correctness, or reserve racism,' he continued.
'To have your experience denied like that, dismissed by those in authority, dismissed perhaps even by your white friends and co-workers and fellow church members again and again and again, it hurts,' he added. 'Surely we can see that. All of us.'
But the woman in the front row wasn't seeing anything, as she had her eyes pursed close.
Chicago's ABC affiliate, which broadcast the sleeping officer, reported some of the Twitter comments her brief nap received.
Some were harsh saying 'sit up straight' and 'show some respect.'
Others were more sympathetic, with one user tweeting, 'God bless her.'
The more lively portion of the program came courtesy of Dallas Police Chief David Brown.
Trying to get some smiles from his officers on a rather glum day, Brown recounted how he tried to pick up women in the 1970s.
'And so being a music fan of 1970s rhythm and blues love songs, I put together a strategy to recite the lyrics to get a date,' Brown explained.
'So for girls I liked I would pull out some Al Green or some Teddy Pendergrass ... But for people that I loved, if I fell in love with a girl, I'd have to dig down deep and get some Stevie Wonder.'
'So today I'm going to pull out some Stevie Wonder for these families,' the bald top cop added. 'So families, close your eyes and just imagine me back in 1974 with an afro and some bell bottoms and wide collars.'
Brown than began to speak the words of Wonder's 'As.'
White nationalist, former Ku Klux Klan member, anti-Semite and convicted felon David Duke says he may run for Congress after a gunman killed five policemen in a racially charged shooting in Dallas.
Duke is gearing up for a challenge against the House of Representatives' majority whip Steve Scalise of Louisiana and expects to make a firm decision ahead of the July 22 ballot deadline, the Daily Beast reported.
Duke, who made headlines for supporting Donald Trump's presidential bid earlier this year, also said he would be an ideal pick as the business tycoon's running mate.
White nationalist, former Ku Klux Klan member, Holocaust denier and convicted felon David Duke (pictured) says he is considering running for Congress after a gunman fatally shot five policemen in Dallas
Duke (left) said he is gearing up to challenge the House of Representatives' majority whip Steve Scalise of Louisiana (right) and expects to make a firm decision ahead of the July 22 ballot deadline
Duke, who made headlines for supporting Donald Trump's presidential bid earlier this year, also said he would be an ideal pick as the business tycoon's running mate
As tensions between the police and minority communities have reached a new high, Duke said he was spurred to run for office after Micah Johnson killed five policemen and injured seven others.
Following the deaths of black men Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and Philandro Castile in Falcon Heights, Minnesota, at the hands of police, Johnson told negotiators that he wanted to kill white people.
Duke, who infamously wore a Nazi uniform when he was a student at Louisiana State University and later became Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, said he had the support of millions.
'Id be the only person in Congress openly defending the rights and the heritage of European Americans. We are on the offensive today. Theres no more defenses,' he told the Daily Beast.
Duke, who has tried on numerous occasions to launch his political career, gained media attention when he pledged his support for Trump in February.
But the white nationalist wasn't always on board and he initially questioned Trump's stance 'on Israel and other issues involving the Jews'.
When Trump became a frontrunner, Duke said: 'Voting against Donald Trump at this point, is really treason to your heritage.'
Trump got into hot water for failing to disavow Duke, and initially pleaded ignorance, saying: 'I dont know anything about what youre even talking about with white supremacy or white supremacists.
'So I dont know. I dont know did he endorse me, or whats going on? Because I know nothing about David Duke; I know nothing about white supremacists,' Trump told CNN's Jake Tapper.
Duke infamously wore a Nazi uniform when he was a student at Louisiana State University and later became Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan (left of left, and right)
Duke blasted Newt Gringrich (right), who is being considered as Trump's running mate, for acknowledging racism and the dangers black people face. Duke said he would be a better pick instead
Trump later renounced Duke, blaming a 'bad earpiece' for his failure to do so during the CNN interview.
As the news surrounding Newt Gringrich's position on Trump's VP shortlist broke, Duke slammed the former House of Representatives speaker for acknowledging the racism black people face.
Duke has launched failed campaigns for governor, senate and the president of the United States
Gringrich had commented on the spate of police shootings, saying: 'It took me a long time, and a number of people talking to me through the years to get a sense of this.
'If you are a normal white American, the truth is you dont understand being black in America and you instinctively under-estimate the level of discrimination and the level of additional risk,' he said.
Gringrich also said black people are 'substantially more likely to end up in a situation where the police don't respect you and where you could easily get killed.'
In light of those comments, Duke told the Daily Beast: 'I would be a better pick. I had a perfect Republican voting record.
'If [Trump] had me as a VP he would have a life insurance policy. But again, I dont see him doing that. Thats just a fantasy.'
Duke served as member of the House of Representatives for Louisiana from 1988 to 1992. He has also launched failed campaigns for governor, senate and the president of the United States.
Controversial former councillor Salim Mehajer is not allowed to be within 50 metres of his wife Aysha for the next five weeks after he was slapped with an Apprehended Violence Order (AVO) following a confrontation at her sister's Wollongong home.
Neither Mr Mehajer nor his wife, whose maiden name of Learmonth was on the application, were present for the proceedings in the Downing Centre Local Court on Wednesday.
The order, in place until 17 August, means the couple will not be together on their first anniversary (15 August), the date of their so-called 'wedding of the century' at Lidcombe, in Sydney's west, almost a year ago.
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Salim Mehajer (pictured) maintained ahead of the court proceedings that he and his wife Aysha see each other regularly 'every day' but confirmed she was not living at their Lidcombe mansion. An AVO against him in court on Wednesday prevents him from being within 50 metres of Mrs Mehajer and he is not allowed to contact her
The lavish wedding in August last year caused chaos in parts of western Sydney when streets were closed at Lidcombe without permission for the then Auburn deputy mayor's nuptials to bride Aysha
The pair are together 'until death do us apart', according to Salim Mehajer. But Mrs Mehajer no longer lives at their Lidcombe mansion and is believed to be residing with her sister in Wollongong. He has been banned from being within 50 metres of his wife for at least the next weeks
The lavish million-dollar event, including a fleet of supercars, limousines, motorbikes, helicopters, and even a jet flyover, caused chaos when a street was closed off without council permission.
Police applied for the AVO following allegations of a dispute at the Wollongong home of Mrs Mehajer's sister.
On Tuesday, the suspended deputy Auburn mayor confirmed his wife was no longer living in their Lidcombe mansion but claimed they see each other 'every day', according to a report in The Daily Telegraph.
Police filed the AVO application against Mr Mehajer on behalf of his wife after she told police he kept 'popping up wherever she is' and feared he could become violent, a police source said.
The property developer's lawyer, Matt Ward, told the court that his client did not oppose three points in the AVO, including that 'the defendant must not assault, molest, harass, or threaten' his wife.
He has also been ordered not to intimidate or stalk her.
However, Mr Mehajer will challenge the following:
'The defendant must not go within 50 metres of the premises at which his wife resides or works' and that Mr Mehajer 'must not approach or contact his wife' except through the defendant's legal representative.
But he won't have any opportunity to change that ruling until the middle of next month, at the earliest.
The order means the couple will not be celebrating their first wedding anniversary together and Salim Mehajer is not even allowed to contact his wife, whose maiden name of Learmonth was used in the AVO
The couple pictured on their wedding day: Police filed an Apprehended Violence Order application against Mr Mehajer (left) on behalf of Aysha (right)
Deputy Chief Magistrate O'Brien heard that she had not yet provided a statement about the incident to police and was given until 27 July to do so.
Mr Mehajer is required to provide his own version of events by 10 August.
'Aysha has not taken out an AVO against me the police are pursuing an AVO,' he told media on Tuesday.
Mr Ward was outlining his proposal to the court when Magistrate O'Brien intervened.
'Your client (Mr Mehajer) is not here, we can't proceed, it won't come back until the expiration of the provisional order,' he said.
Police also confirmed in court they will be proceeding with the matter.
The provisional orders preventing any sort of contact will remain in place until 17 August when the matter returns to court.
It means if the ex-Auburn Council deputy mayor tries to wish his wife a happy first wedding anniversary, he will be in breach of court orders.
The property developer's lawyer, Matt Ward (pictured), told the court that his client did not oppose three points in the AVO but would be challenging two others including not being allowed to make any contact with her
Extravagance: Salim Mehajer's million dollar wedding to Aysha last year was the subject of intense scrutiny after a street in Lidcombe in Sydney's west was closed off without permission causing traffic chaos
The orders in place mean the couple will not be together on their first anniversary - August 15 - the date of their so-called wedding of the century (pictured)
Mr Mehajer has denied his wife is behind the AVO application, telling reporters it came about because of 'alleged complaints by neighbours.'
'Aysha and I, only death will do us apart,' he said.
The revelation Mrs Mehajer no longer live together comes despite Mr Mehajer denying a split with his wife and saying the pair are about to star in a television show.
Mrs Mehajer hasn't been seen at a number of recent family gatherings and celebrations, although her husband has regularly posted pictures of them together recently.
Sources said Mrs Mehajer failed to show up to a birthday party thrown in her honour this year - despite the presence of rapper Tyga.
She also was not seen among a crowd of family and friends watching a pageant show where one of Salim's sisters, Aiisha, competed last week.
But Mr Mehajer said the couple were still living together and exclusively told Daily Mail Australia his wife had been away recently because the pair are about to star in a forthcoming television program.
The revelation Mrs Mehajer no longer lives at the Lidcombe mansion (pictured) comes despite Mr Mehajer long denying a split with his wife and saying the pair are about to star in a television show
Aysha Mehajer (left) is pictured with her look-a-like sister-in-law Khadijeh 'Kat' Mehajer
Mrs Mehajer also did not appear at Salim's sister Aiisha's beauty pageant last week
'Aysha and I are casting and preparing to be part of a TV series,' he said.
'She is currently in audition. At the moment we cannot disclose the show (or) series name.
'I begin casting in August 2016. You can follow our Facebook page if you wish.'
Mr Mehajer added the pair were busy gearing up to be part of his sister Khadijeh's bridal party at her wedding in a few weeks - dubbed 'Sydney's next biggest wedding'.
His remarks come after months of speculation about his relationship with his wife, following reports in May which said claimed she had moved out of the couple's Lidcombe mansion.
Mrs Mehajer was not seen at a beauty pageant where Mr Mehajer's sister, Aiisha, was a contestant last Friday.
She also was not seen in pictures from his sister Khadijeh's bridal shower in June, although Mr Mehajer said she was in attendance.
And the former deputy mayor has flooded social media with pictures of the pair together over the past couple of weeks.
Young love: Mr Mehajer is seen with his future wife, Aysha, in an earlier photo (left) and in a picture for a beauty salon on right
Aysha Mehajer (right) changed her name from April Learmonth when she married her husband in August 2015 but the AVO on Wednesday was submitted with her maiden name in place
'You put the smile on my face , the sparky (sic) in my eyes and the Love in my heart,' he captioned a photo of them together.
He also posted: 'Love is not about finding someone to live with, but rather finding someone that you cannot live without.'
Aysha Mehajer changed her name from April Learmonth when she married her husband in August 2015.
She had previously been a fair-skinned schoolgirl with strawberry-blonde hair and was a beautician before she converted to Islam and joined her husband's property development empire.
'She changed her whole life for him,' one school friend told Daily Mail Australia in 2015 - pointing to her name, religion, hair colour and profession.
Initial reports suggested she had made her transformation for her husband, but Mrs Mehajer told New Idea in October it was a 'personal preference'.
Mr Mehajer was suspended from his mayoral office for four months for failing to disclose his financial interests in relation to property he owned.
It was overturned on appeal.
A cruel mother left her five-year-old son home alone and naked in a cupboard for more than 10 hours whilst she went on a family day out at the seaside, a court heard yesterday.
The boy was sealed inside with Sellotape and given chocolate, sweets, lemonade and water for the day.
With the frightened boy shut inside, the 40-year-old mother took her two older daughters and a female friend on a day trip to Blackpool from their home in Bradford, a jury heard.
Bradford Crown Court, pictured, heard the boy's mother gave the boy sweets, chocolate, lemonade and water before locking him up in a cupboard and sealing the door with Sellotape
The woman, who is 40, went on a 140-mile round trip to Blackpool, pictured, with her female friend who is in her 20s and her two older daughters, leaving the young boy locked up in a cupboard for more than 10 hours
They left in a car at 11am and returned from the 140-mile round trip after dark at 9.30pm.
The friend, aged in her late 20s who is on trial alongside the mother for child cruelty, was said to regularly shut the boy in the wooden cupboard so they could all go shopping without him.
Giving evidence on video, the boys ten-year-old sister said the three children shared a king size bed and the empty cupboard was in the same room.
Every time [mums friend] came to the house my brother was put in the cupboard, said the schoolgirl.
She said the mother was scared for him when they went to Blackpool and it was the friend that taped the little boy in the cupboard.
Describing what happened, the girl said: First she told him to take his clothes off and then she put him in the cupboard.
On another occasion after school the friend hit the boy with a stiletto shoe.
He got a cut on his head, which started bleeding. The blood stopped when they put Superglue on it, said his sister, who described the woman going to buy glue from the shop and sticking the wound together.
The boy was also struck with a metal pole around the head, back, arms and legs in April 2014. The woman wrapped tissue on one end, where she placed her hand, and then hit him up to ten times, cutting open his chin, the court heard.
The women tried to patch it up with a sticking plaster but it continued to bleed and they had to take him to Bradford Royal Infirmary, where the boy received stitches, said prosecutor Ian Howard.
His mother was persuaded by her friend to tell doctors that her son had been running around playing airplanes and had cut himself on a clothes hanger.
The friend had begged her dont get me in trouble,' it was claimed.
But medics suspected facial injury and weals on his back were non-accidental and both women were arrested.
Clutching a soft toy and wearing her hair in pig tails, the boys six-year-old sister, told the jury at Bradford Crown Court that only her brother was mistreated by the friend.
She was angry because he messes about, said his sister. She whacked and whacked and whacked him he was crying.
Both women made no comment in interviews when questioned by the police.
The jury will hear from staff at the boys school who allegedly noticed his injuries.
All the children are now living at their grandparents home.
The boys mother denies two offences of child cruelty, between August 2012, and April 2014.
Her friend pleads not guilty to two similar charges of child cruelty and two allegations of unlawfully wounding the child.
They have not been named to protect the identities of the children.
Conviction for raping a sex worker in 2000 was overturned on Wednesday
Court of Appeal acquitted one conviction and dismissed a second
The Victorian murderer appealed two rape convictions and sentences
Serial rapist Adrian Bayley had three years cut off his jail term after a conviction for raping a sex worker in 2000 was overturned by the Victoria Court of Appeal.
The former pastry chef, 44, who has been found guilty of raping 10 women and attempting to rape two others, appealed two of his convictions to the court on Wednesday.
Justices Marilyn Warren, Mark Weinberg and Phillip Priest acquitted him of a rape conviction based on a lack of identification evidence, which reduced his non-parole period from 43 years to 40 years, but dismissed his appeal against the other conviction.
Bayley was initally sentenced to life with a non-parole period of 35 years for the rape and murder of Melbourne woman Jill Meagher in 2012 but the period increased to 43 years in 2015 when he was sentenced for an additional three rape convictions.
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Serial Victorian rapist and convicted murderer Adrian Ernest Bayley, 44, (pictured) will serve less time in jail after he successfully appealed a rape conviction on Wednesday, reducing his sentence to 40 years
Bayley raped and murdered Melbourne woman Jill Meagher, 29, (pictured) in September 2012
Ms Meagher, 29, disappeared in September 2012 as she walked home from Brunswick in the early morning hours and her body was found in a shallow grave six days later.
Her murderer, Bayley, was on parole at the time after serving eight years in prison for 16 counts of rape against five women.
A coroner ruled in May that Ms Meagher's death was preventable and suggested that the Community Correctional Services and the Adult Parole Board had failed.
The two rape convictions Bayley appealed occurred in St Kilda in 2000 and 2012.
At a hearing in March, Bayley's barrister Saul Holt QC said there were weaknesses in evidence linked to identification in the trial over the 2000 rape of a sex worker in St Kilda.
The Court of Appeal found the identification evidence should have been excluded from Bayley's trial because it had 'virtually no probative value'.
Ms Meagher was walking home from Brunswick when she disappeared and was last seen on CCTV footage (pictured)
Her body was found six days later in a shallow grave (pictured)
Her murderer, Bayley, was on parole at the time after serving eight years in prison for 16 counts of rape against five women
ADRIAN BAYLEY'S RAP SHEET * June 1991 - Bayley, then 19, jailed for raping teenager and attempting to rape two other women * 2000 - allegedly raped 18-year-old sex worker in a St Kilda laneway, conviction has been overturned * April 2002 - jailed for 11 years for 16 charges of rape relating to five victims * April 2012 - raped 25-year-old sex worker * July 2012 - raped Dutch backpacker * September 2012 - raped and murdered Brunswick woman Jill Meagher * Jailed for life with a non-parole period of 35 years * March 2015 - non-parole period increased to 43 years when sentenced on three rape convictions * By 2016 he had been found guilty of raping 10 women and attempting to rape two others. APPEALS * March 2016 - appeals conviction for 2000 daylight rape of teen sex worker, conviction for 2012 rape of Dutch backpacker, and sentence for three rapes which increased his non-parole period * July 2016 - Court of Appeal quashes 2000 rape conviction, reduces non-parole period to 40 years, dismisses appeal against 2012 rape. Advertisement
'Without the identification evidence, there was no evidence upon which a jury could find Bayley guilty,' the justices said.
Having quashed the 2000 rape conviction, the Court of Appeal fixed a new non-parole period of 40 years.
Bayley's argued against his conviction over the 2012 rape of a Dutch backpacker on the grounds telephone evidence was flawed.
The Court of Appeal rejected this argument and found the telephone records were clearly relevant.
In re-sentencing Bayley, the justices said his offending was 'utterly abhorrent' and noted his long history of sexual assaults.
'The history left little room for optimism concerning his prospects for rehabilitation,' they wrote.
The decision has sparked outrage, with many people taking to social media to vent their frustrations at Australia's justice system.
'WT? #AdrianBayley gets his sentence reduced. Aus legal system is a joke. We talk about stopping violence against women & now this? [sic]' one commenter wrote.
'Just so wrong What the hell is going on with our justice system. Bit of luck someone inside will get to him and finish him off [sic],' a women wrote on Facebook.
'Why are we wasting more time and money? Why is this guy still alive? Why are they feeding him? I WANT MY MONEY BACK AUSTRALIA,' another man said.
'WHAT???? SERIOUSLY he can never be rehabilitated his a monster and a killer,' another wrote.
Bayley (pictured) appealed two rape convictions and sentences that increased his non-parole period to 43 years
Theresa May will demand a strict limit on immigration when she negotiates Britain's exit from the European Union, her allies have said.
Senior Tory sources claim that Mrs May, who will be appointed Prime Minister by the Queen today, will make ending freedom of movement her priority.
She is also reportedly determined to see UK law gain supremacy over the EU's Court of Justice.
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Theresa May will demand a strict limit on immigration when she negotiates Britain's exit from the European Union, her allies have said
A source close to the Tory leader told the Express: 'The clear message from the EU referendum was that people want us to get back control of our borders. Theresa is absolutely determined to do that.'
Mrs May has been attempting to reduce immigration to the tens of thousands in her role as Home Secretary and her allies claim she will now push for this target with vigour.
'She understands that the British people really want this sorted out,' one ally told the Express.
The source added that Mrs May will not rush to trigger article 50 of the EU's Lisbon Treaty because of her desire to secure the right deal that crucially includes curbs on immigration.
She will be happy to negotiate the UK's trading relationship with the EU 'step by step' but will reportedly want to tackle immigration and border control from the very start of talks with Brussels.
Senior Tory sources claim that Mrs May, who will be appointed as Britain's Prime Minister by the Queen today, will make ending freedom of movement her number priority
A spokesman for Theresa May outlined her commitment to Brexit: 'Civil servants have already been charged with finding a building to house the Brexit department - an indication of Theresa's commitment to get on with delivering the verdict of EU referendum.
'Brexit means Brexit and we're going to make a success of it,' the spokesman said.
Yesterday, Mrs May told Tory Party staff: 'Now, more than ever, we need to work together, to deliver on Brexit, to build a country that works for everyone, and to truly unite our Party and our country.'
'The Labour Party brought our country to the brink of bankruptcy and we can never let them do it again.
'Whether it's led by Tony Blair, Gordon Brown or Jeremy Corbyn, when Labour prospers the country suffers.
'So let's make sure they don't prosper. Let us redouble our efforts.
Top team: Justine Greening (left) and Brexit backer Priti Patel (right) are also tipped for promotions. Mrs Mays aides said she has always believed that there should be more women in prominent government positions
'And let us make sure we put this time to good use, to build the support we need to go to the country in four years' time, and not just win, but win big.'
The claims over Mrs May's stance on immigration come as speculation mounts over who she will chose to attend her Cabinet.
The combative Amber Rudd is tipped for one of the great offices of state and could replace Mrs May in the Home Office or even move into the Treasury.
Justine Greening and Priti Patel a senior figure in the Brexit campaign are also tipped for promotions. Mrs May's aides said 'she has always believed that there should be more women in prominent government positions'.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's popularity has taken a hit after the Coalition finally declared victory in the 2016 federal election.
In a post-election poll done by Essential Report, Mr Turnbull's approval rating has dropped by three per cent in two weeks to 37 per cent.
Before the election, he had an approval rating of 40 per cent while Opposition Leader Bill Shorten's popularity polled at 37 per cent.
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Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's popularity has taken a hit after the Coalition finally declared victory in the 2016 federal election
But Mr Shorten has made up some ground in the latest poll with an approval rating of 39 per cent.
As for who would make a better prime minister, 39 per cent of participants preferred Mr Turnbull over the 31 per cent who thought Mr Shorten could do the top job.
With the Coalition just scraping an election victory, Opposition frontbencher Anthony Albanese took aim at his political rivals.
Mr Albanese said Mr Turnbull's toppling of Tony Abbott was actually a campaign negative as it meant the coalition could not highlight similar divisions in Labor.
Labor's last term of government was marked by internal ructions after Julia Gillard booted Kevin Rudd and was in turn dumped to make way for Mr Rudd just before Labor's 2013 election defeat.
'Who knew if you knocked off a first term elected prime minister there could be problems,' Mr Albanese said on Andrew Bolt's program on Sky News.
But Opposition Leader Bill Shorten has made up some ground in the latest poll with an approval rating of 39 per cent
Mr Albanese said Mr Turnbull's replacement of Mr Abbott created these problems for the coalition during the campaign.
'The internals in terms of the coalition just created enormous difficulties and it took away the ability of the coalition to campaign on divisions in the Labor Party. That's the big thing it did,' he said.
Mr Albanese said Labor did substantially better this time than it did in 2013.
Although its vote was lower than in 2013, Labor had made significant advances, picking up at least 12 seats but clearly needed to do better next time, he said.
'That could be soon, given the instability and chaos that reigns on the other side,' Mr Albanese said.
Former Labor national president Warren Mundine said Labor needed to get out to the western suburbs of Sydney and listen to their base and their concerns.
Donald Trump said Tuesday night that if Hillary Clinton wins the November election, America will be plunged into 'four more years of civil unrest' of the kind that has gripped inner cities since last week.
Trump claimed during a campaign rally in suburban Indianapolis that America's enemies smell weakness in a society that accepts race riots in the wake of police-involved shootings and the murder of police officers.
'We have our cities exploding. We have ISIS looking at us,' he said of the aggressive protests that have consumed cities in Texas, Louisiana and Minnesota.
'The other night you had 11 think of it! 11 cities potentially in a blow-up stage,' Trump told a crowd of thousands in the town of Westfield.
'Marches all over the United States. And tough marches. Anger. Hatred. Hatred! Started by a maniac that some people asked for a moment of silence for him for the killer! For the killer, okay?'
WARNING: Donald Trump told a rally crowd Tuesday night in Indiana that a President Hillary Clinton would plunge the U.S. into 'four more years of civil unrest' like the violent protest clashes that erupted following the police shootings of two black men in Louisiana and Minnesota
AUDITION: Indiana Gov. Mike Pence (left) introduced Trump with a short but passionate speech meant as a try-out for the role of running mate
Trump also forecast years of leftist urban rage if Hillary Clinton defeats him in November.
'It will be four more disgusting years of Obama,' he said. 'It will be four more years of weakness. It'll be four more years of civil unrest.'
Trump drew parallels between his vision of tough community policing and a take-no-prisoners approach to fighting terrorism.
'They don't have a clue how to beat ISIS,' he said of Clinton and the Democrats. 'They don't have a clue.'
He added minutes later that that toughness would extend to reversing the Obama administration's goal of closing the U.S. military detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
'We're not closing Gitmo,' Trump vowed. 'We're going to fill it up.'
Trump's rally, the final such event planned before the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio, served as a running-mate audition for Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, who introduced him on stage after the pair co-hosted a fundraiser in Indianapolis.
Pence called Trump 'a fighter, a builder and a patriot' who has the potential to inspire 'like no other American leader in my lifetime since Ronald Reagan.'
'Hillary Clinton must never become President of the United States of America,' he said, to home-turf cheers.
And in a nod to the 2012 Benghazi terror attacks that have formed the basis for countless Republican attacks on the former secretary of state, Pence said: 'We don't need a president who took 13 hours to send help to Americans under fire and after four brave Americans fell, said, "What difference, at this point, does it make?"'
'Anyone who ever said that, anyone who did that, should be disqualified from ever being commander-in-chief of the armed forces of the United States of America.'
CUTEST FAMILY EVER: Trump fans in this Indiana family wore matching shirts
PHENOM: Trump's rally in Westfield, Indiana was his final such event before next week's Republican National Convention
SERIOUS: Trump's stump speech gave way initially to a stemwinder praising police and self-identifying as 'the law and order candidate'
Pence's tryout followed similar appearances in North Carolina and Ohio by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.
The billionaire real estate tycoon played coy as rumors percolated of an imminent announcement and a public appearance on Friday with the veepstakes winner.
Trump joked at the end of his speech that when Indianans want to reach him in the White House, 'you'll be calling up Mike Pence. I don't know whether he's going to be your governor or your vice president. Who the hell knows? ... but you're gonna call him and you're either gonna say "Governor" or "Vice President" "Please, please speak to Mr. Trump".'
Trump's ice-breaker was a lengthy statement about the Dallas police murders 'these were great, great people,' he said and the shooting deaths of two men that preceded them.
'The police are not just part of our society. The police are the best of our society,' Trump instructed.
'They represent our highest ideals, our greatest values and our most noble characteristics,' he added.
'When our police are attacked, our entire nation is attacked. ... So the message must be delivered clearly for all to hear: The hostility against our police has to end, and it has to end right now.'
Trump paid brief notice to the deaths of Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and of Philando Castile in suburban St. Paul, Minnesota, without naming them or directly confronting the claims that racial bias was at the root of officers' decisions to fire their weapons in both cases.
'The two people that were killed in Louisiana and Minnesota, it was tough. It was tough to watch. For everybody here, it was tough to watch,' Trump said.
'We have to figure it out. We have to figure out what's going on. Was it training? Was it something else?' he asked, seeming to lean toward alonger discussion along color lines.
RECRUITING: Trump said he believes many Bernie Sanders supporters will flock to his banner now that Hillary Clinton is in charge of the Democratic Party
'It could have been something else. We have to take care of everybody,' he said.
Trump, though, described himself for the second time in two days as 'the law and order candidate,' and sided with men and women in blue.
'We can never, ever forget the hundreds of thousands of deals and great things that our police all over the country do,' he urged, 'and nobody recognizes them for what they do.'
'And when there's a problem, as bad as these two situations were and I personally think they were, they were bad, I hated, I hated watching it but as bad as they were, they get broadcast all over the world for days and days. And all of the good things, which are magnified thousands of times, nobody talks about.'
'Every once in awhile problems happen, and we're going to take care of those problems,' he added later. 'And they can be bad problems.'
'But we are going to treat our police with respect. Remember that, okay?'
Trump spoke hours after Clinton's main challenger ended his quixotic presidnetial campaign and threw his support behind her, giving the onetime first lady, senator and secretary of state a clear path to the Democratic nomination.
'Bernie Sanders gave her this sort of strange endorsement,' Trump mused.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has declined an invitation to address the NAACP's upcoming convention, flouting established precedent and highlighting anew the GOP standard-bearer's struggle to attract support from non-white voters.
NAACP president Cornell William Brooks said Trump had declined the group's invitation to speak at their gathering in Cincinnati, which begins on Saturday.
Presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton is slated to speak there on Monday, which is also the opening day of the Republican National Convention in nearby Cleveland.
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Donald Trump, pictured in Westfield, Indiana yesterday, may have thought to have tried to make time for the NAACP if he wanted to make inroads into Mrs Clinton's lead with non-white voters
Mr Brooks said the Trump campaign cited scheduling conflicts with the GOP convention, where Trump will formally accept the party's nomination.
He argued Trump should have made the time amid the racially charged fallout of videotaped killings of black men by police in Louisiana and Minnesota, followed by the killings of five Dallas police officers by a black sniper.
You can't run for president and not talk about police misconduct and police brutality Cornell William Brooks
Mr Brooks said on CNN: 'We represent an occasion for those running for president to speak to the nation's most critical issues at a critical hour in this country.
'You can't run for president and not talk about police misconduct and police brutality. You can't run for president and not talk about the nation's civil rights agenda.'
He called the gathering an opportunity for Clinton and Trump to give civil rights leaders 'a window into not only their policies, but into their heart and character as a candidate.'
The NAACP's official Twitter account used part of Brooks' interview to chide Trump.
Presumptive US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump (right) greets Indiana Governor Mike Pence yesterday. He will be in neighboring Ohio next week but has not found time to speak to the NAACP
That tweet was quickly recirculated on Clinton's official account.
Republican nominees John McCain in 2008 and Mitt Romney in 2012 addressed the NAACP convention, though Romney was booed when he told attendees he would be better for black families than President Barack Obama had been during his first term.
Black voters, who already helped propel Clinton to the Democratic nomination over Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, will be integral to the general election outcome.
African-Americans cast about 13 percent of presidential ballots in 2012, according to exit polls conducted for the AP and television networks.
Obama drew about 93 percent of the black vote, critical to his margins in such battlegrounds as Ohio and Florida.
Tenants from hell have trashed a home so badly it was filled with a foul stench, littered with mouse faeces and piled with rubbish - and an estimated $50,000 repair bill.
When the owner of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland property finally had the tenants evicted, he even found a drug den underneath the house.
Peter Constantinou told the Sunshine Coast Daily finding the mess was 'absolutely disgusting... Even pigs wouldn't live in here. This is what you call tenants from hell'.
'They shouldn't even be living in a house.'
Rubbish piled up beneath the house on the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, which Peter Constantinou had tenants in for four years
Piles of rubbish and random items were left scattered throughout the house after the tenants finally left
He said he didn't know where to start the clean-up.
Among the carnage were once-polished floorboards scraped bare, bits of drug paraphernalia everywhere, power points ripped from the walls and makeshift shelving nailed up.
Mr Constantinou had privately leased the house to a couple when the man 'begged' to rent the home, the Sunshine Coast Daily reported.
They had a 'handshake agreement'.
When they moved in they brought with them a six-year-old daughter and later two adult children and two large dogs - which had been allowed to sleep in the beds.
Mr Constantinou (pictured) estimates the bill to repair the damage caused to the house will be about $50,000
He said they'd allowed trees to grow and parked cars in the front of the property so people couldn't see what was going on in the property.
A combination of being based in Brisbane and illness meant Mr Constantinou hadn't been able to monitor rent or inspect the home, which he had owned since the 1980s.
The tenants, who he claims were both receiving Centrelink benefits, didn't pay for two years, he said.
When they were gone, he found they'd stolen a granite benchtop, gas stove top and a wall-mounted oven, the Sunshine Coast Daily reported.
Mr Constantinou admitted he had no-one to blame other than himself.
He doesn't yet know if his insurance will cover him and says landlords should 'go by the book'.
'I don't want to see this happen to anyone else.'
Now, he's to spend weeks cleaning up the property to attract new, better tenants.
Makeshift wooden shelving was hammered into the walls and beds were also nailed to the walls
A grand jury has decided not to seek criminal charges in the 1999 death of a man who was crushed to death in a garbage truck after the case was reopened after 16 years.
Lee Naus, 21, had fallen asleep in a dumpster when he was unloaded in a garbage truck on October 1, 1999 and crushed to death.
An anonymous tip in April 2015 alleged foul play and named two suspects, but the grand jury in Sandusky County, Ohio, decided to close the case without pursuing murder charges today.
Lee Naus, 21, had fallen asleep in a dumpster behind Buds Tavern on West State Street (pictured) in Fremont, Ohio, when he was unloaded in a garbage truck on October 1, 1999 and crushed to death
An anonymous tip in April 2015 alleged foul play and named two suspects, but the grand jury in Sandusky County, Ohio, decided to close the case without pursuing murder charges (pictured, the back of Bud's Tavern)
The Sandusky County Corner's office ruled Naus' death an accident, and found no signs of bullet or knife wounds, the Toledo Blade.
Toxicology reports also showed Naus was drunk at the time of his death, The News-Messenger reported.
Nearly 16 years after his death, an investigation was relaunched after an anonymous tip to the Fremont police claimed two men threw Naus into the dumpster.
The tip also pointed the finger at a former Sandusky County sheriff's detective who was known for frequently playing pranks, claiming he might have placed Naus in the dumpster, The Blade reported.
The grand jury decided Naus' death was not a criminal act on Tuesday, according to a report issued by the Seneca County prosecutor, Derek DeVine.
Evidence supporting the claims that Naus was placed in the dumpster as a joke were found to be 'unreliable', and the statute of limitations for negligent homicide had expired.
Evidence supporting the claims that Naus was placed in the dumpster as a joke were found to be 'unreliable', and the statute of limitations for negligent homicide had expired
The report also said the grand jury found 'no evidence of any cover up by any law enforcement officials regarding this investigation.'
Fremont Detective Roger Oddo was acknowledged as having interviewed 'every conceivable witness and pursued every known lead'.
County prosecutor DeVine said: 'This is the end of the criminal investigation into the death of Lee Naus.
Prince Harry's memoir will be called Spare, it was revealed today - with publisher Penguin Random House confirming the 28 book 'full of insight, self-examination, and hard-won wisdom' will be released on January 10. The memoir had initially been signed off ready for an expected autumn release as part of a multi-million pound, three-title deal with Penguin Random House. But its publication was delayed following the Queen's death, and Harry is said to have requested a number of alterations to make it less critical of the Royal Family. A press release released today read: 'Spare takes readers immediately back to one of the most searing images of the twentieth century: two young boys, two princes, walking behind their mother's coffin as the world watched in sorrow-and horror. 'As Diana, Princess of Wales was laid to rest, billions wondered what the princes must be thinking and feeling-and how their lives would play out from that point on. For Harry, this is his story at last. With its raw, unflinching honesty, Spare is a landmark publication full of insight, revelation, self-examination, and hard-won wisdom about the eternal power of love over grief.' It is understood that Harry was paid an advance of $20 million (18.4 million) for the book as part of a three-title deal worth 36.8 million. Today, Penguin Random House said the duke had donated $1,500,000 Sentebale, a charity helping children affected by HIV/AIDS. He will also donate 300,000 to WellChild, which he has been patron of for 15 years. Random House CEO Markus Dohle said: 'Penguin Random House is honoured to be publishing Prince Harry's candid and emotionally powerful story for readers everywhere. He shares a remarkably moving personal journey from trauma to healing, one that speaks to the power of love and will inspire and encourage millions of people around the world.'
Conservatives took to Twitter to criticize the president for speaking on gun control during the tribute
'We flood communities with so many guns that it is easier for a teenager to buy a Glock than to get his hands on a computer,' Obama said
But then he waded into controversial territory by making comments on gun control during his speech on Tuesday
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President Obama sparked a backlash on Twitter after making comments on gun control during a speech honoring the five fallen police officers killed in last week's sniper attack in Dallas.
As he led a memorial to the officers alongside former President George W. Bush in Texas on Tuesday, Obama made unifying comments about the relationship between police and black communities, trying to articulate the viewpoints of both.
Obama spoke near five empty chairs for the white police officers killed last week by a black man seeking vengeance for police killings.
Behind him, underscoring his message of unity: Dallas police officers, a racially diverse church choir and local officials who ranged from black Police Chief David Brown to Bush, a Dallas resident.
But then Obama waded into more controversial territory when he spoke of gun control, saying: 'We flood communities with so many guns that it is easier for a teenager to buy a Glock than to get his hands on a computer.'
It led to criticism on Twitter from conservatives and reporters, who branded him 'the worst' for the polarizing remarks during the speech.
Ben Shapiro, the editor of the conservative Daily Wire, wrote on Twitter: 'Cops murdered by racist. Obama eulogizes them by lying about cops and gun control. What a nasty piece of goods.'
Fox News contributor Katie Pavlich said: 'How am I surprised Obama would use a memorial for police to lecture about gun control and politics? He is the worst.'
Josh Kraushaar, politics editor at the National Journal, added: 'Agree or disagree, the second part of Obama's speech polarizing. Felt like a State of the Union for a moment based on who was applauding.
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Criticism: President Obama sparked a backlash on Twitter after making comments on gun control during a speech honoring the five fallen police officers killed in last week's sniper attack in Dallas.
Polarizing: Obama waded into controversial territory when he spoke of gun control, saying: 'We flood communities with so many guns that it is easier for a teenager to by a Glock than to get his hands on a computer'
Before arriving in Dallas, Obama had called the families of the two men killed, Alton Sterling and Philando Castile.
The president, echoing Dallas Police Chief David Brown, said the country expected too much of its police force 'and we ask too little of ourselves.'
'As a society we choose to under-invest in decent schools, we allow poverty to fester so that entire, we refuse to fund drug treatment and mental health programs,' Obama said.
'We flood communities with so many guns that it is easier for a teenager to buy a glock than get his hands on a computer or even a book,' the president continued.
'And then we tell the police, you're the social worker, you're the parent, you're the teacher, you're the drug counselor, we tell them to keep those neighborhoods in check at all costs, and do so without causing any political blowback or inconvenience, don't make the mistake that might disturb our own peace of mind and then we feign surprise when periodically the tensions boil over,' the president added.
Bush, in a rare public appearance said, 'the shock of this evil has not faded,' taking the stage at the Morton H. Meyerson Sympnony Center before his successor.
The former president and Dallas resident called the slain officers 'the best among us' and said the Dallas Police Department has 'been mighty inspirations for the rest of the nation.'
President Obama followed Brown onstage, who spoke the lyrics of Stevie Wonder's 'As,' to show love to his fellow officers.
'I'm so glad I met Michelle first, because she loves Stevie Wonder,' President Obama said once he took the stage.
Backlash: Obama's comments on gun control led to criticism from conservatives and reporters on the social media platform
Difficult subject: The president has argued that, despite the heated public outcry of the past week, the country is not as divided as it may seem
Poignant: President Barack Obama on Tuesday gathered with politicians, police officers and families of the fallen in Dallas to call for unity in the wake of a shocking slaying of five police officers by a black man who said he wanted revenge for the killings of blacks by police
Tribute: President Barack Obama speaks during a memorial service at the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center
Message: People in Dallas and across the United States are suffering in the wake of last week's slaying of five police officers at a protest against police violence, President Barack Obama told a memorial on Tuesday for victims of the deadliest day for U.S. law enforcement in almost 15 years
Unifier: 'Scripture tells us that in our suffering there is glory. Because we know that suffering produces perseverance,' Obama told a crowd several hundred people, including many uniformed police officers, at the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center. 'Right now, those words test us because the people of Dallas, people across the country are suffering.'
Intent: US President Barack Obama speaks during an interfaith memorial service for the victims of the Dallas police shooting (left) and afterwards hugs Dallas Police Chief David Brown
President Barack Obama speaks at the memorial for the five police officers slain last week in Dallas, Texas
Becoming quickly solemn, Obama spoke of the Bible.
'Scripture tells in in our suffering there is glory because we know that suffering produces perseverance, perseverance character and character hope,' the president said.
'Sometimes the truths of these words are hard to see,' he continued.
'Right now those words test us,' Obama added.
The president went back to that night, acknowledging that the police officers became targets because they were helping protesters act on their constitutional rights.
'For awhile the protest went on without incident and despite the fact that police conduct was the subject of the protest, despite the fact that there must have been signs or slogans or chants which with they profoundly disagreed,' Obama said.
'These men and this department did their jobs like professionals that they were,' the president noted.
'Then around 9 o'clock the gunfire came. Another community torn apart. More hearts broken, more questions about what caused and what might prevent another tragedy,' the president said.
The president said he realized that Americans were struggling: 'First the shootings in Minnesota and Baton Rouge, the protests, then the targeting of police by the shooter here.'
'An act not just of demented violence but of racial hatred,' Obama said.
The three incidents together exposed some of the 'deepest fault lines' of the American democracy, Obama continued and widened some wounds.
Gratitude: US President Barack Obama shakes hands with Dallas Police Chief David Brown (2nd L) watched by First Lady Michelle Obama (L) and Dallas Area Rapid Transit Police Chief James Spiller
Touching: First Lady Michelle Obama hugs Dallas Police Chief David Brown (2nd L) as US President Barack Obama hugs Dallas Area Rapid Transit Police Chief James Spiller (R) during the memorial service in Dallas
President Barack Obama, (third from right), gives DART Police Chief J.D. Spiller a hug as first lady Michelle Obama hugs Dallas Police Chief David Brown, (center), after an interfaith memorial service for the five fallen officers
President Barack Obama, (center), joins hands with Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings and other dignitaries during an interfaith memorial service at the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center in Dallas on Tuesday, July 12, 2016, for five law enforcement officers killed last week in an ambush at a Black Lives Matter rally. From left are Vice President Joe Biden, former first lady Laura Bush, former President George W. Bush, first lady Michelle Obama, President Barack Obama, Mayor Mike Rawlings, Micki Rawlings, Dallas Police Chief David Brown and DART police chief J.D. Spiller
Song: Former president George W. Bush, First Lady Michelle Obama and U.S. President Barack Obama sing the Battle Hymn of the Republic at the end of the memorial service for the murdered police officers who died in Dallas last week
Involved: Former president George W. Bush sings enthusiastically along to the Battle Hymn of the Republic with First Lady Michelle Obama
Joining in: Former president George W. Bush, former first lady Laura Bush, First Lady Michelle Obama and President Barack Obama share a moment during the memorial for the five murdered Dallas police on Tuesday
Hug; President Barack Obama, (left), and First Lady Michelle Obama, (center), reach out to former President George W. Bush during the service
Linked: President Barack Obama holds hands with Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings, (right), and First Lady Michelle Obama during the interfaith memorial service for the fallen police officers
Powerful speech: US President Barack Obama listens to Dallas Police Department Chief David Brown during the Interfaith Tribute to Dallas Fallen Officers at the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center in Dallas - he extensively quoted from Stevie Wonder during his speech
Hand shake: US President Barack Obama is greeted by Dallas Police Department Chief David Brown at the memorial service for the five police officers gunned down on Thursday
Listening to the president: Officials, including Dallas Police Department Chief David Brown (C) reflect on Barack Obama's words during the Interfaith Tribute to Dallas Fallen Officers at the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center in Dallas
Salute for fallen comrades: Police join hands during the singing of 'The Battle Hymn of the Republic' at the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center
Police listen as U.S. President Barack Obama speaks during a memorial service for five policemen killed last week in a sniper attack in Dallas, Texas
Emotion: President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama attend an interfaith memorial service for the fallen police officers and members of the Dallas community
This administration was joined by the last one with President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden and their wives standing alongside former President George W. Bush and former first lady Laura Bush
'The shock of this evil has not faded' said former President George W. Bush as he paid tribute to the officers killed in Dallas, where he now resides
Unity: First lady Michelle Obama and President George W. Bush, flanked by President Barack Obama and former first lady Laura Bush, share a moment during the memorial service for the five Dallas police officers killed on Thursday
Two presidents were on hand today in Dallas with President George W. Bush, with wife first lady Laura Bush, making a rare appearance with President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama
Fallen: Portraits of the five fallen police officers are seen at rear as a memorial at the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center in Dallas
Respect: An honor guard passes the photos of the fallen police officers during a memorial service at the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center, on Tuesday, July 12, 2016, in Dallas
Listening intently: Former first lady Laura Bush former US president George W. Bush and US President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama listen to music during the memorial service in Dallas today
President Obama arrives in Dallas, Texas, today with first lad Michelle Obama and Republican Sen. Ted Cruz in tow
President Obama huddles with Sen. Ted Cruz as they arrive in Dallas, Texas, in a bipartisan show of solidarity that also includes President George W. Bush giving remarks
Five chairs were left empty and draped with American flags today in Dallas to honor the five police officers killed by a racist sniper overnight on Thursday
'I'LL BE LOVING YOU, ALWAYS': DALLAS POLICE CHIEF RECITES POWERFUL LYRICS TO STEVIE WONDER'S AS 'We all know sometimes life's hates and troubles Icon and musician: Stevie Wonder's 1976 masterpiece album Songs in the Key of Life dealt with issues from the civil rights movement that took hold of the United States in the 1960s Can make you wish you were born in another time and space But you can bet your life times that and twice its double That God knew exactly where he wanted you to be placed So make sure when you say you're in it but not of it You're not helping to make this earth a place sometimes called Hell Change your words into truths and then change that truth into love And maybe our children's grandchildren And their great-great grandchildren will tell I'll be loving you Until the ocean covers every mountain high--Loving you Until the dolphin flies and parrots live at sea--Loving you Until we dream of life and life becomes a dream--Be loving you Until the day is night and night becomes the day--Loving you Until the trees and seas up, up and fly away--Loving you Until the day that 8x8x8x8 is 4--Loving you Until the day that is the day that are no more--Loving you Until the day the earth starts turning right to left--Be loving you Until the earth just for the sun denies itself--Loving you Until dear Mother Nature says her work is through--Loving you Until the day that you are me and I am you-- Now ain't that loving you Until the rainbow burns the stars out in the sky Ain't that loving you Until the ocean covers every mountain high And I've got to say always Tribute: Dallas Police Chief David Brown read out the lyrics to Stevie Wonder's 1976 song As - to show his love for his colleagues who died Until the dolphin flies and parrots live at sea always Until we dream of life and life becomes a dream-always Until the day is night and night becomes the day-always Until the trees and seas just up and fly away-always Until the day that 8x8x8 is 4-always Until the day that is the day that are no more-always Until the day the earth starts turning right to left- always Until the earth just for the sun denies itself always Until dear Mother Nature says her work is through- always Until the day that you are me and I am you Until the rainbow burns the stars out in the sky Until the ocean covers every mountain high Until the dolphin flies and parrots live at sea Until we dream of life and life becomes a dream Until the day is night and night becomes the day Until the trees and seas just up and fly away Until the day that 8x8x8 is 4 Until the day that is the day that are no more Until the day the earth starts turning right to left Until the earth just for the sun denies itself Until dear Mother Nature says her work is through Until the day that you are me and I am you' Advertisement
'I understand how Americans are feeling, but Dallas, I'm here to say we must reject such despair. I'm here to insist that we are not as divided as we seem. And I know this because I know America,' the president said.
The president lauded the Dallas Police Officers who shielded protesters from the bullets, who 'did not react recklessly' and who showed 'incredible restraint.'
He talked about the steady leadership of those in Dallas, as so many communities in the county were up in arms over fatal police shootings.
'The Dallas Police Department has been doing it the right way,' Obama said.
But then it was time for some real talk, as the president pivoted to discuss the realities that the country still faced.
'We know that the overwhelming majority of police officers do an incredible job,' Obama began, scolding those who have called for violence against the police for the actions of a few bad officers.
President Obama added that 'race relations have improved dramatically in my lifetime.'
'Those who deny it are dishonoring the struggles that helped us achieve that progress,'
'But we know but America, we know that bias remains. We know it! Whether you are black or white or Hispanic or Asian or Native-American or of Middle Eastern descent, we have all seen this bigotry in our own lives at some point,' he continued.
'We've heard it at times in our own homes. If we're honest, perhaps we've heard prejudice in our own heads. Felt it in our own hearts. We know that.'
President Obama and first lady Michelle Obama arrived in Dallas Tuesday afternoon, where the president will give remarks at a non-denominational service for the five slain police officers
Vice President Joe Biden (center) arrives in Dallas with wife Jill Biden (left), Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins (center left) and Fort Worth, Texas Mayor Betsy Price (center right)
Vice President Joe Biden arrives in Dallas, Texas. He's accompanied by his wife Dr. Jill Biden
Study after study shows, Obama pointed out, that blacks and whites experience the criminal justice system differently.
'When more than 50 years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act, we cannot simply turn away and dismiss those in peaceful protests as troublemakers, or paranoid,' Obama pointed out.
'We can't simply dismiss it as a symptom of political correctness, or reverse racism,' he said, using a term often uttered by the presumptive Republican nominee, Donald Trump.
'To have your experience denied like that, dismissed by those in authority, dismissed perhaps even by your white friends and co-workers and fellow church members again and again and again, it hurts. Surely we can see that. All of us.'
Before Obama gave his talk, Dallas Police Chief Brown, who's gotten national attention for his extremely competent handling of the situation, gave the memorial its lighthearted moment.
'When I was a teenager and started liking girls, I could never find the words to express myself,' he began.
Brown explained that after a few unsuccessful tries, he attempted a new strategy: reciting song lyrics at women he wanted to take on dates.
'So for girls I liked I would pull out some Al Green or some Teddy Pendergrass,' he mentioned, asking the audience to envision the bald police chief with a full fro, bell bottom jeans and wide collared shirts.
'But for people that I loved, if I fell in love with a girl, I'd have to dig down deep and get some Stevie Wonder,' he said.
'So today I'm going to pull out some Stevie Wonder for these families,' he said, and began reciting the lyrics to the song, 'As.'
Dallas victims: Brent Thompson (left) and Mike Krol (right) were two of the officers killed in Dallas
Family: Patrick Zamarripa (above with his family) was one of the five shot dead
Painful loss: Lorne Ahrens (left) was a former deputy in Los Angeles and Michael Smith (right) a father of two
President Bush spoke of the call to duty of those in blue.
'Most of us imagine if the moment called for that we would risk our lives to protect a spouse or a child, those wearing uniform assume that risk for the safety of strangers,' Bush said.
'They and their families share the unspoken knowledge that each new day can bring new dangers,' he continued.
'But none of us were prepared or could be prepared by an ambush of hatred and malice,' Bush added.
Before Bush, Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings spoke first at the interfaith memorial service Tuesday afternoon.
He proclaimed that the 'soul of our city was pierced' on Thursday night. And he said the police were the ones fighting a disease 'this absurd violence on our streets.
Rawlings pointed to the five seats, filled with American flags, left empty for the lives that were lost.
This was the 11th trip Obama made to a city during his presidency to console the family and friends of victims of mass shootings.
In the past Obama and Bush have joined forces in Selma, Alabama in 2015; in Tanzania in 2013, for a wreath-laying ceremony to pay homage to the 1998 embassy bombing victims in Dar es Salaam.
They also appeared together at the 10 year anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks in 2011, gathering at Ground Zero, according to CNN.
In Dallas today, they were joined by former first lady Laura Bush, as well as Vice President Joe Biden and his wife, Dr. Jill Biden.
Bush had served as governor of Texas before moving into the Oval Office in 2001.
Gunman Micah Johnson sprayed bullets at Dallas police Thursday night, killing five, before he was taken out by a robot carrying an explosive. Pictured right is Johnson in high school where he was a below average student
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who vied for the Republican nomination, was also aboard Air Force One today, CNN reported, in a bipartisan show of support.
His Senate counterpart, Texas Sen. John Cornyn, introduced Bush.
At the end of the service the elected official sitting onstage joined hands and sang 'Battle Hymn of the Republic,' with President Bush squeezing first lady Michelle Obama's hand. The first lady was seated next to Bush throughout the program and was spotted patting his left hand to show appreciationg for his comments.
Before leaving the stage the Obamas, Bushes and Bidens applauded the uniformed police officers who were in the audience.
The pictures of the five officers killed were left onstage as the political parade exited.
On Thursday in Dallas, gunman Micah Johnson sprayed bullets at police officers who were charged with monitoring a peaceful Black Lives Matter protest.
Overall, 12 police officers were shot and five were killed.
The victims were later identified as: Brent Thompson, 43; Patrick Zamarripa, 32; Michael Krol, 40; Michael Smith, 55; and 48-year-old Lorne Ahrens.
Dallas police eventually used a robot to kill Johnson.
President Obama was joined by first lady Michelle Obama in the South Lawn today as they boarded Marine One en route to Dallas, Texas, for a memorial service for five fallen police officers
The Obamas, photographed leaving the White House mid-morning Tuesday, will be joined by President George W. Bush and former first lady Laura Bush once they arrive in Dallas for a rare joint appearance
A police officer's act of kindness has gone viral after he decided to pay for the dinner of a couple who refused to sit next to him and his brothers in blue at a Pennsylvania restaurant.
Officer Chuck Thomas and three other officers were enjoying their dinner at the Eat'n Park diner in Waterfront when he noticed a couple who were supposed to be seated across from his group.
That's when Thomas heard the man tell the waiter 'I don't want to sit there', immediately drawing his attention.
Pennsylvania cop Chuck Thomas (top left) was sitting with his fellow officers at the Eat'n Park diner in Waterfront when he noticed a couple come in and refuse to sit next to their table
It was the day after five officers were killed in Dallas and Thomas wanted to try and reach out. So he and another officer split the couple's dinner bill, and left a message on their receipt
'We made eye contact, and his body language just told me that he wanted nothing to do with police,' Thomas told ABC News.
It was the day after five police officers were killed during a protest in Dallas. Thomas, an officer with the Homestead Police Department, tried to reach out.
'I looked over and said, "It's okay sir. You won't have to worry about it, we won't hurt you," Thomas told WTAE.
'He looked at me hard again and said hes not sitting here and walked away.'
The couple got moved to a table 'completely opposite' from where the officers were sitting. But Thomas wanted to do something after the Dallas tragedy.
Thomas decided to split the couple's $28.58 bill with a fellow officer, even leaving the server a $10 tip, and made sure to scribble a message on their receipt.
'Sir, your check was paid for by the police officers that you didn't want to sit next to,' it read. 'Thanks for your support.'
Thomas (pictured with his daughter) said the 'goal' was to make sure the couple knew the officers were there to protect them and that they wanted to 'better the relationship between the community and the police'
Thomas said the 'goal' was to make sure the couple knew the police officers were there to protect them.
'We're not here to hurt you, we're here for you,' he said. 'We work for the public. And we just want to better the relationship between the community and the police.'
Thomas said it was the only 'negative experience' that day, when many were coming up to the officers to thank them and shake their hands after the tragedy in Dallas.
A sever later revealed to Thomas that the couple had been 'thrown back' by his generosity, and ended up 'chuckling' when they saw the receipt.
The officer hopes it is a sign that the tension won't last forever.
'This us-against-them mentality that's out here, we've got to change that,' he said.
Experts believe they could be just three years away from developing the world's first dementia vaccine.
The breakthrough formula, which is being developed by researchers at Flinders University in Adelaide, could be used to prevent and even reverse some of the symptoms of the disease, which affects millions of people worldwide.
If clinical trials are successful, it could be used within in three to five years and administered like a preventative flu shot for men and women over 50.
The vaccine formula targets the buildup of amyloid-beta (a-beta) and tau proteins in the brain that block synapses and cause Alzheimer's by helping the immune system produce powerful antibodies to remove the broken down material.
Experts at Flinders University in Adelaide have created a breakthrough formula which they believe could combat dementia
'You could actually give it to everyone, say when they turn 50, a bit like we give all high-risk groups a flu shot, and thereby stop it in its tracks. You can immunise for it before it even starts,' Flinders University medicine Professor Nikolai Petrovsky told The Australian.
He said clinical trials, which are being held in conjunction with US colleagues from the Institute of Molecular Medicine and University of California (Irvine), are expected in the next couple of years.
Alzheimer's is thought to be caused primarily by the breakdown of two proteins in the brain, amyloid-beta (a-beta) and tau.
HOW DOES THE VACCINE WORK? Alzheimer's is thought to be caused by the breakdown of two proteins in the brain, amyloid-beta (a-beta) and tau. The broken-down material can cause sticky clumps to form and block synapses, so signals cannot pass between brain cells. Experts at Flinders University are developing a vaccine that helps the immune system produce powerful antibodies to breakdown the material, allowing cells to communicate. Advertisement
'[The proteins are] a bit like the car in your driveway,' Professor Petrovsky told The ABC.
'Essentially what we have designed is a vaccine that makes the immune system produce antibodies and those antibodies act like tow trucks so they come to your driveway, they latch on to the breakdown protein or car and they pull it out of the driveway.'
Worldwide 47.5 million people have dementia and there are 7.7 million new cases every year, according to the World Health Organisation.
Common symptoms include deterioration in memory, thinking, behaviour and the ability to do everyday tasks.
Alzheimer's Australia estimates there are more than 353,800 Australians living with dementia, which is most commonly caused by Alzheimer's disease.
Without a medical breakthrough, that number is expected to rise to almost 900,000 by 2050.
A man claiming to have sold Micah Johnson, the 25-year-old who went on a rampage killing five police officers in Dallas, an AK-47 in the parking lot of a Target has come forward.
Colton Crews, 26, who sold the gun, said the deal was organized on Facebook and told the New York Daily News he forgot about the sale until last week, when he was tracked down by federal investigators.
Crews said he met Johnson for 15 minutes in the retail giant's parking lot in November of 2014.
No red flags appeared during the meeting, he said.
Micah Johnson (pictured, left and right), 25, from Mesquite, Texas, shot 12 police officers, killing five, before being killed by a robotic bomb detonated by police after a four hour standoff on July 7
'I don't even know how I feel about it right now. I have no idea. It's awful. It's just bad.
'He didn't stand out as a nut job. He didn't stand out as a crazy person at all.
'He stood out as just another guy. And he was U.S. service, so he was like your first pick when you're selling a gun to somebody,' Crews told the Daily News. '
Johnson paid Crews the $600 for the high-power semi-automatic AK-47, made sure the gun worked, chatted for a bit and went their separate ways.
He said he sold the gun to be able to afford a plane ticket to a friend's wedding.
Colton Crews (not pictured), 26, sold the Johnson an AK-47 semi-automatic rifle after organizing the deal on Facebook (STOCK IMAGE)
Johnson paid Crews the $600 for the high-power semi-automatic AK-47, made sure the gun worked, chatted for a bit and went their separate ways. 'My stepdad actually gets out, thanks him for his service, and lets us do our thing,' Crews said (Johnson pictured, right)
'The wedding was in Mexico, which is why the tickets were so expensive, which is why I needed to start downsizing my collection,' he said.
Under Texas law for a private sale, the transaction was legal.
Crews' step-father accompanied his to the sale, he said. They both though Johnsn was just a war veteran interested in owning one of the high-power weapons like what he had used on the battle field.
'He's in a black SUV, (we) get out, shake his hand, introduce ourselves in person. My stepdad actually gets out, thanks him for his service, and lets us do our thing,' Crews said.
The transaction, which was legal under Texas's law for private sales, took place in the parking lot of a Target (STOCK IMAGE)
It was not confirmed the gun Crews sold to Johnson was or was not used in the attack in Dallas (STOCK IMAGE)
Crews also said he did his own background check on Johnson using the internet and said he felt like the 25-year-old was a 'good guy' at the time.
It was not confirmed the gun Crews sold to Johnson was or was not used in the attack in Dallas.
'He said, "All we can say is it was recovered, we're just finding out everything we can".
'He didn't say it was the one he used. I hope to God it wasn't. I hope I'm not that close to all this,' Crews said.
Investigators found a host of weapons at Johnson's home in Mesquite, Texas, including rifles, ammunition, bomb-making materials and bullet-proof vests.
Inmate Larry Darnell Gordon (pictured), 45, who shot two bailiffs while being transported, was able to grab a gun because he was handcuffed in the front of his body, rather than the back
The inmate who fatally shot two court bailiffs after grabbing a deputy's gun was able to do so because he was handcuffed in the front of his body, a Michigan Sheriff said on Tuesday.
Berrien County Sheriff Paul Bailey initially told reporters that Larry Darnell Gordon, 45, was not handcuffed Monday during the brazen courthouse escape attempt.
On Tuesday, Bailey revised that account, explaining that Gordon was cuffed in front but that the restraint was not attached to a belly chain, which security experts say is a safer way to restrict movement.
Bailey pledged to review his department's guidelines for transporting suspects charged with violent crimes after the tragedy.
'We're going to look at everything about why this happened and make sure that if there are things we can change so this never happens again, we will,' Bailey said. 'We'll be working with our chief judge about our protocols at the courthouse.'
Gary Klugiewicz, an inmate transport expert with security consultant Vistelar in Wisconsin and a retired Milwaukee County sheriff's captain, said the lack of a transport belt could have played a major role in the fatal shootings.
'Somebody handcuffed in front is totally able to do just about anything if they're not restrained to any type of belt,' he said.
Gordon was being moved from a holding cell in an area of the courthouse not open to the public when he disarmed Deputy James Atterberry Jr. during a fight and shot him.
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The bailiffs killed by Gordon were identified as Joseph Zangaro (pictured, left), 61, and Ronald Kienzle (pictured, right), 63
Michigan Lt. Gov. Brian Calley speaks to community members at the Berrien County Law Enforcement Memorial following a community march
He then moved into a public hallway in the courthouse and killed bailiffs Joseph Zangaro, 61, and Ronald Kienzle, 63, both retired police officers, Bailey said.
The detainee also shot a woman in the arm and briefly took hostages before being fatally shot by other bailiffs at the courthouse in St. Joseph, the county seat of 8,300 people about 65 miles northeast of Chicago.
'He was trying to escape,' the sheriff said.
Gordon who was charged with kidnapping, sex assault and obstructing police in April 2016.
Family: Gordon with his ex-wife Jessica and daughter Cheyenne, who is now 6-years-old
Happier times: Jessica said he was probably afraid of going to prison and wanted to 'get home to our baby girl.' She said that Gordon and his 6-year-old daughter Cheyenne were very close
He said the longtime law enforcement officers were close friends of his who became court officers after retiring from their departments.
'Our hearts are torn apart. ... I have known them for over 30 years. It's a sad day,' Sheriff Paul Bailey said of the bailiffs.
Zangaro was head of court security. He retired from the Michigan State Police as commander of the Bridgman Post in Berrien County.
Kienzle retired as a sergeant of the Benton Township police department after serving in the U.S. Army.
Both had been employed by the court for more than a decade.
The injuries suffered by the deputy and the civilian weren't considered life-threatening.
Bailey said the deputy, 41-year-old James Atterberry Jr., had surgery on his arm and is 'doing fine.'
He said the civilian was a woman who also suffered an arm injury. He did not identify her.
Bailey said the courthouse would be closed on Tuesday.
Earlier on Monday, he said the shooting is being investigated by the sheriff's department as well as by the St. Joseph's Police Department and Michigan State Police.
'Those bailiffs were heroes along with all the other officers,' Bailey said.
'They ran to where shots were being fired.
'This could have been a lot worse without them being so brave to go into the gunfire and take this person down.'
People scrambled for cover inside the Berrien County Courthouse in St. Joseph, a city about 100 miles northeast of Chicago, when the prisoner opened fire at around 2.30pm
Berrien County Sheriff Paul Bailey said 'brave officers' took down the gunman, who was an in-custody inmate who had grabbed a deputy's weapon and started shooting
Nathan Hall, a consultant with the National Center for State Courts, which advises court officials on security, said it is best if two deputies transport an inmate.
One armed with a stun gun or baton, but not a firearm would escort the defendant directly.
The second deputy, armed with a gun, would trail at a safe distance.
'That best practice is tailored specifically to the potential for a firearm to be used against that transporting officer,' Hall said. 'These are best practices. The reality is that that can be expensive. We understand that. However, these instances happen.'
Hall said his group also recommends handcuffing from behind.
Two bailiffs were killed and two more people more injured before the suspect was fatally shot by other officers on Monday
In an interview, Gordon's ex-wife said she spoke with him Sunday and had no indication he was planning an attack.
Jessica Gordon said her ex-husband was 'an amazing man that got mixed up with the wrong people,' WOOD-TV reports.
Jessica said he was probably afraid of going to prison and wanted to 'get home to our baby girl.' She said that Gordon and his 6-year-old daughter Cheyenne were very close.
She later said in an interview with the Detroit Free Press: 'He's not a monster.'
Governor Rick Snyder cut short a visit to Midland and traveled across the state to St. Joseph to meet with investigators and victims' families.
Police vehicles are seen at the entrance to the Berrien County Courthouse in Michigan on Monday
Snyder called it a 'terrible day in a wonderful community.'
Earlier on Monday, Snyder said the courthouse had been secured and that an investigation into the shooting is underway.
'Please join me in praying for those affected. We will share more information here from MSP as it becomes available,' Snyder added.
Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump tweeted about the incident shortly after news broke.
'Thoughts and prayers with the victims, and their families - along with everyone at the Berrien County Courthouse in St. Joseph, Michigan,' the 70-year-old wrote.
Berrien County, which borders Indiana, is in the far southwestern corner of Michigan.
A man has been crushed to death in a freak accident when a tree fell on his car while he was driving in 100km/h winds.
The motorist was on the M1 highway north of Wollongong just after 9.15am on Wednesday when the large gum tree crashed onto the cab of his ute, or work truck, causing him to crash into a concrete barrier.
The man, who is not yet unidentified and was the only person travelling in the car, died while paramedics were treating his critical injuries at the scene.
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A ute involved in a fatal accident when a tree fell on the car causing the motorist to crash into a concrete barrier
A NSW Ambulance spokesperson confirmed to Daily Mail Australia paramedics were called to Mount Ousley at 9.20 am.
An SES spokesman said winds had reached up to 100km/h around the Illawarra region with crews attending numerous jobs about felled trees and fallen branches.
Truck driver Robert Tindall was driving behind the ute near the Picton Rd overpass when the tree snapped apart in the wind and crashed down, reports Illawarra Mercury.
'I saw out of the corner of my eye the tree starting to fall down, then it just fell straight on top of the [ute],' he said.
'The ute, obviously because he didn't know what happened, has hit the concrete barrier pretty hard. It was like it happened in slow motion, then bang.'
Another woman who saw the tree crash down said the driver 'did nothing wrong'
The motorist was on the M1 highway when the large gum tree crashed onto the cab of his ute causing him to crash into a concrete barrier
The male motorist died while paramedics were treating his critical injuries at the scene of the accident
Large numbers of NSW Rural Fire Service attended the scene to clear the tree after the freak accident
He said the contents of the ute spilled across the road after the accident.
Large numbers of NSW Rural Fire Service attended the scene to clear the tree from the road before the highway was reopened around 11.10am.
Since Tuesday night, the NSW SES has received more than 120 calls for help from Sydney, Illawarra and Southern Highlands regions as winds bring down trees and power lines
Accused 'burglar killer' Ben Batterham has returned to his job as a chef at a prestigious members-only Newcastle restaurant, just two months after he was released from prison on bail.
The Newcastle Club, where the 33-year-old worked for three years, offered to continue his employment until his trial and Daily Mail Australia understands the club paid his wages for the six weeks he was behind bars.
Batterham was charged with the murder of Ricky Slater after the 34-year-old broke into Batterham's house in Newcastle in the early hours of Easter Saturday and a fight ensued.
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Accused 'burglar killer' Ben Batterham (pictured last month) has returned to his job as a chef at a prestigious members-only Newcastle restaurant
The 33-year-old worked for at the Newcastle Club for three years and they offered to continue his employment while he is on bail and until his trial
The young father will be helping staff at the club prepare for their Bastille Day event on Thursday, news.com.au reported.
He will also be working in the kitchen when the restaurant throws a Melbourne Cup Day lunch in November.
Last month, a source told Daily Mail Australia staff and members 'all support' the man and would welcome his return.
According to its website, The Newcastle Club enforces a strict dress code and refuses entry to patrons wearing 'denim, sweatshirts, shorts, collarless shirts or sandals'.
The Newcastle Club (pictured), where the 33-year-old worked for three years, offered to continue his employment until his trial
Police facts obtained by Daily Mail Australia earlier this year appear to show he was bruised and marked when photographed by officers immediately after the incident
Batterham's barrister, prominent Sydney defence lawyer Winston Terracini, said in court he had been bitten by Slater as they scuffled on the street outside his home. He underwent an HIV test afterwards, it was revealed
Batterham noted the fact he could return to the club as part of his bail application.
Batterham's arrest in March sparked outrage among supporters who argued he was merely protecting his family and home.
Granting bail last month at Newcastle Local Court, Magistrate Robert Stone said his reaction to chase Slater down the street may be 'explained' given the circumstances.
Police facts obtained by Daily Mail Australia earlier this year appear to show he was bruised and marked when photographed by officers immediately after the incident.
Batterham was charged with the murder of Ricky Slater (pictured) after the 34-year-old broke into Batterham's house in Newcastle
Batterham, who was celebrating birthday drinks with his friend, allegedly chased Slater from the house (pictured) and down several streets. Police allege Batterham then tackled Slater on the ground
Batterham's barrister, prominent Sydney defence lawyer Winston Terracini, said in court he had been bitten by Slater as they scuffled on the street outside his home. He underwent an HIV test afterwards, it was revealed.
Batterham, who was celebrating birthday drinks with his friend Paul O'Keeffe, allegedly chased Slater from the house and down several streets.
Police allege Batterham then tackled Slater on the ground, held him and punched him in the head.
Slater was taken to hospital where his life support was switched off the following day and Batterham's charge of assault causing grievous bodily harm was upgraded to murder.
The trial is not likely to begin until next year in Newcastle. Until then Batterham must report daily to police, not apply for a passport and must not drink alcohol or take drugs.
The Sydney siege inquest has heard extraordinary testimony from the first marksman to storm the Lindt Cafe who on identifying gunman Man Monis shouted to his team, 'there's the c**t, shoot him'.
The officer, codenamed Alpha Two, also recalled the moment Monis was shot dead.
'I watched the laser being around his head and upper chest,' he said. 'I remember hearing the rounds engaged, watching as his head exploded and he crumpled to the ground.'
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The first officer to storm the Lindt Cafe has told the inquest into the December, 2014 Sydney siege he watched gunman Man Haron Monis's 'head explode'
The senior constable codenamed Alpha Two recalled spotting the hostage-taker: 'I remember going 'there's the c**t, there's the c**t, shoot him''
Alpha Two told the inquest on Wednesday he saw a red laser trained onto Monis. 'I watched the laser going from the middle of his chest to his head, then I watched his head explode, and he fell down'
The senior constable told how he sprinted towards the Martin Place cafe carrying a 17.6 kilogram ballistics shield after hearing the words 'hostage down', before leading his team in during the early hours of December 16, 2014.
Another officer shattered the cafe's glass door and the Alpha team barged inside, with the shield-bearer providing cover and using the light on his pistol to illuminate the hostage-taker.
He described seeing two white-yellow flashes, which appeared to be gunshots, from where Monis was standing as he burst in.
'I remember going 'there's the c**t, there's the c**t, shoot him',' Alpha Two told an inquest on Wednesday into the fatal stand-off 18 months ago.
He went on to describe seeing a red laser trained onto Monis.
An Alpha team member known as 'Officer A', who was standing to his left, then opened fire.
Alpha Two could feel the firearm over his shoulder and heard the burst of shots ring out.
'I watched the laser going from the middle of his chest to his head, then I watched his head explode, and he fell down,' he said.
As Alpha Two moved to drag Monis' dead, crumpled body a couple of metres away, he could see a number of hostages sitting and standing in the immediate area.
He then helped rush hostages outside and shouted for medics, the inquest heard on Wednesday.
Under cross-examination from Michael O'Connell SC, acting on behalf of the family of hostage Katrina Dawson, who was killed in the crossfire, Alpha Two was asked about his team leader codenamed 'Officer B' falling down behind him as he entered.
Alpha Two told the inquest he couldn't recall seeing Officer B on the ground, but accepted he would have screamed for the man to get up.
The inquest has previously heard Officer B also opened fire when he stormed inside the cafe, but it is not clear which bullets killed Monis.
The inquest heard that snipers initially baulked at shooting gunman Man Haron Monis (pictured) when they first observed him through a window at about 7.30pm on the first day of the siege. Testimony from a marksman has revealed how he was taken down by shooters after 17 hours
Hostages are pictured fleeing the Lindt Cafe during the 17 hour siege in December, 2014
The inquest had previously released images revealing police snipers had direct access to the Lindt Cafe but were unable to shoot Monis because the glass windows were too thick.
The images showed sniper positions were maintained in the Westpac, Network Seven and Reserve Bank of Australia buildings on Martin Place throughout the 2014 siege.
As the Lindt Cafe stand-off unfolded over more than 17 hours, three sniper cells deployed in separate locations manned high-powered rifles and kept an almost constant watch on the stronghold.
The inquest heard that although the snipers could see almost half of the interior they would not have been able to shoot Man Haron Monis due to the building's 30mm-glass windows.
The images also showed that decorations on the windows obstructed the view of snipers located within the RBA building, and partially obstructed the view of the officer in the Channel 7 newsroom.
It also heard snipers had baulked at shooting the hostage-taker when they first observed him through a window at about 7.30pm on the first day of the siege, and about 10 hours into the ordeal, because they did not believe the hostages were facing an 'immediate' threat.
The above images are the views a police sniper would have had off the Lindt cafe from two different windows
The snipers were armed with high-powered rifles and kept an almost constant watch on the stronghold. Pictured is the estimated line of sight for the sniper located at the RBA building
Police enter the Lindt Chocolate Cafe at Martin Place during the hostage stand-off on December 16, 2014
'All the information and intelligence I gathered didn't satisfy the immediate part ... that part was missing,' Sierra 3-1 told an inquest earlier this month.
'We weren't justified in shooting him at that point, so we didn't.'
It would be seven more hours before they would get another clear view of Monis, just minutes before he shot cafe manager Tori Johnson dead at about 2.13am on December 16.
PR queen Roxy Jacenko has recalled her four-year-old daughter Pixie's reaction after feeling a lump in her mother's breast that prompted her cancer diagnosis.
The 36-year-old revealed she was battling the illness on Tuesday, three weeks after her husband Oliver Curtis was jailed for insider trading.
She was seen arriving at work in her $600,000 Bentley within hours of making the diagnosis public, insisting she would fit doctors appointments in with client meetings to make sure her thriving Sydney PR agency remained on track.
The mother-of-two found the mass while showering at their Bondi home two weeks ago and asked her four-year-old daughter to feel it afterwards because she was 'confused' by what it was.
'Her instant reaction was "eugggh mum!"' Ms Jacenko told Daily Mail Australia on Tuesday.
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Sydney PR-queen Roxy Jacenko has told how she asked her four-year-old daughter Pixie (above together at Mercedes Benz Fashion Week in May) to feel the lump in her breast that prompted her cancer diagnosis
'When I found the lump two weeks ago and got out of the shower, I asked Pixie to feel it as I was a little confused to what it actually was,' she added.
With her husband behind bars and her son Hunter aged just two, Ms Jacenko said there was no one else in their Bondi home to share her fears with.
'I guess I showed her as my initial options were Pixie or Hunter. I then called my mum and she raised her concern.
'I didn't think I was letting her feel cancer at the time, you just dont think that at 36,' she added.
The businesswoman underwent a 'quick and efficient' biopsy on Tuesday but has vowed not to let her treatment interfere with work.
'I dont do time off, its not in my blood, I have worked since I was 14.
'I need to keep going, work is my happy place. Couple that with the most sensational team that I have across both my Sweaty Betty PR company and Digital Agency, The Ministry of Talent and it's very much business as usual.
Earlier Ms Jacenko was upbeat as she spoke from her luxury car on her way to work.
'It can only be up from here. You can never expect things in life. You've got to tackle things head on and that's what I'm going to do.
The mother-of-two's diagnosis comes weeks after her husband Oliver Curtis was jailed for insider trading. They are seen above together with Pixie and their two-year-old son Hunter before his sentence was handed down
The 36-year-old said it was 'business as usual' as she returned to work in Sydney's Double Bay after revealing her cancer battle on Tuesday morning (above)
The PR guru said there was no one else in the house that she could have shared her fears with when she found the lump two weeks ago. Above, she is seen with her two children recently enjoying lunch
'I've go two young kids. I've got a responsibility so I'm going to keep doing what I do and it's business as usual - I've just got a few appointments in between and a laptop,' she told Channel Nine News.
Within minutes of arriving at work she shared a photograph of a display for a client, writing: 'Proud proud proud - walked into an incredible set up at Sweaty Betty HQ.'
Ms Jacenko was forced to share news of her health battle with her jailed husband in a six-minute conversation from Parklea prison.
'He happened to phone when I was at the specialist, so I just told him then,' she told The Advertiser.
She said Curtis was a 'broken man' while the past three weeks had rocked her. 'I don't think there is anything that could shock me more now.'
Later she revealed she did not know when she would next be able to visit him.
'He is naturally very concerned and more so due to the fact he is unable to assist with the children and be there as a support.
''Being so removed from your family is challenging at the best of times, throw in a health matter and it becomes a whole new ball game.
'My last visit was Monday, I am unsure when ill be able to go next,' she said.
Since her husband was jailed last month, Ms Jacenko has taken to social media a number of times to share happy selfies with her two children
Oliver Curtis was jailed for two years last month for insider trading. He is seen arriving at the Supreme Court of NSW with Ms Jacenko in June)
Within minutes of arriving at work on Tuesday Ms Jacenko shared a photograph of a display for a client (above) saying she was 'proud' of colleagues
In recent weeks she appears to have gone without her show-stopping diamond wedding rings, sharing selfies from the elevator of her office with bare hands.
While her husband spent his first weekend behind bars, she took her children for a luxury retreat to One & Only's Wolgan Valley resort in the Blue Mountains.
The trio posed for a photograph at the hotel, where three-bedroom villas cost up to $8,000 a night, and Ms Jacenko described her children as the 'most caring people' she knew.
She has not spoken publicly of her husband's jailing. During proceedings she pleaded with a judge not to jail him, describing him as their children's 'primary carer'.
'Pixie and Hunter adore their dad. Hes fun, tolerant, uncomplaining and loving. They screech with excitement as soon as they see him and no one else matters to them not even me.
Ms Jacenko posted a picture on Instagram on Tuesday with luggage - it is not clear whether she was due to spend the night in hospital or not
After her husband's sentence was handed down Ms Jacenko shared a photograph with her children, describing them as the 'most caring' people she knows
'Because of my work hours, I would describe Oli as the primary carer,' she said.
Ms Jacenko rose to fame on the third season of Australia's Celebrity Apprentice after forging a successful career as a publicist.
She runs Sweaty Betty PR, which specialises in fashion, lifestyle and beauty, and recently founded Ministry of Talent.
The mother-of-two has also written a number of novels based on her life as a publicist.
She has been publicly slammed for promoting her children on social media, with some accusing her of exploiting them for business.
Pixie, who is four, has more than 100,000 Instagram followers and is the face of hair accessories company Pixies Bow, a multi-million dollar operation.
Defending her decision to include her in business last year, Ms Jacenko insisted she had her daughter's best interests at heart and was setting her up for life.
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Snow has blanketed Australia's east coast as Sydney braces for sub-zero temperatures later this week.
Parts of Melbourne, Canberra and Hobart were turned into winter wonderlands after snow fell from the skies as a low pressure system made its way across the nation's east.
In Tasmania's north-west at Cradle Mountain, incredible photographs were snapped showing the snow-capped alps.
Back on the mainland, residents of Canberra woke up to a flutter of snow as strong winds deliver a wintry chill.
Most suburbs are being dusted by snow flakes on Wednesday morning, with photos of snow-covered rooftops and cars on social media.
The temperature was sitting at 1C in the city earlier but Bureau of Meteorology forecaster Mohammed Nabi said it felt more like minus 7C as north-westerly winds blew.
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Parts of Melbourne, Canberra and Hobart were turned into winter wonderlands as centimetres of powder fell from the skies as a low pressure system makes its away across the nation's east.
Nine-year-old Amelia Kinross, of Bendigo, Melbourne, plays in the snow at Mount Macedon after a cold front hit on Wednesday
Three-year-old Lexden Coleman of Wallan, a town north of Melbourne, completes his snowman by placing a carrot for the nose
In Tasmania's north-west at Cradle Mountain, incredible photographs were snapped showing the snow-capped Cradle Mountain
Heavy overnight snowfall in the cabin park covered the roads in powder and trees white as the 'Big Freeze' continues
A car seen here is covered in snow and icicles as the day dawns in Cradle Mountain in Tasmania
The three-day forecast across the nation as of Wednesday morning as a cold front hits the east coast
The city is expected to receive one to two centimetres of snow until mid-morning when the weather warms up to a maximum of 7C.
'Most of the suburbs in Canberra have reported snow except for the far northern ones,' Mr Nabi told AAP.
'It will be more like a dusting of snow.'
Winds are expected to remain brisk throughout the morning, with a severe weather warning for damaging winds covering much of the ACT.
Further south, Melbourne's outer suburbs have had a dusting of snow - a sign of the bitterly cold conditions that are yet to come.
The mercury dropped as low as 4.5 degrees in the city overnight, but it feels much colder than that at minus 0.8.
Amelia Kinross, joined a number of other children, making a snowman and kicking snowballs
Workers plough the roads after heavy overnight snowfall at Cradle Mountain on Wednesday morning
Visitors attempt to get their cars out as they navigate their way through the centimetres of snow
Snow has fallen in parts of Melbourne and blanketed Australia's capital Canberra (pictured in the distance is Parliament House)
An intense low pressure system has sent temperatures plummeting across the east coast. Pictured is a snowman in Canberra
Further south, Melbourne's outer suburbs (pictured is Woodend) have had a dusting of snow - a sign of the bitterly cold conditions that are yet to come
It got colder in the outer suburbs, just 0.7 degrees at Ferny Creek in the Dandenong Ranges - but it feels like minus 4.2.
Woodend, Lancefield, Gisborne, Ballan and some parts of the Dandenong Ranges have already seen snow and police are warning motorists on the Calder Freeway to stay in the left lane to avoid slippery conditions.
Paramedics are also calling for drivers to take care after two people were injured when their cars struck a fallen tree in two separate incidents overnight in Nar Nar Goon and Koetong.
They also treated a man who was injured when his car rolled after hitting black ice near Wonthaggi.
Freezing conditions are set to continue all day on Wednesday and while the mercury is tipped to reach 11 degrees in Melbourne, icy wind gusts are expected to make it feel like zero in the city.
It will be even colder in other parts as strong winds and thunderstorms hit coastal areas.
Victoria's SES received more than 100 calls for help on Tuesday and has warned drivers to look out for black ice and drive to the conditions.
The snow is a welcome sight for Australia's ski fields, including Perisher in NSW
A total of 35cm of snow fell overnight at the ski resort, which brings the past 24 hours' total to 50cm
Victoria's SES received more than 100 calls for help on Tuesday and has warned drivers to look out for black ice and drive to the conditions. Pictured again is Woodend
Freezing conditions are set to continue all day on Wednesday and while the mercury is tipped to reach 11 degrees in Melbourne (pictured), icy wind gusts are expected to make it feel like zero in the city
It wasn't just the young children caught enjoying the snow. Visitors flocked to Mount Macedon, a small town 64 kilometres north-west of Melbourne to enjoy the snow
Adults enjoyed the classic snowball fight as they chased each other enjoying the cold front
The cold front is set to head east by Wednesday afternoon, with conditions easing.
The brisk weather will hit also Sydney on Wednesday, in what forecasters are describing as the 'Big Freeze', which are predicted send temperatures plummeting to below zero in some parts of the city by the end of the week.
Severe weather warnings are already in place for parts of New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania, ACT and South Australia through Wednesday, as a damaging cold front whips across the country.
Cafe Bruny, south of Tasmania, had winds measuring upwards of 144km/h, with trees uprooted in the Channel region, the ABC reported.
Across the state, more than 7,000 homes and businesses were left without electricity, and forecasters have warned more gusts were on the way in Tasmania's south.
'We are actually in the lull at the moment in the south-east,' forecaster Tim Bolden told the national broadcaster.
'We're already seeing things pick up in the west, we have seen it get up to about 110kph at Cape Grim and that is going to push into the south-east in the next few hours.'
Tasmania's capital city Hobart has also had its fair share of snow.
Weatherzone meteorologist Kim Westcott told Daily Mail Australia on Tuesday the low pressure system would also bring rain, snow and wind to Victoria.
'We could see snow above 400m during the evening and into Wednesday morning, but by Wednesday the temperature will get quite cold during the day, reaching a top of 11 degrees,' she said.
Most suburbs are being dusted by snow flakes on Wednesday morning, with photos of snow-covered rooftops and cars on social media
The Bureau of Meteorology has issued a severe weather warning in the ACT (pictured is Canberra) and southern NSW
Black ice on the road has made driving conditions dangerous in Canberra (pictured)
Just outside of Canberra hills were blanketed with powder at One Tree Hill near Gungahlin
Residents of Canberra have woken up to a flutter of snow as strong winds deliver a wintry chill
THREE DAY FORECAST: WEATHER ACROSS AUSTRALIA Sydney Wednesday: Min 9, Max 14; windy Thursday: Min 6, Max 15; partly cloudy Friday: Min 6, Max 16; mostly sunny Brisbane Wednesday: Min 15 Max 19; mostly cloudy Thursday: Min 11 Max 17; cloudy Friday: Min 12 Max 19; possible shower
Adelaide Wednesday: Min 6 Max 13; possible shower Thursday: Min 6 Max 14; mostly sunny Friday: Min 5 Max 15; mostly sunny Canberra Wednesday: Min 7 Max -1; windy with showers Thursday: Min -4 Max 10; frost then sunny Friday: Min -4 Max 11; frost then sunny Melbourne Wednesday: Min 5 Max 11; possible shower Thursday: Min 6 Max 14; mostly sunny Friday: Min 8 Max 15; mostly sunny Perth Wednesday: Min 3 Max 16; frost then sunny Thursday: Min 5 Max 18; mostly sunny Friday: Min 11 Max 20; late shower Hobart Wednesday: Min 3 Max 8; windy with showers Thursday: Min 6 Max 13; showers Friday: Min 10 Max 14; mostly cloudy Darwin Wednesday: Min 22 Max 28; windy with showers Thursday: Min 18 Max 27; mostly sunny Friday: Min 17 Max 28; mostly sunny Source: Bureau of Meteorology Advertisement
In New South Wales, the Bureau of Meteorology warned residents in parts of the south of the state to stay indoors as damaging gusts of winds reached up to 80km/h overnight.
The freezing air mass behind the cold front will cause the mercury to dip beneath zero degrees in some parts of Sydney's west through the back end of the week.
'On Thursday and Friday morning we're going to see temperatures well below zero in the West and a wide spread of frost as well,' BoM duty forecaster Rebecca Kamitakahara told The Daily Telegraph.
The chilly conditions will be ideal for the ski fields, with the snow level forecast to drop roughly 600 metres around the central ranges - although the alpine regions are being warned to prepare for blizzards at points above 1700m in the Snowy Mountain districts.
'The ski fields are going to get a decent amount of snow and maybe even up to one and a half metres of snow,' Ms Kamitakahara said.
'Towards Thursday and Friday and later on once that's passed, a large high pressure system will be coming in, bringing colder mornings for Victoria and New South Wales, sunny conditions and lighter winds.'
And while most of the country was experiencing miserable weather, with strong winds and freezing temperatures, Queenslanders were able to enjoy a mostly dry day with a stunning sunset.
Photos of the sunset from Brisbane to the Gold Coast flooded social media on Tuesday evening, showing off a mesmerising meld of red and oranges painted across the sky.
The warmer weather is forecast to continue throughout the week, although the temperatures could dip to a low of 11 degrees on Thursday and there will be the possibility of showers through to Friday.
It appeared to be Christmas in July as visitors walked up closed roads to see the snow at Mount Macedon, Victoria
Children were seen running across fields blanketed by snow caused by blustery conditions after a cold front moved over the state
Nine-year-old Jack Cottingham of Bullengarook, Victoria, enjoyed himself as he tobogganed on the snow
A serial sexual predator with a history of luring young women onto his yacht then drugging and raping them says he's forgiven his victims 'in his heart'.
John Collins appeared in the Queensland Court of Appeal in Brisbane on Wednesday in a bid to clear convictions for raping three different women in the 1980s and early 2000s.
The 77-year-old was found guilty of the offences - which took place at the Gold Coast, Hamilton Island and Kawana - in three separate trials in 2014 and 2015, but has maintained his innocence throughout sentencing.
John Collinshas a history of luring young women onto his yacht then drugging and raping them
Almost all of Mr Collins' victims responded to advertisements he issued looking for a nanny to teach his son on a luxury yacht, which was visiting idyllic Queensland's islands, reports Courier Mail.
Over the course of a decade he allegedly drugged and raped seven women who responded to the adds for work on the boat.
Representing himself for part of Wednesday's hearing, Mr Collins animatedly told the bench: 'I've forgiven them in my heart (for) what they've done to me'.
'I'm going to die in jail because of these people, because of their filthy lies,' he told the court.
Judge Nicholas Samios sentenced Collins to 20 years in jail and branded Mr Collins 'cunning and devious'.
Mr Collins had to be reminded claims he made about his conviction for raping a 17-year-old on his vessel at Kawana in 1986 weren't admissible because he hadn't given testimony at trial.
'I was hoping the three of you ... would put your heads together and say this is just ridiculous,' he replied when Justice Philip Morrison brought it to his attention.
But prosecutor David Nardone challenged his suggestion the teenager had made her complaint to cover up the theft of $150, given she'd come forward some 14 years later.
Almost all of Mr Collins' victims responded to advertisements he issued looking for a nanny to teach his son on a luxury yacht (pictured)
There was nothing to suggest Mr Collins had suffered a miscarriage of justice, Mr Nardone said.
Barrister Peter Callaghan had earlier made arguments on Mr Collins' behalf relating to the other two women, including allegedly irreconcilable versions of events given by one about a period of three to four weeks when she stayed aboard with him.
However, prosecutor Glen Cash said it was clear the matter didn't cause the jury reasonable doubt and there were valid causes, such as the threat of violence, that meant she didn't try to leave earlier.
The court reserved its decision.
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An American was gored and five other runners were injured on Wednesday in the next-to-last running of the bulls at Pamplona's San Fermin festival, officials said.
One of the six bulls crashed into a group of runners close to a fence, goring Mathew Lavin, 39, in the thigh and lifting at least two others in the air with its horns.
The Navarra regional government said Lavin's condition was not serious.
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A bull of the Nunez del Cuvillo ranch charges against runners or 'mozos' during the seventh bull run of Sthe San Fermin Festival in Pamplona, Navarra, northern Spain on Wednesday
One of the six fighting bulls charges against a group of rred-scarved runners during the bull run on Wednesday
Bulls crash into a crowd of runners during Wednesday's bull run. At leats six people were injured during the seventh day of the running of the bulls
A bloodied and injured reveler is tended to by medics on the Estafeta corner. An American was gored in the left leg and taken to a city hospital, spokesman said, and four other runners were hospitalized
His passport showed he was born in New Jersey, the hospital said, but it had no information about his current residence.
Meanwhile, four Spaniards were treated in city hospitals for bruises.
Navarra Hospital said another American, 53-year-old Jake Ramirez, was treated for an ankle injury and released. It had no details of his residence.
More than a thousand red-scarved runners took part in the 8am (2am EDT) dash with six fighting bulls and their accompanying steer along a 930-yard (850-meter) street course to the city's bull ring.
A reveler falls close to one of the fighting bulls on the Estafeta corner during the bull run. The festival is held annually from July 6-14 in commemoration of the city's patron saint San Fermin
An injured man is pictured as he is treated by medics. Revelers from around the world flock to Pamplona every year to take part in the eight days of the running of the bulls
Medical services help an injured man who is seen with bandages on his head during the bull run
Wednesday's bull run featured fewer runners after overnight rain left the streets more treacherous than usual
A runner is pictured lying on the ground after falling as a group of bulls are seen running towards him
Some participants are seen falling to the ground as a crowd runs down cobbled streets along the side of one of the fighting bulls. One man is seen climbing a pole
The bulls then face matadors and almost certain death in afternoon bullfights.
The nationally televised run lasted two-and-a-half minutes and featured fewer runners after overnight rain left the city's cobbled streets more treacherous than usual.
Wednesday's run featured bulls from the Nunez del Cuvillo ranch.
The nine-day fiesta, known also for its 24-hour street partying, became world famous with Ernest Hemingway's 1926 novel 'The Sun Also Rises,' and attracts thousands of foreign tourists.
The festival ends on Thursday.
More than a thousand runners took part in the 8am (2am EDT) dash with six fighting bulls and their accompanying steer along a 930-yard (850-meter) street course to the city's bull ring
Wednesday's run featured bulls from the Nunez del Cuvillo ranch and lasted just 2 minutes 32 seconds. The festival ends on Thursday
The nine-day fiesta, known also for its 24-hour street partying, became world famous with Ernest Hemingway's 1926 novel 'The Sun Also Rises,' and attracts thousands of foreign tourists
A reveler runs close to a Nunez del Cubillo's fighting bulls on the Estafeta corner during the seventh day of the running of the bulls
Spanish bullfighter Juan Jose Padilla performs during the San Fermin Festival, in Pamplona, northern Spain, on Tuesday. During Tuesday's run, officials said five Spaniards were hospitalized for but none for gorings
During Tuesday's run, the Navarra regional government said five Spaniards were hospitalized for but none for gorings. Medical officials had initially reported four injured.
That run featured specially-bred bulls from the Victoriano de Rio ranch and the 875-metre dash from pen to Pamplona bull ring lasted just 2 minutes 13 seconds, the fastest so far this year.
Pamplona's town hall reported that 16 men have been arrested for suspected sex offenses since the festival opened.
Six were arrested for suspected sexual assault, including rape, and 10 for suspected sexual harassment, officials said.
Nine foreigners were arrested, including six Frenchmen, a Bolivian, a Pakistani and a Romanian.
Because of complaints in previous years, the city has campaigned this year for a festival 'free of sexist aggressions.'
Pamplona's town hall reported that 16 men have been arrested for suspected sex offenses since the festival opened. A group of people protest against the alleged sexual assaults on Monday
The city government, political parties and feminist and social groups cooperated to hold two major rallies to protest against sexual aggression since the festival began
Aritz Romeo, town councilor for citizen security, said the number of cases reported was similar to other years and to those in other cities with festivals.
The city government, political parties and feminist and social groups cooperated to hold two major rallies to protest against sexual aggression since the festival began.
Bull runs are a traditional part of summer festivals across Spain.
Twelve people, including four Americans, have been gored since the runs started on July 7.
In all, 15 people have died from being gored at the festival since record-keeping began in 1924.
A reveler prays beside to the barrier of the Estafeta corner before the start of the seventh day of the bull run
The nationally televised run lasted two-and-a-half minutes on Wednesday and featured fewer runners after overnight rain left the city's cobbled streets more treacherous than usual
Participants run ahead of Nunez del Cubillo's fighting bulls on the seventh day of the San Fermin bull run festival in Pamplona
A Vietnamese man has died of suffocation after his wife grabbed his testicles in a domestic argument - and refused to release her fierce grip for five minutes.
With his face turning purple as his wife squeezed and squeezed, 53-year-old Le Kim Khai choked to death when food became stuck in his windpipe, causing suffocation.
It was only when neighbours intervened that Khais wife, Phan Thi Kim Chuong, agreed to release her husbands crushed private parts - but by then he was beyond medical help.
Le Kim Khai, 53, died after his wife squeezed hard on his testicles for five minutes after a violent row at their home in Tien Giang province, Vietnam, pictured
The incident began when Khai and his wife became involved in a violent fight after he had returned home in the southern province of Tien Giang and found the doors locked, Tuoi Tre News reported today.
Tien Giang police told the news site that Khai was furious when he arrived home to find himself locked out, with his wife and two daughters refusing to let him in.
He responded by cutting into the lock with a handsaw - and it was then that the domestic battle began.
Khai, the head of a neighbourhood security unit, reportedly set about his wife with his fists, despite his daughters attempts to stop him.
In her desperation, Chuong grabbed Khais testicles and squeezed - hard.
Khai fell to his knees, her hand still grasping him, before she jumped on his stomach to hold him down as she continued squeezing.
Hearing screams from everyone involved, neighbours ran into the house, where they found Chuong sitting on her husband, his private area still grasped in her hand, while his face turned purple.
She finally agreed to release him as police sped to the house.
By then Khai, whose testicles had been crushed for at least five minutes, had slipped into unconsciousness and was found to be dead on arrival at hospital.
In March this year a Romanian woman Marinela Benea, 40, also tore open husband Lonel Popals scrotum during a violent argument
Doctors found that he had choked to death as he vomited food while in the agonising grip of his wife.
Chuong, the news site reported, told police that she had been repeatedly assaulted over time by her husband and had only intended to warn him when she grabbed his testicles.
In March this year a Romanian woman tore off her husbands left testicle after he failed to give her flowers on International Womens Day.
Marinela Benea, 40, tore open husband Lonel Popals scrotum during a violent argument, resulting in him undergoing emergency surgery.
A truck driver has been thrown through his front windscreen and left in a critical condition when his vehicle collided with a train which derailed and injured a further 11 people.
The V/Line train was travelling through Pirron Yallock, near Colac in southwest Victoria, when it collided with a truck about 3.45pm on Wednesday.
The male truck driver has been airlifted to hospital in a critical condition, an ambulance spokeswoman said.
The train driver and 10 passengers are in a stable condition and are being treated for minor injuries.
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12 people have been injured when a train and truck collided at Pirron Yallock, near Colac in southwest Victoria
A passenger on the train said the truck driver was thrown through his windscreen in the smash
The male truck driver has been airlifted to hospital in a critical condition. 11 others have minor injuries
'We're assessing at least 12 people, 11 stable with minor injuries,' an Ambulance Victoria spokeswoman said.
Julia Thompson was sleeping in her carriage at the back of the train when she was flung off her seat and a suitcase hit her face, she told the Warrnambool Standard.
'It felt like an earthquake. Everything was shaking and rocking,' Ms Thompson said.
'Then there was silence. Everyone was stunned.'
She said the truck driver had been thrown through his front windscreen and was lying on the ground next to the train.
A Victoria Ambulance spokeswoman said the truck driver was seriously injured and has been airlifted to hospital
The train driver and 10 train passengers suffered minor injuries in the smash, about 3.45pm on Wednesday
He has been airlifted to hospital in a critical condition.
Paramedics are treating 11 others, including the train driver and 10 passengers, for minor injuries.
'Priority is obviously to treat the people and getting the rest of the passengers off the train,' CFA operations manager Dean Manson told 3AW on Wednesday.
'Then we will be looking at trying to secure the site. We've got some issues with diesel spills.'
The cause of the incident is being investigated.
'V/Line can confirm there has been an incident involving a V/Line train and truck at a level crossing at Pirron Yallock on the Warrnambool line,' a V/Line statement said.
'The train involved is the 1.21pm Southern Cross Station to Warrnambool service.'
All services on the Warrnambool line have been suspended until further notice.
Concerned customers can call V/Line on 1800 800 007.
Images show the extent of the damage to the truck and the derailed train carriages.
The train has veered from the tracks at at Pirron Yallock, near Colac, west of Melbourne (pictured)
Images show the train has derailed, which left 11 on the train with minor injuries and seriously injured the truck driver
The train would be replaced by buses for the rest of the trip, V/Link said on Twitter
The train was heading to Warrnambool, in southwest Victoria, about 3.45pm on Wednesday when it was derailed (pictured)
Images show the extent of the damage to the truck, leaving its driver seriously injured
The truck driver has been airlifted to hospital and paramedics are assessing the 11 others wounded
Once the young girl hit puberty he ensured she took the contraceptive pill
He commenced a relationship with her which lasted for five years
Scottish-born Graham Rankin Cayzer employed the young girl at his store
The resident was convicted of having a sexual relation with a girl,12
A 55-year-old Tasmanian is being deported over a conviction in the 1990s
A man convicted of having a sexual relationship with a 12-year-old girl he employed to deliver newspapers will be deported from Australia after his permanent residency was cancelled.
Scottish-born Graham Rankin Cayzer, 55, has spent most of his life in Tasmania but the federal government cancelled his permanent visa in 2014.
The former newsagent spent two-and-a-half years in prison after he was convicted in the 1990s for the relationship, reported the ABC.
Graham Rankin Cayzer, 55, a Tasmanian resident convicted of having a sexual relationship with 12-year-old girl will be deported from Australia
Cayzer, who was 36 at the time, employed the young girl at his news agency on Hobart's eastern shore when he commenced the sexual relationship.
The father from Bellerive, Hobart, continued the relationship with the girl for five years.
Once she reached puberty he ensured she got the contraceptive pill from a family planning clinic.
When she reached the age of 18, Cayzer, ended the relationship by sending the girl a text message to move on.
The Federal Court on Wednesday dismissed his application to overturn the immigration minister's decision.
He has been ordered he pay the government's legal costs.
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It's tough being at the bottom of the food chain, as this unlucky fish found out when he went to catch a small fish for dinner but was then gobbled up mid-air by a hungry crocodile.
These sensational pictures show the panicked Jacare fish at the moment he realises he and his catch are about to be chomped on by the predator.
And the greedy crocodile got more than he bargained for when he caught both the fish and ended up with them both to eat.
The incredible images were taken off the banks of the Rio Negrinho Pantanal, Brazil, which is a vast breeding ground for sea life.
They were snapped by Massimiliano Bencivenni, who was lucky enough to get the photo at the exact moment, before it was all over in a flash.
The 45-year-old from Spoleto, Italy, said: 'It was over in an instant.
I could see what was happening and thought, "I need to act fast." It was incredible.'
The moment the crocodile leapt up from the water to catch a fish, which already had another fish in its mouth in a Brazilian river
The greedy crocodile got more than he bargained for when he caught both the fish and ended up with them both to eat
A prolific jailhouse snitch has claimed he was offered a deal by a Los Angeles county sheriff - provide fake evidence to help convict rap boss Marion 'Suge' Knight and a relative would get a reduced sentence.
Knight's lawyers have said he was acting in self-defense when he ran over Cle 'Bone' Sloan, who was punching Knight through the window of his pickup truck, and also ran over Terry Carter, who died from his injuries.
Knight founded the Death Row Records label, which once listed Dr Dre, Tupac Shakur and Snoop Dogg among its artists.
Plea: Marion 'Suge' Knight, who is charged with murder, has been blocked from seeing family and receiving mail or phone calls as he awaits trial. The Death Row Records co-founder is pictured in court last summer
Knight lost control of the company after it was forced into bankruptcy.
The Huffington Post says Daniel Timms, a prolific informant, was ordered to come up with false testimony about Knight in order to bolster the prosecution's case.
Knight, 51, has pleaded not guilty to murder and attempted murder charges filed last year after he ran over two men outside a burger stand in Compton, California.
He faces potential life sentences if convicted because of prior convictions for armed robbery and assault with a gun.
Knight was a key player in the gangster rap scene that flourished in the 1990s and has been kept under tight security since he turned himself in to authorities after the fatal altercation in January 2015.
Knight surrendered to the authorities after the January 2015 hit and run, which killed Terry Carter (left) and seriously injured Cle 'Bone' Sloan (right)
Knight's lawyer, Thaddeus Culpepper, said Timms had told him two sheriff's deputies urged him to lie about what Knight said when they were housed next to each other in jail and told him: 'Knight intended to be violent and showed no remorse in injuring or taking the victims life.'
Mr Culpepper said that In exchange for false testimony, Timms was promised his wifes nephew, Devin Gonzales, would receive a drastically reduced sentence in a murder case in which he faced 70 years to life.
Knights defense attorneys are requesting a formal investigation into Timms' claims by California Attorney General Kamala Harris and U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch.
Struggling chain Poundland will be taken over in a 597m deal by South African retailer Steinhoff International following a hefty slump in shares at the discount retailer.
Poundland, which announced an 84 per cent drop in pre-tax profits last year amid a surge in online shopping, accepted the 222p-a-share bid after rejecting a cash offer from Steinhoff last month.
The deal, which marks Steinhoff's first takeover of a European company this year, came after a huge drop in Poundland's shares following tough trading and a difficult takeover of rival 99p Stores.
Struggling chain Poundland (pictured) will be taken over in a 597m takeover deal by South African retailer Steinhoff International following a hefty slump in shares at the discount retailer
The company had major success with its sale of 'loom bands' in 2014 - silicone bands that could be joined together to make bracelets - but failed to bounce back when the craze died out. Shares have slumped 40 per cent since it was floated that year.
Steinhoff, which already owns the UK furniture firm Harveys and Bensons for Bed and has majority shares in New Look and Virgin Active, first announced it wanted to take over the company last month.
In line with takeover rules, the company had until today to confirm its intention.
The next day, Steinhoff built up close to a 23 per cent stake in the company, although a cash offer was later rejected by Poundland.
Steinhoff, led by chief executive Markus Jooste (pictured), already owns the UK furniture firm Harveys and Bensons for Bed and has majority shares in New Look and Virgin Active
At the time, it had already abandoned its attempt to buy Argos owner Home Retail Group, allowing Sainsbury's to win the takeover.
It had also ditched a bid for French electronics retailer Darty Plc after a protracted duel with Groupe Fnac.
The now-agreed sale price, which also includes a 2p-a-share final dividend on top of the 220p-a-share bid, marks around a 40 per cent premium to the value of Poundland's shares in mid-June.
Steinhoff, led by chief executive Markus Jooste, is trying to compete with the likes of Ikea after moving its primary share listing to Frankfurt from Johannesburg in December.
Founded in Germany by Bruno Steinhoff in 1964, the company now has 90,000 staff and has more than 6,500 stores in 30 countries from the UK to Australia.
Meanwhile, British retail industry veteran Kevin O'Byrne was named chief executive officer of Poundland in March and took over the reins on July 1.
Before his takeover, annual results laid bare Poundland's sales woes as underlying pre-tax profits fell 13.5 per cent to 37.8m in the year to March 27. Bottom-line pre-tax profits crashed 83.7 per cent to 5.9m, including converted 99p Stores.
The company acquired rival chain 99p Stores for 55m and embarked on a costly programme to convert the stores to the Poundland format, which even the retailer admitted was a 'distraction'.
Darren Shapland, chairman of Poundland, said the deal gives investors an 'opportunity to realise their shareholding at a certain and attractive price'.
He said it achieved the share price value targeted under its turnaround plan earlier than could be expected 'against a background of increasing economic uncertainty in the UK and a more challenging trading environment'.
The company had major success with its sale of 'loom bands' in 2014 - silicone bands that could be joined together to make bracelets (pictured) - but failed to bounce back when the craze died out
Steinhoff chief executive Markus Jooste said: 'The board of Steinhoff and its management team are enthusiastic about the opportunities that this transaction brings: we believe that there is significant merit in bringing Poundland into Steinhoff's global network.
'Steinhoff is developing a fast-growing, price-led retail business across the UK and the rest of Europe. Poundland would be a complementary fit to this growth story.'
He added that management at Poundland would continue to play a 'key role' after the takeover and said he looked forward to 'welcoming' the chain's employees.
Poundland founder started discount chain with a 50,000 loan from his market trader dad - and sold it ten years later for 50million
Poundland was the brainchild of two market traders from the Black Country who opened the chain with a 50,000 loan - before leaving years later as multi-millionaires.
Steve Smith and David Dodd opened their first shop in 1991 after receiving a 50,000 boost from Mr Smith's father, another market trader who had set up his own successful cash and carry business.
Ten years later, Mr Smith had left the company with 50m to his name. David Dodd stepped away from the some years later, with a cool 24m in his pocket.
Steve Smith founded Poundland with his colleague David Dodd in 1991 and sold his share in the company ten years later for 20m. Mr Smith is pictured with his Rolls Royce at his 13-bed home in Shropshire
The pair had initially met while they were both working for Mr Smith's father Keith - a hard-working entrepreneur who began his career on a market stall in Birmingham - at his company, Hooty's.
Mr Smith had grown up helping his father on his stall, while Dodd also started retail life as a market trader, after leaving school halfway through his A-Levels.
He gradually worked his way into wholesailing and importing, leading him to Hooty's.
But when Mr Smith's father sold Hooty's in 1988 to retire to Majorca, Mr Smith decided to pursue his own venture with Mr Dodd - a shop where everything cost 1.
In 1991, the pair opened the first store in the Octagon Centre in Burton on Trent, Staffordshire, with 632 products on the shelves - everything from Cadbury's chocolate to garden gnomes.
Mr Smith had grown up helping his father on his stall, while Dodd also started retail life as a market trader, after leaving school halfway through his A-Levels. Mr Smith is pictured at his lavish mansion
The store cost 200,000 to open, but in the first day alone, the pair shifted 13,000 in goods.
The duo's next move was to open a store in a permanent location. Initially they were turned down by a number of landlords who doubted the US dollar-store concept would work in the UK.
But they managed to secure a spot in Meadowhall, the shopping centre in Sheffield, for 250,000 a year - and promptly made 140,000 in the first week.
The pair kept their price down, by sourcing products from factories and parts of the Far East where no other retailers had ventured.
Within two years, Mr Smith had repaid the loan to his father.
Mr Smith sold his share for 50m in 2000, when the company had a 200m turnover, with 100 stores to its name.
Mr Dodd eventually led a management buyout two years later, backed by private equity house Advent. He went on to double the business within a couple of years, and left in 2006.
He retained a 12 per cent stake in the business and pocketed 24m when the company was the subject of a second 200m private equity sale in 2010.
Mr Smith now lives in a 13-bed, 15,000 sq ft mansion in Shropshire - complete with 60 crystal drop chandeliers, a snooker room and an helipad - and also has a six-bed villa in Florida.
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Former President George W Bush has been mocked on social media for dancing along to the Battle Hymn of the Republic during a memorial service for the five police officers killed in Dallas last week.
As he held hands with his wife, Laura, and first lady Michelle Obama, Bush could be seen swaying and swinging his arms while the choir sang the American Civil War-era song.
At one point, Michelle leaned in to whisper something into his ear as Barack looked over with a smile during the service at the Morton H Meyerson Symphony Center, Dallas.
Michelle links hands with George W as the Battle Hymn of the Republic gets underway
Michelle can be seen leaning in to whisper something into the ear of the former president
Barack casts a watchful eye over his predecessor as he sways to the song's famous marching beat
Laura Bush can be seen looking over at the Obamas as her husband swung his arms to the Civil War-era song that was also played at the funerals of Winston Churchill, Robert Kennedy, Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon
George W continued to grin and jig about next to his wife Laura while the Obamas looked somber
One poster on Twitter said: 'Was that George W. Bush next to Michelle Obama rocking out to "Glory Hallelujah" during the police memorial? Even Biden knows better.'
Another tweeted: 'POTUS: [leans over to Michelle] Just go with it. *sigh*'
Poll Do you think Bush's behavior was inappropriate? Yes No Do you think Bush's behavior was inappropriate? Yes 1505 votes
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And on the first lady's reaction, one said: 'Michelle Obama gives a master class on restraint.'
Where Bush made amends, however, was in his speech.
Often lampooned for his oratory skills - or lack of them - during his time in the White House, the 43rd President of the United States was widely praised for his uplifting words - in particular a quote which was widely shared on social media.
'Too often we judge other groups by their worst examples while judging ourselves by our best intentions,' he said, to a huge round of applause from the audience
The former President called the slain officers 'the best among us' and said the Dallas Police Department has 'been mighty inspirations for the rest of the nation.'
Bush's bizarre dancing was not the only unusual incident at the memorial.
While President Obama talked about the difficulties police face and racial bias that still exists in the U.S., one female police officer - sitting just behind him - appeared to be snoozing through portions of his 40-minute address.
During his speech, Obama addressed the relationship between police and black communities, trying to articulate the viewpoints of both, as the five killed were protecting those marching in a Black Lives Matter protest downtown after the deaths of two black men at the hands of officers last week.
Before arriving in Dallas, Obama had called the families of the two men killed, Alton Sterling and Philando Castile.
The president, echoing Dallas Police Chief David Brown, said the country expected too much of its police force 'and we ask too little of ourselves'.
Gunman Micah Johnson sprayed bullets at police officers who were charged with monitoring the peaceful Black Lives Matter protest last Thursday.
Twelve police officers were shot in total, five of whom were killed.
The victims were later identified as: Brent Thompson, 43; Patrick Zamarripa, 32; Michael Krol, 40; Michael Smith, 55; and 48-year-old Lorne Ahrens.
THE BATTLE HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC WAS SUNG AT THE FUNERALS OF REAGAN, NIXON AND CHURCHILL The Battle Hymn of the Republic, also known as Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory outside of the United States, is a song by American writer Julia Ward Howe using the music from the song John Brown's Body. Howe's lyrics were written in November 1861 - a day after she visited a Union Army camp on the Potomac River near Washington, D. C. She heard the soldiers singing the song John Browns Body, and was taken with the strong marching beat. It was first published in February 1862. The song links the judgment of the wicked at the end of time (Old Testament, Isaiah 63; New Testament, Rev. 19) with the American Civil War. Since that time, it has become an extremely popular and well-known American patriotic song. It was sung at the funerals of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, American senator Robert Kennedy, and American presidents Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon Advertisement
TWITTER USERS ASTOUNDED BY BUSH'S DANCING AT MEMORIAL SERVICE Advertisement
Mrs Obama was widely praised on social media for the 'restraint' she showed during Mr Bush's antics
A 19-year-old man who was left fighting for his life following an unprovoked attack now hopes to join RAF after undergoing an operation to repair his shattered skull.
Billy Close suffered a life-threatening bleed on his brain after Jordan Cooper, 22, knocked him out with a single punch following a night out in Newcastle city centre in the early hours of February 28.
Doctors feared Mr Close, from Wallsend, North Tyneside, Tyne and Wear, would not recover from his injuries.
Unprovoked attack: Billy Close suffered a life-threatening bleed on his brain when Jordan Cooper, 22, knocked him out with a single punch in Newcastle city centre. Pictured, Mr Close with the scars from his recent surgery
Recovery: The 19-year-old, pictured right with a friend, now hopes he will one day be able to join the RAF
But the teenager defied the odds and this week doctors inserted metal plates into his head to piece his skull back together. Mr Close is now hopeful he will make a full recovery.
'I feel like I have got my life back now,' he said. 'I'm feeling sound. I'm just waiting for the swelling to go down and I will be able to get on with things. I can make a fresh start.'
Mr Close was out celebrating his 19th birthday when he was pushed by aggressive James Widdowson as he waited for a taxi near the Dog and Parrot pub in the city centre.
Newcastle Crown Court heard how Widdowson's friend Cooper stepped in and punched Mr Close, knocking him unconscious.
The attacker then walked off and said he 'didn't ******* care' when door staff told him that Mr Cooper was lying on the ground, it was heard.
Mr Close spent two weeks in a coma and medics told his mother their was a chance he might not survive. But he made a rapid recovery and was discharged from hospital just five weeks later.
However, until the metal plates were inserted, Mr Close's fragile skull put him at risk of further injury.
He now hopes that the surgery means he will one day be able to realise his dreams of joining the RAF.
Vicious: Jordan Cooper, right, and James Widdowson, left, both admitted to attacking Mr Close
'I'm still waiting for the RAF to get back to us,' he said. 'There may still be a chance I can join up. As soon as the swelling goes down and my hair grows back I will be right back to where I was before this happened. I have been out with friends and it's just nice doing normal things again.'
His mother Michaela, 43, said her son's life is finally 'getting back on track'.
She said: 'He's been really good. He's looking after himself, he's started sleeping sitting up to help get the swelling down. He's just desperate to get his life back.
'He's incredible, he's never had any worries or doubts that he would do anything other than make a full recovery. We have been so lucky, everybody is blown away by how well he's doing, it's like a miracle.'
The burial is believed to be of people from the ancient 'Glazkov Culture'
Skeletons were decorated with unusual rings made from rare white jade
believe they were an ancient dignitary and his younger wife
Archaeologists have unearthed the Bronze Age grave of an couple who have been holding hands for the past 5,000 years.
The skeletons were decorated with unusual rings made from rare white jade, one of which was placed over the eye socket of the man.
The find, overlooking Lake Baikal in Siberia, is believed to be the remains of an ancient dignitary and his younger wife.
The grave of a Bronze Age couple who have been discovered in Siberia holding hands for the past 5,000 years
The skeletons were decorated with unusual rings made from rare white jade, one of which was placed over the eye socket of the man
Intriguingly Russian scientists have not yet revealed details of a 'metal implement' found inside a leather pouch placed between the man's kneecaps.
Three jade rings were placed on the man's chest, while a large jade dagger 20 inches in length, made from the same rare stone, was also found inside the grave.
The burial is believed to be of people from the ancient Bronze Age 'Glazkov Culture' who lived around Baikal, the oldest and deepest lake in the world.
Archaeologist Dmitry Kichigin, of Irkutsk National Research Technical University, said the rings were 'somehow connected with their ideas about the afterlife.'
Three jade rings were placed on the man's chest, while a large jade dagger 20 inches in length, made from the same rare stone, was also found inside the grave
The find, overlooking Lake Baikal in Siberia, is believed to be the remains of an ancient dignitary and his younger wife
'In the grave we found male and female skeletons, lying on their backs, heads to the west, hand in hand,' he said.
'It would be very interesting to find out the purposes the massive jade knife, which we found near the woman, was used for.
'We also found some metal implement in a small leather bag between male's kneecaps.'
Pendants of red deer and musk deer teeth were found on the male skull, and around the feet.
The male skeleton is complete but rodents destroyed the upper part of the female.
The burial site near the lake is at a 'sacred place for ancient people' where Neolithic remains were also discovered
He believed the pair could be 'an owner and his concubine.'
The burial site near the lake is at a 'sacred place for ancient people' where Neolithic remains were also discovered.
The precise location is being kept secret to avoid it being ransacked by treasure hunters.
'We can expect a lot of interesting discoveries on this archaeological site, so we plan to continue our work next year,' the archeologist told The Siberian Times.
They're the pesky birds notorious for stealing our food from seaside promenades.
But fast food giant Hungry Jack's has come up with a quirky solution that could possibly put an end to chip-thieving seagulls.
The chain has claimed it has developed the world's first seagull-repellent chips after launching the 'Pack That Scares Gulls' (PTSG) that are served in reflective cartons designed specifically for its new 'Thick Cut Chips'.
Australia customers can enjoy their potato chips in peace because the latest packaging has been made from a holographic reflective material that creates an optical distraction.
When sunlight hits the dazzling surface, the silver packaging deters the feathered scavengers from pinching the food in a harmless manner.
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Hungry Jack's has launched seagull-repellent chips called 'The PackThat Scares Gulls' that are served in reflective packaging designed to deter the pesky scavengers
Australia customers, who have experienced thieving seafulls, can can enjoy their potato chips in peace
In the development of the packs, the company has worked with 'bird enthusiasts' to create a 'protective coat of arms to equip Hungry Jack's chip loyalists with best possible seagull protection'.
'Seagulls. Just when you thought your chips would never be safe from those pincer-mouthed chip addicted, feather reptiles, Hungry Jack's had a breakthrough,' an advertisement said.
'Introducing the Pack That Scares Gulls. Printed on holographic paper, the glitter surface reflects light and protects our new thick cut chips.
'Released in gull-infested areas around the country, finally Aussies can enjoy their thick cut chips in peace. The Pack That Scares Gulls. Impeccable packs for irresistible chips.'
The packaging is designed to deflect squawking, pesky seagulls away from the new potato thick cut chips
When sunlight hits the glittery surface, the packaging deters the pesky scavengers from pinching the chips
Chief marketing officer Scott Baird said the launch of the innovative PTSG pack was the culmination of months liaising with some of the nations best bird experts.
'We want our customers to be able to peacefully enjoy our delicious new thick cut chips so weve brought to market a QSR first to solve this problem,' he said.
'Hungry Jacks is known for better, we have better burgers and now we have better chips, so we felt compelled to offer our customers better solutions to their problem and arm Hungry Jacks customers with protection from seagulls.'
The food giant claims the inspiration was taken from Australian farmers who use 'scare tape' to protect their crops from birds.
The packaging has been made from a holographic reflective material that creates an optical distraction
The innovative packaging is a world first as a novel solution to protect people from thieving seagulls
THE PACK THAT SCARES GULLS IS AVAILABLE AT THESE COASTAL STORES: NEW SOUTH WALES - Bondi Beach, Circular Quay, Manly QUEENSLAND - Surfers Paradise SOUTH AUSTRALIA - Seaford WESTERN AUSTRALIA - Falcon, Fremantle, Rockingham Advertisement
For the seagull-repellent chips to work, the packs are required to be in direct sunlight and it works effectively when the packaging is held or moving.
The chips are sold at eight selected coastal stores around Australia: Bondi Beach, Circular Quay, Manly (New South Wales), Surfers Paradise (Queensland), Seaford (South Australia) and Falcon, Fremantle, Rockingham (Western Australia).
'Seagulls migrate up north during the winter months to top up their tan, luckily our VIC & TAS stores are gull free zones and do not require protection,' the fast food giant said on its website.
For a limited time only, customers can flock into participating stores for the new thick cut chips.
A surfer who was found dead in a ravine while on a university trip to Morocco was 'ignored' by onlookers who were going to a nearby mosque 'because they feared having to pay his medical bills', an inquest heard.
Luke Sewell, 20, from Wilmslow, Cheshire, was found on a riverbank at the bottom of a 20ft ravine near his hotel in Agadir in March 2014.
Cheshire Coroners' Court found it was 'likely' that Luke had been spotted as early as 4am by people going to the mosque - but nobody stopped due to fears over 'financing the bill'.
Luke Sewell, pictured, 19, died in Morocco in unexplained circumstances while in the north African country on a trip with Newcastle University Surfing Society
The 20-year-old, pictured, was found in a ravine with 'severe head injuries' and it is thought passers-by 'ignored him' on their way to mosque because they 'feared having to pay his medical bills'
He was in the north African country with Newcastle University's Surfing Society and sustained 'severe head injuries' in the unexplained death.
Mr Sewell's mother Tracie Stringer told the inquest: 'We were told everybody walked past Luke for a long period of time and nobody would go near him as they would be liable if he was taken to hospital. That's terrible.'
Formerly a star pupil at Wilmslow High School, Mr Sewell was described as a 'much loved' son who helped care for his autistic younger brother Joel, 19.
The inquest heard he had suffered from depression before switching from chemical engineering to study maths and statistics - but had been happier on his new course.
On the day of his death he had been surfing before drinking 'some alcohol' on a night out with friends - but the inquest heard he had not 'drunk to excess' or taken any drugs.
He had gone back to the hotel at around 1.30am but it's thought he may have gone back out alone to retrieve his phone - which was located under a table the following day.
Mr Sewell, left, was described as a 'much-loved' son who helped care for autistic younger brother Joel, 19, right
The inquest heard Mr Sewell, pictured, had been on a night out with friends but 'had not drunk to excess'
Mr Sewell was found lying in a ravine near his hotel block at around 7am in the morning.
He was taken to hospital but died on April 2 with his parents by his bedside. The inquest heard there was no time to airlift him to the UK for treatment.
Moroccan authorities investigated the death and found it to be non-suspicious - but would not share their findings with UK authorities.
Coroner Dr Janet Napier said his injuries were caused by a 'fall from a height', but it was not known why he had taken the path close to the ravine, which was not guarded by a fence or warning sign.
His family staged a special funeral procession for him, with his body carried in a Volkswagen Camper Van
The family also wore Manchester City shirts in tribute to the student, who supported the football team
There was no evidence of self harm or severe intoxication, she said.
Recording a narrative verdict, she said Luke had died from head and chest injuries, adding: 'Luke Sewell was found with severe head injuries at the bottom of a ravine near his accommodation block.
'There is no evidence as to how this happened.'
The men are suspected to have installed a computer program for the theft
Surveillance images showed men in masks walking away with packed bags
Taiwanese banks are in lock down after masked robbers allegedly ransacked more than 30 ATMs and made off with nearly A$3million in cash.
The thieves targeted 34 ATMs at the First Commercial Bank in Taiwan's capital Taipei last weekend.
Surveillance images showed 'two men wearing face masks and hats walking away with bags packed with cash directly withdrawn from ATMs', the bank said in a statement.
Masked robbers allegedly targeted 34 ATMs in Taiwan last weekend and ransacked nearly A$3million in cash
The thieves targeted 34 ATMs at the First Commercial Bank, sending Taiwanese banks into lockdown
Surveillance images showed 'two men wearing face masks and hats walking away with bags packed with cash'
The men are suspected of installing a computer program that forced the cash machines to churn out more than A$2.8million.
At least two suspects were involved - one Russian man and another foreign suspect whose nationality remains unknown, according to Taipei police.
'It is still not clear how the suspects stole such a large amount of money from the ATMs,' an officer told AFP.
'My understanding is this is the first time such a criminal method has been discovered here.'
It took the duo five to 10 minutes to steal money from each of the 34 ATMs, the bank said, adding that the theft spanned machines at 20 branches.
It said more than 400 of its ATMs of the same type had been shut down following the heist.
Taipei believe at least two suspects were involved in the heist, one Russian man and another foreign suspect whose nationality remains unknown
More than 400 First Commercial Bank ATMs were shut down following the brazen theft
The men are suspected of installing a computer program that forced the cash machines to churn out cash
More than 700 other cash machines of the same type operated by six other banks have also been shut down.
Police said the Russian suspect escaped Taiwan on Sunday, adding that they had sought assistance from Interpol.
'ATM crimes were not uncommon, most of them using fake cards or cheating people out of their money using their debit or credit cards on ATMs,' the officer said.
Taiwanese authorities have also not ruled out the possibility of the heist being an inside job, given the sophistication required to pull off the crime.
The bank has reported the incident to Taiwan's Financial Supervisory Commission, which later announced that First Bank would have to bear full responsibility for its losses.
Taiwanese authorities have also not ruled out the possibility of the heist being an inside job
French fishermen bagged the biggest catch of their lives when they reeled in a Portuguese submarine.
The 220ft navy vessel got tangled in the net of a trawler off the English coast as it was taking part in a training mission.
Portugal's Armed Forces General Staff said the sub got too close to the boat when it was below the surface about 34 miles (55km) southeast of Lizard Point in Cornwall.
The 220ft navy vessel, pictured, got tangled in the net of a trawler off the English coast as it was taking part in a training mission
The trawler, Daytona, which is registered to port in northwest France called Saint-Brieuc, was fishing in the area, according to RT.
Blissfully unaware there was an assault sub below them, fully equipped with eight torpedoes and four harpoons, the fishermen plodded along with their work.
The Tridente-class submarine, which weighs more than 2,000 tonnes, got stuck in the net and hit the fishing boat as it tried to surface.
'The submarine immediately surfaced and made contact with the trawler,' French maritime authorities said in a statement.
Nobody was injured in the mix-up and somehow there was no damage to either the sub or the trailer, but it did take sailors two hours to untangle the net.
These types of events are not uncommon in British waters, with two incidents last year alone of vessels being damaged or completely destroyed by submarines.
In March 2015, a trawler captain claimed his boat was nearly dragged down by a Russian submarine while fishing off the Scottish coast.
Angus Macleod, 46, was fishing for haddock and skate when he became convinced that a hostile vessel was caught up below his boat Aquarius.
The submarine attempted to free itself, taking the 65ft vessel and his two-ton catch with it.
A month later, another vessel was left badly damaged off the coast of Northern Ireland.
Initially the Russians were blamed for the incident, but in September last year the Royal Navy finally claimed responsibility.
Portugal's Armed Forces General Staff said the sub, pictued, got too close to the boat when it was below the surface about 34 miles (55km) southeast of Lizard Point in Cornwall
These types of events are not uncommon in British waters, with two incidents last year alone of vessels being damaged or completely destroyed by submarines
Last month, France's top judicial court has definitively confirmed a decision to close the case of a French trawler that sunk over a decade ago off the British coast, killing five people.
The Court of Cassation said there was no evidence to support the claim that a submarine was involved, nor that it was a fishing accident.
The entire crew of the Bugaled Breizh drowned when it capsized and sank 14 miles (23 kilometers) off Lizard Peninsula in Cornwall on January 15, 2004.
Many suspected a nearby submarine pulled it under.
Britain's Royal Navy has previously denied claims that one of its nuclear submarines caused the sinking.
His family have been taken into protected custody due to rising tensions
The friend who received the WhatsApp message reported it to the police
A Christian man has fled his Pakistan home after being charged with blasphemy for sending a poem that defamed Islam in a WhatsApp text message.
The accused identified as 35-year-old Nadeem or Nasim James sent the sacrilegious poem to a Muslim friend, who turned him into authorities.
Police in the Punjab province began the search for James on Sunday, after the recipient of the poem, Yasir Bashir, turned him in.
The poem is said to denigrate Prophet Muhammad or other Islamic holy figures, according to the Washington Post.
Christians are an embattled minority in Pakistan, where draconian blasphemy laws have emboldened extremists and inflamed religious tensions
The Express Tribune reports that local authorities told the AFP: Police have registered a case on blasphemy charges against Nadeem James and are searching for him as he has fled his home.
James family has been taken into protective custody due to elevated tensions between Christians and Muslims in their hometown, Sarai Alamgir.
The British Pakistani Christian Association reports that James is father to two children, aged eight and 10. The Association contends that James is being punished for marrying a Muslim woman who later converted to Christianity.
Pakistan has some of the most stringent blasphemy laws in the world. Many are vague and open to wide interpretation, and anyone accused of denigrating Islam can be sentenced to life in prison or death.
Since the laws were enacted in 1987, more than 1,400 people have been charged with blasphemy.
James is among the 2.5 million Christians in Pakistan, who make up just 1.6% of the Muslim country's total population
In the past, Pakistan's strict laws have been used an excuse to attack minorities and reconcile personal disputes.
In 2013, more than 1,000 Muslims mobbed Christians in Lahore after rumour spread that a local Christian man had committed blasphemy. The extremists set dozens of homes ablaze.
In 2012, an 11-year-old Christian girl was arrested by Islamabad police after a neighbour accused her of tearing pages out of the Quran and burning them - a capital offense in Pakistan. She was released after authorities found out that a local Islamic cleric had planted the charred pages to frame her.
Former President George W. Bush has been widely praised for yesterday's speech at the Dallas police memorial and especially for a quote which has been widely shared on social media.
'Too often we judge other groups by their worst examples while judging ourselves by our best intentions,' he said at one point, to a round of applause from the audience, and it was a passage which was highlighted and soon went viral.
He was often lampooned for his oratory skills - or lack of them - during his time in the White House but yesterday the 43rd President of the United States was on top form, capturing the zeitgeist.
George W. Bush, who was Governor of Texas before becoming President, has been highly praised for his speech at a memorial service in Dallas
Houston radio host Matt Patrick tweeted today: 'Loved George W. Bush's speech yesterday! Perfect!'
Twitter user Jacob Boos claimed Bush's speech was better than Obama's and added: 'Then again probably not he has an agenda to push.'
And his speech was applauded further afield.
Chris Kenny, a journalist on The Australian, tweeted: 'This really is a superb speech, encapsulating hope in the Great Republic at a tough time.'
Mr Bush hugs his wife Laura, who whispers in his ear, after his speech as the Obamas and (left) Joe Biden and his wife Jill applaud him after his speech
Mr Bush said: 'These slain officers were "the best among us".
'At times, it seems like the forces pulling us apart are stronger than the forces binding us together.
'Argument turns too easily into animosity. Disagreement escalates into dehumanization.'
Time magazine published Bush's entire speech but it was that particular passage which was seen by many Americans as a touchstone for their feelings.
Many people on Twitter found themselves almost shocked that they were so impressed by Mr Bush
Political correspondent John Harwood described Mr Bush's speech as 'pitch perfect'
Michael Beckman, who described himself as a 'Jewish conservative Republican' tweeted: 'President George W. Bush gave a beautiful speech today. What a unifying moment - I love that man.'
Many people searched the internet to see if Mr Bush had plagiarized it from another source.
One suggested there was similarities to a speech made last year by author and public speaker Stephen M R Covey, who said: 'We judge ourselves by our intentions and others by their behavior.'
A police force revealed today it has become Britains first to recognise misogyny as a hate crime.
Nottinghamshire Police is recording incidents such as street harassment, verbal abuse, unwanted physical approaches and taking photographs without consent within the hate crime definition.
It also includes using mobile phones to send unwanted messages, unwanted sexual advances and unwanted or uninvited physical or verbal contact or engagement, possibly including wolf whistling.
Wolf whistling: A police force will record incidents such as street harassment, verbal abuse, unwanted physical approaches and taking photographs without consent within the hate crime definition (file picture)
The forces chief constable Sue Fish said: Im delighted that we are leading the way towards tackling misogyny in all its forms.
Its a very important aspect of the overall hate crime work being conducted and one that will make Nottinghamshire a safer place for all women.
What women face, often on a daily basis, is absolutely unacceptable and can be extremely distressing. Nottinghamshire Police is committed to taking misogynistic hate crime seriously.
The force has spent three months training officers and staff on misogyny hate crime, and said it covers incidents against women that are motivated by an attitude of a man towards a woman.
Police, who have been working with Nottingham Womens Centre on the subject, added that the crime includes behaviour targeted towards a woman by men simply because they are a woman.
Partnership: Nottinghamshire Police chief constable Sue Fish (left) and Nottingham Womens Centre manager Melanie Jeffs (right) have been working on the project to recognise misogyny as a hate crime
Patrol car: The force has spent three months training officers and staff on misogyny hate crime (file picture)
The NWC's centre manager Melanie Jeffs said: Were pleased to see Nottinghamshire Police recognise the breadth of violence and intimidation that women experience on a daily basis in our communities.
WHAT COULD BE INCLUDED UNDER MISOGYNY HATE CRIME? Incidents against women motivated by attitude of a man towards a woman
Unwanted/uninvited sexual advances
Physical or verbal assault
Unwanted/uninvited physical or verbal contact or engagement
Use of mobile devices to send unwanted or uninvited messages
Taking photographs without consent or permission Advertisement
Understanding this as a hate crime will help people to see the seriousness of these incidents and hopefully encourage more women to come forward and report offences.
A force spokesman said: Unwanted physical or verbal contact or engagement is defined as exactly that and so can cover wolf whistling and other similar types of contact. If the victim feels that this has happened because they are a woman then we will record it as a hate crime.
This doesnt necessarily mean that a criminal offence has been committed, but means we will carry out risk assessments and offer support as we would to any victim of a hate crime.
Hate crime is the terminology used to record all incidents and crimes which the victim perceives to be motivated by prejudice. We take all reports of hate crimes extremely seriously.
The spokesman added: Domestic abuse is not included within the scope of misogyny hate crime in this procedure as it is dealt with comprehensively within its own procedure.
In April, Poppy Smart, 23, reported a group of builders to West Mercia Police for wolf-whistling at her on her way to work in Worcester. The force said it was a matter for the men's employers.
And last September BBC reporter Sarah Teale had 'sexual obscenities' shouted at her by a passing man while she filmed a news report about sexual harassment in Nottingham city centre.
The common definition of a hate crime agreed by the Association of Chief Police Officers and the Crown Prosecution service is: Any criminal offence which is perceived by the victim or any other person, to be motivated by hostility or prejudice based on a persons race or perceived race; religion or perceived religion; sexual orientation or perceived sexual orientation; disability or perceived disability and any crime motivated by hostility or prejudice against a person who is transgender or perceived to be transgender.
German police investigating a private Facebook group used to praise the Nazis have raided dozens of homes across the country.
The homes of 40 people were targeted in raids in 14 of the country's 16 states as the authorities sought people suspected of posting far-right or anti-Semitic material.
A unit to target the crimes was set up in 2015 after police in Bavaria spotted regular hate posts being published on a secret Facebook page, according to German website local.de.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg discussed the issue of hate speech in New York in September last year where she pressed the CEO about hate posts on his site
The issue came to the fore when Chancellor Angela Merkel was overheard challenging Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg about the use of his social network to post racist comments in September last year.
Mr Zuckerberg was overheard saying: 'We need to do some work' about the problem during a conversation between the pair at a UN lunch.
German law restricts free speech if it includes incitement to violence, glorifying Nazism, racial discrimination and Holocaust denial. The raids are the latest step in a campaign targeting the rise in online hate speech, much of it posted anonymously.
Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said that the law must apply on the internet. 'Violent language is unacceptable and lays the groundwork for real violence,' he said.
His office said activists campaigning against far-right extremism are frequent targets of online hate speech.
Germans have become increasingly worried in the last year at the risk of political extremism, according to a new survey.
German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere welcomed raids and said violent language was unacceptable
Deadly terrorist attacks in neighbouring France and Belgium and concerns at more than a million migrants entering the country have fuelled those fears, said insurer R+V which carried out the survey.
Nearly three-quarters of Germans are concerned about terrorism, while political extremism is second on the list of worries for 68 percent of the population.
In January, Germany banned a far-right website for spreading 'racist, xenophobic, homophobic, anti-Semitic and anti-Islamic content' and arrested two site administrators.
Material linked to the Altermedia Deutschland platform included banned Nazi slogans and the denial of the Holocaust as well as incitement of violence against foreigners, prosecutors said.
Two months earlier, police raided homes in the German capital when officers confiscated smartphones and computers.
Officials said the it was part of an ongoing investigation into hate speech spread over social media meant to incite people against asylum-seekers and refugee housing.
A 57-year-old man arrested for removing another man's testicle during an unauthorised surgery in a motel room has pleaded guilty to a number of charges.
Allan George Matthews faced Port Macquarie Local Court on the NSW north coast on Wednesday morning after his arrest last month, reported The Age.
Matthews had responded to an online advertisement posted in May by another 52-year-old man seeking help with a medical issue despite having no medical qualifications.
A man who responded to an online ad allegedly performed an unauthorised surgery to remove another man's testicle
The pair then met at a Port Macquarie motel on May 16 on the NSW north coast where the younger man's left testicle was surgically removed.
However, the botched surgery did not go as planned and the 52-year-old man was rushed to hospital.
During the proceedings on Wednesday Matthews pleaded guilty to removing tissue from the body of another without consent or authority.
But he pleaded not guilty to reckless grievous bodily harm.
It is understood the 52-year-old did not have the money for proper medical attention so sought alternative options with the advertisement, reports Sydney Morning Herald.
After being treated for a wound sustained in the procedure at the hospital medical staff alerted police, who launched a search for the man.
Police swooped on a home in Glen Innes, seizing medical equipment, electronic equipment, seven firearms and four bottles of liquid believed to be amyl nitrate.
On Wednesday, Matthews also pleaded guilty to possessing an unauthorised firearm, not keeping a firearm safely, and two counts of possessing or attempting to prescribe restricted substance.
He will face court again mid-August.
David Cameron treated his successor Theresa May to a private tour of his plush Downing Street flat last night as the incoming Prime Minister eyed up the Cameron family's luxury kitchen.
Mrs May, a keen cook, is expected to move in to the flat above No 11, where Mr Cameron has lived with his family - with Chancellor George Osborne's smaller family living in the flat above No 10.
The incoming PM is expected to live in No 11, where the Camerons spent 25,000 to install a luxury new kitchen after arriving in 2010.
The Cameron family's kitchen is understood to be much better equipped and more spacious than their next door neighbours, with Nigella-standard units and surfaces.
But Mr Cameron didn't use the kitchen for one last time last night - instead he treated his staff by ordering one last curry as they frantically packed their bags to make way for the Mays.
Westminster's favourite curry house - Kennington Tandoori - tweeted a picture of their driver setting off with four big bags of curry to deliver their 'last supper' to No 10.
David Cameron (pictured sitting in the Downing Street kitchen) treated his successor Theresa May to a private tour of his plush Downing Street flat last night as the incoming Prime Minister eyed up the Cameron family's luxury kitchen
Westminster's favourite curry house - Kennington Tandoori - tweeted a picture of their driver setting off with four big bags of curry to deliver their 'last supper' to No 10
Theresa May, a keen cook, will be moving in to the flat above No 11, where Mr Cameron has lived with his wife Samantha (pictured in the green top), with Chancellor George Osborne's smaller family living in the flat above No 10
They said it had 'been a pleasure' to serve Mr Cameron - but the curry was actually for their staff, who were probably the ones doing all the packing.
The outgoing PM spent more than 50 on the food, which included mixed grill, samosas and saag aloo.
Mr Cameron's official spokeswoman said the delivery had been for civil servants who were working on arrangements for the change of prime ministers.
Mr Cameron and his wife Samantha are keen curry fans and make a point of tasting local curry restaurants during the Conservative party conference season - whether in Birmingham, Manchester or Brighton.
But Kennington Tandoori - where many Westminster plots originated - might find their custom from Downing Street fading after today, as his successor Theresa May is more keen on cooking her own meals.
WHAT CURRY DID DAVID CAMERON ORDER? David Cameron spent more than 50 on a takeaway curry for his staff last night as they celebrated the final hours of his premiership. Mr Cameron's official spokeswoman said the delivery had been for civil servants who were working on arrangements for the change of prime ministers. Among the items ordered from the famous Kennington Tandoori were: Home made samosas
Kashmiri Rogan Josh
Nashili Gosh
The house special mixed grill
Saag Aloo Advertisement
The restaurant has been a favourite venue of some of Westminster's most famous players over the years - including Ken Clarke, Charles Kennedy, Ann Widdecombe and John Prescott.
Situated across the Thames from the Houses of Parliament, it provides MPs a curry house within easy staggering distance if they need to rush back to the Commons for votes.
And it is perhaps the only restaurant to have ever received a mention during prime Minister's Questions.
Telling off MPs for misbehaving one session, the Speaker shouted: 'When you're eating curry in the Kennington Tandoori, you don't yell across the table'.
The restaurant boasts of supplying 'the meal Gordon Brown ate the night before he moved in to No 10'.
While Mr Cameron's staff tucked into the curry bought by their boss last night, the Prime Minister in-waiting spent her final evening before becoming Prime Minister having dinner with the Chief Rabbi.
Mrs May and her husband Philip joined guests at the north London home of Ephraim Mirvis for the dinner, which had been arranged some time ago.
The Chief Rabbi said her decision to honour the engagement, following the fast-moving events which unexpectedly thrust her into Britain's top political job, was an indication of the esteem in which the new PM holds the UK's Jewish community.
Rabbi Mirvis described Mrs May as 'a friend and champion of our community and of other faith'.
And he also paid tribute to outgoing PM David Cameron for his work to promote Holocaust remembrance and education.
Westminster's favourite curry house - Kennington Tandoori - tweeted a picture of their driver setting off with four big bags of curry to deliver their 'last supper' to No 10
David Cameron spent 25,000 renovating the kitchen over Downing Street after Gordon Brown, pictured in the old kitchen, left in 2010
David Cameron (pictured) treated his successor Theresa May to a private tour of his plush Downing Street flat last night as the incoming Prime Minister eyed up the Cameron family's luxury kitchen
In a statement, the Chief Rabbi thanked Mr Cameron for 'his deep friendship and for his unwavering commitment to promoting the values of decency, respect, liberty and responsibility' and described him as 'a man who not only speaks with great principle and conviction but who acts upon what he believes'.
And he added: 'Today, Theresa May becomes Prime Minister at a time of great political, social and economic uncertainty. Few people are more talented or better qualified to tackle these immense challenges.
'I recall the speed and the sensitivity with which she reached out to the Jewish community following the terror attacks on Jewish targets in Europe last year.
'As she made clear then, 'Without its Jews, Britain would not be Britain'.
'She has proved herself to be a friend and champion of our community and of other faith communities who share her values of tolerance and understanding.
'Last night, on the eve of her becoming Prime Minister, Theresa May kept a long-standing arrangement to join Valerie and me at our home for dinner.
'The fact that she did this in the midst of critically important preparations before taking up office is a reflection of her strong desire to keep to her commitments and the esteem in which she holds the British Jewish community.
'I was delighted to have the opportunity to give her my blessings at this very auspicious time.
'I wish her every success as Prime Minister and look forward to building upon our warm relationship over the coming years'.
The incoming PM is expected to live in No 11, where the Camerons spent 25,000 to install a luxury new kitchen (pictured in the background) after arriving in 2010
David Cameron is widely regarded as the best House of Commons performer of his generation - and opponents have rarely managed to lay a glove on him.
On becoming Tory leader he promised to end the 'punch and judy' politics of Westminster, saying he was fed up with the 'name calling, backbiting, point scoring'.
But it was in the rough and tumble of the House where he really excelled, always ready with a sharp put down and generally able to bluster his way through even the most uncomfortable of political situations.
David Cameron delivered a brutal jibe at Tony Blair in his debut as Tory leader, saying 'he was the future once'
In fact the most regular criticism of Mr Cameron was that he was too harsh on his Labour foes - with many likening him to fictional anti-hero Flashman.
Flashman originally featured as the public school bully who made Tom Brown's life hell in Thomas Hughes' 19th century novel.
George MacDonald Fraser later reimagined the character after his expulsion from Rugby, writing a hugely successful series of books about how the cowardly sex pest turned into a Victorian war hero.
Apart from his verbal sparring skills, Mr Cameron also excelled at the sombre occasions of parliament.
His response to the Bloody Sunday inquiry was particularly highly praised.
But Mr Cameron has also had his fair share of setbacks - including dramatically losing a vote that would have authorised airstrikes against Syria in 2013.
Here are some of the outgoing Prime Minister's key moments from the past 11 years.
'You were the future once'
Tony Blair had dominated parliament for a decade when Mr Cameron became Conservative leader in 2005.
But Mr Cameron laid down a marker during their first clash at the despatch box, saying: 'It is only our first exchange and already the PM is asking me the questions.
'This approach is stuck in the past and I want to talk about the future. He was the future once.'
Even the experienced Mr Blair could not hide how much it stung.
Even the experienced Mr Blair could not hide how much the brutal remark had stung
'We do not defend the indefensible'
David Cameron's ability to play his role as 'father of the nation' was widely seen as one of his greatest strengths as Prime Minister and it was never more on display than the day he responded to the Bloody Sunday Inquiry on June 15, 2010.
Making a fulsome apology at the Commons Despatch box almost 40 years after the shootings following the publication of the Saville Inquiry, Mr Cameron said the killings were 'unjustified and unjustifiable'.
The Prime Minister said he was 'deeply sorry' for the actions of British troops in a major statement that was heard by MPs in absolute silence.
He told MPs: 'You do not defend the British Army by defending the indefensible what happened should never, ever happened.'
'Son of Brown'
Most of Mr Cameron's Commons duels after becoming PM were against Ed Miliband.
In one of their early encounters in December 2010, the Labour leader jibed that the Tory leadership regarded themselves as 'children of Thatcher'.
But the PM hit back with a bruising reference to Mr Miliband's close links to Gordon Brown.
'I would rather be a child of Thatcher than a son of Brown,' he said.
Ed Miliband tried to pain Mr Cameron as 'Flashman' to fend off jibes about his competence
'Knifing a foreign secretary'
In another hammering put-down, Mr Cameron took aim at Mr Miliband for betraying his brother David to win Labour's top job.
'There's only one person i can remember knifing a foreign secretary, and I'm looking at him!' he said.
Mr Miliband responded: 'Flashman is back.'
Mr Cameron sometimes found himself under fire for his aggressive style, including when he told Angela Eagle to 'calm down dear'
'Calm down, dear'
In April 2011, Mr Cameron came under fire after urging Labour front bencher Angela Eagle to 'calm down, dear' during a rowdy Commons session.
Downing Street insisted the PM had merely been borrowing the catchphrase from insurance adverts fronted by film director Michael Winner.
Ms Eagle said 'a modern man' would not have 'expressed himself that way'.
But spokesman for Mr Cameron said it was just 'a humorous remark'.
'I get that and will act accordingly'
One of Mr Cameron's lowest moments in office came in August 2013, when he was humiliated by losing a crucial vote on taking military action against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
He had urged MPs to back his call for a military response in Syria after suspected chemical weapons attacks on the outskirts of the capital Damascus as Assad brutally attacked his own citizens two years into the bloody civil war.
But Mr Cameron, who had recalled MPs a week early from their summer recess - was left defeated in a late-night vote in the House of Commons, losing by a narrow seven votes.
The Prime Minister, who was visibly angry and disappointed at losing the vote, said: 'It is clear to me that the British parliament, reflecting the views of the British people, does not want to see British military action.
'I get that and will act accordingly.'
But for the next three years he worked towards winning a vote on taking military action in Syria, finally winning a vote to launch air strikes against ISIS targets in the country at the end of 2015.
The opposition may have changed since the 2013 vote, but no longer was the UK abstaining from military action in Syria.
Mr Cameron and Ed Balls had a long running fued even though they did not face off directly in the House of Commons
'The most annoying man in politics'
Mr Cameron did not face off directly with shadow chancellor Ed Balls in the Commons.
But some of his most memorable moments came when he targeted Mr Balls as part of a long-running fued.
In March 2011 he broke off from answering a routine question about regeneration to comment: 'I may be alone in finding him the most annoying person in modern politics.'
Mr Balls responded by holding out a glass of water.
In December 2013, he ridiculed Mr Balls for his expansive hand gestures during PMQs, which included a 'calm down' wave.
'After the briefings today I would have thought the only hand gesture should be bye bye,' Mr Cameron said.
He added that Mr Miliband should not need it to be Christmas to realise he was 'sitting next to a Turkey.'
Mr Cameron later said he thought he had been 'dreaming' when Mr Balls humiliatingly lost his seat at the 2015 general election.
Mr Cameron launched some excoriating attacks on Jeremy Corbyn during their exhanges
'Do up your tie and sing the national anthem'
In one of the more memorable exchanges at Prime Minister's Questions, Mr Cameron gave his opposite number Jeremy Corbyn wardrobe advice.
He told the famously scruffy Labour leader to 'put on a proper suit, do up your tie and sing the national anthem'.
It came after a bizarre exchange involving both the leaders' mothers, with Mr Corbyn telling the PM: 'My late mother would have said, "stand up for the principle of a health service free at the point of use for everybody".
It gave Mr Cameron the opportunity to give his own mother's advice, telling Mr Corbyn that his mother would criticise his shabby dress sense.
In one particularly stinging jibe Mr Cameron took aim at the Labour leader's scruffiness and reluctance to sing the national anthem
'For heaven's sake man, go'
Despite having lost the referendum and announced his own resignation, Mr Cameron was able to turn the Commons to his advantage anyway.
As Jeremy Corbyn's front bench team collapsed around him an unprecedented cascade of resignations, the Premier wound up a damning attack on his rival just six days after his ballot box humiliation.
He told him: 'It might be in my party's interest for him to sit there, it's not in the national interest and I would say, for heaven's sake man, go.'
A new string of sexual assaults have hit another Swedish music festival, where dozens of accusations of assault including rape, attempted rape, and groping have been made against foreign men.
Swedish police report that the rape victim was under 18 and taken to the hospital. She was attacked while watching a band perform at last weeks Peace & Love Festival, according to Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter.
Another Swedish newspaper, FriaTider, reports that police spokesman Stefan Dangardt identified the attackers as foreign men.
Local authorities currently have three suspects in custody. Swedish media have not identified them by name because they are said to be underage.
Thirty thousand people attended Peace & Love, which was promoted as a multicultural festival encouraging inclusion and acceptance.
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Crowded: Police have come under fire for failing to protect festival-goers, as campaigners insist that the wristbands are not strong enough to prevent attacks
The festival trumpeted a U Cant Touch This! initiative aimed at preventing sexual harassment and hired officers to patrol the event.
Swedens summer music festivals have been plagued by sexual harassment.
Five women were raped at Swedens biggest festival, Bravalla, and 35 including a girl as young as 12 were assaulted at Putte i Parken (Party in the Park).
According to The Local, a policeman from the Varmland region (where Party in the Park takes place) said the rise of sexual abuse from previous years is enormous.
Complaints: Police spokesman Thomas Agnevik, who was also at the festival near to Norrkoping, said he could 'understand the criticism'. Pictured, file image of the festival from 2015
Campaign: Police have handed out wristbands with 'Don't molest' written on them, in an attempt to crackdown on sexual assaults at festivals. Pictured, National Police Chief Dan Eliasson wearing one of the bracelets (left)
Swedish police have been criticized for not doing enough to protect female festival goers.
Norrkoping police spokesman Thomas Agnevik said he understands the criticism.
'If a crime is being committed obviously not enough has been done,' he said. 'Nobody should have to go to a concert and leave as a rape victim.'
Agnevik emphasized that police are unable to protect all festival attendees, as the attacks often happen in large crowds after dark, which makes it very difficult for them to identify attacks.
'Two of the rapes happened in front of the stage in the crowd, another was in a tent and another in the public bathroom,' he added.
Two of the rapes happened in front of the stage in the crowd, another was in a tent and another in the public bathroom. Police spokesman Thomas Agnevik
Mumford and Sons said they would not play at Bravalla again until they receive assurances from police and organisers that they are doing something to combat 'disgustingly high' rates of reported sexual violence.
They said in a statement: 'We're appalled to hear what happened at the Bravalla Festival last weekend. Festivals are a celebration of music and people, a place to let go and feel safe doing so. We're gutted by these hideous reports.'
It comes after 35 girls aged between 12 and 17 reported being attacked at the 'Party in the Park' festival this weekend in Karlstad, Varmland County.
Some of the alleged victims reported being 'kissed and groped' in scenes similar to the Cologne New Year attacks, in which dozens of women reported being assaulted.
One victim Alexandra Larsson, 17, waived her right to anonymity to tell MailOnline she was molested on Friday night having been looking forward to attending the festival for months.
'I do not know what to think, it is so wrong. Everyone thinks it's wrong but nothing happens,' she said.
'There are large festivals with several thousand people and these mass incidents create a powerlessness for both the police, security guards and especially for visitors who become victims.
'The perpetrators will be so anonymous in the audience that they will get away with sex crimes. That is the main problem, that the perpetrators get away with it.
Trauma: One victim Alexandra Larsson (pictured) told MailOnline she was molested on Friday night having been looking forward to attending the festival for months
'It's not okay. I should be able to go to festivals and have fun like everyone else without being afraid. It is wrong, really wrong, but that's the feeling I have after yesterday. It's damn hard that ordinary people who just want to have fun should have to suffer just because someone thinks it's fun to violate.'
Swedish police launched its new campaign a week ago, in an effort to crackdown on sexual assaults at festivals.
A horse has smashed its head through a tram window and been dragged along the road at a busy intersection, angering those who oppose the largely unregulated horse-drawn carriages.
The horse swung its head and smashed through the driver's window of a northbound tram in central Melbourne on Friday.
It was dragged a short distance down Swanston Street in central Melbourne, but escaped with only minor injuries to its head, face and foot, The Age reported.
An unlicensed operator was handling the horse and was transiting through the tram line illegally, City of Melbourne said in a statement.
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A horse smashed its head through a tram window on Swanston Street in central Melbourne on Friday (smashed window pictured at front of tram)
The incident occurred on the corner of Flinders and Swanston Streets, out the front of a 7-Eleven store.
Witnesses have taken to social media to describe the minor smash.
The horse was 'fine, if a bit shaken' and was settled by the operator, one witness said.
'It stumbled for sure but was able to recover and walk away.'
The owner took the horse home, one of the carriage drivers told a witness.
A woman took a video of the aftermath, which shows police arrive at the scene on Friday afternoon.
Another witness said they were 'showered in glass'.
The horse was dragged a short distance by the moving tram, police reportedly said (pictured smashed tram window)
A witness said the horse-drawn carriage took the horse home after it smashed its head through the window (pictured: the operator takes the horses and carriage away from the scene)
'I instinctively jumped back, which was lucky because the horses ended up right on the spot I was standing,' the witness wrote on Reddit.
The incident has sparked fresh calls to ban horses from central Melbourne.
'Get the horses out of the city already,' one wrote on Reddit.
'There's too much stress and danger for horses to be in a 21st century city CBD,' another said.
Facebook page Melbourne Against Horse-Drawn Carriages said of the incident: 'Horses are not objects existing to cart humans around, and their lives and well-being should never be put at risk to make a few bucks for a handful of greedy humans.'
The group is running a Change.org petition with more than 13,500 signatures, calling on the council to put an end to horse-drawn carriages.
City of Melbourne said they do not have the authority to ban the carriages from entering the municipality.
Trams were delayed for 20 minutes along Swanston Street.
It was the second time a tram and horse-drawn carriage has crashed on Swanston Street, a Yarra Trams spokeswoman told The Age.
Christopher Guy subjected a woman he met online to a harrowing campaign of harassment after lying to her that he fought in the Army
A fantasist pretended to be a war hero to woo a mother-of-three he became obsessed with after meeting on a dating website, a court heard.
Christopher Guy told June Parker completely invented stories of dead comrades and gun battles from his made-up tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The 30-year-old, from Leeds, then began a terrifying campaign of harassment after Ms Parker attempted to cool their relationship. He texted her constantly and posted on Facebook that they were engaged.
Guy even faked a pregnancy test to trick his mother into thinking Ms Parker was pregnant with their child.
Ms Parker has criticised the justice system after Guy avoided a jail sentence with a restraining order and unpaid work earlier this week.
Speaking after the case, she said he is still sending her unnerving texts talking about their upcoming 'wedding'.
After getting a string of messages just after the court case, she said: 'I cannot believe he's not been jailed. They talk as if it is over, as if his behaviour was just a phase, but it is still going on.
'I don't feel that I have help from the police. I do not think there is any point in telling the police. They don't do anything.
'He still sends me so many messages each day. He tells me he's seen me and noticed what cars are at my home, so he's obviously watching me.'
Leeds Magistrates Court heard how June met windscreen technician Guy on a dating website after the breakdown of her marriage in November 2015.
The relationship progressed quickly but June was not ready to introduce him to her young children, aged 13 and six, who still live with her.
Sarah Marsh, prosecuting, told the court: 'His behaviour changed and he started bombarding her with phone calls and messages, she found it too intense and she told him to keep his distance.
'He lied about his time in the army and when she confronted him he became erratic and.. threatened to kill himself. She then felt sorry for him and took him back.
'But it all came to a head when he told his mum she was pregnant. She told him it was over and then he posted on Facebook that they were engaged. Other people were commenting on it.'
By the middle of February, Ms Parker no longer felt safe in her own home in Leeds and moved to another address with her children.
The hearing was told that, by April, Guy was turning up at her door and trying to gain access to her home.
Fantasist Guy worn an Afghan service medal which he was not entitled to wear. He also posted pictures of himself in mess uniform and told his victim's family his invented tales of war
The Army have said he did not complete his training and branded him an insult to all those who did serve
Michael Walsh, mitigating, said: 'Mr Guy is someone who didn't appreciate or get the message given by the complainant. His actions were so persistent that it became criminal.'
Guy was given a two-year restraining order at a sentencing hearing on Tuesday.
He was also handed a community order of 60 Rehabilitation Activity days, 150 hours unpaid work, and a fine of 145.
Victim June Parker said that despite a restraining order being imposed on Guy, he has been texting her since the sentencing hearing
Sentencing, magistrate Mrs Hilary Britton said: 'If you do not listen to what this court tells you you could face five years in jail.'
Speaking after the hearing, Ms Parker said Guy told her and family of his 'heroic deeds on the field of battle'
She said: 'He told me his best friend had been shot and killed in front of him.
'We were once at my sister's and we all sat there together listening how he told us tales of war, that he had been shot in the head and the back and that he was lucky to be alive.
'He once joined other soldiers on a parade dressed in full regalia. All of it rubbish.'
But after getting suspicous she did her own research and believes he only ever did one stint of training with the TA.
An army spokesman said Guy never made it out of basic training, adding: 'This stinks of a Walter Mitty case.'
The spokesman said: 'Someone by his name and date of birth certainly served in the army, but never made it out of basic training. He never reached a unit. It is possible he went AWOL.
'He certainly doesn't warrant the ranks he has pinned to his uniform. To be pictured wearing Afghanistan and Iraq service medals, with the poppy displayed on the wrong side, is insulting to all those who served and gave their lives.'
An army spokesman said Guy never made it out of basic training, adding: 'This stinks of a Walter Mitty case.'
The spokesman said: 'Someone by his name and date of birth certainly served in the army, but never made it out of basic training. He never reached a unit. It is possible he went AWOL.
'He certainly doesn't warrant the ranks he has pinned to his uniform. To be pictured wearing Afghanistan and Iraq service medals, with the poppy displayed on the wrong side, is insulting to all those who served and gave their lives.'
Ms Parker, who mey Guy online, tried to split from him after he became obsessive and she uncovered his lies
This footage captures the nail-biting moment a motorist narrowly avoids crashing into another vehicle while 12 times over the drug-drive limit.
Derry Dawkins was high on cocaine when he gradually veered towards a white Land Rover that was waiting to pull out if a junction.
Dawkins, 46, dramatically swerved the other way into the oncoming lane at the very last second.
This is the moment a man high on cocaine swerves out of the way after veering towards a Land Rover
Luckily no one was hurt but in his state he failed to negotiate a bend further up the road and veered into a hedge.
Police attended the scene found Dawkins had 603 micrograms of benzoylecgonine - a metabolite of cocaine - per litre of blood in his system.
The limit is 50 micrograms per litre of blood.
He was convicted by magistrates in Bournemouth, Dorset, of driving over the specified level.
Dawkins' car was then captured on video driving on the wrong side of the road. After travelling further ahead, he eventually crashed into a hedge
Dawkins, from London, was disqualified from driving for 18 months, given a 200 fine and ordered to pay 115 costs for the incident that happened on the A350 near Sturminster Marshall, Dorset, on April 12.
Dashcam footage captured by a member of the public shows Dawkins in a blue Volkswagen Beetle driving down a single-lane carriageway approaching a junction where the Land Rover was waiting.
A Dorset Police spokesman said: 'The driver of the Beetle escaped crashing into the Land Rover but failed to negotiate a bend further up the road and landed in a ditch. Police attended and he failed a roadside drug wipe.
Vallum was sentenced to life in prison and is now facing possible federal charges for
A Latin Kings gang member pleaded guilty to murdering his transgender girlfriend last May in court on Tuesday.
Josh Vallum, 29, drove Mercedes Williamson, 17, from Alabama to his family's property in Mississippi on May 30, 2015 and told her they were going to have sex before stabbing her and bludgeoning her with a hammer, then burying her body.
'I killed Mercedes Williamson, sir,' Vallum said in court on Tuesday, adding that he murdered the teenager because he 'didnt want it to come out' that he was having a relationship with a transgender woman.
He was sentenced to life in prison and is facing possible federal charges as the US Department of Justice conducts an ongoing investigation to determine if the killing was a hate crime.
Tragedy: Josh Vallum, 29, pleaded guilty to murdering his transgender girlfriend Mercedes Williamson, 17, in court on Tuesday (couple above in August 2014)
Horrific: Vallum (left) drove Williamson (right) to his family property on May 30,2015 and stabbed the teenager before bludgeoning her to death
Behind bars: Vallum (above in court on Tuesday) was sentenced to life in prison and is now facing possible federal charges for committing a hate crime
Vallum's plea came just one week before he was set to go to trial for the murder of Williamson, and less than a month after her former roommate testified in a pre-trial hearing about the couple's relationship.
The Latin Kings member had initially claimed that her murdered the teenager after he reached between her legs while the two were being intimate and discovered that she had a penis.
That was not the case though according to Jeanie Miller, who shared a trailer with Williamson and said she would often speak with the teenager about her relationship with Vallum.
The Sun Herald reports that Miller testified that Williamson and Vallum frequently spent time together and had an active sex life.
Miller also stated on the stand that Vallum was aware that Williamson was transgender and that the two were openly affectionate, calling one another 'baby' and expressing their love for one another.
Vallum also once took Williamson to a Latin Kings beach party according to Miller, and the teenager had spoken in the past about how both she and Vallum would be killed if any member of the gang learned that she was transgender.
A photo from that beach party, with Williamson and Vallum affectionately wrapping their arms around one another, was actually posted by Vallum on Facebook, with the gang member writing: 'Great night with the fam Saturday.'
Miller said that despite the alleged threat of death at the hands of her boyfriend's fellow gang members Williamson told her at one point during her relationship with Vallum that 'she didnt have anything to worry about.'
Williamson, who was born Michael Wilkins, had been living as a transgender woman since the age of 14 and was estranged from her family at the time of her murder.
In the weeks after Williamson was killed Miller wrote about her former roommate on Facebook, saying how much she missed the teenager and stating her belief that Vallum should be charged with a hate crime.
'One day u will pay for taking the most beautiful person away from us,' wrote Miller.
False claim: Vallum (left) initially claimed he killed Williamson (right) when he discovered she had a penis, but that was quickly discredited by people who knew the pair
Legal fees: Vallum posted on Facebook a few months after his arrest: 'If anyone can please help me out with a little money Im kind of in a bind with no way out in sight. Please message me if you can help' (above)
Vallum was arrested just days after the murder of Williamson when his own father reported the crime to police.
His brother Jacob saw him on the night of the murder covered in blood and testified last month during the pre-trial hearing that Vallum told him: 'Well, it was my life or his.'
Vallum continued to claim after his arrest that he was unaware the young woman was transgender and that after discovering she had a penis he blacked out and came to while holding a hammer over her body.
He also posted on Facebook a few months after his arrest: 'If anyone can please help me out with a little money Im kind of in a bind with no way out in sight. Please message me if you can help.'
Vallum's claim about now knowing Williamson was transgender was quickly discredited by multiple witnesses who came forward to tell authorities about the relationship between Vallum and the teenager.
District Attorney Tony Lawrence said in court on Tuesday that it was Vallum's fear of his relationship being discovered by his fellow gang members that made him murder his innocent victim.
'Some people may try to blame it on Mercedes because she was transgender, but that is simply unfair and she should not be blamed for her own death,' said Lawrence.
'Every human being has a right to live the life they choose. A persons hate, fear or intolerance should not be an excuse to take another persons life.'
It is unclear when the US Department of Justice will make their decision about filing hate crime charges against Vallum.
Williamson, who was one of at least 21 transgender women murdered in the United States in 2015, was remembered by Caitlyn Jenner when she accepted the Arthur Ashe Courage Award at the ESPYs.
'Theyre getting bullied, theyre getting beaten up, theyre getting murdered and theyre committing suicide,' said Jenner of Williamson and the other transgender victims of murder and suicide.
The European Union's top court could be set for a U-turn on whether companies can legally ban women from wearing Muslim headscarves after it was ruled discriminatory.
The European Court of Justice has been hearing a case from Muslim Asma Bougnaoui, who was dismissed from her job with Micropole SA as an IT consultant in France, after clients complained about her wearing a headscarf.
It comes after a previous case brought to the same court by a Belgian woman who was also fired from her job for wearing a veil.
The European Union's top court could be set for a U-turn on whether companies can legally ban women from wearing Muslim headscarves after it was ruled discriminatory (file picture)
In that case, the court's advocate general said companies may ban Muslim headscarves if they are enforcing a general prohibition on religious symbols in the workplace.
However, in the case of Ms Bougnaoui another advocate general Eleanor Sharpston today said that the court 'considers that a company policy requiring an employee to remove her Islamic headscarf when in contact with clients constitutes unlawful direct discrimination.'
The senior lawyer, whose opinion must be considered by the court when it makes a final ruling at a later date, found 'nothing to suggest that Ms Bougnaoui was unable to perform her duties as a design engineer because she wore an Islamic headscarf.'
'Indeed, (her employer's) letter terminating her employment had expressly referred to her professional competence,' she added.
The EU court will now examine the two cases and may give its judgement in a joint decision by the end of the year, a legal source told the AFP news agency.
Opinions expressed by the EU court's advocates general are only initial views and not binding rulings, but usually the court follows the senior lawyer's advice when eventually giving its judgement.
The EU court, pictured, will now examine the two cases and may give its judgement in a joint decision by the end of the year
The court could decide to give a general clarification on headscarf bans in Europe and how they may work while still obeying EU law.
The wearing of headscarves and full-face veils has been an increasingly contentious debate in Europe between the forces of secularism and sections of the continent's Muslim minority.
France brought in a ban on full-face veils in 2010, despite claims that the ban was discriminatory and violates freedom of expression and religion.
In March Thomas Dimassimo tried to climb on Trump's podium in Dayton
Last month a British man tried to seize an officer's gun at a Trump rally
Secret Service director Joseph Clancy says threat is now 'elevated'
The Director of the Secret Service, Joseph Clancy, has warned there is an 'elevated' threat to both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton and he said part of the blame was due to the heated tone of the race.
Next week Trump will be formally anointed as a candidate at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio next week.
Mr Clancy said the Secret Service was prepared for the convention, even in the event of armed protesters.
Clinton and Trump are both figures who elicit feelings of great loathing among their opponents
Joseph Clancy, pictured, said the Secret Service were ready for the Republican National Convention in Cleveland next week
He told CBS News the threat had grown on the campaign trail because offenders were getting braver.
Mr Clancy said: 'I would say the candidate threat picture is slightly elevated. People are bolder ... we have to be prepared for that.'
The killing of five police officers at a Black Lives Matter demonstration in Dallas last week has also forced the authorities in Cleveland to finesse their security plans for the convention.
Last month a British man, Michael Sandford, was arrested in Las Vegas at a Trump rally after trying to grab a police officer's gun.
Sandford reportedly said he planned to kill Trump but his mother, Lynne, said he needed psychiatric help.
In March another man was detained by Secret Service agents when he tried to approach Trump at a rally in Dayton, Ohio.
Thomas Dimassimo, 22, said he meant no harm to Trump and his only plan was to go up on stage, grab the mic and shout: 'Donald Trump is a racist.'
Mr Dimassimo later told CNN: 'If I can be unafraid enough to go take his podium away from him, then we all can be unafraid enough to not let this man walk into the White House.'
He has been charged with disorderly conduct and inducing panic.
Darren Annovi, 42, of New York (pictured) has been charged with aggravated cruelty to animals
A New York man has been charged with cruelty to animals after firefighters found a dead cat cooking in his oven, authorities said.
Firefighters responded around 9pm on Monday to a public housing apartment in the city of Batavia, midway between Buffalo and Rochester, for a fire alarm activation, police said.
The apartment was filled with light smoke when firefighters arrived and as firefighters searched for the source of the smoke, they discovered the cat.
Batavia police said they believe the cat was alive when it was placed in the oven.
Following the incident, police have charged 42-year-old Darren Annovi with aggravated cruelty to animals.
He was being held in the Genesee County Jail without bail and is scheduled to appear in court Wednesday morning. It was unclear if he has a lawyer.
Batavia City Police Detective Eric Hill told WROC that nothing in Annovi's past suggests he had previous issues with animal cruelty. He also would not comment on a possible motive in the act.
The incident remains under investigation.
Firefighters responded around 9pm on Monday to Annovia's apartment (pictured) in the city of Batavia, for a fire alarm activation, when they discoverd a dead cat in the oven, police said
With more than 1,200 people killed in just an hour, the Battle of Culloden in 1746 was the last pitched battle fought on British soil - and is normally seen as a victory for civilisation over savagery.
But a new book now claims to reveal the truth about what really took place on Culloden Moor, near Inverness, 270 years after the bloody defeat of the Jacobites under Bonnie Prince Charlie.
For decades the popular narrative of the 1746 battle, which has just featured in the TV drama series Outlander, was that a poorly led, ill-disciplined, ill equipped highland army was routed by professional British redcoats deploying muskets and cannon fire against claymore wielding savages.
But historian Professor Murray Pittock has produced a radical fresh perspective that it was actually redcoat blades not bullets, government swords not muskets that won the day.
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The Battle of Culloden: A historian claims Jacobitism was framed in British history as ill-equipped because of the threat it posed - and the function the defeat played in a narrative of the British Empires development
Charging: Doubts are now being raised over the portrayal of Jacobitism as primitive - and the defeat for Bonnie Prince Charlie on Culloden Moor near Inverness as being one of savagery by civilisation
The Battle of Culloden is currently being re-told in Outlander, which is based on the historical time travel Outlander series of novels.
The show's season 2 finale has just aired and features the start of the famous battle.
Mr Pittock of the University of Glasgow has uncovered evidence he believes shows the Jacobites were far more professional in their formation and weaponry than we may have believed.
The history and literature expert, who has published a book on the fight from his new perspective, said: Arguably no battle out of living memory is remembered so powerfully and so falsely.
On Culloden Moor what was in some ways the last Scottish army sought to restore the Stuarts to a multi-kingdom monarchy more aligned to European politics than colonial struggle.
In battle: It has commonly been thought that poorly-led, ill-disciplined claymore-wielding Highland savages were was routed by professional British redcoats deploying muskets and cannon fire
Expert: Murray Pittock of the University of Glasgow has uncovered evidence he believes shows the Jacobites were far more professional in their formation and weaponry than we may have believed
They were in many essentials a regular army. Outnumbered but not outgunned, cavalry proved their downfall.
CULLODEN: FINAL JACOBITE RISING The Battle of Culloden was the final confrontation in the Jacobite rising of 1745, which saw Charles Edward Stuart try to regain the British throne for the House of Stuart. Following the death of Queen Anne in 1714, the British government sought to appoint a Protestant successor to the throne, which led to the crowning of George I from the House of Hannover. After his son George II took the thrown war broke out between Britain and France as part of the larger war of the Austrian Succession. Supported by the French, Charles Edward Stuart gathered the support of the Jacobites, who wanted a Catholic king to return to the throne. In June 1745 he then set sail from Nantes to Scotland. His forces took Edinburgh on 15 September and then marched into England, capturing Carlisle and later Manchester. However the Jacobite forces were stopped at Derby, forcing Charles to order a retreat while they waited for help from the French. This help failed to materialise and in April 1746, the Jacobites faced the British cannons and muskets across the moor of Culloden. Advertisement
My own archival research and the battlefield archaeology of the site shows that it was not British ball that brought down kilted swordsmen as much as British dragoon blades that cut down Jacobite musketeers.
'Culloden as it happened is in fact much more interesting than Culloden as it is remembered.
He said the rebels were maligned as primitive agents of absolutism, which became accepted fact quickly after and used to characterise colonial enemies by the British Empire.
The professor also believes 3,000 men died on the battlefield, but only a third were killed in action and the rest were wounded who were slaughtered where they lay.
He added: Seldom has the adage that history is written by the victors been more accurate or appropriate than in the case of Culloden.
For two centuries after the battle, British historiography framed Jacobitism as primitive because of the threat it posed, and the function the defeat of that threat had in a national narrative of foundational reconciliation and the development of the British Empire.
It is no coincidence that this approach has begun to founder since 1970, as the imperial state which grew to maturity in part as a consequence of the defeat of the Jacobite threat has itself taken on more fragmentary, modern and multicultural modes of existence.
Mr Pittock also believes that the idea of a noble primitive which emerged after Culloden has also cast a shadow in the US and in films such as Dances with Wolves and The Last Samurai.
The battle is featured in Diana Gabaldon's Outlander time-travelling series of novels, with the finale of season two of the TV adaptation released in Britain on Amazon Prime on Sunday.
Serious injuries: Senior lecturer Dr Marian Bond, pictured, is in a critical condition after the attack
A man has been charged with attempted murder after a senior university lecturer was attacked in her 1million home.
Dr Marian Bond, 61, who teaches at Anglia Ruskin University, is in a critical condition in hospital after suffering serious head injuries in the attack at her detached home in Over, Cambridgeshire.
Paul Bond, 61, who is believed to be her husband, has been charged with attempted murder and is due to appear at Peterborough Magistrates' Court today.
Dr Bond was taken to hospital after paramedics were called to her home at around 8am on Monday.
Neighbours in the rural hamlet said Dr Bond had been 'ill' for some time.
The Bonds have reportedly lived in their house for more than 20 years and were not involved in village life, according to neighbours. It is not yet known whether they had any children.
One neighbour said: 'It's awful what's happened and not the sort of thing you expect to happen here.
'But then you never know what goes on behind closed doors. I just hope she gets better.'
The large detached property where the couple live was abandoned and several windows had recently been boarded up.
Three ageing Renault people carriers are parked on the driveway alongside a camper-van. The hedges around the property are visibly overgrown.
Dr Bond is a senior lecturer in Animal and Behavioural Biology and recently received a students' union award for 'most innovative teaching'. She is also a certified dog trainer and fellow of the Society of Biology.
Mr Bond is listed as the director of IT company Operating Systems Limited, according to documents filed with Companies House.
A spokesman from Anglia Ruskin University said: 'We can confirm that Dr Marian Bond is a member of staff at Anglia Ruskin University.
'As this is an ongoing police investigation we are unable to provide further information at this time.'
A Cambridgeshire Constabulary spokesman said: 'A man has been charged with attempted murder following a serious assault on a woman at a property in Over.
Dr Bond suffered serious head injuries in the attack at her detached home in Over, Cambridgeshire, pictured
'Police were called by the ambulance service at just after 8am on Monday.
'The victim, who is in her 60s, had suffered severe head injuries and was taken to Addenbrookes Hospital where she remains in a critical but stable condition. The assault is being treated as an isolated incident.
Mr Aziz told Furniss he was trained in driving forklift trucks but he was not
William Furniss, 46 (pictured), who faced a 250,000 fine after one of his employees was crushed to death , has been given a lesser penalty because he claimed his company will struggle after Brexit
A factory boss who faced a 250,000 fine after one of his employees was crushed to death in a forklift accident has been given a lesser penalty because he claimed his company will struggle after Brexit.
William Furniss, 46, admitted two health and safety breaches after 27-year-old Soran Aziz was killed by a falling pallet of ceramic tiles at his warehouse in Manchester.
Prosecutors had demanded Furniss - who lives in a 600,000 five-bed detached house - pay out 250,000 for showing 'little thought' towards training his workers.
But Furniss presented the judge with a dossier of documents to support his claims that his company will struggle financially in the wake of the EU referendum.
The firm Stone Superstore Ltd - which made a 40,000 profit last year - imports tiles from around Europe and distributes them from its warehouse, meaning it may now be subject to extra tax.
After hearing the evidence, Judge David Stockdale QC handed Furniss at much-reduced 40,000, saying he was aware of the 'fragility' of the situation.
He said: 'I am entirely aware of the fragility of this company's finances with regards to the recent referendum on the European Union.'
He added that forklifts were 'notorious' for causing accidents, especially when driven by those who are not qualified.
He said: 'This is not a case of a defendant failing to heed warnings, failing to heed previous incidents of accidents. It is not a case of turning a blind eye over the risk, or putting profit over safety. The defendant is a man of entirely good character.
'Systems were in place, but these were not sufficiently implemented or adhered to. The mechanics of the accident are by no means clear cut.
'My sympathies go to everyone concerned with this case, to the deceased young family and friends and associates. This is an extremely sad case.'
Mr Aziz, an Iraqi national who had moved to the UK in 1999, died in October 2010 after while he was helping a colleague stack shelves at the company's depot in Gorton, Manchester.
The colleague was using a fork lift truck to move a pallet of tiles when it fell off the vehicle and landed on Mr Aziz below. He suffered massive head injuries and died two days later in hospital.
The court heard how both Mr Aziz and his colleague were untrained in using forklift trucks, even though they claimed to Furniss they had previous experience.
The judge heard that Furniss monitored his employees for the first few weeks, but claimed he did not think risk assessments were needed as his firm was so small.
Prosecuting David Temkin said: 'Furniss was not accredited to train anyone to operate a forklift truck and was not competent in the legal sense to assess his employees.
'It would have taken only a little thought and Internet research to discover the true position of the law.'
Prosecutors had demanded Furniss pay out 250,000 for showing 'little thought' towards training his workers. But Furniss presented the judge at Manchester Crown Court (pictured) with a dossier of documents to support his claims that his company will struggle financially in the wake of the referendum
But, in mitigation, Dominic Kay, the lawyer for Furniss, said his client was 'deeply remorseful'.
'He takes matters very seriously and regrets more seriously what happened to Mr Aziz,' he said.
'This case has been hanging over his and his family for six years, it had taken its toll on him. He is an utterly decent man, he takes his work very seriously, he is extremely thoughtful and highly organised.
'Mr Aziz was a close friend of Mr Furniss, and his death had a significant impact on him and his family. '
As well as the fine, Furniss was ordered to pay legal costs of 9221.40.
David Cameron clearly found his last PMQs an emotional affair - but it also gave people the chance to poke fun at it him as he stood at the Commons Despatch Box for a final time.
The departing Prime Minister admitted he 'was the future once' and said that the 10 Downing Street cat Larry would not be moving with the Camerons when they leave later today.
And with Theresa May not set to enter through the famous black door until this afternoon one wag asked: 'Cameron to resign. Larry the cat to stay. So for a few minutes this afternoon the UK will be run by a cat?'
Others pondered what the famous cat would be thinking when Mr Cameron leaves him for good later today - and if the Prime Minister will be giving detailed instructions to his successor about the cat's welfare.
Mr Cameron's comparison of Mr Corbyn's leadership to the black knight in Monty Python's Holy Grail proved a hit and one viewer said Mr Cameron had rarely looked so happy in the Commons as his six years as PM ended.
Here is the best of the internet's reaction to his final PMQs:
Instructions: Larry the Cat's twitter account passes on some instructions from the old owner to the new one
Big question: With David Cameron leaving and Theresa May taking over a few hours later, will Larry the cat run the country?
Pondering life: One Twitter user imagines how Larry might be digesting the cut-throat nature of British politics
Funny: Mr Cameron's comparison of Mr Corbyn's leadership to the black knight in Monty Python's Holy Grail proved a hit
Cruel joke: One joker suggested that Mrs May might choose the same path as a woman in Coventry who put a cat in a wheelie bin
New craze: Photoshop star General Boles spotted one MP on his phone in the Commons and wondered if he was using the new Pokemon app
Relief? One politics fan watching the final PMQs remarked on how happy Mr Cameron looked when it was all over
Love and kisses: The cat also thanked Mr Cameron for his warm words in a tweet sent with several heart emojis
Donald Trump has slim leads over Hillary Clinton in a pair of critical battleground states, and is tied with her in a third, as the head-to-head presidential race has begun to take shape.
The billionaire Republican is beating the millionaire Democrat by a 42-39 percentage point margin in Florida, the state that famously decided the 2000 election.
He has a 43-41 lead in Pennsylvania, a hotly contested state where he has already held four campaign rallies.
And he's tied with Clinton at 41-41 in Ohio, the swing state without which no Republican has ever won the White House.
UP: Donald Trump has opened up leads over Hillary Clinton in key swing states Pennsylvania and Florida, while pulling dead even in Ohio
DOWN: Clinton's numbers among non-white voters and men are trending in the wrong direction
The Quinnipiac University survey released Wednesday is a dramatic detour from numbers posted in June, at least where the Sunshine State is concerned.
Clinton led Trump in Florida a month ago by eight points, 47 to 39.
Third-party candidates seem to be robbing more votes there from Clinton than from Trump.
With Libertarian Gary Johnson and Green Party candidate Jill Stein included, Trump's 3-point Florida edge grows to 5.
Much of Clinton's slippage among the public is related to a growing sense among voters that she lacks integrity and is fundamentally dishonest.
'While there is no definite link between Clinton's drop in Florida and the U.S. Justice Department decision not to prosecute her for her handling of e-mails, she has lost ground to Trump on questions which measure moral standards and honesty,' said Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll.
In Florida, much of Clinton's lost ground stems from a dramatic decline in support she enjoys from non-whites and men.
POLL: The Quinnipiac University survey covered three key swing states that will have an outsize impact on picking the next U.S. president
The poll, conducted from June 30 to July 11, surveyed 1,015 voters in Florida, 955 in Ohio and 982 in Pennsylvania.
Clinton wrapped up the Democratic nomination this month and secured an endorsement from rival Bernie Sanders on Tuesday.
Trump is nearing a decision point on his running mate, a choice he's expected to announce by the end of the week.
A mother-of-six is accused of abandoning her children to perform sex acts for money on men inside a modified chicken coop.
Sarah M. Bradehoft, 27, of Star Prairie in western Wisconsin, was charged with child neglect causing bodily harm, second-degree recklessly endangering safety, and three misdemeanor counts of prostitution in Polk County Circuit Court on June 23.
Investigators were tipped off to the mothers activities by a local undercover officer who had contacted the woman by responding to an online ad she created, the Duluth News Tribune reports.
Sarah M. Bradehoft, a mother-of-six from Wisconsin, is accused of abandoning her children to perform sex acts for money on men inside a modified chicken coop
The 27-year-old was charged with child neglect causing bodily harm, second-degree recklessly endangering safety, and three misdemeanor counts of prostitution
Members of Bradehofts family told police the young mother moved from Florida to Wisconsin earlier this year, and she prostituted herself late at night when her children were sleeping.
The next day she would sleep during the day and would all of a sudden have money which came from her activities through the website, a relative told police, according to the Tribune.
Bradehoft reportedly told officers she had five customers and traded sex for cash because she needed the money.
One of her children was found to have traces of amphetamines, methamphetamines and cocaine when tested by Child Protective Services.
her naked and burned her nipples with cigarettes
A fourth Chinese student has been jailed over the brutal bullying attack on a fellow 'parachute kid' in Southern California.
Zheng Lu, 20, pleaded guilty to assault after a gang of friends kidnapped a high school student and took her to a local park where they stripped her naked and burned her nipples with cigarettes, a court heard.
Bullies cut off her hair and made her eat it, while the 18-year-old testified that she was also kicked with high heel shoes, spat on, beaten, punched and forced to wipe up cigarette butts with her hands in the five-hour assault.
A fourth Chinese student, Zheng Lu, has been jailed over the brutal bullying attack on a fellow 'parachute kid' in Southern California (pictured is the scene of the attack: Rowland Heights Park, in California)
One of the teens took pictures of the victim's humiliating attack on March 30, 2015, on her cellphone.
All four defendants, and their vicitm, were 'parachute kids' - students sent to study in Southern California while their parents remained overseas back home.
In February this year, Yunyao 'Helen' Zhai, 20, was sentenced to 13 years behind bars; Yuhan 'Coco' Yang, 19, got 10 years; and Xinlei 'John' Zhang, 19, received a six-year term. All three, who admitted kidnap and assault, apologized in court for their actions.
The defendants pleaded no contest kidnapping and assault. A charge of torture, which carries a potential life sentence, was dropped.
A judge described the case as being like William Golding's 1954 book 'Lord of the Flies,' about a group of boys who turn on each other after being stranded alone on a deserted island.
Yunyao 'Helen' Zhai, 20, (left, at her court sentencing in February) was sentenced to 13 years in a California state prison, while Xinlei Zhang, 19, (right) was sentenced to six years
Disappointed: The father of Xinlei Zhang watched media gather in the press area outside Pomona Court after the sentencing of his son on February 17
Zhai and Zhang were also accused of bullying a 16-year-old girl who was punched and slapped in March, 2015, at a restaurant and a park in Rowland Heights, east of Los Angeles.
She was attacked because Zhai felt she had disrespected her, investigators said.
Two days later, prosecutors say, the 18-year-old was attacked because of disputes over a boy and an unpaid restaurant bill, the court heard.
'I hope they do not carry the wounds from what I did for the rest of their lives,' Zhai wrote of the victims in a statement read by her attorney.
The prosecutor and defense attorney in Lus case would not provide details about Lus role, and Lu did not make a statement in court.
She was sentenced to three years in jail for the assault.
They are among thousands of Chinese students studying in the U.S. Many stay with host families who are paid to provide room, board and substitute parenting. Many have flocked to San Gabriel Valley suburbs east of downtown Los Angeles.
Some of the attackers were students at Oxford School, a private school with about 140 international students - most of them from China. Tuition costs $12,000 a year.
Some of the attackers were students at Oxford School, a private school with about 140 international students - most of them from China. Tuition costs $12,000 a year. The campus pictured above
The judge deciding the case said it reminded him of 'Lord of the Flies' - the 1954 novel by William Golding about a group of British schoolboys stranded on a desert island who separate into rival gangs when forced to fend for themselves.
In her statement, Zhai said living so far from her parents played a role in her actions.
'They sent me to the U.S. for a better life and a fuller education,' she said. 'Along with that came a lot of freedom, in fact too much freedom.
'Here, I became lonely and lost,' she wrote. 'I didn't tell my parents because I didn't want them to worry about me.'
Yang said the case was a wakeup call for 'parachute kid syndrome.'
'Parents in China are well-meaning and send their kids thousands of miles away with no supervision and too much freedom,' Yang said in a letter read by her attorney. 'That is a formula for disaster.'
Before sentencing, Zhang's father - a laborer-turned-businessman from Shenzhen, China - told reporters he regretted sending his son abroad.
'If he'd never left my side, that would have been better,' Zhang told the Los Angeles Times.
Wei Guo, 42, the father of a teenager allegedly involved in the bullying, has been charged with trying to bribe a witness.
The victims weren't in court Wednesday but prosecutor Casey Jarvis said the woman who was stripped and burned has forgiven her attackers.
'She's a happy person, and that was taken from her repeatedly. But somehow she was able to find forgiveness,' he told the judge.
Larry Darnell Gordon, who fatally shot two court bailiffs after grabbing a deputy's gun, was charged with kidnapping a teenager girl, filming sex videos of her and locking her in a shed
The inmate who fatally shot two court bailiffs after grabbing a deputy's gun was charged with kidnapping a teenage girl, filming sex videos of her and locking her in a shed, it has emerged.
Larry Darnell Gordon, 44, was shot dead after snatching the officer's weapon in a Michigan courthouse in an attempt to flee.
The father was facing allegations that he had a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old girl and held her against her will, the Detroit Free Press reported.
Gordon's lengthy criminal history has also been revealed, showing that he was sentenced to almost seven years in jail for possessing pipe bombs in 1992.
It is not clear at what point Gordon was released from prison following the 70-month sentence, but he was locked up for another four years in 1998 for fleeing police.
He was on probation in 2013 for stealing fireworks, according to the Michigan Department of Corrections.
Gordon - father to a seven-year-old girl, Cheyenne - had recently divorced from his now ex-wife Jessica, with the split formalized this February.
He had been living with the his ex-wife and daughter in Coloma, Michigan, while he looked for a new place to live.
Police reportedly checked in at the home in January, and in April Gordon was arrested on an outstanding warrant. He was later charged with sexual assault and kidnapping.
The charges were related to his relationship with a 17-year-old girl - which started when she was 16 - who he was accused of making sex videos of and locking in a shed, Coloma Police Chief Jason Roe said.
Jessica Gordon, 39, told the Detroit Free Press that she believed it was these charges - and her ex-husband's realization that he may not see his daughter again - that led him to grab the deputy's gun.
Bailiffs and former cops Joseph Zangaro, 61, and Ronald Kienzle, 63, were shot dead by Gordon. Deputy James Atterberry Jr - whose firearm he took - was shot but survived, and a woman was also shot in the arm.
Family: Gordon had recently formalized his divorce with ex-wife Jessica and seven-year-old daughter Cheyenne, who he is pictured with
Happier times: Jessica said he was probably afraid of going to prison and wanted to 'get home to our baby girl'. Gordon is pictured with Cheyenne, left, and Jessica, right
People scrambled for cover inside the Berrien County Courthouse in St Joseph, a city about 100 miles northeast of Chicago, when the prisoner opened fire at around 2.30pm on Monday
Video courtesy of WWMT
'Larry was not a violent person. The only thing I can think of is that he was completely terrified, and people do things out of character when they're scared,' Ms Gordon said.
'With all my heart I believe he was trying to get home to see Cheyenne. 'He probably found out how much time he could potentially be looking at and wanted to get out to see us. He thought he would die in prison.'
Ms Gordon said she still loved her former husband and believed he was innocent of some of the charges brought against him.
Berrien County Sheriff Paul Bailey revealed yesterday that Gordon was able to reach the officer's handgun because he was handcuffed in front of his body. Bailey had initially said Gordon was not handcuffed at all.
'We're going to look at everything about why this happened and make sure that if there are things we can change so this never happens again, we will,' Bailey said. 'We'll be working with our chief judge about our protocols at the courthouse.'
Gordon was being moved from a holding cell in an area of the courthouse not open to the public when he disarmed Atterberry Jr during a fight and shot him.
He then moved into a public hallway in the courthouse and killed Zangaro and Kienzle, Bailey said.
The detainee also shot a woman in the arm and briefly took hostages before being fatally shot by other bailiffs at the courthouse in St Joseph.
'He was trying to escape,' the sheriff said.
The bailiffs killed by Gordon were identified as Joseph Zangaro (pictured, left), 61, and Ronald Kienzle (pictured, right), 63
Zangaro was head of court security. He retired from the Michigan State Police as commander of the Bridgman Post in Berrien County.
Kienzle retired as a sergeant of the Benton Township police department after serving in the U.S. Army.
Both had been employed by the court for more than a decade.
The injuries suffered by the deputy and the civilian are not considered life-threatening.
Bailey said Atterberry Jr had surgery on his arm and is 'doing fine'.
The shooting is being investigated by the sheriff's department as well as by the St Joseph's Police Department and Michigan State Police.
'Those bailiffs were heroes along with all the other officers,' Bailey said.
'They ran to where shots were being fired.
'This could have been a lot worse without them being so brave to go into the gunfire and take this person down.'
Michigan Lt. Gov. Brian Calley speaks to community members at the Berrien County Law Enforcement Memorial following a community march
Berrien County Sheriff Paul Bailey said 'brave officers' took down the gunman, who was an in-custody inmate who had grabbed a deputy's weapon and started shooting
Nathan Hall, a consultant with the National Center for State Courts, which advises court officials on security, said it is best if two deputies transport an inmate.
One - armed with a stun gun or baton, but not a firearm - would escort the defendant directly.
The second deputy, armed with a gun, would trail at a safe distance.
'That best practice is tailored specifically to the potential for a firearm to be used against that transporting officer,' Hall said.
'These are best practices. The reality is that that can be expensive. We understand that. However, these instances happen.'
Hall said his group also recommends handcuffing from behind.
Governor Rick Snyder cut short a visit to Midland and traveled across the state to St Joseph to meet with investigators and victims' families.
Snyder called it a 'terrible day in a wonderful community'.
Earlier on Monday, Snyder said the courthouse had been secured and that an investigation into the
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump tweeted about the incident shortly after news broke.
'Thoughts and prayers with the victims, and their families - along with everyone at the Berrien County Courthouse in St Joseph, Michigan,' he wrote.
Colorado deputies received an usual animal-related call on Tuesday morning when they responded to a report of a bear that somehow locked itself inside a car.
Deputies Josh Tillman and Brian McLaughlin of the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office arrived at the scene that morning and were baffled by how the bear got trapped inside the parked Subaru.
'No windows were broken. The door handles weren't the kind you lift up,' deputies wrote in a news release on Facebook.
'And yet somehow this medium-sized bear managed to open a door, crawl inside and close the door behind him.'
Colorado deputies received an usual animal-related call on Tuesday morning when they responded to a report of a bear that somehow locked itself inside a car. The bear shown above looking out the rear window
Deputies Josh Tillman and Brian McLaughlin of the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office arrived at the scene that morning and were baffled by how the bear got trapped inside the parked Subaru in Genessee, Colorado
Annie Bruecker, 17, had reported the incident to police after she was about to head to work but found the animal inside her car.
'He's tossing stuff in the back basically and then you can see the ceilings of my car just ripped and I was like, I'm not going to work today,' Bruecker told FOX31 Denver.
The teenager also noted that she did not lock her car when she came home on Monday night, and said she would not be surprised if the bear had somehow opened the door and let itself in.
She told the station she did not leave any food in her car, but said there was an old can of open lemonade and that the bear might have been able to smell her takeout form the day before.
Authorities said the bear had clearly been inside the vehicle for a while due to the moisture on the windows.
They also noted that due to its size, they wondered if a mama bear was nearby.
The tip of the bear's snout shown as it looks out a car window. Annie Bruecker, 17, had reported the unusual incident to police after she was about to head to work but found the animal inside her car
Deputies said after some deliberation, they decided the safest and quickest way to free the bear was to open the hatch, which they did manually, allowing the bear to escape (shown above after the hatch was opened)
One of the deputies had a shotgun just in case but the bear had no interest in the deputies and instead ran into some nearby woods. The rescue mission took about 20 minutes
On Twitter, the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office wrote that they 'bearly' got the bear out of the car and noted it was an unusual call for deputies
'How did he get in? I don't see a broken window,' McLaughlin can be heard saying in video footage recorded on his cell phone as they approach the car.
'Oh my,' the deputy is heard saying moments later after getting a glimpse of the damage the bear caused inside the car.
As the two deputies worked to get the bear out of the car, it was frantically seen moving inside the vehicle.
Tillman told FOX31 the bear was 'jumping from the back to the front running around as much as he could destroying about everything trying to get out.'
Deputies said after some deliberation, they decided the safest and quickest way to free the bear was to open the hatch.
However, this proved to be a challenge since none of the door's opened easily following the bear's destruction inside the car, which deputies noted included ripping off the door panels.
After the bear was released, deputies got a view of the destruction the animal caused inside the car (shown above)
The bear apparently ripped off the door panels of the Subaru and also the entire ceiling (pictured)
Due to the damage the bear caused to the car, it had to be towed away from the scene
'The hatch door wouldn't open with the key fob button so Deputy McLaughlin had to manually open it while Deputy Tillman stood nearby with his shotgun just in case,' the news release said.
'Thankfully once the door was open the bear had no interest in deputies, only in getting back into the wild.'
In the video, the bear was filmed running from the trunk of the car and into some nearby woods. The rescue mission took about 20 minutes.
'Good work, deputies, and we hope this young bear stays far away from cars in the future,' the news release said.
Due to the damage the bear caused inside Bruecker's car, she had to have it towed away, according to FOX 31.
'The whole ceiling was ripped. The plastic sunroof cover was ripped out,' she said.
'My steering wheel was chewed. My neighbor actually described it as someone put a grenade in there and it just went off.'
Deputies have reminded drivers to make sure they lock their cars so bears can not get inside.
The son of police-shooting victim Alton Sterling is speaking out about the 'good man' his father was and his hopes that protesters continue demonstrating peacefully.
Cameron Sterling, 15, made headlines last week when he broke down sobbing at a press conference following his father's death.
In an interview with CBS News, Cameron says he became emotional because he felt his father's presence with him at that moment.
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Cameron Sterling, the 15-year-old son of police-shooting victim Alton Sterling, spoke out about the 'good man' and 'good father' he was in an interview with CBS News
'When I put my arm around [my mother], it's like somebody else's hand touched me, like I had another hand laying on top of my hand. And when I looked over, was nobody else touching me. Nobody else was touching me. And it was like at that moment I knew: my daddy here -- he right on the side of her,' Cameron said.
'We're standing here as a family together once again. That's when I just started crying... I knew I can't physically have him back, so I knew I had to cry, just to be like, "I want my daddy back."'
the 15-year-old sounded way beyond his years as he was asked to weigh in on the debate about police brutality against black men across the country.
'They all aren't bad. There are some that are bad, but all aren't bad. How I feel? I feel all police shouldn't be punished for other police's crimes,' Cameron said. 'The police in Dallas, Texas... they didn't deserve that because, nobody knew if they had kids to go home to. Those kids need their parents.'
Cameron told CBS News that he felt his father's (pictured) presence with him at that press conference
Alton Sterling's death last week, and the police shooting of another black man the next day in Minnesota, thousands across the country participated in protests over police violence.
At one of those demonstrations in Dallas, Texas last Thursday, five police officers were killed when a gunman angry about the issue opened fire, targeting law enforcement.
Cameron condemned the attacks against police, but said that he hopes people keep protesting peacefully in his father's name.
'But what I want, what I ask if you truly love my father, I truly just want everyone to protest the right way -- protesting in peace. Not in violence,' Cameron said. 'Not beating the police, not police beating the people. That makes no sense. That make things worse. You have to make things better by making peace.'
At a press conference on Wednesday, Cameron reiterated the message of non-violent demonstrations.
'I feel that people in general - no matter what the race is - should come together as one united family,' he said.
'There should be no more arguments, disagreements, violence, crimes...everyone should come together as one united family.'
Cameron is set to meet with President Obama in a town hall meeting on Thursday in Washington, DC. On Friday, he will bury his father in Baton Rouge, Louisiana - who he remembers as a good man and a good father.
'I really want everyone to know, everyone nationwide, everyone in this world, to know that Alton Sterling was a good man,' Cameron said. 'No matter what anyone else has to say about him, truly in my heart, I know he was a good dad.'
A man in Taiwan has been filmed throwing a massive tantrum out in the streets of Taoyuan City after he reportedly discovered his wife leaving a hotel with another man.
The husband had gone in search of his wife Monday night when he suspected she was having an affair.
When he found her in a white sedan with another man, the husband lost his temper in the middle of the street, according to ETtoday.
'Get out of the car!' The man threw a tantrum in Taiwan after he found his wife leaving a hotel with another man
'How dare you rent a hotel room with another man?' The man is heard yelling as a woman approaches him
The drama: The man ripped the scooter helmet off his head and rammed it against the bonnet of the sedan
Standing right up against the vehicle, the furious husband demanded his wife 'get out of the car' before launching into an angry tirade.
He is heard saying in Mandarin: 'How dare you rent a hotel room (with another man)? I'm not going to listen.
'I'm right here in front of you, get out of the car!'
A woman is then seen approaching him, but he flings her off him, yelling, 'Don't apologise!'
He proceeds to rip the scooter helmet he is wearing off his head and smashes it repeatedly on the bonnet of the car as passersby look on.
As the helmet bounces off the bonnet from the impact, the car starts to move, but the man refuses to budge.
Instead, he clings to the moving vehicle, as the car is seen driving several metres with him on it.
Local media report the man's wife eventually called the police, and all parties were taken back to the police station for questioning.
Taoyuan police say the husband, however, could not produce definitive proof that his wife was cheating on him and so was unable to bring charges against her, according to local media.
Neither the man or his wife has been identified.
Authorities added that the husband would face charges for public endangerment.
Stare off: The car is seen moving several metres with the man, who refused to budge, clinging to the front
appointments to her Cabinet tonight and other jobs later in the week
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Theresa May left her London home to travel to Downing Street for her first full day as Prime Minister this morning as world leaders offered their congratulations.
Mrs May, who did not stay at No 10 over night, has told leaders across Europe she would deliver the split from the EU that Britons voted for but warned it may take time to prepare for negotiations.
After pledging on the steps of Downing Street to battle 'social injustice' and create a 'country that works for everyone', Mrs May spoke by phone last night with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Francois Hollande and the Irish Taoiseach Enda Kenny.
'The Prime Minister explained that we would need some time to prepare for these negotiations and spoke of her hope that these could be conducted in a constructive and positive spirit,' the Downing Street spokeswoman said.
Chancellor Merkel phoned from Kyrgyzstan to congratulate Mrs May on her appointment, invited her to visit Germany and said that she hoped to see her at the G20 in September.
'They agreed that they wanted to establish a constructive relationship, recognising the importance of close co-operation between the UK and Germany,' the Downing Street spokeswoman said.
President Hollande also called to offer his wishes as the pair discussed the importance of the bilateral relationship, particularly security and defence co-operation and also the joint work on border controls in Calais.
'The Prime Minister offered her best wishes to the President and the people of France for Bastille Day tomorrow and the President invited the Prime Minister to visit Paris,' the spokeswoman said.
Mrs May also fielded an offer from Mr Kenny during their call to visit London soon for talks on how they could best work together.
Theresa May - who did not stay at No 10 for her first night as PM - was spotted leaving home this morning with husband Philip before heading to the office in Downing Street
Theresa May has pledged to create a 'country that works for everyone' after she formally took over as Prime Minister
Mrs May was flanked by her husband Philip as she set out her vision for the country. She is expected to announce key Cabinet posts later
Setting out her stall as a 'one nation' Tory, Mrs May said she was determined to listen 'not to the mighty' but to the members of society who were struggling and disadvantaged.
Speaking from Downing Street after formally taking over from David Cameron, the new PM said: The Government I lead will be driven not by the interests of the privileged few but by yours.
We will do everything we can to give you more control over your lives. When we take the big calls, we will think not of the powerful, but you.'
Mrs May became Britain's second female premier, following in the footsteps of fellow Tory Margaret Thatcher, after a 34 minute audience with the Queen in Buckingham Palace. The monarch invited her to form a government just minutes after Mr Cameron had been in to tender his resignation.
She went on: Not everybody knows this, but the full title of my party is the Conservative and Unionist Party. That word Unionist is very important to me.
Mrs May said: It means we believe in the Union, the precious, precious bond between England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. It means something else that is just as important.
It means we believe in the Union not just between the nations of the United Kingdom but between all of our citizens, every one of us, whoever we are and wherever we are from.
Mrs May became Britain's second female premier, following in the footsteps of Margaret Thatcher, after an audience with the Queen
The couple laughed and joked with the media after Mrs May delivered her speech, and then walked inside to a warm reception from staff
Mrs May said being a 'unionist' was not just about protecting the UK, but representing everyone who lives here.
That means fighting against the burning injustice that if you are born poor you will die on average nine years earlier than others,' she said.
If you are black you are treated more harshly by the criminal justice system than if you are white.'
She went on: If you are a white working class boy, you are lless likely than anybody else in Britain to go to university.
As is traditional for new Prime Ministers, Mrs May was clapped in to Downing Street by staff and aides
Mrs May and her husband posed for photographers on the steps of Number 10 before walking through the famous black door to start work
Mrs May said she would dedicate her time in charge of the country to tackling the 'burning injustices' that blighted lives
Mrs May is starting to put her new Cabinet together as they start to make concrete plans for implementing the Brexit vote in the referendum
if you went to state school, you are less likely to reach the top professions than if you are educated privately.
If you are a woman, you will earn less than a man.
If you suffer from mental health problems, there is not enough help to hand.
If you are young, you will find it harder than ever before to own your own home.
Mrs May said the 'mission to make Britain a country that works for everyone means more than fighting these injustices'.
If you are from an ordinary working class family, life is much harder than many people in Westminster realise,' she said. You have a job but you dont always have job security. You have your own home but you worry about paying the mortgage.
You can just about manage but you worry about the cost of living and getting your kids into a good school.
If you are one of those families, if youre just managing, I want to address you directly.
Mrs May paid tribute to her predecessor Mr Cameron as a 'great modern Prime Minister' as she addressed the nation outside No10
I know you are working around the clock, I know you are doing your best, and I know that sometimes life can be a struggle.
The Government I lead will be driven not by the interests of the privileged few but by yours. We will do everything we can to give you more control over your lives.
When we take the big calls, we will think not of the powerful, but you. When we pass new laws, we will listen not to the mighty, but to you.
When it comes to taxes, we will prioritise not the wealthy, but you. When it comes to opportunity, we wont entrench the advantages of the fortunate few, we will do everything we can to help anybody, whatever your background, to go as far as your talents will take you.
Delivering a warning about how tough process of Brexit could be, Mrs May said: We are living through an important moment in the countrys history.
Following the referendum we face a time of great national change. I know because we are great Britain, we will rise to the challenge.
As we leave the European Union, we will forge a bold new positive role for ourselves in the world.
Mrs May is only the second woman to hold the country's top job, following in the footsteps of Margaret Thatcher
The new Prime Minister promised to think 'not of the mighty' but of the members of society who were struggling
Mrs May said she would follow David Cameron's example in leading a 'one nation' government
And we will make Britain a country that works not for the privileged few but for every one of us.
That will be the mission of the Government I lead and together we will build a better Britain.
Mrs May paid tribute to Mr Cameron for his work tackling the deficit and getting people into work.
'I follow in the footsteps of a great modern Prime Minister. Under Davids leadership, the Government stabilised the economy, reduced the budget deficit and helped more people into work than ever before,' she said.
But Davids true legacy is not about the economy but about social justice.
From the introduction of same sex marriage to taking people on low wages out of tax altogether, David Cameron has led a one nation government and it is in that spirit I also plan to lead.
Flanked by wife Samantha and their children as he delivered a parting speech outside Number 10 earlier, Mr Cameron said: 'It's not been easy going and of course we have not got every decision right. But I do believe that today our country is much stronger,' he said.
Mr Cameron thanked his family for keeping him 'sane' during his time in office, and described Samantha as the 'love of my life'.
As the constitutional handover swung into effect, Mr Cameron went to see the Queen and formally told her he was quitting.
Mrs May then took her turn - entering as Home Secretary and emerging as the new PM.
Tory MPs hoping to win a place in Theresa May's first Cabinet showered their new leader with praise today, with one declaring: 'We have our Angela Merkel'.
Jeremy Hunt, the Health Secretary, compared Mrs May to the German Chancellor as he waits to find out if he will be promoted after spending three years with the tough health portfolio.
Mrs May is expected to make the most senior appointments of her Cabinet tonight.
But the skills minister Nick Boles has already resigned from the Government, jumping ship before Mrs May could sack him.
Mr Boles, who led Michael Gove's short-lived leadership campaign, was condemned for sending a text to supporters of Mrs May urging them to vote for the Justice Secretary to exclude Andrea Leadsom from getting through to the final two.
Theresa May has been formally installed as the new PM after meeting the Queen at Buckingham Palace
Mrs May had her first official audience with the Queen after David Cameron went in to tender his resignation
The new premier was accompanied by her husband Philip on her trip to see the monarch
Mrs May arrived at Buckingham Palace in her official car as Home Secretary - but departed in the PM's dedicated vehicle
Mrs May could be seen seemingly deep in thought as she arrived for her historic audience with the Queen
The cynical move backfired, with Mr Gove winning even fewer nominations from Tory MPs than the first round of voting.
Asked about his new boss today, Mr Hunt said of Mrs May: 'I think around the cabinet table yesterday the feeling was that we have our Angela Merkel.
'We have an incredibly tough, shrewd, determined and principled person to lead those [Brexit] negotiations for Britain.'
Delivering his valedictory comments before officially stepping down, Mr Cameron said: When I first stood here in Downing Street on that evening in May 2010, I said we would confront our problems as a country and lead people through difficult decisions so that together we could reach better times.
Its not been an easy journey and of course we have not got every decision right but I do believe today our country is much stronger.
Above all it was about turning around the economy and with the deficit cut by two thirds, 2.5 million more people in work, and one million more businesses, there can be no doubt that our economy is immeasurably stronger.
Politicians like to talk about policies but at the end it is about peoples lives. I think of the people doing jobs who were previously unemployed. I think of the businesses that were just ideas in someones head and that today are making a go of it and providing people with livelihoods.
Paying tribute to his family, the outgoing PM said: I want to thank my children Nancy, Elwen and Florence, for whom Downing Street has been a lovely home over this last six years. They sometimes kick the red boxes full of work. Florence you once climbed into one before a foreign trip and said: Take me with you.
Well, no more boxes. And above all I want to thank Samantha, the love of my life. You have kept me vaguely sane and as well as being an amazing wife, mother and businesswoman, youve done something every week in that building behind me to celebrate the best of voluntary service in our country.
Setting out what he sees as his legacy, Mr Cameron said: I think of the hard working families paying lower taxes and getting higher wages because of the first ever national living wage.
I think of the children who were languishing in the care system and who have now been adopted by loving families. I think of the parents now able to send their children to good and outstanding schools, including free schools that simply didnt exist before.
I think of over 200,000 young people taking part in national citizens service, the first youth programme of its kind in the world, something again that wasnt there six years ago.'
Mr Cameron said of Mrs May: 'I will advise Her Majesty to invite Theresa May to form a new administration. I am delighted that for the second time in British history, the new Prime Minister will be a woman and once again a Conservative.
I believe Theresa will provide strong and stable leadership in fulfilling the Conservative manifesto on which we were elected and I wish her well in negotiating the best possible terms for Britains exit from the European Union.
Tory MPs hoping to win a place in Theresa May's first Cabinet showered their new leader with praise today, with one declaring: 'We have our Angela Merkel'. Above, Theresa May attended David Cameron's final Prime Minister's Questions, alongside Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond, right
On her final evening before entering No 10 as Prime Minister, Mrs May had dinner with the Chief Rabbi.
She and her husband Philip joined guests at the north London home of Ephraim Mirvis for the dinner, which had been arranged some time ago.
The Chief Rabbi said her decision to honour the engagement, following the fast-moving events which unexpectedly thrust her into Britain's top political job, was an indication of the esteem in which the new PM holds the UK's Jewish community.
Rabbi Mirvis described Mrs May as 'a friend and champion of our community and of other faith'.
The incoming PM had earlier in the evening been treated to a private tour of her new home in Downing Street by her current boss David Cameron.
Mr Cameron showed her the ropes of the luxury kitchen, which he spent 25,000 on a makeover when he arrived in 2010, in the plush flat above No 11 Downing Street, where the Cameron family live having swapped with Chancellor George Osborne's smaller family.
Mrs May, a keen cook, is expected to move in to the flat above No 11 with her husband and will be treated to the spacious kitchen, decked out with Nigella-standard units and surfaces.
Mr Cameron didn't take a last-opportunity to use the kitchen, however, instead treating his staff to a takeaway curry, spending more than 50 at his favourite Kennington Tandoori curry house.
Mr Cameron was flanked by wife Samantha and their three children as he delivered his parting speech earlier
The Camerons have now moved out of Downing Street, and Mrs May and her husband will move in as her premiership gets under way
Mr Cameron reassured Nancy, 12, as they walked out of the famous black door for him to make his last public statement as PM
The Camerons posed on the doorstep of Number 10, and had a huddle before leaving for the last time
The Chief Rabbi revealed Mrs May had dined with him on her last evening before becoming PM in a statement, in which he also paid tribute to outgoing PM David Cameron for his work to promote Holocaust remembrance and education.
In a statement, the Chief Rabbi thanked Mr Cameron for 'his deep friendship and for his unwavering commitment to promoting the values of decency, respect, liberty and responsibility' and described him as 'a man who not only speaks with great principle and conviction but who acts upon what he believes'.
And he added: 'Today, Theresa May becomes Prime Minister at a time of great political, social and economic uncertainty. Few people are more talented or better qualified to tackle these immense challenges.
'I recall the speed and the sensitivity with which she reached out to the Jewish community following the terror attacks on Jewish targets in Europe last year. As she made clear then, 'Without its Jews, Britain would not be Britain'.
'She has proved herself to be a friend and champion of our community and of other faith communities who share her values of tolerance and understanding.
'Last night, on the eve of her becoming Prime Minister, Theresa May kept a long-standing arrangement to join Valerie and me at our home for dinner.
'The fact that she did this in the midst of critically important preparations before taking up office is a reflection of her strong desire to keep to her commitments and the esteem in which she holds the British Jewish community.
The new Prime Minister, Theresa May, pictured in Downing Street yesterday, left, spent her final evening before becoming Prime Minister having dinner with the Chief Rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis and his wife Valerie, pictured right
'I was delighted to have the opportunity to give her my blessings at this very auspicious time.
'I wish her every success as Prime Minister and look forward to building upon our warm relationship over the coming years'.
David Cameron treated his successor Theresa May to a private tour of his plush Downing Street flat last night as the incoming Prime Minister eyed up the Cameron family's luxury kitchen.
Mrs May, a keen cook, will be moving in to the flat above No 11, where Mr Cameron has lived with his family - with Chancellor George Osborne's smaller family living in the flat above No 10.
The incoming PM is expected to live in No 11, where the Camerons spent 25,000 to install a luxury new kitchen after arriving in 2010.
The Cameron family's kitchen is understood to be much better equipped and more spacious than their next door neighbours, with Nigella-standard units and surfaces.
But Mr Cameron didn't use the kitchen for one last time last night - instead he treated his staff by ordering one last curry as they frantically packed their bags to make way for the Mays.
Westminster's favourite curry house - Kennington Tandoori - tweeted a picture of their driver setting off with four big bags of curry to deliver their 'last supper' to No 10.
The incoming PM is expected to live in No 11, where the Camerons spent 25,000 to install a luxury new kitchen (pictured in the background) after arriving in 2010
Theresa May, a keen cook, is expected to the flat above No 11, where Mr Cameron has lived with his wife Samantha (pictured in the green top), with Chancellor George Osborne's smaller family living in the flat above No 10
Activists have revealed the horrific torture methods that are being deployed by ISIS which includes breaking prisoners' ribs and taunting women by locking them in cages with human skulls.
The terror group controls the Syrian city of Raqqa with an iron fist and is quick to hand out punishment to those who don't live by their rules.
But now the activist movement 'Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently' has lifted the lid on the brutal torture methods handed out to people who defy the jihadists.
Activists have revealed the horrific torture methods that are being deployed by ISIS in their Syrian stronghold Raqqa
And one of the most horrific torture methods is called the 'flying carpet', which is used against prisoners.
According to the activist group, it sees prisoners tied to a metal board with hinges in the middle, which is then closed.
And the brutal bend in the often means the victims end up with broken ribs or fractures in their spines.
Other physical punishments also include electric shocks and even lashings as a way of eliciting information and confessions from victims.
But the jihadis have also been deploying psychological torture as another way of punishing people who disobey their laws.
In the case of women, they are often thrown into metal cages filled with human skulls on the streets of Raqqa to humiliate them.
Meanwhile male prisoners are often taunted with the amputated heads of other prisoners by guards, who promise their will be a similar fate for them if they don't obey the laws.
Prisoners are often taunted with knives being held to their necks by the terror group as a way of psychological torture
Ahmed, an activist for the movement told the Atlantic Council: 'The ISIS prison wardens would speak continuously of the coming retribution.
'ISIS men would enter, place knives on our necks and threaten to kill us.
'An ISIS member would occasionally enter carrying a prisoner's amputated head, promising a similar fate.'
In addition, public executions and whippings are said to be becoming ever more frequent as ISIS loses ground in an attempt to set up a self-styled caliphate.
It has imposed its own sickening brand of medieval justice across swathes of territory in Iraq and Syria, executing prisoners for so-called 'crimes' such as blasphemy and being homosexual.
aggravated menacing in 2002 although charges were later dropped
George Clooney and his wife Amal have won a five-year restraining order against a psychiatric ward patient.
Lawyers for the Hail Caesar! star, who is currently enjoying a vacation in Italy's Lake Como, filed the petition with the Superior Court of California on Monday.
The order states that Mark Bibbee has harassed the Hollywood actor and requested a five-year restraining order to protect both Clooney and his wife, international human rights lawyer Amal.
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George Clooney and his wife Amal have won a five-year restraining order against a psychiatric warn patient
Clooney and Amal seemed unfazed as they were pictured strolling around the beautiful Italian lakes yesterday
The 55-year-old veteran, of LA, is currently in a psychiatric ward at the Veterans Administration Hospital in California.
Court documents reveal that prosecutors found 'clear and convincing evidence' of harassment before they granted the order. So far, no more information has been released about what form the harassment took.
Bibbee must now stay at least 100 yards away from the Clooneys at all times until the order expires on July 11, 2021. Breach of an order can result in a $1,000 fine and up to one year in jail.
Social media posts reveal that Bibbee claims he has been diagnosed as being delusional with psychosis, bipolar disorder and other mental issues. He also refers to multiple stays in psychiatric facilities.
He has repeatedly posted conspiracy theories about who orchestrated 9/11 and made outlandish and unfounded claims such as that the Bush family were linked to the Nazi party.
Mark Bibbee (pictured in these undated photographs, left and right) has been ordered to stay away from Clooney and his wife, international human rights lawyer Amal
Lawyers for the Hail Caesar! star, who is currently enjoying a will cause serious physical harm to the person or property of the other person, the other person's unborn, or a member of the other person's immediate familyvacation in Italy's Lake Como, filed the petition with the Superior Court of California on Monday
The order states that Mark Bibbee had been harassing the Hollywood actor and requested a five-year restraining order to protect both Clooney and his wife, international human rights lawyer Amal.
Bibbee claims in one post that he was investigated by the FBI at some point between later 2001 and 2002, over claims he had been threatening to 'kill' George H.W. Bush but that he was later cleared.
Court documents show the 55-year-old, who previously worked for an automotive sales company, was charged in 2002 with telephone harassment and aggravated menacing - causing another person or their family to fear he would cause them serious physical harm.
However, the victim is not named and the charges were later dismissed.
Bibbee was also listed as being at the Washington Department Of Corrections in 1980 although the offense is unclear.
Clooney and Amal seemed unfazed as they were pictured strolling around the beautiful Italian lakes yesterday.
The couple held hands as they enjoyed an evening walk together before they enjoyed a romantic and sweet candlelit dinner at Villa dEste diner in Cernobbio, Italy.
The 55-year-old actor and his 38-year-old wife have hosted Bill Murray and several members of their family in Italy for days and were pictured throwing July 4 celebrations from their yacht.
George and Amal threw the Independence Day party as they no doubt had arranged the fireworks display for Bill and their other guests.
The 55-year-old actor and his 38-year-old wife have hosted Bill Murray and several members of their family in Italy for days
George and Amal were seen snuggling up together on his yacht during July 4 celebrations
The couple - who tied the knot in an idyllic ceremony in Venice in September 2014 - spend much of their time at the actor's Lake Como residence (pictured)
The couple - who tied the knot in an idyllic ceremony in Venice in September 2014 - spend much of their time at the actor's Lake Como residence, and have been seen together countless times in the scenic Italian region together in recent months.
Recently, they were seen travelling through Rome, where they attended a seminar led by the Pope called 'Un Muro o Un Ponte' at the Paul VI Hall in Vatican City in late May.
The event aimed to promote work by global educational initiative organisation Scholas Occurentes which works with young people all over the world, and highlighted the plight of migrants attempting to reach Europe.
The last sighting of the Clooneys was less than two weeks ago, with the smitten pair seen enjoying a low-key meal at il Gatto Nero restaurant in Cernobbio, another favoured eatery near their Como villa.
Earlier in May, they put on a striking joint display on the red carpet at the Cannes Film Festival as George premiered his latest movie, Money Monster.
A new road network has made the area more accessible, but it still remains one of the world's most remote places
The tribes use make-up, hair staining and huge lip plates to
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Stunning photographs of the Omo Valley have helped shine a spotlight on one of the most remote areas in the world.
Seeking to gain insight into the tribal traditions of the Omo Valley, photographer Trevor Cole travelled to Ethiopia in January 2016 to document their culture.
More than forty tribes reside in the area and the valley is home to about 200,000 people.
The traditions of the Omo Valley tribes are deeply embedded and each tribe's identity is vividly clear, even to outsiders.
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Suri tribe girls take a break from panning for gold by playing in the river in Omo Valley, Ethiopia
An Ethiopian Suri women is pictured holding her lip plate and traditionally painted face with huge corncob headgear (left) while another young Suri women from Western Omo is pictured with body scarification in Omo Valley
The Suri tribe's very distinctive lip plates, which two women are more than happy to show off as they pose for the camera
Trevor said: 'The tribes have many similarities but they also have distinctive differences.
'Young men of the Hamar tribe, for example, have to jump a number of bulls to 'come of age', while the Suri and Mursi tribes compete through stick fighting.
'Many of the tribes take pride in their appearance. The women of the Mursi and Suri have very distinctive lip plates and several tribes use butter and ochre on their hair as a form of adornment.'
The Hamar, Kara, Morsi and Suri tribes all use distinctive paint made from clay to paint their bodies.
Trevor added: 'They paint themselves as a form of camouflage when hunting, or as decoration at special ceremonies, festivals and when outsiders visit.
'They also wear very distinctive beads and jewellery made from recycled materials - batteries, watch chains, bottle tops.'
Due to the development of new road networks and telecommunication networks, the area has become more accessible to the outside world and globalisation has made its mark on the Omo Valley.
A Suri tribe girl kindles a fire as there is no electricity in the villages and fire is used as an essential part of daily life
A group of face-painted Suri tribe women gather to get pictured. Face painting is an integral part of tribe life with such pride taken over appearance
An old Suri tribe woman lights her pipe in Omo Valley, home to more than 40 tribes and about 200,000 people
A young Suri girl applies red and white make up using a mirror. Her tribe use distinctive paint made from clay to paint their bodies
Trevor said: 'The Omo Valley is one of the best locations on Earth to see indigenous people live as they have done for millennia.
'Although these ancient cultures are now affected by globalisation, many tribesmen and women remain resolute in being the change that they wish to see in themselves.
'The area is still remote but more accessible than it was a decade ago due to new road networks and the development of telecommunication networks.'
There are concerns that the area will be reduced to tourist fodder, consequently Trevor advocates using experienced local guides.
He said: 'In Ethiopia a very experienced local guide is always necessary and it is important to be sensitive to the impacts that tourism can have.
'Visits should be sustainable and not promote a human zoo.
'The tribes are almost all pastoralists and are, to some extent, nomadic so tourism brings them a little extra income although in some cases the income is used to buy alcohol or even weapons.'
A group of Hamar women and girls move in unison as they sing at a bull jumping ceremony, where young men 'come of age'
Young men wait for a donga (traditional stick fight) in the village of Kibish in Omo Valley, Ethiopia
Due to the development of new road and telecommunication networks, the area has become more accessible to the outside world
They paint themselves as a form of camouflage when hunting, or as decoration at special ceremonies, festivals and when outsiders visit
As well as make-up, tribeswomen use fresh ochre to stain their hair in another layer of showmanship when it comes to the way they look
The Ireland-born photographer promotes sustainable tourism in the area and runs photo tours through the valley.
He said: 'Here the precedent of paying villages and, or, individuals is almost universal. This was something the tour companies seem to have instigated decades ago when tourism was in its infancy.
'I am sensitive to the impacts that tourism can cause, hence, I will always try to make my visit sustainable and not promote 'zoofication!''
For information about Trevor's photo tours, visit www.epicphototours.com/tribes-of-the-omo-valley--jan-5-2017-jan-17-2017.html
As well as make-up and hair staining, yhey also wear very distinctive beads and jewellery made from recycled materials - batteries, watch chains, bottle tops
Although these ancient cultures are now affected by globalisation, many tribesmen and women remain resolute in being the change that they wish to see in themselves
An old Suri woman enjoys an evening smoke of tobacco from her calabash pipe, captured by Irish photographer Trevor Cole
A group of young men line up for the regular market in the village of Turmi, where there are concerns the area will be reduced to tourist fodder as it becomes more accessible
An actress who was seriously injured when she was thrown to the ground before a film shoot is suing a farm in New York for giving her a horse which she claimed was on drugs.
The lawsuit says Ursula Karven-Veres, 51, was unable to 'to work as both a movie actress and also as a spokeswoman for her Power Yoga lifestyle brands' because of her injuries.
Karven-Veres, a German actress, was scheduled to shoot a horse-riding scene at Winley Farm, in Dutchess County, upstate New York last summer.
The New York Daily News says a federal lawsuit claims stable staff gave her a horse which was dangerous and drugged up.
German actress Ursula Karven-Veres, pictured left during a court case in 2003 when she sued Motley Crue rocker Tommy Lee over the death of her son, claims she is unable to work because of the injuries from her fall
Ms Karven-Veres claims Winley Farm should have provided her with a safe horse as she had 'only limited riding capabilities'.
But they picked a Dutch Warmblood jumper called Dior which was unsuitable for beginners as it was 'trained to be a sport horse', according to court papers.
Dior acted skittish during a test shoot on August 11 last year and was given a 'cocktail' which was supposed to calm the horse.
But the horse bucked and threw Ms Karven-Veres, who landed on her head, lost consciousness and suffered a spinal fracture.
Mrs Karven-Veres sued Motley Crue drummer Tommy Lee (pictured, in court) after her son Daniel, four, drowned in the pool at a party in honour of Lee's son Brandon's birthday. He was cleared of all responsibility
Her lawyer John Balestriere said: 'Ms Karven-Veres was the unfortunate victim of the gross negligence of the Farm and has suffered greatly since the Farm's misconduct caused her injury.'
Winley Farm was not available for comment.
Ms Karven-Veres' four-year-old son Daniel drowned in a swimming pool at the home of Motley Crue drummer Tommy Lee in June 2001 during a party.
A British tourist was killed in a moped crash as he prepared to celebrate Christmas in Thailand, an inquest heard.
Lee Mullen was not wearing a helmet when he collided with the lamppost, sustaining fatal head injuries.
The 45-year-old construction worker from Hattersley, near Hyde in Manchester, was visiting friends and his girlfriend when he died at Nong Kae in the country's Hua Hin district in December 2015.
Tragic: Lee Mullen suffered fatal head injuries when he crashed into a lamppost in Thailand
The 45-year-old construction worker from Manchester had been looking forward to a relaxing three-month break in Thailand
The tragedy happened on Christmas Eve, just one month after Mr Mullen had arrived in Thailand to enjoy a three-month holiday.
He had been to the country several times before and told friends he was looking forward to 'relaxing, fishing and drinking coffee' before the tragedy struck.
Nobody witnessed the accident, and Mr Mullen was found by revellers enjoying a party in a bar nearby.
Recording a conclusion of accidental death, Assistant Coroner Andrew Bridgeman said: 'Mr Mullen lost control of a motorcycle.
'He sustained a massive head injury which ended his life. It's a tragic accident but that doesn't make it any easier in any circumstances.'
Mr Mullen was visiting friends and his girlfriend when he died in the country's Hua Hin district. Nobody witnessed the accident, and Mr Mullen was found by revellers enjoying a party in a bar nearby
Nobody witnessed the accident, and Mr Mullen was found by revellers enjoying a party in a bar nearby
The coroner said Mr Mullen was believed to have died at the scene of the crash, and said a toxicological examination could not be carried out in the UK.
His sister-in-law Rachel Mullen said: 'He was interested in travelling and he had been to Thailand a few times over the past five years and I believe he got a girlfriend over there.
'She never came over here because she lived there, he just spoke about her.
'He was due to come home in February. He had a friend out there called Peter, that's how the information came back to the UK.
'Lee had been riding on a scooter and was on his way back home, he passed a bar and crashed into a lamppost.
'That's all we got told. He didn't ride a motorbike in this country, he drove a van.'
Lee Mullen had been to the country several times before and told friends he was looking forward to 'relaxing, fishing and drinking coffee' before the tragedy struck
Mr Mullen's friend of 30 year David Sands said he spoke to his friend the morning of the crash.
'I received a phone call later that day,' he said.
'It was Peter and he said Lee had been killed. I thought he was having a laugh but he started crying.
'Peter was rung and by the time he got to where the ambulance was he was in the back with a sheet covered over and he had to go and identify the body at the hospital.
'Nobody witnessed it. There was no other third party involvement. Motorbikes are a way of transport over there. Everyone rides them without a helmet.'
He added: 'He would have gone to have a coffee and cigarette first then get something to eat, maybe do a bit of fishing on the pond and go for a couple of pints, then you would just do what you wanted to do.
She has been refused bail and will face court in August
Even after being tasered she continues to be agitated and refuses arrest
Footage of the incident shows police shouting at her to drop the knife
Kathryn Louise Payton from Newcastle, NSW, was tasered by police
Woman, 33, allegedly pulled out a knife after trying to grab a child
A knife-wielding woman had to be tasered in a public park after she allegedly tried to grab a child from a playgroup and refused to put down her knife.
Kathryn Louise Payton, 33, from Newcastle a harbor city of NSW, appeared in court on Wednesday charged with wielding the knife, reported The Herald.
Footage of the incident shows police yelling at Ms Payton to drop the knife before she drops to floor after being tasered on Tuesday morning.
Footage shows a 33-year-old woman being tasered by police in a public park on Tuesday morning
Ms Payton is accused of grabbing the child in the park by the arm before telling a carer 'I need to take care of the children, you don't know how to take care of them,' court documents said.
A worker attempted to tell Ms Payton to move away from the child but she allegedly refused and pulled out a steak knife.
'The accused was extremely agitated and was yelling out about the children,' police said in the court documents.
Ms Payton is seen dropping to the ground after being tasered by the footage but still refuses arrest when approached by the officers.
Kathryn Louise Payton (pictured laying on the ground after being tasered) was wielding a knife after allegedly trying to grab a child
Even after being tasered the woman reportedly continued to resist arrest and was allegedly found to be carrying to other knives
After being searched Ms Payton allegedly also had a boning knife and a Swiss army knife.
The 33-year-old was cleared of any mental illness or disorder but she was reportedly withdrawing from methadone at the time of the incident.
Ms Payton was refused bail and will reappear at court on August 4.
Michaella Henry claims Chukwudi 'Chudi' Ikpeazu sexually assaulted her at Phillips Exeter Academy, which had him bake bread for her by way of apology
An elite boarding school had a student track star bake bread as an apology to a 17-year-old girl he allegedly sexually assaulted in a church basement instead of reporting the incident to the police.
Michaella Henry, a student at the prestigious, $48,550-a-year Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, told school officials that Chukwudi 'Chudi' Ikpeazu groped her.
She claimed last October that Ikpeazu, a 6ft 8ins athlete for the school, slipped his hands inside her shirt and squeezed her breast and bottom despite her repeatedly saying 'no'.
After two months of panic attacks, Michaella - who spoke to the Boston Globe - agreed to meet with Ikpeazu and the school's minister Reverend Robert Thompson.
During the meeting inside the campus church where she claims she was assaulted, Ikpeazu is said to have admitted what he had done was wrong.
Astonishingly, instead of reporting this to the police, Rev Thompson urged Ikpeazu to bake bread and deliver it to Michaella every week as an act of 'penance'.
The reverend praised Michaella, telling her she 'did a great service for Chudi, because you gave him an opportunity to express his regret and to take responsibility for what he had done'.
Michaella said the weekly deliveries made life harder for her as she had to relive her alleged assault every time he dropped off the bread.
'I was so ashamed of it. I was being reminded once a week that he assaulted me,' Michaella said.
Meanwhile, Ikpeazu went back to his popular life at the school, where he competed at shot put and long jump and was known for the cinnamon 'monkey bread' he baked and sold on campus.
Michaella, a student at the prestigious, $48,550-a-year Phillips Exeter Academy (pictured) in New Hampshire, told school officials that Ikpeazu groped her
The school did not immediately tell the authorities or Michaella's parents about the incident, she claims.
Michaella was later told by a friend that she was not the only girl to accuse of Ikpeazu of sexual misconduct.
'Apparently, if youre a girl doing work alone in a church basement, it means youre willing to have sex with someone,' the friend said, before telling Michaella that she had to push Ikpeazu away after he groped her too.
The two girls took their complaints to Exeter's dean of residential life, AJ Cosgrove, in April.
In the meeting, Michaella says Cosgrove told them: 'The good news is you dont have to report this to the police because there was no penetration.'
She also claims that Rosanna Salcedo, dean of multicultural affairs, told her not to contact the police because it would make matters more complicated.
Michaella claimed Ikpeazu (pictured left and right) slipped his hands inside her shirt and squeezed her breast and bottom despite her repeatedly saying 'no'.
Dean of students Melissa Mischke wrote in a letter to Michaella's parents that their daughter was sexually harassed, rather than sexually assaulted.
Under Exeter's school rules, sexual harassment does not have to be reported to the police.
The letter said: 'We determined that [Ikpeazu's] actions with Michaella and the other female student constituted sexual harassment.'
Mischke added that the bread delivery arrangement was 'more harmful than good since it caused Chudi and Michaella to intersect on campus more regularly than necessary'.
She added that an internal investigation by the school found that Ikpeazu 'violated ... policies on sexual harassment and sexual misconduct because he touched Michaella's bottom and breast under her clothing after she expressed to him that she did not want to engage in sexual activity'.
Michaella's mother, Andrea, told the Globe that she was 'beside myself' after finding out what happened.
'You dont know what to do. My child was in their care. I was worried about her life,' she said.
Reverend Robert Thompson organized the bread arrangement, while dean of residential life AJ Cosgrove is said to have told Michaella she did not need to involve the police 'because there was no penetration'
Finally, after growing frustrated by the school's lack of action and her increasing panic attacks, Michaella went to the police in May.
Ikpeazu turned himself into a police station on June 3 and was released on a $5,000 personal recognizance bail. He will be arraigned in August.
Ikpeazu declined to comment to the Globe, as did Rev Thompson, Cosgrove and Salcedo.
A school spokeswoman declined to comment because of the ongoing police investigation.
Police are also probing the school's handling of the case, as well as its attitude to sexual offences in general, a source said.
Phillips Exeter Academy costs $48,550 in fees for boarding students, and $37,875 for day students.
A dog owner's online rant at the 'uneducated' woman who hurled abuse at her for putting a muzzle on her own pet has gone viral.
Nicola Morrison, 24, a trainee veterinary nurse, was in a park in Scotland walking her German pointer Elka and miniature schnauzer Heidi when she saw another dog off the lead bounding towards them.
Elka, seven, who was already wearing a muzzle, is 'terrified' of new dogs so Miss Morrison, of Dufftown, Scotland, quickly put both her pets back on their leads.
She asked the other dog owner if she would do the same, but when the other woman came nearer she directed a 'torrent of abuse at her', Miss Morrison claims.
Nicola Morrison said she received a 'torrent of abuse' from another dog owner because her German pointer Elka was wearing a muzzle
Miss Morrison, 24, took to social media to vent her frustration and said Elka wears a muzzle because she is 'terrified' of new dogs and may try to 'defend herself'
The trainee veterinary nurse, left, said she was 'hurt' to hear Elka, right with miniature schnauzer Heidi, branded 'dangerous'
Miss Morrison did not respond but later vented her frustration on social media in a bid to dispel the myth that all dogs on muzzles are dangerous - and her post has been shared by more than 1,400 people.
She said: 'Elka had a bad experience when she was younger. She was attacked and although she wasn't left with deep physical wounds it affected her emotionally - it terrified her.
'She is so scared she tries to defend herself in the only way she knows how so I put a muzzle on her.
'When I saw this other dog coming at us I called over to ask the woman to put its lead on but I got the usual 'don't worry he's friendly' - but that's not the point.
'I explained that Elka is scared and could she keep the dog close by and in return I got shouted at. 'She hurled abuse and insults at me and Elka.
'She told me I need to train her better, she shouldn't be in public if she needs a muzzle and called Elka a dangerous dog all while the poor thing's rolling around on the lead desperately trying to get away from the woman's dog.
Miss Morrison said Elka, left and right, was attacked when she was young which left 'emotional wounds'
Miss Morrison's other dog Heidi, left, is a 'mini-protector' for Elka, right, according to Miss Morrison
'I just didn't say anything and walked away. This has happened so many times now I feel like there is no point arguing.
'People are so uneducated about muzzle work with dogs. Just because Elka wears one does not mean she is dangerous and it really hurts to hear her, a member of my family, called that.'
Miss Morrison is trying to help Elka overcome her fears by introducing her to her friends' dogs and the 'loving' pet is gaining confidence, especially when she has her 'mini protector' Heidi nearby.
But the student vet nurse said incidents like this one are a massive setback for the petrified pup as she gets very nervous when 'friendly' dogs run over, circle her, or sniff her bum.
Miss Morrison said: 'She is making so much progress and has lots of friends she can happily play with now. Heidi is her mini protector and gives her a bit more confidence too.
'But it's people like this particular owner who let their dogs run over out of control that make her even more scared.
'Basically the people who give me abuse for putting a muzzle on her are the reason she has to wear one.'
Miss Morrison wants people to understand that Elka is a 'cuddly' family pet and that by putting a muzzle of her she is just being a 'responsible pet owner'.
Mrs Morrison, left with Elka, said she wants people to understand that the German pointer, right with Heidi, is a 'cuddly family pet'
Miss Morrison said she hopes by sharing the experience she will help people be more understanding towards owners who put muzzles on their pets
She hopes by sharing her experience, more people will try to be understanding towards dog owners who do put muzzles on their pets.
Miss Morrison said: 'Elka is the softest lump! She likes nothing more than cuddling up on the sofa. She'd be content to be a couch potato for the rest of her life.
'She is a loving - and incredibly loved - family pet just like all the 'friendly' dogs allowed to bound over to her. She's just scared and by putting a muzzle on her I'm protecting her.
'She doesn't dislike having it on. She knows it goes hand in hand with going for a walk so she loves it.
A memorial to police in Richmond, Virginia has been vandalized with a message referring to the police killing of a black man in Louisiana.
A large red 'X' was spray-painted on the torso of the statue of an officer carrying a child, and 'Justice for Alton' is written on the stones below, an apparent reference to 37-year-old Alton Sterling of Baton Rouge.
'It's a senseless act,' said local resident H. Penn Burke, whose police father was slain in 1925, to the Richmond Times-Dispatch.
This Richmond Police Memorial statue was vandalized Wednesday with graffiti referring to Alton Sterling, who was killed by a police officer in Baton Rouge, La.
Local cops are frustrated that someone would desecrate a memorial to officers who died in the line of duty
Before: The statue was recently installed at Byrd Park to memorialize fallen officers
'In my opinion, children aren't raised correctly correctly today to respect elders, to respect the parents, to respect teachers and especially to respect law enforcement,' he added.
'You may not agree with everything that happens in today's world but you need to learn to live together with your neighbors, you need to learn to live together with your parents, your teachers, and most importantly law enforcement.'
Richmond PD spokesman James Mercante said the statue, which had recently been installed in the Byrd Park, become a memorial spot as the local community mourned the five officers killed by a sniper in Dallas.
Several citizens dropped bouquets of flowers at the statue.
Locals have been dropping bouquets at the statue in honor of the five Dallas officers slain by a sniper
'It is sad and frustrating to have someone deface a status that represents a memorial for fallen officers,' he told Daily Mail Online.
Mercante said his department prides itself in reaching out to the community and try to foster a good relationship between citizens and officers.
'Just yesterday, we had a community barbeque, a neighborhood walk through and a forum with the mayor, police chief and other community leaders to gather opinions and express frustrations or any problems with the Richmond Police Department,' he said.
'This organization has a robust community policing philosophy and uses many forums to reach out and connect with citizens.
Detectives continue to work on finding out who vandalized the statue.
But for now, Richmond cops are just happy the statue should be cleaned up again by Thursday.
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Two little girls who both lost their fathers in the Dallas police shooting last week shared a poignant moment at yesterday's memorial.
The older girl is Caroline Smith, 10, whose father, Sergeant Michael Smith was gunned down by crazed sniper Micah Johnson in downtown Dallas last Thursday.
She is seen handing putting a bracelet on the tiny wrist of adorable Lyncoln Zamarripa, aged two, whose father Patrick was also shot dead in Dallas.
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Friendship: Caroline Smith, left, put a bracelet on the wrist of Lyncoln Zamarripa, right, at a memorial ceremony
Yesterday President Barack Obama, former President George W. Bush and the city's Chief of Police, David Brown, led the tributes at a memorial to the five police officers gunned down as they watched over a Black Lives Matter protest.
Caroline and Lyncoln, who had never met before, met up backstage after the formal ceremony and the gesture is almost heart-breaking in its simplicity.
Caroline, wearing glasses and a cream and pink summer dress, reaches down to Lyncoln and puts a bracelet on her wrist.
The picture, taken by a family friend, was shared on the Internet and never has the phrase 'a picture tells a thousand words' been more true.
Both girls share an unwanted bond - they had lost their fathers, killed so senselessly while in the line of duty.
Fathers: Patrick Zamarripa, left, and Michael Smith, right, were both killed in last week's Dallas police massacre
'There's no greater love than this: that these five men gave their lives for all of us,' said Dallas Chief of Police David Brown (right) in his speech yesterday
Sergeant Smith and Officer Zamarripa were killed while standing guard as hundreds peacefully protested the recent police killings of two black men, Philando Castile and Alton Sterling, in Minnesota and Louisiana respectively.
Smith, a 25-year forced veteran, was a former Army Ranger, who left behind another daughter, 14-year-old Victoria, and wife Heidi.
Zamarripa, 32, served in Iraq before joining the Dallas Police Department.
He leaves behind a stepson and a wife, Kristy, as well as little Lyncoln.
Donald Trump met privately with Indiana governor Mike Pence inside the governor's mansion on Wednesday and brought his influential children along as speculation over Trump's final vice presidential pick reached fever pitch as Trump prepares to reveal his choice Friday.
Trump, who was overnighting in Indiana Wednesday evening, tweeted that he 'will be making the announcement of my Vice Presidential pick on Friday at 11am in Manhattan. Details to follow.'
Trump was accompanied by daughter Ivanka Trump, her husband Jared Kushner, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric as he entered the governor's mansion.
The breakfast meeting was a sign that Pence, the former House Republican leader who is well regarded by conservatives and establishment Republicans, remains a leading contender to be Trump's running mate.
'It's a little bit like 'The Apprentice,'' former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, another VP finalist, told Fox News Channel Tuesday. 'You find out sooner or later who the last one standing is.
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Trump brought along his daughter Ivanka, sons Donald Trump Jr., Eric and son-in-law Jared Kushner to his meeting with Indiana governor Mike Pence
Ivanka is pictured above in a blue and white summer dress as she supported her father
Donald Trump Jr, Ivanka and Jared can all be seen above surrounded by security
There are strong indications that Trump's family members, who have become close advisors inside his campaign, are engaged in a final round of vetting of vice presidential finalists.
NBC's Kelly O'Donnell reported Wednesday that New Jersey governor Chris Christie had already met with the other Trump family members, and that former House speaker Newt Gingrich was jetting to Indiana for a meeting of his own.
Gingrich and Fox News agreed to part ways this week on the former speaker's role as a paid Fox consultant. Gingrich appeared with Trump at a rally in Cincinnati, as Trump gave leading contenders public try-outs for the job.
Each of the apparent finalists offers something different. Pence has support from D.C. power-brokers, and some of the professionals on his campaign team, and would be a potential way to unify the party, something Trump says he wants to do.
Trump confirmed that he'll be revealing his pick on Friday
Donald Trump appeared with Indiana governor Mike Pence at a rally in Indiana Tuesday night, in what is seen as a tryout for the possible running mate
Many top Republicans are skipping the GOP convention, although Speaker Paul Ryan, who knows Pence well, is speaking. His resume and conservative issue positions might assuage conservatives who worry about some of Trump's past positions and more recent statements on social issues.
Christie has become a close advisor to Trump ever since he dropped out of the presidential race and endorsed him. He also impressed Trump by destroying senator Marco Rubio in a New Hampshire debate a move that played to Trump's benefit ultimately.
Gingrich is known for a sharp mind and slashing attacks on Hillary Clinton, and for his deep familiarity with the political levers in Washington.
Ivanka Trump has taken on an important advisory role inside the Trump campaign, as has Kushner. Both of them accompanied Trump when he traveled to D.C. last week to meet with GOP members near the Capitol. Donald Trump Jr. has taken on speaking roles at some Trump rallies.
New Jersey governor Chris Christie has become a close advisor to Trump
Trump says he's looking for a 'fighter skilled in hand-to-hand combat, which would certainly apply to former Speaker Newt Gingrich, who helped seize the House from the grip of Democrats
Trump said Tuesday he is looking for a 'fighter skilled in hand-to-hand combat' as his running mate, he told the Wall Street Journal.
At Tuesday night's rally with Pence, Trump said: 'I don't know whether he's going to be your governor or your vice president. Who the hell knows! Good man.'
Pence faces a tough reelection to the governorship, so would likely jump at the chance. He showed his own skill at going on the attack at the rally, going after Hillary Clinton for the attack in Benghazi.
'As the proud father of a United States Marine, let me say from my heart we don't need a president that took 13 hours to send help to Americans under fire,' said Pence. 'Anyone who did that should be disqualified from ever being commander in chief of the armed forces of the United States of America.'
was poking his head in the packet next to bin when it got stuck
Being greedy can often backfire. You put on weight, you get indigestion... or you get your head stuck in the food wrapper.
An unfortunate kangaroo was spotted in Western Australia poking his head into an empty packet of popcorn from a bin... only to get it rammed over his face.
The gluttonous marsupial frantically tries to pull off the foil in a hilarious video, but he's utterly... well, foiled.
An unfortunate kangaroo was spotted in Western Australia poking his head into an empty packet of popcorn from a bin... only to get it rammed over his face
The gluttonous marsupial frantically tries to pull off the foil in a hilarious video, but he's utterly... well, foiled. He scrabbles at the packet, scuttling unsteadily backwards as he does, completely unaware of where he is going
He scrabbles at the packet, scuttling unsteadily backwards as he does, completely unaware of where he is going - and looking thoroughly ridiculous with the wrapper in place of his brown furry face.
A fellow kangaroo watches him with interest - but does nothing to help, perhaps he is too interested in how the piece of unlikely comedy will play out. A sentiment the cameraman clearly shares.
The poor animal even ends up in the middle of the - mercifully deserted - road as he scrabbles ineffectively (although one can't help thinking that if he tugged with a little more vigour he might have more luck).
He hops around plaintively before his friend comes forward to stare at him inquisitively - no, no, not help, he just looks on in fascination.
The poor animal even ends up in the middle of the - mercifully deserted - road as he scrabbles ineffectively (although one can't help thinking that if he tugged with a little more vigour he might have more luck)
In a scene that wouldn't look out of place in a slapstick comedy the hapless kangaroos rams into a nearby parked car, headbutting the tyre before bouncing back in alarm
Eventually the marsupial gets a burst of energy and bounds off towards a row of parked cars.
'No don't go to my car!' the filmer says.
But it's too late.
In a scene that wouldn't look out of place in a slapstick comedy the hapless kangaroos rams into the vehicle, headbutting the tyre before bouncing back in alarm.
All he needs is a little animated circle of stars rotating above his head as he suddenly goes still before limping backwards mournfully.
The man is shocked into action and he can be seen reaching out to try to remove the popcorn packet but the frightened creature backs away, clearly afraid of the stranger in his blind state.
All he needs is a little animated circle of stars rotating above his head as he suddenly goes still before limping backwards mournfully
As he walks slowly away, the man, firm in his resolution, follows him before snatching the foil away in one quick sudden movement. 'There you go buddy,' the rescuer says
As he walks slowly away, the man, firm in his resolution, follows him before snatching the foil away in one quick sudden movement.
'There you go buddy,' the rescuer says as the subdued kangaroo looks around confusedly in the daylight before the clip ends.
Roxy Jacenko has said the support hundreds have offered her after her shock breast cancer diagnosis makes 'challenging times like these that much easier'.
Television presenter and cancer survivor Sally Obermeder, Olympic swimmer Dawn Fraser, model Kyly Clarke, and make-up artist and businessman Napoleon Perdis were among those to have phoned the Sydney-based PR queen.
'It is just remarkable and makes challenging times like these that much easier,' she told Daily Telegraph.
She said she was 'completely overwhelmed with people's kindness'.
Strangers and fans sent her well-wishes in the hundreds.
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PR queen Roxy Jacenko said hundreds have rallied around her in support after her shock breast cancer diagnosis
Television presenter and cancer survivor Sally Obermeder (left) and cricketer Michael Clarke's wife Kyly (right) were among the high-profile friends to offer Ms Jacenko support following her diagnosis
'Give yourself a hug for me. You're such a fighter,' one stranger wrote on Instagram. 'I know you can do this.'
'You are truly incredible how you don't crumble amazes me,' another said. 'Giving you all my strength and good thoughts. Know that you are an inspiration to little girls everywhere.'
'Please take this time to look after yourself and allow yourself time to get well and savour precious moments with those beautiful kiddies,' another wrote.
Others industry friends who reached out to her include businessman Mark Bouris, Pacific Magazine's boss Jackie Frank and model Kyly Clarke.
'Give yourself a hug for me,' one stranger wrote on Instagram on a picture Ms Jacenko shared of her holding hands with her four-year-old daughter Pixie (pictured)
Roxy Jacenko was diagnosed with breast cancer just weeks after her husband Oliver Curtis was jailed for insider trading (Ms Jacenko and Curtis pictured with their two young children - Pixie, four, and Hunter, two)
Ms Jacenko has been fitting breast cancer treatment in between meetings with clients, and was at work right up until she was due to undergo a second biopsy on Wednesday.
'Today I'm going to work and then to a biopsy... it's business as usual,' she said, smiling from behind a pair of oversized sunglasses.
Her blonde hair perfectly curled, she told Nine News: 'It can only be up from here.'
'You can never expect things in life. You've got to tackle things head on and that's what I'm going to do.
'I've got two young kids. I've got a responsibility so I'm going to keep doing what I do and it's business as usual - I've just got a few appointments in between and a laptop.'
Within minutes of arriving at work on Wednesday, Ms Jacenko shared a photograph of a display for a client, saying she was 'proud' of colleagues
'I've got two young kids. I've got a responsibility so I'm going to keep doing what I do and it's business as usual - I've just got a few appointments in between and a laptop,' she said on her way to work on Wednesday
The 36-year-old was seen at the wheel of her $600,000 Bentley as she made her way to her office in east Sydney's Double Bay after sharing her cancer battle publicly.
Ms Jacenko, whose husband Oliver Curtis was jailed for insider-trading last month, was diagnosed with the disease after finding a lump on her left breast while she was in the shower 10 days ago.
Ms Jacenko was forced to share news of her health battle with her jailed husband in a six-minute conversation from Parklea prison.
She was due to undergo a 'partial removal' of the lump but that the cancer was larger than suspected and surgery has been delayed while she awaits further testing.
She shared the news with her 'inquisitive and sensitive' four-year-old daughter Pixie but not her two-year-old brother.
Ms Jacenko posted a picture to Instagram on Tuesday with luggage after her diagnosis was revealed
Ms Jacenko's husband was jailed last month for insider trading and will spend at least one year in prison (Curtis and Ms Jacenko pictured arriving at NSW Supreme Court in June)
Ms Jacenko is pictured with her four-year-old daughter Pixie, who she has told about the diagnosis
After her husband's sentence was handed down Ms Jacenko shared a photograph with her children, describing them as the 'most caring' people she knows
Ms Jacenko has been left to care for their two young children, Hunter and Pixie (pictured together) after her husband was jailed three weeks ago
Shocking details of an orgy at Bulford Barracks emerged at the court martial of Hussain Panchbhaya today. He was cleared of battery
A woman was taken to a barracks for an orgy with at least five soldiers, one of whom was wearing a gas mask, a court martial has heard.
The military court was told the 20-year-old woman was picked up and driven to Bulford Barracks in Wiltshire where she consented to the group sex.
In what the court martial judge referred to as 'a very unedifying spectacle', she had sex with two men at the same time, while a third touched her.
Mobile phone footage of the incident also showed her performing a sex act on a soldier wearing a gas mask, Bulford Military Court heard.
The barracks orgy came to light when the woman complained about being hit with a 'regimental cane' by 4 Rifles soldier Corporal Hussain Panchbhaya.
But the case against the Corporal, 29, collapsed today after the woman left the courtroom as footage of the sexual activity was about to be shown.
She refused to be questioned under cross examination and a panel cleared Cpl Panchbhaya when prosecutors formally offered no evidence.
The complainant earlier told the court how she paid Rifleman James Onwood 80 to collect her from Basingstoke, Hampshire and take her to Bulford Barracks - a 70 mile round trip.
The pair had pre-arranged to have a threesome with another soldier, only known as 'Zane', and the woman was signed into the barracks and went to Rifleman Onwood's room.
She admitted more soldiers ultimately took part in the sexual activity - stating there were 'five, six or seven soldiers' in total.
Cpl Panchbhaya did not take part in the group sex but was in the room holding the regimental cain, the woman said.
She added: 'When I walked away that's when he hit me with it on the left leg, just underneath my hip bone.'
Cpl Panchbhaya, who has since been promoted from lance corporal, accepts he struck her but claimed 'she asked him to do it'.
Barrister Simon Reevell, defending, told the court it was necessary to see the footage as it called into question how her objection to being hit with the cane.
He said: 'It was not particularly traumatic for her as she was having sexual intercourse with three people simultaneously afterwards.'
The court martial was held at the court centre attached to the Bulford barracks where the orgy took place. The case fell apart after the woman refused to be cross examined and left the court when footage was played
After the case collapsed and Cpl Panchbhaya was cleared, a spokesman for the Army said: 'The British Army expects the highest standards of behaviour from all personnel, whether on or off duty.
'Breaches of values and standards are treated very seriously.
'All those who are found to fall short of the Army's high standards will be dealt with appropriately, up to and including dismissal.'
Elizabeth Warren may not get the job as Hillary Clinton's second-in-command. She will however have a prime-time speaking slot at the Democratic Party's nominating convention.
The New York Times reports that Warren has been asked to speak on Monday evening, two nights before the politician picked as running mate usually takes the stage.
Two Democrats familiar with the invitation to Warren told the Times the progressive senator could still be tapped to serve as vice president, however - speaking slots are not set in stone until Clinton has made a decision.
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Elizabeth Warren may not get the job as Hillary Clinton's second-in-command. She will however have a prime-time speaking slot at the Democratic Party's nominating convention
Warren has been asked to speak on Tuesday evening, a night before the politician picked as running mate usually takes the stage. She could still be picked as VP though, the schedule could change
A spokesperson for Warren, who campaigned late last month with Clinton in Cincinnati, Ohio, increasing running mate speculation, did not immediately return an email from DailyMail.com asking about the senator's convention plans.
The formal schedule for the convention, in Philadelphia July 25-28, has not yet been released, though several party officials are known definites.
The president will speak, the White House has said. The vice president is also likely to appear on the agenda in a coveted timeslot.
Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz will preside over the convention, the candidate - Clinton - will also deliver remarks.
Historically, Thursday night is reserved for the party's bethrothed and Wednesday for the person he or she is putting up for vice president. In 2008 Sarah Palin and Joe Biden each spoke Wednesday at their party's respective conventions.
In Clinton's case, her former president husband Bill Clinton, is also expected to give remarks, as well as their daughter Chelsea, who spent her teenage years living in the White House.
A DNC official wouldn't say whether Bernie Sanders specifically will have a speaking slot, given his endorsement yesterday of his primary rival, saying to stay tuned for scheduling announcements.
Sanders suggested this morning that he would deliver remarks, however.
'I suspect that I will speak at the convention, and I suspect that I will be traveling all over this country (to support Clinton),' the U.S. senator told the Today show.
His campaign is also planning a rally for the day before the convention begins in FDR Park, according to several news reports.
Clinton's other major primary rival, Martin O'Malley, the former governor of Maryland will probably make an appearance on the main stage as a show of party unity.
A spokesperson for Warren, who campaigned late last month with Clinton in Cincinnati, Ohio, increasing running mate speculation, did not immediately return an email from DailyMail.com asking about the senator's convention plans
Philadelphia's Democratic mayor Jim Kenney and former mayor Michael Nutter former are also likely to be on the list. Former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell could also get a courtesy speech in the four days of activities.
Clinton's list of possible VP candidates will likely get time as a consolation prize if they don't get the big gig, too.
They are, according to the Times, Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, Congressman Xavier Becerra of California, Housing Secretary Julian Castro and Labor Secretary Thomas Perez and Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia.
Warren is also being vetted and has filled out the necessary paperwork, it said, though she is not expected to be selected. She represents a faction of the party Clinton is struggling to win over but does not come from a swing state.
Additionally, she lacks foreign policy or military experience having not sat on either of the related committees in the Senate or served in the Armed Services.
Yesterday the Times said Clinton was looking at a new name that would fit that bill: retired 4-star Navy Admiral James Stavridis.
Stavridis is the dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in Massachusetts. The former NATO Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, he worked with Clinton when she was secretary of state and has been laudatory of her in the past.
The Perth child psychiatrist arrested in Canada for allegedly filming a boy in a public toilet is now facing further child pornography originating from a third country.
Dr Aaron Szen Yang Voon, 41, faced Perth Magistrates Court on Wednesday where it emerged further child pornography charges following an investigation with New Zealand authorities will be laid.
Voon will now also face the charge of 'possessing, controlling, producing, distributing or obtaining child pornography material outside Australia'.
Dr Aaron Szen Yang Voon (pictured), who runs a pediatric clinic in Perth, Western Australia, faces child pornography from Australia, New Zealand and Canada
The Perth child psychiatrist was arrested in Canada for allegedly filming a boy in a public toilet in Canada. He was confronted by the boy's father (pictured)
Commonwealth prosecutor Kate Gregory said discussions were being held with Canadian police about bundling the matters in the WA legal system with the Australian and New Zealand charges.
Voon attracted international media attention in May when he was arrested at a Canadian shopping mall and charged after he allegedly used his mobile phone to video a boy at a urinal in a public toilet.
A video taken by a member of the public and posted on news sites went viral showing Voon being confronted by the boy's father who demanded to see his phone at the Edmonton shopping centre.
Voon, who runs the Successful Development and Therapy Centre in Perth, has since given a legal undertaking not to work as a medical practitioner until authorities allow him.
After Canadian authorities let him return to Australia on bail, he was arrested and charged at Perth airport, with WA police saying they had found child exploitation images and videos at his home office, including recordings of young boys in public toilets.
Discussions are being held with Canadian police about bundling the matters in the WA legal system with the Australian and New Zealand charges
Voon was granted bail with strict conditions on June 15, reported Perth Now.
He was required to cease working, surrender his passport, pay a $50,000 surety and ensure a 100m distance from any location children may frequent.
He must also not possess any device that can record or receive messages.
WA Police said no link has been made between the seized material and the children Dr Voon worked with.
He will appear in court again on September 9.
A potato stuffed into a vehicle's tailpipe helped lead authorities to a 19-year-old Connecticut stripper who is now charged with setting fire to a business in a dispute over money, police said.
Willow Martin, of Naugatuck, was charged on Tuesday with several offenses, including second-degree arson, in connection with the fire last September at MTM Masonry in Prospect.
Authorities said the fire occurred at the masonry business belonging to the stepfather of Martin's best friend Breonna Constantino, who owed her money, the Hartford Courant reported.
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A potato stuffed into a vehicle's tailpipe helped lead authorities to 19-year-old Connecticut stripper Willow Martin (pictured left and right) who is now charged with setting fire to a business in a dispute over money
Martin was charged on Tuesday with several offenses, including second-degree arson, in connection with the fire last September at MTM Masonry in Prospect (scene from the fire shown above)
The pair were best friends while dancers at the Hollywood Connecticut Strip Club in Southington but ended up falling out over $1,200 Martin had loaned Constantino during a trip to Wildwood, New Jersey last summer, according to an arrest warrant.
Constantino was slow to repay the money which infuriated Martin so much she set fire to the business, the warrant stated.
Investigators determined the cause of the fire was arson and that it was started by gasoline.
On September 15, 2015, when Constantino's stepfather was alerted about the fire that broke out at his business, he was about to drive over when he found a potato in his vehicle's tailpipe.
Authorities said the fire was at a business belonging to the stepfather of Martins best friend, who owed her money (Martin pictured right). The businesss owner found the potato in his vehicles tailpipe and police processed it for DNA, tying it to Martins boyfriend 28-year-old Matthew Garguilo (right)
Once at the scene, he handed the potato over to police who processed it for DNA, tying it to Martin's 28-year-old boyfriend, Matthew Garguilo.
Garguilo told police he handled the potato, but that Martin was the one who put it in the exhaust pipe. He also admitted she set the fire and that he was was with her when she did it.
According to the arrest warrant, the boyfriend insisted he did not set the fire nor did he want to help, but that he ended up going along with it because he worried his girlfriend would find another guy.
He told police he took a gas can and a hammer from his house before driving Martin to Prospect where he watched her force her way into the business through a window while he stayed outside.
Moments after she set the fire, he told police there was an explosion through the door 'just like in the movies.'
Investigators determined the cause of the fire was arson and that it was started by gasoline (scene from the fire shown above)
Garguilo said he and Martin left the fire scene but later returned with Martin giving him a high-five, according to the warrant.
He also told officers that at the time of the fire, Constantino had paid a majority of the money back to Martin, with about $300 to $400 remaining of what she owed her, the arrest warrant said.
Following the fire, Martin refused to speak to police but Constantino told officers about their friendship and the falling out, and how she suspected Martin had set the fire.
She also told police she suspected Garguilo was involved, according to the warrant.
A second witness who started dating Martin after Garguilo was sent to prison on unrelated charges told officers Martin had told him about the fire and potato.
Martin (pictured left and right) was also charged with third-degree burglary, first-degree criminal mischief, attempted first-degree criminal mischief, possession of burglar's tools and five counts of conspiracy
Last Thursday, Garguilo was charged in connection with the fire with second-degree conspiracy to commit arson, third-degree conspiracy to commit arson, first-degree conspiracy to commit criminal mischief and conspiracy to commit possession of burglars tool, according to WTNH.
He remains jailed on $20,000 bail.
Meanwhile, Martin was also charged with third-degree burglary, first-degree criminal mischief, attempted first-degree criminal mischief, possession of burglar's tools and five counts of conspiracy, according to the Hartford Courant.
Shravan Lattupally, 39, of Barking, Essex, was jailed for six years in April for offering migrants a 'cloak of respectability' while working as an immigration advisor
A fraudster has been jailed for six years for helping low-paid migrants pose as high-powered professionals so they could remain in the UK.
Shravan Lattupally, 39, of Barking, Essex, concocted 'phantom jobs' and work records to be used in bogus visa applications.
Indian nationals who did not meet the Home Office's criteria of 'skilled migrants' and were desperate to stay in Britain paid Lattupally 5,000 a time for his services.
Amarnath Aitha, 31, of Croydon, London and Shyam Polsani, 40, Basildon, Essex, avoided deportation after Lattupally produced records to make it look like they were well-paid professionals.
The migrants covered up how much they were actually earning to 'gain a foothold' in this country while working in shops including Superdrug.
It can now be revealed Lattupally was jailed for six years in April for offering migrants a 'cloak of respectability' while working as an immigration advisor in Ilford, Essex.
Judge Martin Beddoe told Aitha and Polsani they will now face deportation back to India.
He said: 'Each of you made a deliberate attack on the immigration controls then in place for those like you who had been permitted to this country and had been allowed to stay on here.
'The system for such controls rely on honesty. In your case Mr Polsani your fraudulent behaviour succeeded, in your case Mr Aitha it did not.
'Either way, by intricate and dishonest means rather than by merit you were seeking to undermine the system.'
The judge said that their actions meant 'someone more deserving' may have lost a chance to stay in the country.
Nicholas Lumley QC, prosecuting, explained that 70 individuals were arrested as part of the operation with the vast majority of them admitting their wrongdoing.
Mr Lumley said: 'Once they had been here for a little while and sought to stay on they bent the rules and the regulations in order to stay in this country.
'We seek to show that rules which were in place relating to immigration, clear rules, were deliberately and dishonestly broken.'
The prosecutor said immigrants like Aitha and Polsani were not being paid enough to guarantee their residence in the UK.
Lattupally made it appear as though they were being paid for work as IT specialists at companies such as IT Verticals Ltd while they were finishing their masters degrees and other courses.
Amarnath Aitha, 31, of Croydon, London (left) and Shyam Polsani, 40, Basildon, Essex, (right) avoided deportation after Lattupally produced records to make it look like they were well-paid professionals. Judge Martin Beddoe told them they will now face deportation back to India
Mr Lumley added: 'There has been exploitation of people and of rules which have governed immigration in this country.
'As a result you won't be surprised to hear that some people have made some money out of it. Those people were prepared to lie, to be dishonest about what they were doing to earn a living.'
At the time of the offences a scheme called the Highly Skilled Migrant Programme was in place, which determined whether a migrant could remain in the UK on a long-term basis.
'What really boosted any application was if the applicant were to show they earned a certain amount of money.
'What each of these applicants struggled to achieve was a significant level of earnings such as would justify them remaining in this country,' said Mr Lumley.
'By creating phantom jobs, false invoices were generated, the money was put into the bank accounts to give the impression people were getting paid but in fact it was all a sham.
'There are people who exist who are prepared to help others in this way by applying a veneer of respectability to people who wish to remain in the country.'
Navya Avala, 35, of Dagenham, was cleared of one count of conspiracy to assist unlawful immigration to a member state
Lattupally was described as being 'integral' to the conspiracy and acted as a 'registered immigration advisor' for Incredible Immigration Services in Ilford.
'Mr Lattupally would complete the application form or advise on the contents of the application form and then submit it to the Home Office knowing that the information provided was entirely false.'
Pradeepa Ravinthula, 40, was jailed for two and a half years in April for her role in the scam.
She was director of a firm called Radiant Connect Ltd and another called Mast Business Solutions in Essex. Both companies paid out thousands in invoices but carried out no legitimate business at all.
Mr Lumley explained: 'Applicants would deposit 4,000 or 5,000 in bank accounts associated with this lady, next thing it would be paid out of the relevant bank account as if it was settling an invoice.
'In a period of eight months, 180,000 was paid out from Radiant Connect to the bank accounts of various applicants.
'Radiant Connect has no legitimate business, it seems to exist only to provide this cloak of respectability to otherwise false applications.'
Aitha was jailed for 21 months seeking to obtain leave to enter or remain in the UK by deception.
Polsani was handed an 18 month sentence for a single count of obtaining leave to enter or remain in the UK by deception.
The pair are not the first migrants to have been convicted of involvement in the racket.
Suresh Pidugu, 32, and his wife Lajavanthi, 34, of Edinburgh, were both found guilty of obtaining leave to remain in the UK by deception by using the scheme earlier this year.
Pidugu was jailed for 15 months while his wife received a suspended sentence so that she can look after their children.
Srikanth Siripuram, 34, was found guilty of two counts of the same charge and also jailed for two and a half years.
Navya Avala, of Dagenham, was cleared of one count of conspiracy to assist unlawful immigration to a member state.
Lattupally was earlier convicted of a charge of conspiracy to assist unlawful immigration.
His six year jail sentence can now be reported for the first time after another similar case heard at Blackfriars Crown Court ended in his acquittal.
David Brock, a nemesis-turned-ally of Hillary Clinton, is wagering $5 million of somebody else's money to try and pressure Donald Trump to release his tax returns by the end of the week.
The Democratic operative said today that he had found an anonymous Republican donor to put up the money, which would be donated to veterans a group Trump has pledged to champion as long as the billionaire finally released his returns.
'Every modern presidential candidate has been transparent on this basic hurdle and now Trump has another incentive to do the right thing,' Brock said in a statement.
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Hillary Clinton ally David Brock initiated a challenge today - announcing he had found a Republican donor to give $5 million to veterans, if Donald Trump released his tax returns by the end of the week
Donald Trump (left) is being pressured by an ally of his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton (right) to finally release those tax returns
If Trump doesn't release his tax returns before the general election, he'll be the first candidate to withhold that information from the American public in 40 years, reported the Washington Post.
Trump's tune has changed through 2016 on the matter of taxes.
First, in January, Trump said he was ready to disclose his 'very big' and 'very beautiful' tax returns, but a month later, during a Republican debate, Trump dragged his feet by explaining that his taxes, since the year 2009, have been under an IRS audit.
He would 'absolutely' release those returns 'but I'm being audited now for two or three years, so I can't do it until the audit is finished, obviously, and I think people would understand that.'
By May, Trump had tried sweeping the disclosures under the rug.
He told the Associated Press, 'there's nothing to learn from them,'
Experts, including many Democrats, begged to differ, suggesting that Trump's returns could tell a number of things about the candidate's business savvy, which is central to his campaign.
'This is a case of what we don't know will hurt us,' Brock argued in a statement today. 'But what we do know about Trump's taxes show that he's gone to great lengths to pay as little as possible, meaning that he is avoiding his fair share and shifting that burden to middle class families forcing them to pay more.'
The Republicans' 2012 nominee Mitt Romney got hit politically when it was revealed that his tax rate was just 14 percent, lower than most middle class families, making the candidate look like an out-of-touch member of the 1 percent.
Trump, however, told the Washington Post in May that he pays 'substantial' taxes, but also fights 'very hard to pay as little tax as possible,' which he signaled was the appropriate thing to do as a successful and rich businessman.
Beyond his tax rate, the returns could lend some legitimacy, or discredit, his claims to have donated $100 million of his personal fortune to charity over the years.
The Washington Post investigated sans tax returns and could only find one donation that Trump might have made.
It was for less than $10,000 in 2009 and may have been a bookkeeping error.
David Brock issues his challenge via Twitter today and then talked to reporters about how he planned to pressure Donald Trump to release the candidate's tax returns
Some Trump critics speculate that what the tax returns will do is prove that Trump isn't worth as much money as he says he is.
Trump started out his candidacy last June by boasting about his wealth 'I'm really rich,' he said claiming to be worth $9 billion.
He then released a set of documents, but because most of his business is in liquid assets like real estate and the branding of his name it's difficult to tabulate his financial value.
'Time and time again we've seen how Donald Trump is factually challenge and we can only assume he's playing fast and loose with the facts on how much he's paid in taxes, how much he's worth, how much money he's made off of potentially fraudulent business scheme, how much he's given to charity and more until we've seen his tax returns,' Brock said.
Brock is an interesting player in the Clinton universe.
Formally a Republican operative, Brock had a change of heart in the late 1990s and apologized for the books and writings he penned against Bill and Hillary Clinton.
Over the years he wedged his way into the Clinton inner circle, launching Media Matters for America, a liberal blog site, in 2004, which pointed out instances of conservative bias in the media.
More recently the super PACs Correct the Record, a rapid response organization that boosts Clinton, and American Bridge 21st Century.
Hillary Clinton's speech about race relations in Springfield, Illinois became an attack on Donald Trump as she ridiculed statements he made about the system being rigged against black people and the billionaire.
She quoted Trump in an interview with Fox News' Bill O'Reilly last night where 'he said that he understands systematic violence against black people and, I quote, "even against me the system is rigged." He went on to say I can relate to it very much myself,' Clinton noted.
'Even this, the killing of people, is somehow about him,' the Democrat said.
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Hillary Clinton spoke about 'race relations' from the Illinois state capitol, aiming most of her remarks at her Republican rival Donald Trump
Hillary Clinton first spoke of the same 'truths' that President Obama did yesterday: police reform was needed, but most are courageous and do their jobs - but she more of a pro-gun control message into her remarks
She also mocked his understanding of the U.S. Constitution, recalling a question that a lawmaker posed to the presumptive Republican nominee at a meeting with congressional Republicans last week.
Rep. Mark Sanford, R-S.C., spilled the beans on the exchange saying that Trump replied, '"I want to protect Article I, Article II, Article XII," going down the list.'
'There is no Article XII,' Sanford pointed out.
Clinton noted that too in today's speech at the Springfield capitol building.
'Here's the thing, there is no Article XII,' Clinton said. 'Not even close.'
'That was a serious question from an elected representative and he either didn't care enough to answer it seriously or he didn't know where to begin,' the candidate continued.
'Even the most stalwart Republicans were alarmed by that,' she added.
Clinton began her remarks, held in the same building where Abraham Lincoln gave his famous 'house divided against itself' address, by delivering many of the same 'truths' that President Obama said yesterday when he spoke at a memorial service for the five police officers killed in Dallas.
Obama weaved together a speech about the difficulties of modern day policing, and how cops are expected to do too much, while articulating the racial biases still felt by many in the black community.
'We flood communities with so many guns that it is easier for a teenager to buy a Glock than get his hands on a computer or even a book,' the president said yesterday. .
After making those points, Hillary Clinton spend the latter half of her address taking on Donald Trump on everything from immigration policies to how he treats the press
Hillary Clinton mocked Donald Trump for suggesting the system is 'rigged' against him too, like it is against black Americans and also ridiculed his knowledge of the U.S. Constitution
Clinton went heavier on the gun control messaging.
'We also need to listen to the families crying out for relief from gun violence,' she said.
'President Obama's trip to Dallas yesterday was the 11th time he has spoken to a city mourning after a mass shooting,' she continued. 'The wrong people keep getting their hands on guns and not just any guns, military weapons like the kind that the Dallas killer had, which allowed him to out-gun the police.
Clinton claimed that the majority of gun owners agreed that 'common sense steps' needed to be taken.
'If we're looking at common ground, this is common ground,' she said.
She also said that she realized her remarks today might upset some Americans.
'I'm talking about police reform just a few days after a horrific attack on police officers,' she began.
'I'm talking about courageous, honorable police officers just a few days after officer-involved shootings in Louisiana and Minnesota,' she mentioned.
'I'm bringing up guns in a country where just talking about comprehensive background checks and getting assault weapons off the streets gets you demonized,' she said.
'But all of these things can be true at the same time,' she noted.
And then, with a quick pivot, she turned to Trump.
'And in times like these, we need a president who can help pull us together, not split us apart,' she said.
'And that is why I believe that Donald Trump is so dangerous,' she added.
Clinton accused Trump of 'stoking mistrust and pitting American against American.'
Hillary Clinton gave her remarks in the Springfield, Illinois state capitol, where President Abraham Lincoln gave his famous 'house divided' speech against slavery before he became president of the United States
Hillary Clinton portrayed Donald Trump as a divider, noting his attacks against a Mexican-American judge, his immigration policy and his plan to ban non-American Muslims from the United States
Hillary Clinton also brought up a recent conversation that Donald Trump had with Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill and cited an 'Article XII' of the Constitution, which doesn't exist
She cited his plan to ban Muslims from the United States and reminded her audience of the attacks made against Mexican-American judge Gonzalo Curiel, who's handling a Trump University case.
Clinton said that Trump knew that Curiel, who the Republican repeatedly referred to as 'Mexican,' was born in the United States.
Just like President Obama, the country's first black president, who Clinton said Trump was trying to de-legitimize through his 'birther' remarks made several years ago.
Clinton zinged Trump's immigration policy, citing a letter she received from a mom.
'Her adopted son asked her with a shaky voice if President Trump would send him back to Ethiopia,' Clinton said.
'When kids are scared of by political candidates and policy debates it's a sign that something has gone badly wrong,' Clinton said.
The Democrat criticized Trump's handling of protesters at rallies and his treatment of the press, even though she hasn't held a press conference during this calendar year.
'He's banished members of the press how have criticized him. Is there any doubt he would do the same as president?' she mused.
At the end of her speech, Hillary Clinton referenced the musical Hamilton and said she enjoyed the song by the character playing George Washington, whose portrait stood behind her
'Imagine if he had not just Twitter and cable news to go after his critics and opponents, but also the IRS or, for that matter, our entire military,' she continued.
'Given what we have seen and heard, do any of us think he'd be restrained?'
Clinton also reminded her supporters that Trump called for the use of waterboarding and other forms of torture against terrorists and advocated harming enemies' families.
'This man is the nominee of the party of Lincoln,' Clinton said. 'We are watching it become the party of Trump.'
'And that's not just a huge loss for our democracy, it is a threat to it,' she said.
Circling back at the end of her speech to more presidents of yore, Clinton inserted a pop culture reference into her remarks.
'I've had the great delight of seeing the musical Hamilton,' Clinton said.
'There's a great song by the character playing George Washington who sings "History Eyes Are On Us,"' she added.
Ruling: Mothers who do not want to bring up their baby should be able to give up the child for adoption, High Court judge Mr Justice Baker (pictured)
Mothers who do not want to bring up their baby should be able to give up the child for adoption, a High Court judge has ruled.
Mr Justice Baker declared that 'a civilised society must accommodate such feelings and decisions, as societies always have'.
In a landmark ruling that could be followed throughout the court system, he said a baby given 'swiftly' to a new family will suffer little harm.
The judge added: 'If society does not tolerate and facilitate such decisions, mothers who feel they cannot keep their babies will be driven to take other measures.'
The number of mothers who give up children for adoption at birth has fallen to almost zero since the 1960s.
Reliable and easily available contraception, benefits for single parents, and the growing social acceptance of lone motherhood ended the system under which 20,000 babies a year used to be adopted.
However, Eastern European immigration has led to cases in which migrant mothers say they cannot raise their children and instead ask for them to be adopted in Britain.
Mr Justice Baker was hearing a case in which a 21-year-old Hungarian hotel chambermaid gave birth last October to a daughter, whose father was a Hungarian colleague, 37.
'The mother and father stated they had come to England to better themselves, that they were not in a position to bring up the baby themselves, that they wanted the baby adopted in England, they did not want relatives in Hungary to know about the baby, and they did not want the baby to have information about her origins and history,' the judge said.
Social workers said that by failing to look after the baby and giving her up into care, the parents had caused her harm, because she would be deprived both of her natural parents and 'experiences consistent with her Hungarian culture and heritage'.
They called for the child to be adopted by new parents in Hungary a position supported by the Hungarian government.
But the judge ruled: 'Very few babies nowadays are given up for adoption at birth. New techniques for reproduction have provided different ways of meeting the requirements of couples who are unable to have children themselves.
'But there remain a few isolated cases where a mother concludes that she is unable to look after her child.'
He added: 'A mother who concludes that she cannot care for her baby, and who notifies the authorities and makes responsible plans for relinquishing the baby at birth, is not, in my judgment, acting unreasonably.'
What it means: In a landmark ruling at the High Court in London (pictured) that could be followed throughout the court system, he said a baby given 'swiftly' to a new family will suffer little harm
Mr Justice Baker rejected social workers' argument that the girl would lose her Hungarian culture and would suffer identity confusion. This, they said, 'could lead to emotional harm and stress'.
But the judge said any harm would be 'diminished if the baby is swiftly moved to another carer in a planned way It is doubtful if it can be regarded as significant harm and, even if it can, I do not consider that the parents can be said to be acting unreasonably.'
He added that a move to Hungary 'would in my judgment be far more disruptive and damaging than an adoptive placement in this country'.
Mr Justice Baker said the child should be adopted in England, but added: 'It should not be assumed that this will be the outcome in every case where a child of foreign parents is relinquished for adoption.'
He added that the baby girl's adoptive parents should have 'an understanding of her background and cultural heritage'.
Buddy Fisher says he received this message on Airbnb after he tried to book an apartment
A Texas man says he was turned down for a rental on Airbnb because he is gay.
Buddy Fisher, of Houston, said he tried to book an apartment on the short-term rental site for the Austin Pride Festival in August.
About an hour later, his reservation was canceled.
'No LGBT people, please,' the unnamed host wrote, according to an image of the online exchange shared by Fisher.
He continued: 'I do not support people who are against humanity. Sorry.'
Fisher was shocked.
'It caught me so far off-guard,' he told CW 39.
Airbnb apologized to Fisher and banned the host from the site for breaking its anti-discrimination policy.
'The company said it has a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to discrimination like this,' Fisher told BuzzFeed News.
The company also helped Fisher find other accommodations.
'It felt like we've been going in the right direction, but then something like this happens,' he said.
'It's like you take five steps forward, then two steps back.'
'It really, really upset me, because I don't feel like I don't support humanity,' Fisher told KHOU.
Some people have even asked the company to offer a gay-friendly option.
There is no word yet on whether that will become a part of the site's features.
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Fisher (pictured) says he was caught 'so far off-guard' about being denied an apartment on Airbnb for being gay
Mexico's Navy says it has seized 217 plastic barrels filled with chili sauce that surrounded packages of cocaine in a shipping container that arrived from Ecuador.
The Navy said in a statement Wednesday that the barrels were discovered in the western port of Manzanillo. Photographs provided by the Navy show blue plastic barrels each weighing about 130 pounds filled with a red chili sauce.
They inspected the containers based on intelligence and found packages of cocaine inside.
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The Mexican Navy said it has seized 217 barrels of chili sauce hiding bags of cocaine inside
The barrels were found inside a contained from Ecuador which was bound for the state of Sinaloa
Sinaloa is known around the world for its drug cartel activity. Mexico's most infamous drug kingpin Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman was arrested in Sinaloa earlier this year, after breaking out of jail for a second time
The shipment's destination was Mazatlan in the Sinaloa state - a region infamous as a cartel stronghold.
Mexico's most notorious drug kingpin, Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman, was arrested in Sinaloa in January of this year, after making a dramatic escape from one of Mexico's most secure prisons in July 2015.
El Chapo escaped from his prison cell through an elaborate subterranean tunnel built by his henchmen that opened into his jail cell shower.
This escape was only the second time that El Chapo busted out of a federal prison - showing his power in Mexico.
El Chapo is currently being held in a prison near the Mexican border with Texas, spurring reports that he is to be extradited to the U.S. soon.
A top Beijing official has accused UN judges of accepting cash from the Philippines after they ruled against their territorial claims to disputed islands in the South China Sea.
Vice Foreign Minister Liu Zhenmin asked who was paying the wages of the judges who dismissed China's territorial claims.
China has been attempting to reclaim land in the South China Sea and build an airbase in an effort to claim fishing, oil and mineral rights across region.
Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Liu Zhenmin, pictured, questioned the impartiality of UN judges who ruled against his country's territorial claims in the South China Sea over several disputed rocks and islands
China has been accused of threatening other ships trying to navigated through the disputed zone
According to ABC.net.au, Liu said: 'These judges are paid, so who's really behind this tribunal. Who was paying them? Was it the Philippines or some other country?'
China expressed outrage over the decision handed down in The Hague.
Following the decision, Liu threatened declaring an air defence zone over the waters if it felt threatened.
The Philippines, under a UN treaty governing the seas, had sought arbitration in 2013 on several issues related to its long-running territorial disputes with China. In its ruling Tuesday, the tribunal found China's far-reaching claims to the South China Sea had no legal basis and that Beijing had violated the Philippines' maritime rights by building up artificial islands and disrupting fishing and oil exploration.
While introducing a policy paper in response to the ruling, Liu said the islands in the South China Sea were China's 'inherent territory' and blamed the Philippines for stirring up trouble.
Liu said: 'If our security is being threatened, of course we have the right to demarcate a zone. This would depend on our overall assessment. We hope that other countries will not take this opportunity to threaten China and work with China to protect the peace and stability of the South China Sea, and not let it become the origin of a war.'
In 2013, China set up an air defense identification zone over disputed islands in the East China Sea, requiring all aircraft entering the area to notify Chinese authorities or be subjected to 'emergency military measures' if they disobey orders from Beijing. The U.S. and others refuse to recognize the zone.
Six regional governments have overlapping claims in the South China Sea, waters that are rich in fishing stocks and potential energy resources and where an estimated $5 trillion in global trade passes each year.
Beijing has been reclaiming land across the South China Sea, pictured, in an effort to help their claims
Chinese troops have been been sent to patrol areas of reclaimed land just a few feet above the waves
Beijing says vast areas of the South China Sea have been Chinese territory since ancient times and demarcated its modern claims with the so-called nine-dash line, a map that was submitted under the UN treaty.
The tribunal said any historical resource rights were wiped out if they were incompatible with exclusive economic zones established under the treaty, which both countries have signed.
However, a former commander of US forces in the Pacific says the US should be willing to use military force to oppose Chinese aggression at a disputed reef off the coast of the Philippines.
Dennis Blair has made the recommendation to a Senate panel Wednesday, a day after an international tribunal invalidated the legal basis of Beijing's expansive claims in the South China Sea.
Blair says the objective is not to pick a fight with China at the disputed Scarborough Shoal, but to set a limit on its military coercion.
The Philippines is a US ally but their treaty is ambiguous about whether the US would come to its defense in disputed territory.
A 2012 standoff at Scarborough Shoal between China and the Philippines prompted Manila to launch the arbitration case.
Taiwan's president Tsai Ing-wen also expressed outrage over the UN's decision.
Although rivals, self-ruled Taiwan and China share the same territorial claims, pitting them against other claimants, chiefly the Philippines and Vietnam.
The UN arbitration tribunal ruled in favor of the Philippines and said that the biggest feature in the Spratly Islands Taiwanese-controlled Taiping or Itu Aba is not an island but a rock, and therefore not entitled to more than 12 nautical miles of territorial waters.
On Wednesday, Tsai said that the ruling 'seriously damaged' Taiwan's rights.
In remarks to navy sailors aboard a frigate before it left on a South China Sea patrol, she said: 'This ship represents the Republic of China (Taiwan). The uniform you are wearing represents the expectations of the people. The mission of this trip is to show the Taiwanese people's determination to defend the country's interests.'
The French foreign minister Jean-Marc Ayrault accused Johnson of lying to the public ahead of the referendum vote
Boris Johnson was booed as he gave a Bastille Day speech at the French ambassador's residence in London
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Boris Johnson was booed this afternoon at the French ambassador's residence despite singing La Marseillaise at a reception to celebrate Bastille Day.
Making his first public appearance as British Foreign Secretary in London, a small section of the French and British crowd at the ambassador's residence heckled Johnson as he attempted to make a speech.
Johnson's appointment as Britain's top diplomat has caused disquiet across Europe - even leading to the cancellation of an informal meeting of foreign ministers in Brussels on Sunday night to discuss the impact of Brexit.
Boris Johnson, pictured, was booed shortly after he arrived at the French ambassador's residence to celebrate Bastille Day
The newly appointed Foreign Secretary, pictured, joined in and sang the French national anthem, La Marseillaise, with gusto
Boris Johnson sat down behind his desk in the Foreign Office after his surprise appointment as Britain's chief diplomat
However, addressing a Bastille Day celebration in the French ambassador's residence in London, Johnson got booed by the audience
Johnson is due to attend his first EU foreign ministers' meeting in Brussels on Monday.
The European Commission's foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini had planned to invite the ministers from all 28 EU states for an informal dinner on Monday night.
The dinner was planned to give politicians the chance to discuss the impact of Brexit. However, following Johnson's appointment, the informal dinner is now in doubt.
Former Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt, now the leading federalist liberal in the European Parliament, summed up the feelings of many on the continent when he tweeted: 'Clearly British humour has no borders.'
French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault was less than diplomatic when he was asked to describe Johnson.
He said: 'I am not at all worried about Boris Johnson, but ... during the campaign he lied a lot to the British people and now it is he who has his back to the wall to defend his country and to clarify his relationship with Europe.
'I need a partner with whom I can negotiate and who is clear, credible and reliable.'
Johnson's appearance, beside the French ambassador Sylvie Bermann, left, was his first official function as Foreign Secretary
Johnson told reporters later he had received 'a charming letter' from Ayrault saying how much he looked forward to working together and to deepening Anglo-French cooperation.
But he acknowledged: 'After a vote like the referendum result on June 23, it is inevitable there is going to be a certain amount of plaster coming off the ceiling in the chancelleries of Europe.
'It wasn't the result they were expecting. Clearly they are making their views known in a frank and free way.'
Vladimir Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov was surprisingly conciliatory towards Johnson, who described the Russian leader as 'ruthless and manipulative tyrant'.
He told reporters: 'The burden of his current position will undoubtedly, certainly, lead him to use a bit different rhetoric, of a more diplomatic nature.'
Rebecca Harms, leader of the ecologist Greens group in the EU legislature said: 'At first I thought it was a joke. Now I don't know whether to laugh or cry. But I know it's not good when irresponsibility is rewarded in politics.'
Critics have said the appointment of the Brexiteer-in-chief as the UK's global ambassador could make Britain a 'laughing stock'.
And this morning the Tory MP got into an instant muddle when he could not find his ministerial car outside his north London home, circling three vehicles before finding the right one and repeatedly muttering: 'I'm so sorry'.
In April he branded Barrack Obama a 'part-Kenyan' who harboured an 'ancestral dislike' of Britain for claiming the UK would be 'at the back of the queue' for a trade deal if Britons voted to leave the EU. Last night he refused to apologise and had another snipe at Obama saying he would be 'at the front of the queue' for talks.
Boris Johnson introduced himself to staff at the Foreign Office this morning after being appointed by Theresa May
There have been distinctly mixed reaction to the news that the former Mayor of London is becoming Foreign Secretary
In May he published a poem about the Turkish leader Recep Erdogan having sex with a goat and calling him a 'w****rer', to rhyme with the Turkish capital, Ankara. In 2008 he apologised for describing the Queen being greeted in Commonwealth countries by 'flag-waving piccaninnies' - a derogatory term for black children.
His extraordinary appointment to high office came weeks after his campaign to be prime minister ended suddenly when he was 'knifed' by Michael Gove and was forced to drop out of the leadership race at the 11th hour.
Yesterday Mrs May's first act as PM, which was to sack George Osborne and name Philip Hammond as her new Chancellor. This morning she also sacked Michael Gove as justice secretary, who will join David Cameron and Mr Osborne on the back benches. Nicky Morgan was also fired as Education Secretary today.
Amber Rudd, 52, was appointed the new Home Secretary, a job made vacant after Mrs May left the department after a near-record six years in charge. Her appointment came weeks after she blasted Boris Johnson in a TV debate and said: 'Boris is the life and soul of the party but he isn't the man you want driving you home at the end of the evening.'
Long-time Eurosceptic Tory David Davis, 67, has been handed the big role of chief Brexit negotiator, a new Cabinet position. Fellow Brexit campaigner Dr Liam Fox, 54, returned to the Cabinet after four years of absence as he was named the Secretary of State for International Trade - another new post and a key role following Britain's vote to leave the EU.
Boris Johnson address his new employees at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office today after his shock appointment as Foreign Secretary last night
Off to work: Boris Johnson left home clutching his red box today as he was appointed Britain's new Foreign Secretary today - but he struggled to find his ministerial car, trying three cars before finding the right one
First day at work: Theresa May gives her husband Philip a big kiss as they leave their London flat - they did not stay at No 10 because Mr Cameron is still moving out and her belongings are not in yet
Boris Johnson (left today) has been appointed Britain's new Foreign Secretary in a shock development - after three goes he managed to find his ministerial car this morning and waved as he was swept off to work, right
Message: A critic of Tory MP left a 'sorry world' poster on the railings outside his north London home last night
Mr Johnson's appointment to high office was earned despite a number of gaffes involving foreign countries.
Last night Obama's spokesman for the State Department, Mark Toner, could not help grinning when he was told Britain's new Foreign Secretary was Boris Johnson but insisted the United States would work closely with him.
Last November local officials called off a visit to Palestine on safety grounds after the then-London mayor told an audience in Tel Aviv that a trade boycott of Israeli goods was 'completely crazy' and supported by 'corduroy, jacketed, snaggletoothed, lefty academics in the UK'.
Palestinian officials accused him of adopting a 'misinformed and disrespectful' pro-Israel stance and said he risked creating protests if he visited the West Bank, although Mr Johnson claimed his comments were 'very much whipped up' on social media.
The month previously he had made a more light-hearted gaffe when he was filmed wiping out a 10-year-old Japanese schoolboy during a game of street rugby on a visit to Tokyo.
The images, which were shown widely, saw burly Boris take out Toki Sekiguchi as the politician raced down the mini turf pitch.
Sekiguchi said afterwards: 'I felt a little bit of pain but it's OK.'
In 2008 Mr Johnson apologised for a Daily Telegraph column written six years previously, while the MP for Henley, in which he described the Queen being greeted in Commonwealth countries by 'flag-waving piccaninnies' - a derogatory term for black children.
The same column mentioned then Prime Minister Tony Blair being greeted by 'tribal warriors who will all break out in watermelon smiles' on an upcoming visit to the Congo.
Germany's foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeie today appeared to call UK counterpart Boris Johnson an 'irresponsible politician' who 'bolted' after Brexit.
'People [in the UK] are experiencing a rude awakening after irresponsible politicians first lured the country into a Brexit to then, once the decision was made, bolt and not take responsibility'.
'Instead they went to play cricket. To be honest, I find this outrageous but it's not just bitter for Great Britain. It's also bitter for the European Union.'
Former Swedish Prime Minister and diplomat Carl Bildt, tweeted the famous picture of Mr Johnson marooned on a zip-wire after he got the job last night and said: 'I wish it was a joke, but I fear it isn't'.
Mrs May's gamble came just after she brutally sacked George Osborne, bringing an abrupt end to his six years in charge of the Treasury. There were also reports that all of David Cameron's political advisors had left Downing Street - a sign Mrs May is determined to break with the past.
The early developments of Mrs May's first hours in charge are a clear sign of Mrs May's attempts to unite the Conservative party after months of bitter infighting during the EU referendum campaign.
By bringing in several high profile figures from the right of the party - including Mr Davies and Dr Fox - Mrs May has handed an olive branch to Brexit supporters who feared she would backtrack on leaving the EU having campaigned on the Remain side.
The pair will be in charge of the two new Cabinet departments created by Mrs May. Mr Davis has been appointed the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union while Dr Fox is in charge of the new International Trade department.
In other developments, Michael Fallon was re-appointed Defence Secretary, while Mrs May's close ally and leadership campaign manager Chris Grayling was yet to be handed a new job and remains as Leader of the Commons for now.
Mr Hammond moves to the Treasury after serving as Foreign Secretary for more than two years. The father of three is expected to take residence in the flat above Number 11, where the Cameron family has been living for the last six years.
The Camerons swapped residencies with the Osbornes because of their larger family. But with Mrs May and her husband Philip having no children, the Hammonds are likely to take the bigger flat.
There were signs earlier this week that Mrs May would not include Mr Osborne in her new government. She used a key speech on Monday to promise a major break from Mr Cameron and Mr Osborne's economic policy, promising to deliver 'serious social reform'.
But it nevertheless came as a big shock in Westminster that the man in charge of the economy for the last six years wasn't even offered a role in the new-look Government.
Reaction: The internet is full of memes reacting to the news that Boris Johnson is Foreign Secretary, including this one of Angela Merkel laughing
Comedian: Rocky Gervais today sarcastically remarked that just when Britain appeared to be a worldwide laughing stock Boris Johnson was made Foreign Secretary
Joke: One Twitter user said that the UK could no longer make fun of other foreign secretaries while former Swedish PM Carl Bildt thought it was a joke when he heard the news
Top job: The former Mayor of London is now Britain's top diplomat and in charge of MI6 despite his gaffes and jokes
Lampooned: Mr Johnson's various foreign trips as Mayor of London have been ideal fodder for internet jokers reacting to his new job
Question: Some believe he will be a disaster in post - others have suggested it could be a masterstroke by Mrs May
BRITAIN'S NEW GOVERNMENT: WHO HAS THERESA MAY APPOINTED TO HER FIRST CABINET AS PRIME MINISTER Theresa May will continue appointing her Cabinet today on her first full day as the Prime Minister. This is what we know so far: Home Secretary: Amber Rudd Ms Rudd came to politics later in life than most, having worked as an investment banker, venture capitalist, and financial journalist. The former Secretary of State for the department of Energy and Climate Change was a loud voice for Remain during the EU referendum. She appeared to support the new PM over her own junior minister Andrea Leadsom in the race for the Tory leadership. Secretary of State for Brexit: David Davis In holding the newly created role Mr Davis will be front and centre in the negotiations for Britain's exit from the EU. He has previously published what he described as a 'Brexit economic strategy for Britain'. Mr Davis has served as Foreign Office Minister and shadow home secretary. Foreign Secretary: Boris Johnson He wanted the top job but pulled out of the race when Michael Gove made a surprise announcement that he was to run for PM. His political fortunes have turned following Mrs May's decision to give him one of the most sought-after roles in the Cabinet. The former Mayor of London's appointment could be seen as somewhat unexpected, having been prone to more than the odd gaffe overseas down the years. International Trade Secretary: Liam Fox He was forced to resign from his role as defence secretary in 2011 after allowing his friend and best man Adam Werritty to take on an unofficial and undeclared role as his adviser. Five years on he has been welcomed back into the ranks by the new Prime Minister. He ran in the Tory leadership contest but was quick to back Mrs May when he was eliminated in the first round. Chancellor: Philip Hammond In one swift announcement George Osborne was out and former Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond was in as Chancellor of the Exchequer. He has previously served as Transport Secretary and Defence Secretary. The 'reassuringly boring' choice, Mr Hammond studied philosophy, politics and economics at Oxford University and is believed to have a devout belief in economic stability and prudent public finances. Defence Secretary: Michael Fallon He had been tipped as a possible candidate for promotion but Mrs May appeared to give her seal of approval to his work in the past two years by keeping Mr Fallon in his current role. A safe pair of hands, Mr Fallon can also expect to keep his other informal role as the 'Minister for the Today programme', sent out to firefight for the Government on difficult days. Advertisement
Humiliatingly Mr Osborne left No 11 by the back door after being told he was surplus to requirements. His departure marks the culmination of a crashing comedown for a politician who was for many years favourite to take over from David Cameron.
HUMILIATED OSBORNE LEAVES BY THE BACK DOOR AS TORY MP REJOICES END OF THE 'POSH BOYS' Humiliated George Osborne left Downing Street by the back door after Theresa May kicked him out of government. The new Prime Minister appointed ally Philip Hammond to the role of Chancellor, with Mr Osborne ejected from the front bench altogether. The departure marks the culmination of a crashing comedown for a politician who was for many years favourite to take over from David Cameron. The historic Brexit vote had wrecked his chances of getting the top job - but allies had still hoped he may be able to move into one of the other great offices of state. However, the writing appeared to be on the wall after Mrs May first dropped his plans to tackle the deficit - and then criticised his flagship austerity measures. As his departure was confirmed, Mr Osborne tweeted: 'It's been a privilege to be Chancellor these last 6 yrs. Others will judge - I hope I've left the economy in a better state than I found it.' But Tory backbencher Nadine Dorries - who previously attacked Mr Osborne and Mr Cameron for being 'posh boys' who did not know the price of milk - delivered a brutal put-down. 'The posh boys have gone. It's over,' she wrote on Twitter. Advertisement
The historic Brexit vote had wrecked his chances of getting the top job - but allies had still hoped he may be able to move into one of the other great offices of state.
However, the writing appeared to be on the wall after Mrs May first dropped his plans to tackle the deficit - and then criticised his flagship austerity measures.
As his departure was confirmed, Mr Osborne tweeted: 'It's been a privilege to be Chancellor these last 6 yrs. Others will judge - I hope I've left the economy in a better state than I found it.'
But Tory backbencher Nadine Dorries - who previously attacked Mr Osborne and Mr Cameron for being 'posh boys' who did not know the price of milk - delivered a brutal put-down. The posh boys have gone. It's over,' she wrote on Twitter.
As Mrs May moved to establish her top team, Brexit champion Boris Johnson was installed as Foreign Secretary - the role that Mr Hammond left.
Mr Johnson, whose dreams of becoming PM were brutally ended when Michael Gove betrayed him, has been rewarded with one of the great office of state.
It suggests the former Mayor of London has had the last laugh over Mr Gove, who was serving as justice secretary under Mr Cameron but has not currently been confirmed in any post.
However, the ex-journalist will face a huge financial hit as he is now expected to have to give up his newspaper column, which earns him around 260,000 a year.
Mr Johnson pulled out of the Tory leadership race after Brexit ally Mr Gove dramatically withrew his support and announced his own bid for the top role - saying the ex-mayor 'cannot provide the leadership or build the team for the task ahead'.
Mr Johnson once claimed there was more chance of him being 'reincarnated as an olive' than taking the keys to No 10, but until that point had been the hot favourite to succeed Mr Cameron.
After leading the Brexiteers to victory, the 52-year-old's stock among the heavily Eurosceptic Conservatives grassroots was higher than ever and a string of MPs had already thrown their support behind him.
But doubts remained about the Old Etonian's commitment to Brexit, prompted in part by his late and agonised declaration for the Leave camp and fuelled by a Telegraph column in which he declared that 'Britain is part of Europe, and always will be'.
Setting out her stall as a 'one nation' Tory outside No 10 after being sworn in as the UK's new Prime Minister by the Queen during a short trip to Buckingham Palace this evening, Mrs May pledged to battle 'social injustice' and create a 'country that works for everyone'.
She said she was determined to listen 'not to the mighty' but to the members of society who were struggling and disadvantaged.
Speaking outside No 10 this evening after being appointed Britain's second female Prime Minister, Mrs May said: 'The Government I lead will be driven not by the interests of the privileged few but by yours.
'We will do everything we can to give you more control over your lives. When we take the big calls, we will think not of the powerful, but you.'
Theresa May waves alongside her husband Philip as she enters Downing Street for the first time as Prime Minister
Long-time Eurosceptic David Davis (pictured outside Downing Street today, left) has been appointed the big job of chief Brexit negotiator, a new Cabinet position, while pro-EU Amber Rudd (pictured entering Downing Street, right) has been appointed the new Home Secretary
As his departure was confirmed, Mr Osborne tweeted: 'It's been a privilege to be Chancellor these last 6 yrs. Others will judge - I hope I've left the economy in a better state than I found it'
Tory backbencher Nadine Dorries - who previously attacked Mr Osborne and Mr Cameron for being 'posh boys' - expressed her delight in a tweet
Mrs May became Britain's second female premier, following in the footsteps of fellow Tory Margaret Thatcher, after a 34 minute audience with the Queen in Buckingham Palace. The monarch invited her to form a government just minutes after Mr Cameron had been in to tender his resignation.
She went on: 'Not everybody knows this, but the full title of my party is the Conservative and Unionist Party. That word Unionist is very important to me.
Mrs May said: 'It means we believe in the Union, the precious, precious bond between England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. It means something else that is just as important.
'It means we believe in the Union not just between the nations of the United Kingdom but between all of our citizens, every one of us, whoever we are and wherever we are from.'
Mrs May said being a 'unionist' was not just about protecting the UK, but representing everyone who lives here.
'That means fighting against the burning injustice that if you are born poor you will die on average nine years earlier than others,' she said.
'If you are black you are treated more harshly by the criminal justice system than if you are white.'
She went on: 'If you are a white working class boy, you are lless likely than anybody else in Britain to go to university.
New place of work: Boris Johnson is shown around the grand Foreign Office on Whitehall building by Simon McDonald last night
David Davis (left) and Dr Liam Fox (centre) will be in charge of the two new Cabinet departments created by Mrs May. Michael Fallon remains the Defence Secretary (right)
Theresa May named Philip Hammond (right) as her new Chancellor and sacked George Osborne (pictured left) in a historic evening in Westminster less than two hours after she was officially sworn in as the UK's second female Prime Minister
Theresa May has pledged to create a 'country that works for everyone' after she formally took over as Prime Minister
Mrs May was flanked by her husband Philip as she set out her vision for the country. She is expected to announce key Cabinet posts later
'If you went to state school, you are less likely to reach the top professions than if you are educated privately. 'If you are a woman, you will earn less than a man.
'If you suffer from mental health problems, there is not enough help to hand. 'If you are young, you will find it harder than ever before to own your own home.'
Mrs May said the 'mission to make Britain a country that works for everyone means more than fighting these injustices'. 'If you are from an ordinary working class family, life is much harder than many people in Westminster realise,' she said. 'You have a job but you don't always have job security. You have your own home but you worry about paying the mortgage.
'You can just about manage but you worry about the cost of living and getting your kids into a good school. If you are one of those families, if you're just managing, I want to address you directly.
'I know you are working around the clock, I know you are doing your best, and I know that sometimes life can be a struggle. 'The Government I lead will be driven not by the interests of the privileged few but by yours.
'We will do everything we can to give you more control over your lives. 'When we take the big calls, we will think not of the powerful, but you.
'When we pass new laws, we will listen not to the mighty, but to you. 'When it comes to taxes, we will prioritise not the wealthy, but you.
'When it comes to opportunity, we won't entrench the advantages of the fortunate few, we will do everything we can to help anybody, whatever your background, to go as far as your talents will take you.'
Delivering a warning about how tough process of Brexit could be, Mrs May said: 'We are living through an important moment in the country's history.
'Following the referendum we face a time of great national change. I know because we are great Britain, we will rise to the challenge.
'As we leave the European Union, we will forge a bold new positive role for ourselves in the world.
'And we will make Britain a country that works not for the privileged few but for every one of us. 'That will be the mission of the Government I lead and together we will build a better Britain.'
Mrs May paid tribute to Mr Cameron for his work tackling the deficit and getting people into work. 'I follow in the footsteps of a great modern Prime Minister. Under David's leadership, the Government stabilised the economy, reduced the budget deficit and helped more people into work than ever before,' she said.
'But David's true legacy is not about the economy but about social justice. 'From the introduction of same sex marriage to taking people on low wages out of tax altogether, David Cameron has led a one nation government and it is in that spirit I also plan to lead.'
Boris slated by Germany and France as Britain's new Foreign Secretary is branded a 'irresponsible' and 'a liar'
Boris Johnson was branded irresponsible and a liar by France and Germany yesterday as his appointment as Foreign Secretary was met with disbelief around the world.
The former London mayors surprise promotion to the Cabinet gave officials in Brussels an immediate diplomatic headache as they considered whether to cancel a dinner of European foreign ministers planned for Sunday night.
As Mr Johnson began his first day in the Foreign Office, diplomats worldwide studied lists of his gaffes and perceived insults about their countries. His European counterparts expressed anger at controversial remarks he made during the referendum campaign, including comparing the EU to Hitlers Germany.
Last night Mr Johnson was booed as he attended a Bastille Day event at the French embassy in London. Frances foreign minister publicly denounced him as a liar. In an interview on French radio, Jean-Marc Ayrault said: During the campaign, you know he told a lot of lies to the British people and now it is him who has his back against the wall.
Mr Ayrault said Mr Johnsons appointment was symptomatic of the British political crisis that has come out of the referendum vote.
He stressed that he needed an opposite number in Britain who was clear, credible and who could be trusted.
Asked if he was scared about facing Mr Johnson around the negotiation table, he replied: No, Ive got no worries at all about Boris Johnson, but you know very well what his style and method are.
Germanys foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier branded Mr Johnson an irresponsible politician who bolted after Brexit.
Carl Bildt, the former prime minister of Sweden, tweeted a picture of Mr Johnson dangling on a zipwire during the London Olympics with the message: I wish it was a joke, but I fear it isnt.
Mr Johnson will face his European counterparts for the first time at a meeting in Brussels on Monday, but officials were last night mulling the cancellation of a dinner scheduled for Sunday.
Ministers had proposed a quiet chat on post-Brexit relations, expecting Mr Johnsons predecessor Philip Hammond, who campaigned to stay in the EU, to reassure them on continued cooperation. But an EU diplomat said: The timing is starting to look awkward. It may yet be cancelled.
Mr Johnson caused upset during the referendum when he described Barack Obama as a part-Kenyan President who harbours ancestral dislike of the British empire. It led European Commission vice president Frans Timmermans to accuse him of spreading hatred with borderline racist remarks.
Yesterday, in a telephone conversation with Mr Johnson, US secretary of state John Kerry urged Britain to be sensible during its exit from the EU. State department spokesman Mark Toner appeared amused when asked about Mr Johnsons appointment but stressed: Were always going to be able to work with the British, no matter who is occupying the role of the Foreign Secretary.
Mr Johnson brushed off the criticisms last night. He said: The French foreign minister has sent me a charming letter just a couple of hours ago saying how much he looked forward to working together.
After a vote like the referendum result on June 23, it is inevitable there is going to be a certain amount of plaster coming off the ceiling in the chancelleries of Europe.
Many newspapers and social media users across Europe mocked Mr Johnsons appointment. Germanys Handelsblatt called Mr Johnson a political jester.
And one of Mr Johnsons neighbours placed a sign next to his home in Islington, North London, saying: Sorry world.
NEWSPAPERS AROUND THE WORLD TODAY REACTED TO THERESA MAY'S DECISION TO APPOINT BORIS From Japan to Turkey and Australia to Germany, headlines on Mrs May's new Cabinet appointments were dominated by the news of Mr Johnson's unlikely new position. French websites pointed out that he is 'not known as an outstanding diplomat' and said he must 'urgently discover a talent for diplomacy'. The Japan Times sought to undermine Mr Johnson's past, drawing attention to when he fabricated quotes while working as a junior reporter for The Times in the 1980s. The story was also covered in Turkey, although the local news apparently failed to comment on Mr Johnson's offensive poem about President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Meanwhile the spokesman for the U.S State Department had to stifle laughter when he was asked about how he felt America would work with the former Mayor of London. French news website Le Soir said Johnson will have to 'urgently discover a talent for diplomacy' in their coverage of the announcement Turkish newspaper Haber Turk covered Mr Johnson's appointment - but failed to comment on his controversial poem about the president Kurier, a German language daily newspaper, chose Boris Johnson to lead their coverage of the new Cabinet - but offered little opinion German tabloid Bild quoted a source who said Johnson did not come across as an 'outstanding diplomat'. Meanwhile its editor tweeted: 'Justice: Johnson now has to lie in the bed he made,' referring to the new Foreign Secretary's campaign for Brexit Japan Times drew attention to the fact that Johnson once fabricated a quote while working as a junior reporter at the Times in the 1980s The Australian newspaper published a story by Sam Coates for The Times, which focuses on Johnson's reputation as being 'gaffe prone' ... at least someone is happy! Former Australian prime minister posted this image of himself with Boris Johnson, praising the new minister Advertisement
Britain's new lethal weapon against barbaric Islamic State militants was yesterday unveiled by the Ministry of Defence.
The 105,000 Brimstone 2 missile will destroy small, fast-moving targets from RAF Tornado GR4 jets flying over Iraq and Syria.
More deadly than the standard laser-guided Brimstone missile, it has double the range, and can hit lone jihadists on motorbikes wearing suicide vests from more than 20 miles away.
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The RAF is preparing to deploy the new upgraded Brimstone 2 missile system to target ISIS terrorists
The Brimstone 2 missiles, pictured underneath this Tornado GR4 can target jihadis from 20 miles
The Brimstone 2 missiles will be deployed using the Tornado GR4, file photograph
It has the same heavyweight punch as it is predecessor but its cutting-edge seeker system and more flexible guidance system means the missile can defeat more challenging targets.
The missile can also hit them with greater accuracy which means it can discriminate between the target and other moving vehicles and civilians in cluttered environments.
The British designed missile can be used by RAF pilots to assassinate IS leaders one by one.
It will destroy targets with a contained explosion which generates relatively little debris and can track targets travelling up to 70mph.
Each missile has a small but highly focused explosive warhead which reduces the chance of shrapnel hitting civilians.
It also has an adjustable fuse which allows the pilot to decide exactly when it will explode.
The new missiles provide the pin-point accuracy of their predecessor but can be fired from 20 miles away
From 20 miles a jihadi will have no idea they are mere seconds from death while driving down the road
The missiles dual-mode guidance system - with a laser designator and a sophisticated radar - makes it the ideal weapon for destroying fanatics driving on motorbikes or on gun trucks.
It also makes the RAF a formidable force in the IS stronghold of Raqqa in Syria where there are high-level commanders mixed amongst civilians in crowded areas.
An MoD statement said: The improvements to the warhead and guidance system mean that Brimstone 2 can be used as an advanced "close support" weapon, capable of attacking targets even more precisely.
The air-to-ground missile can engage a wide range of threats, both stationary and moving, from bunkers to fast-travelling armoured vehicles.
Group Captain Rich Davies, Station Commander of RAF Marham, said: Brimstone is the RAFs weapon of choice in close air support operations.
It is easy to use, highly accurate against static and moving targets, and allows pilots to tackle threats in a complex environment with maximum effect.
Brimstone 2, which builds on experiences using Brimstone in combat, will provide a step up in performance, giving UK pilots an advanced weapon designed for the future battlefield.
Defence minister Philip Dunne added: The MODs 170 million investment in Brimstone 2 will increase the effectiveness of UK air power and provide a significant boost to the national economy.
Tony Douglas, of the MoDs defence equipment and support, said the new battle-winning weapon will support our Armed Forces in their future operations to protect the UKs security and national interests.
Jean-Claude Juncker hosted Amazon officials involved in the firm's controversial tax avoidance strategy when he was Prime Minister of Luxembourg
The President of the European Commission held secret meetings with Amazon officials involved in the firm's controversial tax avoidance strategy when he was Prime Minister of Luxembourg.
Jean-Claude Juncker hosted the officials at a time when his country was offering cozy deals to multinational companies that let them pay little or no tax.
The meetings were not previously disclosed and critics said that they could be evidence that Mr Juncker was 'marketing' Luxembourg as a haven for tax avoidance.
Court documents also allege that Amazon hid key data from the US tax authorities after it was questioned about its low tax rate.
Mr Juncker was president of Luxembourg between 1995 and 2013 and has come under intense scrutiny for facilitating tax avoidance on a global scale.
In 2014 he faced calls to resign following the 'Lux Leaks' revelations - but nobody was fired or held accountable.
The documents about Mr Juncker's meetings with Amazon were revealed by Newsweek magazine and were from a court case in Seattle between Amazon and the IRS, the US tax authority.
They show that Mr Juncker met with four senior Amazon tax officials between September 9 and 12 2003.
Mr Juncker met, amongst others, Bob Comfort, who was instrumental in setting up Amazon's European tax structure.
He also met Jocelyn Krabbenschmidt, Amazon's director of global direct tax from 1999 until 2012.
Another meeting was with Jeroen Pit, Amazon's head of EU VAT.
According to Newsweek, the court documents state: 'Amazon tax executives met with the Luxembourg prime minister.'
Alex Cobham, director of research at the Tax Justice Network, said that if the meetings showed that Mr Juncker had 'direct involvement' in promoting Luxembourg as a place to avoid tax then he had to resign.
The meetings with Amazon officials were not previously disclosed and critics said that they could be evidence that Mr Juncker was 'marketing' Luxembourg as a haven for tax avoidance
Sven Giegold, a German lawmaker in the European Parliament who has spoken out about Mr Juncker's record, said the meetings were very worrying.
He told Newsweek: 'Given that Juncker met senior Amazon tax officials, it is beyond belief that tax questions weren't discussed in these meetings.'
Amazon has avoided paying a fortune in tax by funneling all its UK profits to its HQ in Luxembourg under an initiative known as 'Project Goldcrest'.
This meant that, in the UK, Amazon paid just 11.9million in tax on 5.3billion worth of sales to British shoppers over 11 years.
After a government clampdown it began booking all UK sales in Britain from May last year.
Documents show that Mr Juncker met with four senior Amazon tax officials between September 9 and 12 2003
Documents from the court case in the US, which could force Amazon to pay 1.1 billion in tax if it loses, claim that Amazon did not disclose important information to the IRS after it was audited in 2005 and 2006.
Amazon allegedly did not hand over details of a model titled 'S Team Meeting', a group of senior executives who reported directly to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
Amazon's chief financial officer Tom Szkutak 'was briefed on the projected tax benefits' of Project Goldcrest before it was put into effect in 2006, the documents state.
Mr Cobham, of the Tax Justice Network, said: 'We always tend to give the benefit of the doubt to multinationals and talk about avoidance rather than evasion. But hiding relevant material does suggest the crossing of that line'.
Other companies which employ similar tax avoidance methods to Amazon include Apple, Google, Starbucks and McDonald's.
According to Richard Murphy of Tax Research UK, the amount Britain has missed due to tax avoidance schemes now stands at 120bn a year.
That breaks down into 25bn in legal tax avoidance, 70bn in fraudulent tax evasion and 25bn in late payments.
A spokesperson for Mr Juncker said it was 'entirely normal' for him to have met with Amazon executives
In his current role Mr Juncker will play a key role in Britain's negotiations to leave the EU after the Brexit referendum.
He has already called British people 'deserters' and said they will get no special favours during negotiations.
A spokesperson for Mr Juncker said it was 'entirely normal' for him to have met with Amazon executives.
The spokesman said: 'Any decisions related to the tax arrangements of large companies during his time in office were...strictly a matter for the tax administration'.
Children are in foster care and one boy wrote a letter pleading with the judge not to return him to his parents
Neighbors complained of the odor and that children were being left alone
A bathtub was being used as a makeshift toilet and was full of fecal matter
A Pennsylvania couple have been jailed after police found their 11 children were found living in a filthy, feces-laden home.
Tyree, 29, and Takeya Fluellen, 34, were each sentenced to at least one year in prison after pleading guilty to child endangerment charges last month.
The couple were charged in July last year after authorities discovered the disgusting living conditions at their Steelton home, outside Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, PennLive reports.
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Tyree, 29, (left) and Takeya Fluellen, 34, right pleaded guilty to child endangerment charges last month and were sentenced to spend at least one year in jail each
One of their sons has since pleaded with the court not to send him back to live with his parents once they are released.
Police and child services had been responding to reports that the 11 kids, aged between two and 14, were being left on their own. Neighbors had also reported an odor coming from the house.
By the time officers had arrived, the Fluellens had fled with their children but police who searched the home found overflowing trash infested with maggots and feces-covered toys and clothes.
An upstairs bathtub was being used as a makeshift toilet and was filled with fecal matter while dirty diapers littered the floor, according to police. Raw meat was left out on the counter while officers found no beds or furniture inside.
When police finally caught up with the family in January, six of the kids were found to be suffering from Shigella - an infectious disease caused by exposure to feces.
The children have since been placed in protective custody.
One of the kids wrote a heartbreaking letter to the judge in the sentencing hearing asking the court not to return him to his mom and step-dad.
The Fluellens were charged in July 2015 after Steelton police and child welfare workers searcehd their home and found maggots in overflowing trash cans, dirty diapers on the floor, and feces-covered clothing and toys
'She did some things wrong because she has to go to jail,' said the boy who is going into the fifth grade in fall.
'I want to stay here', he said of his foster care, with his siblings, 'I'm just moving on because they are leaving soon.'
Lawyers for Takeya said she realized how bad the living situation had become but said the family were planning to move to a new clean home soon.
She was scared to ask for financial help in case she lost her children.
'I want you to know I love my children,' Takeya told the judge. 'I want you to know I was not trying to harm them. It was the selfishness of not wanting to lose them.'
Tyree's attorney added that his client had a difficult childhood with an alcoholic mother.
But the judge noted that it was not the first time the pair has faced charges over the care of their children and sentenced them to between one and two years in jail.
Boris Johnson has been made Foreign Secretary as Theresa May moved to bring the big beasts of Brexit into her top team.
The former London mayor, whose dreams of becoming PM were brutally ended when Michael Gove betrayed him, has been rewarded with one of the great office of state.
It suggests that Mr Johnson has had the last laugh over Mr Gove, who was serving as justice secretary under Mr Cameron but has not currently been confirmed in any post.
However, the ex-journalist will face a huge financial hit as he is now expected to have to give up his newspaper column, which earns him around 260,000 a year.
Brexit champion Boris Johnson has been made the new Foreign Secretary by Mrs May
Give a tour: New Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson is shown around the Foreign Office by permanent under-secretary Simon McDonald
As Mrs May seeks to unite the Tories after a divisive referendum campaign, she has also drafted in David Davis as minister for Brexit.
Amber Rudd has been made Home Secretary, filling the role that Mrs May herself held until she formally took over from Mr Cameron.
Liam Fox, a former defence secretary and another prominent leave campaigner, is to be secretary of state in a newly created department for International Trade.
Mr Johnson pulled out of the Tory leadership race after Brexit ally Mr Gove dramatically withrew his support and announced his own bid for the top role - saying the ex-mayor 'cannot provide the leadership or build the team for the task ahead'.
Mr Johnson once claimed there was more chance of him being 'reincarnated as an olive' than taking the keys to No 10, but until that point had been the hot favourite to succeed Mr Cameron.
After leading the Brexiteers to victory, the 52-year-old's stock among the heavily Eurosceptic Conservatives grassroots was higher than ever and a string of MPs had already thrown their support behind him.
But doubts remained about the Old Etonian's commitment to Brexit, prompted in part by his late and agonised declaration for the Leave camp and fuelled by a Telegraph column in which he declared that 'Britain is part of Europe, and always will be'.
Mr Johnson's election to City Hall in 2008 and retention of the powerful position four years later was a clear demonstration of his star quality at the ballot box, catapulting him into the front rank of contenders for the Tory leadership.
Despite achieving only minor shadow cabinet experience during his first stint in Parliament, his distinctive shock of blond hair, idiosyncratic speaking style and appearances on TV's Have I Got News for You made him one of the UK's most recognised politicians.
One of Parliament's highest-earning MPs, Mr Johnson paid nearly 1 million in tax over four years, much of his earnings coming from his Daily Telegraph column and royalties from books.
He is now almost certain to have to give up the column, which the Commons register of interests indicates has been making him 266,667. The hit will be offset by a Cabinet salary of around 141,000 - compared to his MP pay of 75,000.
There is no place in Mrs May's team for George Osborne, who has been humiliatingly ejected from the chancellorship in favour of Philip Hammond.
His departure marks the culmination of a crashing comedown for a politician who was for many years favourite to take over from David Cameron.
The historic Brexit vote had wrecked his chances of getting the top job - but allies had still hoped he may be able to move into one of the other great offices of state.
However, the writing appeared to be on the wall after Mrs May first dropped his plans to tackle the deficit - and then criticised his flagship austerity measures.
As his departure was confirmed tonight, Mr Osborne tweeted: 'It's been a privilege to be Chancellor these last 6 yrs. Others will judge - I hope I've left the economy in a better state than I found it.'
But Tory backbencher Nadine Dorries - who previously attacked Mr Osborne and Mr Cameron for being 'posh boys' who did not know the price of milk - delivered a brutal put-down.
'The posh boys have gone. It's over,' she wrote on Twitter.
Philip Hammond (right) has been appointed Chancellor, while George Osborne is leaving government altogether
Stuntman Mattew Cranch, who died when a human cannonball stunt went horrifically wrong near Maidstone in Kent in 2011
A stunt firm boss was yesterday warned that he could face jail after a catastrophic safety failure led to a human cannonball being killed.
Stuntman Matthew Cranch, 24, was killed when his safety net collapsed while he was flying through the air after being fired from the cannon.
The thrill-seeker fell 40ft to the ground during a performance in front of hundreds of spectators at the 2011 Kent County Show and suffered horrific injuries.
An inquest last year previously heard Mr Cranch had become a stuntman just one week before the tragedy.
And yesterday his boss Scott May, a stunt motorcyclist, pleaded guilty to a health and safety charge and was warned the offence carried a possible two-year jail sentence or an unlimited fine.
Mr Cranchs final moments had been captured on a video which showed the safety net collapsing, only split seconds after he was shot from the mouth of the 25ft cannon.
The horrifying film started with a 3-2-1-Fire! countdown and a firework flash to simulate the cannon firing.
Mr Cranch shot into the air but as he left the barrel the large safety net underneath him fell flat to the ground.
The stuntman continued on his brief upwards trajectory before hunching into a ball as he prepared to land. The video was played to his inquest but stopped before the moment of impact.
Prosecutor Mark Watson told Maidstone Magistrates Court that a quick release catch on the net had failed, meaning the net was not held in place.
He said: Immediately that Mr Cranch was ejected, the safety net collapsed to the ground. Mr Cranch struck the ground at speed and sustained catastrophic injuries.
Paramedics and an air ambulance crew were unable to save the former mechanic from Newquay, Cornwall, who a school friend described as a thrill-seeker.
Matthew Cranch taking part in a human cannonball stunt show moments before he died after a safety net failed during the stunt at the Kent County Showground in Detling
His inquest, held last year, heard a faulty catch meant the recoil from the cannon firing caused enough vibrations to shake the safety net loose.
Mechanical engineer Alex Grimes said the quick-release catch on the safety net was liable to appear locked, while in fact it was loose. He said it seemed to have been left dirty for years, which added to the risk.
The inquest jury heard Mr Cranch and stunt firm boss May both carried out a visual inspection of the lorry-mounted cannon before the event. They returned a verdict of accidental death.
Mr Cranch was employed for the event in Detling, Kent, in April 2011 by Stunts UK Ltd, based in Penzance, Cornwall.
Mr Cranchs final moments had been captured on a video which showed the safety net collapsing, only split seconds after he was shot from the mouth of the 25ft cannon. The horrifying film started with a 3-2-1-Fire! countdown and a firework flash to simulate the cannon firing
May, 39, owns and manages the firm and his lawyer Tanya Robinson said he accepted that his position as managing director meant he was responsible for the safety failure.
She said: The show is his life and he takes matters of health and safety seriously. They had used this trigger release mechanism about 1,000 times without there being a problem with it.
She said May wanted Mr Cranchs family to know how truly sorry he is for what happened to Mr Cranch. The family, who now live in Spain, did not attend the court hearing.
May pleaded guilty to failing to ensure the health, safety and welfare at work of an employee. Two identical charges were brought, one against his firm and one against him.
Mr Cranch had been fired from a cannon mounted on a lorry in front of spectators at the Kent County Showground when the tragedy occurred
Prosecutor Mr Watson told the court the offence carried a maximum two-year jail sentence or an unlimited fine.
The case was brought by Maidstone Borough Council, which took over a health and safety inquiry into the death started by police.
The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal sitting in central London found seven allegations against Alan Blacker, who calls himself 'Lord Harley of Counsel' proved and ordered he be struck off
A lawyer criticised by a judge for dressing like something out of Harry Potter who also exaggerated his qualifications on his CV has been struck off.
A disciplinary panel found Alan Blacker failed to mention properly written accounts relating to client and office money and failed to obtain an accountant's report during six months he held clients money.
The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal in central London found seven allegations proved against the solicitor and ordered he be struck off.
The hearing was told he made misleading comments about his academic qualifications, made misleading claims about his accreditations and qualifications, used titles which were misleading and failed to cooperate with the regulator.
Blacker calls himself Dr The Right Honourable The Lord Harley of Counsel of the Most Venerable Order of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem and resembles Hagrid from the Harry Potter books.
Long-haired Blacker allegedly believed he was allowed to claim the imaginary titles for himself as long as they were independently verified.
Blacker was cleared of recklessly misleading the court.
The court heard he did not keep proper records because they were a waste of paper, the tribunal was told.
In 2014 he incensed a judge when he appeared in court with medals and ceremonial ribbons on his lawyers gown.
Judge David Wynn Morgan, sitting at Cardiff Crown Court, told him: If you want to look like something out of Harry Potter you can forget coming to this court ever again.
Describing Blackers defence, Ed Levey, for the Solicitors Regulatory Authority, said: His case seems to be none of these institutions awarded him the awards that he said they awarded him.
However, because its independently verified by someone its okay that he holds himself as verified.
He said they were accredited by a company approved to work in the UK, US, and Canada.
Judge David Wynn Morgan told Blacker, who resembles Hagrid (right) from the popular film and book franchise: If you want to look like something out of Harry Potter you can forget coming to this court ever again'
Blacker, who is also accused of failing to keep proper accounts dealings with client money, failed to keep documents as he was worried about paper costs, Mr Levey said.
Mr Levey then raised the issue of witness statements provided by Blacker.
He said: We have no idea who these people are, anyone can craft a witness statement.
Blacker, who is said to charge 454 an hour for Crown Court work, had also claimed to once be a banker, Mr Levey said.
He said: He claims to have been a banker in the 80s. His career in banking therefore seems to have happened in his late teens.
Panel chairman Paul Housego banned Blacker (pictured) from the profession, and ordered him to pay costs of 86,000
Mr Levey had earlier told the hearing Blacker had failed to comply with a SRA investigation and claimed he could not send documents because he had been injured administering CPR for an hour.
Investigators asked for more details about the incident, but none were forthcoming.
Blacker is also accused of misrepresenting his qualifications and giving himself the titles Senior Trial and Appeal Counsel, Grade A Civil, level four Criminal - even though such titles do not exist.
He also claimed to be a Commanding Officer Emergency Care Practitioner at the Royal College of Surgeons.
The tribunal heard Blacker also boasted the title of Branch Secretary and Honorary Colonel 24 Batt. (Irish) and 1st Btn of the Royal Artillery Association.
He appeared at Cardiff Crown Court in 2014 in the case of a minibus driver jailed for five years after being found guilty of causing the death of a cyclist by dangerous driving.
At the time the judge told him: I have been practising in these courts since 1978 and I have never seen a barrister or solicitor appear before these courts wearing a medal or with badges sewn on to his gown.
If you ever appear before this court again dressed as you are I shall exercise my right to decline to hear you.
Alice Evans, a forensic investigator, who interviewed Blacker about the allegations, said: We saw Mr Blacker in a downstairs interview room.
At no point were we invited upstairs to his office. We were seen in a separate interview room in a separate firm of solicitors.
I think its very telling that we werent seen in his office.
Mr Levey read a statement from Mr Blacker in which he said Ms Evans declined a second interview and had wasted six hours of his time.
She said: Thats demonstrably not true He tries to postpone meeting me, I decline and said Id be there in any event.
It was then that I received a message about the injury incident in court.
Panel chairman Paul Housego banned Blacker from the profession, and ordered him to pay costs of 86,000.
Tituss Burgess lashed out at a Brooklyn moving company in a scathing Yelp! review after they failed to show up for a scheduled appointment and a worker called him a 'f***ing f****t' in a text exchange.
'My name is Tituss Burgess. Im an Emmy Nominated Actor for Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt currently streaming on netflix. Thats besides the point. But watch it,' began Burges in his Yelp! Review.
'These guys are the absolute most UNPROFESSIONAL workers I have EVER DEALT WITH.'
He then went on to say how Frank's Express asked him to post a positive review about them on Yelp! before they would agree to show up to move his couch.
'DO NOT USE THIS COMPANY,' wrote Burgess, who closed out his review by writing: 'You messed with the wrong Queen.'
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Don't try him: Tituss Burgess (above) wrote a scathing Yelp! review for Frank's Express in Brooklyn after they failed to show up to move his couch
Homophobic slur: After he texted to cancel the service the worker he was communicating with responded by writing:'You are a f*****g f****t' (above)
Burgess detailed his entire experience with the moving company in his review, writing: 'I called this man this morning. We chatted. He said he could move my couch at 1pm which was the time I requested. 1:30 still no movers.
'I called back and he says I will give you a discount...I said ok. He says but you have to post a review on yelp. I said when you complete the job i will complete the review. FOR THE FOLLOWING I HAVE THE ENTIRE TEXT EXCHANGE SAVED.
'He texts saying no review no show. This went on for about 45 minutes. It Completely threw my entire day. I called him about 9 times but he wouldnt pick up but he somehow was capable of texting.'
Burgess later shared his text exchange with the worker on Twitter, writing: 'Doing it..He just texted and called me a F****t. Poor thing doesnt know hell hath no fury like a Tituss scorned.'
The exchange shows Burgess thanking the company and asking if they are 'close,' before eventually texting: 'You're fired and I'm undoing that review and posting our entire text exchange u f****d with the wrong one.'
That was when the worker wrote to Burgess: 'You are a f*****g f****t.'
The worker did not respond to a call and text for comment from DailyMail.com.
Clapback: Burgess urged people on Yelp! to not use the company, and closed out his review by writing: 'You messed with the wrong Queen' (above)
A star is born: The actor is expected to grab his second Emmy nomination tomorrow morning for his work in Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (above with co-stars Jane Krakowski and Ellie Kemper)
Tomorrow looks to be a better day for Burgess with the announcement of this year's Emmy nominees, of which the Kimmy Schmidt star is once again widely expected to be included according to critics from The Hollywood Reporter and IndieWire.
He will be competing for the Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series trophy, which he lost last year to Tony Hale of Veep.
Authorities in Canada are searching for a five-year-old girl who has been missing since her mother was found dead on Monday.
An Amber Alert was issued for five-year-old Taliyah Leigh Marsman early Tuesday morning. Later that day, family members made an impassioned plea to the public to help return the young girl.
Taliyah was first reported missing on Monday, when her mother was found dead in the apartment they shared in Alberta.
Authorities in Alberta, Canada are searching for five-year-old Taliyah Leigh Marsman (left), who has been missing since her mother Sara Baillie (right) was found dead inside their apartment on Monday
Police broke into the apartment and found 34-year-old Sara Baillie's body after she failed to show up to her job at the Calgary airport Chili's and her family couldn't get in touch with her.
Authorities have not revealed how Baillie died, but they have categorized her death as a homicide.
Baillie's car was found not far from the home and is currently being swept for evidence.
On Wednesday, police also released CCTV footage showing the mother and daughter in a Calgary Dairy Queen around 5:30pm on Sunday.
On Wednesday, Calgary police released CCTV showing the mother and daughter visiting a nearby Dairy Queen at 5:30pm on Sunday
In the video, the mother and daughter are seen speaking to another family, and police are looking to identify and speak with that family
It appears that Baillie is the woman in the black sweater to the right in the above still , but police did not identify who the mother and daughter are in the CCTV footage
Baillie was murdered sometime between when when surveillance footage was taken at 5:30pm on Sunday and when she was found dead the following evening
Baillie's daughter remains missing, but police said they got a new tip about a sighting of the girl on Monday
A witness has told police that they saw a girl matching Taliyah's description walking through her neighborhood with a stocky black man Monday morning around 11:30am. It's unclear who the above grab shows, since the woman is not wearing a long-sleeved sweatshirt like in other videos
The child in this grab is seen wearing a pink sweatshirt, not the grey one of the child accompanying the woman who appears to be Baillie in earlier shots. The woman in this shot is wearing shorts and a black sweater
In the clip, Baillie is seen stopping to speak to a family seated in the restaurant. Police are looking to speak with that family.
Another witness in the family's neighborhood told police that they saw a girl matching Taliyah's description walking with black man of stocky build around 11:30am on Monday. The girl was seen wearing red or pink boots with white polka dots and carrying a red-colored suitcase.
Investigators have also said that they don't think a stranger took Taliyah, partly because there were no signs of forced entry at the apartment.
Taliyah's father, 37-year-old construction worker Colin Marsman, was 'estranged' from Baillie but is reportedly cooperating with police and has issued a statement saying he wants his daughter back.
Taliyah's father, Colin Marsman (above), is reportedly cooperating with police. He was 'estranged' from Baillie, the girl's mother
Authorities have not revealed how Baillie died but they have categorized her death as a homicide. Baillie is pictured on the right with her daughter (center) in a recent photo
Taliyah is described a mixed-race, of a slim build, with brown curly hair and blue eyes. Anyone with information on the girl's disappearance is being asked to call 403-532-6237
'I want to make a plea to anyone out there who knows anything about where my baby is. Please, its never too late to do the right thing! If you even think you might have seen something that could be a clue, let your local law enforcement know immediately,' Marsman, who also goes by the last name Paris, said in his statement.
Police confirmed that the former couple have a 'limited' history of domestic-violence related calls.
'Theres limited domestic history both reported and unreported,' Inspector Don Coleman of the Calgary Police Service Major Crimes section said at a Tuesday morning news conference.
Marsman was charged with unlawful confinement and intimidation by threats on February 1, 2015 - but the charges were dropped a month later.
In addition to Taliyah, Marsman has a teen son.
Baillie and her daughter moved into the basement apartment of the suburban home on May 1, and the landlord who lives upstairs says he has never seen the girl's father at the residence.
The last time family had seen the mother and daughter was on Sunday, around 11:30am.
At a Tuesday press conference, some of Taliyah's family members pleaded for her return.
At a Tuesday morning press conference, Scott Hamilton (center) and Mary-Lynne Hamilton (right), Baillie's uncle and aunt, pleaded with the public for their help returning Taliyah
'Taliyah, honey, if you are watching this, we love you. Stay strong, honey,' Baillie's aunt, Mary-Lynne Hamilton, said as she cried.
Baillie's uncle Scott Hamilton said: 'Please return her. Drop her off at an RCMP station, Calgary Police Service station, or grocery store, gas station, wherever you want. Contact the family, we'll come and pick her up. There will be no questions asked.'
'We love her, we miss her, and we want her back,' Mr Hamilton added.
Taliyah is described a mixed-race, of a slim build, with brown curly hair and blue eyes.
Anyone with information on the girl's disappearance is being asked to call 403-532-6237.
A young mother who was so desperately seeking a cure for her cancer she had to leave her husband and their baby at home so she could undergo radical treatment overseas has tragically died in Mexico.
Jessica Gall, 26, from the Gold Coast in Queensland, was first diagnosed with cervical cancer in October 2014 but despite undergoing surgery and being given the all-clear, the cancer returned.
After seeking treatment first in China then in Germany Ms Gall's last attempt to beat the cancer was a radical treatment called ablation immunotherapy in Mexico, which is where she died.
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Jessica Gall, 25, has died after undergoing radical cancer treatment in Mexico
Ms Gall was first diagnosed with cancer two years ago after a test in October 2014 showed abnormalities in her cervix.
'She had the surgery as advised by the doctor and after the surgery she was told it was successful and she had clear margins,' friend Brooke Chamberlin wrote on a fundraising page set up for Ms Gall.
However the cancer returned in July last year, just a month after her own father lost his seven-year long battle with cancer.
When conventional treatments in Australia such as radiation therapy and chemotherapy didn't work for Ms Gall, she sought help overseas.
The young mother, from Queensland's Gold Coast, leaves behind her husband Eden and their son Easton, two
Ms Gall was first diagnosed with cancer two years ago after a test in October 2014 showed abnormalities in her cervix
WHAT IS ABLATION IMMUNOTHERAPY? Ablation treatment for cancer involves injecting needles into the tumor and blasting it with extreme heat or cold. The concept behind the therapy is that ablation acts like a vaccine against the tumor, kick-starting the body into generating an immune response. This is then paired with a type of immunotherapy which aims to get the immune system to attack the cancer itself, supposedly making the treatment more effective. Advertisement
After researching alternative treatments outside Australia, Ms Gall travelled to Renkang Hospital in China in late 2015 with her husband and son.
'At Renkang they combine conventional and alternative treatments and get great results, especially for her type of cancer,' Ms Chamberlin said.
When this failed and Ms Gall was 'sent home to die', she learned of a radical treatment in Mexico called ablation immunotherapy.
This time her husband stayed in Australia so he could care for their child and continue working in order to pay for the treatment.
Ablation treatment for cancer involves injecting needles into the tumor and blasting it with extreme heat or cold, while using the bodys own immune system to fight the disease.
The concept behind the therapy is that ablation acts like a vaccine against the tumor, kick-starting the body into generating an immune response.
She travelled to China, Germany and finally Mexico in search of alternative treatment for the disease
Nine weeks ago the 26-year-old left her young family once again in pursuit of a cure with her sister Sacha, but the alternative therapy left her so unwell she was placed into in intensive care.
Ms Gall died in July 6, leaving behind a loving husband and two-year-old son.
Ms Chamberlin is now trying to raise money for the 26-year-old's family so they can cover the cost of her astronomical medical bills and give her a fitting funeral.
Ms Gall's treatment in Australia plus her pursuit of a cure in China, Germany and Mexico cost her and $600,000 over the past few years.
Family members and fundraisers along the way helped Ms Gall and her husband out, however there are still huge bills to be paid.
Friend Brooke Chamberlin has started a fundraising page to help out in such a difficult time.
'She was a beautiful mum, she was a beautiful wife to Eden', Ms Chamberlin told Daily Mail Australia.
She has urged anyone who can help out to do so, as 'every little bit counts'.
A baby raccoon was saved after it was trapped in a wall in an Arkansas couple's house.
The raccoon, since named Leroy Brown, has been adopted by the couple living at the Fayetteville residence.
Brittany Cusanek is engaged to 37-year-old Jeremy Brown. Together, they own Leroy.
The 29-year-old told ABC News: 'Right now he's very aggressive but playful like a puppy or kitten but his bite is much worse.
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Bad, Bad: Leroy Brown the raccoon belongs to Brittany Cusanek and Jeremy Brown, who are engaged
Aggressive but playful: He had been trapped in a wall in the couple's house and was saved by Cusak
'When we're in home he kind of stays in the house but he'll follow me out in the yard and may go exploring a little bit but doesnt run off.'
An Instagram page for Leroy says: 'Fell from the attic into a wall when I was too young to escape, but luckily was rescued!'
Sounds were heard for weeks in the attic, ABC News reported.
'One day we heard a screech that woke both of us up,' Cusanek said.
'We went through our day and then I was doing homework and I heard a sound in the wall near me that sounded like a baby.'
The raccoon was saved in March by Cusanek, who made an opening in the wall, ABC News reported.
Leroy was bottle-fed cat formula and currently consumes fruits and nuts, it's been reported
Leroy was bottle-fed cat formula and currently consumes fruits and nuts, its report said.
The couple has brought Leroy camping and on dogwalks with their other pet, Arkansas Online reported.
Brown told Arkansas Online: 'Everybody stops and wants to touch him.
'Sometimes somebody knows somebody who has a raccoon.
'For the most part it's fine, until you're trying to break down camp, and you've got people standing there asking, "Is that a raccoon?''
An American man gored in the leg during the seventh bull run in this year's San Fermin festival in Pamplona, Spain said it has been one of the greatest experiences of his life.
Matthew Lavin, 39, a painter from New Jersey was gored in the thigh on Wednesday after one of six fighting bulls crashed into a group of runners close to a fence.
He was pulled to safety and treated by Red Cross medics at the scene before he was transported to hospital where he he said he received around 20 stitches.
'It's going to leave quite a scar,' Lavin told The Local from his hospital bed in Pamplona.
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Matthew Lavin, 39, a painter from New Jersey (pictured as he tended to by medics) was gored in the thigh on Wednesday during the seventh bull run in this year's San Fermin festival in Pamplona, Spain
Lavin was gored in the thigh after one of six fighting bulls crashed into a group of runners close to a fence
Lavin pictured above in Spain before his injury. Speaking from his hospital bed in Pamplona, he said he is alright and that he hopes to return to run with bulls again
Lavin recalled Wednesday's ordeal, saying that at the time he was running and got stuck in human traffic when he turned and saw the half-ton animal running towards him, causing him to run faster as to avoid it.
'I had about three or four strides to get away but I guess I didn't get out of the way quickly enough,' he said.
The fighting bull named Illustrado ended up charging into him, piercing his thigh.
'I knew I had been punctured but at that moment the adrenaline was so great that it didn't really hurt as much as it should have,' he told The Local.
'I didn't realize it was so bad.'
While he said he is feeling alright, the painter noted 'all in all its been one of the greatest experiences of my life.'
'I'm not going to let this put me off. I've had an amazing time at San Fermin and running with the bulls was one of the greatest experiences I've had in my life,' he told The Local.
'I'd love to come back and run again.'
He added: 'I came knowing that if you run with the bulls you can get gored and I thought about it a thousand times before deciding to do it.
Lavin recalled Wednesday's ordeal, saying that at the time he was running and got stuck in human traffic when he turned and saw the half-ton animal running towards him, causing him to run faster as to avoid it
Lavin pictured as he is treated at the scene by medics. He was pulled to safety and treated by Red Cross medics at the scene before he was transported to hospital where he he said he received around 20 stitches
While he said he is feeling alright, the painter noted 'all in all its been one of the greatest experiences of my life
'I knew it could happen and it did happen. And I'm lucky that I can walk away from it.'
Doctors have told Lavin that he could be discharged within 24 hours, which he hopes is the case as he is looking forward the last day of the fiesta, noting 'with an injury like this comes a bit of fame.'
When the bull crashed into the group of runners, it also lifted at least two others in the air with its horns.
Meanwhile, four Spaniards were treated in city hospitals for bruises.
Navarra Hospital said another American, 53-year-old Jake Ramirez, was treated for an ankle injury and released. It had no details of his residence.
More than a thousand red-scarved runners took part in the 8am (2am EDT) dash with six fighting bulls and their accompanying steer along a 930-yard (850-meter) street course to the city's bull ring.
One of the six fighting bulls charges against a group of red-scarved runners during the bull run on Wednesday
A bull of the Nunez del Cuvillo ranch charges against runners or 'mozos' during the seventh bull run of Sthe San Fermin Festival in Pamplona, Navarra, northern Spain on Wednesday
A bloodied and injured reveler is tended to by medics on the Estafeta corner. An American was gored in the left leg and taken to a city hospital, spokesman said, and four other runners were hospitalized
The bulls then face matadors and almost certain death in afternoon bullfights.
The nationally televised run lasted two-and-a-half minutes and featured fewer runners after overnight rain left the city's cobbled streets more treacherous than usual.
Wednesday's run featured bulls from the Nunez del Cuvillo ranch.
The nine-day fiesta, known also for its 24-hour street partying, became world famous with Ernest Hemingway's 1926 novel 'The Sun Also Rises,' and attracts thousands of foreign tourists.
The festival ends on Thursday.
An injured man is pictured as he is treated by medics. Revelers from around the world flock to Pamplona every year to take part in the eight days of the running of the bulls
Wednesday's bull run featured fewer runners after overnight rain left the streets more treacherous than usual
Bulls crash into a crowd of runners during Wednesday's bull run. At leats six people were injured during the seventh day of the running of the bulls
During Tuesday's run, the Navarra regional government said five Spaniards were hospitalized for but none for gorings. Medical officials had initially reported four injured.
That run featured specially-bred bulls from the Victoriano de Rio ranch and the 875-metre dash from pen to Pamplona bull ring lasted just 2 minutes 13 seconds, the fastest so far this year.
Pamplona's town hall reported that 16 men have been arrested for suspected sex offenses since the festival opened.
Six were arrested for suspected sexual assault, including rape, and 10 for suspected sexual harassment, officials said.
A runner is pictured lying on the ground after falling as a group of bulls are seen running towards him
Some participants are seen falling to the ground as a crowd runs down cobbled streets along the side of one of the fighting bulls. One man is seen climbing a pole
Wednesday's run featured bulls from the Nunez del Cuvillo ranch and lasted just 2 minutes 32 seconds. The festival ends on Thursday
Nine foreigners were arrested, including six Frenchmen, a Bolivian, a Pakistani and a Romanian.
Because of complaints in previous years, the city has campaigned this year for a festival 'free of sexist aggressions.'
Aritz Romeo, town councilor for citizen security, said the number of cases reported was similar to other years and to those in other cities with festivals.
The city government, political parties and feminist and social groups cooperated to hold two major rallies to protest against sexual aggression since the festival began.
Bull runs are a traditional part of summer festivals across Spain.
Twelve people, including four Americans, have been gored since the runs started on July 7.
In all, 15 people have died from being gored at the festival since record-keeping began in 1924.
The nine-day fiesta, known also for its 24-hour street partying, became world famous with Ernest Hemingway's 1926 novel 'The Sun Also Rises,' and attracts thousands of foreign tourists
The nationally televised run lasted two-and-a-half minutes on Wednesday and featured fewer runners after overnight rain left the city's cobbled streets more treacherous than usual
Militant union chiefs could 'gerrymander' Labour's leadership contest by allowing thousands of activists to sign up to vote for just 2, it emerged yesterday.
The Unite union, whose boss Len McCluskey is a close ally of Jeremy Corbyn, yesterday began a recruitment drive that could allow hard-Left activists to bypass rules to prevent 'entryism' in Labour's leadership contest.
The party's ruling National Executive Committee decreed on Tuesday that the estimated 130,000 Labour members who have joined since January 12 will not get a vote.
The Unite union, whose boss Len McCluskey (right) is a close ally of Jeremy Corbyn (left), began a recruitment drive that could allow hard-Left activists to bypass rules to prevent 'entryism' in Labour's leadership contest
Outsiders can sign up to vote as 'registered supporters' during a two-day window next week, but it will cost them 25 each.
Yesterday, Unite was promoting the fact that people can get a vote for just 2 by signing up to join the union a route that will remain open until August 8. In a message circulated on Twitter, senior Unite official Jennie Formby, who is a member of the NEC, said: 'Want a voice in leadership election? Join a union and sign up as an affiliated supporter!'
The intervention appears to be an effort by Unite to replicate last year's leadership campaign, when Mr Corbyn signed up tens of thousands of activists as registered supporters. The NEC decided to raise the cost of joining as a registered supporter from 3 to 25 in a bid to prevent a repeat.
But the union move could scupper the clampdown and allow thousands of members of the 'Corbyn army' to sign up.
Yesterday, Unite was promoting the fact that people can get a vote for just 2 by signing up to join the union a route that will remain open until August 8
A former Labour minister last night called for the loophole in the rules to be closed immediately. 'It looks like a desperate attempt by Unite to gerrymander the contest in Corbyn's favour,' he said.
'It will be hugely resented by longstanding members of the party, and we need to block it now we cannot have yet another union fix. Unite's leadership is way out of line with its members McCluskey is behaving like a full-on Trotskyite, but polls show his members don't want Corbyn, by a margin of two to one.'
Behaving like a full-on Trotskyite Former Labour minister
Labour Party sources last night confirmed new union members could theoretically vote in the leadership contest, but warned the rules were not yet finalised. Left-wing campaign group Momentum also signalled yesterday that it could try and circumvent the rules by subsidising the 25 fee.
Group spokesman James Schneider said: 'We have to take advice on whether that would be allowed.'
Momentum was set up with the blessing of shadow chancellor John McDonnell and Mr Corbyn last year in order to provide a standing army of activists to defend his leadership. Moderate MPs accuse the organisation of intimidation a claim denied by the group.
Meanwhile, a member of the NEC yesterday accused Mr Corbyn of endorsing bullying and intimidation at a crunch meeting this week to decide the rules for the contest.
A former Labour minister last night called for the loophole in the rules to be closed immediately and said it looks like a desperate attempt by Unite to 'gerrymander the contest in Corbyn's favour'
Johanna Baxter, who represents constituency parties on the NEC, told Radio 4's World at One: 'A number of us and a number of my colleagues in that room had been subject to bullying and intimidation prior to the meeting taking place.
'Certain groups within the party published my personal contact details online. One of my colleagues has just recently had a stalker sectioned she was in tears, she begged the leader for a secret ballot to protect her and also other colleagues who had received intimidating and bullying behaviour.
'And the thing that really upset me about that meeting was that the Labour Party leader voted against the proposal When it came to the vote to protect colleagues taking an extremely difficult decision that would determine the future of our party, he voted against the single thing that he could have done to protect those colleagues.'
A passenger on-board a train travelling from Melbourne has likened the terrifying moment it derailed to an 'earthquake'.
Julia Thompson told The Standard she was flung off her seat when the V/Line train carrying 100 people collided with a truck at Pirron Yallock near Colac in Victoria's south-west on Wednesday.
'It felt like an earthquake. Everything was shaking and rocking,' Ms Thompson said.
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A passenger on the train said the truck driver was thrown through his windscreen in the smash
A total of 19 people were injured when a train and truck collided at Pirron Yallock, near Colac in southwest Victoria
'Then there was silence. Everyone was stunned.'
Ms Thompson also said the truck driver had been thrown through his front windscreen and was lying on the ground next to the train.
Train services between Melbourne and Warrnambool remain suspended after the crash at the level crossing, leaving 19 people injured.
The 41-year-old truck driver, from Ballarat, was airlifted to Royal Melbourne Hospital in a serious but non-life-threatening condition.
The truck driver had non-life-threatening injuries and was been airlifted to hospital
Eighteen passengers were also taken to local hospitals with minor injuries.
The train driver and conductor suffered head injuries and are in stable conditions.
The level crossing is categorised as a 'passive crossing', with no boom gates or flashing lights.
Police say the 'the exact cause of the incident is yet to be determined and the investigation is ongoing'.
Investigators will spend Thursday combing through the debris at the scene before trains services on the line can resume.
Sergeant Shane Howard said it was lucky no-one died in the crash.
'One hundred people on a train... the truck driver needs to be buying Tatts Lotto tickets this week,' he said.
'Really the opportunity there for extensive loss of life was quite paramount.'
The Victorian Government had earmarked the crossing for an upgrade 17 months ago but no work had started, 9News reported.
Buses will replace trains on the Warrnambool line on Thursday.
Police say the 'the exact cause of the incident is yet to be determined and the investigation is ongoing'
Deaths from asthma have reached the highest level in more than a decade.
Women aged 65 and over were most at risk, making up nearly two thirds of deaths from the illness last year.
It is thought the ageing population, with growing numbers of older people developing asthma, is partly behind the rise in deaths as the condition tends to be more severe and harder to treat in the elderly.
But experts also say patients not getting basic levels of urgent care is also a factor.
It has also been warned that many sufferers do not realise the potential seriousness of the condition because it is so common.
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Experts say patients not getting basic levels of urgent care is a factor. Asthma UK has described the figures as tragic and really alarming
Britain is one of the worst countries in Europe for both asthma levels it affects around 5.4million people in the UK, including 1.1million children and the death rate from asthma, with an average of 3.5 people dying every day from the condition in England and Wales.
A major review in 2014 found two thirds of fatalities could have been prevented with good care but that seven in ten patients do not receive care that meets basic standards.
Asthma causes wheezing, chest tightness, coughing and difficulty breathing.
Symptoms can suddenly worsen during an attack and the lining of the airways become swollen, stopping the sufferer from breathing.
The latest figures, from the Office for National Statistics, showed that last year, 1,302 people died from asthma in England and Wales up 17 per cent on 2014 and the highest level since 2003.
Of these, 938 fatalities were women, of whom 811 were aged 65 or over. It means older women make up 62 per cent of all asthma deaths in the country.
Dr Samantha Walker, deputy chief executive of Asthma UK, said the figures were tragic and really alarming.
She added: It is becoming increasingly clear that there are different sub-types of asthma but, in contrast to childhood asthma, we know far less about asthma that affects older adults.
What we do know is that it doesnt tend to get better, that it is usually more serious and severe than asthma in children, and that treatment options are extremely limited.
This means we desperately need greater investment in research to find new treatments for this type of asthma to alleviate the distress and suffering that are associated with it.
She warned older people may fail to take their asthma seriously, especially if they suffer from other medical problems.
It is really important for older people with asthma to get their flu jabs, go for their annual asthma review, have an asthma action plan agreed with their GP or practice nurse and take their medication as prescribed, she added.
Asthma causes wheezing, chest tightness, coughing and difficulty breathing. Half of sufferers who died did so before they had sought medical help or before emergency care could be provided
The 2014 review, which was led by the Royal College of Physicians and looked at asthma deaths between 2012 and 2013, found that in most fatalities, either the patient, medical staff or both failed to realise the severity of the situation.
Half of sufferers who died did so before they had sought medical help or before emergency care could be provided.
Around a fifth had attended A&E with an asthma attack at least once in the previous year, with one in ten having been discharged from hospital in the last month.
Patients who died had tended to have underused their preventer inhalers, which supply a low dose of drugs directly into the airways to reduce swelling, while over-relying on reliever inhalers meant to provide a bigger dose for one-off relief.
A woman who miscarried her only child after a car crash has won 450,000 in High Court damages including 18,000 awarded for her to undergo IVF treatment.
The sum of 18,150 for three cycles of fertility treatment is part of 447,380 compensation awarded to the 40-year-old, identified only as XP, today at the High Court in London.
After the accident in Poland in April 2011, she traumatically lost her 16-week pregnancy - an event which undoubtedly caused physical and psychiatric injury, said Mrs Justice Whipple in London.
The sum of 18,150 for three cycles of fertility treatment is part of 447,380 compensation awarded to the 40-year-old, identified only as XP, today at the High Court in London
Two years later, in March 2013, while still suffering the consequences, XP was in another road accident, this time on the M4 in the UK.
Liability was admitted by the insurers in both accidents but they disputed the amount of damages and their relative contribution.
The judge ruled that there should be payments of 447,380 and 25,080 respectively from the insurer in the 2011 accident, Compensa Towarzystwo SA, and the unnamed insurers of driver Przeyslaw Bejger, who was involved in the 2013 accident - making a total award to XP of 472,460.
She said that XP, who has not conceived since and is no longer with the father, with whom she had an abusive relationship, remained significantly psychiatrically unwell and desperately wanted a child.
Her claim for fertility treatment was, at its most basic, aimed an enabling her to be put back in the position in which she should have been in 2011, by having a baby.
She added: 'Time is pressing and she cannot afford to wait for a partner, or for better circumstances or health, before trying to become pregnant naturally.
'I am satisfied that this provides a genuine reason for her seeking IVF treatment. Quite simply, IVF treatment is necessary to restore the position.'
XP, who is well educated and has lived in the UK since 2000, was on an Easter visit to see her parents in Poland when she lost her baby.
On her return to the UK, her relationship broke up and she struggled at work before leaving without another job to go to and setting up a loss-making jewellery business,
After the second accident, said the judge, XP felt she was the 'unluckiest person in the world' and was diagnosed with moderate to severe depressive illness.
She had not had a relationship since 2011, no longer socialised and had lost touch with friends because of her depression and lack of funds.
Prison guards have fired live bullets and used tear gas to break up violence between radical Muslim prisoners at a maximum security jail.
Officers at Goulburn jail in NSW were forced to fire warning shots after two inmates failed to stop fighting in the exercise yard of the maximum security wing on Tuesday, News Corp reports.
Teargas was then used and a further fight erupted between two inmates as prisoners were being led back to their cells.
Up to 25 prisoners were present during the violence, which is said to have involved radical Muslims who are allegedly trying to force other prisoners to accept their extremist views.
NSW Corrective Services acknowledged the violence, but insisted it was not religiously motivated - as police have been notified and investigations are continuing.
Prison officers at Goulburn jail in NSW were forced to fire warning shots and use tear gas after two inmates failed to stop fighting in the exercise yard of the maximum security wing on Tuesday
Australia's most dangerous inmate Bassam Hamzy, a convicted killer, was accused of converting other criminals inside Supermax to Islam. There is no suggestion that Hamzy was involved in the latest brawl
Omarjan Azari has been spending time inside the prison since 2014 after allegedly conspiring to behead a random member of the public and drape them with an ISIS flag.
Execution style murderer Leith Marchant (pictured) converted to Islam under the influence of Hamzy in Goulburn jail. There is no suggestion that Marchant was involved in the latest incident
The violence is the latest in a series of incidents believed to be associated with radical Islamists.
Among the Muslim inmates being locked up inside the prison is convicted killer Bassam Hamzy, who is serving a life sentence for a shooting murder and conspiring to murder a witness.
The founder of the 'Brothers 4 Life' gang has been dubbed as Australia's most dangerous inmate who is said to have converted other criminals inside Supermax to Islam.
Other inmates who include killers who converted to Islam - and then some of them converted back - are killer Guy Staines, rapist and murderer Vester Fernando, execution murderer Leith Marchant and violent robber Jamie Paulson.
Last October, Raban Alou, Mustafa Dirani, and Talal Alameddine were charged with being members of a terrorist group in connection to the murder of Sydney police accountant Curtis Cheng.
The three men are being held at Goulburn jail after 15-year-old Muslim extremist Farhad Jabar was shot dead after he gunned down Mr Cheng outside police headquarters in Parramatta.
Omarjan Azari has been spending time inside the prison since 2014 after allegedly conspiring to behead a random member of the public and drape them with an ISIS flag.
There is no suggestion that these men were involved in the latest incident.
Up to 25 prisoners were present during the violence, which is said to have involved radical Muslims who are allegedly trying to force other prisoners to accept their extremist views
NSW Corrective Services acknowledged the violence at Goulburn jail, but insisted it was not religiously motivated. Police have been notified and investigations are continuing
An 18-year-old Islamic State supporter was charged back in April after he allegedly attacked a former Australian soldier in the prison cell they shared at Kempsey prison in NSW.
Bourhan Hraichie allegedly used a sharp object to carve an Islamic State message into the 40-year-old man's head during the attack.
The carving read 'e4e,' an apparent reference to the terror group's 'eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth' mantra.
It is alleged Hraichie also poured boiling water onto a towel he placed on his cellmate's face
Former teacher's aide Michelle Mellinger (pictured) has been jailed for having sex with five students
A sex-obsessed former teachers aide who admitted having sex with five underage students has been jailed.
Michelle Mellinger, 49, who worked in special education at McKeesport High School in Pennsylvania, had sex with five boys and tried to have sex with another between 2013 and 2013, authorities said.
She pleaded guilty to five counts of institutional sexual assault and statutory sexual assault and one count of attempted assault in March, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports.
It is not known if her victims, who were all aged between 15 and 17, were special education students.
She was sentenced to between 11.5 and 23 months in prison, a year of house arrest and five years of probation on Tuesday.
Mellinger, a mother of teenage sons herself, said alcohol was to blame for the two year period during which she had sex with the underage students.
But Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge Donna Jo McDaniel was not swayed by a handwritten letter written by Mellinger.
She failed to take responsibility for her actions, the judge said, but only made excuses for herself.
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Mellinger (above) was sentenced to between 11.5 and 23 months in prison, a year of house arrest and five years of probation on Tuesday
It wasnt a bad decision, Judge McDaniel said, according to the Tribune-Review.
She added: There were six victims over the course of two years. She didnt get drunk and seduce a kid down the block.
Although the families of the victims did not attend the sentencing hearing, the prosecutor read a victim impact statement from the mother of one of the boys.
Her family is forever changed. Her son is depressed and doesnt trust any of his teachers, it said, according to WPXI.
The incidents began in June 2013 and continued until February last year, authorities said.
She reportedly sent text messages to the teenagers, and drove them to her apartment in White Oak and another residence for sex.
In one message to a student, she said: Wow, you look amazing. I just became a pedophile.
Video courtesy WPXI
She pleaded guilty to having sex with five students between June 2013 and February 2015 in March
Mellinger told another student that he was on her bucket list.
At her apartment, she would perform oral sex on them before having intercourse, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported.
Mellinger was arrested in October last year after staff members at the school overheard students talking about the sexual activity and reported it.
Following her arrest, she was placed on leave and denied access to district students and facilities.
She was later charged with institutional sexual assault, corruption of minors, unlawful contact with minors and involuntary deviate sexual intercourse.
But earlier this year, Mellinger pleaded guilty to having sex with the students.
The students, aged between 15 and 17, attended McKeesport High School (file photo) in Pennsylvania
Judge McDaniel ordered Mellingers house arrest to include a bracelet that will alert authorities if she drinks.
The judge also barred her from the accessing the Internet and from having any contact with minors until the court approves it, including her own sons.
Mellinger will receive credit for the 263 days she has already spent in Allegheny County Jail since her arrest.
Paula Whisner, one of Mellingers neighbors, said at the time of the arrest, that she had seen young people going in and out of the apartment but assumed they were visiting Mellingers children.
Brianda Ramirez, 25, was arrested in just her bra after she allegedly hit her ex-boyfriend's truck as revenge after he dumped her
A Florida woman was arrested wearing just her bra after she allegedly crashed into her ex-boyfriend's truck as revenge for dumping her that day right after they had sex.
Brianda Nayeli Ramirez, 25, has been charged with aggravated battery with a deadly weapon.
Ramirez intentionally hit the truck of her ex-boyfriend, Gabriel Sandoval, as he attempted to make a right turn and caused it to flip over, police said.
Sandoval, 38, told police that he and Ramirez began to argue in her apartment after he revealed he wanted to end their one-year relationship.
Ramirez told police the couple had just finished having sex, and she threw on a bra and got into her silver Ford Fusion sedan so that she could follow Sandoval after he left her apartment.
She followed Sandoval to his aunt's house in Belle Glade, where a friend dropped him off so that he could pick up his own truck, according to WPBF.
Ramirez told police that Sandoval refused to talk to her and drove off, but she continued to follow him.
Sandoval's Ford truck flipped onto its roof in the middle of the road after he was hit. He later told police he only knew it was Ramirez who hit him after a witness mentioned a silver car.
Witnesses at the scene told police that the driver did not stop their car after crashing into Sandoval.
Ramirez claims that she rear-ended Sandoval's truck after he slammed on his breaks. She said she panicked after she saw the car flip over and drove off.
Police found Ramirez wearing just a bra when they caught up with her on US Route 27 as she headed to her home in Clewiston.
She told officers that she had wanted to get dressed before turning herself in to authorities that night, according to the Palm Beach Post.
The front of her sedan had damage that was consistent with Sandoval's truck.
Ramirez told police that Sandoval pays for her apartment, car payment and insurance and that he is her only source of income.
They came as a pair and left as a pair.
George Osborne was sacked from the Government yesterday evening as his friend and long-term partner in Notting Hill politics, David Cameron, vacated Downing Street.
Mr Osborne who left No 10 by the back door after a meeting with Theresa May had been inseparable from David Cameron for more than decade, even before the more photogenic and honey-toned Cameron took his tilt at the Tory leadership in 2005.
David Cameron and George Osborne cycle through Hyde Park on their way to Westminster in July 2006
The two were young thrusters in Michael Howards leadership team and as soon as the 2005 general election was lost, Howard promoted the modernising duo to senior front-bench jobs.
Within months they were running and reforming a moribund party. Stolid values were discarded for something more short-term: the narcotic of trendiness. Five years later, the Bullingdon Boys were in power, albeit in Coalition with the Lib Dems.
Osborne was Camerons political brain, his plotter, the Iago who thought five moves ahead and provided necessary devilment to the brew.
Every regime needs its contrasts. While Mr Cameron did the front-of-house charm, Mr Osborne provided the dose of menace that kept some of the doubters and demons in check.
He was never much liked by the public. How many Chancellors are, particularly at times of cuts? At the 2012 Olympic Games, Mr Osborne was booed by the stadium crowd when he turned up to present some medals. He shrugged it off.
Public opprobrium always did bounce off his impressively thick hide.
Mission
From the moment he entered the Treasury in May 2010, he needed every ounce of resilience. The country was near bankruptcy and an urgent rescue mission was required. It is to George Osbornes lasting credit that it was successful, though the details and the extent of recovery may long be disputed.
He battled with the deficit, a hellish task for which he was seldom thanked. He scythed away at Whitehall even though, like an army in Greek mythology, it kept growing new limbs. The markets saw what was happening and they responded with confidence, even while his Labour counterpart and great opponent Ed Balls was caterwauling about the end of civilisation as we knew it.
Balls and Osborne were Punch and Judy made flesh. It was no coincidence that once Balls lost his seat, Mr Osborne never seemed quite so strong.
Colour returned to the economys cheeks and voters started to comprehend that the Cameron government had tax-cutting inclinations.
Growth twitched and employment boomed. Yet debt is still horrifically high and repeatedly Mr Osborne failed to meet his often over-optimistic recovery targets.
He milked our pensions, did tricksy things with the minimum wage (rebranding it the national living wage for blatant party-political purposes) and had a habit of bungling his Budgets.
When delivering those big set-pieces, his metallic voice would become so hoarse, it was reduced almost to a girlish whimper.
Then Conservative Shadow Chancellor, George Osborne waves to the audience with then party leader David Cameron after addressing delegates at the 2007 Conservative Conference at Blackpool's Winter Gardens
He did slowly improve in his presentation and two years ago began a dramatic image revamp, losing weight and restyling his hair to something groovier. George the dude! In recent weeks, some of the weight has returned. Comfort eating, perhaps.
Though Mr Osborne always put up a facade of certitude, there were mishaps aplenty.
An ill-advised attempt to equalise taxes on hot food the so-called pasty tax led to the 2012 Budget being hailed an Omnishambles.
A year ago he tried to cut tax credits, a policy which ignited opposition not only from Labour, but also the Left of the Tory party. A surrender became inevitable. From that moment he was arguably never quite the same.
Mr Osbornes hopes of succeeding his friend Dave as Prime Minister receded fast.
A year ago, it was widely held that Mr Osborne was favourite to be the next into No 10. Now his hopes are dust.
Son of a baronet, George Gideon Oliver was reared in an entrepreneurial family where boom-and-bust were an all too familiar fact of life.
He was schooled at St Pauls, one of Londons independent-school hothouses.
Then came Oxford (modern history at Magdalen) and a heady, privileged existence.
Like David Cameron, he was a member of the Bullingdon Club, a dining circle of often ill-mannered young plutocrats who dressed up like toffish twits. A youthful mistake or a lifelong trait of loftiness?
After university he dabbled briefly in journalism before joining the Conservative Research Department in 1994.
Ruthless
He soon impressed ministers with his logical arguments and precociously silken political analysis. The public might come to regard him as a ruthless calculating machine, but the private George is a shrewd and droll observer of politicians vanities and venalities.
He understands the human weaknesses that make politics turn. Like his journalist friend Danny Finkelstein (now a peer) he has a keen interest in U.S. politics and political melodramas. Oh, the frissons of a little light skulduggery.
Maybe it was that attraction to the dark arts that led him to forge an unlikely friendship, of sorts, with Peter Mandelson. They fell out for a while in 2008 after Mr Osborne was indiscreet about a holiday rendezvous they had off Corfu on the yacht of Russian multi-millionaire, Oleg Deripaska.
I know from personal accounts that Mr Osborne can be a good and solid support to old friends from college days, but he has also shown a weakness for unwise political acquaintances. The Cameron government had a vulgar streak a tendency to reward tawdry business people and that was at least partly down to Mr Osborne.
In the Major years he was a Whitehall special adviser, and then a close aide to William Hague during the first Blair government. In 2001, he became an MP for Tatton, a prosperous Cheshire constituency which booted out Neil Hamilton for his sleaze and was briefly occupied by the former war reporter Martin Bell.
Mr Cameron and Mr Osborne during Michael Howard's speech at the 2005 Conservative Party Conference in Blackpool. The two were young thrusters in Michael Howards leadership team and as soon as the 2005 general election was lost, Howard promoted the modernising duo to senior front-bench jobs
Although his constituents were in the north-west of England, Osborne became a pre-eminent Notting Hill-ite, one of the leaders of the Tory modernisation project which was sometimes seen as excessively metropolitan and foolishly impressionable.
His promotion of the Northern Powerhouse was evidence of wider horizons he also pushed hard the claims of Manchester and he loved to tour the country and be photographed in a hard hat on building sites.
But at his core he remained a St Pauls boy, intimate of the citadel, admirer of money and connections. Spivvy might be putting it too hard. But he lacked roots in the sort of decent, paternalistic, Tory tradition of public duty. He has gone because, like Mr Cameron, he listened to the London elite and polite opinion rather than the shire and blue-collar Tories. Cameron and Osborne and their too narrow circle wrongly assumed that the country would not vote to leave the EU. They believed their own propaganda.
Mr Osborne had been doubtful about the wisdom of a referendum. He was never the most ardent enthusiast for naked democracy. But once his ally Cameron had promised that plebiscite, the offer could not be withdrawn. So they fought dirty.
Bloodshed
They spread gloom and misery. Project Fear was intensely Osbornian and intensely mistaken. Had he and Cameron only kept out of the fray as weightier men of old might have they could have stayed in office.
So much of this political bloodshed has been unnecessary. So much of it was caused by presentational excess.
Now, with the Theresa May Government, we may see a return to more level, less vivid, politics. It will undoubtedly be less fizzy, but it may be more grown-up.
This may not be the end. He is just 45. Only a rash pundit would predict that Osborne will never return to frontline politics. The May Government will not last for ever. But he now has a chance to regroup, to earn some big money, to broaden as a personality.
For all the nit-picking over economic policies, what Mr Osborne really lacked was molten philosophical beliefs or the ability to project them. Where was the Osborne soul? What, outside politics, made him tick?
Former House speaker Newt Gingrich flew to Indiana to meet with Donald Trump Wednesday just a day after suspending his on-air relationship with Fox News by hopping a ride on a jet owned by Fox host Sean Hannity.
The former House speaker is one of just a handful of finalists to serve as Trump's running mate. He flew to meet Trump on a day when Trump and his three kids also met with another leading contender, Indiana governor Mike Pence.
CNN reported on Gingrich's use of Air Hannity, citing two sources with knowledge of the situation. It remained unclear who paid for the trip.
Gingrich is still paying off the debt from his 2012 presidential campaign, which stood at $5 million as of May.
FIRST CLASS: Newt Gingrich, a finalist to be Donald Trump's running mate, hopped a ride to meet the presumed GOP nominee aboard a plane owned by Fox News host Sean Hannity
Word of the high-flying, high stakes meeting broke just hours after Trump met with Pence at the governor's mansion.
Ivanka Trump, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump also were there.
Gingrich and Fox News agreed to part ways this week on the former speaker's role as a paid Fox consultant as it became clear he was under serious consideration.
Gingrich appeared with Trump at a rally in Cincinnati, as Trump gave leading contenders public try-outs for the job.
New Jersey governor Chris Christie, who has been advising Trump for months, met with the candidate's kids Tuesday.
'It's a little bit like 'The Apprentice,'' former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, another VP finalist, told Fox News Channel Tuesday. 'You find out sooner or later who the last one standing is.
Hannity backed Gingrich for VP on his show, saying 'I wouldn't be happy with anyone but Newt,'
Trump brought along his daughter Ivanka, sons Donald Trump Jr., Eric and son-in-law Jared Kushner to his meeting with Indiana governor Mike Pence
New Jersey governor Chris Christie has become a close advisor to Trump
Trump revealed some of his thinking to Fox News host Bret Baer in a clip that aired Wednesday.
'I am narrowing it down. I mean, I'm at three, potentially four,' Trump said. 'But in my own mind, I probably am thinking about two.'
Alabama senator Jeff Sessions, Trump's first endorser in the Senate, also met with Trump.
Although campaign operatives vetting potential running mates are certain to have reviewed bridgegate materials when looking over Christie's background, the governor has clearly impressed Trump with guidance he has provided since endorsing him after ending his own presidential campaign.
'I tell you Chris Christie is somebody I have liked for a long time,' Trump said. 'He is a total professional. He's a good guy, by the way lot of people don't understand that.'
Trump says he's looking for a 'fighter skilled in hand-to-hand combat, which would certainly apply to former Speaker Newt Gingrich, who helped seize the House from the grip of Democrats
Trump said Tuesday he is looking for a 'fighter skilled in hand-to-hand combat' as his running mate, he told the Wall Street Journal -- a characterization that certainly applies to Gingrich.
on July 11 at a hospital in China's Guangxi province
Shocking footage has emerged of a doctor and a patient fighting in a Chinese hospital.
The incident occurred on July 11 at the Second People's Hospital in Beihai, south China's Guangxi province, reports Huanqiu, an affiliation of the People's Daily Online.
Footage shows the doctor and the patient, who was reportedly under the influence of alcohol, arguing in the Emergency Room, which then results in a physical fight between them.
Now that's a fight: Footage shows the doctor and patient fighting in the emergency room of a hospital
Assistance: A security guard rushes in to try and help the doctor but struggles to get control of the patient
According to reports, the man appeared drunk and said he needed medical treatment for a scratched hand.
He became annoyed when a woman was allowed to see the doctor before him because her injuries were more severe.
Footage shows the pair talking up close in the emergency room.
The shirtless man grabs the doctor who then pushes his arm away.
The man then grabs the doctor again who is obviously frustrated by the man's behaviour. The doctor then grabs the man by the throat and pushes him away.
They then begin fighting intensely.
Shocking: A woman also joins in the fight trying to hit the doctor as he continues to tussle with the patient
Horrifying: The woman and the 'drunk' patient violently attack the doctor in the emergency room
The pair then get on the floor and the security guard tries again to get the situation under control
Another woman becomes involved in the fight and hits the doctor.
A security guard enters the room and tries to grab hold of the shirtless man however he loses his grip.
The woman then begins to attack the security guard while the doctor and shirtless man continue to fight on the floor.
She then joins in the fight on the floor before a man in a green T-shirt manages to pull her off.
Hospital staff then come in to try and help the doctor.
The security guard struggles to separate the two while the man in a green T-shirt continues to keep the woman away.
The video ends with the doctor managing to regain control and keep the man in a hold around his neck.
Staff at the Second People's Hospital in Behai said that the doctor was hit in his head and his nose was bleeding.
It is not known whether the shirtless man was injured in the fight.
You know it's true love when he puts her love on top, quite literally.
The heart-warming story behind the photos of an elderly Chinese man from Chongqing walking around with a curious contraption on his head has finally been revealed.
Yang Du-xue came up with the ingenious idea of hanging his IV infusion bag from a plastic bottle on his head so that he could free up his hands to care for his wife, according to huanqiu.com, an affiliate of the People's Daily Online.
Dedicated: The man from Chongqing, China, invented a bizarre yet ingenious device that allows him to receive his own IV treatment while looking after his partially paralysed wife
Creative: To free up his hands to help his wife around, the 65-year-old man hangs his IV infusion bag off a large plastic bottle tied to the top of his head
His wife, 63-year-old Wan Qi-jia, who suffers from high blood pressure, was left with one half of her body paralysed after suddenly passing out in the bathroom in 2004.
The 65-year-old Yang, meanwhile, suffers from chronic problems with his lumbar disk due to overexertion from working as a mover when he was young.
As a result, he has to receive more than 10 days of IV therapy each year.
Because Wan cannot be left unattended, Yang invented the clever apparatus that allows him to move freely and look after his wife without the hassle of an IV stand.
The couple's neighbours told local media that Yang takes Wan with him wherever he goes, from trips to the hospital to drives around the neighbourhood.
He recently bought an electric tricycle for that exact purpose of showing Wan the scenery.
As a sign of his further dedication, Yang told local media he usually wears dungarees as the straps make it easier for Wan to grab onto, as she has trouble moving and sitting up straight.
Hospital workers in Chongqing say Yang always arrives early for his treatment so that he can take his wife back home before noon when it is hottest, reports the Chongqing Morning Post.
For better or worse: Despite experiencing chronic lumbar disk pain that requires him 10 days of IV therapy each year, the man never leaves his wife unattended, taking her with him everywhere he goes
Now that's true love: The couple's story has inspired an outpouring of both sympathy and positivity online, with users praising Yang for his dedication to and love for his wife
The couple met when he was 18 and she was 15, marrying three years later, according to reports.
They are now both retired, having managed to pay off a crushing hospital bill that ate up their entire life's savings on their own, as they did not want to burden their daughter.
'As long as we're still here, then it's no big deal,' Yang told local media, tapping on Wan's shoulder as they smiled at each other.
Their story has inspired an outpouring of both sympathy and positivity online, with users praising Yang for his dedication to and love for his wife.
Nasa has been accused of cutting the live feed to the International Space Station to cover up a strange object.
UFO hunters say the move is the latest in a series of cuts to the feed - all occurring when strange objects appear.
Alien enthusiasts claims the move is a cover up - although even they admit it could simply be a meteor.
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The latest incident occurred on July 9 and was first reported by prolific UFO hunter Streetcap1, who uploaded a video of the incident to YouTube. However, even he cautions the object could be easily explained. Other enthusiasts believe it could be the Chinese space cargo ship Tiangong-1.
CHINA'S LOST SPACECRAFT China may have lost contact with its first ever space station raising fears that it could career back to Earth in an uncontrolled re-entry. The Chinese Tiangong-1 space station module was launched in 2011 and was expected to be deorbited at the end of its life to crash into the ocean or burn up in the atmosphere. But there are reports China has lost control of the spacecraft, meaning it could crash back into the Earth's atmosphere, exploding into molten metal that could be devastating over inhabited areas. Advertisement
The latest incident occurred on July 9 and was first reported by prolific UFO hunter Streetcap1, who uploaded a video of the incident to YouTube.
However, even he cautions the object could be easily explained.
'Remember a ufo is an unidentified flying object.
'This could well be a meteor or the like.'
However, he then goes on to say that the move is strange.
'What made it interesting was the camera cut off when the ufo seemed to stop.'
Other enthusiasts put forward theories including one who suggested in could be the Chinese space cargo ship Tiangong-1.
'I have watched the International Space Station a lot over the last 6 years and I can tell you that this is not the moon, nor a meteor,' he wrote.
'It may be the Chinese space station cargo ship, called Tiangong-1, or the other one Tangong-2.'
The Chinese ship recently hit the headlines amid claims China may have lost contact with its first ever space station raising fears that it could career back to Earth in an uncontrolled re-entry.
The Chinese Tiangong-1 space station module was launched in 2011 and was expected to be deorbited at the end of its life to crash into the ocean or burn up in the atmosphere.
But there are reports China has lost control of the spacecraft, meaning it could crash back into the Earth's atmosphere, exploding into molten metal that could be devastating over inhabited areas.
The video is the latest in a string claiming Nasa cut the feed to cover up UFO sightings.
'They should be made to explain why they are cutting off public information and debate,' demanded one commenter.
Earlier this year a Nasa spokesperson denied allegations that NASA technicians deliberately shut down transmission when UFOs appear on the live video.
According to the spokesperson, NASA never intentionally shuts down live transmission to hide UFOs.
Loss of video is usually due to loss of signals from the ISS.
Other enthusiasts believe it could be the Chinese space cargo ship Tiangong-1. The Tiangong-1 space station module (artist's depiction) is China's first step towards its ultimate goal of developing, building, and operating a large Space Station as a permanent human presence in Low Earth Orbit
In November Nasa captured a bizarre horseshoe-shaped object on its live feed of the International Space Station before transmission mysteriously went down, according to UFO enthusiasts.
The footage has prompted debate among conspiracy theorists who believe the feed was cut intentionally as part of an alien cover-up being conducted by Nasa.
The mysterious clip appears to show a glowing blue object floating ever-closer to the ISS while rotating on the horizon.
Aliens? The feed appears to show a blue object floating ever-closer to the ISS while rotating on the horizon
The feed is then apparently cut for around an hour before it resumes and a much smaller white light can be seen in the distance.
Conspiracy theorists say this may be the same craft that has since moved away - dismissing the idea that it could be lens flare or even the moon.
The 'craft' was spotted by Scott Waring, who posted it to UFO Sightings Daily and wrote: 'I saw a UFO at the space station.
'It was diamond shaped and it seemed to be changing its shape, but I think that's due to it moving ever so closer to the ISS.'
He claimed that shortly after the sighting the screen turned blue, which is Nasa's way of attempting to 'hide it from the public'.
Scott Waring posted the footage to UFO Sightings Daily saying the 'UFO' was diamond shaped and it seemed to be changing its shape
The sighting (left) has prompted debate among conspiracy theorists who believe the feed was cut intentionally (right) as part of an alien cover-up being conducted by Nasa
The footage was then sent to Tyler Glockner of popular YouTube channel secureteam10, who uploaded the video alongside some of his own narration.
Speaking over the footage, he said: 'When you play this footage quickly, it looks like the UFO changes its position.
'When we first see it it's more on its side, but when you cycle through the footage it seems to be manoeuvring more on its face.
'It's definitely another interesting find and once again directly after it appears NASA cuts the feed.'
He later added: 'The only time when the feed tends to get cut is oddly when these UFOs appear.'
On the move: Tyler Glockner, of secureteam 10, said that when you cycle through the footage the UFO seems to be manoeuvring more on its face
Conspiracy? Glockner says the sighting is an interesting find and 'once again directly after it appears NASA cuts the feed'
The sighting comes around two weeks since Jadon Beeson, 20, spotted a cigar-shaped object while watching a live stream from the ISS on his phone.
He told MailOnline: 'I looked and realised there was a metal object above the Earth. It had a blue glow to it and it stayed there for about two minutes.
'It was a metallic object, it looks like a Millennium Falcon from Star Wars or something from Close Encounters of the Third Kind. I thought it was all very strange.'
A Nasa spokesperson said: 'Reflections from station windows, the spacecraft structure itself or lights from Earth commonly appear as artefacts in photos and videos from the orbiting laboratory.'
With more than 25,000 miles of flying behind them, the team behind Solar Impulse 2 are preparing for one final push in their record breaking attempt to fly around the world without fuel.
The sun-powered aircraft landed safely in Cairo this morning following flight taking 48 hours and fifty minutes from Seville in Spain.
Swiss pilot Andre Borschberg soared above Egypt's iconic pyramids just as the sun climbed over the horizon before coming into land at the capital's airport at 7.10am local time (6.10am BST).
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Solar Impulse 2 soared over Egypt's famous pyramids (pictured) on Wednesday morning shortly before landing at Cairo airport. It marked the end of the second last leg of its epic journey around the world. The aircraft will now be prepared for the final flight to Abu Dhabi
The aircraft will now be prepared for its final 1,471 mile trip to Abu Dhabi, expected to take place sometime next week, to complete its journey around the world using only energy from the sun.
HOW DOES SOLAR IMPULSE WORK? Solar Impulse 2 is powered by 17,000 solar cells and on-board rechargeable lithium batteries, allowing it to fly through the night. Its wingspan is longer than a jumbo jet but its light construction keeps its weight to about as much as a car. Solar Impulse 2 relies on getting enough solar power during the day to survive the night. It is also extremely light - about the weight of a car - and as wide as a passenger jet. Both of these combined means it is extremely susceptible to the weather. In high winds it can struggle to stay aloft at the altitudes necessary to gather sunlight. Advertisement
Equipped with more than 17,0000 solar cells built in to its wings, the aircraft uses energy from the sun to power its four engines and charge its batteries for travel in the hours of darkness.
Mr Borschberg, co-founder of Solar Impulse, described his final flight in the aircraft as 'emotional'. He and fellow pilot Bertrand Piccard are taking turns to fly the single-seat plane around the world.
Mr Piccard will be behind the controls for the final leg of the journey to Abu Dhabi.
'This was an emotional and meaningful leg for me,' said Mr Borschberg. 'Being able to enjoy once more the incredible sensation of flying day and night thanks only to the energy of the sun and enjoying fully the present moment.
'But it also brought back many memories about the project - from the moment I heard about Bertrand's incredible vision of an airplane with perpetual endurance, to the creativity, motivation and spirit demonstrated by the entire team and partners throughout this adventure.'
The solar-powered aircraft took 48 hours and 50 minutes to fly from Seville in Spain to Cairo in Egypt. It reached an altitude of up to 28,000 feet before dipping to fly over the Giza Pyramids (pictured)
The aircraft took off from Seville in Spain on Monday morning, passing through Algerian, Tunisian, Italian and Greek airspace before flying over the Giza Pyramids.
During the 2,327 mile flight it reached an altitude of 28,000 feet and an average speed of 47 mph over the two day journey.
The globe-circling voyage began in March 2015 from Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, and made stops in Oman, Myanmar, China and Japan.
After flying through the night, pilot Andre Borschberg flew Solar Impulse 2 over the pyramids just as the sun began to rise over the horizon (pictured)
Solar Impulse 2 landed in Cairo early on Wednesday morning, bringing the round the world record using only the energy from the sun within tantalising reach for the team. The aircraft is expected to take off sometime next week for the final leg of the journey to Abu Dhabi
Mr Borschberg set a new endurance record for the longest non-stop solo flight in July last year with a 118-hour trans-Pacific crossing, over five days and five nights, from Japan to Hawaii.
He also set new duration and distance records for solar-powered flight.
However, their round the world journey was put on hold after the aircraft suffered battery damage during the crossing to Hawaii, meaning it was grounded for nine months.
The team began their journey again earlier this year, crossing from Hawaii to the west coast of the US and then traversing across North America to New York.
The Swiss team's ultimate goal is to achieve the first round-the-world solar-powered flight, part of its campaign to bolster support for clean-energy technologies.
The Swiss team behind Solar Impulse are campaigning to bolster support for clean-energy technologies like solar power (aircraft flying over solar energy plant outside Seville pictured)
With a wingspan exceeding that of a Boeing 747 but an ultra-light carbon-fiber skin and overall weight of a car, Solar Impulse 2 (illustrated) has more than 17,000 solar cells built into its wings
Swiss pilot Andre Borschberg (pictured before taking off in Seville) and fellow pilot Bertrand Piccard have been taking turns to fly the single-seater aircraft. They take brief 20 minute power naps while in the air
With a wingspan exceeding that of a Boeing 747 but an ultra-light carbon-fiber skin and overall weight of a car, the Solar Impulse cruises at speeds ranging from only 34 to 62 miles per hour (55 to 100 km/h).
The four engines of the propeller-driven aircraft are powered exclusively by energy collected from more than 17,000 solar cells built into its wings.
Excess energy is stored in four batteries during daylight hours to keep the plane flying after dark.
The plane can climb to 28,000 feet (8,500 meters), but generally flies at lower altitudes at night to conserve energy.
Mr Piccard and his colleague Andre Borschberg have been taking turns piloting the plane on each leg of the journey.
Pilot Andre Borschberg (pictured embracing his wife Yasemin after landing in Cairo) described his final flight in the solar powered aircraft for the record attempt as 'emotional'. Fellow pilot Bertrand Piccard will sit behind the controls for the final leg of the record attempt to Abu Dhabi
Pilot Andre Borschberg was treated to stunning views as he arrived in Egypt (pictured) following his 2,327 mile flight from Spain
Both have trained to stay alert for long stretches of time by practicing meditation and hypnosis. The pair also take 20 minute power naps while in the air while the aircraft is on autopilot.
Mr Piccard, who originally had the idea for the aircraft, said he was thrilled to see Solar Impulse as it passed over the pyramids and came into land in Cairo.
While waiting for the aircraft to land, he descibed flying Solar Impulse 2 as 'magic.'
He said: 'It's a new era for energy. I love to fly this plane because when you are in the air for several days you have the impression to be in a film of science fiction.
The aircraft (pictured passing over the Pyramids and the Sphinx in Egypt) is intended to demonstrate the potential for solar power by making its round the world journey without using a drop of fuel
'You look at the sun, you look at your motors, they turn for days and for days, no fuel. And you think that's a miracle.
'That's magic. It is actually the reality of today. This is what we can do with these new technologies.'
He added: 'This landing in Cairo brings Solar Impulse back to the origin of my dream.
'Egypt is the country where I landed after my non-stop round the world balloon flight in 1999, and it's precisely here that I had the idea of an airplane flying around the world on solar power.
'Andre and his team of engineers helped to translate my vision into reality, and I congratulate them for having built such a revolutionary airplane.'
HECS Aquatics has built a Faraday cage into a wetsuit, blocking electrical signals from being sent out
Marine animals use electroreception to detect humans by their muscle movement, warning them to stay away
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When swimming in the open ocean, your every movement gives off invisible signals to the fish and sea creatures around you to betray your presence.
Sharks, lobsters, crayfish, rays, eels, lampreys, ratfish, lungfish, sturgeons and some dolphins all have the ability to detect these tiny electrical impulses given off by the movement of muscles and the beat of your heart.
But a new wetsuit could allow divers to slip undetected through the water by preventing these signals from being given off, acting like a kind of underwater 'invisibility cloak'. It promises to let divers to get close to large predators like sharks that often use this 'sixth sense' to detect prey.
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When you are swimming in the ocean, your body gives off invisible signals warning marine creatures of your presence. Sharks, lobsters, crayfish, rays, eels, lampreys, ratfish, lungfish, sturgeons and some dolphins can all detect the electrical impulse given off with each beat of your heart
HOW THE STEALTH WET SUIT WORKS The principle is based on a Faraday cage, invented by the scientist Michael Faraday in 1836. Faraday discovered that inside a sphere of conducting material, the electric field balances out to become zero, even in an external electrical field. HECS Aquatic built a conductive carbon fibre grid that attenuates electrical fields into their wetsuit. Advertisement
The wetsuit was tested by marine biologist Riley Elliott during a research trip in Hawaii, who was featuring in a series of stunning photographs showing him up close with a variety of animals.
'I was testing a cutting edge wetsuit technologycomprised of a Faraday cage weaved into the wetsuit fabric to block the bodies electrical signal, enabling researchers, photo/videographers, spearos and divers, closer and more natural encounters with animals' Mr Elliott said.
Animals in the sea can detect muscle movement, heartbeat and brain activity through electroreception.
The beating of a heart or contracting of a muscle sends a spontaneous electrical signal.
But this new wetsuit blocks the electrical signals, meaning people can get closer to animals without scaring them away.
The 'Stealth wetsuit' was invented by HECS Aquatic, a concealment technology company based in New Zealand.
But a new wetsuit (pictured) prevents these signals and works as a kind of 'invisibility cloak' for the sea, allowing divers to get closer to the animals of the deep
The 'Stealth wetsuit' was invented by HECS Aquatic, a concealment technology company based in New Zealand. It blocks the electrical signals, meaning people can get closer to animals without scaring them away
WHAT IS A FARADAY CAGE? The 'Faraday cage' is named for the English scientist Michael Faraday, who discovered the principles behind electromagnetic shielding. When electromagnetic radiation or static electricity is applied to a hollow conductor, it is transmitted over the surface of the conductorpreventing it from passing through the conductor's interior. A Faraday cage prevents electromagnetic radiation from penetrating its exterior, protecting whatever is inside from static, electromagnetic pulses, radio waves, and other electromagnetic phenomenon. In 2013, as the College of Cardinals convened to elect a new Pope, the Vatican's Sistine Chapel was converted into a Faraday cage so that news of the election couldn't leak out. Advertisement
Marine biologist Riley Elliott testing the suit out with a tiger shark, pictured. The wetsuit principle is based on a Faraday cage, invented by the scientist Michael Faraday in 1836. Faraday discovered that inside a sphere of conducting material, the electric field balances out to become zero, even in an external electrical field
HECS Aquatic built a conductive grid that attenuates electrical fields into their wetsuit. 'HECS is made with a conductive carbon fibre mesh designed to reduce your electrical energy field,' the company website says
Marine biologist Riley Elliott swims among schools of normally weary fish
The technology 'blocks 95 per cent of the electrical signals given off by your muscle movement,' Riley Elliott said in a YouTube video explaining how it works.
It works using the same principle that means you will never be struck by lightning while inside your car.
The principle is based on a Faraday cage, invented by the scientist Michael Faraday in 1836.
Faraday discovered that inside a sphere of conducting material, the electric field balances out to become zero, even in an external electrical field.
This is because external electrical field causes the electric charges within the cage's conducting material to be distributed such that they cancel the field's effect in the cage's interior.
HECS Aquatic built a conductive grid that attenuates electrical fields into their wetsuit.
'HECS is made with a conductive carbon fibre mesh designed to reduce your electrical energy field,' the company website says.
Mr Elliott is not the only one to enjoy the proximity of creatures of the deep after donning the wetsuit.
'I've noticed a marked difference in how close I can approach certain marine life underwater while wearing the HECS suit a worthwhile advantage for any cameraman,' said Dave Abbot, a filmmaker in New Zealand.
'[The] first time diving in my HECS suit I got all three cray species in the one dive. I never thought it would be possible or this easy,' said Jordan Murley, a marine biologist.
'The crays were slow or non responsive to touch and movement when I was wearing the HECS suit.'
'During a recent trip to the Bahamas I had the opportunity to wear the HECS dive skin,' said Jason Scanlon, a diving instructor.
'During the first set of dives I started to notice that most of the wild life ignored me and would swim around and near me as if I wasnt even there.
'I was able to get very close to the life, which allowed me to capture photos and video that others on the dive could not. As the week progressed I noticed that most of the life would treat me as if I were one of them instead of an intruder into their space, some even ran into me.'
The wetsuit is available starting from $399 (300) in Europe, Australia and New Zealand and $449 (338) in the US, Canada and Mexico.
Mr Elliott pictured in the wetsuite with a sandbar and galapago sharks. The sandbar shark is also called the thickskin shark or brown shark. It is one of the biggest coastal sharks in the world. Galapagos sharks are active predators often encountered in large groups
The technology 'blocks 95 per cent of the electrical signals given off by your muscle movement,' Riley Elliott said in a YouTube video (above) explaining how it works. Shown in picture swimming alongside a poisonous stingray
While certain combinations of musical notes can cause our spirits to soar, others can feel like nails across a chalkboard.
Neuroscientists have wondered whether this love for unique patterns of notes was hard-wired in the brain, but a new study suggests these preferences are actually cultural.
According to the research, people with little exposure to Western music have no innate disliking for notes most of us consider 'not in tune', even though they can tell them apart.
According to the research, people with little exposure to Western music have no innate disliking for notes most of us consider 'not in tune', even though they can tell them apart
From Abba to Adele, and Zayn Malik to ZZ Top, most Western music is based around three common scales the major, natural minor and harmonic minor.
Combining notes such as C and G on a piano gives a pleasant, full sound. But a misplaced finger, slipping back a semi-tone from G to F#, sounds hellish.
An example of such a dissonant tone is the diabolus in musica, or 'devil in music', in which two notes are played to create a dissonant tritone, such as the C and F#.
To Western ears, this musical combination is far less easy on the ear and is used as a tool by composers to unsettle listeners.
Combining notes such as C and G on a piano gives a pleasant, full sound. But a misplaced finger, slipping back a semi-tone from G to F#, can produce dissonant tritones - named the 'devil in music'
DISSONANT TONES Most Western music is based around three common scales the major, natural minor and harmonic minor. The majority of chords used are consonant, combining notes which sound full and pleasant, such as C and G - an example of a 'perfect fifth'. But certain combinations of notes, such as a C and F#, are less pleasing to Western ears, and are called dissonant tones. Neuroscientists have long wondered whether this certain patterns of notes was hard-wired in the brain, but the new study suggests these preferences may be cultural. Advertisement
To test whether if the preference for notes was down to nature or nurture, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) headed for the remote Amazon to find people with little exposure to Western music.
Using more than 100 volunteers from the Tsimane society in the Bolivian lowlands, they exposed listeners to recordings of pleasant (consonant) or unpleasant (dissonant) tones, by Western standards, to see if they had would have the same innate response.
'It's pretty hard to find people who don't have a lot of exposure to Western pop music due to its diffusion around the world,' explained Josh McDermott, a researcher in auditory neuroscientist at MIT.
'Most people hear a lot of Western music, and Western music has a lot of consonant chords in it. It's thus been hard to rule out the possibility that we like consonance because that's what we're used to, but also hard to provide a definitive test.'
Most Western is based around three common scales the major, natural minor and harmonic minor. To Western ears, dissonant musical combinations are far less easy on the ear and are used as a tool by composers to unsettle listeners
Over the course of two separate studies, in 2011 and 2015, the team tested listeners to see if they could hear a difference between consonant or dissonant sounds, and asked them to rate which they preferred.
In addition, they carried out the same tests in three other groups: Spanish-speaking Bolivians from a small town close to the Tsimane; people from the city of La Paz; and groups of musicians and non-musicians in the US.
'What we found is the preference for consonance over dissonance varies dramatically across those five groups,' explained Dr McDermott says.
To test whether if the preference for notes was down to nature or nurture, researchers at MIT headed for the remote Amazon to find people with little exposure to Western music - the Tsimane society in the Bolivian lowlands (pictured)
The MIT team played participants examples of consonant (left) and dissonant (right) tones, to see if they could tell them apart and to see their preference. Credit: Josh McDermott, MIT
'In the Tsimane it's undetectable, and in the two groups in Bolivia, there's a statistically significant but small preference. In the American groups it's quite a bit larger, and it's bigger in the musicians than in the non-musicians.'
When asked to rate non-musical sounds such as laughter and gasps, the Tsimane showed similar responses to the other groups.
They also showed the same dislike for a musical quality known as acoustic roughness.
The research are published today in the journal Nature.
We've all heard of the Stone Age but how about the Stoned Age?
Scientists say cannabis was first used around 11,000 years ago, with prehistoric humans in Europe and Asia both starting to experiment with the drug.
However, it took another 6,000 years for the first dope dealers to emerge.
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A review of research papers has revealed tell tale signs of cannabis use, including pollen, fruit and fibres, in Japan and Eastern Europe between 11,500 and 10,200 years ago. Pictured is a still from television programme, Stone Age Atlantis
CANNABIS IN INDIA Cannabis is one of the oldest domestic plants in the history of mankind and has been used for more than 10,000 years, according to the study. The plants grow rapidly in most climates and enrich poor soils after every crop It's been used in tropical climates for centuries to make rope, paper, clothing and sails. In India, hemp domestication dates back to 5,000 BC, when the plant's stem was used for fibre, its achene or fruit for food and oil, and its resin for medicine. Medicinal use of cannabis was first recorded in India in the medical work 'Sushrita' compiled in around 1,000 BC as well as in the texts Tajnighuntu and Rajbulubha, where it s described as being used to clear phlegm, treat flatulence, sharpening memory, increasing eloquence and stimulating appetite. The Hindus consider Cannabis as a holy plant and it is used in Hindu festivals like Shivratri even today. Advertisement
It is often assumed that cannabis was first used, and possibly domesticated, somewhere in China or Central Asia.
However, a review of research papers has revealed tell tale signs of cannabis use, including pollen, fruit and fibres, in Japan and Eastern Europe at almost exactly the same time, between 11,500 and 10,200 years ago.
While the plant's psychoactive properties are likely to have made it popular, it could also have been a source of food, medicine or fibres for textiles, this week's New Scientist magazine reports.
The research, from the Free University of Berlin, suggests use intensified about 5,000 years ago, at the start of the Bronze Age.
Then, the Yamnaya, nomadic herders form the steppes of today's Russia mastered horse-riding, allowing them to cover huge distances and forge transcontinental trade networks.
Cannabis is likely to have been a high-value commodity, making it a 'cash crop before cash', says researcher Tengwen Long.
David Anthony, a US archaeologist, said the Yamnaya may well have indulged themselves but only during feasts and rituals.
Newly arrived space station astronaut Kate Rubins wore top-level biosafety suits for her work on Earth, but that won't be needed when she fires up a pocket-sized device to decode DNA in space.
Rubins, who studied Ebola and other deadly viruses before becoming an astronaut, will be working with harmless test samples and using MinION, a device developed by Oxford Nanopore Technologies.
As the first professional virus-hunter in space, she will attempt to complete the first full-blown DNA decoding, or 'sequencing,' in orbit.
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Rubins, who studied Ebola and other deadly viruses before becoming an astronaut, will become the first virus-hunter in space, she will attempt to complete the first full-blown DNA decoding, or 'sequencing,' in orbit using this handhelp device.
'We're really interested in how this works in microgravity,' Rubins told Associated Press in an interview from the station.
'It's a bacteria virus and a mouse genome we'll be testing.
'Nothing dangerous will get on board - its all been really carefully tested.'
Rubins admitted on Earth she had worked with more virulent strains.
'On ground, I worked on Ebola and smallpox, but everything coming up is safe.
The device will be delivered to the International Space Station on the next SpaceX delivery, scheduled to lift off on Monday from Cape Canaveral, Florida.
Current ISS commander Jeff Williams previously did some experiments on genes in space, but the new device will allow far more.
'The biomolecule sequencer we will use looks at everything in a sample - it's extremely exciting,' said Rubins.
It will also help research into spaceflight that could help man get to Mars.
Spacebound: NASA's Kate Rubins, 37, waves at Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan as she prepares to fly into space for the first time. An expert in infectious diseases, she will perform experiments on the ISS
'Anything we do helps us understand how humans live in space, It will help us look at bone loss and microbes in space, said Rubins.
'It also really has an Earth benefit.
'We've demonstrated human beings can live in space, the chance to see how microbes react in space.'
According to Nasa, the goal of this technology demonstration is to provide evidence that DNA sequencing in space is possible, which holds the potential to enable the identification of microorganisms, monitor changes in microbes and humans in response to spaceflight, and possibly aid in the detection of DNA-based life elsewhere in the universe.
'The ultimate goal is to be able to do on the space station or on Mars the things we are able to do normally on Earth when we sequence DNA,' said Nasa investigator Douglas Botkin, Ph.D.
HOW THE 'ALIEN TRICORDER' WILL WORK The tiny, plug and play sequencer about the size of a large candy bar is diminutive compared to the large microwave-sized sequencers used on Earth. 'Most sequencers in Earth-based labs involve optics, fluorescence, lasers and other vibration sensitive components that are not suited for spaceflight or microgravity,' said Nasa Microbiologist and Project Manager Sarah Castro. The compact biomolecule sequencer has minimal moving parts and plugs directly into a laptop or tablet, which supplies power to the device and collects the sequencing data. 'There is huge power consumption at play with those as well.' The compact biomolecule sequencer has minimal moving parts and plugs directly into a laptop or tablet, which supplies power to the device and collects the sequencing data. The data is collected as the device passes an ionic current through a perforated surface containing nanopores (natural cell membrane ion pores) and measures the changes in the current as biological molecules from samples pass through the pores. The change in current can be used to identify a DNA sequence or other molecules. Unlike terrestrial instruments whose sequencing run times can take days, this device's data is available in near real time; analysis can begin within 10-15 minutes from the application of the sample. Advertisement
'We want to replicate the laboratory environment, the high-tech equipment and those processes we use terrestrially, and try to demonstrate that functionality in a microgravity environment.'
This has never been done in space before and, if successful, this little device could be a big deal.
'Currently aboard the space station there is not a real-time method for identifying microbes, diagnosing infectious disease, and collecting any form of genomic and genetic data concerning crew health,' said NASA Microbiologist and Project Manager Sarah Castro, Ph.D.
'Meeting these needs relies on returning samples from space to Earth and subsequent ground-based analysis, which takes time.
'Real-time analysis could inform scientific investigations, measure the impact of spaceflight on the human body, inform medical interventions and define the effectiveness of countermeasures.
'You can look at DNA for permanent changes, what spaceflight is doing to your DNA long-term, but also by looking at the RNA, you can see how the human body or other organisms are reacting in real time,' said Principal Investigator Aaron Burton, Ph.D.
During the investigation, crew members will sequence the DNA of bacteria, bacteriophage (a virus that infects and replicates within a bacterium) and rodents from samples prepared on Earth that have known genomic characteristics.
Researchers on Earth also will run synchronous ground controls to evaluate how well the hardware is working.
Suits you: Rubins is joined by commander Anatoly Ivanishin (center), 47, and Takuya Onishi (right), 40, in the international scientific effort. Only Ivanishin has prior experience in space, having gone to the ISS in 2011
'We absolutely believe that the sequencer will perform successfully in the microgravity environment of space,' said Deputy Project Manager and Project Engineer Kristen John, Ph.D.
If successful, this investigation will allow the implementation of the sequencer into operational microbial monitoring, a vast array of medical operations, a research facility on the ISS and integration into astrobiology-based exploration missions.
'The space station and Earth are end members of the gravity continuum, so if the device works on Earth and in microgravity, then it should work in any environment in between like an asteroid or Mars,' said Burton.
Rubins has much more hands-on scientific experience than many NASA astronauts, Wired reported, but as a first-time space-goer she has a whole bunch of challenges ahead.
While she has experience studying infectious diseases in level 4 biosafety facilities, where workers are completely encased in hazmat suits, she says wearing a space suit is something else entirely.
'When I first got here I sort of thought, 'Oh yeah I've got all this biosafety experience,' and it's a completely different animal,' she told Wired.
'It was very helpful to work in a biosafety level 4 suit, you're doing difficult tasks with not a lot of dexterity and limited mobility.
'But in the space suit it's first of all much heavier - 300, 400 pounds - and your mobility is even more limited. And you're working on all six axes.'
By that she means that she'll be working without gravity, able to rotate in any direction - which would be disorienting for almost anyone.
She explained that 'you're floating, so you have to put your feet in some footrests and actually kind of stabilize yourself.'
Rubins continued: 'We have a full simulator with the gloves and the hardware and all of that, but there's no way to simulate the floating aspect. We're just going to have to get used to that when we get on board.'
The experiment she's most excited about performing, she said, is replicating DNA in space - seeing how a lack of gravity affects gene-sequencing technology.
Lift off: The trio were carried into space Wednesday aboard a modified Russian Soyuz MS-01 rocket. The trip would usually take six hours, but the crew will spend two days testing the new equipment before docking
Ordinarily it takes just six hours to reach the ISS, but the crew will use the longer travel time to perform tests on the newly modified Soyuz MS-01 spacecraft - just the first in a long series of experiments.
But as well as performing experiments she's also going to be the subject of some; like all ISS crew, she must regularly monitor her own body to see how the human physique deals with life off Earth.
That's of added interest to NASA now, Engadget reported, because they have solid plans to put humans on Mars.
Kitted out: Rubins has her suit tested by Russian Space Agency experts prior to the launch
'It's sort of funny to be on the other side of the equation,' she said about being a space guinea pig.
'We can actually study the pressure on the eyeball by ultrasounding your eyeball, which sounds horrible at first, and it's actually a really easy thing to do!'
Because she'll be in space she won't need the thick ultrasound gel used in hospitals on Earth - just water 'because the water just sits there, and you can ultrasound over the top of your eyelid,' she explained.
'It's amazing,' she said. 'You watch with the other eye, and you can see your retina and your cornea and your optic nerve and it's really cool.'
As well as Rubins, the crew includes Russian commander Anatoli Ivanishin, who already visited the ISS in 2011, and Japanese former pilot Takuya Onishi, who is also making his first trip into space.
Prior to its launch, the rocket was blessed by an Orthodox priest.
Naturally you'd associate snorkelling with faraway sandy beaches and exotic marine life, but the Highlands are trying to challenge that.
The Scottish Wildlife Trust has unveiled its first snorkel trail around the country's north west coast.
Don't let the ice cold waters put you off as hidden below the tide line is a fascinating underwater world filled with dogfish, barrel jellyfish and sea urchins.
The Scottish Wildlife Trust have unveiled their first ever snorkelling trail around the coast of the Highlands, it features the coast of Sutherland (above)
There are nine locations named by the Scottish Wildlife Trust as the best spots in the Highlands to go snorkelling
The trust has already named nine prime locations for beginner and advanced snorkellers.
With a wet-suit on divers are advised to explore the beaches and bays on the coast of Wester Ross and Sutherland.
The trail is self-led and offers a varied view of Scotland's water world
Beginner and experienced snorkellers can follow the trail that takes them around the underwater world of Wester Ross (above)
Highlights include Tanera Mor in the Summer Isles, Camusnagaul and Achmelvich Bay, where you can spot lobsters, crabs, rare maerl, kelp beds, sea-grass and a sunken naval base.
Lizzie Bird, of the British Sub Aqua Club, said: 'Lots of people might think its too cold to snorkel in Scotland but the colours and life under the surface in places like the north west coast are up there with the coral reefs you can find abroad.'
Noel Hawkins, Living Seas communities officer, added: 'The coast of Wester Ross and Sutherland features some fantastic sheltered headlands and beaches that are great places for snorkelling.'
Snorkellers can spot pot lobsters, crabs, rare maerl, kelp beds, sea-grass and a sunken naval base in the nine hotspots named
The self-led underwater route highlights the richly-populated, living seas around the north west Scottish coast
Hawkins hopes to establish a training programme for local people to become qualified snorkel instructors and a snorkel club at the local leisure centre to entice the younger members of the community to explore their local marine environment.
He said: 'Scotland needs healthy living seas that can adapt to climate change.
A new six-month cruise has launched for film lovers that is so exclusive, wannabe guests need to pass a test in order to be allowed to buy a ticket.
For 104,000, voyagers can travel on a round-the-world trip with Bolsover Cruise Club that takes in the locations of 13 famous movies.
Travellers will be able to recreate scenes from films like Jaws in Massachusetts and James Bond's Casino Royale in the Bahamas.
A lagoon at Phi Phi Ley island, near Phuket, (right) the exact place where The Beach was filmed with Leonardo DiCaprio (left)
But before they are allowed to sign up, customers must first prove themselves worthy by passing a movie knowledge entrance exam.
The 16-question entrance exam, which can be seen in full here, features detailed questions from many of the films visited during the trip, that only die-hard movie lovers would be able to answer.
For example, a sample question from the exam is: 'In Jaws, Richard Dreyfuss' Hooper explains that his interest in studying sharks first began when he accidentally caught a baby shark that panicked and destroyed his boat - what species of shark did he catch?'
Those who pass will jet off to Venice before cruising to Barcelona, while taking in the sights from The Godfather, before heading on to Rome, Athens and Istanbul for scenery from The Good, The Bad and The Ugly and Mamma Mia.
The peaks of Darran Mountains reflecting in a Lake Marian, Fiordland national park, New Zealand South island, where Lord Of The Rings was filmed
An aerial view of New York city, where Spider man was filmed (right)
In New York, travellers can witness the sky scrapers where Peter Parker a.k.a Spider-Man span his webs, then it's on to Massachusetts and the Bahamas.
Later in the journey, film fans will be able to take in the Los Angeles sights made famous in Julia Robert's classic Pretty Woman, and Hawaii's Jurassic World scenery.
They will then travel to New Zealand to soak in the The Lord of the Rings setting, as well as visiting beaches in Phuket, made famous by Leonardo DiCaprio in The Beach, and Star Wars sets in Abu Dhabi.
Travellers will tour the world on a total of 13 cruise ships to visit the film destinations
Michael Wilson, Managing Director at Bolsover Cruise Club, said: 'This cruise is for anyone who's dreamed of travelling the world and feeling like a film star at the same time
'Filming locations often double as the most dramatic, scenic settings so we believe this voyage will prove to be a smash-hit.'
Guests will stay in five-star hotels while travelling on a total of 13 cruise liners, as well as business class flight transfers.
In a recent promo for The Bachelor she charmed Richie Strahan with her kind nature and passion for the outdoor lifestyle.
But it has been an unlikely path to happiness for free-diving beach girl Megan Marx, as Daily Mail Australia can reveal she was previously married at a young age.
The 27-year-old, from Geraldton, WA, was just 18 when she walked down the aisle, but the relationship did not last.
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Early life: The Bachelor 2016 contestant Megan Marx (pictured) was previously married at aged 18
Her father Ross Upchurch told Daily Mail Australia earlier this week: 'She was married. That didn't work out.'
He clarified that Megan and her former husband 'were together for about six or seven years'.
'She was 18 when she married. I would have liked her to wait a little longer, but they seemed like a good match at the time,' he concluded.
TV fame: Megan (far left) was just a teenager when she walked down the aisle, but the relationship didn't last. Pictured alongside fellow WA contestants (left to right) Natalie Nazzari, Rachael, Nikki Gogan and Tiffany
Ross said that his daughter is 'a happy, fun-loving girl' and claimed she is 'doing well and enjoying the opportunity' of being on The Bachelor.
'We're very proud of her, she's a lovely girl' he said. 'She's got a great relationship with her family.'
Megan currently works as regional education officer for Cancer Council WA, which sees her educate communities on how to live healthier lives.
The look of love? Megan, who also uses the surname Upchurch, left a good first impression on Richie Strahan in a promo clip for the new series of The Bachelor
'I really felt that we hit it off': Richie felt an instant connection with Megan upon their first meeting
She has used the surname Upchurch professionally, according to a Geraldton rotary club newsletter and two separate local news reports from last year.
However, she now appears to go by Megan Marx.
Last week, Megan was featured in a promo clip for The Bachelor, which saw Richie Strahan clearly impressed by her looks and personality.
Globetrotter: Megan confirmed on social media that she has spent time living in the UK. Pictured in England
Life's a beach! Megan's Facebook portrays her as a fun-loving girl with interests in scuba diving and travel
'I've actually been waiting to have a chat with you all night,' Richie confessed in the clip. 'I really felt that we hit it off'.
Their chemistry is perhaps not surprising as Megan and Richie are both WA natives and outdoor enthusiasts.
Richie's former Bachelorette rival Michael Turnbull told DMA that he believed Megan would be a runner-up in the TV dating show.
Health conscious: Megan works as regional education officer for Cancer Council WA, which sees her educate communities on how to live healthier lives
'I know he likes blondes': Richie's former Bachelorette rival Michael Turnbull (pictured) told DMA he believed Megan would be a runner-up in the TV dating show
'I know Richie. I know the type of girls he typically likes,' said the real estate agent. 'I know he likes blondes and I know he likes tall, fit girls.'
According to her profile on Network Ten's website, Megan decided to try out for The Bachelor on a Friday night when her friends were with their boyfriends.
'My first thought was having a desperate Bridget Jones moment in my PJs. Instead, I ended up online applying for the show,' she revealed.
Beach beauty: Their chemistry is not surprising as Megan and Richie are both WA natives and outdoor fans
She was first identified by local website Everything Geraldton after a friend recognised her photos in OK! magazine.
Meanwhile, the statuesque blonde was photographed enjoying both a single date and a group date with Richie back in April.
The health promotions officer also has some experience in modelling, as her photos have been used to promote swimwear brand KISSMAX.
DMA has reached out to Network Ten for comment.
The Bachelor Season 4 begins on Wednesday July 27 at 7.30pm on Network Ten.
Romance: In April, Megan was photographed enjoying both a single date with Richie Strahan (pictured)
They are one stunning mother-daughter duo.
Bella Hadid and her mom Yolanda Hadid couldn't contain their smiles while out together on Tuesday in New York City.
The 19-year-old model wowed in all black - sporting lace up trousers and a see-through top - while her 52-year-old mother, a former model, donned a sheer white shirt.
What a good looking family: Bella Hadid and her mother Yolanda Hadid couldn't contain their smiles while out on Tuesday in New York City
Bella, who recently returned from Paris and Rome, wore high-waisted trousers featuring lace-up detailing along the sides of the legs.
The runway star wore a black camisole with a matching off-the-shoulder blouse on top, both tucked into the waistband of her chic bottoms.
The teen, who was seen giggling with her mom, carried a patent black Givenchy handbag while stepping out in nude ballerina heels.
She added orange tinted sunglasses for a seventies touch to her chic ensemble.
Sharing a sweet moment: The 19-year-old model wowed in all black - sporting lace up trousers and a low-cut top - while her 52-year-old mother, a former model, donned white and grey pieces
Bella pulled her dark brunette tresses back into a high bun with red glossed lips.
Yolanda looked just as beautiful as her youngest daughter, dressed in a high-neck white T-shirt and matching hued skinny jeans.
The former Real Housewives Of Beverly Hills star balanced her ensemble with a calf-length grey cardigan and matching sandals, finishing it off with a black Saint Laurent handbag.
Pretty duo: Bella, who recently returned from Paris and Rome, wore high-waisted trousers featuring lace-up detailing along the sides of the legs
On Tuesday, Bella was seen wearing another all-black ensemble during a solo outing in the Meatpacking District of the Big Apple.
The younger sister of Gigi Hadid wore a low-but black dress that grazed her mid-thigh, showing a hint of cleavage as well as her long legs.
Bella showed off her tiny waist by adding a Western inspired belt; the star hit the pavement in patent combat boots while carrying her beloved Balenciaga handbag.
She's got the look: On Tuesday, Bella was seen wearing another all-black ensemble during a solo outing in the Meatpacking District of the Big Apple
Stunning beauty: The younger sister of Gigi Hadid wore a low-cut black dress that grazed her mid-thigh, showing a hint of cleavage as well as her long legs
The model added a pop of color with yellow tinted sunglasses and red lipstick, finishing off her chic ensemble with a tight bun.
On Monday, the star, who is dating the musician The Weeknd, took to her Instagram to share a sweet picture while posing with her little brother and fellow model, Anwar Hadid.
She captioned it: 'The best surprise after work today from @anwarhadid & @yolanda.hadid #Love #MyHearts.'
Yolanda is mom to three kids: Gigi, 21; Bella; and Anwar, 17 with her ex husband Mohamed Hadid; she recently filed for divorce from her second husband David Foster.
Runway beauty: The model added a pop of color with yellow tinted sunglasses and red lipstick, finishing off her chic ensemble with a tight bun
Halle Berry was genie chic on Tuesday.
The 49-year-old rocked a pair of harem trousers for a solo spa day in West Hollywood as she walked out of the establishment appearing rejuvenated from a healthy clean-up.
Halle wisely let her skin breathe as she went make-up free for her day of cleansing.
Princess Jasmine has arrived! Halle Berry sported comfortable harem trousers on Tuesday for her solo spa day in West Hollywood
The Extant actress hid her toned legs in a pair of harem trousers that are famous for its low dip and extremely comfortable fit.
Hiding from the sun in mirrored shades, Halle walked in $39 black Dr. Scholl's 'Rae Footbed' sandals, opting for even more relaxation.
While heading to her car, the mother-of-two carried the spa's blue-and-white bag from what appeared to look like a purchase.
Halle also held her large dark grey designer purse off her arm along with clutching on to her cellphone and keys.
Refreshed! The Oscar-winner walked out make-up free after she treated herself
Comfy chic: Halle wore a loose white top over her grey pants and a pair of $39 black Dr. Scholl's 'Rae Footbed' sandals for comfort
Halle's highlighted brown locks were wet on the ends, which she tied back in a ponytail, as her bangs frizzled out in the front.
While the actress' wardrobe was baggy for the most part, her toned arms and petite physique were still on display.
The Oscar-winner has had a busy schedule in between her film shoots, so it makes sense for the brunette beauty to devote time to her skin and body.
Make-up free and marvelous: The mother-of-two looked half her age and sported a wet, messy ponytail, still looking fabulous
Halle has been filming her new movie, Kingsman: The Golden Circle in London, which is scheduled for release on June 16, 2017.
She can also be seen on the big screen in Kidnap, due out December 2, playing a mother who will stop at nothing to recover her kidnapped son.
It was also recently announced last week that the English star Daniel Craig is in talks to star with Halle, former Bond girl, in an upcoming film about the LA Riots, titled Kings.
Cruelty TV is here again.
Cruel parents, cruel quizzing and, cruellest of all, producers who seem determined to humiliate and mock everyone involved.
Child Genius (C4) is back, and this time the question-master is not some pompous twerp from Mensa, but Richard Osman from Pointless.
Osmans a likeable presenter with a kindly demeanour, but his role on this programme is horribly misjudged.
Richard Osman's role in Child Genius is misjudged, says TV reviewer Christopher Stevens
The contestants on Pointless and his other quiz show, Two Tribes, are adults indulging in light-hearted fun with a competitive edge.
But the children on Child Genius have no way of understanding what they are letting themselves in for, as they walk into the auditorium to face four minutes of maths questions, followed by a memory test.
If they win, they look like freaks. If they lose, they look like failed freaks.
Even the architecture of the TV set is vicious. The audience surrounds the stage, in rows rising upwards. The child stands below them in the middle, like the victim in a Roman amphitheatre.
The question setters make no effort to test real knowledge and comprehension. Intelligence is not required, only number-crunching and recall under pressure. The 16 children face mental arithmetic challenges quick, double 68, double it again, add 37, whats your answer?
ARROW SLIT SHOTS OF THE NIGHT The catastrophes and pratfalls in Wedding Surprises: Caught On Camera (ITV) were mostly taken from mobile phone footage. But why do people hold smartphones upright when filming? A vertical picture fills only a slice of the screen. Turn the thing sideways! Advertisement
Then they are given an hour to memorise all the worlds currencies and exchange rates, before Osman bombards them with questions about how many Albanian lek youll get to the pound.
If, like Mastermind, Child Genius contained nothing but a quiz, it would be dull, but not really unpleasant. What make it truly cruel are the backstage scenes and the home interviews, edited to showcase the pushiest parents and the most gauche youngsters.
Win it, win it, nail it! urged Simon to his 11-year-old son, Christopher. He ordered the bewildered boy not to worry about taking part, blah blah, talking to new clever people and all that jazz you have to win.
Christopher duly scored zero points in the maths round, and the cameras made sure we saw him crying afterwards.
Mog, 12, applied to enter the contest himself, because his hobbies Mandarin, Korean and Japanese werent challenging enough. His parents looked relieved simply to have found something that kept their sons brain occupied.
But producers Paul Bithrey and Mark Saben didnt play fair and made sure that whenever Mogs quirky personality looked too odd quoting Karl Marx at sheep, for instance, or comparing his own doodles to Picasso we saw it in close-up. Laughing at an awkward child is nasty enough. Encouraging him to embarrass himself on camera is unspeakable.
Another parent was beyond mockery. Hayley from North London dressed her 13-year-old piano prodigy, Curtis, in a frock coat and powdered wig, like Mozart, and said she was her childrens full-time manager, whose plan was to build up their names, to get a good brand like the Beckhams. People like that should not get the oxygen of airtime.
With luck, bright children were not watching this, but Trainspotting Live (BBC4), in which mathematician Hannah Fry and swingometer maestro Peter Snow indulged their love of locos, and encouraged us to hang over railway bridges with cameras and notebooks.
Trainspotting Live on the BBC features Peter Snow and Hannah Fry
This is the engineering enthusiasts answer to Springwatch. Instead of badgers and barn owls, were looking out for Intercity 125s and Class 66 freight engines.
The trouble is that while most wildlife squeaks, an express rushes by with a bellow like a foghorn breaking the sound barrier. Every time that happened, Peter leapt into the air with his hair bristling.
Historys first trainspotter, we were told, was a girl called Fanny Johnson, but female fans were scarce. Mostly, the platforms teemed with men of advancing years, the type who tend not to smile at jokes about Small Shunters.
Hannah discussed the equations that govern timetables, and everyone looked out for a yellow train called the Flying Banana.
Quality time alone with mother and father is more important than fancy presents when one has many siblings.
And Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie clearly recognised this when they treated their youngest children Knox and Vivienne to a low-key birthday meal at a reasonably priced West Hollywood eatery on Tuesday.
The A-list duo and their twins indulged in a big breakfast as they seized the chance to act like just another average family during their visit to The Griddle Cafe.
Big breakfast: Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt were snapped treating their youngest children Knox and Vivienne to a birthday meal in West Hollywood on Tuesday
Indeed excited punters could not believe their eyes when the famous family walked into the restaurant, with one taking a photograph on their mobile phone for posterity.
Brad, 52, was looking trendy for his age in a white T-shirt and pork pie hat, while his 41-year-old other half was also dressed down in a casual blouse and black top.
The cafe is famous for its tasty all-day breakfast menu, and it seems to have appealed particularly to their boy Knox, as according to TMZ he ate pancakes filled with Oreo cookies, which were covered in powdered sugar and whipped cream.
No doubt the megarich couple, who have an estimated combined net worth of $310 million, had more extravagant celebrations planned for later in the day.
A photo posted by Angelina Jolie Pitt (@angelinajp1975) on Jul 12, 2016 at 4:06pm PDT
Treats for the birthday kids! The family then went to a local Rite Aid for some party supplies
Strong boy! Knox carried one of the paper bags as he led the way
Proud father: Brad looked to be in his element as he bonded with his family
Knox and Vivienne are the second and third of the couple's biological children, with their elder sister Shiloh being born in May 2006.
The couple have six youngsters in total when their adopted children are included.
Angelina gave birth to Knox Leon, and Vivienne Marcheline on July 12 2008 at La Fondation Lenval Hospital in Nice, France via Cesarean section.
The first pictures of the twins were sold to People in the US and Hello in the UK for a reported $14 million, making them the most expensive celebrity photographs ever taken.
However the big-hearted couple were not cashing in to line their own pockets, as all proceeds were donated to the Jolie-Pitt Foundation
Purchasing power: The family leisurely paid for their items at checkout
Taking it easy: The foursome looked to be thinking about other purchases while at checkout
Mummy's favourite's: Angelina with her youngest children Knox and Vivienne in Japan back in 2014
She's the busty bikini model and swimsuit designer envied and admired by her millions of followers for her perfect physique.
But on Tuesday, Devin Brugman proved that she has flaws, just like the rest of us, as she showed off a scar-like mark on her buttocks whilst shooting photos on a beach in Miami.
The deep blemish may come as a surprise to the 25-year-old's loyal social media followers, as it doesn't appear to be visible in any of the brunette beauty's glossy Instagram images.
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Real life Vs. Social media: Devin Brugman showed off a dimple on her buttocks which isn't visible in her Instagram followers, which she shares with her 1.2 million followers
In photos posted to her account, Devin's derriere always appears to be smooth and free of any imperfections.
The voluptuous model has even shared a glute workout that promises to 'get your booty in shape' via her official website.
Devin, along with her business partner Natasha Oakley, run the wildly successful A Bikini a Day blog together.
Where did THAT come from? The 25-year-old's deep blemish was clearly visible as she participated in a photo shoot with business partner Natasha Oakley in Miami on Tuesday
Unrecognisable: From behind, both Devin and Natasha were virtually unrecognisable compared to their popular Instagram images (right)
They've since expanded the brand into their own line of swimsuits and activewear.
In an interview with Hunger TV last year, Devin said: 'We like to promote a really healthy body image, and self confidence in women.'
Natasha added: 'We dont think that our body type is something that you need to aspire to be like, we just wanna be ourselves, and we want everyone else to feel the same way, and feel confident within their own skin, and understand that what makes you beautiful isnt necessarily your physical appearance, theres so much more.'
'We like to promote a really healthy body image, and self confidence in women,' Devin told Hunger TV last year
The busty babes, who have a combined social media following of over 4 million people, have even been featured in Forbes for their business prowess.
Speaking about their burgeoning brand to Forbes, Oakley said: 'Our story is one of friendship, entrepreneurialism, travel and style.'
She added: 'It has created something both inspiring and achievable, and hopefully something that can help push people in the directions they want to go.'
Kyle Sandilands struggled to contain his excitement on Wednesday after he dug up an old modelling photo of co-star Jackie 'O' Henderson where she revealed a glimpse of her nipple.
In the picture, which was taken 16 years ago, Jackie opted to go braless as she dressed in an all-white outfit which included a tight-fitting blouse.
Kyle cheerfully gloated about the discovery of the snap, saying live on KIIS FM airwaves: 'They are great breasts. Look at them.'
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Flashback: Kyle Sandilands struggled to contain his excitement on Wednesday after he dug up a modelling photo of co-star Jackie 'O' Henderson where she reveals a glimpse of her nipple (pictured)
The 45-year-old continued: 'Look at your hair, look at your bloody body. You were so hot. You look great. Is this when you wanted to be an actress?'
After being left blind-sided by the find of the picture, Jackie explained it had been taken by her husband Lee 'around Popstars time' [1999] when she was 25.
'This is making me feel very uncomfortable. Why are we looking at this?' she questioned her co-star.
Pleased with himself: Kyle cheerfully gloated about the discovery, saying live on air: 'They are great breasts. Look at them. Look at your hair, look at your bloody body. You were so hot. You look great'
Supportive: After being left blind-sided by the find of the picture, Jackie explained it had been taken by her husband Lee 'around Popstars time' [1999] when she was 25
While still examining the picture closely, Kyle said: 'Youre wearing a white blouse and you can clearly see nipple there.
'Jackie the photo is great. You look amazing. I can't stop looking at that tit. God you look good.
'Look at how brown and everything you are. The hair, the little sexy face,' he said, before adding he had shared the picture across all platforms of social media.
Not aware: She went on to question Kyle about his motives, saying: 'This is making me feel very uncomfortable. Why are we looking at this?'
Creepy: While examining the picture, Kyle said: 'Youre wearing a white blouse and you can clearly see nipple there. Jackie the photo is great. I can't stop looking at that tit...The hair, the little sexy face'
'No dont, please dont. You can see my boob Kyle,' she pleaded, adding: 'Dont do it kyle. That is a personal photo.'
After losing the battle, Kyle explained to the blonde beauty that she shouldn't 'keep your filthy photos at work, that is the motto here.'
'That is unethical what you are doing,' she hit back to an unconcerned Kyle.
Following the public release of the photo, a caller phoned through to the KIIS FM studio to slam Kyle for his actions.
Out there: He later revealed that he had shared the revealing picture across all platforms of social media leaving her screeching: 'No dont, please dont. You can see my boob Kyle. That is a personal photo'
Not happy: After losing the battle, Jackie commented: 'That is unethical what you are doing'
'That is boarding on sexual harassment you know that?' the caller stated to which Jackie quickly agreed.
Proving he simply didn't care, Kyle snapped: 'You're a pain in the ass. Everyone likes to label people.'
Social media followers were quick to comment on the snap, with many praising Jackie's look.
Their refusal to end their friendship is said to have 'enraged' Johnny Depp.
And while her marriage may be over, it seems Amber Heard's friendship with her ex girlfriend Tasya van Ree remains strong, five years after they ended their passionate four-year romance.
The pair were both pictured arriving five minutes apart for a lunch date at Republique on La Brea Ave in Los Angeles on Tuesday.
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Catching up: Johnny Depp's estranged wife Amber Heard joins ex-girlfriend Tasya Van Ree for lunch at Republique on La Brea Ave in Los Angeles on Tuesday
Her constant companion: In the actress's bag was her Yorkshire Terrier; famously she failed in her attempt to get a restraining order preventing Johnny from being in contact with the dog
They spent an hour chatting, before returning to the separate vehicles.
Amber looked preoccupied as she walked to her car, carrying her pet Yorkshire Terrier - a gift from Tasya during their time together - in a dog bag.
The 30-year-old was as trendily dressed as ever in high-waisted blue denim, with a black and white blouse tucked in at the waist. A long pinstripe jacket was worn unbuttoned and loose, while her blonde hair was braided.
Preoccupied: Amber sported a couple of Band-Aids on her bare arm
Her constant companion: In the actress's bag was her Yorkshire Terrier; famously she failed in her attempt to get a restraining order preventing Johnny from being in contact with the dog
She also sported a couple of Band-Aids on her bare arm.
Meanwhile her ex was dressed in an all black outfit of trousers and jumped, with a clutch of scarfs wrapped round her neck.
Perhaps Amber was seeking some support following her split from Depp, having filed for divorce in May, amid claims he brutally beat her.
If so, she has surely found a supportive ear in Tasya, whose name she once adopted.
Homeward bound: The 30-year-old X Men star was as trendily dressed as ever in high-waisted blue denim, with a black and white blouse tucked into the waist
On March in 2008 in California, the star legally changed her name to Amber Van Ree and stated the reason to do so as they were in a 'domestic partnership'.
Three months later, California started issuing marriage licences to gay couples but that was halted later that year, with gay marriage not legal in California again until 2013 and across the US until 2015.
A source told British paper The Mirror that the couple went on to have a private ceremony in 2011 in New York, when same-sex marriage was legalized there - but did not make it legally official.
Needs her friends: Perhaps Amber was seeking some support in her split from Depp, having filed for divorce in May
The couple asked the special few who attended the wedding to keep the wedding a secret, the source said.
Amber, The Mirror reports, did not need to divorce her partner because of their legal status but did petition to change her name back in 2013 and it was granted the following year three months after she and Johnny got engaged.
Indeed, it was only when she met Johnny and began a romance, that Amber and Tasya finally ended things - although they continued to be pictured together.
It was Amber's continued friendship with her former wife that reportedly led to Johnny's alleged explosive anger at the star.
Days after the split made headlines, she claimed in court that her decision to file for divorce was prompted by Johnny, 52, physically attacking her with an iPhone, leaving her with a bruised eye.
Former love: The pair ended their three-year romance in 2011; Amber was with Tasya longer than she was wed to Johnny
Amber said in a written declaration to the court that she had 'endured excessive emotional, verbal and physical abuse' during their 15-month marriage.
She wrote: 'During the entirety of our relationship, Johnny has been verbally and physically abusive to me. I endured excessive emotional, verbal and physical abuse from Johnny, which has included angry, hostile, humiliating and threatening assaults to me whenever I questioned his authority or disagreed with him.
Snap happy: Tasya seemed captivated by some street art on the sidewalk, perhaps planning to Instagram it
'I live in fear that Johnny will return to (our house) unannounced to terrorise me, physically and emotionally.'
Despite granting the temporary order, which instructs Johnny to remain 100 yards away from his wife at all times, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Carl H. Moor rejected her request for Johnny to attend one year of anger management classes.
He also did not accept her request for the restraining order to extend to keeping the actor away from her Yorkshire terrier.
Headline news: Amber's divorce from Johnny has been anything but amicable
The pair are not thought to have put a pre-nuptial agreement in place before they wed in February 2015 in Los Angeles, followed by another ceremony in the Bahamas.
The former couple met on the set of 2011 film The Rum Diary.
Johnny previously divorced his first wife, make-up artist Lori Anne Allison, in 1985 after just two years of marriage and he split from French actress partner Vanessa Paradis - who he has daughter Lily-Rose, 17, and 13-year-old son Jack with - in 2012 after 14 years together.
As they were: Amber and her then-husband Johnny Depp back in January
Shes finally returned home from a long European vacation.
But it seems Fiona Falkiner is suffering from post-holiday blues as she took to her social media sites to share a throwback snap from her recent travels.
The Instagram picture, posted on Tuesday, sees the 33-year-old show off her fabulous curves in a skimpy black bikini as she took a dip in her hotels swimming pool during her stay in Greece.
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Sizzling display! Fiona Falkiner showed off her fabulous curves in a sexy black bikini as she shared a throwback snap from her travels on Tuesday
Dreaming of being back here! Villa life with @penelope.benson, she captioned the snap, alongside the hashtags #thedreamcamereal and #takemeback.
The skimpy two-piece swimsuit, which boasted side-tie detail, flattered her sun-kissed frame in all its glory as she soaked up the balmy climes.
Moments later, Fiona shared another social media snap of herself looking uncharacteristically different in her winter knits.
Wearing my woollies in the house today, she simply remarked.
Strike a pose! The past few months saw the 33-year-old regularly share envy-inducing snaps from her time in the US, the UK and Europe with her followers
Working it: The former Biggest Loser contestant appeared to have a wonderful time during her winter break
The former Biggest Loser contestant and now host of the show recently enjoyed a whirlwind trip around the world over where she combined work with pleasure.
The past few months saw Fiona regularly share envy-inducing snaps from her time in the US, the UK and Europe with her followers.
Before departing for her extensive trip around the world, the Australian model was enjoying a new relationship with a mystery restaurateur.
Although it is not known whether the two are still an item, Fiona seemed very happy with her new man in April.
Back on home turf: On Wednesday, Fiona shared another social media snap of herself looking uncharacteristically different in her winter knits
Speaking to Daily Mail Australia at the recent launch of her friend Jodi Anasta's, the blonde beauty gushed over her restaurateur beau.
Suggesting online dating services such as eHarmony, for which she is an ambassador, the TV star said: 'If you're kind of not really meeting new people then why not try something new.
'I did and I went on some really great dates and met an incredible guy. Just step out of the box and try something different.'
Joan Collins made sure she was wrapped up warm as she headed out in Southsea on Tuesday to film scenes from upcoming movie Time Of Their Lives.
The film is a Thelma and Louise style story about two women who find friendship through an unforgettable journey after escaping from a retirement home.
83-year-old Joan had her husband Percy Gibson by her side as she headed to the set to join her co-star Pauline Collins, of Shirley Valentine fame, wearing a fashion forward bomber jacket.
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All about the glamour: Joan Collins made sure she was wrapped up warm as she headed out in Southsea on Tuesday to film scenes from upcoming movie Time Of Their Lives
Oh dear: She stars in the Thelma and Louise style movie alongside Shirley Valentine star Pauline Collins who ended up shooting scenes in which she rescued a child in the freezing cold sea
Joan, who plays a character called Helen, was able to retain her glamorous appearance, wearing a striped trouser and peeptoe wedges.
But Pauline, who plays Priscilla, unfortunately had to film a scene in which she rescues a child from the freezing cold sea.
Luckily she didn't have to jump in the water, instead a lookalike mannequin was drafted in to make the leap, wearing the same lilac-coloured fleece.
Thankful for small mercies: Luckily she didn't have to jump in the water, instead a lookalike mannequin was drafted in to make the leap, wearing the same lilac-coloured fleece
It's a tough gig: Pauline appeared in high spirits as she continued to film with the aid of a small team
Sounds fun: The film is a Thelma and Louise style story about two women who find friendship through an unforgettable journey after escaping from a retirement home
All in a days work: The structure above the water shows the lengths taken to get the shots just right
Further filming took place in the Queen's Hotel ballroom which was out of bounds to guests for the duration, as well as at the Royal Marine Barracks.
The movie is being directed by Roger Goldby who has Call the Midwife, Waterloo Road and The Durrells amongst his credentials.
According to the Telegraph, much of the filming will be taking place around France's IIe de Re as Joan's character escapes the comforts of her London retirement home to gatecrash her ex-lover's funeral in the glamorous resort on the west coast of France.
Not getting your hair wet? Joan, who plays a character called Helen, was able to retain her glamorous appearance, wearing a striped trouser and wedges as she emerged with doting husband Percy Gibson
She's assisted in her runaway mission by Priscilla, a downtrodden English housewife trapped in an unhappy marriage.
Joan told UK News in Pictures,'It's lovely being in Portsmouth. It's just a shame about the wretched weather.'
She has been keeping her followers up to date on her antics with Pauline by posting regular updates on social media.
Having a giggle: Joan shared this snap of herself and Pauline on the tour bus as filming continued
Playful: She also shared this funny snap as she wrapped up in bed
Phew! Luckily the child who was rescued was played by another mannequin
He has been billed as the Mr Nice Guy who is poised to front the next series of the Bachelor Australia.
And rope access technician Richie Strahan lived up to his soubriquet when he was seen escorting an elderly lady to her home in Perth on Tuesday.
The gentlemanly 30-year-old was spotted sharing a chuckle with the diminutive woman and holding her parasol as she clambered out of her car before guiding her up a flight of steps to the front door.
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Gentlemanly: Bachelor Richie Strahan helped an elderly lady up the stairs in Perth on Tuesday
Mr Nice Guy: The Bachelor 2016 star placed a caring arm around the diminutive woman and led her up the stairs to her home
Placing a caring around her waist, the chiselled jaw hunk led the struggling woman up the steps to her home.
Dressed for the winter cold snap in a padded hooded jacket, slacks and suede brown shoes, the reality TV star seemed in his element as he made small talk with the woman.
He shielded his glare against the bright morning sun with a pair of dark sunglasses.
Up you go: She clung on tightly to the hunky ex Bachelorette star and appeared grateful for the help
For her part, she was dressed in a baggy jacket and Ugg-style boots.
She clung on tightly to the hunky ex Bachelorette star and appeared grateful for the help.
A self-confessed introvert, Richie has been gearing up to front the Bachelor which airs on July 27.
In an interview with NW, he says he was initially reluctant to star on the show having been turned down on the Bachelorette by Sam Frost last year.
Friendly: He held her parasol as she clambered out of her car before guiding her home
Deed for the day: He shared a chuckle with the lady in the warmth of the morning sun
However, he hints he has indeed found love telling the publication: 'Each ceremony just meant I was closer to meeting The One,' he says.
'I cant say if I did, but Im happy with how its played out. Very happy.'
News broke that Richie would be Australia's fourth Bachelor in March when he made his announcement to The Daily Telegraph.
Job done: After ensuring she was home safe, he made his way to his car
Hat you Richie? The star kept a low profile as he went about his business in Perth
Happy go lucky: He appeared to be in jolly spirits as he ran errands near his home
'To be honest I couldn't believe they called me up to ask,' he told the newspaper.
'I'm a very private person and it's a really big decision to put yourself out in the public arena again.'
Richie has previously told how he would leave his hometown of Perth if the right woman comes along.
'(Leaving Perth) is something I have certainly considered,' Strahan told AAA Weekend.
Charming: One lucky lady may have landed the reality star as he hinted this week he has found love on The Bachelor
Low profile: Richie pulled his hood up as he walked away after completing his good deed for the day
Not meant to be: Richie enjoyed a strong rapport with Sam on The Bachelorette but in the end she feared he wasn't open enough for her
'I have come into this experience with an open mind and I dont want to put up walls to stop me meeting a girl I could fall in love with.'
The hunk will follow in the footsteps of previous incumbents, Tim Robards, Blake Garvey and Sam Wood - all of whom found love, some not ever lasting, on the show.
His last reported romance, with former Big Brother star Tully Smyth, came shortly after Sam Frost left him heartbroken, axing him ahead of Michael Turnbull and eventual winner Sasha Mielczarek during an emotional Bachelorette semi-final last year.
Richie has admitted his love-life had been stop start following his appearance on the hit show and has insisted he won't be 'kissing girls for the sake of it' when it airs later this year.
The Bachelor Season Four premieres 7.30pm July 27 on Channel Ten.
With its focus on ideology and timely social and political themes, the interracial drama Loving looks set to be a big hit at next year's Academy Awards.
And already stirring up Oscar buzz are the film's two leading stars, Australia's Joel Edgerton and Ethiopian-Irish actress Ruth Negga.
The pair deliver appropriately dramatic performances in the newly-released trailer for the movie, which sees Joel sport a peroxide buzz cut for the role.
Oscar buzz: Australia's Joel Edgerton and Ethiopian-Irish actress Ruth Negga are receiving Oscar buzz for their new movie Loving, which just had its full trailer unveiled online
Joel takes on the character of Richard Loving, who is sentenced to prison in Virginia in 1958 for entering into an interracial marriage with Mildred, played by Ruth.
As expected of this kind of movie, the story escalates as Richard takes his fight to the Supreme Court in a bid to stop Virginia's anti-miscegenation laws.
Buzz has been building for a while, with Loving already receiving a standing ovation at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year.
Highly praised: The Australian plays lead Richard Loving sentenced to prison in Virginia in 1958 for entering into an interracial marriage with partner Mildred [Ruth Negga]
Big plot: The story escalates as Richard takes his fight all the way to the Supreme Court in a bid to stop Virginia's anti-miscegenation laws
It doesnt hit cinemas until November but the critics who attended the festival screening are almost unanimous in their praise and have been bowled over by Joels performance.
Variety reports: 'Though it will inevitably factor heavily in year-end Oscar conversations, Nichols film is seemingly less interested in its own glory than in representing whats right.
'And though it features two of the best American performances of the past several years, from Joel Edgerton and Ruth Negga (neither of whom are American, hailing from Australia and Ethiopia, respectively), its emotional impact derives precisely from how understated they are.'
Other movie critics also heaped praise on the film with Vanity Fair penning: 'Edgerton is one of the more dynamic movie actors of his generation.'
Success: Loving was met with high praise after it screened at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year
However, Loving will most likely face some stiff competition from another award-hungry civil rights drama, The Birth of a Nation.
The period drama, about a slave rebellion in Virginia in the 1930s, received a standing ovation from the audience at the Sundance Film Festival before it had even aired.
Once the audience had actually watched it, it swiftly picked up the Audience Award in the U.S. Dramatic category.
She is undoubtedly one of Hollywood's most breath-taking celebrities.
And Rosie Huntington-Whiteley was a vision of beauty as she exited cosmetics store Violet Grey in West Hollywood on Tuesday.
The stunner, who owns her own make-up line, left with a bag full of goodies but struggled to maintain her modesty in a slinky top as she went braless.
All eyes on her: Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, 29, was a vision of beauty as she exited cosmetics store Violet Grey in West Hollywood on Tuesday
Rosie showed off her toned arms and shoulders in a rose-coloured, satin top with draped sleeves.
The UK-born star paired her blouse with a set of cropped, black jeans and strappy high heels.
She accessorized with gold, layered necklaces, hoop earrings, oversize shades and her engagement ring. Rosie also toted a box, chain purse.
Dowtown girl: Rosie showed off her toned arms in a rose-coloured, satin top with draped sleeves
The model, who constantly travels, is often seen rocking her favorite pair of cropped, black jeans.
Her jet-setting ventures could explain the reason behind her choice to recycle her clothing.
In an interview with Vogue UK, Rosie revealed her decision to pack less, thus resulting in a four-choice colour palette.
'Recently, I've challenged myself,because I come back and forth from LA so frequently, to pack less.'
Classic colouring: The UK-born star paired her blouse with a set of cropped, black jeans and high heels
Simple additions: She accessorized with gold, layered necklaces, hoop earrings, oversize shades and her engagement ring. Rosie also toted a box, chain purse
'The last few times I've thought, "Ok, this is crazy, I pack so much, I don't wear any of it, I need to get more organised." So I said to myself, "I'm only going to pack four colours: navy blue, white, grey and black."
'The same with shoes, the same with accessories, the same with all my clothes.'
Rosie realized how simplifying her life truly made a difference.
Sporty! That same day the model slipped into workout attire
'It was amazing because basically it meant that everything worked together,' she began.
'The white shirt worked with the black jeans; and then the black jeans worked with the grey sweater; and the grey sweater worked with the white pants, so everything was interchangeable and versatile.'
They have hosted Bill Murray and several members of their family in Italy for days.
And it certainly looked like George and Amal Clooney wanted their entire group to have the A-list treatment.
The 55-year-old actor and his 38-year-old wife were dressed to the nines along with the rest of the group as they enjoyed a day on the town in Lake Como on Monday.
Summer chic: George and Amal Clooney were dressed to the nines along with the rest of the group as they enjoyed a day on the town in Lake Como, Italy on Monday
Legend: They were joined by pal Bill Murray, who is pictured walking next to Clooney's longtime friend Karen Duffy
Included in the group of people were George's father and mother, Nick and Nina Clooney, as well as several other loved ones.
The handsome troop were all smiles as they chatted it up before boarding a taxi boat to head to a restaurant for dinner.
Amal was definitely the belle of the ball as she sported a shiny white nightie-inspired gown featuring a lacy detailing all over it.
Done up: The A-listers were joined by a large group of family members
Good company: George's mother Nina Clooney (pictured right) was among the group on the outing
She teamed the frock with a pair of shimmering silver wraparound heels, which she showed off as she was helped on the boat by George.
The The British-Lebanese lawyer and activist accessorised with a large gold clutch and huge dangling jewelled earrings.
Amal wore her raven-coloured tresses down flowing over her shoulders as she sported natural, complimentary make-up on her face topped off with a swipe of dark red lip.
George looked dapper in a powder blue suit over a white dress shirt with the top few buttons undone to show off his chest.
Loved up: The 55-year-old actor and his 38-year-old wife were arm-in-arm
Beaming: The crew boarded a taxi boat to a restaurant as George greeted the shipman with a smile
Dapper: George looked good in a powder blue suit over an unbuttoned dress shirt and a white leather belt
Stunning: Amal was definitely the belle of the ball as she sported a shiny white nightie-inspired gown featuring a lacy detailing all over it
What a gent! George offered up a helping hand to his lady love
He held the trousers up with a white leather belt and had his signature salt and pepper hair combed to the side as he sported a big of grizzled scruff.
Not to be outdone, Bill sported his best black dinner jacket over a white dress shirt and matching white trousers.
The 65-year-old Lost In Translation star looked like the perfect gentleman as he walked alongside a mystery woman while walking to the boat taxi.
The outing comes a week after he was spotted taking in Fourth of July fireworks aboard a boat with George, Amal and several others as they celebrated Independence Day.
She has channelled style chameleon Kim Kardashian in the past.
So it comes as no surprise to see glamour model Imogen Anthony once again impersonating the Forbes front cover star in her latest post to Instagram.
Wearing just a pair of black Brazilian cut knickers, the 25-year-old rested one half of her pert derriere against a white bench top.
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'When a butt cheek can officially rest on something': Imogen Anthony channels Kim Kardashian's famous beachside photoshoot as she shows off pert derriere in Brazilian-cut knickers
'When a butt cheek can officially rest on something,' the girlfriend of shock jock Kyle Sandilands captioned the risque image.
Adding: 'L.O.V.E my new little arm addition by my babygirl.'
Imogen also went without a bra and used one of her arms to strategically protect her modesty, while using the other hand to take a picture of her reflection in the mirror.
New tattoo: The 25-year-old paid tribute to her mother with a new love heart tattoo with the word 'mummy' emblazoned across the middle
The professional poser also made sure to show off her new 'mummy' tattoo which was etched into the back of her arm days earlier.
Imogen's mark, drawn by her fellow friend and tattoo artist Lauren Winzer, paid tribute to her mother Felicity.
The upload mimics the reality star's beachside shoot, which included the 35-year-old posing in an itty-bitty gold G-string bikini.
In the shoot, the mother-of-two proudly revealed the truly jaw-dropping size of her behind as she perched on the side of a red rowing boat in Thailand more than two years ago.
'My dark side came out to play': Imogen (left) dazzled fans as she unveiled a dramatic new look on Tuesday, channelling style chameleon Kim (right)
The upload comes weeks after Imogen dazzled fans as she unveiled a dramatic new look - once again replicating Kim's famous features in a picture posted to her social media.
The snap showed the White Trash Royalty fashion designer without her vibrant pink tresses for a long black mane.
She captioned the picture: 'My dark side came out to play today - What do you think?'
Fans were quick to heap praise on the new look, with one commenting: 'Highlights your gorgeous eyes... love it.'
'Love it! You rock any colour though,' said another follower, while another added: 'You look classy....suits u...but so does blonde' [sic].
Her father is an iconic Hollywood hardman, who has made a career out of hunting down the bad guys.
But Clifton Collins Jr. seemed to have no qualms about packing on the PDA with the star's daughter, Francesca, at the afterparty for her latest movie, Outlaws And Angels.
Following a PDA-heavy appearance on the red carpet, the 22-year-old star of the film and the 46-year-old actor shared a tender clinch and a steamy kiss at the bash in Beverly Hills.
Clifton Collins Jr. seemed to have no qualms about packing on the PDA with the Clint Eastwood's daughter, Francesca, at the afterparty for her latest movie, Outlaws And Angels
Cosying up to each other on the red carpet the rising actress and Pacific Rim star weren't feeling camera shy, as they packed on the PDA.
Cuddling up to the brunette beauty, the Triple Nine star placed a sweet kiss on her cheek as they prepared to head into the premiere.
And later on at the bash held after the star-studded event, the two thespians were seen sharing a steamy kiss.
Sticking close to each other's side at the soiree, the stunning Final Girl star could barely keep a smile off of her face as the handsome bearded actor lavished attention on her.
VERY cosy: Following a PDA-heavy appearance on the red carpet, the 22-year-old star of the film and the 46-year-old actor shared a tender clinch and a steamy kiss at the bash in Beverly Hills
A real angel: Their steamy display followed hot on the heels of Francesca's striking appearance on the red carpet at the premiere
Beaming as the Capote actor caught her in a tender embrace, Francesca looked thoroughly delighted.
MailOnline has contacted representatives of the stars for comment.
The pair's affectionate display came after Francesca put on a show-stealing display on the red carpet of the Western film's premiere.
Opting to channel an old-school Tinsel Town vibe, the actress dazzled in a cream gown which contrasted against her red lipstick.
All smiles: Sticking close to each other's side at the soiree, the stunning Final Girl star could barely keep a smile off of her face as the handsome bearded actor lavished attention on her
Happy lady: Beaming as the Capote actor caught her in a tender embrace, Francesca looked thoroughly delighted
Whispering sweet nothings? The duo were near insperable for most of the evening
Showing a tantalizing amount of skin in the low-back frock, which cinched at her waist before cascading to the floor, Francesca certainly looked every inch the silver screen siren.
Highlighting her svelte frame in the high-neck garment, the brunette beauty complemented the neutral ensemble with matching heels.
The breathtaking beauty added a bold red lipstick, brown eye shadow and shimmery pink blush to define her striking and beautiful features.
Keeping to her simple yet sizzling look, Francesca chose to leave her brunette tresses loose with a deep side part.
She's a star: Opting to channel an old-school Tinsel Town vibe, the actress dazzled in a cream gown which contrasted against her red lipstick
Goddess: Showing a tantalizing amount of skin in the low-back frock, which cinched at her waist before cascading to the floor, Francesca certainly looked every inch the silver screen siren
She's a ten: The breathtaking beauty added bold red lipstick, brown eye shadow and shimmery pink blush
Francesca finished off her stunning ensemble with a gold bangle, diamond studded earrings and a ring.
And after her solo sashay she was joined by Clifton, who looked handsome in an all-black ensemble.
The star, who sported a scraggly beard, donned a black button up shirt with dark hued trousers and a suede blazer.
Beautiful lady: Francesca finished off her stunning ensemble with a gold bangle, diamond studded earrings and a ring; pictured with Clifrton
Sealed with a kiss: And after her solo sashay she was joined by Clifton, who looked handsome in an all-black ensemble
Joy: The Pacific Rim star, who sported a scraggly beard, donned a black button up shirt with dark hued trousers and a suede blaze
And another guest clamoring for Francesca's attention was her mother, actress Frances Fisher.
The 64-year-old attended her daughter's premiere in black cropped leggings, pairing it with a sheer top.
The British-born actress, who showed a hint of her bra in the see-through patterned blouse, couldn't stop smiling while with her daughter at the premiere.
Family first: The dark haired beauty posed with her mother, actress Frances Fisher
Having a laugh: The British-born actress, who showed a hint of her bra in the see-through patterned blouse, couldn't stop smiling while with her daughter at the premiere
She's a ten: The star stopped to sign autographs for her fans before heading inside the theater
Also at the premiere was her costar, Chad Michael Murray; the actor plays the male lead in the film, which is set to be released in the US on July 14.
The 34-year-old arrived with his wife actress Sarah Roemer; the couple welcomed their son in May 2015.
Sarah, 31, looked lovely in fitted black dress, finishing off her chic ensemble with strappy gold heels.
Luke Wilson, 44, looked handsome in a navy tuxedo with a light blue button up shirt and cream sneakers.
Dapper: Also at the premiere was her costar, Chad Michael Murray; the actor plays the male lead in the film, which is set to be released in the US on July 14
Good looking couple: The 34-year-old arrived with his wife actress Sarah Roemer; the couple welcomed their son in May 2015
Elegant: Sarah, 31, looked lovely in fitted black dress, finishing off her chic ensemble with strappy gold heels
Former journalist-turned-Bachelorette, Georgia Love, gave up her career to find a man.
And it looks like she's taken to the dance floor to find him, with the brunette beauty seen boogying with a mystery suitor on a solo date in Sydney on Tuesday.
Following a round of ice-skating, the ex-WIN News personality was spotted with the hunky man, cutting a glamorous figure as they danced together in front of a live band at Kings Cross night spot.
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Night on the town! Georgia Love appears to have taken to the dance floor to find love, as the brunette beauty was spotted boogying with a mystery suitor oduring a solo date in Sydney on Tuesday
Georgia put her tanned and toned pins on display in a short black leather miniskirt and a red cut-out blouse.
She teamed the look with a white leather jacket and had her chocolate locks out in waves to her shoulders.
Her male pal meanwhile wore a grey T-shirt with an unbuttoned denim collared shirt on top, paired with dark jeans.
Dancing the night away: The ex-WIN News personality held hands with her love interest and danced to a band
All glammed up: Georgia put her tanned and toned pins on display in a short black leather miniskirt and a red cut-out blouse
Time of her life! Georgia appeared in high spirits on the evening and smiled and laughed as her pal twirled her around to the music
Georgia appeared in high spirits on the evening and smiled and laughed as her pal twirled her around to the music.
He seemed happy to dance with Georgia and showed off his moves, putting his arms in the air as they had fun.
At one point, he moved closer to his leading lady and put his arms around her waist, looking as if he were about to kissing her.
The venue was romantically set up for the pair to include dark lighting, live music and candles scattered around the place.
Chemistry: At one point, the mystery man moved closer to Georgia and put his arms around her waist, looking close to kissing her
Spinning around: He seemed happy to dance with Georgia and showed off his moves, putting his arms in the air as they had fun
Romantic setting: The venue was romantically set up for the pair to include dark lighting, live music and candles scattered around the place
At one point, the man could be seen sitting on a couch with Georgia and pouring her a glass of champagne.
Georgia also got some touch-ups on the night, with a make-up artist reapplying some lip gloss, perhaps suggesting she had rubbed some off on her male suitor.
The night at the bar came after some time out in the cold weather as the duo ice-skated around a rink built in Sydney's CBD for the winter.
If only we all had that! Georgia also got some touch-ups on the night, with a make-up artist reapplying some lip gloss on her face
Steady on! At one point, the man could be seen sitting on a couch with Georgia and pouring her a glass of champagne
Chatting away: She could be seen talking to some crew members throughout the evening
Hydrating: In between glasses of champagne, Georgia was sure to remain hydrated
Just last month it was confirmed that Georgia was the new Bachelorette.
She revealed at the time to The Daily Telegraph that she quit her WIN job to chase her dreams of love.
'I've gotten to a point in my life where I've realised I want to prioritise myself more than my career and the thing that is missing is love and this is my number one focus right now,' she told the publication.
New gig: Just last month it was confirmed that Georgia was the new Bachelorette
She's serious: She revealed at the time that she quit her TV anchor role to chase her dreams of love
She said she quit her job because doubling up on television 'wouldn't have worked for either party.'
She also admitted that leaving her job in the hopes of snagging a man is risky, with 18 men competing for her affections.
'That makes the whole thing even scarier and exciting and more daunting because I've worked really hard my whole career to get to this point and I've loved what I've done but this is how serious I am that I want to find somebody and I want to settle down that I've actually taken a step away from all that.'
Leap of faith: She also admitted that leaving her job in the hopes of snagging a man is risky, with 18 men competing for her affections
Australian model and TV presenter Annalise Braakensiek is known for showing off her stunning figure in bikinis.
But on Tuesday, the photogenic 43-year-old swapped her two piece for a T-shirt for a good cause.
The personality shared a snap to her Instagram wearing a Save The Box top, part of a campaign for gynaecological cancer.
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Lending her support: Australian model and TV presenter Annalise Braakensiek swapped her two piece for a Save The Box top on Tuesday, leading the celebrity pack in the campaign for gynaecological cancers
Close to her heart: The 43-year-old, who is known for flaunting her figure in bikinis, said she has lost loved ones from cancer and urged her fans to get involved with the campaign
Appearing to be make-up free in the snap, she looks off camera as she proudly wears the top with a black bucket hat and a star necklace.
'We can't just look away. Today 4 women will lose their lives to gynaecological cancer,' she began her post.
'I have lost too many loved ones to the hideous disease already. Thankfully one of my dearest friends has survived gynae (six) cancer. I don't know what I'd do without her. Please help raise funds needed to save lives, and stop the silence about gynaecological cancer,' part of the post continued.
Getting involved: Annalise led the celebrity pack getting behind the cause, with stars including Channel Nine's Rebecca Maddern wearing the tee in an Instagram snap to highlight the cause
United: Also throwing their support behind the campaign is the likes of Real Housewives of Melbourne star Gamble Breaux (L) and Studio 10 panellist Jessica Rowe (R)
The Save The Box campaign is an initiative of The Australia New Zealand Gynaecological Oncology Group (ANZGOG), to help raise funds into research into gynaecological diseases.
Annalise led the celebrity pack getting behind the cause, with stars including Channel Nine's Rebecca Maddern wearing the tee in an Instagram snap to highlight the cause.
Also getting involved were the likes of Deborah Knight, Johanna Griggs, Jessica Rowe, radio star Bianca Dye and Real Housewives of Melbourne's Gamble Breaux.
Stepping up! Seen here is Chris Bath and husband Jim Wilson wearing the T-shirts
Wearing them with pride: Pictured is Johanna Griggs (L) and Deborah Knight (R)
According to Cancer Australia of the Australian Government, types of gynaecological cancers include ovarian cancer and cervical cancer.
Annalise meanwhile, spoke earlier this month of her battle with depression, candidly sharing her own experience so as to help others.
She took to Instagram to share her struggle with her more than 32,000 followers.
In part of her post, she wrote: 'Mostly my heart sings with joy but I, as so many of us, have suffered incredible losses and have had people do me wrong, and sometimes I feel pain so deeply I'm immobilised by it.
'Depression is something so misunderstood and has such stigma attached to it'.
She said she wants to help get rid of the stigma and told her followers that they 'are not alone.'
For confidential help, call Lifeline at 13 11 14 or visit https://www.lifeline.org.au/
She's been taking it easy since welcoming her first child in January.
And Cat Deeley was treating herself to some retail therapy on Tuesday, hitting Barney's New York in Beverly Hills for some bargain hunting.
The 39-year-old TV presenter was impeccably dressed for her shopping session, sporting a chic white jumpsuit with cropped trousers.
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Shop til you drop: Cat Deeley was treating herself to some retail therapy on Tuesday, hitting Barney's New York in Beverly Hills for some bargain hunting
Cat looked radiant in the elegant one-piece, which she set off with leather boho-inspired accessories.
The British beauty wore a brown, metallic studded satchel over one shoulder and slipped her feet into a pair of strappy heels.
She styled her long blonde locks down loose, set off with a pair of gold hoop earrings.
The So You Think You Can Dance host - who welcomed her son with husband of four years, Patrick Kielty - has yet to make the name of their first child public.
Vision in white: Cat looked radiant in her elegant one-piece, which she set off with leather boho-inspired accessories
Coordinated to perfection: The British beauty wore a brown, metallic studded satchel over one shoulder and slipped her feet into a pair of strappy heels
Cat certainly had the glow that comes with motherhood, and she has said she's 'besotted with the baby.'
'People keep asking me if I've been hitting the gym, but I haven't! I think breastfeeding is key and it's worked well for me,' the British blonde recently told Closer magazine.
'Add to that running around after a new baby and you don't need to work out.'
Stylish: Cat's jumpsuit was nipped in at the waist with a large white belt, adding a fashionable flair to her look
Private couple: The So You Think You Can Dance host - who welcomed her son with husband of four years, Patrick Kielty - has yet to make the name of their first child public
The five-time Emmy nominee recently returned to hosting the 13th season of So You Think You Can Dance: The Next Generation.
'I hope any child we might have has Cats looks and my accent,' Patrick previously told the Birmingham Mail.
'With our two strong accents, we basically needed subtitles or a UN translator. Especially when wed all had a bit to drink.'
Back to work: The five-time Emmy nominee recently returned to hosting the 13th season of So You Think You Can Dance: The Next Generation
She's one of the most famous models of her generation.
So it was no surprise to see Heidi Klum oozing an effortless and chic vibe as she headed out for the evening in New York, on Tuesday evening.
Stepping out in the city's uber-trendy SoHo area, the 43-year-old Project Runway star showcased her summer sass in a fitted white jumpsuit.
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All white on the night: Heidi Klum oozed an effortless and chic vibe as she headed out for the evening in New York, on Tuesday evening
Heading out for a quiet evening in Manhattan, the blonde bombshell oozed a graceful glamour as she hopped out of her car.
Opting for a simple yet stylish look, the America's Got Talent judge slipped her lithe frame into a floaty white jumpsuit.
Featuring a halter-neck design, which subtly drew attention to her delicate decolletage, the model's flared one-piece also featured a cinched-in waistline that highlighted her trim and toned figure.
She rounded off her look with a pair of white open-toe stilettos, which served to further highlight her figure in an undersated manner whilst sticking to her relaxed yet fashion savvy theme.
Simple is chic: Stepping out in the city's uber-trendy SoHo area, the 43-year-old Project Runway star showcased her summer sass in a fitted white jumpsuit featuring flared trousers
Keeping her look breezy and uncluttered, the model only chose to accesorise her outfit with a pair of gold hooped earrings, a handful of rings and a banana yellow MCM handbag.
Wearing her blonde locks in a funky up do the stunning German mode and mother-of-four showcased her youthful and striking features.
Opting for a simple palette of make-up, the star picked out her eyes with a flash of mascara whilst she also added scarlet lipstick to plump up and define her lips.
But it wasn't Heidi's first stylish appearance of the day, as she managed to wow in a LBD as she marked Project Runway's 15th season with an appearance on Good Morning America.
Still got it: Heidi Klum marked Project Runway's 15th season with an appearance on Good Morning America
Joining her fellow judges Nina Garcia and Zac Posen for an early chat on the legendary Times Square set in New York, Heide ensured she stood out in the a fashion classic.
The German model looked stunning as always in a form-fitting off the shoulder little black dress.
The Victoria's Secret vet added the perfect touch of colour with a pair of red strappy heels and a pastel yellow handbag.
Her make-up was as understated as it was unnecessary, as she tied back her sun-kissed blonde hair into a loose pony, revealing a large pair of pink hoops as the outfit's finishing touch.
Wow: The German model looked stunning as always in a form-fitting off the shoulder little black dress
In the know: The 43-year-old joined her fellow judges Nina Garcia and Zac Posen to for an early chat on the legendary Times Square set in New York
She added the perfect touch of colour with a pair of red strappy heels and a pastel yellow handbag.
Natural beauty: Her make-up was as understated as it was unnecessary
Heidi posted a few behind the scenes shots as she chatted with the shows stalwart Robin Roberts and newcomer Michael Strahan.
Proving she's got the moves to go with the looks, she also shared a slow-motion clip of herself dancing with 35-year-old Posen.
'Nothing like morning tv!!' he wrote, reposting the vid. 'Morning dance @goodmorningamerica with the perfect 10 @heidiklum'.
Finale: She tied back her sun-kissed blonde hair into a loose pony, revealing a large pair of pink hoops as the outfit's finishing touch
On set: Heidi posted a few behind the scenes shots as she chatted with the shows stalwart Robin Roberts and newcomer Michael Strahan
Morning excercise: Proving she's got the moves to go with the looks, she also shared a slow-motion clip of herself dancing with 35-year-old Posen
Quick step: 'Nothing like morning tv!!' he wrote, reposting the vid. 'Morning dance @goodmorningamerica with the perfect 10 @heidiklum'.
Later in the day Heidi slipped into something more comfortable, as she was spotted nipping into her hotel and re-emerging in jeans and a loose-fitting top.
She even swapped out her shoes, bag and earrings to make it a complete outfit do-over.
Hopefully she didn't run into Hilary Duff, who was also walking about NYC wearing the exact same pair of jeans.
Splash: She added the perfect touch of colour with a pair of red strappy heels and a pastel yellow handbag
Quick change: Later in the day Heidi slipped into something more comfortable, as she was spotted nipping into her hotel and re-emerging in jeans and a loose-fitting top
New look: She even swapped out her shoes, bag and earrings to make it a complete outfit do-over
Snap: Hopefully she didn't run into Hilary Duff, who was also walking about NYC wearing the exact same pair of jeans
The day before, a delighted-looking Klum was spotted in New York after being reunited with her children following her recent trip to London.
Heidi beamed as she strolled along with ten-year-old Henry, Johan, 9, and Lou Sulola, 6, whom she shares with ex-husband Seal. Her eldest daughter Helene - or Leni - was absent.
The mom-of-four certainly seemed to have enjoyed her time away, as she was pictured engaging in several PDAs with 29-year-old boyfriend Vito Schnabel as they watched Wimbledon.
Milestone: Project Runway hosts Tim Gunn, Heidi, Nina Garcia, and Zac Posen all celebrated the shows 15th season together
Fabulous four: The group posed behind a cake which was made to look like a sewing machine
Yum: Heidi did not hesitate hand-feeding Tim
Proud moment: The cast shared a laugh together during the celebration
She has faced one of the most turbulent periods in her personal life in recent months as she and ex-husband Guy Ritchie battled through the international court system for custody of their teen son Rocco.
But Madonna has made a huge step in healing her family's rift as she united all four of her children for an emotional visit to Malawi, where both her adopted children David and Mercy were born.
The pop superstar and her family visited the African nation this week as she checked on the progress of a medical centre she is supporting in the southern city of Blantyre.
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Moving on: Madonna has made a huge step in healing her family's rift following her custody battle over Rocco (above) as she united all four of her children for an emotional visit to Malawi
It is the first trip the whole family have taken since 15-year-old Rocco went to live with his director father in London rather than staying in school in New York.
The bitter battle was settled out of court following a plea from presiding judge Mr Justice MacDonald and the Queen of Pop and her son were reunited in April at her London home.
She said afterwards she wanted to 'heal the wounds' of her family - and the life-changing trip to Africa seems to have done the trick.
The proud mum, 57, regularly posted pictures of her with Rocco, eldest daughter Lourdes, and David and Mercy as they toured the country.
Family affair: Madonna returned to the African nation where she adopted her children David and Mercy (above) were born last week
Emotional: Lourdes also went on the trip, where the family visited a local orphanage.
Good spirits: Madonna looked happy as she enjoyed the first trip the whole family have taken since 15-year-old Rocco went to live with his director father in London rather than staying in school in New York
Checking in: Madonna spoke to a team of pediatric doctors and journalists after evaluating progress being made at the construction of the medical centre she is supporting
Huge steps: The singer visited the building site of a paediatric surgery and Malawi's first ever intensive care unit
After checking out the progress of a paediatric surgery and Malawi's first ever intensive care unit, 10-year-old David returned to his native village of Lipunga, close to Malawi's border with Zambia to see his family and receive his tribal name in a special ceremony.
As Madonna updated fans on the family's trip, however, she mistakenly used an emoji of the Kenyan flag, which is also made up of similar green, red and black blocks.
Posting under the photo, one commentor wrote: 'Should have educated her about the flag.'
While another added: 'Please replace the Kenyan flags with our Malawi flag in this post.'
Despite the faux pas, Madonna organised a harmonious meeting between David and his father, Yohane Banda - who claims the star is 'happy' again now she has been reunited with her son.
In an exclusive interview, he told MailOnline: 'I only want the best for my child and I was concerned for him when the custody battle with Rocco was happening.
'There was a rift and it has now been healed.'
Moving: David returned to his native village of Lipunga, close to Malawi's border with Zambia to see his family and receive his tribal name in a special ceremony
Flag faux pas: As Madonna updated fans on the family's trip, however, she mistakenly used an emoji of the Kenyan flag, which is also made up of similar green, red and black blocks - angering some fans
Madonna took son Rocco, daughter Lourdes and adopted daughter Mercy to David's home village of Lipunga, close to Malawi's border with Zambia to see his family and receive his tribal name.
Yohane said any tension disappeared as soon as he clapped eyes on his son whom he had not seen since he gave him up for adoption at 13 months in 2006 when his mother died.
'I am extremely positive about Madonna. I can do nothing but praise her,' he told MailOnline.
'I am happy. As far as I am concerned, I was told by Madonna that the boy will come back to me once he has been educated.
'Nothing has changed in that respect. David was allowed to come here and explore, he said he would come regularly to the village.
'It is encouraging, and it is what I have known all along, even though everyone else told me he wouldn't come back.'
Going forward: The trip united Madonna's children after a bitter court battle between her and ex Guy Ritchie after Rocco, 15, went to live with him last year. The former couple settled the matter outside of the court system on request of a presiding judge in London
She's hard at work promoting her latest movie offering, teen thriller Nerve.
And Emma Roberts ensured all eyes were well and truly on her as she arrived at her New York City hotel on Tuesday before a series of television appearances.
The actress, 25, rocked a futuristic fringed frock in shiny silver material, which served to accentuated her toned figure.
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Silver siren: Emma Roberts ensured all eyes were on her as she arrived at her New York City hotel on Tuesday wearing a futuristic fringed frock
Teaming her metallic gown with a pair of black strappy killer heels, the Scream Queens starlet certainly dressed to impress as she strutted her stuff.
Emma - who is the niece of Hollywood legend Julia Roberts - wore her platinum blonde locks poker straight and opted for natural make-up to accentuate her striking looks.
The actress was arriving back at her hotel after filming an appearance on Watch What Happens Live alongside Nerve co-star Dave Franco.
Emma also has starred opposite Dave's famous older brother James Franco, 38, and was asked by the host Andy Cohen who was the better kisser during her appearance on the chat show.
Working it: Teaming her metallic gown with a pair of black strappy killer heels, the Scream Queens starlet, 25, certainly dressed to impress as she strutted her stuff inside
Dave, she said, while also claiming Dave makes her laugh more but is more obsessed with his looks than his brother.
In a compassionate moment she said shed give her kidney to Dave over James.
When asked about the date for his pending nuptials to Mad Men star Alison Brie, Dave replied: Good question.
Adding: When we got more into the details of planning the wedding we realised that were both pretty horrible at it, and we dont like to do it.
We kept on simplifying itso we might just elope and throw a party at the house, he continued.
Hard at work: The actress was arriving back at her hotel after filming an appearance on Watch What Happens Live alongside Nerve co-star Dave Franco
Pucker up! Emma also has starred opposite Dave's famous older brother James Franco, 38, and was asked by the host Andy Cohen who was the better kisser during her appearance on the chat show
Revealing all: Dave, she said, while also claiming Dave makes her laugh more but is more obsessed with his looks than his brother
Cute couple: Dave and Alison Brie, pictured in June in New York City, confirmed their engagement last August
In a game of Plead The Fifth, Emma refused to say who was the biggest diva between Lea Michele and Ariana Grande her Scream Queens co stars.
She named her least favourite Julia Roberts movie as Mothers Day while admitting that she hadnt even seen recent films anyway.
During a game of Sh*g, Marry, Kill, Emma opted to wed Liam Hemsworth, have sex with Nick Jonas and murder Dave Franco.
Talking of The Real Housewives Of Beverly Hills, Emma said she was Team [Lisa] Vanderpump all the way.
On the head: Emma smashed bottles on host Andy Cohen's head during another game
Im dying to get a group together and go to Pump, she said, referring to one of Lisa Vanderpumps restaurants.
Host Andy asked Dave what was the 'least sexiest' thing about his Neighbors co-star Zac Efron.
Almost too shredded,' Dave replied while admitting that he was reaching.
So hot its not hotit cancels itself out, Andy laughed.
Instagram star The Fat Jewish was behind the bar on the fun-filled show.
Elise, Matt and Trent will join Elena in the MasterChef Australia final after their Blue Team won the food truck challenge on Wednesday night's episode.
The trio pleased both the 200-strong crowd and the judges with their tuna with pineapple salsa and avocado, as well as their chicken with bourbon and ginger glaze and fennel salad dishes.
But it was a fundamental error by the opposing Red Team of Mimi, Harry and Brett that decided the winner - they didn't remove the 'poop chute' from their prawns, leaving them heading to the elimination round of the show.
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Winners and losers: It was a fundamental error by the Red Team of Mimi, Harry and Brett that gave the Blue Team the win during MasterChef's food truck challenge on Wednesday, after they left in the prawn 'poop chute'
'There are three things that so often bring people undone in the MasterChef kitchen,' the judges said. 'Bones in fish, undercooked chicken...and leaving poop chutes in prawns.'
When the three judges plus guest chef Wes Avila from Guerrilla Tacos tried the dish, George Calombaris refused to eat his prawn, saying the unremoved part 'put him off'.
All four agreed the dish was otherwise great, praising the fresh corn and capsicum additions and the charring of the prawn, and George said it 'had the bones of a good dish' but the details let it down.
Fatal flaw: The simple oversight left the trio heading into the elimination round, just weeks out from the finals
Mix up: The team members thought the offending parts had already been removed
'It puts me off': When the judges tried the dish, George Calombaris refused to eat his prawn
Letdown: All four agreed the dish was otherwise great, praising the fresh corn and capsicum additions and the charring of the prawn, and George said it 'had the bones of a good dish' but the details let it down
The team had previously thought the prawns had already had the offending parts removed before cooking began, but it would seem this was not the case for the whole batch of 150.
The Red Team also tripped up when it ran out of time for its soft-shell crab tacos - having to dump the entire taco concept and prepare the crab by itself without the tortilla.
It looked good on the plate, but the judges were disappointed, saying it would have been 'so much better' in a taco.
Oversight: The team had previously thought the prawns had already had the offending parts removed before cooking began, but it would seem this was not the case for the whole batch of 150
Rushed: The Red Team also tripped up when it ran out of time for its soft-shell crab tacos - having to dump the entire taco concept and prepare the crab by itself without the tortilla
Blue didn't escape criticism either.
While the judges loved their tuna dish, they felt it was a bit too 'simple' and 'old school' for that stage of the competition.
'It was beautifully cooked, but we asked ourselves, "could you have done more with it?"' Matt said during the end wrap up.
Matt, whose dream is to open a food truck, put his heart and soul into pushing his team forward with the chicken dish of his own creation, which the judges loved.
'Could you have done more with it?' Blue didn't escape criticism either - while the judges loved their tuna dish but felt it was a bit too 'simple' and 'old school' for that stage of the competition
Big hit: While it drew some criticism for its simplicity from the judges, the tuna was very popular with the public
'It's super juicy and I love the colour and flavour. They really have set the bar high,' Gary Mehigan said. The big hunk of meat with the refreshing salad was only nit picked for being a bit hard to eat on the go.
Matt was ecstatic with the result and said it had him 'hooked instantly' on the concept. 'I wouldn't want to be anywhere else right now, he said.
He added: 'There is absolutely no doubt this is a competition highlight for me. To have a snapshot of what life is gonna be like after this competition and, at the end of that, get a ticket through to finals week... that's as good as it gets.'
Classic LA: The six contestants were divided into two teams with each running a food truck serving 200 people by the iconic Santa Monica Beach pier in Los Angeles
Popular: Huge lines quickly formed and beachgoers had to be turned away when the trucks eventually ran out of food
Local expert: Wes Avila (2nd from left) from Guerrilla Tacos joined the panel as a guest chef
The six contestants were divided into two teams with each running a food truck serving 200 people by the iconic Santa Monica Beach pier in Los Angeles.
The winning team would join Elena in finals week, after she earned early entry for winning the Nappa Valley grape challenge on Tuesday night.
The losing red team will battle it out in an elimination Pressure Test tomorrow in Curtis Stone's Beverly Hills restaurant, for the last two spots in the finals.
It was only last week that Douglas Booth was linked to Prince Harry's ex-girlfriend Cressida Bonas.
But the 24-year-old actor has now been spotted sharing a passionate kiss with actress Bel Powley, also 24, outside a bar in central London on Tuesday night.
Douglas and his A Storm In The Stars co-star were seen gazing into one another's eyes as the handsome Romeo And Juliet actor caressed her cheek.
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Public kiss: Douglas Booth and his A Storm In The Stars co-star Bel Powley were seen sharing a kiss outside a bar in central London on Tuesday night
The helmet-clad pair then locked lips in the street before heading off on their bicycles.
MailOnline has contacted both stars' representatives for comment.
Bel and Douglas are thought to have met on the set of period romance A Storm In The Stars, which began filming in Dublin and in Luxembourg earlier this year.
On set romance? Bel and Douglas are thought to have met on the set of period romance A Storm In The Stars, which began filming in Dublin and in Luxembourg earlier this year
Haifaa Al-Mansour's film looks at the romance between 18-year-old Mary Shelley, played by Fanning, and Douglas Booth's Percy Bysshe Shelley.
It takes place years before Shelley published Frankenstein, which is often described as the first science fiction novel.
Bel is best known for her role in coming-of-age drama The Diary of a Teenage Girl opposite Kristen Wiig and Alexander Skarsgard, as well as appearances in Benidorm and A Royal Night Out.
Rising star: Bel is best known for her role in coming-of-age drama The Diary of a Teenage Girl opposite Kristen Wiig and Alexander Skarsgard, as well as appearances in Benidorm and A Royal Night Out
Talented duo: Bel is best known for her role in coming-of-age drama The Diary of a Teenage Girl opposite Kristen Wiig and Alexander Skarsgard, while Douglas' credits include The Riot Club and Romeo and Juliet
The public embrace comes after Douglas sparked romance rumours with Cressida when the pair arrived at Centre Court at Wimbledon together last week.
Pride And Prejudice And Zombies actor Douglas starred in The Riot Club alongside Freddie Fox, who Cressida was previously linked to.
And Douglas himself was said to be dating his former co-stars Ellie Bamber and Vanessa Kirby.
Linked: The public embrace comes after Douglas sparked romance rumours with Prince Harry's ex Cressida Bonas when the pair arrived at Centre Court at Wimbledon together last week
Indeed, after wrapping filming on Pride And Prejudice And Zombies - a tongue in cheek retelling of the Jane Austen classic - he announced he was looking for a girlfriend.
Id love to have a girlfriend. I dont think Tinders the way Im going to find her somehow, he told Metro.
I dont think it would go down very well. Im not sure how it would work. Some of the people would just think it was fake.'
She's finally moving into her new Essex pad after a year of renovations.
And Lucy Mecklenburgh cut a casual figure in jeans and a jumper as she joined a female friend to move her belongings into her posh new pad on Wednesday.
The 24-year-old former TOWIE star's stuff was visible from within the removal van, including a giant poster of herself.
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Making a move: Lucy Mecklenburgh cut a casual figure in jeans and a jumper as she joined a female friend to move her belongings into her posh new Essex pad on Wednesday
No doubt's Lucy's framed FHM cover - which hails from September 2013 - will take pride of place in her newly-revamped pad.
Lucy looked ready for hard work in a pair of cropped jeans and a baggy grey top with a silver heart design.
She completed her off-duty ensemble with white trainers and barely-there make-up.
Perfect pin-up: No doubt's Lucy's framed FHM cover - which hails from September 2013 - will take pride of place in her newly-revamped pad
Laid-back look: Lucy looked ready for hard work in a pair of cropped jeans and a baggy grey top with a silver heart design
Casual vibes: She completed her off-duty ensemble with white trainers and barely-there make-up
Fresh start: Lucy has been renovating her new house for the past year and couldn't wait to move in
The Results With Lucy fitness pioneer and her pal didn't appear to do much heavy lifting, however, leaving the removal men to it as they headed out on a coffee run.
Lucy - who owns three houses - recently confessed she was proud of her property investment, admitting she spent almost 100,000 renovating her latest home.
'Ive been renovating it for nearly a year now. I basically knocked down a two-bed bungalow and started again with a three-bed, three-bathroom house.
Easy does it! The Results With Lucy fitness pioneer and her pal didn't appear to do much heavy lifting, however, leaving the removal men to it as they headed out on a coffee run
Financially savvy: Lucy - who owns three houses - recently confessed she was proud of her property investment, admitting she spent almost 100,000 renovating her latest home
Single lady: Lucy split from Olympic gymnast Louis Smith this spring
'Theres only me, so thats going to be plenty of room!', she recently told The Mirror.
Lucy has been focusing on expanding her fitness empire since her split from Olympic gymnast Louis Smith this spring.
Discussing the reasons behind their break-up, Lucy told The Sun: 'We had very separate lives and when we were together for a very long time, the cracks started to show.'
'It became clear that we were quite different,' she continued, explaining that the final straw was a romantic holiday to Thailand.
'We got back and it was obvious that for him it was done.'
Moving on: Lucy has been focusing on expanding her fitness empire since her break-up
Pick me up: The boutique owner needed a caffeine boost to keep her going through the day
She enjoyed a romantic getaway with her boyfriend Lewis Romano in the warm European summer.
And Laurina Fleure was already wishing she was back on holiday as flaunted her surgically enhanced assets while lounging in a pool wearing a floral one-piece.
The high-angle selfie was firmly focused on her bulging cleavage and helped to highlight her trim frame, while her pouting lips were the only part of her face included in the shot.
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Bronzed figure: Laurina Fleure was already wishing she was back on holiday as flaunted her surgically enhanced assets while lounging in a pool wearing a floral one-piece in an Instagram post on Wednesday
The former Bachelor contestant also showed off her toned legs beneath the waterline, and her skin appeared to be still bronzed from her holiday sunbathing.
It was not clear whether the photo was taken in her hometown of Melbourne or whether it was a throwback shot from her Mediterranean travels.
It was a strikingly similar pose, and angle, to one she shared in Ibiza as she appeared to be in absolute bliss, lapping up the sun and the water.
The 32-year-old put her ample assets on display in a floral bikini as she posed by her hotel's pool, and compared the weather to the cold she expected on her return home.
Absolute bliss: Laurina flaunted her surgically enhanced assets in a floral bikini as she soaked up the sun and the water while holidaying in Ibiza, Spain
Pity it will be too cold to show off this tan when I get back to Melbs!! the reality star captioned the picture while adding the hash-tags Ibiza, villa and 2016 to the post.
On Tuesday the I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here! star posted a photo from the Italian leg of her journey to again complain about Melbourne's chilly weather.
Wearing the same floral bikini as the Ibiza shot, Laurina showed off her taunt abs and bulging assets in the tiny two-piece as she relaxed in a pool.
Take me back! Wearing the same floral bikini as the Ibiza shot, Laurina showed off her taunt abs and bulging assets in the tiny two-piece as she relaxed in a pool
She leaned her elbows on the side of the pool and threw back her head with her eyes closed in ecstasy as her wet brunette hair fell down her back.
'Hazy hot dayz in Italy vs Coldest Melbourne Winter morning on record 2 weeks ago,' she wrote next to it on Instagram, adding the hash-tag 'still jetlagged'
Laurina and Lewis spent their month-long getaway in Europe visiting the Netherlands, Italy, and Spain.
But before their dream holiday, Laurina was left stranded in China's Guangzhou Airport for 16-hours after her Australian passport was stolen from her handbag during an international flight from Melbourne.
Troubles: Laurina was left stranded in China's Guangzhou Airport for 16 hours after her Australian passport was stolen from her handbag during an international flight from Melbourne - before her European holiday
Speaking to the Daily Mail Australia, the The Bachelor series two star explained that she had her handbag stored under the seat in front of her and was asleep when the incident allegedly took place.
The businesswoman was travelling to China with her mother to meet with a high school friend while also shopping for garments for her online boutique business.
'It is really bad. I had my passport in my handbag and my handbag was under the seat,' she confessed.
Dream trip: Laurina and her boyfriend Lewis Romano are on a month-long getaway to Europe and have visited the Netherlands, Italy and Spain so far
'I have a feeling the person who was sitting in front of me has helped themselves to my handbag and taken the passport.
'You would think it would be safe there but it seems anybody could reach from under their own seat and help themselves.
Despite a lost passport, Laurina could expect a marriage proposal from her boyfriend of more than a year after he told OK! magazine it was 'on the cards'.
When asked by the publication if he would pop the question during the holiday, he coyly replied: 'You never know. It's been a pretty quick and intense eight months.'
During the trip, they returned to Italy, where they first found love after being introduced overseas last year.
Teen Mom 2 star Chelsea Houska is set to become a mother again.
The reality star announced on Instagram that she and her fiance Cole DeBoer are expecting their first child together.
'And then there were four...' the 24-year-old captioned a photograph of her six-year-old daughter Aubree holding the baby's ultrasound, with Chelsea and Cole holding hands in the background.
And then there were four... chelseahouska.com A photo posted by Chelsea Houska (@chelseahouska) on Jul 12, 2016 at 5:34pm PDT
The MTV star shared the news as she launched her new website chelseahouska.com, revealing her baby is due in February.
'We are beyond excited for this journey and cant wait to share it with you all!' she wrote.
'Big sister Aubree is also extremely excited and its no secret that she is hoping for a girl haha,'
Chelsea also shared a snap of her multiple positive pregnancy tests.
'Had to take 3 because I couldn't believe it!' she said.
Big news: Teen Mom 2 star and fiance Cole DeBoer are expecting their first child together, after getting engaged in November
Third time's a charm: The reality star shared a snap of her pregnancy tests on her website Wednesday, telling fans 'had to take 3 because I couldn't believe it!'
Posting a close-up photo of her ultrasound, the excited South Dakota native wrote 'Our little cute patootie!'
The couple announced they were engaged in November, after meeting in 2014.
'I honestly can not believe how lucky I am,' she wrote on social media as she announced their engagement last year.
'Finally found my Prince Charming and I get to be with him for the rest of my life!'
On the way: 'Our little cute patootie!' the 24-year-old captioned her ultrasound
The former 16 And Pregnant star shares daughter Aubree with ex-partner Adam Lind.
Chelsea also took to Twitter on Wednesday to thank fans for their support and answer questions about her pregnancy and upcoming wedding.
While she previously said she wanted to wait until after she was married to have another child, the reality star said the wedding will still go ahead as planned.
'No way! I am even more excited to be married now,' she replied to a fan who asked if the wedding was being postponed.
'Having the wedding as planned. I cannot wait to be married!' she added.
Family: Chelsea, Cole and Aubree posed in their best USA gear for the Fourth of July holiday
The reality star said she's been having some morning sickness but that the family are all very excited to welcome the new addition.
'I've been having some nausea here and there but for the most part feeling great,' she said.
The couple don't yet know the baby's sex, but plan to find out and already have names picked out, Chelsea said.
And an excited Aubree gave her 'a huge hug' when she found out she was going to be a big sister, Chelsea said.
Sweet: The reality star said her six-year-old daughter Aubree is very excited and hoping for a little sister
'Super happy:' The pregnancy was a happy surprise, she told fans in a Twitter Q&A
Can't wait: The reality star said the couple have no plans to postpone the wedding
The 24-year-old admitted that she and Cole were planning to have a child together, they hadn't planned on it happening quite so quickly.
'We were very lucky but also surprised that it happened so fast!' she wrote, adding that it was 'not unplanned.
'Super happpy! we are very lucky,' she wrote.
And the Teen Mom 2 star gushed about her 'amazing supportive' fiance, who was by her side as she took her pregnancy tests.
'He's going to be the best' she said. 'Cole is the proudest man. He wears his 'best dad ever' shirt I got him allll the time.'
Proud dad: The 24-year-old said Cole was by her side as she took her pregnancy tests
Joanna Krupa has been modeling for decades, but appears to be in the best shape of her life right now at the age of 37.
So it's little wonder why the Real Housewives Of Miami vet has posed nude for issue 11 of Steve Shaw's treats! magazine. The Polish native looked stunning in her black-and-white portfolio where she wore only a few pieces of clothing here and there.
As for why the reality star wanted to take so much off, she said, 'I decided to do treats! because the magazine is pure art. We were all born naked and as long as its shot in an artistic way, I dont see anything wrong with it.'
Brave lady: Joanna Krupa took off her clothes for a stunning black-and-white portfolio for issue 11 of Steve Shaw's treats! magazine
In one shot Joanna showed off her perky chest as she put her right hand up to her perfectly tousled blonde locks.
All the toned cover girl had on was a black leather jacket tied loosely around her waist, as if it was about to fall off at any moment.
The looker appeared as if she had put in her time at the gym with a toned tummy and sculpted arms and legs.
Her take: As for why the reality star wanted to take so much off, she said, 'I decided to do treats! because the magazine is pure art. We were all born naked and as long as its shot in an artistic way, I dont see anything wrong with it'
In another shot the TV icon held onto her right breast as her zip-up bomber jacket was pulled off her shoulder.
Krupa, who is married to nightclub owner Romain Zago, had on no underwear and all that covered her lower lady parts was a 't' logo from treats!
Her hair and makeup were perfect and she posed with her lips parted.
Twice as nice: The knockout was also seen without a piece of clothing on as she turned her head for a backside snapshot that revealed plenty
The knockout was also seen without a piece of clothing on as she turned her head for a backside snapshot.
Both her chest and bottom were the focus of the photo, as she oozed sex appeal.
The former Dancing With The Stars contestant flashed her on-trend white manicure as she held onto her naked thigh.
A lot to take in: The Polish beauty was also seen topless as she pulled her hair and stared into the camera
The beauty was also seen topless as she pulled her hair and stared into the camera.
And in another shot, Joanna cradled her right arm as a zip-up bathing suit was pulled down to her lower arms. Her chest was on full display, and again her lips were parted.
The magazine is available online on Thursday from Shoptreatsmagazine.com and will be on newsstands later this month.
Ready for the pool: And in another shot, Joanna cradled her right arm as a zip-up bathing suit was pulled down to her lower arms. Her chest was on full display, and again her lips were parted
In her interview, the Poland's Next Top Model host talked about her life as a model.
'Ten years ago it was a lot harder to book big jobs; now with social media it seems there are new models making it every day,' she said.
'If someone has a big social media following, automatically they become an overnight sensation.'
She added some of her favorite models have been those from another era.
'I loved the supermodels of the 90s: Stephanie Seymour, Cindy Crawford, etc. Back then those were the true supermodels,' she said, weighing in on the 'what makes a supermodel debate.'
Her one and only man: Krupa is married to nightclub owner Romain Zago, who she is seen with her in Malibu last week
Some veteran models have said that newbies Kendall Jenner and Gigi Hadid are not real supermodels. Seymour even went so far as to call them 'bitches of the moment.'
Krupa also called the old guard 'gorgeous' and 'curvy.'
But her favorite pinup is from the 1960s.
Her inspiration: 'The most beautiful woman to me has always been Bridgette Bardot; she is one of the most amazing human beings that walked the earth,' she said
'The most beautiful woman to me has always been Bridgette Bardot; she is one of the most amazing human beings that walked the earth,' she said.
The new issue of treats! also includes Bryana Holly (shot by David Bellemere), Sanda Kubicka (Justin Macala), Hunter Mcgrady (James Macari), and Sarah McDaniel (Robert Voltaire).
Karlie Kloss wore her heart on her sleeve while out in New York.
The supermodel opted for a cute wrap dress with a sweet love heart pattern as she stopped by the Flatiron School to visit recipients of her Kode With Klossy computer science scholarships in Manhattan on Tuesday.
The 23-year-old added a stylish black handbag as she visited the coding camp, where she's sponsoring 80 high school girls to learn coding over the summer.
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City style: Karlie Kloss looked stylish while out in New York City on Tuesday
Karlie looked relaxed as she strolled down the busy street and later hailed a taxi.
The supermodel, who is currently studying at NYU, sponsors the summer camp to encourage high school girls to take up computer programming and coding, a cause close to her heart.
Karlie's cute wrap dress featured small black hearts over a light blue fabric, with loose cap sleeves.
Supermodel: The 23-year-old wore a light blue wrap dress covered in black and white hearts
She carried a black handbag with her name on the strap, and added chic sunglasses.
The cover girl added black, pointed flats that tied at the ankle, and left her blonde hair down.
The runway star has taken a step back from her modelling career to attend NYU's Gallatin School of Individualized Study, and just completed her freshman year.
Taxi! Karlie added pointed black flats and carried a leather handbag
Karlie, who fell in love with coding after taking a computer science course, meet up wtih some of her scholarship recipients on Tuesday.
Her excited students shared photos of the 23-year-old on Instagram as she stopped by to give the class a 'pep talk.'
The supermodel told Fast Company she loves spending time with her students, and believes learning to code is 'empowering.'
Close to her heart: Karlie shared a snap on Instagram as she stopped by her Kode With Klossy program. The supermodel sponsors scholarships for 80 high school girls to learn computer programming over the summer
'I have big goals of continuing to build the community of these young women, to not only stay in touch and support and encourage and challenge each other, but also learn from one another,' she said.
She takes off as much time from modelling as she can to be with the girls.
'Because selfishly, I really am so inspired and so excited by my experiences with the girls,' she said.
'Watching them have these aha moments and this empowerment that comes from learning something new and hard.'
She's the reality TV starlet who became a runway regular.
But after three years as one of the key David Jones ambassadors, Montana Cox has been dropped by the department store.
According to and article in The Daily Telegraph, published on Thursday, the former Australia's Next Top Model winner did not have her lucrative contract renewed and will finish her role with the brand at the end of this month.
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Dropped: Montana Cox has been dropped by David Jones after three years as one of the key ambassadors of the department store
However, the publication also noted the brunette beauty will still be taking to the catwalk at the upcoming Spring Summer launch in August, just not in her current capacity as an official ambassador.
The company's marketing general manager, Michiel Tops, has confirmed the 22-year-old is still set to be a part of the David Jones 'family'.
While Jesinta Campbell joined the ambassador ranks for the brand in 2015, there are no obvious front-runners to take Montana's place in the official line up, which currently includes Jessica Gomes and Jason Dundas.
Daily Mail Australia has contacted David Jones for comment.
Still sauntering down the runway: The brunette beauty is expected to still take to the catwalk at the upcoming Spring Summer launch in August, just not in her current capacity as an official ambassador
Contract over: The former Australia's Next Top Model winner's contract will reportedly run out with the store at the end of the month
Replacement? There are no obvious front-runners to take Montana's place in the official line up, which currently includes Jessica Gomes (front), Jason Dundas and Jesinta Campbell (right)
Earlier this year Montana fronted the department store's 'In My Jeans' campaign, sizzling in the campaign shots.
The news for the leggy stunner comes just months after her colleague Jessica Gomes reportedly inked a one-year deal to stay on with the brand, despite her burgeoning Hollywood career.
In May, PS Sydney reported the 30-year-old will stay on with the department store for another 12 months, for a rumoured $350,000.
The Perth-born beauty has been an ambassador for the department store for three years and regularly appears on the runway during Fashion Week and at new season collection launches.
Sizzling: Earlier this year Montana fronted the department store's 'In My Jeans' campaign, sizzling in the campaign shots
Staying: The news for the leggy stunner (left) comes just months after her colleague Jessica Gomes (right) reportedly inked a one-year deal to stay on with the brand, despite her burgeoning Hollywood career
Jessica's renewed commitment to the store, means Jesinta Campbell will continue to be number two to the LA-based model.
At a recent casting call, the exotic model revealed to the Daily Telegraph: 'We're looking for spunk, personality and an X Factor.'
As Jessica swapped the runway for the casting chair she added that she was looking for both men and women who are confident in their own skin.
'I think it's all about no labelling and just embracing everyone's individuality,' she also revealed to the paper.
It's been 20 years since audiences saw a young Ewan McGregor and Ewan Bemner pounding down the pavement to the beat of Iggy Pop's Lust For Life.
And it seems that Trainspotting 2 is going to pay homage to the iconic cinema moment, as the two actor's were seen recreating the opening credit scene during filming on Wednesday.
Heading back to Princes Street in Edinburgh - where they shot the scenes in 1995 - the Ewans were seen sprinting out of a shopping centre and down the street; presumably having stolen something.
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Dejavu: It seems that Trainspotting 2 is going to pay homage to the iconic cinema moment, as Ewan McGregor and Ewan Bemner were seen recreating the opening credit scene during filming on Wednesday
Sprinting, full-pelt out of a shopping mall, the two actors - who both received their big break in the film - looked to be in deep trouble once-again.
Clearly having not learnt any lessons, Renton (McrGregor) and Spud (Bremner) appear to be still living life in a decidedly dodgy way.
The opening credits for Danny Boyle's Oscar-nominated film saw the 49-year-old Star Wars actor and his co-star, 44, dropping wallets, videos and other items on the pavement as they ran down the street.
Running frantically away from two security guards to the high-tempo riff and beat of Iggy's '90s hit, a young McGregor and Bremner fly down the street before one of them is hit by a car.
Familiar: Heading back to Princes Street in Ediburgh - where they shot the scenes in 1995 (pictured right) - the Ewans were seen sprinting out of a shopping centre and down the street; presumably having stolen something
They never learn! Sprinting, full-pelt out of a shopping mall, the two actors - who both received their big break in the film - looked to be in deep trouble once-again
And while there was no sight of Hollywood legend Ewan being swatted aside by a car for a second time, the actor looked to have hardly aged since the 1996 movie.
Having upgraded Renton's wardrobe slightly, the Fargo star was dressed in a grey tee-shirt , black harrington, skinny jeans and Adidas trainers.
Having allowed his hair to grow out a minuscule amount from his days of shooting heroine in Mother Superior's flat, the middle-aged Renton looks to have defied the ravages of age rather well.
Spud also appears to have changed very little, with Renton's dimwitted side-kick sporting a plethora of manic expressions on his face, as well, as an interesting swerve on fashion.
What a steal! Clearly having not learnt any lessons, Renton (McrGregor) and Spud (Bremner) appear to be still living life in a decidedly dodgy way - having stolen an iPad from the Apple shop
Back in time: The opening credits for Danny Boyle's Oscar-nominated film saw the 49-year-old Star Wars actor and his co-star, 44, dropping items on the pavement as they ran down the street
That moment: Running frantically away from two security guards to the high-tempo riff and beat of Iggy's '90s hit, a young McGregor and Bremner fly down the street before one of them is hit by a car
Dressed in a leather jacket, floral green shirt, baggy chinos and trainers, Spud has also retaine his original haircut.
However, it seems that some things have changed with times, as the pair have been robbing an Apple shop.
Strolling nonchalantly between iMacs and chatting away to one of the company's 'Geniuses', the duo appear just like any other customers - that is till Spud tears out of the store with an iPad in his hand.
Filming for the sequel - which many assume to be based on Porno, Irvine Welsh's sequel to his novel Trainspotting - has been on-going since May.
have you even aged? While there was no sight of Hollywood legend Ewan being swatted aside by a car for a second time, the actor looked to have hardly aged since the 1996 movie
A healthier look (just): Having upgraded Renton's wardrobe slightly, the Fargo star was dressed in a grey tee-shirt , black harrington, skinny jeans and Adidas trainers
Moving with the times: However, it seems that some things have changed with times, as the pair have been robbing an Apple shop
Eyes on the prize: Strolling nonchalantly between iMacs and chatting away to one of the company's 'Geniuses', the duo appear just like any other customers - that is till Spud tears out of the store with an iPad in his hand
Trainspotting 2, or 'T2', is due in February 2017 and will see the Ewans reprise their roles alongside, Robert Carlyle as Francis Begbie, and Jonny Lee Miller as Sick Boy.
It is thought that the second film will mirror author Welsh's follow-up novel, which documents the characters' later-in-life foray into the world of pornography.
The original film focused on Renton, a young man deeply immersed in the Edinburgh drug scene who tries to clean up and get out, despite the allure of the drugs and influence of friends.
So far, Ewan has stayed quiet on the plotline but recently told The Telegraph that he was particularly enjoying being back with the 1996 cast.
'I cant tell you anything,' he said, staying faithful to director Danny. 'Other than that its exciting to be doing it.
'Working with [director] Danny Boyle and the boys again Bobby Carlyle, Ewen Bremner and Jonny Lee Miller is beyond thrilling.'
She has remained tight-lipped about her rumoured romance with Oscar-winning actor Jamie Foxx.
But Katie Holmes grabbed coffee for two early on Wednesday, looking casual and makeup free as she made the quick jaunt from her New York apartment.
The 37-year-old actress stepped out in the sunshine wearing a striped t-shirt and dark grey skinny jeans as she picked up the drinks from Starbucks.
Coffee for two: Katie Holmes was pictured out in New York on Wednesday grabbing two coffees from Starbucks
She teamed them with cream ballet flats and accessorised with a diamond necklace.
Her brunette locks were tied up in a casual ponytail and she sported brown tinted aviators.
Katie also toted her new black and white Tod's bag which she showed off on Instagram on Tuesday.
Rumours have been swirling for months that the Dawson's Creek star has been secretly dating Jamie, 48, for three years.
Caffeine fix: The 37-year-old actress, who was dressed casually in a striped t-shirt and jeans may have got the second coffee for her rumoured beau Jamie Foxx
Off duty chic: Katie wore ballet flats with her casual outfit and wore her long locks loose
Last week fans reported seeing Katie, who was in Canada for work, enjoying an intimate dinner date with the Ray star in Toronto.
While Jamie didn't post anything on social media about his trip, a fan shared a selfie with the Django Unchained star in a clothing boutique in the city.
According to etalk Katie and Jamie were spotted at Kasa Moto Japanese restaurant on Thursday night.
Flying visit: Jamie, 48, was in Toronto at the same time as Katie last week and the duo were spotted having dinner at Kasa Moto together on Thursday
Following the cozy dinner witnesses say Katie was escorted through a back exit by her assistant while Jamie exited another door.
The actor apparently jetted out of town straight after dinner and days later he was pictured in New York making an appearance at Nick Jonas and Demi Lovato's concert in Brooklyn on Saturday.
Katie was back in Canada last week to finish post-production on the episode of The Kennedys: After Camelot that she directed.
Her little girl: The actress shared a cute snap of her daughter Suri, 10, wearing butterfly wings on Tuesday
Last month Claudia Jordan, who has claimed to be a good friend of Jamie's, said in an interview that he and Katie are 'very happy' together.
She later backtracked on her comment saying she 'misspoke' during the Allegedly podcast and insisted she has no knowledge of their so-called coupling.
The persistent reports of Katie and Jamie dating and even planning to wed have refused to die down since the two were seen dancing together at a charity event in 2013, despite official denials by each of them.
Katie shares 10-year-old daughter Suri with ex-husband Tom Cruise.
It's not often when one sees a movie star having to suffer like an everyday person.
But that was the case on Tuesday when Kirsten Dunst had to bend sideways to shimmy her body into the driver's seat of her Audi SUV after another vehicle parked too close for comfort.
The 34-year-old Fargo actress was leaving an appointment at Bellacures in Beverly Hills.
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Where's a valet when you need one? Kirsten Dunst looked frustrated as she tried to get in her Audi SUV after leaving an appointment at Bellacures in Beverly Hills on Tuesday
Her blonde hair was blown by the wind, covering her face and sunglasses as she tried her best to get back in her car.
At one point the Interview With The Vampire star stuck her tongue out in frustration.
It also looked as if the former child star almost slipped out of her flip flops during the incident.
Tough time: The 34-year-old star's hair was blown by the wind, covering her face and sunglasses as she tried her best to get back in her car
Dunst was dressed casually in a black T-shirt and ripped Daisy Duke cut off shorts.
The Jumanji star also carried a sweet-looking structured straw purse with a beige leather handle t by Ferragamo that looked as if it could have been an antique from the 1950s.
The Bring It On actress appeared to be alone for the beauty appointment.
She's got legs! The Humanji star was dressed casually in a black T-shirt and ripped Daisy Duke cut off shorts
The blonde split with Garrett Hedlund in April after four years together.
But a new romance may already be on the cards for Dunst as the blonde beauty was spotted out with her Fargo co-star Jesse Plemons in May.
The duo spent some one-on-one time together as they strolled about in Los Angeles.
New love? The looker seems to be dating her Fargo co-star Jesse Plemons, who she is seen with here in March in LA
The New Jersey native was seen smooching the Breaking Bad star as they enjoyed a cozy lunch together in May as well.
She had on a pretty white sweater and navy blue mini skirt with summery white sandals. Her beau opted for a casual striped t-shirt and jeans with cream trainers.
The duo were also spotted out in March looking affectionate with each other as they smoked cigarettes on an outing in Studio City.
They sure did look good together: The blonde split with Garrett Hedlund in April after four years together; here they are seen in January
Jesse gushed about starring alongside the actress during a panel interview for the TV series at the 2015 PaleyFest New York in October.
'It was a gift,' he said of working with the Melancholia star.
'I loved Kristens work for a long time, and I was really excited once I'd met her, and she's a great person, and we're both actors that just have fun with the material.'
When it comes to her movements on social media, Mischa Barton has attracted quite a stream of unwanted attention of late.
But the British-born beauty appeared to strike the right balance on Tuesday, when she took to her Instagram account to share a racy topless shot of herself posing on a balcony in Mykonos.
With the Greek island's breathtaking scenery laid out beneath her, the actress puffs on a cigarette in the image, while she seductively stares at the camera wearing just a pair of blue skinny jeans.
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Island vibes: Mischa Barton shared a topless shot of herself on her Instagram account on Tuesday, showing her relaxing on a balcony in Mykonos while puffing on a cigarette
In less than 24 hours, the image garnered well over 12,000 likes and 450 comments from her army of followers, a number of whom remarked that she was 'back to her old self'.
She has had a trying few days, firstly from a bitter battle with her mother Nuala over their $7million California home, and her choice of imagery to accompany a post about a recent US shooting.
Hoping to express her solidarity with the late Alton Sterling's family and apparently the Black Lives Matter movement at large, she posted a bizarre picture to Instagram on Thursday - showing her looking downcast and drinking wine on a yacht.
Controversial: Mischa sparked fury from Alton Sterling supporters and Blue Lives Matter backers on Thursday, when she posted a picture of herself looking downcast on a yacht on Instagram paired with a statement about the police shooting
In the caption, the actress wrote that she was 'truly heartbroken' after watching the video of the 37-year-old man's shooting at the hands of the police - which has sparked protests in the US.
'This may have been going on forever in the United States but thank god the pigs get caught on camera now. Its unthinkable and an embarrassment to America. The country I was brought up in.
'Somebody make change. We need gun control and unity. And a real President so think about that when this election is around the corner. The world is a precarious place right now. #stop #reflect and #act appropriately,' she wrote.
Jet-settler: Just last week, the star was seen in Paris, where she attended the Bulgari Celebration of Magnificent Inspirations bash
The choice of image to go with her words sparked widespread criticism from all sides, prompting the star to quickly delete the image.
It was also recently revealed that she is battling it out with her estranged mother in court once again - with both women accusing the other of holding up the sale of their Beverly Hills mansion.
In explosive legal documents obtained by Daily Mail Online, the actress claims her one-time 'momager' Nuala Barton has stonewalled attempts to sell the home for years - even locking her out of the property and refusing access to potential buyers.
Made in England: While she was raised in America, the actress was actually born in London
She also accuses her mother of refusing to work with Josh Altman, the famed LA realtor appointed to sell the seven-bedroom, 10 bathroom property, and refusing to sign off on strong offers from potential buyers.
Nuala has blasted her daughter's claims as 'heinous' and 'false' and says that the pair are 'estranged as a result'.
British-born Mischa, who recently appeared on Dancing With The Stars, famously sued her mother in 2015 accusing her of defrauding her by stealing her money.
The 7,600 sq. ft. Tuscan-style villa, which boasts views of Catalina Island, was one of the focal points of the suit - with the actress claiming her mom gave herself co-ownership of the property without her knowledge or permission.
Battle: Mischa is battling it out with her estranged mother in court, each accusing the other of holding up the sale of the $7million Beverly Hills mansion they own jointly
She accused Nuala of taking out massive loans against the house behind her back - and turning the home into her 'personal ATM'.
Mischa even claimed she was then kicked out of the home by her parents who wouldnt let her back on the property.
That case was dismissed back in February with the terms of the agreement stating Nuala would sell the home with Altman as the listing agent.
Momager: Mischa and mother Nuala were on good terms in 2012 when they attended the Mischa Barton Boutique flagship store launch party in London. Now Mischa claims her mother has locked her out of the property and has refused access to potential buyers
Mischa and her mother agreed the asking price would be $7 million and they both said they would accept any reasonable offers - in order to pay off their many creditors.
But new court papers filed by Mischa last month state that Nuala - the 'Debtor' - did not abide by those terms and has, 'actively impeded any sale by locking Mischa out of the Property to prevent her and prospective buyers from accessing the house or providing copies of plans when requested.
'Mischa attempted to get another real estate agent to work with Debtors agent, but Debtor refused to have her agent work with Mischas agent or to provide Mischas agent with information he needed to sell the property.
Palatial: Property records indicate the actress paid $6,400,064 for her Mediterranean style house in 2005. The 7,607 sq ft mansion has six bedrooms and 10 bathrooms and was built in 2003
'Other attempts with a different agent also failed due to Debtors unrealistic expectation as to the value of the Property, with Debtors agent listing the Property for sale at as much as almost $9 million, obviously without success.'
Mischa and Altman claim that Nuala refused to sign off on a $7 million offer they have secured for the property - which would pay off all their creditors in full.
In the papers, filed on May 26, she asks for the sale to be turned over to a trustee who will sell the property promptly and ensure all creditors are paid in full.
Documents: In explosive legal documents obtained by Daily Mail Online, the former O.C. star claims her one-time 'momager' Nuala has stonewalled attempts to sell the home for years - even locking her out of the property and refusing access to potential buyers
However Nuala has hit back, filing papers on June 22 stating that her daughter's 'heinous claims' are false and she has done everything in her power to sell the home.
The court documents state that Nuala has: 'Done everything in her power, both pre-petition and post-petition to obtain the highest possible sale price of the Bowmont Property.'
She says she became 'wary' of the buyer who made the $7 million offer as he 'stated that he would rather let the Bowmont Property go into foreclosure so he could purchase it for a lower price.'
Last month, according to the papers, Nuala secured a $7.35 million offer on the home - but Mischa 'was adamant on accepting the $7 million offer'.
The pair finally agreed to accept the $7.35 million offer - which has now been reduced to $7,050,000, in court on June 13th - and the sale should close before next month.
Nuala has argued that her daughter's motion to have the sale turned over to a trustee should be thrown out as it is an 'extraordinary and drastic measure'.
For sale: Mischa the listed her Los Angeles villa for $7.495 million as the property has become too much of a 'burden' for the star. But she says her mother - the co-owner - has thwarted the sale
She claims that through her 'conduct and adamant persistence', she secured the current buyer for $7,050,000 - meaning that she and her daughter now have an extra $50,000 to share between them.
The filing states: 'As such, the Debtor's conduct throughout this case has always been in the best interest of the creditors, the estate and Mischa.
'Mischa's Motion is moot and no grounds exist to appoint a ... trustee.'
Nuala had been her daughter's manager for years until the actress accused her mom of being a 'greedy stage mother posing as a talent manager'.
Gated: The villa is inside a gated community in Coldwater Canyon, which is just behind the Beverly Hills Hotel
Mischa's previous lawsuit included claims that Nuala had lied about her salary for a film and didnt pay her the full amount.
She also accused her mom of opening up a Mischa Barton fashion boutique in London and used the Sixth Sense actresss name to hawk a handbag line - yet Mischa claimed she never saw a cent.
Nuala called her daughter's allegations 'nonsense' and the case was dismissed in February this year.
Both mother and daughter have had financial problems for years - so the impending sale of the home should bring much-needed relief to them both.
Lap of luxury: The master bedroom has dual bathrooms, a fireplace and dressing room
In her bankruptcy papers, filed in February, Nuala said her assets totaled $3,747,500 but her liabilities totaled $5,583,412.
She said her average monthly income totaled only $1,600 but her expenses were $27,618 - leaving her in the red over $26k every month
The biggest asset listed in her bankruptcy petition was the Bowmont Drive property.
She said the current value of her portion was $3,747,500 with the total value being $7,495,000.
Expansive: The home also boasts an expansive kitchen, with all of the fixtures and fittings
The petition stated her liabilities as $4,264,567 on the mansion, including an unknown amount owed to Mischa.
Nuala spends $10,500 a month on the Beverly Hills home along with $12,200 in additional mortgage payments, $3,635 in real estate taxes and $600 in food & housekeeping supplies, according to the papers.
Earlier this year, the actress who has been trying to sell off the home for 6 years - listed it for sale at the price of $7.495 million.
Mischa also listed it back in 2010 for $8.6 million and even tried to rent it out for $35k a month but nobody bit.
Landscaped: The landscaped grounds include a pool, spa, grassy yard and vine-covered patio. In the papers, filed on May 26, she asks for the sale to be turned over to a trustee who will sell the property promptly and ensure all creditors are paid in full.
London-born Mischa moved to the States when she was five and began acting at age eight, appearing in hit movies Sixth Sense and Notting Hill before rocketing to fame in teen drama The O.C.
However her glittering career came crashing down as her partying began to get out of control.
She was arrested for DUI in 2007, then two years later - following an intervention by her parents - she had a nervous breakdown and was held in psychiatric care after threatening to kill herself.
In 2009 her house went into foreclosure after it was revealed she had failed to pay her mortgage for five months.
Arrest: She was arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence of alcohol and possessing marijuana in 2007
The same month she was sued by producers of the movie Promoted, who claimed they paid her an advance but she never turned up for work.
Mischa was then sued by her landlord over unpaid rent on her $7,000 a month NYC apartment in 2010 before suing her own mother five years later for 'theft' and 'breach of contract'.
Her legal troubles are believed to have left her homeless and broke.
She attempted a comeback this year - appearing on Dancing With The Stars - but was booted off after just three episodes.
Beginnings: Mischa was a huge hit in The O.C., here with actors Michael Cassidy and Rachel Bilson in 2004
She's totally head over heels for her French beau Jeremy Parisi.
And Kelly Brook, 36, couldn't have looked happier as she arrived at the five-star Grand Hotel Excelsior on the Italian island of Ischia with her man, on Tuesday.
The TV personality never stopped smiling as the couple happily posed for pictures before entering the hotel.
Happy couple: Kelly Brook, 36, couldn't have looked happier as she arrived at the five-star Grand Hotel Excelsior on the Italian island of Ischia with her man, on Tuesday
Kelly pulled off summer chic in a pretty minidress with a plunging neckline and decorated with a floral print.
She showcased off her tanned slim pins and finished the ensemble with a pair of petite wooden heels.
With her dark locks tied back in a simple ponytail, Kelly covered her eyes with a pair of stylish black shades.
The busty beauty looked to be going make-up free and showed off her pearly whites as she posed beside her hunky man.
Well-deserved break: The TV personality never stopped smiling as the couple happily posed for pictures before entering the hotel
Looking good: Kelly pulled off summer chic in a pretty minidress with a plunging neckline and decorated with a floral print
Jeremy's muscular frame was displayed in a tight-fitting red polo shirt which contrasted with the Frenchman's white trousers.
In full holiday mode, he wore a sunhat, tucked his shades into his shirt and kept his feet cool in the Mediterranean heat by wearing black flip flops.
Both Kelly and Jeremy each pulled a large luggage case with them into the hotel, no doubt jam-packed with sartorial options.
In the holiday spirit: With her dark locks tied back in a simple ponytail, Kelly covered her eyes with a pair of stylish black shades
Leading the way: Jeremy's muscular frame was displayed in a tight-fitting red polo shirt which contrasted with the Frenchman's white trousers
Kelly was typically chirpy, waving to the cameras and placing her arm lovingly around Jeremy upon their arrival.
The model has been keeping her Instagram followers up to date with the couple's getaway, posting numerous scenic shots of the picturesque island.
The couple's room appears to look out over a stunning harbour, while another shared shot was taken on a boat as they returned from a trip to Napoli and Mt Vesuvius.
Kelly's break is certainly well-deserved, as she recently finished filming her latest TV project, Channel 5's It's Not Me, It's You, in which she stars alongside host Eamonn Holmes and fellow panelist Vicky Pattison.
Plenty of options: Both Kelly and Jeremy each pulled a large luggage case with them into the hotel, no doubt jam-packed with sartorial options
It's hard to keep up with the Dakota Fanning.
On Tuesday the 22-year-old actress was seen strolling in the SoHo neighborhood of New York City.
Hours later the Man On Fire actress was spotted again, but this time nearly 500 miles away in Toronto. The beauty looked fresh as she was makeup free and had on a pretty layered summer dress.
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Jet-setter! After the short flight from New York City to Toronto, Canada, Dakota Fanning was spotted stretching her legs in Ontario's capital city on Tuesday
Dakota looked summertime chic for her evening outing in a feminine frock. The multi-colored midi-dress featured thick straps and a flouncy bib embellished neckline.
She teamed the laid-back look with a pair of flat nude slides, and a pink purse. The blonde beauty wore her long tresses swept back and away from her face in a messy ponytail.
The fresh-faced star showed off her natural beauty as she took to the streets without a trace of make-up on.
Laid-back look: The 22-year-old went make-up free and looked summertime chic for her evening outing in a feminine frock and flat nude slides
Meanwhile, earlier in the day, Dakota was spotted strolling through the streets of SoHo, New York, while soaking in the warm summer sunshine.
The busy actress has four films set for release this year: Viena And The Fantomes, Brimstone, American Pastoral and please Stand By.
In 2017, the Twilight star - whose younger sister Elle is also an actress - can be seen in the drama The Postcard Killings.
Earlier in the day: Dakota was also spotted strolling through the streets of SoHo, New York, on Tuesday, wearing denim shorts, a white tank and Krewe du Optic sunglasses
In 2014 she talked to The Guardian about growing up in Hollywood.
'Being a known person is pretty much all Ive known,' she said.
'I dont remember much of a time when people didnt know who I was. But you grow up and think about things differently, and you realise how strange fame is. If I can achieve it, I dont want anyone to know anything about me.'
She also said she could relate to her Night Moves character.
'I can understand being a young person and wanting to do something that has immediate effects,' she said.
'I think my generation is obsessed with instant gratification. We want everything now, now, now. I can understand feeling invincible, and wanting to do radical things because you have that confidence,' she said.
'Im not going to do anything like that, but I can see where it comes from.'
Johnny Depp is continuing to jettison his assets.
The 53-year-old has listed his four-story Venetian mansion for $10.8million, according to Italian newspaper Affari Italiani.
The historic 17th century home, which overlooks Venice's Grand Canal, boasts seven bedrooms and nine bathrooms.
For sale: Johnny Depp has listed his four-story Venetian mansion for $10.8million
The actor is making a loss on the sale of the Palazzo Dona Sangiantoffetti, having paid more than $13million for it in January 2011.
Depp fell in love with the city after spending several months there filming the The Tourist alongside Angelina Jolie the year before.
Reports at the time claim he even outmatched an unnamed Arabian Prince in a bidding war for the property.
The Palazzo was one of the only available buildings overlooking the city's main aquatic thoroughfare and is situated in the Santa Croce area of Venice, not far from the Santa Maria Mater Domini Church.
Nice view: The historic 17th century home, which overlooks Venice's Grand Canal, boasts seven bedrooms and nine bathrooms
On location: Depp fell in love with the city after spending several months there filming the The Tourist alongside Angelina Jolie
Speaking of his love for the city at the time, the Hollywood star remarked: 'My experience of Venice really happened between 10pm and 2am when the streets closed and I was able to walk around and experience the poetry of Venice, the ghosts of Venice, all those wonderful dark alleys.
'For an actor being able to film within the confines of that magical city certainly helps... The city's magic shone through completely.'
His property portfolio has also included homes in Hawaii, Somerset, West Hollywood and a a 45 acre island in the Bahamas; while he also put an entire French village up for sale last year for $26million.
Oh well: The actor is making a loss on the sale of the Palazzo Dona Sangiantoffetti, having paid more than $13million for it in January 2011
Want it: Reports at the time claim he even outmatched an unnamed Arabian Prince in a bidding war for the property
Depp has been selling other beloved possessions since the breakdown of his 15-month marriage to Amber Heard.
Last month he sold two of his prized Jean-Michel Basquiat paintings for $11.5 million.
Depp and Heard were married in 2014 and she filed papers asking for a divorce in May, accusing him of domestic violence.
She just spent the last few weeks soaking up the sun in Italy with her actor boyfriend Austin Butler.
But Vanessa Hudgens didn't look too thrilled to be back in Los Angeles as she was spotting leaving the Kate Somerville store in West Hollywood on Wednesday.
Proving she was missing her European vacation, the actress, 27, posted a throwback snap from her stint in Positano on the Amalfi Coast, showcasing her toned curves in a plunging black swimsuit.
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Taking the plunge: Vanessa Hudgens showed off her toned and tanned figure in a plunging black swimsuit as in a throwback snap from her Italian vacation as she soaked up the sun in Positano on the Amalfi Coast
Pouting towards the camera as she posed with a chic oversized sunhat on her head, she wrote alongside the snap: 'I left my heart... in Positano #VsVivaItaly.'
The former High School Musical star was understandably missing her summer break, which saw her travel around Italy with her actor beau, 24, for two weeks.
Vanessa shared several photos of her trip away, including beautiful shots of her posing in front of a stunning sunset on the picturesque island of Elba in Tuscany.
Back in Los Angeles, the Spring Breakers star looked comfortable and casual as she strode through West Hollywood in a printed Adidas tee and little black shorts.
Take me back! The actress, 27, didn't look too thrilled to be back in Los Angeles as she was spotting leaving the Kate Somerville store in West Hollywood on Wednesday
Fun in the sun: The former High School Musical star was understandably missing her summer break, which saw her travel around Italy with her actor beau, 24, for two weeks
Jaw-dropping: Vanessa shared several photos of her trip away, including beautiful shots of her posing in front of a stunning sunset on the picturesque island of Elba in Tuscany
The brunette beauty accessorized her look with a pair of Adidas flip flops and some subtle jewelry after leaving Alfred Coffee.
Vanessa wore her curly raven locks scraped back from her face and opted for minimal make-up to showcase her naturally striking looks.
She had her signature shades on as she carried her mauve purse and phone in her hand.
The Grease Live star looked fresh faced after leaving the famous skincare store Kate Somerville in WeHo.
Pins on parade: The Spring Breakers star looked comfortable and casual as she strode through West Hollywood in a printed Adidas tee and little black shorts
Pretty as a picture: Vanessa wore her curly raven locks scraped back from her face and opted for minimal make-up to showcase her naturally striking looks
The actress may be having some down time at the moment but the budding ingenue will soon be playing Emily Locke in NBC's upcoming comedy, Powerless.
The television series, developed by Ben Queen, is due to show on NBC in 2017.
The show follows an insurance company and how they end up dealing with destruction left by DC Superheros.
NBC describes Hudgens' character Emily as a spunky young insurance adjuster specializing in regular-people coverage against damage caused by the crime-fighting superheroes.
She accidentally stands up to one of these larger-than-life figures and subsequently becomes a cult hero in her own right.
Flower power: Vanessa looked chic in a full-length floral bardot dress as she posed in the Tuscan countryside during her two-week long vacation
What a view: Vanessa posted an arty snap of Austin looking out towards the sunset as they enjoyed a stint on the island of Elba
Nick Cannon was reportedly canoodling with TLC's Rozonda 'Chilli' Thomas at WDKX's Summerfest Concert in Rochester on Saturday.
'It looked serious. They were hugged-up and kissing,' an eagle-eyed source told the New York Daily News.
'He watched Chilli intensely and lovingly as the group performed, then couldnt keep his hands off her backstage. They are definitely together!'
On the down-low: Nick Cannon was reportedly canoodling with TLC's Rozonda 'Chilli' Thomas at WDKX's Summerfest Concert in Rochester on Saturday (pictured April 23 and July 11)
At 45 years old, the R&B belter is only one year younger than the 35-year-old presenter's ex-wife Mariah Carey, whom he divorced in April following a six-year marriage.
Thomas and her bandmate Tionne 'T-Boz' Watkins headlined the New York festival and performed their hit songs Unpretty, No Scrubs, and Waterfalls.
Back in 2010, Atlanta-born Rozonda attended Nick's 30th birthday bash (which was hosted by Mariah) at Manhattan hotspot Lavo.
Cannon and Carey - who's engaged to Australian billionaire James Packer - have remained amicable, co-parenting their five-year-old fraternal twins Moroccan and Monroe.
A source told the New York Daily News: 'It looked serious. They were hugged-up and kissing. He watched Chilli intensely and lovingly as the group performed, then couldnt keep his hands off her backstage. They are definitely together!'
Prefers older women: At 45 years old, the R&B belter is only one year younger than the 35-year-old presenter's ex-wife Mariah Carey, whom he divorced in April following a six-year marriage
Hit parade: Thomas and her bandmate Tionne 'T-Boz' Watkins headlined the New York festival and performed their hit songs Unpretty, No Scrubs, and Waterfalls
'I just don't think I'm ready to date yet,' the America's Got Talent host told People in February.
'It's funny because my next film that I'm writing is all about online dating so I'm learning all about it. It's so intriguing to me but I have yet jump into that pool. But it's the new wave so I'm not against it.'
Meanwhile, Chilli is the proud mother of 19-year-old lookalike son Tron Austin with Grammy-winning producer Dallas Austin.
Friends for a while: Back in 2010, Atlanta-born Rozonda attended Nick's 30th birthday bash (which was hosted by Mariah, L) at Manhattan hotspot Lavo
Father-of-two: Cannon and Carey - who's engaged to Australian billionaire James Packer - have remained amicable, co-parenting their five-year-old fraternal twins Moroccan and Monroe
The America's Got Talent host told People in February: 'I just don't think I'm ready to date yet. It's funny because my next film that I'm writing is all about online dating so I'm learning all about it. It's so intriguing to me but I have yet jump into that pool. But it's the new wave so I'm not against it'
The Body songstress has also been linked to eight-time Grammy winner Usher and For Better or Worse actor Brad James.
Rozonda and T-Boz will next perform this Friday at Chene Park in Detroit alongside New Edition.
The five-time Grammy-winning girl-group has recorded 15 tracks of their fifth studio album dropping later this year.
'Early afternoon workouts with mommy!' Meanwhile, Chilli is the proud mother of 19-year-old lookalike son Tron Austin with Grammy-winning producer Dallas Austin
Former flame: The Body songstress has also been linked to eight-time Grammy winner Usher and For Better or Worse actor Brad James (pictured in 2003)
New album dropping soon: Meanwhile, Rozonda and T-Boz will next perform this Friday at Chene Park in Detroit alongside New Edition (pictured with Zoe Saldana, M)
Howard University chums: The 5ft 'Blindian' also plays novelist Zora Neale Hurston in the Thurgood Marshall biopic Marshall alongside Chadwick Boseman (L), Kate Hudson, and Dan Stevens
The 5ft 'Blindian' also plays novelist Zora Neale Hurston in the Thurgood Marshall biopic Marshall alongside Chadwick Boseman, Kate Hudson, and Dan Stevens.
And Nick currently hosts the 11th season of America's Got Talent, which airs Tuesdays and Wednesdays on NBC.
The Daytime Emmy nominee will also host the eighth season of his sketch/improv show Nick Cannon Presents: Wild 'N Out, which premieres August 4 on MTV.
Pressing the Golden Buzzer! Nick currently hosts the 11th season of America's Got Talent, which airs Tuesdays and Wednesdays on NBC
It's truly a first world problem. What to do when Taylor Swift uses your name as a pseudonym to keep her collaboration with her then-boyfriend a secret (before claiming credit for the song anyway, as her ex drags old rival Katy Perry into the row).
It may sound very specific, but that's exactly what happened to Swedish artist Nils Sjoberg this week.
The 32-year-old runs the Tumblr Nils' First World Problems, in which people submit examples of the inane challenges they face every day, and he sketches them out.
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What's in a name? The real Nils Sjoberg thinks it's 'hilarious' Taylor Swift used his name as a pseudonym and even captured the confusion perfectly in a drawing
But five weeks ago he submitted one of his own: '@taylorswift uses my name (Nils Sjoberg) as an alias when she produce pop songs (it's true, google it!), one of my very own first world problems.'
It had emerged that the 26-year-old had wrote Calvin Harris's hit song This Is What You Came For, but having agreed to keep it a secret for fear of their relationship overshadowing the music, they drafted in Rihanna to sing the vocals instead.
When asked afterwards if he would ever work with Swift on a track, Harris said no; although this was clearly an effort to preserve her anonymity, a recent report claimed the denial was the reason behind the breakdown of their relationship.
What all this meant for Nils Sjoberg was an 'explosion' in traffic to his site from people wondering if he was really Taylor Swift.
Please stand up: The 32-year-old Swede has been retweeting stories about his new found fame
The artist runs the Tumblr Nils' First World Problems, in which people submit examples of the inane challenges they face every day, and he sketches them out... and recently became the subject of his own art
'I havent been contacted by Taylors reps, and thats totally OK,' he told Page Six
'I havent been contacted by Taylors reps, and thats totally OK,' he told Page Six.
'There are a couple of us here in Sweden with this name, even though I havent met any in person yet.'
Sjoberg, who lives in Gothenburg and works a communications manager, even drew up a second First World Problem cartoon as the story developed, with him gasping into a mirror while a lipsticked Swift gapes back.
'I think Calvin Harris and Taylor Swift have made an awesome song,' he added. 'The pseudo is hilarious.'
Sjoberg claimed the journalist who first alerted him to it suggested some of Taylor's Swedish friends in LA must have cooked it up.
Harris's Twitter tirade kicked off when one of Taylor's reps confirmed she was the Nils Sjoberg credited on his song.
Dragged into it: Traffic to Sjoberg's site 'exploded' in the wake of the latest drama between Taylor Swift and Calvin Harris, when he accused her of taking a dig at him by revealing she wrote one of his songs under the now infamous psuedonym
Grab the popcorn: In a Twitter tirade, Harris said he was not going to allow Swift 'bury him' as she had Katy Perry, digging up that old feud too
The 32-year-old DJ initially complimented his former flame on her 'amazing' ability to pen smash hits, but his tweets quickly took a turn.
He accused her of trying to tear him down and said he refused to let her 'bury' him like Katy Perry.
The Roar star herself clearly felt vindicated by the comment and chimed in by retweeting her own post from May 2015 which read: 'Time, the ultimate truth teller.'
Join the list: Nils has been sketching his first world problems for over two years, but has never received quite as much attention
Tom Hiddleston was seen going for a run with his bodyguard on Thursday hours after his new flame Taylor Swift was slammed by her ex Calvin Harris on Twitter.
The British actor, 35, is clearly hoping to be in peak physical condition for his new film, Thor: Ragnarok, as this is the second time he has gone for a jog in the Gold Coast in just three days.
Wearing a tight black T-shirt with the word 'legendary' emblazoned on the front, Tom showed off his muscular physique as he sprinted along the beach at the Australian tourist spot.
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Tight security: Tom Hiddleston was seen going for a run with a bodyguard for protection in the Gold Coast on Thursday morning after his new flame Taylor Swift was slammed by her ex Calvin Harris on Twitter
He paired the fitted top with matching black shorts and Nike trainers - an exact replica of the outfit he wore for his run on Tuesday.
Tom was accompanied by a security guard who could barely keep up with the star's morning jog.
The Night Manager actor had a determined look plastered across his face as he pounded along the sand with his headphones in and his mobile clasped in his right hand.
Bounding along: The British actor, 35, is clearly hoping to be in peak physical condition for his new film, Thor: Ragnarok, as this is the second time he has gone for a jog in the Gold Coast in just three days
Keep up! Tom was accompanied by a security guard who could barely keep up with the star's morning jog
He is currently staying in the Queensland city with his new girlfriend Taylor so he can get to work on his new Thor film.
They landed at Coolangatta Airport last Friday and are believed to be staying in a $1,327 per night penthouse at Peppers hotel in Broadbeach.
But it looks as though there may be trouble in paradise as Taylor's ex-boyfriend Calvin took to Twitter on Wednesday to slam the Shake It Off singer in a series of angry messages.
It came after Taylor confirmed she wrote his song, This Is What You Came For, under the pseudonym Nils Sjoberg.
The 32-year-old DJ initially complimented his former flame on her 'amazing' ability to pen smash hits after it was revealed she'd written the lyrics before sharing it with him while they were dating.
Athletic: Wearing a tight black T-shirt and matching shorts, Tom showed off his muscular physique as he sprinted along the sand on the beachfront
Sporty: He had a determined look plastered across his face as he pounded along the sand with his headphones in
Time to think? He is currently staying in the Queensland city with his new girlfriend Taylor so he can work on his new Thor film
Favourite outfit: He paired the fitted top with matching black shorts and Nike trainers - an exact replica of the outfit he wore for his run on Tuesday
But his tweets quickly took a turn; he accused her of trying to tear him down and said he refused to let her 'bury' him like Katy Perry.
Calvin tweeted on Wednesday: 'I wrote the music, produced the song, arranged it and cut the vocals though. And initially she wanted it kept secret, hence the pseudonym.'
'Hurtful to me at this point that her and her team would go so far out of their way to try and make ME look bad at this stage though.'
'I figure if you're happy in your new relationship you should focus on that instead of trying to tear your ex bf down for something to do.'
Cute couple: The pair landed in the Gold Coast last Friday and are believed to be staying in a $1,327 per night penthouse at Peppers hotel in Broadbeach
Smitten: The pair were seen walking hand-in-hand as they enjoyed supper on the Gold Coast on Sunday
'I know you're off tour and you need someone new to try and bury like Katy ETC but I'm not that guy, sorry. I won't allow it.'
Taylor split from Calvin, 32, five weeks ago after 15 months together.
The singer was pictured cuddling up to her new flame Tom for the first time in Rhode Island on June 15.
Tom and Taylor met and shared a dance at the Met Costume Gala in New York City on May 1, with the smitten actor sending her flowers and wooing her after learning of her newly-single status.
It's getting nasty: Calvin Harris fired off a series of angry tweets on Wednesday morning about Taylor Swift
Three held in Louisiana gun plot against police
Authorities in Louisiana -- already rocked by the deadly police shooting of an African American man -- said they have arrested three black youths for stealing guns they planned to use to kill officers.
Police responded to reports the suspects were trying to steal weapons from a pawn shop, according to the Baton Rouge Police Department.
One suspect arrested at the scene "stated that he and three other suspects stole the firearms and were going to get bullets to shoot police," a police statement said.
Signs are left in front of a police station in Chicago to protest the latest deadly police shooting of African Americans Tasos Katopodis (AFP/File)
Two other suspects, including a 13-year-old, were arrested later. All three suspects were charged with burglary and theft of a firearm over Saturday's break in. It was not immediately clear whether the fourth suspect was in custody.
Eight weapons were stolen, and authorities said six had been recovered.
Liberal hopes dashed as post-Islamist Egypt turns conservative
When Egypt's military overthrew the Muslim Brotherhood in 2013, Egyptians like Nabil dared to hope that their conservative country was on the brink of change.
Like many gay Egyptians, Nabil faced a life of persecution and intolerance, and when the Brotherhood's Mohamed Morsi came to power in 2012 he fled to the United States.
Many believed that Morsi's ouster amid mass protests a year later and replacement with then-army chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi would nudge Egyptian society in a more liberal direction.
Following a military coup in 2013, Egyptian authorities have launched a crackdown on the gay community, writers, intellectuals and even belly dancers STRINGER (EGYPTIAN PRESIDENCY/AFP/File)
But two years after Sisi took office, those hopes have been dashed by a crackdown, not just on the gay community, but on writers, intellectuals and even belly dancers who have fallen foul of conservatives and Egypt's influential Islamic authorities.
"I was hoping that with the change of that theocratic regime of the Muslim Brotherhood the people will realise that they've been fooled all this time and become less conservative," Nabil said.
But any thought of returning from the United States, where he has been granted asylum, has been set aside for now.
"Things are worse. Egypt has gone backwards," says Nabil, 29, who asked to be identified with a pseudonym for his protection.
Morsi's overthrow unleashed a crackdown on his supporters that killed hundreds of protesters and detained thousands.
Authorities then began rounding up liberal and leftist political activists who had been involved in the protests against Morsi and the 2011 uprising that ousted longtime Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak.
- Morality laws -
As Sisi has consolidated his rule, the suppression of political dissent has paved the way for a rise of conservatism, says rights lawyer Negad El Borai.
"One-voice regimes are usually conservative by default," El Borai says. "They're linked not only to restrictions in the political sphere, but in freedoms in general."
Sisi had initially promised modernity and vowed religion would not be used in politics again.
But the authorities' actions say otherwise.
In April, 11 men accused of homosexuality were sentenced to prison terms of up to 12 years after they were convicted of "debauchery".
Egyptian law does not prohibit homosexuality, but gays are prosecuted under debauchery laws.
"They like to show they are still Muslims: 'We're a Muslim state you guys, we have arrested some gays here'," says Nabil.
The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) has documented at least 200 cases against gays and transgender people since Morsi's overthrow.
"The sentences are terrifying," says Dalia Abd El-Hameed, head of the gender programme at the EIPR.
The crackdown has widened, with several artists jailed for violating morality laws.
In February, writer Ahmed Naji was imprisoned for violating "public modesty" after a state-run newspaper ran an excerpt from his novel that described a sex scene.
Islam Behairy, an Islamic researcher, was in December sentenced to a year in prison for "insulting religion" over remarks he made on his television programme criticising books in the Sunni Muslim canon.
- Al-Azhar leads backlash -
In January, poet Fatma Naoot was sentenced to three years in jail after she criticised in a Facebook post the slaughter of cattle and sheep for the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha. She had left the country.
And last year, three belly dancers known as Shakira, Bardis, and Reda El-Fouly served time on accusations they broadcast "obscenities" in music videos.
Al-Azhar, Egypt's top Islamic authority, has been central to the conservative backlash, leading a charge against Behairy that saw his television programme discontinued.
"Al-Azhar today has more political influence than under Mubarak," says El Borai.
The constitution adopted in early 2014 after Morsi's overthrow strengthened Al-Azhar's role, making it "the main reference on religious studies and Islamic affairs."
Some critics say a lack of legal clarity is allowing for morality laws to be applied too broadly.
Lawmaker Zakareya Mohyeldin is trying to abolish an article in the criminal code that leaves the definition of blasphemy vague.
That section "imprisons thinkers and it is against freedom of thought and creativity," he says.
But others, including El-Borai, do not believe changing laws is the solution.
"You can incorporate the best law in the world, but if society and the judiciary are not open and just, this law is worthless," he says.
Egypt's President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi had initially promised modernity and vowed religion would not be used in politics again, but the authorities' actions say otherwise Mohamed El-Shahed (AFP/File)
Beijing warns against 'cradle of war' in South China Sea
China warned rivals Wednesday against turning the South China Sea into a "cradle of war" and threatened an air defence zone there, after its claims to the strategically vital waters were declared invalid.
The surprisingly strong and sweeping ruling by a UN-backed tribunal in The Hague provided powerful diplomatic ammunition to the Philippines, which filed the challenge, and other claimants in their decades-long disputes with China over the resource-rich waters.
China reacted furiously to Tuesday's decision, insisting it had historical rights over the sea while launching a volley of thinly veiled warnings at the United States and other critical nations.
Vessels from China's South Sea Fleet take part in a drill in the Xisha Islands -- or Paracel Islands -- in the South China Sea on May 5, 2016
"Do not turn the South China Sea into a cradle of war," vice foreign minister Liu Zhenmin told reporters in Beijing, as he described the ruling as waste paper.
Liu also said China had "the right" to establish an air defence identification zone over the sea, which would give the Chinese military authority over foreign aircraft.
A similar zone set up in 2013 in the East China Sea riled Japan, the United States and its allies.
"Whether we need to set up one in the South China Sea depends on the level of threat we receive," he said.
"We hope other countries will not take the chance to blackmail China."
- 'Confrontation' -
The Chinese ambassador to the United States, Cui Tiankai, was even more blunt.
"It will certainly intensify conflicts and even confrontation," Cui said in Washington on Tuesday.
And the ruling Communist Party's mouthpiece, the People's Daily, said Wednesday that China was prepared to take "all measures necessary" to protect its interests.
China justifies its sovereignty claims by saying it was the first to have discovered, named and exploited the sea, and outlines its claims for most of the waterway using a vague map made up of nine dashes that emerged in the 1940s.
Those claims overlap with those of the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan.
Manila, under previous president Benigno Aquino, launched the legal case in 2013 after China took control of Scarborough Shoal, a rich fishing ground within the Philippines' exclusive economic zone and far away from the nearest major Chinese landmass.
China has also in recent years built giant artificial islands capable of hosting military installations and airstrips in the Spratlys archipelago, one of the biggest groups of features in the sea.
Aside from stating that China's historical rights were without "legal basis", the tribunal ruled that its artificial island building and the blocking of Filipino fishermen at Scarborough Shoal were unlawful.
- 'Restraint, sobriety' -
The Philippines, under new President Rodrigo Duterte, declined to celebrate the verdict.
"We have to be magnanimous in victory," Foreign Secretary Perfecto Yasay told reporters in Manila on Wednesday.
"In very delicate matters like this you cannot be provocative in statements. We urge everybody including China to exercise restraint and sobriety."
Duterte has repeatedly said he wants to improve relations with China, which plummeted under Aquino because of the dispute, and that he would seek Chinese investment for major infrastructure projects such as a railway for the impoverished southern Philippines.
He is open to direct talks with China aimed at achieving a long-awaited code of conduct among rival claimants for the sea. China has long wanted to negotiate directly, and analysts said dialogue rather than conflict was the most likely scenario.
Yet a military build-up in the sea continued.
China launched naval drills in the northern areas before the verdict, while the US Pacific Command said it had deployed an aircraft carrier for flights to support "security" in the sea.
Taiwan, which was another loser in the verdict as its claims are very similar to those of China, sent a warship on Wednesday to the sea to protect its claims.
Indonesia also announced it would sharply strengthen security around its islands in the sea, where there have been clashes with Chinese vessels recently.
China used deadly force to seize control of the Paracel Islands from South Vietnam in 1974, and Johnson Reef from a united Vietnam in 1988.
China faced immediate pressure to abide by the ruling from Western powers, which insist they have legitimate interests in the dispute because of the need to maintain "freedom of navigation" in waters that host more than $5 trillion in shipping trade annually.
The United States emphasised that China, as a signatory to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, should accept the verdict.
"As provided in the convention, the tribunal's decision is final and legally binding on both China and the Philippines," State Department spokesman John Kirby told reporters in Washington.
Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop warned China there would be "strong reputational costs" for ignoring the ruling, as she called for Chinese island building to end.
Disputed maritime features in the South China Sea -, - (AFP Graphic)
Filipino activists and Vietnamese nationals celebrate on Roxas Boulevard in Manila, on July 12, 2016 Ted Aljibe (AFP)
Chinese police block the road leading to the Philippines embassy in Beijing, on July 13, 2016, a day after an int'l court in The Hague ruled against China in a Philippine challenge over Beijing-occupied territory in the South China Sea Nicolas Asfouri (AFP)
President Tsai Ing-wen (C) meets with the military on the deck of a Taiwanese warship before the vessel heads for Taiwan-controlled Taiping island in the Spratly island chain in the South China Sea, on July 13, 2016 - (Taiwan's Defence Ministry/AFP)
South Korea confirms anti-missile system site
Seoul said Wednesday an advanced US missile defence system will be deployed in a remote southern county and will have the capacity to protect two thirds of the country against feared attacks from the North.
The plan to deploy the powerful system, which fires projectiles to smash into enemy missiles, came last week after the United States placed North Korea's "Supreme Leader" Kim Jong-Un on its sanctions blacklist for the first time.
The move prompted objections from Russia and China, who accused Washington of flexing its military muscle in the region.
The Terminal High Altitude Area Defence system, or THAAD, is a US Army designed, anti-ballistic missile system which fires projectiles to smash into enemy missiles - (US Department of Defense/AFP/File)
Tensions have soared since Pyongyang carried out its fourth nuclear test in January, followed by a series of missile launches that analysts say show the North is making progress toward being able to strike the US mainland.
The Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, or THAAD, will be deployed in Seongju county about 200 kilometres (135 miles) southeast of Seoul, as agreed by US Secretary of Defence Ash Carter and his South Korean counterpart Han Min-Koo, according to the defence ministry in Seoul.
The deployment will be completed by the end of next year and will be able to cover up to two thirds of South Korea from North Korean missiles. It will also protect key industrial facilities, including nuclear power plants and oil depots, the ministry added.
US military bases in the South will also be protected by the missile system, but Seoul and its surrounding areas will be left out. This could mean the military deploying more US Patriot anti-air and missile defence systems in these areas, Yonhap news agency reported.
There have been protests about the system's location, with residents fearing harmful economic and environmental effects.
"We hope the people and residents in Seongju... render support" for the decision, the ministry said in a statement.
But thousands took to the streets Wednesday in Seongju town, carrying banners reading "We absolutely oppose THAAD deployment", Yonhap news agency reported.
The head of the county Kim Hang-Gon and some 10 others staged a hunger strike, cut their fingers and wrote slogans in blood on banners at the Wednesday's rally.
"The THAAD deployment threatens the livelihood of the country's 45,000 residents, 60 percent of whom are engaged in watermelon agriculture", a group against the deployment said in a statement.
North Korea threatened Monday to take "physical action" against the planned deployment of the powerful anti-missile system.
The move has also angered Beijing and Moscow, which both see it as a US bid to boost military might in the region. China on Friday said the move would "seriously damage" regional security in northeast Asia.
The US and South Korea began talks on deploying the THAAD system to the Korean peninsula in February after the North fired a long-range rocket.
South Korean authorities have scrambled to allay fears over possible trade retaliations from its largest trading partner China.
Finance Minister Yoo Il-Ho told the National Assembly Wednesday he believed China will separate politics from economic affairs and is not likely to hit the South with economic sanctions over missile system deployment.
Missile defence system -, - (AFP Graphic)
Indonesian child killer escapes jail in a Muslim veil
An Indonesian child murderer has escaped from jail by putting on a woman's Muslim veil, make-up and sunglasses and walking out past unsuspecting guards, an official said Wednesday.
Anwar bin Kim An, who raped and murdered a schoolgirl, made the bold breakout from a Jakarta prison by quietly changing into a woman's outfit allegedly smuggled in by his wife when she visited during the Muslim Eid holiday.
"The wife gave him the woman's clothing and he just changed his clothes in the meeting room where all the inmates meet with their families," Jakarta police spokesman Awi Setiyono told AFP.
Breakouts are common in Indonesia's prisons, which are overcrowded and poorly guarded, including inmates sneaking out disguised as women Said Khatib (AFP/File)
"He put on some lipstick and later walked away as a woman accompanied by his wife and their two children."
Prison CCTV footage obtained by local media showed the convict, in his 20s, walking out of the prison dressed as a woman and wearing sunglasses while holding one of his children.
Setiyono said Kim An managed to quietly change in the visitor's room in the Salemba prison in central Jakarta as it was crowded and there were just a few guards.
It happened on Thursday last week during Eid, when many people typically pay visits to jailed relatives. Setiyono admitted there were no security checks for female visitors at the jail, unlike for male visitors.
Police have launched a hunt for the escaped prisoner, who had been sentenced to life in jail but had been behind bars just four months.
His wife has been interrogated on suspicion of helping her husband escape but has not been detained, as she has two small children to look after, the spokesman said.
Kim An was convicted of the October rape and murder of the schoolgirl, who was reportedly 12 years old.
Breakouts are common in Indonesia's prisons, which are overcrowded and poorly guarded.
Israel border police kill Palestinian in West Bank: army
An Israeli border policeman shot dead one Palestinian and wounded another in the occupied West Bank on Wednesday when they drove towards officers, an army spokeswoman said.
The officers had been carrying out a search operation in Al-Ram, northeast of Jerusalem, during which they uncovered an arms workshop, when they spotted the vehicle coming towards them, the spokeswoman said.
One of the border policemen, who "felt in danger", opened fire, she added.
Israeli borderguards patrol a section of Israel's controversial separation barrier in the Palestinian village of al-Ram, in the Israeli occupied West Bank Abbas Momani (AFP/File)
A third Palestinian in the vehicle was arrested.
Israeli security forces have launched a major crackdown on underground arms workshops in the West Bank, closing 16 since the start of the year, a senior army officer said on Tuesday.
A wave of violence in Israel and the Palestinian territories since October last year has has killed at least 215 Palestinians, 34 Israelis, two Americans, an Eritrean and a Sudanese.
Most of the Palestinians killed were carrying out knife, gun or car-ramming attacks, according to Israeli authorities.
US will welcome target of 10,000 Syria refugees, says Kerry
The United States will welcome 10,000 Syrian refugees this fiscal year as promised by President Barack Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry announced Tuesday.
Washington has been criticized by some activists for moving too slowly to settle those fleeing the conflict, while Obama's opponents warn their number may include terrorists.
But Kerry said the United States is now on course to admit 10,000 vulnerable refugees, chosen from UN camps and vetted by US security and intelligence agencies.
A Syrian refugee herds his livestock at an unofficial camp for refugees in the village of Bar Elias in the Bekaa Valley, central Lebanon Joseph Eid (AFP/File)
"It's also representing six-fold increase over what we did the year before," Kerry said, referring to the US fiscal year, which runs from October 1 to September 30.
"I'm proud to say that the United States is by far the largest contributor of emergency aid, but we all recognize that still more needs to be done," he said.
Kerry made the remarks at a dinner in Washington to mark last week's Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr, shortly before he was due to set off on a tour of European capitals.
This journey was to take him Thursday to Moscow, where he is set to meet with President Vladimir Putin and lobby Russia to do more to help end Syria's five-year-old conflict.
Syria is in the grip of what Kerry called the worst humanitarian crisis since World War II, and more than 4.8 million people have fled the country.
The United States has traditionally been by far the world's most generous host for refugees but has been criticized for moving too slowly to respond to the Syrian crisis.
Frontline states like Lebanon and Jordan meanwhile have been all but overwhelmed, and the arrival of streams of unvetted migrants on Europe's shores provoked a crisis.
Republican White House hopeful Donald Trump has repeatedly alleged Obama plans allow hundreds of thousands of Syrians to come to the United States without security checks.
Hardline Myanmar monk blasts 'dictator' Suu Kyi
A firebrand monk slammed Aung San Suu Kyi as a "dictator" Wednesday, accusing Myanmar's civilian-led government of trying to destroy an ultra-nationalist Buddhist group blamed for a surge in sectarian violence across the country.
The attack came after the body representing Myanmar's top monks distanced itself from the hardline Ma Ba Tha movement, a blow to its clerical legitimacy.
The Ma Ba Tha is a noisy, monk-led group at the forefront of virulently anti-Muslim protests in Myanmar in the three years since it was founded.
Monks (C) from the Sangha Maha Nayaka Committee, which represents the upper echelons of the clergy in the overwhelmingly Buddhist country, take part in a meeting in Yangon, on July 13, 2016 Ye Aung Thu (AFP)
Wirathu, the movement's most prominent figure, posted his scathing remarks on Facebook.
"I have seen that the ruling party and the new civilian government is stepping forward to target me as 'Enemy Number One' to destroy the whole Ma Ba Tha group to the end," he wrote.
He also described the administration as "a woman dictator's government which is going to put me in prison".
Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy won a landslide victory at last November's elections.
Wirathu's comments came after the Sangha Maha Nayaka Committee, which represents the upper echelons of the clergy in the overwhelmingly Buddhist country, issued a statement late Tuesday saying it had never endorsed Ma Ba Tha.
The ultra-nationalist group recently said it was established under the committee's rules, a claim refuted by the country's top monks, putting clear water between the mainstream Buddhist clergy and the hardline group for the first time.
- Under pressure -
The statement came hours ahead of a two-day gathering of around 50 of Myanmar's top monks inside a man-made cave on the outskirts of Yangon at which Ma Ba Tha is expected to be discussed.
In his Facebook post Wirathu suggested the Sangha was being controlled by the government because it was "part of the state's religious ministry" and "has to carry out the will of the government."
The Ma Ba Tha emerged as a potent political force under the former military-backed government, successfully lobbying for a series of laws that rights groups say discriminate against women and religious minorities.
Scores of people have been killed in sectarian riots that have billowed out in step with their protests.
But the organisation lost out in the November elections that saw their allies in the ruling party trounced by Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD).
It has since been trying to claw back ground, in recent weeks reviving its vitriolic rhetoric that portrays Islam as a threat to Buddhism.
Last month two mosques were destroyed by Buddhist mobs in the centre and north of the country.
Much of the anti-Muslim invective in Myanmar has targeted the Rohingya -- a minority denied citizenship and relegated to apartheid-like conditions ever since deadly riots tore through western Rakhine state in 2012.
Their very name invokes strong emotions in Myanmar, with the Ma Ba Tha leading protests for the Rohingya to be known only as "Bengalis" -- shorthand for illegal migrants from neighbouring Bangladesh.
De facto premier and Nobel laureate Suu Kyi has faced widespread censure from rights groups for failing to speak up for the group -- who the United Nations has labelled one of the world's most persecuted people.
Prominent Myanmar hardline Buddhist monk Wirathu (C) attends the annual summit of the Ma Ba Tha, a hardline Buddhist group, at a monastery on the outskirts of Yangon, in June 2016 Romeo Gacad (AFP/File)
Stranded Pacific lawmaker flees to New Zealand
A Nauru opposition figure who dramatically escaped from the Pacific nation this week after being trapped there for a year said Wednesday the rule of law had broken down and its citizens were living in fear.
Wellington-based Roland Kun travelled to Nauru last year for a four-day visit but ended up stranded for 12 months after the island's government revoked his passport and accused him of inciting a riot.
Kun, who at the time was an opposition lawmaker, was never charged but his requests for a new passport were denied, stopping him from travelling.
Nauru's President Baron Waqa has been appointed for a second term with a parliamentary majority of 16-2 Ness Kerton (AFP/File)
He only managed to flee this week after New Zealand secretly issued him one of its own passports, reuniting with his wife and three children in his adopted homeland on Monday.
"What the government did to us did not make any sense, it wasn't necessary and it should not have happened," Kun told Radio New Zealand.
Kun's lawyer Claudia Geiringer described the cloak-and-dagger measures adopted to get Kun out of the tiny nation of about 10,000 people, which is best known as a site for an Australian-run asylum-seeker detention camp.
First, the New Zealand government, which had raised concerns about Kun's plight, used a special ministerial discretion to issue him a passport.
After he received it, plans were made for him to leave for New Zealand via Australia, with Kun departing on Sunday because Nauru would be in a lull after national elections the previous day.
Even so, he spotted some government ministers at the airport and hung around in the car park, desperately hoping he would not be recognised.
"Sunday was a very nail-biting day for us all as we waited for information to come through," Geiringer told AFP in a written statement.
"We heard from an eyewitness that he was on the plane, but we couldn't know for sure until it landed in Brisbane and he emerged into the arrivals area."
Kun said allegations he incited violence at a protest outside Nauru's parliament last year were "total nonsense" and accused the government of acting with impunity.
"It was clear to me during my time on Nauru, when I wasn't allowed to leave the island, that there's a lot of fear," he said.
"The government has what they call blacklist... it's names of people who disagree with government."
New Zealand suspended NZ$1.2 million ($870,000) in foreign aid to Nauru's justice system last year, citing concerns about civil rights.
International monitors have criticised laws carrying heavy jail terms for political protesters and the suspension of opposition MPs.
However the government tightened its grip on power in the election and President Baron Waqa was appointed for a second term on Wednesday with a parliamentary majority of 16-2.
Situated about 2,800 kilometres (1,750 miles) northeast of Australia, Nauru is the smallest island country in the world, with an area of just 21 square kilometres (eight square miles).
Iran calls in French envoy over exiled opposition rally
Iran has summoned the French ambassador and lodged a formal protest over a rally outside Paris held by an exiled opposition group last weekend, a diplomatic source said Wednesday.
The National Council of Resistance in Iran (NCRI), which includes the former rebel People's Mujahedeen of Iran (MEK), claimed that 100,000 Iranians attended the annual rally at Le Bourget, near Paris, on Saturday.
"The holding of this rally by those whose hands are stained with the blood of the Iranian people... is unacceptable," said the message handed to French ambassador Francois Senemaud by senior foreign ministry official Abolqassem Delfi, state media reported.
President of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (CNRI) Maryam Radjavi arrives for the National Council of Resistance of Iran (CNRI) annual meeting on July 9, 2016, in Le Bourget, near Paris Alain Jocard (AFP)
The MEK is reviled by Tehran for siding with Saddam Hussein's regime during the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-88.
The US State Department listed it as a "terrorist organisation" in 1997.
After the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, its remaining fighters were disarmed and placed in camps where many of them remain with their families to this day.
It was removed from terrorist watch lists by the European Union in 2008 and the United States in 2012.
Delfi said NCRI was linked to radical jihadist organisations such as "the Taliban, Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State" group.
He also dismissed as "inappropriate" comments made in France against Iran, without elaborating.
A French foreign ministry spokesman distanced his country from MEK, the main group within the NCRI.
"The French government has no contact whatsoever with the People's Mujahedeen of Iran," said the spokesman, noting that the group held "violent and un-democratic" positions.
On Tuesday, Iranian government spokesman Mohammad Bagher Nobakht described the NCRI as an "annihilated terrorist group" and a "stinking corpse".
"The Islamic Republic of Iran will continue to confront this hypocritical little group and will condemn any government" that supports it, he told the official IRNA news agency.
Man charged over shooting of Cambodia critic
A Cambodian court on Wednesday charged a man with murdering a prominent political analyst in a brazen daylight shooting in the capital.
Police accuse Oueth Ang, 43, of gunning down pro-democracy campaigner Kem Ley at a Phnom Penh coffee shop on Sunday morning.
But in a bizarre twist to the case, prosecutors say the alleged killer insists he is called Chuob Samlab, an unlikely Khmer name meaning 'meet to kill' and is in fact aged 38.
Cambodian lawmakers from the opposition party pay their respects during the funeral ceremony of political analyst Kem Ley, at a pagoda in Phnom Penh, on July 11, 2016 Tang Chhin Sothy (AFP/File)
The murder sent shudders through Cambodian civil society in a country already bristling with political tensions and where activists are frequently threatened by powerful interests.
Oueth Ang has been charged "with premeditated murder and carrying a weapon without authorisation," according to prosecutor Ly Sophanna, who declined to give further details of the police probe.
Officers have said the suspect claimed he shot Kem Ley over an outstanding debt.
But doubts persist over the motive in a country where the rule of law is threadbare and critics of the elite are easily silenced.
On Tuesday the suspect's wife seeded fresh uncertainty, saying her husband did not have money to lend the victim.
"I don't believe the debt issue was the motive. Kem Ley is rich and we are poor," 45-year-old Hoeum Horth told AFP, explaining her shock at his alleged involvement.
Kem Ley, a popular radio commentator, was a regular critic of Hun Sen, the 63-year-old prime minister who has ruled over notoriously corrupt Cambodia for three decades, as well as the political opposition.
Hun Sen's government stands accused of cracking down on critics and political rivals ahead of 2018 elections, using the courts to strongarm opponents.
He has also been accused of tampering with elections, running a graft-riddled business empire and spearheading a host of rights abuses during his three decades in office.
Fears for two Bangladesh hostage survivors
Families and rights groups on Wednesday expressed fears for two survivors of a deadly siege at a Bangladesh cafe who are missing after being grilled by police over the attack.
Amnesty International has asked the authorities to establish "the fate and whereabouts" of Hasnat Karim who survived the attack and has been missing since being taken in for questioning 11 days ago.
Family members of Tahmid Khan also told AFP that they were in the dark about the 22-year-old Toronto University student's whereabouts after he was taken into custody as part of a police probe into the attack.
Bangladeshi policemen guard a check-point on a road leading to the Holey Artisan Bakery, the scene of a fatal attack and siege, in Dhaka, on July 3, 2016 - (APF/AFP/File)
Suspected Islamist militants killed 20 diners and two police officers when they raided the upscale Holey Artisan restaurant on the night of July 1. Army commandoes stormed the cafe the next morning, killing all five attackers and rescuing 13 people, including Karim and Khan.
Police have said both were initially interrogated as they tried to piece together what had happened during the siege.
But police now say that the pair are no longer under their custody.
"We've questioned them immediately after they were rescued. But they are no longer with police custody," Dhaka police spokesman Masudur Rahman told AFP on Wednesday. A military spokesman also told AFP that the two were not in their custody.
Fears for the pair's safety have been compounded after a 18-year-old injured survivor, who was rescued during the siege and was described as suspect, died in hospital after claims by his father that he was tortured by security forces.
Relatives of Karim and Khan insist both men have no connection to the attack which was claimed by the Islamic State group.
Karim's wife Sharmina Parveen, who was also held hostage along their two children, said she was afraid for his well-being.
"My husband is innocent. He has suffered enough. Please let him come home to his family," she said in a statement to a local rights group.
Reports in local media said both were being investigated for suspicious activity during the siege. They said Khan was seen holding a firearm and Karim strolling with the attackers on the roof.
"We understand it's a national security issue ... But at least they should say where he is and allow our parents to see him," Khan's brother Talha Khan told AFP by phone from Toronto.
"They (Hasnat Karim's family) have already suffered a traumatic episode, and his enforced disappearance prolongs their ordeal," said Champa Patel, Amnesty International's South Asia Director.
Indonesia details defence plan after South China Sea ruling
Indonesia will sharply strengthen security around its South China Sea islands where there have been clashes with Chinese vessels, the defence minister said Wednesday, a day after Beijing's claims in the waters were declared invalid.
In an interview with AFP, Ryamizard Ryacudu said bolstering defences around Indonesia's Natuna Islands would involve deploying warships, an F-16 fighter jet, surface-to-air missiles, a radar and drones, as well as constructing new ports and improving an airstrip.
The military build-up, which started in recent months, would be completed in "less than a year", he said.
The Indonesian Navy intercepts a Chinese fishing boat in the South China Sea
"This will be our eyes and ears," the retired general said.
"So that we can really see what is happening in the Natunas and the surrounding area in the South China Sea."
His comments came after a UN-backed tribunal in The Hague ruled on Tuesday against China's expansive claims in the South China Sea, finding in favour of a challenge from the Philippines which has long-running territorial disputes with Beijing in the waters.
The surprisingly strong ruling provided ammunition for Manila and other claimants locked in disputes over the resource-rich sea but sparked fury from Beijing, which warned its rivals against turning the waters into a "cradle of war" and threatened an air defence zone.
Unlike several of its Southeast Asian neighbours, Indonesia has long maintained it has no maritime disputes with China in the South China Sea and does not contest ownership of any territory.
But Beijing's claims overlap Indonesia's exclusive economic zone -- waters where a state has the right to exploit resources -- around the Natunas, and there has been an upsurge in clashes between Indonesian patrol and navy boats and Chinese fishing vessels and coastguards.
The increase in high-seas confrontations has been triggered by Indonesian authorities' aggressive crackdown on illegal fishing in its vast waters.
After a clash last month, President Joko Widodo visited the Natunas on a warship with his cabinet to send a message to China that Jakarta is serious about defending the remote archipelago.
- 'Let's avoid war' -
As well as the military hardware, Indonesia will send special air force and marine task forces as well as an army battalion to the Natunas, once barracks and housing have been built, Ryacudu said.
He insisted that Indonesia was not adding to the growing militarisation of the South China Sea, and suggested it had a right to defend its borders.
"It is our front door, why is it not guarded?" he said.
Authorities recently approved a bigger defence budget, part of which is to be allocated for the islands.
The minister said that he wanted the islands, in remote waters between Borneo island and peninsular Malaysia, to become like a northern sentry post guarding the country and authorities were considering building similar bases in other parts of the vast archipelago.
After the tribunal handed down its ruling, Indonesia's foreign ministry issued a typically cautious statement that urged "all parties to exercise restraint and not do anything that may increase tension".
Ryacudu echoed the call for restraint and insisted that the ruling would not lead to Jakarta changing its traditional position as a non-claimant state in the sea disputes.
"Let's avoid war," he said, adding Indonesia had good relations with all sides.
"If it is a squabble, a verbal one, please go ahead -- but let's protect this global maritime axis because we have shared interest there."
IS suicide bomber kills four at Iraq checkpoint
A suicide bomber detonated an explosives-rigged vehicle at a checkpoint near Baghdad on Wednesday, killing at least four people, officials said, an attack claimed by the Islamic State group.
The bombing at a checkpoint leading to the Husseiniyah area, northeast of the capital, also wounded 21 people, the officials said.
IS issued a statement saying an Iraqi carried out a suicide bombing targeting a checkpoint, but gave the location of the attack as Shaab, an area adjoining Husseiniyah.
Iraqi soldiers patrol in the streets of Baghdad on July 12, 2016 Sabah Arar (AFP)
The blast is the latest in a series of deadly attacks in and around Baghdad, including a bombing in a crowded shopping district on July 3 that killed 292 people, one of the deadliest ever to hit Iraq.
A few days later, jihadists attacked a Shiite shrine in Balad, north of Baghdad, killing 40 people, and on Tuesday, a suicide bomber struck a market near the capital, killing at least seven people.
IS overran large areas north and west of Baghdad in 2014, but has since lost significant ground to Iraqi forces backed by US-led air strikes, training and other assistance.
Bahrain court denies rights activist bail
A Bahraini court denied bail for prominent human rights activist Nabeel Rajab as he went on trial on charges of insulting a state institution and neighbouring Saudi Arabia online, his group said Wednesday.
The 51-year-old activist, who had been pardoned for health reasons last year, was rearrested last month as part of an intensifying crackdown on government critics that has drawn protests from the United Nations and key ally the United States.
Rajab appeared in court on Tuesday and was charged with "insulting a statutory body, insulting a neighbouring country and disseminating false rumours in time of war," the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights said.
Bahraini human rights activist Nabeel Rajab (C), pictured leaving court with his daughter Malak (L) in February 2015 in the capital Manama Mohammed Al-Shaikh (AFP/File)
The accusations refer to tweets posted on his account in 2015, referring to "allegation of torture" at Bahrain's Jaw prison, and the Saudi-led military intervention in Yemen, the BCHR said.
Rajab has had recurring health problems and was briefly hospitalised late last month but the court ordered that he remain in custody throughout the trial and set the next hearing for August 2.
Amnesty International has said Rajab could face up to 13 years if convicted and has slammed what it described as a "farcical trial."
The Shiite activist has been repeatedly detained for organising protests and publishing tweets deemed insulting to Bahrain's Sunni authorities.
He previously served two years in jail on charges of taking part in unauthorised protests in the Shiite-majority kingdom.
UN warns of new S. Sudan fighting as humanitarian crisis grows
The United Nations warned of fresh fighting in South Sudan Wednesday, after days of deadly gun battles that have sent thousands fleeing and sparked the evacuation of foreign nationals.
Fears of a humanitarian crisis were growing with aid agencies -- themselves forced to restrict their work because of the security situation -- saying there were shortages of food and water.
A fragile ceasefire nevertheless appeared to be holding in the capital Juba for the second day after a sudden flare-up in fighting last week that threatened to drive the world's newest country back into all-out civil war.
Displaced residents take shelter at the UN compound in the Tomping area of South Sudan's capital Juba on July 11, 2016 Beatrice Mategwa (UNMISS/AFP)
As the guns remained silent, President Salva Kiir said he was granting an amnesty, with effect from Wednesday, to the ex-rebels loyal to longtime rival Riek Machar who battled government troops in Juba over four days.
But the situation remains precarious, UN peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous told the Security Council.
"We remain very worried about the potential for the resumption of violence and spill-over into other parts of the country, as we have seen in the past," he said.
Thousands of South Sudanese were clamouring to cross the border into Uganda.
- 'Bodies in the streets' -
President Barack Obama on Wednesday announced the deployment of 47 troops to protect the US embassy and its staff.
"Although equipped for combat, these additional personnel are deployed for the purpose of protecting US citizens and property," Obama wrote in a letter to Congress released by the White House.
Obama also said that 130 more personnel were positioned in Djibouti and ready to deploy if necessary.
While US troops will not have a combat role, their presence will not go unnoticed by rival factions.
Meanwhile Germany and Italy said they were evacuating their nationals and other foreigners, although commercial flights were not expected to resume until Thursday.
Around 200 people, including the hundred or so Germans living in South Sudan, were evacuated to Uganda by the German air force, the foreign ministry in Berlin said.
Residents from Britain, France Australia, the United States, Poland and elsewhere were also on the German flights, as well as three Chinese UN peacekeepers.
The United Nations said around 36,000 people had fled their homes for the perceived safety of UN bases, churches and aid agency compounds since the unrest erupted on Friday.
"There are bodies in the streets, shops have been looted, markets closed, people are queueing for food and families are desperately trying to leave the city," said Peter Walsh, South Sudan country director for charity Save the Children.
In Nimule, the closest border point 200 kilometres (120 miles) to the south of Juba, UN refugee agency officials estimated as many as 20,000 people may be seeking to cross into Uganda.
Those who made it across said South Sudanese soldiers were preventing people from crossing, or relieving them of their possessions before allowing them to pass.
"I only kept two cooking pots, the clothes the children and I were wearing, and one change each, and my handbag," said Mary Modo, a 40-year-old mother of five.
- 'No gunshots today' -
More people ventured on to the streets of the capital, which lies on the banks of the White Nile, but many remained cautious.
"No gunshots today. I have seen no tank, no helicopter," said a resident who did not want to be named. "There are a lot of soldiers and policemen in the streets patrolling."
The violence marks a fresh blow to last year's deal for ending the bitter conflict which erupted in December 2013 when Kiir sacked Machar, accusing him of plotting a coup.
Kiir is a member of the Dinka tribe, while Machar is a Nuer, and the dispute has split the country along ethnic lines.
The August 2015 agreement paved the way for Machar's return to the capital in late April to take up the deputy post again in a so-called unity government.
Machar was permitted to return with around 1,400 lightly-armed former rebel soldiers and Kiir was supposed to retain no more than 3,400 armed forces, with the city being otherwise "demilitarised".
However, during the fighting, tanks, helicopter gunships and anti-aircraft guns were all deployed.
The overall death toll is not known but around 300 were killed in just a few hours on Friday, including two Chinese UN peacekeepers.
Adama Dieng, the UN Special Advisor on the Prevention of Genocide, said some civilians "were reportedly targeted based on their ethnicity".
African Union Commission chairwoman Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma called the situation "totally unacceptable".
The catastrophic impact of the civil war in a country that only won independence from Sudan five years ago has been worsened by the latest fighting.
"Three-quarters of the population of South Sudan is in need of humanitarian assistance," the head of the UN's World Food Programme, Ertharin Cousin, said in Amman.
Jan Egeland, secretary-general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, said his organisation had been forced to halt relief work due to insecurity, while some other aid agencies have begun evacuating non-essential personnel.
South Sudan's President Salva Kiir answers questions during a press conference in Juba, on July 8, 2016 Charles Atiki Lomodong (AFP/File)
Map of South Sudan locating the capital Juba, site of three days of deadly clashes between the army and former rebels - (AFP Graphic)
Nuclear deal holding but more work needed: Iran negotiator
Iran's nuclear deal with world powers is holding a year after it was agreed but more needs to be done to ensure its full implementation, a top Iranian negotiator said Wednesday.
"The total process has been relatively satisfactory despite the difficulties that we see in the implementation," Hamid Baeidinejad told a press conference in Tehran for the first anniversary of the agreement.
"We belive that the deal has not been violated so far and efforts continue to resolve the remaining issues," Baeidinejad said.
Despite the lifting of nuclear-related penalties, Washington and the European Union maintain some sanctions on Iran over its human rights record and ballistic missile testing Atta Kenare (AFP/File)
The deal between Iran and the P5+1 group of powers (Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States) limited Tehran's atomic programme in return for the lifting of some international sanctions, which took effect in January.
There has been some disappointment in Iran that the lifting of the sanctions has not yet led to significant investments, with many international investors and banks still wary of doing business with the Islamic republic.
Despite the lifting of nuclear-related penalties, Washington and the European Union maintain some sanctions on Iran over its human rights record and ballistic missile testing.
Asked if Iran had oversold the deal to its people, Baeidinejad said: "We knew exactly what was agreed upon in the deal and what was not."
He said Tehran "had more expectations on the removal of economic, banking and financial restrictions, but despite all these deficiencies there is a feeling of hope inside our country to remove these obstacles" through more talks.
"We will not agree to anything less than the full implementation of the JCPOA," he said, referring to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the official name of the agreement.
The agreement caused "great optimism" in Iran on "unrelated issues", Baeidinejad said, but those expectations are "fortunately being balanced and adjusted to reality".
President Hassan Rouhani on Wednesday also praised the "new atmosphere" created by the accord, saying it can lead to "better economic, defence, and technological activity" for Iran.
US brands vow to stick with Bangladesh despite attacks
A group of mostly US-based fashion brands and retailers pledged Wednesday not to turn their backs on Bangladesh's crucial garment industry despite a series of deadly attacks by Islamist extremists.
The recent murder of 20 hostages at a cafe in Dhaka has cast a big shadow over over the industry's future, especially as the victims included several Italians employed in the fashion trade.
But the Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety, which represents more than two dozen North American fashion brands and retailers, said its members remained committed to buying garments from Bangladesh.
A sign of solidarity is placed near the restaurant where a bloody siege ended in the death of seventeen foreigners and five Bangladeshis, in Dhaka on July 5, 2016 Roberto Schmidt (AFP)
"Despite these unspeakable tragedies, the Alliance and our member companies will continue to stay the course," James Moriarty, country director for the Alliance told a teleconference.
The alliance, which includes major brands such as Gap and Walmart, was set up to improve safety standards at Bangladesh's estimated 4,500 garment factories in the aftermath of the 2013 Rana Plaza disaster.
More than 1,100 textile workers were killed in April 2013 when a six-storey complex of garment factories collapsed near the capital Dhaka.
Moriarty, a former US envoy to Bangladesh, said that "improving safety for the millions of men and women who make a living in Bangladesh's garment sector is a moral imperative."
"As we review and update our policies to help keep our staff and contractors safe, our work to improve safety in Bangladeshs garment factories will continue at full speed," he added.
The Islamic State organisation claimed responsibility for killing the mainly foreign hostages in Dhaka earlier this month although the government has blamed a home-grown extremist group.
Several leading exporters have reported that some buyers have postponed visits to Bangladesh in the wake of the attack and have instead insisted on meetings in alternative venues such as Dubai or Bangkok.
However officials from the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA) say they have received assurances from retailers like H&M, which is the largest buyer from Dhaka, that they won't shift orders.
Beijing's South China Sea anger belies dilemma, experts say
An international tribunal ruling against Beijing's extensive claims in the South China Sea is the Asian giant's biggest diplomatic setback in years, leaving it facing a difficult choice between pragmatism and nationalism, analysts say.
Beijing has unleashed a deluge of vitriol against the ruling by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, but at the same time the permanent UN Security Council member is trying to position itself as a key player in the global community.
Beijing's claims to almost the whole of the strategically vital South China Sea are embodied in a nine-dash line dating from 1940s maps, and it has built up a series of artificial islands capable of supporting military operations.
Chinese police block the road leading to the Philippine embassy in Beijing on July 13, 2016, the day after an international court in The Hague ruled against China over Beijing-occupied territory in the South China Sea Nicolas Asfouri (AFP)
But when the Philippines, a rival claimant, asked the UN-backed tribunal to rule on 15 issues relating to the dispute, it ruled there was no legal foundation for China's ambitions to control the area's bounty.
The announcement unleashed a flood of condemnation from the Chinese government and state media, which for months had been preparing for an unfavourable outcome with attacks on the tribunal's integrity, calling the group everything from a "fraud" to a "mutant."
Angry Chinese citizens vented their spleen online but authorities reportedly censored the most aggressive comments, and imposed tight security around the Philippine embassy amid fears of protests.
Beijing reiterated its right to declare an air defence identification zone in the area Wednesday, but did not explicitly threaten action in the water.
Its wrath was undercut by the fact that by boycotting the proceedings, insisting that the tribunal had no jurisdiction, Beijing had repeatedly rejected the opportunity to defend its position, analysts said.
Yanmei Xie, a China analyst for the International Crisis Group, said its ambitions for a bigger place on the global diplomatic stage put it in a quandary.
"China is at a point where it wants to participate more in the shaping of international institutions and in some cases has taken up a role as a leader," she told AFP.
Last year China set up a new multilateral lender, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, in September it will host the annual G20 summit, and it contributes more blue helmets to UN peacekeeping missions than any other country in the world.
But its hard won credibility could be at stake if it is seen as setting itself "against international law and international institutions" or "cherry picking" rules for its own convenience, she said.
- 'True test' -
China's ruling Communist Party has long used nationalism to bolster its legitimacy, but the rhetoric has escalated under President Xi Jinping, who has responded to weakened economic growth with calls to resist the kind of pernicious Western influences that led to the country's exploitation and weakness in the 19th century.
At the same time it has also asserted its territorial claims more aggressively, with Xi regularly exhorting the military to improve its ability to win battles.
"This really will be the first true test of Xi Jinping's leadership because he's ridden the tiger of nationalist sentiment and wrapped himself in the flag I think very successfully," said Euan Graham, of Australia's Lowy Institute think tank.
But at the same time, "China does take its membership of the United Nations and the Security Council very seriously," he said, adding "it's not easy to reject an approved tribunal that is drawing on a United Nations treaty".
Jay Batongbacal, a maritime affairs expert at the University of the Philippines, said the judgement was "a foreign policy disaster for the Party".
"It's going to take a lot of great statesmanship to move China from its very hardline public position without looking like it's conceding," he told AFP.
Although China's foreign ministry issued a hardline response to the ruling, full of denunciations, it also offered an olive branch. The country is "ready to make every effort with the states directly concerned to enter into provisional arrangements of a practical nature", it said at the end of a lengthy statement reasserting its claims of sovereignty.
Beijing has warned that it will meet force with force if necessary, but Hu Xingdou, a foreign policy expert at Beijing University of Technology, said a military reaction to the ruling was unlikely.
"It would lead to the interruption of China's modernisation and lead China to become more and more closed," he said.
Ultimately, he said, China's response "must not be too exaggerated, and must not be too outraged".
Disputed claims in the South China Sea
A Philippine activist holds a placard during a protest outside the Chinese consulate in Manila on July 12, 2016 Ted Aljibe (AFP)
A Filipino activist holds a Philippine flag on a ship while a Chinese coast guard ship sails by at the Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea on June 13, 2016
Germany, Italy evacuating nationals, foreigners from South Sudan
Germany and Italy said Wednesday they were evacuating their nationals and other foreigners from South Sudan, after intense fighting killed hundreds of people and forced tens of thousands to flee their homes.
"The government's crisis task force has decided to evacuate German, European and international citizens from South Sudan. The evacuation is ongoing and being carried out by air using German airforce planes," said German foreign ministry spokeswoman Sawsan Chebli.
Around 100 German citizens were still in South Sudan, and those with German organisations would be given priority in the evacuation, said Chebli.
Families find shelter in Saint Joseph's church compound in Juba on July 12, 2016 after days of gun battles sent nearly 40,000 fleeing Charles Atiki Lomodong (AFP)
Berlin would also help bring other foreigners to safety, the spokeswoman said, adding however that she could not give their nationalities for security reasons.
Separately, Rome said an Italian military plane carrying 30 Italians and an unspecified number of other EU citizens departed Wednesday morning for its base in Djibouti.
Japan's Emperor Akihito plans to become his country's first monarch to abdicate in 200 years and allow his son to take over the throne, the public broadcaster NHK has reported.
The monarch, who has had heart surgery and prostate cancer, has been cutting back on his official duties and handing them over to his heir Crown Prince Naruhito, 56, within a few years.
Akihito was the heir to Emperor Hirohito, in whose name Japan fought the Second World War, and has spent much of his time on the throne seeking to heal the wounds from the conflict. He has reigned since his father died in 1989.
Japan's Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko have been on the Chrysanthemum Throne for 27 years after coming to power in 1989)
He marked the 70th anniversary of end of the war last year with an expression of 'deep remorse', a departure from his previous remarks, seen by some as an effort to cement of legacy of post-war pacifism.
'Looking back at the past, together with deep remorse over the war, I pray that this tragedy of war will not be repeated and together with the people express my deep condolences for those who fell in battle and in the ravages of war,' he said.
Akihito has sought to deepen Japan's ties with the world through visits abroad. In 1992 he became the first Japanese monarch in living memory to visit China, where bitter memories of Japan's past military aggression run deep.
Crown Prince Naruhito with his wife Masako will take over from his father.
While Akihito's father was a controversial figure, Akihito 'was the first post-war emperor to embrace the (pacifist) constitution and his role as a symbol of national unity', said Koichi Nakano, a political science professor at Sophia University in Tokyo.
Under the US-drafted, postwar constitution, Japan's emperor is 'the symbol of the State and of the unity of the People', with no political power.
Akihito is said to have expressed his intention to quit for a year to people around him, but officials could not immediately be reached for comment.
He is the first royal heir to have married a commoner, Michiko Shoda, the daughter of a wealthy industrialist.
Emperor Kokaku, who gave up the throne in 1817, was the last Japanese emperor to abdicate, NHK said.
The timing of the latest handover to his son Naruhito, 56, was not immediately clear.
Naruhito is the elder of of his two sons and the first in line of succession. Naruhito's wife, Crown Princess Masako, a former diplomat, is still recovering from a stress-induced mental condition.
Former Burundi minister Hafsa Mossi shot dead
Former Burundian government minister and spokeswoman Hafsa Mossi was shot dead by unknown assailants in the capital Bujumbura on Wednesday, police said.
"Hon. Mossi assassinated 10.30 in Gihosha", in the east of Bujumbura by, "two criminals in a vehicle," police spokesman Pierre Nkurikiye said on Twitter.
Mossi, a former journalist in her 50s who previously worked for the BBCs Swahili Service, was a member of President Pierre Nkurunziza's ruling CNDD-FDD party.
Burundi police officers inspect the vehicle of minister Hafsa Mossi, a close ally of President Pierre Nkurunziza, after she was killed on July 13, 2016 in Burundian capital, Bujumbura, according to the police spokesman, Pierre Nkurikiye Onesphore Nibigira (AFP)
"The assassination of Hafsa Mossi is a despicable and cowardly act," Nkurunziza tweeted.
"This is an inestimable loss for Burundi, her family and the whole EAC (East African Community)," he added.
Mossi was Burundi's information minister and government spokeswoman between 2005-2007, and at the time of her death was a member of the East African Legislative Assembly, a regional parliament.
Foreign Minister Alain-Aime Nyamitwe called her death "a great loss for the nation".
Nkurunziza's controversial but ultimately successful bid for a third term last year triggered a deadly crisis that has left more than 500 people dead and driven around 270,000 to leave the country.
Several senior military officers close to the president have been assassinated since the start of the crisis in April 2015, but Mossi, who was not regarded as a party hardliner, is the first senior politician to be killed.
She had stayed very quiet since the beginning of the crisis and the motive for her murder remained unclear.
An investigation was swiftly opened.
Louise Mushikiwabo, the foreign minister of neighbouring Rwanda, which has difficult relations with Burundi, spoke on Twitter of a "good woman and a dedicated politician. Rest in Peace my sister!"
France condemned the assassination in a statement, adding that Paris was monitoring closely the "continued violence and human rights abuses in Burundi".
The statement also called for an "extensive dialogue" to help bring about an end to the crisis engulfing the country.
Amnesty International called for an independent enquiry into Mossi's assassination.
"Hafsa Mossis death, the latest in a disturbing string of high-profile killings, is a great loss to the people of Burundi and the East African region, said Amnesty's regional director Muthoni Wanyeki.
Boeing inks jet deals with Chinese, Spanish carriers
US aircraftmaker Boeing on Wednesday confirmed orders from Air Europa of Spain and Ruili Airlines of China at the Farnborough airshow.
Air Europa has purchased 20 single-aisle 737 MAX 8 jets worth $2.2 billion at list prices, in an order previously attributed to an unnamed buyer.
Airlines typically negotiate discounts on high volume aircraft orders.
A Boeing 787 Dreamliner takes part in a flying display at Britain's Farnborough Airshow on July 12, 2016 Adrian Dennis (AFP)
Boeing added that it has also finalised a deal to sell six 787-9 Dreamliners, worth $1.59 billion at list prices, to Chinese carrier Ruili Airlines.
The transaction represents the first widebody order for the carrier which is based in Yunnan province in China.
Taiwan ramps up training after deadly missile gaffe
Taiwan said on Wednesday that it was ramping up defence training and guidelines after a missile was accidentally launched towards China, killing one person and triggering a stern response from Beijing.
The Hsiung-feng III (Brave Wind) missile flew about 75 kilometres (45 miles) before hitting a trawler earlier this month in waters off Penghu, a Taiwanese-administered island group in the Taiwan Strait. It killed the boat's skipper and injured three crew on board.
The accident came at a time of deteriorating ties between the island and China, which insists self-ruling Taiwan is part of its territory even though the two sides split in 1949 after a civil war. It has not ruled out using force to bring about reunification.
Taiwan unveiled its Hsiung-feng III (Brave Wind) anti-ship missile in 2007 Sam Yeh (AFP/File)
The navy said the staff sergeant who launched the missile had mistakenly chosen "war mode" and "missile loading mode" during the practice drill.
"The incident caused a death and endangered ties with the mainland," Taiwan Defence Minister Feng Shih-kuan said in a statement posted Wednesday on social media.
"It also raised international concerns and upset the morale and honour of the military."
Feng said all units in charge of "precision weapons" must complete the new training by August 15.
The measures also call for improved operating guidelines to be implemented and a disciplinary code for relevant units.
Zhang Zhihjun, the head of China's Taiwan Affairs Office in Beijing, issued a warning in response to the accidental launch.
"At a time when the mainland repeatedly stressed it wants to sustain peaceful development of cross-strait ties...I felt the influence from the event could be very severe," he said.
Dozens of Syrian civilians 'killed' in bombing of rebel towns
Fierce bombardment of two opposition-held Syrian towns killed at least 31 civilians including children on Wednesday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor said.
Most were killed in air raids likely carried out by either President Bashar al-Assad's regime or its Russian ally, the Observatory said.
The attacks come despite the army's extension of a nationwide truce until early Friday. The freeze in fighting has yet to produce any respite in violence.
More than 280,000 people have been killed and millions displaced since Syria's civil war erupted in 2011 - (AFP/File)
Bombing raids killed at least 16 civilians and wounded dozens more in the rebel-controlled town of Rastan in central Homs province the Observatory said.
Another three civilians were killed in government shelling on the town earlier in the day.
Rastan -- one of the last rebel strongholds in Homs province -- has suffered a devastating siege by government forces in 2012.
In northwest Syria, 12 civilians including three children were killed in raids on the opposition-held town of Ariha.
The town is controlled by the Army of Conquest, a rebel alliance of mainly Islamist groups including Al-Qaeda affiliate Al-Nusra Front that holds almost all of Idlib province.
An AFP journalist saw civil defence workers using a large bulldozer to clear debris away from a crumbling building.
Some rescue workers wearing face masks used small plastic buckets to clear rubble so they could pull a thin man covered in dust out of a destroyed structure.
"We came to the site of the air strike and there was a huge fire, many corpses, human flesh everywhere," said Ahmad Qurbay, head of Ariha's civil defence service.
"The areas that were hit are all residential buildings, near Ariha's main market," he added.
Footage uploaded to Facebook by local activists showed men crying over what appeared to be the bodies of victims wrapped in thick, bloodied rugs.
A rescue worker guided one shell-shocked man covered in blood out of a building and into a large ambulance.
Idlib has regularly been targeted by both Syrian government air strikes and raids carried out by its Russian ally.
A longtime backer of the government in Damascus, Moscow stepped up its support for Assad on September 30, when it began an air campaign aimed at bolstering regime positions.
More than 280,000 people have been killed and millions displaced since Syria's civil war erupted with the brutal repression of anti-government protests in 2011.
Smoke billows in the rebel-held Salihin neighbourhood of Aleppo following a reported air strike on July 9, 2016 Fadi Al-Halabi (AFP)
Idlib has regularly been targeted by both Syrian and Russian warplanes
Germany plans to apologise over 'genocide' in Namibia
Germany plans to formally apologise to Windhoek for the genocide of indigenous Namibians a century ago, a foreign ministry spokeswoman said Wednesday, but added the move would not carry any obligation of reparations.
"We are working towards a joint government declaration with the following elements: common discussions on the historical events and a German apology for the action in Namibia," the spokeswoman, Sawsan Chebli, told reporters.
The joint declaration with the Namibian government can serve as a basis for a parliamentary resolution, she said, adding however that the step would not translate into legal repercussions for Germany.
Germany plans to formally apologise to Windhoek for the genocide of indigenous Namibians a century ago Brigitte Weidlich (AFP/File)
"On the question of whether there could be reparations or legal consequences, there are none. The apology does not come with any consequences on how we deal with the history and portray it," she said.
Berlin ruled what was then called South-West Africa as a colony from 1884 to 1915.
Incensed by German settlers stealing their land and cattle and taking their women, the Herero people launched a revolt in January 1904 with warriors butchering 123 German civilians over several days. The Nama tribe joined the uprising in 1905.
The colonial rulers responded ruthlessly and General Lothar von Trotha signed a notorious extermination order against the Hereros.
Rounded up in prison camps, captured Namas and Hereros died from malnutrition and severe weather. Dozens were beheaded after their deaths and their skulls sent to German researchers in Berlin for "scientific" experiments.
Up to 80,000 Hereros lived in Namibia when the uprising began. Afterwards, only 15,000 were left.
Germany has since 2011 formally handed back dozens of the skulls.
But Berlin has repeatedly refused to pay reparations, saying that its hundreds of millions of euros (dollars) in development aid since Namibia's independence from South Africa in 1990 was "for the benefit of all Namibians".
The speaker of the German parliament last July said the slaughter of indigenous Namibians a century ago constituted a "genocide" that stemmed from a "race war".
Norbert Lammert, writing in a guest column for news weekly Die Zeit, said the Herero and Nama peoples had been systematically targeted for massacre by German imperial troops.
Since then, the government has also used the term, with Chebli on Wednesday also saying that "we have spoken of genocide for a long time."
Pakistan militants accuse India of 'genocide' in Kashmir
Militants in Pakistan-administered Kashmir accused New Delhi of "genocide" Wednesday, after days of clashes left 32 people dead and hundreds wounded on the Indian side of the heavily-militarised frontier.
Up to 3,000 people gathered at a rally in the Pakistani Kashmir capital Muzaffarabad, where militant leaders vowed to launch a civil disobedience campaign on the Indian side of the contested territory.
Violence broke out there Friday after a Hizbul Mujahideen (HM) commander named Burhan Wani -- a 22-year-old poster boy for the region's biggest rebel group -- was killed in a gun battle with government forces.
Indian paramilitary soldiers patrol the streets during a curfew in downtown Srinagar on July 13, 2016 Tauseef Mustafa (AFP)
HM chief Sayed Salahuddin condemned the clashes, which are the worst in Kashmir since 2010.
If India's "occupation" troops continue "with the genocide of Kashmiris then along with armed struggle we will also start a civil disobedience movement in occupied Kashmir," Salahuddin said, amid calls for jihad.
"People on both sides will have to march and trample that bloody line that divides them," he said referring to the de facto Kashmir border between India and Pakistan, known as the Line of Control.
Salahuddin, who also heads the umbrella group the United Jihad Council, which is widely believed to have close links to the Pakistani military, called on Islamabad to raise the issue with the international community.
Islamabad summoned New Delhi's envoy on Monday and conveyed Pakistan's "serious concern" over the recent killings in the disputed Himalayan state.
Police said most of those who died were protesters killed by gunshot wounds as Indian government troops fired live ammunition and tear gas to try to enforce a curfew imposed across the Kashmir Valley.
Those at the rally offered funeral prayers for Wani, while around 150 HM fighters donned commando-style uniforms with headbands inscribed with the words "Freedom of Martyrdom".
HM is one of several homegrown militant groups that have for decades been fighting around half a million Indian troops deployed in the region, calling for independence or a merger with Pakistan.
Google wins extra time to fight EU Android probe
Google won more time Wednesday to answer accusations by the European Commission that the US tech giant abuses the dominance of its Android mobile phone operating system.
"The Commission has agreed to extend Google's deadline to respond to its Statement of Objections concerning Android and its applications until 7 September," a spokesman for the EU's executive arm told AFP.
The decision extends Google's deadline from July 27 and came on the day US Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew was to visit EU officials in Brussels, including EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager.
The European Commission has accused Google of obstructing innovation by giving unfair prominence to its own apps, especially its search engine, in deals with mobile phone manufacturers such as Samsung and Huawei Justin Sullivan (Getty/AFP/File)
The many battles opened by Vestager against US companies on competition issues has put a strain on transatlantic ties.
Other EU investigations include cases against Starbucks, Amazon and McDonald's.
In the Android case, the commission has accused Google of obstructing innovation by giving unfair prominence to its own apps, especially its search engine, in deals with mobile phone manufacturers such as Samsung and Huawei.
Google's response will be the company's last chance to avoid sanctions, which could amount to fines up to 10 percent of the group's annual global sales or $7.4 billion based on their 2015 results.
The case is the second attack by the EU against Google after Vestager last year formally charged the company for abusing its dominance of the search engine market in Europe.
Google could also face a third wave of EU anti-competition charges, this time targeting the search engine giant's advertising business.
Vestager's team is expected to close a long-running state-aid inquiry into Apple's tax arrangements in Ireland, which some have suggested could see the iPhone maker on the hook for $19 billion in back taxes.
Republican Party fractured as Trump set to take mantle
Many Republicans still think it's unlikely that Donald Trump will defeat Hillary Clinton in November and win the presidency.
So, they are looking to salvage what they can on Election Day -- the majority in both houses of Congress, they hope -- and then look ahead to the next race for the White House in 2020.
Next week, the Republican Party will head to Cleveland for a national convention at which Trump will be formally nominated to run against the Democratic former secretary of state.
Presumptive US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump addreses a campaign rally in Westfield, Indiana on July 12, 2016 Tasos Katopodis (AFP)
But instead of a giant pep rally extolling the party's virtues and chances of victory, the event will more likely paper over the deep divides between the Republican establishment and Trump's brand of in-your-face populism.
Of course, the Republican party bigwigs will try to minimize all signs of dissent and project the image of a unified movement ready to put an end to Democratic rule at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Trump may even succeed in throwing a spectacular, made-for-TV political bash.
But the number of absentee Republicans -- the Bush clan, Mitt Romney, John McCain and onetime candidate John Kasich, the governor of the state where the event is being held -- will tell a different tale.
"This is unprecedented among recent conventions," Robert Boatright, a professor of political science at Clark University in Massachusetts, said about the no-shows.
Trump still has not revealed details about the convention program: who will get the coveted primetime speaking slots, and what they will say.
The convention provides a golden opportunity to breathe life into his campaign, which has struggled since he clinched enough delegates to secure the nomination in May.
The billionaire real estate mogul from Manhattan has repeatedly vowed to make himself more "presidential" and abandon the carefree, incendiary tone that has marked his campaign until now.
"In the short term, Trump has to give most Republican members of Congress, most Republican leaders... a reason not to give up on him," Boatright said of Trump's convention goals.
But the most likely scenario, he said, would be that party leaders and big donors continue to ignore him, instead focusing on the half-dozen or so key Senate seats that the party wants to try to save.
The Republican party's platform for the coming four years -- to be unveiled next week -- reprises key talking points of Trump's inflammatory campaign, including calls for a wall on the Mexican border, according to details released by US media.
But it also veered sharply to the right on immigration, family values, gay rights and climate change as the party looks ahead to the midterm elections in 2018 and, of course, 2020.
- What happens after 2016? -
Once upon a time, the 2016 election was thought to be a lock for Republicans.
They won back control of the House of Representatives in 2010 and the Senate in 2014.
After Barack Obama's two terms as president, the Republicans should have benefited from the tendency of voters to seek change, especially when faced with a candidate as unpopular as Clinton, who is still battling voter unease over her use of private email at the State Department.
Trump's surprise rise in the primaries -- on the back of an anti-establishment, protectionist and xenophobic message -- deprived the party of the chance to rebuild troubled ties with black and Hispanic voters.
Result: the civil war raging on the American right since the emergence of the ultra-conservative Tea Party in 2010 will not be resolved during this election cycle.
"With Trump as the nominee, it's certainly a wasted cycle," John Hudak, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, told AFP.
"Donald Trump dominating the conversation has really offered no progress toward understanding what the future of the Republican Party will look like."
If Trump loses to Clinton, which wing of the party will benefit the most?
At 46, House Speaker Paul Ryan is well-positioned to pick up the pieces.
Ryan -- Romney's running mate in 2012 -- is respected by conservative ideologues and seen by the establishment as an effective spokesman for the Republican brand. While he is backing Trump, he is doing so while keeping his distance.
But the ultra-conservatives such as Texas Senator Ted Cruz, who nearly made it to the end of the primaries before bowing out, would be undeniably reinvigorated by a Trump loss.
As he did after Romney lost to Obama in 2012, the 45-year-old Cruz could tell right-leaning voters that the White House again escaped their grasp because the nominee was not a real conservative.
Cruz said in May that he would run for re-election to the Senate in 2018. Another of Trump's former rivals, Florida Senator Marco Rubio, backtracked on his decision not to run again, and will be a candidate in November for a second term.
Cruz and Rubio, along with other young wolves of the party, are looking ahead to 2020.
"2020 is going to be another cycle that is very difficult for the party, and it may not be for quite some time before they finally figure out what direction they're going to move in," Hudak said.
The Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio will likely paper over the deep divides between the Republican establishment and Donald Trump's brand of in-your-face populism Angelo Merendino (Getty/AFP/File)
Campaign supporters await the arrival of presumptive US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump in Westfield, Indiana on July 12, 2016 Tasos Katopodis (AFP)
House Speaker Paul Ryan is respected by conservative ideologues and seen by the establishment as an effective spokesman for the Republican brand Mark Wilson (Getty/AFP)
Kerry to meet Putin in bid to save Syria peace process
A frustrated US Secretary of State John Kerry is heading back to Moscow once again to meet President Vladimir Putin and test his commitment to the stalled Syrian peace process.
Russia and the United States are nominally co-chairs of international efforts to bring Bashar al-Assad's regime to the negotiating table with armed opposition groups.
But ferocious bloodshed continues in defiance of a series of failed ceasefires, and the odd couple heading the peace effort appear increasingly at odds over the way forward.
ecretary of State John Kerry speaks during a reception in honor of Eid al-Fitr at the State Department in Washington, DC, July 12, 2016 Saul Loeb (AFP)
Kerry told diners at a delayed Eid al-Fitr supper Tuesday that he would meet Putin "to see if we can somehow advance this in the important ways that people want us to."
And he told the State Department guests: "You have my word -- all of you -- that we will continue doing everything that we can to alleviate the suffering in Syria."
But, as Kerry's spokesman John Kirby said of his boss to reporters earlier: "I'd say he's extremely frustrated, and we want to see real change in what's been going on.
"I believe he meant every molecule of what he said when he said that his patience was growing thin," Kirby said.
In Washington, many observers have criticized Kerry's outreach to Russia on Syria, arguing he has been strung along by a Putin seeking only to protect his client Assad.
But Kirby insisted the administration is not being naive, and that Thursday's visit to Moscow, Kerry's third this year, would "probe the sincerity" of Putin's promises.
Hopes for the existing peace process rest on the UN-backed blueprint sketched out by the 22-nation, US and Russian-led International Syria Support Group (ISSG).
- Drop dead date -
Under this road map, signed by both Syria's ally Iran and Assad's pro-rebel foe Saudi Arabia, a nationwide ceasefire will precede Geneva-based talks on "political transition."
Substantial political talks were once supposed to start on August 1, although Kerry has sought to underline that this is a "target" and not a "drop dead date" nor deadline.
Before leaving on Wednesday with Kerry for Paris, from where he was due to fly on to Moscow, the spokesman said "we're mindful of the clock. We're mindful of the calendar."
Kirby said talk of the August 1 target date "underscores the importance of the secretary's trip to Moscow and the conversations that he intends to have there."
But he added "clearly, we are not ignorant to the fact that achieving some sort of groundbreaking political development in two weeks is not likely."
Previously, Kerry has suggested that if there is no breakthrough by the target date then Washington might resort to an undefined "Plan B" to deal with Assad.
- Open to ideas -
He and other US officials have since played down this idea -- reportedly a call for military strikes against the regime -- but it is not clear if they have other options.
There have been suggestions that the US and Russia might coordinate their forces to jointly go after the jihadists of the Al-Nusra Front and the so-called Islamic State.
On this, Kirby said the US was "open to ideas."
But on the civil war itself, Washington and Moscow are still far apart, and Kerry's counterpart Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov places the blame on the United Nations.
Lavrov said on Tuesday that UN envoy Staffan de Mistura was "shunning his duties" in not summoning the warring parties to a new round of peace talks in Geneva.
On Monday, De Mistura said he wants guarantees of progress before restarting the process, warning "the key lies in a possible agreement between Russia and the United States."
Washington defends De Mistura, arguing it is hard to expect the moderate opposition to come to the table while Russian-backed Syrian forces are bombarding them daily.
"Russia can play a more productive, more constructive, more useful role in terms of trying to check that behavior," Kirby argued, citing Assad's forced starvation tactics.
"And so we'll see where we get after the discussions... and we'll see where we get throughout the rest of July."
Smoke billows following a reported strike by pro-Syrian government forces in a rebel-held neighbourhood in the northern city of Aleppo on July 12, 2016 Karam al-Masri (AFP)
US Secretary of State John Kerry (R) last met with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin on March 24, 2016 Andrew Harnik (Pool/AFP/File)
Trump, Supreme Court justice double down in war of words
It is pretty much unheard of for a US Supreme Court justice to speak openly about politics. But its aging doyenne Ruth Bader Ginsburg sure did, blasting Donald Trump as a phony.
Now, Trump is questioning Ginsburg's mental acuity and calling on her to resign.
The editorial boards of the Washington Post and The New York Times say the liberal justice should have kept quiet. And even some of her ideological allies say she goofed.
US Supreme Court Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (L) and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump
Ginsburg, 83, dropped all pretense of maintaining a judge's customary reserve in two recent interviews in which she talked about Trump.
"He is a faker," Ginsburg said Monday of presumptive Republican presidential nominee Trump in an interview with CNN.
"He has no consistency about him. He says whatever comes into his head at the moment," said the Brooklyn-born justice, a petite but tough-as-nails figure who has earned the nickname "Notorious RBG" -- a play on the stage name of the late rapper Notorious BIG.
"He really has an ego," she said of Trump.
Trump hit back at the leader of the court's progressive wing, first saying her comments were "highly inappropriate" and then suggesting she is getting senile.
"Justice Ginsburg of the US Supreme Court has embarrassed all by making very dumb political statements about me. Her mind is shot - resign!" Trump wrote on Twitter in the early hours of Wednesday.
Ginsburg told The New York Times in an interview published Sunday that the stakes in the 2016 election were positively huge.
"I can't imagine what this place would be -- I can't imagine what the country would be -- with Donald Trump as our president," she said.
"For the country, it could be four years. For the court, it could be -- I don't even want to contemplate that," said the judge.
In the CNN interview, she also questioned the fact that Trump has avoided releasing his income tax returns, which is standard practice among White House hopefuls.
Ginsburg was appointed to the court in 1993 by then president Bill Clinton, a Democrat. The woman has sartorial style evoking another era, wearing gloves and a lacy collar that sometimes overlays the neckline of her black judge's robe.
And she has clout. Last year, she was named to Time's list of the 100 Most Influential People in the world.
- Remarks deemed inappropriate -
As a lawyer, Ginsburg was a pillar of the fight for women's rights in the 1960s and '70s. She has survived cancer several times. She is wildly popular among American liberals, particularly young ones.
Ginsburg recently demonstrated her position firmly within the court's progressive wing by voting to strike down a Texas law that put restrictions on abortion clinics. Her position prevailed, by a vote of 5-3.
Ginsburg's opinions are often at odds with those stated by Trump and other conservatives.
But a legal opinion is one thing, and open criticism of a candidate for public office is quite another.
The Supreme Court normally has nine justices but has been one short since the conservative Antonin Scalia died in February.
The court is now evenly split between conservatives and liberals, who include Ginsburg.
Worried that a court until now dominated by conservatives could now tip in the liberals' favor, President Barack Obama's Republican foes in the Senate have refused to vote on or even hold a hearing on his nominee to replace Scalia, Merrick Garland.
They insist the decision must wait until after voters choose Obama's successor in November.
- 'Out of place' -
Ginsburg's comments -- which stand out even more because her seven colleagues on the bench have not weighed in on the election -- are seen by many as reflecting her independent spirit.
US judges are generally bound by a code of conduct which, among other things, bars them from publicly opposing or endorsing a candidate for office. There is however no legal requirement for Supreme Court justices to stay silent.
Criticism for Ginsburg's remarks is coming from people other than those in the Trump camp.
"I find it very peculiar, and I think it's out of place," the Republican speaker of the House of Representatives, Paul Ryan, told CNN.
"For someone on the Supreme Court who is going to be calling balls and strikes in the future based upon whatever the next president and Congress does, that strikes me as inherently biased and out of the realm," Ryan said Tuesday.
When asked about the escalating face-off, White House spokesman Josh Earnest declined to comment on the substance, but said, in a knock on Trump's accusations: "I would not call her competence into question."
On a lighter note, he joked: "She didn't earn the nickname the Notorious RBG for nothing."
The Washington Post, which rarely goes easy on Trump, said in an editorial that while it may agree with what Ginsburg said about him, her candor was "inconsistent with her function in our democratic system."
The New York Times offered a similar editorial, saying, "Washington is more than partisan enough without the spectacle of a Supreme Court justice flinging herself into the mosh pit."
Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, pictured on December 6, 2015, has sartorial style evoking another era, wearing gloves and a lacy collar that sometimes overlays the neckline of her black judge's robe Chris Kleponis (AFP/File)
UNESCO raises alarm over Malian earthen town, Uzbek monuments
The UN's cultural agency on Wednesday added Mali's legendary earthen buildings to its heritage-in-danger list, saying a lack of security was preventing conservation of the site, and also expressed concern over the impact of tourism on monuments in Uzbekistan.
Mali's old towns of Djenne, 570 kilometres (350 miles) northeast of the capital Bamako, have been inhabited since 250 BC and are characterised by the extraordinary use of earth in their architecture.
The houses, roughly 2,000 of which have survived, are built on a small hill to protect them from seasonal flooding.
The old earthen towns of Djenne in Mali have been inhabited since 250 BC Francois Xavier Marit (AFP)
UNESCO said that the 40th meeting of its World Heritage Committee in Istanbul decided to place the site on its list of world heritage in danger.
"The Committee has expressed concern over the property, which is situated in an area affected by insecurity," UNESCO said in a statement.
"This situation is preventing safeguarding measures from addressing issues that include the deterioration of construction materials in the historic town, urbanisation, and the erosion of the archaeological site."
UNESCO did not detail the nature of the security threats but Mali has been threatened for the last four years by Islamist militant groups such as Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and Ansar Dine.
The site was inscribed on UNESCO's World Heritage List of the world's outstanding natural and cultural wonders in 1988.
UNESCO says its list of heritage in danger is designed to inform the world of risks to the very characteristics that led to a site being listed as World Heritage and encouraging corrective action.
In 2012, jihadists destroyed nine mausoleums in the ancient Malian town of Timbuktu, as well its famous Sidi Yahia mosque which dates back to the 15th and 16th centuries.
One of the alleged attackers, Ahmad al-Faqi al-Mahdi, will go on trial at the International Criminal Court in The Hague from August 22, the tribunal announced on June 1.
Including Djenne, Mali now has three sites on the world heritage in danger list. Timbuktu and the Tomb of Askia in Gao were both added in 2012 when the fighting first broke out.
- 'Irreversible changes' -
Meanwhile, the committee also added the historic centre of the southern Uzbek town of Shakhrisyabz to the in-danger list, "due to the over-development of tourist infrastructure in the site."
The town contains an unrivalled collection of religious and secular monuments built during the empire led by the great Turco-Mongol leader Timur in the 15th century.
The committee said the destruction of buildings in the centre of the site and the construction of modern facilities such as hotels had "affected irreversible changes to the appearance of historic Shakhrisyabz."
It requested a mission to assess the extent of damage and propose appropriate corrective measures. The site was given world heritage status in 2000.
In a reverse move also announced on Wednesday, the committee decided to remove the complex of churches and holy sites in the Georgian town of Mtskheta from the in-danger list, where it had been listed since 2009.
"The Committee's decision reflects recognition of Georgia's efforts to improve the safeguarding and management of the site," the UNESCO statement said.
Previously, UNESCO had been concerned by the deterioration of its stone fabric and fresco paintings caused by work carried out to its edifices, as well as urban sprawl.
S. Sudan president 'grants amnesty' to ex-rebels in Juba clashes
South Sudan President Salva Kiir on Wednesday said he was granting an amnesty to ex-rebels loyal to his longtime rival, Riek Machar, who battled government troops in four days of fierce fighting in the capital Juba.
As a shaky ceasefire appeared to be holding for the second day, Kiir said in a statement he was "granting (an) amnesty to forces who took up arms against the transitional government of national unity from the 8th to the 10th of July, with effect from July 13."
South Sudanese clamour for refuge at Uganda's border
Predatory soldiers and the sluggish brown waters of the Unyama River separate thousands of fearful South Sudanese from the longed-for safety of neighbouring Uganda.
Thousands of people on the South Sudan side are eager to leave following days of intense battles in the capital Juba, 200 kilometres (125 miles) to the north, which have threatened a return to war.
The few who have so far crossed say soldiers relieve civilians of their possessions before letting them pass.
This handout image provided by the United Nation Mission in South Sudan on July 11, 2016 shows some of the at least 3000 displaced women, men and children taking shelter at the UN compound in Tomping area in Juba Beatrice Mategwa (UNMISS/AFP/File)
"The soldiers near to the border beat people to force them back," said Mary Modo, a 40-year-old mother of five.
"We got through but when we got to the border the soldiers made me leave all my belongings there. I only kept two cooking pots, the clothes the children and I were wearing, and one change each, and my handbag."
Titus Jogo, a Ugandan official who processes refugees, said the number arriving dropped dramatically from around 200 a day to less than 100 when heavy fighting broke out in Juba on Friday and South Sudanese soldiers blocked the way.
"The South Sudan government doesn't want people to know that there is a problem of displacement. They are violating the right of their people to seek asylum," said Jogo.
Those who have made it come on foot and empty-handed.
- Emergency footing -
The United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, estimates that as many as 20,000 people may be logjammed on the South Sudan side of the border, ready to stream across the narrow iron and tarmac bridge if the way is opened.
But for now there is no indication when that might happen.
Those who have made it are taken first to a transit centre before being resettled at the Pagarinya refugee camp.
The United Nations said on Tuesday that a total of at least 36,000 people have fled their homes in Juba since the latest bout of fighting erupted, while three quarters of the population need humanitarian aid.
"The majority of those arriving in Uganda from South Sudan are women and children," said Sardhanand Panchoe, field coordinator for the UNHCR in the nearby town of Adjumani. Two-thirds are children, he said.
Panchoe said his team had been "on an emergency footing" since December as South Sudan's peace on paper failed to translate into stability on the ground.
On paper, the Republican Party classifies pornography as a major public health problem.
But just in case delegates to the nominating convention forget, Cleveland's strip clubs are going all out to get ready for the party.
The Ohio city's bars and gentleman's clubs are preparing for a flood of visitors who will be looking to unwind after watching the GOP formally embrace Donald Trump as its presidential candidate.
Quicken Loans Arena is decorated to welcome the Republican National Convention, which begins July 18
Christie's Cabaret (pictured) has been granted permission by city authorities to stay open nearly two hours later than usual because of the convention
For the strip clubs, that can mean sprucing up with the red, white and blue of the US flag.
'We always decorate according to what's going on,' said Bob Fischer, general manager of Christie's Cabaret.
More important, the city authorities granted the club's request to stay open later - until 4:00 am instead of the usual 2:30 am.
Ditto for porn king Larry Flynt's Hustler Club.
'We're fully prepared,' a female manager who goes by the name London told AFP by phone.
Club managers said it will be all hands on deck in terms of staffing, too, for the duration of the convention, which goes from July 18 to 21.
And the clothes strippers take off will reflect the occasion.
Donald Trump will formally be embraced as the GOP's presidential candidate during the convention
'The club is just beautiful as it is. But I'm sure our girls will be wearing the appropriate attire,' said Diana, a hostess at Diamond Men's Club.
Cleveland expects an influx of some 50,000 people, in a city with a population of just under 400,000.
The invading herd will include around 15,000 people working for news media and some 5,000 delegates and alternates - those who will actually vote to make Trump their man.
The delegates will also adopt the party's newly drafted official platform, which calls pornography a 'public health crisis.'
At a club called Crazy Horse Cleveland, although strippers may wear patriotic colors, there will be no mention of the Republican Party.
'We try to steer clear of politics,' manager Jeff Kallam said.
France to re-deploy aircraft carrier this year in IS fight: president
France will send more military advisors to Iraq and its aircraft carrier will return to the Middle East later this year in the fight against the Islamic State jihadist group, President Francois Hollande said Wednesday.
"We will intensify the army's efforts to support the Iraqis as they try to recapture Mosul (from the jihadist group)," Hollande said, adding that the Charles de Gaulle carrier will return to the region "in the autumn" to be used for bombing raids on IS targets.
Hollande dispatched the carrier to the region following the November 13 attacks on Paris in which 130 people were killed in what he said then was "a war" against the jihadist group.
France to end military operations in C. Africa in October: Hollande
President Francois Hollande announced on Wednesday that France would end its military mission in the Central African Republic in October.
"Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian will go to the Central African Republic next October to officially declare the end of Operation Sangaris," Hollande said at a reception at the defence ministry.
Operation Sangaris was launched in December 2013 in a bid to quell violence between Christian and Muslim militias that left thousands dead and drove half a million people from their homes.
French President Francois Hollande and Central Africa's President Faustin Touadera visit the KM5 area in Bangui on May 13, 2016 Stephane De Sakutin (POOL/AFP/File)
The force, which at its peak had more than 2,000 troops, has been progressively scaled back, being reduced to 350 soldiers in June.
In a bid to suppress the sectarian violence, the UN has sent a peacekeeping force known as MINUSCA, comprising over 12,000 foreign police and soldiers, as well as more than 500 foreign civilian staff.
The chronically unstable country has seen a resurgence of violence since mid-June, sending some 6,000 people fleeing to neighbouring Chad and Cameroon, according to the UN refugee agency.
Are Egypt, Syria next in Turkey rapprochement drive?
Turkey has in the last month manoeuvered to end damaging foreign policy disputes with Israel and Russia, but Egypt and Syria will be tougher nuts for Ankara to crack in its drive for regional rapprochement.
Turkey has had downgraded relations with Egypt since the ousting of pro-Ankara Islamist president Mohamed Morsi by the Egyptian army in 2013.
And in neighbouring Syria, Turkey has made the exit of President Bashar al-Assad a precondition for ending the more than five-year civil war that has seen some 2.7 million refugees flee to Turkey.
Turkish Prime Minister and the leader of Turkey's ruling party, the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) Binali Yildirim delivers a speech during a meeting of the AK Party at the Grand National Assembly of Turkey in Ankara, on June 28, 2016 Adem Altan (AFP/File)
But the appointment of Binali Yildirim -- a close ally of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan -- as prime minister in May signified a more conciliatory approach to foreign policy after the aggressive stance of his predecessor Ahmet Davutoglu.
"We will keep on increasing our friendships by observing the interests of our region and our country," Yildirim told members of his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) party this week.
- 'Zero problems' -
Turkey last month agreed a normalisation deal with Israel, following half a decade of downgraded ties due to the deadly storming of a Turkish aid ship bound for Gaza in May 2010.
Ankara ended the crisis with Russia after Erdogan sent a letter to his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, expressing regret over the downing of one of Moscow's warplanes in November.
In its latest diplomatic overtures, Turkey has gone back to its previous "zero problems with neighbours" foreign policy that defined the early years of Erdogan's time as premier.
The approach rapidly deteriorated into what critics derided as a policy of "multiple problems with everyone" as Turkey had its hopes dashed of finding friendly regimes in place after the so-called Arab Spring.
"Our default approach is to maintain good relations with everyone unless conflict is inevitable," a Turkish official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
- 'Normal with Syria?' -
After the beginning of the Syrian uprising in 2011, Turkey opened dialogue with Damascus, but Erdogan later became a fierce opponent of Assad, a leader who he had once courted as a friend.
In an headline-grabbing comment on Wednesday, Yildirim said: "We have normalised ties with Israel and Russia. But I am sure that we will return to normal with Syria too."
There was no indication that this signalled a change in policy on Assad, which would represent a complete U-turn of the Turkish policy throughout the civil war that has been to back rebels. Officials say there is a distinction between Syria as a country and Assad.
But there have been sporadic reports in recent weeks of a possible softening in Ankara's position, although Turkey denied press speculation Algeria was mediating contact.
Aaron Stein, resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council's Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East, said: "Turkey's softening on Assad" began last summer after Erdogan announced Assad could remain as president for up to six months while a political transition was finalised.
"This policy... differed from Turkey's previous insistence that Assad leave at the beginning of the six-month timeframe," he said.
Previously, the Turkish government under Davutoglu had insisted that Assad's days were numbered.
The main Istanbul-based Syrian opposition coalition says it has been assured by Ankara it still has Turkey's full support.
"There is no change or shift in their policy towards the Syrian regime, their policy towards the Syrian people and revolution," Anas al-Abdeh, head of the Istanbul-based opposition National Coalition, said Tuesday.
- 'Saudi pushing Turkey' -
Observers say back-channel diplomacy, similar to that conducted with Israel, might be put into action to repair the rupture with Cairo, although Erdogan has so far ruled out reconciliation.
Saudi Arabia -- which is rapidly emerging as one of Turkey's closest allies after the accession of King Salman in January 2015 -- is also keen to see closer ties between Cairo and Ankara.
Saudi had strongly backed the ousting of Morsi, with its own ties with Ankara suffering as a result.
A senior ruling party official said this month that Ankara would soon dispatch a team to Egypt to help alleviate tensions. "God willing, a softening will take place with Egypt also," Saban Disli said.
"Saudi Arabia has been pushing both Turkey and Egypt to repair relations since March 2015, the same month that Turkey and Saudi repaired their relationship," added Stein.
"Turkey is certainly recalibrating its foreign policy, but repairing relations with Egypt will continue to be a heavy lift," he said.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, pictured on March 30, 2016, speaks to a journalist during an interview with Russia's RIA Novosti state news agency in the Syrian capital Damascus
Egyptian Foreign Minister Mohammed Kamel Amr (C) and Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi (R) listen to Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu (L) after their first high-level meeting on the Syria conflict in Cairo late on September 17, 2012 Khaled Desouki (AFP/File)
Vienna art installation brings attention to refugee crisis
Visitors to Vienna's Belvedere Palace were confronted Wednesday with 1,005 refugees' life jackets drifting in the baroque pond -- courtesy of Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei.
The installation, entitled "F. Lotus", consists of 201 rings each holding five life jackets -- retrieved from the Greek island of Lesbos -- arranged in the letter "F" and floating like lotus flowers.
Ai, who in February this year attached 14,000 life jackets to the columns of a Berlin concert house, said that the work was his way of addressing the tragedy of Europe's migrant crisis.
Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, pictured in January 13, 2016, has presented his solo show "translocation - transformation", with the central exhibit of a tea merchant family'sancestral temple from the Ming Dynasty (13681644), in Vienna Patrick Kovarik (AFP/File)
"There are over 500,000 life jackets left on (Lesbos) and it looks like a landscape," he told reporters. "It is something so related to individuals. It could be the last thing you grab when you have to escape."
The artist went too far for some earlier this year when he recreated the death pose of Aylan Kurdi, the Syrian toddler found dead on a Turkish beach in 2015, in a photo shoot for an Indian magazine.
Funerals begin for slain Dallas police officers
Funerals were held for two of the five officers killed in last week's sniper shooting in Dallas, one day after President Barack Obama addressed a public memorial service honoring the slain police.
Onlookers paused to pay their respects to Lorne Ahrens of the Dallas Police Department and Brent Thompson, an officer with Dallas Area Rapid Transit, as public funeral processions snaked along area roads.
A Catholic mass was held for a third officer, Michael Smith, whose funeral is planned for Thursday.
An honor guard escorts the casket of Officer Brent Thompson out of the memorial service at The Potter's House in Dallas, Texas on July 13, 2016 Laura Buckman (AFP)
The men were among five officers shot to death last week during an ambush by a black gunman who said he was acting in revenge for recent shootings of black Americans by white police officers.
The gunman, 25-year-old Micah Johnson, was killed during last Thursday's standoff.
During the funeral service at the cavernous Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, Texas, fellow officer Debbie Taylor described Ahrens, 48, as a "gentle giant" who "strived to be the best, most knowledgeable officer."
Police comprised most of the audience at the suburban Dallas church, which seats 7,000.
Eddie Coffey, who studied at the police academy at the same time as Ahrens, recalled his tattooed friend's love of heavy-metal music.
At a concurrent service attended by about 3,000 people at the Potter's House Church in Dallas, slain officer Thompson, 43, was remembered as a "family man" and practical joker.
Police believe Thompson died trying to save Ahrens during the shootout.
"I would have done anything in my power to have been there with Brent in those final moments, even if the outcome would have been the same," fellow officer Joseph Kyser said.
Funeral services have not yet been held for two other slain officers, Patricio Zamarripa, 32, known as Patrick, to be buried Saturday, and Michael Krol, for whom services are still pending.
A majority of Americans -- 69 percent -- think that race relations in the United States are mostly bad, according to a nationwide CBS News/New York Times poll released Wednesday.
The survey suggests that views are even more negative than they were in 1992, when the figure stood at 68 percent following the Los Angeles riots, which were triggered by the Rodney King police brutality case verdict.
Fears of further South Sudan fighting even as ceasefire holds
A heavily-armed Ugandan military convoy crossed into South Sudan on Thursday to evacuate citizens trapped in the capital Juba as fears persist that recent days of intense fighting might reignite despite a ceasefire.
The United Nations has warned of tension and the possibility of fresh fighting in Juba, where a ceasefire has held since late Monday.
A convoy of around 50 trucks escorted by machine gun-mounted armoured vehicles crossed the Ugandan border at Nimule to open up a secure corridor for fleeing civilians on the 200 kilometre (120 mile) Juba-Nimule road.
Uganda troops drive towards Juba, South Sudan, at the Nimule border point on July 14, 2016 in an evacuation mission to extract 3,000 Ugandan civilians Isaac Kasamani (AFP)
"We plan to go to Juba to extract 3,000 Ugandans stranded by fighting, but that number may grow as we will evacuate anyone who wants to leave," said Uganda's army chief Brigadier Leopold Kyanda.
Kyanda said the mission would likely last "two to three days" but an intelligence officer told AFP some Ugandan troops may remain in Juba.
"Why not? We have the capacity to support the government of South Sudan and we were there before," said the plain-clothed officer accompanying the convoy.
The Ugandan army joined the conflict in South Sudan soon after it began in December 2013, fighting on the side of President Salva Kiir against a rebel force led by Riek Machar, now the country's vice president. The troops only pulled out late last year.
While the situation remained calm in Juba on Thursday concerns remain that fighting might flare once again.
"The current situation in the country remains fluid and uncertain," UN peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous told the Security Council late Wednesday.
- One city, two armies -
Four days of intense battles in the capital left hundreds dead and forced around 40,000 to flee their homes. Aid agencies are warning of a worsening humanitarian crisis with a lack of both water and food.
The recent violence in the capital echoed the fighting that triggered the civil war and marks a fresh blow to last year's deal to end the bitter conflict that began when Kiir accused Machar of plotting a coup.
Kiir is a member of the Dinka tribe, while Machar is a Nuer, and the dispute has split the country along ethnic lines and caused tens of thousands of deaths.
The August 2015 agreement paved the way for Machar's return to the capital in late April to take up the deputy post in a so-called unity government.
Machar's return with a 1,400-strong bodyguard meant there were two hostile armies in the city. A shoot-out between Kiir's and Machar's guard units triggered the fighting that began on Friday afternoon.
It appears that Kiir's forces -- which outnumbered Machar's in both troops and heavy weaponry in the city -- dominated the battles, with Ladsous stating they were in "full control" of the capital while Machar's former rebels were "scattered" nearby along the city's western outskirts.
"Further clashes, therefore, cannot be ruled out," he said.
Outside Juba there were reports of fighting in the towns of Leer in Unity State and Wau in Western Bahr el Ghazal and of army and rebel forces mobilising around Malakal in Upper Nile.
"We remain very worried about the potential for the resumption of violence and spill-over into other parts of the country," said Ladsous.
Commercial flights resumed to Juba on Thursday morning, with planes arriving almost empty and leaving full of people desperate to get out of the city.
Specially chartered evacuation flights have been taking foreign nationals out of the country since Wednesday.
South Sudan Gal Roma (AFP)
Displaced women, men and children gather at the UN compound in the Tomping area of Juba where at least 3,000 have sought refuge Beatrice Mategwa (UNMISS/AFP/File)
Airport workers to strike during Democratic convention
Philadelphia airport workers have voted to go on strike during the Democratic Party's national convention in the US East Coast city at the end of July.
In a move that could add to the expected chaos in the city during the July 25-28 Democratic National Convention, the Service Employees International Union said Wednesday that up to 1,000 security workers, baggage handlers and cabin cleaners working for three airport subcontractors will walk out.
The SEIU, which is trying to organize the airport staff into a union, said the move comes after the companies "illegally" worked to block the organizing effort and rejected calls for a minimum wage of $15 an hour.
The Service Employees International Union have called for a strike at the Philadelphia International Airport during the Democratic Party's national convention Bruce Bennett (Getty/AFP/File)
The three subcontractors work mainly for American Airlines, which has a hub at Philadelphia International Airport and controls 70 percent of the traffic there.
"Thirty years ago, airlines began subcontracting out work that used to be done by union workers. This low-bid subcontracting system has left subcontracted airport workers in poverty and resulted in high turnover and short staffing in airport jobs," the SEIU said in a statement.
The union said the workers hope to garner support from the Democratic National Convention, which is expected to confirm former secretary of state Hillary Clinton as its candidate for president in the November election.
Top IS commander Shishani killed: jihadist-linked agency
A top Islamic State group commander, Omar al-Shishani, has been killed in Iraq, the jihadist-linked Amaq agency said on Wednesday.
The Pentagon announced in March that Shishani, known as Omar the Chechen, was believed to have died of injuries received in an air raid targeting his convoy in northeastern Syria -- details at odds with Amaq's account.
Citing a "military source," Amaq said Shishani was killed "in the town of Sharqat as he took part in repelling the military campaign on the city of Mosul", referring to the last IS-held city in Iraq.
A top Islamic State group commander, Omar al-Shishani, has been killed in Iraq, the jihadist-linked Amaq agency said Marwan Ibrahim (AFP/File)
Iraqi forces are conducting operations to set the stage for a final push to Mosul, the country's second city that fell to IS in June 2014.
Sharqat lies on the road north to Mosul, but Iraqi forces recently bypassed the area to recapture a key military base in the Qayyarah area farther north that the Pentagon said will be a "springboard" for the push toward the city.
Amaq did not specify when Shishani was killed, but the loss of the commander is a blow to the jihadist group, which has suffered a string of setbacks in Iraq this year.
In addition to Shishani, the US announced that it had killed IS deputy leader Abd ar-Rahman Mustafa al-Qaduli in March.
Shishani, a fierce, battle-hardened warlord with roots in Georgia and a thick red beard, was one of the most notorious faces of IS.
Shishani, whose nom de guerre means "Omar the Chechen", was one of the IS leaders most wanted by Washington which had put a $5 million bounty on his head.
His exact rank was unclear, but a US official had branded him as "equivalent of the secretary of defence" for the jihadist group.
Shishani came from the former Soviet state of Georgia's Pankisi Gorge region, which is populated mainly by ethnic Chechens.
He fought as a Chechen rebel against Russian forces before joining the Georgian military in 2006, and fought Russian forces again in Georgia in 2008.
He later resurfaced in northern Syria as the commander of a group of foreign fighters, and became a senior leader within IS.
IS overran large areas north and west of Baghdad in 2014 but has since lost significant ground to Iraqi forces backed by US-led air strikes, training and other assistance.
Baghdad declared victory in the city of Fallujah, west of Baghdad, at the end of last month, leaving Mosul as the sole Iraqi city held by IS.
The Sunni extremist group has responded to the battlefield setbacks by striking civilians, particularly Shiites, and experts have warned there may be more bombings as the jihadists continue to lose ground.
'Parachute kid' gets 3 years for brutal California assault
ROWLAND HEIGHTS, Calif. (AP) A so-called "parachute kid" from China who was involved in a brutal attack on a Southern California classmate is going to prison.
The Los Angeles Times (http://lat.ms/29FIyho ) says Zheng Lu received a three-year sentence on Tuesday for last year's attack in the San Gabriel Valley east of Los Angeles.
Authorities say Zheng and others kidnapped an 18-year-old classmate and took her to a Rowland Heights park where she was stripped naked, beaten, burned with cigarettes and forced to eat her own hair.
Investigators say the dispute partly involved an unpaid restaurant bill.
Zheng, who's 20, pleaded guilty to assault. Three other students are serving sentences ranging from six to 13 years.
All were "parachute kids" Chinese teens who live with paid host families while attending U.S. high schools.
___
Protest follows determination that police shooting justified
LOS ANGELES (AP) A Los Angeles woman's fatal shooting by police last year was justified, a civilian review board found Tuesday in a decision that prompted an emotional protest and march on City Hall.
The Los Angeles Police Commission's finding that the shooting of 29-year-old Redel Jones was within departmental policy came during a closed-door meeting.
Police say Jones was shot after refusing to drop a large knife as she moved toward an officer.
Protesters rally outside police headquarters and Los Angeles City Hall on Tuesday, July 12, 2016. The Los Angeles Police Commission ruled Tuesday that the fatal shooting of an African-American woman last year, Redel Jones, did not violate the Los Angeles Police Department's deadly force police. (AP Photo/Amanda Lee Myers)
Community members who had attended an earlier public commission meeting were awaiting the decision outside and erupted in anger when they heard the result, chanting "Fist up, fight back!"
About 100 protesters then marched from the meeting at police headquarters to nearby City Hall, where police denied them entry.
Some demonstrators pushed against the doors and yelled as police inside kept them out while others sat down in front of other entryways.
They chanted and held signs that read: "Stop killing us" and "Justice for Redel Jones."
LAPD Officer Brett Ramirez fatally shot Jones last August. Police say Jones matched the description of a robbery suspect and ran from police.
They say they chased her into an alley, where they say she advanced toward Ramirez with the knife and ignored commands to drop it before he shot her.
She was "facing straight at me, and then points the knife at me and charges at me," Ramirez said, according to a report released Tuesday about the shooting. "I thought my life was in danger ... Only one of us was going to make it out of this."
Jones' husband, Marcus Vaughn, was among the demonstrators at City Hall and said he doesn't believe his wife had a knife.
"She was a beautiful, intelligent black woman who did not deserve any of this," Vaughn said.
Later he told The Associated Press the shooting has torn up his family "from the inside out."
"It's just an event that has caused my children to feel like, you know, that I could someday get killed," he said. "There's nothing that hurts worse."
___
Associated Press writer Delara Shakib contributed to this report.
Marcus Vaughn, the husband of Redel Jones, whose police-involved shooting was ruled justified Tuesday by the Los Angeles Police Commission, rally outside city hall, blocking access from the public in Los Angeles on Tuesday, July, 2016. (AP Photo/Amanda Lee Myers)
Los Angeles Police officers keep protesters from coming into Los Angeles City Hall in Los Angeles on Tuesday, July, 2016. Hundreds are protesting the case of Redel Jones, whose police-involved shooting was ruled justified Tuesday by the Los Angeles Police Commission. (AP Photo/Amanda Lee Myers)
Review: Woody Allen's 'Cafe Society' is a disjointed meander
Woody Allen has outdone himself at age 80. Not only has he kept up his blistering pace of pushing out a movie a year, but this time he's really delivered two films, only loosely connected by jangling neurosis.
"Cafe Society ," starring Jesse Eisenberg as the sweet but awkward Allen stand-in, is a meandering look at lost love that is split between the highball-sipping, fur-wearing elite nightclubs of Manhattan and Hollywood in the 1930s. We never spend enough time in either location to really care about anyone there and so the film comes off disjointed and unconnected.
Allen seems both intrigued and repulsed by all the glamour and never keeps a consistent tone, just as his leading man stumbles trying to achieve coherence, seemingly alternating in every other scene from nebbish, stuttering clown to passive-aggressive bully to suave sophisticate.
In this image released by Lionsgate, Jesse Eisenberg, left, and Blake Lively appear in a scene from "Cafe Society." (Sabrina Lantos/Lionsgate via AP)
Allen narrates his own tale, but mostly tells the audience exactly what we're already seeing, undercutting his actors. There are a few gems in the script (including the line: "Life is a comedy written by a sadistic comedy writer") but the screenwriter is conflicted over whether he's writing a noir, a satire or a romantic comedy.
Allen's cinematographer is three-time Academy Award winner Vittorio Storaro, who combines with costume designer Suzy Benzinger and production designer Santo Loquasto, to recreate lush, gorgeous spaces filled with black ties and shimming gowns, all elegantly lit. The soundtrack is also super, consisting of classics like "Jeepers Creepers" and "The Lady is a Tramp." Basically, the look and sound is jaw-dropping; the story at the center is ho-hum.
The first half follows the New York-born Bobby Dorfman (Eisenberg) as he flees West for adventure in Tinseltown. His uncle (a very good Steve Carell) is a high-powered yet insecure movie agent who puts him under his wing.
A broken romantic triangle sends Bobby back to New York pining for a lost love in the film's second half. He becomes a cool, glad-handing nightclub manager odd, since he's supposed to be so self-conscious and internal for his gangster brother (Corey Stoll, hitting the wiseguy bit a little hard). Bobby gets married to Blake Lively (whose job here is to simply wear dresses fabulously) and has a family.
What connects these stories is Kristen Stewart, a former assistant of Bobby's uncle who walks into the New York club one day like a ghost from the past, a scene as melodramatic as it sounds. Stewart is good at being cold; not so good here as the source of anyone's wild adoration.
The film, which never really catches a full head of stream, sort of peters out by the end. There are some wistful glances and the notion that people do foolish things. And that's about it.
In "Cafe Society," the martinis are dry, stunning women fall for weirdos and irritating people are shot in the head and dumped in concrete, but all in good fun. We learn that men and women can love two people at once, and good people can cheat. No one really grows up. Even hookers are funny.
You'll end up feeling about the film like Bobby about Los Angeles "half-bored, half-fascinated." And that's a pretty poor average, even for two poorly stitched-together films.
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"Cafe Society," an Amazon Studios release from Lionsgate, is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association of America for "some violence, a drug reference, suggestive material and smoking." Running time: 96 minutes. One star out of four.
MPAA Definition of PG-13: Some material may not inappropriate for children under 13.
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Online: http://www.cafesocietymovie.com
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Mark Kennedy can be reached at http://twitter.com/KennedyTwits
In this image released by Lionsgate, Corey Stoll appears in a scene from "Cafe Society." (Sabrina Lantos/Lionsgate via AP)
In this image released by Lionsgate, Steve Carell appears in a scene from "Cafe Society." (Sabrina Lantos/Lionsgate via AP)
In this image released by Lionsgate, Jesse Eisenberg, right, and Kristen Stewart appear in a scene from "Cafe Society." (Sabrina Lantos/Lionsgate via AP)
Virginia man dies after 911 call dismissed as accidental
FREDERICKSBURG, Va. (AP) A 911 dispatch center in Virginia is under investigation after a man died when no one was sent out in response to his call.
WJLA-TV reports (http://bit.ly/29y5IC0) that 56-year-old Robert Paulus died of heart disease in late April in his Fredericksburg apartment. According to Robert Paulus's son, Michael Paulus, his father called 911 hours before his death.
In the 18-second call to Fredericksburg City Dispatch, the dispatcher tried three times to make contact with Robert Paulus. After hearing nothing but an unidentifiable sound, the call was labeled a pocket call, where no call back is required.
Hours later, Robert Paulus was found dead.
Fredericksburg Police Department spokeswoman Sarah Kirkpatrick says the handling of the call "was an oversight." Fredericksburg police are investigating the incident, which could change 911 policies.
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South China Sea ruling deepens tensions between US, China
WASHINGTON (AP) A landmark international tribunal ruling on the South China Sea threatens to sharpen the differences between the United States and China, highlighting a growing gulf between the world powers.
"It will certainly intensify conflict and even confrontation," China's ambassador to the U.S., Cui Tiankai, said hours after the Hague-based tribunal issued its decision. "In the end it will undermine the authority and effectiveness of international law."
In contrast, U.S. officials expressed hope that Tuesday's ruling, which rejected the legal basis of China's expansive territorial claims in the South China Sea, could provide an impetus to diplomacy.
A plainclothes security person stands on duty outside the Philippines embassy in Beijing Tuesday, July 12, 2016. A tribunal ruled on a case raised by the Philippines in a sweeping decision Tuesday that China has no legal basis for claiming much of the South China Sea and had aggravated the seething regional dispute with its large-scale land reclamation and construction of artificial islands that destroyed coral reefs and the natural condition of the disputed areas. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)
The ruling in a case brought by the Philippines was "an important contribution to the shared goal of a peaceful resolution to disputes in the South China Sea," said Daniel Kritenbrink, the White House policy director for Asia.
Both he and Cui spoke at Washington's Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank, and their comments reflected how the South China Sea is increasingly the spoiler in relations between the U.S. and China.
President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping have managed to cooperate on global issues such as climate change, but tensions have grown over China's land reclamation in the South China Sea.
China has created artificial islands with military facilities, viewed by the U.S. as an attempt to gain effective control of the area. The U.S. has responded with more military patrols, which China views as provocative.
If first reactions to the ruling are anything to go by, the differences are set to deepen although both sides say they don't want this issue to dominate the relationship.
Kritenbrink said the U.S. stance was not driven by any strategic rivalry between the U.S. and China, but a desire to uphold the "rules-based international order." He said if that broke down, and countries built up strength and became more assertive, history shows it could lead to "tragic outcomes."
Cui reiterated Beijing's support for negotiations to resolve territorial disputes, but said the ruling would set back the prospects of diplomacy in the South China Sea, where six Asian governments have competing claims.
He also warned of the risk of conflict, but said it was China that was standing up for international law, by rejecting arbitration it had not consented to.
The tribunal ruled it had jurisdiction in the case under the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, which both China and the Philippines but not the United States are party to.
To what extent the South China Sea dominates the U.S.-China relationship may hinge on their actions.
China could assert its sovereignty claims by declaring an air defense identification zone over the South China Sea, or starting construction on Scarborough Shoal, where a standoff with the Philippines prompted Manila to file the arbitration case in 2013.
Amarjit Singh, a senior consultant at IHS Country Risk, predicted that after the ruling, the U.S. would undertake so-called "freedom of navigation" patrols and flights within the area to reinforce the tribunal's findings that various Chinese claims there are not valid.
U.S. lawmakers are urging such action. Influential Republican Sen. John McCain was among those calling for the U.S. to regularly challenge "China's excessive maritime claims."
Since the tribunal ruled that some of China's artificial islands are "low tide elevations" that are not entitled to 12 nautical miles of territorial sea, the U.S. may be tempted to sail closer than it has in the past.
"In theory we could sail within 500 meters" of Mischief Reef, said Michael McDevitt, a retired U.S. Navy rear admiral with long experience in the Pacific. The reef is one of China's reclaimed islands, about 130 miles (210 kilometers) off the Philippine coast.
Cui said such operations are a threat to freedom of navigation by commercial and civilian vessels.
He compared Obama's strategic pivot to boost the U.S. presence in the relatively stable Asia-Pacific to American interventions in Middle East countries such as Iraq, Libya and Syria implying that it could lead to turmoil.
California seeks to extend landmark climate-change effort
California's landmark cap-and-trade program to fight climate-changing pollution from fossil fuels would survive long past Gov. Jerry Brown's time in office under a state proposal Tuesday.
The initiative from the state's Air Resources Board is part of a push by Brown's administration to ensure that some of his programs to curb carbon emissions continue after Brown, a prominent figure globally in the fight against climate change, leaves office in two years.
The centerpiece of Brown's campaign has been a cap-and-trade program that aims to reduce the use of fossil fuels by forcing manufacturers and other companies to meet tougher emissions limits, or buy credits to exceed the limits. California's was one of the first governments anywhere to enact a cap-and-trade program, and the state's effort has been one of the most-watched internationally.
FILE - In this June 1, 2016, file photo, California Gov. Jerry Brown gestures while delivering the keynote address at the Subnational Clean Energy Ministerial in San Francisco, Calif. Oil companies say they are in talks with Gov. Jerry Brown's administration about changes to the state's carbon-emissions programs, including his vaunted program requiring companies to buy pollution credits, Thursday, July 7, 2016. (AP Photo/Eric Risberg, file)
The four-year-old program, however, is authorized to operate only until 2020 and faces a litany of challenges, including a lawsuit questioning its legality, poor sales of credits, and lukewarm support among Democratic state legislators to extend it.
The blueprint released Tuesday would continue cap-and-trade past 2020, lowering the maximum allowable cap for emissions by about 3.5 percent a year through 2030. No board vote on the proposal is scheduled until March 2017.
Supporters credit the strategy born under previous Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, and stemming from other climate change programs initiated under Brown with helping to cut California's overall output of emissions by 1.5 percent in its first two years, despite the massive energy demands of the state's thriving economy.
Opponents condemned the state's draft proposal Tuesday as overreach.
"Any such extension of the cap-and-trade program would require legislative approval," state Senate Republicans said in a statement.
A state appeals court is considering a challenge from the California Chamber of Commerce contending the pollution-credit program is an illegal tax, not a fee.
Environmental groups say the lawsuit and overall uncertainty about the survival of the program are undermining the market for pollution credits. A May auction saw companies buy only one-tenth of the available credits, leaving the state billions of dollars short in projected revenue from the sales.
Death of rebel leader fuels renewed anger Kashmir
SRINAGAR, India (AP) When Indian forces announced last week that they had killed a top Kashmiri rebel leader, they called it a major victory in the fight against militants in the disputed Himalayan region. They clearly didn't expect the backlash that followed an outpouring of public anger, daily protests and dozens dead in the streets.
The killing of Burhan Wani drew tens of thousands to rise up and renew demands for "azadi," or freedom, from Indian rule. At least 29 people have died in clashes and hospitals are struggling with hundreds of injured.
Each day this week has brought a new surge of resistance by young, rock-throwing protesters in jeans and bandanas defying curfews to face down Indian troops firing live ammunition, pellet guns and tear gas.
FILE- In this July 9, 2016 file photo, Kashmiri villagers carry the body of Burhan Wani, chief of operations of Indian Kashmir's largest rebel group Hizbul Mujahideen, during his funeral procession in Tral, some 38 Kilometers (24 miles) south of Srinagar, Indian controlled Kashmir. When Indian forces gleefully announced last week that they had killed a top Kashmiri rebel leader, they called it a major victory in the fight against militants in the disputed Himalayan region. They clearly didnt expect the backlash that followed - an outpouring of public anger, daily protests and dozens dead in the streets. (AP Photo/Dar Yasin, File)
Officials worry that they've unwittingly revived a rebellion that may be hard to control.
"We were not expecting this huge public reaction," said a top security official engaged in counterinsurgency operations, speaking on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to speak to reporters. "It's disturbing."
There were clear signs that the mostly Muslim region was ripe for a renewed rebellion even before the death of the popular, young leader of the area's largest rebel group.
Wani had been hidden by villagers at least half a dozen times before, as have other anti-India rebels, when soldiers zeroed on their hideouts in southern Kashmir villages, according to security officials and local residents. Many among Kashmir's 12 million people saw the 22-year-old handsome Wani as a folk hero who bravely defied India's forces, marked by hundreds of thousands of troops in the disputed region.
Many felt as if they knew Wani personally, having followed the news of his rise through the ranks of Hizbul Mujahideen.
When news spread that Indian troops had killed him and two other militants Friday night, the response was immediate: Tens of thousands of angry youths poured out of their homes in towns and villages, hurling rocks and bricks and shouting at Indian troops in the streets.
Wani's "ability to recruit (people) into militancy from the grave will far outstrip anything he could have done on social media," Kashmir's former chief minister and opposition leader Omar Abdullah tweeted on Saturday.
Inspector-General Syed Javaid Mujtaba Gillani described Wani's killing as the "biggest success against militants" in recent years.
Authorities imposed a 24-hour hour curfew, but still protesters attacked military and paramilitary installations, burned several police stations and some homes belonging to police and pro-India politicians.
"Despite 69 years of opportunity, India has not earned Kashmiri trust," Indian author-journalist Aditya Sinha said in a column published this week in the Mumbai-based daily Mid-Day. He wrote that India's focus on Wani having been a militant was "ironic, given that India has turned the Valley into a part-garrison, part-open air prison."
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, having just returned from a four-nation tour in Africa, called a high-level government meeting to discuss how to restore peace. Indian authorities said Monday they had sent at least 2,000 more law enforcement troops to the mountainous region, where hundreds of thousands already are deployed permanently.
Kashmir has known little other than conflict since 1947, when India and Pakistan gained independence but were unable to resolve their rival claims to the mountain territory. Since then, the countries have fought two wars over those claims, which each controlling a part of the region.
The Indian side has seen several separatist movements, including a bloody armed rebellion launched in 1989 to demand independence or a merger with Pakistan. More than 68,000 people were killed in that uprising and the subsequent brutal crackdown by hundreds of thousands of Indian forces deployed across the region.
Wani was born in the southern town of Tral and was a teenager in 2010 when his older brother was beaten by troops on patrol near their home. Shortly after he joined Hizbul Mujahideen, then a deflated band of rebels on the run from Indian forces, and eventually became the iconic face of Kashmir's militancy, using social media to rally supporters and reach out to others who had grown up like him in the militarized and job-scarce region.
"People identified with him as his message was loud and clear no more subjugation and brutalization. He would use Facebook more than guns," said human rights activist Khurram Parvez.
In an unprecedented outpouring of support, tens of thousands of Kashmiris defied a curfew to crowd around Wani's funeral in Tral, chanting "We want freedom." As his body was being lowered into the grave, two militants fired pistol rounds into the air.
The funeral was the "people's referendum against Indian rule," Parvez said.
Activists have since painted anti-India slogans on shop shutters and walls across Srinagar, the region's largest city.
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Follow Aijaz Hussain: www.twitter.com/hussain_aijaz
FILE- In this July 9, 2016 file photo, Kashmiri villagers shout slogans during the funeral procession of Burhan Wani, chief of operations of Indian Kashmir's largest rebel group Hizbul Mujahideen, in Tral, some 38 Kilometers (24 miles) south of Srinagar, Indian controlled Kashmir. When Indian forces gleefully announced last week that they had killed a top Kashmiri rebel leader, they called it a major victory in the fight against militants in the disputed Himalayan region. They clearly didnt expect the backlash that followed - an outpouring of public anger, daily protests and dozens dead in the streets. (AP Photo/Dar Yasin, File)
FILE- In this July 9, 2016 file photo, Kashmiri villagers pray during the funeral of Burhan Wani, chief of operations of Indian Kashmir's largest rebel group Hizbul Mujahideen, in Tral, some 38 Kilometers (24 miles) south of Srinagar, Indian controlled Kashmir. When Indian forces gleefully announced last week that they had killed a top Kashmiri rebel leader, they called it a major victory in the fight against militants in the disputed Himalayan region. They clearly didnt expect the backlash that followed - an outpouring of public anger, daily protests and dozens dead in the streets. (AP Photo/Dar Yasin, File)
FILE- In this July 9, 2016 file photo, Kashmiri villagers wave Pakistani flags during the funeral procession of Burhan Wani, chief of operations of Indian Kashmir's largest rebel group Hizbul Mujahideen, in Tral, some 38 Kilometers (24 miles) south of Srinagar, Indian controlled Kashmir. When Indian forces gleefully announced last week that they had killed a top Kashmiri rebel leader, they called it a major victory in the fight against militants in the disputed Himalayan region. They clearly didnt expect the backlash that followed - an outpouring of public anger, daily protests and dozens dead in the streets. (AP Photo/Dar Yasin, File)
FILE- In this July 10, 2016 file photo, a Kashmiri Muslim protester throws brick at Indian paramilitary soldiers as they react to the killing of rebel leader Burhan Wani in Srinagar, Indian controlled Kashmir. When Indian forces gleefully announced last week that they had killed a top Kashmiri rebel leader, they called it a major victory in the fight against militants in the disputed Himalayan region. They clearly didnt expect the backlash that followed - an outpouring of public anger, daily protests and dozens dead in the streets. (AP Photo/Dar Yasin, File)
FILE- In this July 9, 2016 file photo, Indian policemen remove roadblock set up by protesters who were reacting to the killing of rebel leader Burhan Wani in Srinagar, Indian controlled Kashmir. When Indian forces gleefully announced last week that they had killed a top Kashmiri rebel leader, they called it a major victory in the fight against militants in the disputed Himalayan region. They clearly didnt expect the backlash that followed - an outpouring of public anger, daily protests and dozens dead in the streets. (AP Photo/Mukhtar Khan, File)
Nissan keeps self-driving simple _ and not quite autonomous
YOKOSUKA, Japan (AP) Self-driving cars may be all the rage, but when it's a real product, coming soon from Japanese automaker Nissan Motor Co., the technology gets toned down. And so don't expect to the driver to disappear for years to come.
The Serena minivan equipped with ProPilot technology relies on a single camera in the back of the driver's rearview mirror. The car can then follow the vehicle ahead, maintaining a safe distance that the driver sets.
It also recognizes lanes so it won't swerve off. If the car it is following moves to another lane, it's smart enough to find the next car ahead of it and start following that one. And it keeps going on a freeway at a set speed.
In this July 12, 2016 photo, Nissan Motor Co. Deputy General Manager Atsushi Iwaki gets his hands off of the steering wheel of a self-driving new Serena minivan during a test drive at Nissan test course in Yokosuka, near Tokyo. The Serena minivan equipped with ProPilot technology relies on a single camera in the back of the driver's rearview mirror. The car can then follow the vehicle ahead, maintaining a safe distance that the driver sets. (AP Photo/Shizuo Kambayashi)
ProPilot is designed to ease stress on stop-and-go congested roads common in Japan, as well as long drives on uncongested roads, like the interstate highways in the U.S., when a driver might tire and get sleepy.
Nissan said Wednesday the minivan goes on sale in Japan next month. The automaker promised similar technology later in China, the U.S. and in the Qashqai sport-utility vehicle in Europe. Specific models weren't disclosed for China and the U.S.
But ProPilot is designed only to help drivers. They must keep their hands on the steering wheel, and an alarm goes off if a sensor on the wheel detects no-hands driving.
ProPilot is smarter and a bit more glamorous than cruise control, already in many vehicles, but for all its help, if you slam on the gas pedal, it cannot stop you from crashing into the car you are trailing.
"The driver must assume full responsibility," said Nissan Motor Co. Deputy General Manager Atsushi Iwaki, a member of ProPilot's development team. "It is best to limit the function to helping the driver."
That approach comes as there are still many concerns about safety for self-driving cars. Last month, a Tesla Model S was operating in semi-autonomous Autopilot mode when it failed to detect a tractor trailer passing in front of it, crashed and killed the driver.
But autonomous capabilities are definitely the way of the future, expected to be in millions of cars in the next decade or two.
"The technology is quite viable, but it isn't ready for consumer use yet," said Karl Brauer, senior analyst for Kelley Blue Book. "Living that reality at a widespread and affordable level is still years away."
Brauer said the challenges to autonomous capabilities include dealing with bad weather, which may trouble sensors, as well as making sure pedestrians and cyclists are properly detected. Some confusion that comes from not knowing when the car is driving or when you are driving can lead to accidents, he said.
Nissan, based in Yokohama, is planning autonomous driving for regular city roads by 2020. ProPilot is limited to dealing with the lane the vehicle is in, and on freeways.
Some types of limited autonomous car systems are already available on the market in luxury brands. Nissan is keeping ProPilot simple to just one camera to keep the price of the vehicle down at below 3 million yen ($29,000). Other price details were not disclosed.
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Follow Yuri Kageyama on Twitter at https://twitter.com/yurikageyama
Her work can be found at http://bigstory.ap.org/content/yuri-kageyama
In this July 12, 2016 photo, Nissan Motor Co. Deputy General Manager Atsushi Iwaki gets his hands off of the steering wheel of a self-driving new Serena minivan during a test drive at Nissan test course in Yokosuka, near Tokyo. The Serena minivan equipped with ProPilot technology relies on a single camera in the back of the driver's rearview mirror. The car can then follow the vehicle ahead, maintaining a safe distance that the driver sets. (AP Photo/Shizuo Kambayashi)
In this July 12, 2016 photo, Nissan Motor Co. Deputy General Manager Atsushi Iwaki gets his hands off of the steering wheel of a self-driving new Serena minivan during a test drive at Nissan test course in Yokosuka, near Tokyo. The Serena minivan equipped with ProPilot technology relies on a single camera in the back of the driver's rearview mirror. The car can then follow the vehicle ahead, maintaining a safe distance that the driver sets. (AP Photo/Shizuo Kambayashi)
In this July 12, 2016 photo, Nissan Motor Co. Deputy General Manager Atsushi Iwaki gets his hands off of the steering wheel of a self-driving new Serena minivan during a test drive at Nissan test course in Yokosuka, near Tokyo. The Serena minivan equipped with ProPilot technology relies on a single camera in the back of the driver's rearview mirror. The car can then follow the vehicle ahead, maintaining a safe distance that the driver sets. (AP Photo/Shizuo Kambayashi)
In this July 12, 2016 photo, Nissan Motor Co. Deputy General Manager Atsushi Iwaki speaks near Nissan new Serena minivan during an interview at Nissan test course in Yokosuka, near Tokyo. The Serena minivan equipped with ProPilot technology relies on a single camera in the back of the driver's rearview mirror. The car can then follow the vehicle ahead, maintaining a safe distance that the driver sets. (AP Photo/Shizuo Kambayashi)
In this July 12, 2016 photo, Nissan new Serena minivan is parked at Nissan test course in Yokosuka, near Tokyo. The Serena minivan equipped with ProPilot technology relies on a single camera in the back of the driver's rearview mirror. The car can then follow the vehicle ahead, maintaining a safe distance that the driver sets. (AP Photo/Shizuo Kambayashi)
In this July 12, 2016 photo, Nissan Motor Co. Deputy General Manager Atsushi Iwaki points a ProPilot system camera on new Serena minivan during an interview at Nissan test course in Yokosuka, near Tokyo. The Serena minivan equipped with ProPilot technology relies on a single camera in the back of the driver's rearview mirror. The car can then follow the vehicle ahead, maintaining a safe distance that the driver sets. (AP Photo/Shizuo Kambayashi)
Pence introduces Trump at rally that doubles as VP audition
WESTFIELD, Indiana (AP) Republican Donald Trump campaigned alongside Indiana Gov. Mike Pence on Tuesday evening, the latest in a series of public auditions as the billionaire businessman mulls his vice presidential pick.
Walking onto the stage to cheers, Pence confidently introduced the presumptive GOP nominee and vigorously advocated for Trump as the best person to lead the country. The speech made clear that despite his mild-mannered reputation, the governor and former Congressman could serve the role of attack dog if Trump taps him as his running mate.
"Donald Trump hears the voice of the American people," Pence said, saying that the billionaire "understands" the country in a way no one has since Republican icon Ronald Reagan. His voice raised, Pence drew thunderous applause when he warned of dire consequences if Democrat Hillary Clinton is elected.
Indiana Gov. Mike Pence joins Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump at a rally in Westfield, Ind., Tuesday, July 12, 2016. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy)
Pence would be a welcome pick among anxious Republican officials who are looking for a steady, disciplined counterpart to Trump's freewheeling style. GOP officials are already starting to gather in Cleveland ahead of next week's national convention.
Taking the stage after Pence's introduction, Trump surveyed the large crowd packed into a new arena in suburban Indianapolis. "Wow," he declared before calling Indiana, which delivered him the nomination after he won the primary here in May, "a special place."
Trump opened by reading prepared remarks about shootings that have dominated headlines in recent days. He said his comments come "right from the heart." He was speaking hours after a memorial service for police officers slain in Texas.
"Our whole nation grieves and mourns for the loss of five heroes in Dallas," he said. He again referred to himself as "the law and order candidate." And he said "hostility against the police must end." He also touched on the deaths of men in Louisiana and Minnesota at the hands of officers. Video footage of those incidents has riveted the nation.
"It was tough to watch," he said. "We have to figure it out."
He questioned whether inadequate officer training or "something else" was responsible.
Late in the rally, he again spoke about Pence, playfully saying, "I don't know if he's going to be your governor" or join the Trump ticket. Trump is expected to his running mate this week. He and Pence also appeared together at a fundraiser earlier Tuesday.
Many in the crowd said they were hopeful Pence would be chosen by Trump.
Christina Lewellen, of Indianapolis, said Pence would have a calming effect because he "doesn't get caught up in the drama like Donald does."
"I think he'll be a restraining device," Lewellen said. "He's almost like a white Ben Carson ... which is excellent. He's calm, cool and collected."
A Democrat who'd come for the spectacle also said Hoosiers would be delighted to see Pence move on.
Dan Gettelfinger, of Indianapolis, summed up his feelings in two words: "Good riddance."
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Associated Press writers Brian Slodysko in Westfield and Jill Colvin in Washington contributed to this report.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks at a rally in Westfield, Ind., Tuesday, July 12, 2016. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy)
Indiana Gov. Mike Pence introduces Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump at a rally in Westfield, Ind., Tuesday, July 12, 2016. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy)
In South Korea, puppy farms struggle amid abuse allegations
YANGPYEONG, South Korea (AP) Nam Ki Sung has raised puppies on a small, rural farm for 15 years, delighting in their company, mourning their deaths and eking out a living. No more: He now has less than $60 in the bank, and struggles to feed his dogs.
Nam is one of many puppy farmers who face collapse amid public anger over recent allegations in media reports and by activists of widespread cruelty at dog farms across South Korea.
"It's like standing on the edge of a cliff," Nam, 74, said in an interview, sitting on a bed inside a revamped shipping container where he lives at the farm he has run for 15 years in the town of Yangpyeong, near Seoul. "We are under a death sentence."
In this June 24, 2016, photo, pet dogs are seen in a cage as puppy farmers stage a rally criticizing the media reports and demanding measures to save their endangered businesses near the National Assembly in Seoul, South Korea. South Korean dog farmers face plummeting prices for puppies and massive public criticism after media reports alleging shocking acts of cruelty at a handful of farms. Some farmers say they are near collapse because of media reports that failed to represent the overall picture. The banners read "Same livestock laws for cows, pigs and pet dogs? and Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry should make companion law!" (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)
Prices have plummeted for puppies in large part because of the public outcry over a report by SBS TV in May that showed shocking scenes of abuse at two rural farms in South Korea. The SBS program, and other media reports that followed, has led to some rare soul-searching on dog welfare in a country where an estimated 2 million dogs are slaughtered every year for food.
On one side of the dispute are animal rights activists who say most dog farms in South Korea have problems with abuse. On the other are small farmers who say that while their facilities often do need improvements, they're not as bad as what's portrayed in recent media reports, which are based on the conditions at only a handful of farms.
During recent visits by The Associated Press to two unregistered farms, the dogs looked healthy and the facilities generally clean and well-run. In nearly a dozen interviews, farmers and pet shop owners said farms were mostly humane. Still, it's impossible to verify those claims because activists say the government mostly fails to monitor dog farms, most of which are unregistered.
South Korea's pet industry has blossomed in recent years one in every five households has either a dog or a cat even as many dog meat restaurants have closed. While restaurants still exist, younger people often stay away from a delicacy that's seen as a holdover from a different era. But the country's animal welfare system and public attitudes toward pets still lag far behind those in many Western countries.
The government estimates that about 1,000 farms have more than 20 dogs that are being raised for pets. Activist groups put the number at 3,000, and say they churn out more than 250,000 dogs annually.
Many South Koreans were appalled by the abuse revealed by the local media reports, some of it captured with hidden cameras: Dogs were confined in squalid, overcrowded wire cages; many were injured or sick, rarely released for exercise. Female dogs were caged until they no longer produced puppies, then slaughtered or sent to dog meat restaurants or stores selling traditional medicines made with dog meat.
A farmer without a veterinarian license talked in one scene about the cesarean sections she had just performed on female dogs that sprawled nearby, sluggish still with anesthesia.
Police later detained the woman for allegedly using veterinary anesthetic illegally, but she wasn't charged with animal abuse because a local law allows farmers to medically treat their animals.
It's hard to tell exactly how many farms have similar levels of abuse because there are few detailed studies on the issue and the worst farms don't accept outside visitors, according to animal welfare groups.
Many farmers feel unfairly persecuted because of what they say are only a few bad farms.
"I'm enraged. Why should we be reviled because of them?" said Moon Young-joo, who breeds about 50 dogs in Umseong, south of Seoul.
An association of farms, pet shops and auctions houses says the prices of dogs that used to sell at 200,000-300,000 won ($173-259) have plunged to 50,000-100,000 won ($43-86).
Some activists are skeptical of the small farmers' indignation.
Kim Hyunji at the Seoul-based Korea Animal Rights Advocates said the farms visited by The Associated Press might have cleaned up their facilities in advance. She said raising dogs in cages is abuse and inspectors must also examine whether the animals routinely get proper medical services and exercise and are over-bred.
The media reports led to protests by activists and an online campaign calling for the abolishment of what critics call "puppy mills."
The Agriculture Ministry last month launched investigations of the country's puppy farms and thousands of other places where dogs are raised for their meat. At dog meat farms, more serious abuses are believed to take place.
Hundreds of angry farmers recently rallied in Seoul, criticizing the media reports and demanding measures to save their endangered businesses.
"We're now looked at as sub-human," said Shim Young Soon, a farmer from Goyang, near Seoul, at the rally. "I worry that my dogs will attack and try to eat each other when I run out of money and can't feed them properly."
Nam said he only has 60,000 won ($52) left in his bank account; but he refuses to sell his newborn puppies at the new rock-bottom price because it would destroy his livelihood.
It is difficult for consumers here to determine where their puppies come from because most pet dogs bred at farms are first sent to auction houses before being sold to pet stores.
Amid the turmoil, the South Korean government recently unveiled measures to promote the pet business. The measures toughen penalties for abuse; give subsidies to farmers who follow government guidelines; and make it more difficult to open farms.
As his business collapses, Nam holds onto the final memory of a guard dog named Sunny.
"When she was breathing her last breath, I patted her and told her goodbye. She wagged her tail even though she was dying," Nam said, tears flowing down his face. "I won't forget her until I die."
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Follow correspondent Hyung-jin Kim at twitter.com/hyungjin1972
In this June 28, 2016, photo, a pet dog pokes its face through a cage at a puppy farm in Yangpyeong, South Korea. South Korean dog farmers face plummeting prices for puppies and massive public criticism after media reports alleging shocking acts of cruelty at a handful of farms. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)
In this June 28, 2016, photo, Moon Young-joo plays with pet dogs at his puppy farm in Umseong, South Korea. South Korean dog farmers face plummeting prices for puppies and massive public criticism after media reports alleging shocking acts of cruelty at a handful of farms. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)
In this June 28, 2016, photo, Moon Young-joo works in a cage at his puppy farm in Umseong, South Korea. South Korean dog farmers face plummeting prices for puppies and massive public criticism after media reports alleging shocking acts of cruelty at a handful of farms. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)
In this June 28, 2016, photo, pet dogs are seen in a cage at a puppy farm in Umseong, South Korea. South Korean dog farmers face plummeting prices for puppies and massive public criticism after media reports alleging shocking acts of cruelty at a handful of farms. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)
In this June 28, 2016, photo, pet dogs are seen in cages at a puppy farm in Yangpyeong, South Korea. South Korean dog farmers face plummeting prices for puppies and massive public criticism after media reports alleging shocking acts of cruelty at a handful of farms. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)
In this June 28, 2016, photo, Nam Ki Sung watches pet dogs in cages at his puppy farm in Yangpyeong, South Korea. Nam is one of many puppy farmers who face collapse amid public anger over recent allegations in media reports and by activists of widespread cruelty at dog farms across South Korea. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)
Torture scandal in Mexico: American "nearly beaten to death"
MEXICO CITY (AP) Ronald James Wooden flexes the large blacksmith's hands with which he once forged everything from large chandeliers to intricate jewelry. He's says he is still regaining feeling in them three years after a four-hour beating with fists and rifle butts by municipal police in southern Mexico.
The officers tightened his handcuffs and then stood on them to inflict maximum damage to his hands, said Wooden, 46, who had set up a workshop in the hills outside the silver-mining city of Taxco along with his Mexican-born wife. Police detained him for allegedly disturbing the peace, but Wooden says the beating arose from a dispute with his neighbor, a former cop who claimed to belong to a local drug cartel.
"They beat me for close to four hours. Some would get tired and then others would come in. They were going to kill me and disappear me," said Wooden, who said he suffered nerve damage, broken ribs and injuries to his genitals.
In this June 30, 2016 photo, American craftsman Ronald James Wooden pauses during an interview in Mexico City. Originally from Iowa, hes says police detained and beat him three years ago for allegedly disturbing the peace, but Wooden says he was beaten because of a dispute with his neighbor, who claimed to belong to a local drug cartel who was demanding protection money. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte)
He said what saved him was "divine intervention and the love that my family has for me." His wife, Carmen, waited outside the police station for hours until she was allowed to pay Wooden's 200-peso ($12 fine) and took him to a hospital after he was released.
Human rights groups say police torture remains all too common in Mexico, but Wooden's case from 2013 is unusual in two respects: He's an American citizen and he's won a court order for a criminal investigation into the beating.
A probe in 2014 by the governmental Human Rights Defense Commission in Guerrero state found that Taxco police illegally detained Wooden, contradicted themselves about how he sustained his injuries and essentially lied about their extent. It found that the American had been covered in bruises, scrapes and cuts.
The commission issued a directive that municipal authorities should punish those responsible and pay reparation.
After two years of no action, a federal judge on June 30 ordered Mexico's government to open a formal criminal investigation for torture and kidnapping in Wooden's case.
"This opens a new road, little explored and little used" to force authorities to investigate the thousands of torture complaints in Mexico, said Mario Santiago, a lawyer for the human rights group Idheas, which is representing Wooden. "We know there are hundreds or thousands of torture complaints all the time in the country. There is no investigation; these go unpunished."
Wooden, who had been living in Texas, was drawn to Taxco by its famed silver jewelry industry, which had been revived by American adventurer William Spratling in the 1930s. But in recent years, the colonial-era town south of Mexico City has been in the grip of drug cartels. In 2010, authorities discovered 55 rotting bodies that had been tossed into an abandoned mine shaft near Taxco.
Wooden said that as soon as he set up his shop, he began receiving threats from a neighbor who claimed to be a member of the Guerreros Unidos drug gang and demanded a 10,000-peso monthly protection payment.
When the neighbor got out a machete and threatened to send Wooden back to the United States in pieces, both men called the police, Wooden said. He said that when officers showed up, they went straight for Wooden, kicking and punching him to the ground. They arrested him for being drunk and disturbing the peace allegations he denies.
Wooden is under no illusions about what could have happened to him: Taxco's police were so notorious that the federal government disarmed the whole force a year and a half after Wooden's arrest and handed policing over to federal officers.
The city's former police chief, Eruviel Salado Chavez, was arrested last month on charges of organized crime and kidnapping. He is accused of close ties with Guerreros Unidos, which is blamed for many of the 100 bodies found in mass graves around Taxco and the nearby city of Iguala. The federal government says 43 college students who disappeared in 2014 in Iguala were kidnapped by corrupt municipal police and turned over to Guerreros Unidos, which supposedly killed them.
"Part of what has protected me is that I'm a foreigner, and I have no fear," Wooden said. "What happened to me has happened to other people ... Whole families have disappeared in those situations."
He said that when he came to his senses in the jail cell after the beating, "I realized that there is dried blood on the floor, and it's not mine so much."
Mexico passed a law setting out punishment for police abuse in 1986 amid horror over the discovery of tortured bodies at an earthquake-damaged police headquarters. The law, on paper, was toughened in 1991, banning the use of testimony obtained under torture.
Still, scandals involving Mexican police, soldiers and marines keep mounting. And Wooden's case is an example of how hard it is to punish such abuses.
The artisan initially filed a criminal complaint after the beating. But he said he dropped the effort when a man at the magistrate's office pulled him aside, saying: "They're planning to disappear you from here if you continue to make noise and press charges.'"
Besides suffering physical damage, Wooden said some of his equipment was stolen. He and his wife left Taxco, fearing for their lives, and moved to other parts of Mexico. He said he's been unable to get new projects due to his injuries and a lack of money to buy materials.
Nobody has gone to jail for torturing Wooden. Two of the police officers got warnings and were required to take human rights classes, though Santiago said it's unclear if they did.
"There is no investigation, these go unpunished. What happened to him happened to a lot of people," said Santiago. "What we are looking for is structural changes, so these abuses don't continue to happen."
In this June 30, 2016 photo, American craftsman Ronald James Wooden pauses during an interview in Mexico City. Originally from Iowa, hes says police detained and beat him three years ago for allegedly disturbing the peace, but Wooden says he was beaten because of a dispute with his neighbor, who claimed to belong to a local drug cartel who was demanding protection money. Besides suffering physical damage, Wooden said some of his equipment was stolen. He and his wife left Taxco, fearing for their lives, and moved to other parts of Mexico. He said hes been unable to get new projects due to his injuries and a lack of money to buy materials. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte)
Hungarian officers beat migrants severely, rights group says
BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) Hungarian police and soldiers have severely beaten some migrants before sending them back across the border to Serbia, Human Rights Watch said Wednesday a report that was disputed by the Hungarian government.
Since July 5, migrants caught within 8 kilometers (5 miles) of the Hungarian border are being returned to the Serbian side of the razor-wire fence built by Hungary last year to stem the migrant flow. Police said 621 people were sent back to Serbia since the new rules took effect.
One of the claims of abuse noted in the HRW report said men in a group of 30-40 migrants that also included women and children were beaten by soldiers for two hours after being detained in Hungary.
Hungarian police and army officers oversee the distribution of food as people queue inside a migrant camp at Serbia's border with Hungary, in Horgos, Serbia, Monday, July 11, 2016. In what appears to be another refugee crisis in the making in Europe, the numbers are surging at camps on Serbias border with EU country Hungary. The numbers have been growing since last week, when Hungary introduced forced deportations of migrants caught within 8 kilometers (5 miles) of border fences. (AP Photo/Marko Drobnjakovic)
"I haven't even seen such beating in the movies," the reported quoted an unidentified man as saying. "Five or six soldiers took us one by one to beat us. They tied our hands with plastic handcuffs on our backs. They beat us with everything, with fists, kicks, and batons. They deliberately gave us bad injuries."
Others interviewed by HRW said they were beaten by police and injured when forced back into Serbia through small openings in the razor-wire fence.
Migrants interviewed Wednesday by The Associated Press in Horgos, Serbia, near one of the Hungarian transit zones, described similar treatment by Hungarian officers.
"I went to Hungary three times. It is very difficult, they beat me up," said Wahed Khan, a 24-year-old migrant from Afghanistan. "Hungarian police are beating people. They injured many people by spraying (tear gas), they use a very dangerous sort of spray."
The HRW report was based on interviews with 41 asylum-seekers and migrants as well as officials from a wide range of institutions, including the U.N. refugee agency, Hungarian police and the immigration office.
The organization said Hungary was also failing to comply with international standards regarding asylum-seekers, for example by quickly dismissing most asylum claims from single men, while accepting only 15 claims daily at each of the two transit zones on the Serbian border. This has led to hundreds of refugees being stranded at the border in precarious conditions.
"The abuse of asylum seekers and migrants runs counter to Hungary's obligations under EU law, refugee law, and human rights law," said Lydia Gall, the rights group's regional researcher. "The European Commission should use its enforcement powers to press Budapest to comply with its obligation under EU law to provide meaningful access to asylum and fair procedures for those at its borders and on its territory."
"Hungary is breaking all the rules for asylum-seekers," Gall said.
The Interior Ministry, in charge of border protection with assistance from the army, rejected the HRW report.
"Migrants are not harassed on the Hungarian border. Hungary treats those truly in need humanely," the ministry said in a statement. "At the same time, it expects migrants to obey to laws of the European Union and Hungary."
The ministry said this year only eight migrants out of nearly 18,000 had filed complaints about police mistreatment but internal reviews found all the claims to be baseless. To rule out the possibility of partiality, the reviews were forwarded to prosecutors.
HRW also said Hungary was applying "legal fiction" at the border transit zones, as people there were not considered to have entered the country even though the zones are in Hungary. This makes it possible for Hungary to ensure that refugees whose asylum claims are rejected in the transit zones do not try to stay in Hungary or pass through the country, as nearly 400,000 people did last year, on their way west.
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Marko Drobnjakovic in Horgos, Serbia, contributed to this report.
China says it could declare air zone over South China Sea
BEIJING (AP) China warned other countries Wednesday against threatening its security in the South China Sea after an international tribunal handed the Philippines a victory by saying Beijing had no legal basis for its expansive claims there.
Vice Foreign Minister Liu Zhenmin said Beijing could declare an air defense identification zone over the waters if it felt threatened, a move that would sharply escalate tensions. But Beijing also extended an olive branch to the new Philippine government, saying the Southeast Asian nation would benefit from cooperating with China.
The Philippines, under a U.N. treaty governing the seas, had sought arbitration in 2013 on several issues related to its long-running territorial disputes with China. In its ruling Tuesday, the tribunal found China's far-reaching claims to the South China Sea had no legal basis and that Beijing had violated the Philippines' maritime rights by building up artificial islands and disrupting fishing and oil exploration.
In this Tuesday, July 12, 2016 photo, workers chat near a map of South China Sea on display at a maritime defense educational facility in Nanjing in east China's Jiangsu province. China blamed the Philippines for stirring up trouble and issued a policy paper Wednesday calling the islands in the South China Sea its "inherent territory," a day after an international tribunal said China had no legal basis for its expansive claims. (Chinatopix via AP)
While introducing a policy paper in response to the ruling, Liu said the islands in the South China Sea were China's "inherent territory" and blamed the Philippines for stirring up trouble.
"If our security is being threatened, of course we have the right to demarcate a zone. This would depend on our overall assessment," Liu said in a briefing. "We hope that other countries will not take this opportunity to threaten China and work with China to protect the peace and stability of the South China Sea, and not let it become the origin of a war."
In 2013, China set up an air defense identification zone over disputed islands in the East China Sea, requiring all aircraft entering the area to notify Chinese authorities or be subjected to "emergency military measures" if they disobey orders from Beijing. The U.S. and others refuse to recognize the zone.
While blaming the previous Philippine government for complicating the dispute by seeking arbitration, Liu said China remains committed to negotiations with the Philippines and noted new Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte's positive remarks on the issue.
"After the storm of this arbitration has passed, and the sky has cleared, we hope this day (of negotiations) will come quickly, but whether it can come, we still have to wait," Liu said, adding that China believed that cooperation would also bring Filipinos "tangible benefits."
Duterte has not directly responded to China's overtures. He is navigating a tightrope in which he wants to revive relations with Beijing while being seen as defending the major victory the country has won through arbitration.
Former Philippine President Benigno Aquino III, who initiated the case, said the ruling brought clarity that "now establishes better conditions that enable countries to engage each other, bearing in mind their duties and rights within a context that espouses equality and amity."
Cooperation, however, would remain elusive if conflicts over claims persist, he said.
Six regional governments have overlapping claims in the South China Sea, waters that are rich in fishing stocks and potential energy resources and where an estimated $5 trillion in global trade passes each year.
Beijing says vast areas of the South China Sea have been Chinese territory since ancient times and demarcated its modern claims with the so-called nine-dash line, a map that was submitted under the U.N. treaty. The tribunal said any historical resource rights were wiped out if they were incompatible with exclusive economic zones established under the treaty, which both countries have signed.
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Gomez reported from Manila, Philippines.
State Council Information Office spokesman, Guo Weimin holds up white policy paper on South China Sea during a press briefing at the State Council Information Office in Beijing, Wednesday, July 13, 2016. China blamed the Philippines for stirring up trouble and issued a policy paper Wednesday calling the islands in the South China Sea its "inherent territory," a day after an international tribunal said China had no legal basis for its expansive claims. (AP Photo/Gillian Wong)
China's Vice Foreign Minister Liu Zhenmin looks at the white policy paper on South China Sea during a press briefing at the State Council Information Office in Beijing, Wednesday, July 13, 2016. China blamed the Philippines for stirring up trouble and issued a policy paper Wednesday calling the islands in the South China Sea its "inherent territory," a day after an international tribunal said China had no legal basis for its expansive claims. (AP Photo/Gillian Wong)
The Latest: Taiwan leader slams UN ruling, sends patrol ship
BEIJING (AP) The Latest on an international tribunal's ruling on the case filed by the Philippines against China's claims in the South China Sea (all times local):
5:05 p.m.
Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen is indignant at the U.N. arbitration tribunal's decision to deny China and Taiwan their maritime claims in the South China Sea.
In this image taken and made available by the Taiwan Presidential Office on Wednesday, July 13, 2016, Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen shakes hands with crew members aboard a Taiwan Navy ship before it sets out to patrol in the South China Sea from the naval base in the southern port city of Khaohsiung, Taiwan. Taiwan's Ministry of National Defense said Wednesday it will continue to send planes and ships to the South China Sea to carry out patrol missions and defend Taiwan's territory and sovereignty despite the Permanent Court of Arbitration's ruling in The Hague, said the Central News Agency. (Taiwan Presidential Office via AP)
Although rivals, self-ruled Taiwan and China share the same territorial claims, pitting them against other claimants, chiefly the Philippines and Vietnam. The U.N. arbitration tribunal ruled in favor of the Philippines and said that the biggest feature in the Spratly Islands Taiwanese-controlled Taiping or Itu Aba is not an island but a rock, and therefore not entitled to more than 12 nautical miles of territorial waters.
On Wednesday, Tsai said that the ruling "seriously damaged" Taiwan's rights.
In remarks to navy sailors aboard a frigate before it left on a South China Sea patrol, she said: "This ship represents the Republic of China (Taiwan). The uniform you are wearing represents the expectations of the people. The mission of this trip is to show the Taiwanese people's determination to defend the country's interests."
Taiwan's Ministry of National Defense said it would continue to send planes and ships to the South China Sea on patrol missions and to defend Taiwan's territory and sovereignty.
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3:15 p.m.
European Council President Donald Tusk said in Beijing that visiting European leaders have discussed an international tribunal's South China Sea ruling with their Chinese counterparts.
He said Wednesday that he hoped the ruling would now be used "to create a positive momentum in finding a solution to the dispute in the South China Sea."
Tusk said Europe would continue to speak out on upholding international law, including when it comes to the United Nation Convention on the Law of the Seas, or UNCLOS.
The case before The Hague tribunal, filed by the Philippines, had centered on the applicability of China's vaguely drawn "nine-dash line" South China Sea boundary under UNCLOS.
The EU has "full confidence" in the arbitration panel and its procedures, Tusk told reporters.
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1:40 p.m.
Former Philippine President Benigno Aquino III, who brought the case against China in 2013, says the arbitration tribunal's ruling in favor of the Philippines brought clarity to the South China Sea disputes.
He says the ruling "now establishes better conditions that enable countries to engage each other, bearing in mind their duties and rights within a context that espouses equality and amity."
Aquino says cooperation, however, will remain elusive if conflicts over claims persist.
China refuses to recognize the tribunal's decision that it violated the Philippines' maritime rights by building up artificial islands that destroyed coral reefs and by disrupting fishing and oil exploration.
Aquino's successor, Rodrigo Duterte, has taken a softer line against Beijing, saying he's open to bilateral talks.
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1 p.m.
A senior Chinese official says Beijing reserves the right to declare an Air Defense Identification Zone over the South China Sea, a move that would sharply escalate tensions in the disputed territory.
Vice Foreign Minister Liu Zhenmin told reporters Wednesday: "China has the right to do so . China has established an ADIZ over the East China Sea."
He says such a move will be based on the level of threat against China.
He says, "If our security is being threatened, of course we have the right to demarcate a zone. This would depend on our overall assessment."
He also says China hopes other countries will not take this opportunity to threaten China and "we hope that they will work with China to protect the peace and stability of the South China Sea, and not let the South China Sea become the origin of a war."
China's ADIZ over the East China Sea is not recognized by the U.S. and others.
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10 a.m.
A day after an international tribunal said China had no legal basis for its expansive claim to the South China Sea, Beijing issued a policy paper saying the islands in the South China Sea are "China's inherent territory".
In a policy paper released Wednesday, China's government asserted its sovereignty over the islands and their surrounding waters and opposes other countries' "illegal claims and occupation."
"It is the Philippines that has created and stirred up the trouble," said Vice Foreign Minister Liu Zhenmin, in introducing the paper.
The paper blamed the Philippines for violating an agreement with China to settle the disputes through bilateral negotiation and said Manila "distorted facts and concocted a pack of lies" to push forward the arbitral proceedings.
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8:20 a.m.
Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said Wednesday that China's reputation and ambitions of becoming a world leader would suffer if it ignored the South China Sea ruling.
Bishop called on all parties to respect the ruling, which she described as final and legally binding.
"To ignore it would be a serious international transgression," Bishop told Australian Broadcasting Corp. "There would be strong reputational costs."
Bishop said she expected to speak with her counterparts in China and the Philippines in coming days and expected the ruling to be discussed at the upcoming ASEAN and East Asia Summit meetings in mid-July.
She said Australian ships and aircraft would continue to exercise freedom of navigation and overflight rights but refused to comment on specific details.
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5:35 a.m.
China's ambassador to the U.S. says an international tribunal ruling that rejected its expansive claims over the South China Sea will intensify conflict and could lead to confrontation.
Ambassador Cui Tiankai (sway tee-ehn k-eye) also accused the Hague-based tribunal of "professional incompetence" saying it was dealing with a sovereignty dispute, which is beyond its jurisdiction.
The case was brought by the Philippines, a U.S. ally.
Cui was speaking at a Washington think tank hours after the tribunal issued its ruling Monday.
U.S. officials say the ruling will narrow the geographical scope of territorial disputes in the South China Sea and could provide an impetus for fresh diplomacy among the claimant nations.
Cui said China always supports negotiations among the concerned parties, but the ruling will undermine the possibility of diplomacy.
Founder of notorious street gang 'MS-13' sent to prison
BOSTON (AP) The founder of a notorious street gang has been sentenced to prison in Massachusetts for illegally entering the United States after having been deported.
Carlos Geovanni Martinez-Aguilar, of Mesquite, Texas, was sentenced Tuesday by a U.S. District Court judge in Boston to three years in prison followed by two years of probation.
Martinez-Aguilar pleaded guilty in April to unlawful re-entry of a deported alien.
Prosecutors say Martinez-Aguilar, a native of El Salvador, illegally entered the U.S. in 1995. In 2002, he was convicted of unarmed robbery. He was deported in July 2003.
Prior to his deportation, Martinez-Aguilar was a leader of the MS-13 gang in the North Shore area of Massachusetts.
Death of rebel leader fuels renewed anger in Kashmir
SRINAGAR, India (AP) When Indian forces announced last week that they had killed a top Kashmiri rebel leader, they called it a major victory in the fight against militants in the disputed Himalayan region. They clearly didn't expect the backlash that followed an outpouring of public anger, daily protests and dozens dead in the streets.
The killing of Burhan Wani drew tens of thousands to rise up and renew demands for "azadi," or freedom, from Indian rule. At least 31 people have died in clashes and hospitals are struggling with hundreds of injured.
Each day this week has brought a new surge of resistance by young, rock-throwing protesters in jeans and bandanas defying curfews to face down Indian troops firing live ammunition, pellet guns and tear gas.
FILE- In this July 9, 2016 file photo, Kashmiri villagers carry the body of Burhan Wani, chief of operations of Indian Kashmir's largest rebel group Hizbul Mujahideen, during his funeral procession in Tral, some 38 Kilometers (24 miles) south of Srinagar, Indian controlled Kashmir. When Indian forces gleefully announced last week that they had killed a top Kashmiri rebel leader, they called it a major victory in the fight against militants in the disputed Himalayan region. They clearly didnt expect the backlash that followed - an outpouring of public anger, daily protests and dozens dead in the streets. (AP Photo/Dar Yasin, File)
Officials worry that they've unwittingly revived a rebellion that may be hard to control.
"We were not expecting this huge public reaction," said a top security official engaged in counterinsurgency operations, speaking on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to speak to reporters. "It's disturbing."
There were clear signs that the mostly Muslim region was ripe for a renewed rebellion even before the death of the popular, young leader of the area's largest rebel group.
Wani had been hidden by villagers at least half a dozen times before, as have other anti-India rebels, when soldiers zeroed on their hideouts in southern Kashmir villages, according to security officials and local residents. Many among Kashmir's 12 million people saw the 22-year-old handsome Wani as a folk hero who bravely defied India's forces, marked by hundreds of thousands of troops in the disputed region.
Many felt as if they knew Wani personally, having followed the news of his rise through the ranks of Hizbul Mujahideen.
When news spread that Indian troops had killed him and two other militants Friday night, the response was immediate: Tens of thousands of angry youths poured out of their homes in towns and villages, hurling rocks and bricks and shouting at Indian troops in the streets.
Wani's "ability to recruit (people) into militancy from the grave will far outstrip anything he could have done on social media," Kashmir's former chief minister and opposition leader Omar Abdullah tweeted on Saturday.
Inspector-General Syed Javaid Mujtaba Gillani described Wani's killing as the "biggest success against militants" in recent years.
Authorities imposed a 24-hour hour curfew, but still protesters attacked military and paramilitary installations, burned several police stations and some homes belonging to police and pro-India politicians.
"Despite 69 years of opportunity, India has not earned Kashmiri trust," Indian author-journalist Aditya Sinha said in a column published this week in the Mumbai-based daily Mid-Day. He wrote that India's focus on Wani having been a militant was "ironic, given that India has turned the Valley into a part-garrison, part-open air prison."
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, having just returned from a four-nation tour in Africa, called a high-level government meeting to discuss how to restore peace. Indian authorities said Monday they had sent at least 2,000 more law enforcement troops to the mountainous region, where hundreds of thousands already are deployed permanently.
Kashmir has known little other than conflict since 1947, when India and Pakistan gained independence but were unable to resolve their rival claims to the mountain territory. Since then, the countries have fought two wars over Kashmir, which each controlling a part of the region.
Pakistani army chief Gen. Raheel Sharif reacted on Wednesday by condemning the killings of Kashmiri youths and reiterating that the world needs to recognize the aspirations of Kashmiri people, their struggle for freedom and help resolve the longstanding dispute. Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said the voice and struggle of Kashmiris cannot be suppressed through use of brutal force.
The Indian side has seen several separatist movements, including a bloody armed rebellion launched in 1989 to demand independence or a merger with Pakistan. More than 68,000 people were killed in that uprising and the subsequent brutal crackdown by hundreds of thousands of Indian forces deployed across the region.
Wani was born in the southern town of Tral and was a teenager in 2010 when his older brother was beaten by troops on patrol near their home. Shortly after he joined Hizbul Mujahideen, then a deflated band of rebels on the run from Indian forces, and eventually became the iconic face of Kashmir's militancy, using social media to rally supporters and reach out to others who had grown up like him in the militarized and job-scarce region.
"People identified with him as his message was loud and clear no more subjugation and brutalization. He would use Facebook more than guns," said human rights activist Khurram Parvez.
In an unprecedented outpouring of support, tens of thousands of Kashmiris attended Wani's funeral in Tral, chanting "We want freedom." As his body was being lowered into the grave, two militants fired pistol rounds into the air.
The funeral was the "people's referendum against Indian rule," Parvez said.
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Follow Aijaz Hussain: www.twitter.com/hussain_aijaz
FILE- In this July 9, 2016 file photo, Kashmiri villagers shout slogans during the funeral procession of Burhan Wani, chief of operations of Indian Kashmir's largest rebel group Hizbul Mujahideen, in Tral, some 38 Kilometers (24 miles) south of Srinagar, Indian controlled Kashmir. When Indian forces gleefully announced last week that they had killed a top Kashmiri rebel leader, they called it a major victory in the fight against militants in the disputed Himalayan region. They clearly didnt expect the backlash that followed - an outpouring of public anger, daily protests and dozens dead in the streets. (AP Photo/Dar Yasin, File)
FILE- In this July 9, 2016 file photo, Kashmiri villagers pray during the funeral of Burhan Wani, chief of operations of Indian Kashmir's largest rebel group Hizbul Mujahideen, in Tral, some 38 Kilometers (24 miles) south of Srinagar, Indian controlled Kashmir. When Indian forces gleefully announced last week that they had killed a top Kashmiri rebel leader, they called it a major victory in the fight against militants in the disputed Himalayan region. They clearly didnt expect the backlash that followed - an outpouring of public anger, daily protests and dozens dead in the streets. (AP Photo/Dar Yasin, File)
FILE- In this July 9, 2016 file photo, Kashmiri villagers wave Pakistani flags during the funeral procession of Burhan Wani, chief of operations of Indian Kashmir's largest rebel group Hizbul Mujahideen, in Tral, some 38 Kilometers (24 miles) south of Srinagar, Indian controlled Kashmir. When Indian forces gleefully announced last week that they had killed a top Kashmiri rebel leader, they called it a major victory in the fight against militants in the disputed Himalayan region. They clearly didnt expect the backlash that followed - an outpouring of public anger, daily protests and dozens dead in the streets. (AP Photo/Dar Yasin, File)
FILE- In this July 10, 2016 file photo, a Kashmiri Muslim protester throws brick at Indian paramilitary soldiers as they react to the killing of rebel leader Burhan Wani in Srinagar, Indian controlled Kashmir. When Indian forces gleefully announced last week that they had killed a top Kashmiri rebel leader, they called it a major victory in the fight against militants in the disputed Himalayan region. They clearly didnt expect the backlash that followed - an outpouring of public anger, daily protests and dozens dead in the streets. (AP Photo/Dar Yasin, File)
FILE- In this July 9, 2016 file photo, Indian policemen remove roadblock set up by protesters who were reacting to the killing of rebel leader Burhan Wani in Srinagar, Indian controlled Kashmir. When Indian forces gleefully announced last week that they had killed a top Kashmiri rebel leader, they called it a major victory in the fight against militants in the disputed Himalayan region. They clearly didnt expect the backlash that followed - an outpouring of public anger, daily protests and dozens dead in the streets. (AP Photo/Mukhtar Khan, File)
Surveys off Alaska lead to new types of soft-bodied fish
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) Federal biologist Jay Orr never knows what's going to come up in nets lowered to the ocean floor off Alaska's remote Aleutian Islands, which separate the Bering Sea from the rest of the Pacific Ocean. Sometimes it's stuff he has to name.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration biologist is part of a group that uses trawl nets to survey commercially important fish species such as cod in waters off Alaska. Sometimes those nets come up with things no one has seen before.
With co-authors, Orr has discovered 14 kinds of new snailfish, a creature that can be found in tide pools but also in the deepest parts of the ocean. A dozen more new snailfish are waiting to be named. Additional species are likely to be found as scientists expand their time investigating areas such as the Bering Sea Slope, in water 800 to 5,200 feet deep, or the 25,663-foot deep Aleutian Trench.
A 2002 photo provided by NOAA Fisheries/Alaska Fisheries Science Center and taken during the second leg of the Aleutian Islands survey shows a snailfish. Snailfish have no scales. The Alaska Fisheries Science Center, part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, has helped name more than a dozen new species over the last decade. (James Orr/NOAA Fisheries/Alaska Fisheries Science Center via AP)
"I suspect we are just scraping the top of the distributions of some of these deep-water groups," Orr said from his office in Seattle.
Orr and his colleagues measure the abundance of rockfish, flatfish and other "bottom fish" for the Alaska Fisheries Science Center, the research arm of the NOAA's National Marine Fisheries Service. The center studies marine resources off Alaska and parts of the West Coast.
Five boats with six researchers each surveyed Alaska waters in late June. The teams trawl on the Bering Shelf every summer and in either Aleutian waters or the Gulf of Alaska every other year.
Their findings on fish abundance are fed into models for managing fish populations.
The scientists put down a 131-foot trawl net that captures whatever is along the ocean bottom. A ton of fish is a standard sample. Along with fish, they get clues to the seafloor habitat. Sponges, for example, indicate a hard seafloor, or substrate.
Fifteen years ago, research biologist Michael Martin suggested a small modification: a net just 2 to 3 feet wide at the front of the trawl net.
"We realized we didn't have a really good picture of the substrate that we were trawling over, and we figured we were missing some things in the big meshes that the larger net had," Orr said. "So one of the other guys here decided to put this little net on, mainly as a means to see what the substrate looked like."
On one of the first hauls, the small net returned with a variety of small, soft-bodied fish, including snailfish, that likely would have fallen out or gotten mashed in the main net. Orr took a look and knew they had found something different.
As someone who studies fish, "I sort of knew what I was looking for and what was known out there," he said. "The first ones that came up, I saw them right away and said, 'We don't know what these are. These haven't been named.'"
Snailfish have no scales, feel gelatinous and look like fat tadpoles. Aristotle described a Mediteranean variety found in ancient Greece as "sea slugs."
Many fish have pelvic fins on their bellies, just behind the gills. Most snailfish species, instead of pelvic fins, have a sucking disc that they use to cling to rocks.
Orr identified some new varieties that did not have a sucking disc. Another had a hardened bone in its head. Another had a projecting lower jaw. Others varied by shape, color or body parts, such as vertebrae.
"Nearly all of them have genetic characters that distinguish them, too," Orr said.
He has wide latitude for giving new species both common and Latin names. A red, white and black snailfish with a big, bulbous nose struck him as funny-looking. He gave it the common name of "comic snailfish" and the Latin name Careproctus comus, after Comus, the god of comedy in Greek mythology.
Snailfish made headlines in 2014 when researchers recorded them swimming nearly 27,000 feet, or more than 4 miles, below the surface in the Marianas Trench, making them the deepest-dwelling vertebrate on the planet. The Marianas Trench is about 200 miles southwest of the Pacific island of Guam and is known as the deepest part of the world's oceans.
A critical part of the work is on the species his agency actively manages. Orr helped distinguish the northern rock sole, which spawns and grows differently than other rock sole. Fishing at the wrong time could disrupt a population important to the seafood market.
"Ultimately we're managing an ecosystem," Orr said. "It's really important to know what each of the elements are."
CORRECTS SUBJECT NAME TO JAMES ORR, NOT GERALD R. HOFF AND PHOTOGRAPHER NAME TO GERALD R. HOFF, NOT JAMES ORR. - This July 31, 2010 photo provided by NOAA Fisheries/Alaska Fisheries Science Center shows James Orr, research fishery biologist in Norton Sound, Alaska. Federal scientists sampling commercial fish species off Alaska's Aleutian Islands keep finding new species. The Alaska Fisheries Science Center, part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, has helped name more than a dozen new species over the last decade. (Gerald R. Hoff/NOAA Fisheries/Alaska Fisheries Science Center via AP)
Court sides with Utah's Planned Parenthood in defunding case
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) The Utah governor's order to block funding to Planned Parenthood was probably a political move designed to punish the group, a federal appeals court wrote in an ruling that ordered the state to keep the money flowing.
The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver decided Tuesday there's a good chance the governor's order violated the group's constitutional rights.
Republican Gov. Gary Herbert cut off cash last fall for sexually transmitted disease and sex education programs following the release of secretly recorded videos showing out-of-state employees discussing fetal tissue from abortions.
FILE - In this Feb. 5, 2015, file photo, Utah Gov. Gary Herbert speaks to reporters during a news conference at the Utah State Capitol in Salt Lake City. A federal appeals court is ordering Utah to continue sending money to the state branch of Planned Parenthood, overturning an earlier ruling that allowed the governor to defund the organization. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer, File)
The head of the Planned Parenthood Association of Utah hailed the ruling as a victory for the clinic's patients.
"Our doors are open today and they will be tomorrow no matter what," CEO Karrie Galloway said in a statement. Her group has planned a celebration for Saturday on the front steps of the Utah State Capitol.
Herbert's spokesman says the governor believes contract decisions should be made by the state, and that he was disappointed in the ruling blocking the defunding order while Planned Parenthood's lawsuit challenging it goes back to be heard by a lower court. The state is considering its next legal steps, which could include asking the full 10th Circuit to reconsider the panel's decision.
Herbert didn't comment on a finding by two appeals court judges that he likely used the controversy to politically attack the group because it provides abortions. A third judge dissented and questioned whether Planned Parenthood would ultimately prevail.
Lawyers for the Utah branch argued it has never participated in fetal donation programs. They also filed emails showing state health officials were concerned about defunding the programs that serve thousands of teenagers and low-income people.
State attorneys have argued that the governor has the right to end contracts and that Planned Parenthood was still under a cloud of suspicion when Herbert ordered state agencies to stop acting as a pass-through for federal money.
Herbert said he was offended by the callousness of the discussion shown on the videos, which sparked uproar among Republican leaders around the country.
Several states have moved to strip Planned Parenthood of contracts and federal money, and the organization has sued in states like Arkansas, Alabama and Louisiana.
While most court decisions have allowed money to keep flowing, U.S. District Judge Clark Waddoups in Utah decided the governor could block the money because the state has an interest in avoiding the perception of corruption.
National Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards said the ruling overturning that decision should send a strong message to politicians across the country on reproductive health care.
While Waddoups acknowledged that the Utah organization has not broken any laws, he said it has associated with other Planned Parenthood entities accused of illegally selling fetal tissue to researchers for profit.
The contracts that the governor blocked are worth $275,000, a small portion of the organization's $8 million budget. It also receives money through federal contracts, fees from clients, insurance and contributions.
Multiple investigations by Congress and several states have cleared Planned Parenthood of illegal acts. A Texas grand jury also cleared the group and instead indicted two of the activists who made the undercover videos.
FILE - This Aug. 25, 2015, file photo, Karrie Galloway, CEO of Planned Parenthood Action Council, laughs as the roar of the crowd drowns out her speech at the state Capitol, in Salt Lake City. A federal appeals court is ordering Utah to continue sending money to the state branch of Planned Parenthood, overturning an earlier ruling that allowed the governor to defund the organization. (Leah Hogsten/The Salt Lake Tribune via AP, File)
Australian prime minister under pressure to revise agenda
CANBERRA, Australia (AP) Australia's prime minister came under pressure from his own lawmakers on Thursday to revise his economic agenda after his weakened coalition scraped through one of the nation's closest ever elections.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's center-right Liberal Party lost at least 14 lawmakers, including some of Turnbull's key moderate supporters, in knife-edge polls on July 2 that left the coalition with a majority of only one or two seats in the House of Representatives where parties form government. Some mail-in votes are still being counted.
Some government lawmakers blame the surprise swing against the government partly on plans to increase taxes on the pension funds of wealthy Australians.
FILE - In this July 10, 2016 file photo, Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull speaks at the government offices in Sydney. Turnbull came under pressure from his own lawmakers on Thursday, July 14 to revise his economic agenda after his weakened coalition scraped through one of the nation's closest ever elections. (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft, File)
Such public criticism of official policy from government lawmakers is rare and proof that the election victory has not healed deep rifts in the administration's ranks.
Liberal Party Senator Eric Abetz, who was demoted from cabinet when Turnbull became prime minister less than a year ago, said Turnbull must consider changing the pension fund tax plans and other policies when government lawmakers meet on Monday.
"When you've just had such a big kick up the pants as we've just had as a coalition ... I think it is worthwhile to ask the question: Why did we hemorrhage ... so many votes, ... is there are lesson to be learnt and would the Australian people actually want us to recalibrate some of those policies?" Abetz told Australian Broadcasting Corp.
Turnbull said his narrow election win gave his government a mandate to implement all the policies he had campaigned on.
"We took a very clear set of policies to the election, we campaigned on it very clearly and that's what we'll be presenting" to the Parliament, Turnbull said Wednesday.
But Abetz questioned that mandate.
"A lot of our colleagues see the election result as the barest of victories, if we can call it a victory," Abetz said. "Having just fallen over the line, I think it might be wise for the leadership team to listen to some of us backbenchers."
Chris Back, another Liberal Party senator, agreed that aspects of the pension fund tax policy "seemed to be unfair" and changes should be debated within government ranks next week.
Turnbull, a moderate in the government, replaced the polarizing and socially conservative Prime Minister Tony Abbott in an internal government showdown in September. Turnbull immediately fired some of Abbott's more rightwing ministers, including Abetz.
Solar plane flies over Egypt pyramids on globe-circling trip
CAIRO (AP) Flying through the haze over the pyramids of Giza, an experimental solar-powered airplane arrived on Wednesday in Egypt as part of its globe-circling voyage.
The Solar Impulse 2 departed from the Seville airport in Spain on Monday and landed at the Cairo International Airport on Wednesday morning. This leg of the trip had been expected to last about 50 hours and 30 minutes.
The aircraft, piloted by Swiss aviator Andre Borschberg, had arrived in Seville on June 23 after an unprecedented three-day flight across the Atlantic.
In this Wednesday, July 13, 2016, handout image provided by Solar Impulse, the Solar Impulse 2 flying over the pyramids, Egypt Cairo. The experimental solar-powered airplane has arrived in Egypt as part of its global voyage. (Jean Revillard, Rezo via the AP)
The around-the-world voyage began in March 2015 in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates and is due to finish there in the coming weeks.
The wings of Solar Impulse 2, 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 45.06 kph (28 mph), although that can double during the day when the sun's rays are strongest.
The solar project, which is estimated to cost more than $100 million, began in 2002 to highlight the importance of renewable energy and the spirit of innovation.
An experimental solar-powered airplane is seen after landing in Cairo, Egypt, Wednesday, July 13, 2016. The experimental aircraft, Solar Impulse 2, flew out of the Seville airport in Spain on Monday and landed in Cairo on Wednesday. (AP Photo/Mohamed Elraai)
An experimental solar-powered airplane is seen after landing in Cairo, Egypt, Wednesday, July 13, 2016. The experimental aircraft, Solar Impulse 2, flew out of the Seville airport in Spain on Monday and landed in Cairo on Wednesday. (AP Photo/Mohamed Elraai)
An Italian-born nun who once challenged Billy the Kid, calmed angry mobs, opened hospitals and schools in the American Southwest and is now on a path toward possible Sainthood soon will be the subject of a TV series.
Saint Hood Productions based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, is scheduled Wednesday to announce a new project around Sister Blandina Segale a 19th-Century nun whose clashes with Old West outlaws and work with immigrants has been the stuff of legend.
At the End of the Santa Fe Trail aims to be a fictional account based on Segale's life and largely will use material from her 1932 book with the same name.
That book consisted of Segale's letters she wrote to her sister about the lawlessness in Trinidad, Colorado, and in Albuquerque and Santa Fe, New Mexico. She also discussed working with immigrants and prisoners.
Pamphlets and prayer cards of Sister Blandina Segale sit on a table. The Italian-born nun who once challenged Billy the Kid and later opened New Mexico hospitals and schools will soon be the subject of a television series
Her encounters with Old West outlaws later became the subject of an episode of the CBS series Death Valley Days, titled The Fastest Nun in the West
Billy the Kid is pictured in this file photograph
Her encounters with Old West outlaws later became the subject of an episode of the CBS series Death Valley Days, titled The Fastest Nun in the West.
According to one story, she received a tip that Billy the Kid was coming to her town to scalp four doctors who refused to treat his friend's gunshot wound.
Segale nursed the friend to health, and when Billy went to Trinidad to thank her, she convinced him to abandon his violent plan.
Allen Sanchez, president and CEO of CHI St. Joseph's Children an Albuquerque community health organization born of Segale's work said the nun is a perfect subject for a television series since many of the same issues she faced still resonate.
'She saw a divided country. She fought violence with nonviolence. She worked to stop discrimination against immigrants,' Sanchez said. 'These are all things we are seeing today.'
The new production comes as Albuquerque has become a popular filming location for television series, ranging for AMC-TV's Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul and NBC's The Night Shift.
It also comes just as the Roman Catholic Church is examining Segale for Sainthood.
In October, the Archdiocese of Santa Fe formally closed its inquiry on why the legendary nun should become a saint and sent its findings to the Vatican.
Archbishop Michael Sheehan talks to reporters at St. Joseph Community Health in Albuquerque, N.M., during an announcement the Archdiocese of Santa Fe is exploring sainthood for Sister Blandina Segale
At the End of the Santa Fe Trail aims to be a fictional account based on Segale's life and largely will use material from her 1932 book with the same name
The public inquiry, headed by former Archbishop Michael Sheehan, was aimed at determining if there was enough evidence to move her case through the largely secret process at the Vatican.
Witnesses said Segale fought against the cruel treatment of American Indians and sought to stop the trafficking of women as sex slaves.
They also testified that in death, Segale has helped cancer patients and poor immigrants who have prayed to her for help.
It's the first time in New Mexico's 400-year history with the Roman Catholic Church that an inquiry was completed in the state on the cause of beatification and canonization.
Officials say determining whether Segale qualifies for sainthood could take up to a century. The Vatican has to investigate her work and monitor for any related 'miracles'.
Segale, a nun with the Sisters of Charity of Cincinnati and an advocate for Hispanics and Native Americans, founded schools in New Mexico and St. Joseph Hospital, a predecessor of the Albuquerque health organization.
She worked as an educator and social worker in Ohio, Colorado and New Mexico.
Tomas Sanchez, executive producer and director of the Segale production, said 98 percent of the cast and crew will be from New Mexico.
'I am honored to tell Sister Blandina's story,' he said. 'This task requires lots of attention to history and demands that we hire the best New Mexican cast and crew to execute some very technically challenging film sequences.'
Donald Trump is wildly unpopular among young adults, in particular young people of color, and nearly two-thirds of Americans between the ages of 18 and 30 believe the presumptive Republican nominee is racist.
That's the finding of a new GenForward poll that also found just 19 percent of young people have a favorable opinion of Trump compared to the three-quarters of young adults who hold a dim view of the New York billionaire.
Trump's likely general election opponent, Hillary Clinton, is also unpopular with young people, but not nearly to the same extent as the real estate mogul and realty TV star. A mere 6 percent of young African Americans, 10 percent of young Hispanics, 12 percent of young Asian Americans and 27 percent of young whites see Trump in a favorable light, ratings that suggest the celebrity businessman faces a staggering task this summer to win their backing in his bid for the White House.
Supporters of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump wait for the start of a rally in Westfield, Ind., Tuesday, July 12
Trump has some work to do winning over young voters
Just 6 per cent of you young African Americans view Trump in a favorable light, according to the GenForward poll
"I think if you want to be a moral young person, you can't support Trump," said Miguel Garcia, 20, of Norwalk, California.
The grandson of Mexican immigrants and a college student who also works at a tire shop, Garcia is a registered Democrat who has not chosen a candidate to support this fall but is resolute in his disdain for Trump.
"It's really hard to back anything Trump does," Garcia said. "He just says prejudiced stuff."
GenForward is a survey by the Black Youth Project at the University of Chicago with the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research . The first-of-its-kind poll pays special attention to the voices of young adults of color, highlighting how race and ethnicity shape the opinions of the country's most diverse generation.
Trump's support among young Hispanics is just 10 per cent
He does better with older voters
The GenForward survey is a poll of adults between the age of 18 and 30, not necessarily registered or likely voters. Those surveyed may not end up voting, or casting a ballot for either major party candidate for president.
The poll found that only 39 percent of young people have a favorable opinion of Clinton to 54 percent who have an unfavorable view of the presumptive Democratic nominee.
Desiree Batista, a former supporter of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, said she was "picking the lesser of two evils" in backing Clinton, a decision she reached in part because she believes Trump "was unqualified" to be president.
"I just don't think he's fit to be a presidential candidate," said Batista, a 21-year-old college student from Colonia, New Jersey. "I understand people like him as a businessman, even though I don't feel the same way."
The depth of animosity toward Trump among young Americans may be driven by the two-thirds of those who believe he is racist. That includes nearly 6 in 10 whites, and more than three-quarters of African Americans, Hispanics and Asians.
Trump launched his campaign last summer by accusing some immigrants from Mexico of being rapists and bringing drugs into the country. He later vowed to temporarily bar foreign Muslims from entering the U.S., a position from which he has recently backed away.
"Clearly, from what Trump has said he can be categorized as racist," said Barrett Coleman, a 28-year-old graduate student from Richmond, Virginia, who is supporting Clinton. "His comments about Mexicans, in particular, are just awful."
A Trump's spokeswoman did not return messages seeking comment about the GenForward poll, which found he does have some supporters among young people. Nour El Hanly, a 20-year-old student from Chicago, is a Muslim of Moroccan descent who said he found Clinton "corrupt" and will "continue failing Obama policies."
"I do not favor all of (Trump's) rhetoric, but he's a smart businessman who will help the nation's economy," said El Hanly, a Republican. He said he favored Trump's plan to strengthen security along the U.S. border with Mexico, but doesn't think Trump will follow through on any sort of plan to bar Muslims from the country.
"Most of my friends don't agree, but I think he is the best choice," he said.
Still, the poll found little common ground between young Americans and Trump. About 7 in 10 oppose Trump's proposal to temporarily ban Muslims from other countries from entering the United States. Seven in 10 oppose his plan to build a wall along the U.S. southern border. Six in 10 say immigrants in the country illegally should be allowed to stay, including large majorities of young Hispanics, African-Americans and Asian-Americans and about half of young whites.
Nathan Mclendon, a 22-year-old African-American independent, said he doesn't believe Trump can relate to the concerns of young voters or people of color.
"He doesn't understand what we're going through. He's not focused on equality," said Mclendon, of Tampa, Florida. "I don't find him trustworthy. And I'm not sure he cares."
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The poll of 1,965 adults age 18-30 was conducted June 14-27 using a sample drawn from the probability-based GenForward panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. young adult population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 3.8 percentage points.
The survey was paid for by the Black Youth Project at the University of Chicago using grants from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the Ford Foundation.
Obama: Still far from solving police, community issues
WASHINGTON (AP) America is "not even close" to where it needs to be in terms of resolving issues between police and the communities they serve, President Barack Obama said after concluding a more than three-hour meeting Wednesday with community activists, politicians and law enforcement officials.
Obama expressed optimism, however, and said the participants who included members of the Black Lives Matter movement agreed such conversations need to continue despite emotions running raw.
Obama has devoted his attention this week to the gun violence directed at police officers as well as shootings by police. The focus comes a few days after a black Army veteran killed five police officers in revenge for police shooting black men in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and the Minneapolis suburbs.
From left, Sherillyn Ifill, President and Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and Terry Cunningham, President of the International Association of Chiefs of Police, look to President Barack Obama, right, as he speaks to media at the bottom of a meeting at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on the White House complex in Washington, Wednesday, July 13, 2016, about community policing and criminal justice with a group made of activists, civil rights, faith, law enforcement and elected leaders. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
On Tuesday, Obama attended a memorial service for the five slain Dallas officers and called the families of Alton Sterling in Louisiana and Philando Castile in Minnesota to offer condolences. He said he wanted Americans to have an open heart so that they can learn to look at the world through each other's eyes, and Wednesday's meeting followed that theme.
Obama said it would be key to repeat the "kind of respectful conversations we've had here" across the country.
"The conversation that took place around this table is very different than the one that you see on a day-to-day or hourly basis in the media," Obama said.
But Obama also said the "bad news" was that making progress is hard.
"We're not even close to being there yet, where we want to be," he said.
The nearly three dozen people invited to the White House included some police organizations that have little regard for Black Lives Matter, a group they blame for inciting violence against police officers. White House officials acknowledged that enhancing the trust that has been frayed in so many communities will be a job for future presidents, but they said Obama was determined to get all sides to commit to steps they can take to improve relations.
Those attending the meeting included Gov. John Bel Edwards of Louisiana and Mayor Chris Coleman of St. Paul, Minnesota, the two locations where police shootings sparked protests around the country. Mayors from Los Angeles, Newark, New Jersey, and Anaheim, California, also attended. From the administration, Attorney General Loretta Lynch joined the president.
"At a time when our country, when we are talking past each other, the president's convening allowed us to hear one another," said Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti.
Also on the list were Mica Grimm, with Black Lives Matter Minnesota, and DeRay Mckesson, who was arrested Saturday in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on a charge of obstructing a highway. Police said Mckesson "intentionally" placed himself in the road after protesters were repeatedly warned to remain on private property or the curb. Mckesson was released from jail Sunday. The Rev. Al Sharpton also attended.
"We learned a lot about the shocking emotions that police have going to work every day and they felt our pain of having to tell our children to be careful of policemen," Sharpton said.
Sharpton said the talk, however, must lead to change. When it comes to shootings by police, "they can't be right every time," he said.
Police groups and activists emerged from the meeting saying they didn't always agree with each other on the issues, but they did agree the meeting was productive and could lead to building trust and improving accountability in police departments.
"From the law enforcement perspective, we hear it, we understand it," said Terry Cunningham, president of the International Association of Chiefs of Police. "I think that too often we comment about statistics. This isn't about statistics from one side or another. This is about emotion. This is about people's lives. This is about fear in the community and it's our job to make people safe."
Cunningham said the Dallas Police Department exemplified that commitment to their community when officers used themselves as human shields to protect bystanders from possibly being shot.
Obama also took to Facebook to encourage more participation. "Going forward, I want to hear ideas from even more Americans about how we can address these challenges together as one nation. That means you," Obama said.
He called on people to submit their stories and ideas to go to: go.wh.gov/VDPvKz
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Associated Press writer Josh Lederman contributed to this report.
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On Twitter, reach Kevin Freking at https://twitter.com/APkfreking
President Barack Obama, joined by Brittany Packnett, of the President's Taskforce on 21st Century Policing, right, pauses as he speaks to media at the bottom of a meeting at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on the White House complex in Washington, Wednesday, July 13, 2016, about community policing and criminal justice with a group made of activists, civil rights, faith, law enforcement and elected leaders. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
Trump and family meet with VP finalists
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) Republican Donald Trump on Wednesday entered the final phase of his high-profile search for a running mate, arranging last-minute meetings with his finalists and family members as his staff prepares for a Friday announcement.
Trump posted on Twitter Wednesday evening that he would reveal his choice at 11 a.m. Friday in Manhattan.
The presumptive GOP presidential nominee, his adult children and key staffers huddled with prospects earlier in the day.
Indiana Gov. Mike Pence joins Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump at a rally in Westfield, Ind., Tuesday, July 12, 2016. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy)
He began Wednesday with breakfast at the residence of one, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, Wednesday morning, a day after the pair campaigned together in the state. They were joined by Trump's three adult children, along with his son-and-law and campaign chair Paul Manafort, who were seen leaving the residence.
Hours later, Newt Gingrich, another finalist, was seen with Trump's entourage at a downtown Indianapolis hotel. Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, who has been advising Trump, was spotted arriving at the same hotel not long after Gingrich left.
Trump's family, including Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, also met privately with New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie Tuesday. The meeting was confirmed by a source with direct knowledge of the meeting, but was not authorized to discuss it publicly.
The meetings have been designed to let Trump's family get to know the candidates better before the presumptive nominee formalizes his decision.
Trump had originally planned to fly back from Indiana with Pence following a rally Tuesday night, but his plane was grounded by mechanical issues, so Trump's kids flew to join them in Indiana, another person familiar with his movements but not authorized to discuss them said.
"It was a late plan," Pence told reporters later Wednesday. "I was hauling dishes from the cupboard at midnight. (Pence's wife) Karen laid out a nice spread."
Indiana is a state with particular significance for the presumptive GOP nominee: It's where he effectively locked up the GOP nomination with a commanding primary win that drove former rival Ted Cruz from the race.
Pence, Christie and Gingrich were said to be the final contenders for vice presidential candidate on the Republican ticket less than a week before the GOP meets in Cleveland for the formal nomination. That's according to a person familiar with Trump's thinking, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to discuss the vetting process. Trump said in a Tuesday interview with The Wall Street Journal that Sessions, Trump's top Senate advocate, is also still in the mix.
Pence is a steady, staunch conservative who would help calm nervous Republican wary of Trump's impulsive style. Gingrich is a boisterous rabble-rouser who has spent decades in Washington, including as House speaker. Christie, a one-time rival, has become one of Trump's most trusted advisers.
Trump has spent weeks consulting with friends and family as he weighs the most important decision of his campaign to date. He's also brought his finalists on tour, having them opening for him at speeches and rallies to test their receptions before his crowds.
Gingrich said Wednesday night he believes it's down to two contenders: him and Pence.
"I suspect sometime tomorrow that Mike and I will both get phone calls and one of us will be packing our bags to go to New York and the other one will be going to watch it on TV," Gingrich said on Fox News Channel's "Hannity."
Trump appeared reluctant to commit Wednesday. "I'm narrowing it down. I mean I'm at three, potentially four. But in my own mind, I probably am thinking about two," he told Fox's Bret Baier.
Introducing Trump at a rally in Westfield, Indiana, on Tuesday evening, Pence received an enthusiastic reception as he compared Trump to Republican icon Ronald Reagan and dug into Trump's likely Democrat rival, Hillary Clinton.
Trump told The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday he is looking for a "fighter skilled in hand-to-hand combat" as his second-in-command, but hadn't seen enough of Pence to measure his fight.
While Trump kept his cards close, he spoke playfully of Pence at the rally: "I don't know whether he's going to be your governor or your vice president."
Pence told reporters Wednesday he was "honored by the attention" and the "opportunity to get to know this good man and his family."
"There's a number of other and noteworthy Americans that they're considering and I'm just honored to be on that list," he said.
Gingrich framed the choice for Trump as a decision between a stabilizing force who would help unify the party and a fellow outsider who clicks personally with the billionaire businessman.
"One of the really hard questions he's got to weigh ... is do you really want a two-pirate ticket?" Gingrich said of himself and Trump.
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Colvin reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Jonathan Lemire in New York and Julie Bykowicz in Indiana contributed to this report.
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie gestures as he introduces Republican Presidential Candidate Donald Trump during a rally in Virginia Beach, Va., Monday, July 11, 2016. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)
FILE - In this July 6, 2016 file photo, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich speaks before introducing Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump during a campaign rally in Cincinnati. Fox News says it is suspending its contributor agreement with Newt Gingrich "due to the intense media speculation" about him as a potential vice presidential candidate of Republican Donald Trump. He joined the network in 1999, and his role was suspended in 2011 when he ran for president in 2012. He returned to Fox in 2015. (AP Photo/John Minchillo, File)
To seek peace in Syria, US offers to cooperate with Russia
WASHINGTON (AP) Frustrated by months of failure in Syria, the Obama administration is taking what might be its final offer to Moscow: Enhanced intelligence and military cooperation against the Islamic State and other extremist groups if Syria's Russian-backed president Bashar Assad upholds a ceasefire with U.S.-supported rebel groups and starts a political transition.
When Secretary of State John Kerry meets Russia's top diplomat and possibly President Vladimir Putin in Moscow later this week, Syria's civil war and Assad's future will top the agenda. Kerry is trying to reverse a trend in which he has hailed a series of agreements with the Russians only for them to fall short, according to officials with knowledge of internal American deliberations.
Kerry is making the trip "to try to resuscitate the cessation of hostilities," and get Russia's "buy-in on a process that can lead to a nationwide ceasefire," State Department spokesman Mark Toner said Wednesday. "We haven't seen that thus far, but we're having another go at this."
In this July 12, 2016, photo, Secretary of State John Kerry speaks at the Washington Passport Agency in Washington. Frustrated by months of failure in Syria, the U.S. is taking what might be its final offer to Russia. Officials say Moscow would get long-sought intelligence and military cooperation to fight the Islamic State and other extremist groups, if Syrias Russian-backed leader upholds a ceasefire with U.S.-supported rebel groups and starts a political transition. Kerry, who will travel to Moscow later this week, has spoken of an August deadline for Syrias transition to begin. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
Kerry will have to thread a needle. He's watched the Syrian military and Russian air force violate truce after truce in recent months. This time, the officials said, Kerry is dangling in front of the Kremlin Russia's long-sought requests for intelligence sharing and targeting assistance in return for Russia using its influence to end the fighting and start ushering Assad out of power. But Kerry will be wary about offering too much.
The talks in Moscow are scheduled fewer than three weeks before an August ultimatum for diplomatic progress. All signs augur poorly for a breakthrough. Fighting is intensifying near Aleppo, Syria's largest city. Assad has reasserted control over more areas of the country he had once lost. Humanitarian aid deliveries to besieged, rebel-held areas are sporadic and grossly insufficient. And counterterrorism campaigns against the Islamic State and al-Qaida show no end in sight, meaning any peace would only be partial.
"The target date for the transition is 1st of August," Kerry told reporters two months ago, hoping to get Russia and Syria to halt military operations. "So either something happens in these next few months or they are asking for a very different track."
But that "very different track" has remained undefined beyond vague hints of a military intervention involving Saudi troops. The White House and Pentagon have resisted a greater U.S. role.
As a result, Washington is stuck with a familiar strategy: Asking Russia to force Assad to halt military offensives against moderate rebels, stop bombing civilian areas and allow aid to reach besieged communities.
But as added carrots, the U.S. is now offering more robust military cooperation against IS and the Nusra Front, Syria's al-Qaida branch, and information to help Russia target affiliated militants. Kerry won't go as far as to suggest joint U.S.-Russian operations, according to the American officials, who weren't authorized to speak on the matter and demanded anonymity.
"We have teed up ideas to the Russians," State Department spokesman John Kirby told reporters Tuesday, saying the Moscow discussions would be an indicator of Russia's sincerity.
In Azerbaijan, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov blamed the U.N.'s Syria envoy for the diplomatic impasse, and said he would try to work with Kerry on a common approach after the top U.S. diplomat's arrival Thursday.
Much of Washington is wary about working too closely with Russia. The U.S. doesn't want to be seen as entrenching Assad, whom American officials have referred to as a "butcher" and "mass murderer." Russia's bombers also have attacked anti-Assad rebel groups that have received weapons, training and other forms of support from the U.S. and allies such as Saudi Arabia whose foreign minister Kerry met in Washington on Tuesday before a weeklong Europe trip.
And, as a dissent cable signed by 51 State Department officials illustrated last month, a sizeable part of America's diplomatic establishment believe a U.S. military response is necessary to resolve the Syrian conflict, given Moscow's increased leverage through its presence on the ground.
When Russia intervened in Syria last September, the administration took a different view, branding it a move of desperation and weakness. The U.S. initially sought to shut Russia out of diplomatic discussions, but quickly reversed course and created the International Syria Support Group with Moscow's help. American officials including Kerry then softened demands for Assad's prompt departure from power.
A cessation of hostilities was reached in February. Several temporary and regional truces have followed, though none have ended the violence that has killed as many as a half-million people since 2011, contributed to a global migration crisis and spawned IS' international expansion.
On Tuesday evening, Kerry announced that the U.S. will provide another $439 million in humanitarian aid to refugees and others affected by the ongoing conflict in Syria, bringing to $5.6 billion the total amount of American aid given since the start of the crisis in 2012.
While some U.S. officials downplay the military significance of what is now being offered to Russia, the symbolic effect is clear. Russia has been keen to present its intervention as part of the global effort against IS and other extremist groups, and not as a ploy to keep Assad in power. More cooperation with the U.S. could reinforce that narrative. The arrangement also could give Moscow greater cover to expand operations against forces the U.S. considers moderate.
The Pentagon is concerned about such a scenario, according to the officials. But the administration has few options right now, given the various, unfulfilled threats throughout Syria's civil war to apply greater U.S. force from declaring Assad's days "numbered" five years ago to Obama's vow of a military response if chemical weapons were used and then backing down in 2013.
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Amnesty International calls on Vietnam to end torture
HANOI, Vietnam (AP) Amnesty International has called on Vietnam to end what it says is torture and ill treatment against prisoners of conscience.
In a report released Tuesday, the human rights group said prisoners of conscience have to endure abuses including prolonged periods of solitary confinement, beatings and the denial of medical treatment.
The report was based on a year of research, including interviews with 18 former prisoners of conscience.
Five of the prisoners told Amnesty International that they spent lengthy periods of time in solitary confinement in dark cells without access to fresh air, clean water and sanitation. They said some prisoners were frequently beaten.
Chau Heng, a land rights activist who was imprisoned, told Amnesty International that when he was taken to see a prison doctor, he opened his mouth to gesture that he could not speak.
"The doctor hit me in the mouth with a round piece of rubber," he was quoted as saying. "He knocked my teeth out, including my wisdom tooth. I lost so much blood and I passed out again."
Rafendi Djamin, Amnesty International's director for Southeast Asia and the Pacific, said even though Vietnam ratified the United Nations Convention Against Torture in 2015, the government must do more.
"Vietnam's authorities should seize the moment as the country's amended penal and criminal procedures codes are being reviewed," Djamin said in a statement Tuesday. "Now is the time to make good on their international obligations by bringing to book those responsible for torture and other ill-treatment and ensuring this appalling practice ends."
Vietnam's Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Turkey PM says Kurdish militants wiped out of urban areas
ANKARA, Turkey (AP) Turkey's prime minister says the security forces have largely wiped out Kurdish militants from the country's urban areas.
In a speech to officials of his ruling party, Binali Yildirim said Wednesday the security forces would continue to hunt down the rebels in rural areas "until there no longer are any incidents of terrorism."
A fragile, 2-year cease-fire between the Turkish state and Kurdish militants unraveled last year, plunging the southeast region into renewed violence.
Turkey imposed round-the-clock curfews in several towns and urban districts in the mainly Kurdish southeast region to root out militants linked to the Kurdistan Workers' Party or PKK.
ACLU, other groups sue police over Baton Rouge protests
BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) Civil rights groups and activists sued Baton Rouge law enforcement agencies over their treatment of protesters rallying against the police shooting death of a black man, saying officers used excessive force and physically and verbally abused peaceful demonstrators.
The lawsuit, announced Wednesday by the American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana, came hours after Cameron Sterling, the 15-year-old son of the slain man spoke publicly for the first time, calling for peaceful protests following the death of his father, 37-year-old Alton Sterling.
Sterling was shot to death July 5 as two white officers pinned him to the pavement outside a convenience store. The killing was captured on cellphone video and circulated widely on the internet, sparking widespread demonstrations across the capital city.
Cameron Sterling, son of Alton Sterling, who was killed by Baton Rouge police last Tuesday, speaks to the media outside the Triple S Food Mart, where his father was killed, in Baton Rouge, La., Wednesday, July 13, 2016. Sterling spoke out for the first time Wednesday, calling his father a good man and asking people not to resort to violence after his death. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
Authorities arrested about 200 protesters over a three-day period, often taking to the streets in riot gear or riding in military-style vehicles. The arrests came amid heightened tensions in the city following Sterling's death, a deadly police shooting in Minnesota and the killings of five police officers in Dallas.
The governor and the Baton Rouge police chief have defended the response, with the chief saying Tuesday that authorities discovered an alleged plot against police over the weekend. Authorities said they found out about the plot after they arrested three suspects in the burglary of eight guns from a pawn shop.
The chief said one of the suspects said the burglary was carried out "to harm police officers," but he didn't give any details about when or where a possible plot would be carried out.
"We have been questioned repeatedly over the last several days about our show of force and why we have the tactics that we have. Well, this is the reason, because we had credible threats against the lives of law enforcement in this city," Police Chief Carl Dabadie said.
The lawsuit, which names Baton Rouge police as well as other agencies, blames law enforcement for escalating the situation. Members of the five organizations that filed the suit either took part in the demonstrations or observed them.
"Plaintiffs have engaged in this peaceful speech, association, and protest on the streets, sidewalks, and medians of Baton Rouge," the lawsuit read. "Unfortunately, this exercise of constitutional rights has been met with a military-grade assault on protestors' bodies and rights."
Among the allegations:
Law enforcement officers gave contradictory and confusing orders to protesters and then arrested them when they didn't comply.
Demonstrators were arrested for obstruction for stepping foot on any paved surface adjacent to the road, even if they didn't obstruct anything.
Authorities used "unconstitutional levels of force, including physically tackling nonviolent demonstrators and use mace, taser charges, and/or pepper spray on nonviolent protesters."
People in jail said they were Maced or pepper-sprayed for making comments or singing protest songs.
A spokesman for the police said they do not comment on pending litigation and the state police said they were still reviewing the suit. The sheriff's department did not respond to a request for comment.
Authorities have said that they have worked with demonstrators in many cases to allow them to protest peacefully, even blocking streets to traffic. But they have defended actions taken to keep demonstrators off a main artery in front of the police department and off the interstate. They also say they have recovered some weapons from protesters, and the governor said one police officer had his teeth knocked out because of a rock.
Alton Sterling's son spoke of the protests while addressing reporters Wednesday morning. Calling his father a good man, he urged protesters not to resort to violence.
"I feel that people in general, no matter what their race is, should come together as one united family," Cameron Sterling told reporters outside the store where his father died. The teen remained composed as he spoke, a contrast from a week ago when he broke down in sobs and had to be led away as his mother talked in front of television cameras about his father's death.
In the first few days after Sterling's death, police took a reserved approach to enforcement, keeping a low profile as hundreds gathered outside the convenience store where Sterling died.
But protests escalated during the weekend as demonstrations moved away from the store and into other parts of the city, marked by a show of force by law enforcement that included police wielding batons, carrying long guns and wearing shields.
The Justice Department opened a federal investigation into Sterling's death, but Justin Bamberg, an attorney for Cameron and his mother, Quinyetta McMillon, said the family also hopes state Attorney General Jeff Landry's office "one day" will get involved.
Landry said in a statement Monday he won't have access to details of the federal investigation until it's completed and a decision has been made on potential federal charges.
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Santana reported from New Orleans. Associated Press writer Cain Burdeau contributed to this report.
Cameron Sterling, son of Alton Sterling, who was killed by Baton Rouge police last Tuesday, holds the hand of his mother, Quinyetta McMillon, as he speaks to the media outside the Triple S Food Mart, where his father was killed, in Baton Rouge, La., Wednesday, July 13, 2016. Cameron spoke out for the first time Wednesday, calling his father a good man and asking people not to resort to violence after Alton Sterling's death. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
Cameron Sterling, center, son of Alton Sterling, who was killed by Baton Rouge police last Tuesday, speaks to the media outside the Triple S Food Mart, where his father was killed, in Baton Rouge, La., Wednesday, July 13, 2016. At left is attorney Justin Bamberg and at right is attorney L. Chris Stewart. Sterling spoke out for the first time Wednesday, calling his father a good man and asking people not to resort to violence after his death. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
People pray during Prayer Vigil organized by Myron Smothers at Memorial Tower on the Louisiana State University campus in Baton Rouge, La., Monday, July 11, 2016. (Scott Clause/The Daily Advertiser via AP)
A photo provided by the East Baton Rough Sheriff's Office shows Malik Bridgewater, 20. Bridgewater is one of three people arrested by police and accused of stealing several handguns as part of what authorities Tuesday, July 12, 2016, described as "substantial, credible threat" to harm police officers in the Baton Rouge, La., area. (East Baton Rouge Sheriff's Office via AP)
A photo provided by the East Baton Rouge Sheriff's Office shows Antonio Thomas, 17. Thomas is one of three people arrested by police and accused of stealing several handguns as part of what authorities Tuesday, July 12, 2016, described as "substantial, credible threat" to harm police officers in the Baton Rouge, La., area. (East Baton Rouge Sheriff's Office via AP)
People gather for Prayer Vigil organized by Myron Smothers at Memorial Tower on the Louisiana State University campus in Baton Rouge, La., Monday, July 11, 2016. (Scott Clause/The Daily Advertiser via AP)
Ella Carr, center, of Austin, Texas, puts her fist up during live music at a night rally in honor of Alton Sterling, outside the Triple S Food mart in Baton Rouge, La., Monday, July 11, 2016. Sterling was shot and killed last Tuesday by Baton Rouge police while selling CD's outside the convenience store. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
Keilosha Walker, left, of Baton Rouge, puts her fist up during live music at a night rally in honor of Alton Sterling, outside the Triple S Food mart in Baton Rouge, La., Monday, July 11, 2016. Sterling was shot and killed last Tuesday by Baton Rouge police while selling CD's outside the convenience store. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
FILE In this Saturday, July 9, 2016 file photo, A protester is grabbed by police officers in riot gear after she refused to leave the motor way in front of the the Baton Rouge Police Department Headquarters in Baton Rouge, La. Police made nearly 200 arrests in Louisiana's capital city during weekend protests around the country in which people angry over police killings of young black men sought to block some major interstates. (AP Photo/Max Becherer)
Sepia Greene, of Baton Rouge, La., holds a crucifix in memory of Alton Sterling outside the Triple S Food mart in Baton Rouge, La., Monday, July 11, 2016. Sterling was shot and killed last Tuesday by Baton Rouge police while selling CD's outside the convenience store. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
Troy Holliday, of Baton Rouge, holds a sign and gestures to passing motorists in honor of Alton Sterling, outside the Triple S Food Mart in Baton Rouge, La., Monday, July 11, 2016. Sterling was shot and killed last Tuesday by Baton Rouge police while selling CD's outside the convenience store. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
A look at who got what they wanted, a year after nuke deal
WASHINGTON (AP) Here are some of the major points of contention in last year's seven-nation Iran nuclear deal, and who is getting their way:
NUCLEAR PROGRAM
By its own metrics, the Obama administration has achieved its main objective: cutting off Iran's four pathways to a bomb. The U.N.'s nuclear agency has confirmed that Tehran has taken offline thousands of centrifuges used to enrich uranium, a potential bomb-making material. The Iranians have disabled a heavy water plant that would have produced plutonium usable in a weapon. They've opened their supply chain to far greater scrutiny. An underground enrichment facility near Fordo remains open, contrary to U.S. wishes, but under strict limits. All told, Iran is at least a year away from developing a nuclear weapon America's overarching criterion.
Compliance also has yielded benefits for Iran, too, giving it newfound credibility as an international player. Many nuclear restrictions begin coming off in the middle of next decade.
Winner: Thus far, a strategic victory for the United States.
MISSILES AND OTHER CONVENTIONAL WEAPONS
The U.S. bragged after the deal was signed that it had secured two key last-minute concessions: Prolonging the United Nations ban on Iranian missile development by eight years and the ban on Iranian arms transfer by five years. Iran almost immediately flaunted both restrictions. It has persisted in sending weapons and fighters to the Syrian government and Yemeni rebels in their respective civil wars. Its missiles have gravely concerned America's Arab allies and Israel. And Washington's response has been limited. It has issued some new, unilateral sanctions. But when it broached the subject of missiles with other U.N. Security Council members, the U.S. found them divided on whether the bans any longer applied. They proved unwilling to support any global punishment in response.
Winner: Iran.
SANCTIONS
Iran wanted relief from international economic pressure to coincide with January's implementation of the nuclear accord. U.S. and other negotiators agreed. More by accident than design, however, it hasn't quite worked out. Iran immediately announced a lucrative deal with European plane maker Airbus, but most international banks and manufacturers have stayed away, fearful of incurring U.S. prosecution or fines. While the Iranians recouped some $100 billion in frozen assets overseas, the U.S. says they've only brought a fraction of that home. A cash shortfall has prompted Iranian threats of reneging on the nuclear deal, leading top U.S. officials to lobby for greater economic investment in Iran. Another breakthrough recently emerged: A deal between Boeing and Iran Air that could be worth $25 billion. More quietly, Iran's oil sector is booming again.
Winner: The U.S., for almost accidentally preserving much of its financial sanctions against Iran, but the ground may be shifting.
GEOPOLITICAL EFFECTS
Both sides raised the prospect of hugely consequential aftereffects from the deal. Iran has won a seat at the table for peace mediation efforts on Syria's civil war, while continuing to send weapons and fighters to help President Bashar Assad's government. In Iraq, both sides are staying out of each other's way as the Iranians pressure the Islamic State on the ground and a U.S.-led coalition pummels the extremist group by air. In Yemen's conflict, the U.S. has exposed Iran's role in support of Shiite rebels. But both sides say they back a peace process that would preserve some of Iran's interests. President Hassan Rouhani and Iranian leaders are flying around Asia and Europe without the stigma attached to predecessors. Secretary of State John Kerry and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif are conversing and meeting regularly.
DC's other 1600 Pennsylvania is source of humor, headaches
WASHINGTON (AP) Presidential candidates work for years to move in to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. For 24-year-old Nicole Berns, moving in was much easier, requiring filling out a three-page form and paying $500 in fees.
Berns' keys aren't for the White House. They're for 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. SE, a 77-unit apartment building that began leasing about a year ago. It is just about 3 miles from the White House, which has the same numbered address but is at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW on the city's grid system. The addition of an address nearly identical to the nation's seat of power has caused some confusion, but also some amusing opportunities for residents.
"I love telling people that I live there. I call it, 'The Other White House,'" said Berns, who recently moved in to the building.
An American flag hangs at the front entrance of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue SE in Washington, Wednesday, June 1, 2016. The White House may be occupied by President Barack Obama and his family for another few months, but other residents are already enjoying 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. That's 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue SE, a new 77-unit apartment building that's four miles down the street from its more famous neighbor. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
Before the apartment building was built, the lot housed a used car dealership whose address was 1550 Pennsylvania Ave. SE. But when developers bought the property they realized that no building had claim to the 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. SE address, which also made sense for the location. Figuring it would be fun and a way to get recognition, they successfully petitioned for an address change.
Residents say they often get funny looks or disbelief when they have to give their address or hand over their driver's licenses. Carlos Gutierrez, 39, and other residents said they get asked: "You live at the White House?"
The address has produced headaches for some residents. One early resident of the building, Daniel Perry, 36, said Amazon.com initially wouldn't take orders to the address, though that's since been sorted out. Another resident said even now, she sometimes has difficulty ordering online. A recent order for a pair of summer sandals required calling the company, she said.
Residents have to make sure that anyone sending them mail puts the all-important "SE" after the address. The correct zip code 20003 is also key. The White House's ZIP code is 20500.
A goof means the mail might eventually get to the correct recipient, but because the president's mail gets extra security screening, any resident's mail with an incomplete address could be significantly delayed.
Mail mix-ups happen the other way, too. Errant letters for the first family arrive at the building every so often and sit unopened by the residents' mailboxes until the U.S. Postal Service redirects them. There's also what property manager Cameron Mahjoubi calls "prank mail" letters sent to past presidents including Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe and George Washington.
The building itself doesn't provoke any double takes. Its tallest part is six stories high and it's mostly brick. There are no white columns in sight, though an American flag does fly out front. The lobby has an American flag, too: a white-on white mural, with one star added for the District of Columbia.
The developers behind the building contemplated other nods to the executive mansion including naming several townhome units after presidents, but they settled instead for the names of local parks, names that still include Garfield and Lincoln. An initial design for the building included plush blue carpet intended to mirror some in the White House, but that was ultimately scratched. The building does, however, have an east and west wing, said Greg Selfridge, managing partner of NOVO Properties, the property's developer and manager.
"We tried to be tasteful and witty," Selfridge said of nods to the White House, which is about 10,000 square feet smaller than his group's building.
Other differences abound. The Oval Office is over two times the size of the smallest studio apartments. And instead of views of the Washington Monument like the White House, the building has views from its top deck of the Potomac River and historic Congressional Cemetery, the final resting place of scores of former members of Congress. Then there's the fact that, unlike the president, residents pay rent: $1,400 to $3,000 a month.
The building does have one thing in common with the more famous mansion, however. No occupant is an owner, and residents are always moving in and out.
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Follow Jessica Gresko on Twitter at https://twitter.com/jessicagresko. Her work can be found at http://bigstory.ap.org/content/jessica-gresko.
Cameron Mahjoubi, a property and acquisition manager with Novo Development Corporation, adjusts the blinds in an empty unit at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue SE in Washington, Wednesday, June 1, 2016. The White House may be occupied by President Barack Obama and his family for another few months, but other residents are already enjoying 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. That's 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue SE, a new 77-unit apartment building that's four miles down the street from its more famous neighbor. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
A corn bag toss game seen in a community area on the roof of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue SE in Washington, Wednesday, June 1, 2016. The White House may be occupied by President Barack Obama and his family for another few months, but other residents are already enjoying 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. That's 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue SE, a new 77-unit apartment building that's four miles down the street from its more famous neighbor. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
The John Phillip Sousa Memorial Bridge and the Anacostia River are seen from the roof of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue SE in Washington, Wednesday, June 1, 2016. That's 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue SE, a new 77-unit apartment building that's four miles down the street from its more famous neighbor. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue SE is seen in Washington, Wednesday, June 1, 2016. The White House may be occupied by President Barack Obama and his family for another few months, but other residents are already enjoying 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. That's 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue SE, a new 77-unit apartment building that's four miles down the street from its more famous neighbor. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
The Latest: Germany's Merkel congratulates May by phone
LONDON (AP) The Latest on British political developments (all times local):
9:45 p.m.
The German government says Chancellor Angela Merkel has spoken with new British Prime Minister Theresa May to congratulate her.
FILE - This photo combination shows from left Britain's Home Secretary Theresa May and German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Political observers in Germany and Britain see a lot of similarities between Britains new leader, Theresa May, and Germanys pragmatic chancellor, Angela Merkel. Both are daughters of small-town Protestant clergymen, display caution and ca pragmatic penchant for seizing the center ground of politics, and like to relax in the kitchen alongside their camera-shy husbands. Both are no nonsense and businesslike. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth, Thibault Camus
Merkel spokesman Steffen Seibert said in a statement that the German leader wished May luck in her new job in a telephone conversation Wednesday evening.
He said Merkel and May "agreed that cooperation in the spirit of the proven friendly relations between both countries should be continued, including in the forthcoming negotiations on Britain's exit from the EU."
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9:05 p.m.
A U.S. State Department spokesman says the U.S. looks forward to engaging with Boris Johnson as Britain's new foreign secretary.
Mark Toner told reporters in Washington Wednesday that the bond between Britain and the U.S. "is frankly a relationship that goes beyond personalities."
He said: "We're always going to be able to work with the British no matter who is occupying the role of foreign sec because of our deep abiding special relationship with the United Kingdom."
He also congratulated Foreign Secretary Hammond on his new role as Treasury chief.
He added: "This and it is an absolutely critical moment in certainly England's history, but also in the U.S.-U.K. relationship so absolutely we're committed to working productively going forward."
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8:40 p.m.
Prime Minister Theresa May has named Liam Fox Britain's new minister for international trade.
May rounded off her first handful of Cabinet appointments with the choice of Fox, a former defense secretary who ran against her to be Conservative Party leader.
Fox was the first of five Tory leadership candidates to be eliminated in the race to replace David Cameron which May won.
He was a strong backer of the successful "leave" side in Britain's EU referendum campaign. May backed "remain" but has given several top government posts to supporters of a British exit from the EU, or Brexit.
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8:25 p.m.
Veteran Conservative euroskeptic David Davis has been appointed to lead Britain's exit talks with the European Union.
Prime Minister Theresa May has named Davis to the newly created post of secretary of state for exiting the European Union.
Davis is a long-serving lawmaker who often clashed with May when she was home secretary over privacy and free-speech issues. He has criticized British spies' snooping powers for being too intrusive.
He has long advocated leaving the European Union, a plan he will now be in charge of implementing following Britain's vote to quit the bloc.
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8:15 p.m.
New Prime Minister Theresa May has given her former job of home secretary to Amber Rudd, Britain's former energy secretary.
That means two of the top four jobs in the government are held by women.
May, Britain's second female prime minister, is likely to boost the number of women in top jobs.
Some ministers are remaining in post as May shakes up the Cabinet, including Defense Secretary Michael Fallon.
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8:05 p.m.
Former London Mayor Boris Johnson has been appointed Britain's new foreign secretary, one of the biggest jobs in government.
Johnson was one of the leaders of the campaign to leave the European Union. He has been given the job by new Prime Minister Theresa May, who backed the losing "remain" side ahead of the referendum.
Johnson had hoped to become British prime minister but saw his dream fade amid Conservative Party plotting after last month's vote.
He will not be responsible for leading Britain's EU exit talks. That will go to a dedicated "minister for Brexit."
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7:45 p.m.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has thanked departing British Prime Minister David Cameron in a valedictory message and congratulated his successor Theresa May.
A Kremlin statement Wednesday said Putin thanked Cameron for cooperation and quoted him as saying "I hope that your rich political experience will be in demand in the future, both in the United Kingdom and in the international community."
To May, who succeeded Cameron on Wednesday, Putin "stressed the conviction that the preservation and augmentation of the significant potential of Russian-British cooperation in various fields that has been accumulated for a long time is in the fundamental interests of the two countries."
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7:35 p.m.
Israel's prime minister says he has sent his congratulations to Britain's new leader Theresa May.
A statement from Benjamin Netanyahu's office Wednesday said he sent a letter to May with his well-wishes.
The statement also said Netanyahu spoke to former Prime Minister David Cameron. He thanked him for "standing beside Israel, the good relations and the strengthening of ties" during his leadership.
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7:20 p.m.
Newly appointed British Prime Minister Theresa May has begun assembling her new government, appointing Philip Hammond as Treasury chief.
Hammond, the former foreign secretary, replaces George Osborne, who had held the job for six years. Osborne has resigned from the government.
May is expected to shuffle several top jobs and appoint a new "Brexit minister" in charge of negotiating Britain's exit from the European Union.
Leading anti-EU campaigner Boris Johnson was among politicians seen entering 10 Downing St. soon after May took over on Wednesday.
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6:20 p.m.
European Union officials are congratulating new British Prime Minister Theresa May and saying that Britain and Brussels will have to move soon to address the consequences of the country's vote to leave the bloc.
Jean-Claude Juncker, the head of the EU's executive Commission, wished May "every success in the task ahead."
He wrote to May Wednesday: "The outcome of the United Kingdom's referendum has created a new situation which the United Kingdom and the European Union will have to address soon. I look forward to working closely with you on this and to learn about your intentions in this regard."
Martin Schulz, the European Parliament's president, wrote on Twitter: "Leadership issue settled, now I expect we work quickly to deliver certainty."
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6:10 p.m.
Prime Minister Theresa May says she plans to lead in the spirit of unity and build a country that "works for everyone."
The new leader stressed she would fight against social injustice and that she believes in the unity of all aspects of the United Kingdom. May's statement is important in that it stresses healing the many fractures that arose in Britain because of the vote to leave the European Union.
She said that Britain will forge "a bold new positive role" in the world, outside of the European Union.
After the remarks, May stopped and waved outside No. 10 Downing Street beside her husband, Philip.
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5:50 p.m.
Theresa May has become Britain's prime minister after meeting with Queen Elizabeth II.
Buckingham Palace has released an image of May offering a deep curtsey before the monarch, denoting that she has accepted the queen's invitation to form a government.
May takes over from David Cameron, who resigned after Britain's vote to leave the European Union.
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5:30 p.m.
Buckingham Palace says Queen Elizabeth II has accepted the resignation of David Cameron as British prime minister.
A statement from the palace says the monarch met with Cameron, who formally resigned the office before handing over to his successor, Theresa May.
May arrived at Buckingham Palace shortly afterward to be confirmed as British prime minister.
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4:50 p.m.
David Cameron has left 10 Downing St. to go to Buckingham Palace to tender his resignation as prime minister.
Cameron said Wednesday it was the "greatest honor" of his life to serve as prime minister. Surrounded by his wife and children, Nancy, Elwen and Florence, Cameron offered an assessment of his tenure saying he left the country stronger and better off.
He wished his successor Theresa May luck in her negotiations to have Britain leave the European Union the matter that caused his demise.
He posed for images in front the shiny black door, waved, and embarked on the brief trip to the palace.
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4:35 p.m.
Top European Union official Donald Tusk is congratulating Theresa May on her appointment as Britain's new prime minister, saying that he looks forward to "a fruitful working relationship."
Tusk is the president of the European Council, which brings together the leaders of the 28-nation bloc.
May's main task as prime minister will be to negotiate Britain's exit from the EU after Britons voted to leave in a June 23 referendum.
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3:05 p.m.
Germany's interior minister says Theresa May is "the right woman for Britain" as she takes over as prime minister in the wake of the U.K.'s vote to leave the European Union.
Thomas de Maiziere has been outgoing Home Secretary May's German counterpart for several years as his country's top security official. De Maiziere said in Berlin on Wednesday: "She is a smart woman thoughtful, disciplined, competent, strong in negotiations ... and critical too, but reliable and credible."
He added: "That's why I think she is the right woman for Britain at this time."
Chancellor Angela Merkel's spokesman, Steffen Seibert, said the German leader hasn't personally met May yet but "will certainly have contact with her soon."
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12:50 p.m.
British Prime Minister David Cameron has received a standing ovation from his Conservative colleagues at the close of his final session of prime minister's questions.
The members of the House of Commons rose as one to thank a smiling Cameron for his six years of service as a Conservative prime minister.
During the friendly session Wednesday he was praised for helping to reduce unemployment, fund the National Health Service and improve educational opportunities. His wife Samantha and their children were in the public gallery.
Cameron will formally resign later in the day during a meeting with Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace, then Theresa May, the Home Secretary, will take over.
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12:35 p.m.
The usually boisterous House of Commons is taking a good-natured turn on the final day of Prime Minister David Cameron's final day in office. Lawmakers told jokes and Cameron joined in with gentle ribbing back.
One of the more cheerful exchanges took place between Cameron and Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.
Cameron poked fun at the leadership turmoil going on in the Labour Party, telling Corbyn that the Tories have had "resignation, nomination, competition and coronation" while Labour is still working out the rules.
Cameron also took a moment to discuss the Downing Street resident cat, Larry, who is being left behind. Cameron says he wanted to scotch "the rumor that somehow I don't love Larry. I do!"
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12:05 p.m.
Prime Minister David Cameron has begun his final session of prime minister's questions at the House of Commons.
He joked that his afternoon schedule "will be light" after he steps down following a brief visit with Queen Elizabeth II.
Cameron will tell the queen at Buckingham Palace he is resigning and suggest that Home Secretary Theresa May has the support to become prime minister.
Cameron's wife Samantha and their children were in the front row of the public gallery for the event.
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12 p.m.
Incoming British leader Theresa May has been greeted with cheers as she entered the House of Commons.
She was attending David Cameron's final session of prime minister's questions before the transfer of power begins.
Cameron plans to meet Queen Elizabeth II after the session to formally resign his leadership post.
May is expected to visit the queen shortly afterward to receive permission to form a government.
She is likely to name her Cabinet in the coming days.
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10:25 a.m.
Prime Minister David Cameron will be leaving 10 Downing St. but another resident of the famous address won't be going anywhere.
Larry, the resident Downing Street cat, will remain in place, having cemented his position at No. 10 despite widespread doubts about his vermin-hunting abilities.
The rescue tabby tomcat was brought in to catch rats and mice at the famous-but-infested residence, but his record of kills has been hotly disputed. Nonetheless, Downing Street said Wednesday that Larry's tenure will continue.
No. 10 has described Larry in the past as a cat who "brings a lot of pleasure to a lot of people" and was Tuesday photographed standing guard at the front gate when incoming leader Theresa May walked past.
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9:15 a.m.
The competition for the Labour Party leadership has become more intense with the emergence of a third candidate.
Former shadow minister Owen Smith said Wednesday he will challenge embattled party leader Jeremy Corbyn and former Labour business spokeswoman Angela Eagle in the contest.
He says he would be a "radical and credible" leader.
Corbyn is fighting to retain his position after a dramatic loss of support among his party's members of Parliament.
The Labour Party executive committee has ruled that his name must be on the ballot despite his lack of backing among legislators. Corbyn is banking on support from rank-and-file members.
The winner will be announced in late September.
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9 a.m.
David Cameron will be appearing before Parliament as prime minister for the last time before handing over to successor Theresa May.
Cameron will step aside on Wednesday after losing the campaign to keep Britain in the European Union. He will take on his final session of prime minister's questions before traveling to Buckingham Palace to formally tender his resignation to Queen Elizabeth II.
Cameron told The Daily Telegraph it had been "a privilege to serve the country I love."
May will seek to calm the country, and the financial markets, after upheaval following the unexpected result in the June 23 referendum.
She will reportedly give priority to appointing a Cabinet minister in charge of implementing Brexit, the decision to leave the EU.
New British Prime Minister Theresa May and her husband Philip May wave from the steps of 10 Downing Street in London, Wednesday July 13, 2016. David Cameron stepped down Wednesday after six years as prime minister. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)
FILE - This is a Tuesday, May 3, 2016 file photo of Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron, background, as Mayor of London Boris Johnson speaks at a mayoral election campaign rally for Conservative party candidate for Mayor of London Zac Goldsmith in London. When David Cameron was elected leader of Britain's Conservative Party, the press called him the "heir to Blair." Like Labour premier Tony Blair, he was a young leader who dragged his sometimes reluctant party toward the political center. Cameron steps down Wednesday, July 13, 2016 after six years as prime minister like Blair, defined by a historic blunder. (AP Photo/Matt Dunham, File)
Queen Elizabeth II speaks with Theresa May, left, at the start of an audience in Buckingham Palace, London, where she invited the former Home Secretary to become Prime Minister and form a new government, Wednesday July 13, 2016. David Cameron had resigned the post in an earlier meeting with the queen. (Dominic Lipinski/Pool Photo via AP)
Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron, with his wife Samantha, waves to the media as leaves 10 Downing Street in London for the last time, Wednesday July 13, 2016. Cameron steps down Wednesday after six years as prime minister. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)
Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron smiles as he leaves 10 Downing Street, in London to face prime minister's questions for the last time Wednesday, July 13, 2016. Cameron will be appearing before Parliament as prime minister for the last time before handing over to successor Theresa May.(AP Photo/Frank Augstein)
The shoes of Britain's Home Secretary Theresa May as she walks past Larry the Downing Street cat as she arrives to attend a cabinet meeting at 10 Downing Street, in London, Tuesday, July 12, 2016. Theresa May will become Britain's new Prime Minister on Wednesday. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)
Larry the Downing Street cat sits lays down 10 Downing Street in London, after Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron left to face prime minister's questions for the last time Wednesday, July 13, 2016. Cameron will be appearing before Parliament as prime minister for the last time before handing over to successor Theresa May.(AP Photo/Frank Augstein)
Labour Party leader, Jeremy Corbyn, leaves Labour headquarters in Westminster, London, after the Labour National Executive Committee held a meeting about the party leadership contest, Tuesday July 12, 2016, where it was agreed to automatically include him on the ballot in the party's leadership contest. The Opposition leader said he was "delighted" that the secret vote went in his favour after hours of discussions. (Rick Findler/PA via AP)
In this grab taken from video British Prime Minister David Cameron, centre, smiles, during his final session of prime minister's questions at the House of Commons, in London, Wednesday, July 13 2016. He joked that his afternoon schedule "will be light" after he steps down following a brief visit with Queen Elizabeth II. Cameron will tell the queen at Buckingham Palace he is resigning and suggest that Home Secretary Theresa May has the support to become prime minister. (Parliamentary Recording Unit via Associated Press Video) TV OUT - NO ARCHIVE
In this grab taken from video British Prime Minister David Cameron acknowledges applause, during his final session of prime minister's questions at the House of Commons, in London, Wednesday, July 13 2016. He joked that his afternoon schedule "will be light" after he steps down following a brief visit with Queen Elizabeth II. Cameron will tell the queen at Buckingham Palace he is resigning and suggest that Home Secretary Theresa May has the support to become prime minister. (Parliamentary Recording Unit via Associated Press Video) TV OUT - NO ARCHIVE
German government proposes stronger laws against stalkers
BERLIN (AP) The German government plans to clamp down on stalking by lowering the threshold for victims to file criminal complaints.
Current law requires that victims show they are "seriously affected" by stalking, such as by having to change jobs or move home.
The Cabinet agreed Wednesday to put forward a bill to permit prosecution of stalkers without proof of a serious impact.
German news agency dpa reported that according to the Central Institute of Mental Health in Mannheim about 12 percent of all people in Germany are affected by stalking at least once in their life.
EU's Juncker says he will miss Cameron despite rocky start
BEIJING (AP) European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker on Wednesday said he would miss Britain's outgoing prime minister despite a rocky start when David Cameron warned that Juncker's appointment could lead to Britons voting to leave the EU.
Cameron was stepping down later Wednesday after losing the campaign to keep Britain in the European Union. Two years ago, he had unsuccessfully tried to block Juncker from becoming president of the commission, the body that proposes EU legislation and represents the bloc on the international stage.
Juncker told reporters in Beijing that the two of them had had "an excellent professional and personal relationship since I am president of the commission, but not before," and that he had "no beef" with Cameron.
European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker listens to a speech during the 11th EU-China Business Summit at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, Wednesday, July 13, 2016. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan, Pool)
"I have experienced a man who is serious, who is a fan of no-nonsense policy and who was delivering at each and every moment when things started to become serious," Juncker said.
Cameron had said that Juncker was a longtime Brussels insider who was chosen in a "backroom deal." He had warned other EU leaders that electing him would undermine his attempts to persuade Britons that the EU could be reformed and make them more likely to vote to leave the union.
Cameron's replacement is his home secretary Theresa May, who gave her lukewarm support to remaining in the EU during the referendum campaign, but who has since said "Brexit means Brexit." She is now tasked with leading Britain as it negotiates an exit from the EU.
She was quoted by British media this week as saying she is "a bloody difficult woman, and the next man to find that out will be Jean-Claude Juncker." Her phrase "bloody difficult woman" was a reference to a recent unguarded assessment of her by a former British minister picked up on camera.
In response, Juncker said: "I don't want to talk about her before I have talked with her." He added that he thought their relationship had "the potential to become a good (relationship)."
Pressed on whether he thought May might reverse Britain's referendum vote to leave the EU, Juncker said: "It's difficult for me to investigate my own psychology, let alone the psychology of others."
Juncker was in Beijing along with Donald Tusk, president of the European Council, and others to attend a two-day China-EU summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang.
The bloc's foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, said Wednesday that Brexit will have a "deterrent effect" on other EU member states who might have thought of "cultivating the illusion in their citizens that the way you solve a problem is simply to get out."
While the EU is losing its biggest military, development aid donor, and a permanent security council member, "the U.K. is losing even more, because the U.K is losing the other 27, it's losing the possibility to sit around the table," she said following a speech at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
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AP writer Gerry Shih contributed to this report.
Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, center right, and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker chat as Chinese and European Union officials take part in a signing ceremony at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, Wednesday, July 13, 2016. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan, Pool)
European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, left, and Chinese President Xi Jinping pose for a photo before a meeting at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in Beijing Tuesday, July 12, 2016. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan, Pool)
From left, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, Chinese President Xi Jinping and European Council President Donald Tusk pose for photos before a meeting at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in Beijing Tuesday, July 12, 2016. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan, Pool)
Romania: protests at 3 prisons over poor conditions
BUCHAREST, Romania (AP) Detainees in three Romanian prisons have protested against conditions, setting light to clothes and refusing food.
The protest began in the high-security prison of Iasi this week where prison authorities said inmates set light to a cell. The protest spread to two other prisons.
Media reported prisoners rattled bars, hit windows with bottles and some set light to clothes.
Gabriel Botezan, spokesman for Porta Alba high-security prison told The Associated Press some prisoners were refusing food Wednesday for a third day.
Some 200 relatives protested outside Bostosani prison in northeast Romania Tuesday evening. Prisoners shouted "Freedom!" and "We want justice!"
Prison warden Dan Brehuescu said there were no reports of injuries or damage to prison property.
More than two pounds of cocaine was discovered floating in waters at a Florida state park along the Gulf Coast, according to authorities.
Charlotte County Sheriff's officials say the suspicious package was spotted Saturday at Don Pedro State Park, part of a chain of barrier islands extending along the coast.
The sheriff's office said in a Tuesday news release that someone 'found what they thought was a suspicious package floating in the water'.
More than two pounds of cocaine was discovered floating in waters at a Florida state park along the Gulf Coast, according to authorities (stock image)
It continued: 'On arrival, the caller met with a Deputy and handed over a suspicious package that was wrapped with clear plastic.'
According to the sheriff's office, 'Upon further inspection, the package contained a white powdery substance that was later found to test positive for Cocaine.'
Inside the parcel was 2.58 pounds of powder cocaine, it said.
The case is under investigation, the Herald Tribune reported.
The sheriff's office said: 'Sheriff Bill Prummell and the Charlotte County Sheriff's Office would like to commend the initial caller who contacted authorities regarding the suspicious package.
'It is because of people like this, where dangerous substances do not fall into curious hands.'
German air force evacuating citizens from South Sudan
BERLIN (AP) Germany says its air force is evacuating German, European and other foreign citizens from South Sudan.
Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Sawsan Chebli wouldn't give further details Wednesday of the operation, citing security reasons.
Chebli said in Berlin officials had examined over recent days how roughly 100 German citizens remaining in South Sudan could leave the country safely.
She said that "German, European and international citizens" will be evacuated but said she couldn't detail the nationalities of non-Germans who will be taken out.
Official: US to help overcome Cyprus peace talks snags
NICOSIA, Cyprus (AP) The United States is willing to act as messenger to help both sides on ethnically divided Cyprus overcome key hurdles holding back progress in talks aimed at reunifying the island, the Cypriot government spokesman said Wednesday.
Nicos Christodoulides said Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades asked U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland during talks a day earlier to convey to the Turkish side the need to resolve "substantial disagreements" on specific aspects of sharing power in an envisioned federation.
There are also disagreements on how to handle private property lost after Cyprus's division in 1974 when Turkey invaded following a coup aiming at union with Greece. Turkish Cypriots declared independence in 1983, but only Turkish recognizes it and maintains more than 35,000 troops there.
In this Tuesday, July 12, 2016, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland waves to the media as she arrives for a meeting with Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades at the Presidential palace in capital Nicosia in the ethnically divided island's. Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades has asked US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland to convey to the Turkish side the need to resolve substantial disagreements on specific aspects of sharing power in an envisioned federation. (AP Photo/Petros Karadjias)
"There is a willingness on the part of the United States to assist in the process," Christodoulides told state radio.
Anastasiades also told Nuland Turkey must "tangibly demonstrate" its stated desire for a peace deal, Christodoulides said. He didn't elaborate, but the Greek Cypriot side has made it clear that military intervention and troop deployment rights that Greece, Turkey and Britain were granted under Cyprus' 1960 constitution cannot be accepted under a new deal.
United Nations-brokered negotiations between Anastasiades, a Greek Cypriot, and breakaway Turkish Cypriot leader Mustafa Akinci have made significant progress since they began in May 2015, but important difficulties remain. Both leaders have insisted that the talks are "Cypriot-led" without uninvited foreign interventions.
Sticking points include a demand by the minority Turkish Cypriots to hold the presidency of a future federated Cyprus on a rotating basis, which Anastasiades opposes.
The Latest: 4 dead, 6 rescued off Greek island of Lesbos
BRUSSELS (AP) The Latest on Europe's response to mass influx of migrants and asylum seekers (all times local):
2:25 p.m.
Greek authorities have recovered four bodies and rescued six people five men and one woman after a boat full of migrants overturned off the eastern Aegean island of Lesbos.
Children stand in a tent inside a migrant camp at Serbia's border with Hungary, in Horgos, Serbia, Monday, July 11, 2016. In what appears to be another refugee crisis in the making in Europe, the numbers are surging at camps on Serbias border with EU country Hungary. The numbers have been growing since last week, when Hungary introduced forced deportations of migrants caught within 8 kilometers (5 miles) of border fences. (AP Photo/Marko Drobnjakovic)
A large search-and-rescue operation was taking place in the area Wednesday to search for more possible survivors. The survivors and the bodies of a girl, a boy, a man and a woman were taken to a hospital in the island's town of Mytilene.
The coast guard said two of its patrol boats, as well as two navy ships, an air force helicopter, a tugboat, and three vessels and a helicopter from the European border patrol agency Frontex were involved in the search.
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1:40 p.m.
Greek authorities have arrested 29 people, including a policeman, suspected of participating in two smuggling rings taking some 600 migrants into Greece from Turkey.
Police said Wednesday the suspects were arrested following a months-long investigation. The police officer was suspended pending an investigation, while those arrested include two men who police suspect were the heads of the networks.
The smugglers allegedly picked up the refugees in the Evros border region, transporting them to Athens or the northern city of Thessaloniki. One group is accused of having transported about 400 people between December 2015 and April 2016, and the second about 200 people between September and May.
The policeman was serving in Evros and is accused of providing information on police deployments there to the chief of the second smuggling ring.
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12:10 p.m.
The European Union's executive arm is proposing new EU-wide rules for granting asylum and resettlement for migrants, among the most controversial of political issues in many European countries. The proposals were made public Wednesday by EU officials.
In a statement, EU Commission First Vice President Frans Timmermans said the proposed reforms "will make sure that persons in genuine need of international protection get it quickly, but also that those who do not have the right to receive protection in the EU can be returned swiftly."
The proposals, which must be approved by the European Parliament and the EU member states to take effect, include provisions to discourage so-called "asylum shopping," where applicants go from one EU country to another looking for the best deal.
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7:50 a.m.
Greece's coast guard says a search and rescue operation is underway off the coast of the eastern Aegean island of Lesbos after a boat carrying migrants overturned.
The coast guard said Wednesday that two survivors had been rescued, and had told authorities they had been in an inflatable dinghy with another nine people when the vessel capsized as it headed to the island from the nearby Turkish coast.
Vessels from the Greek coast guard and the European border agency Frontex were searching for the missing.
Lesbos has been the main arrival point for hundreds of thousands of refugees and migrants heading to Europe. But numbers of new arrivals have fallen dramatically following a March deal between the Eurooean Union and Turkey to limit the refugee flow.
Migrants and refugees from Afghanistan take a swim in a pond in Horgos, Serbia, meters away from Serbia's border with Hungary, Monday July 11, 2016. In what appears to be another refugee crisis in the making in Europe, the numbers are surging at camps on Serbias border with EU country Hungary. The numbers have been growing since last week, when Hungary introduced forced deportations of migrants caught within 8 kilometers (5 miles) of border fences. (AP Photo/Marko Drobnjakovic)
Hungarian police and army officers oversee the distribution of food as people queue at a camp in Horgos, Serbia, on Serbia's border with Hungary, Monday, July 11, 2016. In what appears to be another refugee crisis in the making in Europe, the numbers are surging at camps on Serbias border with EU country Hungary. The numbers have been growing since last week, when Hungary introduced forced deportations of migrants caught within 8 kilometers (5 miles) of border fences. (AP Photo/Marko Drobnjakovic)
Hungarian police and army officers oversee the distribution of food as people queue inside a migrant camp at Serbia's border with Hungary, in Horgos, Serbia, Monday, July 11, 2016. In what appears to be another refugee crisis in the making in Europe, the numbers are surging at camps on Serbias border with EU country Hungary. The numbers have been growing since last week, when Hungary introduced forced deportations of migrants caught within 8 kilometers (5 miles) of border fences. (AP Photo/Marko Drobnjakovic)
A man stands next to drying laundry inside a migrant camp at Serbia's border with Hungary, in Horgos, Serbia, Monday, July 11, 2016. In what appears to be another refugee crisis in the making in Europe, the numbers are surging at camps on Serbias border with EU country Hungary. The numbers have been growing since last week, when Hungary introduced forced deportations of migrants caught within 8 kilometers (5 miles) of border fences. (AP Photo/Marko Drobnjakovic)
China, EU agree to steel working group amid dumping concerns
BEIJING (AP) EU leaders said Wednesday that they have agreed with China to form a working group to discuss Beijing's overproduction of steel, an issue they say is linked to whether they will grant market economy status to China.
European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker told reporters at the conclusion of a two-day summit in Beijing that "there is a clear link between steel overcapacity in China and the market economy status for China."
The status would mean that the EU treats China's economy as one controlled by the market, not the state, and would open the doors to more Chinese imports.
Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, center right, and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, center left, applaud during a signing ceremony between Chinese and European Union officials at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, Wednesday, July 13, 2016. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan, Pool)
European steelmakers accuse China of dumping steel on the world market and have warned the 28-nation EU, China's largest trading partner, not to open further to Beijing, saying this would cost tens of thousands of jobs.
Juncker said that he had agreed with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang to establish "a kind of steel platform between China and the European Union to keep alive the debates and the discussions we have related to the steel overproduction."
Earlier Wednesday, during a speech at a business meeting, Juncker pushed for Beijing to make good on its pledges to reform state-owned enterprises and to allow European companies more access to the Chinese market, saying progress was "too slow."
Chinese officials have previously tried to reassure foreign companies they are welcome in its economy.
Chinese Premier Li Keqiang speaks at the 11th EU-China Business Summit at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, Wednesday, July 13, 2016. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan, Pool)
Israel: Troops kill Palestinian in car speeding toward them
JERUSALEM (AP) The Israeli military says security forces have shot and killed a Palestinian man who was in a car speeding toward them in the West Bank.
The military says the officers, who are with Israel's paramilitary border police, were confiscating an arms-manufacturing machine on Wednesday when the car accelerated toward them. It says the security forces fired toward the car, killing the man.
The Palestinian Ministry of Health identified him as 22-year-old Anwar al-Salaymeh.
The military says another Palestinian was taken to hospital, and a third Palestinian was detained for questioning. It says the military is reviewing the matter.
Zimbabwe pastor released; court says police violated rights
HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) A court in Zimbabwe on Wednesday freed a pastor who organized the largest nationwide strike against the government in nearly a decade, ruling that police violated his rights.
Magistrate Vakayi Chikwekwe told a packed courtroom that the decision to bring new charges in court against Evan Mawarire was unconstitutional.
Mawarire was charged with inciting violence when he was arrested on Tuesday, but prosecutors shortly before his court appearance Wednesday changed it to more serious charges of attempting to overthrow a constitutionally elected government.
Police keep guard outside the Harare Magistrates Court in Harare, Wednesday, July 13, 2016. Zimbabwean pastor Evan Mawarire was charged Wednesday with attempting to overthrow a constitutionally elected government for organizing a nationwide strike which shut the country down last week. Water cannons and riot police surrounded the Harare Magistrates Court to prevent protests over Mawarire's court appearance. (AP Photo)
Mawarire's lawyer protested that the last-minute change was unconstitutional, and the magistrate agreed.
Hundreds of singing supporters greeted the release of Mawarire, who has rallied Zimbabweans with a with a social media campaign called #ThisFlag, encouraging them to reclaim their flag by urging President Robert Mugabe's government to properly manage the country's battered economy.
"We will not relent until our demands are met. Corruption must end," Mawarire told the raucous crowd, a Zimbabwe flag draped around his neck. Supporters, standing in the dark, held up candles and mobile phones to light him.
Dozens of supporters in the courtroom's public gallery had laughed in derision when the prosecutor announced the new charges, which could have brought Mawarire 20 years in prison.
During the day, hundreds of supporters outside the Harare Magistrates Court, many wearing the Zimbabwe flag, sang in defiance. Activists chanted slogans and prayed. Riot police and water cannons and riot police surrounded the court.
Many people last week answered Mawarire's call on social media for a job boycott to protest dismal economic conditions. It was the largest such boycott in Zimbabwe in nearly a decade.
Another boycott had been called for Wednesday, but the response appeared muted. The government has warned organizers of further protests that "they will face the full wrath of the law."
Police keep guard outside the Harare Magistrates Court in Harare, Wednesday, July 13, 2016. Zimbabwean pastor Evan Mawarire was charged Wednesday with attempting to overthrow a constitutionally elected government for organizing a nationwide strike which shut the country down last week. Water cannons and riot police surrounded the Harare Magistrates Court to prevent protests over Mawarire's court appearance. (AP Photo)
Protesters draped in Zimbabwean flags stand outside Harare Magistrates Court in Harare, Wednesday, July 13, 2016. Zimbabwean pastor Evan Mawarire was charged Wednesday with attempting to overthrow a constitutionally elected government for organizing a nationwide strike which shut the country down last week. Water cannons and riot police surrounded the Harare Magistrates Court to prevent protests over Mawarire's court appearance. (AP Photo)
What's next in the South China Sea disputes
BEIJING (AP) An international tribunal made a landmark ruling Tuesday rejecting China's vast territorial claims in the South China Sea, handing the Philippines a victory and dealing a blow to Beijing. But it remains unclear what, if any, impact the ruling will have, given that the tribunal doesn't have any way to enforce it.
The next steps China, the Philippines and the United States might be considering:
CHINA: MAINTAIN HARD LINE, PUSH FOR TALKS
Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Francis Jardeleza, left, and former Solicitor General Florin Hilbay hold a photocopy of the Hague-based U.N. international arbitration tribunal ruling favoring the Philippines in its case against China on the dispute on South China Sea following a news conference Wednesday, July 13, 2016 in Manila, Philippines. The Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) issued its ruling Tuesday in The Hague in response to an arbitration case brought by the Philippines against China regarding the South China Sea, saying that any historic rights to resources that China may have had were wiped out if they are incompatible with exclusive economic zones established under a U.N. treaty. Jardeleza and Hilbay were members of the Philippine team who filed the case against China in The Hague. (AP Photo/Bullit Marquez)
China has spared no effort in dismissing the arbitration decision as null and void, and denouncing the proceedings and even the five-member panel that made the ruling. The government on Wednesday released a policy paper on its dispute with the Philippines over the South China Sea, in which Beijing reiterated its position that the sea's islands are "China's inherent territory."
Vice Foreign Minister Liu Zhenmin also warned other nations not to challenge China's security interests in the South China Sea, saying Beijing had the right to establish an air defense identification zone over the disputed waters if necessary.
At the same time, Beijing appears for now to be trying a softer approach in appealing to the Philippines to return to the negotiating table, saying there would be "tangible benefits" for the Philippines to cooperate with China.
To persuade Manila to return to talks, China could offer to share fishing and oil and gas resources with the Philippines and finance railway projects in the Southeast Asian nation, analysts say.
Because the Hague-based tribunal can't enforce its decision, the ruling's impact on China might mostly be in the damage it causes to Beijing's image as it seeks a stronger voice on the global stage and legitimacy as a global power. Analysts at the Center for Strategic and International Studies say the ruling could help convince Beijing to treat Manila and other claimants fairly in the medium-to-long term.
Some analysts speculate that China could try to escalate the dispute to punish Manila for pursuing the case and deter other claimants from doing the same. Beijing could take more assertive measures such as island building on Scarborough Shoal, a reef off the Philippine coast where a standoff with China prompted the Philippines to initiate the legal case in 2013.
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THE PHILIPPINES: WALK THE TIGHTROPE
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has not directly responded to China's overtures since the ruling was issued, though his spokesmen have said the government is studying the tribunal's decision. China has been on a charm offensive and Duterte is navigating a tightrope in which he wants to revive relations with Beijing while being seen as defending the major victory the country won through arbitration.
Philippine Foreign Secretary Perfecto Yasay said that over the next few days, the government will take steps to ensure that the tribunal's ruling is "peacefully implemented."
"We are open to making sure that we will have bilateral talks with China in the implementation of this decision of the arbitral tribunal," he told Manila radio DZBB. He said that "the next step is to move forward and let diplomacy reign."
Yasay said both China and the Philippines have committed not to take provocative action.
China expert Chito Sta. Romana told ABS-CBN network that the challenge for Duterte now is how to combine engagement and deterrence. "It's how to combine getting along with China and being able to stand up and discuss disputes this is where I think the challenge is," he said.
Philippine House Rep. Harry Roque, an international law expert, said that if China resorts to force in the South China Sea, the Philippines can seek a vote of the U.N. General Assembly not the Security Council, where China has veto powers authorizing sanctions against Beijing.
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U.S.: MORE PATROLS IN THE SOUTH CHINA SEA?
Diplomatically, the U.S. and like-minded allies are trying to put international pressure on China to abide by the findings of the arbitration tribunal.
Militarily, the ruling could tempt the U.S. Navy to sail closer to some of China's artificial islands than it has in the past, just as the Philippines and other Southeast Asian nations may test the waters for fishing and oil and gas exploration.
The Navy has been conducting so-called "freedom of navigation" sails and flights near some of those islands to demonstrate its right to operate in the South China Sea, but it has avoided getting really close, at least publicly.
The tribunal classified some of China's islands as rocks, but others as only "low-tide elevations," which are submerged at high tide and therefore not entitled to 12 nautical miles of territorial sea. They include Hughes Reef and Mischief Reef in the hotly contested Spratly islands.
"In theory we could sail within 500 meters" of Mischief Reef, said Michael McDevitt, a retired U.S. Navy rear admiral with long experience in the Pacific. The reef, built into an island by China, is about 130 miles (210 kilometers) off the Philippines.
Influential Republican Sen. John McCain was among U.S. lawmakers Tuesday calling for the U.S. to challenge "China's excessive maritime claims" regularly.
Doing so could send a message to China to proceed cautiously, though it may not be enough to stop China from doing what it sees as in its own interest.
South China Sea ruling hailed as equalizing small countries
MANILA, Philippines (AP) In one of the world's most disputed waters, the puny Philippine navy doesn't stand a chance against China's flotilla of combat ships. So when diplomacy went nowhere and Beijing's ships seized a disputed shoal and surrounded another reef, Filipino officials took a desperate step: They went to court.
That gambit plunged Manila's ties with China to a historic low but paid off in a monumental way Tuesday when an international arbitration tribunal declared China's sprawling territorial claims and assertive actions in the South China Sea were invalid under a 1982 U.N. treaty governing the world's oceans.
The unprecedented victory, likened by some to the Biblical duel between David and Goliath, provides China's smaller, poorer neighbors a viable way to confront the world's second-largest defense spender without resorting to arms and lopsided bilateral negotiations.
Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Francis Jardeleza, left, and former Solicitor General Florin Hilbay hold a photocopy of the Hague-based U.N. international arbitration tribunal ruling favoring the Philippines in its case against China on the dispute on South China Sea following a news conference Wednesday, July 13, 2016 in Manila, Philippines. The Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) issued its ruling Tuesday in The Hague in response to an arbitration case brought by the Philippines against China regarding the South China Sea, saying that any historic rights to resources that China may have had were wiped out if they are incompatible with exclusive economic zones established under a U.N. treaty. Jardeleza and Hilbay were members of the Philippine team who filed the case against China in The Hague. (AP Photo/Bullit Marquez)
"The award further affirms our collective belief that right is might and that international law is the great equalizer among states," former Philippine Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario, who spearheaded the filing of the arbitration complaint against China in 2013, said, referring to the ruling.
Manila's legal triumph, however, brought it from one dilemma to the next compelling China to comply.
The five-man tribunal under the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, Netherlands, has no power to enforce its rulings, and China defiantly refused to join the case or accept the verdict even though, like the Philippines, it had ratified the U.N. treaty that was a basis for the ruling.
The ruling has been hailed as a trailblazing effort to clarify the ambiguity and limits of China's territorial claims based on the treaty, the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea. But the difficulty of enforcing the ruling means the situation in the seas aren't likely to change in the foreseeable future nor will other governments emulate the Philippines's action against the Asian giant, according to analysts.
China is the largest trading partner of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, a conservative 10-nation bloc with four members engaged in territorial disputes with Beijing the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei. The bloc decides by consensus, meaning just one member can stall joint efforts. At least two members, Cambodia and Laos, are aligned with China and have been known to have blocked stronger ASEAN statements on the territorial disputes.
Vietnam and the Philippines are among the most outspoken critics of China's actions in the disputed waters.
"We cannot expect, you know, a sudden upsurge of unity among claimant countries to sort of gang up on China," said Wilfrido Villacorta a Manila-based analyst who had served as ASEAN's deputy secretary-general. "That will never happen."
Except for Vietnam, which welcomed Tuesday's ruling against China, most ASEAN members issued relatively tame reactions.
Some called for "full respect for diplomatic and legal processes and relevant international law," including the U.N. treaty, but did not mention arbitration, which was considered too strong after China denounced the tribunal as lacking jurisdiction.
Malaysia, which has had tiffs with Chinese coast guards ships in disputed waters, said it "believes that it is important to maintain peace, security and stability through the exercise of self-restraint in the conduct of activities that may further complicate disputes or escalate tension and avoid the threat or use of force in the South China Sea."
It's also uncertain how new Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte would handle the major victory in his hands. His predecessor Benigno Aquino III intensified security relations with treaty ally the United States as a deterrence against China's territorial advances. The Aquino government has planned to campaign to muster international support, including in the U.N., to pressure China if the arbitration ruling had been delivered during his presidency.
Duterte, who took office June 30, has been visibly more friendly with Beijing and critical of the U.S.
During his campaign, Duterte told reporters he was open to joint exploration with China for energy resources in the disputed waters and that he would keep quiet on the issue if China finances railway projects in the Philippines. "Build me a train ... for the six years that I'll be president, I'll shut up," he said in April.
Duterte's foreign secretary, Perfecto Yasay Jr., reacted to the ruling by saying that government lawyers would study the 479-page decision before deciding what to do next. Duterte has said he would consider holding negotiations with Beijing after a ruling is handed down although he did not say if he would press for full Chinese compliance during the talks.
The Philippines and China, Yasay said, have agreed to avoid taking provocative actions that might scuttle chances of holding talks following the decision.
"China has a commitment that they will not take any provocative action against the Philippines or undermine our claims as will be defined under the decision of the arbitral tribunal," Yasay said. "We too will not do any provocative action."
Despite Tuesday's ruling, uncertainties continue to lurk in the disputed offshore region.
Long-displaced fishermen have been meeting in the northwestern Philippine to discuss plans of sailing back to Scarborough Shoal, the fishing ground China seized in 2012, prompting the Aquino government to file the arbitration case against Beijing the following year.
"They will really try so they would know where they have a right and if the (Chinese) would honor the law," Mayor Arsenia Lim of Masinloc town said.
"I'll ask the help of the coast guard to help our fishermen," she said. "The names of those sailing should be listed so we would know if they could return properly and if they're complete."
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Associated Press writers Teresa Cerojano in Manila and Eileen Ng in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, contributed to this report..
A construction worker walks past an image of the Diaoyu Island used as the logo for a restaurant with the words "Diaoyu Island little house" in Beijing on Wednesday, July 13, 2016. China warned other countries Wednesday against threatening its security in the South China Sea after an international tribunal handed the Philippines a victory by saying Beijing had no legal basis for its expansive claims there.(AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)
Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Francis Jardeleza, gestures during a news conference on the Hague-based UN international arbitration tribunal's ruling favoring the Philippines in its case against China on the dispute on South China Sea Wednesday, July 13, 2016 in Manila, Philippines. The Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) issued its ruling Tuesday, July 12, 2016, in The Hague in response to an arbitration case brought by the Philippines against China regarding the South China Sea, saying that any historic rights to resources that China may have had were wiped out if they are incompatible with exclusive economic zones established under a U.N. treaty. Jardeleza is a member of the Philippine team who filed the case against China in The Hague. (AP Photo/Bullit Marquez)
Larry the Cat stays: 5 things to know about UK power shift
Here are five things to know about Wednesday's formal handover of power in Britain from David Cameron to Theresa May.
LUCKY 13?
Queen Elizabeth II sees them come, and sees them go.
Larry the Downing Street cat sits on the steps of 10 Downing Street in London, after Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron left to face prime minister's questions for the last time Wednesday, July 13, 2016. Cameron will be appearing before Parliament as prime minister for the last time before handing over to successor Theresa May.(AP Photo/Frank Augstein)
As Britain's monarch ascended to the throne in 1952, Winston Churchill was already the prime minister. Since then, the queen has given her royal seal of approval to a dozen new prime ministers atop 16 governments. Make that 13 as of Wednesday. Elizabeth invited May to form a government in a private ceremony at Buckingham Palace, formally clearing the way for May to succeed Cameron as leader of Britain's year-old Conservative government.
DAVID'S DEMISE
Before that, the queen bid a formal farewell to Cameron, Britain's leader since 2010, who as part of his office has held weekly "private audiences" with Elizabeth. He entered the palace Wednesday as the nation's leader and left as merely one of the House of Commons' 650 lawmakers.
Cameron has represented the district of Witney near Oxford in Parliament's key lower house since 2001. Now he's forecast to join those Conservative lawmakers who lack ministerial posts, are known as "backbenchers," and typically bray their approval of the prime minister's Commons remarks from their green leather Commons benches.
But Cameron's career is hardly over. He's only 49 the youngest departing premier in more than a century and can expect to make a killing on the global speaker's circuit. For now, Witney gains a more full-time MP for the first time since 2005, when Cameron rose to the national stage as Conservative Party leader. He has already relinquished that post to May.
VOTERS MAY
May became prime minister thanks to support from a strong majority of the 330 Conservative lawmakers in the House of Commons. Nobody else had a vote on the matter, because in parliamentary systems the leader of the ruling party gains a preferential right to lead the nation. Since British parliamentary terms last five years and Cameron's second government was formed only last year, May and her Conservatives don't need to face re-election until 2020. However, the prime minister also wields the power to call an early election should May judge that to be in her party's or nation's interest.
MOVING DAY
Don't let the door hit you on the way out, Mr. Cameron.
Prime ministers normally reside at 10 Downing Street, a Georgian residence with approximately 100 rooms just a few minutes' walk from Parliament. But while Cameron held his final press conference outside the iconic No. 10 door, he and his family actually live next door in No. 11 as part of a residence swap with his neighbor, treasury chief George Osborne. Number 11 had more space for Cameron, his wife Samantha and three children aged 5 to 12.
Whereas the U.S. presidential system allows departing leaders more than two months to extricate themselves from the White House, the Camerons have had barely a day to clear out their home of the past six years.
The same company that moved the Camerons into Downing Street in 2010 arrived Tuesday to take them out again. Simply Removals says they contained the family's Downing Street possessions in 330 boxes, 30 rolls of tape and three rolls of bubble wrap.
LARRY MAY STAY
One family member is staying behind on Downing Street by mutual agreement: Larry the Cat.
The 9-year-old tabby is the government's official Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office, a tradition with its claws in the 16th century court of Henry VIII.
After TV crews repeatedly spotted mice sprinting across Cameron's doorstep in 2011, the premier took his family to a south London animal shelter and picked Larry. The Mays and Camerons have decided that Larry should continue to keep ravaging the rodents of Downing Street. Larry spent much of Wednesday keeping watch on the press pack instead.
Nearby, addressing the Commons for the final time as premier, Cameron declared his love for Larry and brandished a photo of him cuddling the cat in his lap.
"Sadly I can't take Larry with me. He belongs to the house and the staff love him very much. As do I," Cameron said as lawmakers responded in unison: "Awwwww!"
Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron speaks to the press outside 10 Downing Street in London, Wednesday July 13, 2016, as his wife Samantha and their children Nancy, Elwen, right, and Florence, third right, look on. Cameron steps down Wednesday after six years as prime minister. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)
Queen Elizabeth II welcomes Theresa May, left, at the start of an audience in Buckingham Palace, London, where she invited the former Home Secretary to become Prime Minister and form a new government, Wednesday July 13, 2016. David Cameron had resigned the post in an earlier meeting with the queen. (Dominic Lipinski/Pool Photo via AP)
In this grab taken from video British Prime Minister David Cameron, centre, smiles, during his final session of prime minister's questions at the House of Commons, in London, Wednesday, July 13 2016. He joked that his afternoon schedule "will be light" after he steps down following a brief visit with Queen Elizabeth II. Cameron will tell the queen at Buckingham Palace he is resigning and suggest that Home Secretary Theresa May has the support to become prime minister. In the background are Chancellor George Osborne, Home Secretary Theresa May and Foreign Secretary Phillip Hammond, from left. (Parliamentary Recording Unit via Associated Press Video) TV OUT - NO ARCHIVE
Senior diplomat becomes new Maldives foreign minister
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) Senior diplomat Mohamed Asim became foreign minister in the Maldives on Wednesday after his predecessor resigned to protest the resumption of the death penalty.
The president's office says in a statement that Asim took the oath of office before a senior judge.
Dunya Maumoon resigned last week citing differences with President Yameen Abdul Gayoom's attempts to resume executions after more than 60 years of unofficial moratorium. Local media report that Maumoon's resignation is also a result of conflicts between the president and his half-brother and the ex-foreign minister's father Maumoon Abdul Gayoom who was a former president.
Two murder convicts have lost their final appeals and face imminent executions.
Four U.N human rights experts earlier this month called on the government to continue the moratorium and to give a retrial to one of the convicts, stating he wasn't given a fair trial and due process. The group also said resuming executions in the Maldives was unconstitutional and would run counter to the world trend toward abolishing the death penalty.
Famous for its luxury island resorts, Maldives became a multiparty democracy in 2008 after decades of autocratic rule. But much of its democratic gains have shrunk in recent years.
Jailed Cosa Nostra boss dies, decade after capture in Sicily
ROME (AP) Convicted Cosa Nostra "boss of bosses" Bernardo Provenzano, who reputedly led the Mafia's powerful Corleone clan, died on Wednesday, a decade after his capture in Sicily following decades of hiding in the countryside, a lawyer said.
In recent years, Provenzano, 83, had been held under strict security measures at a Milan hospital. The lawyer, Rosalba Di Gregorio had cited Provenzano's increasing physical frailty and mental infirmity in several failed attempts to persuade anti-Mafia prosecutors to ease the prison conditions intended to prevent mobsters from wielding power from behind bars.
The reputed "capo dei capi" (top boss) was arrested in 2006 after 43 years as a fugitive. He had been convicted in absentia of more than a dozen murders, as well as being part of the Mafia's leadership who ordered the 1992 bombings that, in separate attacks, killed Sicily's top two anti-Mafia investigators, Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino. He was also convicted of being a mastermind behind Mafia bombings in 1993 in Rome, Milan and Florence, including one attack near the Uffizi art gallery.
FILE - In thisTuesday, April 11, 2006 file photo, Mafia boss Bernardo Provenzano is escorted by a black-hooded police officer as he enters a Police building in downtown Palermo, Italy after being arrested. According to reports, Provenzano died at a Milan hospital Wednesday, July 13, 2016 at the age of 83. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno, files)
Provenzano was also convicted of being among those giving the order for the 1982 murder in Palermo of Carabinieri Gen. Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa, who had been dispatched to the Sicilian capital by the Italian government to lead the state's uphill war against the Mafia.
While young, Provenzano received the nickname "The Tractor" for determination displayed in a mob career that began as a hitman. He was believed to have taken over the leadership of the Sicilian crime syndicate after the 1993 arrest of a fellow longtime fugitive boss, Salvatore "Toto" Riina.
While in charge, investigator say Provenzano helped the Mafia dig its tentacles deeper into the lucrative world of public works contracts in Sicily, turning the mob into more of a white-collar industry of illegal activity, lessening its dependence on traditional money-makers like drug trafficking and extortion.
He essentially thumbed his nose at authorities, who were trying to hunt down a man whose last photo was a confident-looking young man, in a jacket and tie, hair brushed back from a broad forehead, taken decades earlier.
The man who had for years been Italy's No. 1 fugitive was betrayed not by an informer or a rival mobster, but by clean laundry. Police had tracked a package of clothes to a farmhouse on the outskirts of Corleone, the hilltop town that had inspired the fictional crime family name in "The Godfather."
Police had noticed the package leave his wife's house in Corleone, then be delivered to a series of addresses until it finally was driven to the farmhouse. When someone put a hand through the door to take in the laundry, police swept in, nabbing Provenzano, who had been living in the farmhouse with a shepherd who doubled as his housekeeper.
In his decades on the run, Provenzano had counted on Sicilians' centuries-old mistrust of the state to help him, as he slept in islanders' homes. His children were born in local hospitals. He even sent the national public health care system a bill for prostate treatment he had abroad under a false name.
Investigators said Provenzano gave his henchmen orders with written notes not trusting phone conversations for fear of being monitored by police. The notes, found at the farmhouse along with a typewriter Provenzano was believed to have used to write them, later became the basis of a book by Sicilian best-selling author Andrea Camilleri.
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Frances D'Emilio is on twitter at www.twitter.com/fdemilio
FILE - In thisTuesday, April 11, 2006 file photo, Mafia boss Bernardo Provenzano enters a Police building in downtown Palermo, Italy after being arrested. According to reports, Provenzano died at a Milan hospital Wednesday, July 13, 2016 at the age of 83. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno, files)
** BLACK AND WHITE PHOTO ** This July 4, 2001 file photo shows a 1963 black and white mug shot of Italy's No.1 Mafia boss Bernardo Provenzano. According to reports, Provenzano died at a Milan hospital Wednesday, July 13, 2016 at the age of 83. He was arrested in the countryside of the Sicilian town of Corleone in 2006, after four decades on the run. (AP Photo)
FILE - In thisTuesday, April 11, 2006 file photo, Mafia boss Bernardo Provenzano, center with white scarf, is escorted by hooded police officers as he enters a Police building in downtown Palermo, Italy upon his arrest after four decades on the run. According to reports, Provenzano died at a Milan hospital Wednesday, July 13, 2016 at the age of 83. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno, files)
FILE - This April 12, 2006 file photo shows the house where Mafia boss Bernardo Provenzano was arrested, after four decades on the run, in the countryside near the Sicilian town of Corleone, Italy. According to reports, Provenzano died at a Milan hospital Wednesday, July 13, 2016 at the age of 83. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno, files)
Adviser says Congo's president can stay on if vote delayed
KINSHASA, Congo (AP) A senior adviser to Congo President Joseph Kabila on Wednesday said Kabila is entitled to stay in power past the end of his mandate if elections aren't held on time, a position sure to anger opposition critics who accuse the president of disrespecting the constitution.
"The president is covered by the constitution to continue to manage the running of the country until it has a new elected president. This was confirmed by the Constitutional Court," said Barnabe Kikaya Bin Karubi, a diplomatic adviser to Kabila who spoke by phone while on a visit to Washington.
He was referring to a May court ruling empowering Kabila to stay on if the vote, scheduled for November, is delayed.
Kabila is officially due to leave office when his second and final term expires in December, but critics have accused him of plotting to stay in power.
The United Nations has warned of renewed violence and instability in the central African country that has never had a peaceful transfer of power.
In an apparent attempt to address the anxiety, the leader of Kabila's political party said this week that the president had no plans to stand for a third term.
But the opposition has worried more about Kabila staying on by delaying the vote instead. Congo's electoral commission has said it will be impossible to organize a credible vote by November.
Main opposition party spokesman Bruno Tshibala said Tuesday that party leaders still "have the distinct impression that Kabila does not want to respect the constitution."
The Latest: Minnesota governor says state tornado aid likely
LITCHFIELD, Minn. (AP) The Latest on heavy storms hitting the Midwest (all times local):
7:40 p.m.
Gov. Mark Dayton says state aid is likely for areas of central Minnesota hit hard by tornadoes this week.
Rescue personnel work at the scene of a tree that fell on a vehicle headed eastbound on Taylor Street near Lansing Avenue on Tuesday, July 12, 2016, in Jackson, Mich. Storms spawned tornadoes, torrential rain and powerful winds that prompted evacuations, damaged homes, deposited a snowplow in a tree and flooded roads in parts of Minnesota, Michigan and Wisconsin. (Samantha Madar/Jackson Citizen Patriot-Mlive.com via AP)
Dayton met with local officials in Litchfield and Watkins on Wednesday and toured some of the neighborhoods with the worst storm damage.
Minnesota Public Radio News (http://bit.ly/29EfcSw ) reports Dayton said total damage costs probably are not high enough to trigger federal disaster money. But the governor said he's certain some state emergency aid will be available.
Meeker County Chief Deputy Dan Miller told Dayton the town of Watkins has nine homes with heavy damage and 10 are destroyed. Miller says another 21 houses have major damage and 31 have minor damage.
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6:40 p.m.
A utility says nearly 185,000 of its Missouri and Illinois customers are without electricity because of fast-moving thunderstorms that meteorologists believe may have packed wind gusts at times exceeding 70 mph.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch (http://bit.ly/29ESJ2i ) says the storm Wednesday afternoon knocked out power to 111,500 homes and businesses in Missouri, largely near St. Louis. An additional 72,800 of Ameren's customers in Illinois lost service.
At least 30 trees were reportedly toppled at Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery in south St. Louis County.
There was no immediate word about how quickly the electrical service might be restored.
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7:10 a.m.
A woman and her 2-year-old son have been rescued after lightning struck and toppled a tree onto their car in southern Michigan, trapping them for about an hour.
The Jackson Citizen Patriot reports (http://bit.ly/29v9dxK ) they were driving Tuesday evening in Jackson when the tree hit them during a heavy thunderstorm. Rescue crews cut the roof off the car and used a chain saw to remove the tree.
People at the scene applauded when they were rescued. The newspaper says they appeared to be OK.
Storms hit the state Tuesday, flooding roads and leaving several thousand homes and businesses without power in Jackson County.
Authorities say a tornado struck Michigan's western Upper Peninsula during a storm that downed trees and caused power outages and flooding.
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6:51 a.m.
Authorities say at least two people have died in flooding caused by powerful storms that damaged homes, washed out roads and stranded motorists in northern Wisconsin and Minnesota.
In Wisconsin, Bayfield County sheriff's officials say an 84-year-old Illinois man died Tuesday when his vehicle became submerged in a flooded ditch. A firefighter was able to rescue the man's wife, who was a passenger.
In nearby Iron County, the sheriff's department says a 56-year-old man from Montreal, Wisconsin, died in the flooding, but didn't immediately provide details.
In Minnesota, Gov. Mark Dayton plans to travel Wednesday to the communities of Litchfield and Watkins, which were both slammed by tornadoes on Monday.
The National Weather Service is forecasting another round of thunderstorms Wednesday for northern Wisconsin and Minnesota.
Rescue personnel work at the scene of a tree that fell on a vehicle headed eastbound on Taylor Street near Lansing Avenue on Tuesday, July 12, 2016, in Jackson, Mich. Storms spawned tornadoes, torrential rain and powerful winds that prompted evacuations, damaged homes, deposited a snowplow in a tree and flooded roads in parts of Minnesota, Michigan and Wisconsin. (Samantha Madar/Jackson Citizen Patriot-Mlive.com via AP)
Family: Stolen flag from fallen sailor returned to family
NORTH WILDWOOD, N.J. (AP) An American flag stolen in New Jersey from the family of a Philadelphia man who was killed during the Vietnam War has been returned.
Philly.com reports (http://bit.ly/29QQxX0 ) a family associate said Tuesday the flag was located and an unidentified woman returned it to a neighbor. The family wanted the flag back "no questions asked" and won't pursue charges against the woman.
Police say the flag had been hanging from a flagpole on the Fourth of July in North Wildwood when someone stole it.
The flag was given to the family of 19-year-old Navy Seaman Patrick Corcoran during his funeral. Corcoran and 73 other sailors were killed in 1969 when the USS Frank E. Evans collided with an Australian aircraft carrier in the South China Sea. Corcoran's body was never found.
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Tom Hanks announces death of mother, Janet Frager
Tom Hanks has announced the death of his mother, Janet Frager. She was 84.
The two-time Best Actor winner announced the death on social media Tuesday, posting a picture of Frager with the caption, "This beauty? My mom. She was the difference in many lives. Many lives. We say goodbye to her today. Safe crossing, mom!" He later posted a picture of a movie theater in Red Bluff, California, and added "Saw many movies here with our Mom. Thanks for all who came to see her off.
Hanks' wife, actress Rita Wilson, also paid tribute to Frager on Instagram , thanking her "for bringing my love into the world."
FILE - In this March 10, 2016, file photo, Tom Hanks attends the LA Premiere of "Everything Is Copy" held at TCL Chinese 6 Theatre in Los Angeles. (Photo by Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP, File)
Germany: Police raid that led to Berlin riots ruled illegal
BERLIN (AP) A court in Berlin has ruled that a police raid on a left-wing squat in the capital was illegal.
The raid on June 22 triggered a series of clashes between left-wing extremists and police.
In the most violent incident, 123 officers were injured during a riot in the Friedrichshain district that has undergone rapid gentrification in recent years.
Destroyed cars stand in a street in Berlin Sunday July 10, 2016. Police say more than 120 officers were injured and some 86 demonstrators were detained during leftist riots Saturday in the German capital which police calls the most aggressive and violent protests in the last five years. Berlin police said in a statement Sunday leftist protesters threw bottles, cobble stones and fireworks, destroyed cars and attacked officers with fists and kicks. It was not clear how many rioters were injured in the quarrels. (Maurizio Gambarini/dpa via AP)
According to German news agency dpa, Berlin's regional court ruled Wednesday that the owner of the building had failed to submit a bailiff's order that would have justified the raid.
Burundi lawmaker 'assassinated' in the capital: Authorities
KIGALI, Rwanda (AP) A senior Burundian member of the East African Legislative Assembly was shot dead Wednesday in what authorities called an assassination amid the country's political unrest.
Police spokesman Pierre Nkurikiye said Hafsa Mossi was killed in the capital, Bujumbura, by two unknown gunmen who had trailed her from her home.
Mossi also was Burundi's former minister for East African affairs.
Burundi has been gripped by violence that has left more than 500 people dead since President Pierre Nkurunziza in April 2015 announced his bid for a third term, which opponents said violated the constitution. More than 250,000 people have fled to neighboring countries.
UNESCO: Mali's Old Towns of Djenne endangered by insecurity
ISTANBUL (AP) UNESCO is adding Mali's Old Towns of Djenne, famous for their adobe architecture, to its list of World Heritage in Danger sites.
The decision was made Wednesday in Istanbul where the 40th session of the World Heritage Committee is being held.
The committee expressed concern over the historic towns, saying insecurity stood in the way of "safeguarding measures" and appealed to the international community to support Mali's efforts to protect the site.
Inhabited since 250 B.C., the Old Towns of Djenne became a market center and a major link in the trans-Saharan gold trade. They were also a center for Islamic learning in the 15th and 16th centuries. Some 2,000 traditional houses, raised on hillocks to avoid seasonal floods, have stood the passage of time.
The Latest: Dallas shooter a loner, collected guns, knives
DALLAS (AP) The Latest on the aftermath of fatal shootings by police in Louisiana and Minnesota and the subsequent killing of five police officers in Dallas (all times local):
5:10 p.m.
The father of the Dallas shooter says that his son became a loner after serving in the Army Reserves for six years.
Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) Cpl. Gary Hutchinson salutes the funeral procession for Dallas police Sgt. Michael Smith on Interstate 20 in Duncanville, Texas on Wednesday, July 13, 2016. Smith and four other officers were killed during an attack during a peaceful Black Lives Matter protest on July 7, 2016. (Nathan Hunsinger/The Dallas Morning News via AP, Pool)
James Johnson says in an interview aired Wednesday on TheBlaze website that 25-year-old Micah Johnson "just preferred not to talk to" people after he came back from being deployed to Afghanistan.
Johnson's stepmother, Donna Johnson, said he had a gun and a knife collection.
Johnson shot and killed five officers, and injured nine officers and two civilians during Thursday's protest of recent fatal shootings of black men by police.
Authorities said they found bomb-making materials where Johnson lived, something Donna Johnson balked at, saying, "Everyone has bomb-making materials in their homes."
Authorities, who killed Micah Johnson with a bomb delivered by a robot, said Johnson had plans for a larger assault, possessed enough explosive material to inflict far greater harm and kept a journal of combat tactics.
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4:35 p.m.
The family of the Dallas shooter says that he was angry about the racially charged atmosphere in the United States, including shootings of black men by police.
Delphine Johnson says in an interview aired Wednesday on TheBlaze website that her son, 25-year-old Micah Johnson, was "angry that in 2016 we were still being treated like 1816, just more undercover."
Johnson shot and killed five officers, and injured nine officers and two civilians during Thursday's protest. Authorities say he told them during negotiations that he was targeting white officers.
Delphine Johnson also said that he was not a member of the Nation of Islam or the Black Panthers, but that he was outraged at what had happened to African-Americans in the past and now.
Delphine Johnson and Micah Johnson's stepmom, Donna Johnson, who is white, both said that he did not hate white people.
The family also said he was excited to join the U.S. Army, but once he returned home from serving in Afghanistan, he had become a loner.
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4:20 p.m.
The mother of the Dallas shooter says she believes he did what he thought "was right to correct the injustice in this world today," though she doesn't condone it.
Delphine Johnson says in an interview aired Wednesday on TheBlaze website that her son, 25-year-old Micah Johnson, told her that he was going to go to a protest Thursday because of "all of the shootings" and he told her he would stay out of trouble.
She said police came to her house about 2:30 a.m. Friday and did not tell her what was going on, but asked her to come with them for questioning. She said that they asked whether her son "hates cops" or whether he "ever talked about killing cops."
She didn't find out that he was dead for a few hours.
Johnson shot and killed five officers, and injured nine officers and two civilians during a downtown Dallas protest.
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4 p.m.
A group of local organizations are suing the Baton Rouge, Louisiana, police over their treatment of demonstrators protesting the shooting death of a 37-year-old black man.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana announced the lawsuit Wednesday.
The groups allege that authorities used excessive force, carried out mass arrests and verbally and physically abused protesters.
The lawsuit describes the protests as peaceful and blames law enforcement for escalating the situation.
The shooting death last week of Alton Sterling at the hands of two white police officers sparked outrage among many in the black community.
The police have come under fire for tactics they used on protesters over the weekend. Over a three-day period, police arrested about 200 people.
The governor has defended the police, calling their response "moderate."
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3 p.m.
State troopers have arrested 41 people after demonstrators blocked rush-hour traffic on an interstate in downtown Minneapolis.
Authorities also impounded four vehicles used by the protesters to block traffic on southbound Interstate 35W near University Avenue on Wednesday morning.
The demonstrators walked onto a bridge across the Mississippi River and chanted "I believe that we will win." Troopers arrested protesters on the freeway after about an hour. The interstate reopened shortly after 9:15 a.m.
The demonstrators were protesting recent deaths by police. Philando Castile was fatally shot by a St. Anthony officer during a traffic stop in Falcon Heights last week.
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2 p.m.
A letter from a Minnesota sheriff's department confirms a black driver who was killed by an officer last week had received his permit to carry a gun last year.
The letter to Philando Castile is dated June 4, 2015. It says his permit to carry is enclosed. His family has also confirmed he received the permit in June 2015.
The letter from the Hennepin County Sheriff's Office says Castile must have the permit card and a form of photo identification while carrying a pistol, and must display the permit and ID when commanded by police.
Castile was killed last week during a traffic stop. His girlfriend was in the car and has said that Castile was shot after he told an officer he was armed and had a permit to carry, and was reaching for his ID.
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1:15 p.m.
Data analyzed by The Associated Press shows that a suburban St. Paul, Minnesota, police department whose officer killed a black driver last week has been disproportionately arresting African-Americans.
The AP and other media requested arrest data from the St. Anthony Police Department after the death of Philando Castile. He was shot after being pulled over in nearby Falcon Heights in a killing that has fueled protests nationwide.
Just 7 percent of residents in St. Anthony and the neighboring towns its Police Department serves are black. But nearly half of those arrested in the first half of 2016 were black.
The data does not list details about individual arrests.
A 2001 study of 65 other Minnesota jurisdictions found officers stopped and searched minority drivers at greater rates than whites.
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1:05 p.m.
A memorial to police in Richmond, Virginia has been vandalized with a message referring to the police killing of a black man in Louisiana.
A large red "X'' was spray-painted on the torso of the statue of an officer carrying a child and "Justice for Alton" was written on the stones below, an apparent reference to 37-year-old Alton Sterling of Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Richmond Police Deputy Chief Steve Drew told the Richmond Times-Dispatch (http://bit.ly/29DOvJE) that people have left bouquets of flowers at the statue in Byrd Park in the memory of the five officers killed last week by a black sniper in Dallas.
The chief says the statue is expected to be restored within 24 hours.
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12:10 p.m.
The colleagues of Dallas police Sr. Cpl. Lorne Ahrens have told law enforcement officers from as far away as Canada that Ahrens was a "supersized can of kickass" who was a voracious reader with an intelligence that was equal to his size.
Hundreds gathered Wednesday at Prestonwood Baptist Church in the Dallas suburb of Plano to mourn the 6-foot-5, 300-lb. Ahrens, one of the five officers slain last week by a sniper during a protest march. Nine officers and two civilians were injured in the attack.
The 48-year-old Ahrens worked with the Los Angeles County sheriff's department and was a semipro football player before moving to Texas and joining the Dallas police force.
He often volunteered, in uniform, at the school his 8-year-old and 10-year-old attended.
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10:55 a.m.
A few hundred mourners have gathered for a private Catholic funeral service for Dallas police Sgt. Michael Smith, a former U.S. Army Ranger known for his upbeat attitude and compassionate approach to others.
Smith, his wife and their two daughters were members of Mary Immaculate Catholic Church in Farmers Branch, north of Dallas, where his service was held Wednesday. A public service was scheduled Thursday for Smith at a Dallas church where he worked security.
Smith was an Army Ranger before joining the Dallas police force in 1989. He once received a "Cops' Cop" award from the Dallas Police Association.
Smith and four other officers were fatally shot last week during a protest against the police killings of black men in Louisiana and Minnesota. Nine officers and two civilians were injured in the attack.
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10:30 a.m.
A memorial service has begun at a Dallas church for Brent Thompson, one of the five officers killed last week by a gunman at a downtown protest march.
Hundreds of law enforcement officers in crisp formal uniforms gathered Wednesday at The Potter's House, a Dallas megachurch headed by celebrity Bishop T.D. Jakes.
The service featured a montage of photos of the 43-year-old Thompson with family, friends and fellow officers with the Dallas Area Rapid Transit.
A funeral service for Thompson, a newlywed, was scheduled for later Wednesday in Corsicana, south of Dallas.
Thompson and four Dallas officers were fatally shot during a protest against the police killings of black men in Louisiana and Minnesota. Nine officers and two civilians were injured in the attack.
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9 a.m.
Law enforcement officers have arrested demonstrators who were blocking rush hour traffic on an interstate in downtown Minneapolis.
About three dozen protesters blocked southbound Interstate 35W near University Avenue Wednesday morning before state troopers moved in, arrested them and put them on a bus.
They are protesting police brutality, including the fatal shooting of Philando Castile by a suburban St. Paul officer during a traffic stop last week.
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8:45 a.m.
Demonstrators are blocking rush hour traffic on an interstate in downtown Minneapolis.
More than a dozen protesters are blocking five lanes on southbound Interstate 35W near University Avenue Wednesday.
The demonstrators walked onto a bridge across the Mississippi River and chanted "I believe that we will win."
They are protesting police brutality, including the fatal shooting of Philando Castile by a suburban St. Paul officer during a traffic stop last week.
Authorities are telling the demonstrators to leave the interstate.
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5:55 a.m.
Funerals are set to begin for the five officers slain by a sniper during a protest last week in downtown Dallas.
Funerals will be held Wednesday for Dallas Police Sr. Cpl. Lorne Ahrens, Dallas Police Sgt. Michael Smith and Dallas Area Rapid Transit Officer Brent Thompson.
Ahrens' funeral will take place in Plano.
A private funeral for Smith is planned Wednesday at the Farmers Branch church he and his family attended, and a public service will take place Thursday at the Dallas church where he worked security.
After a Dallas memorial service, Thompson's funeral will be at a church in Corsicana, the town south of Dallas where he lived.
Dallas Police Officer Michael Krol's funeral is set for Friday, and Dallas police Officer Patrick Zamarripa's funeral will be held Saturday.
Dallas Police Officer Eddie Coffey holds back tear as he speaks about his friend Dallas Police Sr. Cpl. Lorne Ahrens during funeral services at Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, Texas, Wednesday, July 13, 2016. Ahrens and four other officers were slain by a sniper during a protest last week in Dallas. (AP Photo/LM Otero)
Turkey: 36 IS suspects charged over peace rally attack
ANKARA, Turkey (AP) Turkish prosecutors are seeking several consecutive life sentences for dozens of suspects accused of involvement in twin suicide bombings that killed 103 people outside Ankara's train station last year, the state-run news agency reported Wednesday.
There was no claim of responsibility for the Oct. 10, 2015 attack that targeted a peace rally, but Turkish authorities blamed the attack on home-grown Islamic State militants.
Anadolu Agency said that in its indictment, the Ankara prosecutor's office has charged some of the 36 suspects with crimes against the state, killing some 100 people, attempting to kill 391 people who were hurt in the attack and possession of arms and explosives. Anadolu said they would collectively face more than 11,000 years in prison, but didn't provide a breakdown. Others face more than 22 years in prison for membership in an armed terror group, the agency said.
A trial date has not yet been set.
Nokia expects boost from patent licensing pact with Samsung
HELSINKI (AP) Finnish telecoms company Nokia expects a sales boost this year after agreeing to expand its licensing agreement with Samsung.
Nokia said Wednesday that the expanded agreement covers access to each other's patented technologies and will push its annual net sales in patent and brand licensing to some 950 million euros ($1 billion) in 2016.
Air raids in northern and central Syria kill and wound many
BEIRUT (AP) Airstrikes on markets in northern and central Syria killed and wounded dozens of people on Wednesday, opposition monitoring groups said, as the government reported "huge material damage" to Aleppo's main museum caused by rebel shelling.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said airstrikes on a market in the northwestern town of Ariha killed 12 people, including three children, and that airstrikes in the central town of Rastan killed 16 people.
The Local Coordination Committees, another activist network, said nine people were killed in the aerial attacks on Ariha, in the insurgent-held Idlib province. It said the air raids on Rastan killed and wounded dozens.
Idlib borders Turkey and is a stronghold of the Fatah Army, an insurgent coalition that includes the al-Qaida-affiliated Nusra Front. Rastan was one of the first Syrian towns to fall into rebel hands.
State news agency SANA meanwhile reported damage to the main museum in Aleppo following days of rebel shelling of government-held neighborhoods. The contested city has seen heavy fighting in recent weeks, which has closed off the Castello road, effectively sealing off rebel-held districts where tens of thousands of people live.
SANA quoted a government statement as saying that dozens of mortar shells have hit the museum in recent days. It said "the museum suffered huge material damage" including the partial destruction of its concrete roof, as well as gates, offices and parts of the outer wall.
The head of the Department of Antiquities and Museums in Aleppo, Khalid al-Masri, said the archaeological collections in the museum are mostly intact and suffered very little damage. He did not elaborate.
Trump demands Ginsburg resign for criticizing him as unfit
WASHINGTON (AP) Donald Trump called Wednesday for Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to resign for saying publicly that she feels he is unfit to be president. Lashing out, Trump said the 83-year-old justice's "mind is shot."
"Justice Ginsburg of the U.S. Supreme Court has embarrassed all by making very dumb political statements about me," the presumptive Republican presidential nominee wrote in an early morning tweet on @realDonaldTrump. "Her mind is shot resign!"
Ginsburg said in an interview with The Associated Press last week that she didn't want to think about the possibility that Trump would be president and predicted that Democrat Hillary Clinton will win and have a few appointments to make to the Supreme Court.
FILE - In this May 26, 2016 file photo, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg takes part in a conference in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. Ginsburg says she doesnt want to think about the possibility of Donald Trump winning the White House, and predicts the next president, whoever she will be, probably will have a few appointments to make to the Supreme Court. (AP Photo/Mike Groll, File)
It is highly unusual for a sitting justice to weigh in so publicly on a political campaign, though Ginsburg is known for speaking her mind on other issues and is celebrated as a liberal icon known to fans as Notorious RBG.
In a subsequent interview with The New York Times, she joked about moving to New Zealand if Trump is elected. She escalated her criticism on Tuesday, telling CNN that Trump is a "faker" and questioning how he has "gotten away with not turning over his tax returns."
"He has no consistency about him," she said.
A Supreme Court spokeswoman did not immediately respond Wednesday to a reporter's request for comment on Trump's criticism.
On Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said that it was "totally inappropriate" for Ginsburg to criticize Trump. He said members of the Supreme Court shouldn't weigh in on American elections.
"It raises a level of skepticism that the American people have from time to time about just how objective the Supreme Court is, whether they're over there to call the balls and strikes, or weigh in on one side or another," he said.
House Speaker Paul Ryan told CNN Tuesday that Ginsburg's comments "shows bias to me."
Former Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders, who on Tuesday endorsed Clinton, said Wednesday he agrees with Ginsburg's remarks.
The Vermont senator declined to say whether it is appropriate for a sitting Supreme Court justice to openly criticize a White House contender. But he told ABC's "Good Morning America" that he agrees Trump is a "total opportunist" and said "the record is quite clear that he lies just a whole lot of the time."
Ginsburg was appointed to the Supreme Court by President Bill Clinton in 1993, and is the senior member of the court's liberal wing of justices.
One of the high court's most conservative justices, Antonin Scalia, died in February and the vacancy has yet to be filled.
Oldest US park ranger back at work after attack at home
RICHMOND, Calif. (AP) The nation's oldest full-time park ranger was greeted with cheers and hugs when she returned to work three weeks after an assailant attacked and robbed her in her San Francisco Bay Area home.
Her bruises healed, Betty Reid Soskin, 94, beamed as fellow rangers embraced her Tuesday at the Rosie the Riveter World War II Home Front National Historical Park in Richmond, facing San Francisco Bay.
"It feels wonderful," she said of being back at work, "because it gives me another chance at establishing a new normal. Sitting around home in the space where all that happened was a little less comforting."
National Park Service Ranger Betty Reid Soskin smiles during an interview on Tuesday, July 12, 2016, at the Rosie the Riveter World War II Home Front National Historical Park in Richmond, Calif. The nation's oldest full-time park ranger at 94, Soskin was greeted with cheers and hugs when she returned to work three weeks after an assailant attacked and robbed her in her San Francisco Bay Area home. (AP Photo/Ben Margot)
Police said an intruder punched Soskin repeatedly in the head and made off with items including a cellphone, laptop and jewelry on June 27.
The thief also took a coin Soskin received from President Barack Obama when she introduced him at last year's National Christmas Tree lighting ceremony at the White House.
Soskin called the encounter terrifying and said the blows split open her lips.
"I've learned enough out of that traumatic experience that I can take care of myself, that I was a match for the intruder," she said.
The attacker has not been caught.
Park Superintendent Tom Leatherman said he received an email from Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell, informing him that the White House planned to replace the stolen coin.
Soskin's colleagues and members of the community raised more than $50,000 to help her replace the other items and fund a documentary being made about her, according to the National Park Service.
Soskin became a ranger about 10 years ago and leads tours at the historical California park and museum honoring women who worked in factories during wartime.
She also made headlines in 2013 when she complained about a government furlough, saying she didn't have time to waste sitting at home at her age.
Soskin said Tuesday that she's never thought about retiring.
"I have been contemporary I think at every decade of my life ... and I think as long as that's true, I'll go on giving what I can and receiving what is possible," she said.
National Park Service Ranger Betty Reid Soskin, right, is embraced by a volunteer Tuesday, July 12, 2016, at the Rosie the Riveter World War II Home Front National Historical Park in Richmond, Calif. The nation's oldest full-time park ranger at 94, Soskin was greeted with cheers and hugs when she returned to work three weeks after an assailant attacked and robbed her in her San Francisco Bay Area home. (AP Photo/Ben Margot)
National Park Service Rangers Betty Reid Soskin, left, and Sue Fritzke smile Tuesday, July 12, 2016, at the Rosie the Riveter World War II Home Front National Historical Park in Richmond, Calif. The nation's oldest full-time park ranger at 94, Soskin was greeted with cheers and hugs when she returned to work three weeks after an assailant attacked and robbed her in her San Francisco Bay Area home. (AP Photo/Ben Margot)
National Park Service Ranger Betty Reid Soskin smiles Tuesday, July 12, 2016, at the Rosie the Riveter World War II Home Front National Historical Park in Richmond, Calif. The nation's oldest full-time park ranger at 94, Soskin was greeted with cheers and hugs when she returned to work three weeks after an assailant attacked and robbed her in her San Francisco Bay Area home. (AP Photo/Ben Margot)
National Park Service Ranger Betty Reid Soskin walks outside the Rosie the Riveter World War II Home Front National Historical Park Tuesday, July 12, 2016, in Richmond, Calif. The nation's oldest full-time park ranger at 94, Soskin was greeted with cheers and hugs when she returned to work three weeks after an assailant attacked and robbed her in her San Francisco Bay Area home. (AP Photo/Ben Margot)
National Park Service Ranger Betty Reid Soskin smiles Tuesday, July 12, 2016, at the Rosie the Riveter World War II Home Front National Historical Park in Richmond, Calif. The nation's oldest full-time park ranger at 94, Soskin was greeted with cheers and hugs when she returned to work three weeks after an assailant attacked and robbed her in her San Francisco Bay Area home. (AP Photo/Ben Margot)
The Latest: Groups sue over police treatment at protests
BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) The Latest on the killing of a black man by white Louisiana police officers (all times local):
3:30 p.m.
A group of local organizations are suing the Baton Rouge police over their treatment of demonstrators protesting the shooting death of a 37-year-old black man.
Cameron Sterling, center, son of Alton Sterling, who was killed by Baton Rouge police last Tuesday, speaks to the media outside the Triple S Food Mart, where his father was killed, in Baton Rouge, La., Wednesday, July 13, 2016. At left is attorney Justin Bamberg and at right is attorney L. Chris Stewart. Sterling spoke out for the first time Wednesday, calling his father a good man and asking people not to resort to violence after his death. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
The American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana announced the lawsuit Wednesday.
The groups allege that authorities used excessive force, carried out mass arrests and verbally and physically abused protesters.
The lawsuit describes the protests as peaceful and blames law enforcement for escalating the situation.
The shooting death last week of Alton Sterling at the hands of two white police officers sparked outrage among many in the black community.
The police have come under fire for tactics they used on protesters over the weekend. Over a three-day period, police arrested about 200 people.
The governor has defended the police, calling their response "moderate."
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11 a.m.
An attorney for relatives of a black man who was fatally shot during a struggle with two white Baton Rouge police officers is urging Louisiana's attorney general to "fight for justice" in the case.
The lawyer, Justin Bamberg, told reporters Wednesday that Alton Sterling's family is pleased that the Justice Department is investigating the July 5 shooting but said that's not enough. Bamberg said the family wants an indictment in the case and hopes state Attorney General Jeff Landry's office "one day" will get involved.
In a statement Monday, Landry said he won't have access to details of the federal investigation of Sterling's shooting until it's completed and a decision has been made on potential federal charges.
Bamberg compared Sterling's shooting to the fatal shooting of a 6-year-old boy last year by two deputy city marshals in Marksville, Louisiana.
Bamberg noted that Landry's predecessor obtained indictments in December against the two black deputies on second-degree murder charges in the death of Jeremy Mardis, who was white.
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9 a.m.
The teenage son of a black man killed by white police officers is speaking out for the first time, telling reporters gathered at the Triple S convenience store where his father died that he wants everyone "to protest the right way, protest in peace."
Cameron Sterling spoke to the crowd in Baton Rouge on Wednesday calling his father, Alton Sterling, "a good man," adding "and he will always be a good man."
The 15-year-old, who a week ago had sobbed as his mother, Quinyetta McMillon, talked about Sterling's death, stood composed as he called for peace, saying he wanted protesters angry about his father's death to "protest in peace."
He said there should be no violence.
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8:45 a.m.
The 15-year-old son of a black man shot and killed by white Louisiana police officers says his father, Alton Sterling, was "a good man" and called for people to come together to deal with violence.
Cameron Sterling said during a news conference Wednesday that people should protest but that they protest peacefully.
Just a week earlier, the teenager had broken down in sobs as his mother talked about his father's death and had to be led away from those gathered at a news conference.
On Wednesday, he appeared before microphones calm as he asked people to remember his father and to make sure that something positive, and peaceful, resulted from what he called his father's sacrifice. He called for people from all races to unite as one as they remember Sterling.
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2:45 a.m.
Police say they've arrested three suspects accused of stealing several handguns as part of an alleged plot to harm police officers in the Baton Rouge area.
Baton Rouge police Chief Carl Dabadie said at a news conference Tuesday that authorities discovered the plot while responding to a burglary at a pawn shop. They arrested one suspect on the scene and then tracked down two others. Authorities called on the fourth suspect to turn himself in.
State Police Col. Mike Edmonson called it a "substantial credible threat" to police.
The arrests come after the deadly police shooting of a black man by two white police officers in the city and the killing of five police officers in Dallas last week.
Cameron Sterling, son of Alton Sterling, who was killed by Baton Rouge police last Tuesday, speaks to the media outside the Triple S Food Mart, where his father was killed, in Baton Rouge, La., Wednesday, July 13, 2016. Sterling spoke out for the first time Wednesday, calling his father a good man and asking people not to resort to violence after his death. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
Cameron Sterling, son of Alton Sterling, who was killed by Baton Rouge police last Tuesday, holds the hand of his mother, Quinyetta McMillon, as he speaks to the media outside the Triple S Food Mart, where his father was killed, in Baton Rouge, La., Wednesday, July 13, 2016. Cameron spoke out for the first time Wednesday, calling his father a good man and asking people not to resort to violence after Alton Sterling's death. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
People pray during Prayer Vigil organized by Myron Smothers at Memorial Tower on the Louisiana State University campus in Baton Rouge, La., Monday, July 11, 2016. (Scott Clause/The Daily Advertiser via AP)
A photo provided by the East Baton Rough Sheriff's Office shows Malik Bridgewater, 20. Bridgewater is one of three people arrested by police and accused of stealing several handguns as part of what authorities Tuesday, July 12, 2016, described as "substantial, credible threat" to harm police officers in the Baton Rouge, La., area. (East Baton Rouge Sheriff's Office via AP)
A photo provided by the East Baton Rouge Sheriff's Office shows Antonio Thomas, 17. Thomas is one of three people arrested by police and accused of stealing several handguns as part of what authorities Tuesday, July 12, 2016, described as "substantial, credible threat" to harm police officers in the Baton Rouge, La., area. (East Baton Rouge Sheriff's Office via AP)
Best friends with Down syndrome make epic zombie movie
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) Two best friends from Rhode Island are living their dream of making an epic zombie movie and becoming celebrities.
Sam Suchmann and Mattie Zufelt, both 20, have Down syndrome.
"Down syndrome causes us to think slower than others, but we don't let that get in the way," Suchmann says. "Because we're naturally amazing."
In this July 12, 2016 photo, Mattie Zufelt, left, and Sam Suchmann pose with ghoulish figures at Sam's home in Providence, R.I. Suchmann and Zufelt, best friends with Down syndrome, are living their dreams of making a full-length, epic zombie movie and becoming celebrities. The duo premiered their movie, Spring Break Zombie Massacre, in Providence last week, have been invited to several film festivals in North America, and are scheduled to appear on Conan Thursday. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola)
Their movie, "Spring Break Zombie Massacre ," premiered in Providence last week, and they've been invited to several film festivals in North America. They also are scheduled to appear Thursday on Conan O'Brien's show.
The friends like movies and zombies and thought they could make a better zombie movie than some already out there. Zufelt hopes their movie proves why a book shouldn't be judged by its cover. He asks people to "look at the contents."
The two friends play brothers in the movie, two cool guys with bionic powers capable of saving humanity forever. The devil chases them through high school, college and spring break, trying to steal their powers and turning bullies into zombies and demons to help him in his quest.
They're often chugging soda, which they absolutely love.
One of their favorite scenes comes at the end of the movie when Paul "DJ Pauly D" DelVecchio, a hero to Zufelt, makes a cameo appearance at a boat party that's attacked by zombies. Zufelt, who dreams of being a DJ, jumps on the turntable in a final battle with the devil.
"My character, he's a straight badass," says Zufelt, whose DJ nickname is "Mattie Mixer."
DelVecchio, a Rhode Island native, says he was intrigued and taken back by how much they wanted him in the movie. He says it was such a "dope" project and he loved their story, so he signed on.
"You could tell they had a passion for this. This was something they really wanted to do," he says. "And it just goes to show you that anybody that can put their mind to it, can get something this big done. ... They worked so hard and it came out great."
Suchmann, of Providence, and Zufelt, of Bristol, grew close after they met while swimming in the Special Olympics during elementary school. They started working on the movie about five years ago. A Kickstarter campaign for the movie raised about $70,000 in late 2014.
Suchmann's older brother, Jesse, asked his high school friend, filmmaker Bobby Carnevale, for help. Carnevale directed the movie. He, along with editor Tim Forster and producer Suzy Beck, convinced others in the industry to volunteer their time and equipment. They filmed the 45-minute movie in Rhode Island over two weeks in August.
"Every day I learned something about life, about humanity, people, about what's important," Carnevale says. "It really was a life-changing experience for me and for everyone that came to meet Sam and Mattie."
Suchmann and Zufelt's friends acted in the movie and worked on it. Some have Down syndrome and others are on the autism spectrum. But Jesse Suchmann says, "This is not just proving people with Down syndrome can do this, too. ... If it was a bunch of professional filmmakers with no differing perspectives, we would've ended up with something way, way lamer. It would've never been this awesome."
The friends are already planning for a sequel and they've been filming a documentary about how the movie was made. Their families are working to start a nonprofit to help people with disabilities fulfill their creative dreams by connecting them with professionals in the industry.
Its name will be "Rock On. Go Wild," the friends' catchphrase.
In this July 12, 2016 photo, Sam Suchmann, left, and Mattie Zufelt pose with ghoulish figures at Sam's home in Providence, R.I. Suchmann and Zufelt, best friends with Down syndrome, are living their dreams of making a full-length, epic zombie movie and becoming celebrities. The duo premiered their movie, Spring Break Zombie Massacre, in Providence last week, have been invited to several film festivals in North America, and are scheduled to appear on Conan Thursday. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola)
In this July 12, 2016 photo, Sam Suchmann, left, and Mattie Zufelt speak during an interview with an AP reporter at Sam's home in Providence, R.I. Suchmann and Zufelt, best friends with Down syndrome, are living their dreams of making a full-length, epic zombie movie and becoming celebrities. The duo premiered their movie, Spring Break Zombie Massacre, in Providence last week, have been invited to several film festivals in North America, and are scheduled to appear on Conan Thursday. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola)
Nothing Was Off-Limits for Robin Williams' Photographer
LOS ANGELES (AP) Photographer Arthur Grace was on assignment for Newsweek when he met Robin Williams in 1986 at a Pittsburgh comedy club. As he traveled with Williams to various stand-up gigs, the two became friends.
In between assignments covering the Ronald Reagan White House and other news events, Grace would stay with the actor-comedian at his home and shoot family portraits and Christmas cards for him.
Grace remembers sitting with Williams and snapping away during his most private moments.
FILE - In this Nov. 5, 2011 file photo, actor Robin Williams poses for a portrait during the "Happy Feet" press junket in Beverly Hills, Calif. Arthur Grace, a photographer and friend of the late Robin Williams, is publishing a book with 190 of his photographs of the late actor-comedian. It will be released next month. (Dan Steinberg/Invision/AP, File)
"He had a private room in his house in San Francisco like a hidden room that was his sanctuary, his space. And in that room he had computers, computer games, video games, scripts, some of his toy soldiers," Grace said. "That's where he'd stay for hours."
Now, some two years after Williams' death at age 63, Grace is releasing a book featuring 190 of his photographs of the famed entertainer that capture intimate moments both onstage and at home. Many have never been previously published.
Grace got to witness Williams close up, at the top of his game, with fellow comedians and regaling total strangers with his famous manic riffs.
"The entire time Robin and I worked together or knew each other, he never once said to me, 'That's enough, stop taking pictures.' Or 'No, you can't shoot this or you can't shoot that.' It was amazing," Grace said. "Nothing was off-limits."
Grace says he isn't sure when he took his last picture of Williams. But he remembers the last meeting, in late 2013 when Williams came to his house for dinner. By then, they were no longer photographer and subject.
"I didn't pull out the camera, even when my dog jumped him," said Grace. "We just talked about other stuff and he was funny as always, but no, the camera didn't have a place anymore.
"People have asked me: How did you happen to do this (book) now? And the answer is simple: I had always had this thought that when I was 84 and Robin was 80, that we would get together as old men, sit down somewhere for a weekend or a week in a nice place and he would reminisce," Grace said. "But that didn't happen."
Rocked by Williams' suicide, Grace initially felt paralyzed.
"Maybe six, eight months later, I started thinking about the photographs that I had, and that I can't sit on them."
That's when he began planning what he calls a "legacy book" for his friend.
Grace said he scanned old photos and hung prints from walls in his house while trying to decide which ones to include. And it wasn't an emotional process until it was.
"All of a sudden, you remember he's gone, you remember the times you had together, what this picture reminded you of," Grace said. Then he breaks up. "And that's what continues to happen."
2 more workers report possible vapor exposure at nuke site
SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) Two more employees have reported possible exposure to chemical vapors on the Hanford Nuclear Reservation even as workers engaged in a job action to demand better protection from such fumes.
The two workers were given medical evaluations Tuesday and cleared to return to work, according to Washington River Protection Solutions, a private contractor that manages a section of the reservation where nuclear waste is buried in underground tanks.
It brought the number of workers receiving medical checks for possible chemical vapor exposure to about 55 in recent months.
Dave Molnaa, president of the Hanford Atomic Metal Trades Council, talks to reporters, Monday, July 11, 2016 in Richland, Wash. A coalition of labor unions on the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington state stopped work Monday at some radioactive waste tank farms because of health concerns over chemical vapors. The Hanford Atomic Metal Trades Council issued a "stop work" order at the double-walled tanks that contain dangerous wastes from the past production of plutonium for nuclear weapons. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)
Some of the workers have reported respiratory problems, and others smelled a chemical odor. All were cleared to return to work, the contractor said.
The latest reports of possible exposure came just a day after the Hanford Atomic Metal Trades Council issued a stop work order on Monday to demand greater protections for workers who deal with underground nuclear waste storage tanks. The council is comprised of unions that represent Hanford workers.
The order required a halt to any tasks within the boundaries of Hanford tank farms if workers were not being supplied with mandatory air respirators.
Washington River Protection Solutions complied by giving employees the bottled air on Tuesday and work resumed.
Hanford, located near Richland, for decades made plutonium for nuclear weapons, and waste from that work are stored in 177 giant underground tanks.
The government is now engaged in cleaning up the site, a process that will take decades and cost tens of billions of dollars.
The two workers evaluated Tuesday were outside the tank farm boundaries when they reported smelling chemical vapors, the contractor said, noting that samples showed air quality was compliant with safety standards.
Officials at the trade council contend that workers have been sickened by the vapors, reporting symptoms like headaches and bloody noses. The group contends the problems go back for two decades.
The vapors aren't radioactive and are invisible to the eye. They are suspected of escaping some tanks when the contents are disturbed during cleanup activities.
Last month, the council demanded that air respirators be required for work in all tank farms. The contractor denied the demand, saying the equipment was not needed for routine work among newer double-walled tanks that do not vent passively into the environment.
FILE - In this July 9, 2014, file photo, workers wearing protective clothing and footwear inspect a valve at the "C" tank farm on the Hanford Nuclear Reservation near Richland, Wash. A coalition of labor unions on the Hanford Nuclear Reservation stopped work Monday, July 11, 2016, at some of the radioactive waste tank farms because of health concerns over chemical vapors. The Hanford Atomic Metal Trades Council issued a "stop work" order at the double-walled tanks that contain dangerous wastes from the past production of plutonium for nuclear weapons. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren, File)
Lawsuit filed in police shooting of man in Memphis
MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) A federal civil rights lawsuit filed Wednesday alleges that a white Memphis police officer used excessive deadly force when he shot and killed a 19-year-old black man during a fight after a traffic stop.
The lawsuit filed on behalf of Darrius Stewart's parents comes almost a year after he was shot by Officer Connor Schilling as the officer tried to arrest the teen on two active warrants. The suit seeks a jury trial and more than $17 million in damages.
The legal action comes amid a wave of protests against the recent fatal shootings of black men in Minnesota and Louisiana by police. Stewart's death on July 17, 2015, happened in the months after the deaths of black men during confrontations with police in New York, Missouri and other states sparked sharp debate on police use of force and racial profiling.
"We believe this lawsuit stands for more than just the fight for Darrius Stewart," said Arthur Horne, an attorney for Stewart's family. "This lawsuit stands for all of the unarmed citizens, young black men, who have been attacked and had their civil rights violated."
The shooting is being reviewed by the U.S. Justice Department. The lawsuit accuses the police department of having policies that make it "okay to shoot first and ask questions second." It also claims city policymakers are aware of a "code of silence" within the police department when it comes to officer misconduct.
The City of Memphis "permitted, encouraged, tolerated, and ratified an official pattern, custom, and practice by its officers of shooting first and using excessive and unjustified force," the lawsuit says.
A woman who answered the phone at the office of Art Quinn, Schilling's lawyer, said Quinn was out of town Wednesday and could not comment. The city issued a statement saying it is "confident in the policies, procedures, and training" that were in place under Toney Armstrong, who was police chief at the time of the shooting. Armstrong, a defendant in the lawsuit, did not immediately return a call seeking comment.
"This case involves the loss of life, and we are very sensitive to that fact," Bruce McMullen, chief legal officer for the city, said in the statement. "We also understand that police/citizen engagement in diverse communities is part of the current national conversation."
Stewart was a passenger in a car stopped by Schilling for a headlight violation. Authorities say Schilling ran Stewart's identification and found the teen had outstanding warrants from Illinois and Iowa, including one for a sexual abuse charge from 2009, when Stewart was 13. Schilling had put Stewart in the back of his squad car, without handcuffs, as he checked on the warrants.
Dispatchers then told Schilling that Stewart should be arrested. As the officer approached the back of the squad car to handcuff Stewart, he kicked open the door, grabbed the handcuffs and starting beating the officer with them, authorities have said.
As they fought on the ground, Schilling fired his service weapon. The teen died at a hospital of two gunshot wounds, a medical examiner found.
Schilling has said he shot Stewart because he feared for his life.
The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation issued a report of more than 800 pages on the shooting. Video shows Schilling and Stewart wrestling on the ground, and the medical examiner told investigators Stewart was shot from no more than 4 feet away. Two witnesses said Stewart was shot as he ran away; Schilling has said Stewart ran after being shot, then collapsed about 60 yards away.
Murray Wells, an attorney for the Stewart family, said the excessive-force claim was partly based on the reports that Stewart was running away when he was shot.
Morning Pointe Senior Living gave the gift of transportation, donating a 15-passenger surplus bus to Bachman Academy.
On Tuesday, M.Ed., CEO and headmaster of Bachman Academy, and Emilee Farris, executive assistant, received keys to the bus previously used by Morning Pointe of Collegedale at Greenbriar Cove to take residents on local outings.
This bus will be used to transport our boarding students out on activities that teenagers enjoy, said Mr. Frizzell.
A candlelight vigil was held in Chicago's Federal Plaza late Wednesday to mark the one-year anniversary of the death of Sandra Bland, a black woman who died in a Texas jail cell after a traffic stop.
Bland, who was a part of the #BlackLiveMatter movement, was pulled over by a Texas state trooper in July last year and taken to the Waller County jail in Hempstead, Texas.
Three days later, she was found hanging from a jail cell partition. A plastic garbage bag was around her neck, and a medical examiner ruled her death a suicide.
Dashcam video of her arrest and the circumstances of her death provoked national outrage.
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People gather in Chicago's Federal Plaza to remember Sandra Bland. Bland died a year ago Wednesday in jail after a Texas state trooper pulled her over three days earlier
Dashcam video of Bland's arrest and the circumstances of her death provoked national outrage. Above, the candlelight vigil on Wednesday
Texas State Trooper Brian Encinia (right) who arrested 28-year-old Sandra Bland (left) during a traffic stop, has been indicted for perjury
Footage of Bland's arrest. Texas officials had been accused of doctoring footage of Bland's arrest but blame the discrepancies on an uploading error
The vigil Wednesday evening was hosted by Women's All Points Bulletin, which supports female victims of police violence, and Black Lives Matter Chicago. It was attended by Bland's mother, Geneva Reed Veal, and other family members.
ABC7 reported that one of Bland's sisters, Shante Needham said she visited her sister's grave earlier in the day. 'Today is a day of healing and remembering my sister,' Needham said.
'The protests are great but it's not always about protesting so we are going to remember her today.'
Bland had been moving to Texas from the Chicago area at the time of her death.
Despite being delayed by a thunderstorm, about 200 people showed up for the vigil, which began with a prayer.
Mugshot of Sandra Bland.The anniversary of Bland's death comes the week after five Dallas police officers were killed by a sniper during a protest over recent killings of black men by police
Separately, the suburban Chicago church where Bland grew up, DuPage African Methodist Episcopal Church in Lisle, plans candle-lighting ceremonies Sunday during its 8.15am and 11.15am services.
Bland's mother is scheduled to speak at the church on August 13, and the church plans a trip to Texas in November.
There church members plan a peaceful prayer meeting outside the jail where Bland died. They also plan to tour Prairie View A&M University, Bland's alma mater, and celebrate services with Hope AME Church in Prairie View, which has hosted rallies and prayer gatherings in Bland's memory.
DuPage AME Church also plans its Sandra A. Bland Diversity Institute on Martin Luther King Jr. Day in January.
The Rev. James Miller, pastor of the church, said the ceremonies are designed to comfort Bland's family and congregants who knew her.
The anniversary of Bland's death comes the week after five Dallas police officers were killed by a sniper during a protest over recent killings of black men by police.
Miller said it's clear from the current landscape in the U.S. that social inequities exist.
'The African-American community cannot be the only ones talking about civil rights and equity,' Miller said. 'It's when white people start talking about it that real action can take place.'
In this April 15, 2016 file photo, Geneva Reed-Veal, left, unveils a street sign bearing her daughter's name during a ceremony renaming University Boulevard to Sandra Bland Parkway in Prairie View, Texas
Congress passes aviation bill to close airport security gaps
WASHINGTON (AP) Congress passed an aviation bill Wednesday that attempts to close gaps in airport security and shorten screening lines, but leaves thornier issues unresolved.
The bill also extends the Federal Aviation Administration's programs for 14 months at current funding levels. It was approved in the Senate by a vote of 89 to 4. The House had passed the measure earlier in the week and it now goes to President Barack Obama, who must sign the bill by Friday when the FAA's current operating authority expires to avoid a partial agency shutdown.
Responding to attacks by violent extremists associated with the Islamic State group on airports in Brussels and Istanbul, the bill includes an array of provisions aimed at protecting "soft targets" outside security perimeters. Other provisions designed to address potential "insider threats" would toughen vetting of airport workers and other employees with access to secure areas, expand random employee inspections and require reviews of perimeter security. Investigators suspect a bomb had been smuggled aboard a Russian Metrojet airliner that disintegrated over Egypt last year.
FILE - In this May 25, 2016 file photo, passengers push their carry-on belongings onto an automated conveyer belt at a newly designed passenger screening lane unveiled at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport in Atlanta. Congress has passed an aviation bill that attempts to close gaps in airport security and shorten screening lines, but leaves thornier issues unresolved. (AP Photo/David Goldman, File)
The measure is the most significant airport security bill to pass Congress in a decade, and its provisions "speak directly to some of the gaps that we perceive to exist in our aviation system in this country," said Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., chairman of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee.
But it also is notable for what it doesn't contain: A plan to remove air traffic control operations from the FAA and put them under the control of a private, non-profit corporation run primarily by segments of the aviation industry.
Rep. Bill Shuster, R-Pa., chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, and the airline industry had made privatizing air traffic control a top priority. But they ran into opposition from other powerful committee chairmen who don't want to cede oversight responsibility for a large share of the nation's aviation system to a private corporation. Other segments of the aviation industry also objected to the plan, saying they feared the corporation would be dominated by airline interests.
Airlines say privatization is needed because the FAA's culture is too slow and inflexible to complete the air traffic system's transition from old radar technology to satellites. The modernization has dragged on for more than a decade and fallen short of promised financial benefits and reduced congestion.
Shuster hasn't given up on the plan and may revive it next year when Congress will face a new deadline to extend FAA's authority.
The bill authorizes a doubling of Transportation Security Administration teams that stop and search suspicious passengers in airport public areas that are outside the security perimeter, often using bomb-sniffing dogs. A "dog's nose" is one of the "most effective tools" the government can deploy to secure airports, said Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla.
It also authorizes TSA to donate unneeded security equipment to foreign airports with direct flights to the United States, and directs TSA to reconfigure security systems at three to six airports, an initial step to increase efficiency and reduce vulnerabilities in terminals.
The bill also seeks to expand enrollment in TSA's PreCheck program for low-risk travelers, and requires TSA to ensure PreCheck screening lanes are open during high-volume travel times. And it authorizes a trial program to develop and test more efficient passenger and luggage screening systems.
The bill also includes several consumer protections. Airlines would have to refund checked bag fees to passengers whose luggage is lost or is delayed 12 hours or more for domestic flights or 15 hours or more for overseas flights. They'll have to ensure that children 13 years of age or younger are seated next to an adult or older child traveling with them. At the behest of Southwest Airlines, lawmakers allowed discretion to exempt airlines such as those that don't offer assigned seating but do provide adjacent seating for families through other means.
The bill would test programs to handle the hazards of drone flights near airports and other critical infrastructure and to research traffic management for drone flights similar to what the FAA does for manned aircraft. One provision would require drone manufacturers to inform consumers of rules and safety guidelines for their use, while another would begin interagency discussions to let drones assist in firefighting operations.
Another provision would impose a $20,000 fine for anyone who "knowingly or recklessly" flies a drone near emergency responders. Authorities recorded 20 incidents in which drones flew too close to wildfires last year, with more than half hindering firefighting efforts. It has happened again at least nine times so far this year.
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NYPD commanders, businessman plead not guilty in bribe case
NEW YORK (AP) Two New York City police commanders and a Brooklyn businessman have pleaded not guilty in an ongoing corruption case.
Deputy Chief Michael Harrington, Deputy Inspector James Grant and Jeremy Reichberg entered the pleas Wednesday in federal court in Manhattan.
The three were arrested last month on conspiracy and other charges in the bribery investigation.
Prosecutors say police accepted $100,000 in travel on private jets, expensive meals and other illegal gifts from Reichberg and others.
The prosecutors say that in return, officers arranged for police escorts, special parking and gun permits.
The case is the result of a series of overlapping public corruption investigations that have also targeted possible misconduct in campaign fundraising for Mayor Bill de Blasio.
Police in Honduras arrest 3 in murder of activist
MEXICO CITY (AP) Authorities in Honduras said Wednesday that they have arrested three suspects in the murder of an environmental and indigenous rights activist the third slaying victim from the same organization in four months.
Two men and a minor were arrested in connection with the murder of Lesbia Janeth Urquia, the Public Ministry said in a statement. One of the men is the brother-in-law of the victim and officials said the killing appeared to be the result of a family dispute.
But the Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras, with which Urquia was affiliated, rejected the theory. Last week it had blamed the government for her death.
People pray by the coffin of slain Lesbia Janeth Urquia, an environmentalist and indigenous rights activist, during Mass in Marcala, Honduras, Friday, July 8, 2016. Authorities say Urquia's body was found Wednesday in a garbage dump in Marcala. Urquia's assassination comes four months after the murder of award-winning environmentalist Berta Caceres stirred international outrage. (AP Photo/Fernando Antonio)
COPINH coordinator Tomas Gomez said Wednesday that authorities are trying to discredit their work fighting a local hydroelectric project and protecting the environment.
Gomez said officials have insisted that "the murder has nothing to do with the political decisions about granting concessions and the privatization of natural resources." Gomez said.
Urquia's body was found last week in a garbage dump in Marcala in western Honduras. She had disappeared Tuesday afternoon after going out to ride her bicycle.
It came four months after the murder of internationally recognized environmentalist Berta Caceres of COPINH. Another activist from the same organization, Nelson Garcia, was killed two weeks after Caceres.
Authorities have arrested four people in Caceres death, including an active-duty army officer and at least one man who worked for a hydroelectric project she opposed.
Global Witness, a London-based organization, considers Honduras the world's most dangerous country for environmentalists. According to its count, 111 activists were killed between 2002 and 2014.
COPINH said last week that Urquia was an outspoken opponent of hydroelectric projects in the La Paz region, particularly the Aurora I dam.
The gunman was a black former military man who targeted white police at a time of social unrest.
The chaos and confusion led authorities to conclude there must be more than one shooter.
And when it was over, a major city mourned five dead officers.
Last week's sniper attack in Dallas was eerily reminiscent of a 1973 shooting spree in downtown New Orleans that shattered the peaceful urban landscape and went on for 11 hours - until police shot and killed Mark Essex from a helicopter hovering over a hotel.
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Mark Essex (left) went on a shooting spree in downtown New Orleans in 1973 that was eerily reminiscent of last week's sniper attack in Dallas, where Army veteran Micah Johnson (right) killed five Dallas police officers when he opened fire at a Black Lives Matter protest on July 7
'It was a horrible time,' said David Cressy, then an assistant city attorney who was at City Hall, across the street from the hotel.
'When I hear a helicopter coming over the house, I still remember.'
The massacre in Dallas revived disturbing memories for the police, city employees and reporters who lived through the New Orleans attack, which unfolded under many of the same circumstances as the Texas shootings.
Army veteran Micah Johnson, 25, killed five Dallas police officers when he opened fire at a Black Lives Matter protest on July 7.
He told authorities he wanted to kill whites, 'especially white officers' before he was killed by police using a remote-controlled bomb on a robot.
But there were differences between the attacks as well, including the way news of the carnage was reported to the world, compared to the instantly streamed and tweeted events in Dallas.
Wounded police officers lie behind a police car in Duncan Plaza, during a sniper incident, across the street from the Downtown Howard Johnson Hotel in New Orleans on January 7, 1973
Patrolman Leo Newman takes the pulse of dying Patrolman Philip Coleman outside the Downtown Howard Johnson Hotel during a 1973 sniper incident in New Orleans
Retired Times-Picayune columnist Angus Lind was a 28-year-old reporter then.
He remembers tracking down a payphone to dictate notes. The only way for people to learn what was going on was through local TV stations.
Even though fears persisted of multiple, organized shooters, news organizations were granted access to the hotel something that would be unusual today.
'The cops would actually cover us as we ran across the street to relieve each other,' Lind said.
The connections between the two events were unavoidable for Larry Preston Williams, a 67-year-old former New Orleans police officer who was there in 1973.
Asked what went through his mind when he heard the news from Dallas, Williams' mind went straight to the hotel.
'Howard Johnson's,' he said on Monday. 'Immediately.'
Now a security consultant in Arkansas, Williams was 24 at the time.
As an African-American, he was recruited by the New Orleans Police Department as it was integrating.
Williams had been a patrol officer and was later assigned to intelligence, helping place infiltrators in left- and right-wing organizations.
He remembers being summoned to City Hall that Sunday morning - January 7, 1973 - because police hoped that, with his background in intelligence, he might be able to identify the gunman if he got a good look at him.
Eighth District officer Kenny Solis, shot in the shoulder, leans against a tree as officer Dave McCann tries to stop the bleeding. McCann and Solis had been walking across Duncan Plaza in New Orleans, when Solis clutched his shoulder and said he'd been shot
A police sharpshooter takes an overall look at the Howard Johnson's Hotel for signs of a second sniper in New Orleans. The attacker was Mark Essex, a black former military man , who was shot and killed from a helicopter
Despite the danger, Williams felt less vulnerable than those around him.
'I was in plainclothes and I was black,' he said. At the time, Essex 'was not shooting black people.'
Williams never got a look at the shooter. What he saw was carnage in the grassy park in front of City Hall.
He watched as Paul Persigo, with whom he had patrolled at times, was gunned down.
Then came shots that felled Phillip Coleman, who died of a head wound, and Ken Solis, who survived.
Inside the hotel, Deputy Police Superintendent Louis Sirgo was killed, along with four civilians.
Essex was a 23-year-old from Emporia, Kansas, who had been discharged from the Navy for 'character and behavior disorders' according to archived accounts from The Associated Press.
He was living in New Orleans and working as a trainee in an anti-poverty program.
But he harbored deep-seated hatred for whites that people who knew him said took root in the Navy.
Investigators later entered his apartment and found racial epithets painted on the walls.
New Orleans police officers fire into a concrete cubicle atop the Howard Johnson hotel in downtown New Orleans, where they believed snipers were hiding, in New Orleans
Mark Essex was holed up in the hotel and killed seven people, among them three police officers, before being killed by police sharpshooters from a marine helicopter
Authorities eventually learned that Essex had actually begun killing people a week earlier, on New Year's Eve.
His first victim was a black police cadet hit when Essex fired at a gateway at the New Orleans jail and escaped.
Later that night, he broke into a warehouse, fatally wounded a responding officer and disappeared again.
The violence resumed on January 7 when Essex shot and wounded a white store owner, stole a car and led police on a chase that ended at the Howard Johnson's, where he turned into the parking garage and ran into the main building.
Then-Mayor Moon Landrieu said in a 1983 interview with the AP that the shootings occurred at a time of racial and political unrest and authorities feared the violence was part of an organized revolutionary attack. No conspiracy was ever revealed.
The pain lingered for years.
A wounded fireman is tended to by police and fellow firefighters during a sniper incident, across the street from the Downtown Howard Johnson Hotel in New Orleans
'There was the agony of the burials, visiting the survivors, helping raise funds for those orphaned,' Landrieu said. 'So that aftermath continued for a very long time.'
In 1973, Louisiana and other Southern states had been rocked by more than a decade of political and social turmoil that accompanied the civil rights movement.
Landrieu, in his first term when Essex attacked, had gained the trust of many black voters and the enmity of some whites by bringing African-American appointees into city government.
Meanwhile, Williams left police work for law school in 1974. His tenure with the New Orleans Police Department had been difficult at times.
Most of the white officers accepted him, but a few refused to ride with him.
He was part of a lawsuit alleging discriminatory employment practices by the department.
But none of that mattered on January 7, 1973.
'When those officers got shot, any kind of racial politics I might have indulged in was put on the back burner,' Williams said.
Trump seeks $10 million from former aide in disclosure case
WASHINGTON (AP) Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is seeking $10 million in damages from former senior campaign consultant Sam Nunberg, alleging that Nunberg leaked confidential information to reporters in violation of a nondisclosure agreement.
In a court filing obtained by The Associated Press, Nunberg accused Trump of trying to silence him "in a misguided attempt to cover up media coverage of an apparent affair" between two senior campaign staffers.
Such a legal dispute is highly unusual for a presidential candidate. It reflects Trump's efforts to aggressively protect the secrecy of his campaign's inner workings, as he has for years fought to protect the secrecy of his businesses and family.
FILE- In this May 23, 2005 file photo, real estate mogul and Reality TV star Donald Trump, left, listens as Michael Sexton introduces him at a news conference in New York where he announced the establishment of Trump University. A federal judge who has been a target of Donald Trumps unending scorn must decide whether to release videos of the presumed Republican presidential nominee testifying in a lawsuit about the now-defunct Trump University, images that Trumps attorneys worry will be used to tarnish the campaign. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews, File)
The AP reported last month that Trump requires nearly everyone in his campaign and businesses to sign legally binding nondisclosure agreements prohibiting them from releasing any confidential or disparaging information about the real estate mogul, his family or his companies. Trump has also said he would consider requiring such agreements in the White House.
Nunberg's filing comes at a crucial political moment for Trump. He's on the verge of picking his running mate and is preparing for next week's Republican convention, one of his highest profile opportunities to reach voters and ease the concerns of GOP leaders who are concerned about his unconventional candidacy.
In the court filings, Nunberg denied disparaging Trump and accused the presumptive GOP nominee of attempting to "bully" him into silence after Nunberg decided to publicly support Texas Sen. Ted Cruz's presidential bid.
"Mr. Trump's actions in starting a $10 million arbitration, seeking to silence Mr. Nunberg and have the proceedings sealed are a cautionary tale of what the American people face if Mr. Trump is elected president," said Andrew Miltenberg, Nunberg's attorney. Miltenberg said Trump's attorney argued for the documents to be sealed in a hearing Wednesday morning.
Trump attorney Alan Garten repeatedly declined to refer to Nunberg by name, but described him as "a person who has a history of making untrue, outlandish and outrageous allegations."
Nunberg was a consultant to Trump's presidential campaign but was fired in August because of racist posts he wrote on Facebook.
Nunberg has been highly critical of Trump's former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, both professionally and personally. In a recent GQ Magazine interview, he said he would suck the "blood of out of (Lewandowski's) skull by the time I'm done with him."
In the court filings, Nunberg said Trump filed a $10 million arbitration claim against him and falsely accused him of being a source of a New York Post story from mid-May that recounted a public quarrel between Lewandowski and campaign spokeswoman Hope Hicks. Lewandowski was fired from the campaign in June after months of tension with other senior Trump advisers.
Nunberg denied being the source of the article, but in court papers referred to the quarrel as being part of an "apparent affair."
Garten told the AP that Nunberg's allegations about Hicks and Lewandowski are "categorically untrue." Reached by phone, Lewandowski said he was "not familiar with the court case" and would not comment on Nunberg's allegations.
Hicks did not respond to detailed requests to respond to the allegations sent via email and text, as well as a voicemail.
Lewandowski helped Trump upset 16 primary rivals, a stunning feat for the political novice and a campaign manager with little presidential campaign experience. But Lewandowski clashed with other campaign staffers and was viewed by GOP leaders as unprepared to oversee a general election campaign.
Since Lewandowski's firing, Trump's campaign has shown flashes of operating more professionally, with the candidate giving more prepared speeches in addition to his freewheeling rallies.
Nunberg's filed the court documents in an attempt to block private arbitration proceedings initiated by Trump in May.
In addition to asserting a right to discuss the campaign on free speech grounds, Nunberg's lawsuit also argued that the campaign's arbitration claim was invalid because it was brought by an exploratory group Trump formed for his 2012 campaign, "which has nothing to do with the Trump Campaign's activities in the 2016 presidential campaign cycle."
"The Trump Campaign was not in existence prior to or at the time of the agreement, and Mr. Nunberg did not agree or intend that it apply to any future entity such as the Trump Campaign," Nunberg's complaint said.
In an affidavit, Nunberg's mother, Rebecca Citron Nunberg, said the Trump entity bringing the claim against her son is not registered in the state of New York, depriving it of its ability to pursue legal claims against him.
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Associated Press writer Jeff Horwitz contributed to this report.
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On Twitter, follow Julie Pace at http://twitter.com/jpaceDC and Chad Day at http://twitter.com/ChadSDay
FILE - In this May 12, 2016 file photo, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's campaign communications manager Hope Hicks, right, and Daniel Scavino Jr., Director for Social Media for Trump Campaign walk to their motorcade vehicle after Trump's visit to Jones Day's D.C. law offices in Washington. The Associated Press reported last month that Trump requires nearly everyone in his campaign and businesses to sign legally binding nondisclosure agreements prohibiting them from releasing any confidential or disparaging information about the real estate mogul, his family or his companies. Trump has also said he would consider requiring such agreements in the White House. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais, File)
Gunman in Michigan courthouse shootings faced life in prison
ST. JOSEPH, Mich. (AP) An inmate who took a gun from a deputy and killed two bailiffs during an escape attempt at a southwestern Michigan courthouse was facing possible life in prison on rape and kidnapping charges involving a 17-year-old girl, according to authorities.
Larry Darnell Gordon, 44, was accused of holding the teen against her will for two weeks and giving her methamphetamines in exchange for sex, the Berrien County prosecutor's office said Wednesday.
Gordon was handcuffed and in an area of Berrien County's Circuit Court that is not open to the public on Monday when he disarmed Deputy James Atterberry Jr. during a fight and shot him. He then moved into a public hallway in the courthouse and fatally shot bailiffs Joseph Zangaro, 61, and Ronald Kienzle, 63, authorities said. Both were retired police officers.
In this undated photo provided by the Michigan Department of Corrections, Larry Darnell Gordon is shown. Authorities say Gordon, an inmate who took a gun from a deputy and killed two bailiffs during an escape attempt at the Berrien County Courthouse in St. Joseph, Mich., July 11, 2016, was facing possible life in prison for rape and kidnapping charges involving a 17-year-old girl. (Michigan Department of Corrections via AP)
A woman also was shot in the arm and hostages were briefly taken before Gordon was fatally shot by other bailiffs at the courthouse in St. Joseph, the county seat of 8,300 people about 65 miles northeast of Chicago.
Gordon was in court Monday to have a misdemeanor domestic violence warrant dismissed due to the more serious charges involving the 17-year-old.
Police were trying to serve the domestic violence warrant in April on Gordon at his home in Coloma Township.
"Upon arrival, officers observed a light on in a shed on the property and discovered Gordon to be inside," the prosecutor's office said in a release. "Gordon barricaded himself inside but escaped through a back access door. Gordon fled and was discovered several streets away with the help of a tracking dog and physically resisted exiting from under a porch."
Officers later found the girl in the shed.
Gordon was charged with five counts of first-degree criminal sexual conduct and a single count of kidnapping. Both charges carry maximum life sentences upon conviction.
He was charged with three counts of production of child sexually abusive material after authorities learned that sexual activity with the teen was video recorded.
Other charges included unlawful imprisonment, possession with intent to deliver methamphetamines and assault by strangulation.
Police also were investigating similar conduct in 2006 with a 16-year-old victim, prosecutors said.
Gordon had numerous interactions with the criminal justice system over the past 24 years.
He was discharged from probation in 2014 after being sentenced for stealing fireworks from a temporary stand. He served time in state prison from 1999 to 2002 for fleeing and eluding police.
He was convicted in 1992 in federal court for possessing a pipe bomb, according to prosecutors.
Christian Dinges, from Buchanan, Mich., visits a memorial located at the Berrien County Sheriff Department in St. Joseph, Mich., Wednesday, July 13, 2016. Two court officers were shot and killed Monday by an inmate at the courthouse. (Don Campbell/The Herald-Palladium via AP)
Visitors look at a memorial located at the Berrien County Sheriff Department in St. Joseph, Mich., Wednesday, July 13, 2016. Two court officers were shot and killed Monday by an inmate at the courthouse. (Don Campbell/The Herald-Palladium via AP)
Flowers, candles, and messages are left at a memorial located at the Berrien County Sheriff Department in St. Joseph, Mich., Wednesday, July 13, 2016. Two court officers were shot and killed Monday by an inmate at the courthouse. (Don Campbell/The Herald-Palladium via AP)
Former Sen. Bayh says he'll seek Indiana Senate seat again
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) Democrat Evan Bayh launched a bid Wednesday to recapture the Indiana Senate seat he left six years ago, a move that boosts his party's chances to pick up the Republican-held seat in their effort to regain control of the chamber this fall.
Bayh, 60, cited frustration with Washington gridlock when he retired in 2010 after two Senate terms. He said a recruitment push by national Democrats didn't sway his decision to seek a political comeback.
"The dysfunction in Washington has gotten even worse over the last six years," he told The Associated Press. "We have challenges that face our country and our families that aren't being met. I want to be a part of the solution to the challenges that we face by helping to bring people together, bridging some of the partisan divides that have separated our country."
In this photo taken May 1, 2016, former Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh speaks in Indianapolis. Bayh is expected to make another run for Senate in Indiana, Democratic officials said Monday, July 11, 2016, a development that would dramatically improve the party's chances to win back the vacant seat, and Senate control along with it. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)
Bayh's announcement came two days after former U.S. Rep. Baron Hill cleared the way by withdrawing as the Democratic nominee for the seat held by Republican Sen. Dan Coats, who is retiring.
"If he thought it was dysfunctional and partisan then, welcome back, it was nothing like it is today," Coats said.
Hill was not considered a strong candidate to take on GOP nominee U.S. Rep. Todd Young, who was backed by Republican establishment figures in the state's May primary against a tea party favorite.
National Democrats pushed for Bayh to enter the race, where he will have advantages of name identification and campaign cash over Young.
Since word of Bayh's candidacy emerged on Monday, Republicans have attacked Bayh for remaining in Washington, where he has been a partner at the McGuireWoods law firm and joined several corporate boards since leaving the Senate.
Young said Bayh, whose father, Birch Bayh, was a three-term senator, is a member of the political elite and the "fortunate son" of Indiana Democratic politics.
"Changing the system does not benefit Evan Bayh," Young said. "Evan Bayh looks out for one one individual, not one party. The name of that individual is Evan Bayh, Washington lobbyist."
Bayh, who was a two-term governor before winning his first Senate election in 1998, said he's never been a lobbyist and shifted away from questions about his post-Senate career.
"This election needs to be about middle class families and what we can do to meet their challenges," Bayh said. "Not about a bunch of politicians tearing each other down."
Democrats need to net four or five seats to win back Senate control four if they hang onto the White House and can send the vice president to break ties in the Senate; five if they don't. With a handful of competitive races around the country, one seat can make all the difference, and putting Indiana in play could be crucial.
Even if Bayh can't win his old seat back, his candidacy would force Republicans to spend money in a state they had no plans to invest in. The latest federal reports show that Bayh had nearly $9.3 million in his campaign account at the end of March, while Young's campaign announced Monday that he had about $1.2 million in the bank on June 30.
Bayh's absence from politics won't hurt him much despite the Indiana trending Republican in recent years, said former Fort Wayne Mayor Paul Helmke, a Republican who lost to Bayh in the 1998 Senate race.
"All the sudden Todd Young has gone from being the favorite to being the underdog," said Helmke, an Indiana University public affairs professor. "All the sudden, rather than being in a positon where they have a money advantage, they have a disadvantage."
While Republicans are attacking Bayh for living and working in Washington after leaving the Senate, Helmke pointed out that Coats survived similar criticism from Democrats in 2010 when he made his own Senate comeback after 12 years out of office.
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Aircraft carrier group returns home; fought Islamic State
NORFOLK, Va. (AP) An aircraft carrier strike group returned home to Norfolk on Wednesday, ending an extended deployment that supported the battle against Islamic State forces in Iraq and Syria.
More than 6,000 sailors disembarked from the USS Harry S. Truman and other ships. A stream of white uniforms flowed into a crowd of about 10,000 people waiting on a pier.
The sailors deployed in November, just days after the terrorist attacks in Paris. Back home on Wednesday, some reflected on their fight against terrorism, dozens saw their infant children for the first time. Many made plans to eat the food they craved during their eight-month tour.
Five-year-old Adley Lausch, cries as she gets a kiss from her father, Lt., Adam Lausch, after he disembarked the nuclear powered aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman at Naval Station Norfolk in Norfolk, Va., Wednesday, July 13, 2016. The Truman returns after supporting missions over Iraq and Syria. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)
The Navy extended the group's time at sea by about a month, sending the Truman group from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean Sea, where it continued to launch strikes against Islamic State militants.
The Navy says the order demonstrated the power of the American military, which has helped allies reclaim 45 percent of ISIS-controlled territory in Iraq and 20 percent of the land in Syria.
'WE'RE A PART OF HELPING'
Kevin Gillespie, 27, a military police officer from Los Angeles, said he knows they helped make a difference.
"The news trickles into us on the ship," Gillespie said. "And we continued to hear about what happened in Paris, and then in San Bernardino, in Orlando and everywhere else. And every time we hear it, it feels good to know we're a part of helping to stop this horrible organization."
Now, he's mostly thinking about eating good food and showering alone, he said.
"Every time you do a deployment it reminds you of the little things you take for granted," he said, "like cellphones, your bed, your privacy."
'STANDING UP ON MY OWN TWO FEET'
Jeffrey Miller, 22, a specialist who maintains aircraft tires and helicopter propellers, said he was shaking after meeting his 7-month-old son Jhorden for the first time.
It's an "amazing" feeling, he said. The monthlong extension of his first deployment "tore him up on the inside."
Miller said the eight months made him more independent, particularly after he couldn't speak with his family for weeks at a time, and emails were delayed for days.
"It was hard dealing with," said Miller, who lives in Norfolk but grew up in Greensboro, North Carolina. "But I'm standing up on my own two feet now."
'WISH THERE WASN'T A NEED FOR WAR'
Lt. Shane Kigin cradled his 5-month-old son, Henry, as the infant chewed on the sleeve of his uniform. The family's immediate plan: finding air conditioning, and a burrito. Then, they plan to move from Texas to Norfolk, where Kigin works as a tactical action officer to defend the Truman from attacks.
"I wish there wasn't a need for war," he said. "I wish there weren't people who wanted to hurt others. But because there are and because this is the calling I have, I feel blessed to have served at this very important time in our history."
Sharva Wilson, right, of Dallas, cries as she hugs her sister, Petty Officer Shalecia Jamerson, after Jamerson disembarked the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Harry S. Truman at Naval Station Norfolk in Norfolk, Va., Wednesday, July 13, 2016. The Truman returnsedafter supporting missions over Iraq and Syria. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)
Commander Clark Crane, gets a hug from his daughters as he disembarks the nuclear powered aircraft carrier Harry S. Truman at Naval Station Norfolk in Norfolk, Va., Wednesday, July 13, 2016. The Truman returns after supporting missions over Iraq and Syria. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)
A sailor is hugged by family as he disembarks the nuclear powered aircraft carrier Harry S. Truman at Naval Station Norfolk in Norfolk, Va., Wednesday, July 13, 2016. The Truman returns after supporting missions over Iraq and Syria. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)
Navy security keeps a close eye as the nuclear powered aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman arrives at Naval Station Norfolk in Norfolk, Va., Wednesday, July 13, 2016. The Truman returns after supporting missions over Iraq and Syria. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)
Carman Garcia, of Port Saint Lucie Fla., holds a sign as she awaits the arrival of the nuclear powered aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman at Naval Station Norfolk in Norfolk, Va., Wednesday, July 13, 2016. The Truman returns after supporting missions over Iraq and Syria. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)
Sailors crowd the gate as they make their way off the pier after disembarking the USS Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier at Naval Station Norfolk in Norfolk, Va., Wednesday, July 13, 2016. The Truman returned after supporting missions in Iraq and Syria. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)
Raphael Godette, of Detroit, jumps over a fence after greeting family as the nuclear powered aircraft carrier Harry S. Truman arrived at Naval Station Norfolk in Norfolk, Va., Wednesday, July 13, 2016. The Truman returns after supporting missions over Iraq and Syria. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)
Petty Officer Mitchell Pelton, of Conn., hugs his girlfriend, Keisha Lang, of Virginia Beach, Va., as the nuclear powered aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman arrives at Naval Station Norfolk in Norfolk, Va., Wednesday, July 13, 2016, after supporting missions over Iraq and Syria. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)
Friends and family of sailors aboard the the nuclear powered aircraft carrier Harry S. Truman wave to the ship as it arrives at Naval Station Norfolk in Norfolk, Va., Wednesday, July 13, 2016, after supporting missions over Iraq and Syria. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)
Sailors aboard the nuclear powered aircraft carrier Harry S. Truman wave to the crowd as the ship arrives at Naval Station Norfolk in Norfolk, Va., Wednesday, July 13, 2016, after supporting missions over Iraq and Syria. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)
Zarah Pachacios watches as the nuclear powered aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman arrives at Naval Station Norfolk in Norfolk, Va., Wednesday, July 13, 2016. The Truman returns after supporting missions over Iraq and Syria. Pachacios was waiting for her uncle to come ashore. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)
Angie Spears waves to her husband Cmdr. Victor Spears, as the nuclear powered aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman arrives at Naval Station Norfolk in Norfolk, Va., Wednesday, July 13, 2016, after supporting missions over Iraq and Syria. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)
Sailors man the rails as the nuclear powered aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman arrives at Naval Station Norfolk in Norfolk, Va., Wednesday, July 13, 2016, after supporting missions over Iraq and Syria. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)
Sailors man the rails as the nuclear powered aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman arrives at Naval Station Norfolk in Norfolk, Va., Wednesday, July 13, 2016, after supporting missions over Iraq and Syria. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)
Colorado deputies release bear that got stuck in car
GOLDEN, Colo. (AP) It's a locked room mystery with a twist: Instead of a room, it was a car, and instead of a victim, it was an inquisitive bear.
The Jefferson County Sheriff's Office in Colorado got a call about the bear who managed to get into a Subaru wagon without breaking any windows. The car's owner even said all the doors were closed.
The bear got trapped in the car, leaving a pair of deputies to find a way to get it out.
One deputy, who recorded the escapade on his cellphone, decided to open the hatch, while the other stood guard nearby with a shotgun.
The Tennessee Department of Finance and Administration reported that total tax revenues in the month of June were more than budgeted expectations. Finance and Administration Commissioner Larry Martin reported Tuesday that June ended with a net positive growth of 6.16% compared to taxes in the same month last year. Overall June revenues were $1.3 billion, which is $112.8 million more than the state budgeted.June sales tax revenues recorded much slower growth than previous months, which was not expected, Comm.Martin said. However, June brought us stronger than anticipated collections from corporate business taxes and well above budgeted expectations for all other tax sources combined.On an accrual basis, June is the eleventh month in the 2015-2016 fiscal year.General fund revenues exceeded the budgeted estimate in the amount of $105.3 million. The four other funds that share in state tax revenues were also in excess of budgeted expectations by $7.5 million.Sales tax revenues were $1.2 million more than the estimate for June. The June growth rate was 1.28%. For eleven months revenues are over budget by $346.2 million. The year-to-date growth rate for eleven months was 7.18%.Franchise and excise taxes combined were $85.3 million more than the budgeted estimate of $313.1 million. The growth rate for June was 11.85%. For eleven months revenues are $372.0 million more than the budget estimate. The year-to-date growth rate was 5.11%; however, after factoring out the one-time tax payments received last year, the effective growth rate for 11 months is approximately 13.10%.Privilege tax revenues were $11.1 million more than the June estimate. For 11 months, revenues are $34.8 million more than the budgeted estimate.Business tax revenues were $3.1 million less than the June estimate. Year-to-date revenues for 11 months are $11.6 million more than the budgeted estimate.Inheritance and estate taxes were $4.9 million more than the June estimate. For 11 months revenues are $19.0 million more than the budgeted estimate.Hall income tax revenues for June were $5.1 million more than the budgeted estimate. For 11 months, revenues are $56.0 million more than the budgeted estimate.Tobacco tax revenues were $1.8 million more than the budgeted estimate of $20.7 million. For 11 months revenues are $16.4 million in excess of the year-to-date estimate.Gasoline and motor fuel revenues for June exceed estimates by $3.2 million. For 11 months revenues are over estimates by $35.2 million.All other taxes for June exceeded budgeted estimates by a net of $3.3 million.Year-to-date revenues for 11 months were $911.2 million more than the budgeted estimate. The general fund recorded revenues in the amount of $841.1 million more than the budgeted estimates, and the four other funds $70.1 million more than the budgeted estimate.The budgeted revenue estimates for 2015-2016 are based on the State Funding Boards consensus recommendation of December 16, 2014 and adopted by the first session of the 109th General Assembly in April 2015. Also incorporated in the estimates are any changes in revenue enacted during the 2015 session of the General Assembly. These estimates are available on the states website at http://www.tn.gov/finance/article/fa-budget-rev.On November 13, 2015, the Funding Board met to hear updated revenue projections from the states various economists. Meeting again on November 23, 2015, the board adopted revised recurring revenue growth ranges for the 2015-2016 fiscal year. The current fiscal years revised ranges recognize growth in total taxes from a low of 2.80% to a high of 3.30%, and a general fund growth from a low of 2.90% to a high of 3.40%.On April 14, 2016, in the second session of the 109th General Assembly, the legislature passed the 2016-2017 budget, which included the Funding Boards current year revised ranges. The governor signed the budget bill on April 21, 2016.With passage of the appropriations act, Public chapter 758, the General Assembly recognized an additional $376.1 million in total tax revenue and a corresponding increase in general fund revenues in the amount of $355.0 million for the current fiscal year.
Ginsburg's public Trump critique raises ethical quandaries
WASHINGTON (AP) Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's public criticism of Donald Trump is dividing legal experts over whether the leader of the court's liberal wing should recuse herself in any future case involving him.
In an interview last week with The Associated Press, Ginsburg presumed Democrat Hillary Clinton will be the next president. Asked her thoughts on the possibility of a Trump win, she said, "I don't want to think about that possibility," and amplified her view in two subsequent interviews.
She called Trump a "faker" who "really has an ego," in a CNN interview. To the New York Times, she said: "I can't imagine what this place would be I can't imagine what the country would be with Donald Trump as our president."
FILE - In this Feb. 4, 2015 file photo, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg speaks at Georgetown University Law Center in Washington. Ginsburgs public criticism of Donald Trump is dividing legal experts over whether the leader of the courts liberal wing should recuse herself in any future case involving him. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta, File)
Trump quickly fired back at Ginsburg, who was appointed to the high court in 1993 by his opponent's husband, former President Bill Clinton. He tweeted Wednesday that the 83-year-old justice was an embarrassment for making "very dumb political statements about me. Her mind is shot - resign!"
Other Republicans have chimed in, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who called Ginsburg's remarks "totally inappropriate."
"She oughta stay out of it," said Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R, Iowa). "It hurts the court when she does that."
While Ginsburg's remarks were relatively tame in an era of hyper-partisanship, experts in legal ethics told AP that she likely ran afoul of Canon 5 of the Code of Judicial Conduct, which says a federal judge "should not . publicly endorse or oppose a candidate for public office."
"This is nothing casual," said Arthur D. Hellman, a professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law. "The aim, I suppose, is to influence the election. ... If a lower-court judge had said those things, they would be subject to disciplinary proceeding."
But those rules aren't legally binding on Supreme Court justices, who as the highest ranking officials in the U.S. justice system are the final arbiters of their own legal ethics.
Ginsburg has been increasingly willing to publicly discuss issues involving the court. She has used media interviews to tamp down speculation about her retirement, especially after she had an operation for pancreatic cancer in 2009 and following the death of her husband the next year.
Ginsburg had previously said she expected a Democrat to win in 2016, meaning she could delay retiring because her replacement would be chosen by a member of that party. But before last week's comments about Trump, she had never dipped so boldly into partisan politics.
Stephen Gillers, professor at New York University School of Law, called Ginsburg's comments "imprudent." He pointed to a federal law that states, "Any justice, judge, or magistrate judge of the United States shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned."
What if a situation were to arise this year like that in Bush v. Gore, the case in which the Supreme Court decided the outcome of the 2000 presidential election on a partisan 5-4 vote? Gillers said it is theoretically possible that Chief Justice John Roberts and the rest of Ginsburg's colleagues could vote to force her to recuse herself.
But in the long history of the precedent-bound Supreme Court, that has never happened, he said.
"The court defers routinely to the decision of the justice," he said. "If Ginsburg declined to recuse herself in such a case that would be the end of the story. The court will not review it."
Further, said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California-Irvine School of Law, it's not as if Ginsburg's political views are a surprise to anyone who has watched or read her opinions on the court for the last 22 years.
"Everyone knows she is a liberal Democrat," he said.
While it's the expectation these days that judges keep their political views private, Supreme Court members haven't always been divorced from partisan activities.
One hundred years ago, Charles Evans Hughes won the Republican presidential nomination on the third ballot at the party's national convention in Chicago, and only then resigned his Supreme Court seat.
Justice William Douglas regularly played cards with FDR. Justice Abe Fortas continued secretly advising President Lyndon Johnson after he put Fortas on the court in 1965. President Richard Nixon and Chief Justice Warren Burger met at the White House the spring night in 1970 Nixon told the nation U.S. forces had invaded Cambodia. Nixon later said he told Burger to be ready to run for president in 1972 if the public turned against Nixon.
President Barack Obama's spokesman on Wednesday declined to respond directly to Ginsburg's comments, but praised her overall competence.
"She has demonstrated a keen intellect, an understanding of the law, and a commitment to making sure it's applied fairly to every American citizen," said White House spokesman Josh Earnest.
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Associated Press reporters Barbara Rodriguez in Des Moines, Iowa, and Josh Lederman in Washington contributed to this report.
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Court upholds conviction of mother in newborn twins' death
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) A court has upheld the first-degree murder convictions of a woman serving at least 51 years in prison for the 2011 smothering deaths of her infant twins.
The Tennessean (http://tnne.ws/29IXhYf) reports that the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals on Tuesday rejected an appeal for a new trial for 29-year-old Lindsey Lowe of Hendersonville.
Lowe's attorney David Raybin argued before the three-judge panel in August 2015 that Lowe was not read her rights and was denied an attorney during questioning. He said as a result, her videotaped confession to investigators before her arrest should never have been used as evidence.
Prosecutors disputed those notions. The officers twice read Lowe her rights, Assistant Attorney General Leslie Price said. Citing case law, Price argued that Lowe waived those rights when she continued to talk. She also said Lowe was free to leave the police station at any time.
"After a thorough review of the record and the applicable law, we affirm the judgments of the trial court," said judges John Everett Williams, Norma McGee Ogle and Robert W. Wedemeyer in their 71-page ruling.
The defense team plans to appeal the decision, Raybin said.
"While I appreciate the thoroughness of the court's review, we are disappointed with the result," Raybin said. "And we are certainly going to appeal to the Supreme Court and ask them to review the case with fresh eyes."
Lowe was found guilty of two counts each of first-degree murder and aggravated child abuse in March 2013.
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NY candidate's Quaker faith prompts threatening online posts
ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) New York State Police have been asked to investigate threatening online comments directed at state Senate candidate Sara Niccoli, whose Quaker faith prohibits her from reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.
The comments called for Niccoli's death or banishment from the United States. They were posted on a Facebook page that criticized her refusal to say the pledge. The page has since been deleted.
"She is not a patriot," read one of the few comments that did not contain profanity. "She should be thrown out of whatever position she holds. Then put on a terrorist watch list."
Quaker teaching instructs adherents not to swear oaths. Niccoli stands while the pledge is recited but does not participate.
Two local officials from Palatine, Niccoli's hometown, wrote to the State Police and Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Tuesday seeking an investigation. The letter from Town Boardmembers Hank Vandenburgh and Niel Yerdon seeks protection for Niccoli and asks that investigators determine who created the Facebook page.
"Due to the heightened political rhetoric and charged atmosphere, these threats must be taken seriously," the letter reads.
The State Police issued a statement saying "we are aware of the matter" and the agency is reviewing the request.
Niccoli, a Democrat and currently the Palatine town supervisor, said Wednesday that she believes the attacks were orchestrated by her opponent in the upstate Senate race, Republican Sen. George Amedore of Rotterdam.
"This is coming from his backers and it's dangerous," said Niccoli, whose family operates a farm in Montgomery County. "It incites violence. It oppresses religious freedom. I'm not going to be bullied."
Amedore and his campaign denied any responsibility for the comments.
"Nobody should be attacked for practicing their religious beliefs. If she doesn't recite the Pledge based on that, it's her choice," Amedore said in a statement. "I personally choose to so I can show my respect for the veterans and the service men and women who fight and have fought for our country, and to give thanks for the blessings that God has given this nation."
Ski resort's chairlift fails; no skiers around, no one hurt
PORTLAND, Maine (AP) Maine has recorded its third major ski resort chairlift failure in six years, but this time no one was hurt because it happened in the summer when the lift was not in operation.
The top unloading terminal of Sunday River's Spruce Peak Triple lift separated from the ground and toppled over, causing the cable and chairs to drop.
Spokeswoman Darcy Lambert says a resort worker noticed it Sunday evening and engineers are on the scene to determine what happened. No decision has been made on whether to repair or replace the 30-year-old lift.
In this Monday, July 11, 2016 photo provided by the Sunday River ski resort, wreckage of the top unloading terminal of the resort's Spruce Peak Triple ski lift is scattered on the ground after it detached from the foundation in Newry, Maine. A resort worker first noticed it Sunday evening, and engineers are trying to determine what happened. It was Maine's third major ski resort chairlift failure in six years. The lift was not in operation at the time, and there were no injuries. (Nick Lambert/Sunday River via AP)
The incident follows a pair of chairlift failures at Sugarloaf. In 2015 a lift rolled backward, and in 2010 some chairs dropped. About 15 were hurt in those two incidents.
IS says senior commander al-Shishani killed in Iraq
BEIRUT (AP) An Islamic State-run media outlet says Omar al-Shishani, one of the group's top military commanders, has been killed in fighting near the Iraqi city of Mosul.
U.S. and Iraqi officials, as well as Syrian activists, said in March that al-Shishani, who was in his 30s, had died of wounds sustained in a U.S. airstrike in Syria.
But the IS-run Aamaq news agency reported Wednesday that al-Shishani was "martyred" in the town of al-Shirqat, near Mosul, while helping to "halt the military campaign" against the IS-held city. IS supporters published eulogies to al-Shishani on social media and messaging networks.
Aamaq had denied that al-Shishani was killed in March, without providing evidence that he was alive.
West Virginia girl still missing 3 weeks after floods
CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) During the little rest James Phillips gets since his daughter vanished, his mind rumbles with flashes of horror.
In his nightmares, Phillips imagines himself as his 14-year-old daughter, Mykala. There are trees. There's a wall that she's trying to see under. There's water.
His sleep never lasts long and he wakes up to a reality far worse: his daughter hasn't been found since she was torn from her brother's grip and an extension cord keeping them together after a raging flood ripped their home off its foundation June 23.
In a Friday, July 1, 2016 photo, the Phillips family home sits several feet away from its broken foundation at the end of Mill Hill Drive in White Sulphur Springs, WV. The family is still searching for 14-year-old Mykala Phillips. Mykala went missing as she was trying to escape from the house with family members during the flood on June 23. Phillips is the only person still unaccounted for from the floods that killed 22 others in West Virginia. (Sam Owens/Charleston Gazette-Mail via AP)
He heard her screaming as the water washed her away.
Hope that the family will ever see her again seems to be slipping away, too.
"I have come to terms with the fact that we might not find her at all," her mother, Becky Carter Phillips, told The Associated Press on Wednesday. "It's all still shock."
Mykala Phillips is the only person still unaccounted for from the floods that killed 22 others in West Virginia. That includes 14 in Greenbrier County, where an estimated 9 inches of rain fell over a 36-hour period.
Search teams have scoured a seven-mile area along Howard's Creek. The effort has involved hundreds of National Guard members, police and fire units, volunteers and even employees of the local Greenbrier resort. County Sheriff Jan Cahill said Wednesday that they have used divers, canoes, boats, helicopters, drones and cadaver dogs.
A 44-year-old woman was found elsewhere in the county more than 30 miles from her home earlier this month, more than a week after the flood. It was a bleak reminder of the scope of the flood's devastation and the challenge that authorities face to bring closure to families.
On June 23, the floodwaters poured into the Phillips' small home. It rose at least 6 feet, forcing the father and his three children to climb out a window while their mom was at work.
Phillips tied the children together with extension cords that he held onto, and the one brother gripped his siblings, too. But the water's power snapped the cord and slipped the brother's grip, sending Mykala into the current. She went in one direction, her brothers ages 15 and 7 went another.
"We could hear her hollering," James Phillips said. "But we couldn't see her anymore. When my daughter wasn't there, that's the scariest part of my life."
Phillips said he was forced underwater by the current and felt himself bump into the hood of his car. They eventually grabbed a gutter and held onto it until the floodwaters began to recede.
At midafternoon, Becky Carter Phillips started heading home on foot from her job at the resort. The 15-minute walk to her street took two hours. The floodwaters prevented her from going any further.
"You couldn't see the road. It wasn't nothing but water," she said.
James Phillips and the boys were in the waters nine hours before being rescued.
While the boys only had scrapes, Phillips sustained fractures in his right foot, hurt a knee, reinjured his back and knocked out multiple teeth. He counted the ones that are left 11 and most of those are cracked. He didn't seek medical help until the next day.
Phillips' injuries prevented him from helping in the subsequent search for his daughter.
"I can't go look myself," he said. "That's the worst part of all of this."
The Phillips family lost everything in the flood. They found another home they intend to buy but are struggling to come up the money to pay for it. James Phillips has been out of work as a certified mechanic due to his chronic back problems. He describes his working wife as the "rock" of the family who takes care of most needs in the household.
On the day of the floods, Mykala posted a selfie photo on her Facebook page. That photo has since been reposted on multiple tribute pages.
She loved music, talking on the phone, drawing artwork and was willing to help anyone in a time of need.
"She would try to do anything, even if she didn't know how. She would try to do it," said Amy Morrison, whose son, Joshua, was dating her. "She was here on Father's Day. I was on a walker. She said, 'well, if you tell me how, I can make the biscuits for the meal.'"
James Phillips said his daughter was going to be a teacher at a Bible school this year. He said he wants the public to "pray and keep hoping that they find her."
For now, Phillips consumes energy drinks to stay awake "and put on a face to stay strong" for his sons.
"You never want them out of your sight, I can tell you that," he said.
Nun who stood up to Billy the Kid to be subject of TV series
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) An Italian-born nun who once challenged Billy the Kid, calmed angry mobs, opened hospitals and schools in the American Southwest and is now on a path toward possible Sainthood soon will be the subject of a TV series.
Saint Hood Productions based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, announced Wednesday a new project around Sister Blandina Segale a 19th-Century nun whose clashes with Old West outlaws and work with immigrants has been the stuff of legend.
"At the End of the Santa Fe Trail" aims to be a fictional account based on Segale's life and largely will use material from her 1932 book with the same name. That book consisted of Segale's letters she wrote to her sister about the lawlessness in Trinidad, Colorado, and in Albuquerque and Santa Fe, New Mexico. She also discussed working with immigrants and prisoners.
FILE - In this Aug. 25, 2015 file photo, pamphlets and prayer cards of Sister Blandina Segale sit on a table at the Catholic Center in Albuquerque, N.M. The Italian-born nun who once challenged Billy the Kid and later opened New Mexico hospitals and schools will soon be the subject of a television series. (AP Photo/Russell Contreras, File)
Her encounters with Old West outlaws later became the subject of an episode of the CBS series "Death Valley Days," titled "The Fastest Nun in the West."
According to one story, she received a tip that Billy the Kid was coming to her town to scalp four doctors who refused to treat his friend's gunshot wound. Segale nursed the friend to health, and when Billy went to Trinidad to thank her, she convinced him to abandon his violent plan.
Allen Sanchez, president and CEO of CHI St. Joseph's Children an Albuquerque community health organization born of Segale's work said the nun is a perfect subject for a television series since many of the same issues she faced still resonate.
"She saw a divided country. She fought violence with nonviolence. She worked to stop discrimination against immigrants," Sanchez said. "These are all things we are seeing today."
The new production comes as Albuquerque has become a popular filming location for television series, ranging for AMC-TV's "Breaking Bad" and "Better Call Saul" and NBC's "The Night Shift."
It also comes just as the Roman Catholic Church is examining Segale for Sainthood.
In October, the Archdiocese of Santa Fe formally closed its inquiry on why the legendary nun should become a saint and sent its findings to the Vatican.
The public inquiry, headed by former Archbishop Michael Sheehan, was aimed at determining if there was enough evidence to move her case through the largely secret process at the Vatican.
Witnesses said Segale fought against the cruel treatment of American Indians and sought to stop the trafficking of women as sex slaves. They also testified that in death, Segale has helped cancer patients and poor immigrants who have prayed to her for help.
It's the first time in New Mexico's 400-year history with the Roman Catholic Church that an inquiry was completed in the state on the cause of beatification and canonization.
Officials say determining whether Segale qualifies for sainthood could take up to a century. The Vatican has to investigate her work and monitor for any related "miracles."
Segale, a nun with the Sisters of Charity of Cincinnati and an advocate for Hispanics and Native Americans, founded schools in New Mexico and St. Joseph Hospital, a predecessor of the Albuquerque health organization. She worked as an educator and social worker in Ohio, Colorado and New Mexico.
Tomas Sanchez, executive producer and director of the Segale production, said 98 percent of the cast and crew will be from New Mexico.
"I am honored to tell Sister Blandina's story," he said. "This task requires lots of attention to history and demands that we hire the best New Mexican cast and crew to execute some very technically challenging film sequences."
Officials said the production is working on finding a network to air the series.
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Follow Russell Contreras on Twitter at http://twitter.com/russcontreras . His work can be found at http://bigstory.ap.org/content/russell-contreras
FILE--In this June 25, 2014, file photo, Archbishop Michael Sheehan talks to reporters at St. Joseph Community Health in Albuquerque, N.M., during an announcement the Archdiocese of Santa Fe is exploring sainthood for Sister Blandina Segale. Segale, an Italian-born nun who once challenged Billy the Kid and later opened New Mexico hospitals and schools, will soon be the subject of a television series. (AP Photo/Russell Contreras, file)
Editorial Roundup: Excerpts from recent editorials
Excerpts from recent editorials in the United States and abroad:
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July 13
The Dallas Morning News on President Obama's remarks at a police memorial in Dallas:
Dallas' response in the days since five of our police officers were murdered demonstrates that our city can help show America how to heal its divisions over race and ease tensions over police violence.
That was the message President Barack Obama delivered Tuesday, and we couldn't agree more.
The shooter, Obama noted, was motivated by racial hatred, but the white officers he killed had been motivated by love and service. Dallas has responded with more love and unity in the days since.
That's a recipe for hope, the president said.
"We are not as divided as we seem," he said. "And I know that because I know America. I know how far we've come against impossible odds. ... And I know it because of what we've seen here in Dallas."
We weren't waiting for the President to tell us we've done what is right. We feel it in our bones, and see it in our neighbors' faces. But the words are welcome anyway.
The truth is, even before any of Tuesday's speeches, the service at the Meyerson Symphony Center was poignant and pitch-perfect. It was an appropriate capstone for five painful days that, despite our tears, have showed Dallas at its best.
Inside, the choir music was soothing and somber. The building itself, one of Dallas' finest, was transcendent. The large, diverse crowd was still and solemn.
Outside, a soft breeze blowing under a blue sky seemed to somehow gentle the punishing summer heat. Protesters were all around, but their signs called for love to triumph over hate. Officers from Grand Prairie and Arlington stood vigil.
And when the service began, Mayor Mike Rawlings spoke for all of us when, with two presidents, a vice president, and their wives, seated to his right, he welcomed a nation watching on live television. "Our pain is your pain," he said.
Dallas Police chief David Brown's Stevie Wonder moment will not soon be forgotten, nor the cheers it brought. Sen. John Cornyn praised our fallen officers powerfully, and still called on all of us to have needed conversations about race and criminal justice.
Former President George W. Bush spoke for us when he told America that we have lost five members of our family. He reminded us, too, that Americans can dream their biggest dreams when men and women in uniform stand guard. He added, gently, that those guardians do best when they are trusted, trained and accountable.
But it was Obama who said the things that most needed saying. Words, he warned, are inadequate.
"I've seen how inadequate words can be in bringing about lasting change. I've seen how inadequate my own words have been," he said.
He went beyond words, however, when he urged us to confront the racism we too often ignore. It is real, and the protesters like the ones in our streets last Thursday speak from places of pain and desperation. We must hear them even as we honor our police.
That's what Dallas can do, and the good news is we've already begun.
As Obama said: "Weeping may endure for a night but I'm convinced joy comes in the morning."
Online:
http://www.dallasnews.com/
___
July 13
The Telegraph, United Kingdom, on the resignation of Prime Minister David Cameron:
Politics is a brutal business. David Cameron thought he had a few more months in Downing Street but the removal vans were at the back door to Number 10 yesterday, taking his belongings away in preparation for the arrival of his successor.
In one of his final duties, he chaired a meeting of the Cabinet and received the plaudits of his colleagues for his achievements, not least of which is his length of tenure. At six years and 63 days, his time in office is more than halfway up the list of British premiers, ahead of Peel, Lloyd George, Heath and Callaghan.
He is young enough to carve out a new career. Mr Cameron has always given the impression of being a man not entirely wedded to politics who can offer much wise advice to Theresa May from the backbenches should he remain in the Commons, which we hope he does. He is grounded by his young family and the support of his wife, Samantha, who after the emotional roller-coaster of the past few weeks may welcome some normality in their lives.
Mr Cameron will hope he is not remembered only for the referendum on EU membership. As he says today, he inherited an economic mess yet leaves behind a stronger country, a thriving economy and more chances to get on in life.
Moreover, the referendum may have been a personal calamity but it was the right thing to do: the country did need to be asked again whether it wished to continue with the UK's relationship with Europe. As the vote of June 23 testified, a majority did not.
In the immediate aftermath, there has been economic uncertainty and political tumult; but the long-term legacy could well be benign, though whether Mr Cameron will then be thanked for it is another matter.
But we need to go back to when Mr Cameron became party leader in 2005 to get the true measure of his success. The Conservatives had endured their third defeat at the hands of Tony Blair and Mr Cameron appreciated they had a problem among voters whose support was needed to win an election.
He had watched Mr Blair with an admiration that some Tories found inappropriate. But the Labour leader had defined himself against the Left-wing traditions of his party to reach out to centre-ground voters. Could the Tories do the same by "modernising" their image?
Mr Cameron was quoted describing himself as "the heir to Blair" even if he has denied saying it. But he wanted the Tory appeal to extend far beyond their traditional shire-based, true-blue voters.
He became an enthusiastic environmentalist, a penal reformer, a supporter of minority rights and a Tory who wished to share out "the proceeds of growth". His ambition was to create a Big Society, with everyone in it together - an impression that was hard to pull off when he and many of his closest colleagues came from privileged backgrounds.
After a succession of grammar school-educated leaders, it seemed like a backward step for the Tories to elect an Old Etonian, once a passport to power yet perversely now seen as a political handicap.
His moment of greatest peril came early in his leadership when Mr Blair resigned and Gordon Brown momentarily toyed with holding a general election, only to flinch from a contest many thought he would have won.
When the financial crisis hit in 2008, Mr Brown found himself vulnerable to the charge of failing to prepare the country for the shock.
But while the sudden end to years of growth knocked Labour for six it also unravelled Conservative plans predicated upon the boom continuing. In his search for new voters Mr Cameron had succeeded in alienating traditionalist Tories, many of whom left to join Ukip.
Partly as a consequence of losing some of this base, he failed to win the 2010 election but forged a successful alliance with the Lib Dems that sustained their coalition in office for five years, longer than many had predicted.
He was able to push ahead with reforms to education, with Michael Gove in the vanguard, and to welfare benefits. On the foreign stage, the triumphant removal of Col Gaddafi in Libya has subsequently been undermined by a failure to plan for the aftermath.
At home, the Scottish independence referendum was a moment of peril for Mr Cameron but the Nationalists were beaten and he went on to win the 2010 election, obtaining an outright Tory majority for the first time since 1992.
In doing so, the Lib Dems were all but wiped out and Labour crushed by the loss of virtually their entire Scottish representation to the SNP. Suddenly, Mr Cameron seemed to have an unchallenged opportunity to pursue his One Nation agenda and dish his Left-of centre rivals for good.
There was just the small matter of the European referendum to get past and Mr Cameron, having confounded so many predictions of his likely demise, believed that would be won, too.
He was wrong and his fate was sealed. Mr Cameron once said he wanted to be prime minister because he thought he would be good at it; and to an extent he was.
In Parliament and on the world stage, he looked and sounded the part, almost born to it. We wish him well.
Online:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/
___
July 13
The Advocate of Baton Rouge, Louisiana on the shooting death of Alton Sterling by police:
East Baton Rouge Parish District Attorney Hillar Moore III made news Monday in recusing himself from the case of Alton Sterling, the black man shot to death by Baton Rouge police during a struggle at a local convenience store on July 5.
Federal investigators are probing the shooting, but Moore could have had a role in determining whether to bring a local case against the officers if the feds decide not to pursue one. In sidelining himself, Moore said he's long known the parents of one of the officers involved in the incident. Because of his recusal, Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry can assign any potential case to another DA, or handle such a case through his office.
Moore cited ethical concerns in removing himself from the case, but his recusal also lifts a political burden from his back. The Sterling case is so polarizing that any choice Moore made in handling it could have angered a large block of voters.
Moore's decision underscores a vivid reality. Sterling's shooting, which has attracted international attention, has become not only a legal issue, but a political one.
Sterling's family, as well as the officers who were present when he was killed, deserve a fair, impartial investigation that's aimed at winning justice, not a popularity contest.
We must safeguard the rule of law, which protects not only citizens, but the police officers who face dangers such as those in Dallas last week, and, closer to home, from a reported threat to kill Baton Rouge police officers.
But as the legal aspects of the shooting play out, the case is already resonating politically most profoundly, of course, in Baton Rouge, where Sterling's death has sharpened a racial divide that's complicated community progress for generations.
While matters of law lean toward narrow questions of who did what, and when, and why, the politics of this tragedy, like politics in general, has been diffuse, touching on the usual barriers to racial progress the economic stagnation of the inner city, educational gaps between blacks and whites, the possibility of profiling by police here and elsewhere.
Those issues were already circulating in the civic life of Baton Rouge before Sterling's death, most visibly in recent discussions about the lack of opportunity in largely black north Baton Rouge.
In the most recent phase of this public conversation, Baton Rouge's political patriarch, Mayor-President Kip Holden, has been largely silent. His muted voice, while unusual, perhaps signals that the post-Holden phase of the city's life has already begun. The mayor leaves office at year's end, and his successor will deal with the long-term implications of the Sterling case, however it unfolds.
But no mayor or police chief, governor or district attorney can do the hard work of racial reconciliation alone. Success will also require active and sustained engagement by residents from all walks of life. The presence of an overflow crowd at a Together Baton Rouge forum about the Sterling case on Tuesday about a mile from the shooting is a healthy sign that citizens are ready to help heal a fractured city.
They, and the city's next mayor, have their work cut out for them.
Online:
http://www.theadvocate.com
___
July 13
The New York Times on Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Donald Trump:
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg needs to drop the political punditry and the name-calling.
Three times in the past week, Justice Ginsburg has publicly discussed her view of the presidential race, in the sharpest terms. In an interview with The Times published Sunday, Justice Ginsburg said, "I can't imagine what the country would be with Donald Trump as our president," joking that if her husband were alive, he might have said, "It's time for us to move to New Zealand."
Earlier, in an interview with The Associated Press that appeared on Friday, when asked to consider a Trump victory, Justice Ginsburg replied, "I don't want to think about that possibility, but if it should be, then everything is up for grabs."
On Monday Justice Ginsburg doubled down, calling Mr. Trump "a faker," who "has no consistency about him." In that interview, with CNN, she added: "He says whatever comes into his head at the moment. He really has an ego."
Mr. Trump responded on Tuesday. "I think it's highly inappropriate that a United States Supreme Court judge gets involved in a political campaign, frankly," he told The Times. "I couldn't believe it when I saw it."
There is no legal requirement that Supreme Court justices refrain from commenting on a presidential campaign. But Justice Ginsburg's comments show why their tradition has been to keep silent.
In this election cycle in particular, the potential of a new president to affect the balance of the court has taken on great importance, with the vacancy left by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. As Justice Ginsburg pointed out, other justices are nearing an age when retirement would not be surprising. That makes it vital that the court remain outside the presidential process. And just imagine if this were 2000 and the resolution of the election depended on a Supreme Court decision. Could anyone now argue with a straight face that Justice Ginsburg's only guide would be the law?
Mr. Trump's hands, of course, are far from clean on the matter of judicial independence. It was just weeks ago that he was lambasting Gonzalo Curiel, the United States District Court judge overseeing a case against Trump University, saying that as a "Mexican," the Indiana-born judge could not be impartial.
All of which makes it only more baffling that Justice Ginsburg would choose to descend toward his level and call her own commitment to impartiality into question. Washington is more than partisan enough without the spectacle of a Supreme Court justice flinging herself into the mosh pit.
Online:
http://www.nytimes.com/
___
July 13
The Orange County Register on civilian deaths from drone strikes:
In a show of shocking imprecision, the White House recently released statistics on the number of civilians killed by U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen and Africa during President Obama's seven years in office.
The imprecision is evident in two ways, and it encourages practical and philosophical questions about the drone attacks that play a large role in America's war on terrorism.
First, there are the statistics themselves. They're an insult to the word "estimate." According to the administration's first-ever report of this kind, as few as 64 and as many as 116 non-combatants have been killed, along with between 2,372 and 2,581 enemy combatants, in 473 unmanned aircraft strikes aimed at suspected terrorists and their leaders.
That's quite a range: 64 to 116. Americans wouldn't accept such inexactitude in a calorie count; we certainly shouldn't accept it in a casualty count of apparently innocent people.
And an accurate number of dead civilians may not fall within that range, given that independent organizations that keep track of reports of U.S. drone strikes believe the real toll is as high as about 800. The website Long War Journal counts 207 civilian deaths in Pakistan and Yemen, the think tank New America counts 216 in those countries, and the news organization Bureau of Investigative Journalism says the range is 380 to 801.
Second, there's what the statistics say about those drone strikes.
Part of the supposed point of using armed drones is that compared to bombs from manned aircraft, they're more accurate at hitting small targets. Collateral damage is supposed to be minimized. Civilian deaths should be few - the strikes more humane.
But these numbers, especially the larger private estimates, suggest that advantage is overstated.
The implications are fodder for critics of President Obama's stepped-up use of drones. Maybe that's why the administration rolled out the numbers on the Friday before the Fourth of July.
Note that the numbers don't include civilian deaths from drone strikes in Afghanistan, Iraq or Syria. They cover only places where the U.S. is not engaged in active hostilities.
To his credit, the president issued an executive order on the day of the data release making protection of civilians a priority for military planning. But good intentions won't satisfy those who say drone strikes, controlled by personnel at video screens thousands of miles away, sanitize the tragedy of civilian casualties.
While Americans debating how to fight terrorism may disagree on how many dead foreign civilians is too many, we shouldn't ignore the question of drone-strikes' big-picture effectiveness. Do they debilitate the enemy and discourage would-be terrorists? Or does anger at the killing of civilians drive more young men and women toward terrorist recruiters? Isn't the killing of civilians what we're fighting against?
Last month, this editorial board called on Congress to give the president authority to use military force against ISIS. At the same time, the board said U.S. leaders must clearly delineate our aims - as well as limits that keep military and police action within the bounds of American values.
They can begin to better define the mission by asking hard questions about the vague, barely believable data released on July 1 and the drone strategy itself.
Online:
http://www.ocregister.com/
___
July 13
The Japan News on Beijing and the South China Sea:
An international court handed down a decision that pointed a finger at the unjustness of Beijing's self-serving actions and statements related to its territorial claims in the South China Sea.
The ruling by the Hague-based court of arbitration fully dismissed Beijing's claims that its sovereignty covers almost all the area in the South China Sea.
Regarding the so-called nine-dash line based on which China claims sovereignty the arbitration court said "there was no legal basis for China to claim historic rights." The court also said "there was no evidence that China had historically exercised exclusive control" over the resources and waters.
The international court further concluded that China was not entitled to an exclusive economic zone for the artificial islands it has constructed in the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea.
The ruling supported the Philippines' appeal based on the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).
The administration of Chinese President Xi Jinping has been increasing efforts to militarize seven artificial islands that his country has built in the South China Sea, thus heightening regional tensions. It is significant that an international organization has rejected the premise Beijing uses for its hegemonic behavior aimed at changing the status quo.
Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida said in a statement that the parties concerned in this case "are required to comply with the award."
"Japan strongly expects that the parties' compliance with this award will eventually lead to the peaceful settlement of disputes in the South China Sea," Kishida emphasized. We regard his comments as a matter of course.
It is a problem that Beijing has reiterated its position of not accepting the ruling by the arbitration court, insisting that it should not handle the case. The Chinese Foreign Ministry released a statement following the decision, which described it as being "void, with no binding force."
The arbitration court cannot force parties concerned to follow its rulings. However, China is obligated to abide by the decision as a signatory country for UNCLOS.
Ignoring the ruling would only highlight China's lawless conduct in disregarding maritime order based on the rule of law. China could not avoid becoming more isolated in the international community.
It cannot be overlooked either that Beijing conducted large-scale military exercises before the arbitration court's ruling, in a show of its effective control over the South China Sea. Beijing is making desperate efforts to secure its maritime interests in the waters, apparently because the country aims to face off against U.S. military influence by using the area as a base for its nuclear submarines carrying strategic missiles.
Japan, the United States and other members of the Group of Seven advanced countries should play a leading role in persistently urging China to respect the ruling.
It is also vital that the United States continues its patrol activities with the Philippines and other countries near the man-made islands to realize freedom of navigation.
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte reportedly hopes to hold negotiations with China in a bid to solve the issue.
It is crucial that Duterte carries on his predecessor Benigno Aquino's policy to work with Japan and the United States for the stability of the South China Sea. We hope the Philippine president will keep this in mind.
Online:
http://the-japan-news.com
___
July 12
The Los Angeles Times on Bernie Sanders' endorsement of Hillary Clinton:
And with that, it's over. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, the 74-year-old Jewish socialist whose candidacy was dismissed by experts but who stunned the nation with 14 months of implausible successes, has offered his unequivocal endorsement to Hillary Clinton. He was a little slow to get there, and some thought he was a little more grudging than he ought to have been, but on Tuesday, he finally said what he needed to say: "I intend to do everything I can to make certain that she will be the next president of the United States."
Sanders was a phenomenon in a year of phenomena. Relatively unknown, unpolished and underestimated, he nevertheless captivated enormous crowds with a charisma powered by passion and a vision of radical change. Why not think bigger, he asked voters? Healthcare for all! Universal college, tuition-free! Livable wages! Close the gap between rich and poor, and reject the big money and special interests that dominate the political system. To millions of Democrats skeptical of Clinton's character or uninspired by her centrism, Sanders offered what sounded like an alternative worth fighting for.
The competition between two such different candidates unquestionably made the race more substantive. But ultimately, Sanders' quixotic message and ambitious promises were insufficient. Hillary Clinton convinced her party and its voters and The Times editorial board that she was the leader with the experience, knowledge and savvy to translate ideals into action. Though she lacked Sanders' intoxicating idealism, she was the vastly better-prepared candidate who could get the job done.
Now, the 13 million Democrats and independents who voted for Sanders in the primaries need to join forces with Clinton's backers in service of a larger and more essential goal. For all the differences between Sanders and Clinton, they have so much more in common with each other than with the presumptive Republican candidate, Donald Trump, who is intemperate and intolerant and a danger to the United States.
Trump's continuing efforts to divide and to bully, his cynical racial politics, his crude taunts, his know-nothing approach to the issues and his repeated reliance on untruths have shown him unfit to serve as president of the United States.
In the months ahead, we hope and expect that Sen. Sanders will work closely and enthusiastically with Clinton to protect this country against the disaster of a Trump presidency.
Online:
http://www.latimes.com/
___
July 6
The Khaleej Times on leadership in South Sudan:
The South Sudanese leadership has failed to keep its word as the world's youngest independent country in Africa is imploding and sliding into chaos. President Salva Kiir and his deputy Riek Machar had vowed to shed the animosity and rebuild the strife-torn country, but have gone back to business of fighting. Week-long strife between rival political groups has left more than 270 people dead, and the capital Juba is in bleeding. A ceasefire, which was announced on Monday night, however, seems to be holding at the moment, but without any format for brokering permanent peace. Since the southern flank broke away from Sudan and became independent in 2011, more than a million people are homeless due to tribal violence and thousands are dead. The United Nations' 13,000 peacekeeping troops are no more than sitting ducks, as they lack a mandate to intervene with firepower.
South Sudan's is a case of leadership rivalry, as Kiir and Machar cannot seem to come together to build a nation and run the government. The war is primarily between two ethnic groups, the Dinka led by Kiir and the Nuer under Machar. As stated by US National Security adviser Susan Rice, they have put self-interest above the well-being of their country and people. This senseless and inexcusable violence is sliding South Sudan into anarchy, and threatening regional peace. This is the time for the world body and the regional stakeholders to put their foot down and reprimand the leadership to implement the power-sharing peace deal signed last August. An arms embargo and sanctions are pressure tactics to make them fall in line. Juba can do well by revisiting the peace deal and try to remove the issues that are holding them back. People rightly insist on accountability, rebuilding of institutions and addressing socio-political issues that have kept them at war all these years. The power-sharing deal, in fact, hasn't addressed the root causes of the conflict. Until and unless that is done, bringing lasting peace to South Sudan will be a mirage.
Online:
The Chattanooga Police Department is warning the public of "Grandparent" and IRS scams here locally in the Chattanooga Area.
Police say that callers are making contact with residents in the following manner:
1. Grandparent Scam: The "Grandparent Scam" is a common practice of criminals that traditionally targets the elderly, but can happen to anyone. The caller locally is making contact with the resident to tell them that their child or grandchild is in jail and that they need to; send or wire money to an address so their loved one can get out of jail.
2. IRS Scam: The caller is stating that they are with the IRS and that the resident owes the IRS money. The caller is then either instructing the party to go to a local store and purchase iTunes gift cards for the amount owed or to take money out of their bank and send it to an address.
Safety tips and advice to avoid being victimized in the first place:
Resist the pressure to act quickly.
Try to contact your grandchild or another family member to determine whether or not the call is legitimate.
Never wire money based on a request made over the phone or in an e-mail...especially overseas. Wiring money is like giving cashonce you send it, you cant get it back.
The IRS will never:
Call to demand immediate payment, nor will the agency call about taxes owed without first having mailed you a bill.
Demand that you pay taxes without giving you the opportunity to question or appeal the amount they say you owe.
Require you to use a specific payment method for your taxes, such as a prepaid debit card.
Ask for credit or debit card numbers over the phone.
Threaten to bring in local police or other law-enforcement groups to have you arrested for not paying.
If you get a phone call from someone claiming to be from the IRS and asking for money, heres what you should do:
If you dont owe taxes, or have no reason to think that you do:
Do not give out any information. Hang up immediately.
Contact TIGTA to report the call. Use their IRS Impersonation Scam Reporting web page. You can also call 800-366-4484.
Report it to the Federal Trade Commission. Use the FTC Complaint Assistant on FTC.gov. Add "IRS Telephone Scam" in the notes.
If you know you owe, or think you may owe tax:
Call the IRS at 800-829-1040. IRS workers can help you.
More information on IRS Scams can be found at: https://www.irs.gov/uac/newsroom/phone-scams-continue-to-be-a-serious-threat-remain-on-irs-dirty-dozen-list-of-tax-scams-for-the-2016-filing-season.
More information on Grandparent Scams can be found here: https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2012/april/grandparent_040212.
If you feel you have been a victim of a scam or you are contacted by a person attempting to scam, call the police at 698-2525 and report all available information including name and number the caller called from.
2 seal pups dive back into the sea after California rescue
SANTA CRUZ ISLAND, Calif. (AP) Two 6-month-old elephant seal pups have been released back into the Pacific Ocean after being treated at a rehabilitation center near Los Angeles.
The Coast Guard says the pups were taken to secluded Smugglers Cove near Santa Cruz Island and released into open water Tuesday.
Michael Remski cared for the animals at the California Wildlife Center rehabilitation facility in Calabasas. He says the pups were tentative at first, but after about 30 seconds, they decided to jump in.
In this Tuesday, July 12, 2016 photo provided by the U.S. Coast Guard, one of two 6-month-old elephant seal pups is released from the deck of a Coast Guard ship at Smugglers Cove on Santa Cruz Island off the coast of Southern California. The pups were found off the coast of Malibu in March, struggling to feed themselves. After care at the California Wildlife Center rehabilitation facility in Calabasas, Calif., the pups are now heavier, and with months of practice catching fish, they are likely to be able to thrive in the wild. (Petty Officer 1st Class Sondra Kay Kneen/U.S. Coast Guard via AP)
The pups were found off the coast of Malibu in March, struggling to feed themselves. Remski says they are now heavier, and with months of practice catching fish, they are likely to be able to thrive in the wild.
In this Tuesday, July 12, 2016 photo provided by the U.S. Coast Guard, one of two 6-month-old elephant seal pups is released from the deck of a Coast Guard ship at Smugglers Cove on Santa Cruz Island off the coast of Southern California. The pups were found off the coast of Malibu in March, struggling to feed themselves. After care at the California Wildlife Center rehabilitation facility in Calabasas, Calif., the pups are now heavier, and with months of practice catching fish, they are likely to be able to thrive in the wild. (Petty Officer 1st Class SondraKay Kneen/U.S. Coast Guard via AP)
Jamaica panel charges 5 policemen in schoolgirl's shooting
KINGSTON, Jamaica (AP) Jamaican investigators have charged five police officers for seriously wounding a teenage girl with what witnesses allege was reckless shooting.
The Independent Commission of Investigations probes abuse allegations against the Caribbean country's security forces. It has the power to arrest and charge police and soldiers accused of wrongdoing.
On Wednesday, it charged five police officers in the June 30th shooting of a high school student who was a passenger in a taxi stopped by police. The girl was shot in the head during the traffic stop but survived.
Four of the officers were charged with misconduct and failure to answer questions. The senior officer also refused to respond and was charged with wounding with intent.
Terrifying Argentine carnivorous dinosaur had tiny arms
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) Unearthed fossils from a carnivorous dinosaur that lived in Argentina about 90 million years ago show that it had tiny arms compared to its body, scientists said on Wednesday.
The team of scientists said the two-legged dinosaur was from 20 feet to 26 feet long but its puny pair of arms only measured about 2 feet, or about the size of a human child. It was a Theropod like other meat-eating dinosaurs including the Tyrannosaurus rex.
"Something totally new has been discovered, a new lineage that we didn't know of before," Argentine paleontologist Sebastian Apesteguia said at a news conference in Buenos Aires after the team published it conclusions in the PLOS ONE journal.
Argentine paleontologist Sebastian Apesteguia speaks next to a a drawing of what he says is a newly-discovered carnivorous dinosaur that lived in Argentina about 90 million named Gualicho in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Wednesday, July 13, 2016. The team of scientists says it was up to 26 feet long but its arms only measured about 2 feet. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)
"Why did this specie have a reduction regarding the size of their arms, having only two fingers similar to a Tyrannosaurus? That's something that we still don't know. But we need to investigate it."
The fossils were found in Argentina's Patagonia region in 2007. But difficulties postponed the team's analysis. The team thus combined the native word for "evil spell" with the last name of Field Museum fossil preparator Akiko Shinya, who discovered the first fossils to name the dinosaur "Gualicho shinyae."
Officials: 3 emergency responders fired for posts online
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) Two additional firefighters in South Carolina's capital were fired Wednesday for comments posted on social media about Black Lives Matter protesters who blocked traffic.
Columbia Fire Department spokesman Brick Lewis said a senior firefighter, hired in October 2013, and a probationary firefighter hired in February were dismissed after admitting to their Facebook comments. Lewis did not know precisely what they wrote, noting that their posts have been deleted.
But he said their termination was part of the same investigation that led to Monday's firing of Capt. Jimmy Morris, a 16-year veteran of the department, for posting while on duty that he would run over protesters if they were still blocking traffic when his shift ended.
The department "will not condone or tolerate this type of unprofessional behavior by any employee," Fire Chief Aubrey Jenkins said in a statement.
Richland County also fired a paramedic Wednesday for "inappropriate" posts on social media, authorities announced in a news release that gave no details on who was fired, what was posted or when. A spokeswoman refused to say more.
Black Lives Matter protesters closed an intersection near the Statehouse and a section of interstate leading into Columbia late Sunday. The protests came after black men were killed by police in Minnesota and Louisiana and white officers were gunned down in Dallas.
In the aftermath, some first responders across the country have been fired or suspended for racially insensitive posts on social media.
Jenkins closed the fire station where Morris worked at 1 a.m. Monday after the department received complaints and threats about his posts. The fire chief will re-evaluate Thursday morning whether to reopen the station, Lewis said.
"Crews are still working and servicing the area" from a different firehouse, Lewis said. "Jenkins felt he didn't want to jeopardize safety and wanted employees there to feel safe while working."
In his first post Sunday night, Morris said the "idiots" blocking traffic "better not be there when I get off work or there is gonna be some run over dumb a----."
The next read, "Public Service Announcement: If you attempt to shut down an interstate, highway, etc on my way home, you best hope I'm not one of the first vehicles in line because you're a-- WILL get run over!"
Morris' shift typically would have ended at 7:30 a.m. Monday, Lewis said.
Troopers arrest 41 blocking highway traffic in Minneapolis
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) Minnesota state troopers have arrested 41 people after demonstrators blocked rush hour traffic on an interstate in downtown Minneapolis.
Authorities also impounded four vehicles used by the protesters to block traffic on southbound Interstate 35W near University Avenue Wednesday morning. The demonstrators were protesting recent deaths by police.
The demonstrators walked onto a bridge across the Mississippi River and chanted, "I believe that we will win." Troopers arrested protesters on the freeway after about an hour. The interstate reopened shortly after 9:15 a.m.
State troopers and deputies stand guard at the entrance to the freeway as Interstate 35W is cleared after protesters blocked the highway leading into Minneapolis over the Mississippi River bridge Wednesday, July 13, 2016, as protests continue over the shooting death by police of Philando Castile last week in Falcon Heights, Minn. after a traffic stop by St. Anthony police. The protesters were arrested and removed from the highway. (AP Photo/Jim Mone)
The protesters come after Philando Castile was fatally shot by a St. Anthony officer during a traffic stop in the Twin Cities suburb of Falcon Heights last week.
State troopers and deputies stand guard at the entrance to the freeway as Interstate 35W is cleared after protesters blocked the highway leading into Minneapolis over the Mississippi River bridge Wednesday, July 13, 2016 as protests continue over the shooting death by police of Philando Castile last week in Falcon Heights, Minn. after a traffic stop by St. Anthony police. The protesters were arrested and removed from the highway. (AP Photo/Jim Mone)
State troopers and deputies stand guard at the entrance to the freeway as Interstate 35W is cleared after protesters blocked the highway bridge over the Mississippi River Wednesday, July 13, 2016, in Minneapolis as protests continue over the shooting death by police of Philando Castile last week in Falcon Heights, Minn. after a traffic stop by St. Anthony police. The protesters were arrested and removed from the highway. (AP Photo/Jim Mone)
3 men charged after shots fired at officers near US Capitol
WASHINGTON (AP) Three men have been charged after shots were fired at officers during a pursuit, prompting a brief lockdown of the U.S. Capitol and its office buildings.
Police said in a statement that Tuesday's event did not appear to be a targeted attack on police.
In the statement Wednesday, police said officers responding to a report of a man with a gun pursued a vehicle to a tunnel near the U.S. Capitol, where someone fired from the passenger window at officers. The vehicle crashed and officers ultimately arrested three men: 19-year-old Keyante Edwards, 18-year-old Alpha Jalloh and 20-year-old Keith Jones.
As police officers gather in the background, a car sits with its doors open near the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, July 12, 2016. The U.S. Capitol and its office buildings were briefly locked down after District of Columbia police stopped the car about two blocks from the Capitol and took three people into custody, Police Chief Cathy Lanier told reporters at the scene. Lanier said one of the people inside the car fired at officers during the pursuit, and officers did not fire back. Lanier described the weapon as a small machine gun and said police recovered a large amount of ammunition. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
According to officers' statements in court documents, Edwards was the one who fired at officers, Jalloh was the driver, and Jones a passenger.
Chinese businessman gets nearly 4 years in US hacking case
LOS ANGELES (AP) A Chinese businessman was sentenced to nearly four years in prison Wednesday for conspiring to export sensitive military information to China after accessing the computer systems of U.S. defense contractors, including Boeing.
Su Bin was sentenced to 46 months in prison in federal court in Los Angeles. He had faced 30 years in prison before reaching a plea agreement with prosecutors in March. His attorneys were requesting two and a half years.
The 51-year-old Bin admitted to conspiring with two unnamed hackers in China to export U.S. military information to the communist nation between 2008 and 2014, according to Bin's plea agreement.
The men targeted fighter jets such as the F-22 and the F-35, as well as Boeing's C-17 military cargo aircraft program, according to court records.
Su, described by prosecutors as a China-based businessman in the aviation and aerospace fields, was arrested in British Columbia, Canada, in July 2014 and brought to the U.S. in February.
As part of the conspiracy, prosecutors say Su would email the hackers in China explaining what people, companies and technology to target. Once data was stolen, prosecutors say Su would translate it from English to Chinese, and email the value of the information to those who benefited from its theft.
Last federal refuge standoff occupier to remain in custody
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) A federal court judge has allowed Oregon standoff defendant Kenneth Medenbach to be released from jail while awaiting trial, but he will keep the last holdout in the armed takeover in custody.
U.S. District Court Judge Robert E. Jones said Wednesday he remained concerned about David Fry's mental instability, threats of "suicide by cop" before his surrender to FBI agents and that he came to Oregon in violation of the conditions of his Ohio probation, the Oregonian/OregonLive reported (http://goo.gl/IJT4b1).
Jones also said a psychological report on Fry states that Fry is concerned about invasions from outer space and has spoken of a wish to be reincarnated as a woman.
Fry objected to the judge's characterization of those statements, saying he's never been diagnosed with a particular mental illness, that he has the right to believe in what he chooses to believe in, and that he had said he'd rather be a woman "because it seems easier." Suicidal statements he made before his surrender at the refuge were caused by fears of being raped in jail, he told the judge.
Fry's defense lawyer suggested Fry that be released to his parents in Ohio and placed on electronic monitoring until trial, when he can be returned to custody as the trial proceeds. "I give you my word I will be here to see this through," Fry told the judge.
After Jones ruled to keep him in custody, Fry continued to object, calling the judge a bigot, a liar and a racist, as a deputy U.S. marshal led him out of the courtroom.
The 27-year-old has pleaded not guilty to charges of conspiring to impede federal officers from doing their work at the refuge.
Fry was the last occupier to surrender at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge on Feb. 11.
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Puerto Rico utility to issue up to $900M in debt amid crisis
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) Puerto Rico's government on Wednesday approved a law to allow its heavily indebted water and sewer company to issue up to $900 million worth of bonds amid a worsening economic crisis.
The government said in a statement that it expects the company will now be able to pay its suppliers, update its infrastructure and invest in capital projects, among other things.
The Water and Sewer Authority carries some $5 billion of Puerto Rico's overall $68 billion public debt load that the governor has said is unpayable and needs restructuring.
Government officials did not provide further details including when the new debt would be issued. The company was poised to sell $750 million worth of revenue bonds last August, but efforts failed amid a worsening financial crisis. Last year's anticipated issuance was going to be closely watched to see how the markets reacted because it was going to be the first time Puerto Rico issued bonds after the governor said it did not have money to pay the public debt.
The water and sewer company last issued bonds in 2012.
Labour leadership hopeful Owen Smith vows to push for second EU referendum
Labour with Owen Smith as leader will push to give Britain a second referendum on European Union membership after a deal is struck on the terms of membership.
The leadership candidate said many Leave voters now regret their decision and are angry after being "clearly misled" by the Brexit campaign.
He insisted Labour should be committing to a second referendum, or at least a general election, once the nature of Brexit is finalised.
Owen Smith is to challenge for the Labour leadership
The former shadow work and pensions secretary told the Guardian the public will want to see the deal, adding: "And then we should give them another chance.
"That does mean a second referendum or a general election when the terms are clear. The Labour government should be committing to that."
He went on: "I think there are many people out there who voted in good faith for Brexit and who felt they were doing the right thing for their families and their communities and I respect them for taking that decision," he said.
"But I think a lot of people I know are now saying to themselves, 'It wasn't the right decision.' A lot of people are angry that they were quite clearly misled by the Brexit campaign."
Mr Smith, who joined the race to challenge Jeremy Corbyn for the party leadership on Wednesday, said either he or fellow challenger Angela Eagle should stand aside, depending on support, to give a unity candidate a free run at the leader.
Mr Corbyn won a vote among the party's ruling National Executive Committee to stand without the nominations of 51 MPs and MEPs and has strong support among the membership who will now vote on the leadership.
"Ideally, we would have one candidate, and the clarity of that one candidate versus Jeremy Corbyn," he said.
Ms Eagle however indicated that she may be willing to run in a three-way battle against both Mr Smith and Mr Corbyn, telling a central London event: "I will leave Owen to do this own thing, I'll do my own thing."
She said there should be no legal challenge to the NEC's decision but warned that Labour risks electoral wipeout in the north at the hands of Ukip, similar to that it has suffered in Scotland if Mr Corbyn remains leader.
The former shadow business secretary also lifted the lid on working in Mr Corbyn's shadow cabinet, complaining of "parallel organisations", "constant cancelled meetings" and a leader "pushing away" MPs.
Ms Eagle said: "There were many things that didn't work, I won't go into great detail here - parallel organisations, reading about the brief that you are meant to be representing in the newspapers because somebody has written a speech without talking to you about it, constant cancelled meetings with (shadow chancellor) John McDonnell, no liaison at all.
"And finally, an inability that Jeremy has to have his parliamentary party convince him of anything - no reaching out, a pushing away.
Bobs Brick Oven Pizza at Rock Spring is one of the sites listed on this years 100 Plates Locals Love in the Georgia Eats guide.
Walker County Chamber officials said, "Bob has enthusiastically embraced this recognition, and we are thrilled. Bob had a plaque made to note the honor."
Janet Cochran, Regional Tourism Project Manager, presented the award.
The restaurant is next door to Mike Herndon's State Farm.
Poundland accepts 597m takeover bid from South Africa's Steinhoff
Discount chain Poundland is to be snapped up by South African retailer Steinhoff International after agreeing a 597 million takeover deal.
Poundland accepted the 222p-a-share bid after rejecting a cash offer from Steinhoff last month for an undisclosed sum.
The deal comes after Steinhoff - which owns UK furniture firm Harveys and Bensons For Beds - recently lost out in a battle with Sainsbury's to buy Argos owner Home Retail Group in March and was outbid for London-listed white goods retailer Darty.
Poundland accepted the 222p-a-share bid after rejecting an undisclosed offer from Steinhoff last month
The sale price, which also includes a 2p-a-share final dividend on top of the 220p-a-share bid, marks around a 40% premium to the value of Poundland's shares in mid-June.
It follows a hefty slump in Poundland's shares over the past year after tough trading and a difficult takeover of rival 99p Stores.
Annual results recently laid bare Poundland's sales woes as underlying pre-tax profits fell 13.5% to 37.8 million in the year to March 27, while bottom-line pre-tax profits crashed 83.7% to 5.9 million, including converted 99p Stores.
Steinhoff had already built up a 23.6% stake in Poundland in recent weeks as it stepped up its pursuit of the set-price retailer.
Darren Shapland, chairman of Poundland, said the deal gives investors an "opportunity to realise their shareholding at a certain and attractive price".
He said it achieved the share price value targeted under its turnaround plan earlier than could be expected "against a background of increasing economic uncertainty in the UK and a more challenging trading environment".
Steinhoff chief executive Markus Jooste said: "The board of Steinhoff and its management team are enthusiastic about the opportunities that this transaction brings: we believe that there is significant merit in bringing Poundland into Steinhoff's global network.
"Steinhoff is developing a fast-growing, price-led retail business across the UK and the rest of Europe. Poundland would be a complementary fit to this growth story."
He added that management at Poundland would continue to play a "key role" after the takeover and said he looked forward to "welcoming" the chain's employees.
Poundland has around 18,000 staff across more than 900 stores and is headquartered in Willenhall, near Wolverhampton.
Steinhoff said it had no plans to change the group's head office or employment conditions for staff.
It marks an eventful start at the top for Poundland's new boss, Kevin O'Byrne, after he took the reins earlier this month.
The former B&Q UK and Ireland head took over from predecessor Jim McCarthy on July 1, having joined as chief executive-designate in April.
Retail analysts at Liberum said Steinhoff had offered a "knock-out price".
They added: "The recommended cash offer is a good result for Poundland shareholders and comes at a time when there was more downside risk than upside in our view."
Steinhoff has been determined to expand further across Europe, having tried and failed to gatecrash two deals in recent months.
It is backed by South African retail billionaire Christo Wiese, whose Brait investment group also owns controlling stakes in Virgin Active, New Look and food chain Iceland.
Steinhoff also owns Conforama in France, as well as a number of retailers across Europe, Australasia and Africa.
Mr Shapland told the Press Association that Steinhoff's bid was an "attractive offer", in particular since the EU referendum result has sent retail stocks plunging.
But the 222p-a-share total offer is far below the 421p level shares hit in early 2015, before its trading woes weighed heavy on the stock.
Mr Shapland said: "You can only go with what's in front of you and w e think it's attractive in terms of what's been going on in the market."
Mr Shapland added that Steinhoff has a good track record of investing and growing businesses and is expected to keep the Poundland brand on the high street.
"They keep well-loved brands and Poundland is a well-loved brand," he said.
Len Goodman to quit Strictly Come Dancing
Strictly Come Dancing head judge Len Goodman is to step down after the next series, the BBC has announced.
The 72-year-old has led the judging panel since the show started 12 years ago.
He will be joined by fellow judges Darcey Bussell, Bruno Tonioli and Craig Revel Horwood for his final series, as well as presenters Tess Daly and Claudia Winkleman.
Len Goodman has been on the judging panel of Strictly Come Dancing since the show started (BBC/PA)
Goodman will not be retiring and will continue his shows on Radio Two.
He said: " In 2004, I was asked to take part in a brand new BBC Saturday night show and who would have thought me, old Len Goodman, would still be part of this amazing series more than 10 years on?
"This adventure began when I was 60 and now that I've reached my 70s, I've decided after this year it's time to hand the role of head judge to someone else.
"It is an honour being part of the wonderful Strictly Come Dancing family and I'm looking forward to my last series very much and to whatever comes next."
The BBC said it was too early to comment on any speculation about who would replace Goodman for the 2017 series.
Charlotte Moore, director of content at BBC, said: "After 12 years, our wonderful head judge Len has decided it's time to hang up his Strictly Come Dancing shoes!
"I know we are all going to miss him tremendously, but I also know Len's final series is going to be full of unmissable moments and I hope audiences will give him the special send-off he so deserves."
Louise Rainbow, executive producer of Strictly Come Dancing, said: "We are absolutely delighted that Tess, Claudia and our judges are all returning for another year. Whilst we will be sad to say goodbye to Len, as our way of saying thank you, we are all determined to make this series the most spectacular, most glittery and entertaining yet."
The show will return to BBC One this autumn.
Goodman, who has also served as a judge on the American version of the show, Dancing With The Stars, announced he was leaving the US production in 2015 due to his schedule on Strictly and the birth of his grandchild.
However, after a series away, he returned to the panel, alongside Tonioli, Julianne Hough and Carrie Ann Inaba.
The new series of Strictly will see a raft of new professional dancers joining the line-up after the departures of Gleb Savchenko, Aliona Vilani, Ola Jordan, Kristina Rihanoff and Tristan MacManus.
They will be replaced by Russian Katya Jones, a world champion, Ukrainian champion Oksana Platero and top Spanish dance professional Gorka Marquez, the BBC said.
They will join returning dancers Anton Du Beke, Brendan Cole, Kevin Clifton, Pasha Kovalev, Aljaz Skorjanec, Giovanni Pernice, Karen Clifton, Natalie Lowe, Joanne Clifton, Janette Manrara and Oti Mabuse.
Outgoing Prime Minister David Cameron was quickly suggested as a successor to Goodman on the judging panel.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn used Prime Minister's Questions to ask Mr Cameron if it was deliberate that his departure coincided with Goodman's announcement.
Mr Corbyn said: " There's a rumour going around that your departure has been carefully choreographed so you can slip seamlessly into the vacancy created this morning on Strictly by Len Goodman's departure.
"Is that your next career?"
Mr Cameron did not answer either way but William Hill are currently offering 5000/1 odds on the politician joining the panel.
Joe Crilly, a spokesman for the bookmaker, said: " Cameron is currently the same price to join the 2017 Strictly judging panel as Leicester were to win the 2016 Premier League so while there is seemingly no chance, stranger things have happened."
Scott Mills, who appeared on Strictly Come Dancing in 2014, said Goodman would always have a special place in his heart.
The radio host and his partner Joanne Clifton left after the dance off in week six, but Goodman said he would have voted to save him.
The head judge said: "I thought they were both so much fun."
Mills told the Press Association: " Len's been an awesome judge, he was so nice to me when I was on Strictly, even when I was dressed as a crab and my dancing was really bad.
"He was the only one who didn't vote me off, so he'll always have a special place in my heart.
Chris Froome extends Tour de France lead ahead of Thursday's shortened stage
Chris Froome extended his overall lead in the Tour de France with an opportunistic attack on the flat in Montpellier before backing the decision to shorten Thursday's stage to Mont Ventoux on safety grounds.
Howling crosswinds allowed Froome to take time out of his rivals on stage 11 from Carcassonne to Montpellier as he latched on to Peter Sagan's stage-winning move 12km from the finish, coming home second and six seconds ahead of the chasing pack.
But those same winds have forced organisers to move the finish of stage 12 from the summit of Mont Ventoux to Chalet Reynard mid-way up the climb, shortening the race by six kilometres.
Team Sky's Chris Froome remains in the yellow jersey (AP)
Gusts were measured at more than 100kph on top of the mountain on Wednesday, with similar forecast for Thursday. Mont Ventoux is known for its exposed summit, but the new finish will see the race end in the relative shelter of the forest.
Froome won on Mont Ventoux on his way to overall victory in 2013, but thanked organisers for putting riders' safety first.
"Of course I was looking forward to doing Ventoux, it's the most iconic climb, the most legendary climb in this year's race," he said after extending his lead to 28 seconds.
"Apparently there are really just gale force winds and it just wouldn't be safe for the riders so thank you to the organisers for making the decision. It's the right thing to do."
Organisers said the move was made now as the entire stage would need to be cancelled if nothing was done before Thursday morning and conditions remained unsafe.
"We're not going to play poker and say 'If we wait until tomorrow we see if we go to the top or the bottom'," Tour director Christian Prudhomme said. "This is the right decision to make."
A bunch sprint was expected in Montpellier but instead there was the unusual sight of the points leaders' green jersey and the race leaders' yellow crossing the line first and second.
Crosswinds caused splits in the peloton throughout the day, and with the pack together on the final approach to Montpellier, Sagan had one more trick up his sleeve.
The world champion burst clear with Tinkoff team-mate Maciej Bodnar, and Froome was first to respond before Geraint Thomas jumped over.
Together the quartet pulled more than 20 seconds ahead and that was enough to keep them clear to the finish.
Froome took yellow with a surprise downhill attack on stage eight into Bagneres-de-Luchon, and Wednesday's move shows he is in feisty mood.
"I'm just enjoying my racing," Froome said of his tactics. "I want to take every opportunity I can and to find myself in yellow by doing that is just an amazing experience."
For Sagan, who was in yellow after his victory on stage two of this Tour, it was a sixth career Tour stage win.
"It is (special)," the 26-year-old said. "It was something crazy that happened. I didn't believe we could go and after Froomey and Geraint Thomas came with us, I said 'We're too strong, they're never going to catch us'. They just pulled very hard and it happened. It's unbelievable."
With bonus seconds applied, Froome leads by 28 seconds from fellow Briton Adam Yates of Orica-BikeExchange, with Irishman Dan Martin of Etixx-QuickStep third, 31 seconds down.
"Hats off to Froome and Sagan for what they have done," Yates said. "I expected guys to attack but I didn't expect Froome to be one of them. The way he takes seconds every day, he'll be hard to beat."
Movistar's Nairo Quintana is fourth, 35 seconds down.
"It was a difficult day for me," said Quintana, who last year gave up 88 seconds to Froome in crosswinds on stage two to Zeeland - more than Froome's final margin of overall victory.
"There was a lot of wind and it was all flat. Froome took a few seconds by taking advantage of the moment but I want to remain positive. We didn't crash while it was very nervous."
Sagan's win strengthens his hold on the points leaders' green jersey after he took it from Mark Cavendish on Tuesday and, given the mountains to come, the Slovakian looks certain to win the category for a fifth straight year barring accident or illness.
Cavendish had been hoping for a shot at a fourth win of this Tour but as Sagan and Froome were attacking ahead the Manxman suffered a mechanical problem and as he slowly rolled home he may have been pondering whether to stay in the race for the final day's sprint in Paris or focus on preparing for the track in Rio.
While disappointed, Cavendish applauded Froome's quick-thinking up the road.
"He's ridden quite an aggressive Tour," Cavendish said. "Fair play. It's nice for the race to see the green jersey and the yellow jersey going up the road."
Froome had been wary of the Mont Ventoux climb as he does not want to empty the tank before Friday's time trial, but does not believe the shortened stage will make life much easier.
"The climb up until Chalet Reynard is extremely hard, and it's another 200km stage tomorrow," he said. "The peloton could be split to pieces before the climb.
"I really don't know what to expect tomorrow. We will have to wait and see. It could be an even more intense race because it's shorter."
Leon Smith criticises "nightmare" Davis Cup schedule as Andy Murray misses out
Leon Smith bemoaned the "nightmare" Davis Cup schedule that means Andy Murray will miss Great Britain's quarter-final against Serbia in Belgrade this weekend.
The world number two was named in the team last week but admitted after winning Wimbledon on Sunday it was unlikely he would contest the tie.
Smith is hoping Murray will come out to Serbia to support his team-mates for the clash at the Tasmajdan Stadium, which starts on Friday.
Wimbledon champion Andy Murray will not play in Great Britain's Davis Cup quarter-final in Serbia
The tie presented the tantalising prospect of a clash between the world's top two players but both Murray and Novak Djokovic are absent and the highest-ranked player on show will be world number 67 Kyle Edmund.
GB captain Smith said of Murray: "He's obviously had an amazing moment again in his life and has enjoyed that moment. He's got to be careful with his own commitments.
"This date is a real nightmare for everybody, not just him. It's a big commitment for all these guys to be here, to have to switch surface yet again. I think it's a real shame the best players aren't playing again.
"But what we've got is a great bunch of guys who totally respect Andy's decision. Hopefully he'll come out and support the team, which would be great because his commitment's been amazing.
"I think he's earned the right (to miss the tie). We're looking forward to it and, if we manage to do it, it can be even sweeter."
Had Murray decided to play, he would have had no time to enjoy his Wimbledon triumph and would have had to head straight onto the clay.
The tie then comes just a week before the start of the American hard-court season, which includes the defence of his Olympic title and the US Open.
Smith had been hopeful last week that Murray would play, but said: "He's got to look forward to what could be an amazing summer with the Olympics and US Open, where he's got a really good chance in both of them.
"He's obviously got the bit between his teeth to go and make that happen and focus on the ranking as well and keep that progress going. We're all absolutely delighted for him."
Murray was named in an initial five-man team along with Edmund, Dan Evans and doubles specialists Jamie Murray and Dom Inglot.
Evans, who reached the third round of Wimbledon and is at a career-high ranking of 73, will also miss the tie and has been replaced by James Ward.
Evans had been struggling with a shoulder problem, and Smith said: "He tried to start playing and it was clear that something was up.
"Then he had a couple of personal things at home and that made me decide he wasn't really in the right head space to travel with the team."
Ward's ranking has slumped to 240 but he has proven Davis Cup pedigree, with his victory over US number one John Isner last February setting Britain on their way to November's stunning title triumph.
This is a big weekend for 21-year-old Edmund, whose only Davis Cup experience so far was a five-set loss to Belgium's David Goffin in last year's final.
As well as Djokovic, Serbian number two Viktor Troicki is also skipping the tie, with the home team made up of Dusan Lajovic, Filip Krajinovic, Janko Tipsarevic and Nenad Zimonjic.
Smith said: "It's going to be really difficult but we've still got a very, very good team. The Serbians are at home, it's their choice of surface, so perhaps they're slight favourites, but I think we're ready to do something."
Rail minister Claire Perry admits she's considered quitting over Southern Rail
Rail Minister Claire Perry has admitted she has repeatedly thought about quitting over the failures of Southern Rail - but believes it would not help.
The Tory frontbencher said she would be "falling on my sword" if she thought it would resolve the difficulties faced by commuters.
Ms Perry added the current situation "feels like a failure" although she insisted stripping Govia Thameslink Railway (GTR) of the franchise would not make Southern's problems disappear and "do almost nothing".
Tim Loughton hit out at Southern Railway
Her defence of the Government's response came after Tory former minister Tim Loughton urged the minister to "get a grip" with the operator, which continues to struggle despite cutting 341 trains a day.
Southern began using a reduced timetable on Monday, claiming the interim move was aimed at making services more "resilient".
It blames service failures on high levels of staff sickness as well as industrial action by the Rail, Maritime and Transport union prompted by a dispute over the role of conductors.
MPs used a Westminster Hall debate to pressure Ms Perry over the continued problems with the service, and renew calls for GTR to be stripped of the franchise.
In her reply, Ms Perry said: "I've been asked repeatedly why don't we just take the franchise back - and the reason is I can't.
"It's not in breach of a franchise contract right now."
Ms Perry added: "We have a contractual structure, there are a series of inputs and outputs, the company is not in breach of those."
She also said: "At the moment I do not have the levers to pull to take the franchise back.
"So what are we going to do? If I thought it would help by me falling on my sword, I would.
"I've thought about it repeatedly. I don't like failure, I don't fail at stuff in my life, this feels like a failure.
"Could I force the end of the franchise early, could I do something contractually to force the franchise early, would the problems actually go away?
"Would the industrial action and staffing problems stop? No.
"Would the investment programme create anything more certain for passengers? No.
"It would do, in my view, almost nothing.
"It feels like that scene in Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff when the test pilot is auguring into the ground shouting 'We've tried A, we've tried B, we've tried C, nothing is actually working'."
Ms Perry also dismissed the idea that "nobody cares", adding management and frontline staff do.
Ms Perry said she wants to bring compensation plans forward for passengers while also speeding up the devolution of train services to City Hall in London.
She said: " I want to bring compensation plans forward - it involves a negotiation with other parts of Government given this is revenue that's coming into the Government coffers but I'm very keen to deliver compensation."
Ms Perry added: "Over the medium-term I also want to accelerate the plan for services for London devolution.
"I think it is absolutely right to do so and it will deliver capacity on those inner-London and suburban routes.
"I don't care about the politics, I don't care that we've got a Labour mayor, I just want those trains to run better."
Opening the debate, Mr Loughton told MPs that Southern's performance and punctuality figures show 23% of services under the revised timetable were late or cancelled on Tuesday.
Mr Loughton also mocked the company by suggesting it should run no trains to ensure it has a 100% record in completing its timetable.
He said the existing problems were a "national disgrace for Britain's largest rail passenger carrier".
Mr Loughton said of the new emergency timetable: "Last night I got the figures for the PPM (public performance measure) for July 12.
"With the emergency timetable, with 341 planned cancellations, that's 341 fewer trains running, the PPM was 77% - barely three-quarters, the second day in of the emergency timetable - 2,800 trains ran, 2,172 were more or less on time, 620 were late and 122 were cancelled or very late.
"The result of the emergency timetable is there's less choice for customers and more overcrowding, but presumably fewer fines."
In her reply, Ms Perry said as of noon on Wednesday the timetable was delivering 90.3% PPM on Southern, adding: "It could all go wrong later in the day but it looks as if it's starting to work.
"We need to monitor that closely, it will be in place for one month."
Mr Loughton ( East Worthing and Shoreham) earlier also accused Ms Perry of contributing to "sloganising headlines" by her comments on the rail unions, adding such an approach does nothing to resolve the problems for passengers.
Mr Loughton added: "She has really got to get a grip."
He requested that GTR is stripped of the franchise by the end of 2016 if it fails to sort the issues before the beginning of September.
Labour's Lilian Greenwood, a former shadow transport secretary, described how a person fainted on one of Southern's trains but "was fortunately not hurt because there were so many people crowded around her she couldn't even fall down".
Tory MP Nusrat Ghani (Wealden) said: "One of my constituents is so late picking up their child from nursery that they're worried the standard procedure for most nurseries is to contact social services when parents are late.
"This is damaging people's lives."
Policeman removed from arrest scene spared sacking
An angry police officer who was taken off an arrest after shouting and balling his fist in the face of a suspected knife-point robber has kept his job.
Pc Daniel Hitchmough accepted telling the male "when police tell you to stop, you f****** stop" as he was being detained on the ground by other officers.
But Hitchmough denied the accounts of two former colleagues that he balled his fist against the suspect's head, "rocking it" back, as he continued shouting at him.
Daniel Hitchmough admitted shouting and swearing at the suspect but denies gross misconduct
In the words of one officer, Hitchmough - described as "a big lad" - had to be moved away by another officer "before it escalated further".
Hitchmough was in front of a West Midlands Police disciplinary panel on Wednesday accused of gross misconduct over the incident in Great Barr Street, Birmingham, just before midnight on June 10, 2014.
The suspect had been CS-sprayed by another officer after reports he was involved in a street robbery.
Hitchmough arrived at the scene on a bicycle as four other colleagues were restraining the suspect face-down on the ground.
One of the officers, Pc Matthew Whitehouse, described Hitchmough's deamenour, and said: "He seemed very angry and agitated at the person."
He added: "Pc Hitchmough was very upset, he made it clear to the offender 'when police tell you to stop, you f****** stop'."
In his statement from the time, Pc Whitehouse said Hitchmough "pushed his fist into the side of the man's head".
That account was backed up by Pc Richard Adams, now with British Transport Police, who said he thought Hitchmough had rocked the suspect's head back "about three times".
However, another officer Sgt Alex Roobottom told the panel Hitchmough had only been pointing his index finger in the suspect's face - but he was concerned enough to move his colleague away from the scene.
Lawyers for Hitchmough said he accepted swearing at the suspect and being aggressive, amounting to misconduct, but denied gross misconduct.
Pc Whitehouse, now with West Mercia Police, said: "Roobottom moved him from the area to calm him down, before it escalated any further."
While being booked into custody, the suspect was recorded on CCTV telling an officer "I wouldn't say he punched me, he forced his hand into my face".
Giving the panel's decision, chairman Steven Evans said Hitchmough, who has three service commendations, had an "exemplary" record of seven years with the West Midlands force but had behaved "recklessly".
Finding Hitchmough had balled his fist in the suspect's face, he said: "We are driven to conclude this behaviour does amount to gross misconduct."
The panel, which could have sacked the officer, also heard from Hitchmough's lawyer Harpreet Sandhu who said: "We don't accept he's the perfect officer - but he will be, given the chance."
Instead, the panel spared Hitchmough an immediate sacking and ordered instead he be given an 18-month final written notice.
High-achieving girls 'vulnerable' to Islamic radicalisation
High-achieving girls appear "particularly vulnerable" to Islamic radicalisation, a High Court judge has warned.
Mr Justice Hayden, who is based in the Family Division of the High Court in London, says he has analysed a number of cases where allegations of children being radicalised have been raised.
The judge says a pattern has emerged in relation to "recruitment to jihadist causes".
Mr Justice Hayden has analysed a number of cases where allegations of children being radicalised have been raised
He has raised concerns in a ruling on a case involving a "perceptive and intelligent" girl in her mid-teens who was taken off a plane by police when heading for Syria.
Videos relating to Muslim extremism had been found at the girl's family home.
The girl had seen "numerous" videos which contained "violent and death-related images".
Mr Justice Hayden said the teenager had described "images" she had seen - and given "some of the most disturbing evidence I have ever heard".
The judge said the girl could not be identified.
He said social workers had asked him to make decisions about the youngster's future.
"I have now heard a number of cases concerning allegations of radicalisation of children," said Mr Justice Hayden in the ruling.
"In the cases that have come before me a pattern has emerged in which conscientious, hard-working and high-achieving young girls appear to be particularly vulnerable."
The judge said he had analysed the teenager's case at a private hearing in London earlier this year.
"(She) was asked about the number of videos she had seen which contained violent and death-related images," said the judge.
"She told me that they were too numerous to remember and that they no longer had any effect on her.
"Everybody in this courtroom will remember this piece of evidence. It was profoundly disturbing to listen to, not least because it was both uncompromisingly honest and manifestly accurate."
Mr Justice Hayden said he found the girl to be "intelligent and perceptive".
"As she described some of these images she became distant, withdrawn, flat and rather glazed in her expression," he said.
"She gave some of the most disturbing evidence I have ever heard from a child or, for that matter, an adult.
"She told me how violent beheadings, point-blank shootings through the brain and images of mass killings no longer had any impact upon her.
He added: "I am entirely satisfied that she was telling the truth about this. Her demeanour was entirely congruent with her verbal evidence. The impact of this evidence on all those who heard it will remain for a long time."
Mr Justice Hayden said "material" found at the girl's home had titles including: "A Muhajid's Guide to the West", "Hiding the extremist identity", "Miracles in Syria", "The Book of Jihad" and "44 ways to support jihad".
"My primary reason to go to Syria was to join an Islamic State," the girl had told Mr Justice Hayden.
"I believed that this was the best way for me to be a good Muslim.
"I believed that the West were responsible for the suffering of Muslims, particularly in Gaza, where innocent people and especially children were being bombed and killed.
"The UK was implicated in supplying arms.
"I felt a traitor living in the West.
She had added: "I believed that I might be able to study there, for free and that this would enable me to study to become a doctor, which, in turn, would enable me to help others. That was a very attractive promise that was made."
Mr Justice Hayden raised concerns about the girl's parents.
He said her father was "headstrong" and had made "absolutely no effort" to regulate his daughter's internet use.
"I do not believe that he had ever stopped to reflect on the extent to which his daughter could inflict emotional and psychological damage on herself by what she viewed on the internet," said the judge.
"(She) dehumanised herself by viewing a surfeit of death-related images that have left her emotionally numb.
"It is this that is the most striking feature of the case, more so than her reading the polemics or expressions of radicalised views."
But he said there was a "naivety" to her father's behaviour rather than a "deep-seated destructive agenda".
The judge said the girl's mother was "dedicated to a heightened code of Islamic belief".
"I do not find that the mother held radicalised beliefs but I have found that on a spectrum of Islamic observance she is at the most committed end," he added.
"In this family those beliefs proved to be fertile ground for (the teenager's) journey to radicalisation."
He concluded that the girl should live at home in future - but under the supervision of social services staff.
Social workers had plans which would give the girl "space" from her mother, said the judge.
The girl's father had "recognised the impact" that "death-related images" had on his daughter.
Police and social services staff would be vigilant in monitoring computer use.
And Mr Justice Hayden said the girl had the potential to "combat" her "addiction" to violent images.
The judge said the family lived in London.
May hails 'bold' Cabinet after clear-out of Cameron allies
Theresa May insists she has created a "bold" Cabinet that has hit the ground running.
In a decisive cull of David Cameron's closest allies, the new Prime Minister's shake-up of the top team saw promotions for women and Brexiteers.
Mrs May is set to travel to Scotland Friday for talks with SNP First Minister Nicola Sturgeon in a bid to underline her determination to keep the UK together in the face of withdrawal from the EU.
Sacked Michael Gove joins ex-chancellor George Osborne on the backbenches in a dramatic reshaping of the Cabinet team
The move will follow Mrs May's sweeping Cabinet clear-out which saw her sack Mr Cameron's right-hand man George Osborne within hours of taking office on Wednesday, and then going on to axe Michael Gove, Oliver Letwin, Nicky Morgan and John Whittingdale.
But Jeremy Hunt kept his job as Health Secretary, despite being widely tipped for the chop.
The new PM, who took a 15 minute congratulatory telephone call from US president Barack Obama, rewarded her leadership campaign manager Chris Grayling with the post of Transport Secretary, adding him to the phalanx of Leave backers in Cabinet which already included Boris Johnson, Liam Fox and David Davis.
The Prime Minister's official spokeswoman said: "This is a bold Cabinet. It's hitting the ground running. What you have seen with the appointments today is that commitment to putting social reform at the heart of her Government."
The creation of specific Cabinet posts for exiting the EU, and boosting international trade " underlines the commitment to delivering on the decision of the British people," the official spokeswoman said.
Labour said the promotion of a string of right-wingers contradicted Mrs May's "warm words" on her entry into 10 Downing Street about seeking to govern "not for a privileged few, but for every one of us".
Mrs May announced changes to the machinery of Whitehall which spelled the end for the Department of Energy and Climate Change - established by Gordon Brown in 2008 to lead the UK's contribution to the fight against global warming.
Greg Clark was appointed to the new role of Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, while his old role at the head of the Department for Communities and Local Government went to former business secretary Sajid Javid, in an effective job-swap.
The business department's responsibilities for universities, further education, skills and apprenticeships were transferred to the Department for Education under its new Secretary of State Justine Greening, who also became minister for women and equalities.
She replaced Ms Morgan, who made clear her departure was unwilling by saying she was "disappointed" to lose the job.
Green MP Caroline Lucas denounced the decision to shut down DECC as a "serious backwards step", as it would mean no dedicated minister for climate change at the Cabinet table.
Meanwhile, failed leadership candidate Stephen Crabb quit the Cabinet "in the best interests of my family", days after The Times reported that he had sent sexually explicit WhatsApp messages to a young woman during the EU referendum campaign.
His job of Work and Pensions Secretary went to Damian Green, and James Brokenshire, entered the Cabinet for the first time as Northern Ireland Secretary, replacing Theresa Villiers who turned down an alternate position.
A week after seeing his hopes of the Tory leadership dashed when he came third in a poll of Tory MPs, Mr Gove lost his Justice Secretary job to Liz Truss, who became the first female Lord Chancellor in the thousand-year history of the role.
Prominent Brexit backer Andrea Leadsom, who paved the way for Mrs May's rapid elevation to the premiership by pulling out of the Tory leadership contest on Monday, was promoted from energy minister to the Cabinet role of Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.
Karen Bradley, who worked under Mrs May at the Home Office, was promoted to Culture Secretary, while prominent Brexit campaigner Priti Patel became International Development Secretary.
Other eye-catching appointments on the second day of the formation of Mrs May's Government included former transport secretary Patrick McLoughlin as Conservative Party chairman and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster.
Alun Cairns kept his job as Wales Secretary and Mr Cameron's former parliamentary aide Gavin Williamson became chief whip.
Meanwhile, a day after their ejection from Government, Mr Cameron and Mr Osborne were spotted nursing their wounds over coffees with their families at a terrace cafe in Notting Hill.
The Conservatives' only MP north of the border, David Mundell, retained his position as Scotland Secretary.
Treasury minister David Gauke was promoted to the Cabinet-level role of Chief Secretary and f ormer Europe minister David Lidington was made Leader of the House of Commons.
Mrs May has completed appointing her full Cabinet with the final role to be confirmed being Attorney General Jeremy Wright.
The final Government appointment until Friday was Ben Gummer being made Cabinet Office Minister.
Mr Johnson was booed after he spoke at the French ambassador's residence in London at a celebration for Bastille Day.
His first public appearance as Foreign Secretary led some in the audience to heckle and boo Mr Johnson.
Andrea Leadsom, the new Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, arrives in Downing Street as Prime Minister Theresa May continues the process of appointing ministers to her new administration
Liz Truss is the new Justice Secretary, replacing Michael Gove
Liz Truss, who moves from the Department for Environment where she spent two years after joining the Cabinet in 2014, said in a message on Twitter that she was "delighted" with her new role.
Philip Hammond was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer in a Cabinet reshuffle by new Prime Minister Theresa May
Newly appointed Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson leaves his home in north London, as Prime Minister Theresa May prepared to put the finishing touches to her top team.
Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson addresses staff inside the Foreign Office in London
Damian Green has been appointed Work and Pensions Secretary
Newly appointed Education Secretary and minister for women and equalities Justine Greening leaves Downing Street
A man arrives with flowers in Downing Street, London, as Prime Minister Theresa May puts the finishing touches to her top team.
Prime Minister Theresa May arrives back in Downing Street as she prepares to put the finishing touches to her top team.
Newly appointed Tory Party chairman and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster Patrick McLoughlin leaves Downing Street
Jeremy Hunt will remain as Health Secretary
Chris Grayling arrives at Downing Street where he has been appointed Transport Secretary
Former prime minister David Cameron outside the property where he is staying in Notting Hill in London
James Brokenshire has been appointed Northern Ireland Secretary
Newly appointed Communities Secretary Sajid Javid leaves Downing Street
Newly appointed International Development Secretary Priti Patel at Downing Street as Theresa May puts the finishing touches to her top team
Karen Bradley is the newly appointed Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport
Greg Clark, who has been appointed Secretary of State in a reshaped Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
Hague tribunal ruling on South China Sea is final, legally binding - Japan Foreign Minister
TOKYO, July 12 (Reuters) - The Hague tribunal ruling on the South China Sea is final and legally binding, and the parties to the case are required to comply, Japan said on Tuesday.
Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida said in a statement that Japan has consistently advocated the importance of the rule of law and the use of peaceful means, not the use of force or coercion, in seeking settlement of maritime disputes.
Meeting of Iran central bank, US Treasury, international banks postponed
By Kylie MacLellan and William James
LONDON, July 12 (Reuters) - A meeting between the Iranian central bank, the U.S. Treasury and international banks in London to discuss stalled progress on banks resuming ties with Iran after U.S. sanctions were lifted in January has been postponed, the British government said.
European banks, some of which have been punished for breaking sanctions imposed on Iran, have shown reluctance to resume trade ties until they get concrete reassurance that they will not be hit again.
Asked by a lawmaker in parliament what discussions he was having with the United States on banking sanctions in order to encourage more British businesses to invest in Iran, British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said a meeting was due to take place in London on Tuesday.
"There is a meeting happening this afternoon ... between the Iranian Central Bank, the United States Treasury and international banks based in London in an attempt to try to make some progress on this matter," Hammond said.
A spokeswoman for the Foreign Office later said the meeting had been postponed and would be re-scheduled. She did not give a reason for the delay, or say when it would be held instead.
She said Britain wanted its banks to be able to support British companies working in Iran and was committed to working through the remaining challenges with international partners, Iran and the banks themselves.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry in May told Europe's top banks they had nothing to fear from resuming business with Iran as long as they make proper checks on trade partners.
The banks however reiterated their concerns, with lenders including Standard Chartered and Societe Generale saying they had no immediate plans to resume commercial activities with Iran.
A spokesman for Standard Chartered on Tuesday referred Reuters to the bank's previous statement on Iran.
"We will not accept any new clients who reside in Iran, or which are an entity owned or controlled by a person there, nor will we undertake any new transactions involving Iran or any party in Iran," he said.
Nine executives from leading European banks took part in the May meeting with Kerry, including Deutsche Bank Chief Executive John Cryan and HSBC's UK head Antonio Simoes.
It was not immediately clear which banks were due to attend Tuesday's meeting.
By 2020, it is estimated that more than 60 percent of the job openings in the state of Georgia will require a college certificate, diploma, associate degree, or bachelors degree.
To address this need, Georgia Northwestern Technical College (GNTC) is part of a statewide project that seeks to increase retention and graduation rates among students.
This initiative, called Complete College Georgia, is a joint effort between the University System of Georgia (USG) and the Technical College System of Georgia (TCSG). The plan seeks to shift the focus of Georgia Colleges from access to completion.
Under the direction of Governor Nathan Deal, the two college systems have outlined a collaborative process to reach the goal of 60 percent of young adults holding a college degree, diploma, or certificate by the year 2025.
The Technical College System of Georgias goal is to produce 85,064 more graduates than the 2008 baseline, which is 18,223. In order to achieve this by 2025, all the colleges combined in the TCSG system need a 2.6 percent increase in graduates each year over the previous year.
A major focus that colleges and universities have adopted to increase graduation rates, while maintaining quality, is the Six Core Principals. These principals are being adopted by each college in the TCSG system to serve as a guide to help students succeed and complete their programs of study at their college.
The Six Core Principals are:
Every student's postsecondary education begins with an intake process to choose an academic direction and identity the support needed to pass relevant credit-bearing gateway courses in the first year.
Enrollment in college-level math and English courses or course sequences aligned with the student's program of study is the default placement for the vast majority of students.
Academic and nonacademic support is provided in conjunction with gateway courses in the student's academic or career area of interest through co-requisite or other models with evidence of success in which supports are embedded in curricula and instructional strategies.
Students for whom the default college-level course placement is not appropriate, even with additional mandatory support, are enrolled in rigorous, streamlined remediation options that align with the knowledge and skills required for success in gateway courses in their academic or career area of interest.
Every student is engaged with content of required gateway courses that is aligned with his or her academic program of study especially in math.
Every student is supported to stay on track to a college credential, from intake forward, through the institution's use of effective mechanisms to generate, share, and act on academic performance and progressive data.
Georgia Northwestern Technical College provides quality workforce education to the citizens of Northwest Georgia. Students have the opportunity to earn an associate degree, diploma, or a certificate in business, health, industrial, or public service career paths. This past year, 13,734 people benefited from GNTCs credit and noncredit programs. With an annual credit enrollment of 7,876 students, GNTC is the largest college in Northwest Georgia. GNTC has an additional enrollment of 5,858 people through adult education, continuing education, business and industry training, and Georgia Quick Start.
South China Sea ruling will 'intensify conflict' -Chinese envoy
By David Brunnstrom and Ben Blanchard
WASHINGTON/BEIJING, July 12 (Reuters) - An international tribunal's ruling denying China's claims in the South China Sea will "intensify conflict and even confrontation," Beijing's ambassador to the United States said on Tuesday.
The ambassador, Cui Tiankai, also told an international forum in Washington that Beijing remains committed to negotiations with other parties in disputes over the vital trade route.
In a case that was seen as a test of China's rising power and its economic and strategic rivalry with the United States, the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague ruled China had breached the Philippines' sovereign rights by endangering its ships and fishing and oil projects in the energy-rich region.
The Chinese diplomat blamed the rise in tension in the region on the United States' "pivot" toward Asia in the past few years. Cui said the arbitration case "will probably open the door of abusing arbitration procedures.
"It will certainly undermine and weaken the motivation of states to engage in negotiations and consultations for solving their disputes," Cui said. "It will certainly intensify conflict and even confrontation."
China boycotted the arbitration hearings and described them as a farce. Legal experts and Asia policy specialists said China risked violating international law if it continued to strike a defiant tone and ignored the ruling.
The United States, which China has accused of fuelling tensions and militarising the region with patrols and exercises, said the ruling should be treated as final and binding.
"We certainly would urge all parties not to use this as an opportunity to engage in escalatory or provocative action," White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters in a briefing.
The ruling is significant as it is the first time that a legal challenge has been brought in the dispute. The court has no power of enforcement, but a victory for the Philippines could spur Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei to file similar cases on their claims to the waters.
China's Foreign Ministry rejected the tribunal's ruling, saying its people had more than 2,000 years of history in the South China Sea, that its islands did have exclusive economic zones and that it had announced to the world its "dotted line" map in 1948.
Ambassador Cui told the CSIS forum that China "will do everything possible to safeguard the unimpeded flow of commerce and stop any attempt to destabilize the region."
CROSSROADS
The Philippines said it was studying the ruling.
"We call on all those concerned to exercise restraint and sobriety," Foreign Affairs Secretary Perfecto Yasay told a news conference.
U.S. State Department spokesman John Kirby said Washington has seen signs in recent weeks of continued militarization by China in the South China Sea.
President Barack Obama's top Asia policy adviser, Daniel Kritenbrink, said the United States had no interest in stirring tensions in the South China Sea as a pretext for involvement in the region.
"We have an enduring interest in seeing territorial and maritime disputes in the Asia Pacific, including in the South China Sea, resolved peacefully, without coercion and in a manner that is consistent with international law," Kritenbrink said at a forum of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).
U.S. ally Australia warned against "unilateral actions" by any claimants.
"Australia will continue to exercise our international law rights to freedom of navigation and overflight, and support the right of others to do so," Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said in a statement.
International law experts described the ruling as a legal blow to Beijing's claims in the disputed waters and one that brought the United States, China and Southeast Asia to a dangerous crossroads.
"This is a tactical victory for the Philippines and a strategic defeat for international law," said Chas Freeman, a former U.S. diplomat who was then-President Richard Nixon's interpreter on his historic trip to China in 1972.
"This decision has left the issue in the condition where it can only be resolved by the use of force. There is no diplomatic process underway to settle claims, and now there's no longer a legal process," Freeman said.
Julia Guifang Xue, a professor of international law at Shanghai Jiao Tong University said that given Beijing's sensitivity about sovereignty and security "we won't be surprised to see some kind of renewed effort by China to consolidate its claim in the area."
U.S. officials have previously said they feared China may respond to the ruling by declaring an air defence identification zone in the South China Sea, as it did in the East China Sea in 2013, or by stepping up its building and fortification of artificial islands.
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called on all parties to resolve the disputes in a "peaceful and amicable manner through dialogue and in conformity with international law."
China claims most of the energy-rich waters through which about $5 trillion in ship-borne trade passes every year.
Finding for the Philippines on a number of issues, the court said there was no legal basis for China to claim historic rights to resources within its so-called nine-dash line, which covers almost 90 percent of the South China Sea.
None of China's reefs and holdings in the Spratly Islands entitled it to a 200-mile exclusive economic zone, it added.
The judges acknowledged China's refusal to participate, but said they sought to take account of China's position from its statements and diplomatic correspondence.
Taiwan, which maintains that the island it occupies, Itu Aba, is legally the only island among hundreds of reefs, shoals and atolls scattered across the seas, said it did not accept the ruling, which seriously impaired Taiwan's territorial rights in the 3.5 million sq km sea.
Fellow claimant Malaysia said it believed disputes could be resolved by diplomatic and legal processes.
A U.S. official who helps set the administration's Asia policies said that faced with the prospect of continuing Chinese assertiveness, it is important for countries in the region and for the United States to avoid provocative actions and leave the door open for Beijing to pursue peaceful solutions "and avoid making matters worse."
He also said, however, that the United States must honour its defence commitments in the Pacific and reassure the Philippines, Vietnam and China's other neighbours that it would not abandon them or Obama's pledge to devote more resources to Asian security.
LATAM Airlines shares soar as Qatar takes stake
By Conor Humphries and Rosalba O'Brien
FARNBOROUGH/SANTIAGO July 12 (Reuters) - Qatar Airways has agreed to acquire up to 10 percent of LATAM Airlines, the two companies said on Tuesday, in a $613 million deal that sent shares in Latin America's largest airline soaring.
The deal, announced at the Farnborough air show in England, follows Qatar Airways' purchase last year of 15 percent of British Airways owner International Airlines Group, which, like Qatar and LATAM, is a member of the Oneworld airline alliance.
The move is part of a rapid global expansion by the Doha-based airline, which was due to talk to Italian carrier Meridiana later on Tuesday about the proposed purchase of a 49 percent stake.
Shares in LATAM hit their highest level in over a year, up as much as 25 percent before paring gains to trade up 14 percent by 11 a.m. ET (1600 GMT) at 5,180 pesos in Santiago and $7.90 in the United States..
Latin American airlines have struggled as a global commodities downturn has sapped growth and weakened currencies, but the region's growing middle class and untapped potential still make it an attractive target for foreign carriers.
U.S. airlines are circling Panama-based Avianca Holdings SA , while Brazilian government plans to loosen tough restrictions on foreign ownership of its airlines could lead to a rush of badly needed fresh capital.
REMOVING RISK
For LATAM Airlines itself, the deal removed a key risk for the stock, BCI analyst Marcelo Catalan said, as the broker put its stance and price target under review.
The company was formed in a tie-up between Chile's LAN and Brazil's TAM in 2012, giving onetime investor darling LAN access to the region's biggest market before U.S. carriers could swoop in.
But it has struggled to live up to the promise of its merger, with full-year earnings losses reported in the last four years.
It has responded by reducing fleet spending and cutting capacity, particularly in Brazil. In the first quarter of 2016, it posted its first profit since 2014, but it has said long-term recovery is dependent on an improvement in Brazil's economy.
The agreement with Qatar Airways allows Qatar to acquire up to 10 percent of LATAM's total shares following a capital increase of $613 million, through the issuance of new shares at $10 per share. The airline's controlling shareholder families have agreed to the transaction.
"We think this makes LATAM more financially solid and generates more investor confidence on the corporate strategy," said Catalan.
As LATAM has cut capacity in Brazil, it has built up a hub in Pacific-facing Lima and indicated that it is eager to improve links with Asia.
"In addition to strengthening our financial position, (this deal) will allow us to explore new opportunities for connectivity with Asia and the Middle East," LATAM's chief executive, Enrique Cueto, said on Tuesday.
Iran summons French ambassador over dissident meeting in Paris
DUBAI, July 12 (Reuters) - Iran summoned the French ambassador on Tuesday to protest about a meeting held in Paris by Iranians in exile who seek the overthrow of the Islamic Republic.
The rally was held on Saturday by the National Council of Resistance of Iran, the political wing of the People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI), sometimes known as the MEK or MKO, a group that waged armed struggle against the Iranian government after the 1979 revolution and assassinated dozens of its top officials.
The MKO sided with Saddam Hussein during Iraq's war with Iran in the 1980s but fell out of favour with Baghdad after he was toppled by the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.
"The gathering held by those whose hands are stained by the blood of the Iranian people ... is unacceptable," Abolghassem Delfi, director of the West Europe department at Iran's Foreign Ministry, was quoted as saying by state news agency IRNA.
The Paris rally was addressed by Prince Turki al-Faisal, former chief of Saudi Arabia's intelligence services, who openly supported MKO's struggle against the Iranian government.
Former Mexico electricity official Ochoa tapped to lead ruling PRI
MEXICO CITY, July 12 (Reuters) - Former Mexican electricity official Enrique Ochoa is set to be ratified as head of Mexico's ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), the party said on Tuesday.
Ochoa resigned his post as head of the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) on Friday. He was the only candidate who met all requirements, the party said, adding that an internal committee would meet to ratify his selection later on Tuesday.
Ochoa, 43, took his CFE job in 2014, and was instrumental in crafting President Enrique Pena Nieto's landmark energy reform while serving as deputy energy minister.
Ochoa replaces former governor and veteran federal lawmaker Manlio Fabio Beltrones as leader of the party.
Beltrones stepped down last month after the PRI's dismal performance in regional elections, where the centrist party won only five of the 12 gubernatorial seats up for grabs. It previously held nine.
Five Honduran police officers plead not guilty to U.S. drug charges
By Nate Raymond
NEW YORK, July 12 (Reuters) - Five members of the Honduran National Police pleaded not guilty on Tuesday to U.S. charges that they conspired with a son of former Honduras President Porfirio Lobo to import cocaine into the United States.
The five officers entered their pleas in federal court in Manhattan one day after surrendering and being brought to the United States to face charges contained in an indictment that was announced less than two weeks ago.
"For allegedly conspiring to move tons of cocaine from the Honduran jungles to American cities, these Honduran police officers will now face these charges in an American court of law," Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said in a statement.
The officers included Mario Guillermo Mejia Vargas, Juan Manuel Avila Meza, Carlos Jose Zavala Velasquez, Victor Oswaldo Lopez Flores, and Jorge Alfredo Cruz Chavez. A sixth officer, Ludwig Criss Zelaya Romero, remains at large.
"This is the first we've learned about these allegations, and we're going to be investigating the charges," said Daniel Parker, Avila Meza's lawyer.
Lawyers for the other defendants declined to comment.
The case comes amid efforts in Honduras to clean up the country's 12,000-strong police force, which has long been accused of working with criminal gangs in the poor Central American country.
According to the indictment, the officers agreed to take bribes to help two informants posing as drug traffickers transport a multi-ton load of cocaine through Honduras so it could be sent to the United States.
The two informants, who worked on behalf of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, were introduced in 2014 to the six officers by Fabio Lobo, a son of the former Honduran president, the indictment said.
Accused Islamic State sympathizer pleads innocent in Arizona plot
By David Schwartz
PHOENIX, July 12 (Reuters) - An Arizona teenager accused of being an Islamic State sympathizer pleaded not guilty on Tuesday to charges of plotting to attack a Phoenix-area state motor vehicle office with bombs and other weapons and was ordered kept in jail without bond.
Mahin Khan, 18, of Tucson, was arrested by FBI agents on July 1 and indicted last week on state charges of terrorism, conspiracy to commit terrorism and conspiracy to commit misconduct involving weapons.
He faces a maximum penalty of life in prison if convicted with aggravating factors at trial, according to prosecutors.
A not guilty plea was entered by a judge on Khan's behalf to all three counts against him during Tuesday's proceedings. The defendant, who was shackled, said little except to answer perfunctory questions, such as stating his name for the record.
His next court date was set for July 19.
Prosecutors said the charges stemmed from an investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and state authorities of Khan's repeated communications with an individual he believed was an Islamic State fighter.
In the communications, prosecutors said, Khan sought to "obtain weapons including pipe bombs or pressure cooker bombs" for an attack on a Motor Vehicle Division office in Maricopa County.
The identity of Khan's alleged co-conspirator, or whether the person was an informant or undercover FBI agent, has not been disclosed.
In a probable cause statement filed in the case last week, the FBI said Khan described himself in an email as an "American Jihadist who supports" Islamic State, the militant group that has seized large swaths of territory in Syria and Iraq and claimed responsibility for bomb and gun attacks in France, Belgium and Bangladesh.
The document cited an alleged email in which Khan asked a contact he believed to be Pakistani to furnish him with assault rifles and a pistol because he wanted to "take out marines and jews."
It also accuses him of "identifying an Air Force recruitment center in Tucson as a potential target for a terrorist attack," although no such mention is made in the indictment.
The state attorney general's office said last week the investigation of Khan began with citizens alerting authorities to unspecified suspicious behavior.
Next UN chief ballots remain secret, despite televised debates
By Michelle Nichols
UNITED NATIONS, July 12 (Reuters) - Ten of the 12 candidates vying to be the next United Nations Secretary-General took part in live televised debates on Tuesday, a first for the world body, but attempts to bring unprecedented transparency to the race will not extend to the Security Council selection process.
The 193-member U.N. General Assembly has sought to lift a veil of secrecy that has surrounded the election of the U.N. chief for the past 70 years by requiring public nominations and holding campaign-style town hall events with each candidate.
That transparency extended to two debates - with five candidates in each group - in the General Assembly on Tuesday, which was broadcast live around the world on the Al Jazeera television network and on the U.N. website.
Candidates were pressed by the Al Jazeera hosts, and took questions from the audience, on issues such as leadership style, climate change, the International Criminal Court, the civil war in Syria and the recent eruption of fighting in South Sudan, where U.N. peacekeepers are struggling to protect civilians.
However, when the 15-member Security Council starts holding informal secret ballots next week to choose a candidate to recommend to the General Assembly for election later this year, the results of those closed-door polls will not be made public.
Council members will be given a ballot for each candidate with the options of encourage, discourage and no opinion.
The council will tally the ballots and inform the nominating states of the results for their candidate, but the overall results will not be made known to the public.
Ultimately, the five nations that hold a veto on the security council - the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China - have to agree on a candidate and there is no requirement for them to pay attention to the popularity of candidates with the General Assembly. The council hopes to agree on a candidate by October, diplomats say.
Since the power to authorize military force or sanctions lies with the Security Council, the U.N. chief has little more than a bully pulpit. Many diplomats say the veto powers prefer a "secretary" rather than a "general".
STRENGTH WANTED
Yet Britain's U.N. Ambassador Matthew Rycroft said on Tuesday that the more transparent process, particularly the individual candidate town halls with the General Assembly, had shown most member states wanted a strong secretary-general.
"That's an emerging consensus which wouldn't have been obvious without these changes in the (selection) process. I think it makes it harder for someone who isn't that strong to be chosen," Rycroft said.
The search for a successor to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon - a former South Korean foreign minister who steps down at the end of 2016 after two five-year terms - has sparked a push by more than a quarter of the 193 U.N. states for the world body's first female leader.
Discussion on the possibility of a female secretary-general and the role of women in the world body received enthusiastic applause during Tuesday's debates.
Half the candidates so far are women: U.N. cultural organization UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova of Bulgaria; former Croatian Foreign Minister Vesna Pusic; Moldova's former Foreign Minister Natalia Gherman; former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark, who heads the U.N. Development Programme; Argentinian Foreign Minister Susana Malcorra; and former U.N. climate chief Christiana Figueres of Costa Rica.
Also in the race are Montenegro Foreign Minister Igor Luksic; former Slovenian President Danilo Turk; former U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres, who is also a former Portuguese prime minister; former Serbian Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremic; former Macedonian Foreign Minister Srgjan Kerim; and Slovak Foreign Minister Miroslav Lajcak.
With the grand opening of Bass Pro Shops just moments away, officials of the City of East Ridge remind area residents and businesses of the potential traffic congestion that comes with such a large business opening on a major traffic corridor.
On Wednesday, Bass Pro Shops will have its grand opening with special celebrity guests at 6 p.m. During the times surrounding this event, traffic along Ringgold Road and Interstate 75 could potentially be heavily congested. The public should allow for extra travel time if they have business or are traveling home at this time, as well as follow all traffic laws.
On Thursday morning the city will have its ribbon cutting ceremony at 7:15 a.m. ahead of the 8 a.m. store opening. This day also starts the giveaway promotion weekend, which could see large crowds reminiscent of the after Thanksgiving sale day. These giveaway days will continue until Sunday.
During the weekend, normal congestion seen at the East Ridge Flea Market and Boyds Speedway will be intensified by the traffic of the Bass Pro Shops. Please be aware of pedestrians that may utilize other parking arrangements to walk to the store.
There are several events scheduled for Camp Jordan Park and Arena, so if you are attending one of these events, you may want to take the back entrance at Frawley Road to avoid Camp Jordan Parkway congestion. There will be shuttles running from Camp Jordan Park to Bass Pro Shops if parking at the store fills up.
Officials said, "If you are going to join in the celebration during the grand opening weekend, please remember to follow all traffic laws and to be patient if traffic begins to stop. Bass Pro Shops is looking forward to having you as a guest at their store just as much as we look forward to having you visit our city."
South Korea chooses site of THAAD U.S. missile system amid protests
By Jack Kim and Ju-min Park
SEOUL, July 13 (Reuters) - South Korea announced on Wednesday the site where a U.S. THAAD anti-missile defence unit will be deployed against North Korea's missile and nuclear threats, a plan that has angered China and prompted a North Korean warning of retaliation.
South Korea and the United States said last Friday they had made a final decision to deploy the Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) system in the South.
Tension on the Korean peninsula has been high since North Korea conducted its fourth nuclear test in January and followed that with a satellite launch and a string of test launches of various missiles.
The South Korean Defence Ministry said the THAAD system would be deployed in the southeastern county of Seongju to maximize its effectiveness while minimizing any impact on residents and the environment.
"By operating the U.S. THAAD battery in Seongju, we will be able to better protect one half to two-thirds of our citizens from North Korean nuclear and missile threats," the ministry said in a statement.
"It will dramatically strengthen the military capabilities and readiness to defend critical national infrastructure such as nuclear power plants and oil storage facilities, as well as the military forces of the South Korea-U.S. alliance."
North Korea's military on Monday threatened to retaliate against the deployment of the system with a "physical response" once its location and time of installation were decided.
South Korea's defence ministry has said it aims to have the system operational by the end of 2017.
The decision to deploy THAAD is the latest move to squeeze the increasingly isolated North Korea, but China worries the system's radar will be able to track its military capabilities. Russia also opposes the deployment.
South Korea and the United States have said THAAD will only be used in defence against North Korean ballistic missiles, but China has warned it would destabilise the regional security balance.
THAAD is built by Lockheed Martin Corp and designed to defend against short- and medium-range ballistic missiles by intercepting them high in the atmosphere, or outside it. The United States already has a THAAD system on the island of Guam.
Putting THAAD in Seongju would also allow for protection of major U.S. military installations in the South, while limiting the range of its radar's reach into China, South Korean media said.
The United States has about 28,000 troops in South Korea. It will pay for the THAAD system.
PROTESTS
South Korean Finance Minister Yoo Il-ho told parliament the government was making contingency plans in case China took action in response to the deployment.
But he added: "I don't think there will be a major retaliatory action in terms of the economy."
In Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang repeated China's opposition to THAAD.
"China will resolutely take the necessary steps to protect our reasonable interests," Lu added, without elaborating.
North Korea conducted its latest test of a submarine-launched ballistic missile a day after the announcement of the THAAD deployment, although it was seen as a failure. Earlier last week, the United States announced sanctions against North Korean leader Kim Jong Un over human rights abuses.
Recent media speculation about possible THAAD sites had fuelled protests from residents, including those of Seongju.
The county's commissioner has been on a hunger strike against the deployment, county official Kim Jee-hyun said.
A group of residents arrived at the Defence Ministry in Seoul on Wednesday to voice their opposition.
Members of parliament raised questions about the possible health impact of the system's radar. The defence ministry had said it would choose a site that did not risk people's health.
Seongju residents are also worried that the deployment could damage the reputation of their melon crop, which Kim said accounted for 70 percent of the country's output.
"Our farmers are in despair," she said.
MEDIA-Indonesia's 4 state firms likely to raise $1.1 bln via rights issues - Jakarta Post
-- Indonesia's four state-controlled firms are expected to raise 14.3 trillion rupiah ($1.09 billion) via rights issues this year, Jakarta Post reported on Wednesday.
-- Indonesia's Chief Economic Minister, Darmin Nasution, urged state firms to take advantage of the tax amnesty timing to raise funds, the report added.
-- The government has allocated 9 trillion rupiah capital injection for the four firms, PT PP, Wijaya Karya Tbk , Krakatau Steel Tbk and Jasa Marga Tbk .
-- Source link: http://bit.ly/29G50r4
-- Note: Reuters has not verified this story and does not vouch for its accuracy
Japan's Suga: Not true govt is considering helicopter money
TOKYO, July 13 (Reuters) - Japan's top government spokesman said on Wednesday the government was not considering "helicopter money" as an option, denying a media report that its advisers were suggesting the policy.
The Sankei newspaper reported on Wednesday that Etsuro Honda, an economic adviser to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, told the premier that now was a good time to embark on the policy, in which money is printed and directly handed to the private sector to stimulate the economy.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told a news conference that the Bank of Japan would decide monetary policy steps based on market movements and economic environment.
China stocks rise after South China Sea ruling; Hong Kong up
By Nathaniel Taplin
SHANGHAI, July 13 (Reuters) - Chinese stocks edged up on Wednesday, with investors shrugging off the impact of an international tribunal's ruling that denied China's claims in the South China Sea.
Finance stocks led indexes up, with sharp rises in banking shares, including China Minsheng Banking Corp Ltd, leading the CSI300 higher.
The Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague ruled in favour of the Philippines in a longstanding case, saying China had breached the Philippines' sovereign rights by endangering its ships and fishing and oil projects.
Analysts said the ruling - that China's claim to nearly all of the South China Sea had no legal basis - had little impact on stocks although some defence-related manufacturers might benefit.
Instead, investors were focused on June trade figures due at 0700 GMT on Wednesday and second quarter GDP data due on Friday, which economists predict will be the weakest in seven years.
Weak economic growth raises the odds of further action by the central bank which would boost finance shares, analysts said. But recent local media commentaries have hinted that the People's Bank of China is reluctant to engage in large scale easing in the second half given the major expansion in stimulus earlier in the year.
"The South China Sea ruling was expected, and is mainly a matter of face, the direct impact on the market is pretty limited," said Xiao Shijun, analyst at Guodu Securities in Beijing.
"On the GDP data and other macro data, if it comes in weaker than expected, you might see some small adjustments in monetary policy."
The CSI300 index rose 0.4 percent, to 3,286.47 points at the end of the morning session, while the Shanghai Composite Index gained 0.4 percent, to 3,060.45 points.
China CSI300 stock index futures for July rose 1.0 percent, to 3,284.6, 1.87 points below the current value of the underlying index.
The Hang Seng index added 0.5 percent, to 21,335.53 points.
The Hong Kong China Enterprises Index gained 0.8 percent, to 8,922.46.
The index measuring price differences between dual-listed companies in Shanghai and Hong Kong stood at 130.82.
A value above 100 indicates Shanghai shares are pricing at a premium to shares in the same company trading in Hong Kong, and vice versa.
The northbound quota for the Hong Kong-Shanghai Stock Connect, currently set at 13 billion yuan, saw net inflows of 0.25 billion yuan.
Total volume of A shares traded in Shanghai was 15.25 billion shares, while Shenzhen volume was 15.98 billion shares.
Total trading volume of companies included in the HSI index was 0.9 billion shares.
Brazil midfielder Ganso close to Sevilla move
July 13 (Reuters) - Midfielder Paulo Henrique Ganso is close to joining Spanish club Sevilla from Sao Paulo in his native Brazil, according to his current club president Carlos Silva.
The 26-year-old, once billed as one of Brazil's brightest emerging talents until his progress was curtailed by injury, was included in his country's squad for the Centenary Copa America last month after a series of impressive displays for his club.
"It's his wish and there's nothing we can do about it," Sao Paulo president Carlos Silva told ESPN. "To keep a player against his wishes is counterproductive.
"I will miss having a guy in our team with such rare talent. We are obliged to accept some things and this is one of them."
Brazilian media reported that the clubs had agreed a fee of 9.5 million euros ($10.5 million) for the playmaker.
New Zealand sets up trust register to curb tax evasion, money laundering
By Charlotte Greenfield
WELLINGTON, July 13 (Reuters) - New Zealand said on Wednesday it will introduce a registry of foreign trusts that local tax and law enforcement agencies could use to investigate suspected money laundering and tax evasion.
The registry was recommended after an independent review by accountant John Shewan last month, in the wake of the Panama Papers revelations, who found the trusts were open to being used to hide illicit funds and tax abuse.
Professional trust formation agents and lawyers were waiting to see whether the ramped-up disclosure rules would scare off foreign clients who had favoured the trusts for their secrecy.
New Zealand has long been identified as offering a trust regime popular with the offshore trust business. The tax department recommended a review of taxation of foreign trusts in 2014, though this did not take place at the time.
Finance Minister Bill English said the register would "ensure that our foreign trust disclosure rules are strengthened and New Zealand's reputation is protected."
The government will introduce a bill to Parliament in August, requiring the Inland Revenue Department (IR) to establish the registry.
Those setting up trusts would have to provide the names, contact details, and tax identification numbers of the settlors and beneficiaries of foreign trusts.
"Until we see the bill implementing automatic exchange of information there is a concerning lack of clarity about who will be able to access the proposed register of foreign trusts," said David McLay, a Wellington-based lawyer who specialises in tax law and trust formation.
"Until we resolve that lack of clarity we cannot answer the question of whether there will be a loss of trusts from New Zealand."
Wellington is currently considering how it would implement rules on exchanging tax details with other countries under the G20-led automatic exchange of information, a global standard to crack down on offshore tax evasion.
Currently, New Zealand's tax department could only access information about foreign trusts on request. It has said that it would not entertain "fishing requests" by foreign governments for information.
There had been 142 exchanges of information between IRD and foreign tax authorities in 23 countries in the past seven years, Shewan's report said.
New Zealand trusts could bring in as much as NZ$50 million in fees a year, with almost 12,000 foreign trusts costing around NZ$4,000 in annual fees, according to lawyers. The value of the trusts is not known.
PRESS DIGEST - Bulgaria - July 13
SOFIA, July 13 (Reuters) - These are some of the main stories in Bulgarian newspapers on Wednesday. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.
-- Bulgaria and Iran will continue talks for the sale of nuclear power reactor and other equipment Bulgaria had ordered to Russia, but later canceled its Belene nuclear project, Bulgarian officials said. (Capital daily, Duma, Monitor, Standart, Trud)
CAPITAL DAILY - Bulgarian IT holding Alterco plans to make a debut at the Bulgarian stock exchange and raise 3.3 million levs ($1.87 million).
TRUD - Bulgaria expects a 30 percent increase in tourist visits from Russia to Bulgarian Black Sea resorts this summer, Tourist Minister Nikolina Angelkova said.
-- Residential real estate prices increased 4.5 percent on an annual basis in the first quarter, statistics data showed, above the European Union average of 4 percent. (Sega, Trud, Monitor, Standart)
TIMELINE-Jihadist attacks in Saudi Arabia
RIYADH, July 13 (Reuters) - Jihadists have carried out many shootings and bombings in Saudi Arabia since 2014, soon after Islamic State's leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, called on his supporters there to mount attacks at home instead of travelling to join him in Syria or Iraq.
Most of the attacks targeted minority Shi'ite Muslims or security officers and were either carried out by people who pledged allegiance to Islamic State or were claimed by the militant group in subsequent online postings.
Saudi Arabia had earlier barred its citizens from going to fight in jihad overseas, used its clergy to denounce Islamic State, imposed prison terms for supporting the group and joined U.S.-led airstrikes against it in Syria.
Here is a timeline of some of the more prominent attacks attributed to the group in Saudi Arabia:
Nov 8 2014 - Three militants pledged to Islamic State fired upon Shi'ites marking their annual Ashura religious rites in Dalwa village of al-Ahsa in Eastern Province, killing seven there as well as the driver of a car they had hijacked nearby.
Apr 6 2015 - Two policemen killed in drive-by shooting in Riyadh. Security services detain suspects and say the attack was the work of Islamic State.
May 22 and May 29 2015 - Suicide bombers target Shi'ite mosques on consecutive Fridays, killing 21 in Qudeih village in Qatif and four in Dammam, both in Eastern Province. The attacks are claimed by Islamic State.
Jul 17 2015 - A teenager kills his uncle, an army colonel before driving to the checkpoint outside Ha'er prison in south Riyadh where many jihadists are incarcerated and detonating a bomb, killing himself and wounding police. Islamic State claims responsibility.
Aug 6 2015 - A suicide bomber pledged to Islamic State kills 15 and wounds 33 in a mosque in a security forces' compound in Asir province.
Sept 2015 - Two brothers kill their cousin in the desert after he joined the Saudi army, posting the video, in which they pledge allegiance to Islamic State, online. On 24 September they shoot dead another two civilians and a policeman in a nearby town. One is caught and the other killed by police days later.
Oct 16 2015 - Shooters kill five people outside a pre-Ashura event in the Shi'ite village of Saihat in Qatif. Islamic State issues a statement saying it was behind the attack.
Oct 27 2015 - One person is killed by a suicide bomber in a mosque in Najran near the Yemen border used by the small Ismaili Shi'ite offshoot. It is claimed by Islamic State.
Jan 29 2016 - A bombing and shooting in al-Ahsa, Eastern Province, where about half the population is Shi'ite, kills four and injures 33. The bombers include a Saudi and an Egyptian.
Apr 5 - Islamic State claims responsibility for assassinating a Saudi security officer, Colonel Kitab al-Hammadi, in al-Arja in al-Dawadmi, south of Riyadh.
Europe in their hands: May and Merkel draw battle lines for Brexit clash
By Paul Carrel and Alastair Macdonald
BERLIN/BRUSSELS, July 12 (Reuters) - Both are pastors' daughters who rose to the top of their conservative parties. Now Theresa May and Angela Merkel, equally firm but pragmatic, will go head to head to determine Britain's future relationship with Europe.
Two years the German chancellor's junior, May is highly regarded among European officials who largely welcomed news that she will become British prime minister on Wednesday after David Cameron bows out.
"Very disciplined" is how one senior German official who has worked closely with May described the Oxford University-educated daughter of a Church of England vicar. She has "excellent" relations with French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve, a source in Paris said.
Described by one veteran British conservative as a "bloody difficult woman", 59-year-old May will need to muster all the goodwill she can in Europe.
Her task is to deal with the negotiating clout and stamina of Merkel, who in 10 years as chancellor has regularly outlasted other European Union leaders at late night Brussels meetings.
Under the Lisbon Treaty, a deal on Britain's departure from the EU must be concluded with the European Council, which groups leaders of the 27 other member states.
Merkel's role, however, is crucial. After Britons voted for Brexit on June 23, she met the leaders of France and Italy to plan the way ahead for the EU, showing that its biggest member states - rather than its institutions - want to determine this.
Both women, who have been married for decades, saw off male challengers on their way to the top.
Merkel defeated her more flamboyant predecessor, the Social Democrat Gerhard Schroeder, at the ballot box in 2005.
May, who has been British interior minister for the past six years, will become prime minister simply because Conservative members of parliament elected her leader of the ruling party. But the woman who has declared "I'm not a showy politician", is also replacing a less cautious politician in the pro-EU Cameron, whose gamble in calling the referendum failed.
Merkel and May agree on one thing: in the Briton's words "Brexit means Brexit". Merkel has insisted the result of what was officially an advisory referendum must be respected.
Beyond that, battle lines are already being drawn. May says Britain will not rush to trigger the formal divorce proceedings under the Lisbon Treaty. Merkel, however, wants Britain to make its intentions clear more quickly.
On Tuesday, Merkel put the ball in May's court. "We must now wait until Britain says what relationship it envisages with the European Union and then we will lead, in our interests, the best negotiations for our citizens in the 27 member states," she said.
The chancellor wants to retain strong links with Britain, Germany's fifth-biggest trading partner for goods, but her bigger priority is to hold together the remaining EU members.
"VERY PERSISTENT"
British diplomats who have worked with May in Brussels rate her highly, saying she is one of the best prepared and best informed ministers to negotiate with their EU partners. Their European counterparts agree.
"She knows Brussels well, she knows the people and how things work here," said one EU official who deals with justice and home affairs. "She has always been prepared for the meetings, active in intervening, she knows the file."
Another senior EU official familiar with negotiations in which May has taken part described her as "very professional, very well respected".
All the indications are May will prove a tough negotiator. "She won't be an easy partner for the EU," said the senior EU official, adding that May does not change her tune easily. "She's been extremely consistent, very persistent."
A quiet 'remain' campaigner, May must now get the best terms she can. Her biggest task is to retain British access to the EU's single market while restricting immigration from the bloc.
EU leaders say market access can come only with a commitment to the free movement of people - just what British voters rejected. Yet May has a record of negotiating compromises with the EU in such apparently black or white situations.
As interior minister, she opted back into a European arrest warrant system and cross-border information sharing despite Britain's 'opt out' on EU justice and home affairs policy.
In brokering those 'opt-ins', the senior EU official said: "She took a great part in the negotiations herself, she didn't rely on officials ... She has very obvious negotiating skills."
Embattled Nepali PM expected to face no-confidence motion
By Gopal Sharma
KATHMANDU, July 13 (Reuters) - Nepal's prime minister is prepared to face a no-confidence motion in parliament after former Maoist rebels who had backed his coalition withdrew their support but he sees no need to step down, an aide said.
The impoverished Himalayan country has been plagued by political turmoil for years and the bid by the Maoists to unseat Prime Minister K.P. Oli and form a new government has ushered in another phase of uncertainty.
Oli, who came to power in October when the Maoists offered his party parliamentary backing to build a coalition, faces the prospect of a no-confidence vote if he cannot persuade other parties to stick with him.
The main Maoist party accuses Oli of reneging on past promises and is expected to move formally lodge a motion of no-confidence in the prime minister on Wednesday.
"There is no need for the prime minister to resign. If there is a no-confidence vote against him in the parliament the prime minister will face it," Oli's press adviser Pramod Dahal told Reuters late on Tuesday after meeting junior coalition partners.
Neighbours India and China compete for influence in Nepal and are both likely to be concerned by the prospect of more instability in a country struggling to rebuild after a devastating earthquake last year.
Oli, Nepal's seventh prime minister since it abolished its 239-year old monarchy in 2008, survived an attempt by the Maoists to unseat him in May after he reached a power-sharing deal.
Maoist officials said on Tuesday the opposition Nepali Congress party, the largest in parliament, was ready to throw its support behind Maoist party leader Prachanda to form a new government.
If that were to happen, Oli's coalition in the 595-member parliament would need the support of other smaller parties to survive.
Congress is due to make a decision on supporting the Maoists on Wednesday, party officials said.
The Maoists accuse Oli of failing to resolve anger in the south of the country over a new constitution, and of failing to rebuild homes and roads destroyed in last year's earthquake.
Nepal adopted a new constitution in September. Its passing looked like a rare moment of political consensus but protests soon followed.
Minority Madhesis, who live mostly in Nepal's lowlands near India, imposed a four-month border blockade to protest against a proposal to carve Nepal into seven federal states, which they say would divide their homeland and deprive them of a fair say.
The Tennessee School Boards Association, in partnership with the Tennessee Organization of School Superintendents (TOSS), Tennessee Association of Supervision and Curriculum Development (TASCD), the Tennessee Educational Technology Association (TETA) and the American Public Education Foundation launched the Tennessee Digital Resources Library (TDRL) today, making digital educational content available free on iTunes U.
We are very excited about the launch of the digital library and believe it will be a tremendous resource for our educators and students. The library was developed by Tennessee teachers curating digital learning resources for Tennessee high school courses that are aligned to Tennessee standards for Tennessee students, TSBA Executive Director Dr.
Tammy Grissom said.
The Tennessee Digital Resources Library was created because TSBA and its partners wanted to embrace the potential offered by digital technology for the sharing of content in the classrooms of Tennessee and engage students with a delivery method that inspires their natural curiosity and parallels the world in which they function outside the classroom. Boards of education spend a significant amount of money on textbooks that are often obsolete even before they reach our students. By utilizing these free, modifiable learning resources and making them available on iTunes U, Boards can use textbook money on devices and technology infrastructure. The Tennessee Digital Resources Library is designed to help school districts use and share open educational resources, which are aligned to Tennessee standards thus helping our teachers as they deliver content in the classrooms.
The digital library was created by utilizing the talents of our Tennessee teachers. Beginning in August 2015, teachers from across the state curated digital learning materials for the following fourteen high school courses: Algebra I and II; Biology; Chemistry; Economics; English I, II, III and IV; Geometry; Government; Physical Science; U.S. and World History. Below is a list of teachers who participated in the project:
Anita Adkins, Cleveland
Amanda Arnold, Kingsport
Brenda Ball, Metro-Nashville
Justin Barton, Hawkins County
Myles Beaupre, Collierville
Paul Blair, Hawkins County
Robert Bolding, Collierville
Susan Bothman, Knox County
Brian Brewer, Bartlett
Misty Brown, Knox County
Lisa Casey, Clarksville-Montgomery County
Sheree Cumberlander, Metro-Nashville
Sara Dorris-Billingsley, Jackson-Madison County
Darryl Fannon, Knox County
Paula Franklin, Knox County
Amanda Frazier, Hamblen County
Ken Freeman, Clarksville-Montgomery County
Tiffany Gholston, Marion County
Courtney Gillespie, Collierville
Chasitie Goodman, Metro-Nashville
William Graham , Collierville
Christopher Greene, Hamblen County
Jonelle Greer, Metro-Nashville
Jessica Hayworth, Kingsport
Angela Hoath, Maury County
Sara Hodge, Collierville
Caroline Howard, Bartlett
Holly Hunter, Rutherford County
Stacy Jones, McNairy County
Pam Kreidenweis, Franklin County
Justin Lambert, Clarksville-Montgomery County
Karen Lawson, Tullahoma
Amy Lyttle, Knox County
Krista Mann, Hawkins County
Lindsay May, Collierville
Larissa McCoy, Collierville
Ashley McCullar, Collierville
Ashley McDonald, Clarksville-Montgomery County
Whitney Meriwether, Collierville
Terrance Moore, Collierville
Tressie Norton, Knox County
Sara Jane Pickett, Franklin County
Bonnie Principe, Clarksville-Montgomery County
William Pszonak, Collierville
Erin Rife, Clarksville-Montgomery County
Elishea Roberts, Marion County
Ashley Rust, White County
Kimberly Stewart, Dyer County
Susan Sudberry, Tullahoma
Cynthia Tatum, Milan Special
Megan Trahan, Collierville
Tamela Underwood, Collierville
Dena Upton, Warren County
Rhonda Utt, Hamblen County
Alicia Walker, Franklin County
Dane Weaver, Jackson-Madison County
Joel Wilhite, Arlington
Charles Williams, Metro-Nashville
Visit www.tndigitalresourcelibrary. com or iTunes U to access the course materials.
A special thanks to David Pickler, president of the American Public Education Foundation, for providing stipends and iPad Airs to all teachers that worked on curating these digital materials.
0-Oil down 4 pct; U.S. stockpile data feeds glut warning
By Barani Krishnan
NEW YORK, July 13 (Reuters) - Oil markets tumbled more than 4 percent on Wednesday, erasing most of the previous session's gain, as a raft of bearish U.S. inventory data heightened concerns about a global glut.
U.S. crude stockpiles fell less than expected last week, distillate inventories rose the most since January and gasoline stocks unexpectedly increased, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) said, painting an unusually weak demand picture during the traditionally busy summer driving season.
The EIA's report pressured prices in a market already bearish after world energy watchdog the International Energy Agency (IEA) warned of a global oil glut, saying surging crude stocks have pushed floating storage to seven-year highs.
"A surprising build in gasoline in the peak of U.S. driving season and a very large build in heating oil will set the tone for lower prices as we go forward," said Tariq Zahir, a trader in crude oil spreads at Tyche Capital Advisors in New York.
"The products markets will continue to put weakness in the energy complex."
Brent crude settled down $2.21, or 4.6 percent, at $46.26 a barrel.
U.S. crude fell $2.05, or 4.4 percent, to close at $44.75.
On Tuesday, both Brent and WTI rose nearly 5 percent, their biggest daily gain since April, on shortcovering and technical buying a day after hitting two-month lows.
Refined oil products also slumped on Wednesday, stung by the EIA data. U.S. gasoline settled nearly 4 percent lower while heating oil, a proxy for ultra low sulfur diesel, dropped more than 5 percent.
The profit margin refiners get for diesel, known as the diesel crack <_1HOc1-CLc1>, fell to a two-month low.
"(Stocks) are at such elevated levels, especially for products for which demand growth is slackening, that they remain a major dampener on oil prices," the IEA said.
The U.S. government's EIA said crude inventories fell 2.5 million barrels last week, less than a 3 million-barrel drop forecast in a Reuters poll.
Distillate stockpiles, which include diesel and heating oil, rose 4.1 million barrels, versus expectations of a 256,000-barrel increase, the EIA data showed.
Gasoline stocks rose unexpectedly by 1.2 million barrels, compared with a 432,000-barrel drop forecast. That came during the week of the July 4th holiday, typically the busiest U.S. driving period.
Retailer Casino says Brazilian business improving
By Dominique Vidalon and Pascale Denis
PARIS, July 13 (Reuters) - French retailer Casino said on Wednesday its sales growth accelerated in the second quarter on an improving performance in Brazil, its second-largest market after France, where its consumer electronics business returned to growth.
In its core French market, Casino's performance suffered setbacks ranging from bad weather that hit clothing sales at Monoprix stores to strikes and floods.
The group, which saw its credit rating cut to junk status by Standard & Poor's in March, declined to say in a call with Reuters whether this would affect its annual target for a rise in profit and cash flow in France.
Casino, which controls Brazil's top retailer, Grupo Pao de Acucar, said second-quarter group sales reached 9.97 billion euros ($11.02 billion).
Stripping out acquisitions, currency effects and revenue on fuel, sales rose by 3.8 percent, a marked acceleration from the 1.5 percent growth seen in the first quarter.
"Overall, a solid statement, which we expect to be supportive of the shares this morning," said Citi analyst Nick Coulter, adding that the market consensus had been for 9.83 billion euros.
In Brazil, the Cash and Carry Assai stores saw rising food sales and promotions boosted revenue at its Extra hypermarkets.
Same-store sales at the group's Via Varejo consumer electronics unit rose 2.6 percent, a turnaround from a 11.8 percent decline in the first quarter, helped by cost cuts and better trading conditions.
Overall like-for-like French sales growth slowed to 1.2 percent in the second quarter, which was behind the 1.5 percent growth Casino has forecast for the full year.
Asked if this changed Casino's forecast for a 50 percent jump in 2016 trading profit to more than 500 million euros at its French operations, Giscard said: "I am not nervous". He added that the company would say more when it reports first-half earnings on July 29.
Steinhoff gets its European deal with $800 mln Poundland buy
By James Davey and Zandi Shabalala
LONDON/JOHANNESBURG July 13 (Reuters) - South African retailer Steinhoff has agreed to pay nearly $800 million for British-based discount chain Poundland after two previous attempts to expand in Europe fell through this year.
The $23 billion company, which sells beds and cupboards to less affluent shoppers in Europe, southern Africa and Asia, is keen to grow its European business when consumers are turning to cheaper chains and its home market is also struggling.
Steinhoff already owns the Bensons Beds and Harvey's furniture chains in Britain. The Poundland deal is third time lucky after it failed to secure Britain's Home Retail, which owns Argos, and was also unsuccessful in a bid for Darty in France.
It is the biggest takeover of a listed British company since a vote on June 23 to leave the European Union, a decision which has prompted concern that Britain may fall into recession.
The fall in the value of the pound is making British assets cheaper for foreign buyers.
Steinhoff, in which South African billionaire Christo Wiese is the largest shareholder, has a reputation for buying underperforming companies that can benefit from its wide global network to source goods at lower prices.
It will pay 220 pence per share plus 2 pence in dividends, valuing the Poundland at 597 million pounds ($791 million).
The price is a premium of 39 percent to Poundland's share price on June 13 -- the day before Steinhoff first bought Poundland shares. It had since built up a 23.6 percent stake.
Shares in Poundland surged 12.6 percent to 220.7 pence by 1050 GMT.
Momentum Wealth head Wayne McCurrie questioned the price the Johannesburg-based company plans to pay for Poundland, which as its name suggests sells every item at a single price of a pound at its UK stores.
"Steinhoff is paying quite a big premium," McCurrie said. "This might be a bit negative for Steinhoff in the next year or two as the British economy tries to find its new home."
Poundland listed at 300 pence in 2014. But its shares have lost 42 percent of their value over the last year, hit by subdued trading, adverse currency moves and the distraction of integrating the 99p Stores chain it bought for 55 million pounds.
It has also faced pressure as British supermarkets fight a price war spurred by the growth of German discounters Aldi and Lidl.
COMPLEMENTARY FIT
Buying Poundland would give Steinhoff more than 900 shops in Britain, Ireland and Spain.
"Steinhoff is developing a fast-growing, price-led retail business across the UK and the rest of Europe. Poundland would be a complementary fit to this growth story," said Steinhoff Chief Executive Markus Jooste.
The deal gives Poundland shareholders a return on their investment without having to await the benefits of a turnaround strategy.
"The Poundland Board believes that (Steinhoff's) all-cash offer presents Poundland shareholders with an opportunity to realise their shareholding at a certain and attractive price," Chairman Darren Shapland said.
Jim McCarthy, who stepped down this month after 10 years as chief executive, is in line for a 22 million pound payment for his stake.
Steinhoff's further expansion in Europe, where it already makes more than 70 percent of its sales, would reduce its reliance on a shaky home market where its furniture unit JD Group is cutting jobs and closing branches because of weak demand. ($1 = 0.7547 pounds) ($1 = 0.9043 euros)
Four drown, six rescued after migrant boat overturns off Greece's Lesbos
ATHENS, July 13 (Reuters) - Four people drowned and six were rescued when a small boat laden with migrants overturned on Wednesday off the Greek island of Lesbos, the country's coastguard said.
Wednesday's fatalities were the first in the area for some weeks after a European Union deal with Turkey that has helped stem the flow of migrants making the narrow but precarious sea crossing from Turkish shores to outlying Greek islands.
Those who survived said there were 11 people in total on the boat, the coastguard said. The victims included two children.
Unemployed man charged with murdering Cambodian government critic
By Prak Chan Thul
PHNOM PENH, July 13 (Reuters) - A Cambodian court on Wednesday charged an unemployed man with murdering prominent government critic and activist Kem Ley, who was gunned down in broad daylight at a shop in the capital Phnom Penh.
Kem Ley's death comes amid rising political tensions between veteran Prime Minister Hun Sen and an opposition hoping to challenge his grip on power at local elections in 2017 and national elections in 2018.
The Phnom Penh city court charged Chuop Somlap, 38, with the premeditated murder of Kem Key, 46, the founder of grassroots advocacy group "Khmer for Khmer", deputy prosecutor Ly Sophana told reporters.
He was also charged with the illegal possession of a weapon and another unidentified person was charged with the illegal sale of a weapon to Chuop Somlap, Ly Sophana said.
Chuop Somlap was arrested shortly after the shooting on Sunday. In a police video he claims to have killed the popular political commentator over a $3,000 debt.
Members of Cambodia's opposition and activists have been jailed in recent months on charges they say were trumped up by the government as part of a crackdown to mute critics ahead of the elections.
Many of Kem Ley's supporters said the murder was political and were sceptical of the reason given for the killing.
Kem Ley's family said the activist did not owe money, adding that they now feared for their safety.
"If I continue to live in Cambodia, it's not safe," Kem Ley's wife Bou Rachana said.
While Chuop Somlap's wife said her husband was a poor, unemployed man and would not have had such a large amount of money to lend. "He has never had that much money," she said.
Kem Ley was a frequent critic of Hun Sen, whose more than 30 years grip on power has been challenged by the rise of the opposition Cambodia Nation Rescue Party (CNRP).
AIDS conference returns to a changed South Africa
By Pete Vernon
JOHANNESBURG, July 13 (Reuters) - The South Africa that hosts a global AIDS Conference next week has come a long way from the "AIDS pariah" that did so 16 years ago, when then President Thabo Mbeki stunningly dismissed the link between HIV and the disease.
At the epicentre of the worldwide AIDS panedmic, South Africa now boasts the largest treatment programme in the world, with 3.4 million people receiving the antiretroviral (ARV) drugs that allow those living with HIV to lead normal lives.
The contrast with the Mbeki era, when the health minister touted beetroot and the African potato as AIDS remedies and hundreds of delegates walked out of the conference when the president suggested poverty might be the leading cause of AIDS, could hardly be sharper.
During his presidency, Mbeki embraced a fringe movement of HIV deniers and resisted international and domestic pressure to seriously address the AIDS crisis. Instead, he denounced ARVs as Western inventions with poisonous side effects.
"The patients were dying like flies. We were treating them with tender loving care and vitamins. We had nothing," said Dr. Jean Bassett, who founded the HIV treatment center at the Witkoppen Clinic in Johannesburg in 1996.
Patience Ndlovu was one of those who received treatment at the clinic. Diagnosed with HIV in 2002, she received only vitamins as treatment at first.
"They were difficult times. To raise a child and me being in that status, I was so scared," Ndlovu, now 38, said.
Ndlovu said that, at her lowest point, her CD4 count - a measure of how well the immune system is working - had dropped below 200, meaning her condition had progressed to AIDS.
She began receiving ARVs in 2004 after the Mbeki government began a reluctant roll-out of the life-saving drugs to the sickest AIDS patients following a 2003 court ruling. She recovered.
NEEDLESS DEATHS
Many South Africans living with HIV were not so lucky. A 2008 Harvard University study estimated that Mbeki's obstruction resulted in at least 330,000 unnecessary deaths in the first half of the decade.
"It was a lost decade. We blew the years 2000 to 2008 with political obfuscation," said Mark Heywood, cofounder of the Treatment Action Campaign, an advocacy group that for many years was the leading public voice on HIV in South Africa.
Major change did not come until new leadership was in place.
Mbeki was ousted in 2008, and the following year Aaron Motsoaledi, a respected doctor, was appointed health minister by new South African president Jacob Zuma.
Motsoaledi immediately refocused the government response to the pandemic, launching a nationwide testing campaign and expanding ARV treatment.
"Motsoaledi has done a remarkable job," said Dr. Chris Beyrer, president of the International AIDS Society, the organiser of the conference in Durban from July 18 to 22.
"For South Africa to have over three million on antiviral therapy - that is just extraordinary."
Today seven million South Africans, 19 percent of the adult population, live with HIV.
The epidemic robbed many families of breadwinners, created an army of orphans and struck down millions in the prime of their working lives. While great progress in providing treatment has been made, the social and economic costs of the delayed response are still being felt.
"Mbeki was responsible for a huge number of people dying," said Dr. Francois Venter, Deputy Executive Director of the Reproductive Health and HIV Institute at Johannesburg's University of the Witwatersrand.
"He has a large amount of accounting to do for a huge number of people who are dead and families who are decimated and an economy that could be much stronger," he said.
Mbeki remains unphased by such attacks. In a letter posted on his foundation's website in March of this year, he pushed back against critics of his record on HIV, repeating his assertion that a "virus cannot cause a syndrome."
For those like Ndlovu, the shift in South Africa's response to the HIV epidemic has saved and changed lives.
Zimbabwe court throws out case against anti-Mugabe pastor
By MacDonald Dzirutwe
HARARE, July 13 (Reuters) - A Zimbabwean court on Wednesday dismissed charges against a religious leader accused of trying to overthrow the government through an internet campaign that inspired rare protests against President Robert Mugabe.
Pastor Evan Mawarire appeared in a packed Harare courtroom draped in the Zimbabwean flag after spending the night in police cells as officers searched his house, church and office.
Magistrate Vakayi Chikwekwe said prosecutors presented different charges from those read out to Mawarire when he was arrested.
"It's my finding that the National Prosecuting Authority cannot charge the accused for the first time in court without charges being read out to him," Chikwekwe told the court.
Mawarire's lawyer Harrison Nkomo said his client initially faced charges of inciting violence before prosecutors changed the charge to attempting to overthrow the government, which carries up to 20 years in jail in found guilty.
Hundreds of Mawarire's supporters gathered outside the court, waving the national flag and singing protest songs, as anti-riot police kept a watchful eye.
"We are here in solidarity with a man of the cloth who is standing against a system that has impoverished the citizens of this nation," Harare resident Pastor Ellard said.
Though Mawarire had called for further "stay at home" protests on Wednesday, queues built up as normal at bus and taxi ranks to ferry people to work, while most businesses were open.
Teachers reported for duty at most public schools, which are conducting mid-year examinations, while nurses and doctors were at work at state-run hospitals.
Mawarire last month posted a video online, that has since gone viral, venting his anger about deteriorating social and economic conditions in Zimbabwe and urging citizens to hold government to account.
"I am angered by the poverty and day to day struggles. The economy is not working and there are no jobs," Zimbabwean activist Maureen Kademaunga told Reuters.
The preacher's social media movement has rattled 92-year-old Mugabe's administration, leading to accusations by the state against Mawarire of inciting public violence.
Anger is rising in Zimbabwe over high unemployment, corruption in government and shortages of money, which has seen people spending hours in bank queues to withdraw their money.
Zimbabwe's government warned protesters on Tuesday they would face the "full wrath of the law" if they heeded Mawarire's call, after his #ThisFlag movement organised the biggest anti-government demonstrations in a decade last week.
After his arrest, Mawarire supporters released a pre-recorded video urging Zimbabweans to stage another stay-away protest on Wednesday.
Amnesty International said Mawarire's arrest was a calculated plan by Zimbabwean authorities to intimidate activists ahead of Wednesday's protests.
Germany will recall soldiers from Turkey if MP visit blocked -vice chancellor
BERLIN, July 13 (Reuters) - Germany will recall soldiers serving at the Incirlik airbase in Turkey if Ankara continues blocking German lawmakers from visiting the troops, Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel said in remarks published on Wednesday.
Turkey, angered by a resolution passed by the German parliament last month that branded the 1915 massacre of Armenians by Ottoman forces a genocide, has denied German lawmakers access to the base.
"The German army answers to parliament," Gabriel told the regional newspaper Mitteldeutsche Zeitung. "And if parliament cannot visit its army, then the army cannot stay there. This is absolutely clear."
His threat to pull out the 250 soldiers at the base, who are part of NATO operations against Islamic State militants in Iraq, is the clearest sign yet of escalating tensions between the two members of the military alliance.
Though they are crucial partners in the effort to stem mass migration to Europe, Germany and Turkey's relations have taken several blows in recent months.
President Tayyip Erdogan was perturbed by the broadcast of a satirical song about him on German television and in April launched legal action against the comedian who wrote it. The Armenian resolution last month, which prompted Ankara to recall its ambassador, compounded the rift.
Gabriel's remarks echoed earlier demands by some German lawmakers that the soldiers should be recalled if Turkey did not change its position.
German forces are currently on missions in around 13 countries, including Afghanistan and Kosovo, as well as conducting monitoring in the Mediterranean. Lawmakers have often visited deployed soldiers, mainly in Afghanistan.
Turkey PM says aims to develop relations with Syria, Iraq
By Gulsen Solaker and Orhan Coskun
ANKARA, July 13 (Reuters) - Turkey aims to develop good relations with Syria and Iraq, and both countries need to be stable for counter-terrorism efforts to succeed, Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said on Wednesday.
Turkey has long been one of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's staunchest opponents, arguing that only his departure could stabilise Syria. That has set it at odds with Assad's ally Russia and distanced it from a U.S.-led coalition more focused on fighting Islamic State.
Since taking office in May, Yildirim has repeatedly said that Turkey needs to "increase its friends and decrease its enemies" - an apparent tacit admission that past policies have left Ankara sidelined.
"It is our greatest and irrevocable goal: Developing good relations with Syria and Iraq, and all our neighbours that surround the Mediterranean and the Black Sea," Yildirim said, in comments broadcast live on television.
"We normalised relations with Russia and Israel. I'm sure we will normalise relations with Syria as well. For the fight against terrorism to succeed stability needs to return to Syria and Iraq," he said.
Jihadist group Islamic State, which controls parts of Syria and Iraq, has also established a network across the border in Turkey that has been blamed for a series of suicide bombings, some of which have targeted foreign tourists.
Turkey last month announced the restoration of diplomatic ties with Israel after a six-year rupture and expressed regret to Russia over the downing of a warplane, seeking to mend strained alliances. Officials have insisted those moves do not mark a broader foreign policy shift for Ankara.
"There is currently no change in Turkey's Syria policy. Turkey does not want to have problems with any countries in the region and emphasises the importance of ending terrorism as well as engaging in close cooperation for regional stability," one official told Reuters after Yildirim's comments.
IEA sees Venezuelan oil output slumping on power cuts, cash crunch
LONDON, July 13 (Reuters) - Venezuelan oil output is set to fall by around a tenth this year due to power shortages, a cash crunch and a drop in activity at foreign oil service companies, the International Energy Agency said on Wednesday.
"Lower oil prices and sliding production are a double whammy for Venezuela, which is caught in the grip of an economic and political crisis," the IEA, which advises industrialised nations on energy policies, said in a monthly report.
"As the cash crunch deepens, there is growing concern that acute shortages of food and medicine could trigger nationwide rioting," it added.
Venezuela has said it hopes to keep output steady this year but the IEA said a drop of around 200,000 barrels per day looked "unavoidable" as international oil companies face repayment issues and daily operational challenges.
Since the start of the year, supply has fallen by 170,000 bpd to 2.18 million bpd in June, according to the Paris-based IEA.
"Although the worst may be over - electricity shortages that sparked a 120,000 bpd decline in the April-June period have eased - further losses are expected in the second half of 2016."
It said it saw the biggest production losses in the mature fields in the east, while fields in the west around Lake Maracaibo were also suffering.
"Even when oil was above $100 per barrel, these ageing oilfields were already struggling due to years of under-investment and poor reservoir management. Natural declines have accelerated due to the power crisis and cash crunch".
Even production in the southeastern Orinoco Belt is starting to dip due to a lack of light crude for blending and reduced investment from foreign partners, the agency said.
The Tennessee County Clerks Organ Donor Awareness Foundation announced it has reached a milestone of $5 million in donations in the same year that it celebrates its 20th anniversary. The funds, raised $1 at a time through the foundations Donate a Dollar program, are used to educate Tennesseans on the critical importance of organ and tissue donation.
With caring local motorists making donations it has helped more than 7,000 Tennesseans to receive the gifts of life through organ transplantation in last 10 years, said Bill Knowles, Hamilton County Clerk. Dollars collected in Hamilton County have played a role in the success by making citizens aware of the great need by distributing educational materials, sponsoring school based programs and recognizing organ and tissue donors. Bill Knowles was a founding member of the Tennessee County Clerks Organ Donor Awareness Foundation.
The Tennessee County Clerks Foundation asks local citizens to donate $1 when they visit their local county clerks office to register a new automobile or conduct other business. The foundation works with the state non-profits, Donate Life Tennessee, Tennessee Donor Services, and Mid-South Transplant Foundation, to educate Tennesseans on the critical importance of becoming an organ and tissue donor.
Bill Kemp, Sumner County Clerk who served as the foundation's original chairman, said, "We began working to pass legislation authorizing the creation of the foundation in 1995. It has been rewarding to serve alongside numerous county clerks supporting such a life-saving effort."
The foundations board, which includes physicians, donor service professionals, and county clerk representatives, administers the funds. These funds have been central to the development of the Donate Life Tennessee online registry, the creation and distribution of educational materials, school-based programs, and recognition programs for organ and tissue donors.
This extraordinary effort is proof that every dollar does make a difference, said Chuck Kizer, Lawrence County Clerk and the current chairman of the foundations board. Who would have imagined when we started the foundation 20 years ago that we would reach $5 million in contributions? What an enormous gift the citizens of Tennessee have made to the thousands of people across the state who are waiting on organ and tissue donations to restore their lives.
Taiwan seeks 2 Russian suspects in $2 mln ATM malware heist
By Faith Hung
TAIPEI, July 13 (Reuters) - Taiwan investigators suspect two Russian nationals hacked into a major domestic bank's ATMs last weekend, using malware to withdraw more than $2 million from dozens of machines in the country's first recorded case of its kind.
Combining cybercrime with daylight robbery after a typhoon battered greater Taipei, the suspects may have used a cellphone to trigger 41 First Bank ATMs to dispense fat wads of bills, investigators said on Wednesday. In each case, the still-at-large suspects took the money and left quickly, filmed on close-circuit TV cameras.
As Taiwan officials continue to piece together how the crime was committed, the theft shows growing boldness in attacks on ATMs in Asia. In May, a gang stole $13 million from Japanese ATMs in a three-hour, 14,000 withdrawal spree.
Since discovering the theft on Monday, a range of Taiwan's biggest state-run banks have frozen withdrawals from nearly 1,000 ATMs of the kind used in the heist, supplied by Germany's Wincor Nixdorf. About 4 percent of Taiwan's national ATM network of 27,200 machines is affected, leaving customers obliged to use other machines.
The Ministry of Justice's Investigation Bureau on Wednesday said two Russian suspects have been identified, but declined to disclose their names. It said it believed the pair left Taiwan early on Monday, and was still investigating whether a possible third one might have been involved.
"So far we think it could have been done remotely, such as via a cellphone, laptop or hacked First Bank staff PC," said Lin Cheng-hsien, a spokesperson for the bureau.
First Bank reported T$70 million ($2.2 million) was stolen from its ATMs in hits that investigators said took place at various times during both daytime and nightfall.
Investigators have identified three different malware programmes that were used to trigger withdrawals. "After testing the malware, we confirmed hacked ATMs will dispense cash immediately according to the malware," the bureau said in a statement.
The raid on Wincor machines comes as its agreed 1.7 billion euro ($1.88 billion) acquisition by U.S. peer Diebold moves closer to its expected closure this summer, creating a global leader in ATMs with a market share of about 35 percent.
Wincor said it had been informed about concerted attacks on its ATMs in Taiwan.
"Attacks follow a similar pattern, irrespective of their make or brand, and we as well as the banks are aware of them," a Wincor official in Germany told Reuters by email. "The details of the attack are being examined by the police, banks as well as experts from Wincor Nixdorf. To support the local teams we have sent security experts."
Officials of Taiwan's banking regulator, the Banking Bureau, declined to comment on the details of the incident, beyond saying First Bank will have to take the loss. It said, however, First Bank's users will not be affected and it will ask local banks to establish monitoring system of their ATMs over the next month.
At least four major state-run financial institutions, including First Bank, Chang Hwa Bank, Taiwan Cooperative Bank and Chunghwa Post Co., suspended cash withdrawals service on their ATMs as a precaution.
They didn't say when the service would be restored, nor whether the suspension might affect their financial performance. ($1 = 0.9055 euros)
Human Rights Watch says abuse of maids in Oman verges on slavery
MUSCAT, July 13 (Reuters) - Human Rights Watch (HRW) has accused Oman of not doing enough to tackle widespread abuse of foreign maids, which it says sometimes verges on slavery.
The group said it had documented physical and sexual abuse, confiscation of passports, excessive working hours and at least one case in which a maid was "sold" to another employer.
Omani authorities did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on the HRW report, released on Wednesday.
Based on interviews with 59 of at least 130,000 domestic maids working in the Gulf Arab sultanate, HRW said it had concluded that Oman's laws did not adequately protect them and employers often mistreated them without being punished.
"It is clear that abuses are widespread and that they are generally carried out with impunity," the New York-based group said.
"Situations like those described below are at the very least dangerously close to situations of slavery."
A Bangladeshi maid said she left home to work for an employer in the United Arab Emirates before a new employer paid cash for her to be transferred to Oman.
"I was sold," HRW quoted Asma K. as saying.
Under Oman's kafala, or sponsorship, system - used in several Gulf Arab countries - migrant workers' visas are tied to their employers and may not be transferred to a new employer without the previous employer's permission.
Around half of Oman's population of 4.4 million people are foreigners sponsored by their employers to live and work there.
Islamic State car bomb attack kills seven north of Baghdad
BAGHDAD, July 13 (Reuters) - A suicide bomber killed at least seven people north of Baghdad on Wednesday, security and medical sources said, in the second bombing claimed by Islamic State in the district in as many days.
Eleven others were injured when the attacker detonated his car, laden with explosives, at a checkpoint.
Islamic State, which regularly carries out such bombings in the capital and other parts of Iraq, where it seized swathes of territory in 2014, said in an online statement it had targeted the army.
A similar attack in Rashidiya on Tuesday, also claimed by the Sunni Islamist group, killed nine people.
A suicide bombing in the central Karrada district on July 3, claimed by Islamic State, killed at least 292, making it one of the worst among the hundreds of such attacks carried out in Iraq since U.S.-led forces toppled Saddam Hussein 13 years ago.
It prompted a public outcry in Baghdad, with residents blaming the government for not protecting the capital.
Islamic State has been turning increasingly to suicide bombings, which U.S. and Iraqi officials have touted as proof that battlefield setbacks are weakening the jihadists.
In a U.S.-backed offensive, the Iraqi army has recaptured the cities of Ramadi and Falluja from Islamic State in recent months. The government said Falluja had been a launchpad for the group's Baghdad suicide bombings.
Further north, Iraqi forces have taken back Qayara airbase, which they will use as a staging ground for the main push on Mosul, the largest city under Islamic State control, some 60 km (40 miles) away.
Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has pledged to retake the city by year-end, though some question whether the military will be ready in time.
U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter on Monday announced the dispatch of 560 additional soldiers to Iraq, most of whom will work from Qayara to assist the Iraqi thrust towards Mosul.
Abadi met in Baghdad on Wednesday, with the commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East, General Joseph Votel, to discuss preparations for the Mosul offensive, a statement from the prime minister's office said.
French missions in Turkey cancel National Day events over security fears
ISTANBUL, July 13 (Reuters) - French diplomatic missions in Turkey have cancelled their planned events to mark France's July 14 National Day due to security concerns, the consulate general in Istanbul said on Wednesday.
"Information points to a serious threat against plans for the celebration of the July 14 national holiday in Turkey. As a precaution, we have decided, in conjunction with the Turkish authorities, to cancel the celebrations," a statement from the mission in Istanbul said.
The consulate general had been due to hold a reception on Wednesday evening, while French missions in the capital Ankara and the Aegean coastal city of Izmir had planned events for Thursday.
Turkey faces multiple security threats, including from Islamic State militants, blamed for an attack on Istanbul airport last month which killed 45 people and wounded hundreds, as well as from Kurdish insurgents.
UN emergency stocks too thin to feed Syria's Aleppo if under siege
GENEVA, July 13 (Reuters) - The United Nations and other aid agencies have enough food in eastern Aleppo to feed 145,000 people for one month, as 200,000-300,000 in the Syrian city are at risk of being besieged by Syrian government forces, the U.N. said on Wednesday.
An opposition official has told Reuters that rebel areas of the city had stocked enough basic supplies to survive months of a siege, even though some goods were running out.
Government forces backed by allies including Lebanon's Hezbollah and the Russian air force advanced last week to within a few hundred metres (yards) of the only road into the rebel-held part of Aleppo, making it impassable for the several hundred thousand people living there.
Prices of non-perishable staple foods have tripled and fresh produce has gone up by even more, if it can be found at all. A kilo (2.2 pounds) of tomatoes, which are now in season, costs at least five times more than they did before the blockade.
The president of the city council for opposition-held Aleppo told Reuters that the council had stockpiled flour, wheat, fuel, sugar and rice, and residents were being urged to adapt to the new situation. Opposition authorities were also trying to find alternative ways to supply the rebel-held zone, he said.
The U.N. said it had reports of 57 people being killed, including 15 children, by shelling of western Aleppo between July 8 and July 11, and government airstrikes on July 10 had killed at least 19 people in Ibeen and seven in Shantra, two towns in rural Aleppo.
It said information on eastern Aleppo was difficult to collect, but it was one of the areas hardest hit by conflict with most people heavily dependent on humanitarian assistance.
The U.N. says almost 600,000 people are under siege, mainly by government forces, in 18 locations across Syria.
German 10-yr Bund yield turns negative for first time at auction
BERLIN, July 13 (Reuters) - Germany's 10-year government bond yield turned negative for the first time at an auction on Wednesday, fetching the lowest average real yield at auction on record for such paper at -0.05 percent, the debt office said.
The German Finance Agency, the federal government's debt management office, sold 4.038 billion euros ($4.47 billion) of its new 0.00 percent, 10-year Bund at the lowest price of 100.48 with a bid-to-cover ratio of 1.2.
"It's the first time that a 10-year Bund fetched a negative yield during an auction," a debt office spokesman said, adding that market liquidity for Bunds was very high and that investors were attracted by Germany's top notch credit rating.
A backdrop of unprecedented monetary stimulus from the European Central Bank and mounting political risks in Europe, including Brexit, have boosted demand for German bonds - seen as one of the safest assets in the world.
South Sudan's vice president leaves Juba, not seeking war - spokesman
By Denis Dumo
JUBA, July 13 (Reuters) - South Sudan's vice president has withdrawn with his troops to outside of Juba but is not planning for war, his spokesman said on Wednesday, as a ceasefire that ended heavy fighting with the president's forces entered its third day.
Forces loyal to longtime rivals Vice President Riek Machar and President Salva Kiir fought street battles in the capital during a five-day period until a ceasefire was reached on Monday.
The events mirror those of December 2013, when a two-year civil war began after Machar, sacked from his post as Kiir's deputy, withdrew his forces from Juba and launched a full-scale insurgency.
"We had to move away from our base (in Juba) to avoid further confrontation," Machar's spokesman James Gatdet Dak in Nairobi told Reuters, saying he was in contact with Machar's forces. "He is around the capital. I cannot say the location."
BUFFER
It was not clear what caused the latest rift between the two men who have long jostled for power, even before South Sudan's independence from Sudan in 2011. The flare-up was apparently sparked on Thursday when Kiir's forces stopped and demanded to search vehicles with Machar's troops.
Gatdet Dak said Machar would stay away from Juba until ceasefire details were worked out.
"He is not returning to the bush, nor is he organising for war," the spokesman said, calling for an outside force to be deployed to act as a "buffer" between Machar and Kiir's forces.
Other demands from Machar's side are to implement a joint command, an integrated armed force and a joint police force securing Juba, all issues laid out in a peace deal but not yet implemented, said Gatdet Dak.
"This is the time for diplomacy ... in an attempt to return the government of national unity into its position," said Ateny Wek Ateny, the spokesman for President Kiir, adding Kiir had held a cabinet meeting with some opposition members on Tuesday.
Kenya Airways, which suspended all its scheduled flights to Juba on Sunday, said it would restart them on Thursday, putting on a larger aircraft to clear the backlog.
In another apparent parallel with 2013, Uganda said it was sending troops to South Sudan but this time they would only help evacuate Ugandans, Uganda government spokesman Ofwono Opondo said. In 2013, they had entered at Kiir's invitation to support his government as well help with evacuation, Opondo said.
The latest upsurge in fighting has left many South Sudanese angry and uncertain.
"Both Kiir and Machar should be held responsible for the killing of their own people, and for their soldiers who looted our property and killed my husband," said a tearful Juba resident Rose Juru, 28.
Kiir and Machar signed the peace deal in August 2015, but spent months arguing over details. Machar returned to Juba in April and was reinstated as Kiir's deputy, a move that was meant to help cement the process.
Japan emperor intends to abdicate "in a few years" -NHK
By Elaine Lies
TOKYO, July 13 (Reuters) - Japanese Emperor Akihito, who has spent much of his time on the throne trying to heal the wounds of World War Two, intends to abdicate in a few years, public broadcaster NHK and other domestic media said on Wednesday, a step that would be unprecedented in modern Japan.
The 82-year-old monarch, who has had heart surgery and been treated for prostate cancer in recent years, expressed his intention to the Imperial Household Agency, NHK said.
It did not cite a reason and officials at the agency could not immediately be reached for comment.
Kyodo news agency, quoting a government source, said Akihito had been expressing his intention to abdicate to people around him for about a year, although in a separate report Kyodo quoted a senior Imperial Household Agency official as denying that the reports were correct.
Akihito has been cutting back on his official duties, handing over some of the burden to his heir, Crown Prince Naruhito, 56.
Born in 1933, Akihito was heir to Emperor Hirohito, in whose name Japan fought World War Two.
The soft-spoken Akihito marked the 70th anniversary of World War Two's end last year with an expression of "deep remorse", a departure from his previous remarks seen by some as an effort to cement a legacy of pacifism under threat from conservative Japanese nationalists.
"Looking back at the past, together with deep remorse over the war, I pray that this tragedy of war will not be repeated and together with the people express my deep condolences for those who fell in battle and in the ravages of war," he said.
While Akihito's father was a controversial figure, Akihito "was the first post-war emperor to embrace the (pacifist) constitution and his role as a symbol of national unity", said Koichi Nakano, a political science professor at Sophia University in Tokyo.
"He cares a great deal about war issues and reconciliation (with Asian countries). Naruhito has made clear that he will carry on with that," Nakano added.
Akihito has sought to deepen Japan's ties with the world through visits abroad. In 1992 he became the first Japanese monarch in living memory to visit China, where bitter memories of Japan's past military aggression run deep.
Emperor Kokaku, who gave up the throne in 1817, was the last Japanese emperor to abdicate, NHK said.
Miiko Kodama, a professor emeritus at Musashi University, said the Imperial Household Law would need to be amended to allow Akihito to step down, a process that could take time and debate in parliament.
A scientist by avocation, Akihito is the first royal heir to have married a commoner, Michiko Shoda, the daughter of a wealthy industrialist.
Under the U.S.-drafted, postwar constitution, Japan's emperor is "the symbol of the State and of the unity of the People", with no political power.
Copper tops $5,000/T on stimulus hopes, China imports
By Maytaal Angel
LONDON, July 13 (Reuters) - Copper surged through $5,000 a tonne on Wednesday to its highest since late April as its imports to top consumer China remained solid in June and as investors bet Beijing will stimulate its economy further.
China's copper imports dipped 2.3 percent in June to 420,000 tonnes from a month earlier, data showed, still brisk in line with increasing demand from the power sector.
"China ... has a lot of refined copper production and it's still able to accept such relatively solid imports. That reflects good and improving demand," said Helen Lau, analyst at Argonaut Securities in Hong Kong.
Chinese stocks and commodity futures closed higher on bets of further stimulus.
London Metal Exchange copper jumped as high as $5,032 a tonne, its strongest since April 29, before ending at $4,938, up 1.4 percent.
Yet LME copper stocks are the highest since February, up by half since early June alone.
"The market is definitely taking a glass half full approach and it's probably a bit premature, given concerns over China's growth and the questions over rising inventories," said Daniel Hynes of ANZ in Sydney.
Nickel hit $10,670, its highest since October, before profit-taking drove prices down 1.3 percent to end at $10,350.
The stainless steel making ingredient has been buoyed by a mining crackdown in the Philippines, the largest supplier of nickel ore to China.
Experts, however, told Reuters that the Philippine crackdown is likely to have only a muted impact on exports to China in the short term because the biggest mines have met environmental guidelines.
Zinc marked a new 13-month top and aluminium hit its loftiest in nearly a year before both metals retreated. Zinc ended down 0.7 percent at $2,178 and aluminium ended 0.2 percent lower at $1,673.
Zinc, used to galvanise steel has been boosted by prospects that Chinese steelmakers will rush to raise output before a government mandated shutdown.
LME zinc 'on-warrant' or available inventories are down at 418,300 tonnes, but remain up 21 percent since June 10.
Tin closed flat at $17,975 while lead ended up 0.6 percent at $1,878.50 after hitting $1,892, the strongest since early March.
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Burundian regional parliament member, former minister, shot dead
BUJUMBURA, July 13 (Reuters) - A Burundian member of the East African Legislative Assembly was shot dead on Wednesday in what Rwanda's foreign minister called an assassination in a country in violent political turmoil.
Hafsa Mossi, a former minister in President Pierre Nkurunziza's government, was "shot by criminals" in the capital Bujumbura, the president's media adviser Willy Nyamitwe tweeted.
More than 450 people have been killed since Nkurunziza pursued and won a third term last year, a move that his opponents say violated the constitution and a peace deal that ended a civil war in 2005.
Government officials and members of the opposition have been among those killed in tit-for-tat violence by rival sides.
Louise Mushikiwabo, the Rwandan minister of foreign affairs, tweeted that she was mourning the loss of Mossi who had been "assassinated".
The upsurge in violence in Burundi has caused alarm in a region where memories of Rwanda's 1994 genocide remain raw. Like Rwanda, Burundi has an ethnic Hutu majority and a Tutsi minority.
So far the violence has largely followed political rather than ethnic lines. But diplomats fear ethnic wounds could re-open the longer violence continues.
Diane Ball has been promoted to vice president of Information Security for BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee. She will be responsible for leading the Information Security program across the company.
Information security continues to be a priority to businesses in an age where cyber-attacks are becoming ever more common, said Nick Coussoule, senior vice president and chief information officer for BlueCross. Dianes strong background in security and privacy, experience across diverse global businesses with significant security challenges and excellent leadership skills make her a tremendous asset.
Ms. Ball joined BlueCross last year after serving as chief information security officer and vice president of enterprise risk & security for Fujitsu America, Inc., in Durham, NC. She has more than 20 years of security and privacy leadership experience at companies including BlueCross BlueShield of North Carolina and Wachovia Bank, where she served as vice president and senior information security manager.
Ms. Ball earned a Computer Science Associates Degree from Pellissippi State Community College and graduated Magna Cum Laude with a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration Management from Tusculum College. She held an instructor position with Dale Carnegie in which she facilitated a course in leading individuals to improve human relation skills, leadership skills, and stress management.
France closes missions in Ankara, Istanbul on security concerns
ANKARA, July 13 (Reuters) - France has closed its embassy in the Turkish capital Ankara and its consulate general in Istanbul until further notice due to security concerns, the embassy said in a statement on Wednesday.
"The embassy of France in Ankara, as well as the consulate general in Istanbul will be closed from Wednesday July 13, 1 p.m. (1000 GMT), until further notice," it said.
Spain's Socialists say will vote against PP re-election
MADRID, July 13 (Reuters) - The leader of the Spanish Socialists Pedro Sanchez reiterated on Wednesday his party would not vote in favour of re-electing the acting conservative People's Party (PP), potentially extending a seven-month political deadlock.
"We will vote against (Mariano) Rajoy as a prime ministerial candidate," Sanchez said after a nearly hour-and-a-half meeting with the acting PM.
Sanchez ruled out that Spain would see a "grand coalition" of the right and the left, as has happened in other European countries, though said he would do anything to avoid forcing Spain into a third election.
Putin to Merkel, Hollande: Help avoid Ukraine escalation
MOSCOW, July 13 (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday asked German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande to use their influence to help prevent any escalation of the conflict in eastern Ukraine, the Kremlin said in a statement.
Putin in a phone call with the two leaders expressed his concerns about the state of a shaky truce between Ukrainian government forces and pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine who have been fighting each other since 2014, the Kremlin said.
"The importance of not allowing any further escalation in the situation was underlined," it said of the call.
"Vladimir Putin expressed his concerns in connection with the intense shelling by Ukrainian troops of populated areas in Donbass," it added. The separatists and the Ukrainian army regularly accuse each other of violating the Minsk peace accord, which was meant to end the fighting.
Merkel has said she wants to see more progress on the accord before considering whether European Union sanctions imposed on Russia over its role in the Ukraine crisis should be lifted.
Brexit could provide boost for Britain's shale gas
By Karolin Schaps
LONDON, July 13 (Reuters) - Britain's shale gas industry could get a helping hand from a falling pound and a supportive new prime minister just as it is gearing up for its first production this year, after facing economic and political challenges that slowed its start.
The British pound's weakness since the Brexit vote has made it more expensive to import gas, helping the case for shale gas which had been hurt in the past by weak oil prices and by opposition to planning approval from local campaigners.
After setbacks including a temporary ban in 2011 on the hydraulic fracturing - or "fracking" - technology used to extract gas from shale rock, those in the industry hope for support from Theresa May, who takes over on Wednesday as prime minister.
In the speech launching her campaign for the leadership on Monday, May stressed the importance of secure energy supplies, which shale advocates say is one of their industry's strengths.
"I want to see an energy policy that emphasises the reliability of supply and lower costs for users," May said.
Stephen Bowler, chief executive of London-listed shale gas developer IGas, told Reuters Brexit made the case for shale more vital: "An independent Britain needs an independent supply of energy. Security of supply becomes even more important now."
Shale gas had a poor start in Britain. The first well to be fracked, near Blackpool in the northeastern county of Lancashire, was abandoned when some of the work there triggered an earth tremor that resulted in an 18-month ban on the technology.
More recently, low energy prices have added to strains.
"The weak gas price certainly doesn't help the economics. But there's still a lot of potential there," said David Round, analyst at BMO Capital Markets. "You'd expect costs to come down once you get a few years into the development."
Two months ago, Third Energy received the first planning approval for a shale gas fracking well since 2011. It says it will start hydraulic fracturing at its Kirby Misperton site in North Yorkshire in northeast England before the end of the year.
Environmental group Friends of the Earth and a residents' anti-fracking group have applied for judicial review of the decision at London's High Court.
Other shale gas developers, including Ineos, IGas and Cuadrilla Resources, are now banking on government support for domestic energy sources and an offer of compensation to landowners to reinvigorate their campaign.
Cuadrilla aims to produce gas next year in the northwest, subject to planning approval, and Bowler's IGas plans to test first gas in northern England by 2018.
NEW RULES
The government has already changed planning rules to speed up shale gas projects by giving the communities minister ultimate decision-making power on planning applications.
A decision on whether to grant a permit under these new rules to Cuadrilla is due by Oct. 6 and will be a first indication of government support for shale gas under the new prime minister. Australian engineer AJ Lucas owns 45 percent of Cuadrilla.
Coal-fired plants are due to close in coming years, making Britain more reliant on natural gas. Britain's network operator said last week that the country may have to import 93 percent of its gas by 2040 if economic growth slows and domestic gas production is not supported.
Shale supporters say relying heavily on imports would make Britain more vulnerable to events out of its control that could divert supply. Still, environmental campaigners intend to challenge shale gas, which they say would undermine Britain's target to reduce carbon emissions by at least 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050.
"Theresa May should not be under the illusion that fracking is the answer to the UK's energy needs," said Daisy Sands, head of energy at Greenpeace.
In a 2013 protest at the Cuadrilla-managed Balcombe oil exploration site south of London, demonstrators chained themselves to gates. Some were arrested, including Caroline Lucas, the Green Party's only member of parliament.
INEOS IN DRIVING SEAT
Shale was slower to take hold in Britain than in the United States in part because British law does not give private land owners the same rights to mineral resources as U.S. law, which helped many Americans profit from the shale boom there.
British shale companies are hoping to win over communities by sharing the wealth. Swiss chemicals group Ineos, Britain's most ambitious shale developer with more than 1 million acres of land, has promised to share 6 percent of revenue from shale gas wells with local communities, landowners and residents.
Shale gas is a national resource which should be shared, said Gary Haywood, chief executive of the Ineos shale business.
"At the moment we're spending an enormous amount of money to buy gas for the UK while we have this resource sitting under our feet," he told Reuters.
For now, the industry is still tiny, but local players hope that once they have started production, bigger companies will join in with the funds to ramp up output.
"We're never going to have access to the sums of money to develop these plays at scale," said Mark Abbott, boss of Egdon Resources, which has signed up French major Total as a partner on some shale gas licenses.
"Our strategy is to be an early stage acquirer, to bring in the big companies, to derisk and to monetise a lot of that position prior to development."
French gas producer Engie is in partnership with IGas and Britain's biggest household energy supplier Centrica shares some acreage with Cuadrilla.
GE aims for $1 bln cell therapy "tools" business with Swiss deal
By Ben Hirschler
LONDON, July 13 (Reuters) - General Electric's healthcare unit aims to build a $1 billion business offering vital manufacturing tools for a coming wave of cell therapies, helped by the acquisition of a Swiss firm that doubles its presence in the field.
Using cells to fight cancer is a long way from GE's better-known areas like power generation and aviation, but the head of the U.S. industrial giant's $18 billion-a-year healthcare operation sees a big, high-margin opportunity.
John Flannery, who leads GE Healthcare from its headquarters in Chalfont St Giles, England, reckons he has secured an important part of the supply chain by buying Biosafe Group, a supplier of cell processing systems.
"We want to double down on life sciences, and especially so in the cell therapy business," he said in an interview.
"This more than doubles our capability right now in cell therapy and we think we can easily have a $1 billion-plus business in cell therapy in the next 10 years."
GE announced its acquisition of Biosafe on Wednesday but declined to say how much it was paying. A spokesman said the addition of the firm, which was established in 1997, would bring 85 new employees and around 230 customers, doubling GE's cell therapy staff and sales.
The acquisition comes at a testing moment for cell therapy, following the deaths of three leukaemia patients in a trial of Juno Therapeutics' treatment JCAR015, which caused the study to be briefly put on hold by U.S. regulators.
GE's confidence in the technology remains intact, however.
"People are still learning, obviously. But this doesn't change our view that cell therapy is going to be fundamentally transformative in healthcare," Flannery said.
The first so-called CAR-T cell therapies could reach the market as soon as next year, with products from Juno, Kite Pharma and Novartis among the most advanced.
They have delivered remarkable results in early trials against blood cancers, eliminating all trace of leukaemia and lymphoma in some patients who had run out of other options, and investors have poured billions of dollars into the field.
GE estimates there are now 375 active T-cell therapy programmes, and seven companies with a market value of $17 billion focused on CAR-T.
EXTREMELY COMPLEX
Producing the therapies, however, is extremely complex, since it involves extracting cells from an individual patient, altering them to sharpen their ability to kill cancer cells and then infusing them back into the patient.
This, effectively, makes the production process an integral part of the product, which is where GE comes in.
While GE has no intention of ever marketing medicines, it plans to offer an "end-to-end" service to drug companies via a range of tools, from bioreactors for growing cells to software systems for treatment delivery.
Internal GE research suggests that sales of cell therapies will reach $10 billion by 2020 and $30 billion by 2030, assuming an average treatment cost of around $250,000 a patient.
Some analysts have suggested the cost could be as much as $500,000 - posing a big challenge to stretched healthcare budgets - but Flannery said economies of scale from standardised production systems would kick in over time.
The logistical challenges of processing cells from individual patients have prompted some scientists and companies to take a different approach by trying to make standardised therapies from donor cells, on which GE is also working.
GE's drive into cell therapy parallels its established role in bioprocessing for biotechnology drugs. All eight of the new antibody drugs approved in the United States last year, for example, use GE technologies.
Recently, GE has taken bioprocessing a step further by offering prefabricated modules for building biopharmaceutical factories, with the first such so-called KUBio factory shipped to China last year.
Spain's Socialists say 'no' to conservative government, extending deadlock
By Julien Toyer
MADRID, July 13 (Reuters) - Spanish Socialist leader reaffirmed on Wednesday his party's intention to vote against a government led by the conservative People's Party (PP), potentially extending a seven-month political deadlock.
The PP won the most votes in a June 26 election, the second in six months, but fell short of a majority. This left acting Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy to convince other parties to join it or at least abstain from blocking it in forming a government.
"We will vote against (Mariano) Rajoy as a prime ministerial candidate," Socialist leader Pedro Sanchez said after a nearly hour-and-a-half meeting with the acting prime minister.
Sanchez also ruled out a "grand coalition" of the left and right, as has happened in some other European countries such as Germany, but added he would "do anything" to avoid sending Spaniards to the polls for a third time after two inconclusive elections.
Speaking after the meeting, Rajoy said he was still aiming to organise a first parliamentary investiture vote by the end of July or beginning of August to try and form a government.
But he also said that if he was certain to fail, he would instead wait until new discussions are held with all parties to see how the stalemate could be broken.
"I want to govern... but if I had the total certainty that my investiture was impossible, I would open a period of reflexion with the other parties to find a way out of this situation," he told journalists.
ABSTENTIONS
The new parliament will be formed on July 19 and King Felipe is expected to hold a formal round of talks between parties as soon as next week.
Spanish liberal party Ciudadanos said earlier on Wednesday that it would abstain in a confidence vote for a conservative government. Ciudadanos placed fourth in the June election.
This put pressure on the Socialists, who came second and who, if they also abstained, could allow a PP government.
Although many analysts believe the Socialists could change their mind and abstain, Sanchez said they were too far away from the conservatives in terms of economic or social policy to consider such a move.
The PP gained only 137 seats in the 350-strong assembly in June, failing to break a stalemate that has hamstrung Spanish politics since the first election in December, which produced a similarly inconclusive result.
"We have to find some way of unblocking this situation and we think a technical abstention is better than ... having a third election," Ciudadanos leader Albert Rivera, whose party won 32 seats, told reporters.
"I hope other parties can do what we have done today."
If only Ciudadanos abstained, Rajoy would still have to win the support of 23 lawmakers from other parties to secure a parliamentary majority.
Slovenian finance minister resigns, opposition calls for early elections
By Marja Novak
LJUBLJANA, July 13 (Reuters) - Slovenia's finance minister Dusan Mramor resigned on Wednesday for what he said were personal reasons, prompting the opposition to call for an early election though junior members in the fragile ruling coalition insisted it was stable.
Prime Minister Miro Cerar said Alenka Smerkolj, Minister for European Cohesion, would fill in the role until a new finance minister had taken over, which he expected to happen in late August or early September. He did not name any candidates.
"In spite of this change the government will continue with its planned policy and will follow the strategy till 2020 which was laid out by minister Mramor and his team," Cerar said at a news conference to announce the resignation.
He would nominate a new candidate in the coming weeks, Cerar said. After that parliament must still give its approval.
Mramor, who tried to resign once before but was refused by Cerar, told the conference he had resigned "for entirely personal reasons".
Tanja Staric, a political analyst at Radio Slovenia, described the loss of Mramor as a blow to the coalition.
"With his resignation the chances that the government will survive till the end of its mandate (in 2018) are getting smaller," she said.
Junior coalition partners of the prime minister's Party of Modern Centre said the government remained stable in spite of Mramor's resignation.
But the opposition centre-right New Slovenia Party called for an early election, saying the coalition is weak and not able to push through necessary reforms.
The coalition is struggling to reconcile demands for public sector wage and pension hikes with reducing the budget deficit.
Slovenia, which narrowly avoided an international bailout for its banks in 2013, managed to reduce its budget deficit to below the EU's ceiling of 3 percent of GDP last year after running excessive deficits for six years.
The government aims to reduce the deficit to 2.2 percent of GDP this year and then gradually bring it to zero by 2020.
Alta Invest chief economist Saso Stanovnik said further deficit reductions would depend largely on who became the new finance minister.
Analysts said the resignation could further delay the sale of the country's largest bank NLB, which was rescued by the state in 2013 and is due to be sold by the end of 2017.
Iran gathers speed with preliminary international oil, gas deals
July 13 (Reuters) - Iran signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Russia's Zarubezhneft on Tuesday for a feasibility study on two joint fields in the west of the country, according to oil ministry news agency SHANA.
It is the latest of several MoUs the ministry has signed since the lifting of international sanctions on Tehran in January. Countries seeking long-term oil cooperation include China, India, South Korea and some European states.
Iran needs foreign investment for repairs and upgrading of its oil and gas fields. It also seeks the transfer of technology to its oil industry after a decade of isolation.
Many Western and Asian oil companies are still waiting for Tehran to unveil its new oil and gas contracts (IPCs) with new terms. In the absence of that, many MoUs are still being signed, especially in last two months:
* Japan's JGC Corp signed an MoU with National Iranian Oil Refining and Distribution Company (NIORDC) in June, for feasibility studies on a project to decrease kiln oil production in Tehran Refinery.
* Germany's Siemens AG signed an MoU in May with National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) and Oil Turbo Compressor Company (OTC) to overhaul equipment and facilities at Iran's oil operations and refineries, according to Iranian news agencies. Siemens also signed a separate MoU with Iran's National Gas Company to develop compressors and increase the existing system's output capacity.
* BASF's Wintershall oil and gas subsidiary signed an MoU with NIOC in April. SHANA reported that the two companies will study four oil fields in western Iran.
* Norway's International Aker Solutions Company signed an MoU with Iran's Research Institute of Petroleum Industry in May, according to Fars news agency, to modernise the national oil industry.
* China's National Energy Administration signed in May an MoU with Iran's Oil Ministry. An Iranian deputy oil minister was quoted by SHANA as saying that "the MoU covers various fields including crude oil and gas condensate exploration and development, oil and gas equipment manufacturing and investment in various oil, gas, refining and petrochemical projects."
* Austrian oil and gas group OMV signed in May an MoU with NIOC, for projects located in the Zagros area in western Iran and the Fars field in the country's south.
* South Korean Daewoo Engineering and Construction (Daewoo E&C) signed an MoU in May with Iranian engineering firm Bahman Geno to carry out construction of an oil refinery in Bandar Jask located in the southern coast of Iran, which will have the capacity of 300,000 barrels per day according to ISNA news agency.
* Dutch Energy Industries Association signed a cooperation MoU in May with Iran Oil Industry Builders Association to cooperate on implementing joint projects and transfer of new technologies. The Dutch partner will provide financial resources and technologies according to IRNA news agency and the Iranians are to undertake implementation of the projects.
* Italy's Saipem, controlled by Eni and Italian state lender fund FSI, signed MoUs in January with the Parsian Oil & Gas Development Co and National Iranian Gas Company (NIGC) to cooperate on pipeline projects and upgrading of some refineries.
EU proposes new asylum rules to stop migrants crossing Europe
By Gabriela Baczynska
BRUSSELS, July 13 (Reuters) - The European Commission proposed more unified EU asylum rules on Wednesday, in a bid to stop people waiting for refugee status moving around the bloc and disrupting its passport-free zone.
In an unprecedented wave of migration last year, 1.3 million people reached the EU and most ignored legal restrictions, trekking from the Mediterranean coast to apply for asylum in wealthy Germany, prompting some EU countries to suspend the Schengen Area system that allows free passage between most EU states.
"The changes will create a genuine common asylum procedure," said EU Migration Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos. "At the same time, we set clear obligations and duties for asylum seekers to prevent secondary movements and abuse of procedures."
The United Nations refugee agency UNHCR said it had concerns about the new rules and said the new system must not lower standards of protection and asylum.
The proposal would standardise refugee reception facilities across the bloc and unify the level of state support they can get, setting common rules on residence permits, travel papers, access to jobs, schools, social welfare and healthcare.
It would grant prospective refugees swifter rights to work, but also put more obligations on them, meaning that if they do not cooperate with the authorities or head to an EU state of their choice rather than staying put, their asylum application could be jeopardised.
The five-year waiting period after which refugees are eligible for long-term residence would be restarted if they move from their designated country, the Commission said.
UNHCR spokesman William Spindler said people should be dissuaded from such movements, not punished.
The proposal also spells out more cases in which asylum seekers could be detained, something Jean Lambert, a British Green Party member of the European Parliament, said showed the EU was taking the wrong attitude to people seeking sanctuary.
"The EU has justifiably come under fire for its response to the refugee crisis but today's proposals ... will do nothing to allay this," she said, accusing the Commission of seeking to curb the rights of asylum seekers and "an obsession with punitive measures".
"People are fleeing because their lives are threatened and homes being destroyed, not because the EU's asylum system is gold plated - it's not!"
The plan, which will be reviewed by EU governments and the European Parliament, comes after Brussels proposed in May a system for distributing asylum seekers, an idea opposed by eastern EU states which refuse to accept refugees.
Only 3,056 people have so far been relocated under the scheme that was meant for 160,000 people, the Commission said. Hungary and Slovakia have challenged the system in the courts.
UNHCR wants the EU to drop the first country of arrival principle and distribute asylum seekers among EU member states.
Asked whether Brussels would punish countries, including Poland and the Czech Republic, for not complying, Avramopoulos said: "We're not here to punish, we are here to persuade. But if this persuasion doesn't succeed, then yes, we're thinking of doing that. But we're not there yet."
SAFE LIST
Last year's record arrivals triggered bitter political disputes in the EU, where the wealthier states which ended up hosting most of the people accused the newer members in the east of showing no solidarity.
A deal with Turkey in March has since cut the arrivals to Greece to a trickle, but has prompted concerns about human rights.
Unlike the Turkey route, however, which mainly brought Syrians and other people with a strong cases for asylum into Europe, the bloc is now worried over a rise in arrivals from Africa through Libya. Most people on that route do not qualify for asylum and, under the EU rules, should be sent back.
The Commission wants to draw up lists of "safe countries" outside the bloc, which would help EU states return people, after Athens' refusal to recognise Turkey as such a place hindered deportations from the Greek islands back to Turkey.
So-called safe countries should only be an option where "precise, impartial, and up-to-date information is available on the safety of a particular country", UNHCR's Spindler said.
"An applicant must have an effective opportunity to rebut the presumption of safety in light of their individual circumstances, and the safe country concepts should not apply to vulnerable applicants."
To discourage chaotic flows by facilitating legal migration, the Commission also proposed an EU-wide system for resettlement directly from refugee camps. It said Brussels would pay 10,000 euros for each person EU states bring in.
But Slovakia, the current holder of the EU's rotating presidency, was sceptical on chances for unified asylum system.
BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee will host 25 Hamilton County students next week to teach them the basics of computer programming.BlueCross has partnered with the Chattanooga Technology Council to immerse area middle and high school students into the world of computer coding. For five days the students will learn HTML, CSS, JavaScript and much more.This is the second year BlueCross has hosted the event and organizers are excited to announce that half of the students participating this year are female.According to a CNBC report, 37 percent of all computer-science graduates in 1984 were women, but today that number is just 18 percent.Just 20 percent of AP Computer Science test-takers are female, and 0.4 percent of high school girls express interest in majoring in computer science, but many leading companies are taking proactive measures to shrink the gender gap.Throughout the week, students will work with professional developers at BlueCross to gain hands-on experience and learn about the computer science industry. On the final day, the student coders will present a project to their parents and a panel of judges who will select winners in a variety of categories.The Code Camp will be held on Monday through Friday from 9 a.m.-3 p.m. at BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee, 1 Cameron Hill Circle in Chattanooga.
Portugal protests against LSE-Deutsche Boerse merger
By Andrei Khalip
LISBON/PARIS, July 13 (Reuters) - Portugal has asked Europe's antitrust chief to take action to prevent a merged Deutsche Boerse and London Stock Exchange becoming so dominant that it would make access to finance more difficult.
Portugal's objections raise pressure on the agreed $30 billion deal that has already been rocked by Britain's vote last month to leave the European Union.
"The merger would negatively impact the functioning of the capital market. Such a concentration of trading and trade-related services poses a clear threat to competition," Portugal's Finance Minister Mario Centeno wrote in a letter to Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, a copy of which was seen by Reuters.
"It also endangers the viability of several European stock exchanges," it said.
Portugal's finance ministry said the letter was sent in late June and confirmed its contents.
"France and Belgium have already expressed similar opinions. There have been contacts at various levels on the subject," the finance ministry spokeswoman said.
The letter also said Portugal was particularly worried about its own market access via Euronext, of which the Lisbon Stock Exchange is part. Lisbon is seeking a bigger role for its struggling stock market to try to attract investment into the economy, still recovering from Portugal's 2010-13 debt crisis.
Euronext, which runs a number of stock exchanges, including Paris, Amsterdam, Brussels and Lisbon, will become a much smaller player if the LSE-Deutsche Boerse deal goes ahead. Its shares have lost about a third of their value since the start of the year.
"The European Commission is in the position to prevent this market distortion," Centeno wrote, calling on the commissioner to work together with all the relevant stakeholders to avoid such a situation.
Mali protesters call for government resignations after shootings
By Adama Diarra and Tiemoko Diallo
BAMAKO, July 13 (Reuters) - Protesters in Mali's northern city of Gao on Wednesday called for the resignation of the region's governor and the national security minister a day after three people were killed when security forces opened fire on a demonstration there.
The government has promised to open an inquiry into the incident, which saw at least 31 others injured and exposed the fragility of efforts to implement a year-old peace deal and stabilise the West African nation's troubled north.
The protesters, some of whom burned tyres and threw stones at police, were angered by the introduction of a new interim authorities who are due to take charge of the region on Friday in line with the terms of the peace agreement.
After initially attempting to disperse the crowd with teargas, security forces shot at the protesters, witnesses said.
"We're calling for the immediate departure of the governor (of Gao), the security minister and the heads of the police, the gendarmes and the army in Gao," said Amadou Sarr, a leader of a local vigilante group who helped organise the demonstration.
The government in the capital Bamako announced late on Tuesday that it would send a delegation including the ministers of defence, internal security, justice and territorial administration to Gao on Wednesday.
"The government exhorts the population of Gao to remain calm and remember that dialogue and consultation must guide all parties," it said in a statement.
The streets of Gao were quiet on Wednesday, but hundreds of protesters staged a sit-in, blocking streets in front of the regional governor's office as they awaited the delegation's arrival.
"The markets are paralysed and the local government and banks have been closed since yesterday. I myself am at home," said civil servant Mahamadou Tamboura.
Mali's government, pro-Bamako militias and Tuareg rebels signed the peace agreement last year to end a decades-long cycle of uprisings that helped jihadist groups seize the desert north in 2012, provoking a French military intervention.
However, implementation of the deal has been slow, with the rival factions accusing each other of stalling.
Participants in Wednesday's demonstration said they rejected the agreement's creation of interim authorities to share power among the deal's signatories.
"These same groups that mistreated us yesterday now want to govern us under the label of interim authorities. We say no," said Nasser Abdoulaye Toure, one of the sit-in participants.
The protests also included members of local vigilante groups who were demanding inclusion in a disarmament and demobilisation programme.
Wanted: foreign trade experts to help UK hammer out new deals
By William Schomberg
LONDON, July 13 (Reuters) - After last month's Brexit vote, Britain faces the challenge of carving out trade deals with the rest of the world, but a key thing is missing: a strong team of trade negotiators.
London is even resorting to hiring foreign negotiators as it prepares for years of talks with its major trading partners in Europe and with some of the world's biggest economies beyond.
The government is also trying to rehire retired civil servants familiar with the complexities of free trade agreements after voters decided to leave the EU last month.
The European Commission hammers out trade deals on behalf of EU countries, meaning Britain has not had its own negotiators since it joined the bloc in 1973. That leaves it with a staffing problem in a priority area for new prime minister Theresa May.
The government says there is no conflict between hiring foreign negotiators and the promises of the referendum's "Leave" campaign to take control over immigration.
"I see no reason why we wouldn't hire people who were non-British if they were the best people to do the job," foreign minister, Philip Hammond, said on Tuesday.
"Clearly one would not want to hire a citizen of another country to negotiate a trade deal with that country. But having entered that caveat I would hope that we would put together the best and most capable teams from wherever."
Britain is aiming to strike deals not only with the EU but also other economies such as the United States, India and China, all of which have large and experienced trade negotiating teams.
In another part of its push, experts with law firms, consultancies and industrial groups are being offered secondments to help create the firepower London needs.
BULKING UP
Britain's Business Ministry, which has around 40 trade specialists, wants to have as many as 300 experts in place by the end of 2016, Business Minister Sajid Javid said last week as he headed for preliminary talks about a trade deal with India.
Only a few of the 55 British officials in the European Commission's trade department in Brussels have worked on negotiations, offering a limited recruitment pool but one which London might well tap into.
A senior EU official said he believed that Britons who have been involved in EU trade negotiations would be able to "name their price" in Westminster.
A Brussels diplomat from a non-European country said his government had been approached by British officials looking for negotiating talent. "But they were looking for something like 300 people. There's no way we can help with that," the diplomat said. "They're going to have to take some time to build up their expertise."
Trade negotiators have skills that are hard to acquire quickly. Typically, they are given marching orders by politicians on much they can give away in terms of lower barriers to trade and investment.
The negotiators must then stick to those instructions while trying to coax concessions from their peers on the other side of the table, meaning trade talks often take years to complete.
Britain will also need to create and find staff for a new office to investigate possible dumping of goods in the country, a separate and equally complex discipline within international trade, Stephen Adams, a partner with consultancy Global Counsel.
May has said she will not start the two-year process for Britain's exit from the EU this year. It is unclear if the EU will agree to begin talks about its new trade ties with Britain before the exit is complete.
Trump nears end of vice presidential search, to announce pick Friday
By Steve Holland
WASHINGTON, July 13 (Reuters) - Republican Donald Trump conducted last-minute talks with his top potential picks for his vice presidential running mate on Wednesday and said he would announce his choice on Friday in New York.
"I will be making the announcement of my Vice Presidential pick on Friday at 11am in Manhattan. Details to follow," the presumptive Republican presidential nominee tweeted on Wednesday night.
Trump had a breakfast meeting on Wednesday with Indiana Governor Mike Pence, and later sat down for talks with former U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Newt Gingrich. His family met on Tuesday with New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who speaks to Trump on a near-daily basis.
In addition, U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions, 69, of Alabama, a fourth potential candidate for the No. 2 spot who has been a close adviser to Trump, was seen going into the Conrad Hotel in Indianapolis, where Trump was.
A source close to the campaign said Trump appeared to be leaning toward Pence but that he could always change his mind. "It's not done until it's done," the source said.
Trump seemed to be trying to decide between Pence and Gingrich, the source added.
The New York businessman is to be formally nominated at the Republican National Convention next week in Cleveland. Traditionally, the vice presidential choice is used to build enthusiasm among party loyalists.
Pence, who faces a Friday deadline on whether to have his name on the ballot to seek another term as governor, said he was humbled to be considered for Trump's running mate.
"I think he's giving it very careful consideration, and we're humbled to be a part of that," Pence told reporters later. "There are a number of other noteworthy Americans that they are considering, and I'm just honored to be on that list."
Republicans close to the campaign said they believed Trump had narrowed his short list to Pence, Gingrich and Christie.
He has campaigned with all three in recent days as he girds for perhaps the most consequential decision of his campaign ahead of the Nov. 8 election.
In a sign of how seriously the campaign is considering Pence, Trump was joined at the governor's residence for breakfast by his daughter Ivanka, son-in-law Jared Kushner and sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump. Kushner and Trump's children have played important roles in the campaign.
Trump's children met with Christie on Tuesday, a source close to the governor confirmed, describing the meeting as good and saying both parties had an existing relationship and were already friendly.
Trump, who wants an experienced politician to join him on the ticket, campaigned with Pence at a rally on Tuesday night in Westfield, Indiana.
'MORE ATTENTION THAN USUAL'
Trump, a political outsider before entering the presidential race last year, has a tough choice to make.
Pence, a 57-year-old former congressman who has flirted in the past with a presidential run of his own, would be perhaps the safest choice for Trump given the governor's popularity among conservatives and his experience in government. He would also bring Midwestern appeal.
But Pence has had a couple of missteps as Indiana's chief executive. A religious freedom law he signed had to be revised because it was seen as discriminating against gays and lesbians, and he had to abandon plans to create a state-run news agency.
"Throughout history vice presidential selections seldom make much difference in the election. Because Trump has never held office and people are anxious to see how he would assemble a government, this pick might get more attention than usual," said Republican strategist Charlie Black.
"Pence would be a very good pick from the standpoint of having federal and state government experience, and also he has been a card-carrying member of the conservative movement his whole life," Black said.
Trump is clearly comfortable with both Gingrich and Christie, a factor that Trump advisers say is important to him. Both Gingrich and Christie have been supportive of Trump throughout much of his bitter feud with establishment Republicans.
Gingrich is popular among many Trump advisers because of his grasp of policy and his counsel. He was House speaker when Democrat Bill Clinton was president in the 1990s, and they achieved welfare reform, among other legislative achievements.
"Trump has staked his candidacy on revolutionary change in Washington and there is no one being considered who has actually achieved revolutionary change like Newt Gingrich," said Rick Tyler, a former spokesman for Gingrich. "If Trump picks him, I'll know that Trump is serious about reforming Washington."
But at age 73, Gingrich could have trouble appealing to younger voters. Trump is 70.
Christie, 53, a one-time rival to Trump in the presidential race, is seen as a kindred spirit of Trump who would be a strong counterpuncher to Democrat Hillary Clinton, 68. But many conservatives doubt he really is one of them.
Iran yet to decide on nuclear fusion project, ITER chief says
By John Irish
PARIS, July 13 (Reuters) - Iran is assessing whether to apply for associate membership of the ITER multi-national nuclear fusion project, its director said on Wednesday, just a year after Tehran struck a deal with six world powers to curb its own atomic programme.
The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) project, which was launched 10 years ago by Europe, United States, China, India, Japan, Russia and South Korea, aims to build the world's largest experimental reactor, or tokamak.
It would generate energy through nuclear fusion, rather than the fission process currently used in nuclear power stations around the world. Fusion could prove cleaner, safer and more efficient.
The head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, Ali Akbar Salehi, visited ITER's headquarters in southern France this month and Iranian media quoted officials as saying that there was a "general agreement" for cooperation on ITER.
But in an interview with Reuters, ITER Director General Bernard Bigot said the purpose of the visit had been just to understand the project.
"After that they told us they had a long-standing interest in fusion and they would like to consider how to join the ITER project, but clearly not as a full member," he said.
Full members provide experienced engineers and scientists and substantial financial contributions.
"They felt that full membership is not best for them, but consider association in some specific areas or fields where they can contribute. Now it's up to them to make up their mind," Bigot said.
DEAL OPENED DOOR
Any application would have to be approved unanimously by the seven full members and the process would take at least six months.
Iran is already studying the development of nuclear fusion and has smaller laboratory tokamak machines.
However, ITER would give it access to new technologies and help bring it into the international civil nuclear energy fold.
Tehran agreed a deal last July with six world powers - Britain, China, Germany, France, Russia and the United States - to curb its nuclear programme, after Western suspicions that its aims were military.
In one of the deal's annexes the powers, which are all ITER members, said Tehran should be encouraged to cooperate with the project. "The nuclear deal opened the door," Bigot said.
Unlike fission reactors, which produce energy by splitting the nuclei of atoms, ITER would generate power by combining them. It remains unclear whether the technology will work and become commercially viable.
Bigot, the former head of French nuclear agency CEA, said the reactor under construction in Cadarache should see the first test of its super-heated plasma by 2025.
He added that after a management and structural review last year the project was now more credible and on track to meet its deadlines.
Poland to spend on boosting its image, defending coal industry
WARSAW, July 13 (Reuters) - Poland's state-controlled firms will pay $25 million per year to finance a foundation aimed at bolstering its reputation abroad, Treasury Minister Dawid Jackiewicz said on Wednesday.
He said one of the foundation's tasks will be to defend Poland's coal industry from European Union plans to curb carbon emissions.
Since winning the first outright parliamentary majority since Poland's 1989 transition from communism, the Law and Justice (PiS) party has overhauled the rules governing the constitutional court, prompting the EU executive to launch an unprecedented inquiry in January into whether the party has weakened the rule of law -- a notion PiS mostly rejects.
"Poland is gaining today a strong weapon in the fight for its good name," Jackiewicz told a news conference with Prime Minister Beata Szydlo, announcing the Polish National Foundation.
He said it would have an annual budget of over 100 million zlotys ($25 million), roughly the same as the upper chamber of parliament, the Senate.
"We are a country with great ambitions, we want to conquer the world, conquer markets. We are prepared and now it's time to make the next step and launch the National Foundation," Szydlo said.
PiS, backed by about 40 percent of Poles according to opinion polls, has sought to increase or solidify state control over economic sectors including banking, energy and chemicals.
Even before the party replaced a centrist government last year, a 2013 study from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development showed Poland had one of the highest levels of state control among its members.
France to deploy aircraft carrier against Islamic State -Hollande
PARIS, July 13 (Reuters) - France will deploy its Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier to the Middle East in the autumn to participate in operations against Islamic State militants, President Francois Hollande said on Wednesday.
Ivory Coast aims to double oil and gas output by 2020
By Loucoumane Coulibaly
YAMOUSSOUKRO, July 13 (Reuters) - Ivory Coast aims to roughly double oil and gas output by 2020 as it pushes for foreign investment in offshore exploration, the head of state oil and gas company Petroci said on Wednesday.
While it has developed natural gas deposits for domestic consumption, French-speaking West Africa's largest economy has ignored its energy sector for decades as the government concentrated on developing agricultural exports.
Authorities are now seeking to develop offshore reserves in the oil-rich Gulf of Guinea.
"Today we have around 60 blocks. We've awarded about 20," Petroci's Managing Director Ibrahima Diaby said on the sidelines of an energy conference in Ivory Coast's capital Yamoussoukro.
"With current exploration our ambition is to reach 200,000 BOE (barrel of oil equivalent) in 2020," he said.
That's around twice current output levels.
Companies either currently conducting exploration in Ivory Coast or preparing to do so include France's Total, U.S. firms Exxon Mobil and Anadarko, and Africa-focused Tullow Oil.
Russia's second-largest oil producer Lukoil withdrew from its Ivorian operations earlier this year.
Ivory Coast has also been expanding its existing oil and gas production.
It has one of West Africa's most reliable power grids, with few blackouts, allowing it to export electricity to its neighbours. But since 2012 an economic boom has seen demand balloon by around 10 percent annually, straining capacity.
Diaby said Canadian Natural Resources and Ivory Coast's Foxtrot International had raised daily natural gas production to 250 million cubic feet from 220 million three years ago.
Ivory Coast's daily crude oil output meanwhile has risen to 53,000 barrels per day (bpd) from around 30,000 bpd last year, he said.
The country is also pushing forward with plans to begin importing liquefied natural gas (LNG) to supplement domestic supply to its gas-fired power plants.
Deals are still being finalised and Diaby declined to give further details, but said the first LNG shipments were expected to arrive in 2018.
Attacks in Saudi Arabia bear hallmarks of Islamic State - CIA head
WASHINGTON, July 13 (Reuters) - CIA director John Brennan said on Wednesday recent attacks in Saudi Arabia bore the hallmarks of Islamic State, and that the militant group was a very serious threat to the kingdom.
Suicide bombers struck three cities across Saudi Arabia earlier this month, killing at least four security officers in an apparently coordinated campaign of attacks on the penultimate day of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
"Those attacks bear the hallmarks of ISIL," Brennan said at an event hosted by the Brookings Institution think tank, using an acronym for Islamic State.
The explosions struck in Jeddah, Qatif and a security headquarters in the holy city of Medina, an attack Brennan described as "unprecedented".
The attacks were not claimed by any group although the Saudi government believes Islamic State is responsible after detaining 19 suspects linked to the five attackers.
Brennan said that while al Qaeda still posed a threat to Saudi Arabia, which had launched a fierce crackdown on the militant group in the early 2000s, Islamic State posed a greater danger to the kingdom.
Canada spy agency joins Twitter: 'It's your turn to follow us'
TORONTO, July 13 (Reuters) - Canada's main spy agency joined Twitter on Wednesday, announcing in a cheeky flip of the script: "Now it's your turn to follow us."
Canadian Security Intelligence Service Director Michel Coulombe said in a statement the agency wanted the public to have a better understanding of what it does.
"Speaking publicly on the nature of our work isn't always easy, but we want CSIS to be more accessible," he said.
Canada's ruling Liberals ran on an election platform last year to increase government transparency and oversight of the country's spy agencies, which have been accused of being overly secretive.
The agency by Wednesday afternoon had 2,247 followers and was following 17 accounts including the U.S Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Central Intelligence Agency.
The new account, @csiscanada, was not the spy agency's first foray into social media.
At least two other accounts, @csiscareers and its French-language counterpart, @carriereauscrs, have been around since September 2013, although they tweeted mostly recruitment messages.
Canada's other spy agency, the Communications Security Establishment, is already on Twitter.
Wired Coffee Bar, a purveyor of fine coffee and meeting spaces, will celebrate two years in Cambridge Square in Ooltewah on Sunday, Aug. 7, from 8 a.m.-11 p.m.
To celebrate and show appreciation for the tremendous support the bar will feature two for one drinks (buy one drink get the second drink of equal or lesser value free). Patrons who stop in to celebrate will receive free cake, and prize drawings all day.
Owner Lisa Goolsby said, "We are pleased with our community and the Cambridge Square development - which is the ideal location for our concept. In 2015 our community showed their support by voting us runner up for Best of the Best. This is a way for us to celebrate with our patrons."
Every time protests erupt in Kashmir, some idiot muses on how Kashmiris enjoy higher development indicators than most other Indians, and how J&K receives massive subsidies.
The point is to show how much India gives to Kashmiris, and how ungrateful they are. The truth is exactly the opposite.
Indian governance has been the cause of the impoverishment of Kashmir, and the progress that Kashmiris have made has been despite Indian misgovernance rather than because of it.
Before Independence, Kashmir was one of the most benighted areas within the larger ambit of the Indian states paying obeisance to the British Empire.
Famines were the norm under Dogra rule, not merely because as Mridu Rai has shown in her brilliant book Hindu Rulers, Muslim Subjects the British encouraged the Dogras to see themselves as Hindu rulers.
One of the main reasons that the Kashmir Valley was carved out of the Sikh Empire and sold to the Dogras was so that a Hindu ruler would block the "Muslim corridor" that extended from Afghanistan.
The neglect and exploitation of the Muslim population of Kashmir was part and parcel of this, and led to impoverishment and starvation. And to complicate matters, the Dogras turn to some Kashmiri Pandit families as their main factotums in the Valley, poisoning inter-religious relations by seeding it with economic resentments.
Sheikh Abdullah.
It is little wonder that while Gandhi led the Quit India movement against British rule similarly exploitative, racist and focussed on religious difference Shiekh Abdullah was leading a Quit Kashmir movement against the British.
One of the successes of the movement was Sheikh Abdullahs changing his Muslim Conference into a National Conference, and with the help of leading Kashmiri Pandit activists such as Prem Nath Bazaz, turning the anti-Dogra movement into a more inclusive movement, rather than representative of one community alone.
The other success was the great land reform that was the principle achievement of Sheikh Abdullah before he was jailed.
The land reform more successful than anywhere else in India allowed poor Kashmiris to finally own some agricultural land, ending the poverty, hunger and famine that had been endemic to the Valley under Dogra rule.
It also earned the Sheikh the undying enmity of Hindu supremacists such as Shyam Prasad Mookerjee, who died in jail protesting the land reforms.
It was these actors that turned Nehru against the Sheikh, as Bazaz documented, leading to the imprisonment of the man largely responsible for the integration of J&K into India, and whose National Conference held off the raiders from Pakistan before the Indian Army landed at the Srinagar airport.
This failure by Delhi could not turn back the great strides that Kashmiris made in development because of the land reform. Even now, the majority of the Valley is dependent on agriculture and horticulture for its well-being.
Indian subsidies barely touch this sector, and so it is their own hard work, and the work of its own leaders, that have given the health that Kashmiris enjoy. Not our handouts.
In fact, India has impoverished Kashmir. It has taken away most rights from Kashmir to exploit its hydropower resources under the Indus Waters Treaty. Most of the hydroelectric dams operated in J&K are run by the National Hydropower Corporation (NHPC).
About 50 per cent of the electricity produced by NHPC is from projects in J&K, and the state receives little of the benefits.
In fact, the papers related to the agreement of many of these projects are missing, leaving a black hole of legality when it comes to when the projects should have been returned to J&K.
And the subsidies? Well, the subsidies are largely for industries and urban areas, and that benefits Jammu far more than the Valley, so in the name of Kashmir, we spend on Jammu, and then ask, why are the Kashmiris so ungrateful?
In fact, another large part of the grants go into the upkeep of security forces whose lack of accountability for their crimes is legion.
In the Patribhal case, members of the Indian Army murdered five labourers and tried to pass them off as militants, the military first argued in the Supreme Court that they were allowed to murder who they would like, without oversight.
When the Supreme Court objected, the Army gave itself a clean chit, even after the CBI had named the guilty men in the case.
These are the people whose upkeep we pay for, and for which we expect Kashmiris to feel grateful.
Beyond the hydropower, beyond the subsidies, there is the fact that the Kashmir Valley, connected for centuries to China, to Central Asia, is now a prison, with one access route through Jammu.
India has delivered Kashmir right back to its former rulers, who block the one road that Kashmiris can trade through, and whose mobs can murder Kashmiri transporters at will.
Hell, even if they get past Jammu, the traders are forced to sell their produce only to a cartel of fruit buyers in Delhi.
Instead of azadi, we give Kashmiris Azadpur Mandi. What a joy.
We have failed Kashmiris at every step, stolen their resources, their rights, their economic freedom and then we wonder why they do not love us.
Oh, I forget, yes, there are people who have become rich because of us these are the politicians we bribe as minister of state for external affairs VK Singh so helpfully told us.
Now that Bernie Sanders has endorsed Hillary Clinton, some of the Vermont senator's Virginia supporters say they will be watching Clinton to make sure she continues to back more progressive positions such as opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership and support for a $15 minimum wage.
But the leader of Sanders' delegation to the Democratic National Convention said she expects his supporters to follow Sanders' lead and support Clinton in November as the next step toward furthering their "revolution" and implementing more progressive policies.
"Of course this just happened. Everybody needs a little time to adjust," Sandra Klassen of Reston, who will head Sanders' Virginia delegation, said of the endorsement.
"Ultimately, I think we're all going to stand behind what Bernie said. It would be very counterproductive not to."
She added: "Continuing the revolution now is defeating Donald Trump."
Mara Seaforest of Fauquier County, a Sanders backer, is among six Virginia participants in the Platform Committee at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia.
"I am very pleased with how much we were able to accomplish in infusing the Democratic platform with much more progressive goals and direction," said Seaforest, who was among Sanders representatives at a meeting of the platform committee in Orlando, Fla.
The language in the draft platform - which awaits ratification in Philadelphia - on issues such as support for the $15 minimum wage says a lot about the serious thought that Clinton has given to issues that have driven millions of voters to support Sanders, she said.
"It would be foolish of her, I think, to turn her back on that passion," Seaforest said.
Klassen echoed Sanders' remarks during his endorsement of Clinton in New Hampshire on Tuesday. She said Sanders and Clinton forces "came together to produce the most progressive Democratic platform" in history and that "our job now is to see that our progressive platform is implemented" by electing Democrats for president and for Congress.
While the draft Democratic platform backs the $15 minimum wage, it includes language that refers to implementation "over time," a gradualism that Sanders supporters did not support.
Clinton is "going to have to do better in convincing us the ideas she's beginning to discuss publicly will be reflected in her presidency," Seaforest said.
One concern for Sanders supporters, she said, is that Clinton not revert without "Senator Sanders snapping at her heels."
Seaforest says she wishes the Democratic platform took a strong stand against TPP, noting that Clinton now opposes the trade pact.
She said she takes a pragmatic view and that she will vote for Clinton, adding: "I think that Donald Trump could easily beat Clinton and that terrifies me."
Bill Bunch, a farmer and former postal worker from Tazewell County, is a Sanders supporter who sought the 9th District nomination for Congress, losing to Derek Kitts, an Army veteran from Christiansburg.
"I still Bern," Bunch said in a phone interview on Tuesday, but he plans to vote for Clinton in November.
"We are looking to the future of progressive change in the Democratic Party," he said. "It's not enough to kick and moan because our guy didn't get elected."
Bunch said still has reservations about Clinton, but declined to spell them out. "I plan to vote for her," he said. "The alternative, to me, is unacceptable."
He said he hopes that if Clinton is elected president, she will "become more a person of the people."
Some supporters of Sanders are not persuaded.
"I am immensely disappointed in Bernie," John Christopher Nolan of Chesterfield County posted on a Richmond Facebook page for Sanders supporters.
"He fights the good fight for so long and now he's going to endorse the Lying Liar Who Lies. Shame on me for having any faith in politicians."
The leaders of Virginia's Democratic Party have firmly backed Clinton throughout the primary process.
"Today marks a milestone in the fight to get Hillary Clinton elected as our next president of the United States," Susan Swecker, chairwoman of the state Democratic Party, said in a statement.
"Bernie Sanders' endorsement is further evidence of a united Democratic Party that's ready to defeat Donald Trump, whose reckless temperament would threaten our economy, hurt working families and put our security in danger."
"We are grateful to Senator Sanders for the campaign he ran and for bringing together passionate Democrats under a common goal: securing a bright future for our country."
Sen. Timothy M. Kaine, D-Va., a potential Clinton running mate who will campaign with her Thursday in Northern Virginia, tweeted that ".@SenSanders ran a superb campaign & the movement will be a force in taking on Trump. So excited to see Dems unite behind @HillaryClinton."
Activist Who Helped Organized Taste Of Chicago 'Shut Down' Placed On House Arrest
By Stephen Gossett in News on Jul 13, 2016 3:20PM
Activist Ja'Mal Green faces Officer (Tyler LaRiviere/Chicagoist)
Activist Ja'Mal Green was released from jail on Tuesday night after being arrested on Saturday during a protest at Taste of Chicago that he helped organize. The demonstration protested the fatal police shootings of Philander Castile and Alton Sterling. Green is charged with five felonies, including one count of attempting to disarm an officer.
Family members and supporters raised $35,000, 10 percent of his $350,000 bond, to secure his release. Green's attorney, Jon Erickson, criticized the high amount, calling it "outrageous" and "punitive."
Video posted by Ayana Clark, identified as Green's girlfriend, shows Green, 20, standing on a police barricade, attempting to address the crowd of demonstrators. An officer reported to be George Deveraux, the executive officer of Area Central that day, first orders him to step down then appears to pull Green down by Green's left short leg.
A different video, published by the Chicago Reader on Tuesday, shows a another, clearer angle of the incident and aftermath. In it, Green seems agitated but does not appear to strike the officer.
A photo taken by a Tribune photographer, which appears to show Green with his hand stretched toward Deveraux, was cited by prosecutors in Green's bond hearing.
Jamal Green, ID'd by CPD as person hitting Cmdr. George Devereaux in this photo, charged w/ 5 felonies #chicago pic.twitter.com/YvUOO0F63Q Peter Nickeas (@PeterNickeas) July 11, 2016
The altercation in which Green allegedly attempted to disarm an officer occurred later, according to police.
Tio Hardiman, of Violence Interrupters, was among those arguing for reduction in bond. "This young man is a standup individual in the community at a much-needed time in our history in the United States," Hardiman was quoted as saying in the Tribune. "The police cannot continue to get away with abusing our people."
Green was placed on house arrest, according to ABC 7.
The only accomplishment David Cameron is worthy of acknowledgement was his reluctant acceptance of a promised EU referendum, otherwise he will be known as a wishy-washy socialist PR man with little truth in his actions. Modelled on Tony Blair, David Cameron is the consummate liar who treated the British people and Britains sovereignty with contempt and disdain during his short tenure.
One of the greatest crimes committed on Britain by David Cameron has been the indignity foisted upon the armed forces, under his tenure they have been stripped to the bone and are a basic shell of what they used to be. Camerons actions have left Britain weak in International standing and vulnerable to outside attack.
Cameron, a staunch Europhile, conducted a treacherous EU referendum campaign utilising government departments and the BBC against the public to effectively commit treason. The daily scaremongering stories pumped incessantly into the media by Cameron and the bulbous nosed Chancellor Osborne were a disgrace to politics and Britain. Its a good thing his dirty tricks were revealed and seen through by the majority of the British people who subsequently voted to leave the EU.
Not only has Cameron betrayed his country and was willing to sell out the United Kingdom for a pittance to Brussels, but he has betrayed his own party. His actions split the Conservative party and it may never recover.
Naturally, the perpetually out-of-touch Cameron, on his way out, is claiming he saved the UK economy from certain Labour destruction. Yes, of course taking away budgets from the most vulnerable in society will bring more money into the coffers, but the truth is Britains budget deficit has risen under the Cameron government and Britain has been forced to borrow more to shore up the budget black hole.
Cameron tried to renege on his EU referendum promise many times, but his election depended on the promise, and this is the only reason he was elected in in the first place. If Labour had won under the insipid Marxist Ed Miliband, there would not have been an EU referendum, and the country would have been condemned to another worthless profligate Labour nightmare made worse by being under the EU, so that is the only thing Cameron was useful for. Although Cameron agreed to an EU referendum, he never in his wildest dreams thought the result would be to leave, and his arrogance got the better of him in the end.
The disparity between the Labour socialists and David Camerons ideology are too thin, microscopic to even be labelled as different, and this is why Cameron is the Conservatives premier fully socialist prime minister. If one digs deeper, Cameron is most certainly a Marxist at heart, because he was willing to betray Britain to the EU Marxist construct. Cameron was willing to throw away Britains currency, its armed forces, the monarchy, and ultimately its sovereignty to Brussels. For this alone, he will go down in British history as a treacherous appeaser to the Soviet EU and its Marxist ideologies of collectivism and complete totalitarian control.
David Cameron, is a weasel who nearly took Britain into an EU nightmare, who willingly lied to the British people with a 9 million taxpayer funded propaganda leaflet and used government institutions and experts to try to push his treachery onto the voting public. Cameron colluded with business leaders when he was meant to be negotiating with the EU thus misleading parliament. He extended the voter registration period so more Remain voters could vote. He was responsible for EU citizens being sent polling cards for the EU referendum. He was responsible for dodgy instructions urging voters to tick the remain box on postal voting cards.
You are a disgrace, a shameful duplicitous disgrace to the nation and if Britain were at a time of war, you would be detained for High Treason.
We shall never forget what you tried to do to the UK.
Never forget!
Hillary Clinton Discusses Laquan McDonald, Sandra Bland In Springfield Speech
By Stephen Gossett in News on Jul 13, 2016 7:41PM
Hillary Clinton spoke to a crowd of 150 guests at the Old State Capitol in Springfield on Wednesday. The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee referenced Abraham Lincoln's historic House Divided Speech, which Lincoln delivered at the state house in 1858.
In the speech, Clinton also cited the controversial deaths of Laquan McDonald and Sandra Bland, according to a Time transcript.
Clinton was careful to not draw an explicit parallel between the Civil War era and the present moment, but she iterated that America's racial struggles are "far from finished" while referencing the tumultuous week in which Philando Castile and Alton Sterling were fatally shot and sniper Micah Xavier Johnson shot to death five police officers in Dallas, in separate incidents.
"The challenges we face today do not approach those of Lincolns time. Not even close, and we should be very clear about that. But recent events have left people across America asking hard questions about whether we are still a house divided, she said. Despite our best efforts and highest hopes, Americas long struggle with race is far from finished. In just the past week, we saw black men killed by police and five police officers killed by a sniper targeting white police."
Clinton told the crowd of 150 guests that the country has "too much violence and hate" and "too little trust and common ground" while stressing the necessity of dialogues about race and income disparity. "It can feel impossible to have the conversations we need to have to fix what is broken. And despite being the richest country on earth, we have too much economic inequality. And that also undermines the foundation of our democracy."
The speech was delivered a day after Sen. Bernie Sanders formally endorsed Clinton, saying "she must become our next president."
Clinton also drew a local connection, mentioning Laquan McDonald, the black 17-year-old who was fatally shot by Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke, and Sandra Bland, the Napervile woman who died a year ago Wednesday while in the custody of Texas police.. "Time after time, no one is held accountable. And surely, we can all agree thats deeply wrong and needs to change. And yes, we do need to listen to those who say 'black lives matter,'" she said. Van Dyke faces a first-degree murder charge for his role in the McDonald killing.
Clinton continues her Illinois visit on Wednesday with a scheduled visit with Laura Ricketts, co-owner of the Cubs, in Wilmette.
'Inside Amy Schumer' Producer Jessi Klein Talks Chicago And Her New Book
By Gwendolyn Purdom in Arts & Entertainment on Jul 13, 2016 8:09PM
Comedian and writer Jessi Klein (Robyn Von Swank/Courtesy of Grand Central Publishing) Amy Schumer, the comedian has written for Saturday Night Live and Transparent and served as a regular panelist on the Chicago-based "Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me" podcast.
So, it makes sense that Klein would make a comedy-centric city like Chicago one of her first stops to promote her new book of essays, You'll Grow Out Of It, following its Tuesday release. Klein will sit down with Chicagoist's associate editor Gwendolyn Purdom to talk about the book at a lunch event at The Standard Club in The Loop on Thursday, but first, we caught up with Klein to get her thoughts on Inside Amy Schumer, our city, and, of course, how to be hilarious professionally.
Chicagoist: One of the things I think you do so well in the bookand, actually your team at Inside Amy Schumer does this so well, tooyou take these seemingly insignificant or silly things and illuminate much bigger issues beneath them. Is that something you do consciously, are you looking for those little but actually big things? How do you choose those topics?
Jessi Klein: I think its a thing where all of these little specific struggles, theyre microcosms and with the stuff that feels headliney and political, the old chestnut is the personal is political. But I think it is. I just know the stuff that, as I go through my day, strikes me as feeling awkward and funny or a little off, and I keep a notebook and I try to remember them and write them down. Its just the stuff that kind of suggests a story to me.
A lot of your essays in your book focus on womanhood. What would you say, off the top of your head, is your favorite thing about being a woman, and what would you say is the most obnoxious thing about being a woman?
That is a toughy. I feel like I would need years to answer that. My favorite thing, at least that I can think of in this moment, is I enjoy how much easier it is for women to connect with one another and make friends than it is for men. My husband is a very together and social guy but I just think women have a way of connecting with each other quickly and easily that I think is a real gift in terms of our ability to just communicate and connect. It seems like it would be kind of lonely to be some dude bro who cant act like he likes another dude cause what if hes gay, dude. Least favorite part? I dont know. I guess my period?
Inside Amy Schumer is in its fourth, going-on fifth season. How would you say the comedy has evolved?
I think at the beginning we kind of found our footing. We just had no idea what we were going to do at the beginning, outside of Amy had such a strong comedic voice, we were finding our way in terms of the types of sketches we wanted to do. We knew that we wanted them to be personal but I think like most shows we kind of found our voice as we went along. And once we had a little bit of a sense of the idea that people were liking what we were doing, it gave us a little bit more of a green light to just own the silliness and the seriousness that we were embracing. And we worried less and less about well, what will blah blah think? Not that everything is perfect or everything hits but we just felt like were not going to worry too much about weather guys liked us. Its honest and its true, so people will like it.
Youre a panelist for NPRs Wait, Wait Dont Tell Me, [which is recorded in Chicago], but do you have other Chicago connections? Were something of a comedy town.
Sadly, other than just knowing a ton of Chicago comedy people who I adore, I have no connection to your people. Ive always liked Chicago, I didnt know that a city could be big and clean. I was just like, How do they do that? Everyones just obeying? Putting things in the can?
Before Inside Amy Schumer, you used to write for SNL and youre surrounded by funny people all the time. What would you say is the quality that sets people who make it in comedy apart from people who dont? What career advice do you have for Chicagos aspiring comedians and comedy writers?
The first quality, and I guess this applies to everything, is perseverance. Persevering and sticking with it and a certain level of fearlessness, if we can define fearlessness not as the absence of fear but the ability to overcome fear. And then, I guess, being funny. And maybe some vulnerability. If you are somebody who wants to perform, just make sure youre performing and if youre somebody who wants to write, just make sure youre writing. Its so amazing to me, Im a billion years old, I grew up without the interwebs, but everyone can be making something [now] without having to wait for someones green light and so thats the main thing. Im so intimately familiar with being paralyzed by the fear of starting and the fear of creating. And you think, well when will I be a writer? And it is kind of hackneyed advice but its when you start and keep going.
Doors for Thursday's event at The Standard Club open at 11:30 a.m.. For more information, visit Anderson's Bookshop's website.
Jabari Parker Voices Black Lives Matter Support On Social Media
By Stephen Gossett in News on Jul 13, 2016 4:39PM
Getty Images
Milwaukee Bucks forward and Chicago native Jabari Parker on Tuesday made an impassioned show of support for the Black Lives Matter movement via Instagram.
The former Simeon Career Academy standout and second overall draft pick unequivocally expressed solidarity in a caption posted alongside a solid black image. "I support BLACK LIVES MATTER. I don't care what anybody tells me what I should and should not say. At the end of the day, I speak from my heart and I could care less trying to impress someone," he wrote.
Last week, Parker voiced safety concerns following the police shooting death of Philando Castile. Parker also challenged former Illinois congressman/current jackass Joe Walsh, posting that the ex-rep won't lay "a single finger" on President Barack Obama, after Walsh tweeted thinly veiled threats in the wake of the Dallas sniper attack.
Melissa Harris-Perry Is Coming To The Chicago Humanities Festival
By Mae Rice in Arts & Entertainment on Jul 13, 2016 5:08PM
Photo by Charles Ommanney for MSNBC (via Facebook)
We already know that the Chicago Humanities Festival's fall season's theme is "Speed," and that Gloria Steinem and Trevor Noah will be among the featured speakers. On Wednesday, the festival announced still more guests on their fall lineup, including Melissa Harris-Perry, author Mary Roach, professor Mychal Denzel Smith and the partners at Logan Square's Fat Rice.
Harris-Perrywho you most likely know from her beloved MSNBC show, and who Ta-Nehisi Coates has called "America's foremost public intellectual'will host a live show at CHF focused on the 2016 election. It is sure to be good and deeply depressing at the same time. [Insert sigh that lasts until November.]
Roach, the best-selling author and science writer who wrote Stiff, will also appear at the festival to discuss her latest book: Grunt: The Curious Science of Humans at War. Smith will likewise appear to discuss his first book, Invisible Man Got the Whole World Watching, in which he reflects on his experiences as a young black man and his struggle to "make invisible men visible."
In local news: The partners behind Logan Square's Fat Rice, Abraham Conlon and Adrienne Lo, will debut their first cookbook at CHF's fall festivities: The Adventures of Fat Rice. The book is just one element of a huge year for Fat Rice; they recently expanded, opening a new bakery and bar.
Tickets to the fall CHF season, which runs from Oct. 29 to Nov. 12, go on sale to CHF members on Tuesday, September 20 and to the public on Tuesday, September 27. For more info, see the CHF website.
This 27-Year-Old Funeral Director Could Revolutionize The Death Industry
By Gwendolyn Purdom in News on Jul 13, 2016 2:38PM
Licensed funeral director and owner of AquaGreen Dispositions, Ryan Cattoni, photo courtesy of Ryan Cattoni
When Ryan Cattoni was starting out in the funeral business, his dream job wasn't legal. Eco-friendly flameless cremation, the growing industry the 27-year-old funeral director wanted to go into, didnt exist in Illinois before he started doing it.
Currently only offered at five funeral homes in the country, flameless cremationor alkaline hydrolysis, if you want to get technicalis a body disposal process thats being touted as greener than traditional cremation because it uses water and lye instead of fire. Writer Owen Phillips published a fascinating exploration of the alternative practice and the changing funeral industry on The Awl last week, which inspired us to reach out to Cattoni to find out more about the life of Chicagolands very own 27-year-old mortuary innovator.
Cattoni first learned about flameless cremation from an article that mentioned the Mayo Clinic using it. The process involves placing bodies into a machine along with a combination of water, lye and low heat, which dissolves the tissue into powder. The powdered remains come out lighter in color than the powder left over after traditional cremation as there's no burning involved. Once Cattoni decided it was a method he wanted to master, he worked with Illinois lawmakers to set legal guidelines and licensing regulations for his previously unpopulated field, and opened his flameless cremation business, AquaGreen Dispositions, in south suburban South Holland in 2012.
When I was a junior in high school, my grandfather, who I was very close with, passed away, and the funeral director who handled his services made a very stressful situation a lot less stressful, Cattoni told us. He made it easier to grieve and to cope with my grandfathers passing. So I figured if I could do that, I would really actually be making a difference with my profession.
The unexpected career choice went over well with Cattonis parents, but his friends were a little more skeptical.
They looked at me a little unusually, he said.
His age, and the fact that mortuary science wasnt already his family's business, set Cattoni apart from other funeral directors in the beginning. Now, his methods also set him apart, in a positive way. He works with a growing number of families throughout the Chicago area and the state.
Families are [often] happy because they didnt like the idea of their loved one being burned, he says.
His eco-minded customers also like the process' significantly smaller carbon footprint in comparison to in-ground burial or traditional cremation that uses fire, Cattoni says. Flameless cremation uses fewer natural resources than burial and emits no polluting smoke because there is no fire involved. The technique also avoids sending potentially harmful chemicals that may be present in dead bodies, such as embalming fluids or even traces of toxins used in chemotherapy, back into the atmosphere like smoke and fumes from regular cremation's fire can.
Its the wave of the future, he said, and its a wave hes hoping others will ride with him. I knew this was my calling. This is what I was meant to do.
Alderman Wants To Spend $100K On Private Security For Wicker Park
By Mae Rice in News on Jul 13, 2016 4:17PM
Photo via MA1216 on Flickr
Update, 4:40 p.m. This measure was tabled, at least temporarily, at a budget meeting for Wicker Park and Bucktown's Special Service Area (SSA) on Tuesday, Ald. Brian Hopkins (2nd) told Chicagoist. He hasn't abandoned the measure, but it will now go into effect in 2017 at the earliest.
"I presented it really at the last minute," Hopkins said. "I did not give the SSA commissioners enough time to vet the idea. They really wanted some more time to consider." Picking the appropriate private security firm, he added, is "a very important decision... not a decision you want to rush through in a weekend."
Before any private security goes into effect in the Wicker Park area, Hopkins said, there will be community meetings on the subject, as well as a request for proposals from local private security firms.
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Wicker Park's alderman wants to reallocate $100K in taxpayer dollars to hire private security firms to patrol Wicker Park and Bucktown's main thoroughfares, he announced Tuesday.
This is a common sense measure with the goal of enhancing security for the Wicker Park and Bucktown communities," Hopkins said in a statement. His statement also cited the current "limited resources" of the Chicago Police Department.
Hopkins' proposal (which DNAinfo wrote about Tuesday) comes in the middle of an uptick in crime citywide, including in Wicker Park. A man was fatally shot near the Division Blue Line in March; in late March and early April, there was a rash of armed robberies along Milwaukee Avenue, including one right outside Umami Burger. In June, a man was stabbed in the head near the Damen Blue Line stop.
Ald. Hopkins proposes to tackle crime in his ward using funds from the Wicker Park and Bucktown SSA to contract with private security firms staffed by retired and off-duty Chicago police officers.
The private officers would be held to similar transparency and oversight standards as Chicago police officers, a representative for Ald. Hopkins office told Chicagoist. Their activity would be available through the same public crime portal used by CPD. Police misconduct, however, wouldn't go through the Independent Police Review Authority (IPRA); instead, any alleged misbehavior would be investigated by Ald. Hopkins, the local police, and the SSA commissioners.
Ald. Hopkins' proposal would allocate $100,000 of the SSA's $190,000 in untapped funds to private security measures. (The current Wicker Park Bucktown SSA's proposed budget for 2016 has only $1,000 allocated to safety program, and it's specifically for bicycle safety.) If unused, the untapped funds will expire at the end of 2016.
SSAs, in general, fund special programs in designated areas through property tax hikes. These special programs include safety measures.
The Wicker Park Bucktown SSA, specifically, covers the neighborhoods' main thoroughfares. It runs along Milwaukee Ave., North Ave. and Division Ave. from Ashland to Western; it also covers stretches of Western, Damen and Ashland, including Wicker Park's namesake park.
It is one of the most endearing moments of an ongoing China Children's Theatre Festival as several young American actors performed a drama on Chinese idiom stories on the weekend.
They are from the US Missoula Children's Theatre, now coming to Beijing for the 6th China Children's Theatre Festival. Their show generated a lot of joy amongst audiences during its less than one-hour long show time.
Young American actors interpret a Chinese idiom "Be there just to make up the number and fill in a vacancy" through their drama performance on July 9, 2016 in the China National Theatre for Children in Beijing.[Photo: CRI]
The American actors' show of 'Box of Idioms' on the stage of China National Theatre for Children contains a total of three idioms, which are called 'Chengyu' in Chinese. They are "Marking a Boat to Seek One's Sword", or Ke-Zhou-Qiu-Jian () in Chinese, "Be there just to make up the number and fill in a vacancy" or Lan-Yv-Chong-Shu () in Chinese and "Display a slight skill before an expert" or Ban-Men-Nong-Fu ()in Chinese.
Matt Loehrke is the Education Director with the US Missoula Children's Theatre.
"I think they have learned a lot of theater skills, to begin with, as Joseph saying, many of them have never performed before, so they have learned to work with the technical crew, professional crew. What it means to learn the lines, what it means to be the characters. And not only to be the character to act it how you were acting, but to take the traditional story, the idiom story, and be those characters, to be the tricky servant, to be the emperor, to be those things. So they are learning the histories of the story as well as acting on top of that."
The China Children's Theatre Festival, which has successfully held five sessions since 2011, will close on Aug25th, lasting one and a half months.
This year's festival is a stage where Chinese and foreign theater groups work together and conduct theatrical culture exchanges.
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The John Bryan Community Pottery (JBCP) is announcing the launch of its capital campaign to fund the replacement of its gas reduction kiln. The campaign runs July and August on Kickstarter.
The JBCP launched with a gathering at the studio on Friday supported by La Pampa Mobil Grill, Yellow Springs Brewery and live music by Mad River Railroad. Also, announced at this event was the fall class schedule including several exciting new format classes for first time potters.
Kickstarter campaigns are Internet based fundraising campaigns quite often used by non-profit organizations to raise awareness and funds for community projects. Direct donations will also be accepted throughout the campaign.
The current gas kiln has seen over 30 years of service to the pottery studio and is in desperate need of replacement to support the studio work. Quotes have been received and reviewed; Bailey Pottery Supply of New York has been working with the pottery staff on the replacement of this community resource. The estimated cost for the kiln, the conversion to natural gas and installation is $25,000. Change to natural gas from propane will be an ongoing cost savings for the studio. Any additional funds will be used to deconstruct the old kiln and on modifications to the glaze and dry storage areas.
Donors can go directly to www.Kickstarter.com to make a donation or can go to www.communitypottery.com and make a direct donation or be redirected to Kickstarter. An overview video of JBCP and the Kiln requirements is available on the website and through Kickstarter.
John Bryan Community Pottery (JBCP) is a full service ceramics studio located in Yellow Springs, OH, established over 40 years ago, serving the southwest Ohio art community. The mission is to introduce the craft of ceramic arts and encourage the development of the next generation of potters through classes, workshops, exhibits and by offering facilities for making ceramic work. JBCP is a nonprofit 501(c)(3), donations are tax deductible. For more information, contact: Krystal Luketic, 100 Dayton Street, Yellow Springs, Ohio 45387, 937-767-9022, jbcp.ys@gmail.com
China is carrying out a new round of reforms on its torpid state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and pushing local governments to support private firms.
One key part of the broad reforms would allow employees to hold stakes in SOEs, as mixed-ownership companies are considered more vibrant and efficient.
"We are working to select a few centrally and locally administered SOEs to pilot the employee stakeholding reform," an anonymous source with the state-owned assets authority was quoted by Xinhua-run newspaper Economic Information as saying on Wednesday.
High tech companies will be given preference to pilot the reform, said the source, adding that the trials are expected to build experience for future expansion.
"The second half of 2016 will be a critical period for the employee-stakeholding reform," said Li Jin, chief researcher with the China Enterprise Research Institute (CERI).
China has more than 150,000 SOEs. They play a pivotal role in bolstering the economy and providing employment, with total assets worth about 125 trillion yuan (nearly 20 trillion U.S. dollars) as of the end of May.
However, an economic slowdown, which trimmed the country's GDP growth to 6.7 percent in the first quarter, has bitten into SOEs' profitability and left many struggling to keep afloat.
Combined profits of Chinese SOEs saw a decline of 9.6 percent year on year in the first five months despite warming signs in the broader economy.
To reverse the situation, policy makers are promoting an overhaul on SOEs, piloting mixed ownership programs, encouraging mergers and acquisitions, and downsizing overstaffed companies.
President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang gave written advice on the development of SOEs to a national meeting on SOE reform earlier this week.
Xi demanded continued efforts to enhance SOEs' vitality, competitiveness and risk resistance, and to establish a modern corporate governance system.
The premier urged SOEs to slash excess production capacity, boost technological innovation and upgrade traditional industries.
In fact, many SOEs still have huge investment in lackluster traditional heavy industries and are overburdened by high operational costs and long payrolls, according to Xiao Yaqing, head of the State-Owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council.
More efforts are needed to improve state-owned asset management and change rigid corporate governance, Xiao said.
"Further measures will be rolled out to facilitate changes in SOEs, including industry consolidation, improvement in main business and overcapacity reduction," said CERI's Li.
At the same time, Chinese leaders appeared to attach similar, if not equal, importance to private firms, which created about 60 percent of China's GDP and around 80 percent of jobs, but have recently been hesitant to invest.
Private fixed-asset investment increased 3.9 percent year on year in the first five months of 2016, compared with 11.4-percent growth in the same period last year.
Official surveys in May revealed local governments' failure to fully implement pro-private investment measures, including wider market access, lower financial costs and equal government services.
The State Council said in a notice also this week that it will dispatch inspectors in mid-July to regions with huge, but sharply slowed, private investment.
The notice did not specify which provincial-level regions will be targeted. It asked local governments and departments to mend their ways and do as required by a string of documents released since the incumbent central government was formed.
The Cabinet last month approved rules for mega-spectrum auction in which airwaves worth Rs 5.66 lakh crore will be put up for sale except SUC as recommended by inter-ministerial panel Telecom Commission.
New Delhi: Government should move to a flat levy for spectrum usage charge as suggested by TRAI or clearly specify a timeline in case it decides to adopt an interim weighted average formula, industry body COAI on July 13 said.
Welcoming TRAI sticking to its stated position for a flat spectrum usage charge (SUC), COAI Director General Rajan S Mathews told PTI, "We believe this should move to the flat 1 per cent previously recommended by TRAI."
Talking about the "constraints" of the regulator due to the terms of reference, Mathews said, "The Cabinet and the Telecom Commission are not so constrained and should move to what TRAI sees as the appropriate SUC regime, which is a flat SUC rate, and not a weighted average approach."
He further said that if the Cabinet decides to adopt an interim weighted average method, it should clearly specify in the NIA (Notice Inviting Applications) when it intends to move to a flat spectrum usage rate, as recommended by the telecom watchdog.
TRAI yesterday stuck to its suggestion of charging mobile operators a flat spectrum charge as it picked holes in the existing method used by the government to collect levy for use of airwaves.
It also suggested using alternative elements to determine the weighted average formula, saying DoT should take into account benefit that a spectrum band delivers and bid price of airwaves as factors to determine an "approximate" value for calculating SUC.
"Each spectrum band has its characteristics in terms of range, penetration, capacity, ecosystem and the like. Accordingly, if DoT chooses to adopt weighted average rate of SUC, then it would be appropriate for it to carefully explore alternate proxies... like technical efficiency factor and the market-determined price for such spectrum band," TRAI said.
The Cabinet last month approved rules for mega-spectrum auction in which airwaves worth Rs 5.66 lakh crore will be put up for sale except SUC as recommended by inter-ministerial panel Telecom Commission. The Cabinet asked the telecom ministry to seek TRAI's view on SUC before it approves the rule.
Tabrez Nooranis Love Sonia features Hollywood star Demi Moore, playing a reformist and social activist working against human trafficking. This is the first time that Demi will act in an Indian film, but according to the director, the actress wasnt as elusive as one wouldve imagined. It wasnt that difficult at all. Demi has been involved in campaigns against human trafficking for years and has her own non-profit organisation called Thorn, which helps such victims. She loved the script and was happy to play the part of the social worker.
Mark Duplass is another Hollywood actor who plays a part in the film. Both Mark and Demi were a delight to work with. We shot with them in LA and have started editing the film now. It was an amazing shoot but a difficult one too.
For Noorani, it has been a long wait before his dream of making a film on the flesh trade could be realised. Ive waited 12 years to make this film. The subject of human trafficking is very close to my heart. Ive researched extensively on the subject, visited brothels and even rescued sex workers in the process with the help of NGOs.
Other actors in the film include Freida Pinto, Richa Chadda, Manoj Bajpai, Mrunal Thakur and Riya Sisodia among others.
About the cast he adds, They all surrendered to my script from the moment they came on board. No money was discussed. I cant begin to describe Manoj Bajpais level of commitment to the project.
Its all about debutant actresses in T-town. Kamna Ranawat, is making her debut in Tollywood opposite Allari Naresh in the comedy flick Selfie Raja. Kamna, who hails from Mumbai, wanted to become an actress and has been looking for opportunities since a long time.
She came across a photographer who informed her that a Telugu filmmaker was looking for a female lead in his film. So, I called the director, Eswar Reddy, immediately. He asked for my portfolios. He was impressed and called me for an audition, Kamna reveals.
Eswar organised a photo shoot and asked Kamna to perform a few scenes. I performed well in the audition and he said that he would consider me for the role, she recalls.
Selfie Raja will be her first film ever, and she will be playing a character called Shweta. I have been a part of theatre earlier with Nadira Babbar in Mumbai, but I dont have experience in films, she says.
She adds that her family has been supportive. My family has encouraged me. We all knew a little about Allari Naresh. But only after signing the film, I came to know that he is the king of comedy, says the debutant.
Her experience shooting for the film has been amazing. Understanding the language was difficult in the beginning. However, I like to learn new languages. It is always good to learn new things in life. So, I accepted the film, she says.
Reading, understanding and memorising the lines has been a difficult task for her, but the cast and crew have been helping her. All the unit members have been very cooperative and helped me get the right emotions for the scenes, she says. Kamna has already signed another Kannada film and is shooting for it.
Cao Fang, 28, had been experiencing pain in her face for over a month that had caused her to eat her meals with great difficulty. (Credit: YouTube)
A 28-year-old woman in China was stunned after she found out that a tooth had been growing right under her eye. She had been experiencing pain in her face for over a month that had caused her to eat her meals with great difficulty, reports People's Daily Online.
Cao Fang, who works in Guangzhou, underwent surgery after doctors warned her that the growing tooth would adversely affect her eyesight if not removed. Her operation was conducted in Chongqing City. Doctors explained that the tooths abnormal growth could have been caused by Caos baby tooth not falling off soon enough resulting in the tooth to grow upwards.
The condition has been termed as a case of impacted teeth, according to Cambridge University Hospital. This happens when one or more teeth fail to grow in the correct position and are held below the normal gum line.
Men with one brother with prostate cancer had a 30 per cent risk of being diagnosed themselves before the age of 75. (Photo: AP)
London: Men with brothers or fathers who have had prostate cancer are at a higher risk of developing the disease, a new study has found. "Men with brothers who have had prostate cancer run twice as high a risk of being diagnosed themselves in comparison to the general population," researchers said.
"It is well known that men with prostate cancer in the family have a higher risk of the disease. Prostate cancer is often a rather indolent disease with favourable prognosis that often does not require treatment but there are also aggressive
types that can be mortal," said Par Stattin from Umea University in Sweden.
"The ability to differ between these types is therefore important. Up until now, there has been no knowledge about the absolute magnitudes of these risks," said Stattin.
Researchers from Umea and Lund University in Sweden studied the prostate cancer risk in over 50,000 men in Sweden whose brothers and fathers had prostate cancer. They found that men with one brother with prostate cancer
had a 30 per cent risk of being diagnosed themselves before the age of 75, compared with 13 per cent among other men without family history of the disease.
Men with one brother with prostate cancer also had a nine per cent risk of an aggressive form compared with five per cent among other men. Men with both a father and a brother with prostate cancer had a threefold risk of prostate cancer themselves - a 48 per cent risk of any form of prostate cancer (compared with 13 per cent among other men) and 14 per cent for aggressive cancer (compared with 5 per cent among other men), researchers said.
The risk of an aggressive prostate cancer was typically as high in those whose brothers or fathers had the mildest form as those who had an aggressive prostate cancer in the family, they said. "We had expected that the risk of aggressive prostate cancer would be particularly lower in men with favourable
cancer in the family, but that was not the case," said Ola Bratt from Lund University.
"Men whose fathers or brothers had a favourable prostate cancer do not usually think that increases their own risk of developing aggressive cancer. They might not even know that they have prostate cancer in the family," said Bratt.
The findings were published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.
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Farm produce prices posted mild declines last week, the Ministry of Commerce said on Tuesday.
The average price of six types of fruit fell 1.5 percent, compared to a drop of 0.7 percent a week earlier, according to the ministry's website.
Meat prices were broadly lower, with pork falling 1.1 percent. Mutton and beef edged down 0.4 percent and 0.1 percent, respectively.
Changes to grain prices varied. Flour dipped 0.3 percent, while rice increased 0.2 percent.
Vegetable prices rose, partly because rain in the country's southern regions disrupted vegetable supplies.
Rape, garlic and cauliflower jumped 12.2 percent, 10.8 percent and 8.7 percent, respectively.
Food prices account for one-third of the calculation of China's consumer price index (CPI).
This year's target consumer price growth is set at around 3 percent, the same as in 2015. China's CPI rose 1.9 percent in June, down from the 2-percent growth rate registered in May.
An HIV-positive partner should be using antiretrovirals for at least six months before the couple engages in condomless sex, researchers said. (Photo: AFP)
Miami: Antiretroviral therapy vastly lowers the risk of spreading HIV for couples in which one partner has the virus and the other does not, even when they have condomless sex, researchers said Tuesday.
The study in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) is the largest of its kind to examine the question of how risky it is for so-called serodiscordant couples to have unprotected sex when the infected partner is suppressing his or her viral load with medication. The research involved 900 couples -- about two thirds of whom were men who have sex with men and the rest were heterosexual.
After a median of 1.3 years, the study found no cases in which the HIV-positive partner, who was taking medication to suppress the virus, infected the partner. There were, however, 11 cases in which a partner who was HIV negative at the start of the study became infected with the virus that causes AIDS. Ten of these cases involved gay men.
Researchers said eight of the newly HIV-positive partners admitted to having had unprotected sex outside the relationship. In no cases could the person's HIV infection be molecularly matched to the partner's, giving researchers an in-couple transmission rate of zero. However, they cautioned, more follow-up is needed.
"Although these results cannot directly provide an answer to the question of whether it is safe for serodifferent couples to practice condomless sex, this study provides informative data (especially for heterosexuals) for couples to base their personal acceptability of risk on," said the study, led by Alison Rodger of University College London. An accompanying editorial in JAMA by Eric Daar and Katya Corado of the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, warned that couples should not take the study to mean that their risk of transmission is zero.
"For individuals who want to routinely or intermittently not use condoms with an HIV-infected partner, clinicians can indicate that the risk of HIV transmission appears small in the setting of continued viral suppression," they wrote. The HIV-positive partner should be using antiretrovirals for at least six months before the couple engages in condomless sex, they said.
"Moreover, clinicians need to be clear that even though the overall risk for HIV transmission may be small, the risk is not zero and the actual number is not known, especially for higher-risk groups such as MSM" (men who have sex with men). They added that "more research is needed with larger numbers of couples and longer follow-up." The condomless sex occurred during periods when the HIV-positive partner had HIV-1 RNA load less than 200 copies/milliliter, said the study. The research was carried out at 75 clinical sites in 14 European countries from 2010 to 2014.
The framework the study proposes includes pathways to research informed practice designed to generate five key outcomes for children.
Washington: Parents, you may want to expose your kids to nature more as according to a recent study, it could yield extraordinary results.
The study also suggested that outdoor learning needs to be introduced more formally into global school curricula in order for its potential benefits to be fully realised.
The report by Plymouth University and Western Sydney University highlights the many and varied benefits to children of learning in the natural environment, not just from an educational perspective but also in terms of their behaviour, social skills, health and wellbeing, resilience, confidence and sense of place.
But it also says that in an age dominated by a full curriculum, busier family lifestyles and increased fear within society, children are losing the freedom to play, explore and be active in their environment and being denied opportunities that could enhance their long term prospects.
The report identifies a framework showing how governments could build on existing and current research and introduce outdoor learning as an integral element of national education policies.
Sue Waite, one of the authors, said: "At the moment, if outdoor learning is part of a school's curriculum in England, it is largely because the teachers recognise the values of it. With so much focus on academic attainment, there can be pressure on teachers to stay in the classroom which means children are missing out on so many experiences that will benefit them throughout their lives."
She added, "This report shows that although there is significant research which supports outdoor learning for academic as well as social and personal outcomes, it is only by having that recognised by policy makers that we are likely to achieve universal positive cultural change."
The framework the study proposes includes pathways to research informed practice designed to generate five key outcomes for children: a healthy and happy body and mind; a sociable confident person; a self-directed creative learner; an effective contributor; an active global citizen.
Western Sydney University's Karen Malone said as the amount of evidence on the benefit of learning in natural environments on health and wellbeing continues to mount, the question is, is it enough to persuade policy makers to come on board?
The blueprint is published in the journal Nature Medicine ahead of a meeting of specialists on July 18-22 at the 21st International AIDS Conference in Durban, South Africa.
Paris, France: Calling the AIDS epidemic "the most important global health challenge in modern history," more than 50 top scientists pressed their case Monday for a drive to stop the killer disease in its tracks.
Anchored by Nobel Medicine laureate Francoise Barre-Sinoussi, the group unveiled an aggressive research strategy for an outright cure an objective once seen as unrealistic and out of reach.
"Not long ago, few considered the possibility that a cure for HIV infection could some day be possible," said Barre-Sinoussi, who in 1983 helped identify the mysterious virus that causes AIDS.
Today, "the search for a cure has become a top priority in HIV research," she said in a statement, hailing a "new optimism" among experts.
The blueprint is published in the journal Nature Medicine ahead of a meeting of specialists on July 18-22 at the 21st International AIDS Conference in Durban, South Africa.
The scientists take stock of many recent gains in treating the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), but argue that the solution for ending the pandemic lies in a cure.
In 2004, AIDS deaths peaked at more than two million.
Last year, the toll was around 1.2 million lives a decline attributed in large part to the success of anti-retroviral (ART) drugs, which reduce the symptoms of people carrying the virus.
'Daunting' situation
But less than half of an estimated 37 million people worldwide living with HIV receive therapy.
Helping them to grasp that lifeline will require a huge, lifelong commitment. On top of that, the powerful drugs can have toxic side-effects.
Those problems are "daunting" and the economic costs "might be unsustainable," the strategy warned.
As a result, preventing and destroying the virus should be top priorities.
On the prevention scoreboard, experimental vaccines show promise, but are probably years away.
As for eradication, scientists understand far better now how HIV remains barricaded in tissues such as the lymph nodes and the gut after being beaten back by ART therapy, the standard drug cocktail given to HIV patients.
Research has found starting ART therapy early limits the ability of the virus to establish a redoubt.
The scientists also outline an array of tactics for identifying how the virus tucks itself away inside the human body, and methods for flushing it out and killing it.
But, they say, "the challenges... remain substantial," and there are still many pieces missing in the puzzle.
One prime target is so-called CD4-plus T cells.
These play a central role in the body's immune system, which defends against viral and microbial intruders.
HIV finds secret hideaways in long-lived "memory" versions of these cells, but how the virus does this is not fully understood.
Another objective is to strengthen the immune system.
Foot-soldiers known as "broadly neutralising antibodies" may be able to recognise these latently-infected cells, and then call on specialised "killer" cells to destroy them.
Better lab tools are needed, the scientists added, for measuring HIV persistence.
A common idea is that HIV only needs a few CD4-plus T cells to hideout. But sequencing of viral genomes suggest the disease's reservoir could be much larger.
Barre-Sinoussi launched the cure initiative in 2010 among a small group of scientists, some of whom were doubtful that eradicating HIV as opposed to holding it in check was feasible.
Two years later, the group developed its first long-term strategy, which is now being updated.
Global investment in finding a cure has risen from $88 million (80 million euros) in 2012 to $202 million (183 million euros) in 2015, most of which came from the US government.
The police arrested Chatterjee on another complaint, by one Santosh Lodh who alleged that the councillor demanded extortion money of Rs 12 lakhs. (Photo: http://www.anindyachatterjee.com)
Kolkata: Trinamool Congress leader Anindya Chatterjee has been arrested for trying to extort money from Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasinas relative in Kolkata.
According to a report in dna, Hasina had called upon West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee, informing of her relative Arunabha Mukherjee, a resident of AC Block of Salt Lake, being harassed by Chatterjee. Hasina said that Chatterjee was trying to extort money from Mukherjee and asked for her immediate intervention in the matter.
Chatterjee, a sitting councillor of ward 41 of the Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation was arrested by the Bidhannagar City Police and then questioned overnight. He was produced before the court and remanded in 14 days judicial custody.
But the police arrested Chatterjee on another complaint, by one Santosh Lodh who alleged that the councillor demanded extortion money of Rs 12 lakhs. The family members claim that Lodh suffered a stroke following repeated threats from Chatterjee.
The Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation mayor wrote to the Police Commissioner following which the arrest was made.
The public prosecutor told the court that several complaints of extortion had been made against Chatterjee but due to his influence, no action was taken.
Ranchi: Dropout of girl child for want of money will not be allowed, Jharkhand Chief Minister Raghubar Das pledged on International Women's Day.
"The government will fully support education for girls as illiteracy is the biggest hurdle for development," Das said at a women's convention here on Tuesday.
Honouring those women doing well in their area of work to mark the day, Mr Das said the government has earmarked a separate budget to execute women-related schemes.
Stating that there were 36,000 self-help groups (SHGs) across Jharkhand giving jobs to approximately, four lakh persons, Das called upon to double the SGHs by the next International Women's Day.
He said the government was providing assistance of Rs 12,000 to each house-hold for construction of toilets.
Once again he appealed the women to create a "people's movement" in their respective villages to make them alcohol-free, for which the village would be rewarded with Rs 1 lakh for development.
According to the ministry, there are around 600 Indians in South Sudan, of them 450 are in Juba and nearly 150 are outside the capital. (Photo: Twitter/MEA)
New Delhi: India will send two C-17 military transport aircraft to war torn South Sudan's capital city Juba on Thursday to evacuate over 300 Indians stranded there, an exercise which will be led by Minister of State for External Affairs V K Singh.
"The General takes charge again! 2 C-17s proceeding to Juba tomorrow with @Gen_VKSingh leading evacuation from South Sudan," MEA Spokesperson Vikas Swarup tweeted. Singh had also supervised evacuation of nearly 4,000 Indians from conflict- ridden Yemen last year.
The General takes charge again!
2 C-17s proceeding to Juba tomorrow with @Gen_VKSingh leading evac'n frm South Sudan pic.twitter.com/H48qiBJHad Vikas Swarup (@MEAIndia) July 13, 2016
The relief flight is expected to reach Juba tomorrow morning, an official advisory said, adding only Indian nationals with valid Indian travel document will be allowed boarding with maximum five kg cabin baggage and no check-in pieces. It also said that women and children will be accommodated on priority.
Apart from Singh, Amar Sinha, Secretary (Economic Relations) will also travel to Juba. India has been closely monitoring developments in South Sudan, which is witnessing heavy fighting between former rebels and government soldiers in several parts of the city. A task force has been set up for the purpose.
According to the ministry, there are around 600 Indians in South Sudan, of them 450 are in Juba and nearly 150 are outside the capital. According to official sources, so far nearly 300 Indians have registered with the Indian embassy for evacuation.
The BSF personnel immediately rushed to the spot and saw some Pakistani smugglers throwing packets towards the Indian side. (Photo: Representational Image)
Amritsar: Over 20 kg heroin with a street value of around Rs 100 crore, which was smuggled in by Pakistani nationals, was today seized by BSF along the Indo-Pak border here.
The smugglers hurled packets of the drug across the border fence into Indian territory and were challenged by BSF troops deployed in the area. The smugglers opened fire at the BSF team, which retaliated. However the smugglers managed to escape.
BSF DIG R S Kataria said that incident took place around 3:30 am when a BSF night patrol party noticed suspicious movement near a Border Outpost along the Indo-Pak border.
The BSF personnel immediately rushed to the spot and saw some Pakistani smugglers throwing packets towards the Indian side, he said.
The DIG said when a search operation was launched in the morning, 21 heroin packets (of 1 kg each) and one loaded shot gun of Italian make were seized.
New Delhi: Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday targeted Narendra Modi after the Supreme Court verdict on Arunachal Pradesh, saying it explained the meaning of democracy to the Prime Minister.
In a major political victory for the Congress, the top court had restored the ousted Nabam Tuki-led government in the state, bolstering the Gandhi scion to take a dig at Modi.
"Thank you Supreme Court for explaining to the Prime Minister what democracy is," he said in a post on Twitter.
Thank you Supreme Court for explaining to the Prime Minister what democracy is. #ArunachalPradesh Office of RG (@OfficeOfRG) July 13, 2016
In a blow to BJP and the Centre, the apex court ordered quashing of the Governor's decision to advance the Legislative Assembly session by a month in December last year and terming it as "unconstitutional".
Read: SC restores Arunachal Pradesh back to Congress in historic verdict
Uttarakhand Chief Minister Harish Rawat, who had also got relief from the apex court and again taken charge of the state government, lauded the verdict.
"My heartfelt gratitude to the Supreme Court for restoring Cong gov in Arunachal Pradesh. Judiciary has restored faith of people in democracy," Rawat said in a social media post.
Read: SC verdict historic, democracy has been protected: Nabam Tuki
The apex court's verdict paves the way for the dismissed Congress government of Nabam Tuki to return to power and sets aside Governor Jyoti Prasad Rajkhowa's message directing the manner of holding the proceedings of sixth session of the Assembly scheduled from January 14, 2016, to December 16-18, 2015. Tuki welcomed the verdict, saying it is "historic" and has protected democracy.
Mumbai: In a jolt to AIMIM, Maharashtra State Election Commission on Wednesday barred it from contesting local body elections along with 190 smaller outfits for failure to submit Income Tax returns and audited accounts, ahead of a string of civic polls including the Mumbai city corporation.
Known for its controversial stance on a host of issues including the allegations against Islamic preacher Zakir Naik, the SEC's decision came when AIMIM is gearing up to put up a good showing in the Greater Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation polls, due early next year.
The parties which lost their registration also include RPI-Khobragade faction, led by Uttam Khobragade and UP-based Peace Party.
The decision to withdraw registration of 191 outfits was announced by State Election Commissioner J S Saharia. So far, 359 political parties have been registered with the Commission out of which 17 are recognised parties, he said.
Notices were served to 326 parties for failure to submit necessary documents, Saharia said.
Despite sending reminders to them and extending the deadline on request of some of them, they had failed to submit required documents, he said. "If the parties want to contest elections in Maharashtra, they have to register," Saharia said.
For long a Hyderabad-based party, AIMIM expanded its influence to Maharashtra in 2014 Assembly polls by winning two seats, one in Mumbai and another in Aurangabad.
Reacting to the SEC decision, AIMIM MLA Waris Pathan said his party would contest the order. "We received a notice from the SEC four months ago and we had clearly replied to it. Yet, they deregistered us. We will appeal against the decision to the higher authority," Pathan, who represents Byculla Assembly seat in the state Assembly, said.
A press release issued by the party's group leader in Maharashtra Assembly and Aurangabad MLA Imtiaz Jaleel said on receiving the SEC notice a party team from Hyderabad had gone to the Commission office in Mumbai and completed all the formalities as required by it including submission of IT returns.
The moment we get the SEC order we will go in appeal against it, he said.
AIMIM respects the independent nature of the Election Commission and fully honour their decision to bring transparency in the election process. For AIMIM the upcoming local body elections are very crucial and the party will contest with full force, the release said.
Umar Khalid was earlier at centre of controversy as he was one of the organisers of the controversial JNU event against hanging of Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru. (Photo: PTI)
New Delhi: The BJPs youth outfit Bharatiya Janta Yuva Morcha filed a police complaint on Tuesday, demanding arrest of JNU student Umar Kalid for allegedly posting anti-national comments on social media and spewing hatred against Indian armed forces.
Khalid, who is out on bail in the JNU sedition case, kicked off another controversy by describing Burhan Wani as a revolutionary. The complaint was filed by BJYM national media coordinators Shivam Chhabra and Parekhseet Dagar at the office of DCP (South).
Umar Khalid is constantly flooding the social media platforms with anti-national comments, alleged the complainants. He is constantly posting derogatory comments against the Indian government over the shootout of terrorist and Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani, they added.
The BJYM office-bearers also accused the JNU student of trying to incite the feelings of hatred and contempt of the public against the Indian armed forces and indirectly against the Government of India, demanding Khalids arrest under charges of sedition (Section 124 A of IPC).
He should be also charged for promoting enmity between different groups and for acting against maintenance of harmony, they said. The police said it had received the BJYM complaint and was looking into it.
Khalid could not be reached for his comments despite several attempts. He was earlier at centre of controversy as he was one of the organisers of the controversial JNU event against hanging of Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru during which anti-national slogans were allegedly raised. He was later arrested in this connection under charge of sedition.
Meanwhile, several students and social organisations have decided to hold a protest demanding immediate end to violence in Kashmir, at Jantar Mantar on Wednesday.
(This story originally appeared in the Asian Age)
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The ARJ21, China's first commericial regional aircraft, is parked at the Shuangliu International Airport in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, Nov. 29, 2015. [Photo/Xinhua]
The first Chinese-made regional passenger jet, the ARJ21-700, has received 90 new orders at Britain's Farnborough International Airshow, the Commercial Aircraft Corp of China (COMAC) said on Tuesday.
China Aircraft Leasing Ltd has signed to acquire 60 ARJ21 aircraft for around US$2.3 billion. This is the largest order of the aircraft since its commercial operations on June 28. One of the leasing firms investors, Friedmann Pacific Asset, will invest in an Indonesian-based airline and help build up its ARJ21 fleet.
Meanwhile, the Aviation Industry Corp of China Leasing Co, or AVIC Leasing, signed a purchase agreement for 30 ARJ21 aircraft with COMAC at the air show, which ends on Sunday.
The 90-seat regional jet has received around 400 orders.
COMAC is attending the air show for the fourth time to present the development progress of the ARJ21 and the Chinese-made single-aisle C919, the planemaker said yesterday.
New Delhi: BJP MP Subramanian Swamy on Wednesday advised the government to "cautiously assess" a UN tribunal ruling on the row in the South China Sea, saying tomorrow such a tribunal can sit on Jammu and Kashmir.
The ruling against China by a UN Tribunal over South China sea islands must be cautiously assessed. Tomorrow such a Tribunal can sit on J&K. Subramanian Swamy (@Swamy39) July 12, 2016
India is "carefully studying" the verdict by an UN-backed tribunal which today ruled that China has no legal basis to claim "historic rights" to islands in South China Sea, the Ministry of External Affairs had said in a statement.
Muzaffarnagar: Taking strong objection to Gujarat Police's failure to produce Kartik Haldar, alleged henchman of Asaram, in connection with the Akhil Gupta murder case, a local court on Wednesday directed it to do so on August 8.
Chief Judicial Magistrate Garima Choudhry issued the order on the request of local police that it is necessary to interrogate Haldar to proceed in the investigation in the murder of Gupta, a prime witness in a rape case against self-styled godman Asaram.
The court had earlier directed Gujarat Police to produce before it Haldar, who is lodged in Ahmedabad jail after his arrest from Raipur in Chhattisgarh in March.
35-year-old Akhil was shot at by unidentified persons on January 11 last year. Subsequently, he was rushed to a nearby hospital where doctors declared him brought dead. He was a cook and personal aide of Asaram, who has been in jail since August 2013, for allegedly sexually assaulting a 16-year-old schoolgirl.
Chennai: It was a reunion mixed with untold trauma and harassment, they underwent during the two and half year detention in United Arab Emirates.
Of the 23 Indian migrant fishermen detained as eyewitness in connection with the death of an Arab in 2013, 11 fishermen hailing from Kanyakumari returned to Tamil Nadu on Tuesday night. State administrators received the fishermen at Chennai airport here and comforted them.
According to National Domestic Workers Movement state coordinator. S. Valarmathi, all the 23 fishermen belonging to Kanyakumari district in Tamil Nadu went to the coastal waters of UAE (in 2014) for fishing, accompanied by two Arabs. One Arab went missing and all the Tamil fishermen were arrested. Later they were acquitted by the foreign court.
Stating that the fishermen were eyewitness in the case, they were detained with their passports confiscated, work permits cancelled and some of them found it difficult to make ends meets. The state and Centre should now help the fishermen as they are suffering huge debts due to the two-year unjustified detention period, Valarmathi added.
VIJAYAWADA: Barely a week after seers protested against the demolition of temples in Vijayawada, the city witnessed more religious gatherings on Tuesday.
Members of the Muslim community gathered at two separate places in the city, one denouncing the preaching televangelist Zakir Naik and the second in favour of the man who has been in the eye of a storm recently.
While the Muslim religious heads representing various Dargahs and masjid committees from across the state opposed the very essence of Zakir Naiks teachings, his supporters adopted an aggressive form of defence. The Ahle Sunnatul Jamaat Forum, referring to the preaching of various saints right fr-om Hazrat Khwaja Garib Na-waz, said that communal harmony and peaceful coexistence had prevailed in the country for centuries but preachers li-ke Zakir Naik have been directly or indirectly misguiding in-nocent Muslims and pushing them towards extremism.
Hazrat Khwaja Garibh Nawaz showed us how to live in harmony with our countrymen about 800 years ago, but now, Zakir Naik and people like him are advocating the cause of terrorism in the name of religion. He is instigating students and youths against the beliefs and traditions of other religions, said Muhammad Altaf Raza, convener of the ASJF. We will not allow Satan to besmirch Islam, he said, posing a direct question to Zakir Naik: What right does he have to disturb the harmonious environment in the country?
While stating that Islam will neither have Naiks nor Khalnaiks, the ASJF convener observed that Muslims are not hired people here in India. We are born here, and we will be here till our last breath, Moulana Raza said. Another religious leader Mu-fti Moulana Abdul Khadir Razvi said that Indian Muslims are ready for any sacrifice to protect the integrity of the country.
Maulana Gauhar Aalam, Ma-ulana Zakir Hussain, Maulana Intekhab Aalam, Maulana Ashrafi, Maulana Abdul Muqeem and Syed Nazeerudden urged the Union government to initiate an inquiry into the flow of funds to Zakir Naik from across the globe. They also demanded a ban on his preaching through any TV channels.
The Muslim Democratic Front on Tuesday demanded the media to immediately stop what it alleged was a vicious propaganda against Zakir Naik. At a meeting organised by the MDF, the speakers accused some media organisations of projecting Zakir Naik erroneously.
Claiming that Zakir Naiks preaching was being misunderstood and of developing misconceptions, Jamaat-e-Ahle Hadees state president Sayeed Ahmed Madani said that the televangelist spoke about unity in diversity time and again but was still wrongly projected.
Muslim Development Society state president Muneer Ahmed suspected political malintentions behind the issue. MDF convener Mohammed Fatahullah and Jamat-e-Islami-e-Hind advisory board member Mohammed Dawood alleged that some media organizations have been acting against the Constitution. "The Government should respond immediately on the said issues," they demanded.
Welfare party of India state president Shabber Ahmed spoke about "Ghar Wapsi" and recitation of Vande Mataram, saying that no action was taken when some people or organisations tried to force others to follow their ideology. "Is that not against the Constitution?" he asked. Student Islamic Organisation state president Kareemuddeen, MDF co-convener Mohiddeen and Muslim Journalist Forum president Abdul Aleem were present.
New Delhi: Much to the chagrin of the BJP, the Supreme Court on Wednesday restored the Congress government in Arunachal Pradesh and held that all decisions by the Governor that led to its dismissal were violative of the Constitution.
The Congress was elated by the verdict as it paved the way back for its dismissed government under the chief ministership of Nabam Tuki. Congress chief Sonia Gandhi said of the verdict: Those who have trampled upon constitutional propriety and democratic norms have been defeated.
Read: Kalikho Pul new CM in Arunachal Pradesh as Presidents Rule is lifted
The court also held that all steps and decisions taken by the Arunachal Pradesh Legislative Assembly following the Governor's order of December 9, 2015 after Tukis government was dismissed -- were unsustainable.
The BJP, which was supporting the new government from outside, sought to deflect criticism by reiterating that the crisis in Arunachal was created by the Congress internal squabbling.
This is the second major blow for the Centre from the Supreme Court. In May, the apex court had ordered a fresh floor test in the Uttarakhand Assembly that led to the return of the Congress government headed by Harish Rawat.
In December last year, a rebellion in Congress ranks precipitated a political crisis in the state, after 21 of its 47 MLAs -- up in arms against then Chief Minister Nabam Tuki -- joined hands with 11 BJP members and two Independents to 'impeach' then Assembly Speaker Nabam Rebia at a makeshift venue. Rebia had termed the move "illegal and unconstitutional".
The Union Cabinet then recommended President's Rule in February and the President soon gave his assent to the proposal. After a brief period of President's Rule in the state, dissident leader Kalikho Pul was formally sworn-in as the chief minister with the blessings of the BJP.
Todays unanimous judgement by a five-judge bench, headed by Justice J S Khehar, turned back the clock to December 15, 2015 just before the present government was formed and said all decisions taken in an Assembly session thereafter were unsustainable.
Read: SC verdict historic, democracy has been protected: Nabam Tuki
Justice Khehar said the order of Governor Jyoti Prasad Rajkhowa dated December 9, 2015, by which he had brought forward the Legislative Assembly from January 14, 2016, to December 16, 2015, was violative of Article 163 read with Article 174 of the Constitution.
"Secondly, the message of Governor directing the manner of conducting the proceedings of the sixth session of the Legislative Assembly from December 16-18-2015, is violative of Article 163 read with Article 175 of the Constitution and as such is liable to be quashed and the same is quashed," the bench said.
Justices Dipak Misra and Madan B Lokur read a separate and concurrent judgement stating the conduct of the Governor should not only be impartial but should appear to be perceptibly impartial.
Nabam Tuki called the verdict "historic", one that had protected democracy and ensured justice.
Supreme Court re-writes history. Democracy wins with a thumping majority, Modiji's politics of defections & conspiracy fails miserably. 1/2 Randeep S Surjewala (@rssurjewala) July 13, 2016
The Nabam Tuki-led government was dismissed following days of turmoil after 21 of the 47 Congress MLAs rebelled against the chief minister. Arunachal Pradesh was placed under President's Rule on January 26.
Just before the apex court had reserved its verdict on February 20 this year, rebel Congress leader Kalikho Pul was sworn in as Chief Minister of Arunachal Pradesh with the support of 18 dissident Congress MLAs and two independents and 11 BJP MLAs who gave outside support in the 60-member Assembly.
KALABURAGI: The Yadgir police have taken three people, including two officials of food and civil supplies department, in connection with the kidnap of deputy director, Mr Arunkumar Sangavi.
Mr Sangavi, who is also holding charge as additional deputy commissioner of Yadgir, was kidnapped on Monday evening from Surpur town. Sangavi, who had gone to Surpur town to inspect a whole sale unit of the food and civil supplies department, was kidnapped by a gang of four-five masked persons in a car.
The department officials and the family members of Mr Sangavi were worried quite a lot as his mobile was switched off by the gang. He was released late night at Rangam Pet, on the outskirts of the town.
In the wake of his kidnap, food and civil supplies minister U T Khader and principal secretary, Harsha Gupta, rushed to the town on Tuesday and held discussions with deputy commissioner Manoj Jain and superintendent of police, Vinayak Patil. Suspecting the involvement of insiders in the episode, local police have taken godown manager Saibanna and inspector Srinath Chavan besides a car driver into custody.
Mr Khader told the media that superintendent of police, Yadgir, would probe the case. In view of suspicion of involvement of two officials of the department, they have been arrested. If the inquiry proves involvement of some more officials and others in the incident, we will initiate action against them without any consideration, however big they are, he added.
The condition of 22 to 30 victims is said to be bad and doctors are trying hard to revive their vision. (Photo: HU Naqash/ DC)
Srinagar: As allegations of security forces inflicting atrocities on local population come in, Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti has warned against excessive use of force while containing the ongoing turmoil in the Valley.
In a televised message on the eve of Martyrs Day, while urging the people to cooperate with the State government amid the turbulent situation in the Valley, Mehbooba assured that action will be taken against security forces for using 'excessive force'.
The Valley is on the boil since Friday last when Burhan Muzaffar Wani, the 22-year-old new-age poster boy of militancy and a heartthrob of its defiant youth, was killed in a reported encounter in southern Anantnag.
Read: Kashmir continues to bleed: One killed, at least 30 injured during fresh protests
The news was received by people with dismay, and soon the streets were filled with huge crowds of mourners, many among them seething in anger. At places, Intifada - as habitual stone pelting battles between protesting Kashmiri youth and security forces locally are referred to, followed.
Intifada, literally meaning tremor or shuddering, are actually popularised Palestinian campaigns directed at ending the Israeli military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The first lasted from 1987 to 1993 and the second began in 2000.
The security forces responded by using terrible force, which has been admitted even by the Chief Minister, though indirectly. 33 protesters have been killed, all but one in shootings and as many as 1,500+ injured, so far. More than 400 received bullet and pellet wounds above their waist lines which doctors who attended on them said suggests the security forces opened fire only to kill.
Over 150 persons including young boys and girls in the 5-10 age group have suffered eye injuries mainly in pellet gun firings. Ophthalmologists have conducted 97 surgeries for such patients during the past five days at Srinagars government-run Sri Maharaj Hari Singh (SMHS) hospital alone.
Read: Kashmir violence: J&K government seeks services of eye surgeons
A total number of 111 patients with eye injuries were admitted to this hospital since July 9 and 47 of them have been sent home after successful surgeries. However, the condition of 22 to 30 victims is said to be bad and doctors are trying hard to improve their vision. Were doing our best but Im sorry to say that five of them have already lost their vision and there is no chance of any recovery. Regarding the rest, we have not lost hope, said a senior ophthalmologist at the SMHS who wished anonymity.
The police and CRPF authorities have defended their actions against the protesters and violent mobs saying they were only compelled to use force and, in fact, in many cases they exercised restraint in spite of severe provocation and being caught in life-threatening situations.
They said more than 150 security personnel have been injured in mob attacks and stone-pelting incidents, and recall how a police driver Afroz Ahmed was on July 10 pushed in River Jhelum at Sangam outside Srinagar by a mob, resulting into his instant death.
Also, scores of police stations and posts, camps of security forces and other infrastructure has been damaged in incidents of arson and other attacks from irate crowds.
But hundreds of houses, cars and other private property belonging to locals has been damaged. At places, homes were ransacked and inmates thrashed. Even ambulances transporting the injured to hospitals were attacked and tear gas canisters fired into hospital premises including at the SMHS hospital.
A medical facility in remote Lolab area of frontier Kupwara district and a nearby pharmacy were ransacked and their staff roughed up by security forces as they were allegedly angry over those sustaining injuries during protests being treated there.
The extent of anger against the security forces, particularly the J&K police and CRPF is such that there have been attacks on the families of local policemen by enraged mobs. One such attack took place at Chadrigam in Tral area of southern Pulwama on Tuesday when a mob allegedly barged into the house of a police official Muhammad Ashraf and beat up his wife and daughter.
Though Superintendent of Police, Awantipora, Sridhar Patil, tried to play the incident down, saying only the windowpanes of the house were damaged, this is for the first time in Jammu and Kashmirs turbulent history that the families of policemen have come under mob attacks in such fashion. However, the thrashing of the mother-daughter duo evoked condemnation in the Valley and beyond and many people took to social networking sites to voice their disapproval. Mohammed Afaaq Sayeed, a frequent Facebook user wrote on his Wall Atrocious to say the least. This should be condemned by all... Any one condoning this will be blocked by me instantaneously.
Hyderabad: AIMIM president Asaduddin Owaisi on Tuesday said that Pakistan has no right to interfere in the internal affairs of India, it is better for that country to introspect. In a tweet with regard to the violence in Kashmir, Mr Owaisi said that Centre must convene an all-party meeting on Kashmir.
He tweeted: We have to show empathy as 32 people were killed and many injured, to end this cycle of violence. The MP wondered why has the Modi government abandoned process started by Vajpayee government on Kashmir, i.e. development of the state and isolate separatists and security deals of militants.
Misplaced priorities that put theatrics and falsified public participation over and above the ground realities so as to befool bosses in Delhi, Omar charged. (Photo: PTI)
Srinagar: Opposition National Conference leader Omar Abdullah on Wednesday attacked Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti, saying her government had "misplaced" priorities and was "shamelessly" trying to convey message of normalcy in the state hit by violence.
Referring to the 1931 Martyrs Day commemoration function here, Omar wrote on Twitter, "Brazen shamelessness of the @MehboobaMufti #BJPDP Govt, ferrying people in police buses to state function to convey normalcy has returned".
Brazen shamelessness of the @MehboobaMufti #BJPDP Govt, ferrying people in police buses to state function to convey normalcy has returned. Omar Abdullah (@abdullah_omar) July 13, 2016
The former chief minister said more than 30 people have died and all Mehbooba and her party want to do is put up party flags and get police to ferry people to her function. Misplaced priorities that put theatrics and falsified public participation over and above the ground realities so as to befool bosses in Delhi, Omar charged.
More than 30 people have died & all @MehboobaMufti & her party want to do is put up party flags & get police to ferry people to her function Omar Abdullah (@abdullah_omar) July 13, 2016
Misplaced priorities that put theatrics & falsified public participation over & above the ground realities so as to befool bosses in Delhi. Omar Abdullah (@abdullah_omar) July 13, 2016
Misplaced priorities that put theatrics & falsified public participation over & above the ground realities so as to befool bosses in Delhi. Omar Abdullah (@abdullah_omar) July 13, 2016
The NC working president said the government should have rather focused on restoring calm in the Valley. "Shameless" Government should have been focused on restoring calm and on helping our doctors who are struggling to treat 1200+ injured people, he said.
Shameless Govt should have been focused on restoring calm & on helping our doctors who are struggling to treat 1200+ injured people. Omar Abdullah (@abdullah_omar) July 13, 2016
Omar also requested Prime Minister Narendra Modi to send specialist doctors to the Valley for treating the injured.
"Hon (Honourable) @narendramodi ji. After Kerala fire you carried a plane load of burn specialists with you. Please send eye/trauma specialists to Kashmir," he said.
Hon @narendramodi ji. After Kerala fire you carried a plane load of burn specialists with you. Please send eye/trauma specialists to Kashmir Omar Abdullah (@abdullah_omar) July 13, 2016
The NC leader said it was time to reach out to the Valley with a healing touch. The injured include security forces persons and young boys who risk losing their sight forever. This is the time to reach out with a healing touch, he said.
Omar said the fact that the youngsters have been injured in protests against security forces should not stop the government from giving them best treatment.
"Please don't let the fact that these youngsters people have been injured in protests stop us from giving the best care possible. Thank you jenab," he said.
New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi has rejected Smriti Iranis decision to appoint of Dr Sarvendra Vikram Bahadur Singh as the next Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) chief when she was still helming the Human Resource Development (HRD) ministry.
Irani lost her high-profile job as the head of the ministry of the human resources development to the new poster boy of the Narendra Modi Cabinet, Mr Prakash Javadekar.
According to a report in The Indian Express, the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet (ACC) which is led by the Prime Minister, will now decide who to appoint as the CBSE chief and has taken away the responsibility from HRD ministry.
While considering the proposal, the competent authority in the ACC has conveyed that the post be filled under Central Staffing Scheme (CSS) by keeping the recruitment rules in abeyance, said a letter that was sent to HRD Ministry by the the Department of Personnel & Training (DoPT).
The post of the CBSE chairman has been lying vacant since December 2014 and needs to be filled by a candidate who has at least three years of experience in educational administration and has the rank of a Joint Secretary.
Dr Sarvendra Vikram Bahadur Singh was Smriti Iranis top choice for the job and her ministry had conveyed this in a letter to the DoPT on June 15 this year.
Singh is the director of State Council of Educational Research & Training and is in the Uttar Pradesh Education Service.
A fugitive on a list of China's 10 most-wanted telecom and Internet fraud suspects has been seized by police, the Ministry of Public Security said on Tuesday.
Liao Naijian, 33, is accused of conspiring with others to defraud 12.5 million yuan (1.9 million U.S. dollars) from a corporate accountant in Jiangsu province by impersonating the head of the company on an instant messenger app in September 2015.
The following day, Nanjing police, acting on tip-off, froze most of the money and seized two suspects, but Liao had fled.
The ministry published the top 10 wanted list on April 10, offering groups or individuals 50,000 yuan for information leading to the arrest of each suspect. Liao is the seventh suspect caught by police, according to the ministry.
On July 10, police caught Liao in Laibin, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. He is now in custody, pending further investigation.
The NIA is waiting to interrogate Zakir Naik and has gathered a lot of evidence against him, say reports. (Photo: PTI)
Mumbai: The Mumbai Police has denied reports that it refused permission to controversial Islamic preacher Zakir Naik to hold a press conference on Skype at Mumbai hotels.
Zakir Naik's spokesperson has claimed that hotels are cancelling venues for his press conference.
In a fresh statement, Naik's spokesperson said, "It's weird - and unfair - what's going on. Apparently, hotels in Mumbai have been told not to give out venue for Dr Zakir Naik's press conference. At least 4 hotels, after confirming availability, and some even after taking the booking, have cancelled. The latest one is the World Trade Centre, who after taking the booking yesterday, called today to cancel it. We had already sent out media invites with the WTC hall details yesterday."
Read: Owaisi's party supports Zakir Naik, says 'media trial should end'
The presser was scheduled to be held at 11:30 am at the World Trade Centre, Cuffe Parade in Mumbai on July 14, and was to be addressed by other personalities as well. Hotels cancelling the event include Taj Hotel, ITC Grand Central, Saahil hotel, and World Trade Centre.
"A manager of one of these hotels told us in confidentiality that they'd been instructed by Mumbai police not to give out venue for Dr Naik's press conference," said the spokesperson.
The spokesperson raged that it was unfair to cancel a press conference, which was neither a public speech nor a public meeting.
Read: Muslim community divided on Zakir Naik: Telangana minorities commission
Earlier, Zakir Naik had alleged that he was being forced to undergo a media trial. Most of the clips shown on the television of myself are either out of context, half statements or doctored. So are my statements in the print media," he said.
After reports emerged that the Dhaka cafe attackers had been influenced by Zakir Naik, the Maharashtra government and the Centre had constituted probe teams to look into the matter.
Read: Zakir Naik flees to Africa, says 'no govt agency has contacted me'
Nine probe teams drawn from National Intelligence Agency (NIA), the Intelligence Bureau (IB) and other agencies are now investigating the activities of the controversial Islamic preacher.
In this regard, the NIA is likely to contact Naik, who is presently in Medina, Saudi Arabia. According to sources, the NIA, which has reportedly given some message or signal to Naik in this regard, has been waiting for his return, and then it will formally ask him to present his points.
NIA tried to contact him over his cell phone, which was switched off. Following which the agency officials tried to contact his aides.
The agency is trying to get more proof to make a stronger case against Naik, whose confidential meetings with individuals associated with terror organisations and their subsequent joining ISIS are rife.
Read: 'Preachers of hate are threat to society': Modi takes dig at Zakir Naik
Videos of a few close door meetings are also among evidences collected by the agency. The NIA is waiting for a formal request from Dhaka to take action against Naik.
Four teams of NIA officials have examined more than 500 CDs, finding most of the footages highly objectionable and a cause of security hazard and communal tension.
Besides, thousands of his emails were also scanned and many of them were found to be suspicious - mostly relating to funding, donations, sponsors and foreign tours.
The Bangladesh government has also banned Zakir Naik's Peace TV in the country.
The central government should analyse Naik's speeches on a war-footing, and book him according to law, said the minorities commission chief Rasool Khan. (Photo: File)
Hyderabad: The Zakir Naik issue has sparked a debate among Muslims, creating a "vertical division" in the community on whether his preachings are right or wrong, and this "unwarranted" development may lead to law and problems, says Abid Rasool Khan, Chairman of State Minorities Commission, serving Telangana and Andhra Pradesh.
He said the Muslim community today has two views on Naik, with half of them saying his preachings are right and the rest contending he is wrong.
The controversial Islamic preacher, whose speeches allegedly inspired some of the militants involved in the Dhaka carnage, is currently facing multiple probes.
Apart from coming under scanner in India, Bangladesh has also banned the broadcast of Naik's Peace TV, cracking down on the channel and radical sermons by the 'televangelist'.
Read: Mumbai Police deny refusing Zakir Naik permission for press conference
Shiv Sena had also demanded arrest of Naik on his landing in India and dismantling of his TV network. "So, why this debate? Why should the community debate for a single man? It is unwarranted. It would create more rift and sort of legal and law and order problems seen in other countries like Iraq, Iran...everywhere we are seeing because of division in the community. We want to pre-empt this and the responsibility of pre-empting is Government of India's," Khan told PTI in Hyderabad.
The central government, through its agencies, should analyse his speeches on a war-footing, and book him according to law if he has stated anything against national interest or against the law and order or encouraging youth to take up arms against the country or anybody, he said.
"But if he has not stated anything which is against law, then witch-hunting a person is not right. If Zakir Naik is preaching hatred, action should be taken against him. But if he is preaching peace and somebody wants to create hatred then those guys should be booked and not the preacher," he said.
"Now the situation is such that this person is dividing the community, vertically. By this thing, the community itself is getting divided which is very unwanted and it should not have been done. Government should act promptly and analyse the speeches and take action, and if nothing is found, they should say nothing on record (no evidence) so that this issue is closed," he further said.
Khan noted that religious leaders, whether Hindu, Muslim or Christian, interpret scriptures in their own way and they have followers which include a few "black sheep".
"Something (interpretation) may be within the parameter and something may be slightly away. So, if Zakir Naik is also interpreting the religion in a way which is detrimental to the religious aspects, Islamic scholars should also take cognisance and explain to him and have a debate on what way he is doing wrong," he said.
"Number of people have number of followers. Zakir Naik has followers who do wrong, RSS has followers who do wrong. Bajrang Dal has followers who do wrong," he said.
He alleged that there are cases where RSS and Bajrang Dal-aligned people and some elements in Christian community were involved in different crimes.
"So, that does not mean the whole institution is bad. We have to remove the black sheep and set right the organisations," Khan added.
New Delhi: In an expected move, Union minister for minority affairs Najma Heptullah, who has crossed the upper age limit of 75 years set up by the government, on Tuesday resigned from the post, a week after Prime Minister Narendra Modis council of ministers witnessed a major reshuffle and expansion.
Minister of state for heavy industries G.M. Siddeshwara, 64, also resigned. Minister of state for minority affairs Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi has been promoted and given independent charge of the ministry.
Mr Siddeshwara was succeeded by Babul Supriyo, who was relieved of the charge of MoS in the ministry of urban development and housing and urban poverty alleviation. President Pranab Mukherjee accepted the resignations of Ms Heptullah and Mr Siddeshwara.
Sources said Ms Heptullah was out of country and could not submit her resignation on July 5, when the PM expanded his Cabinet, though she had decided to do so. Mr Siddeshwara, a Lok Sabha MP from Karnataka, had sought more time to submit his resignation as it was his birthday on July 5.
Ahead of last weeks Cabinet reshuffle, speculation was rife that Ms Heptullah, who turned 76 this year, could be asked to quit. Mr Modi, it was learnt, had set an age bar of 75 years for ministers, apparently the reason why many BJP veterans, including L.K. Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi, were kept out of the council of ministers. Both the BJP veterans are members of the partys margdarshak mandal.
Ms Heptullah said she was extremely thankful to the PM for giving her the opportunity and honour to be in his Cabinet. She said she had resigned due to personal reasons and would always be available for any responsibility given to her.
Another Cabinet minister who turned 75 this month is Kalraj Mishra, a prominent Brahmin face of the BJP in Uttar Pradesh, where crucial Assembly elections are lined up early next year. Mr Mishra holds the portfolio of micro, small and medium enterprises.
Mumbai: Mumbai police will submit its report on controversial Islamic preacher Dr Zakir Naik to the state government before the commencement of the monsoon session of Maharashtra Legislature next week, a top Home Department official today said.
"Contrary to media reports, Zakir Naik has not been given any clean chit by the Mumbai police. All angles are being probed and a report will be submitted to the government before the Monsoon session of the state Legislature (commencing on July 18)," a senior government official said, requesting anonymity.
Read: Mumbai police deny refusing Zakir Naik permission for press conference
Naik, who is now abroad, will be interacting with media via Skype tomorrow, for which arrangements had been made in a small hall in South Mumbai, with the organisers alleging that hotels in the city had been instructed not to provide space for the media briefing under instruction from police, said a statement, which they retracted later.
Read: Owaisi's party supports Zakir Naik, says 'media trial should end'
Facing heat over allegation of inspiring some of the Dhaka attackers through his speeches and under scanner of the state and the central agencies, Naik is expected to clarify his position during the media interaction.
An aide of Naik said in a statement initially that "It's weird and unfair-what's going on. Apparently, hotels in Mumbai have been told not to give out venue for Dr Zakir Naik's press conference. At least 4 hotels, after confirming availability, and some even after taking the booking, have cancelled... We had already sent out media invites (with the details of that venue) yesterday."
Read: Muslim community divided on Zakir Naik: Telangana minorities commission
He claimed in a statement that a manager of one of the private hotels told the organisers in confidentiality that they had been instructed by police not to give out venue for Naik's press conference. He later retracted that statement.
"I am being told that we are not sure under whose instructions the hotels are denying venue for Dr Naik's press conference. But at least four hotels have denied venue in the last 1.5 days," he said in another statement issued later.
Read: Zakir Naik flees to Africa, says 'no govt agency has contacted me'
Srinagar: Hardline Hurriyat Conference chairman Syed Ali Shah Geelani was on Wednesday detained by police after he tried to defy restrictions and march to Martyrs graveyard in downtown area of the city.
Geelani, who was under house arrest, was detained by the police on the airport road outside his residence in uptown Hyderpora after he defied restrictions and tried to take out a march towards the Martyrs graveyard to commemorate the 85th anniversary of those who laid down their lives fighting the Aristocratic rule in the state in 1931.
Geelani was detained by the police outside his residence as he tried to defy restrictions, a police official said. He said some other leaders of the Hurriyat were also detained by the police.
Bengaluru: Smartcards are coming for BMTC commuters. The transport corporation, which is in talks with Axis Bank to issue such multipurpose cards, is planning to launch it in September.
We are planning to put up counters at all 66 bus stations to issue the smartcards, which can be read by the Electronic Ticketing Machines with the conductors. Commuters can avoid the hassle of buying tickets or passes everyday and can get the card swiped for the exact fare and not worry about change. As it works as a debit card, the commuters can also use it for shopping or eating out, said Ms Shyamala S. Maddodi, Public Relations Officer, BMTC.
Commuters can top up the card with cash, debit or credit cards. Recharge points will be available at BMTC car issuing centres, ATMs, web, conductors on buses or Axis Bank Merchant terminals.
These smart cards are the next step towards building BMTCs latest Intelligent Transport System (ITS).The ITS also includes Passenger Information System display boards that have been installed in major bus stations, displaying the arrival and departure time of the buses. Though expected to be completed by June, some of them are still not functioning in around 4 platforms at Kempegowda Bus Station.
We are facing internet connectivity problems with the control centre. It will take until next week for these display boards to be fixed, said Nagendra, Chief Assistant Manager.
In order to improve metro connectivity, the BMTC is also adding more feeder buses to 3 new routes, going through both the purple and green line. There will be six buses to ferry people from Tambuchetti Palya to Dommalur TTMC, passing through Baiyappanhalli Metro Station. There will be 4 buses, from K.R.Puram Railway Station to S.V road metro Station. Both these routes will see buses every 20 minutes. There will be one bus that will begin and end at Mantri Mall Metro station, once every 35 minutes.
Mumbai: In a jolt to the AIMIM, Maharashtra State Election Commission on Wedneday barred it from contesting local body elections along with 190 smaller outfits for failure to submit Income Tax returns and audited accounts, ahead of a string of civic polls including the Mumbai city corporation.
The State Election Commissions decision came when the AIMIM is gearing up to put up a good showing in the Greater Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation polls, due early next year. Reacting to the SEC decision, AIMIM MLA Waris Pathan said his party would contest the order.
AIMIM had expanded Maharashtra influence
The parties which lost their registration also include RPI-Khobragade faction, led by Uttam Khobragade and UP-based Peace Party.
The decision to withdraw registration of 191 outfits was announced by State Election Commissioner J.S. Saharia.
So far, 359 political parties have been registered with the Commission out of which 17 are recognised parties, he said. Notices were served to 326 parties for failure to submit necessary documents, Saharia said. Despite sending reminders to them and extending the deadline on request of some of them, they had failed to submit required documents, he said. For long a Hyderabad-based party, AIMIM expanded its influence to Maharashtra in 2014 Assembly polls by winning two seats, one in Mumbai and another in Aurangabad.
AIMIM MLA Waris Pathan said, We received a notice from the SEC four months ago and we had clearly replied to it. Yet, they deregistered us. We will appeal against the decision to the higher authority.
TS staff strongly opposed allotment of 84 AP native staff to TS and demanded they should be re-allotted to Telangana.
Hyderabad: Bifurcation of employees between TS and AP led to a furore in the Secretariat again on Wednesday. The Kamalnathan committee had to call off its meeting here abruptly after TS staff opposed allocation of AP-native staff to TS and raised slogans against the panel.
AP employees countered with slogans of their own, leading to tension in the premises. The committee had met to take up bifurcation of staff in medical and public health departments besides division of section and assistant section officers in the Secretariat. TS staff strongly opposed allotment of 84 AP native staff to TS and demanded they should be re-allotted to Telangana.
They pointed out that though about 35 AP-native staff gave the option to work for AP, they were allotted to TS on the ground that there were vacancies in TS. With situation turning volatile, the committee called off meeting abruptly.
Hyderabad: BJP national president Amit Shahs Mission-2019 power tips to TS BJP will be set in motion from September 17, when the party will celebrate Hyderabad Liberation Day.
The TS BJP has also decided to launch a signature campaign from Thursday against MIM president Asaduddin Owaisis decision to provide legal aid to the youths arrested by the NIA on charges of sympathising with the dreaded terror group ISIS.
In an informal chat there, TS BJP president K. Laxman said that the party, which has set the target of winning the 2019 elections in TS, will begin the mission with its Hyderabad Liberation Day celebrations.
The party appointed senior leader Indrasena Reddy to oversee the arrangements for the celebrations 20 days in advance. Amit Shah will grace the Hyderabad Liberation Day celebrations in Hyderabad on September 17 while Prime Minister Narendra Modi will visit the state in October, he said.
Explaining the steps the party would take in the state with an eye on the 2019 elections, Dr Laxman accused the TRS government of implementing the MIMs agenda.
Its wrong on the part of Owaisi to support terrorists and promise them legal aid. We will launch a signature campaign against him from tomorrow, he said.
Dr Laxman said that mass defections have brought disrepute to TS and there was an urgent need to amend the law to ensure defectors are immediately disqualified.
Congress has failed and the TD is considerably weakened. BJP has a bright future in the state and people have accepted Modis programmes and policies, he claimed. Dr Laxman also indicated strengthening of party from grassroots level and conduct of organisations elections in all districts to take forward the partys Mission-2019.
We will have booth committee meetings soon and come out with a roadmap to 2019, he said. Earlier, BJP general secretary P. Muralidhar had made it clear that the party, an ally of the TD, will go it alone in 2019 elections.
Officials are exploring options like allotting alternative land to property owners on the city outskirts. (Representational image)
Hyderabad: Major road infrastructure projects, including flyovers and road widening cleared by the Centre are still to take off as the TS government is unable to pay the high prices to acquire land at places like Uppal, Amberpet and LB Nagar.
For example, for the Rs 1,400 crore-worth first phase of the Strategic Road Development Programme, the land acquisition cost was pegged at Rs 3,500 crore. At Jubilee Hills check post alone, the government needs to pay nearly Rs 1,500 crore as compensation to acquire private properties.
With land compensation amounts surpassing project costs by almost two-to-three times, all infra projects have come to a grinding halt. Officials are exploring options like allotting alternative land to property owners on the city outskirts.
Owners are opposed on the ground that the land prices on the outskirts are no match for Jubilee Hills, where a square yard of land costs over Rs 1 lakh.
Hyderabad: The outcome of the survey reportedly ordered by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the performance of Chief Ministers in the country has created a political buzz in the two Telugu-speaking states.
While Telangana state Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao has apparently been ranked first in the country, Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu was ranked 13th.
While AP government sources claimed that Mr Naidu was ranked fifth and not 13th, sources from the TS said that the fifth position had gone to Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal. They said that MP CM Shivraj Chauhan was ranked second, Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Raman Singh third and Gujarat Chief Minister Anandiben fifth. The Prime Minister had ordered the survey by the IB and some private agencies.
Schemes help K Chandrasekhar Rao top
The PM had ordered the survey to gauge the performance of various states and CMs in implementing development programmes. The survey was taken up in all states and Union Territories between April and June this year and the report was submitted to the Prime Minister recently.
The report assumes significance in the backdrop of the PM convening an Inter-State Council meeting in New Delhi on July 16, which is being held after a gap of 10 years. Sources said Modi is expected to make a reference to the survey report in the meeting.
TS sources said the novel schemes being implemented by Mr Rao such as Mission Bhagiratha, Mission Kakatiya and Haritha Haram etc., ensured that he was ranked the No. 1 CM in the country.
They said that the PM and several Union ministers have on several occasions showered praises on Mission Bhagiratha, aimed to supply tap water to every household in TS by laying 1.25 lakh km pipelines by 2018 the largest in the country by spending over Rs 40,000 crore, Mission Kakatiya, aimed to restore 45,000-odd lakes by spending Rs 25,000 crore in five years, and plantation of 230 crore saplings to increase green cover in TS from 27 per cent to 33 per cent in five years, and have asked other states to emulate them.
These three schemes of the TS government, the first of their kinds in the country, stood out among all other schemes being implemented in the rest of the country and helped Mr Rao attain first rank among all CMs, the sources said.
Hyderabad: The tall claims of no power cuts is old story. Large number of localities face power shutdowns in the city. The power utilities call centre 1912 are getting 6,000 complaints about supply breaks.
While there are instructions that power shutdowns for repairs should be taken up only during non-peak hours between 9 am and 5 pm with a gap of one or two hours, complaints of power tripping between 6 pm and 10 pm are being lodged from almost all parts of the city.
Residents said they were getting standard replies from officials that repairs and maintenance works were being taken up. Consumers insist that the government should ensure that there are no power interruptions especially during peak hours. If they are necessary, they should be kept to the minimum.
Infographic
While the TRS ministers claim 24x7 power supply is being given to the city, the situation faced by consumers is entirely different and many a times unbearable. Power supply has been tripping frequently for the last two months. If it was tree branches falling on the power lines and poles getting damaged due to heavy winds a few months ago, now the officials are saying that repairs and maintenance works are being taken up. Is there no relief to the citizens from these unscheduled power shut downs, asked Ch Venkat Narayana Reddy, administrator in a private school and resident of Jubilee Hills.
What is more annoying to the consumers is the shutdowns during peak hours. Children come back from school at about 5 pm. Power supply is going off around 4 pm and is being restored by about 8 pm. This has been happening thrice a week in our colony for the past month. Study hours at home are lost, said Ms Tejasvini Rao, a home-maker and resident of Tata Chary Colony in Shyamlal Buildings.
Officials said they were geared up to meet even 10,000 MW peak demand as power purchases have been made that was after anticipating demand. There is no shortage of power. People should understand that we have to undertake some improvement works also that are taken up as needed like replacement of old wires and poles with new ones, in addition to attending to local problems like tripping of feeders, said an official from TS Southern Discom.
Hyderabad: The Supreme Court on Wednesday asked the state governments of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana state to take immediate steps to relieve the teachers working on deputation as personal secretaries and private assistants to ministers, MPs and MLAs and post them to the schools concerned.
The bench made it clear that providing basic amenities in schools and implementation of the Right to Education Act was the responsibility of the state governments.
A two-member bench comprising Justices Deepak Mishra and Nagappan was dealing with petitions seeking to direct the AP and TS governments to take steps for filling up teachers vacancies in government schools and also provide basic amenities in schools.
State wants 4 months to hire teachers
The Supreme Court on Wednesday asked the state governments of AP and Telangana state to take steps to relieve the teachers working on deputation in peshis and post them to the schools concerned.
Mr Ashok Gupta, amicus curiae in the case, while submitting a report with regard to facilities in government schools, stated that during their visit to the schools it had came to their notice that a number of government teachers were working as PS and PAs to ministers, MPs and MLAs in both states. It was also noticed that parents of students in rural areas had shown interest in English education.
The Federation of Parents informed the court that more than 90 per cent of supervisory cadre posts were vacant in the education department of TS.
Counsel appearing for TS urged the court to grant four months to fill teachers vacancies in government schools.
The bench asked counsels appearing for both the states to file affidavits through their respective Chief Secretaries in four weeks explaining the vacancy position and also steps being taken to fill up the vacancies and also for providing basic amenities in schools.
New Delhi: As part of Operation Sankat Mochan, India will send two Indian Air Force (IAF) C-17 globemaster military transport aircraft to war-torn South Sudans capital city Juba on Thursday to evacuate hundreds of Indians stranded there.
The exercise will be led by Minister of State for External Affairs Gen. (retd.) V.K. Singh who had earlier personally monitored the rescue operations and evacuation of thousands of Indians and foreign nationals by India from Yemen in West Asia.
The former Army chief had camped in nearby Djibouti in Africa last year to lead the Indian Governments efforts in carrying out the Yemen evacuations and had earned enormous praise for the successful evacuations.
We are launching Operation Sankat Mochan to evacuate Indian nationals from South Sudan. My colleague @Gen_VKSingh is leading this operation. He will be accompanied by (the MEAs) Secretary (Economic Relations) Amar Sinha, Joint Secretary Satbir Singh and Director Anjani Kumar. Our Ambassador in South Sudan Srikumar Menon and his team is organising this operation on the ground. Thanks to my colleague (Defence Minister) Manohar Parrikar and my best wishes to the brave Indian Air Force who are carrying out Operation Sankat Mochan, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj tweeted.
The General takes charge again! 2 C-17s proceeding to Juba tomorrow with @Gen_VKSingh leading evacuation from South Sudan, MEA Spokesperson Vikas Swarup tweeted.
The relief flight is expected to reach Juba on Thursday morning, an official advisory said, adding only Indian nationals with valid Indian travel document will be allowed boarding with maximum five kg cabin baggage and no check-in baggage.
India has been closely monitoring developments in South Sudan, which is witnessing heavy fighting between former rebels and government soldiers in several parts of the city.
Hyderabad: In a big setback to land acquisition in the CMs adopted village Erravalli, farmers passed a resolution against parting with their land for Mallannasagar.
Though some elders had agreed to hand over the land, they beat a hasty retreat as their spouses and other family members opposed them. It is learnt that they had been cajoled by irrigation minister T. Harish Rao and TRS leaders to hand over the land.
In tune with the mood of the villagers, the gram panchayat headed by sarpanch Narasimha Reddy passed a resolution stating the villagers were opposed to land acquisition.
After passing the resolution, the 200-odd villagers left for Sangareddy to meet Medak district collector Ronald Ross, but police blocked them midway.
The farmers undertook a padayatra for some distance and later got back their vehicles, met the collector and submitted the resolution of the gram panchayat. The villagers said they and their families were dependant on the land for their livelihood and would not part with it.
Another batch of about 700 farmers from Toguta mandal also marched to Sangareddy on Wednes-day and submitted a similar memorandum to the collector opposing land acquisition for the Mallannasagar project, officials said.
New Delhi: In a major political setback to the BJP and the Centre, the Supreme Court on Wednesday said the clock should be turned back and ordered the Congress government of Nabam Tuki in Arunachal Pradesh restored by quashing all decisions of the governor that had precipitated its fall in January, holding them violative of the Constitution.
PM Narendra Modi deliberated the order and its implications with senior ministers and explored the way forward, including a review petition to be filed, possibly by Kalikho Pul who has been unseated by the apex courts order.
Home minister Rajnath Singh, finance minister Arun Jaitley, law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, attorney general Mukul Rohatgi and top government officials also met at the home ministry and examined the apex court ruling and its implications, official sources said. While social media was abuzz with the Opposition tearing into the BJP and the Centre over the Supreme Court verdict, the BJP found the order strange.
Congress to pin down Centre in Parliament
After Uttarakhand, the top courts order came as another shot in the arm for the Congress. In May this year, the BJP was left red-faced in Uttarakhand where the judiciary restored the dismissed Congress state government. Uttarakhand Chief Minister Harish Rawat eventually won the floor test.
The judgement of the five-judge Constitution Bench set aside, among other things, governor Jyoti Prasad Rajkhowas message directing the advancing of the session and the manner of holding the proceedings of the sixth session of the Assembly from December 16-18, 2015 to January 14, 2016.
With the apex courts order being delivered before the start of the Monsoon Session, Parliament is set to see a more combative Congress try to pin down the Centre on the issue. The Congress had already indicated that it would target the government in both Houses of Parliament for the murder of democracy.
The order might have delivered a blow to the BJPs attempts to achieve a Congress-mukt Bharat (Congress-free Bharat), but party insiders say they were hopeful as far as Meghalaya was concerned. In Meghalaya, dissident activity against Congress Chief Minister Mukul Sharma has been gathering momentum. In Nagaland, Congress MLAs are switching over to the BJP and infighting is brewing in the Congress state unit in Manipur.
In Tripura Congress Leader of the Opposition Sudip Roy Burman has switched over to the Trinamul. The Congress might have won a battle, but we are preparing for a war, a senior BJP functionary said.
Critical of the top judgement, BJP national secretary Shrikant Sharma said, Its a strange order and that is why it is being studied. The person who has the majority, who is running the government at present, is being asked to be in the Opposition.
Hyderabad: The infighting between senior party leaders in Telangana state has not gone down well with TD national general secretary Nara Lokesh, who asked these leaders to mend their ways.
Mr Lokesh is reported to have expressed his displeasure at the bickering, particularly about the silent war between the partys top two leaders in TS L. Ramana and A. Revanth Reddy.
Mr Lokesh convened a meeting of party leaders at the NTR Trust Bhavan recently and expressed his anger over the lack of coordination between the top TD leaders in the state.
The leaders were told to sort out the differences immediately as the party cannot afford such lapses when the ruling TRS is trying to decimate it. Our leaders were told to cast aside their egos and work in unison to strengthen the party by exposing the failures of the TRS government, a source told DC.
The issue was brought to Mr Lokeshs notice by some party leaders who said even the cadre was at the crossroads due to the ongoing feud.
While both Mr Ramana and Mr Revanth Reddy denied any such differences, other TD leaders told Mr Lokesh that they were organising meetings and party programmes on their own without coordinating with each other.
Thiruvananthapuram: CPM has clarified that the party was for entry of women belonging to all age groups in Sabarimala temple. CPM state secretary Kodiyeri Balakrishnan told mediapersons here that the LDF government would file a fresh affidavit in connection with the issue in the Supreme Court where the case pertaining to entry of women in Sabarimala is pending. He said the CPM was for entry of women not only in Sabarimala but also in all temples.
The CPM state secretarys statement comes close on the heels of LDF Government adopting previous Chandy government's stand justifying the restriction on the entry of women between the age of 10 and 50. On Monday the senior counsel appearing for Kerala had submitted before the apex court that as of now there was no change in the stand. However, he added that the matter would be argued legally suggesting that it would convey its stand on the issue later.
In 2007, the then LDF government led by V S Achuthanandan had taken a position that it was unfair to keep the temple out of bounds for women of a particular age category. Devaswom Minister Kadakampally Surendran had hinted at government initiating discussions with all stake holders to seek their opinion on allowing entry of women.
We are not going to impose our decision but to evolve a consensus. The discussions will revolve around the reasons for preventing the entry of women at a time when they are attaining laudable achievements in all spheres of society, the minister had pointed.
The college authorities claimed that there was not enough room in the campus to accommodate all the students. (Photo: ANI Twitter)
Dhanbad: In what may come as an embarrassment for Jharkhand Chief Minister Raghubar Das, who recently fired a salvo at the neighbouring state of Bihar over the exam scam, an unflattering picture has come to the fore where students of the RS More College in Dhanbad can be seen cheating during their Class 11 exams.
Over 100 students were seen sitting close to each other and writing the examination paper on July 9, using unfair means in the college campus.
"There is no space in the college, that's why we are sitting outside. All the seats have been occupied," said one of the examinees.
#WATCH: Students appearing for class 11th examination in Dumka's (Jharkhand) RS Mor College, seen sitting in groupshttps://t.co/rVwVaP7PjB ANI (@ANI_news) July 13, 2016
The college authorities claimed that there were not enough room in the campus to accommodate all the students.
"I cannot see anyone cheating. The students are honestly giving their examination. The capacity of the college is not much. Two students should sit on one bench, but as of now four to five students have to adjust on one bench. It is a congested place," said Manoranjan Gupta, the college professor.
The students were seen with bags and mobile phones during the examination.
Talking about the Bihar School Education Board (BSEB) scam, Das had earlier said that students of the neighbouring state could save their career and credibility by studying in 'education hub' Jharkhand.
BSEB chief Lalkeshwar Singh and his wife were arrested in connection with Bihar merit scam, along with several others.
The matter came to light after the results of Class 12 board examination were declared and television footage showed that toppers were clueless about the subjects in which they scored well.
Ruby Rai, who topped the Arts section, said political science was about the art of cooking, while Science topper Saurabh Kumar could not answer the relation between water and H2O. Rai was later arrested, along with three other toppers, after failing a re-test.
Guwahati/New Delhi: Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Kalikho Pul on Wednesday said that there was no threat to his government as the required numbers are with him and it will be decided on the floor of the Assembly.
In a landmark verdict, the Supreme Court ordered restoration of the Congress government in Arunachal Pradesh by quashing all decisions of the Governor that had precipitated its fall in January, holding them "violative" of the Constitution.
Reacting to the verdict ordering restoration of the previous Nabam Tuki-led Congress government, Pul, who had led the Congress rebels then, said, "(Our) government will remain.
"That will be decided on the floor of the Assembly. Government runs only with the numbers. There is no threat to our government," he told reporters here.
Read: SC restores Arunachal Pradesh back to Congress in historic verdict
Simultaneously, the Centre said it will do a "structured examination" of the Supreme Court order and its implications before making a detailed response.
However, Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad put a poser over developments in the state after December 15, including the withdrawal of the President's Rule and Kalikho Pul proving his majority subsequently in the Assembly following the "legislative procedures" and forming the government.
The judgement is seen as a major setback to the central government and the BJP, which is extending outside support to the Pul government.
Read: Arunachal verdict: Rahul thanks SC for 'explaining democracy' to Modi
"We are yet to get the order. We will study it in detail... And then make structured response. We will do a structured examination of the order. It requires detailed consideration," Prasad told reporters at the Cabinet briefing.
"We will carefully study the judgement and its implications," he said.
Attacking Congress over its criticism of the Centre in the light of the court's order, Prasad said he feels like laughing to hear sermons on democracy from it.
Meanwhile, hailing the verdict as "historic", the Congress demanded immediate sacking of Governor Jyoti Prasad Rajkhowa and apology from all those involved in the decision.
Read: Arunachal Pradesh crisis was outcome of Congress' internal feud, says BJP
Congress also demanded a probe into a tape-recorded conversation of some BJP leaders and a businessman, handed over as proof to the court, for toppling the Arunachal Government with the same "alacrity" as one initiated against Harish Rawat in Uttarakhand.
"We want the Governor to submit his resignation immediately and if he does not do so, we will ask for him to be dismissed both outside and inside Parliament," senior Congress leader Kapil Sibal said.
"I have heard that Rajkhowa is on leave, he should go on long leave," he further said.
Read: SC verdict historic, democracy has been protected: Nabam Tuki
Sibal also demanded an apology from Union Ministers who were involved in the decision of imposition of President's Rule in the state. "I also demand an apology from Central government ministers who were part of the conspiracy to topple the government," he said.
He said, "This particular decision of the Supreme Court is historic in every sense of the word, because never before in the history of this country has the Supreme Court restored the status quo ante, having stuck down actions of Constitutional authorities by using unconstitutional means to bring down governments.
Saluting the Supreme Court verdict, Sibal said, "I believe that their attempt at a 'Congress-Mukt Bharat' has not succeeded, will not succeed because there is somebody out there who is looking after the values of the Constitution to save democracy, to protect it and we salute that authority which is the Supreme Court of India."
"I salute the Supreme Court for having upheld constitutional values on the basis of which only democracy can survive," he said.
Sibal also said this is a message to this Government and also to Governors holding constitutional positions not to use the constitution "for the benefit of the party ruling in India. The BJP and if unfortunately the Governors start doing this, then it is a real threat to democracy".
Guo Weimin:
Ladies, gentlemen and friends from the media: Good morning! Welcome to today's press conference.
On July 12, the arbitral tribunal announced its ruling on the South China Sea arbitration established at the unilateral request of the Philippines. Chinese leaders have said China will not accept any proposition or action based on the decision. The Chinese government published a statement to reaffirm China's territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests in the South China Sea. China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs released a statement on the ruling, solemnly declaring that the award is null and void and has no binding force, and that China neither accepts nor recognizes it. Chinese government's stance has won wide support both from home and abroad.
Today, the State Council Information Office (SCIO) published a white paper titled "China Adheres to the Position of Settling through Negotiation the Relevant Disputes between China and the Philippines in the South China Sea," which thoroughly elaborates Chinese government's stance and policy on the South China Sea dispute. Here, we have invited Mr. Liu Zhenmin, vice foreign minister, to elaborate on the white paper and answer your questions.
First of all, please allow me to give you a brief introduction about the white paper. The white paper, entitled "China Adheres to the Position of Settling through Negotiation the Relevant Disputes between China and the Philippines in the South China Sea," consists of five parts.
The first part talks about Nanhai Zhudao as China's inherent territory. China's sovereignty over Nanhai Zhudao has been established in the course of history. China has always been resolute in upholding its territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests in the South China Sea. China's sovereignty over Nanhai Zhudao is widely acknowledged in the international community.
The second part is about the origin of the relevant disputes between China and the Philippines in the South China Sea. The Philippines' invasion and illegal occupation caused disputes with China over some islands and reefs of Nansha Qundao. The Philippines' illegal claim has no historical or legal basis. The development of international maritime law gave rise to the disputes between China and the Philippines over maritime delimitation.
The third part covers the consensus reached by China and the Philippines on settling their relevant disputes in the South China Sea. It is the consensus and commitment of China and the Philippines to settle their relevant disputes in the South China Sea through negotiation. It is the consensus of China and the Philippines to properly manage relevant disputes in the South China Sea.
The fourth part talks about the moves taken by the Philippines that complicate the relevant disputes and the Philippines' attempts to entrench its illegal occupation of some islands and reefs of China's Nansha Qundao. The Philippines has increasingly intensified its infringement of China's maritime rights and interests. The Philippines also has territorial pretensions on China's Huangyan Dao. The Philippines' unilateral initiation of arbitration is an act of bad faith.
The fifth part details China's policy on the South China Sea issue, including territorial issues concerning Nansha Qundao, maritime delimitation in the South China Sea, ways and means of dispute settlement, managing differences and engaging in practical maritime cooperation in the South China Sea with regards to freedom and safety of navigation in the South China Sea, and the joint upholding of peace and stability in the South China Sea.
The white paper, consisting of more than 20,000 Chinese characters, has already been published in different languages, including Chinese, English, Russian, French, Germany, Spanish, Japanese, Arabic and Portugal. The Chinese and foreign language versions will be printed by the People's Publishing House and Foreign Languages Press, respectively, and will be on sale in Xinhua Bookstore all over the country.
The Chinese people have lived and engaged in production activities on Nanhai Zhudao and in relevant waters since ancient times. Chinese people have called the South China Sea their "forefather's sea." The South China Sea arbitration is actually a political farce presented as a legal issue. The rulings announced by it are null and void and have no binding force and can't change the reality that the Nanhai Zhudao belong to China nor deny China's territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests in the South China Sea. The farce won't make any wave in Chinese people's "forefather's sea." China holds steadfast determination to safeguard its territorial sovereignty and related rights in the South China Sea.
Now, please welcome Mr. Liu to give us more details.
Liu Zhenmin:
Friends from the press, welcome to today's launch of the white paper. Just now, Mr. Guo Weimin briefed everyone on the general idea of this white paper. Launching this white paper is an important step that the Chinese government is taking in response to the Philippines-led arbitration regarding the South China Sea.
The white paper contains five parts, as Mr. Guo said just now. I'd like to give you a systematic introduction of the five parts along with the content.
1. Nanhai Zhudao are China's Inherent Territory.
Chinese people have been conducting activities in the South China Sea for more than 2,000 years. China is the earliest country to have discovered and named the Nanhai Zhudao (the South China Sea Islands), the earliest to have explored and exploited the South China Sea along with the islands and reefs in it, and the earliest to have continuously, peacefully and effectively exercised sovereignty and jurisdiction over them. China's sovereignty over the Nanhai Zhudao along with its various rights and interests were established by the gradual development of history.
Japan once illegally occupied the Nanhai Zhudao during World War II, but returned the stolen territory to China after the war ended, as per the demands of post-war documents, including the Cairo Declaration and Potsdam Proclamation. Therefore, after World War II, China recovered Taiwan, Penghu, Xisha Qundao (Xisha Islands) and Nansha Qundao (Nansha Islands) among other territories that originally belonged to China. After resuming sovereignty over the Nanhai Zhudao, China marked off the South China Sea on the map with the dotted line and announced it to the world in 1948. Therefore, the dotted line dates from 1948.
After the People's Republic of China was founded in 1949, China took a further step to preserve its sovereignty over the Nanhai Zhudao and its rights in the South China Sea. China's patrols, law enforcement activities, resource explorations and scientific expeditions around the Nanhai Zhudao and their adjacent waters have never been halted. It's common knowledge in the post-WWII international society that the Nanhai Zhudao belong to China, and this knowledge constitutes the postwar territorial arrangements and international order. In the post-WWII era, many countries' encyclopedias, yearbooks and maps all document Nansha Qundao as part of China's territory.
2. The core of the relevant disputes between China and the Philippines lies in the territorial issues caused by the Philippines' invasion and illegal occupation of some islands and reefs of China's Nansha Qundao.
Since the 1970s, the Philippines started invading and illegally occupying some of the islands and reefs of the Nansha Qundao by military means, and hence raised illegal territorial demands. In an attempt to cover the illegal encroachment of a number of islands and reefs of the Nansha Qundao so as to realize its ambition for territorial expansion, the Philippines fabricated a series of excuses.
But from the perspective of history and international law, the Philippines' claims are absolutely invalid; its illegal territorial demands and fabricated excuses cannot change the basic fact that the Nansha Qundao is part of China's territory.
In addition, with the introduction and development of the new international law of the sea, China and the Philippines have disputes over maritime delimitation for certain sea area of the South China Sea. These disputes should be settled through negotiation.
3. The white paper intends to illustrate that China has been making tireless efforts to peacefully solve the China-Philippines disputes in the South China Sea, and that China has reached a series of important multilateral and bilateral agreements with successive Philippine governments before the Benigno S. Aquino III administration that is from the Ferdinand Marcos administration to the Aquino III administration on peacefully solving the disputes in the South China Sea through talks and negotiations, managing and controlling maritime differences, and advancing practical maritime cooperation.
On the bilateral front, the two parties agreed to solve the relevant disputes through negotiations while exercising restraint, and not to take any actions that will lead to the escalation of the situation. The two parties insisted on advancing the practical maritime cooperation and joint exploration, and not to have the relevant disputes affect the healthy development of bilateral ties or the peace and stability of the South China Sea region.
On the regional multilateral front, China signed the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea in 2002; China and the Philippines jointly agreed that the relevant disputes shall be settled through talks and negotiations.
4. In recent years, the Philippines breached the bilateral agreements, and kept taking actions to complicate and escalate the disputes. The Philippines is the instigator of conflict.
The Philippines built military facilities on some islands and reefs it has invaded and illegally occupied in the Nansha Qundao, raised territorial demands for the Huangyan Dao, sent military ships to harass Chinese fishermen and Chinese fishing boats, and conducted unilateral explorations of oil and gas in waters under China's jurisdiction.
The former Philippine government unilaterally initiated the arbitration on the South China Sea. The move breached the China-Philippines bilateral agreement on solving disputes through talks and negotiations, violated the stipulation in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) on the limitation of arbitration procedures, and violated China's rights as a member state to the UNCLOS to choose independently a means to settle disputes.
The Philippines is abusing the UNCLOS procedures for dispute settlement, fabricating facts and telling lies, attempting to take the opportunity to fully deny China's territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests in the South China Sea.
5. China is an important force for maintaining the peace and stability in the South China Sea.
China has been resolute in upholding its territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests in the South China Sea, and at the same time has insisted on settling disputes through talks and negotiations, insisted on controlling disputes through regulations and mechanisms, insisted on achieving win-win results through mutually beneficial cooperation, and is dedicated to making the South China Sea a region of peace, friendship and cooperation.
Finally, I wish to emphasize that the arbitration case was initiated unilaterally by the former government of the Republic of the Philippines. It violated the China-Philippines bilateral agreement, the multilateral consensus among regional countries and international law, so it is doomed to be abandoned.
China has noticed that the current Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte and the new Philippine government have assumed a positive stance regarding the South China Sea arbitration, expressing a willingness to conduct talks and negotiations with China on the South China Sea issue. China welcomes this. China is willing to make joint efforts with the new Philippine government to properly handle the South China Sea issue, and push China-Philippines relations back on track.
China has confidence in the future of China-Philippines relations!
This is all for my introduction. Now I'd like to take your questions.
Guo Weimin:
Thank you, Mr. Liu. Now it's time for questions. May I kindly remind you to inform us of what media outlet you represent before asking your question?
Lucknow: Ruling Samajwadi Party on Wednesday slammed BJP and Congress for their choice of office bearers in Uttar Pradesh, saying inclusion of Muzaffarnagar riot accused Suresh Rana and hate speech accused Imran Masood respectively showed "growing desperation" of these parties ahead of 2017 Assembly polls.
Controversial BJP MLA Rana, who is one of the 15 vice presidents appointed by the party yesterday, was booked under the stringent National Security Act for allegedly inciting a mob during 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots and was sent to jail.
Masood, who had courted controversy in the run up to the 2014 Lok Sabha election after he allegedly made a hate speech against Narendra Modi, has been appointed as senior vice president of Congress. The Saharanpur MLA had said that he "will chop Modi into pieces".
Asked specifically about selection of Rana and Masood, Samajwadi Party spokesman Rajendra Chowdhury said, "It's a conspiracy to vitiate the atmosphere in the state. But people understand the reality and will give a befitting reply.
"It just reflects the growing desperation within BJP and Congress ahead of the crucial Assembly polls in 2017," he said.
"In politics, transparency is needed and office bearers should be of clean image. If political organisations make such a start, what will be their fate?" Chowdhury posed.
Ahead of the UP Assembly polls, BJP yesterday announced a jumbo state executive, which includes 15 vice-presidents, eight general secretaries, one treasurer, one assistant treasurer and 15 secretaries.
Reacting to Raj Babbar's appointment as the new UP Congress chief, BJP had said it has become clear that the party would continue to work as the 'B' team of SP in UP.
Appointment of actor-turned-politician Babbar as UPCC chief and inclusion of Masood as the party vice president in UP shows all is not well in Congress, a senior BJP leader said.
Babbar had contested the 2004 Lok Sabha election from Lucknow on an SP ticket against former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.
Born in Tundla near Agra in UP, Babbar (64) belongs to the Viswabrahmin community which is considered an OBC. He has been elected three times to Lok Sabha and is currently a Rajya Sabha member from Uttarakhand.
Thiruvananthapuram: Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Wednesday made a candid and rare admission in the state assembly, stating that the murder of the activists of the CPM and the BJP in Payyannur on Monday night had political reasons.
A gang of about 10 BJP workers murdered DYFI former village secretary of Payyannur Dhanarajan due to political rivalry, the Chief Minister told the house in reply to the adjournment motion moved by K. Muraleedharan of the Congress. In the violence that followed, some persons killed BJP Payyannur assembly segment committee member Ramachandran. The chief ministers reply gave ample hints that workers of his party were involved in the murder of the BJP activist though he did not name the party.
The chief minister said the police, which has registered cases in both the incidents, has effectively intervened and brought tension under control. The Opposition UDF staged a walkout from the Assembly alleging law and order breakdown after the LDF came to power.
Mr. Vijayan said the mafias that had been flourishing in the state were scared after the LDF government started to initiate stern action. The recent murders in Kannur were revenge killings, he said and added that the police were acting without political considerations. Countering the Oppositions alleations that Kannur was becoming a hotbed of violence, he pointed out that as per last years statistics, the number of murders in Thiruvananthapuram and Palakkad was higher than that in Kannur.
Opposition leader Ramesh Chennithala alleged that the BJP and the CPM were equally responsible for the political killings. CPM leader P. Jayarajan was controlling the police in Kannur. After the LDF came to power, 37 murders had taken place in the state, he said.
BJP MLA O. Rajagopal also walked out of the House alleging that the CPM activists were involved in all the instances of violence and that the police were taking action only in cases where the CPM activists were attacked.
Thiruvananthapuram: Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi is likely to meet the party MPs from Kerala next week to seek their views on strengthening the party. He had held discussions with over 70 leaders from the state last week and there was a demand to oust Mr V.M. Sudheeran as KPCC president.
The state leaders have been awaiting the response of the AICC after their meeting with Mr Gandhi. The follow-up on the reports of the four fact-finding committees on the poll deacle is yet to be discussed in the party. KPCC leaders feel that a new party chief will be nominated only after three to four months.
Once the Parliament session starts next week, Rahul Gandhi will meet the MPs from Kerala and seek their views. Only after the AICC leadership takes a decision on the future course of action would anything happen in the party, said a senior leader.
Both A and I factions feel that Mr Sudheeran had failed in leading the party in the Assembly elections though he had opposed fielding tainted ministers and MLAs in the elections. The senior leaders told Mr Rahul Gandhi that the present leadership must be changed to put up a good show in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. AICC sources told DC that it will be difficult for Mr Sudheeran to continue without the support of the two factions.
Senior Congress leader A. K. Antony is camping in Thiruvananthapuram till Sunday. He had held talks with leaders close to him during his brief visit here.
Guwahati: After a two-month political battle, former finance minister and Congress leader Kalikho Pul was administered the oath of office as chief minister of Arunachal Pradesh on Friday.
Arunachal Pradesh governor J.P. Rajkhowa administered the oath to Mr Pul at Raj Bhavan in Itanagar. He took the oath alone. Legislators of both the Congress and BJP were present at Raj Bhavan during the swearing-in ceremony, which started at about 10 pm.
Also read: Tuki lashes out at RSS, BJP, says Congress govts in North East targeted
The swearing-in took place soon after President Pranab Mukherjee approved the Union Cabinets recommendation for revocation of Presidents Rule in Arunachal Pradesh. The Presidents nod came after the Supreme Court on Friday rejected last-ditch efforts by deposed chief minister Nabam Tuki seeking an interim direction that his party be allowed to prove its majority on the floor of the Arunachal Pradesh Assembly. Earlier, the Union Cabinet had recommended the withdrawal of Presidents Rule in Arunachal Pradesh on Wednesday after Mr Pul, accompanied by 31 MLAs, including 18 Congress rebels, 11 BJP MLAs and two Independents met the Arunachal Pradesh governor and staked claim to form a new government.
Pul, 46, a veteran of five consecutive victories in the Assembly elections since 1995, has been the lone crusader against the alleged rampant corruption of the previous Congress government headed by Nabam Tuki.
Mr Pul, a father of five sons, belongs to a very small community called Kaman Mishmi, which has hardly 2,500 members. An MLA from Hayuliang in Anjaw district in eastern Arunachal that shares a boundary with China, Mr Pul has been a minister for most of the time since he was first elected in 1995.
He began as deputy minister for finance (1995-97), then became minister of state for power (1997-99), MoS for finance (1999-2002), MoS for land management (2002-03), and finally minister for finance (2003-05) before he was made chairman of a high-powered committee and simultaneously adviser to the chief minister for about a year.
In 2006-09, he once again served as minister for finance, then minister for rural works (2009-11), and then health. Between 2011 and 2014, he was also made adviser to the chief minister, then again made a minister in 2014.
In 2015, Mr Pul who was accused to have been conspiring to topple Mr Tuki was not only dropped from the Cabinet but also expelled from the Congress for his alleged anti-party activities in April.
However, Mr Pul went to the court challenging his suspension from the Congress, which was revoked at the direction of the court.
Puls challenge is picking of ministers
The Congress, which had 47 MLAs in the 60-member Assembly, suffered a jolt when 21 of its legislators, led by Mr Kalikho Pul, rebelled.
Sources in Arunachal Pradeshs new ruling alliance of dissident Congress MLAs and the BJP told this newspaper that the newly-sworn-in chief ministers biggest challenge would be to expand his council of ministers.
However, the BJP, the second-largest constituent of the government, has not taken any decision on joining the government led by Mr Pul and has been extending outside support to the government. Sources in the BJP said central party leaders would take a final decision on joining the government.
After the Supreme Court delivered its verdict Wednesday on the SLP involving Nabam Rebia and Bamang Felix vs Deputy Speaker and others, it is clear it was an open and shut case. Many may term this a historic judgment, but to an equal number of political watchers the turn of events was a repeat of the Bihar Assembly case of 2005 when then governor Buta Singh recommended Presidents Rule in May 2005, and almost a year later, in January 2006, the Supreme Court held that the governors recommendation was unconstitutional and it severely criticised
Mr Singhs role and the UPA Cabinets wisdom, but by then Nitish Kumar won a comfortable majority after a snap election in October 2005.
Therefore, one shouldnt buy the argument that the ruling on Wednesday was unprecedented. It is not the first time a governor has been rapped for overstepping the Constitution, nor has the wisdom of the Union Cabinet and the President been questioned for the first time.
It is, however, a historic repeat of Bihar Assembly case that had exposed the farcical delayed justice system of our country which has been the cause of much heartburn. This judgment too has come very late in the day. Much water has surged down the river in the past five months.
Kalikho Pul had 19 Congress legislators then, but today he counts 30 Congress MLAs as his supporters, who had joined the lone regional political party, Peoples Party of Arunachal, besides two Independent MLAs who joined his government. To bolster it, 11 BJP MLAs have extended outside support to his PPA government. All told, the tally of Mr Puls government has gone up to 43 MLAs as of today.
Going by the July 13 ruling, former chief minister Nabam Tuki cant be a happy man. He must be crestfallen to find that justice was not only delayed, but that he was denied the chair since January 26. But one also wonders what took the three learned judges Justices Jagdish Singh Kehar, Dipak Mishra and Madan B. Lokur so long to turn the clock back to the pre-December 15 status; though the bench of three judges had almost hinted at this way back on February 23, 2016.
The constitutional position having being established, it is the political situation that is now precariously perched in Arunachal Pradesh once again, and a diabolical fallout is anticipated in law and order too. The knives have been unsheathed; the social media in the state bordering China is now awash with messages on how turning back of the clock is actually a turning back on the people that saw an abundance of development activities, restoration of law and order during and after Presidents Rule.
Wednesdays order means the effective strength of the Arunachal Pradesh Assembly is restored to 58 MLAs, with Nabam Rebia as Speaker and Nabam Tuki as chief minister once again. Prior to December 15, the BJP had 11 MLAs, two were Independent MLAs and the Congress had 45 MLAs as two Congressmen were unseated in the first week of December.
Logically, from New Delhi to Itanagar, everyone seems to be either wondering or strategising about the next political moves. Every politician worth his/her salt is quiet, except the Tuki camp that has erupted in jubilation, hailing it as a victory of democracy. Every attempt to contact PPA or BJP leaders is met with a measured response, but without much content, as they are all huddled in a serendipitous meeting of the North East Democratic Alliance being held in Guwahati, chaired by BJP president Amit Shah.
The Itanagar Raj Bhavan, meanwhile, has a new occupant in Tathaghata Roy, who is acting governor since July 11 in the absence of J.P. Rajkhowa, said to be on medical leave in South India. Mr Tuki called Mr Rajkhowa an honourable man in the national media on Wednesday, but earlier it was his camp that called the governor an RSS agent and Raj Bhavan a BJP office. By that yardstick, the new incumbent, Mr Roy, is a self-declared RSS man who wears it as a badge of honour.
Notwithstanding the Supreme Courts verdict, the political reading of the changed situation is none too good for Mr Tuki. Even if he returns to the chief ministers chair, he is unlikely to survive beyond the date of a fresh floor test, either of his government or of the Speakers impeachment if it has to be taken up with the clock turned back.
Though the BJP was accused of fishing in troubled waters during last winter, the fact remains that it was the PPA that benefited a lot as a political entity, despite the party not having the requisite wherewithal to withstand the pressure of an old crumbling structure called Congress. Therefore, Mr Puls PPA government is likely to lean heavily on the BJP for advice and support, but the ruling party at the Centre is unlikely to yield much without a hard bargain. The saffron political posturing is no secret as the most popular face of the state BJP, Union minister of state for home Kiren Rijiju, made it quite clear back in February that he did not want to be chief minister, and of late former two-time BJP national general secretary and current state chief Tapir Gao has minced no words in declaring the partys intent to form the next government.
Given such a sequence of events, a majority of people in the state have become extremely cynical about politicians, and many feel that Presidents Rule leads to better governance, as they experienced in the 25-day period between January 26 and February 20 this year.
The landmark verdict by an international tribunal against China in a maritime dispute is a vindication of the truth. By upholding Philippines plea and shaming the giant, the tribunal reminded us that principles ought to govern world politics.
Intimidation of the meek by the mighty are assumed to be routine in global affairs. The advancement of international law, specially as an emancipatory tool giving succour to marginalised underdogs, is a counter to this long-held Darwinian belief that the world is a terribly unequal arena. The UN tribunals award in the South China Sea case is a template for appreciating the profoundly egalitarian aspects of international law. Neutral judges from Ghana, France, Poland, Holland and Germany decided Chinas maximal claim of historic rights to resources in 90 per cent of the South China Sea was illegal.
By declaring Chinas expansionist nine-dash line or cows tongue demarcation zone of maritime territory untenable under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, the tribunal dealt an embarrassing blow to Beijings narrative that its law-abiding nation.
Rejecting Chinas attempts to monopolise the South China Sea and exclude neighbouring states from accessing it, the tribunal challenged the realpolitik logic that legitimises the quest for dominance by militarily superior countries. With a rusty navy the Philippines had already been shooed away from Scarborough Shoal, Mischief Reef, Fiery Cross Reef and other rocky features in the SCS by China.
China nonchalantly dredged artificial islands, militarised them and used these as beachheads to illegally extend its exclusive economic zone in a brazen territorial grab. China has been aggressively establishing one fait accompli after another in the SCS in recent years and forcing nations like the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia and Taiwan to eat humble pie.
Though these nations seek military assistance with the United States, Japan, India, Australia, and are also trying to forge a unified front against Chinese strong-arming through regional bodies like Asean, Beijing has repeatedly come up trumps by dividing them and using a combination of military, economic and diplomatic tactics.
Chinas insistence that the Philippines and others engage in asymmetric one-on-one negotiations, and its arrogant behaviour that demands obeisance to its ever-enlarging sphere of influence in Asia, fly in the face of its self-proclaimed peaceful rise. For almost all its neighbours, Chinas rise, as shown in its SCS encroachment policies, is a threat.
Its amid this air of hopelessness and helplessness that The Hague tribunal stepped in with its accurate findings. By backing those unfortunates who have been thrown to the wolves, this impartial body has won the admiration of global public opinion.
China is technically obligated to abide by the tribunals order as it is a UNCLOS signatory. But China being China, it boycotted tribunal proceedings and denounced it as a farce that was allegedly a conspiracy by Japan and the West.
The Chinese governments retort after the much-awaited tribunal award that it is null and void and has no binding force just shows how much this superpower has brashly transcended international law.
Chinas response is based on an authoritarian mindset that is contemptuous of international institutions, and hell-bent on rewriting the world order to suit Chinese designs. The way it reacted peevishly towards Norway in 2010 after jailed Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo got the Nobel Peace Prize also demonstrated its mentality.
Chinas angry and defiant rejoinders to The Hague tribunal reconfirm it is no angel vis-a-vis the US, that is infamous for mocking the International Court of Justice when it deemed its 1986 invasion of Nicaragua illegal. Beijings propaganda that its a different kind of great power in contrast to the US just wont wash.
If superpowers are devoid of responsibility to the common good, what kind of new world order awaits weak nations?
English philosopher Thomas Hobbes horrifying vision of a world where there is fear and danger of violent death and the prospect of nasty, brutish and short lives appears headed for an extended tenure in the 21st century if China and the US keep bossing over the planet.
Still, thank heavens that there is international law to at least symbolically expose and intangibly defeat these goons. Pushback against the arbitrary and unfair exercise of power can only materialise through moral leadership from the portals of justice.
Moreover, Facebook is developing its own Facebook at Work service.
Facebook has reportedly signed a partnership with Microsofts Office 365, including mail and calendar services.
At the Worldwide Partner Conference held on July 12, 2016, Facebooks CIO Tim Campos confirmed that the social-networking giant is Microsoft Office 365s customer.
Campos told Worldwide Partner Conference attendees that Facebook was assured of Office 365 platform, and found the Office 365s security capabilities appealing for the company.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Facebook is planning to deploy some portion of Microsofts Office 365, a tool to enhance workplace productivity, for its employees.
Facebooks policy is to allow its 13,000 employees to use what makes sense for them on the collaboration-front and support their use of products, Campos told at the conference.
He also confirmed that Facebook will not use Yammer or Skype for its businesses, which compete directly with Facebooks own services.
In addition, Facebook is developing its own Facebook at Work service which employees will use within the companys network system.
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The 22-year-old accused Michael Disporto was charged with first degree murder and sexual assault on a child. (Photo: Facebook)
Manahawkin: A New Jersey man has been arrested for sexually assaulting and murdering his partner's two-year-old daughter, Ariana, police officials have said.
Identified as Michael Disporto, the 22-year-old accused was charged with first degree murder and sexual assault on a child. The toddler's mother, Amber Bobo, 26, has also been taken into custody on the charges of endangering the welfare of a minor. She has been slapped with second degree charge.
The assault on the minor began on the fateful night when she was taken to a park late in the evening by Disparto under the pretext of spending some time with her. He raped Ariana in the park and later returned home.
The following morning, Ariana's mother Amber noticed bruises and marks on her body and was taken to the hospital after several hours of wait.
Despite the child showing warning signs of vomiting and weakness, Amber did not consider it important to take her to a doctor and resorted to ice cubes to heal the bruises as advised by Disparto.
She waited for several hours before taking Ariana to the hospital where the little one succumbed to her injuries.
Amber bobo with her two-year-old daughter who was brutally raped and murdered. (Photo: Facebook)
She was the most beautiful baby you'd ever meet, the Ariana's cousin, Destiny Hughes was quoted as saying.
Speaking on the condition of his grand daughter Ariana, Robert Smith posted a message online.
It read, " My granddaughters little body was damaged and destroyed so badly that in terms of describing the condition of her body is that of a 20 pound baby being struck by a speeding car. This attack being done with hands and feet and then her little lifeless body was left for hours and hours and hours before receiving medical attention. Mike Disporto and Amber Bobo have destroyed so many people with their heartless actions."
The heartfelt message shared by Ariana's grandfather on Facebook. (Photo: Facebook)
Currently, Disparto has been held on USD 1.5 million bail. Authorities said that they are investigating the matter in detail.
Barack Obama hugs Dallas Police Chief David Brown after Brown introduced Obama to speak at an interfaith memorial service for the fallen police officers and members of the Dallas community at the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center in Dallas. (Photo: AP)
Dallas: Im here to insist that we are not as divided as we seem. -- President Obama.
They stood in a line, clasping hands as a choir sang, Democrat and Republican, black and white, politician and cop. Led by President Barack Obama and his predecessor George W Bush, they honoured the five Dallas policemen slain last week and urged Americans to rise above racial divides and reject despair.
The scene unfolded at a memorial service after a week when Americans were jarred by video images of angry crowds protesting police killings of black men in Louisiana and Minnesota and heard the screams of Thursdays sniper attack on police in Dallas by a black former US soldier who had said he wanted to kill white people.
We turn on the TV or surf the internet, and we can watch positions harden and lines drawn and people retreat to their respective corners, the first black US president said. I understand how Americans are feeling. But Dallas, Im here to say we must reject such despair. Im here to insist that we are not as divided as we seem.
In a spontaneous display of unity, Obama and first lady Michelle Obama, former president George W Bush and his wife Laura, Vice-President Joe Biden and his wife Jill, Mayor Mike Rawlings, police Chief David Brown and others on stage joined hands at the end of the service as a choir sang The Battle Hymn of the Republic.
Barack Obama delivers remarks during an interfaith memorial service, honouring five slain police officers. (Photo: AFP)
Obama sought a careful balance, paying tribute to the dead police officers and showing respect for the countrys law enforcement while also acknowledging the concerns of those protesting against police violence.
He noted that the Dallas attack came during a protest against racial discrimination in policing that followed the fatal police shootings of black men in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and outside St Paul, Minnesota. A series of high-profile police killings of black men in the past two years have sparked the most intense debate on race and justice in America in decades.
America, we know that bias remains. We know it, Obama told the crowd of several hundred people, including many uniformed police officers, at the Morton H Meyerson Symphony Center. None of us is entirely innocent. No institution is entirely immune. And this includes our police departments.
Black Lives Matter
Obama alluded to the Black Lives Matter protest movement stirred into action by the long series of police killings, which some have painted as anti-police. He said that even people who dislike the phrase Black Lives Matter should recognize the pain felt by the family of Alton Sterling, the 37-year-old black man shot dead last week in Baton Rouge by police who said he was reaching for a gun.
Obama praised the police in Dallas and around the country.
When anyone, no matter how good their intentions may be, paints all police as biased or bigoted, we undermine those officers we depend on for our safety, Obama said.
And as for those who use rhetoric suggesting harm to police, even if they dont act on it themselves, well they not only make the jobs of police officers even more dangerous, but they do a disservice to the very cause of justice that they claim to promote, Obama added.
Injured Dallas area rapid transit police officer Misty McBride gets a hug as she arrives for interfaith memorial service. (Photo: AP)
Bush also addressed the packed hall, where five chairs were empty of people, holding folded American flags, in memory of the slain officers. Bush also sought to strike a note of unity.
At times it feels like the forces pulling us apart are stronger than the forces binding us together. Argument turns too easily into animosity, Bush said. We do not want the unity of grief nor do we want the unity of fear. We want the unity of hope, affection and high purpose.
The slain officers were Mike Smith, 55; Lorne Ahrens, 48; Michael Krol, 40; Brent Thomson, 43, and Patrick Zamarripa, 32.
The death toll in Dallas was the highest for law enforcement on a single day in the United States since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Nine other officers and two civilians were also wounded.
Outside the hall, Sharice Williams, 41, who drove roughly 155km from Waco, stood in hopes of catching a glimpse of Obama.
My heart is heavy. Im tired of seeing my brothers and sisters killed, but the police dont deserve that, said Williams, who is black. Im praying that Obama being here brings us some kind of peace.
Former first lady Laura Bush, former US president George W Bush, first lady Michelle Obama and US President Barack Obama join in singing the 'Star-Spangled Banner' during the interfaith memorial service, honouring five slain police officers at the Morton H Meyerson Symphony Center in Dallas, Texas, on Tuesday. (Photo: AFP)
Chief Warren Asmus, a 35-year veteran with the Los Angeles county sheriffs department, said he flew in for the memorial.
I was grateful for many of the things President Obama said in there, said Asmus, 57. I need to understand what the black community goes through just as much as they need to understand what the police community goes through.
During his flight to Dallas, Obama placed condolence calls to families of Sterling and of Philando Castile, the 32-year-old man shot dead during a traffic stop outside St Paul.
In Syria, the militants lost ground this year to both Russian and Iranian-backed forces supporting President Bashar al-Assad and to the U.S.-backed Syria Democratic Forces (SDF) alliance. (Representational Image)
Washington: Although Islamic State maintained its stronghold worldwide by launching a series of attacks during the holy month of Ramadan, a report suggested that the terror group is preparing for the fall of its caliphate that it started two years ago.
In the recent public messages delivered by ISIS, the group's leaders have admitted that the terrorist organisation's fortunes have declined and could further witness a drop.
In order to survive, the terror outfit has resorted to various means to collect finances for their activities.
Recently, ISIS tightened grip on its sex slaves while trying to sell them on social media as their new revenue tactic. A girl for sale: "Virgin. Beautiful. 12 years old.... Her price has reached $12,500 and she will be sold soon."
Islamic State group militants took this photo of Yazidi girl Nazdar Murat, as part of a database the militants have put together of Yazidi girls and women they have enslaved and are then sold. (Photo: AP)
As ISIS loses control of one city after another in its self-styled caliphate, it is tightening its grip on its captives, taking the Yazidis deeper into its territory and selling them as chattel on popular encrypted apps such as Telegram and WhatsApp.
Moreoever, Obama administration said that the terror outfit's Twitter traffic has plunged to 45% in the last two years. US officials cite the drop in Twitter traffic as a sign of progress toward eliminating propaganda they blame for inspiring attacks around the world.
Islamic State's diminishing presence across the world got a boost when the terror outfit lost control of the city of Ramadi at the end of last year, another key stronghold for the group which captured large swathes of Iraq in 2014. They also lost an area the size of Ireland - a quarter of its territory - to hostile forces in the last 18 months in Iraq and Syria.
In Syria, the militants lost ground this year to both Russian and Iranian-backed forces supporting President Bashar al-Assad and to the U.S.-backed Syria Democratic Forces (SDF) alliance.
The relationship between China and Mongolia has been through many ups and downs throughout history. They've witnessed wars, border disputes, and invasions, which have soured the ties and created misgivings. However, the end of the Cold War helped the two sides reset relations and carve out a new pattern for cooperation, which is still flourishing.
Premier Li Keqiang's historic official visit to Mongolia this week aims to further promote and strengthen the existing ties. It is the first such trip by a Chinese premier in six years and also the first by any Chinese leader since Mongolia elected its new government and parliament this year.
Li will meet with top Mongolian political leadership, including Prime Minister Jargaltulga Erdenebat and President Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj. The discussion will focus on building deeper economic ties for development of bilateral and regional cooperation.
A number of agreements to promote economic and political ties are expected to be signed during the visit. They include agreements related to energy, trade, infrastructure, investment, agriculture and livestock.
The discussion on the development of infrastructure will be a major highlight of the trip. Leaders from the two countries will discuss a tri-nation economic and communication corridor initiative, which will link China, Mongolia and Russia through high-speed trains and other modes of transport.
The trilateral project is an important part of China's overarching "Belt and Road" initiative, which is a massive project to build closer connections among different countries and continents for win-win cooperation.
The convergence of China's Silk Road Economic Belt and Mongolia's Prairie Road program is a major opportunity for investment and long term economic partnership. Also known as Mongolia's Steppe Road project, it is an ambitious plan to build an approximately 1,000 kilometer highway and a 1,100-km electrified railway to connect China and Russia via Mongolia.
The estimated cost of the Mongolian project is more than 50 billion dollars, and international economic input is needed.
China is a natural economic partner of Mongolia, which needs strong economic support to develop, and the visit by Premier Li could help unleash Mongolia's hidden economic strength.
China is also Mongolia's largest trading partner, as it imports livestock products like beef and mutton and different minerals to support its fast growing economic needs. Mongolia is still undeveloped when compared to its two mighty neighbors, China and Russia, but it can become a main transit country as it sits on an important route that will play a major role in facilitating economic cooperation.
Premier Li will also attend a leaders' summit for the 11th annual Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) in the Mongolian capital, Ulaanbaatar, from July 15 to 16. He was invited to the summit by Mongolian President Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj.
The ASEM meeting marks the 20th anniversary of the group's founding. Since then it has become an international forum for the exchange of views on various issues of international and bilateral interests.
Li will give a keynote speech at the summit and will also meet with leaders on the sidelines of the main event.
The presence of China and Mongolia at an international forum is a source of strength for their ties. It shows that China is not only helping Mongolia commercially through investments and offering facilities at its ports, but also through political and diplomatic means by attending global forums like the ASEM.
Sajjad Malik is a columnist with China.org.cn. For more information please visit:
http://china.org.cn/opinion/SajjadMalik.htm
Opinion articles reflect the views of their authors, not necessarily those of China.org.cn.
Washington: Pakistan's Ambassador to the United States Jalil Abbas Jilani has claimed that al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden posed an existential threat to Islamabad.
Jilani said that a brochure titled 'Jihad in Pakistan' reportedly written by Laden and released by the office of Director, National Intelligence, in March this year, lists the reasons why Islamabad was considered an enemy.
"The brochure can be viewed at the DNI's website and is yet another testimony to the fact that terrorism threatens Pakistan and the United States as a common enemy," the Express Tribune quoted Jilani, as saying. He clarified that Pakistan did not shelter the al Qaeda leader.
"The presence of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in Pakistan has often been cited to question its sincerity in fighting terrorism, in spite of the fact that it has been established beyond doubt that he was hiding in Pakistan without information or any help by the state," he added.
The ambassador said that the US leadership involved in the specific operation then where Osama was killed, has clearly rejected any insinuation of Islamabad's complicity.
"This includes the statement by Admiral William McRaven, who supervised the operation, that there was no evidence that Pakistani government knew about the whereabouts of Osama Bin Laden," he said.
He asserted that misgivings about his country's role in the fight against terrorism must stop as Islamabad has suffered most in fighting the menace. He also said that Pakistan helped the United States capture key operatives involved in the 9/11 attacks.
Washington: The US has urged countries in the Asia Pacific region not to engage in "escalatory or provocative" actions in the South China Sea following a decisive ruling by an international tribunal over the disputed region.
The Hague-based Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) in its order invalidated China's expansive sea claims surrounding disputed areas of the South China Sea.
In 2013, the Philippines challenged China's attempts to establish control over an area encompassing nearly 90 per cent of the South China Sea.
China has refused to accept or implement the order. "We certainly would encourage all parties to acknowledge the final and binding nature of this tribunal. We certainly would urge all parties not to use this as an opportunity to engage in escalatory or provocative actions," White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest told reporters yesterday while travelling with US President Barack Obama to Dallas.
Earnest said the US was not a claimant to any land features in the South China Sea.
"Our interest lies in a desire for a peaceful resolution to disputes and competing claims in that region," he said. Earnest said the US wanted to preserve the freedom of navigation and free flow of commerce in that region of the world.
Noting that the South China Sea is a strategically important region of the world, he said, it is also is a route for billions of dollars in commerce.
"It is important to the US economy that that flow of commerce not be significantly disrupted. That's why we have gone to great lengths to make clear that we're not a claimant, Earnest said.
"We're not taking sides in the claims, but we do strongly urge all parties with relevant claims - many of which are competing - to resolve their differences peacefully and through established processes like arbitration," he said.
State Department Spokesman John Kirby said if China failed to abide by the ruling, it would be in breach of international law.
"The world is watching now to see what these claimants will do. The world is watching to see if China is really the global power it professes itself to be and the responsible power that it professes itself to be. The world's watching this," Kirby said.
"I understand that the Chinese have made an argument that they're not going to abide by it. I've heard that loud and clear. But that doesn't change the fact that it's still a legally binding obligation. It is the world's expectation that China will abide by its obligations under this legally binding decision," he said in response to a question.
Daniel J Kritenbrink, Senior Director for Asian Affairs, National Security Council at the White House said the US believed that claimants in the South China Sea can and should use the Tribunal's decision as a new opportunity to renew efforts to address their maritime disputes peacefully.
"We encourage claimants to clarify their maritime claims in accordance with international law, as reflected in the Law of the Sea Convention, and to work together to creatively manage and resolve their disputes," Kritenbrink said.
He said the US viewed the South China Sea in the context of the global rules-based international order America seeks to uphold, both in the Asia-Pacific region and worldwide.
"Our strategy is guided by sustaining the principles at the heart of the rules-based international order: namely, customary international law, unimpeded lawful commerce, freedom of navigation and overflight for civilian and military assets, and peaceful resolution of disputes," he said.
Kritenbrink said the US was not prepared to accept the emergence of a different set of rules in the South China Sea relative to the rest of the world.
"We believe such a development would lead to breakdowns in the rules-based international order. Over time, such a trend could unravel the international legal order and therefore the peace and stability that we and the rest of the international community have enjoyed over the past 70-plus years," Kritenbrink asserted.
"That is the logic underpinning why the US takes such a strong position on upholding the rights, freedoms, and lawful uses of the sea and airspace guaranteed to all countries, and in ensuring that these same rights and freedoms apply in the South China Sea the same as they do in every other part of the world" he said.
"We see these efforts as linked to our broader national security interest in preserving and strengthening order globally," Kritenbrink said.
During a conference call with reporters, a State Department official said the decision announced by the Law of the Sea Tribunal in The Hague was a "very sweeping and decisive ruling."
"Four key elements from our point of view are, first, the invalidation of the nine-dash line claim; secondly, the determination that the features in the Spratly Islands and the
Scarborough Reef are entitled to no more than 12 nautical miles by way of maritime space; that the construction of artificial islands by China and the conduct of Chinese fishing fleets violated the rights of the Philippines; and that the large-scale reclamation and constructing these military outposts in the Spratlys damage the environment," the official said.
The official said the US strongly believed that once the dust settles and the rhetoric subsides, this decision opens the door to some very practical and potentially productive discussions among the various claimants in the South China Sea, in part because the ruling significantly narrows the geographic scope of the areas in question.
"So we are working diplomatically with each of the parties to try to encourage them to use this decision as the basis for discussions and potentially the basis for agreement on what constitutes acceptable behaviour in the disputed areas and to explore the potential down the road for things like joint development," the official said on condition of anonymity.
In the referendum held on June 23, Britain voted to leave the European Union by 52 to 48%.
London: An online petition that calls for a second referendum for the UK to decide on its fate in or out of the EU will be debated in the British Parliament after it was signed by more than 4.1 million people.
The UKs Petitions Committee said the debate would be held on September 5 as a huge number had signed it but it would not influence any change in the rules of the referendum already held on June 23, when Britain voted to leave the European Union by 52 to 48%.
In a statement, the House of Commons Petitions Committee said a debate on the petition would allow MPs to put forward a range of views on behalf of their constituents and a government minister would respond to the points raised.
It added: A debate in Westminster Hall does not have the power to change the law, and wont end with the House of Commons deciding whether or not to have a second referendum.
It will be up to the government to decide whether it wants to start the process of agreeing a new law for a second referendum.
The online petition, set up by William Oliver Healey, gained more signatures than any other on the parliamentary website in the wake of Brexit.
Before the result was declared on June 24, just 22 people had signed it.
The petition, set up on 25 May before the referendum, states: We the undersigned call upon HM Government to implement a rule that if the Remain or Leave vote is less than 60%, based on a turnout of less than 75%, there should be another referendum.
Those who signed it have already received an email that said the prime minister and government had been clear that this was a once-in-a-generation vote and the decision must be respected.
The referendum saw 17.4 million (51.9 %) votes cast to leave the EU, compared with 16.1 million (48.1%) for Remain, with a turnout of 72.2%, according to the UKs Electoral Commission.
Both women, who have been married for decades, saw off male challengers on their way to the top. (Photo: AP)
Brussels: Both are pastors' daughters who excelled as academics before rising to the top of their conservative parties. Now Theresa May and Angela Merkel, equally firm but pragmatic, will go head to head to determine Britain's future relationship with Europe.
Two years the German chancellor's junior, May is highly regarded among European officials who largely welcomed news that she will become British Prime Minister on Wednesday after David Cameron bows out.
"Very disciplined" is how one senior German official who has worked closely with May described the Oxford University-educated daughter of a Church of England vicar. She has "excellent" relations with French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve, a source in Paris said.
Described by one veteran British conservative as a "bloody difficult woman", 59-year-old May will need to muster all the goodwill she can in Europe.
Her task is to deal with the negotiating clout and stamina of Merkel, who in 10 years as chancellor has regularly outlasted other European Union leaders at late night Brussels meetings.
Under the Lisbon Treaty, a deal on Britain's departure from the EU must be concluded with the European Council, which groups leaders of the 27 other member states.
Merkel's role, however, is crucial. After Britons voted for Brexit on June 23, she met the leaders of France and Italy to plan the way ahead for the EU, showing that its biggest member states - rather than its institutions - want to determine this.
Both women, who have been married for decades, saw off male challengers on their way to the top.
Merkel defeated her more flamboyant predecessor, the Social Democrat Gerhard Schroeder, at the ballot box in 2005.
May, who has been British interior minister for the past six years, will become prime minister simply because Conservative members of parliament elected her leader of the ruling party. But the woman who has declared "I'm not a showy politician", is also replacing a less cautious politician in the pro-EU Cameron, whose gamble in calling the referendum failed.
Merkel and May agree on one thing: in the Briton's words "Brexit means Brexit". Merkel has insisted the result of what was officially an advisory referendum must be respected.
Beyond that, battle lines are already being drawn. May says Britain will not rush to trigger the formal divorce proceedings under the Lisbon Treaty. Merkel, however, wants Britain to make its intentions clear more quickly.
On Tuesday, Merkel put the ball in May's court. "We must now wait until Britain says what relationship it envisages with the European Union and then we will lead, in our interests, the best negotiations for our citizens in the 27 member states," she said.
The chancellor wants to retain strong links with Britain, Germany's fifth-biggest trading partner for goods, but her bigger priority is to hold together the remaining EU members.
"Very Persistent"
British diplomats who have worked with May in Brussels rate her highly, saying she is one of the best prepared and best informed ministers to negotiate with their EU partners. Their European counterparts agree.
"She knows Brussels well, she knows the people and how things work here," said one EU official who deals with justice and home affairs. "She has always been prepared for the meetings, active in intervening, she knows the file."
Another senior EU official familiar with negotiations in which May has taken part described her as "very professional, very well respected".
All the indications are May will prove a tough negotiator. "She won't be an easy partner for the EU," said the senior EU official, adding that May does not change her tune easily. "She's been extremely consistent, very persistent."
A quiet 'remain' campaigner, May must now get the best terms she can. Her biggest task is to retain British access to the EU's single market while restricting immigration from the bloc.
EU leaders say market access can come only with a commitment to the free movement of people - just what British voters rejected. Yet May has a record of negotiating compromises with the EU in such apparently black or white situations.
As interior minister, she opted back into a European arrest warrant system and cross-border information sharing despite Britain's 'opt out' on EU justice and home affairs policy.
In brokering those 'opt-ins', the senior EU official said: "She took a great part in the negotiations herself, she didn't rely on officials ... She has very obvious negotiating skills."
Those skills will be put to the test by Merkel, who said on Monday: "We will have difficult negotiations with Britain, it will not be easy."
Hitler spent a decade in Argentina before moving to Paraguay, claims Basti. The former Fuhrer died there on February 3, 1971. (Photo: AFP)
London: Did one of the worlds most terrible dictators, Adolf Hitler, really commit suicide in 1945?
According to the official version of events, Hitler and his wife Eva Braun committed suicide in their underground bunker on April 30, 1945. Hitler died of a gunshot to the head, while Braun consumed a cyanide pill.
Their bodies were then taken outside and burned by staff, before being deposited in a shallow grave.
But according to a report in Huffington Post UK, one Abel Basti of the Instituto Florencio Varela in Argentina, claims that the United States helped Hitler escape to South America so that he would not fall into the hands of the Soviet Union.
Basti, who has written extensively on the dictator, told Sputnik News: There was an agreement with the US that Hitler would run away and that he shouldnt fall into the hands of the Soviet Union. This also applies to many scientists, the military and spies who later took part in the struggle against the Soviet regime.
The historian believes Hitler exited the bunker beneath the Chancellery in Berlin via a tunnel, which took him to Tempelhof Airport, from where a helicopter took him to Spain. From Spain, he traveled to the Canary Islands and then to Argentina in a U-boat.
Read: Hitler's older brother was in fact younger and died early, historian says
Hitler spent a decade in Argentina before moving to Paraguay, claims Basti. The former Fuhrer died there on February 3, 1971.
Basti further claims that Hitler was buried in an underground bunker, which is now an elegant hotel in the city of Asuncion. About 40 people attended the burial, and in 1973 the bunker.
Bastis theory of Hitlers escape and route to freedom has been backed by veteran CIA agent Bob Baer.
Baer and his team appeared on History Channel in January, and analysed 700 pages of declassified information, with one stating: American Army officials in Germany have not located Hitlers body nor is there any reliable source that Hitler is dead.
In 2009, American researchers claimed that DNA tests on a fragment of Hitlers supposed skull showed that it actually belonged to a woman.
The skull with a hole in it was supposedly taken away by the Russians and went on display in Moscow in 2000, where it was considered irrefutable proof of Hitlers suicide.
Archaeologists this year stumbled upon a secret jungle lair in Argentina, which they believe had been built by Nazis to help their leaders escape Germany if the need arose.
But this was unnecessary as then-Argentine president Juan Peron welcomed thousands of Nazis and Italian fascists to the country with open arms.
Joseph Mengele, a doctor who conducted barbaric experiments at the Auschwitz concentration camp and Nazi mastermind Adolf Eichmann lived in Argentina after the Second World War. Eichmann was kidnapped by Israeli agents in 1960, taken to Israel and executed.
In 2000, Argentina issued a formal apology for its history of harbouring Nazi war criminals, but there was no mention of Hitler.
David Cameron said he hoped he was leaving a stronger country, a thriving economy and more chances to get on in life. (Photo: AP)
London: David Cameron made his final appearance in Parliament as Britain's leader today, turning the normally raucous Prime Minister's questions session into a time for praise, thanks, gentle ribbing, cheers - all spiced with a sprinkle of criticism.
The warmth culminated in a standing ovation for Cameron, 49, who is leaving office after voters rejected his advice and decided to leave the European Union. He will now formally tender his resignation to Queen Elizabeth II later in the day and hand over to his successor, Theresa May.
"I will miss the roar of the crowd. I will miss the barbs of the opposition," Cameron said, promising to watch future exchanges as a regular Conservative Party lawmaker on the back benches.
He even poked fun at himself, reminding lawmakers of a barb he had directed at former Prime Minister Tony Blair of the Labour Party as he was leaving office.
"As I once said, I was the future once," Cameron said.
One of the more cheerful exchanges took place between Cameron and Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. Cameron poked fun at the leadership turmoil going on in the Labour Party, telling Corbyn that the Tories have had "resignation, nomination, competition and coronation" while Labour is still working out its leadership rules.
Cameron also took a moment to discuss the Downing Street cat, Larry, who is being left behind to keep working as the resident mouse-catcher. Cameron says he wanted to scotch "the rumor that somehow I don't love Larry. I do!"
After Cameron formally resigns, the 59-year-old May will later visit the palace, where the queen will ask her to form a new government.
The new leader, Britain's Home Secretary - in charge of immigration and law and order for the past six years, has the tough task of calming the country, and the financial markets, after the massive upheaval that has followed the June 23 referendum.
She is expected to quickly unveil a new Cabinet lineup, including a minister in charge of implementing Brexit, a British exit from the European Union.
May, who backed remaining in the EU, will also be expected to reward prominent campaigners for a "leave" vote with key jobs. Observers are keen to see if she appoints former London Mayor Boris Johnson and Justice Secretary Michael Gove, onetime Conservative leadership contenders who jointly headed the "leave" campaign but then turned on one another.
There is also speculation that May, Britain's second female prime minister - after Margaret Thatcher will boost the number of women in top posts.
Cameron told The Daily Telegraph it had been "a privilege to serve the country I love." He said he hoped he was leaving "a stronger country, a thriving economy and more chances to get on in life."
Newspapers offered harsher judgments of a politician toppled by his decision to call a referendum on EU membership which he then lost. The Sun said Cameron had been "undone by his Olympian overconfidence," while the Guardian called him a "prime minister of broken promises."
But Cameron drew praise from an old adversary, with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker saying he would miss the British leader.
Cameron once derided Juncker as a Brussels backroom bureaucrat and tried to block him from becoming commission president. But Juncker told reporters in Beijing that he had "no beef" with Cameron.
"I have experienced a man who is serious, who is a fan of no-nonsense policy and who was delivering at each and every moment when things started to become serious," Juncker said.
London: An Indian offshore ship has been detained in the UK for three offences including non-payment of wages to its crew, British officials said.
'Malaviya Seven' owned by Mumbai's GOL Offshore Limited was held at the coast of Aberdeen in Scotland over "missing" wages for its staff members and a lack of "calculation and payment of wages" record. Its "seafarers employment agreement" was also invalid, making it a total of three offences that provided the grounds for detention.
'Malaviya Seven' is among seven foreign flagged ships under detention in UK ports after failing a Port State Control (PSC) inspection last month.
The vessel was detained by the International Transport Workers' Federation (ITF) union with the support of the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) on June 15, the MCA said in a statement on Tuesday.
"When a ship is found to be not in compliance with applicable convention requirements, a deficiency may be raised. If any of their deficiencies are so serious they have to be rectified before departure, then the ship will be detained," the statement said.
The 'Malaviya Seven' is understood to have been chartered to carry out work for a number of companies, including BP, Dana Petroleum and Premier Oil.
"They (workers) just want to get paid and go home. However, we fear that their ordeal could drag on for weeks if not months because of the huge amount of money involved," said a spokesperson for seafarers' charity Apostleship of the Sea.
The UK is part of a regional agreement known as the Paris Memorandum of Understanding on Port State Control under which information on all ships inspected is held centrally in an electronic database.
Britain's home secretary and new leader of the Conservative Party Theresa May arrives at 10 Downing Street in London on Tuesday, as she prepares to attend Prime Minister David Cameron's last cabinet meeting. (Photo: AFP)
London: UK home secretary Theresa May is set to become Britains new prime minister on Wednesday when David Cameron steps down after six years at 10 Downing Street following the backlash in the EU referendum when Britons decided to Brexit.
Theresa May will be in charge of implementing the voters June 23 decision to leave the 28-nation-bloc of the European Union and strike an independent path. Here are answers to some questions about what happens next:
When will the new prime minister start the legal process to leave the 28-nation EU?
To start the process of a British exit from the EU, or Brexit, a prime minister must invoke Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty. May has said she will not start the process until next year, but she may face strong pressure to accelerate the plan. She is becoming prime minister earlier than anticipated because her opponent withdrew from the Conservative Party leadership contest, and some leaders of the Leave camp want the legal process to begin right away. EU leaders are also pressing for faster action.
May has said there is no rush and that she wants Britain to establish its negotiating priorities before starting the Article 50 process, which imposes a two-year deadline on negotiations. May did not back the campaign to leave the EU, expressing a preference to remain part of the bloc, but she now emphasizes that Brexit means Brexit and says the voters wishes will be respected.
Will she be able to change her mind about Brexit if the political and economic climate shifts?
Article 50 is designed to be irreversible once it is invoked, in large part to discourage countries from threatening to leave in an attempt to negotiate more favourable terms. However, no major country has ever left the bloc before so it is not entirely clear if some way could be found to keep Britain from leaving even after the process has started if thats what British and EU leaders want. The EU has been known for its ability to improvise, or fudge, solutions as needed, and if faced with economic turmoil its possible the union could find a way to remain intact.
Is May planning to handle the Brexit process herself?
May has said she will appoint a cabinet-level Brexit minister along with a Brexit department to spearhead the negotiations with other European nations. It is not clear who that person will be. The process will not be simple: Thousands of treaties and agreements are in place and will have to be unraveled. Britain will also be seeking new trade arrangements with its former union partners. Many aspects of Britains economic and judicial systems have been intertwined with the EU for several decades and ties will now have to be severed. Just separating Britain from the EU bureaucracy will require a whole new bureaucracy to be established to manage the process.
But Mays political future depends on a successful divorce agreement and she may choose to become directly involved, particularly in delicate talks with other European leaders.
Will May keep Britain in the single European economic market even after it leaves the EU?
This is one of the great unknowns. May has indicated she wants British firms to keep having unfettered access to lucrative European markets, but has insisted Britain can no longer accept the freedom of movement that has allowed EU nationals to move to Britain without any restrictions. European leaders guided by EU principles may be unwilling to give Britain access to European markets without accepting the free movement of people. Cameron was unable to win meaningful compromises on this point during his tenure, and it is not clear if May will fare any better. This is really the heart of the matter, with much riding for both sides on finding some common ground.
May is coming to power without having been elected and the Opposition is calling for an early general election. If one is held, how would it affect Mays plans for Brexit?
The next scheduled general election is set to be held in 2020, but Parliament has the power to schedule an earlier vote. May said when she launched her leadership bid in June that she did not see a need for an early election. Once she is in power, it is possible she may ask Parliament to hold an early election if she feels a new election would add to the Conservative Partys slim majority in Parliament. If an election is held, and if a candidate who strongly favours EU membership would be elected with a clear mandate from the public to keep Britain inside the bloc, it could have a substantial impact on the Brexit plan. But May is unlikely to risk an early election unless she is extremely confident of victory.
London: A second candidate joined the race on Wednesday to try to unseat Britain's opposition Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who is battling a party revolt in the wake of the Brexit vote.
"I will stand in this election and I will do the decent thing and fight Jeremy Corbyn on the issues," Labour lawmaker Owen Smith told the BBC.
He will join fellow MP Angela Eagle in trying to wrest the party leadership from the veteran socialist, who has refused to quit despite a major rebellion by his MPs.
The winner of the contest, which will formally get underway with an announcement of the timetable on Thursday, is expected to be crowned in September.
Smith said he had decided to stand after seeing a "dramatic collapse of faith and confidence in Jeremy" over the last couple of weeks.
Many moderate Labour MPs have never reconciled themselves to Corbyn's election as leader last September, secured thanks to strong support among ordinary party members.
They moved against him in the wake of Britain's shock June 23 vote to leave the European Union, an outcome deplored by most of the parliamentary party.
Three-quarters of Labour MPs backed a vote of no confidence in Corbyn on June 28, accusing him of lacklustre leadership in the campaign which culminated with many longtime Labour voters in underprivileged areas defying the party line and backing Brexit.
Many party grandees also fear he would be unable to win a general election if one were called early, although incoming Prime Minister Theresa May, who takes over from David Cameron later today, has ruled out an early vote.
Late on Tuesday, Corbyn won a first victory over his critics after the party's executive committee ruled he would automatically be included on the leadership ballot.
The decision means that unlike his challengers he does not need the required 51 nominations from Labour MPs or members of the European Parliament (MEPs) to stand.
Smith, a former BBC radio producer seen as more centrist than Corbyn, has only been a member of parliament since 2010, representing the Welsh constituency of Pontypridd.
But the 46-year-old has been a member of the Labour party since he was 16, and was special advisor to Paul Murphy, the Labour government minister in charge of Wales and then Northern Ireland, between 2002 and 2005.
After a stint working as a media advisor to pharmaceutical group Pfizer, he became an MP when Labour moved into opposition, and became its spokesman on Welsh affairs.
He appeared in a list of possible candidates to replace outgoing leader Ed Miliband following Labour's second successive general election defeat last year. But he did not step forward then and was named shadow work and pensions minister under Corbyn in September 2015.
Kayleigh-Anne Palmer was around six months pregnant when she was first attacked by her 18-year-old boyfriend Aston Robinson. (Photo: Facebook)
Cheltenham, England: A pregnant 16-year-old teen was hacked to death by her violent boyfriend despite his behaviour being reported to the authorities for over 20 times by their neighbour as well as medics. The incident took place at the accused's home in Cheltenham.
The victim, identified as Kayleigh-Anne Palmer, was around six months pregnant when she was first attacked by her 18-year-old boyfriend Aston Robinson. Robinson had choked Palmer with a scarf until she stopped breathing, killing her as well as their unborn daughter.
Robinson had been charged with murder and cruelty in 2014 and was sentenced to a minimum term of 14 years in prison. He was awarded with a life sentence, but was cleared of child cruelty charges.
The case has again gained attention as a review of the incident carried out this week revealed that the police officials, social workers as well as the National Health Service team missed out on several chances to save the teenager.
The scarf with which Palmer was choked. (Photo: Facebook)
According to a report in the Daily Mail, Palmer's neighbour tried to inform police about the violence next door when she heard that Robinson had kicked his partner in the stomach after learning about her pregnancy.
Social service workers also agreed that the girl was heavily pregnant when she was dealing with an abusive relationship. Yet, no action was taken by the authorities since the violence signs were not properly put together and they had no clear evidences against Robinson. Not one professional or one agency, had all the information about what was happening in Palmers life, the report stated.
On July 12, the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague issued a pre-arranged declaration supporting some Philippines claims against China in the South China Sea despite such a declaration being clearly contrary to international law. Almost simultaneously last week the U.S. announced that it would deploy the THAAD anti-missile system in South Korea. As THAAD has a 2,000 kilometer radar range it is clearly aimed not against North Korea's small missile capacity which is only a few hundred kilometers away, but against China and Russia as both countries made clear.
These U.S. actions will clearly significantly increase geopolitical tensions. This might superficially appear a very strange action when the official claim by the U.S. government is that geopolitical tension is the greatest downside risk to already relatively slow U.S. economic growth. If increased geopolitical tension will allegedly slow the U.S. economy, and therefore weaken the U.S. in its economic competition with China, such U.S. moves to increase geopolitical tension may appear irrational. More realistic analysis below, however, shows that U.S. provocations in the South China Sea and South Korea are not "despite" the risk of U.S. slow economic growth but "because of" slow U.S. economic growth. Furthermore, attempting to increase geopolitical, and even military, tensions is a necessary result of the slow growth of the U.S. economy.
Attempting to create geopolitical and military tension, for reasons analyzed, will be an increasing feature of US actions towards China because slow US economic growth means that it is losing economic competition with China. A further and more general analysis of these trends, which form a pattern which in a sense is the opposite of the old "Cold War" rivalry between the USSR and U.S., is provided in the conclusion of this article.
The analysis will start with the geopolitical processes and then trace them to their underlying economic causes.
Chilcot report
The long awaited U.K. Chilcot Report on the invasion of Iraq last week cast a clear light on the conduct of U.S. foreign policy. It officially catalogued that a web of media lies, which were orchestrated by the U.S. government, had been used to prepare that war. The Chilcot Report officially showed in detail:
processes by which evidence was systematically invented or distorted to claim Iraq possessed non-existent "weapons of mass destruction"
secret pledges were extracted by the U.S. from allies to agree to circumvent the UN Security Council
a war was launched not according to the military situation but according to a pre-determined U.S. timetable
As with the Watergate scandal the lies involved were so great at the highest levels of the U.S. government that an official report was forced to admit them but only, of course, safely 13 years after the invasion.
Given such methods were not only used regarding Iraq but have been repeatedly used by the U.S., as will be analyzed in detail below, it is certain that similar methods of lying and disinformation are being used against China over the South China Sea and to justify deployment of the THAAD system in South Korea.
The South China Sea
Turning to the specific question of the South China Sea, Deng Xiaoping wisely remarked that some problems were best left to be solved by the wisdom of future generations. To put it in more prosaic terms, some situations are unsatisfactory but do not cause an imminent threat, therefore they should not be inflamed at present and are best left to be resolved sometime in the future. Equivalent, if less elegant, the Anglo-Saxon phrases are to "let sleeping dogs lie" or to "put things on the back burner."
Territorial disputes in the South China Sea are among the clearest examples of this. China is strongly dissatisfied that parts of its territory in the South China Sea are illegally occupied, and that claims are made on its territory by other countries, while other countries claim equivalent dissatisfactions. But meanwhile, despite this, the economic development of South East Asia and China has been proceeding rapidly to the immense benefit of the population of all the countries concerned.
Any rational analysis of benefits and disadvantages therefore shows that the most advantageous course is to proceed with economic development and not attempt to inflame the situation. Indeed, for many years this is what occurred relations between China and ASEAN were rather harmonious with rapid economic development to the strong benefit of all countries concerned.
Also prior to Abe becoming Japan's prime minister, China-Japan relations were not as smooth as China-ASEAN relations but tensions were not particularly high. The rapid economic development of China, East Asia, and South East Asia was one of the main drivers of global economic growth and therefore also to the considerable benefit of countries outside these regions.
The series of recent actions, which could clearly only have been taken with the agreement of, or at the instigation of the U.S., has endangered this situation. Japan deliberately inflamed the situation over the Diaoyu Islands before embarking on a more generally aggressive course of remilitarization under Abe. The Philippines launched its unilateral appeal to The Hague Tribunal. The U.S. began a series of provocative voyages and flights of its military aircraft and ships in the South China Sea. As both Japan and the Philippines are entirely dependent for their military protection and economic stability on the U.S., it is clear that provocative actions by these countries could not have been embarked upon without U.S. agreement.
The U.S. record on "international law" and "human rights"
In this overall context, turning to the more strictly defined issue of the Philippines claims to The Hague Tribunal, the particularly ludicrous character of U.S. support for these is evident. Even before getting to any points of international law:
The U.S. itself refuses to sign the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Seas (UNCLOS) under which the Philippines claims are taking action;
When, in 1986, The Hague Tribunal declared in favour of Nicaragua, over a case brought against U.S. military support to "contra" rebels in Nicaragua, the U.S. promptly declared that the tribunal had no authority and refused to accept or carry out its ruling.
Even on a narrow point of law, a through report by the U.S. Brooking's Institute "Limits of Law in the South China Sea" published in May 2016 makes clear the fraudulent nature of the Philippines appeal to The Hague Tribunal and consequently of the U.S. backing to it. The Brooking's study admitted that "the upcoming ruling in the case brought by the Philippines against China before an arbitration tribunal under the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Seas (UNCLOS) will not solve the problems or even make major headway in resolving them."
The reason for this is clearly stated:
regarding countries and UNCLOS "the United States is one of the few that is not [a signatory];"
"all [countries] concede that the tribunal has no jurisdiction to decide any issues of sovereignty' over the islands and rocks in the South China Sea;"
"Article 298 of UNCLOS allows countries to carve out exceptions to the compulsory remedial procedures, and China and a number of other countries have taken the requisite steps to activate those exceptions Specifically, Article 298 provides that a state may declare in writing that it does not accept one or more of the procedures.' Specifically, All [countries] concede that China was within its legal rights under Article 298 of UNCLOS after ratifying the treaty in explicitly exempting itself from compulsory resolution of a swath of issues concerning sea boundary delimitations.'"
In short, the U.S. demands that China submit to a Tribunal regarding a Convention which the U.S. itself refuses to sign, whose decisions the U.S. has explicitly rejected and refused to carry out, and which has no legal jurisdiction because China has not agreed to be a party to the Tribunal's arbitration and has activated a long time ago the necessary legal exemptions all countries agreed were lawful. This means the whole procedure is a farce.
This farce is, however, clearly in line with the long established real attitude of the U.S. to "human rights" and "international law." Far from upholding "international law" the U.S. has waged a series of aggressive wars in Iraq, Libya and elsewhere in which hundreds of thousands of people were killed not to speak of its earlier war in Vietnam in which well over a million people were killed. Numerous of these wars were carried out without agreement of the United Nations or of international law. Since World War II the U.S. has:
dropped bombs on the people of more than 30 countries;
attempted to overthrow more than 50 foreign governments, most of which were democratically elected;
attempted to assassinate more than 50 foreign leaders.
Furthermore, facts clearly establish that the attacks on China's human rights and international law record by the U.S. government are simply hypocrisy. China openly states its foreign policy principle that each country has the right to choose its own form of government, and whether a country wants an absolute monarchy without political rights, a parliamentary republic, or socialism, is not China's affair. The U.S., in contrast, claims the right to criticize other countries, and interfere in their internal affairs, in the name of supposed "universal values" of Western forms of political rule. But the reality is transparently different to U.S. government claims.
A country such as Saudi Arabia, which is an absolute monarchy, in which political parties are banned, in which women are forbidden even to drive cars, is not subject to U.S. campaigns over "human rights." Nor is Bahrain, another absolute monarchy which serves as the base for the U.S. Fifth Fleet. U.S. involvement in events such as the military overthrow of Chile's president Allende is evident, and the U.S. even entirely formally admitted its role in the overthrow of the elected government of Mosaddegh in Iran. In Russia in 1993 the U.S. government supported Yeltsin's attack with tanks on the Russian parliament.
Such facts establish beyond doubt that the problem for supporters of current U.S. government policy regarding China is not "human rights" or "international law" if China were an authoritarian regime supporting the U.S. it would not be criticized. The real problem about China for U.S. neo-cons is that China's national revival makes China strong. It is this, therefore, which both explains the current U.S. actions towards China and what is behind its recent specific provocations over the South China Sea and South Korea.
US tactics towards China
Finally, moving beyond the individual issues to what determines the precise form of U.S. provocations against China, will this pattern continue? This may most clearly be understood by making a comparison of current trends to the old "Cold War" between the U.S. and the USSR.
The USSR was a great military power. Despite its economy reaching at its peak only approximately 45 percent of U.S. GDP, the USSR was in terms of military strength comparable with the U.S. such a scale of Soviet military build-up was not sensible but that is a different issue. However, by the 1970s, due to errors in policy, the Soviet economy was no longer dynamic. Consequently, the U.S. did not enjoy great military superiority compared to the USSR but it had a much larger economy. Therefore, the strategy of the U.S. was to attempt to transfer all issues onto the economic terrain. Even the Reagan military build-up on the 1980s was not aimed to have a military conflict with the USSR but to overstrain its economy.
The relations of China and the U.S. are almost exactly the reverse. China's economy is not only much closer in absolute size to the U.S. than the USSR was but China's economy is also much more dynamic and rapidly growing than that of the U.S. However, the U.S. remains militarily stronger than China. Therefore, it is in the interests of the U.S. to attempt to transfer issues onto the military terrain, in terms of military tension if not of direct wars, and to avoid fair competition with China in the economic field. It is this strategy of attempting to transfer issues onto the military terrain which explains the deliberate U.S. escalation of tension in both the South China Sea and in the deployment of the THAAD missile system in South Korea. China's interests, on the contrary, lie in peaceful economic development and avoidance of geopolitical and military tensions and conflicts.
It is this situation which explains what initially appear to be irrational US actions to escalate geopolitical tensions including in the South China Sea and Korea. It also means that in such disputes humanity's interests lie in the path of peaceful economic development which China logically pursues, rather than in the dangerous escalation of international tensions which the U.S. pursues.
John Ross is a columnist with China.org.cn. For more information please visit:
http://www.china.org.cn/opinion/johnross.htm
Opinion articles reflect the views of their authors, not necessarily those of China.org.cn.
London: Theresa May has become Britains prime minister after meeting with Queen Elizabeth II. Buckingham Palace has released an image of May offering a deep curtsy before the monarch, denoting that she has accepted the queens invitation to form a government.
Buckingham Palace says Queen Elizabeth II has accepted the resignation of David Cameron as British prime minister. A statement from the palace says the monarch met with Cameron, who formally resigned the office before handing over to his successor, Theresa May. May arrived at Buckingham Palace shortly afterward to be confirmed as British prime minister.
May is preparing to promote a string of female Conservative colleagues, including into key cabinet positions, according to the Independent. In contrast to Margaret Thatcher, who chose to be surrounded by an all-male Cabinet for almost her entire time in Downing Street, sources close to May say that she is determined to put into effect a long held belief that there should be a better gender balance at the top end of the government.
Five women besides May already hold Cabinet posts Justine Greening, Nicky Morgan, Amber Rudd, Liz Truss, and Teresa Villiers. Others possibly in line for promotion to the Cabinet include the Works and Pensions minister Priti Patel, who played a prominent role in the Brexit campaign, and the Business minister, Anna Soubry, who backed Remain. The new Prime Minister will also have to consider whether to promote her former rival Andrea Leadsom, to the Cabinet.
Raqqa: In yet another inhuman episode, the most sought after terror group ISIS forced families to witness their loved ones getting beheaded amid a humongous crowd on Sunday. Five men were accused of spying by Raqqas Sharia court and were sentenced to death.
A day before the executions, the five young men were found guilty of communicating crucial information to People's Protection Units (YPG) in northeastern Syria. The convicted were captured in the city of Tabqa, located in Raqqas countryside. Though the aforementioned region lacks ISISs clout and constant efforts are being made by Kurdish forces to expel the terror group from the countryside, Raqqa continues to be the latters capital.
Earlier, the dreaded group executed 25 Iraqi prisoners in Northern Iraq's Mosul by lowering them in a vat filled with nitric acid.
Witness accounts revealed that 25 prisoners were tied together with a rope and then thrown into a large basin containing nitric acid until all their organs and bones dissolved completely.
Recently, the Islamic State group had revealed a new form of punishment for their prisoners - stabbing in the heart to kill them. Recently, ISIS terrorists had stabbed an unidentified man right in his heart, before shooting him dead.
According to reports, more than 270,000 people have been killed and millions have fled their homes since Syria's conflict erupted in March 2011.
In a 2002 post on a Jewish website, Karim responded to a user asking whether Jewish law permits Israeli soldiers to rape enemy women. (Representational Image)
Jerusalem: The Israeli military has been criticised for appointing a rabbi who has disparaged female soldiers and once appeared to justify the rape of non-Jewish enemies.
The military says it summoned Rabbi Col. Eyal Karim on Wednesday over his past remarks after an outcry from lawmakers. In a 2002 post on a Jewish website, Karim responded to a user asking whether Jewish law permits Israeli soldiers to rape enemy women. Karim said the Torah allowed soldiers to satisfy "evil inclinations" during wartime.
Karim later said he was not advocating rape, and the military said today that he denied ever saying that a "soldier is authorised to sexually harm a woman during war. "Opposition lawmaker Tzipi Livni told Channel 2 TV that Karim's views meant that "he cannot be the military rabbi."
Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina paid her homage to the victims of the Dhaka cafe attack victims during a memorial service at the Army Stadium in the city. (Photo: AP)
Dhaka: Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Tuesday asked parents and authorities to remain vigilant about the movement of children to prevent them from getting radicalised.
"The people of the country are pious, but not bigots. I simply cannot understand why the children of these pious people, who are receiving education from reputed institutions, good schools and colleges and English medium ones, are turning bigots," she said.
Her appeal came after it emerged that most of the hostage-takers in the July 1 Dhaka cafe attack, the worst in Bangladesh, had vanished several months ago.
Twenty two people, including an Indian girl, were killed last week after suspected Islamic State terrorists stormed the cafe in the diplomatic zone in Dhaka.
Days later, Islamist militants carrying bombs and machetes launched a deadly attack on Bangladesh's biggest Eid gathering, killing four persons.
Hasina said it needs to be find out how the culprits are misguiding meritorious students. "We don't want these students to lay down their valuable lives indiscriminately getting derailed from the right path," she said.
"We must get rid of this situation. We will have to take our country to the path of development. We must accelerate our socioeconomic development. And I believe we can get rid of this situation," Hasina said.
Reiterating her resolve not to allow the emergence of militancy in the country, the prime minister said the government does not want any recurrence of the incidents happened recently.
"We won't allow any sort of emergence of militancy in the country, we don't want Bangladesh to be the land of militancy...we'll have to take some measurers keeping this view in mind," she asserted.
She said some unwarranted incidents have taken place in Bangladesh and it has to be dealt with strong hands.
Dhaka: Bangladesh on Wednesday launched a probe on schools bearing the name 'Peace', suspecting them to be linked with controversial Indian Islamic preacher Zakir Naik's 'Peace TV' which was banned this week over allegations of inspiring terrorists.
Though the government does not have any specific data on how many schools are being operated with the word 'Peace' in their names, an official said 28 schools in Bangladesh have 'Peace' in their names.
The schools, in the capital Dhaka and in other parts of the country, are allegedly being operated in line with the controversial Islamic preacher's ideals by adding 'Peace' to their names, bdnews24.com reported.
The government is now inquiring into the activities of the so-called 'Peace schools', the report said. Intelligence agencies had been asked to inquire into the 20 'Peace Schools' spotted by the ministry in Dhaka.
"If these schools actually follow Zakir Naik's ideals, they will face action," an offiaial said.
Bangladesh on Sunday banned Mumbai-based Naik's channel after reports that "provocative" speeches inspired some of the militants who carried out the country's worst terror attack at a cafe here.
50-year-old Doctor-turned Naik's speeches are believed to have inspired some of the Bangladeshi militants, who killed 22 people, mostly foreigners, at an upscale restaurant in Dhaka on July 1.
The Dhaka education board authorities said they only approved temporarily an English medium school at Lalmatia to operate under the name Peace School. The others do not have any such permission, the report said.
"We are inquiring (about such schools)," Education Minister Nurul Islam Nahid said.
Dhaka education board Chairman Mahbubur Rahman also said the board would check on the nature of such schools.
An education ministry official said none of these 'Peace Schools' in Dhaka had applied for permission.
Barack Obama Xi Jinping walk from the West Wing of the White House in Washington. (Photo: AP)
Beijing: China vowed to take all necessary measures to protect its sovereignty in the South China Sea and said it had the right to set up an air defence zone, after rejecting an international tribunal's ruling that denied its claims in the region.
State media called the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague a "puppet" of external forces, after it ruled that China had breached the Philippines' sovereign rights by endangering its ships and fishing and oil projects.
China has repeatedly blamed the United States for stirring up trouble in the South China Sea, where its territorial claims overlap in parts with Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan.
Read: Respect verdict on South China Sea, resolve issue peacefully: India
"China will take all necessary measures to protect its territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests," the ruling Communist Party's official People's Daily said in a front page commentary on Wednesday.
The case, overseeing an energy-rich region that is home to also one of the world's busiest trade routes, has been seen as a test of China's rising power and its economic and strategic rivalry with the United States.
Beijing called the Philippines claims of sovereignty in the South China Sea "baseless" and an "act of bad faith". In a government white paper published on Wednesday China also said its fishing boats had been harassed and attacked by the Philippines around the Spratly Islands.
Read: US urges countries not to engage in provocative actions in South China Sea
"On whether China will set up a air defence zone over the South China Sea, what we have to make clear first is that China has the right to...But whether we need one in the South China Sea depends on the level of threats we face," the Vice Foreign Minister Liu Zhenmin told reporters in Beijing, adding that China hopes to return to bilateral talks with Manila.
The United States, which China has accused of fuelling tensions and militarising the region with patrols and exercises, said the ruling should be treated as final and binding.
Read: China reacts guardedly to India's statement of SCS verdict
"We certainly would urge all parties not to use this as an opportunity to engage in escalatory or provocative action," White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters in a briefing.
The ruling is significant as it is the first time that a legal challenge has been brought in the dispute. The court has no power of enforcement, but a victory for the Philippines could spur Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei to file similar cases on their claims to the waters.
Read: Beijing's South China Sea anger belies dilemma: experts
US officials have previously said they feared China may respond to the ruling by declaring an air defence identification zone in the South China Sea, as it did in the East China Sea in 2013, or by stepping up its building and fortification of artificial islands.
Complicated, Unclear
The Philippines reacted cautiously to the ruling late on Tuesday, calling for "restraint and sobriety".
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte held a cabinet meeting after the ruling was announced, but no comment was made about the what was discussed and the presidential palace cancelled a regular briefing on Wednesday.
One of the lawyers who argued the Philippines' case said that though the decision had been delivered, how and when the country would enforce the decision was complicated and unclear.
"There's no timeline for this game, it might have an extended period of gestation," said Florin Ternal Hilbay, a former solicitor general.
"I would assume our diplomats have read the decision and understand the complexities and consequences of enforcing the decision."
But in moves likely to antagonize Beijing, the coastguards of Japan and the Philippines took part in simulated rescue and medical response exercise off Manila Bay on Wednesday, part of what the two countries have called efforts to improve maritime security and combat crime and piracy.
Japan and China are involved in a separate territorial dispute in the East China Sea and Beijing has warned Tokyo against meddling in the South China Sea dispute.
Pivot Pressure
Beijing's ambassador to the United States earlier blamed the rise in tension in the region on the United States' "pivot" toward Asia in the past few years. Cui Tiankai said the arbitration case "will probably open the door of abusing arbitration procedures.
"It will certainly undermine and weaken the motivation of states to engage in negotiations and consultations for solving their disputes," Cui said at a forum of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington. "It will certainly intensify conflict and even confrontation."
President Barack Obama's top Asia policy adviser, Daniel Kritenbrink, said the United States had no interest in stirring tensions in the South China Sea as a pretext for involvement in the region.
"We have an enduring interest in seeing territorial and maritime disputes in the Asia Pacific, including in the South China Sea, resolved peacefully, without coercion and in a manner that is consistent with international law," Kritenbrink said at the same forum.
Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen boarded a navy frigate in southern Taiwan ahead of its departure for the South China Sea early on Wednesday, a regular patrol mission that was pushed forward by a day due to the Hague decision, which Taipei rejected.
"This patrol mission is to show the determination of the Taiwan people to defend our national interest," Tsai said from the warship.
Yangon: A firebrand monk slammed Aung San Suu Kyi as a dictator Wednesday, accusing Myanmar's civilian-led government of trying to destroy an ultra-nationalist Buddhist group blamed for a surge in sectarian violence across the country.
The attack came after the body representing Myanmar's top monks distanced itself from the hardline Ma Ba Tha movement, a blow to its clerical legitimacy.
The Ma Ba Tha is a noisy, monk-led group at the forefront of virulently anti-Muslim protests in Myanmar in the three years since it was founded. Wirathu, the movement's most prominent figure, posted his scathing remarks on Facebook.
"I have seen that the ruling party and the new civilian government is stepping forward to target me as 'Enemy Number One' to destroy the whole Ma Ba Tha group to the end," he wrote.
He also described the administration as "a woman dictator's government which is going to put me in prison".
Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy won a landslide victory at last November's elections.
Wirathu's comments came after the Sangha Maha Nayaka Committee, which represents the upper echelons of the clergy in the overwhelmingly Buddhist country, issued a statement late Tuesday saying it had never endorsed Ma Ba Tha.
The ultra-nationalist group recently said it was established under the committee's rules, a claim refuted by the country's top monks, putting clear water between the mainstream Buddhist clergy and the hardline group for the first time.
Under pressure
The statement came hours ahead of a two-day gathering of around 50 of Myanmar's top monks inside a man-made cave on the outskirts of Yangon at which Ma Ba Tha is expected to be discussed.
In his Facebook post Wirathu suggested the Sangha was being controlled by the government because it was "part of the state's religious ministry" and "has to carry out the will of the government."
The Ma Ba Tha emerged as a potent political force under the former military-backed government, successfully lobbying for a series of laws that rights groups say discriminate against women and religious minorities.
Scores of people have been killed in sectarian riots that have billowed out in step with their protests. But the organisation lost out in the November elections that saw their allies in the ruling party trounced by Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD).
It has since been trying to claw back ground, in recent weeks reviving its vitriolic rhetoric that portrays Islam as a threat to Buddhism. Last month two mosques were destroyed by Buddhist mobs in the centre and north of the country.
Much of the anti-Muslim invective in Myanmar has targeted the Rohingya, a minority denied citizenship and relegated to apartheid-like conditions ever since deadly riots tore through western Rakhine state in 2012.
Their very name invokes strong emotions in Myanmar, with the Ma Ba Tha leading protests for the Rohingya to be known only as "Bengalis" shorthand for illegal migrants from neighbouring Bangladesh.
De facto premier and Nobel laureate Suu Kyi has faced widespread censure from rights groups for failing to speak up for the group who the United Nations has labelled one of the world's most persecuted people.
He said he did not know the name of the attackers and could only recognise them if he saw them. (Photo: Pixabay)
Lahore: A Pakistani Christian man's both hands were chopped off allegedly by some Muslim men for refusing to convert to Islam, media reports said on Wednesday.
Police, however, have dismissed the victim's allegation, claiming he lost his hands in a train accident.
Aqeel Masih, 25, complained to police, on Tuesday alleging that the unidentifed Muslim men chopped his hands off with an axe for not converting to Islam on June 24, the Dawn reported.
"Some people came to me and asked me to convert to Islam. On my refusal, they attacked me with an axe and cut my both hands off," said Masih, who was treated at Jinnah Hospital.
He said he did not know the name of the attackers and could only recognise them if he saw them.
Lahore police senior officer Amara Ather, however, said that according to a medical report submitted by a doctor, Masih had lost his hands in a train accident near a beverage factory in Gulberg.
Quoting eyewitnesses, Athar said Masih was lying unconscious on the track near a railway track when a train engine crushed his hands up to the elbows.
"Some people rushed to the railway track after hearing his cries and shifted him to Jinnah Hospital," she was quoted as saying by the daily.
She said some four to five people were present on the spot.
The police officer said evidence was being collected and a case would be registered against unidentified people after recording Masih's statement.
China has emphatically rejected the verdict questioning the legality of the tribunal. (Photo: AFP)
Beijing: Grappling with the international tribunal's verdict quashing its claims over the South China Sea, China on Wednesday turned down US advise to follow India's example of settling its maritime row with Bangladesh by implementing the judgement saying that there is "no comparison" between the two cases.
"There is a premise for the settlement of the relevant territorial dispute between India and Bangladesh through arbitration, that is, the two respected each other's sovereign wills and reached an agreement on the arbitration request through consultation," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang told PTI in Beijing.
"It is not like imposing one party's will on the other" unlike the Philippines which "unilaterally" filed the petition in Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA), he said in response to question over US Assistant Secretary of Defence for East
Asia Abraham Denmark's recent comments that China should follow India's example of resolving its maritime boundary dispute with Bangladesh by implementing the award by a similar tribunal appointed by the PCA.
India accepted the award which was given in favour of Bangladesh to resolve the over 40-year maritime row.
Read: Beijing warns US, threatens to set up air defence zone over South China Sea
The tribunal awarded Bangladesh 19,467 sq km of area in Bay Bengal in 2014.
"To India's great credit, it accepted the decision and has abided by it, noting at the time that settlement of the issue would enhance mutual understanding and goodwill between the two countries. This is an example we would encourage China to follow," Denmark told lawmakers at a Congressional hearing in Washington last week.
"The arbitral tribunal's upcoming ruling will present an opportunity for those in the region to determine whether the Asia-Pacific's future will be defined by adherence to international laws and norms that have helped keep the peace and enabled it to prosper, or whether the region's future will be determined by raw calculations of power," Denmark said.
China however emphatically rejected the verdict questioning the legality of the tribunal.
Lu said previous Philippines President Benigno S Aquino unilaterally opted for arbitration and "imposed" it on China.
"By doing that the Aquino administration severely violated the agreement between China and Philippines and the consensus in the region, breached relevant provisions under UN
Convention on Law of Seas (UNCLOS), infringed upon China's right as a sovereign state and state party to UNCLOS to resolve disputes by means of its own choice and went against international law," he said.
"Therefore there is no comparison between the two things," he said.
China claims almost all of the South China Sea but its claims are fiercely contested by the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan.
Beijing: China warned rivals on Wednesday against turning the South China Sea into a cradle of war and threatened an air defence zone there, after its claims to the strategically vital waters were declared invalid. China reacted furiously to Tuesdays decision, insisting it had historical rights over the sea while launching a volley of thinly veiled warnings at the United States and other critical nations. Do not turn the South China Sea into a cradle of war, vice foreign minister Liu Zhenmin told reporters in Beijing, as he described the ruling as waste paper.
Liu also said China had the right to establish an air defence identification zone over the sea, which would give the Chinese military authority over foreign aircraft. Meanwhile, top American lawmakers have said the US must ensure that the international tribunal ruling against Chinas claims to rights in the South China Sea is implemented and if needed reinforce its military assets to maintain the status quo in the strategic region.
A ranking of Asia's Top 1000 Brands has been recently developed by Campaign Asia-Pacific magazine with global information and insights provider Nielsen. Samsung, for the 5th consecutive year since 2012, has claimed the title of Asia's No.1 brand, followed by Apple and Sony.
Initiated in 2004, the ranking is based on an online survey which researches 13 markets in Asia, covering 14 major categories including alcohol, financial services, automotive, retail, restaurants, food, beverages, consumer electronics, computer hardware, computer software, courier services, media and telecommunications, travel and leisure, and household and personal care.
Participants were asked to give responses to the questions including "which is the best brand that comes to your mind?" and "which brand do you consider to be the second best brand in the category?"
Let's have a look at the top 10 brands in Asia this year.
Adidas
Adidas [File photo]
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A defiant China today said the UN-backed tribunal's verdict should be "dumped into garbage" and asserted that it has the right to declare a unilateral air-defence zone over the strategic South China Sea after its expansive maritime claims in the region was shunned by a five- member international jury.
Rejecting international appeals to implement the verdict, Defence Minister General Chang Wanquan said China will not accept any proposition or action based on the decision by the arbitral tribunal.
"China's territorial sovereignty and maritime interests in the South China Sea will not be affected by the ruling under any circumstances," Chang said here.
China has refused to abide by the ruling of the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) tribunal in The Hague. It has said the Philippines' claim over parts of the SCS is groundless from the perspectives of either history or international law.
"The Chinese navy can operate in South China Sea at any time as the area belongs to China. Certain country has sent aircraft carrier fleet to the South China Sea," Assistant Foreign Minister Liu Zhenmin said.
"We do not recognise or implement the award. We hope it is only a white paper and it will not be enforced. Just dump it into garbage or put it in a shelf or put it in archives and let us come back to the track of negotiations," he said.
He said that China hopes to go back to the negotiating table with the Philippines.
"This is the policy of the Chinese government and hope that neighbouring countries in the South China Sea and ASEAN countries jointly uphold peace and stability of the South China Sea and freedom of navigation and over flights," he told reporters.
As to whether China will set up an Air Defence Identification Zone over the SCS to force aircraft flying in the area to seek permissions from Beijing, the assistant foreign minister said China "has the right to do so."
"We have set up one over the East China Sea (close to Japan) and whether we will set up another in South China Sea will depend on the degree of threat we are facing. If threatened enough, we will do so but it will depend on a host of factors," Liu said at the nationally televised conference.
"Do not make it a region of war," he warned. Releasing a strongly-worded "white paper" rejecting the verdict of the Hague-based Permanent Court Arbitration (PCA), Liu launched a frontal attack on the international tribunal and its judges, saying they "manipulated" their judgement.
"Can we really trust this tribunal to be fair and to be credible. Some people of a country are saying that the award should has a binding force and should be enforced," he said in an apparent reference to US assertions that the ruling is binding and China should implement it.
"This is lie. This tribunal and the award has no credibility," he said. The tribunal has said its verdict is binding. "Why would anyone enforce it? If a tribunal wants to win other people's respect, it should behave properly," Liu said, adding that it is not a tribunal under the international law.
"It has no relation to the international court in the Hague and the UN system. It has some ties with the International Tribunal of the Law of the Seas. It does not belong to the same system as PCA. Because the permanent court provides secretariat services that is it," he said.
Asserting that the composition of the tribunal was a "political manipulation", Liu specially targeted Japanese jurist Shunji Yanai who had appointed four of the five judges.
Liu said Yanai worked as Tokyo's diplomat in the US and was close to Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. He also hit out at the five tribunal judges -- Thomas A Mensah of Ghana, Judge Jean-Pierre Cot of France, Judge Stanislaw Pawlak of Poland, Professor Alfred H A Soons of the Netherlands, and Judge Rudiger Wolfrum of Germany.
Except Rudiger, who was picked by the Philippines the other four were picked by Yanai, the President of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS).
Liu said Yanai is the chairman of Japanese advisory panel on the reconstruction of legal basis for security and he is still advising Abe on Japan's right to self-defence.
"So he manipulated the arbitral tribunal and continues to exert influence on the operation of the tribunal. As you can see four of the five judges come from Europe, one from Africa, Ghana, but lives in Europe," he said.
This was not the first time Liu attacked Yanai. Days before the verdict, Liu wrote an article in the ruling Communist Party of China's (CPC) mouthpiece 'Qiushi' casting doubts on the make-up of the tribunal.
One of the judges Yanai appointed included a person who had ruled against a party holding a position similar to China in a previous case, Liu had wrote.
"Leaving aside the obvious violation of procedural justice, we can hardly make a better explanation of Judge Yanai's motivation and purpose other than that he did it on purpose," Liu has said. Yanai has defended himself in an interview to 'Japanese Times' saying he had to appoint the judges as ITLOS President.
"I just happen to be a Japanese, but the annex to the convention (UNCLOS) provides that in case the arbitrators are not appointed by the parties or by agreement by the parties then the president of ITLOS must do it," Yanai said.
"I followed exactly these provisions. As the president of ITLOS, I didn't act as a Japanese representative. I don't represent the Japanese at all in the tribunal. That is quite obvious."
He said China could have chosen an arbitrator for the tribunal,, but instead Beijing decided to ignore the process. "So in this case, I had to do the job," Yanai has said.
Today, Liu said some of the judges of the tribunal have pre-existing opinions. "They lead us to believe that they are supportive of certain views but after the arbitration was established what they advocated went against what they expressed in their previous articles and statements," he said.
"So this makes us question whether they can stay true to their real belief," he said. "Who is really behind the arbitral tribunal? These judges are paid and who paid them. Is is it the Philippines or some other country. So the mechanism in the tribunal is completely different from the ICJ or the international tribunal of the law of the seas," Liu said.
"The judges are paid by the UN to ensure they fairness. But this arbitral tribunal judges are paid probably by the Philippines and some other country we don't know. They are paid for their service," he questioned.
"So this case is the first compulsory arbitrary tribunal established under UNCLOS. But it went against the expectations of the founders of the UNCLOS and created a very bad precedent," he said.
Liu expressed the hope to reopen talks with the new government of Philippines headed by Rodrigo Duterte. The petition was filed by previous Philippine government headed by President Benigno S Aquino.
Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi today targeted Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the Supreme Court verdict on Arunachal Pradesh, saying it explains to him what democracy is.
"Thank you Supreme Court for explaining to the Prime Minister what democracy is," he said in a post on Twitter.
In a blow to BJP and the Centre, the apex court ordered restoration of Congress government in Arunachal Pradesh by quashing as "unconstitutional" the Governor's decision to advance the Legislative Assembly session by a month in December last.
Uttarakhand Chief Minister Harish Rawat, who had also got relief from the apex court and again taken charge of the state government, lauded the verdict.
"My heartfelt gratitude to the Supreme Court for restoring Cong gov in Arunachal Pradesh. Judiciary has restored faith of people in democracy," Rawat said in a social media post.
The apex court's verdict paves the way for the dismissed Congress government of Nabam Tuki to return to power and sets aside Governor Jyoti Prasad Rajkhowa's message directing the manner of holding the proceedings of sixth session of the Assembly scheduled from January 14, 2016, to December 16-18, 2015.
Tuki welcomed the verdict, saying it is "historic" and has protected democracy.
Reacting guardedly to India's statement on the strategic South China Sea verdict by a UN-backed tribunal, China today said it too wants to resolve the dispute by "fully complying" with the international law.
"In those public statements made by relevant governments, if it is said that the dispute should be resolved by fully complying with the international law, I think it is the same with what Chinese government is upholding," Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang told reporters here.
He was reacting to questions on India's External Affairs Ministry statement asking all parties involved in the South China Sea row to resolve the maritime dispute through peaceful means without threat or use of force and "show utmost respect" to the verdict by Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague.
India's reaction came after the tribunal ruled that China has no legal basis to its claims of "historic rights" to islands in South China Sea, through which USD 3 trillion passes in trade annually.
The External Affairs Ministry yesterday said that India supports freedom of navigation and over flight, and unimpeded commerce, based on the principles of international law, as reflected notably in the UNCLOS (United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea).
"India believes that states should resolve disputes through peaceful means without threat or use of force and exercise self-restraint in the conduct of activities that could complicate or escalate disputes affecting peace and stability," it said.
The ministry said that sea lanes of communication passing through the South China Sea are critical for peace, stability, prosperity and development.
"As a State Party to the UNCLOS, India urges all parties to show utmost respect for the UNCLOS, which establishes the international legal order of the seas and oceans," it said.
The arbitral court has concluded that "there was no legal basis for China to claim historic rights" within the sea areas falling within China's 'nine-dash line'.
Asserting that it "does not accept and does not recognise" the ruling, China has rejected the verdict as "null and void".
China asserts sovereignty over almost all of the South China Sea waters in the face of rival claims from its southeast Asian neighbours.
The Philippines had lodged the suit against China in 2013, saying that after 17 years of negotiations it had exhausted all political and diplomatic avenues.
Centre today cleared a proposal to sell its stake in state-owned construction company NBCC India with an aim to meet the ambitious Rs 56,500-crore PSU disinvestment target in 2016-17.
"The Union Cabinet has approved the proposal of follow-on public offer (FPO) by NBCC India to divest the central government's stake in the company," a source said after the meeting.
At present, the government holds 90 per cent in the company, which has a market capitalisation of Rs 14,274 crore.
Without divulging details on the quantum of stake sale, the source said the Centre will have to divest at least 15 per cent to meet Sebi's public listing requirements.
The rules say the minimum public holding in a company has to be maintained at 25 per cent.
NBCC was listed on the bourses in 2012 when the government diluted 10 per cent stake to raise Rs 127 crore. The price band of the NBCC IPO was fixed at Rs 90-106 per share.
Earlier, in May this year, shareholders had approved stock split to facilitate the FPO under the government's disinvestment programme. The company has split its share of Rs 10 each into five with a face value of Rs 2 each.
The company's stock was trading at Rs 234, down 9.09 per cent, on BSE today.
The source said the Cabinet at its meeting today also approved the proposal of asset sale in its telecom equipment manufacturing firm, ITI Ltd.
Students seeking admission at Delhi University under the extra-curricular activities (ECA) category this year are in a predicament this year.
Selection trials for different activities are being scheduled in venues far away from one other, forcing applicants interested in more than one field to skip some.
Students get a relaxation of up to 15 per cent in the best of four aggregate if they are selected under the ECA category which includes activities like dance, music and fine arts.
Vidushi Chhabra, 17, had to skip her Creative Writing trials at Gargi College on Monday as she also had to attend Theatre trials at Hansraj College.
She said even on Wednesday she will have to skip a trial, as one of them is at Khalsa and the other at Hansraj.
We have to be at the venue from 9.30 am onwards and our name can be called out any time till 1.30 pm. In such a case, I cannot register at two places even if they are in close vicinity, she said.
For her theatre trial on Monday at Hansraj, she waited till 1.30 pm for her turn to perform. But the judges let her go as they had already seen her at another college.
Chhabra has already got admission through the ECA quota at Jesus and Mary College, which conducts its trials separately from other colleges that come under the university.
This year all ECA trials are centralised. Up to last year, every college held its own ECA trials. Now, the students cannot pick the college for which they want to be considered. And there is only one venue for one activity for all applicants.
So this year Chhabra cannot choose her own college as the university will allot her marks out of 15 for ECA, and give her a college where she fits the cut-off based on class 12 marks.
Chhabra, who is interested in theatre and wants to study English (Hons), said, I know that English (Hons) in JMC is not bad. But their theatre society is not as good as in LSR or Kirori Mal College. If I get in either of these then Id be the most happy.
Udbhav (name changed on request) is interested in two ECA trials, for Creative Writing and Photography. He has already given his preliminary trials but according to the schedule, his final trial for both the activities is on the same day, July 15.
But Bhakti Gandhi seems satisfied with her ECA trials.
I took part in Indian Classical Dance which was held at Keshav Mahavidyala. It is difficult to get ready in classical dance clothes every other day for every trial. I thought that the centralised trials were good for me. I had to prepare only once, said Gandhi.
The final list of candidates selected from the trials will be uploaded on website on July 19.
Leader of the Opposition in Delhi Assembly Vijender Gupta on Tuesday said that he got a threat to life through a phone call on his PAs number this weekend.
He filedan FIR with Prashant Vihar Police Station. On Sunday, his PA received a call from an unknown number. The person told my PA to inform me that I escaped two attacks but my life will not be spared in the third attempt. The caller threatened that increase in security on howsoever large scale will not help, said Gupta.
Gupta added that he has been threatened three times so far. He alleged that these threatening calls might have been made at the behest of Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal. "But such calls can't scare me. I will be exposing another big scam of the Kejriwal government soon. I would continue to expose the AAP government's wrong doings despite threats to my life," he said.
Gupta said that since he became the Leader of the Opposition and started exposing the dark deeds of Kejriwal government, he has been receiving threat calls.
The recent threat call was the fourth in the series. Sometimes callers identify themselves as the AAP workers. They threaten that either I should stop speaking against the AAP government or be ready to face the consequences, he said.
In June, I was threatened with dire consequences via a international call. Sometime ago, goons tried to atrack my vehicle after I left my home in Pandara Park, but I was saved due the presence of mind of my driver.
Delhi Water Minister Kapil Mishra on Monday had launched a campaign against Gupta for his failure to convince Anti-Corruption Branch to take action against former chief minister Sheila Dikshit in water tanker scam.
Terming the campaign 'no jail no mooch', he asked Gupta to either get Dikshit arrested or shave off his moustache.
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A surge in Chinese visitors helped to offset a drop in visitor nights at commercial accommodation in New Zealand in May, according to figures from the government statistics agency.
International guest nights were up 9.7 percent year on year in May, while domestic guest nights fell by 6.4 percent, Statistics New Zealand said Tuesday.
Overall, total national guest nights for May were down just 0.4 percent year on year.
"International guest nights continued to rise strongly, but were offset in May by a fallback in domestic guest nights," business indicators senior manager Neil Kelly said in a statement.
"May 2015 was a record May month for domestic and total guest nights."
Visitor arrivals numbered 193,600 in May, a new May record, Statistics New Zealand said last month.
For only the second time on record, tourist arrivals from China at 22,200 exceeded those from Australia at 20,200.
The only other time when arrivals from China surpassed those from Australia was February 2015.
For the year ended May, national guest nights were up 5.3 percent from the May 2015 year.
Hailing the Supreme Court verdict restoring the Congress government in Arunachal Pradesh as "historic", the Congress today demanded the immediate sacking of Governor Jyoti Prasad Rajkhowa and apology from all those involved in the decision.
Congress also demanded a probe into a tape-recorded conversation of some BJP leaders and a businessmen, handed over as proof to the court, for toppling the Arunachal Government.
"We want the Governor to submit his resignation immediately and if he does not do so, we will ask for him to be dismissed both outside and inside Parliament," senior Congress leader Kapil Sibal said.
"I have heard that Rajkhowa is on leave, he should go on long leave," he further said.
Sibal also demanded an apology from Union Ministers who were involved in the decision of imposition of President's Rule in the state.
"I also demand an apology from Central government ministers who were part of the conspiracy to topple the government," he said.
Sibal also demanded that there be a thorough probe into the alleged taped conversations of BJP leaders with a businessman conspiring to topple the Congress government in the state with the same "alacrity" as one initiated against Harish Rawat in Uttarakhand.
He said "this particular decision of the Supreme Court is historic in every sense of the word, because never before in the history of this country has the Supreme Court restored the status quo ante, having stuck down actions of Constitutional authorities by using unconstitutional means to bring down governments".
Saluting the Supreme Court verdict, Sibal said, "I believe that their attempt at a 'Congress-Mukt Bharat' has not succeeded, will not succeed because there is somebody out there who is looking after the values of the Constitution to save democracy, to protect it and we salute that authority which is the Supreme Court of India."
"I salute the Supreme Court for having upheld constitutional values on the basis of which only democracy can survive," he said.
Sibal also said this is a message to this Government and also to Governors holding constitutional positions not to use the constitution "for the benefit of the party ruling in India i.e. the BJP and if unfortunately the Governors start doing this, then it is a real threat to democracy".
Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has convened a special Cabinet meeting in Lahore on Friday to discuss the "deteriorating situation" in the violence-hit Kashmir and chalk out "future course of action" on the issue.
"The Cabinet will discuss the oppressive actions of Indian security forces against innocent civilians and the over all situation in Kashmir after the brutal assassination of Burhan Wani," the Prime Minister's Office said in a statement.
The meeting at the Governor House in Lahore will discuss the "rapidly deteriorating situation" in Kashmir and the Prime Minister will chalk out "future course of action" on the issue, it said.
The statement also noted that on the directions of the Prime Minister, the foreign office summoned Indian high commissioner to the foreign office and conveyed "strong concerns of the Pakistani government and people on rapidly deteriorating human rights situation in Kashmir and increasing oppression by Indian security forces."
It said that a detailed briefing was also given to ambassadors of all permanent members of UN security council of UN "regarding atrocities of the security forces."
India had asked Pakistan to refrain from interfering in its internal affairs after Sharif issued a statement expressing "shock" at the killing of Hizbul commander Burhan Wani.
Sharif today said the "voice and struggle" of the people of Kashmir cannot be suppressed through use of "brutal force and human rights abuses".
He said this during a meeting with PoK Parliament Special Committee Chairman and Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam Fazal (JUI-F) President Maulana Fazlur Rehman in Lahore.
During the meeting, Rehman apprised the Prime Minister on his recent talks with separatist leaders over the "human rights violations" by Indian military and paramilitary forces in Jammu and Kashmir.
Rehman said the "Kashmiri leadership looks towards Pakistan in difficult times", according to an official statement.
Sharif said, "The government and people of Pakistan respect the sentiments of their Kashmiri brethren and will continue to support the Kashmir cause at each and every forum internationally come what may."
"The resolution of the Jammu and Kashmir dispute is only possible by the realisation of the right to self-determination of the people of Jammu and Kashmir, as per the UNSC resolutions, through a fair and impartial plebiscite under UN auspices," Sharif said.
Meanwhile, Foreign Secretary also briefed the Islamabad-based Ambassadors of the member countries of the OIC Contact Group on Jammu and Kashmir (Azerbaijan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Niger) over the situation in the Valley.
In the meeting, Pakistan called on the OIC member states to raise their voice against "the blatant human rights violations" of Kashmiri Muslims.
The Foreign Secretary also briefed the Ambassadors of the European Union over the situation and emphasised the need for a fair and transparent inquiry against individuals responsible for these killings.
Facing Opposition heat, Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah today announced a judicial probe into the alleged suicide by a DySp, which has raised a political storm in the state.
As his government came under severe attack over alleged suicide by Mangaluru DySp M K Ganapathy, Siddaramaiah made the announcement in the Legislative Assembly, which has been rocked by the issue for the last three days.
Siddaramaiah said the judicial commission would be headed by a retired High Court judge and the report would come out within six months.
He rejected the demand for a probe by CBI, being demanded by BJP which is gunning for the resignation of Minister for Urban Development K J George, named by the deceased police official along with two top police officers for his extreme step.
Ganapathy(51) was found hanging from the ceiling fan in a room at a lodge in Madikeri on July seven, prior to which he gave an interview to a local TV channel, saying the minister and A M Prasad (IG-Intelligence) and Pranab Mohanty (IGP-Lokayukta) would be responsible "if anything happens to me."
Rejecting the charges against him in the Assembly yesterday, George, Minister for Bengaluru Development, had said he was ready to face any punishment if an inquiry finds him guilty and was ready to resign if the Chief Minister asks for it.
The Minister had also claimed that he was being targeted for belonging to minority community.
Government had earlier announced a probe by CID into the incident, which came just three days after the body of another DySP of Chikkamagaluru sub-division Kallappa Handibag (35), accused of kidnapping a person for ransom, was found hanging in his father-in-law's home at Murgod in Belagavi district.
Prior to that, Ballari district Kudligi DySp Anupama Shenoy had resigned her post over alleged interference by the then district in charge minister Parameshwar Naik, who was removed in the recent major ministry reshuffle.
Congress also demanded the immediate sacking of Governor Jyoti Prasad Rajkhowa and demanded an apology from all those involved in the decision of toppling the government.
Government said it will do a "structured examination" of the order and its implications before making a detailed response.
Putting up a brave front, BJP tried to deflect the criticism saying the political crisis in the state was an outcome of Congress' internal fight and claimed that the order is not a setback to the party.
Top Congress leaders Sonia and Rahul Gandhi targeted Prime Minister Narendra Modi with the party president asserting that those who trampled upon constitutional propriety and democratic norms stand defeated today.
Rahul Gandhi took a dig at Modi as he thanked the apex court for "explaining to him (PM) what democracy is".
"Those who had trampled upon constitutional propriety and democratic norms have been defeated today. This judgement, that firmly establishes the democratic values enshrined in our constitution, will deter the Union Government from any further misuse of power," Sonia said in a statement.
She also welcomed the "historic" verdict reinstating the "democratically elected and unconstitutionally removed" government.
Former Chief Minister and Congress leader Nabam Tuki, whose government was dismissed, said the order has protected democracy and ensured that justice prevails.
"It paves the way to protect healthy democracy in the country," Tuki said.
Delhi Chief Minister and AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal also hit out at the government.
"SC judgement is yet another tight slap on dictatorial Modi govt. Hope Modi ji would learn and now stop interfering in democratically elected governments," Kejriwal tweeted.
The apex court ordered that status quo ante that prevailed on December 15, 2015 be restored in Arunachal Pradesh Assembly.
The judgement is seen as a major setback to the central government and the BJP, which is extending outside support to the Pul government.
Trying to play down the impact on BJP, party's national secretary Shrikant Sharma said,"What happened in Arunachal was an outcome of internal fight within Congress. Its government was reduced to minority after a faction within the party rebelled. We only supported the faction's bid for power from the outside. Congress should not blame us for its internal problems.
"Rahul Gandhi is talking about democracy but he should know that past Congress governments have made a century of the use of Article 356 (of the Constitution) to dismiss state governments."
Uttarakhand Chief Minister Harish Rawat, who had also got relief from the apex court, lauded the verdict.
"My heartfelt gratitude to the Supreme Court for restoring Cong government in Arunachal Pradesh. Judiciary has restored faith of people in democracy," Rawat said in a social media post.
The government said it will do a "structured examination" of the Supreme Court order restoring the dismissed Congress government in Arunachal Pradesh and its implications before making a detailed response.
However, Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad put a poser over developments in the state after December 15, including the withdrawal of President's Rule and Kalikho Pul proving his majority subsequently in the Assembly following the "legislative procedures" and forming the government.
"We are yet to get the order. We will study it in detail... and then make structured response. We will do a structured examination of the order. It requires detailed consideration," Prasad told reporters at the Cabinet briefing.
"We will carefully study the judgement and its implications," he said.
Noting it was "probably the first time" that President's rule imposed by a Central Government has been reversed by Supreme Court, CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury described the verdict as "very, very big indictment" of the Modi dispensation.
He demanded that Centre take action against those responsible for the "continuous transgressions" of Constitutional structure, first in Uttarakhand and then in Arunachal Pradesh.
"In both the instances (Uttarakhand and Arunachal) the apex court had to intervenethe government should learn to curb its authoritarian tendencies which have been increasing in the past and we will demand fixing of accountabilities and consequent action in Parliament," Yechury told reporters.
CPI National secretary D Raja termed the verdict as "slap on government's face and victory of democracy."
Congress also demanded a probe into a tape-recorded conversation of some BJP leaders and a businessmen, handed over as proof to the court, for toppling the Arunachal government.
"We want the Governor to submit his resignation immediately and if he does not do so, we will ask for him to be dismissed both outside and inside Parliament. I have heard that Rajkhowa is on leave, he should go on long leave," senior Congress leader Kapil Sibal said.
Meanwhile Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Kalikho Pul said that there was no threat to his government as the required numbers are with him and it will be decided on the floor of the Assembly.
Pul, who had led the Congress rebels then, said, "(Our) government will remain. That will be decided on the floor of the Assembly. Government runs only with the numbers. There is no threat to our government," he told reporters.
He also said that a review petition will be filed in the Supreme Court seeking reconsideration of it verdict.
Terming the verdict as historic, JD(U) spokesperson K C Tyagi said it was "major blow" to the BJP-led central government. "The Supreme Court's decision has exposed the central government's move to impose BJP rule by crushing an elected government.
"It had done the same in Uttrakhand to destabilise the Harish Rawat government. It shows BJP's mindset towards cooperative federalism," he said, adding the truth has prevailed.
Opposition today hit out at the Modi government over the Supreme Court's verdict on Arunachal Pradesh with Congress President Sonia Gandhi saying it will deter it from "misuse of power" and AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal calling the order a "tight slap" on its "dictatorial tendencies".
Grappling with the international tribunal's verdict quashing its claims over the South China Sea, China today turned down US advise to follow India's example of settling its maritime row with Bangladesh by implementing the judgement saying that there is "no comparison" between the two cases.
"There is a premise for the settlement of the relevant territorial dispute between India and Bangladesh through arbitration, that is, the two respected each other's sovereign wills and reached an agreement on the arbitration request through consultation," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang told PTI here.
"It is not like imposing one party's will on the other" unlike the Philippines which "unilaterally" filed the petition in Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA), he said in response to question over US Assistant Secretary of Defence for East Asia Abraham Denmark's recent comments that China should follow India's example of resolving its maritime boundary dispute with Bangladesh by implementing the award by a similar tribunal appointed by the PCA.
India accepted the award which was given in favour of Bangladesh to resolve the over 40-year maritime row.
The tribunal awarded Bangladesh 19,467 sq km of area in Bay Bengal in 2014. "To India's great credit, it accepted the decision and has abided by it, noting at the time that settlement of the issue would enhance mutual understanding and goodwill between the two countries. This is an example we would encourage China to follow," Denmark told lawmakers at a Congressional hearing in Washington last week.
"The arbitral tribunal's upcoming ruling will present an opportunity for those in the region to determine whether the Asia-Pacific's future will be defined by adherence to international laws and norms that have helped keep the peace and enabled it to prosper, or whether the region's future will be determined by raw calculations of power," Denmark said.
China however emphatically rejected the verdict questioning the legality of the tribunal.
Lu said previous Philippines President Benigno S Aquino unilaterally opted for arbitration and "imposed" it on China.
"By doing that the Aquino administration severely violated the agreement between China and Philippines and the consensus in the region, breached relevant provisions under UN Convention on Law of Seas (UNCLOS), infringed upon China's right as a sovereign state and state party to UNCLOS to resolve disputes by means of its own choice and went against international law," he said.
"Therefore there is no comparison between the two things," he said.
China claims almost all of the South China Sea but its claims are fiercely contested by the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan.
Pan-Asia a term that includes diverse Asian countries like China, Japan, India, Indonesia besides several others, offers just as many varieties in terms of its cuisine. From our curries to the kibbeh and shawarma from the Middle East and noodles and bok choy from East Asia, the variety is humongous. Offering a fragment of that variety is Gurgaons Asia Seven at Ambience Mall. With its new Pan-Asian menu, the restaurant has added traditional dishes from countries of China, Thailand, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Vietnam and Myanmar.
Metrolife was welcomed with a refreshing mocktail Orange and Peach Punch. While the dumpling range forms the heart of their menu, their culinary repertoire is much broader with a variety of rice and noodle, wok-fried seafood and juicy spiced meat, all showcasing fresh seasonal produce. We started with the dumplings From the juicy Steamed Chicken Dumplings, crunchy Broccoli, Crunchy Almond, the Schezwan Chicken Dumpling to Crystal Veg Dumplings and the Veg Spicy Peanut Dumpling to the Chicken Chocolate Dumpling, the variety in the Dimsums Small Bites startled us, but in a good way.
We then moved on to taste their Sushi and Tempura Flakes with Mayo which was lighter on the stomach. Alongside the food bites, we ordered a Coffee Toffee, a refreshing, cold and soothing coffee dose.
But it was the Thai flavoured Whole Red Snapper in your Style priced at 1,299 with chilli oyster sauce and butter pepper garlic, which we think is an unmissable dish on their menu. The presentation of the fish is its highlight. We also tried their Thai style pineapple and ginger fried rice Khao Phad Supparot which had a sweetened taste, and left us wanting for more. The other options were duck pancakes, chicken and mushroom bao, pork in chu hu sauce, Asia Seven Panang curry, lamb chop, pomfret along with seafood.
Korean Kimchi fried rice along with the traditional pickle was a taste that might not appeal if you havent tasted it before.
As time for desserts came, we opted for Homemade coconut ice-cream. A coconut lover would gorge on this for sure. So we picked up New York cheesecake served with Yuzu cream and mixed berry compote that summed up our hearty meal.
Recipe
Soya Chaap Biryani
Ingredients
*Basmati rice - (500 gms)
*Soya chaap dices - 20 pcs
*Onion - 3/4 cup thinly sliced (500 gms)
*Green chilli 3-4slit
*Fresh green peas - 1/4 cup (50 gms ) (you can use frozen peas also)
*Thin coconut milk -1 3/4 cup (100 ml)
*Fresh lemon juice 2 tbsp
*Salt
*Turmeric powder -1/4 tsp
*Kashmiri chilli powder - 1 tsp
*Garam masala powder -1 tsp
For Biryani masala
*Onion - 1 medium size
*Ginger - 1 inch piece
*Garlic -3-4 cloves
*Green chilli - 1 small
*Coriander leaves 1 sprig
*Mint leaves 2 sprigs
*Mustard oil : 3 tsp
*For tempering/seasoning whole spices
*Oil - 2 tbsp
*Cinnamon - 1 inch piece
*Cloves - 4
*Green and black cardamom 2 each
*Bay leaf - 1
Preparation
*Soak basmati rice in water for 15 minutes.
*Drain the water completely and keep it aside.
*Take the frozen soya chaap and thaw it.
*Squeeze it completely to drain off excess water content.
*Marinate it with onion paste ginger, green chilli coriander and mint leaves. Pour mustard oil, garam masala , chilli powder turmeric and salt. Let it remain for 90 minutes. Now cut soya chaap into two and keep it aside. Grind the ingredients mentioned under grinding and keep it ready. This is the masala. (onion, ginger, garlic, green chilli, coriander and mint leaves)
Method
*Heat oil in a lagan (kadahai), add the ingredients mentioned under seasoning the whole spices .
*Add thinly sliced onions, green chillies and saute until onions turn golden brown.
*Now add the ground paste and saute until the raw flavour goes.
*Add peas, turmeric spowder, chilli powder, garam masala powder and the marinated soya chaap chunks.
*Saute for two-three minutes and then add the drained rice. Saute for a minute, add lemon juice, thin coconut milk and salt needed. Mix well and close the lagan for dum without weight. Keep the flame in medium. When dum is over add kewra water and rose water for aroma. Serve it with salad or gravy and raita. Cooking time
is 20 minutesChef Mahesh Executive chef at Bengaluru Marriott Hotel, Whitefield
Displaced Kashmiri Pandit (KP) employees who left the Valley at night and arrived at Jammu, today said they will not return to become "sitting ducks for target practice of teenage stonepelters".
Over 200 employees from various KP colonies in the Valley where they were posted under the Prime Minister Special Employment package in 2008, narrated incidents of stonepelting by teenagers, even females, stopping of milk and other supplies and the failure of security forces, despite distress calls from the PMO to the CMO and DGP.
"We have decided not to join our jobs. The governments at the Centre and the state have failed to protect us, despite distress calls from the Prime Minister's Office. There was no security deployment around our camp despite stonepelting by teenagers," Sarita Kumari, a government employee posted in south Kashmir and living in Vessu transit accommodation, told reporters here.
Tears rolling down her cheeks, she narrated the horror at night and periodic stonepelting by teenagers, even females, which she said were unseen in the past. "We are asking the Centre whether we are sitting ducks for teenage stonepelters in Kashmir," she said.
The KP employees said they had high hopes from the Narendra Modi and Mehbooba Mufti governments that they will protect them as they had volunteered to go to the Valley and serve the Kashmiri society, despite opposition from within the community.
Veena, living in Sheikhpora Budgam transit accommodation, said, "The community should support our cause. We cannot serve in Kashmir again. How can we teach those who resort to stonepelting."
"The Central and state governments have failed to protect a handful of KP employees in different transit accommodations even as they talk of bringing back seven lakh KPs to Kashmir with honour and dignity," said King Charanjeev whose wife Shashi works as a teacher in the Valley.
"KP employees were put under lock-and-key in Mattan transit accommodation and were not allowed to leave for their homes in Jammu. Are we sacrificial goats?" he asked.
"Milk and other supplies were stopped to the KP colonies by traders for the last few days," he alleged.
The KP employees hit out at the Kashmiri Muslim society and separatists for their statements to the international community that Pandits were welcome and the society would protect them in their homes in Kashmir.
"Kashmiri mainstream leaders, civil society and separatists did not stop the attacks on KP colonies. Nobody helped us. These are the people who used to ask Pandits to come back to the Valley where they would protect them. We were targeted the way it had happened in 1990," said Sandeep Kumar.
Sanjay Kumar, whose wife and family are still stuck in the troubled Haal transit accommodation, alleged, "The Haal employees colony was attacked by stonepelting mobs dozens of times during three days. The river was diverted to flood the colony to kill the inmates.
"On the fourth day, Rashtriya Rifles troops from Rajouri were brought to protect the area while four days of stonepelting damaged vehicles and window panes of the quarters," he said.
Dheeraj Kumar, a teacher in Kupwara district, Vimalji of Mattan camp and Sunita of Mattan said they will not join services and called for a fool-proof security set-up in the Valley.
KP organisations hit out at the Centre and state for attacks on the community across Kashmir and threatened to recall all the employees from the Valley if the governments failed to instill confidence among them.
"We would recall all the employees to Jammu. They should sit with their families here. Are we waiting for Pandits to get killed in Kashmir?" asked RK Bhat, President, Youth All India Kashmiri Samaj (YAIKS).
YAIKS has called a meet of distressed KP employees along with leaders of a number of organisations to chart out a white paper on the 2016 unrest and targeting of KPs.
After remaining in Intelligence Bureau(IB) for over 28 years, senior IPS officer A K Patnaik, who is son-in-law of former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, has been appointed as CEO of Natgrid, an integrated intelligence grid.
Patnaik, a 1983 batch IPS officer from Gujarat, was appointed as the new Chief Executive Officer of Natgrid till December 31, 2018, the date of his retirement from the service, according to an official order issued today.
The post had been lying vacant since the contract of Raghu Raman, the first CEO of Natgrid, was not renewed by the NDA government. The post was under the additional charge of former Special Secretary Ashok Prasad till January this year.
With his appointment, Patnaik, who is number three in the Intelligence Bureau, is unlikely to be in the race for the post of IB Director in 2018.
Patnaik, a 1983-batch Gujarat cadre officer, currently posted as Additional Director in the Intelligence Bureau, will be responsible for taking forward the government's efforts to set up the Natgrid, an organisation created after the 26/11 Mumbai attack.
The NATGRID, which is still in nascent stage, in different phases, will connect data providing organisations and users besides developing a legal structure through which information can be accessed by the law enforcement agencies.
In the first phase, 10 user agencies and 21 service providers will be connected, while in later phases about 950 additional organisations will be linked and another over 1,000 organisations in the subsequent years.
These data sources include records related to immigration entry and exit, banking and financial transactions and telecommunications. The agencies include the Intelligence Bureau, local police and revenue and customs departments.
While the clearance for Rs 3,400 crore project from the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) came in 2011, execution of the project slowed down after the exit of Home Minister P Chidambaram in July 2012.
There are around 70 personnel, drawn from both the government and private sectors, in NATGRID.
The Patidar Anamant Andolan Samiti (PAAS), of which Hardik is the convener, has planned to felicitate their leader outside Lajpore jail at around 10 AM on July 15.
As per the schedule released by PAAS today, Hardik will travel to several places during 48 hours after his release before leaving Gujarat for six months.
Last week, the HC paved the way for Hardik's release after granting him bail in two cases of sedition and a case related to violence at Visnagar MLA's office.
While granting him bail in sedition cases, the HC set a condition that Hardik will have to stay outside Gujarat for the next six months.
As per the HC direction, Hardik will have to leave Gujarat within 48 hours after his release from jail. PAAS said that the quota leader will travel to many parts of the state during 48 hours which end before July 17 midnight.
According to PAAS, no decision is taken yet on the place where Hardik will spend six months.
After coming out of jail, Hardik's caravan will pass by different parts of Surat city, including Bhestan, Ring Road, Kapodra, Mini Bazar, and Varachha area, which are mostly dominated by Patels.
"He will then garland Sardar Patel's statues in Bhestan and Mini Bazar areas in the city," PAAS leader Dinesh Bambhaniya said while releasing the schedule.
PAAS has also planned a public gathering at Laxminarayan farm on the outskirts of Surat, subject to permission by police.
"We will arrange our programme as per the law and the instructions of the high court. We will arrange the public gathering only if the police grants us permission" said Bambhaniya, a close aide of Hardik.
From Suart, Hardik would reach Vastral area of Ahmedabad city for night stay.
"On the morning of July 16, he will go to his native place Viramgam to meet his parents. He will be welcomed by a large number of supporters. Hardik will then come back here to complete a formality in city sessions court during afternoon. Then, he will embark on a journey to Botad where he will visit Sarangpur Hanuman temple," said Bambhaniya.
After a road show in Botad, Hardik and his supporters will visit Khodaldham temple in Rajkot district and then Umiyadham temple in Jamnagar district in evening.Both these temples are supreme bodies of Patel community.
"From Umiyadham, Hardik will come back to Viramgam via Morbi at night. On July 17, Hardik will visit some north Gujarat towns such as Chanasma, Patan, Siddhapur, Palanpur, Idar and Vadgam. His journey will finally end at Himmatnagar. Hardik will be felicitated by Patels during his entire journey," said Bambhaniya.
When asked about where Hardik will put up for the next six months, he said, "As of now, no decision is taken about where Hardik will stay after July 17, as we are getting invitation from our supporters from across the country. It will be clear only after Hardik comes out and takes a decision about it."
Meanwhile, senior minister and the Gujarat government spokesperson Nitin Patel said, "I hope that Hardik and his supporters will keep in mind the conditions set by high court while granting bail. They should be careful in organising programmes which could create trouble".
Hardik, who had spearheaded agitation for quota for the Patidar community, was arrested in October 2015. He was accused of inciting violence to put pressure on the government to accept the demand for granting reservation to Patels under the OBC category.
Hardik's mega rally on reservation held in Ahmedabad on August 25 last year had sparked violence, in which 10 people, including one policeman, were killed and public properties and vehicles were destroyed across Gujarat.
Hardik was booked in two cases of sedition in Surat and Ahmedabad, besides under various sections of IPC along with his supporters.
In Visnagar case, Hardik and 17 others were accused of ransacking the office of Visnagar MLA Rishikesh Patel during one of the Patidar community's reservation rallies.
After spending nine months behind bars, quota agitation leader Hardik Patel is all set to walk out of Lajpore jail in Surat on Friday morning, days after the Gujarat High Court granted him bail in cases of sedition and violence pertaining to Patidar stir last year.
Theresa May prepared on Tuesday to take over as Britains prime minister facing a nation in such flux that she has a chance to leave a lasting imprint. But her steady and cautious public profile, and her swift, ultimately unchallenged ascent in the wake of the political chaos set off by the countrys stunning decision to leave the European Union, has left supporters and opponents alike lacking a clear sense of whether she is up to the job.
The task before her is daunting. She must negotiate the terms of the countrys withdrawal from the bloc in a way that minimises the economic damage but lives up to the spirit of the vote, especially in limiting immigration, while at the same time seeking to maintain British influence on the global stage.
She is confronting strains on the continued existence of the United Kingdom as currently constituted, with Scotland again agitating for independence and some republicans in Northern Ireland trying to use the Brexit vote to leave the European Union as reason to advance the cause of unification with Ireland.
And like leaders on both sides of the Atlantic, she is facing populist political forces that are challenging traditional ideologies and electoral coalitions, introducing a volatile element into governance. But the circumstances also provide her with a fair amount of room to manoeuvre.
Nearly every other senior figure in the governing Conservative Party was either sidelined or put in political peril by the vote on Europe, leaving a leadership vacuum that she is now filling with support from across the partys fractious elements. The opposition Labour Party is in disarray and at risk of splitting.
In her one substantive campaign appearance before the rapid sequence of events on Monday that cleared the way for her to take power, she set out a vision of a Conservative government intent on doing much more than decoupling from Europe and eager to seize the political centre. Seeking to address the underlying causes of the vote to leave the union, she suggested that she would address the anxieties and frustrations of the British who feel left behind or imperiled by globalisation and its effects, including inequality.
Within the Conservative Party some of her obvious foes have either been undermined, or have undermined themselves, so she does have a clear opportunity, said Philip Cowley, professor of politics at Queen Mary, University of London. He also said that the Labour Party was almost in an existential crisis and those who are talking about it possibly splitting are not too far off. Cowley said May faced formidable challenges but added that there was a golden rule of sorts in British politics: Dont underestimate Theresa May.
Her transition moved ahead rapidly Tuesday. Prime Minister David Cameron chaired his 215th and final Cabinet meeting, planned to go to Queen Elizabeth II with his resignation after a final appearance before Parliament on Wednesday and was already preparing to move out of No 10 Downing St. to make room for May.
May, though little known internationally and having never held an economic or foreign policy position in government, has assumed office. How she will approach the new job is only starting to emerge because, despite her years in the Cabinet, she has done one job, home secretary, which put her in charge of the Home Office dealing with issues like security, policing and immigration.
In a speech on Monday in Birmingham, England, May outlined some wider ambitions, positioning her to the left of many of her colleagues on economic issues, calling for new mechanisms to curb executive pay and warning big multinational companies that they must pay their share of taxes.
Though May has sometimes been compared to Britains previous female prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, Mays centrist-like speech in Birmingham provoked comparisons to the agenda of former Labour Party leader Ed Miliband. One former Labour adviser, Tom Baldwin, posted on Twitter: Tory PM-elect steals Ed Milibands slogan.
The daughter of a clergyman, May was regarded as a moderniser in the Conservative Party before taking over at the Home Office. In 2002, she told Conservative Party activists that they risked being known as members of the nasty party. Yet the issue of Britains departure from the European Union will almost inevitably define May, too, because her primary task is to negotiate a new relationship with the bloc.
She has made clear that the outcome of the referendum is the final word on Britains membership in the union, but she appears intent on moving cautiously. That is, in part, because she sided with those who wanted to remain, so her every move will be watched closely by those in her party who championed leaving.
A trade-off
One challenge for May is that the country did not vote on a specific plan to replace Britains current relationship with Europe. The problem is that nobody knows what Brexit means, Cowley said. Almost anything she can deliver is going to disappoint somebody perhaps by being insufficiently restrictive on immigration, he said. Some of those who voted for Brexit exp-ecting big cuts in immigration or even repatriation are going to be disappointed, he added.
Talks on the exit are most likely to come down to a trade-off between the amount of access Britain wants to Europes single market of goods and services and the extent to which it curbs the free movement of workers that this entails. While big business will press for access to the single market, May will be under pressure from Brexit supporters to deliver cuts in immigration.
And the longer Britain drifts, the greater the uncertainty for businesses that could postpone investment decisions until things are clearer, potentially pushing the nation into a recession. The financial markets have been encouraged by Mays appointment, but they are not celebrating yet. The speed at which the Conservative Party has rallied around May is heartening and promises greater clarity around upcoming negotiations.
This is probably the most important political development, and a positive one, wrote Eric Lascelles, chief economist at RBC global asset management. On the other hand, tangential Brexit risks have become more dangerous, he added, citing Britains commercial real estate market where there are fears that foreigners will relocate their businesses and homes abroad.
Delivering Brexit will therefore be Mays defining task and, as Cowley puts it, this will hardly be easy. If the pessimistic scenario for Brexit comes true, she is going to be delivering all this against the background of economic difficulty, he added.
Located in north China, a mere 1.5 hours drive from Beijing, Tianjin is a good pick for a travel destination. Built in 1404, the city has long been a major seaport and gateway to the nation's capital and now makes for an important industrial and financial hub in the country.
Tianjin is a good example of a mixture of Chinese and Western features. Its historic European-style architecture, ancient Chinese cultural streets, beautiful coastline and picturesque mountain views attract millions of visitors every year.[China.org.cn/Photo by Lu Yue'e]
Chinas territorial claims over a large part of the South China Sea have been dealt a severe blow with an international tribunal ruling that there is no legal basis for China to claim historic rights to the seas, resources and land falling within the nine-dash line. The verdict represents a sweeping victory for not just the Philippines which took the issue to the arbitration court but also countries like Vietnam, Malaysia etc, that dispute Chinas claims. Beijing has rejected the verdict outright, saying it neither accepts nor recognises it. This is unfortunate given the fact that China is a signatory to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) under which the tribunal at the Hague-based Permanent Court of Arbitration was convened. China chose not to participate in the arbitration proceedings; had it done so it could have placed its arguments before the judges. Still, the tribunal did its best to evaluate Beijings jurisdictional arguments.
When it ratified UNCLOS, like all this treatys members, China had agreed to its binding arbitration clause. Its derisive dismissal of the tribunals verdict now is untenable. It is acting in bad faith. It weakens Chinas claims to being a responsible power. It diminishes UNCLOS and the tribunal, as the latter does not have the power to enforce the verdict.
There is a danger of China responding to the arbitration court verdict by upping the ante. It could aggressively reiterate its claims in South China Sea through stepping up infrastructure development on islands near the Philippines, for instance. It could establish an air defence identification zone over the sea, as it has in the East China Sea, where it would assert its right to intercept aircraft passing through the airspace. Such responses would only deepen tension in the region. China needs to wake up to the fact that its bullying of its neighbours is not working. They are not going to be intimidated into giving up their territorial claims. It is pushing them into a closer embrace of the United States, whose mounting military presence in the South China Sea is hardly in Chinas interest. China and the region would be better off if they used the tribunal verdict as a catalyst for negotiations. The Philippines calm response to its victory in the case provides reason for hope. China must match that with similar restraint and maturity. The verdict lays out a clear bargaining position for the Philippines but Manila must resist the temptation to hold on to the PCA verdict too tightly as that may undermine the opportunity of using the ruling to reach a peaceful settlement.
As the memory of the massacre at Dhaka recedes, examples of bravery are coming to the fore. One of them is that of Faraaz Hossain. He was on a vacation in Dhaka from his college in the US where he was pursuing higher studies. He spent less time at home but used the opportunity to meet his friends from foreign climes at Gulshans famous Spanish restaurant, the Holey Artisan Bakery.
When the Islamic State (IS) terrorists struck, Faraaz was having food with his friends at the restaurant. The IS killers were singling out and separating Bangladeshis from the others before using weapon. They came to the table where Faraaz was sitting. Then they asked him whether he was a Bangla-deshi and, when he said yes, they pushed him aside before asking others about their nationalities.
When all except Faraaz said that they were non-Bangladeshis, they opened fire from the only gun they had among them. Faraaz protested and told them that he was a part of his friends group and would not like to be treated separately. The terrorists then told him that he too would be killed if he did not want to stand aside. Faraaz preferred to stand by his foreign friends. And he knew that the price he would pay could be his possible death. The terrorists showed no mercy and killed all of them.
Today, when the massacre at Dhaka is recalled, people talk about the courage of Faraaz. Probably, this is the only compensation for parents and grandparents whom I know well. In fact, I have had dinner at their house in Dhaka. They lead a simple and austere life.
I had met Faraaz at his grandparents house. I recall exchanging notes with him about America (where I had gone to North Western University to earn an MSc in journalism). He was raw in his attitude but steadfast in his views, even though he belonged to a very wealthy family. There were no airs about him. He was curious to know about India, which he said he would visit at leisure. He was impressed by our composite culture, something which he wanted Bangladesh to cherish because it too has a large number of Hindus, nearly 12 million, making it the country with third largest population of Hindus after India and Nepal.
I have tried to pick up every detail about the killings. There is no doubt that Faraaz sacrificed his life for his foreign friends who were the real targets of the terrorists. This does not make amends for the brutal killing, but it does tell a saga of unbelievable bravery. True, he is mentioned with great respect in every Bangladeshi home and cited as an example of courage, but distraught parents and grandparents can never be consoled. A promising child has been lost from their family.
Such examples of self-sacrifice are by no means unique in the East. They are typical of value systems in the East which do not weigh individuals on the scales of wealth as is the case in the West. Mahatma Gandhi is an example. He preferred to be called a naked faqir, as he was characterised by the West, rather than be known for either wealth or erudition even though he had access to both.
Faraaz may not have been a Gandhi follower but he did represent his spirit and discipline. In India, wherever Faraazs name has been mentioned, people bring in Gandhis name. Had Gandhi been living today, I have no doubt that he would have travelled to victims-stricken Dhaka, just as he went to Noakhali after the fierce riots between Hindus and Muslims in Calcutta. And he would have lauded a person like Faraaz who really represented a figure of noble ideals, decency and sacrifice.
Remember Faraaz
Just as statues of Bhagat Singh have been erected all over India, Faraaz should also be remembered in the entire subcontinent and I am confident that people would name their sons and statues after him, not only in Bangladesh but also in India and elsewhere.
School textbooks should have a chapter on him, not for the purpose of accelerating the idea of Hindu-Muslim unity, but for making the youth feel proud about Faraaz. They should be able to tell the elders that a person like Faraaz has given an example of the true spirit of the youth, as well as a demonstration of culture in the East and its value system.
I wonder how his non-Bangladeshi friends are recalling his memory. They should propagate the example of Faraaz in their own countries so that people of different religions and race feel proud of how an ordinary young man stood by his companions when he could have easily escaped from death. This has nothing to do with a particular religion to which you belong, but represents the core of every religion: faith in the people to rise above parochial considerations and think of humanity as a whole. Unfortunately, India, instead of rising above petty parochial appeals and serve as an example to the world, has become a prey to the propaganda of the fanatic fringe.
Since the advent of Prime Minister Narendra Modis regime, the fringe party is trying to represent the whole. Taslima Nasreen, who was ousted from Bangladesh for having written the story of oppression of women, has asked the followers of Islam to introspect and find out how they have strayed from the real content of the religion. Faraaz would have approved such an approach.
Come to think of it, this is the only approach that is cogent, logical and human. The fanatic fringe among Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs and Christians should be made to realise that India is a tolerant country and those who are trying to disturb the equation among the communities are disfiguring India and all that it stands for.
As expected, the US and South Korea agreed on July 8, 2016, to deploy a Terminal High-Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) battery to be operated by US Forces Bay (USKF), which includes 28,500 US troops based in South Korea. This is likely to worsen Washingtons relations with North Korea and Beijing.
The decision came in response to Pongyangs increasing threat, especially after the nuclear test of January 2016 and subsequent multiple ballistic missile tests. A statement released by the USKF said the decision to deploy the anti-ballistic missile system is a defensive measure to ensure the security of South Korea and its people, and to protect Alliance military forces from North Koreas weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile threats.
South Korea and the US have not yet revealed a location for the THAAD deployment, built by Lockheed Martin Corp. The decision to freeze the final location shall depend upon several considerations such as systems effectiveness, environment, health and safety requirements. A joint US-South Korea working group is preparing to determine the best location for the deployment.
One country that would be utmost unhappy and worried is China, which has long been critical of potential deployment of THAAD, even before the decision was announced about its deployment because of its potential impact on the Chinese offensive missile capabilities in the region.
No sooner than the deployment decision was announced, did China voice resolute oppo-sition against THAAD and strongly urge the US and South Korea to stop. In order to alleviate the concerns of China and possibly Russia, the US-South Korea joint statement clarified that THAAD in Korea would not be directed towards any third party nations.
Though North Korea did not react to the deployment immediately, it did react aggressively to the new sanctions declared by the US Treasury Department for the human rights violations as a declaration of war. The Obama administration has also urged other nations to cut emp-loyment of North Korean workers as a way to reduce Pyong-yangs access to foreign currency.
Opinion in South Korea is divided with some political parties supporting and others opposing. The spokesperson of the ruling Saenuri Party defended the deployment decision because of the threat of North Korean nuclear armaments and missiles including the recent Musudan launch and said that such measures will greatly contribute to our countrys defence and safety of the people. The party also made it clear that it would not be directed towards any third party nation.
The Minjoo Party, however, was critical of the decision, saying that there was not enough discussion on it and questioned the deployments practical use.
The Peoples Party, the second largest opposition party in South Korea, neither opposed nor supported the deployment of the system, but said the government should have considered the likely reaction of Chinas opposition on this matter, and the following financial damage that South Koreans might have to suffer as a result of worsened Sino-South Korea relations before agreeing to the deployment.
Experts opined how effective a single THAAD battery would be as they say that if North Korea launches enough missiles quickly enough, it could potentially either outnumber the THAAD interceptors or outpace the reloading process, or overwhelm the tracking radar, which would not only have to track incoming missiles, but also the interceptors fired by the THAAD battery itself.
Chinas objections
The system was expected to be in operation by the end of 2017. China objects to the THAAD deployment because it suspects the systems radar can reach its territory. It urged both the US and South Korea to put a stop to it. The threat perception in South was heightened when Pyongyang conducted the fourth nuclear test in February and next month launched a rocket to put an object into space orbit.
The UN Security Council condemned the launch, which it felt was a test of a long-range missile in disguise, because North Korea is prohibited from doing so under the Security Council resolutions. Pyongyang has all alo-ng rejected such sanctions, wh-ich it says are an infringement on its sovereignty and the right to space exploration. To up the ante, it again launched in June an intermediate range ballistic missile off its east coast. It was again suspected to be a test that showed some advancement in the weapons engine system.
China fears that THAAD deployment would destabilise the security balance in the region without achieving anything to end the Norths nuclear programme. It warned both the US and South Korea to desist from taking any steps that could complicate the regional situation and harm Chinas strategic interests.
Though the decision to deploy the THAAD system was effectively taken in February, the delay was because of Chinas opposition. The deployment issue is quite sensitive because South Korea and China are one of the largest trading partners and the US traded carefully not to cause damage to this strong economic relationship. Yet, the seriousness of North Korean threat led the US to go ahead to the THAAD deployment. The security situation in the region is likely to get more complicated.
(The writer is ICCR Chair Visiting Professor at Reitaku University, Japan)
In a significant development, several NGOs, Muslim leaders and intellectuals on Wednesday voiced their protest against Islamic preacher Dr Zakir Naik.
Uniting under the banner Muslims for Democracy and Secularism, they said Naik is not a messenger of peace and is instead spreading Saudi-promoted Wahhabism and Salafism.
Zakir is also the founder of Islamic Research Foundation and Peace TV channel.
Whether the televangelist is guilty of complicity in terror activities or not will only be established through an unbiased and fair investigation. But theres no doubt about one thing. Zakir is no messenger of peace. Far from peace, his TV channel promotes contempt, if not hatred, towards other religions and its followers, secularist-activist Javed Anand said at a news conference.
They also played a 15-minute audio with nine clips, in which Zakir is clearly seen speaking against Christianity, Hinduism and Buddhism while not making his stand clear on slain terrorist Osama bin Laden.
He has a very narrow understanding of Islam, said activist Feroze Mithiborwala, adding that Muslim youth need to be warned of Zakirs toxic theology.
Anand said Zakirs understanding of Islam is contrary to what has been preached for centuries in the sub-continent by numerous Sufi saints, including Baba Farid, Hazrat Nizamuddin and Khwaja Moinuddin Chisti.
More than two-and-a-half years after recruiting land surveyors, the Revenue department has now recommended a CID probe into the complaint of question paper leak of the surveyors examination.
Revenue Minister Kagodu Thimmappa has recommended to Chief Minister Siddaramaiah to order a CID probe into the issue. The examination, conducted by the Karnataka Examinations Authority (KEA), was held on October 14 and 15, 2011 to recruit 1,834 surveyors. Around 9,000 candidates had appeared for the examination. The recruitment was done after a gap of 15 years in the state, official sources in the government said.
The Survey Settlement and Land Records (SSLR) department had initially conducted a departmental inquiry and recommended to the government to hand over the case to an investigation agency. Subsequently the government directed the then Mysuru divisional commissioner V Jayanti to look into it and submit a report. The suspected leakage of question papers came to light after some aggrieved candidates from Mysuru faxed a six-page complaint to the SSLR, two days after the examination.
Sources in the SSLR said Thimmappa was briefed on how efforts were made to hush up the issue by misleading his predecessor V Srinivas Prasad. The then divisional commissioner too had found prima facia case and recommended a CID probe after conducting a preliminary inquiry in 2014. But the government chose to turn a blind eye and went ahead with the appointment of the surveyors, the sources added.
The complainants had provided many evidences to substantiate their charges. They had specifically said that the Paper II, the examination for which was held on October 15 was leaked. A copy of the leaked question paper (along with an answer key) was sold for Rs one lakh each a day before the examination. About 300 candidates in Bengaluru, Mysuru, Tumakuru, Hassan and Dakshina Kannada districts had bought the question paper. Names and register numbers of some of these candidates were also mentioned in the complaint.
A copy of the answer key sold to the candidates was also attached, with a request to cross-check it with the answer papers of the candidates who had indulged in malpractice. The regional commissioner had found that about 300 candidates had correctly answered all the 150 questions (multiple-choice questions) and, surprisingly, all their answers were identical.
Interestingly, as many as 1,182 of the 1,669 recruited candidates failed to pass an eligibility test conducted by the SSLR six months after the recruitment. The test was held after imparting six months of intense training. Even those who had secured top 10 ranks in the KEA examination were among those who failed the test, the sources said.
The situation in Kashmir continues to remain on edge as one person was killed in firing on Wednesday evening and two more died of injuries, taking the toll to 35.
The chances of an early return to normalcy dissipated as separatists extended the strike call for two more days. Most of the violence-hit areas remained under curfew for the fifth straight day on Wednesday.
Reports said the protesters defied restrictions and fought pitched battles with police and paramilitary forces, throughout the valley. The cops fired teargas and peppergas shells to disperse the youth who hurled stones on them. Clashes and stone pelting continued in different areas.
Stray and intermittent incidents of stone pelting continued throughout the day, as protesters blocked many important roads by burning tyres.
A police spokesperson claimed that the situation remained by and large peaceful. Protesters attacked the police and paramilitary camps at several places. However, the forces maintained the maximum restraint and there was no incident of casualty from anywhere, he said.
Since violence followed the death of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani on Friday evening, the number of injured, according to official sources, crossed 1,500, and of these over 300 are being treated at Srinagar hospitals.
The police took hardline Hurriyat leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani and moderate Hurriyat leader Mirwaiz Umar Farooq into preventive custody, when they tried to march towards the martyrs graveyard in the Old City area of Naqshbandh Sahab.
Karnataka State Womens Commission has condemned the tarnishing the image of DySP M K Ganapathis wife Pavana by stating that their marital discord was responsible for his suicide.
Commissions chairperson Manjula Manasa told reporters here that Pavana is mentally weak following her husbands death. Ministers should issue responsible statements.
Personally, I am also pained at the statements made against her. This is an insult to the women of the whole state.I will write a letter to the Legislative Assembly Speaker not to allow such statements in the House,she added.
She said she could not visit Madikeri due to a tour planned earlier. I tried, but could not contact Pavana.I will soon meet her and extend her moral support. Manasa said the government has handed over Ganapathis suicide case to the CID for investigation and the truth would come out after the probe.
She said the commission would have intervened if it was informed about refusal of Kushalnagar police to receive a complaint from Pavana and her son.
Manasa termed the insult to Mysuru Deputy Commissioner C Shikha as wrong. No one is bigger than the law, she added. She said the Ballari SP has been directed to appear before the commission for trial in connection with a complaint given by former DySP Anupama Shenoy.
Minister of State for Labour and Employment Bandaru Dattatreya told G-20 summit on employment that the Modi government will go ahead with labour law amendments.
He said it was needed to generate employment. Addressing the meeting of employment ministers at Beijing, Dattatreya made a case for changing labour laws.
This was the second international forum where the labour minister reiterated the resolve of the Modi government of amending labour laws.
Watching television, catching up with old times, singing bhajans and songs and having their dinner together were the activities of the legislators of the Opposition parties - the BJP and the JD(S) - till late in the night on Wednesday.
They began their day-night dharna in both the Houses of the legislature seeking resignation of Bengaluru Development Minister K J George on DySP Ganapathi suicide case.
Secretariats of the Assembly and Council had made arrangements for the night stay of the members by providing bed sheets, blankets and pillows besides dinner. The MLCs were asked to have dinner at a room adjoining the Council hall, while it was served in the lobby for the MLAs. In the Assembly, vegetarian food including chapati, rice dishes and gravy were served.
The secretariat also deputed medical staff, aside from ensuring medicine and ambulance services. Jammers in both the Houses were switched off to facilitate phone calls by members. Media was not allowed into the lobby. Both the parties allowed their women legislators to go home.
As the members were given access to cable TV in the lounges of both the Houses, they spent their time watching panel discussions and news updates on TV channels. The BJP members sat together and sang bhajans for some time.
After a long time, all of us are getting to spend some time together. We have been sitting and talking about both the current developments and the old times, said JD(S) MLA G T Devegowda. A majority of the legislators went home to change or get their night clothes and returned.
The last time that the Opposition staged an all-night protest was when they demanded the government to order a CBI probe into the death of IAS officer D K Ravi. The BJP and the JD(S) members had stayed in the Assembly for one whole night on March 17, 2015 seeking a CBI probe.
In November 2013, B S Yeddyurappa, who was then the KJP president had staged an all-night dharna for two nights demanding an extension of Shaadi Baghya scheme to all communities. The session was then held in Belagavi. Prior to that, the Opposition parties had staged a night dharna on July 12, 2010 over the illegal mining issue.
However, JD(S) leader H D Kumaraswamy did not take part in the overnight dharna as he left for Mysuru to resume his sons film shooting.
Session may end on Friday
There was speculation in political circles on Wednesday that if the Opposition continues with its day-night dharna until Friday, then the government may get the budget proposals and bills passed amid the din and adjourn both the Houses sine die. The budget proposals have to be passed before July 31 as the legislature had only given its approval for a four-month vote-on-account in March.
Flash
U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter who paid a surprise visit to Afghanistan on Tuesday reassured Washington's long-term support to the militancy-plagued country.
Addressing a joint press conference with President Ashraf Ghani, the Pentagon chief said the message of his tour here to the people of Afghanistan is the "U.S. would continue to remain alongside Afghans" to win the war on terror and achieve lasting peace and prosperity.
This is the third visit of the Pentagon chief to Afghanistan since assuming office and the first one since conclusion of NATO summit in Warsaw on July 9, during which the military alliance decided to continue funding Afghan security forces until 2020, besides keeping the Resolute Support mission beyond its already once extended target date at the end of 2016.
Nearly 13,000 foreign forces are currently stationed in Afghanistan for the NATO-led Resolute Support (RS) mission to help Afghan forces in the field of training, advising and backing Afghan troops in the war on insurgents.
However, the U.S. president has already announced to keep 8,400 troops in Afghanistan to help Afghan forces in the war against increasing militancy in the country.
"Maintaining U.S. forces presence in Afghanistan of 8,400 troops will enhance our ability to continue progress on our missions here in Afghanistan, training, advising and assisting Afghan forces, so they can secure their nation," said the Pentagon chief.
Replying a question, the defense secretary described terrorism as a threat to Pakistan, Afghanistan and the world at large and added that the U.S. would continue to track down and target terrorists.
Speaking at the press conference, President Ghani said, "Terrorists and the enemies are deemed to defeat and they cannot win on battle ground."
Leader of the Opposition in the Assembly Jagadish Shettar on Wednesday accused the government of trying to shut the DySP M K Ganapathi suicide case by playing the minority card.
Fiercely opposing the judicial probe ordered into the case, Shettar said, Alpa sankhyatara hesaru heli, bara khoon maaf!. The government is trying to absolve itself of the murder by playing the minority card, he said. Stating that the government is adopting double standards, the BJP leader Shettar said that his party is not targeting Bengaluru Development Minister K J George because he belonged to a minority community but because Ganapathi had named him. Did you (Chief Minister Siddaramaiah) drop dalit leader Srinivas Prasad and minority leader Qamar-ul-Islam, because of the BJPs politics? he asked.
When Siddaramaiah took objection to this statement, Shettar continued by saying that concerted efforts were being made to protect George. He (George) is in the kitchen cabinet. The Congress will drop anybody, but not George. All kinds of efforts are being made to protect him, he said.
JD(S) leader H D Kumaraswamy said that the case would not gain any merit till an FIR is registered based on Ganapathis son Nehals complaint. The BJP MLA from Madikeri and former Speaker K G Bopaiah said that if the government remained obstinate, then Ganapathis wife Pavana too would be forced to take an extreme step. But the Congress took objection to his comment stating that it would amount to instigation.
Shettar and Kumaraswamy later told the media that they would stage a dharna inside the legislature, as long as the session begins.
What CM said on the case
*It is impossible to believe that Ganapathi was harassed by his senior officers
*Ganapathis father Kushalappas statement has been videographed
*Ganapathi never worked under IPS officers Pronab Mohanty and A M Prasad
*When Ganapathi was Inspector at Madiwala station (East), Mohanty was Joint Commissioner, West division (Crime)
*There is no truth in the complaint that Mohanty demanded money from Ganapathi
*George and two police officers had never troubled Ganapathi
*George in his career has not troubled any officer
*There is no procedural delay or mistake in handling the suicide case
The Appointments Committee of the Cabinet (ACC) has rejected for the second time former HRD minister Smriti Iranis choice of candidates for the post of CBSE chairman.
Moreover, the high-level panel, headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has curtailed the Human Resource Development (HRD) Ministrys future role in the appointment of the Central Board of Secondary Educations (CBSE) chairman by deciding to fill up the vacant post now under the Central Staffing Scheme.
The Department of Personnel & Training (DoPT) has conveyed to the Ministry about the ACCs decision taken recently. The ministry received a letter from the (Department of Personnel and Training) DoPT today (on Wednesday), official sources confirmed.
This comes within a week after the prime minister shifted Irani from the HRD Ministry to the Ministry of Textile.
Smriti had marked Sarvendra Vikram Bahadur Singh, director of the State Council Educational Research and Training in Lucknow, as her top choice for the post of the CBSE chief in a list of the names of three candidates sent to the DoPT in June when she was the HRD minister.
National University of Educational Planning and Administration professor Kamalakanta Biswal and additional principal director in the education wing of the Indian Navy, Khurram Shahzad Noor, were two other names that figured in Smritis list of candidates then sent by the HRD Ministry to the DoPT for ACC clearance.
The ACC, however, rejected the ministrys recommendation and decided to fill the CBSE chairmans post from CSS, putting in abeyance the current recruitment rules, official sources said. The ACC earlier rejected the name of Satbir Bedi, an Indian Administrative Service officer deployed as a joint secretary at the HRD Ministry, on the grounds that she did not fulfil the basic criteria of having worked with the department of education for at least three years.
Deputy Commissioner J Sathyavathi conducted a public grievance meeting at the DCs office hall in Chikkamagaluru on Wednesday.
Sathyavathi directed the officials of all departments to work responsibly in solving the problems of people. She assured to direct the officials to ban the movement of timber lorries which has been spoiling the roads, till the end of the monsoon.
The DC asked the concerned committee to submit the primary report related to the non-disbursement of compensation for the land owners whose lands have been acquired towards Ambedkar Bhavan. The committee compromises of the Assistant Commissioner, the CMC Commissioner and the Social Welfare Officer.
An ex-servicemen complained that only four acres out of the nine acre land sanctioned to him in Hosalli village in Tarikere taluk has been given. Bhadravathi DCF said that he will seek a report from the officials concerned in this regard.
Villagers of Shirvase and neighbouring villages said that power disruption has become a common problem.
Complaints were raised concerning cheating the construction workers by collecting more amount in the pretext of providing identity cards issued by the labour department. The DC directed the Assistant Commissioner and Assistant Labour Commissioner to initiate steps to solve the issue.
A total of 22 applications were received and six of them were solved on the spot.
Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Wednesday said that if the late police officer M K Ganapathis wife Pavana was hurt by the government quoting her father-in-laws statement, he regretted it.
While replying to a discussion in the Legislative Assembly on Ganapathis suicide, Siddaramaiah said the government in its statement on the suicide case had only reproduced the statement by Kushalappa, the father of the late officer. I regret if the statement has caused her agony. We have no ulterior motive. Kushalappa had given a voluntary statement after Ganapathis death. We are also human beings. We dont want to hurt anyone, he said.
On Tuesday, Pavana had said that she was planning to move the Karnataka State Human Rights Commission and State Womens Commission taking exception to Home Minister G Parameshwaras statement on her husbands death.
Parameshwara had said in the Assembly that a case of unnatural death has been registered by the police based on the statement of Ganapathis father. Kushalappa had said that Ganapathi had faced domestic problems and was thus mentally disturbed. But, later he had retracted his statement.
On Tuesday, Kushalappa had said that an FIR should be registered against Bengaluru Development Minister K J George and IPS officers Pronab Mohanty and A M Prasad based on the complaint filed by his daughter-in-law Pavana and grandson Nehal.
Pavana had said that the government was trying to kill her by saying that her husband was depressed over a troubled relationship with his wife.
Denying that the government failed to inform Pavana about Ganapathis suicide, Siddaramaiah said the police had called her twice on July 7, around 10.40 pm and later at 11 pm. She had informed the police that she was on her way to Madikeri from Mangaluru. There are evidences to establish that the calls were made, he added.
With good spell of rains in Kodagu region, water has started filling the KRS dam, which had reached an alarming level since summer. However, compared to last year, the water level on July 12, is 14 feet less.
Meanwhile, farmers of the region have started exerting pressure to release water into the canals to enable agricultural activities. Last year, water was released into the canals by July 9. But, this year, no steps have been taken in this regard.
Water released from the KRS dam to Tamil Nadu has also irked the farming community in the district. They have been staging protests, demanding to stop water to the neighbouring state.
The meeting of the Cauvery Irrigation Consultative Committee is scheduled to be held on July 15. Discussion on the water level, canal works and other issues would be held during the meeting. The farmers, who were hoping that the water would be released by July 20, have raised doubts about it now.
Water level
Last year, the KRS water level on July 12 was 108 feet. This year, it has not even reached the 100 feet-mark and has only 17.5 tmc feet of water. The government is also facing the pressure to release water to Tamil Nadu.
With 4.40 tmcft dead storage and four tmcft reserved for drinking water purpose, only nine tmcft of water is available for irrigation.
The farmers, who had sown paddy last year by this time, have not taken up sowing. If there is any further delay in releasing water into canals, it would be impossible to cultivate paddy, say anxious farmers.
The outflow, which was 3,696 cusec on July 12, was increased to 7,129 cusecs on Wednesday morning. By evening, the outflow was raised to 10,039 cusecs.
It may be mentioned that due to copious rains in Cauvery catchment area and Kodagu region, the inflow, which was 12,242 cusec on Tuesday, increased to 26,408 cusec by Wednesday evening.
The water level of the KRS dam stood at 95.30 ft as on July 13, as against its maximum capacity of 124.8 ft. The water level has increased by 2.5 ft in a single day.
Farmer leader K S Nanjundegowda,who led the protest, demanded the authorities to stop releasing water to the neighbouring State immediately.
The Congress on Wednesday hit back at Prime Minister Narendra Modi, saying those trampling democratic norms stand defeated.
Following the apex court verdict, the Congress demanded the immediate removal of Arunachal Pradesh Governor Jyoti Prasad Rajkhowa. Rajkhowa was also reprimanded by the court for unconstitutional action of advancing the session of the state Assembly.
Those who trampled upon Constitutional propriety and democratic norms have been defeated today, Congress president Sonia Gandhi said in a statement here.Party vice-president Rahul Gandhi also took a dig at Modi.
Thank you Supreme Court for explaining to the Prime Minister what democracy is, he posted on Twitter.
Senior Congress leader Kapil Sibal, who represented Tuki, sought an apology from the Union ministers who were involved in the decision to impose Presidents Rule in Arunachal Pradesh.
Want dissidents back
Reinstated as the chief minister of Arunachal Pradesh, Nabam Tuki now has the onerous task of proving a majority in the 60-member state Assembly.
More than half the Congress MLAs had rebelled against Tuki when his detractor Kalikho Pul was sworn in as chief minister on February 19, within hours of the revocation of Presidents Rule in the state.
Tuki, who enjoyed the support of 47 MLAs in the Assembly after winning a second term in office in April 2014, found himself as the leader of the opposition in February, with the Congress numbers reduced to 15. The effective strength of the Assembly was reduced to 58 as two Congress MLAs had quit in September 2015.
Kalikho Pul is now a Congress MLA. I have appealed to all (rebel) MLAs to return to the Congress, Tuki told DH.
The Supreme Courts verdict on Arunachal Pradesh has come as a major loss of face for the Narendra Modi government which had dismissed the Nabam Tuki government, imposed Presidents rule and then supported rebel Congress leader Kalikho Pul to become chief minister.
This is the second legal battle which the BJP has lost against the Congress in a span of two months, giving strength to the opposition partys charge that democratically-elected governments were destabilised to install non-Congress ones.
Not suprisingly, both cases involved controversial roles of governors which has come under censure from the Supreme Court.
If the Bommai judgment of the apex court in 1994 had settled the question that all tests of strength of rival claimants should be on the floor of the House, the verdict in Arunachal Pradesh after its order on Uttarakhand crisis has outlined dos and donts for the governor who have enjoyed some discretionary powers previously.
In the present case, the bench ruled that the actions of Governor Jyoti Prasad Rajkhowa were in violation of Article 163 of the Constitution, which outlines the discretionary powers of a governor.
Governor Jyoti Prasad Rajkhowas conduct came under scrutiny because he had advanced the date of the Assembly session by a month, to December 16, 2015.
That development saw the removal of the Speaker who was seen aligned with the Congress chief minister and finally ouster of the latters government by the rebel Congress MLAs.
The Arunachal Pradesh episode preceded the Uttarakhand fiasco with a difference. In Arunachal Pradesh, rebel Congress MLAs sought the Centres help because they felt their party high command had turned a deaf ear to them.
In Uttarakhand, the BJPs role was pro-active to mobilise a rebellion to unseat Chief Minister Harish Rawat.
But in both the cases, the strategy of supporting rebel Congress MLAs to effect a change of government was put into effect because of internal rumblings within the ruling party.
In Uttarakhand, Congress leader Harish Rawat returned as chief minister after the Supreme Court ordered revocation of Presidents rule imposed by Modi-government on the basis of the governor's report. Rawat got a boost when the apex court asked for a fresh floor test while refusing to stay disqualification of nine rebel Uttarakhand Congress MLAs and allow them to participate in the trust vote.
In Arunachal Pradesh, the court ordered status quo ante, effectively restoring the state government to the position it was in before President's Rule was declared.
Flash
Six Russian TU22M3 strategic long-range bombers have launched strikes against positions of Islamic State (IS) terrorist group in three locations in Syria, Russian defense ministry said Tuesday.
"The airstrike was made against targets identified and confirmed through intelligence channels in recent days," a ministry statement said.
It added that a large IS field camp, three ammunition depots, three tanks, four infantry fighting vehicles were destroyed, also killing a large number of militants.
The ministry noted that to ensure flight safety, the U.S.-led international coalition had been warned of the attacks in advance.
All planes returned safely and landed in their airfields located in Russia, it said.
Russia started airstrikes against terrorist targets in Syria at the request of the country's President Bashar al-Assad in September last year, with its aircraft deployed at a local airbase, while also using long-range bombers and missiles from Russian Navy ships in the Caspian sea.
In March, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the withdrawal of most of its air force from Syria, but Russia kept striking terrorist targets and maintained military coordination with the U.S.-led coalition forces.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov earlier in the day urged to resume the intra-Syrian talks brokered by U.N. Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura with a view to peacefully settle the Syrian crisis.
Lavrov added that related issues would be discussed with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, who will visit Russia from July 14 to 15.
"We will try to coordinate the common approach that should be based on absolutely clear and unambiguous principles outlined in the UN Security Council resolutions," Lavrov said as quoted by an official transcript.
Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Wednesday announced a judicial enquiry into the suicide of DySP M K Ganapathi.
Accusing the Opposition BJP and JD(S) of politicising the issue, the chief minister rejected their demand for sacking Bengaluru Development Minister K J George.
Siddaramaiah also turned down the demand to book an abetment to suicide case against George and senior police officers ADGP A M Prasad and IGP Pronab Mohanty, named by Ganapathi in an interview to a news channel before ending his life.
The chief minister brushed aside the demand for a CBI probe, saying the central agency has failed to crack cases referred by the government in the past three years.
The BJP and JD(S) resorted to a day-night dharna in the Legislative Assembly and Council after the government failed to yield to their demands. They announced they would continue the agitation till their demands are met.
The judicial commission, to be headed by a retired high court judge, would be asked to submit its report in six months, Siddaramaiah said.
Though the chief minister said the enquiry ordered by the government would be free and fair, he argued that there was no evidence against George and the two officers. Ganapathi had never worked under these officers to be harassed by them, he said. The deceased made illogical allegations in his TV statement, Siddaramaiah said.
I have decided to voluntarily order a judicial probe because of your allegations. It will be a free and fair investigation, the chief minister said in the Assembly.
The Criminal Investigation Department (CID) is currently probing the case based on Ganapathis father Kushalappas police statement. His death has been considered unnatural while registering the case. Ganapathis son Nehal moved the Madikeri court seeking direction to the police to file an FIR, and sought action against George and the two officers.
Siddaramaiah, a law graduate, quoted various sections of the Indian Penal Code to claim that neither is Ganapathis controversial statement a dying declaration nor has the government got anything to do with his death. He strongly defended the decision to file a case of unnatural death based on Kushalappas statement.
All subsequent complaints given by Ganapathis wife and son have been forwarded to the CID. The government will take appropriate action after the CID submits the report, he added.
The Supreme Court judgment that makes it mandatory to book case as per the dying declaration does not apply to this issue as a cognizable offence cannot be made out as per the statement given by Kushalappa.
Ganapathis father has not made charges against anybody, let alone George and the two officers, the chief minister said.
In a historic verdict, the Supreme Court on Wednesday restored the Nabam Tuki-led Congress government in Arunachal Pradesh in the form it existed on December 15 last year.
Late in the evening, Tuki said he assumed charge as chief minister at the state guesthouse in Delhi. His announcement came after Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi said Tuki stands reinstated as the chief minister of Arunachal Pradesh as per the Supreme Court ruling.
Rohatgis comments came after Prime Minister Narendra Modis top ministers met in the evening to review the order.
A five-judge Constitution Bench, presided over by Justice J S Khehar, set aside Governor J P Rajkhowas decision to advance the Assembly session from January 14, 2016, to December 16, 2015, a move which triggered political unrest in the sensitive border state and culminated in the imposition of Presidents rule on January 26.
The apex courts decision showed the door to the BJP-propped government subsequently formed by rebel Congress leader Kalikho Pul.
Criticising the governor for humiliating an elected government, the court held that Rajkhowas messages to advance the Assembly session and the manner of conducting the proceedings were violative of the constitutional provisions. He could not have acted without the aid and advice of the Council of Ministers, the court observed.
All the steps and decisions taken by the Arunachal Pradesh Legislative Assembly, pursuant to the governors order and messages dated 9.12.2015, are unsustainable. The same are accordingly set aside, the bench, also comprising Justices Dipak Misra, Madan B Lokur, P C Ghose and N V Ramana, said.
The court also set aside the decision of the deputy speaker who had quashed the disqualification of 14 rebel Congress MLAs. However, the court held that it would be constitutionally impermissible for a speaker to adjudicate upon disqualification petitions under the Tenth Schedule, while a notice of resolution for his own removal from the office of speaker is pending.
The order is set to restore 58 MLAs to the 60-member Assembly as two Congress legislators had already resigned. The Union government is likely to seek a clarification on the modalities for restoring the Tuki government.
After the Uttarakhand fiasco, the NDA government suffered another major blow with the apex courts verdict, as the attempt to support the rebels in the Congress government in both the states came a cropper.
This is the first time that the Supreme Court has restored a government after its dismissal and imposition of Presidents rule and subsequent installation of an alternative dispensation.
In its unanimous judgment, the bench held that the governor cannot act in his discretion in convening a state Assembly, nor can assume the role of its ombudsman or conscience keeper.
The governor neither had the jurisdiction nor the power to do so without the aid and advice of the Council of Ministers with the chief minister as the head, the Bench said, adding that the only exception was only when the government has the majority in the floor test.In the judgement written by Justice Khehar, along with Justices Ghose and Ramana, the Bench said, It needs to be asserted as a Constitutional determination, that it is not within the realm of the governor to embroil himself in any political thicket.
The court also held that the governor has no such role assigned to him whereby he can assume the position of advising and guiding the Legislative Assembly on the question of removal of the Speaker or the Deputy Speaker or to require the Legislative Assembly to follow a particular course.
In their separate and concurring judgements, Justice Misra and Justice Lokur also held the governor's order for advancing the state Assembly session as unconstitutional.
With regard to the role of the Speaker, Justice Misra said, It would be an anathema to the concept of Constitutional adjudication, if the Speaker is allowed to initiate proceedings (for disqualification) under the Tenth Schedule of the Constitution after the intention to remove him from his office is moved. Justice Lokur ruled that the Deputy Speaker had no authority in the instant case to set aside the decision of the Speaker disqualifying 14 rebel MLAs including him.
Facebook helped the Delhi Police reunite a runaway teen with his parents after 14 months. Keshav Kumar was tracked down in Srinagar with the help of his Facebook accounts IP address.
The boy, now 17, has told the police that he left home due to his drunkard father. He was regularly rebuked for not studying up to his fathers satisfaction.
In Srinagar, Keshav was working with a merchant named Ishtiaq Ahmed. During the 14 months, he also worked as a waiter at marriage ceremonies and receptions.
Keshavs mother Rekha Devi had filed a complaint with Khajoori Khas police station in May 2015. Keshav had gone missing after leaving home for his tuition classes.
The family conducted a search, but failed to find any clue. A kidnap case was later filed with Khajoori Khas police station, said Deputy Commissioner of Police (North East) Ajit Kumar Singla.
Several months into the probe, the police learnt that Keshav was accessing his Facebook account and used to chat with his elder brother Pawan. It led to the local police to seek assistance from the cyber cell of Crime Branch in November 2015.
Keshav and Pawan were in contact from November 2015 to April, but Keshav refused to reveal his location.
The IP addresses provided by Facebook were found to be of different mobile numbers, Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime) Ravindra Yadav added.
The call data records of the mobile numbers sought from mobile operators further revealed that Facebook was being used at Maharaj Ganj area in Srinagar.
One of the mobile numbers was then traced to a Srinagar resident. On July 6, a joint team of local police and Crime Branch went to Srinagar. They were attacked by local residents while proceeding to Dalal Mohalla in Maharaj Ganj. ASI Umesh was injured after being hit with a stone.
The situation was tense, but the team managed to track down Keshav. He has been handed over to his parents, Yadav said.
The BJP on Wednesday launched an offensive against Delhi Health Minister Satyendar Jain, accusing him of nepotism as his daughter has been appointed as an adviser to the AAP governments mohalla clinics project.
Demanding the cancellation of Soumya Jains appointment, city BJP chief Satish Upadhyay said that nepotism in appointments and corruption in administration had reached its climax under the Arvind Kejriwal government.
The way in which the daughter of the Health Minister has been appointed as implementation adviser indicates that the decision of the government is not honest, the BJP leader said.
Upadhyay also asked the Delhi government to reveal if Jain issued any public notice or gave opportunity to other eligible persons before appointing his daughter.
Appointing his own daughter in his own department by any minister is irregularity under the administrative system, he added.
Soumya, a 26-year-old architect, is using a room on Delhi Secretariats ninth floor.
Favour to AAP workers
The BJP charged that the AAP workers are being favoured in other ways as well under this neighbourhood clinics project. Mohalla clinics have been opened in the houses of party workers providing them means of income, Upadhyay said.
The Delhi BJP has now asked the state government to publicly state if Soumya receives any remuneration.
Upadhyay alleged that Soumya also gets monthly payment for other projects of the Delhi Health Department. According to our information, Soumya Jain gets monthly fees, Upadhyay added.
The Delhi government has plans of setting up over 1,000 such clinics, aimed at providing better medical facilities to the weaker sections. It argues that the project would decrease crowds at government hospitals and increase their efficiency.
A 22-year-old man, who allegedly impersonated a sepoy posted at the Armys ASC Centre here, was caught by the police on Tuesday. Debabrat Raut, a native of Jhanipada in Odisha, is suspected of duping people by promising them jobs in the Army.
He is believed to have taken Rs 2 lakh in cash from Ajit Kumar Sahu, a native of Bhubaneswar in Odisha, by promising him a job in the Army. Raut claimed to be a sepoy posted at ASC Centre. He even gave Sahu an appointment letter.
On Tuesday morning, he reportedly asked him to come near the Air Force Command Hospital to report for training at ASC Centre. But Sahu first showed the letter to some of his friends and they reckoned it to be fake. He panicked and approached officials at ASC Centre who confirmed his worst fears.
ASC Centre officials reported the matter to the jurisdictional Ulsoor police who swung into action and arrested Raut at Air Force Command Hospital. Police suspect he cheated many people in a similar fashion.
Raut had come to Bengaluru just a month ago and was found wearing military uniform to give an impression that he is in the Army. He would approach young men looking for jobs in the Army and then cheat them, police said.
The police have arrested three men with criminal records who reportedly went back to the old ways and stole gold jewellery worth Rs 14 lakh from locked homes.
Among the suspects is a history-sheeter. Palani, 31, Prem Kumar, 21 and Arvind Kumar, 34, met while serving sentence at the Central Prison, Parappana Agrahara.
They were released on bail but got back to crime and decided to target locked homes, police said. Prem and Palani would break into homes and steal gold jewellery while Kumar would sell them to pawnbrokers.
Their activities went unchecked until Prem broke into a locked house in RT Nagar. He didnt find any valuables there but saw a car parked in the portico. He just drove off. When the house owner found the door broken and the car missing, he lodged a complaint at the RT Nagar police station.
The police swung into action and circulated the information across the city. A couple of weeks ago, policemen on night patrol spotted a man moving around in a car in Subramanyapura. They found him suspicious. They waved him down but he didnt stop and even attempted to run a constable over, and drove away, police said.
The police then sent the car details around and the automobile was spotted in Kadugodi, east Bengaluru.
A police team managed to catch the man who turned out to be Prem. According to police, the three men are wanted for crimes like murder, robbery, assault and dacoity.
Palani is registered as history-sheeter at the Kumaraswamy Layout police station while Kumar is a murder accused at Doddapete in Shivamogga. Kumar is also wanted for a break-in reported in Tunganagar, Shivamogga, the police said.
Boating may resume in Ulsoor lake after a gap of three years. The Karnataka State Tourism Development Corporation (KSTDC) has once again shown interest in renewing boating activities which were halted in 2013.
The KSTDC is expected to take up the matter with the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP), which is the custodian of the lake, later this week.
Boating in the lake was stopped as the lease had lapsed. Once the lease agreement is renewed, we will begin boating activities, KSTDC Chairman S A Hussain told Deccan Herald. This time, more boats are expected to be introduced.
The KSTDC also plans to start a floating restaurant to attract tourists. The KSTDCs last lease was valid for five years. The corporation now hopes to get a lease for 10-15 years as the venture will not be profitable otherwise.
Ulsoor lake, one of the most popular water bodies in Bengaluru, has been in constant glare of late. In May, incidents of fishkill were reported due to a drop in the levels of dissolved oxygen in its water. A KSTDC official said containing water pollution would be the BBMPs responsibility. Another official said, The Tourism department is only concerned with improving tourism revenue and making the lake more attractive. Besides, if the water is constantly used, it will be well-maintained.
Palike noncommittal
Boating for the general public was started in Ulsoor lake in 1983 before it was stopped in 2013 after the KSTDCs lease got over. The corporation didnt show interest in renewing the lease. Presently, the Armys Madras Engineer Group uses a portion of the lake to train its cadets.
A senior BBMP official confirmed that the KSTDC had approached the civic body to restart boating services.
The official said the BBMP would first push for opening a sewage treatment plant in the lake to improve its water quality before boating facilities are reintroduced.
Rs 4-crore plan
The BBMP, the Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board (BWSSB) and the Karnataka State Pollution Control Board (KSPCB) have prepared a Rs 4-crore plan to set up the plant and provide for sewage diversion.
Eight youths who arrived in the city with a dream to join the Army have ended up behind bars for producing fake appointment letters. The youths claimed they were cheated by a person in Delhi who impersonated an Army officer.
The police arrested Sandeep, Preetam, Manjeet, Pawan and four others, all from Haryana, after it was found that they produced fake letters to join training at ASC Centre (North) in the city.
The young men had arrived in Bengaluru on June 25. They turned up at ASC Centre on Tuesday and submitted the documents. Army officers found the letters to be fake and informed the jurisdictional Viveknagar police who arrested the men.
During interrogation, the youths insisted they were unaware that the letters were fake. They said the letters were given to them by a man two months ago when they were taking the Army recruitment test in Delhi. The man, who identified himself as Resham, said he was a senior Army officer posted in Delhi.
He promised them jobs in the Army if they paid him Rs 5 lakh each. He also promised them postings of their choice and that they need not take any test. The youths were impressed by him as he was in Army fatigues.
According to the young men, they each paid Resham Rs 5 lakh. Weeks later, the man sent them appointment letters, saying they had been selected. He asked them to report for training at ASC Centre. Accordingly, the youths said, they came to Bengaluru.
Police, however, are not sure if the youths are telling the truth. A senior police officer said they were checking the veracity of their claims. We asked Army officials to check with their higher-ups in Delhi if other youths have been duped similarly. We will share the information with the Delhi police too.
The officer said Army recruitment had become a huge racket with young, gullible people falling prey to it in their quest to get jobs. There are many impostors who cheat youths and make easy money, the officer said.
In April, 2016, a man named Biju Abraham impersonated a neurosurgeon of Army Medical Corps and cheated several people before being arrested by police.
The Advocates Association will write to Chief Justice of India, T S Thakur, to transfer Chief Justice of Karnataka, Subhro Kamal Mukherjee, it decided at a meeting here on Wednesday.
The association members discussed a statement recently made by Justice Mukherjee in open court that a Bengali-speaking person had offered him bribe for a favourable verdict. The association urged the CJI to take immediate action to trace that person.
Meanwhile, an NGO, Proutist Universal, has written to secretaries of the Rajya Sabha and the Lok Sabha to initiate impeachment proceedings against Mukherjee as per Article 124(4) of the Constitution for failing to take action against the person who offered him the bribe.
In the letter, the NGO said, Chief Justice S K Mukherjee has failed to refer (the person who attempted to bribe him) to the Anti-Corruption Bureau or any investigation agency and failed to uphold the laws passed by Parliament.
Thus, citizens of Karnataka are questioning the integrity of the High Court (Chief Justice) and his capacity being a High Court judge. Hence, this is a fit case to be tried under Section 124(4) of the Constitution of India for removing Justice S K Mukherjee as Chief Justice of Karnataka (sic).
Learning Business English and Business Communication is as important as mastering their core subjects, engineering and management students find.
On Wednesday, Cambridge English Language Assessment (part of the University of Cambridge) conducted a workshop on creative ways to use technology in English classrooms.
S V Rasagna, who teaches Business English Certification and Business Communication at New Horizon College of Engineering, Marathahalli, is of the opinion that there is a need to create an impression among recruiters during placements. One way of doing this is through the use of proper Business English, she said.
Every profession has specific jargons that people like to use. Prior knowledge of this usage can give students a great lead while facing an interview and placements. Rasagna uses an array of technologies such as flipped classes and digital media while teaching students in her college. Being students of engineering, they have a better grasp of technology, she said. It is also interesting.
According to Prof Jamuna, a Human Resource and Business Communication lecturer at MS Ramaiah Institute of Management, students with good knowledge of Business Communication can easily have an edge over other candidates during a job interview. General English and Business English are not very different, but students who have good knowledge of both will do well during placements compared to students who do not know the latter.
Newer and more innovative ways of teaching the language are being devised by teachers, though they could never substitute face-to-face learning.
The theme of the workshop is using the chalk as well as the mouse in the teaching. I would say both are equally useful and complement each other, said Vanee Gopalan, media teacher at Delhi Public School, South.
The one-day workshop was organised as part of the Cambridge English Annual Coordinators Conference 2016, which is being held in 11 cities across India. As many as 22 schools and 12 colleges took part in the workshop.
Flash
The ruling on the South China Sea arbitration issued by a court in The Hague is a disgrace to international law, Chinese Ambassador to the Netherlands Wu Ken told the press on Tuesday.
"Today is a 'black Tuesday' for The Hague, 'the capital of international law'," Wu commented.
"China is deeply dissatisfied and firmly rejects this ruling which dishonors international law and damages regional stability," he said.
On Tuesday, the tribunal set up at the request of the former Philippine administration of President Benigno S. Aquino III sweepingly sided with the Philippines' claims.
Wu said the new Philippine government should understand what damages its predecessor has done to bilateral relations and the interests of the Philippines itself.
"They should abandon the delusion of having the issue resolved through the intervention of external forces, clean up the negativity left by the illegal arbitration, and return to the bilateral and regional consensus of settling disputes through negotiations," he said.
The ambassador also called on "certain countries who do not belong to this region" to give up the thought of containing China by using the dispute as a pretext.
"They should stop sabre rattling and fabricating disputes and leave room for a calm negotiation table in our region," said the Chinese diplomat.
Wu reiterated that the ad hoc arbitral tribunal delivered a null and void award on issues linked to territorial sovereignty and maritime delimitation, which exceed the provisions of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).
The arbitration handled a case outside its jurisdiction and is "a legal monstrosity," said Wu.
"Just like a roll of wastepaper, the ruling has no legal meaning for the settlement of disputes in the South China Sea. What's worse, it severely undermined the integrity and dignity of the UNCLOS," he added.
On the tribunal's ruling on the nine-dash line outlining Chinese territory in the South China Sea, Wu explained that historical rights are not governed by the convention and China's dotted line came into being dozens of years before the creation of UNCLOS. "But the tribunal erroneously applied the Convention to draw unfounded conclusions on China's historical rights and the dotted line."
China's historical rights within the dotted line in the SCS will not under any circumstances be affected by this ruling, he stressed.
Wu also told the press that an increasing number of non-Chinese scholars noted that this arbitration case violated the principle of state consent, which is detrimental to the international rule of law. More and more states have voiced their opposition to ultra vires jurisdiction in favor of settling disputes through negotiation and consultation.
"However, certain countries obsessed with a Cold War mentality still attempt to use the South China Sea issue as a pawn to contain China and to boost their own military presence in the Asia-Pacific region," said Wu.
"A piece of cloud can not cover up the sun. This political farce can by no means deny the sound historical facts and legal evidence supporting China's sovereignty over islands in the Sea," he added.
Wu reiterated that negotiation and consultation are the primary means to settle disputes under the United Nations Charter and UNCLOS, and remain the most effective method under international law.
"China has both the legal basis and the ability to recover islands and reefs illegally occupied by other countries. Nevertheless, in a bid to safeguard peace and stability in the region, we have always sought for a peaceful settlement of disputes and upheld maritime cooperation with maximum restraint," Wu said.
The ambassador reiterated that the arbitration farce will not weaken China's determination to defend its national interests. "It will not change China's foreign policy for a friendly neighborhood," he said, "or China's patience and sincerity in peacefully resolving disputes through direct negotiations."
Flash
China is strongly displeased with a press statement issued by the spokesperson of the U.S. State Department on Tuesday on the award issued by the South China Sea arbitration tribunal unilaterally initiated by the former Philippine government.
Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lu Kang said in a statement that China is firmly opposed to the U.S. statement and has lodged solemn representations with the U.S. side.
The U.S. statement turned a blind eye to the facts and endorsed an award that is illegal and invalid, Lu said, stressing the U.S. act went against the spirit of rule of law as well as the basic norms of international law and international relations.
The U.S. statement also went against its declaration of not taking sides on issues concerning territorial disputes, he added.
Lu said that the U.S. side is always selective when it comes to the application of international law: citing international law when it sees fit and discarding international law when it sees otherwise. "It keeps urging others to abide by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) while refusing to ratify the convention to this day. What makes the United States think that it is in a position to make all these irresponsible remarks against others? " said Lu.
He urged the U.S. side to think over its words and deeds, stop fanning fires for the illegal arbitration and meddling up the South China Sea, and put an end to undermining China's sovereignty and security interests and escalating regional tensions.
Earlier in the day, the U.S. State Department said that the award was binding on both parties and that the U.S. expected China and the Philippines both to comply with their obligations under it, said an AP report.
Flash
Taiwan said Tuesday it "absolutely will not accept" the decision in the South China Sea arbitration.
The island's leader's office said that the award "is not legally binding."
The award, especially its claim that Taiping Island is a rock, seriously damages the rights to the island and surrounding waters, it said. The territory and sovereignty must be protected, it added.
The Kuomintang party in Taiwan said it will not accept the arbitration award, saying it was an out-and-out lie, particularly in denying the island status of Taiping where there is fresh water, chickens are raised and vegetables are cultivated.
Taiwan scholars said the award was absurd and that neither side of the Taiwan Strait would accept it. "The award is totally nonsense and malicious, a result of political manoeuvreing," said Chang Ya-chung, a political professor at Taiwan University.
The result will inevitably cause tension, he said.
The award is not legally binding as the tribunal has actually no jurisdiction over the disputes, said Gau Sheng-ti, professor in public international law at the Law of the Sea Institute at Taiwan's Ocean University.
In terms of Taiping Island, Philippine scholars, lawyers and members of the tribunal have never visited the island, how can they overturn a research report made by scholars who visited it, Gau questioned.
Flash
Hillary Clinton's bitter rival in the Democratic Party presidential nomination race Bernie Sanders on Tuesday endorsed Clinton for the 2016 U.S. election.
Hillary Clinton [File photo/Xinhua]
"Secretary Clinton has won the Democratic nominating process," said Sanders in New Hampshire during his first joint rally with Clinton after a chaotic primary season.
"She will be the Democratic nominee for president and I intend to do everything I can to make certain she will be the next president of the United States," said Sanders.
Sanders' endorsement came more than a month after Clinton clinched the Democratic Party nomination, and brought to an end a chaotic and divisive Democratic primary season where he questioned Clinton's judgement as the country's future leader.
Standing onstage with Clinton on Tuesday in a state where he crushed the former U.S. secretary of state with a sweeping victory in the primary season, Sanders called Clinton "far and away the best candidate" to address the serious crisis facing the country.
"Too many Americans are still being left out, left behind and ignored. In the richest country in the history of the world, there is too much poverty, there is too much despair," said Sanders, adding that Clinton understood better than Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, that the country must fix a rigged economy that "sends almost all of the new wealth and income to the top one percent."
During the primary season, Sanders was a constant critic of Clinton's close tie to the Wall Street and criticized Clinton for her decision not to release transcripts of her paid speeches to big banks, such as Goldman Sachs.
Fabrication-ready Hardware-plus-software Communications Solution Boosts Performance, Reduces Energy Consumption
SAN FRANCISCO July 12, 2016 Leti, a CEA Tech institute, today announced it has developed a new on-chip communications system to improve high-performance computing (HPC) that is faster and more energy efficient than current solutions and is compatible with 3D architectures.
Leti researchers, working in the frame of IRT Nanoelec, boosted computing power and slashed energy consumption by stacking chips on top of each other in a single enclosure, or by placing the chips side by side on a silicon interposer. The chips, which have progressed from demonstrator to fabrication-ready, exchange data via a new communications network that is part of the network on chip (NoC) called 3D-NoC.
3D-NoC technology has been demonstrated with a homogeneous 3D circuit that is comprised of regular tiles assembled using a 4x4x2 NoC. It also features robust and fault-tolerant asynchronous 3D links, and provides 326 MFlit/s @ 0.66 pJ/bit. It was fabricated in a CMOS 65nm technology using 1,980 TSVs in a Face2Back configuration.
This second generation 3D-NoC technology has been integrated in the INTACT circuit developed in the frame of IRT Nanoelec. The 3D circuit, currently in foundry, combines a series of chiplets fabricated at the FDSOI 28nm node and co-integrated on a 65nm CMOS interposer. The active interposer embeds several lower-cost functions, such as communication through the NoC and system I/Os, power conversion, design for testability and integrated passive components.
Moreover, the chip requires 20 times less energy for data transmission than chips placed on an electronic circuit board. This new IP is compatible with standard remote direct-memoryaccess- type software used for data transmission and has likely industrial uses in virtual-server migration applications.
The steady rise in the number of applications that require high-performance computing creates a demand for new hardware-plus-software communications solutions that improve both performance and energy consumption, said Denis Dutoit, Leti strategic marketing manager. This new technology brick makes it possible to transfer data between processors via a network-on-chip delivering more powerful, energy-efficient computing.
Leti will host its annual workshop during Semicon West on Sensing your Future with Leti at 5 p.m., July 12, at the W Hotel. Registration is here.
Leti scientists will be available at booth #2028 in the South Hall during Semicon West to discuss this announcement and other recent research developments and initiatives.
About Leti (France)
As one of three advanced-research institutes within the CEA Technological Research Division, CEA Tech-Leti serves as a bridge between basic research and production of microand nanotechnologies that improve the lives of people around the world. It is committed to creating innovation and transferring it to industry. Backed by its portfolio of 2,800 patents, Leti partners with large industrials, SMEs and startups to tailor advanced solutions that strengthen their competitive positions. It has launched 54 startups. Its 8,500m of newgeneration cleanroom space feature 200mm and 300mm wafer processing of micro and nano solutions for applications ranging from space to smart devices. With a staff of more than 1,800, Leti is based in Grenoble, France, and has offices in Silicon Valley, Calif., and Tokyo. Follow us at www.leti.fr and @CEA_Leti.
Three of Russias largest operators have warned that a new law which grants far-reaching surveillance powers to the government could cost the mobile industry as much as $34 billion.
Signed by Russian president Vladimir Putin last week, the new bill comes into effect from 20th July. VimpelCom, MegaFon and MTS have argued that the law will infringe civil liberties as well as constituting a huge expense for them: all operators would be obliged to store voice, internet and SMS activity for all subscribers for six months.
In addition, they must retain metadata for this traffic which can be used to determine the time and location at which users accessed their communications services for three years. The operators have argued that this vast increase in their data storage requirements would cost them as much as RUB2.2 trillion ($34 billion).
US whistleblower Edward Snowden, who currently resides in Moscow, also hit out at the bill, tweeting Putin has signed a repressive new law that violates not only human rights, but common sense. Dark day for #Russia. He later added: Signing the #BigBrother law must be condemned. Beyond political and constitution consequences, it is also a $33b+ tax on Russias internet.
While Russia is far from being the first country to order operators to retain data for surveillance by security authorities, the new bill is particularly stringent in terms of the obligations it imposes. Russian search engine Yandex noted that the legislation will dramatically impact the rights of both companies and individuals.
It may transpire that the actual costs of data storage are not as high as the operators have claimed; they could be stating the worst case scenario. There is also the possibility that the government could be convinced of an alternative arrangement prior to implementing the law in July 2018.
As an example of such a compromise, MegaFon CEO Sergey Soldatenkov suggested the imposition of a further 1% tax on operator revenue, the proceeds of which could then be used to construct a government data centre so that the onus did not rest exclusively with the mobile industry.
Metal Tiger said the potential for its Botswana joint venture to hold copper deposits had increased further after recent drilling tests.
The company said soil sampling had found copper anomalies at several target areas.
Metal Tiger chief executive Paul Johnson said the company's focused strategy of identifying potential new deposits, by targeting regional scale structures identified from regional geophysics, with relatively low cost, soil sampling grids and reverse circulation drilling was paying off.
The strategy worked to delineate the current T3 Resource Project and reportedly led to the discovery of MODS Mahumo deposit, he said.
It is especially interesting to note that the T2 copper in soil anomalies outlined below are over three times higher than the 28ppm Cu anomalies that led to the discovery of T3.
The UK Labour Party has ruled that leader Jeremy Corbyn will be able to stand in a leadership contest against former shadow Cabinet members Angela Eagle and Owen Smith without having to secure any nominations.
Smith said he would run in the contest, saying Labour needed both a "radical and credible" leader.
The Pontypridd MP, who quit as shadow work and pensions secretary last month, said he could "heal" the party and "turn the page" on its internal strife.
Labour's ruling National Executive Committee met on Tuesday to resolve a dispute about whether Corbyn (pictured) could still appear on any ballot as the incumbent or have to meet the minimum support threshold of 20% of the party's MPs and MEPs.
In a stark contrast with the Conservative Party, which has seen Theresa May anointed as the new prime minister within three weeks of David Cameron's decision to stand down after the Brexit vote, Labour has veered from one crisis to the next as the party's parliamentary wing wrestles with the grassroots membership over its future direction.
Eagle has 51 backers. Corbyn had nowhere near that figure after 172 MPs recently a motion of no confidence in his leadership and only 40 supported him. However, Corbyn was elected in a landslide last year largely due to the support of the non-parliamentary membership.
Eagle is challenging as she feels Corbyn would not be an effective challenger to the Conservative Party in a General Election. MPs are also unhappy at the way he failed to show proper support for the Remain campaign in the referendum on Britain's European Union membership (EU).
The mood within the party has become toxic. A brick was thrown through a window in Eagle's constituency office overnight, while Corbyn also claimed he had received threats.
Corbyn supporters, notably Unite union leader Len McCluskey, said it would be "alien to the concept of natural justice" if he was unable to stand.
In a growing sign of discontent over Corbyn's performance at a time when the government was in disarray over the UK's decision to leave the EU, fewer than a third of Labour-affiliated union members think he should lead the party into the next general election, 58% want him to quit before the next election, while 45% want him out now, according to a YouGov poll.
Speedy Hire said on Wednesday that its full-year results are likely to be ahead of the boards previous expectations following a positive start to the year.
The tools, equipment and plant hire services company said revenues in the first quarter ended 30 June were slightly ahead of the comparable period, while overhead costs are significantly lower than in the previous year.
Net debt at 30 June was lower than the corresponding period last year and the group said it continues to have substantial headroom against its banking facilities, which expire in September 2019.
Speedy Hire said that while it is too early to gauge the impact of the EU referendum on its end markets, there has been no deterioration in trading to date.
The board believes that the group's strategy and recovery plan provide the platform for full year results to be slightly ahead of the board's previous expectations.
At 0910 BST, Speedy Hire share were up 5.6% to 33.00p.
South Africas Steinhoff Holdings has reached an agreement with Poundland to buy the remaining shares in the London-listed discount retailer it does not already own for 222p per share in cash, valuing it at 597m.
The offer price represents a premium of 39% to the closing price of Poundland on 13 June, which was the last day prior to the first acquisition of shares by Steinhoff Europe. The 222p includes final dividend of 2p for shareholders on the register at the close of business on 9 September.
Poundland, which rejected a cash offer from Steinhoff last month, said its directors consider the terms of the offer to be fair and reasonable and intend to recommend unanimously that shareholders vote in favour of the scheme.
Chairman Darren Shapland said: The Poundland board believes that SEAG's all-cash offer presents Poundland shareholders with an opportunity to realise their shareholding at a certain and attractive price, securing earlier delivery of the Poundland Group's medium term value than could be expected from the ongoing turnaround process against a background of increasing economic uncertainty in the UK and a more challenging trading environment.
Steinhoff is a well-capitalised, international business with a clear and proven commitment to value retailing. They share our vision for the growth and expansion of Poundland and, as such, we believe they are a suitable and appropriate partner for our colleagues, our suppliers and stakeholders."
Steinhoff, which owns UK furniture stores Harveys and Bensons for Beds and Conforama in France, had been chasing after electricals retailer Darty earlier in the year but lost that race to Fnac.
The company had also shown interest in Argos owner Home Retail, which eventually struck a deal with Sainsburys.
At 1155 BST, Poundland shares were up 12.6% to 220.75p.
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Ohio House candidate cited error in not reporting $1.3M owed in lawsuit
Ohio House candidate Dave Dobos apologized for not reporting $1.3 million a Delaware County judge ordered him to pay partners in a 2011 lawsuit.
Flash
In response to a question regarding the South China Sea, the Spokesperson of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Pakistan stated that Pakistan maintains that disputes over the South China Sea should be peacefully resolved, through consultations and negotiations by states directly concerned, in accordance with bilateral agreements and the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC).
In this context, the Spokesperson added that Pakistan opposes any imposition of unilateral will on others, and respects China's statement of optional exception in light of Article 298 of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).
Pakistan believes that maintenance of peace and security is the collective responsibility of all parties to the South China Sea. Countries outside the region should fully respect efforts made by China and the ASEAN countries to safeguard peace and stability in the South China Sea, and play a constructive role to this end.
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A judge is looking at whether the Clean Water Act applies to tainted groundwater connected to rivers and other surface waters.
By ALAN SUDERMAN
Associated Press
RICHMOND, Va. Dirtier rivers or higher electric prices.
That's what environmentalists and utility officials say is at stake in an upcoming federal court ruling in Virginia could have far-reaching effects on how energy companies dispose of coal ash waste left over from decades of burning coal. Spurred by high-profile coal ash spills and new federal regulations, utilities are grappling with the disposal of vast amounts of the heavy-metal-laced waste.
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Flash
China on Wednesday urged the United States and the Republic of Korea (ROK) to halt the the deployment of a U.S. anti-missile system in the ROK.
Earlier in the day, the ROK's defense ministry announced an agreement with the United States to deploy the U.S. missile defense system, called Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD), to its southeastern region despite continued opposition from neighboring countries.
The THAAD deployment would gravely damage the strategic balance in the region as well as the strategic security interests of countries in the region including China, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lu Kang told a routine press briefing.
The move also contravenes efforts to maintain peace and stability in the Korean Peninsula, he said, reaffirming China's strong opposition to it.
He warned that China will take necessary measures to safeguard its own interests if the United States and ROK don't stop the deployment.
According to media reports, one THAAD battery will be deployed to the Seongsan-ri region of Seongju County in North Gyeongsang Province, where the ROK Air Force's Hawk surface-to-air missile battery is located.
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BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) A large Montana coal plant serving utility customers across the Pacific Northwest agreed Tuesday to shut down two of its four units by 2022 and limit pollution from the plant until that happens, under a settlement with environmentalists who sued over emission violations.
Terms of the partial shutdown of the 2,100-megawatt Colstrip plant were contained in a consent decree filed in U.S. District Court in Montana.
. . .
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BEND, Ore. (AP) Officials in central Oregon are targeting mosquito larva to keep the insect's population down this summer.
We really focus on getting them at the aquatic stage, said Chad Stubblefield, manager of Four Rivers Vector Control District, told The Bulletin.
. . .
India to build Bangladesh's largest coal-fired power plant
Bangladesh and India on Tuesday signed a landmark deal for the construction of a 1,320 megawatt coal-fired power plant at Rampal, the biggest power project in Bangladesh and the biggest project under bilateral cooperation.
The power project is being implemented by Bangladesh-India Friendship Power Company (Pvt) Limited (BIFPCL), a joint partnership between India's state-owned National Thermal Power Corporation and Bangladesh Power Development Board.
BIFPCL on Tuesday inked a deal with Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL), which was selected under an open international tender for constructing the super thermal plant at Bangladesh's southwestern Rampal near the Sundarbans.
India's Exim Bank will provide $1.49 billion for the project, scheduled to start generating power in 2019.
"This ceremony marks the beginning of the biggest project under Bangladesh-India cooperation," state minister for energy and power Nasrul Hamid said.
Environmental groups had opposed the project amid concerns that the coal-fired plant could affect the delicate ecosystem of the Sundarbans, the world's largest mangrove forest, spread across Bangladesh and India.
Speaking at a function to mark the signing of the agreement, Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, her energy affairs adviser Toufiq-e-Elahi Chowdhury and her principal secretary Abul Kalam Azad allayed environmentalists' fears saying that the power project will use the world's most efficient and environment- friendly technology.
"We have a coal-powered plant at (northwestern) Barapukuria in a crowded location which is not affecting the environment while the technology being used for the Rampal plant is far more modern and most environment friendly (than that of Barapukuria)," Azad said.
"We respect the concern of the people of Bangladesh, we are set to maintain the maximum environmental standards for the plant," BIFPCL managing director Ujjwal Kanti Bhattacharya said.
Indian High Commissioner Harsh Vardhan Shringla, Bangladesh's power secretary Monowar Islam and his Indian counterpart Pradeep Kumar Pujari, Bangladesh Power Development Board (BPDB) chairman M Shamsul Hasan Miah and BHEL's general manager Prem Pal Yadav also addressed the ceremony.
Bangladesh had fast tracked the project, which is also known as Maitree Super Thermal Power Project, which was started under a bilateral agreement signed during Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's India visit in 2010.
Project highlights:
Donegal house prices have increased by 11.5% in the past year, according to a new report by the housing website Daft.ie.
The average price for a house in the county now stands at 138,500. This compares to 517, 719 in Co. Dubli, the highest in the country, and to 118,590 in Leitrim and 117,688 in Sligo, according to Daft's latest quarterly report.
Commenting on the findings, Eamonn McBride of McBride Auctioneers in Gweedore said he believes the increase could be partly due to investment from Northern Ireland and England, particularly when sterling was performing well against the euro.
McBride cites county council spending as another reason for the rising prices. He says, The county council has picked up a lot of houses in the last year, especially in Gweedore, The Rosses and Cloughaneely.
Dr Lorcan Sirr, lecturer of housing studies at the Dublin Institute of Technology, explains the effects of Northern Irish and British investment.
Donegal is in a unique position, being both a very scenic county and next door to another country. This has led to regular sales to people from Northern Ireland. Along with that, there has been a recovery in the economy, which will mean more jobs in Donegal for local people, but also more money elsewhere for people to buy second homes,he says.
The housing market in Donegal was in depression between 2008 and 2012, with prices down an average of 55% nationally. Given this, an 11.5% increase is not quite the jump it seems, Paul Franklin of Franklin Auctioneers explains. When you account for how low prices were, this is not a huge increase. The economy has been improving over the past 18 month to two years and people have the confidence to invest again, he says. Prices will continue to rise, there is no doubt about it. Demand has been pent up for a long time and now we are seeing it come through in rising prices. Those who emigrated are coming back and theyre buying. The market can only go one way, he concludes.
Costs relating to the recent visit of the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall to Donegal are yet to be finalised, according to a recent communication from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
To date, the visit is calculated to have cost 11,638, However, this figure only includes transport and printing costs.
Accommodation, official photography, overtime and subsistence is yet to be finalised.
The largest allocation of money, to date, 11,214 was spent on car hire, which transported Prince Charles and his wife Camilla to and from engagements across the county.
The couple visited Donegal town, Letterkenny and Glenveagh National Park during their one day visit.
In a statement from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, they said that the recent visit to Ireland by the Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall served to increase the international profile of Donegal and the North-West as a whole in terms of trade and tourism.
The statement also added that the recent visit showcased 21st century cross-border and British-Irish co-operation in the fields of education, science, business and environmental conservation.
Details in relation to the visit are being finalised.
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Plans are afoot to place a 3.5 metre tall gas tower in the centre of one of Dundalk's last remaining town centre green spots.
Gas Networks Ireland want to put what they describe as a 3.5 metre tall gas flue right in the middle of the group of trees in a patch of park popular among pedestrians.
According to the planning application: The development will consist of an enhancement to the gas network comprising of a free standing vent flue (overall height up to 3.5m to tip of vent flue) to an existing and associated underground district regulating installation (DRI) including site development works.
However the plan has hit a stumbling block.
The application was first received on the 20 June and its status was at the time of writing noted as a 'incompleted application'.
A representative from Louth County Council planning office told the Democrat that the application had been sent back in its entirety as the result of a technicality.
The agents address had not been published on the site notice that had been planted in the middle of the Demesne. This mistake could put the application by back by a number of months.
The UKs decision to exit the European Union is causing market instability and while much of the focus has been on the valuation of ASX200 companies, SMEs are on the frontline during this volatile period.
SMEs are considerably more likely to have direct exposure to lending conditions, greater dependency on a handful of key clients and, given their smaller size, are much more susceptible to changes in market sentiment.
Given the significant increase in volatility, SME owners need to ask themselves: how am I affected by the lack of market confidence and what can I do to protect myself?
For Australian SMES, short-term consequences include additional uncertainty around proposed business reforms and tax cuts, as well as lower business and consumer confidence.
In the longer term, we may witness an extended period of global uncertainty, with the UK Treasury predicting recession following a successful vote for the UK to leave the European Union.
In short, much of the current uncertainty has been driven by political action, which is difficult to control especially for SMEs. The best advice I can give is to evoke the old adage of not worrying about things you cant control and focus on the things you can.
While this is easier said than done, there are a few tips which can be implemented which will ensure your businesses finances remain in order and you are able to take advantage of opportunities at your disposal.
Consider FX and hedging options
For SMEs that export internationally, especially to the UK, speak to your trading partners and assess what impact Brexit and other political risks are expected to have.
If possible, review ways of reducing or avoiding trade while faced with unfavourable currency rates. If you have a long-term export contact in place, currency hedging can be more effective method to mitigate volatility and provide certainty.
If youre an Australian-based importer of products you might find your money going further, enabling you to buy more product or the same for fewer Australian dollars. Cash flow permitting, you may be able to fast track purchases to lock in benefits of a higher AUD.
Remember, the instant asset write-off remains in place and could be applicable. SMEs can use this deduction for each asset that costs less than $20,000 whether new or second-hand.
Collect invoices in a timely manner
Be sure to follow up invoices that are overdue, especially during a period of weaker demand.
If possible, give digital payment options to your customers so they can pay invoices instantly, this means better cash flow for your business.
If customers are not paying you in a timely manner, you can review your bad debt and write it off, as this may provide your business with a tax deductible expense. Another option is to sell your accounts receivable to a third party at a discount to meet immediate cash needs, this is called invoice factoring.
Manage your business finances
It is important for businesses to follow regular procedures and stay on top of business finances. Remember to check cash flow on a weekly basis and monitor any potential issues such as upcoming tax, GST or superannuation payments.
Businesses should review performance against forecasts on a monthly basis and make adjustments where necessary, such as providing discounts for early payment or negotiating longer terms with suppliers if cash flow is tight.
While conditions at the moment are relatively uncertain, it is important to remember the market is cyclical and there will always be periods of heightened risk. It is the maintenance of good practice and savvy business decisions which will assist your business in good times and bad.
About the author
Sam Allert is the Managing Director of accounting software company Reckon.
Note: This article is of a general nature only and should not be relied upon for your specific circumstances. Reckon does not provide tax or legal advice. Businesses should consult with a professional adviser, tax expert or lawyer before acting.
Branding is important; its how customers perceive your business. It isnt just a logo either, its your entire customer experience. Logo, font, website, social media, even the way you interact with customers are all part of your brand. It can be a little overwhelming at times and that explains why so many companies from start-ups to established companies neglect their branding or fail to rebrand when necessary.
Fact: poor or outdated branding is costing you money. In todays global and digitalised market, becoming obsolete is easier than ever and youre hurting your future prosperity by failing to keep up with the times or being too attached to a logo you drew 20 years ago.
If youre thinking of a rebrand then its highly likely that you need one. Here are some common signs that its time for one.
Relevance
Few brands have remained consistent throughout their history or withstood the test of time with aesthetics that always met with contemporary approval. In fact, even well-known brands like Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Apple, Nike and Volkswagen have gone through subtle or seismic change to appeal to modern standards.
Simply wanting to keep up to date is one of the biggest motivations for a rebrand. If your logo was designed in paint or youre still using crappy fonts from the 90s then its likely the only visitors to your social pages are looking for a good laugh. No-one wants to be the guy everyone laughs at for being 20 years behind the times.
Evolution/Transformation
If your business is moving away from its flagship product or service, or youre reinventing its core offerings, then its possible your current brand will not be consistent with your current and future vision for your company. Imagine how confusing youd look to millennials if you run an online store selling DVDs and Blu-Rays but your company is called Beta-Maxs Cheap Vidz thats after theyve Googled Betamax and stopped giggling. Dont be like Max. Your name might have been cool 30 years ago but puns and wordz spelt with zeds are not appealing and arent consistent with your modern services.
New direction is the primary reason for re-branding and as well as symbolising your evolution it can reenergise your brand internally and externally.
Expansion
Businesses offer consider a rebrand when expanding to new territories. Consistent branding is paramount and its possible your new market already has a key player with a similar name or logo. On rare occasions a companys name or logo can be considered offensive in a new market and a total rebrand can be more invigorating and unifying than separate branding. Theres also the trouble of regional names. If your business hopes to expand into a territory that has a historic rivalry with the region youre named after you could find your business opportunities slightly hamstrung.
Lets imagine this for second. Youre the biggest carpet company in Sydney; youve got stores all over NSW and decide you want to go nationwide. You set up shop in Melbourne down the road from another carpet store who you know sell inferior products at similar prices yet people keep walking past without coming in. So you stand in the window of Sydneys Superior Carpets & Flooring and watch the locals walk past and lip read them all saying superior my arse, Im going to Melbourne Carpets. The same can be said if you try to expand overseas.
Developing a new brand identity can send a message that your company is geared for geographical expansion and diversifying of cultures.
Audience
Sometimes the easiest way to launch a new product, create buzz and generate loyalty is to go niche. Once established in the marketplace, with a saturated audience, the next logical step is to broaden your appeal and expand your demographic.
A rebrand is often a good way to break into new markets without alienating your base audience. Your audience can be assured that the rebrand is a result of their loyalty to your product or service as you seek to leverage your market position to benefit a wider audience.
If your branding is niche or tailored to a certain audience a tweak wont normally cut it and your brand will not reflect the expectations of your more diverse target market. Doing a find and replace on your website to change a few words to sound more inclusive will probably end up with you looking stupid as the new text makes little to no sense.
Mergers and acquisitions
When you merge or acquire businesses its important to appeal to your new, larger customer base. Its possible that many of your new customers were customers of the company you acquired or merged with precisely because they didnt want to use you. If you just absorb companies with a positive brand image as though they never existed you can disengage with a lot of customers.
Its essential to understand how acquired brands fit into the overall brand architecture and alignment of the parent company. If this isnt thought through then both brands can suffer and thats why a rebrand can be useful.
A rebrand can help to reflect the new dynamic, retaining loyal customers, and can also be an effective marketing and PR strategy.
Website woes
Sometimes your website could just do with a little TLC. Sometimes it needs completely gutting. If your focus or message has evolved significantly enough to gut your site then you might as well go the whole hog and rebrand. Your companys branding needs to reflect who you are now and where you are going not just where youve come from.
Your branding isnt just about your website though. Your message needs to be consistent across all of your collateral. Your fancy new website isnt going to like being embarrassed by a business card or marketing email that looks like WordArt was sick on it.
Its time
Rebranding can often be essential to reflect the growth of your business but it needs to be done properly. A professional rebrand, performed by experts in brand strategy is a good idea and a solid investment with measurable benefits that are likely to return your investment multiple times over. Youve probably realised it already but you need a rebrand. Its time.
About the author
Maria Bellissimo-Magrin is the CEO of full-service creative marketing agency Belgrin.
Beer, if drank in moderation, softens the temper, cheers the spirit and promotes health. Thomas Jefferson
Last night was another night of drinking for me. It was my first time to actually try out Miller Genuine Draft. I dont know if it is true for others but for me I always see Miller as a male beer, so I drink the other brand with a female name (its direct competitor).
Surprisingly, I enjoyed my bottle of Miller and had four bottles! As I write this the next morning I had no hangover whatsoever.
That night, I asked their brand ambassador and celebrity DJ Mikail, If I was to write about Miller, how would you like me to write about it?
Mikail said Miller is the premium beer that fits Manilas burgeoning nightlife scene, with its DJ culture and electronic music (EDM) . This is the beer that is made especially for the city at night. For the young energetic cosmopolitan consumers.
Fair enough.
But for someone like me who only occassionally parties, yes I am a #TitaofManila sometimes a Lola too. Only my super close friends or people I love will make me go out of my cave to party after 11PM! Haha! I think Miller has more to offer .
So why switch to Miller #ItsMillerTime
Compared to other beers most has 140 calories it only has 130 calories so you get 10 calories less. Millers draft-beer taste is not metallic, it taste light and semi-sweet (not super sweet) and no bitter after-taste. Taste stays the same below zero temperature of even after a few minutes left in the open (no ice needed!) Its the only beer thats cold filtered not pasturized. Top Manila nightclubs prefer and recommend this draft-beer in a bottle. They promote responsible drinking by partnering with UBER and Rustans with their Safe in the City campaign. From July 16 to September 30 first time UBER users who buys a Miller 4-pack at select Rustans outlet will be able to redeem a free ride up to Php200.00 by using a code that can be found inside the Miller 4 pack. Miller continue to support quality electronic music (not the ones you hear with the Beiber totally real EDM) with the Miller Music which will be happening at the following dates and venue:
July 13 : Miller Music Terrace @ Penthouse 8747 with DJ Flex (Ornusa Cadness , Saninja (Sanya Smith) Nix Damn P, and Millers own ambassador Mikail (Mikhail Schemm)
October 29: Miller Music Halloween venue TA
February 201: Miller Music @ The Sunday Social
May 2017: TBA!
With all that Ive said, what I love most about Miller is having beer without worrying about having beer belly. Unlike other beers it doesnt make you feel bloated or gassy and it doesnt make you smell like beer!
Plus when you are at a partner nughtclub/bar in Manila and you see this Miller Tent card on the table, it means you can get 4 bottles of Miller for Php500 only!
What I Wore:
Top: UNIQLO
Jeans: GUESS
Shoes: FAUX PAS PARIS
Clutch: Gift from GUAM VISITORS BUREAU
Taken at BBZ Makati
If you want to be updated with the latest from Miller just follow their social media @millergenuinedraftph.
Stay gorgeous everyone!
Retreat to Guernsey with new wellness packages
Less than an hour from the UK, Guernsey's spectacular scenery, fresh sea air, quiet roads and peaceful way of life make the island a restful destination for a short-break retreat. Here, VisitGuernsey selects wellness packages on the island to rest, relax and rejuvenate.
Wellbeing Experience at Old Government House Hotel
The OGH offers a luxuriously relaxed getaway in five-star surroundings with its three night Wellbeing Experience. The package includes a fitness assessment and one hour personal training session with a qualified instructor in the hotel's well-equipped gym, and a 60 minute treatment of choice at The Spa, as well as complimentary use of the gym, spa pools, sauna and steam room. A revitalising afternoon tea with smoothies, fruit skewers, crudites and dips, and breakfast each morning are also included as part of the package. Guests can make use of the hotel's outdoor pool, a 10% discount on any other beauty treatments and products in The Spa, or explore the surroundings with a stroll through St Peter Port to the coast.
The Wellbeing Experience package at Old Government House Hotel is priced from 580 per person, based on two people sharing a Classic Room. Additional nights are priced at the hotel's best available rate. (Subject to availability; terms and conditions apply). theoghhotel.com
Wellness in Sark
Stocks Hotel offers relaxed charm and barefoot elegance on the island of Sark, a 45 minute ferry ride from Guernsey where life is about kicking back and enjoying nature. With the hotel's three day wellness package, guests will feel the benefit of Sark's clean un-polluted air with a three hour guided walk of Sark, a boat trip around the island with a Sark-born fisherman, and bike hire for the duration of their stay to explore the island's rural landscape. The package also includes a horse and carriage tour around Sark either during the day or after dark to admire the legendary Sark dark skies. In keeping with the island's healthy living theme, the hotel also boasts a solar heated outdoor pool, Jacuzzi style spa pool, gym, and the Venus Room health and beauty facility.
The Wellness in Sark package at Stocks Hotel is priced from 398 per person B&B based on two people sharing a superior double or twin, or from 688 single occupancy of a superior double or twin. stockshotel.com
Yoga Retreat at Fermain Valley Hotel (24 25 September 2016)
The four star Fermain Valley Hotel becomes a yoga retreat for one night and two full days in September in collaboration with local wellness company Yoga Elements. The yoga package includes seven hours of yoga workshop, incorporating Hatha Yoga Flow, guided relaxation yoga practice, restorative yoga, guided meditation and guided Yoga Nirda. There's also a Q&A session about yoga and health in general, a philosophy class, and yoga films shown in the hotel cinema. As part of the programme, designated breaks offer participants the option to use the heated indoor pool, take a bracing cliff walk, or have an invigorating swim in the sea. The one night package includes a healthy brunch (with gluten free muesli, fruit, juices and herbal teas), afternoon tea with protein balls, and a candle light and chill time dinner with Moroccan inspired vegetarian dishes accompanied by Cafe del Mar and Buddha bar music.
The one night yoga retreat at Fermain Valley Hotel is priced at 220 per person based on two people sharing; or 250 per person for single occupancy. fermainvalley.com
Yoga, Well-being and Aging Gracefully Retreat in Herm (21-23 October & 28-30 October 2016)
The yoga and well-being retreat on Herm Island is run by Power Yoga and is centred on providing guests with a gentle and relaxed environment. The package includes six hours of yoga tuition, including Asana (physical postures), Pranayama (breathing), meditation, restorative & Yin Yoga, and Yoga Nidra (deep relaxation). The weekend also includes a 'Move, Play, Rest and Re-Set' workshop and optional treatments. Guests stay in the private rooms of the White House Cottages where there are no televisions, clocks or telephones to provide the ultimate escape from everyday life. Herm is home to just 50 inhabitants, so visitors can relax on the slow-paced island with walks along the deserted rural paths or take a refreshing swim in the sea.
The wellbeing packages in Herm are priced from 289 per person based on two people sharing. Price includes boat transfers from Guernsey, accommodation, six hours of yoga tuition, all meals and running and walking expeditions. poweryogaguernsey.com
Getting to Guernsey:
Direct flights to Guernsey operate year round from London City, Gatwick and Stansted, as well as many regional UK airports with Aurigny (aurigny.com) and Flybe (flybe.com).
Return flights from London Gatwick to Guernsey with Aurigny are priced from 100 per person and flight time is one hour.
Condor operates ferry services from Poole and Portsmouth, and takes around three and seven hours respectively. Return car ferries from Poole to Guernsey are from 190, carrying two passengers (condorferries.com).
For more information on Guernsey, go to visitguernsey.com.
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Almost lost among the deluge of new features in the upcoming version of iOS Apple touted last week was the companys announcement about privacy.
All this great work in iOS 10 would be meaningless to us if it came at the expense of your privacy, Craig Federighi, Apples senior vice president for software engineering, told attendees at the companys Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco.
We believe you should have great features and great privacy, he said. You demand it, and we are dedicated to providing it.
Apple offers end-to-end encryption by default in apps like FaceTime, Messages and HomeKit, and it performs data crunching at the device level, with the data remaining under a users control.
While gathering data about its customers data usage, it uses a technology called differential privacy.
Differential privacy is a research topic in the area of statistics and data analytics that uses hashing, subsampling and noise injection to enable this kind of crowdsourced learning while keeping the information of each individual user completely private, Federighi explained.
Black Box Problem
Despite its potential benefits, differential privacy is not free of controversy.
What Apple is doing is really neat theyre trying to make things more private. But if theyre going to be collecting a lot of data, its good to know what theyre going to do with that data, and we dont, noted Matthew Green, a computer science professor at Johns Hopkins University.
We dont know much about what Apple is doing. They seem to be doing something very much like what Google is doing, he told the E-Commerce Times. Hopefully, theyll publish more details as we get closer to the release of iOS 10, but right now there are ways to get it wrong and ways to get it right, and we just dont know how Apple is doing it.
Googles Differential Privacy
Google has been using differential privacy in its RAPPOR (Randomized Aggregatable Privacy-Preserving Ordinal Response) project since the fall of 2014.
Building on the concept of randomized response, RAPPOR enables learning statistics about the behavior of users software while guaranteeing client privacy, noted lfar Erlingsson, Googles tech lead manager for security research.
The guarantees of differential privacy, which are widely accepted as being the strongest form of privacy, have almost never been used in practice despite intense research in academia, he continued. RAPPOR introduces a practical method to achieve those guarantees.
Differential privacy has its roots in survey methods developed in the 1960s to get honest answers to sensitive questions, according to Joseph Lorenzo Hall, chief technologist at the Center for Democracy & Technology.
For example, if you wanted to find out how many people in a sample ever had a sexually transmitted disease, a respondent would be told to flip a coin. If heads appeared, the respondent would answer yes. If tails appeared, the respondent would answer truthfully.
Effectively, this meant that any given Yes response was completely deniable by the respondent, preserving the privacy of those who answered Yes, Hall wrote.
However, by taking into account that 50 percent of a sample were yes by mandate, surveyors could get significant data. So, if 100 people were asked the STD question, you could eliminate 50 yes answers as mandatory. The number of yes answers in the remainder of the sample would give you a good idea how many people actually had an STD.
Privacy Part of Apples Brand
Will differentiatial privacy deliver on Apples promises?
To me, the question is how effectively does it enhance privacy? asked Ben Desjardins, director of security solutions at Radware.
If it is unproven, using it as a primary means of protecting privacy could create some risk, he told the E-Commerce Times.
Its too soon to tell whether differential privacy will succeed the way Apple envisions it working, said Bob Ertl, senior director of product management of Accellion.
However, that also means harsh criticisms against Apple and this technology are premature, he told the E-Commerce Times.
What we do know is that Apple has arguably overdemonstrated that it is a passionate and vociferous advocate for consumer privacy, Ertl continued. Therefore, I dont think its very likely that they are going to undermine the trust they have generated among the more than 1 billion people using their devices with this technology, he added. Privacy has become Apples brand, and Im sure the company will take every measure necessary not to compromise such a core principle.
More than 85 million Android devices worldwide have been taken over by the Yingmob, a group of China-based cybercriminals who created the HummingBad malware, according to a Check Point report released last week.
HummingBad establishes a persistent rootkit on Android devices, generates fraudulent ad revenue, and installs additional fraudulent apps.
If it fails to establish a rootkit, it effectively carpet bombs the target devices with poisoned apps.
HummingBad has been generating revenue of US$300,000 a month, according to Check Point.
The malware runs along with legitimate ad campaigns that Yingmob has produced for its legitimate ad analytics business.
Weve long been aware of this evolving family of malware, and were constantly improving our systems that detect it, a Google spokesperson said in a statement provided to TechNewsWorld by company rep Aaron Stein. We actively block installations of infected apps to keep users and their information safe.
HummingBads Victim Count
About 25 percent of the roughly 200 apps on the control panel of Umeng a tracking and analytics service HummingBads creators use are malicious, Check Point said. An estimated 10 million people have been using those malicious apps.
China and India have the highest number of victims 1.6 million and 1.3 million, respectively. The Philippines comes in third with 520,000. The United States is eighth, with 286,000 victims.
KitKat runs on 50 percent of the affected devices, Jelly Bean on 40 percent, Lollipop on 7 percent, Ice Cream Sandwich on 2 percent, and Marshmallow on 1 percent, according to Check Point.
How HummingBad Works
HummingBad uses a sophisticated, multistage attack chain with two main components.
The first component, SSP, uses a rootkit that exploits multiple vulnerabilities to try to root the target device.
SSP injects a library into the Google Play process using ptrace, Check Point said, which lets HummingBad imitate clicks on install/buy/accept buttons inside Google Play.
If rooting fails, the second component, CAP, installs fraudulent apps using elaborate techniques. It decrypts module_encrypt.jar from its assets when it launches on a device, then dynamically loads code containing the main malware functionality. Next it decrypts and runs a native daemon binary, among other things.
Regardless of whether the rooting succeeds, HummingBad downloads as many fraudulent apps to the target device as possible a blend of several malicious components, many of them variations with the same functionality.
HummingBad Risk
HummingBad is very hard to identify, very difficult to get rid of, and massively invasive, said Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group.
Alphabet has had a very poor reputation with regard to security, and it will be watched closely to see how quickly and permanently it can mitigate this exploit, he told TechNewsWorld.
If done too poorly or slowly, it could quickly turn Android into an unacceptable risk for the entire industry.
HummingBad could stymie Googles plans to embed Android more deeply into the auto industry, Enderle noted. Google has effectively built a car infotainment system into Nougat, the latest version of Android, he pointed out, and HummingBad could easily have adverse implications with regard to driver safety.
Apple reportedly has declined to sponsor the Republican National Convention in Cleveland next month amid increasing concerns over the rhetoric coming from presumptive nominee Donald Trump.
The company notified RNC officials that it would withdraw its support from the July convention after Trump made a number of highly charged statements targeting minority and religious groups, Politico reported last week. Apple apparently had planned to provide funding and high-tech equipment to both the Republican and Democratic conventions but has pulled its support from the RNC.
The company has butted heads with the Trump campaign in recent months, with the candidate blasting Apples overseas manufacturing practices. Trump also called for a boycott to protest Apples legal fight with the FBI, which had demanded that the company assist in accessing encrypted data to further the bureaus investigation of last Decembers terrorist attack in San Bernardino, California.
Several other major U.S. companies reportedly have declined to help support the RNC this year, including HP, Wells Fargo and Motorola. [*Editors Note June 21, 2016]
HP Inc. will not be providing financial or technical support to either convention in 2016, spokesperson Emily Horn told the E-Commerce Times.
Fundraising on Pace
The RNC is not without its supporters, though, according to Audrey Scagnelli, press secretary for the convention.
We are working with a variety of major tech partners who are focused on being part of the American political process, she told the E-Commerce Times.
While there have been many reports of who may not be supporting this years convention, whats been overlooked is the fact that we have more than 100 donors who are supporting the Host Committee, said spokesperson Emily Lauer.
The Cleveland 2016 Host Committee already has raised US$57.5 million of the conventions $64 million budget, or 90 percent of the funding required, she told the E-Commerce Times.
The fundraising pace exceeds that of the 2008 St. Paul convention and the 2012 Tampa convention, Lauer pointed out.
While some companies have said they will not support the convention, that is different from saying they are pulling out of prior commitments, she argued.
Apple has not been part of the more than 100 committed donors to the Host Committee, Lauer maintained.
Apple had no comment, spokesperson Fred Sainz told the E-Commerce Times.
Brand Protection
Many companies were willing to give Trump the opportunity to pivot toward a broader general election strategy after clinching the nomination, suggested Darrell West, vice president for governance studies at the Brookings Institution.
However, when he ramped up the rhetoric in recent weeks, they didnt want to risk tarnishing their corporate image, he told the E-Commerce Times.
I think theyre worried about damage to their own brand, particularly in the tech sector, which is a very youth-oriented market, West told the E-Commerce Times. Making bigoted statements is sort of the kiss of death.
Apple and other technology companies commonly invest money and resources in both major political parties, because they want to get their phone calls returned and have access to politicians when there are issues of concern on the table, he noted.
The impact on the Republican general election campaign from a company like Apple withholding support goes well beyond the immediate financial blow, as the technical assistance required to run a modern political operation on a national scale is immense. Campaigns generally do not have that kind of expertise in house.
Color of Change Campaign
Apple is one of many corporations Color of Change has been targeting in a campaign launched several months ago. Armed with more than 100,000 signatures, the group aims to get corporations and other organizations to decline to support the Trump campaign.
In addition to Apple, some of the high-profile companies on its list are Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Adobe, Cisco, AT&T, Amazon, Twitter, Verizon and HP.
Color of Change believes that its lobbying and advertising efforts, along with media coverage of its campaign, helped nudge Apple toward its decision.
The Apple news raises the bar for other corporations, said Rashad Robinson, spokesperson for the Color of Change PAC. Not only has Apple declined to support the Republican National Convention, but theyve explicitly told Republican leaders that Trumps bigoted rhetoric is the reason that theyre sitting out.
Companies continuing to support the convention need to ask themselves what their consciences are telling them, he said. History will tell the story of those who had a chance to stand up to Donald Trump and all he represents, but chose instead to throw their brands and money behind his toxic vision for America.
*ECT News Network editors note June 21, 2016: Our original published version of this story included UPS, Ford and JPMorgan Chase among the companies that reportedly declined to support the RNC this year. However, those reports have not completely represented the companies positions.
UPS made the decision last year not to support either political convention when it established the companys 2016 budget, spokesperson Kara Ross told the E-Commerce Times. We will not have a presence at the Republican nor the Democratic convention. It is erroneous to assert or infer that UPS decided not to support the conventions due to the identity or position of a candidate. It was not a political decision, by any means.
Also, Ford is not sponsoring the host committee for either the Republican or Democratic convention, spokesperson Christin Baker told the E-Commerce Times. We will have a presence at both conventions engaging mostly through events with states where we have a manufacturing presence, like Michigan, Missouri and Ohio.
JPMorgan also is not planning to sponsor either convention this year but does plan to sponsor some public-service activities that are connected to each event.
Microsoft has entered a partnership with Kind Financial to create an entity that will obtain government contracts to track seed-to-sale compliance in the legalized marijuana business, Kind announced last week.
The new entity, Kind Government Solutions, will provide state, county and local municipalities with tracking information on marijuana sales to keep them in compliance with government regulations, said Kind Financial CEO David Dinenberg.
Microsoft selected Kind to be a part of its newly created Microsoft Health and Human Services Pod for Managed Service Providers.
We support government customers and partners to help them meet their missions, Microsoft said in a statement provided to the E-Commerce Times by spokesperson Brooke Randell. Kind Financial is building solutions on our government cloud to help these agencies regulate and monitor controlled substances and items, and manage compliance with jurisdictional laws and regulations.
Cannabis Compliance
Kinds main compliance product is Agrisoft Seed to Sale, a software program designed to help government agencies ensure compliance with cannabis sale regulations.
No one can predict the future of cannabis legalization, Dinenberg said. However, it is clear that legalized cannabis will always be subject to strict oversight and regulations similar to alcohol and tobacco.
Matt Cook, former senior leader of Colorados Medical Marijuana Enforcement Division and the author of the states medical marijuana regulations, will act as a special advisor to the partnership on government matters.
Microsoft is taking advantage of a huge market opportunity, while perhaps taking a substantial risk. Due to the uncertain nature of state-by-state marijuana legalization, there are few companies willing to invest millions of dollars into a long-term commitment.
Untapped Potential
Regulation and compliance from one state to the next is still a huge challenge, noted Taylor West, deputy director of the National Cannabis Industry Association.
There is very little in the way of consistency or reciprocity between states regulatory programs, so a company that wants to operate in more than one state really does have to approach each one almost from scratch, she told the E-Commerce Times.
Twenty-five states have legalized marijuana either for full or medicinal use, West said.
The legal marijuana industry is estimated at about US$5.4 billion, according to a report from ArcView Market Research and New Frontier.
I think Microsoft sees a unique opportunity to grow this market, and realizes that by supporting at the ground floor, they will be in an incredibly powerful position once the market fully matures to be a dominant solution provider for it, observed Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group.
A number of technology industry figures are finding a home in the legalized marijuana business because the industry has a large amount of available money to spend yet there is still a problem getting into traditional banking relationships, he told the E-Commerce Times.
Cash Crop
Indeed, the legalized marijuana industry still faces a large number of hurdles to operate like a traditional business, in part because federal law still prohibits the sale of marijuana. The Senate Appropriations Committee last week voted 16-14 to approve a measure that would allow banks to provide services to marijuana businesses.
The federal government should not be forcing Oregons legal marijuana business to carry gym bags full of cash to pay their taxes, employees and bills, said Sen. Jeff Merkely, D-Ore., who coauthored the amendment. This is an invitation to robberies, money laundering and organized crime.
Marijuana would bring in about half a billion dollars in the first 14 months of legal sales just in the state of Oregon he pointed out.
Think about the marijuana business in now-legal states, suggested Paul Teich, principal analyst at Tirias Research.
It has been an underground business where no one wanted any record of transactions, he told the E-Commerce Times. Entrepreneurs just starting up in the business are starting with a good knowledge of their domain growing weed but no real knowledge of modern business practices and legal supply chain economics.
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By Elliott Negin
ExxonMobil officials may hem and haw when reporters ask them if the company still funds climate science denier organizations, but the numbers dont lie.
The company says it acknowledges the reality of global warming and claims it supports a carbon tax, but its recently disclosed list of 2015 public information and policy research grantees shows it spent nearly $2 million last year on more than a dozen think tanks, advocacy groups and associations that dispute climate science and disparage renewable energy.
350.org
Thats significant from both a legal and political perspective.
There are legal implications because ExxonMobil is currently under investigation for allegedly misleading investors and the general public about climate risks. Its scientists, who were conducting cutting-edge climate research as far back as the 1970s, cautioned top management that continuing to burn vast quantities of fossil fuels could be catastrophic. Instead of heeding those warnings, the company stressed scientific uncertainty to protect its long-term profitability and bankrolled denier groups to spread disinformation.
Likewise, it is politically significant because, by sowing doubt about climate science and the potential of carbon-free energy sources, denier groups provide cover for elected officials to stand in the way of progress.
Two Decades of Duplicity
Shortly after the adoption of the Kyoto Protocol international climate treaty, Exxon went on a spending spree to block federal efforts to address global warming. The company, which was outed by a 2007 report by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), spent $18.62 million from 1998a year before it merged with Mobilthrough 2005 on a network of more than 40 groups. From 2006 through last year, it spent another $14.35 million, for a total of $33 million.
Thats just what can be gleaned from the companys tax filings and statements, however. Corporations are not required to disclose all of their political spending and there is reason to suspect ExxonMobil has spent quite a bit more on its climate disinformation campaign. A former ExxonMobil executive who wishes to remain anonymous told UCS that the company secretly allocated as much as $10 million annually for what insiders called climate black ops from 1998 through 2005.
In any case, according to its own figures posted last week, ExxonMobil spent $1.96 million on 16 denier and obstructionist groups last year. Ten of them, including the American Enterprise Institute, American Legislative Exchange Council, Federalist Society and Hoover Institution, were among those listed in the 2007 UCS report.
So what is ExxonMobil getting for its money? Lets take a look at a handful of last years grantees to find out.
U.S. Chamber of Commerce:
Half of ExxonMobils 2015 denier donations$1 millionwent to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the same amount it gave the Chamber in 2014.
The chamber acknowledges that climate change is happening, but discounts the prevailing scientific consensus that it is largely due to human activity, mainly burning fossil fuels. When pressed about the Chambers position during a March 2014 Senate hearing, Karen Harbert, head of the Chambers Institute for 21st Century Energy, replied that there is a robust debate over what is causing climate change. It is caused by a lot of things, she insisted.
Harberts scientifically indefensible comment was not surprising. The Chamber has a long history of disputing climate science and that has alienated some of its members. In 2009, Apple, Exelon, Nike, PNM Resources and PG&E, for example, cancelled their memberships after Chamber Vice President William Kovacs demanded that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) convene a Scopes monkey trial of the 21st century on climate science with witnesses, cross-examinations and a judge ruling on the reality of global warming. It would be evolution versus creationism, Kovacs explained. It will be climate change science on trial.
Those high-profile defections apparently had little impact on the Chambers position. In May 2014, just days before the EPA announced its draft Clean Power Plan to reduce power plant carbon pollution, the Chamber released a grossly misleading report attacking the proposed rule. The report, which was also sponsored by the American Petroleum Institute, was denounced not only by the EPA, but also by PolitiFact.com and the Washington Post. Among its many faults, the report wildly inflated the cost of the rule and failed to consider the benefits of cutting carbon emissions.
Last October, the Chamber and 14 other business associations filed a lawsuit against the EPA, arguing that the Clean Power Plan exceeds the agencys authority to regulate the energy sector and the Chambers priorities for 2016 include opposing EPA efforts to curb carbon emissions as well as the agencys science-based finding that global warming endangers public health and the environment.
Manhattan Institute:
ExxonMobil gave the Manhattan Institute $200,000 in 2015, boosting the companys total donations to the self-described free-market think tank to $1 million since 1998. In turn, the institute has been cranking out papers and articles denouncing efforts to cut carbon and maligning renewable energy technologies.
Last summer, for example, Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow Oren Cass dismissed the idea of a carbon taxExxonMobils supposed preferred policyas a shell game in an article he wrote for National Affairs. He followed up that essay in October with a white paper calling the impending UN climate negotiations in Paris a farce. What did Cass propose as a better solution? He urged policymakers to abandon fruitless negotiations and focus instead on the realistic option of promoting innovation and preparing for any future adaptation that may be necessary.
The institutes longtime point man on energy, Robert Brycewho previously worked for the ExxonMobil-funded Institute for Energy Researchsays hes agnostic about climate change. Over the years he has written numerous columns for the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Wall Street Journal and other publications praising oil, natural gas and coal and disparaging wind and solar. A recent Bryce column in the National Review, for instance, denounced tax breaks and subsidies for the wind industry but ignored the fact that, since 1918, federal oil and gas industry subsidies have averaged $4.85 billion a year in todays dollars.
American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC):
ALEC, a secretive lobby group that drafts sample corporate-friendly legislation for state lawmakers, has received $1.79 million from ExxonMobil since 1998 and that investment is still paying dividends. At ALECs annual meeting last July, for example, corporate and legislator members collaborated on bills and resolutions that would inhibit state implementation of the Clean Power Plan, hamper the solar industry from selling electricity directly to homes and businesses and undermine state renewable energy standards by restricting investment in wind and solar.
One of the keynote speakers at that meeting, Stephen Moorefounder of the Club for Growth and a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundationdeclared at a plenary session that the biggest scam of the last 100 years is global warming. ALECs official position on climate change is only slightly more nuanced, leaving open the question of the role human activity plays. Climate change is a historical phenomenon, its website states and the debate will continue on the significance of natural and anthropogenic contributions.
With that scientifically challenged position, its no wonder ALEC invites speakers for its conferences from such notorious climate science denier groups as the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, the Heartland Institute and, of course, the Heritage Foundationall former ExxonMobil grantees.
While ExxonMobil and other major carbon producers Chevron and Peabody Energy remain steadfast ALEC members, more than 100 corporations have severed ties with the organization for a variety of reasons, including its stance on climate change. Those companies include a number of heavy hitters in the energy sector, including American Electric Power, BP, ConocoPhillips and Shell.
National Black Chamber of Commerce:
From 2002 through last year, the National Black Chamber of Commerce (NBCC) received $1.1 million from ExxonMobil and the organizations president, Harry C. Alford, is unapologetic about taking fossil fuel industry money. Of course we do and it is only natural, Alford states on the NBCC website. The legacy of Blacks in this nation has been tied to the miraculous history of fossil fuel [F]ossil fuels have been our economic friend.
Last summer, NBCC published a report that falsely claimed the Clean Power Plan would pose economic hardship on poor and minority Americans. A UCS analysis found that the report was based on fraudulent claims from previously published studies, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerces anti-Clean Power Plan report from 2014. In fact, unchecked climate change would likely hurt poor and minority communities most.
More recently, Alford wrote an opinion piece attacking the Clean Power Plan for The Hill, a Washington political trade publication. Like the U.S. Chamber of Commerces bogus 2014 report, Alfords June 29 column vastly exaggerated the cost of the proposed rule and did not factor in the billions of dollars in health and economic benefits that would result from cutting carbon pollution.
ExxonMobils Pretzel Logic
Last fall, UCS and reporters at InsideClimate News and the Los Angeles Times revealed that Exxons own scientists had warned the company decades ago about the potential for climate catastrophe. The new revelations also showed that the company responded to that bad news by downplaying climate risks and helping establish the climate science denial network.
A number of journalists did follow-up stories, pressing ExxonMobil officials about the companys longtime support for denier groups. They didnt always get the same answer.
During an interview last September with Richard Keil, ExxonMobils senior media relations advisor, WNYCs On the Media host Bob Garfield pushed Keil for an explanation. Please clarify this for me: Are not funding or did not fund them? Garfield asked. Keils response was unequivocal. We are not funding, he said.
When asked the same question by the New York Times in early November, then-Vice President of Public and Government Affairs Kenneth Cohen likewise said no. We stopped funding them in the middle part of the last decade because a handful of them were making the uncertainty of the science their focal point, he said. Frankly, we made the call that we needed to back away from supporting the groups that were undercutting the actual risk of global warming.
Cohens response wasnt a surprise. He made the same disingenuous claim back in February 2007, a few weeks after UCS disclosed that ExxonMobil had been spending millions of dollars on climate science denier groups. Greenwire, a trade news organization, reported that Cohen said the company has stopped funding them.
The surprise came on November 9, three days after the New York Times story ran, when PBS NewsHour host Judy Woodruff asked Cohen if ExxonMobil has been funding denier groups. This time he took a different tack.
Well, the answer is yes, replied Cohen, who retired from the company in January. And I will let those organizations respond for themselves.
But before anyone declares a victory for corporate transparency, it turns out that Cohens moment of candor was, well, momentary.
On December 1, a Washington Post story quoted yet another ExxonMobil spokesperson who qualified Cohens remark. Alan Jeffers, a media relations manager, said the company rejects the premise that it has been funding climate science denial.
We were engaged with funding public policy groups on policy issues, not on science, Jeffers explained. We made our position known on some climate policies that made us unpopular with environmental activists and they tried to position that as us funding climate denial. And thats just not accurate.
Not accurate? As Jeffers, Keil and their former boss, Cohen, surely know, the think tanks, advocacy groups and associations ExxonMobil has been sponsoring all these years lie about the science to strengthen the argument against doing anything to address climate change. After all, if people believe climate science is a fraudor at least far from settledthey will see no reason to support a carbon tax, cap-and-trade system or any other climate policy. And that line of reasoning, which protects the status quo, seems to suit ExxonMobil just fine.
I have to admit that for a few days I felt really angry and depressed about the outcome of the Democratic Party Platform Committee meeting in Orlando. Despite a letter from more than 200 party delegates calling for a ban on fracking in the platform, more than 100,000 public petitions demanding the same and a recent Gallup poll showing that a vast majority of Democrats (not to mention a clear majority of Americans at large) are opposed to fracking, the committee failed to stand up to the corporate power of the oil and gas industry. In the end, the fracking ban proposal wasnt even allowed to come up for a vote.
Although this is disappointing, our work doesnt change. We must organize, organize, organize and build a grassroots movement so strong and diverse we are able to elect national leaders that reflect our progressive ideals and will fight for worthy policies. And of course we must then hold these individuals accountable.
In the meantime, progress is being made. Democratic Platform Committee members voted in favor of an historic amendment categorizing climate change as a global emergency requiring a World War II-scale mobilization. Its our job to keep fighting for policies that will keep fossil fuels in the ground and end the fracking nightmare. It will be up to each of us to keep demanding that those in powerregardless of political partytake the needed steps to seriously address our impending climate crisis.
To be clear, heres what the Democratic Party platform needed to do that it didnt do:
Call for a national ban on fracking, the dangerous method of oil and natural gas extraction responsible for a majority of American fossil fuel production.
Call for rejection of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a disastrous trade deal that would undermine domestic environmental regulations and encourage more fracking.
Call for a halt to construction of gas-fired power plants, which burn fracked gas and contribute to climate change.
Call for a halt to the construction of oil and gas pipelines and other infrastructure that is scarring the country, impacting land, waterways and communities.
Call for a stop to the use of fracked oil bomb trains, which facilitate more fracking and pose highly explosive risk to communities they pass through.
Call for a halt to all fossil fuel extraction on federal landsto Keep Fossil Fuels in the Groundin order to avoid the biggest impacts of climate change.
Call for challenging corporate power. The committee rejected several amendments that would have addressed this critical issue including one amendment that would stop the revolving door between industry and government employment.
These Democratic Party failures clearly explain why I will be marching in the streets of Philadelphia on July 24, on the eve of the Democratic National Convention, to raise up clear, bold, urgent demandsdemands that must be met if we are to avoid the worst and most disruptive climate consequences. We want fracking banned, fossil fuels left in the ground, the TPP rejected, environmental justice for all and a quick, just transition to 100 percent renewable energy.
Thats what the Clean Energy Revolution requires and we demand that it happen now. Join me in Philadelphia.
In a historic announcement, the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation (LDF) awarded the largest portfolio of environmental grants in the foundations history.
The foundation awarded a total of $15.6 million in grants, including $7,631,508 for wildlife and habitat conservation; $2,525,000 for ocean conservation; $2,100,000 to protect indigenous rights; $2,085,000 to support innovative solutions to the worlds problems; and $1,300,000 to combat climate change. With these grants, the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation has provided more than $59 million in support of many projects since 1998.
The Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation supports more than 70 environmental projects across 40-plus countries and five oceans through close collaborative partnerships with environmental leaders, experts and organizations.
Today we are greatly increasing our level of vital grant making and strategic partnerships to help solve some of the worlds most pressing environmental challenges, Leonardo DiCaprio, founder and chairman, said.
The foundation also announced today the appointment of Terry Tamminen as CEO of LDF. Tamminen joins the foundation from Seventh Generation Advisors, which he founded nine years ago. Previously, he served as Sec. of the California Environmental Protection Agency under Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and founded the Los Angeles Waterkeeper as the Santa Monica Bay Keeper in 1993.
Leo and his foundation have been an invaluable voice in the environmental movement for many years, said Tamminen. I am proud to join them in the fight for the defense of our natural world and the protection of every living creature on Earth. I look forward to working with Leo and the LDF team as we expand the impact of the foundation in the years to come.
LDF supports more than 70 environmental projects across 40-plus countries and five oceans through close collaborative partnerships with environmental leaders, experts and organizations.
The portfolio objectives and grant recipients for this round of funding include:
Wildlife and Habitat Protection aims to improve the future for vulnerable wildlife on land by protecting and restoring natural habitats, end poaching in critical regions and reintroduce native species back into the wild.
Grantees include:
Our most iconic wildlife is on the precipice, worldwide; but the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation and [ Wildlife Conservation Network ] have envisioned a different path forward, Jeffrey Parish, Wildlife Conservation Networks vice president for conservation, said.
LDFs investment in the Elephant Crisis Fund has enabled support to more than 100 projects by 40 organizations across Africa and Asia to end the ivory crisis and ensure these giants will forever roam free. That is nothing short of game-changing, and LDFs investments will ensure more species, like African Lions, will soon be stepping back from the brink.
Ocean Conservation works to safeguard endangered ocean habitats and species, constrain overfishing and establish and expand marine protected areas.
Grantees include:
Indigenous Rights Protection invests in the emergence of an effective, empowered and indigenous-led conservation movement.
Grantees include:
This important grant will help Our Childrens Trust advance the global climate campaign in which more and more young people around the globe are exercising their fundamental constitutional and public trust rights to demand urgent reductions in carbon and methane pollution to stabilize our climate system and protect our oceans, Julia Olson, Our Childrens Trusts executive director and chief legal counsel, said.
Where political branches of governments have failed us, these youth are bringing landmark actions in their state and federal courts to secure the legally binding right to a healthy atmosphere and stable climate, in accordance with current science, for the benefit of all present and future generations.
This weekas thousands of Americans urge awareness to the destruction caused by oil bomb trainsan oil field in San Juan County, New Mexico erupted in flames Monday night, highlighting the continued and increasing dangers of the fossil fuel industry.
The fire broke out around 10:15 p.m. Monday at a
fracking site owned and operated by WPX Energy, setting off several explosions and temporarily closing the nearby Highway 550. Fifty-five local residents were forced out of their homes.
A photo of the fire before emergency response arrived on site. Kendra Pinto
The sitelocated in the Mancos shale deposit area and known as the 550 Corridor and a part of Greater Chaco Canyoncontains six new oil wells and 30 temporary oil storage tanks holding either oil or produced water. All 36 storage tanks caught fire and burned, the Tulsa, Oklahoma-based energy company
said.
The site was still smoldering last night and, now, only 7 of 36 tanks at production site on fire this morning, the company tweeted.
The fire is being allowed to burn itself out due to the intensity of the heat, the number of oil tanks involved and to contain petroleum fluids on WPXs five-acre site, predominantly in the storage tankage, WPX said.
According to Albuquerque news station
KOAT, WPX stopped drilling for natural gas and oil in the area last May. The company had been producing for about a week before the fire broke out.
https://twitter.com/WPXEnergy/statuses/753266559175360512
The cause of the fire is currently unclear. We think that in the next couple of weeks to months, we will have that information and will be able to share that with the public, WPX San Juan Asset Team manager, Heather Riley, told the news station.
There were no reported injuries or damage to nearby property. Most of the evacuees have returned home but 10 families are still lodged in a hotel,
The Farmington Daily Times reported.
Environmental advocates are speaking out about the explosion.
The site that exploded is a brand new facility that consists of six wells drilled to shale formations that have never been adequately analyzed for impacts and safety concerns. Mike Eisenfeld, the Energy and Climate Program manager at the
San Juan Citizens Alliance, told EcoWatch in an email.
WPX was given approval to develop the site from the New Mexico Oil Conservation Division in September. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Farmington Field Office gave final approval to drill the land in December.
In a leap before looking scenario, the federal Bureau of Land Management in Farmington, New Mexico has allowed WPX to proceed with these shale facilities discounting the inherent danger that has now become clear with the explosion, Eisenfeld said.
This highlights the failure to have adequate safeguards in place to protect local communities and also raises serious questions about chemicals and toxicity associated with the explosion. Emergency response for this explosion was hours away. A thorough investigation is necessary. There should be a moratorium on these new wells until BLM completes a legally proficient Resource Management Plan Amendment/Environmental Impact Statement for the Mancos Shale/Gallup formations.
The New Mexico environmental non-profit
WildEarth Guardians noted in a statement to EcoWatch that the BLM Farmington Field Office has leased more than 90 percent of the lands it oversees to oil and gas companies and plans to auction off additional acres for fracking during the January 2017 lease sale. The office manages a total of 1.8 million acres of public land.
Enough is enough, Kendra Pinto, Counselor Chapter outreach intern, said. It seems like every month we see more wells here, and things are going to get worse if the drilling doesnt stop. At this rate, what will be left here for our children? The land has changed.
STOP IT!
Huge #fracking explosion near Chaco Canyon involved six new wells drilled and fracked on our public land.https://t.co/aycGwiRKfr Tim Ream (@ourcarbon) July 13, 2016
WPX Energy has invested millions to drill into the tight shale formations in the San Juan Basin. The company has put in at least $160 million in developing oil plays in 2014 on its 60,000 leased acres, the Santa Fe New Mexican reported.
The rise of hydraulic fracturing has aided a U.S. energy boom but the environmental impact of the technology is under intense dispute, from polluting drinking water to earthquakes. Last year, WPX Energy itself came under scrutiny for failing to disclose how it is managing its impacts on communities and the local environment with its fracking operations.
WPX Energy scored near the bottom of the industry in a recent scorecard report published by investors benchmarking 35 companies on their disclosed efforts to mitigate key impacts, and has faced controversy in the past over allegations that it irreparably contaminated local drinking water in Pennsylvania, the advisory firm Green Century Funds wrote.
WPX Energy has defended its operations and even helped produce a glossy 26-minute documentary, Down Deep, as a way of spreading the message that fracking is safe and necessary for the U.S. energy future, Tulsa World wrote of the film.
Still, as WildEarth Guardians pointed out, the recent oil field explosion in San Juan serves as a sobering reminder of the urgent need to build safe, clean renewable energy in place of fossil fuels.
I know people want jobs, Samuel Sage, Wildlife Guardians Counselor Chapter community services coordinator, said. But why must they come at the expense of our air, water, and climate? Many other places are building clean energy generation and creating well-paying jobs in the process. That is our future, not this dirty industry.
Unfortunately, this may be the tip of the iceberg, Rebecca Sobel, senior climate and energy campaigner at WildEarth Guardians, said. The Obama Administration has already leased more than 10 million acres of public land to oil and gas drilling, and BLM continues to lease more land in New Mexico to fracking interests without studying these impacts. How many more explosions and evacuations will it take before we seriously consider the cost of these dirty fossil fuel industries and simply end this leasing program?
(Photo: REUTERS / Cheryl Ravelo)A Catholic faithful receives holy communion during an open-air Mass led by Pope Francis at Rizal Park in Manila January 18, 2015. Pope Francis concluded his trip to Asia on Sunday with an open-air Mass for a rain-drenched crowd in Manila that the Vatican and the government said drew up to seven million people, the largest ever for a papal event.
Pope Francis ended his Asian trip at a rain-sodden open-air mass in Manila that the Vatican and the Philippines government said drew up to seven million people, the largest for a papal event.
"The official number that has been given to us is between six and seven million," Father Federico Lombardi told journalists at a press conference in Manila on January 18 calling it the "largest event of the history of the popes," the Catholic News Agency reported.
The Pope returned to Rome on January 19 following a closing ceremony in Manila.
Pope Francis' "message of compassion for the poor and the need to end the corruption that sustains their suffering will continue to resonate in a country where a quarter of the population lives on less than $1.25 a day," Bloomberg Businessweek reported.
Before Francis left Manila, Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, the Archbishop of Manila, thanked Pope Francis for his visit to the Philippines .
"Thank you. I say...on behalf of the street children, the orphans, the widows, the homeless, the informal settlers, the laborers, the farmers, the fisher folk, the sick, the abandoned elderly, the families of missing persons, the victims of discrimination, violence, abuse, exploitation, human trafficking," he said.
He thanked them for, "the Filipino migrant workers and their families, the survivors of natural calamities and armed conflicts, the non-Christian Catholics, the followers of non-Christian religions, the promoters of peace especially in Mindanao and creation that groans."
The Philippines is Asia's most Catholic country and the third-largest Catholic country in the world after Mexico and Brazil.
Wearing a cheap transparent yellow poncho over his white cassock, the Pope drove through a cheering in a jeepney a popular mode of transport in the Philippines derived from a U.S. military vehicle used in World War II.
In his homily for the c1osing mass in the Philippines, Pope Francis noted humanity's identity as God's children, calling for the protection of the family against the numerous attacks that threaten it.
"Sadly, in our day, the family all too often needs to be protected against insidious attacks and programs contrary to all that we hold true and sacred, all that is most beautiful and noble in our culture."
Pope Francis spoke at Rizal Park in Manila where some 5 million people had attended a mass celebrated by Saint John Paul II during his papal visit.
Huge crowds have turned out for the Pope's Masses and public events in the Philippines, where 83 percent of the 108 million people identify as being Catholic.
Several typhoons, earthquakes and other natural disasters have caused havoc in the Southeast Asian nation in recent years.
(Photo: Peter Kenny / Ecumenical News)Johanna May Dela Cruz (l) of the National Council of Churches in the Philippines and Ba'laan leader Kerlan Fanagel at the UN in Geneva on 20 June 2016.
Kerlan Fanagel's submission at the Human Rights Council came on its 10th anniversary highlighting the plight of the Lumad in Mindanao, in the southern Philippines, a grouping of people who have been displaced from their traditional lands.
Lumad is the collective term for indigenous people in Mindanao in the southern part of the Philippines) displaced from Talaingod and Kapalong in Davao del Norte, in Mindanao and who have seen international mining companies snatch their land and resources.
Their water is also slipping through their control in a privatizing environment as corporations also seek to exploit local palm oil and trees for logging.
Fanagel spoke on 20 June on behalf of the Commission of the Churches on International Affairs of the World Council of Churches that sees the restoration of justice for the indigenous Ba'laan people of Mindanao as one of the council's priorities.
"As indigenous people, our homes are important to us because of our cultural ties to the land and because this is where our farms and livelihoods are. However, while some people have been able to return home, others are still afraid," said the Filipino indigenous leader.
At the same HRC session, Johanna May Dela Cruz of the National Council of Churches in the Philippines related how on 1 April security forces "brutally dispersed" a peaceful demonstration by some 6,000 farmers and indigenous people on the main highway in Kidapawan.
They were demanding rice and the release of calamity funds to avert the debilitating effects of a drought induced by the El Nino phenomenon.
'FARMERS MET BY GUNFIRE'
"Their demands were well within the government's capacity to respond to but the farmers were met by gunfire, hot pursuit and illegal arrests," said Dela Cruz..
In an interview before testifying to the U.N. rights' body, in which the WCC and other ecumenical bodies engaged through NGO's, Fanagel explained how his people have been displaced from Talaingod and Kapalong in Davao del Norte, in Mindanao.
"We were forced to flee our communities because of the increasing militarization, the occupation and closure of our schools by elements of the armed forces of the Philippines, the extra-judicial killing of some of our people by agents of the state, and other forms of harassment.
"We fled to the Haran Mission Compound of the United Church of Christ in the Philippines, where we were provided with support and protection," he said in his testimony for the HRC in Geneva, saying his group works with the NCCP.
Clad in his red traditional headscarf and shirt, he rued, "However the military and para-military groups have continued to harass us even in this sanctuary," speaking on the HRC hearing on internally displaced people.
He said that government representatives especially congresswoman Nancy A. Catamco directed the Philippine National Police to raid their place of refuge.
"The military and police have brought trumped up charges of kidnapping and human trafficking against people who have been trying to help us.
"They claim that the people were being held in the Haran Mission Centre against their will. This has never been the case. We sought refuge there, have been supported by the church and others in this place of refuge, and have been too afraid to return to our homes," said Fanagel.
He explained that recently the Philippine Ombudsman dismissed a "trumped up case as being without grounds".
This people have also appealed to the Philippine Commission on Human Rights about their experience.
"We call on the armed forces of the Philippines to leave our communities, to stop the harassment against us, and to respect our right to live in peace.
"The military is using para-military groups to harass our people and to commit human rights violations from which the military can distance themselves from direct involvement," said Fanagel.
He called for the disbanding of the para-military groups and that military support no longer be provided to them, "so that we can pursue our lives in peace without fear."
As the second cut off of the University of Delhi pulled crowds to campuses, it also witnessed a large number of candidates coming to withdraw from most colleges to move to their preferred courses in other colleges.
However, the university did not see any candidate withdrawing from one of the top college for commerce, Shri Ram College of Commerce (SRCC). Till early Friday, the college had accepted 472 candidates into the BCom (Hons) programme while 59 students enrolled for economics. It has 501 and 123 places for BCom (Hons) and economics (Hons), respectively. This year, 80% of new enrolees in the college are from Tamil Nadu. About half of these students are from same school, Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan in Erode.
DU s Hansraj College, which admitted 345 students in its science courses till Friday, had almost 45 cancellations. For humanities and commerce, there were 218 admissions and 56 withdrawals. I am sure we will take out a fifth list with a drop of 1-2 per cent as there is little chance of all seats being taken within two or three lists, said Rama Sharma, principal (officiating). Kirori Mal College (KMC) witnessed about 200 students withdrawing from various courses within two days and confirming around 750 students for admissions. Ramjas College enrolled about 555 students for all the courses with only 27 withdrawals. Indrprastha College for Women (IP) and Hindu College had withdrawals mostly from BCom (Hons).
Meanwhile, Sri Guru Tegh Bahadur Khalsa College, which has set aside a 50% minority reservation quota from this year, has enrolled about 180 students. We have had only three withdrawals within the first two days after releasing the second cut-off and that too from the PwD category. Since we have started minority admissions this year, the process will be a little slow. Interestingly, we are receiving students from Nepal and Tibet, said Jaswinder Singh, principal.
R-E-S-P-E-C-T: Find out what it means to me.
In schools working to reduce suspension rates, teachers could take a cue from Aretha Franklin: Considering how young people view respect can greatly improve classroom management, new studies show.
A one-time intervention to help teachers and students empathize with each other halved the number of suspensions at five diverse California middle schools, and helped students who had previously been suspended feel more connected at school, according to Stanford University research published in April in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Changing the mindset of one teacher can change the social experience of that childs entire world, said Jason A. Okonofua, a Stanford University social psychologist who led the experiments.
In- and out-of-school suspensions have come under increasing scrutiny as a discipline tactic. One recent study from the University of California, Los Angeles, estimates that because suspensions are so closely linked to later school dropout and referrals to law enforcement, cutting the 16 percent nationwide rate for all 10th grade suspensions by even 1 percentage point could save taxpayers $691 million over students lives.
In a series of experiments, the Stanford researchers found teachers often view respect in terms of cooperation and compliance. For students, respect involves a basic recognition of your humanity, Okonofua said, including remembering a students name (and pronouncing it correctly), not speaking down to students or embarrassing them in front of their peers, and expressing interest in their perspectives. Both college- and middle-school-age students reported losing respect for teachers who disciplined students in a dismissive or punitive way, and said that they would be more likely to misbehave in such a teachers class.
Feeling respected can change how hard students are willing to work in class, too.
In a separate series of experiments, Geoffrey Cohen, a Stanford professor of organizational studies in education, found that just a short, encouraging note on a highly marked-up essay could change the way students considered their teachers critiques. Adding a note saying Im giving you these comments because I have high standards and I know you can reach them significantly boosted students willingness to rewrite the paper: from 62 percent to 87 percent for white students, and from 17 percent to a 71 percent of black students.
The simple act of answering, Do you believe in me? can do wonders for a kid who believes he might not have a place in the class, Cohen said.
Theres a dark side to the results, though, Cohen added. What does this say about the status quo? It is failing to provide kids with the affirmation that they could and should get to fulfill their potential, he said. This is not about giving the kid a note, its about changing the culture, providing opportunities for kids to feel valued.
Okonofua randomly asked veteran teachers to read one of two articles: One argued that good teacher-student relationships are critical for students to develop self-controla statement aligned with what Okonofua calls an empathic mindsetand the other argued that punishment is critical for a teacher to take control of a classroom, a statement aligned with a more punitive mindset.
Then, both sets of teachers were asked how they would handle minor middle school behavior problems, such as disrupting class to throw away trash. Teachers who had read about the importance of relationships were more likely to speak to the student privately about classroom rules and work to find an alternative solution. Teachers who read about control and punishment were more likely to threaten or dress down the student in front of others, send him to the hall or principals office, or call for a meeting with the student and his parents or an administrator.
Our emphasis on teachers mindsets does not diminish the importance of punitive discipline policies; rather, it illustrates one reason why such policies matter, Okonofua said. They create a context that discourages teachers from prioritizing building strong relationships with students at critical junctures.
Race and Respect
Thats important, because racial stereotypes can increase a teachers punitive mindset and escalate punishments. In prior studies, Okonofua and his colleagues had found that teachers are more likely to invoke stereotypes about students of color in response to minor behavioral problems. Teachers were asked to discipline minor behavior problems of middle school students with names associated with white or black children.
For the first infraction, there was little difference in teachers response by race, Okonofua saidbut if, three days later, the student misbehaved in a minor way again, teachers were more bothered by the behavior and more likely to consider it part of a pattern by a troublemaker if the student had a black-sounding name. Moreover, thosemostly white and femaleteachers were more likely to recommend a severe punishment like a suspension for the behavior.
Stereotypes serve as glue, sticking otherwise unrelated behavior together to make it seem like a pattern, Okonofua said. The label troublemaker leads teachers to want to discipline students more severely, because they see the behavior as a sign of disrespect.
That could help explain why, in spite of a 20 percent drop in out-of-school suspensions nationwide since 2011-12, new federal civil rights data show racial disparities in discipline continue. Black students are nearly four times more likely to be suspended out of school than white students: While 6 percent of all K-12 students were suspended out of school in 2013-14, 18 percent of black boys and 10 percent of black girls were suspended, compared to only 5 percent and 2 percent for white boys and girls. Even in preschool, black children are more than three times as likely to be sent home for misbehaving than white children, federal data show.
Building Empathy
Based on the teacher study, Okonofua and his colleagues developed a professional-development workshop for teachers in five middle schools in three districts. Math teacherschosen because math is a core subject and one associated with a high risk of stereotype threat for black and Latino studentstook part in one 45-minute, in-person workshop and one 25-minute, online exercise on ways to resolve misbehavior in class. Teachers were randomly assigned to either a control group or a training focused on how stress and insecurities that children develop during adolescence can make them detach or act out in school. The teachers also heard testimony from students, talking about how they felt more cared for and respected when teachers took the time to understand them during discipline, and they worked through exercises about empathetic rather than punitive ways to respond to rule breaking.
I dont think the concept of empathy is something new to many teachers, he said, but there are a lot of other factors involved. Teachers are stressed out, depleted, and they can tend to lose sight of the relationships they want to build with their students. The intervention is creating a way psychologically for that empathy to persist in light of stressful environments. Its not that [empathetic] teachers just stop disciplining students. When they discipline, they ask the student why he or she is misbehaving and try to address the misbehaving in a way that addresses the behavior instead of the identity of the child.
In Okonofuas study of 2,000 middle schools, students whose math teacher participated in the empathy training were half as likely to be suspended by the end of the school year than students whose teachers had not participated. The strongest effects were for studentsoften black and Latino boyswho had been suspended at least once in the prior year. In surveys a few months later, those same previously suspended students were also significantly more likely to report feeling that their teachers respected them if they had teachers who had participated in the empathy training.
The most interesting and inspiring part is that we only intervened with one of the students teachers, and it affected their interactions with every other teacher. Just having one better relationship with a teacher at schooljust onecan serve as a buffer for all the other struggles and challenges at school, Okonofua said.
Geoffrey Cohen called this sort of intervention nudge and flownot an attempt to teach students or educators new skills, but to give a person encouragement at the right time to look at a context in the right way.
The researchers plan to repeat the study with a larger group of schools next year, as well as follow up in more detail on how students and teachers feelings of respect for each other change over time.
We know students cannot possibly learn to their fullest potential when they are exhausted, stressed, not well, fueled by Hot Cheetos, or in the midst of crisis.
Though many say the classroom is not the place to address such issues, the fact is that students often do not get such guidance elsewhere, and this directly impacts their ability to focus and learn.
It is therefore important for schools to purposefully help students build mental and physical resiliency skills so they are able to fully access the curriculum and thrive in and out of the classroom.
What might this look like on a practical level?
Building Mental Health Resiliency
Students enter our classes with a lifetime of compiled traumas . All too often, my inner-city students face violence, domestic abuse, rape, loss, substance abuse, isolation, and separation. Many students are in states of perpetual fight, flight, or freeze as major- and micro-traumas emerge in their lives. Not knowing how to process their traumas may cause students to feel emotionally numb, lash out, or disconnect from their bodies or the world around them. Without releasing or processing occurrences, they may stay in a perpetual state of post-traumatic stress disorder as trauma after trauma accrues.
Efforts to build mental health resiliency can help students empower themselves with tools to navigate life, show them theyre not alone, and reduce stigmas. This resiliency can be fluidly incorporated into the classroom as something that adds personalized depth to the curriculum. Here are a few things that worked for me this year as I tried to build students mental health resiliency in my classroom:
Curricular units, texts, projects, and guest speakers that incorporate resilient themes such as decision-making, trauma, and identity. Ive found texts such as Brene Browns Daring Greatly, Susan Cains Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Cant Stop Talking, and Malcolm Gladwells Blink to be particularly effective in helping students navigate life. One student said reading Daring Greatly this year helped me realize that its okay to show my emotions ... helped me conquer many of my fears. Students also directly express and transform their narratives through projects where they write and share personal stories or learn about topics impacting them, their families, and their communities. Of our Mental Health Research Project with FAME Corporations, a Los Angeles nonprofit that builds community-wide partnerships, one student said: It was really relatable towards what I was going through ... [It] has given me knowledge and resources that I can go to in order to help these problems.
Opportunities for artistic self-expression so students can build outlets to process their lives and emotions. This year, my sophomores partnered with the Getty Center and the arts writing center 826LA for a photography exhibition on identity through self-portraiture. A student said the experience helped me look deeper inside myself ... to let myself, and others, in to help me figure it out.
Teaching students tools to mitigate stressors through self-awareness. This can include mindfulness at the start and end of class, pausing during emotionally-charged moments, noticing behavior patterns, reflective journaling, and learning how to have healthy discussions on charged topics.
Creating Purpose and Connection
Structuring opportunities for students to build purpose and connection at the classroom and school levels communicates to them that they are important and their lives matters.
These protective factors help mitigate risk factors that can impede a students ability to thrive. While I cant control the number of risk factors my students face outside the classroom, I can aspire to create an environment where every student feels connected and important. Some ideas about how to do this include:
Creating opportunities for students to build relationships with their peers through purposeful grouping and structured interactions. This can help build a class and school culture where everyone is important and has something special to offer. This year, each student had a specific job and role in my classroom. One said of the experience: Having a job has made me aware of how important everyone is to the class.
Opportunities for students to join and lead clubs, sports, programs, or volunteer options where they can make positive contributions. This can also be embedded in an empowering curriculum where students examine their own roles in improving their communities.
Defining mission statements where students create an individual or shared purpose. This can include a dialogue on what this means in the context of their future self and family legacy.
Encouraging Physical Health
I know if my students are not feeling well, they cannot learn to their deepest capacity. This is particularly urgent in light of statistics that one-third of children are projected to develop diabetes in their lifetime, in a generation that is on track to have a shorter lifespan than their parents. Encouraging these five straightforward foundations of health can change their capacity to learn in the classroom and thrive in life:
1. Food. The fuel students eat is directly correlated to their sustained focus and energy levels. Students will have more fuel to perform mentally and physically when sugar and processed foods are replaced with fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and quality proteins.
2. Exercise and movement. Children were not designed to sit for six hours a day. Lessons that contain active movement will not only help students be active learners, but can also counteract some of the harmful effects of extended sitting.
3. Sleep. Children need at least nine hours of sleep a night. Though my high school students rarely seem to regularly achieve it, we discuss ways to organize their days so that they can maximize on this crucial restoring developmental time.
4. Stress. Though stress is a part of life, students can learn to process and navigate it in healthy ways. They can learn tools to examine their relationship with stress and develop proactive habits towards reducing reactionary or holding patterns that perpetuate the harmful effects of stress.
5. Safe body decisions. When appropriate, discussing decision-making around sexual health and substance abuse can save a students life. Various organizations have highly effective programs to speak with students professionally about these topics.
What we choose to do within schools can determine a childs foundation for lifelong well-being. Though it takes intentional effort and quality professional development, its an investment in students academics and their personal capacity to thrive in the classroom and in life. I cant think of a more worthwhile investment to make.
Ely, Cambridgeshire is best known for its majestic cathedral dubbed the 'Ship of the Fens' because it dominates the flat landscape. The city, which is the second smallest in England, is about 14 miles north-northeast of Cambridge and about 80 miles by road from London.
13:33, 25 OCT 2022
Emirates destinations
Flights to Australia
Australia is one of those destinations that seems designed with the adventurous traveller in mind. Despite its populous cities, huge swathes of the country remain wild, simply begging to be explored. From the sun-baked Australian Outback (home of the iconic Uluru, or Ayers Rock) to the ocean depths surrounding the Great Barrier Reef and the trails of the Daintree Rainforest, the worlds oldest surviving rainforest.
Because Australia has a vast, wild interior, most of the urban activity is concentrated on the coasts, making it a popular destination for beach lovers longing for the city life. The biggest draw is Sydney home of the iconic Sydney Opera House, Sydney Harbour Bay and plenty of restaurants, bars and nightlife venues to keep travellers entertained. Add the sunny climate and golden beaches, and its no wonder that more than 1.5 million expats currently call this city home.
Those in search of a more low-key experience tend to head to Melbourne instead, where life moves at a slightly slower pace. Despite being somewhat smaller than Sydney, Melbourne has plenty to recommend it, from a lively art scene to a bustling cafe culture.
Besides these two tourist magnets, there are a number of other places in Australia worthy of your attention. Visit the west coast to discover destinations such as the less crowded city of Perth, and the Ningaloo Reef, where some parts of the coral are close enough to swim to from the beach.
Although its hard not to be preoccupied with the many modern attractions that Australia has to offer, you shouldnt miss out on delving into the countrys past. The indigenous Aboriginal people have a history that dates back at least 50,000 years. Visit Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park to learn more about their culture.
Emirates destinations
Flights to South Africa
The sheer diversity of South Africa, a country with 11 official languages, has earned it the nickname of the Rainbow nation, and no matter where youre headed once your flight to South Africa lands, youll find beauty and wonder at every turn.
First, theres the urban sprawl of Johannesburg, a buzzing metropolis with a thriving dining and nightlife scene, and a favourite celebrity haunt. Then you have Durban, a quieter destination on the coast, with beach-side cafes, restaurants and surf shops. And then, right at the southern-most tip of Africa is Cape Town, a melting pot of cultures, with beautiful beaches, vineyards and national parks, all overseen by the iconic Table Mountain.
Cape Town is one of the best destinations for learning more about South Africas past, and the history of apartheid. From the coast you can take a ferry to Robben Island, where the late former president Nelson Mandela was incarcerated for 27 years, and see the cell where he was imprisoned. On the mainland, cultural institutions like the renowned District Six Museum shine a light on the countrys past. Regardless, South Africa is a resilient nation, filled with welcoming residents who are always looking to the future.
Beyond the city boundaries, the natural beauty of the landscape is breath-taking, as is the sheer scope of wildlife that inhabits it. For a true bucket list experience, book a safari at the Kruger National Park. This nature reserve is one of the largest in Africa, and the best place in the world to see the continents Big Five: elephant, rhino, lion, leopard and buffalo. For a more foodie-focused experience of the outdoors, the wine routes from Cape Town cannot be beaten.
DED signs Memorandum of Understanding with Chinese Innovation Park
The Isle of Man has connected with a Chinese ''Innovation Park' in a bid to boost commercial opportunities.
The Department of Economic Development has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the 'Silicon Valley of China'.
The Zhongguancun Boya Multimedia Creative and Innovation Park has been in development since 1988 and is the region's first state-level, high tech industrial zone.
Minister Laurence Skelly says the area is specifically for the 1,000 high-tech companies covering the next generation of internet, communications, e-pay and more:
Media
Laurence Skelly MHK
Through the course of his candidacy for the highest political position in the United States, presumptive Republican candidate Donald Trump has made a name for himself by clashing with some of the biggest personalities in America, and beyond. Previous presidents, rivals, even the Pope himself, became a target for the brazen candidate. Now, The Donald has added another name to the list - Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader.
In a way, it could be said that the Supreme Court Justice drew first blood. In a previous interview, Ginsburg, who is known as one of the most vocal and headstrong women in the American justice system, expressed her reservations about Trump's candidacy.
"I can't imagine what this place would be -- I can't imagine what the country would be -- with Donald Trump as our president," she said.
In true Trump fashion, the GOP candidate responded on Wednesday, demanding that the Supreme Court Justice resign immediately. Trump has also added some fire to his own rhetoric, branding Ginsburg's statements as "dumb."
Justice Ginsburg of the U.S. Supreme Court has embarrassed all by making very dumb political statements about me. Her mind is shot - resign! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) Hulyo 13, 2016
Undeterred, however, Ginsburg has responded to Trump once more. Responding to the real estate mogul-turned presidential candidate, the Supreme Court Justice even elaborated on her previous statement. She even targeted a pretty notable criticism of the candidate - his tax returns.
"He is a faker. He has no consistency about him. He says whatever comes into his head at the moment. He really has an ego. How has he gotten away with not turning over his tax returns? The press seems to be very gentle with him on that," she said.
Supreme Court Justice Ginsburg's statements about the GOP candidate has polarized the public's opinion, with some believing that she was out of line and some stating that she was well within her rights to express her own opinions about Donald Trump.
13 July 2016
The EPO signed two agreements at the end of June with the national patent offices of Latvia and Malta to improve conditions for small businesses from these countries seeking to protect their inventions through patents.
EPO President Battistelli and Sandris Laganovskis, Director of the Patent Office of the Republic of Latvia, signing the agreement on 30 June
Under the agreements, the EPO conducts searches for national patent applications in these two countries on behalf of their patent offices and delivers these searches at a reduced rate to smaller patent applicants. The fee reduction - which foresees a refund of up to 75% of the search fee - applies to searches carried out on national patent applications of small and medium-sized enterprises, universities and individual inventors. These high-quality searches are essential for patent applicants, who can then use them to file a European patent application.
"We are pleased to extend our support to this very important group of patent applicants in two further member states," said EPO President Benoit Battistelli. "Patents are an important economic factor for companies looking to market their inventions at home or abroad. Through our co-operation we can support innovation and improve the quality of patented inventions, while cutting costs for companies."
EPO President Battistelli signing the agreement with Malta on 28 June with Godwin Warr, Director General Commerce Department and Comptroller of IP
The agreements were signed by the EPO President and the heads of the two national patent offices, namely Godwin Warr, Director General Commerce Department and Comptroller of Industrial Property at the Ministry for the Economy, Investment and Small Business of Malta, and Sandris Laganovskis, Director of the Patent Office of the Republic of Latvia.
The 75% reduction in the search fee is an exceptional measure, adopted by the EPO's Administrative Council in December 2015, for member states eligible for support under the EPO's co-operation policy with its member states. The EPO has concluded similar agreements with Cyprus, Lithuania and other member states.
Further information
Just 10%-12% of researchers in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics are women, according to UNESCO. Today the number of women enrolling in universities is growing, but many decide not to pursue a research career later on. With the aim of encouraging women to work in science, the EPSRC-funded beamline XMaS at the ESRF, supported by the Universities of Warwick and Liverpool, in partnership with the ESRF run every year a project taking female Physics students, aged 1617 years, to Grenoble to visit the facilities. This week, 16 British girls visited the ESRF and participated in the Synchrotron@school programme during two days.
Computing science, medicine, engineering or physics and philosophy are some examples of the careers these girls want to pursue once they are out of school. They all enjoy science and participated in (and won) a national competition in the UK where they needed to write an essay on the legacy of the Nobel-prize winning, X-ray crystallographer Dorothy Hodgkin, both on the study of structure on an atomic scale and for women in Science". Their prize was a stay at the ESRF for two days. Laurence Bouchenoire, scientist on the XMaS beamline, explains it is very important to show girls of this age that fulfilling scientific careers are possible for women as equally as for men.
In the experimental hutch of XMas.
At the facility, they participated in the Synchrotron@School programme, including hands-on experiments as well as presenting their results. The aim was to experience the work of a scientist: from the experiment to communicating the outcome. They also visited the Experimental hall of the ESRF and interacted with XMaS and other ESRF researchers. It was also an opportunity to discover the wide array of research fields covered at the same facility. Emmeline Poole was impressed by the familiar environment at the facility: I thought it would be bigger and less accessible and instead weve had the opportunity to discuss with scientists and weve been very close to the instruments too.
The students taking part in the Synchrotron@school programme.
Another aspect the girls appreciated was life as a scientist. For Tayma Ferriera, you think scientists will always be working alone and instead it is the opposite as their work takes them to travel around the world sharing their results with other scientists, and that aspect surprised me.
I feel very inspired by this trip and it has shown me how interesting a science career can be. I now feel I should revise more for my exams so that I could get to a good university next year to study science", said Eilidh Campbell.
Water quality scientist Laura Christianson is working on a solution to the "dead zone"--an area with dangerously low levels of oxygen-- in the Gulf of Mexico. Christianson lives over a thousand miles north of the Gulf in Illinois. But human activity in the Mississippi River basin, which connects to the Gulf, can lead to major water quality issues downstream.
In many Midwestern states, farmers use tile drainage to keep their fields from being waterlogged. Pipes buried three to four feet below the surface route water into the Mississippi watershed. The tile pipes keep the fields dry, but they also send large amounts of nitrogen downstream. Nitrogen is a naturally occurring nutrient in the soil and a common ingredient in fertilizer. Extra nitrogen in the water causes problems for aquatic ecosystems.
Christianson researches ways to reduce the amount of nitrogen that moves downstream with woodchip-filled trenches. Their job is to intercept the water's journey from field to rivers and streams. The trenches are called bioreactors.
The trenches themselves aren't the main heroes. It's the bacteria that live in them that neutralize the nitrogen threat. "Good bacteria colonize the woodchips, and use them as food," said Christianson. This concentrated food source gives bacteria extra energy to convert nitrogen into benign gas. Christianson said she was captured by the simplicity of bioreactors. "We're enhancing a natural process," she said. "There's an elegance to it."
States in the upper Mississippi River basin like Minnesota, Iowa, and Illinois are hot spots for nitrogen in drainage water. "There are 10 million acres of tile-drained fields in Illinois alone," said Christianson.
The EPA challenged the twelve states that border the Mississippi River to reduce the amount of nutrients that leach down the river and into the Gulf of Mexico. Rainfall and irrigation pulls nitrogen from the soil and deposits it in the ocean, where algae feed on it. Eventually the algae outcompete other life forms for sunlight and oxygen. Further, when the algae die, the decomposition process eats up all the dissolved oxygen in the water. The resulting "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico is over 5,000 square miles.
Bioreactors aren't only useful in the agricultural sector. Christianson said that in the last 5 to 8 years, the interest in bioreactors as a water quality solution has grown. Scientists are using bioreactors as a low-cost way to reduce pathogens in municipal and aquaculture wastewater. More states are getting on board, and new studies from different parts of the world add location-specific complexity to the research.
Bioreactors have a simple construction. Although sizes vary, a typical trench is 100 feet long and 20 feet wide, and covered by one foot of top soil. The trench is generally 3.5 feet deep and filled with carbon-rich food sources for bacteria, like woodchips or corn. Tile pipes from the fields are re-routed through the trench before flowing into the stream.
Despite the simple design, there are complex challenges when using bioreactors. "We're constantly trying to improve the design," said Christianson. "Much like humans, bacteria don't do their job as well when they are cold." The bacteria aren't as efficient at reducing nitrogen in the Midwestern spring months, when the snow melt starts filtering through. Bioreactors also need to be refilled every ten years or so with woodchips or another source of carbon to keep the bacteria well fed.
Christianson said that although some grants offset the cost of installing a bioreactor, encouraging farmers to participate is a hard sell. "We're asking farmers to shell out money for a public benefit, and that's not easy when you're trying to make ends meet," she said.
Despite the challenges, the uses of bioreactors to improve water quality continue to diversify and their performance continues to improve.
Read more about the latest in bioreactor research and implementation in Journal of Environmental Quality.
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BINGHAMTON, NY - Differences in circadian blood pressure variation due to a combination of genetic and cultural factors may contribute to ethnic differences in cardiovascular morbidity, according to new research from Binghamton University, State University of New York.
Gary D. James, professor of anthropology, nursing, and biomedical engineering and director of the graduate program in biomedical anthropology at Binghamton University, studied a group of women all working in similar positions at two major medical centers in New York City. These women were classified into four broad ethnic groups: African Americans, Hispanic Americans, European Americans, and Asian Americans. Each woman wore a 24-hour blood pressure monitor over the course of one mid-week workday. The monitor took blood pressures every 15 minutes, at which point each woman would write down what they were doing at the time (e.g. their posture, location, mood, and activity).
Circadian blood pressure variation is a controversial indicator of cardiovascular disease risk. Research suggests that having a smaller blood pressure decline from waking to sleep increases cardiovascular risk. Previous studies examining ethnic variation in the waking-sleep decline have compared African Americans or Asian Americans to European Americans and have shown that the European Americans have a larger decline than either group. The study conducted by James and his colleagues is the first to make waking-sleep comparisons among multiple groups of women: African American, Hispanic American, European American, and Asian American. The results of the study confirm that the average blood pressure decline of African American and the Asian American women is less than the European American women, but it turns out that those differences are also similar with Hispanic American women. African American women and Asian American women differ in the same way with the Hispanic American women as they do with the European American women. The Asian American women also had higher pressures during sleep than all the other groups, so that their decline during sleep was the smallest, even smaller than the African American women. What is interesting about this, said James, is that the differences mostly reflect changes from being at work to sleeping; there were no ethnic differences in the decline in pressure from being at home in the evening to sleeping.
"Hypertension develops over time. What the results of this study suggest is that it's developing differently, in different groups, over time," said James. "You can see a clear difference in the way blood pressure is changing over the course of the day. It would suggest that some aspect of cultural upbringing might be contributing to this. There could be some genetic differences also. But, more than likely, it's probably a combination of both. The kinds of behavior people engage in are a source of what causes hypertension, and those behaviors are probably different in different groups. Why this is important is that if you want to treat hypertension and prevent cardiovascular diseases, you need to know a lot about your patient. Treatment is not just a generic thing."
James thinks that having 24-hour ambulatory blood pressure monitoring, done for the purpose of determining hypertension, should be the norm. In Europe, they will not diagnose hypertension until they've done ambulatory monitoring at least two or three times. In America, a blood pressure taken at a doctor's office is often sufficient to make a diagnosis.
"Ambulatory blood pressure monitoring is not something that is done routinely in medical practice," he said. "In America, we are just now coming around to the idea of having people take their blood pressure with a home monitor. These out-of office blood pressures provide a significant amount of added information. They at least tell clinicians what blood pressure is like when patients are relaxing at home, as opposed to when they are in the relatively unusual situation of being at the doctor's office.
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The study, "Ethnic differences in inter- and intra-situational blood pressure variation: Comparisons among African-American, Hispanic-American, Asian-American, and European-American women," was published in the American Journal of Human Biology.
(Boston)--Researchers have developed a diagnostic model that is highly predictive of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). Referred to as the Framingham Steatosis Index (FSI), this novel model may become a cheaper and easier alternative to screen for liver fat, the major feature of this condition.
With the increasing rates of obesity, NAFLD is now the most common chronic liver disease in the United States, with 10-35 percent of the general population affected. Other risk factors for NAFLD include type 2 diabetes mellitus, elevated triglycerides and the metabolic syndrome. Currently, the diagnosis of NAFLD requires evidence of hepatic steatosis (fatty liver) on computed tomography (CT) scans or liver biopsy - both of which are costly, burdensome and impractical to implement on a large scale. NAFLD has been linked to developing advanced liver and cardiovascular disease. With such a large population at risk for NAFLD, there is an urgent need for non-invasive tools to assist clinicians in diagnosing NAFLD.
Using data from the Framingham Heart Study (FHS) researchers performed a cross-sectional study of more than 1,000 members of the Framingham Third Generation Cohort. FHS participants with fatty liver disease were identified by abdominal CT scans. Researchers evaluated a comprehensive list of demographic, clinical and laboratory parameters including liver enzymes such as alanine aminotransferase (ALT) and aspartate aminotransferase (AST) and the ratio of AST:ALT to identify people with hepatic steatosis.
The data was analyzed to find a set of predictors of hepatic steatosis. The researchers found that a model that includes age, gender, hypertension, triglyceride levels, diabetes and the ratio of AST:ALT correlated with NAFLD. The FSI was then externally validated and was found to be an effective surrogate diagnostic index for NAFLD. The findings appear in the journal Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology.
"Clinically, the FSI may be useful to help identify NAFLD patients or those at high risk for steatosis who may benefit from abdominal imaging. Additionally, the ALT:AST ratio may be considered a useful surrogate for hepatic steatosis (versus either ALT or AST alone) especially for future population-based studies," explained corresponding author Michelle Long, MD, assistant professor of medicine at Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM), who is also a gastroenterologist at Boston Medical Center (BMC).
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This study represents a collaboration between BUSM; the Division of Gastroenterology at BMC; the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute's Framingham Heart Study; the Department of Epidemiology, School of Public Health, University of Alabama; the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Boston University; the Radiology Department, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School and the Division of Endocrinology, Hypertension, and Metabolism, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School.
Funding for this study was provided by BUSM and the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute's Framingham Heart Study (contact N01-HC-25195 and HHSN268201500001l) and the Division of Intramural Research of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.
Bacteria are rapidly developing resistance mechanisms to combat even the most effective antibiotics. Each year in the United States over 23,000 people die as a result of bacterial infections that have no treatment options, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Infections with antibiotic-resistance bacteria are extremely difficult to treat, requiring costly or toxic medications that do not always work. Scientists are constantly working to understand the mechanisms bacteria use to outsmart antibiotics and develop resistance. These mechanisms include metallo--lactamases (MBLs), enzymes produced by bacteria that can bind to and inactivate antibiotics. Enzymes like MBLs are one way bacteria are defying all available tools and becoming antibiotic resistant.
A team of researchers at Case Western Reserve University (CWRU), Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Universidad Nacional de Rosario and the National Research Council (CONICET) from Argentina have identified a bacterial mechanism that stabilizes certain MBLs in cell membranes and enables their spread into the environment. This mechanism clarifies one way certain bacteria are outsmarting the immune system and becoming extremely antibiotic-resistant. The work was led in part by Robert Bonomo, MD, professor of medicine, pharmacology, molecular biology, and microbiology at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine and chief of medical service at the Louis Stokes Cleveland Veterans Affairs Medical Center.
"One of the most serious problems facing medicine today is the emergence of multi-drug resistant bacteria," according to Bonomo. "MBLs are the most concerning as they make bacteria resistant to the 'last resort' antibiotics, carbapenems." Carbapenems are used to combat infections for which there are no other antibiotic options.
Clinically relevant MBLs are found between layers of bacterial cell membranes. In contrast to other types of carbapenemases, MBL enzymes rely on zinc ions to properly function. The immune system produces proteins that hide zinc ions and starve bacteria of zinc in an effort to combat infection. The researchers discovered that most MBLs produced by bacteria during zinc-limited conditions are unstable and are rapidly degraded by the bacteria.
One recently identified form of MBL, called New Delhi metallo--lactamase (NDM-1) can retain its function even without zinc. Bonomo and colleagues showed that NDM-1 resists destruction triggered by low zinc by anchoring itself in bacterial membranes. A fatty tail at one end of the NDM-1 protein sticks into the outer membrane of potentially harmful bacteria such as Escherichia coli and Pseudomonas aeruginosa. This tail has a protective effect and is thought to help NDM-1 avoid destructive enzymes between bacterial membranes. Similar mechanisms have been observed in other bacterial species, but have not previously been linked to an evolutionary advantage to escape the action of antibiotics.
The research team also observed that bacteria with NDM-1 in their membranes are able to shed "outer-membrane vesicles" containing the enzyme. These membrane-bound sacs bud off from bacteria. As the vesicles disperse into the bacterial microenvironment, NDM-1 enzymes in them can protect neighboring bacteria that might be otherwise susceptible to antibiotics. Outer-membrane vesicles may also be a vehicle by which the NDM-1 gene and enzyme can spread between bacteria.
Bacteria producing NDM-1 are highly antibiotic resistant and represent a major public health concern as they cause infections for which there is no cure. The gene encoding NDM-1 is quickly spreading across bacterial species and has been found in water samples from India, Bangladesh, and China in a region encompassing almost 40% of the world population. According to Alejandro Vila, PhD, director of the Instituto de Biologia Molecular y Celular at Universidad Nacional de Rosario and co-senior author on the published research, "this dissemination has been favored by membrane anchoring of the protein. This finding reveals a potential Achilles' heel; interfering with membrane anchoring could thwart the worldwide dissemination of superbugs."
Together, the studies by Bonomo, Vila, and colleagues provide clarity on the bacterial mechanism behind one of the most prevalent bacterial carbapenemase identified to date, NDM-1. Understanding the mechanism "allows us to begin considering novel agents that can target this process," according to. Bonomo. New potential targets for antibacterial drug development could include the lipid tail of NDM-1 or outer membrane vesicles.
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The research findings first appeared online in the May 2016 edition of Nature Chemical Biology.
The research was supported by National Institutes of Health research grants R01AI072219, R01AI063517 and R01AI100560, the Louis Stokes Cleveland Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center, the VISN 10 Geriatric Research, Education and Clinical Care Center (VISN 10) of the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Kinship Foundation (Searle Scholars Program), the Argentinian ANCPCyT and CONICET, and MIT Department of Chemistry.
For more information about Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, please visit: case.edu/medicine.
Young stars are often surrounded by dense, rotating discs of gas and dust, known as protoplanetary discs, from which planets are born. The heat from a typical young solar-type star means that the water within a protoplanetary disc is gaseous up to distances of around 3 au from the star [1] -- less than 3 times the average distance between the Earth and the Sun -- or around 450 million kilometres [2]. Further out, due to the extremely low pressure, the water molecules transition directly from a gaseous state to form a patina of ice on dust grains and other particles. The region in the protoplanetary disc where water transitions between the gas and solid phases is known as the water snow line [3].
But the star V883 Orionis is unusual. A dramatic increase in its brightness has pushed the water snow line out to a distance of around 40 au (about 6 billion kilometres or roughly the size of the orbit of the dwarf planet Pluto in our Solar System). This huge increase, combined with the resolution of ALMA at long baselines [4], has allowed a team led by Lucas Cieza (Millennium ALMA Disk Nucleus - http://madnucleus.com/ - and Universidad Diego Portales, Santiago, Chile) to make the first ever resolved observations of a water snow line in a protoplanetary disc.
The sudden brightening that V883 Orionis experienced is an example of what occurs when large amounts of material from the disc surrounding a young star fall onto its surface. V883 Orionis is only 30% more massive than the Sun, but thanks to the outburst it is experiencing, it is currently a staggering 400 times more luminous -- and much hotter [5].
Lead author Lucas Cieza explains: "The ALMA observations came as a surprise to us. Our observations were designed to look for disc fragmentation leading to planet formation. We saw none of that; instead, we found what looks like a ring at 40 au. This illustrates well the transformational power of ALMA, which delivers exciting results even if they are not the ones we were looking for."
The bizarre idea of snow orbiting in space is fundamental to planet formation. The presence of water ice regulates the efficiency of the coagulation of dust grains -- the first step in planet formation. Within the snow line, where water is vapourised, smaller, rocky planets like our own are believed to form. Outside the water snow line, the presence of water ice allows the rapid formation of cosmic snowballs, which eventually go on to form massive gaseous planets such as Jupiter.
The discovery that these outbursts may blast the water snow line to about 10 times its typical radius is very significant for the development of good planetary formation models. Such outbursts are believed to be a stage in the evolution of most planetary systems, so this may be the first observation of a common occurrence. In that case, this observation from ALMA could contribute significantly to a better understanding of how planets throughout the Universe formed and evolved.
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Notes
[1] 1 au, or one astronomical unit, is the mean distance between the Earth and the Sun, around 149.6 million kilometres.This unit is typically used to describe distances measured within the Solar System and planetary systems around other stars.
[2] This line was between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter during the formation of the Solar System, hence the rocky planets Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars formed within the line, and the gaseous planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune formed outside.
[3] The snow lines for other molecules, such as carbon monoxide and methane, have been observed previously with ALMA, at distances of greater than 30 au from the protostar within other protoplanetary discs. Water freezes at a relatively high temperature and this means that the water snow line is usually much too close to the protostar to observe directly.
[4] Resolution is the ability to discern that objects are separate. To the human eye, several bright torches at a distance would seem like a single glowing spot, and only at closer quarters would each torch be distinguishable. The same principle applies to telescopes, and these new observations have exploited the exquisite resolution of ALMA in its long baseline modes. The resolution of ALMA at the distance of V883 Orionis is about 12 au -- enough to resolve the water snow line at 40 au in this outbursting system, but not for a typical young star.
[5] Stars like V883 Orionis are classed as FU Orionis stars, after the original star that was found to have this behaviour. The outbursts may last for hundreds of years.
More information
This research was presented in a paper entitled "Imaging the water snow-line during a protostellar outburst", by L. Cieza et al., to appear in Nature on 14 July 2016.
The team is composed of Lucas A. Cieza (Millennium ALMA Disk Nucleus; Universidad Diego Portales, Santiago, Chile), Simon Casassus (Universidad de Chile, Santiago, Chile), John Tobin (Leiden Observatory, Leiden University, The Netherlands), Steven Bos (Leiden Observatory, Leiden University, The Netherlands), Jonathan P. Williams (University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, Hawai`i, USA), Sebastian Perez (Universidad de Chile, Santiago, Chile), Zhaohuan Zhu (Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, USA), Claudio Caceres (Universidad Valparaiso, Valparaiso, Chile), Hector Canovas (Universidad Valparaiso, Valparaiso, Chile), Michael M. Dunham (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA), Antonio Hales (Joint ALMA Observatory, Santiago, Chile), Jose L. Prieto (Universidad Diego Portales, Santiago, Chile), David A. Principe (Universidad Diego Portales, Santiago, Chile), Matthias R. Schreiber (Universidad Valparaiso, Valparaiso, Chile), Dary Ruiz-Rodriguez (Australian National University, Mount Stromlo Observatory, Canberra, Australia) and Alice Zurlo (Universidad Diego Portales & Universidad de Chile, Santiago, Chile).
The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), an international astronomy facility, is a partnership of ESO, the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institutes of Natural Sciences (NINS) of Japan in cooperation with the Republic of Chile. ALMA is funded by ESO on behalf of its Member States, by NSF in cooperation with the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) and the National Science Council of Taiwan (NSC) and by NINS in cooperation with the Academia Sinica (AS) in Taiwan and the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI).
ALMA construction and operations are led by ESO on behalf of its Member States; by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), managed by Associated Universities, Inc. (AUI), on behalf of North America; and by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) on behalf of East Asia. The Joint ALMA Observatory (JAO) provides the unified leadership and management of the construction, commissioning and operation of ALMA.
ESO is the foremost intergovernmental astronomy organisation in Europe and the world's most productive ground-based astronomical observatory by far. It is supported by 16 countries: Austria, Belgium, Brazil, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, along with the host state of Chile. ESO carries out an ambitious programme focused on the design, construction and operation of powerful ground-based observing facilities enabling astronomers to make important scientific discoveries. ESO also plays a leading role in promoting and organising cooperation in astronomical research. ESO operates three unique world-class observing sites in Chile: La Silla, Paranal and Chajnantor. At Paranal, ESO operates the Very Large Telescope, the world's most advanced visible-light astronomical observatory and two survey telescopes. VISTA works in the infrared and is the world's largest survey telescope and the VLT Survey Telescope is the largest telescope designed to exclusively survey the skies in visible light. ESO is a major partner in ALMA, the largest astronomical project in existence. And on Cerro Armazones, close to Paranal, ESO is building the 39-metre European Extremely Large Telescope, the E-ELT, which will become "the world's biggest eye on the sky".
Links
* Research paper - http://www.eso.org/public/archives/releases/sciencepapers/eso1626/eso1626a.pdf
* Photos of ALMA - http://www.eso.org/public/images/archive/search/?adv=&subject_name=Atacama%20Large%20Millimeter/submillimeter%20Array
Contacts
Lucas Cieza
Universidad Diego Portales
Santiago, Chile
Tel: +56 22 676 8154
Cell: +56 95 000 6541
Email: lucas.cieza@mail.udp.cl
Richard Hook
ESO Public Information Officer
Garching bei Munchen, Germany
Tel: +49 89 3200 6655
Cell: +49 151 1537 3591
Email: rhook@eso.org
Karmenu Vella, EU Commissioner for Environment, Maritime Affairs and Fisheries met with ocean research leaders at the European Marine Board offices in Ostend, Belgium, on Friday 8th July, 2016, to discuss ocean research challenges.
The meeting with Commissioner Vella follows on from a previous consultation, held in March, which identified ocean observation and seabed mapping as crucially important for managing human activities in European seas and across the global ocean.
The Commissioner is also faced with the challenge of achieving sustainable Blue Growth, Europe's long term strategy to support sustainable growth in the marine and maritime sectors.
The meeting advanced discussions on ocean observing and seabed mapping in Europe (set within a global context), by identifying critical gaps in our capability, investment needs and potential funding sources for the future.
The EU Blue Growth Strategy will only be sustainable if we understand, manage and minimise the impacts of commercial activities on the health and productivity of Europe's seas. To achieve this, coordinated ocean observation and seabed mapping is crucial.
For instance, placing structures such as communication cables, oil and gas platforms and offshore wind parks in the marine environment depends on knowledge of the seafloor and sub-seafloor as well as local environmental conditions. Equally important is the role of ocean observation and seabed mapping in meeting the requirements of EU policies and directives that aim to promote a healthy marine environment.
These include the EU's Integrated Maritime Policy, the Marine Strategy Framework Directive, the Marine Spatial Planning Directive and the Common Fisheries Policy. These policies and directives rely fundamentally on marine observations, data and data products for their successful implementation.
"The ocean research community in Europe has led the development of ocean observing technologies and programmes which deliver valuable data for a range of scientific, commercial and public users" explains Dr. Niall McDonough, Executive Secretary of the European Marine Board.
"But there are big gaps in the system. Commissioner Vella is showing his commitment in advocating for adequate investment for ocean research and technology development and we welcome the opportunity to present the views of the marine research community to the Commissioner and his team."
Hosted by the European Marine Board, the meeting with Commissioner Vella marks the second in a series and is an important platform for the ocean research community to communicate directly with the Commissioner on ocean research issues.
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Notes to editors
European Marine Board Secretariat contacts:
Niall McDonough: nmcdonough@esf.org
Tel (Office) +32 (0)59 34 01 53; Mobile: +32 (0)476 98 08 99
Veronica French: vfrench@esf.org
Tel (Office) +32 (0) 59 34 01 70; Tel (Mobile) +32 (0) 47 36 29 574
The meeting agenda and list of participants can be viewed on the European Commission's Maritime Forum website: https://webgate.ec.europa.eu/maritimeforum/en/node/3938
The European Marine Board provides a pan European platform for its member organizations to develop common priorities, to advance marine research and to bridge the gap between science and policy, in order to meet future marine science challenges and opportunities. http://www.marineboard.eu
The European Marine Board (established in 1995) facilitates enhanced cooperation between European organizations involved in marine science (research performing institutes, research funding agencies and national networks of universities) towards development of a common vision on the research priorities and strategies for marine science in Europe. In 2016, the European Marine Board represents 35 member organizations from 18 countries.
The European Marine Board works in association with the European Science Foundation. http://www.esf.org
Scientists still aren't sure why T. rex had those absurdly small forelimbs, but apparently the look was all the rage in the Late Cretaceous. A newly-discovered dinosaur from Patagonia has similar short, two-fingered claws, even though it's not closely related to the tyrannosaurs. Like Tyrannosaurus rex, the new Gualicho shinyae is a theropod, one of the two-legged, bird-like dinosaurs, but it's on a different branch of the family tree, meaning that the unusual limbs evolved independently rather than arising from a common short-armed ancestor.
"Gualicho is kind of a mosaic dinosaur, it has features that you normally see in different kinds of theropods," says corresponding author Peter Makovicky, The Field Museum's Curator of Dinosaurs, who helped describe the new species in PLOS ONE. "It's really unusual--it's different from the other carnivorous dinosaurs found in the same rock formation, and it doesn't fit neatly into any category."
Gualicho is an allosaurid, a branch of medium-to-large carnivorous theropod dinosaurs. The skeleton discovered is incomplete, but scientists estimate that it was a medium-sized predator weighing around a thousand pounds, comparable to a polar bear. It's very different from the other dinosaurs that lived near it; if anything, it looks most like Deltadromeus, a leggy, carnivorous dinosaur with slender arms found in Africa, which it appears to be closely related to.
Despite its large size, Gualicho's forelimbs were the size of a human child's, and like T. rex, it had just two digits (thumb and forefinger). While Gualicho doesn't explain why so many theropods had reduced forelimbs, it adds to evidence that the trait evolved independently numerous times. "By learning more about how reduced forelimbs evolved, we may be able to figure out why they evolved," explained Makovicky.
The dinosaur's name hints at the story of its discovery during a joint expedition led by the authors in 2007 to the fossil-rich Huincul Formation of northern Patagonia. The species name shinyae honors the discoverer, Akiko Shinya, while the generic name Gualicho derives from Gualichu, a spirit revered by Patagonia's Tehuelche people. The team joked about the "curse of Gualichu" when hit with bad luck during the expedition, like when they rolled a truck (everyone was okay, except for some cuts and bruises).
Akiko Shinya, The Field Museum's chief fossil preparator for whom the new dinosaur is named, explains, "We found Gualicho at the very end of the expedition. Pete joked, 'It's the last day, you'd better find something good!' And then I almost immediately was like, 'Pete, I found something.' I could tell right away that it was good."
The paper describing the new species was published in PLOS ONE, and was contributed to by authors at the Universidad Maimonides in Argentina, the Dinosaur Institute at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, and the Gobierno de la Provincia de Rio Negro in Argentina.
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ORLANDO, FL - Cavefish that live in dark caves with only sporadic access to food show symptoms similar to diabetes, but don't appear to experience any health problems. New findings presented at The Allied Genetics Conference (TAGC) 2016, a meeting hosted by the Genetics Society of America, reveal the genetic basis of how cavefish have adapted to their extreme environment, information that might one day lead to new kinds of treatments for diabetes and other diseases.
"We found that cavefish have very high body fat levels, are very starvation resistant and have symptoms reminiscent of human diseases such as diabetes and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease," said lead author Nicolas Rohner, Ph.D., of the Stowers Institute for Medical Research. "However, the fish remain healthy and don't have any obvious health problems like we see in humans. Untangling the molecular mechanisms or genetics responsible for these adaptations could potentially lead to new insights into human diseases."
Rohner's research team is studying the fish species Astyanax mexicanus that is native to certain areas of Mexico. One form of these fish, known as cavefish, lives in completely dark limestone caves while another form of the same fish lives in surface rivers near the caves. Through evolution, the cavefish have lost traits they don't need in the dark such as vision and pigmentation and have acquired other traits that help them survive in these dark caves with little food supply.
Rohner's research focuses on changes in cavefish metabolism that let them survive extremely long periods without food. The researchers think that about once a year flooding brings food to the caves. When food is present, the cavefish eat a lot and greatly increase their fat levels. They then draw on these fat stores for energy until they can eat again.
The team previously showed that when cavefish and surface fish were fed the same amount every day in the laboratory, the cavefish accumulated 10 times as much body fat as their surface fish counterparts. The cavefish also retained more fat than the surface fish did during periods without food.
In their most recent study, the team discovered that the livers of cavefish contain high levels of fat, a condition similar to a human disease called non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. While in humans this condition can lead to tissue scarring, inflammation, cell death, and eventually liver failure, the cavefish with fatty livers didn't show any of these problems.
The researchers also found that the cavefish exhibit very high blood glucose levels just after eating and very low levels when food isn't available. These swings in blood glucose are similar to those experienced by people with untreated type 2 diabetes, though they appear to cause no negative effects in the cavefish.
"We think that like hibernating animals that acquire extra body fat in the fall to survive the winter, the cavefish become insulin resistant as part of their strategy to acquire high body fat levels," said Rohner. "Similarly they likely use higher body fat levels to be more starvation resistant during periods when food isn't available."
The researchers identified a genetic mutation as the source of the cavefish's insulin resistance. "It is not a regulatory or seasonal mechanism like in hibernating animals," said Rohner. "The cavefish are constantly insulin resistant, and that makes the argument even stronger that this is a strategy they are using to gain higher body fat levels. The fish must have also acquired compensatory mechanisms that allow them to stay healthy despite these high fat levels."
New approaches such as Rohner's could help yield new insights on diabetes, a complex disease that likely involves many genes and many biological pathways.
"Our approach, which is known as comparative physiology or evolutionary medicine, takes advantage of the fact that many organisms have adapted to very specific environments," said Rohner. "This is a new and emerging approach aimed at trying to use natural variation as an alternative way to discover novel molecular pathways that might be missed in other types of studies."
Rohner points out that this research is likely decades away from leading to a specific treatment for patients. "However, we can point towards candidate genes and pathways that cavefish use to stay healthy," he said. "This is a unique strategy that evolution has come up with and something that we couldn't invent. Once we identify the genes and pathways and understand them, then potentially researchers can develop drugs that might help patients."
Rohner will present "Cavefish evolution as a natural model for metabolic diseases" during The Allied Genetics Conference at 9:15 AM on Friday, July 15, in Grand Ballroom 7B at the Orlando World Center Marriott in Orlando, Florida.
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FUNDING
This project was supported by the Stowers Institute for Medical Research in Kansas City, Missouri.
About the Genetics Society of America (GSA)
Founded in 1931, the Genetics Society of America (GSA) is the professional scientific society for genetics researchers and educators. The Society's more than 5,000 members worldwide work to deepen our understanding of the living world by advancing the field of genetics, from the molecular to the population level. GSA promotes research and fosters communication through a number of GSA-sponsored conferences including regular meetings that focus on particular model organisms. GSA publishes two peer-reviewed, peer-edited scholarly journals: GENETICS, which has published high quality original research across the breadth of the field since 1916, and G3: Genes|Genomes|Genetics, an open-access journal launched in 2011 to disseminate high quality foundational research in genetics and genomics. The Society also has a deep commitment to education and fostering the next generation of scholars in the field. For more information about GSA, please visit http://www.genetics-gsa.org.
ATLANTA--Chief executive officers (CEOs) should have a different leadership style from an organization's culture in order to improve a firm's performance, according to researchers at Georgia State University, Arizona State University, the University of South Australia and Auckland University of Technology.
Based on data collected from 119 CEOs and 337 top management team members in 119 organizations in the U.S. software and hardware industries, the researchers found CEOs who adopt a leadership style similar to that of the organization's culture have a negative impact on firm performance. Instead, firms are most effective when CEO leadership style and organizational culture are different, a discovery that contradicts widely accepted beliefs. The findings are published in The Journal of Applied Psychology.
"Consistencies between CEO leadership and culture create redundancies," said Chad Hartnell, assistant professor in the J. Mack Robinson College of Business at Georgia State. "Leaders who are culture conformists are thus ineffective. CEOs who lead in a manner different from the culture benefit companies because they provide resources to the organization that the culture does not."
Organizational culture refers to shared values and norms, usually either task-oriented or relationship-oriented, that inform employee behavior. In a task-oriented culture, employees are asked to focus externally on problems such as anticipating customers' needs and preferences and monitoring competitors' behaviors. In a relationship-oriented culture, employees are encouraged to focus internally on issues such as coordination, participation and communication.
"Similarities between leadership and culture can produce a myopic focus on things that have worked in the past while precluding employees from acquiring other resources or processes that could enhance success," Hartnell said. "CEOs should be mindful about focusing employees on important outcomes and processes that cultural signals may overlook."
Hartnell pointed to former Delta CEO Richard Anderson as an example of leadership style differing from company culture.
"His task leadership complemented Delta's relationship-focused culture," he said. "Under Anderson's leadership, Delta was able to capitalize on opportunities to adapt to rapidly changing market conditions. Delta's relationship-focused culture enabled employees to integrate their efforts and execute on the organization's strategic direction. Taken together, differences between CEO leadership and company culture position organizations for financial success."
Not all differences between leadership and culture are positive, Hartnell said. If a leader's approach is oppositional or confrontational, he or she will likely be met with resistance and resentment. A leader who challenges or discards every assumption about what has worked in the past creates uncertainty, ambiguity and skepticism among the organization's employees.
"Leaders must search diligently for what isn't currently being handled by the culture and fill in the gap," Hartnell said. "They should adopt a leadership style that builds upon the positive aspects of the existing culture, contributing to the culture without undermining it."
Co-authors of the study include Lisa Schurer Lambert of Georgia State, Angelo Kinicki of Arizona State University, Mel Fugate of the University of South Australia and Patricia Doyle Corner of Auckland University of Technology.
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Cells lining the walls of tumor blood vessels hold a 'key' that allows tumor cells to break into the blood stream and form metastases, say researchers at Hokkaido University
Researchers at Hokkaido University in Japan have demonstrated that a molecule, called biglycan, plays an intrinsic role in attracting tumour cells toward the inner wall of tumour blood vessels.
Biglycan is a normal component of the supportive matrix outside cells and appears to modulate the biological activities of a number of growth factors. It is also released by immune cells in inflamed tissues.
The team conducted investigations by grafting low-metastatic (LM) and high-metastatic (HM) melanoma tumour cells under the skin of mice.
They found the "endothelial" cells forming the inner lining of blood vessels in the HM tumours secrete increased levels of biglycan, which then binds to specific receptors on the tumour cells, attracting them to the endothelium. When they neutralized the biglycan receptors with antibodies, tumour cell migration toward the endothelium was inhibited.
They then asked why biglycan expression was increased in the endothelial cells, and found that the promoter region of the gene was de-methylated, meaning the gene was switched on. They speculate that the tumour cells created a micro-environment that could induce abnormal gene expression in the neighbouring tissue.
The team analysed a large database that contains gene expression data in cancer patients. They found that high biglycan expression was associated with poor prognosis in patients with breast, lung and colorectal cancer. Further investigation on a specific metastatic cancer case showed high levels of biglycan in the blood of patients with metastatic cancer, while it was barely detected in another non-metastatic case.
The research provides clear evidence that biglycan plays an important role in determining tumour malignancy. Blood vessel endothelial cells act as "gatekeepers", the researchers write in their study published in the journal Scientific Reports. In highly metastatic tumours, these cells give tumour cells the "key" molecule, biglycan, which allows them to break through the gate and proceed into the blood stream, resulting in metastases.
"The present observations, together with unravelling certain remaining issues, may contribute to establishing accurate diagnostics or potent anti-metastatic strategies that target the communications between tumour cells and endothelial cells," the researchers conclude.
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DENVER - Nivolumab (NIV), a checkpoint inhibitor approved for all squamous and non-squamous non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients in 2015, is not cost-effective when compared to treatment with docetaxel (DOC), chemotherapy medication. However, a Swiss analysis showed the cost-effectiveness of NIV is improved when patients are treated with NIV based on PD-L1 positivity (PD-L1+), or if there is a reduction in dose or drug price.
NIV, an antibody that targets programmed cell death protein 1 (PD1) by blocking a signal that would have otherwise prevented T cells from attacking cancer cells, was recently approved for use in several countries as second-line treatment for patients with advanced squamous or non-squamous NSCLC. There is a growing global concern over the cost and value of cancer care and treatment especially as it relates to recently approved cancer drugs like NIV. In December 2015, the United Kingdom National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) reported that for squamous NSCLC, NIV was not cost-effective per quality-adjusted life year (QALY) gained. Further, in February 2016 a Canadian study comparing NIV to DOC and erlotinib in NSCLC found that NIV had the highest expected per-patient cost, but also improved per-patient life years (LYs) and QALYs. While there are reports of NIV not being cost-effective in squamous NSCLC, it's a worthwhile endeavor to explore the cost-effectiveness of NIV on non-squamous NSCLC.
A group of Swiss investigators used a literature-based Markov modelling approach to calculate the incremental cost effectiveness ratio (ICER) for NIV compared to DOC in patients with non-squamous NSCLC from Switzerland's healthcare system perspective. The model was constructed based on the clinical data from the CheckMate-057 study and compared: 1) all patients treated with DOC; 2) all patients treated with NIV; and 3) patients treated according to their PD-L1 status (?1% or ?10% tumor positivity by immunohistochemistry testing). The primary measurement endpoint was the ICER expressed as cost per QALY gained using NIV compared to DOC in patients with NSCLC. The secondary endpoint was the ICER comparing PD-L1 testing with DOC or NIV. The ICERs were compared to a possible willingness-to-pay (WTP) threshold of CHF100,000 per QALY gained. The effect of reduction of dose and price of NIV on ICERs were also assessed. Effectiveness data were inferred from the progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS) outcomes reported in the original CheckMate-057 trial publication and supplementary materials. Cost was established using Swiss public healthcare prices when available.
The results of the study published in the Journal of Thoracic Oncology, the official journal of the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC), demonstrated that giving NIV only to patients with positive PD-L1 tests compared to treating all patients with DOC or all patients with NIV was more cost effective in both scenarios. Treating all patients with NIV compared to all with DOC resulted in a ICER of CHF177,478/QALY gained, whereas, treating only patients with ?1% or ?10% PD-L1+ with NIV compared to DOC resulted in ICERs of CHF133,267/QALY and CHF124,891/QALY, respectively, both ICERs above the WTP CHF100,000 threshold. Although NIV for all patients was weakly dominated by the test-based strategies (and a comparison not justified from a health economic perspective), treating only patients with PD-L1+ with NIV versus all patients with NIV is more cost-effective. Treating patients with ?1% or ?10% PD-L1+ resulted in ICERs of CHF65,774/QALY and CHF37,860/QALY, respectively, resulting in ICERs below the WTP threshold of CHF100,000/QALY. Further, reduction of dose to 1mg/kg and reducing NIV price by at least 45% reduced ICERs to below the WTP threshold.
The authors comment that, "The easiest way to improve cost-effectiveness is to lower drug prices. Depending on the setting, a cost reduction of NIV by at least 33% (NIV given to patients with PD-L1+ tumors versus DOC) or 45% (NIV given to all patients versus DOC) resulted in ICERs below or near the WTP threshold. It will be interesting to see if NICE reaches similar conclusions for non-squamous NSCLC and if they can negotiate a lower price for NIV in the UK. Although our results are not directly generalizable to other countries, the Swiss system is comparable to the US system and to many European countries in terms of patient care and cost. However, in our analysis, both PD-L1 test strategies (NIV only for those patients reaching the ?1% or ?10% positive thresholds) resulted in higher mean costs but also better effectiveness than treating all patients with NIV. PD-L1 testing should be considered in patients with non-squamous NSCLC who are candidates for PD-L1 checkpoint inhibitor therapy."
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Co-author Oliver Gautschi is a member of IASLC.
About the IASLC
The International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC) is the only global organization dedicated to the study of lung cancer. Founded in 1974, the association's membership includes more than 5,000 lung cancer specialists in over 100 countries. Visit http://www.iaslc.org for more information.
Written by: Jacinta Wiens, PhD, 720-598-1941; jacinta.wiens@iaslc.org
Media Contact: Jeff Wolf, 720-325-2952; jeff.wolf@iaslc.org
A new streamlined approach to genetic testing for women with ovarian cancer provides testing rapidly and affordably, allowing many more patients to benefit from personalised cancer management and their relatives to benefit from cancer prevention strategies.
The new approach offers cancer patients the opportunity to get gene testing at one of their routine cancer clinic appointments instead of having to be referred to a separate genetic testing clinic.
As well as offering a more streamlined patient journey, the pathway is less resource intensive for health systems and could save the NHS millions of pounds per year, if implemented nationally.
The new testing pathway was developed by researchers at The Institute of Cancer Research, London, as part of the Wellcome Trust-funded Mainstreaming Cancer Genetics programme.
It was piloted for BRCA gene testing in 207 women with ovarian cancer at The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, in a study supported by the NIHR Biomedical Research Centre at The Royal Marsden and The Institute of Cancer Research (ICR).
The study, published today (Wednesday) in the journal Scientific Reports, showed the new testing approach was welcomed by patients; all 207 ovarian cancer patients accepted the offer of BRCA gene testing and the post-test feedback was very positive.
The new testing pathway reduced hospital visits for patients and substantially reduced the time taken for testing to be completed, ensuring the results were able to be incorporated into clinical decision making.
The test results were useful in deciding medical management of four-fifths of the patients who were receiving cancer treatment. This included 32 women found to have a BRCA mutation, many of whom became eligible for new precision medicines only suitable for women with BRCA-related ovarian cancer.
In the new pathway cancer patients gave consent for testing by a cancer doctor or nurse who completed a 30-minute online training module designed by the research team. All patients found to have a BRCA mutation automatically get an appointment with the genetics team to discuss the implications for themselves and their families in detail.
For each patient identified with a BRCA mutation, on average three family members also decided to see a geneticist to discuss the implications for them. BRCA mutations increase the risk of breast and ovarian cancer occurring and testing in the relatives allowed individualised cancer risk information to be given to them. Relatives that also have a BRCA mutation have various options available to them to improve early detection or prevention of cancer.
The new testing pathway has now become standard at The Royal Marsden and is being adopted by other hospitals in the UK and internationally. Many more women with ovarian cancer have received BRCA testing as a result.
Almost all ovarian cancer patients are eligible for BRCA testing under current national recommendations, but provision of testing has been patchy across the NHS. It is estimated that less than a third of ovarian cancer patients have actually been getting testing.
The simplicity and efficiency of the new testing approach would, the researchers believe, make it practical for all eligible ovarian cancer patients across the UK to be offered testing within existing resources. The researchers estimate that rolling out the new pathway across the NHS would save 2.6M per year compared with the current standard process.
A companion study led by the same researchers in collaboration with DRG Abacus and Astra Zeneca found that the new approach to testing was extremely cost-effective, because many healthy relatives at high risk of cancer make choices that reduce their chance of developing the disease.
If all 7,000 women diagnosed with epithelial ovarian cancer in the UK each year were offered testing, just a single year's testing is likely, over time, to prevent hundreds of breast and ovarian cancers and dozens of deaths in their relatives, the study found.
The researchers showed that national implementation for all ovarian cancer patients would cost 4,339 per quality-adjusted life year - far below the 20,000 threshold that is used to decide what tests and treatments the NHS should offer.
Study leader Professor Nazneen Rahman, Head of Cancer Genetics at The Institute of Cancer Research, London, and The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, said:
"We know BRCA gene testing can be greatly beneficial for women with ovarian cancer, allowing their care to be tailored to their individual genetic information, and improving the cancer risk information we can provide to their families.
"Our new gene testing pathway is faster, simpler and better designed for cancer patients' needs than the standard NHS process. Our study has shown that it is not only a feasible way of providing BRCA testing to all eligible women with ovarian cancer, but could also prevent cancers and save the NHS millions of pounds a year."
Professor Martin Gore, Consultant Medical Oncologist at The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, said:
"The new genetic testing pathway has been a huge success in the clinic. It all runs very smoothly and I know that patients and their families are really most appreciative."
Preeti Dudakia, 49, an ovarian cancer patient at The Royal Marsden who took part in the study said:
"My cancer team explained why the test was useful very clearly and when it came back positive I was able to have a treatment only given to women with a BRCA mutation. If my mother had been able to have this testing when she got ovarian cancer I would have known I was at risk sooner. My situation could have been completely different."
Professor Paul Workman, Chief Executive of The Institute of Cancer Research, London, said:
"Twenty years ago the BRCA2 gene was identified at the ICR. This study is an excellent example of how science such as this can be turned into something very practical that can improve the patient care and save lives. We hope the new model for genetic testing will be rolled out across the NHS."
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For more information please contact Henry French on 020 7153 5582 or henry.french@icr.ac.uk. For enquiries out of hours, please call 07595 963 613.
Notes to editors
All women in the study had non-mucinous epithelial ovarian cancer. Some 90% of ovarian cancers are epithelial, and more than 95% of these cases are non-mucinous.
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidelines recommend everyone with a risk of 10 per cent or more of having a mutation in either the BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene (collectively termed the BRCA genes) is offered testing.
The study found 16% of non-mucinous ovarian cancer patients tested had a BRCA mutation - in line with previous estimates, and indicating that almost all patients with ovarian cancer would qualify for a test.
About 7,000 women are diagnosed with ovarian cancer in the UK each year. About 4,000 women die from ovarian cancer in the UK each year, that's 11 deaths every day.
Many women with a BRCA mutation choose to have their ovaries removed by keyhole surgery after completing their families to reduce the risk of ovarian cancer occurring.
The Mainstreaming Cancer Genetics programme is a multi-stranded translational research initiative working to make genetic testing routinely available to cancer patients that can benefit. It is funded by the Wellcome Trust. Find out more at http://www.mcgprogramme.com
The Institute of Cancer Research, London, is one of the world's most influential cancer research organisations.
Scientists and clinicians at The Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) are working every day to make a real impact on cancer patients' lives. Through its unique partnership with The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust and 'bench-to-bedside' approach, the ICR is able to create and deliver results in a way that other institutions cannot. Together the two organisations are rated in the top four centres for cancer research and treatment globally.
The ICR has an outstanding record of achievement dating back more than 100 years. It provided the first convincing evidence that DNA damage is the basic cause of cancer, laying the foundation for the now universally accepted idea that cancer is a genetic disease. Today it is a world leader at identifying cancer-related genes and discovering new targeted drugs for personalised cancer treatment.
A college of the University of London, the ICR is the UK's top-ranked academic institution for research quality, and provides postgraduate higher education of international distinction. It has charitable status and relies on support from partner organisations, charities and the general public.
The ICR's mission is to make the discoveries that defeat cancer. For more information visit http://www.icr.ac.uk
About The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust
The Royal Marsden opened its doors in 1851 as the world's first hospital dedicated to cancer diagnosis, treatment, research and education.
Today, together with its academic partner, The Institute of Cancer Research (ICR), it is the largest and most comprehensive cancer centre in Europe treating over 50,000 NHS and private patients every year. It is a centre of excellence with an international reputation for groundbreaking research and pioneering the very latest in cancer treatments and technologies.
The Royal Marsden, with the ICR, is the only National Institute for Health Research Biomedical Research Centre for Cancer. This supports pioneering research work carried out over a number of different cancer themes.
The Royal Marsden also provides community services in the London borough of Sutton.
Since 2003, The Royal Marsden Cancer Charity has funded the latest developments in cancer research, diagnosis, treatment and patient care. Over recent years, supporters of The Royal Marsden Cancer Charity have funded facilities including the Oak Centre for Children and Young People, the da Vinci robots, the CyberKnife radiotherapy machine and the Reuben Foundation Imaging Centre.
HRH The Duke of Cambridge became President of The Royal Marsden in 2007, following a long royal connection with the hospital.
About Wellcome
Wellcome exists to improve health for everyone by helping great ideas to thrive. We're a global charitable foundation, both politically and financially independent. We support scientists and researchers, take on big problems, fuel imaginations and spark debate.
About the NIHR
The National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) is funded by the Department of Health to improve the health and wealth of the nation through research. The NIHR is the research arm of the NHS. Since its establishment in April 2006, the NIHR has transformed research in the NHS. It has increased the volume of applied health research for the benefit of patients and the public, driven faster translation of basic science discoveries into tangible benefits for patients and the economy, and developed and supported the people who conduct and contribute to applied health research. The NIHR plays a key role in the Government's strategy for economic growth, attracting investment by the life-sciences industries through its world-class infrastructure for health research. Together, the NIHR people, programmes, centres of excellence and systems represent the most integrated health research system in the world. For further information, visit the NIHR website (http://www.nihr.ac.uk).
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- An Indiana University expert in the high-tech field of computer vision will collaborate with U.S. Navy engineers to improve the quality of microelectronic components used in critical military systems like communication and navigation.
David Crandall, a professor in the IU School of Informatics and Computing, has received $450,000 from the Naval Engineering Education Consortium to conduct research in collaboration with the Crane, Ind.-based Naval Surface Warfare Center Crane Division on new methods to guarantee the integrity of the electronic circuitry used in U.S. Navy platforms. The Naval Engineering Education Consortium is a part of the Naval Sea Systems Command, which supports project-based collaborations with colleges and universities.
"The Navy depends on a lot of critical electronic circuits in its equipment, so spotting defects before something goes wrong is of utmost importance, especially when lives are on the line," Crandall said. "Our project will apply the principles of computer vision to improve the inspection of these technologies, which currently require quality control conducted by people painstakingly examining circuits underneath microscopes."
Computer vision uses machine learning to "train" machines in the creation of algorithms that recognize patterns like faces, scenes and actions. The technology is familiar, as the same basic methods power Google's image search or the motion sensors in Microsoft's Xbox Kinect. The IU-NSWC Crane project will work to apply this pattern-recognition power to spotting microscopic flaws in electronic circuits and semiconductors.
"Today's military employs devices with immensely complicated integrated circuits whose logic gates are less than 25 nanometers wide and feature upwards of 20 billion individual transistors," said Robert Templeman, lead engineer on the project at NSWC Crane and a graduate of the IU School of Informatics and Computing. "What once could be inspected by the naked eye, and later optical magnification, now requires state-of-the-art instruments that create images from sophisticated imaging technology, challenging the limits of human inspection."
The IU-NSWC Crane collaboration will take place in three phrases. The first year will investigate the project's primary challenges and explore solutions. The second two years will be "operation periods" that "expand the scope and ambition of the previous year's goals," Crandall said.
These later phases will produce statistical models that describe the defining structures of microelectronic imagery, algorithms that efficiently compare these features against large-scale images of circuits requiring inspection, and machine learning techniques that automatically detect and characterize any defective microelectronic structures.
Throughout the process, IU scientists will submit reports and white papers to military personnel as well as provide access to the project's source code. The work is also expected to generate new academic knowledge through scientific conference presentations and journal articles.
In addition, Crandall said the IU-NSWC Crane collaboration will provide a number of IU students -- from the undergraduate to the Ph.D. level -- the opportunity to work closely with engineers at NSWC Crane, 25 miles southwest of IU Bloomington. Cultivating a world-class naval engineering workforce through student participation in research is a major part of the mission of the consortium funding the project.
"Machine learning, computer vision and data mining are hot topics right now, and there's a shortage of qualified graduates entering the job market," Crandall said. "This collaboration is a great opportunity for our students, not only to help create important new technology but also to gain the cutting-edge skills they will need to stay competitive as they launch their careers."
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Funding on the project officially began April 1, with activity gearing up for the next three years over the course of this summer.
A team of scientists in Portugal has discovered, in the mouse gut, a novel process that protects the bowel's lining against inflammation and microbial aggressions - and fights them when they arise. And, most surprisingly, they have shown that this mechanism is under the control of the intestinal nervous system - the so-called "second brain".
The sheer size of the network of nervous cells that reside in the vertebrate gut has earned it that nickname in recent years. Now, judging by the research led by Henrique Veiga-Fernandes, at Instituto de Medicina Molecular, in Lisbon, it appears that it is actually a well-deserved one. The results are published today (July 13th) in Nature magazine.
"Our study reveals that the nervous system acts as the 'eyes and ears' of the immune system", says Veiga-Fernandes, who is currently moving his lab to the Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown (also in Lisbon). "Nervous cells receive alerts from the gut and then give specific instructions to the immune system to repair the damage."
It is already known that there is a relationship, a dialog, between neurons in the gut and the immune system. In particular, a study published very recently by a team at Rockefeller University (USA) showed that certain neurons can induce a type of immune cells (macrophages) to produce substances that protect the gut.
But Veiga-Fernandes' team has gone further: "What is totally new in our work", he says, "is that not only did we discover the phenomenon, but we also described the molecular mechanisms at play".
It all started when he and his colleagues identified the presence of a receptor protein, called Ret, on the surface of a type of immune cells called innate lymphocytes (lymphocytes are white blood cells), which are among the most important regulators of inflammation and infection at mucous membranes. Ret acts, in fact, as a switch which can be turned on or off by the signals it receives.
Lymphocytes parading as neurons
Scientists also knew that the same Ret protein is present on the surface of nervous cells in the gut, where it regulates the function of these cells by picking up, as if it were an antenna, chemical signals (called neurotrophic factors) coming from outside the cells. "Suddenly, we were seeing a type of lymphocytes parading as neurons", says Veiga-Fernandes. "This was a big surprise. What was the Ret protein doing on those lymphocytes?"
To try to elucidate this enigma, the team started by locating the innate lymphocytes that expressed the Ret receptor in the gut of laboratory mice, which had been genetically modified so that their cells glowed green when carrying Ret on their surface. And they discovered that, immediately beneath the intestinal mucosa, there are, in fact, thousands of cellular clusters, each containing 100 to 200 innate lymphocytes expressing Ret.
The next step consisted in determining what could be the function of the protein in those lymphocytes. "We then showed that the Ret protein controls the production, by the innate lymphocytes in the gut, of interleukin-22 (IL-22), a molecule that is extraordinarily important for the repair of the gut epithelium [or wall]", says Veiga-Fernandes.
In fact, they confirmed that transgenic mice which did not express Ret on their innate lymphocytes had an altered intestinal epithelium that was less able to regenerate and to express the genes that promote repair.
These results led to another idea: proving that those animals, given their altered epithelium, were prone to various inflammatory pathologies and infections of the gut. "We tested this idea in mice infected with gut bacteria or in which we had induced a chronic bowel inflammation", says Veiga-Fernandes. "And what we saw was that the animals that did not express Ret were highly susceptible to both things and died very quickly."
On the other hand, transgenic mice in which the expression of Ret had been boosted to higher-than-normal levels proved to be "totally resistant" to these pathologies.
The next step was to figure out how Ret is activated in the innate lymphocytes. In other words, to identify the cells that send the necessary neuroregulatory signals to the Ret proteins on the innate lymphocytes, thus inducing these immune cells to produce the key molecule of intestinal repair IL-22. To answer this question, the team used high-resolution microscopy to search for cells in the vicinity of the innate lymphocytes that could be responsible for turning on the Ret switch.
Multi-cellular troika
"We then discovered that all the cluster of innate lymphocytes were very close to glial cells, a type of nervous system cell", says Veiga-Fernandes. "In fact, these are the cells that make the neurotrophic factors that activate the Ret protein on the innate lymphocytes." Glial cells are not neurons, but they are a crucial component of the nervous system.
Next question: how do glial cells detect intestinal threats in order to activate Ret in the innate lymphocytes at the right time?
"Actually, what enables the glial cells to make these Ret activators is the fact that they are able to detect signals of bacterial presence and of damage to intestinal tissue", says Veiga-Fernandes. "These signals are either produced by bacteria or substances called alarmins, which are signals that are emitted by any cell when it is in trouble."
"To summarize, we identified a multi-cellular 'troika' [innate lymphocytes, glial cells, gut epithelial cells], orchestrated by neurotrophic factors, that protects the intestine", says Veiga-Fernandes. "And we found that changes in this cellular and molecular axis lead to intestinal inflammatory disease and to the incapacity of eliminating intestinal infections."
A future application of these results may be the development of new preventive and therapeutic strategies against chronic bowel inflammations - such as Crohn disease and ulcerative colitis - and even against intestinal cancer, according to Veiga-Fernandes.
The team is now exploring ways of activating the innate lymphocytes directly, without the help of glial cells. "We want to manage to do the glial cells' job in their place", says Veiga-Fernandes.
Henrique Veiga-Fernandes graduated in Veterinary Medicine at Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal. He was awarded a PhD in molecular and cellular biology from Universite Rene Descartes, in Paris, France. He developed his post-doctoral research at Institut Necker in Paris, France, and at the National Institute for Medical Research, in London, UK.
He started his own group in 2009 at Instituto de Medicina Molecular (IMM), in Lisbon, and in 2014 he became member of the IMM's board of directors. More recently, his lab joined the new Biology of Systems and Metastasis research programme at the Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown, also in Lisbon.
Henrique Veiga-Fernandes made ground-breaking contributions to the understanding of immunological memory, innate lymphoid cells and hematopoietic stem cell biology. Among other distinctions, he received three European Research Council (ERC) awards, he has been elected as EMBO member and he is Commander of the Ordem Militar de Sant'Iago da Espada of Portugal.
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Researchers of Kumamoto University in Japan have succeeded in the world's first visualization of a peptidoglycan 'wall' present in the chloroplasts of bryophytes (moss plants). Until now, chloroplasts of green plants were considered to be surrounded only by two envelopes. The results of this research overturns conventional wisdom about the structure of chloroplasts.
The chloroplast is a plastid (organelle) that carries out photosynthesis in plant cells. The presently accepted theory of its origin states that a cyanobacterium, which originally had photosynthetic ability, was engulfed by a eukaryotic cell more than 1 billion years ago and eventually became the chloroplast. Chloroplasts, like their cyanobacterium ancestors, proliferate through division.
Cyanobacteria have a peptidoglycan layer component in their cell walls, but this layer has never been observed in the chloroplasts of green plants. Until recently, it was thought that the chloroplast had lost this layer over its evolution. However, two separate research groups, Freiburg University, Germany in 1997 and Kumamoto University in 2002 and 2003, showed that some plants which were thought to have lost the peptidoglycan layer react to antibiotics with inhibited chloroplast division. Furthermore, the findings from Kumamoto University strongly suggested that antibiotics specifically target peptidoglycan biosynthesis in the moss chloroplast. This caused the Kumamoto University researchers to wonder if a peptidoglycan layer actually existed despite not yet being observed, and so began their investigation.
"We decided to do our analysis using the moss, Physcomitrella patens," said Professor Hiroyoshi Takano of Kumamoto University's Graduate School of Science and Technology. "We isolated a moss gene which was homologous to a bacterial gene that encodes the enzyme D-alanine: D-alanine ligase (Ddl). This enzyme is responsible for combining 2 D-alanine molecules into the single molecule D-alanyl-D-alanine (D-Ala-D-Ala) whose only purpose within the cell is the biosynthesis of peptidoglycan. Then, we used a gene targeting technique to generate genetically modified plants without that gene."
The researchers found that the size of the chloroplasts of the mutant plants were greatly increased and chloroplast division appeared to be inhibited. They then grew the mutant plants in a medium supplemented with D-Ala-D-Ala which led to a recovery of chloroplast division. This suggested that the moss plant used peptidoglycan in chloroplast division.
Furthermore, the researchers bound a fluorescent molecule to D-Ala-D-Ala and observed the results through a fluorescence microscope. Fluorescent D-Ala-D-Ala surrounding the chloroplast provided visual proof of the existence of the peptidoglycan "wall" around the chloroplast.
"We think that the 'wall' structure of the moss chloroplast is closely involved in both the division and morphology of the chloroplast," said Professor Takano. "The 'wall' structure of chloroplasts in green plants had been considered lost during the early days of endosymbiosis. Genomic data shows that this peptidoglycan wall has indeed disappeared in angiosperms, but we have shown for the first time that it remains in a moss plant. Similar to moss, the basal land plants may also use peptidoglycan for chloroplast division. The discovery of this 'wall' is an important discovery that rewrites the book on the fundamental structure of the chloroplast."
This finding was posted in "The Plant Cell" on June 20th, 2016.
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TITLE:
Moss Chloroplasts are Surrounded by a Peptidoglycan Wall Containing D-Amino Acids
AUTHORS:
Takayuki Hirano, Koji Tanidokoro, Yasuhiro Shimizu, Yutaka Kawarabayasi, Toshihisa Ohshima, Momo Sato, Shinji Tadano, Hayato Ishikawa, Susumu Takio, Katsuaki Takechi, and Hiroyoshi Takano
JOURNAL:
The Plant Cell
DOI:
10.1105/tpc.16.00104
WASHINGTON - A new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine says that Medicare's value-based payment programs could take into account social risk factors - such as low socio-economic position, residence in disadvantaged neighborhoods, or race and ethnicity - but any proposal to do so will entail both advantages and disadvantages that need to be carefully considered. This is the third report in a series of five that addresses social risk factors that affect the health care outcomes of Medicare beneficiaries and ways to account for them in Medicare payment programs. It was outside the study's statement of task to recommend whether social risk factors should be accounted for in value-based payment or how.
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 and subsequent legislation require the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to implement value-based payment programs. Although CMS payment models cover a spectrum of approaches, the agency is moving steadily from paying for volume, such as fee-for-service payments, to paying for quality, outcomes, and costs, such as in value-based payment programs. Essentially, value-based payment aims to align payment and care delivery goals to improve health care quality and outcomes, while also controlling costs.
Nevertheless, concerns have been raised that Medicare payment programs that do not account for social risk factors, particularly value-based payment programs, may underestimate the quality of care provided by health systems that disproportionately serve socially at-risk populations. Patients with social risk factors may require more resources and care to achieve the same health outcomes as advantaged patients. At the same time, health care providers serving more vulnerable populations historically have been less well-funded than providers who care for larger proportions of patients with commercial insurance. Because current Medicare quality measurement and payment programs do not account for these differences, providers serving vulnerable populations may be more likely to fare poorly on quality rankings and receive penalties under value-based payment. This dynamic, in turn, may potentially increase disparities.
The committee that carried out the study and wrote the report developed five criteria to help CMS determine which social risk factors should be accounted for in Medicare value-based payment programs. It then applied the criteria to various social risk factors and determined that in the short term, CMS could account for several social risk factors in Medicare value-based payment programs, including: income, education, and dual eligibility; race, ethnicity, language, and nativity; marital/partnership status and living alone; and neighborhood deprivation, urbanicity, and housing. The committee noted that some additional social risk factors present practical challenges for use in Medicare value-based payment programs but are still worthy of consideration for inclusion in the longer term. These factors include wealth, gender identity and sexual orientation, emotional and instrumental social support, and environmental measures of residential and community context.
The committee found that CMS payment programs, which currently do not account for social risk factors, have several disadvantages, including giving providers and insurers the incentive to avoid serving patients with social risk factors, underpaying providers who disproportionately serve socially at-risk populations, and underinvesting in the delivery of quality care. While accounting for social risk factors in valued-based payment programs would likely diminish these harms, it could also potentially introduce new ones, such as reducing incentives to improve care for patients from vulnerable populations. Thus, the committee concluded that it is important to minimize potential harms to patients with social risk factors, including monitoring the effect of any specific approach for any unintended adverse effects.
To address the committee's four policy goals of reducing disparities in health care access, quality, and outcomes; improving quality and efficient care delivery for all patients; fair and accurate public reporting; and compensating providers fairly, the committee identified four categories encompassing 10 methods on how to account for social risk factors in Medicare value-based payment programs. Those categories are:
stratified public reporting, which seeks to make quality of care for socially at-risk and other patients visible to consumers, providers, payers, and regulators;
adjustment of performance measure scores, which accounts for social risk factors statistically, in an effort to more accurately measure true performance;
direct adjustment of payments, which explicitly uses measures of social risk factors in payment but by itself does not affect performance measure scores; and
restructuring payment incentive design, which implicitly accounts for social risk factors in payment.
The committee concluded that a combination of reporting and accounting in both performance measures and payment are needed to achieve its four policy goals. Considerations around the trade-offs of various methods are different for cost-related performance and quality performance, and strategies to account for social risk factors for measures of cost and efficiency may differ from strategies to measure good outcomes and improvements in care quality. Lower cost is not always better, for example, when it reflects unmet needs, but high quality is always better.
"Accounting for social risk factors in Medicare payments is not intended to obscure disparities that exist, but rather bring disparities to light," said Donald Steinwachs, committee chair and professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore. "Payment systems should include sufficient incentives for quality improvement for both socially at-risk populations and to patients overall."
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The study was sponsored by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine are private, nonprofit institutions that provide independent, objective analysis and advice to the nation to solve complex problems and inform public policy decisions related to science, technology, and medicine. The Academies operate under an 1863 congressional charter to the National Academy of Sciences, signed by President Lincoln. For more information, visit http://national-academies.org. A roster follows.
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Contacts:
#NASEMmedicare Download Report (active at 11 a.m. EDT on July 13)Jennifer Walsh, Senior Media Relations OfficerEmily Raschke, Media Relations AssistantOffice of News and Public Information202-334-2138; e-mail news@nas.edu Newsroom
Copies of Accounting for Social Risk Factors in Medicare Payment: Criteria, Factors, and Methods are available from the National Academies Press on the Internet at http://www.nap.edu or by calling 202-334-3313 or 1-800-624-6242. Reporters may obtain a copy from the Office of News and Public Information (contacts listed above).
THE NATIONAL ACADEMIES OF SCIENCES, ENGINEERING, AND MEDICINE
Committee on Accounting for Socioeconomic Status in Medicare Payment Programs
Health and Medicine DivisionBoard on Population Health and Public Health PracticeBoard on Health Care Services
Donald M. Steinwachs, Ph.D.* (chair)
Professor
Center for Health Services and Outcomes Research
Department of Health Policy and Management
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
Baltimore
John Z. Ayanian, M.D., M.P.P.*
Director
Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor
Charles Baumgart, M.D.
Senior Medical Director
xG Health Solutions Inc.
Broomfield, Colo.
Melinda J. Buntin, Ph.D.
Professor and Chair
Department of Health Policy
Vanderbilt University School of Medicine
Nashville
Ana V. Diez Roux, M.D., Ph.D.*
Dean and Distinguished Professor of Epidemiology
Dornsife School of Public Health
Drexel University
Philadelphia
Marc N. Elliott, Ph.D.
Senior Principal Researcher
The RAND Corp.
Santa Monica, Calif.
Jose J. Escarce, M.D., Ph.D.*
Professor
Division of General Internal Medicine and Health Services Research
School of Medicine
University of California
Los Angeles
Robert L. Ferrer, M.D., M.P.H.
Dr. John M. Smith Jr. Professor
Department of Family and Community Medicine
University of Texas Health Science Center
San Antonio
Darrell J. Gaskin, Ph.D.
Director
Center for Health Disparities
Department of Health Policy and Management
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
Baltimore
Mark D. Hayward, Ph.D.
Professor and Director
Population Research Center
Department of Sociology
University of Texas
Austin
James S. Jackson, Ph.D.*
Daniel Katz Distinguished University Professor
Institute for Social Research
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor
Daniel Polsky, Ph.D.
Executive Director
Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia
Meredith Rosenthal, Ph.D.*
Professor of Health Economics and Policy and Associate Dean for Diversity
Harvard School of Public Health
Boston
Anthony Shih, M.D.
Professor of Health Economics and Policy
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Boston
STAFF
Kathleen Stratton, Ph.D.
Study Director
*Member, National Academy of Medicine
NASA's Human Research Program launched Phase 1 of the NASA Analog Missions website, a site devoted to studies around the world that help prepare for long duration human spaceflight.
An Analog is a situation on Earth that produces affects on the body similar to those experienced in space, both physical and emotional. The site, http://www.nasa.gov/analogs is a one-stop website for all analog missions linked to NASA.
How real is an analog mission? Andy Self, Flight Analog Project operations lead at the Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston explained, "When we set up an analog research investigation, we try to mimic as many spaceflight conditions as possible. Obviously, they are not in microgravity, but confinement and the stress that goes along with spaceflight can be mimicked."
NASA is associated with at least 15 analog missions throughout the world, including Antarctica, Germany, Russia, Canada, Florida, Houston, and Hawaii. The new webpage gives an overview of the analogs, including a description of the habitats and the types of research conducted, along with a link to each analog mission.
The Human Exploration Resource Analog (HERA) mission site shows a 360-degree photo of the outside and inside of the HERA habitat which is located at JSC . It also has photos from previous missions and tweets from current missions.
Details as to how to apply to be a crewmember, or test subject, for an analog research mission may be found on the "Want to Participate" page on the website. Researchers can find links to calls for research and instructions on how to submit proposals on the "For Researchers" page.
Future phases of the Analog Missions webpage will give more details for each analog, more 360-degree experiences, and more history and education on analog missions.
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NASA's Human Research Program enables space exploration by reducing the risks to human health and performance through a focused program of basic, applied, and operational research. This leads to the development and delivery of: human health, performance, and habitability standards; countermeasures and risk mitigation solutions; and advanced habitability and medical support technologies.
The National Environment Agency (NEA) today signed a Collaboration Agreement with the Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) to co-fund the development of a S$40 million Waste-To-Energy (WTE) Research Facility.
The facility will be the first of its kind in Singapore and enable the translation of emerging WTE technologies, from research into demonstration and test-bedding projects.
Expected to be commissioned by late 2018, the facility will be an open platform to support research and its translation, as well as manpower training to build technical competencies in WTE domain areas. Possible demonstration and test-bedding projects to be conducted at the facility include turning waste and biomass into synthetic gas (syngas - constitutes mainly of hydrogen and carbon monoxide), cleaning and upgrading syngas to run a gas engine or turbine for higher energy recovery efficiencies, utilisation of slag in engineering applications, novel flue gas treatment module for lower emissions, low-grade heat recovery and using a gas separation membrane to extract oxygen from air.
The collaboration agreement was signed by Mr Ronnie Tay, CEO of NEA, and Professor Ng Wun Jern, Executive Director of NTU's Nanyang Environment & Water Research Institute (NEWRI). The signing was witnessed by Mr Choi Shing Kwok, Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Environment and Water Resources and Professor Freddy Boey, Provost of NTU.
Mr Ronnie Tay said, "This collaboration with NTU underscores NEA's commitment towards Singapore's vision of becoming a zero waste nation. We hope that this facility will provide stakeholders such as research institutes, academia and industry with a platform to collaborate in and create more effective and sustainable waste management solutions through research, development, demonstration and test-bedding."
Prof Freddy Boey said, "NTU has an established track record of industry collaboration and for translating research into impactful commercial applications. NTU's research in water covers the whole cycle of water. Through this joint research facility with NEA, we aim to to build a centre of excellence and a hub in waste management research. It will provide local institutions and industries access to the world-class research facilities and expertise at NTU, helping them to innovate and develop clean solutions that are globally competitive. Such innovations will help overcome energy and space constraints faced by Singapore and other urban cities. NTU looks forward to collaborating with the industry in these efforts."
The collaboration was signed at the CleanEnviro Summit Singapore 2016 held from 10-14 July 2016 at the Sands Expo and Convention Centre, Marina Bay Sands.
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About Nanyang Technological University
A research-intensive public university, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) has 33,500 undergraduate and postgraduate students in the colleges of Engineering, Business, Science, Humanities, Arts, & Social Sciences, and its Interdisciplinary Graduate School. It has a new medical school, the Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine, set up jointly with Imperial College London.
NTU is also home to world-class autonomous institutes - the National Institute of Education, S Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Earth Observatory of Singapore, and Singapore Centre for Environmental Life Sciences Engineering - and various leading research centres such as the Nanyang Environment & Water Research Institute (NEWRI), Energy Research Institute @ NTU (ERI@N) and the Institute on Asian Consumer Insight (ACI).
Ranked 13th in the world, NTU has also been ranked the world's top young university for the last two years running. The University's main campus has been named one of the Top 15 Most Beautiful in the World. NTU also has a campus in Novena, Singapore's medical district.
For more information, visit http://www.ntu.edu.sg
About the National Environment Agency
Formed on 1 July 2002, the National Environment Agency (NEA) is the leading public organisation responsible for improving and sustaining a clean and green environment in Singapore. The NEA develops and spearheads environmental initiatives and programmes through its partnership with the People, Public and Private sectors. It is committed to motivating every individual to take up environmental ownership and to care for the environment as a way of life.
By protecting Singapore's resources from pollution, maintaining a high level of public health and providing timely meteorological information, the NEA endeavours to ensure sustainable development and a quality living environment for present and future generations.
London, UK (July 12, 2016). Democracy is under grave threat and with that the prospect of a better world for all, argues Philip Kotler in his latest book Democracy in Decline: Rebuilding its Future, publishing with SAGE Publishing later this month.
Voting systems are flawed, fewer people vote, major corporations fund campaigns and as political parties battle it out, the real changes needed don't occur.
In the book, Kotler identifies 14 shortcomings of today's democracy and proposes potential remedies whilst encouraging readers to join the conversation, exercise their free speech and get on top of the issues that affect their lives regardless of nationality or political persuasion. Situated within the current political environment, and forthcoming US elections, Kotler's commentary couldn't be more timely, as Kotler explains:
"In the United States, we have political candidates on the left and on the right proposing quite different and even contrary ways to make America great again. Bernie Sanders as a current political candidate has been the most active in exposing and enumerating the problems of American democracy. Unfortunately, many of the Republican candidates either deny these problems, omit these problems, or say that they will cost us too much to fix. [Kotler argues that citizens need] a systematic account of how our main democratic institutions work in theory and in practice."
Kotler puts forward a convincing argument addressing the challenges we face in our current political and economic environment as he seeks a path for us to progress forwards. Having studied economics under Nobel laureates, Milton Friedman and Paul Samuelson as a young man and having since ranked consistently as one of the top 10 thinkers of all time by the international business press, Kotler, the marketing guru, uniquely imagines democracy as a product which is failing its customers (citizens) and now therefore requires a re-design in order to better meet their needs. Arthur Lupia, author of Uniformed: Why People Know So Little About Politics and What We Can Do About It describes Democracy in Decline as follows:
"This book covers an astonishing range of critical topics in a lively and highly accessible style. With its thought-provoking proposals for progress, it is a great resource for people who want to creatively rethink modern democracy."
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So can American democracy be saved? An accompanying website invites the public to continue the debate and publish articles that aid our understanding of what is happening and what can be done to improve democracies around the world.
For a copy of the book or to set up an interview email: Mollie Broad (UK) mollie.broad@sagepub.co.uk or Tiffany Medina (US) tiffany.medina@sagepub.co.uk.
Sara Miller McCune founded SAGE Publishing in 1965 to support the dissemination of usable knowledge and educate a global community. SAGE is a leading international provider of innovative, high-quality content publishing more than 950 journals and over 800 new books each year, spanning a wide range of subject areas. Our growing selection of library products includes archives, data, case studies and video. SAGE remains majority owned by our founder and after her lifetime will become owned by a charitable trust that secures the company's continued independence. Principal offices are located in Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore, Washington DC and Melbourne. http://www.sagepublishing.com
Philip Kotler is the S. C. Johnson and Son Distinguished Professor International Marketing at the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University. Professor Kotler is the author of over 50 books on markets and marketing. Trained as an economist at the University of Chicago (under Nobel Laureate, Milton Friedman) and at M.I.T. (under Nobel Laureates, Paul Samuelson and Robert Solow), he has applied his economic knowledge to how markets and marketing works was an early developer of modern marketing and the emerging field of behavioural economics. As an expert on how buyers make their buying decisions, he broadened marketing to explain how buyers make their voting decisions on all kinds of issues.
Peidong Yang has received the third Tsinghua University Press-Springer Nano Research Award. Peidong Yang is the S.K. and Angela Chan Distinguished Professor of Energy and Professor of Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, and a faculty scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Professors Hongjie Dai and Yadong Li (Editors-in-Chief of the journal Nano Research) jointly presented the award plaque to Peidong Yang, while Dr. Yong Li, Chairman of the Board of Tsinghua University Press (TUP), and Dr. Lu Ye, Editorial Director of Physical Science and Engineering at Springer Nature China, presented the award certificate. The award is accompanied by a cash prize of US $10,000. The award ceremony was held during the 2016 Sino-US Symposium on Nanoscale Science and Technology on June 20, in Nanjing, China.
Peidong Yang was selected for the award in recognition of his extraordinary contributions to nanowire-related science and technology in the field of artificial photosynthesis. Yang invented the first fully integrated system for the production of value-added chemicals directly and solely from CO2, H2O and sunlight, which is widely considered one of the major breakthroughs in the field of artificial photosynthesis. He presented an invited keynote speech at the Sino-US Symposium on Nanoscale Science and Technology with the title "CO2+ H2O + Sunlight ? Chemical Fuels + O2".
Nano Research is an international academic journal sponsored by Tsinghua University and the Chinese Chemical Society, and is jointly published by Tsinghua University Press and Springer Nature. Its 2015 impact factor, which was just released by Thomson Reuters, is 8.893. The TUP-Springer Nano Research Award, established by Nano Research along with Tsinghua University Press and Springer in 2013, honors outstanding contributions to nano research by an individual scientist. The winner is selected by the Award Committee (editors-in-chief, associate editors, and representatives from Tsinghua University Press and Springer Nature) after receiving nominations from the members of the editorial board of Nano Research.
Professors Hongjie Dai and Peidong Yang were recently elected as new members of the National Academy of Sciences (USA) in recognition of their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research.
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Springer Nature is a leading global research, educational and professional publisher, home to an array of respected and trusted brands providing quality content through a range of innovative products and services. Springer Nature is the world's largest academic book publisher, publisher of the world's most influential journals and a pioneer in the field of open research. The company numbers almost 13,000 staff in over 50 countries. Springer Nature was formed in 2015 through the merger of Nature Publishing Group, Palgrave Macmillan, Macmillan Education and Springer Science+Business Media. Visit http://www.springernature.com and follow @SpringerNature.
Reston, Va. - The Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging (SNMMI), an international scientific and medical organization, recognized contributions to the field of nuclear medicine and molecular imaging during its 2016 Annual Meeting in San Diego, Calif. Several awards ceremonies were held to recognize the valuable role SNMMI members play in advancing the diagnosis and treatment of heart disease, cancer and neurological conditions.
SNMMI Presidential Distinguished Service Award
This year, two SNMMI Presidential Distinguished Service Awards were given in recognition of continual dedication to the society. They were presented to Peter Herscovitch MD, FACP, FRCPC, FSNMMI, director of the PET Department at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Clinical Center in Bethesda, Md., and to Satoshi Minoshima, MD, PhD, professor of radiology and chairman of the Department of Radiology and Imaging Sciences at the University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah.
A past president of SNMMI, Herscovitch has served at the NIH Clinical Center since 1987. He was named chief of the PET section that year and in 2005 was appointed director of the PET department. Prior to his career at NIH, Herscovitch was an attending physician at Barnes Hospital and an instructor and assistant professor of neurology and radiology at Washington University School of Medicine, both in St. Louis, Mo. An SNMMI member since 1983, Herscovitch has been involved in many councils, committees, task forces and other groups. He chaired SNMMI's Scientific Program Committee, served on the SNMMI Center for Molecular Imaging Innovation and Translation board of directors, and was a member of the Ethics and Education committees.
Minoshima is vice president-elect of SNMMI. He earned his MD and PhD from Chiba University School of Medicine in Japan. Prior to his position at the University of Utah, he served on the faculty of the University of Michigan, as well as the University of Washington, where he was also vice chair for research in the Department of Radiology. Minoshima has published seminal research studies concerning neurodegenerative diseases and other brain disorders using innovative imaging technology. His contributions to the field include discovery of the posterior cingulate abnormality in Alzheimer's disease and invention and worldwide dissemination of diagnostic statistical mapping technology for molecular brain imaging. Minoshima served as president of the SNMMI Brain Imaging Council and currently serves as chair of the SNMMI Scientific Program Committee.
SNMMI Presidential Distinguished Educator Award
Dominique Delbeke, MD, PhD, was selected for the SNMMI Presidential Distinguished Educator Award for her contributions to education and professional development as editor of The Journal of Nuclear Medicine.
A past president of SNMMI, Delbeke is a nuclear medicine physician, professor of radiology and radiological sciences at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, and director of Nuclear Medicine and Positron Emission Tomography at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. She is co-editor of five textbooks and has published more than 160 peer-reviewed articles, including procedure standards and 70 book chapters. Her primary expertise and research interest revolve around PET/CT and SPECT/CT, primarily in oncology but also in cardiology and neurology. She is a lifetime member of the American Board of Nuclear Medicine.
Henry J. Wagner, Jr., Lectureship
Joanna S. Fowler, PhD, scientist emeritus of the Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York, delivered the Henry N. Wagner, Jr., Lectureship on Sunday, June 12. Her speech, "Working Against Time: Designing and Synthesizing 18FDG for the First Human Studies in 1976," discussed the historical development 50 years ago of the radiotracer that has become the most widely used in basic research and clinical settings and has facilitated tremendous advances in the study of the human brain and in the detection of malignant tumors.
Fowler is currently a professor in the Department of Psychiatry at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, where she has collaborated with colleagues on brain imaging studies of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, among other conditions.
Henry N. Wagner, Jr., MD, Best Paper Award
Mark T. Madsen, PhD, professor of radiology in the Department of Nuclear Medicine at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, Iowa, received the Henry N. Wagner, Jr., MD, Best Paper Award for "Personalized kidney dosimetry for Y-90 DOTATOC radionuclide therapy."
Michael J. Welch Award
Robert Dannals, PhD, director of the PET Center and professor of radiology and radiological science at Johns Hopkins Medicine, Baltimore, Md., received the Michael J. Welch Award, which is presented annually by SNMMI's Radiopharmaceutical Sciences Council to an individual who has made outstanding contributions to radiopharmaceutical sciences.
Dannals is well known for his pioneering research in the development of short-lived radiotracers for positron emission tomography and single photon emission-computed tomography. He received his bachelor's and master's degrees from Johns Hopkins University, as well as his PhD in chemistry. Dannals serves as the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Labeled Compounds and Radiopharmaceuticals and is a reviewer for several professional journals, including the Journal of Nuclear Medicine and the International Journal of Nuclear Medicine and Biology.
Berson-Yalow Award
Dongzhi Yang, PhD, received the Berson-Yalow Award. The award commemorates Rosalyn S. Yalow, PhD, and Solomon A. Berson, MD, who together developed the radioimmunoassay (RIA) technique in the 1950s. SNMMI established the award in 1977, the year that Yalow received the Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine. Judges for the award choose the investigator who submits the most original abstract presentation at SNMMI's Annual Meeting and who has made significant contributions to basic or clinical RIA research, or any area of research using the indicator-dilution method.
Yang is a postdoctoral research fellow in molecular imaging at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Mich. He received his PhD in analytical chemistry from Northeastern University in Shenyang, China, in 2008 and teaches at Xuzhou Medical University, Xuzhou, China. His projects involve PET imaging with novel agents and antibodies for targeted radiotherapy and cancer detection. His winning abstract is titled "ImmunoPET of urokinase plasminogen activator (uPA) system: broad applicability in cancer imaging."
Loevinger-Berman Award
Joseph A. O'Donoghue, PhD, received the Loevinger-Berman Award, which was established in 1999 by the Medical Internal Radiation Dose (MIRD) Committee in honor of Robert Loevinger, PhD, and Mones Berman, PhD, who formulated the MIRD schema for internal dose calculations. The award is given in recognition of excellence pertaining to the field of internal dosimetry as it relates to nuclear medicine through research and/or development, significant publication contributions or advancement of the understanding of internal dosimetry in relationship to risk and therapeutic efficacy.
O'Donoghue is an associate attending physicist at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, N.Y. His research focuses on the diagnosis and treatment of systemic malignant disease with radiolabeled molecules and molecular imaging of tumors. His recent studies have focused on imaging the tumor microenvironment (especially oxygen deficiency, or hypoxia); imaging metastatic prostate, colorectal, and renal cell tumors with radiolabeled monoclonal antibodies; and using the alpha particle-emitting agent radium-223 dichloride to treat prostate cancer that has metastasized to bone.
Edward J. Hoffman Memorial Award
Irene Buvat, PhD, is this year's recipient of the Edward J. Hoffman Memorial Award, which is presented annually by SNMMI's Computer and Instrumentation Council. The award was established to honor the memory of Professor Edward J. Hoffman and recognizes scientists in the field of nuclear medicine for their service and devotion to research and development of nuclear medicine instrumentation and to educating and training the next generation of scientists.
Buvat received her PhD in particle and nuclear physics from Paris-Sud University, Orsay, France, in 1992 and has since focused on applications of nuclear physics to medical imaging. She is currently the head of the In Vivo Molecular Imaging Research Lab at the Service Hospitalier Frederic Joliot PET Center in Orsay. Since 2005, she has been the spokesperson of the worldwide OpenGATE collaboration developing the GATE Monte Carlo simulation tool dedicated to emission and transmission tomography and radiotherapy applications.
Peter E. Valk, MD, Memorial Award
Richard L. Wahl, MD, received the Peter E. Valk, MD, Memorial Award, which was created to honor the memory of Peter E. Valk, MD, a pioneer in the establishment of PET as an important clinical study. Wahl was recognized for his contributions to the advancement of PET, including PET/CT, PET/MRI and other emerging technologies, as well as his dedication to the SNMMI PET Center of Excellence.
Wahl is Elizabeth Mallinckrodt Professor of Radiology, chairman of the Department of Radiology, and director of the Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Mo. His research played an important role in the development of radioimmunotherapy for non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. Wahl has also been a leader in the use of PET scans to diagnose a broad array of human cancers and other diseases, and he is at the forefront of efforts to combine quantitative data from PET scans with computerized tomography (CT) to form "fusion" images that can help physicians more precisely diagnose and characterize cancers. He holds 18 patents in radiology and has published more than 400 peer-reviewed scientific manuscripts. He is the primary author of several textbooks, including Principles and Practice of PET and PET/CT.
Kuhl-Lassen Lecture Award
Robert B. Innis, MD, PhD, received the Kuhl-Lassen Lecture Award, presented by the SNMMI Brain Imaging Council. The award recognizes a scientist who has made outstanding contributions and whose research in and service to the discipline of functional brain imaging is of the highest caliber. Innis gave the lecture entitled, "PET of Human Brain Can Monitor Neuroinflammation and cAMP Signaling: Applications to Alzheimer's Disease and Depression."
Innis has been chief of the Molecular Imaging Branch at the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Md., since 2001. His laboratory develops and uses PET radioligands to study pathophysiology in several neuropsychiatric disorders. In addition to traditional receptor targets, he uses radiolabeled probes for in vivo imaging of intracellular signal transduction, gene expression, and a mitochondrial protein that is a marker for inflammatory cells. Innis earned his BS in molecular biophysics and biochemistry from Yale College and his MD, as well as his PhD in pharmacology, from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.
Walter Wolf Young Investigator Award
Yong-il Kim, PhD, received this year's Walter Wolf Young Investigator Award for his abstract titled "Prognostic Value of Pre-treatment Ga-68-RGD PET-CT in Predicting Disease Free Survival in Patients with Breast Cancer: A Comparison Study with Dynamic Contrast Enhanced MRI." Each year, the award recognizes a young investigator for originality, scientific methodology and overall contribution to molecular imaging or therapy through original research showing the importance and value of correlative imaging in all fields of medicine.
Hermann Blumgart Award
Prem Soman, MD, PhD, was selected by SNMMI's Cardiovascular Council to receive the Hermann Blumgart Award. The award annually recognizes a key contributor to the science of nuclear cardiology who is also an advocate for the field through involvement with the society's research and educational activities.
Soman is associate professor of medicine and of clinical and translational Science in the Division of Cardiology at the Vascular Medicine Institute of the University of Pittsburgh in Pittsburgh, Pa. He is also director of the Nuclear Cardiology Laboratory and the Advanced Cardiac Imaging Fellowship at the institute. Soman is widely recognized for his contributions to the field of nuclear cardiology. He practices clinical cardiology, nuclear cardiology and echocardiography at the UPMC Presbyterian Hospital. Under his direction, the Nuclear Cardiology Laboratory performs high-volume, state-of-the-art imaging and is a national leader in clinical research, including the use of a new generation, solid-state SPECT camera and innovative imaging protocols that have enabled significant reductions in radiation dose to patients.
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About the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging
The Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging (SNMMI) is an international scientific and medical organization dedicated to raising public awareness about nuclear medicine and molecular imaging, a vital element of today's medical practice that adds an additional dimension to diagnosis, changing the way common and devastating diseases are understood and treated and helping provide patients with the best health care possible.
SNMMI's more than 17,000 members set the standard for molecular imaging and nuclear medicine practice by creating guidelines, sharing information through journals and meetings and leading advocacy on key issues that affect molecular imaging and therapy research and practice. For more information, visit http://www.snmmi.org.
Unlike classical crystals, quasicrystals do not comprise periodic units, even though they do have a superordinate structure. The formation of the fascinating mosaics that they produce is barely understood. In the context of an international collaborative effort, researchers at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) have now presented a methodology that allows the production of two-dimensional quasicrystals from metal-organic networks, opening the door to the development of promising new materials.
Physicist Daniel Shechtman merely put down three question marks in his laboratory journal, when he saw the results of his latest experiment one day in 1982. He was looking at a crystalline pattern that was considered impossible at the time. According to the canonical tenet of the day, crystals always had so-called translational symmetry. They comprise a single basic unit, the so-called elemental cell, that is repeated in the exact same form in all spatial directions.
Although Shechtman's pattern did contain global symmetry, the individual building blocks could not be mapped onto each other merely by translation. The first quasicrystal had been discovered. In spite of partially stark criticism by reputable colleagues, Shechtman stood fast by his new concept and thus revolutionized the scientific understanding of crystals and solid bodies. In 2011 he ultimately received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. To this day, both the basic conditions and mechanisms by which these fascinating structures are formed remain largely shrouded in mystery.
A toolbox for quasicrystals
Now a group of scientists led by Wilhelm Auwarter and Johannes Barth, both professors in the Department of Surface Physics at TU Munich, in collaboration with Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST, Prof. Nian Lin, et al) and the Spanish research institute IMDEA Nanoscience (Dr. David Ecija), have developed a new basis for producing two-dimensional quasicrystals, which might bring them a good deal closer to understanding these peculiar patterns.
The TUM doctoral candidate Jose Ignacio Urgel made the pioneering measurements in the course of a research fellowship at HKUST. "We now have a new set of building blocks that we can use to assemble many different new quasicrystalline structures. This diversity allows us to investigate on how quasicrystals are formed," explain the TUM physicists.
The researchers were successful in linking europium - a metal atom in the lanthanide series - with organic compounds, thereby constructing a two-dimensional quasicrystal that even has the potential to be extended into a three-dimensional quasicrystal. To date, scientists have managed to produce many periodic and in part highly complex structures from metal-organic networks, but never a quasicrystal.
The researchers were also able to thoroughly elucidate the new network geometry in unparalleled resolution using a scanning tunnelling microscope. They found a mosaic of four different basic elements comprising triangles and rectangles distributed irregularly on a substrate. Some of these basic elements assembled themselves to regular dodecagons that, however, cannot be mapped onto each other through parallel translation. The result is a complex pattern, a small work of art at the atomic level with dodecagonal symmetry.
Interesting optical and magnetic properties
In their future work, the researchers are planning to vary the interactions between the metal centers and the attached compounds using computer simulation and experiments in order to understand the conditions under which two-dimensional quasicrystals form. This insight could facilitate the future development of new tailored quasicrystalline layers.
These kinds of materials hold great promise. After all, the new metal-organic quasicrystalline networks may have properties that make them interesting in a wide variety of application. "We have discovered a new playing field on which we can not only investigate quasicrystallinity, but also create new functionalities, especially in the fields of optics and magnetism," says Dr. David Ecija of IMDEA Nanoscience.
For one, scientists could one day use the new methodology to create quasicrystalline coatings that influence photons in such a manner that they are transmitted better or that only certain wavelengths can pass through the material.
In addition, the interactions of the lanthanide building blocks in the new quasicrystals could facilitate the development of magnetic systems with very special properties, so-called "frustrated systems". Here, the individual atoms in a crystalline grid interfere with each other in a manner that prevents grid points from achieving a minimal energy state. The result: exotic magnetic ground states that can be investigated as information stores for future quantum computers.
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The research was funded by the European Research Council (Advanced Grant MolArt), the Spanish Ramon and Cajal Program, the Comunidad de Madrid, the Hong Kong Research Grants Council, and the TUM-HKUST Sponsorship Scheme for Targeted Strategic Partnerships.
Publication:
Jose I. Urgel, David Ecija, Ran Zhang, Carlos-Andres Palma, Willi Auwarter, Nian Lin and Johannes V. Barth, Quasicrystallinity expressed in two-dimensional coordination lattices,
Nature Chemistry, 8, 657-662 (2016) - DOI:10.1038/nchem.2507
New research, using a Bayesian inference model of audio and visual stimuli, has shown how our perception of time lies mid-way between reality and our expectations.
90 participants were tested across four experiments, and asked to report on the timing of the last event in a regular sequence of beeps or flashes.
The findings, published in Scientific Reports, displayed that participants anticipated future occurrences of the stimuli in line with the regular pattern, but the perceived accuracy of their response differed from reality when the stimuli was either accelerated or delayed.
If the timing was regular, participants were able to anticipate the stimulus. However, when the final stimulus was delivered early, the participants perceived that it had occurred 'only slightly earlier' than expected, around halfway between their predicted response and the reality.
Similarly, when the final stimulus was delivered late, the participants had a similar perception of halfway between their prediction and the reality.
The researchers, from the universities of Birmingham and Sussex, believe their findings suggest that humans do not perceive time as it really is - rather as a mid-way between reality and their expectations. These findings suggest that the brain continuously updates the probability of encountering future stimuli based on prior experiences.
Dr Max Di Luca, from the University of Birmingham, explained, "Our brain relies on past events to predict what will happen next. These predictions are essential to survival because they allow us to react faster to the environment around us and plan what actions to perform."
"Our perceptions are also affected by these predictions; they are the result of the combination of our expectations and actual sensory information. We don't perceive the world as it really is, or as we expect it to be, but somewhere in between."
"Imaging a bad musician playing a cover version of one of your favourite songs. You have an expectation of which notes to expect and when to expect them. Even when poorly performed, your expectations will help 'soften the blow' and make it sound relatively better. However, if you were listening to them play a song you had never heard before, you would have no real expectations and so every mistimed note would be evident."
Dr Darren Rhodes, now at the University of Sussex, added, "We are not passive watchers. We use what we know about the world to inform us about when something is likely to happen. If our predictions are slightly wrong, we perceive the world somewhere in between expectation and reality. We hear, see and feel what we think we should be experiencing, not what is really happening out there."
"The conclusions that that can be drawn from this research can be applied to several technological domains" says Dr Di Luca.
"Knowing how the brain predicts the world can be used to teach robots how to behave and think in a way similar to humans, for example," says Dr Rhodes, who is working at a European-funded project on the interaction between neuroscience and robotics.
Dr Di Luca is currently spending his sabbatical at Oculus.
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A new, minimally invasive procedure appears to be effective for many patients with Fuchs endothelial dystrophy (FED), a common eye disease, without the potential side effects and cost of the current standard of care, a cornea transplant.
In a proof-of-concept study, published in the journal Cornea, researchers led by Kathryn Colby, MD, PhD, the Louis Block professor and chairman of the Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Science at the University of Chicago, showed that removing a few square millimeters of a single layer of cells on the inside of the cornea allowed rejuvenation of the surrounding tissue, without the need for a corneal transplant. This simple procedure restored clear vision to three out of four patients suffering from FED, the most frequent cause for corneal transplantation in the United States.
Over the past two years while at Harvard Medical School, Colby performed the new procedure, known as Descemet stripping, on 11 patients, aged 51 to 91. Two patients had the procedure in both eyes, one at a time.
When assessed six months after the operation, ten of the treated eyes (77 percent) had clear corneas and eight had 20/20 vision or better (two patients had retinal disease that limited their final vision). The other three eyes did not respond and required a standard cornea transplant.
"It's too soon to call this a cure," Colby said. "We performed the first operation just over two years ago. But when it works, it's a wonderful thing. It's quick, inexpensive and it spares patients from having someone else's cells in their eyes, which requires local immunosuppression."
The first patient to undergo Descemet stripping, 69-year-old Eric Thorp of the Boston area, was pleased. "It's quite a breakthrough," he said. His vision, now 20/20 in that eye, "is equivalent to what I had as a boy," he said. "Amazing."
"It's kind of an honor to have been the first," he added. "It was worth doing."
Descemet stripping involves removing a small patch of the corneal endothelium (the pumping cells that stop working in FED) attached to an underlying layer (the Descemet membrane). In patients with FED, water accumulates in the cornea, the clear front window of the eye, because of the dysfunction of the pumping cells, causing reduced vision, glare and haloes. If left untreated, the condition progresses to painful blindness.
Removal of the central dysfunctional cells enables healthier peripheral cells to migrate to the center of the cornea, where they reestablish pumping capacity and removal of fluid from the layers above. This gradually restores clear vision.
"Although Descemet stripping is a relatively simple procedure, its potential is revolutionary," Colby said. In 2015, 14,000 corneal transplants were performed in the United States, just for FED, the most common reason for this operation. The transplants work well, but the tissues are expensive and there is a limited supply in some areas of the world. Because the corneal transplant tissue is foreign, patients must apply topical steroids for the rest of their lives to dampen their immune response and prevent rejection of the transplanted cells. Steroid eye drops are known to cause glaucoma and cataract and can predispose to infection.
The researchers classified patients into four groups based on how they responded to Descemet stripping. Fast responders regained clear vision within a month after surgery. Responders recovered within three months. Slow responders took more than three months. Nonresponders had persistent corneal edema and required endothelial keratoplasty--a streamlined cornea transplant.
Of the 13 eyes treated, four were fast responders, four were responders and two were slow responders.
The next step is to try to understand why some patients, about one out of four, don't respond to removal of the dysfunctional cells. Fuchs dystrophy is a polygenic disease, but in the last few years researchers have found connections between the extent of a repeating nonsensical genetic abnormality seen in other neurological diseases and the severity of FED. Colby hopes to find genetic clues that predict which patients are most likely to respond to this approach.
Thorp, the first patient treated, had 20/20 vision when last assessed in January of 2016 at the University of Chicago, 24 months after his operation. He was first diagnosed with FED and had a cornea transplant in his right eye in 2002, a two-stage operation. It was successful, but the recovery process meant "foggy vision" in that eye for nearly a year. This prevented him from driving.
That eye slowly recovered, but by 2013 vision in the left eye began to decline. After Colby offered her new procedure and explained the logic behind it, Thorp felt "a great deal of confidence and understanding in what she was doing," he said. He volunteered to go first.
"It certainly turned out to be worth it," Thorp said. His operation, removal of a cataract plus Descemet stripping, took less than 30 minutes. That was "about 20 minutes for the cataract and one minute for the stripping," he recalled.
"After I performed Mr. Thorp's surgery, I waited eight months to make sure nothing unexpected happened to his cornea," Colby said, "then I started offering the procedure to patients whom I felt could benefit."
"Few things remind you as constantly as deteriorating vision," Thorp recalled. "Your world steadily narrows as you lose the ability to see. But mine expanded again at the other end. I remember walking the dog at night right after the operation. Each night, the streetlights would be a little more in focus. You could see the improvement, night after night over the course of a few weeks, like the fog lifting out of London. It was cool. Really cool."
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Co-authors of the study were Durga Borkar and Peter Veldman, both at Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary. Colby moved from Harvard to the University of Chicago in August 2015. The authors have no funding or conflicts of interest to disclose.
PITTSBURGH, July 13, 2016 - Most women will get hot flashes or night sweats at some point in life. However, when these symptoms occur and how long they last can vary dramatically among women. New findings show that women fit into four distinct groups when it comes to getting hot flashes and night sweats, with potential ramifications for therapy and prevention of future health conditions, according to the research led by the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health.
The epidemiological investigation followed hundreds of women for an average of 15 years and identified characteristics that predisposed them to certain trajectories for getting hot flashes and night sweats--collectively known as "vasomotor symptoms." The findings are published in today's issue of Menopause: The Journal of the North American Menopause Society and were funded by the National Institutes of Health.
"Most women get vasomotor symptoms, and we used to think these symptoms lasted from three to five years, right around the time of the final menstrual period," said senior author Rebecca Thurston, Ph.D., a professor in Pitt's Department of Psychiatry and an epidemiologist at Pitt Public Health. "We now know that these symptoms persist for far longer--typically seven to 10 years--and occur at different times for different women. This is strong evidence that we need to further investigate the underlying physiological causes of vasomotor symptoms and their link to potentially preventable health conditions."
Hot flashes and night sweats involve a sudden flush of feverish heat and are linked to menopause, the time when a woman's menstrual period stops.
Dr. Thurston and her colleagues followed 1,455 women enrolled in the Study of Women's Health Across the Nation (SWAN) who had not yet gone through menopause when they enrolled. The women lived in Pittsburgh, Boston, Detroit, Chicago, Los Angeles, Oakland, Calif., or Newark, N.J., and were not on hormone therapy, nor did they have a hysterectomy. Each year, the women reported their vasomotor symptoms, along with receiving a clinical examination and sometimes a blood test.
The researchers found that the women could be relatively equally divided into four distinct trajectories for vasomotor symptoms as they went through menopause transition, and that certain characteristics were more common in different categories:
A consistently low chance of having symptoms throughout the menopause transition was more common in Chinese women.
A consistently high chance of having symptoms throughout the transition was more common in black women, those with less education, those who reported drinking alcohol moderately or heavily, and those who reported symptoms of depression or anxiety.
An early onset of symptoms in the decade before the final period with cessation thereafter was more common among women who were obese, had symptoms of depression or anxiety, were in poorer health than their peers and at an older age at menopause.
A late onset of symptoms after the final period that gradually declined in the following decade was more common in women with a lower body mass index (ratio of weight to height), those who smoke and black women.
Hormonal fluctuations were correlated with vasomotor symptoms but were not perfectly consistent, indicating that they did not fully account for the symptoms.
"It's fascinating that we can distinguish these unique patterns and then pinpoint specific characteristics associated with each of these trajectories," said co-author Maria M. Brooks, Ph.D., professor of epidemiology and associate professor of biostatistics at Pitt Public Health, and principal investigator of the coordinating center for SWAN. "When we see patterns like this, it indicates that there's something going on beyond hot flashes and night sweats being a passing nuisance. Depending on which category a woman falls into, there may be important implications regarding her health."
In a different, recent study, Dr. Thurston found evidence that some of these trajectories were associated with risk factors for cardiovascular disease.
"At this point, we can't completely untangle any causal relationship between vasomotor symptoms and health outcomes or suggest preventative measures for vasomotor symptoms without further study," said Dr. Thurston. "But women and their doctors can use these findings now to help them get a better idea what they're likely to experience as they go through menopause and to plan the best ways to manage their symptoms."
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Additional authors on this study are Ping G. Tepper, Ph.D., Samar R. El Khoudary, Ph.D., Joyce T. Bromberger, Ph.D., Kristine Ruppert, Ph.D., and Bobby Jones, Ph.D., all of Pitt; John F. Randolph Jr., M.D., of the University of Massachusetts; Sybil L. Crawford, Ph.D., Sioban Harlow, Ph.D., Daniel S. McConnell, Ph.D., and Huiyong Zheng, Ph.D., all of the University of Michigan; Ellen B. Gold, Ph.D., and Bill L. Lasley, Ph.D., both of the University of California, Davis; Hadine Joffe, M.D., M.Sc., of Harvard University; Rachel Hess, M.D., of the University of Utah; and Nancy E. Avis, Ph.D., of Wake Forest University.
SWAN has grant support from the NIH through the National Institute on Aging, the National Institute of Nursing Research and the Office of Research on Women's Health (grants U01NR004061, U01AG012505, U01AG012535, U01AG012531, U01AG012539, U01AG012546, U01AG012553, U01AG012554, and U01AG012495).
Environmental records obtained from archaeological sites in South Africa's southern Cape suggest climate may not have been directly linked to cultural and technological innovations of Middle Stone Age humans in southern Africa after all.
A study published July 6, 2016 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by an international team of researchers, led by Dr Patrick Roberts from the University of Oxford and including researchers from the Evolutionary Studies Institute at Wits University, shows that while climate shifts may have influenced human subsistence strategies, it may not have been the driving factor behind innovation.
The Middle Stone Age marked a period of dramatic change amongst early humans in southern Africa, and climate change has been postulated as a primary driver for the appearance of technological and cultural innovations such as bone tools, ochre production, and personal ornamentation.
While some researchers suggest that climate instability may have directly inspired technological advances, others postulate that environmental stability may have provided a stable setting that allowed for experimentation. However, the disconnection of palaeoenvironmental records from archaeological sites makes it difficult to test these alternatives.
The authors of this study carried out analyses of animal remains, shellfish taxa and the stable carbon and oxygen isotope measurements in ostrich eggshell, from two archaeological sites, Blombos Cave and Klipdrift Shelter, spanning 98,000 to 73,000 years ago and 72,000 to 59,000 years ago, respectively, to acquire data regarding possible palaeoenvironmental conditions in southern Africa at the time.
For instance, ostrich eggshell carbon and oxygen stable isotope levels may reflect vegetation and water consumption, which in turn vary with rainfall seasonality and amount in this region.
The researchers found that climatic and environmental variation, reflected in ostrich eggshell stable isotope measurements, faunal records, and shellfish indicators, may not have occurred in phase with Middle Stone Age human technological and cultural innovation at these two sites.
"While acknowledging that climate and environmental shifts may have influenced human subsistence strategies, the research suggests climate change may not have been the driving factor behind cultural and technological innovations in these localities and encourage context-specific evaluation of the role of climate change in driving early human experimentation," says Professor Chris Henshilwood, one of the lead researchers from Wits University.
"Our results suggest that although climate and environmental changes occurred, they were not coincident with cultural innovations, including personal ornamentation, or the appearance of complex tool-types. This suggests that we have to consider that other factors drove human innovation at this stage in our species' evolution," says Dr Patrick Roberts.
About Blombos Cave
Blombos Cave is an archaeological site located in Blombosfontein Nature Reserve, about 300 km east of Cape Town on the Southern Cape coastline, South Africa. The cave contains Middle Stone Age deposits currently dated at between c. 100,000 and 70,000 years before present (BP), and a Late Stone Age sequence dated at between 2000 and 300 years BP. The cave site was first excavated in 1991 and field work has been conducted there on a regular basis since 1997 - and is ongoing. The excavations at Blombos Cave have yielded important new information on the behavioural evolution of modern humans. The archaeological record from this cave site has been central in the ongoing debate on the cognitive and cultural origin of early humans and to the current understanding of when and where key behavioural innovations emerged among Homo sapiens in southern Africa during the Late Pleistocene.
About Klipdrift Shelter
Klipdrift Shelter is one of two Middle Stone Age sites situated in the De Hoop Nature Reserve where Professor Chris Henshilwood is leading new excavations. The other is Klipdrift Cave Lower. In 2011 deposits from the Howiesons Poort period (c. 66 000 - 60 000 years) were discovered at the shelter and at Klipdrift Cave Lower an age of 70 000 years is possible. These projects are contributing, and will in future contribute significantly to the international debate on the origins of what is considered modern human behaviour.
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A University of Washington fisheries professor argues this week that saving biodiversity in the world's oceans requires more than banning fishing with marine protected areas, or oceanic wilderness areas. In a three-page editorial published this week in the journal Nature, he argues that this increasingly popular conservation strategy is not as effective as properly managing recreational and commercial fisheries. "There's this idea that the only way you can protect the ocean is by permanently closing parts of the ocean to fishing, with no-take areas," said Ray Hilborn, a professor in the UW's School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences. "You protect biodiversity better by regulating fisheries over the country's entire economic zone."
Marine protected areas have grown in popularity since the early 2000s. Recent examples include an area twice the size of Texas in the central Pacific established in 2014 by President Barack Obama, and a proposal to close 25 percent of the Seychelles' exclusive economic zone, an island nation off Africa's east coast.
Several environmental organizations have set a longer-term goal of making 30 percent of the world's oceans into no-take marine protected areas by the year 2030. But Hilborn believes this is not the best way to protect global marine ecosystems.
"If the problem is overfishing or bycatch, then fisheries management is much more effective than establishing MPAs because you regulate the catch over the entire economic zone," Hilborn said. "I don't see how anyone can defend MPAs as a better method than fisheries management, except in places where you just can't do management."
In countries with functioning fisheries management systems, Hilborn believes, conservationists and the fishing industry should work together on large-scale protection of marine biodiversity and sensitive marine habitats.
For example, changes in fishing practices that allowed "dolphin-safe tuna" have cut dolphin deaths in the eastern Pacific by almost 100 times between 1986 and 1998, the article notes.
"You could never have reduced dolphin deaths that much by simply closing part of the ocean to fishing," Hilborn said.
He argues that working with the fishing industry to modify what types of gear are used and when and where different species are allowed to be caught can make more of a difference than establishing new marine protected areas.
"In Alaska, for example, more than 50 percent of the continental shelf waters are closed to specific kinds of fishing gear and the entire shelf is covered by species-specific catch restrictions," he writes. "This is much more protection than could be offered by turning 30 percent of the region into MPAs."
Hilborn said he worries that marine protected areas are being created without specific objectives, lacking input from affected communities, and without analysis of the larger-scale effects. Closing one area to fishing will just shift the pressure to a different area, Hilborn said, or cause people to seek other, more environmentally harmful sources of food.
In early September, world leaders will meet in Hawaii for the high-profile World Conservation Congress, held every four years by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Hilborn hopes his article will prompt discussion about priorities for preserving the health of marine environments.
"The modern conservation movement is places too much emphasis on protected areas," Hilborn said. "The focus needs to shift. We can better protect biodiversity, and still provide food, by looking to fisheries management as the first defense."
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For more information, contact Hilborn at rayh@uw.edu or 206-543-3587.
DETROIT - Wayne State University recently received a $2.2 million, five-year grant from the Maternal and Child Health Bureau of the Health Resources and Services Administration for the project "Leadership Education in Neurodevelopmental and Other Related Disabilities (LEND) Maternal Child Health (MCH) Training Program," or MI-LEND. The purpose of MI-LEND is to improve the health of infants, children and adolescents with disabilities in Michigan by training individuals from diverse disciplines to assume leadership roles in their respective fields and work across disciplines.
MI-LEND is a consortium of six universities including Wayne State University, Michigan State University, University of Michigan, Western Michigan University, Central Michigan University and University of Michigan-Dearborn; all six universities will contribute faculty and trainees. The Developmental Disabilities Institute (DDI) at Wayne State leads the consortium with Sharon Milberger, Ph.D., director of DDI, serving as the MI-LEND program director. Jane Turner, M.D., pediatrician and professor at Michigan State University, is co-director. MI-LEND leaders will work in collaboration with members of Michigan's Title V program, including Children's Special Health Care Services, the governor's Autism Council, the Michigan Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics and other key statewide disability/advocacy organizations.
MI-LEND will address the complex needs of those with autism and other disabilities, such as cerebral palsy, by increasing the number of graduate, doctoral and postdoctoral students prepared to address their needs. In addition, it will increase the number of providers available to diagnose and treat infants, children and adolescents with disabilities. An important component of MI-LEND is participation of family members and individuals with neurodevelopmental disabilities in developing the curriculum and working with trainees to ensure a family-centered approach to care at all levels.
"Expanding the educational opportunities related to the treatment of autism and other developmental disabilities for over 181,800 medical and professional students and physicians will help improve the quality of care for these individuals and increase their ability to have self-determined independent lives," said Lt. Gov. Brian Calley. "I am proud to see Michigan's universities working together on advancements in this area and want to congratulate Wayne State and its partners at Central Michigan, Michigan State, University of Michigan, University of Michigan-Dearborn and Western Michigan on receiving this national grant to continue these great efforts."
"This is great news for the state of Michigan, as this will reduce the significant gap between the needs of children with neurodevelopmental disabilities and the quantity and quality of services," said Milberger. "Our consortium is excited to work together to expand graduate-level training for a wide variety of professional disciplines and ultimately achieve our shared mission of improving the health of children across our state."
"This is an important program in the Detroit community and throughout Michigan that will improve the health of our youth that have or are at risk for neurodevelopmental and other related disabilities," said Stephen Lanier, vice president for research at Wayne State University. "Wayne State and its collaborative partners will make a tremendous impact on these children and their families by providing this important program that is committed to diversity and equity."
"We are thrilled to work with colleagues across Michigan under the leadership of the DDI to develop a cadre of leaders who will not only have an impact on individual children in their work, but will also improve systems of care for children with autism and other neurodevelopmental disabilities," said Keith English, M.D., chair of the Department of Pediatrics and Human Development at Michigan State University. "MI-LEND brings us a tremendous opportunity to work together to improve outcomes for this very vulnerable population."
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To learn more about the MI-LEND program, contact project manager Ann Carrellas at do9921@wayne.edu or at 888-978-4334.
About Wayne State University
Wayne State University is one of the nation's pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit research.wayne.edu.
DETROIT - Noa Ofen, Ph.D., a Wayne State University researcher in lifespan cognitive neuroscience, received a five-year, $1.9 million grant from the National Institute of Mental Health of the National Institutes of Health to study the development of memory networks in children. Researchers will investigate brain activity predictive of memory formation in children who undergo surgery as part of clinical management of medically uncontrolled epilepsy.
"Little is known about how memory systems develop in the human brain," Ofen said. "In this project, we will use a combination of unique neuroimaging methodologies that allow us to add new insights about the neural basis of memory development. We also hope this project will be a first step toward clinical applications that can ultimately improve the quality of life of children with focal epilepsy."
Commonly used noninvasive neuroimaging methods -- such as functional MRI (fMRI) or EEG -- cannot simultaneously measure the spatial and temporal dimensions of the neural correlates of memory at high resolution. In this project, the researchers will use intracranial EEG recordings -- also referred to as electrocorticography (ECoG) -- from electrodes implanted directly on the surface of the brain of pediatric patients undergoing pre-surgical brain mapping as part of clinical management of epilepsy. ECoG provides excellent spatial and temporal resolution, making it a powerful tool for examining the neural basis of human memory. The researchers will capture the temporal dynamics of information flow in the brain that are predictive of whether studied information or experiences will be remembered.
Ofen will use ECoG to map memory networks in patients and collect additional fMRI data from a subset of these patients and a large sample of matched healthy children to determine age differences in activation and patterns of functional connectivity between key regions in the memory network. "Our overarching goal is to identify the spatial and temporal dynamics of memory networks in the developing human brain," Ofen said. She also hopes to lay the foundation to extend mapping of the brain's "eloquent tissue" in children to include pre-surgical brain mapping of memory networks to reduce the post-surgery memory decline that can occur after surgical removal of the seizure focus. This memory decline is directly linked to health-related decreased quality of life in later years.
Ofen is jointly appointed to Wayne State's Department of Psychology in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and the Institute of Gerontology's Lifespan Cognitive Neuroscience Program that -- together with research laboratories at the Merrill Palmer Skillman Institute for Child & Family Development -- apply a cognitive neuroscience approach to study developmental effects from pre-birth to old age.
The project is in collaboration with Wayne State University School of Medicine faculty member Eishi Asano, M.D., a member of the Epilepsy Surgery Program at Children's Hospital of Michigan; Vaibhav Diwadkar, Ph.D.; Robert Rothermel, Ph.D.; and Harry Chugani, M.D. (now at Nemours/Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children in Delaware). Robert Knight, M.D., of the University of California, Berkeley, is also an integral member of this project.
The award number for this National Institutes of Mental Health grant is MH107512.
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The Institute of Gerontology researches aging, educates students in gerontology, and presents programs on aging issues relevant to professionals, caregivers and older adults in the community. The Institute is part of the Division of Research at Wayne State University, one of the nation's preeminent public research institutions in an urban setting. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.
I have been so caught up in the continuing dissipation of medical ethics and the euthanasia juggernaut in Canada, I havent had the time to discuss ecocide in awhile. Last year, I warned that Monsanto would be put on a mock trial for ecocide.
What is that, you ask? Ecocide represents a radical environmentalist agenda that would criminalize the large-scale exploitation of natural resources as an international crime against peace deemed as heinous by the Greensters as genocide and ethnic cleansing.
Ecocide is not yet international law even though it has received a friendly reception in high places. But we can get a glimpse of what it would be like should the U.N. adopt the proposal.
I have previously written about a moot court ecocide trial in which hypothetical executives of Alberta tar oil companies were tried in the chambers of Englands Supreme Court. Now, in the Hague, Monsanto will be tried for war crimes and ecocide by a gaggle of hard leftists. From the International Monsanto Tribunal website:
The Monsanto Tribunal is an international civil society initiative to hold Monsanto accountable for human rights violations, for crimes against humanity, and for ecocide. Eminent judges will hear testimonies from victims, and deliver an advisory opinion following procedures of the International Court of Justice. A parallel Peoples Assembly provides the opportunity for social movements to rally and plan for the future we want.
Right, a communist one. Not to worry, though, I am sure the pretenders will give the hated company a fair trial.
Its easy to chuckle about this and say, This is just radicals doing the nonsense radicals do. It will never happen. If you think that, you havent been paying attention for the last fifty years.
These people seriously want to criminalize the activities necessary for human thriving. For more information on the future the environmental misanthropes have in store for us, see my book The War on Humans.
Photo: International Court of Justice, The Hague, via Wikicommons.
Cross-posted at Human Exceptionalism.
Dears;
In ITA there is a form for Partnership Information which includes the following main point;
2. At least 3 of the following to show you have lived together for at least 12 months; and
Joint tenancy agreements
Joint ownership of a residential property
Joint mortgage/loan documents
Joint insurance policies
Joint assets/liabilities
bank statements, utility bills or other mail received at your home address. The document must state your or your partners name, the home address and a date. If it was addressed to you and your partner separately, you and your partner need to provide at least one document each, which were received at the same address with similar dates.
A part from other documents they asked to submit the above docs i am not able understand what they exactly want, as i just got married more than a year ago on 16th Jan, 2015 and we are living together from 21st July 2015;
We dont have any joint account, she doesn't work we don't have any joint asset/loan/residential property/tenancy agreement or any other legal document,
Just we have Our Pakistan's National ID Cards which shows our relationships, and our Qatar's ID cards which also shows our relationship, other than there is my name written along with my Partner's name on her Insurance Card/Policy.
She doesn't have any bank account just i recently get a supplementary credit card for her which we got three months back....
Kindly tell me how can i submit atleast three documents which shows that we are together for atleast last 12 months from above!!
Please suggest
London is becoming increasingly popular with expat Latin Americans with new research suggesting that around a quarter of a million now live in the UK with over half, 145,000, in the capital city.Indeed, the Latin American population is one of the fastest growing migrant groups in London with two thirds having arrived since 2000, according to the research by the School of Geography at Queen Mary University of London. Brazilians are the largest national group, making up over a third of the Latin American population in London, followed by Colombians at around a fifth with large groups also from Ecuador, Argentina, Venezuela and Mexico.Of those living in the capital, more than two thirds are in Inner London, with particularly large concentrations in Lambeth and Southwark, followed by Brent, Westminster, Wandsworth and Haringey.It is a particularly young population with two thirds aged under 40, though this is similar to other migrant populations in London. This age profile is perhaps why employment rates are high, at nearly 70%, the report suggests.The research also shows that a quarter of Latin Americans work in low paid elementary jobs such as cleaners, kitchen assistants, porters, waiting staff and security guards and a further fifth in other low paid sectors such as caring, sales and processing. When compared with other migrant groups in London, only Romanians have higher proportions of those working in low paid elementary jobs.The report says more needs to be done to help Latin American expats as half of those in London live in private rental housing, double the average for the city, in what can often be poor accommodation. Their levels of access to health services is low. For example, although 90% have used the NHS for themselves or their family, around one in six are not registered with a GP and nearly seven in 10 have not used a dentist.The report contains a number of recommendations on employment, housing, access to health services and improving monitoring data. The recommendations include ensuring that public bodies have a Latin American category and provide language classes.As one of Londons fastest growing migrant communities, Latin Americans make an essential contribution to how the city operates economically, socially and culturally. Yet only recently have Latin Americans begun to emerge from the shadows of invisibility as a population, said Professor Cathy McIlwaine, from Queen Mary University of London.While they are a diverse community, many end up having to work in low-paid jobs and live in poor quality housing because of their lack of English language skills, despite being very well educated. Yet in analysing two data sets of more established and more recently arrived Latin Americans, this research also shows that Latin Americans do integrate successfully as long as they receive support and recognition as a community, she added.According to Carolina Gottardo, director of the Latin American Womens Rights Service (LAWRS), Latin Americans are hard workers and contribute to Londons economy. They should be able to access health, housing and other services that are theirs by right, she said.Naturalisation fees need to be revised to make it possible for many Latin Americans and other migrants to exercise their rights when entitled, considering the amazing contribution that Latin Americans and other migrants make to the UKs economy, society and culture, she added.
British expats living in European Union countries, especially popular ones such as France and Spain, are still trying to come to terms with how Brexit will affect their finances and living plans.One big area of concern are pensions and Brexit could be a trigger for more people to move their British pensions out of the UK, according to finance experts. The issue revolves around whether or not the UK tax authority, HMRC, will continue to recognise Qualifying Recognised Overseas Pension Scheme, or QROPS, which have been popular for expats worried about currency fluctuations.Brexit will be a trigger for even more people to move their British pensions out of the UK, according to Nigel Green, chief executive of independent financial advisory firm, deVere Group.As the reality of what a Leave result in the EU referendum means for personal finances sinks in, people will now be reassessing their retirement planning strategy. We can fully expect demand for HMRC-recognised overseas pension transfers to be further boosted thanks to the UKs decision to leave the European Union, he said.Due to the huge amount of uncertainty thats created, more and more people who are eligible to do so, thats to say expats and those who are considering retiring outside Britain, will be seeking to safeguard their retirement funds by transferring them into a secure, regulated, English speaking jurisdiction outside the UK, he added.The main concern for finances has been the significant fall in the pound following the referendum decision. For those living in the EU and in receipt of a UK pension, a plummeting pound has serious consequences as the cost of living becomes more expensive.An established way to help mitigate these problems of currency fluctuations, which can seriously erode retirement income, is to transfer a UK pension into a QROPS. However, there have been some questions raised over the legalities of QROPS due to the Brexit decision.QROPS started under EU law, but now there are separate agreements in place between the UK and individual jurisdictions, such as Malta, regarding pensions transfers. This means that when the UK leaves the EU, these agreements will remain intact. Therefore, the pension funds established in these jurisdictions will still meet the criteria to be recognised as Overseas Pensions Schemes under UK legislation, Green pointed out.Considering the wider post-Brexit vote scenario we are facing, we can assume that the wider international financial advisory sector is about to enter a phase of enormous activity and growth, he added.Pensioners are the biggest group of British expats in Europe, and they can use the years they have worked in one member state to qualify for pensions in another. For example, in Germany EU citizens can count years worked elsewhere to meet the minimum requirements for a pension.
There is nearly 5.5 miles between Lake Wissota Business Park and Riverside Industrial Park in Chippewa Falls. That can be a huge distance if your Internet service doesnt have the capacity to handle business-to-business communications.
That distance is about to close, opening businesses in the parks to a world of opportunities.
Local and state officials, including Republican Gov. Scott Walker, celebrated the installation of fiber-optic cable between the business parks. The new cable will be able to handle the needs of computer heavyweights such as Cray, Inc. and SGI and smaller businesses.
The fiber-optic cable sends a message to businesses to locate in Wisconsin, Walker said at a gathering at Chippewa River Industries in the Lake Wissota Business Park.
With the broadband connection, Walker asked why a company would choose to be in a congested location rather than one with the natural beauty of Lake Wissota.
This a great example of partnership, Walker said of the public-private sector work on the project, which was selected for a $268,000 grant by the Wisconsin Public Service Corporation. It was the largest such grant by the state.
It was an easy call for the commission, said Ellen Nowak, chair of the state PSC. The public-private combination made it that way. This project is an example, to others in the state, Nowak said.
Angie Dickison, state broadband director, also praised the local project.
When (state) staff first saw this application, they said, Yes, they hit it out of the ballpark. Dickison said.
The grant and project will be important to Chippewa County, said County Administrator Frank Pascarella. He said Cray has plans to locate in the Lake Wissota Business Park and two other businesses have strong interest in moving into the park. He said fiber-optic cable will help Riverside Industrial Park retain businesses.
The work will make the business parks more attractive to new businesses, said Anson Albarado, chairman of the Chippewa County Board.
Chippewa Falls Mayor Greg Hoffman said the effect of the project will be felt beyond the boundaries of the industrial parks. It really has a huge impact on the community, he said.
The city is starting to get traction in attracting businesses to the Lake Wissota Business Park, Hoffman said. So the city is starting to look at creating another industrial park.
The optic fiber cable project will create competitive advantages for local businesses, said Peter Nohelty, chief technology officer for Royal Credit Union (RCU).
If the project hadnt come along, RCU may have been forced to assign its central data center duties out of a building in Riverside Park to firms outside of Wisconsin.
With this project, those jobs can stay here.
When we all work together, we can do things, Nohelty said.
Tuesday, July 12, 2016
Attract the Right Job or Clientele: Be Up to Date Regarding Money Matters
It is safe to say that every endeavor, regardless of industry, has to take monetary considerations seriously. Budgeting and prioritization are the usual courses of action. But there is so much more to be considered when it comes to money matters:
Global economics
Business
Investments
Tax laws
Funding
Help
If you are a business owner or solo entrepreneur, it is close to impossible to keep on top of everything by yourself. Professional help is the answer such as hiring a credible CPA and other advisors. Continued education on the topics is advisable too so that you are aware of the latest. Education also makes you aware of whether you are receiving the right help.
Read financial related articles by Elinor Stutz,
and published by IRIS.xyz
My Story
Self help by taking classes is a quick and easy answer. As a teenager, I asked my Dad to teach me how to read the stock market page and then he helped me do a test investment. It worked out very nicely. Some called it beginners luck but in actuality, research went into the investment.
From that point forward, I began to take formal classes to learn more. The markets fascinated me. One of my early jobs was to take a job with an investment firm. A bullion trader educated me on the value of investing in silver and gold. I listened and then educated my Dad it was payback of the best kind.
Today, I still read the business news every morning. The markets affect decisions from the top down so we need to be on top of all of this.
The Strategic Advantage
A great strategy is to pay keen attention to events that feature savvy financial gurus. They translate their years of dedicated experience into easy-to-implement information their audience may immediately use.
The perfect example is that of the GFC 2016 ~ Global Finance & Credit Conference & Expo to be held August 29 September 2, in the Chicago area. The tagline is Deliberately Different. The implied message is there will be much to be learned.
Speakers will address many areas of the financial industry. Some topics are:
Professional Development Banking and Finance Credit and Collections Legal and Insurance International Sales and Business Development
Global Business
We are a global society today. It is my delight to say that I will be one of the speakers at the Conference. My topic will be, A 360 Degree Business Development Process that Fuels Sales. It will cover all steps that entrepreneurs need to learn in order to establish a well recognized business on a global level; monetary topics included.
Your Story
If you are at a place now knowing that you can achieve so much more, this conference may well be worthy of consideration. As others witness you quickly move forward, you strengthen brand awareness and income increases too.
Get the information you desire
Network with professionals in the field
Learn what is the absolute latest in the industry
Network and party with similar minded folks (did I mention the after event?)
Be motivated and inspired to climb to new heights!
Sales Tips
Remain up to date on information that affects your business Self educate at every turn Take classes as time permits Attend events for action packed learning Learn from many in your industry Multiple perspectives provide the best path Advance your career with continued learning Seek out potential collaborative partners at events Join in on social activities at events for others to get to know you Apply what you learn to fast track business
These suggestions will help lead you to the Smooth Sale!
For Business Consultation and Conference Speaking
Schedule an Appointment to Learn More: elinor@smoothsale.net
Visit Elinors Author Page
Sponsored By
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From: Jack Marshall -- ProEthics, Ltd. For Immediate Release: Dateline: Alexandria , VA Tuesday, July 12, 2016
Add one more bit of evidence to the pro- side of the debate over whether there should be a limit to Supreme Court tenure. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 83 and a cancer survivor, has now apparently entered the What the hell: Im going to say what I feel like saying period of her life. How nice for her. The problem is that there are some things an ethical Justice should not and cannot say. In an Associated Press interview published last week, Ginsberg opined that a Trump Presidency was too awful to contemplate, saying that she presumed Hillary Clinton will be the next president, and that she didnt want to think about that possibility of Trump being elected instead. Talking to The New York Times, she said, I cant imagine what this place would be I cant imagine what the country would be with Donald Trump as our president. For the country, it could be four years. For the court, it could be I dont even want to contemplate that. Then, in a CNN interview, she got specific: He is a fakerHe has no consistency about him. He says whatever comes into his head at the moment. He really has an ego. How has he gotten away with not turning over his tax returns? The press seems to be very gentle with him on that. This was a remarkably stupid and egregious comment for a sitting Supreme Court justice to make on the record. Say what you will about Justices Antonin Scalia, who died in February, or Clarence Thomas, but they never weighed in on presidential politics quite like this. The closest example I can find is that in January 2004, during an election year, Scalia went on a hunting trip with Vice President Dick Cheney.What Ginsburg did was way worse, though. Law professor Daniel W. Drezner, who teaches at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, minces no words over at the Washington Post, nor should he. Like me, he agrees with Madam Justice on the substance of her remarks about, yechh, Donald Trump. Nonetheless, he writes Of course it is. Ginsburgs comments were directly in opposition to the federal code of judicial conduct, which prohibits Federal judges from publicly endorsing or opposing candidates for public office. It also prohibits them from making speeches on behalf of political organizations or contributing to candidates. It is true that the code doesnt apply officially to SCOTUS, but that doesnt give the justices leave to thumb their noses at it, either. Supreme Court justices are supposed to be role models for federal judges, not a group of uninhibited renegades. True, unlike the case with all other judges, no ethics standards stop Ginsberg or one of the brethren from carrying a pigs in a blanket sign at a Black Lives Matter rally. That doesnt mean that wouldnt be obviously and outrageously wrong. Would her expression of contempt for Trump mean, as some experts are saying, that Ginsberg would have to recuse herself in a future case involving him? No, she wouldnt have to recuse, just as she doesnt have to pay attention to the unambiguous judicial ethics requirements regarding a judges duty to uphold the integrity, reputation and public trust in her position, all of which her gratuitous anti-Trump statements also defied. Still, as Glenn Reynolds wrote, The comments were injudicious, and though they are unlikely to become relevant in the coming term, should they in fact matter because of a contested election, with the nation closely divided her recusal, or worse, her refusal to recuse herself, would undoubtedly have explosive results, both for the nation and for the Court itself, an institution that depends on public regard and that has been growing less popular already in recent years. The comments are an iceberg that most likely will never meet its Titanic, but worth noting here because, should that meeting come to pass, the results would surely be the most significant event of the coming term. and Almost no one, it seems, in our terrible political class has any sense of propriety, or of the fragility of the institutions that they infest. I really should have made that Reynolds quote an Ethics Quote of the Week. It neatly and tragically explains why Donald Trumps complete rejection of civility, decorum, dignity and respect for governmental institutions do not make him repugnant to sufficient numbers of Americans. They see Bill Clinton break election rules, and the Attorney General allow him to taint an FBI investigation. They see Hillary Clinton flaunt national security regulations to cover her tracks as she makes millions influence peddling to foreign governments, and then lies about itstill! without official penalties. They see the President repeatedly attempt local criminal investigations while tarring individual citizens as racist, and watch members of Congress imitate Sixties demonstrators in the House of Representative, holding a sit-in not to ends a war or for civil rights, but to allow the government to remove a citizens rights without due process, as the Fifth Amendment requires. Professor Reynold is right: Justice Ginsbergs conduct is of a piece with the rest. That doesnt make it any less atrocious. Also atrocious is that so many partisan Democrats, anti-Trump pundits and social media commentators lack the integrity or knowledge to understand how harmful and wrong Ginsbergs comments are, and thus applaud her candor. _____________________ Pointer: Instapundit Sources:Poynter, Washington Post, CNN, Instapundit Share this:
From: Chuck Gallagher -- The Business Ethics Expert - Keynote Speaker For Immediate Release: Dateline: Greenville , SC Wednesday, July 13, 2016
Yet, in my work as a professional ethics consultant and advocate, I have seen more examples of circumstances where good people, people that are well intentioned, make bad choices by taking one step on the slippery slope of unethical activity. And, from experience, once on that slope well the word slippery can be an understatement. This is true in not only business but governmental ethics as well. No one is exempt from stepping on that slippery slope.
The process of making bad choices, unethical choices, begins with a simple almost thoughtless decision. How do I know? Well, I am living proof that good people can make some really bad choices and the consequences most certainly can be devastating. While not proud of this sentence, I have made unethical choices and spent time in federal prison as a result. So, suffice it to say, I know a thing or two about the simplicity of making one step on the slippery slope that can lead a person to choices that are life changing.
Never in my wildest dreams did I see this coming. When I first started borrowing from my client I had every intent of paying back what I took. Heck, I did pay some of it backat least at the beginning! Those were the words I shared as I openly confessed that the life I was living was, for the most part, an illusion. Truth be told, for all my legitimate successes, I had over time become no more than a liar and a thief. My choices created consequences that I never dreamed were possible.
Examples of Unethical Behavior In most ethical lapses, people dont start off with the intent to lie or defraud. Instead, they get caught up in a messy situation and compromise their ethics as a way to dig themselves out of their hole. What begins as a seemingly minor infraction spirals out of control over time in other words they get caught in the unethical continuum. The following are examples of folks how stepped on the slippery slope and veered way off course in the area of governmental ethics.
Keenya Meshell Banks was employed by the DEA as a Program Manager, and was responsible for the approval and issuance of government credit cards to DEA employees. While serving in that role, Banks admitted that she submitted dozens of fake credit card applications to JPMorgan Chase & Co. for fictitious DEA employees, using names and identifying information of individuals who did not work at the DEA. Through this scheme, Banks obtained at least 32 fraudulent credit cards, which she then used to withdraw more than $113,000 from ATMs in Maryland and Northern Virginia.
Valtina Pierce, a federal employee plead guilty in May to fraud for doctoring her time sheet. She worked as a time sheet manager at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency offices in Washington, D.C. Pierce acknowledged doctoring her time sheet over a two-year span, including making 100 adjustments during a single time period. According to prosecutors, she accepted more than $15,000 in salary for work hours she never performed.
A former Bureau of Land Management employee, Larry Ray Denny, plead guilty to wire fraud, false claims and theft of government property. Denny continued to receive $112,000 in annual salary and benefits after leaving his federal post in July 2012, claiming health problems. He did not report about $49,000 in income he received from the tribe on a federal financial disclosure report.
If bad choices lead to tough consequences, what can we do to identify bad behavior before it starts? What can we do, as managers or leaders, to prevent unethical choices from being made in the first place? Those are two very profound questions. We are encouraged if not required to uphold the standards of ethical conduct promulgated by our employer or association or both. Its not however signing the Code of Ethical Conduct that is important, rather the question that deserves attention and rarely one that we receive training on is why do good people make unethical choices.
The Three Components of Bad Behavior in Governmental Ethics
Its not just power or position that contributes to the fall of smart people. If you look at any ethical failure there are three components that always are present in some form or fashion. Need, Opportunity and Rationalization. If one component is missing the ethical lapse fails or you cant stand on the three-legged stool. What was Banks, Pierce, or Dennys need? Perhaps position and power do provide a certain level of opportunity the average person lacks. But the key question, when you look at governmental ethics, is how did they rationalize their behavior?
Research has shown that three behaviors are at the core of what would cause or allow an otherwise ethical person to make unethical and potentially illegal choices. These behaviors are well documented and for those who are charged with detecting fraud (Statement of Auditing Standards #99) are called the fraud triangle which applies to all areas of business and governmental ethics:
Need. Described as perceived pressure that a person is experiencing, is the first and critical component of what motives a person to stray from ethical to unethical. Need may come in a variety of forms. The person who is in too much debt likely experiences financial strain which was the root of my need. Alice, a church secretary, found her need triggered by her granddaughters diagnosis of cancer. Infamous Bernie Madoffs need was certainly not money; likely, he was triggered by the need to be infallible. Whatever the pressure, need is the core emotional state that starts the ball rolling from a choice that is ethical to unethical.
Opportunity. It makes no difference what your need may be if you dont have the opportunity to satisfy it then the unethical and potentially illegal choice fails. Without Opportunity there is no fuel for the potential unethical fire. I was a trusted employee, and with that trust came opportunity. Alice was trusted, and had been for so many years that no one could comprehend she was capable of any unethical activity. Madoff took opportunity founded in trust to a new level.
Rationalization. Need combined with opportunity provides a firm foundation, but the glue that holds unethical activity together is the ability to rationalize that what is wrong, is right. If you ask most people found guilty of unethical/illegal behavior, they will tell you they felt their actions were legitimate. I, for example, rationalized that I was not stealing money as long as my intent was to pay it back. Further, I solidified this mental game by paying some of the money back. Surely, I wasnt guilty of stealing money as long as I was paying it back.
That, of course, is a clear example of stinkin thinkin. The mind can be tricky and when you combine need with opportunity, and can rationalize bad behavior as good, you have the perfect storm to move from ethical to unethical, and potential illegal, behavior. While we all would like to think that those employed in government would act in the highest and best interests of taxpayers, reality in governmental ethics is humans are all subject to stinkin thinkin and once on the slippery slope theres a very real chance that the outcome will be bad.
What Can Be Done to Prevent Unethical Activities? As business managers, HR Directors and those connected with Compliance, there are clear actions we can take that can help keep folks between the ethical lines.
Look for Need! While we cant control what needs our employees have, we can be aware of any changes or activities that would suggest an increase in need and the stress that need brings.
I was the one responsible for my unethical actions. I was in too much debt and succumbed to the pressure of my need by turning to an unethical activity. I blame no one, but I also have to acknowledge that if those close to me (my partners in business for example) had noticed my changing patterns of behavior their attention might have thwarted my actions.
When subconscious need is brought to light or becomes conscious, then often the outcome is reduced inclination toward unethical behavior. So, signs to look indicating increased need are: (1) calls from creditors or personal calls intensifying at work; (2) abnormal purchases without apparent new sources of funding; (3) lifestyle changes and/or (4) marital issues or challenges with aging parents.
Need is the fuel that supports the possibility of unethical behavior. The challenge most managers face with thinking about Need is to be open minded enough to consider the potential sources of Need so that what might fuel unethical behavior can be suppressed.
Minimize Opportunities. The most effective course of action to keep our employees and associates between ethical lines is to remove opportunities to conduct unethical activities. For example, I embezzled money from a clients trust fund. While I am not proud of that action (now some 25+ years ago), had the bank account that I used required two signatures, the embezzlement would have been far more difficult. Think about it: with that minor change what would I have done, asked the co-signer to help me steal money from the trust? The answer is simple: of course not. So, less opportunity equals less chance for unethical activity.
A practical question is how do we reduce opportunity? Some of the answers are obvious. Minimize opportunities by: (1) requiring multiple signatures on checks; (2) require people to rotate job responsibilities from time to time; (3) strongly encourage employees to take vacations or time off; and/or (4) ask employees from different positions within the company to identify how people can or do act unethically. When a person is aware that their actions are being watched or subject to being watched, the Opportunity factor decreases substantially. As worn out as the line might be, people really do respect what management inspects. Of course, management must be subject to inspection as well.
Train Rationalization. Depending on ones internal ethical compass, what one person can easily rationalize may be a problem for another. Therefore, as managers our role (just as important as the more analytical Opportunity role) is to educate our people on the significance of Rationalization identifying what it sounds like and when it might appear.
When employees hear what rationalization sounds like, when we bring to consciousness what is active in the subconscious, it becomes far easier to support each other in our ethical choices. At a recent ethics seminar an attendee commented, But everybody does it. As those words were spoken, another participant yelled out, Rationalization! The crowd erupted in laughter as people began to see just how simple and easy it is to rationalize the little things. And, when we rationalize the little, the larger unethical choices become easier to swallow.
Whats Your Ethical Culture? Every organization needs to remember that the creation of an ethical culture is exemplified in the actual behavior and attitudes of all team members. The question is not so much whether you talk the talk (in policy documents, training materials or video or webinars), but whether you walk the walk.
A week ago I had dinner with a client and heard about a number of ways his team was acting in an unethical manner. When pressed about culture he shared that when he took over the team a few short months ago he was informed more than once that this is the way weve always done it. He wanted to change the culture. The question he had to ask is was he willing to break it in order to remake or rebuild it into something that he and the company would be proud of. Changing a culture of unethical behavior starts at the top and without support from the top evidenced by a real commitment, the idea of changing long standing behaviors can be hard.
Want to create a culture of ethical behavior in your organization? Its easy if you think about it. When you start by understanding how good people make bad choices, and follow it with an effective ethics-training program that reinforces ethical choices and accountability, you have a recipe for success. Every choice has a consequence. What choices do you make for your organization to help keep your most valuable assets between the ethical lines?
YOUR COMMENTS AND THOUGHTS ARE WELCOME!
The post
Is it safe to say that all government officers, especially those who are in finance, are expected act in an ethical manner when it comes to the legal, moral, and professional conduct related to the fulfillment of their professional responsibilities? Who wouldnt answer YES to this question? Yet when it comes to governmental ethics many people find challenges that end in bad behavior.Yet, in my work as a professional ethics consultant and advocate, I have seen more examples of circumstances where good people, people that are well intentioned, make bad choices by taking one step on the slippery slope of unethical activity. And, from experience, once on that slope well the word slippery can be an understatement. This is true in not only business but governmental ethics as well. No one is exempt from stepping on that slippery slope.The process of making bad choices, unethical choices, begins with a simple almost thoughtless decision. How do I know? Well, I am living proof that good people can make some really bad choices and the consequences most certainly can be devastating. While not proud of this sentence, I have made unethical choices and spent time in federal prison as a result. So, suffice it to say, I know a thing or two about the simplicity of making one step on the slippery slope that can lead a person to choices that are life changing.Never in my wildest dreams did I see this coming. When I first started borrowing from my client I had every intent of paying back what I took. Heck, I did pay some of it backat least at the beginning! Those were the words I shared as I openly confessed that the life I was living was, for the most part, an illusion. Truth be told, for all my legitimate successes, I had over time become no more than a liar and a thief. My choices created consequences that I never dreamed were possible.In most ethical lapses, people dont start off with the intent to lie or defraud. Instead, they get caught up in a messy situation and compromise their ethics as a way to dig themselves out of their hole. What begins as a seemingly minor infraction spirals out of control over time in other words they get caught in the unethical continuum. The following are examples of folks how stepped on the slippery slope and veered way off course in the area of governmental ethics.was employed by the DEA as a Program Manager, and was responsible for the approval and issuance of government credit cards to DEA employees. While serving in that role, Banks admitted that she submitted dozens of fake credit card applications to JPMorgan Chase & Co. for fictitious DEA employees, using names and identifying information of individuals who did not work at the DEA. Through this scheme, Banks obtained at least 32 fraudulent credit cards, which she then used to withdraw more than $113,000 from ATMs in Maryland and Northern Virginia., a federal employee plead guilty in May to fraud for doctoring her time sheet. She worked as a time sheet manager at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency offices in Washington, D.C. Pierce acknowledged doctoring her time sheet over a two-year span, including making 100 adjustments during a single time period. According to prosecutors, she accepted more than $15,000 in salary for work hours she never performed.A former Bureau of Land Management employee,, plead guilty to wire fraud, false claims and theft of government property. Denny continued to receive $112,000 in annual salary and benefits after leaving his federal post in July 2012, claiming health problems. He did not report about $49,000 in income he received from the tribe on a federal financial disclosure report.If bad choices lead to tough consequences, what can we do to identify bad behavior before it starts? What can we do, as managers or leaders, to prevent unethical choices from being made in the first place? Those are two very profound questions. We are encouraged if not required to uphold the standards of ethical conduct promulgated by our employer or association or both. Its not however signing the Code of Ethical Conduct that is important, rather the question that deserves attention and rarely one that we receive training on is why do good people make unethical choices.Its not just power or position that contributes to the fall of smart people. If you look at any ethical failure there are three components that always are present in some form or fashion. Need, Opportunity and Rationalization. If one component is missing the ethical lapse fails or you cant stand on the three-legged stool. What was Banks, Pierce, or Dennys need? Perhaps position and power do provide a certain level of opportunity the average person lacks. But the key question, when you look at governmental ethics, is how did they rationalize their behavior?Research has shown that three behaviors are at the core of what would cause or allow an otherwise ethical person to make unethical and potentially illegal choices. These behaviors are well documented and for those who are charged with detecting fraud (Statement of Auditing Standards #99) are called the fraud triangle which applies to all areas of business and governmental ethics:Described as perceived pressure that a person is experiencing, is the first and critical component of what motives a person to stray from ethical to unethical. Need may come in a variety of forms. The person who is in too much debt likely experiences financial strain which was the root of my need. Alice, a church secretary, found her need triggered by her granddaughters diagnosis of cancer. Infamous Bernie Madoffs need was certainly not money; likely, he was triggered by the need to be infallible. Whatever the pressure, need is the core emotional state that starts the ball rolling from a choice that is ethical to unethical.It makes no difference what your need may be if you dont have the opportunity to satisfy it then the unethical and potentially illegal choice fails. Without Opportunity there is no fuel for the potential unethical fire. I was a trusted employee, and with that trust came opportunity. Alice was trusted, and had been for so many years that no one could comprehend she was capable of any unethical activity. Madoff took opportunity founded in trust to a new level.Need combined with opportunity provides a firm foundation, but the glue that holds unethical activity together is the ability to rationalize that what is wrong, is right. If you ask most people found guilty of unethical/illegal behavior, they will tell you they felt their actions were legitimate. I, for example, rationalized that I was not stealing money as long as my intent was to pay it back. Further, I solidified this mental game by paying some of the money back. Surely, I wasnt guilty of stealing money as long as I was paying it back.That, of course, is a clear example of stinkin thinkin. The mind can be tricky and when you combine need with opportunity, and can rationalize bad behavior as good, you have the perfect storm to move from ethical to unethical, and potential illegal, behavior. While we all would like to think that those employed in government would act in the highest and best interests of taxpayers, reality in governmental ethics is humans are all subject to stinkin thinkin and once on the slippery slope theres a very real chance that the outcome will be bad.As business managers, HR Directors and those connected with Compliance, there are clear actions we can take that can help keep folks between the ethical lines.While we cant control what needs our employees have, we can be aware of any changes or activities that would suggest an increase in need and the stress that need brings.I was the one responsible for my unethical actions. I was in too much debt and succumbed to the pressure of my need by turning to an unethical activity. I blame no one, but I also have to acknowledge that if those close to me (my partners in business for example) had noticed my changing patterns of behavior their attention might have thwarted my actions.When subconscious need is brought to light or becomes conscious, then often the outcome is reduced inclination toward unethical behavior. So, signs to look indicating increased need are: (1) calls from creditors or personal calls intensifying at work; (2) abnormal purchases without apparent new sources of funding; (3) lifestyle changes and/or (4) marital issues or challenges with aging parents.Need is the fuel that supports the possibility of unethical behavior. The challenge most managers face with thinking about Need is to be open minded enough to consider the potential sources of Need so that what might fuel unethical behavior can be suppressed.The most effective course of action to keep our employees and associates between ethical lines is to remove opportunities to conduct unethical activities. For example, I embezzled money from a clients trust fund. While I am not proud of that action (now some 25+ years ago), had the bank account that I used required two signatures, the embezzlement would have been far more difficult. Think about it: with that minor change what would I have done, asked the co-signer to help me steal money from the trust? The answer is simple: of course not. So, less opportunity equals less chance for unethical activity.A practical question is how do we reduce opportunity? Some of the answers are obvious. Minimize opportunities by: (1) requiring multiple signatures on checks; (2) require people to rotate job responsibilities from time to time; (3) strongly encourage employees to take vacations or time off; and/or (4) ask employees from different positions within the company to identify how people can or do act unethically. When a person is aware that their actions are being watched or subject to being watched, the Opportunity factor decreases substantially. As worn out as the line might be, people really do respect what management inspects. Of course, management must be subject to inspection as well.Depending on ones internal ethical compass, what one person can easily rationalize may be a problem for another. Therefore, as managers our role (just as important as the more analytical Opportunity role) is to educate our people on the significance of Rationalization identifying what it sounds like and when it might appear.When employees hear what rationalization sounds like, when we bring to consciousness what is active in the subconscious, it becomes far easier to support each other in our ethical choices. At a recent ethics seminar an attendee commented, But everybody does it. As those words were spoken, another participant yelled out, Rationalization! The crowd erupted in laughter as people began to see just how simple and easy it is to rationalize the little things. And, when we rationalize the little, the larger unethical choices become easier to swallow.Every organization needs to remember that the creation of an ethical culture is exemplified in the actual behavior and attitudes of all team members. The question is not so much whether you talk the talk (in policy documents, training materials or video or webinars), but whether you walk the walk.A week ago I had dinner with a client and heard about a number of ways his team was acting in an unethical manner. When pressed about culture he shared that when he took over the team a few short months ago he was informed more than once that this is the way weve always done it. He wanted to change the culture. The question he had to ask is was he willing to break it in order to remake or rebuild it into something that he and the company would be proud of. Changing a culture of unethical behavior starts at the top and without support from the top evidenced by a real commitment, the idea of changing long standing behaviors can be hard.Want to create a culture of ethical behavior in your organization? Its easy if you think about it. When you start by understanding how good people make bad choices, and follow it with an effective ethics-training program that reinforces ethical choices and accountability, you have a recipe for success. Every choice has a consequence. What choices do you make for your organization to help keep your most valuable assets between the ethical lines?YOUR COMMENTS AND THOUGHTS ARE WELCOME!The post Governmental Ethics: Why Good People Make Unethical Choices appeared first on Chuck Gallagher
July 12, 2016, Los Angeles, CA - A special 10 percent discount for first time exhibitors at the Ninth National Medicare Supplement Summit was announced today by the American Association for Medicare Supplement Insurance (AAMSI).
Over 50 companies are expected to exhibit at the 2017 national Medigap insurance industry conference taking place April 11-13, 2017 at the Sheraton Hotel in Dallas, Texas. "This is the only national event that exclusively focuses on this growing industry," explains Jesse Slome, director of the Association that produces the conference. "Any company that markets senior-focused insurance products should consider having a presence."
A limited number of sponsorships and exhibit opportunities are available at the three-day event. In addition, the Association is offering a 10 percent discount for first time exhibitors who reserve their space before August 30, 2017.
"We have historically sold out of exhibit space in prior years," Slome notes. "Dallas offers the potential for a larger number of attendees and we are holding a one-day free access pass for agents who want to come and learn and meet with companies exhibiting at the event."
Over 525 insurance company executives, heads of marketing organizations and insurance agents attended the 2016 Medicare Supplement Summit that was held in Kansas City. "Another 100-plus insurance agents attended the free day but we expect anywhere from 300 to 600 will attend the free day in Dallas," Slome predicts.
To learn more about the conference including exhibit and sponsorship opportunities, call the Association offices at 818-597-3205 or visit the organization's website at www.medicaresupp.org.
Carnahan Insurance announces the Insurance Cost Reduction Award has been presented to Tero Technologies. Located in San Antonio, Tero Technologies has been in business since 1999. Tero is a leading provider of high speed network infrastructure and audio visual systems. They provide 24/7 support for their clients' IT needs.
Tero Technologies was chosen for the $53,000 in insurance premium savings they received by bringing their insurance coverage to Carnahan Insurance!
"Tero Technologies is a company with many insurance needs. They have expensive, heavy equipment used by their employees, and the projects they work on are critical to their customers' success. My company was able to reduce their insurance expense by $53,000 with no erosion in coverage," said Jerry Carnahan, President of Carnahan Insurance. He continued, "It's professionally satisfying for me to be able to provide risk reduction advice, programs and tools to this company, as well as so many other great businesses in San Antonio. It also makes me and my staff very happy to help companies achieve significant cost savings."
"Carnahan Insurance provides my company with the same commitment to customer service that we bring to our clients," explained Tero Technologies president Robin Portenier. She continued, "Not only does Carnahan Insurance shares our commitment to excellence, but they were able to save us over $50,000! I can't imagine why any San Antonio business owner would not talk with Jerry Carnahan about their insurance."
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DALLAS President Barack Obama challenged Americans to open their hearts to each other at an interfaith service Tuesday honoring five police officers whose deaths occurred against the backdrop of national racial turmoil.
Obama, lauding the officers who died and other police on duty at the peaceful protest targeted by a sniper, said they showed the best of a country that he maintained isnt as divided as it can seem.
The existence of racial bias nevertheless is undeniable, he said, and solutions elusive.
The slain officers were upholding the constitutional rights of those protesting the deaths of black men in police shootings elsewhere. The sniper who killed them was said to be targeting white people, denounced by Obama as an act of racial hatred.
Obama said he has seen the inadequacy of his own words after attending memorials for too many violent events.
He lamented inadequate investment in education, drug treatment and mental health services coupled with easy availability of guns.
In the end, its not about finding policies that work, its about forging consensus and fighting cynicism and finding the will to make change. Can we do this? I dont know. I confess that sometimes I, too, experience doubt, Obama said. Ive been to too many of these things.
The countrys first black president, who said he has seen Americas promise in his own life, urged Americans to pray for a new heart for each of us, understanding the need to address bias but knowing those who advocate violence in response to it are undermining their own cause.
Obama spoke from a stage at the Meyerson Symphony Center that was decorated with white flowers, ferns and large photographs of the five officers: Patrick Zamarippa, Michael Smith, Michael Krol and Lorne Ahrens of the Dallas Police Department, and Brent Thompson of Dallas Area Rapid Transit.
The officers were killed last week by a sniper at the end of a peaceful demonstration over the police shooting deaths of black men in Louisiana and Minnesota, the latest in a line of such incidents.
Before he was killed following failed police negotiations, the sniper said he was upset about those shootings and that he wanted to kill white people, especially white officers, Dallas Police Chief David Brown said.
Obama said he saw the promise of change in an audience that included those who wept both for the deaths of officers and for the deaths of black men in police encounters.
I see whats possible when we recognize that we are one American family, all deserving of equal treatment, he said. Thats the America I know.
Obama was accompanied by his wife, Michelle, at the ceremony attended by dignitaries of both parties from across the state and country, their disparate views driving home his message of the need for unity.
A case in point was conservative Republican U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, a harsh critic of Obama, who flew on the presidents plane from Washington to the ceremony in Dallas along with Democrats including House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, a liberal lawmaker from California.
Former President George W. Bush, who attended with his wife, Laura, said for Dallas residents like them, the tragedy amounted to five deaths in the family. He also drove home the message of unity.
At our best, we honor the image of God we see in one another, Bush said. At our best, we know we have one country, one future, one destiny.
U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, publicly thanked the Obamas along with Vice President Joe Biden and his wife, Jill for attending the ceremony to honor the officers, calling those who died men of uncommon courage.
In times of darkness, when its hard to hold on to hope, we must remember that these men, along with their fellow officers, were not ultimately overcome by evil, said Cornyn. They overcame evil by sacrificing their own lives so that others could live.
The interfaith service drew law enforcement officers from around the state and country who paid their respects, hearts heavy with pride and sorrow.
Im honestly more proud to be a law enforcement officer when things like this happen, said Sgt. Victoria Horton of the Spartanburg County Sheriffs Office in South Carolina, who attended with a fellow honor guard member from the department, Master Deputy Donna Martin.
It is something we dont like to see, Horton said. But when it happens, law enforcement as you can see already unites. Were a band of brothers and sisters.
Harris County Sheriff Ron Hickman, who attended with a contingent of command staff, said he hoped the service would put a spotlight on the importance of a positive, expanded dialogue between law enforcement and the community. The current environment brings worries for officers, their supervisors and their families, he said.
You know that every wife and every husband is concerned when their spouse goes to work. Are they going to come home? Hickman said.
Ive been in this business 45 years, and one of the things I see is that there is a great tendency to express anger and frustration through violence violence of any kind, whether its weapons or anything else, Hickman said. I think those are the issues that we have to get at the root cause of the problem.
pfikac@express-news.net
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Texas claim that New Mexico is taking too much water out of the Rio Grande should proceed, according to a draft report by a special master appointed by the U.S. Supreme Court to oversee the fight between the states.
The Supreme Court will eventually review the special masters recommendations in the case that began in 2013, when Texas sued New Mexico over diverting river water and pumping groundwater in southern New Mexico.
Texas claimed the diversions and pumping violate the 1938 Rio Grande Compact, an agreement among the two states and Colorado to share water in the 1,900-mile river that forms Texas border with Mexico.
By 2011, New Mexico had improperly allowed the use of tens of thousands of acre-feet annually of Texas water, according to the complaint filed by attorneys with the California firm Somach Simmons & Dunn, hired to represent Texas in the case. They declined to comment Tuesday on the draft report.
The two sides have waited nearly a year since making oral arguments in August 2015 before A. Gregory Grimsal, a New Orleans attorney the Supreme Court appointed to review the case.
In 2014, New Mexico filed a motion to dismiss Texas claims, arguing that the compact only requires it to deliver water to Elephant Butte Reservoir, next to the spa town of Truth or Consequences.
The cities of Las Cruces, New Mexico, and El Paso filed amicus briefs supporting their respective states, as did irrigation districts on both sides of the state line.
In a 273-page discussion of Western water law and the Rio Grande Compact itself, Grimsal wrote that Texas has a plausible claim under the compact. He also recommended that the Supreme Court dismiss motions by the U.S. government and two irrigation districts to intervene in the case.
The districts have plenty to lose. The Elephant Butte Irrigation District regulates the delivery of water to the heavily farmed valley of the Rio Grande in New Mexico, an important growing region for the states renowned chiles along with other crops.
On the Texas side, the El Paso County Water Improvement District No. 1 provides, on average, half of the El Pasos water supply, according to Texas complaint.
Both sides have until Aug. 1 to review the draft report and submit any comments. After that, the Supreme Court will, at some point, decide how to handle Grimsals recommendations.
They can do whatever they want, said Texas A&M University law professor Gabriel Eckstein, who specializes in water law and directs the International Water Law Project, a database of water information.
Once this draft report is final and submitted to the court, the court could take it or not, he said. They could sit on it for two years or more.
If Texas is ultimately successful, New Mexico could owe the state damages for taking its downstream neighbors water. Some estimates of damages have reached as high as $1 billion, according to the Associated Press.
Im sure theyve got some actual mathematician sitting at the Texas governors office or Texas Commission on Environmental Quality or Texas Water Development Board trying to count what is the market value of water, how much water do we project has been quote-unquote stolen from us, Eckstein said.
A spokeswoman for Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton declined to comment on the case, citing ongoing litigation.
New Mexico officials response struck an optimistic tone. In a statement, New Mexico Attorney General Hector Balderas did not address the recommendation to keep Texas claim alive and applauded Grimsals suggestion to limit the claims of the United States.
We will continue to work diligently in protecting the interests of all New Mexicans and our water, he said.
New Mexico State Engineer Tom Blaine said the recommendations, if adopted by the Court, will be an important step in addressing Texas claims and federal overreach involving New Mexicos groundwater.
The state is seeking help in its defense against Texas. In May, Balderas office put out a request for proposals for law firms to represent New Mexico in the dispute.
bgibbons@express-news.net
Twitter: @bgibbs
Grain farming is a mixed bag right now. It is hard to get everything we want, because they are in conflict. What we want is great prices and a great crop. One out of two is not bad, but it is hard to take.
The trade gets one more set of good, hard fundamental numbers July 12 in the form of the world Supply and Demand and Crop Production Reports from USDA. They were released at noon, July 12, and were generally not expected to be good for prices.
Regardless of what improvement they report, the market has traded so low as we go into them that we could rebound, even from a bearish report.
Trading low
How did we get to this point? Grain farmers got one short chance to price last years and this years crops. That chance did not look good enough, and most of them are sitting on too much of the last crop.
Now, we have seen a precipitous decline in prices, but it is for a reason that should have them smiling. Prices are cheap because the new crop looks so good.
Weather worries
Planting was delayed in most areas, but the weather allowed catch-up.
We saw fears of dry weather, but most areas got enough rain. Forecast even during the rain events pointed to hot weather ahead, but now we are tasseling and most of the Corn Belt is not suffering for rain during this most critical period.
Record conditions
All this now has us looking at record projections for corn condition and near-record soybean conditions. That has us looking at record corn production projections, which would lead to burdensome carryout. The carryout leads us to cheap price projections.
We are walking the statistical road to cheap prices right now, and it does not feel good, even while walking the fields feels great. Lets look at the best ideas we have of what those numbers will be.
Report
The Crop Progress Report gives us corn up a percent to 76 percent good and excellent conditions.
That helps traders anticipate that corn production will come in at 14.525 billion bushels. That would be a new record, and is twice what we produced in our biggest year in the early 70s when I was getting started in this business.
That would yield a carryout at the end of the marketing year of 2.205 billion bushels. It is the carryout that has the market spooked. Two billion is seen as extremely burdensome. More than that is a disaster to prices, and has been over the last month.
Soybeans present a similar situation, although the market is sensitive to later weather in the case of beans. The Crop Progress Report puts the beans at 71 percent good and excellent, also up one percent.
Traders look for a crop of 3.867 billion bushels and a carryout of 287 million bushels. With good August weather, those numbers could actually get bigger.
Not created equal
As usual, all farms are not created equal. There are areas of stress where farmers are worried about drought and cheap prices at the same time.
In any record year there are places where the crops are not great, and this year that place is in northcentral Ohio and over into parts of northwest Ohio.
Prices still low
As our production picture has improved, our prices have not. December corn futures have declined over a dollar, from the 4.49 of mid-June to the 3.46 we had July 6.
Farmers traditionally look for the high price for the year to be near the fourth of July. This year they got the low.
We have now recovered just 712 cents off the low as of July 12. We are actually 2 cents lower for the day, July 12, at 3.5312 December futures.
The soybeans are similarly a huge bust for the last few weeks. November futures lost $1.6514 from the June 13 high of 11.8614 to the low July 8 at 10.21. Here we have bounced a third of a buck, to the 10.5312 we see July 12, but that is down 112 cents for the day.
Although I have some hope for a little recovery into this report, simply because we have been so low, it is discouraging that we are actually lower on corn, beans, and wheat.
I would be more comfortable if we were actually anticipating higher prices.
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Bombardier Inc. and Ukrainian Railways
The Minister witnessed the signing of a memorandum of understanding between Canadas Bombardier Inc. and Ukrainian Railways to collaborate on a joint venture focused on manufacturing locomotives that can be procured, not only in Ukraine, but potentially in the Eastern European and Central Asian regions. This strategic partnership has the support of Ukraines Ministry of Infrastructure and supports the production of locomotives in Ukraines western region, Lviv Region, helping to revive the transportation and manufacturing industries.
Borsch Ventures and International Finance Corporation, E-Farmer
The Minister also witnessed the signing of an agreement between Borsch Ventures, E-Farmer and the International Finance Corporation, Joint Venture Investment. The two are joining forces to invest $500,000 to create eFarmer 360, a platform that addresses farm business management needs of farmers and credit risk assessment requirements of banks. Borsch Ventures, a Canadian investment initiative, invests in Ukrainian start-ups in the agriculture sector that show strong potential.
Canadore College
The Minister witnessed the signing of a memorandum of understanding between Canadore College and Ukraines National Aviation University (NAU) on education services. The agreement will allow NAU students the opportunity to continue studies at Canadore and vice versa, and promotes the development of a joint education program, faculty exchanges, the sharing of curriculum and the exploration of areas of common research.
Source: AAFC
"CBH are not taking all the lime; what we are stockpiling is only a very small amount of what is used and we cannot supply the whole district," he said.
"Given the size and importance of this industry to Australia, there is a place for such a body to promote it and it is not solely a government, farmers' or traders' responsibility, all parties need to have a response to this organisational competition from other countries."
Fort Bragg to be known as Fort Liberty. Here's what to know.
military
Victory: GOP Party Platform to Include 'Right to Life' for Pre-Born, Defunding of Planned Parenthood
Contact: Troy Newman, President, 316-683-6790 ext 111; Cheryl Sullenger, Senior Vice President, 316-516-3034; both with Operation Rescue, info.operationrescue@gmail.com
CLEVELAND, Ohio, July 13, 2016 /Christian Newswire/ -- The Republican Party Platform Committee adopted draft language on Tuesday that supports defunding Planned Parenthood and extending the Constitutional "right to life" to pre-born babies.
Troy Newman, President of Operation Rescue, in currently in Cleveland with #OperationRNC, which is a campaign led by Created Equal to ensure the GOP party platform remains pro-life. Newman also served as a founding board member of the Center for Medical Progress, the group that released undercover videos last year showing Planned Parenthood officials haggling over the price of aborted baby parts.
"We are celebrating today on the streets of Cleveland. We got everything we have asked for in the party platform," said Newman. "This shows that the pro-life movement is strong, influential, and here to stay until abortion is banned permanently."
The adopted draft language states:
The Constitution's guarantee that no one can be deprived of life, liberty, or property deliberately echoes the Declaration of Independence's proclamation that "all" are "endowed by their Creator" with the right to life. Accordingly, we assert the sanctity of human life and affirm that the unborn child has a fundamental right to life which cannot be infringed.
We support a human life amendment to the Constitution and legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment's protections apply to children before birth. We oppose the use of public funds to perform or promote abortion or to fund organizations, like Planned Parenthood, that perform or advocate it and will not fund or subsidize health care which includes abortion coverage.
#OperationRNC also plans to fly an aerial tow banner over Cleveland today depicting a 15-week abortion juxtaposed to the words "Rescue Unborn Children." See the airborne banner HERE.
Newman had joined #OperationRNC leaders Mark Harrington, National Director of Created Equal, and Rev. Patrick Mahoney, Director of the Christian Defense Coalition, in Cleveland last month for a statewide tour of Ohio calling for the GOP platform to support the defunding of Planned Parenthood.
About Operation Rescue
Operation Rescue is one of the leading pro-life Christian activist organizations in the nation and has become a strong voice for the pro-life movement in America. Click here to support Operation Rescue.
Tom Hanks' mother has died.
Tom Hanks
The 60-year-old actor paid a touching tribute to Janet Marylyn Frager on Tuesday (12.07.16) in which he praised the "beauty" for making a difference to a number of people.
Alongside a picture of his mom in her younger years, he wrote on Instagram: "This beauty? My mom. She was the difference in many lives. Many lives. We say goodbye to her today. Safe crossing, mom! Hanx."
A few hours later, the 'Saving Mr Banks' actor posted another image of the State Theatre in Red Bluff, California, recalling happy memories as he and Janet watched many movies there when he was younger.
The post read: "Red Bluff, California. Saw many movies here with our Mom. Thanks for all who came to see her off. Hanx."
Tom's wife Rita Wilson also took to social media to pay tribute to her late mother-in-law.
Alongside a picture of her spouse and his parent, she wrote: "This wonderful lady gave birth to my husband, and three other children. Thank you for bringing my love into the world. She is at peace now."
In May, Tom was brought to tears as he recalled the loneliness of his "vagabond" childhood.
The 'Saving Private Ryan' star and two of his siblings lived with their chef father Amos - who died in 1992 - after their parents split up and lived in two houses in five years.
Choosing the theme to '2001: A Space Odyssey' on 'Desert Island Discs', Tom - whose youngest brother Jim stayed with their mother after the split - recalled: "This was the 'wow' moment going from kid trying to figure out what's interesting to young man yearning to be an artist.
"I started asking myself... how do I find the vocabulary for what's rattling around in my head.
"Not long after I started going to the American Conservatory Theatre by myself to see plays I had no idea even existed."
Asked what the feelings in his head were, he grew tearful and said: "What have you done to me?
"No, it's all right, because I put too much thought into this list. What it was, it was the vocabulary of loneliness."
Matt Damon has hinted that he would take on a superhero role if his pal Ben Affleck was in the director's chair.
Matt Damon
There has been plenty of joking that Damon could play Robin alongside Affleck's Batman in the future.
Affleck has recently starred in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and will direct a Batman solo film in the not so distant future.
While Damon never mentioned the role of Robin, he did say that he was keen to work with Affleck again in the future.
Speaking to The Irish Examiner, the actor said: "I'd consider anything with the right director, but I can't imagine there are any superheroes left, I think they're all taken at this moment. If he (Ben) was directing me, I'd jump on it in a New York minute.
"I'd love to work with Ben. The problem with Ben is every time he directs a movie, he gives himself the best role in it, so until he's willing to give up the best role to one of his friends, we're not going to get on with it."
Damon and Affleck have worked together on movies such as Chasing Amy and Dogma but it was Good Will Hunting that shot them to fame. As well as starring in the film, the duo penned the screenplay and went on to win an Oscar for their work.
As for Damon, he will be back on the big screen at the end of the month with Jason Bourne, which will be the fourth time that he has played this now iconic action character.
It will be the first time we have seen Damon on the big screen since the success of The Martian as he reunites with filmmaker Paul Greengrass.
The actor has also completed work on The Great Wall and is currently filming Downsizing, which sees him team up with filmmaker Alexander Payne.
by Helen Earnshaw for www.femalefirst.co.uk
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It is said that the more you travel to different places and countries, the more you change as a person, for the better. Now that's only possible if you do end up spending time learning and becoming one with the culture of the place. But how does one do that if the only place one stays in is a luxurious five-star hotel? Homestays are becoming increasingly popular among travellers as an option that adds to and makes for a more fulfilling travel experience. Here's why:
Window to the local culture: A homestay gives you more than just a peek into the local culture and tradition of the place you are visiting. The local residents will be able to guide you on not just the popular places to visit, but the hidden gems that are yet to be discovered and heralded as the pride of the town or city. Also, staying with a local family could mean that you are often invited to partake in their cultural festivities and traditions.
Gorging on regional delicacies: While your host would be gracious to serve you the food you desire, a homestay is one of the best ways to sample the local cuisine. And you can never run out of unique regional dishes to gorge on in a country as large and diverse as India. So ditch the noodles-and-manchurian combo while you are travelling and relish some authentic fare such as, puttu in Kerala or the traditional Malvani spread while in Maharashtra. The cherry on the cake? Home-cooked food!
More value for money: For the first-time or budget traveller, homestays are basically a godsend. Peak season travelling leaves you with fewer options to choose from among hotels, given the exorbitant prices they charge at such times. And for those homestays that may cost you the same, the added personal service and care make the stay worth every penny. Which brings us to our next point...
Personalised just for you: Unwell? Your homestay host will see to it that you drink a cup of warm honey-lime water to soothe that sore throat. Compared to hotels that have to cater to the needs of a large number of guests, the personalised service and greater attention that you receive at a homestay will only add to your holiday experience.
Refuting media reports on his exit from e-commerce player Jabong, its CEO Sanjiv Mohanty said he was still with the company and expects it to achieve 20-30 per cent growth in sales this year.Claiming that Jabong, which is reportedly on block for sale, is charting a turn around in business, Mohanty reportedly told PTI that Global Fashion Group (GFG) firm is tracking a good pace of growth.
Refuting media reports on his exit from e-commerce player Jabong, its CEO Sanjiv Mohanty said he was still with the company and expects it to achieve 20-30 per cent growth in sales this year. Claiming that Jabong, which is reportedly on block for sale, is charting a turn around in business, Mohanty reportedly told PTI that Global Fashion Group...#
"We have seen small growth... we are tracking about 20-30 per cent growth," he told PTI. The company he said had narrowed down its gross loss to Rs 46.7 crore for 2015 on the back of lower level of discounts from Rs 159.5 crore in 2014.Its net revenue rose 7.1 per cent to Rs 869.1 crore in 2015 compared with Rs 811.4 crore in 2014.The GMV (gross merchandise value) in 2015 increased to Rs 1,502.9 crore compared with Rs 1,320.6 crore in 2014.When asked about reports that he had put in his papers, Mohanty said, "I am very much here. I have spoken to the team too and assured them that I am still with the company."Jabong had brought in Mohanty, who has over 20 years of experience, on board last year to steer Jabong that has been facing strong competition against the likes of Myntra (owned by Flipkart) and Amazon.On a possible sale of equity, Mohanty said the company is exploring multiple options, including getting new investors on board or a complete sell out. "We have always said that we are looking at all options. I can't give you a timeline as these things take time. It could be 4 weeks or 6 or 8 weeks."According to sources, Jabong is in discussions with players like ecommerce major Snapdeal, Aditya Birla Group and Kishore Biyani's Future Group for a possible sell out.The deal, which has been in the works for some time, has floundered in the past as many "suitors have backed out", they say.Another source close to the discussions said a "distress sale" is more likely now with the withering away of the team and potential investors.While Jabong investors are seeking a valuation of about USD 100-150 million, the deal, if it goes through, may close at a much lower valuation of around USD 50 million, they said.When contacted, Snapdeal and Aditya Birla Online Fashion (Abof.com) declined to comment, and Future Group did not respond to emailed queries.Jabong was founded in 2012. In September 2014, its investor, Rocket Internet merged Jabong with four other online fashion retailers in Latin America, Russia, the Middle East, South-east Asia and Australia to create the Global Fashion Group (GFG).Swedish investment firm Kinnevik also owns a large stake in Jabongs parent Global Fashion Group.While Jabong has managed to reduce losses by reducing discounts, both AB Kinnevik and Rocket Internet seem unwilling to infuse fresh capital and are believed to be keen to exit.In April this year, GFG raised fresh funding from existing investors at a lower valuation, raising 300 million euros from Rocket Internet and Kinnevik.Post the last round, GFG was valued at 1 billion euros, a significant fall from earlier valuation of 3.1 billion euros. (SH)
Fibre2Fashion News Desk India
The right delivery partners and easy website navigation with multiple shipping options are critical success factors for e-tailers as nearly two-thirds of digitally savvy consumers report basing a purchase decision on delivery options often abandoning shopping carts before orders are submitted if the process is cumbersome, according to a research by Accenture.The study, Differentiating Delivery: How to Win the e-Commerce Battle, examines an increasingly competitive delivery market that has emerged from continuing growth in online shopping and identifies strategies to help postal organizations and shipping companies retain and gain market share. Among the key findings identified by the study is that organizations need to make effective, dependable delivery options a priority in order to remain competitive. The results are based on a survey of more than 1,100 small- and medium-sized businesses across 10 countries and five continents.
The right delivery partners and easy website navigation with multiple shipping options are critical success factors for e-tailers as nearly two-thirds of digitally savvy consumers report basing a purchase decision on delivery options often abandoning shopping carts before orders are submitted if the process is cumbersome, according to a research by...#
The study surveyed 1124 businesses across ten countries.Continued projected growth of the e-commerce market underscores the importance of the research which shows that e-tailers, or online retailers, were nearly unanimous in seeing online sales growth of at least 2 per cent, with nearly half (46 per cent) of respondents projecting double digit annual online sales growth. Additionally, the study found that a majority (86 per cent) of e-tailers are planning investments to expand e-commerce activities over the next 12 months. According to the 2015 Worldwide Retail Ecommerce Report from eMarketer, retail e-commerce is projected to account for 7.3 per cent of the total 2016 retail market worldwide a 25 per cent increase from 2014 increasing significantly to 12.4 per cent by 2019.e-tailers are chasing a rapidly expanding market, in which delivery is becoming a critical differentiator and a strategic priority, said Brody Buhler, who leads Accenture's global post and parcel business. There is no doubt that e-tailers are getting strategic about delivery and so should parcel delivery organizations.Delivery impacts all stages of a consumer's buying process, increasing the pressure on retailers to provide a seamless online process to purchase and return products. The study showed that two-thirds (66 per cent) of consumers have chosen a retailer based on the number of delivery options and three-quarters (76 per cent) look at a retailer's return policy before completing an order.More than one-quarter of respondents (26 per cent) said they use at least three parcel providers to ensure the best price and to mitigate the risk of lost packages or delayed delivery that might result from relying on a single provider. Despite the possibility of one individual shipper providing all required services, a majority of e-tailers (79 per cent) still would prefer working with multiple providers.
In the wake of frequent price fluctuations of cotton and yarn, hosiery garment manufacturers urged the government to impose restrictions on the export of these articles.According to A. C. Eswaran, president of South India Hosiery Manufacturers Association, it was necessary to control the export cotton and yarn to prevent escalation of prices amidst reports that acreage under cotton cultivation in the country this season stands reduced to 19.07 lakh hectares from 34.87 lakh hectares last season.
In the wake of frequent price fluctuations of cotton and yarn, hosiery garment manufacturers urged the government to impose restrictions on the export of these articles. According to A. C. Eswaran, president of South India Hosiery Manufacturers Association, it was necessary to control the export cotton and yarn to prevent escalation of prices...#
Noting that a slight increase in cost of yarn leads to higher input costs for them, some hosiery manufacturers reportedly said that it had led to increasing the sales price by 10% .They also contended that the Cotton Corporation of India should be prevented from releasing any stock of cotton to traders.Instead, a mechanism needs to be developed to supply the cotton procured by the CCI only to the manufacturers of yarn and fabrics through a direct mode of transfer. This move will prevent hoarding and cotton will then only reach the right hands, they maintained in a report carried by The Hindu newspaper.Appealing to the government to procure cotton at attractive support prices from farmers, the industry body said it would encourage the farmers to supply only to the government machinery instead of traders and middle men who were responsible for periodic hikes in prices of cotton and yarn. (SH)
Fibre2Fashion News Desk India
India will lend Kenya $45 million to help develop the Rift Valley Textiles Factory (also called Rivatex) and other smaller industries. The announcement was made during Prime Minister Narendra Modis visit to the country as part of his recent four-nation Africa tour.The deal highlights Kenya's desire to link up with countries that can help improve its struggling manufacturing sector. India and Kenya signed a total of seven agreements during Prime Minister Modis visit.
India will lend Kenya $45 million to help develop the Rift Valley Textiles Factory (also called Rivatex) and other smaller industries. The announcement was made during Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to the country as part of his recent four-nation Africa tour. The deal highlights Kenya's desire to link up with countries that can help improve...#
Im also particularly pleased that the Indian Exim bank has extended a facility of $30 million which will go towards the revival of the Rivatex textile factory, President Uhuru Kenyatta said.The Rift Valley Textiles Factory shut down in 2000 as mismanagement of the cotton sector led to the collapse of Kenyan production.Rivatex is currently managed by Moi University which took over the firm in 2007 after it was placed under receivership. (SH)
Fibre2Fashion News Desk India
To boost wool exports and generate new job opportunities, textiles minister Smriti Irani has sought views and suggestions from the Wool and Woollen Export Promotion Council (WWEPC).
The minister sought suggestions when representatives of WWEPC met her and apprised her about the problems and various steps that need to be taken for further development of the wool industry in India.
A detailed presentation on wool sector's export performance and other issues was made before the minister by WWEPC vice chairman Rajneesh Ghai.
To boost wool exports and generate new job opportunities, textiles minister Smriti Irani has sought views and suggestions from the Wool and Woollen Export Promotion Council (WWEPC). The minister sought suggestions when representatives of WWEPC met her and apprised her about the problems and various steps that need to be taken for further development...#
The minister has assured full support from the government for solving the issues of the industry to boost exports. The minister also sought suggestions from the stakeholders for development of this sector so that more employment opportunities could be generated, WWEPC said in a statement.
The council, which has more than 1,000 members, is responsible to promote exports of wool and wool blended products like shawls. It maintains close liaison with the International Wool Secretariat and Wools of New Zealand and helps the Textile Inspection committee of India to ensure that Indian woollen products are made as per international standards.
It works with the organisers of leading international trade fairs and exhibitions, in order to project the quality and variety of Indian woollen products abroad. It also assists foreign buyers in their visits to India and chalks out their tour programmes, arrangements, etc. (RKS)
Fibre2Fashion News Desk India
A Fijian delegation is participating in a joint Agricultural Working Group meeting with the Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives of the Kingdom of Thailand to seek collaboration on a range of agricultural issues.
The 2-day meeting is a follow-up to the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) that was signed in Bangkok, Thailand in December 2015 for agricultural cooperation between Fiji and the Kingdom of Thailand by the respective Ministers for Agriculture.Ministry of Agriculture permanent secretary, Jitendra Singh said Fiji is seeking collaboration on issues such as animal nutrition, improvements in tissue culture facilities, technical expertise in virgin coconut oil (VCO) processing, veterinary services and contract farming.Thailand has also sought Fijis assistance in coconut field gene bank management and utilization of coconut varieties for VCO production. While proposals have been tabled, exchange of technical information will take place to facilitate cooperation on these issues.The MOU would pave the way to strengthen agricultural production, both countries have encouraged attachments and visits to respective agencies in Fiji and Thailand to gain further knowledge, Mr Singh said.With improved knowledge, officials will be able to ascertain the best way forward for implementation in the host countries.The Fiji delegation also visited agro-processing businesses in Bangkok to gain an understanding of their operations.The Fijian delegation included the Deputy Secretary (Agricultural Development), Uraia Waibuta, Chairman of Copra Millers, Raj Sharma, the CEO of Fiji Crop and Livestock Council, Jiu Daunivalu; Mr Calvin Kaiming of Kaiming Processors Ltd, and the Charge de Affairs of Fiji High Commission (Malaysia), Mr Pita Tagicakirewa.The meeting was chaired by Inspector-General Mrs Wimolporn Thitisak of the Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives of the Kingdom of Thailand and Co-Chaired by the Permanent Secretary for Agriculture, Jitendra Singh of Fiji.The next Joint Agricultural Working Group Meeting will be held in Fiji in 2018.-ENDS-
Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama received a donation of $87,578 from the Fijian community in Honiara towards the Prime Ministers National Disaster Relief and Rehabilitation Fund to support victims of Tropical Cyclone Winston.
Prime Minister Bainimarama thanked the diaspora community for their assistance in helping affected Fijians rebuild from the devastation caused by the cyclone.The Fijian family stretches far beyond the shores of our islands, and in our hour of need we are very appreciative to see the Fijian community in Honiara come forward with this donation. No matter the physical distances that separate us, we as Fijians share a common bond of nationhood that keeps our connections strong, and we have seen that today through this generous donation, he said.Prime Minister Bainimarama also received a donation of $156,580 from Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare towards Cyclone Winston victims. Prime Minister Bainimarama thanked the people and Government of the Solomon Islands for their donation and emphasised the importance of regional cooperation in rebuilding from natural disasters.All pacific island states are vulnerable to the disastrous effects of rising sea levels and climate change. This year, we in Fiji took a heavy blow, but regardless of where these storms make landfall, every Pacific nation needs to support each other in times of crisis. This generous assistance from the Solomon Islands is greatly appreciated by me and the Fijian people and will not be forgotten, he said.Prime Minister Sogovare said it was in everyones interest to ensure that Fiji was supported in their time of need.Prime Minister Bainimarama is currently in Honiara attending the Pacific Islands Develop Forum Leadership Summit and the Melanesian Spearhead Group Special Leadership Retreat.-ENDS-
AMBASSADOR PETER THOMSON'S SPEECH AT THE HANDOVER OF PRESIDENCY OF THE COUNCIL OF THE INTERNATIONAL SEABED AUTHORITY, JAMAICA
Secretary-General,
Deputy Secretary-GeneralExcellenciesDistinguished DelegatesLadies & GentlemenWelcome to the opening of the Council at this the Twenty-Second Session of the International Seabed Authority. I'm sure you all wish to join me in thanking the Government and People of Jamaica for once again providing us with such fine hospitality here in Kingston. Our thanks also to the Secretariat for their preparations for what will no doubt be another successful session.Change is a constant, but after more than two decades of learned deliberation, there is a solid body of knowledge and understanding of responsibilities ingrained into this institution. As I look around the conference centre, observing the faces of colleagues from sessions past mingling with those of delegates attending for the first time, I'm invigorated by a sense of continuity. It is the strength of this institutional continuity that will lead us judiciously through the challenges ahead.Permit me to note that this is the seventh consecutive annual session of the Council I have attended. What an honour it has been to have led the Fiji delegation in these chambers over the years, and to have served as President of both the Assembly and Council of the Authority. Sadly for me, tomorrow will be my last day at the Authority, as my presence is required in New York to take on further international duties. Therefore these opening remarks also constitute my farewell to the Authority.One thing I've learnt from forty-four years of public service is the importance of the baton change when your term is up and it has come time to hand over tasks and duties. Thus after the election of my successor this morning, I will be availing myself to him to convey lessons learned and advice on the work ahead. Foremost among the latter will be the Article 154 Review, since the President of the Council is required to sit on the Review Committee.Delegates will recall that at last year's session it was agreed the much-delayed review of the International Seabed Authority should stretch over two years, rather than just the one year originally proposed. The main reason for prolonging the review period was to give States Parties the opportunity to deliberate at this the 22nd annual session on the interim findings of the review consultants. I therefore encourage you all to diligently employ this fortnight's session in giving your collegiate attention to the draft findings of the review. Properly concluded at the 23rd Session next year, I've no doubt the final outcomes of the review will prove to be an important milestone in the Authority's development.If I were to leave one parting comment for the review's consideration, it would be that the International Seabed Authority must be given the necessary financial and human resources and strategic direction to lift its capacity, and indeed its authority, in the safeguarding of the environmental integrity of the planet's seabed. To my mind, this is a current deficiency at the Authority and will remain so until there is a strategic plan that we can hold ourselves accountable to.Since September last year, we have been living in the era of the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda. This universal agenda was adopted by the consensus of 193 Member States at the United Nations. It is designed to transform our world for the better, leaving none behind and guiding humanity's place on this planet to a sustainable future.Of the seventeen sustainable development goals launched by the 2030 Agenda, there are many that impinge on the responsibilities of the International Seabed Authority. But there is one in particular that must be a game-changer for the Authority going forward: Sustainable Development Goal 14, calling on humanity to conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources. Targets of this goal include the prevention of marine pollution, protecting marine ecosystems, conservation of marine areas, increasing scientific knowledge and developing research capacity. SDG14 also calls for the enhancement of the conservation and sustainable use of oceans and their resources by implementing international law as reflected in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.In support of the implementation of SDG14, the United Nations General Assembly has mandated the holding of an Oceans Conference, to be co-hosted by the Governments of Sweden and Fiji. The conference will be held in Fiji from 5th to 9th June, 2017, and all relevant stakeholders will be welcome to attend. The co-hosts are determined the conference will be a positive force in reversing the cycle of decline in which the Ocean is currently caught, be it through marine pollution, declining fish-stocks or ocean acidification and ocean warming. As one of the organizers of the conference, may I say that in the light of the International Seabed Authority's many marine responsibilities, it is expected the Authority will play a full and constructive role at the conference and the outcomes thereafter.Another international development of key relevance to the future work of the Authority is the preparation of international law to govern marine biological diversity beyond national jurisdiction, or as it is commonly known "BBNJ". A preparatory committee has been established by the United Nations General Assembly to develop substantive recommendations on the elements of a draft text for an international legally binding instrument on BBNJ under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. The preparatory committee is expected to present its report to the General Assembly in 2017.Here at the Authority we govern the international seabed, and given the juxtaposition of the seabed and the water column above it, common sense dictates that the International Seabed Authority must be intimately involved in the development of BBNJ law. Such logic can be extended to suggest there exists a strong case to be made for synergies in administration of BBNJ and the international seabed, perhaps even to the point of basing such administration here in Kingston in close coordination with the International Seabed Authority. Economies of scale alone make this suggestion worthy of serious consideration.Distinguished Delegates, as my final contribution to the International Seabed Authority, I would like to say just a few more words on the protection of the marine environment. Firstly I would underline that the fundamental concept behind the international seabed regime, and one of the key factors that distinguishes it from the regime for the high seas, is that exploitation of the resources of the international seabed is permissible only under contract to the International Seabed Authority.In other words, the whole of the international seabed, making up 54% of the Ocean's area, is off limits to any form of exploitation unless and until this Authority decides to allow it. The UN Convention on the Law of the Sea requires that the Authority will only permit access to the international seabed if it is for peaceful purposes, in keeping with the Charter of the United Nations, and if it is sure that appropriate measures are in place to prevent damage to the marine environment. The environmental regulations adopted by the Authority are binding on States Parties and those contractors who have been permitted to carry out activities on the international seabed. They are also far more stringent than any rules currently in place for the high seas.In effect, the vastness of the international seabed is a protected zone. It is under the collective ownership of humankind, with the International Seabed Authority having the heavy responsibility of acting as its custodian for the benefit of present and future generations.Having all given their solemn commitment to the Sustainable Development Goals, and in particular in this instance SDG14, the Oceans goal of the 2030 Agenda, I'm confident that States Parties will carry forward their custodial responsibilities at the International Seabed Authority with unimpeachable diligence; so that when the year 2030 is finally upon us, it will be known to all that this Authority has played in full its essential part in preserving the integrity of Ocean's environment.I thank you.
HON PM VOREQE BAINIMARAMA'S KEYNOTE ADDRESS AT THE PACIFIC ISLANDS DEVELOPMENT FORUM SUMMIT IN HONIARA, SOLOMON ISLANDS
Excellencies,
Honourable Ministers,Members of the Diplomatic Corps,Ladies and Gentlemen,This is our first Leaders Summit, and we have much to do. But I ask your indulgence while I take a short excursion back in time to review the brief but auspicious history of the Pacific Islands Development Forum.Four years ago, the call for a Pacific Islands Development Forum was endorsed by 14 Pacific Island leaders at the Engaging with the Pacific meeting held in Denarau, in Fiji.The Official Communique recorded that the Leaders had endorsed the convening of the Pacific Islands Development Forum for the purpose of engaging leaders from key sectors in implementing green economic policies in PSIDSThat inaugural meeting of the PIDF in 2013 attracted more than 300 people from more than 40 countries, 14 of them from the Pacific. Several heads of State, heads of government, ministers, deputies, ambassadors, CEOs and civil society leaders contributed passionately towards the programme of the Forum and the ten priorities for the Pacific islands.In 2014, the Summit accelerated the concept of green growth in the region with the launch of green growth frameworks for Fiji and for MSG countries. The PIDF was also by that time acting as a platform for Pacific Islands States and territories to coordinate their positions and share their ideas in the preparation of global framework.2015 was a very important year for PIDF because a number of unprecedented developments took place. After several inclusive multi-stakeholder consultations, the Charter was endorsed by the Leaders on 4th September, which provided the international legal foundation for PIDF.And a lot has happened since we last gathered in Suva last September. The Suva Declaration on Climate Change, which carried the mandate of the people of the Pacific to Paris, was a success. Its principles set the standard for discussion. In a very real sense, it was the point of departure for the meeting and for all of the conversations on climate change that have followed. One of our successes was to have the Paris Agreement include the main positions we had put forward in the Suva Declaration.So I want to warmly thank those governments, civil society organisations and private sector groups that supported the process. It was a defining moment for the wider Pacific region. In thanking all of you, I need to emphasize that now that the key timelines are specifically articulated by the Paris Agreement, the responsibility is now on all parties--including the PIDFto collaborate fully. We must form durable partnerships that will strengthen the climate-change resilience of our Pacific people by building the capacity of our institutions and educating and training our people to understand, to adapt and even to live in a somewhat different way.We are gaining strength with new partnerships and new developments. Earlier this year the United Nations confirmed the registration of our Charter, which opens the way for the PIDF to participate in all UN processes and meetings.PIDF is now at a turning point. It is now equipped with a strong professional team that should get the organisation to the next step. The process is long, but there will be great rewards as we move forward. We need to remember where we come from and what we are made of. The Principles that underpin PIDF are inclusiveness, sustainability, innovation, leadership and partnership.These Principles should guide our discussion today.I believe it is also important at this point in the evolution of the Framework of Pacific Regionalism that it would be in PIDFs interest to acknowledge the apparent overlaps with the existing agencies of the Council of Regional Organisations in the Pacific. We will need to clarify roles so that they can complement rather than compete with one another. There are many groups all trying to do good work, and we should not be running into each other or duplicating effort. And we certainly dont need competition. This is a collective responsibility and a common cause for the Pacific People.Honourable Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare, we have every confidence that PIDF will continue to advance a Green Blue Economy for the Pacific under the leadership of Solomon Islands, and we pledge you our full support.The transition to a Green Blue Economy is a long-term challenge, and we and the rest of the world will need to persevere and spare no effort as we move towards more efficient use and conservation of natural resources and greater respect for our beloved ocean. This is how we will guarantee the livelihood of future generations in the Pacific and the rest of the world. As we in PIDF know all too well, it is a collective challenge that States and private actors must assume together. We must develop strategies and embrace approaches to business, trade, infrastructure, energy, food production and employment that enshrine efficiency in the use of resources and minimise waste.To make the transition to a Green Blue economy, we will need framework conditions for innovation and a strong voluntary commitment from the business community, the scientific community and civil society. It is PIDFs role to ensure that the measures promoting the Green Blue Economy are put in place.The ten priorities we had previously adopted as leaders provide a very broad mandate. As we deliberate on the Strategic Plan before us, I urge you to consider an even stronger focus on those specific aspects that will strengthen the PIDFs unique role of harnessing the means to develop Green Blue Economies in the Pacific. This includes the reinvigoration of collaborative partnerships that accelerate climate action and oceanic conservation as part of the sustainable development in the Pacific.Such a concentration will not only allow us to pick off some low-hanging fruit before gradually expanding to the other remaining priorities. It will also be the most practical way to achieve more with less as we develop the steps we will need to take to meet accreditation guidelines that will allow us to access multilateral funding through global partnerships.We have a challenging agenda ahead of us. Lets have constructive discussions today, as we always do, as we strengthen and broaden the foundation for our historic regional cooperation.Vinaka Vakalevu. Thank you.
The Brangelina of Bollywood, Saif Ali Khan and Kareena Kapoor are expecting their first child in December. According to Bollywood Life, Saif Ali Khan and Kareena Kapoor had gone to London, where the doctors revealed they would be having a baby boy! (Yes people, you read it right!)
Kareena Kapoor and Saif Ali Khan confirmed the pregnancy news recently. Saif Ali Khan said, "My wife and I would like to announce that we are expecting our first child in December. We would like to thank our well wishers for their blessings and support and also the press for their discretion and patience.''
Want to see how Kareena Kapoor managed to hide her baby bump? Then click on the slider!
The rumuors of Kareena Kapoor's pregnancy came out when Saif and Kareena went to London and Bebo's pictures from the holidays flashed across media apparently showing her baby bump.
The gorgeous actress hid her bump smartly with the aid of dupattas, free-flowing kurtas and plazzos or airy tops. Not just that, even at the UNICEF event Kareena was trying her best to hide her baby bump. At the event, she was playing twister with some kids and was quite uncomfortable while bending down.
Later, she refused to do it saying, "This is becoming a yoga session."
A few days before confirming the news, Kareena Kapoor dropped a subtle hint that she is pregnant, "God willing hopefully. I am a woman. But right now there is nothing to say about it. The fact that you all are talking about it is making me super excited. I have five hidden children in London!"
This would be Kareena Kapoor's first child and Saif's third. Saif was earlier married to actress Amrita Singh and has two children - daughter Sara and son Ibrahim.
The Khiladi of Bollywood, Akshay Kumar, tweeted to the External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj to take necessary and speedy measures to evacuate the Indians stranded in Juba, South Sudan and the minister promptly replied to his tweet in a positive note assuring that everything will be taken care of.
The city of Juba, has witnessed violence due to clashes between anti and pro government forces, and the violence, is only escalating as the days progress. A lot of Indian nationals are stranded in the war-torn country and are looking out for help from the Indian Government.
Akshay Kumar, tweeted to Sushma Swaraj as, "@SushmaSwaraj Ma'am request for speedy measures and actions to evacuate Indians stranded in Sudan. Prayers with them. #SaveIndiansInJuba," for which Sushma Swaraj promptly replied as,
"Akshay Kumar ji - Pl do not worry. We are evacuating Indian nationals from Juba (South Sudan)."
OMG! Shahrukh Khan Shares A Picture From His Shower
The Government of India, is working out an evacuation plan for the Indian nationals stranded in the war-torn country. On July 10, 2016 the Indian Embassy in South Sudan had urged Indians in the country to stay calm and assured them that they are in constant touch with the authorities in India.
We hope the Indian Government evacuates the stranded Indians in Sudan as soon as possible and bring them back home safely.
Ileana D'Cruz's Boyfriend Clicks Mindblowing Pictures Of Her In A Bikini & Much More!
Well, it seems like Mollywood is getting back to campus stories, but, definitely in a much better and innovative way, with fresh ideas.
Oru Mexican Aparatha, is an upcoming film, which would be set in the the period of 1970's, narrating a story in the backdrop of the Maharajas college campus.
A special audition was conducted by the team of Oru Mexican Aparatha, in search of young actors who could fit in to the roles of the students.
Close to 50 people did turn up for the audition, appearing in vintage looks and the team of Oru Mexican Aparatha did sent out a photo through Facebook, mentioning that they have selected some fresh faces who would play the students of 1972 batch of Maharajas College.
Image Courtesy: Facebook
Tovino thomas, who plays the lead role in this film could be seen in the picture along with Roopesh Peethambaran, who is all set to make a comeback to acting.
According to the reports, Tovino Thomas would be seen in the role of a campus leader in this film which would be directed by debutante Tom Emmatty.
Oru Mexican Aparatha has chosen the much renowned Maharajas College in Kochi as its background. According to certain reports, the film is all set to bring back the golden days of the college on the screen.
The makers also revealed that they would be conducting one more audition to select new faces to play another batch of students.
After Yeh Hai Mohabbatein actors Divyanka Tripathi and Vivek Dahiya, here comes another big wedding of the year. Ex-Bigg Boss contestant Sambhavna Seth is all set to enter the marital bliss on 14th July, in Delhi. The actress is all excited about her marriage with Avinash Dwivedi and has been sharing her marriage updates with her fans on her social networking account.
Recently, the actress posted her pre-wedding photoshoot and the couple looked adorable in the pictures. The Mehndi ceremony was held today in Delhi, and the actress posted a few pictures on her social networking account. She also gave a clue to her fans on how she has been preparing for the Sangeet ceremony by sharing her rehearsal video.
Check Out Sambhavna's Mehndi Ceremony Pictures
At the Mehndi ceremony, the actress looked gorgeous in a red sari which had blue border. Her parents, who initially were against the marriage, also attended the function. After all, it's their daughter's marriage, right?
Posting a picture (Slide 2) snapped with her beau, Sambhavna wrote, "All set for mehendi today #wedding #mehendi #sangeet #preweddingphoto #melting #enjoying #dance #schoolfriends #weddingtrends #weddingoftheyear #happy #blessed."
After Mehndi, Sambhavna shared another picture (Slide 3) snapped with Avinash and wrote "Mehendi ki raat aayi mehendi ki raat @imavinashdwivedi #mehendi #sangeet #dance #fun #wedding #whoopwhoop."
Sambhavna and Avinash shook legs for the song 'High heels te nache' and others. The actors also posed for the photographs.
Watch: Sambhavna Seth Dances With Her Groom At Her Mehndi Ceremony
Like Divyanka and Vivek's wedding, Sambhavna's wedding will be a family affair. It is said that only her school friends would be attending the wedding, while she will meet her industry friends in Mumbai. We assume, the actor will organise for a separate party for Mumbai friends! (Images Source: Instagram)
home World Osama Bin Laden's son vows to target United States and its allies
The U.S. and its allies continue to be the prime targets of Al Qaeda militant group, warns Osama bin Laden's son, Hamza, in a recently released audio message.
"We will continue striking you and targeting you in your country and abroad in response to your oppression of the people of Palestine, Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia and the rest of the Muslim lands that did not survive your oppression," said Hamza, according to the SITE Intelligence Group.
The son, who is in his mid-20s, delivered his speech "We Are All Osama" in a 21-minute audio message released through Al Qaeda's media channel, As-Sahab.
He added, "As for the revenge by the Islamic nation for Sheik Osama, may Allah have mercy on him, it is not revenge for Osama the person but it is revenge for those who defended Islam."
Osama's son became known to public when the militant group's new chief Ayman al-Zawahiri introduced him through an audio message released last year. It is widely believed that the militant group aims to regain stronghold and inspire new recruits by grooming Hamza to become its new leader.
This won't be the first time the young bin Laden, already dubbed as "Crown Prince of Terror," addressed the world to incite terrorism. Last year, Al Qaeda released an audio message where he also spoke to inspire lone wolf attacks particularly on America and allies such as London, Washington, Paris and Tel Aviv.
"AQ leadership wants Hamza as a future leader: someone loved & inspirational, without a negative reputation or participation in infighting," tweeted Rita Katz, director of SITE.
In a series of tweets, Katz stated that Hamza has spent a considerable part of his young life marked by jihad and the creation of the militant group led by his late father in Afghanistan.
Osama died in 2011 when U.S. commandos attacked his hideout in Abbottabad, Pakistan. Hamza reportedly escaped while one of his brothers, Khalid, died during the surprise attack.
VAL D'OR, QUEBEC -- (Marketwired) -- 07/12/16 -- Hinterland Metals Inc. (TSX VENTURE: HMI) ("Hinterland") is pleased to announce that it has signed a Letter of Intent ("LOI") with Beaufield Resources Inc. (TSX VENTURE: BFD) ("Beaufield"), whereby Hinterland may earn an interest in the "Lithium Rights", defined as all elements, metals and minerals excluding precious metals (i.e., gold, silver, platinum and palladium), and base-metals (i.e., cobalt, copper, lead, nickel and zinc), attached to Beaufield's 92-claim (4441-hectare) Troilus property (the "Property") located in the Frotet-Evans area of Quebec, approximately 100 kilometres north of Chibougamau. An all-season gravel road starting from Chibougamau passes through the western part of the Property.
The Troilus claims completely surround the Moblan lithium development project held by Perilya Ltd. (60%) and Soquem Inc. (40%). A mineral resource estimate of the Moblan deposit was reported in May 2011 with a 0.60% Li2O cut-off grade as summarized in the following table (Perilya website consulted July 11, 2016):
---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Classification Tonnes Li2O % ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Measured 4,719,000 1.63 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Indicated 6,752,000 1.33 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Inferred 2,780,000 1.22 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Total 14,251,000 1.41 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Although documented lithium mineralization is present on the Moblan project in several zones immediately adjacent to the boundary with the surrounding Troilus property, very little previous exploration work has been completed on the Troilus claims. Hinterland plans to commence work immediately with a compilation of available geological data and generation of lithium exploration targets. A map of the Property can be viewed at http://www.hinterlandmetals.com/s/TroilusLi.asp
Pursuant to the LOI, Hinterland can earn a 50% interest in the Lithium Rights by issuing to Beaufield an aggregate of 2,000,000 shares (500,000 upon closing) and completing work expenditures of $1,000,000 ($200,000 in the first year) over a three year period. Upon completion of the 50% earn-in, Hinterland and Beaufield will form a joint venture with initial respective participating interests to be 50%. The transaction is subject to completion of due diligence, final documentation and approval of the TSX Venture Exchange.
Mark Fekete, P.Geo is the designated "qualified person" as defined in Section 1.2 in and for the purposes of National Instrument 43-101 that reviewed and approved the technical content of this release.
Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. This release may contain forward-looking statements that are subject to known and unknown risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to vary materially from targeted results. Such risks and uncertainties include those described in the Company's periodic reports including the annual report or in the filings made by the Company from time to time with securities regulators. The Company undertakes no obligation to publicly release the result of any revision of these forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date they are made or to reflect the occurrence of an unanticipated event.
Shares Issued 32,924,614
Contacts:
Hinterland Metals Inc.
Mark Fekete
President
1-819-354-5244
Hinterland Metals Inc.
Zak Dingsdale
Director
1-905-269-0797
info@hinterlandmetals.com
www.hinterlandmetals.com
Joyce Ang Senior Officer, Office of Corporate Communications Genome Institute of Singapore, A*STAR Tel: +65 6808 8101 Email: angjj@gis.a-star.edu.sg
SINGAPORE, July 13, 2016 - (ACN Newswire) - An international research collaboration has discovered a strong genetic risk factor for IgA nephropathy (IgAN) - the most common inflammatory kidney disease worldwide - and related renal dysfunction. Published in Science Translational Medicine, the discovery has advanced the researchers' understanding of IgAN.The prevalence of IgAN is higher in Asia than Western countries, and 15-40% of the patients will eventually progress to end-stage renal diseases within 20 years of the disease onset. Despite its global prevalence, IgAN's pathogenesis is not well understood. By investigating copy number variations (CNVs) of the alpha-defensin gene in Chinese patients with IgAN and healthy controls as well as a Caucasian cohort with IgAN, the researchers found that a low copy number of the alpha-defensin gene increases the risk of IgAN, and the CNV of alpha-defensin gene can explain the 4.96% of disease risk.In addition, the researchers also found that the low copy number of the alpha-defensin gene also increases the risk of renal dysfunction in IgAN patients and shows negative correlations with serum IgA1 and galactose-deficient IgA1. This is the first study that demonstrates the vital role of alpha-defensin gene in IgAN development and related renal dysfunction, suggesting the gene to be a potential therapeutic target for this important kidney disease.This collaboration was led by Prof Liu Jianjun, Deputy Director for Research Programmes and Senior Group Leader of Human Genetics at A*STAR's Genome Institute of Singapore (GIS), and Prof Yu Xueqing, Professor of Medicine and Director of the Institute of Nephrology at the First Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University (SYSU), and the current President of the Chinese Society of Nephrology. To date, the collaborative research team from GIS and SYSU have already discovered five novel genetic risk loci for IgAN."As a major source of genetic variation, CNVs have long been suggested to play important roles in disease development, but only a few specific CNVs have demonstrated convincing evidence. This CNV contributes more genetic risk to IgAN than the cumulative effect of all the other loci we have discovered. So, this discovery is truly exciting," said Prof Liu.Prof Yu added, "IgAN is the most common primary glomerulonephritis worldwide. However, no disease-specific treatment agents have been developed yet, due to the unknown pathogenesis of IgAN. Our findings revealed the important role of alpha-defensin gene in the development and renal progression of IgAN. It will help in exploring the specific intervention target for IgAN, and provide a solid work for the future development of disease specific targeted drugs."GIS Executive Director Prof Ng Huck Hui said, "The positive correlation between alpha-defensin gene and risk for IgAN identified in this study is a significant discovery. The translation of these findings have the potential to be beneficial to IgAN patients worldwide.""This paper provides important insights into the genetics and root causes of the world's most common primary disease of the kidney glomerulus, IgAN. The identification of a copy number variant as a genetic mechanism of disease is novel and the discovery of altered activity of alpha-defensins in IgAN pathogenesis suggests potential new avenues for therapy," said Prof Thomas Coffman, Dean of the Duke-NUS Medical School."The discovery of IgAN susceptibility gene, alpha-defensin, is a major breakthrough in the fight against the disease. It will pave the way for identifying individuals at high risk for IgAN. It may also reveal new treatment target (i.e. its protein product - human neutrophil peptides) to prevent the onset and progression of IgAN," said Dr Lim Su Chi, Clinical Director, Clinical Research Unit at the Khoo Teck Puat Hospital.Notes to Editor:The research findings described in this media release can be found in the scientific journal Science Translational Medicine, under the title, "Low alpha-defensin gene copy number increases the risk for IgA nephropathy and renal dysfunction" by Zhen Ai1,2*, Ming Li1,2*, Wenting Liu1,2*, Jia-Nee Foo3, Omniah Mansouri4, Peiran Yin1,2, Qian Zhou1,2, Xueqing Tang1,2, Xiuqing Dong1,2, Shaozhen Feng1,2, Ricong Xu1,2, Zhong Zhong1,2, Jian Chen5, Jianxin Wan6, Tanqi Lou7, Jianwen Yu1,2, Qin Zhou1,2, Jinjin Fan1,2, Haiping Mao1,2, Daniel Gale8, Jonathan Barratt9, John A. L. Armour4, Jianjun Liu3,10,11**, Xueqing Yu1,2**1 Department of Nephrology, The First Affiliated Hospital, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, Guangdong 510080, China.2 Key Laboratory of Nephrology, Ministry of Health and Guangdong Province, Guangzhou, Guangdong 510080, China.3 Human Genetics, Genome Institute of Singapore, Singapore 138672, Singapore.4 School of Life Sciences, University of Nottingham, Queen's Medical Centre, Nottingham NG7 2UH, UK.5 Department of Nephrology, Fuzhou General Hospital of Nanjing Military Command, Fuzhou, Fujian 350025, China.6 Department of Nephrology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Fujian Medical University, Fuzhou, Fujian 350005, China.7 Department of Nephrology, The Third Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, Guangdong 510630, China.8 University College London Centre for Nephrology, Royal Free Hospital, London NW3 2PF, UK.9 Department of Infection, Immunity and Inflammation, University of Leicester, Leicester LE1 9HN, UK.10 School of Biological Sciences, Anhui Medical University, Hefei, Anhui 230032, China.11 Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, National University of Singapore, Singapore 119077, Singapore.* These authors contributed equally to this work.** Corresponding author. Email: yuxq@mail.sysu.edu.cn (X.Y.); liuj3@gis.a-star.edu.sg (J.L.)Full text of the Science Translational Medicine paper can be accessed online from: http://stm.sciencemag.org/content/8/345/345ra88About A*STAR's Genome Institute of Singapore (GIS)The Genome Institute of Singapore (GIS) is an institute of the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR). It has a global vision that seeks to use genomic sciences to achieve extraordinary improvements in human health and public prosperity. Established in 2000 as a centre for genomic discovery, the GIS will pursue the integration of technology, genetics and biology towards academic, economic and societal impact.The key research areas at the GIS include Human Genetics, Infectious Diseases, Cancer Therapeutics and Stratified Oncology, Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology, Cancer Stem Cell Biology, Computational and Systems Biology, and Translational Research.The genomics infrastructure at the GIS is utilised to train new scientific talent, to function as a bridge for academic and industrial research, and to explore scientific questions of high impact. For more information about GIS, please visit www.gis.a-star.edu.sgAbout A*STARThe Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) is Singapore's lead public sector agency that spearheads economic oriented research to advance scientific discovery and develop innovative technology. Through open innovation, we collaborate with our partners in both the public and private sectors to benefit society.As a Science and Technology Organisation, A*STAR bridges the gap between academia and industry. Our research creates economic growth and jobs for Singapore, and enhances lives by contributing to societal benefits such as improving outcomes in healthcare, urban living, and sustainability.We play a key role in nurturing and developing a diversity of talent and leaders in our Agency and Research Institutes, the wider research community and industry. A*STAR oversees 18 biomedical sciences and physical sciences and engineering research entities primarily located in Biopolis and Fusionopolis. For more information on A*STAR, please visit www.a-star.edu.sgSource: A*STARContact:Copyright 2016 ACN Newswire . All rights reserved.
MOUNTAIN VIEW (dpa-AFX) - Google, a unit of Alphabet Inc. (GOOGL, GOOG), got extra time from European Union regulators to defend itself from European Union antitrust allegations that it wields its power over smartphone software to crush competition for mobile applications. Google now has until September 7 to respond to a statement of objections sent in April. The company sought additional time to review evidence held by regulators. By sending a statement of objections, the EU paved the way for potentially huge fines and radical changes to the way the company does business. The move came a year after the EU issued a formal complaint over Google's comparison-shopping service. Regulators are also preparing objections targeting Google's advertising business and an additional complaint over an older probe into its shopping-search service. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX
Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
SINGAPORE, July 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --
QuEST Global is proud to announce that HASK Engineering & Management Pte. Ltd., headquartered in Singapore, will now be part of QuEST Global. This strategic acquisition will:
- Increase QuEST Global's strategic delivery footprint in Singapore as well as augment our engineering excellence in the power generation and oil & gas domains
- Complement QuEST's technical capabilities in Process, Safety, Structural Skin Stress, Piping, Mechanical, Packaging, Electrical, and Instrumentation
Founded in 2006, HASK's engineering services division, HASK Professionals, provides clients with highly qualified global engineering professionals. HASK has a wide network and international presence and delivers locally, in line with QuEST's local-global delivery model. HASK has been successful in capable capacity ramp-up for onshore and offshore solutions in power & energy, oil & gas, marine & offshore, for various projects in power generation, thermal, cogeneration, deepwater drilling, jackets/structures, topsides, floating facilities, living quarter, topsides for FPSO, FSO, process platform, specialty modules, marine engineering, wellhead, LNG E-house modules.
HASK Founderand Managing Director, RK Herojit remarks, "We are excited about the integration of HASK Engineering by QuEST Global. I would like to thank QuEST for recognizing the entrepreneurial spirit and empowering us. The combination of the two companies brings great opportunity for our customers and employees. Our capability and QuEST's proven scalable processes, and infrastructure will create a very formidable competitive service offering to our customers. We are looking forward to working with QuEST to build a world-class engineering service capability for the Energy Industry."
Commenting on the integration of HASK, CEO Ajit Prabhu, QuEST Global said, "We are constantly on the lookout for outstanding engineering talent. This strategic move will strengthen our position in the Energy vertical as well as our delivery capabilities in Singapore. With its strong talent pool, excellent market connectivity Singapore is an integral part of our vision and investments."
About QuEST Global
QuEST Global is a focused global engineering solutions provider with a proven track record of 19 years serving the product development and production engineering needs of high technology companies in the aero engines, aerospace & defence, hi-tech & industrial, medical devices, oil & gas, power, and transportation industries. The company offers mechanical, electrical, electronics, embedded, engineering software, engineering analytics, manufacturing engineering and supply chain transformative solutions across the complete engineering lifecycle.
Press Contact: Hema.varlani@quest-global.com
CALGARY, ALBERTA -- (Marketwired) -- 07/13/16 -- Lightstream Resources Ltd. (the "Company" or "Lightstream") (TSX: LTS) announces that, as a result of our previously announced discussions with an ad hoc committee (the "Ad Hoc Committee") of the holders (the "Secured Noteholders") of the Company's US$650 million 9.875% second lien secured notes due June 15, 2019 (the "Secured Notes"), the Company has entered into a restructuring support agreement (the "Support Agreement") with members of the Ad Hoc Committee holding approximately 91.5% of the Secured Notes in respect of a proposed recapitalization (the "Recapitalization") of the Company's Secured Notes, the Company's US$254 million of 8.625% unsecured notes due February 1, 2020 (the "Unsecured Notes"), the Company's common shares (the "Common Shares") and the Company's revolving credit facility (the "Revolving Facility"). The proposed Recapitalization will reduce the Company's overall debt by approximately US$904 million (approximately CDN$1.175 billion) in principal and reduce our cash interest payments by over US$86.1 million (approximately CDN$112 million) per year.
The proposed Recapitalization is intended to be implemented by way of a corporate plan of arrangement (the "CBCA Plan Transaction") under the Canada Business Corporations Act (the "CBCA"). In connection with the proposed CBCA Plan Transaction, the Company intends to commence proceedings under the CBCA (the "CBCA Proceedings") before the Court of Queen's Bench of Alberta (the "Court") tomorrow, July 13, 2016. As part of the CBCA Proceedings, the Company will be seeking a preliminary interim order (the "Preliminary Interim Order") from the Court. The Preliminary Interim Order being sought by the Company will contain a stay prohibiting any person, including the Secured Noteholders and holders of the Unsecured Notes (the "Unsecured Noteholders"), other than the lenders under the Revolving Facility (the "Lenders"), from terminating, making any demand, accelerating, amending or declaring in default or taking any enforcement steps under any contract or other agreement to which the Company is a party. The Company has also entered into a separate forbearance agreement with the Lenders in connection with the Revolving Facility (the "Forbearance Agreement"), as described in further detail below, and, as such, the Company will not be seeking a stay in respect of the Lenders under the Preliminary Interim Order. Lightstream intends to continue to operate our business and satisfy our obligations to our service providers, suppliers, contractors and employees in the ordinary course of business as we pursue completion of the Recapitalization.
The Preliminary Interim Order sought by the Company will seek authorization to return to the Court on or before August 5, 2016 to seek a further order in the CBCA Proceedings (the "Interim Order Application") authorizing the Company to call, hold and conduct the required special meetings (the "Special Meetings") of the Secured Noteholders, the Unsecured Noteholders and the holders of Common Shares (the "Shareholders") to consider and vote on the CBCA Plan Transaction.
Lightstream and the Ad Hoc Committee are continuing to negotiate and finalize the terms of the proposed CBCA Plan Transaction and are working to finalize the documentation necessary to implement the proposed Recapitalization, including the CBCA plan of arrangement. The precise terms of the CBCA Plan Transaction, further details of which are set forth below, will be fully disclosed as part of the Interim Order Application and in the management information circular that will be prepared and delivered to Secured Noteholders, Unsecured Noteholders and Shareholders in connection with the Special Meetings. The Company will issue a further press release when the exact record date and meeting date for such Special Meetings have been determined.
If all requisite approvals are obtained, the CBCA Plan Transaction will bind all Secured Noteholders, Unsecured Noteholders and Shareholders.
The completion of the Recapitalization is subject to a number of conditions, including that all required stakeholder, third-party, regulatory, Court and stock exchange approvals, consents or waivers must have been received (or, in the case of waiting or suspensory periods, such waiting or suspensory periods shall have expired or terminated) and, in the event that the Recapitalization proceeds by way of the CBCA Plan Transaction, Lightstream must have entered into an additional forbearance agreement with our Lenders, replaced the Revolving Facility with a new credit facility and, upon the completion of the CBCA Plan Transaction, the Lightstream board of directors must be constituted in a manner acceptable to the Ad Hoc Committee.
In the event that the requisite approvals in respect of the CBCA Plan Transaction are not obtained or the Company is otherwise unable to complete the CBCA Plan Transaction, the Company has agreed to pursue the Recapitalization through a sale transaction (the "CCAA Sale Transaction") that will be implemented through proceedings commenced under the Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act (the "CCAA"), further details of which are set forth below.
Should the CBCA Plan Transaction ultimately not proceed, and in order to ensure that the Company is able to implement the CCAA Sale Transaction in a timely fashion, the Company will initiate a sale and investment solicitation process ("SISP") on July 13, 2016 which is intended to generate interest in and potentially divest the business and/or the assets of the Company, with the goal of maximizing value for all stakeholders of the Company and identifying the best available transaction in the event that the CBCA Plan Transaction does not proceed. TD Securities Inc. has been engaged by Lightstream to manage the SISP.
As previously announced on June 14, 2016, Lightstream determined that it would not make the interest payment in the amount of US$32.1 million (approximately CDN$41.7 million) on the Secured Notes on June 15, 2016. Under the indenture governing the Secured Notes (the "Secured Indenture"), Lightstream had a 30-day grace period to make such payment. If the Company fails to make the required interest payment by July 15, 2016, there will be an event of default under the Secured Indenture, which will in turn cause a cross default under the Revolving Facility and the indenture governing the Unsecured Notes (the "Unsecured Indenture"). The commencement of the CBCA Proceedings is also a cross default under the Revolving Facility and a cross default under the Unsecured Indenture. Upon the occurrence of a cross default under the Revolving Facility, all obligations owing under the Revolving Facility, together with unpaid interest accrued thereon will become immediately due and payable. Lightstream has determined that it will not make the requisite interest payment on the Secured Notes and therefore the Company will be in default under its Revolving Facility, Secured Indenture and Unsecured Indenture on July 15, 2016.
As noted above, if the Preliminary Interim Order being requested is granted by the Court, the Secured Noteholders and Unsecured Noteholders will be stayed under the Preliminary Interim Order in connection with such defaults but the Lenders under the Revolving Facility are not expected to be subject to the stay. Instead, the Company (along with certain of its subsidiaries) has entered into the Forbearance Agreement with The Toronto-Dominion Bank, as Administrative Agent and other Lenders under the Revolving Facility. Under the terms of the Forbearance Agreement, among other things, the Lenders have agreed, subject to customary conditions, to forbear from exercising their enforcement rights and remedies arising on account of the cross defaults until July 28, 2016, including in respect of the Company's hedging liabilities. The Company will work toward entering into a second forbearance agreement with the Lenders on or before July 28, 2016. The Company expects that the second forbearance of the Lenders would be subject to a number of conditions including that Lightstream would diligently advance the CBCA Plan Transaction and the SISP and obtain commitments for a new credit facility to be in place upon the completion of the CBCA Plan or the CCAA Sale Transaction, as applicable.
The Company has cash on hand, currently in excess of $26.4 million, and monthly oil and gas sales revenue which averaged $26.7 million per month for the previous two months. Lightstream intends to continue to operate our business and satisfy our obligations to our service providers, suppliers, contractors and employees in the ordinary course of business as we pursue the completion of the Recapitalization.
Additional Details Respecting the Proposed Recapitalization
As noted above, the parties are continuing to negotiate and finalize the more detailed terms of the proposed Recapitalization and are working to finalize the documentation necessary to implement the proposed Recapitalization. However, the features of the proposed CBCA Plan Transaction are expected to include the following key elements:
-- prior to the CBCA Plan Transaction, the Company will seek to continue as a CBCA company; -- the Secured Noteholders, Unsecured Noteholders and Shareholders will each be placed in their own voting class for the purposes of considering and voting on the proposed CBCA Plan Transaction; -- Lightstream's Shareholder Rights Plan will be terminated and all rights thereunder will be cancelled and extinguished; -- on implementation of the proposed CBCA Plan Transaction, the capital structure of the Company will be as follows: -- the existing Common Shares will be consolidated and new Common Shares will be issued, with the result that approximately 100 million Common Shares will be outstanding, -- existing Shareholders will hold a total of 2.25% of the then- outstanding Common Shares and existing Shareholders will also receive Series 2 warrants equal to 7.75% of the total number of issued Common Shares (the Series 2 warrants will be exercisable for a period of five years following the effective date of the CBCA Plan Transaction and have a sliding scale exercise price between CDN$12.88 and CDN$14.96), -- the Secured Noteholders will hold a total of 95% of the then- outstanding Common Shares in full and final satisfaction of their Secured Notes and claims in connection therewith, -- the Unsecured Noteholders will hold a total of 2.75% of the then- outstanding Common Shares in addition to Series 1 warrants equal to 5% of the total number of issued Common Shares (the Series 1 warrants will be exercisable for a period of five years following the effective date of the CBCA Plan Transaction and have a sliding scale exercise price between CDN$10.25 and CDN$11.77), in full and final satisfaction of their Unsecured Notes and claims in connection therewith, -- no fractional Common shares or warrants will be issued and any fractional Common Shares or warrants that would have been issuable shall be rounded down to the nearest whole number, and -- the Company will endeavour to maintain the listing of its Common Shares on the Toronto Stock Exchange; -- the Revolving Facility will be replaced with a new credit facility; -- all incentive shares and deferred compensation shares under Lightstream's employee incentive plans will be adjusted to reflect the capital reorganization contemplated by the CBCA Plan Transaction and will have a maximum term of six months following completion of the Recapitalization; -- all outstanding stock options will be repurchased for nominal consideration or otherwise be terminated; -- Lightstream will amalgamate with our wholly owned subsidiary and continue to carry on business as a CBCA company; -- following implementation of the proposed CBCA Plan Transaction, the ownership percentages in the capital structure of Lightstream will be subject to post-implementation dilution to the extent that any Series 1 warrants, Series 2 warrants or existing options, incentive shares and deferred compensation shares existing under the Company's equity based compensation plans are exercised, or any Common Shares are issued pursuant to the Company's employee incentive plans; -- the board of directors of reorganized Lightstream shall consist of (i) the current Chief Executive Officer, (ii) one or more existing directors acceptable to the Ad Hoc Committee and (iii) other new individuals acceptable to the Ad Hoc Committee; -- the completion of the CBCA Transaction is expected to result in the creation of new "control persons" (as such term is defined in applicable securities laws) of the Company; -- all priority claims, including, without limitation, taxes payable and unpaid wages, will remain unaffected; and -- all trade debt will remain unaffected.
In the event that the CBCA Plan Transaction is not approved or is otherwise unable to be completed, as noted above, the Company has agreed to undertake a CCAA Sale Transaction. As part of the proceedings under the CCAA, the members of the Ad Hoc Committee will make (or direct) a credit bid (the "Secured Credit Bid") for the full amount of the claims outstanding in respect of the Secured Notes, which Secured Credit Bid may serve as a stalking horse transaction in the SISP. In the event that the Secured Credit Bid is the successful bid, the entity through which the Secured Credit Bid is completed will commit to replicate any consideration that was offered to the Unsecured Noteholders or Shareholders in the CBCA Plan Transaction as part of the Secured Credit Bid, provided that the consideration will only be available to the Unsecured Noteholders or Shareholders if they, as a class, approved the CBCA Plan Transaction at the requisite levels at the meetings held by Lightstream to approve the CBCA Plan Transaction. In the event that the Secured Credit Bid is not the successful bid that is approved in the proceedings under the CCAA and the Secured Noteholders are repaid the full amount of their claims in respect of the Secured Notes, then upon receipt of such repayment, the members of the Ad Hoc Committee have agreed to make CDN$20 million available to the Shareholders provided that the Shareholders approved the CBCA Plan Transaction at the requisite level at the meeting held by Lightstream to approve the CBCA Plan Transaction.
Annual General Meeting
With a view to reducing the expense and inconvenience to Shareholders associated with holding two separate meetings, Lightstream sought and received an extension from the TSX to postpone our Annual General Meeting to as late as September 30, 2016 in order to accommodate the Shareholder vote required for the Recapitalization. The Company will issue a press release when the exact record date and meeting date have been determined.
Information Provided to the Ad Hoc Committee
As part of our negotiations with the Ad Hoc Committee, and pursuant to confidentiality agreements, the Company provided Secured Noteholders who were parties to such agreements, with certain internal financial projections regarding the Company, including internal production forecasts, budgeting scenarios and reserves sensitivity analyses (the "Restructuring Information"). A copy of the Restructuring Information has been posted on the Company's website at www.lightstreamresources.com. This Restructuring Information was prepared by management of the Company as at May 31, 2016, represents a small sample of a number of possible scenarios and is subject to interpretation as well as a number of significant assumptions. As a result, readers are cautioned that the Restructuring Information does not necessarily reflect the Company's current circumstances or the current estimates or projections of management. Neither the board of directors of the Company nor any of its committees approved the projections or analyses contained in the Restructuring Information.
The Company does not, as a matter of course, publish reserves sensitivity analyses or our budgets or publish internal projections or forecasts of our anticipated financial position, expenditures, cash balances or cash flows. The Restructuring Information was prepared for the purposes of negotiating the transactions contemplated in the Support Agreement and was not prepared with a view to being disclosed publicly. It has been posted to the Company's website only because such information was made available to certain members of the Ad Hoc Committee and is not appropriate for any other purpose. Therefore, the Restructuring Information should not be regarded as an indication that Lightstream or any other person considered, or now considers, this information to be necessarily predictive of actual future results, and does not constitute an admission or representation by any person that such information is material, or that the expectations, beliefs, opinions, and assumptions that underlie such information remain the same as of the date of this press release. Given the highly speculative nature of the information provided and the assumptions underlying it, as well as the fact that the information represents only one of a number of possible scenarios, Lightstream does not view the Restructuring Information provided to the members of the Ad Hoc Committee and as subsequently posted to the Lightstream website as material. The Restructuring Information may be incomplete, may no longer be accurate, is subject to interpretation and should not be relied upon by any person in making an investment decision or for any other purpose.
In all cases, the Restructuring Information is also subject to significant risks, including the risk factors set forth in the Company's annual information form for the year-ended December 31, 2015 which is filed under the Company's profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com (the "AIF") under the heading "Risk Factors" and under the headings "Risks and uncertainties" and "Sensitivities" in the Company's management's discussion and analysis for the year-ended December 31, 2015 and for the three-months ended March 31, 2016 which are also filed on SEDAR.
In addition to the foregoing, the financial information provided in the Restructuring Information was not prepared in accordance with International Financial Reporting Standards and is therefore unlikely to be comparable to similar information presented by other issuers. Neither the independent auditor of the Company nor any other independent accountant has examined the Restructuring Information nor expressed any opinion or other form of assurance on such Restructuring Information. For financial information respecting the Company, reference should be made to the Company's annual audited financial statements for the year-ended December 31, 2015 and accompanying management's discussion and analysis and its interim financial statements for the three-months ended March 31, 2016 and accompanying management's discussion and analysis, as filed on SEDAR. Further, as the Restructuring Information was not prepared with a view to being disclosed publicly, the internal production forecasts and reserves sensitivity analyses provided in the Restructuring Information was not prepared in accordance with National Instrument 51-101 - Standards of Disclosure for Oil and Gas Activities or the related staff notices of the Canadian Securities Administrators and therefore should not be relied upon by investors. Information respecting the Company's reserves and resources is available in the Company's AIF under the headings "Statement of Reserves Data" and "Additional Information Relating to Reserves Data".
With respect to the Restructuring Information and subject to applicable securities laws, the Company does not intend to or anticipate that we will, and we further disclaim any obligation to furnish updated projections, sensitivity analyses or forecasts or similar forward looking information to holders of securities issued by the Company or to include such information in documents required to be filed with the applicable Canadian Securities Administrators or otherwise make such information publicly available.
Lightstream has retained TD Securities Inc. and Evercore Capital L.L.C. as our financial advisors, Lightstream's Board retained RBC Capital Markets as their independent financial advisor, and the Ad Hoc Committee retained BMO Capital Markets as its financial advisor for the recapitalization plan.
This press release provides only summary information in respect of the proposed Recapitalization, including only summary information relating to the terms of the Support Agreement, the Forbearance Agreement and the Preliminary Interim Order. Readers are urged to consult the full text of the Support Agreement, Forbearance Agreement and Order for further important information. Copies of these documents will be filed under the Company's profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com and posted on the Company's website at www.lightstreamresources.com.
Lightstream Resources Ltd. is an oil and gas exploration and production company focused on light oil in the Bakken and Cardium resource plays. We are committed to delivering industry leading operating netbacks, strong cash flows and consistent operating results through leading edge technology applied to a multi-year inventory of existing and emerging resource play opportunities. Our long-term strategy is to efficiently develop our assets and deliver an attractive dividend yield.
Forward Looking Information. Certain information provided in this press release constitutes forward-looking information (within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities laws). Specifically, this press release contains forward-looking information in respect of the Recapitalization and the matters related thereto including the anticipated timing of certain events, including the timing, form, substance and receipt of the Preliminary Interim Order (including any stay proceedings) and the timing of the Interim Order Application, the second forbearance agreement, the negotiation of the final terms thereof, the commencement of the SISP and the ability of Lightstream to continue to operate its business in the ordinary course while pursuing the Recapitalization. The forward-looking statements are based on information currently available as well as certain expectations and assumptions concerning anticipated financial performance, business prospects and general market conditions. Although Lightstream believes that the expectations and assumptions on which the forward-looking statements are based are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on the forward-looking statements because Lightstream can give no assurance that they will prove to be correct. Since forward-looking statements address future events and conditions, by their very nature they involve inherent risks and uncertainties. Actual results could differ materially from those currently anticipated due to a number of factors and risks, which risks include, without limitation that the Company may not be able to complete the Recapitalization on the timeline or on the terms currently contemplated or at all, the Recapitalization may have an effect on the Company other than what is currently anticipated, the pursuit of the Recapitalization may divert management time and attention away from other business matters and that the Company's business is exposed to commodity price and exchange rate fluctuations and changes in the general conditions in the oil and gas industry and in general economic conditions. In addition, the Company is exposed to each of the risks set forth in the AIF which has been filed on SEDAR and can be accessed at www.sedar.com. Except as may be required by applicable securities laws, Lightstream assumes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking information provided herein or otherwise, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.
Contacts:
Lightstream Resources Ltd.
John D. Wright
President and Chief Executive Officer
403.268.7800
Lightstream Resources Ltd.
Peter D. Scott
Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
403.268.7800
Lightstream Resources Ltd.
Annie C. Belecki
General Counsel
403.268.7800
403.218.6075 (FAX)
ir@lightstreamres.com
www.lightstreamresources.com www.lightstreamresources.com
CANBERA (dpa-AFX) - The Australian dollar weakened against the other major currencies in the Asian session on Wednesday. The Australian dollar fell to 0.7585 against the U.S. dollar and 78.85 against the yen, from yesterday's closing quotes of 0.7622 and 79.78, respectively. Against the euro and the Canadian dollar, the aussie dropped to 1.4575 and 0.9922 from yesterday's closing quotes of 1.4507 and 0.9941, respectively. If the aussie extends its downtrend, it is likely to find support around 0.73 against the greenback, 74.00 against the yen, 1.49 against the euro and 0.97 against the loonie. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX
Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
BRUSSELS (dpa-AFX) - Japan's preliminary industrial production data for May is due to be released at 12:30 am ET Wednesday. Ahead of the data, the yen held steady against its major rivals. As of 12:25 am ET, the yen was trading at 115.32 against the euro, 138.53 against the pound, 105.45 against the Swiss franc and 104.23 against the U.S. dollar. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX
Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
Ekinops, a leading supplier of next-generation optical network equipment for high-speed telecommunications networks, has been selected by Orange to supply 100G solutions for its very high capacity international long haul networks.
In order to meet the needs of telecommunications operators faced with the explosion of often unpredictable data traffic, Ekinops has developed a long haul 100G solution that increases the capacity of existing optical networks. This solution, based on the Ekinops 360 platform, will be deployed by Orange starting in the second half of 2016, on segments of its terrestrial high-speed broadband network, which represents 18,000 km of optical fiber in France and internationally (Europe, USA, and Singapore).
By facilitating the deployment and increasing the capacity of the major international routes, this technology will enable Orange to better serve its subsidiaries and corporate clients worldwide, as well as customers in the wholesale market.
Jean-Luc Vuillemin, Senior Vice President International Networks, Infrastructures Services at Orange, said:
"This Ekinops 100G solution, powerful and simple to set up, meets very well our challenges of increasing our high-capacity routes, which we want fast and flexible.
Didier Bredy, Chief Executive Officer of Ekinops, said:
"We are very proud to have earned Orange's trust for this strategic application with massive potential and to offer an innovative solution to one of the largest carriers. This validates that our strategy and Ekinops' products are in line with the requirements of Tier 1 service providers."
After a laboratory test period and further field tests, Orange has validated the Ekinops solution as it can be deployed quickly and is quite easy to manage, operate and integrate into existing networks, thanks to the solution's interoperability with other equipment on the market.
About Ekinops
Ekinops is a leading supplier of next generation optical transport equipment for telecommunications service providers. The Ekinops 360 addresses metro, regional, and long haul applications with a single, highly-integrated platform. Ekinops is a market-leading innovator in 100G and 200G transport with a coherent line of products that truly optimizes optical networks and comes in 1RU, 2RU or 7RU chassis. The Ekinops 360 relies on the highly programmable Ekinops T-Chip (Transport-on-a-Chip) architecture that enables fast, flexible and cost-effective delivery of new services for high-speed, high-capacity transport. Using the Ekinops 360 carrier-grade system, operators can simply increase capacity of their networks CWDM, DWDM, Ethernet, ESCON, Fibre Channel, SONET/SDH, and uncompressed video (HD-SDI, SD-SDI, ASI). Ekinops is headquartered in Lannion, France, and Ekinops Corp., a wholly-owned subsidiary, is incorporated in the USA. For more information, visit ekinops.net.
Mnemonic code: EKI
Number of shares: 5,769,827
View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160712006233/en/
Contacts:
Ekinops
Dominique Arestan, +33 (0)1 49 97 04 03
Marketing Communications Director
Mobile: +33 (0)6 42 10 95 05
darestan@ekinops.net
WARSAW, Poland, July 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --
Sii, the leading IT and engineering services provider in Poland, has come to the end of the European Business Awards - one of the most prestigious business competitions supporting European businesses - with two titles. Sii was named National Champion, in the category of ELITE Award for Growth Strategy of the Year, and National Public Champion for Poland. This makes Sii the winning choice of both an independent jury composed of personalities from the world of business, science, media and politics and the international business community.
(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160711/388146 )
Only this year, Sii has received six other awards. The company was recognized for best outsourcing services and growth dynamics at the Outsourcing Stars and CEE Shared Services & Outsourcing Awards, and singled out as Best Place to Work and Great Place to Work in IT by Computerworld, for the fourth consecutive year. It also appears on the prestigious Inc. 5000 Europe list of private companies, boasting outstanding growth.
Sii's Success Story
The EBAs are a culmination of Sii's success story, celebrating its 10th anniversary this year.
The company began in 2006 as a one-person start-up, established by Gregoire Nitot, and within a decade has become the largest provider of IT and engineering services in Poland and the biggest and most dynamic company in the Sii Group.
Currently, Sii employs over 2300 specialists, in eight branches of the company, situated in major Polish cities, and provides services in an array of disciplines: software development & maintenance, IT infrastructure, service desk and user support, testing and quality assurance, engineering and training. It is organized across ten competence centers, provided in four flexible cooperation models, depending on the needs of the client.
Trusted Offshore IT-Partner
Sii's portfolio includes over 200 clients from 18 countries, and various industry sectors - mainly banking & financial, telecommunications & media, professional services and the automotive and electronic industries.
The partner of renowned IT solution providers, such as Microsoft, IBM and Oracle, delivers its services within four flexible cooperation models, starting from specialist outsourcing, through the leasing of entire teams of specialists to carry out end-to-end projects. Sii also provides managed services for system maintenance and application management.
Find out more about the company by watching the video promoting Sii at the Business Awards 2015/2016 and visiting sii.pl.
Contact: Emilia Iwinska, 0048512943268
Dr. Sanjiv Agarwala Presented PV-10 Phase 3 Study Design in Symposium on Current Clinical Trials
Provectus Biopharmaceuticals, Inc. (NYSE MKT:PVCT, www.provectusbio.com), a clinical-stage oncology and dermatology biopharmaceutical company ("Provectus" or the "Company"), today announced that data on PV-10 as a treatment for melanoma was presented June 30, 2016 at the 6th European Post-Chicago Melanoma/Skin Cancer Meeting in Munich, Germany.
Sanjiv Agarwala, MD, Professor of Medicine at Temple University, Chief, Oncology Hematology at St. Luke's Cancer Center in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and Global Lead Investigator for the phase 3 study of PV-10 in locally advanced cutaneous melanoma (protocol PV-10-MM-31), participated in a symposium, "Current Clinical Trials I." His presentation covered the status of clinical trials of leading oncolytic agents for the treatment of soft tissue and skin metastases, including the ongoing phase 3 study of PV-10 and the phase 1b study of PV-10 in combination with pembrolizumab (Keytruda).
During his presentation, Dr. Agarwala noted that "systemic therapy is not always possible or appropriate" for patients with locally advanced disease, and that "local-regional control of soft tissue/skin metastases is clinically important." Touching on six different types of oncolytic therapy, he highlighted key efficacy and safety data for PV-10 when used for direct ablation of dermal and soft tissue metastases, and noted that PV-10 is the only one currently being studied as both monotherapy and in the combination setting (with pembrolizumab). With regard to combination therapy, he noted that newer intralesional therapies like PV-10 are the "backbone for future combinations" since they are capable of producing a systemic anti-tumor immune response complementary to that of immune checkpoint inhibitors.
To view his presentation, please visit http://www.pvct.com/presentation/EuropeanPostChicago-2016
For more information about the meeting visit: http://www.melanomaglobal2016.org/.
About Provectus Biopharmaceuticals, Inc.
Provectus Biopharmaceuticals is investigating new therapies for the treatment of skin cancer, liver cancer and breast cancer. Provectus' investigational oncology drug, PV-10, is an ablative immunotherapy under investigation in solid tumor cancers. The Company has received orphan drug designations from the FDA for its melanoma and hepatocellular carcinoma indications. PH-10, its topical investigational drug for dermatology, is undergoing clinical testing for psoriasis and atopic dermatitis. Provectus has completed Phase 2 trials of PV-10 as a therapy for metastatic melanoma, and of PH-10 as a topical treatment for atopic dermatitis and psoriasis. Information about these and the Company's other clinical trials can be found at the NIH registry, www.clinicaltrials.gov For additional information about Provectus, please visit the Company's website at www.provectusbio.comor contact Porter, LeVay Rose, Inc.
FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS: This release contains "forward-looking statements" as defined under U.S. federal securities laws. These statements reflect management's current knowledge, assumptions, beliefs, estimates, and expectations and express management's current views of future performance, results, and trends and may be identified by their use of terms such as "anticipate," "believe," "could," "estimate," "expect," "intend," "may," "plan," "predict," "project," "will," and other similar terms. Forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause our actual results to materially differ from those described in the forward-looking statements. Readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. Such statements are made as of the date hereof, and we undertake no obligation to update such statements after this date.
Risks and uncertainties that could cause our actual results to materially differ from those described in forward-looking statements include those discussed in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (including those described in Item 1A of our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2015) and the following:
our determination, based on guidance from the FDA, whether to proceed with or without a partner with the fully enrolled phase 3 trial of PV-10 to treat locally advanced cutaneous melanoma and the costs associated with such a trial if it is necessary to complete (versus interim data alone);
our determination whether to license PV-10, our investigational drug product for melanoma and other solid tumors such as cancers of the liver, if such licensure is appropriate considering the timing and structure of such a license, or to commercialize PV-10 on our own to treat melanoma and other solid tumors such as cancers of the liver;
our ability to license PH-10, our investigational drug product for dermatology, on the basis of our phase 2 atopic dermatitis and psoriasis results, which are in the process of being further developed in conjunction with mechanism of action studies; and
our ability to raise additional capital if we determine to commercialize PV-10 and/or PH-10 on our own, although our expectation is to be acquired by a prospective pharmaceutical or biotech concern prior to commercialization.
View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160713005333/en/
Contacts:
Porter, LeVay Rose, Inc.
Investor Relations
Marlon Nurse, DM, SVP, 212-564-4700
or
Allison Partners
Media Relations
Todd Aydelotte, 646-428-0644
Managing Director
or
Provectus Biopharmaceuticals, Inc.
Peter R. Culpepper, Interim CEO, COO, 866-594-5999 #30
MOSCOW, July 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --
DCA (Data-Centric Alliance) - a Russian company that specializes in ad technologies based on audience data - announces new capabilities for the engine of the Exebid.DCA, a programmatic demand side platform (DSP). The new version of the platform supports the purchase of audiences in the Americas, Europe, the Asia-Pacific region and China.
(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160711/388254LOGO )
With more than 75 international supply side platforms (SSP) and data centers in Europe, the USA and Singapore, the Exebid.DCA is able to launch brand advertising campaigns in almost any market. Multiple audience targetings make these campaigns more efficient and ensure that the brand is communicating just with its target audience.
For an advertiser, this updated interface turns into a one-stop entry point to purchase any kind of traffic anywhere in the world. Exebid.DCA supports all popular media formats (banners on PC and mobile devices, video, in-banner video, including Retina screens). Payment can be made in RUR, USD, or EUR; however other currencies may be added upon a few days notice.
The platform supports all basic targetings:
- geography (down to city district);
- operating systems and browsers;
- days of the week and time with respect to user's time zone;
- ad viewability;
- specific media resources (private deals, blacklist/whitelist);
- connection type (cellular operator/wi-fi), provider;
- type, make and model of device (for mobile platform and gadgets);
- interest categories.
Facetz DCA Data Management Platform (DMP) will remain the all-in-one audience data provider - one of the biggest Russian independent controllers of PII-free audience data.
The key innovation of Exebid DCA is that now it focuses on mobile platforms and on the use of mobile data for targeting. Now, advertising campaigns may be tuned more accurately based on mobile IDFA/IFA data - current weather (temperature, precipitation, and UV level), geotargeting with accuracy to 25 meters and targeting at organizations where the user is currently staying, passing by or working (educational, healthcare and cultural institutions and organizations).
The updated predictive analysis tools (predictors) consider the CR and CTR thresholds, thus meeting ad campaign efficiency targets.
The antifraud system was optimized too, since about half of the world traffic is known to be created by so-called bots, artificial web users and one third of the world traffic is generated by "fraud bots".
The Exebid DCA solution filters out suspicious "visitors" by their behavior markers; e.g. most bots live less than 24 hours - they do many clicks and refresh pages frequently to get as many banner displays as possible. The ad automatically stops displaying to users with such markers, and the ad sources get banned.
In addition, the system analyzes data on what visitors did before and detects users with abnormal behaviour.
These controls almost eliminate 'bot' traffic.
After launch, the new platform became the main one for some ad campaigns of DCA clients. This fall, a launch of a fully-featured self-service interface is expected, so that advertising agencies and brands will be able to develop their own programmatic expertise.
For more information, click here
Contact: +7-800-500-52-18, E-mail: common@datacentric.ru
TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 07/13/16 -- -Arena Minerals Inc., (TSX VENTURE: AN) ("Arena" or the "Company") has received notice from B2Gold Corporation (TSX: BTO) ("B2Gold") that it will not fulfill its minimum exploration commitments to continue with the exploration of the Cerro Barco and Pampa Paciencia properties as per the option agreement dated February 23, 2015 (the "Agreement"). As per the Agreement, B2Gold shall pay $1.95 million (US$1.5 million) to Arena by issuing common shares of B2Gold to Arena, based on the five day volume weighted average trading price and make a cash payment to Arena of $312,000 (US$241,000), all payments to be made by July 26, 2016.
The properties in the Agreement with B2Gold comprise approximately 30,000 hectares of the approximately 100,000 hectare Atacama Copper Property. B2Gold focused their exploration efforts on the gold-silver Pampa Paciencia project where they successfully discovered an epithermal system that remains open at depth and on strike. The Cerro Barco target identified by Arena prior to the signing of the Agreement remains undrilled. Both these properties will revert back to Arena.
"B2Gold has had great success in its exploration efforts in areas where they have existing core gold operations, such as its Fekola and Kiaka projects in West Africa (please refer to B2Gold press release dated June 29, 2016). B2Gold does not currently have a presence in Chile or a focus on copper exploration, and thus the Cerro Barco and Pampa Paciencia targets were not high priority areas for B2Gold. I would like to thank B2Gold's exploration team for their efforts on Pampa Paciencia and for the exemplary dealings with Arena management during the course of the Agreement," commented William Randall, President and CEO of Arena. "We are pleased to be receiving two attractive prospects back, Paciencia with a newly discovered epithermal gold silver system, and Cerro Barco which remains an attractive and undrilled copper porphyry target. In time we are confident that we will create additional value with these properties."
The B2Gold common shares are expected to be issued on or before July 26, 2016 and will be subject to a four month regulatory hold period.
The Cerro Barco target remains undrilled and as such Arena will complete a data compilation of results of surface exploration performed by B2Gold. If warranted, additional follow-up work will be completed. Arena will review its alternatives with respect to the Cerro Barco and Pampa Paciencia prospects. Alternatives could include further work by Arena, joint venture agreements, and/or share agreements with other companies. There can be no assurance that the Company will enter into any of the proposed transactions and/or enter into any joint venture agreements as proposed or at all.
About Arena Minerals
Arena Minerals is a prospect generator that has two properties under option covering approximately 95,400 hectares within the Antofagasta region of Chile. The properties are at low altitudes, within producing mining camps in infrastructure rich areas. The Company's flagship asset is the Atacama Copper Property, consisting of 92,000 hectares, following a contractual land reduction on July 27, 2015, of essentially undrilled ground in the heart of Chile's premier copper mining district. Currently, approximately 85% of the Atacama Copper Property is under option to third parties. Pursuant to option agreements entered into between Arena, Japan Oil, Gas and Minerals National Corporation and Teck Resources Chile Limitada, each have the right to earn into 60% of the respective land holdings within the property, by collectively spending over $40 million in exploration expenditures, amongst certain other commitments. In addition the Company has the Pampas El Penon project, comprising a total of 3,400 hectares which is less than 1 km from Yamana's Agusta Victoria project which forms part of the El Penon mine complex. The Pampas El Penon and Atacama Copper properties comprise Arena Minerals highly prospective copper and gold properties within an active mining region.
The technical and scientific aspects of this news release have been reviewed and approved by Mr. Vernon Arseneau, P.Geo, who is a qualified person pursuant to NI 43-101. As the Vice President of Exploration of the Company, Mr. Arseneau is not considered independent.
To view the website, please visit www.arenaminerals.com.
In addition to featuring information regarding the Company, its managements and projects, the website also contains the latest corporate news and an email registration allowing subscribers to receive news and updates directly.
On behalf of the Board of Directors of
Arena Minerals Inc.
William Randall, President, and CEO
Cautionary Note Regarding Accuracy and Forward-Looking Information:
This news release contains forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation. Forward-looking information includes, but is not limited to, statements, projections and estimates relating to the future development of any of the Company's properties, the Agreement and the consideration to be received from B2Gold, the prospectivity of, and planned work programs on, such properties, the ability to enter into any additional joint venture partnership agreements as proposed, or at all, the ability of any potential partner to accelerate drill programs, increase the development of any of the projects or prospects of the Company, the results of the exploration program, future financial or operating performance of the Company, its subsidiaries and its projects, the development of and the anticipated timing with respect to the Atacama project and the El Penon project. Generally, forward-looking information can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "plans", "expects" or "does not expect", "is expected", "budget", "scheduled", "estimates", "forecasts", "intends", "anticipates" or "does not anticipate", or "believes", or variations of such words and phrases or state that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "might" or "will be taken", "occur" or "be achieved". The statements made herein are based on current expectations and assumptions that are subject to risks and uncertainties. Actual results could differ materially because of factors discussed in the management discussion and analysis section of the Company's interim and most recent annual financial statement or other reports and filings with the TSX Venture Exchange and applicable Canadian securities regulations. Forward-looking information is subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results, level of activity, performance or achievements of the Company to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking information, including but not limited to: general business, economic, competitive, geopolitical and social uncertainties; the actual results of current exploration activities; other risks of the mining industry and the risks described in the annual information form of the Company. Although the Company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in forward-looking information, there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward looking information. Arena Minerals does not undertake to update any forward-looking information, except in accordance with applicable securities laws.
Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.
Contacts:
Arena Minerals Inc.
William Randall
President, and CEO
(416) 309-2697
PORTLAND, Oregon, July 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --
According to a recent report published by Allied Market Research, titled, "World Automotive HVAC System Market - Opportunities and Forecasts, 2015-2022," the world automotive HVAC system market is estimated to reach $22.8 billion, growing at a significant CAGR of 8.9% from 2016 to 2022. Asia-Pacific is expected to dominate the market throughout the analysis period, growing at the highest CAGR of 10.2% during the forecast period. Factors such as automatic climate control feature, adoption of eco-friendly refrigerant and use of geothermal heat pumps have resulted in the overall increase in demand for automotive HVAC systems. However, high maintenance cost and low fuel economy are likely to affect the market growth.
(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20140911/647229 )
To know more about the report, visit the website at https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/automotive-HVAC-market
Vehicle manufacturers provide HVAC systems that allow individuals to control cabin temperatures as per their comfort. Automakers aim at adopting environment-friendly refrigerants such as R1234yf, in their HVAC systems, as an effort to provide fuel efficiency with improved performance and with mitigating hazardous risks
On the basis of vehicle type, passenger cars generated higher revenue in comparison to commercial vehicles, accounting for over 67% of the market revenue in 2015. Automakers tend to provide passenger cars and commercial vehicles with faster cooling and fuel efficient HVAC systems. As per European Union regulations, all the vehicles in Europe should have HVAC systems with non-polluting refrigerants, with a GWP (global warming potential) lesser than 150, effective from January 2017.
Automotive HVAC systems can be operated manually or automatically. Automatic HVAC system dominated the market in 2015, contributing around 59% of the total revenue. Automatic climate control system inside the vehicle cabin is to be set for once and the HVAC system adjusts the temperature automatically depending on the outside temperature of the vehicle. Such factors would drive the adoption of automatic HVAC system, particularly in passenger cars.
Based on geography, Asia-Pacific was the highest revenue-generating region, accounting for over 46% share in 2015, in terms of revenue, owing to high vehicle production in China, Japan, South Korea, and India. Asia-Pacific is estimated to dominate the market witnessing a CAGR of 10.2% during the forecast period, owing to increasing adoption of eco-friendly refrigerants and large-scale production of commercial and passenger vehicles.
Key findings:
Asia-Pacific is expected to be one of the fastest growing regions, in terms of revenue, growing at a CAGR of 10.2% from 2016 to 2022.
is expected to be one of the fastest growing regions, in terms of revenue, growing at a CAGR of 10.2% from 2016 to 2022. Light commercial vehicles contributed around two-thirds of the revenue in 2015, and is anticipated to grow at a high CAGR of 8.1% during the forecast period.
Automatic HVAC system is expected to maintain its dominance throughout the forecast period.
Leading players in the automotive HVAC system market have adopted strategies such as collaborations, product launches, and acquisitions to expand their market presence. Key players include Sensata Technologies, Inc., Calsonic Kansei Corporation, Denso Corporation Hanon Systems, Johnson Electric Holdings Ltd, Sanden Holdings Corporation, Valeo, Japan Climate Systems Corporation, Keihin Corporation and Mahle GmbH.
Similar Reports Published by Allied Market Research -
World Air Conditioning Market - The global air conditioning market is segmented based on technology, component, vehicle type, and geography. The technology segment includes manual/semi-automatic and automatic.
To know more about the Air Conditioning Market Report, visit the website at https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/air-conditioning-market
World Electric Vehicle Charging System Market - The world electric vehicle charging system market has been segmented based on geography into North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific and LAMEA. In 2015, Europe was the highest revenue generating region, which accounted for around 37% market revenue, followed by North America and Asia-Pacific.
To know more about the World Electric Vehicle Charging System Market Report, visit the website at https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/electric-vehicle-charging-systems-market
About Us:
Allied Market Research (AMR) is a full-service market research and business-consulting wing of Allied Analytics LLP based in Portland, Oregon. Allied Market Research provides global enterprises as well as medium and small businesses with unmatched quality of "Market Research Reports" and "Business Intelligence Solutions". AMR has a targeted view to provide business insights and consulting to assist its clients to make strategic business decisions and achieve sustainable growth in their respective market domain.
We are in professional corporate relations with various companies and this helps us in digging out market data that helps us generate accurate research data tables and confirms utmost accuracy in our market forecasting. Each and every data presented in the reports published by us is extracted through primary interviews with top officials from leading companies of domain concerned. Our secondary data procurement methodology includes deep online and offline research and discussion with knowledgeable professionals and analysts in the industry.
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#205, Portland, OR 97220
United States
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Web: https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/information-&-communication-technology-&-media-market-report
NEW YORK, NEW YORK and TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 07/13/16 -- TouchBistro, the leading iPad Point-of-Sale (POS) solution for restaurants in 37 countries, now offers seamless integration with QuickBooks, the number one rated small business accounting software.
QuickBooks integration is provided as an option for TouchBistro POS app users. The integration helps restaurateurs reduce accountant fees and bookkeeping hours by eliminating time-consuming double entry of operating data into restaurant accounting records. The integration with QuickBooks is simple, taking only minutes to activate, utilizing SHOGO cloud-based integration. During the initial installation of the integration, TouchBistro revenue and cost categories are mapped to the related accounts the restaurant has set up in its QuickBooks application, ensuring accuracy between operational and accounting reports to better manage the business. Existing TouchBistro users on the latest version can simply activate the QuickBooks integration.
"TouchBistro is committed to helping restaurant owners and managers improve their bottom line by seeking out new partners and the best technologies to increase efficiencies and simplify operations," said Alex Barrotti, CEO and Founder of TouchBistro. "By offering integration with QuickBooks within our restaurant iPad app, we are helping our customers to improve the efficiency of their back office operations."
TouchBistro iPad point-of-sale solution is designed to work as the heart of a restaurant. It significantly streamlines operational efficiencies, and helps to improve the bottom line and overall customer experience. Servers use the TouchBistro app to take customer orders tableside, or while patrons are in line, and instantly transmit the orders to the kitchen or bar for preparation. Bills are automatically calculated and split according to the patrons' requests, and bill totals are transferred electronically into integrated card keypads or mobile wallets for payment.
TouchBistro features a full suite of cloud reporting tools to further streamline restaurant operations from seating and scheduling to inventory, payroll, tax calculations and sales analysis. Total revenue and cost aggregate is calculated by TouchBistro as an End-of-Day summary that can be broken out into the categories that work best for the restaurant, such as food, liquor, soft drinks, and desert. With the QuickBooks integration, TouchBistro accounting data can be imported into the restaurant's QuickBooks desktop or online app by categories or totals, thus eliminating the need for double entry.
About TouchBistro
With offices in New York and Toronto, TouchBistro is a leader in iPad point-of-sale technology for restaurants, cafes, bars, food trucks, and other food and drink venues. The TouchBistro app has been ranked as the number one top-grossing food and beverage app in 37 countries on the Apple App Store(SM). TouchBistro was named Best POS System for Restaurants by Business News Daily in its annual review of dozens of point-of-sale (POS) systems and International App of the Year 2015 by Best in Biz Awards. TouchBistro offers a 30-day free trial that can be converted to a no-contract subscription. Additional information is available at www.touchbistro.com.
Contacts:
Media Contacts:
Kari Wise
Boulevard PR (for TouchBistro)
818.588.8074
kari@boulevardpr.com
VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 07/13/16 -- Tree Island Steel Ltd. ("Tree Island" or the "Company") (TSX: TSL) is pleased to announce that it will report its second quarter 2016 financial results for the period ended June 30, 2016, after market hours on July 27, 2016.
The Company will host an analyst call on the same day at 6:30 pm ET. Dale MacLean, President and CEO, and Nancy Davies, CFO, will discuss the Company's financial performance for the period ended June 30, 2016.
To access the call, please dial 1-888-438-5453 or 1-719-325-2428.
A replay of the conference call will be available from 9:30 pm ET on July 27, 2016, until 11:59 pm ET, August 10, 2016. To access the replay, call 1-877-870-5176 or 1-858-384-5517, followed by passcode 4129676.
About Tree Island Steel
Tree Island Steel, headquartered in Richmond, British Columbia, since 1964, through its five operating facilities in Canada and the United States, produces wire products for a diverse range of industrial, residential construction, commercial construction, agricultural, and specialty applications. Its products include galvanized wire, bright wire; a broad array of fasteners, including packaged, collated and bulk nails; stucco reinforcing products; concrete reinforcing mesh; fencing and other fabricated wire products. The Company markets these products under the Tree Island, Halsteel, K-Lath, Industrial Alloys, TI Wire, True Spec and Tough Strand brand names. The Company also owns and operates a China-based company that assists the international sourcing of products to Tree Island and its customers.
Contacts:
Tree Island Steel Ltd.
Nancy Davies
Chief Financial Officer
(604) 523-4587
ndavies@treeisland.com
www.treeisland.com
Tree Island Steel Ltd.
Ali Mahdavi
Investor Relations & Capital Markets
(416) 962-3300
amahdavi@treeisland.com
TORONTO, July 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --
Richmont Mines Inc. (TSX - NYSE MKT: RIC) ("Richmont" or the "Corporation"), announced that it will release the Corporations' second quarter financial results before the market open on Monday, August8, 2016. The financial statements will be available on the Corporation's website at http://www.richmont-mines.com or http://www.sedar.com .
Webcast and Conference Call
A webcast and conference call will be held on Monday, August 8, 2016 starting at 8:30 a.m. Eastern Time. Senior management will be on the call to discuss the results.
Conference Call Access
International & Toronto : 1-416-764-8688
: 1-416-764-8688 Canada & U.S. Toll Free: 1-888-390-0546
Please ask to be placed into the Richmont Mines 2016 Second Quarter Results Conference Call.
Conference Call Live Webcast
The conference call will be broadcast live on the Internet via webcast. To access the webcast, please follow this link:
http://event.on24.com/r.htm?e=1221836&s=1&k=4BF022AEDB00EC80C28A6E55008FCE7C
Archive Call Access
If you are unable to attend the conference call, a replay will be available until 08:00 a.m. Eastern Time, Monday, August 15, 2016 by dialing the appropriate number below:
International & Toronto : 1-416-764-8677 Passcode: 882550#
: 1-416-764-8677 Passcode: 882550# Canada & U.S. Toll Free: 1-888-390-0541 Passcode: 882550#
Archive Webcast
The webcast will be archived for 90 days. To access the archived webcast, visit the Corporation's website
at http://www.richmont-mines.com or follow this link:
http://event.on24.com/r.htm?e=1221836&s=1&k=4BF022AEDB00EC80C28A6E55008FCE7C
About Richmont Mines Inc.
Richmont Mines has produced over 1.6 million ounces of gold from its operations in Quebec, Ontario and Newfoundland since beginning production. The Corporation currently produces gold from the Island Gold Mine in Ontario, and the Beaufor Mine in Quebec. The Corporation is also advancing development of the significant high-grade resource extension at depth of the Island Gold Mine in Ontario. With 35 years of experience in gold production, exploration and development, and prudent financial management, the Corporation is well-positioned to cost-effectively build its Canadian reserve base and to successfully enter its next phase of growth.
For more information, please contact:
Renaud Adams
President and CEO
Phone: +1-416-368-0291 ext. 101
Anne Day
Vice-President, Investor Relations
Phone: +1-416-368-0291 ext. 105
TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 07/13/16 -- Carpathian Gold Inc. ("Carpathian" or the "Company") (CSE: CPN) announces that its Board of Directors (the "Board") has approved the adoption of a Shareholder Rights Plan (the "Rights Plan") pursuant to a Shareholder Rights Plan Agreement (the "Rights Plan Agreement") between the Company and TSX Trust Company. Shareholder approval of the Rights Plan will be sought at the Company's annual and special meeting of shareholders (the "Meeting") to be held on August 4, 2016. The Rights Plan is subject to shareholder ratification. In the event that the Company's shareholders do not ratify the Right Plan at the Meeting, the Rights Plan will be of no further force or effect.
The fundamental objectives of the Rights Plan are to provide adequate time for Carpathian's Board and shareholders to assess an unsolicited take-over bid for the Company; to provide the Board with sufficient time to explore and develop alternatives for enhancing and maximizing shareholder value if a take-over bid is made; and, to provide shareholders with an equal opportunity to participate in a take-over bid. The Rights Plan encourages a potential acquirer who makes a take-over bid (an "Acquirer") to ensure the take-over bid satisfies certain minimum standards designed to promote fairness, or to proceed with the concurrence of the Board (a "Permitted Bid"). If a take-over bid fails to meet these minimum standards and the Rights Plan is not waived by the Board, the Rights Plan provides that holders of common shares of the Company, other than the Acquirer, will be able to purchase additional common shares at a significant discount to market, thus exposing the Acquirer to substantial dilution of its holdings.
The Rights Plan has been prepared in alignment with recent amendments to the regulatory framework governing take-over bids published by the Canadian Securities Administrators, which came into effect on May 9, 2016. The Board considers that the adoption of the Rights Plan is desirable and in the interests of all of the Company's shareholders, and recommends shareholders vote in favour of the Rights Plan at its annual and special meeting scheduled for August 4, 2016. If the Rights Plan is ratified by the eligible shareholders at such meeting, it will have an initial term which expires at the annual meeting of shareholders of the Company to be held in 2019 unless terminated earlier. The Rights Plan may be extended beyond 2019 by approval of eligible shareholders at such 2019 meeting.
Pursuant to the Rights Plan, effective July 6, 2016 rights (the "Rights") have been issued and attached to all of Carpathian's outstanding common shares. A separate rights certificate will not be issued until such time as the Rights become exercisable (which is referred to as the "separation time"). The Rights will become exercisable only if a person, together with its affiliates, associates and joint actors, acquires or announces its intention to acquire beneficial ownership of Carpathian common shares which, when aggregated with its current holdings, total 20% or more of the outstanding Carpathian common shares (determined in the manner set out in the Rights Plan) other than as permitted under the Rights Plan. The Rights will effectively permit holders, other than an Acquirer and such related parties, to purchase common shares of the Company at a 50% discount to their market price (as defined in the Rights Plan Agreement).
The Rights Plan was not adopted by the Board in response to, or in anticipation of, any offer or take-over bid. The Company has no knowledge of any pending or threatened takeover bids for the Company, and has no reason to believe that any takeover offer for the Company's shares is imminent.
Additional details regarding the Rights Plan will be provided in the Management Information Circular that will be available for viewing on SEDAR and mailed to the shareholders of the Company prior to the Company's upcoming Meeting scheduled for August 4, 2016.
About Carpathian Gold
Carpathian is an exploration and development company whose primary business is focused on advancing its exploration and development plans on its 100% owned Rovina Valley Au-Cu Project located in Romania.
Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements
Statements and certain information contained in this press release and any documents incorporated by reference may constitute "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation which may include, but is not limited to, information with respect to the Corporation's expected production from, and further potential of, the Corporation's properties; the Corporation's ability to raise additional funds; the future price of minerals, particularly gold and copper; the estimation of mineral reserves and mineral resources; conclusions of economic evaluation; the realization of mineral reserve estimates; the timing and amount of estimated future production; costs of production; capital expenditures; success of exploration activities; mining or processing issues; currency exchange rates; government regulation of mining operations; and environmental risks. Often, but not always, forward-looking statements/information can be identified by the use of words such as "plans", "expects", "is expected", "budget", "scheduled", "estimates", "forecasts", "intends", "anticipates", or "believes" or variations (including negative variations) of such words and phrases, or statements that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "might" or "will" be taken, occur or be achieved. Forward-looking statements/information is based on management's expectations and reasonable assumptions at the time such statements are made. Estimates regarding the anticipated timing, amount and cost of exploration and development activities are based on assumptions underlying mineral reserve and mineral resource estimates and the realization of such estimates are set out herein.
Forward-looking information involves known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of Carpathian and/or its subsidiaries to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. Such factors include: uncertainties of mineral resource estimates; the nature of mineral exploration and mining; variations in ore grade and recovery rates; cost of operations; fluctuations in the sale prices of products; volatility of gold and copper prices; exploration and development risks; liquidity concerns and future financings; risks associated with operations in foreign jurisdictions; potential revocation or change in permit requirements and project approvals; competition; no guarantee of titles to explore and operate; environmental liabilities and regulatory requirements; dependence on key individuals; conflicts of interests; insurance; fluctuation in market value of Carpathian's shares; rising production costs; equipment material and skilled technical workers; volatile current global financial conditions; and currency fluctuations; and other risks pertaining to the mining industry. Although Carpathian has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual actions, events or results to differ materially from those described in forward-looking statements, there may be other factors that cause actions, events or results to differ from those anticipated, estimated or intended.
Carpathian does not undertake to update any such forward-looking information, except in accordance with applicable securities laws. There can be no assurance that forward-looking information will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such information. Accordingly, readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking information.
The CSE does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this news release.
Contacts:
Carpathian Gold Inc.
G. Scott Moore
Chief Executive Officer
+1-416-861-5903
info@carpathiangold.com
www.carpathiangold.com
SAINT-LAURENT, CANADA -- (Marketwired) -- 07/13/16 -- IntelGenx Corp., (TSX VENTURE: IGX)(OTCQX: IGXT), today announced the recent initiation of a phase 1 clinical trial of montelukast, a unique drug repurposing opportunity for the treatment of degenerative diseases of the brain, such as: mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimers disease, the most prominent form of dementia. The objectives of the trial are to demonstrate: 1. IntelGenx oral film product will provide therapeutically effective blood levels of montelukast, and; 2. montelukast when delivered using IntelGenx oral film crosses the blood brain barrier.
IntelGenx is collaborating with Dr. Ludwig Aigner, a neuroscientist who is a member of IntelGenx Scientific Advisory Board and head of the Institute of Molecular Regenerative Medicine at the Paracelsus Medical University in Salzburg, Austria. Dr. Aigner has made major contributions in the field of brain and spinal cord regeneration over the last 25 years. He was the first to develop tools to visualize neurogenesis in living animals and identified signaling mechanisms that are crucially involved in limiting brain regeneration. One of these mechanisms, leukotriene signaling, is related to asthma. In consequence, Dr. Aigner and his team recently demonstrated that the anti-asthmatic drug montelukast structurally and functionally rejuvenates the aged brain. His main aim is to develop molecular and cellular therapies for patients with neurodegenerative diseases and for the aged population.
"A new era in the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases is arising. Besides protecting neurons from dying, we have found ways to regenerate and to rejuvenate the aged and the degenerated brain by addressing several crucial principles of brain repair with one single mechanism. Montelukast is targeting exactly this mechanism; it will be an exciting breakthrough to see the potential of montelukast to improve learning and memory skills in patients with dementia such as Alzheimer's disease," said Dr. Ludwig Aigner. A video interview with Dr. Aigner discussing montelukast is available at: http://www.intelgenx.com/investors/videos/default.aspx
IntelGenx expects results from the phase 1 trial to be available in September 2016. Following the completion of the phase 1 results, the Company will begin preparation work to initiate a phase 2 study where patients will be enrolled. IntelGenx will be actively seeking a partnership or alliance opportunity to complete the remaining developmental work and commercialization of this product.
"Montelukast is by far the most important and promising drug repurposing opportunity that the company has in its product pipeline," said Dr. Horst G. Zerbe, President and CEO of IntelGenx. "IntelGenx with Dr. Aigner, is taking a leadership position in this most serious unmet need affecting millions globally. The market for degenerative diseases of the brain is a multi-billion-dollar opportunity for the company. We look forward to communicating the results from the phase 1 study and advancing montelukast forward to reach its full potential."
About Montelukast:
Montelukast (trade name Singulair) is a leukotriene receptor antagonist (LTRA) used for the maintenance treatment of asthma and to relieve symptoms of seasonal allergies. Montelukast is a CysLT1 antagonist; it blocks the action of leukotriene D4 (and secondary ligands LTC4 and LTE4) on the cysteinyl leukotriene receptor CysLT1 in the lungs and bronchial tubes by binding to it. This reduces the bronchoconstriction otherwise caused by the leukotriene and results in less inflammation. The "Mont" in Montelukast stands for Montreal, the place where Merck developed the drug.
About IntelGenx:
IntelGenx is a leading drug delivery company focused on the development of innovative products based on its proprietary oral drug delivery technologies.
Established in 2003, the Montreal-based company, listed on the TSX-V and OTC-QX, develops innovative oral drug delivery solutions based on its proprietary platform technologies, VersaFilm, VersaTab and AdVersa.
IntelGenx has developed a broad and diverse product portfolio addressing unmet market needs and offering lifecycle management opportunities. Forfivo XL, launched in 2012, is the first and only FDA approved once-daily bupropion HCl 450mg dose in a single tablet for the treatment of major depressive disorder.
IntelGenx highly skilled team provides comprehensive pharmaceuticals services to pharmaceutical partners, including R&D, clinical monitoring, IP protection, analytical method development and regulatory services. IntelGenx state-of-the art manufacturing facility, established for the VersaFilm technology platform, supports lab-scale to pilot and commercial-scale production, offering full service capabilities to our clients. More information is available about the company at: www.intelgenx.com.
Forward Looking Statements:
This document may contain forward-looking information about IntelGenx' operating results and business prospects that involve substantial risks and uncertainties. Statements that are not purely historical are forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, and Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended. These statements include, but are not limited to, statements about IntelGenx' plans, objectives, expectations, strategies, intentions or other characterizations of future events or circumstances and are generally identified by the words "may," "expects," "anticipates," "intends," "plans," "believes," "seeks," "estimates," "could," "would," and similar expressions. All forward looking statements are expressly qualified in their entirety by this cautionary statement. Because these forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, IntelGenx' actual results could differ materially from those expressed or implied by these forward looking statements. Factors that could cause or contribute to such differences include, but are not limited to, those discussed under the heading "Risk Factors" in IntelGenx' annual report on Form 10-K, filed with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission and available at www.sec.gov, and also filed with Canadian securities regulatory authorities and www.sedar.com. IntelGenx assumes no obligation to update any such forward-looking statements.
Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange), nor the OTCQX accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.
Contacts:
IntelGenx Technologies Corp.
Edward Miller
Director, IR and Corporate Communications
+1 514-331-7440 (ext. 217)
edward@intelgenx.com
PORT WASHINGTON, New York, July 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --
Leading Closed System Transfer Device Vendor Partners with Top French, Swiss, Spanish, Thai and Polish Medical Device Sellers
Equashield, a leading provider of Closed System Transfer Devices (CSTDs) for safe and simple handling of hazardous drugs, today announced that it has signed five international partnerships with distributers in France, Switzerland, Spain, Poland and Thailand.
Equashield has now significantly increased its presence in Europe, with new agreements in place with Macopharma in France, Aegis Medical Technologies GMBH in Switzerland, Palex Medical SA in Spain, and Poland's Laboclinic. Equashield also continues to extend its presence in Southeast Asia through its partnership with Advance Medical Life in Thailand.
"These partnerships illustrate the industry's confidence in Equashield as a strong partner for medical facilities who are continuously striving to provide the safest products possible to healthcare workers handling hazardous substances," said Marino Kriheli, Co-founder of Equashield. "We expect to see more distributers join us to continue this momentum and make a difference for those who work with and around hazardous drugs. Equashield's is the only truly closed system that provides protection from multiple routes of exposure."
The arrival of EQUASHIELD to these new markets builds on last year's rapid growth for the company, which reported a 160% increase in sales with over twenty countries using EQUASHIELD internationally.
"Equashield is quickly becoming the CSTD of choice for protecting healthcare professionals across the globe. Our significant growth is evidence of increasing confidence in Equashield's ability to protect against more routes of exposure than alternative devices," added Kriheli.
About Equashield
Equashield isa leading provider of Closed System Transfer Devices (CSTDs), clinically proven to protect healthcare professionals from hazardous drug exposure. Incorporating a pioneering design, the company's flagship device, EQUASHIELD II, covers more routes of exposure than alternative systems by preventing: contaminationof syringe plungers, drug residuals on connector surfaces as well as exposure to drug vapor. Studies have shown Equashield's CSTD to be faster to deploy and easier to use than competing systems and has passed NIOSH's proposed vapor containment protocol, confirming that it can contain vapors/emissions within the limits of the proposed testing. The EQUASHIELD system has been cleared by the FDA under the ONB product code and substantiated in FDA-cleared labeling as preventing microbial ingress for up to seven days.
For more information: http://www.equashield.com
Media Contact:
Finn Partners for Equashield
Glenn Jasper
goel.jasper@finnpartners.com
@goeljasper
+1-929-222-8002
PORT-CARTIER, QUEBEC--(Marketwired - July 13, 2016) - David Boulard, Executive Vice President of Ensyn Corporation (Ensyn Corporation together with its affiliates, "Ensyn"), is pleased to announce that construction has been initiated on a 10.5 million gallon (approximately 40 million litre) per year biocrude production facility located in Port-Cartier, Quebec (the "Cote Nord Project"). The Cote Nord Project, being developed by Ensyn, Arbec Forest Products Inc. ("Arbec"), and Groupe Remabec, is located adjacent to Arbec's sawmill on the north shore of the St. Lawrence Seaway. Ensyn owns 50% of the equity of the project. The Cote Nord Project has been funded and construction is scheduled to be complete by the end of 2017. This is the first of several production plants being developed by Ensyn to expand the production of biocrude for energy applications.
Arbec is a leading, privately-held forest products company operating in Eastern Canada. Arbec owns twelve wood processing plants in Quebec and New Brunswick, ten of which are in partnership with Groupe Remabec.
Groupe Remabec is a major forest products company operating in Quebec, with a focus on timber harvesting and wood processing. Groupe Remabec harvests more than three million cubic metres of lumber yearly and operates ten wood processing plants.
Utilizing Ensyn's proprietary RTP technology, the Cote Nord Project will convert approximately 65,000 dry metric tons per year of slash and other forest residues from local sources to biocrude. The biocrude will be sold to customers in the Northeastern U.S. and in Eastern Canada for heating purposes and as a renewable feedstock for petroleum refineries for the production of low carbon transportation fuels. The RTP conversion unit is being engineered and supplied by Envergent Technologies LLC, a joint venture between Ensyn and Honeywell UOP.
The Cote Nord Project is being financed by partner equity, funding from the Government of Canada (Sustainable Development Technology Canada and the Department of Natural Resources Canada) and Investissement Quebec, the leading Quebec Provincial financing corporation.
"We are proud to initiate our biocrude expansion plans with Arbec and Remabec in Quebec," said Mr. Boulard. "With an extensive forest industry and a strong culture of innovation, Quebec is an ideal location for our initial expansion facility."
Cote Nord Project -- Purpose-built to Manufacture Renewable, Low Carbon Energy Products
The Cote Nord Project is the first RTP facility purpose-built for the production of biocrude used for heating, cooling and refinery applications. Ensyn's RTP technology has been in commercial use for over 25 years, producing biocrude used for food ingredients, with by-product liquids being used for industrial heating. In 2014, to support its expanding commercial sales to large institutional boilers, district heating systems and universities, Ensyn implemented capital improvements at its wholly-owned 3 million gallon (approximately 12 million litre) per year RTP facility in Renfrew, Ontario that enabled the continuous production of biocrude for energy applications.
Environmental Benefits
The Cote Nord Project is expected to generate significant environmental benefits. Whether used for heating and cooling purposes or as a refinery feedstock, Ensyn's biocrude is a renewable product that reduces the use of conventional fossil fuels. The use of Ensyn's biocrude for energy purposes leads to a reduction in net carbon emissions and a reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) on a total lifecycle basis totaling between approximately 70% and 90%, depending on the application.
Ensyn's biocrude is produced from non-edible woody biomass thereby avoiding competition for materials used in food or animal feed supplies. In addition, the manufacture of value-added products from forest slash allows for the development of enhanced pre-commercial thinning strategies, thereby reducing forest fire risks and improving the health of managed forests.
About Ensyn
Ensyn produces biocrude from forest and agricultural residues that is suitable for heating and cooling applications and as a feedstock for oil refineries for the production of low carbon transportation fuels. Ensyn and its predecessor companies have been applying its proprietary RTP technology for more than 25 years for the production of food ingredients, chemicals and heating fuels. Ensyn is in the process of increasing production capacity to enable a broader commercialization of its energy business. Ensyn owns and operates a commercial production facility in Ontario, Canada from which it sells renewable heating fuels to industrial and commercial heating customers in the U.S. and Canada. Additional production capacity is under development in Canada, Brazil, and the U.S. Ensyn is executing its business plan in conjunction with key strategic relationships including Honeywell UOP, Fibria Celulose S.A., Arbec Forest Products, Chevron Technology Ventures and Roseburg Forest Products.
For more information:
Regarding the Cote Nord Project, contact:
David Boulard
(613) 248-2257 ext. 133
Regarding Ensyn, contact:
Ian Barnett
(647) 203"6588
www.ensyn.com
TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 07/13/16 -- As the Democrats and Republicans both head into National Conventions this week, a Bay Street men's wear merchant is enabling Canadians to vote for style and wear their political stripes. Vassi, an exclusive high-end men's wear destination for the discerning man, today announced the creation of their exclusive 'Dump Trump' tie.
Featuring multi-coloured dump trucks on the front and a bold 'Dump Trump' statement in text on the back, Vassi's 'Dump Trump' tie allows the well-dressed Bay Street man to both embrace the US political circus in a fun way, and potentially be an 'Undercover Trump Dumper.'
Vassi designed the Dump Trump tie because he believes that fashion, at its best, should relate to current social events and reflect the mood of the public ... but he's not taking sides.
"I'm responding to what my clients tell me they want to wear. If anyone comes in asking for a, 'I Love Trump' or 'High-Five Hillary' tie, we'd probably do that too," added Vassi.
To celebrate Canadian 'ties' to US politics, a limited release of 'Dump Trump' ties will be available at the Vassi First Canadian Place location starting Wednesday, August 10th. Preorders of the tie are available by contacting Vassi at dumptrumptie@vassi.ca. The $100, 100% silk ties are hand made in Italy (not China, like many Trump menswear products.)
Vassi predicts that the ties will sell out quickly fueled by Trump Dumpers, north of the border Republicans with a sense of humour, and Canadians that want to purchase a piece of presidential history from one of the most controversial campaigns of the century.
The Dump Trump Tie is available in three colours: 'Great again' Grey Blue, 'Gonna Be Huge' Basic Blue and 'Believe Me' Baby Blue.
Vassi is no stranger to political prominence, his store windows received international attention in 2012 by featuring both Obama and Romney tableau's. This year, he is planning a series of increasingly controversial bi-partisan windows to punctuate the US political circus.
While Vassi is not making a play on his personal political stance, he is firmly against mediocre menswear and seriously considered using all proceeds from the 'Dump Trump' Tie to swing the vote against subpar suits in the White House.
However, Vassi has instead chosen to donate all profits to the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre - a cause to really believe in.
Contacts:
Pointman! Public Relations
Patrick McCaully
416-855-9427 x 301
Patrick@pointmanpr.com
www.pointmanpr.com
DUNSTABLE (dpa-AFX) - Whitbread plc. (WTB.L) announced plans to focus on its strengths, concentrating the Premier Inn international growth strategy on a smaller number of specific markets where it can generate good long term sustainable returns and where there is the greatest long term opportunity to build scale. Alison Brittain, CEO, Whitbread said, 'In April I laid out a three-point plan to build a bigger and better Whitbread. I reiterated the strong growth prospects for Whitbread in the UK, where we have laid out bold milestones for Premier Inn and Costa and confirmed that Whitbread also has an exciting future beyond the UK.' Premier Inn will focus its international strategy on continuing to grow its businesses in Germany, a structurally attractive hotel market and in the Middle East where we operate a profitable and growing joint venture and will commence a phased withdrawal from its operations in India and South East Asia. The company noted that expansion plans for Premier Inn in the UK remain unaltered, and Costa's UK and International growth plans are not affected by today's announcement. The impact of the cost associated with the withdrawal from South East Asia is not considered material. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX
Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
PHILADELPHIA (dpa-AFX) - A large outage at Comcast Corp.'s (CMCSA, CMCSK) business phone service on Tuesday has affected thousands of small-business owners, who are unable to make or receive phone calls. Outages have been reported from dozens of cities across the U.S. Small businesses have complained that inbound and outbound calls are either not being completed at all, or are met with a recording saying the number is no longer in service. Several small businesses have taken to social media to express their frustration at the outage and to inform that they are open, as the outage gives the impression that they have gone out of business. The outage has also impacted local police departments and health clinics. In a forum post, Comcast apologized to its small-business customers for the inconvenience caused by the phone outage. 'The issue has been fixed and we're working to ensure that services are fully restored as quickly as possible. We know our customers rely on us and we're committed to making it right,' Comcast said. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX
Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - One of Donald Trump's senior policy advisers has criticized Bernie Sanders' endorsement of presumptive Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. After a prolonged holdout, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., finally announced his endorsement of Hillary Clinton in a speech on Tuesday. In an appearance with Clinton in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Sanders said he intends to do everything he can to make certain the former Secretary of State will be the next president. But, in a statement after Sanders endorsed Clinton, Trump's Senior Policy Advisor Stephen Miller said Bernie's endorsement becomes 'Exhibit A in our rigged system.' He alleged that the Democrat Party is disenfranchising its voters to benefit the select and privileged few. Sanders has endorsed one of the most pro-war, pro-Wall Street, and pro-off shoring candidates in the history of the Democratic Party, according to Miller. He blamed that Sanders, who ran against TPP, is endorsing the candidate who helped draft the TPP. Miller also cited that Sanders was opposed to globalization, and is now supporting the candidate who has led the push for globalization. The candidate who warned that open borders destroy the working class is endorsing the candidate with the most open borders policy in our history, he added. Miller pointed out that Sanders' decision to support Clinton contradicts his stand on issues like H1B visas for highly-skilled workers. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX
Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
VAL-D'OR, QUEBEC -- (Marketwired) -- 07/13/16 -- Metanor Resources Inc. ("Metanor") (TSX VENTURE: MTO) is pleased to announce that it is moving forward with a preliminary economic assessment (PEA) study for the Barry project.
Following the positive results of the updated mineral resource estimate on its Barry property, located 116 km from the Bachelor mill, Metanor has given a mandate to Goldminds Geoservices Inc. (GMG) for the completion of an independent PEA. The results of this assessment will be published as soon as available and the technical report (NI43-101 compliant) will be available on SEDAR within 45 days following the publication of the results. Metanor expects to receive the results of this assessment in September 2016.
The PEA will target an open pit scenario with the mineralized material shipped to the Bachelor mill. A road upgrade to accommodate road train from 80 to 100 tonnes will be considered and the assessment will also analyse the costs associated with the implementation of a gravity recovery circuit and, the increase of the grinding capacity in order to maximise the combined operations of the Bachelor and Barry mines.
The results of metallurgical testing realised at SGS Lakefield show a coarse gold proportion varying from 18 to 30% (July 11th 2016 report) with an average of 24%. These tests demonstrate a mill recovery between 93.8% and 94.8% with an average of 94.3%. Worth noting is that the mineralized material from Barry requires less energy to grind than the Bachelor ore with 21 Kw/h compared to 17 Kw/h for the Barry material (historical milling information).
The assessment will be based on the resource update of June 2016. A drill program aiming to convert a portion of the inferred resource to the indicated resource category, as well as to drill targets on adjacent properties outside the pit area, is being prepared.
This program will target mainly the resources identified from the optimised pit shell (June 22nd 2016 press release). The total resource in the pit shell is 347,350 ounces of gold at a grade 2.07 g/t in 5.24 million tonnes. The pit shell is calculated using parameters for direct shipping of mineralized material to Bachelor Lake mill where 45% is in the measured and indicated category and 55% is in the inferred category.
Ghislain Morin president and chief executive officer, adds: "Following the successful drill program on the Moroy property which lead to the extension, at depth, of the main veins at Bachelor mine (see June 13th and 30th press release) and the extension in the Hewfran sector, added to the mineral resource update at Barry to be quickly completed by a PEA, Metanor is entering into a new phase of growth and we expect a very dynamic end of year! In the short term, one of our objectives is to open the access to more than 4 sources of ore to feed the Bachelor mill. In such a scenario, a mill throughput between 1,500 and 2,000 tonnes per day could be achieved in less than 5 years. We add that the majority of the permits required to operate the Barry open pit are already in place, this constitutes an important advantage for Metanor."
Qualified Persons
Pascal Hamelin, P. Eng., Vice-president of Operations, is the Qualified Person under NI 43-101, responsible for reviewing and approving the technical information contained in this news release.
Claude Duplessis, P. Eng., from GoldMinds Geoservices Inc. is the independent Qualified Person under NI 43-101 which has prepared and reviewed the technical information contained in this news release.
Cautionary and Forward-Looking Statements
This press release includes certain statements that may be deemed "forward-looking statements". Mineral resources that are not Mineral Reserves do not have demonstrated economic viability. The potential quantity and grade is conceptual in nature as there has been insufficient exploration to define a mineral resource and it is uncertain if further exploration will result in the target being delineated as a mineral resource. All statements in this discussion, other than those of historical fact, that address future exploration drilling, exploration activities and projected exploration, including costs and other estimates upon which such projections are based, and events or developments that the company expects, are considered forward-looking statements. Although the Company believes the expectations expressed in these forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, such statements are not guarantees of future performance and actual results or developments may differ materially from those forward-looking statements.
Neither the TSX Venture Exchange, nor its Regulation Services Provider accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.
431,689,449 outstanding shares
Contacts:
Metanor Resources Inc.
Ronald Perry
Vice-president
514-262-8286
rperry@metanor.ca
SAN FRANCISCO, CA -- (Marketwired) -- 07/13/16 -- ColorTV, the connected TV marketing platform, today announced that it has raised $1.5 million in seed funding led by Foxconn. ColorTV is developing a platform for brands to drive native discovery of content and apps on connected TVs and for developers to better monetize connected TV applications.
"Television advertising is king, with over over 172 billion spent globally each year, yet brands can not predictably market on TV like they can online," said Giancarlo Maniaci, CEO and co-founder, ColorTV. "ColorTV is helping to change that. With the rise in cord cutting, growth in Connected TV and newly launched Apple and Android TV app stores, ColorTV simplifies marketing on TV like it's done on the Internet."
ColorTV was founded by second-time entrepreneurs that successfully bootstrapped and sold TapIt.com, a mobile advertising company. Our team comes from TapIt, Google, Samsung, Millennial Media, and Tapjoy, and are passionate about changing the way TV advertising and discovery is conducted. Ownership of connected tvs is accelerating and the availability of streaming content via applications such as Netflix is exploding. These combined forces have driven adoption of connected devices and the opportunity for advertisers to better reach and service the consumers that use them.
"The Apple TV and Android TV/Chromecast ecosystem will finally enable marketers to track and run TV campaigns in real-time and target more predictively. This is a huge win for TV, and will let marketers better navigate advertising in living rooms across the globe," Maniaci added. "ColorTV's soon to be launched platform will help advertisers and developers take advantage of the huge opportunity that exists in reaching engaged consumers via these devices (Apple TV, Android TV, Amazon Fire TV)."
About ColorTV
Founded in 2016 and based in San Francisco, ColorTV is the first data and advertising company catering to Apple TV, Android TV and Amazon Fire TV. ColorTV's platform provides a diverse suite of data, discovery and analytics solutions for Connected TV, built to empower developers and advertisers navigating the new Connected TV ecosystem.
The company powers content recommendations, analytics and attribution for over-the-top (OTT) platforms. According to NPD Group, approximately 50 million homes in the U.S. now own a connected TV or streaming device. ColorTV is venture backed, with $1.5 million in seed funding led by Foxconn. For more information about ColorTV, go to www.colortv.com.
Contact:
Lisa Langsdorf
Email Contact
(347)645-0484
SAN CARLOS, CA -- (Marketwired) -- 07/13/16 -- Alliance Memory today introduced a new monolithic high-speed, low-voltage CMOS double data rate 3 synchronous DRAM (DDR3L SDRAM) with an 8-Gb density in the 78-ball, 9-mm by 13.2-mm, lead (Pb)-free FBGA package. Delivering increased power efficiency for high-end computer and storage systems, the 1G x 8 AS4C1G8MD3L offers a double data rate architecture for extremely fast transfer rates of up to 1600 Mbps/pin and clock rates of 800 MHz.
The AS4C1G8MD3L's transfer rates are twice as high as DDR and DDR2 SDRAMs, providing higher bandwidth for newer-generation microprocessors in industrial, medical, networking, telecom, and aerospace applications. The 8-GB DDR3L SDRAM operates from a single +1.35-V power supply and is backwards-compatible with +1.5-V power supplies to enable large memory subsystems. The device is a logical choice for customers that require increased memory yet face board space constraints.
The AS4C1G8MD3L is available with an extended commercial temperature range of 0 degrees C to +95 degrees C (AS4C1G8MD3L-12BCN). Internally configured as eight banks of 1G x 8 bits, the DDR3L SDRAM features a fast 64-ms, 8192-cycle refresh from 0 degrees C to +85 degrees C and 32 ms from +85 degrees C to +95 degrees C.
The device released today offers fully synchronous operation and provides programmable read or write burst lengths of 4 or 8. An auto precharge function provides a self-timed row precharge initiated at the end of the burst sequence. Easy-to-use refresh functions include auto- or self-refresh, and a programmable mode register allows the system to choose the most suitable modes to maximize performance.
In addition to the 1G x 8 AS4C1G8MD3L, Alliance Memory also offers the 512M x 16 AS4C512M16D3L in the 96-ball FBGA package, which is available in an extended commercial temperature range (AS4C512M16D3L-12BCN) and an industrial temperature range from -40 degrees C to +95 degrees C (AS4C512M16D3L-12BIN). Alliance Memory is one of the few suppliers of monolithic DDR3L SDRAMs with high densities to 8 Gb. In addition, with minimal die shrinks, the single-die AS4C1G8MD3L provides a reliable drop-in, pin-for-pin-compatible replacement for a number of similar solutions -- eliminating the need for costly redesigns and part requalification.
Samples and production quantities of the new 8-GB DDR3L SDRAM are available now, with lead times of six to eight weeks. Pricing for U.S. delivery starts at $18.00 per piece.
About Alliance Memory Inc.
Alliance Memory is a worldwide provider of legacy memory products for the communications, computing, consumer electronics, medical, automotive, and industrial markets. The company's product range includes a full range of asynchronous and synchronous SRAMs, low-power SRAMs, ZMD low-power SRAMs, 3.3 V synchronous DRAMs (SDR), mobile DDRs, and 2.5 V single (DDR1), 1.8 V double (DDR2), and 1.5 V & 1.35 V triple rate (DDR3) synchronous DRAMs. Depending on the family, these products are available with commercial, industrial, and automotive operating temperature ranges and with densities from 64K to 8G. Alliance Memory is a privately held company with headquarters in San Carlos, California, and regional offices in the United Kingdom, France, Italy, China, and Southeast Asia. More information about Alliance Memory is available online at www.alliancememory.com.
Editor resources:
Link to product image:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/alliancememory/albums/72157670882001906
Link to detailed product info:
http://www.alliancememory.com/datasheets/AS4C1G8MD3L.asp
Agency Contact:
Bob Decker
Redpines
+1 415 409 0233
Email Contact
Alliance Memory Contact:
Kim Bagby
CFO
+1 650 610 6800
Email Contact
DANA POINT, CA -- (Marketwired) -- 07/13/16 -- Craig T. Beling, a southern California attorney, has been commended for his work with Village Care International. An award is to be given out at the end of the 3rd quarter by the YAB Association.
Craig Beling is currently the head of his own law firm, specializing in the fields of debt renegotiation and settlement. While not conducting his own business, Mr. Beling also serves as the corporate counsel and consultant for a number of different corporate entities.
Mr. Beling has had a lengthy career that has been filled with unique experiences. He has worked as both a lawyer and a consultant for the Portfolio Management Group, the Clarus Capital Group, and as director of a Serbian engineering firm. He has also worked as a compliance officer for the global hedge fund Teewinot Funds and has consulted with companies across the world on issues regarding the law, finances, and business development. Over the course of his twenty-five year career, he's gained experience in fields as varied as oil and gas, real estate, and finances while maintaining his standing as an attorney.
During his tenure with Fidelity Capital Market, Craig Beling originated a number of major transactions, dealing with major IPOs from companies like Google, Dominos and Orbitz. As VP of Investment Advisor Relationships, his responsibilities touched on aspects of real estate, consulting, alternative investments, capital acquisition, and compliance matters. Drawing from his experience working with Salomon Brothers and Societe Generale, he put the same work ethic that sourced over a billion dollars worth of real estate equity and debt to work for Fidelity.
Before working in the financial field, Beling spent time working for major law firms in the fields of energy real estate, contracts, bankruptcy, securities and corporate law. As a motivated and independent thinker, Craig always used his unique experience for his clients' gain, putting his Harvard-educated mind to the task of helping his clients and securing the best possible resolutions for their issues.
A graduate of Boston College's Law School, he currently lives in Dana Point, California with his wife and four of his children. He participates in youth mentorship activities and international mission work, while working closely with Village Care International, a group that has helped to build over twenty-five hundred self-sustaining villages throughout Africa. Craig Beling's unique life journey and his varied experience in the fields of law and finance have allowed him to give back to the international community in a very meaningful way.
Email Contact
Craig T. Beling
SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA -- (Marketwired) -- 07/13/16 -- Simavita Limited ("Simavita" or the "Company") (TSX VENTURE: SV)(ASX: SVA) advises the appointment of Nathan Bartrop as Joint Company Secretary.
Nathan is both a qualified lawyer and Chartered Company Secretary employed by Company Matters Pty Limited. Nathan has experience with ASX listed, dual listed and unlisted entities. Nathan has been involved in the listing of a number of entities on ASX, as well as advising other listed entities in relation to ASX listing rules. He also has prior experience at ASX, where he was a Senior Listings Compliance Adviser in Sydney and Perth, responsible for advising and monitoring listed entities' compliance with the ASX Listing Rules.
Nathan is an Associate of Governance Institute of Australia, in addition to being a member of the NSW State Council and the Corporate and Legal Issues Committee.
In accordance with Listing Rule 12.6, Mr Bartrop and Ms Jurd will be responsible for communications with the ASX.
For further information, please check our website (www.simavita.com).
The TSX Venture Exchange has in no way passed upon the merits of the transactions set out herein and has neither approved nor disapproved the contents of this press release. Neither TSX Venture Exchange not its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this Release.
Contacts:
Simavita Limited
Ms Peta Jurd
+61 421 466 653
pjurd@simavita.com
www.simavita.com
FARNBOROUGH, UNITED KINGDOM -- (Marketwired) -- 07/13/16 -- Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada
Canada's aerospace companies demonstrated their global clout this week at the world's largest aviation trade exhibition. More than 400 Canadians representing 100 companies showcased their innovations and developed international business contacts that translate into highly skilled, well-paying jobs for Canadians working in this vibrant, export-driven industry.
The Honourable Navdeep Bains, Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development, led the Canadian delegation at the 2016 Farnborough International Airshow in the United Kingdom. He was joined by the Honourable Judy Foote, Minister of Public Services and Procurement. Their presence demonstrated the government's clear commitment to working in collaboration with the aerospace industry.
Minister Bains took the opportunity to meet with key executives from more than a dozen aerospace companies. His message at these meetings was consistent: the Government of Canada is committed to working with the aerospace and space sectors. That's because aerospace is a key economic engine for Canada, employing more than 211,000 Canadians in highly skilled jobs and helping to foster a thriving middle class. Canadian aerospace companies are thoroughly integrated into global supply chains, exporting nearly 80 percent of their products to international markets. And the sector continues to be an innovation leader, ranking as the top research and development spender within Canada's manufacturing sector.
While at Farnborough, Minister Bains announced that the government is now accepting statements of interest for the latest round of the Technology Demonstration Program, which provides funding for collaborative projects to demonstrate applications of key technologies. Projects under the program provide the basis for next-generation technologies-part of the central contribution of the aerospace sector to Canada's Innovation Agenda.
Minister Bains also announced a total of $4.9 million in financial support to 11 Quebec aerospace companies. These investments will strengthen the skills, knowledge and business expertise that create highly skilled and well-paying jobs for Canadians working in the aerospace industry. The funding will also enable these companies to get their products to market faster and more efficiently.
Quotes
"Canada's aerospace industry is a leading contributor to our economy in manufacturing output, exports and research and development activity. Internationally, Canada punches above its weight. Here at Farnborough, I was pleased to promote to the world the kind of made-in-Canada innovations that have made our country's aerospace industry a global success. The future of the industry looks bright, with its leadership in artificial intelligence, clean tech, hybrid electric jets and other exciting developments we can't yet imagine."
- The Honourable Navdeep Bains, Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development
"The Government of Canada is committed to supporting the aerospace and space sectors as they are a key economic engine for Canada. This year's Farnborough International Airshow provided an important opportunity to meet directly with aerospace companies to discuss upcoming procurement priorities. The Canadian delegation had productive discussions with industry and international partners on ways we can make our procurement processes work better to further position Canada as a welcoming country in which to do business."
- The Honourable Judy Foote, Minister of Public Services and Procurement
Quick facts
-- Canada's aerospace industry contributed more than $28 billion and 211,000 jobs to the Canadian economy in 2015. -- Canadian aerospace manufacturing was the number one research and development investor within the country's manufacturing sector. -- Nearly 80 percent of made-in-Canada aerospace products were exported in 2015.
Follow Minister Bains on social media.
Twitter: @MinisterISED
Contacts:
Philip Proulx
Press Secretary
Office of the Minister of Innovation,
Science and Economic Development
343-291-2500
Media Relations
Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada
343-291-1777
ic.mediarelations-mediasrelations.ic@canada.ca
BORDEAUX, France, July 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --
Europlasma SA, the French company specialised in the design and operation of plasma solutions for renewable energy generation and hazardous waste recovery, announces that its CHO TIPER renewable energy plant is approved by French authorities, and is financially supported by Ademe as part of the "Investissements d'Avenir" programme.
Green light from the local authorities
Concluding an administrative process which had started in September 2014, the "Prefecture des Deux-Sevres" has confirmed its decision to authorize the CHO TIPER project in Thouars. The operating licence is expected shortly.
CHO TIPER is a renewable energy plant, it will produce over 10MWe, covering the electrical requirements of 45,000 people. The clean technology developed by Europlasma, based upon advanced gasification of waste and biomass, will avoid each year local production of 30,000t of CO2, and local landfilling of 45,000t of waste.
Ademe supports the CHO TIPER project and significantly contributes to its funding.
ADEME (Agence de l'Environnement et de la MaAtrise de l'Energie) has selected the CHO TIPER project as part of its Investissement d'Avenir programme.
This decision concludes a rigorous evaluation of the project, both technical and economical, which started early 2016. This evaluation was based in particular on the detailed analysis of the operational progress at CHO Morcenx, as well as on the granular review of the optimized design of CHO TIPER, future industrial demonstrator.
The support from ADEME will materialize in a 12m repayable advance, reimbursable over 6 years after commissioning, at a fixed IRR of 0,99%. The corresponding contract is being finalized.
Jean-Eric Petit, CEO of Europlasma, declares: "We are proud of this very significant support from the French state. It constitutes a tangible recognition of the relevance and the potential of the CHO Power technology, and anchors Europlasma even more firmly as a key player of circular economy. We expect this support to facilitate our deployment in France and abroad."
Marine GLON, head of the circular economy program at ADEME, Investissements d'Avenir, adds "The industrial demonstrator CHO Tiper closely meets the challenges of circular economy and energy transition. Supporting industrial players like Europlasma through the Investissements d'Avenir program operated by ADEME must allow the French industry to play an essential role in bringing innovative, scientific, and technological solutions to these challenges, while reducing environmental footprint."
About EUROPLASMA
At the heart of environmental issues, Europlasma designs and develops innovative plasma solutions for renewable energy generation and hazardous waste recovery, as well as related applications for multi-sector companies wishing to reduce their environmental footprint.
Europlasma is listed on Alternext (FR0000044810-ALEUP). For more information: www.europlasma.com
Press Contact :
Anne BORDERES -Communication Manager / Tel: + 33 (0) 556 497000 - contactbourse@europlasma.com
This is a disclosure announcement from PR Newswire.
2nd innovationsforum for automation to feature talks from INTEL, Texas Instruments, SolarWorld, Bosch, Boeing Spectrolab, and IC Insights among others
The innovationsforum for automation USA sponsored by the Automation Network Dresden (AND) is dedicated to bringing semiconductor companies the latest information on best practices, new technologies and the future of automation.
The innovationsforum, held for the past 11 years in Dresden, Germany, is organized by the AND, a high-tech cluster of the five Dresden-based companies -- AIS, HAP, SYSTEMA, Roth Rau/Ortner, and Xenon -- all of which are experts in automation through software and hardware. In 2015 the conference took place in the USA for the first time.
Over the course of two days companies such as INTEL, IC insights, TI, SolarWorld, BOSCH and others will discuss new technologies that impact semiconductor manufacturing and best practices that have already brought major improvements for the automation of IC fabs. By bringing together automation experts from the semiconductor, PV, and similar industries, the innovationsforum provides a unique forum for the exchange of ideas.
In recent years there has been a focus on showcasing new technologies and achievements in automation research. Each year an 'Innovation Award for Automation' is given to an influencer and driver of innovations in manufacturing at the customary evening event and dinner party.
The 2nd innovationsforum for automation USA will be held at INTEL in Hillsboro on September 22 23, 2016. For more information or to register, visit http://and-innovation.de/ or contact Heather Bonin or Christfried Nicolaus.
View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160713005244/en/
Contacts:
SYSTEMA GmbH
Christfried Nicolaus, +49-351-8824-853
Fax: +49-351-8824-772
christfried.nicolaus@systemagmbh.de
or
SYSTEMA USA Corporation
Heather Bonin, 541-760-7215
heather.bonin@systema-usacorp.com
Natural Gas Posted Gains through June on Recovery in Oil, Coal
LONDON, July 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --European power prices strengthened in June as reduced wind power generation in Germany and nuclear outages in France tightened supply/demand margins, according to data released by S&P Global Platts, the leading independent provider of information and benchmark prices for the commodities and energy markets.
Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160510/365785LOGO
The U.K.'s vote to leave the European Union, an outage at the Rough gas storage facility and a reduction of the Dutch Groningen production quota for gas year 2016 gave the gas market a lot to digest in June.
The immediate impact of 'Brexit' saw the pound fall against the euro, strengthening U.K. gas in pence per therm, with day-ahead gas prices up 1.2 pence to 34.8 p/th June 24 versus a TTF contract down 0.6 per megawatt hour (MWh) to 14.5/MWh.
U.K. power prices remain significantly above those in Continental Europe, so the vote had no impact on import/export flows on interconnectors to France and the Netherlands.
Nevertheless, Continental European power prices, according to Platts Continental Power Index (CONTI)*, increased 18% to 28.33/MWh in June compared to May. On a year-over-year basis the index was down 11.5%.
S&P Global Platts' regional analysis of European power and gas markets showed the following:
Germany: day-ahead baseload power averaged 27.73/MWh in June, up 21% on May amid low wind output, further nuclear outages and rising fuel costs. A day-ahead peakload price of 39.25/MWh June 20 was the highest since January, but the monthly average remained 8% down year over year. Sharp gains in coal and gas prices lifted the year-ahead baseload contract to a 2016-high of 28.55/MWh June 20.
France: day-ahead baseload power prices averaged 27.82/MWh in June, a 15% increase on May as several worker strikes caused unplanned nuclear outages, driving nuclear generation down 8% year over year. The shortfall was covered by a 20% increase in hydroelectric production, and a 130% increase in coal- and gas-fired generation.
U.K. power: day-ahead prices gained 9% month over month to 36.84/MWh, but remained 11% below the June 2015 average of 41.27/MWh. Wet, windy weather had little impact on demand but price volatility ramped up late in the month as nuclear availability dipped, gas-fired generation remained strong and nervous traders tried to make sense of the Brexit vote.
U.K. gas: day-ahead natural gas prices on the U.K.'s National Balancing Point (NBP) trading hub ticked up 13% month over month but remained 21% lower than the June 2015 levels. Norwegian maintenance and low liquefied natural gas (LNG) regasification overshadowed the Interconnector's annual shutdown. Spot and prompt prices came under bearish pressure late in the month due to the unplanned outage at the long-range Rough storage facility, but the bullish strength of the NBP spot during the first half of the month more than covered the late losses. The amount of natural gas used by U.K. gas-fired power stations was close to a five-year high for the January-June period this year.
Dutch gas: on the TTF, continental Europe's most heavily traded natural gas hub, day-ahead gas prices in June averaged 10.5% more than in May. A number of bullish factors drove the contract up, including the annual outage on the U.K. gas interconnector, unplanned Norwegian maintenance, and the Dutch government's preliminary decision to cut the annual Groningen gas field quota to 24 billion cubic meters.
Platts Continental Europe and U.K. Day-Ahead Monthly Averages
Jun-16 May-16 Jun-15
CONTI* (/MWh) 28.33 23.98 32.02
TTF (/MWh) 14.41 13.03 20.51
U.K. Power (/MWh) 36.84 33.85 41.27
U.K. Gas (pence/therm) 34.19 30.33 43.30
Source: Platts
NOTE: All figures are monthly averages of daily day-ahead contract prices as assessed by S&P Global Platts.
For more information on electric power or the methodology used by Platts in its power assessments, visit the S&P Global Platts website www.platts.com.
* The S&P Global Platts CONTI is a demand-weighted baseload average of day-ahead contracts assessed in Germany, Switzerland, France, Belgium and the Netherlands. The S&P Global Platts U.K. assessments reflect day-ahead contracts assessed for firm delivery of power on the high voltage network of England, Wales and Scotland, and at the National Balancing Point (NBP) for gas. The S&P Global Platts assessments reflect prices as determined between buyer and seller in the open physical markets.
CONTACT
Global, Americas, Asia: Kathleen Tanzy, + 1 917 331 4607, kathleen.tanzy@platts.com
About S&P Global Platts
At S&P Global Platts, we provide the insights; you make better informed trading and business decisions with confidence. We're the leading independent provider of information and benchmark prices for the commodities and energy markets. Customers in over 150 countries look to our expertise in news, pricing and analytics to deliver greater transparency and efficiency to markets. S&P Global Platts coverage includes oil and gas, power, petrochemicals, metals, agriculture and shipping.
S&P Global Platts is a division of S&P Global (NYSE: SPGI), which provides essential intelligence for individuals, companies and governments to make decisions with confidence. For more information, visit www.platts.com.
VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 07/13/16 -- A British Columbia Securities Commission (BCSC) panel has found that Rui ("Roy") Figueiredo and two companies that he controlled and was a director of committed a fraud on one investor.
Figueiredo, a B.C. resident, was a director of PARE Realty Ltd. and 0929870 B.C. Ltd. Figueiredo and the companies were purportedly running a "rent to own" business, offering short term loans to home renters to help those renters make deposits or down payments on home purchases.
The panel found that Figueiredo convinced an investor to make nine loans totaling $81,000 to purported clients of the rent to own business. Instead, Figueiredo deposited the investor's funds into a personal bank account and a bank account in the name of 0929870, over which Figueiredo had sole signing authority. Of the investor's $81,000, Figueiredo returned $23,125, purportedly as interest and the return of principal on certain of the investor's loans, and used the rest on personal expenditures.
The panel stated, "There is no evidence that there ever was any real business carried on by the respondents. The respondents took (the investor's) funds, used a portion of them to perpetuate the fraud by paying purported returns and then Figueiredo simply pocketed the remainder and used it for personal expenses."
For their misconduct, the panel permanently prohibited Figueiredo, PARE and 0929870 from trading or purchasing securities or exchange contracts, becoming or acting as a registrant or promoter, acting in a management or consultative capacity in connection with activities in the securities market, and engaging in investor relations activities. The panel also permanently banned Figueiredo from becoming or acting as a director or officer of any issuer or registrant, and permanently cease traded PARE and 0929870.
The panel ordered that Figueiredo pay to the Commission an administrative penalty of $130,000. The panel also ordered that Figueiredo and 0929870 pay to the Commission $57,875. Figueiredo and 0929870 are jointly and severally liable for this amount.
You may view the findings on our website www.bcsc.bc.ca by typing Rui Figueiredo, PARE Realty Ltd., 0929870 B.C. Ltd. or 2016 BCSECCOM 233 in the search box. Information regarding disciplinary proceedings can be found in the Enforcement section of the BCSC website.
Please visit the Canadian Securities Administrators' Disciplined List for information relating to persons and companies disciplined by provincial securities regulators, the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada (IIROC) and the Mutual Fund Dealers Association (MFDA).
About the British Columbia Securities Commission (www.bcsc.bc.ca)
The British Columbia Securities Commission is the independent provincial government agency responsible for regulating capital markets in British Columbia through the administration of the Securities Act. Our mission is to protect and promote the public interest by fostering:
-- A securities market that is fair and warrants public confidence -- A dynamic and competitive securities industry that provides investment opportunities and access to capital
Learn how to protect yourself and become a more informed investor at www.investright.org
Contacts:
Media Contact:
Alison Walker
604-899-6713
Public inquiries:
604-899-6854 or 1-800-373-6393 (toll free)
inquiries@bcsc.bc.ca
OTTAWA, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 07/13/16 -- Correctional Service Canada
The Honourable Ralph Goodale, Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, along with officials from the Correctional Service of Canada, will host a town hall meeting to consult Canadians on the feasibility of re-establishing agribusiness operations at Joyceville and Collins Bay institutions.
The meeting will take place Aug. 16 from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. at Memorial Hall at Kingston City Hall in Kingston, Ontario. The public is invited to attend.
The town hall meeting is part of a larger feasibility study, which includes an online forum where stakeholders from government, business and the community are invited to share their opinions. This online forum is open from June 2 to Aug. 2, 2016 (see June 2, 2016 news release for more information).
Once the feasibility study is complete, the findings will be posted publicly.
Quotes
"The Government of Canada is committed to ensuring Canada's criminal justice system increases the safety of our communities and supports providing offenders with programming that helps them successfully reintegrate into our communities. With that in mind, we invite the public to come out to the town hall meeting and share their views on re-establishing agribusiness programs at Collins Bay and Joyceville institutions."
- The Honourable Ralph Goodale, Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness
Associated links
History of CORCAN and the evolution of prison industries
Contacts:
Scott Bardsley
Office of the Minister of Public Safety and
Emergency Preparedness
613-998-5681
Media Relations
Correctional Service Canada
613-992-7711
media@csc-scc.gc.ca
VIENNA (dpa-AFX) - Theresa May is formally appointed as the 13th Prime Minister of U.K., replacing David Cameron. Theresa visited the Queen at the Buckingham Palace and accepted the invitation to form a new government. She is the second female of U.K. after Margaret Thatcher. While addressing the media outside the official residence at 10, Downing Street, Theresa May said Cameron has governed in the spirit of One Nation Conservatism and she will continue that. Cameron has officially tendered his resignation to the Queen at the Buckingham Palace this evening. Before driving to Buckingham Palace, Cameron said that being prime minister for six years has been the greatest honor of his life. Cameron spoke of series of achievements of his time in office including the free schools program, gay marriage legislation, investing in the National Health Service and giving aid to the poorest people and countries in the world. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX
Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Donald Trump has called on Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to resign after she harshly criticized the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. 'Justice Ginsburg of the U.S. Supreme Court has embarrassed all by making very dumb political statements about me. Her mind is shot - resign!' Trump said in a post on Twitter. Trump's tweet came after Ginsburg repeatedly criticized the real estate tycoon in interviews with several media outlets. In an interview with CNN Legal Analyst and Supreme Court Biographer Joan Biskupic on Monday, Ginsburg blasted Trump as a 'faker.' 'He has no consistency about him,' Ginsburg said. 'He says whatever comes into his head at the moment. He really has an ego.' She added, 'How has he gotten away with not turning over his tax returns? The press seems to be very gentle with him on that.' Ginsburg's remarks to CNN came after she expressed concerns about what will become of the U.S. if Trump is elected president in separate interviews with the New York Times and the Associated Press. 'I can't imagine what this place would be - I can't imagine what the country would be - with Donald Trump as our president,' Ginsburg told the Times. 'For the country, it could be four years. For the court, it could be - I don't even want to contemplate that.' In addition to the reaction from Trump, Ginsburg's comments have also attracted criticism from others who argue that Supreme Court Justices should stay out of the political arena. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX
Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 07/13/16 -- Teranga Gold Corporation ("Teranga" or the "Company") (TSX: TGZ)(ASX: TGZ) announced today that it will release its second quarter 2016 financial and operating results on Thursday, July 28, 2016 at approximately 6:00 a.m. ET. The release will be followed by a conference call and audio webcast later that morning at 8:30 a.m. ET where management will review the Company's results and discuss the quarter's highlights.
Those wishing to listen can access the live conference call and audio webcast as follows:
Date & Time: Thursday, July 28, 2016 at 8:30 a.m. ET Telephone: Toll-free +1-866-393-4306 International +1-734-385-2616 Please allow 10 minutes to be connected to the conference call. Webcast: The webcast can be accessed directly at www.gowebcasting.com/7734 and on Teranga's website at www.terangagold.com. Replay: The conference call replay will be available for two weeks after the call by dialing 416-621-4642 or toll-free at 1- 800-585-8367 and entering the conference ID 47208892. Note: The slide presentation will be available for download at www.terangagold.com for simultaneous viewing during the call.
About Teranga Gold
Teranga is a Canadian-based gold company listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX: TGZ) and Australian Securities Exchange (ASX: TGZ). Teranga is principally engaged in the production and sale of gold, as well as related activities such as exploration and mine development in West Africa.
Teranga's mission is to create value for all of its stakeholders as it pursues its vision to be a pre-eminent mid-tier gold producer in West Africa. Operating in accordance with the highest international standards and using the best available techniques, Teranga strives to set the benchmark for responsible mining and to be a catalyst for sustainable economic, environmental and community development. For more information, please refer to www.terangagold.com.
Contacts:
Teranga Gold Corporation
Trish Moran
Head of Investor Relations
+1-416-607-4507
tmoran@terangagold.com
www.terangagold.com
ST. JOHN'S, NEWFOUNDLAND AND LABRADOR -- (Marketwired) -- 07/13/16 -- Fortis Inc. ("Fortis" or the "Corporation") (TSX: FTS) will release its second quarter 2016 results on Friday, July 29, 2016. A teleconference and webcast will be held the same day at 10:30 a.m. (Eastern). Barry Perry, President and Chief Executive Officer, Fortis, and Karl Smith, Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer, Fortis, will discuss the Corporation's second quarter 2016 results.
Analysts, members of the media and other interested parties in North America are invited to participate by calling 1.877.223.4471. International participants may participate by calling 647.788.4922. Please dial in 10 minutes prior to the start of the call. No pass code is required.
A live and archived audio webcast of the teleconference will be available on the Corporation's website, www.fortisinc.com.
A replay of the conference will be available two hours after the conclusion of the call until August 29, 2016. Please call 1.800.585.8367 or 416.621.4642 and enter pass code 27371747.
About Fortis
Fortis is a leader in the North American electric and gas utility business, with total assets of approximately CAD$28 billion and fiscal 2015 revenue of CAD$6.7 billion. The Corporation's asset mix is approximately 96% regulated (70% electric, 26% gas), with the remaining 4% comprised of non-regulated energy infrastructure. The Corporation's regulated utilities serve more than 3 million customers across Canada, the United States and the Caribbean.
Fortis shares are listed on the TSX and trade under the symbol FTS. Additional information can be accessed at www.fortisinc.com, www.sedar.com, or www.sec.gov.
Contacts:
Kealey Martin
Manager, Investor Relations
Fortis Inc.
709.737.2900
Texas Leads the Nation with 86,000 Jobs Supported by Dutch-US Trade and Investments
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The economic ties between the Netherlands and the US keep growing stronger, a new digitalreport by the Royal Netherlands Embassy reveals. Dutch companies increased their direct investment in the American economy to $305 billion in 2014, up from $261 billion the prior year. In the same period, American companies grew their investment in the Netherlands to $753 billion, up from $717 billion the previous year.
This Smart News Release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160713006374/en/
The Royal Netherlands Embassy created a motion graphic using iconic places in the United States to demonstrate the depth and breadth of the Dutch-US economic bond, and an interactive map that shows the Dutch economic footprint in every American state and virtually every sector. Find them both on NLintheUSA.com.
The 400-year-old economic relationship between the Netherlands and the US supported 740,000 American jobs in 2013, the most recent available data shows. The Netherlands is a fixture in the top 5 of the largest foreign investors in the US, and maintains its place as the No. 1 destination for American investments abroad.
Texas is again the strongest economic partner of the Netherlands among the 50 states. The state leads the nation with 86,000 jobs supported by Dutch-US trade and investment in 2013. It was also the biggest exporter to the Netherlands, sending $6.8 billion in goods and services across the ocean in 2015. California came in second with 66,000 jobs supported by Dutch-American economic ties (2013) and $5.6 billion exports to the Netherlands (2015).
"The Netherlands and the United States are longstanding allies in international affairs and culture. This relationship extends to our economic ties and illustrates the vitality of the partnership between our two nations," said Henne Schuwer, the Dutch Ambassador to the United States.
The Top 5 States for Jobs and Exports to the Netherlands Top 5 Jobs 2013 Top 5 Exports to the Netherlands 2015 Billion USD 1. Texas 86,000 1. Texas 6.8 2. California 66,000 2. California 5.6 3. Pennsylvania 60,000 3. Louisiana 2.6 4. New York 45,000 4. Illinois 1.9 5. Massachusetts 44,000 5. Washington 1.7
"This report proves that the relationship between the Netherlands and the United States is productive. Be it on the West Coast, in the South, the heartland, or the East Coast, the Dutch imprint in the United States is undeniable. 740,000 jobs are not just stats, but people working in every state," said Remco Zeeuw, Minister of the Economic Department of the Royal Netherlands Embassy.
The economic ties report also shows a sizable number of Americans who are of Dutch descent. More than 4.95 million Americans have Dutch ancestors, with the largest populations of Dutch-Americans living in Michigan, California and New York.
The Netherlands is a trading nation that continues to blossom from a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship, and that is rooted in the strong beliefs of security, freedom and justice. For more than 400 years, the Netherlands and the United States have shared a deep bond founded on joint values and history. Our economic ties create jobs, sound investments, and promising opportunities on both sides of the Atlantic. Simply said, the Netherlands and the US have a partnership that works.
The Netherlands diplomatic network in the US promotes strong bilateral relations between the United States and the Netherlands, especially in the areas of agrifood and horticulture, water management, sustainable urban planning, peace and justice, and creative industries. Read more on www.nlintheusa.com and follow us @NLintheUSA.
Follow us on:
http://twitter.com/NLintheUSA
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Washington-DC/NLinUSA/324301056550
http://www.youtube.com/user/NLandUSA
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ny400/collections/
View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160713006374/en/
Contacts:
Royal Netherlands Embassy
Carla Bundy
Public Diplomacy, Press and Culture
202-274-2632 or 202-413-9786
cy.bundy@minbuza.nl
or
Jacquelien Nienhuis
Public Diplomacy, Press and Culture
202-274-2606 or 202-262-0995
jacquelien.nienhuis@minbuza.nl
NLintheUSA.com
NEWPORT BEACH, CA -- (Marketwired) -- 07/13/16 -- Liolios Group Inc., a leading financial communications firm, has appointed Wall Street veteran Sean McGowan as managing director.
McGowan is a seasoned capital markets professional with more than 30 years' experience covering dozens of consumer leisure stocks for a variety of brokerage firms and investment banks. During the past ten years, McGowan was a managing director in equity research at Oppenheimer and Co., Needham & Co. and Wedbush Securities, where he also served as associate director of research.
Prior to Wedbush, McGowan was a founding member of the boutique firm Gerard Klauer Mattison (GKM), serving as a senior analyst and managing director. He was the director of equity research at GKM until shortly before its acquisition by the Bank of Montreal.
During his tenure on Wall Street, McGowan's research earned multiple awards for stock picking and estimate accuracy from the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Forbes, Reuters and Institutional Investor. At Liolios, McGowan will continue to focus on the consumer leisure sector, helping companies improve communications with investors, but also to provide strategic advice across a broad range of subjects.
McGowan received an MBA from Harvard Business School and earned a B.A. in French and English Literature from Hofstra University.
"Sean's extensive background will play a key role in enhancing the breadth and depth of our current strategic financial communications programs, particularly in the consumer sector," said Scott Liolios, founder and president of Liolios Group. "We plan to leverage his extensive network of buy-side relationships and industry contacts to fuel the continued growth of our firm."
"Joining the Liolios platform provides me the opportunity to leverage my experience in the capital markets, where I've worked with both public and private companies of all sizes and stages of growth," commented McGowan. "Over the past five years, I've worked with the Liolios team in connection with several companies I covered as an analyst, and I've attended their Gateway conferences. I have been consistently impressed, and I look forward to working closely with our clients and building upon Liolios' growing platform."
McGowan will be based out of Liolios' Newport Beach headquarters.
About Liolios Group
Liolios is a comprehensive financial communications firm specializing in small-cap companies. The firm aims to deliver superior performance in corporate messaging and positioning, capital markets advisory, investor awareness and capital formation. Founded in 1999, Liolios executives have extensive experience in finance and investments, and represent public and private companies in a wide range of industries, including technology, digital media, consumer/internet retail, healthcare/life sciences, natural resources, financial services and business services. For more information about Liolios, please visit www.liolios.com.
Contact:
Sean McGowan, Managing Director
Tel 949-574-3860
Email Contact
According to the latest market research report by Technavio, the global heart-lung machines marketis expected to USD 283 million in revenue by 2020.
In this report, Technavio covers the present scenario and growth prospects of the global heart-lung machines market for 2016-2020. To calculate the market size, the revenue generated from the sales of various types heart-lung machines have been considered from Americas, EMEA, and APAC.
"The prevalence of CVDs in APAC owing to changing lifestyles in emerging economies such as China and India has increased the demand for cardiac surgeries. These economies are experiencing the growing need for improved healthcare, where more patients are able to access affordable healthcare services," said Barath Palada, one of Technavio's lead industry analysts for cardiovascular devices research.
These affordable healthcare services available in APAC attract patients from developed countries such as the UK, Canada, and the US. For instance, the cost of CABG surgery is USD 50,000-USD 75,000 in the US, whereas the same surgery, including direct and indirect medical expenses cost around USD 10,000 in India. Therefore, Vendors such as LivaNova are focusing on APAC to increase their market share, which will, in turn, fuel the market growth.
Global heart-lung machines market by geography 2015
Americas 39.40%
39.40% EMEA 37.56%
37.56% APAC 23.04%
Source: Technavio research
Request sample report: http://bit.ly/29nEaTY
Americas: largest region for the heart-lung machines market
The heart-lung machines market in the Americas was valued at USD 93.1 million in 2015. CVDs have been one of the leading causes of mortality in the Americas. According to the AHA, in December 2014, around 85.6 million people were diagnosed with CVDs in the US. The direct and indirect costs, including healthcare expenditure and loss of productivity cost, amounted to about $318 billion during 2014-2015. If CVDs are not treated at an early stage, they may cause stroke or lead to death. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in 2015, coronary heart defect was diagnosed in around 40,000 births, per year, in the US; this accounts for 1% of the newborns. Pulmonary atresia is the failure of the development of pulmonary artery, which is rare type of coronary birth defect in newborns. It can be treated with surgery soon after birth. In 2013, in the US, more than 500,000 cardiac operations were performed with the help of heart-lung machines. The growing number of surgical procedures and increase in the number of ASCs in the US will contribute to the growth of the heart-lung machines market in this region.
Heart-lung machines market in EMEA
The heart-lung machines market in EMEA was valued at USD 88.76 million in 2015. The older adult population in EMEA is growing, and people are ready to spend more to increase life expectancy. The median age in the UK has increased from 34 in 1975 to 41 in 2014. CVDs such as ischemic heart disease is common in the older adult population worldwide. In EMEA, Germany and Israel had the highest number of CABG surgeries in the recent past (2010-2014).
The heart-lung machines market in EMEA is expected to grow steadily during the forecast period. In this region, new entrants are focusing on developing portable heart-lung machines, which can play an important role in cost reduction. The price of these products are low, and this helps to reduce the cost burden of the healthcare industry. For instance, Hemovent raised USD 6 million in February 2016 to financially support the development of its fully portable Extra Corporeal Membrane Oxygenation system, which supports heart and lung function during surgical procedures.
Heart-lung machines market in APAC
The heart-lung machines market in APAC was valued at USD 54.44 million in 2015. Healthcare spending in APAC continues to rise because of the improvements in healthcare infrastructure and rise in awareness about diseases. According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in 2014, Asian economies spend just over USD 730 per person per year on healthcare. Also, in 2012, government spending on healthcare in APAC was estimated to be around 48%, while it was 73% in other OECD countries. Increased healthcare spending and awareness about cardiac disorders is expected to aid the market growth during the forecast period.
Browse related reports:
Global Tissue Heart Valves Market 2016-2020
Cardiac Medical Devices Market in the US 2016-2020
Global Cardiac Prosthetic Devices Market 2015-2019
Do you need a report on a market in a specific geographical cluster or country but can't find what you're looking for? Don't worry, Technavio also takes client requests. Please contact enquiry@technavio.com with your requirements and our analysts will be happy to create a customized report just for you.
About Technavio
Technavio is a leading global technology research and advisory company. The company develops over 2000 pieces of research every year, covering more than 500 technologies across 80 countries. Technavio has about 300 analysts globally who specialize in customized consulting and business research assignments across the latest leading edge technologies.
Technavio analysts employ primary as well as secondary research techniques to ascertain the size and vendor landscape in a range of markets. Analysts obtain information using a combination of bottom-up and top-down approaches, besides using in-house market modeling tools and proprietary databases. They corroborate this data with the data obtained from various market participants and stakeholders across the value chain, including vendors, service providers, distributors, re-sellers, and end-users.
If you are interested in more information, please contact our media team at media@technavio.com.
View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160713005031/en/
Contacts:
Technavio Research
Jesse Maida
Media Marketing Executive
US: +1 630 333 9501
UK: +44 208 123 1770
www.technavio.com
media@technavio.com
Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - July 13, 2016) - TURQUOISE CAPITAL CORP. (NEX: TQC.H) ("Turquoise"), a capital pool company, announces that Business Combination Agreement has been terminated (see news release dated April 2, 2015). The agreement was terminated because Turquoise and Vigil Technologies Inc. ("Vigil") were unable to complete certain conditions of closing. Turquoise is in discussions with Vigil regarding the repayment of the $25,000 loan which was advanced to Vigil. Turquoise is seeking alternate business opportunities for its shareholders.
Turquoise also announces that John da Costa has resigned as CFO and Corporate Secretary, but will remain on as a director of Turquoise. To fill the vacancies created by Mr. da Costa's resignation, Turquoise has appointed Devon Brown as CFO and Corporate Secretary of Turquoise. Mr. Brown was also appointed as a director of Turquoise.
Devon Brown holds a BA in English Literature from the University of Regina. He received his designation as a Certified Professional Accountant in 2006 and has over 10 years of experience in Accounting and Finance. Devon has held a variety of executive roles in industry and has experience in mergers and acquisitions, financial reporting to the TSX and the ASX, corporate governance and implementing business solutions in regulated and complex technical environments.
Devon was a founding member of MMJ Bioscience Inc., a Medicinal Cannabis startup and Licensed Producer (LP) with Health Canada. In addition to implementing the overall corporate and governance model, Devon facilitated the creation of the corporate strategy, a merger with Phytotech Medical Ltd. and contributed to the acquisition of a cultivation license from Health Canada:
3M+ start-up capital raised through the issuance of convertible debentures
Significant role in M&A activity (financial modelling, information circular and due diligence)
Managed 6M budget for the construction and licensing of a state-of-the-art facility: negotiated supplier agreements and allocated resources to create synergies
Advisor and decision support for the entire team throughout the licensing process
About Turquoise
Turquoise was incorporated November 14, 2012 under the Business Corporations Act (British Columbia). Turquoise is a CPC as defined by the CPC Policy. On June 28, 2013, Turquoise completed its initial public offering and its common shares were listed for trading on the Exchange on July 3, 2013. As disclosed in its final prospectus dated April 15, 2013, Turquoise's business has been restricted to the identification and evaluation of businesses or assets for the purpose of completing its Qualifying Transaction.
For further information please contact:
Turquoise Capital Corp.
Devon Brown, CFO
250-514-9714
Information set forth in this news release contains forward-looking statements. These statements reflect management's current estimates, beliefs, intentions and expectations; they are not guarantees of future performance. Turquoise cautions that all forward looking statements are inherently uncertain and that actual performance may be affected by a number of material factors, many of which are beyond Turquoise's control. Such factors include, among other things: risks and uncertainties relating to Turquoise's ability to complete a Qualifying Transaction; and other risks and uncertainties, including those described in Turquoise's Final Prospectus dated April 15, 2013 filed with the Canadian Securities Administrators and available on www.sedar.com. Accordingly, actual and future events, conditions and results may differ materially from the estimates, beliefs, intentions and expectations expressed or implied in the forward looking information. Except as required under applicable securities legislation, Turquoise undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise forward-looking information.
NEITHER TSX VENTURE EXCHANGE NOR ITS REGULATION SERVICES PROVIDER (AS THAT TERM IS DEFINED IN THE POLICIES OF THE TSX VENTURE EXCHANGE) ACCEPTS RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE ADEQUACY OR ACCURACY OF THIS RELEASE.
WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - A bill extending the authorization of the Federal Aviation Administration his headed to President Barack Obama's desk after easily clearing the Senate on Wednesday. The Senate voted 89 to 4 in favor of the legislation, which authorizes FAA programs at current funding levels through September of 2017. Senate passage of the bill comes just two days before the FAA's current authorization is set to expire. The House passed the bill by voice vote on Monday. Lawmakers settled on the short-term extension after the House and Senate failed to reach a compromise on a multi-year bill. The legislation includes provisions tightening the vetting of airport employees, expanding the TSA PreCheck program and requiring the Transportation Security Administration to reduce passenger wait times. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX
Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
LONDON and ARMONK, New York, July 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced that Dixons Carphone Group, Europe's largest telecommunications retail and services company, is migrating to the IBM Cloud from IBM datacenters in the United Kingdom to integrate two distinct infrastructures and enable easy scaling to better manage the peaks and valleys of seasonal shopping trends.
Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20090416/IBMLOGO
Dixons Retail and Carphone Warehouse merged in 2014 presenting an opportunity to consolidate the infrastructures leveraging cloud solutions for flexibility, performance and cost savings. After assessing the long-term values and scalability of multiple cloud providers, the company turned to IBM Cloud for a smooth transition to a hybrid cloud infrastructure.
As a result, Dixons Carphone is planning to migrate about 2,500 server images from both enterprises with supporting database and middleware components from both infrastructures to an IBM hybrid cloud platform that comprises a private IBM Cloud with bare metal servers for production workloads and public IBM Cloud platform for non-production workloads.
The company is anticipating the IBM hybrid cloud solution will bring greater IT efficiency over the next two years enabling an even more seamless ecommerce and retail experience during busy retail periods including holidays and new product launches.
"We know we can trust IBM Cloud to seamlessly integrate the infrastructures of both companies into one hybrid cloud that will enable us to continue focusing on other parts of the business," said David Hennessy, IT Director, Dixons Carphone. "We are the retailer people trust to bring technology to life in a way that works for them and we are confident in IBM's ability to support us in the next stage of our development."
"Dixons Carphone is taking an innovative approach to the challenges of merging enterprises," said Rashik Parmar, Lead IBM Cloud Architect and Distinguished Engineer, IBM Europe. "Establishing a hybrid cloud infrastructure will provide flexibility, scalability and security across multiple environments, which will not only expedite the integration, but provide a path for growth going forward."
Dixons Carphone was voted 'Retailer of the Year' at the Retail Week Awards 2016.
IBM in June was named Hybrid Cloud Development Platform Leader by market research firm, TBR.
About Dixons Carphone:
Dixons Carphone plc is Europe's leading specialist electrical and telecommunications retailer and services company, employing over 42,000 people in eleven countries. Focused on helping customers navigate the connected world, Dixons Carphone offers a comprehensive range of electrical and mobile products, connectivity and expert after-sales services from the Geek Squad and Knowhow. Dixons Carphone's primary brands include Carphone Warehouse and CurrysPCWorld in the UK & Ireland, Elkjoep, Elkjoep Phonehouse, Elgiganten, Elgiganten Phone House, Gigantti and Lefdal in the Nordic countries, Kotsovolos in Greece, Dixons Travel in a number of UK & Ireland airports and Phone House in Spain. Our key service brands include Knowhow in the UK, Ireland and the Nordics, and Geek Squad in the UK, Ireland and Spain. Business-to-business (B2B) services are provided through Connected World Services, PC World Business and Carphone Warehouse Business. Connected World Services aims to leverage the Group's existing expertise, operating processes and technology to provide a range of services to businesses.
About IBM Cloud:
For more information, visit: http://www.ibm.com/cloud-computing.
Contact
Meera Lakhani
External Relations Manager, Systems & Cloud
IBM UK and Ireland
+ 44 (0) 7590 863278
mlakhani@uk.ibm.com
VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 07/13/16 -- Precipitate Gold Corporation (the "Company" or "Precipitate" or "PRG") (TSX VENTURE: PRG) is pleased to announce it has received TSX Venture Exchange approval to close a $1,249,750 first tranche of the Company's non-brokered private placement of up to 8,000,000 Units priced at $0.25 per Unit, as reported in the Company's news release dated July 5, 2016. A total of 4,999,000 Units have been issued in this tranche with all securities issued subject to a hold period expiring November 14, 2016.
Units issued with this this first tranche combined with subscriptions already received for a second tranche now exceed the previously announced allocation of up to 8,000,000 Units ($2,000,000). As such, to accommodate the over subscription, the Company is increasing the offering to a maximum of 10,000,000 Units for total proceeds of up to $2,500,000.
As previously announced, each Unit in this offering consists of one (1) Precipitate common share and one (1) share purchase warrant. Each warrant entitles the Unit holder to purchase one (1) additional Precipitate common share at a price of $0.35 per share at any time within 12 months of the closing.
The offering continues to rely upon the usual exemptions, as well an Existing Shareholder Exemption to accommodate participation from existing shareholders who held common shares of the Company as of June 30, 2016.
Proceeds of this private placement will be used to continue exploration at the Company's Juan de Herrera Project in the Dominican Republic. The primary focus of the Company's next stage of exploration will be the commencement of a second-phase drill campaign at the Ginger Ridge zone to test an extensive geophysical and geochemical anomaly along strike from the discovery hole that reported 18.0 metres grading 4.5 grams per tonne ('g/t') gold, including 5.0 metres grading 13.4 g/t gold (see PRG news release of September 24, 2014). Proceeds of the offering will also be applied to the ongoing advancement of multiple newly delineated geochemical anomalies identified elsewhere within the Company's property, and general working capital purposes.
The Company paid an aggregate of $25,500 and issued 102,000 Finders Warrants in connection with this tranche of the offering. Each Finder's Warrant entitles the holder to acquire one common share of the Company at $0.35 per share for 12 months from the date of closing.
About Precipitate Gold:
Precipitate Gold Corp. is a mineral exploration company focused on exploring and advancing its mineral property interests in the Tireo Gold Trend of the Dominican Republic. The Company also maintains assets in northern British Columbia and southeast Yukon Territory and is actively evaluating additional high-impact property acquisitions with the potential to expand the Company's portfolio and increase shareholder value.
Additional information can be viewed at the Company's website www.precipitategold.com.
On Behalf of the Board of Directors of Precipitate Gold Corporation,
Jeffrey Wilson, President & CEO
Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Service Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.
This press release may contain "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation. All statements, other than statements of historical fact, included herein are forward looking information. Generally, forward-looking information may be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "plans", "expects" or "does not expect", "proposed", "is expected", "budget", "scheduled", "estimates", "forecasts", "intends", "anticipates" or "does not anticipate", or "believes", or variations of such words and phrases, or by the use of words or phrases which state that certain actions, events or results may, could, would, or might occur or be achieved. This forward-looking information reflects the Company's current beliefs and is based on information currently available to the Company and on assumptions it believes are reasonable. Forward-looking information is subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results, level of activity, performance or achievements of Precipitate to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking information. Specifically, there is no assurance the Company will be able to close the private placement described above in accordance with such terms, or at all. Although Precipitate has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in forward-looking information, there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking information. Precipitate does not undertake to update any forward-looking information, except in accordance with applicable securities laws.
Contacts:
Precipitate Gold Corp.
Jeffrey Wilson
President & CEO
604-558-0335 or Toll Free: 855-558-0335
investor@precipitategold.com
www.precipitategold.com
OTTAWA, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 07/13/16 -- Product photos are available at http://bit.ly/29I7XHA
Industry is recalling Golden Dipt brand Jalapeno Breader from the marketplace due to possible E. coli O121 contamination. Retailers, restaurants and institutions should not sell or use the recalled product described below.
The following product has been sold in Alberta, and may have been distributed in other provinces or territories.
Recalled product
---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Brand Product Size UPC Codes ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Golden Dipt Jalapeno 4.54 kg 7 63089 72154 8 0414647003 Breader 0513647003 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
What you should do
Food contaminated with E. coli O121 may not look or smell spoiled but can still make you sick. Symptoms can include nausea, vomiting, mild to severe abdominal cramps and watery to bloody diarrhea. In severe cases of illness, some people may have seizures or strokes, need blood transfusions and kidney dialysis or live with permanent kidney damage. In severe cases of illness, people may die.
-- Learn more about the health risks -- Sign up for recall notifications by email, follow us on Twitter, or join the CFIA community on Facebook -- View our detailed explanation of the food safety investigation and recall process
Background
This recall was triggered by a recall in the United States. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) is conducting a food safety investigation, which may lead to the recall of other products. If other high-risk products are recalled, the CFIA will notify the public through updated Food Recall Warnings.
The CFIA is verifying that industry is removing recalled product from the marketplace.
Illnesses
There have been no reported illnesses in Canada associated with the consumption of this product.
More information
-- CFIA: www.inspection.gc.ca/contactus
Contacts:
Media enquiries
CFIA Media Relations
613-773-6600
VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 09/26/16 -- Auryn Resources Inc. (TSX VENTURE: AUG)(OTCQX: GGTCF) ("Auryn") is pleased to announce that it has acquired the option to earn a 100% interest in the Banos del Indio gold project located 10 km to the north of Auryn's Huilacollo project with known gold mineralization (see figure 1 and figure 2). The project is located in the Tacna province of Southern Peru. The Banos Del Indio gold project hosts one of the largest untested alteration systems in the Andes and is located within a prominent epithermal belt.
Shawn Wallace, President and CEO commented, "Our pursuit of acquisitions in Peru has been largely predicated on our technical teams vast knowledge and experience in the country. Banos Del Indio represents an exceptional exploration opportunity that our technical team has been aware of and desired for several years."
Mr. Wallace further stated, "With these acquisitions in Peru and the others that we have recently completed, our goal of building a diverse portfolio with high grade exploration targets in Canada and some of the largest scalable oxide exploration targets is being achieved. We look forward to aggressively executing capital efficient exploration programs including substantive drill programs over the next few years."
Banos Del Indio Property
The Banos del Indio epithermal property is comprised of 7,534 hectares of well-developed high-level steam heated epithermal style alteration and is considered by Auryn to be one of the largest untested epithermal alteration centers in Peru (see Figure 3). Banos del Indio shares many similarities with the La Coipa mine complex in northern Chile where economic mineralization is principally located beneath similar high-level steam heated epithermal alteration. Initial exploration to define drill targets will focus on structural mapping, multi-spectral analysis to identify high temperature clays, volumetric sampling and induced polarization geophysical surveys.
Antonio Arribas, Director of Auryn, stated, "Banos del Indio is one of the largest and least explored alteration anomalies that I am familiar with in the region which I have been aware of for several years. The property is situated in the perfect location for significant epithermal discoveries in Southern Peru."
The Company acquired the rights to the Banos del Indio property through an option agreement with a local Peruvian company, Exploandes S.A.C (the "Banos Option"). Under the Banos Option, the Company may acquire a 100% interest, subject to a net smelter return royalty (NSR), through a combination of work expenditures and cash payments (all dollar amounts are in USD) as detailed in the table below:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Property Work Due dates Payments Expenditures ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- On signing $ 100,000 - ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Within 12 months of the commence of work $ 100,000 $ 200,000 (additional) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Within 24 months of the commence of $ 100,000 $ 250,000 work(additional) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Within 36 months of the commence of work $ 200,000 $ 1,000,000 (additional) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Within 48 months of the commence of work $ 150,000 $ 2,000,000 (additional) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Within 60 months of the commence of work $ 2,500,000 - (additional) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Total $ 3,150,000 $ 3,450,000 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Banos del Indio NSR is 3.0% with 50% (being 1.5%) buyable for $6,000,000. In the event the Company does not complete a feasibility study within 3 years of exercising the option, an escalating advanced royalty starting at $200,000 per annum shall become payable. The total amount of the advanced royalty is capped at $1.5 million.
The Company is also obligated to pay a production bonus of $2,500,000 upon initial commercial production.
To view Figures 1-3, visit the following link: http://media3.marketwire.com/docs/1070514_F1-3.pdf
The Banos del Indio licenses are located within a special economic zone situated within 50km of the Peruvian boarder. As a non-resident company, Auryn's right to ultimately exploit these licenses or register its interests require approval from the Peruvian government in the form of a Supreme Decree. Auryn is in the process of submitting its applications with respect the approval and anticipates receiving the approval prior to exercising its option.
Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.
The securities to be issued pursuant to the transaction have not been registered under the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "U.S. Securities Act"), and may not be offered or sold in the United States absent registration or applicable exemption from the registration requirements. This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy nor shall there be any sale of the securities in any jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful.
This release includes certain statements that may be deemed "forward-looking statements". All statements in this release, other than statements of historical facts, that address events or developments that the company expects are forward-looking statements. Although the company believes the expectations expressed in such forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, such statements are not guarantees of future performance and actual results or developments may differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. The principal factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in forward-looking statements in connection with this news release include the uncertainty of Homestake shareholders approvals, and the outcome of regulatory and judicial approvals. Investors are cautioned that any such statements are not guarantees of future performance and actual results or developments may differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements. For more information on the Company, investors should review the Company's continuous disclosure filings that are available at www.sedar.com
Contacts:
Auryn Resources Inc.
Investor Relations
778-729-0600
info@aurynresources.com
www.aurynresources.com
Strong Potential to Convert Additional Mineral Resources and Reserves
TSX: JAG
TORONTO, September 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --Jaguar Mining Inc. ("Jaguar" or the "Company") (TSX: JAG) is pleased to announce positive drill results from 40 underground diamond drill holes conducted at the Pilar Gold Mine ("Pilar") located at the Company's Caete Complex in the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil. The Caete Complex is situated in the Iron Quadrangle, one of the most prolific mining districts in South America. These results continue to reaffirm increasing grade profiles at depth at the Pilar BFII ore body and suggest a strong potential for the significant conversion of Mineral Resources to Mineral Reserves.
Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160925/411572
This drill program (5,369 metres ("m")) included 40 holes, which generated multiple high-grade drill intercepts from Pilar including BFII, BF, BA, LFW, LHW, C, and SW ore bodies. The total cost of this exploration program was approximately $0.4 million. The underground resource definition-drilling program was designed to test the current resource envelope, and to test the down plunge extensions of the Pilar ore bodies. The drill program targeted, in particular, the newly discovered BFII ore body, as previously outlined in the "Technical Report on the Roca Grande and Pilar Operations, Minas Gerais State, Brazil", a copy of which is available on the Company's SEDAR profile at www.sedar.com.
Drilling Highlights and Key Intercepts
Underground definition drilling on the Pilar BFII ore body has returned significant high-grade mineralization. Key intercepts include: Hole FSB552A - 17.40 g/t Au over 6.80 m (6.46 m ETW 1 ); Hole PPL325 - 7.73 g/t Au over 16.35 m (15.52 m ETW 1 ); Hole PPL326 - 24.19 g/t Au over 5.65 m (4.46 m ETW 1 ); Hole PPL363 - 23.95 g/t Au over 4.00 m (3.35 m ETW 1 ); and Hole PPL340 - 9.05 g/t Au over 7.90 m (6.24 m ETW 1 )
1 ETW - Estimated true width
Exploration drilling focused on testing extensions to the Banded Iron Formation ("BIF") ore bodies to assess the growth potential for Measured and Indicated Mineral Resources.
Definition drilling focused on providing increased confidence and classification of the near-term mineral resources.
The definition drilling programs are designed to replace current reserves being depleted from mining and will be added to the new 2016 Mineral Reserve and Mineral Resource model at year-end.
Rodney Lamond, President and Chief Executive Officer of Jaguar, stated: "Today's reported high-grade intercepts continue to confirm a strong mineralized system down-plunge of current Mineral Reserves at Pilar, in particular the high-grade intercepts related to the newly discovered BFII ore body. These results provide excellent potential for higher grades, the increase of Mineral Resources, and the conversion to reserves for mining at Pilar. Additionally, we have been very pleased with our operations at Pilar where our average grade has steadily increased and we are on track to achieve our production guidance for 2016. For the balance of 2016, the underground exploration and definition drilling programs will be focused on mineral resource growth and resource conversion to reserves in order to grow sustainable gold production."
Drill Programs
This latest completed drill program consisting of 40 holes, over 5,369 m, (Table 1 and Figure 1) was designed to test and convert the current mineral resource envelope, and to test the extensions of the Pilar ore bodies. In addition, drilling has focused on providing increased confidence and classification of the near-term Mineral Resources. The drill program continues to confirm the geological continuity of BIF ore bodies and high grades at depth. The Company expects to continue to test down-plunge continuity in the BFII, BF, and BA ore bodies with a dedicated drill program throughout 2016 and 2017, which will include approximately 5,000 m of diamond drilling to increase definition and confidence below Level 9.
The Company's current assessment of the historical geological information and the rational use of state-of-the-art 3-D software have been an important contribution to the understanding of the gold emplacement and consequent target generation of new resource identification.
Pilar Gold Mine
The Pilar Mine is situated in the northeast portion of the Iron Quadrangle about 100 kilometres east of the city of Belo Horizonte in Minas Gerais, Brazil. The Iron Quadrangle is one of the largest and most important mining and mineral districts in South America with historical production of over 50 million ounces of gold. Mining activities in the Iron Quadrangle have been ongoing since the late 1600s. A number of important and historical gold deposits, including those of AngloGold Ashanti and Vale, are located in the Iron Quadrangle and make up a significant contribution to Brazil's gold production.
The deposit is hosted in a meta volcanic sedimentary sequence of the Rio das Velhas Greenstone Belt and the mineralization is located between a folded zone of BIF, which forms a local isoclinal syncline dipping to the southeast. The west limb of this syncline has a normal stratigraphic stacking and is called the SW limb and the inverted limb, at the east side, is called limb B. The regional axial plane foliation has general direction of NNE/SSW dipping to SSE.
Mineralized zones are classified according to the position of the mineralization relative to the major syncline, the morphological continuity, and the structural and mineralogical occurrence mode. The mineralization is divided from footwall to hanging wall in the SW, LFW, BFII, BF, LHW, BA, and C ore bodies.
The SW ore body matches with the west limb, SW, of the syncline. The LFW ore body consists of a mineralized lens of sericite-chlorite-carbonate-quartz schist present in the footwall of the inverted limb B. The mineralized zones BFII, BF, and BA are parasitic anticlines dipping to the SE, also in limb B of the major syncline. The C ore body is a group of mineralized lenses of sericite-chlorite-carbonate-quartz schist associated with the contact of the shear zone with the BIF at the hanging wall of limb B.
Qualified Person
Scientific and technical information contained in this press release has been reviewed and approved by Marcos Dias Alvim, BSc Geo., MAusIMM (CP), Project Development Manager, who is an employee of Jaguar Mining Inc., and is a "qualified person" as defined by National Instrument 43-101- Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects ("NI 43-101").
Quality Control
Jaguar Mining continues to use a quality-control program that includes insertion of blanks, commercial standards, and duplicate core samples in order to ensure best practice in sampling and analysis.
NQ and BQ size drill core is sawn in half with a diamond saw. Samples are selected for analysis in standard intervals according to geological characteristics such as lithology and hydrothermal alteration contents. All diamond drill hole collars are accurately surveyed using a Total Stations instrument and down-hole deviations are surveyed using optical Reflex Maribor.
Mean grades are calculated using a variable lower grade cut-off (generally 2 g/t Au). No upper gold grade cut has been applied to the data. However, the requirement for assay top cutting will be assessed during future resource work.
Half of the sawed sample is forwarded to the analytical laboratory for analysis while the remaining half of the core is stored in a secure location. The drill core samples are transported in securely sealed bags to the Jaguar in-house laboratory located at the Caete Mine Complex in Minas Gerais. Some samples are also sent for check assaying to the independent SGS Geosol Laboratory located in Vespasiano, Minas Gerais. The preparation and analysis are all conducted at the respective facilities, either at the Roca Grande Mine Laboratory in Caete, Minas Gerais or at the SGS Geosol Laboratory in Vespasiano, Minas Gerais. The Caete Mine Complex laboratory does not carry an ISO certification. The SGS Geosol Laboratory is ISO 9001 accredited. As part of in-house QA/QC, the Caete Mine Complex laboratory inserts certified gold standards, blanks, and pulp duplicate samples.
For a complete description of Jaguar's sample preparation, analytical methods, and QA/QC procedures, please refer to the "Technical Report on the Roca Grande and Pilar Operations, Minas Gerais State, Brazil", a copy of which is available on the Company's SEDAR profile at www.sedar.com.
About Jaguar Mining Inc.
Jaguar Mining Inc. is a Canadian-listed junior gold mining, development, and exploration company operating in Brazil, with three gold mining complexes, and a large land package with significant upside exploration potential from mineral claims covering an area of approximately 191,000 hectares. The Company's principal operating assets are located in the Iron Quadrangle, a prolific greenstone belt in the state of Minas Gerais and include the Turmalina Gold Mine Complex ("Mineracao Turmalina Ltda" or "MTL") and the Caete Gold Mine Complex ("Mineracao Serras do Oeste Ltda" or "MSOL"), which combined produce more than 90,000 ounces of gold annually. The Company also owns the Paciencia Gold Mine Complex, which has been on care and maintenance since 2012. Additional information is available on the Company's website at www.jaguarmining.com.
Forward-Looking Statements
Certain statements in this news release constitute "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation. Forward-looking information contained in forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of words such as "are expected", "is forecast", "is targeted", "approximately", "plans", "anticipates" "projects", "anticipates", "continue", "estimate", "believe" or variations of such words and phrases or statements that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "might", or "will" be taken, occur or be achieved. The Company has made numerous assumptions with respect to forward-looking information contained herein, including, among other things, assumptions about the availability of financing for exploration, development and production activities; the supply and demand for, and the level and volatility of the price of, gold; the accuracy of reserve and resource estimates and the assumptions on which the reserve and resource estimates are based; the receipt of necessary permits; ongoing relations with employees and impacted communities; and general business and economic conditions. Forward-looking information involve a number of known and unknown risks and uncertainties, including among others the uncertainties with respect to the price of gold, labor disruptions, mechanical failures, increase in costs, environmental compliance and change in environmental legislation and regulation, procurement and delivery of parts and supplies to the operations, uncertainties inherent to capital markets in general and other risks inherent to the gold exploration, development and production industry, which, if incorrect, may cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated by the Company and described herein. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking information.
For additional information with respect to these and other factors and assumptions underlying the forward-looking information made in this news release, see the Company's most recent annual information form and management's discussion and analysis, as well as other public disclosure documents that can be accessed under the issuer profile of "Jaguar Mining Inc." on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. The forward-looking information set forth herein reflects the Company's reasonable expectations as at the date of this news release and is subject to change after such date. The Company disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, other than as required by law. The forward-looking information contained in this news release is expressly qualified by this cautionary statement.
Table 1 - Drill Results
Pilar Gold Mine Drill Results Hole ID From (m) To (m) Downhole Interval (m) Estimated True Width (m) Gold Grade (g/t Au) Ore Body FSB549 24.25 28.60 4.35 2.91 3.32 BFII FSB551 25.00 27.50 2.50 1.53 0.98 BFII 29.90 33.60 3.70 3.38 10.12 BFII FSB552A 18.80 20.30 1.50 1.32 10.57 BFII 21.80 28.60 6.80 6.46 17.40 BFII FSB553 26.25 29.50 3.25 2.86 7.33 BFII FSB554 47.30 51.65 4.35 4.22 3.78 BFII 53.50 56.50 3.00 2.74 1.19 BFII 63.30 65.20 1.90 1.08 7.34 BFII 66.40 68.90 2.50 1.43 5.06 BFII FSB556 43.20 45.10 1.90 1.38 4.03 BFII FSB561 31.60 35.10 3.50 2.10 7.75 BFII FSB562 26.10 29.30 3.20 2.90 1.44 BFII PPL325 107.10 123.45 16.35 15.52 7.73 BFII 124.60 130.40 5.80 5.77 2.87 BFII PPL326 90.25 95.90 5.65 4.46 24.19 BFII 112.10 118.50 6.40 6.01 3.15 BFII PPL327 105.30 109.75 4.45 3.54 5.33 BFII 127.20 127.85 0.65 0.53 4.76 BFII 135.25 137.10 1.85 1.51 6.47 BFII PPL328A 129.05 132.45 3.40 3.25 1.17 BFII 149.90 154.20 4.30 2.80 12.91 BFII 171.20 174.20 3.00 1.84 0.86 BFII PPL333 174.65 176.60 1.95 1.83 6.54 BFII PPL337 99.75 105.85 6.10 5.34 4.35 BFII PPL338 58.80 60.70 1.90 1.79 1.56 BFII 72.80 74.60 1.80 1.49 31.72 BFII PPL339C 73.25 74.85 1.60 1.02 27.59 BFII PPL340 52.85 60.75 7.90 6.24 9.05 BFII 64.50 65.75 1.25 1.13 7.01 BFII 68.50 71.00 2.50 2.46 4.87 BFII PPL342 175.30 176.80 1.50 0.68 2.18 BFII PPL343 101.75 104.10 2.35 1.41 0.66 BFII 116.60 117.30 0.70 0.44 7.46 BFII 122.10 122.60 0.50 0.26 11.08 BFII PPL344 173.10 173.95 0.85 0.82 14.26 BFII 176.25 176.55 0.30 0.28 39.54 BFII PPL357 32.35 41.00 8.65 6.98 4.94 BFII PPL363 54.55 58.55 4.00 3.35 23.95 BFII FSB554 33.25 34.70 1.45 1.22 5.51 BF FSB556 20.20 24.50 4.30 1.54 2.97 BF PPL320 110.45 112.70 2.25 2.22 0.75 BF 142.60 145.60 3.00 2.71 1.66 BF 146.40 148.60 2.20 1.99 4.17 BF PPL321 104.80 106.95 2.15 1.46 1.20 BF 114.30 123.95 9.65 6.57 6.34 BF 130.80 131.95 1.15 1.13 25.40 BF 138.60 139.80 1.20 0.77 2.61 BF 142.80 146.25 3.45 2.21 2.40 BF PPL324 109.20 112.80 3.60 2.94 1.43 BF 132.55 134.10 1.55 1.47 6.03 BF 136.45 137.05 0.60 0.57 2.83 BF 139.00 141.45 2.45 2.33 4.41 BF 143.20 144.30 1.10 1.09 5.29 BF PPL325 160.80 165.50 4.70 3.85 1.46 BF PPL326 128.85 129.40 0.55 0.35 7.63 BF 142.40 144.25 1.85 1.60 1.14 BF 148.05 151.45 3.40 1.54 2.66 BF PPL330A 91.80 92.90 1.10 0.73 3.98 BF 119.25 124.30 5.05 5.05 4.11 BF PPL331 114.55 115.85 1.30 1.19 13.48 BF PPL334 173.40 180.60 7.20 6.17 6.09 BF PPL339C 90.65 92.10 1.45 0.83 1.60 BF PPL340 84.60 88.30 3.70 3.47 3.33 BF PPL343 137.50 146.00 8.50 7.84 3.92 BF 165.60 167.45 1.85 1.71 4.00 BF PPL350 167.70 172.90 5.20 4.94 12.92 BF 179.65 186.10 6.45 6.22 5.05 BF PPL351 122.45 124.45 2.00 1.72 19.83 BF PPL377 55.80 63.90 8.10 7.68 4.33 BF PPL380 64.10 66.80 2.70 2.35 13.16 BF FSB546 48.90 50.20 1.30 0.63 5.70 BA 67.30 78.60 11.30 5.48 6.01 BA PPL320 72.05 73.20 1.15 0.93 1.96 BA PPL324 71.45 71.75 0.30 0.29 15.24 BA 82.40 83.85 1.45 1.42 1.43 BA PPL335 82.20 88.00 5.80 4.02 3.15 BA 96.30 98.55 2.25 2.17 2.28 BA 99.50 101.70 2.20 2.12 1.55 BA 106.30 110.00 3.70 3.20 4.24 BA PPL336 95.70 100.25 4.55 1.70 1.19 BA PPL335 41.80 42.65 0.85 0.80 1.77 C PPL336 40.85 42.55 1.70 1.65 1.31 C 47.70 49.35 1.65 1.58 1.68 C FSB552A 44.40 46.55 2.15 2.14 1.12 LFW PPL325 94.95 99.50 4.55 2.47 3.92 LFW 103.05 105.00 1.95 1.78 1.64 LFW PPL326 78.00 83.65 5.65 4.53 7.10 LFW PPL328A 115.90 119.65 3.75 3.07 1.01 LFW PPL333 116.60 118.50 1.90 1.41 1.93 LFW PPL338 23.05 24.9 1.85 1.55 11.24 LFW 38.50 39.8 1.3 0.78 3.25 LFW PPL339C 26.40 28.85 2.45 1.63 3.99 LFW PPL340 20.10 21.75 1.65 1.06 11.12 LFW PPL341 91.05 93.4 2.35 2.31 1.15 LFW 145.00 146.65 1.65 1.06 3.18 LFW PPL342 121.40 122.70 1.30 1.25 6.24 LFW 124.20 129.20 5.00 4.82 1.67 LFW 132.35 134.15 1.80 1.73 2.18 LFW PPL343 61.80 64.60 2.80 2.23 2.73 LFW 85.05 85.95 0.90 0.40 1.89 LFW PPL344 90.20 95.60 5.40 5.21 1.89 LFW PPL363 32.65 40.45 7.80 5.56 6.25 LFW PPL321 100.00 102.15 2.15 1.49 7.23 LHW PPL320 122.00 123.45 1.45 1.22 0.63 LPA PPL325 141.50 146.60 5.10 2.73 5.13 LPA PPL329 92.25 98.85 6.60 6.45 1.30 LPA PPL330A 112.55 115.80 3.25 2.66 4.48 LPA PPL331 105.75 108.00 2.25 2.16 4.89 LPA PPL346 26.60 29.20 2.60 1.49 3.73 SW 71.70 72.80 1.10 0.63 12.05 SW 100.75 101.85 1.10 0.63 3.58 SW PPL347 13.95 25.20 11.25 10.34 3.27 SW 52.85 55.75 2.90 1.66 1.42 SW PPL348 48.65 52.65 4.00 2.29 4.30 SW
Rodney Lamond, President & Chief Executive Officer, rodney.lamond@jaguarmining.com,416-628-9601; Hashim Ahmed, Chief Financial Officer, hashim.ahmed@jaguarmining.com, 416-628-9601
Elevated in-app feature gives brands real-time reporting for measuring and optimizing media campaigns all in one integrated suite of products.
DALLAS, July 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Research Now, the global leader in digital data collection, today announced the launch of the new in-app media measurement solution, part of the ADimensionsuite of products, that enables brands to measure the performance of advertising campaigns across desktops, tablets, and mobile devices, with the advanced ability to connect to a single individual.
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With ADimension, advertisers and agencies can measure key brand and perception metrics including awareness, familiarity, favorability, and intent to purchase. Real-time reporting and flexibility in selecting key performance and brand indicators provides users with a custom view to evaluate and optimise results at each phase of a campaign, ensuring a successful outcome.
Cross-device media measurement is not about measuring the individual device environment. Instead, it is about measuring the different environments for the same user, as this is the most explicit methodology to validate the impact of campaigns the brand creates in the multi-screen world.
The new in-app solution is the newest addition to the ADimension suite of products for ad and audience measurement offered by Research Now, allowing brands to gain access to exposure identification through device IDs, and determine the effectiveness of a campaign's performance across multiple publishers and ad networks at scale. Currently in the UK, Research Now has access to over 300,000 unique device ID's on around 110,000 panelists.
"Research Now is committed to innovation and collaboration within the digital advertising industry, and to that end, we have been working to create a comprehensive media performance measurement platform," said Research Now EVP, Global Products and Client Services, Melanie Courtright. "In order to have a truly scalable solution, we refined the methodology to meet the latest in-app ad requirements, and today we are pleased to offer the industry a complete solution with the full benefit of the Research Now single source panel sample," Courtright continued.
Brands will have access to real-time insights from Research Now's highly-engaged and deeply profiled respondents who make up its industry-leading online panel.
The full media measurement solution is available in the United States and United Kingdom. Companies interested in using ADimension may request more information by visiting http://offers.researchnow.com/adimension-uk.
About Research Now
Research Now Group, Inc., is the global leader in digital data collection to power analytics and insights. It enables data-driven decision making for its 3,500 market research, consulting, media, and corporate clients through its permission-based access to millions of deeply-profiled consumers using online, mobile, social media and behavioral data collection technology platforms. The company operates in more than 35 countries, from 21 offices around the globe, and is recognized as the quality, scale and customer satisfaction leader in its industry. For more information, go to www.researchnow.com.
Applied Composites Group (fka Icon Polymer Group), a UK-based manufacturer of engineered polymer products, received a 10m growth capital investment.
LDC has made the development capital investment, which will enable the company to accelerate a number of strategic initiatives to increase revenues in its core sectors of aerospace and rail.
Led by Tim Pryce, CEO, Applied Composites Group is a specialist polymer manufacturer. In the past year, the company has signed a series of major contracts with blue chip organizations including Rolls Royce and is currently executing a multi-million pound expansion and refurbishment of its manufacturing facility in Retford, Nottinghamshire.
FinSMEs
13/07/2016
Abingdon Health Ltd, a York, UK-based specialist medical diagnostics company, raised 3m in funding.
The round was led by existing investor Imperial Innovations.
The company intends to use the funds to support the commercialization of its recently launched products in the area of multiple myeloma testing.
Led by Chris Yates, CEO of Abingdon Health is commercializing Seralite FLC Serum and Seralite FLC Urine. These assays allow for the rapid quantitative measurement of kappa (K) and lambda () immunoglobulin free light chains (FLCs) as an aid to the diagnosis and management of multiple myeloma.
On 27 June 2016, the company announced it had entered into a multi-year, exclusive, global distribution agreement with Sebia the world leader in medical diagnostics by capillary electrophoresis for Seralite-FLC Serum.
FinSMEs
13/07/2016
PayJoy, a Saratoga, California-based mobile finance startup, raised $18M in equity and debt funding.
The raise included:
$8.5M Series A equity investment led by Union Square Ventures, with participation from Draper Nexus Ventures, Fenway Summer Ventures, Orange Digital Ventures, and Core Innovation Capital,
$4M of venture debt from Western Technology Investment, and
$5.65M of private lending capital.
In conjunction with the funding, USV partner John Buttrick will join PayJoys board of directors while new board advisors include Mitch Kitamura, Raj Date, Olawale Ayeni, and Arjan Schutte.
The company has raised over $22.5M.
Led by Doug Ricket, CEO, Gib Lopez, COO, and Mark Heynen, CBO, Payjoy is a consumer finance startup that offers a pay-as-you-go technology solution to allow underserved consumers to transform up-front purchases of consumer electronics into monthly installment plans. The companys proposed solution allows customers to register for PayJoy at a local merchant with their Facebook account, phone number, and government issued I.D., choose a smartphone, make a deposit, and select a 3, 6, 9, or 12 month payment plan. Merchants then install the PayJoy software on the new phone and once the purchase is paid, the phone is fully unlocked.
FinSMEs
13/07/2016
Paktor, a Singapore-based dating app, raised $10m in funding.
The round was led by YJ Capital, Yahoo Capitals corporate venture firm with participation from Global Grand Leisure, Golden Equator Capital, Sebrina Holdings and existing investors Vertex Ventures, MNC Media Group, Majuven and Convergence Ventures.
The company, which has now raised $22m, intends to use the funds to continue to expand operations in South East Asia.
Founded in July 2013 by Charlene Koh, CMO, Jingshen Ng, CTO, and Joseph J. Phua, CEO, Paktor provides a dating app for singles in Southeast Asia and Taiwan. Built around anonymity, locality, and usability, the app is said to have over 5 million users.
FinSMEs
13/07/2016
According to multiple reports, WeSwap, a London, UK-based travel money service, raised $10m in Series B funding.
Backers included Ascot Capital Partners (lead), EC1 Capital, and IW Capital.
The company intends to use the funds to expand into new markets and launch new products.
Launched in 2013 by Simon Sacerdoti and Jared Jesner, WeSwap is a p2p money travel exchange that aims to cut the middle man at airports and high streets by allowing travellers everywhere to swap and manage currency each others and then spend it for free with a MasterCard , accepted worldwide.
The app now enables members in 10 countries to swap their money into 18 currencies.
FinSMEs
13/07/2016
Mumbai: The Enforcement Directorate today arrested Financial Technologies India Limited (FTIL) founder Jignesh Shah in connection with its probe into the Rs 5,600-crore National Spot Exchange Limited (NSEL) money laundering scam.
Officials said Shah was arrested under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) as "he was not cooperating in the investigation".
They said Shah was questioned by the investigating officer of the case here today after which he was placed under arrest.
"Shah will be produced in a special anti-money laundering court here tomorrow," an ED official said.
Shah was also named in the first charge sheet filed by the ED in this case last year.
Reacting to the development, FTIL said in a statement, "We fail to understand why such a coercive step was taken against by the ED when shah has been fully cooperating with the investigation."
Officials had said the central probe agency, at a recent review meeting, had informed the Finance Ministry that it was preparing to initiate fresh action for attachment of assets against the accused and would also question a number of them based on inputs gathered by its investigators till now.
The agency had filed a 20,000-page charge sheet against NSEL and 67 others in a Mumbai court in March last year, explaining NSEL funds were laundered and "illegally plouged into purchase of private properties".
The charge sheet detailed money trail amounting to Rs 3,721.22 crore.
ED had registered a criminal case under the PMLA in 2013 to probe the case, along with the Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of Mumbai police.
After a high-level meeting, chaired by Economic Affairs Secretary Shaktikanta Das, last month, the Centre also directed the Maharashtra government to expedite the resolution of the case by quickly auctioning assets worth Rs 6,116 crore attached so far and refund investors at the earliest.
NSELs payment troubles started after it was ordered by regulator Forward Markets Commission (FMC) in July 2013 to suspend spot trade in most of its contracts due to suspected trading violations.
The exchange could not settle the outstanding trades, sparking investigations by the police and regulators to find out whether the exchange had defrauded traders by not enforcing rules requiring sufficient collateral to be set aside.
Financial Technologies India Ltd (FTIL) blamed NSEL executives and the trading parties for the default. There were 24 members who defaulted payment to about 13,000 investors. PTI NES NSD ZMN NSD
Tral: The hometown of slain militant commander, Burhan Wani, remains one of the most restive areas of Kashmir. It is not only that people want to continue their mourning for Burhan who has inspired many youth to join militant ranks in Tral but the brutal excesses by the government forces has made them hit the road. Women want to take up guns, children indulge in stone-pelting and young boys are ready to join the militant ranks.
But more fervent has been the father of slain militant commander, Mohammad Muzafar Wani, who is not sorrowful over his sons death, instead feels that he is living. Muzafar Wani, invokes Islamic teachings in favour of his belief that his son died as 'martyr' and is among Allah's chosen ones. Muzafar Wani's house is thronged by people who have been extolling militancy through the mic that was set up at the tent. Praise for Burhan blares out with people shouting slogans: Gun solution only solution, Gun solution only solution.
My son died as a martyr. He attacked the government forces as they oppose the freedom. He died for the freedom of his people, he said. Wani recalled that his other son Khalid Muzafar was also killed in the encounter: The Islamic teachings are clear that a man who dies in the way of Allah dies as a martyr. He is alive till the day of judgment, he added. According to Wani, Burhan was harassed by the police forces as a teenager and that was why he became a militant.
On Friday evening, Burhan was killed by security forces in South Kashmir area of Kokernag. He was laid to rest the next day and the town has been thronged by large numbers of people since then. Residents said that 16-17 militants joined the funeral prayers at the local ground where Burhan was buried, they fired shots into the air and paid him a gun salute. Burhans grave is next to that of his brother.
On Tuesday, young men had boarded the trucks and had ridden their private vehicles and bikes to travel through the dirt tracks to reach the house of Burhan Wani. Despite restrictions in place, the men marched along chanting slogans of freedom and reached Tral. Here, not a single army or paramilitary force personnel could be spotted. On the way to Tral, the Jammu-Srinagar national highway remained completely deserted with major stretches without any security while in some pockets youth had blocked the roads and didnt allow the movement of vehicles.
At Tral, women protested and raised slogans that Burhan was their real hero. Men like Ghulam Nabi Mir said that Burhan laid down his life for the people of Kashmir. He had no individual interest. He was a real hero, our real leader. He was our role model, he said. Young men from the adjoining areas said they knew Burhan only through social media platforms as he had been sharing the videos; some showed their willingness to join militancy. A few said that the only way they can achieve the freedom was by fighting the forces and those who have not yet come in contact with militant commanders plan to snatch away the rifles of the police personnel and learn to operate the weapons to attack them.
Muneer Mustafa, cousin of Burhan Wani, showed torture marks on his back and the wrist. He said that Wani had no option but to pick up the gun. Shaheed Ki Jo Mout Hai Wo Kom Ki Hyat (The death of the martyr is the life for the nation), he shouted at Burhans house, others joined him. Mustafa said that as a young boy when he had protested the bid of the forces to molest women, he was detained and later given electric shocks and received burn marks.
As Tral simmers, the conditions here could well decide whether normalcy will return to Kashmir. As would be the stand by Hurriyat and their decision to extend the strike calendar. But Tral and other parts of Kashmir continue to be restive. Muzafar Wani said that attacks on the forces should continue 'till the time Kashmir achieves freedom'.
Deccan Herald reported on Monday that the Centre had banned the dress code in universities. This will hopefully put a stop to discriminatory rules against women students in class and hostels.
The University Grants Commission (UGC) and the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) had in two separate notifications banned discriminatory rules against women students, including dress code, on the pretext of safety. The notification applies to universities and colleges affiliated to the two regulatory bodies. The Centre has also restricted higher educational institutions from imposing two sets of rules for men and women students, stating, Concern for the safety of women students must not be cited to impose discriminatory rules for women in hostels as compared to male students.
Many professional colleges and universities have been imposing strict dress codes for their women students, on the pretext of preventing sexual harassment. These colleges also police and monitor the movements of women students. The UGC feels the dress code should not curtail the freedom of women students.
This comes as a validation for students of several professional institutions who have been protesting against the dress code imposed on them.
More so, as the Bar Council of India (BCI) issued a circular to all law schools in the country as recently as April to implement a uniform dress code for students. The Times of India reported that the BCI had said that standards of dressing by law students were "gradually detracting" from the institutions' reputation.
The BCI circular had come even as students of several law colleges were fighting the imposition of a dress code on them. For instance, the students of the National Law School of India University (NLSIU) of Bengaluru had been protesting a professors inappropriate remarks against a girl student for wearing shorts to class. Just last month, the students of Hazra Law College in Kolkata too objected to the imposition of a dress code by the Bar Council. Men students had been asked to wear black trousers and white shirt and girls either white sari or salwar-kameez or black and grey full-sleeved blouse.
Now, whether the BCI follows the AICTE and UGC notification has to be seen.
Meanwhile, several educational institutions across the country have been imposing a dress code. The Hindu College, affiliated to the Delhi University recently asked their women students to wear clothes as per the normal norm of society. But the college had to withdraw the dress code in the face of protests by students.
Its not only professional colleges that impose a dress code on their students, even graduate colleges and pre-university colleges do so. Even all womens colleges insist that their women students do not wear shorts or sleeveless shirts to class.
Its no better in schools. Besides the uniforms that school children have to wear, which is already a given, many schools insist that the girl children should not wear jewelry, bindi or flowers. Some schools even have gone as far as to insist on a dress code for their teachers, insisting on the traditional sari or salwar-kameez.
Imposing a dress code is abhorrent in educational institutions, especially if they are being targeted at women students and women teachers alone. A woman is not molested, because of the clothes she wears, but because of the attitude of the men who harass her. Wearing formals, or appropriate clothes is not going to be a deterrent to those out to molest a women. Sexual harassment is a crime against women, which has to be tackled as such.
Just as an educational institutions should allow students to explore their mind freely, they should also give them the freedom to wear what they want to class. Many educational institutions insist on a formal dress code, under the garb of students getting used to wearing formals at their workplace. For instance, law, business management and hotel management graduates are expected to wear formals at their work place.
Corporate settings should get casual
Unfortunately, many corporates insist on a dress code and formal attire at the workplace. The HR body, SHRM or Society for Human Resource Management has clear guidelines on 'Attire and Grooming Policy' which "establishes guidelines for appropriate workplace appearance, clothing, grooming, natural and artificial scents, and hygieneIt provides that department heads will establish guidelines appropriate for the specific work setting and for the work being performed."
But, firstly is it necessary for corporates to impose a dress code on the excuse that it encourages a formal workplace atmosphere? Doesnt it instead encourage a stilted workplace, where no creativity, free thought or fun is encouraged?
In the last decade, many start-ups have broken the norm on dress code and allowed their employees to wear whatever they were comfortable in. Take Apple, Google, Twitter, Tesla or Facebook, for instance. Employees wear jeans and tees and even flip-flops to work. Some of these companies even allow their employees to bring their pets to work. These companies have not only ditched the suit and tie and business suits but have gone out of the way to provide a comfortable working environment for their employees. When I visited the Menlo Park office of Facebook recently, I not only found cool tees and jeans, but a music room in which employees could use to play and practice music.
One of Googles 10 philosophies is "you can be serious without a suit." Google states under this philosophy, We believe that great, creative things are more likely to happen with the right company cultureWe put great stock in our employees energetic, passionate people from diverse backgrounds with creative approaches to work, play and life. Our atmosphere may be casual, but as new ideas emerge in a cafe line, at a team meeting or at the gym, they are traded, tested and put into practice with dizzying speed - and they may be the launch pad for a new project destined for worldwide use.
And, we all know that Google has been consistently ranked as one of the top companies to work for.
The CEOs of these new age companies feel that allowing their employees to wear what they like only encourages free thought and creativity. The work ethics of these cool corporates has not been affected by their rebellion against any formal dress code. In fact, some of the best creative ideas come out of these companies. Many of these new age companies have chief happiness officers and fun officers who work at ensuring the happiness of their employees, so that they are the most productive.
So, its time that not only educational institutions scrapped the dress code, but also stuffy corporates who still insist on formal wear for their employees.
The U-turn taken by the Communist Party of India (Marxist)-led Left Democratic Front government in the Supreme Court regarding the entry of women at the Sabarimala shrine has come as a huge shock to the progressive sections in Kerala.
The pro-women stand that the previous LDF government had taken in 2008 had strengthened a public interest litigation (PIL) filed by the Delhi-based Indian Young Lawyers' Association, challenging the ban on women between the ages of 10 and 50 at the temple located on a hilltop in the Western Ghats of Pathanamthitta district.
But, much to the dismay of the petitioners, the new Pinarayi Vijayan government backed the previous UDF government's affidavit that opposed the plea when the bench of Justices Dipak Misra, C Nagappan and R Banumathi asked government counsel V Giri whether there was any change in the state's stand after the change of government. He said he had no instructions from the new government on the issue but emphasised that the court can go into the constitutional issues. However, the CPI-M has now taken a divergent position.
Party state secretary Kodiyeri Balakrishnan said that the party was in favour of entry of women of all age groups to the hill shrine. "The CPI-M is of the view that women should be allowed in all temples, including Sabarimala. The government would file a fresh affidavit in the apex court after taking into account all opinions on the issue," he said.
However, Law Minister AK Balan said the government had limitations in backing the demand even though it is against gender-based discrimination. The government has to factor age-old traditions and sentiments of believers who do not want to change it, he said. "Being in power, we have to address all aspects involved in the issue. Personally, I do not think that this is a matter that can be resolved through the legal route. It can be solved only through consensus. We need to build this through discussions," he added.
Sharing this view was Devaswom minister Kadakampally Surendran, who suggested an open referendum for building a consensus. He said this was more important than court orders.
Interestingly, the state-controlled Travavancore Devaswom Board, which administers the temple, has already initiated a signature drive against the entry of menstruating women in the temple. The board plans to submit a memorandum to Prime Minister Narendra Modi with one crore signatures before the commencement of the next pilgrim season in November.
It has sought the support of the Ayyappa Seva Sangam units, a spiritual body of devotees of Lord Ayyappa, the deity at the Sabarimala temple, in various states for making the signature drive a success.
Kerala Mahila Congress president Bindu Krishna, an advocate and a strong proponent of women's entry at Sabarimala, said the attempt to build a consensus on the issue through such opinion poll will only favour the conservatives since they have made the women traditionally believe that a violation of the custom could invite the wrath of Lord Ayyappa. She told Firstpost that this may be one of the reasons why women in the state were not coming forward to support the movement.
Curiously, a major player behind the current legal battle is a Muslim lawyer. The counsels for TDB have been repeatedly pointing this out in the apex court while opposing the petition.
The Congress leader believes that the divergent stand taken by the LDF government on the issue is dubious. They say the CPI-M is trying to appease both progressive and conservative sections in light of the recent changes in the political equations in the state. "The LDF, which had raised a big hue and cry against the UDF's stand on the issue, has changed its own stand following the move by the Bharatiya Janata Party to consolidate the Hindu vote bank by forging alliances with various Hindu outfits," Bindu said.
"The LDG government's fresh position is a clear deviation from their previous stand. This is pure opportunism. When they were in the opposition, they were fighting against gender discrimination. Now that they are in power, they are doing the opposite," the Congress leader added.
She feels that the LDF government's decision to stick to the affidavit filed by the UDF may complicate the judicial process since the apex court had taken up the petition filed by the Lawyers' Association in 2006 for active consideration after the Achuthanandan government supported the petitioners' plea.
The court had made a distinction between faith and Constitutional rights after the LDF government affidavit termed the long-standing demand for entry for all women in the temple in keeping with the times.
The ban was enforced under Rule 3 (b) of the Kerala Hindu Places of Public Worship (Authorisation of Entry) Rules, 1965 in tune with a custom followed by the temple for the past 1,500 years. The Kerala high court had upheld the ban in 1991 and directed the state-controlled Travancore Devaswom Board (TDB), which administers the temple, to implement it.
The custom is based on the belief that Lord Ayyappa is a celibate and the presence of menstruating women could shake his celibacy. The chief priest (tantric) of the shrine, who is the last word on temple rituals, considers the presence of menstruating women in the temple a sin.
The tantri says women, who have not attained menopause, cannot preserve the purity during the 41-days 'tapas' (austerity) that devotees observe prior to the pilgrimage.
The petitioners also challenged the rule saying that it was violative of Articles 14 (equality before law), 25 and 26 (freedom of religion) of the Constitution. They contended that the ban was a sheer sexist discrimination. The apex court had referred the plea to a three-judge bench in 2008, saying it involved substantial legal issue.
TDB president Prayar Gopalakrishnan, who had kicked up a controversy with his statement that women will be allowed to enter the temple only after a machine to "check their purity of women" is invented, has viewed the volte face by the new LDF government as a result of the realisation that it was not easy to break an age-old custom through judicial process.
"The apex court had drawn a distinction between faith and the constitutional rights after the previous LDF government had supported the petition. Now that the new government has given weightage to the sentiments of the believers, I am sure the court would respect their feelings," he added.
"The previous LDF government had failed to appraise the court properly about the practices followed at Sabarimala since centuries. The court made the observations without understanding the basis of the temple's rituals and the specialty of the 'perennially celibate' deity," he said. "The divinity of the shrine comes from the practices. We will protect it at all cost," Gopalakrishnan said, adding that they were confident about convincing the court when it takes up the petition for hearing again in November.
The court has indicated referring the petition to the five-judge Constitution bench since it believes that the temple has no constitutional right to prohibit the entry of the women pilgrims to offer worship.
The progressive sections are of the opinion that the restrictions at Sabarimala are due to taboos prevailing in the society over menstruation rather than faith and customs. They are confident that the highest court in the country will appreciate this and undo the injustice to the women.
Is the sudden spurt in the number of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) shakhas due to its improving ideological acceptance among the masses or due to the fact that BJP is in power at the Centre?
The RSS, BJPs ideological mentor, has witnessed a phenomenal expansion in the number of its shakhas (units) across the country in the last six years from 45,000 in 2010 to over 57,000 as of today.
The RSS claim that this trend is reflective of the peoples growing acceptance of the Sangh parivar and its ideology, and that it has nothing to do with politics.
There has been an unprecedented growth in the number of our shakhas across the country in the last six years. As on date, there are more than 57,000 shakhas, which shows peoples increasing faith in the Sangh parivar, said Manmohan Vaidya, Akhil Bharatiya Prachar Pramukh (head of Media & Publicity) of RSS.
In the last six years, the Sanghs reach has increased manifold, which reflects the acceptability of the Sangh and its ideology among the common people. This also goes to prove that people have ignored the rumours and negative perception spread against the RSS, and have accepted it, Vaidya said.
Rumours are abuzz that with an eye on the upcoming 2017 Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections, the RSS has organized its annual meeting of its regional functionaries (Prant Pracharak) at Kanpur this year.
The annual meeting will be held from 11 to 15 July, to review previous years work and to discuss the agenda for 2016-17.
This annual meeting has nothing to do with the BJP or politics or the UP election. Its our internal review meeting. A section of the media has been trying to juxtapose it with UP election, which is incorrect. Besides discussing the Sanghs strategy to expand its reach, the aim of this meeting is to apprise the new entrants about the role, function and responsibilities of the pracharaks, added Vaidya.
The Sangh holds two meetings in a year and these are planned well in advance. RSS is a highly disciplined organisation and doesnt do anything without proper planning and approval. This meeting hasnt been organised in Kanpur because theres an election in UP next year. In March, we had our Akhil Bharatiya Pratinidhi Sabha in Rajasthan. Before that it was in Nagpur. Itll be too far-fetched to connect the two this meeting and the UP election, a senior RSS functionary said on conditions of anonymity.
During its three-day Akhil Bharatiya Pratinidhi Sabha (ABPS) in Rajasthan in March this year, the prime thrust was on increasing the Sanghs cadre base.
The organisation is giving a major thrust on its rural reach. According to sources, a group called Mandal has been created by consolidating 10-15 villages, which falls under a RSS unit.
In this experiment of strengthening its rural reach, 40 percent has been achieved. In Kerala, the Sangh is making its inroads fast and connecting with the rural masses, the source added.
The present six-day meeting has broadly been divided into three phases. The first phase, from 11-13 July, is devoted to close-door meetings of Prant Pracharaks (functionaries of each region). There are 41 regions (prants) in the RSS structure.
In the second phase, the 40 affiliated bodies of the Sangh like the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh, Bharatiya Kisan Sangh, Swadeshi Jagran Manch, etc will meet. The third phase shall have the meeting of the national executive members of the RSS and review the earlier two phases.
During its training session here, RSS will also ensure that its cadre at the grass root level work towards consolidating Hindu votes during the UP election, similar to what it did in the state during the Lok Sabha elections in 2014. Its not the BJP workers, but the RSS cadre that actually work towards preparing the ground for the party to contest and win, a senior BJP member from UP said.
New Delhi: More than Rs one crore of taxpayers' money was spent and expensive gifts were distributed to woo Singaporean investors to Madhya Pradesh, but the Ministry of External Affairs is in the dark about the outcome from state Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan's much-hyped trip to Singapore last January.
While the norm is to submit a follow-up report after an official trip to a foreign country, a reply to an Right to Information (RTI) query has revealed that the MEA has not received any such document from the Madhya Pradesh government or from the Indian high commission in Singapore.
As per another set of documents made available in February to RTI activist Ajay Dubey, expenditure incurred on Chief Minister Chouhan's official trip was to the tune of Rs 1.39 crore borne by the Madhya Pradesh Trade and Investment Facilitation Corporation Limited.Added to that were gifts worth Rs 41,499 given away to potential investors based in Singapore.
According to another reply from the Madhya Pradesh Trade and Investment Facilitation Corporation Limited (TRIFAC), the gifts were sourced from Mrignayani Madhya Pradesh Emporium and MP Laghu Udyog Nigam Limited -- both owned by the state government.
The list of gift items includes four saris worth Rs 22,291 and 20 statuettes of laughing Buddha worth Rs 11,718. The government also purchased five shawls worth Rs 7,490 from Sant Ravidas MP Hastashilp Evam Hathkargha Vikas Nigam Ltd.
The purpose of the Singapore visit as stated in the proforma for political clearance was to attract investors to Madhya Pradesh in various sectors. Meetings and interactive sessions were reportedly held with potential investors in Singapore. These meetings were organised in coordination with the Indian high commission in Singapore and the Confederation of Indian Industry.
However, the documents and air tickets of the trip showed that Chief Minister Chouhan's wife Sadhna Singh also travelled to Singapore with the delegation. It is not clear what was her exact role during the four-day visit between 12-16 January, and who paid for her trip.
The 'official' delegation led by the Chief Minister comprised state Commerce Minister Yashodhara Raje Scindia, Commerce and Industry Secretary Mohammed Suleman, Chief Minister's Principal Secretary S.K. Mishra, TRIFAC Managing Director D.P. Ahuja, Madhya Pradesh Audyogik Kendra Vikas Nigam Limited Managing Director J.N. Vyas and a representative of the Ernst and Young in Bhopal.
Incidentally, Chouhan had visited Japan and South Korea between 29 September and 7 October, 2015. That trip had cost the exchequer Rs 1.39 crore, besides the gift items for leaders and investors on those countries.
There are two ways of looking at the Congress decision to install Raj Babbar as Uttar Pradesh unit chief and make Imran Masood he of 'chopping up Modi into little pieces' fame one of the four vice-presidents under his command.
One, Congress is placing a huge premium on minute strategising around caste and community equations to tackle one of the toughest Assembly elections. In this line of thinking, influenced perhaps by strategist Prashant Kishor, leaders are mere chess pieces on a checkered gameboard and must fit into a whole.
Two, there is such dearth of talent in its ranks, such an acute lack of astute helmsmen with acumen, political base and appeal that it has had to fall back on a tested failure as state president and a tainted man as one of his deputies. The only rationale behind the move could be that Babbar will serve as the veritable Gandhi-screen lotion, should Congress fail miserably to pull off the Priyanka stunt.
Public memory is short. Electoral reverses are shorter still. Once upon a time in 2009, Babbar had defeated UP Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav's wife Dimple in 2009 in a Lok Sabha by-election. Five years later, during the general elections, the actor-turned-politician went down by a humiliating margin of 5.67 lakh votes against General (Retd) VK Singh from the Ghaziabad constituency. He has done nothing of note since to dispel the notion of a political lightweight flitting around without a purpose.
If not electoral brilliance, one of the reasons why the balance tilted in Babbar's favour could be his caste. The 64-year-old Congress spokesperson, said to be a vigorous campaigner, belongs to the Sonar community (goldsmiths), listed as an Other Backward Caste or OBC in UP. If Sheila Dikshit, a Brahmin, is announced as the chief ministerial candidate a decision the party has deferred till the campaign begins then it stands to reason that Congress is trying to win back its original constituency of Muslims, Brahmins and a slice of non-Dalit Other Backward Castes.
The four deputies chosen for the role certainly give such an impression. The appointments of Raja Ram Pal, Bhagwati Prasad Chaudhary, Imran Masood and former MP Rajesh Mishra are targeted at balancing out the delicate caste, community and religious combination.
Raja Ram Pal belongs to a backward caste, Chaudhary is chairman of the state unit's Scheduled Caste department, Mishra is a Brahmin from Varanasi and Masood, of course, is a Muslim leader. All the primary votebanks of Samajwadi party, the BJP and Bahujan Samaj Party would be taken care of.
Single-minded focus on electoral strategy also explains why Congressman Masood, who was jailed in March 2014 for his hate-speech against Modi, was brought back into political mainstream at the risk of attracting stinging criticism.
Masood, 45, who was the Congress Lok Sabha candidate from Saharanpur in 2014, was arrested and sent to judicial custody for 14 days, soon after he threatened to "chop up" BJP's prime ministerial candidate Modi into pieces during an electoral speech. He was granted bail on 29 March that year and later issued a clarification, saying he only meant that he wanted to "teach Modi a lesson".
That the Congress will brazen out the controversy becomes clear looking at the comments made by two of its senior leaders since the appointment.
On Wednesday, Salman Khurshid tried to explain that "Modi ka boti boti kar dunga" was merely a metaphor and Congress's vice-president in UP didn't really mean what he had said.
"Metaphors, these are metaphors and you cannot hold a person down for metaphors they speak and I am sure that he has been given guidance and counselling as far as this is concerned and I don't believe that you would have heard something similar since then, " Salman Khurshid told news agency ANI.
Ghulam Nabi Azad, the party's general secretary in charge of Uttar Pradesh, was more combative.
Questioned on the controversial choice, Azad said: "Why don't you ask the BJP of their ministers who are hate-mongers?"
A report in 2014, quoting the self-sworn affidavit filed by Masood for contesting Lok Sabha polls, had revealed that there were four cases against him pending trials in Saharanpur courts and one in district court in Lucknow.
The cases were filed under different sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), including cheating (Section 420), forgery of valuable security (Section 467), forgery for purpose of cheating (Section 468) and voluntarily causing hurt to deter public servant from his duty (Section 332) among others, the affidavit said.
Ra Besides, a case is being heard against Masood for charges of intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of the peace (Section 504 of IPC) and punishment for criminal intimidation (Section 506) among others, it said.
Congress's bankruptcy in ideas and talent is evident. Can 'master strategist' Prashant Kishor wave his wand? Or will India's grand old party finally burst his bubble?
Islamabad: Pakistan on Tuesday said disputes over the South China Sea should be peacefully resolved through consultations and negotiations by states directly concerned.
A Foreign Ministry spokesman in a statement said the maritime disputes should be addressed in accordance with bilateral agreements and the declaration on the conduct of parties in the South China Sea, Xinhua News Agency reported.
Pakistan opposes any imposition of unilateral will on others, and respects China's statement of optional exception in light of Article 298 of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, the statement said.
The spokesman made the remarks in response to a verdict against China by an arbitral tribunal in the South China Sea case initiated by the Philippines.
China said it neither accepts nor recognises the verdict, dismissing it as "null and void."
"Pakistan believes that maintenance of peace and security is the collective responsibility of all parties to the South China Sea."
"Countries outside the region should fully respect efforts made by China and the Asean countries to safeguard peace and stability in the South China Sea, and play a constructive role to this end," it said.
Budapest: Human Rights Watch accused Hungary Wednesday of "cruel and violent treatment" of migrants, accusing police and soldiers of beating people up before forcibly expelling them back into Serbia.
"Migrants at Hungary's border are being summarily forced back to Serbia, in some cases with cruel and violent treatment, without consideration of their claims for protection," the rights group said on its website.
The new report by the New York-based non-governmental organisation included testimony from interviews it made in April and May with 12 migrants who said they were brutally beaten and abused by officials and then pushed back to Serbia.
"I havent even seen such beating in the movies," said one man cited in the report. "They deliberately gave us bad injuries".
Hungary is "breaking all the rules" and "summarily dismissing claims" by asylum seekers crossing Serbia, said Lydia Gall, a HRW researcher.
"People who cross into Hungary without permission, including women and children, have been viciously beaten and forced back across the border," she said.
Around 400,000 migrants and refugees passed through Hungary in 2015 before rightwing Prime Minister Viktor Orban's government sealed off its southern borders with razor wire and fences in the autumn.
The authorities also brought in tough new laws punishing illegal entry and vandalism of the fences, that have led to almost 3,000 convictions in fast-track trials, most resulting in expulsion orders.
Orban has said that mass immigration by Muslims threatens Europe's security and its Christian identity, refusing to accept refugees from hotspots such as Syria under an EU quota scheme.
Despite the fence, the number of irregular migrants caught by the Hungarian police has been growing each month this year, to a total of around 17,500 as of the end of June.
In response, legislation that took effect earlier this month allows authorities to return any migrant found within eight kilometres (5.0 miles) of the border to "transit zones" located in no-man's land between Hungary and Serbia.
Hungary has restricted however the number of people it allows each day into the transit zones, where asylum claims can be submitted.
In recent months hundreds of people, particularly single young men, have been forced to wait in squalid conditions in the strip of land between the Serbian passport control and the Hungarian fence.
The government was yet to respond to the HRW report.
DALLAS They stood in a line, clasping hands as a choir sang, Democrat and Republican, black and white, politician and cop. Led by President Barack Obama and his predecessor George W. Bush, they honored the five Dallas policemen slain last week and urged Americans to rise above racial divides and reject despair.
The scene unfolded at a memorial service after a week when Americans were jarred by video images of angry crowds protesting police killings of black men in Louisiana and Minnesota and heard the screams of Thursday's sniper attack on police in Dallas by a black former U.S. soldier who had said he wanted to "kill white people."
"We turn on the TV or surf the internet, and we can watch positions harden and lines drawn and people retreat to their respective corners," the first black U.S. president said. "I understand how Americans are feeling. But Dallas, I'm here to say we must reject such despair. I'm here to insist that we are not as divided as we seem."
In a spontaneous display of unity, Obama and first lady Michelle Obama, former president George W. Bush and his wife Laura, Vice President Joe Biden and his wife Jill, Mayor Mike Rawlings, Police Chief David Brown and others on stage joined hands at the end of the service as a choir sang "The Battle Hymn of the Republic."
Obama sought a careful balance, paying tribute to the dead police officers and showing respect for the country's law enforcement while also acknowledging the concerns of those protesting against police violence.
He noted that the Dallas attack came during a protest against racial discrimination in policing that followed the fatal police shootings of black men in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and outside St. Paul, Minnesota. A series of high-profile police killings of black men in the past two years have sparked the most intense debate on race and justice in America in decades.
"America, we know that bias remains. We know it," Obama told the crowd of several hundred people, including many uniformed police officers, at the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center. "None of us is entirely innocent. No institution is entirely immune. And this includes our police departments."
BLACK LIVES MATTER
Obama alluded to the Black Lives Matter protest movement stirred into action by the long series of police killings, which some have painted as anti-police. He said that even people who dislike the phrase Black Lives Matter should recognize the pain felt by the family of Alton Sterling, the 37-year-old black man shot dead last week in Baton Rouge by police who said he was reaching for a gun.
Obama praised the police in Dallas and around the country.
"When anyone, no matter how good their intentions may be, paints all police as biased or bigoted, we undermine those officers we depend on for our safety," Obama said.
"And as for those who use rhetoric suggesting harm to police, even if they don't act on it themselves, well they not only make the jobs of police officers even more dangerous, but they do a disservice to the very cause of justice that they claim to promote," Obama added.
Bush also addressed the packed hall, where five chairs were empty of people, holding folded American flags, in memory of the slain officers. Bush also sought to strike a note of unity.
"At times it feels like the forces pulling us apart are stronger than the forces binding us together. Argument turns too easily into animosity," Bush said. "We do not want the unity of grief nor do we want the unity of fear. We want the unity of hope, affection and high purpose."
The slain officers were Mike Smith, 55; Lorne Ahrens, 48; Michael Krol, 40; Brent Thomson, 43, and Patrick Zamarripa, 32.
The death toll in Dallas was the highest for law enforcement on a single day in the United States since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Nine other officers and two civilians were also wounded.
Outside the hall, Sharice Williams, 41, who drove roughly 95 miles (155 km) from Waco, stood in hopes of catching a glimpse of Obama.
"My heart is heavy. I'm tired of seeing my brothers and sisters killed, but the police don't deserve that," said Williams, who is black. "I'm praying that Obama being here brings us some kind of peace."
Chief Warren Asmus, a 35-year veteran with the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, said he flew in for the memorial.
"I was grateful for many of the things President Obama said in there," said Asmus, 57. "I need to understand what the black community goes through just as much as they need to understand what the police community goes through."
During his flight to Dallas, Obama placed condolence calls to families of Sterling and of Philando Castile, the 32-year-old man shot dead during a traffic stop outside St. Paul.
(Additional reporting by Lisa Maria Garza in Dallas, Ayesha Rascoe, Richard Cowan and Julia Edwards in Washington; Writing by Scott Malone; Editing by Frances Kerry and Will Dunham)
This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
On Tuesday, an international court delivered a damning verdict against China in a Philippines challenge over Beijing-occupied territory in the South China Sea. China claims most of the sea, even waters approaching neighbouring countries, based on a vaguely defined "nine-dash-line" found on a 1940s Chinese map. The Philippines, and other countries, dispute this claim. A five-member UN-backed tribunal of maritime affairs experts in The Hague ruled that China has no historic rights to resources within the sea areas falling within the so-called "nine-dash-line".
The South China Sea is mostly empty with hundreds of the small islands, islets and rocks that are not naturally able to support human settlement. Significant chains include the Paracels in the north, and the Spratlys in the south.
But everyone surrounding the sea Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines, tiny Brunei, Taiwan and, most significantly, China lay claim to some part of it. It is disputed area because scientists believe that the seabed could contain unexploited oil, gas and minerals, which would be a boon to any country that can establish their claims to the region's waters, especially in resource-hungry Asia. It's also home to abundant fisheries that feed growing populations.
But the sea's key value is strategic.
Shipping lanes vital to world trade pass through it, carrying everything from raw materials to finished products, as well as enormous quantities of oil.
Beijing views the South China Sea as its own backyard, a place where it is entitled to free, uninterrupted rein and where its growing navy should be able to operate unhampered. For years, claimants have been building up the tiny reefs and islets to bolster their claims to ownership. China's land-reclamation programme has been particularly aggressive.
Beijing insists its intent is peaceful but the US and others suspect China is trying to assert its sovereignty claims and say that it could pose threats to the free passage of ships. Washington says the waters are international and regularly sends its warships there on so-called "Freedom of Navigation" missions.
How international media reacted
After the ruling, Philippines daily, Phil Star in an oped claimed that the case shouldn't have even reached international courts because the parties involved had "strong cultural ties" and asserted that China's claim was "unreasonable" and that they were using their might to claim stakes through island reclamation without offering explanations as to why they could do that.
"If China wants the kind of respect that is necessary for global leadership, it must first respect rules and instruments for maintaining international order...China, an emerging power, can enhance its ascent to global leadership by setting the example in abiding by international rules."
Manila Times in a detailed editorial about how the Philippine suit is actually a "brilliant US machination", author Rigoberto D Tiglao claimed, "Malaysia, Brunei Darussalam, Taiwan and Vietnam the claimants in the Spratly Islands of course hadnt moved nor will ever move publicly against China, much less file a case against it, as they calculate they are better off with an unsullied friendship with China." Tiglao says that the win for Philippines would be good as it would perhaps make China stop its militarisation of the South China Sea.
An editorial in Global Times, China's English language news website however was vehement in upholding the Chinese rejection of the arbitration award "Not only the Chinese government, but the whole of Chinese society will by no means accept the verdict. Our attitude of non-acceptance and non-participation in the arbitration remains unchanged. The so-called arbitration award is nothing but a piece of paper."
Even a China Daily article called the arbitration a "perfect trap for Beijing" and that China is only being seen as a "bad guy" in the South China Sea narrative.
Beijing: China on Wednesday launched a blistering attack on the jurists of a UN-backed international tribunal that struck down its claims over the strategic South China Sea, saying a Japanese judge who appointed the arbitrators "manipulated" the judgement against Beijing.
Except for a German judge who was appointed at the instance of the Philippines - the petitioner in the dispute - the rest of the four were appointed by Japanese jurist and diplomat Shunji Yanai, China's Assistant Foreign Minister Liu Zhenmin told a nationally televised media conference here.
Claiming that the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague has no international status and its judgement can not be enforceable, he specially targeted Yanai saying he is a former Japanese diplomat and assisted Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
Yanai manipulated the tribunal against China by appointing four judges from different European countries. These judges were not paid by the UN and who has paid them, Liu asked.
The judges - all European and one African - living in Europe has no knowledge of Asian history and culture, he said.
China claims almost all of the South China Sea, including reefs and islands also claimed by others, through which USD 5 trillion in trade passes annually.
It had refused to take part in the tribunal proceedings, with officials saying the tribunal had "no jurisdiction".
Following yesterday's verdict against its claim over the SCS, China immediately said it would defy the decision, which it described as "null and void" with "no binding force."
Earlier this month, in an article in the ruling Communist Party of China's mouthpiece magazine 'Qiushi', the Chinese assistant foreign minister had cast doubt on the make-up of the tribunal, saying none of the five judges had knowledge of the history and international order of ancient East Asia, according to the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post.
Liu has said in the article that one of the judges Yanai appointed included a person who had ruled against a party holding a position similar to China in a previous case.
"Leaving aside the obvious violation of procedural justice, we can hardly make a better explanation of Judge Yanai's motivation and purpose other than that he did it on purpose," Liu has said.
The tribunal was composed of Judge Thomas A Mensah of Ghana, Judge Jean-Pierre Cot of France, Judge Stanislaw Pawlak of Poland, Professor Alfred H A Soons of The Netherlands, and Judge R diger Wolfrum of Germany.
Japanese jurist Yanai has previously defended defended himself in an interview to the 'Japanese Times' saying he had to pick up the judges as president of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS).
"I just happen to be a Japanese, but the annex to the convention provides that in case the arbitrators are not appointed by the parties or by agreement by the parties then the president of ITLOS must do it," Yanai said.
"As the president of ITLOS, I didn't act as a Japanese representative. I don't represent the Japanese at all in the tribunal. That is quite obvious."
China could have chosen a Chinese arbitrator but instead decided to ignore the tribunal, Yanai said.
Beijing: China on Wednesday released a white paper against the verdict by a UN-backed tribunal that struck down its "historical rights" in the South China Sea, insisting that Beijing has claims over the strategic region for 2,000 years.
In a major diplomatic blow to China, the Permanent Court of Arbitration struck down the Communist giant's claims in the strategic South China Sea on Tuesday. The Hague-based court has said that China violated the Philippines' sovereign rights. It said China has caused "severe harm to the coral reef environment" by building artificial islands.
The white paper asserts that China has claims over the South China Sea for 2,000 years and the Philippines, which had filed the petition, was occupying Chinese territory. The core of the relevant disputes between China and the Philippines in the South China Sea lies in the territorial issues caused by the Philippines' invasion and illegal occupation by force, starting in the 1970s, of some islands and reefs of China's Nansha Qundao (the Nansha Islands), it said.
"The Philippines has concocted many excuses to cover up this fact, and to pursue its territorial pretencions," said the document, titled "China Adheres to the Position of Settling Through Negotiation the Relevant Disputes Between China and the Philippines in the South China Sea."
The Philippines' relevant claim is groundless from the perspectives of either history or international law, said the white paper issued by the State Council Information Office.
In addition, with the development of the international law of the sea, a maritime delimitation dispute also arose between China and the Philippines regarding certain maritime areas of the South China Sea, the paper said.
The white paper attacked the Philippines saying that Manila turned a blind eye to bilateral consensus, has repeatedly taken moves that complicate the relevant disputes, gradually intensified them between China and the Philippines in the South China Sea.
The Philippines built military facilities on some islands and reefs of China's Nansha Qundao (the Nansha Islands/Spratly islands) it has invaded and illegally occupied. The Philippines deliberately destroyed survey markers set up by China and attempted to illegally occupy China's Ren'ai Jiao by using a military vessel illegally run around it.
The Philippines also has territorial pretencions on China's Huangyan Dao and attempted to occupy it illegally, deliberately causing the Huangyan Dao Incident, it said. The Philippines has intruded into relevant maritime areas of China's Nansha Qundao to carry out illegal oil and gas exploratory drilling and bidding.
The Philippines has repeatedly harassed and attacked Chinese fishermen and fishing boats conducting routine fishing operations, according to the white paper. In January 2013, the then government of the Republic of the Philippines unilaterally initiated the South China Sea arbitration.
By doing so, the Philippines has violated its standing agreement with China to settle the relevant disputes through bilateral negotiation, has violated China's right to choose means of dispute settlement of its own will as a State Party to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), and has abused the UNCLOS dispute settlement procedures, it said.
"The Philippines has distorted facts, misinterpreted laws and concocted a pack of lies, in an attempt to deny China's territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests in the South China Sea," it said.
The Arbitral Tribunal established at the Philippines' unilateral request has no jurisdiction over relevant submissions, and awards rendered by it are null and void and have no binding force, the white paper said. China's territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests in the South China Sea shall under no circumstances be affected by those awards.
China does not accept or recognise those awards. China opposes and will never accept any claim or action based on those awards, it said.
Beijing: An international tribunal made a landmark ruling Tuesday rejecting China's vast territorial claims in the South China Sea, handing the Philippines a victory and dealing a blow to Beijing. But it remains unclear what, if any, impact the ruling will have, given that the tribunal doesn't have any way to enforce it.
The next steps China, the Philippines and the United States might be considering:
CHINA: MAINTAIN HARD LINE, PUSH FOR TALKS
China has spared no effort in dismissing the arbitration decision as null and void, and denouncing the proceedings and even the five-member panel that made the ruling. The government on Wednesday released a policy paper on its dispute with the Philippines over the South China Sea, in which Beijing reiterated its position that the sea's islands are "China's inherent territory."
Vice Foreign Minister Liu Zhenmin also warned other nations not to challenge China's security interests in the South China Sea, saying Beijing had the right to establish an air defense identification zone over the disputed waters if necessary.
At the same time, Beijing appears for now to be trying a softer approach in appealing to the Philippines to return to the negotiating table, saying there would be "tangible benefits" for the Philippines to cooperate with China.
To persuade Manila to return to talks, China could offer to share fishing and oil and gas resources with the Philippines and finance railway projects in the Southeast Asian nation, analysts say.
Because the Hague-based tribunal can't enforce its decision, the ruling's impact on China might mostly be in the damage it causes to Beijing's image as it seeks a stronger voice on the global stage and legitimacy as a global power. Analysts at the Center for Strategic and International Studies say the ruling could help convince Beijing to treat Manila and other claimants fairly in the medium-to-long term.
Some analysts speculate that China could try to escalate the dispute to punish Manila for pursuing the case and deter other claimants from doing the same. Beijing could take more assertive measures such as island building on Scarborough Shoal, a reef off the Philippine coast where a standoff with China prompted the Philippines to initiate the legal case in 2013.
THE PHILIPPINES: WALK THE TIGHTROPE
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has not directly responded to China's overtures since the ruling was issued, though his spokesmen have said the government is studying the tribunal's decision. China has been on a charm offensive and Duterte is navigating a tightrope in which he wants to revive relations with Beijing while being seen as defending the major victory the country won through arbitration.
Philippine Foreign Secretary Perfecto Yasay said that over the next few days, the government will take steps to ensure that the tribunal's ruling is "peacefully implemented."
"We are open to making sure that we will have bilateral talks with China in the implementation of this decision of the arbitral tribunal," he told Manila radio DZBB. He said that "the next step is to move forward and let diplomacy reign."
Yasay said both China and the Philippines have committed not to take provocative action.
China expert Chito Sta. Romana told ABS-CBN network that the challenge for Duterte now is how to combine engagement and deterrence. "It's how to combine getting along with China and being able to stand up and discuss disputes this is where I think the challenge is," he said.
Philippine House Rep Harry Roque, an international law expert, said that if China resorts to force in the South China Sea, the Philippines can seek a vote of the UN General Assembly not the Security Council, where China has veto powers authorizing sanctions against Beijing.
US: MORE PATROLS IN THE SOUTH CHINA SEA?
Diplomatically, the U.S. and like-minded allies are trying to put international pressure on China to abide by the findings of the arbitration tribunal.
Militarily, the ruling could tempt the U.S. Navy to sail closer to some of China's artificial islands than it has in the past, just as the Philippines and other Southeast Asian nations may test the waters for fishing and oil and gas exploration.
The Navy has been conducting so-called "freedom of navigation" sails and flights near some of those islands to demonstrate its right to operate in the South China Sea, but it has avoided getting really close, at least publicly.
The tribunal classified some of China's islands as rocks, but others as only "low-tide elevations," which are submerged at high tide and therefore not entitled to 12 nautical miles of territorial sea. They include Hughes Reef and Mischief Reef in the hotly contested Spratly islands.
"In theory we could sail within 500 meters" of Mischief Reef, said Michael McDevitt, a retired US Navy rear admiral with long experience in the Pacific. The reef, built into an island by China, is about 130 miles (210 kilometers) off the Philippines.
Influential Republican Sen. John McCain was among US lawmakers Tuesday calling for the US to challenge "China's excessive maritime claims" regularly.
Doing so could send a message to China to proceed cautiously, though it may not be enough to stop China from doing what it sees as in its own interest.
Juba: South Sudan's vice president has withdrawn with his troops to outside of Juba but is not planning for war, his spokesman said on Wednesday, as a ceasefire that ended heavy fighting with the president's forces entered its third day.
Forces loyal to longtime rivals Vice President Riek Machar's forces and President Salva Kiir fought street battles in the capital during a five-day period until a ceasefire was reached on Monday.
The events mirror those of December 2013, when a two-year civil war began after Machar, sacked from his post as Kiir's deputy, withdrew his forces from Juba and launched a full-scale insurgency.
"We had to move away from our base (in Juba) to avoid further confrontation," Machar's spokesman James Gatdet Dak in Nairobi told Reuters, saying he was in contact with Machar's forces. "He is around the capital. I cannot say the location."
It was not clear what caused the latest rift between the two men who have long jostled for power, even before South Sudan's independence from Sudan in 2011. The flare-up was apparently sparked on Thursday when Kiir's forces stopped and demanded to search vehicles with Machar's troops.
Gatdet Dak said Machar would stay away from Juba until ceasefire details were worked out.
"He is not returning to the bush, nor is he organising for war," the spokesman said, calling for an outside force to be deployed to act as a "buffer" between Machar and Kiir's forces.
Other demands from Machar's side are to implement a joint command, an integrated armed force and a joint police force securing Juba, all issues laid out in a peace deal but not yet implemented, said Gatdet Dak.
In another apparent parallel with 2013, Uganda said it was sending troops to South Sudan but this time they would only help evacuate Ugandans, Uganda government spokesman Ofwono Opondo said. In 2013, they had entered at Kiir's invitation to support his government as well as help with evacuation, Opondo said.
The fighting has left many South Sudanese angry and uncertain.
"Both Kiir and Machar should be held responsible for the killing of their own people, and for their soldiers who looted our property and killed my husband," said a tearful Juba resident Rose Juru.
Kiir and Machar signed the peace deal in August 2015, but spent months arguing over details. Machar returned to Juba in April and was reinstated as Kiir's deputy, a move that was meant to help cement the process.
Regional African states have suggested sending in forces to beef up the UN mission UNMISS with a tougher mandate to enforce peace, instead of a narrow focus to protect civilians.
Gatdet Dak said Kiir's helicopter gunships had pursued Machar's forces and attacked Machar's residence in his compound in Juba on Tuesday, although he said Machar had left Juba by that time.
The president's spokesman and other officials in Kiir's SPLA army could not immediately be reached for comment. They previously said they were committed to upholding the ceasefire, implementing the peace agreement and working with Machar.
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When it comes to investing, there are very few sure things in the market. Indeed, the general rule is that the more certainty you want in the rate of return you receive, the lower the rate of return you need to accept in exchange for that higher certainty. Despite that reality, there is one very easy option available to many people that will enable them to double their money by investing it.
That easy way to double your money? Invest in your Traditional 401(k) plan (or your employer's equivalent) at work. If you have a decent match on that plan and benefit from the tax deduction you get from investing in the plan, you can potentially turn $1 of spending money into $2 of investments, just by contributing.
Three simple steps to double your money
Step 1: Invest in your Traditional 401(k) plan. To double your money this way, you need help from two places: your boss and Uncle Sam. While both may very well be willing to help you out, they'll only do their part if you do your part first. By putting money in your Traditional 401(k) plan, you reduce your taxable income for the purposes of federal income taxes. Also, by putting your money in that plan, you qualify for any matching contributions your employer may offer.
Step 2: Accept your employer's matching contribution. Though 401(k) plan matches vary from company to company, a very common match level is 50% of an employee's contribution, up to some cap based on that employee's salary. To get that match, though, you first must contribute your own money. You have the opportunity to potentially double your money for up to as much as your employer will match, though you might be able to contribute more to your plan to build your wealth that much faster.
Step 3: Pay less in taxes. When you get your W2 from your employer to file your taxes, your wages in Box 1 will be reduced by the amount you contributed to your Traditional 401(k). By lowering that starting point for your income, your taxes are reduced compared to what they'd be if you hadn't contributed to your 401(k). If you're in the 25% marginal tax bracket, that's $25 back in your pocket for every $100 you contributed throughout the year.
Put all three of those steps together, and your results could look something like this:
You contribute $1,000 to your Traditional 401(k) plan.
Your employer contributes $500 as a 50% match on your investment, which brings the total invested on your behalf to $1,500.
When you file your taxes, your $1,000 contribution is excluded from your taxable wages. If you're in the 25% tax marginal tax bracket, that saves you $250 in taxes.
You do the math and realize that the $1,500 now invested in your 401(k) only cost you $750 in otherwise spendable money, doubling the money you've got working on your behalf.
What should you do with your invested 401(k) money?
While those three steps are enough on their own to potentially enable you to double your money, making an initial investment in the plan is just the first stage of building your wealth. Once it's socked away, it needs to be put to use in a way that it can potentially increase in value for you. Typical 401(k) plans only allow you to invest in mutual funds or exchange-traded funds. Even with those restrictions, you may very well have some great options to choose from.
If you're several years or more away from retirement, look for low-cost, stock-focused investments, like S&P Depository Receipts (SPY 0.03%). The S&P Depository receipts attempt to track the S&P 500 index -- which consists of 500 of the largest publicly traded U.S. companies -- and it does so with a tiny 0.09% expense ratio. That Exchange Traded Fund and many other S&P 500 index trackers give you broad U.S. market exposure at a very low cost, creating a great opportunity to build wealth over time.
As you get closer to retirement, it becomes important to shift the money you'll need to spend in the next few years into shorter term assets with higher certainty than stocks. You'll be giving up the higher potential returns that stocks offer, but you'll have a greater chance of that money actually being there when you need it.
Vanguard's Short Term Bond ETF (BSV 0.25%) invests in U.S. Government bonds with one- to five-year maturities and also carries a minuscule 0.09% expense ratio. While the Short Term Bond ETF won't make you rich with its mere 1.12% yield to maturity, its low risk assets should help you be assured that the money you need to spend in the near future will really be there for you.
The money is only there if you take advantage of it
Very few investments in life offer you the potential to double your money as easily as you can by investing in your Traditional 401(k), accepting your employer's match, and watching your contribution reduce your taxable income. If that opportunity is available to you, the sooner you start taking advantage of it, the more quickly it can help you build your nest egg. But remember, two times zero is still zero. You have to take the first step and contribute to get the rest of the money headed your way.
Even if your personal circumstances are such that your tax rate and employer match won't let you double your money quite that easily, take a good look at the retirement plan you have available at work. You just might find that the features it offers you still give you an incredible toolset to help you fund a comfortable retirement. Still, in order to get yourself on that path, you need to take the first step and participate in the plan. So get started now, and improve your chances of a more comfortable future.
What: Shares of LATAM Airlines Group SA (LTMA.Q -10.08%) were soaring today, after Qatar Airways agreed to take up to a 10% stake in the company. The stock jumped as much as 28% today and closed the session up 10.4%.
So what: The two companies announced the deal this morning, as the Qatari airline said it would make a $613 million investment in Latin America's biggest airline. The agreement is just the latest step Qatar Airways has taken to expand after it purchased International Airlines Group last year, which owns British Airways, and it's also expected to take a 49% stake in Meridiana, an Italian airline.
The deal helps shore up LATAM at a time when it's struggling because of the commodity bust and weak economies in Brazil, Venezuela, and other parts of South America.
Now what: The agreement allows Qatar Airways to acquire 10% of the company, pending a capital injection of $613 million. It would be issued stock at 10% a share. LATAM CEO Enrique Cueto said, "In addition to strengthening our financial position, [this deal] will allow us to explore new opportunities for connectivity with Asia and the Middle East."
While the partnership with Qatar won't turn around LATAM's financial losses in the near future, over the long term it should provide a boost to the struggling carrier.
With the fertilizer markets visibly under pressure, investors in Mosaic Company (MOS 1.74%) must be anxiously awaiting its next quarterly earnings release to get a clearer picture of where things are headed. But before the numbers hit the Street in a couple of weeks, there's something else you must do: Find out what Mosaic management said in its most recent conference call. Doing so could not only give you valuable insight into the company's strengths and weaknesses, but also help you gauge how things might have changed in recent months. Here are three quotes from Mosaic CEO James O'Rourke that you should know.
Can Mosaic end 2016 on a strong note?
Plunging prices of potash and phosphate are largely to blame for the recent declines in Mosaic's and PotashCorp's (POT) profits. Both companies reported double-digit drops in their net incomes during the first quarter of FY 2016 and downgraded their sales guidance for the full year. O'Rourke, however, sounded optimistic during the earnings call:
We continue to expect a strong second half, with improving global demand for the remainder of 2016.
Mosaic is primarily betting on an uptick in demand from Brazil and India in a few months. That already appears to be playing out given the latest potash contracts from India. However, none of those contracts are with the U.S.-based producers. More importantly, India negotiated at decade-low potash prices. As Mosaic and PotashCorp are now largely price takers, they may have to relent under pressure and sell potash at prices that could wipe out any hopes of higher sales or profits in the second half.
How is Mosaic handling the downturn?
With challenges aplenty, Mosaic is aggressively tightening its purse strings. As O'Rourke pointed out:
[W]e are benefiting from our work to reduce expenses. Mosaic, today, is a low-cost producer and we are building on this competitive advantage.
Mosaic not only reduced its selling, general, and administrative expenses by 10% year over year in Q1, but also lowered its full-year SG&A guidance by $10 million at the midpoint of its previous forecast range of $350 million-$370 million. On the production side, Mosaic kept its potash costs flat and lowered its phosphate costs in Q1 despite a lower operating rate.
Given the increased uncertainty in potash markets, it's imperative for Mosaic to keep production costs as low as possible while finding ways to cut even further. Investors shouldn't miss the company's plans on this front in its second-quarter earnings call.
Big news could be on its way for Mosaic investors
[W]e're actively looking for opportunities to grow our company over the long term. And we believe this part of the cycle may be opening up opportunities for value that might not exist in other parts of the cycle.
This, by far, is O'Rourke's most important quote from the call. Mosaic is actively hunting for growth opportunities (read: acquisitions) in a down cycle -- a strategy that should work to its advantage in the long run. According to Reuters, Mosaic is eyeing Vale SA's (VALE -3.42%) fertilizer business in a bid to expand its footprint in the high-potential Latin American market. In fact, rumors of PotashCorp getting acquired are also doing the rounds, with Mosaic being touted as one of the contenders.
With prices at rock bottom, most fertilizer stocks have been crushed in the past year or so. For global giants like Mosaic and PotashCorp, this presents a great opportunity to scoop up rival assets while they're still cheap. With a comfortable interest coverage ratio of nine times and a debt-to-equity ratio of less than 40%, Mosaic has enough leeway to borrow to fund acquisitions, if required, without jeopardizing its interest or dividend payments.
Mosaic is smartly using a two-pronged strategy of controlling costs and expanding its footprint as it waits for the business cycle to turn. That should position the company for strong growth in the years to come.
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Though some of the 90 municipalities in St. Louis County, Missouri, have as few as 300 residents, most have their own courts and police. Such fragmentation is expensive, requiring residents to pony up for general administration services that could easily be consolidated. Municipalities must constantly be on the lookout for revenue. Pagedale in North St. Louis County is currently embroiled in two lawsuits over its reliance on aggressive code enforcement and municipal fines to pay for the day-to-day operations of city government. The suits outcomes could determine whether Pagedale and similar cities survive as independent entities.
In a class-action lawsuit filed in federal court in November, three Pagedale residentsValarie Whitner, Vincent Blount, and Mildred Bryantallege that the citys code-enforcement practices violate their civil and due-process rights. Their suit lays out the many ways to run afoul of the citys code: letting shrubs or vegetation exceed seven inches in height; having sloppy or mismatched drapes; failing to put screens on windows and doors; playing or walking in the street; barbequing on the front lawn; and wearing ones pants below the waist in public. The city has put revenue generation ahead of the administration of justice, the suit claims.
Valarie Whitner works in data entry at a hospital. Blount, her long-time partner, is unemployed. The city has issued the couple $1,800 in fines and fees; theyve paid off about $1,000. Blount was ticketed though hes not a homeowner. Whitner was cited for lack of screens, unpainted gutters, and failure to remove tree branches. She was arrested for building code violation, contempt, and default. Bryant, 84, relies on a nephew for repairs; she received a building-inspection report demanding, among other things, that she remove the weeds growing in her driveway, and that she install blinds, matching curtains, or other such window treatment for her windows. She couldnt get the work done in the time frame her busybody overseers allotted.
Nearly a quarter of Pagedales 3,300 residents live below the poverty line. The citys median income is $28,000. It took in $2 million in revenue in 2013, 17 percent of it from fines, according to the lawsuit, which Pagedale is vigorously contesting. City attorney Sam Alton denies that Pagedale is preying on its residents. Pagedale is not out to extract money from these people, he said, referring to homeowners. The goal is to bring property up to code. He frowns on Whitners allegations. Often it turns out people have an extensive history and have not paid, he said. On March 10, the city lost a bid to remove Bryant from the case on grounds that shed never been ticketed, only warned. This was a crucial plaintiffs victory because it makes the potential class larger.
Pagedales other case has its roots in Fergusonanother North St. Louis County citywhere the riots that erupted in 2014 following the death of Michael Brown were widely perceived as an expression of long-simmering anger at police and municipal-justice practices. Missouri law allows cities to derive 30 percent of revenue from court fees and fines. After Ferguson, Governor Jay Nixon signed a bill lowering the revenue ceiling to 12.5 percent for cities in St. Louis County. Cities should stop seeing citizens as human ATMs, said Republican state senator Eric Schmitt, the bills sponsor.
Twelve cities in North St. Louis County, including Pagedale, sued to stop the laws enforcement. They claimed that its terms singled them out, crippling their meager budgets and acting, in effect, as unfunded mandates. A judge struck down key provisions of the law in March, but Schmitt championed a new bill, and Nixon signed it in June. The purpose of municipal courts is to protect our communities, not profit from them, the governor said.
Alton believes that richer municipalities in St. Louis County cooked up the new law as a way to push poor cities in North County to the brink because they dont want North County to be part of the county tax pool. If North St. Louis County towns were to dis-incorporateand a new bill on Nixons desk would make that easier to dothey would be forced to merge with the county at large. Pagedale residents dont want to lose their local government, Alton said.
In a post-Ferguson world, the drive to reform how the poor are ticketed and treated in municipal courts in North St. Louis County is not going away. Both suits shine a spotlight on the ongoing legacy of St. Louiss past: poverty, separation, and lack of development in North County that results in municipal budgets heavily dependent on taxing and fining citizens.
Photo by TennesseePhotographer/iStock
A former federal prosecutor is suing President Obama, former Attorney General Eric Holder, civil rights activist Al Sharpton and Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, for inciting a race war that led to the Dallas police shootings.
Larry Klayman, who founded government watchdog groups Judicial Watch and Freedom Watch, recently filed the class-action lawsuit, seeking damages of more than $2 billion dollars.
That amount of damage is for everybody who's been harmed here, Klayman told the FOX Business Networks Deirdre Bolton. Its law enforcement across the boardwhether its black, white or whatever color, race or creedpolice have been trashed, law enforcement trashed its a severe crisis. This President would like to think that hes king, but hes no Martin Luther King. In fact, hes closer to Louis Farrakhan and Al Sharpton in terms of the way he does things.
He added: [The lawsuit] is about racial equality, its not about prejudice. Meaning everybody should be treated equally.
Klayman said the most egregious example is President Obama not representing all of the American people.
He only has a problem if theres crime against blacks or crime is against Muslims or black Muslims for that matter, Klayman said. But he doesnt represent the rest of the country and the people are beginning to see that.
Google is giving small businesses in need of super-fast Internet more options.
The Web giant on Tuesday announced it is transitioning away from the one-size-fits-all Fiber Early Access program it launched in 2014, and, in its place, has introduced three new fiber plans for your business needs. Small businesses in cities where Google Fiber is available will be able to pick upload and download speeds ranging from 100Mbps to 1,000Mbps.
The entry-level 100Mbps tier will set you back $70 per month while a 250Mbps option is $100 a month. The fastest and priciest option, 1000Mbps, is priced at $250 a month. Check out the chart below for a comparison of the three plans.
"We know that businesses come in different shapes and sizes," Google Fiber Product Manager John Shriver-Blake wrote in a blog post. "They have varying needs and would like the flexibility to choose a plan that best fits their needs."
Google also increased the number of static IP addresses available to businesses you can now get up to 13.
Google Fiber availability is, of course, still quite limited. For now, these new plans are only available to eligible small businesses in Charlotte. Those in Kansas City, Provo, Austin, and Nashville, meanwhile, can still sign up under the Early Access program until July 31. Beginning Aug. 1, businesses there will be able to choose from one of the new plans or keep their Early Access pricing for a year.
Businesses everywhere else can check their address and sign up to be notified when Fiber becomes available in their area.
"We continue to be committed to providing fast, reliable service tailored to the needs of small businesses," Shriver-Blake wrote. "Our support team is available to help 24 hours a day, 7 days a week."
This article originally appeared on PCMag.com.
As supply growth continues to outpace air travel demand in the U.S., driving down fares, it is more important than ever for airlines to diversify their revenue sources.
For many airlines -- especially the larger players -- co-branded credit cards represent a key source of ancillary revenue. For example, as of 2014, Delta Air Lines' co-branded credit card relationship generated $2 billion of revenue annually, about 5% of the company's total revenue.
Airline miles (or points) remain a valuable reward currency, enabling airlines to bargain for increased compensation from credit card companies. On Tuesday, American Airlines became the latest airline to score a lucrative upgrade to its credit card revenue stream.
American Airlines renewed its credit card partnerships this week. Image source: American Airlines.
Lots of money here
Among the major airlines, Delta kicked off the recent round of credit card negotiations. In late 2014, Delta Air Lines extended its co-branded card agreement with American Express. The new agreement called for AmEx to pay 15% more per frequent-flier mile beginning in 2015.
As a result, the updated agreement generated more than $400 million of incremental value for Delta last year. Delta's credit card-related income will continue to grow over the six-year life of the contract, including another increase in the per-mile payment next year.
In the year and a half since Delta signed its new deal, nearly every other major airline has followed suit. In most cases, airlines have renewed with their existing partners -- but only after extracting much higher payments for each "mile" or point.
An unusual arrangement
American's current credit card arrangement is unique in that it has two card-issuing partners: Citigroup and Barclays , a legacy of its merger with US Airways. Citigroup has been the longtime card issuer for American Airlines, while Barclays worked with US Airways before the merger.
Most onlookers have assumed that the combined airline would eventually choose a single credit card issuer and that Citi would get the nod. Instead, American is reupping with both Citigroup and Barclays.
Citigroup will remain the main credit card partner going forward. Its AAdvantage cards will be the only ones offered through American Airlines' website. Citi will also get exclusivity for digital, mobile, and direct mail advertising and in American's Admirals Club airport lounges. But Barclays will be allowed to offer co-branded cards in airports and will get exclusive in-flight marketing rights for its cards.
American Airlines believes that working with two card issuers like this will drive faster growth in the AAdvantage cardholder base.
American will get a big revenue boost
As has become common in the airline industry, American Airlines is extending its co-branded credit card partnerships long before they were due to expire. This allowed it to get an immediate step-up in credit card revenue, followed by further compensation increases down the road.
In an SEC filing, American Airlines stated that the new agreements will boost its pre-tax income by $200 million during the second half of 2016. It expects the benefit to rise to $550 million in 2017 -- the first full year under the revised agreements -- and increase further to $800 million in 2018.
These contractual improvements will lift American's pre-tax profit margin by 2 percentage points by 2018, relative to what it would have been under the old credit card agreements. The company expects additional (but smaller) pre-tax income gains after 2018.
Keeping American Airlines' profit margin afloat
American Airlines expects to record most of the incremental revenue from its new credit card agreements in its "other revenue" line. This means that this extra revenue won't help American stem its recent declines in passenger revenue per available seat mile, a metric that excludes other revenue.
Nevertheless, the new credit card agreements will have a big positive impact on the bottom line, which is what really matters. American Airlines still likely needs to slow its capacity growth to avoid significant margin deterioration over the next year. Nevertheless, American's increased credit card revenue stream will help to offset some of the fare pressure that has haunted it lately.
The article American Airlines Signs a Lucrative New Credit Card Agreement originally appeared on Fool.com.
Adam Levine-Weinberg has the following options: long January 2017 $30 calls on American Airlines Group and long January 2017 $40 calls on Delta Air Lines. 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.
Image source: Seagate
What:Shares of Seagate Technology PLC were up 21.8% as of 12:35 p.m. Tuesday, after the data-storage solutions company announced an ambitious restructuring plan and preliminary fiscal fourth-quarter 2016 results ended July 1.
So what:More specifically regarding the latter, Seagate now expects to report revenue for the quarter of roughly $2.65 billion -- or down roughly 9.6% year over year -- along with gross margin of 25%, and adjusted gross margin of 25.8%. By contrast, Seagate's previous guidance called for quarterly revenue of $2.3 billion, and adjusted gross margin of 23%.
These results were driven by better-than-expected demand for enterprise hard drives as well as Seagate's cost containment initiatives. Hard drive unit shipments overall came in at roughly 37 million, good for a total of 62 exabytes of storage, average capacity per drive of 1.7 terabytes, and an average selling price of $67 per unit.
"The evolution of mobile and cloud data driven environments continues to define itself as requiring significant amounts of mass storage," explained Seagate CEO Steve Luczo. "HDD devices are where most data bits ultimately reside and our record HDD exabyte shipments in the June quarter, particularly due to enterprise demand, continue to support this thesis."
In addition to Seagate's restructuring actions announced two weeks ago, Seagate also revealed an expanded restructuring plan to further consolidate its global footprint. Namely, that will come in the form of reducing its global headcount by 14%, of roughly 6,500 employees. This will result in pre-tax charges of roughly $164 million in fiscal 2017, but it should allow Seagate to achieve its operating goal of adjusted product gross margin in the range of 27% to 32% by the December 2016 quarter.
Now what:However unfortunate those layoffs are, it's no mystery that Seagate has struggled to keep pace with competitors in today's fast-changing data storage industry. Shares were down more than 30% through the first six months of 2016 alone, and the company's lofty dividend looked unsustainable after Seagate reported its first quarterly loss in years this past April.
So while I'm not eager to dive in after today's pop, it's hard to blame investors for applauding Seagate's encouraging quarterly results and taking drastic action to realign the size and cost structure of its business.
The article Why Seagate Technology PLC Stock Popped Today originally appeared on Fool.com.
Steve Symington has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Copyright 1995 - 2016 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
HPQ Average Diluted Shares Outstanding (Quarterly)YCharts
As you look deeper into the situation, though, there are some mixed signals that might make investors think that this stock may be cheap for a reason. One thing to keep in mind is that the company completed its split into HP Inc. and Hewlett-Packard Enterprise (NYSE: HPE), and former CEO Meg Whitman decided to go with the newly formed business rather than hang onto the legacy business. There is also the tricky situation where the two big markets for HP Inc. -- PCs and printers -- have been and will likely continue to decline as mobile devices become even more ubiquitous.
On the flip side, there are some small signs of hope for HP Inc. The company is actually gaining market share in the PC industry as it focuses on higher end PCs designed for high performance tasks such as gaming. This is a portion of the PC industry that remains more robust and typically commands a higher price point. The company is also improving its cost structure, as it has reduced its overhead costs by $3.2 billion in the first nine months of 2016.
It looks as though things could go either way right now. Either the company could end up succumbing to industry headwinds over time, or it could get a toehold with these strategic decisions that could help drive sales. The stock may be cheap, but it's probably worth watching this one for a few more quarters to see how this industry versus strategy dynamic plays out.
Ride that last wave
Like the PC industry, coal consumption across the U.S. is in structural decline. Cheap natural gas is taking market share from coal very fast, and wind and solar energy costs are dropping fast enough that new power generation is going to look at these options before coal. Like HP, though, Alliance Resource Partners has been bucking industry trends for a while and gaining market share. Its coal mines in the Illinois Basin have much lower costs than the traditional coal mining centers in the U.S. such as Central Appalachia. It also helps that the company kept its head down and focused on its own operations rather than blowing up its balance sheet like so many other coal miners did in 2011 to make acquisitions at the top of the cycle.
The company did recently trim its payout to shareholders as the market for coal has been so brutal, but the wave of bankruptcies in the industry is leading to a more stable coal market. With a still very large installed base of coal plants in the U.S. generating power there is still a decent opportunity for Alliance to grow as it gains even more market share and ride the last waves of coal as a power source in the U.S.
Clearly, Alliance isn't a buy and hold forever kind of investment because of the industry's decline, but today's stock -- trading at an enterprise value to EBITDA of just 4.1 times and a distribution yield of 7.8% -- has a bit of value that can still be squeezed out.
Cheap, but possibly at the top of the cycle
Typically when a company posts earnings results as strong as General Motors' were this past quarter
What has investors spooked, though, is that auto sales in the U.S. may have peaked recently. 2015 was a banner year for the industry, and executives at GM and Ford Motors seem to be hinting that they are prepping for a decline with statements about maintaining dividends and positive earningslowered their cost structures enough
This makes for an interesting quandary for investors. Do you jump on shares today when the stock is cheap by traditional valuation metrics? Or do you possibly hold out for a little further down the road as shares will likely take a hit as the industry enters a downcycle? I don't think I would shame anyone for picking up shares today because its stock does appear to be a decent value. Chances are, though, those with a little more patience could wait a while to see how these stocks react to declining sales.
A secret billion-dollar stock opportunity
The world's biggest tech company forgot to show you something, but a few Wall Street analysts and the Fool didn't miss a beat: There's a small company that's powering their brand-new gadgets and the coming revolution in technology. And we think its stock price has nearly unlimited room to run for early in-the-know investors! To be one of them, just click here
Tyler CroweYou can follow him at Fool.comor on Twitter@TylerCroweFool.
The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Ford. The Motley Fool recommends Alliance Resource Partners and General Motors. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 daysconsidering a diverse range of insightsdisclosure policy
Did you know that a former president and first lady were the first two people to receive Medicaid cards? Or that the "S." in Ulysses S. Grant's name stands for nothing?
More pertinently for Fools, it seems there were at least a few chief executives who couldn't manage their finances if their lives depended on it. In this clip from theMotley Fool Answerspodcast,Alison Southwick and Robert Brokamp commemorate July 4 with trivia about five presidents who were shockingly bad with money. They might have occupied the most powerful seat in the world, but they were hopeless with their wallets.
A transcript follows the video.
None
This podcast was recorded on Feb. 16, 2016.
Alison Southwick: Robert decided to diginto the personal finances of our great leaders, and perhaps not surprisingly, he learnedthat's just because you're sitting in the White House, it doesn't mean you'rea great budgeter.Robert Brokamp: It's true.Southwick: So you have some lessons for us todayfrom presidents past.Brokamp:Yes. The formula for financial success, we all know, it'slive below your means,avoid debt, diversifyyour investments. We all know that. We don't always follow those rules,and neither do all our past presidents. I'mgoing to give you five examples of presidents who didn't exactly follow those! No. 1,Ulysses S. Grant. Anyoneknow what the "S" stands for? Anyone? Anyone?Southwick: Not "Saver."Brokamp:That's true. Itactually stands for nothing. Hisname was Hiram Ulysses Grant, but when a Congressman nominated him forWest Point,he just put "Ulysses S. Grant," and [Grant] decidedto stick with it. Nonetheless, after hispresidency, he went ona very lavish tour around the world, spent too much of his money,and then he invested $100,000 into abrokerage firm that was started byhis sonand a friend, and unfortunately,that friend was borrowing usingthe securities in the investment firmas collateral. We'vetalked a little bit about this -- that's great ifeverything goes up. If not, thenyour collateral becomes worth nothing --Southwick: Isn't thisthe leveraging thing we talked about?Brokamp: Leveraging margins.Southwick: Margins, OK. Sorry.Brokamp:So, things went south, investments get wiped out, Grant puts a little bit more money in, and he loses everything. So,toward the end of his life,he is pretty much penniless. Mark Twainconvinces him to write his memoirs,which he finishes before he dies. In the end, those royalties earn almost $500,000 for his family. He was dead. But he does havethe largest mausoleum in North America,so while you can't take it with you, you canlive in something thatyour money paid for. How's that, huh?Southwick: You can leave it behind.Brokamp: You canleave it behind for other people to visitand see your bones. No. 4,Harry S. Truman. "S" stands for?Southwick: Not "Saver!"Brokamp:Nothing! His middle name is "S" to honor two of his grandparents. Anyway, young guy, he invests in a mineral company, an oil company, loses everything, fights in World War I, starts a men's clothing store in Kansas City with one of his army buddies. That goes under. Eventually, I think he has to live with his in-laws, then gets into publicservice, is the president, comes out of thepresidency actually without much money. So, in, I think it was 1958,it was the first time Congress enacteda pension for presidents, andpart of it was, I think,out of sympathy for Harry S. Truman,who really didn't have much money. And when Medicare was signed into law in '65, Johnson signed it at the Harry S. Truman library, and Harry and Bess were the first two people to get Medicare cards. So they weredefinitely people who needed the help of the government. No. 3, President William Henry Harrison, ninthpresident. You probably don't knowmuch about him, becausehe has the distinction of being -- anyone? Anyone? Thepresident with the shortest --Southwick: That's right! He gave a speech! He died because hecontracted something from his inaugural speech, right?Brokamp: That's right. He served as president for something like32 days. Hisproblems, he was a farmer,he went off to basically bethe ambassador to Colombia. While he was gone,the crops failed; his sons didn't manage it very well. Sohe came back to a lot of debt. So by the time he was president and died,he actually didn't have a whole lot of money.Southwick: This was the guy who was really, really cold, and was like, "I don't need a coat. I'm just going to give my speech because I'm a tough man!" And then he died.Brokamp: And then he died. There'ssome debate about whether or not that's actually how he got the pneumonia. Butregardless, he was notpresident for very long. No. 2,Thomas Jefferson. We all know him.Southwick: Buthe's huge in Virginia.Brokamp: He was, at one point, was one of the wealthiestpeople in Virginia. But, like,a lot of people own land and property. You can be ...Southwick: Land-wealthy and cash-poor?Brokamp: Right. He owed a lot of money. Healso had expensive tastes. BuildingMonticello was not cheap. He was owed a lot ofmoney by other people; he wasn't great at collecting it. He signed loans for other people that heeventually became responsible for. Toward at the end of his life, he came up with the schemein which he was going to have a lotteryby which someone could win some of his property. I think it was even his estate. He got talked out of that. But by the time he passed away, he owed -- I think, then, was $100,000, which now would be millions of dollars. And his heirs basically didn't get anything. All his stuff had to be sold.Southwick: All right, time for No. 1! [drums fingers]Brokamp: Time for No. 1! This is thesuccess story of the presidents --Southwick: Does that actually sound like a drum roll?Brokamp: Yeah, that was. By the way,Presidents Day, I don't know if you knew this,is actually not an official holiday federally. It's actually Washington's birthday,officially, in the federal books. Stateshave it as Presidents Day. So we're going to end it here with Washington, who also had a lot of land.Southwick: Yes, not far from here, like, 8 miles from here.Brokamp:That's true. Hemade the wise decision of marryingMary Custis, who at that time was one of the wealthiest women in Virginia. He still was in a lot of debt. Eventually, it got paid off because he inherited some money. But even when he went to hisinauguration in New York Cityfor the first inauguration,he had to borrow money to be able to get up there.
Thesmart thing that he did was -- tobacco farming was actually not that profitable. What he did washe diversified hisinvestments. Living on the Potomac,he saw those fish going by and thought, "You know what? I've got to make money from the fish." Sohe had a fishery. He alsoeventually built what was one of the biggestwhiskey distilleriesin the country,down by the gristmill -- those of us at The Motley Fool know that. So, by doing all of those things, in the end, he ended up being debt-free and being very wealthy when he passed away.
Southwick: Oh! So that was a success story!Brokamp: That's thesuccess story. From the president who had toborrow money to get to his own inauguration, to being awealthy guy when he passed away.Southwick: Andnowadays, once you're done being a president,you go on a speaking tour,you go work for some lobbying firm,you got it good,the money starts rolling in after you're done being president.Brokamp: You do.
The article 5 Presidents Who Were Terrible With Money 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.
One of Intel 's biggest failures over the past decade was its inability to enter the smartphone market. Much of that failure can be attributed to Qualcomm , which dominated the market with its Snapdragon chips to become the biggest mobile chip maker in the world.
But today, Intel and Qualcomm are both stuck in a similar rut: Growth in their core businesses has slowed, and their stocks have now become income-generating value plays rather than high-growth ones. Neither chipmaker will likely fade away anytime soon, but is one of these better than the other? Let's examine their core businesses, growth trajectories, and valuations to decide.
Image source: Intel.
How do Intel and Qualcomm make money?
Most of Intel's revenue and operating income comes from its PC and data center chip businesses. Revenue from its Client Computing (PC and mobile) and Data Center units respectively rose 2% and 9% annually last quarter, and together they accounted for 84% of its top line.
Sluggish upgrade cycles and the disruptive effect of smartphones and tablets weighed down sales of PC chips. Data center chip sales also waned because of weaker-than-expected enterprise spending in China. The remainder of Intel's revenue comes from newer businesses like Internet of Things chips, non-volatile memory, programmable chips (from its acquisition of Altera), and security solutions (from its acquisition of McAfee). Operating income at the Client Computing, Data Center, IoT businesses, and Security segments rose year over year last quarter, but the memory and programmable businesses both posted operating losses.
Qualcomm generates most of its revenue from its mobile chipmaking (QCT) business, but most of its pre-tax earnings come from its higher-margin 3G/4G patent licensing (QTL) business, which takes a 3% to 5% cut of the wholesale price of every smartphone shipped worldwide (excluding China). Given rising competition in the mobile chip market, QCT revenue fell 19% annually to $3.34 billion last quarter as operating profit plunged 77% to $170 million. Pressure from regulators and OEMs to lower licensing fees amid plummeting smartphone margins caused revenue at the QTL unitto fall 12% to $2.14 billion and operating profit to slide 14% to $1.86 billion.
Image source: Qualcomm.
Growth expectations and tailwinds
Intel and Qualcomm both face tough headwinds, so sales and earnings growth will likely remain weak for the foreseeable future. Analysts currently expect Intel to postjust 3% sales and earnings growth this year. But Qualcomm is expected to fare worse, withan 11% drop in sales and a 12% earnings decline.
Both companies hope that new chips from their core businesses will boost sales. In PC chips, Intel is counting on its next 14nm revision Kaby Lake in late 2016 and the10nm Cannonlake in 2017 to get its growth back on track. In mobile chips, Qualcomm hopes its new Snapdragon 820 and next-generation 830s will widen its moat against cheaper challengers like MediaTek.
Intel and Qualcomm are both entering new markets to diversify away from PCs and smartphones, respectively. These markets include chips for Internet of Things devices, drones, and connected cars. Intel recently retreated from mobile chips by axing its 4G chipsets, but it also scored a surprisingmobile victory by claiming some orders from Qualcomm in the next iPhone. However, Qualcomm has been advancing into data centers with ARM licensed chips. It's unclear if these chips can dent Intel's 99% share of data center chips, but it represents yet another headwind for that core business.
Valuations and dividends
Intel currently trades at 14.5 times earnings, while Qualcomm has a P/E of 17. Both ratios are much lower than the average P/E of 48 for thebroad line semiconductor industry. Those numbers indicate that Intel is currently cheaper than Qualcomm based on past earnings.
Still, looking ahead, Intel trades at 13 times earnings while Qualcomm has a lower forward P/E of 12. Analysts expect Intel to grow its annual earnings by 10% over the next five years, which gives it a 5-year PEG ratio of 1.4. Qualcomm is expected to post 11% annual growth during that period, which gives it a lower PEG ratio of 1.2. Neither figure falls below the "undervalued" PEG threshold of 1, but Qualcomm is cheaper relative to its earnings growth potential.
Qualcomm's forward dividend annual yield of 3.9% is also higher than Intel's 3.1% yield. Both companies have plenty of room to raise their dividends -- Intel paid out 39% of its free cash flow as dividends over the past 12 months, while Qualcomm spent 45%.
So, which stock is a better buy?
Intel and Qualcomm will both remain under pressure in the near term, but Qualcomm is a slightly better choice based on its lower forward valuations and higher dividend. Its reputation as the market leader in low-power mobile chips could also make it easier for Qualcomm to expand into new markets (like IoT) than Intel, which is primarily known for more power-hungry PC and data center chips.
The article Better Buy: Intel Corporation or Qualcomm Inc? originally appeared on Fool.com.
Leo Sun owns shares of Qualcomm. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Qualcomm. The Motley Fool recommends Intel. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Copyright 1995 - 2016 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Image source: Rick Munarriz.
One of the two rides that Comcast's Universal Orlando was hoping would woo guests this summer has finally opened. After weeks of technical rehearsals to mixed guest reviews and plenty of downtime, Skull Island: Reign of Kong officially opened on Wednesday morning.
NBC's Today morning show was broadcasting live from the attraction, a fitting platform to introduce the country to the new attraction since it's also owned by Comcast. We still don't know if the mechanical breakdowns that have plagued the attraction will continue and we'll have to wait to see if the attraction has been able to improve its experience after compiling weeks of rider feedback.
The important thing is that Skull Island: Reign of Kong is finally open. Comcast can stop tagging its local TV commercials, radio spots, and billboards for the King Kong-themed ride with "Coming Soon" disclaimers. Did it happen too late to save the peak summer travel season?
Slipping on a banana peel
Comcast probably figured it would get the better of nearby rival Disney this summer. Skull Island: Reign of Kong would be the first new ride to open at Universal Orlando's Islands of Adventure since 2009's debut of The Wizarding World of Harry Potter. It was timed to coincide with Universal Pictures'Kong: Skull Island, originally slated to hit theaters later this year.
However, The film got bumped to a theatrical release date for next March and the ride missed the early June window to greet the first wave of summertime guests to its growing resort.
July 13 is obviously still technically summer. However, with area schools set to kick off the new school year on Aug. 15, Skull Island: Reign of Kong will have just a month of peak crowds to entertain this summer.
You wouldn't like me when I'm angry
Image source: Rick Munarriz.
It gets worse. The park closed its signature The Incredible Hulk Coaster in early September last year. It was to be completely retracked, keeping the same layout but incorporating a new queue area and storyline.
It didn't seem like a major refurbishment, and the park pitching a June reopening seemed conservative. It wasn't. June became summer, and summer became late summer.
The ride has been testing vehicles on the track in recent weeks, but the only passengers have been water ballast dummies. The coaster has yet to take on park employees, much less day guests willing to give it a go during technical rehearsals.
The reopen should live up to its "late summer" promise, but who knows how much vacation time will be left for families by the time the updated roller coaster opens. And this comes at a time when three of the adjacent Universal Studios Florida attractions are closed, making room for a pair of new experiences that will open in 2017 and 2018.
This should have been a defining summer for Universal Orlando. Universal Studios Florida has had momentum in recent years, notching 9.6 million attendance in 2015 (a 73% increase from 2009) to the Magic Kingdom's 20.5 million (a 19% boost from 2009). Universal Orlando was the only one of the three major theme park operators in the area to post year-over-year attendance growth during the March quarter, and the new Kong ride and updated Hulk coaster -- if they had officially opened in June -- would have probably sparked an uptick during Comcast's recently concluded June quarter.
Disney, meanwhile, had its shares of setbacks. It had to replace a nightly lake show at Disney's Animal Kingdom and Frozen Ever After -- Epcot'sFrozen-themed boat ride -- has been marred by breakdownssince opening late last month, but at least it was available to guests in June.
Theme parks are starting to move the needle for Comcast, topping $1 billion in revenue during the first quarter, accounting for 15% of NBCUniversal's total revenue. More importantly, theme parks accounted for 23% of NBCUniversal's operating cash flow. This may not seem like much in light of the $18.7 billion that all of Comcast recorded in revenue for the quarter, but NBCUniversal -- and its theme parks -- will become more important as Comcast's cable television stronghold grows more susceptible to cord-cutters.
Theme parks is a dynamic segment that's growing briskly for Comcast. It better hope that two delayed rides this summer don't hurt in the long run.
The article Disney World's Top Foe Finally Opens Skull Island: Reign of Kong originally appeared on Fool.com.
Rick Munarriz owns shares of Walt Disney. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Walt Disney. 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.
What: Shares of Regeneron Pharmaceuticals , a globally diversified biotechnology company, shed another 12% of its value in June, based on data from S&P Global Market Intelligence. The reason for the drop appears to be concerns tied to PCSK9 inhibitor Praluent.
So what: Regeneron's woes can actually be traced back more than three months to mid-March when a Delaware jury decided that Regeneron and collaborative partner Sanofi had infringed on two of Amgen's patents for Repatha, its PCSK9 inhibitor. Regeneron and Sanofi announced plans to appeal the decision, but it leaves Praluent, a possible blockbuster drug that's designed to lower LDL-cholesterol levels -- the bad kind -- in limbo.
One solution for Regeneron and Sanofi could include admitting patent-infringement guilt, and forging a royalty agreement with Amgen. Some analysts, according to FiercePharma, believe a royalty arrangement could cost the duo between 5% and 20% of total sales.
The other option, assuming their appeal is denied, is worse. Praluent could wind up being completely barred from sale in the United States, leaving Amgen's Repatha as the lone approved PCSK9 inhibitor.As long as Praluent's future remains uncertain, Regeneron's share price could be quite volatile.
Image source: Regeneron Pharmaceuticals.
Now what: Regeneron is now forced to fight a number of "battles." In addition to its court battle with Amgen over Repatha, Regeneron is dealing with skeptical investors, who've focused on slowing year-over-year growth for eye drug Eylea. The company recently upped its full-year sales growth for Eylea to a range of 20% to 25% in 2016, but this is down substantially from the 47% year-over-year growth Eylea delivered in 2015, from 2014.
Despite these near-term concerns, I believe the recent downside in Regeneron could be overstated. Eylea's growth isn't slowing so much as it's reaching a steadier percentage of available patients. It'll remain a growth driver for both Regeneron and Sanofi for the foreseeable future.
Additionally, Regeneron has a promising pipeline that could rapidly expand its top line. In early June, Regeneron and Sanofi announced the results of their LIBERTY AD CHRONOS phase 3 study of dupilumab in combination with topical corticosteroids as a treatment for moderate-to-severe atopic dermatitis. Dupilumab wound up meeting both the primary and key secondary endpoints in the study. A regulatory submission for dupilumab is expected this quarter.
Worries over Praluent have pushed Regeneron below a PEG of two, a figure that it's regularly been above for years, implying that it could be attractively priced relative to its other high-growth biotech peers. It's true that Praluent's future is still up in the air, but Regeneron is far more than just Praluent. My suggestion would be to take this recent dip in its share price as an opportunity to further dig into Regeneron's pipeline and underlying fundamentals.
The article Here's Why Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Dropped Another 12% in June 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 owns shares of Regeneron Pharmaceuticals. 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.
On June 30, snack foods giant Mondelez made a $23 billion bid for chocolate maker Hershey . Hershey's board unanimously rejected the $107 per share offer, which represented a 10% premium to its closing price before the bid.
That decision wasn't surprising, since Hershey has rejected numerous takeover offers in the past. But could Mondelez, which owns well-known staples like Oreo, Chips Ahoy, and Cadbury, eventually sweeten the offer to the point that Hershey agrees to a deal?
Image Source: Pixabay
Why Mondelez needs Hershey
The packaged foods market is a slow growth one which is currently being crushed by currency headwinds. Last quarter, Mondelez revenue fell17% annually and declined across all geographic regions. But on an organic basis, which excludes currency impacts and acquisitions, sales rose 2% and improved across all overseas markets.
Buying Hershey's big U.S. business (89% of its sales came from North America last quarter) would reduce the weight of Mondelez' overseas businesses and the impact of the strong dollar. It would also create the world's biggest candy maker with an 18% market share and bring Hershey's brands to more overseas markets. This plan notably defies activist investor Nelson Peltz's attempts to pivot Mondelez away fromcandy altogether.
However, the acquisition should satisfy Mondelez' other big activist investor, Bill Ackman, who wants the company to either sell itself or grow its revenue faster. Based on both companies' projected sales in 2016, buying Hershey would boost Mondelez revenue by 28% to $34 billion. Profitability would also improve, thanks to Hershey's higher operating margins.
Image Source: Pixabay
How much more could Mondelez pay?
At $107, Hershey is valued at 47 times trailing earnings. That's a whopping multiple for a company which grew itsadjusted earnings by just 3.5% in 2015. It's also much higher than the average price-to-earnings of 29 timesfor the confectionery industry. Much of Hershey's 20% rally in 2016 was fueled by investors pivoting away from riskier stocks toward stable, mainly U.S.-based consumer staples plays with healthy dividends.
For reference, Danone's recent $10 billion purchase ofWhiteWave Foods valued the company at 57 times earnings, but WhiteWave had posted 24% adjusted earnings growth last year. WhiteWave's earnings are expected to rise18.5% this year, but Hershey's are only expected to grow 3%.
Returning with a higher bid could be risky for Mondelez, since Moody'srecently warnedthat the deal could impact Mondelez' credit rating. Investors would also likely question the intelligence of paying over $23 billion for a company which generated just $513 million in net income last year.
Learning from Wrigley's mistakes
The Hershey Trust, a $12 billion charity created by founder Milton Hershey a century ago, is the company's controlling shareholder with 81% of the vote. Back in 2002, theTrust put the company up for sale. Wrigley, now owned byMars, nearly won the auction with a $12.5 billion bid which represented a 42% premium over Hershey's price before the process started. That offer valued the company at over 50 times earnings.
But in a surprising eleventh hour decision, the Trust voted to halt the auction in response to ongoing protests in the company's namesake city in Pennsylvania. Many protesters opposed the idea of selling the company which the entire city was founded upon, as well as Wrigley's proposal to rename the combined company "Wrigley Hershey".
Taking note of Wrigley's failed bid, Mondelez pledged to keep the company's headquarters in Hershey and to use Hershey as the combined entity's new name. Unfortunately, it seems like fixing those two issues didn't win over the board.
What's next for Mondelez?
Mondelez probably won't raise its bid dramatically. I believe that the most that it could reasonably raise the bid would be to around $115 per share, based on Hershey's multiple of 50 at that price.
That would value Hershey at nearly $25 billion -- which would still be a huge purchase for Mondelez, which finished last quarter with just $1.3 billion in cash and equivalents and $13.8 billion in long-term debt. This means that Mondelez must finance the deal with more debt or its own stock.
I believe that Mondelez will simply wait for now, since its initial bid has seemingly triggered a conflict within the Hershey Trust. Board member Joan Steel recently resigned without anyexplanation, hinting that some board members might be in favor of a deal. Investors shouldn't buy Hershey expecting a new offer -- since the upside potential will likely be limited -- but they should see if Mondelez can pull off oneof the largest deals in packaged foods history.
The article How Much Could Mondelez Pay for Hershey Co? originally appeared on Fool.com.
Leo Sun has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends WhiteWave Foods. The Motley Fool recommends Moody's. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Copyright 1995 - 2016 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
What happened?
Bank of the Ozarks has a new set of records. The regional banking group released Q2 results that saw a new all-time high net profit for that particular quarter, at $54.5 million ($0.60). That bottom-line figure represented a substantial 22% improvement over the Q2 2015 bottom line of $44.8 million.
IMAGE SOURCE: GETTY IMAGES.
It was also rich enough to beat the market's expectations. On average, analysts were projecting a per-share profit of $0.57 for the quarter.
Bank of the Ozarks also broke its Q2 records for net interest, mortgage, and trust income.
On the top line, revenue zoomed 21% higher, largely on the back of that new high-water mark for net interest income.
Does it matter?
For most companies, posting a record-smashing quarter would likely result in investors flocking to its shares. But Bank of the Ozarks is not most companies -- the modest regional bank from Arkansas has been an overachiever for many years now. Thus, its investors consistently expect the exceptional, making it tough (if not nearly impossible) for the company to wow the market.
Even after a share-price pullback that started late last year, Bank of the Ozarks is an expensive stock. On a price-to-book basis (one of the most critical valuation metrics for banks), the company stands at 2.4; that's well higher than big incumbents Wells Fargo at 1.4 and Bank of America's 0.6. It even exceeds the figures of popular and successful regionals -- U.S. Bancorpstands at 1.7, while PNC Financial Servicesis sporting 0.98.
Bank of the Ozarks has been remarkably stable and consistent over the years, and has been adept at growing both organically and through acquisitions. But that high price-to-book ratio is obviously a concern for investors, particularly when compared to the solid investments in the sector like Wells Fargo, U.S. Bancorp, and PNC Financial Services that are available at relative discounts.
Though Bank of the Ozarks' second quarter was excellent, I believe many investors will still consider the stock to be too rich and hold off on the shares until they start better obeying gravity.
The article Instant Analysis: Bank of the Ozarks Notches a Q2 Earnings Beat originally appeared on Fool.com.
Eric Volkman has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Wells Fargo. The Motley Fool recommends Bank of America. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Copyright 1995 - 2016 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Image source: NVIDIA.
As NVIDIA focuses on the high end of the graphics card market with the GTX 1080 and GTX 1070, Advanced Micro Devices was left with an opening. The first graphics card based on its Polaris graphics architecture, the RX 480, is a mainstream product priced at $199. AMD ceded the high end of the market for the time being in an effort to win back as much market share as possible.
During NVIDIA's last big graphics-card refresh, which began in late 2014 with the GTX 970 and GTX 980, a mainstream card didn't arrive from the company until four months after those high-end cards were released. With AMD gunning for mainstream market share, the story is different this time around. NVIDIA recently announced the GTX 1060, a mainstream $249 card aimed squarely at the RX 480. It will arrive on July 19, just a few weeks after AMD's first Polaris card became available, and a little more than a month after the GTX 1070 launched.
Trouble for AMD
AMD's RX 480 comes in two variants. A version with 4GB of memory is priced at $199, while an 8GB version sells for $239. The GTX 1060, which comes equipped with 6GB of memory, will be in direct competition with the pricier RX 480. NVIDIA still won't have any new graphics cards selling at $200, but it probably0 won't be too long until the company fills in that gap.
According to benchmarks from Tom's Hardware, the RX 480 provides gaming performance that falls a bit short of NVIDIA's last-gen GTX 980, which was a high-end card. That's impressive for a $239 graphics card. But it now looks like NVIDIA's GTX 1060 will be just as impressive, if not more so. NVIDIA is claiming that the GTX 1060 will be 15% faster and 75% more power efficient than the RX 480, which, if true would put AMD in a difficult position.
The large difference in power efficiency should be surprising. Both NVIDIA's Pascal cards and AMD's Polaris cards have moved to 14/16nm FinFET manufacturing, which brings with it efficiency improvements. But if NVIDIA's numbers are taken at face value, they suggest that AMD is still well behind in terms of efficiency. The RX 480 has had some issues with drawing too much power, which has since been fixed with a driver update, but the whole episode reflects poorly on AMD.
The good news for AMD is that it will still have the best $200 graphics card available, at least for the time being. A GTX 1050 and/or GTX 1050 Ti will be coming at some point from NVIDIA, but so far there's no word on the timing.
NVIDIA has a major advantage
AMD has been posting losses for a few years now, and one side-effect has been a shrinking R&D budget. During 2015, AMD spent just $946 million on R&D, down from $1.07 billion in 2014 and $1.45 billion in 2011. This R&D spending is spread across both CPUs and GPUs, meaning that the company's graphics business is only getting some fraction of those resources.
NVIDIA now outspends AMD when it comes to R&D, despite all of its products being built around its graphics technology. NVIDIA spent $1.33 billion on R&D in 2015, about 40% more than AMD. Some of this spending goes toward NVIDIA's growth businesses, like its self-driving-car platform, but it's safe to say that the company has more resources to devote to GPU development than AMD.
This mismatch in R&D spending seems to have created a situation where AMD is perpetually behind NVIDIA when it comes to efficiency. The RX 480 certainly represents a substantial improvement compared to AMD's previous generation of products, but the card uses nearly as much power as NVIDIA's high-end GTX 1080 under load. That raises some questions about how competitive AMD's eventual high-end products will be.
The GTX 1060 looks like it's going to take the wind out of AMD's sails. We'll have to wait until independent benchmarks become available, but based on what NVIDIA has said about the GTX 1060's performance, AMD's RX 480 is looking a lot less impressive.
The article NVIDIA Takes On AMD With the GTX 1060 originally appeared on Fool.com.
Timothy Green has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Nvidia. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Copyright 1995 - 2016 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Image source: Getty Images.
SunEdison's bankruptcy has blown a hole in the renewable energy industry and left a number of struggling companies in its wake. Yieldcos TerraForm Power and TerraForm Global haven't been able to file financial statements since fall 2015, for the unfortunate reason that they share back-office capabilities with SunEdison.
And now Vivint Solar , which was supposed to be acquired by SunEdison for $2.2 billion before the deal fell apart earlier this year, is getting in line with creditors who are owed billions by SunEdison. According to The Wall Street Journal, the residential solar installer is suing for $1 billion for breach of contract in relation to the acquisition.
Vivint Solar gets in line with creditors
Since SunEdison is in bankruptcy, it is facing creditors who are owed some $8 billion, and Vivint Solar is really just getting in line with them. Clearly, Vivint's management feels that there's some upside in filing a $1 billion lawsuit because of SunEdison's failed acquisition of the company, even if it doesn't get anywhere near that amount.
The interesting thing is that TerraForm Power was a key cog in the deal to acquire Vivint Solar and could be dragged into the lawsuit as well. Here's what SunEdison said when it announced a modification to the merger agreement on Dec. 9, 2015:
Interestingly, SEC filings made early in 2016 indicate that TerraForm Power may have been the driving force behind SunEdison's acquisition of Vivint Solar, which could complicate TerraForm Power's effort to distance itself from the deal.
What does this mean for TerraForm Power?
This adds another layer of complexity to TerraForm Power in SunEdison's bankruptcy. The company is already trying to fight off creditors pushing a technical default and the potential default on up to 10 project financing deals because of SunEdison's bankruptcy. We don't know yet if TerraForm Power will have any liability in the failed merger, but with all the lawsuits flying around, it's a risk.
Adding to the unknowns is the fact that investors still don't have current financial statements, and no one really knows when they're coming. And SunEdison's stake in TerraForm Power is now one of the biggest assets creditors have left to fight over.
Hedge funds are starting to bet that TerraForm Power will be a big winner for them in the long term, but retail investors should be careful following their lead. There are too many unknowns to think this is a surefire winner, and with even the slight possibility of SunEdison dragging the company into bankruptcy, there are high risks ahead.
The article Vivint Solar's $1 Billion Lawsuit Adds to SunEdison Bankruptcy Uncertainty originally appeared on Fool.com.
Travis Hoium has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Copyright 1995 - 2016 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
The benchmark FTSE All World global capitalization weighted equity index was down 0.62% (net of tax) in June 2016.
The Atlas Capital Global Downside Protected (GDP) portfolio performance (net of fees) in June was up 0.53%, 1.15% ahead of the index.
From strategy inception on June 9, 2015 through the end of June 2016, the GDP strategy has underperformed the FTSE index by 4.88%.
Missed Rebound
In our opinion, the underperformance is primarily the result of the relatively low weight in equities after the January 2016 downturn.
That limited the portfolios participation in the sharp rebound of the global equities market, which ran from mid-February to April.
While we are not happy with the underperformance during that short period, the strategy continues to perform as designed, and GDP protected against the downside risks that emerged in June.
Brexit Shock
The GDP strategy went into June with 74% of the portfolio in the stock market. The choice by voters in the United Kingdom to exit the European Union (Brexit) roiled markets toward the end of the month.
Most of the GDP positioning choices were beneficial in June. In particular, the strategy was helped by its underweight position in Europe
The other major benefits to performance were from:
Brazil
Brazil has a multitude of problemsa sharp recession and the Zika epidemicahead of the summer Olympic games. Even so, Brazilian stocks rocketed up 19.5% in June.
Most of the gain was from a 12.4% rise in the Brazilian currency, which rallied on improved current account balances. We kept Brazil in the GDP strategy going into June because it has more favorable valuation metrics than most other markets.
US Telecoms
The portfolio was also overweight in the US telecom and utilities sectors, with each gaining more than 7% in June as investors sought safe haven assets.
Our momentum metrics for the few European markets we owned turned negative enough that we dropped out of all our remaining European positions.
We reduced US holdings by 6%, mainly through a reduction in the financial sector.
Emerging market holdings were increased by 3.1%, through the initiation of positions in the Philippines and Taiwan. Overall, the GDP strategy is now 60% invested in equities, with 40% in short-term fixed income.
Volatility Surge
This is the third time in 2016 that weve seen a sudden and large spike in market volatility followed by a rebound.
Is this another false alarm?
We have no way of knowing for sure. But we can examine market fundamentals.
Stock valuations are relatively high in most of the developed stock markets, particularly in the US and there is heightened volatility.
In our opinion, we are in a period of elevated uncertainty regarding the future direction of the world economy and we need to proceed cautiously.
The essential test of this strategy will be in how well it protects our investors in the next major bear market.
Photo Credit: Jussi Ollilia via Flickr Creative Commons
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The post Volatile times for stocks appeared first on Smarter InvestingCovestor Ltd. is a registered investment advisor. Covestor licenses investment strategies from its Model Managers to establish investment models. The commentary here is provided as general and impersonal information and should not be construed as recommendations or advice. Information from Model Managers and third-party sources deemed to be reliable but not guaranteed. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Transaction histories for Covestor models available upon request. Additional important disclosures available at http://site.covestor.com/help/disclosures.
The Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC, is a United States government agency whose main responsibility is enforcing securities laws and regulating the securities industry. The SEC was created by the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 in the wake of the Great Depression in order to protect investors.
What does the SEC do?
The SEC's primary goal is to protect investors and maintain orderly markets that are fair and efficient for all. Created in the wake of the Great Depression in order to enforce newly passed securities laws, the SEC was part of Congress' plan to restore the public's confidence in the market.
In order to achieve these goals, the SEC issues rules to govern the securities industry. And, while the entirety of the rules imposed by the SEC are well beyond the scope of this article, they can generally be divided into two main ideas:
If companies offer securities to the public, they must tell the truth about their business and the risks involved. People who sell and trade securities must treat investors fairly and honestly.
The SEC consists of five commissioners, appointed to staggered five-year terms by the president, no more than three of which can belong to the same political party. Supporting the commissioners is a staff of approximately 4,600 people, spread out across the SEC's 12 offices throughout the U.S.
The five divisions of the SEC
Division of Corporation Finance: Oversees corporate disclosure of important information to the public, such as annual and quarterly filings, proxy materials, and registration statements.
Division of Trading and Markets: Maintains fair, orderly, and efficient markets. This division provides oversight of the major participants in the markets.
Division of Investment Management: Regulates and oversees the investment management industry, including mutual funds, analysts, and investment advisors.
Division of Enforcement: Decides which securities law violations to investigate, and works closely with U.S. law enforcement agencies.
Division of Economic and Risk Analysis: Uses data analytics to assist the SEC in its mission to protect investors.
Responsibilities of the SEC
According to the SEC's website, the commission's responsibilities include:
Interpreting and enforcing federal securities laws
Issuing new rules and amending existing rules
Overseeing the inspection of securities firms, brokers, investment advisors, and ratings agencies
Overseeing private regulatory organizations in the securities, accounting, and auditing fields
Coordinating U.S. securities regulation with federal, state, and foreign authorities
This article is part of The Motley Fool's Knowledge Center, which was created based on the collected wisdom of a fantastic community of investors. We'd love to hear your questions, thoughts, and opinions on the Knowledge Center in general or this page in particular. Your input will help us help the world invest, better! Email us atknowledgecenter@fool.com. Thanks -- and Fool on!
The article What Is the SEC? 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.
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Interactive Brokers Group, Inc.'s move to service a broader swath of the investment community has come with some strange side effects for the business. The company is increasing its customer count and the amount of customer equity it holds, but newer customers aren't trading nearly as frequently as older customers. For a company that's typically catered to high volume traders, that's a change for investors.
At the end of the day, brokerages are a business that relies on trade volume and customers borrowing money to make a profit and the new trends may lead to some weaker results than you might think when the company reports second quarter earnings on July 19.
What to watch for in Q2 results
One of the biggest things investors should watch for with Interactive Brokers is the number of accounts and the client equity in those accounts. And both of those metrics are growing nicely year over year, as you can see below.
The problem is that new customers aren't taking on margin loans at the rate of old customers and are trading less as well. Daily average revenue trades, or DARTs, indicates trade volume and you can see that the trend isn't good.
Metric June 2016 Y/Y Growth Total Accounts 356,800 15% Total Client DARTs 643,000 8% Cleared Avg. DART per Account 419 -6% Client Equity $73.7 billion 12% Client Margin Loans $15.0 billion -21%
Source: Interactive Brokers' monthly brokerage metrics report.
When earnings come out, investors should keep an eye on how these dynamics affect brokerage revenue. Revenue growth could take a step backward as a result of clients trading less or the company could grow as a result of higher overall volume from growing accounts.
The big unknown ahead of the earnings report is market making results. The market hasn't been terribly volatile the past three months, but the divergence among individual stocks can result in negative results, something we saw in Q1 when segment income before taxes fell 26% to $20 million.
The return to stability should help Interactive Brokers in 2016
One of the biggest negatives for Interactive Brokers last year was the sharp drop in the Swiss franc, which resulted in a $121 million loss early in the year. There haven't been the same wild moves in the market this year and an improved currency hedging program should help keep currency risk to a minimum.
What investors should be looking for is increasing revenue from the brokerage business. Client accounts and equity are up, but will that translate to higher revenue and profit given the decline in trades per account? Earnings reported on July 19 will tell us how the operational trends are affecting the business in 2016.
The article Will Client Growth Drive Interactive Brokers Group, Inc. Higher in Q2? originally appeared on Fool.com.
Travis Hoium has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool recommends Interactive Brokers. 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.
Republican Donald Trump thrust the U.S. Supreme Court into the presidential campaign debate on Wednesday, calling for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to resign and describing her as mentally unfit after she lambasted him in media interviews.
The Republican presidential nominee led conservatives in a chorus of outrage over the comments by Ginsburg, who described Trump as a "faker" and speculated about the possibility of moving to New Zealand if he won the White House.
In a post-midnight counter-attack on Twitter, Trump said the 83-year-old leader of the court's liberal wing had "embarrassed all by making very dumb political statements about me. Her mind is shot - resign!"
Other Republicans jumped in, saying Ginsburg's comments showed that she could not be an impartial voice on the country's highest court.
"For someone on the Supreme Court who is going to be calling balls and strikes in the future based upon whatever the next president or Congress does, that strikes me as inherently biased and out of the realm," Republican House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan said on CNN on Tuesday.
The New York Times and Washington Post joined in the rebukes, with the Times asking her to uphold the court's tradition of silence in political campaigns and drop the "punditry and name-calling."
The furor erupted as Trump prepared for the Republicans' July 18-21 convention to formally nominate him for the Nov. 8 election. It gave him an issue to help rally conservatives in his party who are divided over his unorthodox candidacy but concerned that the high court leans too liberal. Recent rulings upholding racial preferences in university administrations and striking down tough abortion restrictions in Texas have compounded that mistrust.
Ginsburg is the senior liberal on the court, which has been ideologically split between four liberals and four conservatives since conservative Justice Antonin Scalia died in February.
"This gives Trump the ability to attack not only Justice Ginsburg but ultimately the authority of the Supreme Court. That is a very bad situation," said Richard Painter, a law professor at the University of Minnesota Law School who served as a lawyer in the White House under President George W. Bush.
U.S. Supreme Court justices are not required to follow the code of judicial conduct that applies to judges on lower federal courts. The code, set by the U.S. Judicial Conference, says judges should not "make speeches for a political organization or candidate, or publicly endorse or oppose a candidate for public office."
Still, the judges on the country's top court typically try to stay out of the political fray.
As a judicial counterweight to the executive and legislative branches of government, the court has a sometimes pivotal role in deciding some of the most divisive social issues in American life. In recent years, major rulings legalized gay marriage nationwide and upheld President Barack Obama's healthcare overhaul.
NOT 'DEMOCRATS OR REPUBLICANS'
In public remarks earlier this year, Chief Justice John Roberts stressed it was important for the justices not to be seen as political players, saying criticisms of partisanship, which he described as inaccurate, were damaging to the court's reputation.
"We don't work as Democrats or Republicans," he said.
Ginsburg was not immediately available for comment on Trump's remarks and the Times editorial.
The Supreme Court, whose nine justices are nominated by the U.S. president to lifetime appointments, had already been caught up in political controversy as the Republican-controlled U.S. Senate refused to take up Democratic President Obama's nominee to replace Scalia, Merrick Garland.
Republicans have said the next president should be allowed to nominate a replacement for Scalia. Trump has emphasized the importance of naming conservative justices to the court.
The next president, potentially serving two four-year terms, could have the opportunity to appoint up to three new justices, not including Scalia's replacement. Ginsburg is the oldest of the justices. Justice Anthony Kennedy turns 80 on July 23, while Justice Stephen Breyer turns 78 in August.
Democrats defended Ginsburg, with U.S. Senator Jon Tester of Montana saying "she called him (Trump) for what she saw" and Senator Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota saying "I think she's the ultimate determiner of what's appropriate and what isn't."
U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who dropped his presidential bid on Tuesday and endorsed rival Hillary Clinton to be the Democratic candidate for the election, told ABC's "Good Morning America" he agreed with Ginsburg. "I think that Trump is a total opportunist," Sanders said.
But Democratic Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut said, "I don't think we're well-served by Supreme Court justices openly expressing their political opinions."
Asked about Ginsburg's remarks, White House spokesman Josh Earnest responded with a joke referencing a nickname used widely on social media by Ginsburg's admirers.
"She didn't earn the nickname the Notorious R.B.G. for nothing," he said. The name was inspired by rapper Notorious B.I.G.
But, saying he had been similarly asked in the last year about some controversial remarks that Scalia once made, Earnest said he would not comment further.
(Additional reporting by Emily Stephenson and Caren Bohan; Writing by John Whitesides; Editing by Frances Kerry)
A billboard for Gods Not Dead 2 has been prohibited from going up at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Meanwhile, convention attendees will reportedly see a billboard that proclaims "We establish no religion in this country," which was purchased by the atheist group Freedom From Religion Foundation.
The "God's Not Dead 2" billboard reportedly features actress Melissa Joan Hart with the slogan, Id rather stand with God and be judged by the world than to stand with the world and be judged by God.
The billboard company Orange Barrel supposedly turned down the billboard citing rules that prohibited scandalous messages at the RNC. The billboard's message was reportedly deemed "incendiary and too political.
Pat Boone, who is in the film, told FOX411 the billboard issue comes at an interesting time in American history.
I think its very ironically appropriate that this thing should arise right while the American people are trying to come up with and reexamine how we are going to be governed, he said. Are we going to be governed by people that have no place for God in their lives or are we going to be governed by people who recognize like Thomas Jefferson did that we receive our rights and liberties by endowment by the creator.
Pure Flix, the films distributor paid Orange Barrel a reported $64,100 for the billboard.
Im perplexed," Pure Flix CEO Steve Fedyski said. "They dragged us along for weeks. Now, right up against the convention date, they say we arent approved, and they give us no logical rationale. My speculation is that someone, somewhere didnt want our message out. Its hard to understand, considering weve used the same marketing on CNN and other national networks.
Boone explained America was built on biblical and Judeo Christian principles.
The Constitution and Republic form of government was created by men who were Bible believing, Bible quoting, Church going men and women (mainly men at that point), who deliberately patterned the government of America on biblical and Judeo Christian principles.
Gods Not Dead 2, the sequel to Gods Not Dead, tells the story of a public school teacher whose Christian faith and career come under attack when she answers a question about Jesus with scripture.
And Boone said believers are going to have to be bold.
Bottom line is believers in God are going to have to be as least as bold as Atheists are.
The film will be released August 16th on DVD.
Pure Flix did not return FOX411s request for comment.
Click here for more from The Hollywood Reporter.
There's nothing to see over here. At least, according to Matt Lauer and Natalie Morales.
The former coworkers are denying rumors Morales left her job in New York for a job in California at "Today" and "Access Hollywood" because the pair had an affair.
"Every aspect of this story is untrue, and its frankly sad that someone would tell lies to harm everyone involved," Lauer told the New York Post.
Morales chimed in saying, "There is absolutely no truth to this completely absurd story. It is damaging, hurtful and extremely sexist. I have proven myself in all aspects of my job as a news professional and journalist, and am adding to my role, taking on three jobs with Access Hollywood Live and Access Hollywood, in addition to Today. This move was dictated by me and my desire to grow in my career. Any insinuations beyond that are uninformed."
According to the Page Six report, Morales moved to California because her husband, Joseph Rhodes, got a new job.
However, another source told the Post that "something has gone awry" and the also married Lauer "didn't want to work with her."
"Today" exec Noah Oppenheim stood up for Lauer and Morales calling the rumors "patently false." He added that "suggestion[s] that Natalie's new role and salary is anything but the result of her merit, is not only not true its sexism in its ugliest form and its offensive."
Fred Savage is feeling "very comfortable" on the "Live! With Kelly" stage.
The 40-year-old actor was Kelly Ripa's "Live!" co-host on Wednesday, when the two displayed their obvious chemistry. Ripa greeted Savage -- who has successfully co-hosted "Live!" before -- with a "welcome home," to which he tellingly replied, "I feel very comfortable now."
He also made it clear he enjoys the gig, when the former "Wonder Years" star told a story about what his young daughter Lily bought him for his recent 40th birthday. Savage said that when the salesman asked what her dad likes, she adorably replied, "Well, he really likes co-hosting with Kelly."
WATCH: The 'Live! With Kelly' Co-Host Search Continues, Andersoon Cooper No Longer Frontrunner?
Earlier this month, a source told ET that Savage is definitely interested in becoming Ripa's permanent "Live!" co-host, though he's reluctant to relocate his wife, Jennifer, and their three young kids -- Oliver, Lily, and Auggie -- to New York City. Savage is booked to co-host the show for the rest of the week.
Savage was a natural on "Live!" on Wednesday, interviewing both Blake Lively and "Mr. Robot" star Rami Malek.
He also gamely ate stinky tofu during a "Bizarre Foods" segment with Andrew Zimmern.
WATCH: EXCLUSIVE -- Michael Strahan Isn't Losing Sleep Over The 'Live! With Kelly' Co-Host Search
Though when ET spoke with Ripa's good friend, Andy Cohen, at Sunday's MLB All-Star Legends and Celebrity Softball Game at Petco Park in San Diego, California, the "Real Housewives" executive producer said he was still pulling for Anderson Cooper.
"You know, the cool thing about this is, Kelly's 'The Bachelorette,' and she keeps getting to date these guys on TV and see who she clicks with -- it's awesome," he joked. "Actually, it's a more lasting marriage than any marriage that has come out of 'The Bachelor,' if you think about it."
Ripa's "Live!" co-host will be announced before the new season starts in September.
Health officials in Hawaii are urging the public to get vaccinated after discovering that a Baskin Robbins worker served customers while infected with hepatitis A, a highly contagious virus. The warning comes amid an outbreak of the infection in the island state, where there were 52 confirmed cases of hepatitis A as of Tuesday afternoon.
Individuals at risk of contracting the virus from the infected employee visited the ice cream shop, in the town of Waipahu on Oahu, between June 17 and July 3, 2016, according to a news release from the Hawaii State Department of Health.
The health department advised anyone who hasnt received the hepatitis A vaccine or immune globulin who visited the store within that date range to contact their health care provider and request vaccination. The vaccine may offer some protection against the virus within the first two weeks after exposure.
The source of this outbreak has still not been determined. In the meantime, we encourage all persons consider and talk to their healthcare provider about getting vaccinated, State Epidemiologist Dr. Sarah Park said in a news release issued Tuesday. This case demonstrates the potential to spread hepatitis A virus to many others who remain susceptible. In an effort to stem the spread of disease, individuals, including food service employees, exhibiting symptoms of hepatitis A infection should stay home and contact their healthcare provider.
Of the hepatitis A cases in the state all of which are in Oahu 16 have required hospitalization.
Symptoms of the virus include fever, fatigue, loss of appetite, abdominal discomfort, dark urine, diarrhea, and yellow skin and eyes, and typically last several weeks to as long as two months. With proper treatment, most individuals recover from hepatitis A without complications, according to the health department.
Hand washing with soap and warm water after using the bathroom and before preparing food, as well as appropriately cooking foods, can help prevent the spread of hepatitis A.
As the average age American women give birth has risen in recent years, new data suggest a similar trend in the United Kingdom. For the first time since the post-World War II baby boom, British women over age 40 are having more babies than women under 20, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
The group found that, in 2015 in England and Wales, there were 15.2 births per 1,000 women ages 40 and over, compared to 14.5 per 1,000 women in their teens, BBC News reported. That year, there were 697,852 live births in the countries.
The number of teenage births in England and Wales has been on decline and is now down more than half from the 33 births per 1,000 women in 1990.
The average age British women give birth is now 30.3, a figure that has been on the rise since 1975, according to the ONS.
The group attributes this shift to advancements in fertility treatment, more women obtaining higher education, and changes in attitude around careers, as well as the rising costs of childbearing.
Data suggested that women ages 30 to 34 have the highest fertility of any age group 111 births per 1,000 women.
"While the risks should never be overplayed, men and women should be aware that reproductive outcomes are poorer in older women, professor Adam Balen, chairmen of the British Fertility Society, told BBC News. "As well as it potentially taking longer to get pregnant, later maternity can involve a greater risk of miscarriage, a more complicated labor, and medical intervention at the birth."
In January, a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that in the United States, the average age of women giving birth for the first time rose from 24.9 to 26.3 between 2000 and 2014. The report suggested that 9.1 percent of women having their first child were 35 or older.
Alma Schneider, who is generally in good health, was taken aback when her doctor told her she has prediabetes.
The 47-year-old in Montclair, N.J., was stymied. Honestly, I wish I didnt know. I mean for me, because Im healthy, theres not much I can do besides have the stress in my head. Every time I eat something now Im worried.
Some experts also say prediabetes, or blood-sugar levels that are higher than normal but not high enough to qualify as diabetes, is often best left undiagnosed. They are pushing back against a recent initiative by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to encourage people to get screened for the condition. Critics of the agencys campaign say it threatens to turn millions of people, many of whom dont have a medical problem, into patients.
More than 1 in 3 adults in the U.S. have prediabetes, most of whom arent aware of it, the CDC warns. Without intervention, between 15 and 30 percent of those people will develop Type 2 diabetes within five years, the public-health agency says. Often considered an epidemic, Type 2 diabetes has been diagnosed in about 22 million people in the U.S., up from 5.5 million in 1980. The American Diabetes Association and American Medical Association are partners in the CDCs public-awareness campaign for prediabetes.
What is the impact of telling somebody you have prediabetes and an increased risk of diabetes? says Robert Ratner, chief scientific and medical officer for the American Diabetes Association. Number one, you get their attention and get them to pay attention to their lifestyle. Whats the downside of a better lifestyle?
Click for more from The Wall Street Journal.
A former surgical technician who is HIV-positive pleaded guilty on Tuesday to tampering with narcotics at a Colorado hospital, potentially exposing thousands of patients to blood-borne diseases, including the AIDS virus, federal prosecutors said.
Authorities said Rocky Allen, 29, was caught switching a syringe filled with fentanyl citrate, a powerful synthetic painkiller, with a dose of an unknown substance during a patient's surgery in January at the Swedish Medical Center in suburban Denver.
"Because access to fentanyl at hospitals is restricted, the defendant would usually only have access to it when a syringe was drawn for use on a patient during an ongoing surgery," prosecutors wrote in a court filing in the case.
The hospital immediately fired Allen and notified 2,900 patients who underwent surgery at the facility between August 2015 and January 2016, the time frame when Allen was employed there, to undergo free screenings for HIV and for hepatitis B and C.
Allen pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Denver to a two-count felony indictment accusing him of tampering with a consumer product and of obtaining a controlled substance by deceit, said Victoria Soltis, spokeswoman for U.S. Attorney John Walsh.
Allen, who remains free on a $25,000 bond, faces up to 14 years in prison when he is sentenced on Oct. 13, Soltis said.
After his termination, a state regulatory board revoked Allen's medical technologist's license, noting he tested positive for fentanyl and marijuana.
Authorities at first said Allen was a carrier of an unidentified "blood-borne pathogen" but later disclosed that he was HIV positive.
There are no reports of any people who were treated at the hospital testing positive for the diseases, but three former patients are suing the hospital for negligence in its hiring of Allen, who federal authorities said had a long history of drug theft.
In court filing, prosecutors said Allen was suspected of stealing painkillers from hospitals or medical clinics in Washington state, Arizona and California.
While in the U.S. Navy, prosecutors said, Allen was court-martialed and convicted in 2011 of stealing 30 vials of fentanyl, while deployed at an Army hospital in Afghanistan.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention classifies fentanyl as a synthetic opioid 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine. Rock musician Prince died of an accidental overdose of the narcotic at his Minnesota home in April.
Ive been thinking about Donald Trump or trying to. You might have noticed that unless Mr Trump is shouting at us from behind a forest of microphones, dressed in one of his ill-fitting suits, preening and grimacing and mugging Mussolini-like, wagging his under-sized finger, or sometimes making his finger into a pistol and pointing it at his own orange noggin, or cursing at some heckler out in one of his diminishing audiences that unless we have Mr Trumps iridescence squarely in front of us, its actually hard to keep him in mind.
Which is odd, for such an out-sized individual who seems to want to win the US presidency on the argument that what you see is what you get the cliche he hopes will translate into a case for his authenticity. Indeed, Mr Trump who, I believe, is an actual human seems strangely insubstantial. Here, it should be said, Im leaving aside all his smoke n mirrors, hoo-doo positions and policies and blustery implausible intentions for what hed do if he were elected to what Andrew Jackson once called the first office in the world (it may not quite be that anymore). Im really just remarking on his personal affect. Watching Donald Trump, with all the gaudy hair and morticians tan and noisy, bludgeoning comportment reminds me of staring into a cheap kaleidoscope, wherein we can see one not-quite-bizarre, not-quite-interesting, not-quite-memorable, not-quite-distinct mandala after another. Thinking about Mr Trump, trying to fix on the there thats supposedly there, is like wanting to figure out what basic design a kaleidoscope really contains down there inside its hollow paper tube. There isnt one.
It might seem unfair (it might be unfair, since Ive never met Mr Trump) to appraise him in this way. Of course, most of the indices we use to estimate and choose our presidents in the United States are hopelessly impressionistic and insecure. We wouldnt choose a person to mow the grass behind our house on such a pitiful amount of hard, supporting evidence. First of all, wed insist on references. After that, wed require to know that the applicant could fully identify a lawnmower, then show some aptitude for using it. Presidents we let off more easily.
To get candidate Trump into better focus and measure his actuality, Ive tried to think of some regular everyday activities I might seek to share with him in essence match him against myself, since Im still fairly actual. For starters, Im sure that I could not have dinner alone with Mr Trump in my favourite restaurant in Paris. Hed ruin it. Im also sure I couldnt go fishing with him on a backwoods lake in Maine. Same reason. Im sure I couldnt explain to him and have him be interested in the anxiety-producing aspects of my saliva gland surgery (or my divorce if Id ever had one). Im sure I couldnt discuss with him a great novel Id just read. He wouldve read something better probably something he wrote. Im sure I couldnt go to most movies with him: hed talk non-stop. In all these activities things I could engage in with pretty much any stranger Mr Trump and I would have nothing to say to each other. Nothing mutual. And the result could be spiritually wounding for me. Im not sure why this seems important, but it does.
To continue reading Richard Ford's personal essay in The Times Literary Supplement, click here.
Editor's note: This article is based on a presentation to the Engelsberg Seminar in Stockholm in June 2016
Vladimir Putin famously called the collapse of the Soviet Union the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th Century. The good news is that he isnt rebuilding the Soviet Union.
The bad news is that he is selectively reaching back into Russian history to glorify the gatherers of the Russian lands, as they are known, and the Russifiersthose who imposed Russian identity by force on the diverse subjects of the empire.
This appeal to atavistic Russian nationalism, nay, chauvinism, may strike a deep chord in a people desperately looking for a new idea and a new identity to rally around following the collapse of the only state they had ever known.
Putins aggressive nationalism is nowhere more obvious than in the new names he has bestowed on many of Russias ballistic missile submarines. These include the St. George the Victor, the Dmitrii Donskoi, the Yurii Dolgorukii, and the Aleksandr Nevskii.
Putins aggressive nationalism is nowhere more obvious than in the new names he has bestowed on many of Russias ballistic missile submarines. These include the St. George the Victor, the Dmitrii Donskoi, the Yurii Dolgorukii, and the Aleksandr Nevskii.
St. George is Russias patron saint. The other three are all mythical heroes of Russian medieval history who conquered enemies and extended Russian lands.
Two more submarines honor historical figures who happen to share Putins first name: the Vladimir Monomach and the Prince Vladimir, the latter a 24,000-ton, 16-missile boomer whose keel was laid in July, 2012, shortly after Putins resumption of Russias presidency for a third term.
Prince Vladimir was the legendary saint who converted Kievan Rus (from which Russia later emerged) to Christianity in the 9th Century.
Vladimir Monomach, on the other hand, was a less noteworthy historical figure descended from, and named for, a Byzantine emperor. Yet the Byzantine reference may be significant, since a later Russian tsar, Ivan IV (the Terrible), sought to legitimize his rule by claiming that Moscow had become the third Rome following Byzantiums fall in 1453 to Turkish invaders.
It could also, of course, simply be fortuitous that Prince Vladimir and Vladimir Monomach were the only two Russian rulers of significance who shared Putins given name.
Could it also be a coincidence, then, that both ruled from Kiev, the heart of the lands of the Rus, as the forebears of the Russians were knowna heartland that includes much of the modern Ukraine?
Vladimir the Great conquered those lands with an army from northern Russia; Vladimir Monomakh entered them at the invitation of its population following a rebellion. Putin surely did not miss these obvious historical parallels.
The name of the last imperial nuclear ballistic missile submarine is even more interestingthe Aleksandr III.
Aleksandr Aleksandrovich was the second-to-last Romanov tsar, ruling from 1881 to 1894. He was not particularly noteworthy nor particularly well-liked among Russians or his fellow monarchs.
He lacked the patriotic appeal of Aleksandr I who defeated Napoleon, or the drive for modernization of Aleksandr II, who emancipated the serfs in 1861, a year before Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves in America.
So why him? Russia already has a warship named for Peter the Great, but one might have put any of a number of more distinguished tsars ahead of AleksandrCatherine the Great, for example.
Yet Aleksandr III perfectly suits part of Putins narrative. He was perhaps Russias most reactionary czar, and his mantra, orthodoxy, autocracy, and nationalism, fits Putins ideology quite closely.
For one thing, Aleksandr abolished the last vestiges of Imperial Russias toleration for non-Russian subjects and launched the harshest Russification effort of the czarist period.
He required all of his subjects to learn and use Russian. Russias subject peoples, such as the Finns and the Poles, had previously been able to study and teach in their native languages, although their autonomy had steadily eroded over the previous decades.
Russias Jews, always subject to discrimination, had been allowed to live in relative peace in poor villages within a designated geographic areathe pale of settlementwhere they could speak Yiddish and practice their religion while eking out a living on marginal frontier lands.
Aleksandr abrogated many remaining rights of the Jews even within the pale of settlement, and his reign saw vicious pogroms that sent many of them fleeing to Europe and America.
Since Aleksandr III did little else of note, these policies are presumably what commended him to Putin.
Their violent nationalism and linguistic imperialism find powerful echoes in Putins actions, statements, and, above all, his narratives of a Western conspiracy of encirclement, cultural and military aggression, and desire for Russian decline.
Russianism defined in this way is inherently expansionist. It defines Russia as the lands occupied by Russian-speakers and those who can claim descent, either genealogical or cultural, from any of the previous Russian states going back to the era of Kievan Rus.
This Russianism has borders, to be sureit is not limitless. But the borders stretch far beyond those of the Russian Federation.
As a statement of intent, the names Putin has bestowed on the most powerful and destructive vessels in his fleet are ominous indeed.
The American nonprofit OneVoice Movement under scrutiny by a U.S. Senate panel over possible links to a campaign to oust Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu quietly filed paperwork that would allow it to engage in political activism after two leading Republican lawmakers questioned its use of government funds, FoxNews.com has learned.
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Rep. Lee Zeldin, R-N.Y., sent a letter Jan. 29 to Secretary of State John Kerry asking whether the group as a recipient of almost $350,000 in recent grants from the Obama administrations State Department had violated its tax-exempt status when it began backing the virulently anti-Netanyahu Victory 15 campaign in Israel earlier that month.
Cruz also publicly asked whether Obama whos had a well-documented adversarial relationship with Netanyahu had launched a political campaign against the Israeli leader in the run-up to the election which was held on Tuesday.
What does it say about the President of the United States when hes more concerned about undermining and attacking the prime minister of Israel than he is standing up to the mortal threat a nuclear Iran poses? Sen. Ted Cruz, (R-Texas)
OneVoice, which until November was headed by a veteran diplomat from the Clinton administration, quickly bushed off claims from critics that its backing of V15 meant it was targeting Netanyahu. Such an effort would be illegal under its tax-exempt status, which falls under section 501(c)3 of the Internal Revenue Code.
Just five days after the public dispatch of the Cruz-Zeldin letter, a corporation service company registered a new funding entity in Delaware called PeaceWorks Action, Inc. under a section of the tax code that still governs nonprofits, but allows them to engage in a limited amount of political activity. Listed under section is 501(c)4 of the tax code, PeaceWorks Action, Inc. is now featured on the OneVoice Website as one of OneVoices funders, alongside PeaceWorks Foundation, whose name has long been present, and which holds 501(c)3 status like OneVoice itself.
Critics are likely to see the registration as tacit admission that it had indulged in political activity alongside V15, which itself has been advised by former Obama campaign aides, including his top field organizer, Jeremy Bird.
Speaking exclusively with FoxNews.com, Cruz expressed outrage over the mounting indications the Obama administration could be implicated in efforts to meddle in the Israeli election.
This is manifesting itself right now in President Obamas national field director helping run the campaign to defeat Prime Minister Netanyahu in Israel in coordination with a nonprofit group that has received hundreds of thousands of dollars from the American taxpayer, he said.
Highlighting how Obama had refused to meet with Netanyahu when the Israeli leader addressed Congress on problems his government sees with administration-backed efforts to reach a nuclear weapons inspection deal with Iran, Cruz added:
What does it say about the President of the United States when hes more concerned about undermining and attacking the prime minister of Israel than he is standing up to the mortal threat a nuclear Iran poses?
Launched in 2002 by snack bar mogul Daniel Lubetzky, OneVoice says it works towards achieving a two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, and believes in a reflection of Obamas thinking, but counter to Netanyahus that Israels 1967 borders should form a starting point for negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.
Against this backdrop, the State Department awarded OneVoice the $350,000 in grant money in 2013, slotting more than $233,000 in staggered payments for OneVoices Israel branch, and earmarking the rest in staggered payments for OneVoice Palestine.
The State Department says the money for OneVoice Israel was to help pay for the groups campaigning in support of talks between the Israelis and Palestinians following the attempt by Kerry to see the peace process restarted. But while those talks collapsed in April 2014, the State Department said in its response to the Cruz-Zeldin letter that its funding continued through Aug. 18 of that year.
This fact has raised additional concern, a senior Congressional aide within the Republican Party told FoxNews.com.
No one is objecting to private American citizens participating in political activity, said the aide, in reference to Obamas former field director and others who are helping guide V15. At issue here is the possibility taxpayer funds in the form of the State Department grants were used for overtly political activity, especially in the period when the ostensible purpose of the grant to promote Secretary Kerrys proposed solution to the Israeli-Palestinian issue no longer existed.
Concerning the registering of OneVoices PeaceWorks Action, Inc. under a part of the tax code that permits limited political activity, the aide added: The establishment of the 501(c)4 post-facto doesnt really clear this issue up.
The registering of PeaceWorks Action, Inc. is likely to be among activities a bipartisan probe by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations will look at as it explores the wider issue of possible Obama-administration ties to the anti-Netanyahu campaign.
FoxNews.com, citing a source with knowledge of the panels activities, on Saturday revealed the existence of the probe.
The Senate subcommittee, which has subpoena power, is the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs chief investigative body with jurisdiction over all branches of government operations and compliance with laws.
It would also be expected to look into the State Departments oversight of the grant monies slotted for OneVoice.
As a guest on Fox News Channels The Kelly File, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki told show host Megyn Kelly last month that the grant money given to OneVoice Israel had been vetted, saying there's reporting that is required to be done about every dollar and cent of money that's spent of US taxpayer dollars.
However, the State Departments response to the Cruz-Zeldin letter is not as emphatic about any post-grant review. In accordance with standard practice, the department reviewed OneVoice Israels implementation plan and approved all proposed US Government-funded activities, the letter, also dated in February, says.
The letter additionally mentions that a portion of the almost $116,000 slotted for OneVoice Palestine had yet to be dispatched.
There is a remaining payment of approximately $10,000 to OneVoices Palestinian branch, which will not be delivered until a review of the final program report is complete and will only cover activities performed during the agreement period, September 2013 to November 2014, the letter says.
Follow Steven Edwards @stevenmedwards and contact him at stevenedwardsnyc@gmail.com
The Republican platform committee included language calling for a border wall along the U.S. and Mexican border in the draft party platform, getting behind one of presumptive presidential nominee Donald Trump's keystone proposals.
The group wrapped up drafting the plan Tuesday in Cleveland in advance of the convention there next week, when the platform will officially be voted on by the full convention's 2,472 delegates.
The proposed platform will express support for a border wall that must cover the entirety of the Southern Border and must be sufficient to stop both vehicular and pedestrian traffic.
The measure was proposed by Trump supporter Kris Kobach, the secretary of state from Kansas.
"This is why we support building a wall along our southern border and protecting all ports of entry," the measure says. "The border wall must cover the entirety of the southern border and must be sufficient to stop both vehicular and pedestrian traffic."
Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus, appearing on "On The Record with Greta Van Susteren," said that including the border wall in the party's proposed platform was a "hat tip" to Trump.
Whether it's a fence or a wall, I mean, for years and years the platform has included the border fence, which congress passed in 2006 but never actually funded," he said. "The idea of a border fence has been in our platform for many, many years and just changing the word from fence to wall is what they did and maybe it was a little hat tip to Donald Trump on that issue and that's fine."
"It's something that the party had in the platform for a long time," he added. "We are just saying what our position is but as far as who pays for it, you know, Congress already agreed that it would be paid for 10 years ago and now it will be up to President Trump to figure that one out.
In addition to the border wall proposal, the draft party platform calls for a slowdown in any new multinational trade deals and eliminates support for the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
While embracing some of Trump's proposals, the proposed GOP platform continues the party's previous stance against same-sex marriage, and other socially conservative issues.
Members of the House Freedom Caucus may go over the head of House Republican leaders, and put a special resolution on the floor to impeach IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, congressional sources told Fox News Tuesday.
Many conservatives have begged for the House Judiciary Committee to try to impeach Koskinen, but Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., and members of the House GOP leadership have been not been receptive to the idea.
Congressional Republicans have sought to impeach Koskinen over grounds he intentionally ignored and lied to Congress about the agencys 2010 targeting scandal.
The House Freedom Caucus is said to be preparing a privileged resolution to impeach Koskinen, congressional sources told Fox News. Privileged resolutions essentially go to the front of the legislative line, and leadership can't do anything about them. The House must consider a privileged resolution immediately or within two legislative days, by rule.
Members of the House Freedom Caucus would like to get an agreement from GOP leadership that they would hold an impeachment vote on Koskinen sometime in the next few months, congressional sources told Fox News. Instead of that, the Freedom Caucus may just author a privileged resolution going over the head of House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wisc.
All impeachment injuries must advance through Goodlatte's panel, but at the request of House leadership, he convened two hearings on Koskinens potential impeachment in an effort to appease the House Freedom Caucus.
Such a maneuver would be an embarrassment to Ryan, who would prefer things operate through a committee system.
Ryan and other GOP leaders are worried about their members taking a vote on such an issue, and that the House might not approve a resolution to impeach Koskinen.
Ryan and GOP leadership also loathe to set a precedent by voting on the floor to impeach Koskinen, according to congressional sources.
Neither the House nor Senate has impeached any cabinet official since the mid-1870s. When it comes to someone other than a federal judge or a president, the House last voted to impeach a cabinet officials in 1876. That was Secretary of War William Belknap for accepting kickbacks for arms sales to France.
It still remains possible that the Freedom Caucus introduces their resolution in the House by Friday, forcing the issue to linger until September, according to congressional sources.
Last July, Freedom Caucus member Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., crafted an unprecedented, non-binding resolution to declare the Speakers chair vacant. Congress then left Washington for the August recess. In the end, Meadows tactic worked, as then-House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, later resigned.
The media appear to be declaring the Republican convention to be a failure even before it gets under way.
The overwhelming narrative, now hardening into concrete, is that so many important GOP honchos are blowing it off, and the party is so seriously shattered over Donald Trump, that the Cleveland gathering is destined to be a flop.
I guess Im old-fashioned and would like to see what happens while Im actually in Cleveland.
Now theres no question that most conventions are coronations and this will be far different. And theres no dispute that there are danger signs that must be covered by the press.
Trump still hasnt released a list of convention speakers, for instance, and its surreal that the former Republican presidents, most of the previous nominees and a number of his campaign rivals are skipping the proceedings.
But lets not forget: Trump ran against the party establishment. Hes the billionaire outsider, the political newcomer who did what none of the insiders thought was remotely possible. He frequently attacked the party poohbahs and has broken with GOP orthodoxy on several major issues.
Of course hes not going to be embraced in some kind of lovefest.
But media narratives have a way of becoming self-fulfilling prophecy. A Politico piece yesterday was headlined GOP Operatives Dread Trump Convention:
Many GOP regulars are skipping Cleveland entirely. (I would rather attend the public hanging of a good friend, says Will Ritter, an up-and-coming Republican digital strategist who worked on the three previous conventions.) And among those who are making the trek, theres an overwhelming sense it wont be fun at all. At a time when many Republicans are deeply dissatisfied with their nominee, pessimistic about their prospects for victory in the fall and alarmed about the direction of their party, theres a reluctance about attending the convention more typically reserved for going to the DMV, being summoned for jury duty or undergoing a root canal.
The RNC is worse than the DMV???
For most, the conventions lack of appeal boils down to one thing: Trump. The New York businessman has shunned the establishment class, reaching out to few of the operatives who worked for his primary rivals and making little effort to bring them on to his team. As a result, many of the Republican ad makers, pollsters, and fundraisers who populate Washington have little desire to witness his expected nomination.
My reaction: Who cares what the insiders think?
Yes, it would have been nice for Trump to unify the party and have everyone singing kumbaya. But that was never going to happen. Instead, hes got Jeb Bush trashing his campaign in an hourlong special on MSNBC.
Given the wall-to-wall cable coverage of conventions, the chorus of punditry will be important. But ordinary folks watch these things very differently than journalists.
If Trump gives a great speech, and if his running mate gives a good speech, thats half the battle.
If the lineup is entertaining, thats a big help, too.
The couch-watchers arent going to sit around and say, gee, why isnt Marco Rubio there, or I really wish John Kasich was the keynote speaker.
And heres the wild card: The audience will probably watch in pretty large numbers. For one thing, there will be more dissent and drama in Cleveland than at most conventions (and less in Philly after Hillary and Bernie hugged it out yesterday).
But also, the star of the show is Trump, the same guy who boosts the ratings of the programs he appears on, the same guy who helped Fox draw 24 million viewers in the first presidential debate.
The convention may or may not go well, but the country may reach a different verdict than the many pundits who have soured on it in advance.
A former Gitmo detainee connected to last months ISIS attack on the Istanbul airport that killed 45 and injured more than 230 others was officially added to the U.S. governments list of designated terrorists Wednesday.
The State Department confirmed to Fox News that Ayrat Nasimovich Vakhitov was at the Guantanamo detention camps from June 13, 2002 until his transfer to Russia by the Bush administration in 2004.
For an individual to be designated a terrorist by our State Department, the threshold is way high, Tony Shaffer, a former defense intelligence officer , told Fox. The Pentagon has been very reluctant to release a number of individuals and has had to bow to White House and State Department pressure.
The State Departments announcement of the terrorist designation does not say Vakhitov was once held at Gitmo, nor does it cite his reported ties to the June attack in Turkey. The connection was first reported by the Long War Journal and independently confirmed by Fox.
On July 5, Voice Of America reported , citing a source inside the small North Caucasus Muslim community in Turkey, that Vakhitov was among 30 people arrested in connection with the June 28 Istanbul airport attack. VOA reported there was no confirmation from Turkish authorities.
According to a leaked Joint Task Force Guantanamo threat assessment of Vakhitov, he was arrested and jailed by the Taliban on suspicion of espionage, jailed in Kandahar and eventually transferred to Guantanamo because of his possible knowledge of an American citizen killed at that same prison while he was there.
Vakhitov is a foreign terrorist fighter from Tatarstan, Russia who has fought in Syria. Vakhitov is associated with Jaysh al-Muhajirin Wal Ansar, a group that was designated by the U.S. Department of State as Specially Designated Global Terrorists. Vakhitov has also used the internet to recruit militants to travel to Syria.
A second individual, Aslan Avgazarovich Byutukaev, also received the terrorist designation Wednesday. The State Department said he leads a group in Chechnya that is tied to the Islamic States so-called Caucasus province.
With the designation of Vakhitov as a terrorist, Fox News asked the State Department how policy supporting the closure of Gitmo is consistent with reducing terrorism and national security.
A State Department official did not directly address the question, but said We take any incidence of re-engagement very seriously... We work in close coordination through military, intelligence, law enforcement, and diplomatic channels to mitigate re-engagement and to take follow-on action when necessary.
Although voters believe Donald Trump is better suited to handle top issues, Hillary Clinton is ahead in the battleground state of Virginia.
Clinton bests Trump by seven percentage points in the presidential race (44-37 percent), according to a new Fox News Poll of Virginia registered voters. Thats within the polls margin of sampling error.
The good news for Trump is that among just those voters extremely interested, hes up by three (45-42 percent). Thats driven by the fact that more Republicans (43 percent) than Democrats (38 percent) say they are extremely interested in the presidential election.
Clinton owes her edge to women (49-32 percent), blacks (83-5 percent), and voters over age 45 (45-39 percent).
Trump is preferred among whites (48-34 percent), men (43-37 percent), white evangelical Christians (64-23 percent), and whites without a college degree (57-28 percent).
CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL POLL RESULTS
Large majorities of Democrats (85 percent Clinton) and Republicans (83 percent Trump) back their partys nominee.
Independents prefer Trump (34 percent) over Clinton (23 percent), yet many volunteer they are undecided (11 percent), will vote for another candidate (16 percent), or not vote (16 percent).
President Barack Obama won Virginia in 2012 by nearly four points over Mitt Romney, and beat John McCain by about six points in 2008. The state backed the Republican candidate in the three presidential elections before that.
Clintons advantage is five points in a hypothetical four-way race: 39-34 percent over Trump. Libertarian Gary Johnson captures 10 percent and Green Party candidate Jill Stein gets four percent.
Most of those backing Clinton (86 percent) and Trump (88 percent) in the head-to-head ballot remain with them in the expanded race. Six percent of Trump supporters and five percent of Clinton supporters switch to Johnson. Three percent for each move to Stein.
Voters narrowly think Trump would do a better job than Clinton handling almost every issue tested.
He bests her on the economy (47-43 percent), illegal immigration (47-43 percent), government spending (46-40 percent), and terrorism (45-43 percent).
Clinton is preferred over Trump by a double-digit margin on one issue: making nominations to the U.S. Supreme Court (51-37 percent).
Nearly 9-in-10 Virginia voters say the economy (86 percent) will be important to their vote for president. Roughly three-quarters feel that way about terrorism (76 percent) and government spending (72 percent). Nearly two-thirds ranks Supreme Court nominations at the same level (64 percent).
Temperament, experience, and empathy are clear advantages for Clinton.
Virginia voters are twice as likely to say the phrase has the right temperament to serve effectively as president, applies to Clinton (54 percent) than Trump (27 percent). By 48-30 percent, more feel qualified to be president describes Clinton than Trump.
Forty-four percent think cares about people like you applies better to Clinton, while 31 percent say Trump. One in five, 21 percent, volunteers the response neither.
Clinton narrowly tops Trump on being a strong leader (41-39 percent).
The two candidates tie on who is better described as being honest and trustworthy (32 percent apiece). One-third of voters say neither candidate is honest (34 percent).
The real estate mogul has a clear advantage on bringing change: 48 percent think Trump would do a better job on a new direction for the country, while 35 percent say Clinton.
Virginia is clearly in play right now, says Democratic pollster Chris Anderson, who conducts the Fox News Poll along with Republican pollster Daron Shaw. A major challenge for Trump in closing the gap is convincing voters hell be different temperamentally as president than hes been as a candidate.
Overall, both candidates are unpopular. Clinton is underwater by 13 points (43 percent favorable vs. 56 percent unfavorable), while Trumps ratings are more negative by 28 points (35 percent favorable vs. 63 percent unfavorable).
In addition, majorities of independents have negative views of them.
It could help Clinton that 49 percent of independents have a favorable opinion of Obama. Among all Virginia voters, 55 percent view Obama positively vs. 43 percent negatively.
The Fox News Poll is conducted under the joint direction of Anderson Robbins Research (D) and Shaw & Company Research (R). The poll was conducted July 9-12, 2016, by telephone (landline and cellphone) with live interviewers among a sample of 601 Virginia registered voters selected from a statewide voter file and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus four percentage points for the total sample.
A Fox News Poll of Colorado registered voters finds Hillary Clinton ahead of Donald Trump by 10 points in the race for the White House.
Clintons up 44-34 percent in a head-to-head matchup. Her lead is outside the polls margin of sampling error.
The Democrat maintains her advantage in a hypothetical four-way race: Clinton garners 37 percent, Trump 28 percent, the Libertarian Party nominee Gary Johnson receives 13 percent, and the Green Party candidate Jill Stein gets 6 percent.
Eighty-one percent of those backing Clinton in the two-way race stick with her in the four-way, six percent defect to Johnson, and four percent to Stein.
For Trump, 79 percent stay with him, while 11 percent go to Johnson and 2 percent to Stein.
CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL POLL RESULTS
Independents prefer Clinton over Trump in the two-way matchup (36-28 percent). However in the four-way ballot, Johnson moves ahead of Trump: Clinton is the choice of 29 percent, Johnson receives 22 percent, Trump 20 percent, and Stein 10 percent.
In the head-to-head matchup, some of Clintons best groups include women (52-29 percent), Hispanics (60-15 percent), whites with a college degree (47-30 percent), and voters who are extremely interested in the election (50-43 percent).
Groups most likely to back Trump include whites without a college degree (50-34 percent), rural voters (46-36 percent), and white evangelical Christians (58-22 percent).
Theres less party unity for Trump, as just 75 percent of Republicans back him compared to Clintons 81 percent among Democrats.
President Barack Obama beat Republican Mitt Romney in 2012 by just over five percentage points in Colorado, while Gary Johnson received about one percent of the vote. In 2008, Obama won the state by nearly nine points over Republican John McCain. In the three presidential elections before that, the state voted for the Republican candidate.
Voters say Clinton is better described as having the right temperament, being qualified to be president, and being a strong leader. Fifty-five percent think the phrase has the temperament to serve effectively as president applies to Clinton. Thats more than twice as many as say the same about Trump (22 percent).
By a 50-24 percent spread, Clinton rather than Trump is seen as qualified to be commander-in-chief. Plus, voters also say strong leader (43-34 percent) and cares about people like me (40-29 percent) are traits that better describe her.
Roughly equal numbers say honest and trustworthy better describes Trump (28 percent) as feel that way about Clinton (27 percent). The largest number however, 41 percent, says that phrase applies to neither candidate.
Overall, more voters say the economy (80 percent) will be extremely or very important to their presidential vote than say the same about nominations to the U.S. Supreme Court (66 percent), terrorism (66 percent), government spending (64 percent), a new direction for the country (59 percent), or illegal immigration (46 percent).
Colorado voters think Clinton would do a better job than Trump on the priority issues.
Shes preferred on Supreme Court nominations by a wide 17-point margin (51-34 percent). Clintons also narrowly the choice on terrorism (45-41 percent), illegal immigration (45-44 percent), and the economy (44-43 percent).
"These results are obviously good news for Clinton and ought to give the Trump campaign pause," says Republican pollster Daron Shaw, who conducts the Fox News Poll with Democratic pollster Chris Anderson.
"It's not just that hes down in the trial ballot. She also beats him across all relevant issue and trait evaluations. He needs to significantly improve his image and substantive impressions of where he wants to lead the country."
Trump tops Clinton by 12 points on taking the country in a new direction (46-34 percent) and by one point on government spending (42-41 percent).
Meanwhile, Colorado voters dislike both major party candidates: 58 percent have an unfavorable opinion of Clinton, and 68 percent feel negatively about Trump.
By a 55-32 percent margin, they have a positive opinion of Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper. Seventy-three percent of Democrats view him favorably.
Hickenlooper met with Clinton July 6 in Denver and confirmed the two spoke about the presumptive nominees search for a vice presidential running mate.
Colorado voters also like Obama: 54 percent favorable vs. 44 percent unfavorable.
The Senate Race
In the Colorado Senate race, incumbent Michael Bennet leads his Republican opponent Darryl Glenn by 51-36 percent.
Bennets strongest support comes from women (55-29 percent), suburban voters (60-30 percent), and independents (49-32 percent).
Glenn does best among rural voters (46-37 percent), white evangelical Christians (61-26 percent), and those who say terrorism is extremely important (51-30 percent).
Bennet was appointed to the seat in 2009, and won re-election in 2010 by two points.
Eighty-six percent of Clinton supporters back Bennet, while just 73 percent of Trump backers go for Glenn.
The Fox News Poll is conducted under the joint direction of Anderson Robbins Research (D) and Shaw & Company Research (R). The poll was conducted July 9-12, 2016, by telephone (landline and cellphone) with live interviewers among a sample of 600 Colorado registered voters selected from a statewide voter file. Bilingual interviewers were used. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus four percentage points for the total sample.
Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg faced a growing and bipartisan backlash Wednesday -- including a call from Donald Trump to resign -- as she doubled down on her criticism of the presumptive GOP nominee, calling him a faker who is unqualified to be president.
Even political figures and newspaper editorial writers who might agree with the comments swiftly said they were out of line for a high court justice.
And Trump himself lashed out on Twitter, saying:
The liberal icon justice had kicked off the storm with comments to The New York Times published Saturday. I cant imagine what this place would be I cant imagine what the country would be -- with Donald Trump as our president. For the country, it could be four years. For the court, it could be -- I dont even want to contemplate that, she said.
She doubled down late Monday, telling CNN: He is a faker."
"He has no consistency about him. He says whatever comes into his head at the moment. He really has an ego. ... How has he gotten away with not turning over his tax returns? The press seems to be very gentle with him on that," she said.
Trump swiftly responded Tuesday, telling the Times it was highly inappropriate that a United States Supreme Court judge gets involved in a political campaign.
I think its a disgrace to the court and I think she should apologize to the court. I couldnt believe it when I saw it, the presumptive Republican nominee said.
Trumps criticisms were echoed by Republican congressional leaders. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Tuesday Ginsburgs comments were "totally inappropriate.
"It raises a level of skepticism that the American people have from time to time about just how objective the Supreme Court is, whether they're over there to call the balls and strikes, or weigh in on one side or another," he said.
House Speaker Paul Ryan used similar language at a CNN event Tuesday.
"For someone on the Supreme Court who is going to be calling balls and strikes in the future based upon whatever the next president and Congress does, that strikes me as inherently biased and out of the realm," Ryan said.
Ginsburgs comments also left Democratic lawmakers squirming.
We all know that the justices on the Supreme Court have political views. Im not sure were well served by them airing them out in the open, Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., told Politico.
She may have got out over her skis a little bit and more forthright and political than she should have been. Its very unusual, Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., told the outlet.
Mainstream media outlets also joined in the chorus of criticism.
However valid her comments may have been, though, and however in keeping with her known political bent, they were still much, much better left unsaid by a member of the Supreme Court, The Washington Posts editorial board said Tuesday. Politicization, real or perceived, undermines public faith in the impartiality of the courts.
The board noted the Code of Conduct for U.S. judges says that a judge should not . . . publicly endorse or oppose a candidate for public office.
The New York Times also chimed in: Washington is more than partisan enough without the spectacle of a Supreme Court justice flinging herself into the mosh pit."
Wednesday morning brought some relief for the under-fire justice, with Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders giving qualified support for her comments. While the Democratic presidential candidate declined to comment on whether her comments were appropriate, he said on ABC he agrees Trump is a "total opportunist" and said "the record is quite clear that he lies just a whole lot of the time."
How can Supreme Court justices be penalized?
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Members of the controversial "black power" group the New Black Panther Party plan to pack legal heat when they hold rallies in Cleveland in conjunction with next week's Republican convention if the law allows, the group's chairman said.
Leaders of the organization, which the Southern Poverty Law Center designates as a hate group, told Reuters that if Ohio's open-carry gun laws allow, its members will bring guns for self-defense. Cleveland police are preparing for mass demonstrations, and word that the New Black Panthers may be armed could complicate preparations.
"If it is an open state to carry, we will exercise our Second Amendment rights because there are other groups threatening to be there that are threatening to do harm to us," Hashim Nzinga, chairman of the New Black Panther Party, told Reuters.
Officials told Reuters it will be legal for protesters to carry registered weapons at demonstrations outside the convention under that state's "open carry" law, which allows civilians to carry guns in public. The state requires permits for concealed handguns, but not for openly displayed guns.
Stephen Loomis, president of the Cleveland Police Patrolmens Association, told The New York Times he is urging people not to bring guns near the convention.
The last thing in the world we need is anybody walking around here with AR-15s strapped to their back, Loomis said.
In last week's sniper attack in which a lone gunman killed five Dallas police officers during a Black Lives Matter protest against police brutality, cops said they were initially confused as to where the gunfire was coming from because some demonstrators were legally carrying rifles.
The killer, Micah Johnson, was an Army veteran who, before he was blown up by a police robot, said he wanted to kill white people and white police officers. New Black Panther Party leader Quanell X said Johnson had worked with his Houston chapter until a few years ago, when he was allegedly dismissed for calling for violence.
Nzinga said he condemned the Dallas shootings.
The Southern Poverty Law Center, a hate group watchdog, describes the New Black Panther Party as a virulently racist and anti-Semitic organization whose leaders have encouraged violence against whites, Jews and law enforcement officers."
Bernie Sanders Secret Service protection has ended, Fox News confirms.
The decision comes after the Democratic presidential candidate formally endorsed presumptive nominee Hillary Clinton on Tuesday. According to a Secret Service source, his protection ended at 5:30 p.m. that day.
Sanders hasnt technically dropped out, however. Asked if the campaign is over, spokesman Michael Briggs told Fox News:
"His name will be placed in nomination in Philadelphia. Just like her in 2008. So no, the campaign is not over."
Fox News Lauren Blanchard and Mike Emanuel contributed to this report.
Some of Bernie Sanders most loyal backers have turned into his biggest bashers on the heels of his Hillary Clinton endorsement.
The Vermont senator, who slammed Clinton repeatedly during the presidential primary campaign, offered his unwavering support to the presumptive Democratic nominee at a rally in New Hampshire Tuesday.
Hillary Clinton will make a great president and I am proud to stand with her today, he said.
What followed was an avalanche of angry tweets, blogs and other social media posts from those who had been feeling the 'Bern' -- and now just feel burned.
In New York, Monroe County Sanders activist Kevin Sweeney told the Democrat & Chronicle he's shifting his donations to Green Party candidate Jill Stein. "A lot of Bernie supporters are making $27 donations to Jill Stein's campaign today," he said.
Others were more direct, as the hashtag #SelloutSanders and others took off on Twitter:
Used to be a Bernie fan but now that he's joined Hillary, who supports everything he's supposedly against, I'm a Trump fan. #NeverHillary Ashley Marie (@music_freak180) July 13, 2016
Revolution? I guess political revolution meant something different to Bernie. I was willing to fight corruption to the death. #NEVERHillary Craig (@craigmart) July 12, 2016
The subreddit thread Sanders For President, which has more than 230,000 followers, also reacted strongly to the endorsement.
Surfer808 wrote, Sorry Bernie, I love you but even with your endorsement I will not vote for Hilary (sic).
_shane posted a picture of Bernie bumper stickers and wrote, Getting this in the mail today was like getting kicked when youre down.
A user under the name Ruscer wrote, Were left with a race between two liars. One who just recently was caught in a web of lies that she slithered her way out of using her power and influence, and the other a racist demagogue.
In an interview with CBS News, Sanders responded to the frustration.
I dont think most of them are calling me a sell-out, he said. In the real world, youve got to make difficult choices.
Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, jumped in on the action.
He tweeted, Bernie Sanders endorsing Crooked Hillary Clinton is like Occupy Wall Street endorsing Goldman Sachs.
But not everyone is hating on Sanders.
Everyone calling Bernie a 'sell out' or 'traitor' hope youre heeding his call and getting involved in local government, Jessica Sawyer wrote on Facebook. I understand your frustration but it would be better utilized in a productive manner, instead of name calling on the interwebs.
Stephen Gomez, the bassist for the band The Summer Set, tweeted, I applaud Bernie on his endorsement of Hillary, and it was an honor to be part of his campaign. He has truly changed the face of US politics.
Sometimes, politics is a smelly business.
And a group of Bernie Sanders supporters plans to make the point that the 2016 race stinks in their own special way -- arranging to hold what they're calling a "fart-in" at the Democratic convention to register their displeasure with Hillary Clinton.
Seriously, this is how it's supposed to work: U.S. News and World Report reported Tuesday that disgruntled Sanders supporters plan to participate in a pre-convention feast of various canned and baked beans, and then let their bodies do the talking once they get to the Philadelphia convention hall.
The organization head for this "fart-in" protest is national coordinator for the Poor Peoples Economic Human Rights Campaign Cheri Honkala.
Honkala told U.S. News that boxes of dried and canned beans have arrived at her home from states like Texas and Wisconsin and will be taken to a Clintonville camp, a replica of the poverty-stricken Hoovervilles of the 1930s.
The Clinton campaign did not return a request from FoxNews.com for comment.
Honkala did not specify how many delegates and supporters have agreed to join her endeavor, but reportedly said her office will likely serve as a second bean-eating location and that Sanders himself will be invited.
Sanders communications director Michael Briggs called it disgusting and juvenile in an email to FoxNews.com.
Though a bean-fueled protest like this has never come to fruition, it was first proposed by community organizer Saul Alinsky in 1972. He once planned for 100 protesters to attend a concert at the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra in New York after eating huge portions of baked beans.
Such tactics arent just cute; they can be useful in driving your opponent up the wall. Very often the most ridiculous tactic can prove the most effective, he told Playboy Magazine.
If all goes well for Honkala and her fellow organizers, the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia may just meet the goal Alinsky once set for Rochester, to be immortalized as the site of the worlds first fart-in.
FoxNews.com's Liz Torrey contributed to this report.
Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump ripped Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in a Twitter message late Tuesday.
"Justice Ginsburg of the U.S. Supreme Court has embarrassed all by making very dumb political statements about me," Trump wrote on his Twitter account. Her mind is shot resign."
Trump has been on the defensive after Ginsburg told the Associated Press last week that she felt he was unqualified for the position. She said in an interview that she didn't want to think about the possibility that Trump would be president and predicted that Democrat Hillary Clinton would win.
Ginsburg also joked that she would move to New Zealand if Trump were elected.
Trump told the New York Times earlier Tuesday that her comments were highly inappropriate and a disgrace to the court.
Its highly inappropriate that a United States Supreme Court judge gets involved in a political campaign, frankly I think she should apologize to the court. I would hope that she would get off the court as soon as possible, he added.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said that it was "totally inappropriate" for Ginsburg to criticize Trump.
McConnell said that members of the Supreme Court shouldn't weigh in on American elections.
"It raises a level of skepticism that the American people have from time to time about just how objective the Supreme Court is, whether they're over there to call the balls and strikes, or weigh in on one side or another," he said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Donald Trump and family dropped in for a visit Wednesday morning with Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, fueling already heated speculation that the state's conservative chief executive is the presumptive Republican presidential nominee's choice for vice president.
But that didnt necessarily rule out other short-listers, including former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. After Trump met with Pence, he met with Gingrich at an Indianapolis hotel, and was set to meet afterward with Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions. NBC News reported Christie also met with members of Trumps family on Tuesday.
Trump, speaking with Fox News Bret Baier in Indianapolis, called Pence amazing and said hes narrowing the short-list, without revealing who is left.
I tell you, Chris Christie is somebody I've liked a long time; he's a total professional. He's a good guy, by the way, a lot of people don't understand that, Trump said. But I'm narrowing it down. I mean I'm at three, potentially four. But in my own mind, I probably am thinking about two.
Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, was thought to still be narrowing her short-list of candidates -- with speculation Wednesday focusing on the possibility of selecting a running mate with extensive military experience.
Trump met with Pence after the two campaigned together Tuesday night. Trump's daughter, Ivanka and her husband, Jared, were among those who visited Pence at his residence on Wednesday.
Pence reportedly is among the final few Trump is considering as a running mate.
Everyone here is acting as if it is happening and Pence is the pick, Indiana Republican strategist Pete Seat told FoxNews.com last weekend.
Pence is viewed as a steady conservative who may help calm nervous Republicans who have become jumpy over Trumps style -- and who may be an effective counter to Trumps fiery temperament.
Trump told Fox News' Bill O'Reilly Tuesday that he had "a pretty good idea" of his pick.
Still, he challenged reports that he was planning a Friday announcement as fewer people tend to watch the news that day.
"When I heard I was doing it on Friday, I was saying, I wonder if those people know me very well," Trump said of his campaign staff.
Speculation over who Clinton will pick is more broad. Sources on Tuesday told Fox News that Clintons camp was vetting former NATO leader and retired Navy Adm. James G. Stavridis.
The New York Times first reported that the retired four-star admiral and former NATO Supreme Allied Commander, Europe was being vetted, with sources saying Clinton was likely to seek someone with military experience on the short-list.
Others, however, were skeptical about the possibility of picking Stavridis, with the reports seen as a possible counter to Donald Trumps consideration of retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn.
Labor Secretary Tom Perez, Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown, California Democratic Rep. Xavier Becerra, Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Julian Castro and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren have all been floated as potential VP picks for Clinton.
Fox News Jennifer Griffin, Jake Gibson, FoxNews.coms Joseph Weber, Christopher Snyder and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Donald Trump said late Wednesday he will announce his choice for vice president at 11 a.m. ET on Friday in New York City.
The presumptive Republican presidential nominee posted the news on Twitter, adding, "Details to follow."
Trump, his adult children and key staffers have been meeting with vice presidential prospects all week.
Earlier on Wednesday, Trump said his campaign still has three or four potential vice-presidential candidates but in my own mind, I probably am thinking about two.
Trump discussed his finalists on Fox News Special Report with Bret Baier in a wide-ranging interview that included questions about his dustup with Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Hillary Clinton and the GOPs nominating convention next week.
Trump said Ginsberg recently calling him a faker and suggesting that a Trump presidency would be bad for America is an absolute disgrace to the high court and that she should apologize to the entire country.
Theres almost something wrong with her, Trump said about the 83-year-old justice. I think I am questioning her mental capacity.
Trump made the comments during an interview conducted in Indianapolis, which has become ground-zero for his vice presidential vetting and where has met with GOP Gov. Mike Pence three times in the past two days.
Earlier on Wednesday, Trump said a breakfast with Pence and the Trump family went really well.
High quality person, Trump said about Pence, who now appears high on Trumps VP shortlist. Wonderful guy. We had a great meeting.
Trump appeared Tuesday in Indiana at a campaign event and fundraiser with Pence, then talked again Wednesday with former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, another potential pick.
He dismissed assumptions that New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is off the list, saying hes somebody I've liked a long time. He's a total professional. He's a good guy. A lot of people don't understand that.
Trump said the greatest accomplishment for Clinton, the Democrats presumptive nominee, will be getting out of her email scandal -- referring to her using a private Internet server system while secretary of state to send and receive government information.
How shes been able to get away from the lies, the deceit, the destruction of 33,000 emails. To me, thats her single greatest accomplishment, Trump said of his likely general election rival.
The Clinton campaign declined to directly respond to Trumps comments, instead referring to earlier responses in which they called Republicans comments about the emails another partisan witch hunt.
Trump also argued that hes not looking for a vice president to play the traditional role of attacking a general election rival.
I just want to pick somebody thats solid, whos smart. Im not looking for an attack dog. Frankly, Im looking for somebody that really understands what were talking about, Trump said. I would rather be talking about policy not talking about Crooked Hillary.
He also expressed optimism about how Republicans are putting together the draft party platform for the convention that includes his plan to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
A few people have said its like a Donald Trump speech, Trump said. But nobody has ever agreed with an entire platform.
Trump also downplayed concerns about the partys Rules Committee perhaps drafting convention procedures for delegates that might help the so-called Never Trump effort, saying hes never been worried about such efforts.
He said that he plans to give a law-and-order speech at the convention, similar to those hes recently given.
A United States District Judge in New York has ruled that the Drug Enforcement Agencys use of a device that provided authorities with the location of a mans cell phone and thus his apartment was an unreasonable search and that evidence they subsequently found could be suppressed, the first time ever such a ruling has been made at this level.
The device in question, a cell-site simulator, is known as a StringRay. It acts like a cell tower and can thus be used to find a cell phones location. According to the judges ruling, a technician sent by the DEA used a StingRay to find the New York City apartment of a man named Raymond Lambis, first using it outside and then even in the apartment building. Later, authorities entered Lambis apartment and found drugs and related paraphernalia in his bedroom.
But the judge, William Pauley, ruled on Tuesday that the use of the StingRay device constituted an unreasonable search because authorities didnt have a warrant, and granted Lambis motion to have the evidence authorities found suppressed.
This is the first such decision at the federal level involving suppressed evidence and a StingRay device, Reuters reported, citing the American Civil Liberties Union, which is concerned about the privacy implications of these devices.
"This opinion strongly reinforces the strength of our constitutional privacy rights in the digital age," a staff attorney for the ACLU, Nathan Freed Wessler, said in a statement, according to Reuters.
The former CTO of futuristic transportation startup Hyperloop One has filed an explosive lawsuit against the company, alleging mismanagement, nepotism and threatening behavior at the firm.
Brogan BamBrogan, who also co-founded the startup, is lead plaintiff in the suit against Hyperloop One, its co-founder and Executive Chairman Shervin Pishevar, and three other company leaders. The lawsuit was filed in Los Angeles Tuesday.
Los Angeles-based Hyperloop One plans to develop a new high-speed transportation system using electric propulsion, which was recently tested in the desert near Las Vegas.
However, the lawsuit for unspecified damages claims that the technological promise of the system is being strangled by the mismanagement and greed of the venture capitalists who control the company.
The suit alleges that one defendant, Afshin Pishevar, the companys then chief legal officer, and brother of Shervin Pishevar, placed a hangmans noose on BamBrogans office chair following a recent dispute over a business trip to Russia.
The suit contains a purported surveillance camera image that allegedly shows Afshin Pishevar approaching BamBrogans desk with a noose coiled in his hand.
The Wall Street Journal notes that the lawsuit is a rare example of the tension that often exists between investors and technologists in Silicon Valley.
Those with the expertise to bring the hyperloop concept to fruition the team that has done an incredible job building out hardware with their heads down and hands in the dirt have been systematically marginalized, while the 'money men' who do not understand the technology spent little time seeking to understand its potential, focusing instead on puffery turning the company into a marketing-driven exercise, instead of the engineering-driven enterprise it should be, the suit claims.
In addition to BamBrogan, three other former Hyperloop One employees - Knut Sauer, David Pendergast and William Mulholland, are listed as plaintiffs. The company, Shervin Pishevar, Afshin Pishevar, Hyperloop One CEO Robert Lloyd and Vice-Chairman Joseph Lonsdale are listed as defendants.
In a letter dated May 26, 2016, the plaintiffs and seven of their senior colleagues diplomatically and quietly approached Defendants about the breaches of fiduciary duty they had witnessed, and changes necessary to set the company on a course for long-term success, according to court documents. The letter was sent to Shervin Pishevar, Lloyd and Lonsdale.
The lawsuit alleges that, over the following month of discussions, the supposed ringleaders behind the letter were targeted for termination. Fearing for his physical safety, BamBrogan was forced to resign, it says. Pendergast and Mulholland, who had been identified as the troublemakers behind the letter, were slated for termination, according to court documents, while Sauer was forced to resign.
Pendergast was fired and BamBrogan, Mulholland and Sauer sent resignation e-mails the morning of June 16, 2016.
Orin Snyder, a partner at law firm Gibson Dunn, who is representing Hyperloop One, described the former employees lawsuit as unfortunate and delusional in a statement emailed to FoxNews.com. These employees tried to stage a coup and failed. They knew that the company was aware of their actions, and this lawsuit is their preemptive strike. The claims are pure nonsense and will be met with a swift and potent legal response, he said.
Frivolous lawsuits like this one have become all too common against start-ups that achieve breakthrough success, Snyder added. It is almost a cliche. It is also a measure of Hyperloop's success.
Hyperloop One is driving towards its goal of commercializing a transportation concept first laid out by SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, according to the lawyer.
The company continues to recruit top talent, secure significant funding from global investors and accelerate toward its technology milestones, he said. Hyperloop is on track, its board and team are united and today's bogus lawsuit will have no impact on its goal of becoming the first company to bring the Hyperloop to the world.
Hyperloop One confirmed to FoxNews.com that Afshin Pishevar is no longer employed by the company.
FoxNews.com was unable to reach Afshin Pishevar for comment on this story.
Follow James Rogers on Twitter @jamesjrogers
Fans of superheros, zombie killers and post-apocalyptic thrillers know that Comic-Con International, which takes place July 21- 24, is the gold standard for worldwide conventions. It's not just about classic comic books-- the festival now includes all things media, celebrating many genres of film and television included.
But if you can't make it to San Diego, how else can you experience the fun? Why not head out to sea.
As it turns out, you can take your fandom to the waves with plenty of uniquely themed cruises perfect for the geek in all of us. Here are seven of our favorites:
1. Battle Cruise
Televised iterations and spinoffs of Battlestar Galactica may have drawn to a close, but the Battle Cruise will rage on aboard Royal Caribbean Internationals Majesty of the Seas in November. Setting sail from Miami on the Nov. 11, the cruise has scheduled appearances from Dirk Benedict (Lieutenant Starbuck) and Richard Hatch (Captain Apollo) from the original series-- Hatch will even conduct acting classes on the ship. Sci-fi fans will also enjoy meet-and-greets, autograph and Q&A sessions, as well as discussion panels, series episode screenings and more.
2. Mighty to Mega Ranger Cruise
With a new movie scheduled for release on March 24, 2017, the Power Rangers will be setting sail aboard Royal Caribbean Internationals Enchantment of the Seas in early March from Miami, Florida. Eleven actors will be along for the ride including Robert Axelrod (Lord Zedd and Finster) from the original Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, Jeff Parazzo (Trent Fernandez, White) from Power Rangers Dino Thunder and Megaforce and Azim Rizk (Jake Holling, Black) from Power Rangers Megaforce and Super Megaforce. There will be opportunities to mingle with the cast as well as VIP passes for private hotel transport and limited edition memorabilia from the cruise.
3. Star Trek The Cruise
Trekkies, or Trekkers as many now prefer to be called, will feel right at home on Norwegian Cruise Lines Norwegian Pearl under the leadership of Captain James Tiberius Kirk-- none other than William Shatner himself. The six-day cruise, departing roundtrip from Miami, Florida, is already sold out for its January 9-15, 2017 run but will likely be reprised due to high demand. At least theres still a chance to win a free cruise on the upcoming sailing to join the likes of Jonathan Frakes (Commander William T. Riker) and Marina Sirtis (Counselor Deanna Troi) from Star Trek: The Next Generation, Terry Farrell (Jadzia Dax) from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Robert Picardo (The Doctor) from Star Trek: Voyager and others. Onboard sci-fi experiences will range from performances and seminars to parties and screenings.
4. Star Wars Day at Sea
For a different galactic cruise on a sea far, far away, Star Wars Day at Sea takes the hit franchise on Disney Cruise Lines Disney Fantasy for the second time with a series of fifteen weeklong sailings from January to April 2017. The sailing includes screenings of all eight films-- from the classic trilogy to Episode VII. Onboard, guests will enjoy photo-ops with favorite characters such as C-3PO, R2-D2, Chewbacca, Darth Maul and even Captain Phasma. Young Padawans might be invited onstage to face their fears and duel Darth Vader, cosplay will be celebrated, trivia kings will be crowned and meals (or at least ice cream) will be served frozen in carbonite. Exclusive merchandise, from apparel to collectible artwork, will be available onboard, and the evenings will close with a deck party crescendo of Star Wars fireworks set to iconic John Williams music.
5. The TARDIS Cruise
After catapulting to worldwide fame, the Doctor Who franchise will soon be featured on The TARDIS Cruise. However, unlike a certain phone booth, Royal Caribbean Internationals Enchantment of the Seas will be the same size inside as it appears from the exterior for the January sailing from Miami. Featured to appear on the three-day cruise are a dozen or so cast members including Paul McGann (The Eighth Doctor), Eve Myles (Gwen Cooper), Kai Owen (Rhys Williams) and Louise Jamison (Leela). The usual meet-and-greets and panels are planned as well as workshops in arenas from special effects to music scoring.
6. Walker Stalker Cruise
Fans of The Walking Dead comic book and television show alike will relish the opportunity to board the Walker Stalker Cruise on February 3-6, 2017, a roundtrip excursion from Miami, Florida on Norwegian Cruise Lines Norwegian Pearl. The cruise is now available for pre-sale and will feature to-be-determined actors and zombie makeup wizards. What can fans really expect? During last years convention at sea, Norman Reedus (Daryl Dixon), Danai Gurira (Michonne) and Greg Nicotero (makeup artist and director) were on hand for the undead festivities. With Fear the Walking Dead taking to the high seas this season, theres no better time to escape the zombie apocalypse on water.
Committing serious crimes could always get you booted from your holiday destination, but one Spanish tourist is facing deportation over a problematic tattoo.
The unnamed male tourist has reportedly been kicked out of Myanmar after local monks took offense to an exposed tattoo of Buddha on his leg.
The man was detained in the ancient town of Bagan, which attracts thousands of tourists a year to its temples and pagodas.
He was then sent to the major city of Yangon.
Monks in Bagan saw a Buddha tattoo on his right leg because he was wearing shorts. They informed us as its not appropriate, a police officer in Bagan told AFP anonymously.
A police official at Yangon, who also spoke under the condition of anonymity, confirmed the man had been detained and said he would be deported to Bangkok, Thailand.
We will send him back because he violated the rules as a tourist here, the official said.
The influence of religious hardliners in Buddhist-majority Myanmar appears to be hardening as a new civilian-led government, replacing decades of junta rule, embraces foreign investment and international tourists.
The AFP reports a small but influential Buddhist nationalist movement has been railing against what it perceives as corrupting Western influences as well as the five per cent of the population that are Muslim.
But this is far from the first time a tourist has landed in hot water for being seen to disrespect the image of Buddha in Myanmar.
Last year New Zealand bar manager Phillip Blackwood spent 10 months in jail forusing a psychedelic depiction of Buddha wearing headphones to promote a cheap drinks night on Facebook.
A Canadian tourist who was a practising Buddhist was detained in 2014 for sporting a leg tattoo of Buddha.
Also that year, a British nurse was thrown out of Sri Lanka in 2014 for a Buddha tattoo on her arm despite her insistence she was a devotee who got inked as a mark of respect.
Another Briton was thrown out of Sri Lanka because of a Buddha tattoo in 2013.
Airports in Thailand are emblazoned with posters warning foreign visitors not to get tattoos of Buddha.
Countries such as Myanmar and Thailand believe the body becomes less sacred from the head down, making Buddha leg tattoos potentially more offensive.
The Spanish mans likely deportation from Myanmar comes as Cambodia cracks down on inappropriately dressed tourists in ancient sites of religious significance.
Last week, authorities at the countrys famed Angkor temples told foreign tourists they must wear pants or skirts below the knees and shirts that cover their shoulders.
Anyone dressed inappropriately would be forced to change their clothes before being allowed to enter.
Long Kosal, a spokesman for Apsara Authority which oversees the archaeological site, said the ban was implemented because wearing revealing clothes disrespects the temples sanctity, AP reported.
Angkor Wat is Cambodias biggest tourist attraction, attracting 2.1 million foreign tourists last year.
The UNESCO World Heritage site is such a symbol of national pride it is emblazoned on the Cambodian flag.
So local authorities were infuriated last year when Western tourists began posing naked for photos at the temples, leading those who were caught to be fined and deported.
Many companies invest heavily to perfect their product development process, hoping the result will entice customers to buy. But most entrepreneurs overlook market trends that could attract more customers and sustain their sales.
When it comes to business, its all about making data-driven decisions and implementing the right strategies to increase your growth rate. First, you must validate your ideas and assumptions through market research outcomes.
Many entrepreneurs share a common misunderstanding: They believe innovative products are enough capture the market. Unfortunately, innovation alone cannot guarantee your startups success. Other, unpredictable factors influence your growth rate.
Conducting market research is like having access to satellite surveillance technology. If you can accurately interpret data, you'll be able to observe competitor strategies, monitor industry fluctuations and understand customer behavior.
Market research is necessary in many stages of your business. However, the ideation stage is the most essential time to begin your efforts. Researching your customers' needs is the best course of action at this point. Your product must help customers achieve their goals, so it's vital to learn how to adapt to the market.
Here are four steps to conduct the type of market research that will help you make informed decisions and grow your startup faster.
1. Collect firsthand data from users.
Inviting potential customers to your office for in-depth interview or focus groups can be very beneficial. If you face difficulty meeting face-to-face with customers, digital tools such as Survey Monkey, Qualaroo and Super Simple Survey can collect primary data to let you hear directly from users.
Simply create a standard questionnaire and send it via email or social media. The software notifies you automatically when a user completes the survey. Digital forms are convenient to create and distribute, but they do have a down side: low response rate.
Related: Why Market Research Matters
Survey data on its own isn't adequate to secure your place among successful startups. You'll also need to leverage innovative methods to confirm, promote and evaluate the information:
Prepare 5 to 10 conditional questions and validate them with a market research expert.
Create a landing page and direct customers to your page.
Run a contest or offer an exclusive giveaway for those who participate in your research.
Provide visitors with an option to participate in the contest.
Once users have answered your questions, analyze the results to select the top three factors that matter most to your customers.
Its crucial to listen to customers' opinions. If feedback indicates you need to make significant changes in your direction, you might want to revisit your business strategy. On the contrary, if results show that making only small changes will attract more customers, you must share the data with your team. You'll need their buy-in and support to incorporate these customer-driven ideas in your product development cycle.
2. Monitor your competitors' strategic moves.
It's key to also analyze your direct and indirect competitors. Understanding their strengths and weaknesses enables you to support your business in difficult situations and take advantage of new opportunities. Programs such as Change Detection allow you to follow and regularly track changes made to your competitors' websites.
Related: 5 Ways to Steal Your Competitor's Web Traffic
Google offers some of the best tools to search for industry trends and perspective on behaviors. Google Insight and Consumer Barometer are powerful allies to conduct fast and accurate market research. Google Trends illustrates the latest movements in different industries.
Depending on your niche and your needs, you might want to invest in a premium paid service such as Gartner or Statista. These collect data and churn out white papers and reports. You'll also find plenty of free or more affordable resources to return efficient results. Internet Archive, Open Strategy and SEMrush for startup are three to consider.
3. Discover different customer personas.
Understanding the character of your customers requires a different research approach. Leveraging an empathy map can be a great way to gain insights about customer concerns, attitudes, pains and desires. You'll want to explore various areas:
What fears, frustrations or obstacles do your customers face? When do they feel successful? What are they thinking about frequently? What do they say and do in public? What are their ambitions? Who inspires and influences them? Who surrounds them? What kind of environment are they living in? How have their behaviors changed?
Extract data from your empathy map exercise and share the findings with your development team. You should have everything you need to develop a minimum viable product based on your market research data and empathy map result.
Related: 10 Ways to Get Into Your Customers' Heads Beyond Creating Buyer Personas
Before you finalize your startup strategy and launch mass production or invest in advertising, validate your results one last time. As soon as your product is ready, share it with the same customer segment. If you get positive feedback, you're on the right track. In contrast, if the results surprise you, it would be wise to do a few more rounds of iterations before you release your final product.
4. Execute and monitor progress.
The amount of data youve collected thus far should help you make sound decisions about your startups direction. You'll need to continue monitoring customer preferences during the product's life cycle, so you can adjust sales channels to meet their needs.
Your conversion rate is the single best measure of which features appeal to your customer. In basic terms, your conversion rate is the number of visitors who decide to opt-in or purchase your products, compared to all visitors.
Although every industry has a different conversion rate, the general rule of thumb prevails: The higher the conversion rate, the better. Free tools such as Google Analytics or services such as Unbounce.com help you conduct efficient split tests, optimize your landing pages and boost revenue.
I mean, seriouslywhat is their !? I demanded.
The phone call with my mother had begun innocently enough. Wed been calmly catching up on various life happenings when the conversation turned to a proposal Id submitted to a potential client a few months back.
You still havent heard back from them? asked my bewildered mother.
I know! I replied. Can you believe that?
As I summarized the situation, I could feel my blood starting to boil.
I have lost track of how many times Ive called and emailed them. Apparently it was just impossible to find two minutes in their schedules to respond in more than two months!
Up until that point, I had been (I thought) justifiably miffed about the whole situation; after all, a good faith business relationship would surely dictate a response, even if its just well get back to you when we can. But on the day of our phone call, what had started as a lightly simmering pot of anger finally boiled over. And despite my mothers attempts to calmly diffuse the situation, I continued my violent vitriol for a good 10 minutes.
Related: 4 Ways to Defuse Your Anger Before It Blows Up Your Career
Thomas Jefferson once said an angry man is again angry with himself when he returns to reason. During our phone call, my fury had felt 100 percent reasonable. After all, these people had personally wronged me. But a few hours later, once Id regained my ability to think rationally, I realized how disproportionate my reaction had been. After all, when you work in business development, you win some and you lose some -- and not everyone cares about responsiveness as much as I do.
My ridiculous behavior was a timely reminder of how anger can turn otherwise sensible people into raving, irrational lunatics. Certainly, anger is a natural part of the human condition, and it isnt always a bad thing. In the early days of human existence, for example, it served a survival purpose, helping us fight back when we were attacked by predators or other humans. And sometimes, anger can give us much-needed energy to drive personal, organizational or social change.
But as a psychologist, I am deeply worried about the rapidly escalating levels of anger in our world -- whats particularly disturbing is our increasing sense of entitlement to express it in aggressive or hurtful ways. And if the vituperative comments on my Facebook feed are any indication, people seem almost eager to be angry -- as if we must all pick a side and take it as a personal affront when others dont share our views.
According to a recent NBC News poll, half of Americans are angrier today than they were a year ago. Truthfully, I cant think of a moment in time when we have had so many legitimate reasons to be angry. But when we let ourselves get hijacked by it, as I did during my fateful phone call, we lose control of our actions. On a good day, we simply embarrass ourselves; on a bad day, we are angry enough to kill.
Laura Hayes, a Maryland-based psychologist, recently opined that uncontrolled anger has become our number one mental health issue. I agree completely, and frankly if something doesnt change, I fear for our collective safety and quality of life. And though most of us arent politicians or policy makers, we can all contribute to stopping this cycle -- the surest way is to start with the only thing we can truly control: our own reactions, behaviors and choices.
There are four strategies for controlling the beast. One of the first victories over anger is deciding, in real time, whether or not theres a good reason to be angry. Though people have different triggers, our inconsequential irritations can needlessly send us off the deep end. As you noticed, one of mine is feeling ignored -- what about you? Do you simmer with irritation when a coworker takes credit for one of your ideas? Does a flight delay turn you into a raving lunatic? Does being cut off on your morning commute bring about a fit of fiery rage at the smiling, unsuspecting grandmother in front of you?
Related: Don't Get Stupid, Use Your Anger for Good
Heres a simple question to help you decide whether its worth being angry: How much does this actually matter for my long term happiness and success? If you realize that a particular situation isn't important, there are three strategies you can use to control your irrational ire. These same three strategies can also be helpful when a situation is worth being angry about, but you dont have any control or influence over it.
1. Diffuse.
Many people believe that discharging anger is the best way to diffuse it. For example, my husband can be a frustrated driver, and he swears that cathartically yelling at other drivers is the best medicine. Unfortunately for both of us, this is a myth, and in fact, discharging anger can actually increase it in the long term.
So if discharging anger doesnt diffuse it, what does? Arguably the easiest approach is to take several deep breaths. Thomas Jefferson (who is apparently a fountain of anger-related wisdom) aptly advised, When angry count to 10 before you speak. If very angry, count to 100. The reason this works is that it keeps our fight or flight system at bay. A related approach is mindfulness: simply paying attention to what were feeling, both physically and mentally, can be a powerful anger diffuser. As crazy as it sounds, even just naming your emotions ("I am really angry right now!") can dramatically reduce their intensity.
Finally, even though its the last thing that occurs to us in the heat of the moment, we can also diffuse anger with humor. Researcher Jerry Deffenbacher has spent his whole career studying anger (and was also brave enough to serve on my dissertation committee). Humor, he says, can give us much-needed perspective. For example, angry people usually believe theyre right and the world is wrong, so Deffenbacher suggests comically exaggerating that idea. Picture yourself as a supreme ruler -- a crown, cape and all -- who is in charge of everything and demands that others bow down before you. Pretty absurd, right? But the more detail you imagine, Deffenbacher says, the more likely you are to remember that the world does not, in fact, revolve around you (unless youre a narcissist, in which case I would probably avoid this exercise).
2. Rethink.
A second strategy to control your anger is to change the way you see the person or thing thats making you angry. Angry people tend to have common thinking patterns. They see people as either good or bad; their actions as right or wrong. Because they awful-ize (as my mom calls it), they love the words never and always (My boss never listens to me; My spouse always ignores my feelings), which reinforces the belief that theyre being deprived of their basic needs. They also see their desires as demands rather than requests (My flight was late so I must have a voucher for a first class ticket!).
The simple way around such thoughts is to choose different ones -- and in the battle between logic and anger, logic usually wins. First, stop the all or nothing thinking. Instead of seeing the person who wronged you as bad, look at things from their perspective, or find something you can appreciate or empathize with. Try to remember a time when your boss did listen to you, or your spouse did pay attention to your feelings. Finally, to get out of the dangerous demand mindset, remind yourself that this situation shouldnt have the power to ruin your day. Do you really need that first class voucher? Does the airline really have that much power over your happiness? Surely, you have far more control over your destiny than that.
3. Avoid.
Though avoiding the source of your anger isnt always on the table, sometimes you do have this option. I certainly dont advocate running away from your problems, but if someone is making you uncontrollably angry, the path of least resistance is to simply stop putting yourself in that situation. Does the Starbucks barista irritate you every morning before youve had your coffee? Go somewhere else. Does your annoying coworkers idle chatter send you off the deep end? Take another route to the copy machine. Do flight delays make you see red? Book the first flight of the day. You get the idea.
Related: Move Away From Shame-Based Management to Inspire Productivity
So far, our three strategies -- diffuse, re-think, and avoid -- work well when its simply not worth being angry. But if something really is worth fighting for, your goal shouldnt be to squelch your anger but to intentionally and productively channel it to help you achieve your goal. And thats where our fourth strategy comes in.
4. Assert.
Paul Kagame became the president of Rwanda in the aftermath of the 1994 genocide, where the Hutus killed one million Tutsis. That alone is challenging -- but Kagame also happens to be a Tutsi and the leader of the opposition army. It would have been easy for his anger to push him to aggressiveness -- that is, getting his own needs met, regardless of the harm caused to others. But instead, Kagame chose to be assertive, enacting his vision while building everyone up in the process. Instead of seeking revenge against the 150,000 alleged killers in his custody, he brought Rwandans together to confront their past, forgive each other, and create a brighter future.
Kagame made three assertive choices: first, to stay together, bringing millions of Hutu refugees home and allowing low-level genocide suspects to be tried in specially formed community courts rather than criminal ones. Second, he wouldnt tolerate corruption or aggression of any kind, even abolishing the death penalty. Third, he decided to think and act big. Rwanda is now the safest country in Africa. Its GDP has tripled since 1994. Rwandans have national health insurance, accessible education, and a boom of foreign investments. If Kagame could accomplish all this after the anger he felt, just think of whats possible for the rest of us.
At the end of the day, and at the risk of sounding a little trite, each of us is either part of the problem or part of the solution. Being part of the problem is easy, because all you have to do is let yourself be seduced by the siren song of anger: to hurl insults at your Facebook friends who are daft enough not to share your opinions, or to let your anger trick you into saying and doing things you wouldnt normally do. Being part of the solution is harder -- it requires thought, intention, and commitment -- but it is also the only way out of this collective collision course.
Phoenix police said Tuesday that a seventh homicide and three other shootings are related to the same serial shooter or shooters believed to be responsible for six other murders in recent months.
The shooting death of Krystal Annette White, 55, is the additional homicide now listed by police as believe to be linked. White was found dead on April 19 along a street east of downtown Phoenix after neighbors reported hearing gunshots in the area.
"Someone out there knows who did this," said Police Chief Joe Yahner. We need our community to call us or Silent Witness and help us solve these cases, bring justice to these families and victims, and prevent more violence from occurring."
That location of White's death is miles from the Maryvale area of west Phoenix where the other homicides occurred between April 1 and June 12. Those victims included two women and a 12-year-old girl shot at one location in the most recent incident.
The new list added three non-fatal shootings in addition to the killing of White that police said are linked, for a total of eight incidents that included seven fatalities.
The additional four incidents were added after investigators reviewed all possibly related incidents since Jan. 1, a police statement said. "All of these incidents were already under investigation but have now been included in the series of violent crimes previously linked and reported," police said.
Two of the newly listed shootings involved people wounded late at night on back-to-back nights in March. One of those two shootings occurred east of downtown and two miles from where White was found.
The fourth newly listed shooting involved an unoccupied vehicle on the west side.
Phoenix police Sgt. Jonathan Howard said because the geographic spread is so wide, all residents should be extra cautious and be sure to report suspicious activity.
"I'm not asking people to be fearful. I'm asking for them to raise their level of awareness to a healthy level, Howard added.
Evidence includes a suspect description provided by a wounded victim and physical evidence left at scenes, Howard said.
He declined to elaborate on the physical evidence but he said the description is of a thin or lanky young man, possibly in his early 20s. A police sketch showed a male with dark hair, and Howard said witnesses reported seeing a car leaving shooting scenes, possibly with more than one person inside.
Howard said the victims all were outside or in a vehicle when shot in or near residential neighborhoods during hours of darkness but have little in common in terms of age, race or gender and there's no known motive.
The 2016 shootings follow an unsolved 2015 series of Phoenix-area freeway shootings which resulted in a 13-year-old girl being cut by glass.
In 2005 and 2006, two men randomly targeted people in the Phoenix area, killing five and wounding 16. During the same period, another man killed nine people.
The Silent Witness Program has offered a $30,000 for information in the current case.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Click for more from Fox 10 Phoenix.
One person was killed and several others were injured in a multi-vehicle wreck involving at least one tractor-trailer on New Yorks I-84 on Wednesday afternoon, NBC New York reported.
The crash involved at least five cars and at least one tractor-trailer, and several people were trapped in the vehicles, Montgomery police told CBS New York. The pileup occurred around 12:30 p.m. near Exit 5 in Orange County.
All westbound lanes near the crash were closed, police said in a tweet, urging drivers to find an alternate route.
It surprises me to no end that so many people believe there is a shortage of tech talent in todays globalized business environment. The world has flattened and become hyper-connected. Why are companies still restricting their potential talent pool to a two-mile radius of their physical office?
And who needs office space anyway? According to Hired.com, an engineer in Austin making $110,000 would need to make $195,000 in San Francisco to support the same lifestyle. Similarly, a $1 million budget for engineering can get you 10.5 engineers in Atlanta, or eight in New York.
For an entrepreneur who is trying to give birth to an idea with limited resources and is trying to make these limited resources go a long distance, hiring in these tech hubs is is beyond their scope.
However, the best talent does not necessarily reside in these tech hubs. If an entrepreneur is able to tap into offshore resources that are cost effective and offer a wide variety of talent and expertise level to choose from, they can achieve a lot with the same resources.
I have been on both sides of the table. I worked at a Citigroup BPO for four years with several U.S. clients. In the past five years, Ive grown a marketing, analyst and engineering off-site team for a startup.
An entrepreneur can source offshore talent from various platforms such as Upwork, Toptal, Hired, Gigster and many others. Quite a few platforms have sprung up, mobilizing the freelance economy. These platforms provide access to a vast pool of talent available all over the world, capable of all kinds of tasks - from high-end software development to basic customer service.
Each of these platforms work differently. In some of them, you list your requirement, get applications and then screen candidates. In others, you just have a list of pre-screened candidates from which you can select the most suitable candidates, and conduct a round of interviews.
In addition to screening the candidates for the required expertise, there are few critical things I would mention when hiring offshore candidates.
Conduct a video interview.
Conduct a video interview as well as a chat interview over Skype, Slack or chat tool of your choice. Communication is very important, which is taken care of by the video interview, but when managing and working with an offshore employee, the majority of communication is going to be via chat. This process ensures that you are selecting someone, who has good communication skills over both of these mediums.
Be open-minded.
To build an off-shore team requires a conscious effort to build a quality team and not necessarily a cheap one. Quality engineering by offshore talent could effectively cost as much as on-shore talent, but its not just cost and quality that matter.
Related: How to Build a Better Business With Outsourcing
There is also throughput and the ratio of throughput to cost. Its far more favorable with offshore resources. Employees can be productive in their pajamas. They are able to balance their family and work, and not just be a weekend parent. This work scenario actually increases productivity for motivated workers.
Hire for a short-term, trial period.
Hiring on a one-month trial period can be a good way to test talent. Employing contractors is more expensive on a monthly basis, so your costs may be higher if you institute this period, but it will give you an excellent evaluation of the employees capability and work ethic. Make this condition known upfront.
Select self-motivated individuals.
You should always hire motivated individuals, but it's especially pertinent when hiring offshore employees. Companies should hire individuals, who are motivated, committed and driven to complete their tasks. It is not easy or possible to monitor daily tasks of offshore employees, and if they are not self motivated, it will be an extremely tense relationship.
Related: 5 Questions to Help Decide if Outsourcing is the Solution
Hiring an off-shore team is only a small piece of the entire process, managing them is another challenge. Here are my views and learnings on how to manage an off-shore team.
Dont try to waterfall projects.
Giving an outside team a particular project, then forgetting about them for a while, is a recipe for disaster. We dont treat our internal employees like this, do we? They have to feel they have a clear line of communication to someone, who can make decisions, and guide them in case they run into any issues. One way of ensuring this is by holding a weekly video call.
Schedule a weekly call.
And always treat it as sacred. Try your best not schedule anything over it. Do a video call, as this brings a huge amount of comfort and connectivity. If you do this regularly, they will feel like a core part of the team, and their responsibility and ownership toward the product and project will be sky-high.
Encourage team bonding.
The first contractors, if well selected, will build a team around themselves by hiring their friends, who are equally good or even better. Being surrounded by friends will help them have fun while working and adhering to the adage that the whole can be great than the sum of its parts. This will give them an even greater feeling of participation and a sense of responsibility as well. It will also help the company in building a stronger team. This has been an extremely effective strategy for me, whether it be for marketing, analytics or engineering. One caveat: Reserve the power of interviewing and direct hiring for yourself.
Related: 7 Legal Steps You Must Take Before Outsourcing Content Creation
Remember that office culture is not the only type of culture. You dont need a physical office space to have a highly social, integrated team. Rather, culture is a product of leadership. Culture is the message you as a leader deliver consistently to your employees through your actions, words, meeting style, work ethic and your focus on customer.
Meet in-person when you can.
A critical aspect of creating an amazing, distributed team for long-term work is to meet them face-to-face. Fly them to your city occassionally, or organize a retreat where all employees get to meet each other. The rapport that is established during these informal meetings gives a massive boost to productivity when everyone returns to their respective places.
Building a cohesive, highly skilled team does not have to come at a high cost. Digital connectivity offers us a great opportunity to hire the best around the world but managing them is definitely is a different than managing someone who is physically sitting in your office. In my experience though, it's totally worth it.
Authorities in Colorado were involved in a wild incident Tuesday morning after a bear broke into a girl's car.
Jefferson County Sheriffs deputies were called to a scary situation in Genessee. A 17-year-old girl called police after a bear climbed into her Subaru and began to rip the seats and the ceiling.
Deputies Josh Tillman and Brian McLaughlin arrived on the scene to find the bear still locked inside the vehicle. According to KDVR-TV, McLaughlin recorded a video on his cellphone showing the animal breathing on the glass and putting its paw on the window.
Tillman said the bear was jumping from the back to the front running around as much as he could destroying about everything trying to get out.
McLaughlin wondered how the bear got into the car because there wasnt a broken window.
The teen told the station that she didnt lock the door and believes the bear may have just opened the door and locked itself in.
Theyre smart animals so I wouldnt doubt if he just opened the door and then let himself in, she said.
The bear destroyed the inside of the car and it had to be towed away. The teen wasnt sure what she was going to do about the car; some insurance agencies claim that an incident with a wild animal is an Act of God, according to KDVR-TV.
Imagine about as much destructing as you can imagine in a car. He ripped door panels off. He tore the steering wheel off, Tillman said of the damaged vehicle.
The deputies were able to pop the handle on the latch and the bear was able to crawl its way out and skip off back into the woods.
He kind of stopped and looked at us like no big deal and took off, Tillman said.
Tillman added that he doesnt want to be that close to a bear again.
Click for more from KDVR-TV.
A court has upheld the first-degree murder convictions of a woman serving at least 51 years in prison for the 2011 smothering deaths of her infant twins.
The Tennessean (http://tnne.ws/29IXhYf) reports that the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals on Tuesday rejected an appeal for a new trial for 29-year-old Lindsey Lowe of Hendersonville.
Lowe's attorney David Raybin argued before the three-judge panel in August 2015 that Lowe was not read her rights and was denied an attorney during questioning. He said as a result, her videotaped confession to investigators before her arrest should never have been used as evidence.
Prosecutors disputed those notions. The officers twice read Lowe her rights, Assistant Attorney General Leslie Price said. Citing case law, Price argued that Lowe waived those rights when she continued to talk. She also said Lowe was free to leave the police station at any time.
"After a thorough review of the record and the applicable law, we affirm the judgments of the trial court," said judges John Everett Williams, Norma McGee Ogle and Robert W. Wedemeyer in their 71-page ruling.
The defense team plans to appeal the decision, Raybin said.
"While I appreciate the thoroughness of the court's review, we are disappointed with the result," Raybin said. "And we are certainly going to appeal to the Supreme Court and ask them to review the case with fresh eyes."
Lowe was found guilty of two counts each of first-degree murder and aggravated child abuse in March 2013.
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Information from: The Tennessean, http://www.tennessean.com
Every year, the federal government spends millions monitoring New England commercial fishermen to ensure they ply their timeless maritime trade in accordance with the law.
Now, a judge is set to rule on who should foot the bill for the on-board monitors: the government or the fishing boat owners. The East Coast fishermen say sticking them with the bill would be the "death knell" for their industry and is illegal on the part of the federal government.
Fishermen of important New England food species such as cod and haddock will have to start paying the cost of at-sea monitors soon under new rules. Monitors -- third-party workers hired to observe fishermens compliance with federal regulations -- collect data to help determine future fishing quotas and can cost about $18,000 a year, or $710 per voyage.
The Cause of Action Institute, a legal watchdog representing a group of East Coast fishermen, sued the federal government in December in U.S. District Court in Concord, N.H., seeking to block the transfer of payments from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to the fishermen.
It is unlawful for NOAA to force struggling fishermen to pay for their own at-sea monitors," said former federal judge Alfred Lechner, the institute's president and CEO. "The significant costs of these regulations should be the responsibility of the government."
The lawsuit was filed against the Department of Commerce on behalf of David Goethel, owner and operator of F/V Ellen Diane, a 44-foot trawler based in Hampton, N.H., and Northeast Fishery Sector 13, a nonprofit representing fishermen from Massachusetts to North Carolina.
It called the transfer of payments the "death knell for much of what remains of a once-thriving ground fish industry that has been decimated by burdensome federal overreach."
Fishing is my passion and it's how Ive made a living, but right now, Im extremely fearful that I wont be able to do what I love and provide for my family if Im forced to pay out of pocket for at-sea monitors, Goethel said when the suit was filed last December.
Im doing this not only to protect myself, but to stand up for others out there like me whose livelihoods are in serious jeopardy," he said.
NOAA decided last November that the industry would have to take over funding of monitors in 2016, saying the government's money had run out.
However, NOAA later revised its position about how much money it had, resulting in more assistance to the fishermen. Agency officials announced last month that NOAA will reimburse New England fishermen for an estimated 85 percent of the remaining cost of at-sea monitors in 2016. NOAA still plans to force fishermen to pay for monitors in 2017.
U.S. District Judge Joseph Laplante is expected to make a ruling any day in the case.
In a statement to FoxNews.com, NOAA stressed the importance of the monitoring system to curb overfishing and assess the abundance of certain species. Under the law, fishermen are required to bring in everything they catch, even if they subject them to fines and other penalties that cut into profits. Without monitoring, they do not always comply.
"The at-sea monitoring (ASM) program provides reliable estimates of catch (kept and discarded) by each groundfish sector in order to ensure their annual catch limits are not exceeded during the fishing year," the agency said.
"This helps prevent overages that could stop a sector from fishing during the current year or result in a reduced quota in a subsequent year. The quotas are set to prevent overfishing and improve stock numbers where necessary," the statement continued.
The Boston Globe reported in April that fishermen and on-board federal regulators are set to launch an experimental new program that would replace government observers with cameras, computers, and sensors to monitor their catch.
But the potential alternative, critics say, would be even more of a burden, costing vessels as much as $50,000, according to estimates.
A Michigan sheriff pledged Tuesday to review his department's guidelines for transporting suspects charged with violent crimes after an inmate who was cuffed in front rather than behind his back wrested a gun from a deputy and killed two court bailiffs.
Berrien County Sheriff Paul Bailey initially told reporters that Larry Darnell Gordon was not handcuffed Monday during the brazen courthouse escape attempt. On Tuesday, Bailey revised that account, explaining that Gordon was cuffed in front but that the restraint was not attached to a belly chain, which security experts say is a safer way to restrict movement.
"We're going to look at everything about why this happened and make sure that if there are things we can change so this never happens again, we will," Bailey said. "We'll be working with our chief judge about our protocols at the courthouse."
Gary Klugiewicz, an inmate transport expert with security consultant Vistelar in Wisconsin and a retired Milwaukee County sheriff's captain, said the lack of a transport belt could have played a major role in the fatal shootings.
"Somebody handcuffed in front is totally able to do just about anything if they're not restrained to any type of belt," he said.
Gordon was being moved from a holding cell in an area of the courthouse not open to the public when he disarmed Deputy James Atterberry Jr. during a fight and shot him. He then moved into a public hallway in the courthouse and killed bailiffs Joseph Zangaro, 61, and Ronald Kienzle, 63, both retired police officers, Bailey said.
The detainee also shot a woman in the arm and briefly took hostages before being fatally shot by other bailiffs at the courthouse in St. Joseph, the county seat of 8,300 people about 65 miles northeast of Chicago.
"Those bailiffs were heroes along with all the other officers," Bailey said. "They ran to where shots were being fired. This could have been a lot worse without them being so brave to go into the gunfire and take this person down."
Nathan Hall, a consultant with the National Center for State Courts, which advises court officials on security, said it is best if two deputies transport an inmate. One armed with a stun gun or baton, but not a firearm would escort the defendant directly. The second deputy, armed with a gun, would trail at a safe distance.
"That best practice is tailored specifically to the potential for a firearm to be used against that transporting officer," Hall said. "These are best practices. The reality is that that can be expensive. We understand that. However, these instances happen."
Hall said his group also recommends handcuffing from behind.
Klugiewicz said many factors are considered when deciding how to transport an inmate such as whether the charges are violent offenses, the defendant has been violent in jail and if the court appearance is a sentencing.
"He's not been combative. He's always been cooperative the entire time he was here," Bailey said of Gordon's time in jail while charges were pending.
Gordon was charged in April with kidnapping, assault with a dangerous weapon and criminal sexual conduct, according to state police records.
Coloma Township police Chief Jason Roe told The Associated Press the charges reflect alleged crimes since 2015, but investigators had been probing earlier allegations.
Roe said the investigation began April 20, when officers went to arrest Gordon. He fled and was later caught with the help of a Michigan State Police dog, the chief said.
"It's unfortunate it ended the way it did," Roe said. "We can't prove these allegations true in court."
Gordon was discharged from probation in 2014 after being sentenced for stealing fireworks from a temporary stand, said Michigan Department of Corrections spokesman Chris Gautz. He served time in state prison from 1999 to 2002 for fleeing and eluding police.
Zangaro, one of the bailiffs killed, was head of court security. He retired from the Michigan State Police as commander of the Bridgman Post. Kienzle retired as a sergeant in the Benton Township police department after serving in the U.S. Army.
In 2011, Zangaro told The Herald-Palladium newspaper that security staff had a "ton of experience," more than many police departments.
"Probably 90 percent of the people who are here don't want to be," he said of people with business in the courthouse. "They have either a criminal issue, a civil issue or a family issue, and those become very emotionally charged sometimes."
The courthouse was closed Tuesday but was expected to reopen Wednesday.
Experts said attention on courthouse security has intensified since 2005, when a man overpowered a deputy who was releasing his cuffs to escort him to an Atlanta courtroom for his rape trial, took her gun and fatally shot the presiding judge and court reporter and then killed a sheriff's deputy outside the building. He later shot and killed an off-duty federal agent.
A small-town police chief in Kentucky was fatally shot in his cruiser in 2007 after he cuffed a DUI suspect's hands in the front instead of the back.
This past March, two violent inmates escaped from the back of a New Mexico prison van after picking the locks on their handcuffs with some sort of wire.
A memorial to police in Richmond, Virginia has been vandalized with a message referring to the police killing of a black man in Louisiana.
A large red "X'' was spray-painted on the torso of the statue of an officer carrying a child, and "Justice for Alton" is written on the stones below, an apparent reference to 37-year-old Alton Sterling of Baton Rouge.
Richmond Police Deputy Chief Steve Drew told the Richmond Times-Dispatch (http://bit.ly/29DOvJE) that people have left bouquets of flowers at the statue in Byrd Park in the memory of the five police officers killed by a black sniper in Dallas.
The chief says the statue is expected to be restored within 24 hours.
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Information from: Richmond Times-Dispatch, http://www.timesdispatch.com
Successful entrepreneurs are lauded for many things: their creativity, intelligence, initiative, and especially their wealth . . . which we sometimes refer as their greed. But wealth is not necessarily the result of greed, and to link or equate the two is unfair when it comes to some of the worlds most powerful entrepreneurs.
Related: 9 Famous Entrepreneur Philanthropists
A closer look at what these men and women do with their wealth suggests they should be respected for their charity and activism. Instead of broadly condemning the cupidity of entrepreneurs, try acquainting yourself with the following three amazing innovators who are using their good fortune to give back to their communities.
Such individuals often fly below the radar with regard to their benevolence but deserve recognition for making charitable work a priority.
Gina Bianchini: Women 'lean in'
Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg gets most of the credit for LeanIn, a program that focuses on elevating the status of women in the workplace. But she didnt birth this professional revolution alone.
Gina Bianchini, founder and CEO of Mightybell, cofounded LeanIn with Sandberg to help other women reach for success. Since professional women, especially those in the male-dominated tech arena, know they need to stick together, its not surprising that Bianchini lends her time and money to LeanIn.
The surprise is how often she gets left out of the story, while Sandberg draws the spotlight. But Bianchini doesnt do it for the recognition, of course. Instead, her work is driven by the simple notion that, Empowering women with practical skills and a network of support just makes sense. We couldnt agree more.
Related: Lessons in Traditional PR. . . From a 14-Year-Old Philanthropist
Albert Scaglione: Putting artists in the classroom
The fact that creative classes -- music, art, etc. -- have been facing cuts across the U.S. public school system in recent decades is a crime. Arts instruction has been shown to improve student performance, making these cuts poor pedagogical practice.
Fortunately, figures like Albert Scaglione, founder of Park West Gallery, are working to reverse this trend. In a previous career, Scaglione was a NASA contractor as well as a professor at Wayne State University, but art has been his passion for decades.
Now, in addition to running more than 5,000 art auctions a year and coordinating 1,000 staff members, Scaglione works with the public-private organization, Turnaround Arts, to put professional artists in the classroom and provide the supplies that students need to participate. With his help, major creative figures like actress Kerry Washington and cellist Yo-Yo Ma, as well as visual arts prodigies like Autumn de Forest, have spent time working with youth across the country.
The gallery may fund his contributions to the classroom, but at this point Scaglione says he has the best of both worlds. The idea that I could have this life," Scaglione says, "where I still have the opportunity to work with the artists, educate, bring art to the public: Im thrilled about that.
Don Grimm: Mentoring matters
Entrepreneurs are able to have a huge impact with their financial generosity, but being generous with their time, energy and influence is also worthwhile. Don Grimm, chairman of Hybridtech, Inc., is an excellent example.
Grimm happily spends his time teaching classes, giving presentations and working on-on-one with individuals trying to launch their careers. Says Grimm: Mentoring . . . is something I do all the time. I did it this morning.
The executive proves an essential point: Its easy to give away money when you have a lot of it, but offering yourself through mentoring shows a greater investment in the success of others. Those of us who dont have tremendous wealth can give back to by offering our time and talents to help others.
We live in a culture that combines demonization of great wealth with immense envy to create hostile attitudes toward the most successful, but its vital to remind ourselves that wealth isnt the sign of a bad person. Instead, it's a signal that an individual has the potential to make a big difference.
Related: Why Philanthropy Is Good Business
Thats what we can see in the lives of Bianchini, Scaglione and Grimm . . . and there are hundreds, maybe thousands, more like them if you look. Rather than judge entrepreneurs for making money, let's start asking how we can participate in their philanthropic projects, or launch our own.
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Minnesota state troopers have arrested 41 people after demonstrators blocked rush hour traffic on an interstate in downtown Minneapolis.
Authorities also impounded four vehicles used by the protesters to block traffic on southbound Interstate 35W near University Avenue Wednesday morning. The demonstrators were protesting recent deaths by police.
The demonstrators walked onto a bridge across the Mississippi River and chanted, "I believe that we will win." Troopers arrested protesters on the freeway after about an hour. The interstate reopened shortly after 9:15 a.m.
The protesters come after Philando Castile was fatally shot by a St. Anthony officer during a traffic stop in the Twin Cities suburb of Falcon Heights last week.
Two Boy Scout camp employees said they were fired last month after trying to rescue an injured bald eagle in Virginia.
Jeremy and Eliana Bookbinder told The Washington Post on Monday that they were fired from Camp Marriott in the Goshen Scout Reservation, nearly 20 miles outside Lexington.
Eliana Bookbinder said she and her brother took the injured bird to a wildlife rehabilitation center after she found, despite being told by her boss not to.
I pointed out that this was a massive violation of the Scout law, she said. Part of the Scout law is to be thoughtful and to be kind, and this was neither.
She said that she and her brother picked up the bird fairly easily and they both drove it to the wildlife center. Eliana Bookbinder said that later that night her boss berated them and said they had endangered the reputation of the Boy Scouts.
The wildlife center said that the eagle eventually had to be euthanized.
Camp officials told the siblings they were fired for disobeying orders, and that they had broken an unspecified federal law. It was unclear what that law they were breaking.
Their boss also said that they opened the Boy Scouts up to a potential massive fine.
According to The Post, bald eagles were removed from Virginias endangered species list in 2013.
Reservation spokesman Aaron Chusid didnt comment on the incident.
We have no comment at this time as it is our policy not to comment on employment matters, Chusid said in an email to The Post. At Goshen Scout Reservation, our first priority is always to promote the health and safety of our campers while adhering to Scoutings values as stated in the Scout Oath and Law.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Click for more from The Washington Post.
A Virginia 911 dispatcher center is under investigation after a man died when no one was sent out in response to his emergency call.
According to WJLA-TV, Robert Paulus died of heart disease in April in his Fredericksburg apartment. Robert Paulus son Michael told the station that his father called 911 hours before his death.
In the 18-second call to Fredericksburg City Dispatch, the dispatcher tried three times to make contact with Robert Paulus. After hearing nothing but an unidentifiable sound, the call was labeled a pocket call, where no call back is required.
Hours later, Robert Paulus was found dead.
"There was one final cry for help and nobody responded," Michael Paulus said.
Fredericksburg Police Department spokeswoman Sarah Kirkpatrick says the handling of the call "was an oversight." Fredericksburg police are investigating the incident, which could change 911 policies.
The TV station noted that 911 policies arent centralized and that if Robert Paulus wouldve dialed 911 in Fairfax County, the dispatcher would have called back.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Yale University will not press charges or seek restitution against an African-American dishwasher who last month smashed a stained-glass window at the university because it depicted what he considered a racist scene.
Corey Menafee admitted he took a broom handle to the glass panel, which was in the Ivy League schools Calhoun residential college dining hall, because it depicted slaves carrying bales of cotton.
The school issued a statement Tuesday saying it did not want to pursue his prosecution and is not seeking any restitution.
State prosecutors plan to meet with lawyers for the school and Menafee and will have the final say as to whether to pursue the criminal case.
Menafee, who faced a felony criminal mischief charge, told the New Haven Independent he was angered by the racist, very degrading image.
I took a broomstick, and it was kind of high, and I climbed up and reached up and broke it, he told the newspaper. Its 2016, I shouldnt have to come to work and see things like that.
I just said, That things coming down today. Im tired of it, he added. I put myself in a position to do it, and did it.
New Haven police arrested Menafee, 38, after the June 13 incident.
Last week, Yale official Julia Adams said a set of remaining stained-glass panels depicting various moments from the life of building namesake John C. Calhoun, a onetime U.S. vice president and defender of states' rights, which included slavery, would be removed from the college common room.
Calhoun's tainted legacy prompted a petition last summer to change the name of the building, but in April, Yale President Peter Salovey announced the school will keep the name.
Adams said the decision to take down the other windows followed a study by Yales Committee on Art in Public Spaces that was prompted by Menafees action. Although the decision might be seen as affirming Menafees act, Yale spokeswoman Eileen OConnor told the Independent that breaking the glass put others in danger.
An incident occurred at Calhoun College, a residential college on the campus of Yale University, in which a stained glass window was broken by an employee of Yale, resulting in glass falling onto the street and onto a passerby, endangering [her] safety, OConnor said. The employee apologized for his actions and subsequently resigned from the University. The University will not advocate that the employee be prosecuted in connection with this incident and is not seeking restitution.
Menafee, who had worked at Yale since 2007, said he regretted breaking the window.
It could be termed as civil disobedience, Menafee told the Independent. But theres always better ways of doing things like that than just destroying things. It wasnt my property, and I had no right to do it.
China warned other countries Wednesday against threatening its security in the South China Sea after an international tribunal handed the Philippines a victory by saying Beijing had no legal basis for its expansive claims there.
Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Liu Zhenmin said Beijing could declare an air defense identification zone over the waters if it felt threatened, a move that would sharply escalate tensions. But Beijing also extended an olive branch to the new Philippine government, saying the Southeast Asian nation would benefit from cooperating with China.
The Philippines, under a U.N. treaty governing the seas, sought arbitration from an international tribunal on several issues related to its long-running territorial disputes with China.
The tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, rejected China's claims in a landmark ruling that also found the country had aggravated the seething regional dispute and violated the Philippines' maritime rights by building up artificial islands that destroyed coral reefs and by disrupting fishing and oil exploration.
While introducing a policy paper in response to the ruling, Liu said the islands in the South China Sea were China's "inherent territory" and blamed the Philippines for stirring up trouble.
"If our security is being threatened, of course we have the right to demarcate a zone. This would depend on our overall assessment," Liu said in a briefing. "We hope that other countries will not take this opportunity to threaten China and work with China to protect the peace and stability of the South China Sea, and not let it become the origin of a war."
In 2013, China set up an air defense identification zone over disputed islands in the East China Sea, requiring all aircraft entering the area to notify Chinese authorities or be subjected to "emergency military measures" if they disobey orders from Beijing. The U.S. and others refuse to recognize the zone.
While blaming the previous Philippine government for complicating the dispute by seeking arbitration, Liu also sought to strike a conciliatory note with the Southeast Asian nation's new leadership. Liu said China remains committed to negotiations with the Philippines and noting new Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte's positive remarks on the issue.
"After the storm of this arbitration has passed, and the sky has cleared, we hope this day (of negotiations) will come quickly, but whether it can come, we still have to wait," Liu said, adding that China believed that cooperation would also bring Filipinos "tangible benefits."
He said, however, that China hoped the new government would not use the arbitration results which China has declared null and void as a basis for negotiations. China believes cooperation with other South China Sea neighbors, whether in fishing or in exploiting oil and gas resources in the waters, could be achieved by negotiations, he said.
Duterte has not directly responded to China's overtures since the ruling was issued Tuesday. China has been on a charm offensive and Duterte is navigating a tightrope in which he wants to revive relations with Beijing while being seen as defending the major victory the country has won through arbitration.
Although the decision is seen as a major legal declaration regarding one of the world's most contested regions, its impact is uncertain given the tribunal has no power of enforcement.
While the findings cannot reverse China's actions, they still constitute a rebuke, carrying with it the force of the international community's opinion. It also gives heart to small countries in Asia that have helplessly chafed at China's expansionism, backed by its military and economic power.
"The Philippines strongly affirms its respect for this milestone decision as an important contribution to ongoing efforts in addressing disputes in the South China Sea," Philippine Foreign Secretary Perfecto Yasay said Tuesday, calling on "all those concerned to exercise restraint and sobriety."
Former Philippine President Benigno Aquino III, who brought the case against China in 2013, said the decision brought clarity to the disputes that "now establishes better conditions that enable countries to engage each other, bearing in mind their duties and rights within a context that espouses equality and amity."
Cooperation, however, would remain elusive if conflicts over claims persist, he said.
Six regional governments have overlapping claims in the South China Sea, waters that are rich in fishing stocks and potential energy resources and where an estimated $5 trillion in global trade passes each year.
The disputes have increased friction between China and the United States, which has ramped up its military presence in the region as China has expanded its navy's reach farther offshore.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest encouraged all parties to "acknowledge the final and binding nature of this tribunal." Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One as President Barack Obama was flying to Dallas, Earnest said the United States seeks a peaceful resolution to disputes and competing claims in the region, while preserving freedom of navigation and commerce.
Earnest also urged the parties not to use the ruling as an opportunity to engage in escalatory or provocative actions.
The five-member panel from the Permanent Court of Arbitration unanimously concluded China had violated its obligations to refrain from aggravating the dispute while the settlement process was ongoing.
It also found that China had interfered with Philippine petroleum exploration at Reed Bank, tried to stop fishing by Philippine vessels and failed to prevent Chinese fishermen from the Philippines' 200-nautical mile exclusive economic zone.
China, which boycotted the entire proceedings, reiterated that it did not accept the panel's jurisdiction. China "solemnly declares that the award is null and void and has no binding force. China neither accepts nor recognizes it," the Foreign Ministry said.
Beijing says vast areas of the South China Sea have been Chinese territory since ancient times and demarcated its modern claims with the so-called nine-dash line, a map that was submitted under the U.N. treaty. The tribunal said that any historical resource rights China may have had were wiped out if they are incompatible with exclusive economic zones established under the U.N. treaty, which both countries have signed.
It also criticized China for building a large artificial island on Mischief Reef, saying it caused "permanent irreparable harm" to the coral reef ecosystem and permanently destroyed evidence of the natural conditions of the feature.
EXCLUSIVE: He had a ringside seat for the entire, bloody rise of ISIS, and by his own count killed dozens of innocent men, women and children. Now facing likely execution, Thahir Sahab Jamel disavows the black-clad Islamist army, but his Kurdish jailers say theyve heard it all before.
In a jailhouse interview with FoxNews.com in the Kurdish-held city of Kirkuk, Jamel, 27, detailed how he joined Islamic State in 2013, served as a foot soldier in the takeover of Mosul a year later and, he claims, eventually became disillusioned with the dark vision of his fellow fighters.
At the beginning, ISIS told us we would all go to heaven, Jamel said, speaking under the watchful eyes of Kirkuk police guards. But now that I am in prison it means I am going to the fire. I am going to hell.
Handcuffed and partially masked, Jamel, who has been in solitary confinement since his arrest two and a half months ago, said he joined the terror group like many other young Sunni Muslim men opposed to the Shia-led government in Baghdad.
A man named Salam talked to me and got me connected to ISIS. He told me I needed to be a jihadist and fight the Shia government. He convinced me to fight the government, Jamel said. I started getting involved as they were planning operations to begin in Iraq and Syria.
Jamel lived with his mother and three brothers in Hawija, a smaller town just south of the oil-rich Iraqi city of Kirkuk. He had a decent, agriculture-related job, and his family did not understand why he wanted to throw in with the insurgents who would soon become the worlds most-feared terrorist army.
In the early days, Jamel said, most of the recruits were young men in their early 20s. But soon their ranks were swollen by experienced soldiers as old as 50 from Saddam Husseins old army. The battle-hardened men, also Sunni Muslims alienated by the Shia government, were experienced with small arms and heavy equipment.
The mission was to take over the nation, and kill infidels and fellow Muslims who stood in their way, he said.
Everything was about setting the role of Shariah [Islamic law], he said. We have to have a world based on Shariah.
We were told that yes, people here are Muslims, but they are not the right Muslims, he said. And to build the Caliphate we must control the economy, take over every oil field.
Jamel was initially permitted to carry a gun, but as ISIS grew, orders came down that only senior leadership and mid-level commanders, known as Amirs, could carry arms when not in battle. But Jamel would not be without his weapon long: He was made an Amir in early 2015 and put in charge of a group of 70 fighters in the heavily-contested area of Baiji.
ISIS moved on the oil-rich city of Baiji, situated on the primary road to Mosul some 130 miles north of Baghdad, a week after overrunning Iraqs second-largest city of Mosul in June 2014. With momentum from victory, and their ranks increased by a steady stream of foreign fighters, ISIS battled Kurdish and Iraqi government forces for the city, which is home to the nations largest oil refinery, the Baiji oil refinery and other crucial energy and money-producing facilities.
Over the next 18 months, the city would change hands repeatedly, its residents caught in a perpetual, bloody crossfire. The prized refinery that made Baiji so critical was so heavily damaged that it may not be operational again for years.
Jamel did not offer an estimate as to how many civilians and soldiers he and his men killed, but he admitted he willfully took part in the slaughter and also handed over prisoners to his ISIS superiors for torture and execution.
Now that he is facing trial at the hands of his enemies, Jamel carefully treads the line between repentance and resignation. He told FoxNews.com he never cared for the public beheadings and civilian murders his team carried out to instill fear in conquered villages. He simply obeyed orders, he claimed, even ones handed down from the shadowy, self-professed Islamic State Caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
I got many orders from him, Jamel said. But he is a liar, he lied to us. His plan is all wrong.
Jamel was arrested in May in a village near Kirkuk. Police in the government-controlled city had intelligence reports on him and arrested him and several associates. It was after the arrest, and as he faced justice in the Kurdish-run courts that Jamels conscience seems to have awakened.
It haunts me that I am responsible for killing many people, we killed them for nothing, he said.
Kirkuk Police Brig. Gen. Sarhad Qader Mohammad told FoxNews.com Jamel told authorities after his arrest that he had been planning to escape ISIS, a claim Mohammad said police hear nearly every time they capture a jihadist.
When they are arrested they try to say they are no longer with ISIS, but most of the time it is not true, Mohammad said. And we know they are terrorists, but we have to complete a special investigation.
This process typically takes a couple of months, during which the prisoner is held in isolation as police investigators and Kurdish security agents known as the Asayish interrogate them. Mohammed insisted that all captives are treated as human beings and are not subject to torture and other violations of international law.
Once this is complete, the prisoner is relocated and able to mix with other criminals and ISIS fighters. He or she also then faces court trial and sentencing typically life behind bars, but sometimes a death sentence by hanging for acts of terror.
The Kirkuk Police Department currently has some 70 ISIS members awaiting trial. Since the militant groups onslaught began just more than two years ago, some 60 fighters have been sentenced to death. Most are local men, but some are foreign fighters, Mohammed said.
We have many operations and ways to arrest them, he added. We arrest them sometimes when they are sleeping, and sometimes we arrest terrorist men trying to hide by dressing as women.
Two days before the anniversary of the landmark nuclear agreement reached between Iran and six world powers led by the United States, a top U.S. military commander says Iran has not changed its behavior, as five Iranian patrol boats took turns shadowing a U.S. Navy warship he was visiting in the Persian Gulf.
Army General Joseph Votel, who leads U.S. Central Command, said while the deal has frozen Irans nuclear weapons program for a time, the activities of Irans Revolutionary Guard forces still concern him in the Persian Gulf and beyond. Among those activities: capturing 10 U.S. Navy sailors at gunpoint when their vessels drifted into Iranian territorial waters in January.
Their general activities that we see out here in the Gulf have not changed as a result of the [nuclear agreement]... and really as weve seen much more broadly around the region, Votel said. He spoke to a small group of reporters during a visit aboard USS New Orleans (LPD-18) in the Persian Gulf as the amphibious ship transited the Strait of Hormuz.
The 684-foot warship was leaving the Persian Gulf with a crew of 1,100 including 650 Marines, following nearly five months of operations during a planned seven-month deployment.
Votel said Iran should be taken to task for capturing the Navy sailors before releasing them a day later.
I think they should be held accountable for the way they conducted themselves, Votel said, but he added that it was not up to him to determine what that punishment should be.
Had the roles been reversed, the outcome would have been very different, Votel said.
If we came across a [disabled] ship, a small vessel in the area, we would try to assist it, we certainly wouldnt board it against their will.
A U.S. Navy investigation recently determined that Iran violated international law for its actions in subduing the American crew.
During the generals visit to USS New Orleans, five Iranian patrol craft approached the ship. The Iranian vessels included one Houdong-class missile boat, identified by U.S. Navy sailors as P313-6 Shams, capable of launching four anti-ship missiles or firing its two 30 mm cannons. Three other Iranian patrol boats had .50 cal machine guns mounted as well as two rows of multiple rocket launchers.
The missile boat sailed within 500 yards of the U.S. ship.
Lt. Forrest Griggs, an operations officer, said one of the Iranian patrol boats raced up and cut its engines near the USS New Orleans' escort ship, USS Stout, a guided-missile destroyer.
"I would prefer they not cut in front of our vessels," he said.
While some sailors characterized Iran's behavior Monday as harassment, the general was more measured.
Votel called the incident "normal activity." Officials with Central Command, responsible for military operations in the Middle East, called the interaction "safe, routine and professional and without incident."
Fox News was present aboard USS New Orleans and witnessed the Iranian interactions and can confirm the Iranian ships did not appear to show hostile intent.
But similar Iranian warships launched unguided rockets 1,500 yards from the American aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt in December -- also during a transit of the Strait of Hormuz.
U.S. Navy ships cross the strait 250 times a year. 90 percent of those transits are characterized as safe, According to Cmdr. Bill Urban, a spokesman for the U.S. Navys 5th fleet, responsible for maritime operations in the Persian Gulf.
Its those other 10 percent of Iranian interactions with U.S. Navy warships that have Votel concerned.
In a relatively compressed space here, there is great opportunity for miscalculation, the general said. Our people dont always have a lot of time to deal with those interactions, what we have probably learned here today is that its measured in minutes.
Urban says the U.S. Navy has rendered assistance to four Iranian-flagged vessels in the last two months, 11 since 2012.
Appearing before the Senate Armed Service Committee in March, Votel told lawmakers the United States should expose Iran for the destabilizing role it was playing in the Middle East.
When asked about those comments Monday aboard USS New Orleans, Votel said: Iran has to be held accountable for the type of influence they are trying to create, whether it is instability in Yemen, whether it is their backing of the Syrian regime, who attacks their own people who drops barrel bombs on them... [and] causing significant refugee problems.
Iran tried illegally to obtain nuclear equipment in the months after the nuclear agreement was reached last year, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing German intelligence officials. In January, he U.S. and European Union lifted some sanctions against Iran as part of the deal.
When asked if Iran had been held accountable for taking the U.S. Navy sailors hostage, Votel said, I dont think so.
In a celebratory infographic posted online, the Islamic State (ISIS) is claiming a major victory in killing and injuring up to 5,200 people over the holy month of Ramadan.
The infographic lauding the "results" of a bloodthirsty Ramadan, published by ISIS Al Naba weekly magazine, notes the 14 terror attacks around the globe attributed to ISIS, including the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando and the Dhaka, Bangladesh bakery attack.
They also mention the Magnanville, France stabbing of a police officer and his wife and a suicide bomb attack that killed 14 Nepalese soldiers who worked at the Canadian Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan.
Recent attacks against Nigerian, Jordanian and Somali troops as well as the downing of six drones and demolition of 440 tanks are also among their listed successes.
The infographic also gives a breakdown of the 5,200 victims, with 1,988 Shiites, 965 Kurdish soldiers, 752 Libyan militiamen, 580 Syrian Alawites, 285 Christians who are labeled Crusaders, 100 Yemeni soldiers, 50 Egyptian troops, 74 Pakistani and Afghani soldiers and 50 Iraqi military men.
Despite recent reports of the Islamic States significant loss of territory, attacks around the world were meant by the terror groups as a wake-up-call demonstrating their intended growth and reach.
Click for more from The Foreign Desk.
Islamic State terror leaders are reportedly preparing for the fall of its so-called caliphate after the U.S.-led coalition and Russian-backed forces made significant gains in recent months in Iraq and Syria.
The Washington Post reported Tuesday that the terror groups leaders in Syria are bracing for its strongholds to fall, but vow to continue its wave of terror attacks abroad. U.S. counterterrorism experts believe the recent large-scale attacks in Istanbul and Baghdad are a sign that its reign in the Middle East is dwindling.
Experts still believe that even if the terrorists affiliated with ISIS start to move underground, the group will still remain dangerous abroad.
Where Al Qaeda was hierarchical and somewhat controlled, these guys are not. They have all the energy and unpredictability of a populist movement, retired Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden told The Post.
ISIS officials still believe that its vision of a caliphate across the Middle East is still viable despite its losses across the region it claims. One also insisted that the group had shifted some of our command, media and wealth structure to different countries.
Officials in the terror group issued a grim statement to its fighters that soon all could be lost. The Post reported that an editorial in ISIS weekly Arabic newsletter acknowledged that its territory could be lost just two years have rejoicing in the start of its Islamic State across the Middle East.
In the editorial, the group insists that the Islamic State will survive even if its foes take all of its territory. However, US- and Russian-backed forces would have to wait for victory, until an entire generation of Muslims that witnesses the establishment of the Islamic State and the return of the caliphate is wiped out.
They dont want to lose territory, Cole Bunzel, a doctoral candidate at Princeton Universitys Near Eastern studies department who translated ISIS editorial on the future of the caliphate, told The Post. But theyre trying to remind people that the group has a long history and theyre going to persist, just as they did in earlier times.
Will McCants, a Brookings Institution researcher who also detailed the history of ISIS in a 2015 book, believes that the Istanbul attack and the Baghdad attack on a cafe are just reassurances to its followers of how volatile it could still be despite losing its territory.
However, top ISIS leaders failed to place the blame on any of its battlefield missteps. ISIS spokesman Abu Muhammad al-Adnani has admitted that the group had made errors in its losses, McCants said.
According to The Post, an ISIS operative spoke to a Western journalist and told the reporter that some of the militants had become disillusioned because of commanders mistakes. However, he added that once Raqqa falls, it would be avenged.
There is a message to all members of the coalition against us: We will not forget, and we will come into your countries and hit you, he said, one way or the other.
As for the next step, Islamic State leaders havent specified but European officials believe its already underway.
They are challenged as we adapt our strategy to their initial one, in order to start de-sanctuarizing them, a French security official told The Post. But they will now expand to other tactics and start executing much more insidious and covert ops, in big cities. The next step, has begun.
Click for more from The Washington Post .
A U.S. airstrike near Afghanistan's border with Pakistan killed the mastermind of a 2014 attack on a Pakistani school that killed some 150 people, mainly children, American and Pakistani officials said Wednesday.
Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook said the airstrike Saturday killed "known terrorist leader" Umar Khalifa, who was known by several other names including Khalifa Umar Mansoor. Cook said he was killed along with four other "enemy combatants" in an airstrike targeting members of an Islamic State (ISIS) affiliate known as Khorasan Province.
Cook said the attack was conducted in Nangarhar province, where ISIS has established a foothold. He called Khalifa a leader in the Tariq Gidar Group, which the State Department on May 25 designated as a global terrorist group. It said the group is linked to the Pakistani Taliban and is based in Dara Adam Khiel, Pakistan.
"Khalifa orchestrated multiple terrorist operations in Pakistan to include the January 2016 attack on Bacha Khan University, the September 2015 Badaber Air Force Base attack, and the December 2014 Peshawar school attack that resulted in the deaths of more than 130 children," Cook said in a written statement.
Pakistan Army spokesman Lt. Gen. Asim Bajwa said a U.S. Army general had confirmed the death in a phone call to Pakistan's army chief Gen. Raheel Sharif.
Bajwa said it was a U.S. drone strike. Cook wasn't specific about what kind of aircraft was used.
Pakistan had asked the U.S. for help in eliminating Pakistani militants who have taken refuge in Afghanistan.
Pakistani media reported a drone strike in eastern Afghanistan earlier this week, saying it killed several militants.
Mansoor, also known as Umar Naray and Khalid Khurasani, had claimed responsibility for training and dispatching a Taliban suicide squad to the school in Peshawar in December 2014.
Shortly after the school attack, the main branch of the Pakistani Taliban, which has killed tens of thousands of people in recent years in its campaign to overthrow the government and impose Islamic law, disowned Mansoor and his group.
Mansoor's killing could indicate improved relations between Washington and Islamabad, allies that have had fraught ties over the years. Relations were strained by a U.S. drone strike in May that killed Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour as he was driving through Pakistan's Baluchistan province.
Pakistan is at war with the Pakistani Taliban, but is widely seen as turning a blind eye to the Afghan Taliban and other extremist groups, viewing them as a way to enhance its regional influence.
In his statement, Cook said the successful attack underscored what he called common security interests shared with Pakistan and Afghanistan.
"The United States maintains a robust counter-terrorism partnership with Afghanistan and Pakistan and we recognize the sacrifices made on behalf of our respective militaries to pursue terrorists for the sake of regional peace and security," Cook said.
"Only through continued cooperation will we collectively succeed in eliminating terrorist safehavens in the region," he added.
New British Prime Minister Theresa May named former London Mayor Boris Johnson, a prominent supporter of the U.K.'s departure from the European Union, as Foreign Secretary Wednesday as part of a Cabinet shakeup.
Johnson had hoped to become Prime Minister himself in the aftermath of the so-called "Brexit" vote, but saw his ambitions dashed amid Conservative Party plotting.
Despite his prominent diplomatic position, Johnson will not lead negotations for Britain's departure from the bloc. That job will fall to David Davis, who was appointed to a special "minister for Brexit" post.
Johnson's predecessor as Foreign Secretary, Philip Hammond was named Chancellor of the Exchequer, replacing George Osborne, a "Remain" supporter who resigned from the government.
Earlier Wednesday, May vowed that Britain will forge "a bold new positive role" in the world as she was confirmed as Britain's second-ever female leader after Margaret Thatcher.
In a carefully orchestrated political ballet, David Cameron left his job and his home at 10 Downing Street on Wednesday, resigning as prime minister soon afterward at Buckingham Palace. May then accepted an invitation from Queen Elizabeth II to form a new government.
May stressed she would fight against social injustice and that she believes in the unity of all aspects of the United Kingdom. She promised that her government would build a country that "works for everyone."
After the remarks, May stopped and waved outside No. 10 Downing Street beside her husband, Philip.
Jean-Claude Juncker, the head of the EU's executive Commission, wished May "every success in the task ahead.
"The outcome of the United Kingdom's referendum has created a new situation which the United Kingdom and the European Union will have to address soon. I look forward to working closely with you on this and to learn about your intentions in this regard, he wrote to May Wednesday
Martin Schulz, the European Parliament's president, wrote on Twitter: "Leadership issue settled, now I expect we work quickly to deliver certainty."
Buckingham Palace confirmed in a brief, formal statement that "the Right Honorable David Cameron MP had an Audience of The Queen this evening and tendered his resignation as Prime Minister and First Lord of the Treasury, which Her Majesty was graciously pleased to accept."
Soon afterward the palace released a photo of May curtseying to the monarch at the palace.
Cameron resigned after making a brief statement outside the prime minister's residence, his home for more than six years.
"It has been the greatest honor of my life to serve our country as prime minister over these last six years, and to serve as leader of my party for almost 11 years," he said, accompanied by his wife Samantha and his children 12-year-old Nancy, 10-year-old Elwen and 5-year-old Florence.
"It's not been an easy journey and of course we have not got every decision right, but I do believe that today our country is much stronger," Cameron said.
He said May would provide "strong and stable leadership" and wished her luck in negotiations for Britain leave the European Union the issue that caused his demise.
Earlier, Cameron made his final appearance as prime minister in Parliament, turning the usually raucous prime minister's questions session into a time for praise, thanks, gentle ribbing, cheers and a sprinkle of criticism.
The warmth in the House of Commons culminated in loud applause and a standing ovation from his Conservative colleagues for Cameron, 49, who resigned after voters rejected his advice and decided to leave the European Union.
"I will miss the roar of the crowd. I will miss the barbs from the opposition," Cameron said, promising to watch future exchanges as a regular Conservative lawmaker on the back benches.
He even poked fun at himself, reminding legislators of a barb he directed at then-Prime Minister Tony Blair more than a decade ago: "He was the future once."
"As I once said, I was the future once," Cameron noted, as his wife and children watched from the public gallery.
Despite the suddenness of Cameron's exit less than three weeks after the June 23 referendum on Britain's membership in the EU he appeared relaxed and confident as he absorbed both praise and carping from opposition lawmakers.
Replying to Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who is facing his own leadership challenge from two Labour lawmakers, Cameron poked fun at Labour's leadership turmoil, noting that the Tories had had "resignation, nomination, competition and coronation" while Labour is still working out the rules for its contest.
He found time to congratulate Wimbledon winner Andy Murray and other British players there, and rebuffed rumors that he does not like Downing St.'s resident cat, Larry "I do!"
Cameron noted that he had answered 5,500 parliamentary questions in his six years in office. Amid the jokes and tributes in his farewell question period, he fielded questions about eye surgery and a health scandal, along with criticism about the rise in food banks and his part in calling the vote that ended up with Brexit.
Trying to reclaim his legacy from the surprise vote, Cameron said his government had cut the deficit, overseen economic growth and legalized same-sex marriage. And he offered the closest thing he has ever given to a mission statement: "I believe that politics is about public service in the national interest."
May, 59, has been Britain's Home Secretary in charge of immigration and law and order for the past six years. She has the tough task of calming the country and global financial markets after the upheaval that has followed Brexit vote.
Although May backed remaining in the EU, she has reassured "leave" supporters that "Brexit means Brexit, and we will make a success of it."
She is under pressure both from pro-Brexit Conservatives and other EU leaders to start formal exit talks with the bloc. But Tony Travers of the London School of Economics said May would likely not rush to trigger Article 50 of the EU constitution, which starts a two-year countdown to a final exit.
"I don't detect Theresa May being an impulsive person," Travers said. "I think she's a cautious person, and the British political establishment needs to come to terms with this massive decision."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Fresh Healthy Vending International Becomes Generation Next Franchise Brands
Company Introduces New Franchise Brand and New Corporate Brand With Focus on Growth and Expansion
SAN DIEGO, CA - (Marketwired - Jul 13, 2016) - Fresh Healthy Vending International, Inc. (OTCQB: VEND), the nation's leading healthy vending franchisor announced today that it has changed its corporate name to Generation NEXT Franchise Brands, effective immediately. The name change is the beginning of a focused initiative to continue the growth of the company and expand its reach with new and innovative franchise concepts. As Generation NEXT Franchise Brands, the Company will showcase three global concepts that will include the original Fresh Healthy Vending, the recently launched Reis and Irvy's Frozen Yogurt Kiosks and the upcoming corporate-owned 19 Degrees Premium Frozen Yogurt.
This includes the Company's recent announcement of the official launch of their second franchise concept, the ground-breaking Reis and Irvy's Frozen Yogurt Kiosk, the world's first and only interactive, robotic frozen yogurt vending system, The robotic kiosks dispense custom frozen yogurt creations and offer nine flavors, six choices of toppings and all within 60 seconds or less. The response to this concept has been impressive and has sparked the Company to focus on a shift to concept expansion, which will also include a newly announced third concept, 19 Degrees, a corporate-focused brand extension of the frozen yogurt kiosks.
"With the addition of Reis & Irvy's to our portfolio, the continuation of our Fresh Healthy Vending brand and the potential opportunities that we are already seeing with our newly developed 19 Degrees initiative, we felt it was time to position ourselves not as a one-concept company, but as the ambassador to multiple franchise opportunities," said Nick Yates, Chairman of Generation Next Franchise Brands. "Fresh Healthy Vending, Reis and Irvy's and 19 Degrees are just the beginning. Our goal is to continue to identify what we deem to be next generation, first-to-market opportunities. Opportunities that will expand our concept portfolio in the future and that already have shown (like Reis and Irvy's) early proven success in the marketplace. It's a very exciting time for us."
The Company's Reis and Irvy's frozen yogurt robot was recently recognized as a future trend in vending by Forbes Magazine. With three impressive franchises already in motion, Yates added that the Company looks to add five concepts within the next five years.
With growth, expansion and an eye on the future, Generation NEXT is focused on paving the way for the "next generation" of franchise opportunities.
Business owners and school administrations interested in adding Fresh Healthy Vending machines to their locations can get more information by visiting www.freshandhealthy.org or calling 888-902-7558. Potential Reis & Irvy's franchisees can find more information by contacting the company directly at 855-385-5333 or by visiting www.reisandirvys.com.
This information is not intended as an offer to sell, or the solicitation of an offer to buy, a franchise. It is for information purposes only. No Reis and Irvy's franchises will be sold to any resident of any state until the offering has been exempted from the requirements of, or duly registered in and declared effective by, such state and the required FDD (if any) has been delivered to the prospective franchisee before the sale in compliance with applicable law. Currently, the following states in the United States regulate the offer and sale of franchises: California, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, North Dakota, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin. If you reside in one of these states, or even if you reside elsewhere, you may have certain rights under applicable franchise laws or regulations.
Generation NEXT Franchise Brands
Generation NEXT Franchise Brands, based in San Diego, California, is North America's leading healthy vending franchisor. Generation NEXT pioneered the concept of vending machines stocked with tried-and-tested fresh, healthy snack options to serve the growing market of health-conscious consumers. The Company has over 245 active franchisees throughout the United States, Canada, Puerto Rico and the Bahamas, and continually looks to partner with like-minded entrepreneurs who share its vision. With its latest offering, the Reis and Irvy's frozen yogurt kiosk, Generation NEXT is taking the next step in the Company's evolution.
The Company has booked over 3000 machines for placement in schools, universities, hospitals, community centers, military bases, airports, fitness facilities, YMCAs, libraries and many other locations.
Generation NEXT Franchise Brand's stock is traded on the OTC Markets, Symbol: VEND.
Cautionary note on forward-looking statements
Except for historical information contained in this release, statements in this release may constitute forward-looking statements regarding assumptions, projections, expectations, targets, intentions or beliefs about future events that are based on management's belief, as well as assumptions made by, and information currently available to, management. While the Company believes that expectations are based upon reasonable assumptions, there can be no assurances that goals, results and strategy will be realized. Numerous factors, including risks and uncertainties, terms and availability of financing, may affect actual results and may cause results to differ materially from those expressed in forward-looking statements made by the Company or on its behalf. In addition to statements, which explicitly describe risks and uncertainties, readers are urged to consider statements labeled with such terms as "believes," "belief," "expects," "intends," "feels," "anticipates," "proposes," "proposed," or "plans" to be uncertain and forward-looking. More detailed information on these and additional factors that could affect Generation NEXT's actual results are described in Generation NEXT's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its most recent Form 10-Q's for the quarterly periods ended March 31, 2016, December 31, 2015 and September 30, 2015, and its annual report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2015. All forward-looking statements in this news release speak only as of the date of this news release and are based on Generation NEXT's current beliefs and expectations. Generation Next undertakes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by law.
SOURCE Generation NEXT Franchise Brands
Media Contact:
Fresh Healthy Vending International, Inc.
info@freshvending.com
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The Bar Method Opens In Los Gatos, California On July 23
July 13, 2016 // Franchising.com // Local Bar Method instructors Stacy Barrett and Shadin Saah open their first studio in Los Gatos, CA.
What:
The Bar Method Los Gatos Grand Opening! The new 3,600 square foot studio will bring its signature isometric exercises and shake strengthening to the community. New customers will be able to sign-up immediately for the first-ever Los Gatos class on Saturday, July 23, 2016 and Sunday, July 24, 2016.
To celebrate its grand opening, The Bar Method will offer free classes on Saturday, July 23 and Sunday, July 24 from 9am to 3pm PT. The public is invited to join the festivities, which will include refreshments, available merchandise, discounted local merchants, customer subscription sign-ups, on-site demo exercises in the studio rooms, studio tours for new clients and interviews with studio owners, Stacy Barrett and Shadin Saah. In addition, attendees will also be able to purchase a limited time only New Client Special - $99 for 45 days of unlimited classes at the studio. For more information, visit: http://Los Gatos.barmethod.com/
Where:
663 Blossom Hill Road
Suite 200
Los Gatos, California 95032
When:
Grand Opening Saturday, July 23 & Sunday July 24 from 9am to 3pm PT
Why:
The Bar Method is the pioneer in the growing barre-based exercise programs with safe, fun, hour-long workouts that use isometric exercises to strengthen and tone all major muscle groups, followed by periods of stretching to elongate, lengthen and align the body. It was developed under the guidance of physical therapists to reshape muscles, burn body fat and improve posture.
The Bar Method Los Gatos is the first studio owned and operated by Barrett and Saah. The studio offers a beautiful second floor, complete with two spacious studios and views of the Los Gatos Mountains. The studio also offers a kids room and locker room.
Who:
The Bar Method, founded by Burr Leonard in 2001, is an industry leader in the rapidly growing barre-based fitness niche. Bar Method classes are built on the body-elongating practice of dance conditioning, the science of physical therapy and the pace of interval training, making it the most targeted and effective body-sculpting workout. Bar Method franchisees, all certified teachers, were attracted to the Bar Methods high-quality, safe workout, excellent teacher-training program, unparalleled franchisee support, and strong brand identity. Bar Method clients are drawn to the effectiveness and safety of the innovative workout, excellent teaching quality and outstanding customer service.
The Bar Method program is highly effective in sculpting bodies and creating stronger individuals; it is proof that minimal, yet concentrated movements, drive results, said Barrett. We are happy to announce that we are opening our first ever studio in Los Gatos, after 12 years of experience training and instructing at The Bar Method. Im thrilled to grow and cultivate the community here in Los Gatos.
Stacy and I both started out in different careers, fell in love with Bar Method and then serendipitously wanted to open a new studio it felt almost predestined, said Saah. It changed our lives by giving us a workplace and a community we felt strong and comfortable in. We are so eager to open our first studio together and give women the same opportunity to transform their lives the way we have!
For more information, visit The Bar Method Los Gatos online, or on Instagram and Facebook.
SOURCE The Bar Method
Media Contact:
The Bar Method
barmethod@harmonica.co
Rabeeah Patail
Account Supervisor
Harmonica
O: 310.935.3886
M: 818.601.2664
E: Rabeeah@harmonica.co
###
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The Melting Pot Looks To Open First Restaurant In Des Moines, Iowa As Part Of Strategic Expansion
Leading Polished Casual Fondue Restaurants Hosts Franchising Webinar to Educate Entrepreneurs On Opportunity July 28 at 11 A.M. (EDT)
July 13, 2016 // Franchising.com // TAMPA, Florida The Melting Pot Restaurants, Inc., the worlds premier fondue restaurant and a leading polished casual dining franchise, today announced the brand is actively scouting Des Moines, Iowa as a target for franchise development. The company is seeking qualified franchisees to open the brands first restaurant in the state of Iowa, and will host a franchising webinar on Thursday July 28 at 11 a.m. (EDT) to share information on the opportunity. To register, please visit http://www.meltingpotfranchise.com/upcomingEvents.aspx.
In May 2015, MarketWatch published a report on Americas most business-friendly cities across the country, and Des Moines was ranked No. 4 out of 100. The impressive ranking based on business climate, economic outcome and the performance of companies located in each city proves the area to be fruitful for future businesses looking to break into the market.
Weve been watching the Des Moines market for a while, and have been impressed that Iowas restaurant industry continues to outperform revenue growth projections each year according to the Iowa Restaurant Association, said Dan Stone, chief business & people development officer at Front Burner. The states notable business climate and Des Moines up-and-coming restaurant scene is a perfect fit for the Melting Pot as we look to bring our unique fondue dining experience to the area.
Des Moines, Iowa is one of a number of select markets throughout the U.S. where the company is looking to recruit qualified franchisees. Domestically, the company is also seeking new franchisees in select markets, including Houston, Texas; Los Angeles, California; South Beach and Fort Lauderdale, Florida; Manhattan and Brooklyn, New York; and Charleston, South Carolina. On the international front, The Melting Pot is focusing its expansion efforts in target markets across Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Indonesia, Mexico, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan.
The Melting Pot operates more than 125 restaurants across 35 U.S. states, Canada, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, and has over 10 locations in development internationally. The concept is known for offering an assortment of flavorful fondue cooking styles and a variety of unique entrees served with signature dipping sauces. The menu features a variety of a la carte selections, highlighting customizable options that invite guests to enjoy one, two, three or more courses as they select any combination of individually-priced cheese fondues, salads, entrees and chocolate fondues.
To learn more about ownership opportunities with The Melting Pot, contact Christina Hobbs, director of franchise development for The Melting Pot, at chobbs@themeltingpot.com, or call 800-783-0867 ext. 109.
About The Melting Pot Restaurants, Inc.
Founded in 1975, The Melting Pot has offered a unique fondue dining experience for more than 40 years. As the premier fondue restaurant franchise, The Melting Pot Restaurants, Inc. has more than 125 restaurants in 35 U.S. states, Canada, Mexico, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates and over 10 international locations in development. A leading polished casual dining franchise, The Melting Pot was recognized as the No. 2 casual dining restaurant in the Nations Restaurant News 2016 Consumer Picks report. Known for offering a choice of fondue cooking styles and a variety of unique entrees, The Melting Pots menu also features cheese fondues, salads, fine wines and chocolate fondue desserts. Fondue fans can join The Melting Pots Club Fondue for exclusive promotions, special events and advance holiday reservation privileges. The Melting Pot is an affiliate of Front Burner, a restaurant management company headquartered in Tampa, Fla. For more information, visit www.meltingpot.com. To learn more about franchise opportunities with The Melting Pot, please visit www.meltingpotfranchise.com.
About Front Burner
Front Burner is a franchise management company headquartered in Tampa, Fla. It is affiliated with the corporate owners of and its management services extended to The Melting Pot Restaurants, Inc., founded in 1975 with more than 125 restaurants in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and 10 locations currently in development internationally. For more information, visit http://www.frontburnerbrands.com.
SOURCE The Melting Pot Restaurants, Inc.
Media Contact:
Rachel Tabacnic
Senior Account Manager
Fish Consulting, LLC
O: (954) 893-9150
C: ((561) 441-9692
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American Real Estate Investments Receives Prestigious Award
American Real Estate Investments provides the highest quality assets across multiple markets in the United States. The company was recently named as the "Turnkey Provider of the Year 2016".
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AREI or American Real Estate Investments is pleased to report that it has been selected as Turnkey Provider of the Year for 2016. The company will accept the award at the Think Realty Global Conference to be held in San Francisco later this year. Turnkey real estate investing is a way of participating in the real estate investment market without the hassle of dealing with renters. AREI offers a free in-home warranty and a skilled and experienced professional team to help guide new investors.
According to a spokesperson for the company, "Our real strength lies in educating our investors and making them feel safe and secure when investing with us. The attention to client education is one reason why we recently were named as recipients of the Turnkey Provider award and were featured on Fox Business News. The award will be delivered in San Francisco at the Think Realty Global Investment Conference."
Turnkey real estate investment opportunities are available to every type of investor. The properties which form the portfolio of options are those which are very stable and are professionally managed top-tier investment, all located in the United States. American Real Estate Investments offers a fully renovated property which any investor can purchase. Each of these properties are currently under rental contracts by the property management team.
The turnkey approach to investing is particularly attractive to those investors who want to participate in the real estate ma4rket, but are lacking in the time or ability to take care of the renovation of properties. They are often unable to take care of any maintenance issues which can arise. AREI is a good fit for turnkey investors who are searching for top tier investment properties that are managed by the turnkey property management team. A selection of property types can be found in the preferred area by completing the contact information online.
For more information, please visit https://areiusa.com/
Contact Info:
Name: American Real Estate Investments
Organization: American Real Estate Investments
Address: 6600 LBJ Freeway Ste: 175, Dallas TX, 75240
Phone: 1-(888) 323-2734
Source: http://marketersmedia.com/american-real-estate-investments-receives-prestigious-award/123180
Release ID: 123180
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Olympic: Best for Businesses Announces DRE Marketing
DRE Marketing has announced to its constituents that the Olympics is one of the best avenues to expand businesses. To be able to maximize the rare opportunity, every company should have an effective SEO technique so that tourists and locals reach these businesses fast.
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The Search Engine Optimization firm DRE Marketing has announced to its stakeholders how the international sporting game, the Olympics, has a great positive economic impact on Olympic host countries.
As tourists and foreigners arrive in Olympic host countries, the economy of that particular country is expected to bloom on the superlative level since there will be an increase of the number of clients and customers.
"Olympics is one of the best reasons why businesses should expand; to cater the needs and wants of the increasing number of countries, local or foreigners, it is important that businesses online should have SEO strategies" says Yusuke Kohara, founder and developer of DRE Marketing.
Thus, DRE Marketing capitalizes on the use of Search Engine Optimization in expanding businesses especially on Olympics and other related international event.
The business industries have always been cooperative with the organizers of international sporting activities, a trend that is usually positive to multinational and other varied prominent businesses.
Furthermore, Olympics as well is an avenue where cultural diversity understanding and international trade works. Events as such provides facets to business owners to invest in hotels and restaurants, board and lodging houses as well as production of right to sales.
It doesn't only provide effects on a country as a whole but to local industries as well by patronizing business ventures such as tourism and real estate. For example, London Olympics have generated more than 75,000 of jobs in 2012.
Businesses that are small in nature actually also benefit from these kinds of international events.
When there are a lot of visitors and foreigners who actually stays in a particular country for quite some time, it is important to understand that the best businesses that could be invested are those that are fundamentally essential to these people.
For instance, food, clothing, souvenir items and the likes are most likely to be the highest products that are going to be patronized by these individuals.
However, according to DRE Marketing, these benefits aren't going to be maximized without strategies on Search Engine Optimization.
Since time has passed and things have changed, the internet and the web are few things that people use nowadays to search for products and services.
DRE marketing is a Search Engine Optimization company that is dedicated and committed to help microbusinesses to expand and become successful. Short for Digital Real Estate, the company targets the website of a partner company to become visible and place the name of the company website on the top rank of search engine results like Google.
Since the Olympics is business-peak season, people of other nationalities are going to search for products and services that could cater their demands and needs. It is important for a company to be top on the results list, so that these foreigners are going to patronize its offered services. DRE Marketing promises to do these things. For more information, visit this site: http://dremarketing.com/.
For more information, please visit http://dremarketing.com/
Contact Info:
Name: Yusuke Kohara
Email: contact@dremarketing.com
Organization: DRE Marketing
Release ID: 123219
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Manalapan Limo Airport Car Service Launches New Website
Monmouth County New Jersey Limo Service boosts online presence by launching a new website with the help of local SEO guru.
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Considered the most passionate, professional and polite limo service in the Manalapan, New Jersey area, Monmouth County New Jersey Limo Service just went live with a whole new website that bucks the limo industry norm.
"I noticed that the majority of limousine companies had ugly, outdated sites that were often difficult to find and even harder to use," says limo website creator, Susan Vincent.
An SEO specialist, Vincent works closely with Manalapan local business owners to keep their sites from cloning other small business website disasters.
"All I had to do was a few Google searches to size up the local limo competition. Seriously, it was laughable. These sites are in a time warp circa 2001. And I don't mean 2001: A Space Odyssey either. They are very outdated," she added.
"Look, we're mid-way through 2016. If you don't get that your online presence is everything, you'll drown in a sea of sameness. Marc, the owner, didn't want that. He wanted a site that was smart, simple, beautiful and intuitive. And rightly so. But he also knew the site had to work flawlessly on smartphones and tablets. I think we nailed it with his site. Marc loves the site and his his phone is blowing up with leads. You can't argue with that," explains Vincent.
The new website can be viewed by visiting: http://www.manalapannjlimos.com
"The internet has mushroomed into this global superhighway that is incredibly noisy. And noise is just noise. With this site, there is no noise. I make websites look great on all devices, especially mobile. Plus, I make it easy and obvious to find information, ask questions, contact the business, and to become a customer.
I expect the Monmouth County New Jersey Limo site to double Marc's limo airport car service business in the next 90 days."
A self-proclaimed perfectionist, workaholic and control freak, Vincent differentiates herself from other Manalapan SEO companies by refusing to outsource to low level employees, or worse, overseas contractors.
"It's true. My business isn't the most scalable SEO service," she laughs. "But by doing each step myself, I know the process is followed to the letter. Plus, that's the reason my SEO works so well. It's not that other search engine optimization competitors don't know SEO, they do. The difference here is that aren't willing to roll up their sleeves and grind it out like me. That's the huge difference."
To see if Vincent has any openings, please visit: http://www.cadillaccopyseo.com
For more information on Monmouth County New Jersey Limo Service, hourly rates, specials, packages, and availability, email luxelimoservicenj@gmail.com or call 855-737-8129.
For more information, please visit http://www.manalapannjlimos.com
Contact Info:
Name: Marc Zee
Email: luxelimoservicenj@gmail.com
Organization: Monmouth County New Jersey Limo Service
Address: North 176, US 9, Englishtown, New Jersey 07726
Phone: 855-737-8129
Release ID: 122981
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Douglasville GA Computer Repair Service IT Business Support Re-Launched
Creative Technology Solutions, an IT support company for local small businesses in the Douglasville, Georgia and surrounding Atlanta areas, has relaunched its IT consulting and support services to incorporate creative and ideas and solutions in computer technology and innovation.
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Small business IT support company Creative Technology Solutions has relaunched its IT consulting and support services for small businesses in Douglasville, Georgia and surrounding Atlanta areas. More information about Creative Technology Solutions' repair services and innovative technology solutions can be found on the website: https://www.creative-technology-solutions.com.
Creative Technology Solutions has been in the computer repair business since 2002, started by a computer technician with 30 plus years of experience, and has since grown its service offer to stay abreast of computer technology and innovation, introducing creative ideas and solutions, inspiring a services suite relaunch.
It's specialty lies in servicing small, local businesses without any technical staff to perform their IT maintenance and computer repairs. Creative Technology Solutions computer repair services include: computer troubleshooting, computer maintenance programs, website design, technology networking, virus removal, malware removal, computer upgrades, software installations and upgrades and data migration.
With the relaunch, Creative Technology Solutions' services have grown to include the more creative and innovative solutions to help its customers keep up with business computer technology, as follows: technology profiling, networking, data backup procedures, vendor negotiations, phone support and technology project management.
Technology profiling is 100 percent customized to each customer and includes inventory and reporting of all computer technology at a customer's site, allowing for efficient hardware and software upgrades, installations and network change detection. With even the smallest office or business, technology is now way beyond a simple phone and computer; networking is a basic requirement for any small business and being a specialized IT function, Creative Technology Services can assist with network installation, troubleshooting, benchmarking and maintenance.
Technology project management may involve new computer installations or upgrade projects, software installation and upgrades, new network infrastructure upgrades and other technology projects. Creative Technology Solutions says it can also apply to vendor negotiations for new Internet services, phone switch and other technology related business needs for the small business office.
An important part of providing a professional service is support, and Creative Technology Solutions firmly believes in phone support, giving the customer the option of a personalized, over the phone service, with a live person. For its customers on the computer maintenance repair program it provides support free of charge if the problem can be solved via a quick solution and it includes a remote login service for comprehensive computer troubleshooting.
For more information, please visit https://www.creative-technology-solutions.com
Contact Info:
Name: John Rogers
Organization: Creative Technology Solutions
Release ID: 123099
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100+ Women Who Care NRV Chapter Receives 3-Year Matching Grant
New River Valley of Virginia and it's non-profits have the opportunity to be funded by a new, local organization, 100+ Women Who Care NRV. A possible $15,000 donation is given to one lucky non-profit in the NRV on July 19th.
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BLACKSBURG, VA - The 100+ Women Who Care NRV Chapter is growing, both in total membership numbers and combined donation amounts. Current membership stands at over 60 members, and the focus is to reach 100 women by the July 19th meeting. A new development includes a generous matching grant from The Secular Society. The Secular Society is a Virginia not-for-profit known for "Advancing the Interests of Women and the Arts in Virginia and Beyond". TSS will be matching 50% of the raised funds up to $5,000 at every meeting for the next three years. 100+ Women Who Care NRV, if they achieve their goal of 100 committed women members for the next meeting, will now offer $15,000 to a local NRV charity at each quarterly meeting, held the third Tuesday of July, October, January, and April. This donation will provide a significant contribution to support local NRV charities.
100+ Women Who Care NRV are also encouraging current members to bring a friend with them to be entered into a drawing to win a t-shirt and a mug. All women are welcome to attend, but only committed members can present or vote on a local charity. As the website describes, the 100+ Women Who Care NRV meet quarterly, and each meeting is one hour or less. During that hour, any committed member has the opportunity to drop her name in the hat with the hopes of being one of three drawn to present her charity. Each of the three members has five minutes to convince the membership her charity is the one to receive the total donation. The group listens, votes, and each member writes a personal check for $100 directly to the organization receiving the most votes. If 100 members are in attendance, the elected not-for-profit would receive a $15,000 donation--thanks again to the matching grant from TSS. The mission of the 100+ Women Who Care NRV is to reach out and help not-for-profit organizations right here in the NRV with 100 or more women pledging to each contribute $100 on a quarterly basis to local charities. All charities and organizations up for consideration should be in the NRV area, not-for-profit 501(c)(3) and non-controversial.
Please join the 100+ Women Who Care NRV for socializing, networking, and fundraising at the next quarterly meeting on Tuesday, July 19th from 6:15pm to 7:15pm at Bull & Bones at First & Main in Blacksburg. For more information and to download a commitment form, visit the 100 Women Who Care in the NRV or contact Sarah Black, Alexa Casey, or Beth Parker with any questions at out email address at nrv100wwc@gmail.com.
For more information, please visit http://www.100womenwhocarenrv.com
Contact Info:
Name: Alexa Casey
Email: nrv100wwc@gmail.com
Organization: 100 Women Who Care in the NRV
Address:
Phone:
Release ID: 123288
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Centrifugal Compressor Market Forecast and Growth Analysis Report From 2016 To 2021 : Radiant Insights,Inc
RadiantInsights.com has announced the addition of "Global Centrifugal Compressor Market Trends, Growth And Forecast Report Up To 2021 : Radiant Insights, Inc" Market Research Report to their Database.
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This report provides detailed analysis of worldwide markets for Centrifugal Compressor from 2011-2016, and provides extensive market forecasts (2016-2021) by region/country and subsectors. It covers the key technological and market trends in the Centrifugal Compressor market and further lays out an analysis of the factors influencing the supply/demand for Centrifugal Compressor, and the opportunities/challenges faced by industry participants. It also acts as an essential tool to companies active across the value chain and to the new entrants by enabling them to capitalize the opportunities and develop business strategies.
Browse Full Research Report With TOC on http://www.radiantinsights.com/research/global-centrifugal-compressor-market-forecast-and-analysis-2016-2021
Centrifugal compressors, sometimes termed radial compressors, are a sub-class of dynamic axisymmetric work-absorbing turbomachinery. The idealized compressive dynamic turbo-machine achieves a pressure rise by adding kinetic energy/velocity to a continuous flow of fluid through the rotor or impeller. This kinetic energy is then converted to an increase in potential energy/static pressure by slowing the flow through a diffuser. The pressure rise in impeller is in most cases almost equal to the rise in the diffuser section.
Global Centrifugal Compressor Market Forecast and Analysis 2016-2021, has been prepared based on the synthesis, analysis, and interpretation of information about the global Centrifugal Compressor market collected from specialized sources. The report covers key technological developments in the recent times and profiles leading players in the market and analyzes their key strategies. The competitive landscape section of the report provides a clear insight into the market share analysis of key industry players. The major players in the global Centrifugal Compressor market areIngersoll Rand, GE, Johnson Controls, UTC, Dresser-Rand, Danfoss, Atlas Copco, MAN, Samsung, Daikin, MHI, Hitachi, Ebara, Shenyang Blower Works.
The report provides separate comprehensive analytics for the North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Middle East and Africa and Rest of World. In this sector, global competitive landscape and supply/demand pattern of Centrifugal Compressor industry has been provided.
Request A Sample Copy Of This Report at: www.radiantinsights.com/research/global-centrifugal-compressor-market-forecast-and-analysis-2016-2021/request-sample
Table of Contents
Part 1. Scope of Report
1.1 Research Methodology
1.2 Geographic Scope
1.3 Years Considered
Part 2. Introduction
2.1 Key Findings
2.2 Value Chain Analysis
2.2.2 Upstream
2.2.3 Downstream
Browse All Reports of This Category at: http://www.radiantinsights.com/catalog/equipment
About Radiant Insights,Inc
Radiant Insights is a platform for companies looking to meet their market research and business intelligence requirements. We assist and facilitate organizations and individuals procure market research reports, helping them in the decision making process. We have a comprehensive collection of reports, covering over 40 key industries and a host of micro markets. In addition to over extensive database of reports, our experienced research coordinators also offer a host of ancillary services such as, research partnerships/ tie-ups and customized research solutions.
For more information, please visit http://www.radiantinsights.com/research/global-centrifugal-compressor-market-forecast-and-analysis-2016-2021
Contact Info:
Name: Michelle Thoras
Email: sales@radiantinsights.com
Organization: Radiant Insights, Inc.
Address: 28 2nd Street, Suite 3036 San Francisco
Phone: 4153490054
Source: http://marketersmedia.com/centrifugal-compressor-market-forecast-and-growth-analysis-report-from-2016-to-2021-radiant-insightsinc/123296
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AJ Bell has confirmed to FTAdviser that it has reclassified property funds that have been suspended as a non-standard asset under the Financial Conduct Authority self-invested personal pensions capital adequacy rules.
This follows a number of temporary suspensions of property funds in the UK in the wake of the UKs decision to leave the European Union .
AJ Bell will not, however, increase Sipp charges for customers holding these property investments in their Sipps.
Speaking to FTAdviser, Mike Morrison, head of platform technical at AJ Bell, said:We believe the decision by a number of investment firms to close the doors of their property funds means that, under the upcoming Sipp capital adequacy rules, they would need to be treated as non-standard assets.
However, AJ Bell is in a strong financial position and so this would not lead to an increase in fees for customers holding these investments.
Abraham Okusanya, principal at FinalytiQ, said the question as to whether to designate property funds as non-standard asset comes down to the individual Sipp provider.
He said: My sense is that, as most providers dont consider most UK based commercial property non-standard, it will be a bit strange to consider property funds non-standard.
Also, the liquidity issue with property fund(s) is largely temporary. Designating the funds as non-standard asset right now suggest that youll then need to change it back to standard when liquidity resumes.
However, he said it was a possibility that in the event of the recent fund suspensions Sipp providers would now opt to class it as non-standard, meaning they would have to hold more regulatory capital to meet capital adequacy requirements.
FTAdviser asked a number of Sipp providers if the spate of property fund suspensions, which included Henderson, Threadneedle, Standard Life Investments, M&G and Aviva Investors temporarily closing the gate on retail investors, whether they had plans to reclassify property.
Rupert Curtis, chief executive officer at Curtis Banks, said he was considering reclassifying the funds.
A spokesperson for James Hay Partnership said they would assess the circumstances for any fund suspensions on a case by case basis.
The spokesperson said: Realistically, we could imagine a scenario whereby a property fund that is suspended could end up being classified as a non-standard investment if there is little chance of redemption within 30 days, however in such cases we would not envisage a non-standard investment charge being applied.
Martin Tilley, director of technical services at Dentons Pensions, said: This is a very interesting point as regulated funds are ordinarily standard assets and the imposition of the suspension of trade on them does call into question their liquidity.
He said at present Dentons is monitoring the situation.
Mr Tilley said: I think we would need some guidance by the regulator as under their guidance, regulated funds are standard assets and Sipp providers are most likely to continue to treat them as such.
Statistics from the Financial Services Compensation Scheme have demonstrated the difference in amount of defaults between mortgage brokers and advisers covering pensions and investments.
The FSCS stated almost 50 home finance firms - the sector which includes mortgage brokers - have been declared in default since January 2010 and it has paid out more than 2.5m worth of compensation in respect of over 200 claims.
This is in comparison to 507 life and pensions advisers and 387 investment advisers over the same period, in terms of which the FSCS has had to pay out 159m and 468m respectively.
Declared in default after January 2010 Funding Subclass Number of firms Amount Investment intermediation 387 468,943,691 Life and pensions intermediation 507 159,292,384 Home finance 50 2,552,167 Total 944 630,788,242
Robert Sinclair, chief executive at the Association of Mortgage Intermediaries, stated the data provides more evidence that mortgage brokers are not the bad guys.
However, because of the structure of the FSCS, mortgage firms are paying huge amounts for failures in pensions and related investment advice, he commented.
More important is the failure of the regulator and professional bodies to ban directors of these failed firms. It is one thing for a firm to fail and it to phoenix, but must be more wrong where this leaves liability in the FSCS.
For that to happen it is more than financial failure, it is bad advice and poor controls. We need better action to prevent owners of these firms returning.
In June, Mr Sinclair sounded a rallying call on reform of the FSCS levy, stating brokers should not be paying for misdemeanours in sectors where they do not advise. He suggested the FSCS funding review should have opened on a product levy, not dismissed it as out of scope because it requires legislative change.
Daniel Bailey, mortgage broker with Derbyshire-based Middleton Finance, said the figures were not that surprising, as the market has steadily improved since 2010, adding those 50 firms which have gone probably did so between 2011 and 2013.
FSCS fees have been rising steadily I think, and although Im an appointed representative of a network, it has still been hard for a lot of brokers, especially when procuration fees havent increased much since 2008.
A spokeswoman for the FSCS explained distribution of the levy depends on the regulatory permissions a firm has, so a mortgage broker may have also registered with the FCA to give regulated investment and pension advice and therefore be paying more.
The existing funding system splits the levy into eight broad classes: deposits; life and pensions; general insurance; general insurance intermediation; life and pensions intermediation; investment intermediation; investments; and home finance.
Each firms contribution is calculated on the tariff base applicable to the relevant class and each contributes proportionally, the spokeswoman stated. A threshold for each class is set by the PRA and FCA by reference to what a particular class (taken as a whole) can be expected to afford in a year.
The Association of British Insurers has come under fire for failing to introduce standards for the protection industry, in line with those being brought in for pensions.
In May, the ABI, along with providers, stated the dashboard should be a centralised system that providers could put on their website under their own branding.
Finance and Technology Research Centre director Ian McKenna accused the trade body of choking off things that are in customers interests.
They are a protectionist trade body that puts the interests of their members way ahead of the consumer, and as such, is no longer fit for purpose, he commented.
Take for example the proposals they have put forward for the pension dashboard. These are the equivalent of saying lets build a bicycle when you have a BMW sitting outside.
Their proposals make perfect sense, if the internet didn't exist and smart phones hadn't been invented.
Mr McKenna argued as a Fintech leader, the UK already has plenty of suppliers to deliver a pensions and protection dashboard, which would help consumers better understand the cover they have, both individually and provided by their employer.
He said: For too long the protection industry has been the poor relation of the savings industry when it comes to delivering good customer data.
A decade ago pension and savings providers put in place mechanisms to make the values of investments available online. The same work was done for protection, but life insurers failed to adopt it.
We have seen overwhelming demand from protection advisers for delivering a better customer experience but insurers continuously cite legacy systems as an excuse for doing nothing, he added.
Protection advisers have also taken aim at the ABI for not implementing industry standards for the publication of policy statements.
Roy McLoughlin, partner at protection specialists Master Adviser, said he was astounded the ABI did not encourage the majority of providers to at least send annual statements out to policyholders.
There is a fear people might use them to go on comparison sites and try to find a better deal, but I think overwhelmingly people would top up, rather than shop around and leave.
People simply forget what theyve got and often that means cover becomes inadequate, he stated, adding: Surely this is a Treating Customers Fairly situation?
An ABI spokesperson responded the issue of making sure consumers were aware of the protection policies they had in place and the benefits the schemes offered was not one that providers had raised with the trade body.
Individual providers make commercial decisions about how to best communicate with their customers on their protection insurance policies, they added.
For want of stating the obvious, Europe is an interesting investment conundrum right now.
Even before the Brexit vote, the European Central Bank (ECB) decided it would extend its asset purchase programme and buy investment-grade, euro-denominated bonds in a bid to increase confidence among corporates and boost the economy.
Last month marked the start of that new phase of its 80bn (68bn) monthly buying spree. By adding corporate bonds to its buy list of government, agency and covered bonds, as well as asset-backed securities, the central bank has moved firmly into the realm of credit easing.
This move reaffirmed the ECBs promise to do whatever it takes and, as we know, this type of quantitative easing is positive for risk assets. But Brexit has rather put a spanner in the works.
Theres now a question mark over firms that have a significant amount of trade with the UK. Perhaps more significantly, there is the worry of Brexit contagion and an eventual break-up of the EU and common currency. Political risk has risen in every European country.
Growth, which had been recovering, is likely to slow. Dividend yields will act as a support to some extent, but confidence will have taken a real knock.
Uncertain times to say the least, and we can expect volatility and some big divergences in market performance in the coming months. That said, opportunities will present themselves and investors should still have part of their core portfolio invested in European equities.
Good companies havent suddenly become bad companies and there are some world leaders based in the continent that are not dependent on the UK.
With all this in mind, the Henderson European Focus fund is worth a look. Its a more concentrated version of the Henderson European Selected Opportunities vehicle (which I also like), with 30-40 holdings that are weighted by conviction.
The process is governed by early identification of industry or sector themes that will still be around a decade from now. This allows manager John Bennett to ignore the macro-driven fear or optimism that fills newspapers and focus on what matters real or absolute value.
In addition, a focus on investing in change is the mechanism through which Mr Bennett and his team invest early enough to maximise potential upside. And if there was ever a time when change is taking place, now seems to be it. In the post-Brexit world, these points will resonate with, and hopefully reassure, many worried investors.
The manager believes that inefficiencies persist across European markets as a whole, due to the diverse local, regional, industry and global supply and demand drivers, which exert uneven pressures on the various markets. By taking a thematic approach to focus on these drivers, he and his team can uncover pockets of opportunity across all market conditions.
Aberdeen Asset Management has ended the week-long suspension of its UK Property funds but investors wishing to redeem still face a 17 per cent cut in prices.
The fund house said investors are able to submit trades as of midday today (July 13), at a diluted price that reflects the current market environment and the fact that short-term sales in the property market have relatively penal consequences.
The suspension, implemented last Wednesday as Aberdeen announced the 17 per cent price cut amid a host of rivals indefinitely suspending their own property funds, was originally scheduled to last 24 hours.
It was then extended by a further 24 hours last Thursday, and subsequently by an additional 48 hours, moves Aberdeen said were to allow those who had submitted trades prior to the suspension to consider their options.
The asset manager also made a separate 7 per cent fair value adjustment to the price of its portfolio at the time of the original suspension.
Aberdeen chief executive Martin Gilbert said today: Investors should be aware that the price may be adjusted on a daily basis to reflect the funds requirement to provide liquidity and the need to protect all investors.
The market may take time to find its level but I have no doubt that property will continue to play an important part in investors portfolios.
An Aberdeen spokesperson added: Although todays price also incorporates a fair value adjustment of 7 per cent on property holdings, the diluted price is quite distinct from that and not a reflection of what we believe is currently achievable in the absence of undue pressure to sell properties.
New prime minister Theresa May has been urged to adopt a national strategy and recruit a TB supremo to inform government policy to help eradicate bovine TB.
John Bourne, who oversaw the 50m Labour government-funded Randomised Badger Culling Trial (RBCT) between 1997 and 2008, said the government should appoint a TB supremo with a small team of between three to five people.
This expert person and the team would stand independently of government and be allowed to just get on and do the job of informing government on its TB policy decisions.
We will eradicate TB in 25 years? Not a hope in hell. We just cant. There is too much infection in the countryside
John Bourne
See also: More badger culls planned this summer, says Defra minister
Prof Bourne warned that Defra hadnt a hope in hell of eradicating TB in the next 25 years with its current plans.
There was more chance of the England football team winning a World Cup over the next six tournaments, he suggested.
He accused Defra ministers of overseeing a piecemeal and tactical TB policy which had no strategic plan.
We will eradicate TB in 25 years? Not a hope in hell, said Prof Bourne. We just cant. There is too much infection in the countryside.
But what one can do, with a well-thought-through strategy that controls animal movements and includes sensible use of the tools available, can seriously reduce that disease over a 10-year period.
TB skin test inadequate
Cattle-to-cattle transmission of disease within herds was the biggest factor for new TB outbreaks, he said. But the current TB tuberculin skin test was inadequate because it left too many diseased cattle in herds with multiple breakdowns.
He urged Mrs May to adopt a national strategy on bovine TB, based on risk-based trading that must involve increased biosecurity, which farmers must be made to comply with as a statutory requirement.
Prof Bourne joined other wildlife experts who delivered testimonies for and against culling badgers at a press briefing at Westminster hosted by Queen guitarist and anti-cull campaigner Brian May on Tuesday (12 July).
Professor Rosie Woodroffe, a senior research fellow at Londons Institute of Zoology, warned that the current badger control licence conditions, which include free shooting of badgers, were unlikely to deliver effective culls.
She said the pilot culls had not succeeded in removing enough badgers and risked spreading disease further.
RBCT trial results
Prof Woodroffe said the RBCT trial had shown that in 10 areas where badger density was reduced by about 70%, confirmed cattle TB cases went down by about one-quarter.
However, in areas outside the culling zones where there had been about a 20% reduction in badger numbers, the trial showed there had been a 25% increase in cattle TB cases.
She put this down to the perturbation effect of badgers fleeing cull zones and spreading disease further.
If you are not reducing the badger numbers enough, you end up with a benefit inside and a harmful effect on the adjoining land.
Ranald Munro, chairman of the independent expert panel that oversaw the culls in 2013, said badger culling was a distraction from the main issue of controlling TB infection within and between cattle herds.
The pilot culls in Gloucestershire and Somerset are due to enter the final year of a four-year licence this summer; and the four-year cull in Dorset will enter its second year.
Cull extension considered
However, Natural England is currently assessing 29 farmer-led applications to extend culling to more counties in England as part of efforts to tackle bovine TB in herds.
Plans to roll out the cull in the late summer/early autumn to six new counties Cheshire, Devon, Cornwall, Herefordshire, Wiltshire and Worcestershire are under consideration.
A Defra spokesman said: England has the highest incidence of TB in Europe and that is why we are taking strong action to deliver our 25-year strategy to eradicate the disease and protect the future of our dairy and beef industries.
Badger control in areas where TB is rife is one part of our long-term plan, which also includes strengthening cattle testing and movement controls, improving biosecurity on farm and when trading, and badger vaccination.
This comprehensive approach has worked overseas and is supported by the government and Defra chief scientists and leading vets.
Tesco has announced it will phase out the sale of eggs produced by hens kept in colony cage systems by 2025.
Britains largest retailer said in a short statement that it had conducted a detailed review of its egg sourcing strategy and concluded the sale of colony egg should end.
It added 43% of eggs sold were currently from hens kept in caged systems.
See also: Soya sourcing are poultry companies acting responsibly?
John Kirkpatrick, agriculture manager for poultry and eggs at Tesco, told Poultry World the next step would be reviewing with suppliers how the transition could be made. We have consulted with our supply base, and will look to use existing assets where possible.
This would see some units converted to multi-tier barn systems, and the idea that colony could be converted to free range would not be ruled out.
He added the future split of sales would likely be continued growth in free-range egg sales, but also some multi-tier barn, explaining: Our customers will still want a value tier of egg.
Mr Kirkpatrick denied that the decision had been driven by a petition started by 14-year-old Lucy Gavaghan, signed almost 300,000 times, calling for an end to the sale of caged and barn eggs by Tesco.
Instead, it was the conclusion of a review that begun some five months ago as part of wider changes within Tesco. We want to demonstrate leadership in the sector, said Mr Kirkpatrick.
Sustainability and welfare
Matt Simister, commercial director at Tesco, said the move was to ensure sustainable sourcing and improve animal welfare.
We carried out an extensive and collaborative review with our suppliers and key industry experts to help us work through how best we can move to 100% cage-free eggs, he explained.
This will ensure we give our supplier partners the certainty they require, to make the significant and necessary investments needed for the new farming systems.
Noble Foods managing director Veli Moluluo said that, as Tescos largest supplier of eggs, it had already begun investigating alternative production methods.
Other retailers
Much of Americas retailers and restaurant chains have also committed to ending caged hen production, leading to calls for the same move here.
In particular, Walmart in the states plans to phase out caged hens from its supply chain leading to pressure on its UK-based subsidiary, Asda, to do the same.
Last month, Aldi followed its Australian business in making a similar commitment.
Sainsburys, Waitrose, Marks & Spencer and the Cooperative do not sell eggs from caged hens.
Story Highlights Nearly half of blacks say their local police treat blacks unfairly
More whites say blacks treated unfairly in dealings with police
Blacks who report personal mistreatment by police steady at 16%
PRINCETON, N.J. -- Just before the July 5 and July 6 fatal shootings of black men during routine law enforcement encounters in Louisiana and Minnesota, blacks in the U.S. were evenly divided over the treatment of blacks by their local police. Half of blacks responded in a June 7-July 1 Gallup poll that police in their local area treat blacks and other racial minorities fairly, while 48% said they treat blacks unfairly.
Blacks' Perceptions of Local Police Treatment of Blacks/Racial Minorities How would you say local police in your area treat racial minorities including blacks -- [very fairly, fairly, unfairly (or) very unfairly]? Jun 15-Jul 10, 2015 Jun 7-Jul 1, 2016 % % Very fairly 8 9 Fairly 44 41 Unfairly 33 29 Very unfairly 15 19 Total fairly 52 50 Total unfairly 48 48 Gallup
Nineteen percent of blacks thought local police treated blacks very unfairly, similar to what Gallup found in 2015.
These results are based on Gallup's Minority Rights and Relations survey. The 2016 poll was conducted by telephone with 3,270 national adults, including large oversamples of blacks and Hispanics.
Although young black men have been the focal point of recent news stories about police shootings, black women -- along with younger blacks -- are more likely to express criticism of the police than are black men and older blacks. Fifty-three percent of black women versus 43% of black men say local police treat blacks and other minorities unfairly. Similarly, 52% of blacks aged 18 to 49 versus 43% of blacks 50 and older think police treatment of minorities is unfair.
Perceptions of Police Treatment of Blacks in Local Area Very fairly/Fairly Very unfairly/Unfairly % % Black men 56 43 Black women 45 53 Blacks 18 to 49 47 52 Blacks 50+ 55 43 Gallup, June 7-July 1, 2016
The views of male and female blacks, as well as younger and older blacks, are similar to what Gallup found when first asking this question last year.
Black Americans' perceptions of how racial minorities are treated by local police are markedly different from the views of Hispanics and non-Hispanic whites. While almost half of blacks believe racial minorities are treated unfairly, only 34% of Hispanics and 20% of whites agree.
Perceptions of Police Treatment of Blacks in Local Area Very fairly/Fairly Very unfairly/Unfairly % % Jun 7-Jul 1, 2016 U.S. adults 71 26 Blacks 50 48 Hispanics 65 34 Non-Hispanic whites 77 20 Jun 15-Jul 10, 2015 U.S. adults 73 25 Blacks 52 48 Hispanics 71 29 Non-Hispanic whites 78 19 Gallup
Whites Express Record-High Belief That Blacks Are Treated Worse by Police
A longer-term Gallup trend asking Americans how blacks in their community are treated compared with whites in "dealing with the police, such as traffic incidents" finds even broader dissatisfaction among blacks. Two-thirds of blacks say blacks are treated less fairly than whites in such encounters. While down slightly from last year's 73%, it is still higher than the 55% and 60% readings in the late 1990s.
Hispanics (45%) and non-Hispanic whites (40%) are far less likely than blacks to perceive a disparity in police treatment by race. However, the percentage of whites expressing this sentiment is up from 34% in 2015.
As a result, the overall percentage of Americans believing blacks receive worse treatment than whites from the police remains at a record high -- 45%, statistically similar to the 43% recorded in 2015.
Meanwhile, the percentage of blacks reporting that they personally have experienced unfair treatment from police -- now 16% -- is similar to the level Gallup has recorded since 2013. From 1999 through 2007, the percentage was slightly higher than it is now, ranging between 20% and 25%.
Bottom Line
A video of several police officers beating Rodney King after a high-speed chase in Los Angeles in 1991 gave the public a rare, pre-smartphone glimpse of police brutality that proved explosive. The proliferation of camera phones and social media has made similar images commonplace in recent years, possibly contributing to heightened public concern about such events. Most notably, even before the recent shootings, four in 10 whites, up from 34% last year, thought the police in their community treat blacks less fairly than whites. Also, the percentage of blacks believing the police treat blacks and other racial minorities less fairly than whites was on the high side of Gallup's two-decade trend, even as the percentage who personally felt mistreated within the previous month remained on the low side.
More broadly, negative views of local police are by no means universal among black Americans. In fact, before the latest incidents, as many blacks said their local police are fair in their dealings with blacks as said they are unfair. But a huge racial gap remains, with the majority of Hispanics and non-Hispanic whites believing blacks are treated fairly.
Historical data are available in Gallup Analytics.
Survey Methods
Results for this Gallup poll are based on telephone interviews conducted June 7-July 1, 2016, with a sample of 3,270 adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia, who had previously been interviewed in the Gallup Daily tracking poll and agreed to be re-interviewed for a later study. The sample is weighted to be representative of U.S. adults.
For results based on the total sample of national adults, the margin of sampling error is 3 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. For results based on the sample of 1,320 non-Hispanic whites, the margin of sampling error is 4 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. For results based on the sample of 912 non-Hispanic blacks, the margin of sampling error is 5 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. For results based on the sample of 906 Hispanics, the margin of sampling error is 6 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. (271 out of the 906 interviews with Hispanics were conducted in Spanish.)
All reported margins of sampling error include computed design effects for weighting.
Learn more about how the Gallup Poll Social Series works.
Story Highlights Approval rating of prime minister tumbles to 34%
Forty-two percent confident in national government
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The suicide bombing in Baghdad last week -- by far the deadliest attack in Iraq in a decade -- will likely further test Iraqis' waning faith in the leadership of Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi and his government. In April this year, only 34% of Iraqis approved of Abadi's job performance. This is very different from the 72% approval ratings when Abadi first took office in 2014 after the unceremonious departure of his predecessor Nouri al-Maliki.
The high approval ratings when Abadi first took office illustrate the lofty expectations Iraqis had for their prime minister. Abadi was expected to help bridge the ethnic and sectarian divides in Iraq and wrest control over parts of Iraq from the so-called Islamic State. The political honeymoon proved short-lived, however, with Abadi's approval rating sinking to 47% by late 2015 -- across most, if not all governorates of Iraq.
Abadi's latest low approval ratings were collected during weeks of political turmoil within the country's parliament that culminated with supporters of Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr storming parliament. The prime minister's low approval ratings may be symptomatic of Iraqis' low approval of their country's leadership in general -- which now sits at 35% -- and their falling confidence in their national government (42%).
The truck bombings took place in the Karrada neighborhood just as the government celebrated its victory against the Islamic State in Fallujah. Iraq's interior minister resigned, blaming the bombing on failing security measures around Baghdad and calling for reform. Public perception of widespread corruption in government is intensifying: rising from 67% in 2014 to 79% this year.
Implications
Exactly 13 years ago this month, Gallup prepared to launch its first poll of Baghdad after the fall of Saddam Hussein. Iraqi interviewers conducting the poll on Gallup's behalf adamantly objected to asking Iraqis about religious sects, telling Gallup that Iraqis would be affronted by questions like this. The interviewers cited that about 40% of the registered marriages in Baghdad were mixed marriages between Sunnis and Shiites. For those interviewers, the notion of a sectarian conflict then was something dreamed up by enemies of Iraq.
The bombing in Baghdad last week gutted exactly the same neighborhood that Gallup Iraqi interviewers operated from back in the summer of 2003 and later in the winter of 2004. Today, the sectarian divisions are violently all too real, and unity is more like the dream.
Survey Methods
Results are based on telephone interviews with 1,011 Iraqi adults, aged 15 and older, conducted in April 2016. For results based on the total sample of national adults, the margin of sampling error is 3.9 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. All reported margins of sampling error include computed design effects for weighting.
For more complete methodology and specific survey dates, please review Gallup's Country Data Set details.
Learn more about how the Gallup World Poll works.
'Hawaii Five-0' Season 7 Air Date, Spoilers, News & Update: 'Grey's Anatomy' Star Joins Cast? Find Out Who!
Now that the cast has officially started filming for the "Hawaii Five-0" Season 7, a new bombshell was dropped that a "Grey's Anatomy" star will be added to the mix. Could it be Katherine Heigl (Izzie Stevens) or Patrick Dempsey (Derek "McDreamy" Shepherd)?
'Hawaii Five-0' Season 7 new cast member is from 'Grey's Anatomy'
"Hawaii Five-0" Season 7 is definitely ready to make viewers get hyped up to the show's latest installment, and what better way to do that than to add another actor on set which is known for his outstanding skills in portraying TV characters.
The name Faran Tahir may not ring a bell to some people, but his face is definitely familiar. Faran Tahir has been a part of "Grey's Anatomy" and "Supernatural," and now he is going to spice things up in "Hawaii Five-0" Season 7.
Faran Tahir joins 'Hawaii Five-0' Season 7
As of now, the "Hawaii Five-0" Season 7 show has kept mum regarding the character of Faran Tahir, but Asia Starz confirmed that the 53-year-old Pakistani-American actor will join "Hawaii Five-0" Season 7 as a guest star and not a regular cast.
Just to show how in-demand Faran Tahir really is, the "Hawaii Five-0" Season 7 guest star will also be seen in the highly-anticipated "Prison Break" Season 5 that will premiere in early 2017.
"The last 3 months have been fun location wise for me as an actor as I have been shooting for upcoming Prison Break in Vancouver and then Morocco," "Hawaii Five-0" Season 7 Faran Tahir shared. "Now [we'll] be heading out to beautiful Hawaii for the show Hawaii Five-0."
READ: 'Prison Break' Season 5 Air Date, Spoilers, News & Update: Plot Details Revealed!
"Prison Break" Season 5 actor Dominic Purcell (Lincoln Burrows) revealed that they have already started shooting for "Prison Break" Season 5 in Morocco.
The 46-year-old Australian actor mentioned that Michael J. Scofield (Wentworth Miller) is alive. He shared that Michael J. Scofield did not die in "The Final Break" but instead he was captured and thrown in jail in "Prison Break" Season 5.
Faran Tahir's character in "Prison Break" Season 5 has yet to be revealed.
'Quantico' Season 2 Air Date, Spoilers, News & Update: Pearl Thusi and Blair Underwood Among New Additions to the Sophomore Season
ABC's new drama "Quantico" debuted to favorable reviews when it first hit the airwaves last September. A month later, the network ordered a full series, bringing the total number of episodes up to 22.
The show's freshman year ended in May, when fans got to see Simon Asher (Tate Ellington) sacrifice his life to steer away a bomb and thereby save the lives of Miranda Shaw (Aunjanue Ellis), Ryan Booth (Jake McLaughlin), and the rest of the agents of Quantico. The season finale also saw Alex Parrish (Priyanka Chopra) receiving a job offer for a position in the CIA.
This September, "Quantico" season 2 will debut with new additions to the show's sophomore season. In fact, Deadline reports that South African actress Pearl Thusi will be joining the cast of the ABC series. Thusi will bring to life Dayana Mampasi, which Deadline describes as a "driven, disciplined, type-A lawyer." Dayana is a Harvard product who graduated top of her class, and worked at an NGO for a couple of years before moving on to become part of her parents' firm in Boston.
Like Thusi, Blair Underwood will also be part of "Quantico" season 2 as a series regular. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the 51-year old actor will play Owen Hall, an "intelligent, inspirational, charming," CIA officer that may have a hidden agenda. But whether or not Owen intends to stir up drama or cause trouble in the life of Alex Parrish remains to be seen.
Series creator and executive producer Joshua Safran had nothing but praises for Underwood, as he said that the actor is very talented. In fact, Safran says he can't wait to create Owen to showcase Underwood's talents. What role Owen plays in Alex's life remains to be seen when the sophomore season of "Quantico" returns to television later this year.
ABC's "Quantico" season 2 premieres on September 25 at 9 p.m.
'One-Punch Man' Season 2 Air Date, Spoilers, News & Update: Whet Your Appetite For The New Season With Saitama's Greatest Opponents
Is everybody still waiting for "One-Punch Man" Season 2? The answer will always be "YES!" Unfortunately, fans will need to wait a little longer before Saitama lands another mindblowing "WAAAN PAANCHH!"
But here's the good news: "One-Punch Man" English dub will air on Adult Swim's Toonami on July 15. Fans who simply cannot wait another two days for that can whet their appetite with Saitama's greatest opponents before the "One-Punch Man" Season 2 release date.
Geryuganshoop
In addition to being one of Lord Boros' most powerful fighters, Geryuganshoop is memorable for his awesome name. Saitama did not have any trouble killing him in "One-Punch Man" Season 1, but Geryuganshoop (who doesn't enjoy saying that over and over again?) still held his own for a short time.
Geryuganshoop was the one who told Lord Boros about Saitama's plans, which is the kind of thing that could get a character killed off to never return in "One-Punch Man" Season 2.
Melzalgald
Lord Boros sure knows how to pick them. Melzalgald has a name that matches his terrifying appearance and power in "One-Punch Man" Season 1. How hard is it to defeat this guy? He can regenerate and divide himself into 5 different bodies, which is a neat trick when going up against S-Class hero.
Overall, Melzalgald is one character that could have his own spinoff anime or perhaps return in "One-Punch Man" Season 2.
Lord Boros
The biggest and baddest of them all should be the leader of The Dark Matter Thieves. Boros is (or was, anyway) the most powerful villain who was almost impossible to defeat in "One-Punch Man" Season 1.
His last words to Saitama even mocked the Caped Baldy, which probably made him appear as a sore loser. But still, "One-Punch Man" Season 2 would not be the same without Lord Boros.
"One-Punch Man" Season 2 is set for release in October 2016. In the meantime, enjoy Saitama's greatest fights in the video below.
Do you think Garou should be part of the list? Is there any "One-Punch Man" Season 1 villain that we missed? Let us know in the comments.
No justice, no peace. No racist police.
About 200 people shouted that message Tuesday evening in front of the Benton County Courthouse while dozens of cars driving by honked their support for the peaceful protest organized through Corvallis Showing Up for Racial Justice.
The gathering, which included participation from members of the Corvallis branch of the NAACP, Community Action for Racial Equity Mid-Valley and several faith groups, protested the recent fatal police shootings of Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Philando Castile in Falcon Heights, Minnesota.
Our hearts are breaking, Faith Reidenbach of Corvallis SURJ told the crowd gathered in front of the downtown courthouse. The killings are happening faster than we can publicize them.
Reidenbach, who is white, said the purpose of Tuesday nights protest was to rally white people to join in the fight for racial equality and work against structures that perpetuate racism and white supremacy.
It is time for white people to join black people and other people of color in working for an end to police violence, she said. White people in Corvallis must join other cities to say we will no longer be complicit with this violence being done in our names.
Reidenbach added that the protest was not aimed at the Corvallis Police Department.
We think that Corvallis has an exceptional police department, and we feel grateful to have it, Reidenbach said. But we think its vital that white people call for an end to police violence.
Several people in attendance Tuesday night also mourned the officers shot and killed in Dallas along with the people of color killed by police. Barry Jerkins, president of the Corvallis NAACP and a former federal police officer, asked the crowd to stand with racial justice groups and demand changes from their government and their police departments.
(The NAACP) as an organization is doing everything we can to make sure justice is served, but we cannot do this alone. I ask you to stand in solidarity, Jerkins said. If youre white, talk to other white people about racism. They need to hear it from you.
Jerkins added that the recent killings and response reminded him of growing up in Alabama during the civil rights movement.
I, as a child, witnessed lynching myself, Jerkins said. White people were forced to watch, and black people, we were forced to watch also to instill fear and remind us of our place. Fast-forward to 2016, when I viewed the videos of those two young men (Sterling and Castile) getting assassinated; to me, that was nothing but lynching.
Angel Harris, a nurse and member of the Corvallis NAACP, spoke through tears Tuesday night after recalling how many times shes spoken following the police shooting of a person of color.
Not because this is the first time, but because its probably not the last, Harris said. This is not a black problem; this is our problem.
Harris said there are things that people of all races can do to help effect change.
Divided groups cannot make this world a better place. Lets not let fear rule us, and lets unite and come together, she said. Weve come together, and coming together is not easy. But it doesnt do a lot if you cant leave this place and be willing to make a change in your everyday life. I know we all hear comments and say nothing. Im not saying scream at people, but you have to say something. You have to say, 'Thats not OK.' Thats what you can do every day.
Lindsey Frye held up a sign Tuesday night during the protest that said "I can't stay calm, I have black children." Frye, of Springfield, said she drove up to the protest with both of her mixed-race children so the kids "could see what their world looks like."
"I didn't want my children to become the next hashtag," Frye said. "Yes, every life is important, but there is obviously a group of people whose lives are extraordinarily threatened."
Life Can't Get Much Better
Good Charlotte - Youth Authority - Youth Authority
Hollingsworth & Vose has agreed to do additional air quality monitoring in and around its south Corvallis glass fiber plant as part of its arrangement with state environmental regulators to address emissions and permitting violations.
In a negotiated addendum to its mutual agreement and final order with the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality, H&V agreed to take the following steps:
Install monitoring equipment to measure carbon monoxide levels in the neighborhood.
Install equipment to continuously monitor carbon monoxide emissions from the companys smokestacks.
Set up a meteorological station to gather data about weather patterns and air movement in the neighborhood.
Conduct three rounds of emissions testing in the next year.
The company is paying the costs of the additional testing and monitoring efforts and will provide the data collected to DEQ, which will post the information on its website (see box with this story).
DEQ officials revealed last December that the glass fiber plant at 1115 S.E. Crystal Lake Drive had been operating under the wrong class of air emissions permit for nearly 20 years and had been emitting much higher levels of carbon monoxide and fluorides than its permit allowed.
The agency negotiated a settlement that requires Hollingsworth & Vose to pay $240,000 in fines and fees but allows it to keep operating its south Corvallis plant while it applies for higher-level permits. A portion of those fines will be offset by contributions toward the cost of local environmental improvement projects.
Claudia Davis, the western region air quality manager for DEQ, said she hopes the steps laid out in the addendum will fill some knowledge gaps about whether emissions from the plant may pose a health hazard for people who live in the area.
During emotionally charged meetings with DEQ and company officials in January and March, neighbors of the facility expressed serious concerns about the amounts of carbon monoxide, fluorides and particulate matter coming out of the stacks and possibly building up at ground level.
I believe this addendum is a very good thing that addresses a lot of the concerns we heard at the community meetings, Davis said.
The folks there have legitimate concerns, and were trying really hard to answer their questions.
Hollingsworth & Vose acquired the Corvallis facility in 1996, when it purchased Evanite Fiber. Today the plant employs about 140 people and produces glass fiber used in specialty battery separator material and high-end air filtration systems.
In a statement announcing the addendum issued on Friday, a Hollingsworth & Vose executive said the company is working to protect the environment.
A large part of H&Vs business is focused on the production of advanced filtration and separation materials which help to improve environmental conditions around the world, said Ken Fausnacht, the companys vice president of global operations. We are committed to maintaining that same approach at our Corvallis facility.
Community activist Marilyn Koenitzer, a longtime critic of the plants environmental record and organizer of the fledgling citizens group Clean Corvallis Air, welcomed the addendum as a step in the right direction but said she would like to see more monitoring in the area. In particular, shes like to see DEQ monitor air near the H&V plant for fluorides, particulates and volatile organic compounds in addition to carbon monoxide.
My goal is to have the people breathe clean air, Koenitzer said.
I dont want (Hollingsworth & Vose) to move, she added. I just want them to do what they can to make it better. Little by little, I feel like were making progress.
LINCOLN Nebraska is going back to "The Good Life."
Gov. Pete Ricketts unveiled state government's first unified brand on July 12, and it takes a nod from the beloved 1970s tourism slogan that still graces highway signs around the state.
The new brand is "Good Life. Great Opportunity."
Versions of that brand, developed by Lincoln advertising firm Firespring for $62,500, will appear on state letterhead, online and in other official capacities.
The tourism slogan will remain "Nebraska Nice" for now but Ricketts encouraged agencies not under his direct control to consider adopting the "Good Life" brand themselves.
He announced the branding at the Cornhusker Marriott before the first Governor's Summit on Economic Development and later revealed the new look to a summit crowd of about 400 people.
"A story will not last if it's not true," the governor said, paraphrasing a quote from John Steinbeck's 1952 novel "East of Eden."
Ricketts said the unified brand is the first of its kind in state history, although Nebraska lawbooks have listed a different official slogan and symbol since 1963: "Welcome to NEBRASKAland ... where the West begins," accompanied by an image of a horse-drawn wagon.
The governor's office will not seek to have the law rewritten, said Ricketts spokesman Taylor Gage.
Firespring began the branding process in October, and a return to "The Good Life" quickly gained favor, said Dave Snitily, the firm's president. Still, Firespring held input sessions in six cities around Nebraska and surveyed 1,500 to 2,000 business leaders, millennials and others about the new brand.
State agencies may customize the "Good Life" by changing the last word to fit their missions, Ricketts said. Four have already done so.
The Roads Department selected "Good Life. Great Journey." Labor picked "Great Connections," the Nebraska State Patrol chose "Great Tradition" and the Department of Motor Vehicles opted for "Great Future."
"It captures the essential nature of Nebraska," state Economic Development Director Courtney Dentlinger said.
Welcome to my genealogy blog. Genea-Musings features genealogy research tips and techniques, genealogy news items and commentary, genealogy humor, San Diego genealogy society news, family history research and some family history stories from the keyboard of Randy Seaver (of Chula Vista CA), who thinks that Genealogy Research Is really FUN! Copyright (c) Randall J. Seaver, 2006-2021.
Beethoven 2020 : Celebrating Beethoven in a big way
Bonn/Berlin Bonn and state officials are drumming up support for the anniversary year of Beethovens 250th Birthday.
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Germany and the birthplace of Bonn are aiming to make a big celebration of Beethovens 250th Birthday in 2020. Bonns Mayor Ashok Sridharan and Monika Grutters, Minister of State for Culture and Media, went to Berlin to gain support and recognition for the occasion. Festivities are planned to begin on December 16, 2019 and run for a year until December 17, 2020. The idea is to make it not only a national event but position it as a global brand. The city has budgeted 3.7 million euro for the celebration. Mayor Sridharan said it was an excellent opportunity for Bonn to present itself as the birthplace and hometown of Ludwig van Beethoven.
While Bonns Mayor was in Berlin, North Rhine Westphalia (NRW) Culture and Family Minister, Christina Kampmann went to the NRW State Parliament to drum up support. All levels of government are needed to support the major undertaking.
During the anniversary year, artistic and interdisciplinary projects should take place across the country, providing diverse and fresh perspectives on the lifetime achievements of Beethoven. All activities surrounding the big anniversary are protected under the trademark: BTHVN2020. Beethoven himself sometimes signed his name without using vowels.
A company has been set up to coordinate and market all activities surrounding the anniversary year: Beethoven GmbH. It has a volunteer Board of Directors. Malte Boecker, who is director of the Beethoven Haus, is also the chair of this volunteer Board.
An internet portal is planned where information can be shared and projects presented. The next step is for Beethoven GmbH to determine its financial status and how well-funded it will be. According to Boecker, this is a process which is still being clarified from a political standpoint.
Syrian refugees : Conflict in Wachtberg refugee shelter
Wachtberg Frustration brews over a long asylum process. Three refugees to be relocated.
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Three young Syrian refugees who have been living in Germany for eight to nine months decided to go on strike in their accommodation at the Wiesenau refugee center. They apparently wanted to protest the slow asylum procedures; this information having been confirmed by Mayor Renate Offergeld and Kurt Zimmerman, volunteer and head of the Ecumenical working group.
According to Offergeld, the trio was to be moved to a different shelter for their actions in disturbing the peace. Zimmerman said that two of them resisted the move but have now agreed to relocate to Fritzdorf. Out of protest, the men camped out during a party outside of the Wiesenau center. Those running the shelter had organized the party for Saturday. The third man who was to be moved is in the hospital and the community still wants to talk to him.
The 22 and 30-year-old Syrians began their protest actions in June during Ramadan. Some of the residents wanted to observe Ramadan and wait until 9 p.m. to eat. A smaller number of residents wanted to eat their meals at the usual times. The three Syrian men belonged to this smaller group. Religious conflict ensued among the residents.
The Wiesenau center does not have its own kitchen and the German Red Cross (DRK), which operates the property contracts for a caterer to bring the meals. Zimmerman explained that taking into account the wishes of all residents, they opted to have the meals delivered at 9 p.m. This caused a controversy. The three Syrians challenged the authority of Tulun Kahlenberg, the director of the center. As Zimmerman said, This is a no-go. Finally, the three agreed to relocate to Fritzdorf.
Offergeld sees the uprising as a kind of cabin fever which has set in due to long months of waiting. In several talks with the Syrians, they heard from the men, Where is our perspective? Problematic for those running the shelter is that they take care of the refugees, offer language courses and do everything they can for them but they have no control over the asylum procedure.
According to Hans Bernd Sonntag of the Wachtberg municipal administration, Most of the approximately 350 refugees in Wachtberg are registered, but they still do not have a hearing date with the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF). Zimmerman sees this as important from the viewpoint of the refugees. They want to know what their fate will be.
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Protecting the worlds oceans an important goal of Germanys climate diplomacy
The worlds oceans are vital to our survival. They regulate the global climate and are a source of food and income for billions of people. Only a very small part of the seas enjoys legal protection, however. Our diplomats are working in New York right now to change this state of affairs.
Honor 8 vs Xiaomi Mi 5: Mid-Range Smartphone War Gets Tougher Features oi -Abhinaya Prabhu
The Honor 8 smartphone is now official and it comes in three variants based on the storage and RAM capacities. We are yet to know about the global pricing and availability of the device, but it might be launched in the coming months.
The device will be priced in the mid-range segment and it will definitely be a stiff competitor to the slew of devices that exist in the specific segment such as the Xiaomi Mi 5. The Xiaomi Mi 5 is a Chinese flagship smartphone that is available in India at a price of Rs 24,999.
Also Read: Karbonn expands 4G portfolio with Rs 5,990 Aura Power
While both are good offerings in the market, here is a detailed comparison between the Honor 8 and Xiaomi Mi 5 for you to know which one is a better smartphone.
Display
The Honor 8 adorns a 5.2-inch Full HD 1080p display and the screen is a curved glass one. On the other hand, the Mi 5 boasts a smaller 5.15-inch IPS display with an FHD resolution of 1080p.
Hardware
While the Honor 8 is powered by an in-house octa-core Kirin 950 processor that is paired with Mali-T880 MP4 graphics, the Xiaomi Mi 5 is energized by a quad-core Snapdragon 820 processor that is teamed up with Adreno 530 graphics.
Also Read: Xiaomi MIUI 8 Global Beta ROM released
Variants
Honor 8 comes in three variants such as 3 GB RAM and 32 GB of storage, 4 GB RAM and 32 GB or 64 GB of storage. Going by the comparison, the Mi 5 has 3 GB RAM and 32 GB of native storage capacity. Notably, the former supports expandable storage support up to 128 GB using a micro SD card.
Also Read: Xiaomi Redmi Note 4 Dual-Camera Setup Leaks
Camera
The Honor 8 features a a 12 MP main snapper with dual-LED flash at its back. This camera is also clubbed with last autofocus. It also features an 8 MP selfie snapper that has a better aperture of f/2.4. In comparison, the main snapper on the Xiaomi Mi 5 is a 16 MP sensor with phase detection autofocus, OIS, and dual-LED flash. It has a 4 MP front-facer with support for FHD video recording.
Software
The Honor 8 runs on EMUI 4.1 based on Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow. On the other hand, the Mi 5 comes with Android 6.0 Marshmallow with MIUI 7 and it will soon receive the MIUI 8 update that has a slew of features additions.
Also Read: Top 10 Samsung Flagship Smartphones That Are Expected to Receive Android Nougat Update
Connectivity
Both these smartphones include connectivity aspects such as 4G LTE, NFC, USB Type-C charging port, dual-SIM support, Bluetooth, and Wi-Fi.
Fingerprint scanner
Both the smartphones include a fingerprint scanner at the front for secure operations. In addition to it, the Honor 8 features an infrared sensor as well.
Battery
Honor 8 and Xiaomi Mi 5 have a 3,000 mAh non-removable battery with the fast charging feature to charge the battery to a specific percentage within a few minutes.
Best Mobiles in India
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Why Galaxy Note 7 and not Note 6?
Samsung has also given reasons why it has skipped the Note 6 name and gone to Galaxy Note 7. Firstly, Galaxy Note 7 will complement the Galaxy S7 and S7 edge flagships and unify the product portfolio. The next reason is that the Galaxy Note 7 will reduce confusion about the most recent technology from the manufacturer providing full alignment with the Galaxy S lineup.
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Iris Scanner Tipped in Invite
Apart from the S Pen stylus with additional functionalities, the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 teaser also shows a ring made of blue-hued pen-like silhouette and a white line that forms an iris pattern as seen in the eye. This tips that the flagship will arrive with ocular-based biometric technology that the Note lineup was long rumored to arrive with.
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Exynos 8893 or Snapdragon 821/820 Spotted
Lately, the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 was spotted in Geekbench database that reveals that the flagship will arrive in two variants with different processors. One variant is powered by the octa-core Exynos 8893 chipset and the other one was spotted with the quad-core Snapdragon 820. With the Snapdragon 821 SoC already being official, we can expect the Note 7 to arrive with this faster SoC.
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Will it have 6 GB RAM?
Though there are rumors and speculations that the Galaxy Note 7 could feature 6 GB RAM for efficient multitasking, the benchmark tests revealed by Geekbench rules out the same and suggests that the device will have just 4 GB of RAM.
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Hybrid UFS 1.0 Standard Based Micro SD Card Slot Expected
Last week, Samsung introduced a new mobile storage format that is based on the UFS 1.0 standard. This way, the read and write speeds will be improved by a minimum of 5x in comparison to the standard micro SD cards. The high-end Note 7 is likely to adopt the new removable storage format from Samsung.
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Pricing has also Leaked
One of the rumors even leaked the pricing of the Galaxy Note 7 tipping that it might be priced starting from EUR 849 ($938). However, we can expect some changes in the final retail pricing.
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Double-Edged Screen
The Galaxy Note 7 is likely to be launched with a double-edged front display that has even confirmed by the first prototype of the device. The device is rumored to come in three color variants such as Black, Blue, and Silver.
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Potential Specs
As of now, the Galaxy Note 7 is rumored to feature a 5.7-inch Quad HD 1440p Super AMOLED curved edge display and 64 GB of internal memory that can be expanded. Based on Android 6.0 Marshmallow, the device might feature a 12 MP rear camera with LED Flash, dual-pixel PDAF, and Smart OIS, and a 5 MP front-facing camera. It is likely to feature the IP68 ratings water and dust resistance. The device is said to feature a heart rate sensor, fingerprint sensor, barometer and come packed with features such as 4G LTE, NFC and USB Type-C. A 3,600 mAh battery is claimed to power the Note 7 giving it the ability to be charged quickly.
Samsung Galaxy On5 Pro vs Lenovo Vibe C2: Which One Will You Buy? Features oi -Abhinaya Prabhu
Within a few days of the launch of Galaxy J2 and Galaxy J Max, Samsung has announced the launch of the Galaxy On5 Pro and Galaxy On7 Pro at Rs 9,190 and Rs 11,190 respectively.
These latest smartphones from Samsung's stable have almost similar specifications as their predecessors - Galaxy On5 and Galaxy On7 expect for a few upgraded aspects. These smartphones come packed with not much-advanced specs.
Also Read: Manzana Drumbazz Bluetooth speakers launched
Another smartphone that has been announced lately is the Lenovo Vibe C2. This smartphone is likely believed to be the Moto E replacement and it arrives with mid-range specs. However, the Lenovo smartphone is yet to be launched in India though we believe that it will be priced reasonably.
Take a look at a detailed spec comparison between the latest smartphones - Samsung Galaxy On5 Pro and Lenovo Vibe C2 from below.
HD screens on both smartphones
Both the smartphones have an identical 5-inch HD IPS display with a resolution of 1280 x 720 pixels. This makes the screens of these smartphones standard and average as any other low-end smartphone.
Galaxy On5 Pro has a better RAM
While the Lenovo Vibe C2 is equipped with a 1 GHz quad-core MediaTek MT6735P processor that is clubbed with Mali-T720 GPU and 1 GB of RAM, the Galaxy On5 Pro is powered by a 1.3 GHz quad-core Exynos 3475 processor that has an identical GPU and a larger 2 GB of RAM.
Also Read: LG Stylus 2 Plus Might be Priced at Rs 25,990
Lenovo Vibe C2 comes in two variants
Lenovo Vibe C2 arrives in two variants in terms of storage. It has 8 GB as well as 16 GB internal storage capacities. Both these variants of the smartphone can be expanded up to 32 GB using a micro SD card. On the other hand, the Samsung offering supports 16 GB of native memory capacity that can be expanded up to 128 GB.
Camera optics seem to be almost similar
Both the smartphones feature an 8 MP rear camera and a 5 MP front-facer for clicking selfies. Though the numbers seem to be the same, we can expect better performance with the Samsung phone as it features f/2.2 aperture.
4G is supported
Going by the current 4G trend, both the Samsung and Lenovo phones are packed with connectivity aspects such as 4G LTE, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS and dual-SIM support as well. The Galaxy On5 Pro is powered by a 2,600 mAh battery and the Vibe C2 is powered by a 2,750 mAh battery.
Also Read: Top 10 Best Smartphones with 20 MP Camera to Buy in India
Android 6.0 Marshmallow on both phones
Samsung Galaxy On5 Pro and Lenovo Vibe C2 are fueled by Android 6.0 Marshmallow and their respective maker's skin such as TouchWiz and Vibe UI respectively. Apart from this, the Galaxy device comes with Ultra Data Saving mode and S Bike mode as well.
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'Feels Like Home Season 2' offers something real and tangible to think about; takes home a pertinent point - if your intentions are good, there is nothing in life that isn't achievable.
Germany spied on 1000s of NATO, EU targets: Bundestag report
Iran Press TV
Tue Jul 12, 2016 5:45AM
Germany's foreign intelligence service spied on hundreds of NATO and European Union diplomatic missions until late 2013, a parliamentary report reveals.
The diplomatic representations of EU and NATO states account for two-thirds of a total of 3,300 targets monitored by the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), according to a Bundestag document seen by the DPA news agency.
A "low two-digit number of people," including heads of state and government as well as ministers, were spied on until October 2013, said the document, which did not clarify when exactly the snooping started.
Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in several sectors, including the aviation and space industries, as well as the arms trade, transport and media were also among the BND targets.
The report further revealed that the intelligence service has also "unjustifiably" snooped on a German citizen in violation of the law that protects German citizens from being the subject of espionage both at home and abroad.
"The most serious problem is that the BND has knowingly and willingly steered at least one German citizen," the report said, referring to the surveillance of the unidentified individual.
Last year, Der Spiegel said Germany's spying missions had targeted interior ministries in Poland, Denmark and Croatia, US diplomatic missions at the EU and UN, the US Treasury Department and Department of the Interior in Washington.
The BND also stands accused of eavesdropping on senior French officials and the European Commission.
In 2013, Edward Snowden, an ex-employee of US National Security Agency, blew the lid off mass surveillance by the agency, including a tap on German Chancellor Angela Merkel's phone.
The revelations angered Merkel, who said at the time that "spying on friends is not acceptable."
However, more revelations later said the BND, which is subordinated to Merkel's office, along with the domestic intelligence service BfV, were helping the NSA in its global espionage missions.
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Coalition Strikes Target ISIL Terrorists in Syria, Iraq
From a Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve News Release
SOUTHWEST ASIA, July 12, 2016 U.S. and coalition military forces continued to attack Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant terrorists in Syria and Iraq yesterday, Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve officials reported today.
Officials reported details of the latest strikes, noting that assessments of results are based on initial reports.
Strikes in Syria
Attack, bomber, fighter and remotely piloted aircraft conducted 16 strikes in Syria:
-- Near Raqqah, two strikes struck an ISIL used-bridge and destroyed an ISIL oil wellhead and three ISIL pump jacks.
-- Near Manbij, 14 strikes struck nine separate ISIL tactical units, destroyed 17 ISIL fighting positions, an ISIL logistics hub and an ISIL artillery piece and damaged an ISIL fighting position.
Strikes in Iraq
Attack, fighter and ground attack aircraft conducted seven strikes in Iraq, coordinated with and in support of Iraq's government:
-- Near Baghdadi, a strike destroyed an ISIL communication relay tower.
-- Near Bashir, a strike struck an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed an ISIL vehicle and ISIL assembly area.
-- Near Kisik, a strike struck an ISIL tactical unit.
-- Near Qayyarah, three strikes struck an ISIL tactical unit; destroyed an ISIL vehicle, three ISIL fighting positions, an ISIL assembly area, an ISIL excavator, an ISIL mortar system and three ISIL boats and denied ISIL access to terrain.
-- Near Sinjar, a strike struck an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed an ISIL fighting 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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Carter Offers Details on Troop Deployment, Iraq Campaign
By Karen Parrish DoD News, Defense Media Activity
WASHINGTON, July 12, 2016 Defense Secretary Ash Carter and one of his senior commanders offered some details about the role of the 560 additional U.S. troops the Defense Department announced yesterday will deploy to Iraq to support Iraqi forces combating the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.
Carter spoke yesterday in Baghdad to reporters traveling with him. The commander of Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve, Army Lt. Gen. Sean MacFarland, joined Carter for the news briefing.
MacFarland told reporters the troops will serve a support role, "to help expand the base at Qayyarah West airfield into a node that can support the Iraqi security forces as they move forward with the Mosul operation." He added that some of the troops will help provide "a security envelope" for the force.
Carter noted the airfield is one of two objectives -- the other being the town of Makhmur in Erbil province -- "that we set some months ago as places from which the Iraqi security forces would position themselves for the southernmost envelopment of Mosul."
He added, "The whole idea is to envelop Mosul from the north and the south, and then collapse ISIL's control over it, as has been done in other cities -- Hit, Rutbah, Fallujah, Ramadi, and so forth."
Achieving 'Important Results'
Carter said Iraqi forces have achieved important results against ISIL, aided by the U.S.-led coalition. "It's essential that this work continue. It's not done yet. We still have important work to do here in Iraq and also in Syria," he said.
The secretary noted that "as we expel ISIL from the major urban areas of Iraq, which the Iraqi security forces with our help are in the process of doing, there will need to be a larger effort to secure the country."
In discussions with Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al Abadi, Carter said, the two leaders also discussed possible support from U.S. intelligence and for countering improvised explosive devices for Baghdad, where ISIL has mounted deadly attacks in recent weeks.
Taking Control Away From ISIL
MacFarland emphasized that ISIL's territorial losses are affecting the group's ability to mount organized attacks.
"As the enemy loses control over some of these key support nodes, like Manbij [in Syria], and eventually Raqqah and Mosul, they lose a base of operations," the general said. "They lose finances. They lose the ability to plan, to create the fake documentation that they need to get around the world.
"And they lose financial resources," he added. "So we don't know how many acts of terror that we've disrupted or prevented so far. It's impossible to know or to prove. But you have to believe that as we continue to deny the enemy the ability -- or a safe haven where they can plan and prepare for these operations -- it will eventually support the larger campaign against terror around the world."
MacFarland said that ISIL is an adaptive enemy that requires an adaptive offense.
"The best defense is a good offense," the general said. "And by continuing to put pressure on the enemy in places like Raqqah, Mosul [and] Manbij, it does prevent the enemy from really hatching a lot of these types of plots. But we are starting to put pressure on the enemy's terror networks, threat networks that are around the capital, and we will continue to ramp that up over time."
Carter said he and other military leaders will continue to look for ways to accelerate the campaign against ISIL in Syria and Iraq, "consistent with our overall strategic approach, which is to achieve a lasting defeat which means working with capable, motivated local forces that can hold territory and govern territory after ISIL is expelled from it."
The secretary added, "We will defeat ISIL, I don't have any doubt about that. But as and when [MacFarland] determines that there are additional capabilities that he needs, again in the enabler role, we will provide them. I will ask the president for them and I have every expectation he will give them."
'Getting the Contributions We Need'
MacFarland noted that coordination with the Iraqi government is key to the coalition's efforts. "Whenever we look for an additional capability to bring into the country, we do that in consultation with the government of Iraq. And that's an important part of the process. And so far, we've had absolutely no issues with getting the approvals that we require," he said.
"Our coalition partners are also increasing their capabilities here right along with us," the general continued. "And it's not just the United States. There is a large coalition and more and more we're getting the contributions that we need from our partners who, by the way, are decreasing the number of U.S. troops that need to deploy as well."
MacFarland said the deployment announced yesterday will not put U.S. forces "any closer to the enemy than we've been anywhere else."
"But we need to move to this place so that we can be as close to the fighting as we have been in the Euphrates River Valley fights," he said.
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International arbitration court rules that Taiping is 'rock'
ROC Central News Agency
2016/07/12 19:17:20
Taipei, July 12 (CNA) An international arbitration court ruled Tuesday that China has no legal basis to claim historic rights to resources within the South China Sea areas falling within a "nine-dash line" and that all high-tide features in the Spratly Islands, including the Taiwan-controlled Taiping, are legally "rocks."
In the case brought by the Philippines against China over South China Sea disputes, the court said there was no evidence that China had historically exercised exclusive control over the waters or resources in the islands in the South China Sea.
There is therefore no legal basis for China to claim historic rights to resources within the sea areas falling within the "nine-dash line," the court said in its ruling.
The Philippines brought the case against China in the Permanent Court of Arbitration, arguing that the land formations claimed by Beijing in the South China Sea are not islands and therefore are not entitled to 200-nautical mile exclusive economic zones.
China's "nine-dash line" territorial claim over South China Sea waters is unlawful under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, the Philippines argued.
While Taiwan is not party to the case, its claims in the South China Sea are similar to those of China, and Taiping Island (also known as Itu Aba), which is controlled by Taiwan, was brought up in testimony during the court hearings.
In its ruling, the court noted that many of the features in the Spratly Islands are currently controlled by some countries, "which have constructed installations and maintain personnel there."
It considered "these modern presences to be dependent on outside resources and support" and said many of the features had been modified to improve their habitability.
After examining the historical record, the court said, it found that the Spratly Islands were historically used by small groups of fishermen from China and other countries, and that several Japanese fishing and guano mining enterprises had been attempted in the 1920s and 1930s.
"The Tribunal concluded that temporary use of the features by fishermen did not amount to inhabitation by a stable community and that all of the historical economic activity had been extractive in nature," the ruling said.
Accordingly, the tribunal concluded that all of the high-tide features in the Spratly Islands (including Itu Aba, Thitu, West York Island, Spratly Island, North-East Cay and South-West Cay) are legally "rocks" that do not generate an exclusive economic zone or continental shelf, the ruling stated.
Six countries -- Taiwan, China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei -- claim part or all of the islands in the resource-rich South China Sea and their surrounding waters.
(By Elaine Hou)
ENDITEM/pc
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U.S. calls for peaceful resolution of South China Sea disputes
ROC Central News Agency
2016/07/12 21:50:21
Taipei, July 12 (CNA) The United States encouraged all South China Sea claimants to clarify their maritime claims in line with international law and urged all parties concerned to address disputes peacefully, the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) said Tuesday, in response to an international court ruling on South China Sea disputes.
"Consistent with our longstanding policy, we support the peaceful resolution of disputes in the South China Sea, including the use of international legal mechanisms such as arbitration," said AIT acting spokeswoman Alys Spensley. The AIT represents U.S. interests in Taiwan in the absence of bilateral diplomatic relations.
The U.S. encourages all claimants in the South China Sea to clarify their maritime claims in accordance with the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and to "work together creatively and peacefully to manage and resolve their disputes," she added.
Although the AIT does not comment on the merits of the case, Spensley said the tribunal's decision is legally binding on both the Philippines and China.
The Philippines brought the case against China in the Permanent Court of Arbitration, arguing that the land formations claimed by Beijing in the South China Sea are not islands and therefore are not entitled to 200-nautical mile exclusive economic zones.
China's "nine-dash line" territorial claim over South China Sea waters was unlawful under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, the Philippines argued.
China has repeatedly rejected the tribunal's jurisdiction over the case since it was filed in 2013.
While Taiwan is not party to the case, its claims in the South China Sea are similar to those of China, and Taiping Island (also known as Itu Aba), which is controlled by Taiwan, was brought up in testimony during the court hearings.
In a "final and binding" ruling, the court noted that many of the features in the Spratly Islands are currently controlled by some countries, "which have constructed installations and maintain personnel there."
It considered "these modern presences to be dependent on outside resources and support" and said many of the features had been modified to improve their habitability.
After examining the historical record, the court said, it found that the Spratly Islands were historically used by small groups of fishermen from China and other countries, and that several Japanese fishing and guano mining enterprises had been attempted in the 1920s and 1930s.
"The Tribunal concluded that temporary use of the features by fishermen did not amount to inhabitation by a stable community and that all of the historical economic activity had been extractive in nature," the ruling said.
Accordingly, the tribunal concluded that all of the high-tide features in the Spratly Islands (including Itu Aba, Thitu, West York Island, Spratly Island, North-East Cay and South-West Cay) are legally "rocks" that do not generate an exclusive economic zone or continental shelf, the ruling stated.
Six countries -- Taiwan, China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei -- claim part or all of the islands in the resource-rich South China Sea and their surrounding waters.
(By Elaine Hou)
ENDITEM/ke
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U.S. takes no side on status of Taiping Island: Taiwan official
ROC Central News Agency
2016/07/12 15:48:19
Taipei, July 12 (CNA) Ahead of an international court decision on the South China Sea that could weaken Taiwan's claims to Taiping Island, Taiwan said Tuesday that it has continued to exchange views on related issues with the United States.
The Philippines has brought a case against China in the Permanent Court of Arbitration arguing that the land formations claimed by Beijing in the South China Sea are not islands and not entitled to 200-nautical mile exclusive economic zones.
As part of the court proceedings, Manila claimed that Taiping is not an island.
Christine Hsueh (), director-general of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs' Department of North American Affairs, said at a regular briefing that Taiwan has continued to exchange views on South China Sea issues with the U.S. ahead of the ruling.
Washington, she said, clearly hopes that all claimants address disputes in accordance with international law and work to ensure freedom of navigation and overflight in the region.
Asked about Washington's stance on Taiping Island specifically, Hsueh said the U.S. takes no side on territorial issues and therefore takes no position on whether Taiping is an island or not.
Her remarks came just hours before the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague in the Netherlands is scheduled to issue its verdict on the Philippines' case against China.
Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Eleanor Wang () on Tuesday reiterated Taiwan's stance that all related parties in the South China Sea must base their claims on international law and the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).
Taiwan expects all claimants to resolve their disputes through peaceful means, and believes that all related parties have the obligation to respect the freedom of navigation and overflight in the region, she said.
Wang said the government will issue a statement in response to the ruling by the international court after the verdict is issued.
In Washington, U.S. Department of State spokesman John Kirby said during a press briefing Monday that however the tribunal rules, the U.S. urges all claimants to show restraint, to show respect for the rule of law, and to not allow for increased tensions and increased instability in the South China Sea area.
In responding to questions on the South China Sea ruling, he reiterated that U.S. wants all claimants to resolve disputes peacefully.
"We don't take a position on claims. We do take a position on coercion; we want these things resolved in accordance with rule of law," he said.
Manila argues that the land formations China claims in the South China Sea are nothing more than reefs and therefore not entitled to 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zones, which challenges Beijing's insistence that it has sovereignty over the waters.
China has repeatedly rejected the tribunal's jurisdiction over the case since it was filed in 2013.
Although Taiwan is not a party to the case, its claims in the South China Sea are similar to those of China, and Taiping Island (also known as Itu Aba), which is controlled by Taiwan, was brought up in testimony during the court hearings.
Should the court rule that Taiping Island is not an island under international law, it could also undercut some of Taiwan's claims.
Six countries -- Taiwan, China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei -- claim part or all of the islands in the resource-rich South China Sea and their surrounding waters.
The 0.51-square-kilometer Taiping lies about 1,600 kilometers southwest of Kaohsiung, southern Taiwan.
(By Tang Pei-chun and Elaine Hou)
ENDITEM/ls
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UK munitions used in Saudi strikes on civilians in Yemen: HRW
ISNA - Iranian Students' News Agency
Tue / 12 July 2016 / 10:57
TEHRAN (ISNA)- Human Rights Watch (HRW) said it has "compelling evidence" that British weapons are being used by Saudi Arabia in the war on Yemen, including against civilian targets.
The New York-based international organization said in a report that Saudi Arabia has hit factories in Yemen using UK-made munitions, and the remnants of the armaments were found at three different sites.
One of those munitions was a laser-guided Paveway bomb produced in May 2015, and supplied to Saudi Arabia shortly after the start of its war on Yemen.
Another was a UK-made Hakim air-launched cruise missile manufactured by a British company in the 1990s.
"This report has proven that weapons sold after the start of this war have been used in unlawful strikes and on civilian targets," Priyanka Motaparthy, a senior emergencies researcher at the HRW, who wrote the report, said.
Andrew Smith, the spokesman for the Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT), said the report strongly proves that UK munitions are being dropped on civilians, and will form part of its legal challenge against the British government to stop arms sales to Saudi Arabia.
"The report presents clear and compelling evidence of UK bombs being used against businesses and civilian targets," Smith said.
He added, "Saudi Arabia has been widely accused of breaking humanitarian law, and yet the arms sales have continued. It is imperative that the government acts on these allegations and ends arms sales to Saudi Arabia."
According to Amnesty International, the UK government sold 2,400 missiles and 58 warplanes to Saudi Arabia last year alone, enabling the regime to continue its war against Yemen.
The security and aerospace company BAE Systems has employed 5,300 people in Saudi Arabia, who provide support to the Saudi air force and the Saudi naval force.
There are also reports that British military experts are training Saudis to use air-launched Storm Shadow cruise missiles, which rights activists say Saudi Arabia has used in Yemen.
The British government has been under fire in recent months for ramping up arms sales to Saudi Arabia, which stands accused of committing war crimes during its military campaign in Yemen. London has shrugged off international calls for an arms embargo on Riyadh.
Saudi Arabia launched its fatal campaign against Yemen on March 26, 2015 in a bid to bring back to power Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, who has resigned as Yemen's president. More than 9,400 people have been killed in the Saudi airstrike ever since.
End Item
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Key West Visits Yokosuka during Western Pacific Deployment
Navy News Service
Story Number: NNS160712-01
Release Date: 7/12/2016 7:52:00 AM
By Lt. David W. Oh, USS Key West (SSN 722) Public Affairs and Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Brian G. Reynolds, Submarine Group 7 Public Affairs
FLEET ACTIVITIES YOKOSUKA, Japan (NNS) -- Los Angeles-class attack submarine USS Key West (SSN 722) arrived at Fleet Activities Yokosuka for a routine visit as part of its deployment to the Indo-Asia-Pacific, July 12.
This visit strengthens the already positive alliance between the U.S. and Japan through the crew's interaction with the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF). It also demonstrates the U.S. Navy's commitment to regional stability and maritime security in the U.S. 7th Fleet area of operations.
"My crew is thrilled to have the opportunity to visit Japan and interact with our fellow submarine shipmates of the JMSDF," said Cmdr. David Coe, Key West commanding officer. "We are particularly looking forward to conducting a bilateral exercise in the near future to further improve interoperability and teamwork between our submarine forces. Because Key West is homeported in Guam ... my crew takes great pride in that we live and work in the U.S. 7th Fleet area of operations all the time. I hope this visit with our partners in Japan reinforces that we are never far away and always mission ready."
With a dynamic underway schedule, the in port period allows Key West Sailors an opportunity to reset before another underway.
"This is a well-trained and proficient crew that has executed a very busy schedule so far this year," said Master Chief Electronics Technician Eric Baker, chief of the boat. "Our presence as a forward-deployed submarine is vital to the area and we are once again ready to show how important liberty is as a mission area in this excellent port. The crew will, as always, show their Key West pride and enjoy some well-earned time off to take in the culture and sites of Japan.
Many crew members are excited about experiencing the rich Japanese culture.
"I'm a big fan of the Japanese culture and have been looking forward to this port call for some time," said Electronic Technician 2nd Class Richard Perry. "I can't wait to go to Tokyo and eat. I may even try climbing Mt. Fuji. It's going to be a great time."
Measuring more than 360 feet long and displacing approximately 6,900 tons when submerged, Key West remains one of the stealthiest and most formidable submarines in the world. This submarine is able to conduct anti-submarine warfare, anti-surface ship warfare, strike warfare, surveillance and reconnaissance.
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President Xi says China rejects any proposition, action based on S. China Sea arbitration award
People's Daily Online
(Xinhua) 20:03, July 12, 2016
BEIJING, July 12 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping said China will not accept any proposition or action based on the decision Tuesday by the South China Sea arbitral tribunal.
Xi said the South China Sea Islands have been China's territory since ancient times. China's territorial sovereignty and maritime interests in South China Sea, in any circumstances, will not be affected by the award.
He made the remarks on Tuesday afternoon while meeting with European Council President Donald Tusk and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker in Beijing.
China has always been a guardian of international rule of law and of fairness and justice, and will always adhere to the path of peaceful development, Xi said.
China is firmly committed to peace and stability in the South China Sea, and to settling the disputes with countries directly involved, through peaceful negotiations based on the recognition of historical facts and in accordance with international law, he said.
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UN: Fresh wave of violence displaced 36k in South Sudan capital
Iran Press TV
Tue Jul 12, 2016 3:0PM
At least 36,000 people have been displaced since fresh heavy fighting erupted in South Sudan's capital, Juba, on July 8, the UN says.
Vanessa Huguenin, spokeswoman for the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said on Tuesday that the number was likely to "evolve" in light of the volatile situation.
"The latest fighting since Friday has displaced 36,000 people," Huguenin said, referring to clashes between troops loyal to President Salva Kiir and rebels backing his opponent First Vice President Riek Machar.
The UN humanitarian agency earlier said in a statement that the displaced had sought shelter in sites run by the UN mission in South Sudan, known as UNMISS, and other locations across the volatile city.
The "recent fighting has had a devastating impact on the civilian population," the statement said, adding that "most of the affected people are women and children."
"Access to those in need is limited by the ongoing fighting and insecurity," the OCHA warned. "It is imperative that civilians are allowed to move freely to places of refuge, and that humanitarian staff and their assets are protected to allow immediate, safe and unhindered access to those in need."
The UN agency said heavy rains in parts of Juba had worsened the situation.
A fragile ceasefire called by both President Kiir and Machar appeared to be holding in Juba on Tuesday.
Machar on Monday called for a ceasefire shortly after a similar call by the president to halt days of deadly fighting between their forces.
The ceasefire initially announced by President Kiir came into effect on Monday.
Kiir said he will remain committed to the 2015 peace agreement he signed in August of that year with rebels.
Thousands of people have been killed and more than three million forced to flee their homes in the conflict that started in December 2013, when President Kiir sacked Machar, his former deputy, only two years after the country seceded from Sudan.
The two sides eventually signed an agreement in August last year to bring the conflict to an end. As part of the deal, Machar returned to Juba in April to take up the post of the first vice president in a national unity government.
Despite the August 2015 peace deal, battles persist across the country. There are numerous militia forces that do not abide by peace agreements and are driven by local agendas.
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China rejects a ruling by the Hague-based tribunal over South China Sea islands
Iran Press TV
Tue Jul 12, 2016 9:34AM
China has dismissed a ruling by a Hague-based tribunal over its disputes with the Philippines in the South China Sea.
A tribunal in The Hague has ruled against China's claims to islands in the South China Sea in an arbitration which is likely to stoke further tensions.
Judges on Tuesday sided with the Philippines which had brought the case already boycotted by Beijing.
"There was no legal basis for China to claim historic rights to resources within the sea areas falling within the 'nine-dash line'," the court said in reference to a 1947 demarcation line.
China immediately dismissed the ruling, saying it "does not accept and does not recognize" the tribunal's arbitration on the dispute, the official Xinhua news agency reported.
Earlier, China's Defense Ministry said, "No matter what kind of ruling is to be made, Chinese armed forces will firmly safeguard national sovereignty... and deal with all kinds of threats and challenges."
Xinhua said shortly before the ruling was announced that a Chinese civilian aircraft successfully carried out calibration tests on two new airports in the disputed Spratly Islands.
Filipino Foreign Affairs Secretary Perfecto Yasay called for "restraint and sobriety," saying "the Philippines strongly affirms its respect for this milestone decision."
Japan, which has its own territorial dispute with China, said the Hague tribunal ruling on the South China Sea is final and legally binding, urging the parties to the case to comply.
Japanese Defense Minister Gen Nakatani earlier said his country's armed forces will carefully watch Chinese activity in the East China Sea.
China's Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said his country will ignore the ruling. "We won't accept any of their so-called materials, no matter what they are."
China claims most of the energy-rich waters through which about $5 trillion in ship-borne trade passes every year.
Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam also have overlapping claims. In their dispute, they are propped up by the US which often conducts military exercises in the area.
On Tuesday, Vietnam accused China of sinking a fishing boat in the disputed South China Sea but Beijing had yet to comment on the allegation.
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Vietnam accuses China of sinking fishing boat in disputed waters
Iran Press TV
Tue Jul 12, 2016 8:30AM
Vietnam has accused China of sinking a fishing boat in the disputed South China Sea as an international court is due to issue a ruling in the territorial row between Beijing and Manila.
The Vietnam Fisheries Society (Vinafis) said in a Tuesday statement that two Chinese coastguard ships pursued a pair of Vietnamese boats on Saturday afternoon off Quang Ngai Province of Vietnam.
"Chinese men jumped onto fisherman Vo Van Luu's boat, struck the Vietnamese sailors and... sunk the vessel," Vinafis said in the statement, adding the five crew members were forced overboard.
The statement further said the second boat was banned from reaching the stranded fishermen.
The five Vietnamese men remained in the sea till dark when the second ship was able to draw near to the area.
Vinafis also denounced the incident, calling for compensation from China.
Beijing has yet to comment on the allegations.
China and Vietnam are locked in a longstanding territorial dispute in the South China Sea over Paracels islands known as Xisha Islands in China and waters in the South China Sea claimed by both countries.
Beijing has long-standing disputes over maritime territory in the energy-rich, strategic waters of the South China Sea with regional states Brunei, Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines and Taiwan.
China claims most of the energy-rich waters through which about $5 trillion in ship-borne trade passes every year.
Regional tensions are slightly rising as an arbitration court in The Hague is due to announce a ruling later on Tuesday in a dispute between Beijing and Manila over territory in the South China Sea.
The case, which was brought by the Philippines, challenges China's maritime claims in the South China Sea. Beijing has already said it will not be bound by the court ruling.
"We won't accept any of their so-called materials, no matter what they are," Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang told reporters in Beijing on Tuesday.
"No matter what kind of ruling is to be made, Chinese armed forces will firmly safeguard national sovereignty... and deal with all kinds of threats and challenges," China's Defense Ministry also said in a statement.
Japan to monitor Chinese activities
Japan, which is also locked in another territorial row with Beijing in East China Sea, expressed concern over the effects of Tuesday's ruling.
Japanese Defense Minister Gen Nakatani said Tuesday his country's armed forces will carefully watch Chinese activity in the neighboring East China Sea.
"We urge all parties concerned to react in a way that does not raise tensions," Nakatani said at a news conference in Tokyo.
"We will keep a close watch on the situation in the East China Sea," he further said.
Relations between China and Japan have soured over the past few years over a territorial row on the uninhabited yet strategically-important island group in the East China Sea. Tensions grew after Tokyo nationalized part of the resource-rich islands in 2012.
China maintains that the islands are inherent parts of its territory and that it has indisputable sovereignty over them, while the Japanese government regards the islands as a part of its Ishigaki Island in Okinawa Prefecture.
The islands have been under Japanese administrative control since the reversion of Okinawa to Japan from US administrative rule in 1972.
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Israel conducted drone raids in Egypt's Sinai: Report
Iran Press TV
Tue Jul 12, 2016 8:48AM
A former high-ranking Israeli official says Israel has carried out numerous drone strikes purportedly against militants in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula with Egyptian consent over the past few years, implying close cooperation between Tel Aviv and Cairo.
The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Bloomberg news network on Monday that the attacks were being carried out with the blessing and consent of the Egyptian government.
The Sinai Peninsula has been under a state of emergency since October 2014, following a deadly terrorist attack that claimed the lives of 33 soldiers.
Over the past years, militants have been carrying out anti-government activities and deadly attacks, taking advantage of the turmoil caused in Egypt after democratically-elected President Mohamed Morsi was ousted by the military in July 2013.
Velayat Sinai terrorists have carried out most of the attacks, mainly targeting the army and police.
In November 2014, the group pledged allegiance to the Takfiri Daesh terrorist group, which is mainly wreaking havoc in Iraq and Syria.
'Netanyahu to attend Cairo summit'
Meanwhile, reports say Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has agreed to take part in a tripartite summit in the Egyptian capital with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
The idea of the Cairo summit was apparently discussed during a meeting between Netanyahu and Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry, who was in al-Quds (Jerusalem) on Sunday.
Shoukry claimed in a joint press conference with the Israeli prime minister that Cairo is committed to a "two-state" solution in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Palestinians are seeking to create an independent state on the territories of the West Bank, East al-Quds, and the Gaza Strip. They are demanding that Israel withdraw from the occupied Palestinian lands.
Israel, however, has refused to withdraw and is unwilling to discuss the issue of al-Quds.
Relations between Egypt and the Israeli regime have been warming since Abdel Fattah el-Sisi who spearheaded Morsi's ouster took power as the president of the North African country in 2014.
Egypt is contributing to the Israeli siege of the Gaza Strip by refusing to allow Gazans through the only crossing that by-passes Israel, namely the Rafah border crossing, which leads into Egyptian territory.
The Egyptian government has also been destroying or flooding with water the underground tunnels that Gazans have dug to bring in much-needed foodstuff and construction material following the latest Israeli war on the coastal enclave in 2014.
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US Urges Recognition of 'Biding Nature' of Court Ruling on South China Sea
Sputnik News
21:38 12.07.2016
White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said that the Hague-based Permanent Court of Arbitration's decision on the South China Sea dispute is final.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik) Parties involved in the South China Sea dispute should recognize the binding nature of the Hague-based Permanent Court of Arbitration's decision, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said on Tuesday.
"This tribunal ruling is final and binding on both parties," Earnest stated as quoted by the White House pool.
Earlier on Tuesday, the court ruled China has no legal basis to claim historic rights to South China Sea resources. It also noted that the Chinese claims were contrary to the UN Convention on Law of the Sea.
The US Department of State said the ruling is important for peaceful resolution of territorial disputes in the area.
A number of disputed islands, including the Paracel Islands and the Spratly Islands, are located in the South China Sea. Beijing's territorial claims to the Spratly Islands, known as Nansha Islands in China, which are believed to be rich in oil and gas reserves, run against those of the Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia, Brunei and Vietnam.
Sputnik
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Russian Helicopters to Overhaul Serbian Aircraft Factory, Repair Mi-8/17s
Sputnik News
17:44 12.07.2016(updated 17:58 12.07.2016)
Russian Helicopters plans to modernize Serbian aircraft-making factory to provide maintenance for military choppers, the firm's deputy chief told Sputnik on Tuesday.
FARNBOROUGH (Sputnik) Russian Helicopters, a leading helicopter producer, plans to revamp an aircraft-making factory in Serbia to provide maintenance and repair for its Mi-8/17 family of military choppers, the firm's deputy chief told Sputnik on Tuesday.
"Our experts are going through details of how to overhaul the maintenance base of the Moma Stanojlovic aviation factory," Deputy CEO Grigory Kozlov said at the Farnborough Airshow in England.
The Serbian facility will be servicing Russia's Mi-8/17 military transport helicopters, one of the most popular choices in their class, according to the Russian holding. They are currently in service in Serbia and some other Eastern European countries.
Kozlov said that the maintenance and repair center in Serbia could be potentially transformed into a one-stop shop for European countries that are operating a fleet of Russian-made helicopters.
Sputnik
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US Should Expand Security Ties With Allies Amid South China Sea Ruling
Sputnik News
17:34 12.07.2016
US Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker said that he hopes all parties involved in the South China Sea dispute will refrain from actions undermining security and stability in the region.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik) The United States needs to boost its ties with allies involved in the dispute around the South China Sea, US Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker said in a statement on Tuesday.
Earlier in the day, the Hague-based Permanent Court of Arbitration said China has no legal basis to claim historic rights to South China Sea resources. The ruling also noted that the Chinese claims were contrary to the UN Convention on Law of the Sea.
"The United States should expand political, economic and security ties with our allies and partners and continue efforts to defend freedom of navigation and overflight through routine patrols in the East and South China Seas," Corker stated, commenting on the ruling.
The senator added that he hopes all parties involved in the South China Sea dispute will refrain from actions undermining security and stability in the region.
A number of disputed islands, including the Paracel Islands and the Spratly Islands, are located in the South China Sea. Beijing's territorial claims to the Spratly Islands, which are believed to be rich in oil and gas reserves, run against those of the Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia, Brunei and Vietnam.
Sputnik
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India Treads Lightly Following UN Rejection of Chinese Claims
Sputnik News
17:22 12.07.2016(updated 17:35 12.07.2016)
The Indian response to an international court decision regarding the South China Sea has been cautious. India's government has responded by saying that they are studying it carefully.
NEW DELHI (Sputnik) "India has noted the Award of the Arbitral Tribunal constituted under Annex 7 of the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea in the matter concerning the Republic of the Philippines and the Peoples Republic of China and is studying it carefully," Spokesperson of the Ministry of External Affairs Vikas Swarup stated.
The Arbitration Tribunal in the Hague has rejected China's claim to have economic rights to large parts of the South China Sea.
"There was no legal basis for China to claim historic rights to resources within the sea areas falling within the nine-dash line," the Permanent Court of Arbitration said on Tuesday.
"Clearly this is slap in China's face, but I think it is something that they have been preparing for. They knew that their claims were not going to be valid; they are not legitimate. They have based their claim to the South China Sea on historical facts and that is not valid in the International Court. This is a big win for the Philippines because clearly the verdict says that the Philippines' sovereignty has been violated; their basic fishing rights have been abrogated. There are several issues on which China has been found violating," Rajeswari Rajagopalan, a Senior Fellow with the Observer Research Foundation told Sputnik in an exclusive interview.
N N Jha, a former Indian Diplomat, told Sputnik that "The decision of the International Court has been significant but what remains to be seen is China's attitude. China is very possessive and aggressive about the South China Sea, so it would further aggravate the problem. Now the US and its allies, along with littoral countries will put pressure on China to abide by the decision of the International Court."
China is still adamant regarding its earlier stand and denounces the decision of the International Court. It said that it does not accept and does not recognize the Hague tribunal's judgment.
"Chinese military will resolutely protect the country's national sovereignty, security and maritime rights and interests and will address threats and challenges," said Yang Yujun, Spokesman for the Chinese Ministry of National Defense.
China legally claims the nine-dash line according the map published by China in 1947, which other countries believe contravenes the UN Law of the Sea. Last year, the Philippines filed a case against China's claim using the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, which was signed both by the Philippines and China. It dictates that nations have an exclusive economic zone (EEZ) stretching 200 nautical miles from their shores, but China's nine-dash line claim overlaps with the EEZ of several countries.
China's stern stance on the South China Sea will further complicate the issue and will destabilize peace throughout the South-East Region.
Sputnik
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Manila Welcomes Court Decision on Beijing's Claims in S China Sea
Sputnik News
15:27 12.07.2016(updated 15:51 12.07.2016)
Filipino Secretary of Foreign Affairs Perfecto Yasay welcomed on Tuesday a decision by the Permanent Court of Arbitration that China has no legal basis to claim historic rights to resources in the South China Sea.
MOSCOW (Sputnik) In January 2013, the Philippines filed a suit against China, claiming that Beijing had violated the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) by its actions in the South China Sea. China refused to participate in the case. Earlier on Tuesday, the Hague-based Permanent Court of Arbitration ruled that China has no legal basis to claim historic rights to South China Sea resources and violated the sovereign rights of the Philippines in the country's exclusive economic zone.
"The Philippines strongly affirms its respect for this milestone decision as an important contribution to ongoing efforts in addressing disputes in the South China Sea. The decision upholds international law, particularly the 1982 UNCLOS. The Philippines reiterates its abiding commitment to efforts to pursue the peaceful resolution and management of disputes with a view to promoting and enhancing peace and stability in the region," Yasay said in a statement, published on the ministry's website.
The secretary added that Filipino experts were studying the decision and the related issues "with the care and thoroughness," and called on the concerned parties "to exercise restraint and sobriety."
The Chinese government refused to accept the Permanent Court of Arbitration's ruling, claiming that it was "null and void."
Sputnik
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Houthi Rebels Plan to Return to Intra-Yemeni Talks in Kuwait
Sputnik News
14:47 12.07.2016
Houthi spokesman Mohammed Abdul Salam stated that the rebels were to stick to the April ceasefire agreement and to desist from hostilities on the ground and in the air.
DUBAI (Sputnik) Yemen's Houthi rebels intend to return to the intra-Yemeni talks in Kuwait, Houthi spokesman Mohammed Abdul Salam said Tuesday.
Talks between the Yemeni government and Houthis brokered by the United Nations have been held in Kuwait since April 21 but have brought no results so far.
"We confirm our adherence to the agreements struck during the first round of talks with the UN special envoy and to the deadline for the next round of talks in Kuwait without preliminary conditions for reaching full-scale decisions," Abdul Salam was quoted as saying by the Kuwaiti newspaper Al Rai.
He added that the rebels were to stick to the April ceasefire agreement and to desist from hostilities on the ground and in the air.
On Saturday, Yemeni President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi said the government's delegation might not return to the peace talks slated for July 15 if participation were made conditional to adopting a UN initiative on the establishment of a joint interim government with all the parties to the conflict.
Yemen has been engulfed in a military conflict between the government headed by Hadi and the Houthis since 2014. The Houthis are backed by army units loyal to former Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh.
Sputnik
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China Does Not Accept or Recognize 'Invalid' Hague Verdict on S China Sea
Sputnik News
12:54 12.07.2016(updated 15:08 12.07.2016)
China does ot accept or recognize 'invalid' Hague court decision on South China sea, the Chinese Foreign ministry stated on Tuesday.
The Hague-based Permanent Court of Arbitration's decision on the South China Sea is "null and void" and Beijing does not accept or acknowledge it, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said Tuesday.
"With regard to the award rendered on 12 July 2016 by the Arbitral Tribunal in the South China Sea arbitration established at the unilateral request of the Republic of the Philippinesthe Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of China solemnly declares that the award is null and void and has no binding force. China neither accepts nor recognizes it," the ministry said in a statement.
Earlier on Tuesday, the Hague-based Permanent Court of Arbitration ruled that China has no legal basis to claim historic rights to South China Sea resources.
"The Tribunal concluded that there was no legal basis for China to claim historic rights to resources within the sea areas falling within the 'nine-dash line'," the court said in a press release.
The court noted that the Chinese claims were contrary to the UN Convention on Law of the Sea.
"Accordingly, the Tribunal concluded that, to the extent China had historic rights to resources in the waters of the South China Sea, such rights were extinguished to the extent they were incompatible with the exclusive economic zones provided for in the Convention," the court said.
The court also ruled that China violated sovereign rights of the Philippines in the country's exclusive economic zone and created serious risk of collision and danger to Philippine ships in the South China Sea.
"The Tribunal found that Chinese law enforcement vessels had repeatedly approached the Philippine vessels at high speed and sought to cross ahead of them at close distances, creating serious risk of collision and danger to Philippine ships and personnel," the press release said.
The court also added that China caused severe harm to Spratly Islands coral reef environment.
Sputnik
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Swedish Authorities Under Fire Over Uncompetitive Helicopter Contract
Sputnik News
12:54 12.07.2016(updated 12:59 12.07.2016)
Sweden's Maritime Administration has been sharply criticized by the country's Competition Authority after a notoriously prearranged helicopter deal, which cost the state budget millions of kroner.
Sweden's Competition Authority recently reproached the Swedish Maritime Administration for its acquisition of seven new rescue helicopters; the deal apparently violated the country's anti-trust laws, Swedish national broadcaster SVT reported.
The Competition Authority's report pointed the finger at the Maritime Administration for breach of transparency and favoritism. The Maritime Administration was also blamed for lacking documentation, and for its preferential treatment of suppliers.
"There are really no meeting notes on all of these meetings [which were] held, which hampers our investigation as we try to objectively clarify what has happened. It's very difficult," Competition Authority Director General Dan Sjoblom told SVT.
According to SVT, the helicopter deal for seven AW139 rescue helicopters with Italian manufacturer AgustaWestland was drafted in secret and in advance. The Maritime Administration announced the purchase in the summer of 2011, after negotiating the deal with AgustaWestland before any contract whatsoever was announced.
Large parts of the deal were negotiated behind closed doors, and managers at the Maritime Administration made extensive use of private Hotmail addresses for communicating with suppliers. According to an e-mail written by the Swedish Maritime Administration's Deputy Director General Noomi Eriksson to AgustaWestland's Icelandic agent seven weeks before the contract was published, the Swedish party was ready "for a handshake," SVT previously reported.
The deal is currently being investigated by the police and prosecutors. Previously, the Parliament's Constitution Committee had also directed severe criticism against Catharina Elmsater-Svard, former Minister of Industry.
According to Ulrika Ekstrom, Director of Communications at the Maritime Administration, however, the authorities has learned a lesson. After the painful revelation, a new purchasing manager was employed, and a number of training programs for employees were conducted.
This is not the first time the helicopter supplier AgustaWestland has found itself in hot water. Several top AgustaWestland executives were convicted of corruption and sentenced to imprisonment and millions in damages for paying bribes using false invoices while conducting a deal with the Indian Armed Forces. At present, the scandal surrounding the Italian helicopter manufacturer is growing, as police investigations against Agusta Westland are also underway in Panama, Canada, Cyprus and Algeria. However, the Swedish Maritime Administration's leadership has repeatedly denied having any talks or negotiations with the managers who were charged with corruption.
Lars Widell, head of the sea and air rescue department at the Maritime Administration, has time and again denied the helicopter acquisition by repeating the same answer over and over again.
"It has been well known that it is the type of helicopter that is optimal for Swedish conditions in particular and Scandinavia's extreme conditions in general," he told SVT.
Incidentally, the "hypermodern" AW139 helicopters came under fire this winter after failing to salvage the Norwegian-Swedish mail flight that crashed in Lapland in January. The helicopter could not reach the crash scene as it was "too far, too cold and too dark," the Swedish tabloid newspaper Expressen reported.
Sputnik
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Hague Verdict: China Has No Legal Basis to Claim South China Sea Resources
Sputnik News
12:07 12.07.2016(updated 13:32 12.07.2016)
Hague-based permanent court of arbitration ruled that China has no legal basis to claim historic rights to South China Sea resources.
The Hague tribunal found no legal basis for China to claim historic rights to resources within nine-dash line.
"The Tribunal concluded that there was no legal basis for China to claim historic rights within the sea areas falling within the 'nine-dash line'," the Hague-based Permanent Court of Arbitration said in a statement.
The court noted that the Chinese claims were contrary to the UN Convention on Law of the Sea.
"Accordingly, the Tribunal concluded that, to the extent China had historic rights to resources in the waters of the South China Sea, such rights were extinguished to the extent they were incompatible with the exclusive economic zones provided for in the Convention," the court said.
The court also ruled that China violated sovereign rights of the Philippines in the country's exclusive economic zone and created serious risk of collision and danger to Philippine ships in the South China Sea.
"The Tribunal found that Chinese law enforcement vessels had repeatedly approached the Philippine vessels at high speed and sought to cross ahead of them at close distances, creating serious risk of collision and danger to Philippine ships and personnel," the press release said.
The court also added that China caused severe harm to Spratly Islands coral reef environment.
The Philippines welcomed the Hague tribunal ruling over south China sea, Foreign Secretary Perfecto Yasay.
"The Philippines welcomes the issuance today on the arbitration proceedings initiated by the Philippines with regard to the South China Sea," Yasay told reporters minutes after the court in The Hague released its verdict.
Chinese state news agency Zinhua reported that China 'does not accept and does not recognise' the Hague tribunal ruling.
A number of disputed islands, including the Paracel Islands and the Spratly Islands, are located in the South China Sea. Beijing's territorial claims to the Spratly Islands, known as Nansha Islands in China, which are believed to be rich in oil and gas reserves, run against those of the Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia, Brunei and Vietnam.
Sputnik
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At Security Council, Ban urges Israel-Palestine talks to overcome 'political paralysis'
12 July 2016 United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today urged both sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to immediately begin discussions on implementing the recommendations made in a recent report published by the diplomatic partners mediating the peace process as efforts continue to restore hope for a lasting political solution.
"The parties will have to make the necessary compromises for peace. At the same time, the region and the wider international community must exercise its influence to encourage both sides," the Secretary-General said this morning in remarks to the Security Council's briefing on the situation in the Middle East.
'Time is running out,' message at heart of Quartet report on conflict
On 1 July, the so-called Middle East Quartet comprising the UN, Russia, the United States and the European Union released the first-ofits-kind report, which analyzes the impediments to a lasting resolution to the conflict and offers recommendations on the way forward, urging Israel to stop its settlement policy and Palestine to end incitement to violence.
In the report, the Quartet calls on each side to "independently demonstrate, through policies and actions, a genuine commitment to the two-state solution" and to "refrain from unilateral steps that prejudice the outcome of the final negotiations. The diplomatic partners reiterate that a negotiated two-state outcome is the only way to achieve an enduring peace that meets Israeli security needs and Palestinian aspirations for statehood and sovereignty, ends the occupation that began in 1967, and resolves all permanent status issues.
In his remarks today, Mr. Ban recalled that during his visit to Israel and Palestine this past month, he carried a "clear and consistent" message to leaders on both sides that "time is running out," a fact that he said is also at the heart of the Quartet's report.
Noting that some on both sides have criticized the report's content and sought to dismiss its conclusions and recommendations, the UN chief emphasized that the report's overriding message, however, is irrefutable: "As negative trends grow more frequent, the prospects of a two-state solution grow more distant," he said.
As such, the report's 10 recommendations provide a practical approach to end the political stalemate, resume the transition to greater Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, and chart a course to negotiations to resolve all final status issues, the Secretary-General said.
Mr. Ban also noted that French efforts to pursue peace complement the efforts being made by the Quartet envoys, and welcomed their coordination with the Quartet. In that regard, he also welcomed Egyptian efforts, including the recent visit by Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry to Palestine and Israel.
UN chief cites leadership failures on both sides, shrinking space for civil society
Turning to the leaders of Israel and Palestine, the Secretary-General stressed that their failures to advance peace has created a vacuum, with extremist voices filling that space. In addition, recent incidents reinforce the mounting risks, and those responsible for recent terror attacks must be held accountable, he said.
However, closures such as those in Hebron as well as punitive demolitions and blanket revocations of permits, penalize thousands of innocent Palestinians and amount to collective punishment, Mr. Ban said.
Noting that he is "deeply troubled" by shrinking space for civil society in the region and around the world, the Secretary-General also expressed concerned over Israel's passage of the so-called "NGO Transparency Law," which he said contributes to a climate in which the activities of human rights organizations are increasingly delegitimized.
"All the while, Israel's settlement enterprise marches on," he said, highlighting that days after the Quartet called on Israel to cease settlement construction and expansion, Israel announced plans to advance building approximately 560 housing units in the West Bank and 240 more in occupied East Jerusalem.
"This is in flagrant disregard of international law. These actions constitute an undeniable contradiction to Israel's official support for a negotiated two-state solution," he added, urging Israel to immediately cease and reverse such plans.
Moreover, the Secretary-General said it is necessary to ask: "How can the systematic expansion of settlements [] the taking of land for exclusive Israeli use [] and the denial of Palestinian development be a response to violence?"
He stressed that such policies will not bring the two-state solution closer to reality, nor will they make Israelis safer or more secure.
"As many former Israeli military and intelligence officers have clearly stated, these policies will do precisely the opposite. Indeed, every brick added to the edifice of occupation is another taken from Israel's foundation as a majority Jewish and democratic State," the Secretary-General said.
At the same time, Mr. Ban said, those Palestinians who "celebrate and encourage" attacks against innocents must know that they are not serving the interests of their people or peace. Such acts must be universally condemned and more must be done to counter the incitement that fuels and justifies terror, he stressed.
Ongoing strife in Gaza
Mr. Ban also noted that his visit to Israel and Palestine included his fourth trip to Gaza, where, despite significant progress, tens of thousands of people are still displaced following the 2014 conflict, families are forced to live without electricity for 12 to 18 hours per day, and unemployment remains staggering.
Emphasizing that funds to rebuild Gaza remain elusive, the UN chief urged donors to fulfil their pledges made at the 2014 Cairo conference.
A long-term stability and sustainability for Gaza depends on the lifting of the "crippling" closures and a re-establishment of a single, legitimate Palestinian governing authority based on Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) principles.
Turning to the Golan, the Secretary-General said that the situation remains volatile and continues to undermine the 1974 Disengagement of Forces Agreement between Israel and Syria, jeopardizing the ceasefire between the two countries.
"As we focus on Israeli-Palestinian peace, we must take a hard look at where this conflict stands. How much longer can the parties and the international community accept political paralysis? And at what grave price?" the Secretary-General asked.
Stressing that the international community, including through the recommendations outlined in the Quartet report, remains resolute in its commitment to support the goal of a peaceful future for both Palestinians and Israelis, the Secretary-General concluded his remarks by encouraging the Security Council to support the efforts of the Quartet to work with the parties, the region and interested stakeholders in advancing peace.
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'Alarming' levels of malnutrition and famine-like conditions in northeast Nigeria - UN
12 July 2016 Humanitarian convoys have uncovered emergency levels of severe acute malnutrition and famine-like conditions in Nigeria's Borno State, particularly in 15 satellite camps, where some 275,000 people are living, the United Nations relief aid wing has warned.
According to a report from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), these camps are in hard-to-reach, insecure areas, many of them still in locations of active conflict. Humanitarian actors are working with the Government to provide the immediately required assistance.
The UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) and partners in newly accessible areas in Borno State have reported alarming levels of severe acute malnutrition.
On 27 June, the Government declared a food and nutrition emergency in the state, and a UN fund that supports rapid humanitarian responses, known as the Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF), disbursed $13 million to provide life-saving assistance to 250,000 people in the conflict-hit northeastern region.
The situation in the Lake Chad Basin has been the subject of discussions at regional dialogues and at the UN Headquarters. Around 3.8 million people are currently facing severe food insecurity across the Basin, where the lean season has now set in in many parts.
The conflict has aggravated the effects of erratic rainfall and other environmental factors that hamper good food production. Those forced to flee their homes are among the worst-affected by the rising food shortages.
A regional protection dialogue, held in Abuja, Nigeria, from 6 to 8 June, brought together participants from the Governments of Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Nigeria, international and regional organizations, donor governments and civil society.
The Governments agreed on measures to provide better protection and assistance to populations of the Lake Chad Basin, in particular to refugees and internally displaced persons.
During the Humanitarian Affairs Segment of the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), a dedicated side-event on the Lake Chad Basin, titled "Ending Needs in the Lake Chad Basin", explored how best to achieve collective outcomes for people affected by the crisis.
In Chad, improved security has allowed humanitarian actors to accelerate delivery of assistance in previously hard-to reach areas in the western and northern parts of the Lac region. The CERF has approved $10 million to respond to the humanitarian crisis in the Lac region and food insecurity in the Sahel regions.
However, malnutrition rates in Chad are alarming, with preliminary results of a screening conducted in June by the World Food Programme (WFP) on 11 sites showing 33 per cent of moderate acute malnutrition and 11.5 per cent of severe acute malnutrition among children under two - well above emergency thresholds.
From 1 to 15 June, WFP provided assistance to over 37,000 displaced people in these 11 sites, and 3,200 children received a malnutrition prevention ration.
Boko Haram insurgents have mounted several attacks in recent weeks, displacing tens of thousands of people in the conflict-hit regions of the Lake Chad Basin. In Bosso area in the south-east of Niger, attacks displaced some 70,000 people. Assistance is being provided in the various sites where the displaced have settled.
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South Sudan ceasefire 'largely holding;' UN urges safe passage for civilians seeking safety
12 July 2016 The United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) has reported that the ceasefire in the crisis-gripped country appears to be "largely holding, barring sporadic gunfire," while the UN refugee agency has urged countries to keep their borders open for people fleeing tensions in Juba, where the human rights wing has warned the situation is "deteriorating rapidly."
According to a UN spokesperson, UNMISS today welcomed the ceasefire announced [by President Salva Kiir and endorsed by First Vice President Riek Machar] yesterday, and Mission chief Ellen Margrethe Lj, strongly urged all parties to adhere to the ceasefire and called on South Sudanese leaders to ensure the order is conveyed through all security forces' chains of command so that soldiers return to their barracks.
The ceasefire comes after days of clashes between soldiers of the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) and the SPLA in Opposition, in an around the South Sudanese capital of Juba. The UN human rights office has said that since Thursday, 7 July, according to Government figures, at least 272 people had been killed, including 33 civilians.
UN Spokesperson Stephane Dujarric told reporters at UN Headquarters this afternoon that Ms. Lj has urged security forces in Juba to allow unhindered access to UNMISS patrols to protect the civilian population and called on the parties to allow civilians to move freely to places of refuge.
"She urged the Government to open up corridors to allow UN and humanitarian actors to provide vital supplies and other assistance to the affected civilians, as well as access for medical evacuations," Mr. Dujarric added.
UNMISS also reported that the airport in the capital has been reopened, although commercial flights remain suspended. Peacekeepers were able to conduct a limited number of short patrols in Juba today.
Since the fighting began on Friday, some 5,000 additional internally displaced persons (IDPs) have sought protection in the UN's Tomping compound in the capital. Another 3,000 IDPs who arrived at the UN House premise have been relocated to the protection of civilians' site nearby, the Spokesperson explained, referring to the situation at some of the protection of civilians (PoC) sites UMISS has been operating since the political face-off between President Kiir and Mr. Machar erupted into full-blown conflict in 2013.
Human rights situation 'deteriorating rapidly' UN warns
Meanwhile at the regular press briefing in Geneva, spokesperson Cecile Pouilly of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) told reporters: "We are extremely concerned at the rapid deterioration of the security and human rights situation in South Sudan."
Preliminary estimates indicated that at least 36,000 people had been displaced by the fighting and were seeking shelter in the UNMISS civilian protection sites and many other locations across the city. Most of the affected people were women and children.
Ms. Pouilly noted that OHCHR is also deeply concerned at reports of civilians being prevented from seeking refuge in the premises of the UNMISS and, in some cases, being shot at while trying to do so, as well as reports that UN compounds and PoC sites have been directly caught in the fighting and apparently at times directly targeted.
She said that there are indications the violence has started to spread to other parts of the country. Armed clashes reportedly erupted yesterday in Mundri, Lainya, Kajo-Keji and Yei, in Central Equatoria state, as well as in Torit, in Eastern Equatoria state.
Welcoming the ceasefire declared by the leaders of the two sides, OHCHR called on both leaders to exercise their leadership and make a concerted and genuine effort to stop their respective forces from fighting each other, as well as to do their utmost to ensure the protection of the civilian population.
UN refugee agency calls for safe passage for people fleeing Juba
The UN refugee agency is calling on all armed parties to ensure safe passage for people fleeing the fighting in Juba, urging neighbouring countries to keep borders open to people seeking asylum.
"Emergency preparedness is in progress in Kenya, Sudan and other neighbouring countries in case of a major influx," said Spokesperson Leo Dobbs of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
Some borders have been affected, such as the Uganda-South Sudan crossing, where security is tightened on the South Sudan side, he said. This has led to a significant decrease in the number of new arrivals coming into Uganda over the weekend.
He said that just 95 people crossed on Saturday, dropping to 36 on Sunday, compared with a daily average of 167 for July and 171 for June.
Also at the briefing, Tarik Jasarevic, for the World Health Organization (WHO), said the movement of WHO staff in Juba was being restricted by military forces. Mothers carrying children had been seen fleeing and trying to reach protection of civilians compounds.
Several days earlier, the WHO had managed to supply the Juba Teaching Hospital with essential medicine and body bags. Medical kits would be distributed to partners on protection of civilians sites, and the WHO was mobilizing additional human and financial resources.
Out of the $7.5 million which the WHO needs for health interventions in South Sudan, only $4.3 million had been received thus far. The health cluster as a whole was only 28 per cent funded, stated Mr. Jasarevic
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US Defense Secretary Makes Surprise Visit to Afghanistan
by Carla Babb July 12, 2016
U.S. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter was in Afghanistan on Tuesday, just three days after international leaders agreed to support the war-torn country with about 12,000 NATO troops and funding for Afghan National Defense and Security Forces through 2020.
Carter met with President Ashraf Ghani and General Mick Nicholson, commander of U.S. and international forces in Afghanistan. He also was to thank U.S. troops for their efforts toward stabilizing Afghanistan and preventing the country from again becoming a safe haven for terrorists who wish to launch attacks against the U.S.
The Afghans have several problems to resolve. While there have not been major military defeats by the Taliban, the ANDSF has seen rising casualties, especially in places like Helmand province, where the Taliban is entrenched.
"The Afghan Air Force is having problems in growing, the Afghan police is not doing well and you are watching the economy reach a crisis point," Anthony Cordesman, the Burke Chair in Strategy for the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told VOA.
Most US troops to remain
Last week, President Barack Obama announced that he was slowing the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan. Instead of drawing down to 5,500 troops by the end of the year, 8,400 U.S. troops will remain in Afghanistan through the end of Obama's presidency in January 2017.
On Saturday, General Curtis Scaparrotti, NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Europe, confirmed that 6,700 U.S. troops would serve in the NATO-led Resolute Support Mission to train, advise and assist the ANDSF and Afghan police. A senior defense official, speaking Tuesday to VOA, said not all of the 6,700 will count toward the total U.S. troop number in Afghanistan because they will be supporting the NATO mission from bases elsewhere in the region.
More than 2,000 of the 8,400 U.S. troops in Afghanistan will support the U.S. counterterrorism mission, dubbed Freedom's Sentinel, which targets remnants of al-Qaida and pockets of Islamic State fighters trying to establish a foothold in the country's east.
Some of the U.S. troops in Afghanistan will serve both missions as opportunities arise, senior administration officials said Saturday.
Drone strike
Tuesday, the U.S. military confirmed a drone strike in eastern Nangarhar province of Afghanistan but would not discuss reports that a prominent Pakistani militant commander had been killed.
"We can confirm that U.S. forces conducted a counterterrorism strike in Achin and Kot districts in Nangarhar province July 9. However, for operational security reasons we do not discuss details of counterterror operations," a spokesman told VOA.
Pakistani and Afghan media quoted unnamed security sources as saying that militant leader Omar Naray, who was wanted for plotting the killing of 134 students of Army Public School in Peshawar in December 2014, was killed in the strike.
Ayaz Gul contributed to this report.
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UN Arbitration Court Rules Against Beijing in South China Sea Dispute
by VOA News July 12, 2016
In a landmark ruling, the U.N. arbitration court is dismissing China's territorial claims in the South China Sea, saying it has "no historic title" to the vast maritime region.
Tuesday's ruling by the Hague-based Permanent Court of Arbitration answers a complaint brought by the Philippines in 2013 that accused Beijing of violating the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) with its aggressive actions on the Scarborough Shoal, a reef located about 225 kilometers off the Philippine coast.
Chinese President Xi Jinping rejected the ruling and said "China's territorial sovereignty and maritime interests in the South China Sea" will not be affected. China's foreign ministry said on its website, "The award is null and void and has no binding force."
The court said Beijing's claim of virtual sovereignty over nearly all the South China Sea under a so-called "nine-dash line" runs contrary to UNCLOS, which sets a country's maritime boundaries 22 kilometers from its coast, and control over economic activities up to 370 kilometers from its coast. The court ruled China had violated Manila's sovereign rights by interfering with Philippine fishing and oil exploration activities in the area.
In Manila, Philippine Foreign Secretary Perfecto Yasay called the ruling "a milestone decision" in a press conference moments after the announcement. Yasay said the ruling makes "an important contribution" to resolving the ongoing maritime disputes, and urged all parties "to exercise restraint and sobriety." New Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has called for bilateral negotiations to resolve the controversy.
U.S. State Department spokesman John Kirby called the ruling "an important contribution to the shared goal of a peaceful resolution to disputes in the South China Sea."
China had boycotted the proceedings at the court, saying the body has no jurisdiction over the dispute, and insists it will not accept, recognize or implement any ruling on the South China Sea, despite being a signatory to UNCLOS along with the Philippines. In a statement issued just hours before The Hague panel announced its decision, a spokesman for China's foreign ministry said it would not accept "any so-called material" from the court.
Analysts said the court ruling is a significant decision in favor of the Philippines.
Ernest Bower with the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies said, "China now faces reality that if it continues to assert, through actions and words" its claims in the region, "it is breaking the law."
Amarjit Singh, a senior consultant at the British think tank IHS, said the ruling "undermines China's claims in the South China Sea and potentially limits China's negotiating stance" with other countries that have also asserted claims there, including, Brunei, Malaysia, Taiwan and Vietnam.
Chinese dissatisfaction
State media Xinhua and online netizens expressed strong dissatisfaction the ruling. A Weibo user said in his posting that "We should unite behind the country's claim and make no concessions on the South China Sea dispute even if we have to go to war," while another user said "China should show no fear for any future economic sanction" shall China decide not to comply with the order.
In its harsh-worded editorial, Xinhua even lambasted the international arbitration court to be "the source of chaos."
Meanwhile, the ruling is coming in the midst of the two-day EU-China bilateral talks, which began in Beijing on Tuesday. The EU advised China to stick to rules and abide by the ruling. German think tank, Mecator, said the EU would never grant China's request for a Market Economy Status if Beijing defies the court decision.
An estimated $5 trillion in global trade passes each year through the South China Sea, which is home to rich fishing grounds and a potentially vast wealth of oil, gas and other natural resources.
About 100 demonstrators marched outside the Chinese consulate in Manila, calling on Beijing to relinquish the Scarborough Shoal, shouting "Chexit Now" - a play on the term coined for Britain's controversial push to leave the European Union.
China has launched a massive land seizure and rebuilding effort throughout the South China Sea in recent years, transforming numerous reefs into artificial islands that can support military installations, all the while ignoring competing claims over the region by Brunei, Malaysia, Vietnam and Taiwan, as well as the Philippines.
The Hague court also ruled Tuesday that none of the Spratly Islands granted China an exclusive economic zone, and that its construction activities on Mischief Reef caused "irreparable harm" to the reef's ecosystem.
Enforcement of ruling
Despite Tuesday's ruling, the United Nations has no mechanism to enforce the decision, either through military action or economic sanctions. But it could prompt China's other Asia-Pacific rivals to also file suit, putting increased diplomatic pressure on Beijing to reduce its presence in the South China Sea.
The United States has also challenged Beijing's increasing aggressiveness in the region, holding a number of naval exercises and deploying warships near the rebuilt reefs to assert the international freedom of navigation rules.
What's behind the dispute?
China claims nearly the entire 3.5 million square-kilometer South China Sea, based on its so-called "nine-dashed line," which it says is based on ancient maps. China's claims overlap with not only the Philippines, but also Brunei, Malaysia, Vietnam and Taiwan. Some of the disputes stretch back decades or even centuries. But tensions have worsened in recent years, as Beijing has moved to assert its control over the territory.
Who brought the case against China?
The Philippines filed the case against China at the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague in January 2013. Manila argues Beijing's territorial claims and recent aggressive activities in the South China Sea violate the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), an international treaty both nations have ratified.
How has China responded?
China refuses to participate in the tribunal, arguing it has no obligation to do so under UNCLOS. Beijing has also repeatedly insisted it will not recognize what it predicts will be a biased ruling. In the meantime, China has continued to build artificial islands and military outposts in the contested waters, in an attempt to create "facts on the ground."
What exactly did the court consider?
The Philippines brought a total of 15 complaints against China. The most significant is complaint number two, which claims China's "nine-dash line" is contrary to UNCLOS. So far, the court has not determined it has jurisdiction to rule on that complaint.
Instead, the tribunal announced late last year it would tackle seven other critical issues. These included complaints challenging specific Chinese activities around particular locations. It is also expected to officially categorize various land features as either rocks, islands, or low tide elevations - labels that would affect the rights of whoever owns the territory.
Is the ruling binding?
Technically, yes. But in reality, UNCLOS has no way to enforce its rulings, since it does not have a police force, an army or a way to impose sanctions on those who ignore its decisions. Some analysts have speculated that the matter could be taken to the U.N. Security Council, but China and Russia, which are permanent members, would inevitably veto any action there.
If the ruling is not enforceable, why does it matter?
If, as expected, the court rules at least partially in the Philippines' favor, it could put important diplomatic pressure on China. It could also provide an important symbolic victory for Asian leaders who say Beijing is ignoring international law as it seeks to assert its power in the region.
A ruling against China would also set an important legal precedent and become part of international law. It could also encourage other countries who have territorial disputes with China to take similar legal action.
What is the U.S. stance on the dispute?
The U.S. says it takes no official position on China's various territorial disputes. But top officials have repeatedly criticized China's actions in the South China Sea and have urged China to accept the court's eventual ruling. However, any U.S. efforts to publicly shame Beijing may be limited by the fact that Washington itself has refused to ratify UNCLOS.
So what's next?
China's next move is uncertain. Some have said it may withdraw in protest from the UNCLOS treaty system. But that can only be done with a year's notice, allowing other nations plenty of time to file last-minute cases. The move also may reinforce a perception that Beijing does not want to play by the established rules of international order.
China says it prefers to solve territorial disputes through direct negotiations, but has taken no meaningful steps toward holding talks. Instead, Beijing is seemingly content to let the disputes play out as it continues building in the disputed areas.
Will anything change under the Philippines new president?
The Philippines' incoming president, Rodrigo Duterte, says he is open to bilateral talks with China if the standoff is not resolved in two years. That represents a policy difference from his predecessor, Benigno Aquino, who took a hardline stance on the territorial dispute.
But Duterte also made it clear this week he does not intend to give up much ground, saying the disputed territory "is ours," and telling China: "You have no right to be there." The tough-talking politician has also threatened to personally ride a jet ski to one of the disputed islands to stake his country's claim.
What's at stake?
A lot of money, and a lot of national pride. More than $5 trillion in trade passes through the South China Sea every year. The area is also home to vital fishing grounds and is thought to contain vast natural gas and oil deposits. Political leaders in many claimant countries have also exploited the issue to rouse nationalistic sentiment.
William Gallo and Richard Green, Saibal Dasqupta and Joyce Huang contributed to this report
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South China Sea Ruling Explained
by VOA News July 12, 2016
An international tribunal in The Hague has rebuked China over its behavior in the South China Sea and found no legal basis for Beijing's vast claims to sovereignty over the waters. The tribunal also criticized China for damaging the environment of coral reefs and for not preventing its fishermen from killing protected species such as sea turtles. Here are the main points from Tuesday's unanimous ruling by the five judge panel:
China has no legal basis for its historic claims to the so-called "nine dash line" which encircles about 90 percent of the South China Sea
-China argues that its fishermen have been fishing in the South China Sea for centuries, but the tribunal found that for much of this time, the waters "were legally part of the high seas, in which vessels from any State could freely navigate and fish." That means that Chinese fishermen were exercising "high seas freedoms... and there was no evidence that China had exercised exclusive control over the waters... or prevent other States from exploiting their resources."
-China's expansive claims under the nine-dash line are incompatible with the allocation of rights under the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, which Beijing ratified. The panel ruled that whatever China's historic rights to resources in the waters of the South China Sea, they "were extinguished" when the country entered into the Convention.
Many features which Beijing claims do not qualify as islands which would give the owner expansive rights over the surrounding waters
-For a land feature to be considered a territory with exclusive rights over surrounding waters, it must remain above water at high tide. The panel noted that while China has carried out extensive land reclamation on many coral reefs, such improvements do not alter the features' legal status, which is based on their "natural condition" before such constructions.
-The panel said it consulted an expert hydrologist and used archival materials to determine that none of the features in the dispute qualify as islands, which would entitle them to a 200 nautical mile exclusive economic zone. However some features including Scarborough Shoal, Johnson Reef, Cuarteron Reef and Fiery Cross Reef are high-tide features, which could generate an entitlement to at least a 12 nautical mile territorial sea.
Rebuke for China's actions in the South China Sea
-The panel ruled that China constructed installations and artificial islands at Mischief Reef without the authorization of the Philippines, violating Manila's sovereign rights.
-The tribunal found that the Philippines has sovereign rights with respect to sea areas in its exclusive economic zone, which includes Mischief Reef, Second Thomas Shoal and Reed Bank. And it found that China had interfered with Philippine petroleum exploration at Reed Bank, and it tried to prohibit Philippine fishermen from operating within Manila's exclusive economic zone at Mischief Reef and Second Thomas Shoal.
-The panel consulted environmental experts to conclude that China's "recent large scale land reclamation and construction of artificial islands at seven features in the Spratly Islands has caused severe harm to the coral reef environment" in violation of Beijing's commitment to protect the marine environment under its obligations to the Convention.
-The panel concluded that Chinese law enforcement vessels also created "serious risk of collision and danger to Philippine ships and personnel" during encounters in the South China Sea, in violation of Beijing's commitment to the Convention.
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Uneasy Cease-fire in South Sudan After Recent Violence
by Jason Patinkin July 12, 2016
An uneasy cease-fire prevailed in South Sudan's capital on Tuesday as aid workers struggled to reach thousands affected by heavy clashes of the last few days. New fighting was reported in the countryside while the government and opposition traded accusations over who was at fault for the violence.
Tuesday was calm in Juba, but Gregor Mueller of the International Committee of the Red Cross said that the situation is far from resolved.
"The fighting of the last three days has displaced thousands of people who are on the move or have sought shelter in different sites around town, mainly in churches and humanitarian compounds, and are in need of shelter, food, water, medical care," he told VOA by phone.
Mueller said the ICRC and the South Sudan Red Cross are distributing food and medical supplies while also helping bury dead bodies which accumulated in the streets.
President Salva Kiir declared a cease-fire Monday government forces pushed opposition fighters from their base in the Jebel region of the city. Opposition leader Riek Machar soon followed suit with a ceasefire order of his own.
Now there is a blame game over who started the clashes, which have left hundreds dead.
South Sudan's ambassador to Kenya Chol Ajongo says the rebels started it.
He also slammed a peace agreement which Kiir and Machar signed last August under intense international pressure.
He said the government did not want to agree to allow the former opposition soldiers to return to the capital.
"We accepted it and this is what we got. This is what we predicted," said Chol Ajongo.
However, the opposition accused the government of being at fault for the renewed conflict.
The fighting erupted in Juba last Thursday. The government says opposition fighters killed five soldiers at a checkpoint.
In the following days, the government used helicopters and tanks against the opposition, which carried only light weapons and whose troop strength in Juba was limited by terms of the peace deal.
During the fighting, the government shelled a U.N. compound protecting thousands of Nuer civilians, the same ethnicity as opposition leader Machar.
The U.N.'s special representative for prevention of genocide said Tuesday that there were reports of civilians targeted for their ethnicity.
The U.N. has called for more troops from the region to be sent to bolster the U.N. peacekeeping mission in South Sudan, which is meant to protect civilians. Government forces have blocked the peacekeepers from patrolling the city.
But Ambassador Ajongo said no more foreign peacekeepers should be sent to South Sudan.
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Indian PM Appeals for Peace in Kashmir
by Anjana Pasricha July 12, 2016
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has appealed for calm in Indian Kashmir, which has been wracked with three days of violent protests.
The unrest, which erupted after the killing of a local militant commander by security forces, has claimed about 30 lives and shuttered much of the region since Saturday. A curfew remains in place across much of the region that has witnessed sporadic protests.
After a high-level meeting convened on Modi's return from Africa, Minister of State in the prime minister's office, Jitendra Singh said Modi expressed concern about the situation in Kashmir and appealed to the people for calm so the situation can normalize. He said he promised to assist the state government in calming the tensions.
Singh said the prime minister also hopes innocent people would not be harmed or inconvenienced in any way.
India has sent more troops to beef up security in the region.
Prominent Kashmir separatist leader Mirwaiz Umar Farooq said the "sending of more troops, which the government has decided, and giving them more powers will add fuel to the fire as it will be greatly resisted by the people."
Separatist leaders have called for a general strike through Wednesday.
Although a violent separatist insurgency has abated, the massive popular protests over the death of 22-year-old rebel commander Burhan Wani have raised fears the appeal of militancy is again gaining ground among young people, who were at the forefront of the violent clashes in the region.
Meanwhile, a statement from the United Nations said that Secretary General Ban Ki-moon calls on all parties to exercise maximum restraint to avoid further violence and hopes that all concerns would be addressed through peaceful means.
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Death Toll Rises To 32 In Worst Kashmir Violence Since 2010
July 13, 2016
by RFE/RL
India and Pakistan traded charges and the United Nations called for restraint on July 12 as the death toll from clashes between protesters and police in the disputed Kashmir region rose to at least 32.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon "called on all parties to exercise maximum restraint to avoid further violence" even as Kashmiri separatist leaders called for further protests and a general strike.
A total of 31 civilians and a policeman have been killed since the weekend in the clashes in Kashmir valley, in the worst civilian unrest to hit the region since 2010, when 110 people were killed in anti-India protests after Indian police killed a teenager.
Doctors and government officials said they were struggling to care for hundreds of civilians who have been admitted to hospitals with bullet and pellet wounds.More than 400 people including 100 security officials have been injured, and the death toll could rise further, officials said.
Across the region, shops were shuttered, businesses closed, and cellphone and mobile Internet services were suspended.
Thousands thronged Tral town, despite restrictions, to participate in the memorial service for rebel leader Burhan Wani, whose killing on July 8 by Indian police triggered the outbreak of protests.
They shouted pro-freedom and anti-India slogans, and displayed banners like "Burhan, the pride of nation." Wani had been a poster boy for the separatist cause.
Wani's killing prompted Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to condemn India's crackdown on civilian protesters and resulting deaths, while he described Wani, 22, a commander of the Hizbul Mujahideen group, as a "Kashmiri leader."
That prompted Indian Foreign Ministry spokesman Vikas Swarup to retort that Sharif's statement reflected Pakistan's "continued attachment to terrorism and its usage as an instrument of state policy."
"Pakistan is advised to refrain from interfering in the internal affairs of its neighbors," Swarup said on July 12.
India accuses Pakistan of sheltering rebels and helping them cross into Kashmir to carry out attacks on Indian soil.
Islamabad says it provides only diplomatic and political support to the people of Kashmir.
The Himalayan region is divided between Pakistan and India, but both claim the entire area and have fought two wars over it since 1947.
Kashmir is India's only Muslim-majority region and has been gripped by a secessionist movement since the 1980s. An estimated 44,000 people have been killed in violence there.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi held a high-level meeting on July 12 to review the security situation in Kashmir and appealed to people there to maintain peace.
Indian authorities sent at least 2,000 more law enforcement troops to the mountainous region on July 11, where hundreds of thousands already are deployed permanently.
With reporting by AP, AFP, and dpa
Source: http://www.rferl.org/content/death-toll-rises-32- worst-kashmir-violence-since-2012-pakistan-india-clash- united-nations-calls-for-restraint/27855375.html
Copyright (c) 2016. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.
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New Space Tracking Ship Yuanwang-7 Launched in China
Sputnik News
13:56 12.07.2016(updated 15:05 12.07.2016)
China launched on Tuesday new space tracking ship Yuanwang-7, which is expected to monitor Chinese space missions, local media reported.
BEIJING (Sputnik) According to China Radio International (CRI), the construction of the 721 feet-long vessel started in 2014. The Yuanwang-7 with displacement of 25,000 tons is capable to resist bad weather conditions and perform maritime tracking for 100 days, the broadcaster said.
The broadcaster noted that the vessel would track the flight of manned spacecraft Shenzhou-11, which is expected to be launched in October 2016 and dock with China's orbiting space lab Tiangong-2 with two astronauts on board. The astronauts will be capable to work at the Tiangong-2 for up to 30 days.
The launch of Tiangong-2 is planned for the fall. The module set to replace the Tiangong-1 prototype, which has been in orbit since 2011.
In early January, the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation said that Beijing will conduct over 20 space missions in 2016, including the launch of a manned spacecraft.
Sputnik
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Private Watchdog Detects 'High-Level Activity' at North Korea Nuclear Site
by VOA News July 12, 2016
A U.S.-based North Korean watchdog says recent satellite images indicates "a high-level of activity" at the communist regime's nuclear test site.
A report released Tuesday by 38 North on its website says the images shows what appears to be supplies and/or equipment stacked on the ground at the north section of the Punggye-ri test site, where North Korea conducted nuclear tests in 2013 and 2016.
38 North said "it is not possible to determine whether this activity is for maintenance, excavation or preparation for a fifth nuclear test" based solely on the satellite images. But the group says it is clear that Pyongyang is making sure the Punggye-ri site "is in a state of readiness" for any future tests.
Pyongyang has conducted four known nuclear tests since 2006, the most recent back in January.
Last month, the United Nations' nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, said satellite evidence shows North Korea has likely resumed activities at a plant at Yongbyon to produce plutonium from spent nuclear reactor fuel.
The information matches evidence found by 38 North, which reported in April that exhaust plumes had been detected from the thermal plant at Yongbyon's main reprocessing installation.
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Valley of Guns: India's New Government Sweating its Kashmir Conundrum
Sputnik News
19:43 12.07.2016
The Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir has reached a boiling point; more than two dozen have died and around 1,300 have been injured in clashes between hostile teens and security forces.
New Delhi (Sputnik) In the shadow of the Himalayas, India's Kashmir valley has erupted into violent clashes between radicalized teens and security forces as unrest engulfs the region.
It has been more than three days since Indian security forces eliminated top terrorist and Hizbul Mujaheedin Commander Burhan Wani. However widespread violence continues to plague the Kashmir valley. So far, 31 people have died and more than 1,300 have been injured.
Prime Minister Modi chaired a high level meeting on Tuesday which was attended by all of India's top cabinet ministers and intelligence officials. After the meeting, the Home Ministry charted out a comprehensive strategy for putting an end to the prevailing unrest in the Kashmir valley.
Sputnik's correspondent obtained access to the Home Ministry document regarding the government's Kashmir strategy.
First of all, the government has decided to send adequate security forces in the valley so as to intimidate young people, in the hopes of dissuading them from pelting people with stones. Furthermore, it will help quell the violence immediately, before it has the chance to flare into a full-fledged conflict.
The government has decided to reach out to the opposition parties to heed their advice and India's central government will impress upon them that Kashmir crisis is a national problem which has to be dealt with unilaterally. By taking this step, the government hopes to get the full backing of all the political parties.
The government has also decided to reach out to the separatist leaders of Jammu and Kashmir and compel them to dissuade Kashmiri youths from engaging in street violence and pelting people with rocks.
The Indian government believes that there has been a lack of communication between the central leadership and the leaders of the various political parties of Jammu and Kashmir. So the government will initiate a political conversation among the different political party leaders, which will help it in the event of future unrest.
The central government will send religious leaders to pacify the rebellious teens in Kashmir. Furthermore, in the long term, these religious leaders will help guide the teens, who might otherwise fall prey to the ideologies of terrorist organizations. The national government has also asked its intelligence machinery to be more vigilant, since the state machinery of Pakistan has also been influencing the young Kashmiris.
The security forces have been asked to adopt a prudent approach to the use of force and not react instantly when dealing with hostile teens. Additionally, the central government will enlist the support of community elders to guide young people and change their mindset. It has been learned that due to the Pakistani propaganda, young Kashmiris consider security forces, state police and administrators to be their enemy. The government is keen to change this perception.
New Delhi is convinced that radicalization is the main reason for the growing unrest in the Kashmir valley, since radicalization has been on rise for the last year, fueling unrest among young people.
"Now it's time for the government to take the right long-term steps to tackle the Kashmir problem. Over the past year, India's status has increased internationally, so it can take some tough and concrete measures," Lt Col (Rtd) Ashok Mehta told Sputnik.
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France Puts Off India by Proposing New Conditions for Rafale Deal
Sputnik News
15:45 12.07.2016(updated 15:56 12.07.2016)
Inter-government talks between India and France on the purchase of Rafale fighter planes have hit another major roadblock as France has reportedly proposed an arrangement that India is most likely to reject outright.
NEW DELHI(Sputnik) Highly placed sources in India's Defense Ministry have confirmed that France has been exerting undue pressure on India to seal the Rafale fighter aircraft deal without finalizing the mandatory offset contracts. The offset clause of India's Defense Procurement Policy (DPP) mandates that foreign vendors spend a portion of the deal's amount on projects within India.
France has proposed that it would assist India in reviving the unsuccessful Kaveri gas turbine jet engine project and a host of other projects including the manufacturing of fighter jet components, but it would take a final call only after the contract for the procurement of Rafale jets is formally signed.
Expert has view that India's revised Defense Procurement Policy (DPP) has no room for such an arrangement.
Amit Cowshish, former finance advisor to the Ministry of Defense, says, "Defense Procurement Policy doesn't support this proposal. According to the Indian defense policy, the Rafale deal contract as well as offsets contract ought to be signed at the same time. If the Ministry of Defense took this deal as exceptional, only then is it possible; but under the set procedure this is not possible."
The offset policy is a mandatory provision which requires foreign vendors to invest a portion of the deal's amount in India. The rationale behind the provision is to encourage foreign companies to invest in research and development, which would eventually make India self-dependent in defense equipment manufacturing. The French are willing to invest 50% of the deal's amount, out of which 30% will be invested in the military aerospace research & development program.
Sources from the Ministry of Defense say that France's new condition has further complicated the deal, which had already been held back due to its many hiccups. To date, not a single major issue has been resolved between the negotiators. Apart from offset projects, the Ministry of Defense has yet to respond to the Ministry of Law's objection over inter-governmental agreement for the Rafale deal.
On January 26 this year, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and visiting French President Francois Hollande had suggested in a joint statement that negotiation for the purchase of 36 Rafale medium multi-role combat aircraft was near completion. Later, Manohar Parrikar, India's Minister of Defense set a June 2016 deadline for the deal. However, the deal was not announced in June. Moreover, soures confirm that negotiators have not met for over a month now.
Sputnik
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India May Build Up Its Military Power With Russia's Shtorm Aircraft Carrier
Sputnik News
14:47 12.07.2016(updated 16:24 12.07.2016)
Russia has offered its latest aircraft carrier design, Project 23000E Shtorm to the Indians. That's according to a senior Indian Navy official speaking to Defense News.
The offer came amid discussions between India and the United States on the prospects for the transfer of military technology for India's future nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, Defense News' India bureau chief Vivek Raghuvanshi explained.
A diplomat at the Russian Embassy in Delhi confirmed to the newsweekly that a delegation of Russian officials had visited India last week to make the offer.
Last year, the St. Petersburg-based Krylov State Research Center and Nevskoye Planning and Design Bureau showed off a model of its new prospective 100,000 metric ton displacement nuclear aircraft carrier, designated the Project 23000E Shtorm ('Storm').
The massive aircraft carrier design envisions transporting up to 90 aircraft, including MiG-29 and T-50 (PAK FA) fighter aircraft, early warning aircraft, and Ka-27 helicopters. Designed with two landing strips, the 330 meters-long carrier would enable planes to take off and land almost without interruption. Capable of serving in frigid temperatures, the prospective carrier's hull design also allows for a significant reduction in water resistance.
For air defense, the prospective carrier is expected to be equipped with Russia's next generation air defense system, the S-500 surface-to-air missile system, currently being developed by the Almaz-Antey Air Defense Concern.
Speaking to Defense News, the unnamed senior Naval official described the carrier, pointing out that it is "designed to conduct operations in remote and oceanic areas, engage land-based and sea-borne enemy targets, ensure the operational stability of naval forces, protect landing troops, and provide anti-aircraft defense."
India, Raghuvanshi wrote, currently "plans to build its second homegrown aircraft carrier, [the] INS Vishal, which will be nuclear-powered, 300 meters long, 70 meters wide and displace 65,000 tons."
Russia and India have a fruitful history of defense cooperation. Between 2004 and 2013, Russia assisted the Indian Navy with the overhaul and deep modernization of a Soviet-era Kiev-class carrier-cruiser purchased from Russia and renamed the INS Vikramaditya. According to independent defense analyst Nitin Mehta, through this process Indian designers "gained valuable insights into carrier-building techniques."
According to the Indian Navy official, India was recently attracted to a US offer to provide Delhi with the technology for an electromagnetic aircraft launch system (EMALS), which is unavailable on the prospective Russian carrier. India and the US have recently formed a 'joint working group' on carrier technology. However, according to Raghuvanshi, there has been no discussion regarding US carrier-based nuclear propulsion technology being offered to India.
Delhi has yet to decide whether to purchase a ready-made carrier or to build it locally, and there are still doubts whether the necessary funding will be made available by the Indian government. Speaking to Defense News, retired Indian Navy Commodore Anil Jai Singh questioned whether the country really has "the kind of global footprint to justify that expense in the next 15 years or so."
An anonymous Indian Ministry of Defense official confirmed that Delhi has yet to finalize details on how to procure its homegrown carrier.
According to one defense analyst, Russia's Shtorm carrier concept is the closest prospective competitor to America's brand new Ford-class carrier.
Sputnik
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India to Lease One More Akula-Class Nuclear Sub From Russian Navy
Sputnik News
07:55 12.07.2016(updated 08:25 12.07.2016)
India agreed to lease the second Akula-class submarine from the Russian Navy, local media reported Tuesday citing a source in the military.
MOSCOW (Sputnik) In 2010, India began a 10-year lease of the nuclear-powered attack Akula-class submarine Nerpa. After joining India's Navy, the submarine was renamed to INS Chakra.
"India agreed to lease a project 971 submarine which will be withdrawn from the Russian Navy," the source told Kommersant newspaper.
Akula-class submarines feature very low acoustic signatures and can carry up to 12 submarine-launched cruise missiles with nuclear warheads and a range of 3,000 kilometers (1,860 miles) in addition to anti-ship missiles and torpedoes.
Sputnik
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All foreign vessels in Persian Gulf being monitored by IRGC Navy
IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency
Tehran, July 12, IRNA -- Deputy commander of Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Navy said here on Tuesday that the IRGC is closely monitoring all foreign vessels in the Persian Gulf.
Following the reports of some foreign media on IRGC dispatching five military vessels to monitor a US warship in the Strait of Hormuz, Ali-Reza Tangsiri said monitoring the foreign vessels is not a new issue.
Alireza Tangsiri underscored that IRGC Navy is monitoring around-the-clock all foreign vessels in the Persian Gulf.
'According to our missions, the IRGC Navy forces are closely and thoughtfully monitoring the movement of any vessel from foreign countries, particularly the extra-regional states such as the hostile US vessels' he added.
Tangsiri concluded that the foreign vessels are also entirely aware of the IRGC Navy forces' monitoring in the Persian Gulf.
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IRGC monitoring all foreign vessels in Persian Gulf
ISNA - Iranian Students' News Agency
Tue / 12 July 2016 / 14:33
TEHRAN (ISNA)- Iranian Deputy Navy Commander Alireza Tangsiri said all foreign vessels in Persian Gulf are being monitored by Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of Iran.
He made the remarks after some foreign media claimed that the IRGC has dispatched five military vessels to watch a US flotilla in the Strait of Hormuz, southern Iran.
Watching foreign vessels in mission points of the Navy is not a new issue and it was, is and would be conducted continuously, Tangsiri said.
He said, "We, based on the missions, are closely monitoring movements of any foreign vessel, especially, those belonging to cross-regional countries and particularly the Great Satan, the US."
He also said that the issue has been continuing for many years, adding what has been mentioned in foreign media is due to wrong understanding of the issue and is quite irrelevant.
End Item
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US has failed to honor its JCPOA commitments: Velayati
ISNA - Iranian Students' News Agency
Tue / 12 July 2016 / 08:58
TEHRAN (ISNA)- A senior adviser to Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei said the US has failed to carry out its obligations under Iran's nuclear deal with the group of world powers.
"The Americans have failed to fulfill their obligations, which were the removal of the [anti-Iran] sanctions and their effects, freedom of trade and scientific, technological, and business ties between Iran and Western countries," said Ali Akbar Velayati on Saturday.
He stressed that the US was supposed to meet all these obligations after the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) confirmed Iran's compliance with the nuclear deal.
On February 26, the IAEA released its first regular report since the implementation of the JCPOA that verified Iran's commitment to the nuclear agreement.
He further noted that the US's failure to abide by its commitments has resulted in a rise in pessimism towards Washington in Iran and other regional countries.
Velayati also censured the other members of the P5+1 group of countries for their silence over the breach of agreement by the US. "We have to demand the reason for their silence on the Americans' oath-breaking."
Iran and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council the United States, France, Britain, China and Russia plus Germany started implementing the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) on January 16.
Under the deal, all nuclear-related sanctions imposed on Iran by the European Union, the Security Council and the US would be lifted. Iran has, in return, put some limitations on its nuclear activities.
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Iraqi forces push terrorists out of villages near Mosul
Iran Press TV
Tue Jul 12, 2016 1:4PM
Iraqi troops have liberated two villages in southern Mosul from the grip of Daesh terrorists as part of the push by government forces for recapturing the strategic northern city.
Nofel Hamadi al-Sultan, the governor of Nineveh Province, where Mosul is located, said security forces managed to wrest control of the villages in the region of Qayyarah on Tuesday, Arabic-language al-Forat news agency reported.
Iraqi soldiers also retook a residential complex in the same area, the report added.
The neighboring district of al-Shirqat, situated in Salahuddin Province, was also encircled by the Iraqi forces during Tuesday's operation.
The road, which links Qayyarah to Shirqat, was one of the major Daesh supply lines.
On Saturday, Iraqi forces retook the Qayyarah air base from Daesh.
In another development on Tuesday, Iraqi armed forces discovered a jail underground in Qayyarah and released hundreds of innocent prisoners who were held by Daesh terrorists.
The Iraqi army also found a six-kilometer tunnel in northern Ramadi with a large quantity of clothes and gold inside the passage. Ramadi, the provincial capital of Anbar, was liberated last December almost one year after it fell to the hands of the extremists.
Ismail al-Mahlavi, the commander of the Iraqi army's operations in Nineveh, said the tunnel was located in a village in northern Ramadi, Iraq's al-Sumaria satellite TV network reported.
Also on Tuesday, Iraqi security forces uncovered Daesh torture cells and iron cages in the recently recaptured city of Fallujah, al-Qadir TV reported.
Meanwhile, Iraqi sources said they found cells used for punishing women who refused to marry terrorists. They further discovered torture equipment such as iron spikes, chains and car batteries.
The northern and western parts of Iraq have been plagued by gruesome violence ever since Daesh terrorists began their reign of terror in the country in June 2014.
Iraqi army troops, backed by fighters from allied Popular Mobilization Units, are seeking to win back militant-held regions in joint operations.
Having suffered heavy losses on the battlefield against Iraqi soldiers, Daesh has recently stepped up its terror attacks across the country.
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Russia's 'Polar Bear Spetznas' Step Up Defense of Country's Artic Borders
Sputnik News
18:24 12.07.2016(updated 22:24 12.07.2016)
Amid NATO's buildup along Russia's borders, including in the Arctic region, Moscow is stepping up efforts to strengthen its northern defense. Moreover, in addition to the Navy and Aerospace Defense Forces, the Arctic's defense is increasingly coming to depend on troops from the ground forces serving under extremely harsh climactic conditions.
Analyzing the Russian military efforts to defend its vast Arctic expanse in a piece for the independent news and analysis website PolitRussia, journalist Oleg Polevoy recalled that "while Arctic motorized rifle units appear from time to time in the Russian media, the general public knows little about them; collecting information from television and newspapers is a painstaking process."
For a long time, the journalist recalled, "the only infantry unit in the entire Russian North was the 200th Motorized Rifle Brigade at Pechenga, Murmansk Region. That unit was established in 1997 on the basis of the old Soviet 131st Motorized Rifle DivisionIt's obvious that a single brigade for the defense of territory including the entire Kola Peninsula and Chukotka was, to put it mildly, insufficient, but it's good that it was least was preserved in the 90s," a very difficult period for the country and its defense capabilities.
Today, Polevoy explained, "times have changed. The country began to revive, and our foreign partners, having already buried Russia mentally, got nervous and started increasing their military activity."
Most recently, the government of NATO member Norway announced a defense spending bonanza, aimed at heavily modernizing all three branches of their military. Meanwhile, earlier this year, the US mulled placing a powerful new radar complex in the country, on top of the one they already have, and aimed primarily at spying on Russia.
In light of the changing conditions, Moscow found it necessary not only to ensure coastal defense, but to create a mobile force capable of reacting anywhere in the Russian Arctic.
"In 2012, the creation of a [new] separate Arctic brigade was announced. In 2014, the government signed a corresponding decree. And on January 17, 2015, the 80th Motorized Arctic Brigade (stationed in the locality of Alakurtti on the Kola Peninsula) received its colors."
The new unit's tasks aren't easy, the journalist noted. "Not only do they have to operate in extreme climactic conditions, but their 'sworn friends' [among foreign militaries] have already set the bar very high."
Polevoy recalled that for its part, the US military, in addition to Navy and Air Force units, "fields three 'Arctic' brigades in Alaska. Moreover, military tasks in the north can be handled by rapidly deployed special purpose Marines."
"The Canadian Army too on the whole is also well-trained for action in the Arctic. Recently, Ottawa set about reorganizing and reequipping its ranger units responsible for security in the Arctic region, which for many years before looked more like volunteer militia than regular army (or even reserve) units. In addition, Joint Task Force 2, an elite special operations unit of the Canadian Forces, is also prepared to conduct tasks in the Arctic."
The Norwegian Special Force 'Rangers', meanwhile, have been specially honed for action in the Arctic. "Recently, Oslo announced the creation of a new unit of special forces practically on the border with Russia. Against the background of a total re-equipment and modernization of the Norwegian Armed Forces, this does not sound very promising," the journalist suggested.
Effectively, according to Polevoy, these 'restless neighbors' mean new demands for the defense of the Russian Arctic. Therefore, "although they are nominally listed as motorized infantry, given the conditions of service and the potential threats they face, they perform specialized tasks" normally given to elite Spetsnaz (Special Purpose Military Units) forces.
"Even judging by the publications available in the media, the eye catches the fact that both the 200th and 80th brigades feature non-standard reconnaissance formations, but recon battalions. The troops carry out airborne and mountain (alpine) training. The material provisions for Arctic brigades are also special; new two-tiered tractors, snowmobiles and hovercraft are currently being developed for them."
Last year, the Arctic units were provided with new articulated tracked snow and marsh buggies, military ATVs, quads and snowmobiles. "The new equipment and weapons are being 'run-in' in combat-like conditions, including via large-scale exercises taking place recently on the Tymyr Peninsula."
"And it looks like the protection of the Arctic from the ground will rest not only on the Arctic motorized infantry," the journalist added. "In 2014, the Novosibirsk archipelago was used for training exercises by Russia's Airborne Forces; 350 troops of the 98th Airborne Division conducted airdrop training, becoming the largest mass landing in the Arctic's history. And it seems setting records was not their only goal. Airborne Forces Commander Vladimir Shamanov stated recently that 'the establishment of an Arctic Airborne force is only a matter of time.'"
Ultimately, Polevoy suggested, in the current situation, "our military has no time for relaxation. Arctic exercises by NATO countries and their partners have followed one after another. In 2015, the Canadian military conducted maneuvers in the Far North. The same year, joint US, UK, Canadian and Norwegian drills in the Arctic lasted five weeks. In the spring and summer the Scandinavians, including Sweden, Norway and Finland also 'trained to fight against Russia' in the region. Finally, in the spring of 2016, the US military staged the ICEX 2016 drills."
"The Arctic is one of the most economically promising regions in the world. The Arctic Circle holds enormous reserves of hydrocarbons and other minerals; the region also provides the shortest path for transporting goods from the Pacific to the Atlantic oceans. According to the norms of international law, a substantial part of the territory in Arctic waters belongs to Russia, thanks to the large extent of our continental shelf."
At the same time, Polevoy warned, "we know that international law has little meaning for certain powers when it comes to confronting someone from whom it is possible to take something away by force. We do not need lands belonging to others, but to prevent anyone from even thinking of 'reaching into our pocket' in the North, it's necessary to keep the gunpowder dry. And an important role in doing so will be played by the guys with the image of a polar bear on their sleeve."
Sputnik
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300k cut off from aid in Syria's Aleppo: UN official
Iran Press TV
Tue Jul 12, 2016 2:26PM
A United Nations spokeswoman has expressed concerns about intensified fighting between Syria's warring sides in the northwestern city of Aleppo, saying the clashes have cut off an estimated 300,000 people from humanitarian supplies.
Alessandra Vellucci told a regular UN briefing in the Swiss city of Geneva on Tuesday that the only road allowing access for humanitarian aid deliveries into the militant-held part of Aleppo has been completely cut off due to confrontation between Syrian government forces and militants.
Vellucci said that 300,000 people depend on the Castello road, the only path into eastern Aleppo, which is held by the terrorists.
Last week, Syrian government forces captured ground overlooking the road, severing the terrorists' only lifeline from the city to the outside world. A few days later, militants hit back with an offensive on government-held districts of Aleppo.
Elsewhere in her remarks, the UN official noted that the Castello road has been rendered "impassable" since fighting there worsened last week.
The UN continues to receive "distressing reports" of shelling on civilian locations in Aleppo, she added.
Syria has been gripped by foreign-sponsored militancy since March 2011. Damascus says Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar are the main supporters of the militants fighting the government forces.
A ceasefire brokered by the US and Russia went into effect in Syria on February 27, but it does not apply to the Nusra Front and Daesh terrorist groups. Renewed violence in some parts of Syria, particularly around Aleppo, has recently left the truce in tatters.
The Takfiri terrorists operating in the Arab country have suffered major setbacks over the past few months as the Syrian army has managed to liberate a number of areas from the grip of the extremists.
UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura estimates that over 400,000 people have been killed in the Syrian conflict since March 2011. The UN has stopped its official casualty count in the Middle Eastern state, citing its inability to verify the figures it receives from various sources.
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Germany Unlikely to Agree AWACS Syria Flights From Turkey
Sputnik News
20:12 12.07.2016(updated 20:59 12.07.2016)
Berlin is unlikely to give a green light to more reconnaissance flights over Syria from the Turkish territory in light of Ankara's resistance to allow a German Bundestag delegation to visit German soldiers at the Incirlik airbase in southern Turkey, Rainer Arnold, a German lawmaker from the Social Democratic Party (SPD), told Sputnik on Tuesday.
MOSCOW (Sputnik) The statement was made after Turkey barred in June German lawmakers from visiting the base and German Chancellor Angela Merkel failed to settle the issue during her meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on the sidelines of a NATO summit in Warsaw on Saturday.
"It is strange that the Chancellor in this situation sought a mandate on sending AWACS [Airborne Warning and Control System] jets for securing Turkish airspace at the NATO Summit in Warsaw. Because the Parliament makes decision on such a mandate. And it is more than questionable whether we would vote for that under current circumstances," Arnold, who is a member of the Bundestag Defense Committee and the defense policy spokesman of the SPD parliamentary group, warned.
Germany has about 250 soldiers stationed at the Incirlik base who help fly planes on reconnaissance missions to locate the Islamic State fighters in Syria. But following numerous refusals by Turkey to let German lawmakers visit the soldiers, many Bundestag members from different political factions said that military personnel should return home and promised to block the AWACS reconnaissance flights that NATO wants to fly over Syria.
Turkey said the country permits only military or technical teams to visit military installations. German media link Ankara's refusal to the resolution passed in Berlin in early June which recognized the Ottoman massacre of 1.5 million Armenians in 1915-1916 as genocide.
"The Turkish government must correct its position. Otherwise prolongation of stationing of the aerial vehicles in Incirlik is unthinkable," Arnold said.
Since all of Germany's military missions need parliamentary approval, the Bundestag regularly sends members of its defense committee to visit field operations, check working conditions and observe the military cooperation with allies.
"When a NATO member state cuts an indefeasible right of another NATO member state, that cannot remain without consequences," the lawmaker stressed.
NATO officials do not announce the number of the AWACS aircraft that are deployed in Turkey. According to independent defense experts' estimates, there are some 2,000 military personnel from 16 countries including Turkey serving in NATO AWACS division.
Sputnik
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Russian Tu-22M3 Bombers Destroy Daesh Camp, Tanks & Militants in Syria
Sputnik News
16:00 12.07.2016(updated 18:17 12.07.2016)
Russian Tu-22M3 strategic long-range bombers have destroyed a number of militants, large Daesh camp, ammunition depots and tanks in Syrian on July 12, the Russian Defense Minsitry stated.
"As a result of the airstrikes, a large terrorist encampment, three ammunition depots, three tanks, four armored vehicles, eight cars equipped with heavy machine guns as well as a large number of terrorists were destroyed," the statement read.
Six Russian Tu-22M3 strategic long-range bombers hit Daesh' high-explosive munitions near Syria's Palmyra, As Sukhnah, Arak, the Russian Ministry of Defense said.
"On the morning of July 12, six Tu-22M3 long-range strategic bombers carried out a concentrated attack using high-explosive ammunition on Daesh targets east of Palmyra, As Sukhnah and Arak," the statement read.
Among the targets identified and confirmed through intelligence channels in recent days, the ministry said a large IS field camp, three arms depots, three tanks and a large number of militants have been destroyed in the attack.
All bombers returned safely to airfields after striking Daesh targets in Syria.
"All planes returned safely and landed in their airfields. In order to ensure flight safety, representatives of the [US-led] international coalition have been notified of the attacks in advance," the ministry underscored.
The representatives of the US-led international coalition have been notified in advance about the Russian airstrikes and the flight corridors of long-range Russian bombers.
Syria has been suffering from the fighting between government forces and opposition, as well as extremist groups.
The Russia-US brokered ceasefire regime in Syria came into force on February 27. The al-Nusra Front and Daesh terrorist groups, which are outlawed in Russia, are not part of the ceasefire deal.
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U.S. Humanitarian Assistance in Response to the Syrian Crisis
Fact Sheet
Office of the Spokesperson
Washington, DC
July 12, 2016
Secretary Kerry announced today that the United States is providing nearly $439 million in additional lifesaving humanitarian assistance for those affected by the war in Syria. This new funding brings U.S. humanitarian assistance in response to this conflict to nearly $5.6 billion since the start of the crisis. This new announcement reflects the generosity of the American people and demonstrates U.S. commitment to helping address the unprecedented magnitude of suffering and urgent needs.
The Syrian conflict remains the largest and most complex humanitarian emergency of our time, with more than two-thirds of Syria's pre-war populationover 18 million peoplein need of humanitarian assistance inside Syria. Through this humanitarian funding, the United States continues to provide emergency food, shelter, safe drinking water, medical care, humanitarian protection services, and other urgent relief to millions of people suffering inside Syria and the more than 4.8 million refugees from Syria in the region. The funding will also help mitigate the impact of the crisis on governments and communities throughout the region that are straining to cope as they continue to host refugees from Syria.
The humanitarian assistance supports the operations of the United Nations, other international organizations, and non-governmental organizations. Through these organizations, the United States is able to provide assistance in all 14 governorates of Syria, helping the people who need it mostultimately saving lives and alleviating human suffering amid daily threats of violence and deprivation.
Our assistance supports critical humanitarian needs, including those addressed in the 2016 UN appeal of nearly $8 billion for Syria and the region. Part of the new funding responds directly to the appeal, while the remainder provides humanitarian assistance for these affected populations through funding to UN agencies and to other partners. Contributions from other donors are crucial to meeting emergency needs in 2016. The Assad regime and its supporters continue to barrel bomb cities, use starvation as a weapon of war, and target civilians in schools, mosques, markets, and hospitals, while violent extremist groups like Daesh and al-Nusrah Front (al Qaeda in Syria) also brutalize Syrians daily. The United States reiterates that all parties to the conflict must cease unlawful attacks on civilians and comply with international law. In addition to the horror of war in Syria, we also see the plight of refugees fleeing beyond the region to European countries and are reminded of the need to provide humanitarian assistance and to assist hosting countries in promoting inclusion and self-reliance in countries of first asylum.
The United States recognizes that along with emergency relief, we must address the long-term development needs of Syria's neighbors, and the funding we are providing will continue to support communities in neighboring countries that have so generously hosted those refugees. There are more than 4.8 million refugees from Syria in the region today, the vast majority of whom receive support in the first country to which they flee. As we saw with the exodus to Europe last year, Syrians who cannot find protection and assistance in Syria and neighboring countries, make difficult decisions to undertake dangerous journeys at great personal peril. We encourage all countries to receive refugees humanely, in accordance with international humanitarian law.
The humanitarian crises around the world have made painfully clear that despite our best efforts, all nations must do more. As President Obama said, "The people who are fleeing Syria are the most harmed by terrorism, they are the most vulnerable as a consequence of civil war and strife. They are parents, they are children, they are orphans. And it is very important that we do not close our hearts to these victims of such violence." U.S. efforts to galvanize significant new global commitments will build toward a high-level summit on refugees hosted by President Obama at the United Nations General Assembly in September. This event will be the culmination of a vigorous, sustained diplomatic effort undertaken by the United States since last year and over the coming months to increase humanitarian assistance, access to resettlement and other legal forms of admission, and refugee self-reliance and inclusion through employment and education.
The United States remains committed to assisting those affected by this terrible war and strongly urges all governments, organizations, and individuals concerned about the situation to support the lifesaving aid efforts of the UN and other humanitarian partners.
Highlights of Humanitarian Assistance:
UNHCR: $130 million
UNHCR's Syria operation is now the organization's largest refugee assistance operation; UNHCR provides both immediate support to new refugees and continuous support to vulnerable refugees. UNHCR also works with other UN agencies to assist persons in need inside Syria. The funding allows UNHCR to continue providing refugees and internally-displaced persons with shelter, protection (including registration, child protection, gender-based violence prevention and response, and mental health support), and daily necessities, either in-kind such as blankets, bedding, and cooking utensils or through cash assistance. UNHCR's efforts are increasingly focused on assistance to non-camp refugees and host communities as well as refugees in camps. In various locations throughout the region, in addition to the above, UNHCR also works in the areas of education, health care and employment support.
UNICEF: Nearly $88 million
Syria's children continue to pay a heavy toll in the conflict. They constitute half of Syria's refugees and internally displaced persons. Inside Syria, more than two million children are out of school and one of every four schools has been damaged or destroyed. As a result, many Syrian children in the country have little or no access to educational opportunities, and those arriving in neighboring countries as refugees are behind in schooling and face limited education opportunities. Today's announcement allows UNICEF to continue child protection, education, child health, and water and sanitation programs, as well as vaccinations campaigns throughout the region, demonstrating the United States' strong support of the No Lost Generation initiative to invest in the future of the region.
UNRWA: $25 million
Of the estimated 560,000 Palestinian refugees registered with UNRWA in Syria, nearly 110,000 have been forced to flee to surrounding countries and beyond. An estimated two of every three Palestinian refugees who continues to live in Syria has been displaced multiple times, with every refugee camp in the country affected by significant clashes between various parties, and some 47,000 Palestinian refugees living in besieged or hard-to-reach areas. Despite these challenges, UNRWA continues to provide assistance throughout the country, including through mobile and regular health clinics, where the agency provided more than one million primary healthcare consultations in 2015. Inside Syria, UNRWA continues to deliver educational services to more than 45,000 students, while the agency's self-learning materials have continued to allow children access to educational materials despite limited options for movement. Beyond Syria, UNRWA is providing cash for food assistance, as well as education and health servicesall of which is supported by U.S. assistance along with the rest of the international donor community.
WHO: Nearly $18 million
The weakened health system in Syria has left millions of people across the country with limited access to even basic medical care. Over half of health facilities in Syria are either out of service or only partially functioning and face critical shortages in life saving and essential medicines. Health facilities continue to be attacked forcing the closure of numerous medical facilities. Estimates are that half of all health professionals have left Syria since the onset of the conflict. New USG funding will support life-saving trauma case management, surgical care and physical rehabilitation, strengthen health coordination, enhance primary health care, provide immunization support, and scale up prevention, early detection and the treatment of malnutrition in children.
WFP: More than $17 million
Millions of people in Syria cannot independently fulfill their basic food needs and risk going hungry without continued international assistance. New USG funding will enable WFP to continue vital food assistance to millions of conflict-affected people inside Syria. With USG support, WFP will continue to provide inside Syria monthly household food parcels, flour to bakeries, and nutritional products to prevent acute malnutrition.
U.S. Humanitarian Assistance for the Syria Crisis, By Country
INSIDE SYRIA: More than $231 million. New total since FY 2012: More than $2.8 billion
U.S. humanitarian assistance provides critical, lifesaving support to millions of people in every affected area of Syria. The new U.S. contribution supports emergency food assistance, including monthly household food parcels, flour to bakeries, and food vouchers. The contribution also supports medical care, cash assistance for emergency needs, funding for shelters and water, sanitation, and hygiene projects to help those affected by the crisis. It also provides critical relief supplies and much-needed counseling and protection programs to help the most vulnerable, including children, women, persons with disabilities, and the elderly.
Included in this funding, the U.S. is supporting UNRWA's emergency operations inside Syria, giving life-saving aid to the estimated 450,000 Palestinian refugees who remain in the country.
LEBANON: More than $84 million. New total since FY 2012: Nearly $1.2 billion
The UN estimates that Lebanon is the highest per capita refugee host country in the world, with over one million refugees from Syria in addition to 450,000 registered Palestinian refugees. Today's announcement provides additional support to both refugees and Lebanese host communities. With the additional funding, the UN and international organization partners in Lebanon can continue to vaccinate children, rehabilitate shelters, and improve access to safe water for Syrian refugees and the communities that host them. The UN can also continue to deliver basic and emergency health care services, support the enrollment of more than 159,000 children in public schools, and assist refugees with specific protection and safety concerns.
The additional U.S. funding also supports vulnerable Lebanese communities hosting refugees by rehabilitating their municipal water and sanitation systems, supporting local community centers, providing supplies and new equipment to health clinics, and improving school facilities. Not only do these services provide vulnerable communities much-needed relief, they also promote social cohesion between the refugee and host country populations.
The funding will also support UNRWA's emergency response, which is assisting the more than 41,000 Palestinian refugees who have fled Syria and sought safety in Lebanon, helping to ensure Palestinian refugee children receive relief assistance, continued educational opportunities and access to health and social services, shelter, and psychological support.
JORDAN: Nearly $65 million. New total since FY 2012: Nearly $795 million
In Jordan, 80 percent of Syrian refugees live in Jordanian towns and citiesnot refugee camps. While U.S. funding will continue to support refugees living in camps, it also supports non-camp refugees seeking to ensure all refugees are registered. The funding will provide cash assistance to meet basic needs, maternal and child health care, and water and sanitation improvement to benefit Syrians and Jordanians alike. This funding provides for activities in child and adolescent-friendly spaces as well as the expansion of services in Azraq camp.
U.S funding includes support to UNHCR at the regional level to provide life- saving assistance for the 80,000 Syrians stranded at the Jordanian border.
U.S. funding also includes support to UNRWA for the needs of more than 16,000 Palestinian refugees in Jordan who have fled the conflict in Syria, by providing them with cash assistance for essential needs and helping them to access health care and educational services.
TURKEY: Nearly $36 million. New total since FY 2012: Nearly $415 million
U.S. funding assists Turkey in addressing the humanitarian and protection needs of over 2.7 million Syrian refugees in Turkish urban areas, host communities, and camps. Funding to UNHCR supports a country-wide joint reverification exercise of all Syrians in Turkey, provides access to legal protection, greater psychosocial support and prevention of gender based violence; tents, blankets, and kitchen sets; targeted support to particularly vulnerable refugees; and technical support to government authorities. Funding for UNICEF helps build additional schools, pay teachers' stipends to provide quality education, buys school supplies and provides programming for children that emphasizes life skills. Support for the International Organization for Migration supports school transportation, mental health support, and shelter.
IRAQ: Nearly $16 million. New total since FY 2012: Nearly $244 million
In Iraq, the Kurdistan Regional Government hosts 96 percent of Syrian refugees in the country, and has provided more than 2,000 square miles of land for the establishment of 10 camps. This additional funding aims to repair health centers, repair and upgrade shelters, expand and rehabilitate schools, and improve water and sanitation systems in refugee and host communities, as well as to manage and maintain camps. Funding will also support initiatives targeting women and girls, vocational and language training, literacy training, and reproductive health, in addition to raising awareness about gender-based violence and early marriage issues. Assistance will also provide child protection activities, including recreational activities and psychosocial care, as well as support to government-provided services such as education through trainings of teachers and provision of essential supplies.
EGYPT: Nearly $5 million. New total since FY 2012: Nearly $107 million
Our funding will help to provide increasingly critical protection and assistance to 118,000 Syrian refugees in Egypt. All refugees in Egypt live in urban spaces, and must therefore compete with locals for access to jobs, seats in oversubscribed schools, and even for primary healthcare assistance. The U.S. contribution enables humanitarian partners to expand assistance in major refugee-hosting cities such as Cairo and Alexandria with community focused projects for refugees and host families in an effort to address the deteriorating protection environment. Assistance also targets prevention of and responsiveness to, sexual and gender-based violence, protection and education for children, increased self-reliance and livelihood opportunities, and improved access to health care services. As thousands of Syrians arrive in Egypt annually (primarily via flight to Sudan and irregular land crossings into Egypt), a robust humanitarian response will be key to prevent Syrians from hazarding a perilous sea crossing for Europe, which IOM reports has increased ten-fold in 2016.
Funding Numbers by Country*
Country This Announcement Total Since FY 2012 Inside Syria $231 million $2.8 billion Lebanon $84 million $1.2 billion Jordan $65 million $795 million Turkey $36 million $415 million Iraq $16 million $244 million Egypt $5 million $107 million Regional $ 2 million $13 million TOTAL $439 million $5.6 billion
*Figures are rounded to the nearest million and may not sum to total due to rounding
Funding Numbers by Organization*
Organization This Announcement Total Since FY 2012 UNHCR $130 million $1.4 billion NGOs $116 million $1.5 billion UNICEF $88 million $553 million ICRC $32 million $212 million UNRWA $25 million $354 million WHO $18 million $63 million WFP $17 million $1.3 billion IOM $4 million $59 million UNFAO $4 million $8 million OCHA $3 million $13 million Other (admin) $1 million $8 million UNFPA $1 million $40 million Other Organizations $23 million TOTAL $439 million $5.6 billion
*Figures are rounded to the nearest million and may not sum to total due to rounding
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The Hague court ruling downgrades ROC's status: foreign minister
ROC Central News Agency
2016/07/12 23:24:21
Taipei, July 12 (CNA) Foreign Minster David Lee () said late Tuesday that the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague has downgraded the Republic of China's status as a sovereign state in its ruling on South China Sea disputes.
Lee said that the court's reference to the ROC as "Taiwan Authority of China" in its ruling is not adequate and has belittled the ROC's sovereignty.
Furthermore, Lee added, the ruling has seriously undermined the ROC's legal status in the South China Sea islands and its rights in the surrounding waters.
The Hague-based court said in the ruling that all high-tide features in the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea, including the Taiwan-controlled Taiping Island, are "rocks" and not islands, and therefore are not entitled to 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zones.
Lee criticized the court for "inflating" its power by declaring the Taiwan-controlled Taiping Island --- the largest of the South China Sea islands -- along with the others currently occupied by Vietnam, the Philippines and Malaysia as "rocks," which are not entitled to the 200-nautical-mile economic zones.
The Philippines, while bringing the case to the court, did not list Taiping Island (Itu Aba) as one of the objectives subject to the arbitration, according to Lee.
Lee said that it's undoubted that the ROC has been entitled to the rights to the South China Sea islands and surrounding waters under international and maritime laws.
The decision by the tribunal is non-binding on the ROC since the court did not invite the ROC to participate in the proceedings and did not consult with Taiwan before handing down the decision.
Meanwhile, Interior Minister Yeh Jiunn-rong () said Taiping Island is definitely an island under article 121 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea since it possesses an ecological system that can support human habitation and daily life.
Yeh said that the ROC has claimed sovereignty over the Nansa (Spratly), Xisha (Paracel) Islands, Zhongsha (Macclesfield) Islands and Tungsha (Pratas) Islands in the South China Sea when it proclaimed the "position maps of South China Sea Islands" as early as 1974.
Both Lee and Yeh said that the court's ruling is totally unacceptable to the ROC, which has advocated a peaceful settlement of disputes and promotion of peace and stability in the area through bilateral or multilateral negotiations.
The Presidential Office in a statement earlier that day said "the ROC absolutely will not accept the ruling and maintains that it is not legally binding on the country."
The Presidential Office also reiterated the ROC's stance that it holds sovereignty over the South China Sea islands and their surrounding waters.
The government will make every effort to safeguard the country's sovereignty and territory and protect the interests of the country, the Presidential Office said.
(By Tang Pei-chun, Liu Li-jung and Bear Lee)
ENDITEM/ke
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South China Sea ruling triggers cross-party condemnation in Taiwan
ROC Central News Agency
2016/07/12 22:16:21
Taipei, July 12 (CNA) Ruling and opposition parties and even local government council members were unanimous Tuesday in condemning an international tribunal's ruling that Taiping Island in the South China Sea is a "rock" rather than an inhabitable island.
In a case brought by the Philippines against China in the Permanent Court of Arbitration, the international tribunal ruled earlier in the day that the Spratly Islands (including Itu Aba, Thitu, West York Island, Spratly Island, North-East Cay, South-West Cay) in the South China Sea are legally "rocks" that do not generate an exclusive economic zone or continental shelf. Itu Aba is Taiping Island.
Wu Ping-jui (), secretary general of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party's legislative caucus, said the ruling seriously damages Taiwan's interests in the South China Sea and is thus "absolutely unacceptable."
"The Republic of China government asserts its sovereignty over Taiping Island" and will definitely not accept the ruling which has "no binding power" in any way on the ROC, Wu said.
Tsai Shih-ying (), a DDP legislator in the Legislature's Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee, said Taiwan has never been invited to offer its views on this case and the judges have made a unilateral decision, which he said is not binding to Taiwan.
Opposition Kuomintang (KMT) legislative caucus' secretary general, Lin Te-fu (), denounced the ruling as "unfair and unjust," saying Taiwan "absolutely cannot accept" it.
Lin urged President Tsai Ing-wen () to call a national security meeting to reaffirm Taiwan's sovereignty over the South China Sea and to make a trip to Taiping Island in the Spratlys to highlight Taiwan's rightful ownership of the island.
His party's spokesman, Chou Chih-wei (), had even stronger words about the arbitration court, saying its ruling indicates the court's judges were "telling lies in broad daylight" and "bullying concerned parties to the full."
Taiping Island is 54,000 times larger than Okinotori Atoll which Japan claims as an island, Chou said, accusing the court in The Hangue of brazenly lying about Taiping Island and handing down a ruling that the KMT "totally cannot accept."
Chiang Chi-chen (), another KMT lawmaker, expressed worry that the ruling would hurt Taiwan's interest over the long term because Taiping's status as a "rock" could invite an unexpected "foreign invasion" and thus become a "root cause for future conflicts."
Opposition New Power Party's legislative caucus convener Hsu Yung-ming () also complained that Taiwan was "made absent" from the legal proceedings and was "unfairly treated" throughout, so his party will not accept a ruling made without Taiwan's participation.
Hsu said the NPP regards Taiping Island as a normal island that meets the international legal definition of the term. He urged the government to bolster the defense and construction of the island that is located 1,600 km from Taiwan.
Minority People First Party said the ROC government should not recognize any ruling or declaration by other countries or so-called international courts that is based on "false evidence" or "technicalities."
The PFP suggested all concerned parties hold talks to set up a "South China Sea free passage hot line" mechanism to ensure rights of navigation for all parties in that area.
On the other hand, it said any ROC official making a wrong policy or statement resulting in the loss of Taiping Island should be charged with dereliction of duty as stipulated in the Criminal Code.
In Kaohsiung, Huang Po-lin (), who is head of the KMT's Kaohsiung City Chapter and a member of the city council, called the court ruling "absurd" and urged Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu () to maintain the city's jurisdiction over Taiping Island.
A nurse based on the island registered her household address at 1 Nansha, Qijin District, Kaohsiung City in January this year, becoming a resident of the city, Huang said.
He said he was not ruling out a possible trip, together with other council members, to the island to visit "fellow city residents" and inspect their living facilities there.
(By Liu Kuan-ting, Wang Shu-fen, Wen Kui-hsiang, Hsieh Chia-chen, Chen Chun-hua, Wang Cheng-chung and S.C. Chang)
Enditem/ke
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Ex-president: tribunal ruling violates common sense
ROC Central News Agency
2016/07/12 23:14:21
Taipei, July 12 (CNA) Former President Ma Ying-jeou (), who had made ceaseless efforts to highlight Taiwan's sovereignty over Taiping Island, said Tuesday he was shocked and infuriated by the Permanent Court of Arbitration's "absurd and unfair" ruling on the island's status as a rock.
In a Facebook post, Ma said numerous government officials and domestic and foreign scholars and journalists have visited the South China Sea island between December last year and May this year, witnessing an island that has fresh water, rich agricultural produce and full functions to support human habitation.
As of the end of April, 2016, he added, international media had carried 430 articles fully reporting the fact that Taiping Island is an bona fide island that meets the definition of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.
Therefore, Taiping Island is definitely not a rock, a fact that has become a consensus of an absolute majority of the people around the world, he said.
In a case brought by the Philippines against China in the Permanent Court of Arbitration, the international tribunal however ruled earlier in the day that the Spratly Islands (including Itu Aba, Thitu, West York Island, Spratly Island, North-East Cay, South-West Cay) in the South China Sea are legally "rocks" that do not generate an exclusive economic zone or continental shelf. Itu Aba is Taiping Island.
Ma pointed out that over the past 70 years, under the Republic of China jurisdiction, Taiping Island has offered humanitarian assistance to ships sailing through the area, winning wide acclaim.
The tribunal in The Hague, without seeking the ROC's views on the island or sending people to investigate the facts about it, made a ruling that violates common sense, he said.
"It is unfair in terms of procedure, and unreasonable in terms of substance," Ma wrote.
What is horrible is that the ruling has downgraded the status of Taiping Island, raised tensions and widened standoffs in the area and at the same time encroached upon the ROC's rights and interests and damaged peace in South China Sea -- while hurting the court's own image as a fair institution, he said.
Instead of settling disputes, the ruling has increased the possibility of conflicts over the disputed islands, Ma said, denouncing "the forces behind the ruling" as having won "face" but lost "substance" -- meaning winning the battle but losing the war.
He urged the government to "use all means" to protest such an absurd and unfair ruling and take concrete steps to protect the ROC's national interests.
(By Hsieh Chia-chen and S.C. Chang)
Enditem/ke
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Alan Burkitt-Gray speaks to Don MacNeil, chief operating officer of GTT, about its company restructuring after coming out of Chapter 11 and its strategic roadmap for the next 12 months.
This is a big year for two of our nations greatest institutions: the National Park Service and the National Endowment for the Arts.
The National Park Service, steward of Americas national parks and historic sites, such as the Gettysburg Battlefield and the Flight 93 National Memorial, is celebrating its 100th birthday. The National Endowment for the Arts, an agency that has funded arts groups such as the Central Pennsylvania Youth Ballet and Reach! USA, turns 50 this year.
Philadelphia-based composer, Jonathan Bailey Holland has been commissioned to write a piece commemorating both these important anniversaries. Titled Forged Sanctuaries, it will receive its world premiere in Harrisburg at Market Square Concerts Summermusic 2016. The composition will be performed by the Curtis on Tour string quartet, along with two other selections at 6 p.m. Tuesday, July 19 at the Market Square Church.
Two other Summermusic 2016 concerts will be held July 15 at 8 p.m., July 17 at 4 p.m.
Forged Sanctuaries was inspired by the Camp Cod National Seashore, an area that the composer said he has visited every summer since his daughter was born. He and his family familiarized themselves with the area by exploring its many beaches and even the lesser-known ponds.
For Holland its not just a destination for escape, relaxation and rejuvenation, but also an area constantly in a state of transformation from the ocean waves and the redistribution of the sands of the beaches. He wanted his work to reflect the beauty of the Camp Cod National Seashore, as well as the historical significance that it holds for many people.
The composition is written in two movements. The first, Glacial Formation, is about the evolution of a glacier, and the music is intended to convey the sound of the wind, snow and the ice that moves across the land and then melts. The second movement, The Hypnosis of Tides, is about the allure of the beach and nature of the waves that are sometimes calm and sometimes violent.
Both the commissioning and touring of this work was made possible by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Curtis on Tour is an apprenticeship program that gives young artists opportunities to share the stage with faculty and alumni of Philadelphias Curtis Institute of Music. Peter Sirotin, artistic director of Market Square Concerts, says Curtis on Tour musicians bring tremendous talent and enthusiasm to the communities they visit.
I know everyone will that comes will be dazzled by the youthful exuberance of emerging young artists on the verge of international careers, he said.
Market Square Concerts Summermusic 2016 is a music festival that brings together the talents of pianists Natalie Zhu and Meng-Chieh Liu, violinist Bella Hristova, cellist Soo Bae and the members of Curtis on Tour String Quartet to play a series of concerts. Aside from Forged Sanctuaries, the repertoire at these three concerts will include masterpieces by Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Dvorak, Elgar and Barber, as well as new compositions by John Novacek and David Ludwig.
Tickets for individual concerts are $35, $30 for seniors, $5 for college students and free for school students with a $10 ticket available for accompanying adult.
For tickets and information, visit www.marketsquareconcerts.org or call 717-214-ARTS.
Legislation designating a stretch of State Route 74 in Cumberland County as the Marine Lance Cpl. Gary Lee Ream Memorial Highway is headed to the governors desk to be signed into law, said state Rep. Stephen Bloom, R-Carlisle, who authored the bill.
Specifically, House Bill 835 would designate Route 74, from the eastern corporate limits of Carlisle Borough to the intersection of Route 74 with Ashland Avenue, in honor of the Marine who died while serving in Vietnam.
Marine Lance Cpl. Gary Lee Ream was stationed in the Quang Nam Province, Republic of Vietnam, as part of the 1st Platoon, C Company, 1st Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division. He died Nov. 3, 1966, at 20 years old, while serving as point man of a combat patrol, when he and his squad were caught in an enemy ambush in which he was hit by enemy rifle and machine gun fire.
Decades have passed since Cpl. Ream gave his life for our country, but his sacrifice is no less significant today than it was on the day he died, Bloom said in a news release. Naming this highway in his honor ensures that his service will be remembered by both current and future generations.
Ream graduated from Carlisle High School. He is the son of Wallace R. Ream Sr. and Lois C. Ream, as well as brother to five siblings.
If signed by the governor, PennDOT will post signs displaying the new name to traffic in both directions.
When Cpl. Reams family see the signs in the months and years ahead, I want them to know that our community appreciates everything he did for us, Bloom said.
To the editor:
I just dont get why in a poll taken most Americans think Donald Trump is more trustworthy than Hillary Clinton.
Trumps companies have had four bankruptcies and cheated many out of their money. Is that trust I dont think so. Contractors are still trying to get paid for building Trump Tower in New York City after all these years. There are hundreds of court hearings still pending over these bankruptcies and failed businesses. His Trump University was nothing but a money-making scheme to cheat hard-working people out of their money.
But many people tell me that they will vote for this man because of his business experience. Really?
Trump has used the system to his advantage. He has something to hide. Trump promises that if people stick with him and trust him hell deliver for them, hell make them successful like him and then everything falls apart and people get hurt. Anything that his man does is all for himself.
Trump has railed against trade agreements that cost American jobs, but he has done little to protect those jobs as a businessman where most of his goods are made overseas. Suits made in Mexico, ties in China and furniture in Turkey and on and on nothing made in this country. What a fraud.
His lack of political experience should be enough not to elect this man. He has never been elected to any office.
Hillary Clinton has proved herself trustworthy. She proved herself with 12 hours before a congressional meeting over Benghazi that she did not cause the deaths of ambassador Stevens and the over three and she was only guilty of using the same server for her emails. Of course, Trump will use this against Clinton calling her childish names like crooked. Hillary has the experience to be president and anything she has done in life was to help Americans not to make money at it like childrens health insurance, which she got passed when she was a senator from New York.
Americans need to wake up and see the true difference between these candidates. One that is for himself and the other one experienced who truly wants to help all Americans.
ROBERT HAYDEN
Blairs
VANCOUVER, Jul 12, 2016 - Kaminak Gold Corporation ("Kaminak" or the "Company") (TSX VENTURE:KAM) is pleased to announce that the previously announced acquisition of all of the issued and outstanding common shares of Kaminak ("Kaminak Shares") by Goldcorp Inc. ("Goldcorp") by way of plan of arrangement (the "Arrangement") has been approved by the holders of Kaminak Shares and options. At the special meeting of Kaminak shareholders and optionholders held on July 12, 2016 (the "Meeting"), a special resolution approving the Arrangement was approved by 99% of the votes cast at the Meeting in person or by proxy by holders of Kaminak Shares and options, voting together as a single class and approved by 99% of the votes cast at the Meeting in person or by proxy by holders of Kaminak Shares, excluding the votes cast in respect of Kaminak Shares held by interested parties required to be excluded pursuant to applicable securities law.On closing of the Arrangement, Kaminak shareholders will receive, subject to the terms and conditions of the Agreement, 0.10896 common shares of Goldcorp for each Kaminak Share held.The Arrangement is subject to final approval by the TSX Venture Exchange and the Supreme Court of British Columbia (the "Court"). The Court hearing for the final order to approve the Arrangement is scheduled to take place on July 14, 2016, and the completion of the Arrangement is expected to occur on July 19, 2016.Additional information regarding the terms of the Arrangement are set out in Kaminak's management information circular dated June 7, 2016, which is available under Kaminak's profile at www.sedar.com.On behalf of the Board of Directors of KaminakEira ThomasPresident and CEOFor further information about Kaminak Gold Corporation or this news release, please visit our website at www.kaminak.com.Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.Caution Concerning Forward-Looking Statements: Certain information contained in this press release constitutes "forward-looking information", within the meaning of Canadian legislation concerning the completion of the Arrangement. Generally, these forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "plans", "expects" or "does not expect", "is expected", "budget", "scheduled", "estimates", "forecasts", "intends", "anticipates" or "does not anticipate", or "believes", or variations of such words and phrases or state that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "might" or "will be taken", "occur", "be achieved" or "has the potential to".Forward looking statements contained in this press release may include statements regarding our ability to complete the Arrangement, which involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties which may not prove to be accurate. Actual results and outcomes may differ materially from what is expressed or forecasted in these forward-looking statements. Such statements are qualified in their entirety by the inherent risks and uncertainties surrounding future expectations.Among those factors which could cause actual results to differ materially are the following: uncertainties as to the timing of the Arrangement and satisfaction of the conditions thereto, market conditions and other risk factors listed from time to time in our reports filed with Canadian securities regulators on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. The forward-looking statements included in this press release are made as of the date of this press release and the Company disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as expressly required by applicable securities legislation.Tony Reda, Vice-President of Corporate Development604.646.4534 or Toll Free: 1.844.646.4520info@kaminak.comwww.kaminak.com
VANCOUVER, BC--(Marketwired - July 13, 2016) - East Africa Metals Inc. (TSX VENTURE: EAM) ("East Africa" or the "Company" or "EAM") is pleased to report on an anticipated active Fall 2016 program on the development and exploration fronts, as the Company looks to address corporate objectives including; the completion of mine permitting, closing of project financing, and the initiation of development for the Terakimti Gold Oxide project, the anticipated startup of operations at Magambazi in Tanzania, and continued work to grow the resource base in Ethiopia through exploration and definition drilling.
The Company's current resource base in Ethiopia comprises 926,000 gold equivalent ounces in the indicated category plus 860,000 gold equivalent ounces in the inferred category (see table below and news release dated June 29, 2016) from Terakimti, Mato Bula, and Da Tambuk mineral resources. Exploration targets that EAM plans to test, to continue the growth of the resource base, will include the VTEM09 and Mayshehagne prospects (highlight intersections previously released are listed in the table below), and new targets along the largely underexplored Mato Bula trend.
Options for geophysically assessing the entire Mato Bula trend are presently being investigated, potentially providing the most cost effective forward program to systematically develop additional gold targets at depth for drill testing. Ground geophysical testing has yet to be initiated on the property, and offers significant opportunity for identification of additional prospective zones.
VTEM09 and Mayshehagne Previously Released Highlight Intervals
*Hole ID From (m) To (m) Interval (m)* Copper % Gold g/t Silver g/t Zinc % Local Azimuth Dip Prospect HD002 24.00 44.70 20.70 5.00 1.03 31 8.20 90 -61 Mayshehagne including 28.75 41.55 12.80 7.77 1.62 50 12.66 HD006 62.00 80.00 18.00 3.23 0.95 22 3.78 90 -45 Mayshehagne including 62.00 67.45 5.45 7.05 1.24 46 6.45 TVD001 20.29 30.50 10.21 3.16 3.97 87 3.82 271 -47 VTEM09 including 21.58 24.40 2.82 5.61 7.48 102 0.72 TVD002 58.20 68.95 10.75 2.24 2.63 71 3.74 263 -60 VTEM09
*Original holes and qualifying data released March 12, 2012, August 8, 2012, July 23, 2013, and May 27, 2015. Minor variance may occur due to QAQC interval adjustments.
East Africa's Mineral Resources at Harvest and Adyabo.
Project Ownership Resource Summary Adyabo 3(Indicated) 100% 446K Ounces AuEquiv Adyabo 3(Inferred) 100% 434K Ounces AuEquiv Terakimti Oxide Update 1 (Indicated) 70% (Permit Pending) 132K Ounces AuEquiv Terakimti Sulphide 2 (Indicated) 70% 348K Ounces AuEquiv 139M lbs CuEquiv Terakimti Sulphide 2 (Inferred) 70% 426K Ounces AuEquiv 170M lbs CuEquiv
The resources stated above have been previously disclosed in News Releases.
1Terakimti Oxide Resource update disclosed October 27, 2015; effective date October 18, 2015. Full mineral resource estimate disclosure can be found in the company's press release dated October 27, 2015, available at www.eastafricametals.com or at www.sedar.com. Subsequent to the release of the Oxide Resource update, a review by the resource QP identified an error in the tabulation of mineral resources. The corrected resource information was disclosed via press release on January 11, 2016. Metal prices for gold and silver are $1,300/oz and $17.50/oz, respectively.
2Terakimti Initial Resource Estimate as disclosed in the 43-101 Technical Report dated February 14, 2014; effective date January 17, 2014. Full mineral resource estimate disclosure can be found on the company's website or at www.sedar.com. Metal prices for gold, silver, copper, and zinc are $1,400/oz, $25.00/oz, $3.50/lb, and $0.90/lb, respectively.
3Adyabo project updated mineral resource estimate disclosed via press release dated June 14, 2016; effective date May 31, 2016. Metal prices for gold, silver, and copper are $1,400/oz, $20.00/oz, and $3.20/lb, respectively. Metallurgical recoveries of 97% for gold, 72% for copper, and 50% for silver were applied at Da Tambuk.
About East Africa
The Company's principal assets and interests include both the 70%-owned Harvest polymetallic VMS exploration Project, which hosts the Terakimti Deposit and which covers approximately 86 square kilometres in the Tigray region of Ethiopia, 600 kilometres north northwest of the capital city of Addis Ababa, and the Adyabo Project, hosting the Mato Bula trend Adyabo Resource, covering 225 square kilometres immediately west of the Harvest Project. The Company owns 80% of the Adyabo Project, and upon execution of a net smelter return agreement the Company will own 100% of the Adyabo Project, subject to a 2% NSR. East Africa now has mineral resources defined at both projects in Ethiopia and plans to continue to test priority targets. Additionally, the Company owns the 93 square kilometre Handeni Property located in north-eastern Tanzania. Handeni includes the Magambazi Project, a gold deposit discovered in 2009. East Africa has entered into a definitive agreement with an arm's length private exploration and development company to advance the project.
More information on the Company can be viewed at the Company's website: www.eastafricametals.com.
Jeff Heidema, P.Geo., VP Exploration, a Qualified Person under the definitions of National Instrument 43-101, has reviewed and approved the contents of this news release.
On behalf of the Board of Directors:
Andrew Lee Smith, P.Geo., CEO
Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Information
This news release contains "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation. Generally, forward-looking information can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "anticipate", "believe", "plan", "expect", "intend", "estimate", "forecast", "project", "budget", "schedule", "may", "will", "could", "might", "should" or variations of such words or similar words or expressions. Forward-looking information is based on reasonable assumptions that have been made by East Africa as at the date of such information and is subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results, level of activity, performance or achievements of East Africa to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking information, including but not limited to: early exploration; the closing of the agreement with the exploration and development company to advance the Magambazi Project or identify any other corporate opportunities for the Company; mineral exploration and development; metal and mineral prices; availability of capital; accuracy of East Africa's projections and estimates, including the initial mineral resource for the Adyabo, Harvest and Magambazi Projects; estimated exploration licence extensions, interest and exchange rates; competition; stock price fluctuations; availability of drilling equipment and access; actual results of current exploration activities; government regulation; political or economic developments; foreign taxation risks; environmental risks; insurance risks; capital expenditures; operating or technical difficulties in connection with development activities; personnel relations; the speculative nature of strategic metal exploration and development including the risks of diminishing quantities of grades of reserves; contests over title to properties; and changes in project parameters as plans continue to be refined, as well as those risk factors set out in East Africa's management's discussion and analysis for the year end December 31, 2015, management's discussion and analysis for the three months ended March 31, 2016 and East Africa's listing application dated July 8, 2013 and Tigray Resources Inc. Management Information Circular dated March 28, 2014. Mineral Resources which are not Mineral Reserves do not have demonstrated economic viability. The contained gold, copper and silver figures shown are in situ. No assurance can be given that the estimated quantities will be produced. Forward-looking statements are based on assumptions management believes to be reasonable, including but not limited to the successful integration of Tigray Resources Inc.'s business with the Company; the price of gold, silver, copper and zinc; the demand for gold, silver, copper and zinc; the ability to carry on exploration and development activities; the timely receipt of any required approvals; the ability to obtain qualified personnel, equipment and services in a timely and cost-efficient manner; the ability to operate in a safe, efficient and effective manner; and the regulatory framework regarding environmental matters, the renewal or extension of exploration licences, and such other assumptions and factors as set out herein. Although East Africa has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in forward-looking information, there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. There can be no assurance that such information will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such information. The Company does not update or revise forward looking information even if new information becomes available unless legislation requires the Company do so. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking information contained herein, except in accordance with applicable securities laws.
Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.
COLORADO, Jul 13, 2016 - Gold Resource Corporation (NYSE MKT: GORO) (the "Company") reports preliminary production results for the second quarter ended June 30, 2016 of approximately 10,011 ounces of gold, 572,500 ounces of silver and significant base metals. Gold Resource Corp. is a gold and silver producer with operations in Oaxaca, Mexico and exploration in Nevada, USA. The Company has returned $108 million to shareholders in monthly dividends since commercial production commenced July 1, 2010, and offers shareholders the option to convert their cash dividends into physical gold and silver and take delivery.Preliminary second quarter production at the Company's Aguila Project totaled approximately 10,011 ounces of gold, 572,500 ounces of silver, 320 tonnes of copper, 1,009 tonnes of lead and 3,813 tonnes of zinc. Through the first half of 2016, the Company's preliminary production numbers total approximately 16,474 ounces of gold, 1,006,640 ounces of silver, 564 tonnes of copper, 1,847 tonnes of lead and 7,074 tonnes of zinc.The Company maintains its 2016 Annual Outlook of 26,000 gold ounces, 1,900,000 silver ounces, 1,100 tonnes of copper, 3,200 tonnes of lead and 12,900 tonnes of zinc.Full financial results for the second quarter will be available at the time the Company files its quarterly report on Form 10-Q with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Gold Resource Corporation is a mining company focused on production and pursuing development of gold and silver projects that feature low operating costs and produce high returns on capital. The Company has 100% interest in six potential high-grade gold and silver properties at its producing Oaxaca, Mexico Mining Unit and exploration properties at its Nevada, USA, Mining Unit. The Company has 54,266,706 shares outstanding, no warrants, no long term debt and has returned $108 million back to shareholders since commercial production commenced July 1, 2010. Gold Resource Corp. offers shareholders the option to convert their cash dividends into physical gold and silver and take delivery. For more information, please visit GRC's website, located at www.Goldresourcecorp.com and read the Company's 10-K for an understanding of the risk factors involved.Cautionary Statements: This press release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. The statements contained in this press release that are not purely historical are forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act and Section 21E of the Exchange Act. When used in this press release, the words "plan", "target", "anticipate," "believe," "estimate," "intend" and "expect" and similar expressions are intended to identify such forward-looking statements. Such forward-looking statements include, without limitation, the statements regarding Gold Resource Corp. 's strategy, future plans for production, future expenses and costs, future liquidity and capital resources, and estimates of mineralized material. All forward-looking statements in this press release are based upon information available to Gold Resource Corporation on the date of this press release, and the company assumes no obligation to update any such forward-looking statements. Forward looking statements involve a number of risks and uncertainties, and there can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate. The Company's actual results could differ materially from those discussed in this press release. In particular, there can be no assurance that production will continue at any specific rate. Factors that could cause or contribute to such differences include, but are not limited to, those discussed in the Company's 10-K filed with the SEC.Corporate DevelopmentGreg Patterson303-320-7708www.Goldresourcecorp.com
July 13, 2016 - Vancouver - Happy Creek Minerals Ltd. (TSX-V:HPY, the "Company") announces it intends to carry out a non-brokered private placement financing of up to $1,000,000 through the sale of up to 2,000,000 flow-through common shares at a price of $0.22 per share for gross proceeds of up to $440,000 and up to 3,500,000 common shares at a price of $0.16 per share for gross proceeds of up to $560,000 (the "Offering"). The Offering is not subject to any minimum aggregate subscription.In addition to other prospectus exemptions commonly relied on in private placements, the Offering will be available to existing shareholders of the Company who, as of the close of business on July 12th, 2016, held common shares of the Company (and who continue to hold such common shares as of the closing date), pursuant to the prospectus exemption set out in BC Instrument 45-534 - Exemption from prospectus requirement for certain trades to existing security holders and in similar instruments in other jurisdictions in Canada (the "Existing Shareholder Exemption"). The Existing Shareholder Exemption limits a shareholder to a maximum investment of CAD$15,000 in a 12-month period unless the shareholder has obtained advice regarding the suitability of the investment and, if the shareholder is resident in a jurisdiction of Canada, that advice has been obtained from a person that is registered as an investment dealer in the jurisdiction. If the Company receives subscriptions from investors relying on the Existing Shareholder Exemption exceeding the maximum Offering, the Company may adjust the subscriptions received on a pro-rata basis.The Company will also make the Offering available to certain subscribers pursuant to BC Instrument 45-536 - Exemption from prospectus requirement for certain distributions through an investment dealer (the "Investment Dealer Exemption"). In accordance with the requirements of the Investment Dealer Exemption, the Company confirms that there is no material fact or material change about the Company that has not been generally disclosed.The private placement is subject to TSX Venture Exchange acceptance. The common shares will be subject to resale restrictions.It is intended that proceeds of approximately $600,000 from the private placement will be used to conduct mineral exploration work that qualifies as a Flow Through Exploration Expense under the Income Tax Act (Canada), and the remaining $400,000 will be used for general working capital and additional exploration, engineering or development work contemplated by the Company. Exploration expenditure will be primarily focussed on the Company's Fox tungsten property as outlined in the press release dated June 27th, 2016.On behalf of the Board of Directors,"David E Blann"David E Blann, P.Eng., President, CEODavid Blann, President, CEOCorporate Office:Phone:604.662.8310Email: Info@happycreekminerals.comWebsite: www.happycreekminerals.comNeither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.Copyright (c) 2016 TheNewswire - All rights reserved.
MONTREAL, Quebec (FSCwire) - Argex Titanium Inc. (TSX:RGX) (the Corporation or Argex) is pleased to announce that, it has closed its previously announced (see press release of May 9, 2016) private placement offering (the Offering) of secured convertible notes (the Notes) for gross proceeds of $2,400,000. Each Note is convertible at the option of the holder into 33,333 common shares of the Corporation (Shares) at an issue price of $0.03 each and 28,333 warrants to purchase additional Shares at any time at a price of $0.05 each over a five-year term. Unless converted prior thereto, the Notes will mature in two years from the date of issuance and bear interest at the rate of 15% per annum payable annually up to their time of conversion. Holders of Notes may at their option convert any unpaid and/or accrued interest thereon into additional Shares at an issue price of $0.03 each.
In addition and as previously announced, the Corporation has amended its existing 8% convertible unsecured subordinated debentures by, inter alia, amending the conversion price thereof from $1.14 to $0.11.
As a result of the foregoing, the Corporation will now be in a position to resume testing and development activities at its laboratory facilities in Valleyfield Quebec and move forward with its plans to develop designs and technical databases for the building of both a pilot and a commercial plant to produce TiO 2 pigment.
New leadership
The Corporation is also pleased to announce that its board of directors will be appointing Mr. Mazen Alnaimi as the Corporations Executive Chairman and CEO. Mr. Alnaimi, whose management company subscribed to 50% of the Offering, will lead the Corporations development.
Mr. Alnaimi has vast experience spanning almost 30 years in the commercialization of greenfield oil and gas, petrochemicals and steelmaking projects. After earning a B.S. in Civil Engineering from the University of Nebraska (1977) and an M.B.A. from the University of Houston (1981), Mr. Alnaimi started his professional career with Aramco, the oil production arm of the Saudi government, where he held positions of increasing responsibility. He was Project Engineer for a sea water injection facility and Design Manager for a refinery unit in Qassim, Saudi Arabia, assigned to work with Bechtel, first in San Francisco and later in Tokyo, Japan. He left Aramco in 1985 to join Saudi Fransi Bank, where he became involved in assessing the risk associated with financing mega petrochemical and steel production facilities on the banks behalf.
In 1989, Mr. Alnaimi started the first private-sector petrochemical facility in the Arabian Gulf, involving investors from five Gulf countries. That venture grew from a US $15 million investment to become Chemanol, a US $700 million company. As Managing Partner, Mr. Alnaimi was the visionary behind the project, from initial conceptualization to feasibility studies, technology selection and development, construction, commissioning, production, marketing and operations. Through several expansions, Chemanol grew from a single plant to 24 separate plants producing close to one million tons of methanol products and derivatives. Mr. Alnaimi took the company public in August 2008 in a very successful IPO that was 400% oversubscribed.
In 2000, Mr. Alnaimi started the first medium-section structural steel company in the Gulf region, United Gulf Steel, another very successful venture where he played the same role that he had at Chemanol. In 2001, he started a successful decorative laminate plant (MODECOR), again as a greenfield project. Mr. Alnaimi has also started several businesses in consulting, logistics and oil and gas services.
In addition, the Corporation is also pleased to announce that Mr. Carroll Moore will also be joining the new team as Chief Operating Officer. He will be leading a technical team of process engineers and chemists supported by external expert consultants.
Mr. Moore, who obtained a Bachelor of Chemical Engineering, did graduate work in industrial engineering in addition to earning an MBA through the University of Chicagos Executive Program. He has been directly involved with Mr. Alnaimi in various projects over the course of the last 15 years and has four decades of experience in petroleum, chemical and business development activities. His expertise covers technology, construction, marketing, operations and financing of large projects globally.
In the past, Mr. Moores experiences included having responsibility over projects ranging in value from US $120 million to US $280 million at UOP Inc., a leading international supplier and licensor of process technology, catalysts, adsorbents, equipment, and consulting services to the petroleum refining, petrochemical, and gas processing industries. Mr. Moore also worked at ABB, a leading global power and automation technology company that enables utility, industry, transport and infrastructure customers to improve their performance while lowering environmental impact, with projects valued at up to US$1 billion. At UOP and ABB, Mr. Moore was responsible for licensing and business development for sophisticated processes offered with full engineering packages; start-up, laboratory, and operating manuals; and field service of commercial units after commissioning. He participated in engineering design reviews, HAZOP reviews, Value Engineering reviews, 3D modelling evaluations and FEED exercises with several EPC contracting firms.
Mr. Mazen Haddad, the Corporations Interim President and Chief Executive Officer, participated in the Offering in the amount of $140,000 representing approximately 5.83% of the Offering. This is an increase of $40,000 to the previously announced anticipated participation for Mr. Haddad.
Due diligence
An extensive, thorough due diligence was carried out, encompassing a review of the technology, its attributes and competitive advantages, a financial review, and an assessment of the rationalization steps that should be taken going forward. It was concluded that the technology has merit and advantages over incumbent technologies and that proprietary know-how will be improved upon by the new team.
Based on the satisfactory results of the due diligence, Mr. Alnaimi confirmed his investment in Argex. The new team is committed to rationalizing corporate and operational expenses going forward in order to focus on the validity and competitiveness of the technology, and to restructuring the Corporation for the future, with a clear focus on efficiency and success.
Way forward
The objective will be to design an annual TiO 2 production level of 25,000 tonnes per annum to de-risk the scaling-up of the pilot plant.
The pilot plant in Valleyfield, Quebec, will be restarted for the purposes of producing an acceptable pigment-quality TiO 2 product and acquiring the physical and chemical data required to validate a process flow diagram. This activity will require four to six months of operating time and will be supported by the analytical efforts of external experts.
This phase will be followed by the hiring of an engineering firm to produce a complete basic engineering package, and then the contracting of a major EPC contractor to build a demonstration plant (scale of 1:2000) and a commercial plant.
About Argex Titanium
Argex Titanium Inc. has developed an advanced chemical process for the volume production of high-grade titanium dioxide (TiO 2 ) for use in high-quality paint, plastics, cosmetics and other applications.The Corporations unique proprietary process uses relatively inexpensive and plentiful source material from a variety of potential vendors to produce TiO 2 , along with other valuable by-products. Argexs process provides a significant cost and environmental advantage over current legacy TiO 2 production methods.
Contact:
Nicole Blanchard
Corporate Communications and Investor Relations
Argex Titanium Inc.
(514) 843-5959
nblanchard@argex.ca
Neither the TSX nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.
To view this press release as a PDF file, click onto the following link:public://news_release_pdf/Argex07132016.pdfSource: Argex Titanium Inc. (TSX:RGX) http://www.argex.ca/en/
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Jaguar Achieves Major Milestone of Over 1.1 Million Ounces of Gold Production
TSX-V: JAG
TORONTO, July 13, 2016 /CNW/ - Jaguar Mining Inc. ("Jaguar" or the "Company") (TSX-V: JAG) today announced multiple high-grade drill intercepts generated from 46 infill drill holes (7,310 metres from a total of a 7,842 metre program) designed to test the current indicated and inferred resource envelope of Orebody A at Turmalina Gold Mine ("Turmalina"). The 46 drill holes do not include four additional holes (532 metres) that are pending assay results.
Drilling Highlights and Key Intercepts
Drill intercepts completed confirm the continuation of high-grade gold mineralization down-plunge of Orebody A, 170 metres below current production workings, while also increasing confidence in the geological model of Orebody A through increased drill density.
Drill results provide the potential to upgrade current inferred resources to a higher category and include the following key intercepts:
Drill hole FTS1299 intercepted 21.66 grams per tonne gold ("g/t Au") over 8.48 metres (ETW 7.1m) Drill hole FTS1298 intercepted 18.26 g/t Au over 8.39 metres (ETW 5.9m) Drill hole FTS1268 intercepted 12.87g/t Au over 20.70 metres (ETW 17.5m), including 29.48 g/t gold over 6.64 metres (ETW 5.6m) and 22.24 g/t Au over 2.94 metres (ETW 2.5m)
Turmalina Gold Complex has achieved over 500,000 ounces of gold production since its commissioning in 2007. Orebody A is the main contributor to gold production at Turmalina. Orebody A has been outlined along a strike length of approximately 250 m to 300 m and remains open at depth below the current drilling program.
ETW - Estimated true width
Rodney Lamond, President and Chief Executive Officer of Jaguar, stated: "These drilling results are highly significant as they represent the first phase of infill drilling programs focused on increasing the geological confidence of Orebody A at Turmalina. Drilling results confirm that the high-grade mineralization recently mined from Orebody A continues 170 metres below the current working production levels, with grades persisting at depth. In addition, these results also reinforce the excellent potential to expand Orebody A down-plunge, as well as potentially increasing mineral resources as we work towards upgrading current inferred resources to a higher category. We are continuing with our infill drilling programs on Orebody A as a priority target given the excellent grades and widths we have encountered. In addition to this program, we are initiating a deep drilling program on Orebody C, expected to commence during Q3 2016, in an effort to identify higher grade mineralized ore shoots within Orebody C to augment the main production from Orebody A."
Turmalina Gold Deposit
The Pitangui area, where the Turmalina Mine is located, is underlain by rocks of Archaean and Proterozoic age. Archaean units include a granitic basement, overlain by the Pitangui Group, a sequence of ultramafic to intermediate volcanic flows and pyroclastics and associated sediments. The Turmalina deposit is hosted by chlorite-amphibole schist and biotite schist units within the Pitangui Group. All units have been metamorphosed to the amphibolite grade.
The mineralization at the Turmalina Mine is typically epigenetic and consists of a number of tabular bodies that are spatially related to a BIF. These tabular bodies are grouped together according to spatial configuration and gold content into Orebodies A, B, and C. Gold can occur within the BIF itself, but can equally occur in the other host lithologies.
Figures 1 and 2 below illustrate the spatial distribution of the known targets at Turmalina. Figure 3 illustrates a detailed longitudinal section of Turmalina.
Gold mineralization occurs in fine grains associated with sulphides in sheared schists (Orebody A) and BIF sequences (Orebody C). Gold particles average 10 ?m to 20 ?m and are mostly associated with arsenopyrite, quartz, and micas (sericite and biotite).
The main production of the mine comes from Orebody A, which is a steeply east dipping tabular deposit, that is located in a biotite schist host rock with a steep southeasterly plunge. The mineralization in this deposit has been outlined along a strike length of approximately 250 m to 300 m and to depths of 700 m to 750 m below surface.
Orebody C is a series of 14 lenses that are located to the west in the structural footwall of Orebody A and are generally of lower grade than Orebody A. They strike northwest and dip steeply to the northeast. A minor amount of production has been achieved from these lenses to date. The mineralization in this deposit has been outlined along a strike length of approximately 800 m to 850 m and to depths of 400 m to 450 m below surface.
Orebody A and C Drill Program
The Company has continued drilling for down-plunge extensions of Orebody A to assess the growth potential for Measured and Indicated Mineral Resources. In addition, drilling has focused on providing increased definition and confidence in the near-term mine operation within the Indicated mineral resource.
The development of a new exploration drilling horizon in the hanging wall of the structure is currently being reviewed and considered to drill the Orebody A down-plunge continuity below the current inferred resource envelope.
Additional deep exploration drilling is also planned to test the promising Orebody C SE down-plunge extension below the known resources, in order to gradually increase total Turmalina throughput.
The assessment of the historical geological information and the rational use of state-of-the-art 3-D software are strongly contributing to the understanding of the gold emplacement and consequent target generation of new resource identification.
A schematic geological cross section (Figure 2) below illustrates the structural positions of the Orebody A and C areas with respect to Orebody B, Faina, and Pontal.
Significant Gold Production Milestones Achieved
In 2007, the Turmalina Gold Complex commenced mining operations and has since maintained a consistent production level, achieving more than 500,000 ounces of gold produced to date. Combining total gold production from Turmalina with total gold production from the Company's other gold assets, Jaguar has exceeded a major milestone producing more than 1.1 million ounces of gold production as at Q2 2016 in one of the most prolific gold camps in South America, the Iron Quadrangle in the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil.
Rodney Lamond, President and Chief Executive Officer of Jaguar, commented: "I am extremely proud of all of our employees and support groups who together achieved a remarkable gold production milestone of 1.1 million ounces which reflects the gold production capability of our gold mines in Brazil. We continue to be well- positioned for future growth and to deliver on our goals in a safe and responsible operating environment."
With the recent success of key exploration programs and a cash balance of US$17.5 million as at June 30, 2016, the Company remains committed to investing in exploration programs that will support the replacement of depleted resources. Additionally, the Company will focus its exploration efforts on areas that will contribute to the growth of its sustainable production profile from its core producing assets: Turmalina, Pilar, and Roca Grande.
Drill Intercepts
The highlighted drilling intercepts contained in this news release (Table #1) are down-plunge of current underground workings at Orebody A. Table #1 comprises intersections drilled between January 2016 and June 2016, and are contained within the current inferred resource envelope, as detailed in the "Technical Report On The Turmalina Mine, Minas Gerais State, Brazil", released and filed on SEDAR on May 24, 2016 ("The Turmalina Technical Report"). With these results, the Company is expecting to replace the reserves being depleted in 2016 and confirming the down-plunge continuity and strength in grade and tonnage of the mineralization.
The impact of these intercepts was not incorporated into the reserve/resource model update that was disclosed in a news release on April 7, 2016. The effect of incorporating the new drill data into the reserve/resource model will only be ascertained and quantifiable once a reserve and resource model update is conducted, later in the year, as additional data is gathered.
Qualified Person
Scientific and technical information contained in this press release has been reviewed and approved by Marcos Dias Alvim, BSc Geo., MAusIMM (CP), Project Development Manager, who is an employee of Jaguar Mining Inc., and is a "qualified person" as defined by National Instrument 43-101 - Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects ("NI 43-101").
Quality Control
Jaguar Mining has implemented a quality-control program that includes insertion of blanks, commercial standards, and duplicate core samples in order to ensure best practice in sampling and analysis.
NQ and BQ size drill core is sawn in half with a diamond saw. Samples are selected for analysis in standard intervals according to geological characteristics such as lithology and hydrothermal alteration contents. All diamond drill hole collars are accurately surveyed using a Total Stations instrument and down hole deviations are surveyed using optical Reflex Maribor.
Mean grades are calculated using a variable lower grade cut-off (generally 2 g/t Au). No upper gold grade cut has been applied to the data. However, the requirement for assay top cutting will be assessed during future resource work.
Half of the sawed sample is forwarded to the analytical laboratory for analysis while the remaining half of the core is stored in a secure location. The drill core samples are transported in securely sealed bags to the Jaguar in-house laboratory located at the Caete Mine Complex in Minas Gerais. Some samples are also sent for check assaying to the independent SGS Geosol Laboratory located in Vespasiano, Minas Gerais. The preparation and analysis are all conducted at the respective facilities, either at the Roca Grande Mine Laboratory in Caete, Minas Gerais or at the SGS Geosol Laboratory in Vespasiano, Minas Gerais. The Caete Mine Complex laboratory does not carry an ISO certification. The SGS Geosol Laboratory is ISO 9001 accredited. As part of in-house QA/QC, the Caete Mine Complex laboratory inserts certified gold standards, blanks, and pulp duplicate samples.
For a complete description of Jaguar's sample preparation, analytical methods, and QA/QC procedures, please refer to the Turmalina Technical Report filed on Jaguar's profile at www.sedar.com.
About Jaguar Mining Inc.
Jaguar Mining Inc. is a Canadian-listed junior gold mining, development, and exploration company operating in Brazil with three gold mining complexes, and a large land package with significant upside exploration potential from mineral claims covering an area of approximate 191,000 hectares. The Company's principal operating assets are located in a prolific greenstone belt in the state of Minas Gerais and include the Turmalina Gold Mine Complex ("Mineracao Turmalina Ltda" or "MTL") and Caete Gold Mine Complex ("Mineracao Serras do Oeste Ltda" or "MSOL") which combined produce more than 90,000 ounces of gold annually. The Company also owns the Paciencia Gold Mine Complex, which has been on care and maintenance since 2012. Additional information is available on the Company's website at www.jaguarmining.com.
Forward-Looking Statements
Certain statements in this news release constitute "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation. Forward-looking information contained in forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of words such as "are expected", "is forecast", "is targeted", "approximately", "plans", "anticipates" "projects", "anticipates", "continue", "estimate", "believe" or variations of such words and phrases or statements that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "might", or "will" be taken, occur or be achieved. The Company has made numerous assumptions with respect to forward-looking information contained herein, including, among other things, assumptions about the availability of financing for exploration, development and production activities; the supply and demand for, and the level and volatility of the price of, gold; the accuracy of reserve and resource estimates and the assumptions on which the reserve and resource estimates are based; the receipt of necessary permits; ongoing relations with employees and impacted communities; and general business and economic conditions. Forward-looking information involve a number of known and unknown risks and uncertainties, including among others the uncertainties with respect to the price of gold, labor disruptions, mechanical failures, increase in costs, environmental compliance and change in environmental legislation and regulation, procurement and delivery of parts and supplies to the operations, uncertainties inherent to capital markets in general and other risks inherent to the gold exploration, development and production industry, which, if incorrect, may cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated by the Company and described herein. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking information.
For additional information with respect to these and other factors and assumptions underlying the forward-looking information made in this news release, see the Company's most recent annual information form and management's discussion and analysis, as well as other public disclosure documents that can be accessed under the issuer profile of "Jaguar Mining Inc." on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. The forward-looking information set forth herein reflects the Company's reasonable expectations as at the date of this news release and is subject to change after such date. The Company disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, other than as required by law. The forward-looking information contained in this news release is expressly qualified by this cautionary statement.
Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulations Services Provider (as that term is defined in policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.
Table #1 Drill Results
Turmalina Gold Mine Drill Results Hole ID
Date
From
(m)
To (m) Downhole
Interval (m) Estimated
True Width (m) Gold Grade
(g/t Au) FTS1260
12-01-16
112.0
125.9 13.9 5.5 10.24 Including
12-01-16
112.0
120.5 8.5 3.4 15.50
FTS1261
06-01-16
73.3
77.1 3.7 2.6 2.75
FTS1262
15-02-16
205.7
227.2 21.5 9.0 4.10 Including
15-02-16
205.7
220.7 15.0 6.2 4.56
FTS1263
01-02-16
254.5
258.2 3.7 3.0 3.00
FTS1264
06-01-16
84.1
101.0 16.9 10.5 5.37
FTS1265
01-01-16
123.6
134.0 10.5 6.9 6.84
FTS1266
21-01-16
120.9
131.2 10.3 6.9 5.45
FTS1267
19-01-16
113.0
115.8 2.9 2.1 10.96
FTS1268
21-01-16
141.7
162.4 20.7 17.6 12.87 Including
21-01-16
141.7
148.3 6.6 5.6 29.48 Including
21-01-16
158.6
161.5 2.9 2.5 22.24
FTS1269
24-02-16
112.7
125.0 12.3 6.2 7.62
FTS1270
12-01-16
90.3
106.7 16.4 7.2 7.08
FTS1271
21-01-16
110.3
120.3 10.0 5.0 4.16
FTS1272
20-01-16
91.6
99.1 7.5 5.0 11.17
FTS1273
18-02-16
98.5
102.1 3.7 2.8 5.69
FTS1274
02-02-16
83.6
84.6 1.0 1.0 1.12
FTS1275
03-02-16 Exploration drill hole to
investigate granite / volcano
sedimentary rocks contacts
FTS1276
10-02-16 Exploration drill hole to
investigate granite / volcano
sedimentary rocks contacts
FTS1278
19-02-16
90.7
95.6 4.9 3.5 1.73
FTS1279
25-02-16
97.8
98.8 1.0 0.5 0.68
FTS1280
22-02-16
168.6
176.1 7.4 6.0 3.04
FTS1281
21-02-16
127.9
133.4 5.5 3.5 7.53
FTS1282
26-02-16
118.8
124.4 5.6 5.0 7.46
FTS1284
30-03-16
89.4
102.8 13.4 12.0 15.29
FTS1285
31-03-16
86.9
101.6 14.7 8.0 2.73
FTS1286
04-03-16
133.5
144.1 10.6 6.4 8.30
FTS1287
16-03-16
118.4
122.2 3.8 3.2 4.46
Hole ID
Date
From
(m)
To
(m) Downhole
Interval (m) Estimated
True Width (m) Gold Grade
(g/t Au) FTS1288
10-03-16
118.1
123.7 5.6 4.2 4.84
FTS1289
04-04-16
111.2
113.1 1.9 1.8 6.07
FTS1290
01-04-16
93.5
96.9 3.5 3.2 7.76
FTS1291
29-04-16
104.9
107.6 2.8 2.0 1.87
FTS1292
01-04-16
96.9
116.7 19.8 14.8 5.58 Including
01-04-16
96.9
102.4 5.5 4.1 14.30
FTS1293
06-02-16
75.6
89.5 13.9 12.2 12.17
FTS1294
15-05-16
81.8
87.3 5.5 3.5 10.87
FTS1295
19-05-16
81.1
97.7 16.6 10.4 10.24
FTS1296
23-05-16
91.1
100.5 9.4 5.6 4.74
FTS1297
06-01-16
87.5
101.0 13.5 10.7 7.71
FTS1298
13-06-16
100.7
109.0 8.4 5.9 18.26
FTS1299
13-06-16
91.6
100.1 8.5 7.1 21.66
FTS1300
26-05-16
146.3
152.6 6.3 3.4 5.44
FTS1301
29-05-16
131.3
137.9 6.6 3.0 5.33
FTS1302
30-05-16
119.3
126.6 7.4 3.2 5.77
FTS1303
30-05-16
99.6
100.5 1.0 0.5 0.71
FTS1304
29-04-16
107.1
108.9 1.8 1.6 8.42
FTS1305
27-06-16
118.7
131.7 13.0 5.0 5.65
FTS1309
21-06-16
102.0
106.6 4.6 2.1 2.92
FTS1310
23-06-16
144.2
150.8 6.5 3.1 6.27
SOURCE Jaguar Mining Inc.
Police shut down I-81 north just before 1 p.m. between Exit 52A for Route 11 and New Kingstown and Exit 57 for Route 114 and Mechanicsburg, according to PennDOT. One lane of the highway reopened to traffic by 2:20 p.m.
Trials of the Wounded Warrior
A man walks home to his trailer in Balad Air Base, Iraq, from the movies. It had been his first day off during his deployment. With the dining hall on his mind, he dropped off groceries he had recently bought at the Exchange in his empty trailer and headed out the door for dinner. As he turned around the corner a blinding white light exploded next to him. The next thing his mind registers is that sirens are wailing across the base, but it usually takes one to two minutes after a blast for them to start. Was he unconscious for that long? He gets up and goes back inside his trailer to find his roommate inside and trying to talk to him, but the man hears no words spilling out from his roommates lips. All he can hear is a steady ringing through a jumble of noises in his ears. A moment of time is unaccounted for in his mind and miraculously hes in one piece. Or so he thought.
This event and memory are those belonging to retired Staff Sgt. Chris Campbell, an Air Force active-duty and Army/Air guardsmen hailing from West Virginia.
Campbells family has a history of being in the military, reaching back to his parents, grandparents and great uncles. He grew up in a poor part of West Virginia and knew his options were limited within that area.
You either go to the coal mines or college, said Campbell. I knew going into my junior year [of highschool], I wanted to join the Air Force. I had no desires for college, I just knew the military was the path for me.
His first duty station as an enlisted Airman was Shaw Air Force Base, South Carolina, as an F-16 crew chief in 1994. His time was mostly spent working 12-hour shifts, six to seven days a week. But, the hard work could not make him love the military any less. However, the Air Force began to change over time and cutbacks on funding became intolerable.
We had aircraft that we couldnt repair, said Campbell. It was pretty much a bare-boned Air Force at the time. They would actually take one jet and cannibalize it to use parts on other aircraft just to keep them flying. [The budget] went from being very good to where we were begging and hoping, just trying to get parts any way we could to keep aircraft in the air.
Campbell cross-trained into a Defense Travel Management Office in 2004 and was offered a slot to deploy to Balad Air Base, Iraq.
We flew into Iraq, they had somebody at the air field to pick me up and Id been up for about 20 hours before I hit the ground and my boss looked at me and said Hey, I need you, can you make it today? and I said, Lets do it, said Campbell.
His boss needed to respond to a plane crash that occurred on Monday, May 30, 2005. Four Americans and an Iraqi crashed before midday. Campbell had gotten there just in time to help bring in the recovered parts of the crash and send them back to the United States to help determine the cause of the crash during the first 10 hours of his deployment.
Ive got their four names [on dog tags], said Campbell. Theyre all buried in Arlington Cemetery. I go visit them every year. Whenever I go back home, I just remember who they were and what they were doing.
Then that fateful day happened a month or so later. The rocket hit, and Campbell would spend the next two years wondering what was wrong with him and seeking answers from anyone who would help. From each duty station and each military doctor, Campbell would hear answers from Youll be fine, just get some more sleep to Its only PTSD.
Campbell had continued giving what he could to the military by seeking any volunteer opportunities to serve. He volunteered to help with Hurricane Katrina just two months after being hit by the rocket, which he would find out only worsened his internal injuries.
We all can still contribute in some way or some form, said Campbell. Never feel like youre a failure or youre hopeless. We all have a purpose. Dont feel ashamed to ask for help. Im always around if somebody needs anything.
Campbell now resides in San Angelo and would like to support his fellow veterans.
It wasnt until about 2007 when the studies began to reveal a deeper understanding of war injuries and as such, the term Traumatic Brain Injury was given for one of Campbells conditions.
Campbell would undergo many tests, of which included the Water Test. Cold and hot water would be injected into Campbell to test the pressure against his brain. The test concluded that one side of his brain had a neurological deficit. The injuries known common symptoms would include loss of balance, walking problems, weakness of the arms or legs, abnormal reflexes and sometimes even the inability to speak. As the doctors continued testing, they found that the hearing in his right ear was only 44 percent effective because of the blast. The doctors would also eventually find that because of inhalation of debris in the blast and in Hurricane Katrina, his lungs had deteriorated to that of an 80-year old chronic smoker, despite the fact that he had not smoked a day in his life.
In 1920, Calvin Coolidge famously noted The nation which forgets its defenders will be itself forgotten. If you are standing here today, you would know our nation is the greatest nation on earth and that it does not forget our defenders, said Col. Michael Downs, 17th Training Wing Commander. Staff Sgt. Campbell, you powerfully overcame the enemys attempt to take your life. This act only made you stronger, you are resilient and an inspiration to all of us. Thank you so much for your service and for your sacrifice.
The Brisbane Times 2017 Good Food Guide is set to be published on Tuesday. Leading up to its release, Good Food is announcing the finalists for the year's major awards.
Today, we bring you the top five contenders to be crowned Best New Restaurant, an award given to the most exciting opening in the past 12 months that sets the eating agenda and starts conversations.
The winner will be announced at The Good Food Guide Awards, presented by Citi and Vittoria, on Monday July 18 and you can follow the evening's action via Good Food's Instagram and Twitter accounts. Good luck to all the finalists!
Billykart West End, West End
Billykart, West End. Photo: Chris Hyde
Set in what feels like a cross between a modern cafe and the large back deck of a Queenslander, Billykart's galley-style kitchen is clearly visible by almost all in the clean-lined open dining space. Owner-chef Ben O'Donoghue's menu crosses borders and continents in search of variety, taste and texture and dishes aren't simply plated up here, they're dressed and accessorised and given a stage of beautifully chosen earthenware. Billykart is hip, yes, but there is a whole lot of substance to the style.
London Fields, West End
Not your standard pub - London Fields, West End. Photo: Chris Hyde
This is the local everyone wants to have: modern, on trend, with a great drinks list and a menu that focuses on quality produce. The space is breezy and bright with high ceilings, lots of blond wood and white walls conveying a chic industrial look. It's food that pays homage to pub fare but with modern sensibilities and classics such as chicken liver parfait with port jelly, and sausages and mash featuring alongside more contemporary favourites such as roast beetroot with goat's cheese.
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Nickel Kitchen & Bar, Fortitude Valley
Chicken Kiev at Nickel. Photo: Supplied
Big, fun, Cadillac-with-the-top-down dining where you can sit at the bar and brunch on waffles, boudin blanc and a textbook Bloody Mary. It's such a plush and handsome room, you might as well stick around for a tossed-at-the-table Caesar salad and pudgy, buttery oysters Rockefeller. Another Manhattan please, Lloyd. Dinner might be an eye fillet of Great Southern grass-fed beef that tastes of prehistoric prairies and a hard-working grill. It's a steak engineered to match Nickel's red wine wallopers and booths that turn long lunches into longer nights. Be sure to Bombe Alaska but don't blame Canada. Celebrate the True North with veal jus-covered poutine instead (the best chips in town - we're calling it).
Otto Ristorante, Brisbane
Standards and tables are set at Otto, Brisbane. Photo: Nikki To
The Fink Group (also owners of Sydney's three-hatted Quay and two-hatted Bennelong) have set high standards in hospitality and attention to detail. Otto's service is as polished as its branded glassware and few expenses have been spared, from leather menus by Saatchi & Saatchi to pirouetting Les Danseuses ceiling fans. Most importantly, the modern Italian food is downright excellent. And how's that view? Gee willikers. A window seat is the hottest date spot in Brisbane but you can always grab a perch at the bar and a glass of rose, and be just as happy dining solo.
The Wolfe, East Brisbane
Elegant bistro dining at The Wolfe. Photo: Chris Hyde
A deceptively simple European-led menu is underpinned by classic technique and partnered by a thoughtful wine list at this elegant bistro featuring Paul McGivern back on the pans. A short carte might feature a pristine fillet of john dory served with a saffron-tinted beurre blanc, buffalo-curd-stuffed zucchini flowers and young asparagus or perhaps pork belly with a thin layer of brittle glazed crackle - its richness held in check by little bursts of acidity thanks to plump muscatels soaked in aged apple cider vinegar. Warm hospitality, comfortable seating and healthy list of by-the glass wines make the idea of lingering at this lovely local highly appealing.
The Brisbane Time 2017 Good Food Guide will be on sale for $9.99 in newsagents and bookstores from July 19, with all purchases receiving free access to the new Good Food app.
I have the best of intentions. I buy lots of delicious fresh ingredients and most nights, I manage to rustle up something half decent. But all too frequently, a lack of planning, imagination or time or a long day of work will result in the following conversation with my husband:
'Have you thought about dinner?'
'Nup. You?'
Related Content How to make 100 dishes from 10 tins in your pantry
'Nup takeaway?'
'Fab, you call, I'll get the kids in the bath.'
Convenient? Yes. Tasty? Usually. Good for our health, waistlines and bank balance? Not particularly.
Zucchini spaghetti
But there is another breed out there, Those Who Cook Their Own Dinner Every Night. How do they do it? And how can we be more like them? We asked five organised foodies for their tips.
Plan in advance
The overwhelming theme amongst our dedicated home cooks is that preparation is key, and one of the best ways to do that is meal planning.
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1. "I plan what I'm going to be cooking on Sunday, and head to the markets to buy the produce for the week - fail proof," says Taline Gabrielian, founder of popular health food blog and Instagram, Hippie Lane.
2. "Before I do the grocery shopping each week, I plan what meals I can make and think through how I could re-use certain staples or vegetables in different meals so I'm not wasting food," says Jo Rossaka Healthy Eating Jo.
3. "If meal planning is something that doesn't appeal or you don't have much time, then pick one cookbook, or one recipe site, or one blog and find five dinners from that source only," advises vegetarian blogger Stacey Roberts of Veggie Mama. "Write your shopping list and you've got a week's worth of meals in minutes."
Taline Gabrielian of Hippie Lane. Photo: Supplied
Maximise your Sunday
While you might spend your Sundays relaxing, our dinner devotees are using it to get on top of the week's meals.
Jo Ross aka Healthy Eating Jo. Photo: HossainSalahuddin
4. "Sunday afternoon is a great time to prepare for the week ahead," says Carla McMillan, healthy chef, yoga instructor and co-founder of Bodypass*. "I like to roast a whole bunch of vegies to add to meals during the week pumpkin, sweet potato, parsnips, cauliflower and broccoli. They'll keep in the fridge for up to four days, so can easily be reheated to add as a side to a piece of fish, steak or chicken, that can be grilled in minutes when you get home from a long day."
Make a big batch of soup, such as this hearty lamb shank and barley number. Photo: Marina Oliphant
5. "I pre-cut my vegies on a Sunday and store them in containers for the week in the fridge," says Melanie Lionello, the nutritionist behind Naturally Nutritious. "I spiralise lots of zucchinis and sweet potatoes so I can add them to salads, use them as noodles in soup or as a pasta replacement. Sundays are also a great time to make big batches of stews, sauces and braises and freeze portions so you can just whip them out and heat them when you're time-poor during the week."
Stacey Roberts of Veggie Mama. Photo: Supplied
6. "It's super handy to make marinades, dips and sauces to store in the fridge for when you need them," says Gabrielian. "I often cook up a tomato pasta sauce and a pesto on a Sunday to use during the week."
7. "Prepping a soup on the weekend can be so quick and easy to reheat on a week night," says McMillan. "Freeze it in portion sizes so you can pull out as many serves as you need to eat at a time."
Nutritionist Melanie Lionello of Naturally Nutritious. Photo: Supplied
Sweet potato fries. Photo: Edwina Pickles
8. "I bake sweet potatoes and pumpkin, which can be cooked and stored in the fridge for three days," says Ross. "Whole baked sweet potatoes can be cut in half and filled with toppings or served as a side, mashed or as sweet potato fries. Sliced baked pumpkin can be served in salads or thrown into curries or quinoa dishes to add flavour and depth."
9. Both Ross and McMillan also recommend preparing grains ahead of time. "I take the time on the weekend to cook up a big batch of quinoa or brown rice cooked with a little vegetable stock for flavour and then I portion it out into containers to suit my family and freeze it," says Ross. "That way I can take it out the night before or the day I need it and it's ready to heat as a side for curries and stir-fries or to mix through salads and vegetable patties, without the long wait that cooking grains normally takes."
Stock up on staples
Our foodies agree a well-stocked pantry means you'll always have dinner options even when the fridge is empty.
10. "Having good wholesome staples in my pantry that I can make a huge combination of meals out of is essential," says Melanie. "Mine are onions, garlic, olive oil, legumes and pulses, and frozen vegies."
11. "Keeping tinned tomatoes, coconut milk, chickpeas, butter beans and lentils in the pantry means you can always throw together a vegetarian dish that will be filling and nutritious, whether it be a tomato based pasta sauce to add to spiralised vegie pasta, a delicious Indian curry or even a bean and grain salad," suggests McMillan.
"I also always have a variety of nuts and seeds in my pantry which can be added to any dish for some quick healthy fats and proteins, fresh herbs to add some fresh flavouring, and eggs in my fridge. They're so easy, delicious and nutritious and so versatile, too. A quick frittata or omelette with some pre-roasted vegies takes only minutes in the oven."
Pantry pasta: Spaghetti puttanesca. Photo: Marina Oliphant
12. "Keep pasta and tomatoes or rice and frozen veg for those nights when you're really pressed," says Roberts. "You don't have to have loads of items (unless you're bordering on a doomsday prepper pantry, like me), but if you've got one or two full meals that are there 'just in case', you should always have something to get you through."
Get inspired
Our regular home cooks have some great ideas for keeping fresh and exciting meals coming.
13. "I'm inspired by looking at different cuisines and cultures and learning their techniques," says Lionello. "For example, I looked at Turkish culinary culture for my honours thesis and now I incorporate lots of yoghurt in savoury dishes as well as herbs and spices such as mint and sumac."
Consider a seasonal vegetable box subscription. Photo: Edwina Pickles
14. "Get a vegie box delivered - sign up for an automatic delivery, if necessary," advises Roberts. "You'll get fresh, delicious produce every week, they will spark ideas for recipes (or you can search online for the vegies you've been delivered and be inspired by the recipes that pop up), and if all else fails, have a vegie stir-fry."
15. "Following wholesome food blogs and healthy food Instagrams inspires me to cook new and different things as well," adds Lionello. "Plus reading food magazines or lift-outs in newspapers might remind me of a meal I love but haven't made in a while."
Perfect your time management skills
16. "I often start prepping the meal in the morning so that I'm ready for the hungry family in the pm," says Gabrielian. "That means rinsing, cutting, peeling and all the other basics to get the dinner happening."
17. "I make a mix of quick and easy and lengthy meals depending on my schedule," Gabrielian adds. "If I'm squeezed for time, I make quick dinner options on the days I'm time-poor, and more lengthy dinners when I have more time."
*Fairfax Media is the owner of Bodypass
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Comparison data used to show prices
By Jayne ODonnell And Laura Ungar, USA TODAY NETWORK
Starting Tuesday, consumers worried about high out-of-pocket health costs can search for procedure prices ranging from knee surgeries to vasectomies, based on their doctor and type of insurance so they can eliminate most of the surprise bills that show up long after their wounds have healed.
Amino, a health data company that launched last fall, was already helping connect patients to doctors in their areas based on quality data. The new tool greatly expands its pricing data and covers about 550,000 physicians, 49 procedures and 129 insurance companies.
While Amino is one of many public and private entities trying to help consumers shop for health care, its new tool gets as close as any have come yet to having such a wide range of details.
The information is based on hundreds of millions medical insurance claims, totaling $860 billion within the last year, to help patients plan for the seemingly never-ending series of bills that follow patients after any major procedure.
"Gaining access to pricing information has proved incredibly difficult," says Amino CEO and co-founder David Vivero. "Industry efforts at price transparency have missed the mark."
Physician Neel Shah, who founded the nonprofit Costs of Care, called Amino's effort "an important first step."
"Most of the way costs are communicated are not really using the language patients use," says Shah.
Amino gives users several opportunities to click for more information about insurance and other terminology used. Whether a patient is insured or uninsured, Vivero says the goal is to give them "a leg up" when they visit their doctor's office.
Vivero agrees with Shah, who says "it's always hard to know what all the costs are going to be" because a doctor may not know what a patient's full needs are until they've been evaluated. And even then, new issues may arise while a patient is under anesthesia. That's why Vivero says it's an estimate based on all the other people with the same insurance who went to the same doctor for the same procedure.
"It's not a (price) guarantee but is using statistics to find the typical price," says Vivero.
Shah says physicians can help too by doing a "better job explaining the range of possibilities" of what a procedure could involve and cost.
Health care costs are a challenge even for the experts to figure out. Elizabeth Munnich, an assistant professor of economics at the University of Louisville who specializes in health economics, says costs vary even within the same hospital because they are largely based on insurer negotiations with health care providers. So the overall mix of insurers, and the relative power of those insurers and the hospital system, influence prices.
One thing everyone should keep in mind, she says: A higher cost doesn't necessarily mean better care, studies show.
Munnich got some firsthand experience when she had a baby last year. She and her husband have a high-deductible insurance plan, so they asked about prices and discovered "nobody can actually give you a price."
Even Amino can't yet. But the company is working on that, along with prices for MRIs, which aren't done by doctors. That requires gathering of all new data from MRI centers.
Getty Images Iraqi pro-government forces take part in a rehearsal for a military parade in the streets of Baghdad onTuesday, to be held later this week by the Joint Operations Command to celebrate the recapture of Fallujah from the Islamic State group jihadists.
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Inside look at U.S.-led coalitions deadliest single attack on ISIL
By Jim Michaels, USA TODAY NETWORK
The initial reports coming into Baghdad's operations center seemed implausible: A convoy of dozens of Islamic State vehicles were preparing to flee advancing Iraqi forces in Fallujah.
A surveillance drone dispatched to the area confirmed the reports. Staff officers gathered around screens and stared incredulously as the numbers of vehicles continued to expand, the militants apparently oblivious to the target they presented from the air.
It was an unprecedented opportunity. The Islamic State had learned to avoid massing in large numbers to avoid airstrikes by the U.S.-led coalition. Now the militants were clustered in a traffic jam south of the city in what appeared to be a panicked retreat from Fallujah, about 35 miles west of Baghdad. "There was no missing it," said Maj. Gen. Jay Silveria, deputy commander of U.S. Air Forces Central Command.
When the dust cleared in late June, at least 348 militants were killed and more than 200 vehicles were destroyed, including truck bombs, in one of the deadliest single attacks on the Islamic State since the militants swept into Iraq nearly unopposed two years ago, according to coalition statistics and interviews with officers overseeing the attacks.
"It's going to change their calculus in the rest of this campaign," Silveria said, referring to the Islamic State.
The convoy attacks were reported at the time they occurred, but new details that emerged from interviews and military statistics released to USA TODAY highlight an unprecedented effort to capitalize on a quicker than expected ground offensive that took the militants by surprise.
The Islamic State's deadly miscalculation in Fallujah may be the strongest sign yet that, at least in Iraq, the terror group's self-proclaimed caliphate is collapsing rapidly.
Over the past weekend, U.S.-backed Iraqi forces captured a key air base that will serve as a staging area for an assault to retake Mosul, Iraq's second largest city, from the militants. The Pentagon announced Monday it would send an additional 560 U.S. troops to capitalize on the momentum.
Two weeks earlier, an estimated 29 coalition aircraft including B-52s, A-10s, F-15s, F/A-18s, British Typhoons and an armed predator drone pummeled the Islamic State convoys, dropping more than 70 bombs and missiles over several days.
"It's an indication of their leadership breaking down," Silveria said in an interview. "It's pretty clear they made a poor assessment on the approaching Iraqi security forces and then they made a poor assessment on what it was going to take for them to get out of there."
Even when the Islamic State lost ground in other major battles, the militants managed an organized retreat, escaping in small groups and reassembling elsewhere. In Fallujah, however, Iraqi forces caught the militants off guard by moving in to retake the city in about five weeks. By contrast, the recapture of Ramadi, another major Sunni city in western Iraq, took about five months, ending last December.
Even as the Islamic State loses ground and troops, it has proved to be resilient. The group, also called ISIS or ISIL, increasingly is turning to terror attacks against civilians as its grip on territory loosens. In early July, a massive bombing in Baghdad killed about 200 people. In a recent report IHS, a consultant group that tracks the Islamic State, predicted such terror attacks would increase as the Islamic State is pushed out of its territory in Iraq and Syria.
The Pentagon said the shift in Islamic State tactics does not require the U.S. military to overhaul its strategy. "Tightening the noose around ISIL in Iraq will make it harder for them to carry out attacks in places like Baghdad," Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook said.
Plans for the deadly attack in Fallujah began forming when reports of a convoy assembling near a highway intersection south of the city began coming into the joint Iraqi-coalition combat operations center in Baghdad late on the night of June 27. At the time, Iraqi security forces were still clearing pockets of resistance in Fallujah.
Coalition officers scrambled a surveillance drone and began studying the imagery, but they couldn't positively identify all the vehicles to ensure no civilians were inside.
The next morning, they authorized airstrikes on obvious targets that could be confirmed, including trucks with machine-gun mounts, vehicles rigged with bombs and heavily armored trucks. Some of the pickups had armed fighters piled in the back.
The coalition officers continued to monitor throughout the day, as the convoy grew to more than 120 vehicles, according to an account compiled by Marine Brig. Gen. Rick Uribe, director of the Combined Joint Operations Center-Baghdad, and provided to USA TODAY.
Coalition officers requested "terrain denial" airstrikes massive craters in roads around the convoy to prevent vehicles from escaping. The mission bought time for officers, as they continued to study the images and identify any vehicles containing civilians.
By 10 p.m. on June 28, the convoy was able to maneuver around the bomb craters and began moving toward an Iraqi military position outside Fallujah. The coalition officers warned the Iraqis that the convoy was headed toward them, but they couldn't yet order airstrikes because they hadn't met the strict standards set to avoid civilian casualties.
The military recently moved the authority to approve targets of opportunity, or "dynamic" strikes, to general officers in Iraq, who are closer to the fighting. Previously, approval was granted from U.S. Central Command, headquartered in Tampa, which has overall authority for military operations in the Middle East.
"It's definitely made a difference in how responsive we are," Silveria said.
Even so, the process can sometimes be time consuming, since targets of opportunity have to be vetted by teams of officers, including lawyers.
The following day, June 29, one 40-vehicle convoy broke off from the main group and started heading south. By 7:45 a.m., coalition officers positively identified the vehicles as enemy combatants and authorized airstrikes.
The militants had gotten out of the vehicles and were attempting to build bridges to cross a "water obstacle," according to the military account. It was a prime target. At 8:10 a.m., coalition aircraft started a wave of strikes that wiped out the convoy.
The rest of the convoy was found in the desert heading west at 12:45 p.m. Aircraft began picking off the vehicles individually as soon as they could be identified as legitimate targets.
The convoy was moving toward Iraqi lines even as it was being targeted. Iraqi forces held their ground and repelled the convoy, forcing it to turn around. Coalition aircraft continued attacking the convoy until after 9 p.m., when little was left of it.
That same evening, the coalition began getting reports of another large Islamic State convoy forming in Albu Bali, a village northwest of Fallujah. Coalition officers scrambled a drone overhead and confirmed that more than 120 vehicles were on the move.
Iraqi artillery began targeting the convoy. Coalition aircraft then struck the lead vehicle, which triggered numerous "secondary" explosions, indicating it was rigged as a car bomb, according to the coalition account.
Militants moved another car or truck bomb into the lead position and began moving again about an hour and 15 minutes later. The coalition again hit the lead vehicle, stopping the convoy.
About 50 people, including women and children, fled the vehicles. When the women and children were spotted, the coalition ceased its strikes.
The coalition observed the convoy for about 60 minutes longer to ensure no women or children were around and then destroyed the rest of the column with a series of bombing and strafing runs, according to the coalition account.
Intelligence gathered by the coalition command found the Islamic State concluded that the strikes were a "disaster" for the group, said Air Force Lt. Col. Chris Karns, a military spokesman.
"We were happy to monitor their progress and as they made a mistake we had to take advantage of it," Silveria said.
SHARE European Pressphoto Agency Larry, the Downing Street cat stands on the steps of No. 10 Downing Street in London, Britain in 2012.
Larry the cat has been on job at No. 10 since 11
By Ryan W. Miller, USA TODAY NETWORK
David Cameron? Out. Theresa May? In. Larry the Cat? Definitely staying.
With the United Kingdom voting to leave the European Union and in turn electing a new prime minister, countless questions around the country's future have arisen in the recent weeks. One thing is not up for debate, though Larry, the Chief Mouser of 10 Downing Street, will keep his London residence during the leadership change.
Larry moved into 10 Downing in 2011 after being recruited from Battersea Dogs & Cats Home for his ability to catch rodents.
"Larry spends his days greeting guests to the house, inspecting security defences and testing antique furniture for napping quality," the U.K. government's official page on the history of 10 Downing reads. "His day-to-day responsibilities also include contemplating a solution to the mouse occupancy of the house. Larry says this is still 'in tactical planning stage.' "
After spending a few years alone, Larry gained a friend nearby in April Palmerston, the Foreign Office's official cat. The two even chat sometimes when political tension gets to be too much for the felines.
Although Larry is the first official cat to hold the title Chief Mouser, cats have occupied government buildings in London since the 1800s.
"He is a Downing Street legend," Cabinet Office spokesman Benjamin Oliver told NBC News.
Susan Miles pioneered preservation of San Angelos history
Miss Susan Miles San Angelo's unofficial historian, a collector of Texas memorabilia, an indefatigable researcher and author died at age 89 in January 1982 at Shannon West Texas Memorial Hospital.
She was born April 22, 1892, the daughter of Jonathan and Lillie Miles.
The family's early San Angelo subdivision home was established by her father in 1882 shortly after a devastating flood destroyed the community of Ben Ficklin.
Until nearly the end of her life, Miss Miles lived at 112 N. Irving St., within a stone's throw of her birthplace.
As a child Miss Miles played among the gravestones of the abandoned cemetery between North Oakes and Magdalen streets, and those gravestones and the history they represented served as one of her earliest forays into historical research.
Among her first discoveries was the unmarked grave of Edith Clare Grierson, the only daughter of Fort Concho Commander Col. Benjamin Grierson. Little Edith died at age 13 in 1878.
Through tireless work and research, Miss Miles made many significant contributions to the preservation of San Angelo's history.
She was one of the founders and the first president of the Tom Green County Historical Society in 1944 and was its executive secretary from its earliest days. She served several terms as president of and delivered more original papers before the society than any other member had.
Her office in the basement of the courthouse was filled with pictures, notes and papers relating to early personalities dating from the time of Fort Concho.
She earned a high school diploma on the stage of the Turn Verein Hall that stood on the corner on Concho Avenue and Magdalen Street.
She earned bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of Texas at Austin.
She came back to San Angelo in 1932 and helped establish a crippled children's society, which provided free clinics for youngsters.
Even then, she continued to focus on Texas history and particularly the history of San Angelo.
Not everyone agreed with the idea of a Historical Society.
"We made no splash with the announcement with our arrival," she told the Standard-Times in April 1968.
"Some of the old-timers even looked askance at us," she said.
"'You've waited too long,' they told us. 'Our history is cold,' some said. Others said, 'You are beginning too soon. Your history is too hot.' "
In addition, Miss Miles was an active contributor to area, state and national organizations dealing in historical research.
The almost endless list of historical subjects Miss Miles studied included the painted rocks in Concho County, the Battle of Dove Creek, Ben Ficklin, Fort Concho, pioneer doctors, attorneys and preachers, ranchmen, cowboys, trails, Concho pearls, floods, droughts, cyclones and fence cutters.
"There are plenty of subjects for research," Miss Miles said. "The trouble is finding someone to do it."
In October 1983 the Tom Green County Historical Society presented a plaque to honor the late Miss Miles.
The plaque reads: "We honor the life and memory of Susan Miles (1892 to 1982) who developed an outstanding talent for interpretive writing and for historical research which added to the recorded history of our area. Local, state and national tributes of merit came to her for her work. We will remain indebted to her for her ability to portray the past with such accuracy and realism. She cared enough to share.
"She honored the past by serving the future."
Rick Smith is a local news and community affairs columnist. Contact him at 325-659-8248 or rick.smith@gosanangelo.com.
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By Rashda Khan, rashda.khan@gosanangelo.com / @Rashda_SAST
Family, friends and law enforcement personnel showed up at the San Angelo City Council meeting Tuesday to watch Lt. Frank Carter sworn in as police chief.
People in uniform representing the San Angelo Police Department, the Tom Green County Sheriff's Office, Texas Rangers, state game wardens, Municipal Court personnel, Department of Public Safety troopers and more packed the South Meeting Room of the McNease Convention Center and spilled out into the lobby area to watch on the wall-mounted television.
Chief Carter, who was elected to a four-year term as San Angelo's police administrator, thanked all his supporters and was visibly moved.
"Many of you do not know, but my father ran in 1978 for police chief," he said. "Thirty-eight-years later, we've come full circle. I don't think in the history of the SAPD there's been a chief and an assistant chief, father and son."
The new chief added that his achievement was an example of what truly matters.
"It's not about your experience," he said. "It's about your drive and passion for what you believe in."
Carter will announce his new assistant chiefs Friday at a 2 p.m. ceremony in the North Meeting Room of the McNease Convention Center, 501 Rio Concho Drive. The ceremony will be open to the public.
Also sworn in was Lane Carter, the new council member representing Single Member District 5, who replaces Elizabeth Grindstaff.
The council voted Councilwoman Charlotte Farmer, representing SMD 6, mayor pro tempore to fill in for Mayor Dwain Morrison in his absence.
In other business, the council:
Pulled the public hearing and consideration of the removal of Ryan Smith from the Planning Commission from the agenda. The item was requested by Councilman Bill Richardson, who declined to comment.
Approved on a 6-to-1 vote the conceptual design of a set of three sculptures regarding the "Historic Beginnings of San Angelo," landscaping and their placement at Bart DeWitt Park. The sculptures will represent the Lady in Blue, a Native American child and a Jumano brave. A contribution of $500,000 from an anonymous donor will finance the project. Representatives of the Jumano tribe attended the meeting in support of the motion.
Approved repealing an ordinance approved Sept. 18, 2012, naming a private drive Time Clock Drive and designated an unnamed private drive in the 2900 block of Southwest Boulevard as the new Time Clock Drive. TimeClock Plus, a San Angelo-based multimillion-dollar business, recently expanded and moved its headquarters, and the measure reflects that change.
Approved an ordinance to change a street name from Creswell Street to Lighthouse Way for a 472-foot stretch from Vaughn Street to Austin Street. The change was made at the request of the Lighthouse for the Blind, a nonprofit organization that employs visually impaired people.
Approved purchase of cushioned seats that look like what was formerly in the City Auditorium. The renovation is expected to be complete in the spring.
SHARE Gonzales
By Staff Report
A San Angelo man who was arrested in November on charges of sexual assault involving a 16-year-old girl has been indicted on numerous counts of sexual assault against the underage girl and another child.
Jose Jesus Gonzales, 41, was indicted in the 51st District Court in early February on three counts of sexual assault of a child under 17 years of age and one count of sexual assault of a child against the 16-year-old girl.
Also in February, Gonzales was indicted on two counts of aggravated sexual assault against a child under 14 years of age after investigators identified another victim, with the same last name as the 16-year-old girl, while investigating the first girl's case. The assaults on the second victim happened in November, which was also when Gonzales assaulted the 16-year-old girl, according to court documents.
His first pretrial is Aug. 2.
Gonzales is accused of sexually assaulting the 16-year-old girl in an abandoned manufactured home on Thanksgiving Day and of having sexual intercourse with the 16-year-old multiple times.
The girl told investigators that Gonzales had sexually assaulted her more than 50 times since May 2015, according to court documents.
The 16-year-old girl told police that Gonzales drove her to his grandfather's residence in the Dove Creek area to deliver a meal Nov. 26, court documents stated.
The girl told police Gonzales drove down a dirt road that day that ran through the property and to the abandoned mobile home. She said the two went inside to a bedroom that had a mattress without sheets, a silver colored comforter, a black plastic box containing condoms and sliding glass doors covered in sheets. The girl told police she knew the bedroom from previous sexual encounters with Gonzales.
The 16-year-old girl told police that Gonzales then had sexual intercourse with her, according to the complaint. She told police the two had been having sexual intercourse at that abandoned manufactured home since May. She said she had been sexually assaulted by Gonzales on more than 50 occasions.
"Jose had sex with me in this house," the girl said during an interview with authorities.
On Nov. 28, the San Angelo Police Department reported to the Tom Green County Sheriff's Office information of a possible sexual assault, according to a news release from the Sheriff's Office. The county took over the investigation and on Nov. 29 the 16-year-old made an outcry to authorities of the sexual assault, according to court documents.
Tom Green County deputies and criminal investigators acquired a search warrant from 340th District Judge Jay Weatherby to search the abandoned manufactured home. Police found two used condoms, two pairs of underwear, a mattress and several unused condoms of the brand and packaging the victim had described to police, according to the complaint.
In an interview after the execution of the search warrant, Gonzales said he had been at the abandoned manufactured home to find an item and to discard a mattress that had been in the room, according to the complaint. Gonzales also stated that he and the victim had been there several times and were there earlier in the week, according to the complaint.
Gonzales also has another arrest listed on the Tom Green County jail records. He was charged in 2012 with failing to register as a sex offender annually for life.
Sexual assault of a child and sexual assault of a child under 17 years of age is a second-degree felony punishable by two to 20 years in prison and fines up to $10,000.
Aggravated sexual assault of child under 14 years of age is a first-degree felony punishable by five to 99 years in prison and fines up to $10,000.
Gonzales has been held at the Tom Green County Jail since Nov. 29 in lieu of $250,000 bond.
First responders get free medium sub at Firehouse Subs on Friday
First responders get a free medium sub at Firehouse Subs on Friday, Oct. 28 with any purchase, according to a news release.
In April 2016 the Pennsylvania General Assembly adopted House Resolution 802 and Senate Resolution 322 designating April 12th as Equal Pay Day. Still, three months later Equal Pay Bills HB1160 and SB303 remain buried in Labor & Industry Committee. Resolutions are hollow gestures without passing the legislation to make them reality.
Pennsylvania places 26th among all states in Gender Earning Ratio rankings. In 12 of Pennsylvanias 18 Congressional Districts, the earnings ratio is less than the state average of 79 percent. In the Institute for Womens Policy (IWP) Research report, The Status of Women in Pennsylvania, 2015: Highlights, Pennsylvania is graded C+ and ranked 23rd among all states on womens employment & earnings along with a D+ and ranking of 33rd among all states in work and family well-being.
Queried about HB1160 and SB303, legislators often ask for more evidence; they want to hear the stories from women in their districts whove suffered from pay inequity. Stories are hard to find. Why? Wage secrecy with the risk of being fired for even asking about others salaries and conditions of settlements in pay inequity suits commonly prohibit revealing the story. These factors are addressed in the very bills at hand!
On May 3, 2016, the General Assembly passed House Resolution 845, designating May 8-May 14, 2016, Womens Health Week, a national effort to raise awareness about manageable steps women can take to improve their health. Yet passage of a package of bills aimed at positive solutions to womens health needs also is stalled or buried in Committee. The IWP report grades Pennsylvania a C- and ranks it 31st among states in the category of womens health &well-being. Another hollow gesture.
Yes, raising awareness on both economic security and health issues is important. That the quality of womens health closely correlates with the degree of economic security equal pay, paid family leave, living wage is well documented. Taking the legislative steps that actually can improve the lives of women is, however, what really counts.
For too long Pennsylvanians have given legislators a pass while we lived with their budget impasses. It is now time for men and women in Cumberland County to say Time is up enough hollow gestures!
Pennsylvania legislators must move beyond empty resolutions in recognition of needs or to raise awareness They must put aside bills aimed at restricting womens options for necessary health care. They must act by moving out of committee bills that actually will make a positive difference to womens economic security, their health, and the well-being of their families. It is time for legislative leaders to lead.
Legislators need to hear the facts. Please share, whenever possible, the stories that tell of the impact of the absence of leadership on issues that significantly affect the lives of Pennsylvanias women and their families. Please call and send e-mail messages. Please write letters to the editor and opinion pieces. Please ask questions at candidate forums or town hall meetings about their positions on issues of womens health and economic security.
Please keep the pressure on incumbents and candidates for the sake of the women in Cumberland County.
Ann Pehle is the Public Policy Chair for AAUWCarlisle.
1. He says he's "a Christian, a conservative and a Republican, in that order."
2. He was raised Catholic and idolized JFK
3. He was a six-term Congressman, serving from 2001-2012
4. He signed RFRA, and gave a disastrous interview defending it
Trump-Pence 2016?With presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump seriously vetting Indiana Gov. Mike Pence as a potential running mate, it's no longer all that far fetched.Whether your reaction to the news was "Mike Who?" or you just need a refresher on his two-plus decades in politics, here's what you should know about the 50th governor of Indiana.Pence has long said his approach to governing is informed not by party, but by his faith and his love of the Constitution.He's staunchly anti-abortion rights, and while in Congress he led the federal government to the brink of shutdown in 2011 in a failed attempt to de-fund Planned Parenthood.A born-again evangelical Christian, Pence has also been a strong proponent of religious freedom, and believes marriage should be between a man and a woman.In addition to his faith, his views on governance were strongly influenced by Russell Kirk, a fountainhead of modern conservative thought, who wrote "The Conservative Mind.""The conservative is animated by the principle of driving toward the ideal of solutions that are grounded in economic freedom and individual liberty, but also understanding that compromise is part of the conservative approach to governance," Pence told IndyStar in a 2015 interview, referring to Kirk's philosophy. "I don't believe in compromising principles, but I do believe in finding a way forward on the basis of authentic common ground."Pence and his five siblings grew up in Columbus, Ind., in a family of devout Catholic churchgoers. His parents weren't especially political, he told IndyStar in a 2012 profile, but as a young man, figures like John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. inspired him to get involved in politics.He volunteered for the Bartholomew County Democratic Party in 1976 and voted for Jimmy Carter in 1980.It wasn't until college, when he met his future wife, Karen, at an evangelical church that he became a born-again Christian. A history major at Hanover College, Pence said his political views, too, began to shift."I started to identify with that kind of common-sense conservatism of Ronald Reagan," Pence told the IndyStar, "and before I knew it, I decided I was a Republican and moved up here in Indianapolis in 1983 to go to law school."In the U.S. House of Representatives, Pence's championing of conservative social issues gained him the most attention, but he also fought to shrink the size of government, showing a willingness to buck party leadership to do so.As a freshman in 2001, he opposed the No Child Left Behind policy supported by President George W. Bush, a fellow Republican. That law seeks to raise student performance and increase accountability for educators. Pence calls it an unfunded mandate that grew government.During Pence's second year in office, he opposed another GOP-favored initiative: the Medicare prescription drug expansion.In later years, he persuaded Republicans to cut spending in the federal budget before approving money for Hurricane Katrina relief efforts in 2005. He also opposed the bank bailout in 2008, leading to Congress abandoning a plan to buy financial institutions' most toxic assets.Over the objections of the business community and LGBT rights groups, Pence in 2015 signed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, setting off the biggest controversy of his political career.Proponents said RFRA was needed to add another layer of protection for exercising one's religious beliefs free of government intrusion. The law in essence prohibited the government from intruding on a person's religious liberty unless it could prove a compelling interest in imposing that burden and do so in the least restrictive way.Opponents, however, feared it could be used to discriminate against lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender people in the name of religion. It explicitly overruled existing human rights ordinances that extend anti-discrimination protections on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.The bill's passage sparked a national firestorm. National media outlets swarmed Indiana, and major employers and conventions threatened to boycott the state. There was even an unsuccessful movement to relocate the NCAA Men's Final Four, which was held in Indianapolis less than two weeks later.The weekend following the bill signing, Pence attempted to defend RFRA and pour water on the fire. Instead, he may have only fueled it.In a nationally televised interview, ABC's George Stephanopoulos asked Pence six times whether the new law would allow a business to discriminate against gay couples. Six times, Pence ducked the question."This is where this debate has gone, with misinformation," Pence said. "We've been doing our level best, George, to correct the gross mischaracterization of this law that has been spread all over the country by many in the media and the online attacks against the people of our state. I'm just not going to stand for it."The interview was widely criticized by Democrats and Republicans alike, who said he didn't do enough to dispel the idea that Indiana was intolerant of the LGBT community.
Leana Wen, just back from a trip to Israel, is jet-lagged. But Baltimores health commissioner doesnt have time to be tired. In the next three days, shes appearing on a CNN segment on opioid abuse, speaking alongside U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch and writing two college commencement speeches.Its a frenzied level of activity that doesnt surprise those who work with Wen. The leader of the nations oldest continually operating health department has taken a fresh and aggressive perspective on what her agency can and should tackle. Appointed in January 2015, Wen was still getting adjusted when the riots over the death of Freddie Gray erupted. The unrest gave her the opportunity to talk about health in broader terms and to a larger audience.The No. 1 thing I do in my daily life is bring together everyone, from faith leaders to leaders of nonprofits and foundations, and making them think about health as this umbrella concept everything falls under, Wen says. Were framing every social ill around health.Its a movement that is beginning to take hold in public health departments across the country. Historically focused on disease outbreaks, restaurant inspections and disaster preparedness, more city and county health agencies are starting to tackle issues surrounding population health that include gun violence and drug addiction.For Wen, investing in these sort of programs are more important than ever in the wake of police-involved shootings -- and subsequent protests -- across the country."Public health officials would all agree that violence is a public health issue. But we have to demand a seat at the table," she says. "Community leaders might just think of it as a criminal justice issue, but we have a responsibility to bring public health in the discussion."To this end, Wen and her team have introduced a dizzying array of initiatives. In September, she ordered that naloxone, a lifesaving antidote to a heroin overdose, be available without a prescription. This year alone, her team has introduced legislation requiring warning labels for sugary drinks, created interactive health maps of the city, and launched a program to ensure that all young schoolchildren have access to eyeglasses.Even before Wen took over, the department had launched a couple of big programs that have shown encouraging results. Though controversial, its Safe Streets program, which uses reformed gang members to intervene in potentially violent situations, had helped one dangerous neighborhood go a year without a shooting. BMore for Healthy Babies, an initiative to curb Baltimores high infant-mortality rate, reduced infant deaths by more than 20 percent between 2009 and 2014.Before BMore for Healthy Babies, says Sonia Sarkar, the health departments chief policy and engagement officer, there were several initiatives throughout the city on infant mortality, but nothing was moving the needle because they werent talking to each other. We are always thinking, How do we bring people together and get them to realize their common goals?The issues Wen is dealing with in Baltimore havent been abstract ones for her. She emigrated from China when she was 8 and lived in what she calls pretty tough areas of L.A., areas not unlike parts of Baltimore. Before coming to Baltimores health department, she was an emergency room doctor and co-wrote a book on misdiagnoses,While shes receiving praise for her work in Baltimore, theres uncertainty on the horizon: Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, who appointed Wen, leaves office at the end of the year.As an appointee of the mayor, every administrative change comes with some level of anxiety, Wen says.Its too soon to say whether Wens programs will stick in a city still considered one of the countrys most dangerous, but she wants to stay to see her vision through.I see all of the residents in this city as my patients, she says. There are problems, and I need to diagnose them.
Origins in Welfare Reform
'Message to Poor Women'
Vivian Thorp was a single mother of a 4-year-old daughter when she enrolled in Californias welfare-to-work program in 1999. Shortly after, Thorp met her fiance, who was also on public assistance. He struggled with mental illness. Sometimes they were homeless. Then Thorp got pregnant and pregnant again.Thorp was shocked to discover that she was not entitled to any more benefits for her two new daughters under Californias maximum family grant rule, which prevented women on welfare from receiving additional money if they had more children. Thorp found that her monthly welfare check of $520 wasnt enough for three kids. Soon she was stealing food and diapers to get by.Im still traumatized, said Thorp, 50, who went off assistance in 2011 and now works as a legal advocate for the homeless. These laws adversely affect our ability to rise up out of poverty. Its shameful to deprive kids of basic things like food and clothing.Last month, California repealed its policy that caps aid for parents like Thorp who have more children while receiving cash assistance. Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown, who had once opposed the repeal, signed a budget deal that allocates $220 million a year in welfare assistance starting Jan. 1 for roughly 130,000 children born to women on welfare.That makes California the seventh state since 2002 to repeal family cap rules enacted by 22 states during the 1990s and early 2000s, according to the Urban Institute, which has closely tracked the issue. Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Wyoming have also repealed their family cap laws often called welfare queen laws.Last month, New Jersey lawmakers voted to repeal the states maximum family grant rule. But Republican Gov. Chris Christie vetoed the repeal. He said the caps provide for equal treatment of welfare recipients and other residents, who do not automatically receive higher incomes following the birth of a child.The move to repeal family payment caps coincides with research that indicates the laws dont reduce birthrates among those receiving Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). Researchers also have found that the rules are harmful to children, cause lifelong damage to their learning and development, and increase the deep poverty rate of children by 13 percent.There was clear evidence it didnt have the impact theyd hoped it would have, said California state Assemblyman Donald Wagner, a Republican who supported repealing the cap but voted against the budget because of other provisions he didnt like. This was a policy that was proven to be counterproductive.Laws capping the payments date to when states and the federal government implemented sweeping welfare reforms in the 1990s that restricted recipients to no more than five years of government assistance, and required most recipients to work, do community service or enroll in vocational training.The idea was to discourage out-of-wedlock births and increase self-sufficiency. Typically, larger families receive more benefits. But critics said the rules relied on well-worn tropes of welfare queens cranking out babies to cash in on public aid. Family caps, they said, only served to further impoverish low-income families.This notion of people who were quote, unquote milking the system is ridiculous, said state Sen. Holly Mitchell, a Democrat who led efforts to repeal Californias cap. I dont know a woman and I dont think she exists who would have a baby for the sole purpose of having another $130 a month. That makes no sense.New Jersey led the effort to cap payments, and was the first state to put a family cap on the books, in 1992. California voters that year rejected a ballot initiative that in part would have cut back on welfare benefits for families the longer they spent on welfare. But state lawmakers in 1994 approved a maximum family grant. Arkansas that year also enacted a cap.As Congress was enacting sweeping welfare reform eradicating the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program and replacing it with TANF in 1996 a flurry of states were enacting caps on maximum family payments. By 2003, 22 states had caps in place, according to the Urban Institute.At least 15 states Arizona, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Massachusetts, Mississippi, New Jersey, North Carolina, North Dakota, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia still have caps. Even if states have wanted to repeal them, many have struggled to do so because of tight budget constraints.The caps vary from state to state and some can be quite complex. In Arizona, for example, lets say a family has a child while receiving cash assistance. If the parents go off welfare, and then later need to go back on, they will only be eligible to receive benefits for that child after five years.But that may soon be a moot point. This month Arizona imposed the most restrictive welfare rules in the country. Families there can no longer stay on welfare more than 12 months and that is a lifetime cap. A family of three with no income would receive no more than $278 a month.On paper, Idaho doesnt have a family size rule. But because the state caps welfare benefits at $309 no matter the size of the family, it has a de facto family cap.In New Jersey, where public assistance grants havent increased in 29 years, a family of three receives $424 a month in cash assistance. If a mother has her second child after she started receiving welfare, her assistance would only be $322 a month.Roughly 20,000 children in the state have been barred from receiving benefits since 1992 under the family cap rules, according to a February report by the New Jersey Policy Perspective, a think tank that focuses on policy issues in the state. Eight in 10 New Jersey children living in poverty do not receive any public assistance.Raymond Castro, senior policy analyst with the think tank, said the intent of the family cap rule was to coerce women into not having additional babies, to put it bluntly.It didnt have any effect on their birthing choices, he said. But it has a huge impact on impoverishing the child.The consequences women in California faced under the payment cap were sometimes stark, said Jessica Bartholow, a legal advocate with the Western Center on Law & Poverty, a California-based research and advocacy group that worked to get the cap repealed.The message to poor women was that they should not conceive and they should seek very permanent forms of birth control, Bartholow said.To preserve their benefits, some of her clients sought out sterilization, she said. One young woman testified before a California Senate committee that she begged her doctor to sterilize her after she became pregnant at 18 so that she could keep her benefits, but he refused to perform the surgery because she was too young. When her birth control failed and she became pregnant again, her infant son was not entitled to any benefits.Under Californias cap, it took Thorp more than a decade to find economic stability and eventually get an associate degree and finally a bachelors degree.She went on and off welfare. She fought the cap, appealed the ruling for her second daughter and eventually won. But that only added another $155 or so a month. She enrolled in all kinds of state vocational training programs. She would drop out of school for a while before picking up her studies again because, she said, she couldnt afford transportation.Thorp became an activist: she lobbied state legislators to repeal the cap. The safety net, she says, has too many holes. Her children still suffer from a host of physical ailments because of poor nutrition, she said.I did rise out of poverty, Thorp said. But unfortunately, Im always a paycheck away. At any given time that things fall apart jobs, the economy, whatnot you can always be back out there.
As hundreds of people demonstrated in downtown Los Angeles against killings by police, the city's Police Commission decided Tuesday that an LAPD officer did not violate the department's deadly force policy last year when he fatally shot an African American woman in a South L.A. alleyway.A crowd of peaceful protesters that had gathered earlier in the day at LAPD headquarters decried the panel's decision and quickly moved across the street to City Hall, where activists pounded on glass doors as they were blocked from entering and denounced how police officers used force, particularly against African Americans.The focus on Redel Jones' death came at a time of flaring tensions across the country over race and policing. Protesters have marched in cities coast to coast, shutting down freeways in Oakland and Inglewood and packing New York's Times Square after last week's fatal police shootings of black men in Louisiana and Minnesota, and a sniper attack in Dallas that killed five officers.But it wasn't only last week's events that drew demonstrators to Tuesday's L.A. Police Commission meeting. In the year since Jones' death, activists have chanted her name at the weekly meetings, written it on signs carried at protests and spread it on Twitter as a hashtag.Jones, who was black, was killed after Los Angeles police say she moved toward an officer while holding a knife. The LAPD said the 30-year-old matched the description of a woman who robbed a nearby pharmacy about 20 minutes earlier, prompting officers to pursue her into the alley.But a woman who said she saw the August 2015 shooting from her car questioned why police opened fire, telling the Los Angeles Times that Jones was running away from the officers and never turned toward them.Siding with the police chief, the Police Commission determined in a 3-0 vote that the shooting was justified because an officer could reasonably have believed that Jones' "actions while armed with a knife presented an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury," according to a written summary of its findings. The panel and the chief, however, criticized some of the actions of the officers, including their talking to her while sitting in their cars instead of getting out.The board also noted that the officers initially failed to activate their in-car cameras and didn't come up with a plan before approaching Jones. It was the first day the two officers had worked together.The written summary did not say whether LAPD investigators interviewed the woman who told The Times that Jones did not charge the officers.Earlier in the day, Jones' husband, Marcus Vaughn, delivered a passionate speech to the Police Commission, describing his wife as a kind woman who "always thought of others more than herself."Vaughn took a bus to Los Angeles from Oakland on Monday night after his 13-year-old son begged him to go and speak on behalf of his mother. He described his children's tears and his wife's accomplishments, saying she taught herself how to fix computers and was taking classes in holistic healthcare shortly before she was killed."You all stole her from me," he told the board, later saying he wanted the officers prosecuted and the LAPD to change its policies from "top to bottom."The Los Angeles County district attorney's office has not yet been presented with the investigation into the shooting, according to a spokeswoman.The events leading up to Jones' death unfolded the afternoon of Aug. 12, when an employee at a Baldwin Hills pharmacy called police, saying a woman had just robbed the store. The amount taken was about $80, according to a report LAPD Chief Charlie Beck submitted to the Police Commission. Footage from the pharmacy's security camera -- which was reviewed by The Times -- captured the robbery as well as the glint of a knife visible before the woman walked out of the store with a cash-filled envelope.Police initially spotted Jones during their search for the robbery suspect. Like the woman described in the robbery, Beck's report said, Jones was wearing a purple scarf and wearing baggy clothing.Officers pulled their patrol car alongside Jones on Santo Tomas Drive, and one told her to stop, according to Beck's report. Instead, the report said, Jones picked up her pace, walking away from them.The officers continued to follow Jones in their car as she turned into a nearby alley, the report said, again telling her to "stop and put her hands up." At one point, the officers got out of their car. One drew his gun and ordered Jones on the ground. Jones jogged away, the report said, pulling a kitchen knife from her waistband."She's got the knife in her hand," an officer broadcast on a police radio. "She's running."The officers ran after Jones as another pair of officers drove into the alley and got out of their car, joining the foot chase. Jones "suddenly stopped" and turned around, the report said, the knife raised in her hand.One witness told investigators that they saw Jones "pull a knife out and advance towards police" after the group stopped running.The names of the officers involved in the encounter were redacted from the report. The LAPD previously identified the officer who shot Jones as Brett Ramirez.Ramirez told investigators he tried to stop when Jones did, but ended up closer to her than he intended. The officer began to move back when Jones moved toward him, he said, according to the report."She's turning, facing straight at me, and then points the knife at me, and charges at me," Ramirez told investigators. "I thought my life was in danger ... only one of us was going to make it out of this."Another officer tried to use a Taser on Jones, the report said, but the stun gun's probes didn't connect to her body.Jones died at the scene. Investigators found the knife along with money and a "robbery demand note" in her clothing, the LAPD said.The woman who previously told The Times she witnessed the shooting gave a different account, saying Jones was running from police when the shots rang out. Courtyana Franklin, 21, said she watched the events unfold from the side mirror of her car, which was parked in the alley."I do know for a fact that she was not charging at them," Franklin told The Times after the shooting. "I just saw her running."Gary Fullerton, an attorney representing the officers, said Tuesday that in "better circumstances," the officers might have had more time to come up with a plan to take Jones into custody without using deadly force. But that wasn't the case, he said.Jones presented an "immediate threat" to police, Fullerton said."Unfortunately, under the circumstances, they had to do what they had to do," he said. "I think the Police Commission got that right."Jones was one of 36 people shot by on-duty LAPD officers last year. Twenty-one were killed. This year, on-duty Los Angeles police officers have shot 10 people, nine fatally.After the commission announced its decision, about two dozen people inside the meeting room began shouting at the panel and demanded that the city remove the commission's president and fire Beck.Others outside wept and hugged. One man began shaking a police barricade until a woman nearby pulled him away."Now's not the time for that," she told him. "This is how black people get shot."Others booed, chanting Jones' name and holding their fists in the air before marching to City Hall. Police officers inside held the doors shut against the crowd of about 100 people."It's our City Hall," the crowd chanted.No arrests were made, the LAPD said.Many in the crowd outside the LAPD's headquarters during the day said they were drawn tby last week's fatal shootings of Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, La., and Philando Castile in Falcon Heights, Minn."I get pulled over like every week. It makes me feel like it's got to end," said Dale Troy, 24, of Burbank, who was attending his first commission meeting. "I feel like what happened to Philando could easily happen to me."Kenneth Ellis, a 32-year-old artist and videographer, said that he was compelled to come to the meeting -- which he learned about on Facebook -- to "stand for justice and unity" not just for people shot by police, but for the officers killed in Dallas."We don't want any violence," he said.
On Tuesday, in the afternoon, at Government House, His Excellency the Honourable Paul de Jersey AC, Administrator of the Government of the Commonwealth of Australia received Mr Eric Quevauvilliers, Dean of the Consular Corps of Queensland.
Following, at Government House, the Administrator received His Excellency Mr Vakur Gokdenizler, Ambassador of Turkey to Australia, and Mr Turgut Allahmanli, Honorary Consul of Turkey to Queensland.
In the evening, the Administrator and Mrs Kaye de Jersey hosted a reception to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Queensland Poetry Festival and launch the 2016 Festival Program where His Excellency addressed guests.
Description
GIS -13 July 2016: Governments commitment to proceed with a Constitutional amendment to remove any form of discrimination on the basis of disability was reiterated by the Minister of Social Security, National Solidarity and Reform Institutions, Mrs Fazila Jeewa-Daureeawoo, yesterday at the National Assembly in reply to the Private Notice Question (PNQ) of the Leader of the Opposition.
The PNQ pertained to measures being taken in Mauritius following the recent publication of the Report of the United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD); the budgetary provisions agreed upon in the forthcoming budget in relation to NGOs and for the provision of inclusive schools; as well as the date when the Disability Bill will be introduced in Parliament.
Mrs Jeewa-Daureeawoo stated that much ground has been covered so far and a draft Constitution (Amendment) Bill is nearing finalisation in consultation with the Attorney Generals Office.
The Ministry has been actively working on a draft Disability Bill which aims at promoting and protecting the rights of persons with disabilities, eliminating discrimination against them and incorporating the provisions of the UN Convention of the rights of persons with disabilities, the Minister pointed out. The draft Bill, she said, will shortly be submitted for its agreement in principle to Cabinet before the document is shared with a broader of spectrum of stakeholders involving NGOs, Disabled Peoples Organisations, Disability Activists, and Civil Society at large.
Minister Jeewa-Daureeawoo also enumerated measures taken to ensure the welfare of persons with disabilities amongst which: substantial increase in the social budget in support of persons with disabilities; launch of a database on disability; and, enactment of legislation to prohibit harassment on the basis of disability at the place of work.
Speaking about inclusive education, Mrs Jeewa-Daureeawoo observed that since 2006, Mauritius has officially adopted a policy of inclusive education with a number of measures to gradually allow for the integration of children with disabilities in mainstream education.
Some of these measures comprise: all new schools are required to be fitted with access facilities such as ramps and adapted toilets; teachers being trained in Special Needs Education by the Mauritius Institute of Education; setting up of 14 Integrated Units in a number of schools to accommodate children with severe disabilities; provision of assistive devices such as wheelchairs and hearing aids to children with disabilities; provision of equipment such as braille display and PCs equipped with screen amplifier to low-vision students; setting up of four Resource Centres to assist schools in the use of adapted teaching techniques; and, refund of transport costs.
As regards budgetary provisions, the Minister said that there have been already several rounds of discussions on support to NGOs and in particular for Special Needs Education. Co nsideration is being given for support to persons with disabilities in the next Budget, she stressed.
Description
GIS 13 July 2016 : The 10th blood donation campaign of the Mauritius Revenue Authority (MRA) kicked off this morning in Port Louis. The event coincides with the 10th anniversary of the Authority.
The Minister of Health and Quality of Life, Mr Anil Gayan, who was present on that occasion commended the MRA for the gracious initiative, acknowledging its vital contribution in saving the lives of compatriots. It is the anonymity and the selflessness of blood donors that we must celebrate today, he said.
According to the Minister, on a normal day 150 pints of blood are required for routine / emergency surgery in health institutions, and the number of road traffic crashes has increased with many people being seriously injured are in urgent need of blood. We have to be ready at all times and in all weather conditions; the demand can fluctuate but the demand for healthy and reliable blood is always there, he said.
The Minister urged people to continue to donate blood regularly so that the blood bank is stocked with adequate supply and ensure that any Mauritian in need of blood can get it. He stressed the utmost importance of having a safe and secure blood supply as more than ever the demand for blood is on the rise due to the expansion in health services, improved health care facilities and introduction of high-tech medical practices like cardiac surgery.
Mr Gayan rejoiced that the Blood Transfusion Service has a quality management system and is ISO 9001:2008 certified adding that his Ministry takes no risks regarding the safety of blood. Utmost precautions are taken in testing for infections like HIV and Hepatitis viruses, while all doubtful blood units in screening tests are discarded irrespective of the results of confirmatory testing. In a bid to further reduce the window period of infections, the Ministry is in the process of acquiring the latest Nucleic Acid Testing equipment which will place the National Blood Transfusion Service of Mauritius at par with similar services in the developed world.
In 2015, the MRA collected 903 pints of blood, which represented more than a week's blood supply for the country. Over 1,000 pints of blood are expected this year.
Only a couple years old now and the federal digital consultancy 18F has a lot to deal with.The innovation group, which helps agencies build, buy and share modern tech, is under fire from sources within and outside of government. Externally, 18F is defending itself from IT lobbyists, representing companies like IBM, Deloitte, Cisco Systems and others, that allege 18F is hindering revenues as a competing government tech provider a message they shared at a recent hearing evaluating 18F's effectiveness. Internally, the group has met resistance from CIOs unsure of its private-sector development practices, and within the General Services Administration (GSA), 18F's parent agency, insiders say that the Federal Acquisition Service (FAS) that funds 18F is actively working to terminate the group.The sources report that 18Fs procurement work to break down IT contracts into smaller pieces has compelled FAS to act. They allege that FAS leadership fears shorter-term IT contracts at more competitive prices would decrease the revenues the organization receives from agencies via contract service fees and other FAS procurement vehicles.Asked for comment, the two IT lobbying groups at the IT Alliance for Public Sector (ITAPS) and the Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA) have yet to respond. Similarly, last week FAS Commissioner Thomas Sharpe declined an interview on the issue. GSA instead submitted a broad statement of FAS' relationship with the Technology Transformation Service (TTS) that houses 18F in the GSA.One person who was willing to speak on the matter is Dan Tangherlini, the administrator of GSA from 2012 to 2015. 18F was founded during his administration, and in an exclusive interview with, he outlined his thoughts on 18F's current struggles. Tangherlini now serves as president of federal services at the digital document startup SeamlessDocs . In his interview, he offered his support for the fledgling venture while at the same time calling for federal groups and private-sector interests to come together.Tangherlini said 18F, one of the contributors responsible for saving Healthcare.gov, should be allowed to innovate, especially considering the federal governments nearly $90 billion in IT spending, 75 percent of which is spent on outdated technology, according to a recent 18F oversight report by the Government Accountability Office.Here is Tangherlini's commentary on 18F.I think it's interesting. Gerry Connolly , who is the congressman quoted in the article [ IT Showdown: Tech Giants Face Off Against 18F ], he represents the part of Virginia that houses a lot of these [government IT] companies. While I know him personally to be a very thoughtful and innovative guy, it's an interesting example where there's the politics of constituency that sometimes drive political positions [Connolly is a House representative overseeing 18F's hearing]. That was an interesting point I think that the article drove home.I also think it drives home the fact that there's maybe recognition in the industry that the federal government isn't actually being as savvy a consumer as it could or should be, and people are getting a little nervous as it builds the chops to be a better advocate for itself and for the agencies. That could mean that it's a little harder to get the kind of work that they've been getting in the way they've been getting it.I think that the federal government in particular is the last place and really the last big place in the economy where you have the 10- or 15-year-old approach to IT acquisition: a system with these very, very structured requirements, waterfall development deliveries on these big, massive, multi-year contracts. People love to win them, but that's not the best way for the federal government to acquire technology.This is not an era of static technology anymore. This is an era where the only thing static is change. That's the only constant. So the idea of buying single, proprietary bespoke systems for agencies is also giving way to an era of software-as-a-service, power by the hour, cloud provisioning. That's really shaking the business models of a lot of the companies.I'm willing to say on the record, as the former administrator of GSA, and the person who launched 18F, that there was, shall we say, constructive tension, between the Federal Acquisition Service and 18F, entirely because 18F was being funded out of the FAS. Another mission to be funded out of the same amount of resources is always going to be an imposition. That's how FAS frankly always felt about 18F, as a bit of an imposition. I think as 18F has grown, and commanded, and frankly demanded, more resources, that sense of imposition has probably grown with it. That's a natural, logical kind of antibody reaction of any organization which doesn't necessarily mean it's correct. That's why people in leadership positions and people in oversight positions need to separate their real complaints from, frankly, people working the referees, if you know what I mean.No, I actually think that 18F is funded in the right way. I mean in the end, the ultimate source of funding for 18F just as it is ultimate source of funding for FAS are the agencies that get the benefit of their services. 18F should continue to refine and improve and enhance their cost recovery model, but the fact is that those services are being demanded by dozens of agencies and agency components. They have over 100 different individual projects that they're working on.People are deeply satisfied with the work that 18F is doing, and while they have not yet broken even, and certainly not turned a profit, this is an internal government agency and we're talking about a federal government that spends from $60 billion to $90 billion a year on IT. That's spending out the door on IT. What's at issue here is whether 18F has recovered one-one-thousandth of that from the agencies [it contracts its services with]. I really think if you really put it in perspective, and you really match the scale, at some level this is more of an intramural fight that's leveraging oversight authorities rather than a real meaningful discussion of IT policy.[click_to_tweet]The primary goal is for the federal government to be better at delivering technology investments over time.[/click_to_tweet]I think the savings are hard to quantify. That doesn't mean that they should get a pass on trying to quantify them. I do think that what you have is an instance where you're trying to prove the dispositive, as they say. This was a big issue at Treasury, where we had the similar predicament with financing anti-terrorism initiatives. There was a group that focused entirely on the financing of anti-terrorism organizations. We spent a lot of time with the chief performance officer and Treasury trying to figure out what performance metrics we could use. If you're looking for outcomes, you have to ask yourself what are positive metrics? What's the number? Is it zero terrorism attacks? Or is it one attack? More? And if it's one attack, does that mean that organizations didn't prevent another five? That's the big thing when you're dealing with issues like this, where you're trying to develop the intelligence, the assessment skills, and you're trying to develop the capabilities. Frankly, with regard to the federal government's technology buying capacity, its difficult to measure that instantly.I think the primary goal is for the federal government to be better at delivering technology investments over time. There's 18F combined with USDS, combined with a really strong CIO and CTO presence in the federal government, combined with digital accountability platforms like ITDashboard.gov [a reporting site for federal IT spending]. All of those muscle movements together really represent an effort on the part of the current administration to turn the ship around in terms of the ability of the federal government to buy and deliver information technology. While the ship isn't 100 percent turned around, I think you would by every meaningful indicator be able to demonstrate that the federal government is a much, much better buyer of information technology now than ever. Fewer and fewer of these big IT projects are failing the way they used to as a routine prior to the efforts of this administration. Further, I was really pleased to hear how at least the Clinton campaign has endorsed the continuation of USDS, 18F and this broader effort on the part of the administration, the executive branch, to dramatically improve the way the federal government buys information technology.There are really two reasons. One is effectiveness. No one would bother if 18F wasnt actually succeeding. Two, if you're trying to nip something in the bud, there's no better time to do it than during a presidential transition. You've got an election coming up, you've got a lot of people changing titles, there are some big cracks opening up in which you can push things down. I think the timing is smart if you wanted to stop something.I really think the issue with sustainability is that it really comes down to whether they're able to continue to attract the absolutely world-class people that they've been able to bring in over the last several years of their existence.I think the real measure of that will be whether the government bureaucratic antibodies are unleashed on it to a degree that people who came to try to dramatically improve the federal government's effectiveness in information technology buying and delivery are scared off, and that word goes out that what was fun is now something that just stinks. That's the real big challenge for the federal government to create a base for innovation, for experimentation and for change. Because it is so big, and there is such an ecosystem of companies and solvent industries that surround it, that any kind of change is going to be deeply resisted by those who have a serious investment in the status quo.That having been said, step back and look at the outcomes the government has been delivering in these areas, and I don't know if there's anyone who can make a clear, evidence-backed argument that there is no need for reform and change. While I think everyone agrees that the status quo is terrible, and this is something I've found often, that the only thing worse than that status quo is change. Because it means altering someone's expectation from day to day.Yet, while I'm worried about the sustainability of 18F, I'm not worried about whether there's demand or interest or need. Im really concerned about whether the powers that oppose innovation and experimentation, that are deeply rooted in the oversight bureaucracy of government, are the ones that make it not fun or interesting or exciting for people to sacrifice some part of their careers to go and provide public service. I think that that would be a massive disservice.I think that that's an overly clever argument , this notion that there's somehow some conflict of interest. I frankly think that if 18F can show an agency that they have the capabilities in house, or within teams that exist within the federal government, they can get this work done faster and cheaper I think that's a great solution. But there's this real strange line that's drawn between what you build and what you buy, and any organization that's really thoughtful about what it does, and delivers, and is trying to accomplish more, is constantly debating the buy-build kind of paradox. I think a capability within government that knows how to build stuff is actually going to make the government a much better buyer.Plus, the simple fact is 18Fs 185 people at GSA are not going to be able to replace the tens of thousands of people in the private-sector IT service provision environment. I don't think 18F will ever get that big, nor should it get that big. I don't think it's a well-thought-out concern. I don't think it's one that recognizes scale. I think it's a threat that is overstated, and frankly shouldn't be so concerning to a set of entities that are doing, by every measure, quite well in terms of their ability to attract resources through federal procurement.Further, I think the tech lobby has to make sure that it doesn't become big old tech and small new tech, and I think that they should be really lobbying if they are really focusing on outcomes on the best interests of agencies, and then ultimately, the American people. What they should be really lobbying for is the sustainability, the support and the expansion of 18F and USDS. That may mean disruption of the traditional model, but I don't think you could buy anyone in the tech lobby a beer and have them defend the existing model on its merits. Because I don't think it has been producing results commensurate with the input for a long time. I think that they know that collectively, and as an industry, we can serve the federal government better.
(TNS) WASHINGTON Government needs to fix its own problems before it can truly address the issues that plague the country, House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer said Monday, July 11.We cant fully tap into our economic opportunities if we dont make sure government works too, the Maryland Democrat said in a speech at the Georgetown University Law Center.Hoyer outlined the need for an overhaul of the campaign finance system and redistricting process, enhancements in voting rights laws, and improvements in government technology as key changes needed.House Democrats are ready to push for reforms in all four areas that I outlined, he said.Many of the ideas Hoyer discussed came from members of the House Democratic caucus who testified at hearings on how to update his Make It in America job creation plan. Hoyer unveiled the latest phase of that plan, which was first launched in 2010, in Baltimore last month.Regarding campaign finance changes, Hoyer cited success of small-donor participation in President Barack Obamas and Sen. Bernie Sanders campaigns and the need to replicate that in campaigns down the ballot.Congress has become too polarized with too many safe seats on both sides of the aisle, Hoyer said, calling for the need for changes to the redistricting processes that prevent politicians from redrawing their own districts.I understand that neither party wants to be the first in doing so, leaving itself vulnerable to the other, he said, suggesting national redistricting standards that takes partisanship out of the equation.The Maryland Democrat also called for changes to voting rights laws, including automatic voter registration, expanded early voting, options to vote by mail and tools to combat voter suppression.Throughout our history, too many people lost their lives to secure access to the ballot box for any eligible voter to be turned away, Hoyer said.Government also needs to invest in its own technology. Hoyer spoke about a bill he introduced earlier this year to create an Information Technology Modernization Fund to pay for upgrades to government agencies technology systems.The measure calls for a one-time $3 billion investment in the fund that would pay for the initial projects, the savings from which would then keep investments flowing into the fund.We need to make sure that federal departments and agencies are as connected and adaptive as possible, Hoyer said. And we need to make certain they are protected against cyber threats. Americans wont trust government to help if they dont trust its systems to protect their private data.Hoyer offered a few other proposals to compliment the four main government overhauls he outlined. Those ideas included restoring earmarks and preventing an individual senator from being able to put a hold on a nomination for months, obstructing the confirmation of executive branch nominations.Its not an ideological agenda, Hoyer concluded. Its a pragmatic agenda.
Bangladesh, India sign agreement for joint coal fired power plant
Published: July 13, 2016
Bangladesh and India have signed an agreement for the construction of a 1,320 megawatt (MW) coal fired power plant near Sundarbans.
The agreement was signed between Bangladesh-India Friendship Power Company (Pvt) Limited (BIFPCL), the joint venture enterprise and Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL).
BHEL was selected under an open international tender for constructing the super thermal plant at Bangladeshs southwestern Rampal near the Sundarbans.
Key Facts
This coal fired power plant is the biggest project under bilateral cooperation between both countries that would mark the transition from electricity export to generation level.
Indias Exim Bank will provide US 1.49 billion dollars for the project and it is scheduled to start generating power in 2019.
The deal came amid concerns by environmental groups that this power plant could affect the delicate ecosystem of the worlds largest mangrove forest in Sundarbans, a world heritage site spreading over both Bangladesh and India.
Earlier Bangladesh had earmarked Maitree Super Thermal Power Project (MSTPP) as one of its fast-track projects. It was started under a bilateral agreement between India and Bangladesh signed during Prime Minister Hasinas India visit in 2010.
Month: Current Affairs - July, 2016
Topics: Bhel Business India-Bangladesh Power Sector
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Pascal Wehrlein has indicated he wants his F1 career to step up a notch for 2017.
A few days ago, the Mercedes-backed rookie said he would be happy to stay with the backmarker team Manor next year.
"First and foremost this is a huge opportunity and I need to take advantage of this chance, of course," the 21-year-old German told DPA news agency after testing Mercedes' 2014 car for Pirelli at Silverstone.
"But the problem is that getting noticed at Manor is difficult," he insisted.
"If you don't include the weekend in Austria, there has not been much of a highlight. On the other hand, if Austria had been a bad weekend, I would have no chance to draw attention to myself this year.
"So this was a key weekend for me," Wehrlein added.
(GMM)
China has no historic rights over South China Sea: Hague Tribunal
Published: July 13, 2016
The Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) in Hague, the Netherlands has rejected Chinas claims to economic rights across large swathes of South China Sea.
Ruling in this regard was given by a five-member tribunal appointed by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in Hague in a case brought by the Philippines.
The ruling came from an arbitration tribunal under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) which both China and Philippines have signed. The ruling is binding but the tribunal has no powers for enforcement.
Ruling
There was no legal basis for China to claim historic rights to resources within the South China Sea areas falling within the nine-dash line.
China has violated the Philippines sovereign rights and also caused severe harm to the coral reef environment by building artificial islands in South China Sea.
Chinas rights are incompatible with the exclusive economic zones (EEZ) provided in the UNCLOS.
Background
The current round of tension between Philippines and China began in 2009 after a tense stand-off over Scarborough Shoal, which led to China to gain de facto control of it in 2012.
Philippines had lodged its suit against China at the International Tribunal for the Law of the Seain 2013, saying China has violated the UNCLOS to which both countries are signatories.
China has boycotted the tribunal ever since Philippines had filed the petition in The Hague international court.
Earlier in 2013, China also had set up an ADIZ (Air Defense Identification Zone) over similarly disputed territory in the East China Sea.
Disputes in South China Sea
Disputes in South China Sea are fight mainly between China, Philippines, Vietnam over the territorial sovereignty in South China Sea along with other atolls, reefs and rocky outcrops.
Chinas claim: It is saying that major portion of these islands belong to them as part of the historical events and area defined by Nine Dash Line.
It is saying that major portion of these islands belong to them as part of the historical events and area defined by Nine Dash Line. Under its claim, China already has started and even completed building artificial islands and even strategic runways for mobilising its airforce from these islands.
Chinas claim overlap the South Chia Sea areas of different claimants countries, that involve Brunei, Vietnam, Philippines, Taiwan and Malaysia.
Importance of South China Sea: It is strategically located and major international shipping route as worlds half merchant ships passes through it.
It is strategically located and major international shipping route as worlds half merchant ships passes through it. The sea rich in energy (reserves of natural resources around them including petroleum), mineral and fishing resources.
Indias position: Supports freedom of navigation and flight and unimpeded commerce based on the principals of international law in South China Sea.
Supports freedom of navigation and flight and unimpeded commerce based on the principals of international law in South China Sea. Believes that states should resolve deputes through peaceful means and exercise self restraint.
Month: Current Affairs - July, 2016
Topics: China Current Affairs 2016 International Permanent Court of Arbitration Philippines South China Sea UNCLOS
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INS India, base depot ship of Indian Navy at New Delhi celebrates Platinum Jubilee
Published: July 13, 2016
INS India, the base depot ship of Indian Navy at New Delhi celebrated its 75th anniversary (Platinum Jubilee) on 13 July 2016.
As a run up to celebrate this grand occasion, a series of events were organised. A Health Run and a Dream Walk was organised. A blood donation camp was also organised.
About INS India
INS India was established as HMIS India in 1941 as small unit with a complement of just a handful of officers and sailors. It was rechristened as INS India on 26 Jan 1950.
The base depot ship has the privilege of being the Flagship of the Chief of the Naval Staff.
It is now a major establishment in New Delhi with a plethora of duties and responsibilities.
It provides administrative and logistics cover to all officers and sailors borne in Naval Headquarters and other units at Delhi.
During 75 years of transition of INS India, the establishment has seen as many as 32 Commanding Officers.
Month: Current Affairs - July, 2016
Topics: Celebrations Current Affairs 2016 Defence Indian Navy INS India National
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New building codes for Green River passed their first reading July 5 during a Green River City Council meeting.
The codes in consideration are mandated by the State of Wyoming. Wyoming State Statute says towns with local jurisdiction must adopt the same codes the state adopts. Councilman Gary Killpack asked why the state is making Green River adopt these codes. Community Development Director Laura Profaizer and Senior Building Inspector David Allred explained that if the city does not adopt the codes, Green River will lose home rule.
Anyone who wants to build has to get inspections prior t...
A plan designed to expand commercial opportunities along the river and downtown was green-lighted by the city council last week.
The plan, M.E.E.T., stands for Main Street, Expedition, Expansion, Transformation. Green River URA/Main Street Administrator Jennie Melvin said the Expedition portion will focus on Expedition Island and the plan is designed to expand and transform downtown Green River and the river corridor. The plan has been in the works since 2013. Wyoming State Statute requires towns to have a plan that designates an area with blighted properties and aims to revitalize that ar...
Seven of the nine Republicans seeking Wyomings sole U.S. House of Representatives stopped by Rock Springs to answer questions posed to them by members of the Sweetwater County GOP.
The two not attending were Tim Stubson and Heath Beaudry.
While much of the discussion was cordial, Rex Rammell frequently focused on Liz Cheney as a target for verbal barbs, criticizing her on how long she has resided in Wyoming and questioning whether she truly supports Wyoming residents values.
Qualifications
When asked about what the candidates thought made them qualified for the office, many focused o...
Mary Pond Hopkins, 77, passed away, July 11, 2016 at the Memorial Hospital of Sweetwater County following a week long illness.
A longtime resident of Green River and former resident of Laramie.
She was born on Sept. 5, 1938 in Powell, the daughter of the late Harold Pond and Elvira Howell Pond.
Hopkins attended schools in Laramie, and was a graduate of the Laramie High School with the class of 1956. She attended the University of Wyoming and received her bachelors degree in music and later obtained her masters degree in music education at the University of Wyoming in 1972.
She married...
Patricia Louise Zombro, 84, passed away July 6, 2016 at the University of Utah following a lengthy illness. She was a resident of Manilla, Utah for the past 19 years and former resident of Rock Springs.
She was born on March 16, 1932 in Rock Springs, the daughter of the late Jim Overy and Hazel Lee Teters Overy.
Zombro attended schools in Rock Springs, and was a graduate of the Rock Springs High School with the class of 1959.
She married Charles Zombro Jr. in Manilla, Utah, July 26, 1994 and he preceded her in death April 27, 2001.
Zombro worked for the Flying J as a waitress for many y...
Sidewalks at the Green River Recreation Center quickly caught the attention of anyone passing by.
From rainbows and flowers, to Minions, dragons, animals and robot drawings, children who participated in the annual Chalk it Up event showed their skills. Bright chalk drawings of various colors and subject matter could be seen in front of the building Friday morning.
Phoenix Sax was one of the many children creating a piece of sidewalk chalk art. He was busy making all sorts of shapes with various colors within those shapes. Sax said he didn't really have a plan, he was just drawing the shapes...
Carm Bingham makes sure Samantha Stanphill has every baked good she wants to buy before placing the items into a plastic bag for her.
Senior volunteers sure were busy at the city's first Green River Farmer's Market.
Wednesday afternoon, Golden Hour Senior Center volunteers set up a booth, and set to work placing baked goods out for market goers to look at and purchase.
Some of the items were kept in coolers to keep them cold before they were sold, while other baked goods were proudly displayed on a table.
Some of the items at this market, which were baked by GHSC baker Janice Castillon, included cream puffs, apple and cherry turnovers, macaroons, cinnamon rolls, lemon bars and rice crispy treats. They were also selling a...
Its possible the legislature will be called back into session to fix Wake County commissioner and school board districts that were struck down by a federal appeals court. We hope it doesnt happen. In the last special session March 23, the legislature came up with House Bill 2. It only needs a day to wreak havoc.
Another example is Senate Bill 667, which was the perfect cover for legislative mischief: 19 pages of proposed changes to state insurance law that could put an actuary to sleep.
It was introduced on March 26, 2015, passed the Senate a month later and then went into hibernation in a House committee.
On June 30, 2016, it snapped to life. But not as an insurance bill. It was rearranged into an omnibus elections bill and rushed to approval in both chambers the same day. Among its new provisions was this bombshell: It is the intent of the General Assembly to provide for even-numbered year municipal elections.
Why? Nearly all cities and towns hold elections in odd-numbered years so they arent overwhelmed by all the attention paid to state and national candidates. High Point experimented with city elections in even years but declared the experience a failure and changed back. But the legislature suddenly issued this edict, which will take effect in 2020, no matter what any cities themselves might want.
The bill also sets a new procedure for listing names on the ballot in this years election for judges of the N.C. Court of Appeals. It just happens that the name of Phil Berger Jr., son of Senate leader Phil Berger, will be listed first. Maybe thats a coincidence. The real problem is that candidates who are registered Republicans get a more favorable ballot placement than those who are Democrats and Libertarians, and that unaffiliated candidates will be listed last. Elections for the Court of Appeals are supposed to be nonpartisan. Its unfair to determine ballot placement on the basis of party registration. In races where voters are unfamiliar with the candidates, names that appear higher on the ballot tend to receive more votes. SB 667 tilts the playing field for partisan advantage, even in an officially nonpartisan election.
The only provision of SB 667 that was given any public discussion requires the attorney general to represent the state when a local act is challenged in court. This stems in part from Greensboros lawsuit to block House Bill 263, which was passed last year to restructure the City Council and change the election system.
Attorney General Roy Cooper declined to defend the act, saying his lawyers were tied up with other cases. Maybe he had no interest in defending it, anyway.
Every time it enacts election changes, the legislature claims to be restoring confidence in government. That goal is incompatible with its blitzkrieg approach to controversial bills.
If theres another special session, it could take a second shot at passing the defeated Asheville City Council bill or even go after Greensboro again. No, every city is safer when the legislature is out of session. It should stay out.
Reminders of Germanys dark past confront 7-year-old Juri Hesselmann each morning as he walks to school with his father.
The Stolpersteine, or Stumbling Stone memorials handmade plaques that memorialize the Jews who once lived in Juris neighborhood are found in front of every other house on the tree-lined Guntzelstrasse, a main street in what was a heavily Jewish area of Berlin before World War II. Many Jewish intellectuals, including Albert Einstein, lived in this neighborhood.
Embedded in the sidewalk, flush with the ground, these cobblestone-sized brass plaques identify the Jewish residents who lived in each of these homes before being murdered in the Holocaust.
A typical Stolperstein reads:
Here lived Gertrud Kirsch
Born Lowenberg 1895
Deported August 15, 1942
Riga, Latvia
Murdered August 18, 1942
Most Jews deported to Riga were marched several miles to a forest and killed.
The word ermordet murdered is almost always on the plaques. Or sometimes the plaque says flucht in den tod killed while trying to escape.
Juris father, Markus Hesselman, an editor at Der Tagesspiegel, Berlins largest newspaper, wrote a about Gertrud Kirsch in his paper. In 1939, Kirsch, a 46-year-old widow, sent her 18-year-old daughter, Helga, to safety in London. Repeated efforts to join Helga in England, however, failed. In her correspondence with Helga, Kirsch sought to reassure her daughter that she was well in spite of the tightening Nazi noose.
In May 1941, in what appears to be her last letter, Kirsch congratulates Helga on her engagement. I hope we can celebrate the engagement together, she wrote.
A year later she was dead.
The first Stolpersteine in Berlin were placed in 1996. Memorializing 50 Jewish residents of Berlins Kreuzberg district, they were the creation of German artist Gunter Demnig as part of an art project that examined Auschwitz, the German death camp in Nazi occupied Poland, where 1.1 million people were gassed, shot, beaten, or died from disease and hunger. These first Stolpersteine were considered illegal. But the Berlin authorities later relented.
In the 20 years since 1996, Demnig has placed nearly 60,000 Stolpersteine throughout Europe, from Norway to Greece, with more than 7,000 in Berlin alone. Astonished by the demand for these memorials, Demnig has acknowledged that the job has consumed his life.
Demnig now has an assistant, Michael Friedrichs-Friedlander, who was especially moved by the 34 plaques he made for 30 orphans and their caregivers. These plaques were placed in front of an orphanage in Hamburg.
They were between three and five years old, Friedrichs-Friedlander told the German government broadcaster Deutsche Welle. I couldnt sleep for weeks.
The plaques serve as constant reminders to the residents of neighborhoods like Juris that the Nazi death machine took so many Jews from the neighborhood. They force residents to think. How would they react if they had a Jewish neighbor who vanished in the night? What would you do if your neighbor were taken away today?
Standing in front of the houses where the victims lived, loved, ate, and slept gave me the shivers, said Brita Wagener, Germanys Consul General in New York, describing her reaction to the first Stolpersteine she saw. A few years ago Stolpersteine were placed in front of my high school to remember the Jewish students.
According to Helmut Lolhoffel, a spokesman for the Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf Stolpersteine project, there were 13,200 Jewish residents deported from this area of Berlin and murdered by the Nazis. The Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf area includes Juris neighborhood. Altogether there were 55,000 Jews deported from Berlin and killed.
Lolhoffel, 72, whose parents were Nazis, said that Germans must forever commemorate the victims of the Nazis.
The Stolpersteine are our permanent reminders, said Hesselmann, noting that their importance grows as the number of survivors who can tell the story of the Holocaust shrinks.
Hesselmann and Juri regularly clean one of the Stolpersteine in front of a local kindergarten. And flowers are placed on the Stolpersteine every Nov. 9, the anniversary of Kristallnacht when, in 1938, the Nazis torched synagogues, vandalized Jewish homes and killed 100 Jews.
Juri understands what the Nazis did to the Jews, said Hesselmann, He knows that they were bad people. And he knows that in spite of this, so many Germans followed these bad people.
Donald Snyder, a Greenwich resident, is a former foreign correspondent and a retired producer for NBC News.
The latest update to Rogers firmware update schedule is now online and couldnt be vaguer. The carrier posted multiple devices which are going to receive their next firmware update as coming soon. It lists devices like the BlackBerry Priv which will receive an update for Googles Security fixes for July 15.
It lists many devices that should be updated including the likes of the Galaxy S6, Galaxy S6 edge, S5 Active, S5 Neo, and Galaxy A5s updates all as coming soon however, Samsung has never been the quickest at putting out updates, especially for carrier specific devices.
Aside from the Galaxy family of devices with Marshmallow updates coming soon there is also an update listed for the HTC Nexus 9 tablet coming soon and the update is for Nougat 7.0 and bug fixes.
Rogers disclaimer regarding the estimated update rollouts is as follows: *Making sure these dates are accurate is our top priority. Sometimes, things change beyond our control so all dates listed are subject to change. Thank you for understanding.
Sure, at this point, all that we could do is speculate. We are still about 3 or so months away from the expected release of Android 7.0 Nougat and Googles announcement of the newest Nexus devices. We can expect the Nexus launches to happen anytime between September and the end of October and sometimes a little ways into November. Besides, unlike the way Apple released iOS updates, the Android Nougat update wouldnt hit devices before new Nexus hardware is released.
Source | Via
The Madison County Sheriffs Department will be participating in this effort by working with the Southeast Missouri DWI Task Force in a sobriety checkpoint during the Drive Sober or Get Pulled Over enforcement campaign. The Madison County Sheriffs Department will be conducting a sobriety checkpoint during the month of July.
Madison County Sheriff Robert Spain says: "We want to remind everyone that getting behind the wheel drunk is a terrible idea. Unfortunately, not only does drinking impair your ability to operate a vehicle safely, it also impairs your judgment and good sense about whether you can, or should drive. If you have any doubt about your sobriety, do not get behind the wheel. If you choose to drive impaired, you will be arrested. No warnings. No excuses. Driving drunk is simply not worth the risk so dont take the chance."
Haiti - Education : Corrections of BAC paralyzed by strike
Since Monday, the teachers involved in the correction of the baccalaureate exams assigned to the Lycee Toussaint Louverture, headquarters of the process, have completely ceased their correction work, challenging the deadline for the publication of results expected on 10 August.
They are demanding better working conditions, challenging the decision of the Ministry of Education that instead of increasing their salaries as requested reduced them to 19,000 gourdes (16,000 Gdes for 18 days of corrective labor, and 3,000 for food costs) while they received before, 21,000 gourdes already considered as an insufficient amount (18,000 Gdes for 18 days of corrective labor, and 3,000 for food costs).
The Ministry justifies its decision due to a lack of available funds to meet the claims of teachers-correctors, which caused this work stoppage. The Ministry invites to the resumption of corrections in order to meet the timetable.
In the contrary case, teachers report that the Ministry would have suggested that it will take steps for the continuation of the correction process, with or without the teachers which is far from calming the minds...
PI/ HaitiLibre
Haiti - Jamaica : 16 years in jail for abuse of a Haitian restavek
Rohan Ebanks (55), a fisherman of St. Elizabeth (Jamaica), was sentenced by Judge Courtney Daye of the Home Circuit Court in downtown Kingston, to a sentence of 16 years in jail for human trafficking on a young Haitian girl (smuggled in 2010) minor, he enslaved and raped.
He was also ordered to pay the girl $1 million Jamaican ( US $ 7.900) for past and future medical bills, including the treatment of depression and other psychological problems and another million for moral damages.
Venoshia Reeves, (28) the wife of Ebanks, escaped imprisonment after being fined 50,000 dollars Jamaican ( US $ 400) and a suspended sentence of three years for facilitating trafficking of that person. If the fine is not paid, the mother of 6 children, will spend 12 months in prison. Note that the average monthly wage in Jamaica is 5,100 dollars ( 428 US dollars).
In this case, the prosecution has proved that the accused had used the girl over a period of 3 years as domestic and that he physically assaulted and raped her. It was also revealed during the trial, that the girl was pregnant, but the pregnancy was terminated. Ebanks had met the girl and her mother in 2010 after traveling to Haiti and supported the teenager girl after promising her mother that she would be sent to school, a promise never kept...
An example of severity, which should inspire our Haitian justice, to discourage and stop the situation of various abuses, of over 200,000 restaveks in Haiti.
See also :
https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-17904-haiti-flash-haiti-on-the-blacklist-of-shame.html
https://www.icihaiti.com/en/news-16846-icihaiti-social-over-200-000-domestic-slaves-under-15-years-in-the-country.html
https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-15815-haiti-politic-fight-against-trafficking-of-restavek-in-haiti.html
https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-11583-haiti-politic-the-restaveks-on-the-agenda-of-cidp.html
https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-11263-haiti-social-launch-of-nationwide-study-on-children-restaveks.html
https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-2366-haiti-social-16-million-to-fight-against-the-exploitation-of-the-restaveks.html
https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-2037-haiti-social-father-miguel-the-hope-for-the-children-restavek.html
SL/ HaitiLibre
Haiti - News : Electoral Zapping...
The opposition would have made concessions but
According to Ronald Lareche, the Acting Chairman of the Senate the 6 political blocs in Parliament reached a consensus on 95% of the roadmap that will be 95% of the roadmap that will be put to vote Thursday, July 14 during the session of the National Assembly https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-18000-haiti-flash-4th-convocation-of-the-national-assembly.html , stressing that the opposition has finally accepted the principle of extending the mandate of the President Privert. However he forgets to say that this concession is conditional to the fact that the government officials and delegates and vice delegates, are not involved in electoral matters and there appointment of a new Minister of Justice and the Interior, what's refuses the Pro-Privert...
The Electoral Register is closed
Mr. Dumel, CEP Communications Director, said that the electoral register was closed Tuesday, July 12, exactly 90 days before the election, as stipulated in the Electoral Decree. Citizens who apply to the National Identification Office (ONI) their National Identification Card (CIN) after this date may not vote in elections on October 9, 2016 and January 8, 2017.
ADIH considering prosecution
"The Association of Industries of Haiti (ADIH) requires factory owners who suffered losses during the events of 11 May https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-17424-haiti-economy-thousands-of-textile-workers-took-to-the-streets.html to please make a detailed report, in order that the Association may share such information with local and US authorities, for all practical purposes. This will also allow to engage legal action. ADIH condemns these acts and requires that the perpetrators are caught and punished according to law."
See also :
https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-17434-haiti-economy-adih-scandalized-by-the-blockage-of-the-textile-sector.html
https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-17424-haiti-economy-thousands-of-textile-workers-took-to-the-streets.html
Anacacis wants an one round election
Jean Hector Anacacis, the Coordinator of the "Alternative League for Progress and Emancipation Haitian" (LAPEH) announced an alliance between several political parties with Jude Celestin as leader, he would like a single round of the presidential with the four leading candidates . Moreover, he argues that the elections with President Privert are impossible and will be spoiled with 70% probability.
Verdicts on 3 municipal cartels
The Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) informs that the two Commissions responsible for conducting administrative investigations on municipal cartels of Croix-des-Bouquets, Lascahobas and Chardonnieres, completed their field work. The Provisional Electoral Council will adopt a decision on their report by Friday 15th July.
Financing the elections a small step toward sovereignty
The Deputy Gary Bodeau (Delmas) welcomes the decision of the United States not to fund the 2016-2017 elections, according to him this will allow the country to better defend its sovereignty. Forgetting as many that it's not the equity financing of elections which will reduce the influence of the international community. Haiti's sovereignty and the end of the influence of the international community will cease the day the country will be able to finance 100% its own State budget instead of the 40 to 50% currently, which is far from the case...
HL/ HaitiLibre
Searchers will be out again today looking for an elderly Iron County man who went missing from his home Sunday.
Iron County Sheriff Roger Medley said despite an intense ground search and the use of a specially-trained dog on Wednesday searchers were still unable to locate Roy Brandel, 84, who reportedly has dementia and suffers from a serious visual impairment.
Brandel reportedly disappeared from his rural home around 11:30 a.m. Sunday. The home is surrounded by U.S. Forest Service property which is complicating the search. Because his pickup truck was found on the property by sheriff's deputies, it was believed Brandel left on foot.
Medley said the search for Brandel resumed Wednesday morning with the addition of a cadaver dog to assist in the effort, but to no avail. The sheriff said searchers have seemingly covered every area near the man's home and routes he might have taken on foot.
Anyone having information regarding Brandel's whereabouts is asked to call the Iron County Sheriff's Department at 573-546-7051 or 9-1-1.
The Daily Journal will continue to follow this story.
Published on 2016/07/13 | Source
Film director Frankie Chen (also known as Yu Shan Chen) revealed her heart as a fan of Song Joong-ki's.
Advertisement
Taiwanese star, Darren Wang's fan meeting, '2016 Darren Wang Seoul Fan Meeting' took place at Samsung Hall in Ewha Womans University in the afternoon on July 13th. Actor Darren Wang and film director Frankie Chan attended the event.
During the event, 'Our Times' director Frankie Chen revealed her fangirl side towards Song Joong-ki. Director Frankie Chen said, "I could not believe such an amazing star, Song Joong-ki watched my movie two times and I was happy to find out about it. During his fan meeting in Taiwan, my daughter's friends and parents were at the venue of his fan meeting. I could not go because I was too shy".
Film director Frankie Chen said, "If I would come up with a movie like 'Our Times' again, I'd like to work with him and also hope he would sing the theme song for it as well".
Published on 2016/07/13 | Source
Added episode 7 captures for the Korean drama "Doctors" (2016)
Advertisement
Directed by Oh Choong-hwan
Written by Ha Myeong-hee
Network : SBS
With Kim Rae-won, Park Shin-hye, Yoon Kyun-sang, Lee Sung-kyung, Kim Young-ae, Jung Hae-kyun,...
20 episode - Mon, Tue 22:00
Also known as "Doctor Crush"
Synopsis
A drama about the realism in the relationship between doctors and patients and the social prejudice of educational background and origin.
Broadcast starting date in Korea : 2016/06/20
More
Harlow is a former New Town in Essex with a population of 86,000. Located in the upper Stort Valley, it was built in the decades after the Second World War to ease overcrowding and London and provide homes for people bombed out during the Blitz. It includes Britain's first pedestrian precinct and first modern residential tower block, The Lawn. Old Harlow, the historic part of the town, was mentioned in the Domesday Book. David and Victoria Beckham's former home, Rowneybury House, nicknamed 'Beckingham Palace', is nearby.
13:18, 27 OCT 2022
Fire department personnel and equipment from Lake Timberline to Cherokee Pass were dispatched to assist with a fire that damaged TAG Truck Center on Tuesday evening.
The fire was reported around 7 p.m. as fire and heavy smoke quickly raged through the truck service and sales center located just off U.S. 67 on the southern edge of Farmington.
TAG Truck Center General Manager Bill Merical was on the scene watching firefighters work to squelch the fire. He said the company had closed for business around 6 p.m. but an employee who was leaving a short time later noticed flames coming from the front of the building and called 911.
I cant believe this, Merical said. We have 14 people who work here, but I have already received calls from my customers asking if they could help. Thats amazing ... customers calling to see how they can help.
The Wolf Creek Fire Department responded to the fire and quickly put out a second alarm.
A decision was made to close the northbound U.S. 67 lanes at Hildebrecht, approximately a mile south of the truck center, to allow for fire trucks to stage near the front of the building which faces the highway.
But it didn't take long before a second call came in for additional officers to work traffic control on the southbound lanes of U.S. 67 due to congested traffic from drivers slowing to see the action.
Within the first few minutes black smoke could be seen billowing from the front windows and beneath the eaves of the brick-fronted building. By the time firefighters could get hoses unloaded and stretched to the building there were already flames showing.
TAG Truck Center provides sales and service for large trucks and trailers, and lubricants and other fluids and parts used to keep them in service.
Assisting the Wolf Creek Fire Department was firefighters and equipment from Farmington, Doe Run, Park Hills, Desloge, Big River, Leadwood, Leadington, Weingarten, Bismarck, Pilot Knob, Zell, St. Marys, Ste. Genevieve, Desoto Rural, Terre Du Lac, Goose Creek, Lake Timberline, Bonne Terre, Desoto City, Jefferson R-7, Festus, Hematite, Cherokee Pass, and Fredericktown Fire Departments.
As of press time the cause of the fire was unknown. A fire investigation will be conducted per standard practices for fires involving commercial buildings.
Watch for follow up stories on the efforts of the business to reopen and the cause of the fire.
Estimated cost of Hinkley Point C nuclear plant rises to 37bn [Corrected 13/7/16]
The total lifetime cost of the planned Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant could be as high as 37bn, according to an assessment published by the UK government. The figure, reported in the Guardian, was contained in an IPA (Infrastructure and Projects Authority) report and compares with a Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) estimate 12 months ago of 14bn.
Artist's impression of Hinkley Point C - EDF Energy
DECC officials confirmed the 37bn figure, but said it was provisional, set in September 2015, when wholesale power prices were low, and would not affect bill payers.
In late June state-controlled French utility EDF, which will build and operate the plant, said it was ready to take a final investment decision on building the two planned nuclear reactors at Hinkley despite Britain's referendum vote to quit the European Union. The latest indication is that this decision will be taken in September.
This comes amid increasing speculation about the future of the controversial project in Somerset, whose existence has been affected by the UK's post-Brexit financial situation. Hinkley has been a flagship energy project for the British government and in particular for the chancellor, George Osborne, who lobbied hard and successfully for China to take a stake in the scheme.
It remains to be seen whether the proposed nuclear plant, potentially the most expensive in the world, will receive the same levels of support from the new UK Government of Theresa May, who took over as prime minister on July 13.
Correction: A reader has contacted us to point out that the 37bn total lifetime cost estimate of the Hinkley Point C project in the Infrastructure and Projects Authority report is different from the 14bn estimated construction cost and the two figures cannot be compared, as was done in the original article on which this report was based.
The lifetime cost includes operational and decommissioning costs, while the construction cost does not. In the original article, both DECC and EDF Energy made this point, and we should have made this clear in our own report - Alan Franck, Editor, Hazardex.
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By Jesse Wood
Tuesdays nights meeting was a movie weve watched before: Despite persistence from local Democrats and a state elections board mandate prior to the primary, Republicans in Watauga County really dont want early voting to happen in the Plemmons Student Union on the campus of Appalachian State University.
Instead, the Republican majority on the Watauga County Board of Elections, which consists of Bill Aceto and Nancy Owen, favored a proposed one-stop plan for the general election in November that features a site at Legends on Hardin Street.
The majority plan also features early-voting sites at the Watauga County Administration Building in downtown Boone, Blowing Rock Town Hall, Western Watauga Community Center in Cove Creek and at the volunteer fire departments of Meat Camp and Deep Gap.
The majority plan features 304 combined hours of early voting at all six sites throughout the early voting period, which runs from Thursday, Oct. 27 to Saturday, Nov. 5. Aceto said that the plan offers nearly 100 more hours of early voting than is required by the state.
I am proud that we offer more voting hours than the majority of counties in North Carolina, Aceto said.
He also mentioned that if you draw a radius around all of the proposed early voting sites, then every voter within that precinct is within 5 miles for that location. (Aceto has previously opposed precincts on the campus because of the proximity to the Watauga County Administration Building in downtown Boone.)
So I think its very helpful for us to have the outlying districts. I think we all can agree on that. You can applaud that if you like, but I am sure you are not going to, Aceto said, directing his comments to Stella Anderson, the lone Democrat on the Watauga County Board of Elections.
To which, Anderson replied, We do all agree [on that] I think its telling that the minority member on this board, whether it was Kathleen Campbell or now me, has never ever even thought about doing away with the out-in-the-county four locations despite the fact that they dont draw very many voters. Its not about taking away sites that are out in the county, its about maintaining the one that is one campus.
Aceto responded before trailing off to another question from Anderson, And we are going to do that by having a site on campus [Legends], a site that is less than 200 yards away from the other site [Plemmons Student Union]. I find it very hard to believe
The only significant difference between the majority and minority plans is that the Democrats favor Plemmons Student Union over Legends. Because a plan wasnt adopted unanimously, the matter moves before the State Board of Elections.
Plemmons Student Union was the location of an early voting site in the spring primary. It was by far the most popular one-stop site. Based on figures released by the Watauga County Board of Elections office months ago, 3,250 people voted early in Plemmons Student Union versus 2,530 at the administration building in downtown Boone and 1,435 at the other four sites (Blowing Rock, Deep Gap, Meat Camp and Cove Creek) combined.
The State Board of Elections (SBOE), in fact, mandated the early-voting site at Plemmons Student Union in the 2016 primary when it was tasked with adopting a plan because the local, bipartisan three-member board wasnt in unanimous agreement.
In February, the SBOE chose the minority plan, which featured an early voting site at Plemmons Student Union on ASU, over the majority plan, which didnt feature any early voting site on the ASU campus.
In making their decision, members of the SBOE in February cited Wake County Superior Court Judge Donald Stephens opinion in the fall of 2014 regarding this similar issue: The early-voting plan by the majority of members of the Watauga County Board of Elections was arbitrary and capricious. All credible evidence indicates that the sole purpose of that plan was to eliminate an early voting site on campus so as to discourage student voting and, as such, it is unconstitutional.
At the February meeting, the SBOE members then asked what had changed in Watauga County since Stephens wrote his opinion; Aceto and Owens answer to that question didnt sway the SBOE and was rebuked by the state board.
Before a unanimous vote in favor of the plan with a Plemmons Student Union one-stop site by the SBOE, Secretary Rhonda Amoroso, a Republican acting as board chair due to an abstention by Chair Grant Whitney, also a Republican, said, I think at this point, we need to put this thing to bed and have a compromise.
But back to Tuesday nights meeting
For Republicans in Watauga County, that compromise is Legends, and the State Board of Elections sometime in the coming weeks will look at the two plans the majority one with a site at Legends and the minority one with the site at Plemmons Student Union.
Republicans state that Plemmons Student Union has too many exists and entrances, so its hard to enforce established buffer zones for any last-minute electioneering and campaigning. They also say that Legends is easier for folks to access and find because its located off the highway, on a corridor, as opposed to a side street like Howard Street, where a parking lot for Plemmons Student Union exists.
Of about 30 people who spoke during public comment at Tuesdays meeting, seven spoke out against an early-voting site at the Plemmons Student Union, including Watauga County Republican Party Chair Anne-Marie Yates, who said shes witnessed buffer zone infractions and illegal campaigning; former Watauga County Board of Commissioner Chair and Republican attorney Nathan Miller; a former student; an elderly women who said Legends is easier for her to access; and a couple residents of Beech Mountain who wondered what all the fuss was about whenever they have to drive all the way from the top of Beech Mountain to vote early.
Moving the polling place to Legends makes more sense. We are not taking away the rights of students to vote. If they want to vote, then they can walk to Legends. Taking away the right for students to vote would be taking it off campus completely, said Caroline Yates, a Boone native and former App State student. When Legends turns into a night bar, then nobody has any complaints about walking down there [as far as] how far it is from campus.
Democrats, on the other hand, think that Plemmons Student Union is the most convenient place for staff, faculty and students to vote. It is the central hub of the campus, and ASU Chancellor Sheri Everts with consultation from her leadership team and the SGA endorsed the Plemmons Student Union in June as the only location on campus that satisfies our mutual goals of providing a convenient and safe environment for citizens and volunteers in compliance with statutory requirements for elections. Her response came with a caveat unless, Everts said, she receives documentation that states otherwise. Her response was in a reply to a letter from Aceto, who noted that the Plemmons Student Union was problematic and not a workable location. The chancellor hadnt received a response back as of last nights meeting.
Joan Brannon, who spoke in favor of the Plemmons Student Union and received the loudest ovation of the speakers, directed her comments to Aceto and his letter drafted to the chancellor: There is an oft-quoted truism that I believe applies here. You can put lipstick on a pig but it is still a pig. In this case, I believe the lipstick is using statutory obligations to dress up the pig of voter suppression.
Clark Streets, a junior majoring in Political Science, was among a handful of students, including SGA President Jayln Howard, who spoke in favor of the early-voting site at the Plemmons Student Union.
Why not utilize a location thats been so successful in the past. Theres no reason why [early voting should not take place] in the Student Union, Streets said. I dont see any reason why it should be removed especially since its been so effective.
See the correspondence between the chancellors of App State and Caldwell Community College and Aceto below:
Aceto letter
ASU Chancellors letter
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(The Business Insider) The activist hedge fund ValueAct has agreed to pay $11 million in a settlement with the Department of Justice, the highest ever settlement for the charge the fund faced. ValueAct is paying following allegations that it didnt properly notify authorities about purchasing voting shares in a big 2014 merger, according to a press release from the DOJ.
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The Police of Finland, she highlights, has pointed out that anyone may be asked, and be obliged under law, to verify their identity to police officers performing official duties.
Leena Meri (PS), a first-term Member of the Parliament, has taken to social media to comment on the controversy that arose after James Nikander, a rapper better known by his stage name Musta Barbaari, criticised the actions of the Police of Finland.
The powers of the police are derived from law, she wrote on Facebook.
Meri later commented on her own writing by suggesting that such an uproar would not have been created by reports of the everyday struggles of Finns. If it's so awful to be in Finland, you can go back to your home country to enjoy its basic rights and social welfare, she added.
Nikander revealed earlier on social media that two police officers in civilian clothes stopped his mother and sister while they were on their way from a restaurant to a tram stop, demanded that they produced their passports and held them in custody for roughly an hour in downtown Helsinki last Friday. An eye-witness interviewed by STT has corroborated the account of Nikander, describing the behaviour of the officers as threatening.
Nikander was born in Turku, while his mother is originally from Tanzania.
The Police of Finland has refrained from commenting specifically on the incident in question but assured in a press release that people are selected for identity checks randomly, not based solely on their physical characteristics and features.
[The selection] cannot be based only on the physical characteristics and features of the person subjected to the check. Also people who have in no way misconducted themselves are targeted in the surveillance, a police spokesperson states in a response to Nikander.
The District Prosecutor of Eastern Uusimaa has opened an inquiry into the incident to determine whether a pre-trial investigation is warranted.
The European Commission Against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) noted three years ago that the Aliens Act of Finland contains discriminatory provisions and perpetuates the risk of racial profiling by police officers.
Meri, who holds a master's degree in law and was previously employed by a magistrate's office, estimates in an interview with Uusi Suomi that the fact that officials are prohibited from publicly disclosing the matters of individuals poses a problem both in the case of alleged police misconduct and the recent, much-publicised case of a mother and daughter facing deportation to Iraq.
The police has come under terrible criticism. There's a tendency to open an inquiry into any case of misconduct, she says.
Aleksi Teivainen HT
Photo: Kristiina Lehto Lehtikuva
Source: Uusi Suomi
[Food waste] is a vicious cycle that preserves the world of breadlines, although breadlines are also associated with a number of social issues, she said yesterday at Suomi Areena, a public debate event held annually in Pori.
Breadlines are at least partially a consequence of food waste, states Maria Ohisalo, a deputy chairperson of the Green League.
Ohisalo, who is currently working on a doctoral dissertation on breadlines, estimated that breadlines are already a source of food for tens of thousands of Finns.
She expressed her bafflement with the fact that unhealthy food is often more affordable than, for example, vegetables. She, on the other hand, praised innovations such as Satokausikalenteri, a calender designed to encourage consumers to identify and use seasonal vegetables that has already been embraced by S Group, and the experiments of municipal authorities with selling leftover food from daycare centres and schools to the public.
The Consumers' Union of Finland has begun collecting pledges from households on how to reduce food waste for a project to be unveiled as part of the Food Wastage Week organised between August and September.
I appreciate food and will clean up my plate, promised Kimmo Tiilikainen (Centre), the Minister of Agriculture and the Environment. Ohisalo, in turn, promised to plan her grocery shopping trips better.
Tiilikainen also reminded that reducing the amount of food waste created by grocery shops is considered important both by consumers and producers. The price margins of sold products have to cover the costs of whatever food waste is created, he said.
Aleksi Teivainen HT
Photo: Roni Rekomaa Lehtikuva
Source: Uusi Suomi
Members of the Gardai, Customs, CAB members of the Special Detective Unit remove high end vehicles
Gardai investigating ten Dublin killings which include murders linked to the ongoing Hutch/Kinahan feud have made 36 arrests and seized 17 firearms.
So far this year, ten murders have been carried out in the Dublin Metropolitan Region (DMR), compared to nine during the same period last year.
The most recent killing occurred earlier this month when David Douglas (54) was shot dead by a lone gunman on Bridgefoot Street in the south inner city.
Assistant Garda Commissioner Jack Nolan, who has special responsibilities for the Dublin Region as well as the South-East Region, said that "progress is being made in all investigations".
In total, 36 arrests have been made and 129 searches carried out, which have led to the seizure of 17 firearms and approximately 1m worth of assets suspected of being obtained from the proceeds of crime.
intelligence
Some 7,626 "investigative tasks" - which include a number of varying operations, from taking witness statements to obtaining CCTV evidence - have also been conducted.
"There are intelligence-driven operations currently ongoing in the DMR, which provide both a proactive and re-active response to serious crime," Mr Nolan told a meeting of Dublin City Council's Joint Policing Committee (JPC).
"While I am constrained in discussing particulars of the cases for operational reasons, I wish to assure this committee that all investigations are fully resourced and are making progress.
"An Garda Siochana is fully committed to identifying the individuals and their associates," the Assistant Garda Commissioner said.
Operation Hybrid patrols, which provide an armed response to organised crime in the capital, have also been successful in preventing a number of serious crimes being carried out by Dublin gangs.
Since February there have been 6,221 checkpoints and 872 mobile patrols, with 2,196 searches conducted under the auspice of Operation Hybrid.
"There have been a number of very significant stops, searches and arrests in relation to the movements of armed criminals in this period," Mr Nolan said.
The Herald previously revealed how a gunman on a bicycle abandoned a planned gangland hit on the brother of Gerry "The Monk" Hutch over the weekend.
A suspected gunman approached the Champions Avenue home of Paddy Hutch Snr (53) but failed to carry out the hit.
Mr Hutch was issued with a Garda Information Message - also known as a GIM form - after gardai received intelligence that there was a credible threat against his life.
Speaking at the JPC meeting, Dublin North-Central TD Maureen O'Sullivan praised the work being done by gardai in her division.
But she raised concerns over the length of time it would take to establish the Special Crime Task Force.
The unit was announced earlier this year by Tanaiste Frances Fitzgerald and will specifically target organised crime in Dublin.
Deputy O'Sullivan said that there was a possibility that more "of the most unfortunate crimes" could occur in the time it would take to have the task force fully operational.
Assistant Commissioner Jack Nolan said that the announcement of membership for the unit was "at an advanced stage", and that necessities including accommodation, vehicles and firearms were being finalised.
Dispute
Mr Nolan will oversee the new task force along with Assistant Garda Commissioner John O'Mahoney, who is responsible for national support services such as the Special Detective Unit (SDU).
Mr O'Mahoney previously said that members of the task force could be sent to Spain to target members of the Kinahan cartel as part of An Garda Siochana's investigations into the current gangland feud.
The scene on the M7 at the time of the seizure in February
Detectives are expected to make more arrests following the discovery of bombs and a loaded Glock gun on the M7 motorway which has been linked to the New INLA gang.
The discovery of the deadly items near Mountrath, Co Laois, following a garda surveillance operation caused the motorway to be closed for several hours on the night of February 25.
Two eastern European men, one in his early 40s and the other in his late teens, were arrested at the scene and questioned for a number of days before being released without charge.
Gardai are investigating the role of a north Dublin-based gangster in the major seizure.
"More arrests are expected in this case which has proven to be complex. A lot of CCTV has been studied and phone records have also been examined," a senior source revealed.
It is understood that the men who were arrested have come under "serious pressure" from the criminals for whom they were transporting the bombs and gun.
"The seizure did cause a lot of tension within the New INLA group," a source said.
It is believed the bombs and gun were being transported from Limerick to Dublin to be used by the New INLA to attack their gangland rivals.
Mob
Since that bust, gardai have had some major successes against the mob, with some of its key members now locked up and awaiting trial.
However, it is suspected that some of the New INLA criminals became involved in the bitter Hutch/Kinahan feud and were involved in February's murder of dissident Republican Vinnie Ryan in Finglas.
Two of the gang's most prominent members, both aged 30, have gone on the run.
A close associate of one of these gangsters, Christopher Maguire (38), remains in a serious condition after being shot five times in an attempted murder in Lusk, north Co Dublin, on Tuesday morning of last week.
Gardai have been investigating whether Maguire was targeted by the Hutch gang because of his pals' suspected role in the feud.
Former Clerys worker John Crowe (right) confronts property developer Deirdre Foley at the Four Courts. Photo: Collins Courts
A former Clerys worker has told the High Court that he's been left with just 6 in his pocket after the sale of the department store.
John Crowe (64), from Artane, said he had worked at Clerys for 43 years before it closed.
After all the years of service with the store he said he had to make an appointment so that he could get personal items out of his locker four weeks after the closure.
Yesterday an emotional Mr Crowe said he had been left with nothing, adding all he had in his pocket was 6 and he could not afford the bus fare to come to court.
He said he hoped the courts give out better treatment than "the way I have been treated".
Details
Outside the courtroom, Mr Crowe criticised Ms Deirdre Foley, who is the owner of a Dublin-based property company, D2 Private Ltd.
Surrounded by her legal team, Ms Foley left the precinct of the courthouse without comment.
The High Court heard yesterday how a "directors' pack" - containing financial details about the iconic Clerys department store and its workforce - was one of the reasons why inspectors sought to get hold of documents at the offices of the property company.
The inspectors, who are conducting an ongoing investigation into the collective redundancy of the store's 460 workers in June 2015, claim the pack was issued by D2 Private before the group of companies that owned and operated Clerys was sold to a joint venture called Natrium by previous owners, the Gordon Brothers group.
Natrium is a joint venture made up of Cheyne Capital Management in the UK and a company of Ms Foley's.
The pack contained detailed information, including financial statements and accounts of the company that operated Clerys, OCS Operations Ltd, as well as the employees' names, their dates of birth, their years of service, holiday entitlements and their total earnings.
The inspectors, appointed by the Workplace Relations Commission, are opposing a challenge brought by D2 and Ms Foley against the WRC concerning the powers of the inspectors, who seized documents and a computer from D2's offices in May.
Shane Murphy SC for the WRC said the inspectors attended D2 Private's offices as part of their investigation into what has become a complex matter.
The inspectors sought materials from D2 Private after being made aware of the pack, which they claim was supplied to directors of OCS Operations Ltd, Brendan Cooney and Jim Brydie, by an employee of D2 Private before the takeover by Natrium.
The directors were appointed by Natrium hours after the Clerys takeover. That same day - June 12, 2015 - they went to the High Court and sought to have OCS Operations, which was loss-making, wound up.
The pack also contained a watermark linking it to D2 Private. Counsel told the court that investigators rejected claims they have acted outside their remit.
They have at all times conducted their investigation in a proper and lawful manner, counsel said. The applicants were attempting to "unfairly mischaracterise" the investigation, counsel added.
Confidential
In their challenge, D2 Private and Ms Foley say neither they nor Natrium were ever the employer of the Clerys workers. They also say the inspectors were not allowed to take the materials - which they added included privileged and confidential material - and have acted outside the remit of their investigation.
They also said the inspectors were not entitled to rely on provisions of the 1977 Protection of Employment Act and the 2015 Workplace Relations Act to justify the taking of documents from the D2 office.
They are seeking various orders and declarations, including an order that the materials be returned, and are also seeking damages for misfeasance in public office and breach of privacy. The application is being supported by Natrium, which is a notice party to the proceedings.
The hearing continues.
Matilde White is accused of repeatedly kicking her son Marco in the groin and biting her other son Luciano. Photo: PA
The estranged wife of celebrity chef Marco Pierre White could be cleared of assault because son Marco Jr is "too hungover" to give evidence against her, a court has heard.
Matilde White, who is separated from their father and known by her maiden name Conejero, is accused of attacking her adult sons, Luciano and Marco Jr.
'Loser'
She allegedly "burst her way" into Marco Jr's flat in Chiswick, west London, and told him: "You're a f****** loser junkie - you're going to prison."
White apparently then kicked Marco Jr repeatedly in the groin before dragging him along by his hair.
When Luciano tried to separate them she allegedly lashed out at him and bit him on the arm.
Both Luciano and Marco Jr, key witnesses in the case, failed to attend a court in London yesterday.
The prosecution are now reviewing the case to see if there is enough evidence to proceed with the trial without the two alleged victims.
Officers were initially unable to make contact with either of the brothers because both were not answering their phones.
Marco Jr later told police he was "too hungover" to give evidence after apparently going out partying on Monday night.
Prosecutor Katie Weiss said: "An officer went to the address, Marco Pierre White Jr wasn't there. Friends at the property said he had a gone to a party last night and he was in Hampshire.
"Officers spoke to him on the phone and he said he is too hungover to come today. He said he is ill."
Police have been unable to make contact with Luciano, the court was told.
District Judge Deborah Wright issued witness summons for Luciano and Marco Jr yesterday but refused to adjourn the trial after they still failed to turn up.
"Luciano is not at home nor contactable, his phone is switched off," she said.
"I am advised that Marco went to a party last night and is too ill to attend court today, probably because of a hangover.
"In both cases the witnesses were aware of their obligation to attend court today and they haven't done so."
Outrageous
White arrived at the court at 9am and spoke only to confirm her details in the dock before the case was adjourned.
The 51-year-old, of Chiswick High Road, west London, is charged with two counts of common assault by beating.
She denies the charges and claims she was acting in self-defence during the incident on September 20 last year.
Michael Smith, defending, branded Marco Jr "utterly outrageous" for his attitude to the criminal justice system.
The 21-year-old sparked controversy during his recent appearance on Big Brother after romping with former fellow housemate Laura Carter.
He had apparently been given a "hall pass" by fiancee at the time, Kim Melville-Smith, which allowed him to cheat on her during his time on the show.
But after his on-screen sexual encounter, she angrily tweeted that it did not mean an "open relationship" and the pair have since split up.
Marco Jr, the first evictee of this year's show, was engaged to commodity broker Jessyca Hydleman until March 2016.
Marta Herda denies the murder of her former co-worker. Photo: Collins
A jury has been shown a Valentine's card allegedly sent to the woman charged with murdering the sender by driving him into a harbour, where he drowned.
The court also heard that she had denied driving into the water deliberately.
A garda read out the card's contents to the Central Criminal Court on the sixth day of the trial.
Marta Herda (29) of Pairc Na Saile, Emoclew Road, Arklow, Co Wicklow is charged with the murder of 31-year-old Csaba Orsas on March 26, 2013.
The Polish waitress has pleaded not guilty to murdering the Hungarian at South Quay, Arklow. Both had worked at the Brook Lodge Hotel in Aughrim.
Relationship
Garda Anthony Crehan testified that he had taken a voluntary statement from the accused, in which she said that the deceased had been in love with her but that she had told him that they couldn't ever have a relationship.
She gave the garda a Valentine's card that she had received from the deceased.
Garda Crehan read what had been written on the card.
"Love letter! Dear Marta, I would just like to tell you in letters how much I love you. Seriously, I feel that I find you finally, the girl I was looking for in all my life. I wish to share my life with only you.
"I'm ready to do anything for you. I can change all my bad habits for the way you wish. Millions of kisses," it continued.
"Thinking of you in every second. I love you Marta. I can promise that I will be the best husband and you will never regret it."
A phone number was given and a smiley face drawn before the final words: "I'm mad about you". The card was dated and timed, 21/5/12, 22.54.
The defence had earlier suggested that Gda Crehan had not put to Ms Herda the proposition of her driving into the water deliberately.
"I wrote it down as she said it," he replied. "She's painted a picture of a back history with this guy and it culminated in this."
The defence then put to him the contents of a subsequent interview, in which Gda Crehan had not participated.
"I didn't want to do that, but I don't want all this happened," she had said.
"It was horrible and scary in this car. I don't want to see him anymore."
She was asked if she had driven deliberately into the water.
"No. I would never want to hurt anyone or even to destroy my car," she replied.
The trial continues before Mr Justice Patrick McCarthy.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has declined to commit to making Ireland a 'special case' in the post-Brexit negotiations in a move that will come as a blow to the Government.
Ms Merkel said she is not prepared to issue any "guarantees" to the Irish Government, and insisted the concerns of all 27 EU member states will be treated equally at the negotiating table.
"It's difficult to give guarantees at this point of time," Ms Merkel said when asked to ensure Ireland will not be sidelined in the negotiations.
"We don't even have the position of the United Kingdom. We have to wait for Great Britain to take a stand and give us an idea of the type of relationship they are thinking about," she added.
Ms Merkel made the remarks at a joint press conference with Taoiseach Enda Kenny at the German Chancellery in Berlin.
During a 40-minute meeting, Mr Kenny voiced concerns that Britain's decision to leave the EU could jeopardise the Common Travel Area and the Peace Process.
Ms Merkel did give a glimmer of hope in relation to the border with the North, emphasising that she recognises that the Common Travel Area has been in place since 1922.
But she noted that Ireland, like the UK, is not a member of the so-called Schengen area, which allows for mutual borders between member states.
"I cannot anticipate the outcome of the negotiations," she insisted.
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Former Maugansville Little League treasurer pleads in theft case
The former treasurer of the Maugansville Little League in Washington County was sentenced Wednesday after pleading guilty to theft.
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The most impossible job on earth was how the first United Nations secretary -general, Trygve Lie, described the post to his successor, Dag Hammarskjold, in 1953. Time has not made the job any easier.
The framers of the UN Charter gave the secretary-general two distinct functions: He or she is the chief administrative officer of the Organization and also an independent official whom the General Assembly and Security Council can entrust with certain unspecified (but implicitly political) tasks. Each holder of the office must demonstrate whether he or she is more secretary than general.
Paradoxes abound. The secretary-general is expected to enjoy the backing of governments, especially the five permanent members of the Security Council, but also be above partiality to any of them. He establishes his credentials by bureaucratic or diplomatic service, but, once elected, must transcend his past and serve as a voice of the world, even a secular Pope.
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The secretary-general is entrusted with assisting member states to make sound and well-informed decisions, which he is then obliged to execute, but he is also authorised to influence their work and even to propose actions that they should undertake. He administers a complex organisation and serves as head of the UN agencies, but must exercise his role within budgetary and regulatory constraints imposed by the member governments.
True, the secretary-general has an unparalleled agenda-shaping authority. But he does not have the power to execute all his ideas, and he articulates a vision that only governments can fulfil. He moves the world, but he cannot direct it.
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Hammarskjold, at the height of the Cold War, argued that an impartial civil servant could be politically celibate without being politically virgin. The secretary-general could play a political role without losing his impartiality, provided he hewed faithfully to the Charter and to international law.
But once a secretary-general is named, what can we expect from him or her? The perception has gained ground in recent years that the Perm Five want a quiescent administrator who will not exceed his brief. But we do not have to look that far back to find an example of a secretary-general who expanded the possibilities of his remit beyond this minimalist notion.
With the Cold Wars end, Kofi Annan was one secretary-general who went further than his predecessors in using the bully pulpit of his office. He boldly raised the question of the morality of intervention and the duty of the individual to follow his conscience, and he challenged member states to resolve the tensions between state sovereignty and their responsibility to protect ordinary people.
Yet it is true that often, a secretary-general can raise an awkward question but not dictate the appropriate answer. Annans historic speech on intervention made before the General Assembly in 1999 set a thousand flowers blooming at think tanks and among Op-Ed columnists, but did not lead to a single military intervention to protect the oppressed. The UN is often seen embodying international legitimacy, yet the secretary-generals pronouncements often have less impact on the conduct of member states than the Popes strictures on birth control.
The secretary-general knows that he can accomplish little without the support of members whose inaction on one issue or another he might otherwise want to denounce. He cannot afford to allow frustration on any one issue to affect his ability to elicit cooperation from governments on a range of others. Annan once made the point by citing an old Ghanaian proverb: Never hit a man on the head when you have your fingers between his teeth.
Todays single-superpower world also means that the secretary-general must manage a relationship that is vital to the UNs survival without mortgaging his own integrity and independence. The insistent demands of some in the United States that the UN prove its utility to America demands that could not have been made in the same terms during the Cold War oblige a secretary-general to walk a tightrope between heeding American priorities and the preferences of the membership as a whole. Paradoxically, he can be most useful to the US when he demonstrates his independence from it.
No secretary-general has enjoyed real independence from governments: The UN operates without embassies or intelligence services, and member states resist any attempt to acquire such capabilities. A secretary-generals reach thus cannot exceed his grasp, and his grasp cannot extend across the member states frontiers or their treasuries.
Indeed, the next secretary-general will command great diplomatic legitimacy, and even greater media visibility, but less political power than the language of the UN Charter suggests. To be effective, she since all signs point to the likelihood of a she must be skilled at managing staff and budgets, gifted at public diplomacy (and its behind-the-scenes variant), and able to engage the loyalties of a wide array of external actors, including non-governmental organisations, business groups, and journalists.
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From Indias point of view, she must be careful not to put a foot wrong on sensitive issues like Kashmir; to recognise Indias legitimate desire to play an influential role on the world stage, including on the Security Council; and to appoint effective Indians to senior positions in the UN system. She also must convince the nations of the developing South that their interests are uppermost in her mind while ensuring that she can work effectively with the wealthy and powerful North. She must recognise the power and the prerogatives of the Security Council, especially its five permanent members, while staying attentive to the priorities and passions of the General Assembly. And she must present member states with politically achievable proposals and implement her mandates within the means they provide her.
Read | India lashes out against powerless UN Security Council
Above all, the secretary-general needs a vision of the higher purpose of her office and an awareness of its potential and limitations. In other words, to be successful, she must conceive and project a vision of the UN as it should be, while administering and defending the organisation as it is. Truly an impossible job.
Shashi Tharoor is member of Parliament. Views expressed are personal.
The impact of the Supreme Courts Wednesday verdict restoring the Congress government in Arunachal Pradesh will be felt not only in the northeastern state but also in Delhi, especially during the upcoming monsoon session of Parliament.
The restoration of the Congress governments in Uttarakhand and Arunachal Pradesh by the top court in a span of just two months is a big blow to the ruling BJP at the Centre and brings hope to the Congress of a consolidation of opposition parties.
The jubilation in the Congress camp following the scrapping of Presidents Rule in Uttarakhand on May 11 was short-lived as the party suffered a huge setback in the following week, losing Assam to the BJP and Kerala to the Left.
Tuki situation: Political options in Arunachal after SC restores Cong govt
Awed by the BJPs historic debut in Assam and the principal opposition partys continuing downslide in the recent round of assembly polls, most regional parties seemed to be gravitating towards the ruling dispensation at the Centre.
The court ruling turned the tables on Wednesday.
We said it earlier. The government erred in Arunachal Pradesh, said Bhartruhari Mehtab, a senior Biju Janata Dal (BJD) leader and veteran parliamentarian.
Asked if his party will make the SC ruling an issue in the monsoon session, he told Hindustan Times, Definitely. And this came from a party perceived to be friendly with the BJP, at least in terms of its support to the governments legislative agenda.
Arunachal crisis: Kalikho Puls expulsion to restoration of Cong govt
Crucial assembly elections, especially in Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Uttarakhand, are slated early next year and the NDA is likely to face combined opposition from an array of regional parties in Parliament.
Until Wednesday, the Congress seemed isolated as even the Left looked inclined to ditch it in its opposition to the Constitution Amendment Bill for rolling out the goods and services tax.
The isolation forced senior Congress leaders to re-visit their stance on the so-called GST bill and tone down their rhetoric against capping the GST rate in the Constitution bill only.
Its difficult to predict whether the partys victory in Arunachal will mean a return to intransigence on this issue.
If regional parties rally around the Congress on the misuse of Article 356 by the NDA and their coordination goes beyond this issue, it might jeopardise the governments agenda in the monsoon session.
Politically, the Congress stands to gain from Wednesdays verdict in poll-bound Manipur where dissident MLAs were said to be in touch with the BJP to topple the Okram Ibobi Singh government.
Himachal Pradesh CM Virbhadra Singh has been accusing the BJP of trying to destabilise his government.
The two Congress CMs may now feel secure with the latest judicial verdict likely to check what the opposition party believes is the BJPs tendency to further its Congress-Mukt Bharat agenda.
At the July 16 meeting of the Inter-State Council, the Centre wants to discuss Centre-state relations in the context of now-forgotten MM Punchhi Commission report.
The commission made many several recommendations that empowers the Centre to play an overarching role in matters falling under the domain of states.
One of the recommendations was that governors should have a fixed tenure and the chief ministers should also have a say in their appointment. After the Arunachal verdict, the NDA government might not be inclined to push this agenda.
After the court verdict against the Centre on Presidents Rule in Uttarakhand last May, the BJP sought to counter the Congress, citing its track record.
Article 356 has been invoked more than 120 times since Independence, mostly by Congress governments. During Indira Gandhis prime ministership, this provision was used 50 times. After the latest rap by the judiciary, even this line of argument by the BJP might not convince many.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi convened the 11th meeting of the Inter State Council on July 16 after a gap of 10 years. One of the key agendas of this meeting is the Centres plan to create a database of NGOs to keep a record of their area of work and members.
Coming on the heels of its earlier crackdowns on NGOs, the idea of a database has got the civil society worried and angry, but not many are keen to speak on record against it.
There are several reasons for them to be anxious. Heres a quick checklist the governments past attacks on NGOs, especially those that work in the human rights space.
First, it was Greenpeace. Then it was Teesta Setalvads Citizens for Justice and Peace and Sabrang Trust. Last month, the government suspended the foreign contribution registration of Lawyers Collective.
Then on July 1, even as it cast its vote in favour of a UN Human Rights Council resolution urging states to give space for the growth of civil society, India said it will not abide by the clauses that call for the restriction of State control of NGO funding and urge countries to submit a voluntary annual report on implementing measures.
Read: Narendra Modi revives UPA-era report on Centre-state relations
The new database plan is not a stand alone one and must be read together with two other recent decisions:
First, the amendment of the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Rules, 2015. The new rules require all Foreign Contribution (regulation) Act, 2010 (FCRA), services and transactions to be made online. The NGOs now need to file their annual returns online. The annual returns must be placed quarterly on the NGOs website or the FCRA website maintained by the home ministry.
Second, according to the new rules released by the department of personnel and training, all foreign and domestic-funded NGOs receiving more than Rs 1 crore as government grant and donations above Rs 10 lakh from abroad will be under the ambit of the lokpal. Under the new rules, office bearers of such NGOs will be treated as public servants and charged under the anti-corruption law in case of financial irregularities.
Read: Coming soon: Big Brother to watch over NGOs, civil society groups worried
It is worrisome that the Lokpal Act and the recent notification of the DoPT relating to the monetary limit of government funding for societies, trusts, associations and LLPs to bring them under the jurisdiction of the Lokpal for purpose of corruption does not include private companies registered under the Companies Act 2013, said Venkatesh Nayak, Programme Coordinator, Access to Information Programme, Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative told a national newspaper recently.
Under the NDA government, NGOs who work in the rights space and have criticized the government have suffered greatly. The ones involved in service delivery have not been touched since the government uses them for several of its mega plans, a civil society activist told me recently. The new laws are like a pincer attack on the first category.
While no one is against weeding out fraud NGOs, the real fear is that these laws would be used to clamp down on dissent.
Read: NGOs: An extension of the government, not an adversary
ISRAELS NEW NGO LAW
On July 11, Israel, a great friend of India, approved the contentious NGO Law. The law requires NGOs receiving more than half of their funding from foreign governments to note that in reports to the registrar of nonprofit associations and in all official publications.
The Israeli government defended the law, saying it would actually increase transparency and strengthen Israels democracy.
Critics say the legislation will target about 24 leftwing groups that campaign for Palestinian rights while excluding rightwing pro-settlement NGOs, who will not be required to reveal their often opaque sources of foreign funding.
The only thing transparent about this law is its true purpose: to intimidate and silence the civic sphere and those advocating for an end to the occupation in particular, The New Israel Funds chief executive Daniel Sokatch told Washington Post.
In India, the reaction of the civil society on the new reporting architecture is not much different.
@kumkumdasgupta
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Bhopal-based metal band Elemental India won the G-Shock Wacken Metal Battle 2016 at Bangalore Open Air (BOA) -- one of the countrys biggest metal music festival.
The band won a cash prize of Rs 1 lakh and the opportunity to represent India at the worlds biggest metal music festival, Germany Open Air in Wacken, Germany next month.
The event saw performances by some of the top international metal bands. The Polish band Vader, Canadian band Skull Fist and Egyptian band Nader Sadek.
The four-piece band Elemental India, said in a statement, G-Shock Wacken Metal Battle is one of the best platforms to perform for any metal band. The competition was tough and intense and winning such an honorable feat is a feeling of great prestige for all of us.
The Wacken Metal Battle competed in eight cities across the nations including Guwahati, Kolkata, Bangalore, Mumbai, Pune and Hyderabad.
The bands, which were shortlisted for finale including Elemental India, were Godia, Gaias Throne, Corpulent Deformity, Vidyut, Jammers Graveyard, Rectified Spirit, and Godless.
India has a growing metal music fan base, and internationally acclaimed heavy metal bands are looking towards the country as a wonderful destination to perform. By this association, we were looking to leverage the synergy between the brand and the audience and we did achieve that while promoting the metal culture of the country on a global platform, Sachin Sharma, assistant general manager, Marketing Casio India said.
A flood alert has been issued in many villages of two border districts of Karnataka after excess rain water was released from Maharashtra into the Krishna river that flows through the state as downstream, an official said on Wednesday.
People living in villages on the banks of Krishna and low-lying areas in Bagalkot and Belagavi districts have been put on alert after Maharashtra released excess water into the river following heavy rains in its catchment areas, the official from the state natural disaster monitoring centre said.
Bagalkot deputy commissioner PA Meghannavar advised people in Jamkhandi and Bilagi taluks of the district to move to safer places from the river banks to avoid being affected in the event of flooding.
As 1.7 lakh cusecs of water has been released from Koyna Dam in Satara district in the neighbouing state into the river, measures are being taken to prevent any untoward incident if more water is released, Meghannavar said in a statement from Bagalkot.
As the fourth biggest river (1,300 km) in terms of water inflows and river basin area in the country, Krishna originates in the rich biodiversity hotspot Western Ghats near Mahabaleshwar in Maharashtra and passes through Karnataka, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, flowing out into the Bay of Bengal.
It is also a major source of irrigation in the four southern states.
Residents in villages along the river course at Chikkodi and Raibag in Belagavi district have been advised to move away from the banks to safer places, as heavy rains in the region can cause flash floods due to raising water level in the tributaries, the official pointed out.
Bridges across the river and its tributaries in low-lying areas are overflowing with rain water, disrupting vehicular traffic in the districts.
Though heavy rains receded in coastal and south interior areas of the state since Tuesday, moderate to light rains are likely to occur in north interior parts of the state during the next 24 hours, while one or two spells of rain have been forecast for Bengaluru and its neighbourhood, with strong surface winds under cloudy sky.
Chikkodi recorded 11 cm rainfall, followed by 7 cm each in Kadra in Uttara Kannada district and Kudachi in Belagavi district.
Whether it is at film sets or while keeping their multiple professional commitments, Bollywood celebrities spend a considerable amount of time in their vanity vans. So, it is natural for them to want to style this second home to suit their personalities and match their requirements.
Last year, Alia Bhatt gave us a glimpse of her quirky and colourful van, when she posted a couple of images on Instagram. Now, her cousin, Emraan Hashmi, is set to follow suit. The actor will get his vanity van restyled, and has hired an American interior designer for the job.
Emraan Hashmi is looking to get his van styled in a unique way. (Aalok Soni/ HT Photo )
Read: I know that people will be shocked, says Emraan Hashmi on Azhar
A source close to the actor says, Last month, Emraan and his family went on a holiday to California, USA. Thats when he met an American designer. He liked his work and decided to hire him to redo his vanity van.
The source adds that the actor is looking to get his van styled in a unique way. For his van, Emraan wants a look that is a mix of Indian and western influences. Currently, he is choosing what he requires for the vans styling. He is taking a keen interest in the designing and is actively involved in every part of the process, the source says.
Emraan remained unavailable for a comment, but his spokesperson confirmed the news.
Read: Who is my mommy, asks Emraan Hashmis son
Actor Sunny Deol is a busy man. Hes not just occupied with his work, but also with his son, Karan Deols Bollywood debut. Im excited for Karans debut and thats what I am working on right now. It is my priority, says Deol, who will produce his sons launch vehicle.
Deols sons Karan and Rajvir have both expressed their desire to become actors and the proud father says he was not surprised when he got to know of their ambition.
Obviously, it was not all sudden that Karan wanted to be an actor. Both our sons want to be actors. There is no harm in it and I believe whatever an individual wants to do, he should be encouraged in that direction. If its their dream then they should try it but not feel any fear, says Sunny, whose directorial Ghayal Once Again released earlier this year.
Sunny Deols son Karan Deol will make his Bollywood debut in his father s home production
The 58-year-old actor made his Bollywood debut with the 1983 film Betaab and went on to give hits such as Darr(1993), ChaalBaaz (1989) , Ghayal(1990) and Gadar: Ek Prem Katha(2001). He accepts that his sons will have to face more competition in the film industry than he did.
Read: I might direct my son, says Sunny Deol
When we came in the industry, there were no teenagers but now its only teenagers who are encouraged to become actors. The competition is always going to be there but you cant shy away from doing what you wish to do because of the fear, he says.
Read: We need a censor board otherwise people might misuse freedom: Sunny Deol
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Kolkata has always had a rich history. Now the culture capital, it was once the hub of opium trade. The British East India Company bought opium from farmers in India and auctioned it in Kolkata, then Calcutta. From there much of it was smuggled to China. Its here that Simon Choa-Johnston got the idea for his first novel.
Whenever, he asked his mother about his ancestors beyond his grandparents, he got a sternly reply, Your great grandfather was a Jewish opium merchant from Calcutta named Emanuel Belilios. Its a completely different thing that his great-grandfather, Emanuel Raphael Belilios was the foremost opium merchant in Hong Kong in the 1880s. In the 2000s, when his mother was in her mid-90s and had moved into a seniors residence, he discovered among her papers, letters, diary entries, photos and other papers about her life that he had never known about. There was, however, nothing about Emanuel. But he found bits of her story that instilled a need to know more. And his quest began.
This led to the novel, The House of Wives. In the novel, two women compete for the affections of their opium merchant husband in colonial Hong Kong. Needless to say, that a major portion of the book is inspired from the life of his great grandfather, who had two wives Semah from Kolkata and later Pearl, a Chinese woman from Hong Kong. Simon, a playwright and a director and who is currently the Artistic Director Emeritus of the Gateway Theatre in Richmond, had to travel to India, China and Hong Kong several times to trace his family history. He speaks to HT on the book and his trips to Kolkata.
Read: Latest updates and book reviews
How much of this book is your familys history and how much is fiction?
It is a work of fiction inspired by true events. Births, marriages, deaths and social events printed in newspapers of the day, prices of opium and real estate purchases as well as known historical events are accurate as far as I know. Whats inside the characters heads, their hearts and private desires are the work of an over-active imagination.
How long did it take to research for the book? Was your family supportive of this endeavour?
My serious research diving into museum archives and public records took about 10 years. Remember, I had a full time job as executive director of the Gateway Theatre, a major theatre company on the West Coast. I did not tell my family that I was working on a novel firstly because I dont talk about my current projects. I have a theory that if youre talking about it youre not doing it. For me, I need silence, focus and a space free of distractions. But when a publication date was set, I did announce it to my family all of whom were excited and impatient to get their hands on my book to see if they were in it.
An opium factory in Patna in the 1860s
Have you visited India, specifically Kolkata, for this book?
I visited twice. Once in 2010 and again in 2013. The first time on a special research grant awarded by the Canada Council for the Arts to verify my research into the Belilios family and the Jewish presence in Kolkata. Rabbi Musleah, who was, I believe one of the last Rabbis in Kokata wrote a comprehensive reference on all the Jewish families in the city. His work was seminal in my search for family roots. On the second visit, I was fortunate to have Rig David, executive director of the Cathedral Relief Services (St. Pauls) as my local facilitator. Rig recruited a small team of local history enthusiasts and together we toured Howrah and found Belilios Road, the old guard house, the remains of the stable and the footprint of the old mansion, all of which are located in Belilios Park near the Howrah railway station. Portraits of the family also exist and the Jewish cemetery was a great help in verifying dates of distant relatives.
Kolkata once had a thriving Jewish community. But now a handful of them remain. Also a large part of the history about Calcuttas Jews has not been document. How did you find out Emanuels details in Kolkata?
Fortunately, my interest began with the birth of the internet. Thats where I found Rabbi Musleahs tome. With that, plus archival records at the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank in Hong Kong as well as museum records at the HK Museum, I could trace the familys movements back to the 1700s in Venice, then to Iraq, eventually to Mumbai and finally to Kolkata where the Sephardic family of Baghdadi Jews finally settled. Emanuel Raphael Belilios was born in Kolkata, which at the time was the capital of British India. I visited Venice twice in search of material. For obvious reasons I have not been to Iraq. Ive also returned to my birth city of Hong Kong several times to trace Emanuels considerable presence there. Finally, I went to London to see his final resting place at Golders Green cemetery. His wife, Semah (also born in Kolkata to the Ezra family), remained in Hong Kong and is interred at the Jewish Cemetery there.
During his research, Simon visited a school in Howrah, Kolkata, which still bears the Belilios family name
You are a playwright, did that make penning this novel easy?
Its like driving a car and driving a boat. There are both conveyances but used for different purposes and require different skills.
How long did you take to write the book?
In a way, Ive been writing this all my life.
Whats next for you?
Ive just come off a six-week book tour and a pile of interviews so Im taking the summer off and will spend time at the cottage with my family.
Amitav Ghoshs Ibis trilogy also talks about the opium trade. Have you read it?
Im a big fan of the great Ghosh and I have devoured all his work. His magnificent trilogy ends where my story begins. I am indebted to the master storyteller for paving the way for neophyte authors like me.
Read: Nobody creates a narrative around climate change: Amitav Ghosh
Though a man is the protagonist, its the women who fuel your plot. Comment.
I find women infinitely more interesting and complex than the men in their lives. While Emanuel sets things in motion, it is the women who must deal with the consequences.
Around 10 lakh bank employees will go on a nationwide strike on July 29 called by the United Forum of Bank Unions (UFBU) against the central governments retrograde banking reforms.
After the Delhi high court refused on Monday to allow the bank strike on July 12 and 13, the unions deferred the strike.
At the call of UFBU consisting of nine trade unions of bank employees and bank officers ( AIBEA , AIBOC, NCBE, AIBOA, BEFI, INBEF, INBOC, NOBW, NOBO), 10 lakh bank employees and officers working in public sector banks, old private banks, regional rural banks, foreign banks and co-operative banks will observe one day protest strike on 29th July to oppose anti-people banking reform policies of the central government, said CH Venkatachalam, union leader and general secretary of All India Bank Employees Association (AIBEA).
A notice for the strike has been served on the Indian Banks Association by the UFBU.
Previously, the unions had protested on May 20 after the government approved merger of five State Bank of India subsidiaries with the parent SBI.
Fund houses have not been enthusiastic in launching new schemes despite record inflows into mutual funds (MF) this year.
As on June 30, the total assets under management in equity funds, or simply put, the total investments made by such funds, totaled Rs 3.82 lakh crore, compared to Rs 3.33 lakh crore last year. However, between January and June this year, only nine pure equity mutual fund schemes were launched, compared with 37 schemes launched in the same period last year. For the full year 2015, about 60 equity schemes were launched.
This has come as a surprise as equities have become the most popular asset of choice, with prospects of other traditional options like real estate and gold dimming due to very low returns. Typically, in times of bullish trends, equity houses introduce new MF schemes to take advantage of the rising interest in capital market and earn more.
According to MF industry veterans, falling upfront commissions, or the fees earned in promoting and pushing MF schemes, is a major reason for the lack of new products. The regulator capping distributor commissions has affected close-ended funds. Earlier for such funds, commissions were paid up-front, which now, cant be paid and that has affected the plans, said Nimesh Shah, MD and CEO of ICICI Prudential AMC, the countrys largest fund house.
Upfront commission is the payment that fund houses pay distributors to sell mutual fund schemes. Earlier, distributors were paid 3-4% of the investment amount as first year commission; in some funds it was as high as 6%. So, if a person would have invested Rs 1,000 in a mutual fund, Rs 30-60 would have gone to the distributor as the first year commission itself.
Since the restrictions on the upfront commissions there is a lot less incentive in terms of distributors and AMCs ability to push distributors to promote new fund launches, says Srikanth Meenakshi, co-founder of fundsindia.com.
Market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India toughened norms for mutual fund houses and had asked them to reduce upfront commissions last year. The industry body Association of Mutual Funds of India (AMFI) has since capped it at 1%. The regulator has also told fund houses to merge similar nature schemes, to make investment decisions easier for investors. The rate of approvals has also reduced, unless a new scheme is significantly different from what a fund house already has. So, if a fund house already has a large-cap equity fund, it may not get approval for a new scheme, which aims to invest in similar basket of stocks.
The scope for launching a new fund, which will not clash with an existing fund, is less. Sebi doesnt give approval for schemes if it is overlapping with existing schemes, said A Balasubramanian, CEO of Birla Sun Life AMC. So, to cash in on the retail investor demand, fund houses are now increasing their marketing on existing schemes which had strong returns in the past.
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IDFC Bank, Indias youngest bank, grabbed attention when on July 12 it announced the acquisition of microfinance firm Grama Vidiyal. In May, it had similarly surprised everybody, including the RBI, when along with partners Telenor and industrialist Dilip Shanghvi, IDFC Bank withdrew from setting up a Payments Bank. The move reportedly irked RBI which had toyed with the idea of levying penalties in such cases, to discourage future drop-outs. MD and CEO Rajiv Lall clears the air in an interview with Beena Parmar.
What was the reason for opting out of Payments Bank?
You see, Telenor, one of our significant partners is re-evaluating its strategic footprint in India. So that was one factor. Likewise, (our other partner, industrialist) Dilip Shanghvi was also reviewing the competitive landscape that a Payments Bank would unveil in India, re-visiting his earlier plan for such a bank. We had been planning to put together a business plan in the light of what we learnt about the competition as it began to unfold. I would say a combination of all these reasons led us to not pursue.
Given that backdrop, are you open to more partnerships?
We are open to any kind of partnerships including for a Payment Bank. Never say never! For a new bank, it is all about partnering in intelligent ways with founders and business leaders, like Grama Vidiyals Mr Devaraj (founder S Devaraj), or in a transnational way like partnering banking correspondents or other start-ups or fintech companies. We are very much looking forward to it.
What was the reason for the acquisition of Grama Vidiyal?
The customer segment (for the MFI) is growing very rapidly, the complexity is very low and its a very clean book, compared to lot of other bank books. The people, management, their vision and alignment with the vision, is good. So also is the quality of the customer and assets base.
IDFC Bank is Indias youngest bank. What are the challenges that you are facing after setting up the bank?
It is all in the execution. You have to build from scratch and now it is building on that momentum. We were on a consolidation mode and are now going across all customer segments - business banking, corporate, diversification into new suite of products, different customer segments in retail, there are a complete set of services such as secured, unsecured, wealth management, trade and finance that are functioning now. To top it, there are also four channels which we are working on salaried or professionals, digital, banking correspondents and branch.
What is the status on the IDFC holding structure? Has IDFC Bank approached RBI to dissolve the structure?
We are exploring (that option). The latest banking guidelines say the non-operative finance holding company, is not required as it is an unnecessary layer which only compounds the problem of the holding company discount. So we want clarity on thatthat the same set of rules are applicable to all banks, including the new lot. Hope something emerges so that it can reduce, if not eliminate the problem of the holding company discount in the coming months. The problem is that you have a parent company which is listed, which owns the bank which is also listed, and in between there is another holding company that RBI wants. So if you are a shareholder of the parent, you are two levels removed from the bank so people are not getting value. So each time a dividend is given, you lose in taxation, there is leakage and you lose value by the time you get to the holding company. It should be constructive for the share price of the parent company.
What are your expectations from the new governor of RBI?
(Whoever comes in) will have to deal with the asset quality problem. They have to make sure that the new institutional arrangement of MPC (monetary policy committee) framework is operationalized. That the responsibilities such as debt management, office etc, are sorted out. Then the new governor will have to worry about, rather focus on the biggest challenge that even we as IDFC Bank are trying to address, which is, how do you nurture, motivate the formal banking system to serve a much deeper and wider base of customers amid technology and competition.
What is retail growth plan for IDFC Bank?
The retail book today must be Rs 3,000 crore. Adding Rs 1,500 crore (through the acquisition of Grama Vidiyal) it will be Rs 4,500 crore. Our goal is to reach Rs 14,000 crore by March 2017 Total retail book would be a fifth of our total book at about Rs 4,000 crore and this would then be increase to 25% of the total book size.
In terms of geographical presence?
We are pretty much across the nation now. We are in all metros, Madhya Pradesh, northern Karanataka, Andhra Pradesh, Meghalaya, Tripura and with this (Grama Vidiyal) we will be in the hinterlands of Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka, Maharashtra. The gaps will be the northern plains of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Haryana, Punjab.
Do you see more inorganic growth?
Possible. But making an inorganic acquisition is not easy as it is as much a factor of luck as it is of focus. So if something presents itself and it makes sense, we will go ahead with it. But we will continue the organic growth.
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The income tax department will start settling pending tax disputes starting September.
Over 3,00,000 tax disputes are pending at various benches of the Income Tax Appellate Tribunals (ITAT) across India, according to a finance ministry official.
To this end, the revenue department has asked all the Commissioners of Income Tax -Appeals (first-level appellate authority), to start sending notices to people and entities for resolving their cases under the one-time dispute settlement window.
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in his budget speech had introduced the Income Tax Dispute Resolution Scheme, 2016 -- starting from June 1 to December 31.
Seen as a continuation of its tax-friendly approach and to help the tax department to reduce the burden of pending disputes, sources said over 300 commissioners have been asked to send notices asking people to come forward.
As per the contours of the scheme, disputes involving tax claims below Rs10 lakh, the settlement can be done by just paying the basic tax arrears without penalty and interest. For those over Rs 10 lakh, 25% of the minimum penalty will also have to be paid apart from tax and interest to settle the dispute.
This settlement window was envisaged keeping Cairn and Vodafone retrospective tax disputes in mind. While, these two companies are unlikely to use the scheme, a slew of other entities and individual tax payers have already approached the tax department with queries under this scheme, added sources.
In addition to the individual notices, the tax department will soon come out with a set of FAQs, trying to answer these queries after which it expects people to start filing their cases for settlement, sources said.
Till now, the response to this window has been lukewarm, but the finance ministry believes it will pick up pace once people start receiving notices, and the tax department issues FAQs.
The tax department has also planned to publicise the benefits of this window on the similar lines of the domestic black money disclosure window.
The hectic speculation around the appointment of the new RBI governor is heating up. Every meeting between finance minister Arun Jaitley and Prime Minister Narendra Modi is being tracked meticulously as the government keeps everyone guessing.
Top sources in the finance ministry said, The finance ministry meets the prime minister at least twice every day. So it is difficult to guess if the new governors appointment is being discussed.
The source quoted above said that the race to the Mint Road is now down to two: Subir Gokarn and Arvind Panagariya. The announcement of the new Reserve Bank of India (RBI) governor will be made anytime now, he added.
The announcement is expected anytime...it is important to end the uncertainty, the source told Hindustan Times.
Panagariya was an economics professor at the Columbia University when he was appointed as the head of the NITI Aayog. He is an admirer of the Gujarat model of development, and his views on the economy are considered similar to that of Modis.
Gokarn is currently with Brookings India. He was the executive director on the board of the International Monetary Fund.
Bankers are hoping that the top central bank job goes to Panagariya. He has been pitching for lower interest rate and he has been pro-growth, it should be good if he takes charge, a top executive at ICICI Bank said.
The decision on appointment of the RBI governor is taken by the prime minister in consultation with the finance minister. As they scout for a new head for the RBI, Narendra Modi has to balance the demands and choices thrown up by his party along with the economic needs of the hour.
Speculation around the RBI governor Raghuram Rajans successor began since his announcement to exit. Names including State Bank of India chairman Arundhati Bhattacharya, RBI deputy governor Urjit Patel, former deputy governors Gokarn and Rakesh Mohan, former economic advisor Kaushik Basu, tax expert Parthasarathi Shome, chief economic adviser Arvind Subramanian and economic affairs secretary Shaktikanta Das, have been doing the rounds.
The preference is for someone who has international acceptance as an economist and has served the Indian government in some capacity, sources told HT.
RBI governor Raghuram Rajan recently announced his decision to return to academia when his term ends on September 4.
For a long time, September and October were the best months for buying electronics, since companies would offer big discounts ahead of the festive season. Then came e-commerce companies with big discounts. You could save money on almost everything you purchased online holidays, clothes, toys, food, books, furniture, dinners sets all throughout the year.
But lately, thanks to the government cracking down on such deep discounts through its new FDI policy and e-tailers own cash crunch, discounts have come down 35% to 40% less than in 2015. So, enter cash-backs. Companies, including CashKaro, CouponDunia, GoPaisa and LafaLafa, have become doorways to hundreds of e-commerce sites. When you go through any of the cashback portals and make a purchase with an e-tailer, it gives some commission or referral fee to the cashback portal. A part of this commission is given to buyers as cashback.
We are a marketing channel for e-commerce companies, like a Google that helps them drive sales. The only difference is that we make money only if a transaction is completed , said Swati Bhargava, founder of CashKaro, Indias largest cashback company with over 1,000 e-tailers as its partners.
The average saving from cashback is around 5%2% for electronics to 25% for apparel. You can also make money by referring the cashback site to your friend or family.
Read | How online shopping is changing rural India
Amal Augustine, 21, from Kerala has referred CashKaro to 1,549 people and earned 88,827 so far. The cash can be redeemed against gift vouchers from cashback sites, or by transferring it to a mobile wallet, paying bills and doing re charges, or transferring it to the back account.
It is estimated that in 2016, 3,000 crore of cashback would be processed. If cash-banks offered by banks, credit cards and payment gateways are thrown in, the market will be more than double of that.
This has led coupon company CouponDunia to pivot into a cashback firm. As e-commerce grows, cashback will also grow. We are driving 1,500 crore worth of sales for e-tailers, said Sameer Parwani, founder and CEO, CouponDunia.
They help us acquire new users, said Nitin Agarwal, assistant vice-president, marketing, ShopClues, which has partnered with a number of cashback companies.
Ankita Jain, co-founder of GoPaisa, a bootstrapped cashback company, however, thinks differently. The growth has been slow this year for startups, but still we are adding around 6,000 new users every day and targeting 650 crore of sales for our partner brands by the end of 2016, she said.
Paytm and Snapdeal-owned FreeCharge have taken cash-backs offline as well. If the customer is new to the merchant, then the merchant funds it. It is like a marketing programme which HUL or any other company runs, said Govind Rajan, CEO of FreeCharge.
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The new Reserve Bank of India (RBI) governor will be named soon, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi back from his four-nation tour of South Africa, a top government source said, adding, the race has narrowed down to two candidates -- Subir Gokarn and Arvind Panagariya.
The announcement is expected in the next couple of days it is important to end the uncertainty, a senior finance ministry official told HT.
The successor has already been decided, it is the announcement that has to be made. And it will be done before Parliament begins, the government source quoted above said.
The choice for the RBI governors post has been the subject of intense debate ever since Raghuram Rajan announced his intention not to seek a second term after September. A number of names have been doing the rounds, including SBI chairman Arundhati Bhattacharya, RBI deputy governor Urjit Patel, former deputy governors Subir Gokarn and Rakesh Mohan, former economic adviser Kaushik Basu, tax expert Parthasarathi Shome, chief economic adviser Arvind Subramanian and economic affairs secretary Shaktikanta Das.
The latest to join the list is NITI Aayog vice-chairman Arvind Panagariya. An economics professor at the Columbia University, Panagariya is an admirer of the Gujarat model of development, and his views on the economy are considered similar to that of Modis.
The preference is for someone who has global acceptance as an economist and has served the Indian government in some capacity, sources told HT.
Gokarn is currently the executive director on the board of the International Monetary Fund. He represents India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Bhutan.
In 2010, Chinese foreign minister Yang Jiechi famously declared, as he glowered at his Singapore counterpart, that China is a big country and other countries are small countries, and thats just a fact . But small countries can draw upon weapons of the weak. On Tuesday, July 12, as part of a case brought by the Philippines, the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague issued a remarkable, wide-ranging, and stinging rebuke of Chinas exercise of power in the South China Sea. The implications for Asia s maritime disputes, US-China tensions, and India s approach to the region could be serious and far-reaching.
The South China Sea is not a new dispute. In the 1980s, for instance, Vietnam lost around 60 sailors in a clash with China. But in the six years after Yangs blunt observation, China established a series of new and significant facts on the groundor, more precisely, in the water. It constructed artificial islands at break neck speed, placed missile batteries and radar facilities on others, and declared a provocative Air Defence Identification Zone( AD I Z) in the nearby East China Sea. American warships responded by pointedly ignoring Chinese claims and sailing right up to Chinese-claimed areas, in so-called freedom of navigation operations. In June 2012, a standoff between the Philippines and China culminated in Chinese forces taking control of Scarborough Shoal in the north part of the South China Sea. The next year, Manila brought abroad case against China under the United Nations Convention on the law of the Sea (UNCLOS), to which both are signatories. China angrily rejected its jurisdiction, but it was taken up regardless by a tribunal of the Permanent Court of Arbitration.
That tribunals ruling is a landmark. It found against China on every important point, but on three in particular. First, it shattered the validity of China s in famous nine-dash line, according to which Beijing claims 85% of the South China Sea. There was no evidence that China had historically exercised exclusive control over the waters or their resources, noted the judges, and the line was contrary to the Convention and without lawful effect . This in itself is a serious blow to decades of Chinese diplomacy, given that the line first appeared (with eleven dashes) in 1947. Second, the tribunal says that key features claimed by China are not naturally habitable, and therefore can not generate a 200 nautical mile Exclusive Economic Zone(EEZ ). This de-legitimises many of Chinas artificial islands in those supposed EEZs, under cuts its demands as to what foreign warships can and can t do in those areas, and erodes its claim to natural resources discovered in the future. Third, the tribunal reprimands not just China s claims, but also its behaviour. China violated the Philippines rights by interfering with fishing and oil exploration, it created a serious risk of collision in doing so, knowingly causedirreparable harm to the marine environment, and has aggravated the dispute by building new islands.
China had declared it would ignore the verdict, and so it has. The state news agency Xinhua tweeted abuse at the law-abusing tribunal and its ill-founded award. It is unenforceable, short of starting a war with Asias largest power. There will be no sanctions. But there are important consequences. Xi Jinping has staked national pride in the South China Sea, and will face domestic pressure to respond to a legal humiliation. This could take the form of vitriolic, if harmless, rhetoric. But it could be something more threatening, such as fresh military deployments or even direct confrontation with the Philippines. The United States is right to have pre-emptively deployed a second aircraft carrier in the region. The ruling, and its categorical rejection by Beijing, will also reinforce the widespread sense, in the West and within Asia, that China is taking a cavalier approach to international law and, more broadly, the nebulous idea of the rules-based international order. Whether these perceptions are right or wrong and there is surely some irony in the fact the US has not ratified UN C LOS, the very convention at stake here it will contribute to the geopolitical balancing against China that we see amongst Asias largest powers, notably Japan, Vietnam, and India.
India has become increasingly engaged on the South China Sea over the past two years, sending four warships there for a months-long deployment in May. The award comes at an awkward moment in Sino-Indian relations, in the aftermath of Indias foiled bid for membership of the Nuclear Suppliers Group. Beijings rejectionism also stands in obvious contrast to New Delhi s dignified acceptance of its defeat to Bangladesh at the hands of the same Permanent Court of Arbitration in 2014. The distinction, and what it says about the nature of each countrys rise, will not be lost on smaller Asian countries balancing their relations with India and China. India will also have to consider the implications for its near seas. Not only is Chinas uncompromising approach a possible indication of its broader behaviour, but intensified US-China competition in the western Pacific, far from tying down Chinese forces, may well induce China to redouble its efforts to protect sea lanes in the Indian Ocean.
Shashank Joshi is senior research fellow, Royal United Services Institute. The views expressed are personal.
NEW DELHI: A number of prospective IIT students have written to HRD minister Prakash Javadekar and the prime ministers office regarding the non-availability of the promised interest-free loans meant for offsetting the steep fee hike ordered in April.
The HRD ministry, which was then under Smriti Irani, had approved a proposal for increasing IIT fees from Rs 90,000 to Rs 2 lakh. Soon afterwards, it issued a press release stating that tuition fees will be waived for all students belonging to the scheduled caste, scheduled tribe and differently-abled categories, besides those from families with an annual income of less than Rs 1 lakh.
Apart from this, it stated that students from families with an annual income of less than Rs 5 lakh would benefit from a waiver of two-thirds of the tuition fee amount. It also said everybodyregardless of caste or classwould have access to interest-free loans under the Vidya Lakshmi Scheme for the total amount. However, when students seeking admission to the prestigious institutes enquired about the interest-free loans, they were told that the offer was not available to those with a family income of over Rs 5 lakh per annum. This distressed a number of students from middle-class families.
The HRD ministry is now flooded with letters and emails about the fee hike likely to be imposed on students recently enrolled in the IITs as well as those planning to seek admission in the future. General category studentswho are the worst hit have asked the ministry to provide them with the promised interest-free loans as well. Sources said even the IIT-Kharagpur administration has written to the ministry, asking it to issue a clarification regarding the fee structure.
It was learnt that the ministry now plans to earmark special funds to the tune of Rs 150 crore, which will take care of loan interest concerns. However, the move is yet to be approved.
The Opposition had raised the issue too, but backtracked after the HRD ministry said there was a provision for interest-free student loans. The ministry also pointed out that the government spends an average of Rs 6 lakh on each IIT student per year. The National Institutes of Technology (NIT) also raised its fee from Rs 70,000 to Rs 1.25 lakh recently, but they did not include the interest-free loan component in the order.
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NEW DELHI: Prominent Dalit leader and junior social justice minister Ramdas Athawale on Tuesday blamed inter-caste love and marriages for growing atrocities on Dalits, and reiterated his demand for weapons to the lower castes for protection.
People from the upper castes cannot accept somebody from their community marrying a Dalit, said the president of the Republican Party of India (Athawale faction), a BJP ally, in an interview to Hindustan Times.
Atyachar ka mool karan hain inter-caste love aur marriage Yeh unko accha nahin lagta hain. Iske liye atyachar badh raha hain jyada. (The main reason for atrocities is inter-caste love and marriage. This is not liked by the upper caste. This has led to growing incidents of atrocity), he said.
The Rajya Sabha parliamentarian, who was made the minister of state for social justice and empowerment when Prime Minister Narendra Modi recomposed his team on July 5, reaffirmed his pitch to allow Dalits to keep weapons for their defence.
Maine bola tha self-protection ke liye hona chahiye. Theek baat hain. Hamare mantralay ko vichaar karna chahiye lekin yeh home department ka vishay hain. (I have said it should be for self-protection. This is right. My ministry should think about it. But it is an issue for the home department), he said.
Athawale had said in January, after Hyderabad University Dalit student Rohith Vemulas suicide, that the government should give Dalits licences to keep firearms for protection.
To make his point, he cited Sikh customs .The Sikhs have permission to keep arms. People are afraid to get into a fight (with Sikhs).
At the same time, he underscored his ministrys responsibility to bring communities together.
Its the home departments mandate to act against atrocities. It is our ministry s responsibility to see that atrocities do not occur, and suggest ways and means to protect them. I will speak to my senior minister (Thawar Chand Gehlot) and secretary to see what can bed one , he said. The 56-year-old Dalit leader from Maharashtra also batted for the longstanding demand for reservation in private-sector jobs. As various sectors are getting privatised, government jobs are shrinking. That is why there should be no issue with providing quota in the private sector.
He said reservation will only strengthen social justice. Being a social justice minister, I will try to get it done. I will speak to the PM about it. Athawale also supported quotas within the reserved categories, saying the condition of those from the extremely backward classes is worse.
There should be a separate reservation for them. They should be given additional 19% reservation, he said. But he admitted this cannot be a long-term solution .We have to find a way to improve their lives.
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SRINAGAR: Violence continued in Kashmir for the fourth day on Tuesday as the toll climbed to 32, hospitals struggled with hundreds of injured and chief minister Mehbooba Mufti appealed to mothers to keep their children at home while promising judicious use of force. Among the dead was a student of Delhi University.
In the Capital, Prime Minister Narendra Modi called an emergency meeting to review the situation in the Valley, where violence after the killing of militant Burhan Wani by security forces refuses to die down. Government sources said the next two-three days would be crucial with intelligence agencies warning that Pakistan-backed groups may make trouble on Martyrs Day (Wednesday).
Making an appeal for calm, PM Modi expressed unhappiness at the media coverage that he said appeared to portray the dead Hizbul Mujahideen commander as a hero. He referred to over a dozen cases registered against Wani, the 21-year-old poster boy of modern-day militancy in Kashmir.
He has asked the people of J&K to maintain peace so the situation can normalise. He also expressed hope that no innocent person should face any kind of inconvenience or loss, minister of state in the prime ministers office Jitendra Singh said.
Later in the day, the Hizbul Mujahideen, in a statement to local media, announced Mehmood Ghaznavi as Wanis successor. Not much is known of the new commander, though some sources said it could be a code name.
In a video message her first public response to the violence Mehbooba lamented the loss of lives. A mother of two, she said she felt the pain of mothers who had lost their children, and appealed to them to keep the young away from the violence.
The Peoples Democratic Party chief, who heads an alliance government with the BJP, promised action against security personnel who used excessive force while adding that some people were taking advantage of the situation and adding to tensions.
She sought the help of religious leaders and civil society in restoring peace while expressing pride in the way Kashmiris had come to the help of stranded tourists and Amarnath yatris. Promising all help to the state, the PM reviewed the law and order situation in J&K and the implementation of a financial package for the state at the meeting attended by home minister Rajnath Singh, defence minister Manohar Parrikar and senior officials. He was briefed by foreign secretary S Jaishankar on Pakistans response to Wanis death.
Rajnath Singh postponed travel to the US for a security dialogue scheduled for next week, though a ministry official cited a busy Parliament schedule due to the monsoon session from July 18 as the reason. Ghulam Nabi Azad of the opposition Congress said it was terrible that the police had been let loose on the old and young in the state. Two more deaths saw the toll rise to 32, though the police maintained an official count of 23. Amir Latoo, a student of Delhi University, died late Monday of bullet injuries sustained earlier that day in south Kashmirs Zirpora while one person was killed when a mob set a police vehicle on fire in north Kashmirs Kralpora Kupwara area on Tuesday.
Divisional commissioner Asghar Samoon confirmed 1,365 injured but said 80% of them had minor wounds. HT found at least 110 patients with bullet injuries in Srinagars three major tertiary care hospitals.
There were also reports of a suspected militant attack on a police post in north Kashmirs Sopore, and attacks on police guard rooms in Traland Pulwama in the south. In Srinagar, CRPF and police personnel were targeted with a petrol bomb. There were no casualties in any of the incidents.
All 10 districts of Kashmir remained curfew-bound for the fourth day.
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NEW DELHI: Delhi transport minister Satyendar Jain on Tuesday hinted that the third phase of the odd-even car rationing scheme could be back in winters.
Pollution is usually low in monsoon, so whatever happen will happen in winters, said Jain at a press conference when asked about the return of the odd-even scheme.
The first and second editions of the road-rationing scheme were implemented in January and April this year. The aim of the scheme was to bring down rising pollution levels in the capital.
Jain, who recently took charge of the transport department, said a notification to impose a fine of Rs 2,000 on motorists obstructing the buses in their dedicated lanes will be issued by the end of July.
Jain also that the scrapping of Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) corridor is almost over and re-carpeting of the road will be taken up after monsoon.
Talking about the new cycle track to be built in South Delhi, the minister said the transport department recently gave presentation on the project to Unified Traffic and Transportation Infrastructure Planning & Engineering Centre and he hopes the project will get nod from all the agencies concerned.
FEVER CLINICS
Jain, who also handles health portfolio, announced setting up of 250 300 fever clinics in the mohalla clinics, dispensaries and hospitals to combat dengue this year.
Apart from counselling, the fever clinics will be equipped to perform ELISA test, an antibody test that confirms dengue fever, and keep people under observation if necessary. The fever clinics will become functional from September.
Fifty-five such clinics had been opened during the dengue outbreak last year.
There is no treatment for dengue and most of the cases can be managed at home. If, however, the doctor suspects that the patient is in a critical condition, he can be taken to the nearby hospital. Although, 90% of the patients who came to the fever clinics did not have dengue, the health minister said.
The minister also added that there will be no shortage of beds. We added temporary beds to ensure that there was no shortage last year during one of the worst dengue crisis, this year too we will ensure that there are adequate facilities, he said.
DDA HELPING BUILDERS
Jain said the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) was trying to favour the builder lobby by allowing only private developers to benefit from the urban development ministrys notification on changes in the transit-oriented development (TOD) policy.
Under the TOD policy, a floor area ratio (FAR) of 400 has been approved. This will enable high rises to come up in these areas and make for denser colonies. TOD colonies can come up in the influence zone of the Metro which extends to 500 metres on both sides of the corridor.
But Jain alleged the DDA had proposed to amend the Master Plan guidelines to limit the benefits of the policy to private builders.
NEW DELHI: Chief minister Arvind Kejriwal has asked Delhi MLAs to collect complaints of unscheduled power outages from people in their respective constituencies and forward them to the state government.
Power minister Satyendar Jain told reporters on Monday that complaints of outages lasting for more than one hour would mean penalty for the discoms.
The chief minister held a meeting with MLAs and officials of all three power distribution companies at the Delhi Secretariat here on Tuesday, to take stock of the power situation. We have asked the MLAs to submit complaints of power cuts lasting more than one hour in their respective areas, so that discoms could be penalised. Discoms will have to compensate consumers for long power cuts, Jain said.
The discoms told Kejriwal at the meeting that 250 transformers were required to entertain applications for new power connections and ensure uninterrupted power supply, especially in unauthorised colonies.
There were pending applications for new power connections across the unauthorised colonies in the city, which were not being considered due to lack of space for installation of new transformers, they said.
The discoms asked the government to provide land so that new transformers could be installed.
Out of 250 transformers, 20-25 electricity transformers will urgently be installed. All the MLAs have also been asked to find out land in their respective areas where new transformers could be set up, Jain said.
Earlier, in May, the AAP government announced that power distribution companies would compensate consumers for unscheduled outages extending up to two hours.
Penalties can go up to Rs 100 per hour.
If the licensee fails to pay compensation, the affected consumer(s) may approach the Ombudsman. In case the claim for compensation is upheld by the Ombudsman, the compensation shall be determined by the Ombudsman at the rate of Rs 5,000 or five times the compensation payable as per Schedule-III to these Regulations, whichever is higher, a senior power department official said.
The chief minister also said back then that power distribution companies would be made to compensate consumers for even an hours outage if they did not boost their supply network in the next six months.
He said there was a need to make discoms accountable for outages and that Delhiites would benefit from the privatisation of the power sector.
NEW DELHI: A domestic help who was sacked after he contracted tuberculosis and his friend have been arrested for murdering an elderly woman in south Delhis Kalkaji on Monday.
Harmeet Kaur, 71, was found dead in her flat on Monday morning. Cash and jewellery worth Rs 1 crore was also missing from the house.
Footage from a CCTV camera installed at a nearby house helped the police zero in on the accused Anil Kumar Sharma, the domestic help, and his friend Krishna in less than 15 hours after Kaur was murdered.
Both Sharma and Krishna are natives of Jharkhands Chatra and were staying in Delhi for the past few years. They were hiding at Sharmas relatives house in Jaipur.
The police claimed to have recovered the robbed cash and jewellery.
During questioning by the police, Sharma said that he was angry with his employers as they had allegedly sacked him around six months ago because he was suffering from tuberculosis (TB).
He told the police that his employers threw him out despite knowing that he was the sole bread earner for his family. He said they did not consider the fact that he needed money to buy medicines, said a police officer.
Sharma was also upset because he needed money for his sisters marriage, said the officer.
Deependra Pathak, joint commissioner of police (south-western range), said Sharma used to call up Kaur even after losing his job. As he had worked at the house for over a year, he knew where the family kept their valuables.
Sharma knew the places where the family members kept cash, jewellery, and other valuables. Before executing their plan, Sharma and Krishna went around the house for 3-4 days, said Pathak.
On Monday afternoon, Sharma sent Krishna to Kaurs house since he knew she would be alone. Sharma told Krishna to pose as a courier boy because he knew Kaur did not open the door to strangers, except for parcels.
When Kaur fell unconscious, Sharma took out the almirahs keys and stole the jewellery. They ransacked the house and fled with Rs 2.30 lakh in cash, jewellery worth over Rs 1 crore and 10 wrist watches. The door got automatically locked when they left the house.
Kaurs new help, Lalit, was taking a bath in his quarter on the top floor when the incident took place. When his knocks went unanswered, he called up Kaurs daughter-in-law. When she opened the door, Kaur was lying dead on the floor.
Initially, the police suspected Lalit but their attention turned towards Sharma when the CCTV footage showed him outside the house at the time of the crime.
The accused took all precautions but failed to locate the CCTV cameras, which have acted as our third eye in recent cases, Pathak said.
SRINAGAR: The cycle of violence that gripped the Valley in 2010 is a painful memory for former chief minister Omar Abdullah, but as he sees Kashmir erupt again, he finds his successor making the same mistakes he did.
Mehbooba Mufti has made the same mistake as me. I went into a shell in 2010 and she has also withdrawn into a shell. The first 24-48 hours are crucial. That is when your people need to see and hear you, National Conference leader Abdullah told HT in an exclusive interview at his residence in Srinagars Gupkar Road area.
The Abdullah government never really recovered from the political shock of 116 youth being shot dead one after the other that summer, and hes candid enough to admit he lost the elections in 2014 because he was punished for not responding to innocent deaths.
Mehbooba openly called for my resignation in 2010 but Im not going to do the same. It is a difficult situation for her to deal with, he said.
Abdullah said he expected her to learn from his mistakes. She should have at least been on television appealing for calm but she seems to have retreated into a shell at a time when she needed to be seen and heard. People call her baaji or elder sister but I had no such kind titles coming my way.
Comparing 2010 to 2016, Abdullah cautioned that while the former was a demand-specific protest in which street protests led to deaths, the current phase of violence is plain anger and dangerous because it is leaderless.
In 2010, people wanted those guilty of the Macchil fake encounter to be punished. The protests were organised by separatists and the bar council but this time, people are coming out in the thousands without a leader pushing them to, he said. He expressed surprise that while he had received a call from Union home minister Rajnath Singh, Mehbooba had neither spoken to him nor called an all-party meeting.
Blaming intelligence agencies for not anticipating the violent backlash to the killing of Kashmirs poster-boy militant Burhan Wani, the former chief minister, however, said, This is not the time for politics. I am not demanding her resignation. This is the time for restraint and we (the National Conference) are not going to fan the flames by using this as an opportunity to unseat her.
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NEW DELHI: A 33-year-old former Hindu College student, who headed an interstate wildlife trafficking gang, was arrested from Delhi on Monday night.
Police said Akash Chand is the son of Sansar Chand known as the Veerappan of the North for having poached wild animals, including tigers in Sariska, for over three decades.
Police said after Chands death in 2014, Akash was running the interstate racket with his mother Rani.
Akash was arrested by a crime branch team from Paharganj in Central Delhi, where he had come to meet his relatives. Police sources said this was the fifth time they had received information about Akash, who had gave them the slip in the past.
Joint commissioner of police RS Yadav said they had received a request from their Jaipur counterparts to arrest Akash, against whom a non-bailable warrant had been issued by a local court.
Akashs anticipatory bail petition had been rejected by the Rajasthan high court.
Our officers received information about Akash visiting Paharganj. When the team went there, a mob gathered at the spot and refused to hand him over. The police team was attacked. They even bit head constable Hamender and constable Pankajs hands and pelted stones at the police party, said Yadav.
The police party asked for reinforcement. A team from the local police station reached the spot and filed a separate case against Akashs family members.
Akashs name cropped up during the interrogation of two men in Rajasthan last year who were arrested with leopard skins, said an investigating officer.
Police approached a court and a warrant was issued against him. Investigating officers said that in all these years, Akash and his mother Rani were running their operations from Delhi.
Their role was to identify the clients and contact poachers in Rajasthan.
Akashs mother presently out on bail was arrested in the same case in May.
Police said the family ran a mobile phone shop in Karol Bagh as a cover. We have handed him to the Rajasthan police. They will interrogate him, an officer said.
Akash told police that in 2014, after his father died of cancer, he took over the business. Akash was then studying BCom at DUs Hindu College. He has been arrested once in 2004 after leopard nails were seized from him. His mother was also arrested in the same case and spent a year and a half in prison.
NEW DELHI: Delhi Police on Tuesday arrested a UP Police constable for allegedly providing call detail records of individuals to a gang for money.
The police had earlier busted a racket of obtaining phone call detail records (CDRs) of individuals and arrested four persons.
The arrested constable, Narendra Choudhary, was detained in Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh, on Sunday and then brought to Delhi for questioning. His name cropped up during questioning of the four arrested suspects in the case.
Narendra was posted in the surveillance cell at the Inspector General of Police office in Kanpur.
Ravindra Yadav, joint commissioner of police (crime), said Narendras interrogation revealed he had been illegally using the official email ID of the SSP, Kanpur, to send requests to telecom operators and nodal agencies concerned for obtaining CDRs of various individuals.
Narendra had been receiving requests for CDRs from the prime accused, Jaiveer Singh Rathore, who runs a detective agency and a private news channel from his office in south Delhis Mahipalpur, said Yadav.
Besides obtaining CDRs of various individuals that his detective agency was spying upon, Rathore took contracts from other private detective agencies for providing them with call detail records of people they were keeping an eye on as well, said an investigator.
The police said Rathore first collected details of targets whose call records he wanted to view and then sent them to Narendra. The constable obtained CDRs of the said targets and saved them as drafts on his email account that had been opened especially for the purpose.
The drafts were never sent. Narender used to just share password of the email account with Rathore who in turn downloaded the CDRs. Once the work was done, Narendra used to delete the account. He opened a new email account every time he had to share new set of call detail records, said an investigator.
Police said they were going through the bank account details of Narendra to establish the monetary transaction between him and Rathore. It has been found Narendra allegedly earned over Rs 20 lakh by supplying call detail records of individuals to various detective agencies.
The anti-corruption branch (ACB) on Wednesday began probing alleged irregularities in dismantling of the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) corridor by collecting documents from government offices concerned.
Sources said three ACB officers had gone to the PWD office at ITO.
The Delhi government accused the Centre, which oversees the ACB, of going after it by raiding its offices.
ACB chief MK Meena denied the charges and said his officers visited the offices to collect documents related to the complaint.
Though an FIR is yet to be registered, the ACB is probing the case on a complaint filed by city advocate Vivek Garg and BJP MLA OP Sharma. The complainants alleged that the PWD minister, officers and contractors had conspired to misappropriate the hard earned public money.
In their joint complaint, the duo alleged the Delhi cabinet allotted `10.97 crore to be paid to a contractor to dismantle the BRT corridor between Ambedkar Nagar and Moolchand.
The complaint said the government did not collect money from the contractor in exchange for the materials that were removed.
Read: BRT dismantling starts, to be completed by Feb
Huge quantities of steel, iron and other stuff/metals costing crores were removed and taken by the contractor. The contractor was supposed to pay the PWD for getting these metals and other materials, the complaint said.
The two alleged that the nexus of politicians/officers/contractors managed to make crores by taking the materials, as well as paid the contractors `10.97 crore, causing a loss to the exchequer.
However, Delhi government and AAP leaders said the tender for the project was for `3.96 crore.
I was the first one to put a hammer to the ill-conceived BRT project, on the demand of the people. We are ready to go to jail for fulfilling the promises made to the people of Delhi.., deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia tweeted.
PWD minister Satyendar Jain had on Tuesday denied the allegations and said bus stops made of steel would remain and that there was no steel waste in the demolition.
Delhis air quality in July is the best in a year but unless you seek out the information on websites, you wouldnt really know it.
Screens that display information about air quality in the city are tucked away in corners that few visit. The Delhi government drew up plans to put up screens in several popular spots across the city in December when the odd-even car rationing scheme was announced.
At present, there are five screens that display air quality information in the capital. Three of these are outside the Delhi Pollution Control Committees (DPCC) monitoring stations in RK Puram, Anand Vihar and Punjabi Bagh. One is outside the office of the India Meteorological Department on Lodhi Road and another at the Delhi Secretariat.
The government has been planning to install screens on busier spots, such as markets, to increase awareness. The project, however, will take at least till August next year to get off the ground.
Read: Pollution spiked during odd-even due to crop burning, says CSE analysis
Installing screens is only a part of the process. We are first looking at widening our air quality monitoring network to come up with one air quality value for the entire city. For someone standing in Sarojini Nagar, there is no use of air quality information from Punjabi Bagh. A single value is more useful. For this, we are getting more stations in collaboration with NTPC so that we can fill the gaps. If needed, we can also shift existing stations to make a more efficient grid-like network, said MP George, DPCCs Air Laboratory.
After that, the committee will have to decide what information, and in which form, is to be displayed on the boards.
This exercise usually takes around 18 months but we are trying to get it done in 13 months, he said.
A number of cities in the world have a system for displaying air quality levels along with warnings. Beijing displays air quality information at many places in the city. Along with the information, it also has a set procedure for when the quality breaches a certain level. Schools are closed, industries shut and vehicular restrictions imposed when the quality dips. Activists in India have been demanding a similar set-up in Delhi so that people are aware of the poor air quality on a given day.
According to environment minister Imran Hussain, though, Delhi may not need such a system.
I dont think we should think about closing schools. Even homes are polluted. We are working at remedial measures so that the pollution is controlled and we are positive that it will happen soon. Emphasis on planting more trees is our first step, he said.
Read: No clarity in pollution trend at borders
Delhis air pollution became part of everyday conversations when the World Health Organisation declared it the most polluted city in the world in 2014.
The Delhi High Court on Wednesday stayed summons issued by a trial court against chief minister Arvind Kejriwal in a criminal defamation case for allegedly making derogatory remarks against a Delhi policeman.
The court asked Kejriwal to explain the meaning of thulla, allegedly used by him, on the next date of hearing.
Till the next date (August 21), the petitioner (Kejriwal) is exempted from personal appearance before the trial court, the court said.
However, you (Kejriwal) will have to explain to this court what the meaning of the word (thulla) that was allegedly used by you is. So, be ready, the court said.
The court also issued notice to the complainant, constable Ajay Kumar Taneja, and sought his response on the Delhi chief ministers plea.
The courts order and oral observation came during the hearing of the plea by Kejriwal who sought a stay and setting aside of the trial courts order summoning him as an accused in the case.
Last month, a city court had summoned Kejriwal as an accused in the case.
Taneja, had alleged that he -- a member of the Delhi Police -- had been defamed by Kejriwal, who used the word thulla to describe the citys police.
In the complaint, filed through advocate LN Rao on July 23 last year, the constable claimed that Kejriwal had used the derogatory term on a news channel. The Delhi CM was talking about AAP governments constraints in ensuring effective functioning of the anti-corruption branch.
If a word like thulla is used by an eminent personality like chief minister Arvind Kejriwal to refer to the personnel of Delhi Police, then the general public too will have no respect for police personnel, the complaint said.
Three people, including the main accused, have been arrested in connection with the murder case of a 44-year-old businessman in Krishnna Nagar area of east Delhi, police said.
Rakesh Kumar was shot dead and robbed of money by assailants riding a motorcycle at Kanti Nagar colony in Krishna Nagar on July 2.
Gyanendra and Fahim were arrested from a restaurant in Shakarpur. During interrogation, the duo admitted to their involvement in the robbery and murder of Rakesh, DCP(east) Rishi Pal said.
They also named two of their accomplices -- Nawabuddin and Imran -- who were later arrested by the police, he said.
The plan to carry out the loot was prepared allegedly by Gyanendra who was released from jail recently in connection with a murder in 2007.
Police recovered Rs 2.68 lakh of the looted amount and a pistol from the accused, he said.
A 55-year-old government official allegedly abused co-passengers in a Delhi Metro train and slapped a constable at a police station on Monday night. The man, who was allegedly drunk, also broke a television set inside the police station.
The Central Industrial Security Force (CISF), which is responsible for the security of Delhi Metro, realised the man was causing nuisance when he was pushed out of a Metro train by passengers at east Delhis Shastri Park station.
At 9.50pm on Monday, the passenger was thrown out by fellow passengers. He was barefoot. He started abusing the passengers standing on the platform. The shift in-charge went to him and asked him to come to the control room but he started arguing with him. Somehow, he was taken to the control room and Delhi Police was informed about it, said a senior CISF official. He was later allowed to leave after paying a fine of Rs 250.
Sources said that the man was posted in health ministry and had boarded the train at Central Secretariat.
The police took him to the Metro police station where he slapped a constable who was talking on the phone. He kicked on the table which broke the TV installed there. Later, his family was called from Shahdara and they took him. He was fined for creating nuisance and no case was registered against him, said a senior police officer.
According to sources, the passenger had got into scuffle inside the train and was randomly abusing co-passengers. When the situation went out of control, the passengers threw him out of the train.
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The Delhi high court held the National Zoological Park in Delhi liable to pay compensation to the kin of a youth who died after being mauled by a white tiger in 2014.
The court said on Wednesday that the zoo had not taken adequate precautions to stop anyone from climbing into the enclosure despite knowing that the feline was a dangerous animal.
A bench of Chief Justice G Rohini and Justice Jayant Nath awarded compensation of Rs six lakh, minus Rs one lakh already paid, to the kin of 22-year-old Maqsood, who had climbed into the tigers enclosure on September 23, 2014 and was mauled to death by the animal.
The court said the zoo was in clear breach of statutory duties provided under the Wild Life (Protection) Act 1972, and other regulations.
In our opinion, there were inadequate precautions taken by respondent 1 (zoo) to guard against any visitor climbing the stand-off barrier, which is not very high. Further, there was enough time, which as per the zoo authority was five minutes, during which the zoo authority could have reacted to rescue and save the life of Maqsood after he fell in the moat.
Read | Killing animals to save humans: Why zoos arent safe for wildlife
A collapsible rope ladder could have been dropped to help Maqsood climb up the moat wall. There was none available. A trained rescue, if available, could have taken other steps to rescue the victim.
There is clear breach of statutory duties by respondent 1 as provided under the Wild Life (Protection) Act and other regulations enacted thereunder as stated above, the bench said in its verdict.
The court further said it was a fit case to hold the zoo liable under principles of absolute liability as it was aware that a tiger is a dangerous animal capable of causing injuries or death to a visitor.
The zoo would be liable for any injury or death caused to a visitor by a tiger under principles of strict liability. Respondent 1 is, in these facts, liable to compensate the petitioner (Maqsoods wife) for the unfortunate death of Maqsood and monetary loss as a consequence thereof, it said.
Noting that the zoo would not normally be a profitable organisation, the court awarded Rs six lakh as compensation, as opposed to Rs 50 lakh sought by the deceaseds wife on the ground that he was the only earning member in the family.
The woman, in her plea, had claimed that the government was liable to pay compensation for their act of negligence and safety and security lapses that resulted in the tragic death of 22-year-old Maqsood.
Watch: Drunk man jumps into lions pen at Hyd zoo, rescued unhurt
Passengers flying with low-cost airlines from Delhi airport will soon have to go to a different terminal to catch their flight. As part of the expansion plan of Delhi airport, at least two airlines will be shifted to Terminal 2 from where international flights used to operate before T3 was commissioned.
Currently, Indigo, SpiceJet and GoAir operate their domestic flights from T1. Sources say, while Indigo will continue to operate from T1, the other two are likely to be shifted for two years till the expansion of T1 is completed.
According to airport sources, a portion of T2, which is next to T3, is being renovated so that low-cost domestic flight operations of the two airlines can be shifted there by the end of this year.
Once the operations are shifted back completely to T1, T2 will be demolished and a new terminal will be built in its place. The new facility will be renamed T4.
A spokesperson of Delhi International Airport Limited (DIAL) said, We do not have the practice of making terminals exclusive for any airline. DIAL has plans to expand Terminal 1 to a much bigger facility. So it is possible that during the construction period, some traffic may be shifted to Terminal 2 as a stopgap arrangement so as to minimise inconvenience for our passengers. Haj operations will continue as before without any change.
An airport official said that proper signages will be placed in and around the airport and airlines will be asked to inform the passengers about the change in the terminal. T2 is almost eight kilometres away from T1.
Also read: IGI airports domestic terminal on Delhi Metro grid this year
After the expansion, the airlines will be shifted back to T1 so that Delhi airport can have three different terminals for international airlines, low-cost domestic carriers and full-service domestic airlines. The ministry of civil aviation has approved the plan for airport expansion.
We will start with the expansion of Terminal 1. In the next three years, the capacity of T1 will increase from 15 million per annum to 30 million per annum, said an airport official.
T1 is built on an area of 53,000 square metres. After expansion, it will be spread over 133,000 square metres. A total of 10 aerobridges are likely to be constructed and the number of boarding gates will increase from eight to 25.
Post expansion, DIAL will also construct Terminal 4 to cater to full-service domestic carriers such as Air India and Jet Airways. Once T4 is constructed, full service domestic operations of Jet Airways and Air India and other such airlines will be shifted there and T3 will only deal with the international flight operations. Terminal 1 will then cater only to domestic low-cost carriers.
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Vinayak Narayanaswamy, now 17, has a rare neurological condition called Sturge-Weber syndrome. This condition caused major speech difficulties for him. He was strong in the right hemisphere of his brain, while his left was completely damaged. However, he had an innate rhythmic sense. He was around eight when his parents found a way to help him get a better life through music. Hindustani classical music helped him with auditory memory, clarity of speech, and his confidence got a major boost.
His musical journey began at Bhaatkhande Sangit Vidyalaya, an institute in Qutab Institutional Area that has been working towards promoting Hindustani classical music and its healing properties for the last 77 years. Being experts in the field of helping children with special needs, the teachers here brought a relaxed but disciplined approach to his musical learning. The annual functions at Bhaatkhande Vidyalaya were an important part of his learning. He loved singing on stage. It helped when he performed at his school functions at Vasant Valley School, and got him many prizes in competitive events for differently abled children, says Geetha Narayanaswamy, Vinayaks mother.
Shriya has been a visually impaired child since she was five-month-old. This caused her to grow up with many behavioural issues and social anxiety. She joined the vidyalaya seven years back. There has been a marked improvement in her personality and confidence, says Shuchi Rastogi, her mother.
Music therapy is one of the oldest and most expressive therapies used for healing an ailment through scientific means. The body has seven chakras, and each of the seven swaras in a musical octave stimulate a certain chakra. A raga is a specific arrangement of swaras, designed to stimulate a vibration within the body. Each raga is supposed to be practiced at a certain time of the day in order to extract its benefits. For example, Raag Yaman is said to help with stress and arthritis, Raag Bagheshri with insomnia, Raag Asavari with low BP, and Raag Tilak Kamod brings relaxation, said Deepa Chopra Sharma, chief coordinator and curator of the programme.
The institute has been engaging music to treat speech disorders like stammering and stuttering as well as other disorders like autism, Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) etc. It began in 2001 when Pooja Gupta, a psychology graduate from Lady Shri Ram College, decided to come up with a music therapy module to reach out to differently abled children. While she eventually moved to Australia and continued her efforts there, her sister, Deepa Chopra Sharma, a counsellor, took over the programme in Delhi.
The institute also holds classes for all age groups, including senior citizens and professionals for whom music is a stress buster. (Tribhuwan Sharma / HT Photo)
The institute also holds classes for all age groups, including senior citizens and professionals for whom music is a stress buster. In her career spanning more than 40 years, Dr Anita Panda, a retired ophthalmologist from AIIMS, has turned to music to deal with the everyday stress of being a medical professional. As a child, I remember my music teacher telling me that one hour of practicing music in the morning can help you to stay calm and composed throughout the day. When the stress of being a surgeon was at its peak, I turned to music to unwind, she says.
Dr Panda has been associated with Bhaatkhande Sangit Vidyalaya for the last four to five years. She says the idea to use music as an alternative therapy struck her when a patient with dry eye approached her. The patient had tried almost every kind of treatment with no results. Eventually, I realised that one of the reasons for dry eye is stress. I knew about a few ragas which can help one deal with stress and asked him to practice them on a daily basis. The patient returned to me after three months with visible improvement, she says.
Dr Panda then collaborated with her music teacher, and came up with a structured and scientific form of treatment by combining music, psychology and physiology. Since diabetes also affects the eye, they have started off with a pilot project offering music therapy to patients. Stress being one of the major causes of diabetes, she felt that music therapy could really help with the problem.
The goal of the course is to treat the ailment through music and regular treatment for faster, more effective results as well as the overall relaxation of the patient, says Dr Panda.
Music therapy can also be used to improve learning, build self-esteem, reduce stress, and facilitate a host of other health related activities. However, music therapy, like any other therapy, takes time to show results.
Patience is absolutely necessary in such kind of a therapy. People usually dont understand that music is an artform that needs to be appreciated. They look for quick results and lose faith in it, urges Guru Vinod Kumar, the director and principal of the institute. The only prerequisite to benefit from this therapy, he says, is to be able to enjoy music.
The next time youre riding your motorbike without a helmet and plan to zoom across a traffic intersection because you see no policemen, think twice.
Chances are a group of 10 policemen have formed a human wall at the exit of the intersection, waiting to nab you and hundreds of similar traffic offenders.
The initiative by the Delhi Police, called Operation Chakravyuh, managed to prosecute almost 10,000 traffic violators across the city over the weekend.
More than 50% of the prosecutions was against bikers riding without helmets. Other fines were for three people riding one bike, dangerous driving, red-light jumping or driving without a licence.
Read More: Traffic cop tries to stop speeding car, run over in east Delhi
The idea behind this special operation is to make traffic violators realise they cannot get away every time. Our objective is to have better prosecution against rules breakers, said Sandeep Goel, special commissioner of police (traffic).
The 21 locations where the drive was conducted included Paharganj, Azad market, Kingsway Camp, Madhuban, Select City Mall, Moti Nagar, Satyam traffic signal and Sarojini Nagar Market.
We kept changing locations during every operation, Goel said.
The entire operation involved more than 50 traffic police personnel, including officers who issued fines, constables for assistance, and supervisors. A total of 42,854 traffic challans were issued on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, including those under the Chakravyuh initiative.
Read More: Most drunk driving cases reported from 2-7am, say Delhi traffic cops
Chakravyuh refers to a special military formation narrated in the Hindu epic Mahabharata, which ensnares opponents and makes it impossible for them to come out.
As part of the operation, a human wall of traffic police personnel is made at each of the exit points of the intersections. With no traffic police present at entry points, traffic violators freely zoom past the road intersection, only to find cops waiting for them at the exit points.
The multi-tiered traffic cop formation is done in such a way that the violators cannot get away without being challaned, once they land in the Chakravyuh. The scheme was launched last year.
The scheme will work as a major deterrent against traffic violation and at the same time curbing road accidents and violations, said Goel.
If everything goes according to the plan, south Delhi will soon come under a strong surveillance cover. The promise was made by New Delhi MP Meenakshi Lekhi, as a large part of south Delhi falls under her constituency, at a recent meeting with the Delhi Police and a group of RWAs. The meet was prompted by the constant complaints and urging of RWAs regarding issues of security including dark patches, street crimes such as chain snatching, vehicle thefts and traffic snarls, among others.
A district level committee meeting conducted with the south district unit of Delhi Police at the DCP headquarters in Hauz Khas was attended by representatives of over 50 RWAs of the area, senior citizens associations and municipal corporation officials. The meeting was chaired by Lekhi in which she promised to fund the project from her MPLAD scheme. The meeting had DCP (South) Ishwar Singh, additional DCPs (south) Nupur Prasad and Sanjay Bhatia, ACPs of all divisions and SHOs of the districts 16 police stations present.
The police will be identifying the corridors and areas prone to crimes where installation of CCTV cameras could help in gathering clues and subsequently fast-track investigation. We have been mapping the area and a report has already been sent to the minister. The requirements have been sent but we are yet to receive a response from her office. It will be an important step for improving general policing as well as creating a deterrent over a period of time, said additional DCP (south) Nupur Prasad, who has also been appointed the nodal officer for the project.
Some of the areas identified include South Extension-2, Vasant Vihar, RK Puram Sectors 8 and 9, Sarojini Nagar and Pilanji Village among others. It was observed, she said, that in many areas where residents have installed the cameras on their own, the monitoring has not been effective.
We will be further narrowing down on the exact spots where the cameras must be installed. Once this is done, we will be able to know where we can set up a control room for routine monitoring, she said.
A number of complaints regarding nuisance around liquor shops were raised by the RWA representatives. The members pointed it out, in particular, that the liquor shops provide an environment for anti-social activities. Lekhi asked them to name the shops that they want to be moved out.
There are two liquor stores in Sewa Nagar and Sarvpriya Vihar markets that are located within the residential areas. Anti-social elements gather here every evening and indulge in frequent brawls, which is a constant nuisance for residents. It becomes unsafe for women to venture out because of these activities, said JR Gupta, a resident of Safdarjung Enclave and president, Senior Citizen Council of Delhi.
Prasad has also been made in charge for addressing complaints regarding dark or poorly-lit patches, as several complaints about the newly-installed LED lights not being functional have poured in.
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The HRD ministry has formulated a scheme to ensure prospective IIT students are able to get interest-free loan to offset the fee hike done recently, the ministry said on Wednesday. HT had highlighted the plight of students who were facing difficulty in paying the fee after the hike on Wednesday.
The existing scheme for providing interest-free loans has a limitation on the annual household income Rs 4.5 lakh. In view of this, a separate scheme is formulated for providing the interest subvention which is under scrutiny of the finance, said a ministry statement.
The ministry, which was then under Smriti Irani, had approved a proposal for increasing the IIT fees from Rs 90,000 to Rs 2 lakh.
Later, it issued a statement saying tuition fees will be waived for all students belonging to Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and differently-abled categories, besides those from families with an annual income of less than Rs 1 lakh.
Apart from this, it said students from families with an annual income of less than Rs 5 lakh would benefit from a waiver of two-thirds of the tuition fee amount, and everybody regardless of caste or class would have access to interest-free loans under the Vidya Lakshmi Scheme for the total amount.
However, when students seeking admission to the IITs enquired about the interest-free loans, they were told that the offer was not available to those with a family income of over Rs 5 lakh per annum. A number of students from middle-class families were affected by the move.
The Natural Gourmet Institute, a health-supportive culinary school in New York, USA, recently held a class about food coupling. The session focused on how certain food combinations
can create food synergy. Nutritionist Pritisha Jadhav explains, Food synergy is the term used for nutrients working together to create greater health effects.
While the traditional food pairing of lemon and tea is well-known, we spoke to experts to curate a list of unusual yet beneficial food combinations that we should know about. The experts also talked about the unhealthy food combinations that people should avoid.
Food synergies that elevate the nutritive value of individual ingredients:
1. Prebiotics and probiotics
The inulin present in significant amounts in onions, bananas and garlic is a prebiotic. Yoghurt, which contains healthy microorganisms, is a source of probiotics. While probiotics introduce good bacteria into the gut, prebiotics act as a fertiliser for the good bacteria that are already present there. So, taking prebiotics along with probiotics is good for the gut bacteria.
2. Good fat and salads
Eating good fat (avocados, olive oil, chia seeds, etc) along with your salad helps the body absorb protective phytochemicals better. These are commonly found in red, orange and green fruits and vegetables. Phytochemicals help lower the bodys blood pressure effectively.
Eating good fat such as avocados with your salad helps the body absorb phytochemicals present in coloured vegetables, better. (Shutterstock)
3. Vitamin D and calcium
The common breakfast combination of milk and eggs is the best you can do for your body in case you do not expose yourself to the morning sunlight. Urban residents often complain about the dipping levels of vitamin D. Eggs are a source of vitamin D and the calcium present in milk helps the body absorb vitamin D better.
4. Tomatoes and broccoli
A study by the University of Illinois, USA, found that this food combination is more effective at slowing the growth of prostate tumours than when either item was consumed separately. Tomatoes are rich in lycopene, vitamin C, and vitamin A, when combined with broccoli which contains phytochemicals beta-carotene, isothiocyanates, and indoles, helps in fighting cancer cells and improving immunity.
Combination of tomatoes and broccoli helps in fighting cancer cells and improving immunity. (Shutterstock)
5. Vitamin C and iron
Vitamin C greatly helps with the absorption of iron (vital for keeping our blood oxygenated). Hence, it is advisable to pair green leafy vegetables like spinach and kale, which are rich in iron, with bell peppers and jalapenos.
Vitamin C present in jalapenos helps in absorbing iron present in spinach leaves. (Shutterstock)
6. Dark chocolate and apples
Dark chocolate is rich in catechins, and apples are a rich source of flavonoids. When consumed together, the combination helps remould collagen to promote healthier skin. They also improve cardiovascular health.
Read: Secret to good health, fitness: Maintaining a food diary
Combination of apples and chocolates helps in remoulding collagen which is key to good skin. (Shutterstock)
Do not mix:
1. Water with your meals
Avoid consuming any kind of liquid during and 10 minutes before and after your meals. This is because liquids dilute the enzymes in our stomach. These enzymes are used to break down proteins, carbohydrates and fats. Diluted enzymes are not quite effective in assisting the digestive process.
Avoid drinking water with meals as it dilutes the digestive enzymes present in stomach. Drink water 10 minutes before or after food. (iStock)
2. Milk with citrus fruits or citrus vegetables
What happens when you squeeze a lemon into milk? It coagulates due to an acidic reaction. Hence, avoid consuming citrus vegetables and fruits (oranges, broccoli, cauliflower, tomatoes, etc.) for at least an hour after having milk or any milk-based drinks.
Avoid having milk with citrus fruits or vegetables as the combination will cause acidic reaction in the stomach. (Shutterstock)
Read: Heres why every tummy-related issue is not bloating or flatulence
3. Fruits with meals
Fruits contain simple sugars that require minimal digestion. When these fruits are combined with grains, meats or other components of a proper meal, they end up staying in the digestive tract for too long and begin to ferment. This can damage the intestinal lining, and cause other problems.
Fruits when consumed with meat or foodgrains can begin to ferment in the stomach and cause problems. (Shutterstock)
4. Tomato with starchy foods
Broccoli and tomatoes can boost a dishs nutritive value. But, combining tomatoes and starchy foods (rice, bread, potatoes, pastas, etc.) can increase the risk of indigestion. This is because the acids found in tomatoes interfere with the digestion of starch.
Consuming tomatoes with starchy foods like rice can cause digestive problems. (Imagesbazaar)
5. Wines with desserts
Wine increases the production of insulin, thereby increasing the bodys sugar level. Eating dessert will further increase the sugar in our body, which will then be stored as fat. This leads to weight gain.
Having wine with sweet items increases risk of obesity. (iStock)
With inputs from Dr Riddhesh Jani, nutritionist and Khushboo Sahijwani, nutritionist.
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A youth was killed at Harnag in south Kashmirs Anantnag district on Wednesday allegedly in firing by government forces, taking the toll in four-day-long violence in the Valley to 35.
A local news portal quoting chief medical officer Anantnag, Dr Fazil Kochak said that the youth was brought dead to the hospital. Kochak did not take calls from HT.
The youth was identified as Bashir Ahmad Dar of Anantnag.
More than 1,300 people have been injured in the clashes between locals and the security personnel, many of them children and young men. Activists and local residents accuse security forces of using excessive force to quell protesters but police say theyre exercising maximum restraint.
Meanwhile, police arrested Hurriyat Conference chairperson Syed Ali Geelani on Wednesday as he stepped out of his Srinagar residence to lead a march for paying tributes to 21 people who died in a popular uprising in 1931.
The separatist leader who is under indefinite house arrest condemned the recent clashes between tens of thousands of people and security forces following the killing of top insurgent Burhan Wani.
Its barbarism by forces at display, its clear India only wants Kashmirs land and wants to systematically kill the population here, he said.
Read| The Kashmir manifesto: Delhis policy playbook in the Valley
Geelani compared Wani to freedom fighters and said the militant wasnt a terrorist but a hero to Kashmiris.
He is a young brave soldier who laid down his life for his people and their dignity. He is a hero like those young men who fought the British forces, Geelani said.
The separatist leader asked the Jammu and Kashmir police to stop using excessive force. ``You are killing your own, he said.
He, however, asked people not to harm police personnel and their families.
Its against the tenets of Islam, he said. A local newspaper had reported a policemans wife and daughter were beaten up by mob at Awantiopora in south Kashmir.
Geelani had called for a march to the historic Naqshband Shahib shrine to commemorate the deaths of 21 Kashmiris who died 85 years ago in an uprising against the then ruling Dogra dynasty.
In their memory, July 13 is observed as Martyrs Day in Kashmir and continues to be a rallying point for political parties.
Read| CM Mehbooba repeating my mistakes: Omar Abdullah on Kashmir unrest
Read| As if I was hit by electricity: Many may lose eyesight in Kashmir pellet firing
Photos, videos and eyewitness accounts of security forces allegedly attacking ambulances have flooded the Valley with many activists saying reports of the brutal crackdown on protesters across Kashmir are unprecedented even in war.
Many at Srinagars SMHS hospital told HT that scores of ambulances from different districts arrived with window panes and glass shields broken as thousands of people clashed violently with security forces, killing more than 30 and left 1,300 injured in the last four pays.
Ambulance drivers said police and paramilitary personnel attacked them on the way, they added.
Kashmir director of health services Saleem Ur Rehman said around 50 ambulances were damaged in recent clashes but didnt specify who attacked them.
Attacks on ambulances is a complete violation of international humanitarian laws. Even if theres a war, there are certain rules, said Jammu and Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society (JKCCS) programme coordinator Khurram Parvez.
But deputy inspector general of the Central Reserve Police Force KK Sharma said the jawans could never do such a thing and that the personnel were exercising extreme restraint.
Read| As if I was hit by electricity: Many may lose eyesight in Kashmir pellet firing
Inspector general of police in Kashmir, SJM Gillani, said police are investigating the authenticity of footage of personnel attacking ambulances. If any of our men are found guilty, appropriate action will be taken, he said.
But the explanations have failed to convince many people, especially those at SMHS where least 270 people with bullet pellet and other injuries are being treated.
An eye-witness at the hospital said Aamir Latoo of Bijbehera, a student who suffered a bullet injury and died Monday night, was brought in a damaged ambulance. Had his ambulance not been attacked and hence not delayed, he might have survived, the source said.
An amateur video purportedly showing personnel stopping an ambulance, pulling out a youth from it, beating him and then arresting him are doing the rounds on social media and sources said it was shot in Anantnag district.
Another purported photo of a shattered ambulance in Shopian district is going viral on Facebook. Citizens report similar damage to ambulances in Pampore, Pulwama, Shopian and Kulgam.
Medical superintendent at SMHS, Nazir Choudhary, confirmed many ambulances that came into the hospital over the last three days were damaged but said none of the hospitals own ambulances were attacked.
Spokesperson of moderate Hurriyat faction Shahidul Islam said the party possessed photographic evidence of how CRPF personnel attacked ambulances heading towards Srinagar.
The alleged attacks on ambulances are one of the many incidents that activists say are rare even in extreme conflict situations.
The SMHS resident doctors association said on Saturday tear gas shell was fired inside the hospital after clashes between angry youth and security forces.
Violating all international laws and guidelines, forces fired tear gas inside the SMHS hospital, said Dr Adil Ashraf, president of the association. Dr Choudhary confirmed and said the smoke did go inside the wards and some patients suffered because of it.
Read| CM Mehbooba repeating my mistakes: Omar Abdullah on Kashmir unrest
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The last thing Amir Nazir Lattoo shared on Facebook, before he died of a bullet injury during the ongoing Kashmir unrest, was a black-and-white graphic of Hizbul militant Burhan Wanis face with the words, This isnt 1 less Burhan, its 100 more Burhans.
The 22-year-old former student of Delhi University from Anantnag described himself as a simple guy on his social media profile. And everything before the Wani post presented Lattoo as a man of simple taste most posts expressed his love of Rumis poetry, photography, and friends and family.
This is the last Face Book post of Amir Nazir Latoo who died of a bullet injury during the ongoing Kashmir unrest. (Amir Nazir Latoos FB post)
On one photograph, uploaded a month ago, in which he is seen performing a stunt on his motorbike, one of his friends commented: Sambal ke bhai....tu waise bhi Paul Walker se kam nhn hai (Be careful brother, you are no less than Paul Walker anyway).
In another post, he quotes Rumi: Goodbyes are only for those who love with their eyes/Because for those who love with heart and soul, there is no such thing as separation.
In yet another post, a photo of his batch-mates at Zakir Hussain college, he wrote: These people made me who I am, gave me memories which I will remember throughout my life. Today, those friends are posting their condolences in the comment section of the photo.
Read | 34 dead in Kashmir violence, Syed Geelani detained in Srinagar
Lattoo completed his Bachelor of Commerce from Zakir Husain Evening College earlier this year and was going to join Aligarh Muslim University on July 19 for masters. He was home for the Eid holidays, family members said.
Early on Tuesday morning, as his relatives waited pensively at a blood bank to arrange B-negative type blood for transfusion, Lattoo succumbed to the bullet injury he had received a day earlier at Bijbehara the hometown of chief minister Mehbooba Mufti.
Amidst shouts of anti-India and anti-PDP slogans, Lattoos funeral in Bijbehara on Tuesday was attended by hundreds of people who defied curfew to be there.
Lattoos is a family of artisans. His father is an expert of Kashmiri silver-thread embroidery and they are a humble family, said a relative who did not wish to be named. Lattoo is survived by his parents and two younger brothers.
A selfie Lattoo shared on Facebook earlier this year is being shared widely on social media by those mourning his death, and has become the face of the 34 victims of the ongoing turmoil in the state.
Kashmir has been on the boil since 22-year-old Burhan Wani, a popular social media-savvy militant of the Hizbul Mujahideen, and two others were killed on Friday when security forces cornered them in the Kokernag area of Anantnag. In addition to the more than 30 fatalities, hundreds of civilians and security personnel have been injured in the protests.
His family claims that Lattoo was not a part of the agitating youth, and was sitting with his friends when the security forces opened fire.
On the other side of the Jhelum, protesters were clashing with forces and policemen were chasing them. But Amir was sitting on this side, called Dhobi Ghat in Baba Mohalla, said a family member. Why did they open fire on the boys sitting peacefully on this side?
Anantnag superintendent of police Abdul Jabbar refused to comment for the report, and calls to a Srinagar-based police spokesperson went unanswered. The official press release of the police on the situation in Kashmir also does not offer details of the circumstances surrounding the death of Lattoo.
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As one enters the high court of judicature at Allahabad, tables and chairs are strewn across an open space. The de facto one-table legal chambers coexist with a line of motorcycles. It is difficult to know who has encroached on whose territory here.
Lawyers in their black robes are chatting - to themselves and to litigants. Paan stain is visible on the staircases. The passages are taken over by small book stalls and clerks.
But even if the aesthetics do not quite convey it, it is difficult not to be awed by the history of the court.
Set up first in Agra, only to be shifted in 1869 to Allahabad, the court is celebrating its 150th year. Motilal Nehru argued here. It has been the site of some of independent Indias most crucial judgements - including the one which annulled Indira Gandhis election in 1975, eventually triggering the Emergency, or the Babri Masjid judgement more recently.
But the court is important not just because of the past, but the present.
It symbolises the political fault-lines that exist in the state - between the west and the east, and the challenges which would emerge if UPs division became a political issue. It symbolises the tensions that continue to exist between the upper castes and the emerging backward castes. And it is a reflection of how in a region relatively devoid of opportunities, a single state institution can become a magnet for thousands and change a citys economy.
Defining a city
The website of the High Court lists 15, 573 advocates in Allahabad - there are another 8000 advocates at the Lucknow bench. Senior advocate VP Srivastava tells HT Allahabad HC has another 10,000 clerks and over 6000 employees. On an average, a minimum of 5000 litigants - from across the state - are in the court premises for their cases.
This is the largest judicial body anywhere in terms of the number of judges (160, of which a little more than half are vacant); territorial jurisdiction (all 75 districts of UP); and the population it serves (almost 20 crore according to the 2011 census). The Lucknow bench of the court serves 13 districts.
The High Court faces challenges similar to the rest of the Indian judiciary - vacancy on the bench, and an extraordinarily large backlog of cases. Every lawyer complains of the pendency rates.
But the scale of the court shapes Allahabad.
When asked how the judiciary affected the economy in Allahabad, advocate Imran Syed - standing outside court number 10 inside the historic building - said, Over 70% of the citys economy depends on the court. A litigant comes, he takes a rickshaw or an auto, he stays in a hotel, he eats in a restaurant or from a street vendor, he pays lawyers, he gets stuff photo-copied. Lawyers buy property, we purchase books, we hire staff, we go out to malls and cinema, we shop, we buy cars.
Every sector, Syed claims, is a beneficiary of the presence of the court.
Senior Allahabad journalist Anupam Mishra has an explanation for why law has emerged as such an attractive proposition for so many.
From across the state, especially east UP, students come to the Allahabad University. There are few employment opportunities except the public services, where seats are limited. Law then becomes a natural choice. This is in some ways the only career option available to gain some professional and social status in this region.
The bifurcation debate
But maintaining this hegemony will not be easy for Allahabad, for a demand for a separate bench of the court in west UP has emerged very strongly over the years.
Politics will determine the the debate over bifurcation. Before every election, politicians in western UP promise to their constituents that the region will be home to a new bench of the High Court.
2017 will be no different.
This is attractive to people who have to travel long distances to Allahabad for their cases - for instance, a Saharanpur litigant has to travel 752 kms to the court; a Baghpat litigant has to travel over 600 kms. It is also attractive because the arrival of a bench will have a multiplier effect on the regional economy. In some ways, the demand for a separate bench resembles the demand for a separate state in the west, which chafes at the domination of the east.
Meerut is the strongest claimant for the bench, with Agra a close second. The BJP MP from Meerut has already demanded a bench, and Union law minister Sadanand Gowda met west UP advocates to assure them the centre is keen on the issue.
But this has been resisted strongly by the bar in Allahabad. Reports that BJP president Amit Shah had backed the demand provoked a backlash from the court bar, who threatened to protest when PM Narendra Modi made a short visit to the court recently. BJP had to beat a swift retreat and deny the comments.
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West UP lawyers claim this is because of the economic costs they would suffer.
But the president of the Allahabad Bar Association, Radhakant Ojha, says that is not the reason, A united judiciary has more integrity than a divided judiciary. There is a united bar and a united bench and both control each other. In a smaller court, corruption is more rampant. It will hurt the system.
Senior advocate Srivastava is also an author of a book against bifurcation. He argues that the constitution did not intend to create separate benches of the high court, while it left the option open in the case of the Supreme Court. He also cites a past SC judgement to claim that distance cannot become a reason to set up a separate bench. The united court has a sanctity. Judges sit and deliberate; the jurisprudence is richer.
Most however believe that the opposition is to maintain monopoly over clientele.
The Brahman domination
Politics and social churning impinge on the court in yet another way - the debate over caste.
The high court is seen as one of the last bastions of upper caste domination in UP. With deepening of democracy, reservations and the politics of identity, the control over the legislature and executive in UP has substantially shifted to OBCs and Dalits. The third organ of the state, judiciary, is where the erstwhile dominant castes continue to hold sway.
And this rankles. Suresh Chaudhary, a Dalit advocate, tells HT, There would be, at most 300 Dalit advocates out of 15000. There has never, to my knowledge, been a single designated senior advocate in Allahabad who is a Dalit. He recalls that last year, a Dalit stood for the bar association elections; his surname was Singh and everyone asked whether he was a Thakur. But as his Dalit identity emerged, support for him shrank. Indeed, the bar association has historically been dominated by Brahmans.
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The established senior advocates feel this critique is not valid.
Ojha says, Look, there should be no caste consideration in the designation of senior counsel. Earlier, law was an elite profession but it has already got democratised. Many people are coming from rural areas. I am a first generation lawyer, from a village in Pratapgarh. If there is merit, no one can block you now.
He lists out the caste composition of the office bearers of his association - but with only a smattering of OBC advocates, it reinforces the perception of the caste inequities in the court in terms of representation. But as an educated class emerges among both OBCs and Dalits, it is only a matter of time that they will make their presence felt in judiciary, like they have in politics.
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The Supreme Court judgment restoring Nabam Tukis government in Arunachal Pradesh is not the only indictment of the 26-month-old BJP-led government at the Centre. The SC has pulled up the Centre in many cases recently.
Wednesdays verdict is the latest round of the judiciary-executive face off, with the executive having to retreat once again. Only two days ago, the Congress had blamed the Centre for hitting back at the judiciary by delaying judicial appointments. Never before in recent history has the executive-judiciary relationship been in tatters as now. Modi government has unleashed several... innuendos, sarcasm, open criticism of court judgements, Congress spokesman Abhishek Singhvi said on Monday.
Here are some of the the major instances that reflect the increasing strain between the executive and the judiciary:
Revocation of prez rule in Uttarakhand
On May 11, the SC declared Congress leader Harish Rawat the winner in the assembly trust vote, setting the stage for lifting Presidents rule in the state and facilitating his return as CM.
...the high court has ascribed many a reason to arrive at the conclusion that the said proclamation was not tenable in law, the SC said, modifying its April 22 order that stayed the HC verdict after the Centre appealed against it.
Quashing of NJAC
The SC on October 16, 2015, struck down as unconstitutional the National Judicial Appointments Commission Act that was passed by Parliament to replace the collegium system of senior SC judges appointing judges in the higher judiciary.
Rejection of govts HC appointments
The SC collegium rejected 38 names for appointments as judges in various HCs in April. The names were recommended by different HC collegiums but cleared by the Centre.
Rejection of MoP
Earlier this month, the SC collegium again rejected the Memorandum of Procedure the guiding document for appointing judges prepared by the government saying the Centre was trying to have the final word on appointing judges.
Pulling up centre for drought crisis
The Supreme Court rapped the Centre for not doing enough to tackle drought in India. It asked the Centre to set up a national disaster response force within six months.
The political battle over the alleged AugustaWestland chopper deal just got shriller. The ruling BJP has taken on the chairman of parliaments public accounts committee (PAC) for conveniently nominating Congress MP Shantaram Naik to head the panels sub-group that will also look into the 2013 helicopter bribery scandal.
Naik, a Rajya Sabha member, was named as the head of the PACs sub-group on defence last week--a move that the BJP suspects was aimed at insulating the previous UPA government and its ministers. As chairman, Naik would get to decide when and how the sub-group would deal with the CAG.
The PAC scrutinises accounts of the government and reports of the Comptroller & Auditor General of India to examine if public money was spent rightly and within the scope mandated.
We have made our views known to (PAC chairman) KV Thomas, a BJP MP told HT after Tuesdays stormy meeting of the high-powered committee. This is not how you run important committees.
The BJP is insisting that the PAC take up the CAG report on VVIP chopper deal, which ran into controversy during the UPA-2 tenure over alleged payment of bribe by the Italian company to secure the contract.
At Tuesdays meeting, BJP MPs, including Anurag Thakur and Nishikant Dubey pointed out that despite being the only Congress member, besides the chairman of the 21 member panel, Naik was given the charge of such a crucial sub-committee. The BJP has eight members in the panel, while it has got chairmanship of two out of the five sub-groups.
Outside, BJP MPs told HT that they wanted the panel to get to the bottom of the chopper scam, and feared Naiks appointment was a ploy to delay probe. We have a reason for it: there are precedents. When a Congress member delayed probe into the irregularities committed in preparation of the commonwealth games, meetings were no held for months. We fear a repeat of that, said another BJP member of the panel.
Members of the ruling party argued at the meeting that every decision in the PAC is taken through a consensus, but they were not consulted on such a crucial appointment. The chairman argued that it was his prerogative to appoint heads of the sub-group, but assured the members to get back to them after fresh consultations.
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The Congress on Wednesday demanded a probe into the alleged tape-recorded conversation between some BJP leaders and a businessman in which they were allegedly conspiring to topple the Nabam Tuki government in Arunachal Pradesh.
There should be a thorough investigation on how Congress legislators were weaned away to support a new formulation, senior Congress leader Kapil Sibal said.
There is a tape-recorded conversation which we produced both in the high court and the Supreme Court which points the needle of suspicion at Prime Minister (Narendra Modi) as well as home minister (Rajnath Singh) and we would like both these authorities to explain their position in Parliament, he said.
Sibal demanded an immediate investigation into the tape-recorded conversation, saying he expected the BJP-led government to act with the same alacrity it had done in ordering a probe into an alleged sting operation in Uttarakhand in the case of CM Harish Rawat. Who is this businessman? Who were the BJP leaders? We want to know who were the people involved in this and whoever is guilty should be brought to book, he said.
A man, who along with his wife and son, was brutally thrashed by three policemen in full public view in Tiruvannamalai district two days ago, on Wednesday moved the Madras high court seeking registration of a criminal case against them and their suspension.
Justice P N Prakash, before whom the petition which also sought protection to the family came up, said he would hear it on Thursday.
Petitioner A Raja of Thokkavadi village submitted that he and his son had gone to the local market on July 11. As his wife too came there on her own, he had scolded her.
Chengam Sub-Inspector Murugan and two constables Nammalvar and Vijayakumar, who were present there, immediately intervened and even without hearing their explanation that it was a family dispute attacked them with lathis, the petitioner claimed.
The barbaric attack continued even after his wife fell at the feet of the policemen and begged them not to beat them. In the impact, a portion of her blouse was torn and some local people offered her a piece of cloth to cover herself, he said.
TN police in Tiruvannamalai reported to have publicly beaten three Dalits in Chengam @htTweets pic.twitter.com/IXEeKqwZEn Aditya Iyer (@Theadityaiyer) July 12, 2016
Read: Rail roko in Tamil Nadu after police lathi charge Dalit family
They suffered bleeding injuries, the petitioner submitted adding they were later taken to the police station. Instead of of giving treatment, they were beaten up there too.
At night, the SI gave him Rs.1,000 with an advice to go only to a private hospital for treatment but the petitioner said he turned it down.
He further said local DSP Shaji pacified an agitated crowd which gheraoed the police station protesting the assault and requested him not to precipitate the issue.
The family was taken to a private nursing home at around 2 AM but asked to approach government hospital as their injuries were severe. A formal complaint about the incident was lodged on Thursday, he said.
Raising doubts about an unbiased probe, the petitioner moved the court for criminal action against the three police personnel and their supension. He also sought an interim direction to provide treatment to his family members and protection.
As the video of the attack on the couple and their son on a busy road went viral, DMK and others condemned it. The three police personnel had since been transferred out of Chengam where the incident had occurred.
Six people were whisked off to a police station from a wedding function after they clashed over playing of popular Hindi songs at the venue in Kanpur, police said on Wednesday.
Clashes broke out on Tuesday between the groups at the wedding function of one Rajendra Kumars daughter when some drunkards from one of the groups ordered the disc jockey to play DJ Waale Babu mera Gaana Baja de song in the marriage procession, they said.
On the other hand, the other group demanded playing of the Nagin Tune following which there was a skirmish between the groups, police said. Six men were detained and were released after issuing them a warning, police added.
In most years, the annual Joint Conference of Chief Ministers of the States and Chief Justices of the High Courts gets barely a passing mention in media outlets and is forgotten soon after.
This year it was different.
Chief Justice of India (CJI) TS Thakurs dramatic outburst in April about the burden being placed on the judiciary firmly brought the spotlight back on to the issue of judicial delays and backlogs in India. He lamented the delay in trials, which has seen the number of undertrial prisoners burgeon. Trials take decades to complete, he said, pointing to the inadequacy of judicial strength as the prime cause.
In May, Thakur quantified this inadequacy with a claim that India needs 70,000 judges to clear the pending cases.
Where does the 70,000 number come from?
The basis for this, as his speech at the Joint Conference of Chief Ministers of the States and Chief Justices of the High Courts indicates, is the benchmark of having 50 judges per million population.
With Indias population being pegged at 1.2 billion as of May 2016, applying this benchmark, India should have approximately 60,000 judges. As on January 1, 2016, according to Court News, a publication of the Supreme Court of India, there were 16,119 judges in the subordinate judiciary, 598 in high courts and 26 in the Supreme Court.
The latest figures (as on July 11, 2016), as seen from the National Judicial Data Grid and Department of Justice data, tell us that there are 16,438 judges at the subordinate judiciary level, 621 in high courts and 29 in the Supreme Court. All of this suggests that getting anywhere close to CJIs benchmark of 70,000 or even 65,000 is going to be a herculean, if not impossible, task in the next few decades.
However, a fundamental question needs to be answered: Do we actually need 70,000 judges to dispose of the pending 32 million cases in the Indian judicial system?
The numbers suggest otherwise.
For a start, even with the present strength, courts dispose of almost as many cases as are filed in a given year.
For instance, between July 2014 and July 2015, with a working strength of between 15,500 and 15,600 judges, the subordinate courts in India disposed of about 18,730,046 cases as against 18,625,038 cases which were filed in the same period just a little more than the number of cases filed.
This must give us pause to question once again the basis for the figure of 70,000 judges.
The Law Commissions methodology
The origin of the benchmark of 50 judges per million lies in the 120th report of the Law Commission of India. That report itself is very laconic. It is all of five pages long.
While it suggests rate of pendency or rate of litigation as a basis to fix judges strength, it doesnt actually carry out the mathematical exercise of arriving at a number on the basis of available data.
Rather, the Law Commission looks at numbers of judges in other countries such as the US and decides India should have as many judges as the US at least, without comparing the number of cases in the system, the underlying economy, and the capacity of the judicial system to handle the workload.
The basis to argue for a benchmark of 50 judges per million is flimsy, to say the least.
But how many judges does India actually need?
An alternative methodology
A case cannot be disposed of in a mechanical fashion like a post office would despatch a parcel. One or more hearings have to take place, evidence has to be presented and the judge has to apply her mind. A proper time frame for the disposal of a case has to be fixed. Assuming that an outer limit of three years is fixed, we can assess how many judges we need to dispose of existing cases, whether they were filed a day earlier or 10 years ago.
This methodology was adopted by the Law Commission of India in its 245th report Arrears and backlog: Creating additional judicial (wo)manpower and is also routinely used within governments and the judiciary to assess judge strength.
Another way to approach the need for additional judges is to determine what role they are going to play within the judicial system are they needed to handle the entire incoming load or the existing backlog?
The numbers tell us that the present strength is about adequate to ensure that the number of pending cases doesnt increase too much on a year-to-year basis. Therefore, it might be the case that what India really needs are more judges to handle the backlog; that is, pending cases which havent been disposed of for a long time.
There are two good alternative ways of looking at solving the pendency problem within three years by calculating how many additional judges are required to hypothetically 1) dispose of all cases currently in the system and 2) dispose of only cases that have been in the system for more than two years, since the judiciary appears to be able to deal with the current incoming workload of cases somewhat adequately.
For the purpose of this analysis, we will focus on the district courts.
The data
Data on the time period for which a case has been pending as on December 31, 2015, in the district courts has been obtained from the Department of Justice, which itself obtained this data from the jurisdictional high courts directly.
Looking at the numbers available in Court News, which contains details of the cases filed and disposed of in the trial courts, it is possible to see the average number of cases a judge decides in a year.
Since the manner of counting a case is different in each state, the five-year average rates of disposal in each state vary.
The wide variance seen in the number of cases disposed of per judge can be attributed to the fact that not all states count what is a case in the same way. Some courts count only the main case whereas some others include the interim applications and miscellaneous proceedings within that case separately. Be that as it may, this gives us some idea how many judges each state would need to dispose of its backlog.
Applying this rate to the pending cases, we can figure out how many additional judges are needed, depending on whether were looking to dispose of all pending cases in three years or just the cases that are older than two years.
Far fewer judges required than expected
The overall picture suggests that the number of additional judges needed is much lower than the figure cited by CJI.
And in some states, the current strength and rate of disposal is enough to dispose of all cases more than two years old within the next three years, whereas in others, filling up the current vacancies would serve the same purpose. However, there are some states where the sanctioned strength of judges needs to be increased dramatically to be able to do so.
As the numbers show, with either of the objectives, Bihar clearly has the worst problem of lack of judicial capacity in the lower courts whereas Odisha and Jharkhand also have significant problems on this front. Another way of looking at it could also be to show that the judicial systems in these states dont function very efficiently.
It might mean that the pendency and delay might come down if the courts just functioned more efficiently, with fewer adjournments, more hearings, better infrastructure and support.
Even so, going by the information in Court News, most states would be able to handle the burden of pending cases if they appoint a reasonable number of judges in addition to their existing strength.
Judges alone are not the answer
Even if one were to accept that more judges are necessary, the present quality of lawyers and the appointment mechanisms dont make scaling up (even to the modest numbers suggested in this article) entirely feasible.
Either the quality requirements will have to be seriously compromised or the terms and conditions of service of being a judge must be vastly improved, involving heavy, recurring expenditure for states.
Other options, such as changes in procedure, improved quality of law graduates, greater use of information technology, alternative dispute resolution must all be explored to ameliorate the situation.
In actually implementing judicial reform, a credible cost-benefit analysis is imperative.
For that we need a dispassionate data-driven approach to the problem and understanding of the limitations of the legal ecosystem we are working in. Adding to the strength of the judiciary is no doubt necessary to some extent, but it should not occupy all the energies and resources available.
(Alok Prasanna Kumar is a senior resident fellow at the Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy. Additional research to this story contributed by Vidhi interns Kanika Sood and Akshay Shandilya.)
Attacking the ruling Siddaramaiah-led Congress government in Karnataka over the alleged suicide of deputy superintendent of police MK Ganapathi, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) said on Wednesday they were not happy with the judicial probe ordered by chief minister and demanded the resignation of minister KJ George.
In an interview given to a local channel before committing suicide, Ganapahthi had alleged that he was being harassed by ADGP (Intelligence) AM Prasad and KJ George.
We are not satisfied with chief ministers reply. We insist that KJ George resigns and an FIR be filed against three people mentioned by deputy SP Ganpathi, BJP leader Jagadish Shettar told media here.
We are not happy with judicial probe being ordered. BJP and Janata Dal (Secular) will sit on dharna day and night till the government responds to our demands, he added.
S Siddaramaiah had earlier in the day ordered a judicial probe monitored by a retired high court justice into the matter.
Ganapathy, who was posted at the IG office in Mangaluru, killed himself in a lodge but left behind a suicide note in which he alleged harassment.
Last Friday, Siddaramaiah said that the BJP has no moral right to demand a CBI probe.
According to reports, the BJPs state unit staged a protest demo in Bengaluru, Madikeri and Hubballi, seeking a CBI inquiry into Ganapathis unnatural death.
The two IPS officers who were also named in the suicide note and the interview before he hanged himself reportedly are additional director general of police (intelligence) AM Prasad and Lokayukta (Ombudsman) deputy inspector general of police Pronab Mohanty.
As angry street protests and stone-throwing incidents continued unabated following the death of Hizbul Mujahideen militant Burhan Wani, mobile services remained blocked in southern parts of Kashmir for the fifth day on Wednesday.
The protests erupted on Saturday, a day after security personnel shot dead the 22-year-old social media savvy militant. According to officials, at least 32 people have died and 1,365 injured in the violent protests till now.
Police and government officials say that banning mobile and internet services is a violence control measure to prevent rumour mongering that stokes more anger.
We dont want people to spread rumours on social media thats why the internet remains banned in Kashmir. This has been specifically done to control violence from spreading to other parts of the valley, a top police source wishing anonymity said.
Read more | Invitation cancelled: Weddings put off in strife-torn Kashmir after Wanis death
Authorities have in the past blocked mobile and internet services whenever protests have broken out in any part of the valley and residents allege that the information blackout is a tactic used by the government to keep the people of the valley uninformed about the killings.
We hardly know what is happening in other parts of Kashmir. We dont know about who has been killed where. The government doesnt want to us know how they are killing people, a Baramulla resident told Hindustan Times over the phone.
People say local newspapers, television news channels and the state-run radio services are the only sources of information. But as access to local newspapers is limited to curfew and strict restrictions, they claim radio and TV channels dont report the truth.
We could have remained updated via the internet but its being banned. TV channels also dont tell you what actually is happening. Once in a while, theyll tell you about the death toll. The state-run radio doesnt even sometimes mention that people are being killed here, a Srinagar resident told Hindustan Times.
Read more | Social media hits out at top politicians for silence on Kashmir violence
Volunteers and local NGOs, who are helping out the injured and their families, say suspension of mobile and internet services makes their task difficult.
Javed - a volunteer at a Srinagar hospital - said that contacting other volunteers and doctors in hospitals in south Kashmir where the rate of causality is very high, hasnt been easy.
Yesterday, a private doctor, who runs a clinic in south Kashmir, had to come to Srinagar just to let us know that he wants to work with us. We are using phone calls and SMS service to communicate with people in Srinagar. We fear that might even be banned if the situation worsens, Javed said.
Read more | CM Mehbooba repeating my mistakes: Omar Abdullah on Kashmir unrest
Kashmiris living outside the state are also worried about their families as they have not been able to contact them.
The last time I talked to my family was on Friday. I could hear slogans chanted on the mosque loudspeakers. Since then I couldnt make any contact with my family in Islamabad. Phone lines arent working, Khalid, who works in New Delhi, said.
Government sources said that mobile and internet services will remain suspended in some parts of Kashmir till the volatile situation in the valley is normal.
Kashmiri Muslims defied curfew on Wednesday to save the lives of Amarnath Yatra pilgrims injured in an accident on the Jammu-Srinagar national highway.
A bus carrying pilgrims met with an accident at Sangam near Bijbehara in South Kashmirs Anantnag district. A pilgrim and the driver of the mini-bus died, and more than 20 were injured in the accident.
Hindustan Times could not independently contact the injured pilgrims, but a video purportedly shot by a news channel is being widely shared on social media. Also, a police officer in the Srinagar control room confirmed that the pilgrims were rescued by Muslim locals.
In the video, a pilgrim, who identified himself as Ajit Kumar Arora from Meerut, Uttar Pradesh, describes how they were saved by the timely intervention of locals.
Read: Militancy: How the Kashmir Valley calculates its notional economic losses
After darshan..., we were stuck at Baltal base camp for two days as the Yatra was suspended due to the prevailing situation. Yesterday night, we left Baltal along with other vehicles in the form of a convoy, an injured Arora says.
It was then that the mini-bus met with an accident, but he managed to crawl out of the wreckage. I...sought help from the other vehicles carrying pilgrims with which we were travelling, but nobody stopped to help us, he recalls.
He also claims that the army and police personnel in the area did not come to their aid.
I saw a local and asked him for help. Instead of one, 50 people came rushing to help us. They broke the window panes of the bus and saved us. Otherwise we would have died, Arora says.
Curfew has been in force, particularly in south Kashmir, for five consecutive days since protests erupted after Hizbul Mujahideen militant Burhan Wani was killed in an encounter on Friday. As many as 34 people have been killed in clashes between protestors and security forces, and hundreds have been injured.
Read: Kashmir protests: Information blackout, communication breakdown adds to woes
But the Muslim locals risked their own lives to save the pilgrims, who were taken to a hospital for treatment. They even ensured our treatment in the hospital, the pilgrim says.
If you want to learn humanity, learn it from Kashmiris. Dont talk bad about them, understand them, Arora exclaims.
This is not the first time that Kashmiris have come to the rescue of Amarnath Yatris. In 2010, when a severe crisis was sweeping the state, people of the Valley opened their hearts and homes to the stranded pilgrims. They provided them food and accommodation, and even ferried them to the cave shrine.
Embattled Congress leader Nabam Tuki claimed to have taken charge as the chief minister of Arunachal Pradesh at the Arunachal Bhawan in New Delhi on Wednesday.
Tuki communicated his position to Tathagata Roy, officiating as the frontier states governor in absence of JP Rajkhowa.
The spokesperson of the governors house confirmed receiving the letter and said no action by the governor has been taken yet.
Tuki told HT, I have also spoken to the chief secretary and DGP regarding the future course of action after reaching Itanagar tomorrow .
In the landmark judgement given by Supreme Court earlier on Wednesday, the Congress government was restored in Arunachal Pradesh, scrapping all decisions by the governor JP Rajkhowa that precipitated the fall of the previous administration.
Congress government led by Tuki was dismissed in December, when 21 of the 47 MLAs rebelled against the chief minister, accusing him of running the government in an autocratic manner.
Read: Presidents rule in Arunachal: A recap of what led to this situation
A visibly pleased Tuki described the Supreme Court judgment as a historic verdict and said the ruling would help protect healthy democracy in the country. This is a historic and remarkable judgment.
According to the judgment, our government has been restored, Tuki said. Ill go to the state and talk to all the 47 Congress MLAs. We will call a meeting.
In Guwahati, chief minister Kalikho Pul maintained that there was no threat to his government and he will file a review petition in the Supreme Court.
Pul said a floor test would prove the numbers backing his government. The government runs only with numbers. There is no threat to our government. That will be decided on the floor of the Assembly.
With the Supreme Court restoring the previous Congress government in Arunachal Pradesh, the verdict is likely to set in motion the following chain of events:
On December 16, the Nabam Tuki government was dismissed in an Assembly session called by the Governor. The bench called the actions of Governor Rajkhowa as illegal and violative of the Constitutional provisions.
Read: Arunachal crisis timeline: Kalikho Puls expulsion to restoration of Cong govt
Commenting on the Supreme Courts verdict, union law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said that the government will study Supreme Court judgment in detail before making any reaction.
He said the court had ordered status quo ante from December 15 and a lot of developments have taken place after that, including withdrawal of Presidents Rule and swearing-in of a new government under Kalikho Pul.
What requires to be done requires detailed consideration, Prasad said.
Prasad dismissed that there was any law mismanagement by the Centre in the case.
It is the second such ruling by the Supreme Court since May when it similarly restored the ousted government of Chief Minister and Congress leader Harish Rawat in Uttarakhand.
Read: Arunachal verdict: Cong says democracy won, BJP reminds it of Emergency
Army chief Gen Raheel Sharif on Wednesday joined Pakistans civilian leadership in criticising Indias handling of the unrest in Jammu and Kashmir, saying the world community should step in to resolve the Kashmir issue.
The powerful military leader made the remarks while addressing a conference of the Pakistan Armys corps commanders at the General Headquarters in Rawalpindi, according to a post on the militarys official Facebook page.
Thirty-five people have died in violent protests in Jammu and Kashmir that were triggered by the killing of militant commander Burhan Wani last week.
Condemning Indian brutal killings of innocent Kashmiri youth, (Sharif) reiterated that the world needs to recognise the aspirations of Kashmiri people, their struggle for freedom and help resolve the long-standing dispute for lasting amity in Kashmir and enduring peace in the region, the Facebook post said.
The corps commanders conference discussed the external security situation with emphasis on the situation in Afghanistan, the post added.
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Pakistans Foreign Office had angered the Indian government by calling Wani a Kashmiri leader and describing the recent deaths in Jammu and Kashmir as extrajudicial killings.
India had asked Pakistan not to interfere in its internal affairs and said the official statements on the situation in Kashmir reflected Islamabads use of terrorism as an instrument of state policy.
The diplomatic spat comes at a time when bilateral relations are at an all-time low following the terror attack on Pathankot airbase, which India blamed on the Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed.
Pakistans Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has convened a special cabinet meeting in Lahore on Friday to discuss the situation in violence-hit Kashmir and chalk out future course of action on the issue.
The cabinet will discuss the oppressive actions of Indian security forces against innocent civilians and the over all situation in Kashmir after the brutal assassination of Burhan Wani, the Prime Ministers Office said in a statement.
The statement noted that on the directions of the Prime Minister, the foreign office summoned Indian high commissioner and conveyed strong concerns of the Pakistani government and people on rapidly deteriorating human rights situation in Kashmir and increasing oppression by Indian security forces.
The statement said that a detailed briefing was also given to ambassadors of all permanent members of UN security council of UN regarding atrocities of the security forces.
India had asked Pakistan to refrain from interfering in its internal affairs after Sharif issued a statement expressing shock at the killing of Hizbul militant Burhan Wani.
Sharif said on Tuesday the voice and struggle of the people of Kashmir cannot be suppressed through use of brutal force and human rights abuses.
Sharif said this during a meeting with PoK Parliament Special Committee chairman and Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam Fazal (JUI-F) president Maulana Fazlur Rehman in Lahore.
During the meeting, Rehman apprised the Prime Minister on his recent talks with separatist leaders over the human rights violations by Indian Army and paramilitary forces in the state.
Rehman said the Kashmiri leadership looks towards Pakistan in difficult times, according to an official statement.
Sharif said, The government and people of Pakistan respect the sentiments of their Kashmiri brethren and will continue to support the Kashmir cause at each and every forum internationally come what may.
The resolution of the Jammu and Kashmir dispute is only possible by the realisation of the right to self-determination of the people of Jammu and Kashmir, as per the UNSC resolutions, through a fair and impartial plebiscite under UN auspices, Sharif said.
France-based Lafarge Holcim announced a divestment deal to sell its five units in India, including the one at Jojobera in East Singhbhum district of Jharkhand, for an estimated enterprise value of $1.4 billion, or Rs 9,300 crore, to Nirma Limited.
But the deal may hit a roadblock if Lafarge fails to obtain approval of the state government for transfer of its Jojobera plant site land to Nirma, state officials said on Wednesday.
Its mandatory to seek state governments prior approval for third-party transfer of leased land, in this case leased to Tata Steel. The district administration had informed this to the company, requesting it to seek governments approval, said KK Sone, the state land and revenue secretary.
They have to comply with the administrations notice. Any violation would draw administrative, civil as well as criminal actions.
The East Singhbhum deputy commissioner, Amit Kumar, has been asked to calculate the revenue that the government stands to gain from such land transfer and its registry.
The district administration had served a notice on Lafarge on October 10 last year when Lafarge was in talks with Birla Corp for a similar deal, informing it of the necessity to obtain the state governments prior approval before transfer of land on which the Jojobera plant stands.
The plant was built on government land leased to Tata Steel.
Copies of the notice were sent to Tata Steel and the state land and revenue department.
We have not received any response from Lafarge nor any application from the company seeking the state governments approval for transferring the Jojobera plant site, even after media reports of a deal to sell the Jojobera plant to Nirma, said Sunil Kumar, Jamshedpur additional deputy collector (land and revenue).
Efforts to get Lafarges comments failed despite repeated calls, SMSes and emails.
Lafarege Holcim chief executive officer Eric Olsen announced the letter of agreement with Nirma Limited on Monday evening, saying the company would divest its three cement plants and two grinding units, including the one at Jojobera, to Nirma.
Olsen said the deal was subject to approval by the Competition Commission of India (CCI) and the process of takeover would start only after that.
The administrations notice to Lafarge highlighted four major anomalies, including the term of lease agreement with Tata Steel that was renewed on August 20, 2005, after the steel major transferred its Jojobera cement plant to Lafarge in 1999.
The steel major didnt take any approval of the Bihar government for getting into a license agreement with Lafarge, permitting use of the Jojobera plant site. Moreover, theres no provision of licensing right to the lessee in either the Bihar land reforms act or in the two Tata lease agreements, in 1985 and then in 2005, an official said, quoting the notice.
Tata Steel had signed a business transfer agreement for its Jojobera plant with Lafarge India on March 9, 1999, after its board of directors decided to sell it in 1998. Subsequently, it got into a license agreement with Lafarge on November 1, 1999, allowing the latter the use of the Jojobera plant site for a license fee of Rs 200 an acre.
Lafarge India Employees Union president Rakeshwar Pandey said on Wednesday that the workers welcome the new management with Nirma. We will talk with them to ensure that there is no retrenchment and all the facilities and salary to the employees is continued, he said.
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The Supreme Court restored the Congress government in Arunachal Pradesh on Wednesday, embarrassing the central government for a second time in two months over its decision to impose Presidents Rule in opposition-ruled states.
A five-judge bench led by justice JS Khehar quashed governor JP Rajkhowas decision to advance the legislative assembly session by a month last year, a move that precipitated the fall of the Congress government led by Nabam Tuki in December. He was succeeded by Kalikho Pul, who led a Congress rebellion and formed the government with support from the BJP.
In May, the Union government clamped central rule in Uttarakhand but the Congress-led state government successfully challenged that decision in court.
Despite the verdict, Tuki might find it difficult to hold onto power in Arunachal Pradesh if a floor test is held as the Congress currently has just 15 legislators in a house of 58. On Wednesday evening, he wrote to the acting governor about the transition of power and claimed to have taken charge as the chief minister from the Arunachal Bhavan in New Delhi. A Raj Bhavan spokesperson in Guwahati confirmed receiving the letter and said that there was no action yet from the governor.
The judgement has to be implemented and the governor will take all necessary actions and steps, Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi said after a high-level convened by the home minister Rajnath Singh at North Block.
According to sources, the Centre is not going to seek any review of the Supreme Court judgement since it was not a party to the case. If any clarification has to be sought, it will be sought by the governor, the sources said.
Read | Parliament to polls: How SCs Arunachal verdict will shake up politics
On Wednesday, the Supreme Court restored the state assembly to its state before December 15 which means the dismissal of the Congress government, Presidents Rule and the new administration have all been effectively declared invalid.
The court scrapped the governors December 9, 2015 message directing the manner in which the assembly proceedings had to be conducted. This order to prepone the assembly violates the constitution, the bench said.
All decisions taken by the Arunachal Pradesh assembly after December 9 are unsustainable and set aside, held the bench in a unanimous judgment. It disapproved of the governors interference with the functioning of the assembly on the ground there was political turmoil in the state.
The provisions of the constitution do not enjoin upon the Governor, the authority to resolve disputes within a political party, or between rival political parties, the bench said and admonished Rajkhowa for issuing the illegal order. It violated the constitutional rules that demarcate the role of a governor and speaker. A governor, the court pointed out, could not have participated in the House proceedings including the speakers removal and disqualification of the 21 rebel Congress lawmakers.
Read | Presidents rule in Arunachal: A recap of what led to this situation
With the Supreme Court restoring the previous Congress government in Arunachal Pradesh, the verdict is likely to set in motion the following chain of events:
Historic verdict
The verdict is historic. It paves way to protect healthy democracy in the country, said ousted chief minister Nabam Tuki.
The Congress demanded the resignation of Governor Rajkhowa. Party president Sonia Gandhi said, Those who trampled upon constitutional propriety and democratic norms have been defeated today.
Read | Arunachal verdict: Cong says democracy won, BJP reminds it of Emergency
Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal said the verdict was a tight slap on Modi government. SC judgment yet another tight slap on dictatorial Modi govt. Hope Modi ji wud learn n now stop interfering in democratically elected govts (sic), Kejriwal tweeted.
Sitting CM Pul also struck a defiant note, saying the government is run by numbers, not court verdicts. For his part, Pul and the dissidents can seek a review of the verdict.
Signs of opposition consolidation around the court decision were visible on Wednesday as the Congress, Left Front, Aam Aadmi Party and Biju Janata Dal indicated they will make it an issue in parliament that begins on July 18.
Read | Arunachal crisis timeline: Kalikho Puls expulsion to restoration of Cong govt
Read | What next in Arunachal Pradesh after SC restores Cong govt
A jubilant Congress accused the Centre of misusing its power after the Supreme Court restored the partys government in Arunachal Pradesh on Wednesday as the BJP attempted to distance itself from what many called a huge embarrassment.
The top court restored the Arunachal Pradesh assembly to December 15 last year, effectively scrapping the NDA administrations decision to impose Presidents Rule in the state. Two months ago, the SC had quashed central rule in Uttarakhand in a similar manner.
Those who trampled upon constitutional propriety and democratic norms have been defeated today, Congress president Sonia Gandhi said as her party demanded the resignation of governor JP Rajkhowa.
Read | Supreme Court verdict on Arunachal Pradesh
Her son and vice-president Rahul Gandhi was more aggressive. Thanks Supreme Court for explaining to the Prime Minister what democracy is, @OfficeofRG tweeted.
Ousted chief minister Nabam Tuki said the BJPs politics of conspiracy had failed and that he will consult party legislators before deciding on a future course of action.
The verdict is historic. It paves way to protect healthy democracy in the country.
Read | Parliament to polls: How SCs Arunachal verdict will shake up politics
But the BJP refused to bow, saying the developments in Arunachal were the result of faction fights in the Congress and that the saffron party only supported the rebels.
Congress misused the Article 356 many times. Emergency is again an example, said BJP spokesperson Nalin Kohli.
Uttarakhand chief minister Harish Rawat, who came back to power after winning a trust vote, described the verdict as a boost for cooperative federalism. Presidential powers were misused in Uttarakhand and Arunachal, he said.
The SC verdict is also likely to resonate in the upcoming monsoon session of Parliament with smaller parties uniting against the NDA. Signs of that were seen on Wednesday with the Left Front and Aam Aadmi Party condemning the Centre.
SC judgment yet another tight slap on dictatorial Modi govt. Hope Modiji would learn n now stop interfering in democratically elected govts, Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal tweeted.
The CPI-M said the judgment posed a question of political morality and accountability for the BJP-led government. The CPI-M wants the central government to stop its growing authoritarian tendency of invoking central rule in states that have governments of opposition parties, the party said in a statement.
Read the verdict below.
Also read | What next in Arunachal Pradesh after SC restores Cong govt
A governor must keep away from any disagreement or discontent within individual parties, and not get embroiled in political controversies, the Supreme Court held while restoring the Congress government in Arunachal Pradesh on Wednesday.
The five-judge bench judgment on the political crisis that gripped the northeastern state last year has underscored that a governor must function within the constitutional framework. It said that the official, as an executive nominee appointed through the Presidents pleasure, can issue orders on the functioning of a legislative assembly only on the aid and advice of the chief minister and his council of ministers.
The court further ruled that as the governor was not an elected representative, he/she cannot have an overriding authority over legislators chosen through a democratic process. Allowing the governor to overrule the resolve and determination of the state legislature or the state executive will not harmoniously augur with the strong democratic principles enshrined in the provisions of the Constitution, the bench, headed by justice JS Kehar, held.
Read | Parliament to polls: How SCs Arunachal verdict will shake up politics
Read | Supreme Court verdict on Arunachal Pradesh
The bench found fault with every decision that Arunachal Pradesh governor JP Rajkhowa took, causing the fall of Nabam Tukis government in the state. It said a governor must keep clear of any political horsetrading and even unsavoury political manipulations during the course of work.
The court declared Rajkhowas December 9, 2015, letter which advanced the assembly session by a month and set out the manner in which the House must be conducted as unconstitutional. The removal of speaker Nabam Rebia was one of the resolutions to be passed by the House, and Rajkhowa said it should be taken up for consideration ahead of any other business.
The actions of the governor were certainly not in the language of the law or the spirit of parliamentary democracy and responsible government. In these circumstances, it must be held that the governors unilateral act of summoning the assembly is unconstitutional, the bench, also comprising justices Dipak Misra, MB Lokur, NV Ramana and PC Ghose, held.
Read | Nabam Tukis Congress govt to be restored in Arunachal Pradesh: AG
Read | Have taken charge as Arunachal Pradesh CM, claims Nabam Tuki
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The Supreme Court will decide on Wednesday the validity of the Arunachal Pradesh governors decision to advance a session of the state assembly that possibly led to the fall of the then Congress government.
A five-member constitution bench headed by justice JS Kehar is likely to lay down guidelines on the discretionary powers and role of a governor in a state, a verdict that can have long-reaching ramifications in other states.
Former assembly speaker Nabam Rebia moved the top court after the Gauhati high court declared governor JP Rajkhowas actions valid.
Arunachal Pradesh plunged into political crisis in November after 21 of the Congress 47 legislators rebelled against chief minister Nabam Tuki.
This led to imposition of Presidents Rule in January and the formation of a fresh government led by rebel MLA Kalikho Pul, supported by the BJP.
The top court will also take up the Congress petition against challenging the central rule and formation of the new government.
Governors in India have often come in for criticism for their role during disputes in states. Many regional parties and commentators say the party in power at the Centre uses governors to its benefit.
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A court here on Wednesday remanded Ram Kumar -- the accused in the June 24 murder of young woman IT professional Swathi -- to three days police custody.
While the prosecution sought five days police custody, the defence strongly objected to it, citing Ram Kumars health condition.
He had slashed his neck when police surrounded him in their effort to arrest him. He was later treated at government hospitals in Tirunelveli and Chennai amid police protection.
Read: Techie murder: The rule of law prevails fitfully
Countering defence claims, the prosecution produced medical reports and a government medical doctor deposed in court stating that the accused is in a fit physical condition.
After hearing both sides, Metropolitan Magistrate, Egmore, Gopinath (he is 13th court magistrate now holding additional charge of 14th court) remanded Ram Kumar to three days police custody.
Speaking to reporters later, Assistant Public Prosecutor R Kolanchinathan said the custody was sought to question Ramkumar about issues like his antecedents and motive.
24-year old techie Swathi was murdered allegedly by Ram Kumar at Nungambakkam railway station on June 24. He was arrested on July 1 from his residence in T Meenakshipuram in Tirunelveli district.
Read: Techie murder case: Swathis father, vendor identify Ram Kumar as killer
India announced on Wednesday that it will send two C-17 military transport aircraft to South Sudans capital Juba on Thursday morning to evacuate over 300 Indians stranded in the war-torn country.
We are launching OP #SankatMochan to evacuate Indian nationals from South Sudan. My colleague @Gen_VKSingh is leading this operation, external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj said in a tweet.
All Indian nationals with valid travel documents will be allowed onboard with a maximum of five kilograms of cabin baggage and no check-in pieces. Women and children will be accommodated on priority basis.
Apart from him, Amar Sinha, secretary (economic relations), will also travel to Juba.
South Sudan has witnessed heavy fighting between former rebels and government soldiers. According to the foreign ministry, there are around 600 Indians in South Sudan 450 of them in Juba and nearly 150 outside the capital.
The Maharashtra State Election Commission on Wednesday decided to cancel the registration of 191 political parties, including the All India Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) led by MP Asaduddin Owaisi, for failing to submit documents such as Income Tax (I-T) returns. The Hyderabad-based party, will be able to contest polls in the state, but will not get a symbol of its choice. The symbol of the party is a kite. The AIMIM has now decided to challenge the decision.
The decision will only be in effect for local body elections in the state. There will be no limitations on these political parties for the state Assembly and the Lok Sabha polls because those are handled by the Election Commission of India and not the state election commission.
Most parties that have lost their registration are small outfits, except AIMIM, the Republican Party of India (Democratic) and the Republican Party of India (Khobragade).
All the political parties concerned must now register themselves again with the commission, but will also have to pay a penalty of Rs1 lakh, said an election commission official.
Our order is related to registration only. The parties that are registered with us get priority when choosing a symbol for elections, JS Saharia, state election commissioner said.
He said parties have to follow certain procedures and submit documents such at I-T returns and an annual audit report every year to remain registered.
We have given them enough time to submit those documents. We also served a couple of notices and released advertisements in newspapers. But they failed to do submit them. So, this decision was taken, Saharia told HT.
AIMIM legislator Imtiyaz Jaleel said the civic body elections are very important for the party. We had received a notice four months ago from the election commission, asking us for some documents. We had complied the very next day. We will file an appeal, Jaleel told HT.
AIMIM, which has the backing of several Muslim voters, is seen as a competitor to the Congress and other parties in getting minority votes. This decision, therefore, could be a setback for the party and good news for the Congress.
The Mumbai police on Wednesday said they are gathering details about the activities and engagements of controversial Islamic preacher Zakir Naik during his time in Saudi Arabia, a country that officials said is the biggest contributor to his non-profit, the Islamic Research Foundation (IRF).
Investigators said Naik has been spending the majority of his time in Saudi Arabia for years, and that the police are compiling details of all his visits there. A police source added that central agencies have been helping them gather this information, which will prove critical in the enquiry against Naik. As they have been unable to question Naik, the police will submit what they term an open report to police commissioner Dattatray Padsalgikar.
The police also said that officials from the special branch, which is conducting the enquiry into Naiks activities, will keep an eye on a press conference organised by IRF at Nagpada on Thursday, which Naik is expected to host via video-conferencing.
It will be interesting to hear if he has something new to say on the issue and to see if he takes specific questions. Whatever he says will also be included in the preliminary report that will be submitted this week, said a police officer, who did not wish to be named.
As a part of the probe, investigators said that they will search properties owned by Naik and IRF after they finish recording the statements of their employees.
Officials have learnt from former employees of Harmony Media Pvt Ltd, which houses an editing studio for Naiks Peace TV at Dongri, that the company allegedly hasnt paid some of its editors their dues.
A video editor who used to work there said, We would be hired on a five-year contract with a clause stating that our salary for the last 2.6 years would be paid after we completed five years there. However, they told many of us to leave before the end of our terms to avoid paying us. I have not received over Rs 2 lakh in dues.
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Will Mumbais roads be free of potholes in the near future, will the agencies in charge figure out how to lay good roads with pavements, will the process of road laying ever be free of corrupt and sub-standard practices? These questions dominate public chatter and local media space this monsoon too, as they have unfailingly done the last few years. If newspapers and local television channels are a record of the society at a given time in history, future readers are likely to be puzzled at this dichotomy: Mumbai is billed as an international city but does not have the technology or will to construct good roads.
Chief ministers of Maharashtra, mayors, and other assorted people in high offices have often remarked that planning and building roads is not exactly rocket science, or words to that effect. The multiple agencies in charge of roads have been pulled up by the courts for bad roads that led to injury and death of commuters. Yet, they cannot get it right except in a few exclusive zones. For example, the roads in Bandra Kurla Complex are so smooth and pothole-free that they would win an international competition for good roads.
Zooming down the wide, garbage-free and tree-lined BKC road brought home what it will mean to be in a Smart City, or in this case the smart zone of a chaotic, garbage-filled, potholed-road city. The BKC and more lately Lower Parel, the newer business district, are the chosen areas to be developed along the lines of the Smart Cities Mission. The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation unveiled a plan for Lower Parel earlier this year to improve roads, railway stations connectivity, wifi network and make it a zero garbage area so that it too could be a Smart City zone.
This column has argued in the past that the much-touted Smart City Mission of central and state governments would result in selective area-centric upgradation of civic services resulting in further gentrification and unequal development within the city. The empirical evidence is in a deep dive study done by How India Lives, a repository that collates and organises public data, on its smart cities tracker and published by Mint recently.
Read more: Same old plotholes in Mumbais monsoon story
The data portal ran an analysis of 33 city proposals under the Prime ministers Smart City Mission. The stark truth is that contrary to the governments hard-sell that the Smart Cities Mission will result in fast all-round development of a city, a staggering 81% of the cities studied had plans for area-based development and only 19% for pan-city improvement or progress. In Chandigarh, Ranchi, Coimbatore, Jabalpur and a few others, more than 90% of the capital expenditure under the Mission was ear-marked for area-based plans instead of the entire city.
In terms of spending priorities, the maximum capital spend was on land (including housing) followed by mobility or transport. But seven out of the top ten cities with highest budgets for land and housing in their area-based plans were spending more on commercial development and business districts than on housing. The researchers at How India Lives observed that urban development under the Smart Cities Mission will end up being the preserve of a chosen locality, not the entire city. Ergo: More well-endowed BKCs and Lower Parels in a stinking, chaotic, potholed-road city.
As the Smart Cities Mission juggernaut rolls on, the questions may longer be about why some roads always develop potholes, why some areas are garbage dumps, and why we cannot get these basic urban services right. They will instead be who owns the cities and how they are shaped or designed to largely service the needs of capital. That is not a smart way of building cities. And yes, smart cities as understood in the international context do not have potholed roads.
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NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Tuesday gave six weeks to a panel to suggest ways to stop circulation and commercial exploitation of jokes on the Sikh community.
The Delhi Sikh Gurudwara Management Committee (DSGMC) constituted the panel headed by Justice HS Bedi after the top court took cognisance of a public interest petition seeking a ban on jokes ridiculing Sardars.
The petitioner, advocate Harvinder Chowdhury has cited harassment faced by her family members in support of her plea.
She has been very passionate about it. We must not waste more time on this. Tell the panel to formulate the mechanism within six weeks so that we are able to hold a proper hearing of the matter, a bench headed by Chief Justice TS Thakur told the DSGMC counsel, senior lawyer RS Suri.
The committee includes retired SC judge Justice MY Iqbal, former bureaucrat Pawan Kumar Verma, Rajya Sabha member MP Bezbaruah and retired IAS officer Raghubir Singh. Chowdhury recalled the harassment her children faced as Sikhs.
Accompanied by a battery of lawyers from the community, she urged the court to hear the matter soon and pass some directions to stop bullying of Sikh kids in schools. Chowdhury said it should be mandatory for parents to give an affidavit that their kids will not bully children from the Sikh community. Besides her, the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) has sought a ban on circulation of jokes.
The SGPC counsel said: A stereotype has been created and Sikhs are being discriminated against in society because of a particular language and religion.
The bench asked the counsel to give suggestions and assured him that it will certainly look into them. We dont want any group to be an object of constant ridicule. But how can our order imposing the ban be implemented, it asked the lawyer. In an earlier hearing, the court said it acknowledged the contribution of the Sikh community to the country, but its orders had to be within the judicial dimension so that they are capable of being implemented. We cannot say something which is impossible for implementation, it observed.
A 32-year-old woman, who works with a media organisation, was allegedly stabbed by her live-in partner on Tuesday night in an apartment in Noida Sector 72, police said.
The accused, Varun Goyal, 28, has been arrested. He owns a gym in Ghaziabad.
The couples neighbours informed the police about the incident after hearing a commotion from their flat.
A police team rushed to the spot to find the victim in a pool of blood. She was stabbed multiple times. She was rushed to the district hospital from where she was referred to Lok Nayak Jai Prakash Narayan Hospital in Delhi where her condition is stated to be stable, said Sandeep Singh, deputy superintendent of police (circle 3), Noida.
After the incident, a police team arrested Varun from his gym. The victim hails from the Gorakhpur in Uttar Pradesh and was staying with Varun in a rented accommodation.
Police said the two met in a gym in Noida where Varun worked before opening his own place. They became friends and decided to move in together.
Varun and the victim were in a live-in relationship for the last one year. They met in a gym where Varun used to work. During his interrogation, Varun said the victim wanted to marry him but he was not willing as she is 4-5 years older than him, said Dinesh Yadav, in-charge, sector 49 police station.
Police said they had a quarrel over the issue on Tuesday night when the victim started pressuring Varun for marriage. The quarrel turned ugly and the couple hit each other.
Varun said he got infuriated and rushed to the kitchen to pick a knife. He said he stabbed the victim multiple times and fled from the spot. The neighbours heard the distress calls of the victim and called the police, said Yadav.
We have recovered Varuns clothes, a kitchen knife that might have been used and other evidence from the spot. He will be produced in court after questioning, he added.
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Ever since militancy began in Kashmir in the early 1990s, very seldom did scholarly discussion move outside the familiar fields: the history of Jammu and Kashmir and its accession to India in 1947, the special position of the state in the Constitution, the relationship between Jawaharlal Nehru and Sheikh Abdullah, the distance between the erstwhile Dogra ruling family of the State and its subjects, failure to develop democracy at the grassroots, etc. The economy did enter the discourse but only fitfully as if it were just adjunct of the main course of events. Now, with an elected government being there, some healing touch was expected to be provided. The common minimum programme that the two ruling parties, the BJP and the PDP, drew up had a strong economic component to it. But unfortunately, with unabated infiltration from across the border for the past six months, leading to repeated attacks on the security forces, and the disturbances and shutdown following the killing of the Hizbul Mujahideen commander, the states economy again seems to be headed towards an uncharted path.
Read: Mehbooba, Omar Abdullah visit 1931 Martyrs graveyard, CM appeals for peace
What have the repercussions on the economy of the state because of infiltrations and the shutdown over the past four days? No principal industry chamber such as the CII, Assocham or Ficci has attempted a calculation so far. Nor has the Kashmir Chamber of Commerce and Industries, which says its principal concern is now with the lives lost.
Assocham had estimated in 2014 because of the floods in the state, the states economy suffered an immediate loss of Rs 5,400-5,700 crore, with the maximum damage caused to trade, hotels, restaurants, horticulture and handicrafts. But with the shutdown this time, the bite will be felt largely in the tourism sector, which had been on the uptick since the gory summer of 2010, when about 120 young people had died in encounters with the security forces. And in 2013, with 26 days of curfew in the valley following the hanging of Afzal Guru in February, the tourism industry had pegged the loss at an estimated Rs 4,500 crore.
The worst part is that tourists may now stop coming after having booked the rooms. Rooms in Kashmir are usually booked from May 25 to June 25. If the demand is good, people in areas around Dal Lake rent rooms to tourists, and in many cases even floors.
Read: Modi expresses unhappiness over media coverage of Kashmir protests
Extremist activities followed by shutdowns do not bode well for the new vision of the state that the two ruling parties have crafted. The common manifesto of the BJP and PDP has a lot that hinges on tourism, which, in turn, depends on urban development. It intends to develop Jammu as an independent tourism circuit, in addition to rebuilding Shehr-e-Khas as a heritage destination by dovetailing craft, heritage and tourism. Dal Lake is supposed to become a world heritage site. The state also wants to develop two mega cities in the shape Greater Srinagar and Greater Jammu. Each of the two would have New Jammu and New Srinagar as satellites. Finally, it also wishes to upgrade all towns with population size class of 30,000 to 99,999 to cities.
According to the Sixth Economic Census of 2013, there are 507,372 establishments in J&K. Of those 40%, comprising handloom and handicrafts, are in urban areas. We have to wait for more information from government and industry sources to know how militancy has affected them.
Jammu and Kashmir is a special-category status state that gets 90% of normal plan assistance in the form of grants against just 30% in the case of general-category states. But the state must create enough revenue-generating sources, which can come only from sustained peace. But with peace constantly eluding the valley, are the goals given in the Agenda for Governance realisable within, say, 25 years? I rest my case.
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In Punjab, the monsoon has brought with it a cloudburst of political controversies. That, for a change, means a frisson of relief for the ruling Shiromani Akali Dal, which has long been facing intense heat over sacrilege, scandals, law and order, and drug issues. As the Aam Aadmi Party battles the miseries of manifesto and Malerkotla, Sukhbir Singh Badal, 54, evinces an unmistakable relish for throwing a resurgent opponent off balance in the rancour-laced race to assembly elections. Speaking to Senior Resident Editor Ramesh Vinayak on Monday, the crown prince of Akali politics pulled no punches and cavalierly dismissed AAP. But, the way he railed and ranted against Kejriwals outfit betrayed who he reckons a potent challenger. Excerpts:
How do you look at Punjabs political landscape today?
Its a three-way fight. A year ago, many believed the Aam Aadmi Party was on an upswing. It was the medias darling. People now know that was hype. The AAP will be number three in the assembly contest.
So, you consider the Congress, not AAP, the challenge?
Absolutely, the Congress is enemy number one. Things are going to go down further for the AAP. Itll be like the Manpreet (Badal) phenomenon before the 2012 polls. In the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the AAP was a new fad. People know them now. The AAP lost the Delhi corporation polls. If its losing on home turf, can it dream of ruling Punjab?
If the AAP doesnt matter, why do you attack it all the time?
The AAP is no threat. It has no agenda. It is leaderless. It has no organisational set-up or command structure. In that sense, its like the ISIS (Islamic terror outfit). Everyone in AAP thinks himself to be a leader. Its a bunch of self-proclaimed commanders. Its all chaos.
AAP is a bunch of self-proclaimed commanders. Its all chaos. (HT Photo)
There is an impression that you are obsessed about AAP.
Im not obsessed. Look at the mistakes they are making. Comparing the AAP youth manifesto with Guru Granth Sahib shows their knowledge about Punjab and Sikhism. AAP leader Sanjay Singh doesnt know who Kartar Singh Sarabha is! And, they want to rule Punjab. They are like the East India Company. They are invaders.
But AAP has leaders from Punjab?
They are political rejects or radicals. Sucha Singh Chhotepur was a radical and a Khalistani. Who is their face for Punjab? I challenge them to declare their candidates for chief minister and MLAs, it will implode into 500 AAPs. Its a ticking bomb.
In public perception, AAP is on a surge.
Thats a wrong assessment. The AAPs agenda is not Punjab. (AAP convener) Arvind Kejriwal wants to use Punjab as a platform to fight the Narendra Modi government. At present, he is the chief minister of a municipality. He needs a state to elevate himself. He doesnt care what it means for Punjab. Without the Centres support, no state can develop. Today, no Union minister says no to Mr Parkash Singh Badal because of his stature. What will Kejriwal do? Sit on dharna against the Centre? You need funds for infrastructure. We got Rs 30,000 crore. Will Kejriwal get a rupee?
AAP has apologised for the manifesto faux pas.
But Kejriwal has not. He is the head of the family and the sin was committed in his presence. Like a raja, he has set a date to come to Amritsar. It shows his arrogance. For him, going to Darbar Sahib is a political game. He is not doing it from the heart. Its for the Sikh community to decide whether to pardon him or not.
AAP accuses you of trying to frame and fix its leaders.
Did I instigate them to compare their manifesto with the holy book? We didnt even touch (Congress leader) Capt Amarinder Singh who, as chief minister, had slapped false cases against us.
But the Akalis are also known to use religious symbols in politics?
We publish photos of the Golden Temple but never compare Guru Granth Sahib with our manifesto. They (AAP leaders) see it as an ordinary book. For Sikhs, its the guru.
AAP MLA Naresh Yadav says he is being implicated in the Maler-kotla Quran desecration case.
Why would we choose him out of 67 AAP MLAs? If we intended to target the AAP, we would fix Kejriwals right hand man like Sanjay Singh or Manish Sisodia. I didnt know Yadav till his name cropped up during the interrogation of the accused.
Didnt you err in opposing the film, Udta Punjab?
We didnt oppose the movie. I wasnt even in India when it was released. The producers created the controversy. But the movie defamed Punjab.
Why are you in a denial about the drug issue?
The drug problem in Punjab is far less than in any other state. Im hurt the Punjabi youth is branded an addict.
Also read | Udta Punjab: Facts, figures and falsehoods of states drug problem
Why would anybody defame Punjab?
For politics. Are 70% of our youngsters into drugs? No one in Punjab believes that. Yet, Captain and Kejriwal are repeating this to get votes. Its hurting Punjabs image. Companies are refusing to invest. Mumbai-based pharma companies recently asked if they would get manpower here!
So whats the extent of the drug problem?
I want the people of Punjab to look within. How many in their family take drugs? Thats the measure. We are putting the drug issue to a final test. We will conduct the drug test on all 6.5 lakh candidates for 12,000 police jobs. Its a large, representational sample. That will tell us how serious the issue is.
But drugs are easily available.
Punjab is at the mouth of drug supply chain from Afghanistan. Pakistan is pushing in drugs. Those packets of heroin arent meant for Punjab but for the rest of India. We catch them and end up being called the drug capital.
Your government cracked down on drug peddlers but went into denial when names of politicians cropped up. How do you explain the flip-flop?
We have been saying that there is no drug problem in Punjab. The Centre has to seal the border. Today, the conviction rate for drugs in Punjab is the highest at 85%. It was 40% when we took over in 2007. Punjab is not Mexico.
Why do you blame the Centre?
Its the Centres job to seal the border. We want the same level surveillance on Punjabs border as its in Jammu and Kashmir.
Dr Navjot Kaur Sidhu, chief parliamentary secretary in your government, says drugs are ferried in red-beacon vehicles?
Do you believe her? She has another agenda. She also uses a red beacon. For three years, she has been saying what she wants. I dont care about non-entities.
Also read: Sidhu says drugs ferried in red-beacon cars
Drug mafias enjoy political patronage?
Why would politicians get into it?
For money?
For anybody in politics, reputation matters. There are thousand other ways to make money. A serious politician will never look at drugs as a source of income. Punjab is a small state and everybody will know about it.
Will drugs be an issue in Punjab polls?
No. People can tell the truth from the propaganda. If Punjabis are on drugs, will they be leading producers of wheat, rice, tractors, milk and sports. Punjab has the second highest representation in the Indian squad for the Rio Olympics. Politicians calling us addicts are enemies of Punjab and Sikhs.
Both Amarinder and Kejriwal have promised to end the drug problem in four weeks, if elected.
In Delhi, drugs are available at every corner. People have died in shelter homes due to overdose. Has Kejriwal arrested a drug dealer in two years? Its a poll stunt.
Kejriwal says he will shut all your illegal businesses?
I have no illegal business. Amarinder tried but couldnt find any. Kejriwal should name the illegal businesses I own. I have hotels in Gurgaon and am building one in Punjab, with permission given during the Congress rule. Its an open secret.
AAP says the Badals and Amarinder are hand in glove?
The AAP formed its first government in Delhi with Congress support. The world can turn upside down but the Akalis will never align with the Congress, which attacked the holiest shrine of the Sikhs and killed thousands.
Do you believe foreign-based Khalistanis are backing the AAP?
Yes. For Khalistanis, Akalis are the biggest foe because we stand for India. When Amarinder was chief minister, he was honoured at Dixie Gurdwara in Toronto, the headquarters of the Khalistanis. Now that he is down, they have dumped him and turned AAP-backers, hoping Kejriwal can finish us.
But the AAP is getting traction from NRIs?
Not NRIs, only radicals.
Where is the evidence of the AAP-Khalistani link?
Kejriwal met radicals in Punjab. Last year, radicals started a website to build a campaign for the sarbat khalsa in Amritsar. Soon after the event, it became AAPs portal. I have proof.
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A day after gunning down three Pakistani intruders, Border Security Force (BSF) personnel were involved in another incident of cross-border firing near Narli outpost in Amritsar sector in the wee hours of Wednesday. Although the smugglers from across the border managed to flee, the search operation resulted in recovery of 21kg heroin, one shotgun and three cartridges.
The Italy-made Beretta shotgun had the name Shabir engraved on it while its bullet had the label made in Pakistan on it, said BSF officials.
It was around 3.20am that BSF personnel spotted movement from across the border at Narli outpost. The Pakistani smugglers entered Indian territory and started throwing some packets over the fence. On being challenged, they opened fire on BSF troops, but fled during retaliatory firing.
Terming the incident a major success, BSF inspector general (IG), Punjab Frontier, Anil Palliwal said: The troops are on a high alert in the wake of inputs about desperate attempts being made by infiltrators and smugglers.
The IG said the troops were ready to face all sorts of challenges, and besides enhanced surveillance, technical help is also being sought. The officer said proceedings are on to hold a flag meeting with Pakistan Rangers to protest the back-to-back incidents.
Tuesday intruders handed over to police
The three Pakistani intruders captured near Dariya Mansoor outpost on Tuesday were handed over to the Amritsar (rural) police on Wednesday.
The three intruders -- identified as Shehzad of Lahore, Babar Ali of Sheikhupura and Ali Raza of Narowal -- are being quizzed by cops as well as other security agencies.
Read: BSF guns down 3 Pakistan intruders, nabs 3 in Ajnala near Amritsar
Although initial probe revealed the trio could have entered into India by mistake, the three have been booked for crossing the border illegally.
Amritsar (rural) senior superintendent of police (SSP) Jasdeep Singh said: During quizzing, the three intruders have told us they had come to attend a wedding in Rayya Kalan village across the border, and entered the Indian territory inadvertently.
The trio was nabbed a few hours after BSF troops gunned down three Pakistani intruders in the same area.
Both the Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) plan to scrap the decision to set up a private university on the campus of Khalsa College in Amritsar. The parties leaders were reacting a day after the Punjab cabinet cleared the decks for establishing Khalsa University.
Read: Cabinet okays varsity status to SGPC-run medical college; nod to Khalsa University
State Congress president Capt Amarinder Singh urged chief minister Parkash Singh Badal not to pass any act for it in the assembly. The college is a part of our Khalsa history and heritage and I promise that the day the Congress forms the government, we will restore its status, Amarinder said in a statement issued in Amritsar on Wednesday. However, the college management has already said the heritage building of Khalsa College will stay untouched and the college will continue to remain as it is, while the university will come up separately.
Questioning the logic of setting up the university next to Guru Nanak Dev University, he said the government should rather have set one up in southern Punjab where there is none.
AAP spokesman Sukhpal Singh Khaira issued a statement in Chandigarh that formation of Khalsa University is an attempt by the Majithia family to grab the prestigious land of heritage Khalsa College. We will scrap the decision once we come to power, he added.
Following allegations of producing a fake Scheduled Caste (SC) certificate to contest youth Congress elections held last year, police booked district youth Congress chief Rajiv Raja for fraud on Tuesday.
On May 23, Congress rebel Gursimran Singh Mand submitted a complaint with police commissioner after which an assistant commissioner of police (ACP) was appointed to conduct an inquiry. After receiving the inquiry report, police chief directed to register a case against the youth leader.
Police have booked Raja who is at large under Sections 420 (fraud), 465 (forgery), 467 (forgery of valuable security and will), 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating) and 471 (using as genuine a forged document) of the Indiana Penal Code (IPC) at Haibowal police station.
The FIR of police stated that Rajiv Raja of Rishi Nagar had produced a fabricated SC certificate to contest youth Congress elections. Ludhiana seat was reserved for SC candidate and Raja won it by defeating Youth Congress leader Sunny Kainth, who id Ludhiana youth Congress vice-president.
Case is a political vendetta: Raja
Meanwhile, talking to HT over phone, Raja said registration of case against him is a political vendetta by the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD)-led state government and police authorities.
Youth Congress has successfully organised events in which PPCC chief Captain Amarinder Singh and other senior leader took part, said Raja. SAD-led state government cannot see the success of Congress in the state. So, they have targeted me to dent youth Congress.
Raja said expelled Congress leader Mand was used to file a complaint against him.
I have full faith in judiciary. I will come clean in the case. Earlier, also Scheduled Caste commission and other departments have given clean chit to me for similar allegations, he said.
Case should be probed again: Gurpreet gogi
Fraud case against Ludhiana youth Congress chief Rajiv Raja has not only provided fuel to the opposition parties who would leave no stone unturned to take potshots at the party, but has also come as a major blow to many senior leaders who relied on the youth leader.
Case against Raja a close aide of Ludhiana MP Ravneet Bittu and MLAs Surinder Dawar and Bharat Bhushan Ashu has given a chance to SAD and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) to criticise the party.
When contacted, district Congress chief Gurpreet Gogi said the case against Raja is a political vendetta and should be probed thoroughly.
Meanwhile, senior party leaders met police commissioner Jatinder Aulak requesting him to act leniently on the issue.
Sources said members of Sunny Kainths Youth Congress vice-president group distributed sweets at Gill Road after Raja was booked. The FIR registered against Raja said he described himself as SC under Megh caste even though he belongs to Chimba caste that comes under other backward classes (OBC) category.
The much-awaited Ferozepur-Patti railway link will become a reality soon as the Punjab government has issued directions to Ferozepur and Tarn Taran deputy commissioners to begin the work on land acquisition for the project.
Also read: Patti-Ferozepur rail link can be of help during crisis: Congress
Rajya Sabha member Shwet Malik, who is also a member of the railway board, made this announcement here on Tuesday. He said the Union ministry is ready to go ahead with the project once the state government acquires the land. The DCs will ascertain the land needed for the project and negotiate with the farmers, whose land is to be acquired, said Malik.
The MP said the rail link will shorten the distance between Amritsar and Mumbai by 249 km and reduce travel time by five hours. It will also benefit the army and traders from across the border, he said. Pawan Kumar Bansal, the then railway minister, had announced the Patti-Ferozepur rail link during the 2013 budget. The 23-km link requires a bridge over the Sutlej which wont take much time to be completed, said the MP.
Mass copying in the open during an examination conducted by a college in Dhanbad district embarrassed the state government, days after chief minister Raghubar Das welcomed students from Bihar to pursue education in Jharkhand.
Citing recent cases of cheating in examination and the toppers fiasco in Bihar, Das said on June 27 that students of the neighbouring state could save their career and credibility by studying in education hub Jharkhand.
Students of RS More College in Govindpur were found writing a Class 11 examination paper on July 9 under trees on the campus and using unfair means.
I have come to know from newspapers about large-scale cheating by students at the examination centre and will take action against people responsible, Jharkhand Academic Council (JAC) deputy chairman Phool Singh said on Tuesday.
The JAC was established for conducting secondary school and Intermediate examinations and for prescribing courses of studies.
The intermediate examination at the RS More College centre has surpassed the notoriety of the Bihar Examination Board in allowing cheating in examination, said a professor of the college.
Five to six examinees were also seen sitting on a bench on Monday and copying answers from books. The father of an examinee was caught in camera while writing answers for his son.
It is a serious matter and after holding discussions with the JAC chairman (Arvind Prasad Singh), a probe will be conducted and action will be taken, Phool Singh said over the phone from Ranchi.
Taking serious note of the exam cheating, Vinoba Bhave University (VBU) vice chancellor Gurdeep Singh said he would ask the centre superintendent to give a report. The college is affiliated to VBU in Hazaribagh.
Centre superintendent Kiran Singh said there was not enough room for all the students to sit indoors. The centre has the capacity of holding examination of 540 students at a time. But on Saturday (July 9) the economics examination of science, commerce and arts streams was held simultaneously that led to overcrowding of the centre.
A nearby school was used for the examination after getting permission of the Govindpur block circle officer, but the space was not enough for more than 1000 students, said Kiran Singh, also the principal of the college.
Kabali, the ambitious new Tamil film starring superstar Rajinikanth, which is slated to hit the screens worldwide on July 22, will release in 400 screens in the US. Special premieres have been planned for a day earlier.
In the US, distribution company CineGalaxy, which had released Theri and 24 earlier this year, will release Kabali.
It will be the biggest release for a Rajinikanth-starrer in the US. The Tamil as well as Telugu version of the film will release in 400 screens, said Madhu Garlapati of CineGalaxy.
Read: Will Kabali be actor Rajinikanths new touchstone?
According to Madhu, theres unprecedented pre-release buzz for the film.
Watch the trailer of Kabali here:
Read: In Kabalis song teaser, Rajinikanth tells the world hes back
We opened bookings on Tuesday and in less than two hours tickets were sold out at Towne 3 cinemas, San Jose. The tickets for premieres are priced at $25, and theres huge demand for tickets, she said.
Directed by Pa. Ranjith, the film also stars Radhika Apte, Kishore, Kalaiarasan, Dinesh, Dhansikaa and Taiwanese actor Winston Chao.
Rajinikanth will be seen as a don who fights for Tamils in Malaysia in Kabali, which will also dubbed and released in Hindi and Malay.
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Vidya Balan was filmmaker Srijit Mukherjis first choice for Rajkahini. Yes, you heard that right! The National Award-winning filmmaker, who is adapting his own Bengali film in Hindi, with Vidya in the lead, admits that Rajkahini was originally meant to be a bilingual and he was looking forward to casting Vidya as the lead in both versions.
Rajkahini, which released in Kolkata during Durga Puja in 2015, had actress Rituparna Sengupta in the lead.
Originally, Rajkahini was written to be a bilingual and I was supposed to cast Vidya Balan to play the role in both the films. Only after I didnt get her dates and things didnt work out, I thought of doing the Bengali film and approached Rituparna (Sengupta, who played the protagonist, a fierce madam of a brothel). If you watch Rajkahini you will notice that the character of Begum Jaan has a north Indian flavour. Also, Rituparnas Bengali was broken, because initially I wanted to make a bilingual film, says Mukherji, who is shooting for his debut Bollywood film in Patjor, a village in Jharkhand.
Mukherji is all praise for Vidya. Theres something about Vidyas face, voice and body language. Frankly, if you think of such powerful roles, you can only think of Vidya or Rani Mukherji. Vidya was my first choice. I cant think of other actors who can pull off this character, he says.
Vidya, who is known as a powerhouse performer, has already watched the Bengali film even before she was approached to play the lead in the Hindi version. I watched Rajkahini. It is a powerful film. My role personifies feminine power in various aspects whether its sensuality, female wroth or compassion, says the Kahaani actress.
Read more: Living the character: Vidya Balan lends her jewellery for Rajkahini role
Though its a remake of his own film, Mukherji says he is treating the Bollywood film as a new entity. He is also prepared for comparisons and criticisms that he knows will follow once the film releases. Comparisons are inevitable. Some of the cast members have watched the original and some havent. Sanjay Leela Bhansali asked me how am I remaking my own film? He told me that he wouldnt be able to remake Bajirao Mastani again. So, I am treating this film as a new one, he says.
Rituparna Sengupta as Begum Jaan in Rajkahini (Shree Venkatesh Films)
Rajkahini, which starred Rituparna Sengupta, Jisshu Sengupta, Saswata Chatterjee, Parno Mittra, Abir Chatterjee and others, revolved around 11 women in a brothel during the Partition of Bengal. To reach out to a wider audience, Mukherji has shifted the base to Punjab in the Hindi version. The plot points, characters, twists remain the same. But the language, milieu, costume and the nature of the partition have been changed. There are many scenes which were not there in the Bengali version. This film concentrates on the brothel and importance has been given to the women characters and their interpersonal relationships. Its more humane than Rajkahini, says the director.
For Vidya, who is always thirsty for meaty roles, the character is challenging. She, however, confesses that the film is not really a remake. We are treating it as a new film. I have never been part of a historical film and though its a fictionalised account, I am enjoying playing a madam of a brothel. I have heard many good things about Srijit from others and I have also seen his previous works. Its lovely working with him, says the Ishqiya actress.
Read more: Srijit Mukherji to adapt two Shakespearean tragedies in one film
In the meantime, the filmmaker admits that the weather is playing spoilsport and the unit is facing a lot of challenges while shooting the film in Patjor. A mammoth 9,000 square feet set, resembling a brothel, has been erected at the same location where the Bengali film was shot. Apart from the weather, the tight budget is also another challenge for the filmmaker. According to Srijit, he has always faced budget constraints and this time too, its no different.
We are facing bipolar schizophrenic weather. One moment its raining and the next moment, the sun is shining bright. Seven days into building the set, it was demolished by a huge thunder storm. But we have planned the schedule well. We are working long hours on days when the weather is holding. Also, we need to shoot with a tight budget. The budget is slightly higher than the Bengali film. Shooting the film is almost like fighting a war, says the filmmaker.
The Nirbaak and 22 e Srabon director says that he was asked to remake his Bengali film Hemlock Society (2012), starring Parambrata Chatterjee and Koel Mullick in Hindi too. But the producers in Mumbai asked him to change the ending, which he didnt agree too. As long as I can tell my stories in my own way, I am ready to work in Bollywood. I cannot compromise. There has been no interference from Mahesh Bhatt or Mukesh Bhatt. I have been given a free hand and hence I am enjoying making the film, he signs off.
The Bollywood film also stars Naseeruddin Shah, Gauhar Khan, Pallavi Sharda, Ila Arun, Mishti, Poonam Rajput, Rajit Kapoor, Vivek Mushran, Rajesh Sharma, Pitobash and Ashish Vidyarthi among others.
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Actor Priyanka Chopra is back on the sets and has started shooting for the second season of her American TV series Quantico.
The 33-year-old, who made her debut on TV with the first season of thriller series, posted a picture on Instagram from day one of the shoot.
Day 1 on set for #Quan2co ! Ready for Tom!! Gn world.. #AlexParrish on her way to ur tv screens in September. C u soon. Zzzzz #NYC #CatchMeIfyouCan #quanticoS2 A photo posted by Priyanka Chopra (@priyankachopra) on Jul 12, 2016 at 7:17pm PDT
The photo has Priyanka dressed in grey trousers teamed same-coloured long jacket.
Read:Have you met Priyanka Chopras doppelganger Navpreet Banga?
See more pics from the sets:
! . . #priyankachopra . A photo posted by raghadv (@raghad_bolly) on Jul 12, 2016 at 5:45pm PDT
She's the cutest!! #Quantico season 2 shoot ~ #priyankachopra @bollywoodbytes A photo posted by Bollywood Bytes (@bollywoodbytes) on Jul 12, 2016 at 11:58pm PDT
Sets of #Quantico in NYC @priyankachopra , we love to see your smile A photo posted by PRIYANKA CHOPRA (@priyankachoprafan) on Jul 12, 2016 at 11:19pm PDT
- #quan2co #bollywood #hollywood #priyankachopra A photo posted by Bollywood . (@beex.khan) on Jul 12, 2016 at 7:56pm PDT
According to shows creator Josh Safran, Priyankas character Alex Parrish will be at the centre of the plot across all upcoming seasons.
Quantico features Priyanka as young FBI recruit Alex Parrish, who is suspected of committing a terrorist attack.
Follow @htshowbiz for more
Im here to insist that we are not as divided as we seem. -- President Obama.
They stood in a line, clasping hands as a choir sang, Democrat and Republican, black and white, politician and cop. Led by President Barack Obama and his predecessor George W Bush, they honoured the five Dallas policemen slain last week and urged Americans to rise above racial divides and reject despair.
The scene unfolded at a memorial service after a week when Americans were jarred by video images of angry crowds protesting police killings of black men in Louisiana and Minnesota and heard the screams of Thursdays sniper attack on police in Dallas by a black former US soldier who had said he wanted to kill white people.
We turn on the TV or surf the internet, and we can watch positions harden and lines drawn and people retreat to their respective corners, the first black US president said. I understand how Americans are feeling. But Dallas, Im here to say we must reject such despair. Im here to insist that we are not as divided as we seem.
President Obama delivers remarks during an interfaith memorial service, honouring five slain police officers. (AFP)
In a spontaneous display of unity, Obama and first lady Michelle Obama, former president George W Bush and his wife Laura, Vice-President Joe Biden and his wife Jill, mayor Mike Rawlings, police chief David Brown and others on stage joined hands at the end of the service as a choir sang The Battle Hymn of the Republic.
Obama sought a careful balance, paying tribute to the dead police officers and showing respect for the countrys law enforcement while also acknowledging the concerns of those protesting against police violence.
He noted that the Dallas attack came during a protest against racial discrimination in policing that followed the fatal police shootings of black men in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and outside St Paul, Minnesota. A series of high-profile police killings of black men in the past two years have sparked the most intense debate on race and justice in America in decades.
America, we know that bias remains. We know it, Obama told the crowd of several hundred people, including many uniformed police officers, at the Morton H Meyerson Symphony Center. None of us is entirely innocent. No institution is entirely immune. And this includes our police departments.
Black lives matter
Injured Dallas area rapid transit police officer Misty McBride gets a hug as she arrives for interfaith memorial service. (AP)
Obama alluded to the Black Lives Matter protest movement stirred into action by the long series of police killings, which some have painted as anti-police. He said that even people who dislike the phrase Black Lives Matter should recognize the pain felt by the family of Alton Sterling, the 37-year-old black man shot dead last week in Baton Rouge by police who said he was reaching for a gun.
Obama praised the police in Dallas and around the country.
When anyone, no matter how good their intentions may be, paints all police as biased or bigoted, we undermine those officers we depend on for our safety, Obama said.
And as for those who use rhetoric suggesting harm to police, even if they dont act on it themselves, well they not only make the jobs of police officers even more dangerous, but they do a disservice to the very cause of justice that they claim to promote, Obama added.
Bush also addressed the packed hall, where five chairs were empty of people, holding folded American flags, in memory of the slain officers. Bush also sought to strike a note of unity.
At times it feels like the forces pulling us apart are stronger than the forces binding us together. Argument turns too easily into animosity, Bush said. We do not want the unity of grief nor do we want the unity of fear. We want the unity of hope, affection and high purpose.
The slain officers were Mike Smith, 55; Lorne Ahrens, 48; Michael Krol, 40; Brent Thomson, 43, and Patrick Zamarripa, 32.
The death toll in Dallas was the highest for law enforcement on a single day in the United States since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Nine other officers and two civilians were also wounded.
Former first lady Laura Bush, former US president George W Bush, first lady Michelle Obama and US President Barack Obama join in singing the 'Star-Spangled Banner' during the interfaith memorial service, honouring five slain police officers at the Morton H Meyerson Symphony Center in Dallas, Texas, on Tuesday. (AFP)
Outside the hall, Sharice Williams, 41, who drove roughly 155km from Waco, stood in hopes of catching a glimpse of Obama.
My heart is heavy. Im tired of seeing my brothers and sisters killed, but the police dont deserve that, said Williams, who is black. Im praying that Obama being here brings us some kind of peace.
Chief Warren Asmus, a 35-year veteran with the Los Angeles county sheriffs department, said he flew in for the memorial.
I was grateful for many of the things President Obama said in there, said Asmus, 57. I need to understand what the black community goes through just as much as they need to understand what the police community goes through.
During his flight to Dallas, Obama placed condolence calls to families of Sterling and of Philando Castile, the 32-year-old man shot dead during a traffic stop outside St Paul.
China could set up an air defence zone in the South China Sea (SCS) if it feels threatened, a top official said on Wednesday, a day after a UN-backed tribunal ruled the country had no historic rights over islands in the contested region.
An arbitral tribunal set up by the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PAC) in The Hague ruled that China had violated the sovereign rights of the Philippines and caused harm to the coral reef environment. A belligerent China dismissed the verdict, calling the tribunal illegal and the ruling null and void.
Vice foreign minister Liu Zhenmin told a news conference that China has the right to set up an air defence identification zone (ADIZ) over the South China Sea if our security is being threatened.
Whether we need to set one up in the South China Sea depends on the level of threat we receive, Liu said.
READ: South China Sea ruling will intensify conflict, says Chinese envoy
Setting up an ADIZ would mean that international flights flying over the waters would be required to notify China. Liu spoke while releasing a white paper explaining Chinas position on the South China Sea disputes.
China had set up an ADIZ over the East China Sea in 2013, prompting angry reactions from the US and Japan, though the zone was not fully enforced.
Reacting to Indias call for parties involved in disputes in the South China Sea to abide by international law to ensure calm in the region, the Chinese foreign ministry said it agreed with the opinion.
In those public statements made by relevant governments, if it is said that the dispute should be resolved by fully complying with the international law, I think it is the same with what Chinese government is upholding, foreign ministry spokesperson Lu Kang said when he was asked to react to Indias statement.
READ: China releases white paper, reasserts claim over South China Sea
In an attack against the tribunal that gave the ruling on the South China Sea, Chinese officials indicated the panel could have been bribed. They said it was financed by the former government of the Philippines.
Quoting vice foreign minister Liu, Lu Kang said the tribunal was financially supported by the former Philippines government. It is not the same as the International Court of Justice or the United Nations. These judicial organs are supported by the UN. But things (in the tribunal) are different. I believe it will be helpful to make that clear.
The white paper explaining Chinas position dismissed the Philippines claim on several islands and reefs.
The Philippines' territorial claim over part of Nansha Qundao is groundless from the perspectives of either history or international law, said the document issued by the State Council Information Office.
It noted that the then government of the Philippines had unilaterally initiated arbitration on the South China Sea dispute in 2013.
By doing so, the Philippines has violated its standing agreement with China to settle the relevant disputes through bilateral negotiation, has violated China's right to choose means of dispute settlement of its own will as a state party to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), and has abused the UNCLOS dispute settlement procedures, it said.
The arbitral tribunal established at the Philippines' unilateral request has no jurisdiction over relevant submissions, and awards rendered by it are null and void and have no binding force, it added.
The policy paper said: China's territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests in the South China Sea shall under no circumstances be affected by those awards. China does not accept or recognise those awards. China opposes and will never accept any claim or action based on those awards.
Releasing the paper, Liu said he hoped all countries would work with China to protect the peace and stability of the South China Sea, and not let the South China Sea become the origin of a war.
The state media, meanwhile, said the US was behind the tribunals decision and was hatching a conspiracy.
READ: Taiwan sends warship to South China Sea after ruling
The timing of the announcement totally reflected the US calculations as June 30 was the date that the new Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte was to be sworn in. Picking this date to announce the verdict represents no more than a backing up of the new Philippine government, a move that the US hopes will minimise the possible improvement between China-Philippine relations, said an editorial in the state media.
It added: The US actions near China, particularly those on the South China Sea issues, are part of its Asia-Pacific rebalance strategies. Its intentions are no more than containing China to preserve its interests in the Asia-Pacific region and its global hegemony.
The US motives are apparent to the world, especially to the Chinese people. The current China is nothing like the country it was one hundred years ago. Any act that tries to violate China's territorial sovereignty will fail.
China escalated its condemnation of the ruling by a UN-backed tribunal that struck down its historical rights over the South China Sea, issuing a white paper that asserted its claims over the strategic region and accused the Philippines of illegally occupying its territory.
The white paper said the core of the relevant disputes between China and the Philippines in the South China Sea lies in the territorial issues caused by the Philippines invasion and illegal occupation, starting in the 1970s, of some islands and reefs of Chinas Nansha Qundao (the Nansha Islands).
The Philippines has concocted many excuses to cover up this fact, and to pursue its territorial pretencions, said the document, titled China Adheres to the Position of Settling Through Negotiation the Relevant Disputes Between China and the Philippines in the South China Sea.
The Philippines relevant claim is groundless from the perspectives of either history or international law, said the white paper issued by the State Council Information Office.
Read: South China Sea ruling will intensify conflict, says Chinese envoy
The document asserted that China has claims over the South China Sea for 2,000 years and the Philippines, which had filed the petition before the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague, was occupying Chinese territory.
It attacked the Philippines for turning a blind eye to bilateral consensus, saying Manila has repeatedly taken moves that complicate the relevant disputes, gradually intensified them between China and the Philippines in the South China Sea.
In a major diplomatic blow to China, the tribunal working under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) struck down the Communist giants claims in the strategic waters.
The Hague-based court said China violated the Philippines sovereign rights. It said China has caused severe harm to the coral reef environment by building artificial islands.
Read: Chinese President Xi leads Beijings charge against ruling on South China Sea
China has often accused the US for fomenting trouble in the South China Sea, through which USD 3 trillion of trade passes annually and where Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan have rival claims to the waters.
The white paper said with the development of the international law of the sea, a maritime delimitation dispute also arose between China and the Philippines regarding certain maritime areas of the South China Sea.
The Philippines built military facilities on some islands and reefs of Chinas Nansha Qundao (the Nansha Islands/Spratly islands) it invaded and illegally occupied and deliberately destroyed survey markers set up by China, it said adding that Manila attempted to illegally occupy Chinas Renai Jiao by using a military vessel illegally run around it.
Read: Beijing has no historic title over South China Sea: Timeline of dispute
The Philippines intruded into relevant maritime areas of Chinas Nansha Qundao to carry out illegal oil and gas exploratory drilling and bidding and has repeatedly harassed and attacked Chinese fishermen and fishing boats conducting routine fishing operations, according to the white paper.
In January 2013, then Philippine government unilaterally initiated the South China Sea arbitration.
By doing so, the Philippines has violated its standing agreement with China to settle the relevant disputes through bilateral negotiation, has violated Chinas right to choose means of dispute settlement of its own will as a State Party to the UNCLOS, and has abused the UNCLOS dispute settlement procedures, it said.
The Philippines has distorted facts, misinterpreted laws and concocted a pack of lies, in an attempt to deny Chinas territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests in the South China Sea, it said.
The tribunal established at the Philippines unilateral request has no jurisdiction over relevant submissions, and awards rendered by it are null and void and have no binding force, the white paper said.
China reaffirmed that its territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests in the South China Sea shall under no circumstances be affected by those awards. China does not accept or recognise those awards, it said.
The white paper said that China opposes and will never accept any claim or action based on those awards.
Britains outgoing Prime Minister David Cameron spiced up his last supper at his 10 Downing Street office/home with Indian food such as Hyderabadi Saffron Chicken, Kashmiri Rogan Josh and Samosas.
Kennington Tandoori in central London tweeted last evening that it had delivered Camerons last supper.
The dishes include Hyderabadi Saffron Chicken, Kashmiri Rogan Josh, Nasheeli Gost, KT Mixed Grill (Lamb and Chicken), Chicken Zalfrazi, Saag Alloo, Saag Paneer, Palak Gost, Veg Samosas, Naan bread and Rice among other dishes, restaurant manager Dr Kowsar Hoque told PTI.
The restaurant is a firm favourite with politicians across all parties. The residents of No. 10 Downing Street have enjoyed meals from the Kennington Tandoori since the restaurant opened in 1985 and the KT would hope that they continue to do so, the restaurant said.
Its been a pleasure Prime Minister, said the restaurant that offers Indian cuisine and is popular among MPs based in the Westminster area near Parliament.
Cameron has often spoken of his love for Indian food, which he says he likes pretty hot.
Over the years, the Prime Ministers office has been at 10 Downing Street but the family home has been next door as it is more spacious.
UK chancellor George Osborne currently occupies No 10s upstairs living quarters but may soon have to move if new Prime Minister Theresa May decides to shuffle him out of the post.
On Wednesday evening, Cameron will be joined by wife Samantha Sheffield, daughters Nancy Gwen and Florence Rose Endellion, and son Arthur Elwen as the family leave for their new privately rented home in central London as their own home in Notting Hill area of the city is not yet vacant.
They also have a home in Oxford but are unlikely to move there while all three children are at school in London.
The son of a stockbroker, 49-year-old Cameron enjoyed an upper-middle class upbringing and studied philosophy, politics and economics at Oxford University.
He began working for former prime minister John Major from 1988-93 and gradually rose up the ranks of the Conservative party. He briefly quit politics in 1994 to work for media company Carlton Communications as director of corporate affairs.
He concluded his final day as Prime Minister after six years in office on Wednesday on a light note, exchanging banter with fellow MPs and Opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn in the House of Commons.
Confusion surrounds the fate of two former hostages from the grisly attack on a restaurant in Bangladeshs capital, with their families saying they havent returned home and authorities announcing they are not in custody.
The two men are considered vital for the investigation into the July 1 attack on Holey Artisan Bakery in the Gulshan diplomatic zone that left 20 hostages, mostly foreigners, dead.
The attack was claimed by the Islamic State but Bangladeshi authorities have insisted it was carried out by homegrown militants.
The families of Hasnat Karim, a British citizen, and Tahmid Hasib Khan, a student at the University of Toronto, have sought information on their whereabouts and rights group Amnesty International has urged the government to clarify.
Police said they had earlier questioned Karim and Khan but they were no longer in custody.
Amnesty said Karims family was taken into custody by police for questioning on July 2, and all, except Karim, were released on July 3.
Hasnat Karims family must immediately be told whether the Bangladeshi authorities are still holding him in custody, and if so allow him contact with the outside world. They have already suffered a traumatic episode, and his enforced disappearance prolongs their ordeal, said Champa Patel, Amnesty Internationals South Asia director.
The Bangladeshi authorities have a poor track record when it comes to human rights in custody, with violations including torture and other ill-treatment often to obtain confessions and the denial of medical treatment, Patel said.
Masudur Rahman, a spokesman for Dhaka Metropolitan Police, said on Wednesday they were not aware of the whereabouts of Karim and Khan.
They are not in our custody, he said without elaborating.
Some reports suggested they were still in the custody of security agencies. Rahman did not comment on these reports.
On the night of July 1, at least five young attackers entered the cafe with firearms, explosives and sharp weapons and took more than 35 hostages. They killed 17 foreigners and three Bangladeshis.
Later, all the attackers were killed by security forces and Karim and Khan were freed.
Karim, a businessman and former teacher at North South University, had left the cafe unhurt with his wife and two children. However, investigators had focussed on him as one of the attackers had studied at North South University. Amateur videos filmed by a man living in a building next to the cafe had purportedly shown Karim talking with the attackers.
A state-run newspaper on Wednesday proudly displayed a world map showing countries that support Chinas position on the South China Sea (SCS) disputes -- and in what some would describe as a flight of diplomatic fancy, it included India.
The countries purportedly backing Beijing, actually most of the world barring North and South America and Australia, were predictably coloured in red in the map on the front page of China Daily.
On Tuesday, China angrily rejected a ruling by a tribunal set up by The Hague-based Permanent Court of Arbitration that said Beijing had no historic rights to islands in the South China Sea. The verdict came in response to arbitration initiated by the Philippines.
World map on front page of state-run China Daily shows India, with the incorrect depiction of its boundary, among countries backing Chinas stance on disputes in the South China Sea. (Screengrab)
The text above the map in China Daily said: More than 70 countries have publicly voiced support for Chinas position that South China Sea disputes should be resolved through negotiations and not arbitration. In contrast, just several countries, mainly the United States and its close allies, have publicly supported the Philippines and called for observing the ruling as legally binding.
The report raised eyebrows in New Delhi, as it came a little more than a fortnight after China blocked Indias application to join the Nuclear Suppliers Group during the elite clubs plenary in Seoul last month.
Read | Beijing could declare air defence zone over South China Sea
Within hours of the tribunals ruling, Indias external affairs ministry issued a statement that, without naming China, called on all stakeholders to resolve disputes peacefully and to show respect for the UN Convention on the Law of the Seas (UNCLOS).
As a State Party to the UNCLOS, India urges all parties to show utmost respect for the UNCLOS, which establishes the international legal order of the seas and oceans, the statement said. It added parties involved in disputes should exercise self-restraint in the conduct of activities that could complicate or escalate disputes affecting peace and stability.
Sea lanes of communication passing through the South China Sea are critical for peace, stability, prosperity and development, the statement said.
Read | South China Sea ruling will intensify conflict, says Chinese envoy
In New Delhi, sources described the China Daily report as part of a misinformation campaign by China. A source said: Our statement yesterday makes our position very clear.
The wording of Indias statement didnt convey explicit support for China on the disputes, especially after Beijing belligerently dismissed the tribunals ruling and described it as illegal and null and void.
Is India actually on Chinas side on disputes that involve, besides China, countries such as the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan? China appears to be convinced.
When asked to comment on Indias response to the ruling, the usually cut-and-dry Lu Kang, senior spokesperson for Chinas foreign ministry, couched his answer in vague words.
In those public statements made by relevant governments, if it is said that the dispute should be resolved by fully complying with the international law, I think it is the same with what Chinese government is upholding, Lu told a news briefing on Wednesday.
In a later response to Hindustan Times over email, the foreign ministry indicated India and Chinas positions are consistent on UNCLOS and peaceful negotiations to end disputes.
For the China Daily map, please ask the newspaper, the foreign ministry said.
Clearly, it was not for Lu or the ministry to smudge India in red, take Indias name and say Beijing was very pleased with New Delhis unflinching support.
In June, India and the US dropped a direct mention of the South China Sea disputes in a joint statement issued after a meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Barack Obama. This was done after both countries mentioned the disputes in two previous joint statements.
But the June statement did mention freedom of navigation and overflight and exploitation of resources as per international law, including the UNCLOS, and settlement of territorial disputes by peaceful means.
If dropping the mention of South China Sea from a joint statement means supporting China, then, well, Washington too is with Beijing on this one.
But how many countries are clearly supporting China against the tribunals ruling?
According to the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative (AMTI) from the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, only a handful of countries,including Afghanistan, are backing Chinas stance. Pakistan, which wasnt on AMTIs list, came out in Chinas support on Tuesday.
To date, we have identified 50 countries that appear to be included in Chinas list of supporters. Of those, seven have publicly confirmed their support, three have denied Beijings claim of support, and 40 have remained publicly silent or have issued statements that are considerably vaguer than indicated by China, an AMTI report said.
In contrast, 10 countries plus the European Union have said that the arbitral award will be legally binding and have called on both China and the Philippines to respect it, it added.
Read | India for peaceful means to resolve South China Sea row, Pak backs Beijing
European Union president Donald Tusk said he looked forward to a fruitful working relationship with incoming British Prime Minister Theresa May who faces the task of negotiating the countrys exit from the bloc.
I look forward to a fruitful working relationship and to welcoming you to the European Council of European Union leaders, Tusk said in a brief letter of congratulations that was released by his office Wednesday.
Mays first meeting with key EU leaders could be at the G20 summit in China on September 4 or 5, but her first encounter with all of the other 27 EU leaders will be at the next European Council summit on October 20-21.
Since Britons narrowly voted for Britain to leave the bloc in June 23 referendum, European leaders have asked London to quickly formalise its divorce but May has indicated she will not be rushed.
During a visit to China, Tusk said that after this so called divorce procedure the UK will remain our closest partner.
As a man live streamed Facebook video of himself and two friends smoking and listening to music in a car, someone opened fire on the vehicle, wounding all three men, Norfolk police said on Wednesday.
About 5 minutes into the Facebook Live video posted on Tuesday evening, at least 30 rounds are fired in a 22-second span. The camera then falls to the floor. Norfolk Police confirmed the video was of the triple shooting, but officer Daniel Hudson said he didnt have any further details, including whether the men were targeted.
Two 27-year-old men and a 29-year-old were taken to a hospital with significant injuries, police said. Two of the men were doing better on Wednesday, but one is still in critical condition.
The shooting was reminiscent of other recent broadcasts on Facebook Live. In Minnesota last week, Philando Castiles girlfriend streamed the immediate aftermath of his shooting death on Facebook. That video prompted protests around the country, including in Dallas, where five officers were killed.
In Chicago, police say 28-year-old Antonio Perkins was live-streaming when he was shot last month. The video shows a man recording himself, standing outside and looking from side to side. Shots ring out and the camera falls to the ground in grass spattered with blood. Police spokesperson Anthony Guglielmi said at the time detectives discovered the video on the mans Facebook page and believe its authentic.
The FBI on Tuesday called off its extensive hunt for a well-dressed, middle-aged man who jumped off the airliner he had hijacked with a parachute and ransom money 45 years ago.
After one of the longest, most exhaustive probes in its history, the probe agency said it will no longer actively investigate the whereabouts of the man who called himself Dan Cooper, and became known as DB Cooper, in what was one of Americas most baffling crimes.
The FBI said that after looking at all credible leads, enough is enough: resources spent on the Cooper case will be redirected to focus on other investigative priorities.
The hijacker, wearing a business suit and tie, commandeered a Northwest Orient airlines Boeing 727 on November 24, 1971 as it flew from Portland, Oregon to Seattle, Washington.
After it landed safely, he obtained parachutes and $200,000 in ransom money and freed 36 passengers.
In this February 13, 1980, file photo, FBI agents scour the sand of a beach of the Columbia River, searching for additional money or clues in DB Cooper skyjacking case in Vancouver. (AP file photo)
The plane took off again with crew members as hostages, this time bound for Mexico. At some point, the man jumped out of the back of the plane using a parachute and clutching his money, falling through the freezing night air.
The case generated myriad tips but they went nowhere. No sign of the man was ever found.
Bundles of crumbling $20 bills from the ransom money were however unearthed by a small boy on a sandbar in the Columbia River in 1980.
Some of the stolen $20 bills taken by a hijacker DB Cooper found in Oregon, US, by a young boy in 1980 (Reuters file photo)
Evidence that will be preserved for historical purposes at FBI headquarters in Washington include that money, the mans black tie and a parachute, the New York Daily News reported.
A suicide car bomber hit a police checkpoint on Wednesday, killing at least eight people in a Baghdad district that was struck by a deadly attack the day before, Iraqi officials said.
Six civilians and two policemen were killed when the bomber rammed his explosives-laden car into the checkpoint in the Shia-dominated northeastern al-Rashidiya district, a police officer said. Up to 23 other people were wounded, he added.
A medical official confirmed the casualties. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity as they are not authorised to talk to the media.
On Tuesday, at least 12 people were killed in a suicide car bombing at an outdoor vegetable and fruit market in the district.
No group has claimed responsibility for the two attacks, which bore the hallmarks of the Islamic State (IS) . The Sunni extremists, who consider Shias heretics, swept across northern and western Iraq in the summer of 2014, capturing large chunks of territory and plunging the country into its worst crisis since US troops left at the end of 2011.
With territorial losses in the countrys west and north, the group has increased attacks in past months beyond front lines in an attempt to distract security forces attention. It was behind two large-scale attacks last week that killed around 300 people.
One of the two IS attacks was a massive truck bombing in Baghdads bustling commercial area of Karada, also a predominantly Shia neighborhood, where 292 people the deadliest single bombing in Iraq since the 2003 US-led invasion. And last Thursday, an attack at a Shiite shrine north of Baghdad killed 37 people.
Wednesdays bombing comes on the eve of a military-run event and parade planned for Thursday in Baghdad as the country marks the anniversary of its 1958 overthrow of a Hashemite monarchy and the declaration of Iraq as a republic.
Abu Omar al-Shishani, who the Pentagon described as Islamic States minister of war, was killed in combat in the Iraqi city of Shirqat, south of Mosul, a news agency that supports the militant group said on Wednesday.
The Pentagon said in March that Shishani had likely been killed in a US air strike in Syria, but this was the first time the group appeared to confirm his death.
Reuters could not independently verify the statement from Amaq news agency, which Islamic State regularly uses to issue reports and which denied Shishanis death after the Pentagons comments in March.
Islamic State supporters exchanged notes of praise and condolence on social media, including pictures of the ginger-bearded fighter, and pledged to launch a fresh offensive in his honour.
Officials at the Pentagon said they were aware of Wednesdays report but could not confirm or deny it.
Hisham al-Hashimi, a Baghdad-based security expert who advises the Iraqi government, said a source in Shirqat confirmed Shishani had been killed there along with several other militants.
Iraqi forces are advancing towards Mosul, the largest city still under the control of Islamic State. They have mostly surrounded Shirqat, 250 km (160 miles) north of Baghdad, and last week retook a major air base from the militants to use in the main push on Mosul, 60 km further north.
Conflicting reports
But Rami Abdelrahman, head of the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said Shishani had been wounded in March and died soon after in the countryside east of Raqqa.
I confirmed from the doctor who went to see him, said Abdelrahman, who tracks the war in Syria through a network of contacts. He told Reuters Islamic State likely delayed announcing his death to allow time to line up a successor.
Shishani, also known as Omar the Chechen, ranked among Americas most wanted militants under a US program that offered up to $5 million for information to help remove him from the battlefield.
Born in 1986 in Georgia, then still part of the Soviet Union, Shishani had a reputation as a close military adviser to Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who was said by followers to have relied heavily on him.
Shishani once fought in military operations as a rebel in Chechnya before joining Georgias military in 2006 and fighting against Russian troops before being discharged two years later for medical reasons, according to US officials.
He was arrested in 2010 for weapons possession and spent more than a year in jail, before leaving Georgia in 2012 for Istanbul and later Syria.
He decided to join Islamic State the following year and pledged his allegiance to Baghdadi. The State Department said Shishani was identified as Islamic States military commander in a video distributed by the group in 2014.
Japanese Emperor Akihito intends to abdicate eventually, public broadcaster NHK said on Wednesday, a step unprecedented in modern Japan.
The 82-year-old monarch has spent much of his 27-year reign working to heal the wounds of a war waged across Asia in his fathers name and helped bring the monarchy closer to ordinary citizens.
Akihito, who has had health problems in recent years, expressed his intention to the Imperial Household Agency, NHK said, adding he wanted to step down in a few years. It did not cite a reason.
Officials at the agency could not immediately be reached for comment.
Born in 1933, he was heir to Emperor Hirohito, in whose name Japan fought World War II. His heir is Crown Prince Naruhito, 56.
Akihito marked the 70th anniversary of World War IIs end with an expression of deep remorse, a departure from his previous remarks seen by some as an effort to cement a legacy of pacifism under threat from conservative Japanese nationalists.
Looking back at the past, together with deep remorse over the war, I pray that this tragedy of war will not be repeated and together with the people express my deep condolences for those who fell in battle and in the ravages of war, he said on August 15, 2015, the 70th anniversary of the wars end.
A scientist by avocation, Akihito is the first royal heir to have married a commoner. Under the postwar constitution, the emperor is the symbol of the State and of the unity of the People, with little formal power.
His efforts to draw the imperial family closer to the people in image, if not in fact, have played into a carefully crafted picture of a middle-class monarchy that has helped shield it from the harsh criticism suffered by flashier royals abroad.
Nepals biggest Maoist party asked Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli to resign within 3 pm on Wednesday, a day after it withdrew support to his nine-month old government.
Meanwhile, Nepali Congress, the biggest opposition party in parliament, decided to support Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda, the leader of Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist Centre) , for prime minister.
A parliamentary committee meeting of CPN (MC) decided that if Oli fails to leave office within the deadline, the party will bring a no-confidence motion against him.
Since the government has been reduced to a minority, Oli should resign and make way for the next government, CPN (MC) spokesperson Pampha Bhusal told journalists.
CPN (MC), the second biggest party in the ruling coalition, had withdrawn support alleging the governments insincerity in implementing agreements signed by Olis Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist Leninist) with it.
The two agreements on power sharing and implementation of the constitution were signed between both parties in May after Maoists threatened to oust Oli from office.
The central working committee of Nepali Congress approved a seven-point power sharing deal with CPN (MC) and agreed to bring a no-confidence motion against Oli if he failed to resign from his post.
Despite growing clamour for his resignation, the prime minister is unlikely to give up his post. Sources close to Oli said he would rather face a no-confidence vote in parliament than resign.
Though Oli has support of other parties in the coalition, their total votes add up to 252 while the CPN (MC) and NC combination has 342 votes, much higher than the 298 votes needed to prove majority.
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Nepals Maoists joined hands with Nepali Congress, the largest opposition party, to lodge a no-confidence motion against Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli on Wednesday but the increasingly isolated leader pledged to fight on.
The motion came a day after the Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist Centre withdrew support to the government, reducing it to a minority. It was registered in parliament after Oli rejected a demand from both parties that he step down.
CPN-MC, the third largest party in parliament, and the Nepali Congress have agreed to form the next government, likely to be headed by Maoist chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda.
Though his nine-month-old government has been reduced to a minority, Oli has refused to quit and plans to face the no-confidence motion.
Oli has the support of other parties in the coalition, but their total votes add up to 252 while the CPN-MC and Nepali Congress have 342 votes - much higher than the 298 votes needed to prove majority.
The agitating United Democratic Madhesi Morcha, which comprises four Madhesi parties seeking amendments to the countrys constitution, has decided to support the no-confidence motion against Oli.
We have decided to support the motion. Whether we join the government or not will depend on how the new coalition handles our demands, senior UDMF leader Upendra Yadav told journalists.
Olis party, the Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxist Leninist, the second largest in parliament, has decided to garner support from allies in the government and other parties to defeat the no-confidence motion.
Earlier on Wednesday, CPN-MC and Nepali Congress gave an ultimatum to Oli to resign by 3 pm or face the no-confidence motion.
The CPN-MC said it had withdrawn support because of the governments insincerity in implementing agreements signed with Olis party. The two agreements on power-sharing and implementing the constitution were signed in May after the Maoists threatened to oust Oli from office.
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Technical hitches limited the death tolls in three suicide attacks in Saudi Arabia but the apparent coordination of the blasts suggests jihadis have the tools to sustain their bombing campaign.
Three young Saudis detonated explosive vests near a Shiite mosque in Qatif last Monday, killing only themselves, while an attack by another young Saudi suicide bomber at the Prophets mosque in Medina killed four policemen.
Before dawn the same day a 34-year-old Pakistani driver had blown himself up in a car park outside the US consulate in Jeddah but only injured two security guards.
Read: Saudi Arabia shaken by suicide attacks, 4 dead near Prophets Mosque
Technically these people are poor. Psychologically they are very poor. Training-wise they are poor, said Mustafa Alani, an Iraqi security expert at the Jeddah-based Gulf Research Centre with ties to the Saudi Interior Ministry.
Out of five suicide bombers, four killed themselves for nothing.
Nevertheless, that five individuals were able to build or acquire explosive vests and to plot three attacks on the same day points to a command chain and supply network that presents a formidable threat, security analysts say.
The attacks were not claimed by any group although the government believes Islamic State is responsible after detaining 19 suspects linked to the five attackers.
The coordination but poor training appear to be a sign of Islamic States operational model in Saudi Arabia, recruiting would-be jihadists online and managing plots remotely with minimal involvement in training.
A damaged car is seen after a blast near the US consulate in Saudi Arabia's second city of Jeddah on July 4. (Reuters file )
An Islamic State recruit inside the kingdom will then seek friends or relatives to join him in an attack, while his handlers in Syria or Iraq suggest a target and help to provide explosives and instructions on how to make a bomb.
That low profile makes it very difficult for the security forces to identify networks or uncover attacks before they are carried out, and Islamic States minimal investment in operations means it has little to lose if a plot goes awry.
SLEEPER CELLS
Unlike during an al Qaeda campaign a decade ago, there is no network of interconnected cells under a central leadership in Saudi Arabia that can be infiltrated or rolled up by the security services.
They ask young people to stay in Saudi Arabia and create sleeper cells and this is a very dangerous thing because you do not know who is in a sleeper cell or who is a lone wolf, a senior Saudi security officer told Reuters last year.
Traces of nitroglycerine were found at the locations of each of last weeks explosions and preliminary investigations suggest the explosives were of a type used by the military.
Read: Three Saudi cities, including Medina, hit by suicide bombings
Police at present believe they came from the same source, said Interior Ministry spokesman Major General Mansour Turki.
Were talking about highly organised attacks under a central command (outside Saudi Arabia) and with a chain of supply, said Alani.
However, he said the lack of an in-country leadership able to carefully select and groom recruits, provide training, centralise bomb making and prepare attackers psychologically meant that many of its operations were ineffective.
The attackers in Jeddah and Medina were both approached by police in car parks near their likely targets because their nervous behaviour attracted suspicion. The Jeddah bomber detonated his device too far from the police to kill them.
After the attack in Qatif, police found explosive packs intact, Alani said, indicating that only the detonators had exploded, killing the bombers but not causing wider damage. Turki said he was unable to confirm that some devices did not properly explode.
Muslim worshippers gather after a suicide bomber detonated a device near the security headquarters of the Prophet's Mosque in Medina, Saudi Arabia on July 4. (REUTERS)
ONLINE RECRUITS
But sympathy towards fellow Sunni Muslims fighting the war in Syria has created a new generation of young Saudi jihadists.
They support the idea of an Islamic State caliphate and view Saudi Arabias rulers and the army and clergy which back them as infidels who betray true Islam.
The government crackdown has forced Islamic State has found new ways to reach potential recruits from a distance, for example through online computer games that are hard for security services to monitor.
Mohammed, a 15-year-old in Riyadh, was contacted by jihadists while playing games on his desktop computer and messaging other online players, his father told Reuters earlier this year, asking to keep his anonymity.
He was chatting with someone who started to send him messages about the injustice faced by Sunni Muslims in Iraq and Syria. Come play with us for real, the person said, and sent Mohammed some films showing Islamic State attacks.
His parents blocked the contact. Reuters was not able to confirm who had contacted Mohammed.
Daesh is trying to be very active in social media, but I think we are winning thanks to their stupid operations. How can you defend somebody who kills innocents in mosques? said the senior security official.
Europe wont miss David Cameron, a senior EU lawmaker in Brussels said on Wednesday as the prime minister who led Britain to the exit left office and handed on the job of completing its withdrawal from the European Union.
The UK finally has a new prime minister, Gianni Pittella, the leader of the centre-left group in the European Parliament said in a statement as Theresa May took over the government.
Goodbye Mr. Cameron. Nobody will miss you.
Other European politicians focused their attention on May, his successor as Conservative leader, who backed Camerons campaign to remain in the EU but then saw off pro-Brexit rivals once he had resigned after losing the referendum on June 23.
European Council president Donald Tusk, whose job it will be to broker negotiations between May and the 27 other national EU leaders, sent a two-sentence letter of congratulation saying that he looked forward to a fruitful working relationship.
Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the executive European Commission which will work on the details of any new deal, said he hoped to meet May in the near future and hear how she plans to address the new situation created by the Brexit vote.
Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel, a vocal supporter of a more federal European Union, was quick to urge May to do what Cameron refused to do after the referendum and formally notify the EU that Britain was indeed leaving the bloc.
We cannot afford a long period of uncertainty. Clarity is in the interest of both Europe and the United Kingdom, he said, adding a salute to Camerons tenacity and strong leadership.
A demonstrator displays a painting depicting former British prime minister David Cameron in central London. (AFP Photo)
Pittella, an Italian who leads the second biggest group in the European Parliament, also called on May to serve notice of withdrawal under Article 50 of the EU treaty, which sets a two-year deadline for London to negotiate an exit or simply be bounced out of the EU. He added: It must be clear that no negotiations will begin before this is done.
May has said she may not trigger Article 50 for months but many officials expect tentative talks to start soon on how negotiations might work to forge a new relationship between Britain and the EU.
Pittella repeated warnings from across Europe that Britain cannot keep the benefits of access to the EU single market without following EU rules, including welcoming EU immigrants.
It was left to one of the three other women on the 28-member European Council, the ever pithy President Dalia Grybauskaite of Lithuania, to sum up the tough task, which all the leaders had hoped would never be required and which May must now take on:
#Brexit, she tweeted. When life gives lemons, no choice but to make lemonade. The best to new #PM of #UK @theresa_may.
A second candidate joined the race on Wednesday to try to unseat Britains opposition Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who is battling a party revolt in the wake of the Brexit vote.
I will stand in this election and I will do the decent thing and fight Jeremy Corbyn on the issues, Labour lawmaker Owen Smith told the BBC.
He will join fellow MP Angela Eagle in trying to wrest party leadership from the veteran socialist, who has refused to quit despite a major rebellion by his MPs.
The winner of the contest, which will formally get underway with an announcement of the timetable on Thursday, is expected to be crowned in September.
Smith said he had decided to stand after seeing a dramatic collapse of faith and confidence in Jeremy over the last couple of weeks.
Many moderate Labour MPs have never reconciled themselves to Corbyns election as leader last September, secured thanks to strong support among ordinary party members.
They moved against him in the wake of Britains shock June 23 vote to leave the European Union -- an outcome deplored by most of the parliamentary party.
Three-quarters of Labour MPs backed a vote of no confidence in Corbyn on June 28, accusing him of lacklustre leadership in the campaign which culminated with many long-time Labour voters in underprivileged areas defying the party line and backing Brexit.
Many party grandees also fear he would be unable to win a general election if one were called early, although incoming prime minister Theresa May, who takes over from David Cameron later on Wednesday, has ruled out an early vote.
Late on Tuesday, Corbyn won a first victory over his critics after the partys executive committee ruled he would automatically be included on the leadership ballot.
The decision means that -- unlike his challengers -- he does not need the required 51 nominations from Labour MPs or members of the European Parliament (MEPs) to stand.
Smith, a former BBC radio producer seen as more centrist than Corbyn, has only been a member of parliament since 2010, representing the Welsh constituency of Pontypridd.
But the 46-year-old has been a member of the Labour party since he was 16, and was special advisor to Paul Murphy, the Labour government minister in-charge of Wales and then Northern Ireland, between 2002 and 2005.
After a stint working as a media advisor to pharmaceutical group Pfizer, he became an MP when Labour moved into opposition, and became its spokesperson on Welsh affairs.
He appeared in a list of possible candidates to replace outgoing leader Ed Miliband following Labours second successive general election defeat last year.
But he did not step forward then and was named shadow work and pensions minister under Corbyn in September 2015.
The Solar Impulse 2 on Wednesday landed in Cairo, its penultimate stop, as the solar-powered plane nears the end of its marathon tour around the world.
After the two-day flight from Spain, just one final leg lies between it and its final destination, Abu Dhabi, where it started its odyssey in March last year.
The aircraft landed in Spain last month, after completing the first solo transatlantic flight powered only by sunlight.
After setting off from Seville on Monday morning, the plane passed through Algerian, Tunisian, Italian and Greek airspace, and flew over the Giza Pyramids before touching down at Cairo airport at around 7.10am (0510 GMT).
Its support crew cheered as the plane, no heavier than a car but with the wingspan of a Boeing 747, landed, and trailed after it on bicycles.
The ground crew of Solar Impulse 2 surrounds the aircraft landed at Cairo International Airport on Wednesday. (AFP)
It had finished the 3,745km journey with an average speed of 76.7 kph, the flight organiser said in a press release.
It was fantastic, everything worked well, pilot Andre Borschberg told the control tower, as a live stream from the cockpit was broadcast on Solar Impulse 2s Facebook page.
He emerged from the cockpit and hugged Bertrand Piccard, with whom he has taken turns flying the plane around the world.
Swiss pilot Andre Borschberg (R) is welcomed by fellow pilot Bertrand Piccard after landing Solar Impulse 2, the solar powered plane, at Cairo International Airport on Wednesday, for the penultimate stage of its world tour. (AFP)
Solar Impulse is being flown on its 35,400-km trip in stages, with Piccard and his Swiss compatriot Borschberg alternating at the controls of the single-seat plane.
Picard, who had arrived early to greet the aircraft, told reporters that flying Solar Impulse 2 showed what new technologies can do.
The 58-year-old had flown the plane across the Atlantic in a 6,765km journey.
(AFP)
Reality of today
It had completed its flight from New York to Seville in 71 hours, flying through the night with the energy stored in its 17,000 photovoltaic cells.
Its a new era for energy, he said.
I love to fly this plane because when you are in the air for several days you have the impression to be in a film of science fiction, he said.
You look at the sun, you look at your motors, they turn for days and for days, no fuel. And you think thats a miracle. Thats magic. It is actually the reality of today. This is what we can do with these new technologies.
Solar Impulse 2, the solar powered plane, piloted by Swiss pioneer Andre Borschberg is seen during the flyover of the pyramids of Giza on Wednesday prior to the landing in Cairo, Egypt. (Reuters)
He said the pilot takes 20 minute naps during the long flights, as the plane inches across the sky.
Borschberg had piloted the plane in its 8,924km flight from Japan to Hawaii in 118 hours, breaking the previous record for the longest uninterrupted journey in aviation history.
It is comfortable. But of course you need to train for that. You need to train to make some exercise in the capsule, in the cockpit, because otherwise after several days you cannot move your legs and your arms anymore, Piccard said.
Borschberg and Piccard have said they want to raise awareness of renewable energy sources and technologies with their project.
But Piccard does not expect solar powered commercial planes any time soon.
There will not be passengers very soon in solar airplanes like ours, he said.
But there will be passengers very soon in electric airplanes that we will charge on the ground.
On the ground you can charge batteries and you can have short haul flights maybe 500km with 50 people flying in these planes in a decade, he predicted.
Beijings ambassador to the United States made a blunt rebuke Tuesday of an international tribunal ruling that rendered its claims in the South China Sea invalid.
China asserts sovereignty over almost all of the strategically vital waters, despite rival claims from its Southeast Asian neighbors, most notably the Philippines.
The decision by the UN-backed tribunal in The Hague will certainly undermine or weaken the motivation of states to engage in negotiations and consultations for solving their dispute, ambassador Cui Tiankai said.
It will certainly intensify conflicts and even confrontation, he added, speaking at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
In the end, it will undermine the authority and effectiveness of international law.
The envoy also warned that the Permanent Court of Arbitrations ruling will probably open the door of abusing arbitration procedures.
Read| Chinese President Xi leads Beijings charge against ruling on South China Sea
Chinas claims, which include waters approaching neighboring countries, are based on a vaguely defined nine-dash-line found on a 1940s Chinese map.
The row has embroiled the United States, which has deployed aircraft carriers and a host of other vessels to assert freedom of navigation in the waters -- through which a third of the global oil trade passes.
FILE - This image with notations provided by ImageSat International N.V., on Wednesday, Feb. 17, 2016, shows satellite images of Woody Island, the largest of the Paracel Islands, in the South China Sea. A tribunal ruled in a sweeping decision Tuesday, July 12, 2016, that China has no legal basis for claiming much of the South China Sea and had aggravated the seething regional dispute with its large-scale land reclamation and construction of artificial islands that destroyed coral reefs and the natural condition of the disputed areas. (AP)
Criticizing the American show of force in the region, Cui warned it could lead to conflict.
Intensified military activities so close to Chinese islands and reefs or even entering the neighboring waters of these islands and reefs, these activities certainly have the risk of leading to some conflict, he said.
I am quite sure they will have the effect of destabilizing regional stability, the ambassador added.
Read| Beijing has no historic title over South China Sea: Timeline of dispute
If armed conflict started, everybodys interest would be hurt, including our interest and I am sure the interests of the USA.
The envoy blamed Washingtons pivot to Asia under President Barack Obama for increased tensions.
Tensions started to rise five to six years ago, about the same time we began to hear from the so-called pivoting to Asia, Cui said.
Disputes intensified, relations strained, confidence weakened.
Read| If China defies tribunal without tangible loss, Beijing will be the winner
South Korea announced on Wednesday the site where a US THAAD anti-missile defence unit will be deployed against North Koreas missile and nuclear threats, a plan that has angered China and prompted a North Korean warning of retaliation.
South Korea and the United States said last Friday they had made a final decision to deploy the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system in the South.
Tension on the Korean peninsula has been high since North Korea conducted its fourth nuclear test in January and followed that with a satellite launch and a string of test launches of various missiles.
The South Korean defence ministry said the THAAD system would be deployed in the southeastern county of Seongju to maximize its effectiveness while minimizing any impact on residents and the environment.
By operating the US THAAD battery in Seongju, we will be able to better protect one half to two-thirds of our citizens from North Korean nuclear and missile threats, the ministry said in a statement.
It will dramatically strengthen the military capabilities and readiness to defend critical national infrastructure such as nuclear power plants and oil storage facilities, as well as the military forces of the South Korea-US alliance.
North Koreas military on Monday threatened to retaliate against the deployment of the system with a physical response once its location and time of installation were decided.
(AFP)
South Koreas defence ministry has said it aims to have the system operational by the end of 2017.
The decision to deploy THAAD is the latest move to squeeze the increasingly isolated North Korea, but China worries the systems radar will be able to track its military capabilities. Russia also opposes the deployment.
South Korea and the United States have said THAAD will only be used in defence against North Korean ballistic missiles, but China has warned it would destabilise the regional security balance.
Read | US missile system in South Korea will harm Chinas security: Beijing
THAAD is built by Lockheed Martin Corp and designed to defend against short- and medium-range ballistic missiles by intercepting them high in the atmosphere, or outside it. The United States already has a THAAD system on the island of Guam.
Putting THAAD in Seongju would also allow for protection of major US military installations in the South, while limiting the range of its radars reach into China, South Korean media said.
The United States has about 28,000 troops in South Korea and it will pay for the THAAD system.
Protests
Thousands of South Korean residents hold up red banners reading "We absolutely oppose THAAD deployment", during a rally against the planned deployment of the US-built Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, (THAAD), in Seongju town, 217km southeast of Seoul, on Wednesday. (AFP)
South Korean finance minister Yoo Il-ho told parliament the government was making contingency plans in case China took action in response to the deployment.
But he added: I dont think there will be a major retaliatory action in terms of the economy.
North Korea conducted its latest test of a submarine-launched ballistic missile a day after the announcement of the THAAD deployment, although it was seen as a failure. Earlier last week, the United States announced sanctions against North Korean leader Kim Jong Un over human rights abuses.
Read | North Korea threatens of physical action against US-S Korean anti-missile system
Recent media speculation about possible THAAD sites had fuelled protests from residents, including those of Seongju.
The countys commissioner has been on a hunger strike against the deployment, county official Kim Jee-hyun said.
A group of residents arrived at the defence ministry in Seoul on Wednesday to voice their opposition.
Members of parliament raised questions about the possible health impact of the systems radar. The defence ministry had said it would choose a site that did not risk peoples health.
Seongju residents are also worried that the deployment could damage the reputation of their melon crop, which Kim said accounted for 70% of the countrys output.
Our farmers are in despair, he said.
A Taiwanese warship set sail for the South China Sea on Wednesday to defend Taiwans maritime territory, a day after an international tribunal ruled China has no historic rights in the waterway and undermined Taipeis claims to islands there.
President Tsai Ing-wen rallied troops on the deck of the frigate, saying Taiwanese were determined to defend their countrys rights, before the warship headed for Taiwan-controlled Taiping island in the Spratly island chain from the southern city of Kaohsiung.
The Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague ruled Tuesday that China has no historic rights to its claimed nine-dash line and that it had violated the Philippines sovereign rights in the exclusive economic zone.
Read: China releases white paper, reasserts claim over South China Sea
Crucially for Taipei, it ruled that Taiwan-administered Taiping, the largest island in the Spratlys chain, was legally a rock that did not give it an exclusive economic zone, undermining Taiwanese claims to waters surrounding the island.
Taiwans government said the ruling was completely unacceptable and had no legally binding force since the arbitral tribunal did not formally invite Taipei to participate in its proceedings or solicit its views.
The South China Sea ruling, especially the categorisation of Taiping island, has severely jeopardised our countrys rights in the South China Sea islands and their relevant waters, Tsai told soldiers on the deck of ship in footage broadcast by news channels.
Read: South China Sea ruling will intensify conflict, says Chinese envoy
This patrol mission will show Taiwanese peoples determination to defend their countrys rights, she said, before disembarking from the warship ahead of its departure.
The defence ministry vowed to firmly defend Taiwans territory and sovereignty and said there would be no change to Taiwans claims in the strategic seas because of the ruling.
It brought the deployment of the warship forward by a day in reaction to the ruling.
The ministry said in a statement it would continue to send aircraft and ships for patrol missions to the region and remain highly vigilant to protect national security.
Read: Beijing has no historic title over South China Sea: Timeline of dispute
Tsais predecessor Ma Ying-jeou visited Taiping in January to press Taiwans claims and show that Taiping is an island, not a rock, in a move that triggered criticism from the United States as well as protests from Vietnam and the Philippines.
The Spratlys are also claimed in part or whole by China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei.
Theresa May, the daughter of a vicar with the reputation of a tough, no-nonsense politician, took over as Britains Prime Minister on Wednesday, tasked with extricating the country from the EU following the contentious June 23 referendum.
May, 59, is the second woman Prime Minister in British history after Margaret Thatchers tenure from 1979 to 1990.
She replaced David Cameron, whose second term in 10, Downing Street was cut short after the Remain in EU camp he led lost in the referendum.
Read: David Cameron resigns as PM, wishes Britain continued success
Harping on the mantra of Brexit means Brexit, May emerged victorious in a five-cornered contest to replace Cameron. She announced the creation of a separate Brexit department to deal with two-year negotiations with Brussels under Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty to exit the European Union.
Making an ambitious statement outside 10, Downing Street after returning from Buckingham Palace as the prime minister, May committed herself to protect the precious bond of the United Kingdom, considered a challenge in the context of the Brexit vote and demands in pro-EU Scotland for another independence referendum.
Often called the British Merkel and compared to the German chancellor, she insisted that her government will make a success of Brexit and forge a bold and positive role for Britain at the international stage.
Read: May or May not: What to expect as Theresa starts untangling the UK from the EU
May, who was in the Remain camp, is expected to appoint a leading light of the Brexit camp to head the department. The MP from Maidenhead was the longest serving secretary in a century in the Home Office, seen as the graveyard of political careers.
Cameron, who tendered his resignation to Queen Elizabeth at the Buckingham Palace after six years in office, was given a standing ovation at his last Prime Ministers Question Time in the House of Commons earlier in the day.
The usually feisty session was marked by much bonhomie and wit as MPs, including Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, lauded his achievements in office. He did not respond to suggestions that he involve himself in future Brexit negotiations.
Elected the Conservative Party leader in 2005, Cameron led a coalition government with the Liberal Democrats from 2010 to 2015, and then led his party to a majority in the 2015 general election.
Read: Forge a new Britain, come what May
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Leading Hindu groups including the UK branch of the RSS have hailed the connect outgoing Prime Minister David Cameron established with the community during his six-year tenure.
Often seen in temples sporting a tilak or visiting gurdwaras during elections with his wife Samantha, Cameron wooed the community since taking over as Conservative Party leader in 2005 as part of efforts to wean it away from its traditional support to Labour.
In a letter to Cameron on Tuesday, leaders of the Hindu Forum of Britain, Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh, National Hindu Students Forum and National Council of Hindu Temples suggested he had been the most Hindu-friendly premier in Britain.
(We) have no hesitation in expressing how effectively you connected with our ethics, principles and our ethos of working hardIt is unquestionable that during your period of office, you have established probably the best relationship that the Hindu community and the Conservative Party have had to date, the letter said.
Amid charges that Cameron adhered to a selective view of the Indian community which privileged the Hindu community to the exclusion of Indian Muslims or Indian Christians, he was also criticised for being allegedly influenced by the Hindu lobby on the issue of outlawing caste-based discrimination in British law.
The letter also hailed Camerons interest in Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who faced a boycott from Britain as Gujarat chief minister for more than a decade after the 2002 riots. The boycott was lifted by the Cameron government in 2013. Cameron introduced Modi during a large diaspora event at Wembley Stadium during the Indian leader's November visit.
The letter said: Your contribution in recognising the pivotal importance of PM Modis election, your support and groundbreaking participation in the Wembley event, your determination to set in cement the foundations of this relationship will also be recognised in the years ahead.
It added, While others of differing vision were unable to accord PM Modi appropriate courtesies, you were clear in your acceptance and recognition and were significantly responsible in rightly welcoming him to the community of global leaders.
As Tory leader, Cameron participated in a large gathering in Leicester addressed by spiritual leader Morari Bapu. His overtures to the Hindu community over the years were credited for increasing support to the Conservatives in the 2010 and 2015 elections.
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Citing weariness over Pakistans support for terrorism, US lawmakers on Tuesday said it was time to consider harsher measures, starting with cutting off financial aid to the country.
A lawmaker said if that doesnt work, the US could consider declaring Pakistan a state sponsor of terrorism like Sudan, Syria and Iran and subjecting it to crippling sanctions.
That would be a new low for Pakistan, currently held close by the US as a non-Nato ally and a critical counterterrorism partner, but not entirely unexpected.
Republican and Democratic lawmakers came together recently to block an Obama administration move to sell Pakistan eight heavily subsidised F-16 fighter jets.
They also sought to make future financial aid contingent and not optional, covered by waivers on the administration certifying Pakistans counterterrorism measures.
Now, however, they are asking if it is time to stop all aid altogether. Speaking of newly endemic weariness with Pakistan, Republican Congressman Matt Salmon said that patience is growing very thin.
If our current efforts in Pakistan are not producing the results we seek then what are our options? he asked while chairing a House sub-committee hearing on Pakistans role in counterterrorism.
We could simply turn the money offwe could enforce sanctions or declare Pakistan as a state sponsor of terrorism, he said, seeking guidance from experts testifying at the hearing.
On the question of financial support, Salmon said Pakistan made the US look like a bunch of chumps by taking its money and doing nothing in return against terrorism.
Dana Rohrabacher, another Republican, brought up Osama bin Laden, who was caught hiding in plain sight in Pakistan and killed in 2011, to say it was absurd to give it financial aid.
Pakistan is a leading recipient of US aid, with Congress approving $18 billion from 2002 to 2015, according to a study by the Congressional Research Service.
The country also received $13 billion from the Coalition Support Fund as reimbursements for logistical and operational support it provided to US troops operating in Afghanistan.
Providing more assistance to a government that has supported terroristsmay not be the best use of taxpayers money, said Brad Sherman, the senior-most Democrat in the sub-committee.
Sherman cited as proof a statement from former president Pervez Musharraf acknowledging that Pakistan supported Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed.
Both groups, based in Pakistan, have carried out multiple terror strikes in India. LeT was responsible for the worst of them, the 2008 attacks in Mumbai, and JeM for the assault on Pathankot airbase.
While Islamabad has acted against the Pakistani Taliban, it has allowed LeT, JeM and other anti-India groups, and, to Americas annoyance, the Haqqani Network to prosper.
The Haqqani Network, a wing of the Afghan Taliban, has been described by US officials as a veritable arm of ISI, and operates from bases in Pakistans northwestern areas.
Pakistans continued failure to act decisively against the Haqqani Network infuriates Americans, and some lawmakers have taken to calling it a duplicitous ally.
Flying these days is a stressful activity but now Canadas Vancouver airport has joined a growing roster of international airports offering a facility to counter that turbulence a space for yoga.
Vancouver International Airport is rolling out the yoga mats on July 15 for a pilot programme on offer till August 26, available for four hours on Friday afternoons to passengers using the domestic departures terminal. The programme has been launched in partnership with YYoga, which runs more than a dozen yoga centres across Canada.
Kim Halowski, manager of sales and services, Vancouver Airport Authority, said: This offers departing passengers a tranquil space where they can engage in a self-guided practice. Passengers can use the space to practice their own yoga flow, meditation or simple stretching.
Though this is the first such yoga facility at a Canadian airport, it is part of a trend that encompasses many Western airports. While the airport in San Francisco lays claim to pioneering the concept in 2012, many others in the US have adopted it, including large airports in Chicago and Dallas, as well as smaller ones in Burlington, Vermont and Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
European airports too are on the bandwagon: Frankfurt opened yoga rooms earlier this year, while travellers can also find them in London and even Helsinki.
While this is a pilot programme that runs through the summer, passenger reaction will influence what the Vancouver airport authorities decide for the future. Once the pilot programme is complete at the end of August, well evaluate the response and take a look at whether there is an opportunity to offer it on a more regular basis at (the airport), Halowski said.
Unlike having to buy extra leg space, this facility will be gratis, as Halowski said, A YYoga instructor will be on hand to welcome passengers, answer questions, and suggest poses and stretches that are particularly beneficial during travel. Pre-registration is not required and there is no fee to use the space and yoga mats will be provided by YYoga.
In a statement to mark the launch of the programme, Berk Kansu of YYoga said, Yoga can offer tremendous benefits to travellers. It can help passengers feel relaxed and centred and help them move to their next destination in a refreshed, calm way.
The trend of yoga spaces available at several airports globally didnt escape the attention of those in Vancouver, as Halowski said, We have heard about other airports offering yoga programmes worldwide. We felt this was a great fit for us with YYoga as they are also a well-known Vancouver brand and Vancouverites definitely love their yoga!
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LONDON: One of the first acts that led to Theresa May being perceived as a tough home secretary was banning controversial Indian preacher Zakir Naik, whose five-year UK visa was cancelled hours before he was scheduled to take off from Mumbai six years ago.
May, set to take over as prime minister, had been in the post for a little more than a month after the May 2010 elections. Reports in the British media had highlighted Naiks controversial views and his forthcoming visit to deliver lectures at major events in Sheffield, Wembley and Birmingham.
The Home Office investigated Naik and, using discretionary powers to exclude individuals from entering Britain, May decided on June 16 his presence in Britain would not be conducive to public good.
The next day, the deputy British high commission in Mumbai delivered Naik a letter, cancelling his visa and informing him May had decided to exclude you from the UK for engaging in unacceptable behaviour by making statements that attempt to justify terrorist activity and fostering hatred.
Naik, currently in focus after it emerged that one of the attackers who targeted a cafe in Dhaka had followed the preacher on social media, had travelled around 15 times to Britain, delivering lectures. In August 2006, a Welsh MP expressed concern over the contents of his lecture in Cardiff. May used 11 controversial public statements by Naik in the decade following 1997 as evidence of unacceptable behaviour, incorporated in law after the 2005 London bombings.
MANILA: Dozens of Filipinos rallying in Manila jumped in joy, wept and waved Philippine flags after an international tribunal sided with their country against Chinas claims on the South China Sea.
As expected, China rejected the ruling , dismissing it as null and void. Beijing said it will not accept or recognise the verdict which it described as having no binding force.
Taiwan, another claimant, also said it does not accept the tribunal s ruling, adding the decision on Itu Aba, Taipei s sole holding in the disputed Spratly Islands, had seriously impaired its territorial rights.
The arbitration court in The Hague ruled that China has no historic title over the waters of the South China Sea and that it has breached the sovereign rights of the Philippines with its actions there.
Vietnam, whose claims on the sea also overlapped with China s, welcomed the tribunal ruling. It said the ruling issued by he Permanent Court of Arbitration in supports the settlement of such disputes through diplomatic and legal processes.
In Manila, one person held up a poster that said: Philippine sovereignty, non-negotiable.
Japans foreign minister Fumio Kishida said the tribunal s decision is final and legally binding and that the two sides should comply with it.
Japan has its own territorial disputes with China over a set of islands in the East China Sea, and has raised concerns over Beijings military assertiveness in the regional waters.
He said Japan supports the rule of law and the use of peaceful means, not the use of force or coercion, in seeking settlement of maritime disputes.
Earlier in the day, rival demonstrators tried to drown out one another in a shouting match outside these at of the Permanent Court of Arbitration.
PESHAWAR: The mastermind of the Pakistani Taliban attack on an army school in Peshawar that left over 140 schoolchildren dead in 2014 has been killed in a US drone strike in neighbouring Afghanistan, security officials said.
Officials said Umar Mansour, alias Umar Naray, had been killed along with another militant leader Qari Saifullah, in the US drone attack in the Bandar area of Afghanistans Nangarhar province on Saturday.
An official said they had credible reports of Mansour having been killed with Saifullah, who was in charge of Taliban suicide bombers, the Dawn reported.
What we have is pretty credible, he was quoted as saying in the report.
The massacre on December 16, 2014, left 144 students and staff members dead after seven gunmen of the banned Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) stormed the Army Public School in the northwestern city of Peshawar.
The US State Department had on May 25 designated Umar Mansour as a global terrorist, clearing the path for his inclusion in its hit-list.
There was no official confirmation of Mansours death from either the TTP or any independent source. If true, his death would be a severe blow to the terror group as Mansour was regarded as a major threat.
Officials said the focus would now be on getting Abdul Wali, alias Omar Khalid Khurasani and Maulvi Fazlullah, both believed to be in Afghanistan.
KATHMANDU: The nine-month old KP Sharma Oli government in Nepal plunged into crisis on Tuesday after key coalition partner Maoists decided to withdraw support.
Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist Centre) withdrew support and recalled ministers alleging the government had failed to implement agreements signed with it in May.
A letter by party chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda mentioning the CPN (MC) decision to the effect was handed over to Oli on Tuesday. Since the present government isnt interested in implementing the nine-point agreement and the three-point gentlemens agreement with us, we withdraw support to the government with immediate effect, the letter stated.
CPN (MC) is the second biggest party in the present government after Olis Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist Leninist).
We already have an agreement with Nepali Congress on formation of the next government. The details will be unveiled on Wednesday, senior Maoist leader Krishna Bahadur Mahara told journalists later.
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Mass shootings are not up and have been flat for forty years. This mass shootings increase mania was created by Obama in September of 2015. Obama used an FBI report titled A Study of Active Shooter Incidents, 2000 2013 that was authored by professors at Texas State University.
The authors of the report were called out for using a misleading start date of the year 2000 with only a couple of mass shootings to manipulate a trend when all studies go back to the 1970s or at least to the peak in 1993, purposefully omitted twenty different mass shooting incidents to also manipulate a upward trend, and mixing the wrong FBI definitions and data between their definition and data of an active shooter and a mass shooter. After being called out on their manipulated data, the authors admitted to using manipulated data and creating their own data making the report worthless. When the correct data was used and the proper timelines were used dating back to the 1970s that the authors did not use, when the correct data from the FBIs active shooter and a mass shooter data were used, there has been no increase in mass shootings.
If a case is to be made, it would be that mass shootings have decreased based on population growth. The numbers are flat since the mid 1970s and the population in 1976 was 218 million and today it is 322 million. From a statistical point of view, mass shootings have dropped by around one-third.
ISLAMABAD: Banners urging army chief Gen Raheel Sharif to take control of the government have appeared mysteriously in Pakistani cities, with some quarters alleging the militarys public relations wing may be behind the move.
This is the second time in a year that such posters and banners have appeared, following a deterioration in relations between the civilian leadership and the military high command.
A little-known political party of Punjab province put up banners in 13 cities on Monday, media reports said. Its leaders urged Gen Sharif to impose martial law and form a government of technocrats.
The banners were put up in Lahore, Karachi, Peshawar, Quetta, Rawalpindi, Faisalabad, Sargodha and Hyderabad by the Move On Pakistan party.
The earlier campaign had requested the army chief to reconsider his retirement.
JOHANNESBURG: Two sets of South African siblings appeared in court Monday on accusations that include plotting to blow up the US Embassy and various Jewish institutions in South Africa.
The four were allegedly planning to fly to Syria, where they were due to undergo training by a terror organisation, police spokesman Hangwane Mulaudzi said. They had been under surveillance for nearly a year.
The allegation is that after the training, they would come back to South Africa, Mulaudzi said, adding that security officials hoped there would be more arrests. Twin brothers Brandon-Lee Thulsie and Tony-Lee Thulsie were charged with conspiring to blow up the US Embassy in Pretoria and various Jewish targets.
SINGAPORE : A Singapore court jailed four Bangladeshi men for between two and five years for terrorism financing on Tuesday in a case that has put the city states most marginalised migrant-worker community in the spotlight.
Authorities said the men contributed from S$60($45) to S$1,360 ($1,000) to fund attacks in their homeland in the name of Islamic State in Bangladesh. It was Singapores first case of terrorism financing.
The amounts were significant relative to the salaries of the accused persons, said the prosecutor, who did not give his name for security reasons.
The sentences would send a strong message that every and all terrorism financing will be dealt with, he said. The four were among eight Bangladeshi men detained under the Internal Security Act in April for planning attacks in their home country. The colonial-era law allows suspects to be held for lengthy periods without trial.
The groups leader, Rahman Mizanur, 31, was jailed for five years.
Two others were jailed for two and a half years and the fourth for two years.
Thoughts on History
You dont have to believe in ghosts to like a good ghost story. Although a confirmed skeptic myself, Ive long been attracted to tales of the mysterious and unexplained. So when I first came across the story of Margery the medium, I was fascinated. Margery and her exploits are interesting by themselves, but once you add Harry Houdini and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to the mix you have more material than you could possibly pack into a single magazine article.
In fact, the lives of both those public figures provide enough material for entire books. For a time the two men were friends, even though they were opposites in many ways. Houdini was small and intense and a natural skeptic when it came to the supernatural. Conan Doyle was big, bluff, and hearty and the worlds best-known believer in spiritualism. Conan Doyle was fascinated by the world-famous escape artist and hoped to win him over to his side of the issue. Houdini enjoyed the company of the well-known author, even though he considered him woefully gullible about the supernatural.
Ultimately, their differing viewpoints ended the friendship. The final break came as a result of a seance they held in Atlantic City. Conan Doyle hoped to use the occasion to submit definitive proof to Houdini that the living could communicate with the dead. Acting as the medium was the authors own wife, Jean, who had developed talents of automatic writing, when she entered a trance-like state and wrote down messages from the beyond. On this occasion she took her otherworldly dictation from Houdinis beloved (and very dead) mother. Yet Houdini asked himself how his Hungarian mother managed to communicate in clear English, a language she never learned. It was the last straw for Conan Doyle. How dare Houdini doubt his own wife! The former friends ended up exchanging barbs through the press until Houdinis death in 1926. Conan Doyle remained intrigued by Houdini, though, and by the end of his own time on earth was certain the magician had possessed genuine paranormal abilities. I have no more doubt that he used psychic powers than I have that I am dictating this letter, he told one correspondent.
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio/Than are dreamt of in your philosophy, Shakespeares Hamlet told his down-to-earth pal. Thats a point believers in the supernatural like to make to the skeptical. Yet Hamlets words cut both ways, for quite often it was the believers who were unable to imagine the great breadth of human imagination and chicanery that allowed mediums to hoodwink their audiences. Some employed small dabs of luminous paint so they could identify cards in a pitch-black seance room, while others used their feet to perform stunts they attributed to supernatural forces. (Houdini liked to demonstrate how he could surreptitiously remove his foot from his shoe and ring a bell with his toes, without the others at the table knowing he was doing it.)
When people truly wanted to believe, changing their minds was next to impossible. Conan Doyle remained steadfast in his belief until he died. He would even champion mediums who had been caught cheating. We must not argue that because a man once forges, therefore he has never signed an honest check in his life, he said. Houdini, who had conducted fake seances when he was a young magician, knew how to fool people. Conan Doyle did not. Being uninitiated in the world of mystery, never having been taught the artifices of conjuring, it was the simplest thing in the world for anyone to . . . hoodwink him, Houdini said.
As for Margeryto this day some of her effects remain unexplained. (In fact, so do some of Houdinis.) Perhaps its for the best. For what is life without a little mystery?
Tom Huntington, Editor, American History
On April 12, 1861, at Charleston, South Carolina, General P. G. T. Beauregard, Confederate States of America, West Point graduate and one-time superintendent of the Academy, ordered his gunners to open fire on Fort Sumter. One of those to pull a lanyard was Wade Hampton Gibbes, who had graduated less than a year before. The Union commander at Fort Sumter was Major Robert Anderson, an Academy graduate who had been Beauregards artillery instructor at West Point.
The United States Military Academy, like every other institution in America, was torn apart by civil war. It was the last to divide. After the Democratic Convention of 1860, the Academy remained as the only truly national institution left in the United States. It was not surprising that this was so, for as the National Academy it had consistently tried to eliminate sectional prejudice and foster national sentiments. As early as 1824 the Board of Visitors had reported that cadets coming from every section of the country contribute much to the extirpation of local prejudices and sectional antipathies. Five years later Secretary of War John H. Eaton advised President Jackson that the Academy may be looked to as one of the strong bonds of our union. The cadets felt a sense of obligation to the Federal Government for their education; as first classman Joseph Ritner put it in a Fourth of July address in 1829, We are the children of the Union and should ever faction raise the fire-brand of sedition, and spread conflagration, turmoil, and confusion through our devoted land, then let it also be recorded, that from her army, at least, our country received a firm, devoted support.
At the Academy the common experience of all cadets, regardless of social or sectional background, combined with a feeling of solidarity they shared as future members of a neglected and even despised profession to strengthen the ordinary bonds of college classmates. West Point was small enough to allow everyone else and to know the name and reputation of those who had preceded them in the Academy. In the Army, and even more so at West Point, the cadet or graduate was isolated from the rest of the world, and his friends and acquaintances were men who had shared the same experiences. The result was a feeling of comradeship, stronger than that in most college fraternities, and it overcame nearly all social, religious, and political differences. Even during the Civil War friendships born at West Point remained; one thinks of Grant sending congratulations across Petersburgs trenches to George Pickett on the birth of his child. And one remembers also the time when during a truce after Fredericksburg, Custer wrote his classmate, Pelham, I rejoice, dear Pelham, in your success. It was, of course, at Fredericksburg that Pelhams guns did such good work that Lee called him the gallant Pelham.
The authorities did all they could to prevent politics from dividing the Corps. In the forties, Superintendent Richard Delafield dissolved the Dialectic Society for a year because it was debating subjects such as Has a State under any circumstances the right to nullify an act of Congress? When he allowed it to reorganize, he limited it to noncontroversial topics. The Corps of Cadets, however, represented all sections of the country, and in the fifties, as political passions rose, divisions did begin to appear. Fights, especially during election periods, became more frequent. In the aftermath of John Browns raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859 there were many heated arguments and at least one duel. A Georgia Cadet, Pierce M.B. Young, hanged Browns body in effigy from one of the windows at the barracks. In a Fourth of July address the next year first classman William W. McCreery condemned the outbreaks, maintained that the noble Union would not dissolve, and concluded, Let us put from us the seeds of sectional strife and draw closer and closer the bonds of this glorious union. Two years later Lieutenant McCreery resigned from the army and joined the forces of his native Virginia. He died in action at the Battle of Gettysburg.
In September 1860 an unknown group of cadets held a mock election in the Corps for President. Some 214 of the 278 cadets voted, 99 of them for the Southern Democrat candidate John C. Breckinridge, 47 for the Northern Democrat Stephen A. Douglas, 44 for the Constitutional Union candidate John Bell, and 24 for Republican Abraham Lincoln. Southerners were jubilant, but Yankee cadets were furious. Second classmen Emory Upton of New York claimed that Southerners had prevented Northerners form voting, there was talk that all the tellers were Southerners, and the Yankees dismissed the whole thing as a Southern project.
The final break began just two months later, when the first Southern cadet resigned to join the forces of his native state. Henry S. Farley, a political fire-eater with appropriate red hair, left the Academy on November 19, a month and a day before his state, South Carolina, seceded. Four days after Farleys departure, another South Carolina cadet, James Hamilton, resigned. In December the remainder of the South Carolina contingent, along with three Mississippians and two Alabamians, also left. One of the Alabama cadets was second classman Charles P. Ball, first sergeant of Company A and heir to the captaincy of the Corps. Ball was one of the most popular cadets. When he was about to leave he revived an old custom, calling the cadets to attention in the mess hall and saying some parting words. A classmate remembered that his voice was clear and strong as he called out, Battalion, attention! Good-bye, boys! God Bless you all! Thereupon the members of his class hoisted him onto their shoulders and carried him to the wharf.
Resignation came hard to most Southern cadets, even those who had no qualms about secession. Pierce Young, first classman from Georgia, after his state seceded told his parents you and others down there dont realize the sacrifice resigning means. He reminded them that it is a hard thing to throw up a diploma from the greatest institution in the world when that diploma is in my very grasp and you know that diploma would give me preeminence over the other men in any profession. He was hurt because Georgia had offered him only a second lieutenancy in her state forces. The idea of giving me a second lieutenant when in a year I would have been offered the same position in the most aristocratic and highly educated army in the world is indeed hard. His father advised him to stay on at West Point and graduate, then resign his commission and join the Confederate forces. Young was going to do so, but when the war began decided he could not wait no longer and resigned.
For a brief period during the secession crisis the superintendent was a Southerner, Captain P.G.T. Beauregard. He relieved Delafield on January 23, 1861. A day or so later a cadet from his state of Louisiana called on Beauregard and asked him whether or not he should resign. The Superintendent replied, Watch me: and when I jump, you jump. Whats the use of jumping too soon? As soon as the Secretary of War, Joseph Holt, heard rumors that Beauregard intended to resign when Louisiana left the Union, he relieved him and on January 28 Delafield once again assumed the duties of superintendent, this being his third term. He served for six weeks until a replacement, Alexander H. Bowman, could relieve him.
Until the second week in April, most of the attention at West Point centered on Southern officers and cadets, as everyone speculated on which ones would resign and which would not. Perhaps to hide their own doubts and misgivings, the Southerners tended to proclaim their views often loudly, and they assumed that most if not all the officers and cadets agreed with them. The idea that the Army and West Point were pro-slavery was popular throughout much of the South. In February 1861 Lieutenant Oliver O. Howard, an instructor at the Academy, received an offer of a professorship in North Carolina, with the final words, As an officer of the army, I presume, of course, that you entertain no views on the peculiar institution which would be objectionable to a Southern Community. And when Lieutenant Alexander McCook accepted the colonelcy of an Ohio regiment, a Kentucky officer at the Academy said in McCooks hearing, A West Point man who goes into the volunteers to fight against the South forgets every sentiment of honor!
The firing on Fort Sumter changed everything. Northern cadets who had been indifferent to or even sympathized with secession suddenly realized what was at stake. A meeting was arranged by word of mouth, and that night all the Northern cadets met in the room of William Harris, where they sang The Star Spangled Banner so that it could be heard across the river. It was, Morris Schaff remembered, the first time I ever saw the Southern contingent cowed. All of their Northern allies had deserted them and they were stunned. The next day all the professors, including Virginia-born Dennis H. Mahan, made patriotic speeches, and Dr. John French offered all the money he had to strengthen the government exchequer. A few days later, when an officer who had been at Fort Sumter visited West Point, he was joyously serenaded.
By this time Southerners were leaving nearly every day, including two instructors, Lieutenants Fitzhugh Lee and Charles W. Field. But the old ties were still there: one cadet remembered later that between the men of the several sections of the country there was no bitterness manifest, nothing but expressions of sorrow and disappointment. This was especially true in the case of Lee who, like his famous uncle, left only after his native Virginia had seceded and then with great regret. A big, cheerful, smiling man who had almost been dismissed on several occasions during his cadet career because of his pranks, Fitz Lee was probably the most popular officer at the Academy. On the night of his departure the officers of the post serenaded him and the entire corps of cadets stood, hats in hand, in front of the barracks as he went past.
By May 1861, most of the Southern cadets were gone. Out of a total Corps of 278, there were 86 Southerners, of whom 65 resigned. The new superintendent, Major Bowman, noted that the remaining 21 were discontented, restless, and neglecting their studies-but, for that matter, so were the Yankees, the excitement being what it was. Bowman was convinced most of the 21 were merely waiting for permission from their parents to resign, and to force them out before they could cause a commotion he ordered all cadets to sign an oath of allegiance. Some of the Southerners from border states hesitated, causing New Yorker Upton to remark, The Government will know who are loyal and who are traitors. Eventually all signed and fought for the Union. In August Bowman held another oath-signing ceremony, this time with the words, I will maintain and defend the sovereignty of the United States, paramount to any and all allegiance, sovereignty, or fealty I may owe to any State, county, or country whatsoever. Two Kentuckians refused to sign, including plebe John C. Singleton, who was thereupon dismissed. Singleton went home, joined the Union Army, and was killed in action.
In the first weeks of the war the cadets felt an acute sense of isolation. I suppose there is a great deal of stir and preparation for war going on in the country, Cullen Bryant wrote his father, though I have as yet seen but very few evidences of it. We are almost completely secluded and shut out from the rest of the world. The war news from all over the country was tremendously exciting, but at West Point, now that the Southerners had left, all was quiet and normal-maddeningly so. All over the North Volunteer companies and regiments were being formed, men were marching off to war to stirring martial tunes, with pretty girls kisses on their cheeks, and the great crusade was underway. But at West Point, nothing. The young heroes, eager to save their nation, were ignored. In retaliation they ridiculed the more fortunate. Cadet Bryant sneeringly told his father he did not expect the Volunteer companies at home were much to look at, and he supposed the officers were rather poor specimens. Bryant, who had been at the Academy for ten months, pontificated, experience only can make an efficient officer. I am afraid our volunteer companies would make a rather poor show in a fight with disciplined troops.
The Cadets often announced their contempt for civilians-turned-soldiers, so they were dismayed when they saw high rank in the Volunteer regiments going to untrained men when the best they had to look forward to was a second lieutenancy in a Regular regiment, and that would probably be a brevet rank. They watched with envious eyes as their Southern classmates became captains or more in the state forces, ranks a Regular Army officer could hardly hope to reach before he was forty. And they were absolutely furious when they discovered that the Secretary of War, in expanding the Regular Army, was giving commissions in it to mere civilians. Those who received the appointments would permanently rank ahead of the first classmen, who would not graduate and receive their commissions until June, for in the Army a mans position and thus his promotions, depended upon the date of appointment. The system of cadet rankings had taught the students they were expected to fight for higher rank, and they learned the lesson well. Many, including William Harris, whose father was a United States Senator, wrote complaining letters on the subject to their Congressmen, but it did no good.
Some cadets listened closely to the enticing offers of the state governors, politicians who realized that their Volunteer forces needed at least a smattering of professionalism. The governors offered a captaincy or a majority or in a few cases even a colonelcy to home-state cadets. For the young men the temptation was great, but so were the drawbacks. They would be commanding citizen soldiers, and they had an ingrained prejudice against such warriors. They would have to resign from the Academy which first and second classmen found difficult, especially since General in Chief Scott had made it clear he did not want any Regular officers joining the Volunteer forces. Scott argued that this would so weaken the Regular Army that it would never recover, and he forced officers to resign their commissions before they could join the Volunteers. Later in the war, after Henry Halleck replaced Scott, he encouraged Regulars to join the Volunteers, hoping thereby to improve the citizen-soldiers efficiency, and many did so. Under the Halleck system they retained their grade and position in the Regular Army, while rising as far as their abilities could take them in the Volunteers. For example, Emory Upton, an 1861 graduate of the Academy who in late 1862 joined the New York volunteers, was still a lieutenant in the Regulars when he was a brevet major general in the Volunteers. Others who rose to gain their stars included George Custer and James H. Wilson, while those who remained in the Regular Army, including Morris Schaff and Henry du Pont, remained junior officers.
In early 1861 all the possibilities presented endless topics for discussion, as the cadets marveled over the colonelcy one had received, what another had been offered, and what a third intended to do. A number sent in their resignations after accepting Volunteer commissions, but to their disgust the superintendent refused to accept them. Major Bowman argued that they were not ready to represent the Academy in the field, although he admitted that they would probably do better than most of those already serving as Volunteer officers, and he feared that if he accepted any resignations for the purpose of serving as Volunteers, the entire Corps would resign.
Like most Americans, the cadets assumed the war would consist of one gigantic battle, with the winner marching on and capturing the losers capital. The inactivity and isolation at West Point, the continuation of regular classes, and the seeming blindness of the authorities who refused to call them immediately into active service, all made the cadets frantic. They were certain the great battle would be fought without them. Cadet Bryant complained about being completely secluded, and commented bitterly that we might as well be at some frontier post a thousand miles from any settlement. When they heard in March that the midshipmen at Annapolis were going to graduate early and go to war, the first classmen held a series of informal meetings and decided upon a course of action. The cadets each wrote their Congressmen, asking that they urge the Secretary of War to graduate the first class early. As a group, they sent a petition to the Secretary of War himself, pointing out that the Secretary of the Navy had ordered the first class at Annapolis into the active service and arguing that they were just as ready and willing to assume their responsibilities. The Secretary, Simon Cameron, responded favorably, and on May 6, 1861, without benefit of either graduation ceremonies or the traditional furlough, the first class went off to war-or, in actual fact, to Washington, where they spent the next months drilling Volunteers.
Encouraged by their predecessors success, the new first class also petitioned Cameron, once again with success, and on June 24, a year early, the cadets were examined, graduated, and ordered to Washington. They received their commissions in General Scotts office with President Abraham Lincoln present for the ceremony, then went out in the field to serve as drill masters. By July both classes had done so well in their tasks that Cameron ordered the new first class, the third of that year, to begin recitations and prepare for graduation. Three days later, just as it began to appear that West Point would soon have no cadets at all, Cameron rescinded his hasty decision and postponed the graduation until the next year. For the rest of the war classes graduated at the regular intervals.
During the next four years there was not much change in the routine at West Point, but the Academy did have to face a vicious attack launched against it by the Radical Republicans. The politicians charged that West Point was disloyal-the leading generals and the President of the Confederate States of America were graduates-and that its products were inferior soldiers. The attack reached a frenzy during the dark days of 1863, but died out after the Union victories of that summer. Grant, Sherman, and the others who had made West Points name famous throughout the world effectively answered the charges of incompetence, and the fact that it was Academy graduates who led the armies to final victory answered the charge of treason.
The last institution in America to divide, the Academy was one of the first to reunite. Grant and Lee at Appomattox set the pattern, and all over the South, as the Confederate armies surrendered, senior and junior officers who had been classmates at West Point held individual reunions. In 1869 a formal alumni association was formed, composed of members from both Blue and Gray armies, and whatever bitterness that had existed was soon forgotten.
The United States Military Academy emerged from the war one of Americas most hallowed institutions. Grant, a tanners son, Sherman, an orphan, and many others made the old charges of its aristocratic nature absurd. Not a single graduate had made any attempt to take over the civilian government, either in the North or South-although General George McClellan did make a couple of frightening but empty statements along those lines-and the ancient fear of military domination was lessened. Most important, Americans North and South were immensely proud of their armies, and they made the men who led them heroes, superior soldiers, so it was said, to any others in the world. And the leaders were West Pointers.
This article was written by Stephen E. Ambrose and originally published in Civil War Times Illustrated Magazine in August 1965.
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We were last in order to clear Rt. 9, but when the forward companies made contact with the NVA, we were ordered to be picked up by chopper to leapfrog ahead and become point element.
Joegy, I recall my grandpa saying after hed had a few beers, Your two best friends are your rifle and your horse. And if you got just a little bit of water left in your canteen, give it to your horse first. Grandpa was a sergeant in the 1st Cavalry in 1917 and he was deployed along the Arizona border during Brigadier General John Pershings Mexican Punitive Expedition against the revolutionary Pancho Villa. He knew the value of the horse and rifle to the cavalry soldier.
Fifty years after my Grandpa learned the lessons of mobility from atop his horse, I found myself an infantry lieutenant with the 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile), the 1st Air Cav, in Vietnam. It was a new concept for the Army, swift deployment of light infantry troops, their artillery fire support, supplies and equipmentprimarily by helicopter. We had mobility and firepower that the other Army units simply did not have.
In the early spring of 1968, that mobility would come into play during one of the wars most prolonged encounters, one that struck fear in the heart of President Lyndon Johnson and gripped the attention of the nation. Leading the 2nd Platoon, D Company, 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry, 3rd Brigade, 1st Air Cav, I was to be a part of the historic relief of the courageous Marines who held on for 77 days at Khe Sanh, and experience the effective use of the Air Cavs awesome agility in breaking the grip of an entrenched enemy and of opening the road to the besieged combat base.
The Marines mission at Khe Sanh was to block the North Vietnamese infiltration across the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) and to establish a jumping-off point for a proposed but never authorized American advance into the panhandle of Laos to cut off the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Some 15 miles south of the DMZ and barely seven miles from the eastern frontier of Laos, the Khe Sanh Combat Base was almost completely surrounded by towering ridges in the center of four valley corridors leading through the mountains to the north and northwest of the base. To the south, Khe Sanh overlooked its namesake hamlet and Route 9, the only east-west road in the province of Quang Tri, linking Laos and the Vietnamese coastal regions. Built atop a plateau, the base covered an area approximately one mile long and one-half mile wide and had a 3,900-foot aluminum mat runway that could accommodate fixed-wing aircraft up to the size of C-130 transports.
By January 1968, the North Vietnamese had cut off Route 9 and built up their forces around the 6,000 Marines at Khe Sanh to 20,000 troops, unleashing a strike a week before starting their Tet Offensive that was waged across South Vietnam. President Johnson and his advisers feared the Khe Sanh siege would be the prelude to a full-scale assault comparable to General Vo Nguyen Giaps crushing 1954 Viet Minh victory over the French at a similar base at Dien Bien Phu. Obsessed over the fate of the firebase, LBJ had a table-top mockup of the Khe Sanh base set up inside the White House and told his advisers, I dont want any damn Dinbinfoo.
The dire Khe Sanh situation, with the trapped Marines reduced to living underground, was dramatized in news reports as likely to be a very rough business with heartbreaking American casualties. It was being framed as a major test of strength between North Vietnam and the United States, loaded with heavy political and psychological overtones. As LBJ personally sent off Marine reinforcements to I Corps from El Toro Marine Air Station, Calif., on February 17, he told them: This is a decisive time in Vietnam. The eyes of the nation and the eyes of the entire world, the eyes of all of history itself, are on that little brave band of defenders who hold the pass at Khe Sanh.
I had only arrived in Vietnam in January, and when my parents sent me newspaper clippings about the Marines at Khe Sanh, I thought that if there were a place on earth that was close to being hellit had to be Khe Sanh. Little did I know that my platoon would soon be at the spearhead of the overland expedition to end the siege.
On February 7, the Special Forces camp at Lang Vei, just seven kilometers southwest of Khe Sanh, was overrun, heightening the alarm over the fate of the Marine base. Only massive bombingsome 110,000 tons dropped during the siegekept a full assault at bay. American casualties at Khe Sanh were high, and the intense shelling hindered effective aerial resupply of the combat base.
On March 2, Maj. Gen. John J. Tolson, commander of the 1st Air Cav, got the green light for his plans for the relief of Khe Sanh, dubbed Operation Pegasus. The mission was: Destroy the enemy forces within the area; open Route 9 from Ca Lu to Khe Sanh; and relieve the Khe Sanh Combat Base. In this operation, the 1st Cavalry Division would be augmented by the 1st Marine Regiment, 26th Marine Regiment, 3rd Army of the Republic of Vietnam Airborne Task Force and the 37th ARVN Ranger Battalion.
The basic concept of Pegasus was for the 1st Marines to launch a ground attack west toward Khe Sanh with two battalions, while the 3rd Brigade would lead the 1st Cavalry air assault. On the first two days of the operation, all elements would continue to attack west toward Khe Sanh; and, on the following day, the 2nd Brigade of the Cavalry would land three battalions southeast of Khe Sanh and attack northwest. The 26th Marines, which was holding Khe Sanh, would then attack south to secure Hill 471. On D plus 4, the 1st Brigade would air assault just south of Khe Sanh and attack north. The following day, the 3rd ARVN Airborne Task Force would air assault southwest of Khe Sanh and attack toward Lang Vei Special Forces camp. Linkup was planned at the end of seven days. Some 20,000 U.S. and ARVN soldiers and U.S. Marines would take part in Pegasus.
D-day was to be April 1, and an airstrip in the vicinity of Ca Lu, Landing Zone (LZ) Stud, had to be ready well before. Also, Route 9 between the Rock Pile and Ca Lu had to be upgraded and bridges repaired to allow prestocking of supplies at LZ Stud.
Also key to the plans success would be the closely integrated reconnaissance and fire support effort of the 1st Squadron, 9th Cavalry, and air, artillery and B-52 Arc Light strikes. The 1/9 Cavalry, which was unique in that it had infantry and air assets combined, operated like the scouts of old out of LZ Stud, moving in gradually increasing concentric circles up to the Khe Sanh area, working all the time with air cover from the Seventh Air Force or the 1st Marine Air Wing. The 1/9 Cavalry was almost the only means available to pinpoint enemy locations, anti-aircraft positions and strong points that the division would try to avoid in the initial assaults. The squadron was also responsible for the selection of critical landing zones.
As Tet broke open at the end of January, my platoon was operating around Bong Son, or VC Valley, along the coast. We were moving north to begin operating out of Camp Evans. It wasnt until late March that we began hearing that our battalion might be a part of Pegasus. In my diary entry of March 22, I wrote:
March 22, 1507 hours. Its hot. Im sitting under poncho liner. Tonight to go out and set up a goat to catch any VC setting up mines. Rumor still is that we will go to Khe Sanh.
At 0700 hours on April 1, 1968, the attack phase of Operation Pegasus started as two battalions of the 1st Marines attacked west from Ca Lu along Route 9. At the same time, Chinooks and Hueys airlifted the 3rd Brigade of the 1st Cavalry into LZ Stud in preparation for an air assault farther west.
Weather delayed the attack until 1300, when the 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry air assaulted into LZ Mike, located on prominent ground south of Route 9 and well forward of the Marine attack. The 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry also air assaulted into the same landing zone to expand and develop the position.
Monday, April 1, 0817. We are waiting to be picked up to go to LZ Ca Lu. From there we go to LZ Thor. Thor hasnt been decided definitely yet. The terrain there is thick and mountainous. We air assaulted to the top of this mountain. It is jungle and grassy. I jumped from the chopper and hurt my arm.
The 5th Battalion, 7th Cavalry air assaulted into an area north of Route 9, about opposite LZ Mike, within range of supporting artillery. Both landing zones were secured and no significant enemy resistance was encountered. A battery of 105mm howitzers was airlifted into each landing zone, and bad weather notwithstanding, everything was in place before dark. The bad weather of D-day was to haunt the 1st Air Cav throughout Operation Pegasus.
On April 2, the 1st Marines pushed along the axis of Route 9. Two Marine companies made limited air assaults to support the regiments momentum. The 3rd Brigade air assaulted the 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry into a new position farther to the west while the other two battalions improved their positions.
Tuesday, April 2, 1000. The sun is out. Were on a high mountain top surrounded by a river on three sides. Today, D Company is to air assault to a new location to set up there. We just got a log ship with food and water. It was nice sleeping last night.
We didnt carry our butt packs, but our web gear, C rations, fragmentation and smoke grenades, ammunition, M-16s, M-60s, M-79s, LAWs (light anti-tank weapons), PRC-25 radios and a 90mm recoilless rifle weighed us down enough. Sometimes we wore our flak vests, but we avoided doing so whenever we could. My point man that day was a lanky guy with a peace symbol on his helmet we called Hippy. He was an excellent point manthe first guy in order of movement as we moved through Indian country. Hippy found the site where an enemy .50-cal. machine gun had been, and a North Vietnamese Army helmet and a bag of raw opium. The NVA used opium for medicinal purposesand perhaps to prepare themselves for suicidal sapper attacks. I told Hippy to take the bag back to turn it in. I never checked to see if he did.
Tuesday, April 2, 1720. D Company led the air assault to where we are now. My platoon led a ground movement. We found a site for a .50-cal. anti-aircraft gun. Also some of my platoon found some ammo and grenades (NVA). Now we are waiting to see where well set up. Were hot and tired.
When the initial attacks met less enemy resistance than expected, General Tolson ordered an acceleration of the tempo. There were now six air cavalry battalions and supporting artillery deep in enemy territory. To get the 26th Marines out of their static defense position, on April 3 Tolson ordered its commander, Colonel David E. Lownds, to launch a battalion-size attack south from Khe Sanh to seize Hill 471, a strategic piece of terrain affording a commanding view of the base. Following heavy artillery preparation, the Marines seized the hill, killing 30 of the enemy. On the same day, the 2nd Brigade of the cavalry division assaulted one battalion into an old French fort south of Khe Sanh. Initial contact resulted in four enemy killed.
Our company was moving through very dense jungle, and 3rd platoon was the point platoon on this advance. Its men made contact with the NVA, and we could hear the firefight ahead of us. The massive bombing had upturned the soft, rich dirt, and the gigantic craters made great pre-dug foxholes we could climb into. A popular NCO in the 3rd Platoon was killed in the action.
Wednesday, April 3, 0953. We are sitting in the jungle right now. 3rd Platoon hit some NVA a little while ago. They got one of their men KIA. The S-3 carried him back on his shoulders and then three of my men took the KIA to the rear. Were waiting for artillery to come in. There are huge bomb craters all around. I can hear the choppers circling the area now. There are trees, high grass and ferns all around.
Later in the day, we set up a company-size perimeter on jungle-shrouded Hill 242, not far off Route 9. So we could get resupplied, we started clearing a landing zone by wrapping detonation cord around some of the smaller trees and blowing them in two, but there were too many and we were unsuccessful in the LZ construction. The NVA surrounded us but apparently did not have the force or will to attack us directly. One of the other units, using a small flat-bed utility vehicle to bring us supplies, a mule, was ambushed as they moved down the road, resulting in some killed. We didnt get any food or water, except for rain water we gathered on our ponchos.
Wednesday, April 3, 1808. We moved to this Hill 242. NVA mortared us. We had 10 or 11 WIA. NVA have us surrounded now. One platoon from another company tried to bring us food and water but got pinned down. I hope we make it through the night.
At one point, the platoon sergeant and I were checking our section of the perimeter when we heard that distinctive clank of the bolt of an AK-47 being pulled back from outside our perimeter. I yelled, Get down! We hit the dirt just as the automatic weapons fire started chopping the leaves above us. He had a horrified look on his face, and I let out a nervous laugh. When that AK opened up, one of our machine gunners started pumping M-60 fire into the jungle in the area of the sound of the enemy fire, no doubt saving our lives.
My platoon had five PRC-25 radios. Some entire companies had only two, but I realized how critical communications was and I wanted my five authorized radios. Two radio telephone operators (RTOs) were near me constantly, and later that night I heard the company commander get on the radio and say that it appeared that artillery rounds had landed in our perimeter but did not explode. He said that they could be duds or chemical agents. I stayed awake all night thinking I might die from a nerve agent, but it didnt happen. The next morning, we moved back to a position where the 105 howitzers had been brought in by Chinooks.
After a while, I got almost numb to the idea that I could be killed at any time. I had been scared before but always did my best to hide it. Although I saw dead and wounded around me, I could keep myself somewhat detached, but when I saw the 2nd Platoon leader of C Company killed, my sense of invincibility deteriorated.
Thursday, April 4, 1800. I have my platoon in position on the perimeter. As we came back today we picked up a couple of the dead and wounded who tried to get us supplies yesterday. When we got back here we saw more dead and wounded. The 2nd Platoon leader of C Company was killed. One medevac chopper was shot up. The NVA here are dangerous. I dont like this area. I hope we all get out alive.
On April 5, the 2nd Brigade continued its attack on the old French fort, meeting heavy enemy resistance. Enemy troops attacked the Marines on Hill 471, but the Marines repulsed the attack, killing 122 North Vietnamese. The fight was one of the heaviest during Pegasus, as units of the 1st Brigade entered the operation with the 1st Battalion, 8th Cavalry, air assaulting into LZ Snapper about seven kilometers due south of Khe Sanh Combat Base and overlooking Route 9. The circle began to close around the enemy.
Friday, April 5, 1550. I got the word today that our battalion may walk to Khe Sanh tomorrow. This could be disastrous. Weve incurred a lot of dead and wounded since weve been here. I hope to God we make it alive. Ive had a lot of close calls and Im getting scared again. Everyone is scared of this area. The NVA are numerous and good fighters. Were digging in again for tonight.
On April 6, the 1st Marines continued operations on the high ground north and south of Route 9, moving west toward Khe Sanh. The heaviest contact of the day occurred in the 3rd Brigades area of operation as the 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry continued its drive west on Highway 9. In a daylong battle, which ended when the enemy summarily abandoned his position and fled, the battalion had 83 NVA killed, one captured, and 121 individual and 10 crew-served weapons captured. Some troops of the 1st Air Cav were airlifted to Hill 471, relieving the Marines at this position. Two companies of troopers remained on the hill, while two other companies initiated an attack to the south toward the hamlet of Khe Sanh.
Using mortars, hand grenades and rocket launchers, an enemy force attacked 1st Cavalry forces at LZ Snapper. The attack was a disaster for the enemy, who lost 20 killed. At 1320 the 84th Company of the ARVN 8th Airborne Battalion was airlifted by 1st Cavalry Division aircraft inside the Khe Sanh Combat Base and linked up with elements of the ARVN 37th Ranger Battalion.
Although 1st Cavalry units had relieved Marines at Hill 471 and airlifted South Vietnamese airborne into the Khe Sanh Combat Base, Route 9 and the road leading into the Khe Sanh base remained to be cleared, and that was the task that lay ahead of us. It was common practice for commanders to rotate personnel or units as point elements, and on this day it was other units turn to be ahead of D Company. We thought wed caught a lucky break, as we were last in order of movement on this day. But when the forward companies made contact with the NVA, we were ordered to reverse our movement and go back to the road to be picked up by chopper to leapfrog over the two companies in contact to continue the mission to clear the highway. We were now point element again.
Saturday, April 6, 1400. Well, we tried to walk from this LZ to Khe Sanh, but we had to come back as the two forward companies received effective fire. Now our company is supposed to air assault to 500 meters east of Khe Sanh. This is a glory push to see who can be the first to walk into Khe Sanh. I hope we make it. We have many reporters with us.
On April 7, the ARVN 3rd Airborne Task Force air assaulted three battalions into positions north of the road and east of Khe Sanh to block NVA escape routes toward the Laotian border. Sporadic fights continued throughout the area as the enemy withdrew. American and South Vietnamese units began picking up significant quantities of abandoned weapons and equipment. The old French fort, which was the last known enemy strongpoint around Khe Sanh, was now completely secured.
We air assaulted near the top of a mountain that seemed to be solid rock. As we were moving toward the crest, bullets whistled overhead. There was no cover and the ground was just too hard to dig in if we had to. We just kept moving toward the crest. The point squad radioed that they saw bunkers as they approached, so I had the platoon get in a line formation so all firepower would be to the front. The lead squad got to the bunkers and said the NVA was gone. My platoon and the rest of the company occupied this area at a location near the intersection where Route 9 branches off toward Lang Vei. It had been a regimental size NVA complex with all kinds of weaponsmortars, machine guns, anti-aircraft guns, ZPU-4, AKs, RPDs, RPKs, RPGs and commo wire linking bunkers surrounding the whole area. The area was heavily pockmarked with bomb craters, and we found dead North Vietnamese in bunkers. It was here that one of my guys found an old French bugle and put parachute cord on it to make a tassel. I grabbed an AK-47 and an NVA bayonet and ammo pouch as souvenirs.
Sunday, April 7, 1045. We air assaulted to an open area on a mountain top and received light sniper fire. We found a complex (NVA) with rockets, mortars-tube and ammo-AK-47s, and all sorts of material. I have a sharp AK-47 which I hope to keep. We are to go to Khe Sanh.
We were now about two miles outside of Khe Sanh, and although the bunker complex was abandoned, the road to the base still had to be cleared. My platoon led the clearing action, straddling the road by 30 meters. We didnt know if NVA were still lurking in the area, and we had to avoid toe popper bomblets that had been dropped by the Air Force. We carefully searched each bunker all the way to the wire at Khe Sanh, but it seemed the NVA had vanished.
Sunday, April 7, 1700. We are at Khe Sanh camped outside the east entrance on Highway 9.
At 0800 on April 8, the relief of Khe Sanh was officially effected, following the 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalrys successful clearing of Route 9 and the road to the base. The 3rd Brigade airlifted its command post into Khe Sanh, and the 7th Cavalry assumed the mission of securing the area. The 3rd Brigade elements occupied high ground to the east and northeast of the base with no enemy contact.
Ours was the first platoon to walk into Khe Sanh, and as we did I blew the cavalry charge on the enemy bugle. A newspaper wire report dated April 8, 1968, described the scene:
SAIGON (UPI)Blowing Charge! on a captured Communist Bugle, American ground forces linked up with the long-surrounded Marine fort of Khe Sanh and then fanned out and killed at least 103 North Vietnamese in the hills on South Vietnams northern frontier, U.S. spokesmen said today.
At Khe Sanh, where round the clock Communist artillery fire had driven 6,000 Marine defenders underground, the Leathernecks Sunday whooped it up as Army 1st Lt. Joe Abodeelys unit walked the last two miles into the camp.Abodeely, 24, of Tucson, Arizona, and his platoon formed the 1st Air Cavalry spearhead of the 20,000-man Operation Pegasus drive that broke the Communist grip around Khe Sanh in a week-long drive that covered 12 miles of jungle, hills and minefields.
The lieutenant triumphantly blew on the bugle he found in a captured arms dump. Its notes echoed across the red dirt plateau. Abodeelys unit had landed by helicopter two miles from Khe Sanh and met no resistance the rest of the way. The helicopter leapfrog technique, plus a Marine road-clearing drive, formed the backbone of Pegasus.
While it was nice that the press saw fit to put a lieutenants name as leading the operation, it was the Marines who defended Khe Sanh for 77 days and fought their way out of the base, and all of the 1st Air Cav troopers who engaged and drove the NVA away from Khe Sanh who were the true heroes of the epic fight.
In the end, the NVA suffered tens of thousands of casualties and was forced to withdraw. Their campaign against Khe Sanh was foiled by the unprecedented mobility of the Air Cav. As General Tolson later wrote: It became increasingly evident, through lack of contact and the large amounts of new equipment being found indiscriminately abandoned on the battlefield, that the enemy had fled the area rather than face certain defeat. He was totally confused by the swift, bold, many-pronged attacks.
Yet, soon after, American tactics changed, and just three months later Khe Sanh Combat Base, where much American blood had been shed, was dismantled. But Khe Sanh, and the courage and determination of the men who fought there, will never be forgotten.
After Vietnam, Joseph Abodeely finished law school and became a Reserve JAG officer, his last assignment at the Military Police Operations Agency. A Maricopa County, Ariz., deputy county attorney from 1971 to 1985 before entering private practice, he has also been the CEO of the Arizona Military Museum since 1980. This article originally appeared in the October 2010 issue of Vietnam magazine.
Click the link to read an exclusive HistoryNet interview with Joseph Abodeely.
Many patriots viewed the destruction of the tea as an act of vandalism.
We all know and celebrate the climax to the Boston Tea Party. On December 16, 1773, several dozen men dressed as Mohawk Indians boarded three ships belonging to the East India Company, cut open 340 chests of tea and dumped the contents in Bostons harbor. We fondly remember the carnival-like drama as a catalyst for the American Revolution, and over the years both liberal and conservative protesters have laid claim to its irreverent legacy.
Revolutionary-era Americans, though, didnt celebrate the event. This might seem strange, since the patriots were the celebrating sort. They staged festive ceremonies to commemorate anniversariesthe first Stamp Act protest, the acts repeal, the Boston Massacre, the Declaration of Independencebut the action against tea or the destruction of the tea (as they variously called it) went unheralded in public ritual. For a half century, Americans shunned the tale, and certainly did not call it a tea party. At first, they didnt dare. Anyone who had anything to do with the event could face prosecution, or at least a lawsuit. Privately, some people knew who was behind those Indian disguises, but publicly, nobody said a word. Moreover, many patriots viewed the destruction of tea as an act of vandalism that put the Revolution in a bad light. Patriots also downplayed the tea action because of its devastating impact. That single act precipitated harsh retaliation from the British, which in turn led to a long and ugly war.
The Boston Tea Party is now an iconic event suffused with myth, but below the surface is the story of a true act of revolution, carried out in a context of power politics, with surprising parallels in the modern era.
Myth 1: The dispute was about higher taxes
The immediate catalyst was a tax breaknot a tax increasethat effectively made imported tea more affordable for colonists. What irked the patriots was that they had no role in the decision.
The saga began with the British governments bailout of a corporation deemed too big to fail. The giant East India Company not only enjoyed monopolistic privileges in south Asia and China under a royal charter granted in 1600; it effectively ruled large sections of the Indian subcontinent. But in 1772, the company was hard hit by the collapse of speculative banking schemes throughout Europe, and its stock tumbled. Unsold goods accumulated in warehouses, and company directors asked the British government for a loan to forestall insolvency. Members of Parliamentlike American congressmen todaystaged committee hearings in which they grandstanded against greedy company officials, who had returned from India with huge fortunes and declared large dividends despite the companys overwhelming debts. Meanwhile, they tried to figure out how to get the company, and the empire, out of the mess.
As MPs debated the advisability of a government takeover, they also discussed schemes for unloading the companys 18 million pounds of surplus tea. The European market was already saturated, but the American market was not. In theory, the East India Company could sell many tons of tea there if taxes were lowered. Two separate taxes were involved: one imposed on tea coming through Britain on its way from India and China to Western markets and another imposed when it arrived in America. Although cutting either one was an economically viable option, repealing the American tax would have had the added benefit of improving relations with colonists. Thats precisely why Lord North, the prime minister, rejected the idea.
In the Tea Act of 1773, Parliament left the American import duties in place but decreed that the East India Company would no longer have to pay any duties on tea landing in Britain and headed to America, nor would it have to sell the tea at British public auctions. It could deliver its product straight to American consumers, untouched by middlemen and almost untaxed, save for a modest American import duty. The only people who stood to incur financial losses from the arrangement were American smugglers who had been peddling duty-free tea from Holland.
Few in London thought the sweetheart deal was a matter of consequence to anyone but the East India Company, and it received little notice. Some relief would be granted to the struggling corporate giant, without political cost. And surely, Americans would not object to receiving tea at bargain prices.
British prognosticators were wrong. For the Americans, the fundamental issue was one of self-governance. Whoever levied taxes got to call the shots, including how to spend the money. Parliament insisted on taxing colonists to supportand commandcolonial administration. Colonists countered that they were more than willing to taxand rulethemselves. No more taxation without representation became their rallying cry, not down with high taxes.
Myth 2: Tea taxes were an onerous burden on ordinary Americans
Land taxes and poll taxes assessed by their own colonial assemblies, as well as long-standing import duties on sugar, molasses and wine, were a much greater burden. The tea tax was a relic of the Townshend Revenue Act of 1767, which also placed import duties on paint, paper, lead and glass. Parliament responded to widespread colonial protests and boycotts of the taxed items by repealing the Townshend taxes in 1770, except for the tea duty, which North kept to assert the right of taxing Americans. At three pence per pound, the tax on tea was barely felt by American consumers, who also had access to the smuggled competition.
Still, the tea tax maintained symbolic significance, and the boycott of tea involved complex overlays. Common folk might enjoy a sip or two of tea, but participating in the elaborate British ritual of teatimewith an array of fancy crockery and silver utensilswas prohibitively expensive for the vast majority of Americans. Calls for a continued boycott of tea dovetailed nicely with lower-class resentments. Tea was an easy target, a symbol both of Parliaments arrogance and a crumbling social hierarchy.
Moreover, tea consumption was deemed suspect, even sinful, by a large segment of the American public. That bainfull weed, as Abigail Adams called it, was an artificial stimulant, what we would call today a recreational drug. Promoters of virtue, who had long been expounding the evils of tea, suddenly became patriots. One concerned writer, in a Virginia newspaper, claimed that ever since tea had been introduced into Western society, our race is dwindled and become puny, weak, and disordered to such a degree, that were it to prevail a century more we should be reduced to mere pigmies.
Pointing to his medical expertise, Bostons Dr. Thomas Young declared authoritatively that tea was not just a pernicious drug, as some assumed, but a slow poison, and has the corrosive effect upon those who handle it. I have left it off since it became political poison, and have since gained in firmness of constitution. My substitute is camomile flowers.
Resistance leaders also launched a new wave of negative propaganda that played to anti-foreign sentiments: Tea from the East India Company was packed tightly in chests by the stomping of barefoot Chinese and was infested with Chinese fleas. In turn, a vast number of colonists vowed to protect American business from foreign competition, even if that business was smuggling. Beware of products from China, buy America, wage war on drugs, down with corporationsall these messages, as well as their better-known cousin, no taxation without representationamplified the response to Parliaments Tea Act of 1773.
Myth 3: Dumping British tea unified the patriots
The immediate effect was just the opposite. The morning after the tea action in Boston, John Adams penned a letter to his close friend James Warren. The Dye is cast, he wrote. The People have passed the River and cutt away the Bridge: last Night Three Cargoes of Tea, were emptied into the Harbour. This is the grandest Event, which has ever yet happened Since the Controversy, with Britain, opened. The sublimity of it charms me. But that opinion was far from universal among patriot leaders.
For Americans who called themselves patriots, the slogan liberty and property was a common rallying cry, shouted at least as often as taxation without representation. George Washington, among many others, chided Bostonians for their conduct in destroying tea. Benjamin Franklin was hardly alone when he argued that the East India Company should be compensated for its losses.
It was not the destruction of tea that pulled Americans together, but the punishments administered several months later through a series of laws dubbed the Coercive Acts (also called the Intolerable Acts by the Americans). Parliament closed the port of Boston and revoked the Massachusetts charter, denying citizens the rights they had enjoyed for a century and a half. The goal of the Coercive Acts was to isolate radicals in Massachusetts, but instead the 13 colonies formed the Continental Congress and agreed to mount a general boycott of British goods.
The destruction of tea had been a catalyst for events leading to independence, but its belligerent tone ran counter to the favored patriotic story line: The British were the aggressors, causing peace-loving Americans to act in self-defense. After the war was over and the nation was on its own, the saga posed another conundrum. It was time to accept the new government, duly elected by the people, and strive to maintain law and order, explains Tufts University historian Benjamin Carp. Once this belief calcified into conventional wisdom, there was less room to celebrate a ragged group of mock Mohawks wielding hatchets in defiance of government.
Finally, in the 1820s, Americans let down their guard, and a new generation of chroniclers toned down the truly revolutionary aspects of the action against tea and played up the carnival atmosphere. More than 50 years after the event was over, it was informally christened the Boston Tea Party. Once the story could be told playfully, it anchored every text intended for children, who liked to dress as Indians in any case. Thats still the version we see in our school texts, and in books for adults as well. Declawed and simplified, the event loses not only its revolutionary punch but also its political and economic context. A corporate tax break that lowered the price of tea in America? Too big to fail? Competition from cheap foreign imports? These dont play well to children. But they do reveal that the action against tea was much more than a party.
Ray Raphael is the author of A Peoples History of the American Revolution, Founding Myths and Founders.
ABRAHAM AND MARY LINCOLN: A HOUSE DIVIDED, An American Experience documentary, airs on PBS television February 19, 20, and 21.
It is almost impossible these days to imagine a TV documentary about the Civil War era that does not feature narrator David McCullogh, the obligatory violin-solo theme music, historian talking-heads offering expert commentary, and cameras slowly closing in on archival photographs for loving close-ups. And David Grubins new six-hour special, Abraham and Mary Lincoln: A House Divided, does not stray far from the proven Ken Burns formula.
There is much that is new to recommend it, however. The writing, by Grubin and Geoffrey C. Ward, is succinct, compelling, and often moving. The historians, among them Mark E. Neely, Jr., Frank J. Williams, David E. Long, James M. McPherson, John Hope Franklin, and particularly the irresistible David Herbert Donald, are often riveting. And Grubin adds lovely new film to the mix of old still photosa rain-swept battlefield here, a clicking telegraph key thereproviding drama and action. Viewers do not simply hear, for example, that young Abraham helped build his mothers coffin; we see a primitive old hammer slamming a hand-wrought nail into a pine box.
The documentary takes an ambitious approach, weaving together the complex stories of the Lincolns public and private liveswith the dissolution of the Union adding new pressure to their own union. Although the documentary offers little that is new or surprising to the public side of the story (save for a rather unsympathetic view of Lincoln as Emancipator), the film treats Mary more tenderly than usual and makes the story of her difficult childhood, stormy courtship, and sad decline more comprehensible than ever. Particular credit must go to expert commentary by Jean H. Baker, Linda Levitt Turner, and Charles B. Strozier.
The documentary does an especially good job contrasting, in short segments, the squalor of Abrahams childhood with the luxury of Marys. Later it turns a well-known exchange of letters between a lonely Congressman Lincoln and his faraway wife into a wonderful, even sexy dialogue, simply by panning back and forth from one handwritten note to the other.
Altogether, Grubins is a sumptuous packagebeautifully filmed, wonderfully detailed, and historically sound. Unfortunately, it suffers from one glaring weakness. David Morse, the voice of Lincoln, reads private letters and public speeches alike in an unrelentingly soporific monotone. Holly Hunter, as Mary, sounds as if she is speaking with marbles in her mouth to moderate her Georgia accent, with a result only slightly more animated than Morses. What were these performers thinking?
HAROLD HOLZER is a historian and a member of the U.S. Lincoln Bicentennial Commission.
The New York Times called him the Evil Genius of the Republican Party. The Confederate army that invaded Pennsylvania in 1863 dispatched cavalry to burn down his iron foundry, just to spite him. The president of the United States suggested that he should be hanged. After he died, in 1868, his party decided to honor him by nominating him for reelection to Congress. He won in a landslide.
His name was Thaddeus Stevens and for a time he was the most powerful man in Congress, famous across America as The Old Commoner, loved by many, loathed by many more. But over the last century his once famous name faded into the mists of history, until Tommy Lee Jones brought his spirit back to life in Steven Spielbergs hit movie Lincoln. Jones plays Stevens as a snide, cynical, misanthropic old pol with a bad wig and a black mistress. In one scene, Stevens, speaking on the floor of the House of Representatives, lambastes a proslavery congressman, calling him proof that some men are inferior, endowed by their creator with dim wits, impermeable to reason, with cold, pallid slime in their veins.
All of that is pretty accurate, as movies go. Stevens really was a nasty man who used his slashing wit as a weapon. When an opponent interrupted one of his House speeches with a request to speak, Stevens replied, I yield to the gentleman for a few feeble remarks. During another House speech, Stevens ripped into a proslavery congressman: There are some reptiles so flat that the common foot of man cannot crush them. But the crusty Old Commoners anger and cynicism masked a bone-deep idealism that the movie only hints at. Stevens fought harder to win freedom and equality for black Americans than any politician in our history, including Abraham Lincoln. And his most hard-fought battles occurred after Lincolns death.
I do not believe, sir, in human perfection, Stevens said in a speech, nor in the moral purity of human nature.
He learned about human imperfections early: He was born in Vermont in 1792 with one leg crippled by a clubfoot. That deformity wasnt the only blight on his childhood. His father was a drunk who deserted the family, leaving them destitute. His mother supported her children working as a maid, and she managed to eke out enough money to send Thaddeus to Dartmouth. There, he began to exhibit a lifelong scorn for those lucky souls born healthy and wealthy.
After graduating in 1814, Stevens moved to Pennsylvania to teach school and study law. He passed the bar, opened a law office in Gettysburg and quickly became one of the states most successful attorneys, frequently appearing before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.
In 1821, he was hired by a Maryland slaveowner who wanted to regain possession of a runaway slave who was living with her two children in the free state of Pennsylvania. The slave, Charity Butler, claimed shed resided in Pennsylvania for more than six monthslong enough to be declared free under state law. But Stevens proved that Butler hadnt lived in the state for six consecutive months, and he won the case. Later, when he pondered how his courtroom cleverness caused three human beings to lose their freedom, he was appalled, and he became a dedicated abolitionist.
Running on the Anti-Masonic Party ticket, he won election to the state legislature in 1833, part of a populist movement against Freemasons, who were widely perceived as a secret elitist cabal. He sponsored a bill to curb secret societies, but his lasting influence came on a more important issuepublic education. In 1834, Stevens helped pass the states first law to fund free public schools. Many affluent Pennsylvanians were outraged: Why should I pay taxes to educate somebody elses children? In 1835, a bill to repeal the controversial education law was headed for victory when Stevens rose to address his colleagues. Speaking passionately of his childhood, he testified that education had lifted him from poverty, and he begged the legislators to give future generations a similar chance to rise.
Build not your monuments of brass or marble, he urged. Make them of everlasting mind!
As he limped back to his seat, his fellow legislators applauded. Then they voted to continue Pennsylvanias free schools. Decades later, Stevens recalled that moment as his greatest triumph.
In 1842, Stevens moved from Gettysburg to the larger town of Lancaster. At 50, he was a wealthy attorney, owner of an iron foundry and many other properties. Unmarried, he hired Lydia Smith, a 33-year-old mulatto widow, as his housekeeper. An attractive, intelligent woman, she lived with Stevens for the rest of his life, fueling rumors that she was his lover. Thaddeus Stevens has for years lived in open adultery with a mulatto woman, a Southern newspaper declared. This mulatto manages his visitors at will, speaks of Mr. Stevens and herself as we, and in all other things comports herself as if she enjoyed the rights of a lawful wife.
The rumors were probably true. Stevens certainly treated Smith more like an equal than an employee. He even hired a prominent artist to paint her portrait. She was at his bedside when he died and he left her $5,000 in his willenough for her to buy the house theyd shared in Lancaster. In 2003, historic preservationists working on that house discovered evidence that Stevens and Smith used it as a station on the Underground Railroad, concealing runaway slaves in a hidden cistern connected to the house by a secret tunnel.
In 1848, Stevens was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives and became a leader of congressional abolitionists, fighting against the Fugitive Slave Law and the spread of slavery to western territories. He delighted in verbal sparring with proslavery congressmen. When a Louisiana senator proclaimed that slaves were the gayest, happiest, the most contented, and the best-fed people in the world, Stevens rose on the House floor with a sarcastic proposal: If this be so, let us give all a chance to enjoy this blessing. Let the slaves who choose, go free; and the free who choose, become slaves.
During one particularly contentious House debate on slavery, a Mississippi congressman pulled out a bowie knife and lunged at Stevens. But the man was subdued before he could carve up the Old Commoner.
Speaker of the House Howell Cobb, a proslavery Georgian, watched Stevens and concluded that abolitionism had found its leader. Our enemy has a general now, Cobb said. He is in earnest. He means what he says. He is bold. He cannot be flattered or frightened.
When the Civil War erupted in 1861, Abraham Lincoln insisted that it was a war to restore the Union, not a war to end slavery. Thaddeus Stevens disagreed, urging Lincoln to turn the war into a radical revolution that would end slavery and crush the power of the Southern aristocracy: Free every slave, slay every traitor, burn every rebel mansion if these things be necessary to preserve this temple of freedom.
In November 1861, Stevens introduced a bill to outlaw slavery in America. It didnt pass. But he kept chipping away at the peculiar institution, pushing a bill to free slaves in the District of Columbia, a bill to free slaves owned by Confederate soldiers, a bill to enlist 150,000 black soldiers in the Union Army. The District of Columbia bill passed; the others failed. But Stevensalong with abolitionist senators Charles Sumner and Henry Wilsonkept pressuring Lincoln to issue an emancipation proclamation.
Stevens, Sumner and Wilson simply haunt me with their importunities for a Proclamation of Emancipation, Lincoln grumbled in 1862. Wherever I go and whatever way I turn, they are on my tail.
Lincoln hated slavery, too, but he was waiting for an opportune moment to issue his proclamation. That moment came after the Union victory at Antietam in September 1862. Thrilled, Stevens praised the president and promised his full support.
Stevens support was crucial because he was chairman of the House Ways and Means CommitteeCongress tax-writing bodyand Lincoln needed huge sums of money to finance the war. Stevens provided it, pushing legislation that raised or borrowed $4 billion to fund the Union war machine. When antiwar Democrats fought his tax and appropriations bills, Stevens rammed through rules that limited debatein one case, to half a minute. And the Army got its money.
By the end of 1864, the war was nearly won and the reelected president again turned his attention to slavery. His Emancipation Proclamation was crafted as a wartime measure and Lincoln worried that courts might nullify it during peacetime. He urged Congress to quickly pass the 13th Amendment, which would outlaw slavery forever. The Senate had already passed the amendment, but in the House, Democrats prevented the measure from garnering the necessary two-thirds majority. As the movie Lincoln depicts, the presidentassisted by Stevens, Secretary of State William Seward and some shady political operativesmanaged to convince, cajole, intimidate or buy off enough Democrats to enact the amendment.
Stevens summed up that story in a sardonic remark that is repeated by Tommy Lee Jones in the movie: The greatest measure of the 19th century was passed by corruption, aided and abetted by the purest man in America.
Ending slavery wasnt enough for Thaddeus Stevens. He proposed a plan to revolutionize Southern society: The Union Army would confiscate the plantations of the richest Southern aristocrats and distribute 40 acres of land to each adult male former slave.
The whole fabric of Southern society must be changed, he said. Without this, the government can never beas it has never beena true Republic.
President Andrew Johnson scoffed at Stevens radical proposal. Johnson, who took office after Lincolns assassination, was a Tennessee slaveowner who remained loyal to the Union when his state seceded. He wanted to reunite the country as quickly as possible. Under his generous rules, Southern states merely had to agree to end slavery and pledge loyalty, and they could send representatives to Congress.
Johnsons plan outraged Stevens. Every rebel state will send rebels to Congress, he predicted. He was right. In December 1865, only eight months after Appomattox, the Southern representatives arrived. Chosen in whites-only elections, they included the Confederate vice president, six members of the Confederate Cabinet, four Confederate generals and 58 former Confederate congressmen. Appalled, Congress refused to seat the Southern delegations.
In the South, the all-white Johnson governments passed laws denying black people the right to vote or buy property or own firearms. Some states enacted black codes that decreed that blacks convicted of petty crimes could be leased to white employers for monthsor yearsof unpaid labor.
Ailing and frail, Stevens, 74, rallied the Radical Republicans to defy Johnson and enact laws to protect the newly freed slaves. Congress passed a bill granting citizenship rights to black people. Johnson vetoed it. Congress passed a bill funding a Freedmens Bureau to assist former slaves. Johnson vetoed it. Congress passed a bill giving voting rights to black men in the District of Columbia. Johnson vetoed it.
Stevens responded by proposing a 14th Amendment to the Constitution that would grant black men all the rights of citizenship, including the right to vote and hold public office, while revoking those rights from former Confederate leaders and soldiers. Stevens proposed changes were too radical even for the Radical Republicans. They drew up a new version of the amendment, which did not mention black voting rights and punished only a handful of Confederate leaders.
Stevens denounced the watered-down 14th Amendment as a shilly-shally, bungling thing but voted for it anyway. Why? Because I live among men and not among angels, he explainedan eloquent defense of compromise by a man frequently scorned as uncompromising. The amendment passed Congress in June 1866. President Johnson promptly urged Southern states to reject it.
That summer, Johnson broke with the Republicans and toured the country campaigning against them. During a speech in Cleveland, a heckler yelled, Hang Jeff Davis! and somebody else responded, Hang Thad Stevens and Wendell Phillips! (Phillips was a prominent abolitionist.) Johnson heard that and said, Why not hang Thad Stevens and Wendell Phillips? Then he denounced Stevens and Phillips as traitors.
A few days later, in St. Louis, another heckler yelled, Hang Jeff Davis! and the president again responded, Why dont you hang Thad Stevens and Wendell Phillips?
Johnsons rhetoric backfired: Republicans triumphed in the election of 1866, winning veto-proof majorities in the House and Senate. They quickly passed the Reconstruction Acts, which divided the South into five military districts, each controlled by a Union general. In order to return to the Union, the former Confederate states would be required to ratify the 14th Amendment and grant the vote to black men.
Johnson vetoed the Reconstruction Acts but Congress overrode his veto. He fought back by firing hundreds of Republican officials in the South, replacing them with Democrats less interested in protecting the rights of black people. The Republicans responded by passing the Tenure of Office Act, which restricted the presidents power to fire federal officials. Johnson vetoed that bill, too, and Congress once again overrode his veto.
Stevens and his allies were determined to prevent Johnson from firing Edwin Stanton, the secretary of war. Stanton controlled the military, which controlled the South, and he was a Radical Republican. Johnson detested Stanton and demanded his resignation. Stanton refused. Johnson, complying with the Tenure of Office Act, asked the Senate to fire Stanton. The Senate refused. Johnson fired him anyway.
Stanton refused to leave and barricaded himself in his office for several months. Meanwhile, Stevens demanded that the House impeach Johnson for violating the Tenure of Office Act. On February 24, 1868, the House voted to impeach, and dispatched a sick and haggard Stevens to inform the Senate.
Stevens was too weak to walk across the Capitol to the Senate chamber. Aides carried him in an armchair to the door of the Senate and then he shuffled in, leaning on his cane, trailed by other congressmen.
We appear before you, Stevens announced in a surprisingly vigorous voice, and in the name of the House of Representatives and all the people of the United States, do impeach Andrew Johnson
Thaddeus Stevens was dying. Some unidentified disease ate away at his body. Gaunt as a skeleton, pale as a shroud, he sat in the Senate with a blanket draped across his lap, dulling his pain with opium and brandy. He was the leader of the House lawyers prosecuting Johnson in the Senate, but he rarely uttered a word. Others were not so quiet. The prosecutors denounced Johnson in gaseous orations full of ornate rhetoric.
The presidents lawyers responded with long legal arguments, asserting that the Tenure of Office Act was unconstitutional, and that Johnsons actions did not rise to the level of high crimes and misdemeanors. In a classic display of legal hairsplitting, they argued that Johnson could not be convicted of removing Stanton from office because Stanton was still barricaded in his office, refusing to leave.
Week after week, the two sides droned on. Finally, on April 27, Stevens rose to deliver his final summation. Barely able to stand, his voice a weak whisper, he denounced the president as a wretched man, a pettifogging political trickster and this offspring of assassination. Johnsons crime was serious, he insisted, because it was done to prevent Stanton from protecting the rights of freed slaves. He demanded that Johnson be tortured on the gibbet of everlasting obloquy.
He couldnt finish. He sank into his seat, handing his speech to another congressman to read.
On May 16, 1868, the Senate finally voted. The galleries were packed with spectators who knew the vote would be extremely close. The chief justice of the Supreme Court called the roll.
Mr. Senator Anthony, how say you?
Guilty.
Mr. Senator Bayard, how say you?
Not guilty.
In the end, it all came down to one manEdmund Ross, a Republican from Kansas.
Mr. Senator Ross, how say you?
Not guilty.
Defeated, Stevens was carried from the chamber in his chair. Seething with rage, he glared at the crowd outside with fiery eyes. Somebody asked him what had happened.
The country, he growled, is going to the Devil!
It was over. Hed lost. But he refused to quit. Obsessed with ousting Johnson, he suggested new impeachment charges and urged the House to investigate whether Johnson supporters had bribed senators to vote not guilty.
Finally, he gave up on impeachment. He advocated a 15th constitutional amendment, which would do what the 14th didnt: Grant voting rights to black men. But he was too sick to fight for it, too sick even to leave his bedroom, and he knew he wouldnt live long enough to see it pass.
My life has been a failure, he told a visitor to his deathbed. I see little hope for the Republic.
Shortly before he died on August 11, he learned that the grave hed purchased was located in a whites-only cemetery. Incensed, he bought another plot, this one in an obscure graveyard in Lancaster with no racial restrictions. Then he wrote an inscription designed to carve his creed into his headstone:
I repose in this quiet and secluded spot,
Not from any natural preference for solitude
But, finding other Cemeteries limited as to Race
by Charter Rules,
I have chosen this that I might illustrate in my death
The Principles which I advocated through a long life:
EQUALITY OF MAN BEFORE HIS CREATOR.
Peter Carlsons forthcoming book is Junius and Alberts Adventures in the Confederacy: A Civil War Odyssey.
coke said: Ohhh, the IRA was formed in the name of their Religion. I got it now. Silly me always thought they wanted independence from British rule..well hey, not everyone can be Americans B) Click to expand...
I was too vague and not very clear. I was assuming Michael was speaking of the IRA. Not that the IRA did anything in England in the name of religion, but I was thinking The Troubles but failed to qualify my statement.
Dear Editor: Why is the work on Highway 92 being done in the daytime rather than at night? T
D avid Cameron has moved out and Theresa May is about to move into the most famous address in the country, but what do we really know about it?
Although the house has been the official residence of the prime minister for nearly three centuries, no PM has lived there since 1997 when Tony Blair decided No 11 had more space for his growing family.
The houses are linked via a corridor and connecting doors, so Chancellor George Osborne could live at No 10 and hold Treasury meetings at No 11 and vice versa for Mr Cameron.
Ten things to know about Downing Street 1 /13 Ten things to know about Downing Street No 10 has employed a cat as Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office since 1924, and in 1929 the office manager was authorised by the Treasury "to spend 1d a day from petty cash towards the maintenance of an efficient cat". The twelfth incumbent is Larry, a rescue animal from Battersea Dogs and Cats Home who has been there since 2011. He shares the run of the street with George Osborne's cat Freya. Getty Although No 10 is the PM's official residence, Theresa May will live at 11 Downing Street, where Mr Cameron and his family spent the last six years. The break with tradition began in 1997 when Tony Blair swapped Gordon Brown's larger Chancellor's flat with the one at No 10 to provide room for his then three children. George Osborne currently lives at No 10 and both houses are linked by a corridor. Reuters A man only known as Mr Chicken was the last private resident of No 10. He moved out in 1732 when George II gave the house to Sir Robert Walpole, Britain's first prime minister. Mr Chicken moved a few doors down the road, but nothing else is known about him. No 10 has three front doors, one is kept in the Imperial War Museum while the other two are rotated every six months while the one in use is repainted and repaired. All the doors share a wonky 0, which is in fact the letter O, set at 37 degrees to resemble a zero. It's believed the Ministry of Works in charge of the house had plenty of spare Os, but no 0s! Reuters On October 14, 1940, at the height of the Blitz, a German bomb fell on nearby Treasury Green, killing three civil servants on Home Guard duty and damaging the state rooms and kitchen at No 10 when Sir Winston Churchill was having dinner. Getty A room at No 10 changes names depending on what colour the prime minister decides to paint it. It was the Blue Room when Margaret Thatcher became PM in 1979 and she changed it to the Green Room. Today, it is the Terracotta Room and houses priceless works of art borrowed from the Government Art Collection. Getty The famous front door has not always been black - Herbert Asquith had it repainted in dark green when he was Liberal prime minister between 1908 and 1916. His wife Margot was embarrassed and appalled at the state of the house when they moved in and decided to start on refurbishment by repainting the door in a then popular colour. Getty In 1954, a survey found No 10 was suffering from subsidence, sloping walls and twisted door frames and in 1959 drastic action was needed before the building fell or burnt down. During work over the next three years, the rotten wooden foundation beams had to be replaced with vast concrete underpinning. The total cost of the work was 3 million, or 57 million in today's money. Getty During the renovations, the building's famous black exterior was discovered to be nothing of the sort and was merely a result of years of pollution from coal-powered trains and open fires. However, it was decided that the old colour was so well-known that the yellow bricks were painted over to make the house black again. Getty The current houses in Downing Street were designed by Sir Christopher Wren and built by diplomat George Downing between 1682 and 1684. The houses were cheaply built and their foundations were not solid enough for the boggy ground of Whitehall. Getty
In fact, No 10 consists of four houses: the one we know from our TV screens, a very large house behind it which was joined up with No 10 in the early 18th century, No 11 to its left and parts of No 12 to the left of No 11, making up a property with more than 100 rooms.
Although No 10 is the new prime minister's official residence, Mrs May won't be given the door keys because there is always someone to let in the PM. Besides, there isn't a door handle on the outside.
Kitchen delights: First Lady Michelle Obama is entertained by Samantha Cameron at No 11 Downing Street / Getty
It's thought that Theresa May, a keen cook, will move into the larger house at No 11 which was fitted with a stunning 25,000 Roundhouse kitchen and bespoke accessories when the Camerons moved in six years ago.
Take a tour of our gallery to discover more secrets behind the famous front door...
T he developer behind the rebirth of Kings Cross has clinched a deal to regenerate Tottenham Hale, creating hundreds of new homes, jobs, shops and leisure facilities.
Haringey councils cabinet committee was last night set to agree a partnership with Argent to create what the council hopes will be Londons next great affordable neighbourhood of choice.
As part of the deal the council will sell Argent a series of publicly owned sites, including Tottenham Hale bus station.
In the initial phase of the regeneration between 600 and 800 new homes will be created on those sites, and on the Ferry Island Retail Park which is already owned by Argent.
Enfield to Clapham: new homes along the Crossrail 2 route 1 /10 Enfield to Clapham: new homes along the Crossrail 2 route The Pavilions, Hale Village, Tottenham Hale Up to 1,200 homes are being built in Tottenham Hale, including The Pavilions, where two-bedroom flats cost from 504,995. Developer Bellway says the homes are popular with key workers and young career professionals priced out of Zones 1 and 2, such as junior doctors and nurses. Call 0845 2579246. Meridian Water, Enfield A district with 10,000 homes is being built around a new station that will open in 2018 and provide 25-minute commutes to Liverpool Street plus an 18-minute rail link to Stratford. Eventually, the station will be plugged into Crossrail 2. Chelsea Waterfront, Lots Road A bustling new terminus may well change the character of Kings Road, but it is likely to push up the value of Chelsea properties. A notable beneficiary will be Chelsea Waterfront, a new neighbourhood being built around listed Lots Road power station. Scroll right... Chelsea Waterfront, Lots Road Beset by busy roads, this part of Chelsea feels detached from the quaint garden square heartland either side of Kings Road and has always been a poor relation, but a Crossrail station will help to bring it in from the cold. St Johns Way, Clapham St Johns Way is the first of the new developments near Clapham Junction station, with a mix of 540 private and shared-ownership flats and houses, from 730,000. Call 020 7021 4842. Clapham Junction This is already Europes busiest interchange, with up to 2,000 trains per day stopping or passing through. As well as becoming a Crossrail station, a Northern line Tube extension from Battersea Power Station is planned. Clapham Junction station is getting more than a facelift. Clapham Junction Proposals include a new pedestrian plaza and shopping hub in Grant Road, which will boost a gritty patch that has always been considered the wrong side of the tracks. A new library, leisure centre and park are coming and the goal is to stitch together neighbourhoods between Clapham Junction and the river and Wandsworth town centre. On a fast track Transport-led regeneration is the single most important factor boosting the value of homes, say property experts, and Crossrail 2 may be the upgrade with the biggest impact in London to date.
Work on the first 298 properties plus a new health centre is due to begin next year and the council hopes the first residents could move in as soon as 2018.
A spokesman for Argent said design work for the project would begin immediately, and Haringey has pledged to use the money it raises from the sale of its land to fund affordable homes for those priced off Londons property ladder.
In three to five years you will not recognise this area, said Sean Downey, a director of Cousins estate agents.
Tottenham Hale has been pencilled in as a new stop on the proposed 16 billion Crossrail 2 route from Wimbledon to New Southgate.
Downey, who has worked in the area for 30 years, said buyers have been gravitating towards Tottenham Hale for the last two or three years, priced out of areas like Hackney, Islington, and Stoke Newington, and paying around 500,000 for a three-bedroom Twenties or Thirties house, or 325,000-350,000 for a modern two-bedroom flat.
The problem with these areas always is that you get people moving in with disposable income to spend but they have nowhere to spend it, said Downey. That is all going to change. Our commercial department is already getting enquiries from people who made a lot of money in Shoreditch asking if there are any pubs going. They know it is the next big area.
In later stages of the project the 22-acre Tottenham Hale Retail Park, owned by Argents business partner Hermes, is expected to be demolished and replaced with a town centre-style shopping centre.
Meanwhile Transport for London is also investing in Tottenham Hale and has already removed the areas hated gyratory system. Its next task is to rebuild and enlarge Tottenham Hale underground station, which is on the Victoria line, in Zone 3, and build a new concourse and shops around it.
Network Rail is considering an upgrade of the West Anglia main line which would allow more frequent trains to stop at Tottenham Hale, improving commuter links to Liverpool Street. The journey already takes just 14 minutes.
In the longer term Tottenham Hale has been pencilled in as a new stop on the proposed 16 billion Crossrail 2 route from Wimbledon to New Southgate.
Boris Johnson, former mayor of London, earmarked Tottenham as an area ripe for house building, describing it as brimming with opportunity.
Questex, a leading global business information and events company, today announced it has acquired The AHC Company Limited, organizer of The Annual Hotel Conference, the United Kingdom's leading industry event in the individual, boutique, branded and consortium hotel segments.
The agreement merges the collective resources of Questex, organizers of the International Hotel Investment Forum ( IHIF ) Berlin, the pre-eminent global conference for the hotel investment community, and The AHC, the UK's leading hospitality event for independent hoteliers. Founders Chris Eddlestone and Jonathan Langston and their team will continue to lead content development and management of the event.
"We are tremendously pleased to team up with Chris and Jonathan and combine our resources to enhance the value provided to the UK hotel industry by this important event," said Kerry Gumas, Questex president and chief executive officer.
"From its beginnings as a small, invitation-only gathering targeting the regional individual and small-chain hotel owner and operator, The AHC has grown over its 13-year lifetime into one of the UK's largest hotel industry events outside London," said Eddlestone. "With Questex's significant scale and resources, we expect the event will grow at a faster pace, with new marketing opportunities for our supporters and partners."
This year's The AHC, which is expected to draw over 700 delegates, will be held Oct. 12- 13 at the Hilton Manchester Deansgate hotel. The event, themed Performing in Transient Times, will bring individual, boutique and consortium hotel owners, operators and managers together with developers, investors, bankers, advisors, government agencies, designers, architects, consultants, tourism leaders, regional tourist board representatives and other stakeholders for relevant and inspirational educational content and peer-to-peer networking.
"Questex has an impressive track record of investing in their core hospitality media and events and successfully launching new products in this market," added Langston. "Our customers will truly benefit by Questex's ability to generate additional business opportunities, relevant content, world-class speakers and generous networking exchanges. We look forward to combining our resources and expertise and working together to drive the growth of the business."
Eddlestone and Langston will work closely with the Questex Hospitality Group team, led by its executive vice president, Alexi Khajavi, to pursue The AHC's core business objectives of providing dynamic education, networking and inspiration for its delegates.
The AHC was cofounded by 30-year industry veteran Eddlestone, global head of hospitality and leisure services at Squire Patton Boggs, an international law firm; and Langston, a renowned industry consultant and commentator with a 30-year track record who most recently served as the UK chief operating officer for CBRE Hotels Europe, Africa and the Middle East.
For more information, or to register for The AHC, visit www.theahc.co.uk or the event's Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook pages.
About Questex
Questex Hospitality Group, a division of Questex LLC, represents a senior audience of $650 billion in hotel assets, reaching one in two hotel owners and operators across the globe. With a portfolio of both media and live events, including Hospitality Insights , The Annual Hotel Conference (AHC) , The International Hospitality Investment Forum (IHIF) , and The Resort & Residential Hospitality Forum (R&R) , Questex Hospitality Group brings together leaders in hospitality investment, development and operations to make the deals that shape recovery and growth in the sector.
Advisory Board members are consulted regularly to shape the content and direction of IHIF to keep it being the most productive and engaging event for hospitality investment. The IHIF 2022 Advisory Board features senior leaders from global hotel brands including Accor, IHG, Marriott, Radisson and Melia, alongside representatives from hospitality real estate and investment such as PPHE Hotel Group, Deutsche Hospitality, Invesco, Bain Capital Credit and BNP Paribas Real Estate.
To find out more about the IHIF 2022 Advisory Board, visit https://www.ihif.com/ihifcom/advisory-board
During the General Meeting that was held today, shareholders representing 73.13% of the total were present or represented by proxy. The shareholders of the Group approved the resolution finalizing the acquisition of FRHI Holdings Limited (FRHI) and the corresponding share capital increase reserved for the Qatar Investment Authority (QIA) and Kingdom Holding Company (KHC), as well as their representation on the Board of Directors.
The shareholders also approved the appointment of six new directors: Aziz Aluthman Fakhroo and Ali Bouzarif, proposed by Qatar Investment Authority, Sarmad Zok,proposed by Kingdom Holding Company, and Jiang Qiong Er, Isabelle Simon andNatacha Valla as independent directors.
The Board of Directors now has 16 members, including one employee representative director. Seven directors are women and 9 are independent. A new employee representative director will be appointed by the Group's European Work Council within the next few weeks, in accordance with the company's bylaws.
Sebastien Bazin, Chairman and CEO of AccorHotels, commented: "The 6 new Board members who have been appointed by our shareholders today are bringing tremendous diversity and experience to AccorHotels' Board. I am convinced that their complementary backgrounds and views will be of great support to continue developing our growth and innovation strategy in the future. "
The changes in the Group's shareholder structure and in the composition of its Board of Directors are governed by individual shareholder agreements between Accor and each of QIA and KHC setting out the principles and objectives of their individual shareholdings.
During the closing of this transaction, Sebastien Bazin, Chairman and CEO of AccorHotels, said: "I am pleased to welcome QIA and KHC as major shareholders of the Group and to have their representatives on the Board of Directors as from now. The acquisition of FRHI that we have just finalized proves the agility of the Group in a hospitality sector undergoing great change and reinforces our service offering for our clients and partners. It also enables AccorHotels to consolidate its shareholder base, with two renowned investors that are great specialists of the global hotel sector becoming new shareholders. With the support of QIA and KHC as well as the active involvement of their representatives in the work of the Board of Directors, we are ideally placed to keep on implementing our ambitious and value-creating strategy".
QIA announced: "QIA puts its trust in AccorHotels and is pleased to become a significant shareholder of this company. We are convinced of the relevance of this transaction for QIA and fully support the strategy defined by the Board of Directors of AccorHotels and implemented by the Group's management team. The acquisition of FRHI positions AccorHotels as a key player in the luxury hospitality industry and strengthens its positioning as the world's leading hotel operator."
Sarmad Zok, Chairman and CEO of Kingdom Hotel Investments and Member of Kingdom Holding Company's Board of Directors, said: "The combination of FRHI with AccorHotels is a milestone transaction in the hospitality sector at a time when the industry is undergoing major structural changes characterized by consolidation, consumer empowerment, disruptive technology, and distribution channels. We are confident in the capacity of the Group and its executives to implement growth and value-creation opportunities within this context. As a significant shareholder in AccorHotels with a seat on the Board of Directors, Kingdom fully supports the current management strategy and looks forward to contributing to Accor's future success."
About Accor, a world-leading hospitality group
Accor is a world leading hospitality group consisting of 5,300 properties and 10,000 food and beverage venues throughout 110 countries. The group has one of the industry's most diverse and fully-integrated hospitality ecosystems encompassing more than 40 luxury, premium, midscale and economy hotel brands, entertainment and nightlife venues, restaurants and bars, branded private residences, shared accommodation properties, concierge services, co-working spaces and more. Accor's unmatched position in lifestyle hospitality one of the fastest growing categories in the industry is led by Ennismore, a joint venture, which Accor holds a majority shareholding. Ennismore is a creative hospitality company with a global collective of entrepreneurial and founder-built brands with purpose at their heart. Accor boasts an unrivalled portfolio of distinctive brands and more than 230,000 team members worldwide. Members benefit from the company's comprehensive loyalty program ALL Accor Live Limitless a daily lifestyle companion that provides access to a wide variety of rewards, services and experiences. Through its global sustainability commitments (such as achieving Net Zero Carbon emissions by 2050, global elimination of single use plastics in its hotels' guest experience, etc.), Accor Solidarity, RiiSE and ALL Heartist Fund initiatives, the Group is focused on driving positive action through business ethics, responsible tourism, environmental sustainability, community engagement, diversity and inclusivity. Founded in 1967, Accor SA is headquartered in France and publicly listed on the Euronext Paris Stock Exchange (ISIN code: FR0000120404) and on the OTC Market (Ticket: ACCYY) in the United States. For more information visit group.accor.com or follow Accor on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram.
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Questex, a leading global business information and events company, today announced it has acquired The AHC Company Limited, organizer of The Annual Hotel Conference, the United Kingdoms leading industry event in the individual, boutique, branded and consortium hotel segments.
The agreement merges the collective resources of Questex, organizers of the International Hotel Investment Forum (IHIF) Berlin, the pre-eminent global conference for the hotel investment community, and The AHC, the UKs leading hospitality event for independent hoteliers. Founders Chris Eddlestone and Jonathan Langston and their team will continue to lead content development and management of the event.
We are tremendously pleased to team up with Chris and Jonathan and combine our resources to enhance the value provided to the UK hotel industry by this important event, said Kerry Gumas, Questex president and chief executive officer.
From its beginnings as a small, invitation-only gathering targeting the regional individual and small-chain hotel owner and operator, The AHC has grown over its 13-year lifetime into one of the UKs largest hotel industry events outside London, said Eddlestone. With Questexs significant scale and resources, we expect the event will grow at a faster pace, with new marketing opportunities for our supporters and partners.
This years The AHC, which is expected to draw over 700 delegates, will be held Oct. 12- 13 at the Hilton Manchester Deansgate hotel. The event, themed Performing in Transient Times, will bring individual, boutique and consortium hotel owners, operators and managers together with developers, investors, bankers, advisors, government agencies, designers, architects, consultants, tourism leaders, regional tourist board representatives and other stakeholders for relevant and inspirational educational content and peer-to-peer networking.
Questex has an impressive track record of investing in their core hospitality media and events and successfully launching new products in this market, added Langston. Our customers will truly benefit by Questexs ability to generate additional business opportunities, relevant content, world-class speakers and generous networking exchanges. We look forward to combining our resources and expertise and working together to drive the growth of the business.
Eddlestone and Langston will work closely with the Questex Hospitality Group team, led by its executive vice president, Alexi Khajavi, to pursue The AHCs core business objectives of providing dynamic education, networking and inspiration for its delegates.
The AHC was cofounded by 30-year industry veteran Eddlestone, global head of hospitality and leisure services at Squire Patton Boggs, an international law firm; and Langston, a renowned industry consultant and commentator with a 30-year track record who most recently served as the UK chief operating officer for CBRE Hotels Europe, Africa and the Middle East.
For more information, or to register for The AHC, visit www.theahc.co.uk or the events Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook pages.
About Questex
Questex is a leading global business information and events company serving corporate and government clients and industries that are driving economic growth and business innovation around the world.
The company drives business investment, innovation and demand-creation in the markets it serves by bringing together investors, buyers, sellers and professionals through its over 100 trade shows, conferences and other business events, informing them through more than 100 business media and information products and supporting clients with a comprehensive platform of marketing solutions. Questexs industry-focused business units include Life Sciences & Healthcare, Hospitality & Travel, Beauty & Wellness, Technology & Telecom groups.
Questex Hospitality Group is the organizer of the International Hotel Investment Forum (IHIF) Berlin, the pre-eminent global conference for the hotel investment community, along with related hotel investment events serving the Americas, EMEA and Asia Pacific regions; the HOTEC, Hotel Management and Hotel Technology series of events in the United States, Europe, the Middle East and Asia and; publisher of Hotel Management and digital newsletters, IHIF Hotel Investment News, Hotel Technology News, Hotel Operations News and Hotel Design News.
Questex is headquartered in Newton, Massachusetts. The company employs over 350 dedicated professional staff members, who are located in offices throughout the United States, Europe and the Asia-Pacific region.
CONTACT:
Evy Apostolatos
RDR PR LLC
Evy@rdrpr.com
973-452-7208
Floyd Mayweather was one of many athletes and celebrities interviewed as part of Hollywood Unlockeds exclusive 5-part series and, as youd expect, the retired boxer had plenty to talk about.
Among the topics of conversation was Floyds style, specifically his sneakers. He was asked why he refuses to wear Air Jordans to which he responded that everybody in the club is rocking Js, so why would he want to be like everyone else?
In sum: I got a different type of money so I got to look different.
Instead, Money Mayweather opts for Balmain, Louboutin, Givenchy etc. You can check out Floyds full style discussion, as well as his thoughts on Ibiza and St. Tropez below:
[FWD to 28:00 mark]
Item #1
Abdullah Muflahi was a witness to the killing of Alton Sterling by Baton Rouge police last week, and was able to capture footage of the police violence on his phone. This footage was particularly important to the case, as it showed that Sterling was not holding a weapon at the time he was killed. In a new conversation with the Daily Beast, Muflahi has now launched a lawsuit against the city of Baton Rouge and its police department, suggesting that the officers over-stepped their boundaries when it came to confiscating his surveillance video.
The lawsuit, filed Monday, says that Officer Blane Salamoni, who fired the fatal shots, ordered fellow officers to obtain the entire store security system just after Sterling had been killed. While Muflahi claims he requested to be in the store when the footage was taken, and also asked for a warrant, the officers locked him in their vehicle and proceeded to confiscate the footage from the stores security cameras, as well as taking the Muflahis phone.
The lawsuit states Muflahi was locked in the car for the next four hours, only being let out to use the bathroom, though he was actually forced to relieve himself alongside the building instead. His lawyer also points out inconsistencies with the times listed on the warrant.
Muflahi is suing Officers Blane Salamoni, Timothy Ballard, Lt. Robert Cook, the City of Baton Rouge and Police Chief Carl Dabadi for false arrest, false imprisonment, the illegal taking and seizing of his security system, illegally commandeering his business.
Black Lives Matter activists have continued to protest in Baton Rouge over the days following the killing of Alton Sterling.
Alton Sterling
Spears teased fans with a snippet view of the new single.
If you are a child of the 90s, one of your guilty pleasures is bound to be a bit of Britney.
Britney knows how to tantalize. She set tongues wagging by teasing her new song Private Show in an Instagram post promoting her new fragrance of the same name.
The teaser gave fans a mere 16 seconds of the steamy action to come.
Enough time to hear her signature wailing refrain and to check out her bangin booty.
Spears has been dropping hints about a hotly anticipated album all year, calling it "the best thing" she's done in a long time.
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Check out the bubble gum princess in this new clip harking back to the good old days, strutting her stuff like she was born to do:
Being extremely coy, she followed the Instagram video with a note "stay tuned", just enough to keep her fans guessing.
Within hours fans of Spears tweeted their excitement:
Britney is coming to slay! Tell everybody. #HomeAlone (@DannyWxo) July 11, 2016
Now Trending:
WE ARE READY FOR BRITNEY
Private Show pic.twitter.com/6VZztM2AbR BritneySpearsRemixes (@BSpearsRemixed) July 12, 2016
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There is still no update when the album will be released, but judging by the reactions of her fans, Britney's still got it.
Looks like we'll have to wait a while before we can indulge in our inner Britney
Calvin Harris felt betrayed by Swift's confirmation that she had in fact penned his latest hit This is What You Came Over
Here are some of his choicest tweets:
And she sings on a little bit of it too ?
Amazing lyric writer and she smashed it as usual https://t.co/vW3yGOIJit Calvin Harris (@CalvinHarris) July 13, 2016
I wrote the music, produced the song, arranged it and cut the vocals though. And initially she wanted it kept secret, hence the pseudonym Calvin Harris (@CalvinHarris) July 13, 2016
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Hurtful to me at this point that her and her team would go so far out of their way to try and make ME look bad at this stage though ? Calvin Harris (@CalvinHarris) July 13, 2016
I figure if you're happy in your new relationship you should focus on that instead of trying to tear your ex bf down for something to do Calvin Harris (@CalvinHarris) July 13, 2016
I know you're off tour and you need someone new to try and bury like Katy ETC but I'm not that guy, sorry. I won't allow it Calvin Harris (@CalvinHarris) July 13, 2016
Please focus on the positive aspects of YOUR life because you've earned a great one Calvin Harris (@CalvinHarris) July 13, 2016
Here's the place to plan your Longitude listening with The National, Major Lazer, Roisin Murphy and all the rest due Saturday and Sunday...
Longitude has been in full swing for 24 hours already and the action has been intense.
While we knew that Kendrick Lamar, Major Lazer and The National would be closing out the action on the main stage on each night, the rest had remained something of a mystery. But if you want to plan the balance of the weekend to maximum effect, look no further! We've got all of the stage times here...
Unless youve developed Padre Pio-like powers of bilocation there are some tough choices still to be made, most notably Roisin Murphy or The National on Sunday night?
However you err, the rest of the weekend is going to be a cracker!
Check out all the details below...
As Netflixs historical epic Marco Polo returns with a second season, Ed Power talks to star Lorenzo Richelmy about shrugging off bad reviews and why this tale of east meets west resonates with the present day.
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You can watch John T. Davis' Shellshock Rock for free now!
Theres a treasure trove of goodies to be found on [link]player.bfi.org.uk/collections/other-grooves[/link] - an eccentric excursion to the furthest fringes of youth culture and alternative lifestyles, as captured in archive film and TV.
The most essential from an Irish perspective is probably Shellshock Rock, John T. Davis seminal 1979 punk doc which features well-known acts like The Undertones and Stiff Little Fingers alongside the less well-remembered Parasites, Victim and Rhesus Negative.
As Rudi mainman Brian Young points out, The question stopped being Catholic or Protestant? and became The Clash or the Sex Pistols?
Aging spiky-hairs will also enjoy Punk Can Take It, an early 1979 run out for Julian Temple whose just shot The Original Of The Species with some young whippersnapper by the name of Keith Richards for BBC4.
Some of the footage is behind a paywall but, hey, lets not be tight here!
Sung by new bassist Paz Lenchantin
Pixies will salute former bassist Kim Deal on their next album.
New bassist Paz Lenchantin asked frontman Black Francis to write a "thank-you letter" song to Deal, to which Francis agreed. The Lenchantin-sung track will be featured on Head Carrier, the followup to 2014's compilation of EPs Indie Cindy.
Black Francis describes the new album as having an "early Pixies slosh", being more Doolittle than Indie Cindy.
Though drummer David Lovering has acknowledged that Kim Deal is irreplaceable, he has also ecstatically praised Lenchantin.
Revisit the Deal-sung favorite 'Gigantic' below.
What happens when an outsourcing company outsources a key workplace function and it backfires? The dispute ends up in federal court.
PSC Industrial Outsourcing, an industrial cleaning service based in Houston, hired ADP to do its payroll processing, and now the cleaning company says it's facing more than $1 million in damages for payroll errors, according to a lawsuit filed last week in U.S. District Court in Houston. ADP, which stands for Automatic Data Processing, pays 24 million workers (or one in six) in the United States and 12 million elsewhere, according to its website. It is one of the nation's largest human resource outsourcing companies.
PSC, which has about 2,300 employees, was sued last year by workers in California for violating labor laws there that require employers to provide detailed payroll information, including any overtime pay earned and the number of consecutive work days in which employees toiled more than eight hours a day.
The cleaning company was not accused of shortchanging employee pay; the dispute centers on providing proper payroll disclosures.
Who's to blame?
While it defends the lawsuit in California, the cleaning company says ADP is to blame for any errors.
"This is why we hire ADP to handle the paperwork," said Houston lawyer Todd Mensing, who is representing PSC.
ADP did not return a call seeking comment.
In its promotional materials, ADP advertises its expertise in employment-related taxes and compliance, according to the lawsuit. That promise of having an expert to understand government regulations and other rules, along with saving money, is what drives many companies to outsource both big and small functions, from staffing to 401(k) management to cleaning.
Bearing responsibility
But as attractive as shifting the duties to another company may sound, Houston employment lawyer Gregg Rosenberg said he reminds his corporate clients that they're still ultimately responsible. The employer buying the services can't transfer liability to the outsourced company, said Rosenberg, who is not involved in the ADP case.
In the lawsuit, PSC also accuses ADP of failing to fix the disclosure problems when they were brought to the payroll company's attention. Consequently, according to the lawsuit, damages against PSC continued to mount.
The case was initially filed in state district court in Harris County in June but was moved last week to federal court because it involves multiple states and overlapping jurisdictions.
BROWNSVILLE Traffic was re-routed to avoid downtown Brownsville Monday and the streets were restricted to 1950s and 1960s-vintage cars, but otherwise there was little evidence that some 80 people were in town shooting a movie.
Hollywood crews on Monday began filming the Embassy Pictures movie The Body, based on a novel by Stephen King.
Peter Benoit, publicity coordinator, said the filmmakers plan to be in the area through about Aug. 10.
Despite some disrupted traffic, some cover-up business signs and some firms possibly shut down for short periods, the project means an economic boost for Brownsville, Benoit said.
A project like this pumps probably $2 million to $3 million into the local economy, he said, explaining that the filmmakers will purchase lumber, hardware and other items locally and will lease vehicles and hire some local extras.
In addition, the film crews receive per-diem expense money, which is spent locally.
Most of the crew is staying at the Eugene Hilton Hotel and traveling to the site.
Monday was the first of three days planned for work on a scene in a treehouse, Benoit said.
The Body is being directed by Rob Reiner, former co-star of televisions All in the Family, who has directed two other films in recent years. The main characters are four teen-age boys who are searching for another missing boy.
Its not a typical Stephen King story, in the genre of some of his previous horror thrillers, Benoit said.
Its not a gory story. Its really more a character study, a coming-of-age kind of story that is quite autobiographical, he explained. Although set in Maine, its kind of a slice of Americana, he said.
The story is told through the eyes of an adult writer who is looking back on his experiences at age 12 with his three crazy friends.
Its not a kids movie. It can have appeal to any adult who ever was a kid, Benoit said.
A special platform was constructed for the tree house scene Monday on a hill overlooking downtown Brownsville, and about 50 people huddled on that platform under black screens that only partially shaded them from the blistering sun and did nothing to alleviate the 90-degree heat.
The crew took frequent breaks between scenes, congregating in the shade cast by huge trucks and gulping soft drinks and fruit juice.
Benoit said the extreme heat made it difficult on some of the cast and crew, who hadnt expected 90-degree temperatures in Oregon in June.
Its good for us though, because we really need good weather, he said. It wouldnt work if it was raining.
Call us cockeyed cynics, but we couldn't help noticing state officials chose the Thursday right before the Fourth of July weekend to release some long-awaited data indicating how many women have recently been denied access to abortions in Texas.
The Texas Department of State Health Services reported about 9,000 fewer abortions, a 14 percent drop, in the first full year after the Legislature enacted one of the nation's toughest laws regulating abortions. The data offering more detail on that decline reportedly was compiled earlier this year, but sources told The Texas Tribune that state officials sat on it for months by claiming the numbers hadn't been finalized.
Abortion rights supporters were especially interested in seeing that data because they knew it would buttress their argument that portions of the aforementioned 2013 Texas law, commonly known in political vernacular as HB2, were preventing women from exercising their constitutional right to terminate pregnancies. After passage of the law, which included the requirements that abortion doctors obtain admitting privileges at a nearby hospital and clinics comply with the expensive standards of ambulatory surgical centers, more than half of the 41 abortion clinics in the state were closed as they were unable to meet the new standards. ("Landmark abortion ruling resounds across state" Page A1, June 28). A whistleblower in the state health department reportedly tipped the ACLU that state officials were suppressing the detailed numbers.
By an astonishing coincidence, the data was released just three days after the U.S. Supreme Court decision blocked key portions of HB2. And yes, it was right before a holiday weekend, when our attention more likely was attuned to fun with family and friends.
We shouldn't be surprised. The law itself was born in deception, under a guise that strict regulations crafted to keep women from having abortions were written by legislators - mostly men - who were deeply concerned about protecting women's health.
Now comes word that the Texas Health and Human Services Commission is proposing new rules that, come in September, would require abortion providers to cremate or bury fetal remains. Fetal tissue from abortions now goes to sanitary landfills, according to the Tribune. Once again, Texas stands poised to impose new restrictions on abortion providers in an ongoing government effort to drive them out of business and, ultimately, deny women one of their constitutional rights.
Our state officials need to stop this nonsense. Our nation's highest court has made it clear it won't tolerate such medically unnecessary regulations and roundabout schemes designed to shut down abortion clinics.
The proposed rules were filed in the Texas Register on July 1, with a 30-day comment period following. Health commission spokesman Bryan Black told the Tribune that the government body "developed new rules to ensure Texas law maintains the highest standards of human dignity." It's a curious choice of words in a state whose foster care system has been deemed by a federal judge to hurt more kids than it helps; where 1 in 4 kids live in poverty; where too many children and families remain without access to health care because state policymakers willfully refuse to expand Medicaid access. We could go on, and clearly we need to as lawmakers' need to score political points apparently still is more important than actually preserving the human dignity of the children in our midst.
In 2004, Texas author Bill Bishop in his book "The Big Sort" described the migration of Americans inspired by lifestyle choices. In envisioning a growing divide in the country, in advance of today's political gridlock in Washington, he wrote that "we have built a country where everyone can choose the neighbors (and church and news shows) most compatible with his or her lifestyle and beliefs. And we are living with the consequences of this segregation by way of life: pockets of like-minded citizens that have become so ideologically inbred that we don't know, can't understand, and can barely conceive of 'those people' who live just a few miles away."
The political consequences? Increasingly we would live in separate worlds of news and what was recognized as facts, so that bipartisan dialogue and compromise would become impossible.
A decade later, it's hard not to wonder how our politics could get more dysfunctional. Congress is unable to even pass a budget.
The Senate is unwilling to consider filling a Supreme Court vacancy. And voters will soon choose between the most unpopular major party candidates for president in polling history, candidates whose only paths to victory could come against each other.
We are soon launching an online series of short films, "Postcards from the Great Divide," that examines aspects of our political divide in nine states. Is anyone happy in Wisconsin, where excessive gerrymandering and heightened ideological division in the Legislature has produced bitter policy fights over everything? How are African-American voters staying engaged in the face of new state restrictions to voting in Florida, a crucial swing state? What were the consequences of outside interests putting more than $1 million into a local school board race outside of Denver, Colo.
A hint: It didn't help produce consensus.
In our Texas film, "The Giant Still Sleeps," the series examines the Latino vote.
Or more correctly, the lack thereof. Latinos may pass whites in population next year, according to state demographers, but they made up less than 20 percent of the vote in 2014.
There's no doubt that recent restrictive voter ID laws have had a negative impact on the Latino turnout.
And without the protection of the Voting Rights Act, by action of the Supreme Court, gerrymandering and the redrawing of district lines to dilute the vote are harder to fight in the courts.
But the challenges run much deeper. There's a cultural aversion to getting involved in politics, along with a younger population who, as of yet, doesn't see the relevance of politics in their day-to-day lives.
Simply put, working-class voters have not been convinced it's worth voting. Many potential voters are fearful, coming from a culture where getting politically involved was dangerous. And the lack of statewide general election competition does nothing to motivate people to go to the polls.
So why is this problem for all Texans? No matter your political preferences, the reality in our one-party state government is that we're not debating serious differences of opinion on public policy in Texas.
Party-line votes in the overwhelmingly Republican Legislature are the norm when elected officials have only primary challenges to fear for re-election. Ideological purity is the test.
In the film, former U.S. Rep. Pete Gallego, currently running to regain his South Texas seat, recalls that "in the 1980s I remember a big poster that said that the '80s was the decade of the Hispanic. And then the '90s were the decade of the Hispanic. And then the 2000s. So we're still waiting for that decade."
The rationale for a two-party system is to encourage political debate, and until our soon-to-be largest ethnic group is engaged in our democracy, nothing will change to remedy what we're missing.
Stekler is chair of the Radio-Television-Film Department in the Moody College of Communication at the University of Texas at Austin. "Postcards from the Great Divide" is viewable at www.politicalpostcards.org.
The Texas County Genealogical and Historical Society has a library open on Tuesdays from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at its Grand Avenue building. Its meetings are on the first []
Farmers markets are a great place to buy healthy local produce and other foods, meet and support local farmers, and enjoy shopping in a fun environment. But shoppers should also pay attention to food safety when buying and using foods from farmers markets, says a University of Missouri Extension food safety specialist.
Because the experience level of the vendors with food safety practices may vary greatly, the consumer needs to take a bit more active role in deciding what products to buy and from which vendors, said Londa Nwadike, extension consumer food safety specialist for MU and Kansas State University. Make sure the produce is clean, that it looks fresh, that its a nice, intact piece of produce. If youre buying cut or peeled produce, make sure that its surrounded by ice or is being kept cold.
When looking at meats, eggs and cheese to purchase, its important to make sure that the products are either in a cooler or on ice, Nwadike said. These products need to be kept cold to maintain their freshness.
Another item to study carefully is milk.
If youre buying milk at a farmers market, it is a regulatory requirement that the milk sold at the farmers market has to be pasteurized, Nwadike said. Check with the vendor and ask if its pasteurized, just to be sure. Pasteurized is much safer.
Nwadike recommends looking for clues that can tell you about the vendors food safety practices. Surfaces and any knives or other utensils should be clean. Workers should have clean hands and clothing. Look for a hand-washing station in the booth, particularly in booths selling prepared foods or offering samples.
MARKETING TERMS
At both farmers markets and grocery stories, youll often see food marketed under such terms as organic, natural, local or sustainable. Theres a certain amount of understandable confusion about what these terms actually mean, Nwadike said.
Some terms are regulated at the state or federal level. Other terms arent regulated, though individual farmers markets may have their own rules, such as what qualifies as locally produced.
If something is certified organic and it has the USDA organic seal on it, then we know it has met certain criteria, Nwadike said. If something just says grown organically at a farmers market, for example, youll have to ask the farmer what that means and what sort of practices he or she was using.
Natural only means that there are no added ingredients and that the product has been minimally processed, and that only applies to meat.
There is no regulated definition for natural for anything other than meat products, Nwadike said.
More general terms such as local, sustainable and artisan do not have a regulated definition, she adds. Checking with the farmer is the best way to know for sure what a lot of those terms mean.
FARMERS MARKETS 101
Fresh produce should be clean, look fresh, have no cuts or nicks, and be displayed off the ground or floor.
Cut or peeled produce should be on or surrounded by ice and look fresh and cold.
Meat, eggs and cheeses should be in a cooler or on ice. Packages must feel cold. Egg cartons should be clean and eggs not cracked.
Milk should be pasteurized for safety. Ask vendor to confirm.
Canned fruits and vegetables should be processed appropriately for the type of product. Ask vendor how they were handled and prepared.
Hot prepared foods should have a lid and be warm enough that you can see steam rising from the pan. Preferably, you should see vendors using a thermometer to check food temperature.
You also want to make sure your food stays safe on the way home:
Keep raw meat separate from other foods.
Make the market your last stop before going home.
Use a cooler or insulated bags, especially if it takes more than an hour to get home.
For more information, call the MU Extension office in Houston at 417-967-4545.
Printable MU Extension fact sheets available for download:
Shopping Safely at Farmers Markets (N1301), http://extension.missouri.edu/p/N1301.
Regulations for Selling Safe Canned Foods in Missouri (N1304), http://extension.missouri.edu/p/N1304.
Food Labeling for Missouri Food Producers and Processors (N1305), http://extension.missouri.edu/p/N1305.
For more information from MU Extension on food safety, including feature articles, learning opportunities and answers to frequently asked questions, go to http://MissouriFamilies.org/foodsafety.
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current debate about the impact immigration is having on the Auckland housing market ignores the economic benefits a migrant workforce offers the New Zealand economy, says Diversity Works New Zealand chief Bev Cassidy-Mackenzie.Migrant workers arrive here with a range of knowledge and skills that help us grow a more effective and productive workforce, she says. They also boost the working age population in New Zealand, which is increasingly important as more baby boomers start to leave the workforce or work fewer hours.Immigrants contribute to the countrys tax revenue and create a new client base for local businesses and service providers, says Cassidy-Mackenzie.Diversity Works New Zealand, formerly the Equal Employment Opportunities Trust, works with New Zealand organisations to help them maximise the benefits of having a diverse and inclusive workplace.While we acknowledge that the high net rates of immigration New Zealand is currently experiencing do put pressure on our infrastructure, particularly in Auckland, its important that we dont lose sight of the wider benefits immigration offers, says Cassidy-Mackenzie.Distinguished Professor Paul Spoonley, Pro Vice-Chancellor of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at Massey University, has been a major contributor to research and public debate on the impact of immigration.He says immigration is now a big factor in population and economic growth, especially at its current historic high levels.As New Zealand has moved from the old immigration model, largely focussed on attracting immigrants from the UK, to one that recruits from a global talent pool, it has transformed New Zealand businesses.Immigrants help fill skill shortages for employers but they are much more than a workforce. They are an important source of population growth, they have made our cities much more diverse and - I would suggest - more interesting places, and they have contributed to the growth of new businesses.New Zealands current economic success is largely a result of immigration, he says, but we do need to manage the pressure immigration puts on infrastructure and make sure that our employers adjust to the reality of a culturally diverse workforce.Professor Spoonley will be speaking about the impact immigration is having on the New Zealand labour force and the opportunities and challenges this presents at the inaugural Diversity Summit in Auckland on August 23.The full-day event at the Sky City Convention Centre has a line-up of high-profile international and local experts who will share the latest information and initiatives creating a more inclusive culture in workplaces around the world. For more information, visit www.diversityworksnz.org.nzFor all the latest HR news and info straight to your inbox, subscribe here
OTTAWA Canada may soon announce it will commit troops to new peacekeeping missions, The Huffington Post Canada has learned.
A spokeswoman for Foreign Affairs Minister Stephane Dion told HuffPost Tuesday the Liberal government wants to re-energize Canadian leadership in key areas and in multilateral institutions.
Canada will increase its support to UN peace operations, extending beyond peacekeeping to include the equally important civilian components of conflict prevention, mediation, and peacebuilding efforts, said Chantal Gagnon.
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Government sources said decisions would be made in the coming months.
The United Nations is organizing a meeting in London this September, when pledges will be made and future contributions discussed, a UN spokeswoman told HuffPost.
Over the weekend, the Liberals announced Canada would lead a NATO mission in Latvia to curb Russian aggression and deploy 450 troops, a frigate and up to six CF-18 fighter aircrafts. Dion told The Canadian Press, It is terribly unfortunate that Canada has to deploy its forces in Latvia instead of having peacekeeping in Africa or in an area of the world where it is much more needed.
The foreign affairs minister is on a rare vacation and was unavailable for an interview. But his office insisted the new NATO deployment will not prevent the Canadian Armed Forces from participating in new peace and security missions.
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Min. Dion has been clear that we will still implement our renewed peacekeeping strategy and that we've had lots of specific requests from other countries to consider, including in Africa (e.g. CAR [Central African Republic], Mali), his chief of staff, Julian Ovens, wrote in an email.
Dions office would not specify what those requests are, but said theyre currently being evaluated in conjunction with the Department of National Defence.
... we will welcome additional support, particularly in the areas of training, capacity building, engineering, aviation and medical support. UN spokeswoman Ismini Palla
The UN said it would welcome additional aid from Canada.
"Peacekeeping is increasingly in need of high-technology assets and specialized skills, said spokeswoman Ismini Palla.
While Canada is already contributing to UN Peacekeeping, we will welcome additional support, particularly in the areas of training, capacity building, engineering, aviation and medical support.
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Canada's contribution in this field would be highly beneficial, she said.
The two missions cited by Dions office are particularly risky.
The UN mission in Mali is the deadliest in the world. Since April 2013, 68 peacekeepers have been killed by what the UN calls malicious acts.
In May, five Togolese peacekeepers were killed when their vehicle was ambushed. Days later, a Chinese peacekeeper was killed in a mortar attack on a UN camp. Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb claimed responsibility for that attack. Three people working for a UN subcontractor were also killed that same day in a separate attack.
The UN mission in Central African Republic is also plagued with violence. Last week, the UNs under-secretary-general for peacekeeping operations, Herve Ladsous, told the Security Council that while free elections had been held this winter, the country continues to face a security climate that remains fragile and reversible.
More than two million people or half the population lack access to food. One-fifth of the nation remains displaced, and armed groups continue to control vast parts of the country, he said. Last month, more than a dozen people were killed, including a Senegalese UN peacekeeper.
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Outside the capital in the countrys southeast, the Lords Resistance Army continues to murder, abduct, force sex-slavery and recruit child soldiers, said the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein in a July news release.
More than 290 people were abducted between January and April, including 60 children, he said.
Zeid also raised concerns that the Ugandan army deployed to help the country is engaged in credible allegations of sexual abuse, exploitation, abduction, forced marriages and rape.
Effective and targeted contributions
Gagnon said Global Affairs Canada the foreign affairs department was exploring different ways to engage in peacebuilding, such as new training initiatives. In addition to talks with National Defence, the department is consulting with the UN, the RCMP, Public Safety, and Canadian experts, she said.
The government is assessing its own abilities in light of the UNs needs and wants to provide effective and targeted contributions, Gagnon added.
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The Liberals are also looking to promote the equality of women and men, and would like to increase the number of female peacekeepers and advisors, she said.
Canada is eager to contribute more to UN peacekeeping efforts, in part because of Prime Minister Justin Trudeaus commitment to the organization, and the governments stated desire to win a Security Council seat in 2021.
Speaking in March at the UN, Trudeau pledged to revitalize Canada's historic role as a key contributor to United Nations peacekeeping.
"Canada will increase its engagement with peace operations, not just by making available our military, police, and specialized expertise, but also by supporting the civilian institutions that prevent conflict, bring stability to fragile states, and help societies recover in the aftermath of crisis, he said.
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Canada would be very welcomed back in peacekeeping.
The United Nations currently has 16 peacekeeping operations, including nine in Africa.
Of the approximately 1,100 Canadian Armed Forces members deployed in operations around the world, only 31 are working in UN peacekeeping operations, ranging from 12 in South Sudan to one lone member in Cyprus.
An additional 84 civilian Canadians are part of peacekeeping missions around the world, according to Global Affairs Canada.
Bilingual advantage
In February, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and Ladsous met with Canadian officials in Ottawa.
They conveyed the message that Canada would be very welcomed back in peacekeeping, Palla told HuffPost.
Our pitch with Canada was also that they can also offer excellent bilingual personnel, in French and English, which is also very important to our peacekeeping operations because half of them are in francophone places, she said.
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HISPANIOLA WINS 2016 GOLDEN BEAN Very proud that our lovely Hispaniola 70% bar received the top honour at this year's Academy of Chocolate Awards Gala - the 2016 Golden Bean! There's no good chocolate without great cacao beans - the farmers and team at OKO Caribe in northern Dominican Republic use care and craft to grow some of the very best. Thank you small, but mighty, Hummingbird team - you guys rock! Thank you Academy of Chocolate for shining a light on fine chocolate (I've always wanted to thank the Academy).
A photo posted by Erica, Drew & friends (@hummingbirdchocolate) on Jul 10, 2016 at 3:35pm PDT
A group of protesters gave attendees at New York Fashion Week: Men's something to think about, without saying a word.
More than a dozen protesters planted their feet and raised their hands outside the main venue on day two of the event to call out the fashion industry's silence on Black Lives Matter, The Cut reports.
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They stood silently, wearing T-shirts and holding signs reading "Black Lives Matter" and "Stop Killing Us" as people entered the building, according to the Cut.
Walking into the @CarlosCamposNYC show & was delighted to see the #blacklivesmatter in full effect at #nyfwm. pic.twitter.com/Zzx6NB3hev Constance C.R. White (@OfficialCwhite) July 12, 2016
The protest was staged by stylist and blogger, Hannah Stoudemire.
Ahead of the protest, she announced on Instagram that she would not be attending the event because, unlike other tragedies like the Paris attacks and the Orlando shootings, major fixtures in the fashion world did not acknowledge the recent police shootings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile.
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Another member of the fashion world, designer Jamila Mariama made a similar criticism in the wake of the deaths, and it was later shared by models Torraine Futurum and Hari Nef, Complex reported last week.
**these comments are on behalf of my own personal opinion A photo posted by Jamila (@fashionistamila) on Jul 8, 2016 at 6:59am PDT
Stoudemire told ELLE that she'd been organizing the protest for a year and planned to do it in September during the more popular women's fashion week, but she decided on the switch after Sterling was shot.
Following the protest, fashion week organizers, Council of Fashion Designers of America, did post a photo of the protest on their Instagram account, along with the caption: "An important reminder no matter how busy the week. #blacklivesmatter."
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An important reminder no matter how busy the week. #blacklivesmatter A photo posted by cfda (@cfda) on Jul 12, 2016 at 9:41am PDT
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Diners at one Earls restaurant in Calgary may never have to calculate a tip again and Canadians aren't exactly cheering on the idea.
Earls.67, which had its grand opening last week, isn't letting its patrons choose how much to tip. Instead, the location is mandating a 16 per cent "hospitality charge" that, unlike traditional tips, will be divvied up equally between servers and kitchen staff, said a company blog post.
A photo posted by @kassymcintosh on Jul 10, 2016 at 9:20am PDT
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"We believe a cook who makes a burger for a guest is as equally important in the experience as the server delivering the burger," Earls vice-president of operations Craig Blize told The Calgary Herald.
Earls.67, located on Calgary's Stephen Avenue, is serving as a test facility for the restaurant chain different culinary ideas will be tried out in-house before they're rolled out elsewhere.
The location is trying the no-tip model after Earls execs saw other chains using it in New York, Toronto, Vancouver, and other cities, according to Global News.
A photo posted by Jackie Leong (@jackie_leong) on Jul 8, 2016 at 5:40pm PDT
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"Currently, a large portion of [a tip] goes to the server and it creates a disparity in the wages from our cooks all the way to the servers," Blize told the network.
"In this new model, what it allows us to do is to redistribute that compensation so 100 per cent of the 16 per cent hospitality charge goes to our highly-trained cooks and it goes to our servers and what we're testing to see is if it promotes teamwork, promotes engagement."
Servers who spoke to Global were enthusiastic about the idea but not all diners agreed.
One patron, Adam Haynes, told The Canadian Press that mandatory tips could inadvertently discourage good service.
"You know when you go to a restaurant and you get a table for 12 or more and they have an auto-grat? Generally the service is worse than if you have discretionary gratuities," he said. "I'm against it."
A photo posted by Mike Mitchell (@mike1333) on Jul 7, 2016 at 3:02pm PDT
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An Angus Reid Institute poll released Wednesday showed that 46 per cent of Canadian respondents preferred to keep tipping the way it is, while 40 per cent said they would like to move to a "service-included" model for restaurants.
The poll found that most Canadians tip anywhere between 10 and 20 per cent.
Spotty record
The no-tipping model has a mixed record in Canada and the United States.
Two years ago, Vancouver Island restaurant Smoke 'n' Water did away with tipping and tried to pay its staff a living wage instead, Metro News reported.
But the restaurant later brought tipping back because customers didn't like the new system.
Earlier this year, Toronto restaurateur Bill Sweete eliminated tipping at two of his businesses: Sidecar, and the Toronto Temperance Society.
"Waiters think that money is theirs," Sweete told Toronto Life. "They think that the rocket scientist who carried the food from the kitchen to the table deserves more than the person who cooked it."
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stevenpwilson via Getty Images City Hall in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Canon rebel.
The city of Edmonton has voted unanimously to work on its privacy policies, days after a coucillor accused council of keeping too many secrets.
Coun. Mike Nickel raised his concerns before council on Tuesday morning, citing concerns that the city's privacy rules are not transparent enough.
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He says rulings have kept items like FOIP requests and portions of council minutes from seeing the light.
Currently, closed-door discussions at city council are kept private from the public minutes or audio of the meetings are never posted, even after matters are resolved.
The city has also denied seemingly innocuous freedom of information requests, The Edmonton Journal reported.
Earlier this year, a University of Alberta professor was told that reports about Rogers Place didn't exist but Nickel easily accessed the documents shortly after.
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The city also refused a Postmedia request for flood maps in April, according to the newspaper.
"It should not be able to stay in private for perpetuity. It's public funds, it's public resources, it's of public interest," Nickel said to CBC News.
"This is not Area 51."
Nickel said he hopes to enact sunset clauses, so matters that might be too sensitive to immediately release can eventually be made public like in the case of Edmonton's LRT Metro line, which has seen serious cost overruns and safety issues.
This is not Area 51, Nickel told 630 CHED.
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A group of Pennsylvania cops have a message for anti-police diners we like you even if you don't like us.
The cops have drawn Internet praise after they paid the bill of a couple who refused to sit next to them at Homestead, Penn. restaurant.
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The four officers, who are regulars at the Eat N' Park, were waiting for their food when the patrons came in, according to KDKA.
They looked over and said, We dont want to sit here, server Louann Davis told the outlet.
You could tell they were looking at the police, and they moved them to another section.
Recent shootings by or targeting police have led to tensions across the U.S., and Homestead police Sgt. John Kaschauer said he's noticed a difference in how citizens act in their presence.
Police officer Chuck Thomas said the gesture was one of goodwill.
I do feel it from people who might be on a traffic stop or passing through the area, little things they say, he said.
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Fellow officer Chuck Thomas told WTAE he reassured the two that the cops weren't there to hurt them, but the man was adamant.
So a random act of kindness was in order.
"I paid the guys [sic] check that didn't want to sit next to us!" Thomas wrote on Facebook Friday alongside photos of the couple's receipt and the officers sitting at their table. "I left this note for him!"
Sir, your check was paid for by the police officers that you didnt want to sit next to," wrote Thomas on the receipt.
"Thank you for your support. I left a $10 tip, too.
Comments on the post expressed admiration for the gesture.
"Boom. Head high fellas, you're worth more than you'll ever know," wrote Chris Galore.
Thomas told WTAE he wanted the diners to know that he and his colleagues aren't a threat.
"It just dawned on me, I should do this real quick just to show this guy look, 'I dont know if you had [a] bad experience with the police in the past you may have, you may have not but I just want you to know I never had an experience with you and Im not here to do anything to you. And neither will my partners.'"
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As one of the officers left, the man laughed and thanked him, according to WTAE.
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The mom of an eight-year-old in El Cajon, Calif. is likely grateful that the girl paid attention in her martial arts class.
A kung-fu move helped the child fight off her would-be kidnapper after he snuck into her bedroom early Sunday morning, her mother told Fox 5 San Diego.
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"I'm relieved that this is the story I get to tell that she's in my home, here and safe," she told the outlet.
According to a police press release, a man broke into the family's condo around 4 a.m. by removing the screen from a ground-floor window. He then snuck into the second-floor bedroom where the eight-year-old and her six-year-old brother were sleeping.
"I would have woken up to an empty bed," said the girl's mother.
The intruder picked the girl up and began to carry her down the stairs, but while still half asleep she punched him in the neck with a partially closed fist, a move she described to NBC San Diego as the "Cheetah Paw."
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He then put her down and left.
When NBC asked the girl why she picked the move, she had a simple answer: "Because it hurt him."
The suspect was described as tanned and thin, with dark, fluffy hair. He wore dark clothing, carried a backpack, and smelled "dirty," according to police. The girl wasn't injured.
A window screen was also removed from a nearby condo that morning, they said. According to NBC, a hand smear was left behind, so cops said they would try running fingerprints.
Cops and a police dog tried looking for the suspect, but couldn't locate him. They said Sunday they were patrolling the area and using databases to find out who may have been responsible.
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Get out your Starbucks cards, everyone there's a new drink in town.
On Tuesday, the coffee company debuted a new drink in Canada and the U.S.: the Iced Coconut Milk Mocha Macchiato. (Phew. What a mouthful.) According to the Starbucks press release, the drink is the company's first iced espresso that features coconut milk. Mixed with white chocolate mocha sauce and topped with caramel sauce, the beverage will only be offered for a limited time.
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This isn't the first time Starbucks has made a drink featuring coconut milk as a dairy-free alternative. In Feb. 2015 (September in Canada), the company revealed it was including the non-dairy milk for customers who don't consume dairy products, and since then, it's been used in drinks such as the new "pink drink" (strawberry acai refresher and coconut milk) from their secret menu.
However, Fortune.com notes if you're lactose intolerant, you need to ask the barista to remove the white chocolate mocha sauce and the caramel sauce.
Starbucks also revealed another new drink that just hit shops July 12: the Teavana Shaken Iced Berry Sangria Herbal Tea.
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The drink includes brewed Teavana Iced Passion Tango Tea a blend of hibiscus, lemongrass and apple flavours and Sangria syrup which contains a blend of peach, elderberry, blood orange and raspberry flavours. The tea is shaken with black berries, orange slices, apple juice, and ice.
The timing couldn't be better.
The only official Opposition critic who does not have a seat in the House of Commons says Liberals can't grasp that Atlantic Canadians want a "hand up, not a hand out."
Former Conservative MP Scott Armstrong, who was defeated by Liberal Bill Casey last fall in the Nova Scotia riding of Cumberland-Colchester, released a statement Wednesday criticizing changes to federal employment insurance rules.
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Former Conservative MP Scott Armstrong rises during question period in the House of Commons in February 2012. (Photo: Adrian Wyld/CP)
But the statement also served as a reminder that all 32 seats in Atlantic Canada are currently held by Liberals, and that the region's main federal critic is unelected.
Interim Tory Leader Rona Ambrose raised eyebrows in November by appointing Armstrong her party's critic for Atlantic issues and the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency less than a month after he lost his seat in the so-called "red tide."
Armstrong's full-time position in Ambrose's office is covered by the Conservative Party, The Chronicle Herald reports, and his time is split between the region and Ottawa.
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Liberals turning backs on Atlantic Canadians: Armstrong
The ex-MP took issue this week with the Liberal government's plan to "weaken the requirements for fishermen's EI" and reduce the hours claimants must work before qualifying for regular benefits.
He said in the release that it is "extremely discouraging" the Liberal government is "turning its back on Atlantic Canadians" by not introducing new skills programs and apprentice grants.
He also blasted the feds for not lowering the small business tax rate to nine per cent as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promised on the campaign trail.
'Petty politics'
Armstrong said in the release that Liberals were making it easier for Atlantic Canadians to work less and still draw EI.
"At a time when lobster prices are higher than ever, captains are struggling to get people on the back of their boats because the Liberals are making it equally profitable to stay home," he said.
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He accused Liberals of playing "petty politics" with Canada's EI program and urged the government to invest more in regional job creation initiatives.
Ambrose courts Atlantic Canada
While Armstrong's shadow cabinet job is unorthodox, longtime MP and Tory finance critic Lisa Raitt told The Canadian Press last fall that it makes sense.
"You can't ignore what happened east of Quebec," Raitt said.
Ambrose has made it clear that she wants to rebuild what has been broken in Atlantic Canada so that Tories win back seats in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, and Prince Edward Island.
She toured the region in the winter and spring, posting video clips and photos to Facebook.
In resource-dependent Newfoundland and Labrador in March, Ambrose pledged that Conservatives will stand fully behind the natural resource sector and fight for jobs in the region.
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She also posted a clip of her chat with John Crosbie, a former federal Tory cabinet minister and one-time lieutenant-governor of Newfoundland and Labrador. Crosbie's son Ches was not permitted to seek a Conservative nomination in the last election.
Crosbie said at the time that his son's participation in a fundraising skit poking fun at then-leader Stephen Harper was the reason his bid was quashed.
"In recent years the relationship between Conservatives here in Newfoundland and Conservatives on the mainland, there have been differences and difficulties," Crosbie said.
Quebec MP Guy Caron was named the NDP critic for Atlantic Canada shortly after his party was shut out of all four provinces in the region.
With a file from The Canadian Press
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The story of artist Vincent van Gogh's ear is probably as famous as his paintings. Until recently, scholars believed that Van Gogh sliced off his ear lobe in a moment of insanity, wrapped the severed body part in newspaper and presented it to a prostitute.
But a new piece of evidence has surfaced revealing that the painter actually cut off his entire ear, not just the lobe, and brought it to a brothel maid as a well-intentioned but ill-conceived gift.
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The evidence came in the form of a letter from Van Gogh's doctor, Felix Rey. The note features a rough sketch of the painter's self-inflicted injury, and it's clear that he lopped the whole ear off.
Nienke Bakker, curator of Van Gogh paintings at the Van Gogh Museum, looks at the painting 'Portrait of Doctor Felix Rey,' part of the exhibition 'On the Verge of Insanity,' at the museum in Amsterdam. (Photo: Getty Images)
"I am happy to give you the information you have requested concerning my unfortunate friend," Rey wrote in French beneath the diagram. "I sincerely hope that you wont fail to glorify the genius of this remarkable painter, as he deserves.
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The letter was discovered by British historian Bernadette Murphy in the Irving Stone Archives at the University of California Berkeley. According to a statement, Murphy spent seven years researching letters from the period in order to find the maid, Gabrielle.
The young girl had suffered a dog bite and was working to pay off her medical bills when Van Gogh gave her the ear. Murphy thinks he had the delusional hope that it would heal her.
"Van Gogh was somebody who was very touched by people in difficulty. I feel that he wanted to give her this gift of flesh."
"Van Gogh was somebody who was very touched by people in difficulty. I feel that he wanted to give her this gift of flesh, Murphy told the Daily Telegraph.
The new story of Van Gogh's ear, along with a handful of Murphy's other discoveries, are being displayed at a new exhibit at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. The exhibit, titled On the Verge of Insanity, will open Friday as a companion to Murphy's book, "Van Gogh's Ear: The True Story."
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The book was released Tuesday.
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If the stunning native art, or expansive mountain view weren't enough to let travellers know they were in the Vancouver International Airport, maybe free yoga will do the trick.
YVR announced Monday it's offering a space in the domestic terminal for passengers to practice "self-guided" yoga before their flights take off.
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People can also use the space which has a wooden floor, mats, and partitions for privacy to meditate or simply stretch.
An instructor from YYoga, a chain of yoga studios, will be available to welcome users and offer tips on best poses for travel, but there are no structured classes.
Carleigh Oude-Reimerink, a master's student in the UBC planning program came up with the idea after her own stressful travel experiences, reported CBC News. She said yoga can help ease people's anxieties over flying and security.
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Her research identified about a dozen airports with dedicated yoga spaces, but YVR is the first in Canada, said CBC.
Sitting in cramped seats for long durations can be bad for your health; in fact, passengers are at risk of developing fatal blood clots because of low blood flow in the legs. Yoga and stretching can improve circulation and limber up one's muscles.
The program is available every Friday between July 15 and Aug. 26 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. across from Gate 46 in the domestic terminal.
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YVR regularly ranks high on lists of best airports in the world.
Last month, YVR unveiled a new "washroom" for pets, which includes artificial grass.
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A demonstrator holds a Sandra Bland sign during a vigil. Bland died in a Texas county jail after the traffic stop for failing to use a turn signal escalated into a physical confrontation. Authorities have said Bland hanged herself, a finding her family disputes. (Photo: AP Photo/Christian K. Lee)
Just months before her death, Sandra Bland told the world she had a purpose.
"I'm here to change history," she said.
It was January 2015, six months before the 28-year-old would be found hanging in a Texas jail cell. Her bold declaration was just one of many she made in "Sandy Speaks," a series of personal videos she uploaded online for the world to see. In them, she spoke about increasing racial tensions in the U.S., as well as her own personal struggles as a black woman living in a white man's world.
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These women were no guiltier but just as worthy of equal treatment as any other man, black or white.
"My white friends -- don't get upset," she said in a video posted March 30, 2015. "But I'm going to call out racism wherever I see it."
Though her death exactly one year ago was ruled a suicide, many disputed the circumstances surrounding her hanging. Nevertheless, it was a wake up call to a community already teetering on the brink.
It was a painful reminder to them that in their fight for black lives, their women could not be forgotten.
In the U.S., police violence against black women has increased. The same year Bland died, police killed a total of 10 black women. Among that list is 25-year-old India Beaty, who was shot and killed in Virginia after allegedly brandishing a weapon, which was later discovered to be a fake. Another victim, 26-year-old Deresha Armstrong, was shot and killed by an officer in Orlando after allegedly pointing a gun at him.
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Already in 2016, the number of black women killed by police is even higher. According to a Washington Postdatabase that tracks fatal shootings by police in the U.S., eight women have been killed as a result of police violence this year.
These women were no guiltier but just as worthy of equal treatment as any other man, black or white. Like Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Walter Scott, Tamir Rice, Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, these women were victims of a system under which black skin is often a deadly offence.
Like Bland, the names of these women have been added to a growing list of blacks brutalized or killed by police. And just like hers, their names and faces have too become fading memories in a never-ending story of racism, police brutality and death. But at a time when many around the world are reeling from last week's string of violence, it's more important than ever that these women be remembered. Their successes, failures, accomplishments, contributions and most importantly, their lives, should be memorialized.
In death, Bland has become something of a poster child for police violence against black women. Yet even as perhaps the most recognized name and face, her story is often forgotten amid the greater discussion of police brutality against blacks. But on the anniversary of her death -- and every day to come -- her name and the names of the countless other black women who have been killed should be remembered.
Sandra Bland believed she was destined to change history. In keeping her memory alive and at the forefront of discussions of racial inequality, even in death, we fulfill her legacy.
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Say her name.
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By Julian Dierkes
Canadian international assistance is governed by the Official Development Assistance Accountability Act. This act specifies three criteria for approval of international assistance projects. Such projects must:
"contribute to poverty reduction;
"take into account the perspectives of the poor; and
"be consistent with international human rights standards."
The International Assistance Review provides the government with an opportunity to review these criteria and the interpretation of these criteria to mean that virtually all Canadian development assistance (DA) activities are focused on poverty reduction.
Good Governance as a Goal
The most obvious challenge that an exclusive focus on poverty reduction presents is that there are many activities that would clearly make positive contributions to beneficiaries' well-being that are not immediately linked to poverty reduction. Under the current structures, this requires a justification of such activities in terms of poverty reduction even when the connection between the two is somewhat remote.
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For example, it seems somewhat clear that good governance ultimately contributes to more equal distribution of resources, but that does not necessarily have to be the case, and the connection may take many decades to unfold. But, is good governance not worthy of Canadian DA support for its own sake?
Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau seems to suggest as much herself in a recent editorial for the Globe and Mail on Canadian contributions to the rebuilding of Colombia. She writes eloquently about the need to support the peace process, about the role of women, but does not mention poverty other than through references to livelihoods. Her statement that, "Better access to land and natural resources for rural people, particularly for women, is how Colombia will avoid slipping back into conflict again." is precisely the sort of logic that many proposals and projects are forced into, i.e. in this case to justify post-conflict peace-building through its contribution to economic development.
Good governance does not always mean democracy because it can be applied to non-political contexts or to subnational contexts that may or may not be subject to democratic decision-making. However, the kind of good governance that is inclusive in consultations of stakeholders, open in terms of decision-making, and clear in its aims, is often supported by democratization of political decisions, and by the extensions of rights to all.
Currently the ODA Accountability Act acknowledges consistency with human rights as a criterion, but it does not allow for projects that are aimed primarily at human rights without (also) claiming a direct impact on poverty. I suggest that most Canadians would likely be supportive of projects that are aimed at governance and rights in addition to other projects that are aimed at poverty reduction.
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Sustainable Development Goals
An alternative to a broader set of criteria would be to abandon domestically-determined criteria entirely and accept the UN's 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as criteria for funding.
Incorporating these development goals into Canadian legislation would offer a number of advantages:
The SDGs were developed as a follow-up on the Millennium Development Goals, themselves created through an international process focused on results-based intervention, but also on participation of developing countries in decision-making
There is somewhat of a global consensus around the SDGs.
At first glance, the SDGs may appear so broad that they are no more specific than the goal to reduce poverty. For example, Goal 1 is the equivalent of the current ODA Accountability Act as it states the goal to "End poverty in all its forms everywhere". Yet, the other 16 goals also have been determined to be worthy of interventions and funding toward those interventions. More significantly, however, these broad goals are operationalized through specific indicators that make them much more concrete than the overarching ambition of current legislation.
The SDGs are operating with a time horizon of the next 14 years. Adopting the SDGs would mean that this adoption has an implicit sun-set clause in 2030. Long enough for planning and development of activities, but also an occasion to review Canadian contributions.
The SDGs offer advantages of donor coordination (at least potentially) and a strengthening of UN institutions in the context of development assistance.
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There are some obvious risks to incorporating the SDGs into Canadian legislation:
Coordination of efforts suggests the possibility to eliminate duplication, and to focus on widely-supported goals, but it also implies standardization and homogenization.
Accepting a global development project may suggest to some that are no specific Canadian contributions to make. Appreciation for Canadian initiatives by specific beneficiary countries may also be reduced when Canadian initiatives are seen "merely" as a contribution to a global effort
Taking Perspectives into Account
The requirement that Canadian DA activities are built around the perspective of beneficiaries is an important one to prevent the implementation of projects that are either not welcome or not appropriate.
But the main way by which such perspectives are solicited is through letters for beneficiary governments. Here, information technology offers many opportunities for real engagement with beneficiaries as I have written at DirectDiplomacy.
Recommendation
An incorporation of the SDGs into Canadian policy seems like a clear choice. Legislation should be revised to reflect this choice.
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After an initial general commitment to the SDGs, the current consultations around DA may suggest some specific emphases that the current government might select among the 17 goals.
Julian Dierkes is an associate professor at UBC's Institute of Asian Research where he teaches Public Policy and Global Affairs. He is project lead on Mongolia at the Canadian International Resources and Development Institute. Follow him @jdierkes
CP
Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada Jody Wilson-Raybould speaks during a news conference, June 30, 2016. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld).
The Honourable Jody Wilson-Raybould, PC, QC, MP. Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, appeared before the Assembly of First Nations Annual General Assembly on Tuesday. Here are her prepared remarks.
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Gilakas'la. Good Morning, Elders, youth, National Chief, Regional Chiefs, Chiefs, Grand Chiefs, Minister Bennett, ladies and gentlemen.
Thank you the Elder for the opening prayer and to Chief Ava Hill, our host, and Regional Chief Isadore Day for your welcoming comments. I acknowledge the Haudenosaunee and the peoples of the Six Nations of the Grand River on whose ancestral lands we are gathering.
Yes, National Chief this has been a momentous year - and yes the momentum is gaining.
And Indigenous voices are increasingly shaping our country. Voter turnout in the 2015 federal election was up significantly - up by as much as 270 percent in some communities, and a record 10 Indigenous people were elected to Parliament.
And yes people are taking note. For example, some of you may have seen a recent article observing how, "Indigenous MPs and senators played a central role in securing passage of the new assisted dying law", bringing "unique perspective". And it is true, we did seek consensus where consensus could be achieved - very much in the spirit of Indigenous political traditions and a non-partisan approach to decision making.
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And yes there is momentum with the pre-inquiry consultations regarding missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls - and with beginning an early review of the Crown's position in select litigation regarding Indigenous issues. And yes, our government has adopted, without qualifications, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. These are all incredibly important advances. But...... it is still only the start.
So - National Chief Bellgarde - while I want to thank you for your optimistic and very encouraging words this morning - and for taking the time to reflect on what has transpired in the last year since Montreal - what was most important to me from your words is a signalling of the hard work that remains before us all - and, in particular, rebuilding the Nation-to-Nation relationship.
While we must, and will, address the social issues now - education, child welfare and health - and consider the immediate needs with respect to closing the financial gap - in truth, the social and economic gaps will never be fully closed until the foundational work of Nation rebuilding has been completed... the Indian Act gone - and where Indigenous peoples are making decisions for themselves - and where the role of the federal government has been transformed from one designing and administering programs and services for Indigenous peoples, into one that supports self-governing Indigenous Nations in a genuine Nation-to-Nation relationship.
So yes, the real work is ahead of us - and that is the message I am here to deliver today.
And, in this regard, we are all very fortunate to have a Prime Minister who understands this and has tasked all of his Ministers with working towards a renewed Nation-to-Nation relationship with Indigenous peoples, based on "recognition of rights, respect, co-operation and partnership."
So, with my time this morning, I want to talk about this relationship and share some thoughts on how we can focus our efforts to collectively set in place a course of action over the coming months that ensures we can turn all the good words - the good will - and the golden opportunity we have - into meaningful progress with practical and discernable benefits on the ground within Indigenous communities. To undertake transformative change.
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And I challenge the critics that say it cannot be done - those, who on the one hand, say the government is not serious or sincere, and on the other, say that Indigenous peoples do not have what it will take or the resolve or that the task is too great.
And I make this challenge confident in the knowledge that there is no one in this room who would suggest that decolonization is easy - and that we all appreciate that trust, especially where trust did not exist before, must be earned, and that it can just as easily be lost - and that we all understand that the stakes are high - incredibly high. We are talking about the lives of future generations of Indigenous children within Canada - about the very survival of our distinct cultures and ancient languages - about a way of life .....
Moving forward, our government's principled approach to a Nation-to-Nation relationship based on recognition does raise some very fundamental questions that must be answered in order to proceed. First and foremost, it begs the question, "what are the Indigenous Nations that are to be recognized"?
That is, how will you define yourselves as Nations? What are the structures through which you will deliver programs and services? And, then, what will your relationship with Canada, with your neighbours, and with other Indigenous Nations, look like? How will you resolve your differences between and amongst yourselves?
In answering these questions, I think we can all agree that the federally imposed Indian Act is not the answer even though it is, as a result of the colonial legacy, necessarily a starting point for conversations in communities where the Indian Act system is, in most cases, currently the primary system of administration in place.
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Even though it is a system that reflects an impoverished notion of governance, one that is fundamentally inconsistent with the United Nations Declaration.
Let me explore this thought further.
The seventh preambular paragraph in the UNDRIP speaks to promoting the inherent rights of Indigenous peoples which derive from their political, economic and social structures - i.e., not those imposed by the state, of which the Indian Act is a case in point.
Article 3 says Indigenous peoples have a right to self-determination and by virtue of that right to freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development. And Article 5 says Indigenous peoples have the right to maintain and strengthen their distinct political, legal, economic, social and cultural institutions, while retaining their right to participate fully, if they so choose, in the political, economic, social and cultural life of the State.
So again it begs the question, what are the political, economic and social structures that the federal government should recognize and that the UNDRIP speaks to and what is the relationship of those institutions to the federal machinery of government?
And as we all know, there is no simple answer. It is, unfortunately, not as simple as just ripping up the Indian Act. Although, if we are speaking openly, adopting the UNDRIP should really require us to do so. But, in so doing, we would also create legal and economic uncertainty during the period of transition.
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How we deal with the existing administrative structures on-reserve, including the Indian Act mechanisms that already exist to support the transition, must be carefully considered. There is already significant infrastructure and steps towards economic improvement on many reserves - so we have to be very careful about the new mechanisms that we put in place. To build on our success.
At the same time we also have to be mindful of the vested interests in the status quo that are resistant to change. Not to mention the citizens of the Nations who may be afraid of change and more comfortable with the devil they know than the devil they do not. But this is the challenge of Nation rebuilding - something that those of us in this room who have been dealing with these issues for years fully understand and embrace.
So as much as I would tomorrow like to cast into the fire of history the Indian Act so that the Nations can be reborn in its ashes - this is not a practical option - which is why simplistic approaches, such as adopting the UNDRIP as being Canadian law are unworkable and, respectfully, a political distraction to undertaking the hard work required to actually implement it.
What we need is an efficient process of transition that lights a fire under the process of decolonization but does so in a controlled manner that respects where Indigenous communities are in terms of rebuilding.
As was described to me by one chief when I was BC Regional Chief, rather than popping the balloon that is the Indian Act, we need to let the air out slowly in a controlled and deliberate manner - slowly until it is all gone and when it is all out what replaces it will be strong and healthy First Nation governments - governments that design and deliver their own programs and services.
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This approach is consistent with article 38 of the UNDRIP which sets out that the role of the state, in consultation and cooperation with Indigenous peoples, is to take the appropriate measures to achieve the ends of the Declaration. Accordingly the way the UNDRIP will get implemented in Canada will be through a mixture of legislation, policy and action initiated and taken by Indigenous Nations themselves. Ultimately, the UNDRIP will be articulated through the constitutional framework of section 35.
So what are the improved or new mechanisms we need to support the Nation-to-Nation relationship? What legislation or changes to policy do we need now and in the future? To create the legal and political space for Indigenous peoples to move forward - to breathe life into Section 35.
What the federal government can do now is begin the process to recognize your Nations and your legitimate institutions of government. What we can do - in full partnership - is to facilitate the transition - to set us on an irreversible path of action - and to develop a national reconciliation framework with improved and new mechanisms to guide this transition to rebuilding strong, self-determining Nations with practicing and thriving cultures.
This includes mechanisms to negotiate modern treaties under new mandates as well as other constructive arrangements that will provide a clear and predictable path for Indigenous peoples and governments for the exercise of decision-making and governance. It means supporting Nation building in the context of historic treaties and, where there are no treaties, respecting the proper title-holders. It means creating new mechanisms to facilitate self-government beyond the Indian Act band.
And we need to get moving on developing these mechanisms as soon as possible. And yes this work will be controversial. But it is absolutely necessary. And it cannot take multiple generations. We do not have time. By some accounts at the current rate of negotiating our way out of the dysfunction of the Indian Act system using existing mechanisms would take 600 years. This is not acceptable.
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To truly celebrate the 150th anniversary of Canada next year, I would very much like to be able to come back to the 2017 AFN Assembly, knowing we have a jointly developed plan, put it in place and with the
work well under way to develop and implement the mechanisms to support the transition in this, what some have called, "the age of recognition".
We simply cannot waste time on reinventing the wheel or replicating reports of yesterday - we must act with conviction and determination. As a proud Indigenous person as well as a proud Canadian, I know that my future and the future of the generations to come, is inextricably tied to the success of the project of creating a stronger Canada that is inclusive and respects diversity - a post-nation state that recognizes pluralism and a system of government that supports this objective. Strong Indigenous Nations are a part of this vision.
Legitimate and strong Indigenous Nations have already begun to change the way Canada is governed for the better, and will continue to do so. There is room in our country for different legal traditions and ways of governing - for an approach that respects diversity and equality and supports the social and economic advancement of Indigenous peoples as part of our evolving system of cooperative federalism and multi-level governance.
It is what distinguishes Canada as a Nation from other Nations of the world where ethnic tensions threaten cohesion and with this, social and economic stability - indeed human progress.
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Accordingly there is no place within today's Canada for governments to deny the place of Indigenous peoples to participate fully in decisions that directly and significantly affect them or where rights require action or jurisdiction to be respected. And to this end the Nation-to-Nation relationship is so critical. Where land-use decisions are being made that affect Indigenous peoples, the legitimate and recognized governments of those peoples must be able to participate in shared decision-making with other levels of government. For me, this is how free, prior and informed consent is operationalized.
I see the role of my Department in this period of transition as one of legal facilitation of recognition and reconciliation - to work to lay out the constitutional and legal foundations within government, and then
to facilitate building the tools and processes needed to bridge between the present and that future state.
On this note, the previous government enacted a suite of legislation that I, along with many others and you, have said is inconsistent with developing a Nation-to-Nation relationship, and as we develop the mechanisms to the transition we will have to reconsider this legislation. And, of course, there will continue to be litigation between Indigenous peoples and the Crown, and courts are not the place to build reconciliation. Accordingly, my role as Minister of Justice and Attorney General is to ensure the Charter is upheld and that the legal positions taken by the Crown in court are consistent with the commitments and values of our government with respect to the evolving Nation-to-Nation relationship with Indigenous peoples.
By way of conclusion, let me leave you with these final thoughts. Now is the time. The political and legal ducks are aligned. There is a friendly government. But we need your solutions. As a government we are not going to impose solutions. With your leadership we can and will make enormous progress for all of us. There is no need to refight battles that have already been won. Limited resources, time and energy have to be expended on building - not fighting. On creating - not destroying. On empowering - not denying. Pressing social issues must be addressed now. But Nations need to be ready to assume jurisdiction and the concomitant responsibility in light of recognition. And while the federal government has a crucial supporting role to play, the hard work is going to be in the community, something I strongly advocated when Regional Chief. As I have said in the commons during the Attawapiskat debate, only the colonized can actually decolonize. No one else can do it for you.
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So collectively are we ready to implement the UNDRIP?
Are we ready to finish the unfinished business of Confederation?
I say we are. I know we are.
There is great hope, optimism and momentum, so let us get on with it. Communication is key. We have much work to do and I look forward to doing this work together during this tremendous moment of
transformation.
Robert Galbraith / Reuters Actress Jennifer Aniston wears a Versace dress and Fred Leighton jewelry as she arrives at the 87th Academy Awards in Hollywood, California February 22, 2015. REUTERS/Robert Galbraith (UNITED STATES - Tags: ENTERTAINMENT) (OSCARS-ARRIVALS)
Loving our bodies is not enough: What is fundamentally missing in our body image conversations?
Do I develop a positive body image by actualizing the adage "love your body more," or should I resort to plastic surgery?
Jennifer Aniston's thoughtfully penned essay on the objectification of women can be added to the growing list of important body conversations occurring; from London's mayor banning "body shaming ads," to Norwegian cities banning Photoshopped model ads, to Caitlyn Jenner and Demi Lovato describing how they overcame body image insecurities, to being #BodyPositive, body image is on our collective mind as a society.
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And while the focus on loosening the ironclad corset and giving breathing room for diverse bodies to be loved and appreciated is a big step in the right direction, something is still fundamentally missing in our well-intentioned conquest to develop a positive body image.
We are still missing the mark because why was more than $13.5 billion dollars (the highest grossing year to date) spent on cosmetic surgery for men and women in 2015?
As Jennifer Aniston laments celebrity "news" is used to maintain a dehumanizing view of women primarily focused on physical appearance. And that is the tip of the iceberg that has not been addressed properly; our societal focus on appearance is shortchanging the wealth of potential that we, as a people, have to cultivate.
What is a positive body image?
Dr. Tracy Tylka's study released in Body Image Journal highlights that a positive body image goes well beyond solely appreciating one's appearance: it includes mental, physical and emotional well-being. It is also not on a continuum where positive body image is placed on one end and negative body image on the other:
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Just because I can tolerate myself and don't espouse a negative body image, does not mean that I like myself and have a positive body image.
People with a positive body image are also not impervious to feeling low or having "bad body days" but realize and emphasize that their internal characteristics shine through to their outer beauty. A person with a positive body image often believes they are inherently valuable and uniquely created.
So where have we gone wrong?
As Jennifer Aniston implores the consumers of tabloid magazines, our awareness needs to change. We have become a society so caught up in appreciating diverse bodies, expunging weight shaming, judging thin or thick body types, that we have forgotten to emphasize the most important quality of all: our humanness and unique talents, ambitions, and personalities that we all are developing.
A positive body image does not reduce to thoughts and opinions about the body, but is rather a holistic appreciation of one's humanity.
Take Robyn Lawley, model and advocate for women's rights:
"Curves don't epitomise a woman. Saying, 'Skinny is ugly' should be no more acceptable than saying fat is. I find all this stuff a very controlling and effective way of making women obsess over their weight, instead of exploiting their more important attributes, such as intellect, strength and power. We could be getting angry about unequal pay and unequal opportunities, but we're too busy being told we're not thin enough or curvy enough. We're holding ourselves back"
How do we get there?
According to a study released in Time magazine, our societal emphasis on loving ourselves more to improve self-esteem is only making us a more narcissistic society. A positive body image is quite the contrary: it is neither narcissistic nor vanity.
Also, celebrating diversity to the detriment of acknowledging health and the increase in obesity is not making our society any happier or healthier. Not only do people with a positive body image engage in health related behaviours (this is not saying a one-size fits all, but rather acknowledging that extremes on either size of the pendulum are unhealthy) but they focus on internal qualities.
The answer is actually quite simple and rooted in religious wisdom from thousands of years ago.
1. Practice self-compassion: Become aware of your own suffering or situation in a caring and empathic way - treat yourself as you would treat a good friend.
2. Nurture gratitude by writing thankful lists: Writing thankful lists cannot only broaden our horizons to the multitude of good qualities in our life but can increase our overall happiness.
3. Appreciate the body for the functions it performs: appreciate your capability to write, paint, run, walk, dance, digest, breath, and heal itself. Our bodies are incredibly complex and intricately designed.
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4. Surround yourself with people who appreciate and accept you for who you really are. This is pretty straightforward.
5. Develop and invest in your talents and gifts: Beauty evolves from age to age and culture to culture. Only striving to be beautiful is like chasing a different caterpillar that constantly evolves into different butterflies. However discovering, investing and developing ones' talents is not only sustainable but can result in a deep sense of accomplishment, increased life satisfaction, and well-being.
While I believe people are hardwired to want to feel good about how they present themselves, an entire societal focus on only celebrating diverse outward beauty is shortchanging us.
The irony is that a stronger focus on cultivating our inner selves would naturally result in a more positive body image; the intended but still elusive end goal to 'loving our bodies' more.
If we are serious about change, then it is time to broaden our focus.
It has been one year since I arrived in the UK coming from Syria. One year ago, I made the perilous journey from Syria all the way to the UK. I joined thousands of people who made the difficult choice to resort to the sea to escape the five-year long and brutal war in Syria. A war which has brought the country to its knees and forced half of the nation out of their homes and caused one of the worst humanitarian crises since World War Two.
I was among the lucky ones who made the journey and reached to the last destination safely, thousands of my fellow refugees couldn't make it. I know of people whose journey was so short that it ended when they were shot dead while crossing the borders fleeing Syria. Others were more fortunate to survive siege, arrest, bombs, shells and knives in Syria, but they were less fortune when they faced the sea unprepared - they were traded by greedy smugglers and their lives were lost along with their bodies in the sea. Thousands of these desperate souls were lost for the sea, these souls tragedy became headlines for a couple of days and they were forgotten, their memories will not be forgotten by their loved ones.
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The room in which Ahmad stayed for four months after arriving in Britain
My journey took me to different places and I met different people and faced death at multiple times while making the journey. I had one thing to get me going and that was hope. I had to develop this notion that things will get better if you are positive and hopeful. It was not an easy thing to develop to be honest, imagine spending five years in a war zone where all you see, feel read and write about is death and only death. Five years were enough to smash your own country, future, dreams and took away your loved ones. It is very difficult to find hope in a place struck by the worst forms of war. I had to look for hope in the tears of wretched mothers and the smiles of orphaned children. I had to search for hope among the rubbles of my destroyed city and dig deep in the history and read about how nations recovered from destructive wars and got back on their feet.
It took me two months to get to the UK. I arrived in hiding in the back of a lorry because I didn't find a better way to get here like normal people do. My nationality and war in my country had made it next to impossible to have a visa where you can fly to where you want with dignity and without the fear of being stopped, interrogated for very long hours or deported somewhere else.
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I arrived in the UK and was so lucky to get the refugee status which meant I can stay in the country legally, work, study and thrive. I was over the moon when I heard this news, it meant that you are here now, you can start new, it is a new country, a new life and a new start. It wasn't an easy start though, imagine yourself arriving in a new country and everything thing you have is only the clothes you are putting on.
Ahmad with refugee campaigner and peer Lord Alf Dubs
Bureaucracy has made my new start difficult and challenging, I faced homeless and hard times. What made me overcome these difficult times was the great help and support I received from people I never knew before. I met wonderful people in the UK from all walks of life since my arrival. I was given a room in a house with an English family who shared their house, time and love with me. I spent about four months living with Nina and Timothy and they were always there for me whenever I needed advice and guidance.
I managed to get a family reunion visa for my family to come from Syria join me. This was great news for me but this news brought more pressure as I had to find a place for my family to live in. The pressure didn't last for long when I was approached by a landlord who told me to move to one of his flats without paying a penny till I am back on my feet again. We had our flat fully furnished within 48 hours by a group of passionate volunteers.
The common thing among all of the people I came across was hope. We need hope now more than any time before, it is crucial to promote the narrative of hope and turn our failures and disappointments into opportunities. These are difficult times for all of us with all the mess in the world the narrative of hope will do us good to get over the difficulties and differences and work for a better tomorrow.
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The 20th-26th June marked Refugee Week. Many events took place over the course of the week to celebrate refugees in Birmingham, such as the Celebrating Sanctuary Festival that hosted performances, film screenings, and exhibitions. During Refugee Week came the EU Referendum, where 52% of the UK voted to leave the EU. Following this result, the UK has witnessed a horrifying amount of racist abuse.
Like many people we were devastated by the images and stories of the refugee crisis of 2015 and, through opportunities at the University of Birmingham, Beatrice Updegraff directed the UK premiere of No Such Cold Thing by Naomi Wallace, turning it into an immersive piece of political theatre set on a washed up Turkish beach. The audience sat in dinghies, the actors performed in sand and the entire space was surrounded with Syrian and Afghan propaganda. Whilst directing, Updegraff discovered more about refugee camps around Europe. Updegraff and I attended the Platforma conference in Leicester last November - a biannual event to celebrate refugee arts, and decided to raise money for charities based in the Calais Jungle.
Over Christmas, Updegraff got in touch with Good Chance Calais, a theatre company working with refugees in the jungle, and Calais Action, a grassroots organisation providing people with basic aid. We discovered that the majority of people in the camps eat once in twenty-four hours, cannot wash and are freezing cold in their summer clothes. It was rapidly approaching winter so Updegraff set up a fundraising page to collect money to take to Calais in order to buy and distribute basic aid. The page got shared around the university and my initial target of 500 was smashed through everyone's generosity; the page ended up raising over 1,600. The money was sent direct to Calais Action and provided people with shelter, food, clothes and basic hygiene.
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I volunteer for a Birmingham-based charity called Restore UK. Restore offer a service called Befriending where, following training, volunteers are matched with a refugee or asylum and they can meet them one-to-one to listen to any concerns they may have, chat, and support them. Restore also organize group trips for refugees to places like museums, parks, and concert halls. Additionally, the charity provides help with job applications to support refugees as they apply for work.
Following our work with refugees, in February we attended the Refugee Week conference at which we met an incredible host of refugee artists from around the globe. Updegraff and I were inspired by a project in London where two individuals took images of themselves with a banner saying 'Refugees Welcome' at some of the city's famous landmarks. With a customized doormat reading 'Refugees Welcome', we photographed ourselves outside fifty-two landmarks in Birmingham throughout Refugee Week. We chose to do fifty-two images as the previous week 52% of the country voted to leave Europe. That is not to say that that 52% would not all welcome refugees themselves, but there is a small minority in the Brexit campaign who are against bringing people to the safety of the UK. We were shocked that Birmingham decided to leave the EU so wanted to illustrate that despite this decision, it is still a place of welcome and sanctuary for those who need it.
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When you hear the words 'British fashion', what does it conjure up in your mind?
London? Burberry? Central Saint Martins perhaps? In other words, a big city, a global lifestyle brand and world-renowned fashion education.
You may not naturally think of a British factory; the machinery, the skills, the years of experience. The oft-viewed bleak world of textile manufacturing is perhaps not what is best known to have propelled our country to its present position amongst the higher echelons of the fashion industry.
I've always understood the clothing manufacturing industry in this country to be a closed and small one. Just quite how small, I didn't realise until recently.
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Meet The Manufacturer is the largest gathering for professionals in the British textile manufacturing industry, and having attended for the first time in May, it's certainly the best place to find a faithful collaborator.
Meet the Manufacturer May 2016, image courtesy of meetthemanufacturer.co.uk
In addition to discussions around heritage and innovation, bringing mass-customisation to the industry and understanding the supply chain, the idea that struck me most sharply, was that of our cultural identity. And the reality that we have been, and are still in danger of, losing control of it.
There are between 100 and 150 thousand people employed in the UK textile manufacturing industry today - one sixth compared to about 30 years ago.
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This is mainly due, of course, to the change in our consumption levels, as well as the ease of manufacturing abroad in larger, and cheaper quantities. But fashion education must also play a part in this. Today, we are taught to be 'designers', not 'makers'. The white collar still preferable to the blue. It's all about aspiration.
I've mentioned before the extreme disconnect between the wearer of a garment and its maker, but it is just as common today to find a designer who cannot cut a pattern or stitch a seam.
Right now, the story of our clothing is less about investing in luxury and skill, and more about fine tuning a process of passive production. One person designs, one person makes, another thinks about who's going buy it and when, someone else sells it and then someone else analyses its success. No wonder the industry as a whole is in crisis.
Enter Fashion Enter - the thoroughly modern British factory.
Situated in North London, they produce clothing for ASOS, the M&S 'Best of British' line and, more recently, London born brand Finery, as well as smaller start up labels. But what makes them different is their investment in apprenticeships, skills and education alongside manufacture.
Forget the bleak stigma attached to a factory environment and think clean, airy, light filled spaces.
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The Factory, image courtesy of fashion-enter.com
The aim of their Fashion Technology Academy (the UK's first technical academy offering eight qualifications on the garment life cycle) is to keep clothing manufacturing skills alive in the UK. And it is hugely apparent that today there are not enough British people with the high level of manufacturing expertise required.
From short term stitching, pattern cutting and production skills classes to 24 month long apprenticeships, expert advice is available from technicians who've run their own factories, to seamstresses from iconic brands like Vivienne Westwood. The knowledge they have and experiences they are able to draw on, give a new generation the skills to move the industry forward.
Quality control station at The Factory, Fashion Enter
When significant change occurs, one of the first things we all invariably do, is to think about the effect it has on us as individuals and more broadly, the industry we work in.
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Former Financial Times manufacturing editor Peter Marsh cites on his latest website, Made Here Now, that 'De-industrialisation - manufacturing's shrinking share of the UK's economic output - has gone far enough. If we are to have sustainable economic growth and higher living standards, Britain must re-industrialise'.
Brexit was the last thing most people who work in, or aspire to work in the British fashion industry would have wished for. Now decided, the outcome itself seems of little consequence: it is how we react that is important now.
Britain is a patriotic country in many ways. But not, it seems, when it comes to the making and purchasing of clothing. British manufacture is a huge part of our cultural identity - an identity that we export successfully. A 'Made in Britain' label stands for heritage, skill and quality and lots of people want a piece of it. We as a country must to get behind it too.
The leadership race, or what semblance of a leadership race there was, between Theresa May and Andrea Leadsom has been one dominated by explicit focus on gender and what, to my mind, is the irrationally optimistic heralding of a feminist revolution. In the over-simplified eyes of many media outlets, two women on the ballot card rang synonymous with uncontaminated progress, change and victory for women, with many racing to draw comparisons between both candidates and Britain's first female Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher. Let me stress: I would love to think that our Prime Minister being a woman could mean more for feminism than simply the reassertion that head of state is a genderless position, however I remain infinitely more cautious, and Thatcher is the main reason why.
When, on 4th May 1979, a former Lincolnshire grammar school girl stood on the steps of Number 10, Downing Street in a royal blue suit quoting St Francis of Assisi, Britain felt itself to be witnessing a landmark victory for women. She beamed triumphantly from the front pages of international newspapers under ground-breaking headlines: "FIRST WOMAN TO HEAD A EUROPEAN GOVERNMENT". The power of those images and the effect of her win can never be underestimated. A woman was Prime Minister: in and of itself, this was revolutionary.
But the progress stopped there. What ostensibly appeared to be a victory for feminism - the rise to power of Britain's first female Prime Minister at the zenith of the Women's Liberation movement - was, in actuality, greatly undermined by Thatcher's total dissociation from the cause. Infamously claiming "I owe nothing to women's lib" and denouncing feminism as "poison", she hypocritically reinforced restrictive gender stereotypes which she herself had defied in her ascension to power. As her daughter, Carol, said, "She led by example", but this - for feminists - was never quite enough, with activist Beatrix Campbell concluding: "Nothing Margaret Thatcher did, absolutely nothing, created positive change for women. In fact she made everything worse."
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During her ascension to power, hope and optimism for the advancement of women under Thatcher can be forgiven, for she continually endorsed the widening of the female arena, stating that "the home should be the centre but not the boundary of a woman's life". In an article she wrote in 1952 entitled 'Wake Up, Women!' Thatcher insisted that having a career and children "could be combined", claiming that "the idea that the family suffers is [...] quite mistaken". Although promising, such statements were wholeheartedly undermined by the unbendingly Victorian stance she adopted from the 1970s onwards, rendering the rise to power of the first female premier, as former politician Shirley Williams famously lamented, "a wasted opportunity on a gargantuan scale". As Prime Minister she came increasingly to attribute social problems, crime and educational failure to the neglect of children by working mothers, condemning the rise of a "creche society", freezing child benefit and introducing a tax on workplace nurseries, adding between 700 to 1,000 to women's tax bills. Having become a role model for the generation behind her, Thatcher came to see herself as the exception to the rule, hypocritically condemning her emulators and championing the very stereotypes she had defied thirty years before.
Throughout her entire time in office, just one woman - Baroness Young, an unelected peer - secured a place in Thatcher's Cabinet, merely for one term. Fewer female MPs returned in Thatcher's 1979 government than in any election since 1951. In terms of in the workplace, so little progress was made on reducing the gender wage gap, that the European Court was forced to intervene, criticising the 1970 Equal Pay Act for failing to comply with the EEC Equal Pay Directive. Margaret Thatcher was no feminist hero and would have scorned the title herself. Her premiership tells us that it takes more than being elected to smash a glass ceiling; it takes helping others up too, not pulling the ladder up behind you.
After Farage's resignation I was at a loss. Who would be the next leader of UKIP and who had the vision to take us forward as a political party? Steve Woolfe is great MEP and a stalwart of UKIP but do not appeal to me and with Suzanne Evan's leadership bid being blocked I had no idea who I saw as the leader of UKIP. There was nobody who was suspected to stand who I could put my utter faith in to take UKIP forward, rebrand and fight tooth and nail for Brexit.
That was until Jonathan Arnott MEP through his hat into the ring. Jonathan has a true vision for UKIP, we are no longer a party of protest but a party for the future of the United Kingdom. No means no and that is regardless of the views of Theresa May or Jeremy Corbyn, we as a party must fight to secure the best deal possible for the United Kingdom outside of the European Union.
Jonathan's visions for UKIP are exactly what I hoped a candidate would announce. We must reach out to the 13.6 million people who voted to leave on June the 23rd but did not vote for UKIP in the general election. The traditional Labour voters especially in the North East (the area where Jonathan is an MEP for) have been abandoned by the champagne socialists who have completely forgotten the working class that they claim to represent. They are too busy holding secret meetings and internal infighting.
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Conservative voters will also be looking for something new along with some of their membership because of one women, Theresa May. Her chief of staff is Stephen Parkinson worked for Vote Leave, this shows the true moral standing of some elitist Conservatives. Their payroll is more important than their values, they do not need to care about what really happens to this country as inside their little bubble everything will always be fine. The Conservative party's membership will not stand for appointing a prime minister through the backdoor; UKIP should be willing and ready to take these hardworking activists and with Jonathan we will be. The Conservative party have denied the British public the best opportunity to get the best possible deal when leaving the European Union and they will not forgive or forget if the negotiations are screwed up.
As Jonathan said, the British people need to see a credible plan for Brexit, how we will create jobs and how we will deal with crime. They need a party which helps the workers, rewards hard work and supports SMEs. We as a party need to empower women and allow stay-at-home mums who want to work get there through improving our education system which is currently failing them. UKIP is not anti-immigration, it is anti-uncontrolled mass net immigration. The powers will soon flood back from Brussels to Westminster and this power needs to then, through devolution, come back to the people.
Nobody can become the new Farage, he was a one off. He fought 7 days a week, 18 hours a day to give us this referendum. He created and connected with UKIPs core voters and is one of the best orators of our time and Jonathan knows that this will be hard to emulate. He wants to do things differently, drawing on the vast talents, skills and expertise within UKIP. A team-based approach would bring even more democracy into UKIPs internal structures and give volunteers in UKIP the opportunity to shine.
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However to appeal to the 13.6 million voters that voted to leave but not for UKIP we need a strategy and Jonathan knows that. He is ready to establish task-forces for a variety of upcoming elections. Defending the council seats won in 2013 is a starting point, one for by-elections and obviously for the 2020 general election with contingency plans in place in case of an early general election. He understands the need for funding and fundraising which is a necessity for target seats such as Hartlepool in 2020. UKIPs message needs to develop, the quality of the literature needs to improve as do campaign materials. The constitution needs to be updated, bringing power back to the party membership with continued development on the party website as well as reforming the membership structure. Jonathan knows that the leader's job is to provide direction and accountability at every stage but not to micromanage it.
The day I was accepted into the Scots Guards was one of the proudest days of my life. I'd always wanted to join the army so I could follow in the family footsteps of my older brothers and felt very fortunate to be doing a job I enjoyed. It brought out the best in me and I worked harder than I ever had done before to establish myself and progress my career.
My time in the army taught me many things, from self-discipline to the value of teamwork and how to lead, but above all, it taught me to never give up, even when the odds are stacked against you. It's a mentality I've always believed in whole-heartedly, but when I was still in the army I never imagined that one day it would literally save my life.
It was in 2010 when life as I knew it changed forever and my career in the army came to an abrupt end. I was on tour in Afghanistan when I was injured by an improvised explosive device while travelling on a main supply route. The blast damaged my coccyx and caused multiple injuries to my entire left leg, resulting in chronic pain disorder, and it quickly became clear that my working life in the military was over.
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In many ways, I found it more difficult to come to terms with leaving the army than with the injury itself. Leaving meant losing a way of life I thrived on, being separated from a fantastic team of soldiers, friends and family who had been through a lot together, and abandoning my dream of a career in the Scots Guards.
After years of being in the army, the realities of moving back to my home town of Blackburn hit me like a tonne of bricks. I felt very disconnected from civilian life and struggled to see how I could ever fit in. Employment prospects were bleak and any jobs I did see advertised seemed impossible to secure. But despite all this, I was determined to move forward with my life.
Things started to change when I responded to an advert for The Prince's Trust. The youth charity has long supported military personnel making the transition into civilian life; a commitment it bolstered this month by signing the Armed Forces Covenant, pledging to help the employment prospects of people leaving the Armed Forces, wounded personnel and their families.
One of the many ways The Trust supports ex-Service men and women is by enabling wounded, injured or sick personnel to access secondments on its Team programme, a 12 week personal development course. I was selected to work as an Assistant Team Leader for Groundwork, a role initially supported with a grant from the Department for Education's Military Ethos funding and later through Help for Heroes, which works in partnership with The Trust. My role was to help vulnerable young people in Chorley to gain the skills, confidence and qualifications they needed to move into work, education or training.
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I could see the same sense of uncertainty I had so recently felt in many of the young people we were helping, but knew that with the right support they would find their way and build a better future for themselves. The experience of working with them was hugely rewarding and gave me something that had been missing from my life since I left the army - a sense of purpose and a feeling that I was doing something good for my community. I was so grateful for the opportunity to prove myself in a civilian role and was given all the help I needed to really make a success of it.
By this point, I was hooked on youth work and stayed on to run another Team programme, this time as Team Leader. When my secondment with Groundwork came to an end, I was delighted to accept a new role as a Fairbridge programme executive at The Prince's Trust's Pennine Lancashire Centre in Burnley, after 18 months of hard work and establishing programme stability. I was soon promoted to Programme manager and now help young people on The Trust's Fairbridge programme.
'You lost to a girl!'
It's a familiar playground taunt, and one now applicable to all who stood against Theresa May in the Conservative leadership race -- and is soon likely to haunt Donald Trump. Only a week ago the national media threatened us with a Boris and Trump pairing (and all the floppy blond hair to go with it) but now we now seem destined for a UK and USA led by Hillary Clinton and Theresa May.
That these two women are winning major and, in the UK's case, unprecedented leadership contests, is a cause for celebration. The very fact that women are now electable is exciting, given that the UK has only ever had one female leader and that some thirty years ago, and the USA never. Together we are edging towards the ultimate and (you would think) rather reasonable goal that the labels foisted on an individual, whether regarding gender, race or sexuality, do not dictate their electability.
In a nation in which fifty percent of the population are women, fifty percent of the government should be female. And not because some stringent quota is imposed, but because if simply being a woman didn't hinder a woman's chances in politics, then the numbers would more-or-less even themselves out. The Fawcett Society predicts that a child born in today's world will be drawing their pension before seeing gender parity in the House of Commons: but perhaps the precedent set by Theresa and Hillary will give other women a boost.
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All of this is not to say that either Theresa or Hillary are necessarily admirable candidates, of course. Whilst both women have their strengths, trailing behind Theresa is a long list of questionable acts and statements as Home Secretary, whilst Hillary is burdened by her private e-mail scandal and marriage to a known philanderer at best, and sexual predator at worst. But again, the very fact that we generally seem to have been scrutinising these women's records and reputations rather than failing to move past their matching chromosomes is heartening to a generation who have only ever known male leaders.
But it's not quite time to crack open the champagne or dance around singing 'who runs the world, girls!' just yet. For one thing, we should probably still be somewhat abashed by how poorly the UK and USA rank for gender representation in government: forty-eighth and ninety-sixth respectively out of the 193 countries surveyed by the Inter-Parliamentary Union, behind Rwanda, Bangladesh and Senegal who have all already had female PMs. Then there's also the inescapable fact that, despite their differing politics, Theresa and Hillary are the same kind of woman.
Whilst their race, age bracket and even haircut shouldn't really matter -- and don't -- it's almost impossible not to notice that they're almost the same. Factor in Margaret Thatcher and Angela Merkel (both of whom Theresa has already been compared to) and you find a group of well-established, middle-aged and level-headed women known for their steely determination and traditionally masculine traits. Thatcher might have been the 'Iron Lady' but May is already the 'Ice Queen'.
Whilst some progress may have been made by way of gender parity, the sort of woman we trust in leadership roles clearly hasn't changed much. It's difficult to imagine a female-equivalent Jeremy Corbyn, beloved by the electorate for his 'kinder politics', or a female Gove or Boris, allowed to show a little personality. Theresa and Hillary may represent one small step for womankind, but there's still an awful lot of room for improvement for women in politics.
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Thursday 14 July is a year since the nuclear deal was signed between the United Nations P5+1 and Iran. Experts believe this helped avert a catastrophic war in the Middle East. The key deal makers are strong contenders for the next Nobel Peace Prize.
Just after the deal was signed, the US media criticised President Obama's failure at the time to secure the release of three US prisoners, Pastor Saeed Abedini, former Marine Amir Hekmati and Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian.
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President Obama replied that he had personally reassured the prisoners' families that the US government was doing all it could. It turned out that Iran and the US had been discussing their release in secret side meetings in Vienna throughout the nuclear negotiations. Six months ago this Saturday, their release was secured.
My 76-year-old British dad, Grandpa Kamal to my daughters, has been held in the same prison as the US prisoners, on the same ludicrous charges. For years my dad has been denied visitors and been deprived of medical care. This Saturday is 1,900 days since his arrest - he has not seen his family for over five years. The Foreign Office told me that during the nuclear negotiations, they did not once bring up my dad's detention with Iran. I think that was a missed opportunity.
Just like the US prisoners, my dad is a pawn in a political war. My dad was taken without charge or explanation by plainclothes Iranian agents from his Tehran apartment to Evin prison, held for 18 months in solitary confinement and questioned about his links with UK. In 2013 Dad was brought, without his lawyer, before Judge Salavati of the Revolutionary Court who ruled that Dad was guilty of alleged "espionage", without providing any evidence or explanation or paperwork about the judgement. Of course Dad strenuously denies the charge.
Over the years my dad's lawyer has made over 50 applications for his release, and he and we keep being told he is about to be released - but nothing changes.
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I predict that this October, the Nobel Peace Prize will be awarded to the nuclear deal diplomats, with Dad still languishing in Evin prison. By then he will hold the world record for the length of time a European citizen has ever been imprisoned in Iran.
We must not rest until my dad is back home with his wife, daughter, son and two granddaughters. We have all suffered for too long.
Theresa May, please do everything you can to help free Grandpa Kamal before it is too late.
The morning after the UK referendum, on 24 June, I woke up feeling a strong sense of deja-vu: that I had seen and gone through it all before, around the time of the collapse of the USSR back in 1991.
For over 20 years now it has been fashionable to proclaim how terrible life was under the Soviet Union - and the further away it gets, the greater the number of myths supporting that narrative. Yet no situation can be completely bad, or good, for that matter.
I grew up in our expansive family home in an idyllic, popular spa town, at the foothills of the Caucasus - what was then the South Ossetian Autonomous Region, within the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic, one of the 15 republics comprising the USSR.
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Everyone was guaranteed social security. At 14, when I was admitted to hospital with advanced tonsillitis, I was put in a separate ward and fed four hot meals a day. The ward was cleaned twice daily and a formidable looking matron would turn up unannounced to carry out spot inspections, running cotton wool along the lino and examining it by the window through her thick glasses.
We could leave our doors either unlocked or with the key under the mat, in complete security. In the twenty-five years prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union, according to official statistics, there had been no murders committed in South Ossetia, with its 97,000 multi-ethnic population and large numbers of tourists.
Education was of high quality and free of charge. We were multi-lingual in Ossetian, Russian and Georgian, but also knew bits of Hebrew picked up from our neighbours' children, and Armenian, Turkish and Greek expressions and songs. There was a strong sense of community, everyone knew everyone else. As children, we always looked forward to our neighbours' national holidays and celebrated them together. We had the highest percentage of mixed marriages in the USSR.
I was sixteen when I first learnt the meaning of 'xenophobia' and 'ethnic discrimination'. Like most girls of my age I had a number of young suitors, none of whom I entertained. One was a likeable, plump lad who used to drive his father's flashy Volga. One day his mother let it be known using the local grapevine - as effective as today's Facebook - that the family did not approve of their only son having anything to do with me. She softened her censure by adding that I was a "nice girl but an Ossetian, nevertheless".
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The boy was Georgian. We had never previously thought of each other in terms of our ethnic origin. Being a bit of a gourmet, I had only ever characterised my friends according to their national cuisines. In fact, there was a sort of unspoken collective taboo in Ossetian society on any discussion of ethnicity. Maybe it was something to do with the trauma of historical narratives that the Nazis had spared the Ossetians as 'representatives of the true Aryan race', or the fact that our society was sufficiently mature and stable not to brandish its past.
I have to admit, I can still remember my indignation, anger and pain at that public declaration of my unsuitability. The boy was not even my type, and I found his mother's words downright unfair. I wanted to deliver a stinging riposte in return, but for some reason, I could not bring myself to humiliate those who had insulted me, my family and my nation. I realised that if I was to, my relations with my Georgian - and other non-Ossetian friends - would never be the same again and I would isolate myself from them. On reflection, I realised that secretly held, or even open expressions of belonging to an exclusive ethnic, class or other identity group is a time bomb waiting to go off - one which went off many years later in front of my eyes during the collapse of the Soviet Union.
I will not go into the root causes of the downfall of the Soviet Union, but the ease with which it happened had much to do with people's fears. The fear of change at the time of perestroika had provoked a retreat from the present into the past, each into their history. That, in turn, had led to an explosion of racism whose potential had been accumulating over the decades during which Moscow ignored multi-national identities and tried to impose instead a common 'Soviet' identity, rooted in the dominant Russian culture.
It all started so simply and did not appear serious, a bit ridiculous even. All sorts of political and public figures emerged, their slogans founded on the basic assumption of 'we are superior to them', which was then automatically interpreted by the few nationalistically minded sectors of society as 'us against them'. Yet people overall did not pay that much attention. They were used to stability and complacent that it would not be undermined by the destructive blather of the new right.
I am far from wanting to draw parallels with the UK, but listening to the British TV, I had the surreal sense that the then leaders of the former Soviet nationalist movements had been listening in back then - so similar were their phrases, such as 'finally regaining our independence and living the way we want', 'getting rid of those who we have to maintain', 'managing our own economic resources and natural wealth, and 'building our own relations with who we want'.
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Just like some Brexiteers, their USSR predecessors had also talked about things being difficult economically to begin with, but that it would stabilise later on and everyone would enjoy a bright and happy future, liberated from each other.
However, while in the UK, one also hears strong voices of reason, calls to and actions for tolerance, this was absent from the public discourse in the final days of the USSR. There, the lack of freedom of speech and thus the culture of holding what should be political and public debates within only narrow circles of friends and relatives, played its fateful part.
All of us in Georgia loved to moan about the Soviet Union in the same way they love to attack the European Union over here. We were annoyed by the high degree of bureaucracy, and hated Moscow's attempt to govern all of us in a centralised fashion, to develop a single set of standards for us all, despite our differences. Yet no one among my close circle ever wanted to build a political or public career. We invested in our own individual growth and education with the result that the country lacked a healthy critical mass of people, capable of bringing about positive change, opposing the radicalisation of public discourse and forestalling many catastrophic consequences.
Centrifugal tendencies emerged first in the Soviet republics with the strongest economies. Georgia, possibly the richest, was a case in point and successfully extricated itself from the USSR. Yet it also had two autonomous regions, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, which did not want to secede from the USSR and did not want to remain part of Georgia, whose political project had begun with the slogan 'Georgia for Georgians.'
Very soon, both South Ossetia and Abkhazia officially declared their desire to secede from Georgia and then the conflicts could no longer be contained as they descended into armed violence, the burning down of hundreds of villages and large-scale displacement on people ethnic grounds.
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I shall not go into the dire consequences this had for the economy, education system, science, social security, etc. The most tragic and irrevocable were the deaths, ruined lives, lost generations who had been stripped of what we had possessed, nations who lost confidence in each other and who now prefer to live in isolation from each other to economic and other types of cooperation.
Ever since, I have heard time again people contemplate the missed opportunities, how everything could have been so different, how prosperous we could have been by now - that even the break up of the USSR could have been managed differently, preserving its economic, scientific and other potential, had xenophobia not destroyed the best thing the USSR possessed - its human potential.
Another part of my deja-vu is this. There is a widely held view in post-Soviet countries that the collapse of the USSR had all been part of a plan hatched by the West and the USA in particular. This mind set, where one positions oneself as a victim, justifies passivity and the sense that it is out of our hands, everything has already been decided at the highest level. It reduces our individual agency and that of society as a whole, and conversely, attributes magical powers to those who have done this to us. Strangely enough, we have heard opinions expressed here, too, that both Europe and the UK are acting according to Putin's plan.
Britain's civic and government institutions are strong. Many of them reacted in a robust way both to the divisive 'them and us' propaganda before the referendum and the outbreak of xenophobic abuse afterwards. In the first week after Brexit, in speaking to complete strangers on three separate occasions, on hearing my accent they felt the need to apologise to me personally for what was going on. At the same time, they blamed the politicians for stirring things up - something you hear from people in all conflict and post-conflict zones.
As long as our societies and our countries are comprised of human beings, no corner of the world is totally immune from the emergence of destructive nationalist tendencies that can undermine everything that has been built over centuries. In every conflict region I have worked in or visited, people say the same: 'we never thought this could happen to us'.
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Irresponsible experiments by political forces or movements who build their agenda by pitting one group against another, scapegoating and xenophobia is playing with fire, even in the healthiest and most stable societies. It is just a matter of time before such fire can get out of control.
There are simple fire prevention rules and regulations, known to everyone. They are based on common human values which propose that one should behave towards others the same way in which you would like them to behave towards you. The only difficulty is that such fire safety rules have to be observed by each and every one of us, on a day-to-day basis.
For a few fleeting seconds last week, I thought something good had actually happened as a result of the Leave vote. A private message on Facebook came through from a neighbour; "Just to give you the heads up..." it said, "...they've cancelled/suspended the Marlowe scheme. One word. Brexit." As I gawped at my phone and made a noise only audible to dogs, our surveyor's number flashed up; calling me with the same news. A hand-delivered letter confirming it arrived shortly after from Ken Jones, Director of Housing at the London Borough of Waltham Forest.
If you've read my blog previously you'll know that "the Marlowe scheme" has been looming ominously over my community in Walthamstow for a couple of years now. Bafflingly described by local MP Stella Creasy as "community-led regeneration", it spells the death knell for dozens of privately-owned homes (including my own), community space, thriving local businesses and three children's play areas, which supposedly must be sacrificed in order for the London Borough of Waltham Forest's "development partner" Countryside to knock down some council homes and build significantly less council homes in their place.
Many of us fought the development tooth and nail but our numbers dwindled as time went on; compulsory purchase orders are frighteningly expensive and complex to challenge. We were one of the last families to agree a price - we had to go to the wire with that CPO to get close to what our house is worth. It shouldn't have been so stressful, or so hard.
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Agreeing the price is only the start of a new, fresh hell - as most people who have ever bought property in England will know. Even the simplest transaction means months of conveyancing, a process akin to firing banknotes indiscriminately out of a blunderbuss at various mansplaining shits in shiny suits, hoping - often vainly - that there will be something tangible to show for it at the end. First, however, there's the house hunt. Even I, nosy parker that I am, was quite looking forward to that bit.
The first house knocked that tiny sliver of optimism out of me. Cramped, dilapidated and nicotine-stained, it stank overwhelmingly of hair. One bedroom was entirely filled with dozens of sinister porcelain dolls; another with a fully decorated nine-foot Christmas tree (it was the end of January). Far more deserving of demolition than our bright, spacious family home, it was on with Foxtons for the same price as we'd been offered for ours.
After that, the near-misses and disappointments came thick and fast. The compact yet beautifully decorated home with around forty different incense burners and reed diffusers, clearly masking the stench of death. The big, shabby ex-rental house that we pulled out of after our offer was accepted, ostensibly because it once had subsidence but in actuality because I belatedly realised that buying a house on a 40 mph main road when you own two exceptionally stupid cats is a really, really bad idea. The stunning huge Victorian terrace that was too good to be true for that price (Chimney of Damocles).
When we saw The One, the one that felt like home, the one we liked even more than what we have, I sat in my car on the driveway of the current Casa Briggs for a long time afterwards, tearfully and silently apologising to the lovely home we were giving up on. And then I pulled myself together, berated myself for saying sorry to bricks and started the tedious process of buying the new house.
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So it was five months later - and days away from the exchange of contracts - when we got the news that Countryside were "unable to commence development" as a result of the "current national situation." To say my feelings were mixed is an understatement. Initially euphoric at the thought of our house, our local playground, being spared demolition, I then felt anger about the people who had already been forced out of the community; the decent homes that have sat boarded up for months. Latterly, it hit me that this could mean for us many more years of limbo, stuck in a home we would ultimately once again be required to vacate once the economy picked back up. And what about the thousands of pounds we'd already spent on the purchase of the new place, money we would only get back from the council in the event of a completion?
Naively, it never crossed my mind that the developer would pull out of the scheme. We heard so many times from the council and Stella that the regeneration was all about building social housing - not profit. But Countryside isn't a non-profit organisation.
Yet forty-eight hours after the shock announcement, Countryside were back on board and, bizarrely, quoted as claiming that they had always been. A spokesperson from the developers told the Waltham Forest Echo that, "A junior member of the project team incorrectly briefed Waltham Forest Council. Unfortunately, by the time this error was spotted, letters to residents had already been issued. A new letter with correct information is being sent out this week."
The "correct information" is that the bulldozers will arrive in September. Sorry about that, everyone! Bit of an admin error. But when you're the Director of Housing for a London Borough, of course you're going to believe an office junior when they tell you your 180 million partnership is on hold possibly forever because, you know, Brexit. No need to check with anyone more accountable before you ring the lawyers and mailshot an entire community.
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Of course I'm being sarcastic. Something stinks here and no amount of Airwick diffusers and joss sticks can disguise that waft. At the time of writing, a week later, no new letter has materialised. Most of my remaining neighbours still think their homes are safe. Many of them are temporarily-housed social tenants who now think they can stay on Marlowe Road.
I need to blog about this, I told my husband a few days ago in the pub. But I don't know how, I said. It's just a rambling stream of angry consciousness, what's the overriding message? He paused, sipped his gentrified Walthamstow pint and replied: contempt. Disrespect. The utter lack of empathy that's been a consistent theme throughout this whole experience, especially from those we elected to represent us.
Yesterday we exchanged. I guess that makes us the "lucky" ones. We finally get closure. I dread to think how it will be for others affected by CPO now; what risible price will they be offered in today's economy? And how many affordable and social rent homes will be sacrificed to keep development partners sweet across the UK?
Jeremy Corbyn took the opportunity to visit the European Union at the height of the referendum on Labour's continued membership of the world's most successful peace project. Not to make a speech, speak truth to power in Brussels - but to holiday. Portugal saw more of Corbyn than whole regions of England did. The Labour leader didn't visit the north-east once, where the EU is vital to the economy.
Worse, having returned from said holiday, there was no noticeable change in tempo. More lacklustre speeches, more a long list of problems with the EU than opportunities if we remain. But the mask slipped at 10.01pm on 23 June. Shadow chancellor John McDonnell told the world that Corbyn was where the country was. It turned out to be for 'Leave'. No real surprise then - just a confirmation of what we all knew.
Labour is at a fork in the road. The road it takes could decide so much about the nation's future.
Tory MPs from the 1990s believe that, had Ken Clarke become the leader of the opposition, Britain would have joined the euro. Their support for William Hague and Iain Duncan Smith at least stopped that, even if they did go on to lose.
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If Labour re-elects Corbyn, a Leaver, he will be in post for the foreseeable future. Does anyone think that if he is leader of the opposition when Theresa May invokes Article 50 he'll be fighting for Britain's role in a single market that is about to include the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership? His catastrophic misjudgement on 24 June, calling for Article 50 to be invoked, tells you all you need to know about his ability to fight for Britain's best interests and get for working people the rights they rely on and the deal they need.
The voters must get their way and Britain will hurtle towards the exit door. But, as I have written in Progress' Editorial this month: Labour must set being back in Europe as its long-term goal. This is what we believe and that does not change. As interdependence grows, the case for international cooperation grows with it. Working with our closest neighbours is often tough, but it is always the right thing to do.
If you want Labour to remain a 'Remain' party, we need a leader other than Corbyn.
This does not mean abandoning the north or our heartlands. Instead, this means going to the difficult places, the issues we have not fully confronted for so long. Many Labour people across the country will come out and vote for us, but being pro-European needs to be the baseline for the party. Our hard-working and tenacious MPs will step up and use their strong relationship with their voters to do the rest.
We need to be the best Europeans we can be. Not because we are pro the institutions themselves but because we are set to leave the world's most successful peace project. The benefits of being in the EU we took for granted will come to the fore. Pro-Europeans must be ready to seize those opportunities. Particularly, as 'Project Fear' gives way to 'Project Understatement', a second scare campaign will not work. It must be a hearts and minds campaign.
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On the Monday evening after the referendum result, while Jeremy Corbyn was stuck in a brutal meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party, the Manchester and Trafford branch of the informal organisation Momentum held one of its regular meetings in the Friends' Meeting House behind Manchester Central Library. It had been planned before the current Parliamentary rebellion against Corbyn, but over the previous two days two-thirds of the shadow cabinet had left it and MP after MP was taking to the media to call for his resignation, and inevitably the meeting's agenda would be overshadowed by these events.
Momentum, established nine months ago within the Labour Party to support the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn, is paradigmatic of the traditional British Left. Outside every meeting, a middle-aged man hands out copies of the Socialist Worker. You cannot enter without receiving four separate leaflets damning austerity and advertising future meetings. The meetings can swing from tub-thumping rhetoric about Blairites and Tories - not that any distinction need be made between them - to complaints about the manifold flaws of poorly-funded local transport from more self-conscious types, and both will be heard with equal respect. At an early meeting in Cambridge last year, the radical Marxists were present, but (with one exception) were measured and realistic. At every meeting, even one held in the middle of an open civil war that threatens to tear down everything Momentum has worked for, there is an infectious feeling of optimism and enthusiasm.
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The speakers on that Monday were eager to contest some of the claims surrounding the challenge to Corbyn. Charlotte Nichols, the National Women's Officer for Young Labour, praised his work during the referendum campaign, pointing out that Labour supporters and the young, to which groups Corbyn has a particular appeal, both voted overwhelmingly for Remain. She cited a Remain event planned for 25 people to which 450 turned up. She then rattled through a string of Corbyn's successes as leader, and argued that the attacks were coming from those who had always been opposed to his leadership.
Leigh Drennan, the chairman of North-West Young Labour, chipped in with similar remarks, arguing that "No-one really believes that Jeremy Corbyn is the reason people voted to leave the European Union" and highlighting a survey of Labour members which found 73% approval of Corbyn's leadership. There was a palpable sense of frustration that these things are not being reported widely, and even more frustration when the discussion turned to the rebellious MPs, who were accused of constructing "a self-fulfilling prophecy" in which their criticisms of Corbyn's leadership only exacerbated his difficulties.
Contrary to the popular perception of Corbynites that they are more interested in bickering with internal opponents than in fighting the government, Momentum will state that its priority is winning elections. It has been condemning the PLP's actions not on grounds of ideological purity, but because they have prevented the party from attacking the Conservatives.
The principal criticism of 'the Blairites' in the Friends' Meeting House was that their strategy, summarised as "trotting out the 1997 manifesto", was not electorally viable in the new political climate, not that they were betraying the principles of the party. This should not necessarily be taken at face value: the description itself, like the term 'Blairites', is evidently reductionist, and of course the words of Momentum's leaders do not necessarily represent the opinions of members.
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Nonetheless, there is a definitive incentive now for Corbynites to prioritise electoral success. The Left's hold on the leadership is fundamentally fragile. Corbyn is the only left-wing MP who might be able to avoid being barred from appearing on a leadership ballot by the closed ranks of the PLP. If he loses a general election, the Left will be marginalised in the party again for decades.
Perhaps it is an awareness of this predicament which has led Momentum to warn its members against an exodus in the event of Corbyn's deposition. Instead, it has called upon them to get left-wingers elected to the bewildering plethora of committees and sub-committees that Tony Blair created to establish distance between the membership and the central leadership, presumably so that if Corbyn is forced out, the Left can nonetheless be reconstructed within the party from the bottom up.
This seems to confirm one of the most common criticisms of Momentum, that they are an entryist group taking to flood the party's power structures with extremists. In fact, no-one who has actually attended a Momentum meeting could gain the impression that the group is the successor to Militant. It fosters a diversity of opinion: the introductions at one meeting revealed a spectrum of attendance from revolutionary anarcho-syndicalists to local bus network obsessives, and attendees debated on Monday whether it might be better for Corbyn to step down so that the Left could begin to build its presence in the party from scratch, rather than try to hold on to a leadership isolated by the PLP.
What is more, Momentum activists will argue that their attempts to gain control of mechanisms within the party are only redressing the balance, since the Labour Right currently maintains its grip on most of them. One activist admitted that the Right is much better organised than the Left within the constituency parties, since most of them have been there for years, whereas the Momentum members are often new to party procedures.
Usually, Momentum is not so fixated on internal party struggles. In recent months their agenda has included various national issues, including voter registration and the junior doctors' strike, in which they have been emphatically supportive of the strikers. It seems probable that they will oppose the most recent contract agreed between the BMA and the government. The group has also co-ordinated with the NUT, and will press for a teacher-orientated education policy.
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In recent years East Africa has emerged as a hotbed of creative solutions to meeting people's energy needs as I saw for myself during my visit to Kenya and Tanzania earlier this year. The nexus between clean energy and mobile-based technology is one that is helping bring power to some of the remotest corners of the continent.
In Kenya, where around 80% of the population lacks access to mains electricity, 2015 Ashden Award winner SteamaCo is using software and hardware developments to bring the benefits of clean energy to off-grid customers through solar powered micro-grids. They use a cloud-based remote metering and payments system which monitors energy use, lets the users pay for power using their mobile phones, and quickly troubleshoots any problems. The micro-grids work like mini power stations for each village, supplying enough energy to run small businesses, as well as power TVs, radios and bright lights in the home.
I was lucky enough to visit Oloolaimutia, a market town on the edge of the Masai Mara National Reserve; small in terms of number of residents but with a complicated energy access picture. SteamaCo has helped install a solar powered mini-grid operated by PowerGen and, often for the first time, shops now have lights so that they can stay open after dark, cafes and bars can serve cold beer and have TV or music playing. The butcher has a fridge. A cinema has opened and there is an internet cafe. The customers we met all spoke very positively of having their own micro-grid connection - one restaurant owner said that having a TV attracted more customers; a hair dresser told us that she no longer had to use a dirty diesel generator and saved money in the process.
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Checking the circuit boards at the Entasopia micro-grid power station.
Since the micro-grid was installed the national grid is being expanded to the village but the connection charge is high, sometimes as much as US$1000 and so beyond the reach of individuals and small businesses. The village school and a safari lodge are the only ones that will benefit from this extension. Apart from the prohibitive connection cost to the national grid, the electricity service can be unreliable for remote spots such as Oloolaimutia, so the mini-grid here is thriving and will be in demand for some time, but SteamaCo want to get to the point where, when the macro-grid arrives, the micro-grid can then connect up which would be a win-win situation. The existence of the micro-grid proves demand in an area which is important for return on investment of grid expansion. In turn, the macro-grid could take over the assets once it arrives, mitigating a risk for the micro-grid operator.
In neighbouring Tanzania, Off Grid Electric is using the mobile money revolution to sell solar home systems to off grid homes and small businesses at an affordable price. Their pay-as-you-go service is tailored to user needs, with flexible payments, opportunity to change service level, and excellent support from a customer care team and local agents, as well as a sophisticated app-based customer registration and product tracking system.
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When Off Grid Electric won their Ashden Award in 2014, they had around 12,500 customers. Fast forward just two years and they have more than 100,000. The workforce has gone from 80 employees to 900 and they are now selling more than 10,000 solar home systems a month! Off Grid are also partnering with the Tanzanian government on the One Million Solar Homes initiative which aims to harness the sun's power for one million properties by 2017 in a country where, according to the International Energy Agency's most recent World Energy Outlook, only 24% of the population have access to electricity.
Due to popular demand, much of their work now focuses on appliances and Off Grid provides a radio or TV for many of the systems that they sell (depending on its size). They recently announced a business in a box product line called Kazi na Zola (Work with Zola). This offering provides solar-powered business tools like solar powered hair clippers for people to be able to set up their own barber shop. And their research and development team are already working on the next level up, exploring how to power larger appliances such as computers and fridges in order to be able to respond to consumer demand. One couple who we visited were the proud owner of an M120 solar home system capable of charging a small TV, a radio and indoor and outdoor lighting. There are so many uses for solar power that Off Grid is busy developing to meet the specific needs of their market.
OffGrid Electric customers. Photo: Rachel Ambrose
One of this year's Ashden Award winners, Tanzanian- and US-based finance organisation SunFunder, has identified a crucial element when it comes to the success of start-up solar enterprises like SteamaCo and Off Grid Electric - the need for working capital. The company is filling the vital funding gap between investors and businesses specialising in off-grid solar energy that need short-term loans. By unlocking capital for debt finance, they are enabling solar companies to make power an affordable reality for the millions living off-grid.
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SunFunder has so far provided over $12 million of finance to 24 solar businesses in ten countries, helping them to offer solar electricity to thousands of people, and are currently in the process of raising a $50 million fund. By moving enterprises from seed funding and grants to securing larger, commercially viable investment needed for expansion and scale-up, we can start to tackle "the Missing Middle" that's currently impeding progress towards achieving access to affordable and clean energy for all.
The past few weeks in British politics, and the UK more widely, have been some of the most unsettling in recent memory. The EU Referendum vote was, of course, a seismic event - as one journalist pointed out the following day 'our Prime Minister has resigned and it's only the third story on the news' - and the aftershocks may be even greater than the original quake. Markets are volatile, the pound has hit record lows and politics has been in disarray. We now have a new Prime Minister and leader of the Conservative party, an experienced politician with the weight of the party behind her, but there is no doubt there will be more change to come.
There has also been enormous emotional impact. After an extremely polarising campaign, divisions within our society have been exposed and run deep. Millions of people across the UK are at best profoundly unsettled and at worst genuinely afraid of both the impact of Brexit and of the disparities and disaffection it reveals in our society.
Now is no time for further division. It is the moment to invest in stronger, more cohesive societies, to pursue strategies that address the inequity of opportunity, mistrust of elites and disillusionment felt by so many in the UK. But this investment must be made with our eyes firmly on the world beyond our borders.
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Now is not the time to turn inwards and away from our positive and progressive role in the world - a world where 1.5 billion people are affected by conflict and violence, where 65 million people have been forced to flee their homes, where poverty, injustice and fear are a feature of everyday life for millions of men, women and children. While we grapple with our own domestic turmoil, our inequalities, our disenfranchised youth, our fear of being overwhelmed by the global crises of displacement and of climate change, much of the rest of the world has been doing the same. In many of the places my organisation, Mercy Corps, works - be it Syria, Somalia or South Sudan - these challenges are much more immediate, life threatening and critical than they are to most people here.
As decisions are being taken about a UK outside the EU, we in the international NGO sector have an important part to play in ensuring widespread understanding of the UK's role in international relief and development. We must continue to champion the UK's enormous achievements - from helping to halve the number of children dying from preventable diseases, to getting 11 million more children into education. We must also be honest about the complexities and risks of what we do, move beyond simplistic messaging and engage with sections of society and the media less inclined to instinctively support us. We must welcome debate, be open to alternative views and accepting of constructive criticism. In a time of increasing populist clamour for 'none of the above' we must do all we can to build and maintain trust in an international third sector ever more interconnected with that of the worlds of politics and business.
Mercy Corps works in some of the toughest places on earth, often in the midst of conflict, to try to build secure, productive and just communities that can emerge from crisis and thrive. In states of high fragility, such as Nigeria and Afghanistan, we've been working (with the UK government's Department For International Development funding) with thousands of young people whose lives have been devastated by conflict, poor governance and lack of opportunity to give them the skills and capacities they need to build a positive future, to reduce the factors driving them to participate in further violence. None of this is easy or without risk, but it is vital.
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The UK has never shied away from tackling such global challenges - our politicians, our public, our universities, think tanks and NGOs have made phenomenal contributions to ending poverty and suffering the world over. That's not just about the amount we spend on aid (although we should rightly be proud of the fact that we were the first G8 country to commit to spending 0.7% of our Gross National Income on aid, not to mention the overwhelming public response to natural disasters) but about doing all we can to make sure that aid is spent well, accountably, and that it contributes to real, lasting change even in the toughest places. It is about our wider positive role in the world - through diplomacy, through fair trade policies, through our support for human rights and international law. It is about our ability to lead by example, and press other governments to end corruption, violence and abuse - creating a better world for all of us.
Sadiq Khan has pledged to be "the most pro-business Mayor yet". He could start by taking a bold new approach to regeneration.
When planning regeneration, it's important to look beyond the surface material: shopping centres emerging from abandoned warehouses; rusting dockyards born again as conference centres; crumbling power stations converted into soaring office blocks.
All of the above certainly give the impression of healthy neighbourhoods and prosperity, but this can be misleading. What sort of businesses are filling these new spaces, and what are they paying to be there? Are they earning enough to hire more employees and expand once the rent is deducted? Do they have long-term interests in the area? What happens if they decide to pack up and go? Who then is the real beneficiary of the redevelopment?
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These are the questions that the Mayor and his team need to be asking as they draw up the London Plan. They have no doubt begun to receive proposals for ambitious and exciting property development schemes. Finding something sleek and cool-looking to invest in will be easy. Finding a scheme that delivers genuine long term economic benefits to an area will take a bit more work, and require the Mayor to weigh up whether property owners or business occupiers are the true beneficiaries.
It's the business occupiers that create jobs, and it's the start-ups, entrepreneurs and innovators that create the jobs of tomorrow. This group should be the target for public investment in regeneration.
London is the start-up capital of Britain and home to a number of SME clusters for Britain's growing tech industry and the creative industries, a sector that now generates nearly 9.6 million per hour. Last year, over 200,000 start-ups were created in the Capital. Imagine the boost to the city's economy if each were able to hire just one more employee this year.
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But start-ups face many challenges that stand in the way of this. Eight out of 10 fail in their first year for a variety of reasons including lack of private sector finance and lack of affordable workspace. These are areas where public investment could help.
What could this look like?
In Camden, the Collective project renovated the abandoned National Temperance Hospital into offices to help young entrepreneurs develop their business, exchange ideas and innovate. Charity funds and rent raised from the building's leased offices helps to pay for subsidised hot desking space and training academies for creative start-ups. The start-ups benefit from being able to operate in one of London's prime creative industry clusters and share learnings with other innovators, something which local rent prices would otherwise prohibit. In turn, the area benefits from their presence and is primed as one associated with enterprise and innovation. Since Collective arrived other workspaces have followed suit, with Interchange and Work.Life bringing in further startups and small businesses that promise to boost the local economy and the area's reputation.
The example of the National Temperance Hospital also highlights the benefits of the 'meanwhile use' of abandoned buildings. The National Temperance Hospital is due to be demolished when HS2 construction starts. In the meantime, it has been repurposed for the use of 125 businesses. Before the building is lost Collective will have made a mark on the area, with members spending money in local shops, bars and restaurants. The establishment of a young vibrant community will change general perceptions of Euston, which would benefit from a reputational boost as much as from
physical improvements. A similar initiative could be undertaken in the unused auction rooms on Buck Street, due to be demolished as part of the Camden Town Underground Station upgrade.
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That's regeneration for innovation - breathing new life into neglected property to create opportunities for promising businesses, boost entrepreneurial skills and enhance the environment for creativity in the surrounding area.
The benefits in terms of visible area transformation, and tax returns, might not be as immediate as many of the proposals sitting on the Mayor's desk. But the long-term return on investment of targeting regeneration spending at start-ups and entrepreneurs will more than justify itself. London is a global city, always vying to maintain and grow its standing in an ever changing business world.
Investing in an environment for entrepreneurialism and innovation will ensure that London continues to have a competitive edge and stays ahead of the curve.
So when choosing regeneration proposals to back, we hope Mayor Khan will live up to his pro-business pledge and look beyond the easy wins that appear great on the surface, but do little for long-term economic growth. We hope that he will explore how the Greater London Authority's hectares of land can be put to use for meaningful long-term regeneration, and opportunities for 'meanwhile use' as in the example of the National Temperance Hospital.
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Lefteris Pitarakis/AP
Today is a day for goodbyes in Downing Street. The swift transformation from incumbent Prime Minister to the arrival of the delivery van to last farewells from the steps of no.10 is one of our most distinctive and extraordinary political conventions. But it has never been more brutally on display than over the past few days. Three weeks ago David Cameron was planning his government's post-referendum relaunch. Two days ago he was planning a summer of legacy moments before he stepped down in September. Today he will awake to a no.10 flat full of cardboard boxes and post-it notes for the movers. He will also get out of bed accompanied by the thought that, from tomorrow, he will no longer be at the centre of things - a thought that will fill him with a mixture of emptiness and delight.
The day of leaving Downing Street is full of drama, process and farce. On 11 May, 2010 I experienced one of my own. It was Gordon Brown's final day as Prime Minister, the fifth day of coalition negotiations that followed the 2010 election. The prospects of Labour staying in power after the election producing a hung Parliament had always been low. But from mid-morning onwards on Tuesday 11 May, it became clear to us that it would be our last.
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It became a day of reminiscences. Without anyone deciding, we started talking about moments from the past with Gordon - ludicrous moments, momentous moments, moments we botched, moments we got right. We cried with laughter at some of the funnier moments, but we cried together. The intimacy that comes from working in a team for so long where the scrutiny is constant, the stakes so high and the atmosphere so charged is difficult to describe. Making yourself cry with laughter is a convenient way of hiding the tears that come from the loss that you know awaits.
In between the reminiscences we stood around watching the rolling news coverage - watching the world watching us. Journalists constantly texted us asking for any nugget of information about what was happening inside no.10, no matter how mundane, to give them a bit of colour. I half-expected Sky to run a banner saying "Breaking News: Gordon Brown unpeels his 5th banana of the day".
The tenure of our Prime Ministers is bookended by two letters. The first is one with instructions to those in charge of our nuclear weapons, written as soon as they arrive in Downing Street; the last is one with good wishes for your successor written just as they leave. Gordon wrote three letters in those final hours - two to heroes that inspired him (Aung San Suu Kyi and Nelson Mandela) and one to David Cameron (accompanied by a bottle of something strong, as I remember). For all their rivalry, his letter to Cameron was warm and sincere, encouraging him never to forget what a privilege it is to be our nation's leader, and full of praise for the extraordinary professionalism of the staff at Downing Street.
Around us, I was aware that the Downing Street civil servants kept furtively slipping out of the office, meeting to organise the logistics of the transition later that day. I said dozens of goodbyes that day to them, and by the end they were as tearful as us. And only then did I realise something from three years before. In May 2007, when Gordon Brown took over from Tony Blair, I was struck by how red-eyed the Downing Street staff had been when we arrived. I thought at the time it was their fear of the prospect of Team Brown at no.10. But I realised, when I said my own goodbyes to them three years later that it was because they had just said goodbyes of their own to Team Blair, with whom they had worked for over a decade.
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The last hour or two was tough. I never realised how complex it could be to organise the choreography of a group of people leaving a building. The sequencing was discussed and re-discussed. Gordon, flanked by his family, gave a short speech to us all. Eventually we lined up outside no.11 Downing Street to see Gordon and his family say goodbye from outside no.10. Then we slipped back in to say our very final goodbyes to the Downing Street team. But they were already hard at work preparing for their next boss. Conscious that Operation "The King is Dead, Long Live the King" was underway, I half-sprinted out the front door, and went to the pub.
Working at no.10 whatever the weather (and boy did we have some storms in our time) is a privilege beyond compare. I used to literally pinch myself walking past the tourists through the Downing Street gates every morning, to remind myself how transitory it was, how much responsibility even a lowly aide like me had, and most of all never to take it for granted. When the music stops, it takes a chunk out of you, and you lose your bearings for a short time. I hope David Cameron and his team recover theirs quickly. I hope they remember the extraordinary honour it is to serve your country. And I hope they learn to cherish the freedom that comes from leaving no.10 and returning to the ranks of those they used to govern.
Lord Wood is a Labour peer and former adviser to Gordon Brown
When people say Theresa May has no small talk they are not exaggerating.
I first encountered her when I was deputy editor of the Sunday Telegraph; every year at the Conservative Party conference we would meet senior party figures and they were invariably relaxed, informal, gossipy affairs. Some were disarmingly indiscreet.
Not Theresa May. Whether it was coffee at the conference centre or dinner in a hotel restaurant she was business-like to the point of taciturn; unusually for a politician, she would listen, say very little, rarely be drawn and bat off all attempts at informality. Geoffrey Boycott, her childhood idol, could not have played with a straighter bat.
As a journalist, it was disconcerting. We were used to ambitious politicians trying to build relationships and alliances, however phoney, with an eye on the glittering prize. Few have dared to take the Theresa May approach and make no attempt to woo journalists, just as she has made no attempt to curry favour with backbenchers in the House of Common tearooms or cosy up to Cabinet colleagues.
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So, what sort of relationship will Britain's new Prime Minister have with the press? She has enjoyed the giddiest of honeymoon periods, depicted as 'a serious woman for serious times'. Her rapid elevation to No 10 Downing Street was received with near-universal acclaim by the nation's leader writers.
The trump card in Theresa May's leadership campaign was the support of the Daily Mail, which declared for her while David Cameron's body was still warm in his political grave. On the face of it, that was a little surprising; the Mail has always been a cheerleader for Brexit and May was the only Remain supporter in the campaign. But the Mail's editor Paul Dacre, who hates the limelight, had doubtless been irritated by a leaked email from Sarah Vine, the wife of Michael Gove - and Daily Mail columnist - in which he was name checked as a prospective supporter of a Boris Johnson/Michael Gove leadership ticket.
But that, in itself, would not have been enough to sway Dacre. More likely, he admires May's character: hard-working, discreet, low-profile, unshowy but driven by conviction. He had a similar admiration for Gordon Brown - like May, offspring of a clergyman - and developed a surprisingly close relationship with him, given their political differences.
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The Times and Financial Times, which both supported Remain, will be relieved that the Brexit leadership candidates imploded, one after another, through a mixture of insouciance, political suicide bombing and naivety. They should be broadly supportive of May and inclined to give her a fair wind.
The Sun and Daily Express, both firmly in the Brexit campaign, will want to hold her feet to the fire as she begins the negotiations to pull the UK out of the EU. The Express, with its close Ukip affiliations, will be quick to seize on any sign of back-sliding and may prove tricky, but its influence has long been on the wane. The Sun's editor, Tony Gallagher, is a wily operator with a sure touch and will be more pragmatic; he's never afraid to ruffle feathers in Downing Street but he's pragmatic too and will recognise the value of being supportive in difficult times.
May's biggest problem may come from the Daily Telegraph, the Conservative Party's house journal. It won't be her support for Remain that alarms the Telegraph; though the paper backed Brexit, it will see May as the acceptable face of the Remain campaign.
Rather it will be her pledge to take on big business, curbing executive pay and installing employees on company boards. At the outset of her leadership campaign - when it still looked like there would be a contest - she signalled that overhauling corporate rules would be a key priority. Ed Miliband would have found himself nodding in agreement with her attack on the greed of big business.
If May is serious about following through on this, she will have a big problem with the Telegraph. Aidan Barclay, chairman of Telegraph Media Group, makes no secret of the fact that his papers must support Big Business unconditionally. Talk of curbing pay or giving more power to employees has him spluttering with rage. Alistair Heath, the Telegraph's deputy editor and outspoken columnist, will rail against these reforms from a great height. It could get ugly.
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What we don't yet know is how the new Prime Minister will respond to trenchant media criticism of this sort. My hunch is she has a thick skin and will not easily bow to pressure. I expect her to be straightforward - one might say old-fashioned - in her dealings with the media. She may have a reputation for a micro-management but I doubt she'll obsess over every headline in the way Gordon Brown did.
"The thing about Corbyn is that he is nearly always proved right - after the event."
So wrote a Guardian interviewer last year, early in the election campaign, when Corbyn was still the political outlier who only got his name on the ballot with minutes to spare. What happened next was completely unexpected for the Westminster and mainstream media bubble--he won with the biggest mandate in Labour history, invigorated party membership to the tune of hundreds of thousands and mobilised a youthful movement of fresh political activists.
It was then that the upper crust of politicians and media editors in our country realised that something had gone terribly wrong.
A principled, anti-austerity, anti-war campaigner leading the left? This wasn't part of the script. Since then, both the broadcast and print media have been viciously attacking him, quietly embarrassed by a steady stream of Labour victories in by-elections, local elections and opposition under his leadership. But the sighs of discontent never ended. News of a coup planned for after the referendum appeared in the Telegraph 10 days before it, undermining the claim that the coup was a reaction to the Leave result. At the same time Angela Eagle was praising Corbyn's efforts, saying he was, "...pursuing an itinerary that would make a 25-year-old tired, he has not stopped."
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Of course, her resignation letter implied quite the opposite, meaning she was either being dishonest before the referendum or afterwards. The allegation is bogus anyway: 90% of Labour members and ~63% of Labour voters opted to Remain. The real party leader to blame is of course Cameron.
But the coup began on this false premise, and since then we have been subjected to endless absurdities. Corbyn is unelectable as a leader! He's just won 60% of the leadership vote and eight general elections. The trade unions are turning against him! They're staunchly for him, and the much-touted poll of Unite sampled 0.0005% of unverified members. Angela Eagle/Owen Smith will connect with the people! An MP who consistently voted for the Iraq War, and another who is an ex-Big Pharma lobbyist aren't exactly flavour of the month. A truly left party won't win an election! If the last election has taught us anything, it's that no-one will vote for the Tory B team when they could just vote for the Tory A team. Corbyn compared Israel to ISIS! Corbyn lunged at a reporter! Etc, etc.
There is a reason this is happening. It is no secret that Corbyn's economic and social policies take real steps to reverse the transfer of wealth and power from the many to the few. Thus the establishment--the political and media class satisfied with the status quo--is taking action. The fact that Corbyn has just been elected 9 months ago by an overwhelming majority doesn't give them pause. It seems the PLP and their media backers think that democracy is something that should be sampled in small doses-and flushed out when needed.
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The party line of course is that MPs have lost confidence in Corbyn, though when pressed they are unable to tell us why. The reality is that their reasoning is patently circuitous: the PLP has no faith in Corbyn as a leader because he is unable to give the PLP faith in him as a leader. The phrase: physician, heal thyself comes to mind. Has it occurred to the PLP rebels that perhaps they are the problem? Perhaps they should not they expect hundreds of thousands of Labour members to change their position on Corbyn, when they are unwilling to do the same? Perhaps respect for democracy demands that they subject their egos to the will of the Labour party they ostensibly represent, rather than demand Corbyn subjects his mandate to them? Evidently not.
Courtesy of Momentum
This coup did not have to happen. The wounds of the Labour party that Eagle says she will heal are entirely self-inflicted. By challenging Corbyn, the rebels will fall on their own sword. Since the coup has started, the Labour membership has swelled by 25% to reach half a million. Huge Pro-Corbyn rallies have been held throughout the country, with 'Saving Labour' rallies remaining conspicuously absent. Without significant anti-democratic fixing of the ballot, Corbyn will stand again, and win again, probably galvanising more of the public in his populist cause. It is high time the Labour rebels realised that, and fell on the side of the British people.
If you think there's justice in America, all you have to do is go on Youtube and search for "cop kills black man" or "police kill unarmed man" and you'll find an array of videos, many of them evidence to police violence against ethnic minorities captured on smartphones.
The vast majority of those who pulled the trigger, despite the videos, and the testimonies, will not be prosecuted.
On July 6th, 2016, in an especially horrific and egregious case that gained national attention Philando Castile, a black man, was killed while allegedly complying with police officers in Minnesota.
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Image capture of police killing of Alton Sterling.
It was the second such incident in two days, following the public outrage the previous day due to the shooting of another black man, Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge. Sterling was shot while being pinned down by police officers on the ground. Castile was killed while sitting in his car.
That the nation has witnessed so much violence upon black men these days is due to technology. A live-streaming video done in Castile's case, by Diamond Reynolds, his girlfriend who sat in the car with him, captured the heartbreaking scene of a father bleeding to death.
A loving father
An exemplary worker in a cafeteria feeding school children, Philando Castile was said to be well loved by staff and the children he served. And he in turn knew each of them by their names. He was reportedly ambitious and a loving father.
His crime? Pulled over by two officers supposedly for having a busted tail light, Castile reportedly reached for his wallet to take out his ID, at which point the law enforcement officer shot him dead. He had a license to carry a weapon and, according to his girlfriend, had informed the police officer so.
Image capture from Diamond Reynolds live streaming video in the aftermath of the killing of Philando Castile
The exchange on the video in the aftermath is especially telling.
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Officer: "I told him not to reach for it. I told him to get his head up."
Woman: "He had... you told him to get his ID, Sir. His driver's license. Oh my God, please don't tell me he's dead..."
Worse, according to Reynolds who later told the media that, "the police officer stopped us for a busted tail light that wasn't busted."
Some African Americans now say they are being "hunted in America," and increasingly watching those videos of police killing American civilians, it is harder to argue to the contrary.
Black males and Hispanic males are especially vulnerable to law enforcement, shot and killed on a regular basis in the country, and in many cases they are killed while being unarmed. The majority of these shootings are eventually found "justifiable cause" by "district attorneys" as many are reluctant to prosecute police officers, despite evidence to the contrary.
The reason is due in part to the Supreme Court's legal standard for use of lethal force, which gives police leeway for split-second decisions made in "tense, uncertain and rapidly evolving" situations.
"The trajectory of police shooting cases has long been determined by police departments themselves, which, until recently, were largely able to control the narrative of events that led to a killing," according to the Huffington Post. "And when cases have gone to trial, judges and juries have exhibited a tendency to side with the police."
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In 2015, police killed 102 unarmed black people, according to the website mappingpoliceviolence.org.
Only 10 of those cases resulted in criminal charges, and only two of those charged resulted in convictions.
It is especially egregious that in 2015 only one of those two police officers found guilty served time in jail: and only for one year. And even in this case, the individual in question was allowed to serve time on weekends, according to the website.
Mapping Police Violence also found that last year, 37 percent of unarmed people killed by police were black, while black people account for only 13 percent of the US population. And unarmed black people were killed at five-times the rate of unarmed whites in 2015.
Police brutality is recorded daily. And those who died unrecorded barely get any news coverage. Yet, despite civic efforts and mass protest, the killing hasn't abated.
So far, in 2016, the number of fatal police shootings has increased as compared to the previous year, according The Washington Post. The paper found that "blacks continued to be shot at 2.5 times the rate of whites." And about 10 percent of all those shot were unarmed.
Understandably outraged
Many are understandably outraged. Former Salon magazine editor, David Talbot, is one of them.
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"How many times has a killer cop actually been convicted for his crime -- even when they are caught flagrantly on camera?" asked Talbot on Facebook. Talbot also noted that "There is no simply no justice in this country for those who are victimized by the police.'"
A serious question now to ask: Is America still governed by law or by arbitrary decisions made by individual law officers?
Many Americans know that there's little justice to be had in the court of law for victims of police violence, but in the court of opinion the American justice system has already been found guilty.
This verdict can't change unless actual justice can be had for those who feel hunted. "The police are not here to protect and serve us... they are here to assassinate us, because we are black." Who can dispute these words, uttered by Reynolds, who bore witness to the wanton killing of her boyfriend, who died a week short of his 33rd birthday and in front of his girlfriend's 4-year old daughter?
Increasingly many who live in America feel that they live with a rigged and skewered justice system in which the business of public protection has become, at least in the eyes of the oppressed, the business of public prosecution, oppression, and in some cases, execution.
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Such feelings may have motivated Micah Xavier Johnson, an Army veteran accused of shooting and killing five police officers and wounding seven others during a protest against police brutality in Dallas, a tragic karmic circle of violence.
Soft power undermined
Abroad, the lack of accountability for police brutality in its treatment of minorities and the poor undermines its soft power.
It is such that for the US to talk of human rights and law and order elsewhere when it cannot practice them at home makes Uncle Sam a laughing stock. Indeed, it is increasingly harder to sell the country's image abroad when there's general discontent and rising malaise coupled with an inept congress unable to confront gun violence that kills 33,000 Americans yearly.
There was a lot of hope when Barack Obama, a black man, won the presidential election in 2008. His repeated slogans were "Vote for Change" and "Yes We Can." But if there was an optimistic take that we were entering a post-racial America era in 2008, that hope was quickly dashed as more police killings of unarmed Americans continued unabated.
And until America reckons with its chronic racism head on, its fear and hatred, its racial injustice, and implements real reforms, we cannot move forward from this juncture, and change won't come.
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Feel like a co-worker is subtly trying to sabotage your career? The mole from the Netflix show has the perfect advice for that, actually.
Image: Anastasiya Melnychenko. Facebook
I am one of the many women in the former Soviet Union who was cheered when Ukrainian journalist Anastasiya Melnychenko decided to discuss on social media the many instances of sexual harassment and abuse she has suffered since she was a child.
Her postings on Facebook caused a sensation -- because no woman in the region had ever talked about sexual trauma in a public forum before.
The postings prompted hundreds of women in Ukraine -- and later Russia -- to discuss their own experiences as sexual-harassment and -abuse victims.
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And they prompted the inevitable backlash, particularly from men who contended that the victims were to blame for what had happened.
I've known several women in the former Soviet Union who were sexual-harassment or -abuse victims, and I've experienced sexual harassment myself.
It didn't surprise me that the many men in the region who believe they are superior to women simply because of their gender were quick to lash out at the women who responded to Melnychenko's posts with their own victimization revelations.
What cheers me the most about the posts is that in order to address a social problem, you first have to get it out in the open for all to see and discuss.
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Melnychenko has done that by beginning her posting a few weeks ago.
At first the discussion that ensued occurred only among her fellow Ukrainians. Then it spread to Russia.
My hope is that the momentum continues so that the issue becomes a lightning rod across the former Soviet Union.
When society gets an issue like this out in the open, it's more likely to do something about it -- although you can be sure there will be entrenched opposition from those who want women to "stay in their place."
For the life of me, I can't understand how even the worst Neanderthals -- and I'm including women as well as men -- can say that the notion of women "staying in their place" includes keeping your mouth shut after you've been sexually harassed or raped.
Melnychenko said it best. "We're not to blame, those who violate us are ALWAYS to blame," she asserted in a defiant post.
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Facebook user Ekaterina Romanovskaya summed up the discussion that Melnychenko touched off by noting that the posts from those who responded to her covered "thousands of episodes of sexual abuse." The responses dealt with "hundreds of flashbacks involving strangers, co-workers, boyfriends, relatives, family friends, bosses, tutors, doctors," Romanovskaya said.
Predictably, many men reacted with contempt, trotting out the old saw that harassment and abuse victims "ask for it."
When a woman is raped, some of them said, it's because she is wearing provocative clothes, is drunk or is walking home at night alone.
My question to these jerks: Since when does being tipsy or walking home alone at night mean you are signaling that you want to be raped?
And as for provocative clothing being a sign that you are "asking for it," many women in the former Soviet Union like to follow the latest fashion trends, including skirts that can ride high and tops that can ride low. This does not mean they are advertising to be raped.
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A typical response from those who blame the victims were the comments of a so-called sex expert whom Russia's Life News interviewed about the discussion that Melnychenko's posts generated.
The "expert" from the Moscow Institute of Psychoanalysis floated the ludicrous notion that a discussion about sexual harassment and sexual abuse should not be held online because it would arouse those who might be inclined toward rape to go out and commit the act.
The "expert" also said that many of the posts about sexual harassment and sexual abuse that women were making in response to Melnychenko's posts were probably fabricated.
The posts opened the eyes of men who are not Neanderthals, however.
"I really didn't expect that so many women and girls I knew were victims of violence and harassment, some at a young age," Artem Loskutov noted. The artist said "it's hard to imagine how you can live with such trauma, how you can live in silence, and it's very important that thanks to the Ukrainian viral action, many people have been able to speak out finally."
How long it takes for the social-media-generated public recognition of this problem to lead to a solution remains to be seen.
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I'm hoping for the best, but I'm fearful it may take decades.
My pessimism is partly rooted in the hostility I've seen toward Armenia's first non-profit organization founded to help women -- the Armenian Women's Resource Center in the capital of Yerevan.
The center has received bomb threats and threats that its staff's throats will be slit from those who have slavered that they are threats to the nation and destroyers of the family.
EDITOR'S NOTE: PLEASE USE THIS IMAGE AS THE SOCIAL MEDIA THUMBNAIL
http://images.huffingtonpost.com/2016-07-13-1468386479-7696929-MDL-thumb.png
Kristen Addix, CEO of MyDrLynx (MDL Solutions), has some insightful stories to tell as she crashes the glass ceiling of the tech world -- stories that show the "bro community" still shortchanges women. Her real life stories further underscore that the gender war is unfortunately alive and the community's frat boy culture is in inverse proportion to a progressively moving industry.
For example, Addix's MDL app provides a simply excellent tech solution that will have a profound impact on patient-doctor relationships, while facilitating, "Healthcare in a Heartbeat." She explains:
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The MyDrLynx app is a game changer because it addresses so many issues. For doctors, time is a primary consideration in patient flow and the maximization of patient satisfaction. For patients, post-procedure instructions and the ability to communicate with care providers significantly reduces stress and lowers repeat unanswered phone calls. Last but not least, administrators and insurers benefit as patient satisfaction and quality of care is enhanced.
MDL's CEO Addix: "The female in me cares...but I'll walk out of a meeting."
But Addix and other brilliant women techies are in the minority as the high tech world has very few high-profile women entrepreneurs. Indeed, Silicon Valley hasn't produced a female Jobs, Gates, or Zuckerberg. In fact, ongoing stories demonstrate that a misogynistic climate is pervasive with sexist jokes, gender-based hiring and firing, threats of violence, and sexual harassment lawsuits all rearing their ugly heads.
As the founder of her company, Addix has taken many meetings with a male legal counsel, and recalls:
I was interviewing a coding firm, and I had my counsel with me, and their two executives on the other side of table. As the CEO and the decision maker, it was interesting to me that they knew that upfront. I had all the files, flowcharts and graphics in front of me. My counsel doesn't really know much about the details. So I'm asking the other two gentlemen technical questions about the app build, but they're answering to him, not to me. Everything I asked was answered to the other male in the room. I quickly said, 'Listen, he's just here to support me. He's not the deciding factor. I am. I'm the designer of the project, I'm the senior executive, so if you have any questions, I would respectfully request that you direct them to me.' But, they didn't, and that's why they weren't hired. Right?!
Addix met with another coding firm that was located within a stone's throw of both her office and residence in Hollywood. They weren't up in Silicon Valley or Seattle or even in Orange County, so she "really wanted to like them" but says:
Again I had my files in front of me. I sat down with three of their guys, again with my counsel on my side of the table - two were across from us, their senior exec was at the head of the table. The meeting again didn't last long. And, when we got outside, after the meeting, my counsel goes, 'We're not hiring them, are we?' I replied, 'What was your first clue?' To which he replied, 'Well, I noticed you hadn't opened the files yet but slid them from in front of their CEO to slightly in front of me and you. And then without saying a word, you quietly slipped them back into your attache case.' Sure enough, I had shaken their senior exec's hand and said, 'It's been nice meeting you, I'll get back to you.' They were doing the exact same thing, I was directing my questions to them, and they would only answer my male counsel.
She doesn't know if these male execs are purposely misogynistic but feels they're "gender-biased," adding, "They live with stereotypes, and it's definitely a boys' club. So there's a reason why there are very few CEOs in my position, working in the tech business. And I think the few that are in my position, the men are very hard on them."
Apple's Steve Jobs was one of Addix's heroes but in their recent management shakeup, no women were involved, and Apple like other tech giants like Google and Facebook is heavily weighted towards men. According to a recent diversity report, women only make up 28% of Apple's leadership team.
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Yet, women drive up 80% of all consumer purchasing, accounting for about 65% of all computer and new car purchases. As Forbes says, "If the consumer economy had a sex, it would be female." Yet, Addix feels that high tech companies are still missing something, saying, "We have female centric issues, like with ergonomics for new cars, and our needs are clearly different."
So, having gone through real-life, gender-biased scenarios, Addix says:
I would directly address gender-bias, in a way that tries to let them know, maybe start with joke or in a light manner say, 'I didn't know I was so invisible,' or, 'My colleague, he's not a ventriloquist (and I'm not his dummy)' And watch their reaction and that will tell you your next step. If it's your own personal company, you obviously have more leeway, and you can walk out of meetings, like I did.
What else would Addix generally suggest: support and encourage companies with more women in senior positions; implement a no-interruption rule for everyone at a meeting; don't stay quiet, immediately stop an interrupter in his tracks; get a male buddy to publically back you up in meetings; support your fellow female colleagues if they've got good ideas and give them credit where due; rehearse being assertive, lean in, stand up, speak with authority.
Addix, who is expecting these issues to be discussed at TEDWomen 2016 (October 26-28, in San Francisco), adds, "And when other things don't quite work out, don't apologize for speaking up, and you can learn to talk really, really loud and clearly. Like men do!"
MyDrLynx - Healthcare in a Heartbeat
As for her company, she says her MyDrLynx app's "proof of concept" is completed, and that it will allow potential investors "to personally use the interface, seeing how simple, elegant and intuitive it is."
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[Tehran, the capital of Iran. Source: Flickr]
AsiaToday reporter Lee Mi-hyun - Iran is striving to serve as a trade hub not just for the Middle East but into Europe and Central Asia by creating a new transport corridor that would connect four countries, including Iran, Armenia, Georgia and Bulgaria.
Regional media outlet Balkan Insight reported on Tuesday, "Bulgaria will join Iran's new transport corridor project."
According to the report, Iran is planning to launch a new transport route running from the Persian Gulf to the Black Sea connecting the four countries - Iran, Armenia, Georgia and Bulgaria.
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Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borissov, who visited Tehran with a Bulgarian ministerial and entrepreneurial delegation on Monday, said, "Bulgaria is ready now to take part in a new transport route using its ports in Varna and Burgas."
He explained that in two weeks' time, experts from the four countries will meet in Bulgaria's capital Sofia to discuss further details about the project. The country's road network can handle the traffic of goods, cargos and natural resources, once the corridor becomes operational.
Iran is dreaming to serve as a trade hub connecting the Arab world and Central Asia. Business people in Tehran hope Iran can become a new conduit in the Middle East thanks to its location, high levels of security, diverse economy and educated workforce, reported Financial Times.
"If Iran and oil-rich Arab states put capabilities together, a very good market can be created for production and trade to meet demands in Central Asia and Arab states," said Masoud Daneshmand, chairman of a department of the Iran Chamber of Commerce which deals with UAE trade.
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Businesspeople in Tehran argue that Iran is no longer just a market of its 78 million population, but it should be seen as a trade hub with a market of 300 million, allowing access to Arab states in the south and west; Central Asia in the north; and Afghanistan and Pakistan in the east.
In addition, Iraq and Syria are also being considered as new markets. "Iran is familiar with the Iraqi culture and market, so it can serve a s trade lane connecting Iraq and Europe," said Yahya Ale Eshaq, head of the Iran-Iraq Chamber of Commerce. Iran, which has been backing the regime of Syria's Bashar al-Assad, is expected to benefit when the Syrian war ends.
Being the second largest economy in the Middle East, Iran is experiencing some big changes after lifting its economic sanctions back in January.
Justice for Berta demonstration outside the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. Photo: Daniel Cima/IACHR
Last year 185 environmental activists were murdered world-wide, two-thirds from Latin America, according to Global Witness. Of the ten most dangerous countries in the world for environmental defenders, seven are in Latin America.
The brave activists we lost were killed for resisting mines, dams, and other destructive industrial projects. Now, more than ever, we must demand accountability. For the loss to the environment, the loss of indigenous cultures, the loss of human rights.
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That just got harder. On May 23 the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights announced a severe financial crisis leading to "suspension of [scheduled] hearings and imminent layoff of nearly half of its staff."
While the Commission has long been short on funds, this is the worst financial crisis it has ever seen. The Commission depends on funding from the Organization of American States (OAS), governments in the Americas and Europe, organizations, and foundations. Nearly all governments have decreased or failed to honor their financial commitments.
The financial crisis demonstrates that our work, and the work of colleagues, communities, and movements, is having an impact. The Commission has produced important decisions in cases involving indigenous and community rights, land and environmental protection, and destructive development projects. For a few years countries have complained that the Commission is going beyond its mandate in cases involving development projects. But of course, when development projects violate human rights, they clearly fall within the purview of the Inter-American Human Rights System.
The Belo Monte Dam case provides clear evidence that this manufactured crisis is a result of our effectiveness. In 2011 the Commission granted the precautionary measures our colleagues and we requested on behalf of affected indigenous communities. Brazil reacted by immediately withdrawing its ambassador to the OAS and by withholding funding for the rest of the year. A new ambassador did not return until 2015 and Brazil's payments haven't normalized since. In addition, after the precautionary measures were issued Brazil started an aggressive process to "reform" the Commission that ended by weakening its power.
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At AIDA we have analyzed how the crisis affects our cases before the Commission; how it affects future cases that need international attention; and how it affects human rights protection in the Americas.
Current cases will likely be delayed. Our case on toxic poisoning in La Oroya, Peru is already seriously delayed. The Commission has promised to release a report on the merits so the case can be taken to the next level, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. We have been told the Commission will approve the report, which has been completed, this year--despite losing 40% of its staff. This remains to be seen. Of course, we have contacted the Commission and stressed the importance of advancing the case. Informally, some judges from the Inter-American Court have indicated their eagerness to receive the case.
Processing the Belo Monte case has only just started, after pending four years at the Commission. Strong political pressure from Brazil will likely delay it further. But political pressure on Brazil and the Commission can help the case move faster. As Belo Monte is linked to the biggest corruption scandal in Brazil, maybe the Commission will understand how relevant it is to advance the case. We will continue advocating for priority processing.
New cases require further evaluation. We plan to bring at least one new case to the Commission soon, because unless we meet a deadline in a few weeks, the statute of limitations will prevent its consideration. All domestic remedies have been pursued; the Commission represents the last chance for justice. Despite the uncertainties of the current situation, it is important to preserve our clients' rights in case the Commission's funding is brought back to an adequate level.
In other cases, we are looking for different ways to achieve justice. For example, we are exploring more than ever the use of national courts and national authorities. In addition, we are looking for new ways to engage financial institutions to prevent funding of projects that harm the environment and human rights.
We are working with other organizations to develop response strategies. One of our attorneys, Rodrigo Sales, a Brazilian lawyer, recently represented AIDA at the General Assembly of the OAS. He advocated for human rights solutions in the region, among other issues. We consider collaboration and cooperation among the human rights and environmental communities to be essential. We need to stand together, showing governments and the public that human rights and the Commission are of vital importance.
The financial crisis of the Commission--an international entity for hearing and resolving hemispheric human rights concerns--is an urgent issue that requires common understanding, thinking, strategizing, and acting.
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New Zealand's crowdfunded beach becomes public park https://t.co/8n6zVfcTFq pic.twitter.com/frWaOeRoAn FRANCE 24 (@FRANCE24) July 11, 2016
By Erik Shilling, originally published on Atlas Obscura.
A beach in New Zealand was given to the public after a crowdfunding campaign with almost 40,000 donors raised $1.7 million to purchase it from its businessman owner, according to the BBC.
The campaign was also successful in thwarting the purchase of part of the beach from another wealthy businessman; instead the 17-acre site will become part of the surrounding national park.
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The Awaroa beach is located inside Abel Tasman National Park, on the north end of the country's South Island. (Tasman, a Dutch explorer, was the first Western explorer to reach New Zealand and Tasmania, his namesake.)
The beach's previous owner had agreed to sell should the crowdfunding campaign come up with the money, and, after less than four weeks, the campaign achieved its goal in February.
After a handover on Sunday, the beach is now accessible to anyone willing to fly, boat, or trek to its sands.
Last week, the United Kingdom voted, via referendum, to leave the European Union, harming its economy and much of its political system in the process. It has now become clear that the victory for "Leave" in the United Kingdom was based largely on fear mongering and nativism, as a group of mostly white and older voters sought to limit the influx of diverse immigrants into their country. The costs to the British economy have been significant, as the pound has collapsed and France has overtaken the United Kingdom as the world's fifth largest economy. Similarly nativist motives underlie an extreme anti-growth ballot initiative facing voters in Santa Monica, California in November. The Land Use Voter Empowerment Initiative (LUVE) would effectively shut down development in Santa Monica, a city of over 93,000 people, by requiring voter approval for nearly every development project greater than 32 feet in height (two stories). Voters in Los Angeles will be facing another anti-development ballot initiative, the Coalition 2 Preserve LA's Neighborhood Integrity Initiative (NII), in March. Together, these initiatives could effectively close an entire region already in the midst of a severe housing crisis to young and diverse newcomers and push out lower-income residents in the process via referenda.
One problem with the British referendum was the widespread amount of low-information voting on the incredibly complex issue of EU membership. After Brexit, Google searches in the United Kingdom such as "What does it mean to leave the EU?" and "What is the EU" sharply increased, revealing widespread confusion in the British electorate over this issue. Still, the British referendum had the merit of focusing on the relatively simple question of "remain" or "leave." The same cannot be said for LUVE, which would require low-information voters to make complex decisions about land use policy and development in Santa Monica. Residocracy, the anti-development group that filed LUVE, argues there is no need for experienced and highly educated planning staff, Planning Commissioners and elected City Councilmembers to construct a coherent development strategy for Santa Monica. Instead, the group wants voters to have the final say by only permitting projects to go forward on an ad-hoc basis.
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The use of referenda is especially inappropriate in this case given the complexity of zoning issues and urban planning. Research into direct democracy from Switzerland suggests that voters with less education are more likely to reject complex propositions or not vote at all; it is difficult for most voters to calculate the benefits and costs to them of complex propositions like general plans, specific plans and development proposals. In the case of LUVE, is the average voter expected to review construction plans and read through thousands of pages of CEQA documents in order to come to an informed decision?
Another concern is campaign finance; despite Residocracy's claim that LUVE would "get special interests out of City Hall," the initiative threatens to turn Santa Monica's politics into a never-ending campaign of developer-dominated elections, with more money being poured into the political system than ever. Local politics are especially susceptible to big money. Take the example of the notorious Koch brothers--the Koch funded super-PAC Americans for Prosperity (AFP) defeated two referenda to raise money for a new public library building in Plainfield, Illinois, and successfully fought a proposal to raise taxes to fund the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium in Ohio. These successes at the local level stand in stark contrast to the Koch's failures to get extremist libertarian candidates elected at the national level. Progressive opponents of the Koch brothers' heavy-handed interventions should be especially skeptical about the LUVE initiative; this regressive initiative would bias development in Santa Monica towards a few big development projects, where the developers could effectively buy elections, jeopardizing necessary mid-size and small housing developments.
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Beyond the procedural inappropriateness of real estate referenda, the LUVE initiative would negatively affect affordability in Santa Monica by squeezing supply at a time of already high rental prices. This concern with affordability was mentioned by the social justice organization Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice (CLUE), which opposes the LUVE initiative because it would produce "additional barriers to housing, ethnic diversity, and economic justice." In contrast to this call for greater affordability, Residocracy founder Armen Melkonians believes "we don't need additional housing." Ultimately, reduced affordability means a Santa Monica that is unavailable to a younger and more diverse group of aspiring residents.
"No good deed goes unpunished." --Clare Boothe Luce
The First Amendment guarantees citizens the Freedom to Assemble. Unless you're in Porter County, Indiana. And a Hells Angel.
Just when it seemed Motorcycle Club profiling couldn't get any worse: On May 11, 2016, while hosting a charity event for kids, patched members were targeted and harassed by over 60 local and state law enforcement officers.
The Background: In late April, the Hells Angels NWI Region circulated flyers, advertising Bike Night at The Mill-- a bar located in Burns Harbor. Proceeds were to benefit a special needs school--an educational facility which includes students with autism.
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Those flyers caught the eye of the Porter County Sheriff's Department. And because they valued a show of force, more than helping struggling children, they decided to put an end to the fundraiser.
So, on the evening of the event--after rallying officers from numerous local and state agencies--they activated a large scale "Saturation Patrol."
Just as the Hells Angels rode up to the bar, authorities swarmed the parking lot, blocking both the street and access to the gathering. Once the general public saw the enormous presence of law enforcement, many pulled out--substantially lowering the charitable outcome.
And all this occurred on the taxpayer's dime. So, how did authorities justify the costly drama? Law enforcement claimed Hells Angels were observed traveling two miles over the speed limit and failing to use a turn signal.
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Way to keep the public safe, Porter County.
Shortly afterward, the Sheriff's Department issued an unabashed statement, making it clear they intended to continue such tactics at future Club events.
And if that wasn't enough, in classic bully style, officers intimidated The Mill owner with threats of Excise (Fines for any infraction they could dream up), if she refused to cancel upcoming gatherings with the Hells Angels.
The intimidation worked.
Not allowing the harassment to stand in the way of freedom, and their determination to serve charities, the Charter made arrangements for their next 3 fundraisers to be moved to an alternate bar. This time, proceeds were directed toward a No kill Animal Shelter.
However, as soon as the Club's flyer went public, depicting the substitute location, law enforcement took note. Keeping their vow, they set out to strong-arm the newest bar owner.
Afraid of losing her business, for illusive infractions, she sent a frantic text. In part, that message read:
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"I'm sorry I have to tell you this, but Excise got ahold of me and they already have things to shut me down, without even walking into my bar. I have been informed that if I allow you to 'take over' my bike night for any of the 3 nights you advertised, I will not be able to afford my mortgage...."
It's crucial to note, the authorities had never been inside her establishment. Yet, they made it evident, they'd cite enough imaginary violations to destroy her business, if she didn't play ball.
Let me be clear: I'm not implying fault with either bar owner. Those proprietors should never be compelled to put their livelihood on the line to affirm a political stance. Undoubtedly, they, like the club, have been unfairly pursued.
As for my perspective? I'm not a party girl. Never have been. (The biggest crowds I interact with are at the mall and church). In fact, I've managed to go my entire life without setting foot in a bar. Until, that is... just a couple months ago, when I found myself somewhere I never before imagined.
In a biker bar. With Hells Angels. On Easter Sunday.
Appreciative of the invitation, I showed up at a Phoenix tavern about an hour into the festivities, made my way through the crowd, gave the organizers' a hug and whispered in their ears: "I'm not really comfortable. I just wanted to come by, say hello to friends, and stay a few minutes. I hope you're not offended when I leave early."
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In response, I was graciously seated at their table, and told they understood my fish-out-of-water dilemma. A couple hours, and several hugs, later, I made my way out the door.
That particular event was a fundraiser for disadvantaged children. And while the language in the bar was...well, let's just say colorful, I have to admit: I've rarely seen such unity, and desire to help others, than I observed between the Club members that afternoon.
In retrospect: I can't think of a more sacred way to spend Easter Sunday.
While police profiling is not exclusive to biker communities, it's a growing occurrence within the culture. And lately, authorities have become so brazen, they no longer attempt to hide their intentions.
Sure, law enforcement knows it's wrong. Of course, they know it's unethical. But with an "ends justifies the means" mentality, and confidence the general public will turn a blind eye, they find loopholes to do it anyway.
And how does it happen? For the most part, citizens won't defend factions outside their comfort zone, especially if those individuals have, first, been vilified. In a distinctive divide and conquer strategy: authorities can illuminate fringe groups, depict them as gangsters, strip them of their rights, and count on the public's uncanny ability to shrug their shoulders and retreat into the shadows.
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Yet, the tragic reality is: when any American loses freedom, we all lose freedom.
So, I have to ask: At what point will citizens decide such harassment is intolerable? At what point will those outside the biker culture--those relatively untouched by MC profiling--realize they, too, can become a target?
If Middle America is too complacent to stand in solidarity with Hells Angels, or charities, under fire--will they, at least, be compelled to stand for Justice? For the U.S. Constitution? For Freedom?
Anybody out there?
*Bio: Candy Chand is a writer living in Cave Creek, AZ. She's been interviewed on Fox & Friends, NPR and PBS. Follow, and message, her on Facebook by clicking on this link @ Candy Chand---Writer
"We are seeing a metastatic spread of ISIS." --David Ignatius
"Metatastic" is an apt but frightening description of the string of terrorist bombings that are ravaging whole communities and taking the lives of staggering numbers of innocent citizens -- men, women and children. The latest death toll is appalling: 49 in Orlando, 41 in Istanbul, 22 in Bangladesh, over 250 in Bagdad, and four in Saudi Arabia.
The first question on people's minds whenever multiple shots ring out, as they did this past week in Dallas, is whether or not the shooting is ISIS-inspired or ISIS-related.
Increased security at transportation hubs and large events and urging citizens, "If you see something, say something," are all crucial strategies. But they are targeting terrorism in motion. They don't get to the roots of the crisis. They don't key in on how to stop the violence before it starts.
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It's not okay that dozens of young men are blowing themselves up. It's not okay that they're being radicalized out of their own humanity into savagery via ISIS propaganda on the internet. It's not okay that their violent acts are destroying the lives of innocent citizens, devastating whole communities, and spreading fear and grief like wildfire.
Metastatic Manhood
New questions must be asked that drill down to the roots of what's happening in order to address this cancer at its source. Why are young men becoming radicalized -- knowing full-well they're signing up for suicide? What is drawing them? How can we counteract what's happening to them?
John L. Esposito (Professor of Religion and International affairs at Georgetown University) believes that "men are drawn to ISIS in search of a new identity, and for a sense of meaning, purpose and belonging." Rev. Paul Brandeis Raushenbush echoed that conclusion when he observed that a key factor is "a lack of meaning and purpose in life."
What does ISIS offer these marginalized men? One ISIS recruit explained, "Overnight you go from being an unemployed nobody to being a headache to the most powerful man in the world."
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Frankly, the very symptoms that are driving young men into the arms of ISIS are surfacing among males in many other contexts. The manhood crisis is on display on city streets, behind closed doors, in locker rooms, and countless other places. Most notably we are seeing it in the angry white men who are flocking to Donald Trump who is offering empty solutions and exploiting the very real pain these men are suffering to serve his own political ambitions. Their very masculinity is under siege. Stagnant or declining wages put their dreams out of reach. The rise of women and a surging minority population threaten white male privilege and dominance.
Globalization, immigration, economic instability, inequality, racism, xenophobia, homophobia, systemic poverty, injustice, terrorism, technology -- this is today's world. The aftershocks in men's lives can produce a horrible sense of diminishment, frustration, despair, and anger.
The world pays an exorbitant price when these emotional forces spin out of control.
Meaningful Manhood
Page one of the Bible puts every man-child born in the world on solid ground when the Creator makes human beings his image bearers (Genesis 1:26-28). This isn't mere taxonomy or simply distinguishing humans from plants and animals. God is bestowing on every human being an indestructible and breathtakingly exalted identity, meaning, purpose and sense of belonging. The imago dei changes everything for men. No conceivable definition of manhood compares with the call to "be like God" -- to know and reflect the Creator and to represent God and do his work in the world.
This reality completely obliterates the lies that come from culture, circumstances, bullying, hatred, violence, and even negative self-talk combined. No matter what downturn a man's story may take, this fact about him remains intact. In fact, it raises any indignity or offense against him or any self-destructive actions he may take himself to a cosmic level as an affront to Almighty God.
With a message like this, the only thing more tragic in the current crisis is for the church to remain silent in the face of the challenges and suffering we are called and equipped to engage. It is time for us to "man-up" and challenge our own theology of manhood (that all too often falls woefully short of God's vision) with pressing twenty-first-century global realities confronting men and boys. Jesus calls his church to reclaim her prophetic voice in a world desperately in need of hope.
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The metastatic spread of ISIS underscores the urgency of our task and drives us back to scripture to wrestle afresh and press the Bible with new and unsettling global questions and to bring humility with us. Inevitably, we will discover we haven't been right about everything after all and have a whole lot more to learn.
The problems are complex, and we have only begun to grasp the powerful remedy God provides. But Jesus knows the way and is saying, "Follow me!"
Originally published at www.MissioAlliance.org
Blue diamonds are arguably one of the most sought-after gems in the world. They are exceptionally rare, comprising only around 0.0001% of the world's diamonds. Of all the blue diamonds ever discovered, just 10 per cent are larger than a carat. In May 2016, a trapeze-shaped diamond known as the "The Oppenheimer Blue" sold for $57.5 million at Christie's in Geneva. The previous month, The World of Diamonds (WOD) Group - one of the largest privately held diamond mining corporations in the world - unveiled "The Jane Seymour", a 2.08-carat cushion-cut fancy vivid blue diamond ring named in honour of the quintessential Bond girl in Live and Let Die, actress Jane Seymour, during her visit to Singapore.
I was thrilled to meet the acclaimed actress, producer, painter, businesswoman, philanthropist and Officer of the Order of the British Empire while she was in Singapore to star in The Vortex play by Noel Coward. Produced by the British Theatre Playhouse of Singapore, the show was in support of the Red Cross and their work with refugees.
The fate of refugees in Europe has gripped the world's attention following the publication of the image of the body a 3-year-old Syrian boy washed up on a Turkish beach. When confronted with this latest "viral" image of the Syrian conflict, many of us expressed shock, horror and grief. Thus it was particularly meaningful for me to see that a celebrity like Seymour felt compelled to lend a hand.
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I was at the Art-for-Charity gala dinner event that took place on April 29 at the Raffles Hotel in Singapore in conjunction with the play's debut, and speaking to the actress, she shared this with me: "The Vortex play is a platform for charity fundraising. We support the Red Cross and want to help Syrian refugees who are desperately in need of medical aid". The sold-out event was attended by Singapore's President Tony Tan and his wife, Mary, the EU Ambassador to Singapore, Michael Pulch and the British High Commissioner to Singapore, Scott Wightman.
The play marked Seymour's return to the theatre stage after a 35-year hiatus and proved to be one of the biggest challenges of her career. Her path to stardom includes a succession of hit movies on television and the big screen, such as "Onassis - The Richest Man in the World" (Emmy Award); "East of Eden" (Golden Globe Award), "Somewhere in Time" and "War and Remembrance". Her television series "Dr Quinn, Medicine Woman" won her a second Golden Globe Award and has endeared her to audiences worldwide. Seymour also starred in the original Broadway production of Peter Shaffer's "Amadeus" opposite Ian McKellan. Making a return to the big screen, Seymour's latest movie "Bereave", in which she stars opposite Keith Carradine and Malcolm McDowell, was released worldwide in January 2016.
It only seems fitting that Seymour's talent and philanthropic work should be recognised by such a prestigious jewel, and she has indeed transitioned to become a star in the world of diamonds. The Jane Seymour blue diamond set in a rose-gold plated platinum ring was especially designed to celebrate this multi-faceted lady's illustrious career and philanthropic efforts. It is the only celebrity ring in the world named after Seymour herself (The "Open Hearts" jewellery collection is designed by her but not named after her).
When Seymour was first presented with the ring, her reaction was delightful; the celebrity wasted no time to pose and take selfies with The Jane Seymour, before officially endorsing it. "The sparkler was born in Russia and brought to life in Geneva - it's beyond priceless", said Karan Tilani, Director of the WOD Group.
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The ring is currently valued in excess of $2 million US dollars, but for this price tag, the WOD Group has another surprise. The Jane Seymour has been incorporated into the world's most expensive dining experience. The luxurious culinary journey consists of an eight-hour experience starting with a 45-minute helicopter ride over scenic Singapore; followed by a chauffeured Rolls-Royce drive and a private luxury cruise on the marina. The buyer - and their plus one - will then be transported to CE LA VI, an iconic Singapore venue on the rooftop of Marina Bay Sands Hotel for dinner, where 10,000 fresh roses will set the stage. The 360-degree views of the city and the 18-course modern Asian meal, which will be enjoyed with diamond-encrusted chopsticks and some of the best wines and champagnes in the world - including a 55-year-old rare vintage - will complete this once-in-a-life-time experience. Who could hope for a more magnificent evening? Even a Bond girl couldn't ask James for more...
Presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump should take a pause before announcing a vice presidential running-mate and pounce on the chance of considering the perfect yin-yang VP: independent Bernie Sanders.
Sure Sanders half-halfheartedly endorsed Hillary Clinton on Tuesday, but Sanders knows that in all "movements" or "revolutions", rules are broken and a few feelings get hurt. It certainly wouldn't be the first time a politician retracted an endorsement and for Sanders it would mean re-gaining those supporters he just lost on Tuesday for being a "sell-out."
The polls say VPs don't matter in a presidential race and the rules of conventional political wisdom say you can't pick a VP from the opposing party.
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So how have polls and conventional political wisdom been working out this past year?
The idea of Trump picking Sanders as VP isn't far-fetched. After all, everyone's favorite president Republican Abraham Lincoln chose Democrat Andrew Johnson to be his second vice presidential running mate as a way to unite the nation following the Civil War. Though that political experiment ended dreadfully, it was a precedent set by a Republican choosing a Democratic that Trump could justifiably tap.
Remember, Sanders isn't really a Democrat, he's an independent and the Democratic Party tried every dirty trick they could think of to make him go away. The fact that he hasn't gone away -- and neither have his 13 million supporters -- says something about his "revolution" and the fact he understands the Democratic party simply patronized him because they hoped to sway his supporters to flock to Clinton.
And Clinton needed an endorsement from Sanders to mute her corporate lawyer candidate image and give some credibility to the milk-toast policies she's selling.
But swaying Sanders' supporters to vote for Hillary Clinton?
President Obama got voted into office using campaign promises made to environmental, anti-war and social justice groups which he never fulfilled and Sanders' supporters are not likely to forget that when it comes time to vote for -- what amounts to -- a continuation of Obama's policies.
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A June Bloomberg Politics national poll -- taken before Bill Clinton's meeting with Attorney General Loretta Lynch and the subsequent "no charges" over Hillary's State Department emails -- found nearly half of Sanders' supporters don't support Clinton.
In fact, many of Sanders' progressive supporters -- like the majority of Trump's conservative supporters -- are in the "anybody but Clinton" camp.
And that means anybody.
Sanders' basic message of eliminating corrupt government; cutting-off Wall Street and corporate political money; stopping bad trade deals; and not rushing into the next "nation building" war have more in common with Trump's populist movement then they do with Clinton's Democratic party.
Both the Sanders and Trump candidacies have tapped voter's revulsion for government dysfunction, corruption and a "rigged system."
Sanders and Trump are in favor of rebuilding America's infrastructure; both have called Hillary Clinton "unqualified" for the White House; and both have argued the U.S. contributes too much to NATO.
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And both understand the U.S. government's monthly job numbers don't reflect any semblance of economic reality.
Trump knows he has these common threads with Sanders and his calls for Sanders' supporters to join him reflects that.
A Trump-Sanders campaign would not only continue both of their historic disruptions to the status quo political machine, it would be the ultimate yin-yang political partnership if Trump could set his ego aside and truly delegate management of issues that are Sanders' strong points and tap Sanders' governing experience.
For example, VP Sanders would certainly do more for environmental and sustainable energy issues then Clinton will ever do as president if Trump would simply give him the delegated space.
More importantly, a Trump-Sanders partnership means we don't have to endure another lawyer-president following the lead of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama giving speeches from the White House that sound good but are so riddled with slick legalese they actually say and commit to nothing.
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Having Trump name Sanders his VP pick would be the ultimate poke-in-the-eye of both the Democratic and Republican Party -- the two status quo parties which have reacted to both these candidates with fear and loathing.
Even the idea that any of Sanders' major policy ideas would actually become part of the Democratic Party platform was a cruel joke perpetuated by the media right up to the time it didn't happen. When the dust cleared, the Democratic Party's platform committee rejected several of Sanders' most important proposals, including opposing the Trans-Pacific Partnership, declaring a national fracking moratorium and a call to end Israel's illegal settlements. Even the platform's climate change position is ambiguous in ensuring "federal actions don't 'significantly exacerbate' global warming."
Significantly exacerbate? Put three lawyers in a room and ask them to define "significantly exacerbate" and you'll get 11 answers.
And though Sanders' supporters had vowed to take the fight to the floor of the convention in Philadelphia where the platform will be subject to a delegate vote, the Clinton endorsement by Sanders could take the wind out of the sails of those who now see Sanders as part of the rigged system.
Worse, even if the party platform was amended it's still not binding so Clinton as president can cherry-pick what to support and what to ignore while Sanders stands on the sideline.
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Sanders and Trump owe nothing to their respective political party elites: The Democratic Party made sure independents could not vote during the primary in some states to prevent Sanders from denying Clinton the prearranged acceptance of the presidential tiara, and the Republican Party is still trying to figure out how to dump Trump.
If Sanders were to even hint that he would consider the opportunity to be Trump's VP, it would be the ultimate disruption to the political status quo that both the Sanders and Trump campaigns have sought from the start.
Trump has already put the brakes on the Bush political dynasty, and with the help of Sanders they both could do the same for the "too-big-to-jail" Clinton dynasty.
At the very least, it would be great to see Sanders stand up at the Democratic convention, withdraw his endorsement of Clinton, and tell his supporters to vote for only the non-incumbents -- both Republican and Democratic -- in November's local and congressional elections to truly bring real change to a rigged system.
After a family trip to Havana in March 2015, I returned home and added a Cuban title to the 101 Ways to Rock Your World book series. Since that time, many changes have taken place, the US Embassy has opened, and direct flights between the US and Cuba are schedule to begin on major airlines this fall. (The video at this end of this piece is my husband seeing his grandfather's home for the first time since 1959.)
Photo credit: Elizabeth Justiz
Want to go? Things are changing fast in Cuba but the more they change, the more some things stay the same. Here are some of our favorite tips from Havana: 101 Ways to Rock Your World - 101 tips that still hold true in this Caribbean gem:
2. CHECK YOUR PASSPORT.
If your passport is going to expire within the next six months before you complete your travel, you can't travel to Cuba - and many other places. Your passport must have at least half a year left before the expiration date. Cuban authorities are professionals at bureaucracy, and while you can talk your way out of some problems, immigration law is not one of them. On the same note: don't overstay your Cuban visa, which is still required at this writing. Renew it at least a week before it expires.
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5. SET REALISTIC EXPECTATIONS.
For many of us, the idea of a Caribbean vacation means being able to shut off the part of our brain controlling moderation and assume everything will be fun and easy. Havana is not so forgiving. The city is almost 500 years old, and it looks it in many places. Lights go off, even in nice hotels, and your water might not always be hot, or even running. Similarly, 57 years of communism hasn't exactly created a service industry that makes the customer feel valued or even wanted. And, if you consider yourself punctual, you should prepare yourself for "island time."
8. LOOSEN UP.
The reason Cubans can tell you are a foreigner, besides the fact your shoes are probably a lot newer than theirs, is you are a bit stiff. Cubans have a swagger when they walk, a sway when they dance, and even their Spanish sounds so loose it's about to fall apart. So, before you leave home - take a stretch, shake out the kinks, and loosen up. A lo Cubano.
22. DOUBLE AND TRIPLE-CHECK YOUR RESERVATIONS.
Cuba's travel infrastructure supports millions of tourists each year but behind the scenes it mostly operates in the pre-digital age. Your reservation could be lost when a less-than-enthusiastic, underpaid hotel employee writes your name down on a scrap piece of paper (because their computer is out of service) and then someone else uses it as a napkin. When you arrive at the check-in desk there will be no record of your reservation, and you will be lucky to get a no es facil from the receptionist. Nip this potential problem in the bud; send emails and make phone calls confirming your reservations when you make them and again before you leave. Arrive in Havana with printed copies of all of those email confirmations.
62. ASK SOMEONE WHAT HIS OR HER OTHER JOB IS.
Due to low-paying state jobs and high-paying tourist jobs, Havana is full of doormen who have doctorates in engineering, taxi drivers who are also emergency room physicians, and waiters who could explain the more complicated aspects of quantum physics. Strike up a conversation with a hotel, restaurant, or transportation worker and ask them what their other job is. You might be surprised to find the person unloading your luggage at the hotel could also be designing Havana's next skyscraper (if any were being built).
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70. GET OFF THE TOURIST MAP.
Popular guidebooks often come with maps of the most visited areas of Havana. However, there are other neighborhoods that have hundreds of years of history and represent the reality of the present day city. Municipalities such as Cerro, La Lisa, and Boyeros are examples of parts of Havana where thousands of people live but hardly anyone visits. Surprise your convertible driver and tell them you want to go to one of those places as you cruise the streets of Havana. They will probably be impressed by your local knowledge and willingness to get off the beaten path.
84. GIVE UNUSED INTERNET TIME TO A LOCAL.
If connected to the digital world in any way, you probably bought Internet time in the hotel or at an Internet cafe. If you have any time left, give it to a Cuban. If your hotel has Wi-Fi just look for the young local kids hanging out in the lobby; they are there precisely to use the Internet. Hook them up with more time by giving away your leftover minutes. They will be stoked.
95. FIND A LOCAL CUBAN CONNECTION.
Almost two million Cubans and their families live outside of Cuba. That means in your hometown, no matter where it is, you are likely to come across someone who once called Havana home. Maybe your short taste of the island left you with a hankering for rice and beans or braised pork loin. Perhaps you want to take up salsa lessons to impress the locals when you make a return trip. You might be surprised to find you can fulfill your Cuban-inspired desires by looking up a local Cuban restaurant or dancing lessons. Cubans are just as curious about what you think of their country as you are about what they think of their homeland.
Need More? Pick up a copy of Havana: 101 Ways to Rock Your World. A lo Cubano!
It has been said that networking is both an art and a science; but at Clinton Global Initiative meetings, it is the opportunity for impact. Over the past several years I have had the privilege of working with the team at CGI on issues such as redefining "First Responder" assumptions for humanitarian relief in Africa, and rethinking refugee response paradigms in the Middle East.
Most recently, their collaboration-based platform has helped me to explore ways to improve conditions in Flint, MI. The scope and scale of possible impact is limited only by the time in a day. I have never been in a place where everyone you meet literally wants to work with you to make positive change -and do so in some of the most impoverished communities on the globe.
In February, my organization, Children's Health Fund, attended our first CGI Winter Meeting; it was an opportunity to introduce myself in a new role and to speak to like-minded people intent on making a positive change in the United States and abroad. The team at CGI, recognizing that newcomers to global forums like this may need some added orientation, arranged a new member breakfast to introduce the CGI leadership and talk about how to best maximize the CGI platform. As both a veteran (from previous roles) and a rookie, I spoke about the convening power of these meetings and encouraged all who attended to lean in, be both interested and interesting, and not to run out of business cards.
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I walked away from the CGI Winter Meeting with about 100 new contacts and a broad range of possible partnerships - although our work was not done. Over the next several months, we prioritized the possible partnerships and began serious discussions with both foundations and corporations about how to best work together.
As a direct result of the CGI connection in February, Children's Health Fund recently hosted Barry Segal, President of the Segal Family Foundation, and his team from Focus for Health, at our program site in Newark, NJ. We together visited Pennington Court, a public housing complex in Newark's East Ward, and as soon as we arrived, you could see and sense the challenges that children and families faced. The average annual household income barely tops $11,000 in this community, and drugs (and drug related violence) are common. Data continually proves that economically vulnerable children experience serious health disparities, including higher incidence of acute and chronic health conditions, worse outcomes, higher mortality rates and difficulty accessing services.
But that is just the kind of challenge that Cindy Sickora, the Program Director for the Children's Health Fund effort in Newark, and Barry Segal's Focus for Health, were looking for. Dr. Sickora, who has a doctorate in nursing practice, believes positive changes are underway and that health care is a big part of the movement. At our program visit, Dr. Sickora introduced us to her secret weapon: a team of
community outreach workers who have visited every apartment in Pennington Court and two other public housing complexes to reach more than 1,000 families every year. When she and the Children's Health Fund's mobile medical clinic arrived on a recent morning at Pennington Court, families were already gathering for their appointments. It seemed like everyone was talking about health - good health.
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Going door-to- door, the health workers, local residents themselves, help educate families about the mobile clinic, schedule appointments, conduct health screenings, and offer support to neighbors trying to lose weight, lower their blood pressure, get more exercise and follow the other medical recommendations. The community health workers are an important link to the mobile program and they were just the sort of community based approach that Barry Segal and his team were interested in supporting.
So now, working together, Children's Health Fund and Focus for Health are adding a bit more hope, and support, to children and families in Newark. All through CGI - but it doesn't stop there.
This past June, CGI America provided the platform for like-minded people, intent of doing something good and giving back, to again become more than the sum of our parts. Solutions to health care access for poor children and families in Newark; or questions how to sustainably deliver a supply of clean and safe water to children and families in Flint, MI will not be solved easily or singularly. It's going to take all of us, working together, to make the positive change we want to see. And as with the CGI Winter meeting, the stage is set - we each walked away from CGI America with an array of possibilities to work together - now it is time to make it happen.
Organic leftovers, waste from vegetable ready for recycling and to compost. Collecting food leftovers for composting. Environmentally responsible behavior, ecology concept.
By Paul Bulcke, Chief Executive Officer, Nestle SA, and Dr. Andrew Steer
Around the globe, about one-third of all food produced for human consumption goes to waste. It rots, gets lost in transport or is simply left on our plates. The impact of this loss extends beyond just food: Production of food that is wasted uses 24 percent of all agriculture-related water, causes 8 percent of all human-created greenhouse gas emissions, and costs consumers, farmers and businesses up to $940 billion per year.
Last year's Sustainable Development Goals, signed by more than 193 countries, included a target to halve food waste by 2030, while some businesses have set even more ambitious deadlines. In 2015, The Consumer Goods Forum - a coalition of more than 400 of the world's largest manufacturers, retailers and service providers - resolved that its members should halve food waste from their own operations by 2025.
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One major hurdle to meeting these commitments has been a lack of consistent guidance. The recent Global Green Growth Forum in Copenhagen addressed this need with the launch of the Food Loss and Waste Accounting and Reporting Standard (FLW Standard). This is the first-ever global guidance for businesses, governments and other groups to measure and report on their food loss and waste.
The new FLW Standard establishes consistent definitions, requirements, and guidelines on what companies need to measure and how they should measure it. Companies that use the guidance will be better able to quantify how much food loss and waste occurs in their operations and supply chains, understand where it goes, and set baselines and measure progress against targets. Armed with this information, companies can develop smarter strategies and increase the efficiency of their supply chains.
As members of Champions 12.3, we are convinced that if we work together we can develop effective solutions to reduce food loss and waste, helping the world meet Sustainable Development Goal Target 12.3, which aims to cut food waste by 50% by 2030. Launched in January 2016, Champions 12.3 is a coalition of leaders in government, business and the non-profit sector dedicated to inspire ambition, mobilize action, and accelerate progress toward this global goal.
Achieving Target 12.3 is aligned with Nestle's goal to achieve zero waste for disposal by 2020. As the leading nutrition, health and wellness company, Nestle is committed to reducing food loss and waste across its value chain.
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Reducing food loss and waste not only helps Nestle secure its supply of agricultural raw materials, but it will also have a positive impact on society by supporting rural development, water conservation, and food security. Shockingly, more than 800 million people - one in nine globally - are undernourished. And yet 1 billion tons of food that is produced for people never gets consumed. If we can get more food to more people, this will increase their nutrition intake and improve their well-being, while reducing pressure on natural resources.
By measuring food loss and waste, companies can better see and report on where and how food is lost in their supply chains. Increased transparency can, in turn, help companies identify hotspots, develop new strategies and monitor progress. Nestle, for example, provides regular updates around its efforts and progress to reduce food loss and waste in its annual Nestle in Society: Creating Shared Value report and through related private and public reporting initiatives.
The FLW Standard was developed using input and feedback from more than 200 external stakeholders. Nestle provided input during the standard's development, drawing on pilot tests in its milk supply chain in Pakistan. The Pakistani dairy sector was chosen because of its complexity and high volumes, and because it offered an opportunity to test the efficiency of the company's dairy hub model.
At each stage of the value chain, Nestle analyzed all potential causes of wastage using the FLW Standard. Results were impressive. The total milk loss in the company's supply chain was estimated to be only 1.4 percent, significantly lower than average country estimates. Indeed, approximately 15 percent to 19 percent of milk sold by Pakistani farmers is wasted in route to the market, according to a 2004 Asian Development Bank report. Nestle also found that sharing best practices among farmers contributes to an increase in milk production and less milk being rejected by chilling centers, while improved management at the retail stage could further reduce product losses. We expect that as more businesses use the FLW Standard, they will be able to identify similar opportunities.
The FLW Standard builds on a precedent. About 15 years ago, WRI teamed up with the World Business Council for Sustainable Development to launch the Greenhouse Gas Accounting and Reporting Standard, which is now the most widely used and trusted approach for measuring and reporting emissions. We hope the FLW Standard will have similar reach.
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Tim Goral published an extremely interesting interview with former president of the Appalachian College Association, Alice Brown, in University Business last month.
Ms. Brown's comments reflected the wisdom of a professional who has served for 15 years leading a consortium of 35 private, liberal arts colleges in North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia. Her remarks were wide ranging but one set in particular stood out above the rest. Ms. Brown claimed that "the central Appalachian region has a unique character - the students have different needs and different goals."
Ms. Brown explained that students in her college consortium "come from a different culture." She suggested that "the culture is very family oriented.... It's a culture that doesn't give kids a lot of experiences in the outside world. They come from a closed culture and they can continue to get that at a small college."
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Ms. Brown argued that this need reinforced the value proposition for small, rural liberal arts colleges that provide a nurturing climate crafted to encourage student success. These colleges did so on terms acceptable to the cultural and social environment into which these students were born and to which they hope to return.
The dominance of family, social, psychological, and cultural forces on a student's decision to attend and remain at college should not be underestimated.
Higher education leaders at two- and four-year colleges in Massachusetts have conveyed the same story to me, separately and repeatedly. For many of their students, success means something different than the stereotypical views of hyper-competitive students angling for admission to Princeton before accepting a seat in a future admissions class at Yale Law.
For many American students, their ambition is not dramatically different than among the most competitive students in any admissions class.
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The best and brightest students can come from anywhere. But the differences can be magnified when shaped by geography, the ability to handle debt, the need to support themselves and others, and the reasons for seeking a college degree. It's often more pragmatic than broadening.
As one group of community college counselors reported in a conversation with me about how best to create a seamless transfer pathway, it's often impossible for a Boston-born student to imagine success beyond a transfer to the local four-year public, UMass Boston. There's nothing wrong with this ambition, especially given the amazing work undertaken at the University. But the failure - if there is one - is in the narrowness in which the transfer student approaches the goal of a four-year degree.
The counselors reported that the decision to attend the local public university goes well beyond finances to include the practicality and insularity that comes with tribal ties to family, neighborhood, culture and region, whether rural or urban.
UMass is a logical choice because it has a good educational program at a stop on the MBTA subway line. It makes sense to a student whose mindset reflects the familial and cultural values that inform their decision and reinforces their sense of self that may extend only as far as the end of the subway.
This raises an interesting policy question.
If the purpose of American higher education is broader than workforce training, what values, if any, does this education support? Should colleges and universities enforce the cultural and social norms of their region - or at least their market draw - or should they teach to the broader values in American society? Is the purpose of American higher education principally to create global citizens?
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Are critics of colleges and universities who "coddle" their students with elaborate safety nets in a nurturing environment really missing the point when the very success of student service programs is measured by metrics upon which accreditors, state and federal regulators, consumers, parents, students and graduates judge them?
If a student feels alienated from the mainstream campus culture, the isolation typically conveyed by many first-time freshman as "homesickness" can have a dramatic impact in areas like retention. Yet we know that graduation rates are highest when American colleges and universities match their educational program with student service support and employment after graduation. It makes the value proposition clear to students and their families.
It may be that residence life programs must serve two masters. The first is to be certain that college shapes, defines, and supports a constantly evolving understanding of American values in a global society across its academic and residence life programs. But it may also be true that to do so colleges and universities must better understand the competing claims tugging at students drawn from the splendid parochialism of their upbringing.
Ruth Nemzoff and Rosie Rosenzweig are Resident Scholars at the Brandeis Women's Studies Research institute
My dear Millennials,
As feminists of the older generation, we would like to reach across the great eldering divide to you of the more recent generation. As Bernie Sanders might say: "We may have a disagreement. Can we discuss this?" So what's the "this"? Guess what? It's the election and really it's about the future of our country. Now don't recoil in rebellion at this serious topic, but you are the only ones that can mold this; after all you are the future, and the future always rises up to challenge us, your elders.
Now about this Bernie fellow: While one author (Nemzoff) writes that she knew him well enough to have dated him, or a reasonable fact simile, like all those guys from Brooklyn who wear their ideology heavily accented in speech and action, the other (Rosenzweig) claims to have married him. Or a guy who "tawks" like him, who schlepped her to the March on Washington in 1963, where the entire crowd took three steps forward when Martin Luther King was introduced, who wore our children on his shoulders while we demonstrated against the Vietnam war, and even considered going to Selma, almost leaving her a widow, but decided, at the last minute to stay home. This one has a political crush on Bernie, and an intellectual feminist respect for Hillary. The other one (Nemzoff, in case you forgot) is head over heels staunchly in the Hillary camp, and thinks Bernie doesn't have a practical chance in hell to change this country. Those two are still talking about that.
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But, all asides aside, to get to the point of this letter: we have been conducting research into you guys among our students, stopping kids with buds in their ears at shopping malls, and generally quizzing our grandchildren to try to understand where you are coming from. We both want to make a united effort to "get" what's with the emerging generation. So just to make sure that we do understand, here are the attitudes and characteristics as we have heard them.
Please correct us if we are off.
You really don't swallow everything we tell you. We have to earn your respect, because it is not assumed that our opinions are relevant to you. You don't want to be like us.
You don't like to be described with the stereotypical millennial generalizations as "entitled," "complaining" and "lazy," etc. You live in a more challenging less rewarding world than ours was at your age.
Your debt is enormous, prices are higher, real estate has skyrocketed; "breaking up the banks," the demons behind your financial woes, sounds attractive.
You are NOT going to settle down into the old marriage lifestyle of a house, and 2.5 kids though you may have a dog. You are probably third or fourth wave feminism engulfing race, minorities, sexual freedom that embraces LGBT and alternate fluid (cisgender)lifestyles, even communal living. You want to hook up without commitments if you so desire. If you do have a child, you may not even marry. If you do marry, your child will have a hyphenated name.
You do not identify as feminists of the old guard.
Your job prospects are not guaranteed, because your expensive education is impractical in today's job market.
Even if you are forced to live with your parents, you want your independence.
Bernie is the grandfather you want to turn up with, after weed is legalized.
Hillary is "old school," and does not earn your vote just because it's time for a woman to be president.
You may not even vote, because the government does not address nor represent the life you live.
Of course there is another side and, if you have read this far, you are expecting it. So here it is: we also resent the generalizations that you apply to us. Some of us did not live the "stable" lives of which we are accused: some divorced; some were indeed more hippy than grandpa Bernie; some of us tried drugs and were wrecked from "bad trips" and bad decisions. We didn't want to be like our parents either. And my dear young people, give us some credit: some of us did engage in fluid life styles, in the closet. If you were watching the academy awards, remember Chris Rock saying "Why didn't we revolt in the old days?" Because the consequences were much more punishing. Just like black folks who find themselves in life-threatening positions today, radicals were followed and harassed by the FBI and closed-minded people. We liked sexual freedom just like you, but we liked it with protection, AND in those days protection wasn't very good and sex had to be kept secret, because society didn't accept women who engaged in it. Though the paradox is only sex with women was considered acceptable for men. Give us some credit, we had inter-racial relationships, gender fluidity, unisex dressing, women athletes, (even though we were warned that too much physical exertion would damage our health), and attitude. The ones you read about are the icons of our time and were considered artists, "bohemians," and the like: "The Other" is what we were called then. We did blaze some trails for you. As for pot, some of us tried it, but we now believe you can get high on life; what do you think the whole Mindfulness Revolution is all about? We were there, but we didn't talk about it now, because we figured we had to be "stable" for your mental health!
And now for the final plea. Drumroll please.
Do you want to live in a world that has wasted and polluted its resources?
Do you want to deny your own potential to influence this world to represent the life you live and the issues that you believe are important?
Do you want to be the stereotype you deny? Uncommitted? Too lazy to work at your own revolution? Too short-sighted and high to see that this here and now moment makes the future you want to be possible?
Remember as we are now you soon shall be. Buddha says you can't avoid old age, sickness, and death. Americans say death and taxes are inevitable, use whatever phrase you want.
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All this blab is to get you to vote. Nemzoff says that Hillary is the one who does know, from her long experience in politics, how to get things done. While Rosenzweig's heart was for Bernie, her head will support Hillary. But change won't happen unless all you who supported Bernie support Hillary now! Maybe her practical step by step boring but effective process will change for the better and come out of gridlock. Maybe the country and you will be able to live up to both of your potentials. We want those moments for you, so that the future you deserve will come into being.
Jackie and I have been eating quite a lot of rice pudding this summer, partly because it is one of the best things to eat with rhubarb or strawberry-rhubarb compote and partly because it is so easy to make. It just about cooks itself if you follow Mark Bittman's instructions, which I urge you to do. I use exactly his technique, but I always choose a risotto-type rice for a creamy pudding with plump, soft grains of rice (the vialone nano variety, or carnaroli if I've run out of that). Also, I use a little more rice than he does: a level 1/2 cup for his quantities; and for the liquid I've taken to using a 50/50 mixture of whole milk and coconut milk (the Aroy-D brand from Thailand, packed in boxes rather than cans, is particularly good), with a little vanilla extract and (unusually for me) no salt.
One afternoon last week, we had an unsettling moment: Looking ahead to the evening, there was not quite enough leftover rice pudding for both of us as a standalone dessert (one cup, or about 235 ml by volume), and no fruit compote to eke it out. Then a memory of Italy came to the rescue: I got to thinking of those wonderful rice tartlets we've eaten in bars and pastry shops all over the country: risini, risottini and tortini di riso are just some of the names they go by. A larger, flatter version of this would serve six, which meant the two of us could have it that evening, then for breakfast the next day, and for an afternoon snack too. We could even give a (small) slice to a friend.
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Considering the filling, I felt that the creamy, gently flavored rice pudding could use a hint of acidity and a few points of contrasting texture, and I thought of the jam often found under the almond-egg filling of a frangipane tart (British readers may think of a Bakewell tart/pudding). For this, I had the remains of a jar of very loose cherry preserves, so loose that they were more like candied cherries in syrup, though I could have used normal jam to pretty good effect.
To begin, a quick whir of the food processor produced a small disc of pastry (mine was made with approximately 4 oz / 115 g flour, 2.5 oz / 70 g butter and a little salt, with moisture provided by a drizzle of the simple syrup I try to keep in the fridge). After it had rested in the refrigerator for 20 minutes, I rolled this out and lined a tart pan measuring 8 inches (20 cm) across and 1 inch (2.5 cm) deep; mine was a fluted, removable-bottom model. I lined the pastry with aluminum foil and put the pan into the freezer while the oven came up to just shy of 400 F (200 C). Clearly, any buttery pie or tart pastry will do, though not puff pastry or anything that will rise substantially when baking.
In the meantime, I added a whole egg and an egg yolk to the one cup of rice pudding. If your pudding seems insufficiently creamy in consistency, you might add a splash of milk too. To keep that Italian theme going, I also stirred in the grated zest of a medium lemon. I left the rice filling on the counter to warm to room temperature.
Next, I baked the foil-lined tart shell, adding dried beans to keep the pastry from bubbling away from the pan or sagging around the rim. After 20 minutes, I lowered the oven temperature to around 375 F (190 C), removed the foil and beans and returned the shell to the oven to bake until browned and cooked through. No: even though fully baked, it will not burn when you later return it to the oven to cook the filling - the rice mixture serves as an insulator.
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At this point, I spooned syrup from my cherries onto the base of the tart shell and dotted it with cherries from the jar, then returned it to the oven to dry the fruit and syrup a little: just five minutes. If I hadn't had these super-loose preserves, I'd have warmed a third of a cup (80 ml by volume) of good cherry or raspberry jam to partly liquefy it and used this - in that case I probably would have proceeded directly to the next and final step: lowering the temperature to 350 F (175 C), adding the rice pudding / egg mixture to the tart shell and baking it for another 25 minutes or so until it had set but remained soft. Palpate it with your finger to check that it's custardy and not quite firm to the touch.
Serve tepid or at room temperature; unless your house is very hot, you won't want to refrigerate the remains - and if you have a couple of guests or family members to help, there won't be any.
Note on temperatures: Yes, you can do this whole thing at 375 F (190 C). In dishes like this, I fiddle with the thermostat more out of superstition and habit than out of any firm conviction that a few degrees one way or the other matter all that much. You'll need to adjust timing, though not by a lot.
This worked just as hoped: the rice mixture remained pudding-y, soft and creamy, but the eggs held it together well enough that the tart could be eaten with fork or fingers; because it was thoroughly pre-baked, the pastry remained crisp for the entire 2-1/2-day life of the tart; the lemon zest and cherries did their job of adding another dimension to the dessert's flavor.
The fact is that we'd have eaten that lone cup of rice pudding anyway, but the dessert outlook was much brighter with this tart sitting there on the counter top.
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The Icelandic countryside photographed just outside of Hverageroi (The Flower Town)
By Marisa Sashti
335,000 people. 40,000 square miles. 170 geothermal pools. Combined, these numbers comprise Iceland, a country that is much more than the barren lands filled with frozen water many Americans imagine. About the size of Kentucky, Iceland is shaped by a unique landscape of glaciers and volcanoes - hence its nickname, the land of ice and fire - and it is the only country in the world that generates 100 percent of its energy through renewable and sustainable initiatives - a goal the U.S. lags far behind on. Harnessing the heat from the Earth's inner core, Iceland is able to heat 99 percent of its homes, making geothermal energy the nation's secret to energy conservation. In addition, the Icelandic peoples' mentality around conservation -- highlighted by the country's extensive national park system -- positions the country as one of the foremost leaders in the green energy revolution.
In March 2016, students from around the world traveled to Iceland with EF Education First to participate in this year's Global Student Leader Summit and witness Iceland's innovations across the country's varied landscape. In the Southern city of Vik, waterfalls roared as they harness hydroelectricity. Even further south in Hella, a geothermal greenhouse provides heat to grow fresh tomatoes. Iceland has become an expert in the practical use of their natural resources -- each year, the nation generates about 7,100 megawatts from hydropower and 2,000 gigawatt hours from geothermal implementation.
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Ryan, a sophomore from Arlington, Virginia, was in awe at the natural wonders. "I love that all the Icelanders here have such a sense of pride, because of their ability to use renewable energy," he said. "To be honest, I think I would too if my country was completely sustainable."
Elin Perla Stefansdottir, a college student in Reykjavik, commented on her country's stability by referencing a motto that Icelanders live by: "Society without waste."
"Energy is really important, and limited, and we have to use it wisely," she added. This essential perspective changes the conversation from questioning whether and when a resource will run out to understanding a single resource's impact on the individual, the community, and the Earth as a whole.
"I've never seen a country that has such respect for the natural environment," said Nisha, a high school junior student from Virginia.
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But how can the U.S. use Iceland as a model? Speakers at the Summit spoke about exactly that. In one talk, Icelandic President Olafur Ragnar Grissom highlighted the country's independence from fossil fuels, and pointed out that even Mozambique and Paraguay score higher in terms of renewable energy than the United States. "If they're ahead, why can America not do better?" he joked.
That isn't beyond the realm of possibility for the U.S. Grissom went on to say that if the United States were to harness all of its geothermal power capabilities, it would produce two times the amount of energy that Americans already use.
Grissom's talk shed light on the U.S.'s need to further energy efficiency efforts. As of 2013, 90.5 percent of our country's energy came from fossil fuels, while only 9.52 percent came from renewable energy. Although the U.S. does not currently harness geothermal energy efficiently enough to merit its use, the potential is apparent. The geysers in California host the largest grouping of geothermal power plants in the world. And it doesn't stop with California's geysers - the U.S. boasts several other untapped sources of renewables, should they decide to confront climate change through renewable energy sources, including regions with great wind power and solar potential.
But this change will not come easily. First, Americans must accept the consequences of fossil fuel use and change, much in the way Iceland was once forced to. After witnessing the effects of coal mining on their communities, Icelanders took it upon themselves to convert their way of life. Grissom spoke of his own teenage years, a time when his country was 80 percent dependent on foreign oil. Just one generation later, the country has made a whole-hearted shift towards renewables.
With the recent Paris COP21 climate talks, the world is clearly beginning to understand the urgency in addressing climate change. As a teenager, people my age can also play a role in a sustainable energy future. Not only do we have the time and ability to make a change -- our future depends on it.
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For now, we could begin by taking a few hints from a country that has already made its mark -- or rather, that hasn't left a trace at all.
Marisa Sashti is a high school junior from Tennessee
ExxonMobil officials may hem and haw when reporters ask them if the company still funds climate science denier organizations, but the numbers don't lie.
The company says it acknowledges the reality of global warming and claims it supports a carbon tax, but its recently disclosed list of 2015 "public information and policy research" grantees shows it spent nearly $2 million last year on more than a dozen think tanks, advocacy groups and associations that dispute climate science and disparage renewable energy.
That's significant from both a legal and political perspective.
There are legal implications because ExxonMobil is currently under investigation for allegedly misleading investors and the general public about climate risks. Its scientists, who were conducting cutting-edge climate research as far back as the 1970s, cautioned top management that continuing to burn vast quantities of fossil fuels could be catastrophic. Instead of heeding those warnings, the company stressed scientific uncertainty to protect its long-term profitability and bankrolled denier groups to spread disinformation.
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Likewise, it is politically significant because, by sowing doubt about climate science and the potential of carbon-free energy sources, denier groups provide cover for elected officials to stand in the way of progress.
Two Decades of Duplicity
Shortly after the adoption of the Kyoto Protocol international climate treaty, Exxon went on a spending spree to block federal efforts to address global warming. The company, which was outed by a 2007 report by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), spent $18.62 million from 1998 -- a year before it merged with Mobil -- through 2005 on a network of more than 40 groups. From 2006 through last year, it spent another $14.35 million, for a total of $33 million.
That's just what can be gleaned from the company's tax filings and statements, however. Corporations are not required to disclose all of their political spending, and there is reason to suspect ExxonMobil has spent quite a bit more on its climate disinformation campaign. A former ExxonMobil executive who wishes to remain anonymous told UCS that the company secretly allocated as much as $10 million annually for what insiders called climate "black ops" from 1998 through 2005.
In any case, according to its own figures posted last week, ExxonMobil spent $1.96 million on 16 denier and obstructionist groups last year. Ten of them, including the American Enterprise Institute, American Legislative Exchange Council, Federalist Society and Hoover Institution, were among those listed in the 2007 UCS report.
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So what is ExxonMobil getting for its money? Let's take a look at a handful of last year's grantees to find out.
U.S. Chamber of Commerce: Half of ExxonMobil's 2015 denier donations -- $1 million -- went to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the same amount it gave the Chamber in 2014.
The Chamber acknowledges that climate change is happening, but discounts the prevailing scientific consensus that it is largely due to human activity, mainly burning fossil fuels. When pressed about the Chamber's position during a March 2014 Senate hearing, Karen Harbert, head of the Chamber's Institute for 21st Century Energy, replied that there is a "robust debate" over what is causing climate change. "It is caused by a lot of things," she insisted.
Harbert's scientifically indefensible comment was not surprising. The Chamber has a long history of disputing climate science, and that has alienated some of its members. In 2009, Apple, Exelon, Nike, PNM Resources and PG&E, for example, cancelled their memberships after Chamber Vice President William Kovacs demanded that the EPA convene a "Scopes monkey trial of the 21st century" on climate science with witnesses, cross-examinations and a judge ruling on the reality of global warming. "It would be evolution versus creationism," Kovacs explained. "It will be climate change science on trial."
Those high-profile defections apparently had little impact on the Chamber's position. In May 2014, just days before the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced its draft Clean Power Plan to reduce power plant carbon pollution, the Chamber released a grossly misleading report attacking the proposed rule. The report, which was also sponsored by the American Petroleum Institute, was denounced not only by the EPA, but also by PolitiFact.com and the Washington Post. Among its many faults, the report wildly inflated the cost of the rule and failed to consider the benefits of cutting carbon emissions.
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Last October, the Chamber and 14 other business associations filed a lawsuit against the EPA, arguing that the Clean Power Plan exceeds the agency's authority to regulate the energy sector, and the Chamber's priorities for 2016 include opposing EPA efforts to curb carbon emissions as well as the agency's science-based finding that global warming endangers public health and the environment.
Manhattan Institute: ExxonMobil gave the Manhattan Institute $200,000 in 2015, boosting the company's total donations to the self-described free-market think tank to $1 million since 1998. In turn, the institute has been cranking out papers and articles denouncing efforts to cut carbon and maligning renewable energy technologies.
Last summer, for example, Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow Oren Cass dismissed the idea of a carbon tax -- ExxonMobil's supposed preferred policy -- as a "shell game" in an article he wrote for National Affairs. He followed up that essay in October with a white paper calling the impending U.N. climate negotiations in Paris a "farce." What did Cass propose as a better solution? He urged policymakers to "abandon fruitless negotiations and focus instead on the realistic option of promoting innovation and preparing for any future adaptation that may be necessary."
The institute's longtime point man on energy, Robert Bryce -- who previously worked for the ExxonMobil-funded Institute for Energy Research -- says he's "agnostic" about climate change. Over the years he has written numerous columns for the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Wall Street Journal and other publications praising oil, natural gas and coal and disparaging wind and solar. A recent Bryce column in the National Review, for instance, denounced tax breaks and subsidies for the wind industry but ignored the fact that, since 1918, federal oil and gas industry subsidies have averaged $4.85 billion a year in today's dollars.
American Legislative Exchange Council: ALEC, a secretive lobby group that drafts sample corporate-friendly legislation for state lawmakers, has received $1.79 million from ExxonMobil since 1998, and that investment is still paying dividends. At ALEC's annual meeting last July, for example, corporate and legislator members collaborated on bills and resolutions that would inhibit state implementation of the Clean Power Plan, hamper the solar industry from selling electricity directly to homes and businesses, and undermine state renewable energy standards by restricting investment in wind and solar.
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One of the keynote speakers at that meeting, Stephen Moore -- founder of the Club for Growth and a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation -- declared at a plenary session that the "biggest scam of the last 100 years is global warming." ALEC's official position on climate change is only slightly more nuanced, leaving open the question of the role human activity plays. "Climate change is a historical phenomenon," its website states, "and the debate will continue on the significance of natural and anthropogenic contributions."
With that scientifically challenged position, it's no wonder ALEC invites speakers for its conferences from such notorious climate science denier groups as the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, the Heartland Institute and, of course, the Heritage Foundation -- all former ExxonMobil grantees.
While ExxonMobil and other major carbon producers Chevron and Peabody Energy remain steadfast ALEC members, more than 100 corporations have severed ties with the organization for a variety of reasons, including its stance on climate change. Those companies include a number of heavy hitters in the energy sector, including American Electric Power, BP, ConocoPhillips and Shell.
National Black Chamber of Commerce: From 2002 through last year, the National Black Chamber of Commerce (NBCC) received $1.1 million from ExxonMobil, and the organization's president, Harry C. Alford, is unapologetic about taking fossil fuel industry money. "Of course we do and it is only natural," Alford states on the NBCC website. "The legacy of Blacks in this nation has been tied to the miraculous history of fossil fuel.... [F]ossil fuels have been our economic friend."
Last summer, NBCC published a report that falsely claimed the Clean Power Plan would pose "economic hardship" on poor and minority Americans. A UCS analysis found that the report was based on fraudulent claims from previously published studies, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's anti-Clean Power Plan report from 2014. In fact, unchecked climate change would likely hurt poor and minority communities most.
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More recently, Alford wrote an opinion piece attacking the Clean Power Plan for The Hill, a Washington political trade publication. Like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's bogus 2014 report, Alford's June 29 column vastly exaggerated the cost of the proposed rule and did not factor in the billions of dollars in health and economic benefits that would result from cutting carbon pollution.
ExxonMobil's Pretzel Logic
Last fall, UCS and reporters at InsideClimate News and the Los Angeles Times revealed that Exxon's own scientists had warned the company decades ago about the potential for climate catastrophe. The new revelations also showed that the company responded to that bad news by downplaying climate risks and helping establish the climate science denial network.
A number of journalists did follow-up stories, pressing ExxonMobil officials about the company's longtime support for denier groups. They didn't always get the same answer.
During an interview last September with Richard Keil, ExxonMobil's senior media relations advisor, WNYC's On the Media host Bob Garfield pushed Keil for an explanation. "Please clarify this for me: Are not funding, or did not fund them?" Garfield asked. Keil's response was unequivocal. "We are not funding," he said.
When asked the same question by the New York Times in early November, then-Vice President of Public and Government Affairs Kenneth Cohen likewise said no. "We stopped funding them in the middle part of the last decade because a handful of them were making the uncertainty of the science their focal point," he said. "Frankly, we made the call that we needed to back away from supporting the groups that were undercutting the actual risk" of global warming.
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Cohen's response wasn't a surprise. He made the same disingenuous claim back in February 2007, a few weeks after UCS disclosed that ExxonMobil had been spending millions of dollars on climate science denier groups. Greenwire, a trade news organization, reported that Cohen said the company "has stopped funding them."
The surprise came on November 9, three days after the New York Times story ran, when PBS NewsHour host Judy Woodruff asked Cohen if ExxonMobil has been funding denier groups. This time he took a different tack.
"Well, the answer is yes," replied Cohen, who retired from the company in January. "And I will let those organizations respond for themselves."
But before anyone declares a victory for corporate transparency, it turns out that Cohen's moment of candor was, well, momentary.
On December 1, a Washington Post story quoted yet another ExxonMobil spokesperson who qualified Cohen's remark. Alan Jeffers, a media relations manager, said the company "rejects the premise" that it has been funding climate science denial.
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"We were engaged with funding public policy groups on policy issues, not on science," Jeffers explained. "We made our position known on some climate policies that made us unpopular with environmental activists, and they tried to position that as us funding climate denial. And that's just not accurate."
Not accurate? As Jeffers, Keil and their former boss, Cohen, surely know, the think tanks, advocacy groups and associations ExxonMobil has been sponsoring all these years lie about the science to strengthen the argument against doing anything to address climate change. After all, if people believe climate science is a fraud -- or at least "far from settled" -- they will see no reason to support a carbon tax, cap-and-trade system, or any other climate policy. And that line of reasoning, which protects the status quo, seems to suit ExxonMobil just fine.
For the past few years, as I've learned more about race and privilege in our country, as I've learned more about the discrimination against people of color in America, I've become more and more passionate about fighting for change, joining the Black Lives Matter movement, and using my privilege to advocate for truth and justice. But this week, for the first time, my passion turned to heartbreak. For the first time, I was broken over our country.
I sat in a circle full of women I love and admire, and choked back sobs as I prayed for racial reconciliation in our country. I prayed because it was all I knew how to do. I prayed because I cannot change the hearts of anyone around me, but I know the One who can. Ultimate truth and ultimate justice come from the One who created it all, and in the midst of the deaths of two more black men and five police officers, all I can do is fall to my knees.
Lord, you are good, and you are sovereign. In the midst of heartbreak and chaos, You are our peace, you are our strength. I beg that you would bring reconciliation to a broken and hurting world. I pray that you would bring us together, unite us as one people under You. I pray that you would open the eyes of your church, that you would open the eyes of the privileged who follow you. Make it abundantly clear to us that your Kingdom is one of beauty and color, that your Church is not exclusively white. Open our eyes, open our hearts, let us scream and shout for those who have lost their voices.
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Oh Lord, let change begin with us, with your church. Let your people be the first to stand up and proclaim that something here is not right. Let us scream and shout and mourn for our brothers and sisters of color. Let us join them, let us link arms as we proclaim that their lives matter too. Let us be slow to speak and quick to listen to those who are in pain. We are hurting and we need you. White, black, brown- we need you. Show us that we need each other.
Let us unashamedly proclaim the names of those who have not known justice while here on this broken earth.
Lord we lift up the black men and women, boys and girls, who were forcibly removed from their home countries and brought to America in shackles, where we began a legacy of slavery, brutality, and murder. Open our eyes to the truth that the system of slavery has left a lasting impact on our country and our communities.
We lift up the leaders who fearlessly fought against the injustice of Jim Crow laws in the 1950's and 60's. We lift up Martin Luther King Jr., whose legacy of of nonviolence was rooted fully in your Gospel. We lift up Claudette Colvin and Rosa Parks, who refused to believe that they were less than. We lift up John Lewis and those who sat down in Greensboro sit ins, despite the hate thrown at them. We lift up all who marched, all who spoke, all who used their bodies and their voices to change the legal systems set up against them. We lift up those who marched from Selma to Montgomery, not once, but three times, to stand up for justice. We lift up those who gave up their lives for freedom.
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We lift up Emmett Till, who was brutally murdered in 1955 for whistling at a white woman. We lift up all of the men and women of color who were killed at the hands of hate, never to see justice in their lifetimes. Lord, let our hearts break over the truth that these legal systems have not yet been fully rectified.
We lift up Michael Brown, we pray for his family, that two years after his murder they would continue to heal from the results of police actions taken against their son. We lift up those affected by the 2014 riots in Ferguson, Missouri, that their battle cry of "Hands up, don't shoot," would still be heard around the world.
We lift up Freddie Gray, Tamir Rice, Dontre Hamilton, Eric Garner, John Crawford, Ezell Ford, Dante Parker, Tanisha Anderson, Akai Gurley, Rumain Brisbon, Jerame Reid, Tony Robinson, Phillip White, Eric Harris, Walter Scott, and the hundreds of other unarmed men and women of color who have died at the hands of those responsible for protecting them.
We lift up Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, and we beg that these deaths would be the last, that this would be the moment our country proclaims that enough is enough.
We lift up Lorne Ahrens, Michael Krol, Michael Smith, Brent Thompson, and Patrick Zamarripa, the five police officers killed while protecting Dallas citizens' rights to peacefully protest. We lift up their families. We ask for healing. We lift up the officers who ran towards the danger, echoing the cry that Black Lives Matter.
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We pray for those who have been told that their lives matter less because of the color of their sin. We beg for forgiveness for the way we have treated those whose skin does not match our own. We beg that you would convict our hearts, that you would change us.
We beg that you would raise up leaders in our country brave enough to join the fight, brave enough to proclaim freedom and justice. Build up a police force dedicated to empowering the communities they serve. Rebuild the system that has been devastatingly broken.
Lord, we ask that you would convict the hearts of those who have committed acts of ill intent towards our bothers and sisters of color. Convict the voices of bias inside all of us. Give us a hunger and a thirst for justice, a hunger and a thirst that can only point back to You. This is your battle, Lord. We are your soldiers, let us be your hands and feet. Lead us to the victory that belongs to you. And in the end, sweet Jesus, let us pass through the gates of heaven arm in arm, rejoicing in eternal life together. Let your sons and your daughters rejoice as one.
Turkey's EU membership journey has always been cumbersome and contentious. It elicits impassioned reactions from both opponents and proponents. The novelty is that Turkey's EU membership process has now long since been decoupled from its relations with Europe. But while the British exit from the EU looks set to further derail Turkey's EU membership bid, which is already in a shambles, a Brexit may well end up as a boon for Turkey's bilateral relations with individual European countries. This should create incentives for Turkey and the EU to begin to contemplate on an alternative arrangements between themselves to overcome the anxieties and expectation created by long defunct and largely illusory membership process.
British exit from the EU can potentially produce two types of responses. First, a crisis-stricken EU would become more navel-gazing and inward-looking, hence losing its appetite for enlargement altogether, let alone allowing Turkey in. Second, inspired by the history of the European integration, the EU will try to overcome this crisis by going for deeper integration, resulting in an ever-closer Union. In this case, the identity and political culture will matter more for any prospective member country. In this scenario, the distance between the EU and a Muslim Turkey with a different political culture and troubled democratic credentials will only be widened.
This is not the whole story. One of the major mistakes that experts make is that they treat Turkey's path to EU membership and -the country's relations with Europe as identical. For a long time, Turkey and Europe also treated these relations as practically the same thing. But this is no longer the case. The decoupling of these two types of relations has become palpable in recent months, and looks set to continue. Moreover, a British exit from the EU will affect these two tracks very differently.
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As argued above while Turkey's EU membership bid lacks momentum, and would further stall in the aftermath of the Brexit, Turkey's relations with Europe are experiencing a revival, and appear to offer a relatively promising future.
The Syrian refugee crisis, a growing tide of radicalism, the collapsing regional order in MENA, and the Russian defiance of NATO are driving Turkey and Europe to cooperate closely. This trends seems set to continue. As it is the realpolitik considerations rather than the shared values, these relations can no longer serve as an anchor for Turkey's democratisation process, as the EU membership process had done for Turkey between 2002-2007. This is an unfortunate outgrowth of the decoupling of the Turkey's EU membership bid and its European relations.
Putting this adverse side affect aside, Brexit is likely to contribute into Turkey - European relations.
Britain and the EU have intricate and mutually beneficial economic ties, this dictates the sides to devise a new arrangement to lessen the negative consequences of the departure. Unlike the hasty and angry calls made earlier by the EU and member states' officials, calling for a speedy exit of the UK, Merkel has called upon the remaining 27 EU member states not to make any rash decisions and to rationally consider the EU's future path in the context of Brexit. With the passage of time, this is likely to be the tone defining the process of charting the nature of future British - EU relationships.
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Here Turkey - EU relations can set a precedent. As a member of the customs union with the EU. Turkey aims to upgrade the status of this agreement to cover agricultural products and services, besides industrial products. If this materializes, it may set a precedent for the UK to seek a customs union arrangement with the EU that includes provisions for its world-renowned financial industry and services.
In return, the UK's would be new arrangement with EU can inspire Turkey to seek, or at least be content with, a new type of arrangement, falling short of full membership, with the EU. Such a search for an alternative arrangement is not new. In fact, when Turkey's membership hope was high in 2004 - 2005, Germany's Christian Democratic Union Party leader of the time Angela Merkel, later joined by then-French interior minister and presidential hopeful Nicolas Sarkozy, proposed a 'privileged partnership' as an alternative to membership. This proposal lacked substance. Turkey regarded it offering neither privilege nor partnership, only stifling the membership prospect. Moreover, Turkey regarded this proposal as reducing Turkey's status to second-class status in the European system.
Turkey rejected this proposal. The resistance to it thus incorporated both political and psychological aspects.
With the benefit of hindsight, Turkey might have been right to refuse the fuzzy and shallow content of the offer, but not the idea of it. Turkey's EU membership process is going nowhere. Turkey has thus far opened 16 chapters, provisionally closing only one, out of 35 chapters that any candidate countries need to complete.
It is therefore long overdue for Turkey and EU to focus on what can be workable for both of them, a new model of partnership, instead of squabbling over what is untenable, full membership. The prospective model of British - EU relations can show the way out. A British special status with the EU would help overcome Turkey's psychological resistance to such measures, as these arrangements would no longer be seen as reducing Turkey to second class power status in the European system, and would hence be more acceptable to Turkey's political elite and general public.
Brexit has put the European integration process to one of its most daunting tests. But not all the repercussions of the Brexit are adverse, at least not for everyone. If Turkey can show political dexterity and seize the opportunity, a Brexit will open up new opportunity spaces for the country to exploit.
Cheryl Smith, owner of Cheryl's Global Soul in Brooklyn, NY
Everyday business owners are finding it increasingly difficult to get the financial resources they need to grow and prosper. Since the recession, small business loans on bank balance sheets have declined by 20%, while loans to medium and larger enterprises have increased by about 4%. Given the critical role of entrepreneurship in community development, how can we ensure that all business owners, regardless of background, have access to the support they need?
Community development financial institutions (CDFIs), like the four members of Accion's U.S. Network, are essential to filling this financing gap. CDFIs are mission-based lenders dedicated to serving individuals in economically disadvantaged communities, who face numerous barriers to qualifying for traditional finance. They receive funding through the U.S. Department of Treasury's CDFI Fund to leverage capital for impact. According to the CDFI Coalition, there are 945 certified CDFIs serving communities across the country.
In the years following the 2008 recession, CDFI lending increased slightly at the same time that bank lending significantly decreased. Every $1 dollar in awards from the CDFI Fund translated to $12.23 in loans made by CDFIs between 2005 and 2012. These funds financed a range of community development solutions, from small business loans to construction loans for affordable housing units and health care facilities. Between 2003 and 2012, CDFI loans generated approximately 63,249 permanent jobs and 47,866 construction jobs. CDFI investments have played a central role in our nation's economic recovery and growth.
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The unfortunate truth is that traditional lenders don't serve all communities equally. Women- and minority-owned businesses operate with substantially less capital than their peers even after accounting for other factors like credit score, and this is one reason they survive at a lower rate. Women-owned businesses receive only 16% of conventional small business loans and minority-owned businesses receive even less - 9.9%. In contrast, approximately half of Accion's loans in the U.S. go to women-owned businesses and two thirds go to minority-owned businesses. These businesses survive at a rate of 97%. In 2015 alone, Accion's loans helped create or sustain more than 8,500 jobs.
A study by the Aspen Institute found that among mission-based lenders, $1 in program costs to assist a business translated to between $8.96 and $9.45 in benefits. At Accion we see how access to capital impacts lives - for business owners, their employees, their families, and their communities. Tequila Jarrett, a client of Accion in Chicago, discussed the significance of her business' success in an interview with The Atlantic. "At the end of the day, I can tell my son, this is what mommy did," she said. "Mommy provided this many jobs. She was able to help this many families. I'm really trying to leave a legacy for him."
I began writing this piece after rebounding from some personal trauma, but I am a slow writer and sometimes upsetting national or international news overtakes me. Of course, trouble and pleasure are constant visitors on the micro level (stubbed toes and flowers) and the macro (an awesome Pope and drowning refugees). And, they're inter-connected: our own happiness or lack thereof dramatically affects our ability to contribute to the greater good, while the greater good or seeming lack thereof similarly impacts our own capacity for joyful living. That is why I advocate as strongly as possible for both personal happiness and a Gross National Happiness paradigm. Both are fundamentally important.
Still, following the killings of black Americans Alton Sterling and Philando Castile -- as you all probably know, two seemingly unjustified executions by police officers -- and then the targeted executions by a sniper of five police officers keeping the peace at a Dallas Black Lives Matter protest, my personal musings just seemed so damned trivial. Yet, where else can we start but in our own hearts and souls?
So I offer my story of kindness, resilience and post traumatic growth with the hope that it may help individually while also providing one more droplet for the sea of needed national well being.
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To start, here is one of my favorites, Italian psychotherapist Piero Ferruci. In The Power of Kindness:The Unexpected Benefits of Leading a Compassionate Life, he wrote,
"Kindness? It may strike us as absurd to even approach the subject: Our world is full of violence, war, terrorism, devastation. And yet life goes on precisely because we are kind to one another. No newspaper tomorrow will tell of a mother who read a bedtime story to her child, or a father who prepared breakfast for his children, of someone who listened with attention, of a friend who cheered us up, of a stranger who helped us carry a suitcase. Many of us are kind without even knowing it. We do what we do simply because it is right."
I have a winter memory of kindness, a day several passing motorists stopped to get my car unstuck from an ice-coated driveway. When I thanked them, one of the strangers thanked me right back, for the opportunity to help someone in need.
I've been remembering that normal, "simply because it is right" interaction because it illustrates so well the "helper's high" the kindness giver may feel, rather than the profound gratitude that can flood the recipient. To understand the latter, I apparently needed more than the minor annoyance of a stuck car. A threat to my left eye created a mile-wide ability to receive kindness, so much kindness, which undoubtedly hastened my emotional recovery. The kindness remains in my heart, a clear benefit from this traumatic time.
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I don't know for sure if the treatments will work, though the doctor assures me the odds are "heavily stacked" in my favor. I don't know if the sight in my left eye will ever improve. Meanwhile, the possibility of the same problem arising in my right eye is very real, although here again the doctor is reassuring. That's a lot of unknowns. Rather important unknowns.
However, I do know some things.
First, I know that it was a traumatizing shock to hear that I was in danger of losing all vision in my left eye without immediate, invasive treatments. My response to be quiet, turn inward, and focus on my own feelings was apparently both appropriate and effective, as my spirits rebounded substantially within a week of the first treatment. Whatever the reality of my vision, I feel like myself again. Research shows that happier people may be more resilient. Perhaps I had the science of happiness on my side.
Second, the treatment isn't as bad as I expected. Obviously no one wants a shot in the eye, but I falsely assumed the injection would be in the pupil, a particularly distressing prospect. It wasn't the pupil, it wasn't that painful, or even especially sore afterwards. A little freaky, but I can let go of ruminating over an unfounded fear.
Third, I know I am lucky to have insurance coverage for this doctor and these treatments. This was almost financially disastrous. The first retina specialist my optometrist connected me with is outside my insurance coverage region, which would have meant an $1800 deductible followed by an ongoing 30% co-pay. Both a retina specialist and the vision-saving drug are likely exceedingly expensive. If the current doctor had not been available, I would obviously have gone to the first recommended specialist, even if saving my vision led to bankruptcy. I am simultaneously grateful for my own good fortune and horrified that the minefield I dodged exists at all!
Fourth, social media was a godsend. While I am an extrovert who generally gets a lot of energy from face-to-face relationships, for about a week, I needed to cocoon. Social media provided a way for me to reach out, and for others to respond. The morning of my first treatment, I wept with gratitude as I read an outpouring of caring messages. The love I needed was there for me, thanks to the oft-maligned virtual world.
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Fifth, I know that my trauma was minimal compared with what many people endure. My thoughts on Post Traumatic Growth (PTG) refer only to my own experience, especially since, as a non-therapist, I don't know that much about Post Traumatic Growth. Wikipedia says PTG, or
"benefit finding": "refers to positive psychological change experienced as a result of adversity and other challenges in order to rise to a higher level of functioning. ... Post traumatic growth is .... undergoing significant 'life-changing' psychological shifts in thinking and relating to the world, that contribute to a personal process of change, that is deeply meaningful."
No matter how life-changing this episode turns out to be, it certainly contributed to "a personal process of change that is deeply meaningful." I believe I will look back at this time with a sense of peace, love, gratitude, and even joy, thanks to an awareness of the many gifts that supported me, including:
Gift of time. My husband, friends, and the nature of my work and responsibilities at this stage of life allowed me to back off from everything that did not serve my needs. Again, I know I am fortunate. And grateful.
Gift of writing. Sometimes writing feels like a burden to me. In this case, writing allowed me to articulate the experience as I saw and felt it, giving me some sense of control over my own story. I was so grateful to be a writer, especially when others told me that my story somehow inspired or helped them. Amazing! To be able to help others in my own time of pain, it blows me away.
Gift of reduced negativity. My initial diagnosis happened the day before the Orlando massacre. While I normally follow the news pretty closely and cry with much of the world's heartbreaks, this time, I limited my exposure. Being a good citizen is important to me, but I had to take care of myself first. This, by the way, is a gift each of us can give to ourselves when we need it.
Gift of modern medicine. Big pharma gets a bad rap for greed and money-fueled lobbying, but today I am very thankful for the drug industry. Until recently, doctors had no way to help patients who developed the same condition I have. My doctor told me, "We could only watch helplessly as they went blind." The drug that is saving my eyesight has been in use for just 10 years. Wow. So grateful. So lucky.
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Gift of Good Luck. Ferruci notes that luck is often a matter of mindfulness, of perceiving and appreciating the good in life. In addition to the medicine and the insurance, it was good luck that I went to the optometrist when I did, because the symptoms I noticed were unrelated to the condition that exam discovered. Since my right eye was working overtime to compensate for the deteriorating left eye vision, what luck that I had flashing and a floater! Again, like a broken record, I am grateful.
Above all, gifts of love. My husband, who spent many hours waiting in doctors' offices with me; my friend Ulrike who told me to go ahead and cry at her birthday brunch if that's what I needed (I did); the flowers, gift certificate, offers of whatever help I needed; even my son's compliment on my writing skills -- the gifts came in many forms. Each alone and all together, they mean so much.
NANSHA, CHINA - APRIL 05: Image shows the lighthouse on Zhubi Reef of Nansha Islands on April 5, 2016 in China. According to Xinhua Agency, China said on Tuesday that it neither accepted nor recognized the award of an arbitral tribunal in the South China Sea arbitration established at the request of the Philippines. (Photo by Li Jin/VCG via Getty Images)
After months of mounting speculation, the Permanent Court of Arbitration delivered its ruling on July 12 in the Philippines' case against China over maritime disputes in the South China Sea. The tribunal ruled unanimously that Beijing's attempt to turn the South China Sea into its own virtual lake violated international law, issuing a sweeping finding that Chinese claims to exclusive sovereignty over all the islands and shoals within the nine-dashed line -- which encompasses 86 percent of the sea -- have no legal basis. Prior to the ruling, the United States and its allies had already started criticizing China for pledging to ignore the final decision -- which one Chinese official derided last week as, "nothing more than a piece of paper." Sure enough, Chinese President Xi Jinping immediately rejected the decision. Going further, his foreign minister referred to it as a "political farce," while China's ambassador to the U.S. accused the PCA of "professional incompetence."
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It may seem un-American to ask whether China should do as we say, or, by contrast, as we do. But suppose someone were bold enough to pose that question. The first thing they would discover is that no permanent member of the U.N. Security Council has ever complied with a ruling by the PCA on an issue involving the Law of the Sea. In fact, none of the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council have ever accepted any international court's ruling when (in their view) it infringed on their sovereignty or national security interests. Thus, by rejecting the court's decision, China is doing just what the other great powers have repeatedly done for decades.
By rejecting the court's decision, China is doing just what the other great powers have repeatedly done for decades.
From the day the Philippines went to court, China has argued that the PCA has no legitimate jurisdiction on this issue since it concerns "sovereignty" -- which the text of the Law of the Sea treaty explicitly prohibits tribunals from addressing. When the court rejected China's objection, Beijing refused to participate in its hearings and made it clear that it would ignore the PCA's ruling. The United States and others have criticized Beijing for taking this stance. But again, if we ask how other permanent members of the Security Council have acted in similar circumstances, the answer will not be one we like.
When the Netherlands sued Russia after the latter's navy boarded and detained the crew of a Dutch vessel in waters off of the Russian coast in 2013, Moscow asserted that the court had no jurisdiction in the matter and refused to participate in the hearings. It also ignored a tribunal's order that the crew be released while the dispute was being resolved. After the PCA ruled that Russia had violated the Law of the Sea and ordered Moscow to pay the Netherlands compensation, Russia refused.
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The PCA ruled that the U.K. violated the Law of the Sea by establishing a marine protected area in the Chagos Islands. Britain disregarded it. (REUTERS/Terry Boughton/Royal Marines)
Anticipating the court's ruling in the case brought by the Philippines, then U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron proclaimed: "We want to encourage China to be part of that rules-based world. We want to encourage everyone to abide by these adjudications." Perhaps he had forgotten that just last year the PCA ruled that the U.K. had violated the Law of the Sea by unilaterally establishing a marine protected area in the Chagos Islands. The British government disregarded the ruling, and the marine protected area remains in place today.
The United States has never been sued under the Law of the Sea because -- unlike China -- Washington has not ratified the international agreement and is thus not bound by its rules. Chinese commentators have already emphasized this point in the mutual recriminations that have followed the court's announcement.
If we ask how other permanent members of the Security Council have acted in similar circumstances, the answer will not be one we like.
The closest analogue to the Philippines case involving the United States arose in the 1980s when Nicaragua sued Washington for mining its harbors. Like China, the United States argued that the International Court of Justice did not have the authority to hear Nicaragua's case. When the court rejected that claim, the United States not only refused to participate in subsequent proceedings, but also denied the court's jurisdiction on any future case involving the United States, unless Washington explicitly made an exception and asked the court to hear a case. If China followed that precedent, it could withdraw from the Law of the Sea Treaty altogether -- joining the United States as one of the world's only nations not party to the agreement.
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In the Nicaragua case, when the court found in favor of Nicaragua and ordered the United States to pay reparations, the U.S. refused, and vetoed six U.N. Security Council resolutions ordering it to comply with the court's ruling. U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. then, Jeane Kirkpatrick aptly summed up Washington's view of the matter when she dismissed the court as a "semi-legal, semi-juridical, semi-political body, which nations sometimes accept and sometimes don't."
A Philippine marine swims in the South China Sea. (AP Photo/Bullit Marquez)
Observing what permanent members of the Security Council do, as opposed to what they say, it is hard to disagree with realists' claims that the PCA and its siblings in The Hague -- the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court -- are only for small powers. Great powers do not recognize the jurisdiction of these courts -- except in particular cases where they believe it is in their interest to do so. Thucydides' summary of the Melian mantra -- "the strong do as they will; the weak suffer as they must" -- may exaggerate. But with the court's ruling this week against China, it is no surprise that Beijing has chosen to respond just as other great powers have traditionally done.
An earlier version of this article appeared in The Diplomat.
Also on WorldPost:
By Linda Graham
Linda Graham explains how therapists--and couples themselves--can prevent conflicts from spiraling out of control.
We've all been there: Your partner says something that rubs you the wrong way (or vice versa), and you launch into an argument. As you both get increasingly revved up--blood pressure rising, stomach churning, fists clenching--you lose your ability to think straight or see one another's point of view--a sign that your levels of cortisol, the body-brain's stress hormone, are running high.
Before you know it, one (or both) of you explodes and says something jaw-droppingly nasty, something you can never take back. What could have been a minor disagreement has escalated into a major conflict, and you both come away feeling hurt, disappointed, and dissatisfied with your relationship. And that dissatisfaction might lead to more--and more heated--conflicts in the future.
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How can couples avoid this vicious cycle?
A recent study offers some hope. Researchers from the University of Wyoming and the University of Oregon observed 88 romantic couples as they discussed a conflict in their relationship. Before and after the conflict, the researchers took saliva samples from both partners to measure their levels of cortisol--an indication of how stressed they were feeling.
Immediately afterwards, the researchers also asked each partner what they were experiencing during the conflict. Specifically, they wanted to know how much the partners approached their conflict with mindfulness, the moment-by-moment, "non-judgmental" awareness of thoughts, feelings, and sensations--an ability to notice and accept what we are experiencing in the present, without judging those thoughts or feelings as "right" or "wrong."
The results, published in the journal Hormones and Behavior, showed that partners' cortisol levels generally spiked during their conflict, a sign of high stress. But those with greater mindfulness seemed to recover more rapidly: Their cortisol levels were quicker to return to normal after the conflict ended, suggesting they were keeping their cool. That was true for both men and women.
"Mindfulness helps partners to regulate their own responses and more fully accept one another," the researchers suggest, "resulting in less negative fallout from conflict when it arises."
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Why does mindfulness carry these benefits? Further analysis revealed that mindfulness during conflict helped romantic partners not take things so personally, regulate their emotional reactions more quickly, and empathize with their partner more deeply. The researchers surmise that while mindfulness helps people remain more engaged during constructive conflict, it also enables them to disengage more quickly from conflicts that become destructive.
How might these findings be applied with couples in the midst of conflict? Over the 20 years that I've worked with couples in my private marriage and family therapy practice, I have developed a three-step process for helping partners practice mindfulness to cool down from conflict, usually without even using the word "mindfulness" at all.
To do that, I draw on the two different aspects of mindfulness that the researchers define in their study.
1. Pay attention
The first is called "attentional mindfulness," meaning how well each partner can intentionally tune into his or her thoughts, emotions, and bodily sensations during the conflict, without getting too wrapped up in those thoughts or emotions, instead observing them from a safe distance. In the study, people who scored high in attentional mindfulness during the conflict generally agreed with statements like, "I was aware of my thoughts and feelings without over-identifying with them."
One of my favorite interventions, which encourages attentional mindfulness, is simply to ask, "What are you noticing now?" I find that there can be tremendous benefits simply by shifting my clients' attention to their own bodily sensations--clenched jaw or fists, tightness in their throat or chest, churning in the stomach--and by labeling their feelings as they arise and escalate: Anger, sadness, fear, and shame are the most common ones. Noting their patterns of thoughts and behaviors helps see them for what they are: habitual and automatic, well-grooved into the brain's neural circuitry. And like any habit, these patterns don't need to own or define us; they're something we can change.
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2. Be accepting
Then I can guide each partner in "attitudinal mindfulness": being open, interested, curious, accepting of their own experience (the researchers also refer to it as "mindful curiosity"). In the study, partners who scored high in mindful curiosity generally agreed with statements like "I was curious about each of the thoughts and feelings that I was having."
Noticing and naming sensations, feelings, thoughts--and accepting them as part of being human--helps my clients take their own experience not so personally. They can recognize that when they feel threatened within a relationship that they depend on for safety and comfort, it's not surprising that they'd demonstrate evolutionarily hardwired and habitually conditioned responses, such as aggression (negativity) or withdrawal (abandonment).
When I can help them see that their reaction is understandable but not inevitable, they can then begin to take responsibility for reacting the way they are--for their own part in the conflict, for any of their own negativity, either aggression or withdrawal. When either partner begins to take responsibility, that can immediately shift the tension in the couple in that very moment.
3. Engage with your partner
Then I can gently shift the focus of their attention to their partner's experience. They can be curious. They can listen to their partner's concerns, fears, and desires. They can re-engage rather than defend against or attack their partner.
It's important that I do this after having asked each partner to be curious about their own experience first, giving them the chance to regulate their own emotional state to the point that they don't feel like they have to win their argument in the next two minutes. Then they are better able to maintain that open-mindedness when they focus on their partner's experience.
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Though I'm not measuring cortisol levels in my office, I can immediately see the effects of these applications of mindfulness: more relaxed postures, deeper breathing, more careful listening, more tolerance--and fewer negative behaviors like trying to control, coerce, or attack their partner, or defensively, often passive-aggressively, withdrawing from the conversation.
At best, there's that magic moment when couples turn to look at each other (rather than making the case against one another to me). There may be a gentle touch on the arm or a passing of Kleenex, or simply a softer gaze and a tentative smile. Then I deliberately ask these two people to pay attention to even this moment in their relationship with curiosity and openness. And to acknowledge that they were able to shift out of a habitual pattern of conflict into a more open, receptive stance.
One significant nuance to the Hormones and Behavior study is that the researchers found that the two different forms of mindfulness--attentional and attitudinal--seemed to provide benefits in different situations.
If a partner engaged in negative behaviors during the conflict--for instance, by showing anger or frustration, by threatening their partner, or by demanding that their partner change their thoughts or actions in some way--the partner who was subjected to those negative behaviors recovered from stress more quickly if he or she scored high in mindful curiosity, regardless of his or her level of attentional mindfulness. Perhaps that was because, as the authors write, approaching the conflict with openness and curiosity "may allow partners to remain connected to their own and their partners' emotions in a constructive way during conflict."
However, when one partner simply withdrew and refused to work through the disagreement, the more resilient other partners were those who scored high in attentional mindfulness (though this was only true for men). "It may be that compensating for partner disengagement by distancing from what is happening helps," they write, "to maintain a sense of equilibrium and/or to empathize with the partner's perspective."
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The researchers did acknowledge limitations of mindfulness when one's partner is especially verbally aggressive; in and of itself, mindfulness probably can't reverse the impact of highly destructive tactics.
Indeed, I have often had to step in and immediately stop verbal attacks and abuse--not allowed--and return each partner's attention to their own experience in the moment. When safety has been restored and clients have calmed down, I can return them to a process of constructive engagement and discussion.
But in less threatening situations, this new research illustrates how therapists, or even couples themselves, can use mindfulness to cool down a conflict and re-warm up their relationship: When each partner can react with greater equanimity, both partners can recover more easily. They regain a deeper acceptance of the other, recover their perspective taking and communication skills, and thus resolve disagreements more quickly before they spiral out of control.
By Nancy Kiernan, InternationalLiving.com
Don't you just hate it when your kids are right?
In January 2011 we were in the middle of "talking" about moving overseas during one of our daughter's visits home from college. She sat quietly during dinner, listening to our conversation. During dessert she just couldn't stay quiet anymore. She blurted out, "You guys are never going to do this, you know."
Medellin, Colombia Skyline
We stopped mid-discussion and asked why she felt that way. She smiled and said, "Because you haven't decided to do it. Both of you have always accomplished whatever you decided to do."
Here we were -- a couple in our mid-50s -- being shown the error of our ways by our 21-year-old daughter. After she returned to school, we finally made the decision: By the end of 2011 we would be doing something different.
But where? It's a huge world out there. How would we choose?
Living in the U.S. northeast, we wanted to choose a part of the world that was a reasonable commute back to visit family and friends. That helped narrow it down to Central or South America.
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We decided to embark on a four-month fact-finding trip that included Ecuador, Uruguay, Panama, and Costa Rica. The idea was to spend a month in each country, visiting different areas, looking for our place to retire five to 10 years down the line.
Once we made the decision to move in 2011, things just seemed to fall into place. Our house sold in April 2011, so we down-sized and put our best things into storage. I left my job as a healthcare executive, and my husband was on his four-month winter hiatus from his job as a cruise ship captain. We boarded the plane for Quito, Ecuador, on November 1, 2011.
Plaza Botero, Medellin, Colombia
Traveling through Ecuador for two months was exciting and full of new experiences, but we just couldn't see ourselves living there. Although Ecuador is a truly amazing country, none of the cities we visited quite felt like home.
We told an acquaintance we met at an International Living conference in Quito what kind of location we hoped to find. He thought that Medellin, Colombia, would be just what we wanted.
So we stopped by for a couple of weeks to see what all the fuss was about, even though it wasn't on our list of countries to visit. By day three we were both in love with the city. The people were welcoming and the climate perfectly suited our taste. Two weeks became two months, and then we just took the plunge and moved here. We never made it to the other countries on our list. And we haven't looked back...
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In Medellin we found a new culture to experience, a new language to learn ... and so much more.
How does a typical day play out? There is no "typical" day! Walking through the lovely green parks ... drinking coffee in chic cafes ... or watching the sun set over the Andes Mountains from our balcony.
Downtown Medellin, Colombia
I spend nearly every weekend in one of Medellin's many restaurants or museums or attending a concert. With over 30 universities in the city, there are more cultural events to attend than there is time.
For us, Medellin checked all the important boxes on our list. In Colombia, Medellin is dubbed the City of Eternal Spring. Temperatures are in the upper 70s F to lower 80s F during the day and the mid-60s F in the evening. Although we are only six degrees north of the equator, being at 5,000 feet above sea level allows for non-humid, bug-free weather. Our apartment doesn't have screens on the windows or a thermostat. We don't need A/C or heating. This is a very nice change from paying heating bills six months of the year back in the U.S.
Our cost of living is less than half what it was back in Maine. Our 2,200-square-foot, three-bedroom apartment, with a huge terraza (terrace) that overlooks the city and the Andes Mountains, is located in one of the most desirable neighborhoods. It cost us just under $150,000. Average utility bills run us about $115 a month for water, sewer, electricity, and gas. (Keep in mind we have a dryer and our own private Jacuzzi. Apartments without those average $50 a month in utility costs.) Fresh fruits and vegetables are plentiful and inexpensive. Farmers' markets offer locally grown, farm-fresh food. I can get a week's worth of fresh produce for less than $10.
The cost of services is extremely inexpensive. A full mani/pedi in an upscale salon is about $8 (tip included). You can have an experienced handyman come to your house for an entire eight-hour working day to do whatever projects you have -- electrical, plumbing, carpentry, painting -- for only $15 ... yes, for the entire day!
The healthcare you can get at the top-notch hospitals here is both affordable and of a very high quality. (As a former healthcare executive, I can evaluate professionally the quality and accessibility of health services.) In Medellin we have world-class healthcare at a fraction of the U.S. cost. My husband and I have basic health insurance here through the National Health Insurance Plan. The monthly premium is $70 for both of us.
Mural in Downtown Medellin, Colombia
We've both used the health system here regularly. And I can tell you first-hand that the quality of care is excellent and access to services is faster and more efficient than my experiences in the U.S. When my husband needed a CT scan, he had an appointment within a few days, and we walked out with the results in hand the same day. Our copay for this was $3. He pays the same copay for a 30-day supply of his medications ... all five of them.
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But for us, the warmth and friendliness of the local people are what make Medellin feel like home.
When we first arrived, my husband continued to work in the U.S. as a captain and traveled back and forth regularly. I, on the other hand, stayed in Medellin. I learned Spanish, became certified to teach English, and now have a small travel agency that is focused on bringing people from the U.S. and Canada to Colombia.
Without a doubt, moving overseas is a big decision ... but it can be the best one of your life. It has been nearly four years for us in Medellin. And neither one of us regrets it at all.
This article comes to us courtesy of InternationalLiving.com, the world's leading authority on how to live, work, invest, travel, and retire better overseas.
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Earlier on Huff/Post50:
The government has told the company to increase production after crude oil prices plummeted 33.4 percent.
Budget contributions from Vietnams national oil and gas company, PetroVietnam, fell during the first six months of this year as oil prices continue to decline.
The company contributed VND42.2 trillion ($1.87 billion) to the state budget from January to June, down 33.6 percent from a year earlier, PetroVietnam said in a statement on Tuesday.
This was mainly due to sales of crude oil falling by 31.5 percent on-year to VND60.3 trillion in the first half. PetroVietnams revenue from petroleum services in the first six months was VND72.4 trillion, down nearly 30 percent compared to the same period last year.
PetroVietnams average crude oil price in H1 stood at $40.5/barrel, falling 33.4 percent from $60.5/barrel in the first half of last year, according to the company.
The contribution from crude oil to the state budget in the first half is estimated to have fallen 45 percent on-year to VND20.3 trillion ($910 million), the company said on July 8.
PetroVietnams new production target in 2016 has been raised from 16.03 million tons to 17.03 million tons of crude oil following directions from the government.
This is the second consecutive year the government has called on the company to raise production in a bid to secure a greater contribution to the state budget. In July last year, the government directed PetroVietnam to produce an additional one million tons of crude oil for the year to help achieve the targeted annual economic growth rate of 6.2 percent for 2015.
In a resolution released on July 7, the government said the country's annual gross domestic product (GDP) growth in the first half was 5.52 percent, down from 6.32 percent during the same period last year. As part of the measures to achieve GDP growth of 6.7 percent in 2016, the Ministry of Industry and Trade has been directed to adjust the country's production target for crude oil.
Related news:
> PetroVietnam aims to produce more oil amid modest GDP growth
> Russian oil giant to supply nearly 100 million tons of oil to Petrovietnam
For world travelers who covet seeing the most mesmerizing and awe-inspiring sites on the planet, China may not necessarily be the country that springs immediately to mind. But outside of its crowded cities, the country is filled with amazing scenery. In fact, it's so vast that it'd be almost impossible for a tourist to see every single site in China capable of taking their breath away. Your eyes will be wowed and your soul touched at what you'll witness.
The first place visitors to China should make sure they see is Potala Palace in Tibet. While the palace isn't part of the country's natural landscape, it's one of the world's greatest architectural wonders. Potala Palace is one of the most exclusive tourist destinations in China, with a limited number of tourists admitted each day. The palace is 13 beautiful stories built right into a mountainside. Inside, you'll find over 1,000 rooms that once acted as the home of the Dalai Lama and the political and religious center of Tibetan Buddhism. It's a truly magnificent site both inside and outside.
The Potala Palace
To see more natural beauty, one place to visit is Benxi Water Cave, which is home to the world's longest underground river. Less than two miles of the river is accessible, and of that only a few hundred yards is open to tourists, but the parts tourists can see are stunning. In addition to a dazzling collection of stalagmites and stalactites, the cave is bursting with color, as green, yellow, and red paint all the walls of Benxi Water Cave in a way that is mesmerizing.
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The Benxi Water Caves
Another gorgeous site that includes water is Huangguoshu Waterfall, which is the highest waterfall in Asia at more than 250 feet down. Nicknamed the "Yellow Fruit Tree," the waterfall can be viewed from nearly every possible angle, including above and below, making it easy for tourists to see and astonish at its beauty. When the water is at its peak flow in the middle of the summer, the site of Huangguoshu is equally amazing as any other waterfall in the world.
The Huangguoshu Waterfall
The Yuanyang rice terraces are one of the most unique sites in the world. Terraces have been carved into the slopes of Ailao Mountain that will fill with water and reflect everything around them, from the sky and the clouds to the rice plants and algae. The result is a spectacular display of color that is almost impossible to replicate in any other landscape. The view is surreal and something tourists have to see to believe.
The Yuanyang Rice Terraces
One final place in China that offers beautiful scenery is the Guangxi region in the southern part of the country. Tourists often overlook this region when visiting China, but there's so much to see that a traveler could dedicate an entire trip to the Guangxi region and not run out of places to see. There are picturesque villages that look like they belong in a painting, tranquil rivers of blue and green to traverse, rock paintings on vertical cliffs that have been around for over 2,000 years, and so much more. There's so much to see and the beauty of the entire region will leave you mesmerized.
Today marks the one year anniversary of the death of Sandra Bland, a 28 year old black woman who was pulled over and accused of failing to use a turn signal. Bland was arrested and later found hanged in a jail cell in Waller County, Texas.
#BlackDeath at the hands of police has become, as we all know by now, an all too common trend. Only last week, the names of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile became the latest in a long line of #blackdeath as a result of interaction with police.
There are, it seems to me, at least two parts to this ongoing story. One of them is marked by pain--wrenching, terrible, intimate. The other claims power--the power to demand justice, to insist on a brand of justice that is nothing less than an expression of love and power.
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Pain
On Tuesday, July 5th when Alton Sterling was murdered by two Baton Rouge police officers, I posted a litany by Dr. Yolanda Pierce with a photo of Alton Sterling. My 14 year old daughter told me she saw my post, we talked for a brief moment and she went on her way. It was different this time than it was in other times, with other #blackdeaths that scrolled across the screens of her childhood. This time, she didn't ask how or why they both died. By now, she knows.
When Trayvon Martin and Mike Brown were murdered she had a million questions. I watched her cry as she tried to make sense of how law enforcement, who are sworn to serve and protect, could just take the lives of two innocent children. But in her short life, this has become an all too common routine - the gunning down of black bodies, the vigils, the protests.
I carried her in my arms when she was a baby as we stood in solidarity with our Palestinian brothers and sisters in Washington, D.C. She has marched in the streets of Baltimore on issues such as jobs, fair wages, affordable housing, lead contaminated water fountains, gentrification, the proposal to build $100 million youth jail and more. She has marched for Trayvon Martin, Mike Brown and Freddie Gray.
Later on, after the most recent killings, she asked me if there were there any protests planned for Baltimore and if she could participate. She assured me her spirit was strong. But I couldn't help but think; How many more vigils? How many more protests?
Power
"Nobody in the world, nobody in history, has ever gotten their freedom by appealing to the moral sense of the people who were oppressing them."- Assata Shukur
Dr. Emilie Townes stated in a recent article, "The murders of Sterling and Castile reveal the awful fact that this brand of tragedy has become routine. The videos of their deaths allow us to bear witness, but it will not necessarily bring justice."
Justice... So what is justice? What do we really want? Will America ever gives us justice? And is justice something other people can give us? Dr. King said, "...justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love." Hmmm, Power - To get justice you must have power. King continued, "Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice." Justice is rooted in love and power. For as King stated, "Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic."
The system of white supremacy has its foot on the necks of every black person in America. How do we move beyond making moral appeals that seemingly fall on deaf ears?
James Cone stated that,
"this economic and political domination, sharply enhanced and defined by racism, will not be ended simply through an appeal to reason or the religious piety of those who hold us in captivity. Oppression ceases only when the victims accumulate enough power to stop it."
Reform based movements that aren't pursing power, if successful, only lessen the pressure on our neck, but they do not move us toward power. We are only allowed to breathe for a brief moment until they reapply pressure once again.
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Rev. Albert Cleage wrote in 1972 that, 'The solution to our problem depends upon our ability to escape powerlessness, so we evaluate everything in terms of power. Does it get power for us? Does it create a base from which we can move toward power?"
#MLK2BAKER: #BeyondReActivism #OrganizingforPower
I have been writing and fleshing out an idea that I call #MLK2BAKER (IMAGES). I've been asking myself whether, as social media begins to democratize communication, a hashtag can lead us to an Ella Baker movement--a more democratic and decentralized model of leadership and social change. And if so, how can these tools be utilized to help us move #BeyondReActivism (Reactionary Activism)? How can these tools help move us beyond the tweeting and protest of #blackdeath to a sustained movement--#OrganizingForPower or holistic community development where the end goal is not reform or rights, but power? Power that is just and rooted in love.
The glue that holds decentralized organizations together is ideology. Developing a holistic ideological framework around the hashtag keeps us moving toward our goal--power--and moves us #BeyondReActivism.
Here's but one example of what such an ideological framework could look like. On December 10, 1988 George Edward Tait published an article entitled, "Interlocking Principles: Kwanzaa and Buy Black Campaign", a strategy to incorporate the principles of Kwanzaa into the "Buy Black Campaign." What Tait set out to do was to move us from celebrating the principles of Kwanzaa once a year to incorporating them into our everyday life. The idea was to use the principles to support and sustain the Buy Black campaign; transforming the structures of oppression in their own lives. Tait stated that these principles must become an "integral part of our daily existence and not just limited to a hasty observance during the final holiday season of the year.' Buying Black Campaigns shouldn't just be in response to state violence, but a set of principles in our framework to gain power.
When you think of a typical pitch competition, you usually think of an entrepreneur pitching their product, business idea or company to a room full of investors, venture capitalists and startup gurus usually after going through an accelerator or mentorship program. Or you might think of a reverse pitch competition where a municipality or corporation has a problem they need fixed and they pitch entrepreneurs to come up with ideas to find solutions to help them evolve to meet the needs of their constituents or shareholders. What you don't think of is what the Mayo Clinic is doing with entrepreneurs. That's because no one has done it.
It's hard to imagine that any American has not heard of the Mayo Clinic. However, if you have not, it's a nonprofit that is heavily involved in clinical practice, education and research that works with individuals who need medical care or healing. The Mayo Clinic is based in Rochester, Minnesota. Now what many, if not all Americans, don't know is the Mayo Clinic has a Center of Innovation and a Mayo Clinic Ventures operation that is turning pitch competitions upside down with the Think Big Challenge. Talk about flying under the radar.
First off, when I think of the Mayo Clinic, I don't think about pitch competitions. To be honest I don't think about pitch competitions much at all in the health care world. The Mayo Clinic has decided to grant one business or entrepreneur the opportunity to license Mayo Clinic technology, take it to market with a team around them and oh by the way give them $50,000 in cash. So wait a second, the Mayo Clinic is saying here is our technology we have developed and we want you to scale it with our help? Not a bad spot for an experienced entrepreneur to be in. I have never heard of anything quite like this in the pitch world.
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"Our goal is to reach as many people as possible and to reach lives outside of the ones we currently care for and engage with at the Mayo Clinic," says Jeanne Huddleston, M.D. and medical director for the Mayo Clinic Think Big Challenge. "We want to improve the health of people around the world by finding innovative and successful ways to partner with entrepreneurs."
So why is this so unique? Tech transfer is a complicated process. The traditional way to do tech transfer is through peer review. If your resume doesn't read a certain way its hard to get in the door. However, in order to save lives with the tech its imperative to start working with entrepreneurs with strong intellectual capital to get the job done. The Mayo Clinic believes it has found an innovative, effective way to stay nimble and partner with outside entrepreneurs to improve health around the world. This feels almost like Tinder for tech transfer.
This new way of conducting a pitch competition seems like it will benefit both the entrepreneur and the Mayo Clinic. If you're an entrepreneur you will have the opportunity to work with a product or technology that is already functional with the name brand and assets of the Mayo Clinic behind you. You will have a home inside the Mayo Clinic. Essentially you're starting a new company with the Mayo Clinic. Plus you get to build relationships and have new access to many high-level investors and venture capitalists through the pitch competition. If you're the Mayo Clinic you get to utilize and meet some of the brightest innovators and entrepreneurs in the health care space to take your technology from the shelf to market and scale it over a 12-month period. You typically don't have these type of people walking your halls. You heal people; you don't have the core competency to bring something to market. You will get to see a go forward strategy that various entrepreneurs will bring forth during the pitch competition for your technology. If the challenge is successful you have a pipeline of entrepreneurs for your new devices and next technologies.
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The Think Big Challenge will take place on September 15th, 2016 at the 10th annual Transform Conference (September 14th-16th), which brings people together in the health care space, public sector, corporate world and insurance industry to discuss innovation and health care. Applications for entrepreneurs opened on July 12th and close on August 15th.
Will this type of pitch competition become mainstream? Most likely, it makes sense. Suffice to say the Mayo Clinic is blazing the trail on a future trend.
Last week, IMG announced the cancellation of Toronto Fashion Week, due to lack of commercial and local interest.
"As we continue to evolve our portfolio of fashion events around the world, we've made the decision to no longer produce Toronto Fashion Week," Catherine Bennett, senior vice-president and managing director of IMG Fashion Events & Properties, stated to The Canadian Press. "We really felt that our Canadian fashion footprint was not generating the local commercial funding that we really required in order for us to continue producing the event to the highest standard that, really, the industry deserves and the designers in Toronto deserve," she noted.
For most business readers it's passing news.
But in reality, the end of Toronto Fashion Week is one of many warning signals presenting a larger issue. The economic impacts for Toronto and Canada are much bigger than they appear.
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Toronto (like many other cities) tends to undervalue local 'fashion' commerce as a real source of creative, technological and manufacturing growth and innovation.
Only recently have world-class cities like New York realized the economic importance of reviving and rebuilding the local fashion industry after the 1990s saw most garment districts in North America shut down and moved offshore to achieve cost savings from labour arbitrage.
In 2014, a Harvard Business Review (HBR) article explored the geographic importance of New York's Garment District in relation to the local fashion economy and industry.
While now much smaller in size and stature than in its glory days, New York's Garment District continues to serve as a creative hub that adds to the industry network and the many local designers who frequent it. HBR concludes that specific location is not as important as the existence of the hub itself, acting as a source of critical mass for designers and the industry they work in. HBR's study attempts to validate the effects of a thriving local fashion district on the success of the designers who frequent it.
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Does the critical mass offered by New York Fashion Week act as a hub that fuels the rest of the local fashion industry, as well as the local and global economy?
American designers are also realizing that strategic partnerships, collaboration and innovation is needed for growth, investing in labs to develop new fabrics, new manufacturing processes and new technologies. The last few years have seen an enormous explosion in the field of fashion and beauty technology globally, with disruptive business models born out of experimentation. As a result, new business propositions are fueling the creation of new jobs and skill sets and raising demand for fashion designers, pattern-makers and traditional creative talent. The impact of this phenomenon is woefully limited in Canada and there is much room to catch up.
By contrast, Montreal's fashion industry has suffered devastating losses with the recent dismantling of several Canadian brands including Jacob, Mexx, Parasuco and Bikini Village. To combat this, Montreal's industry leaders are working on new collaborative opportunities for recovery. Jacques Daoust, Quebec's Economy, Innovation and Exports Minister, has announced that the recently established mmode cluster will support the industry's growth and competitiveness. The province and municipality are providing a total of $200,000 in startup funding. Several modern brands like Frank & Oak and Matt & Nat call Montreal home and have embraced digital and innovation in production. But how many have left the area?
It's also no secret that Canadian fashion talent continues to leave its borders to receive sufficient support, validation and fulfilling careers in driving the growth of global commerce. The list of Canadian fashion talent situated abroad seems almost endless and includes the likes of the industry icons like DSquared; Erdem; Alfred Sung; Jason Wu and CFDA award-winning Imran Ahmed.
Part of this Canadian talent drain is due to the inherent size of promise and opportunity present in large fashion hubs established elsewhere but exasperating the lack of infrastructure for design talent in Toronto is not an option during a time the world's eyes are on this city. Toronto's Ryerson University is world-renowned for its curriculum and has been recently recognized by go-to industry publication the Business of Fashion as one of the world's leading schools in this field. The cancellation of Toronto Fashion Week eradicates a significant national opportunity for fledgling creative class to showcase their businesses without having to leave the country for London, Paris or New York. It does nothing to prevent further expatriation of the Canadian design economy.
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Clothing is a staple like food and transportation. Torontonian consumers spend a total of $3,816 per household on clothing each year which adds up to $5.8B a year of Canadian money spent on apparel. And yet it's rare to see Canadians citizens celebrate the local fashion economy as a source for GDP growth. Recent press spotlights by public figures like Sophie Trudeau and Jessica Mulroney were a welcomed treat to the local industry players.
So last week announcement should do more than cause sadness.
"There is so much great talent, and we hope that the local industry will ultimately decide to continue to put on an event and to continue to organize shows." Catherine Bennett, senior vice-president and managing director of IMG Fashion Events & Properties.
Should Canadians decidedly allow talent and money to leave its borders as a result of not understanding how innovation through experimentation and creativity really happens?
The dismantling of the industry continues to sound the alarm. The good news is that there's no lack of expressed support for innovation in Canada at the federal government level. There also hasn't been a better time to petition support at the local business level. It's time for specific action planning across key players, more active and visible sponsorship, and an investment in top talent for key roles. It's time to revive the defunct Fashion Design Council of Canada, which once ran Toronto's fashion week and to infuse more power into the Toronto Fashion Incubator.
It's time to understand the drivers of the economic growth and appreciate that:
innovation comes from diversity and cross-pollination;
is not born out of reducing funding in the arts;
requires critical mass to scale.
If the fashion industry isn't recognized as a source of Canadian innovation, it will continue to collapse and drag while other countries leap ahead yet again.
Clothing is ingrained in a society's cultural identity.
One of the best things about being a pet writer is the chance to meet the amazing people who work in animal rescue, like two teens named Morgan Wells and Wyllow Hildner. They like to say, "You're never too young to change the world," and it's a concept they live by - they were just 10 and 11 years old when they met as volunteers at the La Plata County Humane Society in Durango, Colo.
"I have always loved dogs because they are such great companions and never judge you," Wells says. "They will protect you with their lives and always want to please you. They love you so much and it's only fair if we help them out of sticky situations."
One day the girls met Kaya, a "sweet" pit bull in the shelter's "Lonely Hearts Club," the name for animals who have gone 45 days without being adopted. They learned about the challenges facing Kaya and other pit bulls because of their fearsome reputation and decided to do something about it by founding Pit Bulls for People.
Wells and Hildner created a website at PitBulls4People.org that shares photos, videos and descriptions of "pitties" available for adoption at the shelter. They get to know the dogs' personalities on weekends and during summer vacations when they socialize and train the pups to help increase their adoption chances. Often they meet with potential adopters to introduce them to the dogs.
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"Working with pit bulls is one of the best things I've ever done," Hildner, now 14, told me. "They give actual meaning to the phrase 'Don't judge a book by its cover.' They may look big and strong, but they are one of the sweetest breeds I've ever known. Just knowing that these dogs are being used for the wrong things makes me want to do something about it even more."
Since founding Pit Bulls for People in 2013, the girls have helped the shelter find homes for over 150 adult pit bulls - including Kaya - and raised more than $1,000 for the cause.
"I love working with pit bulls because they're smart, though they don't always catch on super quickly," Wells, now 13, says. "They are really funny to see when you praise them for doing something right. They always get so happy with their tails flying and their tongues trying to reach your face."
Chris Nelson, shelter director of the La Plata County Humane Society, finds the dedication of the girls inspiring.
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"They work really hard for the pit bulls that we get in here, and they've been a big help to us," he says. "They're passionate."
Wells and Hildner are also active volunteers with Soul Dog Rescue, a Denver-based nonprofit that frequently hosts spay/neuter clinics on the Navajo Reservation, which covers over 27,000 square miles across three states. The girls help in whatever way needed, from caring for animals recovering from surgery to going out on rescue missions. In one memorable instance, they helped save a litter of puppies spotted by an old tire - they named the pups Hope, Faith, Joy and Peace.
"They were covered in dirt and ticks. We went back and washed them all off in the sink," Hildner says. "The feeling of holding the dog you just rescued is priceless."
Both Hildner and Wells plan to continue working in animal rescue as adults. They are committed to combatting breed specific legislation and educating the public that pit bulls - an umbrella term that includes American pit bull terriers, American Staffordshire terriers, Staffordshire bull terriers and pit bull mixes - can be wonderful pets when treated right.
"Pit bulls are a very energetic breed. They need to have owners who love to exercise and can give a lot of attention to them," Hildner says. "If you spend time with them, keep them healthy, and give them love, they will be the best dogs ever. Regular socialization is also very important for any dog."
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Wells and Hildner are quick to praise others, from their parents being supportive even when they ask for early morning rides on weekends, to La Plata County Humane Society making Pit Bulls for People "possible." They hope other young people will get involved in rescue and learn how to stop animal abuse and neglect.
"It's very important that kids grow up to respect the animals around us ... To dogs, the glass is always half full. And it doesn't matter how you look or who you are, they will always give you unconditional love no matter what," Hildner says. "I could talk for hours about how great dogs are."
Soldiers of China's People's Liberation Army (PLA) Navy patrol near a sign in the Spratly Islands, known in China as the Nansha Islands, February 9, 2016. The sign reads "Nansha is our national land, sacred and inviolable." REUTERS/Stringer/File Photo ATTENTION EDITORS - THIS PICTURE WAS PROVIDED BY A THIRD PARTY. THIS PICTURE IS DISTRIBUTED EXACTLY AS RECEIVED BY REUTERS, AS A SERVICE TO CLIENTS. CHINA OUT. NO COMMERCIAL OR EDITORIAL SALES IN CHINA. FROM THE FILES PACKAGE - SEARCH "SOUTH CHINA SEA FILES" FOR ALL IMAGES TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY
The United Nations Permanent Court of Arbitration delivered its final ruling Tuesday in a case between the Philippines and China over disputed maritime claims in the South China Sea. Closely watched around the world, the three-year-old landmark case was seen as a litmus test of China's intentions as a rising power.
As expected, the panel ruled in favor of the Philippines and determined that China has no legal basis to claim rights to the majority of the South China Sea. But there is no mechanism to enforce the ruling. And China quickly rejected the decision, with some in the Chinese establishment hinting at possible retaliation.
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While all eyes are focused on the tribunal's decision and its fallout, we can actually learn far more from this case by focusing on what's missing. The real puzzle is why there aren't more cases like it.
Filipino activists and Vietnamese nationals release flowers in Manila on July 12 as they anticipate a favorable decision from the UN tribunal ruling. (TED ALJIBE/AFP/Getty)
Beijing has staked its claims in several territorial disputes in the South and East China Seas. Broadly speaking, China's "nine dash line" (the shorthand reference to China's self-drawn maritime map) envelops the bulk of these waters and overlaps the claims of Brunei, Malaysia, Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia and Taiwan. There are further disputes in the East China Sea with Japan, Taiwan and South Korea. So why is the Philippines the only one to assert its claims under international law?
The answer is simple: China is quite literally raising the costs of challenging Beijing. Following Manila's early attempts to defend its claims in the Scarborough Shoal, Beijing vented its displeasure by allowing Filipino agricultural exports to rot on the dock and by initiating a finishing ban around waters claimed by the Philippines. Chinese leaders also depressed Chinese tourism to the Philippines. It worked. Within weeks, the Filipino government relented, pulling its ships from the Scarborough Shoal.
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If the U.S. wants to curb Beijing's expansionist impulses, it will need to find ways of raising the economic costs to China.
Tokyo came in for similar treatment in 2010, when China halted exports of rare earth minerals to Japan amid tensions over competing claims in the East China Sea. In addition to this direct economic bullying, China has also sought to make an example out of the Philippines and Japan, making clear that any country considering a more assertive stance in these disputes can expect similar costs.
China's use of economic muscle in these territorial disputes goes well beyond coercion. Beijing regularly conscripts China's state-owned enterprises to help enforce these claims. China's leading oil company is fond of parking one of its deepwater rigs within Vietnam's exclusive economic zone, in "one of the most sensitive spots possible." The company's chairman once described the rigs as "mobile national territory and a strategic weapon."
Map showing the overlapping claims by country on the South China Sea. (Reuters/RM)
China has also been busy building artificial islands -- creating or expanding at least seven in the South China Sea in the past few years, apparently unbothered by the lack of economic or commercial rationale for these projects.
Always quick to mix carrots with sticks, Beijing is also sweetening the rewards for cooperation. From the new Chinese-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank to the "One Belt, One Road" regional investment campaign, China is undertaking a flurry of state-led outbound investment -- drawing nearby countries into its economic orbit while sharpening its diplomatic leverage and creating commercial opportunities for Chinese firms in the process. The scale is difficult to overstate: the China Development Bank -- one of the primary financing entities for both the AIIB and China's OBOR -- holds more than $1 trillion in assets, far outstripping the World Bank's lending capacity.
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China's entire strategy is predicated on the belief that exercising a military option in the next decade would simply prove too costly.
For all of the military bluster encircling the South and East China Seas, this is an economic contest. China's entire strategy is predicated on the belief that exercising a military option in the next decade would simply prove too costly for the U.S. and Japan, and for that matter, for China itself.
If the U.S. wants to curb Beijing's expansionist impulses going forward, it will need to find ways of raising the costs to China of its growing bellicosity, of reducing asymmetrical economic dependence on China and of building adequate defenses against Chinese economic bullying.
Chinese navy sailors search for targets onboard the missile destroyer Hefei during a July 8 military exercise near Hainan Island and Paracel Islands. (Zha Chunming/Xinhua News Agency via AP)
Thus far, there is little to suggest that U.S. leaders appreciate the need to reach for something other than military might. Washington remains much too fixated on the military dimensions of these disputes: How many U.S. Marines to station in Darwin, Australia? How soon to begin arms sales to Vietnam? How best to position the U.S. Seventh Fleet so as to respond to China's provocations?
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The military buildup in Asia is real. But its bark is too loud and risks obscuring the larger struggle for leadership in the region, which is being waged in chiefly economic terms. Until America and its Pacific allies forge an economic counterpart to the U.S. military alliance, Beijing will likely continue changing facts on the water -- unfazed by U.N. arbitration panels or U.S. naval exercises.
Jennifer Harris is a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York and co-author of "War by Other Means: Geoeconomics & Statecraft" (Harvard University Press, 2016).
Many people do not realize how much they are limiting themselves by blaming themselves or someone else for where there life is right in this moment. Whether we have faced abuse or some other situation that has felt unfair; hurt someone else intentionally or unintentionally; or come down with a physical or emotional disease or impairment - the number one way to begin to shift out of whatever situation you have been in is to begin to take responsibility for where you are in this moment. "Coulda woulda shoulda's" or pointing a finger does nothing but disempower you and causes you to feel unmotivated and powerless to change your circumstances. Here are five ways to step out of the victim mentality to create the life you want.
1. Forgiveness of Others -- You cannot move forward if you are in the past feeling victimized by something someone did to you or a circumstance that happened. Being in this state of not forgiving means you are still giving that other person or circumstance energy and are not moving past it. It helps to use tools like "Ho'oponopono" (featured in the first chapter of my book for free when you subscribe to my website) to forgive others. You are coming from a place of compassion. Happy, well-adjusted people don't go around hurting others. If someone is abusive - they were most likely abused and never healed from it continuing the cycle. Using Ho'oponopono is a simple way to transmute that energy so you can move into the present moment.
2. Forgiveness of Self -- I am sure when I mentioned taking responsibility in your life it brought up some feelings. This does NOT mean blaming yourself. Quite the opposite. If there is a situation you feel regret about - you have beaten yourself up about it for long enough. Allow yourself be free of it. If you have felt badly about a past situation, you have learned from it and would act differently now knowing what you know. Take the lesson, give gratitude for what was learned and absolve yourself from the guilt. If you need to make peace with someone else - do so. Ho'oponopono is also a very powerful way to forgive yourself at a deep soul level.
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3. Become Aware of your Self Talk -- Victim mentality is caused by circumstances in the past, but it can perpetuate by the language you are using when you talk to yourself. For example, do you say things like "my abuse", "my disease", "when they did that to me", or "I am an abuse victim". These things can keep you rooted in the past and actually be attracting new situations to you where you are a victim once again. By coming to peace with the situation as you did in the first and second steps, you free yourself to be in the present. Use that time to listen and act the way you talk about the situation to see if it is still charged and you are still giving it energy. I have seen clients with more horrific abuse than I care to imagine and they have been able to overcome their past and become present and speak to themselves in a much more empowering manner. Calling yourself a victim repeatedly and owning that challenge as if it is a part of you will keep you stuck in a victim mentality. Give yourself permission to let it go and choose more positive words to support yourself.
4. Get Present and Give Yourself Gratitude -- Now that you have done some healing around this issue, spend some time looking at it honestly and see how it might have affected your life to this point. Let yourself off the hook, knowing this was a healing process and now you are ready for the next stage. See if there were any life lessons learned from the situation and give yourself credit for noticing a blessing in what might have felt like a curse for so long. If you left an abusive relationship perhaps that has allowed you to come into claiming your self-worth which is priceless. No matter if you have spent the last days, weeks, months, years or decades running the past victim dialogue - you can be free of it now. You are working on being free of it to move to the next stage of your life with grace. I feel that deserves heaps of gratitude. It is scary to let go with something we have identified so closely with. In letting go of it however, we allow ourselves to step into the power of our present moment. Give yourself so much gratitude for being in this place of power to move forward.
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5. Set Intentions -- Victimhood keeps you stuck in the past, you have now given yourself permission to move into the future. Honor it. Tell yourself you are now ready to move on with life now that you have the extra energy you had invested in being stuck. Set intentions in every area of your life; mentally, physically, spiritually, emotionally, relationally, and financially and tell yourself one small step you can take in any of these areas to move yourself forward. When you consciously take a step to improve your life in a way you are intending, you might be so surprised how the Universe rises up to meet you giving you new opportunities.
Last week five Dallas cops were killed by Micah Xavier Johnson, a Black man who was allegedly motivated to take such drastic action after continually watching the US legal system refuse to hold killer cops to account. Naturally, bootlickers across the globe are unquestioningly celebrating the slain officers as heroes, innocents, and protectors. But what if one of those dead cops was a white supremacist--is he still a hero? And I don't mean a white supremacist in the sense that all cops are enforcers of a classist white supremacist order, which they are. No, I mean the more common use of the term. The one we associate with Klansmen, neo-Nazis, Skinheads, and your average Brownshirt wannabe.
Meet Lorne Ahrens.
Ahrens was one of the five Dallas cops killed last week. While mainstream media presented him as a family man, gushed over his imposing size, his sense of humor, and otherwise went to great lengths to humanize and memorialize him as a hero, a band of international Internet sleuths came together to research something the press failed to notice: Ahrens' affinity for imagery associated with white supremacists. Right in one of the main pictures journalists and editors were sharing with stories about Ahrens, is an Iron Cross tattooed on his finger. With this tipping them off, the Internet sleuths jumped into action and quickly turned up more evidence of Ahrens' white supremacist leanings.
Evidence in hand, they put together a meme cataloguing it and blogged about what they'd found.
A few friends and acquaintances of mine did the legwork and discovered that slain Dallas police officer Lorne Ahrens was a proud, open white supremacist. His ring finger bore an Iron Cross tattoo, his Facebook cover photo was a massive Thor's Hammer symbol, and his left arm was emblazoned with a "crusaders' shield," common to those right-wing Christians who believe that Christianity is engaged in a centuries-long war with Islam. His Facebook likes included pages which bore similar iconography--more Iron Crosses and a Confederate flag or two.
Taken in isolation, each of Ahrens' choices of imagery and his Facebook "likes" might be explainable. Taken in context, the band of Internet sleuths' conclusion that "Ahrens was a proud, open white supremacist," is hard to deny. Let's look it over.
First, the Iron Cross. In spite of its use by the Third Reich, it isn't an inherently a racist image. It's popular amongst bikers, skaters, and a host of other groups in the United States. On the other hand, it remains in the Anti-Defamation League's Hate Symbols Database and prevalent amongst white supremacists. So far there are no indications Ahrens was a biker or skateboarder.
Thor's Hammer (Mjolnir) is in a similar boat as the Iron Cross as far as it not being an inherently racist symbol and existing in the ADL's Hate Symbols Database. Unlike the Iron Cross, Mjolnir imagery is also used by Asatruers--a Neopagan religious group. Regrettably, Asatru beliefs also appeal to white supremacists, especially in prisons, as they see it as more purely white than Christianity. The Southern Poverty Law Center estimates as many as 15 percent of its adherents "follow an overtly racist version of the theology." Indeed, shortly after tweeting the meme about Ahrens I received a message from a proud white supremacist Asatruer on Facebook. His profile includes the introduction, "14/88 soldier for life," a common pairing of two white supremacist numerical symbols, and a few pictures down his wall he's holding a hammer with the post, "My god carries a hammer,your God was nailed to a cross.any question? Hail odin,balder,frey,and thor". His message to me read, "Your a whigger and your kid is going to have n***er babies.hang yourself". (That's his punctuation/spacing/capitalization/spelling, and of course he didn't edit the n-word.) So, while by no means am I suggesting Asatruers are all, or even mostly racist, let's not pretend there's no connection. It took me one tweet to find them. Or for them to find me, as it were.
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(Image via Facebook)
Given his work in law enforcement and the ties between Asatru and prisoners, it's hard to believe Ahrens' embrace of the Mjolnir was an innocent one. Beyond that, it appears he took the image from a t-shirt for sale that's advertised with the not-so-subtle dog whistle to white supremacists: "'Nordic Pride' Shirt! Real Vikings will know what this means!" I'm no Viking, but I'm pretty sure I know what they mean.
Next, the Crusaders' Shield tattoo. Again, by itself this might just be the mark of a hyper-masculine Christian, who believes his faith shields him from evil in some sort of ongoing biblical conflict. In the context of someone who publicly follows a range of Islamophobic Facebook groups and has an affinity for other white supremacist iconography, it becomes more damning. It also contradicts the argument that he picked the Mjolnir for his Facebook cover photo due to Asatru religious beliefs, since it indicates Ahrens' Christian faith. His funeral service is being held at a Baptist church as well.
Then there's Ahrens' work history. Before becoming a police officer in Dallas in 2002, Ahrens worked as a technician with the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department. The same LASD that has a history of white supremacist gangs operating within the Department. Perhaps not coincidentally, one of the primary gangs during Ahrens' time with the LASD was known as the Lynwood Vikings. And while these white supremacist gangs represent an ongoing issue (or feature) in Los Angeles, there's no doubt the Vikings and Grim Reapers--who were based out of one of the places Ahrens worked, Lennox Station--were active and prevalent over the years he was affiliated with the LASD (1991-2002). Add to all of this the fact modern policing was born at the intersections of racial and class oppression, the long history of white supremacist ties to police departments, numerous recent incidents involving white supremacist police officers (there's a good partial list here), the FBI report warning that white supremacists have been infiltrating police departments, and a pretty clear picture begins to emerge.
Is all of that convincing beyond a reasonable doubt, probably not. Though it was enough evidence for at least one white supremacist blog to claim Ahrens as their own. Altogether, there seems to be a preponderance of the evidence for one to conclude Ahrens had some pretty well-developed white supremacist leanings, and may have been a poorly disguised "ghost skin;" which the aforementioned FBI report described as, "those who avoid overt displays of their beliefs to blend into society and covertly advance white supremacist causes."
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So, is he still a hero? He never was to me, but this should raise some serious questions for media and all you "patriots" out there continuing to exalt him as one. It also underscores the logic behind Micah Johnson's motives--assuming we believe what's been reported of them to be true. In a year that's seen nearly 200 Black people killed by police already, and when none of the officers are likely to ever be charged with a crime for doing so, Micah Johnson killed five police officers. And one of them was likely a full blown white supremacist. Perhaps unsurprisingly, if someone wants to target white supremacists, starting with cops is a good bet.
Now, I know what a lot of you are thinking. How dare I sully Ahrens' good name after he's dead. And to that I'd say if he was affiliated with white supremacy as he appears to be, his name was never good in the first place.
I'm home again, for a few minutes at least.
Hey, cut me some slack; have you ever heard of snow and ice? It's summer and to fully appreciate the places I've been, this is the best time of the year to be there.
As usually happens when I spend time soaking up the energy of great cities, I feel enriched and inspired to bring some of those lessons home to Los Angeles. My latest trip took me to New York, Chicago and Madison. And all three cities get a shout out for re-envisioning and making great things happen in their streets, open spaces or transit.
What New York has done with its Hudson River waterfront and extension of the 7 Train west to the Hudson Yards is legendary, and Madison is practically Mecca to a bike rider.
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Away from Los Angeles, It was a week of contrasts, a chance to scope out the most expensive transit improvement - the Calatrava station at New York's World Trade Center site - and the most basic of massive domestic urban transit systems, Chicago's seemingly ubiquitous L.
My biggest shout out goes to the much maligned City of Chicago. Why do people hate on Chicago? For all the City's violent crime, failing schools and missteps of its tone deaf mayor, Chicago is awesome, to use a word I can't believe I just uttered, given my age.
Between some of the world's finest urban architecture, beautiful parks, great transit and bike share, terrific food and music, vibrant neighborhoods and a lake the size of an ocean, I'll take it.
In light of the terrible news of the past two weeks, how great it is to have something homegrown and American Made to celebrate.
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Whoever would have thought we would live to see the sort of shameful attacks on the Black Lives Matter movement that plagued this country back in 1968?
No Faux News and you other haters, a disciplined civil disobedience movement a la SNCC and Dr. King himself did not murder five police officers in Dallas.
RIP the officers as well as Philando Castile and Alton Sterling!
We are better as a country than the side of things we have seen as of late.
But let's get back to Chicago. Won't you please come to Chicago...
I remember that it gets cold in the Windy City, as in really cold, but the views south from the Lincoln Park Nature Boardwalk and north and west from The Field Museum and Adler Planetarium in Grant Park are breathtaking urban landscapes that rival anything one finds on either coast.
Given the week's news, I had second thoughts about leaving behind bucolic Madison, my free summer Bcycle bikeshare membership and chair near the stage on The Terrace at the University of Wisconsin Memorial Union. The brats and beer and open mic night on Lake Mendota alone almost justified the out-of-state tuition at one of the Country's finest public (and private) universities. And that's even after years of Scott Walker's shameful efforts to eviscerate The Wisconsin Ideal.
Though I was sorry to miss the opening day of Bike Metro, LA's new bikeshare program, Bcycle, Madison's protected bike lanes and its lakeside paths helped me appreciate the significance of bikeshare's arrival in Los Angeles as nothing short of transformational and a shot in the arm of the growing chorus of support for complete streets in Southern California.
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After my time in Madison, Chicago beckoned. The "express" Van Galder bus from Madison hit a traffic wall around Austin and Cicero. But that was OK for me as there were CTA Blue Line tracks running down the middle of the Eisenhower Expressway. Sure, the train line is not pretty and standing on those platforms in the winter must be brutal, but let's focus on the positive; the line exists and offers functional, frequent 24/7 transit to thousands of daily riders.
In spite of Chicago's traffic, reminiscent of any hour on the 5, 405, 10, 110, 605, 710, need I go on, we eventually made it to The Loop where the real fun started at Chicago's Union Station. A walk/architectural tour through The Loop of the big shouldered city and along the Chicago River (with kayakers!) never disappoints.
With the quiet Expo Line to Santa Monica in mind, I have a soft spot in my heart for the noisy, gritty L, a largely bare bones urban transit system that rivals New York's bursting at the seams behemoth. Were Chicago building the L today, it would never get its basic design past the public and the Federal Transit Administration. But there it is, in all its Loop-centric glory, taking riders nearly everywhere in the sprawling city.
All over Chicago, I saw plenty of rust and the lines are pretty rattly and noisy at times. But, assuming the tracks and trains are safe, to an inveterate transit fan, the noise and rust are small prices to pay for frequency like we can only dream of for now on LA Metro.
To a city junkie, there almost nothing like riding the L through The Loop and out into Chicago's vibrant neighborhoods.
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On the active transportation front, Chicago's robust Divvy bikeshare program is super popular, especially near the Lake and parks, making it hard to find a bike at some of the stations.
Takeaway for LA, build out our transit fast and within budget and give Angelenos the frequency they need and the system will land discretionary riders who don't even think about driving. This is what LA Metro's November Ballot Initiative is all about and why we need to vote for it early and often as they would in Chicago.
Just don't get me started about the fact that Chicago's Blue Line goes all the way to O'Hare, not just nearby, requiring a second ride.
Since I probably sound like a PR flack for Chicago, I should add that I saw some annoying things in the City like Mayor Rahm Emanuel's name on the sign at Bixler Playlot Park in Hyde Park, as if Rahm paid for the playground himself.
In LA of course, we would never put the name of a living County Supervisor on the name of a regional park. Never!
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And I am not so nearsighted that I missed the resilient blight and crime that plagues much of Chiraq's South Side and West Side.
But in Chicago, like in New York, I also saw a vibrant city, where races mix, at least on the L and in the street and parks along the Lake.
LA fascinates me because its density and clash of dreams and cultures creates a built environment that is greater than the sum of its parts. Our cousins in Chicago and Madison and New York are also doing great things that can teach us a thing or two about how to build and rebuild cities that work.
Now let's get out and vote.
Gay rights activists raise a huge rainbow flag during a gay pride parade in Athens, June 11, 2016. REUTERS/Michalis Karagiannis
At this year's San Francisco Pride Parade, we had the privilege of marching with a special contingent memorializing all those killed at Pulse nightclub in the early hours of June 12. Organized with lightning speed by Richard Sizemore and many others, 49 of us held individual memorials, featuring the name and a life-size photograph of each of the victims. Hundreds of others wore shirts, stating simply "We Are Orlando." For the previous dozen years, we had made the trip down Market Street, cheering and chanting wildly for marriage equality. This year we marched in silence, dedicating each step to the memory of the person whose portrait we held. We were a means for them to have a presence in the parade. And instead of raucous cheering, the crowds greeted us predominantly with reverent silence or noble applause for each of those lost. Many fought back tears.
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The vast majority of victims were Latinx members of the LGBT community. We wanted to hold the memorials of Christopher "Drew" Leinonen and Juan Ramon Guerrero. They were the couple that lived together and that news outlets reported hoped to marry someday. But instead, their families contemplated a joint funeral for them. Juan's sister Aryam described the couple to Time magazine: "They were honestly so in love. They were soul mates. You can tell by how they looked at each other."
We were struck by how much Juan's family and Drew's mother, Christine Leinonen, not only accepted but also celebrated Juan and Drew. Aryam described Juan's family as "really loving and accepting" of Juan when he came out and that Juan "was so much love and light." Catherine McCarthy, a lifelong friend of Drew, wrote in the Washington Post that Christine's "not just 'tolerating' [Drew's] sexuality, but truly loving him, all of him, allowed him to exist unfettered and undiluted." In a live interview on ABC television the morning of June 12, Christine, desperate to learn any news of Drew, told the world how "proud of him" she was for starting the gay-straight alliance at high school over fifteen years before, an accomplishment that won him the Florida Holocaust Museum's Anne Frank Humanitarian Award "to bring gays and straights together."As demonstrated by Drew's founding his high school's gay-straight alliance, Drew and Juan's love was not passive; it was powerful. Catherine McCarthy described Drew as "love, embodied" and explained that "[h]e had all the time for love because he left little time for anything else." According to the Orlando Sentinel, Drew and Juan's mutual friend Brandon Wolf, who himself survived the Pulse massacre, memorialized them: "[Drew] and Juan were the love we wish to see in the world, the kind that pulls people together, breaks down walls, the kryptonite to hate."
Nothing spoke more of the power of their love than Christine's urgent entreaties to the nation that Sunday morning as she searched for her son: "We're on this earth for such a short time. Let's try to get rid of the hatred and the violence, please." And she spoke of a different "club" from the Pulse nightclub, a "club" that "nobody wants to be in," that of loved ones of gun violence victims. She appealed to all Americans: "[P]lease could we do something with the assault weapons so that we could stop this club from ever getting any new members. I beg all of you, please."
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When we married at San Francisco City Hall in February 2004 and found our lives transformed by the sense of dignity we experienced for the first time as LGBT people, we vowed to do everything in our power to make the dignity that comes with marriage equality something that all Americans could experience. We feel a similar urgency now. We cannot fully honor the lives of those lost in Orlando on June 12 unless we do everything in our power not just to reduce hatred but to eliminate access to the firearms that provide the means by which people carry out these types of massacres and other gun violence.
Drew's close friend Catherine wrote: "There will be a time to change our laws. A time when this sharp grief will shift into a hot and forceful anger. We will not let their deaths go unremembered, nor leave any questions unanswered." The American freedom to marry movement achieved something that often seemed unimaginable: nationwide marriage equality. It took millions and millions of us, our friends, families, and strangers doing everything we could and employing every skill we possess for our love, dignity, and common humanity. We never, ever gave up. It's time to do the same to silence the gunfire. It's time to embody love to become the kryptonite to hate.
Authors' Note: The activists who came together to make the We Are Orlando contingent a reality are too numerous to name here individually. However, we want to acknowledge the inspired leadership and dedication of Richard Sizemore, Mason Smith, Richel Desamparado, Tristan Moaveniyan, PSPrint, the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, and San Francisco Pride.
Vietnams Ministry of Industry and Trade is considering proposals to sell state ownership in two leading state-owned beverage firms.
Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc in a meeting on Tuesday asked Industry and Trade Minister Tran Tuan Anh to speed up the sales of state ownership in state-owned enterprises (SOEs) which are under the management of the ministry.
State ownership in big companies like Vinamilk, Habeco and Sabeco must be sold on a transparent basis to gain money for the State, Phuc said. He added that the sales of governments shares in state-run companies in sectors other than power and food should be accelerated in the coming time.
Private companies should be given priority for development, along with the divestment of governments shares in the state-run firms, the prime minister said.
The plans to sell state ownership in Saigon Beer, Alcohol and Beverages Corporation (Sabeco) and Hanoi Beer, Alcohol and Beverages Corporation (Habeco) are being weighed by the Ministry of Industry and Trade. The government may reduce its ownership in the two companies to 50 or even zero percent, Minister Anh said at the meeting.
The Vietnam Association of Financial Investors (VAFI), a local non-profit organization, in June this year also urged the Ministry of Industry and Trade to speed up the sales of state ownership in the two leading beverage firms.
Beer production in Vietnam. Photo by VnExpress
In May this year, a report by the Vietnam Beverage Association showed that Sabeco accounted for 46 percent of the domestic market share. Sabeco said state ownership in the firm will be reduced to 36 percent from 89.59 percent if the government approves its scheme.
The state ownership, represented by the Ministry of Industry and Trade, in Habeco is currently at 82 percent of the companys charter capital.
The board of directors of Vietnamese dairy firm Vinamilk has formally approved the removal of its 49 percent foreign ownership cap, paving the way for an expected flood of interest from overseas investors in a local company valued at $7.85 billion.
The decision to open up Vinamilk is made more significant by the planned divestment of the government's 45 percent stake, held by the State Capital Investment Corporation (SCIC) and worth $3.5 billion.
Vietnams public debt nearly doubled from 2011 to 2015 to reach VND2,608 trillion ($116 billion), or 62.2 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). Meanwhile, the National Assembly has set a ceiling for public debt at 65 percent of GDP.
Ongoing privatization of SOEs is among the measures expected to ease lingering public debt pressure.
Related news:
> Higher duties fail to stop Vietnamese from guzzling beer
> Vietnams former industry minister under fire over son's promotions
Following years of hard-fought negotiations by labor interests, the minimum wage was recently raised in several U.S. states this year, and the impact has been evident. Not so much an economic impact, or even the social im-pact that will help make life easier for the thousands who have experienced wage stagnation through the years.
Instead, this impact has to do with motivation, the rewards and incentives that help drive productivity.
Multiple research studies and surveys across the years have shown that feeling appreciated is a key driver of employee engagement in the work-place. Undoubtedly, these feelings start with compensation -- an unfair salary can discourage even the most motivated employees.
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However, any good manager will tell you that appreciation extends far be-yond fair wage and salary increases. There is much more to motivation and rewards than cold, hard cash. Having a clear understanding of this fact can make all the difference in the world when it comes to a company's bottom line and its ability to attract and retain great talent.
According to Dr. Jeremy Dean, a psychologist and founder of PsyBlog, re-wards can have a strange effect on motivation. His conclusions in this space are supported by and drawn from facts gleaned from a study con-ducted by psychologists Mark R. Lepper and David Greene from Stanford and the University of Michigan.
The study analyzed the behaviors of pre-school children between three and four years old who enjoy drawing (the key word being "enjoyed"). Kids were divided based on three different conditions: Some kids were told they were going to receive an award if they were part of the drawing test. Other chil-dren were not told about the reward until after the drawing activity was fin-ished. Another group didn't receive a reward at all. The test was conducted over time.
The study found that the children who expected a reward had decreased the amount of spontaneous interest they took in drawing, while the other two group of kids -- a reward after the fact or no reward at all -- were more motivated.
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There exists a similar motivational outcome mechanism in the minds of adults. Now, clearly a reward system for employees should be available in organizations large and small. However, it is very important that companies have a better understanding of their employees and consequently of what these rewards should be and how they should be awarded. After all, re-wards should motivate people, not inhibit their spontaneity.
A Washington Post article from last year made some excellent observa-tions regarding rewards and incentives in the current workplace. It noted that the "annual raise was turning into a relic of the pre-crisis economy as companies turn to creative -- and cheaper -- ways to compensate their employees." Companies have been upping their benefits expenditures not only because it makes financial sense, but also because employees' priori-ties have change over time. For instance, some people place great value on schedule flexibility and health care. As a matter of fact, beyond normal healthcare coverage, ancillary health and wellness packages are also in high demand as key benefits package components.
(This, plus pet insurance.)
However, rewards should go beyond all those nice perks and they should translate into things that are truly fundamental to all employees: a great work environment. This may sound a bit cliche, but the reality is that people who love what they do and are surrounded by an environment that stimu-lates them every day is as important as tangible rewards. A great culture is its own motivation.
There are many ways to reward employees, and one of those ways is by building a corporate culture that not only recognizes good work and behav-ior with nice perks and words of encouragement, but also that provides a setting where people can be heard, lets them take ownership of their work, makes them feel they have a purpose and gives them an opportunity to grow in their career and at a personal level.
On the Fourth of July in Lander,Wyoming, Liz Cheney was walking with a gaggle of campaign volunteers alongside a parade float handing out little frisbees with "Cheney for Wyoming" stamped on them to anyone who was interested. She gave me a frisbee, shook my hand, and I snatched a quick photo.
If anyone would have told me when I awoke that morning that Liz Cheney would be personally handing me a frisbee I wouldn't have believed them. She was dressed like she had just arrived from a cattle drive after shoveling manure all day and tending the ranch (for a second I didn't recognize here).
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She is running for the sole House seat in Wyoming, the same one once inhabited by her father, the infamous Dick Cheney. Liz Cheney threw her cowboy hat into the ring following the decision by the incumbent Republican Representative Cynthia Lummis not to seek re-election. Cheney joins a crowded Republican field that includes eight other GOP candidates, which will be decided on August 16th when the primary elections are held. (There are also two hapless Democrats, a Libertarian, and a Constitution Party candidate competing for the job).
I was visiting Lander (population 7,200) where I watched the big parade on the Fourth of July, which is a tradition among my wife's family. Most of my in-laws are dyed-in-the-wool right-wing Christian fundamentalists (a couple of the older ones are George McGovern "prairie" Democrats).
I asked my Wyoming kinfolk what they thought about Liz Cheney. And learned in no uncertain terms that they don't like her one bit. Their animosity stems mainly from the fact that she hasn't really lived in Wyoming for years, choosing instead the bustling cosmopolitan outside world of Washington, D.C. or Virginia over the wind-swept freezing isolation of their home state. They resent her thinking she can ride into town and snap up their only House seat after being absent out there living the good life.
As for Donald J. Trump, all of the Wyomingians I talked to -- staunch Republican gun-owning white Christian right-wingers all -- absolutely despise him. They told me his candidacy makes them ashamed to be Republicans.
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LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA - MAY 1: Black Lives Matter demonstrators express themselves at one of several May Day marches on May 1, 2016 in Los Angeles, California. Immigrants, union members, workers and supporters are participating in the annual marches in downtown Los Angeles to call for greater rights for immigrants and improved conditions for workers. (Photo by David McNew/Getty Images)
The police officer who shot and killed Philando Castille in Minnesota, Jeronimo Yanez, was Latino. That shooting added to the narrative of yet another white officer killing a black man. In Dallas one police officer killed with four others by Micah Johnson, was also Latino, Mexican-American Patrick Zamarripa.
He was targeted by a black man who reportedly wanted to kill white police officers in retaliation. Both officers were initially reported as white adding to the complexity of reporting about the nation's largest racial/ethnic minority. In December 2015 in Yonkers, New York an unarmed black man was killed by police when he ran into the woods after a car chase. The excellent police shooting database reported by The Washington Post listed the victim, Miguel Espinal, as black. Each of his relatives named in all of the local reporting had Spanish-surnames, as does he -- an Afro-Latino who lived in a country still stuck in a black -- white binary. And just this month in the days that enveloped the shootings in Baton Rouge, Falcon Heights and Dallas five Latinos were killed in police encounters with barely a ripple of media attention. Raul Saavedra-Vargas, 24, in Reno; Pedro Villanueva, 19, in Fullerton, California; Anthony Nunez, 19, in San Jose, California; Vinson Ramos in Los Angeles; and Melissa Ventura, 24, in Yuma Arizona.
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One was allegedly armed with a gun, two with a knife and two were killed while driving. Maria Teresa-Kumar got it right in stating that mainstream media segregates us into neat categories: police abuse is a black issue, immigrant abuse is a Latino issue. Thus the absence of accurate coverage. All true but there's a lot more nuance here. Frankly, from the outside Latinos appear to be a lot more complicated. But at least on one front it's not complicated for Latinos who live in urban America. The solidarity that Latinos have shown, and continue to build, with black America on policing, criminal justice, and drug policy reform is premised on a simple fact: we are black too. Afro-Latinidad, as Yara Simon notes in the Remezcla website, is an integral part of who we are.
Historically, well over 20 times more enslaved Africans reached Latin America than reached the U.S. Michael Eric Dyson recently noted how whites in America are given binoculars at birth "to see black life from a distance, never with the texture of intimacy." The binoculars equate to privilege, he said. For the majority of Latinos who share space with African-Americans and Afro-Caribbeans in urban America our common agendas were forged decades ago.
In New York City alone the first activist to spark an organized response to the racist Stop & Frisk practices of the NYPD was Puerto Rican, Richie Perez who teamed up with the Center of Constitutional Rights. And Richie was a light-skinned 'Rican at that. Mind you, solidarity here is not always operating in a straight, direct fashion. Racism within the Latino community continues to halt the progress of Afro-Latinos within Latino social, public and private spheres. And its systemic effects across generations require constant vigilance for the sake of true reform. And yet this still does not address the invisibility of a Latino collective response to policing and criminal justice reform. In this regard, what is more of a challenge is the heretofore anemic response from Latino leaders and organizations to police violence - although that finally appears to turn a corner in 2015 at least with the membership of the National Hispanic Leadership Agenda.
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Or the silence of the Catholic Church to police killings in places like Los Angeles, compared to the black church everywhere else in the country. Or the way all Latino activism keeps getting cabined into immigration reform. Or the proportionate share of Latino police officers in Los Angeles County that changes the dynamics of us versus them in that part of the country. Finally, another factor that contributes to the lack of media coverage is the lack of data. It was only as recently as 2013 that the FBI Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) finally inserted a field for Hispanics. Submission of UCR's are notoriously haphazard since all of it appears to be voluntary for police departments throughout the country.
In fact, in 2015 eleven states either failed to report out how many Latinos were arrested or incarcerated in their systems by continuing to report only in black and white terms or they failed to issue any demographic data whatsoever. In 2016 you would think that by now the federal government would have devised a better way to condition federal law enforcement grants in return for better data collection.
Not yet. This abysmal lack of accountability permeates mainstream media reporting on Latinos affected by the criminal justice system. It even compromises the demographic profiles of even the best intentioned reformists many of whom report on all facets of the punishment industry in a black and white binary even in 2016.
I was an early supporter of Bernie Sanders. Yes, I was feeling the Bern. But today, I am proud to endorse Hillary Clinton for President of the United States. She offers strong progressive values, a remarkable tenacity of spirit, and has demonstrated a capacity to listen.
During the campaign, I was impressed by how seriously Secretary Clinton heard and respected the progressive movement. We saw her talk with Black Lives Matter activists about systemic racism. We saw her listen to environmentalists about their concerns about the Keystone pipeline. We saw her stand with labor activists in opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
That willingness to include the progressive movement led to the most progressive platform in the history of the Democratic Party. Serving on the Platform Drafting Committee, I witnessed firsthand the unity and shared values of the two campaigns on critical issues - from raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, to strong criminal justice language on demilitarizing the police and requiring body cameras, to calling for a financial transactions tax to curb excessive Wall Street speculation.
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But I'm not surprised. Hillary Clinton has progressive roots and values. For decades, she has fought for the issues today's movement marches for - expanding health care, immigration reform, and fighting for better wages and working conditions.
And within the last week she has announced two historic plans: one to make public colleges and universities tuition free for more than 80% of American students, and a second to double funding for primary health care services at community health centers.
But her willingness to listen and her progressive values aren't all that has impressed me. It has also been her tenacity and resilience. We all remember when Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy accidentally told the truth by confessing, "Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable. But we put together a Benghazi special committee, a select committee. What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping." Despite the committee spending $7 million and more than a year of investigation, Secretary Clinton withstood the attacks - facing down an 11-hour grilling with poise - and was completely vindicated.
Attacks are nothing new to Hillary Clinton. For more than 25 years, she has faced a relentless attack machine that has sought to slander her name and distort her record. Yet, she continues to fight. Like a tree with strong roots, she may bend, but she will never break.
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She brings this into the general election against Donald Trump. She is committed to turning around Democrats' slide at the state and local level, and she's launched a crucial 50-state strategy to build the infrastructure we need to win.
Throughout the primary, Bernie showed the true power of a grassroots organizing campaign. 13 million Americans - many participating in the democratic process for the first time - voted for progressive values in every part of the country. Bernie's events saw record crowds: 11,000 in Phoenix; 14,000 in St Paul; 28,000 in Brooklyn. Voters were so energized by Bernie's message that nearly 2.5 million donors gave an average of $27 to support his presidential race, turning conventional thinking about campaign funding on its head.
Our movement is just beginning. We must stay energized and organized to elect progressives at all levels of government - from city councils to school boards, governorships to senate seats.
Bernie said many times our movement was never about him. It was about tackling income inequality, getting big money out of politics, and ending crippling student debt.
We can accomplish these goals and more with the progressive movement united to defeat Donald Trump. He has called Mexicans rapists and criminals, he wants to ban all Muslims - nearly one-quarter of the world's population - from entering the United States, and he has repeatedly degraded women. He is unfit to lead this great country and I will join Hillary, Bernie and their supporters to do everything in our power to ensure he never gets the chance. The stakes in this election couldn't be higher.
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Hillary Clinton is the most qualified nominee in history and there is no question that she stands firmly for progressive values.
WASHINGTON, DC - APRIL 18: Pro-immigration activists gather in front of the U.S. Supreme Court on April 18, 2016 in Washington, DC. The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments in the case of United States v. Texas, which is challenging President Obama's 2014 executive actions on immigration - the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (DAPA) programs. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)
by David F. Damore, Latino Decisions*
Earlier this week Latino Decisions and America's Voice released a poll examining the reaction of Latino voters to the Supreme Court's recent U.S. v. Texas decision blocking President Barack Obama's authority to implement DAPA and to expand DACA (full results and crosstabs here).
One thing is clear: The Supreme Court decision on DAPA has important implications for the 2016 election. Overwhelmingly, 83 percent of Latino voters favored DAPA and wanted to see it fully implemented. The issue of protecting versus deporting immigrant parents will certainly be relevant on the campaign trail.
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And as it stands now, Latino voters nationwide favor Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton over Republican nominee Donald Trump by more than a 4-to-1 margin, 74 percent to 16 percent.
The America's Voice poll also suggests that for many Latino voters the partisan politics surrounding the U.S. v. Texas case reinforce the diverging paths that the parties are taking with respect to immigration. When asked if Trump's support for the U.S. v. Texas decision would cause them to be more or less likely to vote for other Republican candidates, 62 percent said they would now be less likely to vote for GOP in the fall. In contrast, 62 percent of respondents indicated that Clinton's opposition to the 4-4 U.S. v. Texas decision made them more likely to vote Democratic. More generally, nearly half (46 percent) of Latino voters think the GOP has become more hostile to Latinos in recent years, as compared to 11 percent who think that the Republican Party has become more welcoming. The opposite holds for the Democrats: 40 percent said the party has become more welcoming to Latinos.
In terms issue priorities, immigration continues to be an animating issue for Latino voters. In response to an open ended question asking respondents what the most important issue facing the Latino community, 50 percent cited immigration reform. Moreover, the two policies at the center of the Republicans' legal challenge in the U.S. v. Texas case enjoy broad support among Latino voters. Specifically, 83 percent of Latinos approve of Obama's executive order DAPA and 81 percent approve of DACA.
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The continued saliency of immigration within the Latino electorate should not be much of a surprise. For many Latino voters, immigration is a personal issue as 59 percent of respondents know a family member, friend, co-worker or other acquaintance who is an undocumented immigrant, and over a quarter of Latino respondents know someone who applied for the DACA program.
Perhaps the poll's most telling finding though is the degree to which U.S. v. Texas serves an important reminder of what is at stake for Latino voters this November. When asked if the outcome of the case made them more or less enthusiastic about voting in 2016 as compared to 2012, 54 percent responded that they are now more enthusiastic about voting in 2016. By comparison, in 2012 it was not until late October that polling by Latino Decisions found similar levels of enthusiasm for voting as currently exists within the Latino electorate. There is no doubt that the electoral climate produced by Trump and other Republicans has motivated many Latinos in 2016 as demonstrated by the large protest rallies outside Trump events across the country.
Regarding the future of the Supreme Court, 70 percent of Latinos think that they would be worse of if Donald Trump were making appointments to the Supreme Court, while 62 percent of the sample responded that they would be better off if Hillary Clinton were to choose the next members of the Supreme Court. Given the Court's growing role on issues of immigration, civil rights, and voting rights it appears the U.S. v. Texas DAPA ruling has energized the Latino vote heading into 2016 presidential election.
The poll also revealed that Latino voters' perceptions of the two presidential candidates are well entrenched. All respondents were familiar with the candidates and just 5 percent had no opinion of either Democrat Hillary Clinton or Republican Donald Trump. More significantly, while Trump may "love the Hispanics," the feeling is far from mutual. Only 17 percent of Latino voters have a somewhat favorable or very favorable opinion of the businessman and a remarkable 78 percent have an unfavorable view of the Republican nominee including 69 percent who view him very unfavorably.
Clinton, in contrast, is perceived much more favorably: 63 percent of Latino voters have either a somewhat (27 percent) or very favorable (36 percent) opinion of the former Secretary of State, with only 32 percent viewing her as somewhat (12 percent) or very (20 percent) unfavorably. Given these perceptions, Clinton leads Trump 73 percent to 16 percent in a hypothetical general election match-up. In generic U.S. House and Senate contests, the Democrats also enjoy advantages of more than 50 percentage points among Latino voters.
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More generally, in both their evaluations of the presidential candidates and in their voting preferences in federal races, Latino voters are much more pro-Democratic as compared to the electorate as a whole. Given the concentration of Latino voters in swing states such as Colorado, Florida, and Nevada that are feature competitive Senate races this cycle, Latinos have the potential to not only tip the balance in favor of Hillary Clinton in these states, but also significantly aid the Democrats as they seek to gain majority control of the Senate.
David F. Damore is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and a Senior Analyst for Latino Decisions.
Editor's Note
A HuffPost article that previously existed at this URL has been removed.
At the present time, an increase in U.S. military spending seems as superfluous as a third leg. The United States, armed with the latest in advanced weaponry, has more military might than any other nation in world history. Moreover, it has begun a $1 trillion program to refurbish its entire nuclear weapons complex. America's major military rivals, China and Russia, spend only a small fraction of what the United States does on its armed forcesin China's case about a third and in Russia's case about a ninth. Furthermore, the economic outlay necessary to maintain this vast U.S. military force constitutes a very significant burden. In fiscal 2015, U.S. military spending ($598.5 billion) accounted for 54 percent of the U.S. government's discretionary spending.
Certainly most Americans are not clamoring for heightened investments in war and war preparations. According to a Gallup poll conducted in February 2016, only 37 percent of respondents said the U.S. government spent too little "for national defense and military purposes," compared to 59 percent who said it spent too much (32 percent) or about the right amount (27 percent).
These findings were corroborated by a Pew Research Center survey in April 2016, which reported that 35 percent of American respondents favored increasing U.S. military spending, 24 percent favored decreasing it, and 40 percent favored keeping it the same. Although these latest figures show a rise in support for increasing military spending since 2013, this occurred mostly among Republicans. Indeed, the gap in support for higher military spending between Republicans and Democrats, which stood at 25 percentage points in 2013, rose to 41 points by 2016.
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Actually, it appears that, when Americans are given the facts about U.S. military spending, a substantial majority of them favor reducing it. Between December 2015 and February 2016, the nonpartisan Voice of the People, affiliated with the University of Maryland, provided a sample of 7,126 registered voters with information on the current U.S. military budget, as well as leading arguments for and against it. The arguments were vetted for accuracy by staff members of the House and Senate appropriations subcommittees on defense. Then, when respondents were asked their opinion about what should be done, 61 percent said they thought U.S. military spending should be reduced. The biggest cuts they championed were in spending for nuclear weapons and missile defense systems.
When it comes to this year's presumptive Presidential candidates, however, quite a different picture emerges. The Republican nominee, Donald Trump, though bragging about building "a military that's gonna be much stronger than it is right now," has on occasion called for reducing military expenditures. On the other hand, his extraordinarily aggressive foreign policy positions have led defense contractors to conclude that, with Trump in the White House, they can look forward to sharp increases in U.S. military spending. Indeed, insisting that U.S. military power has shrunk to a pitiful level under President Obama, he has promised that, under his presidency, it would be "funded beautifully." In March 2016, when Trump appeared on Fox News, he made that commitment more explicit by promising to increase military spending.
Given the considerably more dovish orientation of the Democratic electorate, one would expect Hillary Clinton to stake out a position more opposed to a military buildup. But, thus far, she has been remarkably cagey about this issue. In September 2015, addressing a campaign meeting in New Hampshire, Clinton called for the creation of a high-level commission to examine U.S. military spending. But whether the appointment of such a commission augurs increases or decreases remains unclear. Meanwhile, her rather hawkish foreign policy record has convinced observers that she will support a military weapons buildup. The same conclusion can be drawn from the "National Security" section of her campaign website, which declares: "As president, she'll ensure the United States maintains the best-trained, best-equipped, and strongest military the world has ever known."
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Although the big defense contractors generally regard Clinton, like Trump, as a safe bet, their influence is even greater in Congress, where they pour substantially larger amounts of money into the campaign coffers of friendly U.S. Senators and Representatives. Thus, even when a President doesn't back a particular weapons system, they can usually count on Congress to fund it. As a Wall Street publication recently crowed: "No matter who wins the White House this fall, one thing is clear: Defense spending will climb."
Will it? Probably so, unless public pressure can convince a new administration in Washington to adopt a less militarized approach to national and international security.
[This is a guest post by my West Point colleague, MAJ John Spencer]
One of the last barriers to equality in the military is gone. It was simply embarrassing and prevented the best of our society from serving. But the fight for equality isn't over yet. Unfortunately, some service men and women will have to fight culture for the near term.
Defense Secretary Ashton Carter's decision to lift the Pentagon's ban on transgender people serving openly in the armed forces will make the military stronger. It is another step towards a culture of equality the military as an institution has struggled with in the past.
Leading up to Secretary Carter's decision there were many military and civilian leaders putting up red flags arguing the critical impact it would have on unit readiness and effectiveness. I personally disagree.
I've only served in the military for 23 years and I have already "survived" two major social paradigm shifts. These include the lifting of the "don't ask, don't tell" policy in 2011 and the opening of all combat roles to women last year. I say survived because prior to each of these changes the cultural narrative spread by many was how it would destroy the military's readiness and effectiveness in combat.
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Culture in the military is a powerful force. It includes the values, beliefs, behaviors, and norms of the entire Army and specific sub-groups or units. It is learned, shared, and internalized by us all. As Cornell's Elizabeth Kier notes, "Few organizations devote as many resources to the assimilation of their members. The emphasis on ceremony and tradition, and the development of a common language and esprit de corps, testify to the strength of the military's organizational culture." I learned much of my beliefs from the older members of my units.
As a member of the infantry I frequently heard how an LGBT soldier or a woman would mean our entire way of life would have to change. The social cohesion of our units would disintegrate. The image of American 18-year-old girls coming home in body bags would sour public support for our war efforts. All in all, we would become weaker as a fighting force.
But in both my deployments to Iraq l learned it didn't matter. I learned that when everything went to hell in combat I wanted the best possible soldier to my left and right. I didn't care about gender, race, or sexual orientation. My deeply ingrained cultural beliefs also cracked when I saw women serving in our ranks, living among us, and performing on mission in some cases better than our own soldiers.
What I also find ironic is the natural acceptance in younger generations who are developed in an environment of inclusiveness. I was reminded of that recently at the United States Military Academy. Every summer thousands of Army cadets deploy into the woods and mountains near West Point, New York. For those cadets going into their senior year they must pass a three-week crucible that includes a grueling twelve-day field training exercise -- think kicking down doors of huts meant to be ISIS compounds or defending land meant to be mountain top combat bases - designed after the Army's Ranger School.
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During these drills, males, females, all races, ethnicities, and openly gay cadets are placed into infantry roles to fight simulated battles in realistic combat scenarios. They live, eat, sleep, and conduct personal hygiene together. Again I saw that the only things that mattered to these cadets was everyone doing their assigned job to standard. The difference is they didn't have to undo their cultural beliefs.
Vanguards of what will impact "military's readiness and effectiveness" have repeatedly been disproved. Before lifting of the "don't ask, don't tell" policy, soldiers surveyed said it would have little impact on their units' performance. We now know that these soldiers were correct.
Transgender soldiers will face many of the same cultural hurdles that females seeking to fill combat roles recently open currently face. They will be accepted if they meet military standards. Military leaders at the lowest level will have to lead the way of changing culture rather than allowing old beliefs to be passed on. The old breed should take lessons from the new generations.
"What?" I mouthed to my husband through the car window, pointing to the phone still up to my ear. I'd been holding for 30 minutes and cut off twice -- I wasn't hanging up without good cause. We had stopped for gas after our son's occupational therapy. I didn't even notice my husband had wandered inside until I saw him walking quickly back toward the car with a strange look on his face and a lottery ticket in his hand. As I am finally patched through to the nurse reviewing my long-term disability claim, he's feverishly tapping on the closed window, "An elderly woman tripped over a speed bump and hit her head. She's saying she doesn't need an ambulance."
As he disappears back inside, it clicks through to voicemail. I leave a discombobulated message for the nurse and sit momentarily disoriented wondering what to do. Emergencies are not my forte and I'm out of practice, dull, medicated. I haven't been able to work as a nurse in four years.
I ransack the glove compartment for anything absorbent and find nothing useful save a nearly empty pack of travel tissues and an unopened bottle of water. My head launches without pause into a rapid-fire assessment of my usefulness in this particular situation: I can't leave the children in the car by themselves. Surely they called an ambulance already. I'm not even a legit nurse anymore. My nursing license lists my status as inactive. Tissues? These are going to stick in the wound. Diapers. Don't panic. I need diapers.
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One day when I was still a practicing RN, we were leaving the supermarket when an older disabled man was struck by a car crossing the street. He was still lying in the crosswalk next to his overturned scooter as we were pulling out of the parking lot -- someone had called 911 but they hadn't arrived yet and his head wound was gushing. All I had was a stash of diapers which sufficed until the paramedics arrived moments later. Despite working in the Neonatal ICU for seven years, emergency situations were out of my comfort zone. Emergencies in the ICU were usually controlled, predictable. Someone who knew exactly what the hell to do was always right there. That wasn't me. I brought Huggies to the scene of the accident. Today I didn't even have those. I took my pocket tissues and my water, and got out of the car.
That morning I had prayed for reassurance that I still had something useful to offer and here I didn't even have a first aid kit. Make it clear, God, I had prayed. I'm thick sometimes. Lately I had felt useful to no one, least of all myself. All the nonsense with having to keep proving my disability to the insurance company despite my doctors repeated documentation of three unsuccessful surgeries had me feeling cynical about my chances against corporate bullies and the general goodness of humankind.
I was certain I had found my true calling in nursing and I counted on doing it until I couldn't do it anymore. I would feel better for a while and would work as much as I was able in between surgeries, but after several months the pain always returned. Still, I held onto to my plans, clung to them really, while I tried to heal my back until my spine was finally fused. Inactive, they call it. That's what they put on your license when you aren't practicing anymore. Status: INACTIVE.
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Inactive: adjective, not working; inoperative. Synonyms: idle, lifeless, inert, motionless.
That's exactly what it feels like when you lose something you love, that somehow you aren't quite real anymore. That you are inert, lifeless.
"If you could just drive me down the street to see if my friend is home," she kept saying with her legs dangling sidesaddle out the driver's side door next to the diesel pumps. The blood around her head wound was already coagulating but a steady stream was dripping off her brow onto her cheek, and running down her neck. She lived alone and had no family nearby, she told us. Her friend might be home though, she kept insisting, she just couldn't remember the address. I told her I was a nurse and that an ambulance was on it's way. She made it clear she didn't want all this commotion when she heard the sirens approaching
"I don't need an ambulance," she kept repeating. The assistant manager was hovering nearby, completely beside himself, trying to make himself useful. It occurred to me later I should have sent him to look for a first aid kit, but he was as clueless and unprepared as I was. Before we pulled up he was about to drive her off the premises and down the street to look for her friend's house. Even in her fragile state, she nearly had him convinced that she didn't need medical care. He thanked us profusely for making him call an ambulance. This was his first week at this new job and he didn't really know what to do, he explained.
I poured the water onto my pocket tissues and wiped some of the blood from her face and where it had collected in the hollow of her neck. I looked down at her arm -- both the bones were snapped in two the same way mine was the day I fell off the monkey bars in the 3rd grade. The only thing I knew to do was comfort her and it was only a few moments, because thank God the paramedics showed up and saved us all in what felt like seconds. I took a deep breath and gratefully stepped out of the way while they opened their emergency gear around the car and tended to her. I whispered a prayer for them all as I walked back to the car and gave thanks for a day of saves. We had saved the assistant managers job. The paramedics had saved the injured woman. The injured woman had saved me.
For those moments, while I was wiping blood from a stranger's face, I forgot all about the insurance company bullshit. Serving others has that effect because sometimes it means showing up with a mostly-empty pack of pocket tissues. Sometimes it's just holding someone's hand or wiping blood from their face. Sometimes it's not knowing what to do and showing up anyway.
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And unfortunately my past good deeds do not protect me in any way. There are no minutes to roll over, or special passes to cash in for public service. I've learned bad shit still happens and the good guys don't always win. Despite providing the insurance company again and again with what seems to me sufficient documentation, a year ago they dropped my claim. I've been fighting them ever since.
They don't know every time they suggest that I would choose to not return if I were able, it's a knife in my heart. They don't know I had counted on nursing carrying me through the rest of my working years. They don't consider that it not only sustained my family financially, it sustained my well-being. So I have had to seek other means in search of the wellness that comes with doing what you love. I have found writing to be one of the only things that has helped me work through such abrupt changes in my perfect plans. And for now, as long as I'm breathing, I'm going to keep doing it. It has kept me alive.
As for the insurance company, they want nothing more than to dump a drain like me. Losing one's livelihood is hard enough and then you lose the insurance that you get in case you can't do your job. These things did not factor in to my precious plans. And my story isn't special, it's one of millions. My research has revealed a treasure trove of patient stories on the internet; horror stories of big-corporate insurance companies screwing over the little guy. I'm now well versed in what happens to you when have an injury that doesn't get better. They get tired of paying you whether you have a legitimate claim or not. They will wiggle and worm their way around every law. They will lie, cheat, trick, stalk and surveille you -- anything to get out of making good on your policy, all while using Snoopy as a mascot.
They operate on the premise that I like collecting less than half my salary and assume I would pretend to be hurt while I rot away into nothingness and get paid for it. As much as I know that it isn't personal. It is. It's calling me a liar, a fake. It's saying, "There's nothing wrong with you," when something clearly is.
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That day I fell off the monkey bars in the 3rd grade and snapped both bones clean in two, I had gone to the school nurse. It's probably just sprained, she said sending me back to class after first recess at 10 am. I went all day guarding my arm close to me and that afternoon I took the long bus ride home. We lived in the sticks and often didn't get home until 4:30 or later. There was an older boy, Kevin, who always sat in the back. He taunted me as I got up to get off the bus when it finally stopped in front of my house. "There's nothing wrong with you," he said as he shoved my arm into my abdomen. I got off the bus and walked through the dirty gravel up the driveway.
When she saw my arm, we did not pass go or collect two hundred dollars -- my mom took the ten-mile drive back into town straight to the emergency room. My hand was hanging at the wrist, a near-greenstick fracture where the bone comes through the skin. I hadn't complained all day at school. I trusted that a nurse would know better than I did until it was clear she didn't. I was eight then, but the fact is, I'm still figuring out how to be heard at forty-one. It has taken me all the time in between to figure out that some of us just speak more clearly in the written word.
Who knows if the insurance company has a chance at redemption, or if the nurse I was on hold with that day will have mercy on me; they are, after all corporate machines. I was not silent this time, I appealed their decision. I didn't let them push me and tell me I wasn't hurt. And Kevin? Sometimes I think about him and hope he got his redemption via a nurse-given enema. No, not really. Ok, maybe a little bit. But more than that, I pray he grew up and learned how to treat a human being. He taught me what it felt like to not be seen or heard and I carried it through my nursing career and carry it still today. It made me a better person, a better nurse, so thanks, Kevin, and by the way, I forgive you. Everyone is an asshole sometimes.
I still feel like a nurse as I keep learning to be a writer. It's not something that leaves you. It's a difficult transition and at times I am utterly lacking confidence in my ability or potential with a pen. In order to do it well, you have to make yourself vulnerable, and maybe being hurt has provided me that vulnerability. But the solace offered me by writing has also kept me isolated and inside my head, which has made me slow, off my game. That was clear to me when the only thing I could offer the poor lady at the gas station was comfort and an almost empty pack of pocket tissues. But what she gave me was priceless. I need blatant reminders despite my purest intentions. Nursing kept me grounded, reminded me that being alive means that you bleed. It's why I miss it like a lost limb. To see the truth about what it is to be born, to live, to get sick, hurt, to die -- those experiences keep us honest, humble, real.
And being real means my joints are loose and shabby and yes sometimes (almost always) it hurts. It means changes happen midstream and there is not a damn thing you can do about it. Being real means losing your job and being on hold for 30 minutes with insurance company. And sometimes, being real means bleeding from the head at the gas station. I know that being alive means it can be no other way. For me, it has meant getting down to the truth of things, even when it isn't pretty. Writing has served me well to sift through the insecurities and fears I mistakenly thought were behind me. Getting it out on paper has been a safe-haven while I have mourned the loss of my best-laid plans and tried to forge new ones.
I've long since lost my sharp edge, dulled by unrelenting pain and mind-numbing medications. I had no supplies at the gas station and had forgotten all the things you do in emergencies because writers aren't required to know these things. Lucky for me they don't need strong backs and quick feet are not a prerequisite. Writing has expanded my awareness in ways that otherwise might have escaped me, but it also comes with a heaping dose of self-doubt. For me, sacred as it is, holding a pen is not the same as holding someone's hand. I'm still learning how words can save us. I'm still learning how to let them.
This morning as I sit at the kitchen counter while my coffee drips and try to make heads or tails of this essay, my phone rings. It's 5:30 a.m. I haven't been up this early in a while, but pain woke me and it's my favorite time to write. It's staffing on the phone. My number is still in the system. They need nurses to work 0700-1900. And though I know I can't, somehow that comforts me -- to know I'm still needed. It tells me, just keep going. It says, this is where you are right now. It gives me just enough to endure when I want to give up.
So I will keep writing about this journey, unexpected as it is. I know it doesn't happen all at once; that becoming Real takes a long time. And even though I can't do what I once could, the important stuff I learned not from a science degree or nursing school or even writing. The really good stuff I learned from a beloved children's book because the stories we're told when we're kids are the ones we never forget:
"Real isn't how you are made,' said the Skin Horse. 'It's a thing that happens to you.'
'Does it hurt?' asked the Rabbit.
'Sometimes,' said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. 'When you are Real you don't mind being hurt.'
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'Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,' he asked, 'or bit by bit?'
'It doesn't happen all at once,' said the Skin Horse. 'You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand..."
Some press reports on the crisis in Brazil seem to imply that the removal of President Dilma Rousseff, re-elected in 2014 for a four-year term, is a done deal. Of course the interim government is acting as though they are the product of some huge electoral victory, even though the elected president is merely suspended pending her upcoming impeachment trial in the Senate. Beginning with a cabinet of all rich, white males, in a country where more than half identify as Afro-Brazilian or mixed race descent, they have tried to create the impression that they are the new government that will rule at least until there are new presidential elections in 2018. But the chances that they will be gone before September are increasing every day.
First there were the series of scandals, which have so far resulted in the resignation of three ministers, and revealed that the main impetus behind the impeachment of Dilma was to protect corrupt, pro-impeachment politicians from further investigation. Then last week the speaker of Brazil's House of Representatives had to resign from his position because of corruption that reportedly netted him more than $40 million, including millions in Swiss bank accounts. (He has not resigned from his seat in Congress, despite an order from the Supreme Court to do so in order to stand trial. Members of Congress have immunity from normal prosecution and can only be tried by the Supreme Court; this is one of the unfortunate structural reasons why a majority of legislators are under investigation for a range of crimes).
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But the most encouraging, and widely underreported development has been the formation of a bloc within the Senate that is against the impeachment. The Senate vote on May 12 suspended the president, and she is expected to be put on trial in mid-August. In order to permanently remove her from office, the Senate will have to vote for conviction by a two-thirds majority. That means the pro-impeachment forces will need 54 of the 81 senators.
But according to one of Brazil's most well-known and respected journalists, Paulo Henrique Amorim, there is now a bloc of 36 Senators who have committed to vote against impeachment, with some of the Senators making this conditional on a referendum to decide whether to have early presidential elections. Some supporters of Dilma and her Workers' Party (PT) are against this proviso, since Dilma was elected for a four year term and they think that she should serve it out without further interruption, as according to the constitution. However, Dilma herself is willing to accept the referendum. This group of 36 Senators (G-36) is 8 more than enough to defeat the impeachment effort.
Vietnam's flagship carrier has been recognized by ratings unit SkyTrax.
Vietnams flagship commercial carrier Vietnam Airlines was awarded a 4-star rating on July 12 at the Farnborough Airshow in the U.K. by SkyTrax, the world's leading airport and airline rating organization.
The award comes after a comprehensive evaluation by SkyTrax of products and services both onboard flights and in airports, according to a recent press release by Vietnam Airlines.
Vietnam Airlines is the fourth 4-star commercial carrier in Southeast Asia after Thai Airways, Bangkok Airways and SilkAir. Vietnams largest carrier now stands among the worlds most reputable airlines, including Air France, British Airways, Emirates, Japan Airlines, Korean Air and Lufthansa.
Vietnam Airlines' business class option has rapidly improved with high service quality. Photo from airlinequality.com
"This 4-star airline rating is an excellent achievement for Vietnam Airlines and the result of their hard work across a range of product and service areas. Introducing two brand new aircraft types into the fleet in such a short space of time is a difficult task, but the reward for Vietnam Airlines is a fabulous new product in their core long haul market, SkyTrax CEO Edward Plaisdted said.
The CEO added: We acknowledge the considerable change and improvement they have achieved, with a new service concept rolled out in business class and an overhaul of cabin staff training procedures - all which will further strengthen Vietnam Airlines' position.
Vietnam Airlines President and CEO, Duong Tri Thanh, said: I am honored to accept this highly prestigious accolade on behalf of Vietnam Airlines. This fantastic achievement is testament to the hard work of all of Vietnam Airlines' dedicated employees, and an important indicator of the excellent progress we are making towards our goal of becoming one of the best-regarded airlines in Asia-Pacific.
The national airline underwent a dramatic transformation over the last 18 months to reach its 4-star status, beginning with a major replacement of its old wide-body aircraft fleet by a new-generation of Airbus A350-900 XWB and Boeing 787-9 Dreamliners.
The change has significantly enhanced its products, launched a new corporate identity and focused on training as well as ensuring both the quantity and quality of pilots, cabin crews and technicians.
By the end of 2016, Vietnam Airlines' long haul route network, including flights to Europe and Australia, will be serviced by these new aircraft. The company has already taken delivery of 11 of the new aircraft, and by the end of 2017, another nine will be launched.
The 4-star award owes a significant amount to the new terminal at Noi Bai International Airport in Hanoi, offering a new business class lounge and upgraded check-in facilities to reduce waiting time. A new business class lounge will be opened in Ho Chi Minh City this September.
Established in 1989, Skytrax undertakes qualitative product, service and passenger audits and research studies for airlines, airline alliances, airports and related air transport suppliers across the globe.
Skytrax operates the global Airline and Airport Review online guide, one of the most popular, independent airline review forums and air travel information websites.
The reputation of the World Airline Awards has been built by Skytrax strict adherence to its founding principles set out when the awards began in 1999.
A key directive of the survey is for customers to make their own, personal choices as to which airlines they consider to be the best, underlining the brand as the Passenger's Choice Awards.
Headquartered in Hanoi, Vietnam Airlines operates 92 routes to 20 domestic and 29 international destinations with an average 400 daily flights.
Related news
> Vietnam Airlines to sell $108 million stake to Japans largest airline
> Vietnams first low cost carrier expands fleet with $1 bln deal
> Canada to train Vietnam Airlines pilots in HCMC
Today, the Earth got a little hotter, and a little more crowded.
Saving BUB, Beautiful Unique Biodiversity, like this Amazon tree frog, is another reason to conserve carbon storing forests. Source www.theguardian.com
Forests: the cheapest way to store carbon
The Giants Nearby my home in California. I love them. Source www.resetsanfrancisco.org
OO California Redwoods: The Ultimate Carbon-Storing Forests in the World a new study finds.
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Amazon Burning Credit Dado Galdieri at AP
OO El Nino, Climate Change Are Making The Amazon Dry And Flammable says researchers at NASA and the University of California, Irvine.
What were once considered once-in-a-century events are increasing as global warming takes hold.
Just in the past decade, the Amazon suffered from two record drought years (2005, 2010), and massive fires thought to have been mostly caused by humans.
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Related Headline:
OO Dry Amazon Could See Record Fire Season forecast researchers.
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OO 2015 Southeast Asian Fires Emitted Most Carbon Since 1997 - blanketing the area in thick haze and, producing emissions higher than in the whole of the European Union, say scientists.
OO Millions Massive Die-Off of Trees Worldwide Tied to Climate Change is occurring in California, the US Southwest and Europe, adding to further climate change as their decomposition releases climate-changing gases.
The link is from current extreme droughts of the sort expected under continued climate change.
When we harm forests, we harm ourselves.
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HOT NEWS
Orange Areas average 28 degrees C. Source www.independent.co.uk
OO Humans Have Caused World's Warmest Seas To Surge In Temperature, scientists say, via greenhouse gas emissions that have created the giant 'Indo-Pacific Warm Pool', the largest area of warm water in the world that stretches 9,000 miles along the equator.
The Indo-Pacific Warm Pool, where the water averages more than 28 degrees Celsius, has increased in size by about a third in 60 years.
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SOCIAL REPERCUSSIONS
The Fate Of Future US Babies? Zika infected pregnant women often give birth to tiny brained babies, whose lives are often short , and for their parents, tortuous. Source bn.thetodaypost.com
OO Zika In Florida: 10 New Cases Confirmed
Amid Concern Over US Sluggish Response - although all infections were acquired overseas, hundreds of infected people in Florida heighten the chances of creating an infected pool of mosquitoes.
This pool could then create an epidemic of zika in Florida that could spread further in the US.
OO Summer Of Fire: Drought Transforms Southern Sierra into a tinderbox of an estimated 66 million dead trees in the southern Sierra Nevada.
Related Headline:
OO Wildfires Engulfing The West Coast Are Fueled By Climate Change experts warn, and require new strategies.
Run: A new wildfire burning through bone-dry grass, shrub and timber has forced the evacuation of dozens of homes in a mountain community.
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OO California Wildfire Prompts New Round Of Evacuations
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Study in Toxic Green Source www.miamiherald.com
OO Florida Takes Economic Hit:
Toxic Algae Drives Away Tourists - the massive bloom smells like "death on a cracker"; the last time such a big bloom occurred, it took months for the estuaries to recover.
Both rising water temperatures and poorly regulated pollution guarantees more of these.
OO 1 In 10 People May Face Malnutrition As Fish Catches Decline around the world both from lack of protein and critical micronutrients like iron and zinc.
So declining fisheries pose major risks for global health, scientists warn.
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HOUSTON, WE'VE GOT A WATER PROBLEM...
The Vital Monsoon: When Will It Come? Wikipedia
OO Climate Change Warming Asian Waters, Altering Monsoon - making it more erratic and unpredictable.
It's an ominous problem for 70% of India's 1+ billion citizens, who need reliable monsoon predictions
to decide when they will sow their seeds and harvest their crops.
The Not So Mighty Indus Wikipedia
OO Stressed Indus River Threatens Pakistan's Water Supplies - the river supports the lives of 300 million people, and supplies Pakistan with less water than it did 50 years ago, particularly in the spring and summer, researchers have found.
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Meanwhile, demand for water is projected to rise sharply.
OO Murders, Violence On Rise As Parched India Battles For Water - Northern and central India continue to suffer thorough severe drought and oppressive heat.
Police in several regions are reporting a rise in violent - and often deadly - clashes over water.
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MEATY PROBLEM
You Want To Eat ... ME??! Source TakePart
OO Meat: An Unhealthy Habit - accumulating evidence indicates that meat, particularly red meat, is just a disaster for the environment - and not so great for human beings, too.
OO This Is What Your Hot Dog And Burger Are Doing To The Planet When Americans fire up their grills on July 4th, they dump up to 882 million pounds of carbon pollution into the atmosphere--the equivalent of burning almost 2,200 railcars of coal.
Okay, I can hear it now - "What -- now you're attacking my hot dog?"
It does all add up - BUT what will really make a difference is whether you vote for leaders who will act on preventing further climate change.
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GOOD IDEAS
Blowing Interference Credit Christian Steiness
OO Creating More Efficient Wind Farms -
Based on Schools of Fish - Takeaways:
Large offshore turbines disrupt air flow
creating interfering wakes of slow moving air behind them;
Thus, turbines in rows behind them harvest less energy;
Large size forces turbines to be spaced widely, further reducing energy harvesting.
Fish School Us On Wind Power - a piscine school is a demonstration of animals adapted to maximizing their swimming efficiency. Courtesy Robert Whittlesey
Fish in schools show staggered formation,
And use neighborly turbulence to swim more efficiently;
Staggering Counter Spinning Turbines ups efficiency. Credit John Dabiri and Matthias Kinzel
Staggering smaller, shorter wind turbines
In pairs of opposing rotations,
Increases wind energy harvesting 10 times, researchers found.
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OO Transport Emissions Are Rising - Time to Tighten Standards
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Source renewableenergyideas.org
OO Apple, Patagonia, Google, and Others Are
Expanding Into Solar Power - not just through solar panels on their roofs, but through:
Rooftop projects to massive plants (Google)
Giant solar plants and selling excess energy from their roofs (Apple)
Solar panel leasing on other rooftops (Patagonia)
Patagonia is also showing other companies how to expand into the solar power business.
Walmart, Macy's, Costo, and Ikea are some of the biggest users of solar power to power their businesses in the US - is it just a matter of time before they start selling solar electticity?
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OO 'Tesla Solar' Wants to Be the Apple Store for Electricity - providing the solar rooftop systems, the batteries to store the solar power, and the electric cars that use those batteries. And offering it all in a convenient, economic way to customers.
Educating Bill Gates Source www.huffingtonpost.com
OO Let's Upgrade Bill Gates' Climate Reading List - Bill is under the delusion that we need clean energy "miracles," because he believes the flawed arguments of Vaclav Smil.
Luckily, Bill and Vaclav are wrong. It's time to update Bill.
OO Canada: Govt Think Tank Pushes Nation to Think Beyond Oil Dependence
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THE "NEW COAL"
COULD CREATE A HOLE
IN ANY CLIMATE GOAL
Natural Gas: Not All That Clean Credit Tim Evanson at flickr
OO Leaking Coal Seam Gas Fields May Blow Hole In Emissions Goals - a growing chorus of voices from Australia and overseas is warning that any perceived benefits of burning natural gas for energy could easily be lost with just small leakages of the potent climate changing gas.
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SPEAKING OUT
Stephen Hawking Source www.strangenotions.com
OO Stephen Hawking: Pollution And 'Stupidity'
Still Biggest Threats To Mankind - he notes: "Six years ago, I was warning about pollution and overcrowding, they have gotten worse since then. The population has grown by half a billion since our last interview, with no end in sight."
Credit Stephane Mahe at Reuters
"Greenhouse Gases Must Be Substantially Reduced." Major US scientific organizations told Congress.
OO Top U.S. Science Organizations Hammer Congress on Climate Change--Again
Scientists implore action and note rising bipartisan demands for action as heat waves and wildfires worsen.
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OO Science Organizations Again Urge Congress To Take Climate Change Seriously in a letter signed by many major US groups.
It pushes back against climate denial and calls for policy solutions to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
OO 31 Scientific Bodies Tell US Congress: Climate Change Is Real and to get real on climate change.
As many as 180 Congressional members are thought to be skeptical of human-caused climate change.
OO After 6 Years Of Working On Climate At Harvard,
I Implore It To Show The Courage To Divest
Source thomasnet.com
Clean It Up Fast for a smooth energy transition and stable economies, says Moody's.
OO Major Credit Giant Calls For Rapid Paris Climate Deal Approval
The giant, Moody's has called on countries to speed ratification of the deal.
This will lower the risks of a damaging transition from fossil fuels -
And calm markets.
Moody's pledges to use the UN climate pact as benchmark for rating companies.
OO Canada: Court Overturns Major Pipeline Approval issued by the previous federal cabinet two years ago.
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CLUELESS LEADERSHIP
"Men Argue; Nature Acts." Voltaire, 1769
OO The World Has The Right Climate Goals --
But The Wrong Ambition Levels To Achieve Them - pledges will not meet targets. Takeaways:
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195 nations agreed to pledge to cut emissions to prevent a 1.5 C rise in world temperature.
this would prevent most of the gravest tipping points, e.g., the disappearance of the Arctic ice cap.*
countries' actual pledges to cut their emissions just aren't ambitious enough to keep the world within the "safe" climate range that lies at the core of the Paris agreement, shows a new analysis.
"The window for limiting warming to below 1.5 C with high probability and without temporarily exceeding that level already seems to have closed," the study notes.
*an important planetary thermal shield preventing even more heat from being absorbed by Earth. A 1.5 C rise would not prevent severe threats to coral reefs, or major melting in Antarctica.
OO What Would It Take To Achieve The Paris Temperature Targets? To keep the Earth from heating a further 2 C would require net zero emissions to be reached by 2085 and considerable amounts of negative emissions, researchers say.
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That is, humans would need to remove significant amounts of emissions already in the atmosphere.
Credit Tom Tole at the Washington Post
OO Richest Nations Fail To Agree
On Deadline To Phase Out Fossil Fuel Subsidies - campaigners say hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies for fossil fuels are undermining efforts to tackle climate change.
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GOOD CLEAN NEWS
OO India To Get Over $1 Billion From World Bank For Its Solar Goals
OO U.S. Hardens Royalty Rules On Fossil Fuel Production - Takeaways:
Rules had not been updated since 1980s;
Old rules let companies pay 50+% lower royalties when selling to affiliates;
A significant percentage of companies did this;
New rule: companies must pay royalties on sales to the first unaffiliated customer;
Royalty revenues to taxpayers should increase significantly.
OO Exxon Is Now Lobbying for a Carbon Tax to combat climate change, and has supported one since 2009.
It's also is lobbying the rest of the American industry, and Capitol Hill.
The 2015 Paris Agreement, aimed specifically at keeping most fossil fuel reserves in the ground, has prompted the company to increase its efforts recently to convince the rest of the industry to get on board.
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OO Minnesota: A Wind Power Utility Makes Wind Power Reliable - Xcel Energy developed:
a constantly updated, reliable forecasting system, and
smart technology that allows turbines to turn on and off automatically in response to changing forecasts.
Resulting savings are passed on to its customers,
to date yielding about60 million in savings for an investment of3.8 million.
Its wind production displaces approximately 11.7 million tons of CO2 emissions annually, too.
Now that's good news!
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NATURAL REPERCUSSIONS
Red Knots In A Bind Credit Greg Breese, US FWS
OO Rapid Climate-Driven Loss Of Breeding Habitat
For Arctic Migratory Birds - a study suggests 66-83% of Arctic shore bird species will lose the majority of their currently suitable habitat by 2070.
Rapid climate change in the High North strongly affects where species are able to breed and disrupts migratory connections globally, say the authors.
Credit roadrunner_876 at photobucket.com
As Long As The Zebras Are There lions' meals won't be disrupted. Credit roadrunner_876 at photobucket.com
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OO Wild Meat Eaters Are Less Disrupted by Climate Change
Than Their Plant Eating Prey - says a new large study.
This makes sense: many plant eaters are not adapting well to shifting plant seasons.
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OO Thanks To Climate Change, The Arctic Is Turning Green NASA scientists show with views from space especially as the northern regions rapidly warm. And then there's wildfires....
Related Headline:
OO Human-Induced Greening Of The Northern Land Surface is occurring a new study shows.
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CLIMATE LEADERSHIP
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Source www.huffingtonpost.com
OO Hillary Clinton's Ambitious Climate Change Plan Avoids Carbon Tax - But she:
vows to produce a third of the nation's electricity from renewable sources by 2027;
will spend billions of dollars to transform the energy economy;
will install a half-billion solar panels by 2020, upping the current number 7x;
will give 60 billion to states and cities to develop more climate-friendly infrastructure,
will put the US on track to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 80 % from 2005 levels by 2050.
And, she says, she could achieve all that without new legislation from Congress.
OO US Senate Panel Backs $500 Million For Global Climate Fund - in a rare show of bipartisanship. More shows, please!
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Source Office of the Prime Minister, Canada
OO US, Canada, Mexico Agree Climate Partnership - the "three amigos" set targets to get half of electricity from clean sources and cut methane emissions 40-45% by 2025.
OO US, Canada and Mexico Pledge 50% of Power from Clean Energy by 2025
OO Obama's New Clean Energy Goal For North America: 50 % By 2025
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OO Conservative To Fund Republicans Who Back Climate Change Action - with least $5 million through to back five Republican congressional candidates who have supported taking action on climate change.
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FOSSIL FUEL FOLLIES
You Want Me to Drink... THAT? Source activistpost.com
OO California: Freshwater Formations Are Being Drilled, Fracked - as oil and gas development overlap with groundwater sources; monitoring is clearly needed. Let's consider some safeguards, say the authors.
OO US Coal Baron Promises Huge Layoffs --
Then Tells Workers To Vote Trump - problem is, coal mining jobs aren't coming back - even under President Trump.
OO Falling Gas Prices Are Driving Consumers Back to Bigger Vehicles
When They Go Away, Who Will Pay? Source www.businesstimes.com
OO Indonesia Faces Environmental Time Bomb After Coal Bust - thousands of mines are closing in Indonesia's tropical coal belt as prices languish and seams run dry.
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But almost none of the companies have paid their share of billions of dollars owed to repair the badly scarred landscape they have left behind.
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FIXING CLIMATE CHANGE
@@ A Simple And Smart Way To Fix Climate Change given by Dan Miller in 2014 at a Ted talk suggests a way to profit as we tackle climate change, by finally charging those who sell and use fossil fuels - and distributing the revenues back to all of us.
The strategy is sure to speed transition to clean renewable energy. What's not to like? Check it out!
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ELECTION YEAR:
If You Don't Vote For Climate Action, You Can Forget The Rest - in a climate-changing world of famine, drought, rising seas, giant storms and heat waves, there will be no security in jobs, health, wealth, or national safety. There will be chaos ensuing from increasing crises and disasters. Vote.
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OO Global Warming Policies We Set Today Will Determine The Next 10,000 Years - of global warming, a new study shows -- and whether our civilization survives or not: history shows that harmful climate change has destroyed civilizations before.
This time, it could be worldwide. Let's keep "The Hunger Games" in the realm of fiction.
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If we do not grow sustainably,
Our children will die inhumanely.
@@ Myth vs Truth: The Huge Value of Contraception is an incisive, heartfelt recognition of the value of contraception by Sarah Brown, CEO, The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy
Unintended Pregnancy Costs US Taxpayers:
Unintended Pregnancies Cost US Taxypayers Nearly $11 Billion Yearly
-the Guttmacher Institute
Teen Childbearing Alone Cost US Taxpayers $9+ Billion In 2010
And the costs of raising a child usually ensures decades, if not a life, of poverty for its mother.
- US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
WHAT YOU CAN DO
Help prevent unintended pregnancies in your community:
publicize where women can access affordable contraception.
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They can go here to find locations:
And there are many more actions you can do, right here.
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SOLAR KEEPS SAILING
OO Here Comes The Sun: US Solar Power Market Hits All-Time High after a rocky start.
@@ What Rooftop Solar Looks Like In Watts, Los Angeles, CA Women participating in a unique solar installation training program in Los Angeles's Watts neighborhood are bringing power to the people, and empowering themselves.
Check it out here, right now!
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There is, of course, much more news on the consequences and solutions to climate change. To get it, check out this annotated resource list I've compiled, "Climate Change News Resources," at Wordpress.com here. For more information on the science of climate change, its consequences and solutions you can view my annotated list of online information resources here.
To help you understand just what science does and does NOT do, check this out!
In the wake of the tragedy in Orlando a few weeks ago, the nation has tried to evaluate how these horrific happenings keep occurring. Many talked about ISIS and terrorism. Many talked about stricter gun control legislation. Still others talked about the inherent bigotry against the LGBT community that persists in this nation.
All of these conversations are worthwhile endeavors in searching for answers and in trying to prevent future horrors. However, it is this last topic I'd like to dig into further.
When we refer to bigotry against the LGBT community, where exactly does it from?
While the shooter in Orlando was not Christian, I think most people would point to the Bible when we talk about opposition to gay rights in this country. And I think that's fair.
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Opposition to gay marriage has traditionally been a mainstay on the Republican platform, which has a predominantly Christian base. And who could forget Republican Presidential candidates Ted Cruz, Bobby Jindal, and Mike Huckabee attending that Kevin Swanson conference on the campaign trail where Swanson discussed (more accurately shouted) about the merits of burning homosexuals? I know I can't. Oh, the memories.
Thirty-seven percent of Americans still oppose gay marriage in the US, according to a 2016 Pew Research Study--even after last year's Supreme Court decision. And several studies in the past few years show that about 70 percent of Americans are Christian. I'm not an analytics specialist so I can't prove causation, but it's hard not to find a link.
The point is these are not niche beliefs. They are mainstream. We wonder why people still are bigoted enough to kill people dancing at a gay nightclub, and yet families still bring their kids to religious services where religious leaders teach congregations to oppose other Americans' civil liberties, to demean the LGBT community, and in some instances, actual advocate for killing these "sinful" creatures.
We've been taught to hate gays. I know I have been. As a Catholic, I learned young to hate myself and that has been to the financial gain of my therapist for years. You're welcome for the summer home, Dr. Thompson.
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My question though is why?
Why has Christianity singled out homosexuality as its rallying cry? As the flag of the Christian crusade?
With the amount it's discussed in Christian sermons nowadays, you'd think Jesus went around Jerusalem handing out "pray away the gay" hotline numbers or standing outside Cher raves in Bethlehem discouraging men from entering. But alas, no.
Yes, homosexual acts are denounced in the Bible, but it's only mentioned a handful of times and the majority of those are rape. For example, Sodom and Gomorrhea is often cited as a direct attack on gays. In actuality, the Bible is denouncing a bunch of Sodomites who try to gang bang rape some male angels who are visiting the city. First of all, is anyone supporting raping angels at the Pride parades? Unlikely. Second of all, that's just poor hospitality. Any self-respecting gay would've had a cheese platter and some chilled wine ready for those traveling angels.
In another section, 1 Corinthians 6:9-11 talks about how gays won't inherit the kingdom of God and then proceeds to list others who won't either: the greedy, drunkards, idolators, on and on.
Oh gosh, who knew there was so much to judge people for? What are some of the other things that warrant death and condemnation? Well, eating pork or shellfish is pretty horrific. As is charging interest on debts, folks. I'm looking at you, Bank of America, with your ATM fees.
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But importantly ladies, listen up and listen good: if you don't bleed during your first sexual experience with your husband, it is reasonable for him to assume you're not a virgin, you've been a whore, and then he is perfectly within his rights to drag you out into the streets where the town can stone you to death. That's fun the whole family can enjoy. And if you call right now, we'll throw in a second stoning for free--just pay shipping and handling!
The point is that there's a lot of crazy teachings in the Bible, and I'm not even touching Revelations.
So, why do we focus on homosexuality?
If bigoted Christians spent a fraction of the time they spend on anti-LGBT shenanigans by hating people for all these other reasons, they wouldn't have time to pick their kids up from Sunday school or to indulge in that deluxe Ashley Madison account. They'd be way too busy protesting outside of any butcher shop that sold pork, or telling everyone at bars that their alcohol is sending them to hell, or communally killing any girl who didn't bleed in the wedding bed.
I firmly believe homosexuality is not sinful. But let's pretend for a second it is. Why does it warrant such a higher level of judgment and hatred than everything else the Bible mentions? Christianity has a laser-like focus on sexual sins.
Even if gay is a sin (read: it's not), thinking something is sinful does not equate to hatred for the sinner. Nobody is banging down the door to every adulterer threatening to kill them. Nobody is shooting up honky-tonks where lust is prevalent and drunkenness is out in full force.
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Who determined homosexuality was a bigger sin than all of those? Nowhere in the Bible is there a ranking of sins. I looked.
LGBT folks are targeted because they are people whose "sins" are easily identifiable. They make the Sunday churchgoer feel better because those LGBT "sins" are not in the dark. They're visible, they're easy to judge, and judging makes one feel superior.
And lest we forget, Jesus' greatest commandments were: 1) Love your God with all your heart, soul, and mind. 2) Love your neighbor as yourself.
They were not 1) Stop butt sex. 2) Prevent scissoring.
Give up the crusade, Christians. It's not just about sex.
Research links:
http://www.pewforum.org/2016/05/12/changing-attitudes-on-gay-marriage/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michelangelo-signorile/post_10496_b_8544540.html
http://www.gallup.com/poll/1690/religion.aspx
Mississippi, Natchez Trace Parkway, Tupelo National Battlefield, Civil War Canon and Monument. (Photo by: Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
Reconstruction is perhaps the least understood period in American history, a distinction that has been both perpetuated by and reflected in popular culture since the late nineteenth century. Films in particular have gone from presenting the era through the Dunning lens of rank white supremacy (The Birth of a Nation, Gone with the Wind, Tennessee Johnson) to skipping straight to white reunion (Abraham Lincoln, Ken Burns's The Civil War) to addressing its social achievements and betrayals through either subtle foreshadowing (Lincoln, Glory) or highbrowed metaphor (The Hateful Eight). Director Gary Ross's Free State of Jones, however, which depicts the origins and aftermath of Newton Knight's bigender and biracial anti-Confederate insurgency in Jones County, Mississippi, might be the first to properly and historically situate Reconstruction in full relation to the war itself, serving as a vigorous repudiation of Lost Cause mythology.
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Consulted by and employing source material from historians including Eric Foner, David Blight, and Victoria Bynum, Free State of Jones presents a wartime regional counternarrrative that becomes a postwar national standard narrative. In other words, the events depicted both are and are not historically representative. Led by farmer-turned-renegade Knight, ably portrayed by a suitably angular Matthew McConaughey, white members of the "Knight Company" are deserters and poor farmers who have rejected the Confederate "Twenty Negro Law" and regressive property confiscation; its black constituents are self-emancipated slaves and intrepid spies with even greater interest in overthrowing the callous Southern plantocracy. Through a series of competently shot skirmishes and ambushes, this militant underclass slowly drives Confederate forces from a large swath of southeast Mississippi. Persecuted by the Confederacy and ignored by the Union, Knight's militia declares a "Free State of Jones" committed to principles of social and economic egalitarianism. His white wife and child having absconded, Knight falls for a mixed race slave, Rachel (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), and together they create a biracial community that still exists.
The final act, however, is a sweeping depiction of how gains achieved during the war changed amid postwar social and political complexity -- loyalty oaths, sharecropping, Black Codes, apprenticeship laws, Union Leagues, ballot box fraud, arson, lynching, white paramilitaries, and the establishment of a hard, legal color line are all here. Nearly all of the Knight Company's white members quickly bow out -- a choice of racial solidarity over class solidarity that has characterized so much of American history. Meanwhile, empowered freedpeople and the small number of white comrades who remain use legal political channels to challenge former Confederates and planters (embodied here by the dastardly Lieutenant Barbour and Master Eakins) who are looking to reclaim power at all costs. We know how this story ends: wholesale white-on-black political violence, the "redemption" of the master race, and those defeated in war winning the peace.
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Nevertheless, charges of "white savior" began with the release of the film's teaser trailer. To be sure, this is a story -- a true story -- in which a white male character "leads" people of color and whites in a military capacity. He also has a romantic relationship with a woman of color. But that's really where the tropes end. Not only does the film (unlike Lincoln) feature multi-dimensional black characters, the scenes of black political mobilization, particularly those led by the remarkable actor Mahershala Ali as the suggestively named Moses Washington, are some of the movie's best. Knight, meanwhile, follows Washington and other freedpeople in a political capacity after the war. More importantly, Free State's lack of a redemptive angle -- any accurate assessment of Reconstruction must affirm the era's progressive to regressive arc -- precludes it from standard white savior fare. This is not simply a story of paternalistic white people teaching black people how to do things, nor is it a story in which black characters merely serve to enlighten the white protagonist. Rather, it's a story of the mediation between black and white worlds, the violent struggle to unite those two worlds on the basis of shared (though by no means equal) oppression, and the failure of that project due to white supremacy and the political and economic power it conferred. Indeed, as any proper interpretation of Reconstruction should be, this is a story of rapid, even revolutionary change, things looking hopeful, then slowly getting worse.
Social critics in The Atlantic, the New York Times, and elsewhere have also lamented that the film does not focus on the brutality of slavery. They take particular umbrage at a line from the film in which Knight proclaims, "Somehow, some way, sometime, everybody is just somebody else's nigger." To the first point, there cannot be enough artfully and historically rendered depictions of slavery. Period. But, despite depictions of master-on-slave rape, whipping, and punishment collars, Free State is not a story about black subservience only, and what it is -- a story about racial construction and the nexus of race and class -- is important in its own right. To the second, that this word choice (which is period appropriate) has drawn impassioned reaction by twenty-first century audiences is understandable. But I would only ask moviegoers to consider Knight's audience. He is speaking primarily to white Confederate defectors, explaining to them not that their experiences and conditions are identical to those of black people, but that a similar inferiority that they direct toward black people is directed toward them by the planter class which is directing the war. My first thought was John Lennon's "Woman is the Nigger of the World." Neither movie nor song are claiming equal oppression, but underscoring hierarchies of oppression within culturally specific contexts.
To that end, films emphasizing the Civil War's class dynamics need not be pitted against those emphasizing its racial ones -- indeed, the two cannot be disentangled. And in attempting to disentangle them, critics are obstructing the ability of the film to strike a colossal and highly public blow against the pernicious Lost Cause. Furthermore, while class is, primarily, the fulcrum on which Knight's decisions turn, class is not the fulcrum on which the freedpeoples' decisions pivot. Nor is it for the overwhelming majority of southern whites, including members of Knight's biracial posse, which shrinks from overwhelmingly white down to a black majority with a mere handful of white men during Reconstruction. This gradation of privilege on screen left this reviewer with no doubt whatsoever that while poor whites -- subject to conscription, property seizure, and arson -- were certainly oppressed, black slaves and freedpeople -- subject to manacles, rape, and unbridled political murder, and without the basic social advantage conferred by white skin -- were oppressed far worse. Indeed, the film offers several instances of racial oppression within or in addition to class oppression: Knight's camp is de facto racially segregated, white volunteers harass black ones, and white over black racial privilege is recurrently demonstrated. As Knight repeats to Washington when he attempts to retrieve his son, who has been "apprenticed" by a local planter, "They'll arrest me, they'll kill you. They'll arrest me, they'll kill you." While Knight is indeed arrested and able to buy back Washington's son, Washington is later lynched for recruiting black voters.
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This is not to say the film is without interpretive problems. Some of the action scenes are a bit too Hollywoodized; Knight is too uncorrupted; and the decisions to obscure Rachel's true relationship to the Knight family (she was owned by Newt Knight's grandfather) as well as her previous children are unfortunate ones. One might also argue that Ross bites off more than he can actually chew in terms of periodization, and that a movie with so much to say would have better lent itself to a cable TV miniseries format. The result of such condensing is artistic limitation in terms of character development and narrative coherence. But, all in all, Free State of Jones is a terrific story capably told. With so much to say about and the social interconnectivity between Civil War and Reconstruction and Jim Crow, my biggest gripe is that it has to say so much so quickly.
Alas, the Lost Cause, the racial and class and political and economic assumptions of which have breached every nook and cranny of American culture and social policy, was constructed in no small part through popular culture; it must also be deconstructed through popular culture. General depictions of anti-Confederate guerillas, the broken promises of land redistribution, and biracial demonstrations of "John Brown's Body" represent gains not only for historical nuance, but, in exploding toxic Lost Cause myths that still penetrate the core of the American psyche, they represent gains for truth and justice as well.
A driver uses a Samsung Electronics Co. Galaxy edge smartphone displaying the Uber Technologies Inc. car service taxi application (app) to pick up a passenger in this arranged photograph in Budapest, Hungary, on Wednesday, July 13, 2016. Uber will suspend its ride-hailing services in Hungary from July 24 following a government decision to pass a bill that allows authorities to block access to the mobile application and fine media promoting it. Photographer: Akos Stiller/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Uber's ruthless expansion strategy has put state and local legislators in the middle of the debate over regulation of the on-demand, ride-hailing workforce. Laws requiring background checks for drivers, which can restrict access to Uber's core asset, are now a central theme of the regulatory battle, focusing specifically on the use of state and federal criminal history databases that require fingerprinting of ride-hailing drivers.
Indeed, Uber and Lyft recently chose to abandon the Austin, Texas market rather than comply with local laws requiring taxi drivers to undergo fingerprint-based background checks (56 percent of Austin voters rejected an initiative to exempt on-demand companies from the city's law). And in New Jersey and Chicago, where similar measures are now being actively debated, Uber retained former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to lobby against the bills by challenging the accuracy and fairness of fingerprint-based FBI background checks (which is an issue that NELP has championed as an advocate of bi-partisan federal reform legislation).
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To help inform the debate, it's important to first clarify that "fingerprinting" is a shorthand term referring to background checks that require an individual's fingerprint (usually captured by means of "livescan" technology) to access either a state criminal history repository or the FBI database, which collects data from the state and local systems. In contrast to name-based checks conducted by commercial background check companies, fingerprint-based checks are less vulnerable to misidentification. In addition, private employers typically cannot access the databases requiring fingerprinting of the workers unless authorized by a federal, state, or local occupational licensing law, like the ride-hailing laws regulating taxi drivers. Instead, with varying degrees of accuracy, the commercial background check companies collect criminal history data from the local courts, the states, and "aggregators" of criminal history data.
The arguments for and against fingerprinting break down roughly as follows. State and local lawmakers advocating for fingerprint background checks of on-demand drivers are concerned for the safety and security of consumers, which they argue is better protected by accessing the national FBI database, while also pointing out that on-demand drivers should be subject to the same background check regime as all other ride-hailing drivers. Uber, in contrast, has argued that the FBI database, in particular, contains incomplete information (mostly state arrests that have not be updated to reflect the disposition of the case), which discriminates against people of color who are more often arrested for crimes that never lead to a conviction.
As an advocate for the employment rights of people with records and on-demand workers, NELP has concerns with both approaches. Most importantly, while we strongly agree that the FBI database has serious limitations, Uber's position advocating for the rights of workers with records rings hollow unless it can demonstrate, with hard data (e.g., internal audits), that its commercial background checks are more accurate than the FBI's records. Equally important, as argued in a recent NELP paper, Uber and most other on-demand employers should be fully complying with the civil rights and consumer laws that protect workers navigating employment background checks. That means recognizing that the drivers, indeed, have rights under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Fair Credit Reporting Act, which can be enforced independently by the federal enforcement agencies and the courts.
Our concern with the position of lawmakers -- that FBI records are the "gold standard" of background checks and should be applied to more ride-hailing drivers -- is that it fails to adequately appreciate the limitations of the FBI records. We appreciate the need to ensure a level playing field of background checks for all taxi drivers, but policymakers have to take seriously the damage done by FBI background checks in the name of consumer safety.
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Gay men are prone to be hypersensitive. We care about our feelings and how our feelings affect ourselves and those we care about. It's only natural that we want to help others in order to lead more meaningful lives. This is how we find significance.
When we get overwhelmed with emotions by our fears of rejection or feelings of being alone, we internalize our hypersensitivity as being a disability. It's easy to think "there's something wrong with me" when everyone else seems to take light matters with a grain of salt.
I used to cry over trivial matters like getting teased by a close family member or making mistakes at school when I was a young kid. These early signs displayed by own hypersensitivity. Whenever I cried, my close family members yelled at me to stop crying and my natural response was to shut down and block my true feelings. This didn't make growing into adulthood easy.
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As a young adult, I find myself swimming in a pool of dark emotions such as anger, jealousy and resentment in the most meaningless situations like conversing with other gay men on dating apps or when I do something incorrect at work. I feel so bad when I don't live up to my own expectations or the expectations of others.
As hypersensitive gay men, our natural tendency is to be people pleasers because we genuinely care what other people think, say and do -- especially as it relates to our own behavior.
At the end of the day, we want others to be happy because happiness in other people is what makes us feel complete, whole, and peaceful. When we see others react with anger, contempt or resentment, it exacerbates our own feelings of pain that come alongside our hypersensitive nature.
In cultures where hypersensitive people are not nurtured, we need to develop skills and strategies to cope with our introverted nature so that we can live with more peace, security, and balance. In developing these coping mechanisms, here are five simple ways you can begin to feel more confident, happy and secure in your own sensitive nature.
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1. Acknowledge that your hypersensitivity is a gift and not a weakness.
This is when I say, "screw society and embrace your sensitive nature" because it's a quality that makes you special. It allows you to view the world from a unique perspective and behave in ways that benefit society at large. Being hypersensitive means you're a compassionate person who cares about other people. What could be more special than that?
A specific coping mechanism you can use to acknowledge your hypersensitivity is to share your honest opinions, thoughts and feelings in environments that embrace your perspective and point of view. Taking up journaling to release your feelings in a safe, non-judgmental space can be liberating and clarifying. Encourage yourself to express your feelings honestly in a journal. I recommend sharing an entry with a close friend or mentor every now and then because it'll help you connect with others on a meaningful level and you'll build a stronger relationship with those whom you're close with. Again, use your journal and close relationships as a springboard to remind yourself that it's ok and completely acceptable to be hypersensitive.
2. Give your hypersensitivity a voice.
Since most cultures reject hypersensitivity, it should be your mission to embrace your hypersensitivity by giving it a space to be what it is without judgment. When you find yourself wallowing in feelings of sorrow or low-energy, simply label and welcome the sensitivity as "my friend", "this is a blessing" or any other label you want to give it. Make sure it's a nurturing, positive label because this will continue to help reinforce the gift that is your true nature.
Remember that your sensitivities are in fact a gift and an asset. You have to trust this fact.
3. Expel negative energy when it's not serving you.
Being around negative people who "suck the energy" out of you or bring you down can be one of the most detrimental things to do as a hypersensitive gay man. Not only does it contribute toward your negative feelings in the moment, it could reinforce the fact that hypersensitivity is not accepted. Don't allow these people to sabotage all of the amazing work you've been doing from steps 1 and 2 because this will counteract your belief that hypersensitivity is good and that it deserve a voice.
When you find yourself around negative or energy draining people, you can simply do one of two things. You can make the decision not to hang around them anymore. It's okay to say no and make the choice to hang around people who do embrace your hypersensitivity. You're not rejecting others by doing this, in fact, you're helping others see the best in you because you won't be inauthentic by hanging with people who don't give you the space to be yourself.
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The second coping mechanism is to release your negative energy when you have no other choice but to be around these people. Simple techniques to do this is to go away into a private space for a few moments to do some simple breathing exercises or qigong (close your eyes and shake your body) for a few minutes. These are a few simple ways to expel negative energy when you're forced to be around energy-draining people.
4. Remind yourself of your goodness.
You're a good person and you need to trust this goodness. That's what world-renown mindfulness teacher Tara Brach told me in our latest interview together about Radical Self-Acceptance for Gay Men. Regardless of your sensitivities, everything about you makes you whole and complete. It's easy to reject ourselves and our own nature because dominant societies have been known to reject gay men in the past. These ideologies and experiences inspire our own negative thinking even when most Americans and cultures say they accept gay men.
By being a mirror for others and acknowledging their goodness, you reinforce your own goodness and positive qualities. You can simply give other people compliments and acknowledge that others are doing a good job in life. Make sure that your compliments come from the heart. As a natural hypersensitive person, that shouldn't be too difficult for you.
5. Recite a power word that reinforces your strengths.
"Courage", "Brave" or "Loving." Picking a word to say to yourself is going to give you the power to return to a place of confidence, happiness, and self-love whenever you feel depleted by negative energy.
Make sure you have these simple reminders in multiple places to remind you of how powerful you are throughout the day. You can add reminders on your smartphone, write your power words on a post-it and stick it on the fridge, or have it displayed on your desktop. Read it, whisper it to yourself, and make sure you believe it wholeheartedly because it will change your life in more ways than you can imagine.
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As a hypersensitive gay man myself, some days I just wanna crawl up in a ball and hide out from the world because that's what I need to get my energy back and be of service to others. When I acknowledge that my hypersensitivity is a gift and an asset, I believe I can be a valuable person in my community.
The strategies and practices outlined in this article are meant to help you believe in yourself as a hypersensitive person in a world that can easily overlook our positive qualities. Make sure you write these down and be sure to practice them with consistency and vigilance.
If you think you can answer this question just by looking at a map, read on. You may be surprised.
To ask the question more concretely, what's across the ocean from New York? It doesn't really matter what beach in New York you choose, but just to be specific, let's go with Montauk, NY. It is at the tip of Long Island and has a clear, unobstructed view of the Atlantic ocean.
To figure out what's across from New York, the first thing you might do is take out a map, follow a straight line eastward, and conclude that the answer is Europe, or more precisely Portugal.
Of course there is not just one answer. When looking out across the ocean, there are any many directions you could choose, each of which would lead you to a different location. But in this case, surprisingly, Portugal is not one of them.
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Europe is not across the ocean from New York... but Australia is
When you stare across the ocean from a beach in Montauk, or anywhere in New York, this map shows what's on the other side (excluding some smaller countries that unfortunately did not fit).
No matter which direction you look, you're not facing Europe.
That's partly because the coast of Long Island is angled southward. But there is also something else going on.
If you stand on the beach and turn your head all the way to the left, the direction you're facing is north east. Common sense would seem to dictate if you sail in that direction (north east), you should end up somewhere north east of where you began. Namely, you should end up in Europe.
In reality, if you were to point your ship north east from New York and sail straight ahead without turning, you would land in Morocco, which is to the south of New York.
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Stranger still, when you stand on a beach in New York, one of the countries directly across from you is Australia.
If you were to sail through the orange Australia section in the map above, without ever turning the ship, you would eventually hit Australia's southwestern coast. And as you land, you would be approaching from the south.
Sailing from New York to Australia in a straight line
Because we're used to looking at the world on a flat surface, our perception of Earth's geography is distorted in many ways. In this case, it is the concept of straight lines that throws us off.
Technically, there are no straight lines on a globe, since the surface itself is curved. The shortest distance between any two points, the closest thing to a straight line, is known as a great circle arc.
Over short distances, straight lines on a 2-dimensional map are the same as great circle arcs on a 3-dimensional globe. But over long distances, the relationship breaks down as the Earth's curvature comes into play.
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If you've ever followed the path of a long international flight, you already know the shortest distance between two points on the Earth's surface looks curved. The same effect applies here.
Though the lines in the map above appear curved, all of them are actually straight lines (great circles) on the 3D globe.
Looking at it from a different perspective
I spent a good while looking at this on Google Earth convincing myself it was correct.
If you have any doubt whether it's possible to sail from New York to Australia along a straight line, the video below shows what it looks like in 3 dimensions.
There is also a 2-dimensional way of looking at these lines that clears up what's really going on. The image below shows the Earth from a top-down perspective, using an azimuthal map projection, with New York in the center.
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From this view, you can see the lines do appear straight.
You can also see clearly that the U.S. East Coast as a whole does not face toward Europe at all.
What's really across across the Atlantic ocean?
If you were to stand on a beach on the U.S. East Coast and look directly east, here's what's really across the ocean.
Inspired by this map from the Washington Post, which shows what's across the ocean based on lines of constant latitude. For an even more precise look at what's across from every individual beach, see these maps by Andy Woodruff.
All 2D maps were made with QGIS using imagery from Natural Earth . The 3D globe is from Google Earth
The memorial at the Euless Police Department created by community members after my brother lost his life.
Photo Credit: Jessie Torres
Today, I'm tired. I'm tired because as I'm mourning my brother who was assassinated in the line of duty on March 1 in Euless, Texas, I have to think about you, the family of the fallen Dallas officers. I think about the moment you received a knock on the door from uniformed men and women with somber faces. I think about how you walk up to the door thinking that this isn't good. But, believing at the same time that it can't really be bad either, because you love your officer. It just can't be that bad. And, then it is.
It is, in fact, the worst.
I think about the moment you receive a phone call or a visit from a panicked loved one and you hear the words uttered that: "He was shot. He's gone." And all you can think is: "No, it can't be. It's not him. It can't be him. I love him. He can't be gone. He's a good person. He can't be gone."
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But, he is.
But, he can't be.
But, he is.
He is.
I think about how you will rush to the hospital, or make your way to the funeral home. You will see the rest of your family and those closest to you, and you will sit in silence, confused, because this is all wrong. Then, something odd will happen or someone will say something funny and you smile or laugh, because this is all so unreal. And, you will think how can I possibly laugh right now. My husband is dead. Or, my dad is dead. Or, my brother is dead.
In the next moment, you will look around and wonder why you're there, in that moment, in that situation. And you'll remember that:
"He was killed."
And you'll think that it can't be. He was a good person. This only happens to "other people."
But, it happened. And, you're really at the funeral home, making decisions about caskets and flowers.
I think about how your family in Blue will take your hand, squeeze your shoulder, bring you a plate of food that you don't want to touch. They will glance in your direction, feeling helpless that they can't do anything to ease your pain, except perhaps, get you to drink a cup of water and eat a bite of anything at all. You will feel ill. Your stomach will hurt. Your chest will feel so heavy. You will feel like you can't breathe.
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As you sit there, making decisions on music and viewings, you will think:
"How can a person bear this much pain."
"How am I still breathing? How am I still walking?"
Some moments you will think: "I wish the world would just open up and take me away."
I think about how you will go to sleep at night, exhausted, and when you wake up, for just a moment things will be ok, and then the knowledge of what has happened will wash over you and you will experience the deepest, darkest sadness you will ever know. And this will happen morning after morning, at least for a little while.
I'm no expert at grieving, but I'm a few months ahead of where you are. There is nothing that anyone will say or do that will feel right, because right now everything is just wrong. People will try to comfort you, tell you there is a reason for everything, tell you that an angel went home or that something good will come from all this.
Know that they mean well, but they can't possibly understand what it means to have someone you love torn from you in the most violent way possible.
After Dave was killed, I received a letter from a father, who lost his own son too soon. He wrote: "Time does not heal the pain. The pain you feel at the loss will never diminish but every day you will get stronger in how you deal and cope with that pain." This was the most helpful thing anyone has said to me.
These words will bring you little comfort in these horrible days ahead, but know that we are thinking of you. We understand. We're here. You will, somehow, make it.
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You have to make it, because your man in blue needs you too.
Conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh speaks during a secretive ceremony inducting him into the Hall of Famous Missourians on Monday, May 14, 2012, in the state Capitol in Jefferson City, Mo. (AP Photo/Julie Smith)
Last week, in which the police shootings of two African American men were followed by the assassination of five police officers guarding a peaceful Black Lives Matter protest in Dallas, was wrenching. Sadly, in this atmosphere of mourning, anger and grief, too many on the far right have done what they do best: co-opt tragedy to promote hatred and fear. These are more than just a few absurd and cringe-worthy comments; instead, they represent a line of thinking that has elevated many right-wing politicians who wield significant power in this country.
After the Dallas shootings, Joe Walsh, a former Republican congressman turned radio host from Illinois, tweeted: "This is now war. Watch out Obama. Watch out black lives matter punks. Real America is coming after you." He later tried to claim that he wasn't calling for violence against the president. Ted Nugent, a board member of the National Rifle Association, said that President Obama "wants a racewar [sic]."
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Dan Patrick, the lieutenant governor of Texas and, probably not coincidentally, a former conservative talk radio personality, blamed the innocent bystanders at the Dallas attack, saying that they were "hypocrites" for running from gunfire while relying on the police to protect them. His point seems to have been that the Black Lives Matter movement doesn't want police protecting communities, which is clearly not true.
Rush Limbaugh called Black Lives Matter a "terrorist group," as did right-wing author Brad Thor. One conservative commentator called Black Lives Matter "the new KKK." The ever-perceptive Sarah Palin said that the social justice movement is promoting "the antithesis of Martin Luther King Jr.'s message" by saying that "one race matters more than another." Mike Huckabee said that the real movement should be "Male Lives Matter."
Others fell back to their standard talking points, no matter how irrelevant. Frank Gaffney, an anti-Muslim activist who advised Ted Cruz's presidential campaign, claimed that Black Lives Matter was working with "Islamic supremacists" to foment revolution. Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, a great favorite of presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump, claimed that liberal philanthropist George Soros engineered the whole thing in order to start a race war. Conservative activist Jesse Lee Peterson said it was all a plot to distract from Hillary Clinton's emails. The Oath Keepers, an anti-government group, called for the formation of citizen militias.
These aren't just fringe activists and media personalities; as much as we'd like to ignore them, we can't afford to. Their cynical exploitation of bigotry and fear has already caused too much damage in our country. This is the same media swamp that has for years promoted the idea that white people in America are the real victims of racial prejudice, the same people who have spent more than seven years claiming that the first African-American president is an outsider impostor who possibly even lied about his heritage to earn his seat. Is it any surprise that the right-wing media was ready to demonize Black Lives Matter when it emerged and to claim that the movement's critiques are illegitimate? Is it any wonder that they were ready to blame a gruesome crime against police officers on the president's concern for racial justice?
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It doesn't have to be this way. In the wake of last week's tragedies, some conservatives approached the national conversation with genuine attempts to speak honestly and thoughtfully about race in America. We might not always agree, but if we can speak with open minds, that's a good start.
ASPEN--Somewhere between the LoJack hijack by the Tea Party and the high dudgeon of Donald Trump, Charles Koch and his devotees at Koch Industries decided it was time for their titular titan to engage in what could only be described as a conservative charm offensive.
The idea was re-position the brotherly billionaire magnate from malevolent ogre to truth-seeking grandpa beloved by all.
The amazing thing is people are still falling for it. The word kumbaya comes to mind whenever New Koch appears, including his star turn here this week at Fortune Brainstorm Tech at the Aspen Institute, under the inoffensive banner "What Makes A Large Company Tick?" The interview was hosted by Fortune editor Alan Murray, the magazine's way of saying it's always charming when a billionaire opens his mouth.
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In response to Murray, Koch claimed the publication of his book, "Good Profit," in 2015, was the reason for New Koch; then he said it was a particularly good interview with Megyn Kelly, the face of Fox News, that got him off the PR schneid.
"You were being defined by your opponents...." Murray said. "What was wrong with that picture?"
"What was right with it?" New Koch said--estimating that only 10 percent of the etch-a-sketch pieced together by the media was inside the lines.
But New Koch does not come out in light of day to bellyache: he would rather pontificate about "my interest in the philosophy of science." He wants to know "what makes societies more innovative and productive than others" and "how to use that inside an organization."
The organization is Koch Industries, of course, described on the web site as:
"Food. Shelter. Clothing. Transportation. Creating life's basic necessities for people around the world through various businesses in multiple industries."
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That description would not have to stretch to far to fit the Catholic Church or even Scientology. Russian oligopolies come to mind. In truth, New Koch arrives to spoon-feed the archaic religion of conservatism to anyone willing to feed at the trough.
"We hire first on values," he said at Brainstorm, with "ten guiding principles" that lay out "who we are as a company. They guide everything we do including who we hire."
The Koch approach, New or Oulde, is famously anti-government and anti-regulation. Fair enough. But it is also eminently fungible. The "philosophy of science"--and what New Koch proudly calls "the republic of science... where all the people working on the problem share knowledge"--
is strangely in abeyance when science criss-crossses with climate change.
New Koch ran this rant up the flag pole: "I believe it's been warming.... There are such things as greenhouse gasses.... I don't think science is settled.... Science is never settled....."
So the man who lives in the "republic of science" says science is never settled--not even the science of gravity, which keeps New Koch from flying off into outer space.
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And remember the high-falutin' talk about "values" and "guiding principles" in Koch Industries? The company does indeed try to lower its carbon footprint, but only because "you have pressure from your customers" like Wal-mart.
"So we got into biofuels...." New Koch said. "So we're doing that."
So a company built "on the philosophy of science," on the "republic of science"--a company built on specific "values" and "guiding principles"--is only to happy to chuck it all to one side if Koch Industries can make a buck.
Tuesday Bernie Sanders enthusiastically endorsed Hillary Clinton, having said for the past few weeks that defeating Donald Trump is the priority. I deeply appreciate what he has done with his campaign, which I supported, but here we come to a parting of the ways.
If you favored Bernie's candidacy and can discern a lesser of the two evils now poised to become president, by all means support her. But I urge you to never seek a vote for her without exposing her for who she is and explaining why you think her opponent would be even worse. And don't send money to help her campaign propagate a different message. If you are among those who see her as emblematic of everything Bernie Sanders stood against, there is surely no need to emulate Bernie's now-uncritical support.
A Tale of Two Evils
In all honesty, I cannot foresee the future well enough to discern who will hurt the people of this country, the people of the world, and other life on this planet the worst. I do know two things. One is that Donald Trump would be extremely dangerous in his rhetoric and his continued stirring up of scapegoating, machismo, and misdirected white male and working-class anger; that he would be unpredictable; and also that he would be largely ineffective in pursuing whatever he may have of a real program.
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I also know that Hillary Clinton, unopposed by a powerful movement or movements, would, like Barack Obama, serve the 0.01 percent with considerable effectiveness in her domestic policies; continue supporting coups and dictatorships and brutal, terrorism-feeding drone wars abroad; and do only enough on climate change to postpone the fatal cooking of the planet by a decade or so. In the meantime, also like Obama, she would blame Republicans for her "inability" to deliver on her promises, receive a pass on criticism from liberals who are afraid of feeding pro-Republican sentiment, and continue to falsely brand herself and the less overt of the two corporate parties as somehow progressive.
There are two related criteria for deciding whether to support Clinton or to let the chips fall where they may, i.e., by sitting out the presidential race or supporting Green candidate Jill Stein. The first is whether Clinton or Trump will do less harm and more good. (I include "more good" because, though I think that, e.g., Trump ending NAFTA, etc., or Clinton bringing college-debt relief, have but a snowball's chance in hell of coming to pass, I could be wrong.) The second criterion is which presidency will leave more space for a movement for an actual political revolution to do its work and grow, along with the many movements fighting in the shorter term for particular needs of the 99 Percent, including people of color.
The Harm Trump Can And Cannot Do
Trump has brought one of the dark sides of American political consciousness out into the open. But he also stirs it up and legitimizes it, and we certainly don't need four years of that from the Oval Office. His policy positions, to the extent he is consistent on any of them, are mostly wacky and extremely dangerous.
But, appearances to the contrary, the billionaire class and its minions disagree only within a fairly narrow portion of the range of possible policies on most foreign and domestic issues. No president can alone move that class's Congress, a gigantic bureaucracy, and the judicial system far from that fundamental consensus, as I noted when urging Bernie to help us build a movement rather than just an electoral organization. Moreover, the corporate media will also undermine any presidential attempt to act far outside the establishment's comfort zone. In terms of actual policy, Trump would be as relatively immobilized in the Oval Office as Sanders would have been.
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Before the 2012 election Glen Ford, editor of Black Agenda Report, made a cogent argument that is pertinent here as well. His stance was that Obama was not the lesser evil, but "the more effective evil." As a writer for The Atlantic, he summarized his position:
By virtue of being a Democrat, [Ford] argues, the president has been able to advance policies that would trigger resistance if the GOP attempted them. His deficit-reduction commission has created "a model for austerity," and he codified preventive detention in law, Ford complained. "He's expanded the theaters of war in drone wars, and he's made an unremitting assault on international law," he continued, adding that "what will go down as his biggest contribution to history is a kind of merging of the banks and the state, with $16 trillion being infused into these banks, into Wall Street . . . and the line between Wall Street and the federal government virtually disappearing."
Ford noted that another reason liberals and African-Americans were quiet in the face of Obama's betrayals was that he was Black.
This logic still applies. Liberal activists, organizations, commentators, and politicians will stand up against crazy Republican Trump in a way they never will with a Democrat, especially one who is also the first woman in the White House.
And Then There's Hillary Clinton
I can't repeat here most of what I've written recently about why Clinton would also be a disastrous president. (In this piece, see the two subheadings that begin with "Improving Democrats' Rhetoric.") But I have to reiterate the part about her claiming she's uninfluenced by receiving Wall Street's largesse:
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She tells us, in effect: "True, I raised tens of millions of dollars from corporate heads, often at $225,000 for an hour-long speech. But you can trust me to represent you, not them. I conned them into believing they'd get their money's worth, but they won't. You, however, can trust me I would never con you."
Her implicit stance is that being a good con artist proves her incorruptibility. Right.
I truly am not ready to say whether this person would be "the more effective evil," but only because it is harder to predict what will happen under Trump.
The True Priority
The real priority for those who know what corporate rule is doing to our country and our world is building a nonviolent movement that can dislodge that class from political power. Bernie Sanders, in an email sent to his supporters the same day he endorsed Clinton, wrote, "In the coming weeks, I will be announcing the creation of successor organizations to carry on the struggle . . ." I have no idea what he means by that. I am angry that I don't, because this should not be a top-down project. What he should be announcing is a series of forums in which those of us who supported him and his program can decide for ourselves how to carry on the struggle. (If you agree, there is an open letter you can sign.)
And for those who feel they know that Trump would be a worse disaster than Clinton, I suggest a more nuanced principle than the one Bernie has offered: "The priority is to defeat Trump, while exposing Clinton and building a movement to contain her once she wins." Anything else promotes the greatest evil at all, the illusion that the two-party system gives us a choice about anything other than how fast we move towards collapse.
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Jetstar has reached for the sky with an order for 10 new Airbus A320s.
Jetstar Pacific has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with multinational aircraft manufacturer Airbus to order 10 A320 CEO Sharklet commercial aircraft valued at $980 million at list price.
The agreement was announced today during the Farnborough International Air show in the UK and will mark the first direct purchase of civil aircraft by Vietnams first low-cost airline with the Toulouse-based manufacturer.
10 Airbus A320 CEO Sharklet aircrafts will be handed over to Jetstar Pacific in 2017 and this agreement marks a milestone in our development, said Le Hong Ha, CEO of Jetstar Pacific.
Ha added that the "new aircraft will allow us to expand our operations on our international network from Vietnam as part of the wider Jetstar Group. With low operating costs and a comfortable cabin, the A320 enables us to offer our passengers a quality value-based product in a highly competitive market environment.
Representatives of Jetstar Pacific and Airbus have signed an MOU for 10 Airbus A320 CEO Sharklet aircraft. Photo from daidoanket.vn
The MOU comes shortly after Vietnam Airlines and Qantas announced they would inject $139 million into Jetstar Pacific over the next four years. .
John Leahy, Airbus Chief Operating Officer, said: We are pleased to have signed our first MOU with Jetstar Pacific. The news reinforces the position of the A320 as the single aisle aircraft of choice in both the low-cost and full service sectors. We will look forward to working with Jetstar Pacific as it consolidates its position in the fast-growing Vietnamese market.
Jetstar Pacific is a member of Jetstar Group, a leading low cost carrier in Asia Pacific. Jetstar Pacific is a joint venture between Vietnam Airlines (70 percent) and Australias Qantas Group (30 percent).
Based in Ho Chi Minh City, Jetstar Pacific currently operates a fleet of 12 leased A320 family aircraft flying to 28 domestic and regional destinations.
Related news
> Australia's Qantas and Vietnam Airlines to invest $139mln to expand Jetstar Pacific fleet
> Low-cost carrier VietJet Air ready for take-off in Thailand
> Canada to train Vietnam Airlines pilots in HCMC
WASHINGTON, DC - Feb. 24: Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg arrives in the House chamber before Barack Obama's first address to a joint session of the U.S. Congress. (Photo by Scott J. Ferrell/Congressional Quarterly/Getty Images)
All this talk about Ruth Bader Ginsburg and her dismissive comments about Donald Trump possibly harming Hillary Clinton seems to be wishful thinking on the part of the media and possibly just pseudo purist analysis on the part of political/legal observers.
It may be odd, not to mention intriguing, that a Supreme Court Justice would spout her opinions about a presidential candidacy, but to presume that it is particularly wrong, that she should remain impartial about politics belies the reality of what happened in a 5-4 Supreme Court decision in 2000.
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Of course I am referring to Bush v. Gore and the 5-4 vote wherein five Republican appointed jurists just happened to determine that Florida should not recount disputed votes that might have benefited the Democratic candidate Al Gore.
The fact that no one specifically said, "Well, I'm voting this way because I think it would be a disaster for Al Gore to be president," or had made comments against him during the election does not by any stretch of imagination make it a coincidence that the five GOP justices voted the way they did and did so as a supposed impartial determination of the facts at hand.
One might say the same about the Democratic appointed justices, except that their actions did not prevent the counting of ballots that might or might not have changed the results of an extremely close election and thus the future of our nation. Compounding this, of course, is that the five Republican justices acted even knowing that Gore had received a half million more popular votes than George W. Bush. How much really would it have hurt the nation if the results were delayed a few weeks to absolutely know for sure who actually did win Florida's electoral votes?
Another view of Ginsburg's lambasting of Trump is that she would have to recuse herself from any future case regarding potential Trump laws or policies, as if the mere absence of specific language regarding Democratic candidacies spewed from the mouths of the GOP justices somehow made them unbiased regarding their rulings concerning issues Democrats support.
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It is just hogwash. It is political correctness that masks the realities that exist behind the closed door Supreme Court chambers.
Regarding Trump's "outraged" warning that this will only inflame his base, that might be true, but it might also get the Bernie Sanders holdouts to get behind Hillary, as most of them adore Ruth Ginsburg, and also in light of Bernie's enthusiastic endorsement of her yesterday.
So, the media pundits on CNN, MSNBC and Fox News, which are mostly concerned with promoting an uncertain election outcome so that people will continually watch their news programs and inflate their ad rates, have everything to gain by fomenting controversy over a tremendously damning indictment of a presidential candidate by a respected jurist. Making matters worse, while doing so they didn't balance the discussion with the fact that Trump has in an unprecedented manner been spurned by two former presidents of his party, plus the most recent nominee Mitt Romney, other GOP presidential candidates this very year, a number of U.S. Senators and other high-ranking GOP officials.
It's still way early to know what's going to happen. Michael Dukakis was well ahead of George H.W. Bush after the Democratic convention and we know what transpired in 1988.
However, my main point is that while it may have been unorthodox for Ginsburg to say what she did, perhaps she was doing it as a patriotic American and it may well light a fire for those now on the fence to become avid Clinton supporters.
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Last year, I started an opera company Victory Hall Opera -- along with two colleagues in Charlottesville, VA. We selected Der Rosenkavalier as our opening production for a number of reasons: it's a masterpiece, we felt it could be adapted really successfully to a chamber reduction and we wanted to perform a work that would be a soul-bearing offering of love to our new community.
If we ever had any doubts about this choice, they were allayed one hot summer night at an art gallery called Les Yeux du Monde.
At an exhibition opening of the beloved Charlottesville artist Richard Crozier, I met a German expat named Angelika Sensbach. She listened with interest to our plans for starting a new opera company; when I told her that our opening production would be Rosenkavalier, her face lit up.
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The room was crowded, we all balanced our wine and cheese and struggled to hear one another, but over the throng, the lovely Frau said something along the lines of, " Oh! You know, there is a connection between Hofmannsthal and Mary Miller at Yule Farm. There were letters. Look for them. You will find them!"
"Um, OK," I thought. The following day, I remembered her words and wondered what on earth she meant by them.
A quick Google search revealed that there had been a book called The Poet and the Countess by a former Charlottesville resident, released back in 2000 at the local New Dominion Bookshop. I grabbed my co-founder and we rushed down to the store, where tucked away on a bottom shelf (thankfully!) was one remaining copy. We bought it, retired to a sofa in a nearby cafe, and began to read. What we learned was nothing short of extraordinary.
These were letters between Hofmannsthal -- the librettist for Rosenkavalier -- and the Countess Ottonie von Degenfeld. "Mary Miller" (the editor/publisher of the letters) was the Countess's daughter, who had moved with her husband Ralph to a farm outside of Charlottesville, which they christened Yule Farm.
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Arriving in Charlottesville shortly before the outbreak of WWII in 1939, Mary abandoned all the trappings of her previous life as a member of the German aristocracy, and set to work learning the business of farming. From salvaging slops from the University of Virginia to feed her pigs, occasionally selling her excess melons from the back of her truck, Mary made a go of things during hard times.
During her childhood at Neubeuern Palace, Mary had known the famous poet Hugo von Hofmannsthal (a regular visitor) very well. She had even travelled with him to see his masterpiece Der Rosenkavalier in performance in various European cities. What she didn't know was what was hidden in her mother's attic, wrapped in a blue ribbon, marked Only to be read upon my death, by my daughter.
The ribbon contained a small collection of letters between her mother and Hofmannsthal, from the years 1909 to 1911 (the same years in which he was writing Der Rosenkavalier). Most of the poet's correspondence had already been published; the relationship with Ottonie had been acknowledged only as a friendship; the countess was known to be the inspiration for Hofmannsthal's later creation, Ariadne in Ariadne auf Naxos. But these earlier publications were not complete.
The letters told of a passionate relationship between two soulmates. What began as a well-meaning effort on Hofmannsthal's behalf to help the young widow during her time of mourning grew into something more.
Meanwhile in the cafe, we gasped as time and time again, the couple exchanged language and described situations that we recognized from the text of Rosenkavalier. A secret rendezvous in a train car; a flirtatious alter-ego of a maid with a "country" accent (!). Ottonie as the model for the Marschallin (Rosenkavalier's beloved central character) became increasingly clear, as we read of this melancholy but charismatic young woman heading out to the countryside to nurse the aged, or staying up all night battling her perpetual insomnia.
The married Hofmannsthal's adoration of Ottonie also became evident, and it seems that Der Rosenkavalier was an extended love-letter to her. She received the first copy of the script (dedicated to her) before anyone else had seen it, and held the first read-through at her house. Hoffmansthal pleaded with Ottonie to come to the Premiere of the opera in Dresden, where she would be able to see "how much of him was in this production". When she did attend the opera, she went alone.
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My dear Rosenkavalier...
she wrote after the performance
never have we spent such intense hours together as we did this evening.
The publication of these letters should have changed everything. Sadly, a small release at a local Charlottesville bookstore did not make international headlines, and so this important history of Der Rosenkavalier has gone largely unnoticed.
Ottonie's daughter was not born as "Mary Miller", but Marie-Therese von Degenfeld. In her own autobiography (also a fascinating read!), Marie-Therese tells of the time she asked Hofmannsthal if he named the Marschallin/ Marie-Therese after her.
Aber naturlich!
he replied. "But of course!"
So here we are, a newly formed opera company with a big story to tell. If you didn't believe in fate before, perhaps this story will change your mind.
The lead character in Der Rosenkavalier shared the name of a Charlottesville character. There was a countess in our midst, and now we will perform this, her favorite opera, in her own home town! She could never have imagined this, and neither could we. Almost makes you believe in destiny, doesn't it?
www.victoryhallopera.org
Third generation Los Angeles furniture designer Michael Felix, and his furniture collection were first introduced to the public at the Sight Unseen OFFSITE last year. This past May, during Design Week, Felix brought his second collection once again to the East Coast at the third annual Sight Unseen OFFSITE. Showcased were upholstered chairs, poufs, shelving better known as "steps", pillows, and new materials for customizable projects.
Of recent, West Village design outpost Calliope hosted a "Meet the Maker" event with Felix. The designer featured furniture not usually shown in-store, including a striped pouf and leather Standard Sofa. Guests relaxed while enjoying popcorn and raspberries, which echoed the sweet, curated details found throughout Calliope. Felix's approachable designs were a perfect fit for the summer event, bringing together industry insiders with casual admirers.
Michael Felix is considered to be one of the few independent designers creating upholstered furniture fit for the modern home with fans ranging from designer Steven Alan to Coolhaus. Customizable fabrics and finishes make each piece unique, while traditional upholstery techniques ensure that his designs remain modern yet nostalgic. Each piece of furniture is made to order by hand in Southern California.
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by Virginia C. McGuire
If you're moving back to the United States after an extended period -- more than a year -- living abroad, you may be in for a nasty surprise when you apply for a credit card. Even if you've used credit responsibly in the past, a lack of active accounts in this country means there may not be enough recent credit data on you for a card issuer to form a complete picture of your creditworthiness.
In the worst case, it's almost as if you have no credit history at all.
"You're a financial grown-up, and then all of a sudden you have to go back to being a pre-adolescent," says Dana Twight, a financial advisor in Seattle who has worked with Americans living overseas.
That's why it may be necessary to build credit the same way you did when you were just starting out in life. It will take some time -- but you can do it.
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Getting a credit card now that you're home
Let's say you haven't kept any credit card accounts active, either because you never expected to return to the U.S. or because you didn't know it might be hard to get access to credit if you didn't have a recent credit history in this country.
The first thing to do when you get back is see where you stand. Twight recommends checking your credit report immediately to see exactly which accounts are active, if any. This will also help you make sure there has been no fraudulent activity in your name while you were gone.
Arikia Millikan, a journalist who spent two of the last three years traveling in Europe and Asia, had to contend with a huge pile of mail -- including alarming letters from a bank -- when she returned to her apartment in Brooklyn, New York, this spring.
"I thought someone stole my identity," Millikan says. "But it was a mistake on behalf of the company."
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Many people living overseas get used to a cash-based economy. But in the U.S., most people believe that they need, at minimum, a bank account with a debit card attached and at least one credit card.
If you're starting over, it might be necessary to get a secured credit card to rebuild your credit. This is a card that requires you to put down a refundable security deposit; the amount you put down is usually equal to your credit limit. After making small purchases on the card and paying it off in full every month, your credit score should eventually rise enough that you can qualify for an unsecured card.
Another option is to become an authorized user on another person's account. If you have a parent or adult child with a long credit history in the U.S., being added to his or her account could help you re-establish a credit file. Keep in mind that not all credit cards report authorized user status to the credit bureaus. Credit activity can help you only if it's reported to the bureaus.
Why rebuilding credit is important
By now you may be wondering why you should even bother to rebuild your credit if you don't have an immediate need to borrow money. But credit scores and histories are used for much more than opening a credit card account, financing a car or getting a mortgage. Credit scores measure only your ability to manage debt, but they've come to be used as a gauge of overall responsibility. Looking for insurance, a job or a lease? Need to get a cell phone or sign up for utilities? All of these things can be more difficult and more expensive without good credit.
But suppose you do need to borrow. Credit can be almost impossible to access if you don't have a track record of managing debt wisely. And unfortunately, that credit card bill you paid faithfully before you moved abroad won't help you much if the account has been closed or inactive for many years.
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"That's the thing about credit," Twight says. "You have to have trackable activity that's regular and reportable."
If you're planning to move abroad
If your international adventure is just about to begin, you have an advantage. It's easier to re-establish credit when you return to the U.S. if you take steps to help yourself before you leave. Twight recommends that expats keep at least one credit account active and make regular purchases on the account. If Amazon ships to the country where you'll live, keep a U.S. card linked to the account. That's one of Twight's favorite ways for her clients to keep an American credit card account active.
"If you use Amazon, you don't turn into a financial zombie when you're out of the country," she says.
Another option is to keep a joint bank account and a credit card open in the United States with a trusted relative.
"Maybe you have a card with a $3,000 limit that you and your mom share," Twight says. That way, if you decide to move back or need to return suddenly because of a medical emergency, you'll have immediate access to credit.
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Betsy and Dan Norton-Middaugh, both teachers at the American School in Taichung, Taiwan, have an adult daughter in Seattle who takes care of financial matters they can't handle remotely. She keeps an eye on the house they still own in the Seattle area, and she helps them file their taxes. But for the most part, Betsy Norton-Middaugh says, "we can manage our accounts online with no problem."
During the four years they've lived in Taiwan, the Norton-Middaughs have been able to get by with just a local ATM card, since cash transactions are the norm there.
If you decide to make do with an American credit card, look for one that doesn't charge foreign transaction fees. Here's a list of our favorites.
An easy homecoming
Returning from a long stint in another country requires a lot of hard work. There's a home to close up in the country you're leaving and a home to find or reopen in the U.S. Plus, there's always the hassle of shipping your belongings across international borders.
But rebuilding your credit doesn't have to be a source of stress. Once you've checked your credit reports, you'll have a clearer sense of whether you've dropped off the credit map completely. Then it's just a matter of rebuilding your credit file until you can qualify for the best credit card for your needs.
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Virginia C. McGuire is a staff writer at NerdWallet, a personal finance website. Email: virginia@nerdwallet.com. Twitter: @vcmcguire.
While it would certainly be premature to predict the disintegration of the European Union at this point, the United Kingdom's recent departure from the bloc via "Brexit" referendum certainly casts a dark shadow over the continent's political future. If the E.U. continues to unravel or becomes distracted by its own internal frictions, Russia may seek to capitalize on the ensuing chaos by pursuing further territorial aggrandizement on its neighbors. Watching events unfold from afar, Ukrainians are petrified at the prospect that the West may abandon them to further Kremlin encroachment.
For Kiev, which has long sought to embrace the E.U. and free itself from Moscow's orbit, the recent Brexit vote comes as a bitter pill. Almost three years ago, protesters called for closer ties to the West via an E.U. "association agreement." Such calls ran up against the plans of President Viktor Yanukovych, whose government rejected the association agreement and wanted to move Ukraine into Russia's sphere of influence. Indeed, it was protesters' demand that Yanukovych heed their desire to join the ranks of the West which ultimately led to the Maidan Revolution and brought a new government to power. Not surprisingly, in a poll conducted recently 49% of Ukrainians favored E.U. integration while only 16% supported joining a Russian-led customs union.
From Dutch Referendum to Brexit
But even before the U.K. voted to "Brexit," Kiev's newly-installed government found it difficult to gain universal acceptance within the E.U. There have been tensions, for example, over Kiev's failure to systematically halt corruption and end oligarchic cronyism in "one of the biggest kleptocracies in the world." Meanwhile, though 27 members of the E.U. ratified Kiev's association agreement, which would lead to advantageous terms of trade, the Dutch snubbed Ukraine in a recent non-binding referendum. Though both chambers of the Dutch parliament voted in favor of the initiative, the public voted against Ukraine and as a result Prime Minister Mark Rutte is legally bound to "reconsider" the entire agreement. By law, all 28 E.U. member countries must ratify an association agreement before it comes into force. The Dutch referendum could block visa liberalization for Ukrainians interested in traveling to other E.U. nations.
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Recently, Prime Minister Rutte remarked that multilateral agreements should never be subjected to referendums. The vote over Ukraine, he said, was a "disaster," adding that "It makes no sense, as we have seen in the Netherlands. You can't as one country decide on something for the whole of Europe." In April, Dutch MP's narrowly voted to keep the association agreement, despite the earlier referendum result. Some opposition MPs hailed the developments as a political farce which ultimately served to sideline voters. Rutte must now renegotiate the association agreement with other E.U. leaders.
As if the entire process could become no more fraught, Brexit has now heaped doubt upon the E.U.'s future prospects. In the wake of the U.K. vote, Rutte floated the idea of amending the E.U.-Ukraine association agreement with European officials so as to incorporate voters' input. Rutte, who may be concerned about from Geert Wilders' anti-immigrant and Euroskeptic Party for Freedom, has asked E.U. leaders for "legally binding" assurances so as to allay Dutch concerns over the association deal, otherwise The Hague might have to block the agreement.
E.U. Implosion and Ukraine
Just what all these recent developments mean for the E.U. and Ukraine is still open to debate. Indeed, contrary to some dire predictions, establishment parties have gained popularity in the wake of Brexit. In Germany, for example, Angela Merkel and her center right CDU party have seen their approval ratings surge while rightwing populists have lost ground. In the Netherlands meanwhile, popular support for Geert Wilders, who has pushed for his own "Nexit," has fallen to its lowest level since last year. Perhaps, the Brexit vote has actually encouraged more pro-European sentiment as people consider the real implications of an E.U. meltdown.
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Nevertheless, the French far right anti-E.U. Front National has remained level in the polls and party leader Marine Le Pen has promised to hold a referendum on the E.U. if she wins next year's presidential elections. Tensions meanwhile are mounting in Denmark, Italy, and Sweden all of whom face demands for referendums over Europe. Such developments are welcome in the Kremlin, which has done its utmost to divide Europe in recent years. Indeed, Putin has extended a loan to Le Pen while Russia's international state broadcaster has provided positive media coverage of Nigel Farage's U.K. Independence Party.
As Deutsche Welle explains, "The Brexit decision actually indicates that Russian foreign policy has reached its highest goal: In the coming years, the E.U. will focus on itself. E.U. enlargements are currently no longer conceivable...The prospect of Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia joining the E.U. has been destroyed until further notice. Indirectly, it means that these countries will be pushed back into Russia's historic sphere of influence, even though no one in the European Union would openly admit it." Not surprisingly, Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine have celebrated Brexit. Indeed, the rebels hope the British referendum will help to shape Europe's wider view of unrecognized breakaway "republics."
Domestic Fallout in Kiev
In Kiev meanwhile, the government hopes Brexit will not affect E.U. policy toward Ukraine, or prompt the West to abandon visas for Ukrainian nationals. However, the recent turn of events could slow down integration. Andreas Umland of the Atlantic Council quotes Ukrainian Vice Prime Minister for European Integration Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze as saying "We respect the British citizens' decision, but Ukraine feels sorry for these events. To my mind, this will weaken the E.U., and it will have to concentrate on its own problems." Umland adds, "The minister's consternation and worries are right. For Ukrainians, the British vote is difficult to understand. They have fought and are still fighting for their 'European choice.' Initially in a revolution, then in a highly intense hybrid war, and now in low-intensity warfare, they are defending their right to freely associate with and eventually join the E.U."
Domestically in Ukraine, the Dutch referendum as well as Brexit have served to sideline pro-European politicians. Writing in Kyiv Post, one Ukrainian MP remarks remorsefully that recent developments stand to undermine European integration in parliament. "Joining the E.U. is a promise made by every single Ukrainian politician," he notes. "It's something people on the Maidan sacrificed their lives for, but now it runs counter to the recent developments in Europe. As a consequence, European integration opponents may grow stronger in Ukraine, and start saying: 'Why bother joining a union that is collapsing anyway?'" Meanwhile, pro-Western Ukrainians worry that Brexit may undermine their aspirations as a spineless Europe fails to stand up to Russia. If trends continue, pro-European Ukrainians may lose credibility as the public starts to question why Kiev should try to join an exclusive club which others seem all too intent on leaving. Throwing Ukraine to the Wolves
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Even more ominously for Ukraine, the Brexit vote could dampen European resolve to confront Vladimir Putin. The U.K. was known as being hawkish on Russia, writes Umland, and "the disarray in Europe following the British referendum makes a softening of the E.U.'s sanctions against Russia more likely." Indeed, Britain had pushed for the E.U. to renew sanctions on Russia in response to the latter's annexation of Crimea, while other E.U. members sought to lift sanctions. In the wake of Brexit, outgoing Prime Minister David Cameron has urged Europe to remain united in the face of Russian aggression. His comments came in the wake of declarations by French President Francois Hollande, who said Paris viewed Russia as a "partner" and not a threat.
The Washington Post frets that a U.K. exit eliminates one of the E.U.'s most powerful members. "Whether it was Britain's world-class military or its skilled diplomatic corps," notes the paper, "the U.K. contributed greatly to an array of E.U. missions over the years, despite its complicated relationship with Brussels." Other European think tanks believe that "While the shared links between the U.S. and E.U. mean the two are likely to work around a Brexit, the disappearance from the E.U. of one of its major military powers could further strain efforts at Europe-wide defense cooperation, whether through the E.U. or NATO. Hopes the E.U. might develop a serious military capability would likely prove very difficult without the U.K.'s military, but this is already difficult enough."
Given the possibility of further western splintering, Ukraine may try to consolidate links with other like-minded Eastern European nations. Take, for example, Kiev's rapprochement with the so-called "Visegrad Group" comprising Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary. With relations deteriorating with Russia as of late, the political and military bloc has been holding meetings about the situation in Ukraine. Though Ukraine has had its own stormy historic relations with Poland, the latter has been sounding increasingly eager to come to the defense of its eastern neighbor. Reciprocating in kind, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has remarked that he hopes the Visegrad Group will incorporate his country and thereby move from a four to five bloc group of nations. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian military has been meeting with its counterparts in the Visegrad Group to discuss the harrowing situation in Donetsk and Luhansk, and officers hope to conduct joint exercises.
Moving Beyond Geopolitics
So much for all of the geopolitics and hand wringing about "what is best for Ukraine," but perhaps it might be helpful to step back for a moment and ask ourselves whether the E.U. was ever a social or political panacea in the first place. The notion of Brexit, let alone other European nations breaking away, is not necessarily a backward notion; it just depends on the underlying politics behind such developments. In the case of Brexit, moves to break free from the E.U. were dominated by right wing xenophobic forces. Leftist critiques of the Brussels elite, meanwhile, have unfortunately been lost in the fray.
For Ukraine, the debate over E.U. membership may carry certain ironies. As I've written, mainstream protesters on the Maidan were motivated by a desire to rid Ukraine of corruption which had riddled the Yanukovych regime. If Ukraine were to join the European Union, or so the reasoning went, then Kiev would start to exhibit the rule of law and governing institutions would become more akin to transparent political life as enjoyed in other western nations. On the other hand, Ukrainian activists on the independent left circuit who I spoke with tended to treat such notions as somewhat tangential to their overall goals.
Denis Pilash, a veteran of Maidan student protest, was hardly immune to calls for greater transparency: both he and his colleagues distributed leaflets calling for a ban on offshore money laundering. On the other hand, the activist told me, "I was skeptical about the Maidan protests from the very outset." During his own political evolution, he had focused more on social questions like poverty, inequality and police brutality rather than foreign policy issues such as Yanukovych's tilt toward Russia and away from the E.U. At the time of Maidan protest, Pilash declares, "some Greek left colleagues wrote me and said, 'you're crazy, you want to be in the European Union even as we are burning the E.U. flag?'"
On the Maidan, the student left was placed in a slight quandary since the association agreement with Europe might have led to greater austerity cuts under western-style institutions like the International Monetary Fund. Vadym Gud, a veteran of Direct Action student labor union, was immersed in such controversies at the time. Within the group, Gud told me, "We had a huge debate about getting involved in the protests." Gud took a more pro-E.U. line, reasoning that Ukrainian activists could help to move the E.U. toward the political left. On the other hand, most leftists didn't like the idea of signing a trade pact with the European Union.
Brexit Fallout
Denys Gorbach is another Ukrainian political organizer and journalist. Since Maidan, he has been pursuing a sociology degree at Budapest's Central European University and recently I caught up with him to get a sense of how the Ukrainian public perceives the E.U. three years after Maidan protest. On the right, he says, Brexit represents a slight conundrum. "Rightists have always been anti-E.U. and pro-isolationist," Gorbach says, "though they have a hard time acknowledging this to euro-optimistic Maidan audiences. I haven't seen any declarations from the far right on Brexit yet, and maybe that's not a coincidence."
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Reaction on the left meanwhile has been somewhat mixed. On the one hand, liberals and "less politicized people" clearly don't understand why someone would want to leave the "promised land of the E.U." Gorbach says such folk typically employ condescending views to explain the Brexit result, implying that certain British voters must have been poor, under-educated and working class. Some Ukrainians even chalk up the Brexit result to pro-Putin propaganda, since "it's customary to ascribe all social evils of the world to Russian leadership." Yet other leftists, however, point out that Brexit could be interpreted as a protest vote against the E.U.'s neo-liberal agenda.
If there is a silver lining to the Brexit affair, let alone future internal frictions within the E.U., then perhaps it will be Ukrainians taking a more level-headed and nuanced view of the West. Having seen much of its territory outright disappear over the past few years, Ukraine is understandably fearful about any further Kremlin aggression and that is putting it mildly. Throwing in one's lot with Europe, however, also has its drawbacks as Brexit has demonstrated. It is to be hoped that in the years to come, the Ukrainian public will work to protect social needs even as hostilities and war become ever more palpable.
By Emma Baccelieri
Former Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh starts his campaign with no shortage of resources and has the capacity to raise far more. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)
When former Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) retired from politics at the end of 2010, more than $10 million sat in his campaign account.
Now, after five years of work as a partner in a lobbying firm and an adviser for a private equity group, Bayh is mounting a bid to return to the Senate. News that he planned to run began spreading Monday, and Bayh made it official with an announcement Wednesday morning. And that $10 million? Almost all of it is available for his 2016 race.
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In Bayh's time away from politics, he's spent close to $1 million of the $10.3 million that remained in his warchest, leaving him with almost $9.3 million as he gears up for 2016.
Shortly after leaving the Senate, Bayh gave more than $300,000 of his stash to the Indiana Democratic Party. He has also lent a hand to fellow Democrats in dozens of congressional races over the years. The rest of the $1 million has gone to taxes, travel costs and political consulting fees -- for more than a year, he made monthly payments of $2,000 to the firm led by Dan Parker, former head of the Indiana Democratic Party. The only other regular expense by his candidate committee? Holiday cards, which have run north of $5,000 each December and sometimes as much as $15,000. (He typically spent a comparable amount on cards, if not more, during his time in the Senate.)
Personal use of leftover campaign funds is is the only major limitation on how they're spent. Former lawmakers "can't pocket the money, but they can keep that committee open and that money in the bank for as long as they want," said Paul S. Ryan, deputy executive director of the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center. Because federal law does not require that contributions be earmarked for use in a specific election, all of the remaining money is open for Bayh to use in a new campaign, Ryan noted
The leftover money from 2010 puts Bayh at the top of the pack for 2016. Without doing any fundraising for the election, he already has more than twice as much as his likely opponent, Rep. Todd Young (R-Ind.), who has $3.7 million in the bank. Only 14 other Senate candidates -- most of who have been aggressively fundraising for tight races or are household names such as Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) -- have more cash available than Bayh's $9.3 million.
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Much of Bayh's stash was given by the industries he ended up in after leaving politics: finance and lobbying. Over the course of his time in the Senate, he received more than $1.8 million from the securities & investment industry ($4.6 million from the broader finance, real estate and insurance sector), and nearly $3 million from lawyers and lobbyists. From 2004 until Bayh stopped fundraising in 2010, Goldman Sachs was the company responsible for the largest chunk of his cash, with peer institutions CNO Financial Group, Morgan Stanley and the Carlyle Group also in his top 10.
He'll likely have little trouble raising additional funds from those and other sources this time around. For instance, there are the many lobbying clients of McGuireWoods, the firm where he's been ensconced (though not as a registered lobbyist); together they've paid the firm more than $5 million in each of the last two years. Companies and trade groups like Altria, the Distilled Spirits Council, Exxon Mobil, Southern Co. and the American Petroleum Institute, all of which are McGuireWoods clients, are accustomed to attempting to oil the hinges of a potential lawmaker's door with campaign contributions.
The leaders of Apollo Global Management, the financial firm Bayh has been advising, tend to lean to the right, but there are Democrats in its ranks who could ante up for Bayh. And they have the kind of resources that a pro-Bayh super PAC would welcome; the last time the former senator ran for office, these creatures didn't exist, but one will surely spring up quickly.
Ted Boutrous embarrassed himself in Huffington Post this week in an apparent attempt to "up the crazy" as the trial to seize Chevron's assets in Canada looms. It appears the "Big Lie" sickness of Donald Trump-ism continues to grow in America. The lawyer for Gibson Dunn, a firm known for its corporate attack dog efforts, has taken lying and slander to a new level. To Boutrous, giant fossil fuel corporations are the victims of legal attacks by environmental and human rights groups and the actual human rights violations or environmental destruction is either insignificant, or nonexistent in Ted's view. To top it off, Boutrous defender of Chevron worst global polluter ever is lecturing that "the ends don't justify the means." It's not a coincidence that Chevron will find itself in court once again in a matter of weeks trying to justify the unjustifiable - dumping 18 billion gallons of toxic waste into the Ecuadorian Amazon over the course of decades.
Boutrous has now tagged himself as the kind of lawyer who blames the rape victim for dressing the "wrong way". Or the kind of lawyer who blames the black man shot by police for being where he shouldn't have been and "looking like a threat." He has the audacity to blame the people Chevron deliberately poisoned by intentionally dumping billions of gallons of toxic waste in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Despite the fact that it is the largest oil-related disaster in history, which remains yet today in the form of almost 1,000 toxic waste pits, Boutrous claims there's "a lack of evidence."
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To the families of the over 1,400 people who have already died of cancer in the Amazon Boutrous denies your suffering. To the indigenous communities wiped out by Chevron's operations (and Texaco) over decades, Boutrous never believed in you in the first place. To any environmental or human rights advocates who denounced the environmental "crime of the century" Boutrous says you are criminals.
For the record, here are but a few of the incontrovertible facts to which Texaco has already confessed and to which any non-corrupted lawyer would concede:
In fact, Chevron videos taken in 2005 and leaked by a whistleblower prove even the few pits Texaco claimed to have cleaned were still toxic years after the alleged "remediation".
Texaco argued for a decade in US Federal Court in New York that Ecuador was the proper venue for the case and agreed that it would honor the decisions of the Ecuadorian court system. However, on the first day of the new trial in Ecuador, Texaco insisted that the case should not be heard in Ecuador either.
Chevron's RICO trial specifically excluded any evidence of the contamination in Ecuador and in no way exonerated nor even suggested that Chevron/Texaco was not responsible for the contamination in Ecuador.
Chevron's key witness in its RICO case, disgraced ex-judge Alberto Guerra, received over $2 million from Chevron for his testimony, admitted to lying about alleged bribes from lawyers for the Ecuadorians, and admitted that he embellished his story to get Chevron to pay him more.
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In 2013, a US District Court found that Chevron had not shown that Amazon Watch had done anything wrong in relation to the Chevron litigation or that Amazon Watch had engaged in fraudulent conduct or furthered a conspiracy against Chevron. In an 11-page order, Judge Cousins quashed Chevron's attempts to open up Amazon Watch's files, and threatened sanctions against Gibson Dunn and Chevron if they reissued subpoenas unless they were "significantly narrower in scope to seek only highly relevant information and more carefully tailored to avoid infringing upon the organization's First Amendment rights."
None of this can be contested by Boutrous, no matter how much he may wish he could. And every single one of these facts are ones Chevron and Gibson Dunn hopes desperately that the public (and justices in Canada) will ignore or forget. Yet despite knowing them, and all those ethical guidelines Ted theoretically understands, he is willing to write that there's a "lack of evidence" against his client Chevron and the environmental NGOs asserting otherwise are criminals for doing so.
It's unclear which is a greater danger to our society, the ability for oil companies to intentionally and catastrophically pollute, or the willingness of large law firms like Gibson Dunn to cheat, lie and generally abuse the legal system in order to deny the existence of the continuing suffering of tens of thousands of people. Add to that the vilification and intimidation of anyone who dares to speak against them. Sounds like Donald Trump's ideal America to me.
Ted Boutrous is not an idiot, but he has demonstrated absolutely no moral compass whatsoever. In the fever to defend his client a company that admitted to the deliberate pollution in the first place he has gone completely off the deep end. And he has embarrassed himself in the process. That's probably why he (or his staff) have obsessively deleted every comment to his post on Huffington a delicious irony from a "First Amendment lawyer."
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The notion that anyone would accept his premise when Chevron has lost every legal contest apart from Kaplan's (which is still under appeal, and was just handed another major blow by a recent SCOTUS decision about the use of RICO in such circumstances) is frankly preposterous.
No, we can't afford to sue Ted and Gibson Dunn for their acts of libel and intimidation, and they know it. The system of justice here completely favors the Chevrons of our society. That's why they are infuriated that the people of Ecuador actually persevered. Despite all Chevron and Gibson Dunn did to prevent it, they couldn't stop the $9.5 billion judgement against them. They won't be able to stop the action to enforce that verdict in Canada to seize Chevron's assets there, but Ted Boutrous and his buddies intend to get much richer trying.
Ted's post is a sign that the Chevron attack dogs are foaming at the mouth the closer we get to a trial in Canada (it begins in September). Last year, when the Supreme Court of Canada sided unanimously with the Ecuadorians to allow them to sue to enforce their verdict, it sent shock waves through Chevron's board room. The phone calls to Gibson Dunn have probably been non-stop ever since.
Ted Boutrous is using Huffington Post to spread more lies that Chevron hopes will sow more doubt about this case. "Perhaps there is no evidence in Ecuador after all." That's what they hope journalists or justices in Canada will think. Perhaps global warming is a hoax, too. "I read on the internet," says Donald Trump. That is the era we live in.
The Constitution sets up an independent judiciary as the third branch of government, intended to protect peoples rights and to serve as a check on the power of the other two branches. Our nations charter tasks the president and the Senate with the job of selecting and vetting the people who would serve on those courts. President Obama has been doing his duty by nominating qualified women and men to serve as judges at all levels of the judiciary, including the Supreme Court.
But the GOP-controlled Senate is not living up to its constitutional responsibilities. While this has always been harmful to America, it is even more so with Donald Trump the presumed presidential nominee of his party.
Mitch McConnell and his party have slow-walked or outright blocked so many nominees that the number of circuit and district court vacancies has risen from 40 when they took over the Senate to 80 today. (There are also several vacancies for the Court of International Trade and the U.S. Court of Federal Claims.) In that same time, the number of vacancies formally designated as judicial emergencies has skyrocketed from 12 to 29. The Senate has not been allowed to vote on nominees who were thoroughly vetted and approved months ago by the Judiciary Committee with strong bipartisan support.
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Yesterday, Sen. Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin went to the floor to draw attention to the problem. She noted that while the Senate GOPs blockade of Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland has been in the headlines, that has not been the case with the obstruction of lower court nominees.
She focused particularly on Seventh Circuit nominee Donald Schott, who not only has Democrat Baldwins support, but also that of his other home-state senator, Republican Ron Johnson. Schott would fill the nations longest circuit court vacancy, which has been open for well over six years. Since the Supreme Court takes so few cases, the Seventh Circuit is usually the last word on the meaning of the Constitution and federal laws for millions of people in Wisconsin, Illinois, and Indiana, and every day that goes by with that vacancy open hurts everyone in those states. Schott earned strong bipartisan support from the Judiciary Committee, which advanced his nomination to the full Senate four weeks ago. Baldwin noted that Schott also has the support of a bipartisan group of former Wisconsin Bar presidents. Saying that the people of Wisconsin and our neighbors in Illinois and Indiana deserve a fully functioning appeals court, Baldwin urged McConnell to finally allow votes on Schott and on all of the judicial nominees who have cleared the Judiciary Committee. Many of them have been waiting for more than half a year for a floor vote, with several having been approved by the Judiciary Committee last year.
But Republicans are fighting to keep vacancies open for as long as possible so that they will be filled by a President Donald Trump.
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Donald Trump, who wants to make it easier for the government to punish media sources whose reporting he disagrees with.
Donald Trump, who has said that Latinos cannot serve effectively as unbiased judges.
Donald Trump, who would ban certain people from entering the country based on their religion.
Donald Trump, who has demeaned and humiliated women at every opportunity.
Donald Trump, who has used hate groups blatantly anti-Semitic imagery in his campaign.
Donald Trump, who has said he is considering firing all Muslim TSA agents.
With serious discussion among scholars, political figures, and Americans across the political spectrum on whether Trumps extreme views amount to fascism, we need a strong, effective, and independent federal judiciary more than ever. Yet Senate Republicans are pulling out the stops to allow Donald Trump to move quickly to dramatically transform our judiciary from the Supreme Court on down.
Innovation and technology will change the world--we've heard that one for a hundred years, right?
Of course, innovation and technology have already changed the world, in a whole host of ways, causing massive shifts in our lives and societies. But so far, innovation and technology haven't had their full impact on the working world just yet. That's because technology, so far, has created more jobs than it has replaced.
But experts say that will soon change. Both technology and job loss will accelerate rapidly, and a massive, automated robotics revolution will have a profound impact on just about everyone.
When two researchers at Oxford University--Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael Osborne--explored the impact of automation on American jobs in 2013 they concluded that 47 percent of jobs in the US are "at risk" of being automated in the next 20 years. Their research revealed that jobs in every sector, "especially transportation, logistics, and office and administrative support, are at 'high risk' of automation. More surprisingly, occupations within the service industry are also highly susceptible, despite recent job growth in this sector." Even information workers, the study found, are at risk.
Try to imagine it--two decades, and half of our jobs are gone, replaced by the computer automation revolution. Several forward-thinking observers have already started to explore the reality: Jerry Kaplan, in his book Humans Need Not Apply; and Martin Ford, who wrote Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future. Both authors foresee a future of mass unemployment caused by automation. Ford finds:The golden era for American workers - when new machinery and technology required employees to learn valuable skills - is gone. Today, workers can't expect raises or advanced training when new technology appears. Instead, they should fear for their jobs.
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Let's just take one of those sectors the Oxford study identified--transportation--and look at the disruptive potential. I believe the biggest revolution we are about to experience in the coming years has to do with the massive changes to the automotive industry, primarily led by the introduction of autonomous vehicles--whether surface vehicles or drones. The introduction of autonomous vehicles, plus the rapid adoption of sharing technologies and models, as well as the logistics companies such as Uber and Lyft, will result in many fundamental changes in our car-intensive societies:
Many fewer vehicles will be produced. On average, vehicles are utilized 5% of the time and the rest of the time they sit idle, parked.
Sharing vehicles and maximizing utilization could result in the manufacturing of 95% fewer vehicles.
But let's get conservative here and account for peak usage--and say that we can live with 80% fewer vehicles.
That seismic shock means the car industry, as we know it, will not and cannot continue to exist in its present form.
When the number of vehicles we need goes down by 80%--and by the way, much of the remaining 20% will probably carry the emblem of Google, Apple and Tesla--it means enormous change will occur, and occur very rapidly. This does not even account for the market that will be lost to autonomous drones, which as I have said in my previous blogs I believe could be the primary mode of transportation in the near future.
This huge shift will displace more workers than we have probably ever seen in history:
millions and millions of truck drivers and taxi drivers
factory workers at the traditional car manufacturers
parts makers, wholesalers and retailers
service shops and dealerships
the traditional oil industry and its gas stations
On top of all that, think about the tremendous amount of obsolete real estate currently used as parking lots and structures, service shops and car dealerships. When the core industry changes, the supporting industries change even more dramatically, resulting in workers losing jobs and cities getting devastated when much of their vehicle-intensive real estate loses functionality and value.
Some argue that vehicles will be used more efficiently in the near future, but believe that the mileage driven will ultimately remain the same--so cars will have to get replaced more often, and therefore the same number of cars will be necessary.
But that assumes vehicles will have the same life expectancy as they have had in the past--and we know that's no longer the case. The longevity of electric vehicles such as Tesla, with a lot fewer moving parts, changes the equation. Also, let's not forget that out of 16 million new vehicles sold in the U.S. every year, many if not the majority are sold, not because the previous car had reached the end of its useful life, but rather because the owner simply wanted the new model with the new features and more horsepower. As we move from vehicle ownership to vehicle sharing, all those factors will matter less and less. Instead, service offered through the vehicle-sharing platforms, the connectivity and the personalization of the experience will matter much more. Assuming that the increased mileage on a per vehicle basis will protect the number of vehicles sold is a fallacy.
Some also argue that those who lose their jobs will get placed elsewhere in the economy--just like what happened during the last century, when we moved from the horse and buggy to internal combustion.
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That's dangerous thinking, because it promotes inaction, and inaction will have a significant human toll on millions of families who lose their livelihood in a newly automated sharing economy--not to mention the major instability such losses will cause in our societies.
The idea that our information economy will be able to put to work the millions who will lose their jobs is utter ignorance. On a much smaller scale, we have seen how an entire industry can get devastated... do you remember travel agents? There were hundreds of thousands of them!
So, what's the solution? I would recommend two possible solutions, and add one saving grace:
A new focus on high quality food production. Industrial agriculture has driven down the quality of our food. Farming is not only one of the noblest professions, but is also fundamentally in need of transformation to focus on quality, not quantity. A hundred years ago we needed to grow great quantities to feed the world, but today distribution is the problem, not production. We can and we will put millions of people back into farming.
A shorter work week. As human beings will finally free ourselves from the shackles of 40+ hour work weeks. Our economies will allow some of the efficiencies gained to be shared with workers, rather than all of it benefiting corporations.
And lastly, about that saving grace: Most industrialized societies are aging, which means there will be fewer working people for every retired person. This will clearly mean that, as time progresses, the active workforce will automatically reduce its numbers.
With all of these radical changes colliding, the next few decades will be highly tumultuous and dangerous. But as humanity evolves from its previous century of materialism, we also have a chance to build a new millennium focused on knowledge accumulation, spiritual growth and quality of life.
However, to get there with less social upheaval, danger and turbulence, we will ideally need help from our government and its policy makers. Rather than politicians promising people they will bring back lost manufacturing jobs, they should tell them the truth--those jobs won't be coming back, nor should they. That would be regress. Even China will lose jobs to machines. We have entered a new age, and everyone will be affected by it.
Rather than celebrating the best year the automotive industry has had, driven partly by the free money poured into some of the car makers by the government and the economy's "quantitative easing" policies, ideally our politicians for once will see ahead of the curve. The smart ones will tell us about their policies for how they plan to address the inevitable automation-driven disruption that the automotive industry and all related sectors are about to experience. They will make it easier for displaced workers to acquire new skills. They will encourage and help companies to hire those newly retrained employees. Let's make that switch now, from the old reactive policy-making approach to a new, honest and forthright approach that will help alleviate the inevitable hardship caused by previously-unseen levels of unemployment.
How did you know you had Asperger's? originally appeared on Quora -- the knowledge sharing network where compelling questions are answered by people with unique insights.
Answer by Leo Mauro, proud owner of an Aspie brain since 1957, on Quora.
I don't know [when I knew I had Aspergers]; probably at the beginning. I was still quite young (about 7-8 years old) and I already noticed that I was a Stranger in a Strange Land. To me, human interactions were befuddling, to say the least. I never could understand why people interacted the way they did. I tried a lot to predict people's reactions to so many situations and I failed in most cases. In particular, I failed at understanding and anticipating reactions to me, be it to things I said or things I did, or conversely, to those I did not.
My teachers said I was very "precocious," but at the time that didn't make sense to me. I thought everybody was like me, except that I lacked something that prevented me from understanding them as they seemed to understand each other. I started feeling inadequate --despite my teachers and parents telling me I was all right. The feeling has continued to nag me to this day, although it later subsided somewhat.
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Feelings of inadequacy notwithstanding, I dedicated my time to the only thing I knew I did well -- even better than most anybody else I knew: learning. I breezed through elementary and high school, essentially with straight A's (minus some mind-numbing classes on topics I decided would be better if they never touched my mind). I finally got to go to a university where everything started to change.
After deciding I would dedicate myself to learning (which I did), essentially to abscond myself from my feelings of inadequacy and befuddlement, I crashed head-on, unprepared, into a completely different environment about which I knew nothing and had nobody that could help me navigate it. The university is very different from school, be it elementary, middle, or high; human interaction is practically mandatory, and everybody essentially forces themselves unto you. They want to talk to you, they want you to talk to them, they want to hang out with you and have you hang out with them. In a word: they want... And I couldn't, at the time, understand what the heck they wanted from me -- I tried to accommodate them, but more often than not, it all blew up in my face. For the first time in my life I started having what I now know are called meltdowns. I got really scared.
I spent some months with a therapist who finally assured me that I was all right and just had (a series of) panic attacks. It did little to nothing to allay my concerns, so she prescribed me a mild antipsychotic for a couple months, and sent me away. As befuddled as ever, but now also more scared. I decided then that I would do what I always did and that had worked so well for me in the past: I would take things into my own hands, learn as much as I possibly could -- no matter how long it took -- about whatever it was that was happening to me. I would try to figure out what was triggering the response and stay the hell away from whatever it was, and for good measure, keep some distance between me and the throng of noisy, wanting people.
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That was in the mid-70's. I had a few more meltdowns, and eventually figured out that the trigger was an excess of people being incomprehensible and befuddling me to the point I got overwhelmed and somehow automatically shut down as a protective measure. I have few clear memories of these events, other than what those present during them told me. I had no way to verify their veracity, or even if they were exaggerating. Be it as it may, I decided to focus on those events and minimize them as much as possible. I became essentially a hermit, allowing very few people to be near me and interact with me. Some of those few I still call good friends even after all these years.
Fast forward 25 years. It's the early 90's, I have a career that allows me to support myself and my aging mother (my father having passed 5 years before). I never intended to be a successful entrepreneur, and in fact I am not; humans still befuddle me no end, despite my many efforts, and entrepreneurs cannot be befuddled by humans if they want to be worthy of the name. Nevertheless, I couldn't complain. I earned enough to have a good living and travel, go to conferences that interested me, and so on. I organized my life around what came most naturally to me -- computer science -- and had the good fortune to be there during some of its halcyon days. I was reasonably well known, and various kinds of work offers landed at my feet, without even looking for them. One of those turned out to be very important in this story of self-discovery.
I was asked to be CTO of a startup based in Charlotte, NC. They were just out of their second round of funding and were developing some voice and network communications technology. They heard of me and essentially snatched me to lead the next level of development of the technology they had developed. After some soul searching and pondering, I accepted. I had to relocate there, from my country of birth (Venezuela), and follow all the mandated immigration and labor rules. Luckily for me, the company retained a nice, very experienced lawyer to navigate those muddy waters. It was due to this that I entered contact with Duke University in Durham, NC, due to the need to validate my studies and experience in order to get a Green Card and stay in the USA.
To make an already too long story somewhat shorter, the CS Department at Duke--pending some formalities and testimonials--granted me a Honorary Ph.D in CS and AI, and was willing to waive some transcripts to get me started on a degree in Neuroscience (after I told them of my interest and what I had studied regarding that field). It was during the following years that my contact with Duke bore fruit: I was invited to a symposium on Autism and Asperger's, organized by a student of Simon Baron-Cohen. This was a big eye opener: I suddenly understood so many things in their proper context. I got a possible name for my condition (I still thought of it as a defect--a flaw): Asperger's Syndrome.
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I tried to get myself evaluated and diagnosed, but I was told that few (Neuro) Psychologists were trained to perform such tests. None were readily available, but one of the researchers pointed me to a test developed by Baron-Cohen himself. It was not a complete diagnosis, but had a very good track record to predict the results of an actual diagnostic. At the time it was a paper and pencil test, but now it has been remade into an online test: see Take the Asperger's Test. I took the test, and the results were so clear that there was no doubt I had Asperger's Syndrome.
I finally knew something about myself. And as they say, knowledge is power. I started studying as much as I could about the subject, reading everything Baron-Cohen wrote about it. My neuroscience self-studies were coming very handy, as I could not only understand what the papers explained, but could also follow the alternate views and opposing opinions until I formed my own understanding of myself.
That was 1997. It took 10 years to finally get a medically validated diagnosis. Not that I needed it, but it is good to know somebody that purportedly knows his or her stuff agrees.
It's been a (very) long road going from there to here. But I finally can lay to rest the fear and sense of failure that accompanied me (and in many ways crippled me) since I was a small kid. I finally know I'm not defective in any way: I'm different--and it is good to finally know that I was right all along: I'm a Stranger in a Strange Land. A land that was made by Others for Others to accommodate Others. I'm not like them, but I do not reject them, dislike them or shun them--I would like a different land made for me, but I know there's only this land we all share.
That's okay with me.
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Efforts to end the global AIDS pandemic by 2030 are lagging.
In a new report, UNAIDS cautioned that while new HIV infections had fallen dramatically in the past two decades, especially among children, the trend among adults has stalled and even risen in a number of places over the past five years.
"This situation scares me, and we need to act fast," UNAIDS chief Michel Sidibe told reporters in Geneva at the launch of the report.
"If we don't, the epidemic could once again take hold with huge human and financial losses," he warned.
The HIV epidemic has been in decline over the past decade, but there are still 36.7 million people worldwide living with HIV/AIDS, most of them in sub-Saharan Africa.
Great strides have especially been made globally towards preventing children from contracting HIV, with new infections among those under the age of 15 down 56 percent since 2010 and by 70 percent since 2000 to around 150,000 last year, the report showed.
Surging infections in Russia
But at the same time, some 1.9 million adults have contracted HIV globally every year for at least the past five years, according to Tuesday's "Prevention Gap" report.
Most regions saw a flat trend, with relatively small increases or declines, but the Eastern European-Central Asian region had shown a dramatic 57-percent increase in new annual infections among adults since 2010, the report said.
A full 80 percent of those new infections occurred in Russia, with another 10 percent found in Ukraine, it said, blaming "low coverage of prevention programmes, in particular harm-reduction interventions among people who inject drugs.
Experts have complained that the Russian government's policy focuses on treatment while neglecting prevention drives such as sex education in schools.
Russia also bans methadone replacement therapy for drug addicts, which would allow users to avoid injections, eliminating the risk of contracting the virus from contaminated syringes.
Pointing out that more than half of all new infections in Russia were among people who inject drugs, Sidibe warned that "If you don't reach them you will not be able to control the epidemic."
If the epidemic is not controlled among the main risk groups it will become more generalised, he warned.
Globally, people who inject drugs and men who have sex with men are 24 times more likely to be infected with HIV than the general population, while sex workers are 10 times more likely, the report said.
"If you don't control the epidemic among those groups, because you have marginalised them, because you exclude them, because you criminalise them you will have infection moving into the general population," Sidibe said.
Girls, women at risk
UNAIDS also voiced deep concern over the situation in eastern and sub-Saharan Africa, which continues to account for the vast majority of cases.
While the region has seen new infections among adults fall four percent since 2010, Tuesday's report pointed to a stark gender inequality among those contracting the disease.
Three quarters of all new HIV infections among people aged 15-24 in the region occurred among adolescent girls and young women, the report found.
This was partly due to "extremely high levels of sexual abuse and violence against female children, including underage, child and forced marriage," it said, also stressing that girls and women often lack access to HIV services due to gender inequality and stigma.
Such difficulties in the fight against the HIV/AIDS epidemic are being compounded by dwindling funding by international donors, and generally not enough spending on prevention efforts.
"We have a five-year window of opportunity. If we miss this window of five years, we will have a rebound in this epidemic, we will have resistance, and will not be able to control the epidemic and make sure we end it by 2030," Sidibe warned.
Related news:
> Vietnam launches painting contest to prevent AIDS discrimination
> Thailand first in Asia to eliminate mother-to-baby HIV: WHO
> Vietnamese ethnic woman asks U.N.
For much of the country, the weather is finally starting to warm up, which means open-toed shoe season is right around the corner. And that definitely means we're ramping up our mani/pedi schedules. But it also means being vigilant about keeping an eye out for any sketchy practices at the local nail salon.
These are things that can hurt your nails, shorten the life of your manicure, or even pose a dangerous health risk. We talked to some of the top manicurists in the biz to find out what you need to watch out for, so you can walk out with 10 perfect fingers or toes -- minus the yucky stuff.
If you see any of these 10 things but are too afraid to speak up, celebrity manicurist Deborah Lippmann offers this advice: "Skip the manicure and just ask them to change your polish -- then, walk out the door."
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Illustrations by Elliot Salazar.
Filthy Work Stations
Even a salon that appears clean can harbor dirty little secrets. So, if a salon actually looks unkempt? Well, that's not a good sign. "We all go into those corner nail salons, and there's dust everywhere -- on tables, in drawers. That's stuff from other people's nails," says Lippmann. Glance over at the garbage cans, too. They should have a lid, not a visible, overflowing pile of trash. "Bacteria, mold, and spores have to be contained, so just like in a doctor's office, trash cans should always be covered," says celebrity manicurist Elle. And, also just like in a doctor's office, stations should be scrubbed between every client, and new coverings should be put down over the surfaces. "I mean, how would you feel if your gynecologist reused the same paper?" says Elle.
Dirty Tools
In many states (including New York), the law requires that salons use a brand new nail file for every single client. But anyone who has ever been to their corner spot knows that's rarely the case. "It's unsanitary to use a nail file on more than one client," says Elle. "If the person before you had a fungus, it can spread to you."
Along with nail files, anything that's porous -- think wooden tools, orange sticks, pumice stones, or buffers -- can harbor and breed bacteria, so they should always be new, as well. Metal tools, such as cuticle nippers, can be reused, but experts say they must be disinfected with a hospital-grade disinfectant for at least 10 minutes between clients -- or sterilized in an autoclave. "But watch for 'UV sterilizers,' which are not effective for proper sterilization," says Julie Kandalec, celebrity manicurist and creative director of Paintbox in New York City. "A true sterilizer looks like a toaster oven or a crock pot and heats tools to approximately 400 degrees. They cost several hundred to thousands of dollars, compared to UV models, which are well under $100."
But here's an easy way to avoid the stress (and the possible infections): Bring your own tools. "Having your own nail kit and just throwing it in your purse is the best thing you can do," says Elle. "If everything is yours, there's no danger."
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Using The Wrong File
Not only does the file have to be new, but it has to be the right one. Like sandpaper, files come in various grits ranging from ultra-fine (the best choice for natural nails) to super coarse (only okay for artificials). "Unfortunately, many manicurists tend to use a generic file for everything, and it's usually one that's too coarse, which can damage natural nails," says Elle. So how to tell if your tech is using one that's too harsh? "Listen to how it sounds on your nails," says Kandalec. "A fine-grit file has a higher-pitched sound and generally sounds more pleasant. A coarse-grit file has a deeper sound that isn't as nice."
Filing The Wrong Way
Okay, so she's using the right kind of file. And it's new. Now, you need to make sure she's wielding it the correct way, too. "Filing back and forth causes microscopic splits in the nail, which can lead to chipped polish and dry, peeling nails," says Kandalec, Instead, she says, your tech should be filing from the outside corners in towards the center. "Filing towards the middle of the nail prevents splitting," she explains.
Filing On Top Of The Nail
Ever had a manicurist "rough up" the top of your nails under the guise of prepping them to better grip polish? Yeah, stop that next time, because it turns out that's total B.S. "Etching is a lazy way of prepping nails," says Elle. "It does not help polish stay on. Actually, it's the opposite -- it's completely bad for your nail." Instead, clean, dry nails and a good base coat are all the polish prep you need.
Going To Town On Your Cuticles
"Manicurists always want to cut your cuticles, because it's faster for them and it means you will come back more often, since your manicure will look uneven faster," says Lippmann. "But cuticles are meant to be there to keep bacteria from entering your body." Getting rid of them entirely isn't necessary -- and cutting them at all isn't even recommended.
Instead, your tech should use a cuticle remover to soften them, and then gently push them back. In fact, the only time it's okay to pull out a nipper is if you have a hangnail. And, in that case, the hangnail should be gently nipped, never tugged. "Pulling too hard with nippers is one of the biggest mistakes that nail techs make," says Lippmann. "Nippers should be very sharp -- something that is often not the case at corner salons because they don't get them sharpened regularly. But if they aren't sharp, that's when they have to pull, and that can easily rip too much skin.
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Sub-Par Prep Before The Base Coat
A hand massage is one of the best parts of the manicure, right? (Duh.) Problem is, leftover lotion can sabotage your polish job if every trace isn't removed before your manicurist brushes on the base coat. "The nail has to be dehydrated and completely clean before you polish," says Elle: "If you polish on a wet nail, or one with dirt on it, your polish won't last."
We thought it was standard practice for a manicurist to clean our nails by wrapping an orange stick in cotton and dipping it in remover, but it turns out that's completely the wrong way to do it. "That's the cheap and lazy way to do it," says Elle. "Acetone doesn't remove lotion, because it doesn't remove oil. Instead, it deposits more residue and makes nails split and peel." Per Elle, a better way to do it is to swipe nails with a brush soaked in antibacterial soap.
Thinning Out Nail Polish
While many top manicurists cop to occasionally using acetone to thin out old, too-thick lacquer, "it's a temporary fix," says Elle. "It should be a one-time thing in a pinch -- not something you do regularly in a professional salon." But that doesn't mean the cheapie places don't do it on the regular. "And it happens even at nice salons!" says Lippmann. "But anything you put in polish compromises its chemistry. That really affects the wear and can also cause bubbles on the surface of your nails." Bringing your own polish is a surefire way to avoid the tainted stuff; steering clear of near-empty, likely-ancient bottles will help, too.
Overzealous Gel Removal
Gel nails get a bad rap. But experts say that it's inexperienced techs -- not the gels themselves -- that are the real problem. "The right way to remove gels is what no one wants to do: You have to be super, super patient," says Lippmann. That means there should be no hacking, no scraping, no metal tools, and no pain.
Instead, the manicurist should cover your fingertips in acetone-soaked pads, wrap them with foil, and leave you to sit for 10 to 30 minutes. "The gel should look almost melted when it's ready," says Lippmann. "At that point, an orange stick should be all it takes to gently nudge it away." And if your tech wants to cut corners? Run. Or risk weakened, dented, or even broken nails. Lippmann herself even came face-to-face with the issue once while making a pit stop to have gels removed on the way to the airport. "I went into a nail salon and said, 'How long will this take?' And I kid you not, the woman said, 'What is your pain threshold?'" she remembers. "I said, 'Bye, bye!' Nothing should hurt."
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Pedicure Tubs With Jets
There are few things more relaxing than settling into a cushy pedicure chair with an issue of Us Weekly, cranking up the massage remote, and slipping your feet into the bowl of hot, soapy water. That is, as long as you don't think too hard about what's in that bowl. "With pedicure jets, it's like swimming in someone's personal Jacuzzi," says Elle. "Not only are they too hard to clean, but the hot water breeds bacteria. And if you have an open cut on your feet? Well, that's it."
Elle adds that pedicure jets must be sanitized for at least 15 minutes with hospital-grade disinfectant ("not Windex") between every client. (And when was the last time you saw a salon do that?) To be safe, seek out salons that exclusively use jet-free basins. Sure, they don't have the fun bubbles or the color-therapy lights, but they're also much less likely to have the nasty stuff.
By: Alyssa Hertzig
Also on HuffPost:
The burgeoning fashion and beauty industries in the Middle East are becoming an international power, and with them, massively successful Middle Eastern bloggers and photographers have begun to enjoy many of the same perks as their Western counterparts. Just like ones based in New York, L.A., London, and Sydney, Middle East fashion blogs represent a spectrum of people, personal styles, and philosophies. From religious fashion bloggers who advocate for modest dressing to fashion-forward bloggers who champion standing out, personal style in the region is, as anywhere else, nuanced and varied.
Yet, blogging in the Middle East comes with its own set of challenges. Attitudes throughout the region range from the more lax, like Dubai, where you can essentially wear whatever you want, to Saudi Arabia, where women are not permitted to drive or even leave the country without explicit written consent from a male spouse or guardian. But regardless of city or state, there is value placed on the traditional.
Photographs by Alya Mooro.
As blogger Lana El Sahely told Savoir Flair, the Middle East's first online fashion magazine, "We need to always be careful to draw the line between being fashionable while remaining conservative and respectful of the traditions." In most cases, this means dressing modestly, and in some countries, wearing a hijab is required by law. Failure to follow suit in public can result in punishment; models were recently arrested in Iran for posting pictures of themselves on Instagram without the veil.
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Despite this, Middle Eastern individuals are taking to the internet more and more to document their personal style. As Mariyah Gaspacho, a blogger based in Dubai explains: "It was difficult when I was first starting out and when blogging was new here, but the past two years, blogging has hit the Middle East, so it's a lot easier now to go around the city and shoot."
That said, having shot most of my blog content in London, it was with both excitement and trepidation that I took to the streets of Cairo a few months ago to shoot some looks from one of my favorite Egyptian designers, Amina K, with Egyptian photographer Aisha Al-Shabrawy. I wasn't sure quite what to expect, but I attempted to cater to the environment as best I could, ensuring to style the pieces in such a way that I would not be showing too much skin.
My family members were not very happy -- to say the least -- with what they considered my complete insanity in wanting to draw attention to myself in this way in Cairo (they have absolutely no problem with me doing it elsewhere), potentially due to the fact that Reuters statistics reveal that 99.3% of women in Egypt have experienced some form of sexual harassment in their lifetimes. This is compared to 65% in the U.S. and U.K. I was however, pleasantly surprised at the humor and good grace with which we were met; I only occasionally felt uncomfortable.
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Of course, each country is culturally and politically different, but here are five things I learned while shooting there...
1. Be Respectful
Most people I spoke to stressed the importance of being respectful to a country's customs and dress codes. For the most part, that means not showing too much skin. Keep your shoulders, anything above the knee, and your cleavage covered up. Tops with spaghetti straps should also be avoided. Most countries, barring the likes of Saudi Arabia, Iran and the southern parts of Iraq, don't actually legally enforce dress codes or force women to wear veils, but it'd be a bit like if you were to walk down a busy NYC street wearing just a bikini -- you have the right to do it, but you're going to feel like the odd woman out, which could be uncomfortable; people will definitely stare and probably make pretty nasty, sexual remarks and even feel like they have the right to come grope you.
Al-Shabrawy explained: "If my subject is a female wearing anything revealing, she will have to keep herself covered until we get the shot ready. Once she's in a revealing outfit we have to be as fast as possible before people gather. This is for her protection, especially knowing the amount of harassment on Cairo streets."
Indeed, the easiest solution (though, it's also the least empowering), is to have a man with you. Even though having a man around obviously doesn't actually make a situation safer, in countries where men are seen as strong and as an authority, it does appear to deter or at least cause other men to think twice before approaching. As Al-Shabrawy explains: "[Having a man around] makes us less approachable and more protected."
2. Get Comfortable With People Staring At You
Regardless of what you are wearing, people are probably going to be staring. Dana Al Khalifa of The Overdressed, a Bahrain-based blog, told Refinery29, "I shot a Burberry campaign in the [market] one time, and everyone was staring. There was a circle of expat labor workers surrounding us; [I've found that] they're mostly the people who stare as they often come from largely populated, under-developed countries so they're not used to seeing people dress in metallic pink-lame coats in the middle of summer." Indeed, staring is very much a common thing in the Middle East and not considered particularly rude or ominous.
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3. Be Aware Of Who Else You're Photographing
The concept of family honor is an important idea in the Middle East and, whether or not you agree with it, honor is often dependent on the behavior of the women in the family. This often manifests itself as men feeling like they need to chaperone and protect their female family members. Many therefore stressed the importance of asking permission before taking a photograph of someone, or, if you're posing for the picture yourself, making sure no one else is captured in the frame without their knowledge.
Indeed, while in other parts of the world, especially at Fashion Week, people dress up especially to be captured on camera by the multitude of street style photographers, in much of the region, it's not okay to take a photo of someone without asking for their permission first.
Moez Achour, a street style photographer based in Dubai explained how it works: "We make sure not to include random people in photos, we never shoot when there is a lot of people out in public, and we always avoid areas that are restricted or residential with a lot of locals... Be careful not to include women or children, too; that is a big no-no out there."
But it's not only women who may not want to make up any part of a photo. Indeed, while shooting at a famous cafe in Cairo, we ran into some trouble when the owner became concerned that we were capturing some of his clientele in the background. We had to show him the pictures, delete the ones he didn't approve of, and eventually had to retire to the most hidden spot in the cafe where no one else was in view. Even then we had to be super quick and as inconspicuous as we could.
4. You'll Probably Have To Ask The Government For Permission -- Seriously
"Unlike in other parts of the world, in Dubai you often need permission from the property manager or owner to shoot in particular areas. Even outside the buildings, the streets around them often belong to the owner of the building or district," explained Olga Lobanova, a Russian blogger who now lives in Dubai.
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This is the case in much of the Middle East. Al-Shabrawy explained that in Egypt, you even need an official permit to be able to use a professional camera on the street. Without one, you could get arrested.
If in doubt, the general rule at the very least, explains Olga, is not to take pictures in front of mosques or government buildings.
5. Be Human
Admittedly, considering the high rate of sexual harassment in Egypt, I was a little concerned with how the shoot was going to go. Turns out, I didn't really have anything to worry about, thanks in large part to Al-Shabrawy and her friendly demeanor. She was totally casual and relaxed; she engaged any passersby who may have stopped and stared for a little too long, smiling and joking and offering to take their picture, too.
I also noticed that she took every opportunity to show her appreciation for the people who allowed us to shoot in their vicinity undisturbed: by buying some apples from the man whose fruit cart I was posing in front of, by taking a picture of someone's daughter and promising to send it to them and so on, she spread good vibes by paying it forward.
All of the countries I've had the fortune of visiting in the region are truly, truly spectacular in terms of everything from the wealth of culture to the insanely beautiful beaches and old mosques to the generosity and good nature of the locals when they felt like you were making an effort to be respectful of their customs, space, and time. Be informed, be aware of what's going on around you, and be friendly, and you'll soon have some awesome pictures for the 'gram.
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As Hoda Katebi, an Iranian blogger and photographer who lives in Chicago and recently traveled through Iran on her own to create Tehran Streetstyle -- the first-ever collection of the country's modern street style fashion photography -- said: "I actually feel more unsafe in parts of Chicago walking alone at night than in Tehran. Of course, it is important to always be aware of your surroundings regardless of where you are."
By Alya Mooro.
Also on HuffPost:
The pharmaceutical industry has become a major health hazard to the American people.
Our nation pays - by far - the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs. As a result of these outrageous prices, nearly one in five Americans cannot afford to fill their prescriptions. Meanwhile, the five largest prescription drug companies made a combined $50 billion in profits last year. That is unacceptable. A lifesaving product does no one any good if a patient cannot buy the medicine they need, and that is now happening far too often in the richest nation in the world.
A new report out today from Americans for Tax Fairness explains how a pharmaceutical company, Gilead Sciences, games the system to charge high prices, shift profits offshore and avoid billions in U.S. taxes.
Gilead sells a drug called Sovaldi, which is used to treat the hepatitis C virus. The drug was developed with taxpayer funds by a researcher who worked at the Department of Veterans Affairs and founded a small drug company. Gilead bought the company for $11 billion, acquired the government-provided monopoly rights and set the price at $1,000 per pill, or $84,000 per treatment in 2013.
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U.S. public and private insurers, taxpayers and patients spent more money on Sovaldi in 2014 than on any other prescription drug. Gilead made its investment back in less than a year.
If gone untreated, hepatitis C can end in what one nurse-practitioner called "some of the worst deaths I've ever seen." She said, "At the end, you die not knowing who you are, your belly looks 12 months pregnant, you're malnourished, and you're bleeding to death."
Patients with hepatitis C are often low-income and a disproportionate number of them are veterans. Yet many Medicaid programs have had to limit access to the drug, and despite spending literally billions of dollars on the new hepatitis C drugs, the Department of Veterans Affairs initially struggled to provide the medication to every veteran who needed it.
Meanwhile, Gilead's profits have quintupled since it started selling the drug, from $4 billion in 2013 to $22 billion in 2015.
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It gets worse. The Americans for Tax Fairness report finds that Gilead has dodged nearly $10 billion in U.S. taxes.
How is that possible?
Gilead claimed that despite making "two-thirds of its revenues here and charging higher drug prices than anywhere else in the world, it made only about one-third of its profits in the United States," according to the report. The company pays an effective tax rate of just 1 percent in the foreign countries where it claims to do business. And in 2013, Gilead's chief financial officer said the formula for Sovaldi was being transferred to Ireland in order to lower the company's effective tax rate.
The strategy worked: Gilead's worldwide effective tax rate dropped from 27 percent in 2013 to 16 percent in 2015.
Many American corporations use this practice to avoid paying U.S. taxes, but Gilead's greed is particularly reprehensible because the American public paid for these drugs twice: first taxpayers bankrolled the research behind the hepatitis C drugs and then they paid a second time when Gilead decided to charge Americans the highest price in the world for the treatment.
And now Americans are getting cheated a third time as Gilead stashes its profits abroad to avoid taxes.
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But Gilead is not the only company taking advantage of our public research funding and tax loopholes. Pfizer, Merck, Johnson & Johnson, Eli Lilly, Bristol-Meyers Squibb and many others engage in similar offshore tax dodging to avoid billions in U.S. taxes each year.
At what point do we say our tax system, our publicly funded research and our patent system are not serving the public interest? At what point do we realize that they have been distorted to serve the private interests of a few billionaires like John C. Martin, Gilead's CEO until this past March, whose compensation peaked at almost $200 million in 2014? At what point will Congress have the courage to stand up to the greed of the pharmaceutical industry and say enough is enough?
Last year I asked the Department of Veterans Affairs to use an existing law allowing the federal government to break patents in order to make hepatitis C drugs available to veterans. I also introduced a bill last year, the Corporate Tax Dodging Prevention Act, which would tax all profits of American corporations the same way regardless of where they are earned. This would eliminate the incentive for companies to hide their profits overseas.
I have also supported legislation that would lower costs for consumers by rewarding developers of medicines on the basis of a drug's benefit to consumers. Under such a system, Sovaldi would have been awarded a substantial monetary prize as it represented a major advancement for patients with hepatitis C, but under my proposal, the drug would immediately come on the market as a generic drug, saving consumers a decade or more of paying exorbitant prices for brand-name drugs. I also strongly support instructing Medicare to negotiate drug prices and reducing the barriers to the importation of prescription medication from Canada and other countries.
Other countries strictly regulate what pharmaceutical companies can charge, but in the U.S. there is no limit to the egregious profiteering of corporate CEOs. Coupling outrageous prices on drugs with new and inventive ways to avoid paying taxes is truly shameless.
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That must change.
Presidential candidate Hilary Clinton is not an energy expert. She probably has some such person on her campaign staff, but she didn't need them when she told the unfortunate truth to a West Virginia audience. She said, "We're going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business." This occurred at a round table forum in March in Kentucky, hosted by CNN. The statement was made in the context of proposing to replace these jobs with renewable energy jobs, and was not made as a policy prescription, more as a statement of fact.
Was she right? What is the future of coal in the US, and more broadly in the world?
It is not easy to make a case for the coal mining (and burning) industry. Coal mostly is used in electric power plants, and has been historically for a hundred and thirty-four years, since Thomas Edison built the first electric plant, the Pearl Street station in downtown Manhattan, in 1882.
Using coal as a fuel has advantages: the combustion technology is straight-forward, it is far easier to burn coal in large boilers and move the electricity around than it is to have coal deliveries to every home and business with a small furnace. It is plentiful; there is a huge reserve available in the US, and much in a number of other countries. There has never been an "OPEC of coal" because of this dispersion of the resource. But over time the disadvantages have begun to chip away at the market.
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Let's start with production. Being a coal miner is a dirty, damp and dangerous occupation, particularly underground mining. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, mining is the second most dangerous occupation in America. And just to answer the obvious question, depending on how you calculate, either commercial fishermen or loggers hold the prize for most dangerous US job.
But concern for worker safety is not driving coals' decline--it's a combination of competitive economics and environmental concerns.
Burning coal in power plants has become more and more expensive as more environmental control hardware has been required over time. First it was electrostatic precipitators to take out the particulates n the exhaust, then scrubbers for the SO2 and now technologies to remove mercury and other trace metals. The final step, currently on hold due to litigation, is the Federal proposed requirement - the Clean Power Plan - to decrease the CO2 emitted from burning coal, given its impact on global warming. And since coal is almost all carbon, this is a real problem. It is even more challenging because no cheap or easy way exists to separate the CO2 from the other gasses going up the stack of a coal plant. The most recent effort to solve this challenge, the Kemper plant in Mississippi, has gone from an initial budget of $2.9 billion, to a current estimate of $6.7 billion. And it is neither finished nor working, two years after it was supposed to be on line.
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But it may be natural gas and solar that really finishes off coal.
Plants powered by natural gas are cheaper to build and run, and produce far fewer traditional pollutants, and only about forty percent of the CO2 of coal. The fracking boom has driven gas prices below $5/mmbtu for the last five years, and frequently below $2.00. This has made gas a better economic choice in competitive markets. And recent solar prices in utility scale applications--even below 3 cents a kwh in Abu Dhabi a month ago--make electricity from new solar plants cheaper than just the operating cost of coal plants. The CEO of AES' largely coal US plants, Ken Zabgrebski, recently remarked at a recent energy conference in Arizona that the future was clearly solar.
It is not pleasant to watch wrenching change. It is less pleasant to be on the wrong side of it, especially when the impacts include joblessness for people who have made a decent living from mining coal. But technological advances, the working of markets and the requirements of the widespread consensus on environmental needs occurring simultaneously are difficult to withstand. Just ask any of the 28 US coal companies who have gone bankrupt in the last seven years, including Peabody, the world's largest coal company.
Merle Haggard sang, "It's dark as a dungeon way down in the mines." The same is now true in every coal company boardroom.
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder arrives to talk to the media about the shooting of two police officers in Ferguson, and to announce pilot cities for DOJ program to build trust between law enforcement and communities they serve, at the Justice Department in Washington March 12, 2015. Holder said on Thursday the shooting of two police officers in Ferguson, Missouri, was a "heinous assault" that threatens reforms under way in the city. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas (UNITED STATES - Tags: POLITICS CRIME LAW)
Eric Holder certainly has changed since his days at Columbia University. According to the New York Times, "as a boyish-looking freshman" he "was recruited by upperclassmen to help take over the R.O.T.C. office," which they claimed as "a student center named for Malcolm X."
As Attorney General, Holder chose not to prosecute banking giant HSBC for laundering Mexican drug cartel money. Holder, Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer, and other Obama Justice Department officials showed similar favoritism to other big banks.
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In fact, not a single big-bank executive was prosecuted during their tenure, despite the most massive and well-documented epidemic of financial fraud in American history.
The Times reports that young Holder "chose to major in American history as a means to explore his own heritage and to use as a prism through which to examine current events. Longing to escape the elite world at Columbia, he spent Saturdays taking underprivileged teenagers around New York City."
It's easy to condemn the Eric Holder of today. It's harder to understand, and sadder to contemplate, whatever became of someone who was once so young and idealistic.
Thanks to a new Congressional report, we now know that Holder and Breuer overruled prosecutors and cut a settlement that let the bank avoid pleading guilty to felony charges. The bank merely paid a fine of $1.9 billion -- a sum that was widely described as "a slap on the wrist" at the time. (That should convey a sense of the magnitude of wrongdoing involved.)
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In its write-up of the Congressional report, Bloomberg News said that Holder "didn't immediately respond to a phone message seeking comment."
Holder's deal protected HSBC and its executives from any consequences for their actions -- actions that aided and abetted the murderers of as many as 85,000 people in war-torn parts of Mexico, sometimes by decapitation and often through prolonged torture.
Why did it take Republican members of Congress -- Republicans, for God's sake! -- to bring this information to light? It was the Republican chair of the Financial Services Committee who famously said, "In Washington, the view is that the banks are to be regulated, and my view is that Washington and the regulators are there to serve the banks."
How did this cash-drunk crew of bank-servile troglodytes become messengers of truth and justice? They may be imperfect vessels, but make no mistake: the GOP report is thorough, well-documented, and incontrovertible.
Holder said this about big banks like HSBC:
"I am concerned that the size of some of these institutions becomes so large that ... if you do bring a criminal charge, it will have a negative impact on the national economy, perhaps even the world economy ... some of these institutions have become too large."
Shortly thereafter he amended his remarks:
"I made a statement I guess in a Senate hearing that I think has been misconstrued ... let me make it very clear that there is no bank, there's no institution, there's no individual who cannot be investigated and prosecuted by the United States Department of Justice."
If by "misconstrued" Holder meant "universally understood to mean the exact opposite of what I now claim to have intended" then yeah, he was misconstrued. And even if he believed that HSBC itself was too big to indict, why didn't Holder pursue criminal charges against the individual bankers who committed these crimes?
This report raises some questions for the Democrats, too. Why do you suppose the Republicans released this information now? If Dems don't think this is going to be an issue in the presidential campaign, they're in for a surprise. They'll need to convince voters that lawbreaking bankers won't receive the same lenient treatment in the next Democratic administration they enjoyed in the last.
That may not be easy. Trump will almost certainly bring up past Clinton connections to HSBC and other large banks. Secretary Clinton should promise not to appoint Wall Streeters to senior positions in the Treasury or Justice Departments, and she should pledge to break up several of our nation's too-big-to-fail banks.
Holder has gone back to Covington & Burling, the firm where he earned more than $3 million a year before leading the Justice Department. So has Lanny Breuer. That firm represents many of the banks Holder protected as Attorney General. Other unsavory clients include Big Pharma companies, Halliburton, Philip Morris tobacco, and Xe (formerly Blackwater).
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And did we mention? It's also a lobbying firm.
Matt Taibbi called Holder a "double agent" for Wall Street, but it's doubtful that he sees himself that way. Few of us think of ourselves as bad people. But then, how does Holder justify his behavior to himself?
I wish I knew.
"I'm for truth," a great leader once wrote, "no matter who tells it." How did a young idealist wind up using his high office to protect bankers from standing equal before the law? The same leader also wrote, as if in prescient rebuke to Holder: "I'm for justice, no matter who it's for or against."
With the recent loss of Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, I've thought a lot about my very first meeting with him 30 years ago and all that we shared since then.
There have been numerous reflections about his remarkable legacy as an influential thinker, author, teacher, and activist. In addition to these enduring contributions, another must be added: institution builder.
Without him, it is hard to imagine the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. This is not only because he led the 1978-79 presidential commission that recommended the creation of the museum and then went on to serve for six years as the founding chairman of the governing council that would oversee its development. Equally consequential, he imagined a very particular mission for the Museum that only he had the moral authority to envision and the precision of language to powerfully articulate.
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Today the Museum embodies that bold and ambitious mission but the struggle for what some felt was the soul of the institution was not without debate and controversy in those early years. Ultimately, due to the power of his moral clarity, intellect and eloquence, it was Elie's vision that would carry the day.
I first met Elie in 1986 shortly after I joined the staff of the project to build the museum. It was at a meeting of the presidentially-appointed U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council. I nervously anticipated meeting the renowned Elie Wiesel, who had not only authored Night (according to the New York Times, "a slim volume of terrifying power") but had also been recently named as the Nobel Peace Prize laureate. As it turned out, my apprehension was misplaced. Elie was warm and welcoming to me. But he threw the meeting into chaos when he announced to the group that he would be stepping down from the chairmanship of the Council believing that it was right time for others to bring the project to fruition.
President Bill Clinton (center), Elie Wiesel (right) and Harvey Meyerhoff, council chairman, (left) light the eternal flame outside the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum during the dedication ceremony on April 22, 1993 (U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum)
Over the next six years, Elie would emerge as a giant on the world stage, a symbol of the Holocaust and a universal voice of conscience. During that same period, a talented team would create the permanent exhibition of the Museum and in the process frequently debate the fundamental questions Elie had identified at the very outset.
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The outset was 1978, when President Jimmy Carter formed a commission, chaired by Elie Wiesel, and charged it with the preparation of a report "with respect to the establishment and maintenance of an appropriate memorial to those who perished in the Holocaust."
The commission determined that memory alone was insufficient. Education was also required. Education about the events of the Holocaust - decisions and actions, causes and consequences, lessons and legacies. But that led to a set of questions about the narrative of the exhibition and the role of the Museum itself. Was it to be "Jewish" or "universal"? Was it to be solely about remembrance and education, or also a call to action?
At a meeting of the commission in February 1979, Elie stated,
"The real discussion today, the substantive discussion, centered around the question: was the Holocaust a universal event, or solely a Jewish, and therefore, unique one? My answer: it was both. .... If we are to remember the Holocaust, it is not only because of the dead; it's too late for them. Nor only because of the survivors; it may be too late for them. Our remembering is an act of generosity...extended to all others. Our remembering aims at saving as many men and women as possibly from apathy to evil, if not from evil itself."
However, this universalist approach threatened to diminish the reality of this specifically Jewish event for some of the survivors, who were understandably still haunted by their horrific experiences from a mere three decades earlier.
In the end, the exhibition would reflect Elie's vision of "both" - the specificity of Holocaust history presented in ways that illuminate timeless lessons. Indeed the language of the 1979 President's Commission Report would turn out to be an apt description of both the exhibition and the institution itself as, in his words, "a living memorial":
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"We wish through the work of this commission to reach and transform as many human beings as possible. We hope to share our conviction that when war and genocide unleash hatred against any one people or peoples, all are ultimately engulfed in the fire..... To remember the Holocaust is to sensitize ourselves to its critical political lessons. Nazism was facilitated by the breakdown of democracy, the collapse of social and economic cohesion, the decline of human solidarity and an erosion of faith in the political leadership and in the ability of democratic governments to function."
In 1993, fourteen years after those words were written, Elie's speech at the Museum's dedication would embody the idea of a living memorial. In the context of speaking about his beloved mother and the world's failure to save her and the Jews of Europe, Elie, standing before thousands of Holocaust survivors and others, turned to a newly elected President Clinton, and said,
"Mr. President, I cannot not tell you something. I have been in the former Yugoslavia last fall. I cannot sleep since for what I have seen. As a Jew I am saying that we must do something to stop the bloodshed in that country! People fight each other and children die. Why? Something, anything must be done."
Three years later Elie would significantly advance the Museum's role as a living memorial when he launched a key recommendation of the President's Commission report that had been deferred: the Committee on Conscience, whose role was to address "the need to ensure that such a totally inhuman assault as the Holocaust--or any partial version thereof--never recurs."
In 1996, standing in the memorial space--the Hall of Remembrance--of the completed Museum building, Elie referred to the "long overdue" effort to create the Committee on Conscience. One of the most powerful ways to honor the memory of the victims of the Holocaust would be to call attention to genocidal threats today--and to do so in their name. The Museum was precisely the place to do it.
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Harking back to his admonition to President Clinton, he said,
"Some people claim that precisely because the Museum is about a unique tragedy we must not use it to denounce other injustices. A case in point: when in my address at the inauguration ceremony of this Museum I pleaded with President Clinton to do something for Sarajevo, I was criticized by a distinguished columnist. He said that I shouldn't have evoked Sarajevo on this 'sacred' ground. Well--this ground is not sacred. It is important, informative and instructive--it is all that and more. ....We are duty bound to listen to the voice of our conscience. The question is only how we formulate its advice and commandments. We must be careful when we relate other tragedies to our own. In other words, a reference to Auschwitz is possible and permissible; an analogy to Treblinka is not."
And he concluded with this harsh reminder:
"Killers always have more power than their victims. But we too have power--the power of conscience."
Elie made sure he was at the Museum when the call to conscience was needed. In 2007 he was present when President George W. Bush gave a policy speech on the genocide in Darfur and announced new steps to confront the ongoing atrocities perpetrated by the Sudanese government against some of its ethnic minorities.
In 2012 President Barack Obama invoked his visit with Elie to Buchenwald before announcing the formation of the U.S. Government's first-ever inter-agency Atrocities Prevention Board. Elie took that occasion to remind the world yet again of one of the Museum's central messages: the Holocaust was preventable.
"We must know that when evil has power it is almost too late. Preventative measures are important. We must use those measures to prevent another catastrophe."
Holocaust memory in all its singularity stands--and always will--at the heart of the Museum. But if memory has a purpose, then understanding the past should help us do better at shaping the future. My very last meeting with Elie was to discuss the Museum's Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide. As Elie said at the dedication ceremony, "the Museum is not an answer, it is a question mark." The institution is and provokes many questions. Thanks to Elie Wiesel, the question of whether the Museum should be a living memorial is no longer one of them.
The Kaptivators are a Manchester-based 6-piece. In theory a live hip hop act, the band fuse their varied influences - from funk to punk to rock & roll - and the result is a typically upbeat but complex sound that makes you move. I interviewed Kevin Harris, who fronts the band with his sister Susie, about the local music scene, and the undercurrent of disenfranchisement that affects many in the UK for Impolitikal.com.
Manchester has a pretty good live scene, is it quite hard to crack into, or easy enough if you're from here?
I'm actually not originally from Manchester, but I've been here about 10 years now. The band was formed in Manchester. I moved up here for city life, from down south, Northampton. I've always been a lyricist or a rapper on my own, and been into hip hop as long as I can remember. When I moved up to Manchester I met a lot more likeminded people, musically, and that's how I started making more actual, proper songs on the production side. When my sister was visiting, from Brighton, we went and saw a live hip hop band, and they asked if anyone in the crowd wanted to get on stage and do any MCing or singing. I got up and started doing something, and then the next thing my sister gets up and started singing. So we're both doing this impromptu freestyle and rapping and singing thing onstage. Everyone was buzzing off it, so straight after that I said, you know what? This is what I want to do, form a band.
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What was it that drew you to Manchester in the first place? Why here, not London, or one of the other cities?
Basically, I went to university in Wolverhampton. I met a lot of people while I was there, and a lot of them were from Manchester. It just happened that when I was back in Northampton I used to come and visit these guys in Manchester, and liked the vibe. It felt like a bit more of a community vibe, and it was easier for me to break into that community as well, with having a lot of friends up here. I liked the scene a lot and gradually decided to move up. Once I did it was no turning back basically, it was a really good decision. Culturally it just suited me, Manchester. You don't get lost as much as London, there's a lot more crossing over of boundaries and genres. We've played a lot of gigs, and there'll be a metal crowd or an indie crowd, and they'll be listening to our music. It's a slightly different vibe to some parts of London, where you've got your specific crowds and specific types of music.
What do you think about the Brexit outcome? Was it a big deal for you?
I didn't think I would care that much, and then when I saw the result the next day I felt a bit sad to be honest. Because it felt that we'd just sort of deserted a lot of what the EU stood for. Which was an inclusive, collaborative approach to a lot of the dangers, and also the benefits of a collaborative society with all of our European neighbours, and it seems we have given up on it based on a few things that may or may not be true. I didn't think that people were voting with the full information, that's what I felt. I can see that there could be benefits of leaving as well, but my heart is more in than out. I think unfortunately people were scared of a lot of things, like immigration and the EU didn't seem to be wanting to be flexible on certain issues, so maybe that's why people voted out in the end.
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I think the campaign was really mismanaged and misinformed, both campaigns were to blame really. It was quite easy to manipulate, because there was already a bit of a feeling towards things like immigration, so the Leave campaign played to the strengths of Ukip and all those sorts of organisations were popular for. They sort of cut through a bit more than what David Cameron's Remain argument was cutting through. It's just sad that we've left this organisation after 40 years. I don't know if they actually will leave it though, it might become too much of a mess to leave. I don't know what's going to happen next. Everything's just gone up in the air, hasn't it, now.
I guess it highlights as well the fact that the fears the Leave campaign tapped into are strong, and have been building.
Well yeah, I think it's been simmering along a little bit, especially maybe with the rise of Ukip, and those sort of organisations. It's a worrying time, I guess. I hope that everything settles down, and we manage to work out how we're going to move on from Brexit, because these things that you hear about attacks and things like that is not cool. I have a lot of friends that are not from England, they're all worried about what's the future for them. There's so many people that live here from abroad, they're all feeling a bit marginalised.
Whether or not it actually plays out that way is another story. It might just be a really massive wake-up call for the government.
Yeah, I'm kind of split on it. I think there was a problem with the EU, with the way it's run, and this is why it's come to this. But my heart says that we should stay in the EU, because we want to be able to collaborate and be involved with decisions that affect Europe, not just Britain.
Does this sort of thing motivate you when you're writing music?
I just try and get a feeling from a beat normally. Most of the stuff that I've written has been quite positive, uplifting stuff, or just genuinely stuff that I experience. We've got one song called 'The People', which I wrote after the riots - about two or three years ago. It was based loosely on the riots, the feeling that the people were feeling at the time, and it's just about people gathering together in opposition to wrongdoing by the powers that be.
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Police officer at sunset in New York City
When I was a young girl, about 10 years old in 1950, I came face to face with ugly, vile, stupid and dangerous discrimination: I cheered Jackie Robinson on with all my girl power to counteract what my father said was hatred aimed at Jackie for the color of his skin.
When I was with my mother in Florida, I saw African Americans forced to sit in the back of the bus. I turned to her for an explanation.
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"Segregation," she said.
Growing up in Brooklyn, this made no sense to me. My mother could have let it go. Instead, she told me to follow her to the back of the bus. Not that anyone noticed, but we knew exactly what we were doing.
The civil rights movement made enormous progress in changing our laws, but the trouble still remains in our hearts. There is still too much hatred and distrust in our communities.
Let's be clear: whether you are a police officer kissing his or her family goodbye in the morning or the parents of a young African American teenager, no one should ever have to fear that they won't see their loved ones that night.
Now is not the time to paint whole groups of people with a broad brush. That is the exact definition of prejudice!
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We need a de-escalation of suspicion and an escalation of trust.
It is long past time that we stood together, united. It is long past time that we look inside our hearts, look inside our souls and banish the hatred.
We must instead embrace each other as God's creation.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr wrote,
Men often hate each other because they fear each other; they fear each other because they don't know each other; they don't know each other because they cannot communicate; they cannot communicate because they are separated.
We begin that conversation by breaking down the barriers that separate us, bridging the gap between communities and law enforcement, and establishing trust. Healing will begin in the streets - and it should. Policing should be for the community, by the community and with the community!
When I was a County Supervisor in the 1970s, there were issues between police and the community, so I recommended and my colleagues concurred in a new system of community policing. Relationships developed, and it seemed so right that I was shocked to learn that not enough communities were following this same community policing method.
Where it exists, there is cooperation and true protection of the community and it is an obvious step that should be implemented widely. There are five steps the federal government should take right away:
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1.We should pass the PRIDE ACT, my legislation with Senator Cory Booker, which would require states to report to the Department of Justice (DOJ) every incident when an officer is shot by a civilian, a civilian is shot by an officer, and when the use-of-force by or against an officer results in serious bodily harm or death - so that both sides are treated fairly. It would also provide funding to states for use-of-force training for law enforcement agencies and personnel, including de-escalation and bias training, and for tip lines, hotlines and public awareness announcements to gain information regarding use-of-force against the police.
2.We should increase federal funding for DOJ's Community Policing Development (CDP) Program, which provided law enforcement agencies nationwide with only $8 million last year in federal funding to implement innovative community policing practices.
3.We should provide dedicated funding for DOJ programs to initiate formal gatherings or summits to bring community members and police into one conversation.
4.We should formally recognize and encourage police departments that epitomize what it means to be a "keeper of the peace" and establish a Community Policing Innovation Fund at DOJ to reward law enforcement agencies and localities that are doing the right thing.
5.We should address gun violence by passing legislation to keep military-style weapons off our streets, expand background checks - an idea supported by almost 90 percent of the American people and a majority of NRA members - to help keep guns out of the hands of criminals and the mentally ill, prohibit the sale or possession of high-capacity magazines, and end the ban preventing the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) from researching gun violence.
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My state of California just created a new research center on gun violence to better understand the impact of firearm fatalities and injuries and hopefully prevent and reduce them in the future. This must also happen at the federal level.
We need a layered defense to protect our communities from criminals and terrorists who want to inflict mass casualties, and that is what these proposals would provide.
There will always be bad people, lost people, mean people, but we cannot and must not allow them to poison our nation. Good people - and that's most of America - must join hands across every line that divides us: race, religion, color and creed.
We must call out the racists and the haters, whoever they are and wherever they are. Some may even be in elected office!
We must support those who believe in community policing and not support those who refuse to admit that there is a problem with profiling and brutality.
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We must support those activists who bring us together and support steps to improve our institutions and reject those who inflame fears.
We must speak out and support those who believe that this is the United States of America, not the Divided States of America!
I know America, and I believe we will overcome.
My colleague and dear friend, Congressman John Lewis, who was beaten, bloodied and jailed while fighting for civil rights, tells this story:
I saw those signs that said 'white men,' 'colored men,' 'white women,' 'colored women,' 'white waiting,' 'colored waiting.'
I would come home and ask my mother, my father, my grandparents, my great-grandparents, 'Why?'
They would say: 'That's the way it is. Don't get in the way. Don't get in trouble.'
In 1957, I met Rosa Parks at the age of 17.
In 1958, at the age of 18, I met Martin Luther King Jr., and these two individuals inspired me to get in the way, to get in trouble.
So, I encourage you to find a way to get in the way. You must find a way to get in trouble -- good trouble, necessary trouble.
We are blessed as this hero, John Lewis, is still a leading member of Congress. We must listen to him!
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Our job is to get in the way of prejudice and hate. Our job is to move forward with respect and understanding, with tolerance and love.
Our Founding Fathers knew we were not a perfect union, but it is our job to make it more perfect. And it is truly our job, each and every one of us.
Well written summer reads can fill you with awe, wonder and keep you on the edge of your seat.
As I was planning my summer holidays I started to think about the books I'd like to read this summer. Whether you're travelling, lounging by the pool, have sand between your toes or just want something to read before bedtime, getting lost in a good book is definitely one of lives simpler pleasures and a must-do for summer. Many of my own trips have been inspired by reading travel books such as Eat Pray Love and Wild.
Here are my favourite summer reads:
100 Places To Go Before They Disappear by Patrick Drew and Archbishop Desmond Tutu
What would our world look like if the planet's average temperature were to rise by only a few degrees? Cities including Venice, Bangkok, London, Chicago, and New York would experience severe flooding. The tea fields of Sri Lanka and the vineyards of France would suffer under heat and drought. Beijing and Timbuktu would be transformed into deserts, and the Great Barrier Reef's coral colonies would die. This stunning book will inspire travellers and environmentalists to help save the gorgeous places that might soon be only a memory.
In To The Wild by John Krakauer
In To The Wild follows Christopher McCandless after he graduates from college, donates his savings to charity, and sets off across the United States in search of a deeper meaning to life. Throughout his journey he meets people from all walks of life and also finds a deeper insight into his own life and the life he left behind. Unfortunately, he was found dead by hikers in Alaska after eating the wrong type of berries in desperation for food. It is an inspirational story about breaking the mould and following your dreams.
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Calm by Michael Acton Smith
Modern life is hectic and relentless: trains delayed, endless emails filling the inbox, kids squabbling before bedtime... There has never been a more important time to rediscover your pause button. Calm is the book that will show you how to take back a little bit of peace, space and all-important calm. This book contains the simple tools, tricks and habits that will change the rest your life. It is a practical and pleasurable guide to twenty-first century mindfulness.
How To Pack by Lonely Planet
Packing is an art, a science or, for some, a necessary evil that needs to be tackled before the journey even begins. No matter where you are heading, or how you are getting there, How to Pack for Any Trip by Lonely Planet contains tips, techniques and advice that will help unleash the packing pro within. Whether you're going on a beach break, jungle trek, weekend jaunt or six-month expedition, take the pain out of packing with Lonely Planet's How to Pack for Any Trip.
Holy Cow by Sarah MacDonald
Holy Cow is authored by Journalist Sarah MacDonald as she writes about her experience moving to India to follow her boyfriend, despite vowing never to return after a visit a few years before. The book features amazing insights into Indian culture and its differences from the West, from family, marriage, and dating to class breakdowns. It provides real insight in to the way many travellers settle in to new lives across the world and the challenges they often face.
Advice from My 80-Year-Old Self by Susan O'Malley
Thats the question social-practice artist Susan OMalley (1976-2015) asked more than a hundred ordinary people of every age, and from every walk of life. OMalley collected their responseswords of encouragement, truth, and generosityand transformed them into the distinctive text-based images gathered in this book. Together, they reveal the wisdom we all hold inside ourselves right now.
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Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding
This is is the book I go back to time and time again. And seeing as the film is coming out in September now is a better time than ever to get up to speed with what happened over 10 years ago. The story follows the mishaps and love life of Londoner Bridget Jones, written in the style of a diary and following several years in Bridget's often wayward shoes, each book showcases her adventures in falling in love, reinforcing friendships, establishing her career and dealing with ageing - making them sometimes embarrassingly truthful reflections of every single woman's 30s and 40s.
Putting this article together gave me an opportunity step back and observe the landscape that medical cannabis policy has created. The work of medical cannabis advocates and brave legislators is truly saving lives. Positive outcomes from medical cannabis policies are driving more states to create and improve programs. With more than 300 million Americans living in the 42 states, along with D.C., Guam, and Puerto Rico, where some kind of medical cannabis law has been passed, there is a strong platform for politicians to move forward on this issue.
After putting this list together, it is mind-blowing to me that Senator Grassley will not allow the Compassionate Access, Research Expansion, and Respect States (CARERS) Act (S. 683/H.R. 1538) a vote in the Senate Judiciary Committee, especially considering that 78% of people in his own state of Iowa support medical cannabis. Maybe this is one of the reasons he is struggling with his campaign for re-election. This important bill would remedy the state-federal conflict over medical marijuana law; allowing (not requiring) states that want to participate in medical cannabis programs to do so without breaking federal law.
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Maybe Grassley just needs to see this list too
1. CARERS has Growing Support from Mainstream Republicans, such as Senator Graham (R-NC) and Congressman Young (R-IA)
2. National Patient Organizations Are Calling for Change in Federal Law
Yesterday, Americans for Safe Access (ASA) delivered a letter on behalf of 13 patient-based organizations to Senators Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Representatives Joe Pitts (R-PA) and Gene Green (D-TX) urging them to give the Compassionate Access, Research Expansion, and Respect States (CARERS) Act a vote in the United States Senate Judiciary Committee and House Committee on Energy and Commerce: Subcommittee on Health, respectively. The letter was signed by Americans for Safe Access, Citizens United for Research in Epilepsy (CURE), Danny Did Foundation, Epilepsy Foundation, Finding a Cure for Epilepsy and Seizures (FACES), Hope4Harper, Hope for Hypothalamic Hamartomas, Lennox-Gastaut Syndrome (LGS) Foundation, National Multiple Sclerosis Society, National Womens Health Network, Realm of Caring, The Michael J. Fox Foundation, and Tuberous Sclerosis Alliance.
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This letter follows another group letter sent in April addressed to DEA Acting Administrator Chuck Rosenberg stating Moving cannabis from Schedule I in the Controlled Substances Act would lift federal barriers to research on cannabis, which would ultimately lead to new treatments as well as much needed information that can help families make informed choices about medical cannabis.
3. States Keep Passing Medical Cannabis Laws
So far in 2016, Pennsylvania and Ohio have passed medical cannabis laws, with possibly two more (Arkansas and Missouri) passing initiatives in November. In April, Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf signed SB 3. The bill, introduced by Senator Mike Folmer, passed the House of Representatives on April 13 with a vote of 149-46. The bill will allow patients with cancer, HIV/AIDS, multiple sclerosis, PTSD, seizures, autism, sickle cell anemia, and intractable pain to obtain medical cannabis with a doctors recommendation. In May, the Ohio Senate passed HB 523 by a vote of 18-15, which will create a retail dispensary framework for medical cannabis in the state.
4. States Continue to Improve Medical Cannabis Laws
Many states with existing medical cannabis laws are working to make those programs even better. In February, the Virginia Senate passed SB 701 by a vote of 37 to 2. This bill will allow for the production and manufacturing of cannabidiol (CBD) and THCA extracts. This was a big step towards creating safe access for patients and their caregivers. In April, the Maryland Senate passed HB 104, Medical Cannabis - Written Certifications - Certifying Providers by a vote of 36-10 allowing podiatrists, nurse midwives and nurse practitioners, in addition to physicians, to provide written certifications for medical cannabis to qualifying patients. Florida voters will be deciding on improvements to their program this November through a referendum.
5. New CDC Guidelines Instruct Pain Doctors Not to Test for THC
In March, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, made a bold statement in their guidelines for prescribing opioid medications for pain, instructing clinicians not to dismiss patients from care due to THC in their system. Experts noted that there might be uncertainty about the clinical implications of a positive urine drug test for tetrahyrdocannabinol (THC)...Clinicians should not dismiss patients from care based on a urine drug test result because this could constitute patient abandonment and could have adverse consequences for patient safety."
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For many years patients have been denied or terminated from receiving medications for pain due to their use of medical cannabis, and in some cases, positive THC results also had legal consequences. While the CDC is not saying that clinicians should never test for THC, the guidelines recommend that clinicians should only test for substances for which results would be used to guide patient management.
6. Largest Pharmaceutical Retailer Acknowledges Medical Benefits of Cannabis
In April 2016, Walgreens, the largest retailer of pharmaceuticals in the U.S. with stores in all 50 states, posted What is medical marijuana? by Dahlia Sultan, PharmD, Resident Pharmacist for Walgreens and the University of Illinois at Chicago on the Walgreens Tumblr site. Much like statements made by the National Cancer Institute last year, the post talks about the many conditions that medical cannabis can treat, methods of delivery, possible side effects, and how to obtain the medicine, while encouraging the reader to talk with your doctor for more information. The post illustrates the reality for healthcare professionals such as pharmacists who are dealing with the growing interest in cannabis therapies despite federal prohibition.
7. Politicians Breaking Political Boundaries for Medical Cannabis
Georgia Representative Allen Peake who authored Georgias current law known as Haleighs Hope Act (HB1), publicly admitted to breaking the law to bring medical marijuana to patients in Georgia. The current Georgia law does not provide for cultivation, production, and distribution in the state, so patients and caregivers must go elsewhere to obtain the oils and bring them back to Georgia. So Peake, a Republican, did it for them.
In May, the Utah Democratic Party's nominee for governor, Mike Weinholtz, revealed that his wife is facing a criminal investigation for using medical cannabis to treat arthritis and chronic pain. In a brave statement, Weinholtz said that they were happy to be the public face for this issue now in the hope it will help others in their state. If elected, Weinholtz said he would sign a medical marijuana bill.
Also last month, while giving a speech on Capitol Hill, Representative Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) admitted that he began using a medical cannabis topical a few weeks before to treat arthritis pain, telling the group that it was "the first time in a year and a half that I had a decent nights sleep because the arthritis pain was gone.
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8. Studies Continue to Show Public Health Benefits in States with Medical Cannabis
Studies have shown that state-run medical cannabis programs have little to no negative impacts on public health, but instead, positive effects on public health outcomes. A recent study from University of Georgia found Medicare experienced a savings of $165.2 million on prescription drugs across the then 17 states and the District of Columbia with medical cannabis laws. The report suggests that this savings would have reached $468 million if all states had medical cannabis programs. This is exciting news for the country!
But benefits to the public are not just financial. The Journal of American Medicine found that States with medical cannabis laws had a 24.8% lower mean annual opioid overdose mortality rate compared with states without medical cannabis laws. This study backs up a 2015 National Bureau of Economic Research report that found, providing broader access to medical marijuana may have the potential benefit of reducing abuse of highly addictive painkillers.
9. Both Presidential Candidates Support Medical Cannabis
On the campaign trail both Trump and Clinton pledged their support for the state medical cannabis programs.Although a Governor Christie lead transition team or serving as Attorney General could put a damper on medical cannabis policies.
Last week, the Democrats added medical cannabis policy to the platform: Because of conflicting laws concerning marijuana, both on the federal and state levels, we encourage the federal government to remove marijuana from its list as a Class 1 Federal Controlled Substance, providing a reasoned pathway for future legalization
10. Opponents Know they are Losing this Fight
In June, a new bill, the bipartisan Medical Marijuana Research Act of 2016, was introduced. Surprisingly, this bill was sponsored by several known medical cannabis opponents, including Representative Andy Harris (R-Md.), one of Congress's most vocal opponent of legal marijuana, Other sponsors included, Earl Blumenauer (D-OR), Sam Farr (D-CA), and Morgan Griffith (R-VA), and in the Senate; Brian Schatz, (D-HI), Orrin Hatch (R-UT), Chris Coons, (D-DE), and Thom Tillis (R-NC). While it should be commended that they are making a step towards removing federal barriers to medical cannabis research, this bill does nothing to protect state programs and patients. It is their way of saying, we are losing this fight, so we must give something in return.
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Ending the conflict between state and federal medical cannabis laws is the most important goal for keeping patients safe, and for that reason, it is important to remain focused on passing the CARERS Act, which would protect existing state programs and patients. While more research is certainly desirable, patients cannot wait for the years or decades it may take for the results of this research to drive further Federal policy changes.
If nothing's done, "the [Mekong] delta's agricultural production will be exhausted in the next three years."
About 45 percent of Vietnams Mekong Delta, where more than half of the countrys rice is grown, will be affected by saltwater intrusion by 2030 if hydropower dams and reservoirs along the Mekong River stop water from flowing downstream, said the Ministry of Planning and Investment.
If we dont come up with solutions right now, the deltas agricultural production will be exhausted in the next three years. And by 2030, up to 45 percent of the Mekong Deltas areas will be salinitized, the governments online news portal quoted Nguyen Van Hieu, deputy minister of Planning and Investment, as saying.
Vietnam has been struggling with its worst drought since French colonial administrators began recording statistics in 1926.
A joint rapid assessment, carried out by the Vietnamese government, the United Nations and non-governmental organizations in March, estimated that in the 18 of the country's most severely affected provinces, as many as two million people have no access to clean water and 1.1 million are in need of food aid.
The agriculture sector took a hit from the adverse weather conditions, said the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, adding that the sector recorded negative growth of 0.7 percent during the first half of the year.
The historic natural disaster has taken a heavy toll on agricultural production. Thousands of hectares of fruit, rice and sugar crops have been destroyed.
The Department for Agricultural Economy under the Ministry of Planning and Investment said the country's south central region, Central Highlands and southern Mekong Delta have been hit hardest.
Saltwater has made its way nearly 80 kilometers inland in the Mekong Delta, official statistics show.
Experts estimated that the prolonged drought, along with falling groundwater levels, have increased salinity levels in inland areas to as high as 23ppt (23,000 milligrams of salt per liter).
The buildup of salt in soil has reached toxic levels making it impossible for plants to grow.
The intensified saltwater intrusion has hit Vietnams 2015-2016 winter/spring paddy crop, which accounts for about 45 percent of annual production.
The Mekong Delta, which accounts for half of the winter/spring output, recorded the highest losses. Official reports show that the drought has hammered the deltas production down by 1.1 million tons from the same period last year to 10 million tons, the U.S. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said in a food security brief released on July 5.
The FAO forecast that Vietnams total rice output is likely to fall this year by 2 percent from last year to 44.5 million tons.
The countrys rice exports will also decline somewhat, due to a combination of tighter export availabilities and reduced demand, said the FAO.
Reuters cited industry analysts last month as saying that Vietnams rice exports this year will dip 4.45 percent from last year to 6.44 million tons. The country produced a record 45.21 million tons of paddy in 2015 and exported around 30 percent of the output, mainly to China, the Philippines and Indonesia.
Rice has not been the only victim of the prolonged drought and salinity; it has also taken a heavy toll on the countrys shrimp production.
The latest report released by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development said that as of June, the worst drought and saltwater intrusion in almost 100 years had ravaged 83,000 hectares of shrimp farms.
The southernmost province of Ca Mau, which accounts for 25 percent of the countrys shrimp production, last month recorded a loss of VND260 billion (about $12 million) in shrimp production, with 52,000 hectares of affected areas.
According to a new estimate, the most severe drought and salinity in almost a century has caused some VND4.7 trillion ($300 million) in lost agricultural production in the Mekong Delta.
The Mekong Delta in the south of Vietnam contains 12 provinces: Long An, Tien Giang, Vinh Long, Ben Tre, Dong Thap, Tra Vinh, An Giang, Hau Giang, Bac Lieu, Soc Trang, Kien Giang and Ca Mau, plus the city of Can Tho.
Related News:
> Drought and salinity rock Vietnam's economy in first half of 2016
> El Nino drought leaves millions hungry and in need of drinking water in Vietnam
> UN backs Vietnam's call for $48.5 mln in aid to combat record drought
Epilepsy is one of those silent diseases that continues to take lives each and every day. It is medically defined as a disorder that occurs when a person has two or more seizures which have not been provoked by specific events such as trauma, infection, fever, or chemical change, he or she is considered to have epilepsy. Each year in the United States of America alone estimates that 50,000 deaths occur due to Sudden Unexpected Death in Epilepsy (SUDEP). Additionally, each and every year epilepsy costs the American health care system $15.5 billion dollars each year.
While America continues to struggle with finding a cure for epilepsy our friends in Canada are dealing with the same epidemic. Many parents in Canada that are having to deal with watching their children suffer from difficult to treat forms of epilepsy have found that hemp oil has been the key in heling them control their children's seizures.
Parents of 19 cbd oil users were informed recently that they were no longer taking Canadian orders because the shipments of their products were being stopped at the Canadian borders. In Canada it is the legal obligation of those who work at the border control agency to stop packages that contain marijuana from entering into the country because drugs are still illegal in the country.
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Parents in Canada are devastated because there is no comparable product being made in Canada that will help them treat seizures. Alan Repetski, the father of a young four-year-old daughter who suffers from severe epilepsy believes "CBD has no psychotropic effects and shouldn't be banned under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act".
Despite the outrage among many parents in Canada the government Canada continues to stand by its law that it doesn't matter what your medical need is for the drug it is still illegal to bring the drug across the border.
Francis Crick, shared the Nobel Prize in 1962 for discerning the structure of DNA. It was perhaps the most important biological discovery of the past century. But then Crick became fascinated with the nature of consciousness, an imprecise and controversial field at the time, and moved from England to La Jolla, CA, to the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. His granddaughter Kindra Crick, a cell biologist and artist who created the DNA sculpture called "What Mad Pursuit" for the billion dollar Crick Institute in London, recalls those heady times of early science on La Jolla's Mesa, "The Miracle Coast."
Intellectual Capital: How did you come to the Salk?
Kindra Crick: The summer after my freshman year at Princeton University I was trying to decide my major so my granddad, Francis Crick, arranged for me to be an intern in a neuroscience lab where he worked. This was so I could to learn the nitty gritty of research. In Dr. Martyn Goulding's lab, I helped perform experiments running DNA gels and watching neural tube development (cells that ultimately form the brain and spinal cord) under the microscope.
Intellectual Capital: What was the Salk like then?
Coming from Seattle the Salk was bathed in sunshine. The labs seemed busy even during the summer and there were a number of stimulating lectures. One was on a computer-learning program that could determine the gender of both chimps and humans from a photograph. After training it would even rate a face on how masculine or feminine it was. There was good camaraderie and the labs surrounding mine would get together on Fridays for drinks and barbecues on the weekends. I played on the lab's softball team.
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My granddad had made the move to the Salk in 1976. With this came a shift in the focus of his own research from work in molecular biology in England at the Medical Research Council to the brain and consciousness at the Salk in California. Then 60 years old, he wanted to tackle a problem that had been a lifelong interest, the brain. He wanted to move the field that treated the brain like a black box, where one only gained insight from resulting actions, to a field that would uncover the mechanism and functions that lead to how humans perceive the world, what happens during sleep and the elusive actions inside our skull that constitute our conscious world upon waking.
Intellectual Capital: Which scientists impressed you?
I vividly remember a long lunch with Dr. V.S. Ramachandran who spoke enthusiastically about his work with patients with phantom limbs who sometimes experienced excruciating pain in a hand or arm that was no longer present. He had discovered that with the use of a simple mirror he could instruct amputees to look at the mirror image of their working hand, which appeared to take the place of the missing one, and unclench it to relieve their phantom pain. My granddad was an attentive listener and would occasionally probe with a targeted question, but I realized a few years later when reading Dr. Ramachandran's book 'Phantoms in the Brain' that we had discussed many of the central themes and imaginative experiments in that book.
Another scientist that made a lasting impression was my granddad's long-time collaborator, Christof Koch. He would come by the house often while I was there, and they would discuss and debate the way the visual system worked in the brain. A conversation that stood out was how one perceived the blueness of blue. At first, I didn't understand the question, although it seemed like such a simple one. We walked through the basics of wavelength and the mechanisms of the eye with its cones and rods. And then we jumped into the visual cortex and the more abstract part of the question which was why at a particular wavelength our perception changes and we have a name for this color and there is a quality to that color that is a sensation separate from its name and the objects that we perceive to be blue. A quality missing, for example, from something outside our realm of seeing, like ultraviolet. One can describe everything about ultraviolet, but with our naked eye it does not possess a sensation of color like blue does, in our mind.
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Intellectual Capital: What was it like living with Francis and your grandmother Odile Crick?
My grandparents lived in a quiet cul-de-sac near the top of Mount Soledad in La Jolla. I stayed in a large guest room which had its own entrance with French doors opening onto the deck and pool. People came over for dinner and lunch, but there were no large parties at the house that summer, as my granddad had been having slight heart problems. We did attend a few parties that summer, the most memorable being the one to celebrate the 85th birthday of Bradley Smith, the noted Life magazine photographer. Intellectual musings tended to be at smaller gatherings and over leisurely lunches by the pool, and most of the guests my grandparents entertained were photographers, painters or scientists.
Intellectual Capital: Do you visit the Salk now? How have things changed?
Not only did Francis end up tackling the problem of consciousness himself, collaborating with Koch, but he was slowly and deliberately recruiting some of the best and brightest to unlock the black box of the mind. For example, my granddad gathered with a small group of scientists who called themselves the Helmholtz Club. This group brought together scientists from various research fields as neuroanatomy, neurophysiology, psychophysics, computer science and engineering. All had an interest in the study of the visual system and of higher cognitive functions relying on visual perception such as visual consciousness. I believe one of the reasons San Diego and The Salk have become a hub of neuroscience research today is based partly on the work and vision of the scientists who attended those monthly meetings. The study of the brain is a burgeoning field and we are right in the middle of it. I have been told by many of my granddad's peers, that he was a tremendous inspiration and influence.
Intellectual Capital: And talk of your own art, its roots or themes--
At Princeton, I embraced the study of molecular biology but balanced it with my passion for drawing and painting by developing visuals and materials for campus theater. Biology itself is a visual subject, rich with a tradition in observation and communication through art. I still enjoy research, but I feel most driven when I am making art. My early experiments with the marriage of art and science came while at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. In my paintings, I incorporated imagery from my observations under the microscope in the lab where I had worked on [breast cancer genes] BRCAI and BRCA2. Cancerous fibroblasts would envelop my canvas in layers. The birth of my daughter and my obsession with the new research on the biological basis of love fully crystalized my passion for merging science and visual expression. A series of prints and paintings questioning the science and symbolism of one of our most basic drives, love, soon followed. Now I create work that gives visual expression to the wonder and process of scientific inquiry.
Intellectual Capital: And your approach to your new sculpture--
I was invited to paint 'What's in My DNA?' on a seven-foot double helix-inspired sculpture.
This sculpture was part of Cancer Research UK's campaign to raise awareness for the soon-to-be-finished Francis Crick Institute in London. Twenty-one sculptures were created by world-leading artists and designers, including Ai Weiwei, Zaha Hadid, and Benjamin Shine, based on what's in their DNA.
My sculpture, What Mad Pursuit, explores the creative possibilities achievable through the intermingling of art, science and imagination in the quest for knowledge. The piece is inspired by my grandparent's contribution to the discovery of the structure of DNA. My grandmother, Odile Crick, was the artist who first drew the iconic image of the double helix molecule.
Half of my double helix sculpture is a chalkboard layered with the patina of science. I christened the chalkboard by writing, erasing and rubbing in the dust the words from some of my favorite scientists, including Oliver Sacks. What I left visible for the viewer to discover are handwritten notations from my granddad's letters and his many chalkboards. The complementary helix strand is a flourish of vibrant blue bordered by a golden helix. The abstracted growing forms that spread and mutate up the sculpture can be seen as cellular life or as a metaphor for infectious ideas.
Intellectual Capital: Why "Mad Pursuit?"
I took the title 'What Mad Pursuit' from the title of my granddad's 1988 memoir and essays on scientific discovery. My granddad chose that title from a line in the Keats poem "Ode on a Grecian Urn." It is a nice banter between art and science and speaks to the mad pursuit of both, and sold earlier this year at Christie's London, at an auction that raised $500,000 for the Francis Crick Institute, a leading center of biomedical research and innovation due to open in 2016.
Cold Spring Harbor,100th Anniversary of Francis Crick's Birth. Clockwise from bott. left, Mike Crick, Anne Churchland, Kindra Crick, Bob Olby, Jim Watson (original Nobel,) friend, Liz Watson, Ludmilla Pollock, Yours Truly. I had the salmon.
This story is about a young man I know who began working in the IT department of a local hospital. His mother also worked in the same hospital. He was skilled, excited, and committed.
Eventually he was promoted and saw other opportunities. He wound up in the billing department. Then, this is what he found.
His job was basically to tell patients that their insurance company has denied insurance coverage. For things like colonoscopies, biopsies, radiation therapy, and many other treatments.
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He also had to tell them that they would have to pay for a CT scan at their hospital or clinic, knowing that at other clinics the same test was hundreds of dollars cheaper.
This young man did this day after day, speaking to patients who lived in his own community. He had to listen to their frustrations, their helplessness, and he had to be the single voice of rejection when he had no power to change or alter the outcome.
He also had to lie, withholding information that would have helped, and did so as part of his job.
It wore on him. It saddened him and infuriated him. After a time, he left the job and the hospital.
Nurses Face Similar Challenges
On a day-to-day basis, nurses work within a health care system that controls everything from medication, length of stay, to how many patients they care for on a shift. And each day, choices are made, choices that are narrowed by the "rules" of the system and the insurance of the particular patient.
While changing the health care system may be daunting and mired in political posturing, on a one-to-one basis it is possible to extend compassion and caring in every interaction with patients, family members, and co-workers.
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There is nothing generous about saying no. However, there are opportunities to reach out and find a work-around. The frustration that nurses feel is also experienced by teachers who want to help students when the educational system ignores what they need.
The more personal nurses can reach into the dilemma of their patients, the greater chance they will find some way to help.
Be Your Own Advocate & Rely on Others to Help
From my own experiences and that of others, I believe that most people know little about how the U.S. health care system and insurance works. There are few absolutes in insurance; in fact, every decision can be appealed and many are eventually served without financial risk.
This document from the Patient Advocate Foundation provides some guidance for appeals, but seriously, when confronted with an urgent diagnosis, it is difficult to think straight.
In reality, the best insurance is a social network of people who love you, care about you, and can get information for you when you need it. Believe me when I say that you, too, have lots of resources you can bring to the table in an emergency.
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Without question, relationships that are close, trusted, and reliable are each a kind of health insurance. Our friends and family members don't have access to MRI machines or laboratories. But, they can help us get there, help us fill out forms, and find others to help us understand what we cannot understand.
The Johns Hopkins Center to Eliminate Cardiovascular Health Disparities has studied the many factors that contribute to people not receiving the care they need. These include everything from geographic location to not having the right insurance, not having transportation, and not having the time off from work to see a doctor. Social isolation carries with it the highest risk.
Ever suffer from the travel itch? You know, that feeling you get when you haven't traveled or explored somewhere new in awhile? Symptoms include anxiety, irritation and maybe even a little anger (sorry innocent folks who've had to deal with this).
I've had the travel itch many times. While I don't love the act of flying itself, to not go anywhere for an extended period of time makes me not feel like myself. It's the sign of a true travel addict.
And while in theory it would be easy to just book a flight and go, there are a few practical matters to take into account: 1. Jobs and vacation time 2. Funds (which are not unlimited, though one can dream) and 3. Life (appointments, family obligations and so on).
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The problem is that I have unlimited wanderlust and what sometimes feels like a desperate need to satisfy it. Fortunately, I have found a few ways that help me combat the travel itch in between trips:
Explore a New Neighborhood in Your City
This feels like a no-brainer, but so often, we take advantage of our cities and stick to our usual routines. We visit the same friends in the same neighborhoods and don't often venture off the local beaten path. I am completely guilty of this, but I have been trying to break up my routine when I can. I recently attended an event in Brooklyn and realized it had been years since I wandered the Brooklyn Heights neighborhood. On top of that, the day was predicted to be a stunning one. So, I ducked out of the event a little early, whipped out my sunglasses and had a nice leisurely stroll through Brooklyn Heights and Brooklyn Bridge Park. I had no direction and no agenda, just a desire to explore a new area. I ended the day feeling energized and happy, the result of an afternoon of explorations. The day calmed my travel itch and left me in a pleasant mood.
Try Something New in Your Neighborhood
On a similar note, in addition to exploring a new neighborhood in your city, why not explore your own neighborhood and see what you discover. I tend to do this when the weather starts warming up, or what it's starting to cool down; basically the sweet spots when it's not boiling hot outside. Every time I set out to try something new -- a new coffee shop, restaurant, park or museum -- I get the same sense of satisfaction that I get when trying something new during my travels. It's the act of discovery that's appealing, and something I am open to in whatever form I can get. A few months after I moved into my neighborhood, I was in between trips and decided to spend a free Saturday roaming the area. That decision led to the discovery of an interesting art installation featuring a floating, transparent Buddha in New York's East River. Local explorations for the win.
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Embrace the Day Trip or Weekend Getaway
I am all about the day trip/weekend getaway, though I admittedly don't do this nearly often enough. For me, it's probably the best way to satisfy wanderlust because, while not a huge, go-all-out vacation, it's a great way to see a nice place in a limited amount of time. This has been especially valuable for me as I have a full-time job and can't exactly go off for weeks at a time. I've written in the past about some of my favorite local New York getaways. In addition to those, there are plenty of other places that make for a great weekend trip. In fact, I'm trying to think of where I would not want to go because the list of places I want to see is pretty long. One place that I always enjoy: Philadelphia. I recently visited a close friend in the City of Brotherly Love and had a great time exploring new parts of the city. Perfect for my travel itch!
Read About Travel or Watch Travel Shows
This may be because I'm a media junkie, but I love consuming travel through various mediums. No, it's not exactly like the real thing and it often does fuel my wanderlust even more but it also, strangely, satisfies me. When I open a travel magazine or read a travel-related novel, I get caught up in the words and (in the case of the magazines) images, and it makes me excited. I've also recently gotten into several travel shows and documentaries. A friend of mine pointed me in the direction of Viceland's Huang's World and Gaycation, two fascinating series with completely different takes on exploring a new place. Of course, I also love catching episodes of Parts Unknown and, though not quite a travel show, I remain obsessed with House Hunters International. It satisfies both the wanderluster and nester in me.
Plan Your Next Trip (And Maybe the Trip After That)
I love me some travel plans. I think, of all the ways to satisfy my wanderlust, this is number one. Some may argue that trip planning is actually fueling my wanderlust rather than satisfying it, but I think it's both. I feel more patience after planning a trip because, though I'm not traveling now, I'm excited about what's to come and feel okay to wait. It's the pleasure of anticipation, which studies show can make one happier than the event itself. Now, if you're like me, not only are you planning your next trip, you're planning the trip after that, and after that, and so on. I'm even starting to think about 2017 and where I need to go next year (and maybe the year after that). It's just how I'm wired, and I find that it helps by giving me a new adventure to look forward to. And who can say no to a new adventure?
How do you satisfy your wanderlust in between trips?
With Britain set to leave the EU, the veto against deeper political, economic, and defense integration is seemingly out of the picture. "Ever closer union" is now a practicable prospect. Following the vote to Leave the EU, Chancellor Merkel and President Hollande released a white-paper outlining a vision for deeper economic and political integration once Britain formally triggers Article 50 and the exit process begins. This proposal, unofficial as of yet, will set the tone for the future of the EU. Will reform mean more or less Europe? Will the EU be given more powers to regulate and tax the economy, secure the external borders, and guide the foreign affairs of the continent, or will these powers return to the member states? These are not questions that are asked simply for the sake of having a debate. These questions demand answers. These answers will come from continental Europe (and Rep. of Ireland), where pro-EU sentiment is strong. With the UK removing itself from the scene, deeper integration is not just likely, it is inevitable.
Since Thatcher, British attitudes towards the EU have been largely skeptical, if not outright hostile. British politicians (on the left and right) have supplanted a deeply ingrained distrust of the Brussels machine, lambasting its bureaucracy, regulatory regime or even its legitimacy. The cries during the referendum campaign about British sovereignty being chiseled away by EU technocrats were not new- they've been the pillar of the euroskeptic mantra since the Thatcher years. That said, however, the reality is that the only country that has ever really held these attitudes at such a mainstream level is the United Kingdom. Since the introduction of the euro in 2000, Eurozone countries have committed to deeper political and economic union at each juncture because the success of the common currency, Schengen, and the Single Market depend on it.
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The European Central Bank, the European Stability Mechanism, the European Investment Bank, and the euro itself, all rely on the 19 eurozone countries to adopt similar fiscal and monetary policies. And with Britain out of the way and the threat of a veto all but gone, expect to see more economic authority transferred from member states to the EU over the next few years.
Already, we have seen Germany Finance Minister Wolfgang Schauble call for an EU-wide corporation tax to pay for infrastructure investment in the southern countries. Such a move would give Brussels greater economic authority, paving the way for a tax-and-spend prerogative to be shifted permanently to the EU from member states.
Pundits claiming to know the pulse of European political sentiment argue that the remaining 27 states want to see less EU intervention, not more. While it is true that public distrust of EU institutions is at an all-time high, it is by no means held by a majority of EU nationals. Given the enormity of the challenges facing Europe at this present time in history, the case for a emboldened and visionary EU is clear. There must be a common European policy on refugee placement. There must be a common European policy on external border security. There must be a common European policy on fiscal and monetary matters, particularly debt and deficit reductions and targets. And finally, there must be a common European policy on taxation and tax avoidance. No member state- especially no eurozone country- should give preferential treatment to corporations who are based or hire in that country like Luxembourg and Ireland have done in the past.
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We all know the EU has its faults- it is slow to respond to crises, it is overly bureaucratic and it oversteps its treaty-based authority at times. The solution is not to run away from the European Project but to embrace it.
If you've made your way to a festival at some point in your life, there's a decent chance you've heard of Electric Daisy Carnival, or EDC.
Last month, over 400,000 passionate music fans made their way to Las Vegas Motor Speedway to celebrate together "under the electric sky" for three nights of festivities. Attendees danced from dusk to dawn with old and new friends to the sounds of some of the biggest electronic dance music producers including Tiesto, Kaskade, and The Chainsmokers.
What was once a small gathering twenty years ago - only 5,000 people attended the 1997 event in California - has evolved into something much more, generating a staggering $1.3 billion for the local economy according to Beacon Economics and having drawn more than 1.7 million attendees to its Las Vegas location.
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And that's not all: different versions of EDC have taken place all throughout the world including New York, Mexico City, Orlando, Puerto Rico, and Tokyo.
But while good music, colorful lights, and the idea of a Vegas weekend can easily draw a crowd, a key element keeps EDC and EDM ("electronic dance music") culture thriving: the concept of PLUR.
An acronym for "Peace, Love, Unity, Respect," the idea of PLUR is a major contributor to the massive growth of not just EDC, but festival culture in general. At EDC and other festivals all throughout the world, the PLUR lifestyle has been appealing to more people over time as these events are breaking attendance records year after year.
"Not to sound cliche, but PLUR actually does resonate with the audience heavily," said producer and EDC performer Bro Safari. "Everyone is here for the music but they are also here for their friends and the overall experience. That has to be the reason [EDC] is still going strong years later."
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Pasquale Rotella is the founder and CEO of Insomniac, the production company that manages Electric Daisy Carnival each year. He provided the following definition of PLUR:
To be in the same place as another, to exist simultaneously without conflict or adverse effects/reactions.
To unconditionally feel great affection for a fellow being, and offer friendship, regardless of race, sex, or creed.
To come together and defend common interests and give a sense of well being among those who feel unaccepted, to allow any and all to be a part of you and your friends.
To allow yourself to be who you are without expectations, and allow others to do the same while helping each other, giving those around you the pride, courage, and honor you would yourself.
Rotella shared when he first became familiar with PLUR. "When I was first introduced to this concept in the 90s...at that time it was a spoken thing. A discussion," he said. "Sometimes it was written in the corner of a flyer here and there. But they [Peace, Love, Unity, Respect] were definitely the overriding principles of attending an event - and also for trying to live your life outside of events."
The phrase "PLUR" has become an incredibly familiar term to those who've attended everything from underground shows to massives like EDC. But it's not something that all attendees understand. Between the colorful and creative outfits of attendees and the sharing of "kandi" bracelets that line their arms, sometimes PLUR can seem a bit silly to those not familiar with festival culture.
"I'm not sure it became popular or 'cool' to clown on 'PLURRRR, bro!'" Rotella said, referring to those to like to poke fun at the concept. "But I just laugh and give those people a big hug, because they don't get it."
It is clear that PLUR not only drives fans to attend festivals, but also inspires those on the production side. "PLUR is OG," Rotella added. "PLUR is why I keep doing events."
Little has been announced yet for next year's festival, but if you're looking to find a community and celebrate the PLUR lifestyle, you will want to be on the lookout for news of EDC 2017.
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While incorporating peace, love, unity, and respect can positively impact your day-to-day life, sharing these values with a crowd of over 400,000 is not something you get to experience every day. As long as the energy and values of PLUR live on, it is only expected that festivals will only be getting bigger and better each year and EDC can provide you with a connected experience that you'll never forget.
In a small, unassuming bar in the center of Cambodia's capital, Phnom Penh, a new generation of young Khmer men are starting a revolution.
It's not a political uprising, a protest at alleged government corruption, nor an initiative to reduce widespread poverty in the country; it's goes far deeper than that.
This is a project to challenge young, gay Cambodians' perceptions of themselves.
By day, Space Hair Salon and Bar is an unassuming place to fashion yourself a new 'do'. By night, it's a rip-roaring, pec-pumping, drinking den hotbed of handsome young Khmer men only too willing to serve you your favorite sin-drink with a smile, a tricep-flex and a flirt.
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Situated a short hop, skip and a jump from the Tonle Sap river which flows through the city, Space is the brainchild of entrepreneur Chuk Sopheap.
Sopheap (pictured above outside Space) arrived in Phnom Penh with a vision. Hailing from the city of Battambang in northwestern Cambodia, he experienced anti-gay discrimination and bullying in his teenage years. Like many gay men growing up in rural areas, he knew he had to relocate to the big city to find other gay men and start living openly, as himself.
A trained hair stylist, he opened Space Hair in 2013 and expanded it into a bar later that year. The businesses now employ more than 20 Khmer men, many of whom also relocated to Phnom Penh in search of acceptance.
But Sopheap had even higher aspirations, setting out to celebrate sexuality, the beauty of his country, and the sex appeal of his fellow countrymen. This summer, he launched the well-received (and practically hot to touch) 'Men of Cambodia' calendar, which is thought to be the first of its kind in the country.
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"So many Khmer men look upon white Western men as the ideal form of beauty - many use whitening creams to lighten their skin and dress in an American or European style," says Sopheap. "I want to highlight the beauty of not only Cambodian men, but Cambodian gay men."
The calendar features fifteen gym toned, dashingly handsome models, eighty per cent of whom identify as gay, according to Sopheap. Beautifully photographed and presented, shoot locations were carefully selected to showcase Cambodia's newly opened modern hotels, both in Phnom Penh and on the beautiful coastal province of Kep; the city's street art, which adorns the capital's meandering backstreets and alleyways; the Phnom Tamao Wildlife Rescue Centre; the famous temples and fashions of the Khmer Empire era; and the silk and pepper trades. It also presents Cambodia as a haven of male muscle and homoerotica.
A series of behind the scenes videos of the making of the calendar are setting social media alight in the country.
"Many of the models worked very hard in their villages, growing up, which laid the groundwork for the sculpted the bodies you see in the calendar," Sopheap continues. "Now they're in the city, they all work out and some even box to keep fit. By immortalizing them in this calendar, I'm hoping their fitness and handsomeness can change perceptions of what Khmer men are like, not only from a Western perspective but also - more importantly - to other Cambodian gay men. This has the potential to have an incredibly positive effect, building self esteem and helping young gay Khmer men to come out and feel proud of who they are."
A percentage of profits from the sale of each calendar goes to a local charity which supports young Cambodians get a better start in life. Find out more via the Space Hair Salon and Bar Facebook Page.
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By Noah J. Nelson (@noahjnelson)
There are plenty of folks in the education technology field who are excited about virtual reality as the next great educational tool. One team in England, however, is reaching into education's past to bring a lost technology--the ars memoriae or Art of Memory--back.
Before the mass production of written text was a thing the art of memory was used by orators, actors and others to memorize and contextualize vast amounts of information. The masters of the form took this far past rote memorization and party tricks. One sophisticated technique involving the creation of personal
"memory palaces" from which facts and speeches could be summoned up at will.
The examples of this in antiquity revolve around Roman senators memorizing the features of the Forum, and then mentally imprinting the contents of their speeches on the virtual versions of the space. Actors would do the same with the theaters they worked.
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Fans of the BBC series Sherlock may also be familiar with the concept, as the modern-day version of the great detective played by Benedict Cumberbatch has his own "mind palace."
As someone who relates to information spatially the idea that one can develop this trait into a workable framework for learning is exciting. Which is exactly what Dr. Aaron Ralby, the CEO of a company called Linguisticator, is doing with the Macunx project.
Earlier this month he launched a Kickstarter to fund the Macunx VR project. The idea: to build a VR sandbox that could be used to create memory palaces that could, in turn, be used to teach multiple subjects. I spoke with Ralby at length about his plan, which has its roots in his background as a linguist and medieval scholar. He has since applied the techniques he researched about the art of memory to educational projects with young students, some with learning disabilities, and says that they've helped them tackle subjects that had been difficult for them before.
The core system will be a toolset that lets anyone build their own memory palace on top of a Unity base. The development phases beyond that aim to build modules for specific subjects (e.g. languages, anatomy, history) and an instructor mode that would allow teachers to develop their own lessons and upload them into a global platform. As we've seen from other frontiers in technology the really interesting stuff starts to happen once you add user generated content into the mix.
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The project is well on its way, having cleared its financial goal by almost double, and is going to be developed with the help of Westminster University. This means that the "free build" mode is guaranteed. As the project enters its final week the team is hoping to hit a stretch goal of 10,000-- they're a little over the halfway mark for that--and get subject modules built for the program.
While I'm excited about the prospect of tackling a language--maybe Japanese, which I've always wanted to learn--with the aid of spatial learning techniques my own selfish interests lay in the existence of the platform as a tool for organization and creation. As a fan of mind mapping techniques and data visualization I view a VR memory palace as the ultimate tool for teasing insight out of information.
Just another reason to be excited about our VR/AR future.
Britain's Home Secretary Theresa May waves to the media as she leaves after attending a cabinet meeting at 10 Downing Street, in London, Tuesday, July 12, 2016. Theresa May will become Britain's new Prime Minister on Wednesday. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)
LONDON -- Britain has, by accident, embarked on a revolution. Few expected the Leave campaign to win -- even the Leave campaigners themselves, who gave little or no thought to what Brexit would mean in practice. Some ongoing relationship with the European Union? Complete detachment? They have no agreed-upon plan, nor have they advanced any since the vote. The inability to mount any challenge for the Conservative Party leadership was a tribute to their fecklessness. Yet, the revolution has begun with all the attendant unpredictability of revolutions, which never go according to plan. And whatever the possible long-run benefits are, they're never accomplished without monumental disruption. Frequently, they are disasters.
Rational economics requires the new British government to prioritize access to the European single market above any other consideration, including trying to reduce immigration substantively. But this is the policy the ascendant anti-immigrant and nativist right emphasize above any other. The right-wing goal to couple both a successful referendum with a takeover of the Conservative Party may have failed, but Theresa May, a steely Remainer and the next prime minister, knows full well she has to throw the inflamed nativist right some red meat.
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The question is how far she will feel she has to go in controlling immigration and completely exiting all EU structures to assuage their appetite for torching anything European whatever its merits. If she does, the policies could trigger at best a deep economic recession and at worst a second financial crash and depression. I have never been so fearful for the British economy in my career as an economic commentator.
The notion that everything is now set in stone because the people have spoken -- even in the face of calamity -- is absurd.
In the last few days, the markets and business have been delivering their judgment. Half of the U.K.'s largest commercial property funds have suspended withdrawals as investors panic about values. Most large companies have frozen any investment projects; others have begun the process of moving out of Britain. The 13 percent fall in the pound, the lowest for 31 years, is the steepest since Britain was bounced out of the EU's Exchange Rate Mechanism in 1992.
Certainly there are short-term benefits in dollar and euro profits being translated into higher profits in sterling terms, which has prompted a rise in share prices in the FTSE 100, but most economists believe that with so much uncertainty about Britain's future trading architecture, the response in higher exports will be paltry -- just as it was in more favorable circumstances when the pound devalued in 2009. As the prices of imports rise, consumers will find their real incomes even more squeezed. There are no silver linings in these darkening clouds.
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Commuters heading into the City of London cross London Bridge in front of Tower Bridge on June 24. (DANIEL SORABJI/AFP/Getty)
After more than 40 years of EU membership, Britain's financial and economic structures are profoundly intertwined with those of the European Union -- whether so-called "bank passports" that allow British banks to trade everywhere in the EU or the system of agricultural support. On top, the country has a current account deficit of more than 5 percent of GDP that can only be financed by inflows of capital which, whether to buy property or companies, were dependent on EU trade and market access. This enmeshed set of relationships cannot be unraveled without huge risks. In the words of futurist Parag Khanna, "EU countries are functionally inseparable, an egg that cannot be unscrambled. Their monetary system, transportation routes, energy grids, financial networks and manufacturing supply chains are all heavily integrated."
Britain is now going to set about trying to unscramble the egg from a position of profound financial vulnerability. The price of farmland -- dependent on the Common Agricultural Policy -- has doubled in the last five years. So have prices of commercial property, dependent on London in particular being the de facto commercial capital of Europe. Residential property prices have boomed. All have been financed by an overstretched banking system vulnerable to the huge imminent loan write-downs as prices now collapse -- and doubly vulnerable to liquidity in London's interbank markets being hit by a cessation of capital inflows. The risk of a first order banking crisis, presaged by the closure of commercial property funds last week, is very real -- and blithely ignored by the Brexiteers.
The risk of a first order banking crisis, presaged by the closure of commercial property funds last week, is very real.
The least bad option to save the day is membership in the European Economic Area -- the so-called Norway option, in which the U.K. would continue to have full access to the single market but no voice in its governance -- which would at least allow trade, financial and capital flows to continue and avert the risks of the downward vortex of a banking crisis. But this will require May's government to accept the freedom of movement of people as the quid pro quo -- precisely the opposite of the referendum result.
So far, European governments have shown no readiness to compromise on this core EU freedom. Nonetheless, working towards this end is the only rational response for both Britain and the EU. The EU must make a face-saving offer on the freedom of movement of people to allow the package to be sellable in the U.K. -- perhaps accepting that EU citizens have to find a job before moving to Britain. And Britain must accept the compromise package no matter how politically difficult it is; some parts of the population are now openly anti-immigrant and bordering on racist, one of the most baleful consequences of the dishonest way the Leave campaign fought the referendum.
Nigel Farage, the leader of the U.K. Independence Party, at a referendum campaign meeting in Gateshead on June 20. (SCOTT HEPPELL/AFP/Getty)
This deal -- which requires the U.K. to remain a member of the EU until the new deal is agreed -- may even need a second referendum or election to be sealed. The notion that everything is now set in stone because the people have spoken -- even in the face of calamity -- is absurd. It is democratic nonsense to argue that the people cannot revisit a decision if it is obvious it means their economy is going over a cliff. Such a deal might even do better than just holding the line: after turbulence, the EEA could be a halfway house that also allows Britain to do trade deals with other countries and muddle through. It could even presage Britain one day rejoining a genuinely reformed and more dynamic EU -- especially if EU leaders learn their lessons from the debacle.
If not, Britain will have to opt for complete exit -- either negotiating a bilateral deal with the EU like Switzerland or Canada or just accessing the EU markets under World Trade Organization rules. The Treasury estimated that both would cost the U.K. dearly in the long run -- nearly twice as much lost output over 15 years compared to the Norway option.
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EU countries are functionally inseparable, an egg that cannot be unscrambled.
If anything, the Treasury -- and other forecasters like the International Monetary Fund and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development -- were almost too optimistic. The forecasts assumed the economic egg could be quickly recreated and there would be no financial crisis: neither of which is likely. Once any credit crunch sets in, Britain will experience all that it did in 2008-9 -- but with no wider stable financial and economic architecture.
It appears that neither the new government nor the beleaguered Labour Party leadership are measuring up to the scale of the risk. Chancellor George Osborne's promised corporation tax cuts offer the prospect of the U.K.'s future as an offshore tax haven. But this will neither work nor offer any future to the left-behind communities and voters who opted for Brexit.
The Bank of England's governor, Mark Carney, speaks during a news conference in London on July 5. (Dylan Martinez/ Pool via AP)
A pall of dismal closure will extend over Britain. British science and British universities fear funding cuts and marginalization. So do the creative industries. British farmers will never be so well-off again. The revived motor industry, dependent on access to EU markets, will have to retrench. Poorer parts of the country, many of which voted to leave the EU, will find that the lost EU funding will never be replaced.
Future historians of our times will find it hard to explain the madness that descended on the U.K. -- the readiness of Leave campaigners to disseminate such disinformation and outright lies and inability for them to be countered by the Remain contingent. Lies have consequences. We are about to discover just how serious they are -- and how much the ramifications will extend beyond Britain. Beware nativism -- and pray that May can deliver the compromises and deals that will avert disaster.
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Earlier on WorldPost:
The article will critically examine and explore the recent Dhaka cafe terror attack. It will specifically examine the role of the law enforcement agencies in handling the crisis and will question the effectiveness and appropriateness of law enforcers' interventions. In addressing this issue, the key focus will remain whether the human rights of victims and perpetrators were respected (Masferrer and Walker, 2013; Ranstorp and Wilkinson, 2008). It will also look into the political responses of the mainstream political parties after the Dhaka cafe terror attack in order to evaluate whether or not the political responses helped in effectively dealing with the crisis and finding the roots of terrorism (Pedahzur and Weinberg, 2013; Weinberg, 2008).
Furthermore, it will briefly look into other terror attacks which took place in Bangladesh in the recent past and will also examine the popular political responses to those attacks. These events will be considered from a human rights perspective to develop a critical and in-depth contextual understanding of the country's mainstream politics of terrorism (Stephens and Williams, 2010; Bjorgo, 2005 and Eubank and Weinberg, 2006). Finally, it will explore the psychosocial impact of the Dhaka cafe terror attack on the people of Bangladesh (Murray Parkes, 2013).
Brief description of the Dhaka cafe Terror
It is important to present readers with a brief description of the Dhaka cafe terror attack based on the available information published in different news sources. This will help readers to track the events, issues, responses and interventions related to the attack which will be critically examined (Manik et al. 2016; Hammadi et al. 2016; Islam, 2016; Dhaka tribune, 2016; BBC News, 2016 and Xinhua, 2016). It could be argued that 'Terrorism' in general and specifically the Dhaka cafe attack is one of the most debated and discussed issues in Bangladesh. It is important to note that the description of the terror attack has been limited due to lack of direct access to victims and the sensitivity of its nature. The only credible sources to build up a picture of the attack are different news sources which are mainly based on government and law enforcers' narratives of the event; indeed, with very few narratives of the victims and a complete absence of the narrative of the perpetrators.
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Terror attack Narrative
According to media reports, the deadly terrorist attack on an unarmed international crowd at the Holey Artisan Bakery, which is known as a bustling cafe popular with expats and wealthy locals in Gulshan, the diplomatic zone in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh (BBC News, 2016). Political analysts note that, in Bangladesh's history, this is the first terrorist attack of such a nature, which led to a hostage situation and involved an international crowd with the alleged direct involvement of the global terror outfit, the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
Hours of terror, uncertainty and fear
According to the media news, the hostage situation started at approximately 8.45 pm on the Friday, 1 July 2016 and ended at 1.39 pm on Saturday 2 July 2016 by the completion of 'Operation Thunderbolt', a special armed operation which was mainly led by the 1st Para-Commando Battalion, an elite force in the Bangladesh Army but also involved the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB), Border Guard Bangladesh, Bangladeshi police and its different branches, specifically Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT), an elite tactical unit of the Dhaka Metropolitan Police (Manik et al., 2016; Dhaka tribune, 2016; Islam, 2016 ).
The barbaric terrorist attack ended costing the lives of twenty hostages, which included nine Italians (Cristian Rossi, Marco Tondat, Nadia Benedetti, Adele Puglisi, Simona Monti, Claudia Maria D'Antona, Vincenzo D'Allestro, Maria Rivoli, Claudio Cappelli), seven Japanese (Hideki Hashimoto, Nobuhiro Kurosaki, Koyo Ogasawara, Makoto Okamura, Yuko Sakai, Rui Shimodaira, Hiroshi Tanaka), three Bangladeshis (Faraaz Ayaaz Hossain, Ishrat Akhond, Saiful Islam Chowkidar) and an Indian (Tarishi Jain) who were allegedly killed by the terrorists (Pleasance, et al., 2016; Hammadi et al., 2016). The hostage situation also cost the lives of five alleged terrorists (Nibras Islam, Rohan Imtiaz, Meer Saameh Mubasheer, Khairul Islam, Shafiqul Islam) who were killed during Operation Thunderbolt and two police officials Rabiul Islam, Assistant Commissioner of Detective Branch of the Dhaka Metropolitan Police, and Salahuddin Ahmed, officer-in-charge of the Banani police station who earlier attempted to confront the terrorists prior to operation thunderbolt (Dhaka tribune, 2016; BBC News, 2016).
Who did it?
After careful observation of social media, blogs, news and opinion pieces, the common questions which were repeatedly asked included who perpetrated the act of terror, which organizations these terrorist belong to and who they are individually. Ordinary people, commentators and politicians are continuing the debate to determine the identity of the perpetrators and establish whether there was direct involvement of the global terror outfit, ISIS.
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Political responses to terror attack
It is important to note who did it - seeking a definitive answer to this question is crucial because if carefully observed, the political responses to this question may define what further measures can be taken to handle the situations.
Bangladesh is politically a very divided nation; in the absence of meaningful democratic practices and endemic corruption, political biases of the different professionals such as journalist, politicians, law enforcers and judges obstruct the ways and means of meaningful democratic debate and discussions on important issues such how to handle the terrorism and bring the perpetrators to justice. Professionals often ignore the national safety and security; furthermore, by prioritizing their narrow personal gains and interest, the best interests of the nation and its people are neglected. The public domain has often been corrupt and politically-biased dysfunctional state institutions thereby fail to protect and promote democracy, justice and peace. Widespread violence also takes over in different shapes and forms: one of form of such violence is 'Terrorism'. Political discourse of finding out who is involved and the process that helped the terror attack is also politically defined and divided. Political parties, specifically the ruling political party Bangladesh Awami League (BAL), have failed to demonstrate the necessary seriousness and political maturity in responding to the terrorist attack: those responsible for the attack have not been named.
BAL blamed local home-grown terrorist group with a particular Islamic affiliation and on a different occasion it blamed the opposition political party Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami in addition to home-grown terrorist outfits. It also blamed Pakistan's premier intelligence service, ISI - Inter-Services Intelligence (Indian Express, 2016). It is worth noting that a lack of robust evidence supporting these claims consequently failed to convince the public of these organisations' involvement: local people continued to believe that ISIS in Bangladesh had direct involvement in the Dhaka cafe terror attack. Although SITE Intelligence Group published pictures of the alleged perpetrators claiming that ISIS published those pictures in addition to another unverified video, ISIS allegedly claimed responsibility for the terror attack, praised the attackers and threatened further attacks. Shortly after the Dhaka cafe attack, another attack occurred in which three alleged attackers were killed as they were carrying bombs and guns whilst trying to attack the country's largest gathering to mark the Muslim Eid holiday on the 7 July, 2016. This establishes that the threat from ISIS will continue; nonetheless, the government continues to deny the very existence of ISIS in Bangladesh (Dhaka Tribune, 2016; Bdnews24.com, 2016 and Pokharel and Westcott, 2016).
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What made the 'Terror' attack possible?
It is important to ask who brought about the terror attack but at the same time it is also necessary to ask a further question: 'What made the 'Terror' attack possible?' This will possibly lead us to the root of problem. It should be kept in mind that the Dhaka cafe terror attack was only an outcome but to make an attack of such kind there is a need for planning, arms, ammunitions and most importantly the question needs to be asked as to what the conditions are within the state that allowed such kinds of organized terrorist groups to grow, plan and carry out such actions. To answer these first, it is important to make my stand clear - I believe that the terrorism problem has been caused due to a lack of democratic system which is a continuing problem and should not only be credited to BAL, but should also be credited to other political parties who ruled this country since its independence. However, for this discussion it is important to focus on the current ruling party and its opposition. Years of continuous and deliberate failures of political parties in effective state governance left much to be desired, specifically at this time when there are questions about the about the legitimacy of the BAL government, where a puppet opposition party was placed in country's parliament the problem of the electoral system leaves people with few choices to be heard and take part freely in the country's democratic process. The ruling political party - BAL continued to ignore and fail to address the grievances of the people which has caused the situation to deteriorate to such abysmal levels: a section of the population have started to think that brute force is the only viable option available through military interventions or another alternative of extremists such as ISIS and their supported home-grown terrorist outfits taking control. It is worth noting that the Dhaka cafe attack is not an isolated event rather it is representative of a power struggle between the ruling political party and their challengers who are sadly terrorists making their voices heard at cost of many lives while BAL continues to deny the democratic rights of the people.
Other Terror attacks
Readers should keep in mind that nature of state whether it would be secular or Islamic country that is a long and unresolved issue in Bangladesh often used as political currency by different political parties to garner votes. The continuum of this struggle took a new shape during this government whereby, since 2013, a number of secularist and atheist writers, bloggers and publishers in Bangladesh have been killed or seriously injured in attacks that are believed to be perpetrated by Islamist extremists. According to media reports four bloggers had been killed in 2015, on August 6 - Niloy Chatterjee, blogger, hacked to death at his home in Dhaka; on May 12 - Ananta Bijoy Das, blogger for Mukto-Mona website, killed while on his way to work in the city of Sylhet; on March 30 - Washiqur Rahman Babu, blogger, hacked to death by three men in Dhaka. On February 26 - Avijit Roy, a prominent Bangladeshi-American blogger, killed while walking with his wife outside Dhaka University (Al Jazeera and AF, 2015). It should be noted that responsibility for the attacks on secularists, which have since occurred, has been claimed by a number of militant groups including Ansarullah Bangla Team, who have frequently justified their attacks on the grounds that their victims are "atheists" and enemies of Islam. But the most important point to note is that none of these cases were satisfactorily solved and critic claims that in the absence of a functioning criminal justice system, the government is using this case to oppress the opposition. This is not unique to this BAL government; on 21 August, 2004 the Dhaka grenade attack took place at an anti-terrorism rally organised by Bangladesh Awami League on Bangabandhu Avenue. The attacks targeted Awami League leader Sheikh Hasina, the current prime minister of Bangladesh, which left 24 dead and more than 300 injured. Readers should note that during this case Jamal Ahmed, also known as Joj Mia, was coerced into giving a false confession. He was forced to implicate the Seven-Star Group, led by Subrata Bain through torture by security forces during Bangladesh Nationalist Party rule who is known in opposition (Prothom Alo 2014). Political analysts argue that the then government of Bangladesh nationalist party, which is now in opposition, failed to bring perpetrators of the heinous crime to justice. However, when the BAL government came into power the case was prioritised and in March 2012, the son of opposition leader Tarique Rahman and former prime minister Khaleda Zia were tried in absentia for their alleged involvement in the attack. The supplementary charge sheets charge local terrorist group Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HUJI) , influential leaders of the BNP and the Jamaat, and some officials of the Home Ministry, police, Directorate General of Forces Intelligence (DGFI), National Security Intelligence (NSI) and Prime Minister's Office (PMO) with involvement in the planning of the bombing (Dhaka Tribune, 2015).
It was important to explain this story although not necessary directly linked to the Dhaka cafe attack. Crucially, terrorism is nothing new in Bangladesh, justice has been overdue for many years and all political parties have been accused of using the issues for their political gain. Now regarding the main point the question as to who carried out the Dhaka cafe attack the BAL government is so reluctant to accept the involvement of ISIS because it sees this attack from the lenses of their continuing struggle with their political opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami. It could be argued that the unnecessary and unfair political responses of the current government to different terror attacks encouraged and empowered terrorist groups of different types to grow and operationalise such heinous acts. A group of political critics have gone a step further to suggest that the BAL government itself is involved in the attacks on atheist bloggers, religious minorities, although they are yet to present substantive evidence to back up these claims.
Actions and Interventions of the law enforcements agencies
The readers should keep in mind that the law enforcement agencies are often accused of practicing endemic torture, corruption and manipulating evidence and justice process influenced by the ruling government. It was very clear when there was an attempt on Sheikh Hasina's life on the 21st August 2004. The incompetency of the law enforcement agencies is well known among people; law enforcers are seen not necessarily as protector of them rather than an extended hand of the ruling party. Law enforcers of all types are accused of gross human rights violations, although many are rewarded rather than punished for playing their role as an extended arm of the political party. Readers should keep in mind who was involved in the rescue operation and their past record of human rights violations.
Inconsistency in rescue narrative
Although at the end of 'operation thunderbolt' Inter Service Public Relations Directorate (ISPR) claimed that six terrorists were killed, police claimed that only five terrorists were claimed. It was identified and reported in the media that Saiful Islam Chowkidar, 40, a pizza maker at the Artisan, was identified as a terrorist but later it emerged that he was a hostage and wrongly killed by the law enforces during the operation thunderbolt (BBC News, 2016). This raises questions about the plan and actions that were taken by the law enforcers. With careful observation of the whole operation from media, it could be said that the law enforcers placed less emphasis on hostage negation and they have placed insufficient effort into communicating with the terrorists actively listening to their demands, empathically communicating with them or gaining the trust of the attackers and changing the behaviour, which could have been a successful force for them to surrender. This is nothing new a Behavioural Change Stairway Model developed by Federal Bureau of Investigation is widely used by Police negotiators. More could be said on the failure of the Bangladeshi law enforcers about their lack of willingness or incompetency of hostage negotiation skills. Some of the law enforcers were trained by British and Americans but the question remains as to why they failed or whether they were driven by the political agenda of the government. If they had successfully achieved the hostage negotiation, many lives could have saved. The question also remains as to who should thus be held responsible for the failure of this hostage negotiation.
Furthermore, critics are asking about the how many people were arrested as the 'operation thunderbolt' ends. ISPR and police contradict each other in this regard: ISPR claimed one person was arrested but police claimed two people were arrested at the end of the operation and one was arrested in a local hospital. In another version, a family member claimed that Jakir Hossain Shaon, assistant Chef at Holey Artisan Bakery was arrested by police and tortured in police custody (Dhaka Tribune, 2016, BBC News, 2016).
Critics are accusing the law enforcement agencies for their incompetence and the government for trying to gain political benefit out of this situation rather than addressing the problem and bringing the real perpetrators to justice. Critics are accusing the political leaders of ruling BAL government of attempting to lay blame with opposition parties Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami for this attack. It has been argued that the ruling government is trying to gain benefit by blaming the oppositions political parties for this attack and raising general conscious among mass people that the opposition parties are involved in this deadly terrorist attack and in future to save the country the only option is to vote for them. It is evident that politicians of ruling government have failed to break the old pattern of politics with wholesale accusations directed at the opposition for promoting and protecting Islamic terrorist groups.
Psychosocial impact of the Dhaka cafe terror attack
The Dhaka cafe terror has left a scar in people's mind in Dhaka and beyond. The hostages who were rescued will need immediate psychosocial support and in many cases may require medical attention, although those issues were not a key priority of the government or main issues of public discourse. Different media outlets continued to publish graphic images of the event which could have left negative impact on people's mind specially if they were seen by the children. Prime minister Sheikh Hasina and her government need to be praised because they warned not to live telecast the Dhaka cafe terror attack. Nevertheless, it was reported that some media ignored the request and proceeded with the live telecast of the event which subsequently has a negative impact on the operation of the law enforcers. The Dhaka cafe terror attack created a fearful situation and people continue to live in uncertainty specifically a group of people who belongs to minority religious groups - Christian, Hindu, Buddhist and also atheist people living in fear of being attacked by unidentified enemies. Bangladeshi society has been divided by allowing terrorism to take place while the main perpetrators and their roots remain undiscovered, leading to high levels of widespread mistrust. As fear takes over the hearts and minds of the people, the gross human rights violations by the law enforcement agencies such practices of endemic torture, endemic corruption of the government and politicians remain. The fundamental need to protect and promote democracy remain unaddressed as terrorists remain untouched.
Endnotes
Yes, it happened just like in a movie!
The lives of two couples in the southern province of Binh Phuoc have been turned upside down after DNA results confirmed that they have been raising the wrong daughters for the last three years.
Trang with the DNA results. Photo by VnExpress/Phuoc Tan
In 2013, two women gave birth to two baby girls at the same time and in the same room at Binh Long Hospital. Both baby girls weighed three kilograms. Each was given a mark on before the nurses bathed them and gave them to their families. Both women were discharged from hospital several days later.
For Nguyen Thi Thu Trang, 26, and her husband Tan (whose full name was not revealed), the last three years have been a difficult time with the suspicion of an affair putting a strain on their relationship.
Trang has two daughters but now it turns out that the second was mistakenly switched at birth. As time has passed and the daughter has grown up, it's become apparent she looks nothing like anyone in the family, while her sister looks much more like her parents.
To make matters worse, during the time Trang got pregnant, Tan was mostly out of town. He worked as a mechanic in Ho Chi Minh City and only returned home every two weeks. This reinforced his suspicion that Trang had been having an affair.
"Over the past years, the thought of breaking up with my wife tortured me," Tan said.
Trang's husband Tan. Photo by VnExpress/Phuoc Tan
Tan had secretly carried out his own investigation to see if his wife had been cheating on him, but found no proof.
In May this year, Trang's father accidentally passed his real granddaughter while delivering banh mi (Vietnamese sandwich) in the neighborhood where the girl lives, just five kilometers from his home. The girl looked exactly like his daughter, so he immediately informed the couple. The couple decided to do a DNA test and the truth was revealed.
They left their jobs and dedicated all their time to getting their real daughter back.
When they visited the other couple's house to tell them the unbelievable story, no one trusted them.
"They thought it was a trick to kidnap their baby, so they refused to cooperate," Trang said.
The problem was only solved when Trang and her husband asked the hospital to intervene.
"It breaks our hearts that we have been unable to care for our real daughter for the last three years. We both feel ill thinking about it," Tan said. "Our lives have been turned upside down. Now all we want is to have our real daughter back," the husband said, adding that the wrong daughter is still loved by the whole family.
The hospital has publicly apologized to the families, saying it will compensate them for the mental and material losses.
"Both families said they need more time to consider the matter, so we have yet to receive any request from them," Tran Dinh Cuong, deputy director of the hospital, told VnExpress.
At present, the two families have yet to switch their babies.
Related news:
> Baby girls switched at birth swapped back after four years
Regardless of the outcome of the November election, and by that I mean both the presidential and congressional elections, health care will once again be on the agenda.
At this point, the most likely scenario is a Clinton victory, a change in the Senate majority from GOP to Dem (though it could be very close) and a diminished, but still majority, GOP in the House. This scenario would set up an opportunity for some real progress on several nagging health care issues. To add to the analysis, there is an outside chance that the GOP could lose majority control of the House, but for this to happen, it would require an electoral landslide by Clinton preceded by a Trump implosion. No one is holding their breath on this but it is notable in that it is being discussed.
A Trump victory would obviously change the dynamic and the results of the Senate and House elections would be critical to what might happen. If Trump wins, it is probable that the GOP's House majority would hold close to its current level with just a few losses, and the outcome of Senate control would be extraordinarily close. Some have even predicted a Trump win could result in a 50/50 split, resulting in the Vice President acting as the tiebreaker. Under this scenario, continued gridlock would be the result.
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But under any scenario, neither party is likely to control all branches and chambers, and importantly, no one party will have the 60 votes necessary in the Senate to move any truly controversial legislation.
However, if an opportunity for progress emerges, it would be based less on the raw numbers and more on the message that voters send. The big unknown is will the newly elected and reelected actually hear the message or will they filter it through their own political lens and go forward with business as usual? Arguably, this is what they have done over the last several elections, going forward with their own personal agenda and ignoring what the voters want, which seems to be governance and compromise.
The most important person in a scenario of progress is Speaker Paul Ryan. While a strong conservative, it seems clear that Ryan wants to govern and legislate. He wants to address some of the big challenges facing the U.S. To do this under any scenario requires compromise. In our current political climate, compromise will require will and courage. So the question is does he have both and will he be willing to exercise them if he does?
What are the key issues?
ACA
Clearly the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is at the top of the agenda. It continues to be a political issue for both parties with Republicans continuing their promise to repeal the law. Just last week, Speaker Ryan, after six years of saying the GOP would release a health care alternative, finally released a plan. The short of this plan is that it is not an actual replacement for the ACA in that it would not provide insurance coverage to the millions of Americans who have received it under the ACA. How far that number might fall short is anyone's guess right now as the plan is deficient in the detail necessary to do such analysis. It also has few if any financial/budget details to determine how much it would cost. However, despite its shortfalls, it does provide Republicans at least some ground to stand on in the debate over health care.
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Interestingly, current Senate HELP Committee Chairman Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN) has said he will be ready next year to work with whoever is President to fix the many problems with the ACA. Senator Alexander said, "Whoever the president is in January, we're going to have to take a good, hard look at Obamacare POLITICO's "Pulse Check" podcast. "It can't continue the way it is...I don't think Republicans can go another four years, whether we have a Republican president or not, and say just give us a couple more Republicans and we'll repeal Obamacare," he added. He cited the work of his committee to reform the "No Child Left Behind" legislation as the template for how to make changes to the ACA as well as citing the fact that Hillary Clinton is married to a former president known for his deal-making skills. "Hillary Clinton is married to a fellow who made a lot of deals as president," Alexander said. "And if she shows an aptitude for taking a position, listening to other people and looking for the 80 percent instead of the 20 - or if Mr. Trump does, if he's the president - then we can improve the health care system."
Issues he cited for possible change cover less government management, more support for private sector innovation and more flexibility for states regarding Medicaid. He called Speaker Ryan's plan a "helpful" starting point, though he did not specifically endorse it. Throughout, Alexander has had a good working relationship with Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) who would most likely become chairman if Democrats take majority control in the fall election.
All of this points to a possible way forward to making needed changes to the ACA that have been impossible to even try under the current President.
Drug Prices
Despite the political fire of the ACA, this may be the most volatile issue facing Congress and the Executive Branch next year. The public relations battle over the impact of drug prices (which actually encompass a couple key issues: the individual price for drugs and whether price impairs access and the overall drug spend on total health care spending) between politicians, the pharmaceutical industry and the health insurance industry has heated up in recent months (it never actually goes away, just fades and returns over time).
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But next year may see a convergence that the pharmaceutical industry may not like. For decades Republicans have been their stanch defenders. That rock solid support is eroding. Last fall, Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) referred to some drug industry practices as "pure profiteering." "The companies decide, We can get away with charging it, and so we do.'" Senator Rubio - Bloomberg
Donald Trump has also taken shots at the industry by criticizing drug prices and suggesting Medicare should be allowed to negotiate prices among others issues. The problem with handicapping Trump on issues is that he often changes his position, sometimes in a matter of minutes. So where he would land as President - who knows?
Hillary Clinton has been clear where she stands and has taken a hard line. She wants to allow Medicare to negotiate prices as well as require higher rebates in Medicare; end the tax break to direct-to-consumer advertising; in exchange for any government support, demand some level of R&D investment; move to get more generics in the market as well as biopharmaceuticals and/or specialty drugs, allow drug re-importation, and; prohibit "pay for delay" of generics among other positions.
Exactly what a drug price agenda would or will look like next year is not as important as understanding that the ground has shifted underneath the pharmaceutical industry and it is unclear how they will respond. One thing they need to know, the "Maginot Line" once created and defended by the GOP is no longer.
The 21st Century Cures Act
Once thought to be legislation that would pass fairly easily, the 21st Century Cures Act and related legislation has become bogged down in the partisan divide that Congress has become on almost all issues. Most agree, given the changes that have gone on and are underway in the scientific and drug discovery world, the FDA and the processes it follows to approve new drugs and devices must be modernized to keep pace with the changes going on all around it. But that's where the agreement seems to end.
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The House on a fairly partisan basis moved an Omnibus bill that captured all the various changes the majority agreed upon while the Senate, because of its unique politics and rules, took a piece meal approach and passed several bills. Besides making it difficult to go to conference, neither side has fully addressed the elephant in the room - funding.
Republicans in the House are very reluctant to approve any new funding even for things they want to do, preferring to take money away from some other related or not federal program, while in the Senate there is more appetite to fund new legislation - hence the deadlock that does not seem likely to get resolved this year.
Next year with a new Congress and President, it is hoped this hurdle can be overcome as reform is clearly needed.
Public Health Funding/Zika
Despite the fact the Zika virus is creeping closer and closer to U.S. shores (we already have cases of Zika in the U.S., though they were contracted outside the U.S. and the U.S. has already seen a baby born with microcephaly here), as well as one confirmed death from Zika, Congress has so far failed to pass any specific funding for vaccine research and response. The fight, in what has become all too common, is over money. Republicans want to take funding from other areas or disease research and response - specifically Ebola - and apply it to Zika, or take funding from the ACA and shift it to Zika. Democrats have resisted and thus we have no bill.
Meanwhile, Dr. Anthony Fauci, one of the world's top infectious disease experts and Director of the National Allergy and Infectious Disease Institutes at NIH, on C-SPAN said, "If we don't have a firm commitment to get the money to us within several weeks into the summer, then we're going to have to scramble around and figure out how we can work so as to not slow down the process." He added, "We're reaching the point now that...we're not going to be able to do the proper preparation and implementation of the more advanced Phase 2 trial."
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Congress is likely to eventually clean up the mess they find themselves in, but the question it raises is given the ever increasing number of disease outbreaks we're seeing whether from disease we know - Ebola - or emerging infections - like Zika - is the current debacle in Congress the new normal or is it an exception? For our country's health, we should hope it is the exception.
And bear this in mind: the $1.9 billion the White house asked for is only for short-term projects. It will be years before we have a vaccine that can be used widely on the public. In the meantime, Zika will come to our shores and we will have babies born with microcephaly who will need intensive and expensive care. That is a reality that no amount of political fighting and figure pointing can erase.
If not next year, then sometime soon, there will be some new emerging disease we will need to respond to in addition to Zika. You can count on it.
Advocates say healing takes time after former police officer arrested
After a former Hutchinson police officer was arrested in a series of rapes and sexual assaults, victim advocates worry some victims might stay silent.
Meanwhile, losses to corruption totalled $2.6 billion.
Only 10 officials have been disciplined over graft, and just a tenth of losses suffered from corruption have been recovered over the last 10 years in Vietnams anti-corruption fight, said Phan Van Sau, Inspector General of the Government Inspectorate, at a conference held today.
From 2006 to 2015, 879 Vietnamese state officials voluntarily turned over VND3.3 billion ($150,000) in ill-gotten funds and only 10 people were disciplined, said Sau.
Over the last ten years, Vietnam reportedly prosecuted 2,500 corruption cases with 5,447 defendants.
Only 17 out of 4,800 verified asset declarations were found to be false during that period, while nearly one million declarations had been submitted as of May 2015, according to data from the Central Committee's Commission for Internal Affairs.
Losses to corruption totaled VND59.7 trillion ($2.6 billion) and 400 hectares of land, but Vietnam has recovered just VND4.67 trillion ($210 million) and 219 hectares of land.
With 31 points, Vietnam ranked 112th among the 168 countries and territories on the Corruption Perceptions Index 2015 compiled by Transparency International. The average is 43 points and any country or territory unable to make the 50 mark is deemed to have serious corruption problems by the organization.
Related news:
> Deputy PM requests corruption probe into Formosa's licensing
> TPP will help Vietnam combat corruption: Vietnamese official
> Vietnam to investigate corruption investigators
> Vietnams Anti-Corruption Bureau speaks about Panama Papers
Its Time To Submit Music for 59th GRAMMY Awards Consideration [Full List Of Deadlines]
From the fine folks at A2iM comes a reminder that now is the time to submit music for consideration for nomination for the 59th Grammy Awards and a a full list of all the upcoming Grammy deadlines.
______________________________
Its Grammy time! If you are a voting member of The Recording Academy your deadline to submit music via their Online Entry Process is as follows:
JULY 01: Online Entry Process Access Opens:
Record Company & Member First Round Entries (Access Closes: August 17, 2016)
JULY 31: Last Day to Become A Member of TRA & Participate in OEP
AUG. 10: Online Entry Process Access Opens:
Record Company & Member Final Round Entries (Access Closes: August 24. 2016)
SEP. 15: Last Day to Join The Recording Academy & Receive First ballot
OCT. 14: MAILING: First Ballot to Voting Members (Due Date: November. 4, 2016)
NOV. 15: Last Day to Join The Recording Academy & Receive Final ballot
If you are NOT a voting member but you are a Registered Media Company/Record Label with The Recording Academy, you are invited to submit music for consideration, but are ineligible to vote in the GRAMMY Awards process.
Want to become a voting member? Click here! It only costs $100 to become a member/voter!
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Ha Tinh authorities have asked for the waste disposal site to be kept intact for further investigation. Photo by VnExpress/Duc Hung
Investigators are looking at how and why 100 tons of waste from Formosa's steel factory found it's way onto a farm in Ha Tinh.
Ha Tinh authorities have found that the Urban Environment Company (UEC) in Ky Anh District was responsible for burying over 100 tons of industrial waste released by Formosa Ha Tinh Steel the culprit behind Vietnams recent mass fish kills.
UEC only specializes in providing conventional waste-treatment services. Ha Tinh's Department of Natural Resources and Environment said the contract between FHS and UEC to treat conventional waste would have been fine, but the deal to treat 100 tons of black mud since the beginning of April was a violation.
UEC in Ky Anh District only has the capability to handle conventional waste, not industrial waste. The area where they dumped the waste also conflicts with local land-use planning. FHS was wrong to sign a contract with a company incapable of handling industrial waste, said Pham Van Hung, head of the Environment Department in Ky Anh.
Deputy Chairman of Ha Tinh Province Duong Tat Thang said Formosa has acknowledged that the buried waste came from the factory. Tomorrow, Ha Tinh authorities will continue to work with Formosa and its sub-contractors to find out the extent of the damage, according to Thang.
"Formosa's full cooperation is vital. In principle, all parties who took part in this must take joint responsibility. We will need to clarify how Formosa has managed its waste disposal since it signed the contract," said Thang.
According to the provincial Department of Natural Resources and Environment, UEC has transported and handled 267 tons of waste from Formosa, including 189 tons of industrial waste.
Tons of black mud in Ky Trinh Ward has been excavated by local authorities. Photo by VnExpress/Duc Hung
According to Le Quang Hoa, the owner of UEC, the buried waste came from a waste-treatment facility at Formosa. The waste was harmless black mud, which can be recycled or used as fertilizer, he said.
Hoa cited a test result of the waste samples dated back in January from an Environmental Protection Branch (Department of Natural Resources and Environment of Ha Tinh).
The samples were analyzed by the Institute of Science Technology and Environment (University of Hanoi). Results showed that the waste was non-hazardous.
The contract between FHS and UEC has been suspended while Ha Tinh authorities and related agencies take samples for analysis.
Taiwanese company Formosa hit the headlines recently for causing one of the biggest environmental disasters in Vietnamese history, killing tons of fish across four coastal provinces. The companys test-run led to the discharge of toxic substances into the sea, including phenol, cyanide and iron hydroxide.
The company has officially apologized to the Vietnamese people and promised to pay compensation of $500 million to make up for the damage.
Related news:
> Over 100 tons of Formosa steel plant waste dumped on Ha Tinh farm
> Formosa illegally changed waste-treatment technology: Vietnam minister
> Vietnam slaps polluting steel firm Formosa with $70 mln tax bill
We work towards an equitable,
gender-just, self-reliant and
sustainable fisheries,
particularly in the small-scale,
artisanal sector
We work towards an equitable,
gender-just, self-reliant and
sustainable fisheries,
particularly in the small-scale,
artisanal sector
We work towards an equitable,
gender-just, self-reliant and
sustainable fisheries,
particularly in the small-scale,
artisanal sector
We work towards an equitable,
gender-just, self-reliant and
sustainable fisheries,
particularly in the small-scale,
artisanal sector
Filipino activists and Vietnamese nationals hold placards and wave Philippine flags. Photo by AFP/Photo by AFP/Ted Aljibe
"None of the Spratly Islands grant China an exclusive economic zone," said Hague tribunal.
The Tribunal stated that China's claims to historic rights under nine-dash-line are contrary to U.N. convention. Hague also finds that Chinese actions have aggravated Philippines dispute during resolution attempts.
"China had violated the Philippines' sovereign rights in its exclusive economic zone by interfering with Philippine fishing and petroleum exploration, by constructing artificial islands and failing to prevent Chinese fishermen from fishing in the zone," the Hague-based Permanent Court of Arbitration said in a statement.
The Philippines "welcomes" South China Sea (Vietnam's East Sea) ruling, calling for "restraint and sobriety".
Philippine Foreign Secretary Perfecto Yasay gives a brief statement regarding the issuance of the award by the arbitral tribunal constituted by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) during a press conference at the Department of Foreign Affairs headquarters, Manila, Philippines July 12, 2016. Photo by Reuters/Romeo Ranoco
In the 497-page ruling, judges also found that Chinese law enforcement patrols had risked colliding with Philippine fishing vessels in parts of the sea and caused irreparable damage to coral reefs with construction work.
The Chinese state media Xinhua said China "does not accept and does not recognize" Hague tribunal judgement.
China foreign minister says the ruling will worsen the tensions. President Xi Jinping said China is dedicated to maintaining peace and stability in the South China Sea but will not accept any positions or actions based on the outcome of the arbitration case over the dispute.
Philippines Foreign Minister said experts have studied award with care in response to Chinese Xinhua's claim that court has issued "ill-founded award" on the disputed waters.
Statement of the Secretary of Foreign Affairs pic.twitter.com/s40RAN3K2i DFA Spokesperson (@dfaspokesperson) July 12, 2016
Previously on July 5, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte had offered to hold conciliatory talks with China and vowed he would not "taunt or flaunt" any ruling.
Vietnam's Foreign Ministry welcomes the tribunal ruling.
Taiwan says South China Sea disputes should be resolved via multilateral negotiations.
Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida said in a statement that Japan has consistently advocated the importance of the rule of law and the use of peaceful means, not the use of force or coercion, in seeking settlement of maritime disputes. He also stated that the Hague tribunal ruling on the South China Sea was final and legally binding, and the parties to the case were required to comply.
A five-member tribunal of maritime affairs experts in The Hague has issued the ruling.
The tribunal set up by the Permanent Court of Arbitration is allowed to arbitrate on matters of international law, including the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). It has the power to make a decision that cannot be appealed. However the tribunal and the PCA have no means to enforce the verdict, with compliance left to the parties concerned.
China claims most of the South China Sea, even waters approaching neighboring countries, based on a vaguely defined "nine-dash-line" found on a 1940s Chinese map. The Philippines, and other countries, dispute this claim.
Commentators say the 3 million square kilometres (1.2 million square miles) of water are a potential flashpoint for regional conflict.
The tensions have alarmed the United States which has key defense treaties with many regional allies, and in a show of strength last week sent warships to patrol close to some of the reefs and islands claimed by China.
Meanwhile, the Chinese navy conducted combat drills near its southern island province of Hainan and the Paracel islands in the South China Sea one week ahead of the Hague tribunal's ruling.
Scientists believe that the disputed waters could contain unexploited oil, gas and minerals, which would be a boon to any country that can establish their claims to the region's waters, especially in resource-hungry Asia. It's also home to abundant fisheries that feed growing populations.
Related news:
> Beijing will not 'step back' in 'South China Sea'
> Philippines willing to share 'South China Sea': govt
> China urged to #CHexit from 'South China Sea'
> Vietnam waits with bated breath for The Hague to rule on Philippine lawsuit
PM orders shake up at scandal-hit Ministry of Industry and Trade
Vietnam is restructuring unwieldy government bodies in a bid to maintain economic momentum and reduce administrative burden.
Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc has called for a major shake-up at the Ministry of Industry and Trade.
We have talked about restructuring the [trade and industry] sector. In fact, the ministry itself needs significant and transparent reforms, said the PM on Tuesday at a meeting to review the ministrys performance in the first six months.
The Ministry of Industry and Trade has recently come under the spotlight following a series of scandals involving top ministerial officials.
Suspicions have emerged in the public media that former trade minister Vu Huy Hoang had used his political clout to help his son quickly climb the corporate ladder, rising to the position of a top executive at the countrys largest state-owned beverage company at an unusually young age.
The media has also looked into the career advancement of a party official from the southern province of Hau Giang who worked as a top official at the Ministry of Industry and Trade for many years.
The PM asked Minister of Industry and Trade Tran Tuan Anh to reshape the way the ministry is run.
The price of economic growth
Prime Minister Phuc also urged the trade ministry to be more proactive in developing a market-based economy and fully engaging the private business sector.
[We should] let the market do its work. [What the state should do] is organize and regulate the market in a way that ensures transparency, equality, no monopolies and fair competition, said Phuc.
Vietnams manufacturing sector is being held back by low-wages, low-tech and low-added value. The country is looking at ways to move up the global value chain so that it can maximize the potential benefits from a variety of new generation free trade agreements.
The Prime Minister emphasized that without creativity and innovation, Vietnam will remain at the bottom of the global value chain and become an outsourcing hub for the rest of the world.
We cannot make compromises purely for economic growth, said Prime Minister Phuc, referring to the most serious environmental disaster Vietnam has faced.
Earlier this month, the Vietnamese government warned Taiwanese steel plant Formosa, located in the central province of Ha Tinh, never to discharge toxic waste into the ocean again, otherwise the plant would be shut down for good.
The Formosa steel plant, a subsidiary of Formosa Plastics, admitted that it had caused the mass fish deaths along a 200-kilometer stretch of coastline in central Vietnam.
The mass fish deaths started in April in the central province of Ha Tinh, about 400 kilometers south of Hanoi.
Farmers began to find fish dead on April 6 at aquatic farms near Ha Tinh Provinces Vung Ang Port. More dead fish were subsequently found washed up on nearby beaches.
The problem quickly spread to the provinces of Quang Binh, Quang Tri and Thua Thien Hue along a 200km stretch of coast.
The mass fish deaths have reportedly devastated local fisheries, disrupted peoples lives and hit local tourism in the area.
A Vietnamese fishing boat from Da Nang is sank by Chinese vessel in May. Photo by VnExpress/Nguyen Dong
Increased harassment against the fishermen looms large after the Philippines wins the international lawsuit.
Vietnam has lashed out at China for ramming and sinking a Vietnamese fishing boat in an island chain over which Hanoi claims sovereignty, urging action against those responsible and demanding compensation for the affected fishermen.
Vietnam demands that China respect international laws, not repeat similar actions and compensate the Vietnamese fishermen properly, Le Hai Binh, the foreign ministry spokesman, said in a statement on Wednesday. Vietnam on Monday also delivered a diplomatic note to the Chinese Embassy in Hanoi protesting the harassment of its fishermen.
On Sunday, according to local search and rescue forces in the central province of Quang Ngai, two Chinese vessels rammed and sank a Vietnamese fishing boat near the Paracel Islands in the East Sea, internationally known as the South China Sea.
Vietnamese authorities accused the Chinese vessels of not only sinking the Vietnamese boat but also trying to prevent other boats from rescuing the fishermen. The five-man crew have since returned home.
Hundreds of Vietnamese fishermen and their crews have fallen prey to China's increasingly aggressive patrols around the disputed islands in the East Sea.
In 1974, taking advantage of the withdrawal of American troops from the Vietnam War, China invaded the Paracel Islands. A brief but bloody naval battle with the forces of the then US-backed Republic of Vietnam ensued.
Vietnam's giant northern neighbor has illegally occupied the islands ever since. But a post-1975 united Vietnam has never relinquished its ownership of the Paracels and continues to keep military bases and other facilities on the Spratlys, another island chain in the East Sea.
China routinely outlines the scope of its territorial claims through maps featuring a so-called nine-dash line a demarcation that includes about 90 percent of the 3.5-million-square-kilometer East Sea. But these maps have been emphatically rejected by international experts and fly in the face of competing claims by four members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei, which have overlapping claims in the Spratlys.
On Tuesday, an international arbitration court ruled that China has no historic title over large swaths of the East Sea and that Beijing has violated Manilas sovereign rights with its actions.
Analysts expect that China, which has dismissed the court as a farce, will challenge the validity of the ruling by acting even more aggressively in the flashpoint waters.
China would continue to do what it is doing now, said Nguyen Vu Tung, the acting president of the Diplomatic Academy of Vietnam, at a conference held on Tuesday by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank based in Washington D.C. That would also include harsh treatment against fishermen in the region.
Related news:
> Chinese vessels sink Vietnamese fishing boat near Paracel Islands
> Unidentified ship sinks Vietnamese fishing boat in Hoang Sa archipelago
Imperial Valley News Center
European Commissions Approval of the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield Framework
Washington, DC - Federal Trade Commission Chairwoman Edith Ramirez issued the enclosed statement following the European Commissions approval of the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield Framework in Brussels, Belgium today.
I welcome the European Commissions approval of the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield Framework. The FTC has a strong track record of protecting consumer privacy, and we will remain vigilant as we enforce the new framework. We will also continue to work closely with our European counterparts to provide robust privacy and data security protections for consumers in the United States and Europe.
California welcomes proclamation of National Farmers Market Week
Sacramento, California - My former boss at the USDA, Tom Vilsack, recently signed a proclamation designating August 7-13, 2016 as National Farmers Market Week. This is the 17th annual event showcasing the important role that farmers markets play in local economies. We appreciate the USDAs commitment here in California, where certified farmers markets have been in place since Governor Brown signed legislation creating them during his first stint in office in 1977.
California has approximately 700 certified farmers markets and about 2,200 certified producers selling in the markets. A little more than half are year-round. The rest are seasonal. These markets are now part of the fabric of many communities throughout the state. Heres how to find one near you.
The high quality and fresh produce brought to certified farmers markets by its producers creates a diverse market and also provides consumers with opportunities to meet farmers and learn how their food supply is produced. This direct pathway for healthy, nutritious food is one of several ways in which consumers and farmers connect.
Certified farmers markets are an important source of fresh produce to many seniors and low-income families who can purchase fruits and vegetables through the Senior Farmers Market Nutrition Program; the Women, Infants and Childrens (WIC) Supplemental Nutrition Program; and the CalFresh program.
We are proud and pleased to offer these markets in California and look forward to partnering with the USDA next month during National Farmers Market Week!
Energy Department Announces $14 Million to Advance Hydrogen Fuel Technologies
Washington, DC - Today, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced up to $14 million in funding for the advancement of hydrogen fuel technologies. Specifically, these selections include advanced high-temperature water splitting, advanced compression, and thermal insulation technologies. These projects will accelerate American innovation in hydrogen and fuel cell technologies by supporting research and development and domestic manufacturing.
For cost-competitive transportation, hydrogen must be comparable to conventional fuels and technologies on a per-mile basis in order to succeed in the commercial marketplace. DOE's current target is to reduce the cost of producing and delivering hydrogen to less than $4 per gallon of gas equivalent (gge) by 2020 and $7/gge for early markets.
To combat a limited supplier base, DOE is also announcing the launch of HFCNexus, an online tool for hydrogen and fuel cell technologies, developed through a current DOE-funded project by Virginia Clean Cities at James Madison University. A business-to-business website that connects fuel cell and hydrogen technology developers with potential suppliers, HFCNexus will be a resource when it comes to necessary equipment, such as hoses, nozzles, and meters.
The projects selected under this funding opportunity are:
High Temperature Water Splitting
Ceramatec Inc.; Salt Lake City, Utahwill improve the performance of durable materials for high temperature water splitting stack technology through the development of a novel cell architecture that introduces macro-features to provide mechanical support of a thin electrolyte, and micro-features of the electrodes to lower polarization losses.
Fuel Cell Energy, Inc.; Danbury, Connecticutwill demonstrate the potential of solid oxide electrolysis cell (SOEC) systems to produce hydrogen at a cost of $2 per kilogram.
Giner, Inc.; Newton, Massachusettswill develop high temperature alkaline water electrolyzers with improved electrical efficiency at a reduced cost.
Advanced Compression
Giner, Inc.; Newton, Massachusettswill demonstrate a cost-effective method for compressing hydrogen while eliminating the need for mechanical compressors which can have significant reliability issues.
Greenway Energy, LLC; Aiken, South Carolinato overcome the reliability issues of mechanical compression and the efficiency challenges of solid state compression technologies, this project combines two novel technologies, Electrochemical Hydrogen Compression (EHC) and Metal Hydride Compression (MHC), into a new hybrid solid state hydrogen compressor.
Sandia National Laboratories; Livermore, Californiawill investigate and demonstrate a laboratory scale two-stage metal hydride-based hydrogen gas compressor.
Thermal Insulation
Vencore Services and Solutions; Reston, Virginiawill apply integrated cryogenic tank approaches and novel technologies developed by NASA's Cryogenics Test Laboratory to build an integrated subscale insulation system prototype demonstrating the heat leak targets applicable to cryogenic hydrogen storage tanks for commercially produced fuel cell powered automobiles.
The Department's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy accelerates development and deployment of energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies and market-based solutions that strengthen U.S. energy security, environmental quality, and economic vitality.
Department of State To Host 2016 Timbie Forum on Arms Control and Nonproliferation
Washington, DC - The Department of State, in partnership with the George Washington University Elliott School for International Affairs, will host the 2016 James Timbie Forum on Arms Control and Nonproliferation on July 14-15 at the Department of States George Marshall Auditorium and George Washington Universitys Elliott School for International Affairs, Henry Harding Auditorium.
The Timbie Forum is dedicated to fostering new voices and ideas on policies relating to weapons of mass destruction (WMD). By emphasizing diverse and dynamic panels and presentations, the Department of State hopes to inform and engage with a new generation of experts devoted to reducing the threats posed by WMD.
Speakers at this years event will include 19th U.S. Secretary of Defense William Perry, Congressman Jeff Fortenberry (R-NE), Congressman Seth Moulton (D-MA), General Philip M. Breedlove USAF (ret.), National Security Council Senior Director for Arms Control and Nonproliferation Jon Wolfsthal, National Security Advisor to Vice President Biden Colin Kahl, Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Rose Gottemoeller, as well as a host of emerging leaders.
The July 14th sessions are open to the press, and will begin at 8:45am. It will be held at the George Marshall Auditorium at the Department of State. Pre-set time for cameras is at 8:15am from the 21st Street entrance. Final access time for writers and stills is at 8:30am from the 21st Street entrance.
Sao Tome and Principe National Day
Washington, DC - On behalf of President Obama and the American people, I congratulate the people of the Democratic Republic of Sao Tome and Principe on the 41st anniversary of your independence on July 12.
The United States is proud of the strong and vital partnership that our countries have forged. We value your contributions to peace and security in the Gulf of Guinea, and support your efforts to promote stable economic growth, democracy and good governance, and sustainable development of energy resources.
I send best wishes to the people of Sao Tome and Principe for a joyous national day.
Zimbabwe Man Who Started 'Pak Bean' Rivalry Had This to Say After Pakistan's Defeat
One of the most complicated dishes on the region's menu, the dish is available only from the ninth month to the third month of the lunar calendar. The moss stays fresh for only two hours after harvesting. Found where the water flows the fastest, the moss of choice is found on stream rocks. Only young moss is harvested and then pounded to get rid of the dirt. Moss comes in soups, salads and grilled, but it's at its best with ginger and pepper.
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A newly discovered letter has revealed Vincent Van Gogh cut off his whole left ear and gave it to a chambermaid, differing from established historical accounts of the incident.
The letter from the troubled artist's doctor, Dr Rey, showed a sketch of the mutilated ear and what happened to it.
Art historians had previously thought the post-impressionist only cut a portion or a lobe of his ear before handing the severed flesh to a prostitute in the brothel he was staying in Arles.
Researcher Bernadette Murphy was able, with the help of the letter, to prove the ear was given to a girl called Gabrielle - Telegraph reports.
Gabrielle had been injured as a result of the an attack by a ravaged dog and had been working as a cleaner in the brothel to pay off her medical bills.
Nienke Bakker, curator of paintings at the museum, said: "The discovery of Dr Reys letter, which is very clear and factual, finally solves the question about which part of his ear he cut off
"It is a very beautiful document, bringing us closer to the doctor who cared for Van Gogh."
A close-up view of the letter by Dr. Felix Rey about the ear of Vincent van Gogh is displayed as part of the exhibition 'On the Verge of Insanity. (EPA)
Louis van Tilborgh, senior researcher and professor of art history at the University of Amsterdam told MailOnline: "It solves a long outstanding question of whether he cut off his ear, only part of his ear or only his lobe.
"We now know for sure that it was indeed his whole ear. It's an important document with a lot of emotional value."
Van Gogh paintings have lost their original colours
Van Gogh committed suicide in 1890 after failing to secure a market for his work - he only ever sold one of more than 900 paintings.
The letter, the pistol he used to shoot himself and 25 of his paintings and drawings are to be shown in an exhibition called "On The Verge of Insanity"
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A James Dean waxwork in Coney Island in the 1950s is shiny and white through the glass; an elderly woman with a neat perm frowns as she clutches her pocketbook on Fifth Avenue; a woman impersonator looks comically tragic as he applies lipstick in the mirror.
Diane Arbus early photographs are now on display at the Met Breuer and capture the full freakdom of New York City after the Second World War.
Although the fire-eater might be gone from the Brooklyn palisades and the backwards man might not be as novel a concept as he once was, modern New Yorkers can all identify with those ghost-like shapes we pass on the streets, people with their own stories to tell but whom we will never get to know.
Maybe that is what so fascinating about Diane Arbus - we hardly know the photograher herself as she struggled with bouts of depression and took her own life at the age of 48.
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What Im trying to describe is that its impossible to get out of your skin into somebody elses, she once wrote. "And thats what all this is a little bit about. That somebody elses tragedy is not the same as your own."
The expression of the boy who steps off the curb and onto the street - young and wide-eyed - gives us not only a snapshot of his life amid the frenzy and transience of the New York City streets but also of the artist behind the frame.
Unlike her contemporaries, such as Walker Evans or Helen Levitt, who actively used to hide their cameras when taking photos so as not to distract their subjects, Ms Arbus would seek a moment of eye contact or engagement with the people she photographed.
(Met Museum)
She was famously drawn to so-called deviants - prostitutes, pimps, strippers, dancers, gang members, Russian midgets and female impersonators.
Freaks was a thing I photographed a lot. It was one of the first things I photographed and it had a terrific kind of excitement for me, she wrote.
Most people go through life dreading theyll have a traumatic experience. For freaks, they were born with their trauma. Theyve already passed their test in life. Theyre aristocrats.
(Met Museum)
Ms Arbus apparent lack of sympathy in describing marginalized communities as things is remarkable given the fact that she made friendships with many of these people, from the hard core lesbians in Washington Square to the toothless, transgender prostitute whose birthday party in Harlem she was invited to.
The photographer, who married her high school sweetheart at the age of 18 and lived and died in the West Village, described the mix of excitement and dread when she went out to take pictures of people, as if she was going on a blind date.
(Met Museum)
That feeling resonates in the photographs, as if she and most of her subjects are wary, checking each other out, and totally vulnerable.
Most people we encounter are strangers. Yet in a city of millions of people, Ms Arbus wanted to make her photographs specific.
There are an awful lot of people in the world so its going to be terribly hard to photograph all of them, so if I photograph some kind of generalized human being, everybodyll recognize it, she wrote.
The authority of displaying the Common Man is what draws the viewer closer to the photograph, peering in as if there is more there than first meets the eye.
What did that elderly woman in pearls whisper to her companion at the ball? What is going through the mind of that girl with the thick fringe who is looking up at the skyline?
It may be a land of freaks, but within those pictures, even 70 years later, most New Yorkers will see a piece of themselves.
"Diane Arbus: In The Beginning", is on display at the Met Breuer from 12 July to 27 November 2016
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Poor Harry Potter, in his cupboard under the stairs.
You've got to wonder what the kid could have possibly done to have incurred the wrath of the Dursleys; of his grotesque uncle and aunt, and their equally grotesque son, their tortures towards Harry making his triumphant arrival to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry all the more triumphant. Well, J.K. Rowling finally has some answers.
In a post on Pottermore, Rowling wrote at length about the history of Vernon and Petunia Dursley, who met in the dull environments of the office; Petunia forever embittered by the fact her witch sister - Lily - was the favoured child. Indeed, her romancing of the distinctly ordinary Vernon appears to have been a rebellion against her sister's own uniqueness.
In numbers: Harry Potter at 20
However, tension soon grew between Vernon and Lily's own boyfriend, James Potter, and the sisters grew even further apart; Lily was not invited to be a bridesmaid at Petunia's wedding, and Petunia failed even to show for Lily's.
The very last correspondence between the pair was a letter from Lily announcing Harry's birth, which was promptly thrown in the bin. Unsurprisingly, then, the Dursleys were shocked at the discovery of their orphaned nephew on their doorstep a little over a year later but, reading of Lily's shocking death, Petunia felt she had no choice but to take the child in.
"She did it grudgingly, and spent the rest of Harry's childhood punishing him for her own choice," Rowling reveals on the matter; Vernon's added resentment also stems from Harry's close resemblance to his father James, which motivated Severus Snape's own dislike in turn.
Rowling's writing on Pottermore had also recently revealed a wealth of details on the American Hogwarts, Ilvermorny School of Witchcraft and Wizardry; including the revelation of the school's four houses.
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, which features Rowling's debut screenplay, hits UK cinemas 18 November 2016.
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Filming on Star Wars: Episode VIII has officially wrapped.
One of the most highly-anticipated sequels of recent years is officially in the bag, and about to embark on the lengthy process of post-production ahead of its release next year. Of course, its secrets are closely guarded against the outside world, with Daisy Ridley even having to shield Rey's new hairstyle from prying eyes on her Instagram; but spirits certainly seem to be high.
Cast and crew celebrated the film's wrap party in absolute style, taking to London's Natural History Museum for a night of dancing and some extra special guests, an elite squad of dancing stormtroopers. Britain's Got Talent finalists Boogie Storm took to the stage dressed in the costumes to perform a whole host of iconic dance routines, from the Nae Nae to Beyonce's "Single Ladies".
A performance which certainly impressed Luke Skywalker himself, with Mark Hamill posting a video of the routine to Facebook with the glorious hashtag, #TheEmpireShakesItsBooty.
That said, don't necessarily expect to see footage anytime soon; Disney's focus will likely stay fixated entirely on its riskier endeavour Rogue One up to its release, though the upcoming San Diego Comic-Con may tease out a few revelations for the sequel.
Star Wars: Episode VIII is set to hit cinemas December 2017.
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An era defined by free love, music parents hated and an if it feels good, do it attitude, sixties Hippie counter culture is back. Sartorially, this was a movement bound by self-expression so what was the number one garb for elite nonconformists? Tie-dye, of course. With its roots in ancient forms of resist-dyeing, the free-spirited tinting technique reached peak popularity in the 70s followed by a short stint in the 90s thanks to a surge in youthful rebellion and do-it-yourself style. But, just how has the capacity to tie, twist and dye become a trend frontrunner in 2016?
Altuzarra Spring Summer 2016
This season, tie-dye print gets a high-fashion makeover with a grown-up take on pastel-hued swirls and bursts of colour. One of the most elegant offerings came from Altuzarra who worked with tonal-greens, rich oranges and yellows inspired by the designers Spanish heritage. Tie-dyed in saturated colour, the silhouettes retained maturity with crepe skirts cut high to the waist, midi-length dresses and their signature thigh-baring split.
This more considered approach wasnt for everyone though with some designers sticking to tie-dyes imperturbable roots, albeit with a high-fashion twist. For Valentino, jacquard coats, cargo jackets and flares were swathed in khaki and burnt range tie-dye with a collection stirred by the wild plains of Africa. For Max Azria though, 70s skate and surf culture took the reins with board shorts, tie-dye knits and multi-coloured bucket hats oozing West Coast style.
Paco Rabanne Spring Summer 2016 (pixelformula.com)
Tie-Dye is a great alternative to habitual summer prints such as florals but to avoid looking like youve just stepped out of a time warp, there are a few points to consider. Wear it sparingly, one item at a time as like many other patterned trends, its important not to go overboard. Source one key piece, such as a top or skirt, and make sure the rest of your outfit is neutral you want to avoid cliched surfer vibes and little goes a long way with this one. Dont be afraid of colour either and be sure to embrace tie-dyes psychedelic heredities; for something a little chicer opt for pieces that contain shades within the same colour family. This season, it really is a case of do or dye.
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Most people associate a lump or a change in size and shape of their breast as a sign of breast cancer, but one woman has shared a picture of a dimple on her breast to raise awareness of the other symptoms involved.
Claire Warner posted a picture of her left breast on social media after being diagnosed with breast cancer. The picture shows the underside of her breast, with an obvious mark of a bruise from where she had a biopsy taken, next to a less obvious possible sign of cancer: a dimple.
Ms Warner shared the picture on Facebook with a message encouraging women to check for all abnormalities on their breasts, not just lumps. The post was shared more than 25,000 times but has since been made private after Ms Warner became inundated with messages.
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Ms Warner said on Twitter that the story of Lisa Royle, a woman who shared her own picture of a dimple on her breast on Facebook, had alerted her to her own symptom.
It was this Facebook post by this amazing lady that alerted me. I felt no lump. Just saw the dimple, please check!! she wrote.
She has been diagnosed with a 14mm grade three invasive ductal carcinoma, which is curable, and will undergo surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy to treat it.
Ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) means that some of the cells inside the breast ducts have started to become abnormal and turned into cancer cells, Cancer Research UK states.
(Breast Cancer Care)
The NHS states that while 90 per cent of breast lumps are not cancerous, it is always advisable to have them checked by a doctor.
Other possible symptoms of breast cancer are: a lump or area of thickened tissue in a breast; a change in the size or shape of one or both breasts; discharge from a nipple; a lump or swelling in an armpit; dimpling on the skin of the breast; a rash on or around a nipple; or a change in the appearance of a nipple, such as becoming sunken.
The Irish miracle By: Scott Sumner
Theres been a lot of recent discussion of the new GDP statistics out of Ireland, which show 2015 RGDP growth of 26.3% and NGDP growth of 32.4%. Almost everyone agrees that the data is somewhat fishy, but its not clear whether that means wrong or accurate but misleading. Based in what Ive read, I vote for wrong.
Half of the growth in NGDP is due to a massive jump in depreciation. This sector had been rising at a very gradual pace from many years, from 25,087 in 2010 to 30,891 in 2014. Then it doubled to 61,558 in 2015. That almost certainly did not actually happen; rather it probably represents multinationals writing off certain assets in a lumpy fashion.
Paul Krugman links to another explanation:
The increase in investment, although you cant see it in the national accounts, is being driven by airline leasing. My hunch is that this has increased by about 110%. Airline companies of the world are effectively transferring their financial activities (as new aircraft machinery) into Ireland for tax purposes. As a student of mine nicely put it: imagine all those massive Boeing planes flying around the world, then imagine them in Ireland, and hundreds of people working on them. Where are they? In truth. We couldnt even fit these planes in Ireland. Its just around 20 people managing a financial fund for tax avoidance purposes. Then using the generated money for profit redistribution. Thats whats really go on. The increase in exports, although more real, and somewhat more complicated, is a result of a similar dynamic. Its large corporations transferring assets and IP patents into Ireland with no real connection to employment and then booking it as real investment, for tax purposes.
This makes no sense to me. Suppose assets like airliners or patents were transferred to Ireland. That would indeed represent investment, as their capital stock would rise rapidly. But it should also show up as a boost in imports, which subtract from GDP. So there is no first order effect on GDP (which isnt to say it might not make Ireland more productive, and gradually boost NGDP over time). Even worse, the article suggests the airplanes were not even located in Ireland.
Ive argued that NGDP targeting is not always appropriate for small open economies, citing examples such as Australia and Kuwait. Actually, its probably much more appropriate for Australia than Ireland. The key is whether NGDP tracks total labor compensation fairly closely. Where it does, as in the US, then NGDP targeting is appropriate. Where it doesnt, as in Kuwait, then you want to target total labor compensation, perhaps per capita.
In terms of monetary policy, it doesnt matter whether the Ireland data is wrong, or correct but misleading. Either way that huge surge in reported NGDP does not reflect labor market conditions, and hence is not an appropriate target for NGDP. (I didnt even check the wage data, its one of those things you just know, if you are numerate.)
And the Irish really need to get some better national account statisticians.
HT: Tyler Cowen, Gordon
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There was something fitting about the way one of George Osbornes last tweets as Chancellor left a great, pendulous, counterfactual swinging in the background.
I hope Ive left the economy in a better state than I found it he wrote on the social media platform.
But of course one would certainly expect that after six years any economy would be in a better state, that GDP per capita would be higher, that jobs would have increased, that wages would have risen.
And they are.
But this is hardly the appropriate metric to reach for.
What matters when it comes to judging a Chancellors record is whether the economy is in as good a state as one might reasonably have hoped and expected before they took office.
Could things should things - have been much better? What was the counterfactual?
And here, alas, history is not likely to judge Osborne kindly.
His tenure will be defined by austerity but the crime was less austerity than inflexibility.
Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in and who's out? Show all 27 1 /27 Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in and who's out? Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in and who's out? Andrea Leadsom Andrea Leadsom has been appointed Secretary for Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Getty Images Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in and who's out? Priti Patel Priti Patel has been appointed International Development Secretary PA Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in and who's out? Alun Cairns Alun Cairns will stay on as Welsh Secretary Reuters Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in and who's out? Karen Bradley Karen Bradley is now Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport Rex Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in and who's out? Greg Clark Greg Clark has been appointed Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy PA Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in and who's out? James Brokenshire James Brokenshire has been appointed as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland PA Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in and who's out? Stephen Crabb Stephen Crabb has resigned as Work and Pensions Secretary PA Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in and who's out? Theresa Villiers Theresa Villiers will not return as Northern Ireland Secretary. She was reportedly offered a role by Theresa May, but turned it down, saying it was not one she felt could take on Getty Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in and who's out? Chris Grayling Chris Grayling has been appointed Transport Secretary PA Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in and who's out? Damien Green Damien Green has been appointed Work and Pensions Secretary Getty Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in and who's out? Liz Truss Liz Truss has been appointed Justice Secretary Getty Images Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in and who's out? Patrick McLoughlin Patrick McLoughlin who was Transport Secretary has been appointed Tory Party chairman and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster Getty Images Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in and who's out? Justine Greening Justine Greening has been appointed as Education Secretary Getty Images Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in and who's out? Gavin Williamson Gavin Williamson is to become the new Government Chief Whip Reuters Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in and who's out? Jeremy Hunt Jeremy Hunt will continue as Health Secretary Getty Images Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in and who's out? Nicky Morgan Nicky Morgan lost her job as Education Secretary Reuters Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in and who's out? Michael Gove Michael Gove has been sacked as Justice Secretary Reuters Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in and who's out? John Whittingdale John Whittingdale left his job as Culture Secretary EPA Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in and who's out? Oliver Letwin Oliver Letwin, the Chancellor for the Duchy of Lancaster, has been sacked from his role in the cabinet PA Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in and who's out? Philip Hammond The former Foreign Secretary has been made Chancellor EPA Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in and who's out? Boris Johnson Leading Brexit campaigner is given the role of Foreign Secretary Getty Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in and who's out? Amber Rudd Leading Remain campaigner takes Theresa May's old job of Home Secretary PA Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in and who's out? Michael Fallon Stays as Defence Secretary AP Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in and who's out? Liam Fox The former Defence Secretary is named as head of new Department for International Trade PA Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in and who's out? David Davis The former shadow Home Secretary and leadership rival to David Cameron is named Secretary of State for Leaving the European Union - aka Brexit minister PA Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in and who's out? George Osborne Gone as Chancellor - and fails to secure any new role in May's government GETTY Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in and who's out? David Mundell The Conservative Party's only Scottish MP retains his role as Scottish Secretary Getty Images
In 2010 he embarked on a clumsy assault on the deficit, mainly by slashing state capital infrastructure spending.
He cut hard before the UKs recovery from the Great Recession was assured, ignoring the great insight of Keynesian economics that to do so can make matters worse.
Hindered from without by the eurozones self-inflicted agonies, UK growth duly stalled, as Osbornes was warned by many that it might.
The recovery from the 2008-09 downturn was already by far the longest from any recession in UK post-war history.
A major fiscal stimulus U-turn would have been wholly appropriate and would have boosted UK output and living standards - with no credible risk of an investor run on UK debt (indeed UK Gilt yields plummeted rather than rose as the reviled deficit flatlined).
But the Chancellors hardline rhetoric on the national debt and the size of the deficit and his cocksure early rejection of the need for any Plan B had made that politically impossible.
In the end, aggressive monetary loosening from the Bank of England came to the economys rescue, along with one the Chancellors very worst policies, a "Help To Buy" scheme that stimulated consumer confidence in 2013 but only at the terrible price of perpetuating the countrys housing disaster.
On the supply side of the economy in general he was far too timid and ideologically hidebound.
He was allergic to any form of direct state funding for house building, sorely needed though it was and remains.
Nor would he countenance the foundation of a proper state bank to fund small firms or infrastructure.
For all his bold rhetoric on cleaning up finance in the wake of the crash, Osborne was never really interested in breaking up the giant banks and he has delivered a wholly unsatisfactory half-way house of ringfencing.
His proclaimed desire to take on abusive oligopolies in energy and other markets came only at the eleventh hour of his Chancellorship and nothing has been delivered.
When it came to tackling corporate tax evasion he spoke with a forked tongue, proclaiming his intolerance of multinational tax dodging while also seeking to turn the UK into a kind of semi-tax haven by slashing corporation tax to unnecessarily low levels.
Politics, far too often, got in the way of the economics for Osborne.
His obsession with creating lurid fiscal dividing lines with Labour was arguably his undoing.
It boxed him in when his initial austerity drive proved counter-productive.
And his economically illiterate surplus target in this Parliament, again primarily designed to embarrass Labour, forced him into the terrible blunder of trying to find savings by cutting working tax credits and disability benefits. His reputation has never recovered from those debacles.
In fairness, he did some good and brave things, mainly towards the end of his time in office.
The big rise in the minimum wage was a gamble, but one worth taking and it belied his image as a small state ideologue.
The apprenticeship levy on corporations was a fine policy and one that Labour should have implemented itself when in power.
His emphasis on the need for a Northern Powerhouse, though coming rather late in the day and hardly fleshed out as a policy, was a welcome recognition of the need for a regional economic rebalancing.
And of course he argued passionately and responsibly for Britains continued European Union membership, which he knew would do his career prospects no favours in a massively Europhobic Tory party.
Yet, in the end, he didn't learn fast enough from his many mistakes. And the youngest Chancellor in 120 years never quite managed to shed the whiff of the callow ideologue who was not as clever as he thought he was.
It could and should have been a lot better.
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Airbnb is expanding into business travel after signing a deal with three travel management companies that could pose a threat to the hotel industry.
The home rental platform has partnered with three travel management companies: American Express Global Business Travel (GBT), BCD Travel and Carlson Wagonlit Travel.
It plans to make it easier for corporate customers to book accommodation with Airbnb hosts.
Business travellers are increasingly looking for alternatives to hotels, and companies want to be able to offer employees those choices while managing costs and without compromising security and safety, said Lex Bayer, head of global payments and business development at Airbnb.
This could pause a serious threat to hotel managers who previously considered that business travellers their core customers - were safe from the sharing economy.
We believe corporate travel will continue to be more difficult for Airbnb to penetrate given safety and privacy concerns holding back adoption, and the higher importance corporate travelers place on amenities, a report by Morgan Stanley Global Insight stated.
But the situation is changing.
Quartz
Airbnb said more than 50,000 employees of more than 5,000 companies have completed bookings since July 2015.
Employees who have booked with Airbnb saved their companies an average of 30 per cent more than traditional accommodation, according to a study by CWT solutions group.
Business travellers stay seven nights in Airbnb accommodation, twice as long as stays in traditional hotels, the same study found.
Business travellers want the freedom to choose accommodation that aligns with their personal and professional tastes, said Wes Bergstrom, vice president, global supplier relations, GBT.
The first phase of the American Express GBT deal will go live in the US in the next few weeks and expand to additional countries, including the UK, France and Germany, later this year.
Take a look at Beyonce's Super Bowl Airbnb Show all 10 1 /10 Take a look at Beyonce's Super Bowl Airbnb Take a look at Beyonce's Super Bowl Airbnb Airbnb / Host Cheryl Take a look at Beyonce's Super Bowl Airbnb Airbnb / Host Cheryl Take a look at Beyonce's Super Bowl Airbnb Airbnb / Host Cheryl Take a look at Beyonce's Super Bowl Airbnb Airbnb / Host Cheryl Take a look at Beyonce's Super Bowl Airbnb Airbnb / Host Cheryl Take a look at Beyonce's Super Bowl Airbnb Airbnb / Host Cheryl Take a look at Beyonce's Super Bowl Airbnb Airbnb / Host Cheryl Take a look at Beyonce's Super Bowl Airbnb Airbnb / Host Cheryl Take a look at Beyonce's Super Bowl Airbnb Airbnb / Host Cheryl Take a look at Beyonce's Super Bowl Airbnb Airbnb / Host Cheryl
In June, the European Commission issued new guidelines warning officials to stop aggressively cracking down on Uber, Airbnb and other sharing economy companies. They contributed about 28 billion (21.6bn) to the European Union economy in 2015, with revenues doubling in a year.
Elzbieta Bienkowska, Europe's senior official for industry and entrepreneurship, said such services were an opportunity, not a threat.
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Irelands economy grew by more than 26.3 per cent in 2015, largely as a result of corporate restructuring, the country's Central Statistics Office said on Tuesday.
Much of the growth is the result of a number of multinationals that moved their headquarters to Ireland last year, to take advantage of a corporate tax rate of 12.5 per cent. This compares to an OECD average of 24.85 per cent and a US rate of 38.9 per cent.
A press statement from the CSO explained the upward revision from the 7.8 per cent it had originally reported in March was the result of an increase in the number of new aircraft imports for Ireland, as well as corporate restructuring both through imports of individual assets and also reclassifications of entire balance sheets.
300 billion of assets were transferred to Ireland last year, the CSO figures show. This amounts to 66,700 for each of its 4.5 million population.
However, the CSO noted that that employment has not changed greatly as a result.
Analysts have doubted that the figures represent the true position of the Irish economy, which emerged from a 67 billion bailout from a troika of international creditors led by the International Monetary Fund two years ago.
The 26.3 per cent makes for a great media headline. But if the media want to go find this growth, they might as well go plane-watching at Dublin airport, said Aidan Regan, assistant professor in the School of Politics and International Relations at University College Dublin.
The average household didn't wake up phenomenally richer this morning Austin Hughes, KBC chief economist
Speaking to Reuters, KBC chief economist Austin Hughes said, The reality is that the average household didn't wake up phenomenally richer this morning. Public and private debt still remain where they are and Brexit will still have the same sort of impact envisaged.
Michael Noonan, Ireland's finance minister, said in a statement that the figures showed Ireland was enjoying real growth.
Peoples lives are improving with more at work than at any time since the onset of the downturn. We no longer need to impose swingeing cuts to public services, rather we have room to invest in services and infrastructure, Noonan said.
George Osborne to reduce UK corporation tax
The figures come as George Osborne announced plans to reduce the UKs corporate tax rate to 15 per cent by 2020, down from 20 per cent now and 28 per cent when he became Chancellor in 2010. The UKs rate is already the lowest in the G20.
The head of the World Trade Organisation, Pascal Lamy, and a host of charities have already criticised Mr Osbornes move as dangerous tax competition, which reduces corporate tax revenues everywhere in the world, including in developing countries.
Ireland has come under international pressure over its low tax rate, particularly from the US. Over 700 US companies are now officially based in Ireland, many having used so-called inversion deals.
Osborne on tax evasion
In April, US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer backed down from a $160bn inversion, which would have seen it technically purchased by smaller Dublin-based Allergan.
Had the deal gone through Pfizer would have been able to lower its tax bill by transferring billions in profits to the low-tax economy.
Business news: In pictures Show all 13 1 /13 Business news: In pictures Business news: In pictures Flybe collapses Airline Flybe has collapsed. All future flights on the Exeter-based airline have been cancelled leaving more than 2,300 staff facing an uncertain future, and wrecking the travel plans of hundreds of thousands of passengers. The chief executive, Mark Anderson, said: Europes largest independent regional airline has been unable to overcome significant funding challenges to its business. AFP via Getty Business news: In pictures Future product placement will be 'tailored to individual viewers' Marketing executives say that product placement in films and televison shows on streaming services such as Netflix may be tailored to individuals in future. For instance, if data shows that a viewer is a fan of pepsi, a billboard in the background of a shot would host an advert for pepsi, while for a viewer known to have different tastes it could be for Coca-Cola Paramount Business news: In pictures Corbyn wishes Amazon a happy birthday In a card sent to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos on the company's 25th birthday, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn writes: "You owe the British people millions in taxes that pay for the public services that we all rely on. Please pay your fair share" Business news: In pictures No deal, no tariffs The government has announced that it would slash almost all tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit. Notable exceptions include cars and meat, which will see tariffs in place to protect British farmers Getty Business news: In pictures Fingerprint payment NatWest is trialling a new bank card that will allow people to touch their hand to the card when paying rather than typing in a PIN number. The card will work by recognising the user's fingerprint NatWest/PA Wire Business news: In pictures Mahabis bust High-end slipper retailer Mahabis has gone into administration. 2 Jan 2019 Mahabis Business news: In pictures Costa Cola Coca-Cola has paid 3.9bn for Costa Coffee. A cafe chain is a new venture for the global soft drinks giant PA Business news: In pictures RIP Payday Loans A funeral procession for payday loans was held in London on September 2. The future of pay day lenders is in doubt after Wonga, Britain's biggest, went into administration on August 30 PA Business news: In pictures Musk irks investors and directors Elon Musk has concluded that Tesla will remain public. Investors and company directors were angry at Musk for tweeting unexpectedly that he was considering taking Tesla private and share prices had taken a tumble in the following weeks Getty Business news: In pictures Jaguar warning Iconic British car maker Jaguar Land Rover warned on July 5, 2018 that a "bad" Brexit deal could jeopardise planned investment of more than $100 billion, upping corporate pressure as the government heads into crucial talks AFP/Getty Business news: In pictures Spotif-IPO Spotify traded publically for the first time on the New York Stock Exchange on Tuesday. However, the company isn't issuing shares, but rather, shares held by Spotify's private investors will be sold AFP/Getty Business news: In pictures French blue passports The deadline to award a contract to make blue British passports after Brexit has been extended by two weeks following a request by bidder De La Rue. The move comes after anger at the announcement British passports would be produced by Franco-Dutch firm Gemalto when De La Rues contract ends in July. The British firm said Gemalto was chosen only because it undercut the competition, but the UK company also admitted that it was not the cheapest choice in the tendering process. Business news: In pictures Beast from the east economic impact The Beast from the East wiped 4m off of Flybes revenues due to flight cancellations, airport closures and delays, according to the budget airlines estimates. Flybe said it cancelled 994 flights in the three months to 31 March, compared to 372 in the same period last year.
Barack Obama has called corporate inversions one of the most insidious tax loopholes out there.
Apple is currently facing EU action over the low tax rate it pays in Ireland. The EU claims that the sweetheart deal offered to the American company amounts to illegal state aid.
However, in a budget speech last year finance minister, Noonan, said that he would defend our 12.5 per cent corporation tax rate and promote innovation as the lynchpin of our jobs policy, underpinned by strong alliances with our European partners.
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Holidaymakers heading to Europe will receive just one euro per pound at UK airports thanks to the combined effect of high charges and a Brexit-weakened pound.
Those heading to the US will hardly get a better deal in dollars.
The worst rates are at Moneycorps Bristol Airport bureau de change, which gives customers just 1.0008 per pound, according to Caxton FX, a pre-paid card provider.
Scots flying from Edinburgh will get a similarly low rate of 1.007.
Those flying from London airports get the best deal, receiving 1.07, an extra 70 for 1,000 exchanged, from Heathrow or Gatwick.
However, at ICEs desk at Luton airport the rate slides to just 1.007. At Stansted it is 1.015. All the airport prices were taken by Caxton FX on July 11.
The euro exchange rates offered at UK airports Caxton FX
The pound was trading at 1.194 at 4pm on Wednesday, meaning that consumers could be paying 18 per cent in commission and charges at some outlets.
Exchange rate: outrageously poor
Currency exchange bureaus at the airport have a captive audience, so they can offer outrageously poor rates and are still confident that people will purchase foreign currency from them, commented Rupert Lee Browne of Caxton FX.
The figures also highlight how far the pound has fallen since the June 23 EU referendum. Since the unexpected vote to leave, uncertainty around the UKs economic future has seen sterling plummet from 1.30 to 1.19.
The pound has fallen as a result of uncertainty after the shock referendum result (Bloomberg)
It was down again on Wednesday, having moved slightly upwards on the news that the Conservative leadership race had ended and Theresa May would be the new Prime Minister.
On the eve of the Brexit poll 1 would buy $1.50, compared to just $1.32 today, its lowest level since 1985. The timing of the fall will hit millions of UK travellers planning their summer holidays.
Koko Sarkari, the COO of ICE, which runs several of the bureaux surveyed, advised shoppers hit by the falling pound to obtain better online rates than those offered by his companys airport outlets.
We do always recommend that customers plan ahead and shop around before they leave for their holiday, he said.
Holidaymakers can also make their devalued pounds stretch further by putting money onto a pre-paid card.
6 ways Britain leaving the EU will affect you Show all 6 1 /6 6 ways Britain leaving the EU will affect you 6 ways Britain leaving the EU will affect you More expensive foreign holidays The first practical effect of a vote to Leave is that the pound will be worth less abroad, meaning foreign holidays will cost us more nito100 6 ways Britain leaving the EU will affect you No immediate change in immigration status The Prime Minister will have to address other immediate concerns. He is likely to reassure nationals of other EU countries living in the UK that their status is unchanged. That is what the Leave campaign has said, so, even after the Brexit negotiations are complete, those who are already in the UK would be allowed to stay Getty 6 ways Britain leaving the EU will affect you Higher inflation A lower pound means that imports would become more expensive. This is likely to mean the return of inflation a phenomenon with which many of us are unfamiliar because prices have been stable for so long, rising at no more than about 2 per cent a year. The effect may probably not be particularly noticeable in the first few months. At first price rises would be confined to imported goods food and clothes being the most obvious but inflation has a tendency to spread and to gain its own momentum AFP/Getty Images 6 ways Britain leaving the EU will affect you Interest rates might rise The trouble with inflation is that the Bank of England has a legal obligation to keep it as close to 2 per cent a year as possible. If a fall in the pound threatens to push prices up faster than this, the Bank will raise interest rates. This acts against inflation in three ways. First, it makes the pound more attractive, because deposits in pounds will earn higher interest. Second, it reduces demand by putting up the cost of borrowing, and especially by taking larger mortgage payments out of the economy. Third, it makes it more expensive for businesses to borrow to expand output Getty 6 ways Britain leaving the EU will affect you Did somebody say recession? Mr Carney, the Treasury and a range of international economists have warned about this. Many Leave voters appear not to have believed them, or to think that they are exaggerating small, long-term effects. But there is no doubt that the Leave vote is a negative shock to the economy. This is because it changes expectations about the economys future performance. Even though Britain is not actually be leaving the EU for at least two years, companies and investors will start to move money out of Britain, or to scale back plans for expansion, because they are less confident about what would happen after 2018 AFP/Getty Images 6 ways Britain leaving the EU will affect you And we wouldnt even get our money back All this will be happening while the Prime Minister, whoever he or she is, is negotiating the terms of our future access to the EU single market. In the meantime, our trade with the EU would be unaffected, except that companies elsewhere in the EU may be less interested in buying from us or selling to us, expecting tariff barriers to go up in two years time. Whoever the Chancellor is, he or she may feel the need to bring in a new Budget Getty Images
Sarkari blamed the low rates offered at airports on distribution, costs of operation, regional competition and other factors such as ongoing volatility in the market. The company was offering a rate of 1.1372 on its website on Wednesday for home delivery.
A Travelex spokesperson said that the company had to "take into consideration the cost of providing the service we offer at each location," which can be higher at airports.
Mark Horgan, CEO of Moneycorp, which offered the worst rates of the companies surveyed, pointed out that, "foreign exchange rates tend to differ between airports and other retail outlets," because of the costs involved. "Customers can access our best rates by ordering online... and opting to pick up their currency at a designated airport bureau, he said.
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David Cameron is about to be evicted from the home he has enjoyed for the last six years and 62 days as his premiership comes to an end. Removal vans have already arrived to cart off many of his belongings and Mr Cameron has eaten his last supper.
Later today, Mr Cameron will leave 10 Downing Street for the final time as Prime Minister. After facing his final and 182nd Prime Minister's Questions in the Commons, he will head to Buckingham Palace to offer his resignation to the Queen.
The man who once promised to stop the Conservative party banging on about Europe announced he would be stepping down after losing the EU referendum in June.
The 49-year-old will be the youngest Prime Minister to leave office since the Earl of Roseberry in 1895 while Theresa May becomes the oldest incoming PM since Jim Callaghan back in 1976.
From embarrassing remarks caught on camera to the moment Boris Johnson announced he would be backing Brexit, here is a look back at some of the most memorable moments of his premiership in pictures.
Click on the gallery below:
David Cameron's premiership - in pictures Show all 15 1 /15 David Cameron's premiership - in pictures David Cameron's premiership - in pictures Britain's Queen Elizabeth II greeting David Cameron at Buckingham Palace for an audience to invite him to be the next Prime Minister on 11 May 2010 PA David Cameron's premiership - in pictures Prime Minister David Cameron and his wife Samantha wave from the steps of Number 10 Downing Street on 11 May 2010 Getty Images David Cameron's premiership - in pictures On 12 May 2010 Prime Minister David Cameron said in a press conference with Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg, who was then deputy PM, they plan to "take Britain in a historic new direction" and Conservative-led coalition government would be united and provide "strong and stable" leadership Rex David Cameron's premiership - in pictures A decade ago, David Cameron visited the Arctic to witness the effects of climate change. However since coming to power in 2010, his government has gradually dropped down a succession of green policies David Cameron's premiership - in pictures Prime Minister David cameron told the then New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, the Queen had purred down the line after he told her Scotland had voted against independence in September 2014. He was forced to apologise for breaking constitutional convention Getty Images David Cameron's premiership - in pictures Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron greeted soldiers working on flood relief in York city centre after the river Ouse burst its banks, in northern England in December 2015 REUTERS David Cameron's premiership - in pictures Claims that David Cameron performed an obscene act with a dead pig and smoked cannabis during his studies at Oxford University spread around the world in September 2015. The extraordinary allegations were made in an unauthorised biography of the Prime Minister written by Lord Ashcroft David Hartley/REX Shutterstock David Cameron's premiership - in pictures In 2016, Mr Cameron was caught up in a worldwide scandal dubbed the Panama papers Reuters David Cameron's premiership - in pictures Prime minister David Cameron and his wife Samantha with seven week old Regan as they meet her parents, first time home buyers Robert Arron and Kelly Jeffers at the Heritage Brook housing development in Chorley, Lancashire. David Cameron has joked that he wants "another baby" and said that he feels a "bit broody" every time he sees a newborn on the campaign trail David Cameron's premiership - in pictures Prime Minister David Cameron was criticised for branding refugees in the Calais jungle camp as a bunch of migrants in January 2016 after thousands of refugees died in their attempt to cross the Mediterranean in 2015 Sky News David Cameron's premiership - in pictures Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron speaks with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker during an EU summit meeting on 17 March 2016 at the European Union council in Brussels. Cameron was in Brussels to renegotiate deal of UK membership with other European leaders. The deal, sealed after hours of haggling at a marathon summit, paved the way for a referendum on whether Britain will stay in the EU AFP/Getty Images David Cameron's premiership - in pictures President Barack Obama shakes hands with British Prime Minister David Cameron at a meeting at 10 Downing Street in London on 22 April 2016. The President and his wife visited 10 Downing Street where he joined press conference with British Prime Minister David Cameron and made his case for the UK to remain inside the European Union Getty Images David Cameron's premiership - in pictures After David returned from Brussels claiming victory in his renegotiation with European leaders, Boris Johnson announced that he will not support the Remain campaign. The prime minister said publicly he was "disappointed but Boris remains a friend" PA David Cameron's premiership - in pictures Prime Minister David Cameron makes a joint appearance with Mayor of London Sadiq Khan as they launch the Britain Stronger in Europe guarantee card at Roehampton University on 20 May 2016 in London. The 'guarantee card' lists five pledges should Britain remain in the EU, including the protection of workers' rights, full access to the single market and stability for Britain David Cameron's premiership - in pictures Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron speaks outside 10 Downing Street on 24 June 2016. Cameron announced his resignation after Britain voted to leave the European Union after a bitterly divisive referendum campaign AP
It is not yet known exactly what Mr Cameron will do next but he says he plans to continue as an MP for Witney in Oxfordshire.
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Jennifer Lopez has prompted a backlash across social media for a tweet which appeared on her account including the All Lives Matter hashtag.
The tweet was accompanied by an image of Lopez, 46, performing her Orlando benefit song alongside Lin Manuel-Miranda at a concert commemorating the victims of the Orlando shooting.
The tweet immediately stirred controversy on social media and the original post was quickly deleted.
Protests after Baton Rouge police fatally shoot Alton Sterling Show all 10 1 /10 Protests after Baton Rouge police fatally shoot Alton Sterling Protests after Baton Rouge police fatally shoot Alton Sterling Gerald Herbert/AP Protests after Baton Rouge police fatally shoot Alton Sterling Bryn Stole/Twitter Protests after Baton Rouge police fatally shoot Alton Sterling Bryn Stole/Twitter Protests after Baton Rouge police fatally shoot Alton Sterling Bryn Stole/Twitter Protests after Baton Rouge police fatally shoot Alton Sterling Brittany Weiss/Twitter Protests after Baton Rouge police fatally shoot Alton Sterling Brittany Weiss/Twitter Protests after Baton Rouge police fatally shoot Alton Sterling Bryn Stole/Twitter Protests after Baton Rouge police fatally shoot Alton Sterling Alton Sterling/Facebook Protests after Baton Rouge police fatally shoot Alton Sterling Google Maps Protests after Baton Rouge police fatally shoot Alton Sterling Family Handout
The phrase All Lives Matter has come under heavy criticism from much of the Black Lives Matter movement in the US. They argue that the counter-term misunderstands the phrase Black Lives Matter and interprets it as meaning black lives matter more than any other lives when in actual fact it is an attempt to highlight the fact that black people's lives are relatively undervalued in the US and they are more likely to be the victims of police brutality.
Television host Bill Maher has expressed support of the Black Lives Matter phrase, saying that 'All Lives Matter' implies that all lives are equally at risk, and they're not.
Lopez has received widespread criticism for the usage of the term on both Twitter and Instagram.
I just lost respect for @JLo after her tweeting/deleting all lives matter. How complicated is it to understand #blm doesnt mean others dont? wrote one Twitter user.
While another added, Still can't believe J Lo said All lives matter.
"Do some research all lives don't matter if black lives don't matter!" added an Instagram user.
"So if there are two houses and one is on fire do you put water in the house that's not on fire since all houses matter? They not killing everyone they're killing blacks," said another.
But some defended her, with one user saying: "I don't believe J Lo used 'all lives matter' to be ignorant. Yes black lives matter, but there's gays and Muslims and Hispanics targeted too."
Black Lives Matter protests have taken place across the US in the past week following the fatal police shootings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile.
Mr Sterling, a 37-year-old father of five, was selling CDs in Baton Rouge in Louisiana when he was shot by a police officer last Tuesday and Mr Castile, 32, was fatally shot by police a day later during a traffic stop in Falcon Heights in Minnesota. Five police officers were later killed after a man opened fire near a peaceful protest in Dallas.
A representative for Lopez did not immediately respond to request for comment.
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Brexit could break Britains knowledge economy unless the Government can negotiate a deal that preserves many of the benefits of being in the European Union, the chair of the Commons Science and Technology Committee has warned.
Conservative MP Nicola Blackwood urged Science Minister Jo Johnson to argue within new Prime Minister Theresa Mays Government for the need for an immigration system that would allow EU scientists to continue to work in the UK and for British academics to retain access to European research grants.
But Mr Johnson, who campaigned to remain within the EU, was unable to give her reassurances that EU citizens would still be able to come to the UK in significant numbers after Brexit.
Mrs May has talked about getting immigration down to the tens of thousands and there are currently some 43,000 people from other EU countries working in British universities.
Europe provides about 1bn a year in research funding to the UK through schemes that are open to non-EU members to join, but the terms of such a deal would have to be negotiated.
At a Science and Technology Committee meeting, Ms Blackwood told Mr Johnson: Can I plead with you to make the case within Government, not only that issues such as continued access to Horizon 2020 [a funding scheme] are maintained and collaboration [is maintained] and the right kind of immigration system that benefits our science and higher education sectors are in place, but also that the science and innovation community is at the heart of the exit negotiations, as youve been saying is important, because I think this will be make or break for our knowledge economy going forward.
6 ways Britain leaving the EU will affect you
She also said she hoped Mr Johnson would continue in the Government, saying he had been an outstanding minister for science.
We very much hope you are going to stick around, Ms Blackwood said.
Earlier in the hearing, she had asked Mr Johnson, brother of the pro-Brexit Tory MP Boris Johnson, to describe the sort of system he would like to see to enable EU citizens to come to Britain to work in science.
But he said: You are tempting me to get involved in the detail of our future immigration policy, which would be very unwise.
The Home Secretary [Theresa May] has a tremendous amount of expertise on immigration policy and I dont think she would appreciate me freelancing on the day of her arrival in Number 10.
Mr Johnson also said he was aware of anecdotal reports that British scientists were already facing discrimination from EU institutions acting as if Brexit has already happened.
The Department of Business, Innovation and Skills has issued an email address for academics to report such incidents and set up a special unit to monitor the situation.
We have been very clear that there should be no discrimination against UK institutions, soft or hard, Mr Johnson said.
He said he had been in touch with Carlos Moedas, the European science commissioner, who had issued a statement reassuring UK researchers that their validity for Horizon 2020 remained unchanged.
Which celebrities support Brexit and which support Remain? Show all 30 1 /30 Which celebrities support Brexit and which support Remain? Which celebrities support Brexit and which support Remain? David Beckham (REMAIN) The former captain for the England international football team announced on Instagram that he was voting to Remain. He said: We live in a vibrant and connected world where together as a people we are strong. For our children and their children we should be facing the problems of the world together and not alone. Getty Which celebrities support Brexit and which support Remain? Victoria Beckham (REMAIN) 'I believe in my country, I believe in a future for my children where we are stronger together and I support the remain campaign.' Getty Which celebrities support Brexit and which support Remain? Daniel Craig (REMAIN) Actor He was pictured wearing a white T-shirt with the slogan: 'No man is an island. No country by itself. Vote Remain on 23rd June.' Getty Images Which celebrities support Brexit and which support Remain? Bob Geldof (REMAIN) Irish singer expresses his support for the Remain vote as he waves from a boat carrying supporters for the 'Remain' campaign in London AFP/Getty Which celebrities support Brexit and which support Remain? John Cleese (LEAVE) The Monty Python star signalled he will vote to leave the EU when he tweeted: "If I thought there was any chance of major reform in the EU, I'd vote to stay in. But there isn't. Sad." Getty Which celebrities support Brexit and which support Remain? Daniel Portman (REMAIN) Game of Thrones actor supports Reamin vote Getty Images Which celebrities support Brexit and which support Remain? Elton John (REMAIN) The singer also announced his intention to vote Remain on Instagram, sharing an image which said Build bridges not walls, along with the caption I'm voting to remain. #StrongerInEurope Getty Which celebrities support Brexit and which support Remain? Roger Daltrey (LEAVE) Former frontman of iconic rock band The Who. I am not anti European, but I an anti the present way we are being governed in Europe, he wrote in The Mirror. The whole system has been corrupted by political ego and massive government overreach. The Euro being a perfect example I do not want to be dragged into the kind of Federal State that this present EU is pushing for - with the UK's voice getting smaller and smaller. AFP/Getty Images Which celebrities support Brexit and which support Remain? JK Rowling (REMAIN) The author of the Harry Potter books has expressed concern that "racists and bigots" are directing parts of the Leave campaign. She added: How can a retreat into selfish and insecure individualism be the right response when Europe faces genuine threats, when the bonds that tie us are so powerful, when we have come so far together? How can we hope to conquer the enormous challenges of terrorism and climate change without cooperation and collaboration? Getty Images Which celebrities support Brexit and which support Remain? Vivienne Westwood (REMAIN) British fashion designer expressed her support for Remain vote Getty Images Which celebrities support Brexit and which support Remain? Michael Caine (LEAVE) The actor has said he is a reluctant Leaver. He said: "I don't know what to vote for. Both are scary. To me, you've now got in Europe a sort of government-by-proxy of everybody, who has now got carried away. Unless there is some extremely significant changes, we should get out." Getty Images Which celebrities support Brexit and which support Remain? Benedict Cumberbatch (REMAIN) Benedict Cumberbatch and Sir Patrick Stewart led more than 280 figures from the arts world who backed a vote to stay. An open letter pledging support for Remain was also signed by music stars Hot Chip, alt-J and Paloma Faith, authors Dame Hilary Mantel and John le Carre, and fashion designer Dame Vivienne Westwood. Daniel Craig was pictured wearing a vote Remain t-shirt with the words "No man is an island. No country by itself" emblazoned across it in a picture tweeted on the Stronger IN account. Getty Images Which celebrities support Brexit and which support Remain? Patrick Stewart (REMAIN) Actor is a leading supporter of the Remain campaign Getty Images Which celebrities support Brexit and which support Remain? Elizabeth Hurley (LEAVE) The actress said If it means we can go back to using decent lightbulbs and choose high-powered hairdryers and vacuum cleaners if we so wish, I'm joining Brexit for sure. Getty Images Which celebrities support Brexit and which support Remain? Stephen Hawking (REMAIN) The physicist was in favour staying, and said "progress comes from co-operation". He said: "By working together in Europe we make our economy stronger and we give ourselves more influence in the world and we provide future opportunities for young people." Numerous scientists have also voiced their support for Remain, claiming an out vote would badly damage the field. Getty Images for Breakthrough Pr Which celebrities support Brexit and which support Remain? Sol Campbell (LEAVE) The former England international football star said he is backing Brexit so that young British sporting talent would be nurtured and given greater opportunities at British clubs. He said: "I'm looking at the sporting side - how youngsters aren't getting the opportunities at some of the big clubs and some of the big clubs are bringing in youngsters from 14, 15, 16 and becoming homegrown, which is pushing some of our youngsters out." Getty Images Which celebrities support Brexit and which support Remain? Hilary Mantel (REMAIN) Author Hilary Mantel announced her support for Remain vote Getty Images Which celebrities support Brexit and which support Remain? Bear Grylls (REMAIN) The adventurer and TV presenter said he spoke "from the heart" in backing the EU. "At such a time for the UK to retreat, run and cut ourselves loose from Europe, when there are so many challenges on our doorstep, to me just doesn't feel either courageous or kind, he said. Europe has many flaws, but I also believe the way to help resolve many of those tough issues is from within... I have never been a good quitter and I am so proud of the UK and our values: tolerance, kindness, respect, courage and resilience. This is why I want us to stay together and Remain in Europe." Getty Images Which celebrities support Brexit and which support Remain? Billy Bragg (REMAIN) British singer decided to support Remain campaign AFP/Getty Images Which celebrities support Brexit and which support Remain? Ian Botham (LEAVE) The former England Test cricketer and Test team captain supports Brexit Getty/Laureus Which celebrities support Brexit and which support Remain? Simon Cowell (REMAIN) Music mogul Simon Cowell announced his support of staying in EU Getty Which celebrities support Brexit and which support Remain? David James (LEAVE) The former England goalkeeper supports Brexit Getty Images Which celebrities support Brexit and which support Remain? Idris Elba (REMAIN) The actor voiced his support for Remain vote Getty Images Which celebrities support Brexit and which support Remain? John Le Carre (REMAIN) British writer supports Remain campaign Getty Images Which celebrities support Brexit and which support Remain? Paloma Faith (REMAIN) English singer supports Remain campaign Getty Images Which celebrities support Brexit and which support Remain? Perry McCarthy (LEAVE) The racing driver supports Leave campaign Rex Features Which celebrities support Brexit and which support Remain? Keira Knightley (REMAIN) The actress intends to vote for Remain campaign Getty Images for Lincoln Center Which celebrities support Brexit and which support Remain? James Cracknell (LEAVE) British athlete and rowing champion decided to vote for Brexit Getty Images Which celebrities support Brexit and which support Remain? Florence Welch (REMAIN) British singer supports Remain campaign Getty Images for Gucci Which celebrities support Brexit and which support Remain? Helena Bonham-Carter (REMAIN) The actress expressed her support for Remain vote AFP/Getty Images
Mr Johnson repeatedly sought to reassure the science community, saying the Government was "fully committed" to maintaining the UK's status as a "science superpower".
"That's how we see ourselves as a country," he added.
Dr Mike Galsworthy, programme director of Scientists for EU, a pro-Remain campaign group now trying to raise awareness of the importance of science, welcomed Ms Blackwood's "make or break" comment.
"It's heartening that the chair [of the science committee] understands the magnitude of what the science community is facing," he said.
But he also called for a "Plan B" in case there was an "impasse over freedom of movement".
Dr Galsworthy also called for Mr Johnson and Life Sciences Minister George Freeman to remain in their posts.
"They have shown they understand the issues and can represent the community well," he said.
"We need stability and continuity now, rather than more chaos in the mix."
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People in Norwich have responded to the smashing-up and petrol-bombing of Romanian shop by 'racist' vandals by plastering the window with messages of support.
The owner, Maria Purgea, was asleep upstairs above the shop when the vandals first threw a brick through a window.
At the time of the incident, more than 1,000 people were attending an anti-Brexit demonstration outside City Hall.
Police are treating the attack as deliberate and have not ruled out the possibility of it being a racially motivated crime.
A JustGiving page has been set up to raise money to help the shop, which sells both Eastern European and British food, repair the damage and replenish its stock.
Nearly 30,000 has been raised vastly outstripping the initial goal of 500.
With her daughter acting as an interpreter, Ms Purgea said: "We put everything here, our soul, our money, everything into this shop and I was shocked and upset.
Maybe its to do with the referendum, with all the East Europeans and our shop is East European, mostly Romanian."
Ms Purgea's daughter Andrea Abraham, 23, told the Eastern Daily Press: "I am so pleased. Its not about the money, but about the kindness. People are showing support and thats really nice.
"I just want to thank them and I hope whoever did this to us sees the support we have.
"When we open again we want to do free cakes for all the people who have donated. We would use the money to redo the shop and give whats left to charity."
There will be a 'Love bombing' rally of support on Wednesday 13 in nearby Anglia Square as a show of support for the shop staff and owner .
Brexit protest: Thousands march in London Show all 12 1 /12 Brexit protest: Thousands march in London Brexit protest: Thousands march in London A woman poses with a home-made European Union flag as Remain supporters gather on Park Lane in London to show their support for the EU in the wake of Brexit PA Brexit protest: Thousands march in London Remain supporters demonstrate in Parliament Square PA Brexit protest: Thousands march in London Tens of thousands of people gathered to protest the result of the EU referendum PA Brexit protest: Thousands march in London A majority of people in the capital voted to remain in the European Union Reuters Brexit protest: Thousands march in London Protesters chanted: What do we want to do? Stay in the EU PA Brexit protest: Thousands march in London The march follows a similar rally in Trafalgar Square that was cancelled due to heavy rain but which tens of thousands of people turned up to anyway Reuters Brexit protest: Thousands march in London Britain voted to leave the European Union in a referendum by 52 per cent to 48 per cent Reuters Brexit protest: Thousands march in London But support for the Leave campaign in urban areas and among young people was significantly lower Rex features Brexit protest: Thousands march in London Marchers gathered at Park Lane at 11am and marched towards Parliament Square PA Brexit protest: Thousands march in London Some protesters held up baguettes in a display of affection for our continental neighbours PA Brexit protest: Thousands march in London The disparity between different parts of the country has promoted a four million signature petition calling for a second referendum and even a renewed push for Scotland to cede from the UK PA Brexit protest: Thousands march in London The events organiser, Kings College graduate Kieran MacDermott, wrote: We can prevent Brexit by refusing to accept the referendum as the final say and take our finger off the self-destruct button" Reuters
While the Metropolitan Police have reported a 50 per cent rise in hate crime since Brexit, Norfolk Police say they haven't seen an increase.
Detective Inspector Chris Burgess of Norwich CID, said: We are aware of suggestions this may have been a racially motivated incident and whilst there is currently no information to suggest this to be the case we will of course keep an open mind.
We are treating this as a deliberate ignition, an arson, at this stage and the investigation is ongoing."
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One of the UKs wealthiest aristocrats has been banned from driving his Land Rover after he was caught speeding on numerous occasions.
David Manners, the Duke of Rutland, 57, has a wealth of around 140 million and was disqualified for a year after amassing 24 points on his licence.
The duke was also handed a 3,025 fine after he exceeded the speed limit twice in Nottinghamshire, once in Derbyshire and once in North Yorkshire over the course of eight months.
In March this year, he was caught driving at nearly 75mph in a 50mph zone near Lowdham, Nottinghamshire. On the other three occasions, he was penalised for exceeding the speed limit by less than 10mph.
The duke lives in Belvoir Castle in Leicestershire, and also owns the Haddon Hall estate in Bakewell, Derbyshire.
Northallerton Magistrates Court heard the duke already had nine points on his driving licence when he was caught speeding in his Land Rover Discovery. The peer himself declined to attend the hearing.
The dukes solicitors indicated he would plead guilty to all the offences, despite having not responded to fixed penalty notices.
UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 27 October 2022 98-year-old D-Day Veteran Bernard Morgan, whose story is among those featured on the giant poppy wall, during the launch of The Royal British Legion 2022 Poppy Appeal, at Hay's Galleria in central London PA UK news in pictures 26 October 2022 A meerkat explores a pumpkin in the enclosure at Wild Place, Bristol, where some of the animals are having pumpkin treats as part of their environmental enrichment PA UK news in pictures 25 October 2022 King Charles III welcomes Rishi Sunak during an audience at Buckingham Palace, where he invited the newly elected leader of the Conservative Party to become Prime Minister and form a new government PA UK news in pictures 24 October 2022 Rishi Sunak celebrates with Tory MPs outside the Conservative Campaign Headquarters after becoming the new leader of the Conservative Party Reuters UK news in pictures 23 October 2022 The Green Man at October Plenty, Borough Market's annual Autumn Harvest festival, in London, which returns for the first time post pandemic PA UK news in pictures 21 October 2022 Sculptor Peter McKenna puts the finishing touches to a pumpkin that will form part of the Planet A Hebden Bridge Pumpkin Trail in the West Yorkshire town PA UK news in pictures 20 October 2022 Britains Prime Minister Liz Truss delivers a speech outside of 10 Downing Street in central London to announce her resignation AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 19 October 2022 Salmon leap up Stainforth Force on the River Ribble in the Yorkshire Dales as they swim upriver to their spawning grounds during the annual Salmon migration PA UK news in pictures 18 October 2022 Just Stop Oil protesters continue their protest for a second day on the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge, which links Kent and Essex and which remains closed for traffic, after it was scaled by two climbers from the group PA UK news in pictures 17 October 2022 Hundreds of students take part in the traditional Raisin Monday foam fight on St Salvator's Lower College Lawn at the University of St Andrews in Fife PA UK news in pictures 16 October 2022 A protester holds a placard during a march into central London at a demonstration by the climate change protest group Extinction Rebellion AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 15 October 2022 A member of the public drags an activist who is blocking the road during a "Just Stop Oil" protest, in London, Britain REUTERS UK news in pictures 14 October 2022 Germanys Womens double skulls during day one of the World Rowing Beach Sprint Finals at Saundersfoot beach, Pembrokeshire PA UK news in pictures 13 October 2022 Family and mourners arrive at St Michael's Church, in Creeslough, for the funeral mass of 49-year-old mother of four Martina Martin, who died following an explosion at the Applegreen service station in the village of Creeslough in Co Donegal on Friday PA UK news in pictures 12 October 2022 Motorists in Coventry pass trees showing autumnal colour PA UK news in pictures 11 October 2022 A woman and her dog in the the North Sea at Tynemouth Longsands beach before sunrise PA UK news in pictures 10 October 2022 Police officers remove a campaigner from a Just Stop Oil protest on The Mall, near Buckingham Palace, London PA UK news in pictures 9 October 2022 A drummer plays during the Diwali on the Square celebration, in Trafalgar Square, London PA UK news in pictures 8 October 2022 Timothee Chalamet attending the UK premiere of Bones and All during the BFI London Film Festival 2022 at the Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, London PA UK news in pictures 7 October 2022 Two young male fallow deer lock antlers in Dublins Phoenix park as rutting season begins PA UK news in pictures 6 October 2022 The Princess of Wales during a cocktail making competition during a visit to Trademarket, a new outdoor street-food and retail market situated in Belfast city centre, as part of the royal visit to Northern Ireland PA UK news in pictures 5 October 2022 Greenpeace protesters interrupt Prime Minister Liz Truss as she delivers her keynote speech to the Conservative Party annual conference PA UK news in pictures 4 October 2022 Prime Minister Liz Truss and Britains Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng wearing hard hats and hi-vis jackets, visit a construction site for a medical innovation campus in Birmingham AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 3 October 2022 British artist Sam Cox, aka Mr Doodle, reveals the Doodle House, a twelve-room mansion at Tenterden, in Kent, which has been covered, inside and out in the artist's trademark monochrome, cartoonish hand-drawn doodles PA UK news in pictures 2 October 2022 Erling Haaland celebrates after scoring Manchester City's second goal against Manchester United at Etihad Stadium. Haaland went on to score a hattrick, his third of the season in the Premier League. City beat United 6-3. Manchester City FC/Getty UK news in pictures 1 October 2022 Protesters hold up flags and placards at a protest in London. A variety of protest groups including Enough is Enough, Don't Pay and Just Stop Oil all demonstrated on the day AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 30 September 2022 British Prime Minister Liz Truss, who has not been seen in days, leaves the back of Downing Street after a meeting with Office For Budget Responsibility following the release of her governments mini-budget Getty UK news in pictures 29 September 2022 The Virginia creeper foliage on the Tu Hwnt i'r Bont (Beyond the Bridge) Llanwrst, Conwy North Wales, has changed colour from green to red in at the start of Autumn. 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
Solicitor Lisa Wilson said in court: He [the duke] does not wish to minimise the offences. He does not wish to put forward an argument of exceptional hardship.
"The court may consider that with the title he has and the property he resides in the defendant is of considerable means.
The duke, a father of five, inherited his title and estates from his father Charles upon his death in 1999.
He lives with his estranged wife Emma in the Belvoir Estate, along with their respective partners.
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Police officers in the UK are to classify misogyny and incidents of harassment against women as hate crimes for the first time, under new measures.
Nottinghamshire Police announced crimes ranging from harassment on the street to aggressive physical approaches will be recorded as hate crimes, becoming the first force in the country to change its definition.
The force now defines misogynistic hate crime as "incidents against women that are motivated by an attitude of a man towards a woman, and includes behaviour targeted towards a woman by men simply because they are a woman".
By the end of July, selected Nottinghamshire officers and staff will have completed comprehensive misogyny hate crime training, in keeping with the new guidelines.
Planning for the scheme began in summer 2014, when members of the police force met with womens rights campaigners and staff from Nottingham Womens Centre.
Officers listened to a range of testimonials from women who had been harassed, abused and attacked in the city of Nottingham over the past few years.
Sam Smethers, chief executive at the Fawcett Society which campaigns for women's rights, told the Independent: "This is what the Fawcett Society has been calling for. Nottinghamshire Police's commitment to taking misogynistic hate crime seriously should be welcomed and rolled out nationwide.
What women face, often on a daily basis, is absolutely unacceptable and can be extremely distressing Chief Constable Sue Fisher
We need to call out misogyny for what it is a hate crime. Women and girls face a tidal wave of abuse and harassment every day. Our law has to send a clear signal that this is not acceptable. It is a crime.
Meanwhile, Nottinghamshire Polices chief constable Sue Fish said the force was committed to tackling misogyny in all its forms.
What women face, often on a daily basis, is absolutely unacceptable and can be extremely distressing, she said. Its a very important aspect of the overall hate crime work being conducted and one that will make Nottinghamshire a safer place for all women.
Nottinghamshire Police is committed to taking misogynistic hate crime seriously and encourages anyone who is affected by it to contact us without hesitation.
UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 27 October 2022 98-year-old D-Day Veteran Bernard Morgan, whose story is among those featured on the giant poppy wall, during the launch of The Royal British Legion 2022 Poppy Appeal, at Hay's Galleria in central London PA UK news in pictures 26 October 2022 A meerkat explores a pumpkin in the enclosure at Wild Place, Bristol, where some of the animals are having pumpkin treats as part of their environmental enrichment PA UK news in pictures 25 October 2022 King Charles III welcomes Rishi Sunak during an audience at Buckingham Palace, where he invited the newly elected leader of the Conservative Party to become Prime Minister and form a new government PA UK news in pictures 24 October 2022 Rishi Sunak celebrates with Tory MPs outside the Conservative Campaign Headquarters after becoming the new leader of the Conservative Party Reuters UK news in pictures 23 October 2022 The Green Man at October Plenty, Borough Market's annual Autumn Harvest festival, in London, which returns for the first time post pandemic PA UK news in pictures 21 October 2022 Sculptor Peter McKenna puts the finishing touches to a pumpkin that will form part of the Planet A Hebden Bridge Pumpkin Trail in the West Yorkshire town PA UK news in pictures 20 October 2022 Britains Prime Minister Liz Truss delivers a speech outside of 10 Downing Street in central London to announce her resignation AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 19 October 2022 Salmon leap up Stainforth Force on the River Ribble in the Yorkshire Dales as they swim upriver to their spawning grounds during the annual Salmon migration PA UK news in pictures 18 October 2022 Just Stop Oil protesters continue their protest for a second day on the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge, which links Kent and Essex and which remains closed for traffic, after it was scaled by two climbers from the group PA UK news in pictures 17 October 2022 Hundreds of students take part in the traditional Raisin Monday foam fight on St Salvator's Lower College Lawn at the University of St Andrews in Fife PA UK news in pictures 16 October 2022 A protester holds a placard during a march into central London at a demonstration by the climate change protest group Extinction Rebellion AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 15 October 2022 A member of the public drags an activist who is blocking the road during a "Just Stop Oil" protest, in London, Britain REUTERS UK news in pictures 14 October 2022 Germanys Womens double skulls during day one of the World Rowing Beach Sprint Finals at Saundersfoot beach, Pembrokeshire PA UK news in pictures 13 October 2022 Family and mourners arrive at St Michael's Church, in Creeslough, for the funeral mass of 49-year-old mother of four Martina Martin, who died following an explosion at the Applegreen service station in the village of Creeslough in Co Donegal on Friday PA UK news in pictures 12 October 2022 Motorists in Coventry pass trees showing autumnal colour PA UK news in pictures 11 October 2022 A woman and her dog in the the North Sea at Tynemouth Longsands beach before sunrise PA UK news in pictures 10 October 2022 Police officers remove a campaigner from a Just Stop Oil protest on The Mall, near Buckingham Palace, London PA UK news in pictures 9 October 2022 A drummer plays during the Diwali on the Square celebration, in Trafalgar Square, London PA UK news in pictures 8 October 2022 Timothee Chalamet attending the UK premiere of Bones and All during the BFI London Film Festival 2022 at the Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, London PA UK news in pictures 7 October 2022 Two young male fallow deer lock antlers in Dublins Phoenix park as rutting season begins PA UK news in pictures 6 October 2022 The Princess of Wales during a cocktail making competition during a visit to Trademarket, a new outdoor street-food and retail market situated in Belfast city centre, as part of the royal visit to Northern Ireland PA UK news in pictures 5 October 2022 Greenpeace protesters interrupt Prime Minister Liz Truss as she delivers her keynote speech to the Conservative Party annual conference PA UK news in pictures 4 October 2022 Prime Minister Liz Truss and Britains Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng wearing hard hats and hi-vis jackets, visit a construction site for a medical innovation campus in Birmingham AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 3 October 2022 British artist Sam Cox, aka Mr Doodle, reveals the Doodle House, a twelve-room mansion at Tenterden, in Kent, which has been covered, inside and out in the artist's trademark monochrome, cartoonish hand-drawn doodles PA UK news in pictures 2 October 2022 Erling Haaland celebrates after scoring Manchester City's second goal against Manchester United at Etihad Stadium. Haaland went on to score a hattrick, his third of the season in the Premier League. City beat United 6-3. Manchester City FC/Getty UK news in pictures 1 October 2022 Protesters hold up flags and placards at a protest in London. A variety of protest groups including Enough is Enough, Don't Pay and Just Stop Oil all demonstrated on the day AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 30 September 2022 British Prime Minister Liz Truss, who has not been seen in days, leaves the back of Downing Street after a meeting with Office For Budget Responsibility following the release of her governments mini-budget Getty UK news in pictures 29 September 2022 The Virginia creeper foliage on the Tu Hwnt i'r Bont (Beyond the Bridge) Llanwrst, Conwy North Wales, has changed colour from green to red in at the start of Autumn. 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
The use of mobile devices to send unwanted or uninvited messages or take photographs without consent or permission are also included in the guidelines for officers.
The force confirmed that domestic abuse will not be included in the scope of misogynistic hate crime as there are separate procedures already in place.
Melanie Jeffs, Centre Manager at Nottingham Womens Centre, said: Were pleased to see Nottinghamshire Police recognise the breadth of violence and intimidation that women experience on a daily basis in our communities.
Understanding this as a hate crime will help people to see the seriousness of these incidents and hopefully encourage more women to come forward and report offences.
On July 11, 19 Democratic senators, led by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), took to the floor to attack fossil fuel companies for engaging in a web of denial about climate change. Senator Whitehouse and his like-minded colleagues are using climate change as a Trojan Horse to hide their environmental agenda and their hostility to the economic benefits derived from using fossil fuels.
Senator Whitehouses resolution claims that fossil fuel companies have engaged in a misinformation campaign to mislead the public and cast doubt in order to protect their financial interest. It also claims that think tanks, public relations firms and other organizations have been funded to give legitimacy to this campaign and are part of this web of denial. These senators base their allegation on a sound bitethe science is settledthat is derived from the radical tactics of activists like Saul Alinsky. Sound bites are not evidence.
The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which climate activists cite as the gold standard on climate science, does not claim that the science is settled. In its most recent Assessment Report, it identifies a number of important climate factors and processes for which the state of knowledge is limited. It ranks the level of confidence about 11 factors contributing to warming from very high to low. Of the 11, only 2 are ranked very high and only 3 are ranked high. This only represents 45 percent. That is hardly sufficient for claiming settled science.
Back in 2001, the National Academy of Sciences addressed a number of questions about climate change. In its report, it stated unambiguously Because there is considerable uncertainty in current understanding of how the climate system varies naturally and reacts to emissions of greenhouse gases and aerosols, current estimates of the magnitude of future warming should be regarded as tentative and subject to future adjustments (either upward or downward). While our state of knowledge has advanced since then, it has not eliminated uncertainty as evidenced by the fact that advocates cannot adequately explain the pause in warming since 1998.
The list of reasons why the science is not settled, and likely never will be, could go on, but these few examples are sufficient to make the case that Senator Whitehouse and his 18 other colleagues are not interested in facts and honest debate. Their goal is to silence critics of the climate orthodoxy, which provides the ultimate rationale for environmental overreaction and the precautionary principle. As one observer commented years ago, freeze or fry, wet or dry, the problem is always the same, fossil fuels and the solution is more regulation.
These senators with the support of the environmental lobby represent a clear and present danger not just to the first amendment but also to our system of government. Environmental elites have for some time championed greater control by central governments. At the 2000 climate change Conference of the Parties (COP), former French president Jacques Chirac called for global governmentFor the first time, humanity is intuiting a genuine instrument of global governancewhich France and the European Union would like to see established.
More recently, the former head of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, Christiana Figueres stated, Democracy is a poor political system for fighting global warming. Communist China is the best model. And lest anyone think that she simply misspoke, she also said, The Industrial Revolution was also a transformation, but it wasn't a guided transformation from a centralized policy perspective. This is a centralized transformation that is taking place because governments have decided that they need to listen to science. So it's a very, very different transformation and one that is going to make the life of everyone on the planet very different.
A world government modeled on the UN or EU is a scary thought. Senator Whitehouse and his colleagues took an oath to support and defend the Constitution. But history has demonstrated that silencing criticism and debate are the first steps in limiting freedom and liberty.
William O'Keefe is the President of Solutions Consulting. You can follow him on Twitter here.
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Boris Johnson has been appointed as Britains Foreign Secretary, it has been announced.
The former Mayor of London will represent Britain abroad on the world stage.
He will also take a key role in Brexit negotiations once so-called Article 50 has been triggered to begin the process of leaving the European Union.
Other responsibilities include overal executive authority of Britain's diplomatic missions and a seat at the table at high-level summits.
Mr Johnson is Theresa Mays second appointment as Prime Minister; her first was that Philip Hammond is Chancellor of the Exchequer.
The former Mayor Mr Johnson was first elected to Mayor of London in 2008, and was reelected to the post in 2012, when he stepped down to once again become an MP.
Long touted as a successor to David Cameron, Mr Johnson sensationally announced that he would not stand for leader at the last minute before deadlines closed.
Boris Johnson's defining moments Show all 32 1 /32 Boris Johnson's defining moments Boris Johnson's defining moments 2016 Boris Johnson swings from a bus as Northern Ireland Secretary Theresa Villiers (left), Northern First Minister and DUP leader Arlene Foster and Minister of Enterprise, Trade and Investment Jonathan Bell (second right) look on during a visit to Wrightbus Chassis plant in Antrim PA Boris Johnson's defining moments 2015 Boris Johnson takes down 10-year-old Toki Sekiguchi during a game of Street Rugby with a group of Tokyo children Reuters Boris Johnson's defining moments 2015 Boris Johnson planting flowers at the Royal Botanical Gardens in Kew PA Boris Johnson's defining moments 2015 A commuter gesturing to Boris Johnson as he cycles across Vauxhall Bridge PA Boris Johnson's defining moments 2014 Mayor of London Boris Johnson boxes with a trainer during his visit to Fight for Peace Academy in North Woolwich Boris Johnson's defining moments 2014 The Mayor of London Boris Johnson wears a traditional headdress during a visit to the Shree Swaminarayan Mandir, a major new Hindu temple being built in Kingsbury in London Boris Johnson's defining moments 2014 Many Conservative Party members gagging to have Boris Johnson as their MP PA Boris Johnson's defining moments 2014 Boris Johnson prepares to deliver a speech in Bloomberg's European headquarters on Britain's involvement in the EU. Mr Johnson also announced his intention to become an MP again at the 2015 general election, whilst serving out the remainder of his term as mayor. Getty Images Boris Johnson's defining moments 2014 The Mayor of London Boris Johnson during a speech and Q&A session at Bloomberg, London, where he has said that 'in all probability' he will seek to stand for Parliament in next year's general election. PA Wire Boris Johnson's defining moments 2014 London mayor Boris Johnson helps shear a sheep held by New Zealand's most successful competition sheep shearer, David Fagan (L) on a visit to Lister Shearing Equipment in Stonehouse Boris Johnson's defining moments 2013 Mayor of London Boris Johnson takes a helicopter ride over Hong Kong as part of week long visit to China to promote trade between the far east and London PA Boris Johnson's defining moments 2013 Boris Johnson explains why he's such a hit with female voters PA Boris Johnson's defining moments 2013 Boris Johnson celebrates after a wildly successful interview with Eddie Mair PA Boris Johnson's defining moments 2013 Mayor of London Boris Johnson sits in the operator's cab of a crane on the quay at DP World London Gateway Port in Stanford-le-Hope Boris Johnson's defining moments 2013 Boris Johnson shoots a basketball Getty Images Boris Johnson's defining moments 2013 The Mayor of London make a strong pose in what appears to be a particularly bad tourism advert for Asia PA Boris Johnson's defining moments 2013 Boris Johnson meets saltwater crocodile George, which was named after the royal baby EPA Boris Johnson's defining moments 2013 Perhaps the only person ever who has ridden on the Emirates Air Line Getty Images Boris Johnson's defining moments 2012 Boris Johnson's encounter with a zip wire only served to prove how adept the London Mayor is at defying political gravity in 2012 Getty Images Boris Johnson's defining moments 2012 Boris Johnson playing tennis Getty Images Boris Johnson's defining moments 2012 Aside from his mayoral duties, London Mayor, Boris Johnson, is looking displeased at his seven appearances Rex Features Boris Johnson's defining moments 2012 Boris goes for a bounce in one of favourite places... (the Olympic village obviousy) Reuters Boris Johnson's defining moments 2011 London Mayor Boris Johnson on the streets of Clapham REUTERS Boris Johnson's defining moments 2011 Like a raging bull, Boris Johnson challenges a statue to a duel AP Photo/Rajanish Kakade Boris Johnson's defining moments 2010 Boris Johnson embraces a member of the public in Ealing, west London, who seems to have taken a shine to him FACUNDO ARRIZABALAGA Boris Johnson's defining moments 2009 Frothy top? Boris Johnson visits Starbucks in Mayfair PA Boris Johnson's defining moments 2009 Johnson tries on one of his favourite pink and sparkly hats Getty Images Boris Johnson's defining moments 2008 Johnson smiles smugly as he thinks of his fine mop of hair, worthy of a L'Oreal advert PA Boris Johnson's defining moments 2008 Boris Johnson tries his hand at policing the capital - primarily by wearing a new hat PA Boris Johnson's defining moments 2008 The hippie world welcomes a new member to the fold in Boris Johnson Reuters Boris Johnson's defining moments 2004 Boris Johnson jogs on the streets of London PA Boris Johnson's defining moments 1980's Boris as a young'un. He was fired from his first job as a trainee reporter at The Times for making up a quote about the Plantagenet King Edward the II and his gay lover BBC
Mr Johnson was highly active during the European Union referendum campaign, appearing on television more than almost any other politician.
Though popular with the Conservative membership, his leadership bid was torpedoed by then Justice Secretary Michael Gove, who raised questioned about his suitability as leader.
Having called journalists to a press conference where he was expected to announce his bid, he said he would in fact not stand.
He backed Brexit at the last minute before the campaign, alienating his former university friend David Cameron, who backed Remain.
Ms May is unveiling her first Cabinet after being appointed Prime Minister by Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace earlier this evening.
She has unveiled the first tranche of her front bench this evening, with the rest due to be announced over the next few days.
The former Home Secretary has pledged to create a fairer economy and create a government that works in the interests of "ordinary people" rather than the "privileged few".
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Owen Smith has promised to hold a second referendum on any Brexit deal if he is elected leader of the Labour Party.
The leadership challenger, who announced he was running in the contest against Jeremy Corbyn and Angela Eagle on Tuesday morning, has said he will offer the public a chance to vote on any deal Britain strikes with the EU.
Mr Smith, who resigned as shadow Work and Pensions Secretary during the revolt against Mr Corbyn's leadership last month, has said the public will want "another chance" to vote on the deal.
"We should give them another chance," he told the Guardian: "That does mean a second referendum or a general election when the terms are clear. The Labour Government should be committing to that.
"There are many people out there who voted in good faith for Brexit and who felt they were doing the right thing for their families and their communities and I respect them for taking that decision.
"But I think a lot of people I know are now saying to themselves, It wasnt the right decision. A lot of people are angry that they were quite clearly misled by the Brexit campaign."
He attacked Mr Corbyn's refusal to resign following the overwhelming vote of no-confidence.
Mr Smith called it "selfish" and said the party is "teetering on the brink of being destroyed".
Corbyn wins right to be included on ballot paper
The MP for Pontypridd urged his colleagues not to resign themselves to a split in the party and instead they must try to "wrest the steering wheel" from the people who are forcing Labour to "career towards a cliff".
He refused to be drawn on whether his fellow anti-Corbyn colleague, Angela Eagle, should resign but said it would be "ideal" if there was only one Stop Corbyn candidate in the race.
Labour's ruling National Executive Committee (NEC) voted to allow Mr Corbyn an automatic place on the ballot - rather than gathering 51 MPs - by 18 to 14.
The most ridiculous claims made about Jeremy Corbyn Show all 11 1 /11 The most ridiculous claims made about Jeremy Corbyn The most ridiculous claims made about Jeremy Corbyn He called Hezbollah and Hamas friends True. In a speech made to the Stop the War Coalition in 2009, Mr Corbyn called representatives from both groups friends after inviting them to Parliament. He later told Channel 4 he wanted both groups, who have factions designated as international terror organisations, to be part of the debate for the Middle East peace process. I use (the word friends) in a collective way, saying our friends are prepared to talk, he added. Does it mean I agree with Hamas and what it does? No. Does it mean I agree with Hezbollah and what they do? No. Reuters The most ridiculous claims made about Jeremy Corbyn Jeremy Corbyn thinks the death of Osama bin Laden was a tragedy Partly false. David Cameron used this as a line of attack at the Conservative Party conference but appears to have left out all context from Mr Corbyns original remarks. In an 2011 interview on Iranian television, the then-backbencher said the fact the al-Qaeda leader was not put on trial was the tragedy, continuing: The World Trade Center was a tragedy, the attack on Afghanistan was a tragedy, the war in Iraq was a tragedy. The most ridiculous claims made about Jeremy Corbyn He is haunted by the legacy of his evil great-great-grandfather False. A Daily Express expose revealed that the Labour leaders ancestor, James Sargent, was the despotic master of a Victorian workhouse. Addressing the report at the Labour conference, Mr Corbyn said he had never heard of him before, adding: I want to take this opportunity to apologise for not doing the decent thing and going back in time and having a chat with him about his appalling behaviour. The most ridiculous claims made about Jeremy Corbyn Jeremy Corbyn raised a motion about pigeon bombs in Parliament This one is true. On 21 May 2004, Mr Corbyn raised an early day motion entitled pigeon bombs, proposing that the House register being appalled but barely surprised that MI5 reportedly proposed to load pigeons with explosives as a weapon. The motion continued: The House believes that humans represent the most obscene, perverted, cruel, uncivilised and lethal species ever to inhabit the planet and looks forward to the day when the inevitable asteroid slams into the earth and wipes them out thus giving nature the opportunity to start again. It was not carried. The most ridiculous claims made about Jeremy Corbyn He rides a Communist bicycle False. A report in The Times referred to Mr Corbyn, known for his cycling, riding a Chairman Mao-style bicycle earlier this year. Less thorough journalists might have referred to it as just a bicycle, but no, so we have to conclude that whenever we see somebody on a bicycle from now on, there goes another supporter of Chairman Mao, he later joked. The most ridiculous claims made about Jeremy Corbyn 'Jeremy Corbyn will appoint a special minister for Jews' False so far. The Sun report in December was allegedly based on a rumour passed to the paper by a Daily Express columnist who has written pieces critical of the Labour leader in the past. The minister did not materialise in his shadow cabinet. The most ridiculous claims made about Jeremy Corbyn Jeremy Corbyn wishes Britain would abolish its Army False. Another gem from The Sun took comments made at a Hiroshima remembrance parade in August 2012 where Mr Corbyn supported Costa Ricas move to abolish it armed forces. Wouldnt it be wonderful if every politician around the worldabolished the army and took pride in the fact that they dont have an army, he added. The caveat that every politician must take the step suggests Mr Corbyn does not support UK disarmament just yet. The most ridiculous claims made about Jeremy Corbyn Jeremy Corbyn stole sandwiches meant for veterans False. The Guido Fawkes blog claimed that the Labour leader took sandwiches meant for veterans at at Battle of Britain memorial service in September but a photo later emerged showing him being handed one by Costa volunteers, who later confirmed they were given to all guests. The most ridiculous claims made about Jeremy Corbyn He missed the induction into the Queens privy council True. After much speculation about Mr Corbyns republican views and willingness to bow to the monarch, his office confirmed that he did not attend the official induction to the privy council because of a prior engagement, but did not rule out joining the body. The most ridiculous claims made about Jeremy Corbyn Jeremy Corbyn refuses to sing the national anthem. Partly true. The Labour leader was filmed standing in silence as God Save the Queen was sung at a Battle of Britain remembrance service but will reportedly sing it in future. Mr Corbyn was elusive on the issue in an interview, saying he would show memorials respect in the proper way, but sources said he would sing the anthem at future occasions. The most ridiculous claims made about Jeremy Corbyn He is a member of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Cheese True. The group lists its purpose as the following: To increase awareness of issues surrounding the dairy industry and focus on economic issues affecting the dairy industry and producers.
The decision means the future of the party's leadership will solely be up to the membership - but only members who joined before January.
The NEC made the decision to exclude the 100,000 new members who have joined the party since the leadership revolt began on 24 June.
People wishing to vote in the election can still pay 25 to register as a supporter over a two day period from Thursday to Saturday.
A petition, which has now reached over 30,000 signatures, was launched within minutes of the result being announced demanding that the decision be reversed.
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It takes a certain amount of chutzpah, at your first stint asking the questions at PMQs, at 38 years of age, to tell a Prime Minister whos won three elections that, He was the future once, as David Cameron did in December 2005.
But if the last few weeks have proved anything, chutzpah is one thing Britains soon to be ex-Prime Minister is not short on. Risking the prosperity of the nation to solve an internal row that couldnt in any event be solved, and to then lose, certainly takes flair.
In nine and a half years on one side of the despatch box or the other come Wednesday lunch times, the occasions on which Cameron has allowed his self-confidence to overtake his judgement have been regular. And the results have been as cringeworthy as you might imagine.
April 2011 - Doing an impression of Michael Winner is always a high risk strategy, and telling Angela Eagle to calm down dear, still haunts him five years on. Months later he was forced to apologise for the quite openly sexist remark.
December 2014 - Shooting oneself in the foot in the act of failing to say the word sadomasochism is no small achievement. It was a preplanned dig at Ed Balls: The shadow chancellor said he would be tough on the deficit and tough on the causes of the deficit. He is one of the causes of the deficit.
I think weve all found one of the first ever examples of political masosadism.
Much of the news media spent much of the day trying to work out what masosadism means. A year or so later, Cameron simply admitted he meant to say sadomasochism. Next time the opportunity arose, he kept it simple and just called Balls a blithering idiot.
January 2016 - In the heat of the moment, true colours intensify. They [Corbyn and McDonnell] met with a bunch of migrants in Calais and told them they could all come to Britain! he boomed. MPs from every other party lined up to condemn his words, as did various refugee groups. What Corbyn and McDonnell had done was seek to arrange for refugee children without parents to join up with family members already living in the UK. It was also Holocaust Memorial Day. Arguably not the day to demonise refugee children.
David Cameron's premiership - in pictures Show all 15 1 /15 David Cameron's premiership - in pictures David Cameron's premiership - in pictures Britain's Queen Elizabeth II greeting David Cameron at Buckingham Palace for an audience to invite him to be the next Prime Minister on 11 May 2010 PA David Cameron's premiership - in pictures Prime Minister David Cameron and his wife Samantha wave from the steps of Number 10 Downing Street on 11 May 2010 Getty Images David Cameron's premiership - in pictures On 12 May 2010 Prime Minister David Cameron said in a press conference with Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg, who was then deputy PM, they plan to "take Britain in a historic new direction" and Conservative-led coalition government would be united and provide "strong and stable" leadership Rex David Cameron's premiership - in pictures A decade ago, David Cameron visited the Arctic to witness the effects of climate change. However since coming to power in 2010, his government has gradually dropped down a succession of green policies David Cameron's premiership - in pictures Prime Minister David cameron told the then New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, the Queen had purred down the line after he told her Scotland had voted against independence in September 2014. He was forced to apologise for breaking constitutional convention Getty Images David Cameron's premiership - in pictures Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron greeted soldiers working on flood relief in York city centre after the river Ouse burst its banks, in northern England in December 2015 REUTERS David Cameron's premiership - in pictures Claims that David Cameron performed an obscene act with a dead pig and smoked cannabis during his studies at Oxford University spread around the world in September 2015. The extraordinary allegations were made in an unauthorised biography of the Prime Minister written by Lord Ashcroft David Hartley/REX Shutterstock David Cameron's premiership - in pictures In 2016, Mr Cameron was caught up in a worldwide scandal dubbed the Panama papers Reuters David Cameron's premiership - in pictures Prime minister David Cameron and his wife Samantha with seven week old Regan as they meet her parents, first time home buyers Robert Arron and Kelly Jeffers at the Heritage Brook housing development in Chorley, Lancashire. David Cameron has joked that he wants "another baby" and said that he feels a "bit broody" every time he sees a newborn on the campaign trail David Cameron's premiership - in pictures Prime Minister David Cameron was criticised for branding refugees in the Calais jungle camp as a bunch of migrants in January 2016 after thousands of refugees died in their attempt to cross the Mediterranean in 2015 Sky News David Cameron's premiership - in pictures Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron speaks with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker during an EU summit meeting on 17 March 2016 at the European Union council in Brussels. Cameron was in Brussels to renegotiate deal of UK membership with other European leaders. The deal, sealed after hours of haggling at a marathon summit, paved the way for a referendum on whether Britain will stay in the EU AFP/Getty Images David Cameron's premiership - in pictures President Barack Obama shakes hands with British Prime Minister David Cameron at a meeting at 10 Downing Street in London on 22 April 2016. The President and his wife visited 10 Downing Street where he joined press conference with British Prime Minister David Cameron and made his case for the UK to remain inside the European Union Getty Images David Cameron's premiership - in pictures After David returned from Brussels claiming victory in his renegotiation with European leaders, Boris Johnson announced that he will not support the Remain campaign. The prime minister said publicly he was "disappointed but Boris remains a friend" PA David Cameron's premiership - in pictures Prime Minister David Cameron makes a joint appearance with Mayor of London Sadiq Khan as they launch the Britain Stronger in Europe guarantee card at Roehampton University on 20 May 2016 in London. The 'guarantee card' lists five pledges should Britain remain in the EU, including the protection of workers' rights, full access to the single market and stability for Britain David Cameron's premiership - in pictures Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron speaks outside 10 Downing Street on 24 June 2016. Cameron announced his resignation after Britain voted to leave the European Union after a bitterly divisive referendum campaign AP
February 2016 - It was two weeks since David Camerons own mother had signed a petition against Conservative cuts. Corbyn, of course, doesnt do personal attacks, so hadnt mentioned it all. A full week had transpired without Cameron being able to use his preplanned mum material, but when a backbencher shouted out What would your mum say? He couldnt help himself. What would my mum say? Shed say put on a proper suit, do up your tie and sing the national anthem! Corbyn was furious, and mounted a strong defence. My late mum would say stand up for what you believe in. Stand up for an NHS free at the point of delivery! History should recall that it was never Corbyn himself that brought it up, though arguably he should have done. But the attack was entirely undeserved.
June 2016 - At the end of exchanges between Cameron and Corbyn conducted in deafening silence, one defeated leader versus one who, though he battles on, is finished the moment he sets foot in parliament, Cameron despatched some brutal honesty. It might be in my partys interest for him to remain, but it is not in the national interest. For heavens sake man, Go!
Of course, it could be that Cameron was wise enough to realise that telling Corbyn to go only makes him more steadfast, and in fact helps the Tories by keeping him in place. On the other hand, he might have just been telling the truth.
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The British government could potentially strip European Union citizens already living in UK of their right to stay, David Cameron has said.
The Prime Minister said though he wanted EU citizens to stay, a future government could send EU citizens home in retaliation for British citizens living abroad being sent back to the UK.
He issued the warning at his last Prime Ministers Questions in the House of Commons on Wednesday.
We are working hard to do what we want, which is to give a guarantee to EU citizens that they will have their rights respected, all those who have come to this country, he said.
The only circumstance I could ever envisage a future government trying to undo that guarantee would be if British citizens in other European countries didnt have their rights respected.
I think it is important to have reciprocity. The future Prime Minister will be working to give that guarantee as fast we can.
Mr Cameron was responding to a question by Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who accused the Government of providing no clear answer on the issue.
It would be good in his last question time of the Prime Minister could offer some reassurance to those people, he said.
Brexit protest: Thousands march in London Show all 12 1 /12 Brexit protest: Thousands march in London Brexit protest: Thousands march in London A woman poses with a home-made European Union flag as Remain supporters gather on Park Lane in London to show their support for the EU in the wake of Brexit PA Brexit protest: Thousands march in London Remain supporters demonstrate in Parliament Square PA Brexit protest: Thousands march in London Tens of thousands of people gathered to protest the result of the EU referendum PA Brexit protest: Thousands march in London A majority of people in the capital voted to remain in the European Union Reuters Brexit protest: Thousands march in London Protesters chanted: What do we want to do? Stay in the EU PA Brexit protest: Thousands march in London The march follows a similar rally in Trafalgar Square that was cancelled due to heavy rain but which tens of thousands of people turned up to anyway Reuters Brexit protest: Thousands march in London Britain voted to leave the European Union in a referendum by 52 per cent to 48 per cent Reuters Brexit protest: Thousands march in London But support for the Leave campaign in urban areas and among young people was significantly lower Rex features Brexit protest: Thousands march in London Marchers gathered at Park Lane at 11am and marched towards Parliament Square PA Brexit protest: Thousands march in London Some protesters held up baguettes in a display of affection for our continental neighbours PA Brexit protest: Thousands march in London The disparity between different parts of the country has promoted a four million signature petition calling for a second referendum and even a renewed push for Scotland to cede from the UK PA Brexit protest: Thousands march in London The events organiser, Kings College graduate Kieran MacDermott, wrote: We can prevent Brexit by refusing to accept the referendum as the final say and take our finger off the self-destruct button" Reuters
At another point in the question session, Mr Cameron said it was vital for Britain to retain access to the single market.
Incoming Prime Minister Theresa May has refused to guarantee EU citizens the right to stay in Britain.
Last week the House of Commons voted 245 MPs to 2 in favour of protecting European Union migrants rights to stay. The Conservatives did not vote on the issue, however.
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The removal van at the back entrance to Downing Street is often described as the grim reaper of British politics. In fact it is the undertaker. By the time they come for your possessions, your hopes and dreams are already long gone.
It was a blue one today, first spotted at noon, with a chap in a Speedy Removals T-shirt, walking past the security cordon. One has to imagine it was the speediest theyve ever done. On Monday, the Camerons werent going anywhere until September. Now, by Wednesday night theyll be homeless. Their house in West Kensington is rented out. They have a place in Oxfordshire, but its a long way from the kids school.
In the morning David Camerons final Cabinet meeting came and went. Ordinary-looking men and women were walking in steady pace up a not-at-all ordinary British street, and in and out through a grand front door that familiar scene that always marks a shift in the tectonic plates of power.
No two iterations are ever quite the same, but there has never been one remotely like this. When Number 10 receives new tenants, it is in the wake of victory and defeat. Be it via ballot box or coordinated coup, a loser departs and a winner arrives. Cameron lost his own gamble, but it has destroyed all those who would claim to have been his conquerors too. The meeting lasted 50 minutes. There was a lot of banging on tables. But once George Osborne and Theresa May had offered a few kind words, the Prime Minister put an end to the tributes. Michael Gove, once a close friend and godfather to Camerons deceased son Ivan, was not permitted to speak. They banged on the table at the end. Jeremy Hunt, Anna Soubry and one or two others stopped for a chat with the TV crews. Hunt thanked him for everything he has done for the country. Gay marriage. Free schools. Having to fix the roof while no sun shone. But such things will not weigh a feather in the balance, not in historys first draft or its last.
It took Theresa May several minutes to get out of the door and into her waiting car. First she went the wrong way and tried to get in the wrong car, then the photographers talked her into remounting the steps for a picture on the Number 10 doorstep. She was driven the very short distance to Parliament with a far larger team of police outriders than is usual. How quickly the trappings of high office are transferred. It was only a preview, of course. In our weary democracy, the increasing dysfunctions of which have never been more exposed than in the past few weeks, it is all but impossible for a Prime Minister step down unless the Queen (or King) is at home at the palace. On Tuesday the monarch was in Norfolk, so the formalities must wait.
It has been brutal but it has certainly been swift. A single explosive episode of political thriller. Meanwhile, Labours hideous box set drags for hour after stultifying hour, with neither character nor action.
Across town, Jeremy Corbyn fought his way through the usual throng and into a meeting of Labours National Executive Committee, who were meeting to try and work out their own rules on whether a leader who is subject to a leadership challenge must be included by default in the resulting election. But if Corbyn goes and the credits roll, Labour will soon find out there are a load more episodes to come, and life without their anti-hero is scarcely any less pointless.
It is now a week since Sir John Chilcots thunderbolt cameo amid the unending madness. The Blair government should have foreseen the horrors that would follow the toppling of a tyrant. We do not agree that hindsight is required, he said.
To see that Labours many intractable problems, from Scotland to Ukip to its sheer lack of leaders, will not be cured by the toppling of the partys own uncharismatic dictator does not require hindsight either.
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The political party leadership turbulence triggered by the EU referendum has calmed significantly in the blue corner with the appointment of Theresa May as Conservative Party leader and the UKs new Prime Minister.
But Labour's tumult as the parliamentary party attempts to oust current leader Jeremy Corbyn is set to continue for another 10 weeks.
New rules have been decided, Angela Eagle and Owen Smith have announced their candidacy and there are more than two months of debate, wrangling and campaigning to come before the party announces its leader.
And after all that, it could well be Mr Corbyn again after it was decided that existing leaders must be included on Labour ballots.
In the wake of Labours defeat under Ed Miliband at the 2015 general election, Mr Corbyn won a landslide 59.5 per cent of the vote to become the partys new leader.
The second-placed candidate was Andy Burnham. with 19 per cent, while Yvette Cooper received 17 per cent of the vote and Liz Kendall 4.5 per cent.
But controversy surrounded Labours voting system, which was being used for the first time, with reports of entryism from the far-left and even Conservatives who relished the chance of a Corbyn-led opposition skewing the vote in his favour.
Previously, MPs, union members and party members had a third of the vote each in leadership contests.
But the rules introduced by Mr Miliband introduced a one member, one vote system and allowed registered supporters of the party to sign up and vote for 3.
These supporters were a significant boost to Mr Corbyn. According to Labour List, 84 per cent of the 3 voters backed him.
Meanwhile, among the full Labour Party membership, 49.6 per cent voted for him - meaning, contrary to widespread perception, he would have comfortably won the leadership even without the backing of those who paid 3 to be 'supporters'.
In the coming leadership election, the rules have now changed significantly, though who will benefit most is unclear.
The 3 supporters are gone as registered supporter status entitles individuals to voting in just one leadership. Instead, those now wishing to become a registered supporter must now pay 25 to vote, and will only be able to sign up during a two-day window between 18 and 20 July.
And more controversially, the party has agreed that anyone who became a member after January 12 2016 will not be eligible to vote, even if they have paid the full membership fee of 47.
More than 130,000 people have signed up during this period, many of whom are thought to have done so in support of the leader.
However, they may pay the 25 to become both a registered supporter and a full member, thereby allowing them to vote in the leadership contest.
The reduced selectorate created by the higher cost of voting, is thought to favour Mr Corbyns opponents.
UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 26 October 2022 A meerkat explores a pumpkin in the enclosure at Wild Place, Bristol, where some of the animals are having pumpkin treats as part of their environmental enrichment PA UK news in pictures 25 October 2022 King Charles III welcomes Rishi Sunak during an audience at Buckingham Palace, where he invited the newly elected leader of the Conservative Party to become Prime Minister and form a new government PA UK news in pictures 24 October 2022 Rishi Sunak celebrates with Tory MPs outside the Conservative Campaign Headquarters after becoming the new leader of the Conservative Party Reuters UK news in pictures 23 October 2022 The Green Man at October Plenty, Borough Market's annual Autumn Harvest festival, in London, which returns for the first time post pandemic PA UK news in pictures 21 October 2022 Sculptor Peter McKenna puts the finishing touches to a pumpkin that will form part of the Planet A Hebden Bridge Pumpkin Trail in the West Yorkshire town PA UK news in pictures 20 October 2022 Britains Prime Minister Liz Truss delivers a speech outside of 10 Downing Street in central London to announce her resignation AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 19 October 2022 Salmon leap up Stainforth Force on the River Ribble in the Yorkshire Dales as they swim upriver to their spawning grounds during the annual Salmon migration PA UK news in pictures 18 October 2022 Just Stop Oil protesters continue their protest for a second day on the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge, which links Kent and Essex and which remains closed for traffic, after it was scaled by two climbers from the group PA UK news in pictures 17 October 2022 Hundreds of students take part in the traditional Raisin Monday foam fight on St Salvator's Lower College Lawn at the University of St Andrews in Fife PA UK news in pictures 16 October 2022 A protester holds a placard during a march into central London at a demonstration by the climate change protest group Extinction Rebellion AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 15 October 2022 A member of the public drags an activist who is blocking the road during a "Just Stop Oil" protest, in London, Britain REUTERS UK news in pictures 14 October 2022 Germanys Womens double skulls during day one of the World Rowing Beach Sprint Finals at Saundersfoot beach, Pembrokeshire PA UK news in pictures 13 October 2022 Family and mourners arrive at St Michael's Church, in Creeslough, for the funeral mass of 49-year-old mother of four Martina Martin, who died following an explosion at the Applegreen service station in the village of Creeslough in Co Donegal on Friday PA UK news in pictures 12 October 2022 Motorists in Coventry pass trees showing autumnal colour PA UK news in pictures 11 October 2022 A woman and her dog in the the North Sea at Tynemouth Longsands beach before sunrise PA UK news in pictures 10 October 2022 Police officers remove a campaigner from a Just Stop Oil protest on The Mall, near Buckingham Palace, London PA UK news in pictures 9 October 2022 A drummer plays during the Diwali on the Square celebration, in Trafalgar Square, London PA UK news in pictures 8 October 2022 Timothee Chalamet attending the UK premiere of Bones and All during the BFI London Film Festival 2022 at the Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, London PA UK news in pictures 7 October 2022 Two young male fallow deer lock antlers in Dublins Phoenix park as rutting season begins PA UK news in pictures 6 October 2022 The Princess of Wales during a cocktail making competition during a visit to Trademarket, a new outdoor street-food and retail market situated in Belfast city centre, as part of the royal visit to Northern Ireland PA UK news in pictures 5 October 2022 Greenpeace protesters interrupt Prime Minister Liz Truss as she delivers her keynote speech to the Conservative Party annual conference PA UK news in pictures 4 October 2022 Prime Minister Liz Truss and Britains Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng wearing hard hats and hi-vis jackets, visit a construction site for a medical innovation campus in Birmingham AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 3 October 2022 British artist Sam Cox, aka Mr Doodle, reveals the Doodle House, a twelve-room mansion at Tenterden, in Kent, which has been covered, inside and out in the artist's trademark monochrome, cartoonish hand-drawn doodles PA UK news in pictures 2 October 2022 Erling Haaland celebrates after scoring Manchester City's second goal against Manchester United at Etihad Stadium. Haaland went on to score a hattrick, his third of the season in the Premier League. City beat United 6-3. Manchester City FC/Getty UK news in pictures 1 October 2022 Protesters hold up flags and placards at a protest in London. A variety of protest groups including Enough is Enough, Don't Pay and Just Stop Oil all demonstrated on the day AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 30 September 2022 British Prime Minister Liz Truss, who has not been seen in days, leaves the back of Downing Street after a meeting with Office For Budget Responsibility following the release of her governments mini-budget Getty UK news in pictures 29 September 2022 The Virginia creeper foliage on the Tu Hwnt i'r Bont (Beyond the Bridge) Llanwrst, Conwy North Wales, has changed colour from green to red in at the start of Autumn. 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
In particular this is because support for Mr Corbyn among party members is reportedly waning due to the EU referendum result.
A YouGov poll for the Times in the week following the referendum in June showed that, among full Labour party members, Mr Cobyns approval rating slipped dramatically to +3, down from +45 in May - and that 54 per cent want him to resign before the next general election.
However, the significantly higher cost of becoming a registered supporter may also work against Mr Corbyns opponents, whose support will largely depend on winning over a selectorate who largely voted in favour of the current leader.
Despite Mr Corbyns fall in approval rating, the poll revealed that in a leadership competition between Ms Eagle and the current leader, Mr Corbyn would triumph by 50 per cent to 40 per cent. A total of 10 per cent said they would not vote or did not know.
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The former Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond has risen to some of the highest offices in Government while leaving little trace in the public imagination.
His reputation - within Westminster at least - has been as a highly articulate and effective "safe pair of hands" who can plough a steady course without causing drama, upset or excitement.
It is exactly those qualities which have made him the "reassuringly boring" choice for successive promotions to Transport Secretary, Defence Secretary, Foreign Secretary and now Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Despite being a permanent fixture in David Cameron's shadow frontbench team and Cabinet throughout his time as leader, he was rarely mentioned as a possible successor - and that is probably the way he liked it.
Recommended Read more Theresa May makes pitch for centre ground in first speech as PM
The Treasury has always been his goal, and he is understood to have been disappointed to miss out on the number two job there in 2010 when the necessities of coalition gave Liberal Democrats the Chief Secretary's post - a role he had shadowed for three years in opposition. Sent instead to the Department for Transport, he was swiftly moved on to Defence in the aftermath of the exit of Liam Fox amid a public furore over his special adviser.
With a reputation forged in the shadow Treasury team as the Tories' public spending "axeman", he was ideally placed to preside over a big spending squeeze to close the "black hole" in Ministry of Defence budgets.
His installation as Foreign Secretary in 2014 was hailed by Eurosceptics, who detected signs of a fellow spirit in comments which appeared to suggest he was ready to contemplate withdrawal from the EU if the Government was unable to negotiate a better deal.
But when the referendum came, he remained true to his practice of never rocking the boat, loyally backing Mr Cameron's renegotiation and backing the Remain side during the campaign.
Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in and who's out? Show all 27 1 /27 Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in and who's out? Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in and who's out? Andrea Leadsom Andrea Leadsom has been appointed Secretary for Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Getty Images Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in and who's out? Priti Patel Priti Patel has been appointed International Development Secretary PA Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in and who's out? Alun Cairns Alun Cairns will stay on as Welsh Secretary Reuters Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in and who's out? Karen Bradley Karen Bradley is now Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport Rex Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in and who's out? Greg Clark Greg Clark has been appointed Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy PA Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in and who's out? James Brokenshire James Brokenshire has been appointed as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland PA Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in and who's out? Stephen Crabb Stephen Crabb has resigned as Work and Pensions Secretary PA Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in and who's out? Theresa Villiers Theresa Villiers will not return as Northern Ireland Secretary. She was reportedly offered a role by Theresa May, but turned it down, saying it was not one she felt could take on Getty Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in and who's out? Chris Grayling Chris Grayling has been appointed Transport Secretary PA Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in and who's out? Damien Green Damien Green has been appointed Work and Pensions Secretary Getty Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in and who's out? Liz Truss Liz Truss has been appointed Justice Secretary Getty Images Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in and who's out? Patrick McLoughlin Patrick McLoughlin who was Transport Secretary has been appointed Tory Party chairman and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster Getty Images Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in and who's out? Justine Greening Justine Greening has been appointed as Education Secretary Getty Images Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in and who's out? Gavin Williamson Gavin Williamson is to become the new Government Chief Whip Reuters Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in and who's out? Jeremy Hunt Jeremy Hunt will continue as Health Secretary Getty Images Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in and who's out? Nicky Morgan Nicky Morgan lost her job as Education Secretary Reuters Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in and who's out? Michael Gove Michael Gove has been sacked as Justice Secretary Reuters Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in and who's out? John Whittingdale John Whittingdale left his job as Culture Secretary EPA Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in and who's out? Oliver Letwin Oliver Letwin, the Chancellor for the Duchy of Lancaster, has been sacked from his role in the cabinet PA Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in and who's out? Philip Hammond The former Foreign Secretary has been made Chancellor EPA Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in and who's out? Boris Johnson Leading Brexit campaigner is given the role of Foreign Secretary Getty Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in and who's out? Amber Rudd Leading Remain campaigner takes Theresa May's old job of Home Secretary PA Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in and who's out? Michael Fallon Stays as Defence Secretary AP Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in and who's out? Liam Fox The former Defence Secretary is named as head of new Department for International Trade PA Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in and who's out? David Davis The former shadow Home Secretary and leadership rival to David Cameron is named Secretary of State for Leaving the European Union - aka Brexit minister PA Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in and who's out? George Osborne Gone as Chancellor - and fails to secure any new role in May's government GETTY Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in and who's out? David Mundell The Conservative Party's only Scottish MP retains his role as Scottish Secretary Getty Images
After the result came in, Mr Hammond, 60, did not demur from Theresa May's insistence that "Brexit means Brexit" but left little doubt that he thought voters had handed the new Prime Minister a thankless task, warning that the process of leaving the EU could take six years.
As Foreign Secretary, he played a key role in the 2015 agreement for Iran to give up its military nuclear ambitions.
And he was the minister who tabled the fateful European Union Referendum Bill in the House of Commons.
State-educated in his native Essex, Philip Anthony Hammond arrived at Oxford University to study philosophy, politics and economics on the day Labour won the second general election of 1974.
His devout belief in economic stability and prudent public finances were forged in the turbulent years that followed, culminating in Margaret Thatcher sweeping to power in 1979.
Mr Hammond made his first steps in party politics during that campaign as a volunteer in Westminster, going on to be chair of the Lewisham East Conservative Association for several years.
After a failed 1994 by-election bid, his entry to the Commons came on another day of victory for Labour - Tony Blair's 1997 landslide when he secured the Surrey seat of Runnymede and Weybridge which he has held ever since.
Quickly promoted to William Hague's opposition front bench at health, he held several other positions and moved into the shadow cabinet as chief secretary under Michael Howard in 2005.
Married with three children, he faced some criticism during the expenses scandal for claiming almost the full second home allowance despite living in the commuter town of Woking.
He is reported to be one of the richest individuals in the Cabinet with the success of the property company he co-founded said to have netted him an 8 million fortune.
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That the nation has run Coyote-like off the cliff edge but is still waiting for the fall has been the most commonly repeated metaphor of these mad times.
But at the end of three long weeks of running on air, Coyote Cameron achieved the impossible. His final Prime Ministers Questions over, he cleared the ravine and landed safely on the other side. But in the coming months and years this self-styled heir to Blair will, with frightening de ja vu, be forced to look on as his reputation nosedives to its doom.
Cameron, in his final hour, was a class act. How long he has sat on an email from Judith, sent in September, foreseeing Jeremy Corbyns woes as Tom Watson machinates around him. To parody your opponent as you demolish them is rather brilliant, even if it has been close to a year in pre-preparation. He had brought a picture with him to scotch rumours that he was no fan of Larry the Number 10 cat feline lovingly perched in the lap of power.
He compared Mr Corbyn to the Black Knight in Monty Pythons Holy Grail, but not even King Arthur was that mockingly cruel as he severed all four of his hapless opponent's limbs. And certainly not when, as is customary, it would fall to Labour's Black Knight to say something nice in return. In the end, Mr Corbyn passed on his good wishes to the Cameron family, even to Camerons mum, for the advice on suits and ties and songs that she had herself never actually given.
To depart from the nation's higest office via a semi-congratulatory session at the despatch box is by no means customary, so the comparisons with Blair are fair. When a politicians greatest weapon is communication, never will they be more exposed than when the communicating stops. When you are no longer around to justify your actions, even as their consequences continue.
The most moving moment of Blairs departure nine years ago came from the lower benches, where the smaller opposition parties sit. The Reverend Ian Paisley, 81 years of age, paid tribute to the historic peace that had been brokered in that corner of the kingdom.
Nine years on, from those same benches rose Angus Robertson of the SNP, to forewarn that the Scottish National Party would not be applauding Cameron: The Prime Minister's legacy will undoubtedly be that he has taken us to the brink of being taken out of the European Union. The legacy that comes with it, will be an ever more committed nationalist movement, determined to break the Union.
I will be willing all of you on, Cameron said as he departed, reserving his final tributes for Parliament itself. People come here with huge passion for the issues they care about. They come here with great love for the constituencies that they represent. I will be willing on this place.
A noble sentiment, that will do for the moment. But in the coming years, he will be remembered solely for his decision to subvert it.
Parliament applauded as he left. The Conservatives up on their feet, a small handful of Labour too. Even Paul Flynn, an 81-year-old anarcho-syndicalist suddenly having a taste of life on Labour's front bench, the oldest parliamentarian to do so since Gladstone, rose to his feet. In the far corner, Boris Johnson had snuck in for this very final scene.
But it wasnt parliament that has finished Cameron off. It was the people and finished themselves off too.
How often it has been said in the past few weeks that politics is brutal? But it has a brutal sense of humour to go with it. As her Majesty spent a second sunny Wednesday afternoon waiting for the crash to earth of a brilliant young high-flyer who never noticed that his wings were made of wax, what should be the subject of debate in the Commons this afternoon? The Report of the Iraq Inquiry: Day 1.
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Ruth Davidson has mocked her political rivals and allies alike in a speech which had lobby journalists in stitches.
The Scottish Conservatives leader addressed the press gallery at its regular lobby lunch and took aim at Andrea Leadsoms leadership campaign and Labour chaos.
Commenting on the speed with which Theresa May has been declared the new Prime Minister following the withdrawal of Ms Leadsom from the race she said: Thats kind of the difference between our two parties.
You know, Labours still fumbling with its flies while the Tories are enjoying a post-coital cigarette after withdrawing our massive Johnson."
She then joked about her ally Stephen Crabbs - who she originally backed for the leadership - latest woes, saying: Sorry thats not even my speech, thats just a text from Stephen Crabb....
The married father-of-two was accused of sex messages to a young Tory party activist on Saturday.
She also mocked many of Ms Leadsoms mistakes during the campaign such as referring to fictitious past experiences and the Energy Ministers repeated referral to motherhood.
Brexit protest: Thousands march in London Show all 12 1 /12 Brexit protest: Thousands march in London Brexit protest: Thousands march in London A woman poses with a home-made European Union flag as Remain supporters gather on Park Lane in London to show their support for the EU in the wake of Brexit PA Brexit protest: Thousands march in London Remain supporters demonstrate in Parliament Square PA Brexit protest: Thousands march in London Tens of thousands of people gathered to protest the result of the EU referendum PA Brexit protest: Thousands march in London A majority of people in the capital voted to remain in the European Union Reuters Brexit protest: Thousands march in London Protesters chanted: What do we want to do? Stay in the EU PA Brexit protest: Thousands march in London The march follows a similar rally in Trafalgar Square that was cancelled due to heavy rain but which tens of thousands of people turned up to anyway Reuters Brexit protest: Thousands march in London Britain voted to leave the European Union in a referendum by 52 per cent to 48 per cent Reuters Brexit protest: Thousands march in London But support for the Leave campaign in urban areas and among young people was significantly lower Rex features Brexit protest: Thousands march in London Marchers gathered at Park Lane at 11am and marched towards Parliament Square PA Brexit protest: Thousands march in London Some protesters held up baguettes in a display of affection for our continental neighbours PA Brexit protest: Thousands march in London The disparity between different parts of the country has promoted a four million signature petition calling for a second referendum and even a renewed push for Scotland to cede from the UK PA Brexit protest: Thousands march in London The events organiser, Kings College graduate Kieran MacDermott, wrote: We can prevent Brexit by refusing to accept the referendum as the final say and take our finger off the self-destruct button" Reuters
She said: Before politics not only was I a BBC journalist, I single handedly saved the British banking system during the Barings collapse, I piloted Apollo 13 back down to earth.
A little-known fact is that I was the original Misha the bear at the 1980 Moscow Olympics, which is the same year that I won Eurovision, which, speaking as a mother, is a hard thing to do."
Ms Davidson, who became Scotlands official Leader of the Opposition in May following the partys resurgence at the Holyrood elections, also said she would not rule out a second EU referendum as the House of Commons prepares to debate the issue.
Over four million signed a petition on the Governments official website to re-run the election because, it argues, turnout was too low to reflect the wishes of the majority of the British public.
First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has pledged to do everything she can to keep Scotland in the EU and has called for a second referendum on independence following the result.
She said: "The result is testing this country's sense of unity. In Scotland, where people voted overwhelmingly to remain in the EU, the result is testing the binds of the Union as well.
"The honest answer is I don't know what's going to happen - I think [a second referendum] would be highly unlikely."
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Theresa May must improve her and Britains record on human rights now that she is becoming Prime Minister, campaigners have warned.
Amnesty UK and Reprieve are amongst charities calling for the former Home Secretary to commit to a fresh start on issues like UK complicity in torture, and the European Convention on Human Rights.
Ms May has previously said she would consider pulling out of said Convention, but made clear during her leadership campaign that that policy was now off the table.
She has also been criticised for masterminding a policy of sending vans around Britain telling undocumented migrants to go home or face arrest. Heavily anti-immigration themes in her speech at Conservative party conference 2015 were also rubbished by campaigners.
Donald Campbell, head of communications at, Reprieve told the Independent that as Home Secretary Ms May had presided over worrying secrecy but expressed hope that things might change.
At times, Theresa May's Home Office has been worryingly secretive on human rights issues, he said.
For example, they have frequently refused to disclose information on funding and training for overseas police forces which could lead to people being tortured and executed.
We hope that the new prime minister will place greater emphasis on transparency and accountability, and ensure Britain no longer provides assistance which could end up supporting torture and the death penalty around the world.
The 6 most important issues Theresa May needs to address Show all 6 1 /6 The 6 most important issues Theresa May needs to address The 6 most important issues Theresa May needs to address Brexit The big one. Theresa May has spoken publicly three times since declaring her intent to stand in the Tory Leadership race, and each time she has said, Brexit means Brexit. It sounds resolute, but it is helpful to her that Brexit is a made up word with no real meaning. She has said there will be no second referendum and no re-entry in to the EU via the back door. But she, like the Leave campaign of which she was not a member, has pointedly not said with any precision what she thinks Brexit means Reuters The 6 most important issues Theresa May needs to address General election This is very much one to keep off the to do list. She said last week there would be no general election at this time of great instability. But there have already been calls for one from opposition parties. The Fixed Term Parliaments Act of 2010 makes it far more difficult to call a snap general election, a difficulty she will be in no rush to overcome. In the event of a victory for Leadsom, who was not popular with her own parliamentary colleagues, an election might have been required, but May has the overwhelming backing of the parliamentary party Getty The 6 most important issues Theresa May needs to address HS2 Macbeth has been quoted far too much in recent weeks, but it will be up to May to decide whether, with regard to the new high speed train link between London, Birmingham, the East Midlands and the north, returning were as tedious as go oer. Billions have already been spent. But the 55bn it will cost, at a bare minimum, must now be considered against the grim reality of significantly diminished public finances in the short to medium term at least. It is not scheduled to be completed until 2033, by which point it is not completely unreasonable to imagine a massive, driverless car-led transport revolution having rendered it redundant EPA The 6 most important issues Theresa May needs to address Heathrow expansion Or indeed Gatwick expansion. Or Boris Island, though that option is seems as finished as the man himself. The decision on where to expand aviation capacity in the south east has been delayed to the point of becoming a national embarrassment. A final decision was due in autumn. Whatever is decided, there will be vast opprobrium PA The 6 most important issues Theresa May needs to address Trident renewal David Cameron indicated two days ago that there will be a Commons vote on renewing Britains nuclear deterrent on July 18th, by which point we now know, Ms May will be Prime Minister. The Labour Party is, to put it mildly, divided on the issue. This will be an early opportunity to maximise their embarrassment, and return to Tory business as usual EPA The 6 most important issues Theresa May needs to address Scottish Independence Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP are in no doubt that the Brexit vote provides the opportunity for a second independence referendum, in which they can emerge victorious. The Scottish Parliament at Holyrood has the authority to call a second referendum, but Ms May and the British Parliament are by no means automatically compelled to accept the result. She could argue it was settled in 2014 AFP/Getty
At home, she must deliver an independent, judge led inquiry into uk involvement in the CIA torture programme- a promise made, but then abandoned, by her predecessor.
Meanwhile Kate Allen, director of Amnesty UK, welcomed Ms Mays newfound commitment to the ECHR but hinted that the organisation had not forgotten Ms Mays 2015 conference speech.
We look forward to working with Theresa May on a range of human rights issues, she said.
Theres much to be concerned about in the country Theresa May is inheriting, and we very much need to turn the corner on human rights.
The work should start today. The Prime Minister should make it her first point of business to guarantee that EU migrants can stay in the UK and wont be used as bargaining chips in Brexit negotiations.
She also needs to tackle the recent rise in hate crimes, racism and xenophobia and ensure refugees and migrants are no longer denigrated in political speeches.
Theresa May has said shes committed to the UK remaining a signatory to the European Convention of Human Rights, which we warmly welcome, and she should now ensure that key human rights protections are safeguarded in Brexit negotiations, that human rights are put back at the centre of British foreign policy and the Human Rights Act is safeguarded here at home.
The United States strongly condemns the recent spate of deadly terrorist attacks that have taken hundreds of lives from Istanbul to Dhaka to Baghdad to the attacks in Saudi Arabia. These acts have shown no respect for human life, whether young or old, male or female, Muslim or non-Muslim.
These attacks were intended to spread terror and fear. They occurred at the end of Ramadan, the holiest time of the year for Muslims. Indeed, a Daesh spokesman himself called for targeting during this holy month. So whats obviously evident, said State Department Spokesperson John Kirby, is that Daesh certainly has no respect for Muslim life, life in general, or any respect for Islam itself.
The United States remains extremely concerned about ISILs ability to inspire terrorist attacks and is working with its partners to help halt the spread of terror.
This requires a multi-pronged approach that includes working with partners from around the world to cut off Daeshs messaging, financing, and recruitment networks. The U.S. and its allies are also expanding their ability to identify, disrupt, arrest, and prosecute suspected foreign terrorist fighters.
The United States now has information-sharing agreements with 55 international partners to identify and track the travel of suspected terrorists, and the number of countries contributing foreign terrorist fighter profiles to Interpol has now increased by some 400 percent over the last two years.
At least 35 countries have arrested foreign terrorist fighters or aspirants, and 12 countries have successfully prosecuted foreign terrorist fighters. At least 45 countries have enacted laws or amendments to create greater obstacles for foreign terrorist fighters traveling into Iraq and Syria.
The U.S. is also focused on discrediting the violent messages that Daesh puts out on a daily basis on social media that they use to inspire and to recruit people.
In an effort to defeat ISIL at its core in Iraq and Syria, the Counter-ISIL Coalition has accelerated the campaign against Daesh in those countries. Over the last six months, there has been significant progress retaking territory and diminishing the groups finances and access to additional manpower.
The United States will continue the fight against ISIL on all fronts until the terrorist group is defeated.
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Conservative MP Theresa May has been appointed as Britain's second woman Prime Minister.
Ms May, 59, was invited to form a government by Queen Elizabeth II in a private audience at Buckingham Palace.
The 12th PM during the Queen's reign, Ms May suceeds David Cameron, who tendered his resignation to the monarch half an hour earlier.
She arrived at the palace by ministerial car with her husband Philip May, having set off from the House of Commons after Mr Cameron was officially accepted by the Queen.
Mr Cameron advised the Queen to appointed the former Home Secretary in his place.
A spokesperson for the Palace said: "The Queen received in audience Theresa May and requested her to form a new Administration."
In a brief address outside Downing Street before he resigned, Mr Cameron said: "It has been the greatest honour of my life to serve our country as Prime Minister over these last six years and to serve as leader of my party over 11 years.
"And as we leave for the last time, my only wish is continued success for this great country that I love so very much."
Ms May is to give an address outside Downing Street later this afternoon outlining her initial priorities in office.
The 6 most important issues Theresa May needs to address Show all 6 1 /6 The 6 most important issues Theresa May needs to address The 6 most important issues Theresa May needs to address Brexit The big one. Theresa May has spoken publicly three times since declaring her intent to stand in the Tory Leadership race, and each time she has said, Brexit means Brexit. It sounds resolute, but it is helpful to her that Brexit is a made up word with no real meaning. She has said there will be no second referendum and no re-entry in to the EU via the back door. But she, like the Leave campaign of which she was not a member, has pointedly not said with any precision what she thinks Brexit means Reuters The 6 most important issues Theresa May needs to address General election This is very much one to keep off the to do list. She said last week there would be no general election at this time of great instability. But there have already been calls for one from opposition parties. The Fixed Term Parliaments Act of 2010 makes it far more difficult to call a snap general election, a difficulty she will be in no rush to overcome. In the event of a victory for Leadsom, who was not popular with her own parliamentary colleagues, an election might have been required, but May has the overwhelming backing of the parliamentary party Getty The 6 most important issues Theresa May needs to address HS2 Macbeth has been quoted far too much in recent weeks, but it will be up to May to decide whether, with regard to the new high speed train link between London, Birmingham, the East Midlands and the north, returning were as tedious as go oer. Billions have already been spent. But the 55bn it will cost, at a bare minimum, must now be considered against the grim reality of significantly diminished public finances in the short to medium term at least. It is not scheduled to be completed until 2033, by which point it is not completely unreasonable to imagine a massive, driverless car-led transport revolution having rendered it redundant EPA The 6 most important issues Theresa May needs to address Heathrow expansion Or indeed Gatwick expansion. Or Boris Island, though that option is seems as finished as the man himself. The decision on where to expand aviation capacity in the south east has been delayed to the point of becoming a national embarrassment. A final decision was due in autumn. Whatever is decided, there will be vast opprobrium PA The 6 most important issues Theresa May needs to address Trident renewal David Cameron indicated two days ago that there will be a Commons vote on renewing Britains nuclear deterrent on July 18th, by which point we now know, Ms May will be Prime Minister. The Labour Party is, to put it mildly, divided on the issue. This will be an early opportunity to maximise their embarrassment, and return to Tory business as usual EPA The 6 most important issues Theresa May needs to address Scottish Independence Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP are in no doubt that the Brexit vote provides the opportunity for a second independence referendum, in which they can emerge victorious. The Scottish Parliament at Holyrood has the authority to call a second referendum, but Ms May and the British Parliament are by no means automatically compelled to accept the result. She could argue it was settled in 2014 AFP/Getty
She is also expected to unveil the core members of her Cabinet later this evening, with other appointments to be made clear in the coming days.
The former Home Secretary, who backed Remain in the European Union referendum debate, will steer Britain's exit from the bloc.
One of her first major milestones in her time as PM will be triggering the so-called "Article 50" in the European Union treaties, which will formally begin the Brexit negotiation process.
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Theresa May will have more women in her Cabinet than any previous Conservative Prime Minister, with one of the three big offices of state expected to be filled by a woman.
In contrast to Margaret Thatcher, who chose to be surrounded by an all-male Cabinet for almost her entire time in Downing Street, sources close to Mrs May say that she is determined to put into effect a long held belief that there should be a better gender balance at the top end of the government.
Five women besides Mrs May already hold Cabinet posts Justine Greening, Nicky Morgan, Amber Rudd, Liz Truss, and Teresa Villiers. Others possibly in line for promotion to the Cabinet include the Works and Pensions minister Priti Patel, who played a prominent role in the Brexit campaign, and the Business minister, Anna Soubry, who backed Remain.
Recommended Read more How Cameron will see out his last day as PM
The incoming Prime Minister will also have to consider whether to promote her former rival Andrea Leadsom, to the Cabinet.
The Works and Pensions minister Priti Patel is tipped for promotion to the Cabinet (PA)
A spokeswoman for Mrs May said: "It was Theresa that set up the campaign to elect more female MP's to parliament - and she has always believed that there should be more women in prominent government positions."
Her determination to have a woman in one of the top three ministers means that either the Chancellor George Osborne, or the Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond, or the Commons leader Chris Grayling, who ran Mrs Mays leadership campaign, will have to stand aside.
One of the first appointments Mrs May is expected to make is the Cabinet minister who will have the vital job of handling the Brexit negotiations with the rest of the EU. He or she will head a brand new government department, and yesterday, civil servants were scouring Whitehall looking for a suitable building where it can be housed.
Andrea Leadsom announcing on Monday that she would drop out of the Tory leadership race - she is also a Cabinet contender (EPA)
Her spokeswoman said: Civil servants have already been charged with finding a building to house the Brexit department - an indication of Theresas commitment to get on with delivering the verdict of EU referendum. Brexit means Brexit and we're going to make a success of it.
Mrs May still has a few hours to wait before she moves in to 10 Downing Street as only the second woman Prime Minister in British history.
Yesterday David Cameron chaired his final Cabinet meeting the 215th since he became Prime Minister. As it ended, he said presiding over the Cabinet had been an honour and a pleasure and praised Theresa May as the right person to take his place. There were tributes to Mr Cameron from Mrs May and the Chancellor, George Osborne, before the traditional banging of the desks.
Afterwards, Mr Cameron went on his last prime ministerial visit outside Westminster to a free school in London. Today he will take Prime Ministers Questions in the Commons for the last time, then go to the Palace to hand in his resignation to the Queen.
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The British system of democracy, which has despatched itself with such beautiful efficiency over the last few weeks, will have another of its periodic moments of charming idiosyncrasy, when one Prime Minister hands over to another via two meetings with a woman appointed by birthright that no one else is allowed to see.
But before David Cameron goes to the palace to offer his resignation, he will attend his last Prime Ministers Questions, a fittingly similar end for the self-styled heir to Blair. On that occasion, in 2007 David Cameron, then Leader of the Opposition, compelled his MPs to join in a standing ovation for the departing Prime Minister, many of whom did so with extreme resentment.
It seems unlikely Jeremy Corbyn will return the favour. He may not even do up his tie and wear a proper suit for the occasion (He certainly wont sing the national anthem).
He will be expected to pay some sort of tribute to the departing Prime Minister. At the State Opening of Parliament two months ago, he couldnt even bring himself to make small talk with him, and that was before Cameron gambled the nations future on an internal party problem and lost. Camerons PMQs attacks on Corbyn have grown increasingly personal this year. It is hard to see quite how Corbyn will summon anything like a bon mot in the circumstances.
Camerons own side will no doubt applaud him. The anti-EU zealots have much to thank him for. The rest owe him a debt of gratitude for modernising the party, even if his sudden demise marks a quantum leap backwards from his own achievements on this front. The relics have won.
Camerons own remarks will be brief. He has met the most ignoble end of any Prime Minister in modern times. His final appearance in public will have been to booed by the Centre Court crowd at Wimbledon. They are not the booing a Prime Minister kind. Cameron will no doubt list a few of his achievements, but in the full knowledge they have all been overshadowed.
Then will come the drive to Buckingham Palace in the Prime Ministerial car. The news helicopters will hover. He will tender his resignation to the Queen and drive away in a different one. Theresa May will arrive, take up the seals of office, and find something to say to the nation on the steps of Number 10. Such words haunt every Premiership, none moreso than Margaret Thatchers, who promised to bring harmony where there was discord, and left in the raging public riots over the poll tax. Gordon Brown pointedly read out the motto of his old comprehensive school. But the Etonians floored him in the end.
David Cameron's premiership - in pictures Show all 15 1 /15 David Cameron's premiership - in pictures David Cameron's premiership - in pictures Britain's Queen Elizabeth II greeting David Cameron at Buckingham Palace for an audience to invite him to be the next Prime Minister on 11 May 2010 PA David Cameron's premiership - in pictures Prime Minister David Cameron and his wife Samantha wave from the steps of Number 10 Downing Street on 11 May 2010 Getty Images David Cameron's premiership - in pictures On 12 May 2010 Prime Minister David Cameron said in a press conference with Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg, who was then deputy PM, they plan to "take Britain in a historic new direction" and Conservative-led coalition government would be united and provide "strong and stable" leadership Rex David Cameron's premiership - in pictures A decade ago, David Cameron visited the Arctic to witness the effects of climate change. However since coming to power in 2010, his government has gradually dropped down a succession of green policies David Cameron's premiership - in pictures Prime Minister David cameron told the then New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, the Queen had purred down the line after he told her Scotland had voted against independence in September 2014. He was forced to apologise for breaking constitutional convention Getty Images David Cameron's premiership - in pictures Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron greeted soldiers working on flood relief in York city centre after the river Ouse burst its banks, in northern England in December 2015 REUTERS David Cameron's premiership - in pictures Claims that David Cameron performed an obscene act with a dead pig and smoked cannabis during his studies at Oxford University spread around the world in September 2015. The extraordinary allegations were made in an unauthorised biography of the Prime Minister written by Lord Ashcroft David Hartley/REX Shutterstock David Cameron's premiership - in pictures In 2016, Mr Cameron was caught up in a worldwide scandal dubbed the Panama papers Reuters David Cameron's premiership - in pictures Prime minister David Cameron and his wife Samantha with seven week old Regan as they meet her parents, first time home buyers Robert Arron and Kelly Jeffers at the Heritage Brook housing development in Chorley, Lancashire. David Cameron has joked that he wants "another baby" and said that he feels a "bit broody" every time he sees a newborn on the campaign trail David Cameron's premiership - in pictures Prime Minister David Cameron was criticised for branding refugees in the Calais jungle camp as a bunch of migrants in January 2016 after thousands of refugees died in their attempt to cross the Mediterranean in 2015 Sky News David Cameron's premiership - in pictures Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron speaks with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker during an EU summit meeting on 17 March 2016 at the European Union council in Brussels. Cameron was in Brussels to renegotiate deal of UK membership with other European leaders. The deal, sealed after hours of haggling at a marathon summit, paved the way for a referendum on whether Britain will stay in the EU AFP/Getty Images David Cameron's premiership - in pictures President Barack Obama shakes hands with British Prime Minister David Cameron at a meeting at 10 Downing Street in London on 22 April 2016. The President and his wife visited 10 Downing Street where he joined press conference with British Prime Minister David Cameron and made his case for the UK to remain inside the European Union Getty Images David Cameron's premiership - in pictures After David returned from Brussels claiming victory in his renegotiation with European leaders, Boris Johnson announced that he will not support the Remain campaign. The prime minister said publicly he was "disappointed but Boris remains a friend" PA David Cameron's premiership - in pictures Prime Minister David Cameron makes a joint appearance with Mayor of London Sadiq Khan as they launch the Britain Stronger in Europe guarantee card at Roehampton University on 20 May 2016 in London. The 'guarantee card' lists five pledges should Britain remain in the EU, including the protection of workers' rights, full access to the single market and stability for Britain David Cameron's premiership - in pictures Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron speaks outside 10 Downing Street on 24 June 2016. Cameron announced his resignation after Britain voted to leave the European Union after a bitterly divisive referendum campaign AP
Ms May knows the nation has rarely ever been more divided. Between young and old, city and country, rich and less well off. It may yet be under her watch that the union breaks apart. All this in the context of no one having voted for her. Even if the referendum might be considered an exercise in representative democracy by proxy, which it shouldnt, then she lost that too.
Ms May is every inch the doer, not the talker, but in these rarefied times, these words will matter. But there are none that will fully suffice.
Then she will turn her back and go through the famous door, to a job that has rarely been more impossible.
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Donald Trump is suing a former campaign aide for $10 million worth of damages after he allegedly leaked information.
Sam Nunberg, who acted as a senior campaign consultant, has been accused of violating a nondisclosure agreement.
In a court filing first obtained by the Associated Press, Mr Nunberg has accused Mr Trump of trying to silence him in a misguided attempt to cover up media coverage of an apparent affair between senior campaign staffers.
The court document pointed to a New York Post story, published last month, about a public fight between campaign staff Hope Hicks and Corey Lewandowski on the streets of New York.
Mr Trump is seeking to aggressively protect the inner wheels of his campaign.
Mr Nunberg was fired from the campaign last August for old Facebook posts which described president Obama as a "Nazi appeaser" and used a racial slur to describe the African American daughter of the Reverend Al Sharpton.
The former staffer denied that he was the author of the posts from 2007.
He signed his nondisclosure agreement on 1 January 2015. Yet he was the source for a GQ profile of Mr Trumps aide, Ms Hicks.
People who will flee America if Donald Trump wins Show all 8 1 /8 People who will flee America if Donald Trump wins People who will flee America if Donald Trump wins Miley Cyrus 'God he thinks he is the f***ing chosen one or some shit! Honestly f*** this sh*t I am moving if this is my president! I dont say things I dont mean!' Jemal Countess/Getty Images People who will flee America if Donald Trump wins Whoopi Goldberg 'I dont think thats America. I dont want it to be America. Maybe its time for me to move you know' People who will flee America if Donald Trump wins Samuel L. Jackson 'If that mother**er becomes president, Im moving my black ass to South Africa' People who will flee America if Donald Trump wins Raven Symone 'My confession for this election is, if any Republican gets nominated, Im gonna move to Canada with my entire family. Is that bad? I already have my ticket. I literally bought my ticket, I swear' People who will flee America if Donald Trump wins Cher 'If he were to be elected, I'm moving to Jupiter' People who will flee America if Donald Trump wins Neve Campbell 'Im terrified. Its really scary. My biggest fear is that Trump will triumph. I cannot believe that he is still in the game ... [I'll] move back to Canada' People who will flee America if Donald Trump wins Jon Stewart 'I would consider getting in a rocket and going to another planet, because clearly this planets gone bonkers' People who will flee America if Donald Trump wins Randy Blythe 'He could just be a clown. If he is the president, though, I am leaving America 'till he's gone'
In December 2015, Mr Nunberg told The Daily Beast, I dont think he will win.
The same month, Mr Trump sent his former staffer a cease and desist notice. His NDA reportedly was meant to outlive his employment with Mr Trump's campaign.
Mr Nunberg could not be immediately reached for comment.
He was fired twice. He first advised Mr Trump to take part in a Buzzfeed profile which was unflattering when published, but he was rehired later that year.
The news of the lawsuit comes on the same day that the presumptive Republican nominee is meeting with possible vice presidents.
The VP list includes Indiana governor Mike Pence, former house speaker Newt Gingrich, Alabama senator Jeff Sessions and New Jersey governor Chris Christie.
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A 49-year-old special education teacher who told the children she abused, I prefer younger people" has been jailed.
Michelle Mellinger, who worked as a teaching assistant at McKeesport Area High School, Pennsylvania, pleaded guilty to five counts of having intercourse or sexual contact with students and one count of sexual assault.
She has been sentenced to between 11-and-a-half and 23 months, after a court heard she texted one of her victims: Wow, you look amazing. I just became a paedophile.
Mellinger also told one boy he was on her bucket list before she slept with him.
She would send her pupils texts, before driving them to her home and having sex with them, the court heard.
Mellinger abused five boys aged between 15 and 17, but was caught in October after colleagues at her school overheard students talking about having sex with her.
Mellinger tried to have sex with a sixth boy, but the court heard he took off running when she started to undress.
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
A victim impact statement from one boy's mother, which was read by the prosecutor, said: Her family is forever changed ... Her son is depressed and doesn't trust any of his teachers.
Judge Donna Jo McDaniel said Mellinger had been sustained in her pursuit of underage boys. According to press in Pennsylvania, the incidents occurred between June 2013 until February 2015.
It wasn't a bad decision," the judge said, "there were six victims over the course of two years.
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As the Obamas, the Bushes and the Bidens stood to sing at the memorial service for the Dallas police shooting victims, they were all somber and solemn - except one.
Holding hands with his wife, Laura Bush, and First Lady, Michelle Obama, former president George W Bush swung their hands, swayed back and forth and smiled widely.
On the other side of the podium were Dallas mayor Mike Rawlings and Dallas police chief David Brown, a man who has lost his partner, brother and son to violence in the city.
The politicians and police chiefs were gathered for a memorial service for the five Dallas police officers who were killed and seven who were injured when 25-year-old Micah Xavier Johnson opened fire during a peaceful protest.
The protest had followed the killings of two black men, Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, by law enforcement.
At the memorial, as the choir behind current and former presidents at the Morton H Meuerson Symphony Center sang the American Civil War-era song, "The Battle Hymn of the Republic", only Mr Bush and his wife sang along as the rest of the line remained quiet.
At one point, Michelle Obama smiled and leaned over, whispering something into his ear as Mr Obama looked on.
(AP (AP)
At the end of the song, Mr Bush held up the two womens hands and grinned widely, while the Obamas maintained respectfully solemn faces.
If the former president lacked composure during the song, Mr Bush regained a sense of his surroundings when he gave his speech.
Too often we judge other groups by their worst examples while judging ourselves by our best intentions, he said to loud applause.
None of us were prepared or could be prepared for such an ambush with malice, added Mr Bush. The shock of this evil has not faded. At times it seems the forces pulling us apart are stronger than the forces binding us together.
Americans have a great advantage. We only have to remember our values.
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The leader of a Mormon sect under house arrest for fraud charges is believed to have escaped his tracking device by using olive oil, the FBI has confirmed.
Federal prosecutors pleaded with a judge not to release Lyle Jeffs, of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS), from prison in Utahs Salt Lake City as they believed he would attempt to evade police surveillance.
However, Jeffs was released on June 9 and violated the terms of his house arrest less than two weeks later, after which a warrant was issued by the FBI for the 56-year-olds capture.
It is believed he used olive oil as a lubricant on his ankle to slip off the GPS monitoring bracelet on 18 June.
Investigators said the device had been slightly damaged but not enough to trigger a warning to officers in the area.
A Mustang car was seen leaving the garage of Jeffs home late at night, around the time he is thought to have escaped from his tracker.
FBI spokeswoman Sandra Yi Barker told People Magazine officers believed Jeffs escape was premeditated and he had help, adding that he should not be confronted as he may be armed.
She added the cult head also has access to various modes of transportation, including planes and boats with which to launch an escape.
The Latter Day Saints leader is one of 11 people accused of diverting $12m of taxpayer money into a food stamp fraud scheme, and his trial has been delayed.
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
Former FLDS members believe Jeffs will be using a network of secret safe houses across Utah and Arizona to evade the attentions of FBI officers, according to the Salt Lake Tribune.
The network was allegedly set up as a two-tiered system in 2004 by Jeffs brother Warren, who is serving a life sentence for the rape of two children.
Jeffs is a known polygamist, and the FLDS preaches that homosexuality is a sin and harbours white supremacist beliefs.
The FBI said investigations were ongoing as to how Jeffs could have evaded surveillance officers.
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A teacher has been sacked after part of a stage set burst into flames during a school play, leaving two students with severe burns.
Secondary school girls Veronica, 16, and Athziri, 17, were rushed to hospital after they were caught in an on-stage fire in the school theatre in Izucar de Matamoros, central Mexico.
The incident occurred when a student was instructed to throw a lit candle into a cardboard prop Veronica and Athziri were hiding in, setting it on fire.
In a video clip released online, one of the students is seen running off stage while another tries to extinguish the flames burning her left arm and hair.
The teacher responsible for the play had told the students the production should be as real as possible, according to Mirror Online.
Athziri is still being treated in hospital for second degree burns, while Veronica was released a few days after the incident and has returned to classes.
The family of one of the girls demanded that the teacher be sacked, saying there were not enough security and safety measures in place.
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 students medical bills were not covered by the schools insurance company, which argued the fire had not been accidental and did not come under the policy.
The school said: The teacher responsible for the class has been removed from the institution, after an investigation uncovered an omission on his part during the planning of the activity.
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Hillary Clinton chose the site of Abraham Lincolns most famous anti-slavery speech to tackle US race relations and call for unity after the recent spate of high-profile, police-involved shootings.
Speaking on Wednesday at the Illinois Old State House in Springfield, where in 1858 Lincoln declared that a house divided against itself cannot stand, the presumptive Democratic nominee also delivered a fresh rebuke to Donald Trump, whom she accused of stoking mistrust and pitting American against American.
Warning that the Party of Lincoln was becoming a Party of Trump, Ms Clinton said: Thats not just a huge loss for our democracy, it is a threat to it, she said. Because Donald Trumps campaign adds up to an ugly, dangerous message to America.
The presumptive Democratic nominee picked the Old State House, where Barack Obama also launched his campaign for the presidency in 2007, to present its history as a stark contrast to the conduct of the 2016 election. In times like these, we need a president who can help pull us together, not split us apart, she said.
Mr Trump has shown contempt for and ignorance of our constitution, Ms Clinton went on, referring to the Republicans recent pledge to protect Article 12 of the constitution, which does not exist. The first oath any president takes is to protect and defend the constitution, she said. To do that with any meaning, youve got to know whats in it.
Urging a return to civility in politics, the former Secretary of State admitted that she too may have contributed to its disintegration. In the middle of a hotly fought political campaign, I cannot claim that my words and actions haven't sometimes fuelled the partisanship that often stands in the way of our progress, she said. I recognise that I have to do better, too.
Discussing last weeks police shootings of black men Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, which were followed by the assassination of five black police officers in Dallas, Ms Clinton called for continued reforms to policing and the criminal justice system. Despite our best efforts and highest hopes, Americas long struggle with race is far from finished, she said.
In closing her remarks, she invoked Hamilton, the hit Broadway musical about Founding Father Alexander Hamilton, which she is reported to have seen three times. Ms Clinton quoted the character of George Washington, saying Historys eyes are on us, and adding: That was true then, and that is true today."
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Donald Trump is calling on Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to resign from the US Supreme Court calling her a disgrace to the institution after publicly disparaging him as a faker.
Ms Ginsburg, who stands out as the most forthright liberal voice on the countrys highest court, has surprised many in the legal world with outspoken remarks lambasting the presumptive Republican nominee in a string of outspoken interviews in recent days.
Recommended Read more Bryan Cranston would like to play Donald Trump
She launched her criticisms last week with comments to the New York Times in which she spoke of barely being able to think about the impact Mr Trump would have on the future make-up of the court were he to win the White House in November.
For the country, it could be four years. For the court, it could be I dont even what to contemplate it, she told the newspaper. She made a similar observation in an interview with the Associated Press. She also faulted the press for being too soft in its reporting of Mr Trump.
Aged 83 she was appointed to the court by President Bill Clinton in 1993 Ms Ginsburg is likely to be among the justices to leave her seat vacant during the first term of whoever winds up succeeding President Barack Obama in January next year.
Justice Ginsburg continued to batter Mr Trump in a third interview with CNN this week. He is a faker, she said. He has no consistency about him. He says whatever comes into his head at the moment. He really has an ego... How has he gotten away with not turning over his tax returns? The press seems to be very gentle with him on that.
Mr Trump, who is expected to be confirmed by Republicans as their standard bearer at the partys national convention in Cleveland next week, struck back via Twitter early on Wednesday.
Justice Ginsburg of the US Supreme Court has embarrassed all by making very dumb political statements about me. Her mind is shot resign! he declared.
It is highly unusual for a member of the top court to be so outspoken about a candidate for president just as the campaign is reaching a critical juncture. Her remarks were described as out of place by House speaker, Paul Ryan, the most senior Republican in Washington
For someone on the Supreme Court who is going to be calling balls and strikes in the future based upon whatever the next president and Congress does, that strikes me as inherently biased and out of the realm, he offered. Even the top Democrat on the Hill, Senator Harry Reid, demurred when asked to respond to her comments by reporters.
Ms Ginsburg told CNN that at first she didnt even take the Trump candidacy seriously. At first I thought it was funny, she said. To think that there's a possibility that he could be president... She then jabbed the media, saying, I think he has gotten so much free publicity.
Mr Trump also spoke to the New York Times of his dismay with what Justice Ginsburg had been saying about him. Its highly inappropriate that a United States Supreme Court judge gets involved in a political campaign, frankly I think she should apologize to the court. I would hope that she would get off the court as soon as possible, he added.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said that it was totally inappropriate for Justice Ginsburg to lash out at his partys likely candidate and it was not her place to try to influence the election for president.
It raises a level of scepticism that the American people have from time to time about just how objective the Supreme Court is, whether they're over there to call the balls and strikes, or weigh in on one side or another, he said.
Mr Trump has meanwhile been blindsided by the emergence of remarks he made in a long-forgotten syndicated radio series called Trumped! that aired from 2004 to 2008, now unearthed by the Wall Street Journal.
Among those likely to cause him embarrassment are segments that reveal him making off-colour remarks about women, including one in which he expresses surprise at research showing most women disapproved of one-night stands. I thought today's women were independent and had a lot of sexual freedom, he said in a 2006 clip. Well, I guess they fooled me.
In a separate clip, he also made an unkind reference to Britney Spears having got married and how that might dim her image. She has gone down, there's no question about it, he said. That's what a marriage can do for you.
Darlene Arnelda Orr Landsidel, age 61, went home to be with her Lord and Savior on July 10, 2016 after a courageous battle with cancer. She was born alongside her twin sister on November 1, 1954 to Paul and Jean Orr in Kalispell, Mt. Dar attended school in the Kaispell area, graduating in 1974.
In 1979 she welcomed her daughter Stephanie Bright Eyes into the world. Then in 1986 she met and married the love of her life, Bill. Dar enjoyed the simple things in life, such as spending time with her family, especially her grandkids.
After moving to Nevada Dar treasured trips home to the Big Sky State. She and her twin loved collecting all things pig related. Dar is survived by her mother, Jean Orr; husband Bill; daughter Stephanie; grandchildren Justin and Jenna; twin sister, Marlene (Bill) Sevesind; sisters Louise Keith; Ellen (Jim) Rowe and brother Paul Orr, Jr., as well as several nieces and nephews.
In Heaven she met with her dad and two nephews, Robert and Billy.
Services will be held Thursday, July 14, 2016 at 2:00 pm, at the Calvary Baptist Church, 577 Walnut, Elko.
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The Jungle refugee camp in Calais will be completely demolished very soon, the mayor of the French town has said.
Natacha Bouchart, the right-wing mayor of Calais, said the remaining half of the ramshackle area, currently inhabited by thousands of refugees including hundreds of children will soon be razed.
Ms Bouchart said French interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve had approved the destruction of the remaining half of the camp and would announce it soon.
She added: For our country, its population and its economic actors, urgency is definitely there!
We cant wait any longer, we need to know as fast as possible when and how the Jungle will be torn down.
French Officials estimate there are about 4,500 refugees in the Jungle, mainly from Africa and the Middle East, but the latest census by Help Refugees UK puts that number at 7000, of whom 425 are unaccompanied minors. According to Agence France-Presse, in the last 24 hours, molotov cocktails were thrown by refugees onto the Calais bypass in reaction to the announcement.
France divided on Calais camps after Brexit
Josie Naughton, Co-founder of Help Refugees, said in a statement: This is absolutely terrible news. Hundreds of children went missing the last time French police moved in to evict the camp. That is sure to happen again unless British officials act to ensure these children are protected.
Pierre Henry, director general of French refugee charity Terre d'Asile, told The Independent: Its easy to demolish the camp, but the difficulty is in building something news we need to create a functioning legal route for asylum seekers.
Brexit has changed nothing. In reality, we need to cooperate with a good spirit and respect international law. Renegotiations will happen, but we must now consider the many women and children in danger.
Earlier this year, the southern part of the camp was demolished after approval from a French court, with around three thousand refugees forced to live in shipping containers deemed "inadequate" by charities. Thousands of police and security personnel are currently deployed around the Jungle, as refugees have made deadly attempts to cross to the UK.
A report by the Refugee Rights Data Project found more than three-quarters of refugees living in the Jungle said they experienced police violence.
Lily Caprani, Deputy Executive Director at Unicef UK, described the reports as deeply worrying.
She said: This will cut off any hope of a safe and legal route, which theyre entitled to, and effectively drive them onto the train tracks and into the backs of lorries.
For the refugees whove left their homes fleeing conflict, these reports must come as another blow to their hopes of reaching safety.
The Calais prefecture, which has the responsibility of issuing a demolition order, told The Independent it had no news on the issue.
Calais and Dunkirk camps Show all 16 1 /16 Calais and Dunkirk camps Calais and Dunkirk camps (Photo: Alan Schaller) Calais and Dunkirk camps A portrait of an Afghan man wearing a traditional Perhan Turban in the Calais Jungle (Photo: Emily Garthwaite) Calais and Dunkirk camps Two Gendarmes guard the main entrance to the Dunkirk camp (Photo: Emily Garthwaite) Calais and Dunkirk camps One Kurdish Iraqi mans reminder to himself (Photo: Alan Schaller) Calais and Dunkirk camps Two young boys in the Dunkirk camp (Photo: Alan Schaller) Calais and Dunkirk camps An Iranian hunger striker stands outside the only remaining shelter in the South Side of the Calais camp (Photo: Emily Garthwaite) Calais and Dunkirk camps A church in the South Calais camp, on of the the only structures not demolished in the South Side of the camp (Photo: Emily Garthwaite) Calais and Dunkirk camps A man gets a hair cut in the Calais camp (Photo: Alan Schaller) Calais and Dunkirk camps Night falls on the Calais Jungle. Fires burn in the distance (Photo: Alan Schaller) Calais and Dunkirk camps The containers provided as alternative accommodation for the people in the camps (Photo: Alan Schaller) Calais and Dunkirk camps A young boy in the Dunkirk camp (Photo: Alan Schaller) Calais and Dunkirk camps A man listens to music inside one of the shipping containers (Photo: Emily Garthwaite) Calais and Dunkirk camps The awful living conditions in the Dunkirk camp (Photo: Alan Schaller) Calais and Dunkirk camps An Afghan man in the Calais camp (Photo: Emily Garthwaite) Calais and Dunkirk camps One of the Iranian hunger strikers (Photo: Alan Schaller) Calais and Dunkirk camps A family in their wooden shelter in the new Dunkirk camp (Photo: Alan Schaller)
The Mayor of Calais previously called for the decade old Le Touquet agreement with the UK, which places the border between the two countries on French soil, to be scrapped.
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Italy is on the cusp of tearing Europe apart but the economic and political crisis brewing in the nation is largely going unnoticed.
All eyes have turned to Britain's vote to leave the European Union as having the most drastic political and economic impact onto the 28-nation state but if you look at the country's economic data, bank issues, and the impending constitutional referendum coming up, Italy is like a bomb waiting to explode.
The Italian financial system, which to put it gently, is in a major state of flux right now. While Britain's EU referendum in June was seismic in terms of having economic and political repercussions across the bloc, there is another referendum of equal importance, coming up in Italy in October, and the result could fundamentally alter the state of the already delicate Italian economy.
Italians will have a say on reforms to its Senate, the upper house of parliament, in October. The proposed reforms are widespread, and if approved could improve the stability of Italys political set up and allow Prime Minister Matteo Renzi to push through laws aimed at improving the countrys economic competitiveness.
If denied, Renzis government will most likely fall, plunging Italy back into the type of political chaos last seen after the ousting of former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, according to Deutsche Bank. That, Citi says, makes the referendum probably the single biggest risk on the European political landscape this year among non-UK issues.
If the referendum is rejected, we would expect the fall of Renzis government. Forming a stable government majority either before or after a new election could become extremely challenging even by Italian standards, Deutsche Bank analysts led by Marco Stringa said in a note to clients in May. Fears that the reforms will be rejected have intensified since the eurosceptic vote won in Britain.
A political mess can quickly turn into a cornucopia of financial and economic disarray. According to estimates from business lobby Confindustria, if Renzi's reforms do not pass, it would push Italy into recession, lead to massive capital flight, and widen spreads on Italian debt.
(Business Insider (Business Insider)
Italy simply cannot afford any of those things at the moment.
Not only is the country in a state of economic and political turmoil it has crushingly low productivity, a history of missing growth targets, and has generally underperformed the rest of Europe in recent years but the country's banking system is also in the midst of serious, serious problems.
One theme which could dictate near term direction for markets and which arguably Brexit has reignited and brought back to the forefront is the ailing and fragile state of the Italian banking sector, Deutsche Bank's Jim Reid noted in his daily Early Morning Reid on Tuesday.
The country's financial sector is plagued by an enormous surfeit of bad loans so great that the government was, in April, forced into rallying bank executives, insurers and investors to put 5 billion (4.2 billion, $5.57 billion) behind a rescue fund for its weakest banks. The Atalante fund is designed to buy so-called bad loans from lenders and invest in their shares in the hope that the re-energized banks will lend more to businesses and spur growth.
However, Monte dei Paschi di Siena the oldest bank in the world and weakest bank in Italy is in possession of a bad loan book of around 47 billion (39.9 billion) right now, and that has got the European Central Bank very worried. On Monday, the ECB's banking supervisor insisted that Monte dei Paschi must cut that book by 8 billion by the end of 2017, and by another 6 billion by the end of 2018.
The bank has immediately initiated discussions with the European Central Bank in order to understand all the indications included in this draft letter, and to present its reasoning before the final decision, expected by the end of July 2016, Monte Paschi said in response to the ECB's demands.
The news sent shares in all of Italy's banks substantially lower, with Monte dei Paschi understandably bearing the brunt of the falls. Shares dropped more than 8% on Monday to just 0.3 cents, valuing the bank at 1 billion, according to the Financial Times.
Here is the incredibly depressing chart from Bank of America Merrill Lynch:
(Merrill Lynch (Merrill Lynch)
In total, the financial sector in the country has roughly 300 billion of 'bad' debt, which needs to be addressed one way or the other. This might not be such an enormous problem if it was not for the fact that, as previously mentioned, Italy's economy is chronically weak. This in turn affects the ability of the country's government to provide a viable bailout package for the banking sector. Government debt in Italy now stands at almost 140% of GDP, second only to Greece in eurozone in gross terms.
Online publication This is Money suggests that despite the assertions of Renzi that he is ready to provide assistance to bail out underperforming banks, Italy is actually around 35 billion short of having the required capital to do that.
There are now serious fears in Brussels, according to the Financial Times, that the Italian government will not be able to fund a rescue package for the banking sector.
That has led to Italy going to Brussels for assistance, something that has so far been rejected, as it would be in contravention of EU rules.
We have established specific rules as far as recapitalisation of the banks is concerned, German chancellor Angela Merkel said over the weekend.
We cant come up with new rules every two years. The Commission is ready to help, but so far it has not been convinced by what has been proposed by Italy.
Despite that rejection, Renzi who is now known in some circles as the Demolition Man for his efforts to shake up the Italian political system is reportedly ready to bypass the EU and act unilaterally to protect the financial system.
We are willing to do whatever is necessary [to defend the banks], and do not rule out acting unilaterally, although that would only be as a last resort, a source familiar with the governments thinking told the FT. Renzi himself has said he will not be lectured by the schoolteacher.
While several suggestions have been made including boosting the size of the Atlante fund, and launching a separate fund, a sort of spin-off to Atlante, that will look to specifically buy up bad loans issued during Italy's last recession it currently looks like there won't be a concrete solution to the banking crisis any time soon.
Add to this the fact that any fix created could get totally dismantled if Renzi and his party lose the reform referendum and the government falls. The Italian financial system is teetering on a precipice without much hope of a solution. Brexit may be the biggest problem facing Europe right now, but Italy isn't far behind.
Read more:
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Read the original article on Business Insider UK. 2016. Follow Business Insider UK on Twitter.
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The personal hair stylist of French president Francois Hollande is paid nearly 10,000 a month, local media has reported.
The hairdresser, identified only as Olivier B, also received a housing allowance and family benefits, in addition to the 9,895 monthly fee, according to weekly publication Canard Enchaine.
The money amounts to an annual wage of 118,740, or 474,960 across the years of Mr Hollandes tenure so far. In comparison, Mr Hollande who gave himself a 30 per cent pay cut when he entered office earns 175,408 per annum, or around 5,000 more per month than his hair stylist.
In addition, the average monthly wage in France is 2,600, according to the International Labour Organisation.
Olivier B reportedly accompanies Mr Hollande on many of his overseas trips and his contract says he must "maintain absolute secrecy about his work and any information he may have gathered both during and after his contract".
Lawyers representing Olivier B have defended the salary. In comments reported by The Local, attorney Sarah Levy said: He is available to the president around the clock, 24 hours a day, and is never replaced by anyone else. He missed the birth of his own children, their broken arms, their operations.
According to Mr Hollandes official residence, the Elysee Palace, Olivier B starts very early in the morning, and has a long working a day. He does the presidents hair every morning and as often as is necessary at each public speaking event.
In pictures: France strikes Show all 12 1 /12 In pictures: France strikes In pictures: France strikes French riot police use tear gas against a demonstrator during a protest against the government's labour market reforms at Place de la Nation in Paris EPA In pictures: France strikes Workers on strike are evacuated by French riot policemen as they block the access to an oil depot near the Total refinery of Donges Getty In pictures: France strikes Demonstrators protest during a rally against employment and labour law reforms in Lyon Rex In pictures: France strikes Security forces clash with demonstrators during a protest called by seven labour unions and students against the labour and employment law reform, in Bordeaux Getty In pictures: France strikes French police apprehend a man during a demonstration to protest the government's proposed labour law reforms in Nantes Reuters In pictures: France strikes Riot police prepare to confront refinery workers outside an oil depot in Douchy-Les-Mines Getty In pictures: France strikes A protester holds up his fist as riot police prepare to intervene to disperse refinery worker holding a blockade of the oil depot of Douchy-Les-Mines to protest against the government's proposed labour reformsr labour reforms Getty In pictures: France strikes An employee stands next to a fire and French CGT union's flag as employees block the access of the PSA plant in Valenciennes Getty In pictures: France strikes CGT union workers and docker workers attend a demonstration in Marseille EPA In pictures: France strikes Men burn bins during a protest against the government's labour market reforms in Rennes Getty In pictures: France strikes People demonstrate in Le Havre Getty In pictures: France strikes A protestor raises his fist during a protest against the government's labour market reforms in Rennes Getty
The news has caused uproar in France, where the economy is stagnant and citizens see the expenditure as an example of extravagant overspending by a socialist politician.
Using the hashtag #Coiffuregate, French citizens took to social media to voice their outrage and mock the president.
Mr Hollande has been facing growing unpopularity in France for some time and the revelations are unlikely to improve his public image.
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A small Italian town has been forced to shut down the majority of its municipal operations, after half of its town hall employees were arrested for skipping work.
Police in the town of Boscotrecase, south of Naples, arrested 23 public sector workers as part of a clamp down on systematic absenteeism taking place across Italy, leading the local mayor to close down a number of offices.
During a lengthy investigation, staff members were secretly filmed signing in before leaving to go about their personal business, with 200 cases revealed in all.
Meanwhile one man was caught trying to tamper with security cameras before swiping two cards, while others carried multiple swipe cards to register absent co-workers according to Reuters.
Certain workers even went as far as putting cardboard boxes over their heads to conceal their identities.
Boscotrecases heads of traffic police and accounting were among those arrested, on charges of fraud against the state of Italy.
Ill probably have to shut down the town hall, Mayor Pietro Carotenuto told Sky Italia.
The 23 workers have been suspended from work for between six and 12 months, and may eventually be dismissed from their roles pending further investigations.
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
Figures released in March revealed nearly a quarter of Romes employees are off work at any one time, with most of those absent calling in sick.
In 2015 an average of 5,286 city workers out of a total of 23,083, around 22 per cent, were absent on any given day.
Last year, 35 public sector workers were arrested in the town of San Remo for dodging work and a further 195 placed under investigation for absenteeism.
In January this year Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi promised the national government would use an iron fist against anyone found to be skipping work and depriving municipal authorities of much-needed funds.
These people are destroying the credibility of the great majority of public employees who work well, he said in an interview with Canale 5.
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An American has been gored in the leg and five other runners injured in the penultimate running of the bulls in this year's Pamplona San Fermin festival.
The man was gored in the thigh after one of six bulls crashed into a group of runners near a fence on Wednesday morning. The bull then lifted two other runners into the air with its horns.
The Navarra regional government identified the American runner with the initials MLO and revealed he was 38 years old. A brief statement confirmed his condition was not serious.
Recommended Read more Slaughter of mother of bull that gored matador sparks anger
Around 1,000 people took part in the 850m-run through Pamplonas old town, which started at 8am local time. The event was televised on national television and lasted two and a half minutes.
A firecracker was lit to signal the release of the bulls from their enclosure. Participants sprinted alongside six fighting bulls through cobbled streets to the citys bullring. The 1,300lbs (590kg) animals are then expected to participate in the afternoons bullfights.
In pictures: Bull running in Pamplona Show all 20 1 /20 In pictures: Bull running in Pamplona In pictures: Bull running in Pamplona Spain A bull throws a reveler in the bullring during the Fiesta de San Fermin in Pamplona in July 2014 In pictures: Bull running in Pamplona Spain 'Mozos' or runners fall during the 4th bull run at the San Fermin Festival in Pamplona In pictures: Bull running in Pamplona Spain Members of the Red Cross look after two girls after bulls from 'Jarandilla' ranch entered the bull ring during de fifth bullrun at the San Fermin fiestas in Pamplona In pictures: Bull running in Pamplona Spain 'Mozos' or runners are crowded together as bulls from the 'Jarandilla' ranch turn La Estafeta street during de fifth bullrun at the San Fermin fiestas in Pamplona In pictures: Bull running in Pamplona Spain Jandilla ranch fighting bulls enter the bullring during a running of the bulls at the San Fermin festival in Pamplona In pictures: Bull running in Pamplona Spain A bull jumps over revelers on the ring at the San Fermin festival in Pamplona In pictures: Bull running in Pamplona Spain A man wheeling a bull head chases children at the San Fermin festival in Pamplona In pictures: Bull running in Pamplona Spain A reveler is hit by a bull on the ring at the San Fermin festival in Pamplona In pictures: Bull running in Pamplona Spain Photographers take a close up as 'mozos' or runners fall just before the bulls during the second 'encierro' at the San Fermin Fiestas in Pamplona In pictures: Bull running in Pamplona Spain Bulls chase 'mozos' or runners as some fall to the ground during the second 'encierro' at the San Fermin Fiestas in Pamplona In pictures: Bull running in Pamplona Spain Runners sprint alongside Torrestrella fighting bulls at the Estafeta corner during the first running of the bulls of the San Fermin festival in Pamplona In pictures: Bull running in Pamplona Spain Bulls run after the 'mozos' or runners during the first bullrun of the 2014 Sanfermines in Pamplona In pictures: Bull running in Pamplona Spain Revellers run with Torrestrella's fighting bulls along the Calle Estafeta during the second day of the San Fermin Running Of The Bulls festival in Pamplona In pictures: Bull running in Pamplona Spain A statue of San Fermin, the patron saint of the Fiesta of San Fermin, is paraded during a procession on the second day of the Festival of San Fermin (or Sanfermines) in Pamplona In pictures: Bull running in Pamplona Spain A runner avoids a fighting calf inside Pamplona Bullring during the second day of the San Fermin Running Of The Bulls festival in Pamplona In pictures: Bull running in Pamplona Spain Participants run in front of Torrestrella's bulls during the first bull-run of the San Fermin Festival in Pamplona In pictures: Bull running in Pamplona Spain Steers and bulls from the Ranch of Torrestrella run above runners entering the bullring during the second day of the San Fermin Running Of The Bulls festival in Pamplona In pictures: Bull running in Pamplona Spain Medical assistants help a participant injured during the running of the bulls with ''Torrestrella'' fighting bulls, at the San Fermin festival in Pamplona In pictures: Bull running in Pamplona Spain Bulls run after the 'mozos' or runners during the first bullrun of the 2014 Sanfermines in Pamplona In pictures: Bull running in Pamplona Spain Revelers cheer before the launch of the "Chupinazo" rocket, which is set off to announce the start of the Fiesta of San Fermin, during the celebration of the opening day of the Fiesta of San Fermin 2014 in front of the Town Hall of Pamplona
Bull runs are a traditional event in summer festivals across Spain. The nine-day San Fermin festival has become Spains most famous after being immortalised in Ernest Hemingways 1926 "The Sun Also Rises".
During the festival, 12 people, including four Americans, have been gored in the running of the bulls. Since record-keeping began in 1924, 15 people have died from gorings at the festival.
Wednesdays run took place four days after a Spanish bullfighter was gored to death in the ring the first such incident in 30 years.
Like bullfighting, animal rights activists condemn the running of the bulls. This year, activists travelled to Pamplona to express their discontent.
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Staff at a school where a Muslim pupil refused to shake hands with a female teacher during a graduation ceremony have staged a walkout in protest.
Teachers at the Kurt-Tucholsky School in northern Germany were said to be outraged when the class mistress extended her hand to the student to congratulate him for passing Abitur sixth-form exams, and he offered his wrist to shake instead.
No offence, my religion wont let me do that. I do not mean to disrespect you, the pupil said by way of explanation, according to Hamburger Morgenpost.
Headteacher Andrea Ludtke refused to send the boy home from the event for disrespecting his teacher, which several staff members felt he should have been.
After engaging in intense discussions about the situation, five class teachers walked out of the ceremony and refused to return until the boy had been told to leave.
Later in the evening, seven teachers boycotted the graduation celebration ball, a decision the headmistress described as very bad.
Ms Ludtke said the student was a committed pupil in religious studies as well as in other subjects, adding that he "in no way" held extremist views and that the school was considering how to show that we cannot tolerate such behaviour.
This is not the first instance in which a refusal to shake hands has created tensions between cultures in Germany.
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
In June, an imam took his child out of a Berlin private school after a meeting with a teacher, when he explained he wouldn't be able to shake her hand.
In response, the teacher said he should "adapt to the culture" and was harming his childs hopes of integrating with his fellow students.
Meanwhile in May this year, Muslim schoolboys in Switzerland were told they must shake their female teachers hands by law or face fines of up to 3,500.
The court ruling followed an incident at a school in Therwil in April, where two pupils requested an exemption from shaking a female teachers hand.
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Abu Omar al-Shishani, a high ranking Isis commander, has been confirmed as dead by pro-Isis propaganda outlets.
The Chechen-born, hugely popular 'minister of war' was killed in fighting close the the beleaguered Iraqi city of Mosul.
His death - purportedly at the hands of the US - was falsely reported in the past but the claim is now being supported by a number of analysts and pro-Isis social media accounts. However, The Independent has not been able to verify the information.
Isis media outlet Amaq announced the news on Wednesday evening, saying al-Shishani was killed in combat in the Iraqi city of Shirqat, south of Mosul.
Shishani, also known as Omar the Chechen, ranked among America's most wanted militants under a US programme that offered up to $5 million for information to help remove him from the battlefield.
Born in 1986 in Georgia, then still part of the Soviet Union, the red-bearded Shishani had a reputation as a close military adviser to Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who was said by followers to have relied heavily on Shishani.
In March, the Pentagon said Shishani had likely been killed in a U.S. air strike in Syria.
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
Iraqi forces are advancing towards Mosul, the largest city still under the control of Islamic State. They have mostly surrounded Shirqat, 250 km (160 miles) north of Baghdad, and last week retook a major air base from the militants to use in the main push on Mosul, 60 km further north.
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Isis has bragged about murdering and maiming a total of 5,200 people in military operations during the holy month of Ramadan.
In an infographic in the jihadists' weekly magazine, al-Naba, Isis lists 14 different terrorist attacks the group carried out in Europe, the US, Asia, Africa, Syria and Iraq.
The thousands include 49 people killed in an attack at a gay club in Orlando, Florida, in June, and 22 hacked to death in Dhaka, Bangladesh, at the beginning of July.
The group also boasts of one of its most deadly attacks to date. Almost 300 were killed in Baghdad when a truck packed with explosives detonated in a bustling market in the Iraqi capital. Shoppers were preparing for Eid al-Fitr, the celebration marking the end of Ramadan.
Yet, the group does not include the attack on Istabuls Ataturk Airport, one of the worlds busiest travel hubs, which killed 41 people and injured hundreds more. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has blamed Isis for the attack.
The group takes responsibility for an attack by Larossi Abdallah, a supporter of the terrorist group who murdered a French policeman and his wife just outside Paris. They also take credit for a car bomb that killed six Jordanian soldiers near the Syrian border.
Infographic published by Isis in its al-Naba magazine
Although these incidents are well-known, not all the numbers have been independently verified, Vocativ reports.
The graphic gives a breakdown of the victims and where they have come from. They include nearly 2,000 Shiites, 1,000 Kurds, 600 Syrian Alawites and 300 Christians.
In pictures: Iraq battles to drive Isis out of Fallujah Show all 12 1 /12 In pictures: Iraq battles to drive Isis out of Fallujah In pictures: Iraq battles to drive Isis out of Fallujah Smoke rises after airstrikes by US-led coalition planes as Iraqi security forces advance against Islamic State extremists in Fallujah, June 15, 2016 AP In pictures: Iraq battles to drive Isis out of Fallujah Iraqi security forces advance during heavy fighting against Isis militants in Fallujah, Iraq, on 14 June AP In pictures: Iraq battles to drive Isis out of Fallujah Shia militia say that moving resources from Fallujah towards the area near Mosul was a 'betrayal' of the battle for the city GETTY In pictures: Iraq battles to drive Isis out of Fallujah Hospital sources said 18 bodies were recovered from the river over the weekend AP In pictures: Iraq battles to drive Isis out of Fallujah Up to 60,000 civilians were feared trapped in Fallujah at the start of the Iraqi operation AP In pictures: Iraq battles to drive Isis out of Fallujah Shia fighters hold an Isis flag in an operation east of Fallujah the terror group has lost ground in both Syria and Iraq AFP/Getty In pictures: Iraq battles to drive Isis out of Fallujah Shia fighters hold their weapons as they gather near Falluja, Iraq, June 4, 2016. Reuters In pictures: Iraq battles to drive Isis out of Fallujah Pro-government forces bid to take back ground from Isis in Fallujah MOADH AL-DULAIMI/AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Iraq battles to drive Isis out of Fallujah Smoke billows on the horizon as Iraqi military forces prepare for an offensive to retake the city AP In pictures: Iraq battles to drive Isis out of Fallujah A member of the Iraqi security forces fires artillery during clashes with Isis militants near Fallujah, Iraq, 29 May, 2016 Reuters In pictures: Iraq battles to drive Isis out of Fallujah Iraqi government forces fire a rocket near al-Sejar village, north-east of Fallujah, on May 26, 2016, as they take part in a major assault to retake the city from the Islamic State group AFP/Getty In pictures: Iraq battles to drive Isis out of Fallujah Shia fighters and Iraqi security forces advance towards Fallujah Thaier Al-Sudani/Reuters
The month of Ramadan is traditionally a period of introspection and peace within the Islamic faith, but militants have used the month as a time for a holy war. Before Ramadan began, the terrorist group called for its supporters to kill wherever they could around the globe.
The attacks come as Isis is being forced to act defensively. Following strikes against them, the size of the land controlled by Isis is shrinking.
In the last 18 months, Isis has lost a quarter of its territory across Iraq and Syria, an area the size of Ireland. But a foreign affairs committee said the UK needs to do more to help starve the terror organisation of funding.
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The Israeli army has appointed a new chief rabbi who once appeared to suggest it was permitted for soldiers to rape non-Jewish women during times of war in order to boost morale.
Rabbi Colonel Eyal Karim has also argued it is "entirely forbidden" for women to serve in the military and has opposed women singing at army events.
The controversial rabbi's appointment to the highest religious role in the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) has been criticised by women's groups and female politicians.
In 2002, Rabbi Karim responded to a question on the religious forum Kipa which asked whether a Torah verse meant it was acceptable for Israeli soldiers to rape enemy women during war.
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
He replied that some Jewish laws could be relaxed during war time, such as allowing soldiers to eat non-kosher food to keep up their strength.
Since the success of the whole at war is our goal, the Torah permitted the individual to satisfy the evil urge, under the conditions mentioned, for the purpose of the success of the whole," he wrote, according to a translation from the +972 blog.
However, in 2012, following outrage over the post, Rabbi Karim clarified his comments, saying rape is prohibited in every instance.
Video appears to show knife being kicked towards Palestinian man just shot by an Israeli soldier
The rabbi's has also previously opposed women taking up combat roles in the army.
He suggested women should not be drafted into the army except when Israel faces an existential threat, adding: "But in our era we do not live with a real threat to our survival.
And because of the liable damage to the modesty of the girl and the nation, the great rabbis and the Chief Rabbinate have ruled that the enlistment of girls to the IDF is entirely forbidden," he wrote, according to the Times of Israel.
He also wrote that women should not sing at army events, the Jerusalem Post reports, but said religious men do not need to leave the ceremony if they refrain from looking at the women performing.
Opposition lawmakers have called for his appointment to be rescinded.
"Even if he was dealing with a theoretical debate about rape during battle or [if he] opposes female service or song in the military, no, he cannot be the military rabbi," opposition lawmaker Tzipi Livni told Channel 2 TV.
Zahava Galon, leader of the left-wing Meretz party, wrote a Facebook post calling for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to intervene in the appointment. She described Rabbi Karim as morally unsuitable for the post of chief rabbi in a military in which thousands of women serve.
The military has given no indication it was reconsidering Rabbi Karim's appointment.
Issuing a statement on Tuesday on his behalf, the military spokesman's office said he wanted to clarify that his writings in 2002 came in answer to a theoretical question and did not relate to "practical Jewish law".
"Rabbi Karim has never written, said or even thought that an Israeli soldier is permitted to sexually assault a woman in war, and anyone who interprets his words otherwise is completely mistaken," the statement said.
Additional reporting by agencies
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In a letter to this newspaper, Gary Kirk summed up the terrible crisis that confronts us. He wrote: There is no trust in MPs, its a widely held belief that they are more acutely aware of their own career and advantage than the actual matter of governing. This is an accurate assessment and points to a difficult problem.
As Kirk goes on to write: The latest and perhaps most serious post-war calamity is now upon us and the major perpetrators leave the scene to a financially secure future and leave the rest of us to carry the can. Unfortunately, carrying the can is likely to be an arduous task for the rest of us. I shall try to describe later what might be involved.
In fact, the behaviour of leading politicians during the referendum campaign, with their untruths, their inaccuracies, their scaremongering and their crude threats, was not a sudden development. It has been in the making for some 30 years. There were two simultaneous developments.
The first is that the political class began to expand as new career paths opened up. Young people interested in politics could go straight from university into jobs situated on the fringes of Parliament political advisers, research assistants to MPs, analysts in policy research bodies and lobbyists for organisation representing special interests. This meant that the Conservative Party could more nearly match the Labour Party, which had long relied on trades unions as incubators of political talent. At the same time, political reporting and analysis positions in the media became more numerous.
So when the Smith Institute analysed the 2015 Parliament in its study Who Governs Britain?, it found that some 40 per cent of Conservative MPs had previously worked in politics, public affairs or the media while the comparable figure for Labour was 45 per cent; in addition 15 per cent of Labour MPs had been trades unions officials. Thus in total some 60 per cent of Labour MPs are fully paid-up members of the political class.
Theresa May, first PM to lead UKs post-Brexit era
Look at the early careers of the chief protagonists in the Brexit campaign, not only David Cameron and Boris Johnson but of their chief lieutenants George Osborne and Michael Gove. In their different ways, these four have been in politics since they left university. Camerons and Osbornes first jobs were with the Conservative Party research department; then they became special advisers to Conservative ministers before becoming MPs. Cameron had also worked as a lobbyist for a TV company. Johnsons and Goves early careers were also strikingly similar. Both were journalists on national newspapers, writing frequently on politics, until they became MPs. Johnson was also editor of The Spectator.
The professionalisation of politics, however, has done nothing to eradicate the insecurity of political careers. Political parties can be in opposition for many years at a stretch, their MPs deprived of the power that is the chief reward of politics. From 1979, when Mrs Thatcher became prime minister, the Conservatives were continually in office for an unbroken 18 years. Then New Labour ruled for an uninterrupted 13 years until 2010. In addition, as recent events have vividly shown, the careers of party leaders and their close associates can often brutally be cut short.
There is thus an underlying desperation to life in the Westminster village. That explains the second development: in the 1980s the political classes enthusiastically took up the marketing techniques used by industry. They thought that the use of these new disciplines would enable them either to retain power for longer or to regain it more quickly.
As a result, political parties became brands to be managed. The renaming of the Labour Party as New Labour was an exercise in updating the brand. When Theresa May warned Conservatives in 2002 that people call us the Nasty Party, she was talking the language of brands.
Peter Oborne, the political commentator, wrote perceptively about these developments in his book published in 2007, The Triumph of the Political Class. He said that before the emergence of the political class the conventional mode of leadership was based on a vestigial idea of gentlemanly conduct. The style had been laid down by the Duke of Wellington in the early 19th century, both as a leader of men on the battlefield and later as Prime Minister and national icon, he wrote. It was based on understatement, sobriety both in personal conduct and in speech, self-sacrifice, restraint. Now, instead of understatement, there is boasting. Instead of restraint there are soundbites. Soundbites are the language of political marketing.
In this and other ways, the embrace of marketing techniques has changed the relationship between politicians and the electorate for the worse. For marketing techniques often have the result of treating buyers of products and services not as customers to be respected but as objects to be exploited. This cause and effect is well illustrated by the recent history of high street banking.
The introduction of aggressive marketing destroyed the personal relationship that bank customers used to have with their managers. And as relationship banking was replaced by transaction banking, so the high street banks began to engage in misselling financial products on an enormous scale. They could do this because they had lost respect for the users of their services. In an identical manner, the behaviour of the Remain and Leave campaigns in the referendum debate demonstrated precisely the same absence of respect for voters, which led to the same misselling.
So the problem is the political class. Its members place the demands of politics ahead of good government. There will never be a better example than the promise of a referendum by the former prime minister, David Cameron. He must have realised at the time that leaving the European Union would be a disaster. After all, that is what he argued during the referendum campaign itself. But he ordered the referendum all the same in order to reduce the threat that Ukip posed to the Conservative Partys election prospects. It was a tactical move, nothing more. In the weird world in which politicians spend their time, there is no strategy, only tactics.
Dave Brown on David Cameron Show all 11 1 /11 Dave Brown on David Cameron Dave Brown on David Cameron 4 March 2016 Boris Johnson campaigns for Brexit Dave Brown on David Cameron 20 January 2016 Cameron's response to Tata Steel job cuts Dave Brown on David Cameron 5 January 2016 Cameron's reaction to Saudi Arabia executions Dave Brown on David Cameron 3 December 2015 Cameron called the opponents of military action in Syria "terrorist sympathisers" Dave Brown on David Cameron 2 December 2015 Cameron and the Syria bombing vote Dave Brown on David Cameron 19 November 2015 Cameron moves toward a second vote on bombing Syria Dave Brown on David Cameron 21 October 2015 Xi Jinping is lauded at a state banquet as British steelworkers lose their jobs, largely as a result of cheap Chinese steel imports Dave Brown on David Cameron 8 October 2015 Tory conference responds to Camerons keynote speech Dave Brown on David Cameron 6 October 2014 Clegg attempts to distance himself from Cameron Dave Brown on David Cameron 27 June 2014 Cameron and EU re-negotiation Dave Brown on David Cameron 1 December 2012 Cameron, Murdoch and the Leveson Report
Members of the political class are unprepared for government. Before suddenly turning up as secretary of state at a major government department with a payroll in the thousands, few of them have ever had responsibility for the employment of more than a dozen people at most. It is like asking somebody to conduct an orchestra who cannot play a musical instrument or read scarcely a note of the score. But the orchestra, that is the civil service, carries on regardless.
Earlier this week, former Cabinet Secretary Lord Butler described the first Blair government as a dysfunctional collective entity. He was taking part in a debate on the Chilcot report. That is the big risk we run with a political class such as we have at present dysfunction in government.
There is, however, a solution to this problem: I propose that MPs should be subject to term limits. This would mean that they would be able to serve for, say, only three sessions of parliament. To put it another way, they could stand for re-election no more than twice. Politics would no longer be a lifelong career but, rather, a public duty.
This would be very hard indeed to bring about. In tomorrows article, I shall describe what this arduous process might involve.
ELKO A multi-vehicle crash Saturday in a construction zone on U.S. 93 seriously injured a Sparks woman and delayed traffic on the busy highway for about six hours, according to the Nevada Highway Patrol.
A semi was traveling south at about 12:30 p.m. when it struck a Honda CRV that was stopped behind a Toyota Corolla and another semi about 15 miles north of Wells.
The Honda was rear-ended, overturned and came to rest on the left shoulder. The same semi then rear-ended the Toyota, pushing it off the road onto the right shoulder. The semi continued south and struck the rear end of another semi, stated the NHP.
A passenger, Suzanne Mcmanmon of Sparks, was flown to University of Utah Hospital with life-threatening injuries.
All four drivers and one other passenger were taken to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.
The driver of the semi was Edward Jobe from Billings, Montana.
A citation has not been issued at this time, the investigation is ongoing due to the severity of the injuries, stated NHP.
The Nevada Highway Patrol would like to remind drivers to please be extra cautious when driving through construction zones while traveling this summer.
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It finally happened - Bernie Sanders officially endorsed Hillary Clinton in the wild sprint for US president. The announcement happened during a joint rally in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, during which Sanders declared to the crowd, I have come here to make it as clear as possible why I am endorsing Hillary Clinton and why she must become our next president.
Ive been biting my lip waiting for this moment to happen, hoping and praying Sanders would have the courage to make this endorsement. And, yes, you read that right - the courage. I have no doubt Sanders will take heat for cowering away from his beliefs, scurrying beneath the higher-ups and succumbing to the ever-mounting pressure of Clintons campaign. But I present a different perspective: that this is the most courageous thing Sanders has done since his campaign momentum slowed to a crawl.
Bernie Sanders endorses Hillary Clinton
Sanders is no Clinton groupie - and neither am I. Like many Democrats, I believed in his message of hope: I applauded his push for immigration reform, his unbridled attack on selfish big business, his support of diversity movements and womens rights, his plans for affordable (if not completely free) education and his unique perspective on healthcare. I voted for him because I believed in him, in how he could grow, in what he could do. I didnt trust Clinton, whos wiggled back-and-forth on key issues for decades.
But, finally, Sanders failed - and Im sad to admit I halfway expected him to fail. I knew Clinton had the expertise. Clinton had the political stake. Clinton had the power. And now, Clinton has the support of Sanders.
So how can I possibly think such a thing courageous? How can I support a candidate I dont completely trust, a candidate I actively voted against?
I can support Clinton because I believe in unity. I believe in the transformation of politics and the reformation of politics, not the stubbornness of politics. And above all? I believe we have a bigger enemy.
It can be easy to say the threat of Donald Trump is overstated. It just seems too hyped-up, doesnt it? But Im afraid its not. Donald Trump is every bit the danger he seems. I may not harbour unconditional love for Clinton, but if Im suspicious of some of her policies, my distrust for Donald Trump is a hundred times the greater.
Bernie Sanders campaigns with Hillary Clinton Show all 15 1 /15 Bernie Sanders campaigns with Hillary Clinton Bernie Sanders campaigns with Hillary Clinton Andrew Harnik/AP Bernie Sanders campaigns with Hillary Clinton Darren McCollester/Getty Bernie Sanders campaigns with Hillary Clinton Mary Schwalm/Reuters Bernie Sanders campaigns with Hillary Clinton Brian Snyder/Reuters Bernie Sanders campaigns with Hillary Clinton Brian Snyder/Reuters Bernie Sanders campaigns with Hillary Clinton Brian Snyder/Reuters Bernie Sanders campaigns with Hillary Clinton Brian Snyder/Reuters Bernie Sanders campaigns with Hillary Clinton Brian Snyder/Reuters Bernie Sanders campaigns with Hillary Clinton Andrew Harnik/AP Bernie Sanders campaigns with Hillary Clinton Andrew Harnik/AP Bernie Sanders campaigns with Hillary Clinton Darren McCollester/Getty Bernie Sanders campaigns with Hillary Clinton Andrew Harnik/AP Bernie Sanders campaigns with Hillary Clinton Andrew Harnik/AP Bernie Sanders campaigns with Hillary Clinton Andrew Harnik/AP Bernie Sanders campaigns with Hillary Clinton Andrew Harnik/AP
The role of US president is not something we should take lightly. Its one of the most powerful positions in the world. I shudder to think what kind of hatred Trump would encourage if he took over that role - and how easily he could do it, considering the influence of Washington.
Unity is what America needs. Love is what America needs. I know how that sounds like a 60s flower child mantra, but I believe it to be true. Sanders having the courage to step forward and announce his support of Clinton, even with his supporters chastising him for doing so, is a good thing. It means a Democratic party that will hopefully be united come election time (a recent Pew poll found 85 per cent of Sanders supporters say they will vote for Clinton in November). This means the liberals will not be squabbling between each other, but will be ready to fight the bigger injustices.
Its a shame that Sanders campaign has ended, and I am sad to see it go. But he spent weeks debating and negotiating with Hillary Clinton, and there is no doubt his policy has had a significant impact on her own. Sanders has pushed Clinton to be braver, to be more transparent, to be more voracious in her fight for change. Already some of her drafted policies have shifted to reflect Sanders initiatives, including proposals to raise the minimum wage and get rid of the death penalty. This is a huge success.
Just like everyone else, I wish American politics looked different. I wish we had candidates with whom we could fully trust. I wish Clinton wasnt the only barrier against Donald Trump as president. But this is where we are now, and we must choose to accept it.
Bernie Sanders has chosen unity. The rest of America must do the same.
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According to the Labour Party website: As a democratic, socialist party we welcome people to join from all walks of life, to have their say and influence policy. We welcome membership applications from individuals, families, young people, students, workers, unemployed, older people anyone with an interest in building a better Britain.
It also states: To newcomers, working out how everything fits together can seem a bit of a maze - and theyre not wrong there. New members, including those young and unemployed supporters, have been left wondering why some members of the National Executive Committee (NEC) have voted to retrospectively disenfranchise them. Following a decision taken last night, the 130,000 members who joined in the last six months are no longer able to vote and will have to re-register and pay a whopping 25 registration fee if they wish to vote in the upcoming Labour leadership election.
25 is an outstanding amount of money for the young, the unemployed, workers on low wages, and older people the very groups the party purports to represent. A person looking for work, unable to work because of illness, or a person who is pregnant, a carer, or a single parent on low income and working less than 16 hours per week is given between 57.90 and 73.10 per week to live on. So if you are on benefits, becoming a supporter of the Labour Party will cost you between 34 per cent and 45 per cent of your weekly income. Being a member of the Labour Party then starts to look like an opportunity for the privileged few, rather than one available to all.
Jeremy Corbyn: Democracy is splendid
The move was supposedly an attempt to prevent a split in the party, but by bringing these measures in, members of the NEC who voted in favour of the motion have already ripped up their supporters trust. Many new members joined following Brexit, feeling motivated to engage with politics after seeing figures like Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and Nigel Farage exploit the concerns of working class communities worn down by years of Tory-led austerity. They joined Labour in the hope of becoming involved in their local branch and voting for a leader - be it Angela Eagle or Jeremy Corbyn - who would create a credible alternative to the Conservative Party.
Instead, the NEC have decided to financially and democratically exclude members, who they suspect are largely Corbyn supporters, to further their own party goals of winning at any cost. Furthermore, some in the NEC have been accused of gerrymandering after the vote was taken on the motion which was not included on the agenda, and after Corbyn and other pro-Corbyn members had left the room. So much for restoring trust in the Labour Party.
This move only serves to exacerbate the social exclusion of those who need more than ever to be given a voice within mainstream parties. If you needed proof of their anger, the damning protest vote against parliamentary politics during the EU referendum was pretty hard evidence. Amina Gichinga, 26, a recent Labour Party member and community organiser in Newham, told me recently, The ridiculous 25 charge is an attempt to keep out the most working class marginalised people from voting because they know it'll amount to a landslide vote for Corbyn. 25 is some family's weekly shopping money - it is an insult to anyone in a difficult financial situation and an attempt to stifle their political voice.
The most ridiculous claims made about Jeremy Corbyn Show all 11 1 /11 The most ridiculous claims made about Jeremy Corbyn The most ridiculous claims made about Jeremy Corbyn He called Hezbollah and Hamas friends True. In a speech made to the Stop the War Coalition in 2009, Mr Corbyn called representatives from both groups friends after inviting them to Parliament. He later told Channel 4 he wanted both groups, who have factions designated as international terror organisations, to be part of the debate for the Middle East peace process. I use (the word friends) in a collective way, saying our friends are prepared to talk, he added. Does it mean I agree with Hamas and what it does? No. Does it mean I agree with Hezbollah and what they do? No. Reuters The most ridiculous claims made about Jeremy Corbyn Jeremy Corbyn thinks the death of Osama bin Laden was a tragedy Partly false. David Cameron used this as a line of attack at the Conservative Party conference but appears to have left out all context from Mr Corbyns original remarks. In an 2011 interview on Iranian television, the then-backbencher said the fact the al-Qaeda leader was not put on trial was the tragedy, continuing: The World Trade Center was a tragedy, the attack on Afghanistan was a tragedy, the war in Iraq was a tragedy. The most ridiculous claims made about Jeremy Corbyn He is haunted by the legacy of his evil great-great-grandfather False. A Daily Express expose revealed that the Labour leaders ancestor, James Sargent, was the despotic master of a Victorian workhouse. Addressing the report at the Labour conference, Mr Corbyn said he had never heard of him before, adding: I want to take this opportunity to apologise for not doing the decent thing and going back in time and having a chat with him about his appalling behaviour. The most ridiculous claims made about Jeremy Corbyn Jeremy Corbyn raised a motion about pigeon bombs in Parliament This one is true. On 21 May 2004, Mr Corbyn raised an early day motion entitled pigeon bombs, proposing that the House register being appalled but barely surprised that MI5 reportedly proposed to load pigeons with explosives as a weapon. The motion continued: The House believes that humans represent the most obscene, perverted, cruel, uncivilised and lethal species ever to inhabit the planet and looks forward to the day when the inevitable asteroid slams into the earth and wipes them out thus giving nature the opportunity to start again. It was not carried. The most ridiculous claims made about Jeremy Corbyn He rides a Communist bicycle False. A report in The Times referred to Mr Corbyn, known for his cycling, riding a Chairman Mao-style bicycle earlier this year. Less thorough journalists might have referred to it as just a bicycle, but no, so we have to conclude that whenever we see somebody on a bicycle from now on, there goes another supporter of Chairman Mao, he later joked. The most ridiculous claims made about Jeremy Corbyn 'Jeremy Corbyn will appoint a special minister for Jews' False so far. The Sun report in December was allegedly based on a rumour passed to the paper by a Daily Express columnist who has written pieces critical of the Labour leader in the past. The minister did not materialise in his shadow cabinet. The most ridiculous claims made about Jeremy Corbyn Jeremy Corbyn wishes Britain would abolish its Army False. Another gem from The Sun took comments made at a Hiroshima remembrance parade in August 2012 where Mr Corbyn supported Costa Ricas move to abolish it armed forces. Wouldnt it be wonderful if every politician around the worldabolished the army and took pride in the fact that they dont have an army, he added. The caveat that every politician must take the step suggests Mr Corbyn does not support UK disarmament just yet. The most ridiculous claims made about Jeremy Corbyn Jeremy Corbyn stole sandwiches meant for veterans False. The Guido Fawkes blog claimed that the Labour leader took sandwiches meant for veterans at at Battle of Britain memorial service in September but a photo later emerged showing him being handed one by Costa volunteers, who later confirmed they were given to all guests. The most ridiculous claims made about Jeremy Corbyn He missed the induction into the Queens privy council True. After much speculation about Mr Corbyns republican views and willingness to bow to the monarch, his office confirmed that he did not attend the official induction to the privy council because of a prior engagement, but did not rule out joining the body. The most ridiculous claims made about Jeremy Corbyn Jeremy Corbyn refuses to sing the national anthem. Partly true. The Labour leader was filmed standing in silence as God Save the Queen was sung at a Battle of Britain remembrance service but will reportedly sing it in future. Mr Corbyn was elusive on the issue in an interview, saying he would show memorials respect in the proper way, but sources said he would sing the anthem at future occasions. The most ridiculous claims made about Jeremy Corbyn He is a member of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Cheese True. The group lists its purpose as the following: To increase awareness of issues surrounding the dairy industry and focus on economic issues affecting the dairy industry and producers.
This charge will only serve to make people who are new to engaging with politics disaffected again, another Labour supporter, 29-year-old Kjeli Eldor, said.
Corbyn may attempt to get the vote overturned and he may have to resort to legal means, since the Labour website made it clear that membership bought a vote. In the meantime, for those who wish to vote but cannot afford to, you can join the union Unite as a community member and pay 50p a week before becoming an affiliate member by 8 August.
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The new Prime Ministers first words rose to the historic occasion. Presenting herself as a centrist leader who understood that many people feel ill-served by politicians, she delivered a well-crafted message and delivered it well.
In David Cameron, I follow in the footsteps of a great modern Prime Minister. Under Davids leadership, the Government stabilised the economy, reduced the budget deficit and helped more people into work than ever before.
I am continuity as well as change. David has just told you what a wonderful job he did. I am here, an hour later, to say what a terrible state the nation is in, and how much more work there is for me to do.
But Davids true legacy is not about the economy but about social justice. From the introduction of same-sex marriage to taking people on low wages out of tax altogether, David Cameron has led a One Nation government and it is in that spirit I also plan to lead.
I am a social liberal and on the side of people on middle and lower incomes. The New Labour coalition. The centre ground vacated by Jeremy Corbyn and on which I plan to park my tanks.
Because not everybody knows this, but the full title of my party is the Conservative and Unionist Party. And that word Unionist is very important to me. It means we believe in the Union, the precious, precious bond between England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
A bit of history for the party grassroots that helps to underline a big message for my premiership: one of the reasons I was a Remainer despite being opposed to current levels of immigration was the danger of Scotland breaking away. I am determined not to let it happen. Nicola Sturgeon, I have your number.
But it means something else that is just as important. It means we believe in the union not just between the nations of the United Kingdom but between all of our citizens, every one of us, whoever we are and wherever we are from.
A play on the double meaning of union is a better rhetorical device than Ed Milibands Together, dont you think? Together: a different idea for Britain, he said in 2014. Ill show him how its done.
That means fighting against the burning injustice that if you are born poor you will die on average nine years earlier than others. If you are black you are treated more harshly by the criminal justice system than if you are white.
Allow me to pay a compliment to my predecessor-but-two, Tony Blair, who forced the Conservative Party to care about poverty and racial discrimination. Ive been telling my party this for 14 years. Now I can put it into practice in government.
If you are a white working-class boy, you are less likely than anybody else in Britain to go to university. If you are at a state school, you are less likely to reach the top professions than if you are educated privately.
The underachievement of white working-class boys is a problem that has been neglected for too long, and I can sound more left-wing than Labour, always wary of sounding like class warriors, by talking about the divisiveness of private education. And I can sound a bit more credible than my Etonian predecessor.
If you are a woman, you will earn less than a man. If you suffer from mental health problems, theres not enough help to hand. If you are young, you will find it harder than ever before to own your own home.
And Im a feminist. And I will take on two of the toughest challenges facing modern governments: mental illness and the housing market.
But the mission to make Britain a country that works for everyone means more than fighting these injustices. If you are from an ordinary working-class family, life is much harder than many people in Westminster realise.
I feel your pain.
You have a job but you dont always have job security. You have your own home but you worry about paying the mortgage. You can just about manage but you worry about the cost of living and getting your kids into a good school.
I have read about your pain in focus-group transcripts.
If you are one of those families, if youre just managing, I want to address you directly. I know you are working around the clock, I know you are doing your best, and I know that sometimes life can be a struggle. The Government I lead will be driven not by the interests of the privileged few but by yours.
Let me use the simple but effective device of identifying you and addressing you directly, and contrasting your interests with those of some imaginary rich people who used to run the establishment until about an hour ago.
We will do everything we can to give you more control over your lives. When we take the big calls, we will think not of the powerful, but you. When we pass new laws, we will listen not to the mighty, but to you. When it comes to taxes, we will prioritise not the wealthy, but you.
You think Im a wooden technocrat? I can do rhetoric. Just listen to this device: we will think not of them, but you. And I will get the emphasis right. Dramatic, no?
When it comes to opportunity, we wont entrench the advantages of the fortunate few, we will do everything we can to help anybody, whatever your background, to go as far as your talents will take you.
For the many not the few. Where have you heard that before? Well, I mean it.
We are living through an important moment in our countrys history. Following the referendum we face a time of great national change. And I know because we are Great Britain, we will rise to the challenge. As we leave the European Union, we will forge a bold new positive role for ourselves in the world.
As we leave: just in case you thought that I, as a Remainer, might try to stall on delivering the Brexit demanded in the referendum.
And we will make Britain a country that works not for the privileged few but for every one of us. That will be the mission of the Government I lead and together we will build a better Britain.
For the many not the few, again. And I, daughter of a Middle England vicar, can rail more convincingly against privilege than someone who went to Eton. I am on a mission. Do not get in my way.
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Taking Theresa Mays Birmingham speech on the economy at face value, the person she ought to appoint as her first chancellor is a politician called Ed Miliband.
Anger over spiralling executive pay, frustration over multinational tax avoidance, antipathy to tax-driven cross-border takeovers, concern about the unequal distribution of the fruits of economic growth, fears over oligopolies, an urge to overhaul the prevailing culture of business in Britain: large tracts of our new Prime Ministers speech appeared to have been plucked from the former Labour leaders pitch at the 2015 general election, like ripe apples scrumped from a neighbouring orchard.
And the rhetoric was indistinguishable.
We need to get tough on irresponsible behaviour in big business.
Tax is the price we pay for living in a civilised society.
Dont let anyone tell you that this is the anti-business choice.
It is not anti-business to suggest that big business needs to change.
Our country only works for the privileged few today, not for most people.
We must make Britain a country that works not for a privileged few but for every single one of us.
If you can identify from whose mouth each of those quotes emanated (whether from Theresa or Ed) you deserve a seat on the Cabinet yourself.
Theresa May: How her leadership speech differed from her voting record
The chances of May delivering this radical agenda will indeed depend to a large degree on the person she chooses as her chancellor, unquestionably the most powerful government job outside that of prime minister.
Given Miliband is unlikely to be summoned across the Parliamentary floor to enact the programme he offered (unsuccessfully) to the nation in 2015 who will it be? Its hard to think of anyone on the Conservative benches who is particularly sympathetic to Mays surprise agenda, given the unreconstructed Thatcherite inclinations of most of them.
Perhaps the best choice would be someone like Jesse Norman, who has written thoughtfully and unfashionably (in Conservative circles at least) about the damage done by crony capitalism. Or perhaps a genuine old school, one nation Conservative such as Ken Clarke might be able to have a stab at it.
Yet even if the Chancellor and other ministers in major economic portfolios were fully signed up to Mays vision, the political challenges of implementing these kinds of reforms are colossal.
May wants to get more houses built. But the hard reality is that achieving this will require a massive liberation of the planning system and the green belt. And this will mean taking on the nimby tendencies in the country and a formidable coalition of opposition to development that includes the Campaign to Protect Rural England and The Daily Telegraph.
The 6 most important issues Theresa May needs to address Show all 6 1 /6 The 6 most important issues Theresa May needs to address The 6 most important issues Theresa May needs to address Brexit The big one. Theresa May has spoken publicly three times since declaring her intent to stand in the Tory Leadership race, and each time she has said, Brexit means Brexit. It sounds resolute, but it is helpful to her that Brexit is a made up word with no real meaning. She has said there will be no second referendum and no re-entry in to the EU via the back door. But she, like the Leave campaign of which she was not a member, has pointedly not said with any precision what she thinks Brexit means Reuters The 6 most important issues Theresa May needs to address General election This is very much one to keep off the to do list. She said last week there would be no general election at this time of great instability. But there have already been calls for one from opposition parties. The Fixed Term Parliaments Act of 2010 makes it far more difficult to call a snap general election, a difficulty she will be in no rush to overcome. In the event of a victory for Leadsom, who was not popular with her own parliamentary colleagues, an election might have been required, but May has the overwhelming backing of the parliamentary party Getty The 6 most important issues Theresa May needs to address HS2 Macbeth has been quoted far too much in recent weeks, but it will be up to May to decide whether, with regard to the new high speed train link between London, Birmingham, the East Midlands and the north, returning were as tedious as go oer. Billions have already been spent. But the 55bn it will cost, at a bare minimum, must now be considered against the grim reality of significantly diminished public finances in the short to medium term at least. It is not scheduled to be completed until 2033, by which point it is not completely unreasonable to imagine a massive, driverless car-led transport revolution having rendered it redundant EPA The 6 most important issues Theresa May needs to address Heathrow expansion Or indeed Gatwick expansion. Or Boris Island, though that option is seems as finished as the man himself. The decision on where to expand aviation capacity in the south east has been delayed to the point of becoming a national embarrassment. A final decision was due in autumn. Whatever is decided, there will be vast opprobrium PA The 6 most important issues Theresa May needs to address Trident renewal David Cameron indicated two days ago that there will be a Commons vote on renewing Britains nuclear deterrent on July 18th, by which point we now know, Ms May will be Prime Minister. The Labour Party is, to put it mildly, divided on the issue. This will be an early opportunity to maximise their embarrassment, and return to Tory business as usual EPA The 6 most important issues Theresa May needs to address Scottish Independence Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP are in no doubt that the Brexit vote provides the opportunity for a second independence referendum, in which they can emerge victorious. The Scottish Parliament at Holyrood has the authority to call a second referendum, but Ms May and the British Parliament are by no means automatically compelled to accept the result. She could argue it was settled in 2014 AFP/Getty
Governments with sizeable majorities, led by prime ministers with personal mandates from the electorate and united parties behind them, have been unable to secure progress on this front. Its difficult to see May, who lacks any of these things, succeeding where they failed.
On curbing obscene pay for executives, the pitch has been helpfully rolled by the former Lib Dem Business Secretary Vince Cable, with his requirement that large listed firms publish a single figure of remuneration for bosses and also hold a binding shareholder vote every three years. It ought to be relatively straightforward for May to apply further pressure on pay by tightening this regime further. Yet securing genuine reform on runaway UK boardroom pay will always be an uphill battle while their peers in US firms fail to show a jot of moderation.
National oligopolies? The competition authorities are wrapping up major inquiries into the retail banking and household energy sectors and have essentially concluded there is no justification for a break-up of the big players. If May is serious about wanting to open this up again she will need to give those competition authorities new marching orders and possibly even change the law. Not impossible, but certainly a big ask. The banks and the energy companies will not sit back quietly either while their interests are threatened.
And all these sensitive structural and cultural reforms, of course, would need to be enacted alongside what promise to be agonisingly detailed and fraught negotiations with the rest of Europe over Brexit and our future trade relations with the Continent negotiations that are bound to dominate most of Mays attention.
Such reforms would also need to be pushed in the context of (reasonable) doubts from major corporations about whether it is sensible to expand operations in the UK. Lobbyists can be relied upon to depict every proposed nudge to corporate life as an act of gross self-harm on the grounds that it damages business confidence. That message will be reliably trumped by the many friends of corporate vested interests who work in the right-wing press. And this unprecedented reform drive, to boot, would need to take place at a time of sluggish growth and, quite possibly, a return to recession.
May has audaciously scrumped her apples from the Miliband tree. If she manages to squeeze anything from them at all in the coming years of Brexit-dominated economic trauma she will go down as one of the most impressive prime ministers in modern history. The odds, alas, must be that she will not.
Enda Kenny insisted a growth in jobs, rising consumer spending and taxes "confirm a strong recovery rooted in the domestic economy"
Enda Kenny has admitted official figures for the Irish economy are inaccurate.
As experts lined up to dismiss a claimed 26% spurt in the economy last year, the Taoiseach said the numbers can be exaggerated.
"They don't reflect accurately what is happening in the Irish economy," he told the Dail.
But he said the latest Central Statistics Office figures were unprecedented and down to a number of "exceptional" factors during 2015.
Critics say a better system for gauging the economy is needed to allow the government to best plan how it spends public money and imposes taxes.
Concerns have also been raised about Ireland's international reputation regarding widely-derided official figures.
Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin said the official economic growth rate does not reflect what is happening to real people around the country.
"Nobody believes the figures," he said.
The "absolutely farcical" nature of the figures are also "damaging Ireland's international reputation", Mr Martin told the Dail.
Citing comparisons to Soviet Russia and China, Mr Martin called for a new system to be devised that better reflected what is actually happening in the country.
Mr Kenny said the relocation of multinationals to Ireland, aircraft leasing and developments in the manufacturing sector last year skewed the latest figures.
But he insisted a growth in jobs, rising consumer spending and taxes "confirm a strong recovery rooted in the domestic economy here in Ireland".
Nobel prize-winning economist Paul Krugman has branded the latest official Irish figures as "Leprechaun economics".
Responding to the outcry, the Central Statistics Office said it was setting up a "high-level" team to review the way official economic figures are compiled.
Jennifer Banim, assistant director general, accepted normal economic indicators do not always reflect what is happening in Ireland.
"Assessment of the Irish economy is very complex and it is important that we look across the broad suite of indicators available to get a sense of what is happening in the economy," she said.
"These indicators include statistics on personal consumption and expenditure, unemployment data and retail sales."
German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Taoiseach Enda Kenny finish their joint news conference at the chancellery in Berlin. AFP/Getty Images
German Chancellor Angela Merkel declined to commit to making Ireland a 'special case' in the post-Brexit negotiations in a move that will come as a blow to the Government.
Ms Merkel said she was not prepared to issue any "guarantees" to the Irish Government and insisted the concerns of all 27 EU member states would be treated equally at the negotiation table.
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"It's difficult to give guarantees at this point of time," Ms Merkel said when asked to ensure Ireland would not be 'sidelined' in the negotiations.
"We don't even have the position of the United Kingdom. We have to wait for Great Britain to take a stand and give us an idea of the type of relationship they are thinking about."
Ms Merkel made the remarks at a joint press conference with Taoiseach Enda Kenny at the German chancellery in Berlin.
During a 40-minute meeting, Mr Kenny voiced concerns that Britain's decision to leave the EU could jeopardise the Common Travel Area and the Peace Process.
Asked about the impact on the North, the Fine Gael leader described peace as a "fragile entity".
"We have had, over 30 years, 3,000 people blown up and shot and killed. We also have some people who are still missing from that time, and they are called 'the Disappeared'. I always remind people of the value of the EU, which is itself a peace process," the Taoiseach said.
Ms Merkel did give a glimmer of hope in relation to the border with the North, emphasising that she recognises that the Common Travel Area has been in place since 1922.
Read more: Angela Merkel all but rules out making Ireland a special case in post-Brexit negotiations with Britain
Read more: EU must avoid 'negative consequences' on the Border with the North in a post-Brexit deal Italian Foreign Minister
But she noted that Ireland, like the UK, is not a member of the so-called 'Schengen' area, which allows for mutual borders between member states.
And on two occasions, she pointedly declined to accept a scenario whereby Ireland would be considered a 'special case'.
"I cannot anticipate the outcome of the negotiations," she insisted.
"The 27 member states will bring their influence to bear. The Irish voice will be heard as much as every other voice.
"It is important that Ireland plays a part here and we will do so in a special friendship. We will approach the post-Brexit challenges on the basis of friendship between the two countries."
Both Ms Merkel and Mr Kenny placed pressure on Theresa May, who will today be sworn in as British prime minister, to trigger the formal process of leaving the EU.
"So until the British government actually decides its strategy and points out what it wants, Europe is not in a position to put forward propositions," Mr Kenny said.
Connections
The Fine Gael leader added that he told Ms Merkel of the various connections between Ireland and the UK.
"But I pointed out to the chancellor that Ireland offers a different perspective in many respects because of our close association over many hundreds of years," Mr Kenny said.
"Because of the many thousands of people working in British companies and the almost million people living in Britain and because of the extent of our trading relations across the Irish Sea."
The Taoiseach also moved to dampen down the ongoing controversy surrounding his leadership of Fine Gael. He called on ministers to concentrate on their respective briefs in what will be seen as a warning shot to his detractors.
"We have an agreement with Fianna Fail in terms of confidence and supply, we have a programme for government with the Independent Alliance and the independent members with over 600 commitments and my focus is entirely on that future in making this happen.
"We have a great deal of work to do in the time ahead and I would like to think that people can concentrate on those duties in the time ahead."
As the row rumbled on back in Dublin, one of the Fine Gael TDs who had expressed disquiet in recent days called on Jobs Minister Mary Mitchell O'Connor to withdraw remarks in which she said that those within the party who were criticising the Taoiseach were "unpatriotic".
But Fergus O'Dowd said: "It's wrong to be calling people unpatriotic. It's balderdash."
Ms Mitchell O'Connor made the comments in yesterday's Irish Independent.
Asked about her remarks, Public Expenditure Minister Paschal Donohoe said he would not use "language that's going to prolong that debate".
He said he expected the commentary surrounding Mr Kenny's leadership to end tonight with the Taoiseach outlining his "ambition for the future" at the weekly meeting of Fine Gael TDs and senators.
Meanwhile, EU Commissioner Phil Hogan also weighed into the debate, telling his local KCLR radio station that Mr Kenny "saved the country".
"He's now going to have face the challenges of Brexit for Ireland. He's very well received in Europe by other states."
Authorities say a couple wanted in connection with murder cases in Arizona and Nevada has been found dead in a desert area southeast of Kingman. Mohave County Sheriffs detectives say the bodies of 26-year-old Hunter McGuire and his girlfriend, 32-year-old Samantha Branek, were found lying next to each other Friday with gunshot wounds to the head. Lake Havasu City police say it appears McGuire shot himself, but its unclear if Braneks wound was self-inflicted. The county medical examiners office will determine an official cause of death. Authorities say the couple was being sought in connection with a double homicide in Kingman on June 28. They say McGuire also was considered a suspect in the fatal shooting of a woman Monday in Las Vegas.
Building a successful dairy herd from home-bred strong cow families was the main theme at the Annual Irish Holstein Friesian Association (IHFA) Open Day which was held on the farm of Tommy and Orla Screene at Menlough in Co Galway - the first time the event has been held in the county.
More than 1,500 breeders admired the progeny of the successful Katie, Mary, and Irene bloodlines, three of the cow families upon which the 65-cow Windfield herd has been built.
The Screene family, who have been farming at Windfield since 1890, switched to dairy farming in the 1970s and the pedigree herd was established by Tommy in 1999.
A new dairy unit was erected on a green field site the following year.
He has successfully concentrated on building the herd around a select number of cow families, relying mainly on herd replacements and breeding them to 100pc AI sires specifically chosen to improve both yield and solids and breed a functional type cow.
"Our heifers consistently keep improving year on year," said Tommy.
He added that the heifers being offered at the draft sale in tandem with the event "included many that we would love to retain for the herd's future progress.
"Our aim is to breed an economically efficient cow with five equally important traits, good production of high milk solids, good feet and legs, good fertility and longevity," he said.
The herd has been testing for BVD for four years with all tests clear and routine vaccination is carried out for IBR and Leptospirosis.
The official opening was performed by Arrabawn CEO, Conor Ryan, the major sponsor for the event, and the guest of honour was Connacht rugby star John Muldoon, a friend of Tommy Screene (pictured) from his rugby playing days with Buccaneers.
IHFA resident Alec Ryan congratulated the Screenes on "a fine herd of cows" and IHFA chief executive Charles Gallagher described it as a "fantastic achievement" for any farmer to put together a herd of cows with such performance and strength while also breeding for longevity.
Master judge for the stock-judging competitions was Northern Ireland's David Parry, president elect of the Holstein Friesian Association in the UK.
In-calf heifer tops sale at 4,200
A top price of 4,200 was paid at the Windfield IHFA Open Day sale of pedigrees for an in-calf heifer with the potential to be a third generation EX and
whose dam and sister has topped 4pc protein.
February 2014 born Windfield Katie 17 is out of Windfield Merci Katie 3, one of the top cow families in the Screenes herd, and is by the sire, Bomaz Marion Emerald 648.
There was huge interest in the heifer when she entered the sales ring as she is a maternal sister to Windfield Beverlake Katie a heifer that produced 7,731kg at 4.65pc fat and 4.01pc protein while her dam produced 6,854kg milk at 4.26pc fat and 4.03 protein in her fifth lactation.
The hundreds of breeders who filled the ringside gave a round of applause in recognition of the sale topper from an entry of 38 animals from the herd, which has an impressive performance with yield averaging 1,870 gallons of milk at 3.83pc fat and 3.5pc protein.
Another offspring of the Katie family in the herd, Windfield Katie 19, out of Windfield Faber Kate and the renowned sire Parlo Goldwyn Wyman ET achieved the second highest price at the sale, when the new owner paid 3,200 for her.
The Katie cow family were dominant at the sale in which five of the line were sold for a total of 13,900, an average of 2,780.
A seven month old heifer calf became another price topper when Windfield Clover SDX sold for 2,000 to bring down the curtain on the evening sale.
The proceeds, including auction fees were donated to charity.
Her dam is Ardglass Clover 39 and she is by the sire, Dream-Prairie Shadow Boxer.
London 2012 seems a long time ago, but not for our athletes who contributed to Ireland's best haul of 16 medals at a Paralympic Games since Seoul in 1988.
The Seoul Games were a year before Helen Kearney was born and only her family will remember those Games, but they will never forget London, where Helen became one of the most successful athletes of this era with three medals to her name in what was a fantastic two weeks for Ireland's Paralympians.
Helen had travelled across the Irish Sea with high hopes aboard her horse Mr Cool, but exceeded her own expectations by a mile when winning team bronze and individual bronze and silver.
"In 2011 I claimed Ireland's first European Para Equestrian medal, but London really was a dream come through for me and I was honoured to represent my country there.
"The best score up to that had been 73pc, so to gain a mark of 76pc was amazing," commented the 27-year-old.
Fast forward four years and the Dunlavin, Co Wicklow native is now busy preparing to fly the flag once more having been recently confirmed as Ireland's sole representative in the para equestrian competitions in Rio in two months' time.
It has been a long journey to get here, but it is all the more remarkable given Helen's story to date.
Diagnosed with the rare degenerative condition Friedreich's Ataxia (FA) at the age of 13 following surgery for scoliosis, Helen quickly threw herself into horse-riding to distract herself from a disease for which there is currently no cure.
Little did she know back then that her love of ponies would lead her to joining Para Equestrian Ireland in 2008, and from there to the greatest sporting event in the world, not once but twice before the age of 30.
Battling against the odds, over the years Helen has shown immense strength and courage to overcome her disability which sees her in a wheelchair when not aboard her horse Rock & Roll 2.
"Since my diagnosis of Friedreich's Ataxia in 2001, horses have been a huge part of life. Horse riding, and the physical activity that goes hand in hand with it, is what is keeping me walking.
"It has given me a reason to keep fighting. Horse riding and competing in para-equestrian sport has given me so much of what this rare condition has taken away."
Following her success at London, Helen began the daunting task of finding another horse to replace Mr Cool who was now nearing retirement age. The next horse proved unsuitable, and it was only after a chance encounter while in Germany with her trainer Heike Holstein that she discovered what would be her equine partner for the foreseeable future.
"After London I knew I would need another horse sometime soon and we tried a few but it was not until January of last year that we purchased 'Rocky'. Until then it was all up in the air as to whether or not I would qualify for Rio."
Sadly Mr Cool was euthanized just two months later following an accident in the paddock.
Deemed unsuitable for able-bodied riders due to his 'laid back' approach to life, Rocky proved the perfect match for Helen who completely relies on a sensible and steady horse to perform her dressage tests.
Initially introduced to the sport at Grade III, a deterioration of her condition since 2010 now sees her compete at Grade 1a which is confined to riders with the greatest impairments.
Competing at this level of the sport, whether it's the Olympics or Paralympics, takes great dedication and Helen has the wonderful support of her family - her parents Michael and Mary, brother John (30) and younger sister Brona (24), who also suffers from Friedreich's Ataxia.
An active horse-rider like her sibling, she enjoys competing in endurance. "Mum and Dad are very supportive, and are really looking forward to travelling to Rio, as will my boyfriend David Redmond.
"It's a logistical nightmare getting 'Rocky' there - he's never flown before - but my groom Lydia Bagge will be there to meet him when he arrives.
"It's a long way for us too but I am really looking forward to it. I have had a good preparation competing abroad in recent months and feel I am ready now.
"The competition will be different this time round and there are new people in my category but if I finish in the top six I will be happy with that," Helen concluded.
The number of breeders signed up to LambPlus continues to rise and now stands at 600, according to Sheep Ireland's Eamon Wall.
Sheep Ireland is now recording more key traits for the flocks, including health information on top of the usual growth traits.
"This year we also have carcase data from the central progeny test (CPT) flocks," he said, adding they agreed with breeders that it was long overdue.
He also unveiled a pilot project for later this year which is designed to get more breeders using the high index, high accuracy CPT rams.
"A lot of breeders have submitted rams to the CPT programme over the years. We've got loads of commercial data on the rams and increased their accuracy, they're high index rams. Unfortunately they go back to the breeders and maybe don't get the widespread use we'd like them to get," he said, adding they would also use the LambPlus sale on August 27 in Tullamore to promote the message to commercial farmers.
"On the beef side of things there is GeneIreland and test bulls and farmers are used to using these young bulls and testing the best genetics. That is something we want to try and stimulate on the sheep side."
Mr Wall said it was a pity there was no EuroStar element in the new knowledge transfer programme but they were hopeful there would be a push for genetic improvement in future schemes.
He said the data quality index, a simple rating, would be published in sale catalogues this year for those breeders who had participated in the pilot projects.
"Over time commercial farmers will latch onto this and see it as a measure of a breeder engaging strongly with the system," he said.
"From commercial farmers we've gotten feedback they'd like to know where these CPT sires are. There is certainly a growing attraction from commercial farmers."
Cost
Teagasc expert Donagh Berry said they selected 10 flocks from the five main breeds as a pilot project for the genomics programme.
At the moment the genotypes cost 62, including the tag and VAT, for a panel with 50,000 DNA markers or 28.50 for a 15,000 panel which includes major genes.
"Everybody in the world is doing this. When I started genotyping in dairying in 2008 I paid 272, now I'm paying 22. We do see the cost of this DNA profiling coming down. I'd like to see it down to at least the 22 that we are paying for cattle," said Dr Berry.
Teagasc PhD student Aine O'Brien explained only the animals that lambed down in 2016 were genotyped.
She pointed out there were a number of sheep samples failing the 'call rates' at which they deem it correct, with a number of factors being blamed.
"Part of the reason could be error in sampling with a lack of biological material. Obviously if you have no tissue sample for that animal you can't genotype it," she said. They also identified an issue with some tags.
"The main cause we are going to have to put down to the tag. Initial call rates were very poor and were up around 10pc," she said. Ms O'Brien said they have doubled the amount of preservative to keep the tissue from going off. "That led to a notable improvement in the call rate."
There were nearly 13,000 genotyped, with 5,000 animals with a parent also genotyped.
"There were just over 2,700 animals that had their sire genotyped and 271 of these sires were incorrect or about 10pc," she said, pointing out over 7pc of dams were incorrect.
Ms O'Brien said the errors were quite similar to the parentage rates in beef cattle.
"There are reasons why it could be wrong, it could be the wrong animals sampled, incorrect assignment of DNA ID, it could be escapees at mating or a lamb mismatch at birth," she said.
Ms O'Brien said it needed to be discussed to potentially resample those animals and for pedigrees to be corrected in flockbooks.
"People are realising 10pc of the parentage is incorrect so they need to go seek an animal that is parentage verified," said Dr Berry.
"If you have 10pc parentage errors then genetic gain is 10pc slower than what it should be at a national level.
"Profit in sheep is very low, imagine if I was to tell everybody I'll give you 10pc more money in the next year or two," he said. "It was found across all 13,000 Ovigen flocks. It is more than likely the mis-mothering or the period when rams are changed at mating. The key is that 10pc is normal, it is not bad."
Sheep breeders are being urged to invest in genomics to make their produce more competitive in international markets.
Researchers behind the Ovigen project to drive genomic improvements with proven rams are examining options to continue the project for the next year or longer.
Around 60pc of the ewes from LambPlus - the performance recording service provided by Sheep Ireland to all pedigree ram breeders - are part of the Ovigen project, which includes around 12,000 ewes and rams.
James Murphy, chair of Sheep Ireland, has stressed that other countries are using genomics to drive improvements and profits in their sheep industries and Ireland must not be left behind.
"Other countries are going to use DNA sampling, they're going to use genomic selection and the technologies. We'd be foolish not to use them ourselves," he said. "Sheep is a low income sector and the question is whether there is value for money here. I think there is, it is a solid investment."
Teagasc genetic expert Donagh Berry (pictured) said they have spent around 500,000 so far building up a database.
"The Department of Agriculture have put about 400,000 to 500,000 into this to build up this database. To do parentage you need to have the DNA profile of the parents obviously, so if you stop doing it now someone is going to have to spend 400,000 to 500,000 in three or four years time to do it all again," he said.
He pointed out when they started out in cattle they asked the breed societies if they might get 10 to subsidise it to allow more genotyping, pointing out the Angus society paid 5 and the breeder 5 while other societies subsidised the 10.
Researcher Noirin McHugh said they favoured subsidising genotyping replacements lambing next year, with the breeder paying a portion of the costs at 10 plus the tag as the best value for the money left for the project.
"There is potentially funding available for this for two years. It would be a subsidised cost at 10 and you'd get back your genomic proof and the additional information," she said. Ms McHugh pointed out some samples have already been taken and this would allow for potential funding for two years.
Other options highlighted included genotyping all rams for the next three years or else fully subsidising genotyping replacement ewes and rams in 2017 from Ovigen flocks with funding available for just a single year.
However, at a Sheep Ireland meeting, a number of the pedigree breed societies pointed out that they might not have the same level of funding as pedigree beef socieites to push it through.
Mr Murphy said they would also discuss the issue with the Department of Agriculture.
Dr Berry queried whether farmers would prefer to go to a sale and know the exact parentage of a pen of sheep or a ram.
He said the extra 10 for a ram meant a farmer could be fully confident in the parentage.
Part-time beef farmers may reap benefits from successfully synchronising their herd with timed AI to deliver a compact calving season, Teagasc researchers found.
A trial among 2,200 cows in 80 herds found 80pc of cows were pregnant within 23 days
Federico Randi said beef farmers can benefit from timed AI as it reduces the requirement for heat detection, tightens the breeding and calving seasons.
With star ratings debated by many farmers at Beef 2016, he pointed out it also allows them to breed replacements from elite sires.
The researcher said during their study they used three different programmes all based on a seven day progesterone protocol. The study found that 57pc were pregnant with a single AI was with the supplementation of eCG or PMSG.
He said the bulls were then later put out with the cows, with 78pc in calf at 23 days.
"The important message is you are not going to calve them all in the one day they are going to be spread from the single sire in around three weeks," he said. "As a consequence of the fact that cows that didn't conceive with synchronisation are going to repeat in three weeks. You are going to have a second compact calving."
Mr Randi said only 22pc of suckler cows in Ireland are born through AI, which is a very low acceptance of the technology.
He said this does not improve the fertility but it is a management tool.
"Being a part-time farmer it is impossible to be there detecting cows in heat three to five times a day," he said. "This situation here you design your three handlings. From a calving point of view you have two compact calvings that you can organise your time around that."
However, Teagasc genetics expert Donagh Berry does caution that farmers must be sure that their cows are showing signs of fertility through oestrus.
He warns that using drugs for synchronisation with cows that may have an issue would breed infertility into the herd.
Workload
Donal Callery, manager of the 100 pedigree Charolais and 130 continental cross cow Skidoo herd in Ballyboughal, Co Dublin, synchronised 90 cows on one day. They found 10 cows were not suitable for it.
Mr Callery (pictured) pointed out 50pc conceived to the first timed AI and the key figure for him was 80pc calved within 33 days. He said he saw a lot of benefit in it for part-time farmers in terms of time and also sires.
"Doing so many the one day was great as it condenses the workload into a single day and it took a lot of the guess work out of heat detection. Even though we were doing a lot of AI and we would have teaser bulls and we'd be tailpainting.
"This was fixed time AI and regardless of whether we saw the heat or not they went for AI."
Mr Callery said he would use it again although it was expensive working out at 30 a cow for the injections and the coil, excluding the AI and straws.
"We have a closed herd and to breed our own replacements I wanted to use a variation of bulls so we used Saler, Simmental, Limousin and Charolais," he said. "We crossed the Saler bull with pedigree Charolais cows with a lot of milk that wouldn't be worthy of being in the pedigree herd but a good functional cow to breed replacements."
Housebuilder Abbey has reported gradual progress in the Irish market as profits last year jumped to 61.5m from 49.1m in the previous year.
But the company remains sceptical about its future prospects in the UK housing market and didn't rule out a long period of gradual decline in London.
"A slowdown in the UK economy is now being forecast and in particular a correction in the housing market after its strong performance in recent years. Prospects for the short, medium and long term are now very unclear," the company said .
Abbey said its project in Lucan is nearing completion while it also launched a new development in Delgany in June. The company also spent the year buying up land in Rotoath, Meath, and Cornelscourt, Dublin - both schemes are now under construction.
The company said that demand for new home ownership in many parts of the wider Dublin area "remains muted".
Overall the firm concluded 597 sales groupwide - 23 in Ireland - bringing in a total turnover of 198.6m. Abbey has set out a dividend of 8c per share for approval at the agm.
At the end of the year Abbey had 90.4m in cash and 12.7m in Government bonds. Rental income for the year was 984,000. Goodbody analyst Eamonn Hughes said trading in the early part of the year has been "encouraging". Shares in Abbey were up 4.66pc at 2pm on Tuesday at 10.44 (12.38).
the Irish-headquartered aircraft leasing firm Avolon reported strong growth in the second quarter of its financial year as it increased its owned, managed and committed fleet to 443.
During the three-month period the company delivered 11 aircraft to seven customers and sold a further five. Avolon also said it has letters of intent in place for 13 further sales due to be completed this year.
The firm's fleet increased by 70pc year on year with the rise driven by the acquisition of 45 aircraft from GE Capital Aviation Services.
The aircraft, which are due to be delivered to Avolon in the second half of 2016, are on lease to 29 airlines in 15 countries.
Avolon described the new aircraft as "young, modern, and fuel efficient". The acquisition also brings 15 new customers to the company.
Outside of portfolio acquisitions Avolon also operates in sale-leaseback transactions with airlines and direct orders from airlines.
The company also said the acquisition demonstrates its ability to operate in all three channels.
The leasing company increased its committed debt facilities by around 500m in the second quarter as it looks to strengthen its balance sheet and add extra liquidity for growth.
The Dublin-headquartered firm was set up in Ireland six years ago by leasing duo Domhnal Slattery and John Higgins.
The company is a wholly-owned indirect subsidiary of Bohai Leasing, a publicly listed Chinese company. The deal was awarded 'Deal of the Year' by Finance Dublin after Bohai secured the firm for $7.6bn.
Following the deal Avolon completed the integration of Hong Kong Capital fleet and processes into Avolon.
Avolon said its average aircraft age now stands at 3.4 years with an average lease term remaining of 7.4 years at the end of the second quarter.
Earlier in the year Mr Slattery pointed out the demand for aircraft in China, saying the country will need $1 trillion worth of new planes over the next year.
The Avolon chief was speaking on Bloomberg in January when he said the country had grossly under-ordered aircraft by 750 planes.
"Quite simply, if we look at Asia there's 600 million to 700 million in the middle class. That's going to grow in the next 20 years to 2.6 billion people. That's 400pc growth," Mr Slattery said.
Irelands debt -to-Gross Domestic Product ratio dropped to 80pc at the end of March, from 97.1pc at the same period last year.
The dramatic fall was due to increased GDP. The Central Statistics Office said yesterday that Irish GDP rose by a massive 26.3pc last year.
The statistics agency said the growth jump in the size of the economy was due to the activities of multinationals here, although there has been no change to employment.
Economists have dismissed the figure as meaningless, claiming it is overinflated by the activities of Irelands base of large foreign firms.
But it does, as it has been revealed today, have an impact on our debt to GDP ratio.
Ziggurats Montrose student housing scheme during construction in 2014. The development is now near occupancy, says developer Matthew McAdden, with more projects planned in Ireland
The head of UK-based student accommodation developer Ziggurat has said his company is "getting out of the UK completely and investing all our money in Ireland".
Speaking to the Irish Independent, Ziggurat founder and managing director Matthew McAdden said while the decision of the British electorate to vote in favour of Brexit was causing "immense problems" for the UK, he did not see any adverse impact for the Irish economy which he described as "very, very strong".
He said: "We genuinely don't see an [adverse] impact of the 'leave' [Brexit] vote in the UK which is causing us immense problems in the UK.
"We are getting out of the UK completely and investing all our money into Ireland. We just don't see an impact of the 'leave' vote on the economy of Ireland. If anything, it might be of benefit."
The Ziggurat chief confirmed his company's plans to invest around 400m in 4,000 new student units in Dublin, Cork and Galway.
The UK developer is already well known in the Irish marketplace having acquired and converted the former Montrose Hotel opposite UCD's Belfield campus in Dublin to student accommodation.
According to McAdden, the Montrose property is already near full occupancy with "just a handful of rooms left". This is despite the fact that the average cost per room has increased since last year to 256 per week. Ziggurat has now acquired sites on Dublin's Upper Dominic Street and on the North Circular Road where it plans to build facilities capable of housing 380 and 420 students respectively.
The location of the developments will see demand from students attending the DIT campus at Grangegorman.
Owing to the close proximity of the Luas, students attending Trinity College may also be interested in securing accommodation there.
The sites in question include the former Michael H textile plant acquired from Small Firms Association chairman AJ Noonan and two former Arnotts car park sites controlled by developer Noel Smyth.
Subject to planning, Ziggurat expects to have the proposed 800 Dublin student rooms ready for occupation in 2019.
The company has also acquired a site on Cork's Western Road close to UCC for a 200-bed facility and intends to build up to 1,000 student rooms in both Cork and Galway over the next three years.
Referring to the opportunities presented by the Irish market, McAdden said: "We're enthused by it. Dublin is very exciting, but so is Cork.
"There are 25,000 students at UCC and it's an internationally-recognised university and NUIG (Galway) has 18,000 to 20,000 students and is also internationally-recognised."
He added: "The real economy in Ireland is very, very strong. People continue to have the confidence to rent properties to go to university."
Building materials firm Grafton Group has forecast further growth in the Irish and Dutch markets but has seen its UK trade weaken in the second quarter.
Revenue at the company, which trades as Woodie's in Ireland, rose by 13.3pc in the first half of the year up to 1.23bn.
Over 70pc of Grafton's revenue comes from its UK marketing business, which dipped into negative territory in June.
Goodbody equity analyst Jason Molins said it was still "early days" when it came to evaluating the impact Brexit will have on Grafton.
"We're highlighting the stronger performance in Ireland, the Netherlands, and also the Selco brand in the UK has proven a lot more resilient than parts of its own business but also compared to some of its other peers as well.
"In this space everyone's focus is on the UK and on Brexit and implications and we're just trying to highlight the differentiating factors," Mr Molins said.
Grafton's Irish merchanting revenue increased by 12.6pc in the first six month of the year while its Irish retailing and manufacturing arm increased by 6.4pc and 14.9pc respectively.
The company said it benefited from a positive trading environment in Ireland thanks to a recovering housing market.
"The recovery in retail sales in Ireland which gathered pace during 2015 continued into the half year supported by momentum in consumer spending that was reflected in strong revenue growth in the Woodie's DIY business," the company said.
Grafton chief executive Gavin Slark said he expects the uncertainty caused by the vote to weigh on the UK repair, maintenance, and improvement (RMI) market.
Shares in Grafton were among the worst hit on the Irish Stock Exchange following the outcome of the referendum.
Shares fell by as much as 18.4pc from 7.12 on the day after the UK vote.
The share price has since stabilised, standing at 5.14 (6.09) at 2pm yesterday.
Grafton's acquisition of Dutch merchanting firm Isero has proved to be an initial success with the business benefiting from an improvement in the Dutch economy.
Mr Molins said the firm's strong balance sheet leaves it in a position to snap up businesses like Isero.
"They have a well regarded management team, they've made a number of key deals in recent years and have the firepower to look to do that," he said.
On the semi-frozen surface of Faraday Lake in Canada's subarctic, two diamond rigs are drilling around the clock. It's spring breakup north of the 63rd parallel, which means the Kennady Diamonds exploration team is running out of time.
"It's starting to candle," says geologist Martina Bezzola, scuffing her rubber boot over the fast-melting ice where vertical tunnels, or "candles", have appeared. The thaw means the team has two weeks to extract kimberlite samples from beneath the lake before they're banished to drilling onshore. "Basically it's like sticking a needle into a haystack to determine what's in the haystack."
Twenty-five years after the first diamonds were found in Canada's Northwest Territories, it's still a game of hurry-up-and-wait. For every thousand grassroots exploration projects, only one becomes a mine.
Yet the dream lives on. At a time when global miners are shedding assets, De Beers is about to open the largest new diamond mine in the world, Gahcho Kue, 280km from Yellowknife. Further north, Rio Tinto Group last year found - and just sold - the largest gem-quality diamond recorded in North America at its Diavik mine, the 187-carat Foxfire.
"The return in diamonds is fantastic, but you need the patience of Job,'' says Jonathan Comerford, chairman of Kennady Diamonds, whose company is backed by Irish billionaire Dermot Desmond, on site at the Kelvin Camp on Faraday Lake.
Mr Desmond owns almost a quarter of Toronto-based Kennady and 23pc of its former parent company, Mountain Province Diamonds, which these days is focused on developing Gahcho Kue with De Beers. Canada has a couple of marks in its favour that keep the majors interested amid a grim market, says Kim Truter, ceo of De Beers Canada.
Prices for rough stones have rebounded 10pc this year after plunging 44pc in the five years ending in January. The country is politically stable and has a long mining history, mitigating the snail's pace at which projects proceed.
Canada produces approximately 10pc of world diamond output by volume but about 15pc by value, said Mr Truter, (51). "The price we receive for the diamonds in Canada is actually quite high compared to other regions of the world."
So is the cost to produce them. Gahcho Kue's billion-dollar price tag could have been 30pc less elsewhere in the world, Mr Truter says. In seven years of operation, Snap Lake never made money, crippled by the costly engineering challenge extracting diamonds from beneath a subarctic lake.
The best way to understand what it takes to mine diamonds here is to view it from above. The landscape, for hundreds of kilometres in all directions, is almost entirely binary: snow-covered rock and too many lakes to count. The temperature ranges from -50C to 35C in the summer.
Each winter, mine operators spend three months constructing a 350km ice road across this terrain. Once the ice is thick enough to support the movement of heavy equipment, a convoy of trucks crawls along at 1km intervals to avoid stressing the ice. This year, the road was open eight weeks before it started to melt. After that, the only way in is by air.
Historically, diamonds in Canada have tended to be found by lean and nimble junior exploration companies, although De Beers continues to invest heavily in exploration. Those that go broke scare off future investors, making shareholders like Ireland's Dermot Desmond and his private equity money invaluable. "Without the support of the Irish we would be up the creek," says Patrick Evans (60), Mountain Province's ceo and, until this April, also of Kennady. It was Mr Desmond's team that insisted Kennady be spun off to maximise the value of both companies. The Irish billionaire has done well this year with diamonds: Kennady's stock is up about 40pc in Toronto. Mountain Province has gained about 60pc.
Evans, Comerford and Kennady's new ceo, Rory Moore, have flown into Kelvin Camp to go over the geological data. It's a spare but cozy operation: two neat rows of red-walled sleep tents surrounded by an electric bear fence. There's also a plywood office, communal washroom (hand sanitiser, no sinks), carb-heavy kitchen and a core shack. The latter is crowded with executives, a handful of camp personnel and Tom McCandless, an independent director of Kennady.
A geologist, McCandless (61), has been wheelchair-bound since a desert bike accident in 1975. That's never kept him out of the field; he's spent the day wheeling through snow. At frequent intervals Evans and the others step in to lift his chair in and out of buildings, vehicles and aircraft, at one point jury-rigging a sled to drag him through the slush.
Inside, crowded between tables of kimberlite samples and maps, this esprit de corps morphs into a friendly debate between McCandless and Moore as they grill Bezzola's fellow geologist David Cox, (31), on progress. The discussion is technical but the underlying question is clear: could Kelvin Camp be sitting on the kind of deposit De Beers is developing a stone's throw away?
Kelvin Camp is located just up the road from Gahcho Kue (or would be, if there were a road). How Ireland's Desmond came to have a foot in both camps is a story Evans and Comerford never tire of telling.
The area was discovered by Mountain Province in the early '90s. Like most exploration companies, to fund development it ended up in bed with a major, in this case De Beers.
Back in 2005, as Evans recounts it, De Beers was focused on developing Gahcho Kue and baulked at paying 6,800 to extend permits on the surrounding land. "I sat in the meeting and thought: my God, what fools," he said. Mountain Province leapt in to take over the mineral rights for free and when it got around to drilling in 2011, Evans's instinct was validated. "It was clear from the results we were getting that they'd put their holes in the wrong place and we asked the question: what the hell is going on?" The Mountain Province team tracked down a geologist who solved the mystery: A builder changed the height of the building on which the radio beacon was located without alerting the geologists and the company ended up drilling the wrong coordinates.
How Chuck Fipke and Stewart Blusson, two prospectors down to their last nickels, found diamonds in this part of the world back in 1991 is also the stuff of legend.
The discovery started a frenzy reminiscent of the 1940s gold rush on which Yellowknife was founded. People mortgaged houses and every helicopter for miles around was booked, ferrying prospectors to remote areas. Above the tree line, even the wood for the stakes had to be flown in after Yellowknife hardware stores ran out of two-by-fours.
Now, back at Kelvin Camp, the Hagglunds all-terrain ground vehicle has broken down and a helicopter is being discussed as the best option to ferry the executives to the Twin Otter plane waiting a few hundred metres out on the lake.
"Can't we walk?" Mr Comerford asks. "Let's just walk." Given the melting ice, it will mean a stroll through shin-deep water. Geologist David Cox looks at him like he's mad. "You can try." (Bloomberg)
Dr Orlaigh Quinn of the Reform and Delivery Office, and Minister Paschal Donohoe at a briefing on the Progress Report on Civil Service Renewal at Government Buildings. Photo: Gareth Chaney Collins
Official figures showing the Irish economy grew by a massive 26pc last year - more than three times faster than first thought - were quickly dismissed as "farcical".
Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman described the phenomenon as "Leprechaun economics", as experts lined up to explain why the figure doesn't reflect reality.
Economists say that while growth is strong, the official figure is dramatically overinflated - because it is driven primarily by the activities of Ireland's multinational and aircraft-leasing sectors.
But the high growth figure is sure to prompt calls for increased public spending and put pressure on the Government to loosen the purse strings.
But Public Expenditure and Reform Minister Paschal Donohoe was forced to move to dampen expectations, insisting that the CSO figures would not influence choices made by the Government as part of Budget 2017.
Read more: Irish GDP growth at staggering 26.3pc last year, economist says figures are 'meaningless'
Read more: Ireland's 26.3% growth figure a farce, say economists
"I would be exceptionally cautious about translating that degree of economic growth into budget choices that we are going to make for 2017," he said.
Mr Donohoe welcomed "any degree of growth" but said he was more enthused by figures that showed consumer spending rising by around 4.5pc.
"I would be very, very cautious about saying that rate of growth is anything that we are going to be able to sustain in the future.
"We have to see a growth like that as something that is exceptional," he told Newstalk's 'Lunchtime'.
Meanwhile, Fianna Fail's finance spokesman Michael McGrath told the Irish Independent that the figures were a "bolt from the blue" and "could draw unwanted attention to Ireland".
"There has to be a clear explanation given for such an extraordinary jump in economic activity when it's not matched by other indicators such as employment or tax receipts," he said.
"The reputation of the State as a place with a stable business environment must be protected. Unexpected swings of this magnitude are not always helpful.
"To have overall economic output distorted to this extent needs investigation."
He added that there were "whispers" of some large companies channelling large amounts of money into Ireland and questions must be asked about how the "sudden and unexpected spike" could happen "under the noses and the radar of the CSO and the Department of Finance". The Cork TD also said it's unlikely to affect Budget 2017.
The colossal increase in GDP was due primarily to some very large foreign companies reinventing themselves as Irish companies to benefit from our low corporation tax rate, as well as purchases by aircraft-leasing firms based here.
There was also a massive jump in net exports, due largely to the fact that multinationals here contracted companies overseas to do work. But some have booked it through their operations in Ireland, even though no economic activity was taking place here.
The big concern is that it is now difficult to ascertain the "real" level of economic growth when exceptional factors are removed from the equation.
Aidan Regan, assistant professor in the School of Politics and International Relations at University College Dublin, said there was "no credibility to the national accounts".
"The 26.3pc makes for a great media headline. But if the media want to go find this growth, they might as well go plane-watching at Dublin airport. It's a farce," he said.
And although the figure does not reflect what's taking place in the economy, it does have an impact in terms of the country's debt-to-GDP ratio, a closely watched international gauge.
Finance Minister Michael Noonan said that is now expected to fall from the 88pc figure recorded in the Summer Economic Statement last month, to just under 80pc now.
"I think the figures released by the Central Statistics Office show that Ireland's economy continues to grow," he said.
"People's lives are improving, with more at work than at any time since the onset of the downturn. We no longer need to impose swingeing cuts to public services, rather we have room to invest in services and infrastructure."
Sinn Fein finance spokesman Pearse Doherty urged people to take it with "a ton of salt" and said the number was a "nonsense". "It is irrelevant. It does not reflect any sort of reality," he said.
Q: Did the Irish economy really grow by more than 26pc last year?
A: No. Well on paper, yes, but in reality, no. The Central Statistics Office, which in March said the economy in GDP terms surged by 7.8pc last year, revised its figure to a massive 26.3pc.
The activities of Ireland's multinational sector are primarily the cause of this. The CSO said the surge was driven by an increase in the number of aircraft imported for international leasing, at least in accounting terms, and, in part, by some very large foreign companies reinventing themselves as Irish to benefit from our low corporation tax rate. That doesn't necessarily mean there's any meaningful movement of workers or operations here. These are called corporate inversions, in which a US company registers in Ireland to avoid paying hefty corporate taxes in America. But in reality, there has been no change to the economy as you and I know it. It's multinational funny games related to our complex, open economy.
Q: So is this essentially phantom growth?
A: That's a decent way of putting it. Economists have dismissed the data as utterly meaningless and "farcical". Even Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman has weighed into the debate, branding it as "Leprechaun economics". They say the best indication of the health of the economy can be found by looking at indicators like employment and unemployment, and consumer demand.
Q: If this is essentially phantom growth, what is the underlying, true growth, in the economy?
A: The Central Statistics Office didn't say, which is rather frustrating.
But most economists estimate that it's probably in the 4pc to 5pc range, with the Department of Finance forecasting growth of 4.9pc this year, although that is likely to soften now in the wake of Brexit. So, even though the figure given yesterday is dismissed as meaningless, the economy is growing strongly. Just not as strongly as the official figures suggest.
Q: If this surge in growth is driven by multinationals, is there a better measurement of economic strength?
A: Up to now, it's been GNP, or Gross National Product.
That strips out the effect of multinationals, but the problem now is those companies that have registered themselves as Irish, so they can now be classed as Irish companies according to Dermot O'Leary of Goodbody Stockborkers, and can be counted in GNP. This means that measure is now distorted also.
So there are now question marks over the validity of not only GDP data in Ireland, but also GNP.
Q: You mean to tell me we have an official body giving the public the official GDP figure, which is then dismissed as meaningless, and we simply accept it?
A: Welcome to Ireland. It's not fair to blame the CSO, because this is the economy that we've created for ourselves, and it is operating within those parameters.
When you have an open economy as heavily dependent on multinationals as we are, you're going to get these anomalies. But what emerged yesterday brought it to a new level of absurdity.
Q: Does any of this matter in my life, then?
A: Yes, because GDP is probably the key international benchmark for the health of an economy.
Everything from how much we owe, to how much we can invest, is measured against it.
The cost to Ireland of our membership of international bodies, including the European Union and IMF is calculated based on the size of the economy. It also, in theory, has an effect on the Budget arithmetic.
Q: Oh, you mean the Government could have more money in the Budget?
A: Don't get greedy. Haven't you been paying attention? The official figures are misleading. The amount of money in the economy hasn't changed.
We haven't suddenly gotten 26pc richer, but the Government could be under some pressure nonetheless to loosen the purse strings.
Q: Does this damage our international reputation?
A: Potentially, yes. The chief reason for all of this is the unusually big impact here of multinationals, which is undoubtedly linked to our low corporate tax rate.
We're already criticised because of that, and these off-the-wall statistics will cast the spotlight further on the credibility of Ireland Inc.
Finance Minister Michael Noonan met with Europe's Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager yesterday, amid speculation that a decision on the state-aid case involving Apple is imminent.
If she decides against Ireland, Apple faces potentially huge bills for back taxes.
Mr Noonan met Ms Vestager while he was in Brussels for a meeting of European Finance Ministers. The Apple case is thought to have been discussed, although the precise details of the conversation have not been made public. The Department of Finance confirmed the meeting took place, but gave no further details.
US treasury secretary, Jacob Lew, is reportedly also set to meet with Ms Vestager this week, four months after he complained to her about the EU unfairly targeting US multinational firms trading in Europe. Ms Vestager has denied the claims.
A Bloomberg report claimed that the Commissioner's team has now come up with two positions on how much tax Apple owes in Ireland.
The newswire also said Mr Lew has contacted Ms Vestager ahead of her final ruling, urging her to avoid ordering any collection of back taxes from Apple.
The EU opened the Apple probe in 2014, and, in preliminary findings, said its tax arrangements were improperly designed to give the company a financial boost in exchange for jobs in Ireland. The Irish government has said it will "vigorously defend'' any adverse Apple tax decision.
Apple told a European Parliament panel earlier this year that it has "paid every cent of tax that is due in Ireland".
Mr Noonan said last month the EU decision could come as soon as July, though he also suggested that the UK vote to quit the EU may trigger delays. The finance ministry couldn't comment on timing.
Ms Vestager has remained tight-lipped about the possible amount that Apple could be ordered to pay back to Ireland should regulators decide that the company received illegal tax breaks.
Estimates from banks have varied from hundreds of millions of euro to billions.
A spokesman for Apple declined to comment on the timing of the decision.
The company has previously claimed that its operations in Ireland support 18,000 jobs and that it spent over 200m with Irish companies last year. It also claimed it has spent over 11bn with 4,500 European suppliers supports 240,000 jobs in Europe.
Apple is Cork's largest private employer where its facility has operations in service, sales, finance and logistics. Its Cork factory, employing more than 5,500 people, is the only Apple-owned manufacturing facility in the world.
So-called corporate inversions have traditionally been big American pharmaceutical companies, keen to escape the high tax rates in the United States. Stock Image
One of the elements that helped boost Ireland's GDP last year are so-called corporate inversions, in which US companies re-register overseas in order to avoid hefty tax bills.
The colossal 26.3pc GDP rate was in part driven by these deals, which essentially involve large foreign companies reinventing themselves as being Irish to avail of our low corporate tax rate, while keeping their core operations in their original jurisdiction.
They have traditionally been big American pharmaceutical companies, keen to escape the high tax rates in the United States.
In an inversion, the American company typically buys a smaller foreign rival and relocates, at least on paper, to the rival's home country so that the new combined company is not based in the US.
The US Government has clamped down on these deals by introducing new rules.
That scuppered the planned $160bn merger of drugs giants Pfizer and Allergan, which would have created Ireland's biggest company by shifting Pfizer's global tax base to Ireland.
But there had been other successful deals before that.
Other companies that have inverted, mostly through acquisitions, are Perrigo and Jazz Pharmaceuticals.
So Ireland has been a favourite location for this type of activity in recent years. But the problem is that it artificially inflates the size of our economy, which is what we have seen in the data produced yesterday.
To be fair to the Government here, it has openly stated it is not in the business of courting inversion deals.
It casts yet another negative shadow on Ireland's corporate tax offering, and that's something the Government is keen to shake off.
Unfortunately for us, the latest GDP figures make that difficult.
The funeral of Victor Barrio. Pablo Martin (EFE)
Spains Fighting Bulls Foundation, one of the countrys leading organizations for the promotion and legal protection of bullfighting, says it will take legal action against individuals who used the social networks to mock the death of torero Victor Barrio in the aftermath of his fatal goring in the ring on Saturday.
In a press statement issued on Tuesday morning, the organization said it had already contacted the police regarding charges of slander, defamation and incitement to hatred.
The foundation said it was acting on behalf of Barrios family and would take all legal measures available. There can be no impunity for these acts, said the statement.
Barrio, a 29-year-old professional matador, died after a horn pierced his chest during a crowded bullfight in the town of Teruel, in the eastern region of Aragon. His death was shown live on television. He is the first Spanish bullfighter to die in the ring since 1992.
To prevent future generations from embracing the sport, legislation in Catalonia makes bullfights R-rated: children under 14 can no longer attend bullfights
So far, opponents of bullfighting have posted more than 50 messages on the social networks celebrating Barrios death, along with insults aimed at his widow and family.
Many of these messages are crimes punishable by law through prison sentences of up to 14 months, aggravated by the publicity they have received through their dissemination on the social networks, said the foundation in its statement.
It added that it was calling on bullfighting aficionados to contact the foundation regarding any message, tweet or other communication related to Barrios death.
The foundation said it would be seeking institutional support from the office of Spains ombudsman, as well as the culture, justice, and interior ministries to guarantee the observance of the law and respect for the bullfighting world.
Declining popularity?
The popularity of bullfighting has been in decline over the last two decades. Between 2007 and 2014, the number of bullfights held in Spain dropped by almost two-thirds, according to the Culture Ministry. On the other hand, other kinds of bull-related events, typically held during local fiestas, grew in number.
Animal rights groups have been increasingly active in rallying opposition to bullfighting, reflected by the decision of some city and town councils to withdraw financial support for the sport.
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Animal rights groups say that less than 10% of Spaniards attend bullfights, pointing to similar television audience shares.
In 2004, Barcelona declared itself an anti-bullfighting city, and in 2007, an animal-protection law prohibiting new bullrings went into effect throughout the entire northeastern region of Catalonia. To prevent future generations from embracing the sport, the law also made bullfights R-rated: children under 14 can no longer attend. Aficionados say that with each move against bullfighting, the chance that new generations will embrace this most Spanish of spectacles is reduced, and that it will soon die out.
English version by Nick Lyne.
Here are the main business stories from this morning's papers:
Irish Independent
* Finance Minister Michael Noonan met with Europe's Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager yesterday, amid speculation that a decision on the state-aid case involving Apple is imminent.
If she decides against Ireland, Apple faces potentially huge bills for back taxes.
* Facebook, Google and other Irish-based tech multinationals will not face any block on data transfers to the US in the near future after the EU and US agreed a new transatlantic data accord.
The 'Privacy Shield' pact, which succeeds the struck-down 'Safe Harbour' agreement, ends months of uncertainty over cross-border data flows.
* The Irish-headquartered aircraft leasing firm Avolon reported strong growth in the second quarter of its financial year as it increased its owned, managed and committed fleet to 443.
During the three-month period the company delivered 11 aircraft to seven customers and sold a further five. Avolon also said it has letters of intent in place for 13 further sales due to be completed this year.
The Irish Times
* Central Bank governor Philip Lane is concerned over the latest figures around the country's economic growth after the CSO said GDP rose by 26pc in 2015.
According to a report in The Irish Times, Mr Lane met with the statistics office to highlight his concerns that the GDP figure does not mirror the country's real economic growth.
* Multi-nationals have been put at the heart of the reason for Ireland's massively inflated economic growth figure for 2015 with a number of firms in aircraft leasing, tech, and pharma contributing.
The figure had been previously estimated at around 7.8pc but had to be reclassified due to a number of one-off factors.
* Finance minister Michael Noonan met with Margrethe Vestager on Tuesday to discuss the Apple tax case as a decision on the tech giant looms.
According to a report in The Irish Times, Mr Noonan reiterated the Government's stance that the tax allegations against Apple were unfounded.
Irish Examiner
* 1.6m in salary top-ups will have to be repaid by senior charity bosses as part of a crackdown by the Government.
According to a report in the Irish Examiner, minister for public expenditure Paschal Donohoe warned that unauthorised pay to charity bosses won't be tolerated.
* German chancellor Angela Merkel has ruled out any special trade deal for Ireland following Brexit saying that Ireland's voice will be heard as much as any other member state.
Ms Merkel was speaking at a press conference in Berlin with the Taoiseach where she gave no indication of a possible negotiation for Ireland post Brexit.
* The Shannon Group has kick-started plans to have in place a new flagship tourism attraction for the Midwest.
The group is seeking expressions of interest from firms to carry out a feasibility study into the development of a new tourism product.
The new boss of Marks & Spencer appealed to the British retailer's army of private shareholders to back his attempt to revive its clothing business, but some attendees at Tuesday's annual investor meeting remained fearful of another false dawn.
Steve Rowe, a 26-year M&S veteran who succeeded Marc Bolland as chief executive in April, has pledged to turn around the clothing business by improving ranges and availability, cutting prices and offering fewer promotions.
His plan came with a warning of a short-term dent to sales and profit and last week the 132-year-old group reported its worst quarterly clothing sales fall for a decade.
Rowe said in May that he would focus on the retailer's average customer, a 50-year-old woman he described as "Mrs M&S", who had been neglected in the pursuit of younger, more fashion-conscious shoppers.
"I know that it's a big ask for me to stand here today with a new set of ideas and ask you to trust me that things will be different this time," Rowe told a packed meeting at London's Wembley Stadium complex.
"(But) I firmly believe that we can return our clothing business to positive growth."
Small private shareholders account for about a quarter of M&S equity, prompting Rowe to take steps to counter the most vocal perennial AGM complainers by inviting a group to a shareholder panel "tea party" last month.
The tone of Tuesday's meeting was generally positive, with one shareholder, a Mr Clark, describing the CEO's speech as "inspirational stuff".
Some, however, were unconvinced.
A Mrs Smith introduced herself as "not Mrs M&S" and questioned whether management understands its customers.
"In my view, the remark about Mrs M&S shows that you don't," she said.
"It was in my opinion the most disastrous piece of marketing since Gerald Ratner extolled the virtues of his silver-plated dinner set," she added, in a reference to an infamous speech given by the boss of jewellery chain Ratners in 1991.
"It does suggest to me that you still live in the world where women dress from head to toe in one brand -- we don't ... We're individuals and we don't like being labelled."
Shares in M&S, down 38 percent over the past year, rose 1.5 percent to 334 pence at Tuesday's close.
The Strategic Banking Corporation of Ireland (SBCI) and Bibby Financial Services Ireland (BFSI) have launched a new 45m invoice financing fund for small and medium enterprises (SMEs).
The new fund makes more favourable rates for BFSI's invoice finance facilities accessible for Irish firms and is available immediately.
Invoice financing frees up cash for company by giving them up front payment against the value of outstanding invoices. The deal marks the SBCI's first venture into invoice financing.
Finance minister Michael Noonan welcomed the new fund.
This new 45 million package further diversifies the funding available to SMEs at a critical time for Irish businesses especially those who include exports to the UK as part of their sales.
"It is a welcome fact that Bibby Financial Services is a global business with a strong presence throughout the UK and Ireland. Irish SMEs are now in a position to benefit from SBCI funding available through an expert Invoice Finance provider," Mr Noonan said.
BFS chief executive Steve Box said he was "delighted" to announce the partnership.
At a time where there is some uncertainty in markets across Europe, the most basic support that SMEs need to grow and scale-up their businesses is access to finance. Our 45m facility agreed with SBCI will enable us to deliver lower cost, more flexible and competitive funding solutions to SMEs throughout Ireland.
"While there is still a high level of dependency on traditional banks amongst SMEs, we are seeing a growing appetite for alternative sources of finance and we look forward to helping Irish businesses to thrive and grow, both domestically and internationally.
David Cameron was in mischievous form for his last PMQs session before Theresa May takes over the role of Prime Minister this evening.
Cameron laughed and teased Jeremy Corbyn, saying hes looking absolutely splendid today, before continuing on to settle one last rumour about his time as Prime Minister.
It has long been speculated that the 49-year-old is not a fan of the cat that resides in 10 Downing Street, however Cameron shut the rumours down by producing a photo of him sitting in an arm chair with the much-loved animal.
This gives me the opportunity to put a rumour to rest, he said.
Even more serious than the Strictly Come Dancing One
The rumour is that I dont love Larry. And I do. I have photographic evidence to prove it, he said, before displaying a photo of him and his furry friend.
The former Conservative Party leader went on to confirm that the feline will not be evicted from Downing Street upon his departure - something that he isnt happy about.
Sadly, I cant take Larry with me, he said.
He belongs to the house and the staff love him very much. And so do I, he finished.
New Tory leader Theresa May and husband Phillip are set to move into Downing Street on Wednesday evening when Cameron officially hands over the keys.
Actor Simon Pegg poses for photographers upon arrival at the premiere of the film 'Star Trek Beyond' in London. (Photo by Joel Ryan/Invision/AP)
Star Trek actor and writer Simon Pegg urged Theresa May to consider "What would Kirk do?" when she takes over as prime minister.
Pegg, who plays Scotty in the rebooted franchise, said he hopes Mrs May follows the example of the captain of the starship USS Enterprise after she takes up residency in 10 Downing Street.
Arriving at the UK premiere of Star Trek Beyond, which he co-wrote, Pegg urged: "Lead for the people, don't forget anybody. Don't just protect the people who are well off, look after everybody. There are a lot of people in this country who need to be looked after, who are so often forgotten.
"Ask yourself 'what would Kirk do?' Theresa."
Pegg said the film, which sees the crew of the USS Enterprise face a new and ruthless enemy, has messages that could benefit the British people following the vote to leave the European Union.
He said: "Ironically the message is it's better together, unity is strength. It's about co-operation and breaking down the boundaries between races and species and types and working together and it seems incredibly apposite at the moment considering the decision this country has just made, which feels a little bit to me like a retrograde step.
"We need to be a little bit more Star Trek, a bit more like the Federation."
Pegg, who described himself as a "dyed in the wool" left-winger, also voiced his support for embattled Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn saying: "I respect Jeremy Corbyn because I like that fact he's brought some opposition back into party politics.
"Party politics had become very bland, they had almost become the same party and you need someone to mix it up. You need the dark and the light, you need the opposites, you need debate and you need to move forward through debate and I think Jeremy is just standing up for shit and I have got to respect that."
Zachary Quinto, who plays vulcan Spock in the film, echoed Pegg's sentiment about the film's message, saying unity is "something a lot of people in the world could benefit from right now".
He added: "We all feel pretty fractured right now and the divisiveness seems really pervasive and overwhelming and that is unfortunate. There seems to be one way of thinking which is much more progressive and accepting and open and one which is much more xenophobic and nationalistic and closed off. I think there is only one clear path forward."
Quinto said he could see parallel divisions in society in the UK and USA, as well as other parts of the world, adding: "It's shocking to me how quickly it has happened, that we have split off into these two factions that are not really interested in what the other group has to say, it's very intolerant on both sides.
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"Openness and curiosity and connectivity are things that could benefit all of us in this day and age."
Pegg and Quinto were joined at the premiere by their co-stars Chris Pine, John Cho and Karl Urban, as well as franchise newcomers Idris Elba and Sofia Boutella.
Star Trek Beyond is released in UK cinemas on July 22.
Angela Kerins on the way to a hearing of the Dails PAC. Photo: Tom Burke
The former chief executive of the Rehab Group, Angela Kerins, attempted suicide in the aftermath of her infamous appearance at the Dail Public Accounts Committee (PAC) and would have died but for medical intervention.
Ms Kerins took a large quantity of pills and some alcohol in her home and fell unconscious, but was rescued by a Rehab colleague who broke into the house out of concern.
She wrote notes for her family to explain her actions before the suicide bid.
At the time I was very angry I did not succeed, she said in an affidavit opened in court today.
The incident was revealed by counsel for Ms Kerins in the High Court, where she has begun an action for damages against the committee.
Opening the case, John Rogers SC detailed how on March 14, 2014, just over two weeks after a bruising appearance at the PAC, which focussed on her 240,000 salary and governance at Rehab, Ms Kerins self-harmed.
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She became unconscious in her own home and had to be rescued for her life, said Mr Rogers.
In her affidavit, Ms Kerins said that following the hearing and negative publicity which accompanied it, she became irrationally convinced that the solution was to sacrifice myself.
She said she felt that if she was off the planet the furore would end.
In short my death would solve the problem, she said.
In the affidavit, she said she consumed a large quantity of pills and some alcohol at her home.
She said she did not succeed in taking her life after a colleague from Rehab gained access to the house and had her rushed to hospital.
After the incident she was admitted to St Vincents Hospital, where she remained until the following day.
Mr Rogers outlined events leading up to the suicide bid.
He said that after the PAC hearing on February 27 that year, during which there was repeated questioning about her salary, pension and bonuses, Ms Kerins became ill.
Mr Rogers said that on March 2, she had a collapse in her health.
He said she had a GP in Waterford and was admitted to the Whitfield private clinic.
She was under the care of a gastroenterologist and was referred to a psychiatrist.
Ms Kerins was discharged on March 6 and driven by a friend to the Beacon Hospital in Dublin, where she was admitted and remained until March 11.
The suicide attempt occurred three days later.
Mr Rogers described Ms Kerins as a most courageous woman and said her submission to the court had to be one of the most difficult a person can make.
He said that in January 2014, his client was confronted with a growing amount of material which was negative to her interests and reflected negatively on her character.
He pointed to a Sunday Independent article by former PAC member Shane Ross from January 12, 2014.
Mr Ross is now Minister for Transport.
This article dealt with an interview Ms Kerins gave to Morning Ireland presenter Gavin Jennings in which she was asked about her salary.
Mr Ross said in the piece that Ms Kerinss hubris was breathtaking, referring to her response to questions about her remuneration.
Mr Rogers told the court that this article set the tone for what was to follow.
Ms Kerins was asked to attend the PAC in a letter on January 22 and there was further correspondence on February 27 outlining the format of the hearing.
We know the PAC is a place, certainly in the past two years, where an invitee will go with some hesitancy, said Mr Rogers.
Counsel said the tone of the meeting was critical.
I think I can safely say members of the committee used, in some instances, upbraiding language, said Mr Rogers.
The meeting on occasion became judgemental. Ms Kerins was examined on private matters. She was re-examined and cross examined about her pension and bonuses.
In Ms Kerinss affidavit, she said she encountered a tsunami of abuse at the PAC hearing.
She said committee members pursued a horrific agenda in the pursuit of headlines.
Ms Kerins said she had not been naive and had sought and received assurances in advance of the hearing that questioning would be limited to the publicly funded element of the charity and commercial groups operations.
These were services funded by the HSE and Solus. It was also outlined that the Charitable Lotteries Fund, which had been the subject of a legal dispute between Rehab and the Department of Justice, would be discussed.
Ms Kerins pointed out in advance that her salary was not drawn from any public funding.
She said she was not coerced into attending the hearing, but at the same time her appearance could not be described as voluntary.
Ms Kerins said she was helpless in the face of what happened next.
She said it was a McCarthy-like with hunt. The committee engaged in a real case of impression management, giving the impression that it was acting in the public interest.
Ms Kerins said PAC members asked the same questions again and again, even though other members had asked them already.
She said she was shocked PAC chairman John McGuinness had not intervened on her behalf and that she felt she had been entrapped by him.
After the hearing, she had difficulty leaving the house and felt her name had become like poison.
A trip to the hairdressers was enough to produce sensational headlines. People had begun hanging around outside her house at night and she had a real fear of a break-in.
Ms Kerins said the negative publicity was affecting her family too. She said her husband was working outside the country and she had a duty to try to shield her children from it.
The former Rehab chief executive also said she had been the subject of an anonymous death threat.
She said her whole world had been turned upside down and the exchanges of the meeting were quite devastating.
The PAC had caused her to be humiliated in the national and international media and she had lost her job as a result.
One of the PAC boasted that my resigning was one of their greatest achievements, she said.
The affidavit said she resigned on April 1, 2014 and the resignation had effect on April 4.
After leaving Rehab she had spent a long period feeling rudderless and directionless.
She said it had taken her a long time to get her life back on track.
Even now I can become overwhelmed, she said.
The case, which is being heard by High Court President Peter Kelly, Mrs Justice Isobel Kennedy and Mr Justice Seamus Noonan, is set to last six days.
Ms Kerins is seeking damages, alleging she suffered personal injury, lost her job, and had her constitutional rights breached as a result of the conduct of the committee.
The committee denies her claims. It maintains it was entitled to question her in circumstances where 81pc of Rehabs income in Ireland came from State contracts.
The Samaritans can be contacted by phone at 116 123. This number is FREE to call.
Chief Justice Susan Denham launched the annual report of the Courts Service in Dublin. Photo: RollingNews.ie
Court officials are seeking extra security around home and property repossession cases after a series of disturbances at courthouses around the country.
Officials are now profiling upcoming cases to assess where additional gardai should be drafted into courthouses when it is feared there may be a flashpoint.
It follows the agreement of new pre-case protocols between Courts Service officials and senior gardai.
Action has had to be taken after several courts were "taken over" by members of anti-authoritarian groups such as the Land League and Integrity Ireland. In some instances court officials have been forced to flee from their bench or hearings have had to be adjourned.
Brendan Ryan, chief executive of the Courts Service, said: "No judges have had to leave the bench, but some country registrars have."
County registrars are not members of the judiciary, but do have a quasi-judicial role and can conduct case progression hearings and arbitrations.
Incidents have occurred at courthouses in Mayo, Wexford and Limerick over the past year.
Mr Ryan told the Irish Independent that a high-level security review was conducted 18 months ago and new arrangements were recommended in a subsequent report produced last March.
"Arising out of that there were various recommendations, including trying to profile these cases to ensure that the courts inform the guards at the appropriate time that there may be an issue," he said. "The guards also do their own profiling."
During one incident in Castlebar, Co Mayo last September, a judge was forced to adjourn proceedings amid shouting from the public gallery and efforts by the Integrity Ireland group to place the judge and a garda superintendent under citizen's arrest.
There were chaotic scenes in Limerick last May when a county registrar had to vacate his bench twice after protesters approached him shouting.
Mr Ryan said it was "appalling that the judicial system should be attacked" in this manner.
"It should not happen. At the end of the day in any democratic society you need a functioning efficient independent court. That is the basis to every democracy," he said.
David Barniville, president of the Bar Council, said such incidents were becoming "more prevalent".
Undermine
"Some of these groups, their sole objective seems to be to undermine the State, undermine the judiciary, undermine the rule of law," he said.
"There have been a lot of cases of judges being physically intimidated, verbally intimidated, interfered with, and their courts being taken over by groups of these people."
Meanwhile, figures published in the Courts Service annual report yesterday revealed court-sanctioned debt settlements increased by 84pc last year, up to 1,735.
Speaking at the launch of the report, Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald said this was down to the reform of personal insolvency legislation which allows courts to review and, where appropriate, approve insolvency deals that have been rejected by banks if the borrower's home mortgage is involved.
"Court rules and procedures for repossession cases were also streamlined to assist people who are unfamiliar with court rules and proceedings," she said.
The report said there had been a 40pc decrease in High Court possession orders, down to 113 last year.
New cases for possession in high and circuit courts amounted to 5,169, down 38pc on 2014.
There was a 5pc increase in bankruptcy cases.
A Dutch pensioner has been jailed for 15 years convicted of murdering his Irish wife at their home in the Netherlands.
Passing sentence on Arnold Viguurs (63) yesterday the three judge Court in the city of sHertogenbosch (Den Bosch) described the violent death last November of Martina O Brien Viguurs bludgeoned with a hammer and then strangled by her husband as a shocking act of violence.
The punishment is very severe by Dutch standards as the accused man had no previous convictions.
In their judgement the Court said a severe punishment was necessary because of the immense pain, suffering and loss her death had caused to her 8 children and 11 grandchildren.
Martina (64) was a kind, warm-hearted woman devoted to her family who had died needlessly at the hands of a callous coward of a man whose only way out of telling her the truth about their severe financial problems was to cold bloodedly plot and carry out her murder, the Court ruled.
Just hours before she believed they would catch a flight to Ireland to visit family and view houses for sale, as they had recently sold their Dutch home, glamorous former nurse and air hostess Martina already lay dead on the living room floor.
Former estate agent Viguurs told his trial two weeks ago that he killed her because he was desperate and afraid to admit they could not travel to Ireland because there was no money to pay for the tickets nor enough to buy a new home there.
He had lived a lie for years telling his wife, a native of Rathkeale, Co Limerick, they would have enough money to retire comfortably and move back to Ireland after selling their home in Den Bosch, a small city 100 kms south of Amsterdam.
He finally told Martina the truth that debts had eaten up their entire savings from his half of a local real estate business he sold in 2013 and there was nothing left for the air tickets or a house in Ireland, before killing her.
He claimed that it was a spur of the moment action but during his interrogation the accused admitted that he had thought about ways of killing her the previous night as an escape from coming clean about their financial meltdown.
When he told her he planned to end his own life in 2014 because he was so desperate about money she begged him not to do so saying she could not live without him.
The killer wrote a suicide letter two days earlier saying Tina I have always loved you I am sorry I have made such a mess of our life. I hope you can forgive me. I cant leave you behind in the trouble Ive caused. I hope you find peace in heaven.
I realised that if I was to kill myself I had to take her with me he told the Court. After killing Martina he went upstairs but with a noose around his neck was unable to take his own life. Instead he called the emergency services.
Forensic evidence showed Martina suffered injuries to her hands and elbows consistent with an attempt to defend herself. But it was strangulation and not the hammer blows that caused her death on November 9 of last year.
He had always wanted to give Martina the best but that was no longer possible, he pleaded during the trial two weeks ago saying their marriage had been a loving one.
Civil Guard officers with a jihadist suspect in the Catalan city of Lleida. EFE
A new report by a leading think tank about the activities of Islamic State (ISIS) in Spain shows a shift away from the lone wolf radicalization process to one in which relatives, friends and neighbors are playing a growing role.
Researchers at the Real Instituto Elcano also found that out of the 124 jihadists who were arrested in Spain between June 2013 and May 2016, 34.5% of them one in three wanted to carry out an an attack on Spanish soil, either out of hatred or a desire to earn a place in paradise.
129 Spaniards in ISIS P. O. D. Figures ending in May 2016 show there were 129 Spanish nationals in Syria and Iraq fighting for the Islamic State. Another 29 had died and 20 had returned to Spain. Barcelona stands out among all Spanish cities as a hotbed for radicalization: 28.2% of detainees lived in the Catalan capital or surrounding area. Meanwhile, the exclave cities of Ceuta and Melilla, located along the northern coast of Africa, remain the main places of origin of Spanish islamists.
Most Spain-based jihadists (83.1% of cases) are men aged around 30, either Moroccan or born in Spain to Muslim immigrants. Typically they are married and have at least two children. These recruits also tend to have little or no personal knowledge about Islam (only 11% displayed understanding of its precepts) and often have a criminal record.
Fernando Reinares and Carola Garcia Calvo, the authors of the report, found that the lone wolf is increasingly being replaced by a new type of jihadist. In 94% of cases they looked at from 2013, terrorists were part of recently created cells, while three out of four had some form of direct organizational link to the so-called Islamic State. In other words, they were not acting independently, but were part of networks.
Most of these networks are international. In many cases, jihadists had connections to individuals in Morocco, France and Belgium, as well as with Turkey, which is a transit nation for most European combatants heading to Syria and Iraq.
Wolf packs
Spain-based jihadists, says the report, no longer act or become radicalized alone and now belong to what the authors call wolf packs. Their reasons for joining the Islamic State are varied, ranging from emotional crises to a desire to go to heaven or undertake personal penance.
All people who live in Spain are criminals
Jihadist suspect
There came a point when I didnt care about the world anymore, one jihadist is reported as telling police. Its an opportunity for sinners like me, said another.
Hatred of Europe and European values also drives some young men toward radicalization, as evidenced by conversations intercepted by the police and referred to in the report. Seeing the terror on Europeans faces was priceless, said one of the perpetrators of the Paris attacks of November 13, 2015. All people who live in Spain are criminals, said one individual arrested here. Damn their race, I cant stand them, said another.
This analysis contradicts the widely accepted sociological theory that recruits are radicalized on the internet and social networks. Instead, the report shows that the main points of contact with violent radicalism are worship centers headed by charismatic leaders, personal homes or penitentiaries. That is to say that physical contact is more important than virtual contact, in a process that typically begins when the target is between 15 and 29 years old.
English version by Susana Urra.
EU Agriculture Commissioner Phil Hogan has received apologies and damages, believed to total over 100,000, from two media outlets over claims that he engaged in racist and prejudicial behaviour.
This follows comments by broadcaster Vincent Browne in 2013 and articles published in the 'Irish Daily Mail' during 2012.
Mr Hogan was present in the High Court yesterday as Mr Justice Colm Mac Eochaidh was told that actions the former Environment Minister had taken against both media outlets had been settled on terms agreed between the sides and could be struck out with no order.
Apologies from TV3 and Associated Newspapers, the publishers of the 'Irish Daily Mail', were then read to the court.
The TV3 apology said that during the course of a broadcast on the 'Tonight with Vincent Browne' show on May 20, 2013, comments were made by Mr Browne "that Mr Hogan engaged in racist behaviour and suggested he was prejudiced against the Travelling community and intervened with the local authority about the allocation of housing for Travellers".
Counsel for TV3 said: "We accept these comments were untrue and unwarranted and defamatory of Mr Hogan's reputation. TV3 takes this opportunity to publicly apologise to Mr Hogan for the damage caused to his reputation."
The apology read on behalf of Associated Newspapers said articles published on two dates in September 2012 in the 'Irish Daily Mail' "inferred that Mr Hogan was prejudiced against the Travelling community and that he had intervened with a local authority in relation to housing accommodation for Travellers".
Counsel for Associated Newspapers said: "We accept that these articles were unfair, misleading and damaging.
"The publisher of the 'Irish Daily Mail' takes this opportunity to publicly withdraw these allegations and apologise for the damage caused to Mr Hogan."
The terms of the settlements were not disclosed, but a source close to Mr Hogan indicated that the total sum involved was in excess of 100,000.
The commissioner initiated legal proceedings against both media outlets in 2013.
In a statement, Mr Hogan said that he was pleased to have been "vindicated" by the apologies.
It added: "Mr Hogan sincerely hopes he can continue to discharge his duties without further wrongful and damaging media comment on this matter."
The husband of a woman who died while undergoing surgery at the National Maternity Hospital, Holles Street, has had "every imaginable obstacle" put in his way in his attempts find out what happened, his solicitor has claimed.
Malak Kuzbary Thawley (34), who developed an ectopic pregnancy, died on May 8 while being operated on at the hospital.
The report of an internal inquiry into her death, which was due to be circulated yesterday, has been delayed for a number of weeks.
Caoimhe Haughey, solicitor for Alan Thawley, has written several strongly worded letters to the hospital, including correspondence in late June asking for all documentation to be handed over. She said this should include hospital notes, clinical notes, statements, medical and clinical opinions as well as reports that were supplied to the investigation team.
This was essential if Mr Thawley was to accept an invitation to take part in the inquiry, she added.
The hospital gave Ms Haughey the deceased's hospital chart but said it could not give additional documentation because the investigation was conducted on a confidential basis.
A hospital spokesman said: "The case is subject to external investigation by the coroner and a public inquest to be held in public. At all times, Mr Thawley has been welcome to participate in this investigation process in accordance with the hospital's standard protocol. The investigation report will be furnished to Mr Thawley immediately upon completion."
A Dublin man who was found with a shotgun in his bedroom has been given a suspended three-year sentence.
Shane Byrne (28) of Brompton Lawn, Castleknock pleaded guilty to one count of possessing a firearm in his home between March 1 and March 7, 2012.
Garda Michael Costello told Dublin Circuit Criminal Court on Wednesday that gardai carried out a search warrant at a house in Castleknock, which Byrne shared with his older brother, Michael.
Shane Byrne led gardai to his bedroom, where they discovered a shotgun stuffed down the side of an armchair.
During the search, gardai also found another shotgun and a quantity of drugs. Byrne's brother has been dealt with by the courts in relation to those items, the court heard.
Byrne told gardai his brother had left the gun in his bedroom and that he wasn't involved in any of this stuff, the court heard.
Byrne has no previous convictions. He later went travelling to Australia and was charged in Dublin airport upon his arrival home.
Seoirse O Dunlaing BL, defending, said the shotgun was only in Byrne's bedroom because his brother put it there.
It was there out of a sense of loyalty to his brother, Mr O Dunlaing said. (His brother) was the main participant and the main perpetrator and Shane Byrne's role was of allowing his property to be used.
Judge Melanie Greally said it was clear the shotgun was not Byrne's property.
It was put into his bedroom by his older brother who accepted responsibility for that and all of the other illegal items which were housed in the premises in Castleknock.
She said it was important to note the harm caused to society by firearms. She handed down a three-year sentence and suspended it in its entirety.
Jill Meagher who was murdered in Australia in 2012
The man who murdered Irish woman Jill Meagher has had a subsequent rape conviction quashed and his jail term cut by three years.
The jail term was cut after the Court of Appeal found a trial judge erred in allowing a jury to hear crucial identification evidence, the Age newspaper has reported.
Adrian Bayley (44) was jailed for at least 35 years for the rape and murder of the Louth woman.
Jill was last seen alive walking home from an inner city bar in Melbourne in the early hours of September 22 2012.
Bayley was found guilty in May of last year of three more violent rapes and was sentenced to 18 years in jail for those crimes.
Bayley appealed against the convictions in the first and third rape trials, and the sentences in all three trials.
The Court of Appeal reduced Bayley's non-parole period from 43 years to 40.
A mother, who overloaded her shopping trolley with her children and injured herself in a fall, has lost a 60,000 damages claim against her local Tesco.
Forensic engineer Stephen Mooney told Judge James ODonohoe in the Circuit Civil court today that by putting her children, aged three and six, on the trolley Patricia Martin had destabilised it and caused it to topple.
Ms Martin, aged 43, claimed she had injured both her knees and her left thigh when the trolley knocked her down while she tried to protect her two children from hitting the trolley ramp.
She told the court that she had carried out a shopping at Tesco, Churchview Road, Ballybrack, Co Dublin, in July 2014 and was leaving the store with her goods, and her three year old son and six year old daughter seated on the trolley, when the accident happened.
Martin, of Oakton Park, Ballybrack, claimed the accident had been caused by a deficiency in the trolley or in the ramp leading from the store to the car park. She said she had been pushing the trolley when it had suddenly overturned.
Mr Mooney told the court that cctv coverage of the incident revealed that Ms Martin had been approaching the ramp with her trolley side-on to it when the accident occurred. He said there had been no problem with either the trolley or the ramp.
He said the trolley provided seating for two toddlers of a combined weight of no more than 19 kilos but, between them, Ms Martins two children weighed 36 kilos, just under twice the recommended weight maximum.
The extra weight of the children would certainly have destabilized the trolley, he told barrister Frank Martin, counsel for Tesco, who appeared with Declan OFlaherty of Tormeys Solicitors.
Judge ODonohoe, dismissing Ms Martins claim and awarding costs against her, said it was reckless of her to have put both children on the trolley and she had been the author of her own misfortune. Neither the trolley or ramp had breached any safety regulation.
A Dublin man who assaulted a woman while she was on a visit home from America has been sentenced to three years in jail, with the final 18 months suspended.
Padraig Murphy (30) was out on bail for another assault when he grabbed Tracey Pavone by the neck during a confrontation in the Cottage Inn pub, Bluebell Avenue, Dublin.
Murphy of Lindisfarne Green, Clondalkin pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to assault causing harm to Ms Pavone on on June 8, 2014.
Garda Barry Hanrahan told the court that the Dublin woman, who now lives in America, was on a visit back here and had been celebrating a family Confirmation earlier that day.
She told gardai she got into a verbal disagreement with Murphy early on in the evening, when he said gardai were scumbags. The court heard Ms Pavone took exception to this because her brother-in-law is a guard.
During the disagreement, Ms Pavone told gardai Murphy squeezed her wrist. Later in the evening, she said she confronted Murphy about this incident.
The court heard Murphy then grabbed Ms Pavone by the neck and dragged her by the hair out of the pub, calling her a whore. A woman who was with Murphy then punched and kicked her, the court heard. The entire incident was captured on CCTV.
Gardai were called and Murphy was later arrested. Ms Pavone suffered bleeding, bruising and tenderness in the wake of the assault, but was not seriously injured, Gda Hanrahan said.
In a victim impact statement tendered to court, Ms Pavone (39) said she had panic attacks, recurring nightmares and difficulties with her confidence since the incident. Murphy had taken away her peace of mind by assaulting her the way he did, the court heard.
The court heard that at the time of the assault, Murphy was on bail for another assault offence. He was later jailed for 18 months and was released from prison in May this year.
Shaun Smyth BL, defending, said that Murphy believed Ms Pavone had spat on him when she confronted him in the bar, which caused him to react in an abominable manner.
He was incensed by this and the blood rushed to his head and he reacted in a way that was unacceptable, violent and thuggish, Mr Smyth said.
Mr Smyth said Murphy had a difficult and abusive childhood and had anger issues as a result. He worked as a carpenter in his early twenties, but was made redundant during the recession and suffered from depression as a result. He issued an apology to the court through his barrister.
Sentencing Murphy, Judge Melanie Greally noted he had a number of previous convictions, many of which demonstrate a tendency towards violence.
The court cannot ignore the serious nature of the offence and the fact it was committed on bail, she said. She sentenced Murphy to three years' imprisonment and suspended the final 18 months.
The price of going to college has reached 11,000 per year due to increases in the cost of rent, public transport and the student contribution charge over recent years.
DIT Campus Life's annual cost of living guide for 2016/17 found that the cost is similar to last year, largely due to the 3,000 contribution charge remaining the same.
The figure will be less for the 40pc of students who receive a grant, as Student Universal Support Ireland (SUSI), the national awarding authority, pays their charge.
However, the guide, which is designed to help those starting college in September, found that public transport costs have nearly doubled for students in the last decade. This year, students will pay around 135 per month.
And despite going down during the recession, rent nationally is now an average of 343 per month, and is 462 in Dublin. The figure today is just 90 less per year than it was in 2007 when prices were at their peak.
The guide also warns that if current trends continue, the 2007 peak is likely to be topped in 2017.
The cost of living guide has been published annually by DIT Campus Life since 2006. This year's report outlined some of the key changes for students during that period.
It found that students increasingly experience financial difficulty. While 45pc of undergraduates were happy with their financial situation in 2009, by 2013 this fell to 33pc.
The amount of money being spent socialising has dropped significantly during the decade. In 2006, it was more than 1,000 a year. It has now dropped to around 666 annually. The report notes that this is largely due to the availability of cheap alcohol in supermarkets and the rise in popularity of pre-drinking before hitting clubs.
The guide comes in the same week as the long awaited Cassells report into funding higher education. The committee, which was chaired by Peter Cassells, offered three options for funding third-level.
Read more: Peter Cassells: We owe it to our young population not to squabble over options
Read more: Student loan scheme 'a mortgage on young people for their education'
One of these options is a controversial 'study now, pay later' loan system. The option would allow students to get their degrees and start working before they start making repayments. The system could see students leaving college with up to 20,000 debt.
Increased attention has been paid to the funding of third level in recent years as demand for places rises. This year, more than 80,000 applied to the CAO.
Parents are spending almost 1,000 a year to send a child to primary school and 1,500 to send one to secondary school, according to a new survey.
New research by the Irish League of Credit Unions (ILCU) has found that back-to-school costs have soared by more than a third since 2012. It now costs on average 967 to send a child back to primary school, up from 686 four years ago.
And parents getting their child ready for secondary school in September will spend on average 1,474, up from 1,090 in 2012.
Among the biggest costs facing parents of primary school children are uniforms (145), school lunches (129), books (94), transport costs (83) and the so-called 'voluntary contribution' (77).
However, parents are also forking out for additional costs outside of school hours, including after-school care (132) and extracurricular activities (189).
And the costs rise steeply when it comes to secondary school, where parents are forking out for uniforms (234), books (214), lunches (166), school trips (187), 'voluntary contributions' (160), transport (124) and gym gear (97).
Enrolling your secondary school child in extracurricular activities will cost, on average, a further 180.
With costs rising sharply in recent years, it is little wonder that three-quarters of parents surveyed said they did not think schools were doing enough to keep costs down.
This view was more pronounced (83pc) among parents of children at secondary school, where the costs are higher.
Read more: Families cutting back on food to pay rising school bills, survey says
Over a third of parents said they felt under pressure to buy branded school supplies, particularly for their secondary school children. Two-thirds of parents admitted that meeting back-to-school costs would negatively impact on their household bills and family plans.
Most said they would have to sacrifice a family holiday or children's summer camps in order to cover the cost of sending their children back to school.
However, 13pc of those surveyed said they would have to cut back on how much they spent on food in order to cover school expenses.
Ed Farrell, chief executive of the ILCU, urged people to properly assess what they need, set a budget and then stick to it.
Contributions
"While it can be tedious, we would urge parents to shop around for the best-value deals," he said. "Many of the major retailers will offer fantastic deals on uniforms and school supplies.
"Most importantly, avoid using moneylenders. If you are considering a loan, make sure to visit your local credit union to see what is available to you."
The credit union survey found that almost one-third of parents got themselves into debt trying to pay the bills.
On average, parents borrowed 357, down slightly from last year by just 3.
And 14pc of the mothers and fathers in debt over back-to-school costs said they had used a moneylender at one time to get the cash.
One-third of parents this year said the back-to-school charges would have no adverse impact on them, up from 28pc last year.
Almost eight out of 10 parents are now expected to make a voluntary contribution to the school, the survey found.
On average, this costs 118 per child.
The amount sought in voluntary contributions is up this year. Parents of secondary school children are asked to make the biggest voluntary contribution, on average 160 in 2016, compared to 147 in 2015.
The average 'voluntary contribution' sought by primary schools is unchanged at 77 per child.
Some 60pc of those surveyed said they now shopped online for back-to-school items for their children, up more than 10pc from a year ago.
Saving money, getting better deals and convenience were cited as the main reasons for doing so.
Two back-to-back national elections have come and gone, yet most parties refuse to budge from their positions, making it possible for Spaniards to have to go to the polls for a record third time . Mariano Rajoy, who has been in charge of a caretaker administration ever since the original election of December 20, is widely expected to stand for reinstatement. On Wednesday, for the first time, he openly expressed his intention to put himself to a parliamentary vote if King Felipe VI, following legal procedures, formally asks him to try to form a government.
Mariano Rajoy and Pedro Sanchez meet on Wednesday. J. C. HIDALGO (EFE)
I have an interest in going to the investiture if His Majesty the King considers it convenient, said Rajoy, whose Popular Party (PP) earned 137 seats at the June 26 election, up from December but still short of the 176 required for a parliamentary majority.
But later that same day, after spending 80 minutes with Socialist Party (PSOE) leader Pedro Sanchez, Rajoy introduced elements of doubt into his earlier statement: I have an interest in going and I have an interest in governing. I dont know whether the others have an interest. I do. But if I had the certainty that it is impossible for me to get voted in, then I would open up a period of reflection and wonder how we are going to find a way out of this.
If parties once again fail to reach governing deals or at least secure the promise of an abstention that would enable a candidate to become prime minister in either the first round of the investiture vote or in a run-off then Spain will be facing the very real possibility of a third national election.
The nationalist connection Pere Rios / EP The Catalan nationalists of Convergencia are asking Socialist leader Pedro Sanchez to take the initiative and try to form an alternative majority of his own. If not, Spain is on its way to third elections, warned the partys congressional spokesman, Francesc Homs. Homs did not promise that Convergencia would vote for him if he were to stand for the prime ministers position once again, but he also noted that support for a referendum on independence is no longer a necessary condition. Instead, he asked the PSOE to accept the creation of a congressional committee to analyze the referendum issue. Meanwhile, the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) said on Wednesday that it would make no sense for the Socialists to block a Rajoy government if the Socialist nominee does not have an alternative of his own. "That would really take us to third elections, which would leave the country's image at the level of mud," said PNV congressional spokesman Aitor Esteban.
Rajoy said he wants to avoid such a scenario at all costs, because it would be an absurdity. He said he would like for Spains new executive to be up and running by late July or early August, in order to start working on pressing issues such as the 2017 budget.
But so far, the main opposition Socialists, who have 85 seats in Congress, insist that they will vote against Rajoy if he bids for the post. Walking out of his meeting with Sanchez, Rajoy said that the essential thing is that he told me he will vote no, and for us to seek agreements with other political forces more similar to ourselves.
Pedro Sanchez, who himself bid for the prime ministerial position after the first election and was voted down by other forces, held a press conference of his own after his meeting with Rajoy and insisted that the latter may not count on the PSOE to help him into office.
To this day, the PP has no support of any kind, he said. To this day, the PSOE reaffirms that it will vote against Mr Rajoy. He knows that he cannot count on the PSOE for a grand coalition government or to negotiate a legislative program. The PSOE will do exactly the same thing the PP did when it voted against my investiture.
Some Socialist voices have quietly been suggesting the need for an abstention in order to let the PP form a minority government and pull Spain out of the months-long political deadlock. The latest and most high-profile proponent of this move is Felipe Gonzalez, Spains longest-serving prime minister, who recently published an article in EL PAIS asking the PSOE not to obstruct a government by the most-voted party.
But so far, Sanchez is not convinced.
Mr Rajoy needs to find potential allies, and the PSOE is not among these potential allies, he said on Wednesday. I reminded him that he no longer has an absolute majority and that he must read the election outcome fully: the PP is the first force in terms of seats, but Spaniards did not give him a large enough majority to govern with just his own program.
Between a rock and a hard place
Meanwhile, the emerging forces Unidos Podemos (71 seats) and Ciudadanos (32) are doing their own math, and putting pressure on Sanchez to break the impasse.
Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias is asking Sanchez to choose between the right, which would make him a partner of the PP or his own Unidos Podemos leftist alliance. Sanchez must choose between Rajoy, a leftist alternative or third elections.
It is up to the PSOE to go to third elections or not. I understand they are under a lot of pressure. I would not want to be in their shoes right now, said Iglesias on the TV network Antena 3.
But Sanchez has noted that Podemos and the PP already partnered when they voted against him at the investiture vote in March.
There are those who blocked a progressive government of change at the time, but now they are going around giving others lessons, he said.
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When he bid for the position in March, Sanchez had the sole backing of Ciudadanos, whose 40 seats at the time were insufficient to get the Socialist candidate appointed.
On Wednesday, Ciudadanos decided that it will abstain at the run-off of the investiture vote if Rajoy finally opts for the post. This decision breaks with the reform-oriented partys campaign promise not to help the acting prime minister remain in power because of the PPs long corruption record.
Ciudadanos leader Albert Rivera is now hoping that the Socialists will abstain as well in order to avoid a third election in Spain. This has now become Riveras top priority. Its up to the PSOE to make a move now, he said.
Mariano Rajoy meeting with Ciudadanos leader Albert Rivera. Jaime Villanueva (EL PAIS)
The Plan B for a minority government by the party that won the election is the only alternative to the current gridlock, said Rivera. We will not support or enter into such a government, but we have to choose between the bad and the less bad.
Rivera also issued a message to other opposition parties. We all know that we dont share Rajoys government, but Spaniards hope that politicians will provide solutions, not problems.
English version by Susana Urra.
Fr Aidan Troy with the then president Mary McAleese at the Console National Conference in 2009. Photo: Collins
The priest who won international respect for protecting Catholic children during the Ardoyne loyalist protest in Belfast has spoken of his shock at being dragged unwittingly into one of Paul Kelly's funding bids.
Fr Aidan Troy, who is now based in Paris, was among a list of people named by the former Console chief in his 2005 application for 100,000 of National Lottery funding.
But the priest told the Irish Independent that his name was used without his permission.
"It is my understanding that my name was included along with others on a list of 'board of management and patrons' submitted by Console in connection with a funding application. That was without my knowledge," he said.
"This is all I know so far about the matter.
"The big number of suicides in north Belfast during my time at Holy Cross Monastery, Ardoyne in the early 2000s gave me an awareness of an urgent and constant need for suicide prevention and related services.
"I have tried since then to assist people and families in any way I could in the area of suicide and have continued trying since being transferred to Paris in 2008."
Costs
Documents released under Freedom of Information reveal that the Department of Health, which was administering the lottery grants, had to write to Paul Kelly three times to get information on how he had spent the money.
A spokeswoman for the department said yesterday that in April 2005 it approved a grant of 100,000 from National Lottery Funds towards the operational costs of the National Suicide Crisis and Counselling service.
Console was advised in writing that a condition of the grant was that certification of expenditure be submitted to the department as soon as possible after the end of the financial year or when the project was completed.
Read more: Console scandal: Elaborate web of deceit of an 'untouchable' charity founder
The department said: "Where certification of expenditure is not received, it is the practice to issue a reminder to the organisation concerned. Reminders (were) issued to Console in September 2006 and July 2007."
The spokeswoman said that in August 2007 the department received certification of expenditure from Console in the form of its annual report and audited accounts for the year ending December 2005.
"This confirmed that 100,000 was received from National Lottery funds for ongoing operational costs of the national suicide helpline and counselling service.
"The independent auditors' report indicates that the financial statements give a true and fair view of the state of Console's affairs as at December 31, 2005, and of its incoming resources and application of resources for the year ended on that date.
"The department accepted this independent auditors' report as evidence of the appropriate expenditure of funds."
In addition to the 2005 grant, Console received further national lottery funding in later years. The figures were:
2006 - 50,000
2007 - 25,000
2008 - 100,000
2009 - 100,000
2011 - 50,000
2012 - 75,000
Console received the bulk of its State funding from the HSE. However, there were also other grants from agencies, such the Department of Foreign Affairs, which gave Console's UK counselling centre around 160,000 to provide services to the Irish emigrant community in Britain.
Former health minister Dr James Reilly has yet to answer questions about what he knew about Console chief Paul Kelly as far back as 2011.
Former Fine Gael parliamentary assistant Tommy Morris says he first told Dr Reilly in 2011 that Mr Kelly had impersonated a doctor.
In response, Dr Reilly issued a statement 11 days ago, saying he recalled Mr Morris "raising Paul Kelly with me on one such occasion in the Dail canteen, but nothing specific".
The Irish Independent asked Dr Reilly six questions relating to the events in 2011. These are:
Mr Morris said he addressed concerns regarding Mr Kelly in the Shelbourne Hotel in late 2011 and then gave you a dossier with clippings on Kelly and other details on funding later that day. Was this passed on to the Department Of Health (DOH)?
Was this the first time you were made aware of Mr Kelly's court appearance related to his impersonation of a doctor in the 1980s?
Did you follow up with the DOH after they questioned Mr Kelly? Were you ever briefed on same?
Did you or anyone in the DOH request the charity be more closely monitored on the back of the information received?
Mr Morris said he raised his concerns on other occasions in person with you. Do you recall these conversations?
Do you accept that this was a "missed opportunity" to uncover the problems in Console as far back as 2011, as suggested by Mr Morris?
Dr Reilly has yet to respond.
An aide in his Oireachtas office said the statement was "100pc truthful and accurate" and that Dr Reilly would not be commenting further.
Read more: Questions over what Reilly knew in 2011
Read more: HSE not told flag was raised about Console chief
Independent TD, Clare Daly, has accused the Government of double-speak for seeking to sell live cattle to Egypt, while also campaigning for the release of Ibrahim Halawa from prison there.
Ms Daly said the Government should have used the trade talks to promote the case of Irish citizen Ibrahim Halawa in prison in Egypt without a trial since 2013.
I think theres a certain double-speak in the attitude of the Irish Government, she said. On the one hand they were seeking to promote trade with Egypt while turning a blind eye to human rights abuses by a brutal regime as cited by Amnesty.
Agriculture Minister Michael Creed accused Ms Daly of being mean-spirited while wrongly claiming the Government was less committed than any other party in the Dail to securing Mr Halawas release. He said the Government had committed to defending the incomes of 100,000 farm families in part by promoting cattle exports.
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Mr Creed said he could not advance Mr Halwas cause by having Irish agriculture officials raise the case with Egyptian agriculture officials. Youre into building walls and cutting off contact. Im into improving our relations with these countries and thereby bringing pressure to bear so we can achieve our objectives, the Minister said.
Ms Daly rejected allegations that she was mean-spirited and she questioned the right of defending farm incomes at any cost to issues like human rights. She accepted that the Government was committed to seeking the release of Mr Halawa but she said they were using the wrong tactics.
The Independent TD said Australia had taken a much more robust stance with Egypt on the issue of prisoners and human rights. Australia had warned Egypt on consequences for trade, diplomatic and other links, and also warned on damage to their international reputation.
Taoiseach Enda Kenny has offered to personally meet dissenting TDs over a cup of coffee as he attempts to draw a line over his leadership crisis.
There have been tense scenes at the Fine Gael parliamentary party meeting as TDs questioned the decision to hand Dr Reilly the job - just weeks after effectively being sacked.
The meeting, which is taking place in Leinster House, also saw Taoiseach Enda Kenny insist that he has no plans on stepping down in the short term.
Mr Kenny said he wanted to draw a line under the leadership issue and offered to bring dissenting TDs out for a coffee to discuss their concerns.
But just minutes into the meeting, the issue of Dr Reillys re-appointment was raised.
Cork South West TD Jim Daly is understood to have called on Mr Kenny to reconsider the appointment, according to sources present.
And Carlow/Kilkenny TD John Paul Phelan asked Mr Kenny to give an explanation for giving Dr Reilly the job.
In response, Dr Reilly passionately defended his position. He said he was offered the post by Mr Kenny and duly accepted.
Read More
The newly appointed senator is also understood to have accused some of those present of criticising him as a proxy to question Mr Kennys leadership.
He spoke passionately and fiercely, but I think people remain unconvinced, one source said.
Kerry TD Brendan Griffin, who this week called on Mr Kenny to step down as Taoiseach and party leader, has told the meeting he does not believe his concerns have been addressed.
But addressing the meeting, Mr Kenny insisted he has no plans to step down in the short term.
He said the Government has a job of work to do and he is happy to discuss with their TDs their concerns over a cup of coffee.
Significantly, Mr Kenny gave no indication of how, and when, he will step down.
Also at the meeting, junior minister Catherine Byrne called on colleagues to stick together and put the bickering behind them.
A grieving mum whose son died after he was struck by a car has slammed Minister for Transport Shane Ross for a breakdown in progress over compulsory speed limits in housing estates.
Jake Brennan was just six when he was killed in a road accident outside his family home in Kilkenny in June 2014.
His mother Roseann (31) has lobbied extensively for strict 30kph speed limits in residential areas with her Jakes Law campaign ever since.
Ive been calling his [Shane Rosss] office everyday since he became transport minister because the pressure needs to be kept up, she told the Herald.
When Paschal Donohoe was minister, we were working towards something but its been seven months now, and weve heard nothing.
Theres been no progress. If the Minister changes, does that mean weve got to start all over?
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Thats not how it should be ... I didnt just work with one man, I worked with an office.
Ms Brennan was speaking at the launch of a public consultation ahead of Dublin City Councils plans to roll out a limit of 30kph in residential areas.
She said that without support from Minister Ross such a measure would not be adopted on a national level due to private estates being exempt from council guidelines.
Our housing estate where [Jake] was killed is still 50kph because the county council cant touch it. We, like a lot of families in Kilkenny, live in a private estate.
I was asked at my little boys inquest [in March] if there was anything wed like to see come of his death, and we said a speed limit of 30kph that was mandatory in all housing estates.
This is why the Minister needs to get involved because no matter what Dublin [City] Council do they could change the entire city they still cant touch the private estates.
Frustrated by endless voicemails, Ms Brennan said she had lost count of the messages she had left with the ministers personal secretary.
Not once did [Ross] pick up the phone ... but then theres a press release about DCCs plan and my involvement and suddenly I get a phone call reassuring me that Im down for a meeting, at some point.
I just found the timing odd and Im hoping that I havent just been spun a few lines to keep me happy.
She added: All the emails and phone calls, Ill make public if I dont hear anything back.
At this stage, Im angry because last year Paschal Donohoe pledged 2m to help support local authorities implement speed limits my heart broke when I saw 500,000 was left over because some councils didnt see a need for compulsory speed limits.
Thats why we need [Ross] to get involved. Without a national rollout, were basically saying some childrens lives are worth more than others.
The difference between 50kph and 30kph is a broken leg against a child passing away in his mammys arms begging not to die.
Cleaver East have taken the famous NYC staple and brought it to Dublin
Dillingers- one of the most Instagrammable brunches you could hope for
What could be better than a late breakfast, accompanied by some bubbles? Its the only way to spend your Sunday, so here are the top five brunches in the city right now...
Cleaver East
6 Essex St East, Dublin 2
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An all-you can eat brunch? What's not to love? Cleaver East have taken the famous NYC staple and brought it to Dublin, big style. Sample the envy-inducing menu while you enjoy endless boozy top-ups until you're ready to go merrily on your way. It's the bottomless brunch of dreams- Mimosa for everyone (which you can avail of for just 15). Every Sunday from 12pm-3pm.
San Lorenzos
South Great Georges St, Dublin 2
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The Brunch of Champions at San Lorenzo is the real deal so much so, you will need to queue early if you want to nab a table at the weekends. The music is loud and the service is fast, but its the gargantuan menu that deserves real props. Coco Pops French toast or crab cakes are real winners. And dessert? The New York Nutella baked cheesecake is everything. Saturday, 10.30am-3pm, and Sunday, 10.30am-4pm.
Brother Hubbard
153 Capel St, Dublin 1
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So much choice, so little stomach space the standout at brunch is the Middle Eastern breakfast plate: a feed of egg, hummus, feta, cucumber, tomato and fresh mint. Go healthy with Turkish eggs menemen or go bold with the beans and pulled-pork special. The perfect cafe vibe, it may be snug but its darling.
Whitefriar Grill
16 Aungier Street, Dublin 2
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Arguably one of Dublins best brunch spots, theres not much to complain about here. Clever cocktails, fresh juices and a rather sumptuous menu make this the perfect place to while away an afternoon. Soak up the atmosphere while you chow down on a menu that includes the utterly delectable huevos rancheros with chorizo, black eyed beans, corn tortillas, tomato chipotle salsa, guacamole, fried eggs and obviously, leave room for dessert checkout the Belgian wafflesor, a personal favourite, chocolate fondue with peanut-butter fudge, marshmallows and pineapple
Dillingers
47 Ranelagh, Dublin 6
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A foodies paradise, Dillingers is one of the most Instagrammable brunches you could hope for no filter required. Served Saturday and Sunday, from 11am-4pm, tag your photos #BRUNCHtastic to share with other brunch fiends and land a prize. Get a load of Dillingers Burger: aged beef burger, smoked cheese, pickles and fries, or try the new classic Louisiana spiced chicken, buttermilk waffles and spiced maple syrup.
Doyou, a family member, a neighbour or a friend remember the day candles and lanterns were quenched and lights were finally switched on in the homes of rural Ireland?
If so, your treasured memories, personal tales or handed down stories of the 'Rural Electrification Scheme', often described as 'The Quiet Revolution' are being sought as part of a new publication out later this year.
The book - Then There Was Light - hopes to provide a valuable snapshot of the time Ireland left the dark ages, by allowing power and light into the midst of even the most remote communities.
The book will be accompanied by an RTE radio documentary to coincide with the celebrations surrounding the 70th anniversary of the commencement of the Rural Electrification Scheme.
The stories for the collection and radio programme will seek to provide a frank insight into the suspicions, worries and welcome the ESB's light brigade faced as they began work on one of the most important undertakings in recent Irish history.
It is envisaged that the stories from all over the country will help to encapsulate and preserve how rural Ireland came to terms with the prospect of a rapidly changing lifestyle.
The book and documentary will be co-edited by Around The Farm Gate editor PJ Cunningham and Dr Joe Kearney. They are seeking particular stories rather than people just remembering that gangs of workers arrived to dig holes and put up poles.
Dr Kearney said: "Ideally, there should be a bit of tension or fun or drama involved in what people send in to us.
"Like the story of how the first big 'switch on' ceremony was fraught with the potential of becoming the first switch off because of a major storm," he said.
PJ Cunningham, co-editor, says countless heartbreaking and hilarious tales are already flying in.
"There are so many interesting and funny lines that we could take, but even if they don't make the final cut they will be published in the ESB archives where they will be kept forever," he said.
If you have a story you want to get in touch please contact Dr Joe Kearney on 087 2633041 or joe.kearney@eircom.net. PJ Cunningham can be contacted on 086 8217631, pjcunningham1@gmail.com or ballpointpress1@gmail.com
All stories received will be considered for inclusion in the radio documentary and book.
Meanwhile, Crossmahon Macra will hold a charity tractor run and barbecue evening on July 17. Registration is at midday, all proceeds will go to Bandon Community Hospital. Prizes for best vintage and modern tractor will be up for grabs.
An MP who was bitten by a tick after a weekend away in Latvia was diagnosed with Lyme disease after a chance conversation with a constituent.
Michelle Donelan, 32, the Conservative MP for Chippenham, noticed a rash on her upper arm after she appeared as guest of honour at the Semington village fete in Wiltshire.
She thought nothing of the bite until a week later, when a man suffering from the tick-borne disease came into her weekly constituency surgery to discuss care options.
It was then with alarm that she realised she was already suffering the symptoms herself, and sought medical attention.
Ms Donelan said "I knew that I wasn't well, I had the rash for a week and it was getting worse but I thought nothing of it.
"On Friday I had my surgery and a chap came in and he wanted to talk about level of care and Lyme Disease. I did a bit of research on it and saw the symptoms and thought that's how my rash looked.
"I had a bullseye mark half the size of my arm and that's when I knew what it was. I was quite lucky, as if you don't get it really early, it can damage your nerves and can eventually lead to death."
Following her diagnosis she said: "I feel absolutely terrible - I'm suffering from severe tiredness and feeling sick.
In another post she added "After 5.5 hours I can confirm the hospital think I have Lyme disease and I have three weeks of antibiotics.
"Thank goodness that man came in regarding the disease yesterday at my surgery. Thank you a thousand times to him. It appears MP surgeries can help MPs too!"
In recent years reports of the tick-borne disease have risen. Last year there were around 2,000 to 3,000 new cases in England and Wales.
Symptoms can include a bulls eye red shaped rash, tiredness, muscle pain and headaches. If left untreated the disease can lead to heart problems, seizures and mobility issues.
John Caudwell, the founder of Phones4U, has accused the NHS of negligence in failing to fully investigate the increasing number of cases across the country. He has called for more research after he claimed that 11 members of his family had contracted the disease.
Telegraph Media Group Limited [2022]
Bundestags Turkish Member: Young Turks Are Traitors; Talat & Enver Criminals
By Harut Sassounian Publisher, The California Courier www.TheCaliforniaCourier.com Cem Ozdemir, co-chair of the Green Party, delivered a passionate speech in the German Parliament (Bundestag) on June 2, 2016, in support of the resolution recognizing the Armenian Genocide by Ottoman Turkey, while acknowledging Germanys complicity in this mass crime. Ozdemir, born in Germany, is son of Turkish-Circassian (Cherkess) migrant parents. He was the first person of Turkish descent elected to the Bundestag (1994-2002). He reentered the German Parliament in 2013, after serving in the European Parliament from 2004 to 2009. With support from all political parties in the Bundestag, the Armenian Genocide resolution, which Ozdemir had long championed, was adopted by the German Parliament almost unanimously, with one no vote and one abstention. Below are translated excerpts from the remarkable speech Ozdemir delivered in German in the Bundestag on June 2nd, while wearing on the lapel of his suit the forget-me-not button symbolizing the Centennial of the Armenian Genocide: There can be no question about the appropriateness of time when talking about unimaginable savagery like genocide. We know that after lengthy and tiresome back and forth, Germany, as an accomplice to the crime, is openly calling the event by its proper name. This constitutes a chapter of German history. Ozdemir recalled the callous and cruel words of German Imperial Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg: Our whole purpose was to keep Turkey on our side during the entire course of the war. Whether Armenians were to be destroyed or not, made no difference. In a powerful statement, Ozdemir directly addressed the Armenian guests attending the Bundestags session on June 2nd: Just because we were complicit in this horrible crime in the past does not mean that today we are going to side with the deniers. Ozdemir went on to urge the millions of Turkish residents of Germany to be proud of the heroic Turks who rescued Armenians during the Genocide, and not criminals like Talat and Enver. The Turkish-German Parliamentarian then declared that the ugliest expression which causes him great pain is that Armenian is used as a swear word in Turkey. They ask me if I am Armenian. I dont view someone being an Armenian as an insult. Being a descendant of a Sunni Muslim family, Eastern Christianity does not make me uncomfortable. Ozdemir quoted his Turkish Armenian friend Hrant Dink who was assassinated in Istanbul by an extremist Turk: If Armenians lived in Van today, that city would be the Paris of the Orient. During his visit to Armenia in March 2015, Ozdemir elaborated on Dinks statement in an interview with Civilnet: I went to the Genocide museum and read the names and professions of the people we have lost. They were the most forward looking and brightest intellectuals of Istanbul and they were killed starting with architects, intellectuals, journalists, writers. The Ottoman Empire exterminated the most progressive citizens in its history. The Ottoman Empire lost immensely. I think one of the reasons why Turkey isnt among the most developed countries today is because the Young Turks were not heroes, but traitors. They harmed Armenians, Assyrians and Turks as well. The Turkish German Parliament member ended his nine-minute speech, which was repeatedly interrupted by thunderous applause, by stating that members of Bundestag should not be threatened for expressing their thoughts. I am sure that I will not be arrested on my way home from the Parliament or that my parliamentary immunity will not be lifted; I will not be beaten up or killed. I cannot say the same thing about my colleagues in Turkey! Nevertheless, Ozdemir did not anticipate that after Bundestags approval of the Armenian Genocide resolution, he and ten of his Turkish colleagues in the German Parliament would be placed under police protection after receiving numerous death threats from Turkish extremists. In an announcement reminiscent of Hitler-era racial profiling, Pres. Erdogan advocated that the 11 Turkish members of the German Parliament who had supported the Armenian Genocide resolution undergo a blood test to prove their Turkishness. Meanwhile, officials of Tokat, Turkey, Ozdemirs fathers hometown, stripped his name from the list of honored sons of that city. However, after making bombastic threats of retaliation against Germany, Pres. Erdogan was forced to restrain himself, realizing that such irresponsible steps would only lead to a devastating effect on the faltering Turkish economy!
Every single day I see people lighting up at the wheel, drinking scalding coffee with one hand while steering and so on.
I know from your emails and contact that you do too on a regular basis. It can be crazy sometimes.
But have you ever come across anyone trying to solve a Rubik's Cube when driving? No, me neither.
But apparently it happened recently. In Manchester of all places.
A man videoed a woman driving her Toyota Corolla on a highway fiddling away energetically with the cube.
Not alone that... she SAW the man videoing her and passed absolutely no remarks.
The man said she kept on trying to solve the puzzle for "several more miles".
You'd wonder what in God's name she was thinking. How did she manage to avoid causing an accident?
I don't think we'll ever solve the puzzle of what makes some people so stupid when they are driving.
And there is more to the 'cube woman' story. The police department says it does not investigate reports it receives via social media.
Work that one out for yourself.
**Let me know about the weird-at-the-wheel behaviour you have come across.
* Paris has a ban on vehicles built before 1997.
It is in place during weekday daylight hours It's all about "reclaiming" the city for pedestrians and bikers.
Oslo will ban cars from its downtown area completely by 2019.
Several other cities have partial bans/heavy penalties on taking your car into town - such as London.
After sampling several European cities this year, including London and Paris, I have to say it is hard to make a case against some sort of curbs in major conurbations.
And that stretches to Dublin and parts of our regional cities. But those making the plans need to be ultra sensible and think long-term.
Like the Rubik's Cube, it isn't an easy one to sort out but we need it to be supplemented with a real choice of public transport. I'd hate to see cars banned and no real alternative available. Cities such as Munich make you think seriously about bothering to take the car when you can get a day ticket across all sorts of public transport for half-nothing.
* It seems we are far more interested in having smartphone connectivity and aids that help us park than we are about having our cars safety supplemented with new technology.
A survey of more than 1,200 people by What Car?/Autocar also revealed that we are not that interested in watching television in our cars.
Nor does wirelessly charging a device make our day.
Definitely low on our priority list, the survey suggests, are safety systems such as lane departure warning.
The report adds they are "among the least sought-after technologies in new cars".
And even further down the pecking order are speed limit warning and blind spot monitoring functions.
**Any opinions on what you'd want in a new car?
* The great old Land Rover Defender may not be finished quite yet. There are reports that billionaire chemicals tycoon Jim Ratcliffe is in talks with the company to explore the possibility of resurrecting the icon.
I'd say that would get a round of applause from a lot of people.
Three weeks ago, Theresa May wandered the streets of Co Down, speaking with a tone rather like that of the Grim Reaper.
A Brexit, she warned, would bring despair and severely affect the island of Ireland.
It would be "inconceivable" that there would not be any changes to border arrangements and the agricultural sector would be particularly badly hit.
In fact, for a 'Remain' campaigner who has been accused of keeping her powder dry during the build-up to the referendum, it seems that Mrs May saved some of her strongest comments for her trip to Northern Ireland.
It is unlikely that the 59-year-old was thinking at that stage that she would be handed the keys to 10 Downing Street a mere 22 days later.
But now, Mrs May finds herself trying to balance the weight of England and Wales, who want out of the European Union, with Scotland and Northern Ireland, who took her Remain message to the ballot box.
Yet in her own words, "Brexit means Brexit" - and despite telling the people of Northern Ireland that it would be a very bad move, she will now lead them out.
One Conservative Party colleague described her this week as somebody who "says something today and does it tomorrow".
That creates a problem for Ireland because the version of Brexit described by Mrs May on June 21 will be hard to swallow.
"Put simply, Northern Ireland outside the EU could not prevent free movement and continue with an open North/South border," she said at that time.
And on the economic front, Mrs May said the arguments for remaining in the EU were "compelling".
"Not only does Northern Ireland rely on EU exports to a greater extent than nearly every other region of the UK, 50,000 jobs here are linked to EU trade," she said.
"The local agri-foods sector is a major economic player and, importantly, Northern Ireland is a net beneficiary of European funding."
Perhaps the best measurement of what Mrs May's appointment means for Ireland is the responses of the nationalist and unionist leaders.
DUP First Minister Arlene Foster said Mrs May had "a positive history of working with the Northern Ireland administration".
But in Dublin yesterday, Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams said that her appointment would present difficulties for the peace process and Anglo-Irish relations.
Aside from Brexit, Mrs May has in the past forcefully said she wanted the UK to withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights, which underpins much of the Good Friday Agreement.
However, Tanaiste Frances Fitzgerald played down her stance on that yesterday, saying: "She has in the course of the campaign rowed back on earlier comments she had made on that."
Ms Fitzgerald, who knows Mrs May better than any other Irish minister, reckons she is "very easy to work with" and "very pragmatic".
However, Mrs May's past statements suggest that the Government must be resolute when dealing with her.
A shopper strolls the quiet London streets last weekend, as retailers recorded their worst June in a decade after Brexit. Photo: Chris Ratcliffe
The disarray created by Brexit has intensified the lingering disquiet in Britain about the way the European project has progressed. We have failed to face the difficulty involved in extending our understanding of governance to the European sphere. We have been seduced by the myth that, unlike Europe, we are governed by the exercise of the voice of the electorate and not by a bureaucratic elite.
Ireland mirrors the political practices of Britain, where voting is mainly driven by inherited loyalties, whilst Britain's use of the 'first past the post' system provides its own distinctive anomalies.
The notion that we can convert individual preferences into collective choices by exercising our vote does not sit easily with the realities of political life.
The myth that the electorate is in charge and that the results of elections or referenda express the will of the people do not withstand critical scrutiny.
The fatal flaw lies in the fact that the driving force of political discourse is intended to disengage us from our capacity to think beyond the demands of self-interest.
The protagonists in the war of words leading up to the British referendum on Europe traded in half-truths and deliberately manufactured ambiguity. Spin doctors worked overtime to help key politicians perfect the art of persuasion. The concept of Realpolitik, the practise of politics independent of religious, moral or ethical considerations, has dominated British and Irish political life for years.
The fruits of this approach to politics and power have been excellently chronicled by Martina Devlin and David Murphy in 'Banksters', revealing how a privileged 'golden circle' had gambled and lost the deposits and pensions of the Irish people under the noses of our politicians, who, themselves, seemed bewitched by the imperatives of money and power.
Philip O'Neill
Oxford, England
Women and family values
The fairness of equating one's ability to serve as an effective prime minister to their also being a parent has sparked a wave of attention.
Whilst the comments by Andrea Leadsom undoubtedly generated controversy, they arguably did not bring about debate.
It is the very difference between controversy and debate that underpins the persisting social inequalities for women.
'Views Not Shoes', run by the Fawcett Society, is one example of a campaign that seeks to address the pervasive ways in which women continue to be shoehorned into certain personas.
It highlights how the asking of loaded questions regularly feeds into the primary characterisation of women as caregivers, not to mention an even less satisfactory objectification based on clothing.
The tendency to ask women questions that relate to the circumstances which surround their roles as political actors rather than ones which directly address their political opinions undermines their legitimacy.
The link between the asking of such loaded questions and the exigency for campaigns such as 'Equal Pay for Equal Work' is painfully clear.
The turn of events in the quest for Tory leadership is not a lesson in ignoring family values; it is one in how to appropriately weigh credentials. Time will tell through our everyday, subconscious question asking and placing of women whether we have in fact learned this lesson.
Alice Munnelly
Athlone, Co Westmeath
Breaking free from political past
A Leavy (Irish Independent, Letters, July 11 2016) questions, perhaps quite rightly, the call for Micheal Martin, as a member of a previously failed government, to replace Enda Kenny. The point is well made but it falls well short of considering how we can break away from failure by successive governments.
Mr Martin is pretty much indistinguishable from Mr Kenny; as is Fianna Fail from Fine Gael.
We need to move out of our political comfort zone and look to those who are outside the traditional political tribes to give them the confidence of their convictions.
Forget the Labour Party, or the politically naive Greens.
We will be the victims of our past, the victims of our continued failures, until we have the wisdom and the strength to find a new path for the future. What that will be is in our hands.
Each one of us must engage in our destiny and together we will find the answer.
We must become engaged in politics and the life of the country, especially our young.
The alternative will be a continuation of a disastrously failed and corrupt past.
Osnat Spillane
Mount Merrion, Dublin
Crisis? What crisis?
The word 'crisis' is ubiquitous in the media. The media constantly refers to the increase in homelessness and the shortage of housing as a crisis. I refer to these events as situations, or problems. Calling them crises is sensational and inflammatory, in other words it's unhelpful.
A crisis, by definition, has no solution. According to Leilani Farha, special rapporteur for the UN on adequate housing, "Homelessness occurs when housing is treated as a commodity rather than as a human right". Leilani encourages all European states to commit to eliminating homelessness by 2030. Right now, that doesn't look likely or even possible - not until the housing shortage is addressed.
Homelessness has not been explicitly recognised as a human rights violation by the Irish court, so the Government doesn't have to do anything about it. There is no right to housing in Irish law. No matter how high rents and property prices become, the Government doesn't have to do anything about it. Democracy, etc, etc.
Gavin Wylie
Castleknock, Dublin
Celebrating unity not division
In response to the letter by Fr Sean McManus (Irish Independent, June 12), why not celebrate the Duke of Wellington, rather than the victory of William of Orange over James II, and the Battle of Waterloo, rather than July 12?
Waterloo was won by 10,000 Irish under an Irish Field Marshal from Dublin and Co Meath and, when Lord Uxbridge was wounded, another Irishman, General Sir John Ormsby Vandeleur from Queen's County/Laois, took command of the British cavalry.
I sometimes wonder why we must commemorate the things that divide us rather than those that unite us. Especially given the fame of Irish leadership and valour close to the Belgian capital, seat of the EU.
Dr Gerald Morgan
Trinity College Dublin
MINI is giving you the chance to win some exclusive MINI luggage, your accommodation and the use of a MINI 3 Door hatch, 5 Door hatch, or Clubman for a weekend so you can enjoy one of these road trips
Just pick one of these, Irelands top 5 road trips to be in for a chance to win a set of exclusive Mini luggage, the use of a MINI and your accommodation so you can enjoy your favourite Irish road trip in style.
Ring of Kerry
The most iconic drive in Ireland can get a bit packed along its 179 km route in peak season, but its still absolutely worth the effort. Its a magical world of lush greenery, dramatic hills and winding roads through an ever changing landscape. Just some of the highlights along the way include: Gap of Dunloe, Bog Village, Rossbeigh Beach, Derrynane House, Staigue Fort, Moll's Gap, Ladies View, Torc Waterfall, The Blue Pool and Ross Castle.
The Burren
When you leave the coast of Clare and head inland to the Burren, its like youve gone to a completely different planet. The Karst regions otherworldly landscape is strewn with hand built dry stone walls and punctuated with abandoned farmers dwellings. A bleak and haunting place in winter, sparse and vivid in the summer.
Donegal Coast
Donegal being cut off from the rest of the island has its own unique charm. For those who love driving, it has the benefit of taking at least four hours to reach from Dublin means it means a good deal of time spent in the car. More than anything Donegal bewitches with its extensive unspoilt coastline, untouched blanket bogs, Glenveagh National Park, and Errigal.
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Dingle Peninsula
The Dingle Peninsulas position at the southwest corner of Ireland means it basks in the full benefits of the Gulf Streams warmer waters, resulting in a unique combination of craggy rock and lush vegetation, all set against the wild Atlantic Ocean. Drive from Castlegregory at the Corca Dhuibhne Peninsula, go west into Cloghane, through the stunning Conor Pass and Dingle and west to Slea Head with dramatic views to South Kerry and the Blasket Islands. After Ballyferriter, continue to Murreagh and Kilmalkedar, to Ballydavid and back to Dingle. Youll take in some serious scenery and the winding country roads are fun to drive.
Sheeps Head Drive, Bantry
Starting and finishing in Bantry, with all its gourmet restaurants, wonderful Irish pubs and colourful shops, to drive around one of the most stunning locations in the country. The road will lead you around Bantry Bay and Dunmanus Bay, the road to Durrus and the road to Kilcrohane allows you to take in the hairpin bends around craggy outcrops of rock and to the sea with some stunning sheer cliffs. Stop the car and take in some of the Sheeps Head Way walking route along the headland jutting out into the Atlantic with unspoilt nature all around, dramatic cliff faces and the wind in your hair. Work up an appetite to enjoy the seafood fare on offer back in Bantry and youll be in heaven.
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Model and new Victoria's Secret Angel Taylor Hill from Illinois walks the runway during the 2015 Victoria's Secret Fashion Show at Lexington Avenue Armory on November 10, 2015 in New York City. (Photo by Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for Victoria's Secret)
Taylor Hill has been unveiled as the new face of Lancome
Angel Taylor Hill at Victoria's Secret St. Catherine's on April 26, 2016 in Montreal, Canada. (Photo by Raffi Kirdi/Getty Images for Victoria's Secret)
Taylor Hill has been unveiled as the new face of Lancome
Taylor Hill is thrilled to have been selected as Lancomes newest brand ambassador.
The 20-year-old model has made a splash in the fashion world of late, walking the runway for the likes of Versace, Alexander Wang and Carolina Herrera, as well as landing a contract with Victorias Secret, becoming one of the elite Angels for the famed American lingerie company.
She joins familiar faces like Daria Werbowy, Kate Winslet, Lupita Nyongo, Julia Roberts and Lily Collins as ambassadors for the French luxury beauty brand.
I am very excited and honoured to join Lancome, she said in a statement. I love the vision behind this feminine brand. This new role of ambassadress is a major step in my career, a dream that has become reality.
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Taylor, who has over four million followers on Instagram, was discovered when she was 14 in a barn in Granby, Colorado by Jim Jordan, a model agent and photographer.
With her expressive blue eyes, bold brows, candid smile and an undeniably rock chic style, Taylor exudes self-confidence. Accordingly, Lancome views Taylor as a natural fit for the brand, and sees her as personifying the millennial woman.
We are delighted about this new collaboration with Taylor, who represents a modern Lancome, in harmony with its time, with a subtle mix of sensuality, ingenuousness and sweet yet striking beauty, explained Francoise Lehmann, Lancome's International General Manager.
She is a very inspiring young woman for her generation: she is immensely curious, open-minded and has a positive outlook on life.
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Apart from modelling commitments, Taylor has shown an interest in the acting scene, recently making her debut on the big screen in The Neon Demon, by Nicolas Winding Refn.
Actor Robert Sheehan (L) and Sofia Boutella attend the 2015 San Luis Obispo International Film Festival at Fremont Theatre on March 10, 2015 in San Luis Obispo, California. (Photo by Phil Klein/Getty Images)
Laura Whitmore arrives for the UK premiere of "Star Trek Beyond" at Empire Leicester Square on July 12, 2016 in London, UK. (Photo by Ian Gavan/Getty Images)
Sofia Boutella attends the UK Premiere of Paramount Pictures "Star Trek Beyond" at the Empire Leicester Square on July 12, 2016 in London, England. (Photo by Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images for Paramount Pictures)
Sofia Boutella arrives for the UK premiere of "Star Trek Beyond" at Empire Leicester Square on July 12, 2016 in London, UK. (Photo by Ian Gavan/Getty Images)
Sofia Boutella attends the UK Premiere of Paramount Pictures "Star Trek Beyond" at the Empire Leicester Square on July 12, 2016 in London, England. (Photo by Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images for Paramount Pictures)
Sofia Boutella at the Star Trek world premiere and right, with boyfriend Robert Sheehan
Sofia Boutella stole the show at the world premiere of Star Trek: Beyond in London.
The 34-year-old actress plays Jaylah in JJ Abrams' latest instalment of the blockbuster franchise and ensured all eyes were on her in a semi sheer black lace dress by Prabal Gurung.
But one accessory was notably missing - her boyfriend of two years, Irish actor Robert Sheehan (28).
Sheehan and Boutella first met on the set of Jet Trash in India in 2014 and live together in London, but prefer to keep a low profile when it comes to their relationship.
Expand Close Sofia Boutella attends the UK Premiere of Paramount Pictures "Star Trek Beyond" at the Empire Leicester Square on July 12, 2016 in London, England. (Photo by Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images for Paramount Pictures) / Facebook
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Sofia, from Algeria, ensured all eyes were on her in her daring dress, which got caught in her heel as she walked the red carpet in London on Tuesday night.
Former Love/Hate star Robert gushed over his other half last year, saying they help one another for castings.
"We're both show offs and we both help each other when we have job interviews," he told 2FM.
"It's [going] great. Again, it was at a point where we were bouncing back and forth from one continent to another, so the luxury or living in the same city is nice."
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Whatsapp Actor Robert Sheehan (L) and Sofia Boutella attend the 2015 San Luis Obispo International Film Festival at Fremont Theatre on March 10, 2015 in San Luis Obispo, California. (Photo by Phil Klein/Getty Images)
Also spotted at the premiere was co-stars Idris Elba and Chris Pine, while red carpet host Laura Whitmore stunned in a white suit dress by La Mania.
Hes based in London, but Love/Hate star Robert Sheehan made the journey back to Ireland bringing his other half along with him.
The former Misfits actor (27) took French-Algerian Sofia Boutella with him as he was honoured in Trinity College.
Fresh from appearing in the UK stage production War of the Roses, Robert was honoured by the colleges History Society with the Burke Medal for Outstanding Contribution to Discourse through the Arts while Sofia watched on proudly from the audience along with Roberts aspiring actor brother Brendan.
The couple have been loved-up since meeting on the set of backpacker movie Jet Trash last year.
Robert starred in the movie and produced it, but the pair been keeping out of the limelight.
Robert and his dancer girlfriend spent weeks in India making the film and taking in some of the local culture.
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I had a fantastic experience. The film was made on a shoestring and it looks extraordinary, he said.
An injured reveller is tended to by medics during the seventh running of the bulls at the San Fermin festival in Pamplona, Spain (AP)
An American has been gored and five other runners injured in the penultimate running of the bulls at Pamplona's San Fermin festival.
One of the six bulls crashed into a group of runners close to a fence, goring Mathew Labin, 39, in the thigh and lifting at least two others in the air with its horns.
The Navarra regional government said Mr Labin's condition was not serious. His passport showed he was born in New Jersey.
Four Spaniards were treated in hospitals for bruises. Navarra Hospital said another American, Jake Ramirez, 53, was treated for an ankle injury and released.
More than a thousand people took part in the 8am dash with six fighting bulls and their accompanying steer along a 930-yard street course to the city's bull ring. The bulls then face matadors and almost certain death in afternoon bullfights.
The nationally televised run lasted two-and-a-half minutes.
The nine-day fiesta, known also for its 24-hour street partying, became world famous with Ernest Hemingway's 1926 novel The Sun Also Rises, and attracts thousands of foreign tourists.
Bull runs are a traditional part of summer festivals across Spain.
Twelve people have been gored since the runs started on July 7. In all, 15 people have died from being gored at the festival since record-keeping began in 1924.
AP
Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said he will name a more right-wing cabinet next week (AP)
Australia's prime minister has said he will name a more right-wing cabinet line-up next week after his weakened coalition government scraped through one of the nation's closest ever elections.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's centre-right Liberal Party lost at least 14 seats in knife-edge polls on July 2, including some of his key moderate supporters. The junior coalition partner, the Nationals, gained one seat.
Mr Turnbull said the Nationals' larger representation in his government entitled the more conservative, rural-based coalition partner to two additional seats in his cabinet.
"Politics is governed by the iron laws of arithmetic and plainly the Nationals have a larger percentage of the coalition party room after the election than they did beforehand," he told reporters.
The Nationals' increased influence has reduced expectations that Mr Turnbull will pursue a more progressive agenda during the government's second three-year term.
The cabinet will be announced shortly after the government meets on Monday for the first time since the election, Mr Turnbull said.
Mr Turnbull, a moderate in the government, replaced the polarising and socially conservative prime minister Tony Abbott in an internal government showdown in September. He immediately fired some of Mr Abbott's most right-wing ministers.
Turnbull supporters had hoped that a convincing election victory would give him a mandate to reform government policy in several areas, including climate change and gay marriage.
Some postal votes are still being counted with the government assured of 76 seats - the barest majority in the 150-seat House of Representatives where parties form the government.
Mr Turnbull said on Wednesday that he was confident his government would extend that majority to 77 seats.
He added that his government's policies remained the same as were detailed during the election campaign, including a promise to hold a public vote this year on whether Australia should recognise same-sex marriage.
AP
Armenian Parliament has no levers in Artsakh conflict settlement - lawmaker (video)
Armenia's parliament has no levers to influence the final settlement of the Karabakh issue. Hovhannes Sahakyan, a lawmaker from the Republican Party of Armenia (HHK) faction, says, The Artsakh issue is to be solved solely by Artsakh people. When asked about the role of the Armenian parliament in the issue, Mr. Sahakyan said, The Constitution defines the role and functions of the National Assembly the legislature passes laws, discusses international laws and the like. Mr Sahakyana sys he cannot say anything definite in this regard; we do not what solution will be found and what role will be ascribed to Armenia. The National Assembly exercises powers which are granted by the Constitution of the Republic of Armenia. Hovhannes Sahakyan was unaware of allegations that Serzh Sargsyan is changing the Constitution in order to transfer the burden of territorial concession from the President to the National Assembly. The National Assembly is within the borders of Armenia while the liberated territories and Atsakh as the security guarantee of these territories, have a different status," he stressed. At the same time the Republican MP reminds that after the four-day war in early April there was no need in the two parliaments to discuss or ratify the agreements reached by the Presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan at the Vienna-hosted meeting. Hovhannes Sahakyan said in conclusion that the agreements reached in Vienna stem from the interests of Armenia and Artsakh.
A member of the Philippines navy signals towards a Chinese coastguard vessel blocking them from entering Second Thomas Shoal in the South China Sea (AP)
Beijing has said it could declare an Air Defence Identification Zone over the South China Sea, in a move that would sharply escalate tensions in the disputed territory.
Vice foreign minister Liu Zhenmin told reporters: "China has the right to do so. China has established an ADIZ over the East China Sea."
He said such a move would be based on the level of threat against China.
"If our security is being threatened, of course we have the right to demarcate a zone. This would depend on our overall assessment," he said.
Mr Liu said China hoped other countries would not take this opportunity to threaten Beijing and "we hope that they will work with China to protect the peace and stability of the South China Sea, and not let the South China Sea become the origin of a war".
China's ADIZ over the East China Sea is not recognised by the US and others.
Mr Liu's statement came hours after he issued a policy paper calling the South China Sea islands China's territory and blamed the Philippines for stirring trouble - and a day after an international tribunal ruled that Beijing had no legal basis for its expansive claims.
The Philippines sought arbitration from the tribunal on several issues related to its territorial disputes with China.
The tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, rejected China's claims in a landmark ruling that also found the country had aggravated the seething regional dispute and violated the Philippines' maritime rights by building up artificial islands that destroyed coral reefs and by disrupting fishing and oil exploration.
While the decision is seen as a major legal declaration regarding one of the world's most contested regions, the true impact is uncertain, given the tribunal has no power of enforcement.
In the policy paper, China asserts its sovereignty over the South China Sea islands and their surrounding waters and opposes other countries' "illegal claims and occupation".
The paper blamed the Philippines for breaking an agreement with China to settle the disputes through bilateral negotiation and said Manila "distorted facts and concocted a pack of lies" to push forward the arbitration proceedings.
Still, Mr Liu said, China remained committed to negotiations with the Philippines, noting new president Rodrigo Duterte's positive remarks on the issue.
"China stands ready to work with the new Philippine government," Mr Liu said, adding that "early removal of obstacles posed by the arbitration case" would help efforts to improve relations.
While the findings cannot reverse China's actions, it still constitutes a rebuke, carrying with it the force of the international community's opinion. It also gives heart to small countries in Asia that have helplessly chafed at China's expansionism, backed by its military and economic power.
"The Philippines strongly affirms its respect for this milestone decision as an important contribution to ongoing efforts in addressing disputes in the South China Sea," Philippine foreign secretary Perfecto Yasay said in Manila, calling on "all those concerned to exercise restraint and sobriety".
Former foreign secretary Albert del Rosario, who helped oversee the filing of the case, said the ruling underscored "our collective belief that right is might and that international law is the great equaliser among states".
Six regional governments have overlapping territorial claims in the South China Sea - waters that are rich in fishing stocks and potential energy resources and where an estimated 3.8 trillion in global trade passes each year.
The disputes have also increased friction between China and the United States, which has ramped up its military presence in the region as China has expanded its navy's reach further offshore.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest reacted to the ruling by encourage all parties to "acknowledge the final and binding nature of this tribunal".
In 2013 the Philippines, under a United Nations treaty governing the seas, asked for arbitration on a number of issues it had with treaty co-signee China.
The five-member panel from the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague unanimously concluded China had violated its obligations to refrain from aggravating the dispute while the settlement process was continuing.
It also found that China had interfered with Philippine petroleum exploration at Reed Bank, tried to stop fishing by Philippine vessels within the country's exclusive economic zone and failed to prevent Chinese fishermen from fishing within the Philippines' exclusive economic zone at Mischief Reef and Second Thomas Shoal.
China, which boycotted the entire proceedings, reiterated that it did not accept the panel's jurisdiction. China "solemnly declares that the award is null and void and has no binding force. China neither accepts nor recognises it", the foreign ministry said.
It added that "China's territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests in the South China Sea shall under no circumstances be affected by those awards".
The ministry repeated China's often-expressed stance that the Philippines' move to initiate arbitration without China's consent was in "bad faith" and against international law.
Australian foreign minister Julie Bishop said China's reputation and ambitions of becoming a world leader would suffer if it ignored the South China Sea ruling.
"To ignore it would be a serious international transgression," she said. "There would be strong reputational costs."
Japan's foreign minister Fumio Kishida said the tribunal's decision was "final and legally binding" and that the two sides should obey it.
AP
Taiwan's president Tsai Ing-wen criticised the UN arbitration tribunal's decision to deny China - and Taiwan - their maritime claims in the South China Sea.
Although rivals, self-ruled Taiwan and China share the same territorial claims, pitting them against other claimants, chiefly the Philippines and Vietnam.
The tribunal ruled in favour of the Philippines and said that the biggest feature in the Spratly Islands - Taiwanese-controlled Taiping or Itu Aba - is not an island but a rock, and therefore not entitled to more than 12 nautical miles of territorial waters.
Ms Tsai said that the ruling "seriously damaged" Taiwan's rights.
In remarks to navy sailors aboard a frigate before it left on a South China Sea patrol, she said: "This ship represents the Republic of China (Taiwan). The uniform you are wearing represents the expectations of the people. The mission of this trip is to show the Taiwanese people's determination to defend the country's interests."
Taiwan's Ministry of National Defence said it would continue to send planes and ships to the South China Sea on patrol missions and to defend Taiwan's territory and sovereignty.
AP
Revelers run around Nunez del Cubillo's fighting bulls on the Estafeta corner during the seventh running of the bulls at the San Fermin Festival, in Pamplona, northern Spain. (AP Photo/Alvaro Barrientos)
An American has been gored and five other runners injured in the penultimate running of the bulls at Pamplona's San Fermin festival.
One of the six bulls crashed into a group of runners close to a fence, goring Mathew Labin, 39, in the thigh and lifting at least two others in the air with its horns.
The Navarra regional government said Mr Labin's condition was not serious. His passport showed he was born in New Jersey.
Four Spaniards were treated in hospitals for bruises. Navarra Hospital said another American, Jake Ramirez, 53, was treated for an ankle injury and released.
More than a thousand people took part in the 8am dash with six fighting bulls and their accompanying steer along a 930-yard street course to the city's bull ring. The bulls then face matadors and almost certain death in afternoon bullfights.
The nationally televised run lasted two-and-a-half minutes.
The nine-day fiesta, known also for its 24-hour street partying, became world famous with Ernest Hemingway's 1926 novel The Sun Also Rises, and attracts thousands of foreign tourists.
Bull runs are a traditional part of summer festivals across Spain.
Twelve people have been gored since the runs started on July 7. In all, 15 people have died from being gored at the festival since record-keeping began in 1924.
Labour MPs hoping to remove Jeremy Corbyn from office were last night dealt a major blow after the party's ruling body decided he did not need the support of MPs to re-run for the leadership.
The Labour leader's claim that he should be on the ballot automatically was passed by a margin of just four votes - including his own - in a fraught meeting of the party's National Executive Committee (NEC).
The decision means that Mr Corbyn will battle Angela Eagle for the leadership in a brutal summer contest that MPs fear could split the party, pitting hard Left-wingers against moderates.
However, there was also a boost for Labour rebels as rules that allowed anyone to vote in the leadership contest last summer by paying just 3 were ditched. Instead the price has been increased to 25, while full-time members must have been affiliated to the party for at least six months to vote - barring the 100,000 new members who joined in recent weeks.
The vote for Mr Corbyn to get on the ballot automatically passed by 18 votes to 14 after a heated meeting that lasted almost six hours. There was speculation that the Labour Party could formally challenge the vote through the courts last night, though leading moderates played that down.
Labour rebels were left infuriated by the decision, claiming the trade unions had "done us over" by propping up Mr Corbyn and saying he does not have the "moral authority" to lead. They must now attempt to defeat a man who won an overwhelming majority from party members less than a year ago.
Ms Eagle, who triggered the contest, said: "I am glad the NEC has come to a decision. I welcome the contest ahead and I am determined to win it."
John McTernan, Tony Blair's former director of political operations, told Sky News that trade unions who voted with Mr Corbyn had "stabbed the party in the heart". "This is the end of the Labour Party, nothing more or less than that the unions have destroyed the Labour Party," he said.
Britain's Home Secretary Theresa May, who is due to take over as prime minister.
With his arm placed gently around her waist, Philip May gives his then girlfriend Theresa Brasier a supportive hug.
It was June 1977 and Miss Brasier, then aged just 20 and glancing back at the camera with a knowing look, had just completed her final exams at Oxford University.
Almost 40 years on, the couple remain inseparable. Theresa May is on the verge of becoming the countrys next prime minister, an ambition which, friends told The Telegraph, she has harboured since the age of 18 when she first arrived at Oxford.
Mr May, her rock, could soon become Britains First Husband, the new Denis Thatcher. Three years after the photograph was taken, the couple married at the Church of St Mary the Virgin in Wheatley in Oxfordshire, where Miss Brasiers father was vicar.
A year later, tragedy struck. The Rev Hubert Brasier was driving his Morris Marina to a nearby church where he was due to conduct the evening Sunday service when he was in collision with a Range Rover on the A40 outside Oxford. Mr Brasier, 64, died of head and spine injuries a few hours later.
A report of the inquest at the time told how the vicar had been trying to cross the busy A40. He edged forward from the central reservation into the path of a Range Rover.
The Range Rover, with a driver and two passengers, tried to brake in time but collided at high speed with the front wing of the Marina. Mr Brasier was rushed to hospital but could not be saved.
A few months later, Mrs Mays mother Zaidee, who suffered from multiple sclerosis, also died. At the age of 25, Mrs May was suddenly an orphan.
Mrs May has barely talked about the tragedy, telling Kirsty Young on Desert Island Discs only that her husband had been a huge support, adding: That was very important for me. He was a real rock for me.
Alicia Collinson, a close friend at Oxford, who heard about the crash much later, said: It was dreadful... Theresa had Philip and Philip saw her through that. He was and remains her rock.
Mrs May and Miss Collinson both arrived at St Hughs College, Oxford, to study geography in October 1974, just as Harold Wilson was winning the second general election of that year.
Wilsons victory was the talk of the university and at a college breakfast not long after, the young Theresa Brasier turned to her friend Alicia Collinson and said she would one day be prime minister.
My memorys hazy but it was the first term at Oxford in 1974. We were at breakfast and she said something about wanting to be prime minister, recalled Miss Collinson.
Friends recall that for the first two years of undergraduate life, Mrs May had many male friends but nobody who was special.
She was part of a high-flying set that also included Alan Duncan, the former international development minister, and Damian Green, who answered to Mrs May when a Home Office minister and who is married to Miss Collinson.
Theresa went out with other people, said Miss Collinson, a successful family law barrister, But none of them were quite what she wanted. None of them were special. Then in our final year, Philip came along. There was Philip and nobody else.
The pair met after an introduction by Benazir Bhutto, who would go on to become Pakistans prime minister, at an Oxford Conservative disco in 1976, Mr Mays first year.
Miss Collinson describes Mrs May as fun to spend time with but others, who do not wish to be named, describe her even then as reticent and self-contained.
One contemporary said: You didnt feel you were ever on matey terms with Theresa, but Philip was easy to get on with.
The contemporary said Damian Green was considered the brightest of the set, and destined for the highest office, adding: I always wondered how it must have felt that Damian has been playing second fiddle to Theresa.
When Mr May came on the scene, he was a year younger than his wife-to-be and two years below at Oxford. In his final year, Mr May would go on to become Oxford Union president, meeting the likes of the former US president Richard Nixon.
Mrs May was a keen debater. In reports of the Oxford Union debates at the time, she cut quite a figure.
In one debate on abortion she is described as the statuesque Miss Brasier burning with emotion in her red dress.
By 1977, Mrs May had graduated, taking a job in the Bank of England while her husband remained at university.
A gossip column in the student newspaper Cherwell suggested, somewhat mischievously, that by 1979, his final year, Mr May had been issued with an ultimatum by his girlfriend.
I gather the same fate [of being rejected] awaits Philip if he hesitates any longer in announcing his intention to make an honest woman of the Vicars daughter, claimed the diary.
Whatever the truth, by the time Mr May became Oxford Union president in the summer term of 1979, the couple were engaged.
In September 1980, both still only 23, they were married. Mr May would leave Oxford to embark on a highly successful career in the City. Briefly, according to one friend, he dabbled in politics, becoming chairman of the Wimbledon Conservative Association.
But Mr May has steered away from politics, allowing his wife to take the lead. Ever since those dark times in October 1981, when her father died so suddenly and tragically, he has remained her bedrock.
Hungarian police and army officers oversee the distribution of food as people queue inside a migrant camp at Serbia's border with Hungary, in Horgos, Serbia (AP)
Hungarian police and soldiers are beating some migrants severely before sending them back across the border to Serbia, a human rights group has said.
Since July 5, migrants caught within five miles of the border are being returned to the Serbian side of the razor-wire fence built by Hungary last year to stem the migrant flow.
Police said 621 people were sent back to Serbia through the fence during the first week the new rules were in effect.
According to one of the claims noted in a report released on Wednesday by Human Rights Watch, men in a group of between 30 and 40 migrants that also included women and children were beaten by soldiers for two hours after being detained in Hungary.
"I haven't even seen such beating in the movies," the report quoted an unidentified man as saying.
"Five or six soldiers took us one by one to beat us. They tied our hands with plastic handcuffs on our backs. They beat us with everything, with fists, kicks, and batons. They deliberately gave us bad injuries."
Others interviewed by HRW claimed to have been beaten by police and of being injured when forced back to Serbia through small openings in the fence.
The HRW report was based on interviews with 41 asylum-seekers and migrants as well as officials from a wide range of Hungarian and international institutions, including the United Nations refugee agency, Hungarian police and the immigration office.
The organisation said Hungary was also failing to comply with international standards regarding asylum-seekers, for example by quickly dismissing most asylum claims from single men, while accepting only 15 claims daily at each of the two transit zones on the Serbian border. This has led to hundreds of refugees being stranded at the border in precarious conditions.
"The abuse of asylum seekers and migrants runs counter to Hungary's obligations under EU law, refugee law, and human rights law," said Lydia Gall, the advocacy group's regional researcher.
"The European Commission should use its enforcement powers to press Budapest to comply with its obligation under EU law to provide meaningful access to asylum and fair procedures for those at its borders and on its territory."
"Hungary is breaking all the rules for asylum seekers," Ms Gall added.
The Hungarian government did not immediately respond to requests for comment, but last month authorities rejected similar claims of abuse reported by the UN refugee agency.
HRW said it sent its findings and questions to Hungary's Office of Immigration and Nationality, as well as to the interior and defence ministries on June 13 and did not receive any response.
HRW also said Hungary was applying "legal fiction" at the transit zones on the border, as people there were not considered to have entered the country even though the zones are in Hungarian territory.
This makes it possible for Hungary to ensure that refugees whose asylum claims are rejected in the transit zones do not try to stay in Hungary or pass through the country, as nearly 400,000 people did last year, on their way west.
Rescuers work at the scene where two commuter trains collided head-on near the town of Andria, in the southern region of Puglia (AP)
Delays in rail improvements and the "risky" telephone alert system used in parts of Italy have been identified as possible underlying causes of a head-on train crash that killed more than 20 people.
Recovery operations continued on Wednesday using a giant crane to remove the mangled carriages and debris of the two commuter trains that slammed into one another just before noon on Tuesday in southern Puglia.
The official death toll stood at 23, including a farmer working in his fields who was killed by flying debris. The prefect of Barletta, Clara Minerva, said relatives reported another four people unaccounted for and suggested that their remains could have been scattered within the wreckage, particularly in the area of highest impact.
"Some remains have been recovered, and on these DNA and other tests are under way," Ms Minerva said.
As a result Transport Minister Graziano Delrio put the provisional death toll at 27. Local officials said that of the 51 people originally hospitalised, 27 have been released. Seven of those still in hospital are in a critical condition.
Mr Delrio confirmed that the stretch of track between the towns of Andria and Corato did not have an automatic alert system that would engage if two trains were close by and on the same track. Rather, the system relied on station masters phoning one another to advise of a departing train.
The phone system "leaves an entirely human management and is among the least evolved and most risky ways of regulating railway circulation," Mr Delrio told parliament.
Under the system, he said, the station master can only allow the train to leave if it is confirmed that the line is free at the arrival station, allowing only one train at a time on the single railway.
He said the single rail track used in the area is not dangerous if "advanced technology is applied".
Andria mayor Nicola Giorgino said the crash was particularly tragic and "paradoxical" since work was to begin within a few months to build a second track on the route.
In fact, the work was supposed to have begun years ago, and EU funding was secured when it was first proposed for the 2007-2013 period.
According to the national investment and development agency Invitalia, the EU Regional Development Fund had approved 62% of the 180 million euro investment into the north Bari rail improvement that included a second track for the Corato-Andria line.
Mr Delrio did not explain why it was never built but noted that Puglia officials had secured funding for the 2014-2020 budget and that bidding for contracts was to have begun on July 19.
Trani prosecutor Francesco Giannella said the delay in the track-doubling work would be part of the investigation. "We will investigate on the delays of the work on the line and on the deficiencies in the security system," he said.
Many relatives of the victims have demanded justice, questioning how a single track could still be in use in 2016 and warning national authorities not to abandon them.
"We went around all the hospitals, all day," said Giuseppe Colaleone, the brother-in-law of a passenger. "In the end we came here. My brother said she (his missing wife) had a necklace with the letter M on it, and a scar here, signs that could identify her. A nurse said they have probably identified her."
The trains were operated by a private, Bari-based rail company, Ferrotramviaria, that connects the city of Bari with Puglia towns to the north and the airport. Ferrotramviaria's website said its fleet comprises 21 electric trains, most with four carriages each.
Mr Delrio stressed that the national government bore no responsibility for the incident, and that security for regional trains was up to the operator in charge, Ferrotramviaria.
AP
Opinion: Aliyevs voice became five times louder after St. Petersburg meeting
Dog does not eat dog! Anush Sedrakyan, Deputy Head of the Free Democrats Party, recalled the proverb when speaking about Russian-Turkish relations on July 13. She advises everyone not to forget the fact that Russia continues to sell weapons to Azerbaijan. Speaking about the attention shown by the international community to the Karabakh conflict, Anush Sedrakyan said it shows that the situation is tense in the region. They say [U.S. Secretary of State] John Kerry is going to discuss the Syrian crisis and Karabakh conflict during his visit to Moscow. This is another reason to believe that Karabakh is in the centre of attention and the situation is very serious. Anush Sedrakyan is concerned about the fact that no one bothers to introduce a mechanism to investigate the agreement reached during the Vienna summit. After the St. Petersburg meeting, Aliyevs voice became five times louder and more bellicose. Gurgen Yeghiazaryan, a former deputy head of the National Security Service, says there is no need to worry about the issue. And who was to speak about it. Grandma Gyulnaz? Of course, it was supposed to have been done by the Armenian authorities. Speaking about the arrest of Karabakh war veteran Jirayr Sefilyan, Mr. Yeghiazaryan said, They arrested him without any reason. Do they think that by arresting several people they can change anything? No, they cannot. Eventually, they will understand what is going on in this country. they think they are immortal, but they are mistaken, even Lenin was not immortal.
US President Barack Obama speaks at the memorial ceremony in Dallas
US President Barack Obama called on Americans to find common ground in support of racial equity and justice as he spoke at a memorial service for five police officers murdered in Dallas.
Mr Obama acknowledged Americans are unsettled by another mass shooting and are seeking answers to the violence that has sparked protests in cities and highlighted the nation's persistent racial divide.
Five Dallas officers were killed last Thursday while standing guard as hundreds of people protested against the police killings of black men in Louisiana and Minnesota earlier in the week.
"It's hard not to think sometimes that the centre might not hold, that things might get worse," Mr Obama said.
"We must reject such despair."
He joined politicians, police officers and families of the fallen in the wake of the shocking killings by a black man who said he wanted revenge for the killings of blacks by police.
"The soul of our city was pierced," Dallas mayor Mike Rawlings said as he welcomed Mr Obama to the memorial service.
It was organised to help combat "a common disease" of violence and honour those who fight it, "our men and women in blue, our peacemakers in blue".
Mr Rawlings spoke steps from five empty chairs and portraits of the dead officers.
A call for national unity and solidarity was reinforced by several speakers at the interfaith service, including former president George W Bush, a Dallas resident, who attended with his wife, Laura.
"At times it feels like the forces pulling us apart are stronger than the forces binding us together," Mr Bush said.
"Too often we judge other groups by their worst examples, while judging ourselves by our best intentions. And this has strained our bonds of understanding and common purpose.
"We want the unity of hope, affection and higher purpose," he said.
Mr Obama has denounced the shooting as a "vicious, calculated and despicable attack on law enforcement" by a "demented" individual. And he has argued that, despite the heated public outcry of the past week, the country is not as divided as it may seem.
Mr Obama's choice of travelling companions underscored the theme. Republican Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi of California joined Mr Obama on Air Force One for the flight to Dallas.
Republican Senator John Cornyn of Texas spoke at the service but did not travel with the president. He said the attack was deeply personal.
"Being a Texan doesn't describe where you're from, it describes who your family is," the senator said.
The White House said the president worked late into the night writing his speech and consulting scripture for inspiration.
As Mr Obama landed in Dallas, spokesman Josh Earnest said the president had telephoned the families of Alton Sterling, the man shot by police in Baton Rouge, and Philando Castile, the Minnesota motorist shot by an officer, to offer his and First Lady Michelle Obama's condolences.
Mr Obama included references to both men in his remarks at the service.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump gives a thumbs-up as he leaves the residence of Mike Pence (AP)
Donald Trump is extremely unpopular among young adults, in particular young people of colour, and nearly two-thirds of Americans between the ages of 18 and 30 believe the presumptive Republican nominee is racist, according to a survey.
The GenForward poll also found just 19% of young people have a favourable opinion of Mr Trump compared with the three-quarters of young adults who hold a dim view of the New York billionaire.
Mr Trump's likely general election opponent, Hillary Clinton, is also unpopular with young people, but not nearly to the same extent as the real estate mogul and realty TV star.
A mere 6% of young African Americans, 10% of young Hispanics, 12% of young Asian Americans and 27% of young whites see Mr Trump in a favourable light - ratings which suggest the celebrity businessman faces a staggering task this summer to win their backing in his bid for the White House.
"I think if you want to be a moral young person, you can't support Trump," said Miguel Garcia, 20, of Norwalk, California.
The grandson of Mexican immigrants and a college student who also works at a tyre shop, Mr Garcia is a registered Democrat who has not chosen a candidate to support this autumn - but is resolute in his disdain for Mr Trump.
"It's really hard to back anything Trump does," Mr Garcia said. "He just says prejudiced stuff."
GenForward is a survey by the Black Youth Project at the University of Chicago with the Associated Press-NORC Centre for Public Affairs Research. The poll, the first of its kind, pays special attention to the voices of young adults of colour, highlighting how race and ethnicity shape the opinions of the country's most diverse generation.
It surveys adults between the ages of 18 and 30, not necessarily registered or likely voters. Those questioned may not end up voting, or casting a ballot for either major party candidate for president.
The poll found that only 39% of young people have a favourable opinion of Mrs Clinton compared with 54% who have an unfavourable view of the presumptive Democratic nominee.
Desiree Batista, a former supporter of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, said she was "picking the lesser of two evils" in backing Mrs Clinton, a decision she reached in part because she believes Mr Trump "was unqualified" to be president.
"I just don't think he's fit to be a presidential candidate," said Ms Batista, a 21-year-old college student from Colonia, New Jersey. "I understand people like him as a businessman, even though I don't feel the same way."
The depth of animosity towards Mr Trump among young Americans may be driven by the two-thirds of those who believe he is racist. That includes nearly six in 10 whites, and more than three-quarters of African Americans, Hispanics and Asians.
Mr Trump launched his campaign last summer by accusing some immigrants from Mexico of being rapists and bringing drugs into the country. He later vowed to temporarily bar foreign Muslims from entering the US, a position from which he has recently backed away.
"Clearly, from what Trump has said he can be categorised as racist," said Barrett Coleman, a 28-year-old graduate student from Richmond, Virginia, who is supporting Mrs Clinton. "His comments about Mexicans, in particular, are just awful."
A Trump spokeswoman was not available to comment on the GenForward poll, which found he does have some supporters among young people.
Nour El Hanly, a 20-year-old student from Chicago, is a Muslim of Moroccan descent who said he found Mrs Clinton "corrupt" and will "continue failing Obama policies".
"I do not favor all of (Trump's) rhetoric, but he's a smart businessman who will help the nation's economy," said Mr El Hanly, a Republican.
He said he favoured Mr Trump's plan to strengthen security along the US border with Mexico, but does not think the tycoon will follow through on any sort of plan to bar Muslims from the country.
"Most of my friends don't agree, but I think he is the best choice," he said.
Nevertheless, the poll found little common ground between young Americans and Mr Trump.
Some seven in 10 oppose his proposal to temporarily ban Muslims from other countries from entering the United States. Seven in 10 also oppose his plan to build a wall along the US southern border. Six in 10 say immigrants who are in the country illegally should be allowed to stay, including large majorities of young Hispanics, African-Americans and Asian-Americans and about half of young whites.
Nathan Mclendon, a 22-year-old African-American independent, said he does not believe Mr Trump can relate to the concerns of young voters or people of colour.
"He doesn't understand what we're going through. He's not focused on equality," said Mr Mclendon, of Tampa, Florida. "I don't find him trustworthy. And I'm not sure he cares."
:: The poll of 1,965 adults aged 18-30 was carried out between June 14 and 27 using a sample drawn from the probability-based GenForward panel, which is designed to be representative of the US young adult population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 3.8 percentage points.
The survey was paid for by the Black Youth Project at the University of Chicago using grants from the John D and Catherine T MacArthur Foundation and the Ford Foundation.
Respondents were first selected randomly using address-based sampling methods, and later interviewed online or by phone.
Bernie Sanders, the outsider who outran all the insiders in US politics, finally took his place alongside Hillary Clinton yesterday to consolidate her bid to beat Donald Trump.
Mr Sanders, whose appeals for a "political revolution" captured the imagination of millions of voters across the US, finally gave his much-anticipated endorsement of his Democratic rival Mrs Clinton, calling for unity two weeks shy of the Democratic National Convention.
Standing alongside one another at an event in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist, congratulated Clinton for winning the nomination and vowed to do everything he can to help her beat presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump.
"Hillary Clinton understands that we must fix an economy in America that is rigged and that sends almost all new wealth and income to the top 1pc," he said, listing his reasons for endorsing her.
"Hillary Clinton understands that if someone in America works 40 hours a week, that person should not be living in poverty."
Democrats have coalesced around Mrs Clinton's candidacy since she defeated Sanders in primaries last month in California and five other states, led by endorsements from President Barack Obama and Vice-President Joe Biden.
Mrs Clinton will need all the help she can muster, as Mr Trump continues to chip away at her lead in a national poll, a survey released yesterday shows. The presumptive Democratic nominee now has just a three percentage point edge over the likely GOP nominee, 47pc to 44pc, according to the NBC News/Survey Monkey poll. The same poll last week showed Mrs Clinton at 48pc and Mr Trump at 43pc. And two weeks ago, she held an eight percentage point advantage over the mogul, 49pc to 41pc - Mrs Clinton's peak in this poll.
The latest survey comes after the Department of Justice decided not to pursue charges against Mrs Clinton for mishandling classified information. In a public address last week, FBI Director James Comey outlined Clinton's wrongdoings, but also said he wouldn't recommend a prosecutor bring charges.
Some 93pc of Trump supporters disagree with the FBI director's decision not to recommend an indictment of Mrs Clinton. Even 20pc of Clinton supporters think Mr Comey got it wrong. Overall, only 41pc of registered voters agree with the FBI director's decision, while 56pc said they disagree with that move. Both candidates remain widely unpopular. Mrs Clinton is disapproved of by 60pc of registered voters, while Trump's number is even worse - 62pc.
US President Barack Obama and wife Michelle arrive back at the White House after attending a memorial service for five police officers shot dead in Dallas (AP)
US President Barack Obama is to meet police chiefs at the White House following a series of shootings.
He faces a delicate balancing act of supporting law enforcement while addressing concerns of bias from some of the communities they serve.
Wednesday's meeting is the second such session this week and this time will be expanded to include mayors, academics and civil rights activists.
"We'll share solutions from communities that have already found ways to build trust and reduce disparities," the President said on Facebook.
Mr Obama and Vice President Joe Biden met representatives from eight police organisations on Monday before flying the next day to Dallas to lead a memorial for five police officers killed by a suspect who said he wanted to kill whites, particularly white officers.
The officers were working at a rally where protesters had gathered to voice complaints about the shooting deaths of two black men by police officers, one in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and the other in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
"Going forward, I want to hear ideas from even more Americans about how we can address these challenges together as one nation. That means you," Mr Obama said
Mr Biden told CNN after Monday's meeting that a couple of the police groups had voiced some displeasure with the President, while others told him he was "doing it just right" with his comments.
Mr Biden did not offer detail about the complaints, but said Mr Obama stressed how he has repeatedly voiced support for law enforcement and offered to send critics a list of when he has done so.
Mr Biden said the President asked the police officials at the meeting: "Fellas, what do you think I'm not doing? What have you not heard me say?"
Mr Biden also said some of the police organisations had voiced concerns for the safety of their members. "It's the first time I've ever heard police organisations say 'My guys are frightened'," he said.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Mr Obama is hoping to push the conversations toward concrete actions that the government and communities can take.
"Even the most optimistic assessment of what could happen tomorrow doesn't leave anybody concluding that all the problems are going to be solved," he said on board Air Force One as it headed to Dallas.
"But the President is hopeful that while the country is focused on this issue, that we can reprioritise and re-energise the search for common ground."
AP
The son of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry has said his father would have been on board with an Enterprise crew member being portrayed as gay, but is unsure if it should have been helmsman Hikaru Sulu.
Rod Roddenberry said his father would have been supportive of a gay Trek crew member and praised the Star Trek Beyond film makers for featuring an LGBT character. Gene Roddenberry died in 1991.
"I think he would be 100% in favour of a gay character in Star Trek," said Roddenberry. "There's so much going on in the world today. I think he would love any sort of social issue being brought into Star Trek."
Actor John Cho told Australia's Herald Sun last week that a scene in the upcoming film plainly presents Sulu with a male spouse raising an infant daughter.
Cho said he liked that the fact that the approach did not "make a big thing" out of it.
But original Sulu actor George Takei, 79, who is gay, has called the decision "unfortunate".
He told The Hollywood Reporter that he thought the character had been altered and would have preferred the film-makers to create a new gay character.
Star Trek Beyond actor-screenwriter Simon Pegg defended the choice in a statement and said the film-makers wanted an LGBT character to be "someone we already knew because the audience has a pre-existing opinion of that character as a human being, unaffected by any prejudice".
Roddenberry said he understood Takei's opinion that his father probably did not intend for Sulu, who never had an on-screen love interest in the original TV and film series, to be gay.
"In a way, it's George's character," he said. "I can understand why he feels strongly about it. I don't see why everyone is bickering about it. It's about time. Let's just do it."
Roddenberry, who is serving as an executive producer on the upcoming Star Trek series on the CBS All Access online video service, said his father would have probably created a gay character to be featured in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. The spin-off of Star Trek: The Next Generation ran from 1993 to 1999.
AP
Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan may be seeking to improve ties with Syria
Turkey's prime minister has said he wants to improve ties with Syria in what would mark a U-turn in policy.
Binali Yildirim said in a televised address that Turkey is expanding its circle of friends, adding: "I am sure that we will return (our) ties with Syria to normal. We need it."
The statement follows the restoration of Turkey's diplomatic ties with Russia and Israel. Ankara cut ties with Syrian president Bashar Assad after a popular uprising erupted in 2011.
The Turkish government has consistently cast the departure of Assad, who enjoys the backing of Iran and Russia, as necessary for a successful political resolution to the conflict in Syria.
Turkey, which borders Syria, is home to about 2.75 million Syrian refugees. It has served as a base for political representatives of the Syrian opposition and various rebel groups seeking to unseat Assad.
Last week, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced that the path to Turkish citizenship would be open to Syrians who meet several criteria including having no links to terror groups.
Turkey's war on terrorism is primarily focused on Kurdish militants - which Ankara considers a threat in both the Syrian and Turkish context - as well as the Islamic State group.
AP
United States to allocate $22.4 million to Armenia and $10.9 million to Azerbaijan
House Appropriations Committee approves foreign assistance bill for FY 2017 Today, the U.S. House Appropriations Committee approved the Fiscal Year (FY) 2017 State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs (SFOPS) Appropriations Bill, which covers assistance to Armenia and the region, the Armenian Assembly of America (Assembly) reported. The bill maintains Section 907 of the FREEDOM Support Act and includes language for aid to nations hosting Syrian refugees. Specifically, the SFOPS Report highlighted the need for additional assistance to "vulnerable populations in Syria and in neighboring countries," comprised of Syrian refugees, Christians, and other minorities afflicted by the Syrian civil war and persecuted by the Islamic State (ISIS). According to the bill, funds "shall be made available for programs in countries affected by significant populations of internally displaced persons or refugees." The Committee also recommends the expansion of humanitarian programs to ensure services reach these vulnerable populations. In addition, the House has incorporated a section on Genocide Victim Memorial Sites, where funds are appropriated "to establish and maintain memorial sites of genocide." Similar to Fiscal Year 2016, this year's Committee report did not delineate funding levels for the South Caucasus generally, however, the Senate approved version provided $24.1 million in non-military assistance to Armenia as well as called for continued aid to Nagorno Karabakh. "As Congress finalizes the House and Senate Appropriations Bills, the Armenian Assembly will continue to push for additional assistance to help Armenia cope with the influx of refugees fleeing from violence in Syria, as well as for much needed humanitarian assistance to help Nagorno Karabakh rebuild after the April war launched by Azerbaijan," Assembly Executive Director Bryan Ardouny stated. Earlier this year, 33 Members sent a letter to the House Appropriations Committee outlining funding and policy issues for the region. Ardouny, in testimony submitted to the Committee, outlined nine key policy priorities for the Armenian American community, including assistance to Christian Armenians in the Middle East, the majority of whom are descendants of survivors of the Armenian Genocide. According to Ardouny's testimony: "The Assembly also urge[d] enhanced assistance to Christian and other minority communities at risk in the Middle East, with a particular focus of concern regarding the continued unrest in Syria, particularly the battleground city of Aleppo where Armenian churches and other institutions have come under attack." The House Appropriations Bill, similar to the Senate's maintains Section 907 of the FREEDOM Support Act as well, restating the six customary exemptions for humanitarian and other assistance to Azerbaijan. Section 907 of the 1992 FREEDOM Support Act was enacted to address Azerbaijan's hostile actions against Armenia.
SHARE Shown from left in back row are Amy Wilbanks, special education teacher; Fredd Schramm and John Hubbard, both Knights of Columbus representatives; Principal Jami Verderosa; and in front row are Kentae Catchings and Ben Bryant, both students at West-Oak Middle School.
The self-contained special education class at West-Oak Middle School recently received a donation of $750 from the Seneca Knights of Columbus. Knights representatives, Fredd Schramm and John Hubbard, presented the school with the donation to assist with the self-contained special education program for students with intellectual disabilities. The grant is a result of the proceeds of the Knights of Columbus's HOPE Campaign fundraising drive.
Special education teacher Amy Wilbanks said, "This generous donation from the Knights of Columbus is greatly appreciated by the special education students at WOMS. The money will be used for hands-on learning activities and community-based field trips to help students develop and practice their independent living and social skills."
The HOPE Campaign is a program sponsored and coordinated by the state Knights of Columbus organization through the Columbus HOPE Foundation and is conducted annually at every council in South Carolina. Each local campaign is audited to assure that it is in compliance with the mission and procedures of the HOPE Campaign. The chief requirement of the foundation is that all donations directly assist intellectually challenged citizens.
KEN RUINARD/INDEPENDENT MAIL Erick Bradshaw Sr., former executive director and of Fresh Start Community Development Corp., arrives at the Federal Courthouse in Greenville. Bradshaw is charged in a three-count indictment.
SHARE KEN RUINARD/INDEPENDENT MAIL Erick Bradshaw Sr., former executive director and of Fresh Start Community Development Corp., arrives at the Federal Courthouse in Greenville. Bradshaw is charged in a three-count indictment.
By Nikie Mayo of the Independent Mail
GREENVILLE An attorney for Erick Bradshaw Sr. said Wednesday that his client intends "to cooperate fully" as Bradshaw faces federal charges about his activities while he led Fresh Start Community Development Corp. in Anderson.
The now-defunct Fresh Start got money from the state to repair houses for low-income residents in Anderson County. Bradshaw, the executive director, and Augustina Cabral-Rice, the organization's housing services coordinator, are accused of lying about the work that was done and keeping some of the money for themselves.
They both had a scheduled pretrial conference in front of federal Judge Bruce Howe Hendricks in Greenville on Wednesday, though neither addressed the judge. Ryan Beasley, Bradshaw's attorney, told Hendricks that he had a lot of documents still to look at related to the case. Willie Peters III, a lawyer acting on behalf of Cabral-Rice, stood next to Beasley.
Hendricks agreed to allow attorneys more time on the case, meaning that it may not come before her again until September.
Outside the courtroom, Bradshaw did not take questions except to confirm that he now lives in Kentucky.
Beasley said, "Mr. Bradshaw plans to cooperate fully to bring this case to a resolution as quickly as possible."
Bradshaw, 40, and Cabral-Rice, 61, were indicted by a federal grand jury in May. They were indicted on the same charges: conspiracy and two counts of money laundering. According to the indictments, they are accused of "engaging in monetary transactions in criminally derived property worth more than $10,000."
Cabral-Rice still lives in Anderson, according to court records.
In the indictments, Bradshaw and Cabral-Rice are both accused of forging the signatures of contractors on bank-funding certifications and state-housing certifications of payment. According to the indictments, both also submitted information that had "inflated costs compared to the invoices of contractors who actually performed the work."
If convicted, Bradshaw and Cabral-Rice could each face at least 15 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. They could also have to forfeit more than $282,000, according to the indictments.
Bradshaw may be best known for his involvement in lawsuits against Anderson County.
He and others unsuccessfully challenged the Anderson County Council investigation into former County Administrator Joey Preston's administration.
Bradshaw and Cabral-Rice started working together at Fresh Start Community Development Corp. sometime in late 2010 or early 2011, according to Independent Mail archives. The organization received funding from the South Carolina State Housing Finance and Development Authority.
The activities described in the indictments cover a period from January 2011 to December 2012.
Follow Nikie Mayo on Twitter @NikieMayo
Residents and commuters in Starr are circulating a petition to try to keep open Rhody Farm Road. The road off S.C. 81 South in Starr remains passable, but is marked with signs indicating that it is closed.
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By Nikie Mayo of the Independent Mail
STARR Drivers have started a petition and have contacted the South Carolina Department of Transportation trying to stop former Anderson County Councilman Eddie Moore from closing a connector road near the community's elementary school.
Until recently, Rhody Farm Road was maintained by the state. It connects Agnew Road to S.C. 81 South and, according to residents, is especially popular when Starr Elementary School is in session and drivers are seeking to avoid school bus traffic.
Some people concerned about the potential closure of the road say they think Moore is trying to close it out of retaliation after losing in his bid for re-election last month.
Moore, who owns property on both sides of Rhody Farm Road, said Tuesday that a history of troubles near his farmland made him decide to ask the state to let him handle the road himself.
"I petitioned to close it because of the litter, trash and garbage that just accumulates out there," he said. "This is a cut-through road that goes right through my farm. Too many big trucks use it and there is too much trash. And somebody shot and killed one of my horses. When someone is messing with your livestock ... you have got to do something."
The road remained passable Tuesday afternoon, but signs on each end read: "ROAD CLOSED Private Road No Thru Traffic."
Kevin McLaughlin, the state Department of Transportation's district engineering administrator for this region, said Moore followed the proper channels within the state agency to get the road transferred to him. Moore's request was approved last month, McLaughlin said.
"In hindsight, maybe we at the district level should have given his request a little more consideration and looked into it a little more," McLaughlin said Tuesday. "Most of the time, when someone makes a request like this, the roads are very minor. So we didn't do any elaborate studies."
The state did offer Anderson County the option to take over the road before approving Moore's request, Deputy County Administrator Holt Hopkins said. Hopkins said after he received correspondence from the state, he asked Anderson County Councilman J. Mitchell Cole, who represents the district, about the road. Cole did not see a need for the county to take over the road.
"The county has enough roads to maintain already," Cole said Tuesday. "And I don't think I fully understood all the ins and outs of this situation at the time."
McLaughlin had similar sentiments.
" I have heard from so many people on this road and I have apologized to all of them," he said. "The responsibility is on me. I now think we should have done more due diligence on this."
McLaughlin said the state Department of Transportation's approval of Moore's transfer request "does not give him the right to close the road." To do that, McLaughlin said, Moore would have to get approval through the South Carolina court system.
That is not the way Moore understood things Tuesday afternoon.
"I've got a right to close this road, but I have not done it yet," he said.
Amber Crisp, one of the people who signed the petition, said she uses Rhody Farm Road at least four times a day.
"You can't just close a road that is used that much without giving public notice," she said. "That road is in good shape and is used. Taxpayers deserve to know when something like this is happening."
Residents and drivers in the community have started a Facebook page called "Save Rhody Farm Road" to drum up support. Copies of the road petition are circulating in Starr and neighboring Iva.
Prashant Patel owns the Redi-Mart Convenience Store in Starr and has a petition on the counter. The store is less than a half-mile away from Rhody Farm Road. The petition there had 67 signatures Tuesday afternoon,
"That road helps my business," Patel said. "A lot of people come off that road and then stop right at my store. And once school starts again, there will just be a lot of congestion if that road is not available."
Ray Graham, who beat Cole in the June 14 primary and then bested Moore in a runoff later, said he thinks the road issue has some politics attached.
"When somebody does something like this that you know affects residents and commuters in a community, you have to wonder if he has some sour grapes over losing," Graham said of Moore.
Sen. Mike Gambrell, a Republican from Honea Path, said he has been inundated with calls about the road and has reached out to the state Department of Transportation because of those.
"We'll see what are options are," he said. "We hope there will be a solution that will be right for everyone."
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By Ray Chandler, Special to Independent Mail
SENECA City officials said Tuesday they will meet with representatives of local churches to discuss ways members of the community can respond during interactions with police officers.
A request for a summit came from the Rev. W.C. Honeycutt of the Seneca River Baptist Association during the regular meeting of the Seneca City Council.
The Seneca River Baptist Association includes more than a dozen area churches.
Honeycutt, pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Seneca, said he and his organization hoped to take proactive steps to avoid in Seneca situations "like we've seen in Minnesota and Louisiana recently."
The pastor referred to incidents in which police officers have shot young black men in situations that have created questions about the justification of lethal force in those instances and of the policies regarding training of officers in the use of force generally.
"We need to partnership of the churches, schools and the police," Honeycutt said.
The crisis, he said, was in teaching how to people should respond during interactions with police officers.
Mayor Dan Alexander agreed.
"I'll be glad to sit down with you," Alexander said, adding that the discussion should include other council members and Seneca Police Chief John Covington.
There are no specific details on when and where the meeting will be held.
In additional city council news, the city council voted 9-0 on Tuesday to approve $11,900 in tourism promotion grants funded by the city's accommodations tax revenue.
The grants included $8,900 for the Lachlan McIntosh Tannery Foundation event scheduled for November in the city's Norton-Thompson Park, $1,500 for the Blue Ridge Arts Center's book publishing and printing for the Downtown Cats Tour and $1,500 for three tourism promotion events by the Seneca Women's Club.
The city council also approved by a 9-0 vote a new intergovernmental agreement with the city of Clemson and Clemson Area Transit for the operation of the Seneca public transportation bus system.
The agreement runs through June 30, 2017. Under the terms of the agreement, Seneca will pay Clemson $694,492.
Armenian Assembly welcomes bipartisan expansion of Armenian caucus (video)
Today, the Armenian Assembly of America (Assembly) welcomed the bipartisan expansion of the leadership of the Congressional Caucus on Armenian Issues with the addition of Representatives David Valadao (R-CA) and Jackie Speier (D-CA) as Co-Chairs and Adam Schiff (D-CA) and David Trott (R-MI) as Vice Chairs, reported the Assembly. These Members of Congress join current Co-Chairs Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-NJ) and Robert Dold (R-IL). "Representatives Speier, Valadao, Schiff, and Trott have all proven to be dedicated and integral Members of the Armenian Caucus. We are excited to see them take on this new leadership role," Assembly Executive Director Bryan Ardouny said. "As more Members of Congress take the lead on Armenian issues, the more we can accomplish, especially in these challenging times. The Assembly welcomes the expanded Caucus leadership team and looks forward to working with them throughout the remainder of this Congress," Ardouny continued. During a recent meeting with Congressman Pallone, Armenian Assembly Board Co-Chair Van Krikorian expressed the importance of strengthening the Caucus in view of recent developments in the region as a result of Azerbaijan's attacks against Armenia and Nagorno Karabakh. Co-Chair Valadao serves on the House Appropriations Committee and is the Vice Chair of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration and Related Agencies. Co-Chair Speier, who participated in the U.S. delegation that traveled to Armenia last year for the Centennial of the Armenian Genocide, also hails from California and serves on the House Armed Service Committee as the Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations and on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Vice-Chair Schiff, who met with the Assembly's 2016 intern class today, has long been a leading Democratic sponsor of the House resolutions affirming the Armenian Genocide. Rep. Schiff previously served on the House Appropriations Committee, and presently serves as the Ranking Democrat on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Republican Member Trott was also part of the U.S. delegation to Armenia for the Centennial of the Armenian Genocide. He serves on the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the House Committee on the Judiciary. The Congressional Armenian Issues Caucus has worked to strengthen the ties between the United States and Armenia and keep members engaged on Armenia-related issues. The Caucus continues to advocate for increased trade and assistance to Armenia, self-determination for Nagorno Karabakh and supporting U.S. recognition of the Armenian Genocide.
Gaurav Arora who would be seen in 'Raaz Reboot' seemed to have an adventurous shooting schedule in Romania. The actor along with co-star Kirti were to shoot an intense scene on the by lanes of Romania when chaos broke through.
A source from the unit informed, it was a crucial scene for both the actors and we were running against time since the same had to be shot in the day light. But the set up managed to attract a lot of onlooker out which some started passing comments on the actors. Gaurav who otherwise is calm and composed spoke to the people once and requested them to let the shoot happen in peace. But when volleys of bad words were thrown that`s when the actor lost his cool and got himself embroiled in a fight. It was the online production from the set that intervened and controlled the situation.
On touching base with Gaurav, he stated, "It was a crucial scene and we were running against time anyways. I tried explaining the onlookers to be quite and let us shoot but they just didnt listen.. Infact few of them just got nasty and passed some lewd remark against me and kriti.. Thats when I got angry and the situation got so ugly that Romanian team had to intervene to get it sorted. But eventually we managed to shoot in given time."
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What is Quicko? How does it help the tax payers of India?
Tell us something about how Quicko helps tax payers with saving taxes.
What if one doesnt file tax returns?
How is Quicko different from other online tax filing websites?
What is the fee charged by Quicko?
Any plans to introduce additional services for tax payers?
Can you list some for the uninitiated tax payer, especially the younger ones?
has completed his Bachelors of Engineering in Computer Science in the year 2006 and masters in computer science in the year 2008.Sonagara founded the company in the year 2014. He has been previously associated with Deutsche Bank Fidelity Investment and Thomson Reuters.Founded by Vishvajit Sonagara and Anand Satyapanthi,fills the huge void in the space of e-filling of Income Tax Returns. Founded and manned by thorough professionals team Quicko consists of 8 Chartered Accountants, 10 software professionals. It Offers an easy-to-use platform to register company from the comfort of your home and helps Access your Income Tax Return at anytime.Replying toof, Vishvajit Sonagara says "Our objective is to build a Do-It-Yourself software that simplifies the entire process of tax filing and also aids in management of finances."Quicko is not just about online tax filing. We are neither an accounting firm nor a tech filing platform. Our objective is to build a Do-It-Yourself software that simplifies the entire process of tax filing and also aids in management of finances. We have created Quicko as a platform to focus on financial planning.Quicko helps tax-payers to enjoy the process of filing their Income Tax Returns and not treat it as a burden. We encourage the tax-payers to not only file Income Tax Returns, but to also build aninvestment portfolio.When a user logs into the account, he/she is asked to feed in certain important data regarding his/her taxes from the Form 16, salary, PAN card, passport, bank account, monthly EMI (if any) andtax saving investments made, if any. The underlying software identifies the data and throws suggestions around other tax saving plans.If you do not file Tax Returns on time, you will have to pay interest on your tax dues when you file at a later date. If you have incurred losses or paid excess taxes, you cannot carry forward the same tosubsequent years if you do not file your Return. You could also become liable for a penalty orprosecution by the Income Tax Department if you conceal or fail to disclose your income.We have coded complex rules in the engine that perform Income Tax calculation on the escrow on a millisecond basis. On other platforms, users get the tax summary at the end of the Form after filling all the data. Quicko, however, uses real-time algorithms to keep updating the summary as and whenusers feed data. It is a technology-driven model.However, the more important differentiation is that we enable the tax payers to save tax, harvest it and create a better future for them. By making tax filing easy and online, we also further the Digital India initiative taken by the government and also enable to convert many more tax evaders into tax payers through a systematic process of education, awareness, technology, and financial planningopportunity.On an average, while other CAs and Income Tax Return filing firms charge somewhere between Rs. 1,500-Rs. 7,500 for Income Tax Return filing, Quickos fee ranges from Rs. 500- Rs. 1,500, averaging at Rs. 700.Tax filing is a data-intensive process, and therefore, the Web is the primary medium. Around 95% of the customers file through the Web. The retention rate is high as the users do not keep switchingplatforms once they get used to it and find value. Although recurring, it is still a seasonal business. It peaks during June and July when around 60% of the tax payers queue up for filing Returns. In order to break this seasonal binding, we haveintroduced value added services around tax planning at a very low cost.We will introduce more features on the platform such as Plan and Drive. While Plan would be a full-fledged finance and portfolio management tool, Drive would be a cloud offering where userscould access their data such as Form 16, PAN card, Passport on demand. The drive would be theirpersonal folder on the cloud, which they can access anywhere, anytime. They need not upload the same data every year for tax returns filing and can also pull them for Visa applications or any other purpose.I have often heard youngsters say that they are not keen on tax returns since their income is not much. However, one must remember that the income keeps growing and the tax returns become animportant document for you just like your passport or important identity documents. It becomes your standard income proof which enables banks to sanction your loans quickly and easily.You can also trade in stocks, open bank accounts, get bank credits, and make investments with ease by filing your tax returns. The tax returns enable you to claim refund of taxes deducted or paid in excess of your tax liabilities. If you have to go abroad for jobs or higher education, the income tax returns become a proof to enable authorities to validate your financial standing before granting you a Visa.For professionals and business organisations, Income tax returns are a must to become eligible to secure certain tenders. Most importantly, it is also a proof of you being a good tax-paying citizen contributing to the development of our nation. Its great to have the tag of a tax-payer as compared to a tax-evader.
It never occurred to me that I might visit Armenia - Jacqueline Bisset (video)
Renowned English actress Jacqueline Bisset arrived in Armenia last night to participate in the 13th Golden Apricot Yerevan International Film Festival (GAIFF). Minutes ago, she arrived at the Moscow cinema without the official ceremony on the red carpet. Her captivating smile and alluring looks were the same as in the many films in which she starred many years ago. In reply to A1+s question how she felt, the actress responded with a smile, very well, thank you. Then she hurried to the cinema hall where an excited audience was waiting for her with unceasing applause. Stepping onto the stage, the actress said she lives in Los Angeles where there are a lot of Armenians. Very often I talk to them about life in Armenia. It never occurred to me that one day I might visit Armenia. Now I must discover everything for me I already know that Armenians are good people, I feel the warmth. Now I want to taste your cooking. Harutyun Khachatryan, Founding Director of Golden Apricot International Film Festival, said Jacqueline Bisset has been awarded the Parajanov's Thaler, a Lifetime Achievement Award, which is given to the greatest stars in the world. We shall bestow the award upon her during the closing ceremony, he said. This was followed the screening of Francois Truffaut's Day for Night, where Jacqueline Bisset stars with Jean-Pierre Leaud.
Vikram Khakhar, the make of Randeep Hooda's Main Aur Charles, is all set to make a movie on Gaurav Tiwari. You might already know that paranormal investigator Gaurav Tiwari was recently found dead in his Delhi apartment under mysterious circumstances. While the police is suspecting suicide, Gaurav's father maintains that he had told his wife that 'a negative force was pulling him and he couldn't control it'.
And now filmmaker Vikram Khakhar is all set to make a film on it. Gaurav's case will be a part of his upcoming film XXX Case Files (working title), which is a remake of 2013 horror flick Oculus, with Huma Qureshi, Saqib Saleem and Lisa Ray.
In fact, Vikram had himself met Gaurav in 2014.
Talking about him he said, "He didn't seem suicidal, he was a man of courage. In the course of our research, we've discovered that sometimes when on a 'cleaning' trip, an entity can get attached to an investigator. Gaurav had been to some haunted places."
The film would revolve around a trio of paranormal investigators and is based on real case files. "Gaurav is now also a case and they will investigate his death. I'm sitting with my writers trying to incorporate the track into the storyline," says Vikram.
Burhan Wani's encounter and its aftermath have created ripples in the power corridors of New Delhi. The deaths of more than 30 people in the last four days in the wake of Wani's encounter seems to have shaken the nation's conscience.
But Wani was a terrorist after all. And he got what he deserved.
BCCL
An Indian Army veteran, Major Manoj Arya, penned an open letter where he's said how, despite being hailed as a martyr in Kashmir, Wani was a terrorist after all and would have met the same fate even if he had managed to get away this time.
The letter also explains that barring sympathy for a precious life being lost, Wani doesn't deserve anything else, and all those who conspire to take Kashmir from India should be met with an iron hand.
BCCL
Here's the letter:
Read.
Dear Departed,
Ever since you were terminated in a forces-led operation in the Valley, 23 people have died. I dont know why they died. The majority were possibly overcome with grief and fury and wanted to avenge your death. That did not happen, for obvious reasons. A policeman was thrown along with his vehicle into a river and he drowned. I grieve with your family and with the families of all those who lost their lives. Despicable though you may have been, I cannot find it in my heart to blame your family.
You could have been an engineer, a doctor, an archeologist or a software programmer but your fate drew you to the seductive world of social media, with its instant celebrity hood and all encompassing fame. You posted pictures on the internet with your brothers, all you fine young Rambos holding assault rifles and radio sets. It was right out of Hollywood. Your rifles fire selector switch was set to safe and your weapon rested on your shoulder. I know its too late to advise you on such matters, but NEVER do that in an operational area.
The day you started with your social media blitzkrieg, you were a dead man. You encouraged young men of Kashmir to kill Indian soldiers, all from behind the safety of your Facebook account. Your female fan following was delirious. You were a social media rage. Unknown to you, there was probably some nerd with a laptop sitting in HQ XV Corps, tracking you 24/7. You died when you were 22. Had you survived this operation, you would have died when you were 23. Just a different date on the calendar, thats all. The intensity of violence and the result would have been the same.
I wish we had met and I could have explained to you (before killing you) that the old men of the Hurriyat Conference are like leech. They feed on the blood of men. They send young Kashmiris to face the Indian Army. What sort of a war is this, where lambs are sent to fight lions?
I would have shown you the sheer duplicity of the Hurriyat, with their sons living abroad, pursuing professions other than jihad. Name one relative of Syed Ali Geelani, the head of the Hurriyat Conference, who is fighting the so-called Indian occupation? His son Nayeem Geelani is a doctor in Rawalpindi, and lives under the patronage of the Pakistani ISI. Zahoor, his second son, lives in South Delhi. Mirwaiz Umar Farooqs sister Rabia is a doctor in the US. Mariyam Andrabi, sister of head of the radical Dukhtran-e-Millat, Asiya Andrabi, along with her family lives in Malaysia. Every Kashmiri separatist leaders daughter or son is rich and safe, outside Kashmir. Jihad is for other peoples sons.
And your parents son is dead. Dead from a 7.62 mm full metal jacket round to the head.
Kashmirs young and restless blame the security forces for killing them. But they never question the Hurriyat. No one asks Syed Ali Geelani why Burhan Wani is not from his family.
Pakistani media was ecstatic when Kashmiris celebrated Eid this year along with Pakistan and not with the rest of India. This was reported as a blow to the unity of India. This is the first time in the 1400 year history of Islam that Eid was declared, not by witnessing the Shawwal moon, but by looking towards Pakistan. Well done.
The Hurriyat has nothing to do with Kashmiris. This unrest, this bloodshed is just another business. If not, I would like to see the list of martyrs from the Hurriyat leaderships families.
The Hurriyat knows too well that Kashmir has fallen off the map of the worlds attention. No one cares and everyone knows that it is an artificially manufactured conflict. The Kashmir dispute exists because it is an inexpensive way for Pakistan to keep Indian forces bogged down in the valley.
You were a terrorist. You chose to wage war against India. Like for all other such perpetrators in the past, it didnt go too well for you. When you choose to fight against the Indian Army, know this; THEY WILL KILL YOU.
Your supporters now want blood. So be it.
Cheers!
Major Gaurav Arya (Veteran)
A 16-year-old boy from Delhi who was untraceable since May 9, 2015 has been located, thanks to Facebook.
AP
The boy, a resident of Khajuri Khas area in the national capital did not return from his daily tuitions on May 9th, after which the family filed a case of suspected abduction in the nearing police station.
"During investigation, police came across a Facebook profile which seemed to be that of the boy. It also came to light that the boy had chatted with his elder brother Pawan on Facebook from November 2015 to April this year but did not reveal his location," a police official said.
cbiacademy/ Representative Image
The location of the boy was traced in Srinagar with the help of cyber cell. Police said the student was working with a rice merchant in the city.
The boy reportedly admitted that he had ran away from home after his father rebuked him for not studying up to his satisfaction.
Even sitting here in Delhi you know what Harlem of New York is. You know of Al Capone who controlled Chicago of the 30s. But how much do you know about the gangs that run Delhi?
In a series, Indiatimes explores Delhis underbelly and uncovers its deepest, darkest secrets. Such fierce is the gang war that it left close to a hundred people dead, dozens of them in a single village of Delhi Mitraun in Najafgarh.
Just six kilometer away from Mitraun, there is another Dichaon Kalan which has been a battleground for one of the most dreaded gangs that have operated out of Delhi. Surprisingly, what catch your eyes in the village bordering Haryana are CCTV cameras that are installed in majority of the houses here. It is a necessity of life as residents point out. It helps them keep an eye on friends and enemies.
Indiatimes
Every new visitor of the twin villages is seen with suspicion. Residents begin tracking their movements and if you are a journalist who wants to click a few pictures, be ready to answer a battery of questions from the locals or face their wrath. Villagers wont talk to you, forget offering a glass of water. Reason: talking or offering a drink caught on the CCTV is seen as conspiring against others or taking sides.
Unlike the gangs of Harlem there arent many skinny suits and number bosses. The modus operandi is different here. Bullets ring in the citys badlands on every minor issues. Recently, argument over Jat quota turned bloody in Dichaon after two ex-servicemen working as private security officers (PSOs) of property dealers and financiers associated with gangster-turned-politician Krishan Pehalwan were gunned down by another PSO and his aides at his farmhouse on the night of March 13.
Indiatimes
The dark cult figures operating fearlessly in outer and west Delhi are bound by one common thread, that of extortion and land grab.
Neeraj Sehrawat aka Neeraj Bawana, Ravi Gulia, Vikas Lagarpuria, Rajesh aka Karambir Bawana, Dheer Pal aka Kana, Naveen aka Bali and Manoj Morkheri are among the most talked about persons who dominate crime in the national capital.
The early days
Following a Supreme Court order in 1996, the Delhi government bought land from farmers in rural Delhi and sold it to industrialists so that they could shift their industrial units from the city areas. The city government measurably failed to develop city's outskirts as industrial hubs and industrialists were finally permitted to operate their units in the city again in 2007. Realtors quickly bought up the land that industrialists sold at cheaper rates. This prompted the gangsters to take interest in land barons from whom they began extorting money.
As property prices sky-rocketed in the last 20 years, the gangsters either themselves or helped realtors acquire disputed properties. At some places, they even created dispute where there was none. Now, the situation has reached to such an extent that no property in most parts of outer Delhi can be sold off without their wishes.
Indiatimes
Sometimes, they provide protection to the landowners in exchange for their share. However, if differences come up between them, it yields deadly results.
Southwest Delhi's Najafgarh has witnessed several bloody gang wars in the past 25 years over property disputes. Three close friends - Balraj and Anup from Mitraun village and Krishan Pehelwan (an MCD councilor) from neighbouring Dichaon Kalan village - turned foes over a civic contract in 1992 and started gang wars which are still going on in these parts that shares the border with Haryana. A number of people have lost their lives in these gang wars. After committing a murder to avenge the killing of his uncle Rohtash, Pehalwan was arrested in 1992, but released five years later. During his stay in the prison, he formed a criminal gang.
Mitraun, the most notorious village in the city, has lost dozens of its residents in revenge killings in the last two decades. At least a dozen of its men were killed last year. While Mitraun is the stronghold of the Anoop-Balraj gang, Dichaon Kalan is the stronghold of Krishan Pehalwan's gang.
With passage of time, the number of gangs in the area increased. Estimates suggest there are at least 15 big and small gangs operating alone in Mitraun of Najafgarh area. While the smallest of these gangs consist of at least four members, the bigger ones such as those led by the likes of the notorious Naveen Khati have over 50 men. Few splinter groups, which continue to fight over real estate and land grabbing, operating in the area are: Naveen Khati gang, Manjeet Mahal gang, Gaurav Kohli gang, Sandeep Mental gang, Sajid Munna gang, Ravinder Bholu gang, Sonu Kharb gang, Mandhoti gang, Udaiveer aka Kala gang, etc.
Surat Kane, the father of Balraj and Anoop and and a well-known gangster of 1990s, asked a landlord of the area, Balwan Fauji, to give him a three-acre plot. Fauji refused and hired Krishan Pehalwan to deal with Kane.
Since then, the two gangs namely Anoop-Balraj gang of Mitraun and Krishan Pehalwan gang of Dichaon Kalan have been involved in bloody gun battles on the streets of outer Delhi, killing dozens of men from both sides. Initially, Pehalwan was more powerful but later the rival camp gained ground. Members of the two notorious gangs, the police say, are hired for settling land disputes.
Politics and gang wars
Earlier, Pehalwan joined hands with the top leaders of the Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) and made huge sums of money by illegally supplying alcohol to Haryana when it was declared a dry state between 1996 and 98. Flush with cash, Pehelwan's gang launched a crackdown on its rival camp. The rival camp's chief Balraj was gunned down in 1998.
Following his elimination, Anup, the second in command of the Anup-Balraj gang, took over and since then a series of bloodbath started. To revenge his brother's death, Anup started killing Pahelwan's men. His men shot dead Pehalwan's 22-year-old brother Kuldeep in central Delhi. On the same day, Anoop's 19-year-old nephew Yash Pal was also killed outside his shop in Mitraun.
The Anup gang made many attempts to kill Pahelwan, but he escaped unhurt in a daring attack in broad daylight while he was being brought to a court in Haryana's Rohtak. He was later killed in 2004 in Rohtak.
After Anup's murder, his gang was neutralised. Pahelwan then entered politics and successfully contested councillor's election. His younger brother Bharat Singh alias Bharte became an MLA on INLD ticket (between 2008 and 2013) and was shot dead in April 2015 in Najafgarh.
Indiatimes
Bharte attained greater heights after entering the land grabbing industry. He took advantage of the unprecedented hike in property rates. He acquired disputed property and became so influential that no piece of land could change hands without his blessings. But he could not sustain his writ for a long because several new gangs mushroomed by that time in the outskirts of Delhi in Khanjawala, Narela, Bawana and Rohini.
All of them have been trying to challenge Kishan Pehelwan's gang since then.
The other gangs
According to the police, gang wars generally increase after the death of a gang leader. A day after Neetu Dabodia was shot dead in south Delhi's Vasant Kunj in October 2013, a war for supremacy began between Dabodia's rivals Neeraj Bawana and kidnapper Manoj Morkheri. A shootout between them took place in Narela few days after Dabodia died.
Likewise, the gang war, in which two members (Paras Vikram and Pradeep Bhola) of the Neetu Dabodia gang were killed in August last year in a police van when they were returning to Tihar from Rohini court, was also the revenge of a murder that took place near Greater Kailash-I few last year.
Paras was leading the Neetu Dabodia gang after latter's death in an encounter with the Special Cell in October 2013. His nearest rival Neeraj Bawana, who was also being taken to the jail in the same van along with his men, is facing trial for allegedly killing Dabodia's henchman Pradeep Dahiya, who was shot dead by the gang at R ani Bagh area in northwest Delhi in August 2014.
Cops say mushrooming of new gangs and killing of gang leaders provide the new comers an opportunity to easily step and dominate crime in the city.
Kashmir is still tense, on the fifth consecutive day since the killing of Hizbul commander Burhan Wani.
BCCL
In the past couple of days we have heard the opinion of politicians, defence experts and diplomats on what they feel is happening in the valley.
In fact this have always been the practice, always we the 'rest of the country' have been fed with the POV of everyone, but a Kashmiri who is affected by what is happening in his/ her home and how they have been living under constant struggle.
While the valley is still on the edge, and normalcy yet to return to the valley, a Facebook user, Shazia Bakshi a Kashmiri woman puts things into perspective, from the people of Kashmir.
EPA
In the post she speaks about how she went from "taking pride in being an Indian to becoming an Kashmiri."
She also points out how some are treated good Indian while others like her are not.
She concluded the post by saying that "So I have become a Kashmiri today."
I am a Kashmiri.
Now that must come as a surprise to many , most of all me ,as all my life I have strived and endeavoured to be an Indian. Taken pride infact in being one.Not any more.
Today the criteria for being one has been changed by the collective conscience of the majority of residents of the mainland and the government that heads it. There is a good Indian today and then a traitor.
A good Indian by default is a born Hindu, non beef (meat)eating,khaki shorts clad,holier than thou saint who never questions the actions or the thought process of the state-whatever they may be.Who worships the ground the Prime Minister walks on , never mind the fact that he is more out of the country than in.Who gives a carte blanche to the armed forces for any and every action they take.He is more patriotic than the next man , never mind that he always has a 'juggad' for paying the taxes,if at all,which may actually benefit the country.A good Indian definitely must possess the mob mentality of going with the Dikat of the State and whatever the present government believes to be true .
Unfortunately this does not go with my belief of being an Indian. My belief was based on a bigger picture laid out by the founding fathers of my country-My constitution,my Preamble - and let me repeat it to all what you have conveniently forgotten:
WE, THE PEOPLE OF INDIA, having solemnly resolved to constitute India into a SOVEREIGN SOCIALIST SECULAR DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC and to secure to all its citizens:
JUSTICE, social, economic and political;
LIBERTY of thought , expression, belief, faith and worship;
EQUALITY of status and of opportunity; and to promote among them all FRATERNITY assuring the dignity of the individual and the unity and integrity of the Nation.
Secular (?)-the Prime Minister and his good men have no time to give lip service or attend an Iftaar thrown by the President . A man is lynched because the mob thinks there is beef in his fridge.
Democratic (??) what a laugh ...ask this to a Hardik Patel,Kanhaiya or an Umar.
Justice(?) -30 young kids shot in last two days in the madness of killing a FaceBook Terroriser (not a terrorist)...the guy was yet to fire a bullet ! Think about it logically , every young angry man with a radical idea and a fan following does not need to be eliminated !
Liberty(?) - yes ,I need to post this from a city which has been under curfew for the past 4 days , with net available in select pockets.
Equality(?) - Anybody but a right wing Hindu ,in today's India is a child of a lesser God .
Fraternity(?) -My fellow Indians you do not even acknowledge let alone protest against the carnage and terror that has been unleashed on my state and people.
Because we people choose to voice our dissent on this treatment we cease to become Indian in your eyes.Because we refuse to die ,you by turning your face away from us try to obliterate our existence.Because we mourn a Burhan Wani and other 2 lakh young ones disappeared or slaughtered,we automatically become terrorists. We mourn the idea of an India lost, a promise from none other than the first Prime Minister of the country yet to be fulfilled , we become anti nationals. Because we demand a retribution for a Kunan Poshpora or a Tufail Mattoo 2010 we become ''Pakistani". Because we ask for revocation of AFSPA we become in your eyes an enemy of the state . Because we refuse to be the present day Indians like you,we become Kashmiris .
So I have become a Kashmiri today.
I refuse to be like you.
I have a conscience and I have a voice.
You may stifle me , but you will never silence me.
There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people-not even the Indian Flag.
Read the original post here
iPhone maker Foxconn is likely to begin manufacturing mobile phones from its second India factory near Mumbai from August.
BCCL
Taiwan-based Foxconn, which makes iPhone, iPad and other Apple products, will initially make mobile phones at a 2 lakh square feet facility in Navi Mumbai and later laptops and computers, said Apurva Chandra, Principal Secretary Industries, Maharashtra government.
Foxconn has taken a rented premise in Navi Mumbai. They have taken 2 lakh square feet. They have (set up) their mobile manufacturing facility (there). And probably, as we are told, first week of August they are going to launch mobiles from this facility, he said.
BCCL
The rented premise is a temporary facility and the company is looking at 1,200 acres of land in Maharashtra for a new multi-billion dollar factory.
Foxconn had recently announced plans to make India a key global manufacturing hub for servicing markets across Africa and West Asia.
Chandra said Foxconn has indicated plans to start with manufacturing mobile phones and later laptops and computers.
Mobile manufacturing will begin in August then they are going to manufacture laptops and computers, he said adding a mobile assembly can be set up in 6-8 months.
BCCL
Foxconn had last year started assembling smartphones for Chinese firm Xiaomi at its facility in Sri City, an industrial park in Chittoor district of Andhra Pradesh.
In August last year, Foxconn Chairman and CEO Terry Gou announced plans to invest in India across verticals like manufacturing, startups, energy and e-commerce portals and was also looking at bringing supply chain companies and major technologies.
BCCL
He had then said that Foxconn may build as many as 12 factories in India by 2020 to manufacture LED TVs, batteries and other electronics products. It has been looking at potential sites in Gujarat, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra.
Foxconn currently manufactures in Chinese factories. Plans to set up manufacturing units in India, the nation with second-highest number of mobile phone accounts behind China, are seen as move to mitigate rising labour costs in China and lower manufacturing cost of iPhones.
BCCL
Last year, Adani Group had stated that it was in talks with Foxconn to form a joint venture. This joint venture could be for manufacturing iPhones in India at Adanis SEZ in Mundra, Gujarat.
The Taiwan-based firm, which manufactures for a host of global device brands like Apple, BlackBerry, Amazon, Motorola, Xiaomi and Sony, has the bulk of its factories in China.
But it also has plants in Asia, Europe, Brazil and Mexico which together assemble about 40 per cent of all consumer electronics products sold globally. It has 12 factories in nine Chinese cities, the most in any country.
Police in Gujarat's Gir Somnath has arrested three people in for thrashing a group of dalit youths accusing them of cow smuggling.
All the three men Ramesh Bhagwan, Rakesh Joshi and Nagjibhai Vaniya are members of of a local gau rakshak samiti.
The victims, who were employed in disposal of carcass were attacked by the vigilantees while they were carrying the cow as a part of their occupation. The accused however claimed that the youths were skinning the cow, a charge which the victims and the police have ruled out.
The shocking crime came to light on Monday after a video of the incident went viral on social media. It showed some people chained to a car while the accused are seen thrashing them.
The video was reportedly recorded by Pramod Giri Goswami, president of Shiv Sena chapter in Gir Somnath district and head of the cow vigilante group.
Goswami defended the barbaric act "On basis of the information, we (gau rakshaks) went to the village where we saw around five people slaughtering our maata. When questioned, the group said they had permission to eat the animal meat. They were disobeying the government rule so we took them to Una police station."
Remember Uttarakhand Police horse Shaktimaan who died after being attacked by BJP MLA Ganesh Joshi in March?
BCCL
While the story of the poor creature is still afresh in the memory of most of the people in the country, it doesn't seem to be the case for some in Uttarakhand government though.
It appears that the government doesn't want the people to be reminded of the horse, so much so that, a statue of the horse in state capital Dehradun has disappeared overnight.
BCCL
BCCL
According to some reports the statue was removed after facing criticism for getting preference over a memorial for the cops who lost their lives.
The statue was here till last evening. Today morning when I came here, it wasnt here. It was a horse statue. I dont know where did it vanish, a local resident told ANI news agency.
It also happened days after state chief minister Harish Rawat, who had then termed the horse a martyr, backed out from inaugurating the glass and fibre statue which stood at 9 foot tall and was built at at a cost of Rs. 5 lakhs.
BCCL
According to a report in the Times of India, Rawat skipped the inauguration after being advised by an astrologer.
Rawat, a deeply religious man is known to be a devotee of Golu devta, the dispenser of justice who is believed to be an incarnation of Shiva. The god too rides a white horse - just like police horse Shaktiman.
Rawat while admitting that he met astrologer Bejan Daruwalla, said that him backing out of the event has nothing to do with it.
"The next government, after the 2017 elections, in Uttarakhand will take a decision on the Shaktiman statue and the day for dedicating it to the people. I agree that I am a religious man, but superstition has nothing to do with the issue. Famous astrologer Bejan Daruwalla was in Dehradun for his birthday on Monday but it has no connection with the matter. I had decided well before meeting him that I will not inaugurate the statue."
It is also reported that "spiritual guides and astrologers" have advised Rawat a strong believer in astrology, to stay away from the issue of the horse's installation, as "A statue of a horse without a rider brings bad luck.
ANI
A second statue of Shaktiman has been installed at the police headquarters, where the horse was buried with police honours, its future is also now uncertain.
BCCL
14-year-old Shaktiman's leg was injured after being attacked during a BJP rally and had to be amputated. Even though it was fitted with a US-made prosthetic leg, the horse died of infection weeks later.
On March 11, 2011, an earthquake of 9.0 magnitude hit the north-eastern coast of Japan. The earthquake also caused a 15 metre high tsunami, which disabled the power supply and cooling of three Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactors causing one of the most catastrophic nuclear disasters. Keow Wee Loong from Barcroft Media visited four evacuated towns of Fukushima - Tomioka, Okuma, Namie and Futaba - to capture the abandoned town.
#1
Keow wee loong/Barcroft images
#2
Keow wee loong/Barcroft images
These photos have a ghostly touch to them, as if time hasn't visited these towns in five years.
#3
Keow wee loong/Barcroft images
No one lives in these disaster-struck towns anymore because the nuclear effects of the disaster can still be felt and the air carries a strange smell.
#4
Keow wee loong/Barcroft images
#5
Keow wee loong/Barcroft images
#6
Keow wee loong/Barcroft images
#7
Keow wee loong/Barcroft images
#8
Keow wee loong/Barcroft images
#9
Keow wee loong/Barcroft images
#10
Metro.co.uk
An old picture of David Cameron moving to his West London home has surfaced after moving vans pulled up outside 10 Downing Street as he prepares to leave both home and office.
@jahanarawattoo
Prime Minister David Cameron resigned last month when the UK voted to leave the EU in a referendum. He chaired his final Cabinet meeting today and will address Prime Ministers Questions for the last time later today before heading over to the Buckingham Palace to hand his resignation over to the Queen. Cameron is leaving office with a 40K pension. Theresa May is going to succeed him as PM, only the second woman in the UK to reach that podium.
Metro.co.uk
Metro.co.uk
And of course Twitter users had a little something to say as well:
David Cameron is currently approaching the "stick everything in a bin bag and shove it in the back of the van" stage of moving house. Jim Waterson (@jimwaterson) July 12, 2016
"The bins are collected on Wednesday, you need to put them out by 7.30am. I think that covers everything." #Cameron pic.twitter.com/3SHhibTSMw Neil Saunders (@NeilRetail) July 12, 2016
Cameron's removal van is EU blue pic.twitter.com/0W1P8xkArs Leon Ross (@MehLeonRoss) July 12, 2016
Riddle me this - would you fight off an armed robber if he dared to break into your shop or would you bravely ignore his presence until he becomes invisible?
I ask this because a man in Wellington chose to do the latter and won our respect for 'not being a hero'.
YouTube
In a May 28 incident, Said Ahmed of the Egyptian Kebab House in Christchurch was taken at gunpoint after an armed robber burst into his shop. In the footage revealed by the police, we witness Ahmed choosing to ignore the gun as he continues to serve his customers some delicious kebabs.
Instead of emptying his cashier and filling a bag with the money, Ahmed turns away from the robber to pack some souvlaki along with napkins and cutlery!
He then courteously offers the bag to a customer, who accepts it reluctantly and quickly walks away. Meanwhile, the robber lingers at the counter being completely awkward before leaving the shop unrobbed.
Hailed as the "the chillest chip shop operator ever", Ahmed is winning hearts everywhere.
While speaking to Fairfax New Zealand, Ahmed said, "He didn't scare me...he was surprised from my reaction. I was sure he would not shoot me. He came to rob me, not to kill me."
Thanking God, Ahmed closed his 15-year-old shop early that evening and went home to advise his kids on the importance of being "a little brave - life can change in a few seconds".
Amen to that!
There have been reports that some members of the Nigerian upper legislative chamber have threatened President Muhammad Buhari with impeachment.
The process of impeaching a Nigerian president is rather long winding and complex. In this light, INFORMATION NIGERIA brings you, the procedure for removing the president of Nigeria from office as stated clearly in Section 143 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999 (as amended) .
1.There must be a notice of any allegation in writing signed by not less than one-third of the members of the National Assembly.
2.The Notice of Impeachment requires the signature(s) of at least one-third (1/3) of all the members of the National Assembly. That means among the 469 members in the National Assembly. A minimum of 157 members of the National Assembly must sign the notice to commence the process.
3.It is then presented to the president of the senate in this case Bukola Saraki, stating that the holder of the office of President is guilty of gross misconduct in the performance of the functions of his office, detailed particulars of which shall be specified.
4.The President of the Senate shall within seven days of the receipt of the notice cause a copy thereof to be served on the holder of the office and on each member of the National Assembly, and shall also cause any statement made in reply to the allegation by the holder of the office to be served on each member of the National Assembly.
5.Within fourteen days of the presentation of the notice to the President of the Senate (whether or not any statement was made by the holder of the office in reply to the allegation contained in the notice) each House of the National Assembly shall resolve by motion without any debate whether or not the allegation shall be investigated.
6. A motion of the National Assembly that the allegation be investigated shall not be declared as having been passed, unless it is supported by the votes of not less than two-thirds majority of all the members of each House of the National Assembly.
7. Within seven days of the passing of a motion under the foregoing provisions, the Chief Justice of Nigeria shall at the request of the President of the Senate appoint a Panel of seven persons who in his opinion are of unquestionable integrity, not being members of any public service, legislative house or political party, to investigate the allegation as provide in this section.
8. The President whose conduct is being investigated under this section shall have the right to defend himself in person and be represented before the Panel by legal practitioners of his own choice.
9.A Panel shall be appointed which shall;
(a) have such powers and exercise its functions in accordance with such procedure as may be prescribed by the National Assembly; and
(b) within three months of its appointment report its findings to each House of the National Assembly.
10. Where the Panel reports to each House of the National Assembly that the allegation has not been proved, no further proceedings shall be taken in respect of the matter.
11. Where the report of the Panel is that the allegation against president has been proved, then within fourteen days of the receipt of the report at the House the National Assembly shall consider the report, and if by a resolution of each House of the National Assembly supported by not less than two-thirds majority of all its members, the report of the Panel is adopted, then the holder of the office shall stand removed from office as from the date of the adoption of the report.
12. No proceedings or determination of the Panel or of the National Assembly or any matter relating thereto shall be entertained or questioned in any court.
And according to the constitution gross misconduct means a grave violation or breach of the provisions of this Constitution or a misconduct of such nature as amounts in the opinion of the National Assembly to gross misconduct.
A Nigerian, Ejike Okoye, was nabbed on Tuesday by joint elements of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency Region 3 (PDEA RO-3) and PDEA-National Capital Region (PDEA-NCR) in a drug sting inside a resto bar along Sumulong Highway in Philippines. He was caught in the act.
According to Manila Bulletin, 33-year-old Ejike (alias Martin is said to be a member of West African Drug Syndicate operating in Metro Manila and nearby provinces of Central Luzon.
PDEA RO-3 director Emerson Margate revealed that PDEA RO-3 agents were able to secure a drug deal from Okoye to purchase of 300 grams of shabu for PHP360,000. They agreed to meet inside the resto bar in Marikina City. That was where they arrested the suspect.
Confiscated from the Ejike were six medium-sized resealable transparent plastic sachets containing a white crystalline substance suspected to be shabu with a street value of PHP1,050,000 and the marked money used in the anti-drug operation.
Ejike was brought in PDEA Jail Facility in the City of San Fernando for further investigation.
Source: Manilla Buletin
In a statement signed by Mai Mala Buni, the National Secretary of All Progressives Congress (APC), the party described as laughable, media reports of impeachment plot by some Senators on President Muhammadu Buhari during Tuesdays July 12, 2016 closed session of the Senate.
INFORMATION NIGERIA has put together 6 takeaways from the party statement.
1.The Party advised the Senators in question to stop this huge joke and concentrate on their primary constitutional responsibilities of lawmaking and discharging of their legislative mandates to their constituents at the National Assembly.
2.The party urged the Senators in question do not to allow political shenanigans becloud overall national interest.
3.APC says it will not to join issues on the Senate forgery suit and other court cases concerning some members of the 8th Senate because it will be sub judice.
4.The party therefore adviced the Senators in question to tow the same line and allow judicial processes run it normal and legitimate course.
5.APC also said that repeated allegations that the court cases are politically-motivated by the President and the APC are baseless.
6.They also stated that the President Muhammadu Buhari administration strictly respects the principle of the Rule of Law and also adheres to the constitutional provisions of Separation of Power between the three arms of government.
After refusing to appear before the Senate twice, the Attorney General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami honored the invitation of the Senate.
He was summoned over a forgery trial instituted against some principal officers of the Senate.
The Senate President and his deputy as well as two other other members are facing charges of forging the Senate standing order.
Malami refused to comment on the case before the Senate. In his words,
the proof of evidence is before the court. I am a party in the suit being the prosecutor. I cant comment on the question you asked because doing so would be sub judice.
He said, I was invited to appear before the committee based on a letter which reads Imminent threat to Nigeria democracy. I have a clear obligation to do whatever should be done within the context of the constitution to sustain the democratic process.
The issue that constitute the basis of this invitation is a criminal case instituted against certain members of the Senate. It is an act that predates my appointment. There are series of suits.
I was appointed on the 12th of November, 2015. That is four months after the investigation was concluded by the NPF. I have an obligation in the sustenance of democracy to institute a legal action from an investigation that has been concluded. It was based on this that I took the action.
The action was not taken to truncate any democratic process, but was taken to protect democracy. There are now two pending cases in court. One is a civil case instituted by some Senators. The other is a criminal case instituted by the office of the AGF.
The initiation behind the forgery case was taken in the interest of the public and in the interest of democracy. I want to state clearly that my decision was based on public interest and the aim is to prevent abuse of public offices.
In a rare occurrence that caused disquiet in some parts of Kaduna metropolis, an operative of the Department of State Services, DSS, accidentally shot and killed a female traveler along the Kaduna-Abuja Express on Wednesday.
The unnamed woman, who was traveling on a commercial vehicle from Abuja to Kaduna with five of her children, was hit by a stray bullet from the gun of the DSS operative, witnesses said.
The incident occurred around the busy Jere town, but the victimss body was taken to the toll gate at Kakau/Sabon Gaya community.
According to a witness, the incident occurred around 2:15 pm when the driver of an oncoming vehicle was ordered to stop by the operatives but he refused, resulting in shots being fired.
The identity of the DSS operatives was not released.
We actually dont know what really happened but we only saw the DSS operatives, about six of them arriving in two Hilux vehicles. Immediately they saw a vehicle coming they tried to stop the driver but he refused to stop so they shot at him, a witness said.
Unfortunately they missed their target and hit at the commercial vehicle conveying the victim and her five children. She died on the spot, he said.
The incident provoked motorists, who blocked the highway.
The road was reopened following the intervention of the Kaduna Commissioner of Police, Adamu Ibrahim.
Mr. Ibrahim told the protesters that the DSS operative had been arrested.
The DSS is yet to comment on the incident.
National Hospital, the largest hospital in West Africa has been sealed by the authorities of the Abuja Environmental Protection Board.
The hospital formerly established for the care of women and children under Decree 36 of 1999 Act 36 of the 1999 Constitution was sealed off on Tuesday, July 12, over unpaid debts environmental sanitation rendered to it by the AEPB.
Chief press secretary to the minister of the Federal Capital Territory Muhammad Sule said the sealing off of the hospital followed an FCT chief magistrates order over the debt owed by the National Hospital.
Sule said the chairman of the ministerial task team on the recovery of over N9 billion owed the AEPB executed the order.
The recovery task team was established by the FCT Administration . He said the court gave the order after it issued three different summons to the chief medical director of the National Hospital J.A. F. Momoh.
He said Momoh however failed the honour the court summons.National Hospital, the largest hospital in West Africa has been sealed off by the authorities of the Abuja Environmental Protection Board.
The hospital formerly established for the care of women and children under Decree 36 of 1999 Act 36 of the 1999 Constitution was sealed off on Tuesday, July 12, over unpaid debts environmental sanitation rendered to it by the AEPB.
Oyo-Ita had also warned that if the government ministries, agencies and departments do not comply with the rules, the monies owed will be deducted from their first line charge by the federal government.
Source: Naij
The Senate is set to clash with the Executive again over a comment attributed to Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Babachir David Lawal that the constituency project for the National Assembly in the 2016 budget may not be implemented.
Following the comment, the Senate yesterday summoned Lawal to explain what he meant when he said Ministries, Departments and Agencies might not find constituency projects as critical to the execution of their mandates, especially in light of dwindling resources.
The invitation followed the adoption of a motion by Senator Matthew Urhoghide (PDP/Edo South).
Urhoghide, in his lead debate, said his representation as a senator was being threatened by the SGF.
According to the Edo South lawmaker, it was unbecoming of the SGF to declare that N60 billion constituency projects in a budget of N6.08 trillion, would not be implemented.
Deputy Senate Leader, Senator Bala Ibn NaAllah, who seconded the motion, however, said the Senate should not dignify a statement from improper authority.
According to NaAllah, what the SGF was reported to have said could not be the position of President Muhammadu Buhari.
He said: I wish to state that this Senate will be doing a lot of good to democratic process. It is precise to recognise some certain issues that are fundamental.
This Senate is aware that SGF is not the Finance minister, this Senate is equally aware that he is not a minister of Budget, this Senate is equally aware that the SGF is not a spokesperson of the Federal Government. I want to say that what was alleged to have been said by the SGF cannot be the position of Mr. President.
We should not dignify comments from improper authority. The SGF does not have the authority to speak for the Federal Government.
His position was however, countered by the Deputy Minority Whip, Biodun Olujimi (PDP/Ekiti South), who said whatever comes from the SGF as the highest nominee of the Federal Government, should not be taken lightly.
Olujimi said: The SGF is the highest administrative nominee of this government and whatever comes out of his mouth must be a policy statement that has to do with government.
I have a secretary to the government in my state; when she speaks, she speaks responsibly because she knows whatever comes out of her mouth will be taken as important.
In the last few months, we have had an SGF that has been speaking carelessly and has being meddling with affairs of the other tiers of government and that is not right.
The SGF himself called the conference of such eminent Nigerians, a conference that was put together to see how we can take care of the problems of Nigeria and people came together to talk about Nigeria, to talk about our existence and talk about moving forward, he called it a job for the boys.
The next thing he will do was to say constituency projects that have been approved by this red chamber will not be properly implemented.
Chairman, Appropriation Committee, Mohammed Danjuma Goje (APC/Gombe Central) said: I was surprised and shocked when I read the statement credited to the SGF. I felt embarrassed.
He shouldnt have made that statement. Without prejudice to the motion, let the SGF come and explain.
In addition, we in Appropriations have sent an invitation to the minister of Finance and minister of Budget to come and clarify and give us an update on the budget implementation as a whole.
Goje said because the budget was passed as an Act of the National Assembly and assented to by Mr. President, if that law is not going to be implemented, we have to know why.
Another senator, Adamu Aliero (APC/Kebbi Central), told his colleagues that it would be unfair for the Senate to expect that the 2016 budget would be implemented 100 per cent.
Senate President Bukola Saraki said the proper thing should be to invite the SGF to explain what he said.
The Senate president, therefore, mandated the joint committees on Ethics, Privileges and Public Petitions, Finance and Appropriation to grill the SGF on what he said.
Saraki urged the joint committees to report back to the Senate in plenary within the week.
The annual Egungun ceremony in Isheri, Magodo area of Lagos State was marred, weekend, after one of the guests, Mutiu Edunjobi, was allegedly stabbed to death by a suspected cultist.
Late Edunjobi, a 34-year-old battery charger, who resided at 3, Egbedina Street, Isheri, was said to have been lured to the party by suspected cultists, Sunday, who had plotted to kill him for being sympathetic to a rival cult group.
A fight broke out between rival cult groups at about 8p.m., during which dangerous objects were reportedly used. In the process, the father of two was allegedly stabbed in the neck by one Kehinde Lawal, a suspected cultist.
When news of Edunjobis attack went round, youths in the area reportedly went berserk as they attempted to carry out jungle justice on his assailant and members of his cult group.
Eyewitnesses said the angry youths stormed the assailants residence at 5, Ajegunle Street, Isheri and threatened to set it ablaze but for the intervention of policemen.
He was my everything WIFE
When Vanguard visited the deceaseds home yesterday, his widow, Mariam, was seen with her 41-day-old baby, while the elder one, aged six, rested her head on her mothers lap.
She said: My husband was not a cultist. They just killed him for nothing. He was my friend, brother and father. He promised to open a shop for me when my baby turns one and half.
Now he is gone. Who will take care of me and my children?
Father of the deceased, Mr. Dauda Edunjobi, disclosed that cultists were always at loggerheads in the area, calling on Lagos State government to address the issue, as it was getting out of hand.
He maintained that his son was never a cultist. According to the distraught father, The person that stabbed my son to death is about 10 years his junior. They were never friends. My late son was an easy-going fellow, who was loved by all.
He was not a cult member. Their grievance was that he was sympathetic to their enemies and for that reason, they have been threatening to kill him.
My late son was invited to the party by Ipodos brother. He never knew it was an invitation of death, as it was a deliberate plan to kill him. They have been telling people that they will kill him and now they have carried out their threat. All we want is for justice to be done.
Police
When contacted, spokesperson for Lagos State Police Command, Dolapo Badmus, a Superintendent of Police, said: I can confirm that at about 8p.m., one Kehinde Lawal allegedly stabbed one Mutiu Edunjobi on his neck with a knife during a fight at Edum compound, Isheri.
Edunjobi was rushed to a nearby hospital, where he died. The corpse was deposited at the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital, LASUTH, Ikeja for autopsy. Meanwhile, efforts are on to arrest the suspect.
Source: Vanguard
David Cameron addressed the British Parliament today for the last time as Prime Minister as his resignation becomes official today.
In his final address, he said
The last thing Id say is that you can achieve a lot of things in politics you can get a lot of things done. And that in the end the public service, the national interest that is what its all about. Nothing is really impossible if you put your mind to it. After all as I once said, I was the Future once.
He received a standing ovation from the Parliament immediately after his speech. He will be replaced by by former Home Secretary, Theresa May.
A popular Nollywood actor, Emeka Ike has informed a Lagos Island Customary Court that he had filed an application before a High Court restraining the lower court from hearing the divorce suit filed by his estranged wife, Emma. Emma had sometime in 2015 approached the court to dissolve the 16 years union between her and the Nollywood actor on grounds of incessant battery.
The allegation which the actor had vehemently denied, and begged the court not to separate them, saying I still love my wife. When the matter which was slated for judgment came up on Tuesday, Emekas lawyer, Mr Abdul Labi-Lawal informed the court that his client had filed a stay of proceedings before a High Court in Lagos.
Emeka Ike and his estranged wife, Emma The application marked FCMP/20054/16 had Emma and the Customary Court President, Mr Awos Awosola as the first and second defendants respectively.
The application sought the High Courts declaration that the Lagos Island Customary Court lacked requisite jurisdiction to entertain and determine the Ikes divorce suit. The application noted that the marriage between the estranged couple was conducted in Enugu State under the Igbo customs and traditions. Emeka also urged the High Court to declare that all the proceedings already conducted by the Customary Court in respect of couples marriage be rendered null and void.
The Nollywood actor also applied for a perpetual injunction restraining the Customary Courts President, Awosola, and any other person appointed in the capacity of entertaining and or continuing the proceedings in respect of the couples divorce suit. Labi-lawal, therefore, urged the court to stay proceedings on the suit pending the hearing and determination of the suit at the High Court.
Opposing the application, Emmas lawyer, Mr Iheanyi Awa urged the court to discontinue the stay of application and deliver judgment. Awa, who said Emekas application was aimed at arresting the courts judgment, informed the court that neither his client nor himself had been served with the application. It is an attempt to arrest the judgment of the court, I am aware that the respondent wants to arrest the judgment which is to be delivered today.
The stay of proceedings has been decided for a long time and court has ruled that it has jurisdiction to entertain the matter. It is a ploy to frustrate my client, they just want to delay the judgment till another day. The court should give its judgment and if they are not satisfied, they can appeal, he said. After listening to the submissions of both parties, the court said; In view of the submission of the respondent, the stay of proceedings is hereby granted, and the matter is hereby adjourned sine die.
Source:Vanguard
According to Barrister Emeka Ugwuonye, the Police detained little Chibuike, a pry 2 pupil of Carmelite Nursery and pry school, Enugu and allegedly insisted that until when they see the landlord who is currently on the run, they will not release the little Chibuike
Below is the full statement issued by the Enugu State Police
The attention of the Enugu state command of the Nigeria Police Force has been drawn to various publications in some sections of the media regarding the alleged detention of a 7 year old boy over a murder case under investigations at the command and hereby wish to present the fact as follows for the guidance of the members of the public and to avoid further,being misinformed.
1)On 29th may,2016 at about 1110hrs,one Ifeanyichukwu of No 4 owerri Jikala street Independence Layout Enugu Reported at New Haven Police Station Enugu that at about 1030hrs,one Oluebube John aged about 12 years who was playing with other children was shot by one chibuike Oramalu aged 7 years through the window of the house of one Edwin Oforma of No 57 Lobito Crescent Independence Layout,Enugu.
2)That enquiry conducted revealed urgently that Chibuike Oramalu is living with the mother one Nwakaego Oramalu in the house of the alleged owner of the English made double barrel gun which was already loaded with cartridge cocked and kept in the room of the said owner of the house
3)That it was discovered that both the son of the owner of the gun/house one chukwuma Anu offorma had allegedly asked Chibuike Oramalu and brother one Ifeanyi Oramalu to clean the fathers room for him.
4)That while the duo of ifeanyi and chibuike were allegedly cleaning the room,chibuike stormed into the already cocked double barrel gun where he also touched the trigger of the said double barrel gun and it allegedly fired and pierced through the window of the house to a nearby compound and allegedly hit one Oluebube John of about 12 years old.
5)That following the development,operatives of the Enugu state police command moved in to the scene where they saw the victim already lying in his pool of blood and consequently took him to Enugu state University Teaching Hospital,Parklane,Enugu where he was confirmed dead by Doctors on duty hence his body was deposited at the colliery Hospital Mortuary,Enugu.
6)That this development angered members and families of the deceased who were on the move to unleash vengeance on Chibuike Oramalu and cause destruction on the house of the said owner of the double barrel gun.
7)That the state command of the Nigeria Police Force in its bid to save the life of little chibuike oramalu as well as to forestall breakdown of law and order,moved chibuike away from the scene to the police headquarters on the ground of protective custody while security was intensified within and around the scene.
8)It is however pertinent to point out that the state command is not unaware of the existence of rule of law,human rights as well as childs rights Act as to have exposed the 7 year old chibuike oramalu to danger as published in some sections of the media.
However,while efforts are intensified with a view to unraveling the circumstance surrounding the unfortunate incident and bring the owner of the said gun to book,the command wish to use this platform to join other members of the public to commiserate with the family of the deceased OLuebube John.
First daughter of the woman who was murdered while preaching at Kubwa, Abuja, Mrs Eunice Olawale, Jessica, said her mum asked her to love her siblings and take care of them night before her death.
She also said her only consolation was that her late mum was in heaven.
The 15-year-old girl, speaking with the Nigerian Tribune on Monday, said the evening before she was killed, she woke me up to follow her somewhere, When we got to a junction, she paid a shopkeeper who she was owing.
When we were returning home, she asked me if I noticed the love between her and her siblings, she then asked me to love my siblings as well and bring them together. She said I am supposed to love them and be their mother.
The last thing she told me before she died was good night dear.
A condolence message by Jessica read: Mummy, I cant still believe you are gone. I love you so much. I will try to be very strong for daddy, ok.
I will take care of my younger ones like you wanted me to do. Oh! How I miss you. You were so beautiful in all, suffering and pain. I miss you, come back to us.
The second child, Michael, said her mother was the strongest woman he ever knew.
If we dont have food to eat and we ask her what we will eat, she will say God will provide. She encourages my daddy, during the last year convention, she paid the transportation fee for a number of people while we have not known how we will go, he said.
Nigerian Tribune gathered that about 123 condolence messages had been written in the register, including the message from the wife of the Vice-President, Mrs Dolapo Osinbajo.
Meanwhile, the husband of the deceased, Pastor Elisha Olawale, has said he will not file any charges against the perpetrators of the act if arrested, but will, instead, want them to repent.
Pastor Olawale further described her late wife, Eunice, as everything he had, adding that he would miss her absence.
Speaking with the Nigerian Tribune on Monday, the husband of the deceased noted that he and his wife had been very open to each other, even on their individual financial stand.
According to him, as a pastor, we have been called to the ministry of reconciliation. If they arrest them (perpetrators), killing them wont help, we are just helping the devil more.
What I will suggest is that if they should preach to them, they should accept Christ, heaven has more gain, as long as my wife has gone to heaven, if they accept Christ, that will be myjoy.
He further said I will miss everything about my wife, she is my mother and my sister. Before she died, she knew what I have in my account and I knew what she had in her account. We have been open to each other. She is almost all we have.
Source: Tribune Online
The Rivers State Police Command via its Explosive Ordinance unit have recovered fabricated Improvised Explosive Device from criminals in Rumuche, Emohua LGA of the state.
In a statement released on Monday by Mr Omoni Nnamdi, the State Police Public Relations Officer, in Port Harcourt, he disclosed that the device was placed to blow off a pipeline belonging to Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas Natural Limited.
Mr Omoni said the device was fabricated with a large mass of dynamite and other accessories.
The Police Command declined to give details of the people responsible for placing the IED but however, said that investigation was still ongoing.
Meanwhile, the Police have assured residents of Rivers State of their preparedness to maintain the fight against criminals and have again pleaded for understanding and cooperation of all residents in terms of information sharing.
The Federal Government is planning to build ranches for herdsmen as part of measures to address perennial herdsmen/farmers clashes, it was learnt.
When established, park rangers, Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) and other security agencies, would be trained to protect the ranches from being looted by hoodlums.
The Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Audu Ogbeh, made this known while inaugurating an inter-ministerial committee on Security in Abuja on Tuesday.
He said because of the challenging times, the government would protect investments.
Ogbeh said the government would curb herdsmen/farmers clashes to assure indigenous and foreign investors of the safety of their investments.
The problem we are facing is the security of investment. We are inviting Nigerians and foreigners to invest, especially in the agriculture industry. The crime rate is soaring and sometimes, criminality is carried out because there is no credible intelligence.
We are planning to build ranches and bring our cattle rearers in manageable conditions, where herdsmen and farmers would no longer have clashes. We will encourage agro-investment and we assure investors; indigenous and foreign, that Nigeria is serious about investment and about protecting investors, the minister said.
He stressed that the committee would work out modalities for training and deployment of security personnel for the project and warned the security operatives against abandoning their duties.
You should not become private bodyguards or errand boys, Ogbeh warned.
Speaking on the occasion, the Minister of Interior, Lt. Gen Abdulrahman Dambazzau (rtd) said investment protection was important to increase investors confidence in the country.
The Federal Government yesterday unveiled a health intervention programme that would assist 10,000 poor and needy Nigerians registered with the National Health Insurance Scheme, NHIS, with free surgery.
The programme, scheduled to commence on July 18 in 46 health facilities across Nigeria, will also extend free breast and cervical cancer tests to 18,000 Nigerians as well as free diabetes and hypertension tests to 500,000 others.
The Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, Mallam Garba Shehu, disclosed this in a statement yesterday after President Muhammadu Buhari met with the World Health Organisation (WHO) Regional Director for Africa, Dr Matshidiso Rebecca Moeti.
Earlier in her remarks, Moeti commended the federal governments health programmes and pledged continued support of the WHO to the development of Nigerias health sector.
Fifty two days after the national secretariat of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) was sealed by the police, the Wadata Plaza is yet to be reopened.
The headquarters was shut as a result of the intractable leadership tussle between Senator Ali Modu Sheriff and the Senator Ahmed Makarfi-led national caretaker committee.
A visit on Tuesday to the PDP headquarters, located in the Wuse zone of Abuja indicated that its entrance was still under lock and key with armed policemen on standby to ensure nobody gains entance.
At least 10 police officers were seen within and outside the secretariat during the visit while a police Hilux van from Wuse Division, marked NPF 6684C, was used to block the access road to the complex.
However, few staff of the secretariat were seen hanging around under trees, nursing the hope of having the office reopened soon.
One of the partys workers, who spoke on condition of anonymity, expressed displeasure with the continuous closure of the secretariat.
Some of us have been coming around with the hope that the office would be opened for staff to work; but I think the office will be open soon, perhaps later in the day.
There is a meeting going on now with the acting Inspector-General of Police, Ibrahim Idris, involving delegates from the Sen. Ali Modu Sheriff and Sen. Ahmed Makarfi factions.
I believe the office gates should be opened, latest tomorrow, said the staff.
The staff, however, added that in spite of the crisis, staff salaries were being paid as at when due.
It was not known which faction of the party was responsible for the salary payment as both sides lay claim to the authentic leadership of the self-styled largest political party in Africa.
(NAN)
An attack by suspected Boko Haram gunmen on Tuesday evening was successfully repelled by troops of 119 Task Force Battalion stationed in Kangarwa, northern Borno State, the Nigerian Army has said.
A statement on Wednesday from army spokesman, Colonel Sani Usman, said the attack, which started at about 6.30pm, was successfully repelled after about 3 hours of exchange of heavy gunfire.
Col. Usman noted that as a result of the heavy gun battle, the insurgents were inflicted tremendous casualty.
The army spokesman, however, regretted to announce that two gallant soldiers paid the supreme price, while seven were wounded in action.
He, however, said due to poor visibility, the number of Boko Haram fighters killed during the battle could not be ascertained for now.
He also said the bodies of the gallant soldiers and those wounded in action are being evacuated while the unit is carrying out mop up operation.
It should be noted that the successful repelling of the attack was made possible by support from the Nigerian and Chadian Air Force fighter jets, the army statement said.
Benue state Governor, Samuel Ortom has denied reports that 81 people were killed in communities in the state on Saturday. Governor Ortom made the remarks while paying a visit to the Minister of interior, Lt Gen (rtd), Abdulrahman Damabazau.
SEE ALSO: 5 People Killed In Fresh Benue Attacks
He went ahead to call the reports of the killings in the media rumors and called on news agencies to stop spreading the rumors.
President Buhari has come under criticism for his silence over the incessant violence unleashed on Benue communities by Fulani herdsmen.
The Ebonyi State Governor. David Umahi has denied cloned social media accounts registered with his name and pictures as scam being used to defraud unsuspecting members of the public.
The governor in a statement yesterday made available by his Chief Press Secretary, Mr. Emma Anya, advised the public to disregard such accounts on Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms.
The statement reads, The attention of Engr. David Umahi, the governor of Ebonyi State has been drawn to the existence of accounts on Facebook, Twitter, etc operated by unscrupulous individuals asking unsuspecting people to apply for jobs and contracts on the social media by paying for forms. One of such accounts on Facebook asks people to pay to one Dr. James with mobile telephone number 0813 939 3872.
Governor Umahi does not directly or indirectly operate accounts on Facebook, Twitter and other social platforms. When he decides to, the public would be informed accordingly. He will never ask anyone to pay for jobs or contracts as being demanded by the impersonators.
The general public is therefore advised to dishonour such demands. People should be extremely careful with those they transact business with on the social media, especially those claiming to be public office holders. Ebonyi State Government publishes contracts, job vacancies and other activities in Newspapers and not on Social media platforms, the statement added.
The Chairman, Southwest Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), Archbishop Magnus Atilade has called for reconciliation, peace and harmony between CAN and Muslim community in Osun State for development to be realised.
Atilade, who gave the advice in a chat with Southwest Report in Lagos said all hands must be on deck so as to achieve peace in Osun State without which there would be no tangible development.
The cleric praised the efforts of Governor Rauf Aregbesola in providing free food to all students in public schools, building of new schools, new roads and extension of new roads which are praiseworthy.
He stressed that the church is not against the wearing of Hijab by Muslim girls because Catholic Rev. Sister wear it. He, however, said the school as an institution should promote uniformity which is why every school has a uniform to identify it.
On all schools being public, he said: The mission schools established by the missionaries and other private school proprietors were forcibly taken over by the state governments.
Ultimately our prayer is that the schools be returned to their original owners just as the former Governor of Lagos, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu did in Lagos.
It is evident that no government can conveniently run public institutions. Why should government insist on taking over of schools?
All over the world, no government, be it capitalists, socialists or communists, has the sole responsibility of providing education for its people, he said.
He lamented the non-payment of salaries by 28 state governments, saying it is pertinent for government to hand over mission schools to their original owners.
Governor Rochas Okorocha of Imo State has expressed confidence that by the time he would be completing his second term in 2019, he will be handing over a debt-free state to his successor.
Speaking at the NUJ Press Centre, Owerri, the Imo State capital yesterday, Okorocha said that he has settled the loans borrowed by the state government.
The only loan yet to be settled, he said, was the bailout fund given the state by the federal government, which repayment has been structured to be made in 20 years.
The governor carpeted the past Peoples Democratic Party administration in the country, describing it as the worst thing that ever happened to Nigeria.
He, however, appealed to the citizens to continue to support President Muhammdu Buharis administration to fight corruption.
I am happy president Buhari has the courage to fight corruption, he said, calling on the people of Imo State to buy into the vision of the All Progressives Congress-led federal government aimed at bringing change.
Hundreds of commuters plying the Kaduna Abuja Road were on Wednesday stranded as angry motorists blocked the road following the accidental killing of a traveller by men of the Department of State Security (DSS ) along the expressway.
It was learnt that the victim and her five children who boarded a commercial vehicle from Abuja to Kaduna was hit by a stray bullet when the men of the DSS fired at a vehicle that was also plying the road.
The incident occurred around 2:20pm near Jere town, about 200 kilometres away from Kaduna .
The corpse of the woman was brought to the Toll Gate located at Kakau/ Sabon Gayan community near Kaduna metropolis, prompting angry reaction from motorists who witnessed the incident.
Both sides of the express way was blocked by the motorists, preventing commuters who were either heading towards Abuja or coming to Kaduna .
The DSS operatives were said to have allegedly opened fire on vehicle which they attempted to stop, however the bullet hit the vehicle the woman and her children were travelling in, killing her instantly.
According to an eye witness who spoke with our Correspondent on phone, the DSS operatives were six in number and were driving in two Toyota Hilux vans, but could not say exactly say what led to the shooting.
We actually dont know what really happened but we only saw the DSS operatives about 6 of them arriving in two Hilux vehicle. Immediately they saw a vehicle coming they, tried to stop the driver but he refused to stop so they shot at him, but unfortunately they missed their target and hit at the commercial vehicle conveying the victim and her five children. She died on the spot
This angered motorists that witnessed the incident as they block the highway, the eye witness said.
Hundreds of commuters coming into Kaduna, Zaria and going to other nothern states like Katsina, Kano, Zamfara, Sokoto, Jigawa were stranded for several hours including members of House of Representatives Committee on Army who were on the way to Zamfara state.
Further details later
Source: Thisday
The National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) in its social responsibilities has donated thousands of foods items to the Borno State Government for the feeding of the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in Maiduguri.
The Deputy Governor, Alhaji Usman Durkwa, while receiving the items thanked the agency and promised that the items would be distributed accordingly.
A statement from the Public Relations Office, signed by Sani Datti, listed the items to include 8,000 bags of rice (25kg), 1,200 bags of Maize Gritz (50kg), 1,000 bags of millet (25kg) and 3,200 bags of Beans (25kg).
Mohammed Kanar, the Northeast Zonal Coordinator of the agency said the items were donated in line with the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed with the Borno State Government on provision of food for the feeding of the IDPs in one month.
Punch
The United States government says it has no information on the alleged crimes committed by President Muhammadu Buharis wife, Aisha.
Vanguard
The display of N60 million, reportedly recovered by the Rivers State Police Command, after a bullion van conveying over N100 million went missing on Friday, left many dumbfounded.
Thisday
The Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas (NLNG) has invested a total of $12 million in six Nigerian universities as part of efforts to develop research and engineering in the institutions.
The Sun
It is no longer news that Aba, the commercial hub of Abia State, has the worst network of roads in the country and this malady did not start today.
Daily Times
The name of Pastor Osagie Ize-Iyamu, who emerged as the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, governorship candidate in Edo State on June 20, has been accCaretaker Committee of the PDP.
Guardian
To attract patronage, Dana Air has commenced daily flights from Lagos to Owerri at low fare of N12, 600 for a one-way ticket.The airline currently operates daily flights to Abuja, Lagos, Abuja,Port Harcourt and Uyo and is set to extend its operations to other cities in Nigeria as part of its strategic route expansion plans.
Daily Trust
The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, has called on journalists to expose the mistakes of public office holders with a view to correcting them.
The Nation
President Muhammadu Buhari has sent the budgets of agencies and corporations under the Fiscal Responsibility Act, 2007 to the National Assembly for passage.
New Telegraph
Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Governors Forum, Dr. Olusegun Mimiko, has raised fears over the possible survival of the party, saying the opposition party may go into extinction.
Daily Independent
The trial of Senate President Bukola Saraki at the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT) over alleged false assets declaration will no longer continue on Wednesday as scheduled due to the 2016 annual recess to be embarked upon by the tribunals judges.
Indications have emerged that the Nigerian Navy is planning on setting up a base in Tongeji Island of Ogun State, to assist other security agencies in combating crime.
This indication was given on Tuesday when the Flag Officer Commanding, FOC, Western Naval Command, Ferguson Bobai, visited the State Governor, Senator Ibikunle Amosun, in Abeokuta.
According to Bobai, the new base is aimed at fighting maritime illegalities, which he said had become rampant in the area.
He disclosed that he had already visited the site to assess available facilities based on the directive of the Chief of Naval Staff.
Tongeji Island is a border community in Ipokia Local Government Area of the state on the Nigeria- Republic Benin border and is said to have a vast crude oil deposit.
When established, the FOC said the naval base would serve as buffer on the Nigeria-Benin Republic border.
We have made some arrests since the beginning of this year stretching from people dealing with petroleum products and these products are gotten from pipeline vandalism and smuggling of contraband and drugs weve all seized in conjunction with Customs, Mr. Bobai affirmed.
So, it is hoped that when the naval base is established there, we will act as a checkpoint where people must pass to go to Benin Republic, and once our presence is established there, its like you virtually block them. We expect to see a decline in some of these illegal activities within that stretch, he added.
Speaking on the incessant militant activities in the state, Mr. Bobai said As a matter of fact, you know that there is an on-going operation called Operation Awatse. Awatse is a Hausa name to say scatter; so we hope that in a short while, the Operation Awatse would swing into intensive operations to ensure that all these places are cleaned up of these militants.
Earlier, Governor Amosun urged the navy and Nigerian government to continue to assist the state in combating the militants.
Mr. Amosun also advised the federal government to take the Tongeji island issue seriously, to avoid the mistake Nigeria made with Bakassi Peninsula.
The Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers of Nigeria (PENGASSAN) has suspended its strike after meeting with representatives from the Federal Executive Council (FEC) led by Minister of Labour and Employment, Senator (Dr.) Chris Ngige.
Recall that PENGASSAN had last Thursday directed its members to embark on indefinite strike following the federal governments failure to abide by its May 12 agreement. It cited among others, the issue of prolonged JV funding and cash payment arrears, as well as absence of no clear stand on the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) on the part of government as reasons for going on strike.
The meeting between the leadership of the union and representatives of the FEC, started at about 3p.m on Tuesday and lasted till early hours of Wednesday at the State House, Abuja.
The suspension of the strike is with immediate effect.
The Police in Rivers State says it has recovered the N60m stolen from a bullion van last Friday. It also vowed to smash the syndicate behind the theft.
The driver of the bullion van working for Bullion Van Company allegedly made away with the money with other members of his group.
The deputy commissioner of police, Rivers State Command, Uche Anozie told journalists that the driver of the bullion van absconded with the money after the commercial bank hired the bullion van to convey the money from Aba to Port Harcourt branch last Friday.
Anozie said that based on credible intelligence the huge sum of money was found in a parked vehicle at a popular hotel in Port Harcourt by a security man.
The police officer warned commercial bank operators to always attach their officials in any hired bullion van conveying their cash.
No arrest however, has been made as at the time of filing this report.
This will come as a rude shock to many of her fans that top Nollywood actress Clarion Chukwurah has abandoned her faith and converted to a new one.
The newly married actress of 51 years has joined the Jehovah Witness. This it was gathered is her husband Anthony Boyds religion and thus since she is married to him she has converted to his faith. The couple shared photos of them in their meeting.
The veteran thespian shared her photo and that of her husband on her Facebook after meeting and captioned it:
An Instructive Meeting Sunday at the Kingdom Hall towards Baptism and Evangelization Ministry as Jehovahs Witnesses.
The actress and Boyd tied the knot in March in the United States. She is the mother of renowned video director Clarence Peters.
Chukwurah had been married twice before, to Tunde Abiola (MKO Abiolas younger brother) and Femi Odeneye and she had Clarence for juju musician Sir Shina Peters.
The House of Representatives on Tuesday passed a resolution mandating the Acting Inspector General of Police, Ibrahim Idris, to ensure a thorough investigation of the killing of a preacher, Mrs. Eunice Elisha Olawale.
Mrs. Olawale was murdered early hours of Saturday while carrying out her routine morning preaching around Gbazango-West area of Kubwa in the Bwari Area Council of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).
The Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) and Kubwa zone of the Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria (PFN) in separate statements, condemned the killing of the female preacher, who was said to be the wife of an Assistant Pastor of the Redeemed Christian Church of God, RCCG, Elisha Olawale and called on the relevant authorities to fish out those responsible for the mother of sevens murder.
While the FCT Police Command said on Sunday that six suspects were arrested in the murder, the House of Representatives urged Mr. Idris to ensure that perpetrators of the heinous crime are not allowed to go scot-free.
The resolution of the House followed a motion of urgent national importance by a member, Hon. Babatunde Gabriel Kolawole (APC Ondo).
Moving the motion with the title: Gruesome murder of Mrs. Eunice Olawale in Kubwa, Abuja and the need to protect other citizens in the FCT, the lawmaker said the woman was hacked to death in the early hours of Saturday, while preaching the gospel a few meters from her house in Kubwa, by unidentified miscreants.
The late Mrs. Eunice Olawale is from Ilawe (Ekiti State) while her husband, Pastor Elisha Olawale is from Ikare-Akoko in Ondo state, and that she was allegedly murdered by miscreants who were said to be annoyed by her early morning preaching in the area.
Rep. Kolawole, who pointed out that the incident had caused ethnic tension to build in the nations capital because some people are claiming she was murdered by extremists while others attributed the killing to miscreants, called on the House to be proactive to prevent the breakdown of law and order and further loss of lives.
When Speaker Yakubu Dogara called for a vote on the motion, it was overwhelmingly supported by members.
The lawmakers thereafter observed a minute-silence for the late Mrs. Olawale.
No American president has passionately campaigned for a chosen successor in recent years as President Barack Obama did penultimate Tuesday in North Carolina for his former secretary of state and onetime political arch-rival, Hillary Clinton. Adeola Akinremi, in New York, writes that Obama seeks to protect not just his legacy but also break the succession barrier of many years.
Shoulder-to-shoulder, Americas President Barack Obama and Democratic Partys anointed presidential candidate, Hillary Rodham Clinton, arrived in North Carolina on a recent Tuesday with cheers and chant. The stump speeches came moment after they both stepped off Air Force One together in a camaraderie atmosphere at a place, where they were once political foes.
In 2008, when Clinton faced Obama in a Democratic nomination race, North Carolina was a place of negative speeches, but now it has turned to a place of positive speeches, where Obama is rooting for Mrs. Clintons victory during the November election. The star power and political gusto of President Obama once more fascinated political watchers across the United States as he told the world, I am ready to pass the baton.
For Mrs. Clinton, it was a moment to savour on a day the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) described her judgment in the handling of classified material as secretary of state as extremely careless.
As she stepped off the Air Force One in company with Obama, Mrs. Clinton beamed with smiles, revealing unusual confidence.
Clearly, the frenetic campaign that saw her overcome the shadow of doubts placed in her way through mudslinging and embarrassing barrage of attacks that initially pinned the blame of a broken system in Washington on her and her tie to big money interests by her arch-rival in the Democratic primary, Bernie Sanders, may be giving way to a collective journey to victory for the Democrats as the party rallied behind her candidacy.
But Mrs. Clinton will still have to overcome the Donald Trump storm in the coming months as the Republicans struggle to unite behind Mr. Trumps candidacy for the GOP. Interestingly, the odds still favours Clinton to win the November election. For instance, President Obamas desire to see his legacy protected and the transition of government from Democrat to Democrat is one of many reasons Mrs. Clinton will enjoy unusual support from Obama during this campaign season.
Already, President Obama has said: I am ready to pass the baton and I know Hillary Clinton is going to take it. There has never been any man or woman more qualified for this office than Hillary Clinton.
As part of his plans, Obama hopes to push the words around the country for Clinton to help her cross the finishing line with ease despite the obstacle posed by her Republican challenger, Trump.
The barrier that Obama seeks to break is not an easy one. Since 1963, when Lyndon Johnson succeeded John Kennedy as president after the later was assassinated, no Democratic president has ever been fortunate to hand over government to another. The Republicans have enjoyed that many times prior to and after 1969.
In 2000, President Bill Clinton was closer to recording the feat that Obama hankers for after his vice, Al Gore, successfully received the nomination of his party as a candidate but the Monica Lewinsky scandal that nearly brought Clintons government down made it impossible for him to stump for Mr. Gore. Mr. Gore according to reports avoided making public appearance with Clinton during most part of his campaigns.
Gore deliberately distanced himself from Clinton, who became frustrated at Mr. Gores inability to relate to an audience effortlessly as he would have during campaigns. But President Clintons eagerness to help couldnt go beyond his acceptance by Gore to do so.
Specifically, the same day Mr. Gore officially confirmed his candidacy in June 1999, ABC News put out an interview in which Mr. Gore frequently detached himself from the president, expressing disappointment over Mr. Clintons conduct with Monica Lewinsky, the White House intern with whom he had an affair.
New York Times reported that after eight years together, here is the state of the relationship between President Clinton and Vice President Al Gore: Mr. Gore wont pick up the phone. He doesnt call, and Mr. Clinton doesnt know why. Mr. Clinton is both hurt by the personal rebuff and bewildered as to why his political heir wont come to him for the advice he is itching to give advice the president feels the candidate needs, according to two friends who have discussed this with Mr. Clinton recently.
Mr. Clinton feels frustrated, eager to help but unwilling to insert himself where hes not wanted, say the friends, who have discussed this with him. Its beyond him why Mr. Gore cant manage to relate to an audience in the way that comes so effortlessly to him. And hes convinced that Mr. Gore moved too slowly to capitalise on his successful convention performance, in the presidents view, running away from him when he ought to be running on their record.
Now, with a legacy to protect and the opportunity of a lifetime to have a Democrat president hand over to another as the Republicans continue to suspect the Trump candidacy, Obama is starting the journey early with Mrs. Clinton.
According to Caitlin Huey-Burns, a national political reporter for Americas political news website, RealClearPolitics, Perhaps no Democrat has the mobilising potential of Obama, who endorsed Clinton after the California primary last month and has been eager to return to the campaign trail to protect and promote his legacy.
Unlike two years ago, when vulnerable Democrats up for re-election in a midterm year kept their distance from the president, Obama is now a vaunted surrogate, with an approval rating hovering around 50 per cent, according to the RealClearPolitics polling average, a remarkably high rating for a second term incumbent in a general election year.
So, with Clinton campaigning as a successor to Obamas legacy, North Carolina voters welcomed her with both hands. Clinton is hoping to build upon the winning diverse coalitions that Obama cultivated in 2008 and in 2012. The strategy helped her sweep Southern primary states with high African-American turnout. Many key members of the Obama campaign and administration are now working for Clintons presidential bid.
This year, just like in the past, North Carolina will be a battleground state. Obama challenged the status quo in 2008, when he won the state for Democratic Party after three decades of failed efforts. But in 2012, the Republican candidate, Mitt Romney, carried the state, when Democrat lost the state again by 2 percentage margin. It is one reason why North Carolina is critical: high percentage of African-American voters and an influx of young people and minorities to the state.
The huge turnout of this group often helps Democrats coast home to victory during elections, but where they fail to come out on the Election Day, the Republicans naturally win their contests.
The demography in North Carolina has become a magnet for the Clinton campaign to take the state away from the Republican. On one hand, the growing Latino population that has broadened the states diversity is an advantage for Clinton to take and on the other hand, the recent controversial pee where your sex is bathroom law pushed by the Republican legislature that appeared discriminatory to the LGBT community is an incentive for Mrs. Clinton to go to North Carolina anticipating a great win in the state during the presidential election.
For his part, President Obama has been quite keen to campaign against Trump for many reasons. The GOP presumptive nominee had once challenged Obamas American citizenship and had forced the president to bring out his birth certificate in 2011. Also, Obama has criticised Mr. Trumps bigotry in several of his speeches without mentioning his name.
But with campaigns coming to a full throttle after parties hold their conventions sometime this month, Obama is expected to go all out against Trump using words to define him and emphasising his weaknesses to voters in a stop Trump movement.
In June, while reacting to Trumps speech in the aftermath of shooting in Orlando Florida, Obama said the GOPs presumptive nominee carries with him a dangerous mindset capable of pulling America into the abyss.
We hear language that singles out immigrants and suggests entire religious communities are complicit in violence. Are we going to start treating all Muslim-Americans differently? Are we going to start subjecting them to special surveillance? Are we going to start discriminating against them because of their faith?
Do Republican officials actually agree with this? Because thats not the America we want it doesnt reflect our democratic ideals. It wont make us more safeIt will make us less safe. Weve gone through moments in our history before where we acted out of fear, and we came to regret it. Weve seen our government mistreat our fellow citizens, and it has been a shameful part of our history, Obama said with fury.
All set, Mrs. Clinton will still have to overcome many huddles of doubts, even as Americans pay close attention to her words versus Trumps ahead of November. But with Obama running on a straight line to help Clinton make it to the White House in a race with many other strong stakeholders on either side of the parties, the battlefield will be full of surprises.
So far, Mrs. Clinton has survived all knives from Benghazi probe to private email account, but her frying pan to fire experience is far from being over as her political foes continue to link her to other family scandals like the Whitewater, a failed family real estate investment that ultimately led to the impeachment of President Bill Clinton on December 19, 1998.
A divided House of Representatives had impeached President Clinton based on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice and recommended virtually along party lines that the Senate remove him from office, though no evidence suggested any act of wrongdoing on the part of the Clintons.
To finish strong, Mrs. Clinton will have to keep track of the source of the multiple attacks and that in itself is an arduous task in an election year. But Obama is very clear in pointing out that Hillarys got her share of critics. Thats what happens when youve fought for what you believe in. Thats what happens when you dedicate yourselves to public service over the course of a lifetime. And what sets Hillary apart from so many others is she never stopped caring. She never stopped trying.
For Obama, this years election is as critical as the race he ran in 2008 and 2012 and thats his message to every American anywhere he goes. The line was obvious when he said to a mammoth crowd in Charlotte that: Im here today because I believe in Hillary Clinton. I want you to help elect her the next president of the United States of America.
It will be clearer where the pendulum swings with Gallup polls after the conventions and as November draws near, but polls sometimes dont reflect voters mind. Ultimately, the result of the election will determine who occupies the White House from January 20, 2017, between Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Trump.
Quote
President Obamas desire to see his legacy protected and the transition of government from Democrat to Democrat is one of many reasons Mrs. Clinton will enjoy unusual support from Obama during this campaign seasonThe barrier that Obama seeks to break is not an easy one. Since 1963, when Lyndon Johnson succeeded John Kennedy as president after the later was assassinated, no Democratic president has ever been fortunate to hand over government to another. The Republicans have enjoyed that many times prior to and after 1969
Source: Thisday
The Senate Tuesday threatened to invoke necessary legislative powers including arrest warrant, to ensure that the Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Mr. Ababukar Malami, appears before it.
The resolution followed a briefing by the Chairman, Senate Committee on Judiciary, Human Rights and Legal Matters, Senator David Umaru, to the effect that the Minister failed to honour the invitation of his committee.
With tempers on the rise over Malamis perceived disrespect of the National Assembly, Senate President, Dr. Bukola Saraki, said that the Senate would be guided by Constitutional provisions to deal with the AGF if he failed once again to honour the invitation of the upper legislative chamber.
Special Assistant to the President on Prosecution attached to the Federal Ministry of Justice, Mr. Okoi Obono-Obla, had about two weeks ago, told the committee that it lacked the power to summon Malami since he (AGF) was not an appointee of the Senate.
The Senate had summoned the minister to explain the reason behind the prosecution of Mr. Saraki and his deputy, Ike Ekweremadu, over alleged forgery of the Senate standing rules.
Obono-Obla, who represented the AGF at a sitting of the committee, insisted before he was walked out of the meeting that Malami did not commit any offence by prosecuting the Senates presiding officers.
The Senior Special Assistant to the President on National Assembly (Senate) Matters, Senator Ita Enang, has since apologized for the comment by the AGFs representative, saying he (Obono-Obla) he spoke out of ignorance.
Umaru who came under personal explanation said: The resolution of the Senate was for the committee on Judiciary, Human Rights and Legal Matters to invite the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice to appear before it and explain the reason behind attempts to prefer charges against the principal officers of this hallowed chamber.
In line with the directive, we invited the Honourable Attorney General, first on the 23rd of June and on that date he did not appear but a letter was received by our committee to the effect that he needed more time to articulate its position and that he was out of the country.
The committee obliged him, we scheduled another meeting for the 30th of June, on that day, the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice did not appear before the committee.
However, somebody who claimed to be Mr. Obla appeared to say that he was appearing on behalf of the minister.
The committee therefore told him that he was not an invitee and that we will not attend to him and we asked him to leave.
I have being informed by Senator Ita Enag (Senior Special Assistant to the President on National Assembly Matters) and I have received lots of attempts to reach me by the Hon. Attorney General. Senator Ita Enag have informed me that the Attorney General regrets his inability to respond to our petition and that he requests time to appear before us.
I think it is important for the distinguished colleagues to be informed about this development and for us to request for more time to give him the opportunity to appear since he has indicated his willingness to appear before the committee.
Saraki, who did not allow debate of the matter, insisted that the AGF must appear before the committee in line with the resolution of the Senate.
He noted that failure to comply with the resolution of the Senate to appear before the committee, would necessitate the use of constitutional measures to enforce the resolution.
The Senate President noted that they would have no choice than to follow strictly what he Constitution dictates if the AGF failed to honour the invitation.
Saraki said, We all heard the explanation of the chairman Judiciary. What he is trying to get across to us here is to tell us the status of the situation because what we have been reading in the papers was of great concern where the number one judicial officer of the country will be the one that will be flouting the Constitution.
Section 89 (c) of the Constitution is very clear. But it appears from what you are saying that the Attorney General is requesting for one more chance to be given to appear before you.
The Senate is always in the progress of development; as such we will do that and ensure that he does come this time.
Otherwise, we will have no choice than to follow the constitution strictly.
So, you will report back to us before the end of the week to let us know the status of that situation.
If that does not happen, we will go ahead and go in line with the Constitution very clearly.
Barely a week after Fulani herdsmen killed 81 people in communities in Benue state, five people have again been killed by suspected herdsmen.
The attack occurred on Tuesday in Akombo village at around 5:30 pm. A school principal identified as Mr. Sam Wayo as well as four other persons were killed while an unknown number of persons were taken hostage by the attackers.
It is the latest incidence of violence in Benue state in what has become an almost weekly affair. Meanwhile, the Nigerian Police Force has disputed claims that 81 people were killed in Saturdays attacks and insisted that only 21 people were killed.
The Minister of Agriculture, Audu Ogbeh announced today that the the Government will set up ranches as part of efforts to curb the attacks by herdsmen.
The Nigeria Police Force on Tuesday paraded 11 suspected abductors of the Deputy High Commissioner of Sierra Leone to Nigeria, Maj-Gen. Alfred Claude-Nelson.
The Sierra Leonean envoy was kidnapped on June 30 along Kaduna-Abuja Road by suspected gunmen and freed on July 5.
The Deputy Commissioner of Police, Don Awunah, while presenting the suspect said that the suspects were arrested through coordinated police operation.
In a coordinated operation based on intelligence and technical support, the intelligence Response Team of the Nigeria Police has smashed an 11-man kidnap gang.
This coordinated operation led to the arrest of 11 members of the notorious gang that has been terrorising the North Central states of the country, he said.
He said that the gangs mode of operation included mounting of road blocks on highways in military uniforms and surprise attacks on unsuspecting motorists while others move their victims from one point to another in the forest to avoid detection.
Awunah said that items recovered from the suspects included three AK 47 rifles, three AK 47 rifle magazines with 90 rounds of ammunition as well as two sets of military camouflage.
He said the Acting Inspector-General of Police, Mr Ibrahim Idris, had directed state commissioners of police and technical operation commanders to improve on response to cases of crime and criminality.
He said that the IG assured all members of the diplomatic community of their safety and adequate security in Nigeria.
He said that investigations were ongoing and that the suspects would be charged to court as soon as investigations were concluded.
On this day in 1934: Akinwande Oluwole Wole Babatunde Soyinka was born.
He is a Nigerian playwright and poet. He was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in literature, the first African to be honored in that category.
Wole Soyinka was born in Abeokuta. After study in Nigeria and the UK, he worked with the Royal Court Theatre in London. He went on to write plays that were produced in both countries, in theaters and on radio.
He took an active role in Nigerias political history and its struggle for independence from Great Britain. In 1965, he seized the Western Nigeria Broadcasting service studio and broadcast a demand for the cancellation of the Western Nigeria Regional elections.
Bechuanalands (now Botswana) first President, Seretse Khama died on 13 July 1980 he died in Gabarone, Botswana.
He was born on 1 July 1921 at Serowe, Botswana. His grandfather was Kgosi (King) Khama III, (also known as Khama the Good) of the Bangwato people. Under his rule and with his approval, Bechuanaland had been put under British protection in the 19th century.
AS part of the efforts at improving the entrepreneurship skills of staff and students of Osun State Polytechnic Iree, a five-day workshop was organised for the polytechnic community on apiary, bee keeping and honey production.
A volunteer of the United States for International Development (USAID) to Nigeria, Mr. Caleb OBiren described the apiary farming and bee keeping as a panacea to poverty, saying it is a veritable venture that could boost the nations economy.
The apiary workshop was packaged by USAID and Winrock International, a Non-Governmental Organisation, as a stable of the farmer-to-farmer programme of the organisation to boost Agricultural technology in Nigeria through trainings and workshops for officials of tertiary institutions and local farmers in the country.
The institutions Media Relations Officer, Mr. Tope Abiola, said participants at the workshop were trained on modern technology of Bee Keeping and Honey Production which the USAID official described as a veritable venture that could be used to provide jobs for unemployed Nigerians.
Mr. Obiren, an American based apiary and bee keeping specialist, declared that apiary is a good venture that could be done in local communities with a little capital to produce honey in large quantity.
While explaining the importance of honey and demand for it in all parts of the world, Obiren said honey production is not capital intensive, its production can survive a country, because it is what is needed by all homes in a country.
It is a daily need that is used for treatment of certain ailments. It is also used to prevent certain deceases which could cause damage to some cells in our bodies.
Explaining why the Osun State Polytechnic Iree organised the training for staffers of the institution and farmers in Iree Community, the Rector of the institution who is the facilitator of the workshop, Dr. Jacob Olusola Agboola stated that it was part of the capacity building and skills acquisition program embarked upon recently by the institution.
Dr. Agboola stressed that apiary and bee keeping is a type of agriculture that we must encourage in our community to engage our teeming youths in the country, who are unemployed, while employed individuals can also embark on it to boost their economic power.
He added that it is part of efforts of the Department of Agric Engineering and Bioenvironmental Studies of the Polytechnic to train local farmers in the state on modern Agricultural skills.
The Acting Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, Ibrahim Magu is talking tough as he spearheads Nigerias fight against corruption.
The EFCC is currently prosecuting several high placed Nigerians who served in the previous regime and has routinely blamed some Senior Advocates of Nigeria and even the judiciary for frustrating its efforts.
Nevertheless, the EFCC says it will not be deterred in its determination to fight corruption in the country. Ibrhaim Magu spoke at a one-day workshop organised by the Nigeria Bar Association, NBA, in collaboration with the Presidential Advisory Committee against Corruption, PACC, in Abuja.
He said, We consider everybody a stakeholder, as the EFCC does not have monopoly of knowledge to defeat all shades of graft.
We will not stop going after people who are involved in laundering money.
It doesnt matter who you are, the law is a respecter of nobody, especially those who commit crime.
Whether you are EFCC, SAN or whatever, sooner or later we will start going after people who buy properties with stolen funds as well as people who help others to escape justice, Magu said.
Coffee Prices Sink on Continued Demand Concerns Barchart - 54 minutes ago December arabica coffee (KCZ22 ) today is down -1.25 (-0.70%), and Jan ICE Robusta coffee (RMF23 ) is up +3 (+0.16%). Arabica coffee prices today extended the sharp sell-off seen in the past three weeks... KCZ22 : 178.85s (-0.50%) RMF23 : 1,878s (+0.16%)
Triple Digit Losses for Midday Cotton Barchart - 1 hour ago Cotton futures are down at midday with losses of as much as 264 points led by the Dec contract. Dec is now printing lows not seen since April of 2021. Cotton export sales were 68,437 RBs for the week... CTZ22 : 75.35 (-3.17%) CTH23 : 75.00 (-3.08%) CTK23 : 74.65 (-2.74%)
Hog Prices Fading through Thursday Barchart - 1 hour ago Lean hog futures are trading with triple digit midday losses of as much as $3.15 in the December contract. The USDA National Average Base Hog Price was $91.65 on Thursday morning after a $6.66 drop. The... HEZ22 : 85.350 (-3.56%) HEJ23 : 92.350 (-1.94%) KMZ22 : 95.950 (-0.80%)
Wheat Futures Trading Weaker Barchart - 1 hour ago Midday wheat quotes show the domestic market is down 4 1/2 to 5 1/2 cents in SRW. KC wheat is trading 9 1/4 to 10 1/2 cents weaker so far in the front months. MPLS spring wheat futures are down 2 to 6... ZWZ22 : 838-4 (-0.24%) ZWH23 : 858-0 (-0.17%) ZWPAES.CM : 7.7193 (-0.26%) KEZ22 : 932-6 (-0.85%) KEPAWS.CM : 8.9099 (-0.89%) MWZ22 : 952-0 (unch)
Midday Cattle Complex in Red Barchart - 1 hour ago Front month live cattle futures are trading 7 to 27 cents weaker so far at midday. Feeders are down by 35 to 75 cents in the front months. Cash trade remains quiet through Thursday morning, with some reports... LEV22 : 151.375 (-0.05%) LEZ22 : 153.375 (-0.13%) LEG23 : 156.750 (-0.18%) GFV22 : 175.925 (-0.28%) GFX22 : 178.000 (-0.46%)
Corn Futures Working Red Barchart - 1 hour ago The midday corn market is trading 3 1/2 to 4 1/2 cents lower through the morning session. That has Dec sitting on the $6.80 round number support. The weekly Export Sales report showed 263,999 MT were... ZCZ22 : 682-4 (-0.36%) ZCPAUS.CM : 6.7360 (-0.38%) ZCH23 : 688-0 (-0.36%) ZCK23 : 687-2 (-0.40%)
Beans Red on Weaker Soy Oil Barchart - 1 hour ago Soymeal futures are trading near the highs through Thursdays midday with 1% to 1.4% gains. Beans and bean oil are red, with 1 to 2 1/2 cent/bu and 68 to 110 points/lb losses respectively. USDA reported... ZSX22 : 1382-2 (unch) ZSPAUS.CM : 13.3837 (+0.06%) ZSF23 : 1393-4 (unch) ZSH23 : 1402-0 (unch)
Crude Rallies on Positive U.S. GDP Report Barchart - 1 hour ago Dec WTI crude oil (CLZ22 ) today is up +1.17 (+1.33%), and Dec RBOB gasoline (RBZ22 ) is up +0.0605 (+2.35%). Dec nat-gas (NGZ22) today is sharply lower by more than -6% on mild weather forecasts. Crude... CLZ22 : 89.36 (+1.65%) RBZ22 : 2.6537 (+2.95%) NGZ22 : 5.858 (-4.27%)
Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) in Montgomery, Alabama recently received a $1 million gift from Boston area couple Jonathan and Jeannie Lavine via their Crimson Lion Foundation. The gift is one of the largest donations in the organizations history, and will propel EJI's work to eliminate wrongful convictions and excessive punishment in the United States.
EJI was founded in 1989 by attorney Bryan Stevenson, who serves as executive director of the organization. The spotlight on mass incarceration and police brutality has arguably never been greater, making EJI's work all the more relevant and pressing. Stevenson, a Harvard Law and Harvard School of Government graduate, has been chipping away at these issues for years, first working for the Southern Center for Human Rights (SCHR) in Atlanta before founding EJI.
A few years ago, Stevenson gave a TED Talk on his work that became a sensation, garnering over 3 million views to date. The talk brought a gusher of donations to Stevenson's work to end the practice of putting children in adult jails and prisons. Then, in 2014, Stevenson releasedJust Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption, a powerful bestselling account of his coming of age as a lawyer and the people he defended. Stevenson has even been called "America's Nelson Mandela."
That's going a little far, but all this attention has certainly introduced more people to the Equal Justice Initative, including Jonathan Lavine, co-managing partner of Bain Capital. I recently spoke with Lavine to unpack the couple's $1 million gift and the story behind it. While the Lavines are keen on the work that EJI is doing, backing an outfit like this also fits within the couple's larger philanthropic mission.
Lavine says he felt "beside himself" reading Just Mercy. He passed the book along to family, as well as to co-workers. Last year, Lavine met with Stevenson and the two discussed a gift and how to structure it. Impact appears to be key, here, and Lavine explained that he was especially convinced of Stevenson's strong track-record of tackling broad issues with specific and individual solutions.
Last fall, Stevenson and EJI secured a big win when they helped foster the release of Anthony Ray Hinton, a black man who had been on death row in Alabama for some three decades. Litigation went on for years until a judge finally dismissed the charges. In 2012, meanwhile, EJI's lawyers successfully argued before the Supreme Court that imprisoning children under age 17 to life imprisonment without parole was cruel and unusual punishment. Stevenson and his staff have won reversals, relief or release for over 115 wrongly condemned prisoners on death row.
One thing that Lavine really admires about Stevenson is that he's "using the system to reform the system," in the tradition of icons like Thurgood Marshall. Lavine also said that he and Jeannie are very much interested in improving the system or systems with their philanthropy. The couple tends to donate or invest in things that "help level the playing field, create opportunity and support fairness."
Consider when the young couple were still at Harvard Business School and got their philanthropic feet wet with City Year, an organization that addresses the drop-out crisis. A young Lavine sponsored a City Year volunteer for $18, an amount symbolic in the Jewish faith. Fast-forward several decades, and Lavine now chairs the national board of trustees of City Year. Oh, and not too long ago, the Lavines gave a $10 million gift to the organization. While initially a regional interest, the Lavines have become interested in supporting public school systems across the country.
The Lavines move some of their philanthropy through the Crimson Lion Foundation, but also make gifts independently of the charitable vehicle. Through the charity, though, the couple has supported organizations like LIFT, a national nonprofit organization that helps families break the cycle of poverty, and Capital Good Fund, a financial empowerment outfit. The couple is also involved with the Anti-Defamation League and provided a $5 million grant to the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative (HHI).
We write often about large gifts coming together when a donor and an organization share similar visions and this is yet another example. Apart from the Lavine couple's $1 million, EJI received $1 million from Googles philanthropic arm for its race and poverty initiatives, including creating civil rights landmarks at lynching sites.
News out of Los Angeles suggests that Southern California's vibrant philanthropic arts scene resembles Swiss cheese.
In other words, while the region may be (aesthetically) enticing, savory, and fulfilling, it's nonetheless riddled with holes.
The same can be said for other places in the U.S.
Let us explain.
Los Angeles has a new arts grantmaker, the Davyd Whaley Foundation, which recently launched to fill an "over-looked gap in L.A.'s art philanthropy." The city boasts an "ever-expanding visual arts scene, however, some things have not kept pace with this growth and that is support of a certain population of individual artists working in Southern California" (emphasis added).
According to its press release, the foundation will award its inaugural grants in early 2017 and plans to expand its grant program in the coming years. Awardees at the end of each year will be further recognized with a showcase exhibition and sale of their work at a local venue.
Initially, two grants will be awarded, according to Director Ellie Blankfort. The release of grants will be staggered over the first year of the foundation. The first grant will be the $10,000 Davyd Whaley Mid-Career Artist Grant, awarded to an under-recognized, mid-career artist in the Los Angeles area. Application for this grant will be available October 15, 2016.
The second will be the $10,000 Davyd Whaley Artist-Teacher Grant, awarded to an artist-teacher in the Los Angeles area, to allow them more time and resources for their own studio work. Application for the second grant will be available January 15, 2017.
These grants are available to artists in the following five counties: Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernadino, and Ventura.
All of which brings us back to the swiss cheese analogy. In a city overlowing with art, mega-museums, and very, very rich people, it sounds rather strange that foundations frequently overlook mid-career artists. But according to the foundation, the gap is very real, and we can't say we needed much convincing, based on what we see in LA and other arts local funding scenes.
What's more, according to the foundation, the rare monies going directly to artists does not fund mid-career or under-recognized artists in supporting their work in the studio. L.A.'s Department of Cultural Affairs COLA Master Fellowship grant, for example, goes to accomplished artists and their Artist in Residence grant supports an artist heading up a workshop for an underserved population.
It just goes to show you that all philanthropy is local. After all, we here at IP frequently look at foundations supporting individual artists on a national scaleclick here and here for recent examplesas well as those taking a non-monetary approach. But nationwide grant programs, quite naturally, suggest a far larger applicant pool and with it, greater competition. They're of little consolation to mid-career Los Angeles-based artists looking for direct financial support.
And so TV director Norman Buckley established the foundation to honor his late husband Davyd Whaley (1967-2014). Whaley was a resident artist at the Santa Fe Art Colony in downtown Los Angeles, a member of the Los Angeles Art Association, and previously worked for 15 years as an electrical engineer. (Click here to learn more about Whaley.)
"The foundation not only provides monetary support but also seeks to champion the values of the artist in whose honor it is named," Blankfort said. "Davyd Whaley was deeply committed to the exploration of the human psyche in his work, as well as helping those he saw to be in need of his support and encouragement. It is his personal commitment that served as a model for our mission."
The world stood still when news of pop icon Princes death began to flood the headlines on April 21, 2016. Months later, Prince is still making news, but now for something entirely different.
Rumor has it that Prince may have donated $34 million to the San Francisco Foundation, a major local force in racial and economic equity in the Bay Area. SF Soundsrecently speculated that Prince was the anonymous donor who gave $34 million last summer to make the Bay Area a better place. (We had guessed the Kenneth Rainin Foundation.)
Related: Guessing Game: Who's the Anonymous Donor That Just Showered Millions on Oakland?
A CNN political commentator and Princes close friend, Van Jones, made the following statement thats leading folks in the Bay Area to believe that Prince might just be their guardian angel:
He did not want it to be known publicly, but Im going to say it because the world needs to know that it wasnt just the music. The music was one way he tried to help the world. But he was helping every day of his life. There are people who have solar panels on their houses right now in Oakland, California that they dont know Prince paid for them.
Throughout his life, Prince was extremely generous, and were just learning about much of this generosity now from those close to him. Some of the Bay Area groups that have acknowledged Princes past support include Black Girls Code, East Oakland Youth Development Center, Hack the Hood, and #YesWeCode.
This leads us to believe that the areas youth and STEM education may have been of importance to the musician in this region, and perhaps elsewhere, as well. TSFFs $34 million donation flowed to numerous youth development and STEM education causes in the region, as well as job creation, affordable housing, and immigration legal needs.
Although Prince was from Minnesota, the Bay Area had a profound impact on his musical career. He recorded his first studio album in the Bay Area, and he died just weeks after playing three sold-out shows in Oakland.
We may never know for sure what Bay Area projects and programs Prince paid for. TSFF is bound by a promise of anonymity that wont be broken, and Prince often gave charitable donations through proxies and close friends. But details about other unrelated contributions could very well trickle out over time. And well sure be interested to hear about them, if and when they do.
Related: This Community Foundation Just Got Edgier. Will Others Follow?
A man believed to be under the influence of alcohol was arrested on Monday night after allegedly firing several shots into empty self-storage units at Uptown Storage in Lawton, Okla. Police initially responded to a report of a man with a pistol standing in a wash bay at Red Oak Car Wash, but by the time they arrived, the suspect had moved to the nearby self-storage facility at 1104 S.W. C Ave. A car-wash employee told investigators he heard nine gunshots. Police also heard a gunshot at the south side of the storage facility after setting up a perimeter, according to a source.
After being called out by police, Andrew Jones surrendered without incident. He emerged from a storage unit in a section of the facility still under construction. Officers found a Springfield .45-caliber magazine in his pocket and 18 empty shell casings in the immediate area. They also found an empty magazine in one of the storage units that matched the one taken from Jones and a loaded Springfield XD-45 pistol, a source reported. A nearly empty bottle of Barton vodka was nearby, according to police.
Police described Jones as belligerent with bloodshot eyes and slurred speech. He reportedly told investigators the worse charge he could face was public intoxication. He was booked on charges of damage to private property, felony discharge of a weapon, possession of a firearm after a felony conviction, possession of a firearm while intoxicated, and public intoxication.
Investigators found multiple bullet holes in several units. The owner of the self-storage facility estimated the damage at $5,000.
Police also believe Jones shot at least four rounds into the nearby Family Home Medical office building.
@WeatherTech @WeatherTechCa @DumoulinDC @DumoulinLP #NPS TROIS-RIVIERES, QC Behind the wheel of the #47 WeatherTechCanada /Groupe Bellemare car, Louis-Philippe Dumoulin will take the streets of the Toronto Exhibition Place this weekend during the Pintys Toronto Grand Prix, July 15-16. The Dumoulin name has accomplished many feats on the Toronto-based circuit. Notably in 2002, when Louis-Philippe Dumoulin climbed the highest step of the podium in Formula Ford 1600, during an exceptional season at the end of which he was crowned Canadian champion in Formula Ford.
Its a track that brings back many great memories. In 2002, I won the race in Toronto. I remember quite a nice fight with Christopher Guerrieri. That year, we had won six of eight races with the Aim Autosport team, says the enthused driver of the #47 Dodge WeatherTechCanada / Groupe Bellemare, who aims to repeat the same brilliant performance once again. I would like to get back on a winning path, he claims.
The NASCAR Canada series hasnt been presented on this track since 2011, a year that saw Louis-Philippe Dumoulin cross the finish line in seventh place on an extremely limited budget. Its a similar track to that of the Trois-Rivieres Grand Prix, and thats very nice for us. Many blind turns where its hard to get a good point of reference. From there we can see the importance of having good braking points and making sure we make the right decisions for overtakes. There is very little room for error, as were racing within the city and between concrete walls. Its a track we like a lot, explains Louis Philippe Dumoulin, #47 WeatherTechCanada / Groupe Bellemare.
Come romp with us and rally against cancer!
Throughout the whole season, the Dumoulin Brothers are inviting fans present at any race of the NASCAR Pintys series to sign their car for the cause. Next fall, the Dumoulin Competition team will become waiters for one night only for a happy hour meetup at the Carlitos Maison de debauche, during which the trunks of both cars will be put up for an auction. All funds raised that night will be given in full to the Quebec Cancer Foundation.
Come see us on Friday the 15th and Saturday the 16th of July on the site of the Toronto Honda Indy.
The weekend schedule can be found at http://hometracks.nascar.com/racedayschedule/nps-toronto-71616-schedule
Follow the racehttp://hometracks.nascar.com/nps/race-central-live-toronto
The race will be broadcastTSN (3 & 5) on Saturday July 23 at 2:30 p.m as well as on RDS.
Passion Performance Partnerships
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ABOUT PARTNERS
WeatherTech Canada designs, develops and produces high quality, digitally custom fit automotive accessories; including FloorLiners, All-Weather Floor Mats, Cargo Liners, TechLiners and No-Drill Mudflaps. Engineers use the newest technology available to measure the geometric complexity of the vehicle ensuring a constantly perfect fit.WeatherTech Where Technology and All Weather Protection meet! www.weathertech.ca
Groupe Bellemare: Competitive and dynamic, Thomas Bellemares innovative and growing family team is ready to take on any challenge. With support from senior members and a qualified team of managers, the third-generation Bellemares are reaching new heights. Built upon a solid past, the company moves forward with an exceptional team of experts and seeks a select group of clients. Our clients continue to benefit from our wide variety of services that target a large number of sectors. As a result, our visibility is constantly on the rise. Working with the Bellemare team has become a measure of success. Start off right by choosing a winning team! www.groupebellemare.com
WEBSITES / ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:
Meet Louis-Philippe Dumoulin at www.weathertech.ca
WeatherTechCanada: www.weathertech.ca/behindtech
Groupe Bellemare: www.groupebellemare.com/
Grand Prix de Trois-Rivieres : www.gp3r.com
Honda Indy Toronto : www.hondaindytoronto.com
Aim Autosport : www.aimautosport.com
Dumoulin Competition: www.dumoulincompetition.com
NASCAR Pintys Series: http://hometracks.nascar.com/series/pintys-series
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/dumoulincompetition
Twitter: @DumoulinDC / @DumoulinLP / @jf_dumoulin
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Summary Highlights in Louis-Philippe Dumoulins career
In 2015, he finishes the NASCAR Pintys championship in fourth place (2 podiums and six top-5s in eleven events.)
2014 champion of the NASCAR Pintys series: 5 podiums and 2 victories, as well as 9 top-5s in eleven events. It is the first time that a team made up entirely of Quebecers wins this championship. (Prep. team: King Autosport, managed by Martin Roy).
Won the Gilles Villeneuve Trophy in 2014 and 2001. This trophy symbolizes the fighting spirit and on-track excellence of a Quebec-native driver throughout the season that just ended. It is the first time that a recipient of the Trophy wins it twice throughout their career.
Won, in 2013, the only Ontarian event to this day made up of an all-Quebecer podium (Canadian Tire Motorsport Park NCATS series);
The only Canadian who climbed on the podium in 2012 during the prestigious event of the 12 hours of Sebring (2nd place American Le Mans Series GT3 Cup WeatherTech Racing Team);
Won the title of rookie of the year in 2011 in the NASCAR Canadian Tire series despite having only participated in 8 races out of 13 (scoring four top-10s and two top-5s);
Crowned Canadian champion in Formula Ford 1600 in 2002;
He still owns the record in Formule Ford 1600 for the highest amount of victories and pole positions in one season (2002).
Media Contacts:
Jessica Menard, Ph.D., Les Equipes Caissie-Menard inc., medias@dumoulincompetition.com, 819 448-6514 (voicemail)
Me Paul Corbeil, Certified Agent, PARAPHE sports-management, 819 696-2768 (voicemail)
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The year is shaping up to be one of the best ever for the master of macro mayhem.
Brooklyn University has announced three new course subjects, including one with a claims focus, as it looks to assist broker education. Brooklyn Underwriting s educational offering will include new courses in the property, claims and broking skills areas with the launch of natural catastrophe, claims handling nd insurance lingo units.Tim Fairbrother, manager, partnerships at Brooklyn Underwriting told Insurance Business that the underwriter expects interest in all three areas but the claims course should be the most popular.The first claims subject should gather some interest as this was created in response to feedback from students on what courses they wanted to see next, Fairbrother said.The Natural Catastrophes we think is an area that is very interesting and increasingly important in the world we live in. The Insurance Lingo course is a back to basics dictionary that we hope students print off and refer to any time, not just when completing the course online.Our next step may be to introduce some more interactive sessions and possibly live sessions. We are also working with some industry bodies to help deliver some industry wide material.With claims forming the majority of requests for Brooklyn University, Fairbrother stressed that the business will now look to include more claims information across the offering.Claims has been the most vocal request from users, Fairbrother continued. We will look to include claims scenarios in all product specific courses as well as look to launch more claims specific courses.Whilst the new courses may be beneficial to new entrants to the industry Fairbrother noted that specialist brokers will also benefit.They say you cant teach an old dog new tricks, Fairbrother said. We think they are more likely for entry-level members to the industry but we increasingly we people from all levels of the industry participate. Often, the case is that a broker is a specialist in one area and Brooklyn Uni allows them to learn about a new area of the market.
It is a story that would make a Hollywood screenwriter blush as one young man begins his career in the mail room, is guided by a series of mentors before launching his own successful business but that is what happened to Robert Cooper.His insurance story begins in the Lumley mail room in South Australia and Cooper told Insurance Business it was this introduction to the industry peaked his interest.When I was in the mail room I got to learn a fair bit about insurance and how it works and thought that I quite liked it, Cooper said.We are actually helping people, you can lose a lot of money if your car is written off and we are there to pay for their loss and they can buy a new car with that money. Thats a big impact.I started studying insurance at Lumleys, they were great and paid for that, and I got my associateship with the Australian Insurance Institute there and I really grew to love the profession as I thought we could save people from catastrophe, from financial catastrophe and help them out.After working throughout the industry for smaller brokers and international firms and achieving his MBA alongside working part-time, Cooper settled on starting his own business, CPR Insurance Services, based in Grange.I thought to myself I think Ive done pretty well putting on this new business from scratch, having to develop new contacts and new relationships and trying to come up with my own unique ideas, I should do this for myself.I was in my late 40s so basically thought no one would want to offer me a job because people would want younger people anyway so I looked around and began drawing up plans to start my own business.I first looked at getting my own license but the costs of getting a license and having to employ the necessary staff was just much too much of a risk that I didnt want to put on my family.We started off just wanting to be an expert in professional indemnity so we called the company Cooper Professional Risks Proprietary Limited and then my wife, Mandy joined me. She didnt just want to be focussed on professional indemnity so we set up the trading name CPR Insurance Services.Coopers first year as an authorised representative was more challenging than expected but advised others looking to start their own business or those in the throes of growing pains to persevere.The first year was a bit of a struggle, Cooper continued. But things kicked into gear in the second year and we increased our turnover by 200% in the second year.What I would suggest is to persevere and stick to their game plan. Before they actually go into the business, they have got to have a strategic plan about how they are going to do business.Realise that the first year is going to be the toughest but youve got to allow for the next two or three years. You cant expect to have a good business going in 6 months if you are starting from scratch.My advice is that it is a relationship business so build up strong relationships with clients, underwriters, claims officers, everyone you can and that will stand you in good stead to not only learn how to build and maintain relationships but when you want to start new ones later on when you start your own business.When setting out his business plan before the launch of CPR Insurance Services, Cooper made the decision to focus on networking and joined local Chambers of Commerce as well as setting up his own business group alongside Mandy, the Kedron Brook Business Group, which has helped cement their place in the community.Weve been growing quite well and we have got a good portfolio of clients now and the great thing is that they actually refer us to other people and as a result of the networking that we invested in a number of years ago, which we still do a lot of just to keep in contact with people and to find other businesses for referrals, so we still maintain that.It is no good coming into networking and just getting what you want out of it and then leaving, it is best to be genuine in your support and that has just kept the momentum going.We dont go to networking events and walking around asking to quote their insurance, we just tell them what we do and give them some anecdotes about some of the battles weve had, the claims weve had and how weve dealt with them.We certainly respect the long-term relationships that those people have with their own brokers which is what I want to achieve, long-term relationships.With a career spanning almost every step on the ladder of the industry, Cooper said that it is consistent learning curve that keeps him coming back for more.Ive found it to be a challenging and rewarding career and you never stop learning which keeps the interest going, Cooper said.There is always something new to learn in our industry and that keeps you fresh and looking forward to the next challenge.
Buffalo, New York-based insurance agency Lawley has added Pat Malleolo to its employee benefits sales division in its recently relocated Purchase, N.Y. office.
The hiring of Malleolo in Lawleys Westchester County office introduces a dedicated employee benefits consultant to the already-established business insurance and personal insurance teams servicing the New York City, Westchester County and Connecticut markets.
Malleolo will focus on pharmacy benefit analysis, healthcare reform and creating self-funding plans for companies.
Topics New York Chubb
A Jersey City, New Jersey, man has admitted using social media to promote a website that sold fake drivers licenses, some of which were later used to commit financial crimes, according to U.S. Attorney Paul J. Fishman.
Fishmans office said Abraham Corcino, 34, pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge Jose L. Linares in Newark federal court to an information charging him with conspiracy to commit fraud in connection with authentication features.
According to documents filed in this case and statements made in court, from October 2012 through August 2014, Ricardo Rosario, 33, of Jersey City, with the assistance of Corcino and Alexis Scott Carthens, 38, of Newark, New Jersey, sold fake drivers licenses over a website that was available at fakeidstore.co and fakedlstore.com.
The website sold fake New Jersey, Florida, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Wisconsin drivers licenses, and boasted that the licenses had scannable barcodes and real holographic overlays. The price for each fake drivers license was approximately $150, but the website offered bulk pricing for orders of 10 or more.
Officials said that a number of the fake drivers licenses sold by Corcino and other conspirators were used by criminal actors in connection with cash out schemes where stolen credit card information, usually obtained through hacking or ATM skimming operations, was encoded on to counterfeit credit cards and used to steal cash from victims accounts.
The FAQ section of the website indicated that orders would be received approximately one to two days after payment was received and described the websites policy with respect to returns: No Refunds. No snitching.
At the plea hearing, Corcino admitted promoting the website on social media and mailing the fake drivers licenses to the websites customers, according to officials.
The conspiracy charge carries a maximum potential penalty of 15 years in prison and a $250,000 fine, or twice the gross gain or loss from the offense. Sentencing is scheduled for Oct. 19, 2016.
Carthens pleaded guilty to his role in the scheme on April 25, 2016 and awaits sentencing. The charges against Rosario are pending. The charges and allegations against him are merely accusations, and he is considered innocent unless and until proven guilty.
Topics Personal Auto New Jersey
Lawyers for Fox News chairman Roger Ailes on Friday asked a judge to halt anchor Gretchen Carlsons shameless publicity campaign against her former boss, and send her sexual harassment lawsuit against him to arbitration in accordance with her employment contract.
The request came two days after Carlson sued Ailes in Superior Court in New Jersey, portraying him as a persistent harasser who demoted her and ultimately forced her from Fox News, her employer since 2005, after she rebuffed his advances. Ailes has forcefully denied Carlsons allegations.
Carlsons lawyers, Nancy Erika Smith and Martin Hyman, said their client intends to pursue her right to a public jury trial.
Roger Ailes is trying to force this case into a secret arbitration proceeding, the lawyers said in a statement. Gretchen never agreed to arbitrate anything with Mr. Ailes.
The parent of Fox News, 21st Century Fox Inc, late on Wednesday said it had full confidence in Ailes and began an internal review of the matter.
In filings with the federal court in Newark, New Jersey, Ailes lawyers said Carlsons June 2013 contract required her to arbitrate any employment disputes.
They accused Carlson of gamesmanship for suing only Ailes and not the network as well, calling it a legally improper means to avoid arbitration, and of conducting a public tar and feather campaign to sully Ailes reputation.
The lawyers also said that under federal law the case did not belong in the New Jersey state court because Carlson lived in Connecticut and Ailes in New York, and the amount of money at stake was too high.
Plaintiffs ploy of filing in Superior Court to justify her shameless publicity campaign against Roger Ailes should not be countenanced, the lawyers said.
Fridays filings included a copy of what Ailes lawyers said was Carlsons employment contract, which calls for employment disputes to be heard by a three-person arbitration panel.
Ailes, 76, a former Republican political consultant and confidant of 21st Century Fox Executive Co-Chairman Rupert Murdoch, has built Fox News over two decades into the most-watched U.S. cable news channel and become one of the most powerful American media executives.
In her lawsuit, Carlson, 50, accused Ailes of sexually inappropriate conduct such as calling her a man hater, ogling her in his office and telling her she was sexy but too much hard work.
Carlson said Ailes removed her in 2013 as co-host of the morning show Fox & Friends in retaliation for her refusal to accept his advances and reassigned her at lower pay to an afternoon show. She also said his decision on June 23 not to renew her contract was retaliatory.
The federal case is Carlson v Ailes, U.S. District Court, District of New Jersey, No. 16-04138.
(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Chris Reese and Cynthia Osterman)
Topics Lawsuits New Jersey
Specialty property/casualty insurer Philadelphia Insurance Companies announced the hiring of Brian Kilroy as national vice president of Marketing. Kilroy will lead the insurers wholesale and global broker relationships, as well as focus on business development opportunities between Tokio Marine Group companies.
Kilroy brings 26 years of insurance industry experience to this new role. He spent the past 15 years at Zurich North America, most recently as Business Development leader and Market Customer manager. In this role, he managed production for the Mid-Atlantic region and served as a liaison to large customers. Previous to that role he served as sales director for the environmental group at Zurich.
Before joining Zurich, Kilroy led Great American Insurances specialty lines production efforts for Pennsylvania and worked as a retail broker for Rue Insurance in Trenton, N.J. His insurance career started at Philadelphia Insurance
Companies (then Maguire Insurance Group) in 1990 as a corporate sales representative.
The Insurance Information Institute (I.I.I.) announced that Sean Kevelighan, most recently with Zurich Insurance, has been named president and chief executive officer, effective Aug. 8.
Kevelighan brings with him 18 years of public affairs, communications and media relations experience, including leadership roles in the global property/casualty insurance industry. Most recent Kevelighan, age 43, was global head of Public Affairs for Zurich Insurance Group, where he was responsible for setting the corporations global public policy and corporate responsibility agendas.
Before his time at Zurich, Kevelighan was group head of Global Consumer Banking Public Affairs for Citigroup. He has also worked as head of North American Group media relations for Zurich, as well as in President George W. Bushs Administration both for the Treasury Department and as press secretary for the White House Office of Management and Budget.
As president and CEO of I.I.I., Kevelighan will provide strategic oversight for the organization and act as a key spokesperson for the property/casualty insurance industry as a whole.
Over nearly two decades, Sean has attained impressive accomplishments in public affairs and communications as well as a deep technical knowledge of insurance issues, said Bruce Kelley, president and chief executive officer of EMC Insurance Companies and chairman of the I.I.I.s board of directors. The search committee screened dozens of high-caliber candidates, but the final vote was unanimous. Sean is an ideal fit for the CEO role due to his success as a media spokesperson in both corporate and government settings, as well as his international insurance industry experience.
Kevelighan will be succeeding Dr. Robert Hartwig, who is stepping down from his role to become a faculty member in the University of South Carolinas Darla Moore School of Business. He will also be co-director of the Moore Schools Risk and Uncertainty Management Center. Hartwig, an economist who has headed the organization since 2007 announced his plans in February.
Although my decision to leave the Institute after 18 years was an extremely difficult one, it is made much easier knowing that I will be leaving the organization in such capable hands, said Hartwig. I love this organization and this industry and Im confident that Sean will be a strong, strategic leader for the I.I.I. and a persuasive spokesperson for an industry that I remain fully committed to.
Hartwig will retain a formal relationship with the organization, periodically writing research reports, delivering presentations and offering testimony to public policymakers on the I.I.I.s behalf.
Kevelighan will report directly to the I.I.I.s board of directors; reporting to him will be the Institutes executive team including the executive vice president, chief economist, chief actuary, and chief communications officer.
Its an honor to have been given this opportunity, said Kevelighan. Insurance is the lifeblood of any economy, as it enables individuals to be better prepared for the unexpected and, in turn, to live more freely. Over the years I have truly grown passionate about insurance and, quite frankly, feel it deserves more credit for the value it brings to society.
Related:
Topics Market
A state judge has refused to dismiss the city-parish from a lawsuit by the mother of a 4-year-old Baton Rouge boy who drowned in an abandoned sewer hole near his home in 2014.
The East Baton Rouge City-Parish government contends it isnt liable in the death of Jassiah Clark because it didnt perform any of the work associated with demolishing the pumping station or filling the abandoned sewer hole.
The Advocate reports District Judge Mike Caldwell, after hearing brief arguments on, decided to keep the city-parish in the suit for the time being.
Caldwell noted that the hole in which the boy drowned was 20 feet deep.
Other defendants are Grady Crawford Construction, of Baton Rouge, and CH2M Hill Inc., of Englewood, Colo.
Grady Crawford was the independent contractor hired by the city-parish to demolish the pumping station. The city-parish contracted with CH2M Hill to be the project manager over the upgrading of the citys pumping stations.
Clark was reported missing the night of Dec. 20, 2014, and his body was recovered two days later following a massive search involving about 100 officers from several agencies, including the FBI.
An attorney for the boys mother, Brittni Clark, has said the hole was first reported by city-parish inspectors in October 2014 and again by project inspectors two weeks before the fatal accident.
A contractor filled the opening with flowable fill and sand two months before the boys death, a city-parish official has said, but a migration of soils occurred sometime between September 2014 and the time of the tragic accident.
Lewis Unglesby, one of Clarks attorneys, said the hole resembled a typical mud puddle. There were no signs, barricades or fencing around it at the time of the accident.
Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Topics Lawsuits Legislation Louisiana
Unsafe working conditions have landed combined fines of more than $120,000 for two companies operating in the Texas oil and gas sector.
Exterran Energy Solutions LP and South Texas Specialty Welders LLC were cited by federal safety regulators for violations at a worksite in Alleyton, Texas.
An Occupational Safety and Health Administration investigation found two repeat, 23 serious and four other violations. OSHA issued a $111,000 penalty to Exterran Energy Solutions LP and a $9,800 penalty to its labor broker, South Texas Specialty Welders LLC.
OSHA initiated the inspection on Jan. 13, 2016, after receiving a complaint alleging unsafe working conditions. The agency issued repeat citations after the employer failed to ensure proper disposal of materials contaminated with residues from the paint booth and for not ensuring proper labeling of containers with hazardous chemicals. OSHA cited the company for the same or similar violation in November 2014, at the same Alleyton worksite.
Among the 23 serious violations, OSHA cited Exterran for failing to:
Prevent fall hazards on scaffolding, open-sided floor edges and steel tanks.
Provide clear instructions for locking out energy sources prior to working on industrial machines.
Prevent material handling hazards created by forklifts, cranes.
Inspect and test lifting devices.
Properly guard the points of operation and rotating parts on industrial grinders and metal presses.
The agency also cited South Texas Specialty Welders, the staffing company, for failing to ensure:
The installation of protective railings on loading docks more than 4-feet high.
Employees received fire extinguisher training when authorized to fight fire.
A means for quick removal for welders in confined spaces in case of an emergency.
Employees received effective hazard communication training where hazardous chemicals are used.
Exterran Energy Solutions is an oil and gas extraction equipment manufacturer, and South Texas Specialty Welders is a local staffing agency.
Source: OSHA
Topics Texas Workers' Compensation Commercial Lines Business Insurance
Managing General Agency J.M. Wilson has added Justin Steigenga to their Charleston, South Carolina office as a transportation underwriter. Steigenga is responsible for quoting new and renewal transportation risks, corresponding with company underwriters, and serving independent insurance agents in Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee.
Prior to joining J.M. Wilson, Steigenga assisted agents during a summer internship at an insurance agency in Grand Haven, Mich. He graduated from Olivet College in May, with a Bachelors Degree in Insurance and Risk Management.
J.M. Wilson is a managing general agency and surplus lines broker providing independent insurance agents access to specialty markets for both personal and commercial lines. With branch and affiliate offices in eight states, J.M. Wilson provides coverage for standard and hard-to-place commercial, transportation, property & casualty, brokerage, professional liability and errors and omissions, personal lines and surety classes in thirty-one states.
Topics Agencies Underwriting South Carolina
Sixty-eight companies have signed onto a legal brief opposing a North Carolina law that limits protections for LGBT people.
The amicus brief filed July 8 is part of a legal challenge brought by the Department of Justice. The federal government has asked a judge to block a provision of the law that requires transgender people to use bathrooms corresponding to the sex on their birth certificates.
The amicus brief says many of the companies operate in North Carolina, and the law is hurting the ability to recruit while adding hurdles that are directly impacting their bottom line.
The roster includes General Electric Co., Microsoft Corp. and United Airlines Inc.
Republican Gov. Pat McCrorys office issued a statement saying that its disappointing the companies are siding with the Obama administration.
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Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Topics North Carolina
After review by the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation (OIR) and much criticism from Florida stakeholders, Florida-based Heritage Property & Casualty Company has withdrawn its request for an overall 14.9 percent increase of homeowners insurance rates in the state.
The insurer, which has been one of the biggest take-out companies of Floridas insurer of last resort, Citizens, notified OIR on July 5 that it was withdrawing its request and would resubmit a new request at a later date.
Homeowners insurers operating in Florida are subject to annual rate filing requirements and all rate filings submitted under the homeowners line of business are reviewed by the OIR. Heritage submitted its overall 14.9 percent increase for HO-3 and HO-6 policies on April 6 for all new and renewal business as of Sept. 1, 2016. The total number of Heritages policies that would have seen an increase was 184,339.
The rate increase filing attracted much controversy and the Florida Consumer Advocate called for a public rate hearing, though the increase was under the 15 percent threshold required by Florida law for public rate hearings.*
OIR indicated through much back and forth with Heritage that the 14.9 percent rate increase filing would not be approved.
The Office performed a thorough review of the rate filing submitted by Heritage Property & Casualty Insurance Company and held productive discussions with the company to address various items within the filing, Amy Bogner, OIR spokesperson, wrote in an e-mail to Insurance Journal. The outcome of this review resulted in Heritage electing to withdraw the filing. The Office looks forward to working with Heritage when it resubmits the filing again and to address any concerns that may arise on behalf of the consumers of Florida.
The insurer cited assignment of benefits (AOB) for water loss claims as the reason it was seeking such a dramatic rate increase for the former Citizens policies. In South Florida, where AOB abuse has been most rampant according to OIR data call results and insurer claims data, Heritage requested the biggest increases.
In Miami-Dade counties, Heritages proposed increases for HO-3 policies were as high as 22.2 percent; it requested a 25 percent increase in Martin County. In Broward and Palm Beach, the requested rate increases were 21.4 percent and 22.4 percent.
In its Q1 earnings call, Heritage indicated that severe weather events, namely tornadoes, and an increase in water loss claims with AOB, which it described as an adverse development, led to the jump in Heritages loss ratio from 32.1 percent in Q1 of 2015 to 63 percent in Q1 of 2016. In the same period, its overall combined ratio rose from 56 percent to 93.6 percent.
The increase in water losses in the Tri-County area that were represented by an attorney, public adjuster or loss consultants were significantly higher than what the company expected and estimated for the quarter.
The number one thing that drove adverse development was litigated claims, plain and simple, Bruce Lucas, CEO of Heritage, said on the Q1 earnings report conference call. These are claims that came in either attorney-repped, or were in an active litigation. We had claims that settled. We paid the policyholder. It was a closed claim. And then they come back three to six months later with an attorney, and they want more money. Those were the single biggest drivers of the adverse development. And thats something that you just cant predict.
Heritage CFO Steve Rohdes said the actual development losses were $8.3 million higher than the company had expected to pay in the first quarter and led the company to revise its estimated personal lines ultimate loss ratio for accident year 2015. Heritage anticipates additional cases to be reopened throughout the year and increased its loss reserve by $6.2 million as a result.
The snowballing effect that happened in the first quarter was something far beyond what was expected, Rohde told those on the call.
Despite these factors, Heritage reported a net income of $7.4 million for Q1 2016 and a 10 percent increase in gross premiums written for Q1 2016 as compared with Q1 2015. It also increased its total policy count to approximately 328,500.
Heritage has not yet released its second quarter results, but set its Q2 earnings results call for Aug. 4 and will release its financial results for the second quarter after the market closes on Aug. 3.
In the end, however, Heritages explanation for the rate increase in its 801-page rate filing was not enough to convince OIR that the increase was justified. OIR also notified Heritage on May 23 that its filing to clarify policy form language to address water losses would not be approved as submitted. OIR said the filing from Heritage was considered more restrictive than what has been approved for other insurers attempting to curb AOB abuse in water loss claims.
Citizens was the first to work with OIR to address policy language and OIR encouraged other insurers to make what it has dubbed me too filings.
While you do not have to submit the exact language approved for Citizens, the proposed language should not result in greater restrictions, OIR said in its May 23 letter to Heritage.
Heritage did not respond to multiple inquiries from Insurance Journal about its rejected form or rate filings, but Heritage President Richard Widdicombe told the Orlando Sun-Sentinel that rates in the next filing would be a lot less than 14.9 percent, and probably in the 6 to 7 percent range statewide.
CEO Lucas said he is optimistic that the AOB issue will be addressed by lawmakers next session, despite their failure to do so the last four years.
The Palm Beach Post quickly praised the rate rejection by OIR, and slammed Heritage for the $27 million in salary, stock and bonuses Lucas is expected to earn in 2016 while at the same time saying it needs to raise rates by such a significant amount.
The regulators did their job and worked on homeowners behalf. Lets hope they do the same each and every time one of these Citizens offshoot companies comes looking to pad their profits at Florida consumers expense, The Palm Beach post wrote in an editorial on July 8.
*This story has been updated to correct an error in an earlier version that stated OIR only reviews rate filings for rate increases over 15 percent. OIR reviews all rate filings submitted for the homeowners line of business, unless there is an exception allowed by law, such as for flood.
Related:
Topics Carriers Trends Florida Claims Profit Loss Pricing Trends Homeowners
Oregon businesses that participate in the Associated General Contractors/SAIF Workers Compensation program will receive a $2.5 million retrospective return on their 2014-15 plan year premium, SAIF announced on Wednesday.
Six hundred and sixty-five AGC employers in construction and related industries participate in the joint program with SAIF. The program emphasizes safety awareness and injury prevention.
At 8.3 percent, this years retro return is smaller than in previous years due to several serious injuries. In the programs 24 years of evaluation, returns have totaled more than $169 million.
More than $3.4 million will be returned to members participating in the AGC/SAIF program. This includes the retro return, medical reimbursements, and credits resulting from adjustments to Oregon Department of Consumer and Business Services premium assessments.
This years results may not be as strong as in the past, but because of the outstanding collaboration between workers, employers, agents, AGC, and SAIF, were still able to return $2.5 million to these Oregon companies, SAIF Marketing and Groups Director Christy Witzke said in a statement.
The return will be distributed in August 2016.
SAIF is Oregons not-for-profit workers comp insurance company.
Topics Oregon
Dallas, TX, July 13, 2016 Worldwide Facilities is pleased to announce that Matt Donovan, RPLU, has joined its team as Assistant Vice President in the Dallas, Texas office.
Prior to joining Worldwide Facilities, Donovan served as National Underwriting and Global Practice Leader in the Technology and Privacy space for Hiscox USA, as well as Vice President and Global Practice Leader for Cyber and Data Risks for the Hiscox Groups operations worldwide.
Donovan has been extensively published in insurance trade journals including Independent Agent, American Agent & Broker, and Insurance Journal.
Were thrilled to have Matt on board, says Ron Austin, President & COO at Worldwide Facilities. Hes bringing extensive expertise and market relationships to our cyber liability practice. We anticipate that our retail insurance partners will find Matt to be a tremendous resource when placing cyber risks.
Im looking forward to being part of the incredible team of professionals at Worldwide Facilities, says Donovan, as well as contributing to the companys continuing growth and success.
About Worldwide Facilities, LLC
Worldwide Facilities, LLC is a national wholesale insurance broker and managing general agent that has been in business since 1970. Our seasoned brokers and underwriters are industry leaders in providing expertise in a wide range of specialty lines, and offer extensive contacts with carriers domestically and overseas.
Media Contact
Erika Guerra
EGuerra@wwfi.com
Direct: (213) 236-4509
Topics Agencies
Even six years after the Panama Papers leaked a confidential list of offshore accounts held by the global elite, tax morality is still very much on the table.
Un ottobre da sogno per Antonio Conte: lex ct della Nazionale italiana, attualmente alla guida del Chelsea, nelle ultime quattro gare di Premier League ha collezionato solo successi, conditi da 11 reti segnate e addirittura nessuna incassata. Numeri da record che non sono certo passati inosservati alla Federazione inglese, la quale ha conferito al tecnico leccese lambito premio di Manager del mese.
Unavventura oltremanica iniziata in sordina, quella di Conte, pur a fronte di tre vittorie nelle prime tre gare di campionato. A far vacillare, anche se solo per un momento, le certezze del patron del club londinese, Roman Abramovich, i risultati conseguiti tra la 4a e la 6a giornata, coincisi con un pareggio sul campo dello Swansea City e, soprattutto, con le due pesanti sconfitte subite dal Liverpool, sul terreno casalingo di Stamford Bridge, e dallArsenal. In particolare, la debacle interna coi Reds, aveva irritato non poco il numero uno russo, poiche occorsa proprio nel giorno della sua 250esima partita da presidente della societa.
Come detto, solo un momento. Dopo lincontro dellEmirates, il tecnico salentino cambia modulo, adottando un piu equilibrato 3-4-3 e inserendo elementi di corsa come lo spagnolo Pedro. Una svolta totale perche, di li in poi, il Chelsea inanellera solo e soltanto vittorie: 2 gol allHull City e al Southampton in trasferta, 3 ai campioni dInghilterra del Leicester e 4 allo United in casa, con un meraviglioso numero zero nella casella delle reti subite. Un fantastico poker, ottenuto tra l1 e il 29 ottobre. Un cambio di marcia sbalorditivo, confermato dal 5 a 0 rifilato ai toffees dellEverton nel primo match di novembre, e una scalata che, man mano, ha portato i blues al secondo posto in classifica, a soli 2 punti dal Liverpool capolista.
E allora, non poteva mancare il riconoscimento di migliore allenatore del mese, ottenuto surclassando tecnici del calibro di Jurgen Klopp (Liverpool), Arsene Wenger (Arsenal) e Mark Hughes (Southampton). Tanta, ovviamente, la soddisfazione: E un grande onore e voglio condividerlo con i giocatori e con la societa ha dichiarato Conte sul sito ufficiale della Premier League -. E la prima volta che lavoro in un altro Paese, con una cultura diversa, e portare la propria filosofia non e facile, ma ora sono contento di questa scelta.
A completare la festa, la premiazione del fantasista belga, Eden Hazard, come miglior giocatore di ottobre. Due risultati importanti per il club, ottimo incentivo per la rincorsa al trono dei campioni, occupato dal Leicester di Ranieri. Il prossimo appuntamento per l11 di Conte sara al Riverside Stadium, tana del Middlesborough neopromosso. Il tempo di festeggiare e gia finito.
Bernardo Provenzano, successore di Toto Riina alla guida di Cosa Nostra, super boss del clan dei Corleonesi, e morto a 83 anni. Era stato catturato l11 aprile 2006 dopo 43 anni di latitanza in una masseria situata a pochi chilometri dal suo paese natale e dallabitazione dei familiari.
Il declino del vecchio padrino comincia il 12 maggio del 2012, quando le videocamere del supercarcere di Parma lo riprendono, nella sua cella, con un sacchetto in testa. Si tratta di uno dei primi segnali della malattia neurodegenerativa da cui Provnzano non si riprendera mai. E una prova che il capomafia non e piu quello dun tempo e anche laudio dellinterrogatorio che, dopo qualche giorno, gli allora pm Antonio Ingroia e Ignazio De Francisci vanno a fargli in carcere per sondare eventuali intenzioni di collaborazione con la giustizia. Parole sconnesse e difficolta a rispondere. Provenzano farfuglia e confonde presente e passato. Per alcuni finge, per altri manifesta sintomi di una patologia che galoppa.
Poi ce la caduta in carcere, a Parma, a dicembre del 2012. Il padrino riporta un ematoma al cervello, entra in coma e viene operato. Si salva ma non si riprende piu. I figli Angelo e Francesco Paolo e la moglie Saveria Palazzolo lo incontrano. Lui e sempre al 41 bis: regime che non gli verra mai tolto. Le immagini girate nella sala colloqui dellistituto di pena lo riprendono con un berretto in testa. Fatica a tenere in mano la cornetta del citofono interno, stenta a riconoscere i familiari. Da allora lo visitano decine di medici. Consulenti di parte nominati dai legali che chiedono la revoca del regime carcerario duro, periti dei giudici. Imputato nel processo sulla cosiddetta trattativa Stato-mafia, viene dal gip dichiarato non in grado di partecipare coscientemente al processo. La sua posizione viene stralciata e periodicamente il boss e sottoposto a nuove visite. Una infinita serie di referti finiscono agli atti processuali.
Nel procedimento sulla trattativa, in cui ogni sei mesi il gip deve pronunciarsi sulle condizioni del boss, e nei procedimenti sollecitati dai legali di Provenzano, che chiedono, prima la revoca del carcere duro, poi, ai vari tribunali di sorveglianza competenti da Parma nel frattempo e stato trasferito a Milano la sospensione della pena. Consulenti e periti, salva qualche eccezione, sono netti: il capomafia e gravissimo. Le patologie di cui soffre sono plurime e gravi di tipo invalidante: dal grave decadimento cognitivo il boss non parla piu da anni ai problemi dei movimenti involontari, allipertensione arteriosa, a una infezione cronica del fegato, oltre alle conseguenze degli interventi subiti per lo svuotamento dellematoma da trauma cranico,per lasportazione della tiroide e per il tumore alla prostata.
I giudici gli nominano un curatore speciale: e il figlio Angelo, a cui verranno notificati gli atti vista lincapacita mentale del padre. Come puo parlarsi di pericolosita e della possibilita che mandi messaggi allesterno se non parla piu?, ripetono gli avvocati nelle istanze in cui sostengono che sono venuti meno i requisiti per lapplicazione del 41 bis. Ma la risposta e sempre la stessa. Anche se la Cassazione, tra gli ultimi a pronunciarsi, non parla piu di pericolosita. E, nel confermare la decisione del Tribunale di sorveglianza di Milano che rigetta una delle richieste di differimento pena, parla della necessita di tutelare in modo adeguato il diritto alla salute del detenuto. In pratica, sostengono i giudici, in carcere Provenzano viene curato meglio, spostarlo altrove sarebbe piu dannoso.
NIO Inc. (NIO), founded in 2014 by Chinese entrepreneur William Li, is a Shanghai-based automobile manufacturer that specializes in designing and developing electric autonomous vehicles. The company, formerly known as NextEV, has big plans to become the Tesla Inc. (TSLA) of China and satisfy Beijings ambitions to rapidly expand the countrys production of sophisticated technologies, including vehicles that reduce emissions.
In September, NIO became the third-biggest U.S. listing by a Chinese firm this year. The company raised $1 billion in its initial public offering (IPO), falling short of initial expectations. The shares were priced at $6.26 a piece on Sept. 12, just above the low end of its $6.25 to $8.25 target price range. Sources told Reuters that its valuation was dragged down by investor concerns about the troubles engulfing chief competitor Tesla. Waning sentiment in Chinese companies probably also did not help.
At the start of the IPO process, NIO had hoped for a valuation of as much as $20 billion. In the end it had to settle for a market capitalization of $6.41 billion.
The shares currently trade at $7.39, with a market cap of $7.52 billion. Below are the companys three largest individual shareholders.
William Li
In its IPO prospectus, NIO listed William Li, the founder and CEO of the electric vehicle start-up, as its biggest shareholder owning 148.6 million shares or a 14.5% stake immediately after the offering. These shares are in the form of class C shares, except for 189,253 class A shares held by Originalwish Limited, a company incorporated in British Virgin Islands and beneficially owned by Li. He promised to donate 50 million of his shares "at an appropriate time in the future" and retain his voting power.
Born in 1974, Li rose to fame after he founded Bitauto E-Commerce Co. Ltd., a provider of internet content and marketing services for Chinas automotive industry, in 2000. The success of Bitauto, which employs more than 3,000 people and covers 340 cities in China, led Li to be referred to in his country as the godfather of the transport sector. The entrepreneur is also a chair at ride-sharing service Dida Chuxing and was one of the first major investors in bike-sharing platform Mobike Technology Co. Ltd.
Tencent
WeChat owner Tencent Holdings Ltd. (TCEHY), one of the worlds biggest internet companies, has developed a reputation for plowing billions of dollars into various start-up ventures. The Shenzhen, China-based firm was one of the first major backers in NIO and held 137.2 million shares immediately after the offering, which translates to a 13.4% stake. This includes 132 million class B shares and 5.2 million class A shares, which Tencent entities were expected to purchase at the IPO price. Tencents investment in NIO, as well as Tesla, feeds into its ambitions to become a leader in artificial intelligence and connected devices. Earlier this year, the internet giant secured a license to test self-driving vehicles in the city of Shenzhen.
Baillie Gifford
In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Oct. 9, Baillie Gifford, the second-largest holder of Tesla stock after Elon Musk, confirmed that it had acquired an 11.4% stake in NIO, bringing the total number of shares it owns to 85.3 million. News of the UK investment management firms investment sent NIOs shares up 22.35% the same day.
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Monsignor Edward Joseph Flanagan, founder of Boys Town made famous by the Spencer Tracy movie, was a lone voice in condemning Irelands industrial schools back in the 1940s and he was viciously castigated by church and government for doing so.
Flanagan was born on July 13 1886 in the townland of Leabeg, County Roscommon, to John (a herdsman) and Honoria Flanagan. In 1904, he emigrated to the United States and became a US citizen in 1919.
He was ordained a priest in 1912 having made the great leap across the pond, to America. In 1917 he was living and working in Omaha, Nebraska, when he hit upon the idea of a "boys town," which offered education and a home for the poor and wayward boys of Omaha.
However, demand for the service was so great that he soon had to find bigger premises. Boys Town, built on a farm 10 miles from Omaha, was the result.
The center was open to all. There were no fences to stop the boys from leaving. Fr. Flanagan said he was not building a prison."
"This is a home," he said. "You do not wall in members of your own family.
Boys Town eventually became so well-known - and so well-respected - that Hollywood and the U.S. President came calling. Spencer Tracey and Mickey Rooney starred in the 1938 movie "Boys Town," and it made a national hero out of Fr. Flanagan. He was internationally renowned as the worlds most foremost expert on boys training and youth care.
When World War II ended in 1945, President Harry S. Truman asked Flanagan to tour Asia and Europe, to see what could be done for the homeless and neglected children in those regions.
Flanagan decided to return to the land of his birth in 1946 to visit his family, and also to visit the so-called training schools" run by the Christian Brothers to see if they were "a success or failure.
The success of the film "Boys Town," meant Flanagan was treated like a celebrity on his arrival. His visit was noted by the Irish Independent, which said that Flanagan had succeeded against overwhelming odds, spurred on by the simple slogan that 'There is no such thing as a bad boy.'
But Flanagan was unhappy with what he found in Ireland. He was dismayed at the state of Ireland's reform schools and blasted them as a scandal, un-Christlike, and wrong. And he said the Christian Brothers, founded by Edmund Rice, had lost its way.
Speaking to a large audience at a public lecture in Corks Savoy Cinema he said, "You are the people who permit your children and the children of your communities to go into these institutions of punishment. You can do something about it." He called Irelands penal institutions "a disgrace to the nation," and later said "I do not believe that a child can be reformed by lock and key and bars, or that fear can ever develop a childs character."
However, his words fell on stony ground. He wasn't simply ignored. He was taken to pieces by the Irish establishment. The then-Minister for Justice Gerald Boland said in the Dail that he was not disposed to take any notice of what Monsignor Flanagan said while he was in this country, because his statements were so exaggerated that I did not think people would attach any importance to them.
Flanagan was a devout Catholic, a man who Catholics and non-Catholics world-wide had deemed a hero. He was the Mother Theresa of his day.
Despite that, the Irish Church and the Irish authorities felt comfortable ignoring Fr. Flanagan, ignoring the fact that he was considered to be an expert in the matter of providing for the education and upbringing of boys who were otherwise considered to be lost causes.
When he arrived back in America Flanagan said: "What you need over there is to have someone shake you loose from your smugness and satisfaction and set an example by punishing those who are guilty of cruelty, ignorance and neglect of their duties in high places . . . I wonder what God's judgment will be with reference to those who hold the deposit of faith and who fail in their God-given stewardship of little children."
Again, his efforts fell on stony ground.
What was it about the Irish Church and the Irish authorities that made them so insular that they felt comfortable dismissing someone of Fr. Flanagan's stature? Despite the fact that Fr. Flanagan was a popular hero to many Irish people, his words had no sway with those in authority, whether in the government or the Church.
And, once those who endorsed the industrial school model survived Fr. Flanagan's broadsides, they must have known that no one would challenge them again. They were right, for 50 years anyway.
Heres a documentary, produced by Sorcha Glackin, on his incredible deeds:
* Originally published in 2013.
A referendum, planned for early next year, on Ireland's election law could lead to the country's 800,000 passport holders who live outside the state getting the right to vote in Irish presidential elections.
The Minister for the Diaspora Joe McHugh unveiled plans for the referendum during a special event in Kampala, Uganda attended by Irish citizens living in the country. McHugh admitted that if the diaspora voting in the presidential election went well then voting rights for emigrants could be expanded to include the right to vote in general elections.
Currently there are 800,000 Irish people with Irish passports living outside the state in 120 countries around the world. They currently do not have the right to vote on matters in Ireland. The proposed referendum, if passed, would see this law change.
The referendum is part of a package of measures being addressed by the Ministry for Diaspora Affairs including matching job skills of returning emigrants with needs of employers in Ireland. The package is currently being examined by a high-level interdepartmental government committee.
McHugh told the Irish Independent that the priority was to give Irish emigrants the right to vote in presidential elections.
He said the French diaspora get to vote for three or four seats in the French parliament and this is something that could happen in Ireland too, but we must get the presidential vote over the line first.
Definite proposals will be presented to the Global Civic Forum, in February 2017, with a view to holding the referendum vote shortly thereafter.
The referendum was discussed at an interdepartmental working group on the Diaspora Affairs, which McHugh chairs, he told the Independent.
** http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/news/referendum-to-give-millions-of-irish-abroad-a-vote-in-presidential-election-planned-for-2017-34874496.html
We received a presentation last Wednesday from officials. We still need to figure out a proper time frame as to how this works, but my aim is to have a vote next year, he said.
We are driving the issue hard and the Taoiseach is very interested in it. There is an impatience on his part and his view is even to have to wait six months from now is too long. The Civic Forum in February is a place where we will have something real and tangible to present which will then go to cabinet.
In September McHugh will meet with Irish companies experiencing skill shortages in a bid to determine what can be done to match those shortages with Irish emigrants who wish to return home. He has also had discussions with Google, Facebook and LinkedIn about developing a digital communications campaign to share information with the Irish Diaspora on the skills needed by companies in Ireland.
He highlighted the fact that most of the Irish emigrants who have left in recent years are highly educated and skilled.
They do not all want to come home, but those who do should be asked what their skills and needs are, said McHugh.
Fianna Fail Senator and Spokesperson on Foreign Affairs, Trade and the Diaspora Mark Daly spoke to Newstalk about the possible upcoming referendum. The most fundamental right of any citizen is the right [to vote] and we must stop denying that right to so many millions of our citizens," said Daly.
Daly said the plans have been welcomed by all parties. He added that there are logistical concerns over "how to make it happen and whether or not it will happen for the next presidential election as it would require a vote and a change to the constitution."
Other issues surround extending the rights to other elections and time limits for those who live away. Daly said if theres a limit of seven years during which a citizen living outside the state can vote that there would be a very high possibility that they would never be able to vote in a presidential election. This is due to the fact that Irelands presidents serve seven year terms and are often returned unopposed for the second term.
On Tuesday morning Sinn Fein President and member of the Irish parliament Gerry Adams released a statement saying, Any referendum on votes for Irish citizens living outside the state must include people in the North.
Longer term it requires some deep thinking about how our food industry positions itself best to avoid the downside of a UK exit from the EU.
Today, if you work in an Irish food company, things are tougher than they were just two weeks ago. In that period sterling has declined by about 10% relative to the euro.
That is a major shift for any currency but is especially sensitive for companies and co-ops that operate with relatively thin profit margins.
Those businesses that produce food in the Republic fit into that category so they are now grappling with depressed revenues in euros for the same volumes produced just a month ago.
Because the UK is our largest export customer, and our nearest geographic customer, the impact is significant.
Food tends to have high volume-to-value ratios, so having a market close to home is important financially.
When that market is suddenly buying everything 10% cheaper it hurts.
The pain is already being felt across the meat industry as beef exports to Britain are large.
Small companies that have built up UK customers will also be exposed as will the dairy sector which continues to ship a lot of cheese and butter, in particular, to the UK market.
For the dairy sector, Brexit just adds to the challenges posed by weak global markets currently so both dairy farmers and processors will have to bear the pressure for some time yet.
These adverse effects are solely related to exchange rates for now. An even greater threat relates to how the UK extricates itself from Europe.
If that goes ahead, and an increasing number of thought leaders in the UK are questioning that possibility, it triggers a wide range of issues for agri- food.
If the UK leaves Europe will it face punitive WTO tariffs on both imports and exports of food?
Will a UK outside of Europe turn to Argentina and New Zealand for cheap food?
If sterling continues to fall will food prices in Britain rise given their net food importing status?
These questions have major consequences for food producers in Ireland and we need the equivalent of a Special Forces team around food to address them.
Amid these challenges there is an interesting dynamic at work among the large Irish food companies.
Despite Brexit the share prices of companies including Glanbia and Kerry has been relatively unaffected.
You might ponder how that is so given the scenario outlined above.
The reason is that these companies have built global businesses that have a much-reduced dependency on food manufactured in Ireland than was the case decades ago.
They have created international businesses in areas outside traditional Irish food processing and in so doing have given their shareholders some protection from the challenges now posed by Brexit.
Key lessons have to be taken from what is unfolding for the Irish agri-food sector.
They include over-dependence on a single market carries systemic risks; building a food business which has product and market diversification helps manage exogenous shocks such as Brexit; efficiency at both farm and factory levels are critical for any industry to thrive amid adversity, and; strong balance sheets are an essential ingredient to navigate periods of crisis in a low margin industry.
I continue to cling to the idea that the really serious thinkers in Britain can engineer a way for that country to avoid triggering Article 50 and starting the formal exit process from Europe.
The stakes are so high, for Britain itself and for its nearest neighbour Ireland, that every stone should be turned before taking that fateful decision.
If they press ahead Ireland must prepare for the exchange rate and market volatility that only started in the past fortnight.
That probably requires consolidation at farm and processor levels, greater investment outside Ireland to provide a hedge against UK turmoil, and a period of low prices for all.
If they find a way to stay in the single market then farmers and food investors, alike, will breathe easier.
Joe Gill is director of corporate broking with Goodbody Stockbrokers. His views are personal.
Adjusted earnings before interest and taxes rose 5.6% to 3.97bn in a preliminary tally, significantly beating analyst expectations, the automaker said.
Daimler benefited from gains in vans and buses while earnings dropped at the trucks and the Mercedes Cars division.
The result excludes almost 500m in Takata air-bag recalls as well as 400m for legal costs.
Locked in a race for luxury-market leader with BMW and Audi, Mercedes has been in the process of rejuvenating its fleet, including a new version of the business-focused E-Class sedan in March.
The carmaker was ahead of both rivals in sales through June.
Daimler shares rose almost 3% in Frankfurt.
The stock has lost over 26% this year, compared to a 7% drop in the benchmark DAX Index.
The stronger than expected result was driven by the strong performance in the cars division, said Arndt Ellinghorst, a London-based analyst with Evercore ISI who has a sell rating on the shares.
Just when Brexit has increased macro risks and Daimler has just recently warned on its trucks outlook, Daimler delivers a material beat.
Daimlers legal challenges include a lawsuit in the US claiming its BlueTec diesel vehicles violate clean-air standards when run at cooler temperatures.
The carmaker declined to comment on whether the legal costs are linked to that suit, which it has called baseless.
Germanys antitrust regulator raided Daimlers offices last month in a probe of steel purchasing by the auto industry.
The CSO said the capital transfers led to dramatic revisions to its GDP numbers and means the economy here surged last year by 26.3%, up from its preliminary estimate of 7.8%.
The increase in assets on the national accounts, however, led to no substantial increase in the number of jobs and did not increase exports because some of the companies are involved in so-called contract manufacturing where the goods and services are made by plants located abroad.
An examination by the Irish Examiner of World Bank statistics could find no other country whose economy expanded by over 26% last year.
Irelands nearest rival was the West Bank and Gaza, which is rebuilding its war-damaged economy and where economic growth climbed 12.4% in 2015.
Uzbekistan posted the worlds third-largest increase, with GDP growing by 8%.
The Department of Finance told the Irish Examiner the revised level of GDP will lead to an increase in the amount Ireland pays into the EU budget, but by how much remains unknown.
The accounting manoeuvres will raise uncomfortable questions about the credibility of Irelands tax regime, analysts said.
Economist Jim Power said the surge of over 26% surge in GDP will attract the attention of observers abroad who will ask: What in the name of God is going on in Ireland?
It sent a clear message about the artificial nature of some of what Ireland does. It raises the question of what a number of companiesprobably no more than fiveacted the way they did in 2015, Mr Power said.
Alan McQuaid, chief economist at Merrion Capital, said Irish GDP figures were now illusory and a fantasy which will in terms of credibility for Ireland bring a lot of unwelcome attention on the corporate tax regime.
He said the GDP revisions risk stoking pay demands at home and may undermine Irelands negotiations with Brussels to offset the economic effects of Britains exit from the EU.
Seamus Coffey, an economist at UCC, said many of the asset transfers from tax havens were led by attempts to increase the transparency of how much and where corporates pay their taxes, under the OECDs so-called Base Erosion and Profit ShiftingBepsinitiative.
Ireland has been an unintended beneficiary of the Beps process, Mr Coffey said, adding he believes the GDP revisions and asset transfers will have no bearing on the EUs decision over whether Ireland struck a too-sweet tax deal with Apple.
We are all trying to detect what the underlying growth was in 2015. It is very hard to decipher from this set of figures, said Thomas Conefrey, chief economist and head of the secretariat at the tax and spend watchdog, the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council.
A Department of Finance spokesman said the surge in the level of GDP will lower the countrys net debt as measured in terms of GDP.
However, there is no increase in the so-called fiscal space of 1bn available in Octobers budget for 2017, the Finance Department spokesman said.
Financial industry reforms are critical to entrench financial stability and support the recovery, the IMF said in a statement following its regular review of the Italian economy.
The Washington-based fund said non-performing loans appeared to be stabilising at around 18% of total loans.
The IMF said concerns related to the bail-in of retail investors should be dealt with appropriately.
Talks between Italy and the European Commission to recapitalise Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena and other banks are stuck on whether creditors should face losses if taxpayer funds are used.
Rules that took full effect this year require bondholders and shareholders to absorb losses in failing lenders in the event of a rescue, a process dubbed a bail-in.
Italy favours a precautionary recapitalisation under the EUs bank-resolution rules, which allow governments to bolster lenders when capital gaps emerge in stress tests, according to sources.
After what happened with the departure of the UK, in my view its fundamental there should be common sense in Europe, Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi said yesterday.
He called on banks to return to lending to artisans and small businesses while there should be rules that are a little more logical, a little clearer, a little more humane.
The IMF urged measures including more intensive use of out-of-court debt restructuring mechanisms, strengthened supervision, and a systematic assessment of asset quality for banks not already subject to comprehensive ECB assessment.
The former junior finance minister said the UKs decision to leave the EU must serve as a wake-up call to Europe as to the power and effect of populism across the continent.
The Brexit result should act as a catalyst for negotiators to finalise the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) as quickly as possible, Mr Hayes said.
We have seen with the result of the UK referendum the damaging effects of populist politics. I hope this gives us a wake-up call in Europe and we can now push ahead with the real jobs and growth agenda. Finding an agreement on TTIP is a key part of Europes future growth agenda.
We should not let populists take a hold of TTIP like they did with the Brexit debate. We need to look at the facts and figures and it is clear the economic benefits for Ireland and the EU are enormous from a potential deal. A recent EU study says Ireland will gain 1.4% in GDP from the deal.
EU and US negotiators should speed up their talks and find an agreement before the end of this year. The longer it is allowed to linger on, the more chance populists will have to hijack any deal, Mr Hayes said.
Advocates of the trade deal point to the projected benefits to Ireland of the partnership while critics claims it will hand too much power to corporates and compromise safety and quality standards.
EU and US negotiators meet in Brussels this week for the 14th round of negotiations.
Shares rose as much as 4.8% to the highest price since August 20, but later eased back to 4,855 pence.
Xiidra could become a blockbuster by 2022, with sales of just over $1bn (905m), according to the average of seven analysts estimates compiled by Bloomberg.
The FDA approved the eye-drop for both early signs of dry eye detectable by doctors and symptoms such as stinging and burning.
The FAD approval makes it the only approved drug in the US for this indication, according to a note today from analysts including Peter Welford at Jefferies.
Shires product will take on Allergans Restasis, a drop that that induces tear production.
A survey of ophthalmologists by analysts at Citigroup found a clear pent-up demand to try Xiidra on patients that had failed to respond to Restasis, according to a note published yesterday.
About half of Restasis patients who stop taking it do so because of its cost, the Citigroup survey found.
Shire is preparing to talk to pharmacy benefit managers and other payers in the US to have Xiidra included on their formularies, said chief executive officer Flemming Ornskov in a phone interview.
Im very confident that over time, Xiidra will be available with reimbursement to many patients in the US and we will meet the significant unmet need there is, Mr Ornskov said.
He declined to comment on the planned price of the drug.
Shire is also in discussions with European, Canadian and Japanese regulators as well, Mr Ornskov said.
The company acquired the drug with its purchase of SARcode Bioscience in 2013.
That was a deal that Mr Ornskov worked on with his predecessor just before taking the top job.
Shire, which last month completed its acquisition of Baxalta, isnt after more large-scale deals, Mr Ornskov said.
Whats next for Shire is one single word: Execution, he said.
The company will continue to look for innovation in the marketplace.
Its not large scale M&A thats not in the cards for Shire right now.
The showdown comes days after Ms Vestagers team came up with two possible scenarios on how much tax Apple owes in Ireland, according to two people familiar with the case, who asked not to be identified.
Mr Lew has contacted Ms Vestager urging her to avoid ordering any collection of back taxes from Apple, according to one of the people.
Conflict over trans-Atlantic tax practices escalated in February as Mr Lew complained to the Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker that US firms are unfair targets of state-aid investigations.
The treasury secretarys letter came after EU enforcement focused on fiscal pacts Apple, Amazon.com and McDonalds have with Ireland and Luxembourg. The companies all say they acted within the law.
Ms Vestager has repeatedly denied deliberately taking aim at US firms, insisting that probes into tax rulings are part of the watchdogs responsibility to police fair competition within the EU.
Clawing back undue advantages simply restores equal treatment, she insists.
The Commissions press office didnt comment beyond confirming the Brussels meeting today. Apple declined to comment.
The EU opened the Apple probe in 2014, and, in preliminary findings, said its tax arrangements were improperly designed to give the company a financial boost in exchange for jobs in Ireland.
The Government has said it will vigorously defend any adverse Apple tax decision.
The company told a European Parliament panel earlier this year that it has paid every cent of tax that is due in Ireland.
Finance minister Michael Noonan said last month the EU decision could come as soon as July, though he also suggested that the UK vote to quit the EU may trigger delays.
In a worst-case scenario, Apple may face a huge bill if the Government ultimately loses and is forced to recoup tax from the company, according to JPMorgan Chase analyst Rod Hall.
Brussels lawyers speculate that the final amount could be much less, in the hundreds of millions range large enough to send a message to companies like Apple and the countries that dole out tax breaks, but not too large to risk creating havoc in case the decisions get overturned in the EU courts.
Speaking during a joint post- Brexit press conference with Taoiseach Enda Kenny in Berlin, the head of the German government twice failed to give any indication a deal will be sought or allowed.
Despite failing to reassure Ireland that special plans will be put in place, a Government spokesperson noted that Ms Merkel said she is aware of this countrys near century-old common travel area agreement with Britain and the Norths soft border issues.
However, when twice asked if she is in favour of a specific deal to help Ireland address these difficulties, Ms Merkel strongly indicated this country will be treated no differently to other EU members.
Of course I cannot anticipate the outcome of negotiations [with Britain on a Brexit], she said. The 27 member states will bring their influence to bear and the Irish voice will be heard as much as every other voice.
Ms Merkel added it is important Ireland plays a part here and describing this countrys relationship with Germany as a special friendship, saying: We will approach the post-Brexit challenges on the basis of friendship between the two countries.
However, despite acknowledging the common travel area between Britain and Ireland has been in place since 1922 before the EU existed and that Ireland is now the only EU member not in the Schengen free movement area, she did not indicate any special deal would be arranged for this country.
Mr Kenny said that Ireland is the EU member state most at risk from the Brexit fallout.
#Business: CPL Resources shares fall further as firm warns of Brexit risk https://t.co/pmEmgjGjHm pic.twitter.com/pFTMppioCm Irish Examiner (@irishexaminer) July 12, 2016
Responding to questions about the same issue while standing beside Ms Merkel, Mr Kenny said he does not want to see an EU border running from Dundalk to Derry as it would impact on trade in the Republic, the North, and Britain.
Mr Kenny said British prime minister David Cameron was in favour of continuing to the common travel area during a recent EU meeting in Brussels, a position the Taoiseach said he supports.
He added repeated analyses of the Brexit situation before Britains historic referendum last month showed Ireland is most at risk from the decision, and that as such additional help may be required.
Many of the economic studies pre the Brexit decision did point out Ireland would be one of the most adversely affected from the Brexit outcome, and that Northern Ireland would actually be the most specifically adversely affected, he added.
French minister: Eurozone needs more integration post Brexit https://t.co/14OcZGzFR3 pic.twitter.com/NCUjiV4nHd Irish Examiner (@irishexaminer) July 12, 2016
Any special deal for Ireland in light of the Brexit crisis will focus on issues such as the common travel area with Britain and potential economic supports for this country.
However, both Mr Kenny and Ms Merkel noted discussions will hinge on what Britain sets out to achieve in negotiations and what position new prime minister Theresa May takes.
Standing orders were suspended at a meeting in County Hall when Cllr Deirdre OBrien raised the ward closure at Fermoy Community Hospital. She said the HSE had confirmed it will shortly close a 12-bed ward because of staff shortages.
But we have reason to believe it could be long-term and want to take immediate action to stop that happening, she told colleagues.
She said the ward is for short stays and its closure would cause stress to full-time carers, who depend on the hospital for respite for relatives or those in need of convalescence after surgery.
In January of this year, it was announced by then minister Kathleen Lynch that Fermoy hospital was allocated 2m in funding under the governments 2016-2021 capital spending plan. This was to ensure the best facilities are available for residents and their families... What Id like to know is: Where is this investment?
Cllr OBrien said the HSE should have had replacements lined up when it knew there would be staff shortages.
Cllr Frank OFlynn, who seconded her motion, said staff at the hospital were very worried that the closure could be permanent.
Cllr Noel McCarthy said he had contacted the HSE and had been informed that 12 of the 72 beds were to close shortly and reopen in September, adding: We need clarification on this though.
Cllrs Kay Dawson and Ian Doyle also agreed that the issue needed to be resolved.
My worry is the ward will not be opened again. Where do the 12 patients go in the meantime? We need a 100% assurance from the HSE that it will reopen, Cllr June Murphy said.
Cllr Declan Hurley, who is chairman of the Friends of Bantry General Hospital, said he would be very concerned about ward closures and he gave his support to the north Cork councillors.
The case concerns a 78-year-old Irish man, who is wanted to face prosecution in Britain on 10 alleged offences including rape, attempted rape, indecent assault and indecency of a child alleged to have been committed in the Camden area of London as well as Essex on dates between 1960 and 1973.
The Dublin man, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, denies the allegations contending that they are scurrilous and totally groundless.
The case was briefly mentioned before Mr Justice Paul Gilligan yesterday when Martin Hayden, counsel for the charity, applied to have the matter adjourned on the basis of the orders continuing.
There was no opposition from lawyers for the defendants, Console founder Paul Kelly and his wife Patricia, and Mr Kellys sister Joan McKenna.
Judge Jacqueline Linnane heard in the Circuit Civil Court that in 2009, Christopher and Elizabeth OBriens son died in Thailand, leaving his year-old to the care of its Thai mother, who had since abandoned the child.
James P Evans, solicitor for the OBriens, said the couple, who owe 117,000 mortgage arrears on their home at 6 the Walk, Cypress Downs, Templeogue, Dublin, were not out of the jurisdiction for financial convenience.
Their situation has come about due to the death of their son in Thailand in 2009, and whose one-year-old child was abandoned by its mother, Mr Evans told the court.
They felt compelled to go to Thailand to bring their grandchild back to Ireland, and had been going through an administrative process but were refused in Ireland.
They then had to apply for the adoption of the child and believe this may take another 12 months.
They had been making payments of 700 a month towards their mortgage and can increase that figure to 1,200, Mr Evans said.
When Judge Linnane asked Mr Evans how this level of payment would deal with mortgage repayments and arrears of 117,000, the court heard that Mr and Mrs OBrien were attempting to engage with Permanent TSB, formerly Irish Life and Permanent.
Mr Evans said the OBriens had a daughter living in the property at The Walk, Cypress Downs, who was meant to take responsibility for mortgage repayments and who, unfortunately, had not, leading to the large amount of arrears.
He said Mr and Mrs OBrien, for a significant period of time, believed their daughter was taking care of their mortgage, and were unaware of the developing situation because their mail was not being forwarded to them in Thailand.
When they found out this wasnt happening, they took the necessary steps to engage with the bank. Thats the correct and accurate situation, Mr Evans said.
They had now obviously arranged for all of their mail to be forwarded to Thailand, and were attempting to come to some arrangement with the bank.
I dont believe they are working in Thailand but they own a number of rental properties in Ireland, Mr Evans said.
Granting the bank an order for possession of No 6 The Walk, Cypress Downs, together with its legal costs, Judge Linnane said the problem was just not being addressed. The court heard that the OBriens appeared to be living permanently in Thailand.
Mr Evans said the OBriens regarded No 6 as their family home, and was granted a two-month stay on execution of the possession order to allow them make some further attempt to tackle their indebtedness.
The inspectors, who are conducting an investigation into the collective redundancy of the stores 460 workers in June 2015, claim the pack was issued by D2 Private before the group of companies that owned and operated Clerys was sold to a joint venture called Natrium by its previous owners the US Gordon Brothers group.
Natrium is a joint venture made up of Cheyne Capital Management in the UK, and a company of Deirdre Foley who is the owner of property firm D2 Private Ltd.
The pack contained detailed information, including financial statements and accounts of the company that operated Clerys OCS Operations Ltd, as well as the employees names, dates of birth, years of service, holiday entitlements and total earnings. The inspectors, appointed by the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC), are opposing a challenge brought by D2 and Ms Foley against the WRC concerning the powers of the inspectors, who seized documents and a computer from D2s offices in May.
Shane Murphy, counsel for the WRC and the inspectors, said the inspectors attended at D2 Private offices as part of their investigation into what has become a complex matter. The inspectors sought materials from D2 after being made aware of the pack, which they claim was supplied to directors of OCS Operations Ltd Brendan Cooney and Jim Brydie by an employee of D2 Private Ltd before the takeover by Natrium. The directors were appointed by Natrium hours after the Clerys takeover. That same day, June 12, 2015, they went to the High Court and sought to have OCS Operations, which was loss-making, wound up.
Counsel also said the investigators rejected claims they acted outside their remit.
In their challenge, D2 Private and Ms Foley say neither they nor Natrium were ever the employer of the Clerys workers. They also say the inspectors were not allowed to take the materials, which they add include privileged and confidential material, and have acted outside the remit of their investigation.
Ms Foley was yesterday criticised and heckled by a former Clerys worker. Shortly before Mr Justice Michael Twomey rose at 4pm, John Crowe, 64, from Artane, told the court he had worked at the store for 43 years. After all the years of service, he had to make an appointment to get personal items out of his locker four weeks after the closure.
An emotional Mr Crowe said he had been left with nothing, adding all he had in his pocket was 6 and he could not afford the bus to come to court.
Outside of the courtroom, Mr Crowe was critical of Ms Foley.
Surrounded by her legal team she left without comment.
The hearing continues.
The cow had previously broken through an electric fence in the field she was in and then fell down a 10 foot bank into the river just south of Kilkenny city.
It wasnt until a man out walking on the other side of the river noticed the cow in distress and raised the alarm.
The cow was managing to keep her head above water until some farmers close to the incident rushed to the scene, alerting the cows owner on the way.
One of the farmers who helped during the rescue was Suzanna Crampton who explained how she was joined by five others at the scene to bring the cow to safety.
Suzanna said: The cow broke through an electric fence and fell into the river.
A man walking on the other side of the river saw the cow fall in and happened to also see our house on the hill above the field.
He called up to let me know, which was very good of him. I then figured out whose cow it was and called the owner.
When we got there the cow was in deep water and was trying to keep afloat. We tried walking her up river to a shallow incline but she would only go so far.
There was heavy vegetation around the animal so we managed to find a spot with no trees and then called another neighbour who had the right machine to reach out over river to pull her up.
The farmer brought down his telescopic handler to the river and we managed to attach the forks to a belt around the cow and lifted her out of the river.
There were two vets in attendance during the rescue in case anything went wrong or in case she needed some veterinary attention.
Thankfully all ended well and the cow was rescued. She was a bit shaken but will recover fully very soon.
Suzanna also said there is always a great willingness between farmers to help each other in times of need.
Farmers are always willing to help each other at a moments notice, she said.
There were six of us all helping during the rescue and we were all glad the cow was safely rescued in the end.
Farmers most certainly do stick together and help each other out in times of need. They drop whatever they are doing and do anything they can to help each other out. And, if that wasnt enough drama for the day, just moments later some more cattle broke out of their field nearby onto a busy main road.
Before 1866, it took two weeks to send a message to America afterwards, it was instantaneous.
From her home on the Isle of Wight, Queen Victoria sent a message of congratulations to the President of the United States, the worlds press gathered, and for the next 100 years, south Kerry was a world hub of engineering, technical, and telegraphic skills.
The Transatlantic Telegraphic Festival celebrating Kerry and Europes connection with the tiny fishing village of Hearts Content in Newfoundland kicks off today with fireworks over Foilhommerum Bay, where the Great Eastern, then the worlds largest ship, left on her groundbreaking cable-laying enterprise across 1,686 nautical miles.
The cable was brought ashore in Newfoundland on July 27.
Not until 1966 was the Valentia cable outmoded by satellites.
Descendants and relatives of the original cable station team are assembling and the five-day festival is being launched by Adrian Fitzgerald, the 24th Knight of Kerry and London politician, whose family have long been associated with Valentia and with South Kerry.
In terms of global fame these days, Valentia island is on the world map for the oldest dinosaur prints in the world, that of a 400 million-year-old tetrapod recognised by a Swiss geology student in 1997.
But it is Valentias role in ushering in the age of modern communications technology that is the basis for an application for Unesco world heritage status, the festival will hear.
A highly skilled workforce trained in telegraphy, engineering and science assembled in south Kerry to serve three cable stations at Waterville, Valentia, and Ballinskeligs Bay.
A training college was established in Cahersiveen and for several generations, south Kerry was the centre of the world.
Alas, the closure of the railway, lack of industry and good roads in recent decades has seen massive population drop on both Valentia and south Kerry.
A number of academic papers will be formally launched over the next few days and there is an exhibition of rare prints and paintings the photographs of the time which were commissioned to record the historic event.
Academics are to give talks and local historian Michael Lyne, associated with reviving the slate quarry which roofed the Houses of Parliament in London, will speak about the quarry as well as the railway line to Renard Point, the arrival of huge ships to collect emigrants and the islands scientists and weather station.
Meanwhile, tonnes of cable lie on the sea bed in south Kerry. There had been several attempts to lay the cable from the late 1850s and thousands of miles of snapped and blown copper (the voltage was too high in one case) and brass coated cable lie on the ocean bed.
These are joined now by thousands of tonnes of the disused cable from the three stations at Valentia, Waterville and Ballinskelligs that still lie on the ocean floor.
Twenty years ago, a Norwegian rig arrived to harvest it, but it was an expensive operation and the business was not viable because of the cost of recovery, said local man Joe C Keating, one of those involved.
The cable is still there, tonnes and tonnes of it, Mr Keating said.
The EU and the US said the new Privacy Shield imposes stricter obligations on American companies, including the likes of Facebook and Apple, to safeguard the personal data of individuals, from health matters through to social media activities.
Critics argue that the new framework does not go far enough, and are concerned that the consumer protections are not sufficiently strong. They also warn that the possibility of blanket surveillance from US agencies remains.
As part of the deal, the US government has given assurances that any access on national security grounds by public authorities to personal data transferred under the new arrangements will be subject to clear conditions, limitations, oversight, and preventing generalised access.
The two sides said the deal includes stronger monitoring and enforcement by the US department of commerce and federal trade commission, including increased cooperation with European authorities.
There will be an annual joint review of the pact, while those who think their data has been misused have a route for complaint.
A new ombudsman based at the US state department will be appointed to follow up on European complaints.
At a joint launch in Brussels, the US commerce secretary Penny Pritzker said: The approval of the Privacy Shield is a milestone for privacy at a time when the sharing of data is driving growth in every sector, from advanced manufacturing to advertising.
The deal potentially brings an end to a period of uncertainty for businesses following last Octobers decision by the European Court of Justice that the previous Safe Harbor pact was invalid because it did not adequately protect consumers when their data is stored in the US.
The pact, which had been used by around 4,500 firms, had allowed the easy transfer of data from the EU by having US companies promise to provide privacy protections equivalent to those in the EU.
The EU courts ruling that the pact was invalid opened up the possibility that data privacy officers across the EU might be inundated by complaints from consumers worried about their privacy.
Markus J Beyrer, director general of the lobby group BusinessEurope, said: The adoption of Privacy Shield will enhance legal certainty for thousands of businesses on both sides of the Atlantic, while providing an adequate level of protection for citizens data.
Concerns over the privacy of data transfers had been stoked by spying revelations from Edward Snowden, a former contractor at the US National Security Agency. Snowdens claims had prompted the complaint to the European court from Max Schrems, an Austrian law student.
Mr Schrems said the new arrangements do not go far enough, and argued the requirements on US authorities are not equivalent to those that exist in the EU. It is little more than a little upgrade to Safe Harbor, he said. It is very likely to fail again... This deal is bad for users, who will not enjoy proper privacy protections, and bad for businesses, which have to deal with a legally unstable solution.
The proposal is one of three solutions to a looming annual 1bn higher education shortfall set out in the report of an expert group chaired by Peter Cassells, which Education Minister Richard Bruton published this week for consideration by the Oireachtas Education Committee.
Mr Bruton wants consensus on any plan to bring to Cabinet for decision but, while Labour and Sinn Fein oppose such a scheme, Fianna Fail is cautiously open to the idea which is also favoured by its youth wing.
Fianna Fail education spokesman Thomas Byrne believes details would have to be worked out about how the State would finance income-contingent loans, to be paid back by students once they begin earning a minimum salary.
However, he said there is a huge burden on families trying to pay the 3,000 annual undergraduate fee.
It has to be paid by around half of undergraduates, but the other half have it paid on their behalf by the State as they qualify for grants.
Were open to looking at the loan system but theres a lot of work to be done on this before we find out whether we can do this, Mr Byrne told RTEs Morning Ireland radio programme.
He said terms and conditions had to be considered to determine how much people would end up paying, and what impact there would be on the ability of people from disadvantaged backgrounds to go to college.
Ogra Fianna Fail this year proposed an income-contingent loan scheme, meaning strong opposition is unlikely from younger members.
It suggested a 20,000 cost for a four-year college degree, to be repaid from earnings over 30,000 a year, with higher repayments due as salary increases.
Labour Youth urged Fianna Fail to rule out student loans, saying they have not worked in the UK, US or Australia, but have saddled students with debt and discouraged people from studying at third-level.
We believe publicly funded third-level education, as is the norm in most European countries, is the fairest and most sustainable funding model, said Labour Youth national chairwoman Grace Williams.
It is clear Fianna Fail do not strongly value an equitable third-level education system, which is essential to Irelands future economic development.
The Union of Students in Ireland will be focusing its campaign for the option of a fully State-funded system, instead of a loan scheme, on the various political parties before the Oireachtas committee considers the different choices.
The committee is chaired by Mr Byrnes party colleague, Fiona OLoughlin, who said this week she does not favour raising the 3,000 fee, which is currently paid by around half of undergraduates because they do not qualify for grants.
However, increasing the figure was not an option put forward by the Cassells report, which recommended either abolishing it entirely, keeping it at the current level, or replacing it with a system of fees to be repaid under the loan scheme.
Analysis: 11
Garda Niall Mangan, aged 46, told the court that, in April 2009, he had been patrolling in Carrigaline, Co Cork, with a colleague when they attended a public order disturbance that involved youths drinking in a forest.
He told a Garda compensation hearing that the drinkers were extremely intoxicated but most of them had agreed to leave the area. One man had become very aggressive but eventually agreed to leave too.
The CSO said capital transfers into Ireland last year led to dramatic revisions to the GDP growth numbers and mean the economy here surged in 2015 by 26.3%, up from the 7.8% expansion in a preliminary estimate.
Experts said following the international tax crackdown led by the OECD, a small number of multinationals last year switched their capital assets from Caribbean tax havens into Ireland.
However, the asset transfers were purely cosmetic and have contributed no substantial rise in Irish jobs or to the amount of goods and services produced here. The accounting manoeuvres will raise uncomfortable questions about the credibility of Irelands tax regime, making it harder for the Government to plead any special case with Brussels for measures to offset the potential economic washback from the UKs decision to quit the EU.
Economist Jim Power said the unprecedented revisions will lead to observers abroad asking: What in the name of God is going on in Ireland? It sent a clear message about the artificial nature of some of what Ireland does, Mr Power said.
Alan McQuaid, chief economist at Merrion Capital, said Irish GDP figures were illusory and a fantasy. They also risk stoking huge pay demands, he said.
The Department of Finance told the Irish Examiner the new GDP numbers will lead to Ireland having to pay more into the EU budget, but it was too early to say by how much the payments will rise.
Officials said the new GDP numbers will, however, have no effect on the 1bn in so-called fiscal space for 2017 the tax-and-spend measures available to Finance Minister Michael Noonan in his October budget, and that the position for future years will be assessed later this year.
An examination by the Irish Examiner of World Bank statistics found no other country whose economy expanded by over 26% last year.
Irelands nearest rival was the West Bank and Gaza, which is rebuilding its war-damaged economy and where economic growth climbed 12.4% in 2015. Uzbekistan posted the worlds third-largest increase, with GDP growing by 8%.
Public Expenditure Minister Paschal Donohoe said the Governments budgetary plans would be sensible and not based on the exceptional CSO figures.
I wouldnt accept that it is meaningless, because certainly in terms of allowing our country to manage the 200bn worth of debt that we have, it is of help, said Mr Donohoe. But in terms of how we plan for the future, we are expecting our economy to grow by about 3.7% to 4% next year, he said.
The Government will outline a mid-year expenditure report today after it goes to Cabinet.
See, its at 82 now, thats pretty good, she said, but wait until Tom comes on stage. Ill be checking it then!
It was seating room only at Live at the Marquee last night, and nearly a full house too, with plenty of couples who must have been contemporaries of the 76-year-old crooner out for a trip down memory lane, mingling with younger fans who discovered Jones in his come-back era in the early 2000s, when he recorded with fellow Welsh artists such as Stereophonics and Cerys Matthews.
There was a distinct bias towards women in amongst the audience, though, testament to the long-standing sex appeal of the star.
There were husbands, and the occasional dedicated male fan: Mark drove all the way from Newry in Co Down for his 13th Tom Jones gig.
Ive been a fan for as long as I can remember, he said. Hes just a consummate showman.
Jackie and Tom Brooks from Youghal, Co Cork, went to Live at the Marquee Cork to see Tom Jones.
Jones, tanned and fit-looking and clad in a dapper check jacket and tight jeans, was relaxed and chatty, joking with the crowd that his in-ear monitor wasnt a hearing aid and professing himself delighted to be back in Cork in between knocking out a combination of hits such Delilah and gospel and blues songs that brought him back to his early days singing in working mens clubs in Welsh mining towns.
I used to listen to my good friend Elvis sing this, he said, introducing a stunning rendition of gospel number Run On. But it was his slow, sultry lead in to Sex Bomb that finally got the female audience members to their feet and dancing, and after that the hits came thick and fast. Leave Your Hat On led to an outbreak of raunchy dancing from the delighted crowd that had to be seen to be believed.
BRachel Mulcahy, Katie OSullivan, and Rebecca Mulcahy, all from Ballyphehane, Cork, at Live at the Marquee Cork to see Tom Jones.
The aisles were manned with staff and security, on hand to fox any knicker-throwing attempts by ladies overwhelmed by the power of The Voice.
Supported by a slick nine-piece band with a full brass section, and buoyed up by the screams of his female fans, Jones seemed to have the energy to keep playing all night, and rumour had it that his band would do exactly that, with a plan to swing by the Crane Lane Theatre following their Marquee set to play another gig.
However, the Fine Gael leader has once again failed to indicate when he will set out plans for his departure from office, risking fresh dissent before a weekly party meeting tonight.
Speaking at a joint Brexit press conference in Berlin, with German chancellor Angela Merkel, after a week in which a potential backbench revolt was stamped out by senior cabinet ministers, Mr Kenny said that, despite ongoing criticism of his time in office, his party colleagues needed to bed down and focus.
And, in a thinly veiled warning to a number of cabinet members who are believed to privately want the Taoiseach to step aside sooner rather than later despite publicly backing him, Mr Kenny added that ministers, in particular, needed to concentrate on their duties, instead of their personal ambitions.
In respect of the Government and the party, we are in a position now where the Government is in situ, said Mr Kenny.
Every minister has a brief and a set of commitments to follow through, so what I am interested in is that ministers have time, now, to bed themselves down, do the department work they have to undertake, and move the country forward.
We have an agreement with Fianna Fail in terms of confidence and supply, we have a programme for government with the Independent Alliance and the Independents, with over 600 commitments, and my focus is entirely on that future, in making this happen.
Howlin: Fine Gael internal wrangling and dysfunctional Dail puts country at risk https://t.co/IV2KNQ6Ry9 pic.twitter.com/c64u7DzMGh Irish Examiner (@irishexaminer) July 12, 2016
We have a great deal of work to do, in the time ahead, and I would like to think that people can concentrate on their duties in the time ahead.
Mr Kenny made his comments in response to a question on when he intended to step down as leader and when party colleagues would be informed of the schedule for a takeover before the next election issues that he failed to answer in his response.
The remarks at a press conference in which Ms Merkel congratulated him on his re-election as Taoiseach and said it was important we continue our good co-operation also came ahead of Fine Gaels weekly parliamentary party meeting this evening, in which Mr Kenny is likely to address the dissent of recent days.
While weekend reports suggested that a number of backbenchers may table a motion calling for a new leader to be put in place by the end of this year, due to the risk of a general election early next year, those involved in the plot confirmed, in yesterdays Irish Examiner, that this would not now take place.
In recent days, almost all Fine Gael cabinet members have stressed their ongoing support for Mr Kenny.
Enda Kenny survives but Fine Gael dissent remains https://t.co/kM8pIsUqy0 pic.twitter.com/uzPxdisQEh Irish Examiner (@irishexaminer) July 12, 2016
They include senior ministerial figures who have been touted as potential replacements for Mr Kenny.
One of the main dissenters, Kerry TD Brendan Griffin, yesterday said backbench TDs had now done all they could to force the leadership issue and that any further movement requires ministers who have ambitions to replace Mr Kenny to make their views known.
Gerard Howlin: 10
Predictably, bonfires blazed across the Six Counties to the beat of Lambeg drums.
But in Limerick yesterday, where the Williamite army wrought plunder and woe, the street party was more akin to a Munster Heineken Cup victory homecoming as the Treaty City managed to out-12th the Northern Twolft.
Thousands took over the whole of OConnell St in a demonstration of culture.
Judges for the European City of Culture 2020 were in town.
A winner will be chosen on Friday from Limerick, Galway, and the Three Sisters of Waterford, Wexford and Kilkenny and so Limerick pulled out all the stops.
Even the old organ in the former Jesuit Church solemnly joined in the party, with a priest of Insitute of Christ The King order at the keys.
Standing on the corner of The Crescent and Newenham St, John Hayes made his debut as a busker.
John, a 56-year-old resident of Clare St, said: I brought my guitar along to sing a few old sixties and seventies numbers.
Theres a great carnival atmosphere and any money I collect will go to Milford Hospice.
Scores of food stalls added multinational flavours throughout the afternoon of partying.
Kirsti OKellys pickled herrings were going down a treat at her Silver Darling outlet.
Next to her was Ciara OHalloran of the Red Food Bank Company in the Burren, Co Clare
We have had a huge amount of people coming to savour our flaggy shore oysters, said Ciara.
They are smaller than the usual oyster.
Dan Mullane, who presided over the famous Mustard Seed restaurant in Ballingarry for 32 years, said being designated European City of Culture 2020 would transform not just Limerick, but the entire region.
Dan said: The food here today is just amazing. Food is culture and an art form and Limerick has this culture and art form in abundance.
Shannonsiders enjoyed the festivities but the serious business of earning the Culture title starts tomorrow night as the judges confer in Dublin to make an announcement on Friday on the chosen location.
European City of Culture 2020 status will be worth up to 170m to the successful bidder.
I am disgusted. I am deeply ashamed and embarrassed, said Damien OBrien. I would like to say please dont judge the people of Cork on an idiot like me. I cannot say enough how sorry I am.
OBrien, aged 44, who is from Cork City but now living at 34 St Colmans Park, Macroom, Co Cork, pleaded guilty yesterday to a charge of assault causing harm to Jim Gunter, who was going home from work in Cork city at 1.40am on the day of the assault.
Garda Aoife Hayes, who investigated the case, said it dated back to February 18, 2012, when Mr Gunter walked from the South Mall to Morrisons Island, Cork City.
Without any exchange of words or build-up, OBrien started attacking Mr Gunter by hitting him and kicking him repeatedly.
The attack lasted approximately one minute and stopped suddenly when OBrien realised he was attacking the wrong man. Mr Gunter was not the man OBrien thought he was. OBrien ran away, leaving Mr Gunter with a broken nose and a deep cut across the bridge of his nose which is still scarred four and a half years later.
OBrien was subsequently arrested and he made full admissions to the crime of assault causing harm.
He explained that he mistook the injured party for a male who had threatened his girlfriend, Gda Hayes told the court.
Donal Daly, defence solicitor, said OBrien was profuse in his apologies to the injured party as soon as he was interviewed about the matter.
Gda Hayes said of the injured party: He was very accepting of these apologies. He is very grateful that there has been a plea of guilty and that the case is over. He is a very understanding man.
Mr Daly said the accused was now staying away from people with whom he used to get into trouble, and that he had a heroin problem at the time but was now off drugs and alcohol and was secretary of his local AA branch.
OBrien hoped the case could be adjourned for him to gather compensation.
Judge Olann Kelleher said the accused had had since February 2012 to do that and had not done so.
This is a very serious assault. It has to be dealt with by a custodial sentence five months in prison, the judge said.
Inspector Adrian Gamble said the accused had a previous conviction for assault causing harm, three for assault, and three for making threats to kill.
Judge Kelleher wondered what would have happened if OBrien had met the man he wanted to meet that night when he was taking the law into his own hands.
Hundreds of people from Ballyshannon have already expressed an interest in attending the event, which has been organised by local resident Naomi Brady.
Ms Brady, herself a twin and a mother of twins, said she was touched into taking a stand on Marys case after viewing a YouTube video on the Donegal childs disappearance in Cashelard in 1977.
As a twin and a mother of twins, I was touched by the programme and how Marys twin sister, Ann, and her family must have suffered down through the years.
I am hoping this march will spark someone into doing the right thing now. Like a lot of people I think that someone must know what happened to Mary.
I am hoping that after all this time someone who knows something can find it in their heart to come forward and to give the Boyle family some closure.
Hopefully, it will also lead to Marys remains being found and she can be given a Christian burial, she said.
The march, which will start at 2pm this Saturday, will leave the Abbey Centre before walking to the local Garda station where a few words will be said.
Asked why the march was finishing at the local Garda station, Ms Brady said: Its where the search for Mary Boyle ended. She stressed the march would be a peaceful one and is non-political.
She asked anyone who is planning to attend the march to wear purple and white ribbons in honour of Mary, who was understood to be wearing similar ribbons when she disappeared on March 18, 1977, aged just six.
Ms Brady, who is originally from Dublin but who has been resident in Ballyshannon for four years, said she was probably in a better position to call for such a march than local people.
I think because I have no connections with the area that I was probably in a better position to suggest such a march, she said, adding she hoped it led in some small way to closure for the family.
A five-judge Supreme Court unanimously dismissed the appeal in which he claimed there was a breach of fair procedures by sole tribunal member, Mr Justice Michael Moriarty, by limiting both the amount of time and the extent of the questions his lawyers could ask Danish telecommunications expert Michael Andersen.
Prof Andersen was managing director of the international consultants engaged by the Department of Communications in 1995 to assist civil servants in assessing six applications form the countrys second mobile phone licence, which eventually went to Mr OBriens company, Esat Digifone. The tribunal, set up to examine payments to politicians Michael Lowry and Charles Haughey, examined the awarding of that licence by then communications minister Mr Lowry.
Mr OBrien had argued that a declaration that fair procedures were not applied during part of the tribunal, which centred on payments to politicians Michael Lowry and Charles Haughey, would have an effect on the public view of the tribunals report.
If he got such a declaration from the Supreme Court, he could also consider moving to quash certain parts of the report and this could also have consequences for the issue of the tribunals costs, he argued.
The tribunal had opposed the appeal arguing the matter was moot as its report has been published and there has been no challenge by Mr OBrien to its contents.
In one of three separate judgements dismissing the appeal, Chief Justice Susan Denham found Mr OBriens rights to fair procedures, and constitutional justice had not been breached.
She said it became apparent Prof Andersen was available to give evidence, having previously declined to do so, some considerable time after the provisional findings of the tribunal had been circulated to interested parties.
The curtailment of time to Mr OBriens lawyers to ask questions was clearly appropriate and took into account Mr OBriens rights and the rights of others, she said.
The chief justice
found the High Court was correct that Prof Andersen had given evidence that in his (Andersens) opinion, the tribunals lawyers were biased and he had explained in detail what he had meant.
Irreparable harm
Red Flag Consulting will suffer irreparable harm if it is ordered to disclose documents to Denis OBrien revealing the identity of the client who commissioned it to prepare a dossier on the businessman, the High Court has been told.
Michael Collins, counsel for Red Flag, disputed claims on behalf of Mr OBrien that, if the client is a competitor of Mr OBriens and/ or involved in bitter litigation involving Mr OBrien and/ or involved in the planned Digicel IPO, that was all highly relevant to the billionaire businessmans claims of conspiracy and he was entitled to know the clients identity.
The hearing continues today.
An Irish League of Credit Unions (ILCU) study found the money needed to get youngsters ready for the new term in August and September has soared since 2012.
Three-quarters of parents told researchers they do not think schools are doing enough to keep costs down. However, they are doing more themselves to reduce the bills, as numbers shopping online for back-to-school items are up significantly to 60%, from just under a half a year ago.
The main reasons are to save money, with some citing the savings on petrol associated with shopping trips for school clothes and books. However, saving time and stress were also prominent reasons for online shopping.
In addition, parents are increasingly comfortable with buying generic items than branded goods which can be more expensive. Less than one-third said they feel pressurised to buy branded school supplies, something which affected 42% of those surveyed a year ago.
The credit union research found escalating price tags are run up on new uniforms and gym gear at an average of 257 a child, the so-called voluntary contribution to the school at about 113 and books at 145.
Bills also fly in for after-school care, extracurricular classes, lunches, school trips and transport.
The most expensive items on the list were uniforms for secondary school children at an average of 234.
ILCU chief executive Ed Farrell urged people to properly assess what they need, set a budget and stick to it.
While it can be tedious, we would urge parents to shop around for the best value deals. Many of the major retailers will offer fantastic deals on uniforms and school supplies, he said.
Most importantly avoid using moneylenders. If you are considering a loan, make sure to visit your local credit union to see what is available to you.
The credit union survey found almost one-third of parents get themselves into debt trying to pay the bills.
On average, parents borrowed 357, down slightly from last year by 3. And 14% of the mothers and fathers in debt over back-to-school costs said they have used a moneylender at one time to get the cash.
The survey of 1,000 adults in June also examined the knock-on effect, with two thirds of parents saying they sacrifice a family holiday to meet the costs.
Elsewhere, 13% of parents will save on food bills.
One third of parents this year said the back-to-school charges will have no adverse impact on them. Almost 80% of parents are now expected to make a voluntary contribution to the school.
A former government minister, Mr Hogan alleged articles by the Irish Daily Mailand comments broadcast on TV3 concerning representations made by him as a Fine Gael TD to a local authority wrongly suggested he was prejudiced against the Travelling community.
He was in court yesterday to hear the apologies read by counsel for both media organisations.
In a statement issued afterwards through his solicitor, Mr Hogan said that he was pleased to have been vindicated by the apologies.
Mr Hogan sincerely hopes that he can continue to discharge his duties without further wrongful and damaging media comment on this matter, a statement added.
Declan Doyle, counsel for Mr Hogan, had earlier told Mr Justice Colm MacEochaidh both actions had settled on terms agreed between the sides and could be struck out with no order.
Both defendants were to read apologies, he said.
In the apology on behalf of TV3 it was stated that, on May 20 in 2013, during broadcast of the Tonight with Vincent Browneshow on TV3, comments were made by Mr Browne relating to Mr Hogan that he engaged in racist behaviour and suggested he was prejudiced against the Travelling community and he had intervened with the local authority to prevent the allocation of housing to Travellers.
We accept that these comments were untrue, unwarranted, and were defamatory of Mr Hogans reputation, the apology read. TV3 takes this opportunity to publicly apologise to Mr Hogan for the damage caused to his reputation.
In an apology on behalf of Associated Newspapers (Ireland) Ltd, publisher of the Irish Daily Mail, it was stated that, on September 26 and 27, 2012, the Irish Daily Mail.
published articles about Mr Hogan which inferred that Mr Hogan was prejudiced against the Travelling community and he had intervened with a local authority to prevent the allocation of housing to Travellers.
We accept that these articles were unfair, misleading and damaging to Mr Hogans reputation, the apology read
The apology concluded that the publisher of the Irish Daily Mail
takes this opportunity to publicly withdraw these allegations and to apologise to Mr Hogan for the damage caused to his reputation.
Judge MacEochaidh made the relevant orders as sought by counsel.
However, senior Fine Gael sources now expect Taoiseach Enda Kenny will be given space after the meeting, following questions being raised about the timing of his departure.
It has also emerged that Fine Gael ministers are attempting to fix relations with Independent ministerial colleagues after their own recent squabbles.
Mr Kenny is expected to face questions at the meeting this evening about his resignation as party leader. While senior ministers in the last 48 hours rowed in behind Mr Kenny, an attack on the TDs who want the issue debated has now backfired.
Jobs Minister Mary Mitchell OConnor was criticised by Louth TD Fergus ODowd yesterday, after she claimed it was unpatriotic to criticise Mr Kenny.
Mr ODowd fired back on Twitter: A democratic difference of opinion on when the Taoiseach departs and when a new leader is elected is not unpatriotic. Disgraceful remarks.
While some Fine Gael TDs say tonights meeting may be a damp squib, Mr Kennys leadership will be raised, even though it is not formally on the agenda.
Cork South West TD Jim Daly indicated that TDs would stand by colleague and Kerry TD Brendan Griffin, who had gone out on a limb and wants Mr Kenny gone over the summer.
Mr Daly said: It [the meeting] must be grown up, open and honest. I sincerely hope there is a conciliatory tone. If members have issues, they should be allowed to air them. They should be free to make them.
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Mr Daly said his position was still that, after Octobers budget, a conversation must be had about Fine Gaels leadership.
Public Expenditure Minister Paschal Donohoe said he expected talk about the leadership to be shut down after the meeting. Reiterating his support for Mr Kenny, Mr Donohoe said he would not put himself forward if the Taoiseach goes.
That [discussion] is now what has happened from a number of my colleagues over the past number of days, I expect that debate will be concluding tomorrow, because the Taoiseach has made clear his determination to carry on with his work, said Mr Donohoe. I fully support him with that. There is no vacancy in the leadership of Fine Gael or in the Taoiseachs office at the moment.
Meanwhile, Independent ministers are mending fences following clashes with their Fine Gael cabinet colleagues.
The latest rift saw Independent and Fine Gael ministers openly trade insults over disagreements on how Cabinet voted on a Dail abortion motion.
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Social Protection Minister Leo Varadkar accused alliance ministers of risking the Coalitions stability over the controversy, but alliance ministers described his comments as quite outrageous and suggested that Fine Gael was destabilising the Government.
Alliance sources told the Irish Examiner that a key mediator or programme manager between both sides would be appointed in the coming days.
A source said: The two sides are talking, trying to mend fences.
The Food Rescue Project, which has been operating in Dublin since 2014, held an information session for volunteers in Cork last night, ahead of its launch in the city next week.
The team also issued an open invitation for more volunteers to join, and for more food businesses to sign up.
Hundreds of charities collect food donations daily, directly from local supermarkets.
But two social entrepreneurs spotted an opportunity to streamline the relationship, and to scale up the collection and distribution network.
It was set up by FoodCloud two years ago. It uses technology to connect businesses that have surplus food to charities that need it, and it is partnered with Tesco and Aldi.
The supermarkets perfectly good food, which would otherwise end up in the bin or landfill, now provides 30,000 meals every week for people in need across the country.
But as FoodCloud grew, its co-founder and CEO, Iseult Ward, said it became clear that not every charity had the resources to collect surplus food from their local supermarkets or food businesses.
Some charities have a huge need for food donations, but are running very tight operations and dont have the resources required to pick these up. This is especially obvious in urban centres, she said.
FoodCloud then launched the Food Rescue Project, which arranges for volunteers to collect food from shops and businesses and deliver it directly to charities.
It has been operating in Dublin for over a year, with 150 volunteers providing a seven-day-a-week service. They have delivered the equivalent of 66,581 meals to charities in Dublin city centre.
FoodClouds volunteer coordinator, Ailing Kirwan, said: Were delighted to bring The Food Rescue Project to Cork, for the first time. Weve had huge interest from volunteers, so much so that were going to set up two daily food-rescue runs.
Morning and evening food collections, from the various partner food businesses, will begin from FoodClouds base, in Little Island, from next week.
Six charities, including a womens refuge and a homeless hostel, will receive the food donations, before they decide who is in most need.
The equivalent of 1,000 meals will be delivered every week to people who need it.
Anyone who wishes to volunteer as a collector can email aisling@foodcloud.ie, and any food businesses that have surplus food, and that want to get involved, can contact the FoodCloud team on 083-1902585.
www.food.cloud
Frances Fitzgerald accused opposition parties of scaremongering for raising reports that nine emergency departments are under threat of downgrading, shorter hours or closure of some kind and the removal of trauma facilities from them.
However, she added that a review of the current fragmented arrangements for dealing with trauma in hospitals is being carried out, and in some trauma cases, such as those involving car accidents, may be better off in centralised treatment centres.
Details revealed in the Sunday Business Post at the weekend showed a draft copy of the Governments draft report of its trauma steering group that proposed cuts to services at nine hospitals.
The hospitals Cavan General, Naas, Portiuncula in Ballinasloe, Kilkenny, Wexford, South Tipperary, Clonmel, and the Mercy University Hospital in Cork City could now face cuts to trauma care services and these services would instead by amalgamated.
Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin told the Dail that emergency departments are already struggling to cope with overcrowding and any closures would be unacceptable.
There was a time when the rows were over whether there would be an emergency department in a county, said Mr Martin. Based on this report, there will be regions without emergency departments if this trend continues.
In the east, there is the potential for nothing in between Waterford and Dublin, with Kilkenny and Wexford taken out.
In the Midlands, there will be nothing between Tullamore and Tallaght in Dublin.
In Cork, we have seen closures in the South Infirmary, Mallow, and Bantry, down through the years.
Ms Fitzgerald said that a draft report has yet to be completed, but added that the purpose of the study is to ensure we do the best for patients who suffer traumatic injuries and make sure they go to the right place, where they will get the best health care.
It is not about closing or changing the arrangements in regard to emergency departments, said Ms Fitzgerald.
Responding to similar questions from Sinn Feins Louise OReilly, the Tanaiste said: There is no need for people going past their hospital emergency department tonight to have the kind of concern the deputy is outlining that raise anxiety unnecessarily.
Marta Herda, aged 29, of Pairc Na Saile, Emoclew Road, Arklow, Co Wicklow, is charged with the murder of Csaba Orsas, aged 31, on March 26, 2013.
The Polish waitress has pleaded not guilty at the Central Criminal Court to murdering the Hungarian at South Quay, Arklow. Both had worked at Brook Lodge Hotel in Aughrim.
Garda Anthony Crehan testified that he had taken a voluntary statement from the accused, in which she said that the deceased had been in love with her but that she had told him that they couldnt ever have a relationship.
She gave the garda a Valentines card that she had received from the deceased.
Garda Crehan held it up in the witness box so the jury could see. He explained that it had pink roses in a vase on the front of the card and included the words, Thinking of you, printed inside. A love heart had been drawn around this, he said.
He then read what had been handwritten on both sides of the card.
LOVE LETTER! Dear Marta, I would just like to tell you in letters how much I love you. Seriously, I feel that I find you finally, the girl I was looking for in all my life. I wish to share my life with only you.
Gda Crehan explained that Marta was then spelled out, with a love heart drawn around each letter.
Im ready to do anything for you. I can change all my bad habits for the way you wish. Millions of kisses.
Thinking of you in every second. I love you Marta. I can promise that I will be the best husband and you will never regret it.
A phone number was given and a smiley face drawn before the final words: Im mad about you.
The card was dated and timed, 21/5/12, 22.54.
The accused womans former boyfriend, Eamon Ibrahim, also gave evidence.
He testified that she had been suspicious of his former girlfriends and maybe a bit jealous.
He was asked how she was with other men while they were together.
She got on with other men, he replied.
He was also asked about her swimming ability and he described it as good.
The trial continues today.
Social Democrats TD Stephen Donnelly said charitable status should not be available to hedge funds or special purpose vehicles.
He outlined how a mortgage company called Mars Capital had bought up distressed debts of thousands of Irish borrowers.
Mars Capitals accounts show that for an investment of 80m, the company expects to see a return of almost 400m, the TD said, amounting to over 300m in profits.
The profits from buying the distressed loans needed to be taxed, he said. Instead, the money would be paid to an unknown company in an unknown location.
He said Mars Capitals first year figures showed they made 14m in revenue, but after making payments to this unknown location, their tax last year amounted to just 250.
The TD said Mars Capital had three shares which were owned by charitable trusts, each called Badb, Eurydice, and Medb.
These three trusts were controlled by corporate law firm Matheson, which works for companies doing business in and through Ireland.
All three of the trusts have charitable status and so are tax exempt. All three owned a lot of companies here, including Mars Capital, the Dail heard.
We know that the companies that the charities control have billions of euro in assets, Mr Donnelly said. But he also asked: Why are Irish charities being made the shareholders of firms that are legally avoiding paying their taxes in Ireland?
The Wicklow TDs
comments came as the Government accepted proposals to strengthen the regulation of charities but questioned calls for one single agency to tackle corruption.
Tanaiste Frances Fitzgerald said enhanced powers were being made available to the charities regulator in September.
In total, the charities regulator is working with in excess of 12,500 charitable organisations. It has received around 300 concerns raised against 132 entities, the majority of which were charities, the Dail was told during a debate about the regulation of charities.
The Social Democrats and the Green Party want improved powers to regulate charities.
While the minority government is prepared, in principle, to accept the recommendations, Ms Fitzgerald raised questions about calls for an overall agency to tackle corruption.
During his keynote address at the Develop Conference, Kojima said, "So far, when I've been making games, I've had to give up on something or at least compromise on something in order to get things done.
He says that working with Sony has ensured that he wont have to do that. "But this time, working with you [Mark Cerny] and you bringing the state of the art technologies, we will get around that [usual problem], he explained.
Ubisoft is a massive gaming company which is about to have a huge year, including welcoming Watch Dogs 2 and a massive blockbuster movie version of Assassin's Creed. 2016 also marks the 30th anniversary of the company which was started by five brothers from the Guillemot family Brittany in March 1986.
Three decades on and it has become synonymous with brands like Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, Splinter Cell, Prince of Persia, Rayman and Ghost Recon, with major titles releasing every year. One burning question remains though - just how do you pronounce the name of the company? And it turns out even the people who work there haven't quite decided.
AT THE beginning of my Leaving Cert year in September 2009, if someone had told me that in six years time I would be compiling a PhD application, I would have laughed in their face.
That winter, I was struggling with the thought of even sitting my Leaving Cert. I had given up the college dream.
My Special Needs Assistant (SNA) hours had been cut earlier that year in the aftermath of a short assessment of my needs, with the end result that I struggled through most classes because the hours arent there for you.
It was as simple as that I had made it this far, but because the access to resource teaching and SNA time was being reduced across the board due to factors such as the dwindling of public funds coupled with an increase in the number of children needing supports, I was going to lose out.
In order to make sure we all had some level of support, everyones supports were reduced. Its like cutting a cake in quarters to share between four children, only to realise you have half the cake to start with.
Since birth, Ive had a vision impairment known as Oculocutaneous albinism and an involuntary eye movement known as nystagmus, which prevents me from focusing my eyes.
Because Ive never had full sight, I cant really explain what I can see to a fully sighted person.
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I explain it by telling people that when I read the eye chart at my doctors surgery, I can only read the top line one solitary letter. Coupled with the nystagmus, school was a struggle for me.
But, it wasnt impossible.
Mainstream school was still an option given that I had the right supports to put me on a level playing field as the other kids in my class.
When I started primary level in the late 90s, there was no legislative requirement on schools to support children like me, and I struggled despite supports provided by my school.
However, following the introduction of the Education Act 1998, state-funded services began to filter down to children like me. I mentioned in my recent open letter to Education Minister Richard Bruton that I feel, even now, that these services came a little too late for me and I missed the basics of my education. Yes, I have gone on to graduate with two degrees one of which is a Masters but that is due in no small part to the support I received from the Assistive Technology wing of the Disability Support Service in UCC.
And its also due to my parents having the resources and strength to support my education.
But when I was in secondary school, the State reduced my classroom support. There was no SNA support available to cover my biology class and this forced me to drop the subject which was a required subject for my chosen college course.
I had two options: drop to five subjects and give up on university, or find a teacher to homeschool me.
Luckily, my parents had the resources to find and finance a fantastic biology teacher to work with me on a one-to-one basis and cover the entire curriculum. But that is it luck. A luck that others dont always have.
Needless to say, I did well in my Leaving Cert and made it to college.
And so here I am, more than six years later, applying for a PhD. During my time brainstorming for a thesis subject last year, I began to think deeply about my journey through the education system. While Ive done fairly well, I have struggled to secure services and to have my needs accepted in some circumstances.
Luck was on my side for the most part, but I began to think about the children who didnt have luck on their side.
When my thesis concluded that there is an issue with service provision in the special education system, despite provision in the legislation, I felt almost duty-bound to follow up on it.
My first instinct was to go down the academic route, and base my PhD application around further investigating the service provision in special education.
While writing my application however, I began to contemplate how much of my education was down to luck. And that really worried me.
Life, at times, can be difficult for someone with a disability because the world isnt made for people like us. So we must adapt each and every day. And when you are fighting this ongoing battle, other things can fall by the wayside such as your education.
The fact that I have now made it through the system has lead me to feel almost responsible to ensure the struggle I faced does not fall on the shoulders of another child or teenager.
Yes, the world isnt made for people like me and I dont expect that to change anytime soon but the education system must be adapted for each and every child.
In my view, there are no ifs or buts about this. I intend to continue following up with the Minister and the National Council for Special Education (NCSE) each month, focusing on different issues I have identified in different sectors of education, starting with primary and moving onto second level.
Already, I have noted a number of issues that I will bring to the Ministers attention, such as the absence of a multi-disciplinary team in Scoil Cara which caters specifically for children with autism and intellectual difficulties, and the overall reduction of resource hours by 15% due to an increase in service users. In his first reply to me, the minister indicated that service allocation of SNAs has not changed, and he is correct it hasnt.
However, what has changed is the increase in children entering the education system who are in need of special education supports. In this regard, while allocation has remained high and increased this year, the reality within classrooms is that more children are sharing the service which is leading to an overall reduction in the access to the services for these children. Similarly, there are also issues surrounding the amount of National Educational Psychological Service psychologists which are available to carry out assessments on children, particularly those in primary education where early intervention is most important.
As many parents of children with special educational needs will know, these assessments are the first step to acquiring services for a child.
And yet the State reinforces this initial barrier to obtaining services to allow children begin their education on an equal footing to others.
There are many issues and solutions, big and small, that Im hoping to detail for the Minister. Many are nationwide issues.
Its unfortunate that in 2016, the idea of cherishing all the children of the nation equally is still a lofty ideal we read about in the Proclamation, and not a founding concept that the education system is based upon.
THE Cassells report outlined three options for funding higher education. The first two involve increased state funding, but one will scrap the student-contribution fee and the other will maintain it at current levels.
The third is an income-contingent loan (ICL) system. Graduates borrow from the State to pay for their education, but do not make any repayments until they are working at a certain income threshold.
It is unclear which is the preferred option of the Government, but the loan scheme has generated a great deal of debate, not all of it fully informed. Given the mixed information, it is important to clarify a number of issues.
A loan system implies that some students might not pay back any of the debt they owe. For example, if somebody leaves third-level education and chooses not to work for the rest of their life, they repay nothing.
A key point about this system is that higher education is free at point of use. So, instead of paying 3,000 every September for four years, the students have no up-front tuition costs. One common misconception is that a loan scheme is similar to a home-mortgage loan. However, the crucial difference is that if the individual makes no repayments due to unemployment, say, nothing is repossessed and there is no impact on future credit-worthiness.
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Mindful of potential hardship for graduates, the repayment burdens within an ICL scheme are generally capped. In other words, the proportion of an individuals net monthly income used to service the debt has a limit. In countries where ICLs have been introduced, such as Australia, New Zealand, and England, the maximum repayment burdens are 8%, 10%, and 9% of income per period, respectively.
Another common argument is that a loan scheme would drastically worsen the underrepresentation of students from lower social classes.
The latest research from England and Australia shows that the proportion of new entrants from the lowest socio-economic groups has not changed since the introduction of, or subsequent reform to, their ICL schemes.
Partly, this is because socio-economic gradients in higher-education participation are formed well before a student sits their end-of-secondary-education exams.
Other funding models have also been suggested. For example, countries such as Sweden, Germany, and Denmark provide full State funding for third-level education, meaning taxpayers subsidise 100% of tuition costs.
From an equity perspective, this may seem attractive. However, funding higher education fully through the taxpayer can be regressive. For instance, a large proportion of the funding burden may fall on those who derive little direct benefit from third-level education.
Furthermore, without addressing the persistent underrepresentation of lower social classes in third-level education, the benefits of higher education to higher life-cycle incomes will mainly accrue to those who are already better-off. As a result, public funding of higher education, through a free-fees scheme, can be a mechanism for people on lower incomes to subsidise the better-off to participate in higher education.
Another alternative is a voucher system, whereby individuals receive a fixed coupon amount. This can be used in any third-level education institution.
Such a scheme was introduced in Colorado in 2004, but it has achieved none of its aims and actually reduced access to higher education for those in lower socio-economic groups.
The UK-based Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI) has also highlighted concerns about this scheme. If the State fixes the value of the voucher, without limits to the number of students that can attend higher education, this represents an unrestricted financial commitment. Thats a worry.
The State could avoid this by limiting the number of students or limiting the number of vouchers. However, this would defeat the key aims of the system. Concerns like this led HEPI to conclude the problems to which vouchers would give rise are such as to render them an unattractive and unacceptable basis for funding universities.
But a loan scheme is also not without its flaws. For instance, the revenue generated is deferred, whereas the costs to the State are immediate. And would emigration affect the collection of revenue? The recent economic crisis affected young people disproportionally. Burdening them with a substantial amount of debt, as they leave higher education, could be unfair.
However, these obstacles can be significantly mitigated by choosing the correct parameters within an ICL scheme. The system, while not perfect, can provide adequate finance to the higher-education system and provide more equal access to all, if designed in a sensible manner.
It is crucial that any debate around this sensitive issue is done without the confusion of misconception.
Dr Darragh Flannery, lecturer in economics, Kemmy Business School, University of Limerick; Dr. John Cullinan, lecturer in Economics, JE Cairnes School of Business & Economics, National University of Ireland, Galway
200 delegates attending the six-day general synod, north of Toronto, rejected the resolution, after 60-plus speakers, most of whom supported it, argued their points.
Same-sex marriage has been legal in Canada since 2005 and Mondays vote puts the Anglican Church the third-largest in Canada out of step with most Canadians, including prime minister, Justin Trudeau.
He said the nation is not as divided as it seems and called on Americans to search for common ground in support of racial equity and justice.
Mr Obama acknowledged Americans are unsettled by another mass shooting on their streets and are seeking answers to the violence that has sparked protests in cities and highlighted the nations persistent racial divide.
Five Dallas officers were shot dead last Thursday while standing guard as hundreds of people protested the police killings of black men in Louisiana and Minnesota earlier in the week.
Its hard not to think sometimes that the centre might not hold, that things might get worse, Mr Obama said. We must reject such despair.
He joined politicians, police officers and families of the fallen at the service.
The soul of our city was pierced, Dallas mayor Mike Rawlings said, as he welcomed Mr Obama to the memorial service.
The group had assembled to combat a common disease of violence and honour those who fight it, our men and women in blue, our peacemakers in blue.
Mr Rawlings spoke steps from five empty chairs and five portraits of the dead officers.
A call for national and solidarity was reinforced by several speakers at the interfaith service, including former president George W Bush, a Dallas resident, who attended with his wife, Laura.
At times it feels like the forces pulling us apart are stronger than the forces binding us together, Mr Bush said.
Too often we judge other groups by their worst examples, while judging ourselves by our best intentions. And this has strained our bonds of understanding and common purpose, he said.
Mr Bush called on Americans to reject the unity of grief and fear.
We want the unity of hope, affection and higher purpose, he said.
Mr Obama has denounced the shooting as a vicious, calculated and despicable attack on law enforcement by a demented individual. And he has argued that, despite the heated public outcry of the past week, the country is not as divided as it may seem.
Mr Obamas choice of travelling companions underscored the theme. Republican Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi of California joined Mr Obama on Air Force One for the flight to Dallas.
Republican senator John Cornyn, attended and spoke at the service but did not travel with the president.
He described the attack as deeply personal.
Being a Texan doesnt describe where youre from it, describe who your family is, the senator said.
The White House said the president worked late into the night writing his speech and consulting scripture for inspiration.
The ruling by the five-member panel at The Hague handed a massive victory to the Philippines, which had filed the case in 2013 challenging the so-called nine-dash line that China uses to claim virtually the entire South China Sea.
Manila opposed it because it infringes upon its own 200-mile exclusive economic zone.
Chinese President Xi Jinping repeated Beijings stance that the South China Sea has been Chinese territory since ancient times and said Chinas territorial sovereignty and interests in the region would not be influenced under any circumstances by the ruling, the official Xinhua News Agency said.
This farce is now over, said Foreign Minister Wang Yi, in an interview with state broadcaster CCTV. Meanwhile, the Foreign Ministry said in a statement: China opposes and will never accept any claim or action based on those awards.
The ministry repeated Chinas often-expressed stance that the Philippines move to initiate arbitration without Chinas consent had been in bad faith and in violation of international law.
The tribunal also said China had violated its obligations to refrain from aggravating the dispute while the settlement process was ongoing and also ruled that Chinas large-scale land reclamation and construction of artificial islands destroyed coral reefs and the natural condition of the disputed areas.
Analysts said the ruling dealt a blow to Chinas South China Sea strategy by potentially providing ammunition to the arguments of other countries involved in maritime disputes with China.
Six governments have overlapping territorial claims in the South China Sea China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia and Brunei. In addition, Chinas nine-dash line overlaps waters that are part of Indonesias exclusive economic zone.
It goes much farther than most people expected that this was going to go. Its really devastating for China, said Bonnie Glaser, senior adviser for Asia at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.
Its quite serious for China and it doesnt open up a lot of opportunities for face saving-ways out.
Cabinet ministers spoke of a sad day but also Mr Camerons determination to remain upbeat and continue to drive the one nation Conservative agenda as he prepared to hand power to Ms May.
The new Tory leader moves into 10 Downing Street today as the UKs second female PM.
Culture secretary John Whittingdale said there was a touch of sadness about the meeting but told Sky News: It was emotional but quite rightly we spent a long time on the Government business, but then we had a period during which we could raise tributes to the extraordinary service the prime minister has given, led on by George Osborne and Theresa May.
Northern Ireland secretary Theresa Villiers insisted Mr Cameron is leaving Britain in a better state than when he took office in 2010.
Hes changed our party for the better, hes changed our country for the better, hes also given me huge opportunities, so for me it was a kind of sad day to see David Camerons last Cabinet meeting. But Im sure our country is in safe hands with Theresa May.
Ms May now faces a breakneck period of activity appointing a new Cabinet after the expected nine-week leadership campaign was truncated to just a couple of days by Andrea Leadsoms withdrawal from the contest.
Ms May is expected to offer plum posts to leading figures from both the Remain and Leave camps from the EU referendum, in which she backed continued membership but kept a low profile.
Mr Osborne looks unlikely to stay on as chancellor after the new PM trashed parts of his economic legacy, and is tipped to become foreign secretary in a potential job swap with Philip Hammond.
Senior Brexiteer Chris Grayling will be rewarded for his role running Ms Mays campaign, possibly replacing her as home secretary. And it is thought that a prominent Leave campaigner could be given the job of overseeing negotiations for the UKs departure from the EU and making good on Mrs Mays promise that Brexit means Brexit.
Ms Leadsom is expected to be offered a job in recognition of her raised profile from the referendum.
But big question marks were hanging over the future of Brexit standard-bearers Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, who were seen to have blotted their copy-books in the wake of the referendum result but moved quickly to endorse Ms May when Ms Leadsom pulled out.
Ms May will take up office today, after Mr Cameron answers MPs questions in the House of Commons for the last time and goes to Buckingham Palace to offer his resignation to the Queen.
Since last year, Malala has been in contact via Skype with a group of girls in Dadaab and was looking forward to seeing them, said Taylor Royle, her spokesman.
I am here to speak for my unheard sisters of Somalia striving for education every day, Malala said yesterday, explaining that on each birthday she chooses a region where girls education is neglected and needs attention.
Matilde Conejero, who is separated from their father and known by her maiden name, was accused of attacking her adult sons, Luciano and Marco Jr.
She allegedly burst her way into Marco Jrs flat in Chiswick, west London, and told him: Youre a fucking loser junkie youre going to prison.
Conejero apparently then kicked Marco Jr repeatedly in the groin before dragging him by his hair. When Luciano tried to separate them, she allegedly lashed out at him and bit him on the arm.
Luciano and Marco Jr, key witnesses in the case, failed to attend Uxbridge Magistrates Court yesterday. The prosecution said there was not enough evidence to proceed with the trial without the two alleged victims.
Officers were initially unable to make contact with either of the brothers because both were not answering their phones.
Marco Jr later told police he was too hungover to give evidence.
Prosecutor Katie Weiss said: An officer went to the address, Marco Pierre White Jr wasnt there. Friends at the property said he had a gone to a party last night and he was in Hampshire.
Officers spoke to him on the phone and he said he is too hungover to come today. He said he is ill.
Police had been unable to make contact with Luciano, the court was told. District Judge Deborah Wright issued witness summons for Luciano and Marco Jr.
Conejero, 51, arrived at the court at 9am and spoke only to confirm her details in the dock.
She denied the charges and claimed she was acting in self-defence during the incident last September.
England:
A composer has turned the tune that David Cameron casually hummed as he walked into No 10 after announcing his prime ministerial resignation date into an evil anthem fit for Darth Vader.
Chris Hollis, from Hitchin, Hertfordshire, was inspired after he saw the footage on Monday during which a microphone picked up Mr Cameron humming the tune.
But Mr Hollis has taken the tune to another level and transformed it into a composition similar to the Imperial March from the sci-fi movie Star Wars: A New Hope. It has been viewed more than 200,000 times.
England: A series of pictures drawn in the margins of a 700-year-old book are ancient childrens doodles, historians believe.
Child psychologists were brought in to help examine the drawings found in the 14th-century manuscript, which originally came from a Franciscan convent in Naples.
The drawings depict a horse or cow, a human figure and possible images of the devil.
Deborah Thorpe, a York University historian, believes they were probably drawn by children a couple of centuries later as the book found its way into the hands of the youngsters who took to sketching in the margins.
Dr Thorpe, a research fellow at the universitys Centre for Chronic Diseases and Disorders, said she came across the drawings by chance while carrying out research on a separate project.
She said: I was looking through a database of medieval manuscripts online and I found images of these beautiful doodles in the margins and to me they looked like they were done by children. I thought this is really interesting, has anyone written anything about this?
Dr Thorpe enlisted the help of child psychologists who confirmed they were probably drawn by children aged four to six years old.
She said: The psychologists came up with a set of criteria for why we could say they were the work of children, for example the elongated shapes, the really long legs and the lack of a torso, the focus on the head.
These are the things that are most important to children. If you compare them with the doodles that children make today, they are really similar. It was just a case of detective work really.
The paper is published in the journal Cogent Arts & Humanities.
Great white shock
USA: Were going to need a bigger boat.
Thats what Lars White told his six-year-old son, Blake, after the boy hooked a great white shark while fishing off Cape Cod.
The Houston resident told the Cape Cod Times that the 3.4m-long shark swam into the hook and spent an hour and a half trying to free itself. When the shark finally surfaced, Whites wife took some photos and then the family cut the fishing line to free it.
State shark scientist Gregory Skomal confirmed Blake had caught a great white. Great white sharks have been spotted in increasing numbers in recent years around Cape Cod.
Havent got a prayer
England:
A jewel-encrusted prayer book which once belonged to a French king is at risk of being exported from the UK unless a buyer can match the 8m price tag.
The Book Of Hours, which has an enamelled gold metal cover studded with gems and contains parchment painted with 20 religious images and prayers, was made in 1532.
The book could be lost from the UK after it was sold to a foreign buyer, prompting culture minister Ed Vaizey to place a temporary export bar on the item to give a UK buyer time to come up with 8m to save it for the nation.
Metal mix-up
USA:
Red Hot Chili Peppers bass player Flea said he ended up autographing some Metallica items following a mix-up at an airport in Belarus.
Flea posted a picture on his Instagram account of him signing his name on a Metallica album, a DVD, and pictures of the band. He wrote that the Chili Peppers tried to explain to the custom officials who asked for the autographs that they had the wrong band, but they insisted that we sign anyway.
Flea said he did play a song with Metallica once, but added that he is no Robert Trujillo, Metallicas bassist.
Make America grape again
USA:
A Connecticut soft drinks company has released two sodas in honour of candidates in this years US presidential election. Averys Beverages in New Britain is offering Trump Tonic and Hillary Hooch named, of course, after Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton. Trump Tonic comes with the slogan make America grape again. Hillary Hooch is a berry soda with ingredients that general manager Rob Metz joked are classified.
Robber is nailed
USA:
A 27-year-old woman is accused of stealing nail polish worth $700 from a New Orleans store in one day. Raushawn Ford was charged with theft and possessing stolen property. Police said she had also stolen from two other shops.
The event will take place on September 5 in parliaments second debating chamber, Westminster Hall.
Since Britain voted by 52-48% to leave the bloc, many people, including some lawmakers, have called for another referendum.
But Theresa May, who will take over from David Cameron as prime minister today, has ruled out a second vote, saying Brexit means Brexit.
Parliaments petitions committee said it had decided to put the issue forward for a debate due to the large number of signatures. It stressed it was not supporting the call for another referendum.
The petition, which was posted online before the June 23 referendum, said the government should hold another referendum if the support for Leave or Remain was less than 60% in a turnout of under 75% of eligible voters.
The debate will allow members of parliament to put forward a range of views on behalf of their constituents. At the end of the debate, a government minister will respond to the points raised, the committee said.
It added: A debate in Westminster Hall does not have the power to change the law, and wont end with the House of Commons deciding whether or not to have a second referendum.
The committee also pointed out that the petition called for the referendum rules to be changed, which it was now too late to do.
Parliament is required to consider for debate all petitions that attract more than 100,000 signatures.
Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson has refused to rule out a second referendum as she urged the new prime minister to hurry up and give assurances to EU migrants that they are welcome in the country.
While leaving the door open to another nationwide poll on EU membership, Ms Davidson said such a vote was highly unlikely .
Ms Davidson said the result had put a strain on the union, but another independence referendum was not needed because 2m people in Scotland had voted to stay in the UK in 2014, as opposed to 1.6m people who opted to remain in the EU.
Richard Ratcliffe said it was astonishing no British minister had publicly criticised Tehran for arresting Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe in April as she tried to leave Iran with her daughter Gabriella, three.
He spoke as he delivered letters to Downing Street for outgoing prime minister David Cameron and his replacement Theresa May on his wifes 100th day in custody.
Heavy fighting involving tanks and helicopters raged in South Sudan between troops loyal to President Salva Kiir and those backing Vice President Riek Machar.
The violence, which erupted in the capital Juba five days ago, risks a return to civil war in the worlds newest nation.
This is the time to massively reinforce UN action, Ban told reporters, adding that fighting had spread to areas outside of Juba in Central Equatoria state.
When a government cannot or will not protect its people, and when warring parties seem more intent on enriching and empowering themselves at the expense of their people, the international community has a responsibility to act, he said.
Two Chinese UN peacekeepers and one local UN staff member have been killed in the fighting, Ban said.
UN peacekeepeers have been deployed in South Sudan since the country gained independence from Sudan in 2011.
We desperately need attack helicopters and other material to fulfil our mandate to protect civilians, Ban said.
I also urge all countries contributing to (the UN mission) UNMISS to stand their ground. Any withdrawals would send precisely the wrong signal, in South Sudan and across the world.
Kiir and Machar have long been rivals in politics and on the battlefield. A civil war that began in December 2013 came a few months after Kiir dismissed Machar as his deputy. The pair signed a peace deal in August 2015, but implementation has been slow.
Yet again, the leaders of South Sudan have failed their people, Ban said. What kind of leadership is it that resorts to deadly weapons and identity politics, time and again? Failed leadership.
In a rare move, Ban called for an immediate arms embargo on South Sudan and targeted sanctions on leaders and commanders blocking implementation of the peace deal.
The United States, Britain, France, Angola and other members of the Security Council pushed for an arms embargo on South Sudan earlier this year. But veto power Russia said it was opposed to such a move because it did not believe it would be helpful to implementation of the peace deal.
The president of South Sudan and his opposition rival called for a ceasefire.
President Salva Kiir declared a halt in fighting and raised fears of a return to civil war that could draw in even more of the East African countrys ethnic groups. On Saturday, the troubled nation marked the fifth anniversary of its independence from Sudan.
Burma Arakanese Activist Sentenced to Two Years Hard Labor
Rural development activist Maung Aye is convicted by a Kyaukphyu, Arakan State court for suspected ties to the Arakan Army, a charge which he denies.
RANGOON Arakanese social activist Maung Aye was sentenced to two years hard labor in a Kyaukphyu courthouse on Wednesday for suspected links to the Arakan Army (AA), according to his lawyer, Tin Myint.
Maung Aye, who is also the chair of the Kyaukpyu Rural Development Association in Arakan State, was originally arrested by the Kyaukphyu-based Office of the Chief of Military Security Affairs, better known by its Burmese acronym, Sa Ya Pa. He was taken from his house in Leik Kha Maw village along with other two men, Htun Tha Phyu and Zaw Win Maung, and detained for over five months in a Kyaukphyu cell.
Sa Ya Pa pressed charges under Burmas Unlawful Association Act, Section 17(1), a statute created during British rule which has since been used to prosecute members or suspected members of ethnic armed groups.
During Wednesdays sentencing, Htun Tha Phyu and Zaw Win Maung were handed jail terms of three years each, after both identified themselves in front of Judge Nant Tha Nwe Nwe Win as AA soldiers, reporting their batch number within the organization and their station in northern Arakan State.
Aye Maungs plea [to the judge] was that he did not know them as AA soldiers. He is a social activist. Thats why he was helping them find jobs, said Tin Myint, who added that he is preparing an appeal on Maung Ayes behalf.
In recent months, dozens of residents have been detained by local authorities in Taungup, Kyauktaw, Mrauk U and Sittwe townships after being suspected of having ties to the AA, an armed group which formed in 2009 and has been excluded by Burmas military from engaging in the countrys peace process unless it disarms.
The Irrawaddy contacted the Arakan State Police Department in the capital of Sittwe on Wednesday to learn more about these arrests, but police Maj Aung Win Sein declined to comment on the situation.
We cant give [information] to you, because we dont know [about them] exactly, he said, explaining that these were local cases and concerned the police in each township.
Police in Kyauktaw claim that 38 people have been imprisoned in different locations for reportedly violating the Unlawful Association Act; The Irrawaddy asked a police official whether these individuals had all acknowledged ties to the AA in court.
Im not sure whether they admitted to being in the AA or not, he said, but the judge has already punished them.
The penalties imposed on individuals charged under Section 17(1) in Arakan State have varied; those convicted of being low ranking members of the AA are typically jailed for three years, while those charged as high ranking officials are reportedly sentenced to prison terms of five years and charged under an additional Section 17(2) statute.
As of June, more than 2,000 people displaced by fighting between the AA and the Burma Army in Arakan State have sought shelter in temporary camps in Kyauktaw, Ponnegyun, Rathedaung and Mrauk U townships.
Burma Detained Laborers Sentenced for Contempt of Court
Laborers and student activists detained for marching on Naypyidaw from a Sagaing industrial zone are sentenced for refusing to respond in court hearings.
MANDALAY A Court in Tatkon Township of Naypyidaw Union Territory has sentenced detained labor demonstrators and student activists on Wednesday with a one-month imprisonment or a 5,000 kyats (US$4.20) fine for contempt of court.
Fifteen laborers and studentswho were arrested in Takton Township in May for staging a march from an industrial zone in Sagaing Division to Naypyidaw to meet the presidentrefused to respond during the previous court hearings, prompting the contempt charges.
The laborers and student activists said they would choose imprisonment over paying the small fine.
We dont believe in the judiciary so we didnt hire a lawyer or listen to the court. If they want us to go to prison, let that be, said Hnin Aung, one of the labor demonstrators.
The workers and students are currently facing suits under articles 143, 145 and 157 of Burmas penal code, for participating in an unlawful assembly, disobeying police and disturbing public order. The next court hearing will be on July 27.
About 100 workers from a plywood factory in the Sagaing Industrial Zone marched to the capital Naypyidaw in late April, following failed negotiations with Myanmar Veneer Plywood Private Ltd. over the dismissal of more than 100 factory employees in February. They hoped to meet President Htin Kyaw, whom they hoped would provide them redress.
They were arrested just outside of the city of Naypyidaw on May 18. Twenty-three of them were handed over to police and administrators in Sagaing Division, and later released.
The rest, including student activists who came to support them in their march, were jailed in Yamethin Township in Mandalay Division, because there was insufficient space to detain them all in Naypyidaws Tatkon Township. Fifty-one were eventually charged.
The jailed laborers and the students say that many of them have suffered from influenza and diarrhea, with inadequate medical treatment on hand.
There are doctors and a prison clinic, but the doctors cant be there when the inmates need them most. They only have basic medicines and have no incentive to provide good care, said Kaung Zaw Hein, a student activist.
Moreover, if a sick person needs care at an outside hospital, many steps are required. We discovered that two men passed away in the past week while awaiting approval from the jail authorities to visit the public hospital, he said.
According to the jailed student activists, there are about five hundred inmates at the prison in Yamethin, and most are suffering from influenza due to heavy rain and dampness.
Burma Min Aung Hlaing Asks Soldiers in Arakan Not to Be Extreme
On a tour of flood-hit areas of Arakan State, Burmas armed forces chief warns resident soldiers against extreme activities in a plea for ethnic unity.
Burma Army Commander-in-Chief Snr-Gen Min Aung Hlaing requested soldiers stationed in Arakan State not to practice extreme activities while upholding their culture and religion.
He made the comments in a speech delivered on Wednesday to soldiers and their families at a military cantonment in the Arakan State capital of Sittwe. Min Aung Hlaing has been conducting a relief tour of several flood-hit areas in Arakan State.
In his speech, the armed forces chief cited previous official figures that Burmas population is 87 percent Buddhist, six percent Christian and four percent Muslim, alongside smaller religious communities.
These figures, still in official use, have not been updated according to the 2014 census, whose breakdown on religious demographics has been repeatedly delayed due to concerns over social unrest, and is now scheduled for release later this month.
People should not resort to extreme activities in upholding their respective religions and cultures, but must do so in a just way, said Min Aung Hlaing.
In his speech, later posted on his official Facebook page, Min Aung Hlaing said that it was necessary to reestablish unity among ethnic groups, which was broken after Burma lost its independence during the British colonial era.
He blamed discriminatory policies from colonial rulers for creating disunity, division and misunderstanding leading to ethnic armed conflict and disagreements over politics, religion and national identity. These factors lay behind current internal instability, he said, prompting the need to rebuild unity among ethnic races based on facts.
Anti-Muslim violence in Arakan State in 2012 and 2013 displaced around 140,000 people, the large majority belonging to the Rohingya Muslim minority, the majority of whom are denied Burmese citizenship. Many Rohingya remain confined to camps, with restrictions placed on their movement and access to healthcare and education. Buddhist and Muslim communities remain segregated across substantial areas of the state.
Earlier this month, Arakan State saw protests by the local Arakanese Buddhist majority, which has rejected the governments attempt to adopt less polarizing terminology to refer to Buddhist and Muslim communities in the state.
Burma No New Irrigation Dams During Govts Term
The government has called a halt on construction of, and spending on, irrigation dams, due to their negligible impact on agricultural production.
NAYPYIDAW No new irrigation dams will be built during the tenure of the current government, and spending on existing facilities will be halved, says Deputy Minister of Agriculture, Livestock and Irrigation Tun Win.
Burma now has more than 100 irrigation dams, and the ministry has questioned the benefits they provide to agricultural production and farmers welfare. It announced on Friday that it would also dismantle about 200 river-water pumping stations.
A large sum of money has been spent on building [irrigation] dams since 1988, but a look at whether they have really benefitted farmers, or whether paddy yields have increased, reveals that the cultivation of rice paddy through irrigation, as before, still makes up only 10 per cent of total cultivation, said the deputy minister.
The remaining 90 per cent has to depend on unpredictable rainfall. It has become clear that building [irrigation] dams contributes nothing to national development, he added.
Rice exports to China, which reached 1.5 million tons in 1992 when there were not many dams in the country, stood at around the same amount in 2015, the deputy minister pointed out.
The government has decided to halve maintenance spending for dams down from 24 billion kyats (US$20.3 million) for the 2016-17 fiscal year because only 2 million acres of irrigated farmland are in use, while the acreage of monsoon paddy is as high as 15 million acres.
Additionally, farmland has previously been supplied with irrigated water only during the hot season (March to May). In some instances, water has been stored in dams just for the benefit of officials conducting inspections.
Water was stored in dams for hot season use and for official visits, although farmers needed the water also for paddy during the rainy season [June to September]. It is unacceptable that water was stored in dams just for official inspections, the deputy minister said.
He said that farmers dared not ask for water during the rainy season even though droughts sometimes occur at that time.
We have instructed authorities to release water from dams whenever farmers need it. It is no long just time for change. The change has already started, he said, referencing the National League for Democracys (NLD) campaign slogan for the November 2015 general election.
The cultivation of hybrid paddy strains will also be stopped because [the seeds] were imported from China at high prices, even though there is no international market for hybrid paddy and local consumers do not like it. Research will be conducted to produce seeds at home, the deputy minister said.
Translated from Burmese by Myint Win Thein
Burma State-Backed Monks Council Decries Ma Ba Tha as Unlawful
Leading Buddhist cleric organization Ma Ha Na declares that Ma Ba Tha was not formed in accordance with the countrys monastic rules.
RANGOON Burmas leading state-backed cleric organization, Ma Ha Na, has announced that the ultranationalist group Ma Ba Tha is not a lawful monks association as it was not formed in accordance with the countrys monastic rules.
In a public statement made on Tuesday night, Ma Ha Nashort for the Sangha Maha Nayaka, a government-appointed council of monks which oversees Buddhist monastic discipline in the countryalso denied Ma Ba Thas claim last week that it was formed as an offshoot of a 2013 conference of Buddhist clerics attended by multiple orders within the Sangha.
We have had five All-Order Sangha meetings so far since 1980. In none of those meetings, was the name Ma Ba Tha mentioned, nor was there the recognition and formation of Ma Ba Tha, the statement said.
Burma has nine major Sangha Orders, and Ma Ha Na is made up of 47 senior monks from within those orders.
Signed by the 14 senior monks, including the chairman of the organization, the announcement added that there should be only one Sangha organization in the countryMa Ha Nain accordance with the Sangha charter.
Wirathu, a leading Ma Ba Tha monk known for engaging in anti-Muslim hate speech, responded to Ma Ha Nas announcement with his own statement on Wednesday portraying Ma Ba Tha as the last bastion of Theravada Buddhism.
I dont feel anything special regarding their statement, as senior monks within Ma Ha Na are part of the Ministry of Religious Affairs and they were just following the governments wishes, he said.
Wirathu also declared that, as a typical nationalist, he would continue protecting race and religion until his death.
Sopaka, another high-ranking Buddhist monk within Ma Ba Tha, told The Irrawaddy that he had no further comment regarding Ma Ha Nas announcement, simply admitting that what Ma Ha Na said was true.
Founded in 2014, Ma Ba Tha is led by Buddhist monks and is infamous for its hardline anti-Muslim stance. Its name comes from the Burmese acronym for its full title, the Association for the Protection of Race and Religion; since its formation, the organization has built a network across the country.
The state Sangha organizations Tuesday night announcement came one week after Rangoon Division Chief Minister Phyo Min Thein publically described Ma Ba Tha as not necessary in Burma. His criticism sparked condemnation from Ma Ba Tha, which demanded that the countrys President Htin Kyaw and State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi take action against the minister for his criticism, threatening to stage nationwide protests if their July 14 deadline was not met. Yet Ma Ba Thas leaders called off the protest on Tuesday, saying that they no longer took Phyo Min Theins comments seriously.
Htin Lin Oo, a former NLD member who was sentenced two years in prison in 2015 for criticizing Ma Ba Tha, told The Irrawaddy that he believed the Ma Ha Nas denouncement of the group could serve to reduce the religious intolerance that he feels has become more prominent in Burma since Ma Ba Thas formation.
I dont like Ma Ba Tha. As a Buddhist, I am very sad to see Buddhist monks involvement in laymens affairs, Htin Lin Oo said, referring to Ma Ba Thas lobbying which led to the passing of four controversial laws placing restrictions on religious conversion, interfaith marriage, polygamy and childbirth. These Protection of Race and Religion measures have been condemned by rights groups as discriminating against women and religious minorities.
Buddhist monks have to be free of any racial bias, he added, referring to how, in Burma, religious discrimination and persecution is known to cross ethnic lines.
Wednesday, July 13th, 2016 (10:56 am) - Score 1,908
The 410 million Digital Scotland project has today confirmed the next set of locations that will benefit from an upgrade to Openreachs (BT) fibre broadband (FTTC/P) network, which is due to start this Winter (2016).
The on-going programme currently aims to ensure that 95% of premises in Scotland are put within reach of the new network by the end of March 2018 (i.e. benefiting an additional 750,000 premises), although the target for the Highland and Islands region alone is just 84% by the end of 2016.
So far some 600,000 homes and businesses have already befitted from the effort (2 million+ if you include upgrades from purely commercial deployments) and 50,000 of those were reached in the last three months alone.
Overall around 2,800 new up to 80Mbps FTTC Street Cabinets are now live across 620 Scottish exchange areas and more than 7,500km of cable has been laid by engineers from BTOpenreach.
Ed Vaizey, UK Digital Economy Minister, said: The UK Government wants everyone in Scotland to have fast broadband, which is why were investing more than 120m to take fibre broadband to as many parts of Scotland as possible. Thanks in part to this UK funding, more than eight out of ten Scottish homes and businesses can now get superfast broadband, and weve reached more than 600,000 premises as part of this project who would otherwise have missed out.
Fergus Ewing, Cabinet Secretary for Rural Economy and Connectivity, said: We are now more than half way through the roll-out of the programme and as we progress we are starting to reach very small and more remote communities like Forgue in Aberdeenshire. Deploying fibre to areas like this is part of the plan that will help ensure that Scotland becomes a world class digital nation by 2020.
The programme itself is being delivered via two projects, one led by Highlands and Islands Enterprise in its area and the Scottish Government in the rest of Scotland. Other funding partners include the central Governments Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) programme, BT, local authorities and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF).
Digital Scotlands Phase 1 Contract Funding The Highlands and Islands (145.8m):
126.4m from public bodies (Scottish Government, Broadband Delivery UK [50.83m], Highland and Islands Enterprise and all seven local authorities in the project area)
19.4m from BT. The Rest of Scotland (264m):
157m from public sources (Scottish Government, ERDF, Broadband Delivery UK [50m], and all 27 local authorities that form part of the Rest of Scotland Project area)
106.7m from BT.
Work is already taking place to develop a second contract that will extend coverage even further, but this has yet to enter procurement. In the meantime this latest phase of the Digital Scotland project will begin in the winter (2016/17) and seems to be focused upon smaller communities, such as Crathes in Aberdeenshire, Balmacara in the Highlands, Blair Atholl in Perth and Kinross, Lochinver in NW Sutherland and Carsphairn in Dumfries and Galloway.
NOTE: As usual we should mention that the following roll-out plan is still tentative and could change. Similarly Openreach often doesnt cover 100% of the areas that it targets, at least not right away.
The next Rest of Scotland areas are:
Local Authority New exchange area (rest of Scotland) Aberdeenshire Catterline, Crathes, Eden, Forgue, Whiterashes Dumfries & Galloway Bentpath, Boreland, Carsphairn, Carrutherstown, Drummore Falkirk Slamannan Perth and Kinross Blair Atholl, Glenalmond, Tummel Bridge Scottish Borders Camptown
The next Highlands and Islands areas:
Wednesday, July 13th, 2016 (9:08 am) - Score 484
Entanet has called for the new UK Prime Minister, Theresa May, to sack the Digital Economy Minister, Ed Vaizey. The ISP claims that Ed is failing to engage adequately with ISPs and suffers from a lack of experience in the telecoms field, which they believe means he has not been effective.
The often outspoken ISP is of course no stranger to tackling difficult issues head-on and theyve previously highlighted concerns with the newly proposed Digital Economy Bill (check our summary), as well as the Governments controversial Investigatory Powers Bill (here) and various other measures that impact broadband providers.
Many ISPs, especially smaller providers, often complain that the Government frequently fails to adequately consult them about changes that could affect the industry and weve also seen this thought being echoed by the UK Internet Service Providers Association (ISPA). As such Entanets new Open Letter to Theresa May calls for a change.
Neil Watson, Entanets Head of Service, said: Without really shaking things up and creating a separate Department of Communications (wherein the artsier elements of culture, media and creative industries can be dealt with adequately by a Minister of Mr Vaizeys experience), its important to have a Minister in place who has the ability to understand the communications industry from a technical perspective including its benefits, boundaries, limitations and how communications technologies can be applied singularly or in consort to give our United Kingdom the best opportunity to create a digital landscape and supporting economy of international renown. To this end, we believe that Baroness Joanna Shields might be a wise choice to fill Mr Vaizeys shoes. Her experience of technology which includes everything from streaming video and audio, network storage, online marketing, social media and latterly championing the social responsibilities of the Internet as Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Internet Safety and Security suggests to us that she has the abilities necessary to continue to pioneer digital technology within the United Kingdom.
Its unusual to see an ISP being so overtly political in this way and we have our doubts about whether a change of minister, at this stage, would really make much of a difference.
Similarly it could be argued that Ed Vaizey has been far more involved with the industry than prior individuals who have occupied a similar position, although admittedly broadband and Internet issues werent really on anybodys political agenda until around 2007/8.
On top of that we must not forget that Ed Vaizey has helped to push through some changes that many consumers would consider to be positive, such as improvements to national broadband / mobile connectivity, optional parental controls (network-level filtering) and clearer pricing. Admittedly from the ISPs perspective a number of those measures were identified as being flawed, but pro-consumer policy can be a vote winner.
Meanwhile Theresa May has signalled a desire to get more women into her cabinet and so there is still a possibility of a positive shake-up, but equally ISPs could also end up with somebody far worse. Finding the right balance is never easy, but we cant disagree that ISPs do need to be consulted more about changes that affect the industry.
Samsung has and probably always will be a big player in the smartphone market. Despite their latest flagship, the Galaxy S7 doing incredibly well, the company will soon release another powerful competitor. On August 2, the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 will be released.
The Note 7 is actually the sixth in its family. However, the company skipped the Note 6 name in order to create a parallel to its Galaxy S7line. As Samsung confirms, it has upgraded the S Pen in order to give users a better means of expression. The company shares that the Note 7 is definitely for individuals who want the best and want the most from a handheld.
Samsung is holding a launch event in New York, at 11am EDT on August 2, 2016. Another event will mirror the launch in Rio de Janeiro at 12 noon and London at 4pm.
The simple invite to the event, as Mashable notes, depicts an iris. This invitation could be Samsung's confirmation of the long rumored iris scanner. A definite upgrade from the finger scanner, the iris scanner should unlock the smartphone with just the look of the owner.
The device is also expected to come with Qualcomm's latest Snapdragon processor and will run on 6GB of RAM and 64GB of internal storage. Like always with Samsung, the storage is expandable through a microSD card.
The Samsung Galaxy Note 7 is expected to have a larger 4000mAh battery. The unit will also have a 5.8 inch Quad HD Super AMOLED display and is expected to be water resistant, much like the Galaxy S7.
It is unclear at this point whether Samsung has decided to upgrade its camera, or if it will stick with the current 12 megapixel rear camera and 5 megapixel front camera. The Samsung Galaxy Note 7 will come in three minimalist color options - Black Onyx, Silver Titanium and Blue Coral.
Earlier this year, Asus announced that the company would release a new flagship, called the Asus ZenFone 3. It made waves, but was not the most exciting piece of news to hit the smartphone market. That is until it was announced that the Deluxe version would house the newest Qualcomm Snapdragon Processor 821.
Arguably, the most powerful player in the current market are the Samsung S7 and Samsung S7 Edge. To compare, these Samsung units are powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor. GSM Arena further notes that the units are preinstalled with Android Marshmallow 6.0 and come with a choice of either 32 GB or 64 GB of internal storage, which both expandable via microSD cards. The Samsung Galaxy S7 and Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge run on 4 GB of RAM.
So just how well will the Asus ZenFone 3 Deluxe put up a fight? If the processor is anything to go by, the fight will be a close one.
As C|Net reports, the Qualcom Snapdragon 821 promises to increase performance on all current smartphones that are powered by the Snapdragon 820, by at least 10 percent. Further, a 2.4GHz CPU will come with the 821, as opposed to the 820's 2.1GHz CPU.
The Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 is coming as a surprise to many, as Asus initially announced that the ZenFone 3 would come with the Snapdragon 820. Either way, Asus has surprised the tech world and will surely make waves with the Asus ZenFone 3 Deluxe.
Other than the Snapdragon 821, the Asus ZenFone 3 Deluxe will come with a 5.7 inch display. It will have a 23 megapixel rear facing camera. It will be powered with 6GB of RAM and will likely come with 64GB of internal storage. The batter will be pretty standard at 3000mAh.
The standard Asus ZenFone 3, which will arrive in three variants, will come only with the Snapdragon 820 chip. They will also come with a choice between 6 GB of RAM and 64 GB of internal storage or 4 GB of RAM with 32 GB of internal storage.
Google announced on Tuesday, July 12, that its Project Fi provides now its subscribers with access to wireless international data at speeds at least 10-20x faster than before.
According to Tech Crunch, the Project Fi from Google is an experimental cheap wireless service. Google's Project Fi already works in more than 135 countries. As part of the service, international data is included without a surcharge in the company's plans.
According to Project Fi's webpage, the plans start at $20 per month for unlimited texts and calls, Wi-Fi tethering and international coverage. An additional $10 is charged per GB of used data.
When traveling abroad, customers of Google's Project Fi only had access until now to 2G speeds. Project Fi opens now the access to the fastest available network, Instead of capping rates at 2G speeds.
Customers will be able to use LTE, 3G or 4G, depending on their availability and roaming agreements. Different countries have different speeds, but users of Project Fi will always get the fastest connection available on a given network.
The new feature is offered by Google thanks to the addition to the Project Fi network of international carrier Three. In order to provide the faster international coverage, Google also collaborate with several other carriers.
According to CNET, Project Fi can undercut traditional carriers by allowing users switch automatically between Wi-Fi signals and cellular service without disrupting a streaming video or dropping a call. Project Fi runs on the US Cellular, T-Mobile and Sprint networks.
Google developed Project Fi in order to test services and models that the wireless industry might adopt. Tech analysts believe that Google's new move will push other carriers to remove their international caps as well.
The Project Fi is part of Google's broader initiative to provide wireless access to more people. Other such Google initiatives are Project Loon that uses balloons to provide Wi-Fi signals in rural areas and Google Fiber that provides super-fast internet service.
Earlier this year, NASA announced that its Juno spacecraft was in the midst of entering Jupiter's orbit. That made it the very first to do so successfully. Scientists around the world are excited at what information Juno will provide those in the ground. Naturally, as no other machine has gotten this close, Juno has also provided the most spectacular images of Jupiter and its moons.
As ABC News reports, the images were released on Tuesday. In the same, Jupiter is in the middle of three of its largest moons. The photo was taken as Juno was making its rounds 3 million miles away.
As Juno was approaching the planet, its cameras and some of its other instruments were turned off. This was done in order to help shield the spacecraft from the planet's radiation. Several days after the initial entry, they were turned on again.
There is plenty of curiosity about Jupiter, especially its specific makeup underneath the cloud of gas that is always surrounding it. There are, however, some facts about Jupiter that are already proven true.
1. Jupiter was discovered by ancient Babylonians
That is, according to Space-Facts.Com, Ancient Babylonians were the first to ever record their sightings of Jupiter. It happened as early as the 7th century BC and the planet is named after the king of the Roman gods. On the other hand, it represented Zeus, god of thunder, to the Greeks. Yet still, the Mesopotamians regarded Jupiter as the god Marduk, the patron of Babylon. Meanwhile, German tribes believed Thor was represented by the planet.
2. Jupiter has a long orbit cycle
Unlike the Earth's 365 day orbit around the Sun, Jupiter takes 11.8 years to make one full circle.
3. Jupiter has a short day
Despite the length of time it takes to orbit the Sun, a day in Jupiter lasts only 9 hours and 55 minutes.
4. Jupiter has a constant storm
The Great Red Spot that is found by Jupiter is actually a storm. As far as man can tell, it has been going on for the last 350 years. Further, it is so large that three Earths could fit into the storm.
5. Juno is the 9th spacecraft to make a mission to Jupiter
Preceeding Juno are the Pioneer 10 and 11, Voyager 1 and 2, Galileo, Cassini, Ulysses, and New Horizons missions. However, the earlier missions were either unsuccessful as they entered the orbit of Jupiter, or they were sent to focus more on its moons.
Juno will continue to explore Jupiter for the next 20 months, after it has journeyed for 5 years. The next set of photos will be coming next month, when Juno orbits back.
Google Fiber has announced on Tuesday, July 12, that it is enhancing its offer of super-fast internet for small businesses with more options.
According to PCMag, the high-tech giant has launched in 2014 its one-size-fits-all Fiber Early Access program. This business model will be replaced by three new fiber plans for small business needs. In cities where Google Fiber is available, SMSs will have access to upload and download speeds in the range of 100Mbps to 1,000Mbps.
The fastest option is also the most expensive one, providing internet speed of 1000Mbps for a monthly subscription of $250. The 250Mbps option will cost a small business $100 a month, while the entry-level 100Mbps option is priced at only $70 per month.
In a blog post, Google Fiber Product Manager John Shriver-Blake wrote that the three new service plans are designed to match the different needs of small businesses that come in various sizes and shapes. The new plans provide SMEs with the flexibility of choosing the best fit for their needs.
As part of the new offer, Google Fiber is also increasing the number of static IP addresses available to SMEs to up to 13. For now, Google Fiber availability is limited to eligible small businesses in Charlotte.
Until July 31, SMEs located in Austin, Provo, Kansas City and Nashville can still sign up under the Google's Early Access program. Starting Aug. 1, small businesses located in those areas will have the possibility to keep their Early Access pricing for a year or choose from one of the new plans.
According to Engadget, Google Fiber's "superfast internet" represents an important commodity and the company aims to extent this service for other areas as well. Small businesses that are not located in cities where the Google Fiber service is currently available can check Google's list of upcoming Fiber areas. It is also expected that the service rollouts will continue for residential users as well.
The social media network Twitter allows now its users to upload higher-quality GIFs on its web platform.
These days, the animated GIFs are present everywhere on the internet. One of the top social media networks, Twitter, provides support for animated GIFs as well. The micro-blogging service allows users to share and view animated GIFs on iPhone, Android and Twitter.com.
In the documentation published on company's support page, Twitter has announced now that it extends support to animated GIFs up to 15 MB. The change affects only the web platform and it is still unknown when Twitter will lift the 5 MB limit for GIFs posted on mobile apps.
Venture Beat reports that while users can now only upload larger GIFs through Twitter.com, it is highly likely that the feature will also become available on Twitter mobile apps as well. The speed of implementation will need to take into consideration how this feature would impact users' data plans on mobile devices and it is likely to depend on how well the company's infrastructure can handle the 15 MB GIFs.
GIF support was added by Twitter back in 2014. Thanks to a partnership with Fiffsy and Giphy, in February Twitter has introduced a GIF button on its apps. Users can tap the GIF button when they are composing a direct message or tweet in order to browse categories of different reactions such as Mic Drop, Dance, Happy and YOLO, or search the GIF library by keyword. Instead of forcing the user to a website to view the image, the actual image appears in-tweet.
According to PCMag, in other Twitter news, hackers have recently attacked another high-profile victim. Over the weekend, the Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey had his Twitter account broken into. An attacker going by the name of "OurMine" posted a tweet followed by a Vine video clip on Dorsey's own Twitter account. The tweet stated that the hacker was in fact testing the security of Twitter accounts.
Australian mobile billing and payments platform, SmartTrans, continues to expand in Chinas e-commerce market with a new deal to sell health products in the country through its online portals.
The deal will see SmartTrans sell Bloom Health products into the large and growing market for vitamins, supplements and healthcare products in China.
SmartTrans managing director Bryan Carr says the company is encouraged by its success in selling Blackmores and Swisse health products in China utilising its online payments and marketing expertise and by leveraging growing market demand for authentic and trusted clean and green Australian brands.
According to Carr, the healthcare products market in China is estimated to be worth approximately US$17 billion annually, having doubled over the past decade, and anticipated to be worth circa US$1.1 trillion a year by 2020.
Carr says SmartTrans China market expansion has been made possible by the companys established billing relationships in China, its online delivery capability and privileged cross-border payments facility.
SmartTrans earns revenue through service fees, commissions on products purchased and transaction fees for each transaction that it processes.
This is further confirmation of SmartTrans business model as the gateway for Australian products into China utilising SmartTrans online presence and partnerships with our online payment systems. This is another great example of SmartTrans bringing Australian merchants products and services to the huge China e-commerce market.
This arrangement is made possible by SMAs established online service capabilities, payment systems and cross border transaction facility from China, also delivering a new revenue stream for the company.
Customers of multi-currency payment system Pin Payments will have access to lending services of online provider of unsecured loans, Moula, in a deal put together by the two companies.
Under the partnership, Pin Payments customers can complete a loan application online with Moula in under 10 minutes and, if approved, receive the proceeds on the loan within 24 hours.
Chris Dahl, director of sales and growth at Pin Payments, says the partnership might be further enhanced at a later stage through data analytics to prompt even faster approval.
"Were excited to partner with Moula Were passionate about helping our customers succeed and we know that access to funding can be crucial in helping their businesses grow.
Moula simplifies the loan application process, making receiving a loan more accessible for small businesses.
Dahl says Pin Partners has more than 5000 small business customers across Australia.
Moula chief executive Aris Allegos says the work with Pin Payments supports businesses in the e-commerce space looking to have an international presence.
Its great to be working with another Australian founded business focused on creating efficiencies for our SMEs. Moulas small business customers are varied in terms of size and industry.
The ABC ran a segment on Lateline in 2009 which was similar to the Catalyst episode "Wi-Fried" but did not encounter anything like the ruckus which the latter has.
The 2009 Lateline segment was done by Ticky Fullerton, with Leigh Sales, the current host of 7.30, in the chair. The 2009 programme was mentioned by a reader, Colin Legg, in the comments below the July 11 Media Watch transcript.
The Wi-Fried programme, which was broadcast in February and looked at the alleged connection between mobiles and brain cancer and also the impact that wireless use may be having on people, resulted in the presenter, Dr Maryanne Demasi, being suspended until September.
The suspension occurred after an ABC investigation found that the programme had not met its own editorial standards, even though five levels of management had given it the green light.
Fullerton'sis titled "Scientists speak out on mobile phone, cancer link" and she spoke to some of the people whom Demasi interviewed. For example, epidemiologist Dr Bruce Armstrong, and Professor Devra Davis of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute were common to both programmes.
She did not take up the question of whether wireless has any effect on those in its surroundings.
Perhaps the most significant difference was that Fullerton spoke to someone from the Australian Mobile Telecommunications Association, the main lobby group for the industry, and also a representative of Australia's biggest telco, Telstra.
Additionally, both Sales and Fullerton have a much higher profile than Demasi; indeed, to compare the extent to which they are public figures would invite ridicule.
In 2009, the mobile industry was worth a fraction of what it is worth today. Thus the pushback against programmes that cast a cloud over such devices is much greater in 2016.
The ABC appears to be hanging Demasi out to dry, and trying to save the five levels of management that approved the programme from any collateral damage. That was underlined on Monday when Media Watch host Paul Barry recommended that Demasi should be sacked.
A team from the Australian National University has created accurate models to reflect the quantum of energy needed by wireless sensors to detect and transfer information.
The ANU said this meant they had taken one more step on the journey to collect renewable or ambient energy from mobile phone base stations which could be used to power battery-operated wireless sensors.
Such sensors have multiple uses in industries, with health and agriculture being two examples.
Lead researcher Dr Salman Durrani from the ANU Research School of Engineering said wireless sensors for buildings, biomedical applications or wildlife monitoring used batteries that were tough to replace.
"A major problem hindering the widespread deployment of wireless sensor networks is the need to periodically replace batteries," he said.
Australian viticulturists use sensors to keep track of temperature, wind speed, light, humidity and the amount of water in soil to boost the growth of grapes and prevent crop loss due to heat or cold.
Sports also use wireless sensors to collect performance data from participants. And, sensors are also used to keep track of the condition of bridges and machinery.
The scientists found that it was possible to use energy from solar or surrounding radio frequency sources, like communication towers or other mobile phone base stations, to replace batteries.
The delay in communication was generally less than a few hundred milliseconds.
Though the use of the technology was probably years away, Dr Durrani said the team had tacked an important practical consideration.
"If we can use energy harvesting to solve the battery replacement problem for wireless sensors, we can implement long-lasting monitoring devices for health, agriculture, mining, wildlife and critical national infrastructure, which will improve the quality of life," he said.
The Fujitsu World Tour is one of the largest multi-city events of its kind in the ICT industry. This year the theme is Human Centric Innovation in Action, which demonstrates how innovation is transforming the way we work, think, and collaborate - creating new value for individuals, organisations, and society.
There will be a strong focus on the words In Action as we demonstrate examples of how people are embracing increasing digitalisation and its impact on removing barriers to innovation. Here are just a few highlights from this years program:
International thought leaders with a focus on digital transformation
Demonstrations of the power of ICT, including the Internet of Things (IoT), Mobile and Hybrid IT with a focus on creating business advantage
Local and international perspectives on the changing ICT landscape
A comprehensive technology showcase featuring the latest ICT innovations
Opportunities to network with business leaders and ICT professionals across the industry
Click here to view the complete agenda.
By working with our customers, Fujitsu leverages the power of human centric innovation to change the way we work, think and collaborate.
We will demonstrate new ways of using ICT including the Internet of Things (IoT), Hybrid IT, mobile and other digital technologies to benefit business and society as a whole.
It was appropriate that LG decided to launch its CordZero vacuum cleaner line-up at a special preview of Ghostbusters (2016).
Brad Reed, Home Appliance Marketing Manager at LG Australia, drew the analogy, Its a great match if anything can suck up pure scum like Ghostbusters then LG can.
Lets get the movie out of the way it is a remake of the 1984 classic with some of todays finest female comedic actors Melissa McCarthy, Kate McKinnon, Kirsten Wigg, and Leslie Jones. It does not try to be anything serious it relies on fart jokes, sitcom, action, blatant copying of the original (including Slimer and the Michelin Man), and defeating sometimes hilariously funny apparitions. The female cast has chemistry, Chris Hemsworth plays a beefcake "himbo", and there are cameo appearances from the original cast including Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Ernie Hudson and Sigourney Weaver. In all a very entertaining, easy to watch, movie go and see it.
So back to the vacs. They are even more entertaining than the movie and my advice is go and see them at major retailers.
CordZero simply means no power cord required. They use lithium-ion batteries. There are essentially three types and a few models in each.
Canister
Handstick/portable
Roboking self-vacuuming drones
As a tech publication I wont delve too deeply into buzzwords like dust microns; smart inverter brushless motors with a 10-year warranty; four stage carbon HEPA filters; RoboSense; cyclonic whirls; carpet and hard floor mode; 99.9% dust retaining ability
What I will say is that from a brief inspection at the launch all models are very well made and use the latest tech to do the job. They are at the top of the heap and can suck it up with the best.
The Roboking models did have some interesting tech. Some can be controlled remotely via Wi-Fi using the LG Smart ThinQ app and includes a front facing camera which lets you monitor your home through the new HomeView and HomeGuard functions.
HomeView
This provides real-time monitoring through a front camera. Using the Smart ThinQ app, you can check on your Roboking Turbo+HomeViews cleaning progress remotely as well as alter the vacuums path at the touch of your smartphone's screen.
HomeGuard
It can be used to alert you to movement in your home. Using the HomeGuard function, the vacuum can monitor a pre-selected area and send images directly to your smartphone when movement is detected. This feature is an ideal alert to let you know if someone has returned home or if you need to keep an eye on a mischievous pet.
Manual control
Manual control is great to vacuum a specific area using a smartphone on-screen joystick or remote control.
Roboking Turbo+Homeview TripleEye3 and RoboNavi
The Roboking Turbo+HomeView (VR66803VMNP) has three separate cameras to improve the navigation ability of the vacuum and support its extra features:
Upper Camera: Creates a map of the house to plan the most efficient way to vacuum, even in reduced light. The latest series boasts II-SLAM technology which automatically calculates the intensity of light while vacuuming, which helps to prevent it wandering off track in low light levels.
Lower Camera: Reads the pattern of the floor through the use of an optical sensor which can measure distance and even slight changes to the floor pattern or surface. This feature makes the vacuum ideal for cleaning darker areas such as under the couch or the table.
Front Camera: Acts as the home monitoring camera.
All Roboking Turbo models feature RoboNaviTM technology which provides smart mapping for optimal cleaning coverage
Scheduled cleaning and cleaning diary
Roboking can be set to vacuum on a recurring schedule with scheduled cleaning. The additional cleaning diary on the Wi-Fi and HomeView models lets you trace exactly where the vacuum has already covered through a playback feature viewable via a smartphone that monitors the movement route.
Smart designed inverter motor
The Roboking Turbo+HomeView features the smart designed brushless inverter motor, which is lightweight, compact, and durable and comes with ten year parts guarantee.
Four cleaning modes
Cell by Cell option methodically cleans in individual cells. This setting is ideal for complex areas, as the vacuum ensures each cell has been completed before moving on
ZigZag programme moves back and forth until it has covered the room. Ideal for large spaces with few obstacles
Spiral shape which works best when you want to vacuum a specific spot
My Space programme allows you to efficiently clean an area that you have selected. For example, you can set the vacuum to clean areas that typically need vacuuming more frequently, such as near the front door or around the kitchen table.
The Roboking Turbo range also includes all the features you know and love from the current LG robotic vacuum cleaner collection:
Up to 100 minutes of run time before finding its way back to the charging
Corner Master feature means more thorough cleaning in the corners of the room thanks to its square shaped design and brushes that are now 1.5cm longer, which help the vacuum reach right into those hard to reach areas. Corner cleaning performance in our new model has improved by 89%, and its cleaning efficiency has been enhanced to 94%.7
More than 90 voice alerts where the vacuum will alert you to issues that require your attention.
Digital Bumper and Smart Exit recognises obstacles around and minimise collision. The sensors can also help the vacuum to understand how far ahead objects are, and the Smart Exit function provides various actions to help it manoeuvre its way out in the unlikely event it gets stuck
Easy Out Dust Bin: The Roboking Turbo boasts a pull-up dust bin that can be easily removed from the top of the vacuum
Turbo Mode detects when it has reached a carpeted area and increases the performance of the brush and suction motors to enhance cleaning performance
The majority of vacuum modes can also be accessed via a specially designed remote control
Reed added, At LG, we strive to use innovative technology to help make everyday life that little bit easier and our whole CordZero vacuum range works in synergy to make this daily chore more convenient. Our cordless range has something to suit any vacuuming task and nowadays its common for time poor families to have multiple models in the home to cater to their needs. Our canister model is ideal for the thorough once-a-week clean, the more portable hand stick is perfect for those quick and easy touch-ups while the robotic vacuum is fantastic to help you keep the daily dust build-up at bay.
Comment
The Roboking range is impressive. I spoke to a few robotic vacuum owners, and they all said that while it saves them enormous time every so often you need to use a canister vacuum to do a really complete job.
The Canister vacuums are interesting and I particularly like the RoboSense model ($1099) that self-propels and follows you around. You can get the model without it as well ($899)
The really interesting one was the Handstick ($449) which is both a stick and a removable hand-held vacuum. It comes with dual batteries and about an hours use for each. My wife and I live in an apartment, and that is the one for us.
The global body representing mobile operators, the GSMA, has launched a new online analytical tool the Mobile Connectivity Index to measure the ability of more than 130 countries to enable billions of their citizens to access to the Internet for the first time.
There are more than four billion people who still dont have access to the Internet via mobile, unlike the three billion already enjoying access.
The GSMA says those offline citizens are excluded from the powerful opportunities for social and economic development that the mobile Internet enables.
According to Mats Granryd, director-general of the GSMA, mobile is the primary enabler of connectivity in developing world markets where the high cost of deploying fixed-line networks means that Internet penetration is low.
Connectivity to the mobile Internet is also an important foundation upon which the UNs Sustainable Development Goals depend for their delivery, providing a platform for reducing poverty and improving healthcare, education, commerce, information sharing, employment and innovation.
The launch of the GSMAs Mobile Connectivity Index will provide valuable insights that will inform projects designed to support the ambition of universal access to the Internet.
According to GSMA Intelligence, the approximately 3.2 billion people accessing the mobile Internet at the end of 2015 represented about 44% of the global population and among these users, about a third were using 2G networks and two-thirds were using mobile broadband (3G/4G).
This leaves approximately 4.16 billion people, about 56% of the global population, still not on the mobile Internet. Among this segment, 2.5 billion people 34% of the global population live within the footprint of a mobile broadband network but do not access services, while approximately 1.6 billion (22% ) live outside of a mobile broadband network footprint.
The GSMA says its Mobile Connectivity Index measures the performance of 134 countries, representing more than 95% of the worlds population, against the four key enablers that are essential to driving mobile Internet adoption:
Infrastructure the availability and quality of high performance mobile Internet network coverage. Without network coverage, people cannot get online, and without high-performing networks it is more difficult to access the full potential of the Internet.
Affordability the availability of mobile services and devices at price points that reflect the level of income across a national population. Aside from prices and incomes, affordability is also affected by the level of taxation, as well as inequality if income distribution is skewed towards a small proportion of the population, the mobile internet will remain unaffordable for many people.
Consumer readiness citizens with the awareness and skills needed to value and use the Internet. Without the necessary skills and supporting cultural environment, individuals may not understand how to use the mobile Internet or appreciate how it can benefit them. Some individuals, especially women, might also find themselves prevented from accessing the mobile Internet in some countries.
Content the availability of online content and services that are accessible and relevant to the local population. Consumers are less likely to connect to the mobile Internet unless there is online content and services that are relevant and would be of benefit to them. This might be as simple as having content in their native language or it might be the availability of certain apps or services such as social media, banking or education.
Granryd says scores for each of the four key enablers to be updated on an annual basis are available for each country and are combined to produce a single composite measure for a given country, reflecting the strength of the foundations to support widespread adoption of the mobile Internet.
The Mobile Connectivity Index is accessible through a freely available Web-based interface that allows users to explore in detail the performance of individual countries, compare countries against each other, and investigate the different dimensions and indicators that feed into each of the enablers.
To access the tool click here.
HTCs Desire 628 is a mid-range smartphone and is now available at JB Hi-Fi for just $299 for an unlocked handset.
It has a dual colour design: cobalt white with blue trim, a great front and rear camera and a 5 display.
Ben Hodgson, country manager, HTC Australia, and New Zealand, said, The HTC Desire 628 strikes the perfect balance between style and functionality with its stunning HD display and unique dual colour design. With consumers seeking a full range of smartphones at a variety of price points, the HTC Desire 628 delivers extraordinary value for consumers seeking a powerful proposition at an affordable price."
Gary Siewert, general manager of marketing, JB HI-FI, said, "We have been selling HTC smartphones for many years, and it is a trusted brand for both our staff and customers. Its products are consistently innovative and outstanding quality. With the launch of the Desire 628, JB HI-FI is proud to stock the largest range of HTC smartphones, of any retailer in Australia.
The phone is not on HTC Australias website, but it is at JB Hi-Fis website and includes the following specifications.
5, 720P, IPS, LCD, 294 ppi, 66.2% screen to body ratio
MediaTek eight-core, 1.3GHz, MT6753
2GB RAM, 16GB storage, micro-SD (up to 2TB OTG)
Rear Camera: 13MP, f/2.0, 75 angle, 1080p @ 30fps video
Front Camera: 5MP, f/2.4, 75 angle
Wi-Fi N single band, Bluetooth 4.1, FM radio, no NFC
Non-removable 2200 mAh battery, micro-USB charger, fast charge capable with 1.5A charger
4G LTE bands and category unknown but believed to be CAT 4 (150/50Mbps) with up to 12 LTE bands
Android 5.1
The specifications are pretty standard for a mass market device and the market is pretty crowded at this level with excellent offerings from OPPO, LG, Samsung and much more.
Android 5.1 is not ideal, and it is unknown if HTC will eventually provide an upgrade to 6.x.
The Z623 home speaker system has what Logitech describes as "200 watts of window-rattling power". Its THX certified audio is rich and loud with deep impressive bass. From music lovers to gamers, just plug in your gear and stand back as this compact system has no trouble filling the room and immersing everyone in it. The system has generated almost 3,000 reviews on Amazon, averaging 4.5 out of 5 stars (87% rate it 4+ stars -- read reviews). Amazon indicates that its typical list price of $149.99 has been reduced by a significant 33%, so you can buy the 200 watt 2.1 speaker system now on Amazon for $99.99.
This story, "33% off Logitech Z623 200 Watt 2.1 Home Speaker System - Deal Alert" was originally published by TechConnect .
The security team of the popular Drupal content management system worked with the maintainers of three third-party modules to fix critical vulnerabilities that could allow attackers to take over websites.
The flaws allow attackers to execute rogue PHP code web servers that host Drupal websites with the RESTWS, Coder or Webform Multiple File Upload modules installed. These modules are not part of Drupal's core, but are used by thousands of websites.
The RESTWS module is a popular tool for creating Rest application programming interfaces (APIs) and is currently installed on over 5,800 websites. Unauthenticated attackers can exploit the remote code execution vulnerability in its page callback functionality by sending specially crafted requests to the website.
There is no mitigating factor and upgrading to the module's latest version, which fixes the flaw, is highly recommended.
Coder is another popular module and allows Drupal administrators to check their code against various coding standards and best practices. It is installed on over 4,950 websites and it too contains a remote code execution vulnerability that can be exploited by unauthenticated attackers.
The module does not even need to be enabled in order for the flaw to be exploitable, its mere presence on the file system being enough.
Finally, the Webform Multiple File Upload module allows website administrators to receive multiple files from users and is installed on some 3,000 websites. It too has a vulnerability that could lead to remote code execution, but the flaw's exploitation depends on which libraries are available on the website.
Furthermore, an attacker needs to be able to submit a web form with specifically crafted input and, depending on the site configuration, this might require authentication. Since there are mitigating factors that could limit the flaw's impact, it was rated only as critical instead of highly critical.
The Drupal CMS powers over one million websites, including 1 in 10 of the most popular 10,000 websites on the Internet that are based on a known content management system. It is commonly used by businesses.
Microsoft is doing new things with its Surface tablets, and hoping that enterprises will find a lot to like.
The company is taking steps to tailor the tablets to the needs of enterprises. The goal of customization is to differentiate the Surface from look-alike products, and to tie devices closely to a company's operations.
"We're going to meet the enterprise on their terms," said Hayete Gallot, general manager of Microsoft Devices, in an interview with the IDG News Service.
Surface tablets have been successful with consumers and professionals, and Microsoft is giving it an additional enterprise twist. The effort comes as companies look to upgrade to Windows 10 PCs, with tablet-laptop hybrids like Surface being popular replacements.
The customization plans are centered around software and buying options, but Microsoft is also open to the idea of customizing Surface hardware.
Microsoft is partnering with IBM and Booz Allen Hamilton to develop custom software for Surface devices. The software will be tuned specifically to a company's needs.
Working with IBM is "like bringing the big dog" to develop custom software for Surface, Gallot said. IBM will use its expertise in analytics and big data to develop apps for the retail, consumer goods and health care industries. IBM will develop applications for retailers and consumer packaged goods companies to access analytics that will help maximize employee productivity. Interactive applications will also be made for demand forecasting and product and sales management.
The partnership with Booz Allen Hamilton will be on tuning Surface tablets for government, public sector and health-care organizations, with a focus on security and manageability of devices. For example, Booz Allen Hamilton will able to offer lock-down features that will increase the security of devices, Gallot said.
Microsoft can also customize hardware to meet enterprise needs, if needed.
"We are open to it," Gallot said.
It's not uncommon for enterprise customers to ask for specific hardware features when it comes to security, memory and storage capacity.
But there's no demand yet for custom Surfaces, as the tablets are being widely used in enterprises in their current configurations, Gallot said.
Microsoft also announced the Surface as a Service program, which provides flexibility on hardware purchases. Surface devices can be packaged with cloud services and paid for on a subscription basis. The subscription program is becoming popular as customers try to retain financial flexibility when purchasing new hardware, Gallot said.
Such programs last from one to three years, and also give customers quicker access to hardware upgrades, Gallot said.
HP also launched a similar hardware-as-a-service program last week. Such programs reduce the up-front cost of paying for hardware, and instead break them down into monthly chunks that are similar to installment payments.
IDC says PC upgrades may pick up after Microsoft ends its free Windows 10 upgrade program on July 29. Companies may buy new PCs instead of paying for a Windows 10 OS license.
There are questions lingering around the release of a possible successor to Surface 3, which Microsoft said it will stop making by the end of the year. Gallot didn't definitively say if such a device would be released, but said the Surface 3 sold well in the enterprise.
Nick's bowling Bashes Herts to earn a deserved opening day draw
West Herts 168-9 dec
Stortford 148-6
Match drawn
(Herts Cricket League
premier division)
BRILLIANT bowling from Nick Bashford was the highlight for Bishop's Stortford as they opened their Herts League premier division campaign with a draw at West Herts.
On a quick pitch which suited the seamers, Bashford took six wickets as Stortford reduced their hosts to a reachable total of 168-9.
But the visiting batsmen could not score fast enough to take advantage and time ran out with 21 runs still needed.
Stortford skipper Ben Debenham, whose side are determined to improve on last season's poor show in the division which saw them prop up the final table, said: 'We were never really in danger of losing but we started our reply slowly and we didn't chase our target well enough.
'A draw is a good result but it was a game we should have won.'
Debenham himself contributed a steady 62, well assisted by Adrian Wacey's 37. But there were no other contributions of note as the visitors finished on 148-6.
An encouraging performance followed for Stortford on Sunday as Thatcham Town, from Berkshire, visited Cricketfield Lane for the first round of the National Cup.
In a contest limited to 45 overs each, the home side batted first and blasted their way to 252-5, Debenham top-scoring again with 52, Steve Burrow adding an unbeaten 44 and Nick Maley 27.
Thatcham struggled to cope with the home attack and were eventually all out for 140 as Stortford won by 112 runs.
This Saturday, Stortford entertain Letchworth in the league then they travel to Stanmore on Sunday for the second round of the National Cup.
Two teenage girls who have been missing for almost a month are being sought in the Harrow area.
Selda Alternay, 15 and Ubax Hassan, 14, vanished from their foster home in Gillingham, Kent on April 15 and have not been seen since.
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Land and Space Journal Sentinel business reporter Tom Daykin talks about commercial real estate and development. SHARE
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Two vacant city-owned lots would be sold to help accommodate the next phase of a mixed-use development on Milwaukee's north side, under a new proposal.
The adjacent lots, at 2242 and 2246 N. 16th St., total 8,167 square feet and would be sold for $1,000 to Wellness Commons LLC, a group organized by Walnut Way Conservation Corp., according to a Department of City Development report.
Walnut Way, a neighborhood improvement group, and Fix Development are developing Innovations and Wellness Commons. That development's first phase opened last fall at 1615-1617 W. North Ave. at a cost of $2.7 million.
That renovated 6,000-square-foot, two-story building features a small Outpost Natural Foods store, The Juice Kitchen juice bar, a commercial kitchen operated by Milwaukee Center for Independence and offices for Fondy Food Center, the nonprofit group which runs the Fondy Farmers Market, 2200 W. Fond du Lac Ave.
The second phase, a $4.2 million, 12,000-square-foot building, would be built on the parking lot at the southwest corner of N. 16th St. and W. North Ave., just east of the first phase.
Its tenants would include the nonprofit Milwaukee JobsWork, Engineering for Kids Inc., Walnut Way's community outreach offices, Core/El Centro's north side natural healing center, and offices for other local health and wellness practitioners.
Walnut Way has so far raised $2 million from foundations for the proposed expansion, according to the city report.
The city acquired the vacant lots through property tax foreclosure, and their sale needs Common Council approval. That could come at the July 26 meeting.
Walnut Way hopes to break ground on the second phase by the end of this year, said LaShawndra Vernon, executive director.
MKE Diner News and notes on the restaurant scene from dining critic Carol Deptolla SHARE
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California native Jan Kelly will close her restaurant Meritage, 5921 W. Vliet St., in mid-August after a monthlong farewell that includes a multichef dinner and move back to the West Coast.
Meritage, with a strong local and seasonal focus to its menu, opened in 2007 and has been on every Journal Sentinel Top 30 list since 2008.
Before opening her own place, Kelly became known for her dishes at the late Barossa in Walker's Point.
Kelly issued a written statement this morning announcing the closing of the Washington Heights restaurant.
"I'm sad to sad to say goodbye to Meritage and Milwaukee, but I really want the last month we're open to be a time to truly celebrate what we've created here," she said in the statement.
Kelly will be saying goodbye through food:
On July 20, July 27 and Aug. 3, she'll bring back her popular buttermilk and Tabasco-brined fried chicken with gravy and sour cream biscuits. Thursdays through Saturdays starting this week through Aug. 11, the chef will bring back other favorite dishes from menus through the years, including bison meatloaf and grilled romaine with scallops.
The special events culminate with a farm-to-table chefs' dinner on Aug. 10 with Justin Aprahamian of Sanford, Nell Benton of the National, Thi Cao of Buckley's, Mike Engel of Pastiche and Joe Muench of Maxies, Story Hill BKC and Blue's Egg. The menu and registration will be available at the restaurant's website.
Presumpteive presidential nominees Hillary Clinton (left) and Donald Trump (right). Credit: Associated Press
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Amid a tumultuous summer for the country and the campaign, the negative views of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton in Wisconsin appear almost fixed in stone, impervious to events.
Thats one take-away from a statewide poll released Wednesday by the Marquette University Law School.
Clintons lead over Trump among likely voters in the state narrowed from 9 points in June to 4 in the new poll, taken last Thursday through Sunday.
She leads Trump 45% to 41% among likely voters polled and 43% to 37% among registered voters, a slightly broader measure of the potential electorate.
That suggests a tightening that is consistent with a number of other state and national surveys released this week.
But what is striking is how little fluctuation there is in perceptions of the two presumptive nominees, despite a series of dramatic developments since Marquettes last survey June 9-12. Among them: the Orlando massacre and its aftermath; the FBIs findings that Clinton was reckless in using a private email system as secretary of state; the Dallas police shootings and the searing debate over racial violence; and the latest in an ongoing spate of controversies over Trumps campaign rhetoric.
Yet views of Clinton and Trump are almost identical to what they were a month ago, which isnt encouraging for either one.
In June, 64% of registered voters here viewed Trump negatively. Today 63% do.
In June, 58% of registered voters viewed Clinton negatively. Today the percentage is the same.
In June, 55% said they were very uncomfortable with Trump as president. Today it is 53%.
In June, 42% said they were very uncomfortable with Clinton as president. Today it is 43%.
In June, 30% said Trump has the qualifications to be president. Today its 32%.
In June, 28% said Clinton was honest. Today the percentage is exactly the same.
It is very interesting that we had kind of a tumultuous month in both parties, but it didnt radically change the images of either candidate, Marquette pollster Charles Franklin said. It doesnt seem to have changed the vote margins much either. (Clinton's lead among registered voters barely moved, from 7 points to 6).
At one point in his presentation of the poll Wednesday at Marquette, Franklin described the shifts from June to July as smidgen-y.
Both parties still have big divisions within them. And among the dissenters in both parties, there is still a real appetite for somebody other than their partys nominee, Franklin said. This means that the next two weeks of the conventions plays a huge role in unifying or failing to unify the parties.
The GOP convention starts Monday in Cleveland, while Democrats meet a week later in Philadelphia.
The poll contains some modest signs that Trump and Clinton are improving their standing within their own parties. Trumps negative rating among Wisconsin Republicans has declined from 31% in June to 24% today.
And for the first time this year, more Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents prefer Clinton as the nominee than prefer Bernie Sanders, who handily won the states primary in April.
But its a close call. Resistance persists to both Trump and Clinton within their parties. Almost half of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents would rather see Sanders nominated. And Clinton has made no progress since June with this group; only two-thirds of those voters are ready to back her in November.
Meanwhile, four in ten Republicans and GOP-leaning independents would still like the party to nominate someone other than Trump.
By one measure the share of people who say theyre certain to vote enthusiasm is down in both parties compared with what it was four years ago.
If youre not really happy with your nominee, thats one of the consequences, Franklin said. Youre not quite as enthused about voting.
In another sign of discontent, 10% of registered voters backed Libertarian Gary Johnson when he was offered as an option, another 4% backed Green Party candidate Jill Stein, and 12% had no preference or backed no one. Clinton led Trump by 7 points in this four-way matchup, but even she couldnt top 40% of the vote.
At least two other things havent changed in the polling this summer.
One is that Clinton and Trump are overwhelmingly disliked by voters in the other party. This should come as no surprise given how polarized along party lines voters are in Wisconsin. But the pattern has become so extreme it almost defies belief.
Only 3% of Wisconsin Democrats have a favorable view of Trump, while 93% have an unfavorable view.
Only 1% of Wisconsin Republicans have a favorable view of Clinton, while 98% have an unfavorable view.
The disdain and negativity toward the other partys stand-bearer is virtually unanimous on both sides.
And the other thing that hasnt changed is how negatively both major party candidates are perceived by independent voters in Wisconsin: 65% have an unfavorable view of Clinton and 67% have an unfavorable view of Trump.
When these voters are offered a choice of Trump, Clinton, Johnson or Stein, Clinton musters just 31% of the independent vote, with Trump right behind her at 30%. Johnson gets 14%, 10% dont know, Stein gets 6% and none gets 5%.
In other words, more independents reject both major party candidates than support either one of them.
Follow Craig Gilbert on Twitter @WisVoter
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Milwaukee-based C.H. Coakley & Co. has acquired StorX Inc. of New Berlin and Telestar Installations of Waterford.
Financial terms of the transactions, expected to close Aug. 1, were not disclosed.
StorX is a packaging and assembly warehousing service that owners Mike and Brenda Landwehr begain in 2004. After the sale of the business, the Landwehrs are expected to stay on as Coakley employees.
Telestar provides installation, expansion and support for telecommunication firms. Telestar owner Sean Marshall brings 20 years of telecommunications and installation experience to Coakley.
Mike Coakley, president of CH Coakley, said, "Our focus this year has been to present our clients cohesive solutions for their business needs, and the addition of StorX and Telestar certainly helps with that objective."
The Bastille Days Festival will light up the Cathedral Square neighborhood Thursday through Sunday.
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Wine tastings, beignets and Mardi Gras parades. No, you're not in France, or even New Orleans. Welcome to Bastille Days, Milwaukee's French-themed festival, which takes place Thursday through Sunday at Cathedral Square Park.
Like any Milwaukee festival, food and drink make the experience. Free wine and beer tastings, and chef demonstrations are offered daily.
Ticketed wine tastings cost $35 on the grounds or $25 in advance. Sessions begin at 6 and 8:30 p.m. Saturday in the northeast corner of Cathedral Square Park.
Milwaukee Brewing Company's Bastille Days ale will be released on Thursday with the help of Mayor Tom Barrett, who will tap the firkin at 5:30 p.m.
Cool off with a scoop of gelato from Peter Sciortino Bakery or chow down a Croque Monsieur from Bartolotta's Lake Park Bistro. Bastille Days provides a variety of food from 30 restaurants and food vendors.
Performances include Madame Gigi's Outrageous French Cancan Dancers, Carnival of Curiosity & Chaos, New Orleans' own Sweet Crude, Reverend Raven & The Chain Smokin' Altar Boys and Robin Pluer.
Top off the first day of the fest with the Storm the Bastille 5K run/walk at 9 p.m. Thursday, which commemorates the storming of the Bastille prison in 1789. Registration on the day of the race is $25.
Enjoy a Mardi Gras parade Friday evening at 8:30 p.m., 9:30 p.m. or 10:30 p.m. Don't forget your beads.
Kids Day begins at 10 a.m. Saturday. Take the family out for a French breakfast at $5 per child or adult. Ballet lessons, mini-French lessons, face painting and crafts will also be available.
Mass will be celebrated in French at 5:15 p.m. Saturday at the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist, 802 N. Jackson St.
For updated Bastille Days information and an interactive map, download the new Bastille Days mobile app through the iTunes App Store or Google Play.
IF YOU GO
What: Bastille Days
Where: Cathedral Square Park neighborhood downtown
Hours: 11 a.m. to 11:30 p.m. Thursday through Saturday; 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sunday. Saturday breakfast is served at 10 a.m.
Admission: Free
Two HealthLine rapid transit buses pause at a bus stop in Cleveland. The proposed bus rapid transit service between downtown Milwaukee and the Milwaukee Regional Medical Complex in Wauwatosa would be similar to the 7-mile-long HealthLine service. Credit: Joshua Gunter / The Plain Dealer
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Proposed bus rapid transit service between downtown Milwaukee and the Milwaukee Regional Medical Complex in Wauwatosa cleared two hurdles Wednesday with preliminary approvals of City of Milwaukee and Milwaukee County panels.
The County Board's transportation committee and the Common Council's public works committee in separate meetings Wednesday recommended use of a preferred route along sections of Wisconsin Ave. and Blue Mound Road for the new bus service.
Ald. Mark Borkowski was the only official to vote against the proposal at those meetings.
The Common Council will act July 26, and the County Board on July 28, on their respective committee recommendations.
The Wauwatosa Common Council adopted the plan on June 21.
Approval of a preferred route by all three local governments is needed for county transportation officials to apply for a federal transit grant that would pay 80% of the estimated costs, county Department of Transportation Director Brian Dranzik said.
The cost of establishing the service along the nine-mile route is estimated at $45 million, a County Board resolution says. Costs include buying special buses, constructing stations with boarding platforms and ticket kiosks, and creating exclusive lanes for the buses.
All of those ingredients are needed to cut transit times in the corridor, attract more bus riders and reduce vehicle congestion along the route, officials said.
A county consultant estimates 13 minutes of transit time would be shaved off the full length of the route between downtown and the county park-and-ride lot on Swan Blvd., between I-41/U.S. 45 and Highway 100.
The service would cut eight minutes off the transit time between downtown and the regional medical complex, according to the consultant. Those reduced transit times would boost ridership in that corridor by more than 30% a day, the consultant said.
But Milwaukee aldermen on Wednesday pointed to unresolved issues with use of exclusive lanes.
Ald. Robert Bauman said extensive use of dedicated lanes for the bus service would inconvenience other drivers by barring them from entering traffic at intersections where there are no traffic signals.
Ald. Michael Murphy said residents and businesses along the route are concerned about the loss of parking in their neighborhoods if those lanes were to be used for the new service.
County officials at the city committee meeting Wednesday said costs could come in between $42 million and $48 million, depending on how much of the route includes dedicated lanes for the service.
Costs would be raised by creating the exclusive lanes, but greater use of dedicated side or center lanes would reduce transit times and make the service more competitive with vehicle traffic, according to Dranzik.
At an estimated total cost of $45 million, the county's share would be $9 million, according to the County Board resolution.
The county already has set aside $1.2 million for installing traffic signal priority technology for the service, enabling a bus on the route to extend periods of green lights at signals so it can pass through an intersection. The county would borrow $7.8 million in 2017 to cover remaining local costs, the resolution says.
Final negotiations on the extent of exclusive lanes along the route in Milwaukee and Wauwatosa are among the next steps for establishing the service.
The first priority for the county is to meet a federal grant application deadline of Sept. 2. That is key to establishing the service by 2019, officials said.
County transportation officials and regional planners proposed establishing bus rapid transit by 2019 as an option for commuters during reconstruction of I-94 between 16th and 70th streets. State transportation officials are planning to add one lane in each direction on that stretch of freeway and construction could start in 2020 or later, depending on availability of funds.
Bus rapid transit service would reduce congestion by helping to take 6,700 cars a day off the route while improving transit service to jobs and health care, officials said.
Milwaukee County Executive Chris Abele said the new service "will efficiently and affordably connect more people to more jobs while helping create a climate that attracts new businesses and new workers to Milwaukee.
"BRT is a major step toward modernizing our transit system in a responsible and sustainable way," Abele said in a statement.
Among local organizations supporting bus rapid transit service are: the African-American Chamber of Commerce, Disability Rights Wisconsin, ACLU of Wisconsin, and Menomonee Valley Partners.
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The former president and chief executive of Farmers Exchange Bank in Wisconsin is accused of giving himself fraudulent bonuses and using bank funds to purchase car-racing items and two SUVs for his personal use, according to a federal indictment.
Geffrey Sawtelle, 62, of Neshkoro faces multiple charges of bank fraud and embezzlement, U.S. Attorney Gregory A. Haanstad announced Wednesday.
Sawtelle served as president of the bank from 2000 until 2014, and prosecutors allege he defrauded the bank for a decade.
Sawtelle is accused of buying car-racing items, including trailers, a motor home and Corvette, and manipulating the bank's ledger to hide the purchases, according to a news release.
In addition to the fraudulent bonuses, Sawtelle also is accused of creating "straw loans" in the names of other people for his own benefit, prosecutors said in the news release. He faces another two counts related to the bank's purchase of SUVs for his personal use and two counts of embezzling related to the sale of a bank-owned Corvette and the transfer of $20,000 from bank to his personal account.
Twenty-three of the charges carry a maximum prison sentence of 30 years. Two obstruction charges carry a maximum five-year prison sentence. The case was investigated by the Office of the Inspector General for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Office of the Inspector General for the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and the FBI.
Nate Hamilton (right), brother of Dontre Hamilton, has a discussion with MPD Assistant Chief James Harpole about where the group could march. Credit: Mike De Sisti
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Milwaukee Police Chief Ed Flynn warned protesters headed to downtown's Red Arrow Park to rally against the killings of young black men by police Tuesday afternoon that marching without a permit could lead to arrests.
Protesters gathered for a second day in a row, and on Tuesday they remained on the sidewalk, as requested by police at the scene. Before the gathering got under way, protest organizer Nate Hamilton and others had heated exchanges with officers at the scene about the arrest threat.
Coalition for Justice members plan to meet 6 p.m. Thursday at All People's Church - Florist Campus at 5975 N. 40th St. to discuss their next moves.
They'll also meet with Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm Saturday, July 23 to brainstorm solutions to tension between the city's police force and its black community.
"We're trying to set the trend here," said Nate Hamilton, brother of Dontre Hamilton who was fatally shot 14 times by an officer at the park in 2014. Nate and his mother, Maria Hamilton, led the cohort of protesters representing Coalition for Justice.
On Tuesday, protesters spent most of their three hour gathering calling for "cultural competency" within the force and reminding each other they "can't be stopped."
"We are not backing down," Samuel Alford said. "You (the police) don't abuse us openly and then tell us to (rally) quietly."
Milwaukee High School of Languages alumna Savannha Pyatt and senior Shondriona Knight sang an original song about their love for both the police force and their Milwaukee community. A circle of onlooking protesters at Red Arrow Park clapped along.
"At the end of the day, we're still brothers and sisters," Pyatt said. And to Knight, "there's a peaceful way to go about this."
Also Tuesday afternoon, in Wauwatosa, about 20 protesters with Blackout United, a group affiliated with Black Lives Matter, gathered at Mayfair mall to protest the death of Jay Anderson, who was shot in Madison Park by a Wauwatosa police officer.
The protesters, clad in all black and chanting slogans like "Ain't no power like the power of the people cause the power of the people don't stop" and "Hands up, don't shoot," walked throughout the mall from about 4 to 6:30 p.m. One of the protesters said they encountered no issues with security officials.
The protest at the mall follows one Friday. The protesters said they plan to come back to the mall at 4 p.m. on Wednesday for another rally.
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More than two months after an inmate died at the County Jail, Milwaukee police detectives have interviewed an inmate who said he saw the man beg for water days before his death.
Last week the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that the family of Terrill Thomas had been told little about how or why the 38-year-old died in the jail on April 24. They believe jail employees might have cut off Thomas' water supply when he acted erratically instead of getting him mental health treatment.
Until Tuesday morning, Marcus Berry, whose cell was near Thomas', had not been interviewed by police detectives investigating the death. Berry was quoted extensively in the Journal Sentinel story.
Berry told a Journal Sentinel reporter Tuesday he was awakened shortly after 5 a.m. and told he had visitors. Two police detectives interviewed him for two hours beginning around 5:30 a.m.
Berry said he was questioned about whether he had seen Thomas be violent, whether he had seen Thomas eat during his stay and whether it was possible Thomas' water tap was turned back on without Berry's knowledge. Berry said he thought Thomas would have been drinking water if that had happened. He said he hadn't seen Thomas be violent and that Thomas refused to eat Nutraloaf, the food served in the segregation unit where the two were housed.
Milwaukee Police Department spokesman Sgt. Tim Gauerke confirmed detectives interviewed Berry Tuesday morning. He said detectives didn't interview him earlier because he refused to exit his cell or be interviewed by police.
Previously, Gauerke said "pertinent witnesses" had been interviewed.
Berry has said he repeatedly asked to be interviewed after Thomas' death, and that jail employees determined who was interviewed by detectives.
Berry said he asked the detectives why they hadn't questioned him sooner. He said they denied it had anything to do with the Journal Sentinel publishing his account and told him they are now speaking to people who initially refused to talk or were never interviewed.
Thomas was found unresponsive in his jail cell a week after being arrested at Potawatomi casino on April 15. He fired two shots in the casino's High Roller area. Earlier that day, Thomas shot a man in the chest near his parents' house. The man he shot was treated for injuries.
Thomas' parents said he had a history of mental problems and appeared to be suffering from a mental breakdown at the time of the shootings. They said he had been saying strange things and getting very little sleep.
An autopsy is not being released pending the Police Department's investigation.
Berry said the police detectives told him Tuesday they would also be interviewing two people now at Dodge Correctional Institution who were previously in the County Jail. Gauerke said detectives plan to interview any witnesses with information.
One of those people is likely Alexander Cambronero, 30, whose jail cell was down the hall from Thomas' during his weeklong stay. Cambronero was moved to Dodge Correctional Institution five days after Thomas died.
He spoke by phone with a Journal Sentinel reporter last week. Cambronero recalls overhearing a corrections officer say the water tap in Thomas' cell was turned off because he had flooded his previous cell.
"By the sixth day, he was crying out for water," Cambronero said.
As of last week, Cambronero had not yet been interviewed by detectives investigating Thomas' death.
He said he and Berry told employees they had witnessed Thomas' entire stay and therefore had more information than other inmates.
"The police obviously didn't want our information," Cambronero said.
Cambronero is serving 25 years in prison for first-degree sexual assault of a child, his first felony. Berry is awaiting trial for a 2014 incident in which he is accused of shooting and injuring three people following a gambling dispute.
Cambronero said when guards and health care workers did their rounds, many of them seemed to avoid Thomas. He thinks it was because Thomas was naked, yelling strange things and had littered his cell with ripped up toilet paper and Styrofoam from food trays.
Except for one officer who worked the night shift, "every psychologist passed right by him, every corrections officer avoided him," Cambronero said.
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Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett is calling for state officials to close Wisconsin's troubled Northwoods youth prison and reopen the Waukesha County juvenile correctional facility shut down five years ago by Gov. Scott Walker.
Barrett told the Journal Sentinel that Lincoln Hills School for Boys and Copper Lake School for Girls have been a failed "experiment." And he said he wants immediate steps taken to reopen Ethan Allen School for Boys.
"It is time for the state to accelerate its analysis for closing Lincoln Hills and reopening Ethan Allen," Barrett said. "Clearly they undertook an experiment to move all of the juvenile facilities far away from the community that's most affected by juvenile crime, and as has been well-documented, it has not worked well."
But Barrett's push to reopen Ethan Allen was met by immediate skepticism from Waukesha County officials.
News broke in December that Lincoln Hills is under criminal investigation for allegations of inmate abuse, child neglect, destruction of public records and misconduct in office.
The crisis has left local officials scrambling to find safe alternatives for the dozens of young offenders from Milwaukee currently held at Lincoln Hills.
"The question becomes what happens to the young people there. And some of the young people need to be in a secure facility," Barrett said. "And from a logistics standpoint, from a cost standpoint, from a programmatic standpoint, from a staffing standpoint, Ethan Allen provides an opportunity that must be explored very, very quickly."
The state closed Ethan Allen School in 2011, a move that sent all young male offenders to Lincoln Hills. Southern Oaks in Racine County was closed at the same time, with girls to be placed at the Copper Lake facility on the Lincoln Hills grounds. The closures were part of Walker's 2011 budget.
At the time, the Republican governor said the closures were necessary because the state Department of Corrections had been unable to reduce operating expenses at juvenile facilities enough to align with dramatically lower populations.
Local officials representing the area encompassing the Ethan Allen School questioned the logistics of Barrett's proposal.
Waukesha County Executive Paul Farrow, who previously served as a Republican state lawmaker, noted that reopening the school would be costly.
"Ethan Allen is an older building," Farrow said. "Because it's been dormant for five years now, it's going to need some work, so we'd incur some costs."
Peter Wolff, the supervisor on the Waukesha County Board whose district used to host the school, said he was concerned that Barrett has not yet indicated where the school would get the resources to operate.
"It would be nice for Milwaukee to step up and help with the funding," he said.
Walker administration officials in 2014 included the Ethan Allen School site in the Town of Delafield on a list of 10 possible properties to sell and it has not been sold.
Milwaukee County officials on Monday called for the closure of Lincoln Hills as part of a proposed overhaul of the state's juvenile justice system. County officials said their proposal involves a regional plan that is more focused on treatment, education and behavioral health.
Tristan Cook, spokesman for the corrections department, said state officials have received input from a number of stakeholders and reviewed various state-level juvenile justice models from around the country, but no final decisions have been made regarding potential changes.
The mayor said he met with corrections department officials last week, and delivered the message to them that the Lincoln Hills situation was "very bad."
"Now is the time to move," Barrett said. "Now is the time to act."
The criminal probe of Lincoln Hills has been running for 18 months and is now headed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The U.S. Department of Justice is also investigating whether a pattern of civil rights abuses has occurred.
In recent months, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has reported the institution's security director was demoted because he had not reviewed sexual assault reports and a guard was subjected to an investigation after she reported an inmate had rubbed against her breasts and crotch even as officials waited months to criminally investigate the inmate.
Most recently, the Journal Sentinel reported the top psychologist at the facility faced no discipline after admitting he'd said to a co-worker that a teenage inmate with mental health issues had breasts that looked "used and abused" and "worn out" after he saw her run naked down a hall.
Dallas Police Chief David Brown pauses at a prayer vigil Friday following the deaths of five police officers during a Black Live Matter march. Credit: Getty Images
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By now, most Americans know the name of Dallas Police Chief David Brown and quite a few wouldn't mind seeing him play a larger national role. I hear Republicans are looking for a substitute nominee.
Brown is admired not only as a defender of law and order but also as a blunt spokesman for a nation reeling from violence. He minces no words when he says, "We're asking cops to do too much in this country" or, addressing protesters around the country, "We're hiring."
"Get off that protest line and put an application in, and we'll put you in your neighborhood and we will help you resolve some of the problems you're protesting about."
Such tough talk is welcome from a man who has his own share of suffering, including the death of his son, who went on a shooting rampage, killing two people including a police officer, before being killed in a firefight with police. Whatever forces compelled those acts will no doubt become part of a larger story in time.
For now, Brown has focused his energies on comforting the families of the dead and articulating our anxieties amid the chaos and killing.
His has been the calming voice the country needed, made all the more powerful by virtue of his personal experience and the heartfelt sorrow he shares with so many. And, let's be honest, my fellow white folks, because he's black. And another black Dallas voice has added texture and depth to the debate now roiling wherever people gather. Brian Williams, the surgeon who futilely tried to save some of the wounded officers' lives, became emotional as he expressed his own grief, not only for the dead but also the violence.
"I don't understand why people think it's OK to kill police officers," he said in a CNN interview. "I don't understand why black men die in custody and they're forgotten the next day. I don't know why this has to be us against them. ...Something has to be done."
Most people don't understand either. But, as Williams also said, we get the anger and frustration. It is not without reason that many blacks distrust the police. In Ferguson, Missouri, where events led to the Black Lives Matter movement, Department of Justice investigators found department-wide racism.
It is not without reason that blacks have little faith in a criminal justice system that imprisons them at six times the rate of whites, according to a Pew Research Center study. Or that awards blacks nearly 20% longer sentences than whites for similar crimes, according to a 2013 report by the U.S. Sentencing Commission.
Personal experience and observation also play a role. Even Williams, whose demeanor is as nonthreatening as any central-casting physician, acknowledged his own "fear and mild inherent distrust in law enforcement, that goes back to my own personal experiences that I've had in my own personal life."
This isn't to indict all police officers or even many, but there are "those." Writing for Vox, former black cop Redditt Hudson posited that 15% of police will always do the right thing; 15% will abuse their authority at any opportunity; the remaining 70% could go either way depending on whom they're with.
This is why voices such as Brown's and Williams' are so vital, even as I recognize the racial stereotyping implicit in this observation. But the larger point is that while protesters can be marginalized as rabble-rousers, the voices of a respected doctor and a police chief can't be.
Nor can one ignore (black) tenured Harvard economist Roland Fryer, who on Monday released research findings that police officers don't, in fact, use deadly force more often against blacks than whites. Indeed, in Houston, one of the cities studied, police were less likely to shoot when the suspect was black. But Fryer also found that black suspects more often than whites are subjected to nonlethal force, such as being shoved against a wall.
What's clear as facts are added to narratives enhanced by video and live-streaming is that few things can be reduced to black and white. It also seems we have reached a tipping point in what any society can tolerate when it comes to injustice. Finally, the nation's long-overdue conversation about race and racism is on the front burner. Keeping it there is the least we can do for those whose blood was shed to make it so.
Kathleen Parker is a columnist for The Washington Post. Email kathleenparker@washpost.com Twitter: @KathleenParker
Sen. Ron Johnson: The Obama administration has an undeniable pattern of using regulatory overreach and intimidation to further its political aims. Credit: Associated Press
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Last summer, I saw just what was at risk from regulatory overreach when a young Milwaukeean testified at a hearing of the Senate committee that I chair, sharing her story of adversity, compassion and commitment. Justine "Justice" Shorter told how her eyesight faded to legal blindness when she was a student at Milwaukee's Messmer High School and how the school responded.
Messmer is a Catholic school that educates many students in Milwaukee's groundbreaking parental school choice program. It does this on a voucher that delivers a fraction of the funding that the city's public schools get. On its own, Messmer couldn't afford the costly adaptive equipment Justice would need. Donors stepped in, but Justice pointed out the crucial role Messmer played: "That technology, coupled with love, support, attention and time that I received from the staff at Messmer, allowed me to truly thrive and excel."
Justice was testifying at a hearing last July examining the success of Milwaukee's school choice program and how these schools had been affected by a years-long federal investigation. More than 25,000 Milwaukee children use the program to attend schools that their parents pick. As Justice said, those schools should know that the state funding that parents use will complement, not complicate, the education of children with disabilities.
The U.S. Department of Justice was complicating it. By last summer, its probe of the choice program had run four years without finding any wrongdoing.
The Obama administration's hostility to school choice programs is well known. The administration tried defunding a program in Washington. It conducted legal warfare against one in Louisiana. School choice opponents, many of whom are allies of the administration, for decades had tried to kill Milwaukee's choice program. I and many others worried that the Department of Justice's probe was fueled by politics.
We had reason to worry. The Obama administration has an undeniable pattern of using regulatory overreach and intimidation to further its political aims. The president is unilaterally rewriting immigration and labor law by his infamous "phone and pen." Lois Lerner used the power of the IRS to systematically target President Barack Obama's political enemies.
The Department of Justice closed its school choice investigation in December 2015 without ever finding wrongdoing. It did so after the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, which I chair, sent three letters asking about the scope, reasons and findings of the probe. No answers existed to some of my questions, and the department refused to answer the others. It did not come to Milwaukee to explain itself to the people whose schools it endangered.
I have been involved in improving and supporting both public and private schools since before I ran for office. I have heard over and over for six years from Wisconsin families about how they value the power that school choice gives them to find better opportunity for their children.
Those families' stories motivated me to offer an amendment to the bill that appropriates money to the Department of Justice an amendment to close off the discredited legal excuse the department used to drag out its probe. My amendment simply requires the American with Disabilities Act to be followed as written; to be used as intended. The amendment does not restrict the government's current authority to investigate discrimination. It only keeps the federal government from expanding its power beyond what the law provides.
It stops the Obama administration from reopening this front in its attack on school choice. The damage this administration has done to the rule of law and our constitutional protections is so grave that it sometimes seems abstract. But that damage hurts individual Americans, and, in Milwaukee, we can see that it endangered a fundamental need education.
"We all should be able to make the very best choices for ourselves, our families, our future," Justice testified. She's right. My amendment is aimed squarely at protecting Wisconsinites' right to make those choices.
Ron Johnson, a Republican, is a U.S. senator from Wisconsin.
Milwaukee County Executive Chris Abele explains why the county is moving children out of troubled corrections facilities during a community brainstorming session in February on the problems at Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake schools. County officials are now saying its time to close the facility. Credit: Rick Wood
Milwaukee County officials are right: It's time to close Lincoln Hills School for Boys and Copper Lake School for Girls in northern Wisconsin and build a new juvenile justice system in the state. The revelations of alleged abuse and misconduct that have come to light as part of a state and federal investigation point to a system that has failed to protect juveniles from harm and has not given them the tools they need to reintegrate into society.
It's time for Gov. Scott Walker to take responsibility and end this farce.
The FBI is continuing to investigate alleged abuses at the prison, including sexual assault, abuse of prisoners and destruction of public records. And the Journal Sentinel, using the state's open records law, has detailed a number of disturbing revelations, including most recently a failure to review sexual abuse investigations and the appalling behavior of the former top psychologist at the state's troubled juvenile prison, who faced no discipline last year after mocking the breasts of a teenage girl with mental illness who had run down a hallway naked, the Journal Sentinel reported that records show.
There were no serious consequences for Vincent Ramos (he was ordered into counseling) despite complaints from others that he invaded their personal space and used terms such as "babe" and "honey," according to documents released under the state's open records law, the Journal Sentinel reported.
Ramos was fired nine months later, the Journal Sentinel reported, after allegations that he took pictures of psychology interns in his hotel room while he was wearing only his underwear and a shirt. The Journal Sentinel is seeking a copy of that investigation report under the open records law.
That he was fired for allegations of bizarre activity outside the prison while receiving no discipline for his attitudes and comments inside may speak volumes about the atmosphere and culture at the youth facilities.
State officials say that things are improving under new leadership. Yet the new person in charge, Wendy Peterson, was an integral part of the old regime, as deputy to the superintendent, and helped make the decision not to discipline Ramos. Her promotion to the top job even though she had been demoted in a previous state job and Lincoln Hills workers had expressed grave concerns about her does not instill much confidence. It's time to end this farce.
Hector Colon, director of Milwaukee County's Health and Human Services Administration, told members of the city's Public Safety Committee on Monday that Lincoln Hills has other issues: "Lincoln Hills is too far (away from Milwaukee), regardless of the current crisis we have there, which is horrible. It's still too far. From a best practices perspective, from a discharge planning perspective, it's not the right model. Its not the right model today, it wasn't the correct model five years ago, quite frankly."
Five years ago, the state closed Ethan Allen School in Waukesha County, and sent all young male offenders to Lincoln Hills. Southern Oaks in Racine County also was closed, and girls were placed at the Copper Lake facility on the Lincoln Hills grounds.
Colon said the county's proposal involves a regional plan that is more focused on treatment, education and behavioral health, the Journal Sentinel reported. Officials are developing a local residential treatment facility and are working with a provider who has developed successful programs around the country.
State officials say they are considering a number of proposals, including the county's, but we wonder how urgently. The continuing investigation and what's been revealed so far demand dramatic and swift change. Close these "schools" as soon as possible and move to a model that will serve both the taxpayers and juvenile offenders.
Tim Cullen (left), a former Democratic state senator from Janesville, is considered a potential challenger to GOP Gov. Scott Walker (right). Credit: Journal Sentinel files
By of the
Madison Former state senator and possible candidate for governor Tim Cullen said Tuesday that Gov. Scott Walker has botched the response to abuse at the state's juvenile prison.
The Janesville Democrat said the GOP governor should have visited Lincoln Hills School for Boys after news broke in December that the North Woods prison is under criminal investigation for inmate abuse, child neglect, destruction of public records and misconduct in office.
"The governor should have been at Lincoln Hills the day after he found out about the problem," Cullen said. "As far as I'm able to determine, he's never been up there since this has unfolded.
"He is the elected leader of the state and you can't just pick and choose only to be involved in the issues that your think are good for your political career."
Walker spokesman Tom Evenson acknowledged Walker has not visited the facility but said the governor is making sure the Department of Corrections is fixing problems there.
"Governor Walker has directed Jon Litscher, the new DOC secretary, to address the problems at the institution and (Litscher) has visited it multiple times," Evenson said in a statement. "Jon is instituting important reforms and the department is making progress."
Walker in February put Litscher in charge of the department and in recent months has replaced top officials at the agency and Lincoln Hills. The administration has also boosted pay to help resolve a worker shortage, provided additional training and equipped employees with body cameras.
Cullen criticized Walker for closing Ethan Allen School in Wales in 2011 because of a declining juvenile inmate population. Cullen said it didn't make sense to shut the juvenile prison that was close to Milwaukee while leaving open the one in the north since the largest number of inmates come from southeastern Wisconsin.
Cullen served in the Senate from 1975 to 1987 and from 2011 to 2015. He ended his first stint in the Senate early to take a job as Republican Gov. Tommy Thompson's health and social services secretary and in that role was responsible for the state's prisons.
As secretary, he said he frequently visited prisons and talked with wardens, guards and inmates.
"You learn just by going there," he said. "You get a feel for it....You talk to the guards, the guards tell you a lot."
The criminal probe of Lincoln Hills has been running for 18 months and is now headed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The U.S. Department of Justice is also investigating whether a pattern of civil rights abuses has occurred.
In recent months, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has reported the institution's security director was demoted because he had not reviewed sexual assault reports and a guard was subjected to an investigation after she reported an inmate had rubbed against her breasts and crotch even as officials waited months to criminally investigate the inmate.
Most recently, the Journal Sentinel reported the top psychologist at the facility faced no discipline after admitting he'd said to a co-worker that a teenage inmate with mental health issues had breasts that looked "used and abused" and "worn out" after he saw her run naked down a hall. The psychologist, Vincent Ramos, was later fired over a different incident.
"For that man to face no discipline whatsoever for what he acknowledged there is just unbelievable," Cullen said.
Cullen, who published a book on Wisconsin politics in December, is one of several Democrats considering a run for governor in 2018. He said he has been traveling the state in recent months and expects to make up his mind by the end of the year on whether to run.
He briefly considered running in the recall campaign against Walker in 2012 but said he decided against it because he didn't have enough time to raise money for a run in the compressed period of a recall election.
"I would run as a uniter and clearly label this governor as a divider," Cullen said. "I would be a center-left governor and I don't think Wisconsin needs or wants a far-right governor."
By of the
Millions of dollars have been spent on campaign ads, but the race between Democrat Russ Feingold and Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson remains the same.
Johnson has to make up ground to win a second term, according to Wednesday's Marquette University Law School Poll.
Feingold received support from 48% of registered voters while Johnson was backed by 41%. In the June survey, Feingold had a 4-point edge.
Among likely voters, Feingold's advantage narrowed from a month earlier when he held a 9-point advantage. Now, it's down to 5, with 49% backing the former three-term U.S. senator and 44% supporting Johnson.
"Looking at their favorables or their name recognition or the vote margin, there hasn't been a lot of change over the last month as both campaigns started to do a significant amount of advertising," poll director Charles Franklin said.
Franklin noted the race has narrowed since late 2015 and early 2016 when Feingold held double-digit leads.
In a three-way race, Libertarian candidate Phil Anderson drew 8% of registered voters, with Feingold at 45% and Johnson at 38%.
Feingold was viewed favorably by 40% and unfavorably by 32%, with 27% lacking an opinion. Johnson's favorable rating was at 34%, his unfavorable at 35%, with 32% having no opinion.
The Johnson and Feingold campaigns both saw good news in the poll.
"Sen. Feingold had a head start in this race, but everyone has always known this will be tight to the end and that Ron Johnson has the momentum," said Brian Reisinger, a Johnson spokesman. He added that the voters "fired" Feingold once, when Johnson beat him in 2010, and "we believe they'll do so again."
Michael Tyler, a spokesman for Russ Feingold, said, "despite $6 million in ads from Senator Johnson's corporate special interest friends, Russ continues to lead the race. We expect a competitive race, but one where voters choose Russ over Sen. Johnson and his big D.C. special interests."
Among leading politicians, President Barack Obama's job approval among registered voters stood at 51%, with 45% disapproval. House speaker Paul Ryan, a Republican from Janesville, had 48% job approval and 33% disapproval.
Gov. Scott Walker, who a year ago launched a failed bid for the Republican Party presidential nomination, continued to have trouble raising his ratings. Only 38% approved of how he's handling his job, while 58% disapproved.
Walker's job approval stood at about 50% before his re-election to a second term in 2014.
Franklin said that for Walker, the dramatic change in his approval ratings came in 2015 during the budget debate and the presidential race.
"And during almost all of the time since then his approval has been between 37% and 39% and disapproval of between 58% and 59%," Franklin said.
There was a slight tick up for Walker in March when 43% approved of the job he was doing. But that figure has since declined. Walker has said he is considering running for a third term in 2018.
On a policy issue, 59% agreed that marijuana should be legal and regulated like alcohol, while 39% disagreed. In September 2014, questioners were asked if the use of marijuana should be legal or illegal 46% said it should be legal, while 51% said it should not be legal.
The poll of 801 registered voters was conducted Thursday through Sunday. For the full sample of voters, the margin of error was plus or minus 4.1%. Results for the 665 likely voters had a margin of error of plus or minus 4.5%.
A highway sign over 1-43 in Milwaukee reads Drive now catch Pokemon later Credit: Mike De Sisti
By of the
First the concern was texting and driving; now it's Pokemon Go.
As the popular app has skyrocketed in the last few days, authorities are now worried people may be playing at inappropriate times.
So traffic signs on interstates around Wisconsin now read "Drive Now. Catch Pokemon Later."
The idea for the sign came from Gina Paige, the communications manager for the Department of Transportation's traffic operations center, who proposed it Monday. The sign was approved on Wednesday and went up statewide, unless more pressing traffic alerts need to be posted.
"Our youngest audience is our biggest audience for distracted driving," Paige said.
The plan is to keep the message up until Friday.
The Pokemon Go app, developed by Niantic Labs, uses the phone's GPS and camera to allow users to capture Pokemon characters in real locations, such as walking down a sidewalk or worse, driving down the street.
Flooding and heavy rainfall on Tuesday nearly destroyed Saxon Harbor in Iron County. Credit: @ReadyWisconsin/Civil Air Patrol
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Two days after torrential rains flooded eight northern Wisconsin counties and led to a state of emergency, authorities Wednesday identified a second victim killed in the floods.
Delmar Johnson, 84, of Tower Lakes, Ill., died when his vehicle sunk in a flooded ditch in Bayfield County, sheriff's officials said.
A firefighter was able to rescue Johnson's wife, 84, who was a passenger. The firefighter went back in the water and pulled Johnson from the vehicle, but couldn't resuscitate him, officials said.
In Iron County, the sheriff's department said Mitch Koski, 56, of Montreal, Wis., died in the flooding. Koski was Montreal's assistant fire chief and a former mayor in the city of about 800 near Hurley. He was a Montreal Fire Department member for 30 years, said Fire Chief Mark Haeger.
"The guy lived his entire life helping other people," Haeger said. "Everything he did revolved around the community."
He said Koski heard people were in distress in Saxon Harbor and went to help.
In Bayfield County, sheriff's officials said a deputy's vehicle fell into a washed out section of roadway and was carried away by the powerful current. The deputy got out of the vehicle and clung to a tree for more than two hours before he was rescued, authorities said. The deputy is hospitalized in good condition, according to the sheriff's department.
David Stearns steps down as Brewers president of baseball operations
Stearns was hired in 2015 and oversaw the most successful run in franchise history
07/12/2016
Jacksonville State University will host the third annual Autism Conference on July 20, 2016 from 8:30 a.m. - 4 p.m. on the 11th floor of the Houston Cole Library. Alabama State Autism Coordinator Anna B. McConnell, LCSW, MPH, will be the guest speaker. She will share some of the latest developments with establishing Autisum Center across the state as well as address other future plans. There will also be a panel of persons with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and parents of children and young adults with ASD, who will share personal stories and experiences in the afternoon session.
Geared towards educators, this conference is also open to healthcare professionals, social workers, parents and anyone interested in Autism studies. While admission is free, registration is required.
For educators, registration can be found at the registration for professional development sessions here: http://www.jsu.edu/inservice/registration.html If you are not an educator but would like to attend, please contact the Office of Curriculum and Instruction at 256-782-5091 to be added to the list. Registration is done on a first come first served basis, so hurry before it is full!
The tentative schedule for the conference is as follows:
8:30 a.m. - Sign In/Coffee/Pastries
9:00 a.m. - Speaker: Anna McConnell, State Autism Coordinator
10:00 a.m. - Speaker: Janet Kuchinski, Autism Specialist
11:00 a.m. - Lunch (on your own)
12:00 p.m. - Keynote Speaker Mamta Mishra
1:00 p.m. - Dont Limit Me Presentation
2:00 p.m. ASD Panel Discussion/Q&A
3:00 p.m. - Networking Session
For more information, please contact Valerie Wheat at 256-782-5098.
JSU's Center for Autism Studies within the JSU College of Education and Professional Studies provides leadership, research, and advocacy in the area of Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD).
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By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) |
Josh Rogin of the Washington Post caused a stir by noticing something Secretary of State John Kerry said at Aspen last month. Kerry slammed Syrian al-Qaeda (Nusra Front) and Daesh (ISIS, ISIL), then said,
There are a couple of subgroups underneath the two designated Daesh and Jabhat al-Nusra Jaysh al-Islam, Ahrar al-Sham particularly who b rush off and fight with that alongside these other two sometimes to fight the Assad regime . . .
In his opinion piece, Rogin characterizes what Kerry said as a gaffe that yielded to the Russian position that all rebels against the al-Assad regime in Syria are terrorists. Rogin also defended Ahrar al-Sham (Freemen of Syria) as not an al-Qaeda affiliate or in the line of command of al-Qaeda, though he admitted that it is Salafi and wants a radical Muslim dictatorship.
Im not sure why the State Department officials who anonymously blasted Kerry think that Freemen of Syria are good guys just because they arent al-Qaeda.
And the fact is that they are in fact in a formal political and military coalition with al-Qaeda. I.e. they are playing Mulla Omar and the Taliban to al-Qaedas Ayman al-Zawahiri (the 9/11 mastermind to whom the Syrian Nusra Front reports).
I wrote some time ago:
The Free Men are closely allied with the open al-Qaeda affiliate, the Support Front (Jabhat al-Nusra). This is not a mere alliance of convenience. They have formed joint operation offices. They coordinate closely militarily. They have a common rubric in Idlib Province of the Army of Conquest (Jaysh al-Fath). When the two groups of holy warriors and their allies took over the city of Idlib . . . they conquered 18 villages north of that city largely inhabited by members of the esoteric Shiite Druze religion. The Free Men leadership gave control of the Druze villages to al-Qaeda, which promptly began stealing their property and killing them when they objected. Some 23 were massacred Note that the Free Men did not have to give the Druze in Idlib Province to al-Qaeda. They could have administered that territory themselves. That they thought al-Qaeda a suitable overlord for a group viewed by hard line Salafis as unbelievers and idolators shows that they just dont care about human rights. They want a Salafi , Taliban-style Islamic state. We know exactly what happened to Shiite Hazara under the Taliban in Afghanistan. They were massacred. If the Free Men are so moderate, they would renounce their close alliance with al-Qaeda and stop coddling the terrorists, who report directly to Ayman al-Zawahiri, a mastermind of the attacks on New York and Washington in 2001. That this intertwining of the Free Men with al-Qaeda is all right with the Washington Post is just baffling.
Me, Id say a formal political and battlefield ally of al-Qaeda is pretty sketchy and just the sort of sub-group to which Kerry referred. Why would the US want to protect a group that differs in no respect from Afghanistans Taliban and wants to turn Syria into a dictatorial Salafi society? What would happen to Syrian Christians, Druze, Alawis and leftist Kurds under a Freemen government?
As for the Saudi-backed Army of Islam (Jaysh al-Islam), it is less politically tied to al-Qaeda but it is a frequent battlefield ally, just as Kerry said.
Josh Wood at the UAEs The National pointed out last winter that Russia and Syria are not the only ones worried about the Army of Islam and the Freemen of Syria:
While the groups both oppose ISIL, they are allies of Al Qaedas Syrian affiliate Jabhat Al Nusra and their behaviours during the war have been seen as tinged with extremist tendencies. Jaish Al Islams former leader Zahran Alloush spoke of Alawites and Shiites in derogatory terms and at times advocated that they be cleansed from parts of Syria. Last autumn, the group paraded captured Alawite civilians and soldiers through Damascus suburbs in cages, allegedly planning to use them as human shields against government air strikes. The group also does not shy away from gory displays of violence.
Nice.
So what Kerry said was not inaccurate and it did not give away anything to the Russians. But it probably did anger Saudi Arabia and Turkey, who apparently roped the CIA into this business of allying with the Salafi Jihadis.
Really? In 2016, elements of the US government want to repeat the mistakes of the 1980s that in many ways led to the September 11 attacks? You dont build up Salafi Jihadis and help them take over a country. They dont believe in democracy, they hate minorities, and deep down inside they despise and want to harm the United States, even if they are willing to ally with it tactically to get what they want. After they have gotten it, that is when they start dreaming about taking down towers.
And by the way, that Israeli flirtation with al-Qaeda in the Golan Heights should have brought enormous US pressure to cut it out.
It is al-Qaeda for Gods sake.
So, in this instance both Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov are right. A resolution of the Syrian civil war cannot come as long as the strongest groups are terrorists. It is true that the regime is also a state terrorist on a massive level. That is why it has provoked a tremendous revolution against itself. But these anti-democratic radical religious groups just give the alternative to the regime a bad name.
Or at least they would if journalists would do their homework and think straight.
Related video added by Juan Cole:
Newsy: Did Sec. Kerry Mistakenly Call 2 Syrian Rebel Groups Terrorists?
Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - July 13, 2016) - Evrim Resources Corp. (TSXV: EVM) ("Evrim" or the "Company") and exploration partner First Majestic Silver Corp. (TSX: FR) (NYSE: AG) ("First Majestic") are pleased to announce a 2,000 metre drill program has been planned at the Company's Ermitano gold-silver property in Sonora, Mexico. The program follows up exploration completed by First Majestic in 2015, where drilling tested new targets at the Ermitano East and Veta Valentina areas.
Exploration Highlights
A US$640,000 exploration program including six drill holes is planned in the Ermitano West area, located approximately three kilometres southeast of First Majestic's Santa Elena silver and gold mine
The principal Ermitano West vein shows thickness ranging from 2.0 metres to 3.5 metres wide, outcrops over more than 500 metres of strike, and has never been drilled
Twenty of 912 rock samples taken at Ermitano West exceed 1.0 gram per tonne ("g/t") gold to a maximum of 6.63 g/t gold
Drilling at Ermitano East in 2015 intersected anomalous gold throughout two of three holes
Three of seven holes drilled at Veta Valentina in 2015 intersected anomalous gold and base metal values
Figure 1 - Location map of Ermitano project and Santa Elena mine
To view an enhanced version of Figure 1, please visit: [http://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/2604/21562_a1468352349515_85.jpg] Ermitano East
Stewart Harris, Evrim's Vice President of Technical Services commented, "The drilling program at the Ermitano West target represents an excellent opportunity to add to the mineral endowment of a 10 kilometre by 15 kilometre trend, which includes Ermitano East, Veta Valentina, Durazno area, and the Santa Elena Mine. Vein structures at Ermitano West exhibit similar structural characteristics to the east-striking principal veins at Santa Elena and vein textures suggest a shallow level of exposure in this low to intermediate sulphidation epithermal system. The shallow level of exposure suggests that the most prospective part of the epithermal gold-silver system has been preserved beneath this untested target."The Ermitano West zone (see Figure 1) consists of a network of low to intermediate sulphidation east-west trending epithermal veins and stockwork. The veining covers an area of 1,200 metres long and 600 metres wide with 912 rock samples averaging 0.12 g/t gold over widths ranging from 0.1 metres to 3.5 metres and averaging 0.7 metres. The principal east-west striking vein is up to 3.5 metres wide and with a hanging wall of sub-parallel east-west striking veins and north-south striking stockwork veining over 200 metres wide. Vein textures, including banded quartz, quartz replacing bladed calcite, and an elevation 200 metres to 300 metres higher than the pit at Santa Elena suggest a shallower level of exposure in the epithermal environment compared to Santa Elena.First Majestic plans to begin the 2,000 metre drill program at Ermitano West in August. The drilling is planned to test the principal quartz vein and sub-parallel veins and stockworks.
Ermitano East is an east-west trending zone of stockwork quartz veining and galena-bearing silver quartz veining with indications of two different levels of epithermal exposure (deep and shallow). Three holes totaling 792 metres were drilled at Ermitano East with one hole targeting a gold-mineralized structure and the remaining two holes targeting silver-lead-zinc mineralization. One hole from each target area returned anomalous gold values from throughout the hole. An additional structure and significant portions of these structures have yet to be tested by drilling.
Veta Valentina
Veta Valentina hosts an east-west silicified limestone and a north-trending stockwork zone of dense calcite and chalcedonic quartz veining typical of low sulphidation epithermal systems. Seven holes totaling 1089 metres were drilled at Veta Valentina and three of these holes intersected anomalous gold, silver, lead and zinc values.
All figures are available in the News Release posted on the Company web page www.evrimresources.com.
Option Agreement
First Majestic can earn a 100% interest in the Ermitano Property by paying US$75,000 upon signing the Agreement and US$50,000 each anniversary thereafter, completing a minimum of US$500,000 in exploration expenditures in the first year, and delivering a Production Notice specifying mine and construction plans with accompanying permits. Upon vesting, First Majestic will no longer be required to make the annual payments and Evrim will retain a 2% Net Smelter Royalty ("NSR"). To date, over $3.1 million has been spent on the Ermitano property by First Majestic and previous partner SilverCrest Mines.
Qualified Person Statement
Evrim's disclosure of technical or scientific information in this press release has been reviewed and approved by Stewart Harris, P.Geo. Vice President, Technical Services for the Company. Mr. Harris serves as a Qualified Person under the definition of National Instrument 43-101.
About Evrim Resources
Evrim Resources is a mineral exploration company whose goal is to participate in significant exploration discoveries supported by a sustainable business model. The Company is well financed, has a diverse range of quality projects and a database in Mexico and portions of southwestern United States. The existing projects, and generation of quality exploration targets and ideas, are advanced through option and joint venture agreements with industry partners to create shareholder value. Evrim's business plan also includes royalty creation utilizing the Company's exploration expertise and existing projects.
On Behalf of the Board
EVRIM RESOURCES CORP.
Paddy Nicol
President & CEO
To find out more about Evrim Resources Corp., please contact Paddy Nicol, President or Charles Funk, VP New Opportunities and Exploration at 604-248-8648, or visit www.evrimresources.com.
Forward Looking Information
This news release includes certain statements that may be deemed "forward looking statements". All statements in this news release, other than statements of historical facts, that address events or developments that Evrim Resources Corp. (the "Company") expects to occur, are forward looking statements. Forward looking statements are statements that are not historical facts and are generally, but not always, identified by the words "expects", "plans", "anticipates", "believes", "intends", "estimates", "projects", "potential" and similar expressions, or that events or conditions "will", "would", "may", "could" or "should" occur.
Although the Company believes the expectations expressed in such forward looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, such statements are not guarantees of future performance and actual results may differ materially from those in the forward looking statements. Factors that could cause the actual results to differ materially from those in forward looking statements include market prices, exploitation and exploration successes, and continued availability of capital and financing, and general economic, market or business conditions. Investors are cautioned that any such statements are not guarantees of future performance and actual results or developments may differ materially from those projected in the forward looking statements. Forward looking statements are based on the beliefs, estimates and opinions of the Company's management on the date the statements are made. Except as required by securities laws, the Company undertakes no obligation to update these forward looking statements in the event that management's beliefs, estimates or opinions, or other factors, should change.
Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.
The Turkish government is blocking access for independent investigations, Human Rights Watch (HRW) [advocate website] said in a report [text] released Monday. HRW claims that the Turkish government is abusing civilians on a massive scale and attempting to cover it up. These alleged abuses include unlawful killings of civilians, mass forced civilian displacement, and widespread unlawful destruction of property. HRW reviewed lists of the dead compiled in numerous attacks which show as many as 66 residents, including 11 children, killed by gunfire or mortal explosions during Turkish government [BBC profile] security operations. Witness accounts claim that Turkish forces opened fire on civilians on the streets carrying white flags. HRW also documented widespread property destruction during many of the military operations. The Turkish government has not responded to the public statement [press release] from the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) [official website] or its request for permission for a UN team to conduct an investigation within the region.
Turkey and its treatment of human rights are cause for concern due to the growing partnership with the EU caused by the refugee crisis. EU leaders agreed [JURIST report] to a deal with Turkey in March to stem migrant flows, particularly of Syrian refugees, to Europe in return for financial and political incentive to Ankara. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan stated [JURIST report] that EU states are violating international law by breaking their migrant pact with Turkey by not allowing the country to extradite suspected terrorists. In April the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, Nils Muiznieks, called on Turkey to focus on human rights [JURIST report] in the wake of their anti-terrorism security measures. Also in April Amnesty International reported [JURIST report] that Turkey has been forcibly returning up to 100 refugees to Syria per day and expressed concern for the possible future of transported migrants.
[JURIST] Israeli lawmakers on Monday passed a controversial law [press release] increasing regulation on Israeli human rights organizations. The law requires that organizations receiving more than 50 percent of their funding from foreign governments or political organizations disclose that they rely on such funding in all communication with public officials and on television, newspapers, billboards and online. Some, such as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu [BBC profile], have lauded the law as a measure to increase transparency between organizations and the public, but others believe it is just an attempt to target liberal organizations that disagree with the government. Many critics have denounced the bill claiming that it unfairly targets leftists that support Palestinian rights.
The increase in violence in the ongoing Israel-Palestinian conflict [HRW backgrounder] has created a contentious human rights situation. The UN Committee Against Torture (CAT), a body of independent experts, released [JURIST report] closing remarks to its fifty-seventh session in May, expressing concern about the use of excessive force by Israeli forces against Palestinians. An Israeli court in April convicted [JURIST report] Yosef Haim for the 2014 murder of a Palestinian teenager that led to a 50-day war in Gaza. UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories Makarim Wibisono resigned [JURIST report] from his position in January, saying that Israel has not granted him access to the Occupied Palestinian Territory after repeated requests.
Tesco is following in the footsteps of its UK high street rivals with the announcement that it is to stop selling eggs from caged hens by 2025.
Waitrose only sells free range and organic eggs, while Sainsburys stopped selling whole caged eggs in 2009 and stopped using them as an ingredient in 2012. Aldi made the same pledge as Tesco, to cut out caged eggs by 2025 earlier this year.
The UKs largest retailer said it came to the decision after speaking with industry experts, suppliers and other stakeholders.
This will have a significant impact on the UKs egg production industry because Tesco sells 1.4vb eggs a year, of which nearly half (43%) are currently sourced from caged hens.
Campaign group Compassion in World Farming congratulated Tesco on the bold commitment shown in the decision, which it said represented a leadership position over the remaining UK retailers that sell caged eggs.
Caged hens are the cheapest way of producing eggs, but the method is considered cruel by animal welfare campaigners. The most basic form, barren battery cages were banned across Europe in 2012, but enriched cages with more facilities were still allowed. Now Tesco will move to only using barn hens for its non free-range eggs.
Our decision on caged hens is one of a number of Tesco initiatives designed to ensure sustainable sourcing, and improve animal welfare, said Tesco commercial director for fresh food Matt Simister.
We carried out an extensive and collaborative review with our suppliers and key industry experts to help us work through how best we can move to 100% cage-free eggs. This will ensure we give our supplier partners the certainty they require, to make the significant and necessary investments needed for the new farming systems.
Working with supplier partners, Tesco will make the switch to 100% cage-free eggs, moving to alternative sourcing methods, such as barns, free range and organic.
We have already started investigating new methods of egg production, and the commitment from Tesco to move away from enriched colony production in a manageable timeframe gives us the confidence and ability to invest for the long term, said Veli Moluluo, managing director of Tescos largest egg suppliers Noble Foods.
The move is the latest initiative to ensure Tesco sources products in a sustainable way. Tesco recently launched its Fair For Farmers Guarantee for fresh milk which helps support British dairy farmers.
Tesco has also introduced guaranteed high value contracts for British potato growers, and sustainable farming programmes for lamb farmers and producers of cheese.
Earlier this year the supermarket also launched new fresh produce ranges, including a number of Farm Brands and its Perfectly Imperfect range, which allows Tesco to take more fresh produce from British growers up to 95% of their crop.
The high street giant has also pledged to source more of its seafood in a sustainable way, in partnership with the Marine Stewardship Council.
KEARNEY After five months, Kearney police have arrested two suspected gang members in connection with vandalism at Harmon Park.
Brandon Egge, 19, and a 16-year-old boy, both of Kearney, are accused of spray-painting several structures at Harmon Park and Harmon Pool Aug. 17.
The teens were cited in January, and Kearney Police Department officers believe they are members of gang known as the Goon Squad.
Egge is charged in Buffalo County Court with criminal mischief between $200 and $500, applying graffiti first offense, and second-degree trespassing, all misdemeanors.
The 16-year-old boy is charged in Buffalo County Juvenile Court with contributing to the delinquency of a child, three counts of intentional criminal mischief between $200 and $500, minor in possession of alcohol, tobacco use by a minor and possession of drug paraphernalia.
Egge has denied the allegations and his case is set for trial in May. The boy is scheduled for an admit/deny hearing later this month.
Court records outline the case against the teens:
On Aug. 17, the lighthouse, park benches, gazebo benches and sidewalks at Harmon Park and the diving boards at Harmon Pool were vandalized with black, orange and red spray paint. Swastikas were painted on sidewalks throughout the park.
The vandalism is believed to be gang-related because several of the writings displayed the East Side Locos gang signs.
A witness told police he knew who committed the vandalism. Egge and the boy were later interviewed and arrested.
The East Side Locos are a branch of the Surenos gang, which originated in Mexico, while the Goon Squad is a documented gang from the Chicago area, although there is no known association with the Kearney Goon Squad.
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LINCOLN (AP) Small Nebraska towns with an abundance of jobs need more flexibility to attract new workers and retain residents who are natives of the state, said a lawmaker who presented a bill Tuesday that would let cities offer "relocation incentives."
Sen. Kate Sullivan of rural Cedar Rapids said the measure would allow the cities to create the incentive programs at their own expense to draw plumbers, electricians, nurses, computer professionals and other high-demand workers. Communities would use revenue from a voter-approved, local option sales tax.
Sixty cities have approved the tax for economic development projects. Current law allows local governments to use their economic development dollars for business loan programs, job training grants and salaries for economic development staff.
Under Sullivan's bill, cities would be able to define what they count as "relocation incentives," but local officials would have to secure voter approval again to use the money for that purpose. Sullivan said the measure, loosely inspired by a state incentive program in Kansas, is intentionally vague to give cities as much leeway as possible.
"I think we'd better give them the flexibility to craft their own program and spend their own dollars," said Sullivan, who presented the bill to the Legislature's Urban Affairs Committee.
Lawmakers have considered another incentive program on a statewide scale, but rejected it in committee because of the estimated $2.3 million price tag. Kansas offers tax breaks and college loan payments to people who move to one of 50 rural counties. Sullivan said her bill would cost Nebraska nothing, because cities are only allowed to use their own sales tax revenue that voters have approved.
Caleb Pollard, executive director of the Valley County Economic Development Board in Ord, told lawmakers that the 200-plus businesses he represents have shown an interest in the bill. Pollard said businesses in his area face chronic workforce shortages, with 2.2 percent unemployment and an estimated 85 percent loss of area high school students to colleges in other parts of the state.
"We have a real opportunity to bring those kids back," Pollard said.
K.C. Belitz, president of the Columbus Area Chamber of Commerce, said businesses in his region have struggled to find skilled workers despite high unemployment nationally. He pointed to a trip his group made to northern Michigan to recruit welders, machinists and other workers. After hearing the sales pitch, Belitz said, the potential workers asked: "How am I going to get there?"
"That has been a challenge we've struggled with as a community for many years," Belitz said. "... Locally, we have put some of our resources into helping people move from Michigan to Columbus. But it just isn't enough."
Some lawmakers questioned whether the wording of Sullivan's bill would give cities too much authority to use the money as they please, with few restrictions.
"Relocation incentives, to me, could mean anything," said Sen. John Murante, of Gretna. "It could mean taking a CEO to Disneyland."
Lynn Rex, executive director of the League of Nebraska Municipalities, said cities would still have to outline to voters how they planned to use the money.
"You're not going to take a set of incentives ... to take CEOs on expensive trips," Rex said. "How many citizens are going to approve that?"
The bill is LB 295.
Nebraska lawmakers to hear bill on sheriff's fees
LINCOLN (AP) Nebraska lawmakers are set to hear a bill that would let counties establish the fees charged by local sheriffs.
Sheriffs are asking lawmakers for legislation that would give county boards the power to set those fees after holding a public hearing. The Legislature's Government, Military and Veterans Affairs Committee will consider the bill on Wednesday.
The bill would apply to a host of fees for court-ordered services, such as reclaiming property for a bank or evicting tenants who haven't paid their rent. Some sheriffs have complained that the current fees don't cover the expense of delivering services, which forces counties to make up the difference with general-fund tax dollars.
The bill is sponsored by Sen. Ken Schilz, of Ogallala.
The bill is LB65.
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When Arnold Schwarzenegger was governor, he decided that you and I dont need to have physicians in charge of our anesthesia care, and he signed a letter exempting California from that federal requirement. Luckily most California hospitals didnt agree, and they ignored his decision.
When he needed open-heart surgery to replace a failing heart valve, though, Governor Schwarzenegger saw things differently. He chose Steven Haddy, MD, the chief of cardiovascular anesthesiology at Keck Medicine of USC, to administer his anesthesia.
Now some people in the federal government have decided that veterans in VA hospitals all across the U.S. should not have the same right the governor had: To choose to have a physician in charge of their anesthesia care.
Thats right. The VA Office of Nursing Services has proposed a new policy to expand the role of advanced practice nurses, including nurse anesthetists, in the VA system. This new policy in the Nursing Handbook would make it mandatory for these nurses to practice independently. Physician anesthesiologists wouldnt be needed at all, according to this proposal, even in the most complicated cases such as open-heart surgery.
If this misguided policy goes into effect, the standard of care in VA hospitals will be very different from the standard of care other patients can expect. In all 100 of the top hospitals ranked by US News & World Report, physician anesthesiologists lead anesthesia care, most often in a team model with residents and/or nurses.
The new policy isnt a done deal yet. The proposal is open for comment in the Federal Register until July 25. Already thousands of veterans, their families, and many other concerned citizens have visited the website www.safeVAcare.org and submitted strongly worded comments in opposition. I urge you to join them.
Physician-led care teams have an outstanding record of safety, and they have served veterans proudly in VA hospitals for many years. Many university medical centers have affiliations with their local VA hospitals, where their faculty physicians deliver clinical care and conduct research. UCLA, for example, sends anesthesiologists to the VA hospital in Los Angeles, so that our veterans get the same high-quality care as wealthy patients from the enclaves of Brentwood.
Many of our veterans arent in good health. They suffer from a host of service-related injuries, and they have high rates of chronic medical disease. Some have been among the most challenging patients Ive ever anesthetized. Their care required all the knowledge I was able to gain in four years of medical school, four years of residency training in anesthesiology, and countless hours of continuing medical education.
No VA shortage of anesthesia care
Its clear, of course, why the VA is proposing the change in the Nursing Handbook. The reason is the scandal over long waiting times for primary care. Proponents argue that giving nurses independent practice will expand access to care for veterans.
But theres no shortage of physician anesthesiologists or nurse anesthetists within the VA system. The shortages exist in primary care. A solution that might help solve the primary care problem shouldnt be extended to the complex, high-tech, operating room setting, where a bad decision may mean the difference between life and death.
The VAs own internal assessment has identified shortages in 12 medical specialties, but anesthesiology isnt one of them. The VAs own quality research questioned whether a nurse-only model of care would really be safe for complex surgeries, but this question was ignored. The proposed rule in the Federal Register lists as a contact Dr. Penny Kaye Jensen, who in fact is not a physician but an advanced practice nurse who chooses not to list her nursing degrees after her name. The lack of transparency in the proposal process is disturbing.
In 46 states and the District of Columbia, state law requires physician supervision, collaboration, direction, consultation, agreement, accountability, or direction of anesthesia care. The proposed change to the VA Nursing Handbook would apply nationally and would override all those state laws, which were put in place to protect patients.
In Congress, many senators and representatives on both sides of the aisle recognize the need to continue physician-led anesthesia care for veterans. Representatives Julia Brownley of Californias 26th District and Dan Benishek, MD, of Michigans 1st District, are strong advocates for veterans health. They have co-authored a letter (signed by many in Congress) to VA Secretary Robert McDonald, urging him not to allow the destruction of the physician-led care team model as it currently exists within the VA system.
Governor Schwarzeneggers heart surgery is a matter of public record. He has spoken about it openly on television, and he graciously invited the whole operating room team to his next movie premiere. I was lucky enough to go to the premiere too, because his anesthesiologist, Dr. Haddy, happens to be my husband.
But I didnt set out to write this column on behalf of my husband. Im writing on behalf of my father, who is now 93, landed on the beach at Normandy on D-Day, and miraculously survived the rest of the war as a sniper. And Im writing on behalf of all the men and women who have served our country, and who deserve the best possible anesthesia care from physicians and nurses who want to work together to take care of them. If we dont defeat the proposed change in the VA Nursing Handbook, they all lose.
A version of this column ran in the newspapers of the Southern California News Group on July 2.
Karen S. Sibert is an anesthesiologist who blogs at A Penned Point.
Image credit: Shutterstock.com
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In the wake of the horrific Orlando shootings, there has been renewed attention given to the U.S. Food and Drug Administrations (FDA) so-called ban on blood donations from gay men. A congressman called the ban discriminatory, and demanded its repeal a call joined by the American Medical Student Association.
I can understand how many gay men feel. I often donated blood at various American Red Cross locations. Either they loved my blood or have way too many volunteers, because I was seemingly besieged with calls every eight weeks (the minimum waiting time between blood donations). Then in February of this year, I was diagnosed with DLBCL a form of lymphoma.
During my treatment, the Red Cross called, and I told them I couldnt donate this time because I was undergoing chemotherapy for lymphoma, and to call me back in a few months. The worker apologized, and told me he would put me on the permanent deferral list. It was then I realized: My diagnosis of a blood-borne cancer meant I couldnt donate for life. Despite a lack of definitive scientific evidence, the unknowns were judged to be too great. After all, what if lymphoma is found to be caused by a virus, like many liver failures were later found to be caused by hepatitis C?
Being on the deferred list wasnt easy to bear; I feel like I am permanently marked, damaged goods. But nevertheless, despite my empathy for what many gay men may feel about the policy, the FDAs ban on them donating blood is not discriminatory.
To start with, it should be noted that no one, gay men and me included, are or were banned from donating blood. Rather, individuals are deferred either for a period of time or indefinitely. Furthermore, the FDA has never said anything about sexual orientation the term they used described only the behavior: men who have sex with men (MSM). These distinctions are important: The verbiage simply meant that at that time, blood from those individuals was not accepted, but may be in the future. And people of a certain sexual orientation were never targeted: Only people who engaged in a behavior that was considered high risk.
Until a few years ago, MSMs were deferred indefinitely. In 2015, that policy was re-evaluated by the FDA, and changed to a deferment for one year after the last episode of intercourse. This new policy matches several other deferments: Women who have sex with a man who they know or believe has had sex with other men are deferred for one year. Tattoo recipients are deferred for one year, but are not deferred at all if they received their tattoo at a registered tattoo parlor. And even individuals with known gonorrhea and syphilis infections are also deferred only for one year: Clearly demonstrating that the deferments were for medical reasons, not social judgments.
Why is it that women who have sex with MSMs are deferred for one year, while MSMs themselves were previously lifetime banned? Because of the biology of HIV. The virus is inherently more transmissible by anal sex than by vaginal sex by a factor of 10. In other words, a man having receptive anal intercourse with an HIV+ man is ten times as likely to be infected as a women who has vaginal intercourse with an HIV+ man. In fact, the act of receptive anal sex is approximately twice as likely to infect the recipient as sharing a needle for IV drug use! This is why HIV is still overwhelmingly a disease of gay men. MSMs make up only ~2 percent of the population, but account for 68 percent of the approximately 50,000 new cases of HIV every year.
One common response is to point to blood testing: the FDA mandates that all blood in the United States be subject to an extensive series of tests for blood borne disease including HIV. Wont this catch the disease? But the reality is that no test is perfect. A certain percentage of individuals who are HIV positive will be missed by every test. Right now, despite all the testing, the risk of HIV being transmitted through the blood is estimated to be 1 in 1 million to 1 in 1.5 million. This seems to not be a big deal, until one considers that 21 million blood products are transfused every year. Of note, this is an estimated risk: The true rate is impossible to know, since the US doesnt routinely test all recipients of blood products for HIV 6 months after the event. Some believe the rate is much lower: The last documented case of transmission of HIV through blood in the U.S. was in 2008.
The scientific reason for this rate of transmission is the HIV window period: the time a person who was just infected with the disease is still capable of transmitting it, but will not show up on any tests. This period could be months long in the 1980s: The tests that were being used were that insensitive. The modern tests that are now in place are capable of picking up HIV only 11 days after infection; hence why the policy of deferring MSMs was relaxed in 2015. Why is the deferral for a year when the window period is 11 days? The innate conservatism of medicine: No one wants to take an action that will hurt patients, and if two weeks is the safe margin, a year is safer still.
So, faced with this latent period where individuals can donate blood which is tainted, what is the only way to reduce the risk of transmission? It is to reduce the probability that anyone who does donate has HIV: Which means the deferral list.
One might object: What about gay men in stable relationships who have both tested negative in the past? What about gay men who always use condoms? Sadly, condoms can fail. 18 percent of couples who use only condoms for contraception will have a pregnancy; hence why most OB/GYNs and public health specialists recommend IUDs. And spouses can cheat. While the individual donating blood may know himself to be perfectly monogamous, ultimately, how sure can he be that his partner is?
These may seem to be objections to heterosexual individuals donating as well. But, remember: The risk of contracting the disease is ten times higher for gay men, and that doesnt take into account the far greater prevalence of HIV in the gay community. And there are other considerations: Per the FiveThirtyEight article above, when the Canadians looked at better stratifying heterosexual donations based on behaviors and risk, they found that the drop in blood donations would simply be far too great.
Ultimately, I do not believe the FDA is made up of a bunch of villainous bigots bent on denying gay men permission to donate blood for no reason other than to be evil. The FDAs doctors and scientists are the heirs to the proud legacy of Dr. Francis Oldham Kelsey, who singlehandedly saved thousands of American children from horrific birth defects by facing down a pharmaceutical giant and prevented the sale of thalidomide. They make the decisions they make to keep patients safe and indeed, in many ways, they are more liberal than other western societies: Canada has a deferral policy for MSMs of 5 years from the last episode of intercourse. Great Britain, France, and Australia all match the U.S. policy of a 1-year deferment.
The FDAs research recently concluded that an additional 68 people would be exposed to HIV if the current behavior-based deferrals were dropped. Without significant evidence establishing the number of people who will die from lack of blood if any, and that this lack of blood can be significantly alleviated by the addition of at most approximately 2 percent of the population to the potential donor pool, I dont think its appropriate to call the FDAs deferral policy discriminatory at this time. While I understand more than most how it feels to be told that your donations will not be accepted, pending further research I fully support the FDAs position at this time.
Vamsi Aribindi is a surgery resident who blogs at the Medical Intellectual.
Image credit: Shutterstock.com
There is a warning for anyone planning on going into Nuevo Laredo.
Rivaling cartel members are feuding across the border in Mexico.
According to Sheriff Martin Cuellar, this is due to a split in the Zeta Cartel between the older group and the group led by a new leader.
In a banner left by one of the factions, it warns people to avoid staying out late and going to nightclubs.
"When there's infighting like this, there's a lot of bullets flying around," Cuellar said. "We don't suggest or recommend that people go across. If you have to, go during the day."
The banner warns the public not to be at nightclubs, because they will be targeted. It also warned people not to be out on the streets of Nuevo Laredo or Ciudad Victoria past midnight.
The Laredo Parks and Leisure Department is hosting Water Safety Training for the community, in order to prevent fatal accidents.
The department has partnered with the Laredo Fire Department, with support from City Council and management, to put together these classes for the community.
These classes hope to give the opportunity to share water safety knowledge and tips so people can apply them and share them with others.
We spoke with the City of Laredo Fire Department as to why this class is so important.
"That's what this course is about, knowing what to do, how to act, and how to intervene as quickly as possible without putting oneself in danger," says Laredo Fire Department District Chief Eloy Vega. "And how to help with the situation. And we can do that by prevention."
These classes are free of charge, and offered to people of all ages.
Young people from Kilkenny were among those celebrated at the recent Foroige Youth Citizenship Awards, in partnership with Aldi, in the Citywest Hotel and Conference Centre in Dublin.
The awards recognised the work of young people in the community over the past year, with over 2,000 young people in attendance as well as hundreds of volunteers. Some 160 community enhancement projects were exhibited at the event with all 26 counties represented.
The event was opened by Minister for Children and Youth Affairs Katherine Zappone TD, , and featured talks from disability rights campaigner Joanne O Riordan, and social media expert Darragh Doyle.
There were projects exhibited from two local Foroige clubs Paulstown and Cuffesgrange.
Cuffesgrange Foroige Club discussed at their club meeting how modern technology doesnt always provide necessary information.
They wanted everyone in their community to know about community groups and emergency contact numbers for their area so they designed and printed a sheet and distributed the sheets around the community.
Paulstown Foroige Club, Kilkenny took a walkabout their village before deciding on their Youth Citizenship project.
They felt that the derelict post office needed some attention and that they would paint a mural on it. After receiving permission from the owner they power washed the building, put timbers up, painted the timbers and then painted a mural with the help of a local artist.
CEO of Foroige Sean Campbell said community wellbeing was the driving force behind the projects.
It is so inspiring to see what young people can achieve when they work together and put their minds to something, he said.
A delegation of the Fiscal Affairs Department of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has been carrying out an independent assessment of the reform of the State Fiscal Service of Ukraine since the start of this week, the Ukrainian Finance Ministry's press service reported.
"We have presented our plan of reform of the Fiscal Service, our priorities and discussed its implementation with the IMF. It's time to translate this process into concrete actions and results, which businesses will feel," the ministry's press service quoted Finance Minister Oleksandr Danyliuk as saying at a meeting with the IMF mission.
According to the ministry, the sides discussed the implementation of key performance indicators (KPI) which were developed by the Finance Ministry and which reflect the expectations of the business from the structural changes in the Fiscal Service. They discussed removing unnecessary functions and dismissal of inefficient staff of the service, primarily support staff in regions, and using the released funds to increase salaries.
The ministry said that they are developing additional tools to protect the rights of taxpayers in order to reduce the number of irregularities within the Fiscal Service.
As reported, the State Fiscal Service is a leader among government agencies in terms of the number of complaints from businesses. According to the business ombudsman, about 45% of all complaints were directed against the Fiscal Service.
Kodaline flew in from the UK to pay their respects at the funeral of fan Ciara Lawlor who died suddenly having fallen ill at a concert of the band in Dublin at the weekend.
And the chart toppers performed their hit song 'High Hopes' to the heart-broken attendance at St John's Church in Kilkenny city as a tribute to Ciara.
Mourners were led by Ciara's parents John and Eimear and her brothers Jack and Barry.
Also, Loreto Secondary school principal Colm Keher and the teaching staff of her secondary school.
A number of Leaving cCert students from other schools who were out of the country on an organised holiday returned home early to pay their respects, including Ciara's boyfriend.
Many local families cut short their holidays to support the Lawlor family.
In his Homily Fr Frank Purcell said Ciara was a beautiful girl inside and out.
There wasn't a dry eye in the church when her younger brother Barry recited a poem in honour of h is sister.
Traffic came to a standstill in the vicinity of the funeral service which was one of the largest funerals ever held in St John's.
Thousands of morners attended and there was a guard of honour from Loreto Secondary School, O'Loughlin Gaels GAA Club and Kilkenny City Harriers.
Ciara, who was to sit her Leaivng Cert next year, was also a qualified lifeguard.
In a statement Kodaline said they were shocked and devastated at the death of Ciara.
Think back to four years ago, when media outlets and economic pundits were doing their best Henny Penny impersonations.
The economic sky was falling. Whether Barack Obama or Mitt Romney was to be elected president, the United States would be unable to pay its bills. The stock market would drop to perilous levels, perhaps as much as 30%.
That level of drama went on for months.
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Now here we are four years later, and the drama is on par with where it was then, but this time, we started hearing it even earlier.
My advice: Don't buy into it. In fact, I want to focus on taking the drama down a notch.
Back in 2012, if we all had a dollar for every time we heard the term "fiscal cliff," we'd each have an additional $10,000 in our savings accounts. It was brought up every day on every channel. Before then, the term had never been used.
For those who don't remember, at the time, President Obama and Congress needed to reach a deal on $500 billion in tax increases and across-the-board spending cuts. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke coined the term "fiscal cliff" to warn of the dangerous drop-off the nation faced if no action was taken.
We worried about whether, as a country, we would be able to pay our bills. On a scale of one to 10, our drama level reached a 12.
No one in the media ever discussed, to any great degree, a scenario that would pave the way for the positive year the market actually experienced in 2013.
Remember that as we continue through this election cycle. No matter how dire the situation may seem, no one has a crystal ball to truly predict how the market may or may not perform. You're better off disregarding all the gloom and doom and focusing on your own financial situation.
In any year, regardless of whether there is an election, the key thing is to develop a financial strategy that allows for the ebbs and flows that occur in the market at any given time.
Whether you use a professional or do it yourself, create a financial plan that allows for some clarity on how much money you are really willing to lose and how much money you are potentially willing to lose, even if it's just paper losses. The last thing you want to do is create an investment plan with too much risk, causing you to hit your "uncle point" and potentially make decisions that could have a severe impact on your long-term plan.
If you do work with a financial professional, be sure that person communicates with you effectively during stressful and uncertain times so you're not making rash and drama-filled decisions.
Isaac Wright, president of Financial Dynamics & Associates, is a financial advisor and licensed insurance professional who has helped retirees for more than 15 years. He also is author of Navigate Your Way to a Secure Retirement.
Investment Advisory Services offered through Global Financial Private Capital, LLC, an SEC Registered Investment Advisor.
Yvette Hammett contributed to this article.
(Kitco News) - The gold market still has room to move higher even if it is overheating and probably due for a small correction, this according to one mining executive.
In an interview with Kitco News, Ian Ball, chief executive officer at Abitibi Royalties (TSX.V: RZZ), said that with so much global market uncertainty, gold should continue to perform well as a safe-haven asset. He added that he expects gold to outperform against other currencies.
I think this is a great environment for gold, he said. Gold is money and in todays market it is performing the way it should.
Ball said that because prices have run up so quickly, rallying more than 26% since the start of the year, he wouldnt be surprised to see a correction sometime in the near future; however, he added that he wouldnt be too worried about a short-term decline given that the market is in a new bull uptrend.
However, with the precious metals market and mining sector continuing to heat up, the young CEO said that he is concerned that mining executives havent learned the lessons over the last few years. With capital coming into the cash-starved sector, he said that the early signs of fiscal discipline is going out the door.
We have seen gold prices go up and what is the first thing you hear about? Deals being made, he said.
Ball added that his plan as CEO is to buck the trend and to use free cash flow to buy back his companys shares, a plan to create v alue for shareholders. The company is looking to buy back 546,300 shares.
Over the next three years, we would like to see our outstanding shares go from 11.3 million to 10 million, he said in a recent representation in Montreal, Canada. That would increase everyones effective ownership in the company by 10%.
He noted that his plan is working. The Abitibi Royalties stock price is up more than 174% year-to-date, last trading at $9.46 a share.
Instead of looking at potential overpriced acquisitions, Ball said that companies should be looking at developing new philosophies and embracing new technology to promote new exploration of their current properties.
He noted this is what Yamana Gold (NYSE: AUY, TSX: YRI) and Agnico Eagle (NYSE: AEM, TSX: AEM) are achieving at their joint Malartic project, one of Canadas largest mines in the Abitibi region in Northern Quebec. Both companies have been allocating significant resources to explore relatively unchartered territory, known as Odyssey.
Ball explained that his company holds a 3% royalty in Odyssey property, which represents a significant source of growth for Abitibi Royalties given the exploration in the area..
The Odyssey property is a testament to exploration and it is going to significantly add to the resources of Malartic, he said. All the companies are going to benefit because we have faith in our assets.
Balls company has also done its part to embrace innovation in the mining sector, launching the Abitibi Royalty Search. Since early 2015, the company has been reaching out to property owners, offering to pay the fees and taxes for existing mineral properties or staking new mineral claims for a period of time in exchange for a royalty on the property.
Ball said that with the mining sector turning around, it looks like the program has run its course; however it has been a positive experience as, Abitibi Royalty has spent just over $200,000 for 13 royalties.
He noted that one of the last agreements to be signed was for a 3% royalty on property that is adjacent to Eldorado Golds Efemcukuru mine in Turkey. Ball said that he is excited about the potential as Eldorado is drilling and exploring near the two properties boundaries and there are indications that the deposit encompasses the entire area.
By Neils Christensen of Kitco News; nchristensen@kitco.com
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By Christian Vosler, christian.vosler@kitsapsun.com
BAINBRIDGE ISLAND The City Council voted Tuesday to commission a study that will examine the feasibility of a public electric utility on the island.
The council, in a 5-2 vote, awarded the study contract to Kennewick-based consulting firm D. Hittle. The study aims to evaluate the pros and cons of creating and operating a municipal electric utility, which would provide energy to the island.
The cost of the study is not to exceed $99,300 and will be paid from the city's general fund.
The creation of a public utility would require the city to acquire assets from its current electrical energy provider, Puget Sound Energy. As part of the contract, D. Hittle will provide analysis of the legal, operational and economic costs of purchasing and operating a public electric utility.
However, the firm is not currently slated to make a recommendation to the council on whether it could successfully manage that kind of undertaking, City Manager Doug Schulze said.
Schulze estimated that the study could take three to four months to complete.
The decision came on the heels of several hours of passionate comment from the public. On Bainbridge, power outages can be crippling to families and businesses. Debate over from where the island's electricity comes, as well as its reliability, was at the forefront Tuesday night.
Several commenters wore "Island Power" buttons, a reference to the grass-roots community group credited with starting the discussion in 2014. They argued that publicly operated electric utilities would lower ratepayers' costs, increase control and reliability of electrical power and decrease dependence on fossil fuels.
"We're hearing a lot of different facts from a lot of different citizens, and that is exactly why we need a feasibility study from somebody who has looked at these kinds of questions before," island resident Fran Korten said. "I can tell you I do not want to be a person who every time I turn on my lights, I am contributing to the devastation of the planet."
Others said that a fledgling public utility operated by the city would do more harm than good. Stefanie Olson said her family recently moved to Bainbridge and had heard about the power problems. She said recurring problems are not PSE's fault.
"There are a lot of things that (PSE) could have done, that they could do, that they've not been allowed to do," Olson said. "Trim trees, build another substation, move the substation. None of these things will go away if we have island power."
A few commenters pointed to Jefferson County, which in 2010 purchased assets from PSE for $103 million, as a successful example of a municipal electric utility. Others said that the associated costs of such a transaction would cripple the island for the near future.
After nearly an hour of comment, council members discussed their views briefly before proceeding to a vote. Many reiterated that the vote was not on whether to purchase assets and establish a public utility but to authorize a study to help them make such a decision.
Councilman Michael Scott said that he supported moving forward with the study because the council lacked essential information.
"We don't really have the facts," he said. "There's a lot of hopes and fears and possible benefits but not backed up by an independent analysis of whether the risks can be managed, whether the costs are feasible, whether the benefits are realizable."
Councilman Ron Peltier and Councilwoman Sarah Blossom voted against the study. Peltier said that while he felt PSE was a less than forthright company, it would be best for the council to slow down and save money. He advocated for observing Jefferson County's public electric utility and measuring its success before spending money on a consultant.
Blossom said that she didn't think the city should take on a project as complex as running a power utility.
"I think that there have been mistakes made in past practices with utilities, and the fact that the city as an organization, not one person individually, doesn't seem to want to ever acknowledge mistakes or errors whether they were intentional or not," she said.
"I think the culture of this organization is to never admit wrong and dig their heels in, and I think that when you have that kind of culture you cannot run things like (a public utility well)."
By Christina Henry of the Kitsap Sun
BREMERTON Candidates for the 26th District state House and Kitsap County Board of Commissioners introduced themselves and gave snippets of their platforms at a forum Tuesday at the Norm Dicks Government Center hosted by the League of Women Voters of Kitsap County.
The candidates for both offices face off in the Aug. 2 primary to represent South Kitsap and a portion of Bremerton. There are four candidates in the race for the 26th Legislative District Position 1 seat and four seeking the County Commissioner District 2 seat.
Incumbent Commissioner Charlotte Garrido, a Democrat who has held the office since 2009 and who served a four-year term as South Kitsap commissioner in the 1990s, said her priorities are a strong economy, a healthy environment and "people working together" for a better community. Addressing homelessness is a high priority, she said.
Roger Gay, retired from Puget Sound Naval Shipyard and running as an independent, said, after watching and commenting from the sidelines, he hopes to bring a "different point of view" to the board of commissioners. Gay said "out-of-the-box" thinking is needed to solve the county's problems.
Chris Tibbs, a business owner who has served as chairman of the Kitsap County Republican Party, said he, too, hopes to bring a "fresh perspective" to the office. He's committed to affordable housing and property rights, focused on jobs, roads and public safety, and he'd like to "right-size" county government.
Dino Davis a Democrat, business owner and member of the Bremerton City Council said he's focused on achieving results in county government. His big focus is improving infrastructure. "It's holding us back as a regional contender," he said.
Funding roads, highways and other infrastructure was a topic of interest in the forum.
Gay said the county and Kitsap's cities need to band together to approach the state and federal government for transportation money with a unified voice and plan. Major freeways should be the focus of this endeavor, he said.
Tibbs also advocated "regional solutions." He reminded the crowd that 70 percent of Kitsap residents don't live in urban areas. "I think we have not been mindful of a regional solution," he said.
Davis talked about federal money that could come to the South Kitsap Industrial Area, part of Bremerton between Gorst and Mason County. What's needed is a regional plan, he said.
Garrido said the Gorst corridor is a high priority for the whole county. There is a feasibility study underway for improvements, she said. Garrido also stressed that ferries are part of the state's highway system.
None of the candidates supports a measure on the November ballot that would increase the sales tax for fast-ferry service from Kitsap County to Seattle. Tibbs said he's OK with the concept but the proposed sales tax is "too much" for county residents. Davis said Kitsap Transit should focus on its core mission of bus service within the county. Garrido said she likes the fast-ferry concept but another funding mechanism is needed. Gay said seeking a fast ferry before restoring bus routes in the county was "putting the cart before the horse."
In the race for the state seat, incumbent Jesse Young, appointed to fill an unexpired term in 2014 and then elected to the seat, said he would continue his record of bipartisan policymaking. A software engineer by trade, Young, who spent some of his youth homeless, said he would remain an advocate for the homeless. Young is a proponent of separating the education budget from the rest of the state's obligations, a Republican platform known as "fund education first."
Larry Seaquist, a Democrat and former state representative who ran unsuccessfully against Michelle Caldier, Tibbs' fiancee, in 2014, had registered for the state superintendent of public instruction position but shifted gears when party members asked him to attempt a return to policymaking. Seaquist's focus is education. Adequate funding of K-12 and higher education will form the foundation of a stable and thriving state economy, he said.
Alec Matias, a Democrat from Port Orchard, is the son of Cuban immigrants. He saw his father work his way to success, then lose everything through lack of support in a workplace injury. Matias said he would not shy from advocating taxes including a capital-gains tax to fully support education, infrastructure and other state needs.
Bill Scheidler, a Republican "loosely" of Port Orchard, has run for other offices and is again making a bid to curtail what he sees as rampant government corruption. Scheidler, who in past years has served on the South Kitsap School District's budget advisory committee, advocates scaling back basic education to class time only. The educational system has been asked to take on too many other functions that rightly belong under the social services heading, he said.
To see videos of the commissioner candidates talking with the Kitsap Sun editorial board, click here.
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By Kitsap Sun Staff
BREMERTON Washington State Ferries is adding an extra round trip Friday between Seattle and Bremerton to accommodate increased traffic for the Mariners' game with the Houston Astros at Safeco Field.
An added sailing will depart Bremerton at 10:15 p.m. and depart Seattle at 11:30 p.m. Riders can get ahead of the crowds by pre-purchasing a return-trip ticket, arriving early and planning for longer than usual wait times eastbound in the afternoon and westbound in the late evening.
The Saturday and Sunday games start at 1:10 p.m.
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NEW YORK By now most Americans know the name of Dallas Police Chief David Brown and quite a few wouldn't mind seeing him play a larger national role. I hear Republicans are looking for a substitute nominee.
Brown is admired not only as a defender of law and order but also as a blunt spokesman for a nation reeling from violence. He minces no words when he says, "We're asking cops to do too much in this country" or, addressing protesters around the country, "We're hiring."
"Get off that protest line and put an application in, and we'll put you in your neighborhood and we will help you resolve some of the problems you're protesting about."
Such tough talk is welcome from a man who has his own share of suffering, including the death of his son, who went on a shooting rampage, killing two people including a police officer, before being killed in a firefight with police. Whatever forces compelled those acts will no doubt become part of a larger story in time.
For now, Brown has focused his energies on comforting the families of the dead and articulating our anxieties amid the chaos and killing.
His has been the calming voice the country needed, made all the more powerful by virtue of his personal experience and the heartfelt sorrow he shares with so many. And, let's be honest, my fellow white folks, because he's black. And another black Dallas voice has added texture and depth to the debate now roiling wherever people gather. Dr. Brian Williams, the surgeon who futilely tried to save some of the wounded officers' lives, became emotional as he expressed his own grief, not only for the dead but also the violence.
"I don't understand why people think it's OK to kill police officers," he said in a CNN interview. "I don't understand why black men die in custody and they're forgotten the next day. I don't know why this has to be us against them. ... Something has to be done."
Most people don't understand either. But, as Williams also said, we get the anger and frustration. It is not without reason that many blacks distrust the police. In Ferguson, Missouri, where events led to the Black Lives Matter movement, Department of Justice investigators found departmentwide racism.
It is not without reason that blacks have little faith in a criminal justice system that imprisons them at six times the rate of whites, according to a Pew Research Center study. Or that awards blacks nearly 20 percent longer sentences than whites for similar crimes, according to a 2013 report by the U.S. Sentencing Commission.
Personal experience and observation also play a role. Even Williams, whose demeanor is as nonthreatening as any central-casting physician, acknowledged his own "fear and mild inherent distrust in law enforcement, that goes back to my own personal experiences that I've had in my own personal life."
This isn't to indict all police officers or even many, but there are "those." Writing for Vox, former black cop Redditt Hudson posited that 15 percent of police will always do the right thing; 15 percent will abuse their authority at any opportunity; the remaining 70 percent could go either way depending on whom they're with.
This is why voices such as Brown's and Williams' are so vital, even as I recognize the racial stereotyping implicit in this observation. But the larger point is that while protesters can be marginalized as rabble-rousers, the voices of a respected doctor and a police chief can't be.
Nor can one ignore (black) tenured Harvard economist Roland Fryer, who on Monday released research findings that police officers don't, in fact, use deadly force more often against blacks than whites. Indeed, in Houston, one of the cities studied, police were less likely to shoot when the suspect was black. But Fryer also found that black suspects more often than whites are subjected to nonlethal force, such as being shoved against a wall.
What's clear as facts are added to narratives enhanced by video and live-streaming is that few things can be reduced to black and white. It also seems we have reached a tipping point in what any society can tolerate when it comes to injustice. Finally, the nation's long-overdue conversation about race and racism is on the front burner. Keeping it there is the least we can do for those whose blood was shed to make it so.
Kathleen Parker's email address is kathleenparker@washpost.com. She writes for The Washington Post Writers Group.
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Richard Nerf, Bremerton
Get 'control' to keep us all safe
Outdoors columnist Seabury Blair writes: "I've witnessed some riders who demonstrated complete control while hurtling through a forest or over boulders at speeds approaching a half-mile every minute." ("Time to change etiquette on trails," July 12)
This shows a common misunderstanding of the concept of being in control.
When I was a landlocked kid, dreaming of ocean adventures, diligently studying the nautical rules of the road, I learned that their definition of out-of-control was "unable to stop in half the assured clear distance ahead." In my experience, that definition is relevant to any activity that involves motion, literal or figurative. If more folks understood this definition, we would all be "attending" far fewer of the misunderstanders' accidents.
Seabury's etiquette of hikers yielding to cyclists yielding to horses reminds me of a friend's story of a sailing yacht close-hauled on starboard tack in Bahamian waters. Rules of the Road would say that such a vessel would be required to yield right-of-way only to a human-powered craft. Upon finding himself on a collision course with a local sailing vessel running downwind, the yacht's helmsman cried "Starboard!" as a reminder of its privileged situation. The local helmsman replied "Workboat rules Mon! Biggest boat got de right-of-way!"
Newshub reports:
US Vice President Joe Biden is coming to New Zealand for his first ever visit.
Its a trip Prime Minister John Key says will be fleeting but significant.
Hell have just 24 hours on the ground, but theyll cover a range of important issues.
The United States has been moving towards that pivot into Asia and its been a big plank of President Obamas foreign policy, says Mr Key.
They were instrumental in leading the TPP, of which we are a member, and so they have had a much heavier focus and theyve been pretty strongly making statements about the South China Sea. So theres a lot of issues in the region.
One of the issues to be discussed will be whether a US naval ship will be sent here to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the New Zealand navy.
Stuff reports:
New Zealand has called on all parties to respect an international ruling on South China Sea, a stance that will test relations with our biggest trading partner, China.
China has violated The Philippines sovereign rights in the South China Sea by building artificial islands and by interfering with the smaller nations fishing and petroleum exploration, The Permanent Court of Arbitration has found in a landmark ruling.
The court in The Hague has effectively thrown out Chinas nine dash line which asserts the countrys claim to most of the South China Sea. The court found that such historical claims in Chinas case going back hundreds of years are superseded by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.
China has made it clear it will not accept or recognise any ruling rejecting its claims to the hotly contested waterway.
The Philippines took China to the International Court of Arbitration in The Hague in 2013 after the Chinese navy seized control of Scarborough Shoal. The tribunal has ruled that there was no legal basis for China to claim historic rights to resources within the sea areas falling within the nine dash line, according to reports.
While New Zealand does not take a position on the various territorial claims in the South China Sea we have consistently stated that the differing interests in the region should be managed peacefully and in accordance with international law, Foreign Minister Murray McCully said.
Maintaining peace and stability in the South China Sea is vital to the ongoing prosperity of the wider Asia-Pacific region. It is in all parties interests to ensure the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea is respected.
The owner and president of DCH Group Oleksandr Yaroslavsky who holds a controlling stake in Kharkiv Tractor Plant seeks to invest around UAH 200 million in the enterprise.
"I plan to invest near UAH 200 million in Kharkiv Tractor Plant. The plant could be restored within six months," he said in an interview with Forbes Ukraine publication.
The businessman said that he sees the plant producing tractors, and if the company receives an order from the state military equipment that the plant made 20 years ago: multipurpose lightly-armored transporters.
Asked about the possible modernization of the plant, he said that it would be conducted if it suits business plan.
"Modernization is a manmade process. If there were order from the state to make military equipment one can do everything I bought the asset with a focus on production of tractors. If I need to increase production or change the processes, I will take my old business plan when I was the owner of the plant, dust it off and start implementing. I do not need research institutions and dozen-year work," he said.
Yaroslavsky said that Ukraine, Russia and even Cuba buy tractors made by Kharkiv Tractor Plant.
Explaining the debt structure to banks, he said that early June a one-year debt rescheduling plan was signed with banks.
"Earlier an amicable agreement with Ukreximbank was signed. It included payments of debts starting from 2035 during 30 years," he said.
He said that the rest of the plant's debts are debts to the tax service.
"Taxpayers accrued UAH 400 million, while in fact this is UAH 109 million to be paid in installments, according to all documents and the payment terms agreed earlier," the businessman said.
John Cochrane blogs: Conor Dougherty in The New York Times has a good article on zoning laws,
a growing body of economic literature suggests that anti-growth sentiment is a major factor in creating a stagnant and less equal American economy.
Unlike past decades, when people of different socioeconomic backgrounds tended to move to similar areas, today, less-skilled workers often go where jobs are scarcer but housing is cheap, instead of heading to places with the most promising job opportunities according to research by Daniel Shoag, a professor of public policy at Harvard, and Peter Ganong, also of Harvard.
One reason theyre not migrating to places with better job prospects is that rich cities like San Francisco and Seattle have gotten so expensive that working-class people cannot afford to move there. Even if they could, there would not be much point, since whatever they gained in pay would be swallowed up by rent.
Stop and rejoice. This is, after all, the New York Times, not the Cato Review. One might expect high housing prices to get blamed on developers, greed, or something, and the solution to be government-constructed housing, affordable housing mandates, rent controls, low-income housing subsidies (which protect incumbent low-income people, not those who want to move in to get better jobs) and even more restrictions. No. The Times, the Obama Administration, California Governor Gerry Brown, have figured out that zoning laws are to blame, and theyre making social stratification and inequality worse.
This is the major factor in house prices in Auckland. Labour, National, the Productivity Commission, the NZ Initiative etc all agree. We just need the Auckland Council to listen and if they wont, to have Parliament over-rule them.
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Ukraine's Agricultural Policy and Food Ministry and grain market players on Tuesday signed a memorandum of understanding between the ministry and grain exporters for 2016/17 agricultural year (July-June).
The memo aims at stabilizing the grain market in the country and ensuring the predictable grain exports for 2016/17 agri-year.
The document contains mechanisms for cooperation between grain market players, exchange of information and monitoring.
"The memo does not contain any figures. The importance of the event is that all market players accepted the position that exports will be discussed with the ministry in the context of harvest forecasts," Minister Taras Kutoviy said at the signing ceremony.
He said that this position is important, but this approach contains risks that could affect business if forced steps are made to resolve exports problems.
"We will present forecasts at the first important harvesting stages. According to the preliminary assessment of fields there is no threat on the domestic market and Ukraine will have bread," the minister said.
Representatives of the American Chamber of Commerce, Ukrainian Grain Association, Ukrainian Agrarian Confederation, European Business Association, Ukrainian Agribusiness Club, Grain and Feed Trade Association (GAFTA), Association of Farmers and Private Landowners, Agrarian Union of Ukraine and Ukrainian Millers signed the document.
KYIV. July 13 (Interfax-Ukraine) Ukraine's Agricultural Policy and Food Ministry and grain market players on Tuesday signed a memorandum of understanding between the ministry and grain exporters for 2016/17 agricultural year (July-June).
The memo aims at stabilizing the grain market in the country and ensuring the predictable grain exports for 2016/17 agri-year.
The document contains mechanisms for cooperation between grain market players, exchange of information and monitoring.
"The memo does not contain any figures. The importance of the event is that all market players accepted the position that exports will be discussed with the ministry in the context of harvest forecasts," Minister Taras Kutoviy said at the signing ceremony.
He said that this position is important, but this approach contains risks that could affect business if forced steps are made to resolve exports problems.
"We will present forecasts at the first important harvesting stages. According to the preliminary assessment of fields there is no threat on the domestic market and Ukraine will have bread," the minister said.
Representatives of the American Chamber of Commerce, Ukrainian Grain Association, Ukrainian Agrarian Confederation, European Business Association, Ukrainian Agribusiness Club, Grain and Feed Trade Association (GAFTA), Association of Farmers and Private Landowners, Agrarian Union of Ukraine and Ukrainian Millers signed the document.
Fiscal service is leader in number of claims from business
Ukraine's State Fiscal Service is the leader among authorities in the number of claims by representatives of business using the call center over unlawful actions of supervision agencies, Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman has said.
He said that the call center was launched recently.
"We have launched the call center and I can say that today there are many claims almost all of them are against supervision agencies, and the champion here is unfortunately the State Fiscal Service," he said at a meeting with business representatives in Kyiv on Tuesday.
He said that deregulation and reduction of control over business should be in line with business desire to work honestly.
"Everyone who puts pressure on business are class enemies of the Ukrainian government," Groysman said..
SHARE Construction that has had the 700 block of Gay Street closed since December has hurt Frussies Deli and Bakery on the corner of Gay and Cumberland, diagonal to the Bijou Theater, just one year after the longtime South Knoxville staple made its debut downtown. Lesli Bales-Sherrod/special to the news sentinel Construction that has had the 700 block of Gay Street closed since December has hurt Frussies Deli and Bakery on the corner of Gay and Cumberland, diagonal to the Bijou Theater, just one year after the longtime South Knoxville staple made its debut downtown. This shows the construction fence blocking traffic from crossing Gay Street to get to Frussies. Jay Brandon, owner of Frussies Deli and Bakery, celebrated one year at his Gay Street location Monday. The deli is known for building its sandwiches, like this turkey club, on bread Brandon bakes fresh each morning and with meats he roasts, cures and marinates in-house. Photos by Lesli Bales-Sherrod
A longtime South Knoxville business that moved across the river last year has lost the very thing it sought at its new location: foot traffic.
Frussies Deli and Bakery, 722 S. Gay St., has been battling ongoing construction on the 700 block of Gay Street since December, and the streetscape project keeps getting delayed, owner Jay Brandon said Friday.
"It's been like starting over," Brandon said of the deli's move downtown after 19 years in South Knoxville. "I lost a lot of my South Knoxville customers due to the parking and the construction."
Brandon said he knew the city had the streetscape construction planned when he opened Frussies on Gay Street on July 11, 2015, a move precipitated by a desire for more business than the Moody Avenue location was experiencing after the closure of Baptist Hospital, the Henley Street bridge and several nearby businesses.
"The South Knoxville clientele was extremely loyal to me, but it was down to Frussies closing for good or (moving to get) more volume," Brandon told the Knoxville News Sentinel last year after he announced the move downtown. "I just needed more viable foot traffic."
The timeline of the 700 block project did not concern him, Brandon noted, because it was scheduled from Dec. 10 to April 28.
"It didn't seem that bad," Brandon said. "I thought it would be the middle of winter, which would be kind of a slow time anyway."
But as construction has dragged on, now estimated to wrap up July 31, Frussies is down 50 percent every day compared to the same day last year, Brandon said. To combat the construction, Frussies now offers delivery to the downtown area, primarily from Summit Hill to the Gay Street bridge.
"The construction has made it hard for people to get here, and I also notice that people are very controlled by the weather here in that if it's cold or raining they won't leave their desks for lunch," Brandon explained. "If they won't come to me, I'll come to them. I wanted to give people an option."
Delivery isn't the only new thing at Frussies, which was founded by the late James Dicks in Gatlinburg in 1986 and moved to South Knoxville in 1996. Still open 11 a.m.-3 p.m. Mondays through Fridays, Frussies now offers brunch 10 a.m.-3 p.m. Saturdays, with menu items from Mimaw's pancakes and a Monte Cristo to the Dubliner, which includes house-cured corned beef, red potato hash and fried egg.
"It's been one of my strongest days of the week," Brandon said. "And I'm probably still 50 percent brunch (items) and 50 percent sandwiches on Saturdays."
Brandon also took Frussies' tried and true recipes, which Dicks taught Brandon to make, and expanded on them, adding four new sandwiches to the menu: the Downtown Havana, pork loin, ham, pickle, mustard and Swiss cheese; the Dirty Bird, house-cured pastrami, Thanksgiving turkey, mayo, mustard and Swiss cheese; the Three Little Pigs, pork loin, bacon, ham, Archers BBQ sauce, cole slaw and cheddar cheese; and the Philly, roast beef, grilled onions, mushrooms, peppers, mayo, provolone and American cheese.
What hasn't changed is the heart of Frussies: 11 varieties of bread Brandon bakes daily as well as all the meats that Brandon cures, roasts and marinates in-house.
It was Frussies' food, after all, that convinced Brandon, who graduated from culinary school in New York, to buy and re-open Frussies in 2011 after Dicks was diagnosed with cancer.
"I lived in New York City for two years going to school, and there are really good delis on every corner up there," said Brandon, a native of Fountain City and a graduate of Central High School. "A friend of mine brought me to Frussies, and I thought, 'Wow. That's the best sandwich I've ever had.'"
Brandon wanted to learn the secrets of Frussies' food, going as far as to take home Dicks' potato salad and wash it off in the sink in an effort to determine all the ingredients.
"He sold me the potato salad recipe for $200 one day," Brandon said, laughing. "I could get close, but I couldn't get his."
After Dicks closed Frussies to battle cancer, Brandon agreed to buy and reopen the deli on the condition that Dicks teach him how to make everything exactly how he made it.
Brandon reopened Frussies on Nov. 1, 2011, and Dicks passed away March 12, 2012. On March 15 this year, Brandon celebrated Frussies' 30th anniversary -- and the memory of his friend -- with a ribbon-cutting with the Knoxville Chamber of Commerce and by giving away Frussies' hot Italian subs for the special occasion.
The 30th anniversary also was the perfect time to launch the deli's website, www.frussies.com, which was one of the perks Frussies received for winning Knoxville's first Project BrandAid contest in December. The contest, which allowed the public to vote for three finalists, provided Frussies with $40,000 worth of marketing help.
"Asen Marketing did a great job building our website, and also did a food photo shoot and designed and printed new menus for us," Brandon said.
The tools are in place for Frussies on Gay Street to be bigger and better than ever. Brandon is just ready for the construction to be over, he said.
"The whole key to success in a restaurant is volume," Brandon said. "Hopefully the new sidewalk will be wide enough to allow me to put patio tables out front so that customers can eat outside!"
Customers can order (and pay) online at www.frussies.com or can call in orders at 865-333-5359. Customers also can find Frussies on Facebook and Instagram.
Greg Johnson, News Sentinel columnist.
PADRON, Spain At this rate I'll never Hike 100 to celebrate the 100-year anniversary of the National Park Service.
Oh, I've been hiking plenty. Got blister badges to prove it. Just hasn't been in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
In fact, I hiked 100 last week. Kilometers, that is. About 118, which works out to about 73 miles, or very close to the distance the Appalachian Trail covers in the Smokies. I did that once.
Exactly 25 years ago last week, I hiked from Davenport Gap to Fontana Dam changed my life.
But the Camino de Santiago the Way of Saint James called me exactly six years ago last week. My son and I hiked from Ponferrada, Spain, to Santiago de Compestela. Martin Sheen and Emilio Estevez gave an accurate and moving depiction of the Camino Frances in their movie, "The Way."
This time, I took the Camino Portugues, starting in Valenca, Portugal, walking north across the International Bridge above the River Minho into Tui, Spain, to Redondela, to Pontevedra, to Caldas de Reyes, before arriving in Padron.
Like the Smokies and Dolly Parton draw a global crowd, so does the Camino and Saint James. I met folks from Germany, Canada, Brazil, South Africa, Ireland, Spain, Portugal and the United States. An entire industry and infrastructure has developed over the past, oh, 1,200 years or so with Santiago, the place St. James is buried, being the aim, but particularly for pilgrims, like me, who walk for religious reasons.
Padron, though, is where St. James started life in Iberia. Catholics believe they have the actual stone "pedrone" in Spanish to which James hitched his boat when he sailed from the Holy Land, then up the River Sar, after the resurrection of Jesus.
After a full day of walking, I wandered Padron, found the stone, then hauled my weary carcass up a bazillion steps to the place James reputedly preached his first sermon in Spain. A poignantly purposeful stack of boulders, topped with a stone statue of James, marked the spot.
Like so many times in the Smokies, where millions come yet never touch toe to trail, I sat alone, the only sound the wind brushing through the trees. My heart fell quiet.
The Smokies are the main attraction in our neck of the woods, yet so much distracts. So much to see. So much to do.
Same in Spain. So much to see. So much to do. So many steps to Santiago.
Yet with a few extra steps to an obscure place, we so often find true re-creation.
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By News Sentinel Staff
Authorities say wearing a seat belt might have saved a 41-year-old Alabama woman who was killed when she was thrown from the car in a rollover crash along Interstate 75 in Loudon County.
Jennifer M. Torbert of Pell City, Ala., died in the single-vehicle crash, reported at 11:35 a.m. Tuesday at mile marker 80 near Lenoir City, according to a Tennessee Highway Patrol incident report.
Torbert was a passenger in a 2008 Nissan Sentra headed north when the Sentra veered into the median and rolled before coming to rest near the southbound lanes.
Fellow passenger Meghan Torbert, 19, of Pell City, Ala., was also thrown from the vehicle. She was not wearing a seat belt, either, the report states.
A third passenger, Braylon C. Newton, 7, of Pell City, was belted in the front seat.
Authorities found evidence of drug use by the driver, Jerry P. Newton, 66, also of Pell City, according to THP Trooper Paul Clendenen's report.
Criminal charges are pending, according to the report.
The conditions of the three injured survivors were not immediately available Wednesday.
More details as they develop online and in Thursday's News Sentinel.
Jeffrey Sweeney, left, 63, former co-owner of the Casual Pint, during his appearance in Knox County courtroom with his attorney T. Scott Jones Wednesday, July 13, 2016. Sweeney's case was postponed for 6 months until he can take an approved course. (MICHAEL PATRICK/NEWS SENTINEL)
By News Sentinel Staff
KNOXVILLE A former co-owner of a West Knoxville pub has agreed to attend a training class on the realities of sexual exploitation in order to have an enhanced charge of patronizing prostitution against him dismissed.
The misdemeanor charge will be dropped after six months if Jeffrey Sweeney, 63, a former co-owner of the Casual Pint in the Northshore Town Center, keeps his record clean, pays court costs and attends an eight-hour training session with the Knoxville nonprofit Community Coalition Against Human Trafficking.
Knox County General Sessions Judge Geoff Emery approved the terms of the agreement during a hearing Wednesday.
Sweeney was cited May 18 one of 27 men and five women charged during the three-day "Operation Someone Like Me" sting conducted by the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation and the Knoxville Police Department.
The sting was billed as part of a campaign against human trafficking.
Sweeney sold his interest in the West Knoxville bar a week after being cited, which avoided any potential of the business losing its city beer permit.
He was one of several men who visited the Best Western Knoxville Suites on Pratt Road in response to an online prostitution ad posted by undercover agents, authorities said.
The motel is next door to the Gospels Voice Russian Church. State law calls for increased punishment if certain offenses occur near a school or church.
Sweeney's attorney, T. Scott Jones, had argued the enhanced charge was manufactured by authorities who purposefully chose to conduct the sting near the church.
More details as they develop online and in Thursday's News Sentinel.
SHARE Dennis Mills Jr.
By Jamie Satterfield of the Knoxville News Sentinel
If anyone knew his right to bar law enforcers from searching his home without a warrant, it was former Knox County Sheriff's Office Lt. Dennis Mills Jr., a judge said Tuesday in rejecting the ex-deputy's bid to quash crucial DNA evidence in his trial on child rape charges.
Knox County Criminal Court Judge Scott Green made quick work of Mills' challenge to the constitutionality of the search of his Powell home in March 2014 after hearing a day's worth of testimony the previous day.
"In this court's mind, this is not even a close call," Green said.
Mills is charged with raping a girl over a two-year period while serving as a patrol lieutenant for the KCSO. He was fired as a result of the allegations. He faces charges of molestations that prosecutors say occurred in 2012, when the girl was 12, and of statutory rape by an authority figure in similar allegations in 2013, when she was 13. The News Sentinel is not identifying the relationship between Mills and the girl to protect her identity.
The girl's mother learned of the abuse claims in March 2014 and contacted Mills' superiors. The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation was called in. TBI Agent Andy Corbett testified Monday he went to Mills' home soon after the allegations were revealed, but Mills did not answer the door.
Testimony showed Mills' supervisor phoned Mills with instructions to go outside, where other KCSO officials and TBI agents were waiting. Corbett said Mills was "calm" when he walked outside. KCSO commanders searched him for weapons, and Corbett said Mills signed a form giving his blessing to a search of the home. That search yielded a pair of men's underwear with DNA of Mills and the girl and a condom wrapper with the girl's DNA on it, court records show.
Defense attorney Stephen Ross Johnson argued Mills' consent was not voluntary since Mills testified he was confronted at gunpoint when he walked outside and feared he would be fired if he did not cooperate. Prosecutor Joanie Stewart countered Mills showed no signs of duress, knew he could force the officers to obtain a search warrant and refused an immediate search of his cellphone.
The judge sided with prosecutors.
"Mr. Mills was a law enforcement officer, been with the sheriff's department for 18 years," Green said. "He is not some person who is not educated in the law and doesn't know what his rights are."
Quantavious Williams
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By Jamie Satterfield of the Knoxville News Sentinel
An innocent man died, and the teenager whose gang initiation prosecutors say led to the killing didn't even make the Crips cut.
"I wanted to get down, but they wouldn't put me down," Quantavious Williams said, describing the Rolling 20s Crips gang he sought to join when Jack Hutchins wound up dead in a crime spree required for membership. "I'm a (expletive). I froze up. They said, 'He ain't 20 material.' "
Hutchins, 52, was among a half-dozen innocents killed in Knoxville in recent years as a result of a steady climb in gang violence that came to the fore of community discussion in December after the death of Zaevion Dobson, a Fulton sophomore hailed nationally as a hero for shielding two friends from gang-related gunfire.
Williams was 17 at the time of Hutchins' shooting death in the front yard of his Woodbine Avenue home in November 2013. He's one of four teenagers charged and the first to stand trial. Williams maintains he is not responsible for the others' actions.
Jurors in Knox County Criminal Court on Tuesday heard, via a video of an interrogation by former Knoxville Police Department Investigator Brian Moran, Williams' account of how his bid to join the Rolling 20s led to the carjacking of an East Knoxville pastor and Hutchins' death.
After more than an hour of denying involvement, Williams revealed the Chattanooga-based Rolling 20s Crips sect lacked Knoxville members and leadership, so the gang sent ranking members Nolandus Sims, then 19, and Andre "Evil D" Terry, then 15, for what is known as a "put down" to initiate Williams into the group. Sims and Terry, Williams said, got their rank, called "stars," through violence against others, including murder. Another Crips' member, Antonio Marlin, is also charged in the case.
"Stars mean they hit somebody," Williams said.
To prove his mettle, Williams was required to commit armed robberies of "randoms," the victimization of innocents. Their first target was a drug dealer in the Townview Towers apartment complex in downtown Knoxville, but Williams said the group kicked in a door only to find the apartment empty.
The group next attacked the Rev. Larry J. Mathis, according to the interrogation, although Williams apparently did not perform to the satisfaction of the others.
The crew then headed to the Parkridge community, where Hutchins had just arrived at his home with takeout food for his family as he and his girlfriend, Beth Dompier, prepared for "date night," she told jurors.
According to Williams, Terry and Sims confronted Hutchins at gunpoint in his yard. As Hutchins turned toward his truck, Williams said Terry "shot him in the face."
Terry and Sims continued to fire at Hutchins as he slumped to the ground, Williams said. The pair ran to the car where Williams and Marlin were waiting, he said.
Although Williams knew Hutchins, he denied the respected handyman was targeted. The Chattanooga gang members simply needed cash, and Hutchins was the first person they saw as they looked for another victim.
"They not going home broke," Williams said. "They needed gas money."
The trial continues Wednesday.
SHARE Protesters participate in a Black Lives Matter rally, despite the rain, in Knoxville on Market Square on Friday, July 8. CAITIE MCMEKIN / NEWS SENTINEL Protesters participating in a Black Lives Matter rally, march down Gay Street in downtown Knoxville on Friday, July 8, 2016. The rally was in response to the recent fatal shootings of black Americans by police officers. (CAITIE MCMEKIN/NEWS SENTINEL) Knoxville Police Chief David Rausch discusses the recent protests and unrest locally and across the country, in an interview at the City County Building in Knoxville on Tuesday, July 12, 2016. (CAITIE MCMEKIN/NEWS SENTINEL) July 12, 2016 - Memphis Police Department Deputy Director Mike Ryall pats Black Lives Matter supporter Frank Gotti on the shoulder before the gentlemen walk inside to have a meeting at the Raines Station on Tuesday. Six people were detained earlier in the day for blocking parts of Elvis Presley Boulevard as part of the continuing Black Lives Matter Protests. "Their heart is speaking and we need to listen, but we need to do it in a way that is not civilly disruptive, but it is a way we can start developing change," Ryall said. (Yalonda M. James/The Commercial Appeal) Related Photos Photos: Black Lives Matter rally blocks Gay Street
By Adam Tamburin, USA TODAY NETWORK-Tennessee
In Tennessee over the past week, Black Lives Matter marches have had a lot in common with others across the nation: activists chanting, waving signs and blocking traffic as they decry police shootings and allegations of racism.
Some of the protesters that erupted after black men in Louisiana and Minnesota were killed by police have been marred by violence and arrests and the added tension of a deadly attack on police in Dallas. In Tennessee, the events have been mostly peaceful with only a handful of arrests, although signs of a complicated and fractious relationship between protesters and police remain.
Law enforcement officials in Knoxville, Nashville, Memphis and Chattanooga have indicated they are taking intentional steps to avoid arrests, maintain peace and build on sometimes tenuous relationships in black communities.
'AN EXAMPLE FOR THE WORLD'
Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland said his city "set an example for the world" Sunday night after police there avoided arrests and violence when protesters blocked both sides of the Interstate 40 bridge over the Mississippi River for more than four hours.
Interim Memphis Police Director Michael Rallings walked onto I-40 in a Kevlar vest and locked arms with the some protesters. Officers in riot gear arrived later to clear out a smaller group after most of the others had left, but police still avoided major problems.
But another demonstration Monday outside of Graceland hinted that simmering tensions with police would stretch well beyond a few days of demonstrations. Police arrested, cuffed and cited six protesters who they said were blocking the road. Officers dragged one woman away as an onlooker called to "let her walk."
Earlier on Monday, protesters released a letter slamming Rallings for betraying their trust during a town hall meeting. The letter suggested city officials did not honor an agreement related to the meeting, although it did not describe the agreement. Strickland said city officials have followed through on their agreement to talk with protesters, and he promised on Wednesday to continue the conversation with further meetings.
friendly approach
In Knoxville on Friday, about 100 protesters walked down the middle of Gay Street, downtown's most iconic thoroughfare, before linking arms to block a major intersection. Traffic stopped for about 15 minutes and protesters held a 1-minute, 15-second moment of silence to recognize the 115 black people killed by police gunfire in the U.S. this year.
Drivers navigating the busy streets honked their horns and one middle-aged white man got out of his vehicle to ask police to do something and told a protester to find a job.
Police, though, took it in stride. They accommodated the protesters by simply directing traffic around them.
Two days later, on Sunday, protesters again began blocking intersections, but police officers encouraged them to move inward to keep from blocking the road.
The emphasis is always on balancing the safety of protesters, the public and the officers, said Knoxville Police Chief David Rausch.
"The good news is that the experience here so far has been that if we feel there's a safety issue, we have a conversation with those who are engaged in the protest and let them know, 'Hey, things are getting unsafe,' " said Rausch, who is president of the Tennessee Association of Police Chiefs. "They have been very good at adjusting with us."
Rausch estimated he brought in "40 or so" additional officers during the protests between the "mobile field force," which is trained to work with large crowds, and a special operations team to handle what he termed "overwatch."
"It changed up a little bit," Rausch said of how they policed this weekend over previous protests. "The overwatch concern this time was different because of the incident in Dallas. We did have a different approach to ensure our officers were safe."
He declined to comment further on adjustments they made.
The interactions between police and protesters were all congenial which wasn't anything new, he said.
"Those who were engaged in the protests were thanking the officers for being there, for protecting them," Rausch said, adding that officers respect the protesters. "There have been issues that we have seen throughout the country where there have been some disparity questions, and so we get it. We understand why the questions are being asked."
Knoxville Mayor Madeline Rogero agreed and lauded the mutual respect between officers and the community they serve.
"You have the police who approach it in a very respectful way, recognizing the rights of the individuals to protest," she said. "Likewise, the folks who have shown up to protest have also been, by and large, very respectful. That goes hand-in-hand and has really helped to have significant protests for people to send a very clear message about their anguish and their concern, but at the same time, do it a way that everyone stays safe."
Chattanooga police worked with marchers during demonstrations on Saturday, Sunday and Monday without any problems. In a statement, the department vowed to "supply activists, marchers, organizers and citizens with a safe environment to express their views."
"We support protesters and proponents alike," Chief Fred Fletcher said in a statement. "It's our job to keep everyone safe."
police 'here to serve everybody'
Police in Nashville have long been praised for their accommodating attitude toward those affiliated with the Black Lives Matter movement officers served water and hot chocolate to protesters in 2014.
The department followed a similar model during marches over the weekend. Police helped eight people who were overheated Saturday get back to their meeting point in Centennial Park. And the department has shared photos of police praying and smiling alongside protesters over the weekend.
Metro Police Chief Steve Anderson has taken a leading role in setting the city's tone.
"We're here to serve everybody," Anderson said during an interview this week. "As much as possible, we want to allow that to occur."
That includes allowing protesters to shut down busy thoroughfares, an action that has been met by tear gas and handcuffs in other cities. Anderson has taken a practical approach when justifying the decision not to make arrests for blocking roads.
"What do we intend to accomplish?" Anderson said. "If we swoop in and start making arrests, are we going to block the street longer than the protesters want to block it? We just have to weigh those sorts of things."
But even as Anderson has stood up for protesters in public statements, there are signs that strains might exist in his department. Two officers were decommissioned in recent days for Facebook posts that drew criticism in the wake of the police shootings and the attack in Dallas.
Joshua Crutchfield, an organizer for the Nashville chapter of Black Lives Matter, said he wasn't surprised Metro police projected such an accepting and helpful tone during the demonstrations.
While he acknowledged Nashville police had been friendlier to protesters than departments in other cities, he challenged the idea that a peaceful protest was indicative of fair day-to-day police work. He said traffic stops and other police interactions in Nashville still unfairly target racial minorities.
"It doesn't match what's actually going on in the city," Crutchfield said. Racial inequality "is also a problem here," he said.
For his part, Anderson seemed hopeful that positive interactions during marches could lay the groundwork for improved relationships.
"We try to be as tolerant as possible, we try to be as accommodating as possible," he said. "Along the way, maybe we build some mutual respect."
Ukraine's higher business court has dismissed a counterclaim of Russia's Gazprom against decisions of lower instance courts that returned without review its claim challenging the decision of Ukraine's Antimonopoly Committee to fine the Russian company UAH 85.966 billion.
An Interfax-Ukraine correspondent has reported that the decision was made on Wednesday.
"The decision of the business court dated April 13, 2016 and the decision of Kyiv's appeal court dated May 18, 2016 in the case are left unchanged, and Gazprom's counterclaim is dismissed," the judge said.
As reported, the Antimonopoly Committee levied the fine on January 22, 2016, after determining that Gazprom had abused its monopoly position in transiting gas through Ukraine. However, Gazprom argues that the Antimonopoly Committee does not have the authority to regulate transit through Ukraine.
By MJ Slaby of the Knoxville News Sentinel
As she held up the supplies that students would use to create their models, Julie Beckman, a University of Tennessee architecture faculty member, told the students to get started right away.
Don't wait until you have it all thought out and don't think you'll have it perfect on the first try, she said, and adding that design is about trying multiple times until it's just right.
"You can't believe in it until you see it," said Beckman, who is director of student development for the UT College of Architecture and Design.
The group of 22 high school students was gathered in a classroom at UT's Art and Architecture Building for the annual Design Matters! Camp for rising high school sophomores, juniors and seniors.
The camp is about immersing students into what it's like to study design and what it's like to be a UT student who lives on campus, Beckman said.
The high schoolers come to the camp with some interest in architecture and design or in building, and then learn more about the career, she said.
"We are helping to hook them on it," she said.
Earlier in the week, the students visited the Fab Lab a UT facility on North Gay Street filled with cutting-edge equipment like 3D printers and laser cutters for architecture and design students and explored downtown Knoxville, including Market Square and Krutch Park.
While they were there, camp leaders encouraged them to look at the urban area differently and pay more attention to how people use the spaces, said Beckman, who is one of the faculty members for the camp.
And that means asking a lot of questions about the space and its uses, she said. On Wednesday, the students were starting models of their designs for an activity space within Krutch Park.
Ideas included a birdbath and bench, a secluded seating area and spots to enjoy the scenery.
But as they gathered supplies including an 1-inch-tall people that were scaled to the size for their work several students said the idea of starting to create the model was overwhelming.
"The camp is more challenging than I expected," said Joanna Finley, a rising high school senior from West Virginia.
Rose Moss, a rising junior from Georgia, agreed that the design process was "more than you think."
Moss added that although she's visited UT before, the design camp allowed her to imagine herself as a student living there.
Beckman said there's sometimes a misconception that architects only design houses and subdivisions, but designers are involved in all types of buildings and spaces.
"They have a great impact on everyday society," she said.
U.S. Sen. Bob Corker
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By Michael Collins of the Knoxville News Sentinel
WASHINGTON U.S. Sen. Bob Corker and a bipartisan group of lawmakers said Wednesday they will push for a new round of sanctions against Iran for "illicit" activity outside the scope of the nuclear agreement concluded one year ago Thursday.
Corker, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the senators will file legislation Thursday that would renew an existing sanctions measure scheduled to expire at the end of the year and impose new sanctions against Iran for ballistic missile activity, terrorism and other activities.
"We are seeing how Iran continues to push the limits," Corker said. "There's just no pushback occurring from the (President Barack Obama) administration or other countries. We feel like this is an appropriate way of pushing back."
The nuclear agreement called for Iran to curb its nuclear program in exchange for billions of dollars in sanctions relief. The deal resulted from months of negotiations between Iran and the United States and six other Western powers.
The deal's one-year anniversary comes on the heels of a report by Germany's intelligence agency that, even as the deal was being negotiated, Iran sought "a quantitatively high level" of nuclear technology and equipment from German companies.
Corker, who opposed the nuclear agreement and led opposition to it in the Senate, said Iran's overtures to German companies are "certainly a violation of the spirit of the deal."
He said the new legislation would enable the United States "to push back against all of the other nefarious activities that we know Iran is involved in the region."
Specifically, the bill calls for new mandatory sanctions against entities involved with Iran's ballistic missile program and those that transact with them. Sanctions also would be imposed on Iran for any activities that undermine cybersecurity.
In addition, the bill would renew the Iran Sanctions Act, which is scheduled to expire at the end of the year and spells out trade, energy, defense and banking sanctions over Iran's nuclear and missile activities. The bill would reauthorize the law through 2026.
The legislation also would require the president to block the property of any person or entity involved in the supply, sale or transfer of prohibited arms and related materials to Iran.
The bill "reasserts the proper role of Congress," Corker said, by prohibiting a president from using sanctions relief in the future to implement an international agreement with Iran without congressional approval.
The State Department, along with the Defense and Treasury departments, would be required to give Congress a report every two years on a 10-year strategy to counter Iran activities in the Middle East, North Africa and beyond.
Besides Corker, the bill's sponsors are Sens. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., Marco Rubio, R-Fla.; and Joe Manchin, D-W.Va.
"Iran's threats extend well beyond nuclear weapons ambitions," Menendez said. "The United States must reserve the right to hold Iran accountable for its actions, and that is exactly what this legislation will do, imposing stricter sanctions tied to the specific actions outside of the nuclear portfolio. We must speak to Iran in the language they understand: There will be consequences."
The White House and the State Department oppose any new sanctions against Iran. Corker said he understood that, to get Senate Democrats on board, the legislation could not be seen as an attempt to undermine the nuclear deal.
"I opposed the deal," he said. "But we are also concerned that what is happening is the Iran nuclear deal is becoming our Middle East policy. We want them to know we are pushing back in every other area possible against Iran's nefarious activities."
Corker said he hopes the Senate Foreign Relations Committee can have hearings on the legislation in September.
Boyd Matheson of Utah has been leading a push for the 2016 Republican National Convention's Platform Committee to adopt a much smaller statement of principles instead of the current 33,000-word document. (Special to the News Sentinel/ Victor Ashe)
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By Victor Ashe
Victor Ashe, former Knoxville mayor and U.S. ambassador to Poland, will be writing a "Delegate Diary" for the News Sentinel from the 2016 Republican National Convention.
CLEVELAND The lengthy meetings of the 2016 Republican National Convention's Platform Committee finally concluded Tuesday with a document that certainly marks the party as the most conservative.
Whether social issues or national defense or economic issues, the party is squarely on the right. To the credit of the 112 delegates, there was extensive debate and almost exhaustive consideration given.
The section on foreign policy was titled a "Dangerous World," and contains the view of how the world looks today. Given the tragic set of attacks across the world, the title is an accurate summary of the situation all of us face.
As an observer, the shortcomings were lack of substantive research on some amendments as there was on occasion an absence of resources to verify or nullify assertions. That is why the committee focused on national security and relationships with foreign allies in Asia, Africa, Latin America and Europe. The United Kingdom was recognized as our top ally whether the U.K. is in the European Union or not.
A quick glance at the composition of the Platform Committee shows a membership overwhelmingly white, with only one African-American woman and one openly gay woman. At some point, the Republican Party must include more nonwhites if there is a serious intent to win future national elections. The makeup of the committees is governed by each state delegation, which chooses one man and one woman on each standing committee.
The convention, which begins Monday, will show America an overwhelmingly white complexion. The Democratic National Convention the following week in Philadelphia will show a more much diverse group.
The GOP at some time in the not too distant future will have to expand its base while maintaining its principles or become the losing political party.
An innovative development among committee members was continued discussion on changing to a short, direct statement of principles not to exceed 1,200 words. Such a platform would be much more readable and understandable than the current 33,000-word document.
Led by Boyd Matheson of Utah, the effort to shrink built support as the arcane debate on numerous amendments left delegates wondering how much the American public would ever understand or know about the decisions made in Cleveland. They are right on target: only policy wonks and some media people will ever read such long reports.
Shorter statements of principle for both political parties would enable more voters to be better informed on both parties' platform. Perhaps it would increase voter turnout. Such a move could not take place until the 2020 presidential election.
Tennessee Republican Party Chairman Ryan Haynes of Knoxville arrived Tuesday in his role as delegate and party chair. Other Tennessee delegates will arrive in Cleveland over the weekend, staying at the Radisson Hotel in Eastlake, which is 17 miles from downtown.
The convention will meet for the first time midafternoon Monday after a morning brunch hosted for the state's 116 delegates and alternates by Gov. Bill Haslam, and U.S. Sens. Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker. Every day next week there is a social event (including a boat trip on Lake Erie) for Tennessee delegates.
U.S. Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., on Wednesday, March 1, 2016, on Capitol Hill. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
SHARE Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn.
By Michael Collins of the Knoxville News Sentinel
WASHINGTON Rep. Marsha Blackburn is asking the FBI and other federal agencies to open a "public corruption" investigation into the activities of the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation.
In a letter she is circulating to other House members, the Brentwood Republican says media reports have raised significant questions about the foundation's practices and their intersection with American foreign policy.
"These reports, along with recently discovered information about the foundation's initial tax exempt filings, portray a lawless 'Pay to Play' enterprise that has been operating under a cloak of philanthropy for years and should be investigated," the letter says.
The letter will be sent Friday to FBI Director James Comey, IRS Commissioner John Koskinen and Edith Ramirez, chairwoman of the Federal Trade Commission. Blackburn asks all three agencies to investigate the foundation's practices.
A spokesman for the Clinton Foundation did not respond to a request for comment.
In the letter, Blackburn suggests the foundation's international activities are illegal. In its initial filings with the IRS, the foundation said its activities would involve constructing a presidential library, maintaining a historical site with records and engaging in study and research.
"No mention is made of conducting activities outside of the United States, which is one of the codes included in the IRS 'Application for Recognition of Exemption' in effect at that time," the letter says.
The letter also raises questions about the foundation's dealings with two companies, Laureate International Universities and Uranium One.
The International Youth Fund, whose board members include Laureate's founder, Douglas Becker, received more than $55 million in grants from the U.S. Agency for International Development while Hillary Clinton was secretary of State, the letter states. Laureate has given between $1 million and $5 million to the Clinton Foundation and paid Bill Clinton $16.5 million to serve as honorary chairman.
As for Uranium One, Hillary Clinton, now the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, was one of several Obama administration officials who approved the sale of uranium to the Russian-operated company, whose chairman also has donated $2.35 million to the Clinton Foundation, according to the letter.
"The appearance of 'Pay to Play' transactions involving Laureate and Uranium One also raise serious allegations of criminal conduct requiring further examination," the letter states.
Blackburn sent letters to the IRS and the Federal Trade Commission earlier this year asking them to investigate the foundation's activities. Her office said Wednesday that at least 40 House members have signed the new letter.
Appearing before a congressional committee last week, Comey declined to say whether the FBI looked into the Clinton Foundation's activities as part of its investigation into Hillary Clinton's emails.
"I'm not going to comment on the existence or nonexistence of any other investigations," Comey said in response to a question from Republican Rep. Jason Chaffetz of Utah, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
You don't have to take sides.
I have been thinking a lot lately about a conversation I had with a colleague years ago. Jackie Brown, a black female reporter, and I were sitting in my office at the old News Sentinel building talking about our children. We both had teenage boys in high school and we were commiserating with each other about anxious Saturday nights and how hard it was to sleep until we heard that front door close around midnight.
I started to talk about a parent's worst nightmare the boys doing something stupid and getting mixed up in something that involved the police and something tragic happening. A high school prank, a party out of hand, speeding. Jackie looked me in the eye and said: "What if your boys were black?"
It should be obvious why that conversation resonates with me these days after what's happened in the last week. Two black men killed by police, five police officers killed by a black sniper.
It is often said, and borne out by events in Dallas last week, that officers put their lives on the line every day. Given that there are thousands of uniformed officers in America, it is inevitable that you can have a few who are ill-trained, scared or just bigoted enough to let a routine traffic stop get out of hand. When that happens, people die. But it also creates an animus toward the thousands of good policemen who do their difficult job every day and do it well.
What distresses me is that when a black suspect is killed people immediately start to take sides, whether they know all the facts in the case or not. You can read anything on social media about the victim's rap sheet or how policemen are racists. Can we not all agree that people being killed is a bad thing and let's not let the color of their skin decide right and wrong?
I grew up down on the Alabama-Tennessee border. The Alabama side was a dry county. Every road and pig trail into Tennessee had a beer joint. Being teenage boys driving around on Friday or Saturday night was probable cause to be stopped and searched. We soon learned that there were only two responses that were acceptable: "Yes, sir" and "No, sir."
Knox County is blessed with good professional officers in the sheriff's department and in the city police department. When we had some incidents in Knoxville over 15 years ago, Mayor Victor Ashe appointed a civilian review board to receive complaints about police behavior. Sheriff Jimmy "J.J." Jones has not hesitated to discipline and fire officers who screw up.
But the situation is volatile everywhere. When a broken tail light leads to a death, something is wrong. When a guy selling untaxed cigarettes dies in police custody, something is wrong.
What's worrisome is that instead of dealing with the individual facts of a case and punishing the guilty, we scale the incident up into a national debate and people take sides. You don't have to take a side. Lawbreakers should be punished, whether a black suspect or a bad cop, and it's possible to be on different sides, depending on the facts of the case. You should not assume that all black suspects are resisting arrest or that all police officers are trigger-happy.
Where do you suppose we here in the United States got the idea that taking a vacation was a sign of weakness? Or that we were so important our company couldn't get along without us? Or that taking time off was like telling the boss you didn't take your work seriously?
A recent Reuters/ipsos poll found that only 57 percent of U.S. workers use up all their vacation days, compared with 89 percent of workers in France.
The typical number of days off that large U.S. companies give their 10-year employees is 15 paid vacation days and 10 public holidays, for a total of 25. Just for the sake of comparison, Brazil and Lithuania offer 41 total days off; Finland, France and Russia offer a minimum of 40 days off.
My son and his partner, who live in Canada, left this morning for vacation: two months renting an apartment in Barcelona. My son, George, is an elementary school teacher, and their schools go through June and begin in September. David oversees real estate transactions and manages properties for a non-profit agency that serves adults with special needs. Some of his work can be done with phone calls and by computer.
Most countries have labor laws mandating paid vacation time for employees, and in Canada, nearly all provinces require at least two weeks, plus holidays. U.S. law does not require employers to grant any vacation or holidays at all. About 25 percent of all U.S. employees receive no paid vacation time or paid holidays. None.
The Center for Economic and Policy Research calls the U.S. the "No Vacation Nation." The U.S. is the only advanced economy in the world that doesn't guarantee paid vacation for employees. We complain about this, yet over half of us don't take the time off we are given. Why?
According to an Expedia survey, people who don't take their vacation time do so for several reasons: "They hope to receive compensation for unused time, they have a hard time planning ahead or their partner can't travel during the same time period."
All work and no play not only makes us dull, it is hard on family life. Most children have two working parents, and if there is never any time to play together or travel for a week or two, relationships suffer. Playtime should be a priority. Ask a child for their happiest memories, and you'll see why. It isn't a scene from the workaday world.
Some say the reason we in this country don't make vacation time a priority is because we value stuff more than time. Big cars. Gadgets. Giant houses. An editorial in U.S. News & World Report put it pretty straightforward: It all comes down to what people feel is important. We value money and stuff. Other countries value leisure time.
And then there's this: The puritanical version of Christianity, so much a part of our history, continues to appeal to certain Christians today. "True Christians" follow the stern message that hard work is good for the soul. We are proud of being busy it is a virtue; being idle is a vice.
Modern Europe seems to have avoided "so melancholy a lesson." When my friends hear about my son's two months in Spain this summer, the first question is, "How can they afford so much time off?"
They saved for it. They made it a priority. Their government takes it seriously and mandates workers get significant time for rest, recreation, for a change of scenery and an escape from routine. And for family time.
They have given their Texas nephew as a high school graduation gift a trip to Spain to visit and see a new part of the world with his uncles. A vacation none of them will ever forget.
In a perfect world, everyone should be so lucky.
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Knox County Commission races are competitive this year, a welcome change over 2014 when all four candidates in the general election went unchallenged.
In the 1st District, which includes East Knoxville, downtown and Mechanicsville, special education teacher Evelyn Gill, a Democrat, is the best candidate in the three-person contest to replace Sam McKenzie, who chose not to run again.
Gill would make a passionate advocate for the district, especially when it comes to schools and business development and infrastructure improvements in a district that is home to some of the county's most economically challenged neighborhoods. With her background as a teacher, Gill would add an informed voice on education funding and equity in the allocation of resources. Some of the school system's most struggling schools are in the 1st District.
Republican Michael Covington and Independent Tyrone Fine are focusing on economic development and education, respectively. Both, however, likely will find it tough going in the county's most reliably Democratic district.
In the 9th District, which encompasses South Knox County, another three-way race is unfolding. Republican Carson Dailey has been active in the community for years and should get the nod over Democrat James "Brandon" Hamilton and Independent Tom Pierce.
Dailey has served on the county Board of Zoning Appeals, Blighted Properties Commission and Ethics Committee, giving him the experience needed for the job. Expanding the area's senior center, paving rural roads and improving safety along Chapman Highway are his priorities.
Hamilton, an insurance agent, is extremely intelligent and has a bright future in politics, but he lacks seasoning. Pierce, as a self-described "white separatist" who heads up an organization monitored as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, is not worth consideration.
Voters should opt for incumbent Republican Brad Anders over Democrat Donna Lucas in the 6th District, which includes Hardin Valley and Karns, A Knoxville police officer, Anders says road and infrastructure needs in Northwest Knox County must to be addressed. Coming up with a comprehensive fire protection plan for unincorporated Knox County will be a priority, as will a jail diversion facility for non-violent offenders with mental health and substance abuse issues.
Lucas is to be commended for providing a Democratic alternative, but Anders' experience makes him an easy choice.
Another effective incumbent with invaluable experience voters should choose is Chairman Dave Wright, who is running for re-election in the sprawling 8th District. Wright has placed several feathers in his cap in his most recent term, leading the charge for new elementary and middle schools for the district and helping to find common ground on the once-controversial Midway Business Park.
His opponent, Independent Don Wiser, faced criminal charges in connection with a driving school he used to run. A judge last week dismissed some charges against him and a jury deadlocked on the remaining minor count. Prosecutors have not said whether they will try to bring the case to trial again.
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I am writing to address several misconceptions about induction-heated steam power generation. At least two writers responded to my letter regarding the proposal by Phoenix Energy of Nevada to purchase and retrofit TVA's Bellefonte Plant with this technology.
One writer asserts that induction power plants cannot be emissions-free because electricity is required to maintain the induction heating process, and this power would most likely come from a fossil fuel source. This is incorrect. While it is true that the initial startup would require energy from an outside source, it is self-sustaining once operational. Approximately 10-15 percent of the power produced would be diverted to operate the system, but the rest would be available for the grid. If the initial startup is powered by a renewable energy source like solar or wind, the entire operation would produce zero emissions.
Another writer apparently did not visit PENV's website to familiarize himself with the details of their power plant design. PENV has a patented reverse condenser that recirculates condensate, thus reclaiming waste heat for a more energy-efficient boiler. Waste heat would not be discharged into the air or river. He also misrepresents the true cost of nuclear energy. He does not take into account regulatory costs or the cost of disposing of spent nuclear fuel.
Induction-heated steam power plants could be built and operated for a fraction of the cost of nuclear plants with none of the regulatory, security or radioactive waste issues. Finally, he minimizes the hazards of nuclear energy with his statement that he can find no evidence of deaths or radiation overdoses in any American nuclear plant during the past 60 years. Anybody remember the near-catastrophe at Three Mile Island? Overseas, what about Chernobyl and Fukushima? He may prefer nuclear, but induction power is safer and more efficient.
Ann W. Delap, Knoxville
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President Barack Obama and presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton refuse to link terrorists with Islam, although the terrorists themselves say their religion is the reason they are committing their horrific acts.
Why would Obama and Clinton refuse to name the ideology behind the killings?
Former U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey may have given us the answer when he appeared on Greta Van Susteren's program on the Fox News Network.
He stated that "bleaching" such words as "Islamic," "Sharia" and "jihad" from teaching manuals for FBI recruits and reports, such as the report released by the Justice Department on the killings of 49 people at a nightclub in Orlando, was "part of something much larger and Resolution 16/18 is a part of it."
Resolution 16/18 was passed in the Human Rights Council at the United Nations in 2011 and seeks to criminalize defamation of religion.
Resolution 16/18 was passed as a non-binding resolution. However, according to Mukasey, the Obama administration has taken the position the resolution is international law.
Clinton, while secretary of state, applauded the Organization of Islamic Cooperation for helping pass Resolution 16/18.
According to the Saudi-U.S. Relations Information Service, a Jan. 15, 2015, OIC statement on terrorism and extremism states that "A final communique following OIC's meeting said OIC categorically rejects any attempt to link terrorism with any country, ethnic group, or religion (ideology) or culture or nationality."
It appears the OIC believes any mention of Islam, factual or not, putting Islam in a negative light is an attack and deemed "defamation of Islam."
Using Resolution 16/18 as though it were international law is a direct attack on our freedom of speech rights.
Resolution 16/18, with all its ramifications, is the reason the term "Islamic terrorist" will not be used by Clinton and the reason she must not become president.
Brenda Miller, Knoxville
Head of the State Space Agency of Ukraine (SSAU) Liubomyr Sabadosh has said that as of July the 2016 national space program has not been financed as foreseen in the law on the 2016 national budget.
"We have not yet received any kopeck this year for the space program from the budget. They have money. The funds are on the treasury account," Sabadosh said in an interview published in the Uriadovy Kurier newspaper on Wednesday.
He recalled that according to the law on the 2016 national budget the financing of the national research and technical space program is approved at UAH 230 million.
Sabadosh links violation of the budget legislation with the complicated procedure for agreeing financing for public agencies.
"The complicated approving procedure at the Economic Development and Trade Ministry and Finance Ministry hinders us [from getting money]," he said, adding that after the government reshuffle the red tape got even worse.
According to the 2016 national budget, UAH 3.4 billion is foreseen for financing of the space sector, including UAH 2.47 billion from the general fund of the budget.
Some UAH 223.6 million is planned to provide for financing of the works under state targeted programs and state orders in the space sector, including the general state targeted research space program, which is 4.5 times more than in 2015 (UAH 49.4 million).
Some UAH 1.85 billion from the general fund or 55.9% of total financing will be sent to fulfill liabilities on credits raised to realize the Cyclone 4 and National Satellite Communications System projects.
The draft document foresees that UAH 925.8 million (27.2% of total financing) will be provided from the special fund to implement state targeted programs on reformation and development of defense and industrial complex, designing and introduction of new technologies, boosting the industrial capacity of the sector facilities to produce defense products.
The Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine has received U.S. support in customs reforming and together with the U.S. customs officers and border guards will drastically transform the Ukrainian customs system within a year, Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman has said.
"Our understanding is in complete accord and we'll put things in order at the Ukrainian customs. I think that the situation will be drastically changed within a year," Groysman said during the Cabinet meeting in Kyiv on Wednesday.
According to him, 11 experts of customs and border services of the U.S., who worked in Ukraine, in the course of the final system meeting on July 12 presented a summary report, which confirmed the need for fundamental changes in the country's customs system.
The prime minister noted that a detailed report would be submitted within 30 days. It will contain recommendations for overcoming corruption in the customs system, the transformation of customs into high-quality service for legitimate business, removal of any abuse during customs clearance of goods.
As reported, Groysman in May during a meeting at the Krakovets border check point on the Ukrainian-Polish border informed the leaders of the State Fiscal Service of Ukraine and Customs Office leaders that they have three months at their disposal to restore order at the Ukrainian customs.
Technical U.S. Customs Service mission had been operating in Ukraine from June 28 until July 11. The experts arrived to Kyiv at the invitation of the prime minister to determine the needs for reforming the Ukrainian customs and reform preparations.
Hyundai Development Company (HDC) Chairman Chung Mong-gyu, left, presents Pianist Cho Seong-jin with this year's Pony Chung Innovation Award at the Pony Chung Hall in southern Seoul, Wednesday. / Courtesy of HDC
By Lee Hyo-sik
Pianist Cho Seong-jin has been selected as the recipient of this year's Pony Chung Innovation Award for winning the International Chopin Piano Competition, one of the world's oldest and most prestigious music competitions.
The Pony Chung Foundation held a ceremony at the Pony Chung Hall in southern Seoul, Wednesday, to present the 21-year-old pianist with the award.
Cho, the first Korean to win the Chopin competition in Poland last October, is the youngest recipient of the innovation award, the foundation said. Past awardees include figure skater Kim Yu-na and U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.
Pony Chung Foundation Chairman Kim Chul-soo, Hyundai Development Company (HDC) Chairman Chung Mong-gyu and 150 other high-profile figures attended the award ceremony.
"Pianist Cho won the 17th International Chopin Piano Competition, significantly raising Korea's status on the international classical music stage," Kim said. "He has also sparked a great deal of sensation among music fans at home and abroad. We have high hopes for Cho's achievements in the future."
Cho won the top prize and 30,000 euros (36.8 million won) at the International Chopin Piano Competition, held every five years in Warsaw, Poland, the home of Chopin (1810-1849).
The Pony Chung Foundation has been offering the Pony Chung Innovation Award every year to those who bring positive changes to society in commemoration of the late Chung Se-yung. Those chosen received 100 million won in prize money.
In November 2005, the HDC chairman set up the foundation to honor his late father and former company Chairman Chung, who placed top priority on fostering innovation.
In addition, the foundation has been providing students with scholarships and implementing other academic support programs.
Since 2008, each year it has selected up to three Ph.D. holders majoring in the humanities, giving each 50 million won in research funding.
It also runs a program to nurture young musicians by offering scholarships and organizing concerts in which they can show off their talent.
By Lee Hyo-sik
Hyundai Heavy Industries (HHI) and other shipbuilders are experiencing difficulties in winning new orders due to the reluctance of banks to issue credit guarantees for them, officials said Wednesday.
Over the past year, financial firms have become reluctant to provide a refund guarantee (RG) as domestic shipbuilders suffer from deteriorating financial health amid the global shipbuilding industry slump.
It is a must for shipbuilders to obtain a guarantee from banks if they want to finalize contracts from shipping firms. Shipbuilders can receive a down payment, normally amounting to 10 percent of the contract price, from shippers only after they obtain an RG from banks.
The RG guarantees that shipping firms can get the down payment back from the bank if the shipbuilders fail to honor the contracts.
Officials from shipbuilding companies call on banks to look into the details of new orders and extend credit if the shipbuilders can make a profit from building the ships.
"It is absolutely necessary for us to receive an RG from banks in order to secure new deals," a HHI official said. "When we grappled with a range of problems from January to May, it was really hard for us to get an RG. No banks were willing to extend a credit guarantee."
However, things have improved since June, according to the official, who said its main creditor KEB Hana Bank, and the Export-Import Bank of Korea (EXIM Bank) extended support to HHI.
In late May, the shipbuilder won orders from SK E&S to build two LNG carriers. But it wasn't able to obtain an RG from banks for nearly a month. At the last minute, KEB Hana Bank and EXIM Bank issued an RG for each of the ships, enabling HHI to finalize the deal.
So far, HHI has won seven new orders this year, while its affiliate Hyundai Mipo and Hyundai Samho secured three and two, respectively.
It has been more difficult for Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering (DSME), which has been under a prosecution investigation for accounting fraud and other irregularities, to obtain an RG.
"In the first six months of the year, it was extremely difficult for us to get a credit guarantee," a DSME official said. "Banks have become unwilling to do business with struggling shipbuilders. Thanks to our main creditor Korea Development Bank (KDB), and EXIM Bank, which issued RGs, we were able to secure four new deals this year."
The official said banks should be more willing to take risks, stressing that if shipbuilders can make money from building ships, financial firms need to be more forward thinking.
"This year, we won all the new orders at reasonable, market-based prices. So, there is no risk for banks to incur losses from issuing an RG to us," he said. "They should be able to pick good apples from the bad."
On June 26, DSME even issued a press release announcing that it obtained an RG from KDB for a $580 million order from Angelicoussis Shipping Group based in Greece. This was largely aimed at quelling concerns among foreign shipping firms by showing that DSME can honor the contracts.
Samsung Heavy Industries, one of Korea's three big shipbuilders, has failed to secure any new orders this year.
By Jhoo Dong-chan
The nation's two largest trade unions have started holding a vote on a general strike after failing to reach an agreement with management over this year's wage and employment rules. Workers at the two companies are expected to approve the strike.
Unionized workers at Hyundai Motor and Hyundai Heavy Industries (HHI) said that they both held a vote on the strike Wednesday. It was the first time for the two giant unions to hold a vote for a strike on the same day.
A total of 47,000 workers at the nation's largest automaker in the cities of Ulsan, Jeonju, Asan and Namyang participated in the one-day vote, and whether they stage a walkout will be announced Thursday.
Also, about 16,000 unionized workers at HHI also started the three-day vote on the general strike on Wednesday 6:30 a.m. The unionists will announce the result of the poll Friday.
It seems certain that the two unions will stage a general strike as they are reportedly very disappointed by the managements' positions during the negotiations in May.
If workers at the two unions approve the strike, a strike by Ulsan's two largest unions is expected to be the first of its kind in 23 years since they struggled together for better wages in 1993.
Hyundai Motor and HHI officials were not forthcoming about the unionized workers' move.
"The result has yet to come out. And we will keep focusing on the union's decision," said an official.
"We are, however, still willing to engage in further negotiations."
Business circles and the local community in Ulsan voiced deep concerns about the union's decision.
"It is time for workers and the company to cooperate," Kwon Myung-ho, head of Ulsan Dong-gu district office, said.
"Dong-gu area in Ulsan has been the center of the nation's shipbuilding industry, but has faced economic crisis along with the restructuring process in the industry. I strongly suggest both sides to split differences and find a way to get over the situation."
It would be a severe blow in the HHI's efforts for management normalization if the unionized workers decide to stage a walkout alongside Hyundai Motor workers. Creditors of the embattled shipbuilder demanded the union's cooperation as one of the baseline conditions for the shipbuilder's restructuring plan.
HHI announced a self-rescue plan that includes asset sales and a cut in the workforce to save 3.5 trillion won. Under the shipbuilder's self-rescue plan, temporarily approved by its creditors and led by KEB-Hana Bank, it will sell stock investments, non-core assets and cut its workforce, which will reduce its debt-to-equity ratio to below 100 percent by 2018.
Hyundai Motor workers also demanded a 7.2 percent increase in basic pay along with paying 30 percent of last year's net profit as incentives as well as reinstatement of fired workers during a dozen meetings with the company officials.
By Kwon Mee-yoo
Chung Myung-whun
Maestro Chung Myung-whun, the former director of the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra (SPO), arrived in Korea Wednesday morning to be questioned by the police and the prosecution for alleged defamation.
Chung said the truth will be revealed soon, upon arriving at Incheon International Airport. "I don't think I am being investigated but the time for truth has come," Chung said in the airport's arrival hall after arriving from Munich, Germany.
The maestro has been in a legal dispute with former SPO CEO Park Hyun-jung and will be questioned at the Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office Thursday.
Park was accused of verbally and sexually abusing SPO employees, but the police dismissed charges against her in August 2015. Park sued Chung for defamation, claiming that he represented the allegations as true in interviews.
Chung countercharged Park with false accusations and libel.
By Choi Sung-jin
One out of every two single Koreans approves of living together on the premise they will get married. And they are quite negative about the existing marriage practice, in which men buy homes and wives prepare furnishings.
According to the "2015 fertility survey" of 2,383 unmarried people aged 20-44, by the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs, 68.1 percent of male and 51.2 percent of female respondents approved cohabitation with marriage in mind.
Asked whether they can live together regardless of marriage, however, 47.4 percent of men said "yes" but only 29.8 percent of women agreed.
On the other hand, to the question of whether marriage registration should be made after they live together as couples for some time, 58.4 percent of women said "yes" but only 44 percent of men gave the same reply, reflecting the relatively bigger social hardships women experience after divorce, the survey said.
Kim Jung-ju, founder of Nexon and chairman of its holding company NXC, answers reporters' questions as he enters the Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office in southern Seoul, Wednesday, for questioning over his alleged involvement in senior prosecutor Jin Kyung-joon's huge gains in trading Nexon shares. / Yonhap
Probe to focus on link between Kim and prosecutor
By Kim Bo-eun
Prosecutors on Wednesday summoned gaming company Nexon's founder and chairman Kim Jung-ju for questioning over his alleged involvement in senior prosecutor Jin Kyung-joon's suspicious trading of the company's stocks.
The investigation team led by a specially appointed prosecutor also looked into Nexon's alleged irregularities, and whether Kim provided Jin benefits in return for favors such as shielding the company from investigations.
The summons came a day after the team raided 10 sites including Kim's residence and office in Seoul and Jeju Island as well as Jin's residence in southern Seoul.
"I'll cooperate fully with prosecutors," Kim told reporters before facing the questioning. "I'm sorry for causing the stir."
In March, it was found that Jin made some 12 billion won in profit after selling Nexon shares which he purchased in 2005 at much lower prices. At the time, Jin bought 10,000 shares for 400 million won.
Questions arose over where Jin had gotten the money to buy the stocks, and Nexon last month admitted to having lent the amount to Jin and other investors. But controversy escalated as it became known that the company offered the loan without interest.
In addition, because Nexon was not listed when Jin purchased the company's stocks, it would have been hard for him to know about the company selling its shares.
Because Jin and Kim went to the same university and their families are close, suspicions arose that Kim provided insider information to Jin when the company's business started to pick up.
Suspicions were also raised that Nexon provided Jin two luxury sedans, a Hyundai Genesis and a Mercedes-Benz, which were initially leased by the company, but later handed over to Jin's relatives.
Before Kim's summons, Jin's legal representative submitted a document partially acknowledging the allegations.
Jin admitted to the loan from Nexon and his purchase of the stocks. However, he claimed he was not granted favors in the process and he did not offer any favors to Kim or his company in return.
Jin also acknowledged that he received a Hyundai Genesis from Nexon under his brother-in-law's name.
The prosecution is expected to soon summon Jin for questioning.
On Monday, civic group Spec Watch filed a complaint with the prosecution against Kim, alleging he was involved in professional negligence, embezzled corporate funds and evaded taxes amounting to some 2.8 trillion won. Kim allegedly caused losses when he sold Nexon Korea to Nexon Japan. In addition, Kim is suspected of having embezzled over 10 million won in the process of purchasing NXP, a real estate unit of Nexon, at extremely low costs.
The civic group claimed Kim provided Jin information on stock trading and other benefits in exchange for covering up Nexon's malpractices.
By Kim Hyo-jin
The U.S. military will open its Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) base in Guam to the South Korean media next week in an effort to dispel concerns here over deployment of the anti-missile system, according to military sources, Wednesday.
"The U.S. Army will open its THAAD facilities in Guam to South Korean journalists from July 17 to 19," a military official said. "It will help them understand how the battery is operated and address any concerns about safety issues."
It is the first time the U.S. Army has allowed foreign media access to the THAAD facilities, according to the official.
The South Korean military said journalists from seven outlets, including Hankyoreh and the Chosun Ilbo, will visit the base.
The move is seen as an attempt to quell controversy in South Korea over a THAAD deployment and ease public concerns over potentially harmful electromagnetic waves from the X-band radar that comes with the system.
The South Korean defense ministry asked U.S. Forces Korea (USFK) to allow the visit after calls from South Korean reporters, and the USFK soon approved it, the official said.
"The U.S. stepped up helping settle mounting controversies over safety concerns over the battery with this decision," he said.
The defense ministry also said it plans to open media access to a patriot missile base near Seoul and a green pine radar base in Chungcheong Province.
"Questions over harmful effects of electromagnetic waves emitted from THAAD's X-band radar have been raised," a defense ministry official said. "But they are no stronger than patriot or green pine radar. We are hoping to ease safety concerns surrounding the THAAD system."
But some say the defense ministry is responding too hastily to public discontent with the government's decision.
"Those bases require top security," said Rep. Kim Jong-dae of the Justice Party. "It's understandable if the ministry decides to open them for the people's right to know but it still seems to be a hasty decision only concerning the urgency of deploying the battery here."
By Kim Hyo-jin
Opposition parties called on the government, Wednesday, to get parliamentary approval for the planned deployment of the U.S.'s Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) battery here.
They criticized the government for failing to seek public understanding about the controversial issue in advance, saying the decision should be withdrawn if the National Assembly opposes it.
The government picked Seongju County in North Gyeongsang Province as the location for the missile-defense battery.
"A deployment of the THAAD battery is a subject that needs the National Assembly's ratification as it takes public money and land," said Rep. Kim Song-sik, chief policymaker of the minor opposition People's Party.
"We hardly believe the U.S. will afford the whole cost to run the system; moreover, Seongju is now under control of the South Korean army, but will belong to the USFK following the THAAD deployment."
Moon Jae-in, former leader of the main opposition Minjoo Party of Korea (MPK), also strongly protested the government's decision in tune with the minor People's Party, calling for a re-consideration. He is a major opposition contender for the presidential election next year.
"It's hard to understand why the government hastily made the decision and pushed ahead with it while fanning public uneasiness," Moon said in a press release.
"It is desirable for the government to go through a process of seeking parliamentary approval considering the issue would require our financial burden and part of our territory."
Taking a hard-line tone, Moon further insisted that "if needed, the Assembly should consider revising the Seoul-Washington Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA)."
The government earlier said that a deployment of the THAAD battery does not require parliamentary approval as the USFK will cover expenses for its deployment and operation, mentioning the regulations in the SOFA.
Following the government's announcement over the THAAD location, the MPK stepped up condemning its hasty decision lacking public consensus.
"It's against common sense that the government skipped the process of discussing the matter with citizens about the decided location," Lee Jae-kyung, the MPK's spokesperson said.
The party decided to form a committee to come up with measures against the government's move. But the party did not reach a conclusion about whether to oppose the decision itself as the party's official position, he added.
Seoul remains vulnerable to North Korean missiles
By Kang Seung-woo
South Korea and the United States announced Wednesday that they will deploy a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) battery in Seongju County, North Gyeongsang Province.
However, the missile shield will leave Seoul and its surrounding areas vulnerable to North Korean missiles because its maximum intercept range is about 200 kilometers. Seongju is located some 210 kilometers southeast of Seoul.
Because of this, some analysts are raising questions about the necessity of having the system on South Korean soil some even claim that the main mission of the battery is to protect U.S. military bases here.
Announcing the location, the South Korean military said the THAAD battery will be operational from late next year.
The military said it will deploy more ground-to-air missiles near Seoul to defend the capital from North Korean missiles.
It remains to be seen if North Korea will make any military provocations against the South and the United States, as it threatened Monday to make "merciless" retaliatory strikes against them from the moment the location for THAAD was selected.
The operations of the central office of Donbas Energy System in Horlivka blocked on June 30 due to its seizure by a group of armed persons was unblocked on July 12, and the companys managers started implementing their duties, National Energy Company Ukrenergo has reported.
"After taking measures, including with participation of representatives of the company and the firm position of employees of Donbas Energy System, their professional responsibility for the reliable functioning of the regional power grid as part of the Ukrainian power grid, the operations of the central office of Donbas Energy System was unblocked on July 12, 2016," Ukrenergo said on Wednesday.
The company said that employees of generating divisions of the system provided for its functioning as usual during the office blocking period.
On July 2, 2016, Ukrenergo said that a group of armed persons headed by the head of the enterprise of power grids created by authorities of self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) seized the premises of Donbas Energy System of state-run enterprise Ukrenergo in Horlivka. On July 1, 2016, managers of Donbas Energy System were not allowed at the workplace. The fulfillment of instructions of the legal managers is being blocked by armed persons. Technical staff had to write applications to transfer to the enterprise of power grids created by so-called DPR's authorities and fulfill orders of its managers.
"These unlawful actions violate the Minsk agreements, Ukrainian legislation and rights of Ukrainian citizens," Ukrenergo said.
By Kang Seung-woo
Korean tourists should pay extra caution visiting Brazil during the Rio Olympics, said the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA), Wednesday, citing five risk factors.
The ministry said an unstable security situation, possible terrorist attacks, epidemics, political and economic confusion and an absence of a Korean diplomatic mission there may threaten visitors' safety.
The warnings came after a ministry team visited Brazil last week to investigate possible security and health risks to tourists.
The security situation in Brazil is the most worrisome amid a growing domestic crime rate.
"From January to April this year, Brazil saw increases of 15.4 percent in homicides, 23.7 percent in muggings and 19.7 percent in carjacking," the official said.
MOFA is also concerned the Islamic State (IS) may carry out an attack during the Summer Games that are scheduled for Aug. 6 to 22.
Although Brazilian authorities assured the country's safety from terrorist attacks, the extremist group in May threatened to target the Rio Olympics and numerous measures are being taken to prevent such an attack.
According to the Brazilian national intelligence agency, the country is preparing for all eventualities, beefing up the number of soldiers and police officers by 80,000.
As well, the mosquito-borne Zika virus and other infectious diseases are spreading, making it difficult for patients to receive treatment.
Korea does not currently operate a diplomatic mission to Rio de Janeiro, so the government plans to run a temporary consulate with officials from the foreign and health ministries to protect visiting Koreans during the Olympics.
The government has already issued a travel alert for Brazil and plans to raise it if the local security situation worsens.
By Kim Se-jeong
An Air Force airman stands guard at the gate of a Hawk ground-to-air missile battery on a mountain in the town of Seongju, North Gyeongsang Province, Wednesday. South Korea and the United States announced Wednesday that they have chosen Seongju County as the location for a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) battery. / Yonhap An elderly woman ties a band around her head during a protest against the proposed deployment of a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) battery in Seongju County, North Gyeongsang Province, Wednesday.
/ Korea Times photo by Kim Young-chul
The government's announcement Wednesday to deploy the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system on a hill in Seongju County in North Gyeongsang Province has created an uproar among its 45,000 residents.
More than 5,000 gathered in the county's capital to oppose the decision, claiming the missile system will pose serious health risks to them and environmental damage due to strong electromagnetic waves from the radar.
"What a decision. We do not accept it," the people chanted.
The Ministry of National Defense cited two reasons for the decision: the county's low population and an existing missile unit there which will enable cost saving.
"A low population isn't true," Seongju County head Kim Hang-gon said in the protest. "Right next to where the THAAD will be deployed is the county capital where almost half of the county's population lives."
The county's capital is home to 15,000 people, and the planned THAAD site is 1.5 kilometers away. "THAAD is coming right into Seongju's front yard. We won't tolerate this."
The leaders of South Korea and Switzerland will hold a summit in Seoul on Wednesday to discuss bilateral cooperation in trade, investment, science, security and other areas, the presidential office here said.
President Park Geun-hye and her Swiss counterpart, Johann Schneider-Ammann, are also expected to discuss joint efforts to pressure North Korea to abandon its nuclear and missile programs through the strict enforcement of international sanctions and other means.
The Swiss president's two-day trip to South Korea, which begins Wednesday, was arranged on the invitation of Park. Schneider-Ammann is the first Swiss president to visit Seoul since the two countries opened diplomatic ties in 1963.
The agenda for the bilateral summit is also expected to include the possible economic ramifications of Britain's recent decision to quit the European Union (EU), although Switzerland is not part of the 28-member bloc, observers said.
During his stay here, Schneider-Ammann will attend a session of the South Korea-Switzerland committee on science and technology, and a separate bilateral forum on biotechnology.
Last year, two-way trade reached $3.94 billion, with South Korea exporting $1.48 billion worth of ships, cars and petrochemical products to Switzerland and importing $2.45 billion worth of watches, gold and medicine from the European state. (Yonhap)
South Korea called Wednesday for "peaceful and creative diplomatic efforts" to resolve the South China Sea dispute following a landmark ruling that rejected China's claims to the key body of water.
On Tuesday, the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague ruled that China has no historical rights to the resource rich waters that are also claimed by the Philippines and other Southeast Asian nations.
In a statement, Seoul's foreign ministry said South Korea has consistently maintained the view that the South China Sea dispute should be resolved in accordance with relevant agreements and international regulations.
"Our government, while bearing in mind the arbitration ruling announced on July 12, hopes for a resolution of the South China Sea dispute through peaceful and creative diplomatic efforts," it said.
The ministry also reaffirmed its position that peace, stability and freedom of navigation and flight should be guaranteed in the area that serves as a key maritime trade route. (Yonhap)
President Park Geun-hye faces a tricky balancing act at the upcoming Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) in Mongolia, a venue likely to be marked by geopolitical tensions over a set of thorny issues including the South China Sea dispute, observers said Wednesday.
Park will attend the two-day multilateral summit, slated to take place on Friday and Saturday in Ulaanbaatar. The biennial gathering will be attended by the leaders of more than 50 countries including Japan, a key ally of the United States which is not an ASEM member.
The summit comes a few days after an international tribunal in The Hague, the Netherlands, rendered a landmark ruling against China's territorial claim to the lion's share of the resource-rich South China Sea.
Though the legal case at the Permanent Court of Arbitration was brought by the Philippines in 2013, it has been seen largely as a high-stakes battle between China and the U.S. -- the two major powers with which South Korea has been striving to maintain close ties for security and economic reasons.
Washington has led an international campaign to protect the "global commons" -- the freedom of navigation and flight in the strategically crucial waterway, while Beijing has pushed to beef up its territorial claims by building artificial islands in the disputed waters.
Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Taiwan and Brunei have also engaged in maritime disputes with China that has delineated its claim to the waterway with "the nine-dash-line," a maritime demarcation line that takes in more than 80 percent of the South China Sea.
The long-simmering row over the sea is not in the official agenda for the ASEM summit. But it is likely to emerge as an important topic among the ASEM participants during their multilateral or bilateral encounters, analysts said.
What kind of stance the South Korean leader will present over the territorial issue has drawn keen attention as Seoul has sought to further strengthen ties with the U.S and China. The U.S. is South Korea's top security ally, while China is its crucial partner for trade, tourism and joint efforts to denuclearize North Korea.
"The ASEM summit this time could put Park in a difficult position due to a series of ongoing issues including the South China Sea spat and the friction with Beijing (over the decision by Seoul and Washington to deploy an advanced anti-missile system to Korea)," said Lee Dong-ryul, a China expert at Dongduk Women's University.
Park is unlikely to directly mention the South China Sea issue at the gathering as South Korea is not among the claimants to the contested waterway -- although the sea involves a crucial shipping route for the export-reliant South Korea, observers noted.
Should she feel the need to stake out her position, Park is likely to repeat her earlier statement. During the East Asia Summit in Malaysia in November last year, the president said that the freedom of navigation and flight must be protected, and that the waterway must not be militarized.
Attention is also being drawn to whether Park will meet Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang bilaterally on the sidelines of the ASEM summit.
Officials here said that Park's schedule for a summit with Abe or Li has not been fixed yet. But the three leaders could briefly meet one another during the multilateral summit gatherings, analysts said.
Above all, the most crucial task for Park is to drum up support from the ASEM members to pressure Pyongyang to abandon its evolving nuclear and missile programs.
Park is expected to use the multilateral summit to urge participants to faithfully enforce U.N. Security Council (UNSC) sanctions, which were adopted in May in response to Pyongyang's nuclear test in January and long-range rocket launch the following month.
Launched in 1996, ASEM is a consultative body aimed at strengthening cooperation between Asia and Europe in political, economic, social, cultural and other areas. The summit is held biennially, with the last one held in Italy in 2014.
ASEM consists of 51 member states and 2 regional organizations: the European Union and the secretariat of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. (Yonhap)
By Yi Whan-woo
South Korea faces a tougher job in striking a balance between security and economic interest amid escalating rivalry between the United States and China, analysts said Wednesday.
Beijing is protesting an agreement between Seoul and Washington to set up a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) battery in South Korea to counter North Korea's missile threats.
In addition, the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA), an international tribunal in The Hague, ruled against Beijing's claim to most of the disputed South China Sea, Tuesday. The ruling makes it problematic for China in its plan to expand its influence across the Asia-Pacific.
Seoul has to take its stance on the tricky issue during three international meetings scheduled for this month.
The three meetings are vice foreign ministerial talks among South Korea, the U.S. and Japan in Hawaii, Thursday, the Asia-Europe (ASEM) summit in Mongolia from Friday to Saturday, and foreign ministerial talks during the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) in Laos, July 26.
Analysts said President Park Geun-hye, Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se and Vice Foreign Minister Lim Sung-nam should pursue a two-track strategy of handling security and economic issues in their scheduled meetings.
The strategy will be critical for Seoul to ensure its security alliance with the U.S. while maintaining business ties with China, South Korea's largest trading partner.
President Park, Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will join other heads of state and other high-level officials from 51 countries at the ASEM summit in the Mongolian capital of Ulaanbaatar.
Yun and five other foreign ministers from the six-party talks nations aimed at North Korea's denuclearization are expected to join the ARF along with ASEAN-member states.
Lim will meet U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Tony Blinken and Japanese Vice Foreign Minister Akitaka Saiki in Honolulu after they last met in Tokyo in January.
Workshop participants stress importance of universal values
Jane Wanjiru Nyaga, assistant director of the Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development Paola Garcia Castillo, pedagogical consultant of the Ministry of Education in Colombia Damira Orusbaeva, teacher trainer working at the Center for Social Integration in Kyrgyzstan Wael Nehme, staff member at the Teacher Training Center at the Center for Educational
Research and Development in Lebanon
By Chung Hyun-chae
Jane Wanjiru Nyaga, assistant director of the Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development, has emphasized the importance of global citizenship education in helping students enhance their understanding of global issues such as human rights, gender equality, world peace and democracy.
"Global citizenship education can help improve Kenyan education in that it will help learners take active roles both locally and globally to face and resolve global challenges," Nyaga told The Korea Times.
"What we think should be included in our new curriculum is citizenship education that encompasses human rights, democracy, ethnic, racial relations, security, sustainable development and gender issues," she said.
Nyaga attended the first Global Capacity-Building Workshop on Global Citizenship Education (GCED) hosted by the Asia-Pacific Centre of Education for International Understanding (APCEIU) under the auspices of UNESCO.
She was among 28 teachers and education experts from 26 nations who participated in the workshop held in the APCEIU building in Guro-gu, southwestern Seoul. The workshop lasted for two weeks from June 19.
"As Kenya is in the process of reforming its basic education and curriculum, it was critical for us to participate in the workshop to learn more about global citizenship and put it into the mainstream of our curriculum," she said.
All participants agreed that global citizenship education can also improve general education by involving teachers and students in global issues.
Global citizenship education is designed to equip students of all ages with knowledge, skills and universal values such as world peace, human rights and environmental sustainability, which are key elements for global citizenship.
"By creating a culture of peace, global citizenship education will contribute to models of conflict resolution and global solidarity," said Carlos Alberto Torres, director of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Paulo Freire Institute and UNESCO chair in global learning and global citizenship education.
Describing Korea as a world leader in global citizenship education, Torres said, "I am not surprised that it was Ban Ki-moon who proposed in 2012 the first-ever initiative on education from the United Nations. This leadership should be recognized and complimented."
Paola Garcia Castillo, pedagogical consultant of the Ministry of Education in Colombia, expects the APCEIU's workshop to contribute to the development of her country's education.
"Each project about global citizenship education with APCEIU is going to enrich our program about peace education and civic competence," Castillo said. "I will introduce the themes and activities about global citizenship education covered in the workshop to my country."
She noted that Colombia's President Juan Manuel Santos has regarded education as one of the country's most important issues since 2015.
"He decided to trace a path in which Colombia will be the most educated country in Latin America by 2025," Castillo said.
Damira Orusbaeva, a teacher trainer working at the Center for Social Integration in Kyrgyzstan, said that she wants to implement what she learned from the workshop into her new program.
She is working on a new workshop program for building teachers' capacity in her country.
"Although we acknowledge that teachers and students need to develop social and cultural skills, which are essential in global citizenship education, we do not know how to do it except through a workshop," Orusbaeva said.
Among all programs, Orusbaeva picked out a communication class as the most helpful one.
"A trainer put us in a real situation where we had to solve problems while exchanging our feelings," she said. "When I go back to my country, I will definitely create a role-play session where participants can face conflicts."
Wael Nehme, who works for the Teacher Training Center at the Center for Educational Research and Development in Lebanon, chose another program about the Holocaust as the most memorable.
"The session on the Holocaust illustrated how we can learn through history and how that can inform the future," Nehme said. "It helps in finding a connection from history to students' lives. We need to confront the difficult and sensitive past so as to prepare for the future."
Established by an agreement between Korea and UNESCO in 2000, the APCEIU has been working to develop methods for global citizenship education and spread education for international understanding.
"Keep in mind that it was in APCEIU that we planned the first forum on the GCED in September 2013 and the forum took place in Thailand in December that year," Torres said.
APCEIU Director Chung U-tak said he will positively consider providing financial support for the participants.
"We hope the participants will successfully spread global citizenship education in their countries after completing our workshop," Chung said.
Leading figures in South Korea's main opposition Minjoo Party of Korea are squaring off over the deployment of an advanced U.S. missile defense system in the country, political observers said Wednesday.
"In terms of national interest, (the deployment) will bring more losses than gains," former party leader Moon Jae-in said. Moon is considered a leading opposition contender for the next presidential race slated for late 2017.
Last week, Seoul and Washington agreed to station the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system in South Korea to better counter advances in Pyongyang's missile capability.
"The government's rushed move to deploy THAAD cannot be understood, even taking the security issues into consideration," Moon said, adding the decision should win parliament's approval.
"The role of the government is to manage risks on the Korean Peninsula sparked by the North Korean nuke issues," Moon said. "The government failed in dealing with the THAAD issue, aggravating risks rather than solving issues."
Local pundits said the remark reflects the internal dispute within Minjoo, as Kim Chong-in, the interim head, has remained relatively neutral on the deployment.
While Kim also expressed concerns over the THAAD deployment, he said the party will not oppose the stationing.
Concerning Moon's latest remarks, Kim declined to comment on the "personal opinion."
"The THAAD issue is not something that can be discussed simply as yes or no," Kim said.
On Wednesday, a group of lawmakers from Minjoo also made a separate statement against THAAD.
"The deployment will deteriorate the inter-Korean issues, and weaken the international cooperation against the nuke problems," the statement said. "We are against THAAD, which will have an adverse impact on peace on the Korean Peninsula and in Northeast Asia."
Moon's remarks echo the stance of the People's Party and its leader, Rep. Ahn Cheol-soo, who is another contender vying to become the country's next president.
The People's Party has been opposing the deployment, adding that the decision calls for the parliament's approval, and that Minjoo should stand against THAAD.
"Kim Chong-in is a conservative figure. He has similar ideas with President Park Geun-hye when it comes to inter-Korean issues, diplomacy and security," Rep. Chung Dong-young of the People's Party said during an interview with a local radio station. "(Minjoo) is incapable and irresponsible as the top opposition party." (Yonhap)
By Nam Sang-so
The Air Force Club located south of Seoul has a billboard displaying its motto "The highest power in defending the Republic of Korea" with a picture of a pilot in combat gear and jet fighters flying high in the air. There is a sauna in the club facilities. When I present my Korean War Veteran ID to the receptionist, she bows to me smiling.
Sometimes I get military salutes from naked young men standing in the dimly lit sauna. I'm not a retired Air Force general, but I've fulfilled my share of duty in combat and now displaying a beer belly, I salute back. I love these loyal military men and enjoy having casual conversations with young officers, some of them fighter pilots who have a lot of muscles and are lean with sharp eyes.
Serving in the Air Force, they knew of the story of the legendary Japanese fighter ace who survived the Pacific War; Saburo Sakai (1916~2000). Pilots everywhere even in ex-enemy countries spoke in awe of his incredible exploits in the air. The poignant story we exchanged on this particular evening went something like this:
In his Zero fighter Sakai had engaged in more than 200 dogfights, from the Philippines to Iwo Jima, and by the end of the war he had downed a staggering total of 64 enemy aircrafts and logged 3,700 flight hours. The Zero, produced by Mitsubishi, was considered to be the most capable carrier-based fighter in the Pacific War.
He said in his autobiography "Samurai!" that; "In the navy I learned only one trade kill the enemy before the enemy kills you. This I did for five years across the Pacific. I knew no other trade." With Japan's surrender, I was thrown out of the navy. Despite my wounds and my long devoted years of service, there was no pension. We were the losers, and pensions and disability payments are for the veterans of the victor nation.
"The end of the war only opened a bitter struggle far worse than any I had in the actual combat. There were new and deadlier enemies poverty, hunger, sickness, frustration and humiliation. Doing manual labor, in primitive living quarters and with hardly enough food, I barely survived. The ultimate crushing blow was the death of my dearest wife from illness. She had survived the enemy bombs, but she could not escape the new enemy of poverty in the defeated nation. If you do not have 100 percent confidence that you can win a war, you shouldn't engage in it. A war is there to win.
The retired ace fighter pilot further lamented; "No one attempted to assume the responsibility for Japan's defeat, that's because people did not question the Emperor's responsibility. Japanese say the economic prosperity we enjoy is the result of diligence of the people but I would say it came from the economic aid given by the United States."
The former samurai in the air somehow had a favorable thought about the aggressiveness of Koreans; "Look at our neighbor, the Republic of Korea. Despite overwhelming enemy soldiers combined with Chinese soldiers, Korea didn't lose the war. And look at how Korean soldiers fought in the jungles of Vietnam. They were the most gallant military in the Vietnam War."
Suddenly I felt these naked handsome youngsters in the steam room resembled Tom Cruise of "Top Gun" and the samurai in the sky their sharp eyes assured me that the Air Force billboard wasn't just a military advertisement.
The writer is a Korean War veteran. His email address is sangsonam@gmail.com.
By Mark Tokola
To be clear, the United Kingdom has not yet left the European Union. The June 23 referendum in the UK was an expression of the will of the people (by a majority of 52 percent to 48) that the British government should begin the process of negotiating an exit from the EU. The EU Treaty allows for such a process. British government officials have said that negotiation may take a decade because of its complexity. The Brexit decision, however, marks a historic turning point that will have ramifications in expanding circles from inside the UK, to the EU, and to the rest of the world, including the United States and Korea.
Europe and Korea, and their relationships to the U.S., and to one another, are not separate issues. The U.S., Korea, and EU are all part of the democratic, market-oriented group of countries that must for their own interests work together to promote the rule of law, liberal economic policies, collective security, and human rights. Anything that happens in one makes a difference to the others.
What happens next after the Brexit vote? In the immediate future, not much. The economic agreements between the U.S. and the EU, and the EU-Korea Free Trade Agreement remain intact and the UK remains part of those agreements until the terms of its departure from the EU can be agreed and implemented. Even then, it is imaginable that that the UK will remain part of an economic relationship with the EU that keeps it within international trade agreements.
If, for example, the UK became a member of the European Economic Area, along with Norway and other non-EU member states then, for all practical purposes, the U.S. and Korea would continue torelate to the UK as a member of the European trading bloc. At a more extreme case, it is conceivable that the EU may reconfigure itself into a different type of organization, with a European Political Union consisting of a smaller set of member states, and a European Common Market consisting of a different set. In that case, countries such as Denmark, the Netherlands, or Ireland might join the UK in a reformed Common Market, with themselves departing from the Political Union.
If the break is complete, then the U.S. and Korea would need to conclude economic agreements with the UK separately from the EU. It is worth noting that the UK only comprises 17 percent of the overall economy of the EU. It would be an important trading partner on its own, but for the U.S. and Korea, not in the same league as China or the rest of the EU.
Some commentators simply do not believe that the result of the Brexit will be a UK departure from the EU. They believe that during the years ahead, the British public will change its mind and decide to stick with an EU that may have reformed itself in the meantime. There are many uncertainties ahead. One of the issues that will soon surface will be that Brexit from the EU does not mean that the UK would leave the European Convention on Human Rights and the jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. That is part of the Council of Europe legal framework, which is not part of the EU. What will the British public (and the Scots in particular) think of burning yet another bridge with Europe?
The main point to be taken from the Brexit vote is that it is part of the tide running against globalization everywhere. While being very different phenomenon, Putinism in Russia, Chinese international assertiveness and its crackdown on domestic dissent, violent religious extremism, and populist nationalist movements within democratic societies (including the U.S. and Korea) have in common their rejection of globalization.
There is a strong strain within global society and politics of people who want to live within traditional communities, stop having to compete in a global market, maintain traditional attitudes and cultures, and to have a pride in the groups to which they belong, which are often defined by which people do not belong. People in the UK who voted for Brexit often said in interviews that they just wanted "to live the way we used to." It is hard to think of any society that has succeeded in recreating a past in which to live. And in the end, the problem with building walls to keep the world out is that they also keep you in.
Mark Tokola, a former deputy chief of mission at the U.S. embassy in Seoul, is vice-president of the Korea Economic Institute of America in Washington, D.C. The views expressed here are his own and should not be taken as representing those of the KEIA.
Chairman of the State Service for Food Safety and Consumers' Rights Protection of Ukraine Volodymyr Lapa has urged Ukrainian grain exporters to observe the biosecurity requirements of China when they export grain to the country.
The press service of the authority reported that Lapa on Tuesday at a meeting of the working group on the functioning of the grain market with participation of market players said that each country protects its territory from bringing quarantine organisms and introduces its biosecurity requirements. If goods do not meet them the country sends notifications that the food does not meet biosecurity standards. The larger exports are the larger risks of getting notifications are.
He said that recently Ukraine received a notification from the Chinese National Plant Protection Organization that Ukrainian corn does not meet Chinese biosecurity requirements.
"The business society should self-organize, approve effective corporate approaches to avoid similar cases. The state, in turn, should supervise food for exports if it meets these requirements: the biosecurity inspectors should control grain in the field, during its transportation in the country and when it is exported," Lapa said.
He added that the Ukrainian government has taken all measures to deregulate and simplify doing business.
Lapa ordered the biosecurity department of the authority to take effective measures and investigate the notification from China, effectively control food going for exports and form batches only from inspected fields.
Embryonic stem cell research will resume soon after the Ministry of Health and Welfare granted conditional approval to a private university's project, Monday.
Prof. Lee Dong-ryul of CHA University in Pocheon, Gyeonggi Province, will lead a team of researchers in carrying out a four-year research project aimed at treating rare and incurable diseases. The university conducted similar research in 2009 but failed to produce viable stem cell lines.
Nearly 600 human eggs will be used for the research, 100 of which will be unfrozen, raising hopes for the research team to succeed in cloning embryonic stem cells this time.
The latest approval carries great significance because almost all embryonic stem cell research in Korea was halted following data fabrication scandals involving Hwang Woo-suk, the disgraced former Seoul National University professor. The strict ban on the use of unfrozen eggs began in 2005 after the scandal involving Hwang, who used such eggs from women seeking infertility treatments. Later he was convicted of falsifying research results and embezzlement.
Most notable is that the upcoming research will follow the somatic cell cloning method adopted by Hwang in producing stem cell lines that have the potential to develop into any kind of human tissue. Scientists say many future medical advances will be possible in accordance with the progress in stem cell research.
Research into incurable diseases using stem cells has advanced by leaps and bounds globally over the past decade, with the United States and Japan taking the lead. In 2012, Shinya Yamanaka, a professor at Japan's Kyoto University, won a Nobel Prize in medicine for his work on stem cell biology.
By contrast, Korea has lagged behind in stem cell research. A lot of scientists went abroad, frustrated by the government's tougher regulation following the Hwang scandal.
The latest approval for stem cell research is a necessary step to nurture the biotech industry, which could be one of our future growth engines. It's imperative that the government provide strong support for the private sector so that our researchers can get ahead of their overseas competitors.
What deserves our attention is that researchers should meet ethical standard requirements: eggs must be taken legitimately, an independent ethical committee should be in place and a monitoring system must be established to block human cloning. CHA University and its researchers should observe these rules without fail, paying heed to concerns raised in religious circles concerning the possible abuse of new stem cell technology.
China should act responsibly by complying with law
Beijing lost a battle over its claims to South China Sea when a tribunal at the U.N. Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague announced a verdict favorable to the Philippines. The unanimous ruling by a five-judge tribunal found a wide range of China's activities regarding the resource rich waters unlawful and in violation of Philippines' rights. Pursuant to the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, the Hague ruling rejected China's claim of historic rights to the waterway, which is a thoroughfare for $5 billion in annual trade.
Beijing's fury was evident from remarks by Foreign Minister Wang Yi, who immediately mocked the arbitration as a "political farce staged under legal pretext" and reaffirmed its staunch position of "non-acceptance and non-recognition" of the ruling. Wang reiterated that China's territorial and maritime rights and interests in the South China Sea are based on solid historical and legal ground and that this could not be affected by the arbitration.
China's furious reaction shows that it lacks respect for the rule of law. To be a responsible superpower, the country should uphold international rules. China should comply with the ruling and implement obligations under the legal conclusion reached by the U.N. tribunal.
The U.N. ruling offers no immediate resolution to the dispute over the South China Sea since the U.N. has no mechanism to enforce an implementation of the decision on China. So the tribunal has limitations even though it has produced some important conclusions.
The Hague decision should be followed by effective diplomacy to manage the differences among the parties concerned for stability and co-existence in the region. Their common goal should be to guard against inflaming regional tensions. The world does not want to see tension in the region escalate. The U.S. military has held naval exercise in the area to respond to China's increasing presence in the South China Sea. China has built artificial islands that can support military bases.
After the ruling, Korea's diplomacy faces a period of additional difficulty amid escalating U.S.-China rivalry. The maritime dispute is ultimately part of a power struggle between the two superpowers, China and the U.S., to maintain Asia-Pacific supremacy. The U.N. ruling comes on the heels of rising tensions between Korea and China over an announcement by Seoul and Washington to deploy a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile defense battery here.
As a middle power, Korea should not be a bystander in Asia's geopolitics. So far, Korea has been vague on the South China Sea dispute and has been careful not to cross either Washington or Beijing on this issue. In a statement, the foreign ministry only expressed hopes for a resolution in accordance with relevant agreements and international regulations. Korea needs a more assertive diplomatic strategy to protect its economic and diplomatic interests in the South China Sea, and actively do its part to maintain a stable regional order.
Retired Staff Sgt. Jose Diaz-Rivas, second from left, receives the Congressional Gold Medal for his contributions in the Korean War from Brooke Army Medical Center Commander Col. Jeffrey Johnson, as Diaz-Rivas' wife and family look on, at Fort Sam Houston's San Antonio Military Medical Center in Texas in this
June 5 file photo. / Courtesy of U.S. Army
By Kang Seung-woo
An 86-year-old Korean War veteran received the U.S. highest civilian award last month for his contributions during the war, according to the U.S. Army.
Jose Diaz-Rivas, a retired staff sergeant who served with the 65th Infantry Regiment during the 1950-53 war, was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal on June 5. The regiment was a Puerto Rican U.S. Army unit that made their mark in extensive campaigns during the conflict.
"Not many people receive this medal; I feel very proud," said Diaz-Rivas as he accepted the medal during a ceremony at Fort Sam Houston's San Antonio Military Medical Center in Texas.
Thanks to the regiment's achievements in the Korean War, its soldiers earned more than 2,700 Purple Hearts, 600 Bronze Stars, 250 Silver Stars, nine Distinguished Service Crosses and one Medal of Honor, according to the U.S. Army.
Diaz-Rivas initially planned to accept the medal in April in Washington, D.C., alongside his fellow soldiers, but his declining health prevented him from attending the ceremony. However, his family and caregivers thought a medal in the mail would not be good enough to honor his commitment and Col. Jeffrey Johnson, the commander of the military medical center, presented it to him in person.
"We honor you and thank you for your sacrifice," Johnson said during the award ceremony.
Diaz-Rivas, a Puerto Rican native who enlisted at age 16, received a Combat Infantryman Badge and a Korean Service Medal with two Bronze Stars for his contributions in the Korean War, said the U.S. Army.
He later jointed the Air Force and participated in the Vietnam War before retiring from the military in 1971 with 21 years of service.
"My father is very proud of his medal," said his daughter, Ivonne Diaz-Navedo. "But we are proud of all of his contributions. It's a complete life he's lived."
Discussions for cross-licensing are likely
By Kim Yoo-chul
Lei Jun, Xiaomi founder and CEO
Samsung Electronics' memory chip business is predicted to see a boost in its profits throughout this year as Xiaomi is expected to request Samsung to supply more memory chips.
Sources said Wednesday that Xiaomi's top management, including its founder Lei Jun, will meet Samsung Electronics memory division chief Jeon Young-hyun on the sidelines of his visit to Korea, possibly this week.
Kwon Oh-hyun, senior Samsung vice chairman who also oversees all of Samsung's component business, is scheduled to meet with Oracle CEO Mark Hurd in the afternoon of July 14, separately.
As the Samsung executive Jeon is in charge of handling the company's memory chip business, it's been expected that the Chinese handset manufacturer may ask Samsung to supply more memory chips during the high-profile meeting, according to sources.
The Samsung president Jeon declined to elaborate despite repeated requests by local reporters over details about the possible meeting with the Xiaomi founder.
Xiaomi competes with Samsung in budget mobile; however, the Chinese manufacturer has recently shifted its focus towards premium handsets and was hoping to enter into the mobile payment markets in China via strategic alliances with sector leaders.
"Samsung may fill in the void left by weak handset sales with a close partnership with Xiaomi in mobile payment and seek to boost the sale of its memory chips. For Xiaomi, Samsung is the a leader in memory chips that is guaranteed for output commitment, on-time delivery and better pricing as Samsung runs chip plants in China," said one official asking not to be named.
Because Xiaomi is already a key Samsung customer, the Chinese smartphone vendor is seen to procure NAND flash memory chips from Samsung as NAND chips are regarded as the crucial component in determining the storage capacity of handsets.
By the first quarter of this year, Samsung Electronics is the global leader in NAND flash chips with a share of 42.6 percent, followed by Toshiba of Japan and Micron of the United States, according to the data from IHS, a market research firm.
Xiaomi is also expected to hold talks over an issue for a possible cross-licensing deal with Samsung to cut the risk of litigation and to take on its chief domestic rival Huawei, which recently sued Samsung over alleged patent infringement.
As Samsung Electronics holds extensive wireless intellectual properties both in commercial and standard essential patents (SEPs), a licensing agreement with Samsung may help Xiaomi expand its business profile in non-Chinese markets.
"Xiaomi is a late contender in the smartphone market and it has been hungry to strengthen core technologies. As a short-term strategy, Xiaomi could hedge risks in patent disputes with cross-licensing deals with market leaders such as Samsung. Xiamoi became a threatening force' in budget handsets and it needs new momentum to expand its influence in other segments and other markets," said another official.
NATO has channeled $130 million in aid to Ukraine to restore its defense capability over the past two years, Ukrainian Defense Ministry's military policy, strategic planning and international cooperation department director Anatoliy Petrenko has said.
"If speaking about NATO's assistance to the Ukrainian Armed Forces over the past two years, we can say today that this sum is over $130 million," he said at a briefing in Kyiv on Wednesday.
Besides, Petrenko did not answer a question about the amount of money envisaged in the support package to Ukraine, which had been adopted at the NATO summit, which was held in Warsaw on July 8-9.
The sum of a transaction on the acquisition of a controlling stake in PJSC Naftogazvydobuvannia significantly exceeds a figure of $180 million voiced by ex-chairman of the company Oleh Seminsky, the press service of DTEK has told Interfax-Ukraine.
At the same time, the energy holding said they did not have the right to operate exact figures, because, in accordance with the agreement of the parties, this information is confidential.
"We draw your attention to the fact that Oleh Seminsky is neither a shareholder nor the party to the transaction and his statements are emotional, they do not contain reliable information either about the value of the company or the terms of the deal, the current activities of PJSC Naftogazvydobuvannia," the press service said.
DTEK also declared its readiness to protect its business reputation in Ukrainian and international courts.
The business ombudsman office began work in Ukraine on May 20, 2015 and has already received 1,000 complaints, of which 446 concerned the work of the State Fiscal Service, Business Ombudsman Algirdas Semeta has said at a meeting of Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman with business representatives in Kyiv.
"Today we will focus mainly on the issues of tax administration and customs matters. I won't reveal a great secret that at present this is the most painful issue for businesses, a real headache," he said.
He said the matter concerns illegal inspections and VAT refunds issues, its electronic administration, initiation of criminal proceedings even if taxpayers won higher instance court cases, assessment of the customs value of products and compensation of overpayments.
"We will announce these cases and offer systemic solutions to these problems. I hope we have the first result when preparing this meeting in many areas there were steps to eliminate the problems presented. We need to more often initiate such meetings and problems will be solved prior to them," the expert said.
As of 6:00 p.m. on Tuesday, positions of Ukrainian forces in the Anti-Terrorist Operation (ATO) zone in eastern Ukraine were shelled 20 times, the ATO press center said.
"Today Russian occupation troops continue armed provocations against ATO forces. In total, since this day began, the adversary opened fire 22 times on units of the Ukrainian Armed Forces," the press service said in its daily summary report published on Facebook.
Pieces of 152mm artillery, which is prohibited under the Minsk Agreements, were used in shelling of fortifications of the Ukrainian military in Mykolaivka 2 near Donetsk, while Zaitseve, Semyhirya, Novoselivka 2 and Avdiyivka were shelled from 120mm mortars. Positions near Novhorodske were shelled from 82mm mortars and positions near Troitske from large-caliber machineguns, it said.
"In the Mariupol sector, it has been unquiet near Krasnohorivka: 122mm artillery, 120mm and 82mm mortars shelled the positions of Ukrainian forces and later armored vehicles engaged," the press service said. The adversary shelled Shyrokyne, using grenade launchers, while snipers were activated near Maryinka, according to the report.
Fire was also conducted near Stanytsia Luhanska and Krymske in the Luhansk sector.
Ukrainian Deputy Health Minister and Health Ministry office head Roman Vasylyshyn, who was recently suspended after being presumably arrested red-handed while accepting a bribe, has been freed on a bail of UAH 2 million, Kyiv prosecutor's office press secretary Nadia Maksymets said.
Vasylyshyn "walked out of the detention facility at 5:30 p.m.," Maksymets told Interfax-Ukraine on Tuesday.
Ukrainian Security Service and Prosecutor General's Office operatives detained Vasylyshyn on July 8.
Security Service chief Vasyl Hrytsak said in commenting on the detention that Vasylyshyn had arranged a scheme in which a number of doctors at the Oleksandrivska Hospital in Kyiv had to illegally collect money from patients for operations. Law enforcement services also detained a mediator.
"We confiscated a total of more than $50,000, UAH 320,000, and other evidence proving these individuals' criminal activities during the detention and search," Hrytsak said, adding that Vasylyshyn had been detained red-handed while accepting the fifth bribe.
Kyiv's Dniprovsky district court had ordered late on July 8 to arrest Vasylyshyn at least for 60 days. The court allowed for freeing the official on a bail of UAH 2 million, saying that, if bail is deposited for him, he would have to wear an electronic tag.
Vasylyshyn himself had said he disagreed with the judge's ruling and would appeal it.
Vasylyshyn's daughter deposited UAH 2 million for him on July 11.
Vasylyshyn was appointed deputy health minister and head of the Health Ministry's office in November 2015. Before this, he had worked as chief physician at Kyiv's Central Municipal Clinical Hospital, also known as Oleksandrivska Hospital.
A Jasper County jury on Wednesday convicted a man who used to live in Greene County for the murders of his nephew and his nephew's wife in April 2011. The jury then recommended Robert Campbell receive a life prison sentence.
The jury deliberated for more than ten hours before finding Campbell guilty of two counts of second-degree murder. It delivered the verdict about 11:20 a.m. After the jury said Campbell, 72, should go to prison for life (30 years), Circuit Judge Gayle scheduled a sentencing hearing for Sept. 12.
Campbell was charged with two counts of first-degree murder for the murders of Russell "Rusty" Porter and Rebecca "Becky" Porter. They disappeared from their home north of Willard in April 2011. Their bodies were found in July in Taney County. Each of them was shot in the head. Investigators believed Campbell recruited four other people to murder the Porters because of resentment over them living on family property.
Attorneys picked the jury on July 5. Jurors then heard five days of attorneys' statements, evidence and testimony presented by Taney County Prosecuting Attorney Jeffrey Merrell and Assistant Prosecuting Attorney Tiffany Yarnell, and cross-examinations by private defense attorneys Brady Musgrave and Kristin Jones. Defense attorneys chose not to present any witnesses after prosecutors rested their case.
The jury started deliberating just after 2 p.m. Tuesday. They went home about 10:30 p.m. before returning on Wednesday morning.
The penalty for second-degree murder is a prison sentence of 10 to 30 years (life), with a chance of parole. The penalty for first-degree murder is life in prison with no chance of parole unless prosecutors seek a death penalty, which they did not in this case.
Musgrave said in a brief telephone interview that he plans to appeal the guilty verdict. He wouldn't elaborate.
Editor's note: A previous version of this report said the defense attorneys work for the Missouri Public Defenders Office; they do not. Musgrave used to be a public defender.
Background
Investigators believe Robert Campbell recruited four others to help him kill Russell "Rusty" Porter and Rebecca "Becky" Porter because of a family dispute over real estate at their home along Highway HH northeast of Willard.
The Porters disappeared in April 2011. Their buried bodies turned up in rural Taney County four months later. Five people were charged in Taney County for the murders in late 2012, although Greene County Sheriff's Department investigators said they had a pretty good idea who committed the murders soon after they happened.
Campbell used to live near the Porters; Rusty Porter was his nephew. The dispute, according to search warrant documents, appeared to stem from the Porters living on what Campbell considered his family's "home place."
Campbell's trial on two counts of first-degree murder was moved from Forsyth to Joplin to try to ensure a fair outcome.
Tony Friend, his wife, Windy Friend, his son, Phillip Friend, and Dusty Hicks are all serving time for the murders after they were convicted at trial or pleaded guilty. Investigators say Hicks, Tony Friend, and Phillip Friend broke into the couple's house, tied them up, took them to a remote area of Taney County near Protem, shot them in the head, and buried their bodies.
After the murders, Campbell and his wife moved to a home in rural Barry County. After he was suspected of stealing a vehicle in 2013 while he was out on bond for the murder case, a judge revoked his bond and he's been in the Taney County jail since late 2013.
End of background report
From Casenet, the Missouri Courts online record, here is the running account of the trial.
(July 5, 2016) Jury Trial Day One: State appears by Mr. Merrell and Ms. Yarnell. Defendant appears in custody and with attorneys, Mr. Musgrave and Ms. Jones. Pretrial motions. Jury panel of 52 seated and sworn at 10:02 am. Voir Dire cconducted. Recess at 10:35 am. Admonishment. (MAI-CR3d 300.04) Reconvene at 10:55 am. Voir Dire conducted. Recess at 11:50 am for lunch. Admonishment. (MAI-CR3d 300.04) Reconvene at 1:05 pm. Voir Dire conducted. Recess at 1:45 pm. Admonishment. (MAI-CR3d 300.04) Hardships. Strikes for cause and preemptory strikes done. Jury of 12 and 2 alternates seated and sworn. Instruction Numbers 1 and 2 read. Jury recess at 3:15 pm. Admonishment. (MAI-CR3d 300.04). So Ordered. Gayle L. Crane, Circuit Judge.
(July 6) Jury Trial Day Two: State appears by Mr. Merrell and Ms. Yarnell. Defendant appears in custody and with attorneys, Mr. Musgrave and Ms. Jones. Motions heard. Jury seated at 9:17 am. Opening statements presented. Recess at 10:15 am. Admonishment. (MAI-CR3d 300.04) Reconvene at 10:30 a.m. State presents evidence. Recess at 11:56 am. Admonishment. (MAI-CR3d 300.04) Motions taken up. Reconvene at 1:10 pm. State presents evidence. Evening recess at 5:04 pm. Admonishment. (MAI-CR3d 300.04) So Ordered. Gayle L. Crane, Circuit Judge.
(July 7) Jury Trial Day Three: State appears by Mr. Merrell and Ms. Yarnell. Defendant appears in custody and with attorneys, Mr. Musgrave and Ms. Jones. Jury seated at 9:00 am. State presents evidence. Recess at 10:17 am. Admonishment. (MAI-CR3d 300.04) Reconvene at 10:35 am. State presents evidence. Recess at 12:00 noon. Admonishment.(MAI-CR3d 300.04) Reconvene at 1:05 pm. State presents evidence. Recess at 2:34 pm. Admonishment. (MAI-CR3d 300.04) Reconvene at 2:49 pm. State presents evidence. Evening recess at 5:05 pm. Admonishment.(MAI-CR3d 300.04) So Ordered. Gayle L. Crane, Circuit Judge
(July 8) Jury Trial Day Four: State appears by Mr. Merrell and Ms. Yarnell. Defendant appears in custody and with attorneys, Mr. Musgrave and Ms. Jones. Jury seated at 9:05 am. State presents evidence. Recess at 10:20 am. Admonishment. (MAI-CR3d 300.04) Reconvene at 10:37 am. State presents evidence. Recess at 12:05 pm. Admonishment.(MAI-CR3d 300.04) Reconvene at 1:05 pm. State presents evidence. Recess at 3:07 pm. Admonishment. (MAI-CR3d 300.04) Reconvene at 3:28 pm. State presents evidence. Evening recess at 4:05 pm. Admonishment.(MAI-CR3d 300.04) So Ordered. Gayle L. Crane, Circuit Judge
(July 11) Jury Trial Day Five: State appears by Mr. Merrell and Ms. Yarnell. Defendant appears in custody and with counsel, Mr. Musgrave and Ms. Jones. Motions taken up with counsel. Jury seated at 9:12 am. State presents evidence. Recess at 11:15 am. Admonishment. (MAI-CR3d 300.04) Reconvene at 11:33 am. State presents evidence. Recess for lunch at 12:15 pm. Admonishment.(MAI-CR3d 300.04) Record on Witness testifying. Jury seated at 1:35 pm. State presents evidence. Recess at 2:17 pm. Admonishment. (MAI-CR3d 300.04) Reconvene at 2:45 pm. Record on witness. Jury seated at 3:00 pm. State presents evidence. Evening recess at 4:24 pm. Admonishment.(MAI-CR3d 300.04) Record made. So ordered. Gayle L. Crane, Circuit Judge
(July 12) Jury Trial Day Six: State appears by Mr. Merrell and Ms. Yarnell. Defendant appears in custody and with counsel, Mr. Musgrave and Ms. Jones. Informal instruction conference held. Jury is seated at 11:15 am. State Rests. Defendant files Motion for Acquittal at the Close of the State's Evidence. Motion overruled. Recess at 11:17 am. Admonishment.(MAI-CR3d 300.04) Defendant's Right to Testify record made. Instruction record. Jury reconvenes at 12:57 pm. Defendant Rests. Defendant files Motion for Acquittal at the Close of All Evidence. Motion overruled. Court reads Instruction Nos. 3 through 36 to the jury. Closing arguments presented. Bailiff sworn. Jury in deliberation at 2:12 pm. Court receives note marked Court's Exhibit #1 at 2:55 pm. Court responds to jury at 3:02. Additional Bailiff sworn. Court receives note marked Court's Exhibit #2 at 10:11 pm. Court receives note marked Court's Exhibit #3 at 10:19. Jury seated at 10:25 pm. Jury excused for the evening at 10:28 pm. So ordered. Gayle L. Crane, Circuit Judge.
Jury Trial Day Seven: State appears by Mr. Merrell and Ms. Yarnell. Defendant appears in custody and with counsel, Mr. Musgrave and Ms. Jones. Jury begins further deliberations at 9:00 am. Court receives note marked Court's Exhibit #4 at 9:05 am. Additional Bailiff sworn at 9:16 am. Court receives note marked Court's Exhibit #5 at 9:25 am. Court sends in request of Court's Exhibit #4 at 9:35 am. Jury reaches verdict at 11:11 am. Jury seated at 11:20 am. Court announces verdict. "As to Count I, we, the jury, find the defendant Robert Campbell guilty of murder in the second degree as submitted in Instruction No. 13. As to Count II, we, the jury, find the defendant Robert Campbell guilty of murder in the second degree as submitted in Instruction No. 25." Penalty Phase. Instruction conference and record made. Jury seated at 12:45 pm. Court reads Instruction Nos. 37 and 38 to the jury. Opening statement presented by the State. State presents evidence. Court reads Instruction Nos. 39 and 40 to the jury and attaches Instruction Nos. 1 and 2 from first packet. Closing arguments presented. Jury in deliberations at 1:16 pm. Court receives note marked Court's Exhibit #6 at 1:37 pm. Jury reaches verdict at 2:12 pm. Jury seated at 2:15 pm. Court announces verdict. "As to Count I, we, the jury, having found the defendant Robert Campbell guilty of murder in the second degree assess and declare the punishment for murder in the second degree at life imprisonment. As to Count II, we, the jury, having found the defendant Robert Campbell guilty of murder in the second degree assess and declare the punishment for murder in the second degree at life imprisonment." Court accepts the verdict and discharges the jury at 2:17 pm. Sentencing set for September 12, 2016 at 2:00 pm. Defendant granted extended time for post-trial motions. So ordered. Gayle L. Crane, Circuit Judge.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has said that he will ask the Verkhovna Rada to pass amendments to the Constitution giving the Crimean Tatar People the right to self-determination within a sovereign Ukraine.
"On May 18, during the remembrance [of the deportation of Crimean Tatars] in the Opera House, I stressed that I will ask the Ukrainian parliament, the Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada, and the Ukrainian people to support this. We have the right, we must give Crimean Tatars the right to self-determination within a united Ukraine. I believe we owe them that. I believe that the Ukrainian authorities should have done this 20 years ago, and the situation would be different now," Poroshenko said at the presentation of 'Crimea. Resistance' documentary in Kyiv on Tuesday.
He also said that "the aggressor and occupant will pay the price." "Nobody doubts Crimea will return to Ukraine. It has been and will be part of Ukraine," the president said.
As reported, on June 28, Poroshenko called to amend Ukraine's Constitution and give the Crimea Tatars right to self-determination as part of a sovereign Ukraine.
"We should start the process of modification and additions to Chapter 10 of the Ukrainian Constitution titled 'Autonomous Republic of Crimea' [...]. These adjustments fully derive from the inalienable right of the Crimean Tatar people to self-determination within the sovereign and independent Ukrainian state," the president said.
Rights and freedoms of ethnic Ukrainians, Russians and other ethnic groups should be fully guaranteed on the peninsula, Poroshenko said.
13:00 13.07.2016 Interfax-Ukraine to host press conference 'Murder of Buzyna. Arbitrariness of Authorities. Why This Crime Will Never be Investigated' today at 13.30
1 min read
On Wednesday, July 13, at 13.30, the Interfax-Ukraine News Agency's press center will host a press conference entitled "Murder of Buzyna. Arbitrariness of Authorities. Why This Crime Will Never be Investigated." Participants will include lawyers Andriy Fedur and Oleksandr Dulsky (8/5a Reitarska Street). Registration requires press accreditation.
The SLFP does not condone the continuation of the Emergency Regulations (The Public Security Ordinance) more than a day necessary
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Los Angeles-based photographer Nick Ut posted on Facebook today that he has returned his Associated Press cameras to New York and will be retiring from the wire service at the end of the year. The rest of 2016 will burn off his unused vacation time. [*Update: Nick clarified on Facebook that the effective date is not until March 2017. So I edited the headline.]
Ut will complete 51 years with AP, dating back to South Vietnam in 1965, when he was a local hire in the Saigon hire of AP following the death of his photographer brother. Nick is a fixture around the Los Angeles media scene, and globally known for his 1972 photo of a naked child, Kim Phuc, running from a napalm attack in her town of Trang Bang. Ut won the Pulitzer Prize for the photo of Phuc.
Ut and Phuc appeared together at last month's Los Angeles Press Club journalism awards banquet, where he received a lifetime achievement award. Here's Gary Leonard's photo of the pair together that night.
Ut told the magazine of the National Press Photographers Association that now that he is 65 it's time to retire, but not to stop making pictures.
I shipped all my AP cameras to New York, Ut told News Photographer magazine tonight. After 51 years I have a lot of vacation time to take before I retire, he said with a big laugh. Im going to be taking a lot of days off until the end of the year.
Ut says hes retiring from AP but hes not retiring from photography. I am going to travel a lot, and do workshops, and go everywhere, he said. I love the AP so much. They have been my family since I was 14 years old in Vietnam, and Horst Faas and Eddie Adams came to my family home for dinner. APs Vice President and Director of Photography Santiago Lyon reacted Tuesday night to Uts retirement plans. From his incredible work in Vietnam as a young man, including the iconic Napalm Girl photograph, Nick continues to photograph for AP in Los Angeles where he covers a wide variety of news and celebrities and he does it with the same positive attitude that has served him so well throughout his life, Lyon told News Photographer magazine. Weve been very lucky to have Nick on our team, and we wish him the very best of luck for his future. [skip] And then there was the most famous picture, Napalm Girl, with little Phan Thi Kim Phuc. Running down Highway #1, burned from a Vietnamese Air Force napalm drop that missed its target and struck her familys village, and where they were hiding inside a temple for safety, the little girl and Ut met for the first time moments after he photographed her in a picture that would go on to win a Pulitzer Prize and define, for many, a searing moment in the global consciousness about the Vietnam war. Back in the States people from the White House down to factory assembly lines were forced to face the stark reality. As the world now knows, Uts actions saved Kim Phucs life and she grew up calling Uncle Nicky her guardian angel until, as an adult married with two children she became a United Nations Ambassador for Peace, traveling the world with Ut telling their story and the story of the utter futility of war.
Ut returned last year to the road in Vietnam where he captured the image of Kim Phuc and while there ran into a familiar face from Los Angeles media.
Ukraine's Verkhovna Rada has increased scrap ferrous metal exports duty from EUR 10 per tonne to EUR 30 per tonne for one year and annulled the registration of imports contracts.
An Interfax-Ukraine correspondent has reported that 248 lawmakers approved the proposal of the Ukrainian president who blocked the previous version of the bill on the three-year increase of the duty.
"This is a compromise that creates the best possible conditions today [for metal companies]," Deputy Economic Development and Trade Minister Maksym Nefyodov said.
He said that the previous version of the bill (No. 3868) passed on April 21 and vetoed by the president violated Ukraine's liabilities to the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the EU. It also threatened with antidumping investigations, while the revised bill meets all rights of the state to react to threats to national security. Nefyodov said that the market faces a shortage of scrap metal, especially in the past two years due to annexation of Crimea and war in eastern Ukraine.
Head of the parliamentary profile committee Viktor Halasiuk said that the president's proposals to revoke quotas are not in the interests of Ukrainian industry.
"However, it is better to have something than nothing," he said, adding that profile associations confirmed the same position at consultations.
Currently Ukrainian metal companies face an acute shortage of scrap metal. The scrap metal shortage on the domestic market in 2015 was 855,000 tonnes or 22% of the need (3.92 million tonnes).
PRESS RELEASE
HSBC Escaped U.S. Money-Laundering Charges After U.K. Warned of Global Financial Disaster
July 12, 2016 (EIRNS)Todays edition of the London Guardian writes that the new report issued by the U.S. House Financial Services Committee (HFSC) on July 11 said that direct British government interventions prevented the HSBC bank from being charged with money-laundering by the Obama Administration in 2012. The report said the British government "played a significant role in ultimately persuading the DOJ [Department of Justice] not to prosecute HSBC." Instead of pursuing a prosecution for crimes including terrorist aid and drug money laundering, the bank agreed to pay a record $1.92 billion fine.
The HFSC report charges that British Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne (who holds the same post to this day) and a British banking regulator warned of "global financial disaster" if HSBC were prosecuted.
The report published letters and emails from Osborne and Financial Services Authority (FSA) officials to their U.S. counterparts, warning that launching criminal action against HSBC in 2012 could have sparked a "financial calamity." Osborne wrote to Ben Bernanke, who was then the Federal Reserve Chairman, and Timothy Geithner, then Treasury Secretary, to warn that prosecuting a "systemically important financial institution" like HSBC "could lead to [financial] contagion" and pose "very serious implications for financial and economic stability, particularly in Europe and Asia."
The report charged that the FSA was "problematic," "weighed in very strongly," and caused a "firestorm," which led then- U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to overrule the advice of his own prosecutors and not pursue criminal action.
"FSA has been on the phone for the criminal discussions," officials wrote in emails released in the House report. "Thats what has caused the latest firestorm. The contents of that discussion are included in the Chancellors letter."
The FSA was so desperate about the possibility of HSBC losing its charter to operate in the United States, that the FSA repeatedly warned that even the threat of possible charter withdrawal could have caused a fresh global financial crisis. Furthermore, the report said Holder "misled" Congress about the Justice Departments reasoning for declining to prosecute. It said the Department did have enough evidence to pursue criminal charges against HSBC, despite Holders claim to the contrary, and pointed out that the bank had already admitted to the U.S. government that it had broken money-laundering rules.
The report said: "Rather than lacking adequate evidence to prove HSBCs criminal conduct, internal Treasury documents show that DOJ leadership declined to pursue [its legal teams] recommendation to prosecute HSBC because senior DOJ leaders were concerned that prosecuting the bank could result in a global financial disasteras the FSA repeatedly warned."
This is a dramatic, "smoking gun" confirmation of Lyndon LaRouches repeated insistence that the Obama administrations policies, including salvaging the criminal banking system, are dictated by the British Empire.
PRESS RELEASE
Zepp-LaRouche: Deutsche Bank Must Be Rescued, for the Sake of World Peace!
July 12, 2016 (EIRNS)Helga Zepp-LaRouche, chairwoman of the German Civil Rights Movement Solidarity party, issued the following statement today: (See more on the LaRouche Weekly Webcast)
The imminent threat of the bankruptcy of Deutsche Bank is certainly not the only potential trigger for a new systemic crisis of the trans-Atlantic banking system, which would be orders of magnitude more deadly than the 2008 crisis, but it does offer a unique lever to prevent a collapse into chaos.
Behind the SOS launched by the chief economist of Deutsche Bank, David Folkerts-Landau, for an EU program of 150 billion to recapitalize the banks, lurks the danger openly discussed in international financial media, that the entire European banking system is de facto insolvent, and is sitting on a mountain of at least 2 trillion of non-performing loans. Deutsche Bank is the international bank which, with a total of 55 trillions of outstanding derivative contracts and a leverage factor of 40:1, even outdoes Lehman Brothers at the time of its collapse, and therefore represents the most dangerous Achilles heel of the system. Half of DBs balance sheet, which has plummeted 48% in the past 12 months and is down to only 8% of its peak value, is made up of level-3 derivatives, i.e., derivatives amounting to circa 800 billion without a market valuation.
It probably came as a surprise to many that Lyndon LaRouche called today for Deutsche Bank to be saved through a one-time increase in its capital base, because of the systemic implications of its threatened bankruptcy. Neither the German government with its GDP of 4 trillion, nor the EU with a GDP of 18 trillion, would be able to control the domino effect of a disorderly bankruptcy.
The one-time capital injection, LaRouche explained, is only an emergency measure which needs to be followed by an immediate reorientation of the bank, back to its tradition which prevailed until 1989 under the leadership of Alfred Herrhausen. To actually oversee such an operation, a management committee must be set up to verify the legitimacy and the implications of the obligations, and finalize its work within a given timeframe. That committee should also draw up a new business plan, based on Herrhausens banking philosophy and exclusively oriented to the interests of the real economy of Germany.
Alfred Herrhausen was the last actually creative, moral industrial banker of Germany. He defended, among other things, the cancellation of the unpayable debt of developing countries, as well as the long-term credit financing of well-defined development projects. In December 1989, he planned to present in New York a plan for the industrialization of Poland, which was consistent with the criteria used by the Kreditanstalt fuer Wiederaufbau (KfW) for the post-1945 reconstruction of Germany, and would have offered a completely different perspective than the so-called "reform policy," or shock therapy, of Jeffrey Sachs.
Herrhausen was assassinated on November 30, 1989, by the "Third Generation of the Red Army Fraction," whose existence has yet to be proven to this day. It happened only two days after Chancellor Helmut Kohl, who counted Herrhausen among his closest advisors, had presented his ten-point program for gradually overcoming the division of Germany [between East and West]. The cui bono of the terrorist attack remains one of the most fateful issues in the modern history of Germany, and one which urgently needs to be clarified.
The fact is that Herrhausens successors introduced a fundamental paradigm change in the banks philosophy, which brought Deutsche Bank into the wild world of profit maximization at all costs, and also into countless unpunishable and punishable legal entanglements, which those responsible have avoided until now, mainly because of the "too big to fail" premises.
The transformation of Deutsche Bank into a global investment bank with the highest derivatives exposure, combined with the simultaneous credit crunch for German small and medium-sized enterprises, is symptomatic of the folly which has led to the current catastrophe.
We must now act with resolution, but not in the way Folkerts-Landau proposes, that is, not with more of the same medicine, which would certainly kill the patient. Although it has mainly operated over the past years out of London and New York, Deutsche Bank is too important for the German economy, and therefore for Germany, and ultimately for the fate of all of Europe. Its reorganization in the spirit of Alfred Herrhausen is not only the key to overcoming the banking crisis, but also for averting the acute danger of war.
Herrhausens assassination has gone unpunished. However, there exists "the dreaded might, that judges what is hid from sight," which is the subject of Friedrich Schillers poem "Die Kraniche des Ibykus." The Erinyes have begun their dreadful dance.1
It is now incumbent upon all those who, in addition to the family, have suffered from the assassination of Herrhausen, upon the representatives of the Mittelstand, of the German economy and the institutional representatives of the German population, to honor his legacy and to seize the tremendous opportunity which is now offered to save Germany.
See more on the LaRouche Weekly Webcast
[1] Friedrich Schiller, "Die Kraniche des Ibykus" in German or in English.
Tesla Motors Inc. on Wednesday cut the starting price of its Model X to $74,000 for a more limited-range version of its sport utility vehicle as the electric carmaker tries to boost sales.
The new Model X 60D has a range of 200 miles, compared with 237 miles for its prior entry-level version, the 75D. That car costs roughly $9,000 more.
Top-level versions of the Model X, which have added range and faster acceleration, can cost more than $100,000.
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With the 60D, customers have the flexibility to choose the Tesla model, price point and range that best fits their lifestyle, Tesla said.
The price cut follows Teslas report this month that its second-quarter global deliveries of 14,370 including 4,625 Model X vehicles fell short of expectations. Tesla also has struggled with ramping up production of the Model X, which debuted last fall.
See the most-read stories this hour >>
The Palo Alto-based carmaker faces several other problems. Federal safety authorities are investigating the companys autopilot feature after the May 7 death of a driver who was using the autonomous technology when his Tesla Model S sedan crashed in Florida.
The Securities and Exchange Commission also is reportedly looking at whether Tesla erred in not disclosing the fatality to investors.
Teslas stock closed down $2.12, or 0.9%, at $222.53 on Wednesday.
ALSO
Recall of dangerous Takata air bags affects 1 in 8 vehicles, report says
How does Teslas autopilot feature react to crossing traffic? Feds want to know
Tesla is said to be under investigation by the SEC for failing to disclose a fatal crash
UPDATES:
1:41 p.m.: This article was updated with Teslas closing stock price.
This article was originally published at 9;51 a.m.
We can probably admit that the spectacle of a totally dysfunctional Congress has its entertaining aspects. Were familiar with the old saying that no mans life, liberty or property are safe while the legislature is in session, a sign that lawmakers are apt to do the least damage when theyre idle.*
But the point comes when Congress needs to act in an emergency. Then the funs over. That point is now, and the emergency is the spread of the Zika virus. We are now in the last week of the House and Senate sessions until after Labor Day, Sept. 5, and efforts to pry money out of the chambers to push on with research on a Zika vaccine have come to nought.
Thousands more Americans could be infected , including potentially thousands of pregnant women leading to infants born with severe fetal birth defects. HHS Secretary Sylvia Burwell and OMB Director Shaun Donovan
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Its tempting to blame Republicans and Democrats equally for the impasse, but thats not what the facts dictate. Its the GOP that has insisted on saddling Zika funding measures with riders that are in some cases irrelevant and in others actually damaging to public health. Democrats have resisted these cynical stunts, with good reason.
Lets look at the record.
First, theres no dispute that Zika poses a potentially major public health crisis. Superficially, the mosquito-borne illness, which can also be transmitted sexually, appears to be mild; its most common symptoms are fever, rash, muscle pain and headache, which appear within a few days of infection. Under the surface, however, Zika is associated with birth defects of children born to infected mothers, particularly microcephaly, and with Guillain-Barre Syndrome, which can lead to permanent nerve damage.
No cases of local infections have been reported yet among U.S. states, where the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention counted 1,132 cases picked up during foreign travel. But 2,526 cases of local infections have been reported in American Samoa (31), the U.S. Virgin Islands (21), and Puerto Rico (2,474). Thats a harbinger of the viruss spread onto the mainland, with the southeastern region at most risk.
Federal public health officials have been pleading for Congress to break the logjam over funding for a vaccine. The delay means its going to take that much longer to prove that the vaccine works, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health, told the Associated Press. If it takes that much longer to prove that it works then you take that much longer to get it out to the people who need it.
A letter sent this week to congressional leaders from Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell and Shaun Donovan, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, warned that if Congress adjourns for its seven-week vacation without action, thousands more Americans could be infected with Zika virus, including potentially thousands of pregnant women leading to an unknown number of infants born with microcephaly and other severe fetal brain defects. They continued: We expect local transmission this summer as mosquito populations continue to become more active.
So what has happened? The GOP majorities in the House and Senate have saddled Zika funding bills with riders they know are unacceptable to Democrats. Some would roll back long-standing environmental programs, others bar funding for affiliates of Planned Parenthood, a GOP bugaboo. The latter stunt is especially cynical, since the public health services provided to women by Planned Parenthood are especially crucial now, when a medical threat with particularly acute consequences to pregnant women is on the rise.
President Obama requested $1.9 billion in Zika funding in February. The House and Senate responded with their own funding measures the Senate at $1.1 billion, the House at $622 million. The House proposal would raid other disease programs to cover the bill.
The House went one step further in May, voting mostly along party lines to loosen pesticide regulations, ostensibly in the name of fighting Zika. (Voting with the GOP majority were 23 Democrats.) The House commitment amounted to rebranding an old anti-regulation measure, the Reducing Regulatory Burdens Act, as the Zika Vector Control Act. Possibly hoping that no one would notice that the House was proposing a wolf in sheeps clothing, Speaker Paul D. Ryan, R-Wisc., tried to blame Democrats for opposing the Houses latest effort to fight Zika at its source. He asserted that the Administration was putting the interests of environmental interest groups ahead of the public, adding fatuously, the health of the public is at stake.
More recently, Senate Republicans stuck language into a Zika funding bill that would block funding for ProFamilias, a group that works with Planned Parenthood in Puerto Rico. Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., sought to get the language removed, but was rebuffed by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who this week told reporters, the time for a debate about the content of it is over.
In exchange, Democrats asked Republicans to drop a budget cut to the 2010 health-care law and remove language that effectively prevented funding from going to ProFamilias, a group that partners with Planned Parenthood in Puerto Rico.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) Tuesday rejected that offer, saying the time for such negotiations had passed. Mr. McConnell said Democrats would have to decide whether they would again this week block the GOP-backed measure, which passed the House last month almost entirely along partisan lines.
The time for a debate about the content of it is over, Mr. McConnell told reporters Tuesday. As we write, no sign of a deal has emerged.
It seems obvious that the Congressional majority is comfortable putting off a Zika bill indefinitely, because to most Americans the threat still seems an abstract one. Zika is still limited to infections acquired overseas by a relative handful of travelersexcept in Puerto Rico, which is safely remote from most lawmakers districts and therefore not a major concern. But by the end of this summer there may well be outbreaks of locally transmitted disease, and even a few babies with birth defects born in these same lawmakers districts. Then the public will be looking for someone to blame, and the guilty parties will be easy to identify. Theyll be the ones whose answer to a public health crisis was to make hostages out of environmental safety and womens health.
* The quote is often attributed to Mark Twain, but appears to have originated in an 1866 surrogates decision in New York.
Keep up to date with Michael Hiltzik. Follow @hiltzikm on Twitter, see his Facebook page, or email michael.hiltzik@latimes.com.
Return to Michael Hiltziks blog.
Tensions are rising between the U.S. and China and not just on the presidential campaign trail.
A day after an international tribunal ruled against Chinas claim to historic rights for a vast part of the South China Sea, the Obama administration said on Wednesday it filed a formal trade complaint against the Asian superpower challenging export duties on nine key raw materials.
In an enforcement action launched with the World Trade Organization, the U.S. said China failed to abide by a commitment to eliminate duties of 5% to 20% charged on exports of materials, including cobalt, copper, graphite, lead and tin.
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The materials are vital to manufacturing in important U.S. industrial sectors, such as aerospace, automotive, electronics and chemicals, administration officials said.
The export duties mean American companies, including those that use graphite to produce lithium-ion batteries or cobalt to make gas turbine engines, pay more for the raw materials than competitors in China.
During a speech at the Port of San Diego Wednesday, Vice President Joe Biden blasted Chinas trade practices as unfair.
Were going to continue to be as aggressive as we can when any country violates agreements they made, hurting American businesses, American entrepreneurs, American workers, he said.
The complaint was the 13th filed against China at the WTO by the Obama administration since 2009. The filing is drawing heightened attention because Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, has sharply criticized the administrations trade relations with China.
In a speech in Pennsylvania last month, Trump said the Obama administration had failed to go after China for trade violations. Trump vowed a tougher approach if elected president.
Chinas entry in 2001 into the WTO has enabled the greatest jobs theft in history, Trump said, vowing to enact tariffs if the country doesnt stop its illegal activities.
The U.S. supported Chinas entrance into the global trading community during the administration of Bill Clinton, the husband of presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
A Trump campaign spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment.
Hillary Clinton has been critical of some Obama trade policies, including the Trans-Pacific Partnership pact. The free-trade agreement involving the U.S. and 11 Pacific Rim nations though not China is awaiting approval by Congress.
Peter Morici, a University of Maryland professor and former official at the U.S. International Trade Commission, said the Obama administration is trying to get tougher on trade enforcement against China as Trump has pounded on the issue during his campaign.
I think the cases are justified, Morici said of the administrations WTO filings. Trump talks about bringing more of them. I kind of have more confidence that Trump would bring them than Clinton would.
Zhu Haiquan, a spokesman for the Chinese embassy in Washington, said the U.S. was abusing the WTO process.
China urges the United States to strictly abide by the WTO rules and restrain from abusing of trade remedy measures, he said.
Derek Scissors, a China expert at the conservative American Enterprise Institute think tank, said Chinas export duties on raw materials were an indirect subsidy to its companies.
It may be portrayed as important politically getting tough on China but is far too subtle for that, he said.
Still, Scissors said, it could turn out to be a very small step toward a much-needed revamp in U.S. trade strategy toward China, to be undertaken by the next administration.
Last year, China eliminated export controls on rare-earth metals, such as tungsten, after losing an appeal of a WTO ruling against it triggered by a complaint filed by the U.S., Japan and the European Union.
Biden said the Obama administration has been consistent in demanding China and other nations live up to the terms of their trade agreements.
Since day one, our administration has enforced our trade laws aggressively, more aggressively than any administration in the past, he said, noting the U.S. has won all the WTO cases brought against China that have been decided so far. Im confident well win this one.
Staff writer Don Lee contributed to this report.
jim.puzzanghera@latimes.com
Follow @JimPuzzanghera on Twitter
UPDATES:
10:58 a.m.: This article was updated with comment from a spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington.
3:36 p.m.: This article was updated with additional information and comment.
The original article was published at 10:51 a.m.
Jennifer Aniston is mad as hell and shes not going to take it anymore.
In an essay for Huffington Post entitled For The Record, Aniston took on tabloid culture where theorizing on her procreation (or lack thereof) serves as a renewable resource.
Aniston details the swarms of the photographers that camp outside her home, hoping to nab a photo that might begin the cycle anew.
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She also explains, for the record, that shes not pregnant. And that while she may enjoy being a mother some day, its not because she somehow feels incomplete as a woman.
We are complete with or without a mate, with or without a child. We get to decide for ourselves what is beautiful when it comes to our bodies, Aniston wrote in the most powerful passage of her essay. We dont need to be married or mothers to be complete. We get to determine our own happily ever after for ourselves.
While Aniston claims that worrying about whether or not shes pregnant is small potatoes in light of a world rife with mass shootings and an upcoming presidential election, the larger issue shes addressing, within celebrity culture and the world outside it, grows increasingly prevalent.
The actress may have penned her words after experiencing another month of pregnancy scrutiny, but the essay comes on the heels of several high-profile instances of the mainstream conversations that go on surrounding female celebrity bodies.
In June, L.A. Weekly published a column by Art Tavana entitled Sky Ferreiras Sex Appeal Is What Pop Music Needs Right Now before going on to break down the musicians assets and saying that Ferreira looks like a more cherubic Sharon Stone, icy but also sweet, like a freshly licked lollipop.
After the piece sparked an online uproar, L.A. Weekly apologized, saying that it crossed a line, but attempted to explain the article away as the author using deliberately inflammatory language to talk about Ferreiras sexuality in her artistry.
We get to determine our own happily ever after for ourselves. Jennifer Aniston
Last week, Vanity Fair published a profile of Australian actress Margot Robbie written by Rich Cohen, a paean to her beauty and the perceived lost purity of America.
America is so far gone, we have to go to Australia to find a girl next door, Cohen opened his piece with, before going on to describe Robbies physical appearance in depth, including the phrase, She can be sexy and composed even while naked but only in character.
The Vanity Fair profile also spurred outrage, with readers taking issue with the sexism and creepy undertones of the piece, but also with the basic geographical inaccuracies about Australia.
But perhaps the most egregious example of the pervasive sexism of celebrity culture came with a June 30 Variety column in which chief film critic Owen Gleiberman pondered whether or not Renee Zellweger is a different actress if she no longer looks like herself.
Gleibermans column was a response to the newest trailer for Bridget Joness Baby in which Zellweger is returning to a role she first played 15 years ago.
Watch the official trailer for Bridget Joness Baby, which hits theaters Sept. 16.
Watching the trailer, I didnt stare at the actress and think: She doesnt look like Renee Zellweger. I thought: She doesnt look like Bridget Jones! Oddly, that made it matter more, Gleiberman wrote, before continuing, Celebrities, like anyone else, have the right to look however they want, but the characters they play become part of us. I suddenly felt like something had been taken away.
All of these examples come back to Anistons core complaint about the commodification of celebrities, be it their faces or their bodies or their lives. She expands her argument to look at the ways these perceptions create a toxic culture for all women, particularly the most impressionable of all.
Sometimes cultural standards just need a different perspective so we can see them for what they really are a collective acceptance... a subconscious agreement. We are in charge of our agreement. Little girls everywhere are absorbing our agreement, passive or otherwise, Aniston wrote.
She ends her piece with an acknowledgement that tabloids wont change any time soon, but that shouldnt render people powerless.
What can change is our awareness and reaction to the toxic messages buried within these seemingly harmless stories served up as truth and shaping our ideas of who we are.
libby.hill@latimes.com
Twitter: @midwestspitfire
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Los Angeles police chief and mayor met with President Obama on Wednesday for a White House discussion on race, policing and ways to heal the tensions that have flared following the recent high-profile police shootings of black men and a sniper attack on officers.
LAPD Chief Charlie Beck and Mayor Eric Garcetti caught an overnight flight to Washington for the meeting, joining dozens of law enforcement officers, activists, academics and elected officials. The 4 1/2-hour meeting ran longer than expected so long, Beck said, that he missed his flight back to L.A.
We didnt agree on everything thats for sure, Beck said. But we all agreed that the discussion has become far too polarized, that people arent listening to each other, people arent showing empathy.
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The often-heated national conversation about race and policing was refocused last week after the fatal police shootings of two black men Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, La., and Philando Castile in Falcon Heights, Minn. and the deadly sniper attack on officers during an otherwise peaceful protest in Dallas.
There are still deep divisions about how to solve these problems, the president told reporters after the meeting. Theres no doubt that police departments still feel embattled and unjustly accused. And there is no doubt that minority communities, communities of color still feel like it just takes too long to do whats right.
The pace of change is going to feel too fast for some and too slow for others, he added.
See the most-read stories this hour >>
Garcetti said in a statement that the meeting underscored a lesson L.A. learned after its own unrest over race and policing: Moving forward requires us all to go to places we dont normally go, talk to people we dont always see and take personal responsibility for being part of an ongoing solution.
Wednesdays meeting included discussions about shootings by officers and how police respond to demonstrations, Beck said. The group heard from both officials and activists in Louisiana and Minnesota about their experiences there in recent days.
They also discussed the need to bring different viewpoints to the same table, Beck said, noting the huge cross-section of folks at the meeting. Attendees included Atty. Gen. Loretta Lynch and Rev. Al Sharpton, along with prominent Black Lives Matter activist DeRay Mckesson.
It was productive, Mckesson tweeted after the meeting, and theres a lot to reflect on.
We didnt agree on everything thats for sure. But we all agreed that the discussion has become far too polarized. LAPD Chief Charlie Beck
The D.C. trip by Beck and Garcetti came a day after hundreds of people gathered in downtown L.A. to protest killings by police as the citys Police Commission decided that an LAPD officer did not violate the departments deadly force policy last year when he fatally shot Redel Jones in a South L.A. alley.
Jones, who was black, was killed after police say she moved toward an officer while holding a knife. The LAPD said the 30-year-old matched the description of a woman who robbed a nearby pharmacy about 20 minutes earlier, prompting officers to pursue her into the alley.
Siding with Beck, the Police Commission determined that the shooting was justified because an officer could reasonably have believed that Jones actions while armed with a knife presented an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury, according to a written summary of its findings.
News of the decision prompted an emotional response from the crowd gathered outside the LAPDs downtown headquarters. Many people wept. Others booed. The group quickly marched across the street to City Hall, pounding on the glass doors as they decried the ruling.
Dozens of activists stayed overnight and then spent Wednesday camped outside City Hall, promising to stay until they met with Garcetti or until Beck was fired.
Were just holding this place, showing resistance and resilience, said Jasmine Richards, an activist affiliated with the local Black Lives Matter movement.
Beck said Wednesday that he believed a lot of that criticism is sparked by a lack of dialogue. He urged those critical of the commissions decision to read the publicly available summaries of the review of the shooting then we can have a dialogue, he said.
The chief said the White House discussion mirrored conversations he and the mayor had in Los Angeles on Tuesday afternoon, which they spent meeting with local civil rights leaders, police officials and entertainers. The group talked about how police officers use force, but also how to reduce violence overall.
I think we got a little head start on the presidents discussion, Beck said. And were going to continue on that.
Times staff writer Christi Parsons and James Queally contributed to this report.
kate.mather@latimes.com
For more news on the LAPD, follow me on Twitter: @katemather
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UPDATES:
7:56 p.m.: This story was updated with comments from after the meeting.
This story was originally published at 9:13 a.m.
OSCE Special Monitoring Mission (OSCE SMM) Principal Deputy Chief Monitor Alexander Hug expects that members of the Trilateral Contact Group will sign a document on disengagement between the conflicting parties in Donbas during Wednesday's meeting in Minsk.
In response to an Interfax question about chances of seeing such an agreement inked at today's meeting, Hug said that he certainly hopes for this and that 'hope dies last'.
Los Angeles County voters will decide this fall whether to tax marijuana businesses to help pay for housing and health services for the homeless.
The ballot measure, approved Tuesday by the Board of Supervisors, seeks to take a potentially significant new source of government revenues, from marijuana sales, and use it to address one of the regions oldest and most intractable problems. L.A.s homeless population has been rising in recent years, and the proposed pot tax is part of a larger effort by city and county officials to finally put significantly more money behind easing the problems.
The boards 3-2 vote comes two weeks after the Los Angeles City Council agreed to place a $1.2-billion bond initiative on the November city ballot to build more housing for the homeless. The bond money could be used only for housing construction, not to provide services. Backers see both measures as a package and hope voters will approve both.
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The county proposal calls for a 10% levy on the gross receipts of businesses that produce or distribute marijuana and related products. It would apply to medical marijuana operations as well as the recreational marijuana industry if California voters decide to legalize it in November.
County analysts estimated that the measure, which would require a two-thirds majority vote to pass, would raise as much as $130 million a year to pay for mental health and substance abuse treatment, rental subsidies, emergency housing and other services intended to get and keep people off the streets.
But how much revenue the tax would generate depends largely on whether California voters legalize marijuana and whether large numbers of illegal sellers enter legal venues. County officials estimate that only about $13 million of the annual revenue would come from the medical marijuana industry.
If recreational marijuana is legalized at the state level, the county would not be able to begin collecting taxes on that industry until 2018. In the meantime, the county and cities will need to set up their own set of regulations on commercial marijuana businesses.
Spurred by the growing visibility of homeless encampments throughout the county, there has been much talk in local government about a unified approach to addressing the problem. The most recent count by the Los Angeles Housing Services Authority found about 47,000 people were homeless throughout the county.
The county budgeted $100 million this year to carry out an ambitious new homeless agenda, but it does not have a dedicated source of funds for ongoing efforts.
Advocates and people who are currently or formerly homeless urged the supervisors to place a funding measure on the ballot.
Destiny Vazquez, 16, said she spent two years homeless off and on as a child, but now lives with her grandmother and volunteers with an organization that helps the homeless.
I am here as their voice, because I didnt ask to be homeless either, she said. Her mother, Nereida Vazquez, 39, who said she is now homeless again, accompanied her daughter to the meeting.
Tuesdays vote comes after months of debate about the best way for L.A. County to raise more money for the homeless.
Initially, the board had hoped to pursue a millionaires tax on high-income earners. But the county does not have the legal authority to raise income taxes, so officials pushed for a change in state law that would have allowed them to go forward.
After that effort failed, Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas proposed placing a property tax on the ballot and then backed a quarter-cent sales tax. Both of those plans would have raised more money than the pot tax. Neither proposal was able to get the needed level of support on the board .
A number of advocates urged the board to consider the sales tax, which would raise the most money -- an estimated $355 million a year -- and could be implemented more quickly than a marijuana tax. But most said they would also support a marijuana tax.
We know that we will not see another opportunity in terms of public attention on homelessness and voter turnout like we will in November, said Katie Hill, executive director of the group People Assisting the Homeless.
Supervisors Sheila Kuehl, Hilda Solis and Don Knabe voted for the marijuana tax, with Michael D. Antonovich and Ridley-Thomas voting against.
Kuehl and Solis hailed the vote as a major step toward addressing the countys homeless crisis. But Ridley-Thomas said that the county needed more time to look at the issues surrounding a marijuana tax and that he had not given up on the sales tax. Antonovich expressed concerns about the health and safety effects of legalizing marijuana.
Knabe said he is not a proponent of marijuana, but if California voters decide legalize it, we ought to get a piece of the action, because it will help those that we need to help.
Public health and law enforcement officials expressed concerns about whether high taxes on the legal marijuana industry would drive more consumers back to the black market. L.A. County Sheriff Jim McDonnell sent a letter that said the level of homelessness in the county is dire, but urged the board to look at measures other than marijuana.
Collecting from marijuana businesses, which typically run on cash, will also raise potential security issues for county tax collectors. Treasurer-Tax Collector Joseph Kelly said his office might hire armored cars to pick the money up.
The supervisors went into a closed-door meeting ahead of the discussion of marijuana and the homeless tax, which were not on the closed session agenda. Ridley-Thomas said the closed session was needed to talk about a confidential attorney-client privileged communication the board had received the night before. Kuehl and Solis argued that the issues could be discussed in public, but were voted down by the other three.
Kuehl said afterward that the supervisors had discussed the items that were on the closed session agenda, but also discussed a memo from county counsel on potential liability and federal law issues related to marijuana.
To me, it could have easily been said in public, she said, but added that she thought the topic was appropriate for closed session because it dealt with potential litigation.
abby.sewell@latimes.com
Twitter: @sewella
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Orange County supervisors Tuesday approved a settlement agreement with two women who were victims of former public works manager Carlos Bustamante, who is serving a one-year jail sentence after pleading guilty to sex crimes last December.
Officials agreed to pay $500,000 each to the women, who filed civil lawsuits against the county in August 2013. Both are former secretaries for the county; one worked for Bustamante, the other for Bustamantes boss at the time.
Settlement negotiations began once the criminal case against Bustamante ended in January, with the former Santa Ana city councilman convicted of sexually assaulting subordinates and of committing grand theft of public funds.
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We pushed to resolve this quickly because we didnt want to drag the victims through the mud or have them suffer more stress or exposure. This closes a dark chapter in our countys history, Supervisor Todd Spitzer said Tuesday evening.
Prosecutors had accused Bustamante of assaulting five women between 2009 and 2011 while working at the Orange County Public Works Department, saying he targeted women who worked with him and who were his subordinates.
The Orange County district attorneys office began investigating Bustamante in March 2012. Authorities arrested him four months later, alleging that he also stole more than $3,000 in public funds for training at Harvards Kennedy School of Government.
County employees in Bustamantes chain of command, who may have contributed to a culture which tolerated the defendants acts, have all left the county or been terminated, Spitzer said. They include the county CEO and the director of the Public Works Department.
As a result of this case, Spitzer said officials ordered sexual harassment training for all county managers.
anh.do@latimes.com
Twitter: @newsterrier
UPDATES:
3:56 p.m. July 13, 2016: This article has been updated to remove the womens names.
This article was originally published at 10:12 p.m. July 12.
Los Angeles County supervisors voted Tuesday to place a marijuana business tax on the November ballot, with the proceeds intended to pay for homeless services.
The proposal calls for a 10% levy on the gross receipts of businesses that produce or distribute marijuana and related products. It would apply to medical marijuana operations as well as the recreational marijuana industry if California voters decide to legalize it in November.
County analysts estimated that the measure, which would require a two-thirds majority vote to pass, would raise up to $130 million a year to pay for mental health and substance abuse treatment, rental subsidies, emergency housing and other services intended to get and keep people off the streets.
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About $13 million of the revenue is expected to come from the medical marijuana industry. Officials acknowledged that the actual total would depend on how much of the existing illicit marijuana market crosses into legal venues.
If recreational marijuana is legalized at the state level, the county would not be able to begin collecting taxes on that industry until 2018.
Tuesdays 3-2 vote comes on the heels of a move by the Los Angeles City Council to place a $1.2-billion bond initiative on the ballot to build more housing for the homeless. The bond money could be used only for construction, not to provide services once people are housed.
The supervisors have been mulling several options to raise more money to fund homeless outreach.
Initially they had hoped to pursue a millionaires tax on high-income earners. But the county does not have the legal authority to raise income taxes, so officials pushed for a change in state law that would have allowed them to go forward.
After that effort failed, Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas proposed placing a property tax on the ballot. The supervisors also considered a sales tax, but neither proposal was able to get majority support on the board.
abby.sewell@latimes.com
It was like a scene from the movie Jaws, a great white shark circles a fishermans small skiff and then launches itself into the craft nearly knocking it over.
Thats how fisherman Mark Davis described an incident off Capitola on the northern end of Monterey Bay on Friday morning, when a shark sank its teeth into the bow of his 15-foot boat.
It was a full-on slam attack from down below, Davis told KSBW-TV. He came and hit the boat at full speed and knocked it into the air He was aggressive and fired up.
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Davis said smaller sharks had swum up to him before, but never one quite so big.
This thing was huge, he said. Ive never seen anything that large in the water before, and Ive seen a lot of fish.
Sean Van Sommeran, a researcher at the Pelagic Shark Research Foundation in Santa Cruz, told the station that the teeth marks left on the boats bow indicated the great white was at least 15 feet long and weighed perhaps a ton.
Davis was fishing for squid bait when the shark attacked. He wasnt injured, but said he was glad he didnt fall into the water.
Eddie Rhee-Pizano, state parks lifeguard supervisor for Santa Cruz, said sharks do occasionally bite boats.
The shark will bite a boat for a variety of reasons, he said. If a shark has shown aggressive behavior, if its attacking, well have signage posts for about three days within a mile of the beach.
No warning signs have been posted in connection with Fridays attack offshore.
alexia.fernandez@latimes.com
Twitter: @alexiafedz
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Huntington Beach police are investigating a possible hate-motivated attack against a black family after a man yelled racial slurs and threw a rock at their apartments sliding glass door.
The attack occurred about 12:40 a.m. Tuesday at an apartment complex at Warner Avenue and Edwards Street, Officer Jennifer Marlatt said.
The resident was resting on his balcony when he saw a white male riding his bicycle with flashing lights, she said. The resident went into his apartment, but noticed the light was now flashing outside his apartment.
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He looked outside and saw the bicycle lying on the sidewalk. The man walked into a recessed area near a flood control channel and picked up an item, Marlatt said.
Shortly thereafter, the resident and his mother heard a racial slur, then a rock crashed through their sliding glass door. She looked outside the window and saw a man on a bicycle with a flashing light riding south on Edwards.
See the most-read stories in Local News this hour >>
Police went to the neighborhood, but did not find the suspect, Marlatt said.
The residents recently moved into the location and said they had not had any issues with anyone, she said.
Elisha Caballero told KCBS-TV she heard the man say, I am going to kill you, followed by a racial slur.
The familys sliding glass door has been boarded with slabs of plywood, but she said they still live in fear.
We know it was done out of a hate, she told the news station. I just want him to know we forgive him. Even though we dont agree. Even though we dont feel the same way towards each other, we need to respect one another.
veronica.rocha@latimes.com
For breaking news in California, follow VeronicaRochaLA on Twitter.
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Police were searching downtown San Diego and East Village looking for a man on a bicycle who used a hammer to strike an apparent transient on the head Wednesday.
Paramedics took the victim to a trauma center, but no information on the extent of his injuries was immediately available.
Officers responding to a 911 call from a passerby found the man at 10th Avenue and G Street about 6:20 a.m. and determined that the man had been attacked about two blocks away, near 8th Avenue, San Diego police said.
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The attacker was riding a royal blue mountain bike and wore a backpack, police said. He was last seen heading east on Market Street.
Officers were questioning possible witnesses and looking for surveillance camera video that could help them trace the cyclist.
There have been a number of attacks on the homeless in the last few weeks in San Diego in which sleeping men were stuck on the head. The victim in Wednesday[s assault was awake, and a witness saw him arguing with a man shortly before the attack was reported.
In what is believed to be a separate violent outbreak, four homeless men were attacked last week and three of them died from severe upper body wounds. Two were set on fire after being attacked. Homicide investigators arrested a suspect on Thursday, but he was released from jail on Monday when authorities said they didnt have enough evidence against him to press charges.
Repard writes for the San Diego Union-Tribune.
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A Los Angeles Police Department motorcycle officer was airlifted to a hospital with major injuries after colliding with an automobile on an Inland Empire freeway Wednesday morning, according to authorities.
The male officer was riding his department bike to work westbound on the 60 Freeway near the Mountain Avenue exit in Ontario when the crash occurred, LAPD Officer Norma Eisenman said. The collision was reported around 11 a.m. The officer was transported by helicopter to a hospital, police said.
See the most-read stories this hour >>
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California Highway Patrol officials said the officer suffered major injuries in the collision with a silver Toyota.
A view from a KTLA-TV news helicopter showed a severely damaged motorcycle next to the freeways center divider.
The CHP issued a SigAlert and partially blocked the freeway while firefighters attended to those involved in the crash.
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Man yells racial slur, hurls rock into home of black family in Huntington Beach, police say
UPDATES:
1:08 p.m.: This post was updated with additional details from the California Highway Patrol.
This article was originally published at 12:14 p.m.
A stone fort used by a group of fiercely territorial surfers in Palos Verdes Estates will be dismantled and carted away under a plan approved by the citys elected leaders Tuesday.
The councils unanimous decision came despite strong opposition by residents, who urged their elected leaders not to buckle in the face of the California Coastal Commission. That agency has urged the city to remove the unpermitted facility or seek approval by proposing a package of measures to improve public access and reduce harassment.
Witnesses accuse the Bay Boys surfer gang of congregating at the three-decade-old structure and bombarding outsiders with dirt clods, slashing their tires and assaulting them in the water sometimes coordinating the attacks with walkie-talkies.
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Police reports over the years show that the illegal palapa has repeatedly been a site of alleged drug and alcohol use.
But dozens of residents said the community has embraced the site as a community landmark, and some said it had been a beloved location for weddings and memorial services.
The Bay Boys who congregate there are not a gang. It is a club, said resident Pat Stolz, who urged the city to preserve the structure. We dont want crowds. Think twice when someone comes in and tells you what to do.
Another resident, Stanton Hunton, said the Bay Boys are very pleasant people and told the council members, dont succumb to the Coastal Commission.
Hunton said the city should also block a Coastal Commission proposal to improve public access with better pathways, benches, viewing binoculars and other amenities.
Why the city would allow the Coastal Commission to strong-arm it to allow in nonresidents who dont know the perils of that cliff is beyond me, he said.
The patio structure consists of cemented stone retaining walls, a cemented stone patio with a stone table, fire pit, a stone bench and a wooden canopy, and an adjacent seating area with a wooden bench covered by a wood-frame palm frond canopy.
City staffers said they plan to hire a contractor for about $50,000 to take jackhammers to the structure and carry away the pieces.
Staffers recommended the plan after meetings with representatives of the Lunada Bay Homeowners Assn., which urged the city to preserve the stone structure, and the Surfrider Foundation, which has pressured the city to take concerns about harassment more seriously.
City attorneys said that permitting the structure would mean that the city would also need to maintain it and assume liability for anyone who is hurt there.
The truth of the matter is that the city does not want to own a structure like this. We cant afford to own a structure like this, said Councilman James D. Vandever.
In response to the citys plan to remove the structure, the Coastal Commission sent a letter to the city saying it was encouraged by the decision but still planned to press for more improvements to public access.
The city missed a July 6 deadline to submit a public access improvement plan, and Coastal Commission Enforcement Officer Jordan Sanchez said the agency continues to hope that improving access amenities, including such things as benches and educational signage, would benefit all members of public, including the local residents.
garrett.therolf@latimes.com
Twitter: @gtherolf
UPDATE:
6:00 p.m.: This story was updated with Coastal Commission response.
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Santa Monica, which last year passed some of the nations toughest regulations on short-term rentals, has now convicted its first Airbnb host under the new law, prosecutors said.
Rental operator Scott Shatford, who listed five properties on Airbnb, was charged with eight misdemeanor counts of operating a business without a license and failing to comply with citations after he refused to stop renting out his properties, Deputy City Atty. Yibin Shen said Wednesday.
Shatford pleaded no contest on July 5 in a plea deal with the city, agreeing to pay $3,500 in fines and to stop renting properties within the city. He was also placed on two years probation.
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In May 2015, the Santa Monica City Council unanimously passed a law outlawing rentals of less than 30 days. The law allows so-called home-sharing, such as renting a couch or spare room while the owner is present, but bars renting an entire residence for fewer than 30 days.
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At the time, the new rule outlawed more than 80% of the citys estimated 1,700 short-term rentals.
The city now has a full-time task force dedicated to the issue, with two code enforcement officers and an analyst, said Shen, the prosecutor on Shatfords case.
Shatford, a 36-year-old Santa Monica resident, wrote a book on home-sharing and runs AirDNA, a database that helps hosts price their units so they can Airbnb like a pro.
On Tuesday, Shatford said he had been renting vacation properties in Santa Monica for about four years and has been vocal about his doubts about whether the city could actually enforce its new law.
I was probably targeted by Santa Monica because I was out there, talking about my rentals, Shatford said. The city came after me, to make me their little poster child and be able to promote me as their first victory. Its pretty silly.
Shatford said he had received citations, but that they were sent to his vacation properties, where he does not regularly check the mail.
While investigating Shatford, city officials booked one of his properties near the 3rd Street Promenade on Airbnb for four nights for $1,200, collecting a rental agreement that they used as evidence, Shatford said.
After all the time and money they spent theyve lost money on the whole situation, he said.
Asked why he did not remove his rentals after the law passed last year, he said: The moneys too good.
Even with the $3,500 fine, thats what one of my properties makes in a month, he said.
Shen, the prosecutor, said city officials received a complaint from someone who had rented one of Shatfords properties. The woman was surprised to learn that she was renting a unit that was illegal and was uncomfortable with the situation, Shen said.
Before referring the case to the city attorneys office, the new Vacation Rental Enforcement Task Force attempted to work with and educate Mr. Shatford for many months, issuing multiple warnings and citations with fines, the city said in a statement, adding that Shatford boasted publicly that he was not concerned about local law.
Shen said he hopes the case will serve as an example for the public.
The city views its rental prohibition quite seriously, and it takes enforcement of these laws quite seriously, Shen said.
As for Shatford, hes moving to Denver this week, after 13 years of living in Santa Monica. He said he hopes people are more tolerant there.
Los Angeles is mulling new rules that would legalize and regulate the practice of renting out rooms or whole homes for short stays, a practice that has flourished even though planning officials say it is currently illegal in vast swaths of the city. Unlike in Santa Monica, Angelenos would be able to rent out their entire home to temporary visitors while they are not present.
However, the proposed L.A. law would impose restrictions on how often they could do so: Angelenos who rent out their primary residence for short stays those of less than 30 days -- could do so for up to 180 days annually. The Los Angeles City Planning Commission has also recommended allowing short-term rentals of other kinds of property -- such as a second home -- for a maximum of 15 days a year.
Under the L.A. proposal, hosts would face fines if they exceed those restrictions or fail to register with the city. And online rental platforms such as Airbnb could also be fined if they refuse to turn over addresses of rentals that failed to register. The proposed law was backed last month by the Planning Commission, but has yet to be discussed by the Los Angeles City Council.
Emily Alpert contributed to this report.
hailey.branson@latimes.com
Twitter: @haileybranson
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UPDATES:
4:26 p.m.: Updated with Los Angeles policy.
Originally posted at 3:28 p.m.
For years, there have been complaints about a so-called surfer gang in the Lunada Bay area of the Palos Verdes Peninsula.
Beachgoers and witnesses have accused the Bay Boys surfer gang, some of whom are reportedly middle-aged, of bombarding outsiders with dirt clods, slashing their car tires and assaulting them in the water sometimes coordinating the attacks with walkie-talkies.
But over the last year, the issue has received more focus, and some action was taken this week.
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What happened this week?
Palos Verdes Estates officials voted to have a stone fort used by the group dismantled and removed under a plan approved by the citys elected leaders Tuesday.
1 / 10 A Palos Verdes Estates police officer watches for trouble at Lunada Bay, where local surfers have clashed with outsiders. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times) 2 / 10 A man records a small group of surf outsiders challenging the Bay Boys efforts to keep the surf spot to themselves at Lunada Bay in Palos Verdes Estates on Feb. 5, 2016. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times) 3 / 10 A Palos Verdes Estates police officer checks on outsider surfers Jordan and Diana Milena, left, and Cory Spencer, before they hit the waves at Lunada Bay in Palos Verdes Estates on Feb. 5, 2016. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times) 4 / 10 A group of outsiders checks the conditions early in the morning before surfing at Lunada Bay in Palos Verdes Estates. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times) 5 / 10 A surfer with a small group of outsiders challenging the Bay Boys rides a wave at Lunada Bay in Palos Verdes Estates on Feb. 5, 2016. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times) 6 / 10 A stone fort at Lunada Bay will need to be demolished or undergo a rigorous permitting process. The California Coastal Commission is cracking down on access problems at the Palos Verdes Estates surf spot. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times) 7 / 10 With police watching for trouble from the bluff top, outsider Diana Milena, 28, of Malibu, who filed a police report for harassment by the Bay Boys, stands in the locals hangout fort. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times) 8 / 10 A stone fort constructed by locals at Lunada Bay will need to be demolished or undergo rigorous permitting procedures, the California Coastal Commission said. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times) 9 / 10 With police watching for trouble from nearby blufftops, an outsider heads out to surf at Lunada Bay in Palos Verdes Estates on Feb. 5, 2016. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times) 10 / 10 The Coastal Commission has funds available to improve the pathways from the bluff down to shore to aid public access to Lunada Bay. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
The councils unanimous decision came despite strong opposition by residents, who urged their elected leaders not to buckle in the face of the California Coastal Commission. That agency has urged the city to remove the unpermitted facility or seek approval by proposing a package of measures to improve public access and reduce harassment.
Police reports over the years show that the illegal three-decade-old structure has been a common site of alleged drug and alcohol use.
What other actions are possible?
A federal lawsuit targets the city of Palos Verdes Estates, asking a judge to require it to investigate and prosecute complaints of crimes committed by the surfer gangs.
City officials have denied allegations that theyve ignored the complaints.
Was there support to keep the fort up?
Yes, dozens of residents said the community has embraced the site as a community landmark, and some said it had been a beloved location for weddings and memorial services.
The Bay Boys who congregate there are not a gang. It is a club, said resident Pat Stolz, who urged the city to preserve the structure. We dont want crowds. Think twice when someone comes in and tells you what to do.
Another resident, Stanton Hunton, said the Bay Boys are very pleasant people and urged the council, dont succumb to the Coastal Commission.
Hunton said the city should also block a Coastal Commission proposal to improve public access with better pathways, benches, viewing binoculars and other amenities.
Why the city would allow the Coastal Commission to strong-arm it to allow in nonresidents who dont know the perils of that cliff is beyond me, he said.
Wasnt there a video showing Bay Boys in action?
Yes, last year, the Guardian newspaper published this hidden camera record.
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Buzyna was murdered by at least two people, so it cannot be Medvedko
The defense lawyer of the suspects in the murder of journalist Oles Buzyna, Andriy Fedur, has said that more than one person was involved in the killing of the journalist, and therefore it cannot be Andriy Medvedko, who is charged with the murder.
"I have found clear evidence that Oles Buzyna was killed by more than one person and at least two people were shooting. Two different types of firearms were used. And if this was so, then these are certainly not Medvedko and Polischuk, because the [investigators'] theory behind their charges is that the only person who was shooting was Medvedko," he said at a press conference at Interfax-Ukraine on Wednesday.
As reported, Buzyna was killed in the yard of an apartment block where he lived in Kyiv on April 16. Kyiv residents, Andriy Medvedko and Denys Polischuk, are suspects in the case.
The pre-trial inquiry into the case still continues. The two suspects say they are not guilty.
Meanwhile, on May 13, 2016, Buzyna's mother Valentyna Buzyna at a meeting with members of the Opposition Bloc asked them to help in the investigation of her son's murder.
According to her, despite the best efforts of the lawyer, her written request to the U.S. ambassador, the investigation in this case has not moved a bit.
"The actions of the Ukrainian authorities show their reluctance to punish the murderers. The investigation has been unlawfully suspended and the suspects have been released from custody. Both have an obvious connection with the government agencies - one served in the Interior Ministry, and the other in the Armed Forces of Ukraine," the mother of the murdered journalist said in her letter.
William H. McNeill, the groundbreaking scholar who wove the stories of civilizations worldwide into the landmark The Rise of the West and described the power of disease to forge history in Plagues and People, died Friday. He was 98.
McNeill, who died in Torrington, Conn., wrote more than 20 books, notably The Rise of the West: A History of the Human Community, published in 1963. The New York Times called it the most stimulating and fascinating work of world history ever released. It won the National Book Award, sold well despite exceeding 800 pages and later was ranked No. 71 by the Modern Library among the 20th centurys best English-language nonfiction books.
McNeill sought new ways to explain the world. He didnt explore history through the feats of great men but through everyday innovations, contacts between civilizations, and disease. He investigated how such changes as better-designed plows or potato cultivation propelled human societies and how pathogens defeated them. His books had sweep and brimmed with daring, provocative ideas.
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He wrote about big topics, trying to speak to a bigger audience, said Ian Morris, a Stanford University history professor.
Morris said McNeills writing was especially influential in places such as California, where few students identified with the traditional way of teaching history via straight-down-the-middle Western Civ courses focused Great Britain and Europe.
McNeill painted history against a sprawling new canvas, demonstrating that there is this whole world out there that you have to look at the world on a global scale and look at the different strands of history, Morris said.
And he was such an unusual guy, that was just the beginning for him, Morris added.
McNeill had a knack for flipping conventional wisdom on its head and upending long established paradigms, as he did in his 1983 work The Great Frontier: Freedom and Hierarchy in Modern Times.
It was published at a time when historians of the American West were just beginning to break free of the influence of Frederick Jackson Turner, who associated frontiers with freedom and opportunity, said Stephen Aron, UCLA history professor. That is the way the myth of the West has been told go west for freedom, he said.
McNeill inverted this by suggesting that labor scarcity meant labor often had to be compelled in frontier regions, Aron said. Thus, frontiers tended to be areas of forced labor, McNeill argued just the opposite of the mythology. His insights influenced a subsequent generation of scholars of the West, making them more attuned to the spectrum of unfree labor and the conditions under which it occurs, Aron said.
The Rise of the West, even in its title, was a direct challenge to Oswald Spenglers The Decline of the West. It also served as counterpoint to Arnold Toynbee, then the reigning scholar of world history. Toynbee believed that civilizations had essentially developed independently and their stories were separate. McNeill countered that they were very much part of one story.
Indeed, world history since 1500 may be thought of as a race between the Wests growing power to molest the rest of the world and the increasingly desperate efforts of other peoples to stave Westerners off, wrote McNeill, who also cautioned that another civilization could yet overtake the West.
McNeill welcomed disagreement, and in a retrospective essay, he noted that The Rise of the West was in part influenced by the Cold War and the United States post-World War II ascendance. He underestimated the Chinese, gave undue attention to Latin Christendom and showed scant concern for the sufferings of the victims of historical change.
His subsequent books included the 1976 release Plagues and People, in which he was among the first to examine the impact of infectious disease in history, from ancient Eurasia to the 20th century. It helped launch a field of scholarship that includes Jared Diamond, Laurie Garrett and Richard Preston.
Other works included The Pursuit of Power and a biography of Toynbee. In 2003, he collaborated with his son, J.R. McNeill, on The Human Web: A Birds Eye View of History. His memoir, The Pursuit of Truth, came out two years later.
He was born in Vancouver, Canada, in 1917. His father, John T. McNeill, was a theologian and historian; the younger McNeill would see his own scholarship as a secular version of his fathers calling. He studied at the University of Chicago, then got his PhD at Cornell University. His formal education was suspended during World War II when he served in the Army five years. But he continued to observe and absorb. He shared quarters with men of widely differing backgrounds.
What better experience could a historian have than to find himself observing revolution and counterrevolution close-up? he wrote in his memoir.
He married Elizabeth Darbishire. He joined the faculty of the University of Chicago and remained for 40 years.
He worked for years on what he knew would be his big book.
I typed the manuscript of The Rise of the West on a portable Underwood noiseless typewriter that my parents had given me as a 21st birthday present, he wrote in his memoir. It was accompanied by a verse my father composed inviting me to write a book of lasting worth.
Leovy is a Times staff writer; Italie writes for the Associated Press.
UPDATES:
3:21 p.m.: This article was updated with additional quotes and details.
This article was originally published at 10:20 a.m.
Its a strange week when Donald Trump known for his provocations and unconventional behavior lectures a Supreme Court justice on whats highly inappropriate, and many legal experts say hes right.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburgs unprecedented public criticism of the presumed GOP presidential nominee has left legal experts and her own supporters scratching their heads. No one could recall a similar instance of a justice on the nations highest court openly and repeatedly denouncing a candidate running for its highest office.
Trumps campaign is already exploiting Ginsburgs attack as the latest example of the high courts growing politicization. He called upon her to step down and predicted her attacks would only serve to energize his conservative base.
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While few expect their high-profile spat to weigh heavily in the 2016 race, Ginsburgs remarks cast a harsh spotlight on the courts liberal lion, who inspires such admiration that supporters don T-shirts with her image and have dubbed her Notorious RBG, a take-off on Christopher Wallaces rap moniker, The Notorious B.I.G.
Many legal experts agree Ginsburgs public comments crossed a long-standing line that has separated the Supreme Court from partisan electoral politics.
What Justice Ginsburg did in these interviews is facially unethical in my view, said Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University. It undermines the core values and integrity of the court.
Ronald Rotunda, an expert in legal ethics at Chapman University in Orange, said Ginsburg essentially endorsed the presumed Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton.
I found her comments jaw-dropping, he said. She is politicizing the court and that is not good for the country or the court. We give them life tenure and salary protection so they will be above the political fray. But she is jumping right into it.
The White House made light of Ginsburgs comments Wednesday. She didnt earn the nickname the Notorious RBG for nothing, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest told reporters.
But even the editorial page of the New York Times and some liberal legal scholars chastised Ginsburg for her remarks.
In three interviews in the last week, Ginsburg said she despaired at the prospect that Trump could be president. I dont want to think about that possibility, she told the Associated Press. She joked to the New York Times that she may want to move to New Zealand.
Hes a faker. He has no consistency about him. He says whatever comes into his head at the moment, she told CNN. He really has an ego...How has he gotten away with not turning over his tax returns? The press seems to be very gentle with him on that.
Exactly why Ginsburg weighed in on Trump is now the subject of debate among legal scholars and political insiders, but shes shown no signs of backing down.
Some have suggested Ginsburgs age she is 83may play a role. Past justices, including the late Antonin Scalia, became more outspoken as they grew older.
See the most-read stories in National News this hour >>
Her mind is shot resign! Trump tweeted Tuesday.
Others pointed to the unusual nature of Trumps candidacy.
I dont think she is losing it mentally. Her opinions reveal close and complex legal reasoning, said New York University law professor Stephen Gillers. I think the answer is simple. She is as deeply alarmed as many others over the prospect of a Trump presidency and the consequences to the country and the court. She thinks the voters may be falling under the spell of a charlatan and is willing to accept the criticism for speaking rather than remain silent.
He noted Ginsburg first made her mark in the law fighting for womens rights in the late 1960s, when legal precedents were not on her side. Shes been a fighter and thats what shes doing now, he said. There are some things she is unable to accept.
A few pointed to the phenomenon of celebrity justices who travel the country appearing before ideologically friendly audiences.
This can have a corrupting influence on jurists who are treated like rock stars and receive an outpouring of adoration, said Turley of George Washington.
Though Ginsburgs comments were the most blatant in recent memory, she is not the first justice to be accused of taking sides.
On election night in 2000 when the votes were being counted, Justice Sandra Day OConnor was overheard at a party saying it was terrible when Democratic nominee Al Gore briefly pulled ahead.
Scalia raised eyebrows in 2004 by going duck hunting with then-Vice President Dick Cheney shortly after the court agreed to decide a case challenging Cheneys handling of an energy policy task force. And Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. was criticized by some for shaking his head and mouthing not true when President Obama criticized the Citizens United decision during his 2010 State of the Union address.
Within the court, the justices are divided on how they handle their public roles. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, like Ginsburg, often appears before liberal and progressive legal groups, such as the American Constitution Society. On the right, Justices Clarence Thomas and Alito regularly speak before the conservative Federalist Society, as did Scalia.
Notably absent from those meetings are Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Anthony M. Kennedy, Stephen G. Breyer and Elena Kagan. They tend to speak at law schools or other forums that do not have a political or ideological leaning.
Caroline Fredrickson, president of ACS, said the flap over Ginsburgs comments should prompt a serious conversation about a code of conduct for the Supreme Court. While lower courts are bound by a code of conduct and can be reprimanded for violating it, the Supreme Court justices decide for themselves how to conduct themselves.
In 2004, 2nd Circuit Judge Guido Calabresi, a former Yale Law School dean, came under investigation and issued an apology for an off-the-cuff comment before a legal group that President George W. Bush came to power through a court decision, adding that Hitler and Mussolini also came to power without winning an election.
But Supreme Court justices are allowed to monitor their own behavior, including deciding when to recuse themselves from a case.
Its not clear whether Ginsburgs comment would raise questions about her ability to fairly handle a future case involving a Trump administration, but many legal experts agree she would come under pressure to recuse herself if there were an election dispute similar to Bush vs. Gore in 2000.
Two years ago, some leading liberals had urged Ginsburg to retire so that Obama could chose her successor while Democrats still held the Senate majority. They recalled an earlier era when aging Justice Thurgood Marshall, a hero of the civil rights movement, hung on into his early 80s, but was forced to retire because of his health. His seat was filled 25 years ago by Thomas, an unwavering conservative.
But Ginsburg, then 81, said she was confident she could still do the job well, and she expressed optimism that a Democrat would succeed Obama. However, if Trump were elected, she would turn 84 shortly after his inauguration.
Legal experts note that much turns for Ginsburg in the upcoming election.
Her legacy depends on who wins the White House, said UC Irvine law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky, who was among those who had urged her to retire earlier. If a Democrat wins, there likely will be a liberal majority on the court for years to come. If a Republican wins, there likely will be a majority to overrule her views on every issue.
On Twitter: @DavidGSavage
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In 1840, the Democratic Party platform, buttressing the run of unpopular incumbent Martin Van Buren, clocked in at fewer than 540 words: a recitation of the powers and limits of government in simple, broad strokes.
Now, party platforms have ballooned to tens of thousands words covering such crucial issues as foreign policy as well as ones that perhaps only the most dedicated party activists could love, like the fate of the endangered prairie chicken and sage grouse.
But beyond the canned rhetoric and pedantic detail that risk rendering them all but ignored even by party leaders, platforms have retained an important place in the American political process. They have served as predictors of how candidates will try to govern once in office. And in the upheaval of 2016, they have emerged as a tool for both presumptive presidential nominees to court and placate skeptical members of their parties activist wings.
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A platform, said Betsy Franceschini, who helped craft the current Democratic version, is the spinal cord of a party.
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The attention the platforms have won in recent weeks has also underscored how much the documents have evolved in purpose and in scope.
Platforms came from a time when candidates could not have direct contact -- or even TV or radio contact -- with the people, said Sandy Maisel, a government professor at Colby College in Maine. So they were basically saying what it was that distinguished them from their opponents.
Now, in an age of media saturation, platforms function much as a tool for leverage for party insiders seeking certain promises from their presumptive nominees.
The current Democratic version incorporates the wishlist of Bernie Sanders backers, who staked out ground to the left of presumptive nominee Hillary Clinton. The document included flavors of the Sanders stump speech, such as calls for a $15 federal minimum wage and setting a price on greenhouse gas emissions.
But liberal activists gathered last weekend in Orlando, Fla., did not yank the platform entirely to their side. Sanders allies sought explicit opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a massive trade deal reviled by the left as well as by presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump. But the document stopped short of a condemnation, avoiding an embarrassing rebuke for the deals champion, President Obama, from his own party.
The 2016 platform will be used to judge how well Democrats perform in office,, predicted Nina Turner, a former Ohio state senator and Sanders supporter.
People are fully awake and theyre engaged. ... We got our scorecard right here, and its called the platform, she said.
The GOP platform, hashed out in Cleveland on Monday and Tuesday, has echoes of signature Trump policies, including a call for negotiated trade agreements that put America first and a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
But Trump was outflanked on social issues that animate the Republican base. The document is unambiguously antiabortion -- without exceptions for rape, incest or to save the mothers life -- even though Trump had indicated he supports such exceptions.
The platform that weve produced does help assuage concerns that conservatives might have justified or not about the presumptive nominee, said Scott Johnson of Georgia, a platform committee member and former supporter of Texas Sen. Ted Cruzs candidacy who has come around to Trump.
To be sure, platforms tend to be more aspirational than fail-safe forecasts of what will happen, given the resistance of lawmakers from the opposition party and the influence of unforeseen events.
The documents are promises that never take into account political context, and political context is really important, Maisel said.
Still, they continue to have political implications for candidates, who are often hitched, sometimes unhappily, to its contents.
Even if a presidential candidate is not lockstep with everything in the platform, their opponent can say, Well, your party said this, said Elizabeth Simas, a political science professor at the University of Houston.
In 1992, for example, George H.W. Bush ceded many GOP platform demands to rival Pat Buchanan, who staked out far-right positions on social issues.
It clearly hurt him in the general election, Maisel said of Bush, who would go on to lose that election to Bill Clinton.
That same year, allies of Clinton stripped many liberal positions of the George McGovern era from the Democratic platform, signaling the partys shift to the center during the 1990s.
Some Republicans expressed concern this week with the increasingly bloated size of their manifesto. What was once a few hundred words grew to 30,000 words in 2012 (26,000 for the Democrats version). The word count for this years platforms or their final language wont be available until delegates approve the platforms at their nominating conventions in the coming weeks.
GOP delegates pointed to the platform delving into micro-issues such as the greater sage grouse and lesser prairie chicken: two birds considered endangered by the federal government. The GOP platform calls for repealing that status, saying such protection harms oil and gas development and hunting interests.
Weighing in on too many small issues threatens to divide the party rather than unite it, said Darcie Johnston, a delegate from Virginia.
It makes us look small and were not, she said.
But such specificity is needed to satisfy the many interests in each party, said Jonathan Gardner, a Republican from New Mexico.
Its not enough just to say, We support freedom. Well, who doesnt support freedom? Gardner said. What does that look like? What type of approach are you going to take on certain issues when you actually end up in the position to legislate or sign bills?
Mason reported from Cleveland and Megerian from Orlando, Fla.
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When five police officers were killed and nine wounded in an attack during a protest march in Dallas on July 7, it rattled the nation.
Ten days later, three officers were killed and three injured in Baton Rouge, La., as they were responding to a call about a suspicious person with an assault rifle.
Between the two attacks, law enforcement officers from Georgia to Michigan were shot in incidents that drew far less attention but have added to the growing sense that its a dangerous time to be a cop.
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With the Dallas shootings, 31 law enforcement officers have died in the line of duty so far this year, compared with 18 officers who had died at this point in 2015, according the statistics from the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund.
Nick Breul, director of research for the memorial fund and a former Washington, D.C., police officer, said that there have also been a number of surprise attacks targeting and killing police officers.
As we see increases, it becomes very concerning, particularly when you see increases in the cases of the nature of Dallas, Breul said.
Certainly there is a climate now -- and the Dallas case indicates that there is a climate now -- that certainly should have police on guard, he added.
A black Army veteran, Lakeem Keon Scott, targeted police in a shooting on July 7 along a highway in Bristol, Tenn., authorities said. One woman was killed and three other people were injured, including one officer who is white. Scott was charged with one count of first-degree murder and seven counts of attempted first-degree murder.
Preliminarily, the investigation reveals Scott targeted individuals and officers after being troubled by recent incidents involving African Americans and law enforcement officers, authorities from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation said in a statement.
An officer in the St. Louis suburb of Ballwin, Mo., was shot from behind and critically injured during a traffic stop while he was walking back to his patrol car on July 8, the day after the Dallas shooting.
A direct attack on an officer like this is not common. It was a very open and very blatant ambush, said Officer Benjamin Granda of the St. Louis County Police Department. The officer is white and the suspected shooter is black, but Granda declined to speculate about whether the attack had racial overtones.
The same day in Valdosta, Ga., a shooter lured an officer to his house with a 911 call and then opened fire, authorities said. The man, a recovering drug addict, said he wanted the police to shoot him as he wanted to die, according to a Georgia Bureau of Investigation news release. Both the shooter and the officer survived bullet wounds, authorities said.
Also on July 8 in Georgia, another officer on patrol became a target when a motorist pulled up and fired at him in Roswell, north of Atlanta. The officer was not injured, and a suspect was taken into custody. But authorities have not commented on the gunmans motives.
Roswell Det. Zachary Frommer told WSB-TV news that officers were already on high alert after the attacks in Dallas.
Then something like this happens and it just perks us up even more, Frommer said.
The violence continued after the weekend when two court bailiffs, both former policemen, were shot and killed by an inmate inside the Berrien County Courthouse in Michigan. A sheriffs deputy in the courthouse was wounded, and the gunman was later shot and killed.
Kim Fowler, a former law enforcement officer who knew both the slain bailiffs, said that growing violence is a danger to police, but officers try not to dwell on the risks when they are doing their job.
They cant sit around thinking about it, and they dont, he said. All you can do is try your best to prepare. You cant stop doing your normal activities or your everyday police work in taking care of the public.
erica.evans@latimes.com
ALSO
From Ferguson to Baton Rouge: Deaths of black men and women at the hands of police
After 45 years, the FBI finally throws in the towel on D.B. Cooper hijacking
Obama mourns slain Dallas officers: They shared a commitment to something larger than themselves
UPDATES:
July 17, 3:47 p.m.: This article was updated with the deaths of three police officers in Baton Rouge, La.
This article was originally published July 13 at 3 a.m.
Civil rights groups and activists have sued Baton Rouge law enforcement agencies over their treatment of protesters rallying against the police shooting death of a black man, saying officers used excessive force and physically and verbally abused peaceful demonstrators.
The lawsuit, announced Wednesday by the American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana, came hours after 15-year-old Cameron Sterling spoke publicly for the first time since the death at police hands of his father, Alton Sterling. 37.
Sterling was shot to death July 5 as two white officers pinned him to the pavement outside a convenience store. The killing was captured on cellphone video and circulated widely on the Internet, sparking widespread protests across the capital city and elsewhere in the U.S.
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Authorities in Baton Rouge arrested about 200 demonstrators over a three-day period, often taking to the streets in riot gear or riding in military-style vehicles. The arrests come amid heightened tensions in the city since Sterlings death, the fatal police shooting of a black motorist in Minnesota and the killings of five police officers in Dallas last week.
Louisianas governor and the Baton Rouge police chief have defended the response, with the chief saying Tuesday that authorities discovered an alleged plot against police while responding to a weekend burglary at a pawn shop.
We have been questioned repeatedly over the last several days about our show of force and why we have the tactics that we have. Well, this is the reason, because we had credible threats against the lives of law enforcement in this city, Police Chief Carl Dabadie said.
The lawsuit blames law enforcement for escalating the situation.
Plaintiffs have engaged in this peaceful speech, association, and protest on the streets, sidewalks and medians of Baton Rouge, the lawsuit read. Unfortunately, this exercise of constitutional rights has been met with a military-grade assault on protesters bodies and rights.
Cameron Sterling spoke of the protests while addressing reporters Wednesday morning. Calling his father a good man, he urged protesters not to resort to violence.
I feel that people in general, no matter what their race is, should come together as one united family, Cameron Sterling told reporters outside the store where his father died. The teen remained composed as he spoke, a contrast from a week ago when he broke down in sobs and had to be led away as his mother talked in front of television cameras about his fathers death.
In the first few days after Sterlings death, police took a reserved approach to enforcement, keeping a low profile as hundreds gathered outside the convenience store where Sterling was fatally shot.
But tensions escalated during the weekend as protesters moved away from the store and into other parts of the city, marked by a show of force by law enforcement that included police wielding batons, carrying long guns and holding shields.
The Justice Department opened a federal investigation into Sterlings death, but Justin Bamberg, an attorney for Cameron and his mother, Quinyetta McMillon, said the family also hopes state Atty. Gen. Jeff Landrys office one day will get involved.
Landry said in a statement Monday he wont have access to details of the federal investigation until its completed and a decision has been made on potential federal charges.
ALSO
Son of slain Louisiana man speaks out for first time
Its not just Dallas police officers have been killed across the country
From Ferguson to Baton Rouge: Deaths of black men and women at the hands of police
UPDATES:
2:29 p.m.: This article was updated throughout with more details about the lawsuit.
This article was originally published at 2:13 p.m.
Deadly force occurs in less than 1% of the millions of encounters police have with people each year. A look at the laws and policies governing when police can use deadly force:
When is force justified?
There are two defining cases. In Tennessee vs. Garner in 1985, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that an officer cannot use deadly force against a fleeing suspect unless the suspect is a significant threat to the officer or to others.
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Four years later, the Supreme Court ruled in Graham vs. Connor that officers who use force must be judged on the totality of circumstances and a standard of objective reasonableness.
Force must be judged from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene, rather than with the 20/20 vision of hindsight, the court said.
What happened in the Graham case?
Dethorne Graham was a diabetic who was experiencing a blood-sugar episode. He asked a friend to drop him off at a store so he could get some orange juice.
When Graham saw the long line, he left behind the juice, ran out of the store and rode away in a car.
An officer saw Graham leave, became suspicious and pulled him over to investigate. Backup officers arrived and handcuffed Graham, ignoring his pleas that he was having a diabetic reaction. During the encounter he suffered multiple injuries.
He was released after the initial officer determined nothing illegal had happened.
Graham sued, claiming the police used excessive force. The court decided against him, saying Grahams erratic actions justified the officers initial suspicion.
See the most-read stories this hour >>
How much force is too much?
Force should be limited to what is needed to make a suspect comply with police instructions, said Darrel Stephens, the Major Cities Chiefs of Police Assn.'s executive director.
After you gain compliance, its inappropriate for you to continue to use force. Thats where, at times, police officers get carried away and go beyond, he said. They kick or punch somebody just because of their anger.
Does a suspects possessing a gun justify use of force?
Not necessarily. A gun on a suspect may heighten the officers alert for signs the person is reaching for the firearm. Responding to a threat often involves immediate decisions. But the justification for using force depends on the complete circumstances of the situation and the Graham decisions reasonableness standard.
The presence of a firearm dramatically changes the use-of-force decision-making, said Chuck Wexler, the Police Executive Research Forums executive director. For police, he said, knowledge of a gun on a suspect takes the situation from zero to 60 in a split second.
How do police avoid using force?
More police departments are training officers to defuse situations without using force, said John Bostain, a former officer who provides training to police agencies for the company Command Presence.
Officers are often trained to think that they must act quickly, he said. But Bostain said they should be finding ways to slow things down and consider alternatives.
Better decision-making would lead to fewer situations often referred to as lawful but awful, he said.
MORE NATIONAL NEWS
Once again, President Obama tries to convince America that it is united
Amid protests, panel finds that LAPD did not violate deadly force rules in shooting of black woman in South L.A.
Mother of unarmed teen killed by Fresno police files claim, says there was no reasonable basis to shoot
Good morning. It is Wednesday, July 13. The newest trend in San Francisco is robots acting as security guards. But can they be trusted to keep us safe? A mother says her toddler was knocked down and run over by a robot in Palo Alto. Heres what else is happening in the Golden State:
TOP STORIES
Police shooting
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Protesters marched outside LAPD headquarters before taking to City Hall on Tuesday as the Police Commission found that the fatal shooting of a 30-year-old woman was within the departments policy. Redel Jones was killed in August 2015 after police say she moved toward an officer with a knife. A witness, however, said Jones was running away at the time she was shot. Shame on you, one activist yelled after the commissions decision. Los Angeles Times
Taxing marijuana
Los Angeles County supervisors agreed Tuesday to place a measure on the November ballot that would allow marijuana businesses both medical and, potentially, recreational to be taxed 10%. The tax money would then be used to pay for services for the homeless. The tax measure requires a two-thirds vote for approval. Los Angeles Times
Tech dispute
Hyperloop Technologies finds itself in the middle of a wrongful-termination lawsuit. Co-founder Brogan BamBrogan alleges he was pushed out of the company after complaining of widespread mismanagement and poor behavior. An attorney for the company called the allegations pure nonsense. Los Angeles Times
Readers, we always love hearing from you. You can keep up with Alice and Shelby during the day on Twitter. Follow @TheCityMaven and @ShelbyGrad.
DROUGHT AND CLIMATE
Saving water: In Los Angeles, city officials want to turn alleyways green to capture stormwater. The alleys funnel water into underground storage receptacles, preventing water from rain, hoses, fire hydrants and other sources from making its way, through sewers, drains and concrete riverbeds, to the ocean. New York Times
L.A. AT LARGE
Falling apart: When the Los Angeles Rams take to the field in six weeks, itll be in a venue that was state-of-the-art circa 1923. The Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum has chipped paint, old bathrooms, spotty cellphone coverage and out-of-date concession stands. It will be home to the Rams until the teams $2.6-billion stadium in Inglewood is finished. Variety
Presidential home: The former chairman of Univision, Jerry Perenchio, paid $15 million for the longtime Bel-Air home of Ronald and Nancy Reagan. The couple moved to the home after leaving the White House. Perenchio is on the board of trustees for the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation. Los Angeles Times
In the neighborhood: Capturing the spirit of Historic Filipinotown in a new book. LA Review of Books
POLITICS AND GOVERNMENT
Just say no: Thats Sen. Dianne Feinsteins position on legalizing marijuana. Proposition 64 lacks protections for children and would clash with the states regulations on medical marijuana, she said. I am not really for recreational use of marijuana. Medical use, yes, Feinstein said. Sacramento Bee
Hidden away: San Diego is having a busy month with the MLB All-Star Game and Comic-Con and with all those tourists in town, homeless advocates say city officials would prefer it if the homeless could just get out of the way. Signs in the East Village warned homeless individuals that if they didnt clear out their encampments, they could be ticketed. Its a process of criminalizing homelessness, said Michael McConnell, a local homelessness activist. CityLab
CRIME AND COURTS
Tragedy remembered: Forty years ago, Paul Paulsen completed the two toughest tasks of his life he had to identify the body of his sister and tell their mother that her daughter had been murdered in a mass shooting at Cal State Fullerton. All of the families of the victims serve life sentences. Were the ones who are suffering, Paulsen said. Orange County Register
Dog attack: A 37-year-old woman survived a brutal dog mauling in San Bernardino thanks to the quick thinking of a retired Los Angeles city firefighter. Penny Holt was on an evening walk when she passed a cyclist with a German shepherd. After the dog attacked Holt, the cyclist and the animal disappeared. In my 34 years in the fire service and as an EMT, this was one of the worst injuries I had ever seen of a person who survived a dog mauling, said Randy Souza. San Bernardino Sun
Mystery man: The FBI officially closed the investigation in D.B. Cooper on Tuesday, but some former agents believe the elusive criminal is Scotts Valley native Robert Wesley Rackstraw. He was questioned about the 1971 jump out of a commercial airliner, but Rackstraw has always maintained hes not Cooper. He now lives on a boat in the San Diego Bay. SFGate
Utility trial: Witnesses at PG&Es federal trial on pipeline safety will be allowed to mention the San Bruno explosion of 2010. U.S. District Court Judge Thelton Henderson declared it time to be honest with the jury. Mercury News
CALIFORNIA CULTURE
Second generation: El Mercado in Boyle Heights is now an example of gentefication, which happens when a neighborhoods change is driven not by whites but by Latinos with higher incomes and education levels. The younger generation thats now running El Mercado wants to appeal to Latinos who were born in America and may not share the same tastes as their parents and grandparents from outside the country. Los Angeles Times
Make way: A California Highway Patrol officer was driving down the 134 Freeway when he spotted a duck standing over a grate. It turned out her 10 ducklings had fallen in. Crews were able to reach the baby ducks and get them into a cardboard box. Mama and babies were reunited in the Los Angeles River. Los Angeles Times
Surprise visitors: This is amazing two kayakers were in the San Francisco Bay when they spotted some birds. As they got closer, they encountered a group of humpback whales. Three at once coming up from the bottom like a Polaris missile with their mouths open to capture all the water. We had never seen this behavior before in the bay, said Lyrinda Snyderman. Good Morning America
Home sale: In the town of Julian, $1.3 million will get you a house, a saloon and a barbecue restaurant. The two-acre property also comes with a horse pasture and liquor license. Curbed LA
CALIFORNIA ALMANAC
San Diego will have low clouds and a high of 76 degrees. Los Angeles will have clouds and a high of 82 degrees. Riverside will be sunny and 96 degrees. Sacramento will be sunny and hot at 100 degrees. San Francisco will have low clouds as temperatures reach a high of 73.
AND FINALLY
Todays California Memory comes from Natalie Ochoa:
As a little girl, I loved the day trips to Long Beach with my grandmother. My favorites were the Queen Mary and the Spruce Goose. My grandma told me the stories she learned as a young mother back in Indiana. She told me of Howard Hughes and his hopes for the wooden plane and the ocean liners like the Queen Mary that ruled the seas bringing hopeful immigrants and wealthy titans of industry in steel palaces across the ocean. Those visits imbued with stories of a beautiful ship and unsuccessful plane gave me a thirst for deep connections with the past that I have never quite lost.
If you have a memory or story about the Golden State, share it with us. Send us an email to let us know what you love or fondly remember about our state. (Please keep your story to 100 words.)
Please let us know what we can do to make this newsletter more useful to you. Send comments, complaints and ideas to Alice Walton or Shelby Grad.
Last December, when Congress finally approved a long-term transportation funding bill after a decade of temporary measures, Southern California transportation officials hailed the passage for two reasons. First, the bill ensured they would have a reliable stream of money for much-needed highway and transit construction. Secondly, the federal government created an entirely new pool of money specifically for truck, train, plane and ship-related projects that could move freight in a faster, safer and more environmentally friendly fashion something local leaders had long lobbied for.
Surely, the metropolitan Los Angeles region, which has the nations largest port complex, second busiest airport, worst traffic and smoggiest air, would be at the front of the line for funding, officials reasoned. But apparently not. The U.S. Department of Transportation recently announced the first round of grants -- $759 million awarded to 18 projects with nothing for the region. Zero. Zilch. Projects to add zero-emission cranes at the Port of Los Angeles, build rail directly to the docks to reduce truck trips and add truck lanes to local freeways were among those rejected for funding, the San Gabriel Valley Tribune reported.
In fact, just one project was funded in California. The DOT gave $50 million to San Diego County for a highway project on the U.S.-Mexico border to allow faster border crossings by commercial trucks. Its a worthy project, but couldnt the federal government cough up some more money for infrastructure in a state that is a linchpin of trade and has the sixth-largest economy in the world?
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Transportation planners in the Los Angeles region were shocked and disappointed to be left out of the first round of funding. The six-county area that stretches from Ventura to Imperial counties (and does not include San Diego County) received nothing although it is larger than the state of Tennessee and handles almost half of the nations shipping containers. Trade is an economic engine not only for the Southern California area but for the entire country. The value of the goods moving through the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach is nearly $400 billion, and the volume of goods is expected to more than double over the next 30 years.
Yet the conditions on the ground cant support that growth. The roads are often clogged with traffic. The rail lines are some of the busiest in the nation. And the pollution from dirty diesel- and fossil-fuel-powered equipment means Southern Californians continue to breathe unhealthy air that cannot meet federal Clean Air Act standards. The region needs significant investment in new transportation infrastructure and cleaner technology and its not just an L.A. problem. Its a national imperative, as well as a reminder that there is a tremendous demand for transportation infrastructure funding nationwide. Congress allocation will meet just a fraction of the need.
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By issuing a sharp ruling against Chinas aggressive moves in the South China Sea, an international tribunal may turn a regional conflict into a global one or trace a peaceful path out of an increasingly tense situation. The choice is largely Chinas to make, although it is incumbent on leaders in the United States and Asia not to push the Peoples Republic in the wrong direction.
The immediate issue was a complaint by the Philippines that China had violated the 1982 U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea by interfering with fishing and oil drilling and building on reefs in waters claimed by the Philippines. But the tussle over the rocks and waters throughout the South China Sea has been going on for centuries. China has formally claimed sovereignty over all of the land in those waters an area larger than the Gulf of Mexico at least since 1947, when official government maps showed Chinas border extending hundreds of miles beyond its coastline through a U-shaped series of dashes (now known as the nine-dash line).
Naturally, other countries in the region have asserted competing claims. But China has gone further , building airstrips and ports on disputed reefs and using its coastal police to harass other countries fishing fleets. The moves reflect the widespread view in China that rival claims were just the latest efforts by envious outsiders to seize Chinas land and diminish its power.
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This may be the riskiest element of the dispute: that it feeds a culture of grievance in China, one that draws its emotional strength from the foreign occupations and forced territorial concessions of the 20th century. Many Chinese leaders and scholars argue that the Philippines went to the U.N.-backed tribunal in The Hague at the behest of the United States, which they say is determined to not let China challenge its power in the Pacific. To the Chinese, the case went hand in hand with the Obama administrations pivot to Asia, which moved the bulk of the U.S. Navy into the Pacific, and with the U.S. Navys freedom-of-navigation exercises in the South China Sea.
That puts the Obama administration in a delicate spot: It cant endorse Chinas bullying of its neighbors, so it cant back away from its support for them or the freedom of navigation, but it also cant afford to be seen as capitalizing on the ruling either.
The irony is that this tiff is exactly the sort of dispute that China and other maritime nations designed the U.N. convention to settle. Yet China refused to participate in or even acknowledge the tribunal, saying any problems should be worked out through one-on-one negotiations between the neighbors. That violates the principle that China signed on to when it ratified the U.N. convention to level the playing field so that major powers cannot use leverage to extract sweetheart deals from smaller neighbors and undermines its claim to be a responsible international actor.
The tribunal didnt decide who had sovereignty over the reefs and rocks in the South China Sea; rather, it declared that the disputed territories (including the ones China had been building on) werent inherently habitable islands and therefore were not entitled to expansive territorial waters. In so doing, the tribunal called into question Chinas claim to the entire nine-dash-line area.
The right approach now is for countries throughout the region to negotiate jointly an agreement that ensures each one fair access to the resources while respecting the rights of all nations to travel freely in shared waters. Even as top Chinese officials dismissed the ruling and said it would have no effect on Chinas territorial sovereignty and marine rights, they said they were ready to work with other coastal states to ensure safe and open shipping lanes through international waters. Thats a start, but they need to follow through by convening talks among all the regions stakeholders to resolve the conflicting territorial claims. And policymakers on both sides of the Pacific need to provide time and space for such a process to succeed.
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President Obamas eulogy for five Dallas police officers on Tuesday was an eloquent plea to Americans to acquire a new heart a new empathy toward others across the racial divide. But the speech was remarkable for another reason: Rarely has a president talked so bluntly about the limits of his ability to bring about the changes he seeks.
It is as if the deepest fault lines of our democracy have suddenly been exposed, perhaps even widened, Obama said. Faced with this violence, we wonder if the divides of race in America can ever be bridged.
We must reject such despair, he insisted, while acknowledging that he wasnt sure how effective his exhortations could be.
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Ive seen how inadequate words can be in bringing about lasting change. Ive seen how inadequate my own words have been, he said. I confess that sometimes I, too, experience doubt.
Even though his presidency still has five months to run, a subtext of Obamas message was: I cant do much to fix this problem any more if I ever really could. Im speaking now, to all sides, to try to keep violence from spiraling. But in the long run, it will be up to others citizens, police officers and mayors to heal their communities. National politicians arent likely to be much help.
And that part of his message was sadly correct.
In an era of partisan polarization, the problem isnt merely a deficit of great leaders capable of binding the nation together; its also a shortage of citizens willing to listen.
Ever since the tenure of Ronald Reagan, an increasing number of Americans have tuned out presidents of the opposite party.
According to the Pew Research Center, only 14% of Republicans approve of Obamas conduct, compared with 80% of Democrats.
Thats a record high in polarization but the previous record was held by Obamas predecessor, George W. Bush, who was supported by only 23% of Democrats.
We still expect our president to act as a chief of state a national unifier and, in times of tragedy, a national consoler but weve made the job harder than before.
Its even harder in an election year, which sharpens partisan reflexes and tempts politicians to ignore the better angels of their nature (if they have them). This year, both major presidential candidates are focused on turning out their partys base supporters, not reaching across the center which makes polarization sharper still.
We still expect our president to act...as a national unifier and, in times of tragedy, a national consoler but weve made the job harder than before.
Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton has issued a series of awkward statements on recent events, first expressing solidarity with the families of black victims of police violence, then expressing support for police forces.
Republican candidate Donald Trump briefly adopted a strategy that by his standards was statesmanlike: Silence. Then on Monday, Trump edged back into the issue, declaring himself the law and order candidate and blaming Clinton and Obama for racial division.
Some Republicans indulged in what can only be called acts of political arson: former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who said Black Lives Matter protesters put a target on police officers backs, and Rep. Steve King, who said the Dallas shooting stemmed from Obamas anti-white attitudes. (There were black hotheads, too, of course, but they havent been elected to high office.)
And there it was: the false dichotomy that Obama has struggled to break the notion that you can support either the police or the grievances of black citizens, but you cant support both.
As Americas first black president, Obama suffered from inflated expectations from the start. Many of his most fervent supporters and many skeptics, too hoped he could make major progress in healing the racial divide.
But theres even a racial divide on how well he did.
A Pew Research Center study released last month before the recent shootings found that 51% of black Americans think Obama made progress on race. Only 28% of white Americans agree, and 32%, think he made race relations worse.
Last week, musing to reporters about his legacy on race relations, Obama sounded philosophical. He said he hoped his children and grandchildren can experience a country that is more just. Thats not going to happen right away -- and thats OK. We plant seeds, and somebody else maybe sits under the shade of the tree that we planted.
More than 300 years passed between the introduction of black slavery in North America and the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Its going to take more than 50 years and one black president to heal that history -- and Obama knows it
doyle.mcmanus@latimes.com
Twitter: @DoyleMcManus
Participants in the talks going on at the Trilateral Contact Group meeting in Minsk encountered difficulties when discussing the document on division of conflicting parties along the contact line in Donbas, a source familiar with the situation told Interfax on Wednesday.
"The talks are going through difficulties. The sides indicate serious differences regarding the delimitation. The process of achieving an agreement is being dragged on," the news agency's interlocutor said.
The sides have yet to finalize the draft document in question, according to the source.
"The differences are concerning several aspects of the process, including areas and approaches to their ratification," the source said.
As the next mayoral election approaches, Eric Garcetti, like many Los Angeles mayors before him, has reason to ponder just how many of his fellow Angelenos can come up with a list of his accomplishments. Or just one accomplishment. Or even know hes mayor.
A distinguishing feature of Los Angeles life as distinct from New York or Chicago life, say is that its residents seldom give a thought to their mayor. While the chief executives of other cities are familiar faces on local newscasts and tabloid covers, mayors of Los Angeles routinely end up on the cutting room floor.
The problem is partly structural: Los Angeles is just one of 88 cities in the county; an autonomous elected Board of Supervisors controls health and welfare issues, while an autonomous elected school board controls L.A.s schools. Nor can the mayor invoke party discipline to sway the City Council, since municipal government in California is nonpartisan.
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There are exceptions to the rule of civic obscurity, of course. The very fact of Tom Bradleys election a black mayor in an overwhelmingly white major city catapulted him into the spotlight. Like Bradley, the media-savvy and charismatic Antonio Villaraigosa also benefited from personifying the breakthrough of a historically subordinated minority. But in the normal course of events, L.A. mayors tend to fade into the woodwork.
Garcetti should have a shot at resisting that trend. Attractive, a Rhodes scholar, brimming with ideas on progressive city governance, and an Italian-Mexican-Jewish-yuppie to boot, Garcetti is a natural poster boy for trailblazing urban innovation.
He certainly has some achievements he can point to raising the minimum wage to $15 (though he was late to the movement, originally proposing $13.25), and persuading the Army Corps of Engineers to allocate serious funds to the L.A. River restoration. Hes not done anything, however, that has really made Angelenos sit up and take notice, much less blaze innovative trails. His deliberately modest initial focus in office was to get city government back to basics, as he put it: Doing a better job on filling potholes, fixing street lights, improving response times. Its a necessary agenda and hes delivered on some of it. Its also an agenda more befitting a city manager than a political leader who seeks to mobilize, or even just join, constituents in battle for some social good.
A Rhodes scholar, brimming with ideas, and an Italian-Mexican-Jewish-yuppie to boot, Garcetti is a natural poster boy for trailblazing urban innovation.
The rap on Garcetti is that hes conflict-averse. He appointed his major rivals in his first run for mayor to civic positions; he also reached a modus vivendi with the union of Department of Water and Power employees, which spent $2 million in its unsuccessful effort to defeat him in that campaign. More important, Garcetti has not taken on any significant power players or constituencies. Inside City Hall, hes left the work of assembling council majorities on major legislation to council President Herb Wesson. Hes not the strongest arm-twister out there, one City Hall veteran told me.
If that sounds like a virtue, consider that political leaders only achieve notice when they engage in serious, high-stakes battles.
During his four years as mayor, Jim Hahn had one such battle thrust upon him, when he led a successful campaign to defeat San Fernando Valley secession, and waged one of his own choosing, ousting Bernie Parks as police chief to create largely successfully a more accountable police force. Those battles came at considerable cost: Hahn was not reelected. But by his willingness to make enemies in the cause of civic cohesion, he won what will surely be the admiration of L.A. and police historians.
In todays L.A., the levels of economic inequality and housing unaffordability cry out for a war. To deal with the latter, Garcetti has proposed a linkage scheme, requiring developers of market-rate housing to build or fund affordable housing as well. The question is whether Garcetti will risk creating a few foes by aggressively pushing for its enactment.
Garcetti has demonstrated that he can manage. If he wants anyone to remember him, he needs to demonstrate he can lead.
Harold Meyerson is executive editor of The American Prospect and a contributing writer to Opinion.
Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion or Facebook
Hillary Clinton charged Tuesday that the Republican Party, once headed by a president who held the union together, is now led by a man who intentionally stokes divisions for personal gain, as she blasted Donald Trump for pitting American against American when the nation needs a president who can help pull us together, not split us apart.
Clinton said the fierce debates that have emerged after last weeks racially fraught shootings could strengthen the nation, like steel tempered by fire, if opposing factions try to understand and appreciate each others perspective.
For the record: This story has been corrected to reflect that the officers who fatally shot black men in two recent high-profile cases were not all white. One of the officers was Latino.
But in a somber but blistering address from the Old Illinois Statehouse from which Abraham Lincoln once declared that a nation divided against itself could not stand, Clinton charged that the Republican Party has become the party of Trump, and that he shows contempt for and ignorance of the Constitution.
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Thats not just a huge loss for our democracy; it is a threat to it, she said, because Donald Trumps campaign adds up to an ugly, dangerous message to America.
At the heart of Clintons critique of what she called a campaign as divisive as any we have seen in our lifetime was her contention that Trumps motivations were simply about personal power and not the greater national good.
She catalogued ways in which Trump has taken aim at some of our most cherished democratic values, with proposals to ban Muslim immigration, deport the American-born children of immigrants, and order the military to commit war crimes like torture.
His comments targeting the Mexican heritage of an Indiana judge presiding over a lawsuit against Trump University were a cynical, calculated attempt to fan the flames of racial division and cast doubt on the integrity of the judicial system.
Why would someone running for president want to do that? she said.
And as demonstrations continue across the country after black men were shot to death by police officers in Baton Rouge, La., and outside St. Paul, Minn., Clinton quoted Trump as saying a day earlier that he understood systematic bias against African Americans because, as he put it, Even against me, the system is rigged.
Even this, the killing of people, is somehow all about him, Clinton charged.
At one point she offered a dire warning about what Trump might do with the powers of the presidency.
Imagine if he had not just Twitter and cable news to go after his critics and opponents, but also the IRS, or for that matter, our entire military, she said. Given what we have seen and heard, do any of us think hed be restrained?
Though she summoned Lincolns own words and example, Clinton was careful in her address to say the present challenges are hardly in the same category the debate over slavery that ultimately led to the Civil War.
Still she lamented growing violence and hate on display after the deaths of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling, as well as the shooting rampage targeting police in Dallas. These tensions were playing out against a much broader backdrop of fear and anxiety, which has contributed to a pessimism among many about whether America holds anything for them, or cares about them at all.
Speaking from the rostrum of the former state Capitols chambers, a setting akin to one in which a president would deliver the State of the Union, Clinton seemed to acknowledge Americans lack of faith in her ability to bridge the nations divide.
But she said her lifes work has always been built on the conviction we are stronger together, and outlined some steps she would take to address economic inequality including her pledge to launch a major infrastructure and jobs program in her first 100 days as president.
But like the two presidents who spoke the day earlier, Clinton also asked Americans to put themselves in the shoes of minorities concerned with criminal justice reform, or the law enforcement officers who face an uncertain future every time they put on their uniforms.
And she asked her own supporters to understand what is motivating many to respond to Trump.
We may disagree on the causes or the solutions to the challenges we face, she said. I believe, like anyone else, theyre just trying to figure out their place in a fast-changing America. They want to know how to make a good living and how to give their kids better lives and opportunities.
michael.memoli@latimes.com
For more 2016 campaign coverage, follow @mikememoli on Twitter
ALSO:
Democrats new platform adopts many Sanders demands
Behind a Bill Clinton speaking engagement: A $1,400 hotel phone bill and $700 dinner for two
Obama urges Americans to listen to each other and avoid heated rhetoric
The president who acknowledged the elusive nature of national unity on Tuesday seemed far removed from the little-known state senator who made his political mark boasting of its presence.
It has been only 12 years since then-Illinois state Sen. Barack Obama won national acclaim with a Democratic convention address that asserted there was not a liberal America and a conservative America, no black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; theres the United States of America.
On Tuesday, the president spoke as a man who had cast aside the cocky confidence of those words. In their place he offered a more mature and realistic assessment of the ills of a nation that has the capacity to unify, but not always the will.
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We can decide to come together and make our country reflect the good inside us, the hopes and simple dreams we share, he said toward the end of remarks that at times sounded wistful.
We can decide to come together and make our country reflect the good inside us, the hopes and simple dreams we share. President Barack Obama
All of us, we make mistakes. And at times we are lost. And as we get older, we learn we dont always have control of things not even a president does. But we do have control over how we respond to the world. We do have control over how we treat one another.
The president spoke amid a tableau of American solidarity at the memorial for the five Dallas police officers slain in a Thursday night ambush. Filling the stage were two presidents George W. Bush, a white Republican; and Obama, an African American Democrat the white mayor, the black police chief, white officers and black choir members.
Unseen, but referred to by speakers, were two African American men killed by police in Louisiana and Minnesota in the days preceding the Dallas shooting.
The visuals made one of Obamas points: Americans are not as divided as extremists on both sides would have it seem; progress has indeed been made. That judgment has been borne out in recent days as protesters and police officers have come together in Dallas in a wave of mutual appreciation, and both sides in at least many parts of the nation have reacted with more nuance and understanding than in the past.
Still, by virtue of who he is, Obama was in the middle of it both physically and figuratively, trying to thread together communities outraged by the recent deaths of the two black men and those mourning the victims in Dallas. It was not an unfamiliar role for Obama, but a reminder of his status as a president with unique standing.
Obama spoke on a day of whipsawing political developments. In Indiana, presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump presented himself as the law and order candidate phrasing that echoed Richard Nixons pitch during the protest-ridden 1968 election but also said that he found the civilian shootings in Louisiana and Minnesota to be bad.
We have to also get to the bottom of things, but we can never, ever forget the hundreds of thousands of great things the police all over the country do, he said.
Earlier, as she accepted the endorsement of rival Bernie Sanders in New Hampshire, presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton opened her remarks with a nod to the difficult days for our country.
Rebuilding the frayed bonds of trust and respect between law enforcement and the communities they serve will require contributions from all of us, Clinton said. And we have to begin by starting to listen to each other.
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If Clinton laid out some programmatic proposals, the suggestion in Dallas was that both the problems and the solutions lay not in new laws but in Americans themselves.
Too often we judge other groups by their worst examples while judging ourselves by our best intentions, said former President Bush, who spoke before Obama.
At our best we practice empathy, imagining ourselves in the lives and circumstances of others, Bush added. This is the bridge across our nations deepest divisions.
Obama was more explicit as he outlined the differing focuses of African Americans and others angered at the persistence of police violence against civilians and those worried about concurrent violence against the police.
He implored both sides to search for context for protesters to admit the dangers facing police and for police to acknowledge that African Americans face higher rates of police violence than white Americans. In a speech that frequently leaned on biblical passages, he heralded one about replacing a heart of stone with one of flesh.
With an open heart, we can learn to stand in each others shoes and look at the world through each others eyes, so that maybe the police officer sees his own son in that teenager with a hoodie whos kind of goofing off but not dangerous, Obama said. And the teenager maybe the teenager will see in the police officer the same words and values and authority of his parents.
Time and again, as the first president who could speak with personal credibility on issues of race, Obama has sought to educate white Americans on the perspective of black Americans, and vice versa.
But, perhaps inevitably, critics have alleged that he was favoring black Americans over police officers. That impulse crystallized only six months into his presidency, when he waded into the disputed arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., who was taken into custody after a neighbor reported a potential burglary.
Obama, while saying he didnt know the full facts, asserted that Cambridge police Sgt. James Crowley had acted stupidly in arresting Gates. Obama later apologized and invited both men to the White House for a beer-fueled reconciliation.
Since then, even in police-related incidents that were more often deadly, Obama has regularly noted that the vast majority of police officers behave appropriately but those words have not received as much attention as his admonitions against police violence.
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The events of last week the deaths of two African American men at the hands of police and the deaths of the five officers watching over a peaceful rally in Dallas forced both sides into a horrible equilibrium.
And they gave Obama, in one of his highest-profile such speeches, another chance to try to explain one part of America to another, to urge a politically polarized country to come together in mourning for all victims.
In doing so, he went back to the themes of that 2004 speech, the one that rang with optimism, the one before all the violence had taken its toll not only on untold victims but, it was apparent Tuesday, on Obama himself.
Im here to insist that we are not as divided as we seem, he said. And I know that because I know America. I know how far weve come against impossible odds.
He alluded to his own election as evidence of the countrys open-mindedness and then to Dallas, itself, once ravaged as the city of hate in which a president was killed, and in recent years reborn with a police department doing things the right way.
In this audience, I see whats possible, he said. I see whats possible when we recognize that we are one American family, all deserving of equal treatment, all deserving of equal respect, all children of God. Thats the America that I know.
During a presidential election year riven with anger, with his time in office slipping away, Obama was once again willing all Americans to hold that view.
cathleen.decker@latimes.com
Twitter: @cathleendecker
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Trump sticks to false statement that he opposed Iraq war from the start
Over and over, Donald Trump has stated falsely that he opposed the Iraq war from the start, and he did it again Tuesday in Indiana.
It should have never happened, the Republican presidential hopeful told a crowd at a rally outside Indianapolis with a potential running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence.
I didnt want to go from the beginning, and I have proof from the beginning. I didnt want Iraq. I said youre going to destabilize the Middle East, and thats exactly what happened.
But in an audio recording unearthed by Buzzfeed News, radio host Howard Stern asked Trump whether he supported invading Iraq in an interview on Sept. 11, 2002, six months before President George W. Bush ordered the start of the war.
Yeah, I guess so, Trump responded. I wish the first time it was done correctly.
Asked for proof that Trump had opposed the war, his spokeswoman Hope Hicks said he was referring to a clip from Neil Cavuto of Fox News from January 2003.
Trump told Cavuto that perhaps Bush shouldnt be doing it yet, and perhaps we should be waiting for the United Nations, according to Politifact, a nonpartisan fact-checking organization. But it was false, Politifact found, for Trump to state that he was totally against the war in Iraq and had warned it would destabilize the Middle East.
Trumps statements Tuesday came in freewheeling remarks to supporters in Westfield, Ind., after days of sticking to carefully scripted comments in the aftermath of the fatal shooting of five police officers in Dallas.
He accused Democratic rival Hillary Clinton of singlehandedly giving rise to the Islamic State terrorist group when she was secretary of State. Shes the one who created it with stupidity, he said. With stupid, stupid policy.
Trump, whose rallies have repeatedly deteriorated into violent clashes between protesters and his supporters, warned of four more years of civil unrest if Clinton wins the election.
He also said Iran had made fools of the United States with its deal to restrain its nuclear program. Folks, those days are over, Trump said.
And he returned to his hard-line rhetoric on illegal immigration, leading a call-and-response on his proposed border wall.
Who is going to pay for the wall? he asked.
Mexico! the crowd hollered back.
I dont hear you, Trump told the crowd.
After a loud reprise, Trump continued: They will 100%. And you know what? Theyll be happy to pay for the wall.
Trumps rally came amid growing speculation over who he will name as his running mate. Pence is the latest of several to audition by introducing Trump at rallies around the country.
I dont know whether hes going to be your governor or your vice president who knows, Trump joked. Good man.
Donald Trump polling stronger with evangelicals than Mitt Romney four years ago
Donald Trump does not speak often about his Christian faith, but its not a problem for many evangelical voters.
A new poll released Wednesday by the Pew Research Center shows that 78% of white evangelical voters would vote for Trump if the election were held today. Thats higher than the 73% of evangelicals who voiced support for Mitt Romney, an active member of the Mormon Church, at the same point in the 2012 presidential race.
The survey, which queried 2,245 voters and was conducted June 15-26, found about a third of white evangelical respondents said they strongly support Trumps campaign. By contrast, about a one-quarter of evangelicals said they strongly supported Romney at this point four years ago.
Evangelicals are a key voting bloc for Republicans. White evangelical Protestants make up one-fifth of all registered voters in the U.S. and, according to Pew, one-third of all voters who say they identify with or lean Republican.
Despite winning over the support of a majority of evangelicals throughout the Republican primary, many remain divided and are concerned about the depth of Trumps faith. Earlier this year, Trump, a Presbyterian, drew scorn from some religious leaders after he inaccurately cited Two Corinthians during a speech at Liberty University. The more common expression is Second Corinthians.
In recent weeks the presumptive GOP nominee has visited with evangelicals in large groups and in one-on-one meetings.
James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family and a high-profile evangelical leader, said following a recent visit with the billionaire businessman that he had accepted a relationship with Christ.
believe he really made a commitment, but hes a baby Christian, Dobson said of Trump.
In advance of a political showdown in the state Legislature, Gov. Jerry Browns administration made its first formal effort Tuesday to extend the life of the program central to Californias bid to combat climate change.
The California Air Resources Board, which is controlled by the governor, released a plan that would continue the states cap-and-trade program to cut carbon emissions beyond 2020, the date when the program currently expires.
Cap and trade functions by forcing companies to buy permits in order to pollute, providing a financial incentive for power plants, oil refineries, manufacturers and other businesses to reduce their emissions. Money from the program finances high-profile projects, such as the states bullet train and electric car subsidies, alongside other efforts to cut pollution, particularly in disadvantaged communities.
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The new plan would provide stronger links to similar programs in Canada, better align with federal clean power standards and give the state a mechanism to meet Browns aggressive greenhouse gas reduction targets through at least 2030, according to a report from the board.
Despite Californias marked progress, greater innovation and effort is needed to avoid the worst consequences of climate change, the report said.
The plan released Tuesday represents somewhat of an insurance policy in case the governor and lawmakers fail to reach a deal next month that would cut through the many political and legal challenges facing the cap-and-trade program.
Brown wants new legislation to extend cap and trade beyond 2020 and is negotiating with oil companies, as part of an expected major debate over the issue when the Legislature returns from recess in August. An extension of the cap-and-trade program might also require approval from two-thirds of lawmakers, the threshold required to approve new taxes. Doing so would insulate cap and trade from pending legal arguments that contend its currently an unconstitutional tax because the original 2006 law to authorize the program only passed with a majority vote.
Clearing any legislative hurdle is a tall order, with previous efforts to expand the states climate change programs opposed not only by Republicans, but also business-aligned Democrats in the Assembly. Should a new law not pass, the plan released Tuesday formalizes Browns intention to continue cap and trade, albeit with lesser legal certainty.
Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de Leon (D-Los Angeles) praised Brown and the Air Resources Board for moving toward continuing cap and trade, but said the Legislature also needs to act.
The governor is doing his job, De Leon said after a Tuesday news conference in Sacramento to tout the clean energy industry. Now its time that the Legislature do its job by making sure that we bring predictability, that we stabilize the markets, that we continue to invest in vulnerable communities throughout the state of California.
Beyond the political and legal wrangling over cap and trade, the program has faced financial problems. The cap and trade auction in May produced only $2.5 million in revenue instead of the $150 million that state officials had expected. Tuesdays plan aims to create greater certainty for investors about the climate programs future.
The 14-member Air Resources Board all but two are appointed by Brown must still sign off on the cap-and-trade extension before it takes effect. A final vote is expected in spring 2017.
liam.dillon@latimes.com
Follow me at @dillonliam on Twitter
Times staff writer Patrick McGreevy contributed to this report.
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Updates on California politics
Californias congressional delegation spent $3 million in taxpayer money talking to constituents last year. Almost a third was spent in just five of the states congressional districts.
While many members of Congress have turned to free or low-cost ways to reach folks back home, five California members rank among the top spenders on so-called franked mail, or taxpayer-funded mass communications.
Franked mail is official correspondence members of Congress send to at least 500 constituents using their signatures, rather than stamps. Members pay the equivalent of postage out of annual office budgets, and each piece must include the statement, This mailing was prepared, published, and mailed at taxpayer expense. Franking began in England in the 17th century and has been in use on and off since the United States was founded.
Fifteen of Californias 53 House members spent more than $100,000 in 2015 to talk with constituents through letters, fliers, emails or surveys, even Facebook ads and automated phone calls, a Times review of members office spending found.
Among all House members who sent at least one mass mailing or communication, the average cost between 2009 and 2011 the most recent years for which data are available was $107,431 each, according to the Congressional Research Service.
The two California representatives who spent the most, Reps. Steve Knight and Ami Bera, serve districts targeted by the national parties as seats where control could be flipped.
Knight, a Palmdale Republican, was pleased to hear that the $204,139 he spent last year is more than any other member of Californias delegation.
We make a serious effort to communicate, he said. Any office reacts to what a community wants, so we want to know what the community wants.
A Facebook ad paid for by Rep. Steve Knight (Test)
The House Legislative Resource Center keeps a copy of each piece of mail or communication in storage. Knights file includes a telephone town hall script, a pamphlet on constituent services and Facebook ads telling people to call his office for information about reimbursements from the Aliso Canyon natural gas leak last fall. Knight said more than 7,000 people receive his electronic newsletter, Knight Vision, every 10 days.
Bera, a Democrat from Elk Grove, also said people in his district like the regular communication through letters, fliers, surveys and social media. He called the $190,089 in mailings and other communications exactly what we should be doing.
A lot of our mailing is about how to access our services, what we can help them with, etc., Bera said. My predecessors who had the office before did very little in constituent services, so a lot of this was educating the folks in the district in how they could use their congressional office.
Beras file includes surveys asking for constituents opinions on gun control or money in politics, fliers and Facebook ads about what the office can do to help those in the district.
A piece of mail sent by Rep. Ami Bera. (Test)
The other top spenders were Reps. Norma Torres (D-Pomona), who spent $184,867; Mark DeSaulnier (D-Concord), who spent $170,219; and Brad Sherman (D-Porter Ranch), who spent $159,825.
Torres and Sherman said the mail and communications sent in 2015 were responding to incidents in their districts.
Although the San Bernardino shooting wasnt in her district, it affected her constituents, Torres said, prompting her office to send mailings with public safety information.
The 35th Congressional District was created from parts of three districts when boundaries were redrawn after the 2010 Census, and Torres predecessor stayed for only one term. Torres said the amount she spent also went toward making sure constituents knew how her office could help.
We wanted to make sure they knew, first of all, who their member was. And number two, we wanted to make sure that they knew about the services that already exist in our community and what we can offer them, Torres said.
Sherman pointed to the months-long gas leak at Aliso Canyon as the cause of his high mail and communication costs. Thousands fled their homes during the leak, and Sherman said he wanted to get them as much information as possible. Now that the leak has been plugged, he said he expects spending to decline.
We thought wed space things out over the year, and then we got the gas leak, Sherman said. We communicated a lot on the gas leak in November, December, January, February.
Sherman serves on the House Administration Committees Commission on Congressional Mailing Standards, the group of lawmakers tasked with approving or rejecting each communication members want to send out.
He said he uses mass communication and mailings to alert constituents about his town halls, so hes used to his spending being a bit higher than other offices.
Almost every one of our mailers is there to announce a town hall. You dont save much money sending out a little postcard. You get more people to notice your town hall if you send them a big colorful piece of mail, Sherman said.
DeSaulnier said he uses mailers to inform people in the 11th Congressional District about public meetings and his district offices. Hes serving his first term.
I wanted to do it aggressively, and I wanted to do a lot of town halls in my first two years because its a new office and I wanted to make sure people feel like I was open and available to them, DeSaulnier said.
He said he might turn to more digital outreach and less physical mail for much of the district, while still sending mail to areas that might not have as much Internet access.
I want people to know who their congressman is. I think people in a democracy should know who their elected officials are. Its just you dont want to spend public funds to appear like youre running for reelection or promoting yourself, DeSaulnier said. Its a double-edged sword.
The signature in lieu of a stamp is shown on the back of a Porter Ranch gas leak brochure sent out by Rep. Brad Sherman. (Test)
The Times review of office spending included both franked mail and mass communications, unsolicited messages from a member of Congress expected to reach more than 500 people, such as radio and Internet ads, telephone town hall meetings and newspaper ads.
Mailings and communications must be about policy or laws and cannot be used to campaign. Members cant send the mailings within 90 days of an election, so mailings must stop between Aug. 10 and Nov. 8.
Still, the communications are routinely criticized during election years as providing an unfair advantage to incumbents at the taxpayers expense.
Some members have stopped using franked mail, instead using the money for their offices in other ways.
A May 2015 report by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service found that overall spending on mailings and other communications dropped from about $30 million in 2012 to about $20 million in 2014.
Nine California House members didnt spend any money on mass mailings or mass communications in 2015.
One of them, Rep. Mike Thompson (D-St. Helena) said hes found ways to communicate with constituents without franking.
I have a pretty good district outreach program that were able to do with minimal mail, Thompson said.
Thompson spokeswoman Megan Rabbitt said the congressman reaches constituents through social media and e-newsletters. He responded to over 50,000 constituent letters last year, she said.
Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, a Republican from Costa Mesa, uses social media, television interviews and in-person meetings to talk with constituents, his spokesman, Ken Grubbs, said.
He doesnt feel that spending tax dollars on mass mailings of self-aggrandizement serves him or his constituents. His constituents seem to agree, Grubbs said.
Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Alpine) used mass mailings to build his electronic newsletter list, his spokesman, Joe Kasper, said, but with social media and television interviews he doesnt send physical mail anymore.
Most people want to get information by email, Kasper said. Direct mail is becoming less and less appealing.
Communication and mailing costs California's House delegation spent $3 million on contacting constituents in 2015, according to a Los Angeles Times review of office spending. Name Party Hometown Total Steve Knight R Palmdale $204,139 Ami Bera D Elk Grove $190,089 Norma J. Torres D Pomona $184,867 Mark DeSaulnier D Concord $170,219 Brad Sherman D Sherman Oaks $159,825 Julia Brownley D Westlake Village $158,964 Pete Aguilar D Redlands $158,470 Mimi Walters R Irvine $155,464 John Garamendi D Walnut Grove $149,603 Scott Peters D San Diego $149,027 Paul Cook R Yucca Valley $144,844 Ken Calvert R Corona $132,123 Juan Vargas D San Diego $128,256 Jeff Denham R Turlock $128,101 Xavier Becerra D Los Angeles $119,349 Tony Cardenas D Los Angeles $79,300 Eric Swalwell D Dublin $78,647 Ed Royce R Fullerton $76,883 David Valadao R Hanford $65,052 Susan A. Davis D San Diego $51,292 Barbara Lee D Oakland $49,849 Karen Bass D Los Angeles $42,255 Ted Lieu D Torrance $40,865 Doug LaMalfa R Richvale $34,883 Janice Hahn D Los Angeles $34,629 Michael M. Honda D San Jose $31,625 Linda T. Sanchez D Whittier $30,666 Raul Ruiz D Palm Desert $30,000 Jackie Speier D Hillsborough $22,790 Kevin McCarthy R Bakersfield $21,768 Tom McClintock R Elk Grove $20,600 Maxine Waters D Los Angeles $16,265 Grace F. Napolitano D Norwalk $13,091 Loretta Sanchez D Santa Ana $12,462 Alan Lowenthal D Long Beach $9,646 Devin Nunes R Tulare $9,120 Lois Capps D Santa Barbara $9,000 Mark Takano D Riverside $8,558 Sam Farr D Carmel $7,552 Darrell Issa R Vista $7,500 Jerry McNerney D Stockton $3,524 Judy Chu D Monterey Park $492 Doris Matsui D Sacramento $300 Jim Costa D Fresno $17 Duncan Hunter R Alpine $0 Dana Rohrabacher R Costa Mesa $0 Anna G. Eshoo D Menlo Park $0 Jared Huffman D San Rafael $0 Zoe Lofgren D San Jose $0 Nancy Pelosi D San Francisco $0 Lucille Roybal-Allard D Downey $0 Adam B. Schiff D Burbank $0 Mike Thompson D St. Helena $0
sarah.wire@latimes.com
Follow @sarahdwire on Twitter
Read more about the 55 members of California's delegation at latimes.com/politics
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San Diego Rep. Scott Peters and his family have been involved in a series of donation exchanges with the families of other congressional candidates, apparently legal trade-offs that allowed more money to flow to each campaign than might be allowed under contribution limits.
Federal Election Commission reports show Peters and his family have written checks for years to other Democrats, almost always for the maximum amount.
These candidates and their families donated the same amount to Peters around the same time, often on the same day.
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U-T Watchdog was able to identify 21 such dollar-for-dollar swaps:
Peters campaign received $41,600 from Rep. Ami Bera or members of his family from 2012 to 2015. Each of the 16 contributions was matched with one for the same amount from Peters or his family to the campaign of Bera (D-Elk Grove).
The parents of Pennsylvania Democrat Kevin Strouse gave four donations totaling $10,400 to Peters campaign in March 2014. On the same day, Peters and his wife, Lynn Gorguze, gave back the same amount to Strouses campaign.
The campaign of Mark Takano (D-Riverside) gave $2,000 to Peters campaign in 2013. Peters father-in-law gave the same amount to Takanos campaign on the same day.
The Watchdog asked Peters spokeswoman MaryAnne Pintar whether the funds were given with the understanding that they would come back to the campaign, and she did not answer directly.
Its common for members of Congress to support and help elect candidates and other members who share their values in order to pursue their agendas, Pintar said. Its also common for the money to come in roughly at the same time, at the end of the quarter, when candidates and causes are focused on end-of-quarter fundraising pushes.
Beras office also did not answer questions about whether the contributions were coordinated.
When help is needed, Rep. Bera has always been willing to encourage his own supporters to assist other candidates in competitive or challenging races, said campaign manager Jerid Kurtz. Its absolutely ridiculous to suggest that there is anything improper about candidates helping one another.
Jordan Libowitz, communications director for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said donation swapping doesnt run afoul of FEC regulations.
Theres nothing inherently wrong with saying Ill give to you if you give to me, said Libowitz, whose group is nonpartisan but has been accused recently of becoming left-leaning. But most of the time, when you hear about accusations of donor swapping, its with mega donors trying to get around donor limits.
In 2012, Lynn Gorguze had reached the $5,000 donation limit for giving to her husbands campaign. Then on June 20, she gave $2,500 to Beras campaign five days after Bera gave to Peters campaign in the same amount.
Under federal law, Gorguze was not able to give more money directly to Peters campaign, but the criss-crossing contributions were allowed.
In February 2013 Peters in-laws Vincent and Gloria Gorguze each had given $5,000 to the La Jolla Democrat, $200 shy of the maximum for that election cycle. Then on June 30, they gave $5,200 to Beras campaign. Beras parents gave the same amount to Peters campaign on the same day.
Vincent Gorguze made a similar same-day exchange with Rep. Takanos campaign committee that September, a swap that gave another $2,000 to Peters.
By 2015, Peters father-in-law had passed away. His mother-in-law and wife continued to donate the maximum amount to his campaign, two $5,400 contributions in March. They also gave a like amount to Bera, whose parents had already given the same amount to Peters indirectly placing an additional $5,400 in Peters treasury.
Peters has frequently been identified as one of the wealthiest members of Congress, mostly due to assets from his wife and her family.
According to the Center for Responsive Politics, which compiles lists of the richest politicians in office, Peters had an estimated net worth of $72.9 million in 2014, the most recent data available, making him the 10th wealthiest member of the House that year.
Bera, a physician in Elk Grove, ranks 70th with a net worth of about $5.7 million.
Paul Ryan, executive director of the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center, said donor swapping is common among wealthy families, since it allows someone to indirectly give more money once theyve reached the donation limit.
If the parents have maxed out to their own kid, they can give another max donation to someone else who promises to donate back to their kid, Ryan said. Its a fundraising strategy, and its perfectly legal.
In April 2014, the parents of former Pennsylvania congressional candidate Kevin Strouse donated the maximum amount to their sons campaign. That same week, they swapped donations with Peters and his wife, indirectly adding an additional $10,400 into their sons campaign fund.
Donor-swapping helps boost appearances as well, Ryan said. On paper, a candidate has raised more money, from a longer list of supporters, and the reports appear less reliant on their own family wealth for campaign support.
Identifying swaps in contribution data can be difficult, since exchanges usually go through family members, who may have different last names. Donors arent always listed with the same information. Beras father, for example, is listed variously as Babulal Bera, Bob Bera and B.R. Bera on a series of donations over the last four years.
In May, the Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust, or FACT, filed a complaint with the FEC, naming more than a dozen politicians as participants in a complex family shell game that allowed Democrats and their families to contribute as much as five times the lawful limit.
The letter said the swaps effectively allowed the Bera family to make contributions in the names of Peters and his family, among others. Federal law does not allow someone to give a campaign contribution in someone elses name, and the complaint is pending.
It smells really bad, said Matt Whitaker, former U.S. attorney and executive director of FACT, which is nonpartisan but has been described by some as right-leaning. Clearly there was an organized and very specific agreement to do this, these transactions. But its difficult to prove: Really only the people involved know what the agreement was.
Beras office said there was nothing untoward about his contributions to Peters.
Scott is one of my closest friends in Congress and he regularly faces challenging races, so Ive always been proud to do everything I can to support him, Bera said, according to a statement released by his campaign in response to the U-Ts questions.
Babulal Bera recently admitted that he illegally arranged for nearly $270,000 in campaign contributions to the 2010 and 2012 campaigns of his son Rep. Ami Bera (D-Elk Grove). (Randy Pench / Sacramento Bee via Associated Press )
The congressmans father, Babulal Bera, 83, recently admitted in federal court to illegally funneling nearly a quarter of a million dollars to his sons 2010 and 2012 election campaigns, exceeding campaign contribution limits by reimbursing people who agreed to donate. Prosecutors said the scheme involved more than 130 instances of improper campaign contributions from about 90 people.
The Bera case is similar to a long line of straw man election law cases, in which bogus donors write a check and then are reimbursed by the real contributor an illegal act.
The donor swapping is different, not only because its legal, but also because no one is reimbursed for making a donation. The contributions are in like amounts, and in mutual interest, but the parties to the transactions are separate.
The elder Bera is to be sentenced in August. Prosecutors have maintained that theres no evidence Rep. Bera or his staff were aware of the illegal activity.
Peters campaign mailed a refund check to Bob Bera for $5,400, two days after he pleaded guilty to two counts of felony election fraud. The campaign did not return other funds from Bera or his family.
Peters and Bera were both elected in 2012, defeating incumbents in both seats.
Bera is running against Republican Sacramento County Sheriff Scott Jones in Novembers election. Peters faces Republican challenger Denise Gitsham in November.
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Instructors from Canadian Forces will continue training the Ukrainian military men from the Ukraine's Armed Forces until the end of 2017, Deputy Defense Minister of Ukraine Ihor Dolhov has said.
"Canadian instructors will continue training the Ukrainian military men until the end of 2017," Dolhov told reporters on Yavoriv training area (Lviv region) during the visit of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to an army training complex on Tuesday.
According to the minister, the agreement was reached during negotiations between Trudeau with the Ukrainian authorities in Kiyv.
Among other things Dolhov said that in addition to already existing training program Canadian instructors will train Ukrainian sergeants and intelligence unit. Ukrainian officers will be sent to study at Canadian military schools.
Assistance in the development of military field medicine is another area of support to the Ukrainian Armed Forces by the Canadian side.
Shortly before President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko asked the prime minister of Canada to extend the term of stay to Canadian military instructors that train Ukrainian military men.
Poroshenko at a joint with Trudeau press conference in Kyiv on July 11 recalled that the Canadian soldiers train Ukrainian military men on the Yavoriv training ground.
We've made a deal today that our cooperation program will be surely prolonged as Canada provides assistance in creating a new, modern professional Ukrainian army," Poroshenko said at a joint briefing with the prime minister of Canada on Monday.
"We emphasize that Canadian military instructors should stay in Ukraine until March 2017, as I asked the prime minister to extend this mission," Poroshenko said.
On July 12 Trudeau visited Yavoriv training area in the Lviv region, where about 200 instructors of the Canadian Forces are training Ukrainian military servicemen.
When it comes to musical aesthetics, beauty is in the ear of the beholder. A new study finds that people who havent been exposed to Western music dont find certain discordant sounds unpleasant at all.
The findings, described in the journal Nature, show that Western musical sensibilities arent hardwired into the human auditory system. They may actually be a cultural phenomenon.
Humans have been making music for tens of thousands of years. Its a quality, along with language, that seems to define our species. And while music can be found nearly any place on earth, where you find human societies, its origins and true nature remain a mystery.
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Music is present in every culture, but the degree to which it is shaped by biology remains debated, the study authors wrote.
The ideas of consonance and dissonance play a key role in that debate. If youve ever been listening to someone play the piano and he hits a wrong note in a chord, youll probably notice immediately and register it as unpleasant, or dissonant. On the other hand, consonant musical combinations are thought to be pleasant-sounding and can even be described in mathematical terms that also are beautiful in their elegance and simplicity, according to Robert Zatorre of the Montreal Neurological Institute at McGill University, who was not involved in the study. The perfect fifth, for example, involves two notes whose frequencies are in a ratio of 3:2. The major third involves two tones in a 5:4 ratio. Both are thought to be more consonant than two notes in a 16:15 ratio, known as the minor second.
Aesthetic responses to consonance are commonly assumed by scientists to have biological roots, and thus to be universally present in humans, the study authors explained. Ethnomusicologists and composers, in contrast, have argued that consonance is a creation of Western musical culture. The issue has remained unresolved, partly because little is known about the extent of cross-cultural variation in consonance preferences.
Part of the reason its so hard to make those cross-cultural comparisons is because Western cultural influences, music included, have spread across the globe. Even in places such as India and China, with very distinctive musical heritages and traditions, people still know who Beethoven and Britney Spears are.
So for a paper led by Josh McDermott of MIT, a team of researchers decided to set up an experiment that included people with somewhat limited or virtually no access to Western music. Their study participants included people from the United States, separated into two groups: those with musical training and those with little to none. They compared the U.S. listeners to three other groups: city-dwellers in La Paz, the capital city of Bolivia, which has plenty of exposure to Western culture; residents in San Borja, a town in the countryside that is accessible only by airplane during much of the rainy season; and members of the Tsimane, a native population in Santa Maria, a remote village in the Amazon rainforest that can be reached only by canoe.
Of these groups, the Tsimane were a particularly interesting comparison to the U.S. residents not just because they were so remote as to be largely uninfluenced, but because their musical culture lacks harmony, polyphony and group performances. In fact, the researchers tried to get the Tsimane musicians to play or sing together but failed to persuade them.
They were usually reluctant to do so (despite being eager to perform solo songs for each other), and on the few occasions when we could elicit concurrent performances, they were unable to coordinate, the authors wrote. Our experience suggests that group musical performance in Tsimane culture is rare at best.
If the Tsimane never played or sang with or over one another, then perhaps they wouldnt even have a concept of what it means to harmonize and to do so in a way thats aesthetically pleasant. This made them extremely valuable participants in this musical test.
The researchers played two- or three-note chords (some played by a synthesizer, others sung by humans) that would be, according to Western standards, either consonant or dissonant, and asked listeners in each group to put on headphones and rate the pleasantness of the sound on a four-point scale.
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The U.S.-based participants had the strongest preference for the consonant chords, with the musicians showing the most extreme bias. And there seemed to be a clear gradient in the listeners responses: The city dwellers and townfolk had a statistically significant but far less pronounced preference for consonant sounds. The Tsimane, however, didnt seem to distinguish between the supposedly pleasant and unpleasant chords at all.
To make sure all the participants understood the task, scientists also had listeners rate non-musical human sounds like laughing and gasping; the laughs were consistently rated as more pleasant by all the groups, proving that all the participants were indeed on the same page. The Tsimane, then, really didnt hear an aesthetic difference between the concordant and discordant tones.
The results indicate that consonance preferences can be absent in cultures sufficiently isolated from Western music, and are thus unlikely to reflect innate biases or exposure to harmonic natural sounds, the authors concluded. The observed variation in preferences is presumably determined by exposure to musical harmony, suggesting that culture has a dominant role in shaping aesthetic responses to music.
There might be an interesting analogy for this phenomenon in language development, Zatorre explained. After all, babies have the capacity to hear a vast variety of distinctive sounds, but tend to lose them as they acquire their first language. Thats why Japanese speakers learning English might sometimes have trouble navigating the r and l sounds at first because that particular distinction is irrelevant in Japanese. Similarly, if Tsimane infants never heard harmonies in their youth, then perhaps there would be no reason for the brain to hold on to the ability to draw distinctions between the aesthetics of different combinations of notes.
But does this idea rule out the possibility of innate factors? Zatorre wrote in a commentary on the paper. Not necessarily, because, despite their lack of preference for harmonically related tones, the Tsimane did display a similar dislike to Western listeners for roughness the sensation of sound that is elicited by tones that are close together in frequency, especially minor and major seconds. This finding suggests that there are probably some innate biological constraints on which environmental input operates.
It would be interesting to explore whether consonance and dissonance (as we think of them) arise in those cultures that do start to use harmonies in music, he added.
Although many questions remain, this work represents an important contribution to our understanding of how the diversity of human cultural expression can influence perception, he wrote.
amina.khan@latimes.com
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Safe sex without condoms? With drugs keeping HIV in check, infected partners didnt spread virus
One of the surest ways to prevent the spread of HIV is to use condoms during sex. But that doesnt always happen, especially when medicines are keeping the virus at very low levels.
Is this safe?
Health experts are divided on the question. In 2008, a national commission in Switzerland gave HIV-positive adults the go-ahead to have unprotected sex as long as they were taking antiretroviral drugs, and those drugs had kept their viral load undetectable that is, below 40 copies per milliliter of blood for at least six months. (A third requirement was that people have no other infections that could be spread through sex, such as gonorrhea or syphilis.)
But plenty of doctors remained skeptical. Health officials in the U.S. advise HIV-negative people to use condoms consistently and correctly if their partners are HIV-positive.
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To get a better idea of the risks, an international group of researchers studied hundreds of couples made up of one partner that had HIV and one that didnt. All of the HIV-positive volunteers had viral loads below 200 copies per milliliter of blood, thanks to antiretroviral drugs.
The researchers didnt ask the couples to have sex without condoms on the contrary, volunteers who were HIV-negative were warned that they could become infected through unprotected sex. To emphasize the point, every time they checked in with the research team, study participants were advised to use condoms.
But 888 couples went ahead and skipped condoms anyway. And they did so quite often.
Couples comprised of an HIV-positive woman and an HIV-negative man had unprotected sex a median of 35 times per year. Couples in which the roles were reversed said they had unprotected sex a median of 36 times per year. Among male couples, participants reported a median of 42 acts of unprotected sex per year.
The study participants told researchers they threw caution to the wind because they thought their risk of spreading HIV was low (a belief expressed by 52% of heterosexual women, 57% of heterosexual men, and 63% of men who had sex with men). Another popular explanation was that sex felt better without condoms. In addition, 15% of the women in the study said they didnt use condoms because they were trying to get pregnant.
Altogether, the researchers counted more than 58,000 acts of unsafe sex. And the total number of times an HIV-positive person infected his or her partner? Zero.
Thats not to say the condom-less sex was totally safe. Between 17% and 18% of the men who had sex with men were diagnosed with a new sexually transmitted infection, as were 6% of the men and women in heterosexual relationships.
In addition, 11 of the 888 volunteers who were HIV-negative at the start of the study became infected with the virus after they enrolled. But in all of these cases, the newly acquired virus didnt match the one the partner had. Eight of these 11 volunteers acknowledged having unprotected sex with someone other than their study partner. (The researchers had no way to measure the viral loads of these sexual partners.)
Even though there were no documented instances of HIV spread between study couples, the researchers stopped short of declaring sex without condoms safe. They said they would need to track more couples for a longer period of time to confidently say there is no risk of transmission when a partners viral load is suppressed. The study (known officially as PARTNER, short for Partners of People on ART A New Evaluation of the Risks) is continuing.
The results were published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Assn.
karen.kaplan@latimes.com
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A new underwater microscope allows scientists to take their lab right to the bottom of the ocean, where they can get up close and personal with coral and other sea life to see how they behave in their own watery domain.
This high-powered tool, described in a paper published Tuesday in Nature Communications, is already revealing new details about life at the sea floor and the inner workings of mysterious marine organisms like coral.
Coral reefs can stretch for miles. The huge structures are built by tiny animals, called polyps, that are related to jellyfish and sea anemones. It takes millions of them to build and maintain a reef.
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We want to look at those 1-millimeter-sized guys and see what their lives are like, said study lead author Andrew Mullen, a graduate student in ocean engineering at UC San Diego.
The underwater microscope consists of a camera that can record photos and video, along with a computer that focuses the lens and stores images. They are housed in separate aluminum cylinders that can be safely submerged. The microscope unit is attached to a tripod that lets the scientists set it exactly where they want it.
A ring of white LED bulbs provides the illumination required to snap brilliant images to a resolution of nearly one micrometer, or about one-hundredth of the width of a human hair. The scientist in control of the unit can see each image as its taken, providing live feedback on the quality of each shot.
Mullen and his colleagues used the new contraption to observe stretches of coral reefs off the coast of Maui and the Israeli city of Eilat. In both places, they dived to the ocean floor and selected a small section of reef to examine. After positioning the microscope lens about 2 inches above the coral much farther away than conventional microscopes and tweaking a few settings on the computer, the structure of the polyps was brought sharply into focus.
Coral polyps resemble upside-down jellyfish attached to rocks. Each one has a ring of tentacles around a sac that acts as the animals stomach.
Two polyps of a Stylophora coral eat brine shrimp in this time-series video filmed in a lab. (Jaffe Lab for Underwater Imaging, Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego)
The new microscope allowed scientists to look within the translucent coral skeleton and see the microscopic plant cells living inside. These tiny algae provide nutrients to the coral allowing the colony to grow about an inch each year and give a reef its unique and vibrant color.
To the naked eye, coral appear to lead relatively calm and still lives. But they do move around quite regularly, and the cutting-edge instrument offered scientists a peek into the delicate and methodical movements of the minuscule creatures.
With the microscope watching, the polyps tentacles gently swayed back and forth to pull in plankton and other microscopic organisms that floated by. The device captured some never-before-seen images of coral polyps kissing after eating, which researchers think could be a way of sharing nutrients across a coral colony.
Polyps on a Stylophora coral are seen kissing in the wild. (Jaffe Lab for Underwater Imaging, Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego)
When the researchers left the microscope on overnight, they captured a series of images that showed the slight dancing and waving movements that polyps make.
In a short time, the microscope has already unmasked valuable information on some of the complexities of coral life, such as the competition for territory on the sea floor.
When the researchers set two competing species of coral near each other, they observed the stronger one sending out filaments thin, worm-like fingers that act as its gut and coating the tissue of the weaker one.
They use those filaments to basically digest the neighbor next to them, Mullen said.
Removing neighboring competition is no small feat consuming a nickel-sized chunk of its opponent took nearly an entire night.
Corals Stylophora , left, and Pocillopora, right, compete with each other, filmed in the wild. A fragment of the Stylophora found nearby was moved closer to the Pocillopora to induce competition. (Jaffe Lab for Underwater Imaging, Scripps Insti
Mullen said the best thing about the microscope is that it allows scientists to conduct their research without disturbing their subjects.
If you take coral and bring it back to the lab, you can precisely study it, but youre totally removing it from its natural conditions, Mullen said.
Those conditions, including the temperature and acidity of the water and the activity of nearby ocean organisms, can have a big influence on coral behavior.
Most of the factors that either make coral polyps healthy or lead to their deterioration can only be studied in the wild, said Victor Smetacek, a professor of bio-oceanography at the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany who was not involved with this study.
Its like studying an ant in a cage and drawing conclusions about what it does in nature, Smetacek said. These details of their day-to-day life can only be revealed by direct observation.
So far, this new microscope has only been used to image coral, but it could delve into the secret lives of other marine creatures, such as kelp forests or seagrass beds.
These videos are examples of what it can do now, Mullen said. And theyre a little bit of a taste of what we can do in the future.
megan.daley@latimes.com
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A dozen San Fernando Valley area nonprofits that serve the homeless, disabled and school children in low-income areas were recently awarded $400,000 in grants from Providence Health & Services, the Catholic nonprofit that operates Providence Saint Joseph Medical Center and Providence High School in Burbank.
The grants are paid for through the charitys Mother Joseph Fund, named for the nun who founded Providence Health & Services in the Pacific Northwest, to which Providence Tarzana, Providence Holy Cross and Providence Saint Joseph medical centers contribute.
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Recipients were announced on Tuesday last week in Burbank on the anniversary of the founders death in 1902.
Among the organizations selected by an advisory committee made up of Providence physicians, employees, board members and community representatives were four Burbank charities: Family Promise of the Verdugos, Boys & Girls Club of Burbank and Greater East Valley, Family Service Agency of Burbank and the Kids Community Dental Clinic of Burbank.
We are blessed with the resources to partner with community organizations who share our mission the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual health of all those we serve, said Sister Nancy Jurecki, chief mission integration officer for the Providence Health & Services, Southern California, which includes six hospitals and a network of primary care clinics, urgent care centers, home care, hospice facilities and a high school.
The Mother Joseph Funds namesake had directed her order that whatever concerns the poor is always our affair. In keeping with that, Providence returns its profits to the community for the benefit of the poor, immigrants, the elderly, homeless, mentally ill, children in at-risk situations and others, said Patricia Aidem, a company spokeswoman.
The recipients are organizations that the nonprofit can partner with to expand its efforts to improve the health of the communities, Aidem said.
These partnerships allow us to avoid duplication because its more effective to bolster a program that already exists and is having a positive impact, has expertise and has created a foundation in the community, she added.
Family Promise of the Verdugos, which partners with 24 area congregations to help homeless families, will use the money to provide shelter, meals and a sense of home for first-time homeless families, according to Aidem.
Family Service Agency of Burbank will use its grant for its domestic violence program, which provides shelter for women and children who are victims of domestic abuse for as long as necessary an average of three years, Aidem said.
The Kids Community Dental Clinic of Burbank provides free dental care to the needy, including 11,000 children in 70 local schools last year, Aidem said.
A grant to the Boys & Girls Club will be used to fund about 80 club memberships for children participating in after-school and summer programs at Our Lady of the Holy Rosary in Sun Valley and St. Patrick School in North Hollywood, where 98% of the members are on full or partial scholarships, said Shanna Warren, the organizations chief executive.
The funds will be used to ensure that no child is turned away, Warren said.
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Chad Garland, chad.garland@latimes.com
Twitter: @chadgarland
As a young animation student in New York City, Ian Jones-Quartey had to improvise in his quest to break into the business of cartoons. He cold-called studios all across the city until a door finally cracked open, beginning a career that has included creative roles on such popular Cartoon Network shows as Adventure Time and The Venture Bros.
Now based at Cartoon Network Studios in Burbank, Jones-Quartey has made a point of offering advice and encouragement to another generation of animation creators. On Sunday, the network hosted its first Animation Jam, drawing teams of students from several local animation schools to work on the Jones-Quartey-created O.K. KO! Lets Be Heroes.
Its a world where everyone is a superhero, Jones-Quartey said of the title. Our main characters are three kids at a convenience store for superheroes. They have an evolving fun world thats filled with different characters, bright and colorful.
The three-day Animation Jam began with a Saturday reception for students at Cartoon Network, followed by intense creative sessions all-day on Sunday. In a first-floor meeting room at the Cartoon Networks tower of offices, undergraduates huddled around computer screens and sketch pads. Half-empty soda cans and snacks piled up as characters were brought to life, one frame at a time.
The students had come from a variety of schools, including USC, CalArts, Laguna College of Art and Design and California State University, Fullerton. Also in the room were young animators from New Yorks School of Visual Arts, the alma mater of Jones-Quartey. Each team was tasked with creating a 15-second piece from brief scenarios printed on slips of paper.
One read: Enid kicks Darrells head back over to Boxmore, with unintended consequences.
At one work station near the door, a student had a character bouncing from the floor to the ceiling, getting his head stuck, legs dangling. The student was from Exceptional Minds, the Sherman Oaks animation and special effects school for young people on the autism spectrum.
The days finished collection of films was screened Monday in the main lobby of Cartoon Network Studios for an audience that included animators from several network shows.
Theres a lot of animation being made right now, said Jones-Quartey. When you put together TV networks, the Internet, independent animation, movies and online shorts and things for mobile games, theres so much out there right now. Its easier to create art and get it out there. I tell students, you should be making your own ideas, come up with your own thing, and put them out there. People will find you.
Hes also active on Twitter, where he receives a lot of questions from students looking for expert advice. Ive always been real interested in helping those people along, and help them get interested in making a finished piece of art. Its something I really feel passionate about.
Ive always been real interested in helping those people along, and help them get interested in making a finished piece of art. Its something I really feel passionate about. Ian Jones-Quartey
It was the Cartoon Network Studios ongoing shorts program that led to the creation of O.K. KO! Lets Be Heroes. His short cartoon Lakewood Plaza Turbo was an early take on the idea. But instead of turning it into a series, the studio chose to first develop it as a video game, and invited 200 professional game developers to a Game Jam in Portland, Ore.
They brought sleeping bags and created 48 proposed games during a single weekend. O.K. KO! launched first as a mobile game and a series of animated shorts online.
After that successful collaboration, the studio began contemplating how to expand the process into other areas. Jones-Quartey suggested gearing an Animation Jam for students.
It fit the creator-based Cartoon Network Studios underlying philosophy, said Rob Sorcher, chief content officer. It starts as an artist-driven studio. The artists are actually leading all the story-telling, which is pretty unusual for TV animation today.
The studios creative atmosphere can be seen in the main lobby, where original art lines the walls, and several cartoons in progress are plotted on bulletin boards. Right beside the elevator, Sorcher has rows of removable Etch A Sketch drawing toys mounted placed there in case an artist has sudden inspiration to draw.
The urge to share in that creative flow was part of the idea behind Animation Jam.
Doing it with students and setting it up in this way really makes it a community event, and giving students a chance to work with animators who are pros. They get to experience a little bit of Cartoon Network Studios, which they love and these animators, who they admire, Sorcher said.
And it continues the story of collaboration.
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Steve Appleford, steve.appleford@latimes.com
Twitter: @SteveAppleford
Burbank resident Ruth Ione Luttge is turning 100 years old today.
She was the youngest of seven children born to George S. Kendig and Frances Beddoe Kendig in Plymouth, Pa.
When Ruth was about 7 years old, her family moved to California. She said her father picked Burbank because he had heard about Warner Bros. being located there. She recalled the family traveling across the country in a private railroad car.
Kendig went to Burbank schools, graduating from Burbank High in 1935. She met Andra Luttge, and they married in April 1936, according to her family members.
They had two children, Andrea Luttge Heintz, who lives in Burbank, and Wayne Luttge, who lives in Santa Rosa, Calif.. She now has four grandsons and seven great-grandchildren.
She was a stay-at-home mom and always enjoyed playing her piano and spending time with friends and relatives, her family members said.
She said she has seen a lot of changes in 100 years, and she often wonders why she has survived so long. Many of her family members say they think its because of her natural curiosity and sense of humor. They jokingly say shes staying around because she doesnt want to miss anything.
Also, as she has aged, she said she has given up worrying. She just rolls with the punches, according to her family members.
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Mark Kellam, mark.kellam@latimes.com
Twitter: @LAMarkKellam
Throughout Burbank and Glendale sit vacant or little-used properties, dusty and seemingly forgotten. Given the nature of the real estate market, these underutilized lots seem more-than-passing strange, begging the question of how they got to their current state and why. Below are the stories of some of the more prominent ghost properties in the Media and Jewel cities.
Burbank: Galpin Ford
A battered concrete slab on a weed-grown 12-acre property is all thats left of what was formerly a Zero Corp. operation on Front Street in Burbank, between the Golden State (5) Freeway and the railroad tracks south of Burbank Boulevard.
The manufacturer moved the operation to Utah in 1991 and leased the site out for the next several years until Ford Leasing Corp. bought 8 acres of it in 1998 for $12.75 million. The city owns another 4 acres and had been prepared to vacate its easement on the land to include it in a proposed $40-million Galpin Ford auto sales super center.
The City Council cobbled together $12.5 million in incentives for the dealership, including a $3-million loan to Galpin Ford, the largest Ford dealership in the country, contingent on the start of construction. Officials hoped it would bring in $55 million in tax revenues and 300 jobs over the following 25 years.
We are very excited about this, then-Mayor Bob Kramer told the Los Angeles Times in March 1998. Its going to create a lot of new sales tax for the city and new jobs. And finally, people in Burbank can buy cars here. That will keep more money in the city.
The early 1990s in Burbank saw an exodus of several large companies, including Zero, Lockheed and Menasco Aerospace. Roughly 58-acres of the former Lockheed B6 site, which has been used mainly for vehicle parking over the past decade, was recently sold for $72.5 million to real estate developer Overton Moore Properties.
Menascos former property on San Fernando was for a time home to Western Studio Service, which stored studio props and other materials, but it is now the site of a future IKEA building under construction, which is expected to bring the city more sales tax revenue and about 100 jobs.
Near the end of the 1990s, with only one new car dealership Community Chevrolet on Olive Avenue Burbank was leaking sales tax as city residents traveled to North Hollywood and Glendale to make their purchases, said Ruth Davidson-Guerra, Burbanks assistant community development director, in an interview this week. Galpin Ford was expected to put a plug in what was leaking out.
There were a lot of high hopes back in the day, Davidson-Guerra said. It would have been a great infusion of cash into the citys General Fund.
Bud Ovrom, Burbanks city manager at the time, said this week that the citys tax revenues in all categories but auto sales were strong at the time, sometimes two or more times stronger than the state average. When it came to auto sales, however, it was below the per-capita average and the city adopted a strategy to bolster our weaknesses.
The Natelson Study, an in-depth analysis of Burbanks economy in 2000, found the city was missing out on $75 million a year in potential auto-dealership revenues.
In addition to the loan and the land, Burbank agreed to give the dealership half of the citys share of the sales tax generated by auto sales at the business for 10 years or up to $9 million. Galpin Ford would receive only 25% of the sales tax income, however, until the loan was repaid, at 6.5% interest.
The property was zoned exclusively for a new auto dealership fairly restrictive zoning, said City Manager Mark Scott this week but the dealership didnt materialize.
It was approved, but then nothing ever happened, Davidson-Guerra said.
About eight months after the city approved the incentive package, Galpin Ford owner Bert Boeckmann notified city officials that Ford Motor Co. had scrapped its plans to build as many as four Valley auto outlets.
Ovrom said the city courted other dealers, but Boeckmann decided that if he couldnt build a dealership on the property, he wouldnt let anyone else.
For reasons beyond [the citys] control, it just didnt work out, Ovrom said, adding that the city should probably give up the hope of putting another dealer there.
A Ford Motor Co. official declined to comment last month, referring inquiries to Galpin Ford. Representatives of the dealership did not respond to repeated requests for comment, though a woman who answered the phone at the office of Alan Skobin, vice president and general counsel for the company, said he was out of the office recovering from a surgery earlier this month.
Kramer, now an employee of the city, also declined to comment.
It is not my position to speak to reporters, Kramer said, offering to find another city official to discuss the issue.
A proposal came in December 2001 for a two-story, 300,000-square-foot building with a Sams Club on the ground floor and Wal-Mart on the second floor. The combination store could generate $200 million a year in sales, Ovrom said in a Burbank Leader story at the time.
In 2002, then-Mayor David Laurell wrote to Ford pleading with company officials to sell the property or swap it with the city so that it could be developed.
By 2004, the half-dozen buildings totaling more than 280,000 square feet had been razed and still the dealership didnt follow. One of the few things the property has been used for in recent years is as a location when the circus comes to town.
Other than Cavalia, not much is going on there, said Gary Olson, president and chief executive of the Burbank Chamber of Commerce.
Davidson-Guerra said Cavalia and Circus Vargas shows hosted on the property kind of helped the cause on a temporary basis by bringing people to the city. There has been other interest throughout the years, Davidson-Guerra said, but she said the City Council seemed reluctant to rezone the property.
The California Department of Transportation is also using part of the property temporarily while crews make improvements to the Golden State (5) Freeway near Empire Avenue.
Once thats complete, there may be renewed interest in the property, Davidson-Guerra said, especially in light of the fact its steps from the Burbank Metrolink Station, the regions second-busiest station for the commuter rail line.
The site has a lot of potential, she said, noting that it could be ideal for mixed-use development that would include housing, for which the city is in desperate need.
Ovrom said he thinks its time the city look at other commercial uses beyond an auto dealership.
It was a good idea at the time its time has passed, Ovrom said.
But Ovrom said its location near the freeway and the railroad tracks that carry both commuters and freight through the city.
Scott said he believes the property will become very active once the states high-speed rail authority has figured out its plans for a bullet-train rail line connecting a potential Burbank station to Los Angeles Union Station.
I do think that property will come into play before long, Scott said.
Glendale: Marie Callenders and Masonic Temple
Two vacancies near Glendales rapidly developing downtown were picked up for revival this year: a former Marie Callenders location and the historic Masonic Temple on Brand Boulevard.
The restaurant was built in 1976, while the nine-story Masonic Temple was erected in 1928. They dont have much in common, yet could be symbolic of the citys continued emergence from 2008s Great Recession.
In a very broad sense, the timing of both is related to the thawing of the real estate market, said Glendales Community Development Director, Philip Lanzafame.
The shuttered Marie Callenders sits at the corner of Pacific Avenue and Burchett Street, a heavily traversed intersection right off a Ventura (134) Freeway onramp.
It sat vacant for about three years until it was bought for $6 million this spring by new owners who plan on tearing it down and turning it into a Rite Aid pharmacy.
The structure is one of the few commercial buildings on Burchett, which is mostly made up of single-family homes and apartments. Some of those residents raised concerns about traffic impacts of the pharmacy, but city officials approved the plan last month.
The Marie Callenders closed in 2012 after the chain filed for bankruptcy. The former franchisee didnt give up right away and converted the eatery into the short-lived Bar & Grill.
After that, it was silent but for passing cars.
Despite its prime location, Lanzafame said many things could have prevented the property from being snapped up. He noted a common challenge is whether a building from the past has an appropriate use in the present.
A property that may have been developed some time ago, for whatever reason, the configuration doesnt fit what were looking for today, he said.
The length of time it took to get a project going at the site was a surprise to Glendale Chamber of Commerce President Judee Kendall, but she said the Great Recession may have put a pause on things.
While she would have liked to have seen another restaurant go in, a Rite Aid could be useful to the new residents who will be living in downtown developments along nearby Central Avenue.
A little more than a mile southeast sits the 9-story Masonic Temple at 234 S. Brand Blvd. which has sat idle for decades. Little has happened there besides A Noise Within doing theater shows there from the early 1990s through 2011.
Its floors had different heights with windows scattered on the sides of the building to reflect Masonic values, making it difficult to use.
Lanzafame said the Masonic Temple presented particular challenges to would-be developers.
In addition to all those other elements you have, you now have the historic nature of the building, he said. Youve got to make all these things line up from financing to usability to compatibility to code; making sure your impacts or any other impacts are mitigated.
The previous owners of the temple, Frank De Pietro and Sons, wanted to convert it into an office building, but that effort fell through in 2010.
This spring, Caruso Affiliated, developer of the Americana at Brand across the street, stepped into the picture and bought the property. The development company plans to turn the property into office space with a restaurant on the ground floor.
The process has not been without controversy.
The Glendale Historical Society wanted to preserve the asymmetrical layout, but Caruso Affiliated proposed and officials approved a more aligned pattern.
Greg Grammer, president of the historical society, said hes glad the building is being brought back to life and made to sustain 21st-century uses, but some of the changes are radical.
We are disappointed at the extent of the alterations that were done to the original historical fabric of this building, he said.
But the development company said it has been sensitive to the propertys historic nature.
The facade is being rehabilitated to its near-original appearance and all front windows on Brand Boulevard are original with the exception of the ground floor/storefront area, said Jackie Levy, executive vice president of operations for Caruso Affiliated.
The California High Speed Rail Authority redrew its proposed routes for the Burbank-to-Palmdale stretch of the states bullet train in an effort to address concerns from residents impacted by the project, officials said this week.
However, some residents and elected officials from the northeast section of the San Fernando Valley aired their displeasure and skepticism of the refined routes during a meeting of the San Fernando Valley Council of Governments on Thursday.
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The revised routes, which are between 35 and 45 miles in length, are proposed to have the bullet train travel underground for most of its run from the Palmdale station to the Burbank Station, which would possibly be located next to Bob Hope Airport.
Dan Richard, chairman of the High Speed Rail Authority, said that a supplemental alternatives analysis found no issues for the underground railway, in which some stretches could be as long as 16.3 miles.
However, there are certain sections along a route known as E2 that have tracks above ground, which some residents said will negatively impact the communities in the northeast San Fernando Valley, such as Shadow Hills, Lake View Terrace and Sun Valley.
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Additionally, the route would involve tunneling under mountainous areas of Angeles National Forest.
I am deeply disappointed in the HSR Authoritys decision to move forward with these routes through the Angeles National Forest. California needs high-speed rail but it needs to be done in the right way, with proper thought given to how a particular route will affect communities, open space and environmental justice concerns, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Burbank) said in a statement Friday. If a route through our communities cannot adequately address all of these important considerations, the HSR Authority may need to go back to the drawing board.
Some residents were concerned the route would have a negative impact on the groundwater and wildlife in the area.
That route would destroy the open space in the Big Tujunga Wash, Shadow Hills resident Dave DePinto said, who was speaking on behalf of the resident group Save Angeles Forest for Everyone Coalition. This is the gateway to the San Fernando Valley, Hansen Dam Recreation Center, [Angeles] National Forest and the Crescenta Valley.
San Fernando Mayor Joel Fajardo said more work needs to be done to address the concerns many residents still have with the routes. He also criticized the project, saying that it lacked the funding to make the proposal a reality.
Richard argued that the funding will come about over time and that even the state legislature does not know where the funding for the project will come from.
The L.A. Metro system, when it started, did anybody know where all the money was coming from? he asked. Nobody knew that Measure R was going to be there.
Los Angeles City Councilman Mitchell Englander added to Fajardos concern, saying that the high-speed railway project was like building an airplane in midair without any landing gear.
Authority officials are continuing to study the new routes and will present the plan for the Palmdale-Burbank route at a meeting on April 12 at the Anaheim Convention Center.
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Anthony Clark Carpio, anthonyclark.carpio@latimes.com
Twitter: @acocarpio
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In 2014, NASAs astrobiology program gave $1.1 million to the Center of Theological Inquiry, an independent research institution rooted in Christian theology.
The grant was for the study of the societal implications of astrobiology, according to Religion Dispatches, an online publication of the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.
NASAs Astrobiology Program examines the origins of life on earth, and its research can deal with more abstract, theological questions like What does it mean to be alive? and How would [the discovery of sentient life in other places] change humanitys sense of our place in the universe?
In June, more than a year later, the Freedom From Religion Foundation requested NASA, a government agency, withdraw its grant because of CITs religious orientation.
Q. Does NASAs grant have any merit? The writer, Michael Schulson, also poses some interesting questions: What is the place of theology in the public sphere? Is theology inherently religious?
The NASA grant does have merit, in my opinion. The concept of theology is probably religious. I mean, the word theology means God study. But isnt it possible for us to have a broader understanding of what the term religious means? Could it not be possible that whether we believe in a deity or not, the word religious could connote exactly where each of us fits in the cosmos? Granted, I am a believer, so in that sense I am a religious person. But couldnt someone be religious in a broader sense, appreciating the wonder of our vast universe, without specifically believing in God?
When I was in seminary one of my fellow students could not really affirm that God exists, but he definitely believed in beauty, and he could certainly affirm that. I think we should broaden our understanding of the term religious and stand in silent awe as we gaze into what appears to be endless space.
The Rev. Skip Lindeman
Former Pastor, La Canada Congregational Church
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Theology, as a term, means god study. To study something is to examine it, think about it and learn. If scholars think philosophically about our existence in terms of an external force, a personal force called God (who is reputedly responsible with the creation of time, space and matter) then I understand how this may be perceived as religious, but religion, per se, is all about how one relates to this philosophical being in a subjective way. Christians should understand that religion has no great truth in and of itself, it is simply the active, practical response to what we believe is the ultimate truth; that truth being God and his salvific incarnation as Jesus Christ.
But Im sure that merely looking at the impact of religion, its influence, its understanding, etc., could be intelligently explored without it being necessarily proselytizing. There are intelligent, scientific, reasonable theories behind theology that deserve attention and should be considered lest science goes deliberately blind where no man has gone before. And I tire of the freedom from religion folks. They offer nothing in the discussion here. Here is science recognizing that there are implications to whatever direction they pursue with regard to astrobiology and so they make an inquiry to people of faith. The FFR people merely stamp their feet on the sidelines crying foul. They have nothing to contribute, no theory beyond just saying no to anything religious and yes to everything secular. But here is a smart secular institution thinking it wise to discuss theology with the theological, and the FFR was not consulted because, well, it exists only as an eternally lost curmudgeon.
Look, the world is a religious place, and the majority religion on the planet is Christianity. If billions of dollars are going to be sapped from Americas ostensibly religious inhabitants so that NASA can search for Martians (which most of us dont believe exist) then they would be wise to do such studies with bright Christians and just see what we know, expect to know and how much we want to know. The population could turn negatively toward NASA endeavors as much as positively, and that would affect everything for both sides. So consider the options, understand theological implications and then boldly go!
Rev. Bryan A. Griem
Tujunga
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Im probably not the only one who will think instantly of a scene from the movie Contact, in which Jodie Foster plays a scientist who had first found evidence of extraterrestrial life, then had to lobby hard to be the person sent to go investigate it. Upon arriving at the far-distant planet (or was it a different plane of reality?), she gazes out the window of her craft at the strange and amazing beauty before her, and says in wonder (after all that fighting to be the one to be sent), We should have sent a poet.
Likewise, there are great reasons to include theologians among the scholars who are in on the ground-floor discussions of astrobiologys widest implications. Why overlook the inheritors of centuries worth of earthly pondering on the Big Questions of life, those who already have the language and intellectual muscle to engage the many intertwined metaphysical issues which surely will arise?
And like it or not, theologians are high on the list of the worlds top ethicists; and undoubtedly, these discoveries will raise new planet-wide ethical challenges. Human history tells us that without the tempering voices of theologians and ethicists, humanitys first response to discovering new life will be to exploit and abuse it, perhaps at our own peril.
And who knows, maybe the discoveries of extraterrestrial life will solve some of the conundrums of Earths religion the very nature of creation and creator, for instance. Surely discoveries of new life will lead to improved definition of Gods place as source, essence or mid-wife of life in all its forms.
So bring on the theologians, scholar-believers from every major world religion. Include some anthropologists, who also study the core truths of humanness. And its not too early to bring in the poets, and artists, and musicians, who are able to express truths for which human language has not yet been invented.
Bottom line: Why, in our exploration of the furthest extents of the cosmos, would we go small on who gets to study it?
The Rev. Amy Pringle
St. Georges Episcopal Church
La Canada Flintridge
The fate of future elections in Costa Mesa is in local voters hands after City Council members voted Tuesday night to officially place on Novembers ballot a proposal to expand the number of representatives on the council to seven, including a mayor elected by the public.
Tuesdays 3-2 vote, with council members Katrina Foley and Sandy Genis opposed, was greeted with both a smattering of applause and a low chorus of boos from a packed house at City Hall.
Voters will decide this fall whether to adopt the plan, which would split Costa Mesa into six voting districts. Residents in each district would elect one council member from that area to represent them.
Currently, the five council members are elected by citywide vote.
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Under the councils districting plan, all Costa Mesa voters would be able to choose a mayor who would be elected for two years and could serve two consecutive terms.
Currently, the mayor is selected by a majority vote of the council and serves in that post for two years.
Council members currently are elected for four years and can serve two consecutive terms, though they can return in a later year.
Under the new plan, a council member who otherwise would be termed out would be able to run for mayor.
The council agreed earlier this year to seek voter approval to change to a district election system as part of an agreement to stave off a threatened lawsuit over allegations that Costa Mesas current citywide voting system violates the California Voting Rights Act of 2001 by diluting the power of Latino residents to influence council elections.
Several speakers at Tuesdays council meeting favored the plan, saying they like the idea of voting directly for mayor and support how the district boundaries were drawn.
However, most of the dozens of residents who spoke opposed the plan, saying an elected mayor would unbalance the council because there would be one district where both the mayor and a council member are residents.
Opponents also argued that the councils endorsement of the plan shows disregard for the publics perspective, since many residents who attended a series of community meetings in June said they didnt want a mayor elected at-large and preferred a five-district map.
Wendy Leece, a former council member, questioned whether a council vote July 5 favoring the plan for six districts and a directly elected mayor may have violated the state open-meetings law because neither the ... agenda nor the agenda report mentioned that the City Council would be discussing and possibly voting that night to put an elected at-large mayor on the November ballot.
She said she has sent a letter to the Orange County district attorneys office asking for an investigation.
Mayor Pro Tem Jim Righeimer said he doesnt think districts are a good system but that an elected mayor would provide citywide perspective to balance out council members who will be focused on representing their specific districts.
A council member who wants to eventually run for mayor would have to demonstrate that he or she represents the interests of the whole community, not just a slice of it, Righeimer added.
Of course, the mayor is going to be from one of those districts, he said. But the reality of it is, they are running citywide and they have to make sure the people in the community know they are running citywide.
Righeimer said he thinks the fact that we are now going to create a Hispanic district [District 4 would be predominantly Latino] is not a good thing and that the issue here is ... more of culture than it is about race.
The reality of it is, compared to other races and ethnicities you dont turn up and vote in those districts like everybody else turns up and votes, he said.
Foley said Righeimers comments should serve as a challenge to those who disagree with the council majority.
He basically said you dont matter because you dont vote, so please prove him wrong, she said.
Kevin Shenkman, the attorney with Malibu-based law firm Shenkman & Hughes who threatened to sue Costa Mesa over its current balloting method, said Wednesday that he thinks a mayor elected by citywide vote could pose an issue since a system that has any at-large elected council member, regardless of title, is still potentially subject to challenge under the CVRA.
Shenkman has filed or threatened lawsuits against several Southern California cities over at-large voting systems.
However, he said, the plan approved by the Costa Mesa council is a huge step in the right direction, since six of the councils seven members would be elected by district.
In a sense, were getting six-sevenths of a complete remedy, which is a whole lot better than zero, Shenkman said.
City officials have warned that, should residents reject the districting proposal in November, Shenkmans threatened lawsuit could become a reality.
When asked if he or his clients would consider restarting litigation against the city if the plan fails, Shenkman responded, Absolutely.
Proposed Costa Mesa voting districts
District 1: Mesa Verde, Upper and Lower Birds, the State Streets, Wimbledon Village and the SoCo area. Includes the Fairview Developmental Center.
District 2: Halecrest, Mesa North, South Coast Metro and the Sobeca District
District 3: College Park, Mesa Del Mar and a small slice of the Eastside just east of the 55 Freeway. Includes Orange Coast College, Vanguard University and the OC Fair & Event Center.
District 4: Dense Westside pocket south of the Fairview Developmental Center, ranging from Harbor Boulevard west to Monrovia Avenue and south to West 17th Street
District 5: Wraps around District 4, taking in downtown and about half the Westside. Includes Fairview Park and Talbert Regional Park.
District 6: Covers virtually all of the Eastside, except the portion in District 3
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Luke Money, lucas.money@latimes.com
Twitter: @LukeMMoney
HAIKOU, July 12 -- China tested two new airports on the Nansha Islands on Tuesday, adding more landing choices for flights across the South China Sea.
A Cessna CE-680 airplane from the Flight Inspection Center of the Civil Aviation Administration of China flew between the new airports on the Meiji and Zhubi reefs.
The two airports are capable of handling civil aviation flights and will facilitate transportation, emergency rescue and medical services for people on the islands.
Glendale Arts recently received a $13,000 grant from the Community Foundation of the Verdugos to be used for updated radio equipment for the staff and crew at the Alex Theatre.
The equipment will include new digital narrow-band radios, charging stations, ear pieces and batteries.
Glendale Arts is honored to not only be a recipient of a Community Foundation of the Verdugos grant, but to have a long history of partnership with them, said Elissa Glickman, chief executive of Glendale Arts, which manages the Alex. This most recent award helps Glendale Arts and the Alex Theatre better serve our clients, promoters and patrons, as well as our community at large.
Staff and crew use the radios for everyday tasks such as working together on maintenance projects, updating each other on customer needs during a dress rehearsal and addressing special issues that arise during a performance.
There was a sense of urgency in the request for new two-way radios so that Glendale Arts would be brought compliant with an FCC mandate as soon as possible, said Vincent A. Espinoza, vice chair of Glendale Arts board of directors. The proposal also made it very clear that updated radios were needed to improve operational communication.
Groups to team up for blood drive
YWCA of Glendale and the Hoover High School Red Cross Club will hold a community blood drive from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Thursday at community room at the YWCA, 735 E. Lexington Drive, Glendale.
To make an appointment, email amishachowdhury21@gmail.com or visit redcrossblood.org and enter code YWCAHoover.
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Mark Kellam, mark.kellam@latimes.com
Twitter: @LAMarkKellam
Police busted five suspected prostitutes and a pimp in a series of vice stings this week on the heels coincidentally of the beating and robbery of a self-described prostitute at a Glendale motel, police said.
Undercover detectives initiated the undercover operations at two hotels and a motel after finding solicitation advertisements online, according to Glendale Police Sgt. Robert William.
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At the Glen Capri Inn & Suites Thursday, 18-year-old Sitzi Sanchez was cited on suspicion of prostitution after offering to perform sexual acts in exchange for money, William said. A suspected pimp, identified as Luis Roberto Perez, was also arrested after police tied him to the room during surveillance.
Two others, Stockton resident Alyssa Trent, 19, and Sacramento resident Shkoyia Lomack, 23, were also cited in operations conducted at the Vagabond Inn and the Hilton Los Angeles North/Glendale hotel, respectively.
Meanwhile, police cited two Monterey Park women Juan Gu, 47, and Yao Quing Li, 53 on suspicion of prostitution during two similar operations conducted at two massage parlors, Number One Smile Massage and Sunshine Massage.
We are amping up our enforcement efforts and have zero tolerance for this, William said, noting that one of the women told police she was visiting the Los Angeles area because its a more lucrative market than Northern California. We are hoping these types of operations have some type of residual effects to the underlying problems in the underground world of prostitution, pimping and human trafficking.
Though unrelated, the operations came on the heels of another incident involving a self-described prostitute who was choked, beaten and robbed after arranging a meeting online.
Two Fountain Valley residents Paige Lark, 24, and Jasper Johnson, 30 were both charged with one count each of attempted murder, making criminal threats and first-degree residential robbery. Lark was also charged with two counts of battery upon a custodial officer, while Johnson was charged with one count of resisting an executive officer.
Lark pleaded not guilty on Friday to the charges, while Johnsons arraignment was continued to next week.
According to the Los Angeles County district attorneys office, Lark was out of custody for an unrelated crime, while Johnson has previous convictions for carrying a loaded firearm with a prior conviction, receiving stolen property, battery by gassing while in a San Bernardino prison and carjacking.
They were slated to appear in court Friday.
If convicted, both suspects face life in state prison.
Dont know about you, but Ive been enjoying our crisp weather and cooler evenings. At last maybe we can believe that winter is on its way.
I am recuperating from heart surgery that took place on Nov. 11. I am considering taking two or three weeks off from the column, then easing back into it. So, in case you notice that the Valley Line is missing next week, please know I expect to be back soon. In the meantime, I invite you to send any information about local social events to our newspapers general inbox, lceditorial@valleysun.net, where one of the Valley Suns staff members will find it.
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La Canadans were out and about to raise funds to support the Los Angeles Public Library so that all 73 libraries across the city can offer free access to information, books, ideas, technology, educational and cultural programs for millions of children, teens and adults.
The event, Literary Feasts, is held every two years by the Council of Library Foundation of Los Angeles. This year there were 48 dinner parties across the greater Los Angeles basin, each with a featured author. The fundraiser garnered more than $1.2 million.
La Canada Flintridge residents Sharon and Nelson Rising hosted one of the dinners at their beautiful home. Their guest author was L.A. Times columnist Steve Lopez and his wife, Alison Shore.
La Canadans Loretta Savery, her husband Alex Black, along with Rob and Elizabeth Toms attended a dinner at the home of political consultant Frank Luntz in his Brentwood home. Also joining them at this feast was Val Toms, Robs mom, and Francoise Rozzell. Before dinner, Luntz gave guests a tour of his home, giving them the opportunity to see collectibles and treasures from famous moments in history.
Nancy and Mike Harahan went to a literary feast in Pasadena co-hosted by Phyllis and Mike Hennigan and Andrea and John Van de Kamp. Their guest author was Jim Newton, who spoke about his book on President Dwight D. Eisenhower. The menu that night reflected the cuisine that was served at the White House when the Eisenhowers were in residence. Guests left the party wearing buttons that said, I Still Like Ike.
La Canada author and resident Mark Salzman spoke at a home in Pacific Palisades. He spoke on his book, The Man in the Empty Boat. An accomplished cellist, before dinner Salzman gave a delightful cello recital for the guests.
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The Oakmont League of Glendale, under the presidency of La Canada resident Nina Ratliff recently honored past presidents at a luncheon and fashion show held at the Oakmont Country Club.
Past presidents attending the event included Marcia Lytle, Joanne Ashton, Joanne Cate, Ann Chadney, Jeri Benton, Barbara McCullough, Julie Budimer, Marlene Hirt, Chloe Ross, Judy Mendicina, Donna Sauer and Chris Halajian.
The retail store My Fair Lady presented a fashion show. Jonathan Rick, owner of the shop, was the commentator. Models included Lydia Trout, Cathy Steel, Ellen Farewell, Sharon Swinford, Fernanda Genthon and Nina Ratliff.
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Getting in an autumn mood in decor, the Womens Council of the USC Verdugo Hills Hospital Foundation hosted its third annual Boutique Wine Tasting.
Nearly 200 people attended the event in the newly renovated Council Rooms at the hospital. The gathering was held to benefit the hospitals nursery and the planned NICU.
Our focus is to continue to help renovate the hospital to bring the latest in medical services in the right environment to the community, said Ruth McNevin, chair of the womens council.
Jeff Zitti of Rosso Wine Shop selected high quality premium wines for sipping. The hospital caterers prepared a delectable menu featuring a hot and cold buffet and a beautiful array of desserts.
There was an array of silent auction items available for placing the highest bids. It gave guests an opportunity to get some holiday shopping done early.
It was a highly successful evening that built awareness of the hospital and its needs. It was also a way to build new friends for the hospital.
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JANE NAPIER NEELY covers the La Canada Flintridge social scene. Email her at jnvalleysun@aol.com.
The sound of music, specifically ukuleles, will waft through Waikiki in a really big way. More than 700 ukulele players, most of them children, will take the stage at the Ukulele Festival Hawaii in Honolulu on Sunday.
The giant band will be directed by festival founder Roy Sakuma, who taught the kids how to play the diminutive stringed instrument.
The bands performance of Hawaiian songs is the highlight of the annual festival that began in 1971. The event is also will feature ukulele bands from Australia, Japan and South Korea.
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And theres something for novices too. Beginners are encouraged to grab a uke for a free lesson and learn to play at least one song, according to a news release.
If they have a desire to buy an instrument, various ukulele makers will be showcasing their handcrafted wares. Among the festival sponsors is Kamaka Ukuleles, a company celebrating its centennial this year. Sam Kamaka began making ukuleles in his Honolulu home in 1916.
A dozen food booths will be scattered throughout the festival grounds in Kapiolani Park near the southern end of Waikiki Beach. The festival is set for 10:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission is free.
Info: Ukulele Festival Hawaii
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They are supposed to save the rhino police in Mozambique, South African soldiers, park rangers and government officials.
But the people who could help stop the species extinction are often making things worse, according to a report Wednesday that laid out a series of damning failures of governance and law enforcement.
The problem is part corruption, part incompetence and partly the petty refusal of neighboring governments to cooperate, as rhinos face ruthless, highly organized international syndicates, according to the report by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, an analytical group.
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Diplomats or government delegations from North Korea, Vietnam and China have abused their diplomatic status to traffic rhino horn, according to the report. Rhino horn, consisting of keratin and similar to horses hooves, is valued in parts of Asia as a premium, status-conferring medicinal substance. Chinese citizens accused in major smuggling operations have been arrested, but granted bail in southern African courts and simply disappeared.
The upshot: Unless something changes drastically the fight against poaching is an unwinnable war, according to the report.
Again and again efforts to target syndicates in multiple jurisdictions are hamstrung by corruption, incompetence, governments that are unwilling or incapable of acting, a lack of information-sharing, petty jealousies and approaches to tackling crime that wrongly emphasize arrests and seizures over targeted investigations and convictions as a barometer of success, the report, Beyond Borders, found.
Rhino poaching has soared across southern Africa in recent years, with South Africas largest national park, the iconic Kruger National Park at the epicenter. Earlier this week, the transnational group warned that unless more effective action is taken, the parks population could plummet from around 9,000 at present to a few thousand within two years.
Mozambique, with a weak justice system and deeply entrenched corruption and which neighbors Kruger National Park is a major part of the problem, according to the group.
Chinese and Vietnamese criminal networks have become ever more deeply entrenched in Mozambique, secure in the knowledge that being caught smuggling ivory, rhino horn or any other wildlife product can usually be resolved by paying a fine or a bribe. Since the beginning of the current rhino poaching crisis, no Vietnamese or Chinese nationals arrested in connection with smuggling rhino horn or ivory has been jailed, the report said.
The crisis was harshly illustrated in May of last year: Mozambican police raided a house occupied by two Chinese nationals and seized the biggest haul of poached rhino horn and ivory in the countrys history: 340 tusks and 65 horns weighing 1.6 tons. One of the men offered police a $34,000 bribe, but both were arrested.
At first.
The suspects were released on bail to appear in court in November and havent been seen since. A dozen of the seized horns were stolen from police custody, and four police were among the six men arrested over the theft.
The seizure came just days after Mozambican police stopped Pak Chol-jun, a North Korean diplomat based in South Africa, who was traveling in the Mozambican capital, Maputo, in a car carrying about 100,000 in cash and 10 pounds of rhino horn.
Next to the ambassador, he was North Koreas most senior representative in southern Africa. It was his second stint at the embassy. His passenger, Kim Jong-su, was a taekwondo master and, according to diplomatic and government sources, a suspected North Korean spy whose cover was teaching martial arts students in South Africa and Mozambique, the Wednesday report found.
The North Korean ambassador to South Africa, Yong Man-ho, flew in and within hours the men had paid $30,000 and had been released. Kim left South Africa in November and Pak departed in December.
In 2006, Vietnamese diplomats in South Africa were accused by police of smuggling rhino horn. Between 2008 and 2010 Chinese diplomats in South Africa were arrested for being in possession banned wildlife products. But neither was prosecuted.
In Zimbabwe, according to the report, there is evidence of involvement by officers of the countrys Central Intelligence Organization in poaching and smuggling. In South Africa, soldiers, national park rangers and vets have been arrested for involvement in the illegal rhino horn trade.
If this investigation has revealed anything, the group said, it is the complexity of the challenges facing those trying to protect the rhino and other African wildlife from virulent and versatile professional criminal networks. As our two reports show, we are a long way from being able to meaningfully disrupt transnational criminal networks, and reaching a point where we can protect key species in not just southern Africa but around the world. Their future is becoming increasingly uncertain.
robyn.dixon@latimes.com
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No matter how it decides, international courts ruling in South China Sea case wont end the fight
China struck back loudly and forcefully Wednesday after an international tribunal invalidated many of its claims in the South China Sea. But Beijing has largely been silent about some of the tribunals most damning findings: that its activities there have caused devastating and long-lasting damage to the environment.
The Permanent Court of Arbitration investigated The Philippines claims that China has been doing grave harm to the regions ecology, in violation of its commitments under the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea.
The panel of five judges consulted numerous experts, and what they found shocked even them, the tribunal wrote in its final ruling of more than 500 pages. Damage to the coral reefs in the Greater Spratly Islands spread for 48 square miles, and China was responsible for 99% of that, they said.
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The tribunal found that China not only failed to prevent Chinese fishing boats from harvesting endangered species including sea turtles but also provided armed protection for those vessels. And it concluded that China was fully aware of and actively tolerated a practice called propeller chopping to harvest endangered giant clams an activity that basically kills coral reefs.
The South China Sea is one of the most biodiverse regions in the world home to 76% of the worlds coral species and 37% of the worlds reef fish. Because coral reefs provide crucial habitats for fish and fish larvae, widespread loss can have a major economic and social effect.
Professor John McManus of the National Center for Coral Reef Research at the University of Miami, one of the experts the panel referred to, called on China and other countries in the region that have been fighting for years over territory in the South China Sea to set aside their differences and declare the region an international protected zone, the way Antarctica is managed.
If we dont do this, we are headed toward a major, major fisheries collapse in a part of the world where [that] will lead to mass starvation, he warned in remarks Tuesday to a panel in Washington organized by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He noted that such a collapse would hurt not just China but many countries in the region. Talk about military instability, he said.
Although some of the damage was caused by dredging and island-building, the majority was blamed on the giant-clam harvesting using propellers. McManus called the practice more thoroughly damaging to marine life than anything he had seen in four decades of investigating coral reef degradation, the tribunal noted. Many of the clam shells are taken to the Chinese island of Hainan, where they are carved into decorative items and sold to tourists.
See the most-read stories in World News this hour >>
There is no hope for many of these reefs to recover in the coming decades or centuries, Kent Carpenter, a professor at Old Dominion University in Virginia and another coral expert consulted by the tribunal, said Wednesday from the Philippines, where hes on a research trip. China is trying to solidify its claims, and they obviously have decided not to worry about the environmental aspects. The environment there is now just written off.
China issued a white paper Wednesday in response to the tribunals ruling, but it did almost nothing to rebut the tribunals findings on the environmental issues.
Before the courts ruling, the state-run China Daily newspaper ran a commentary Tuesday saying that some countries slander that China developing the South China Sea islands and reefs has caused extensive damage of coral reefs. On the contrary, the truth is, China insisted on developing green engineering and ecology reefs as the concept of environmental protection.
The newspaper claimed that China had conducted thorough in-depth research and applied dynamic protective measures during the whole process, to complete projects as well as achieve environment protection, to accomplish sustainable development in the area. After China completes the construction activities, it will greatly enhance the reefs environmental protection capability, the paper added. These practices can stand the test of time.
China refused to participate in the tribunals proceedings, and did not respond to requests from the court to provide evidence of its efforts to protect the environment in the South China Sea or proof that it had conducted an environmental impact assessment as required not only by UNCLOS but Chinas own laws.
Dan Liu, a researcher at the Center for Polar and Deep Ocean Development at Shanghai Communications University, told the CSIS panel that the Philippine claims were some kind of political mask and questioned how the experts could evaluate the reefs unless they visited them personally something nearly impossible given Chinas non-cooperation with the tribunal.
But Carpenter said that satellite imagery and other available data made assessments relatively straightforward. The tribunal said that it and the experts it consulted found many of Chinas public statements about its environmental stewardship in the South China Sea to be contradicted by the facts and that Beijings assessments of the effect of its construction was largely in disagreement with the available information.
Ashley Townsend, a visiting fellow at the Asia-Pacific Center at Fudan University in Shanghai, said the tribunals strong language on the environmental effect of Chinas activities could shift the political dynamics, which until now have been dominated by strategic, military and economic concerns.
Environmental degradation and depletion of endangered species by Chinese activities and island construction essentially has been a background story to whats been happening in the South China Sea, he said. Now there is a strong legal grounding to criticize China on its environmental stewardship and open a second front.
Theres a capacity to ... leverage global environmental activist networks to make this not just an issue about sovereignty and geopolitics but about the health and well-being of the global commons, he said. Thats more likely under the ruling.
Nicole Liu in The Times Beijing bureau contributed to this report.
julie.makinen@latimes.com
Follow me on Twitter @JulieMakLAT.
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A day after an international tribunal in The Netherlands issued a sweeping ruling against China over its conduct and claims in the South China Sea, ordinary Filipinos continued to exult Wednesday over the result. But government officials in Manila and across Southeast Asia maintained a largely circumspect posture as they considered their next moves.
Filipinos flooded social media with self-congratulatory messages and held parties to show excitement about the decision from the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague. Some Filipinos posted messages online calling for Chexit i.e., Chinas exit from the South China Sea.
Chinese officials, however, maintained their stance that they would ignore the tribunals ruling. China issued a lengthy White Paper titled China Adheres to the Position of Settling Through Negotiation the Relevant Disputes Between China and the Philippines in the South China Sea.
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China also said that, if threatened, it may impose a so-called air defense identification zone in the region. That would require airplanes flying over the South China Sea to first notify Beijing. Such a step, if taken, would likely increase tensions with both Washington and Manila.
At the same time, though, Chinas foreign minister suggested that Beijing and other countries could engage in joint exploitation of fisheries as well as oil and gas deposits in the region.
China has reacted rather harshly in words, but what its real reaction, what measures it will take, remains to be seen, said Linda Jakobson, a visiting professor at the U.S. Studies Center at the University of Sydney in Australia and author of The Perception Gap: Reading Chinas Maritime Objectives In Indo-Pacific Asia.
Behind the scenes, there is a lot of diplomacy going on, she added.
Many Filipinos on Wednesday expressed gratitude toward former President Benigno Aquino, who initiated the case in 2013, claiming that China had committed multiple violations of the U.N. Convention of the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS)and asking for clarifications about what maritime rights the various land formations in the region were entitled to no matter who controlled them.
Current Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, who took office in June and has adopted a less confrontational stance toward Beijing than his predecessor, has said he is open to direct negotiations with China. Duterte kept a low profile on Wednesday. The Inquirer, a Philippine newspaper, reported that the government would take five days to study the ruling before commenting.
See the most-read stories in World News this hour >>
China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan have long had competing claims to territory and maritime rights in the resource-rich and strategically important South China Sea. The Hague tribunal did not rule on questions of sovereignty, but found that Chinas claim of historical rights in the area was invalid. It said China had violated UNCLOS by damaging the environment with its island-building projects and by allowing destructive techniques to harvest endangered giant clams.
The court also said that none of the land formations in the Spratly Islands were large enough to have exclusive economic zones extending 200 nautical miles from their shores.
That decision in particular disappointed Taiwan, which controls the largest landmass in the Spratlys known variously as Itu Aba, or Taiping. Although Taiwan is often at odds with China, it had aligned itself with Chinas stance on South China Sea matters.
On Wednesday, Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen briefly went aboard the Dihua frigate, a navy warship, before the vessel headed to the Spratlys for a routine patrol mission. (Tsai got off the ship before it departed). Adopting a more muscular stance, the coast guard also switched out a 100-ton Spratly Islands patrol ship with a 2,000-ton ship a few days ago.
Taiwans President Tsai Ing-wen shakes hands with crew members aboard a Taiwan navy ship before it sets out to patrol in the South China Sea. (Taiwan Presidential Office / Associated Press )
Taiping has an airstrip, some solar panels and coast guard base, and Taiwan regards it as an island. But the tribunal deemed it a rock, meaning whoever occupies it cannot claim an exclusive economic zone in surrounding waters
Taiwan, echoing China, said it did not consider the ruling legally binding. Still, it said in a statement that it urges that disputes in the South China Sea be settled peacefully through multilateral negotiations, in the spirit of setting aside differences and promoting joint development.
Taiwan, it added, is willing, through negotiations conducted on the basis of equality, to work with all states concerned to advance peace and stability in the South China Sea.
Malaysia likewise was urging dialogue, according to the Star online, an English-language news site in the capital, Kuala Lumpur. The government wants China and other countries involved in the dispute to find constructive ways to talk and negotiate, the Star reported Wednesday.
Ibrahim Suffain, co-founder of the Merdeka Center for Opinion Research in Kuala Lumpur, said ordinary Malaysians have little awareness of the South China Sea issues, but they respect the U.N. arbitration process because Malaysia has used it before against Singapore and Indonesia. The government is in a difficult position over how to react to the verdict, he said.
Theyre in a quandary because China is one of the biggest investors in the country and has close relations with the countrys leaders, so they dont want to offend China, Suffain said.
Vietnams Foreign Ministry welcomed the court ruling Tuesday and noted that it had sent a statement of its support to the tribunal, the state-run Viet Nam News said. Relations between Vietnam and China have been strained over South China Sea issues; in 2014, China authorized a state-owned oil company to station a rig near the Paracel Islands in an area also claimed by Vietnam, sparking deadly anti-China riots in Vietnam.
Vietnam will develop a comprehensive response to the ruling, but for now advocates peaceful resolution, Foreign Ministry spokesman Le Hai Binh said.
Indonesia urged all parties to exercise restraint, avoid raising tension and maintain peace in the region, the Straits Times of Singapore said, quoting the Indonesian Foreign Ministry.
Indonesia is not a major South Sea claimant, but it has clashed with China over the 272 Natuna Islands near Borneo. Indonesia has found Chinese fishing boats there and in March, Chinese vessels stopped Indonesia from making arrests.
A Jakarta Post commentary piece on Tuesday said Indonesia has a moral high ground it can project without rubbing salt in Beijings wounds: a principled stand based on international law and not a rejection of China.
Alex Chiang, international relations professor at National Chengchi University in Taipei, said he saw the opportunity for both bilateral and multilateral negotiations.
China will prefer bilateral negotiations, he said, because it has individual disputes with specific countries and because it could flex its economic and military strength in any two-way talks. In bilateral negotiations, the strongest state always wins, he said.
Jerome A. Cohen, an expert in Chinese law at New York University, said he expected Chinas threatening gestures to persist for a while but there will also be quiet attempts to make a face-saving deal with the Philippines through economic incentives and even under-the-table influences.
This may stimulate serious negotiations with other neighbors too, he wrote on his blog. I think Vietnam and Indonesia can credibly threaten to launch their own arbitrations unless Beijing gives assurances of better behavior and shows a genuine willingness to compromise.
Staff writer Makinen reported from Beijing and special correspondent Jennings from Taipei.
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Nearly two years after shrapnel from a mortar shell hit his familys Gaza Strip home and wrecked his upper body, Rami Abdusallam can finally move his right arm thanks to a team of Turkish surgeons.
Abdusallam, who is from Rafah, at the southern edge of Gaza, said he had been sleeping in his bedroom when an Israeli shell crashed through the homes roof.
For the record: An earlier version of this article stated that about 3,000 patients from the Gaza Strip with life-threatening illnesses apply each month to get treatment at Israeli hospitals, according to the World Health Organization. The figure is about 2,000. It also stated fewer than two-thirds receive security clearance to pass through the Erez crossing. The figure is fewer than three-quarters on average.
One piece of shrapnel entered my shoulder and came out from my chest, and here another cut open my belly, he said recently at an apartment in Istanbuls Fatih district, where he was recovering between surgeries.
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The injuries and the lack of adequate medical care available in Gaza, an impoverished seaside territory with about 1.8 million Palestinians, led him to seek help in Turkey, the 26-year-old said.
Abdusallam is among more than 40 Palestinian men from Gaza who are sharing a rented apartment building while undergoing surgery and rehabilitation for injuries related to the ongoing conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. They said they have no ties to the militant group Hamas, which rules Gaza.
The United Nations has said the few hospitals in Gaza are unable to cope with the demands for surgery and rehabilitation. Thousands of people wait long periods for appointments or apply for treatment in countries such as Turkey, Egypt, Israel or Jordan.
The treatment for Abdusallam and others has come as Turkey and Israel have moved to normalize diplomatic relations, while peace talks have been stalled between Israelis and Palestinians.
In late June, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim separately announced that restoring ties between the nations, both U.S. allies, would be beneficial to them and result in aid to Gaza.
The agreement, Netanyahu said, included a commitment from Turkey to prevent militant activities by Hamas on its soil. It also calls for help in attempts to return the remains of Israeli soldiers held since the groups 2014 war with Israel in Gaza. Hamas and others fired thousands of rockets into Israel, which responded by bombarding the strip.
Israel agreed to let Turkey ship building materials for a new hospital and other projects in Gaza, according to the June deal.
Hamas has ruled Gaza since ejecting the secular Palestinian faction Fatah in 2007, and Israel has enforced a blockade of the strip, restricting fuel, construction materials, medicine, food and other essentials for the territory, where the United Nations says nearly 80% of the population is dependent on daily humanitarian aid.
The blockade has meant medicine and equipment for treatments such as chemotherapy and orthopedic surgery are difficult to obtain.
According to the World Health Organization, about 2,000 patients from Gaza with life-threatening illnesses apply each month to get treatment at Israeli hospitals, but fewer than three-quarters on average receive security clearance to pass through the Erez crossing. The strips other outlet, the Rafah crossing to Egypt, is even more difficult: Since October 2014, it has been open for a total of 44 days, and of the nearly 10,000 patients seeking treatment in Egypt, about 100 a month have made it through.
You will die before you get to a hospital, said Abdusallam, who said an uncle spent three months last year waiting to receive chemotherapy in Cairo for lymphoid cancer.
Denied entry to Erez because he did not pass an Israeli security screening, the uncle bribed Hamas officials to get permission to cross through Rafah.
He finally got to [a hospital in] Cairo and died within an hour of them putting the needle into his veins, Abdusallam said.
Since 2014, the Turkish government has run a program to treat patients from Gaza, granting them special diplomatic visas to go to Istanbul and Ankara, the capital. Its a trickle only a few hundred people so far but for patients like Abdusallam who need specialized treatment and cannot get it in Gaza, its a life changer.
The program is among several Turkey has been running after relations with Israel soured in 2010, after Israeli commandos killed nine Turkish activists attempting to break the blockade of Gaza. A 10th activist who had been in a coma died in 2014.
Under the June agreement, Israel will pay $20 million to a fund Ankara will set up for the families of the victims and allow more humanitarian aid to be sent to Gaza.
The Mavi Marmara, the ship that carried the activists in 2010, is still docked in the Bosporus strait, draped in a giant Turkish flag, seen by millions who commute from one side of Istanbul to the other each day.
For Abdusallam and many of the other patients from Gaza, the overwhelming feeling is of gratitude for Turkeys help, even if larger problems persist back home.
Thank you, Turkey, Abdusallam said in basic Turkish, which he picked up between four months of surgeries and checkups at a government hospital in Istanbul.
In two more months, he plans to return to Gaza. He said he would like to find work, but the prospects are virtually nonexistent for him and many other young men in Gaza, where the unemployment rate is 43%.
I have a university degree in banking, Abdusallam said. There is no bank in Gaza that will hire me.
The apartment buildings sitting room is a mess of braces, bandages and crutches, and a television is tuned to Al Aqsa TV, broadcast from the Gaza Strip.
Gaza faces a host of problems, said Ahmed Khaled, 27, a journalist from Gaza City who was injured by shrapnel in 2014 and is undergoing surgery on his right leg and hip that will allow him to walk.
We have power eight hours a day on days when Egypt does not cut it off completely from the Sinai, Khaled said. We cant get enough food. Every house has someone martyred or wounded.
Farooq is a special correspondent.
Authorities in Honduras said Wednesday that they have arrested three suspects in the slaying of an environmental and indigenous rights activist the third person from the same organization to have been killed in four months.
Two men and a minor were arrested in connection with the slaying of Lesbia Janeth Urquia, the Public Ministry said in a statement. One of the men is Urquias brother-in-law and officials said the killing appeared to be the result of a family dispute.
But the Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras, known as COPINH, with which Urquia was affiliated, rejected the theory. Last week it had blamed the government for her death.
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The councils coordinator, Tomas Gomez, said Wednesday that authorities were trying to undermine their efforts to stop a local hydroelectric project and protect the environment.
Gomez said officials have insisted that the murder has nothing to do with the political decisions about granting concessions and the privatization of natural resources.
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Urquias body was found last week in a garbage dump in Marcala in western Honduras. She had disappeared Tuesday afternoon after going out to ride her bicycle.
It came four months after the slaying of internationally recognized environmentalist Berta Caceres of COPINH. Another activist from the same organization, Nelson Garcia, was killed two weeks later.
Authorities have arrested four people in Caceres death, including an army officer and at least one man who worked for a hydroelectric project she opposed.
Global Witness, a London-based organization, considers Honduras the worlds most dangerous country for environmentalists. According to its count, 111 activists were killed between 2002 and 2014.
COPINH said last week that Urquia was an outspoken opponent of hydroelectric projects in the La Paz region, particularly the Aurora I dam.
But the Public Ministry said that Urquias brother-in-law, Manuel Orlando Lopez Ortiz, had threatened her over a dispute about an inheritance with her sister. It said he contracted two others to kill her.
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Clad in a military uniform, a handsome young man appears on a video flanked by two other men with weapons. It is an appeal to youth in the disputed territory of Kashmir to join him in a battle for independence.
The young man is Burhan Wani, who was killed last week at age 21 in an operation by Indian security forces, touching off protests and a security crackdown that had left 37 people dead as of Thursday, hospital officials said.
The latest flare-up of violence in the rugged, volatile Kashmir valley has put on display the growing threat of militancy among young people in a territory that both India and Pakistan claim in its entirety.
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Wani was a commander with the Hizbul Mujahideen armed group who became a poster boy for new-age militancy, using social media to expand his reach and persuade educated young men from financially stable backgrounds to resist Indian rule in Kashmir.
His story influenced people across the valley, his videos seeming to reach every young persons phone via the WhatsApp mobile messaging service, as Internet access improved in Kashmir.
Born into an educated family, he reportedly took up arms at 15 after his older brother, Khalid, was beaten unconscious by Indian state police while they were out for a bike ride. Khalid was gunned down last year by security forces who said he had been gathering recruits for Hizbul Mujahideen, a charge his friends denied.
After Wanis death on July 8, throngs of people poured into the streets to observe his funeral, sparking hundreds of clashes with security forces over the next four days, including some attacks on police stations.
While militant funerals in Muslim-dominated Kashmir have turned violent before, experts say the size of the protests and scale of the bloodshed are worrying signs for India. In an effort to keep control of the territory, they say, New Delhis heavy-handed security tactics have fueled disillusionment among a younger generation that opposes Indian control but sees no chance for self-determination.
When educated youngsters become militants, it shows the Indian state has failed to engage them in a dialogue, said Shujat Bukhari, editor of the Rising Kashmir newspaper.
The government has, at various times, signaled that it does not care about the dissenting voices in the valley, which is why Wani has emerged as an icon.
Under a special anti-terrorism law, Indian forces operate in Kashmir with near impunity and have been accused of abuses against civilians, which they deny. Many in Kashmir hold no love for Muslim-dominated Pakistan, but they also oppose the idea of being Indians.
A protester throws stones during clashes with Indian troops in Srinagar, Indian-administered Kashmir, on July 12. (Dar Yasin / Associated Press )
Experts say Indias attempt to suppress anger at its policies has sparked an intense backlash.
Kashmir will not be normal [until] it is treated like it is normal, columnist Mihir Sharma wrote for Indias NDTV website. It is not going to be a normal Indian state while basic Indian rights are suspended, and those omnipresent soldiers know they are above the laws that constrain them in the mainland.
Days after Wanis killing, police forces were still patrolling the streets in heavy numbers, enforcing a curfew in most major towns and villages. Hospitals were packed with hundreds of injured, many with eye wounds from nonlethal pellet guns that hospital officials say could cause them to lose their sight.
Wani hailed from southern Kashmir, a pristine region of sparsely populated villages, paddies and dense forests. But it has emerged as a hotbed of militancy in the past year and a half, since the Peoples Democratic Party, whose power base is in the south, formed an alliance to lead the state with the Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP, the party of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Analysts say the alliance provoked anger because Muslim youth are skeptical of the BJP, which has close ties to Hindu nationalist groups that have shown little willingness to listen to their demands.
PDP spokesman Waheed-ur-Rehman Parra said there was no connection between the alliance and growing militancy.
Militancy has been a problem in Kashmir for decades, he said. To reduce it to one event is inappropriate.
Kashmir has long been beset by unemployment and low economic growth, problems that worsened after deadly floods in 2014. But many believe the protests following Wanis death which included many educated people like him from well-to-do backgrounds showed that Kashmiris were agitating not for jobs, but for a political settlement.
Kashmir only gets noticed when it is on fire, Omar Abdullah, former chief minister of the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, said in an interview.
There is this on-again, off-again engagement, which inevitably only follows from trouble. Until we see some sort of forward movement on the political problem, these things will continue to flare up.
Parth M.N. is a special correspondent.
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UPDATES:
June 14, 10:49 a.m.: The story was updated with a new death toll from the security crackdown.
This story was originally published June 13 at 11:39 a.m.
DHAKA, July 12 -- There is no reason for China to accept the award of an arbitral tribunal in the South China Sea arbitration established at the request of the Philippines, Bangladeshi experts said here Tuesday.
The tribunal handling the South China Sea arbitration case unilaterally initiated by the former Philippine government issued its final award on Tuesday, amid a global chorus that the panel has no jurisdiction.
China, on the same day, said it neither accepts nor recognizes the award. "The award is null and void and has no binding force," the Chinese Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
Bangladeshi experts said the Philippines has lied in its unilaterally-initiated case since 2013.
They said people all around the world know clearly that China has refused to participate in the arbitration proceedings as the tribunal in The Hague has no jurisdiction over the case, which is in essence related to territorial sovereignty and maritime delimitation.
"What the tribunal has done can never be called an arbitration," said Ashfaqur Rahman, former Bangladeshi Ambassador to China.
He said, "Arbitration is a process in which both the disputed parties agree to argue their cases and agree to accept verdict whatever it is."
In this case, he said, "We all know that China was not a party. It did not take part in the process. So how can it be called an arbitration?"
A law professor, who did not like to be named, said, "It's very clear to us that the so-called arbitration on the South China Sea initiated unilaterally by the Philippines is abuse of international law."
China's territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests in the South China Sea shall under no circumstances be affected by the so-called award, he said.
Bangladeshi experts pointed out that by refusing to engage in consultation and negotiation with China, and by unilaterally initiating the case, the Philippines has shifted away from its commitment to seek to settle its disputes with China in the South China Sea in good faith, and attempted to obtain unlawful interests in the South China Sea.
Bangladeshi experts also called on the United States to stop its interference in the regional affairs.
Lieutenant General (retired) Mahbubur Rahman, former chief of army staff of the Bangladesh Army, said, "I think what America is doing over the South China Sea issue is just disturbing the region."
"America should refrain from its naked interference in the affairs of the South Asia and the Southeast Asia regions," he stressed.
When a young female Iranian lawmaker named Fatemeh Hossaini was swept into office as part of a pro-reformist wave in Februarys parliamentary elections, it was supposed to be a signal of change in a country long led by a corrupt and overwhelmingly male elite.
But the substantial income of Hossainis family has dragged her into the middle of a widening national outcry over public-sector corruption that underscores Irans economic troubles.
As part of a series of leaks exposing high salaries among Iranian state-owned companies, Hossainis father, Safdar Hossaini, chairman of Irans sovereign wealth fund, was revealed to be earning more than $23,000 per month dozens of times what the lowest-paid government workers earn.
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Known as the National Development Fund of Iran, the fund is meant to reserve surplus oil and petrochemical revenues for development and economic emergencies. Safdar Hossaini resigned in silence along with his colleagues.
Then Hossainis husband, Hani Mirmohammad-Ali, a tile seller turned civil engineer, was accused of using family connections to get a license to operate a money exchange shop that has been implicated in money laundering.
A year after the Iranian nuclear deal was signed, the so-called Payslip-gate revelations are adding to a growing frustration at the lack of economic improvement under President Hassan Rouhani, who promised the historic pact would ease widespread unemployment and industrial decline.
Iranian demonstrators rally in front of the former U.S. Embassy in Tehran. The annual state-organized demonstration drew particular scrutiny as pressure increases on President Hassan Rouhani. (Vahid Salemi / Associated Press )
In one indicator of the pressure on Rouhani, survey results released last week by IranPoll, a Canadian polling company with ties to the University of Maryland, showed that three-quarters of Iranians said there had been no economic improvement over the last 12 months.
When the nuclear deal was signed July 14 of last year, 63% of Iranians surveyed said they expected tangible economic benefits.
Although Hossaini has not been formally accused of wrongdoing, she was greeted with boos when she stood up in parliament last month to defend her father and husband. Unknown in politics before the election, she was accused by critics of using favoritism to get herself placed on the 30-member List of Hope, the slate of parliamentary candidates who supported Rouhani and swept all the seats in Tehran.
Hossaini did not respond to messages seeking comment.
Some Rouhani supporters worry that unless he takes action against his implicated allies, he risks losing a reelection bid next year.
I, like many reformists, feel that we have been betrayed by some of the lawmakers, said Farshad Qorbanpour, a journalist and activist who was jailed for participating in protests following the disputed 2009 elections.
Hossaini and others were supposed to be a voice for the voiceless and fight injustice. Now it is revealed that some like her are in fact profiting from her political activities.
Reform activists cheered the success of pro-Rouhani candidates in the February elections, in which moderates and reformists won major gains against conservatives who had dominated parliament for years. The election was seen as an endorsement of Rouhanis outreach to the West and pursuit of the nuclear deal.
The release of salary information in recent weeks has exposed how top leaders in Irans cloistered public sector have profited despite and in some cases because of the years of Western sanctions that crippled the national economy.
The news has benefited hard-liners who oppose Rouhani. Irans supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, weighed in on the issue in his address last week to commemorate the Eid holiday, warning that illegitimate payments to managers of state-owned companies must be returned to the treasury.
The managers earning illegitimate payments are few, but even a few corrupt managers are too many and their illegitimate payments must be confiscated, Khamenei said.
Other critics of Rouhani also see a chance to pounce.
Ali Akbar Javanfekr, former media manager for conservative ex-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad seen as contemplating another run for office pointed out that the revelations had not come during Ahmadinejads time.
The IranPoll survey found that Ahmadinejad now trailed Rouhani by just 8 percentage points in a head-to-head match up for president, compared with 27 points in May 2015.
We wish President Rouhani had a chance to be reelected for a second term, but he has disappointed people and he has no chance, the website Shomal News quoted Javanfekr as saying.
Special correspondent Mostaghim reported from Tehran and Times staff writer Bengali from Mumbai, India.
shashank.bengali@latimes.com
Follow @SBengali on Twitter for more news from South Asia
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An Islamic State-run media outlet says Omar al-Shishani, one of the groups top military commanders, has been killed in fighting near the Iraqi city of Mosul.
U.S. and Iraqi officials, as well as Syrian activists, said in March that al-Shishani, who was in his 30s, had died of wounds sustained in a U.S. airstrike in Syria.
But the Islamic State-run Aamaq news agency reported Wednesday that al-Shishani was martyred in the town of al-Shirqat, near Mosul, while helping to halt the military campaign against the Islamic State-held city.
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Islamic State supporters published eulogies to al-Shishani on social media and messaging networks.
Aamaq had denied that al-Shishani was killed in March, without providing evidence that he was alive.
It was not immediately possible to reconcile the conflicting reports.
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The stampede to see South Koreas most reluctant celebrities starts early, often before theyre out of bed.
On many weekends, hundreds of tourists appear at the tumbledown homestead to meet 82-year-old farmer Choi Won-kyun and his loving but nagging wife, Lee Sam-sun.
Theyre the unlikely stars of Old Partner, a documentary that chronicles two years in the lives of the hard-working couple as they await the death of the aging cow that has served them faithfully for 40 years.
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The movie shattered box-office records here for an independent film, becoming an instant low-budget classic, a fable about love, loyalty and rural Korean values -- and also a touching, sometimes funny, tale of a wifes jealousy over the bond between husband and bovine.
But since the movies January premiere, a near-daily invasion of curious visitors has threatened the tranquil life of the illiterate couple, who just want to be left alone. Everyone wants a piece of them, pestering for countless photos: Stand here. Pose there. Bale more hay. Smile! Now take us to the old cows grave site for just a few more snapshots. The boldest intruders barge into the house uninvited.
Im gratified that people are interested in my parents, says Choi Won-kyun, the eldest of the couples nine children. If only they would have a sip of coffee and leave, but they stay. What can my parents do? Hospitality is part of rural life. We dont have any choice but to welcome them.
The project brought first-time director Lee Chung-ryul overnight success as well as a hard lesson in filmmaking: Sometimes a documentary can imperil the very subjects it works to portray.
From the start, I promised I would protect this couple, he says. But this movie has become more successful than I ever imagined. It has taken on a life of its own.
Lee wanted to make a documentary about the beauty of simple things. To tell the story, he chose a farmer who preferred his devoted old cow over any modern tractor.
He was inspired by his own rural childhood and the novelist Pearl S. Buck, who nearly a century ago wrote of a farmer and cow she saw on a trip to Korea.
She said it was the most beautiful scene she had ever witnessed, says Lee, 42, a small man with a Beatles-style mop of hair. Now the cows status has changed. Theyre no longer family members but seen as pieces of meat.
For five years, he searched for the right relationship between man and beast. In 2002, he was introduced to Choi, who recently had been informed that his female oxs days were numbered. She had already lived far longer than most.
The pairs similarities astounded him: Nearly deaf with a malformed leg, the limping farmer was often forced to crawl across his rice fields. The staggering brown cow, which is never given a name, was no better off. Choi often groomed the skinny animals diseased hide and fed her special gruel to keep her strength up.
For Lee, the pair seemed to have a secret pact: Keep working together or well both die.
In 2005, he began shooting what he saw as an intimate chronicle of the cows final year. Problems arose from day one.
Choi resisted any intrusion he felt would interrupt his chores. Every time Lee approached with his camera, Choi and his wife stopped talking, or stared as though posing for a snapshot.
So the director affixed microphones to the couples clothes and filmed from a distance with a zoom lens.
What his camera captured was a poignant real-life drama, as the woman constantly berated her husband for not exchanging his old partner for a tractor.
In her gravelly voice, she nags him to use chemicals that would improve crop yields and about the energy he wastes doting on the cow -- but especially about her tiring labors caring for both animal and husband.
We work so hard, she tells the cow one day. We both met the wrong man.
Choi finally relents and takes the cow to sell at market, but he sagely asks for so much money that the cattle buyers laugh in his face.
This cow is better than a human, he says. When it dies, Ill be its chief mourner -- and Ill follow. Im alive because of this cow.
Later, Choi sits forlornly with his head in his arms as his wife gripes that he loves the cow more than he loves her. He doesnt react, but when the animal lows, his head jerks up.
It was a romantic triangle, says director Lee. The old woman was jealous because her husband gave the cow more attention.
The farmer endured both wife and filmmaker.
There were two things that got him upset, Lee says. When his wife started nagging and when he saw me coming.
A year into the project, Lee found that the old cow was ignoring her stage cue: She refused to die. Making the film with borrowed money, he fought with his producer over the financing and deadline.
At one point, I told the cow, Could you please die faster? I feel bad about that now, Lee says.
As the animal grows weaker, the couple and cow seem to know the end is near. In one sequence, Lee shows a tear in the eye of the farmer, then his wife, then the cow.
In one of their last days together, the animal struggles during a trip to collect firewood, prompting the farmer to stop the cart. He unloads some of the wood, straps it to his back and walks alongside his old partner in a gesture that signals he considers the two equals.
But Lee, who had parted ways with his producer and was dealing with a budget of less than $1 million, couldnt be there for every poignant moment. He wasnt there when the cow finally fell over, unable to rise.
Alerted by the farmers eldest son, he made the three-hour journey from Seoul to find Choi weeping as he implored the cow to get up, asking a veterinarian, What can I do to prolong its life?
When the animal finally dies, even the wife is moved. May you go to heaven, she says. But why are you leaving before us?
Finally, Lee had his ending. He went into postproduction, creating movie posters that showed the farmers weathered hands holding his keepsake cowbell. In Korean, the film is called The Sound of the Cows Bell.
Success was immediate. The movie won an award at the prestigious Busan International Film Festival and played at the Sundance Film Festival, prompting Lee to look for a U.S. distributor. (The movie is now showing in Los Angeles at the Mpark4 theater on Wilshire Boulevard.)
South Koreas previous box-office record for an independent documentary was 120,000 tickets, Lee says. His film has surpassed 3 million. Even President Lee Myung-bak wanted to meet the director.
One morning I woke up famous, Lee recalls.
But with fame came a nagging question: How much is an old couples privacy worth?
Since the films release, Chois health has worsened. His younger cow gives him fits, making it impossible to rest. Then there are the crowds.
Chois son says the family doesnt blame Lee.
The director recently made a nationwide appeal to South Koreans to respect the couples privacy. But the hordes keep coming.
He holds himself accountable: I put so much stress on the cow and the old man, their health worsened because of me.
Lee Sam-sun, her tiny frame stooped low, only three teeth gracing her lower jaw, summons her husband for a picture with several visitors. He shuffles over slowly with his cane but soon disappears back to his farm work.
My husband makes me so upset sometimes, the 79-year-old woman announces.
In February, the director staged four sold-out showings of the film at a local community center. Lee Sam-sun, who has lived on the same farm since she married Choi at 16, cried during one scene -- when she watched herself singing a song called Bring Back My Youth.
Choi wasnt interested in seeing the documentary. Even when shown a DVD version on his grandsons laptop, his eyes soon wandered toward the nearby TV screen.
That movie was his life, says the son, Choi. It was nothing new.
In this farming town of 35,000, residents are divided over the movie. Some say it makes rural life look too glamorous.
Others fault the family for allowing the old couple to continue working so hard.
How could nine children let their parents live in such squalor? asked a convenience store clerk.
And people are starting to gossip: The couple were paid millions for the film, according to one rumor. The children are squabbling bitterly over the spoils, goes another.
Even though he says the family has yet to see any portion of the films profits, son Choi says residents approach him on the street or call his home anonymously with the same prying question: How much were you paid?
One group heard I made a lot of money, says Choi, 56, a high school art teacher. They insisted that I donate to their charity.
His parents once would ask visitors to sign a guest book and then offer a tour of their home and farm. Now their impatience shows.
One day, the old man suddenly asks his wife within earshot of guests: When are they leaving? When a visitor asks him about the cow, his wife snaps, Dont ask about the dead cow.
Still, the local tourism board is planning an Old Partner museum and has erected signs leading to the farm.
It has collected the elder Chois clothes and cane used in the movie. The board even claimed the tarnished cowbell, with plans to sell replicas to tourists.
The family knows the movie could be a ticket to prosperity for their ailing community. They feel an obligation.
Still, as she watches her husband pile wood, Lee admits the stress of celebrity can be overwhelming. My husband says he gets sick of all this, she says. I told him to behave himself.
She pauses. I guess I do nag a lot.
john.glionna@latimes.com
All material is subject to strictly enforced copyright terms & conditions and cannot be repurposed or reproduced. 19882022 Latin American Financial Publications Inc.
Power and energy-related transactions were some of the largest M&A transactions for the first half of this year
Donald Trump's pledge to build a wall along the Mexican border has been formally embraced by the Republican Party in the form of being included as part of the party's platform.
During a recent subcommittee hearing, GOP leaders successfully campaigned to have the language, handed out to delegates slated to be on hand for this month's party convention in Cleveland, changed to read, "That is why we support building a wall along our southern border and protect if all ports of entry."
The declaration adds: "The border wall must cover the entirety of the southern border and must be sufficient to stop both vehicular and pedestrian traffic."
Trump Hardline Immigration Stance
That's more in line with what Trump has pushed for since marking the launch of his campaign by deriding Mexicans as criminals and drug dealers. Since then, the party's presumptive nominee has also vowed to have Mexico foot the bill for the wall he plans to erect if he is elected.
The GOP backed provision outlined to delegates does not specify how the wall should be paid for. The party's full platform committee is scheduled to soon convene to debate the matter and others.
By contrast, democratic lawmakers recently moved to make immigration reform an official rung of the 2016 platform adopted by presumptive nominee Hillary Clinton.
Immigration Reform High on Dems Agenda
Immigration reform activist were recently thrilled to learn an early draft of the party's platform has dems taking a liberal-minded stance on the issue, including calling for a path to citizenship.
"The platform recognizes the pressing need and the status of the more than 11 million undocumented migrants living and raising their families in the Unites States," said Maureen Meyer, director of the Washington Office on Latin America's Mexico Program. "It provides assurances that the raids that have been threatening recently arrived Central American families and which have caused fear in the immigrant community will be stopped."
Meanwhile, Trump has continued to struggle mightily with Hispanic voters. A recent Pew Research Center poll shows Clinton leading Trump by a nearly 3-1 margin among Latinos.
New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez's once-thought-to-be-clear path to a White House run has been noticeably slowed by her ongoing feud with presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump.
The most prominent Latina in U.S. politics finds herself at the head of a growing list of Hispanic public figures that have locked horns with Trump, who has adopted a hard-line stance on immigration that includes mass deprtations as a central component of his platform.
Once Viewed as Republican Saviour
Martinez was once viewed as just what the GOP needed in its national attempt to expand its appeal among Latina and female voters. But that all changed back in May when Trump publically blasted her over the state's unemployment rates and swelling numbers of food-stamp recipients.
The feud dimmed any chance Martinez had of becoming the country's first Latina vice president in 2016, but even Trump still seems to realize her potential value.
Word is he is desperately seeking her endorsement and hasn't entirely ruled out adding her to the GOP national ticket.
During her run for governor, the 56-year-old Martinez campaigned on being tough on illegal immigration, cutting wasteful spending and balancing the state's budget, stances known to be near and dear to Trump's heart.
Face to Face Meeting Looming?
Indeed, there was talk that the two might be planning to meet face to face in hopes of ironing out their differences after Martinez struck back by insisting she wouldn't be bullied into voicing her support for him.
"Governor Martinez is encouraged by Mr. Trump's commitment to protect New Mexico's labs and bases, which are not only important to our state but also our national defense," said Martinez press secretary Mike Lonergan. "As she has said, this has never been about her -- it's about the issues that impact New Mexico."
Martinez has previously taken Trump to task over his position on immigration, which includes a vow to deport millions of immigrants and to build a wall along the Mexican border to further keep immigrants out.
THE HAGUE, July 12 -- An arbitral tribunal on the South China Sea rendered ruling on Tuesday, resulting in a deluge of criticism from China and other countries.
The 479-page award issued by a five-member tribunal is sweepingly in favor of the claims filed by the administration of former Philippine President Benigno S. Aquino III, which unilaterally lodged the arbitration.
Chinese President Xi Jinping, in a meeting with visiting European leaders on Tuesday, said that China will not accept the award, and that China's territorial sovereignty and maritime interests in the South China Sea will under no circumstances be affected by it.
Shortly after the publication of the award, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said in a statement that the arbitration is a political farce under the pretext of law and the ruling has no legal force at all.
The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs immediately issued a statement saying it "solemnly declares that the award is null and void and has no binding force. China neither accepts nor recognizes it."
The verdict against China also drew condemnation from other countries.
A spokesman for the Pakistan's Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday that maritime disputes in the South China Sea should be addressed in accordance with bilateral agreements and the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC), adding that Pakistan opposes any imposition of unilateral will on others.
The DOC calls for states directly involved in territorial and maritime disputes to resolve their differences through peaceful negotiations and was signed by China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
The ministry added that it further respects a declaration China made in 2006 under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea not to involve a third party to resolve disputes over maritime delimitation.
The Thai Foreign Ministry in a statement also mentioned the DOC, adding that disputes in the South China Sea should be addressed on the basis of mutual trust to reflect the nature of the long standing ASEAN-China relations.
Scholars, too, have voiced their suspicion over the arbitration.
Saeed al-Lawindi, a political researcher and expert of international relations at Cairo-based Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, believed that the ruling is completely biased and could result in serious conflict in the region. The ruling may lead to instability instigated by the United States and other Western states, he said.
Tom Zwart, professor of law at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, told Xinhua that the award will not resolve any issues in the region because the tribunal lacked jurisdiction in its ruling.
"From the outset, critics like me said that it would be very difficult to avoid sovereignty issues (when handling the Philippines' claims)," said the professor.
"Another reason for the tribunal not to accept jurisdiction is that the S. China Sea issue is a too complicated a matter for them to decide. There are so many issues involved and some of them are outside of that jurisdiction."
BEIJING, July 12 -- The South China Sea arbitration, unilaterally initiated by the Philippines, is a political farce made under the pretext of law, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Tuesday.
Wang made the remarks after an Arbitral Tribunal handling the South China Sea arbitration case issued its final award on Tuesday.
"The South China Sea arbitration is completely a political farce staged under legal pretext. Such a nature must be exposed for everyone to see," said Wang.
Plotted and manipulated by certain forces outside the region, the former government of the Philippines unilaterally initiated the arbitration with no consent of the other party, he said.
"Such an act ran counter to the agreement previously reached between the two sides to resolve disputes through bilateral negotiation and consultation. It also violated the commitment the Philippines made in the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC)," said the foreign minister.
Its purpose is clearly not to seek proper settlement of disputes with China, but to violate China's territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests and put peace and stability in the South China Sea in jeopardy, he noted.
The arbitration was conducted according to unwarranted procedure and application of law, and was based on flawed evidence and facts. Such as it is, it will never be accepted by the Chinese people. Nor will it be recognized by anyone in the world who stands on the side of justice, said Wang.
Wang said China's position of non-acceptance and non-participation is aimed at upholding international rule of law and rules of the region.
According to international law, each country has the right to choose on its own will the means of dispute settlement.
The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) gives the State Parties the right to exclude relevant disputes from the application of compulsory dispute settlement procedures.
The DOC signed by China and the ten ASEAN countries manifestly stipulates that relevant disputes should be resolved by countries directly concerned through dialogue and negotiation.
"China's non-acceptance of and non-participation in the arbitration is solidly based on international law, and is consistent with the norms and rules of the international law of the sea. China is acting in strict accordance with the law," said Wang.
The award given by the Arbitral Tribunal violates China's lawful rights. It challenges the norms of international law, including respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity. It undermines the sanctity and integrity of the system of international law of the sea, and has a negative impact on the rules of the region established on the basis of the DOC, he said.
The establishment of the Arbitral Tribunal has no legitimacy and the Arbitral Tribunal has no jurisdiction over the case. The award is clearly out of the Arbitral Tribunal's acts of self-expansion of power and ultra vires, and has no legal effect, he emphasized.
Wang pointed out that more and more countries in the world as well as people with vision have expressed concerns and doubt about the case, especially legal experts worldwide.
Over 60 countries have publicly expressed their understanding and support for China's position.
"These are voices of justice that the international community should well listen to," he said.
China's territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests in the South China Sea are based on solid historical and legal ground.
They shall not be affected by the award of the Arbitral Tribunal, Wang stressed.
The statement issued Tuesday by the Chinese government reaffirmed once again China's territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests in the South China Sea.
They include, inter alia: China has sovereignty over Nanhai Zhudao (the South China Sea Islands); China has internal waters, territorial sea, contiguous zone, exclusive economic zone and continental shelf based on its sovereignty over Nanhai Zhudao; and China has historic rights in the South China Sea, according to Wang.
He stressed that China's territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests in the South China Sea are not new claims. These, including the dotted line, have been formed in the long course of history, and have been upheld by the successive Chinese governments.
"Any attempt by any force to undermine or deny in any way China's territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests will be futile and will fail," he said.
On issues of territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests, China will not accept any means of third-party dispute settlement without China's prior consent or any imposed solution. This temporary tribunal, unjust and highly controversial, does not stand for international law, the rule of law or equity and justice in the world, said Wang.
He said China will remain committed to peaceful settlement of disputes through consultation and negotiation, and will continue to work for peace and stability in this region.
China is a contributor to global order and regional peace, he said, adding that China will stay committed to peaceful settlement of disputes with parties directly concerned through negotiation and consultation and in accordance with international law.
China is committed to upholding the freedom of navigation and overflight enjoyed by all other countries under international law, he said, noting that China is committed to the full and effective implementation of the DOC, and will work to advance the consultations on a Code of Conduct within the framework of the DOC.
The arbitration and the out-of-bad-faith dramatization and political manipulation that ensued have put the South China Sea issue to a dangerous situation, with growing tension and confrontation, said Wang.
It is detrimental to peace and stability in the region, and it does not serve the common interests of China and the Philippines, countries in the region or the wider international community, he said.
"Now the farce is over. It is time that things come back to normal," said Wang.
China has noted the latest statements by the new government of the Philippines, including its readiness to re-open consultation and dialogue with China on the South China Sea issue.
China hopes that the goodwill of the new Philippine government for improving relations with China will be accompanied with real actions, and that the Philippine side will work with us to properly manage differences and bring China-Philippines relations back to the track of healthy development at an early date, said Wang.
He reiterated that it is China's long-standing commitment to grow good-neighborly and friendly relations with its neighbors.
China has an international responsibility to uphold peace and stability in this region, and China will remain firm in its strategic determination to pursue peaceful development, he said.
China will continue to do what it can to safeguard the purposes of the Charter of the United Nations and the basic norms governing international relations, to uphold international rule of law and equity and justice in the world, and to promote peace and development of mankind, he added.
TAIPEI, July 12 -- Taiwan's major political parties on Tuesday refused to accept the award in the South China Sea arbitration and called for safeguarding China's sovereignty.
Taiwan's Kuomintang party said in a press conference that the South China Sea Islands are the inherent territory of China that China has clear strategic interests there, and should not give up any sovereignty.
The Kuomintang called the arbitration "telling lies and shameful," saying that the Party was absolutely unsatisfied with it, and will not accept or recognize it.
People First Party issued a statement saying that islands and reefs in the South China Sea are China's inherent territory and it will not accept the so-called award.
The statement called for enhanced military preparations in the South China Sea.
New Party chairman Yok Mu-ming said the arbitration award is not legally binding. He said the two sides of the Taiwan Strait should join hands to safeguard China's inherent territory in the South China Sea.
Taiwan authority said it "will not accept" the award.
The tribunal in The Hague issued its decision on Tuesday, despite a global chorus that the panel has no jurisdiction.
The Chinese mainland neither accepts nor recognizes the award.
Nation remains committed to resolving maritime disputes through negotiation, President Xi says
Yongxing Island is home to the government of Sansha, China's southernmost city. [Photo/Xinhua]
China is committed to resolving disputes through direct negotiations, but its national sovereignty and maritime interests will not be influenced under any circumstances by the South China Sea ruling by the Arbitral Tribunal of The Hague, President Xi Jinping said on Tuesday.
The South China Sea Islands have been China's territory since ancient times, and China refuses to accept any claims or activities based on the arbitral ruling, Xi said while meeting in Beijing with European Council President Donald Tusk and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker.
The Arbitral Tribunal, appointed by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, announced on Tuesday that China has no "historic title" over the South China Sea.
The Foreign Ministry said in a statement that the ruling "is null and void and has no binding force".
China has always respected international laws and justice and kept to a path of peaceful development, Xi said. Maritime disputes should be resolved though direct negotiations on the basis of respecting historical facts and in line with international laws, he added.
Premier Li Keqiang, while meeting with Tusk and Juncker, called on Europeans to insist on justice and remain neutral on the issue.
Beijing issued two statements immediately after the arbitration ruling was announced. Noting that Chinese activities in the South China Sea date back more than 2,000 years, one statement pointed out that China is the first to have discovered, named, explored and exploited the South China Sea Islands and surrounding waters.
Manila said it welcomed the ruling, but it urged "restraint and sobriety" by all parties involved.
Meanwhile, Taiwan said on Tuesday that it does not accept the tribunal's ruling. The decision on Taiping Island of the Nansha Islands has "seriously impaired" its rights, according to a news release from the office of Taiwan leader Tsai Ing-wen.
Taiwan reiterated that the disputes should be resolved through negotiations.
Ma Xiaoguang, the mainland's Taiwan affairs spokesman, said on Tuesday night that those on both sides of the Taiwan Straits share responsibility for safeguarding China's sovereignty and maritime rights in the South China Sea.
Foreign Minister Wang Yi warned on Tuesday that the arbitral ruling has placed the South China Sea "in a dangerous situation of intensifying tension and confrontation".
The unilaterally initiated arbitration case is a "sheer political farce in the disguise of law", through which the Philippines aimed to harm China's sovereignty and maritime interests, Wang said.
"The attempts of any power to harm or deny China's sovereignty and maritime interests in any form will be futile," he said.
Wang said that "the temporarily set" Arbitral Tribunal was filled with controversies and injustice and did not represent international law or global justice.
According to Foreign Ministry statistics, more than 70 countries have expressed support for China's stance that negotiation, and not arbitration, is the only way to resolve South China Sea disputes.
Wang said China has noticed that the new government of the Philippines has expressed a willingness to restart negotiations and dialogue on the maritime disputes. China is glad to see the sincerity of the Philippines' new government in trying to improve bilateral ties through real actions, he added.
In 2002, China and the member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations signed the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea, which stipulates that parties should resolve disputes through dialogue and negotiation.
Yang Yujun, spokesman for China's Defense Ministry, noted on Tuesday that China just concluded a large-scale military drill in the South China Sea. Yang said that regardless of the arbitration ruling, China's military will firmly safeguard national sovereignty, security and maritime interests, maintain regional peace and stability, and cope with any threats or challenges.
Zhao Xiaozhuo, a researcher of China-US defense studies at the Academy of Military Science, said that China should firmly stop warships from the US and its allies from trespassing on China's maritime territory.
Meanwhile, China should also enhance crisis management and keep the situation from going out of control, he added.
Wang Wen, executive dean of the think tank Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at Renmin University of China, said that safeguarding sovereignty does not mean using force, because peace, stability and development are the "main themes" of the South China Sea.
Chinese president and premier said China will not accept any proposition or action based on the decision Tuesday by the South China Sea arbitral tribunal.
President Xi Jinping said the South China Sea Islands have been China's territory since ancient times. China's territorial sovereignty and maritime interests in South China Sea, in any circumstances, will not be affected by the award.
He made the remarks on Tuesday afternoon while meeting with European Council President Donald Tusk and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker in Beijing.
China has always been a guardian of international rule of law and of fairness and justice, and will always adhere to the path of peaceful development, Xi said.
China is firmly committed to peace and stability in the South China Sea, and to settling the disputes with countries directly involved, through peaceful negotiations based on the recognition of historical facts and in accordance with international law, he said.
Also on Tuesday, Premier Li Keqiang said that by not accepting nor recognizing the award, China is in fact safeguarding the international law.
Li's statement came as he co-chaired the 18th China-EU Summit with Tusk and Juncker at the Great Hall of the People.
As a country directly concerned, China cares most and is committed to the peace and stability of the South China Sea region, Li said.
China will also be committed to peaceful settlement of disputes through negotiations and consultations in line with the Declaration of the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea and international law, said Li.
He called on the European Union to maintain an objective stance and neutrality on the issue.
China has refused to participate in the arbitration proceedings, reiterating that the tribunal in The Hague has no jurisdiction over the case, which is in essence related to territorial sovereignty and maritime delimitation.
A Bethlehem man was shot to death Tuesday afternoon in Center City Allentown, the Lehigh County Coroner's Office announced.
Eric J. Wagner lived in the 1100 block of Maple Street.
The 40-year-old was shot multiple times about 4:25 p.m. outside in the 100 block of South Eighth Street, Coroner Scott Grim said.
Wagner was taken to Lehigh Valley Hospital, Salisbury Township, where he was pronounced dead at 4:54 p.m., Grim said.
The coroner ruled the death a homicide.
Allentown police and the coroner's office continued Tuesday night to investigate the killing, with assistance from the Lehigh County District Attorney's Office.
An autopsy is scheduled Wednesday.
Authorities did not immediately have anyone in custody, according to city police.
Kurt Bresswein may be reached at kbresswein@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @KurtBresswein. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
Allentown shooting scene July 13, 2016
Candles, some melted, are arranged July 13, 2016, outside Headliners Barbershop in Allentown, where owner Eric J. Wagner was fatally shot the day before. (Sarah Cassi | For lehighvalleylive.com)
No one was in custody as of 7 a.m. Wednesday in the Tuesday afternoon killing of a Bethlehem man in Allentown, city police said.
It's too early in the investigation to release any information on the circumstances that led to the death of Eric J. Wagner, 40, of the 1100 block of Maple Street, police Capt. Tony Alsleben said. Investigators are running down numerous leads, he added.
The only official information on the fatal wounding of Wagner at 4:25 p.m. in the 100 block of South Eighth Street came Tuesday night from Lehigh County Coroner Scott Grim.
Wagner was shot multiple times and died at 4:54 p.m. at Lehigh Valley Hospital in Salisbury Township, Grim said. He ruled the death a homicide.
The Morning Call said Wagner owned Headliners Barber Shop at 125 S. Eighth St. Wagner was sitting on a chair on the sidewalk outside his shop when a tall, thin man walked up and shot him several times, the newspaper reported, citing witnesses.
Alsleben said more information could be released later in the day, likely in conjunction with the Lehigh County District Attorney's Office.
Tony Rhodin may be reached at arhodin@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @TonyRhodin. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
general.jpeg
Wilson Borough police investigate a fight the evening of July 12, 2016, in the 1500 block of Northampton Street. (Kurt Bresswein | For lehighvalleylive.com)
Two men who fought Tuesday evening in Northampton Street in Wilson Borough both went to jail.
But it wasn't for fighting. Neither pressed charges, borough police Chief Steven Parkansky said Wednesday morning.
A man is in custody the evening of July 12, 2016, after a fight in the 1500 block of Northampton Street in Easton. (Kurt Bresswein | For lehighvalleylive.com)
Both men were sent to Northampton County Prison due to warrants for their arrest, Parkansky said.
Borough police responded at 6:45 p.m. to the 1500 block of Northampton Street and spoke to Justin Cornwell, 27, of that block, Parkansky said.
Cornwell and Brian Morris, 33, of the 1000 block of Washington Street in Easton, were fighting when Morris pepper-sprayed his opponent, Parkansky said.
Morris was found near 15th and Northampton streets, Parkansky said.
A second man involved in the fight Tuesday, July 12, 2016, at 16th and Northampton streets in Wilson Borough is in custody after being treated by EMS. (Kurt Bresswein | For lehighvalleylive.com)
Both men were treated for scrapes and exposure to pepper spray, Parkansky said.
Morris was wanted for failing to appear in Carbon County Court for a March 30 trial on trespassing and related charges from a April 23, 2015, incident, court papers say. Morris was taken to the prison in Easton on the warrant, Parkansky said.
Cornwell was wanted on a warrant out of Binghamton, New York, in a grand larceny case, Parkansky said. Cornwell was taken to Central Court at the prison to await arraignment on a fugitive from justice charge. He will be given the opportunity to fight extradition to New York.
Tony Rhodin may be reached at arhodin@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @TonyRhodin. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
Teen 'stable' after running to Palmer Township crash and collapsing
Palmer Township police respond to a two-car crash Tuesday, July 12, 2016, in the 900 block of Tatamy Road, where 17-year-old Dawson Bochini, who lives nearby, collapsed from a pre-existing heart condition while running to the scene. (Tim Wynkoop | Lehighvalleylive.com contributor)
The Palmer Township teenager who collapsed and had to be revived after running toward a car crash near his home remained hospitalized Wednesday, in stable condition, according to his mother.
Dawson Bochini, who turned 17 this month, was taken to Children's Hospital of Philadelphia following the incident Tuesday night, said Stephanie Mathers.
"He eating and walking around," Mathers said after speaking with her son Wednesday. "He's alert and stable."
Bochini and Mathers both battle fibrillation and tachycardia, heart conditions that require them to know when to limit physical activity, according to Mathers. Bochini has been dealing with it since he was 6 years old, his mother said.
His heart stopped as he ran toward the two-car crash about 8 p.m. on Tatamy Road in Palmer Township, just north of Hackett Avenue and the eastern entrance to the Palmer Park Mall.
Bochini lives nearby, in the 900 block of Tatamy Road, with his grandparents, Anthony Vallera Jr. and Linda Vallera.
A neighbor, Lori Paff, and one of the drivers in the crash performed CPR while a township police officer used an automated external defibrillator to restore his heartbeat.
He was already alert and talking as Suburban EMS rushed him to treatment, township police Sgt. Tom Vogel said at the scene.
No one was injured in the crash, involving a white Nissan Altima and dark-colored Mazda 2, according to police. The names of those involved were unavailable Wednesday afternoon from the police department.
Kurt Bresswein may be reached at kbresswein@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @KurtBresswein. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
Boston Beer Co. Pennsylvania Brewery
Seen on Dec. 19, 2013, the Boston Beer Co. brewery in Breinigsville, Upper Macungie Township, is the brewer's lone facility that produces Sam Adams canned beer. (Lehighvalleylive.com file photo)
A Lehigh County man was drunk when he entered the grounds of Boston Beer Co.'s Pennsylvania brewery and crashed his vehicle, authorities said Tuesday.
John Raab, 59, of Alburtis, had been drinking alcoholic beverages prior to the July 1 incident in Upper Macungie Township, according to township police.
Raab's blood-alcohol content exceeded the 0.08 threshold for penalties that applies for most motorists, police said.
The brewery at 7880 Penn Drive in the township's Breinigsville section is one of three operated by Boston Beer, brewer of Sam Adams. The others are in Boston and Cincinnati.
Breinigsville is the lone producer of Sam Adams' canned beverages, Boston Beer founder Jim Koch said during the "Meeting of the Malts V" in March in Bethlehem.
Raab faces a charge of drunken driving in the crash, police said. Police did not indicate anyone was injured in the incident.
Kurt Bresswein may be reached at kbresswein@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @KurtBresswein. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
A Florida resident who grew up outside Philadelphia fell to her death while hiking at the Grand Canyon on Friday.
Colleen Burns, 35, of Orlando, was "hiking and taking photographs with friends for sunrise when she accidentally stepped off the edge of the trail," The National Park Service said this week. Rangers found Burns' body about 400 feet below Ooh Ahh Point.
Burns, a regional marketing director for Yelp in Orlando, had posted two photos of views of the Grand Canyon to her Instagram page the night before her fall.
That view tho [?] [?] [?] A photo posted by Colleen Burns (@colleenburns) on Jul 7, 2016 at 9:48pm PDT
Burns' mother, Catherine Burns, told PEOPLE that she is afraid of heights and that when she saw the photo of her daughter she had to close her computer because "it freaked me out so much."
"And then the next day we lost her," Burns's mother said.
The 35-year-old described herself as a "PhillyGirl@heart!" on her Twitter profile. Burns grew up in Morton, Pa., in Delaware County and attended Cardinal O'Hara High School, according to her social media accounts.
Burn's friend, Meghan Patricia, told The Orlando Sentinel that she first met Burns in elementary school in Pennsylvania and they have remained close since then. She told the newspaper Burns moved to Florida in the 90s.
"As for her dreams she was walking, living and breathing them," she said of Burns.
Burns was stepping out of the way for another hiker at Ooh Ahh Point, which is about a mile down the South Kaibab Trail, when she "kind of got tripped up on her own feet and fell backwards," Burns' Jessica Roman told 6ABC.
Erin O'Neill may be reached at eoneill@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @LedgerErin. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
Cigarettes.JPG
Cigarette taxes in Pennsylvania would rise by $1 a pack under legislative revenue plan.
( Express-times file photo)
Pennsylvania lawmakers are looking at a myriad of revenue producers to close a $1 billion-plus deficit in the 2016-17 spending plan that became law on Monday without Gov. Tom Wolf's signature.
With broad-based tax increases off the table, legislators are looking at just about everything else -- legalizing casino-game betting online, reinstating a tax on natural gas sales, raising taxes on banks, and subjecting digital downloads to the 6 percent sales tax.
One tax hike that seems certain to pass is a $1-a-pack increase on cigarettes, which would push it to $2.60 a pack -- and probably have an impact on the tobacco shops in border towns such as Easton, which benefit from lower taxes in Pennsylvania compared to New Jersey.
The tax package would also hit smokeless tobacco and electronic cigarettes -- but not cigars. Pennsylvania has attracted several cigar wholesalers and distributors because it has no specific tax on cigars.
In the meantime, the state's budgeting authority remains in a legal limbo, with a spending plan in place and insufficient tax revenues to support it. Legislators are scrambling to patch together a revenue foundation, as bond-rating companies are threatening to downgrade the state's credit rating.
Many readers at lehighvalleylive.com took issue with a higher cigarette tax. Here's a sampling of their comments. Feel free to join the discussion, as the what-to-tax conversation continues in Harrisburg.
Make it a $5/pack hike and get rid of those archaic property taxes.
Let's stop sticking taxes on smokes and start making EVERYONE pay their fair share. Taxing smokes doesn't work. Let's tax soda, junk food and fast food instead.
Raise taxes on alcohol. Fits the Wolfe agenda of making it easier to buy everywhere. Increased sales will bring in more monies and DUI monies as well.
It looks like Grover Norquist, the tax jihadist, gave the republicans the OK to increase the "sin" taxes.
Nothing like raising taxes on low income people.
Tax the cigarette companies instead. They made billions by going children addicted. It's a disgusting industry.
How about privatizing booze sales and get the state out of that business? In many states it runs that way already but taxes on hooch can still be raised by the legislature. The benefits start with the state also not having to worry about employees as they could gravitate to the private sector with the licenses sold. Then look seriously at changes to the pensions that state employees get and how it's funded.
Sludge fields in Palmer Township
These signs warn of the use of biosolids on fields off Tatamy Road near Van Buren Road in Palmer Township.
(Rudy Miller | lehighvalleylive.com)
To many, biosolids used as fertilizer are considered either a safe and inexpensive way to help local farmers -- or a health hazard that contaminates earth and water with an offensive odor that lingers for weeks after its application.
The topic arose at Monday's Upper Mount Bethel Township supervisors meeting and led to a debate among officials and residents that ultimately led to a letter of support to the state regarding a resolution to examine the safety and usefulness of sewage sludge.
Biosolids, also known as sludge, are a byproduct of the treatment of human waste from domestic sewage.
House Resolution 60, which was passed last month, asks Pennsylvania's Legislative Budget and Finance Committee to review the state's program for the beneficial use of sewage sludge on land. This will be the first major review of this issue by Pennsylvania lawmakers since 1997.
"For there not to be a study in 20 years," Supervisor Chairman John Bermingham Jr. said, "I think we owe it to the people to take another look."
Former township supervisor Ron Angle owns several pieces of land in Upper and Lower Mount Bethel townships that have had biosolids applied on them.
Angle criticized Bermingham and others in the audience, who said they felt the study is a good idea, for pandering to environmentalists in the township.
Angle argued that other states and several universities have studied biosolids multiple times in the last two decades and consistently concluded they are safe.
"You're scared about something that doesn't exist," Angle said referring to potential health hazards.
Supervisor Anthony DeFranco questioned if those who support the study would accept its results if it concludes biosolids are safe.
DeFranco voted against the letter of support and supervisors Bermingham, Jerry Geake and David Due voting in favor. Supervisor Larry Hallett was absent.
(Global Times) 09:50, July 13, 2016
The picture shows the newly commissioned guided-missile destroyer Yinchuan.Photos: chinamil.com
The South China Sea Fleet of the Chinese PLA Navy held on July 12 a commissioning ceremony for the new guided-missile destroyer Yinchuan (hull number 175) at a naval port in Sanya, a port city in China's island province Hainan.
Zhou Xuming, deputy commander of the South China Sea Fleet of the PLA Navy attended the ceremony and presented the navy ensign and naming certificate for the new destroyer.
With the hull number 175, the guided-missile destroyer Yinchuan is more than 150 meters long and about 20 meters wide. It is the PLA Navy's most advanced guided-missile destroyer in active service developed and built by China independently, and has stronger regional air defense and maritime combat capabilities.
A military band plays military music during the commissioning ceremony for the new guided-missile destroyer Yinchuan (hull number 175) at a naval port in Sanya.
Officers and soldiers attend the commissioning ceremony for the new guided-missile destroyer Yinchuan (hull number 175) at a naval port in Sanya.
The picture shows the newly commissioned guided-missile destroyer Yinchuan.
The picture shows the newly commissioned guided-missile destroyer Yinchuan.
Sailors aboard the newly commissioned guided-missile destroyer Yinchuan man the rails during its commissioning ceremony on July 12, 2016.
Sailors aboard the newly commissioned guided-missile destroyer Yinchuan man the rails during its commissioning ceremony on July 12, 2016.
Sailors aboard the newly commissioned guided-missile destroyer Yinchuan man the rails during its commissioning ceremony on July 12, 2016.
Li Hui (L), captain of the guided-missile destroyer Yinchuan, takes the navy ensign from the hands of Zhou Xuming, deputy commander of the South China Sea Fleet of the PLA Navy during a commissioning ceremony for the new guided-missile destroyer Yinchuan (hull number 175) at a naval port in Sanya.
Wang Yanguang (L), political commissar of the guided-missile destroyer Yinchuan, takes the naming certificate from the hands of Zhou Xuming, deputy commander of the South China Sea Fleet of the PLA Navy during a commissioning ceremony for the new guided-missile destroyer Yinchuan (hull number 175) at a naval port in Sanya.
The launch of the book 'Ambassadors of Hope', took place in the Donaghmore Workhouse Museum last Thursday week.
Profiling over 500 religious from the Rathdowney area and its 10-mile hinterland, the book was written and researched by Niall O'Doherty.
On hand on the night to launch the publication was former RTE news correspondent, Charlie Bird.
Author, Niall O'Doherty outlined the genesis of a book which originally was intended to be chapter in a history of Rathdowney.
This was abandoned when the sheer volume of people from the area who had entered religious life became apparent.
He said the book contained 500 people stories, and it was his privilege to record those.
Charlie Bird detailed a trip to the Philippines in 1984 to meet with the Columban priest, Fr Niall O'Brien who was imprisoned in the country in the early 198os.
This opened my eyes as to what what missionary priests and nuns were doing on the ground. It was remarkable work, he noted.
Fr Brian Darcy said it was phenomenal to see the work which had been undertaken by missionaries and clergy at home.
Fr Martin Delaney PP Rathdowney originated the idea of writing about parishioners who had entered the religious.
He noted that at home, people have been reticient to acknowledge the huge hole played by Irish missionaries abroad, in contrast to the countries in which many of these men and women served.
Rev David Muir reflected on his childhood in Granstown and early education in Rathdowney.
Sr Elizabeth Maxwell spoke of her experience entering an enclosed order.
The recent revelations about the Kildare-based charity, Console, did not come as much of a surprise, to me at least.
The sector, in general, walks on a tightrope with regarding to funding. As I write, two key thoughts come into my mind.
The first is the story about rural a gentleman who, when asked by a passing motorists how to get to a certain place, replied, 'well, I would not start from here, if I were you'.
The second is a lesson imparted long ago by my late grandmother. She used say that the person who left the 5 note on the table was worse than the person who stole. It took me a while to grasp what she was saying.
I will translate the above as they apply to Console and many charities like it.
Firstly on the rural gentlemans observation.
While it is very likely that the only thing which may be done in the wake of Console will be to implement detailed regulations, provide more strict oversight and ensure proper corporate governance, I would be much happier if we stop farming out important and essential services to charities.
There are too many charities all over the place, including in the area of suicide. Most of these charities have large salary bills, some of them eye-watering. They are even competing against each other in some cases.
Too much of the money is going on managing the service, even in the honestly-run charities.
In the Console case we have been told that the State had handed over millions of euros for a service where the key service providers, the therapists, have been having difficulties getting paid.
Deputy Sean Fleming was right to express some concern about six different agencies looking into Console, including Gardai, Charities Regulator etc. Too many chefs spoil the broth?
This, ironically, mirrors the mess with the charity sector as a whole.
Now to expand on my grandmothers point about the stolen 5.
With hundreds of people setting themselves up as charities, you can be sure some of them are of the self help variety, and policing them becomes difficult.
Policing money is even more difficult and the Gardai and other agencies are understaffed.
Fraudsters know this. We have left the 5 out for them, easy to steal, and we expect them not to grab it.
Fraudsters know that if they can set up a plethora of companies at the Companies Registration Office, they can confuse the best in the land.
If somehow they are convicted of what is known as 'white collar crime' such as misleading your auditor or regulator, their chances of avoiding jail will be very high. In the shyster game, the probability of being caught/convicted is not high in Ireland.
The punishment, when caught, is low. That is a bad signal to send out.
This may see harsh but in the long run the public would better off not funding charities and paying more tax to fund more efficiently run State services where people are paid adequate salaries to provide good and efficient services. I suspect, unfortunately, that little will change within this of State services. Consoles Mr Kelly would have a better chance of becoming Pope.
Preparations are well advanced for the 2016 edition of Prosperous Music Festival.
With over 50 acts over the weekend of August 19, 20 and 21, its likely to provide a bit of everything for everyone.
And organisers say that this, the fourth edition of the event, will be he biggest and best music festival in Prosperous yet.
As is normally the case with this event, every gig will be free thanks to the four main supporters, Dowlings Bar and Restaurant, Larrys Bar, Christys Bar and Kildare County Council.
This year there will be a 6k Fun Run sponsored by Londis, a car boot sale and a churchgate collection. There will also be bucket collectors floating around on the weekend to help cover the many costs of the festival this year.
The festival will cost in excess of 12,000 to run, covering such expenses as insurance, stewarding and communications and the committee are asking people to put their hands in their pockets over the weekend and throw in just a couple of euros, said chairman Darren Brereton.
A new addition to the festival weekend is the Family Fun Day in St Farnans Post Primary School Field. There will be an outdoor stage set up for the younger performers of the area to get up and showcase their talents to family, friends and their community.
The free PMF app is available to download now in the Google Play Store and Apple Store. It will feature the full programme and times for the weekend.
Acts will include Ben Cully, The Classic Rockers, Last Second Magic, Bon Jovi Tribute, Gavin and Michelle Crowe, Curtis Walsh, The New Social, She Speaks, Downtown Motown, Between The Lines, Donnacha Hayden, Crooked Edge, Bruce Springsteen Tribute The Rising, Bog Standard, Resistor, Elevation Falls and many many more.
Leitrim councillors have voted unanimously to call for the retrofitting of hard shoulders on the existing Dromod/Rooskey Bypass.
At Monday's Council meeting, Cllr Des Guckian called for the retrofitting of the existing Dromod/Rooskey Bypass describing its design as dangerous.
He also sought assurances that any extension of the bypass would also include this along with numerous crossing points to accommodate local residents with property on either side and to prevent the community on one side being cut off from the other.
Responding to his motion the Director of Service, Planning, Community and Economic Development, Joseph Gilhooley pointed out that the Environmental, Transportation and Infrastructure Policy SPC committee had already adopted a new policy regarding hard shoulders on all future national road schemes.
This policy was adopted due to the committee members' concerns regarding the new road schemes at N4 Dromod Rooskey Bypass and N16 Cornacloy to Sradrine, pointed out the Director of Service.
Mr Gilhooley told the Chamber that Leitrim County Council had since written to the former National Roads Authority, now Transport Infrastructure Ireland (TII), notifying them of this policy change.
However in response the TII said that Leitrim County Council was obliged to comply with the NRA Manual for Roads and Bridges which states that: 'Carriageways, hard shoulder and hard strip dimensions are fixed values.'
The TII said any reduction or increase in the width of these elements is a departure from standard and would require to be dealt with appropriately.
Mr Gilhooley pointed out that the Dromod/Rooskey Bypass is a 2+2 standard over its entire length of 7.8 km and it was designed and constructed in accordance with the Design Manual for Roads and Bridges standards.
Leitrim County Council are currently exploring the feasibility of the provision of laybys in accordance with NRA TD 69 between the Dromod roundabout and the Rooskey roundabout on either carriageway. A submission is to be forwarded to the TII for their assessment.
However Cllr Des Guckian said this proposal would only be for one lay-by each side of the bypass and said that was unacceptable.
He said that the current design was not sufficient for purpose and posed a serious risk to motorists who developed car issues or who had to stop because of children getting car sick.
There is a huge problem on this road especially with speed, in fog and when there is ice, he added.
Cllr Sean McDermott said he would support the motion saying that the failure to provide hard shoulders was a disaster in the long term.
Chief Executive Officer, Frank Curran noted that the agreement to incorporate hard shoulders on all future national roads projects had been, essentially, vetoed by the TII's insistence that the local authority would have to comply with existing national standards.
However Cllr Guckian said that this was not acceptable adding that if anyone is killed I'll be outside (the Council) with a placard banging on the door.
Cllr Sinead Guckian said that councillors were all frustrated with the response of the TII and noted that the SPC, which she chaired, had voted unanimously to renew the call for the hard shoulder to the TII.
Cllr Sean McGowan said that all councillors would love to see a hard shoulder provided on this road but said that this situation was a difficult one because of the response of the TII.
Cathaoirleach, Cllr Mary Bohan said it was clear there was support for the motion adding that the Council would keep fighting for the change.
She suggested that the Council contact the Road Safety Authority to try and garner support for the hard shoulder change.
Cllr Des Guckian also requested the Council write to the relevant Minister to highlight the concerns about the Dromod/Rooskey Bypass.
A game created by a Manorhamilton student which puts the fun into learning about science has been selected for the prestigious DCU Ryan Academy UStart Student Accelerator programme.
Squeazy Eazy Science, founded by Matthew Hewston, a former pupil of St. Clares Comprehensive School is all about putting the fun into science and helping people to learn about it through game based challenges.
Matthew, who is a first year Marketing, Innovation and Technology student at DCU came up with the idea during his time at St.Clares when he found a science demonstration during a science class and reinvented it into a fun, game based challenge called the Squeazy Eazy.
Speaking about Squeazy Eazy, Matthew explained, Squeazy Eazy Science is an educational toy company which is all about making science fun and easy.
In 2012, we found this science demonstration at the back of a classroom and took that and came up with a fun, addictive challenge to help people learn about science.
Squeazy Eazy has enjoyed incredible success to date, appearing in numerous student business competitions and RTE Dragons Den.
The product is now stocked in stores across Ireland and the UK. The comapny also had an app designed.
Squeazy Eazy is among ten companies on the UStart Student Accelerator Programme, with start-ups across the technology, food, science and the digital sector availing of strategic mentoring and business expertise.
The programme runs from May 25 to October 5 .
BEIJING, July 13 -- The United States is sabotaging international law by violating global rules of conduct and adopting double standards.
The Charter of the United Nations (UN) stipulates that "all Members should refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations."
However, the United States has repeatedly despised and infringed upon international rules.
On Dec. 20, 1989, the U.S. army invaded Panama to topple Panamanian general Manuel Antonio Noriega.
On March 24, 1999, U.S.-led NATO forces, without authorization from the UN Security Council, launched military strikes against a sovereignty state -- the Yugoslav Serb Republic.
On March 20, 2003, the United States along with its allies launched a war against Iraq on the assertion that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction which turned out to be false.
And when international law stands in the way of U.S. interests, it will simply withdraw from any binding agreement.
In 1998 the United States signed the Kyoto Protocol which sought to cut carbon dioxide emissions by 5 percent from 1990 levels by 2012. But in 2001, Washington withdrew from the 128-nation protocol, saying it was too expensive and wrongly excluded developing nations. It also unilaterally withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which it signed with the Soviet Union in 1972.
Furthermore, Washington refused to ratify the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty. Joining both would greatly enhance global peace and reduce the risk of conflict.
All in all, it is hard to find an international rule that was created by the United States and carried out by the country from beginning to end. Uncle Sam gets used to looking down on international law, considering it a hindrance to its hegemony.
Current international law with the UN Charter at its core was formed after the end of World War II and the establishment of the United Nations, and gradually became the rule of conduct for the international community.
However, with the end of the Cold War and arrival of economic globalization and network informatization, international law faces new challenges.
Today, the development and evolution of international law has become an irresistible trend and should be promoted through international agreements, practices and judicial precedents.
Meanwhile, it is time for emerging countries to actively participate in the process, improve on the current mechanisms in place to solve international disputes and reduce the influence of developed countries in dictating the management of international affairs.
So, just as Theresa May left Buckingham Palace, I had to leave home to go for a meeting. When I stepped out into an Edinburgh street and checked my phone two hours later, I realised Id stepped into a parallel universe. I must have done. I mean, a new Prime Minister known for careful and cautious deliberation appointing a man who had grossly insulted the President of the United States just a few weeks ago as the countrys top diplomat? Its probably worth reminding ourselves of Boriss response to President Obamas back of the queue speech.
Johnson, a high-profile figure in the campaign for Britain to leave the EU, wrote about the decision of the Obama administration to remove a bust of Britains wartime leader Winston Churchill from the Oval Office. Some said it was a snub to Britain. Some said it was a symbol of the part-Kenyan presidents ancestral dislike of the British empire of which Churchill had been such a fervent defender, said Johnson in an article designed to hit back at Obama after the US president waded into the EU referendum debate on Friday.
As it happens, the bust was removed before Obama even took office. Again, like many of the Leave campaigns claims, only the most casual relationship with the truth.
And then there was the time when he compared the EU to Hitler.
Theresa Mays team seems so far to be bereft of team players. Boris, David Davis, Liam Fox. Shes not a team builder or player herself. Its hard to see how this can end well.
The only thing she could do that would be more bizarre would be to appoint Michael Gove to Health to sort out the junior doctors. However, I suspect hell be sent packing along with his mate George.
Tim Farron wasnt impressed either. He said that the PM had lost credibility after just 90 minutes in office.
I cannot believe that Boris Johnson is now going to be the person to represent Britain abroad. Presumably Boris Johnsons first act as Foreign Secretary will be to apologise to the President of the United States, and then the leaders of our European partners. At this incredibly important time that will determine Britains economic and cultural relations with Europe, it is extraordinary that the new Prime Minister has chosen someone whose career is built on making jokes.
When the Lib Dems went into coalition with the Tories six years ago, I divided the Coalition Agreement into three parts the good, the meh and the lock me in a cupboard with a bottle of gin when theyre voting on this.
I look at the new Cabinet and reach for the gin.
* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings
As David Cameron leaves No 10, his legacy is being scrutinised. I have to say that I found the glowing tributes coming from his Cabinet colleagues as they entered Downing Street yesterday pretty nauseating.
Much of the news commentary has been way too positive.
I am dreading the inevitable fawning over him thats going to happen as he faces his last Prime Ministers Questions. I will not be happy if, as they did for Blair, any of our lot indulge in any applause or standing ovations for him.
Lets look at some of the key compliments people are paying him:
Stabilise the economy?
Well, do you remember the 1980s when the recession lasted for years because the Tories insisted on cutting public spending beyond what was sensible? Well, this time they were prevented from doing so by the Liberal Democrats in coalition. They wanted to cut further and faster. It was Nick Clegg and David Laws, by and large, who saw that common sense prevailed. Even then, some of their ideas werent put into practice because the Tories wouldnt have it. Some of us felt that even the Liberal Democrats in Government too far but at least the economy was starting to do well. Until, that is, David Camerons actions have led to a spectacular crash in the value of the pound. More money was wiped from the country in the days after the referendum than we ever paid to the EU. And thats only the start.
Same sex marriage?
Well, he didnt really. The person who drove that through Government was Lynne Featherstone, backed up by Theresa May. Cameron regretted it because of the fuss his backbenchers made. He couldnt even get half of them to go through the lobbies in support of the measure. Nick Clegg was the first leader to enthusiastically embrace the concept of same sex marriage and did so even ahead of the 2010 election.
He won two elections and a referendum?
Well, he managed to get just over a third of the votes cast, both times. The first time, he couldnt secure a majority, the second time he did so by scaring Middle England into thinking that Ed Miliband governing with the SNP would ruin all our lives. Do you know what? Id take that over his Tory majority.
And, actually, the Scottish referendum should have been won by a lot more. Cameron and Osborne had so little clue about Scotland that they wanted to impose a referendum on their terms when the SNP won its mandate to hold one. That would have been so counter-productive. It was the good sense of Michael Moore that ensured a more pragmatic attitude to the referendum process. Unfortunately, the Tories learned from the referendum win that scaring people was the way to win referenda. In fact, the reason people in Scotland voted No was because they werent convinced by the Yes campaigns assertions. Osborne went too far. When he came up to Edinburgh and told us we couldnt share the currency, he over-egged the pudding and turned people off. There was an opportunity to present a positive vision of the UKs future that might have reduced the Yes vote and held back the SNP tsunami that happened in 2015.
Until recent weeks, the moment of Camerons Premiership when I had least respect for him was when he emerged from No 10 on the morning after the Scottish referendum. He could have given an open, inclusive, magnanimous, forward looking speech. Instead he made a grubby little oration designed to pick a fight with Labour over English Votes for English Laws.
That was Cameron all over going for the short term politics without looking at the long term effect.
I never warmed to him. Im naturally suspicious of Tories. However reforming they may appear, you will often find some pretty unpleasant views if you look beyond the surface. I found an interview he gave to the Politics Show in early 2010 particularly chilling.
Anyway, none of this has made me as chilled to the bone as the words that came from Conservative leader David Cameron this morning on the Politics Show. The moment a burglar steps over your thresholdthey leave their human rights outside I mean, what cheap, populist rubbbish. If you take his words to their logical conclusion, they could be taken as an incitement to virtually anything. Now, burglary is horrible. I have friends whose house has been done over twice in the last few years and Ive seen how traumatised they were. Im not suggesting its soemthing that shoud go unpunished. Lets get that clear before I get any youre soft on crime thrown at me. However if a burglar leaves his human rights outside what is Cameron giving licence to? Kicking them where it hurts? Bopping them over the head with a frying pan? Stabbing them? Calling your mates over to give them a good hiding? I mean, if these people have no right to be treated as human beings, where do you stop? I found it quite scary to hear such nonsense coming from somebody who thinks hes going to be Prime Minister in a few months.
David Cameron should be leaving office in disgrace for what he has done to our country. All of us (apart from the super-rich, of course), will be paying the consequences of his folly for decades to come. There is no way Brexit can happen without us being in a worse situation. The collapse in the pound and the markets is only the start. He did not need to hold this EU referendum. He did it purely to avert a civil war in his own party because he was such a weak leader. And its not as if he wasnt warned. Much has been made of Mystic Clegg but David Laws Coalition makes it very clear that Clegg warned Cameron not to do this and what would happen if he did as far back as 2012.
Taking that risk with the country is unforgivable. Even if he had done a huge amount of good in his time as PM, this would utterly negate it. As it is, he will be remembered as the person who needlessly crashed a recovering economy and dashed the opportunities of a generation of young people.
* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings
The House of Lords debated the Chilcot Report on 12th July 2016: here are some of the key quotes from Peers who spoke, giving some flavour of the debate:-
The noble Lord, Lord Touhig, said that there was an atmosphere of mutual respect at the time of the vote. I beg leave to question that judgment. Charles Kennedy was described as being guilty of appeasement. He was told that he was similar to Neville Chamberlain, and a national newspaper printed a photograph of him with the word Traitor underneath. There was by no means mutual respect. So the reactions on these Benches to the report from Sir John Chilcot are, as might be imagined, somewhat mixed. But the one thing on which I hope we can all agree is that Charles Kennedys principled leadership on this issue has been vindicated, as indeed has the similarly principled stance taken by Robin Cook.- Lord (Ming) Campbell of Pittenweem (Liberal Democrat)
In Parliament, as we have rightly been told, the Liberal Democratsthe noble Lord, Lord Campbell, and his colleaguesstood out. Charles Kennedy was a great party leader, who showed great courage. It was the Liberal Democrats finest hour, and reminds me of the South African war, when Campbell-Bannerman and Lloyd George condemned the British Government for methods of barbarism. In government there was, of course, Robin Cook. Chilcot is a complete vindication of what he said on every aspecton weapons, on security and on the flouting of the United Nations. He was indeed a great man, and a very considerable loss. Lord (Ken) Morgan (Labour)
I note that last weekend the noble Lord, Lord Prescott second-in-command in the Blair Government wrote:
In 2004, the UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said that as regime change was the prime aim of the Iraq war, it was illegal. With great sadness and anger, I now believe him to be right.
I salute the noble Lord for that. I would be even more impressed by his candour if he admitted that Charles Kennedy, and Liberal Democrat MPs, of whom I was one, took precisely that same view in March 2003.- Lord (Paul) Tyler (Liberal Democrat)
I say immediately that the decision of the young leader of the Liberal Democrats, Charles Kennedy, to oppose the war was an outstanding example of political integrity and courage
In another place they are perfectly right and proper to examine whether this represents contempt of Parliament; otherwise, what do we do? Do we just leave it? How many people ever knew, years on from the Suez crisis, that we had colluded with the Israelis and the French to occupy the Suez Canal? It is absolutely essential that this much is learned, because I am one who believes that we may have to intervene in the future. I do not want what happened in the aftermath of this war to condemn all military interventions in the future.- Lord (David) Owen (Independent Social Democrat)
Some of my colleagues may remember me coming back from the Library and waving it about, saying that it looked a bit like a students A-level dissertation and did not contain much evidence. That was actually not far from the truth because as my noble friend Lord Campbell reminded us it was in fact taken from the thesis of a PhD student from somewhere in California. Our instincts were right. It was not impressive or convincing and I am proud to remember that my party, led by Charles Kennedyagainst the jeers and mockery of a lot of people in other partiesopposed military action at that time. We wanted to see a second UN resolution and Hans Blix and his team given time to finish their work. Baroness (Jenny) Tonge (Independent Liberal Democrat)
The International Criminal Court postponed the exercise of its jurisdiction over the crime of aggression until 2017 and it will not be retrospectiveso what can one do about instituting a war of aggression? There are calls for Mr Blair to be brought before Parliament for contempt of Parliament on the grounds of his misleading the House of Commons. Such an offence has a long and ancient history in law, and it is not obsolete. It was used in Canada as recently as March 2011; as a result, the then Canadian Government fell and there was a general election
For the moment, Mr Blair faces the court of public opinion. Chilcot supplies the evidence which convicts both him and those who surrounded him in making that fatal decision. Lord (Martin) Thomas (Liberal Democrat)
A leader with Tony Blairs skills, determination and unquenchable self-belief should not have been presiding over a system which offered so little challenge. This sad story, which cost many British lives and is still costing so many Iraqi lives, has done lasting damage to public confidence in politicians and the political process. It has undermined in our country the very democratic institutions which our Armed Forces risk their lives to defend, and we owe them better- Lord (Alan) Beith (Liberal Democrat)
Chilcot speaks of the development of widespread sectarian conflict, the victory of terrorist groups, the collapse of the democratic process, the division of Iraq and the damage to the UKs political and military reputation. Looking at the situation now, like the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London I point to theat least10 million people in need of humanitarian assistance. Iraq itself is hosting 250,000 refugees from Syria.
This has been a deeply troubling debate about a deeply troubling period in our history. Baroness (Lindsey) Northover (Liberal Democrat)
The full debate can be seen here.
* Lord Tyler is the Liberal Democrat Lords Spokesperson for Political and Constitutional Reform.
The House of Lords has been debating Chilcot this week.
Ming Campbell, our foreign affairs spokesperson at the time, spoke in the debate. Heres his speech:
Contrary to popular belief, I have never believed that what we were presented with was a false premiseimplying that there was some effort at deceptionbut I have always believed that it was flawed, and the distinction is important. But it is clear that throughout these events Mr Blair thought that it was the right thing to doand he still does. That was inevitably a moral judgment, but the strength of it gave rise to the error of making the evidence fit the judgment rather than the judgment fit the evidence.
The belief that the United Kingdom should be with the United States whatever was a flawed belief. Indeed, some would say that that single word reveals all that lay at the heart of the disastrous decision to go to war against Saddam Hussein. On reflection, there seems to have been a complete misunderstanding of the position of the United States. George W Bush always wanted regime changeit was no secretbut why was that? It was because around him was a cluster of influential neocons who thought that his father had made a fatal error in not instructing American forces to go to Baghdad at the end of the first Gulf War. If anyone doubts the good reasons for that decision, I suggest they read the memoirs of Sir John Major, who sets out with great clarity his support for that decision.
These were the same neocons who wrote to President Clinton telling him he was in breach of his responsibilities as commander-in-chief for not seeking to remove Saddam Hussein. It is true that the Motion passed at the end of the two-day debate in the House of Commons concentrated on weapons of mass destruction as a justification for what was being proposed, but I suggest that by our concurrence with the United States military action we inevitably became party to the policy of regime change and the responsibilities that flowed from it.
At the heart of all this was the belief that we had to stay close to the United States to be of influence. We had, we have, and I hope that we will continue to have an intimate and rewarding relationship with the United States, but we cannot allow our foreign policy to be defined by that relationship alone. My ally right or wrong is not sustainable.
It is clear that the intelligence assessments were accepted at face value and without demur. They formed the basis of the document of 24 September 2002 but were never revisited after publication, even when Dr Blix and Dr ElBaradei were saying something different. Indeed, as Sir John Chilcot records, no one ever considered that Iraq might be telling the truth or that Dr Blix and Dr ElBaradei were right.
The really dodgy dossier was not the one of September 2002 but the one produced in the spring of 2003 in advance of the decision-making. It was based on the 10 year-old thesis of an American PhD studenthardly, one might think, a compelling basis for justifying actions of the kind being contemplated. There are questions here. Why was no account taken of Dr Blix and Dr ElBaradei? There has been no proper answer to that. Was it because their reports undermined the case for intervention, even if Resolution 1441 allowed it? Was it because they contradicted the assertion that Saddam Husseins weapons programmes were active, detailed and growing, made by the Prime Minister on 24 September? This was plainly not true but it became, as Sir John Chilcot has recorded, an ingrained belief that inevitably polluted all other thinking.
The authority for intervention was said to be derived from Resolution 1441 of the Security Council. But read that resolution: it is a masterpiece of ambiguity, designed to persuade the French, who were wholly opposed to military action, to sign. There is more than a hint Lewis Carroll: Words mean what I want them to say. United Nations-speak for authorisation is the expression all necessary means, but Resolution 1441 simply talked about serious consequences.
Sir John Chilcot is highly critical of the process by which legal advice was provided. Without going into that in detail, because it is fully recorded, let me put it this way: at the highest the Attorney-Generals final view was little more than lukewarm and,
on balance, the better view.
I respectfully suggest that, if we are going to commit thousands of our young men and women to circumstances where their lives may be at risk, we need something a little better than a better view.
We know that the Cabinet was not provided with the full, detailed opinions of the Attorney-General. Sir John Chilcot forcefully finds that that was not proper and should not happen again. He says that he had no obligation to take a view on legality, but he has provided all the information necessary to do so. He found that military action was not yet the last resort, that diplomatic options were still available, that there was no imminent threat, that Dr Blix and Dr ElBaradei were still able to fulfil their responsibilities, and that there were conflicting views about Resolution 1441. When you add to that Article 2 of the United Nations charter which prohibits regime change, it is a legitimate judgment that this was not a legal war.
No account was taken of Iraqs recent history: no account of the anger and frustration felt by the Shia majority at their brutal subjugation by the Sunni-dominated regime of Saddam Hussein; and no account of Irans resentment of Saddam Husseins 10-year war against it, in the course of which he used chemical weapons. As a result, a vacuum was created and, as a consequence of the failure to have a plan, the Shia population, encouraged by Iran, was emboldened to take revenge against the Sunnis, who, not surprisingly, fought back. We became embroiled in a civil war. The welcome army of liberation became an army of hated occupation.
I began by saying that the prospectus was flawed. The unhappy truth is that the prospectus was flawed not simply in conception but in execution. The lessons to be learned from that are manifold. It will only be a justification of Sir Johns work and that of his committee if we can say with confidence, now and in the future, that these lessons have been properly learned.
The upcoming Brexit negotiations will be difficult for Liberal Democrats to watch. The vast majority of us campaigned to remain, and even those who voted to leave will, I imagine, be nervous at the prospect of an authoritarian Tory leader, probably without a specific mandate from the electorate for her party to run these negotiations, having so much power over what Britains negotiating position is to be.
As a parliamentary party, our lack of numbers will make it hard for us to get our message across when were needed the most. This is a time we as members and supporters are perhaps needed more than usual; to directly protest, write letters, persuade our fellow citizens, and hold the government to account from outside Westminster in support of our representatives inside.
Creating unambiguous messages to send to government on such a complex problem with such diverse viewpoints is difficult, and much ink has been and, Im sure, will continue to be spilt on the subject. Today I just want to outline an idea of one specific strategy we could take, which Im dubbing the three freedoms principle, as an attempt to boil down the terrifying complexity of the EU negotiations to something rather punchier.
Essentially, my view is that in the negotiations (setting aside the upcoming struggles on eg working rights and environmental protection which are likely to devolve to Westminster) there are three key things to secure.
One is the British economy and free trade, especially the rights of SMEs to export freely and also the ability of our service sector to operate with minimal interference across the continent. Free trade means more in the 21st century than tariff-free trade and we need to recognise that, with financial passporting and contract bidding rights among other things at stake.
A second is that we must stand up for free movement. Too many families, too many of our rights, are at stake to let this principle slip. I was born with the right to live and work and love across Europe; it is not something I am prepared to let go without a fight, especially when it is unlikely that destroying it will make any meaningful difference to the opportunities or livelihoods of people in the UK. We must hold the line on this; people left behind by globalisation deserve honest discussion and solutions rather than lies, and we and our European friends and neighbours deserve our rights to stay and to move across the continent.
Thirdly and finally, we should stand up for research and access to European academic projects. Britain and the world have gained alike from the high-powered scientific advances we have made as Europes leading academic nation. Our prowess as a knowledge economy is something we should do everything possible to defend; good research benefits everyone in, and many people beyond, Britain, and its something we should be proud to support.
So there you have it. Three freedoms research, trade, and movement that we can push for to build an internationalist future for the UK. An idea that encompasses our challenges to government, and neatly fits in a hashtag. Ive launched a parliamentary petition you can support here (with a further explanatory blogpost & video here to start pushing this strategy; I hope others will agree with me that it has the potential to be an eye-catching but effective way forward.
* James Baillie is a member and activist from Breckland and a former chair of the Lib Dems' Radical Association. He is currently a doctoral student at the University of Vienna, where he works on digital studies of medieval Georgia. He blogs about politics at thoughtsofprogress.wordpress.com.
China has placed a ban on unqualified and unlawful drivers working for car-hailing apps, including ex-convicts who served time for drug-related crimes, robbery and serious traffic violations, China News Service (CNS) reported.
Fugitives, as well as those who have committed crimes that jeopardized national security or restricted others personal freedoms, would also be forbidden from registering as drivers for the apps.
The blacklist was issued on Monday by the Internet Society of China together with Didi Chuxing, a Chinese car-hailing app industry giant. Didi Chuxing is also considering increased restrictions on drivers who have mental illnesses and those with more minor traffic violations, CNS reported.
Traffic authorities in Shenzhen have met with representatives from several car-hailing app companies to discuss the feasibility of barring more high-risk drivers from registering with the apps. This comes in the wake of a number of scandals that have attracted negative attention to the rising industry. For instance, several female customers were sexually assaulted during their respective rides.
Many netizens have also complained about the varied quality of drivers on different car-hailing apps.
Closing the Cancer Gap
Higher mortality rates. Less access to care. Poorer quality of life. These are some of the realities minority groups face when cancer care is not equitable.
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GARDAI are investigating an alleged hoax phone call to emergency services that occurred over the weekend in Limerick city.
On Saturday at 2.40pm, emergency services were alerted to a report of a man seen entering the River Shannon, via Thomond Bridge.
Three units of Limerick Fire Services Swiftwater Rescue crew attended the scene, with the FireSwift rescue boat. Gardai, paramedics, coast guard helicopter, and members of the Marine Search and Rescue team also attended the scene.
Emergency services searched the area for approximately 30 minutes. According to a source, attempts to reach the original caller were unsuccessful, and services were then stood down.
It is believed that a message had been set up on the callers voicemail abusing gardai.
A member of the Marine Search and Rescue team said that, while there are people who call in good faith, there are malicious calls.
It is not funny when you are driving through traffic and you are trying to answer a call, and you see in the pager that it says Person after entering the water at Thomond Bridge. And you are trying to get there as fast as you can because you think that there is somebody in the water. Then you hear on the radio that it turns out to be a prank call. It is a relief that there is nobody in the water, but its the hassle that it causes.
It is the cost of putting the helicopter in the air. It is the cost of services being put on alert. That helicopter serves a huge catchment area. If there was an emergency somewhere up the country, and it was a prank call, that could be a life or death situation for another emergency somewhere else, the member explained.
Cllr John Costelloe, who condemned the alleged hoax call, said the public can get very anxious when they see or hear the helicopter.
They cannot ignore the calls, even if it is a hoax. And they have to go when they get the call. It is just such a waste of money and resources. Their [emergency services] service is so valuable and important in Limerick.
A BELARUSSIAN man who allegedly fled the mafia in his native country has appeared before Limerick District Court after presenting a false passport to the Department of Social Welfare in Limerick city.
Judge Mary Larkin heard that Andrey Ramaneka, 45, with an address at Fishermans Quay, Grove Island, has been charged under the Social Welfare Consolidation Act (2005) after presenting a false passport to the department offices on Dominic Street in the city.
The court heard it was his intention to claim jobseekers allowance under one name, and to work under another to support his family.
The father of three, who was described by his defence as a very genuine person, pleaded guilty to the offence. What was described as an unusual case by Inspector Donal Cronin, transpired at the social welfare offices on February 23, 2015.
When he presented the passport at the social welfare offices some of the details contained matched a person with another name, after the passport was scanned through facial recognition software.
The offices then brought the matter to the attention of gardai.
The accused purchased the fraudulent passport whilst in the direct provision system when he first came to Ireland in 2000/01, never used it, and was in receipt of jobseekers allowance since 2003.
Solicitor Darach McCarthy said his client had a good income in Belarus from his business in the building supply trade, but the mafia engaged in racketeering, putting the accused at grave risk. He then moved to Ireland, receiving the standard 19 a week in the direct provision system.
However, Mr McCarthy stressed that there was no loss to the State in this case, and that his client didnt use the fraudulent passport as his residency came through quite quickly.
His wife, a nurse, and family then moved to Ireland, and the accused went to school here to complete his Leaving Certificate, and went on to do a degree in civil engineering in Limerick Institute of Technology, where he earned first class honours.
Mr McCarthy also stressed that the couple and their three children are here to stay, not to receive social welfare payments, but want to contribute to the economy.
He has a lot ahead of him and he has suffered a lot of hardship. There was an element of economic duress in this case, but he destroyed the passport when he realised it was a bad idea, said his defence.
He has no relevant previous convictions, bar a minor road traffic matter. Judge Larkin said she has sympathy for people in this position and applied the Probation Act.
MEMBERS of the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation are to meet next week to discuss the possibility of balloting for industrial action at University Maternity Hospital Limerick.
Announced on Sunday afternoon, the INMO stated that midwives are deeply frustrated by the failure of the HSE to address concerns flagged in January 2015, and the implementation of a Workplace Relations Commissions agreement last November.
According to the INMO, the 30 midwife and neonatal nurse positions have not been filled since the November agreement.
However, the UL Hospitals Group said that it refutes that we are failing to implement the agreement.
The group said that 14 new midwife and neonatal staff have commenced since the WRC agreement, with 16 posts remained to be filled.
We are confident that we will fill these in the coming months. There is ongoing advertisement for staff midwives and neonatal nurses.
Three staff midwives attended for interview on June 10, and were successfully panelled. We also interviewed 22 graduate staff midwives whom we hope to offer posts, subject to their registration and completion of as appropriate clearance.
CEO Colette Cowan said it is operating in a challenging recruitment environment, as is the case for all Hospital Groups.
We remain committed to hiring more midwives, nurses and other staff as agreed last November, and will continue in our efforts to do this whilst remaining in regular, monthly contact with the unions throughout this important process.
INMO industrial relations officer, Mary Fogarty said that midwives are disillusioned with the HSE and its failure to listen and act in a timely fashion and put in place robust governance and safe staffing arrangements.
THE man tasked with leading Limericks bid for European Capital of Culture in 2020 has said winning the bid would be a great energiser" and would see the city playing in the European league.
Limerick 2020 bid director Mike Fitzpatrick, speaking immediately after the visiting jury panel deciding on the bid departed the city, said the difference to winning it and not, is it would be the lever that would allow the investment.
I think we will carry the culture within ourselves, it wont go away. What I am proud of, after today, is that the people of Limerick have given a great boost. It was fantastic, led by the city and the people so I am very happy.
You can be proud to walk around, it is now a city that doesnt feel a fear, there is a sense of attention, engagement and companionship, which is phenomenal. Let us hope we can maintain that wonderful sense of interaction with diversity.
Best day in the office since #Granny2014 Thank you @Limerick2020! But how are we going to face back into normality tomorrow?! #Limerick2020 Maura O'Neill (@MauraONeill1) July 12, 2016
The visiting judges two of the ten person panel running the rule over the bid, which is regulated by the EU Commission were brought on an eight hour tour, starting by viewing the city from the Strand Hotel and taking in Moyross, Cleeves Factory, UL, Troy Studios, finished with an extensive walk around the city, which was transformed for the day with a host of street parties.
Limerick trended nationally for the entire day on Twitter as the sun came out and the public joined in the fun, sharing their love for the city on social media.
#Limerick2020 currently the top trend in Ireland. Brings a tear to my eye. It could greatly improve the lives of a generation in the city. Rubber Bandits (@Rubberbandits) July 12, 2016
The next stage is the presentation of the bid book on Thursday and the announcement on Friday and Mayor Kieran OHanlon said he was looking forward to going up on Friday and lifting the European Cup.
Deputy bid director Sheila Deegan, who was the official host of the judging panel on their visit, said: I think we are certainly a contender after today.
Today, I think, we showed them that by taking over the city, that idea of occupying the streets, Limerick has become really good at that, and a number of our projects are about that spectacle, she said.
Helen ODonnell, city trader and local activist who hosted an event in the Hunt Museum, said that there was a great buzz, it is like the Granny, it is emotional.
It just fabulous. I just hope the judges capture that, Limerick people really want this and Limerick really needs it. I think we deserve it.
A Chinese man has been charged in connection with a drug seizure worth 10,000 in Limerick city last week.
Jinlong Xue, 33, of 10 Howley's Quay, is facing two charges in relation to the discovery of the cannabis herb at the same location on July 5 last.
The accused has appeared before Judge Mary Larkin at Limerick District Court, charged with possession of cannabis herb and possession for sale or supply.
He was arrested by gardai at 8.55pm during a search of an apartment at Howleys Quay on Tuesday evening last. The search, carried out as part of an ongoing investigation targetting the sale or supply of drugs in the Limerick area, uncovered the cannabis with an estimated street value of 10,000, while more than 20,000 in cash was also recovered.
There was no objection to bail, subject to a number of conditions. He has been ordered to surrender his Chinese passport and not apply for any other travel documents, sign on at Henry Street three times weekly and notify gardai,if he intends to move from his current address.
He was granted free legal aid, with Sarah Ryan appointed as defence solicitor.
Judge Larkin remanded him on bail to appear before the court again on October 26, for the DPPs directions.
A 65-year-old Dutch man has been jailed for 15 years for the murder of his Limerick-born wife.
Mother-of-eight Martina OBrien-Viguurs, a native of Rathkeale, was found dead in her home in the Dutch city of Den Bosch on November 9 last year.
Her husband Arnold Arno Viguurs was arrested shortly after the discovery of her body.
This Wednesday, a court in the Netherlands found him guilty of murder and sentenced him to 15 years in prison.
During the trial, the court was told that Ms OBrien died as a result of blows to the head and strangulation.
After killing her, Viguurs placed a cushion under her head and put rosary beads into her hands.
Ms OBrien, 64, had been due to return home to Ireland with her husband when she was killed.
A native of Rathkeale, she had lived for many years in Cork before going to live with Viguurs in the city of Den Bosch in the south of the Netherlands.
She is survived by her daughters Tammy, Dawn, Jane, Deirdre, Martina and Aisling and her sons Sean and Seamus.
During his trial, Viguurs admitted killing his wife but declared: I am not a murderer.
He told the court that he planned to kill himself after killing his wife so that he could escape money problems. The couple had sold their home in Den Bosch and planned to use the money to buy a new house back in Ireland.
However Viguurs failed to disclose to his wife that in fact he was broke, having used the proceeds from the house sale to pay off his debts. At the time, he was receiving unemployment benefit after the proceeds from his share of a property leasing agency proved worthless
BEIJING, July 13 -- The Philippines, turning a blind eye to bilateral consensus, has repeatedly taken moves that complicate the relevant disputes, gradually intensified the relevant disputes between China and the Philippines in the South China Sea, said a white paper issued on Wednesday.
The Philippines built military facilities on some islands and reefs of China's Nansha Qundao (the Nansha Islands) it has invaded and illegally occupied, said the document, titled "China Adheres to the Position of Settling Through Negotiation the Relevant Disputes Between China and the Philippines in the South China Sea."
The Philippines deliberately destroyed survey markers set up by China and attempted to illegally occupy China's Ren'ai Jiao by using a military vessel illegally run aground at it, according to the document issued by the State Council Information Office.
The Philippines also has territorial pretensions on China's Huangyan Dao and attempted to occupy it illegally, deliberately causing the Huangyan Dao Incident, it said.
The Philippines has intruded into relevant maritime areas of China's Nansha Qundao to carry out illegal oil and gas exploratory drilling and bidding.
The Philippines has repeatedly harassed and attacked Chinese fishermen and fishing boats conducting routine fishing operations, according to the white paper.
In January 2013, the then government of the Republic of the Philippines unilaterally initiated the South China Sea arbitration.
By doing so, the Philippines has violated its standing agreement with China to settle the relevant disputes through bilateral negotiation, has violated China's right to choose means of dispute settlement of its own will as a State Party to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), and has abused the UNCLOS dispute settlement procedures, it said.
"The Philippines has distorted facts, misinterpreted laws and concocted a pack of lies, in an attempt to deny China's territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests in the South China Sea," it said.
The Arbitral Tribunal established at the Philippines' unilateral request has no jurisdiction over relevant submissions, and awards rendered by it are null and void and have no binding force, according to the white paper.
China's territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests in the South China Sea shall under no circumstances be affected by those awards. China does not accept or recognize those awards. China opposes and will never accept any claim or action based on those awards, it said.
Apr 28, 2021, 10 AM
By Michael Baadke
Social reformer Father Edward J. Flanagan was the founder of Boys Town, near Omaha, Neb., an individual and family services organization with a focus on providing support for at-risk children.
Born July 13, 1886, in County Roscommon, Ireland, he left for the United States in 1904 and was ordained as a priest in 1912, assigned to the Diocese of Omaha.
Within five years, Flanagan rented a home in Omaha to provide shelter for five boys in his care. His project grew quickly, and in 1918, he established Boys Town, caring for dozens of youngsters who were orphaned, homeless or in need of help.
In 1921, the facility moved to a location just west of Omaha, where it is headquartered today, offering support and education for boys and girls and their families. Several additional Boys Town sites are located in other parts of the United States.
Father Flanagan was honored on a 4 Great Americans definitive stamp issued July 14, 1986, one day after the 100th anniversary of his birth (Scott 2171).
Jul 13, 2016, 12 PM
The United States forever stamp honoring renowned math teacher Jaime Escalante was issued July 13 in Washington, D.C. Standing next to the oversize image of the stamp is Escalante's son, Jaime W. Escalante II.
By Bill McAllister, Washington Correspondent
They laughed. They cried and they clapped.
All that emotion and more poured out in a Washington, D.C., hotel as members of the League of United Latin American Citizens welcomed a forever stamp honoring one of their own.
The July 13 issuance of the Jaime Escalante commemorative stamp honored a Bolivian native who came to California and became renowned for teaching mathematics to students some regarded as unteachable.
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That was a label that Escalante never placed on his students at Garfield High School in an impoverished area of East Los Angeles.
At the Washington first-day ceremony hundreds of Latinos and the nations top educator Education Secretary John B. King Jr. praised Escalantes legacy.
Actor Edward James Olmos, who played Escalante in the 1988 movie Stand and Deliver, said simply, He was a giant of a man.
Screenwriter Tom Musca told the ceremony attendees that he wasnt the teacher that we all wanted. He was the teacher we all needed.
But it was Escalantes son Jaime W. Escalante II who brought many to tears as he recalled the obstacles that his father faced in order to get a classroom job in America.
His father had already achieved success teaching math in Bolivia, but California school systems insisted he return to college and get degrees in the United States.
Escalante did that, but his teaching methods didnt gain much attention until 14 of his students were accused of cheating on an advanced placement exam in 1982.
To resolve the issue, Escalante urged that the accused students retake the exam. Twelve of the 14 did. All 12 students passed, creating much acclaim for the teacher and leading to the movie about how he had motivated his students.
Olmos hailed the stamp as a symbol of the growing influence Latinos are having in America.
We dominate the hemisphere, he said, predicting that Latinos will have the same influence here in the United States.
Without making any reference to politics, Olmos said that the timing of the stamp could not be more crucial.
He thanked the Postal Service for issuing the stamps and urged the audience to buy as many of the new stamps as they could afford.
If you happen to find yourself in Iran, do not miss the chance to look up at any opportunity--otherwise you might miss the most stunning domes you have ever witnessed. Traditionally part of palaces, mosques and public bathhouses, the domes are made of colored glazes and marble. These photos were taken by French photographer Eric Lafforgue when he traveled to Iran. (Photo/People's Daily Online)
SEOUL, July 13 -- South Korea's defense ministry on Wednesday announced an agreement with the United States to deploy the U.S. missile defense system, called Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD), in its southeastern region despite continued oppositions from neighboring countries.
One THAAD battery will be deployed in the Seongsan-ri region of the Seongju county in North Gyeongsang province, where South Korean Air Force's Hawk surface-to-air missile battery is located.
Yoo Jeh-seung, deputy defense minister for policy, said at a nationally televised briefing that the county was proposed as the best site to maximize military effectiveness and secure safety of residents in the region, which was approved by defense ministers of South Korea and the United States.
After Friday's decision between Seoul and Washington to deploy U.S. interceptors in the South Korean soil, the decision for the deployment site was announced earlier than expected amid mounting oppositions and controversies at home and abroad.
On Friday, Seoul said the site would be announced within weeks, but nationwide protests against the THAAD deployment had spread especially in candidate sites, prompting the country to announce it just five days after the deployment decision. The two allies aim to deploy the U.S. missile defense system in the site by the end of next year.
China and Russia have expressed strong oppositions to the THAAD deployment in the South Korean soil as its X-band radar can spot Chinese and Russian territories far beyond the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK).
The AN/TPY-2 radar can detect 600-800 km with a terminal mode, which South Korea plans to adopt, but it can be converted at any time, and takes less than a day to change, into a forward-based mode that ranges as far as 2,000 km because the two versions have the same hardware.
The THAAD battery will be operated by the U.S. Forces Korea (USFK) and the radar operation will not be made transparent. The deployment itself indicates South Korea becoming part of the U.S. missile defense program, or the core of the U.S. Pivot-to-Asia strategy.
"Even if (Seoul and Washington) try to politically promise (not to keep watch on Chinese and Russian territories), such pledge has no meaning in technical terms," said Cheong Wooksik, director of Peace Network, a local civic group.
"The terminal and forward-based modes just have difference in software. The conversion takes just several hours," Cheong said at a forum hosted by the People's Solidarity for Participatory Democracy (PSPD), a local civic group.
"What kind of radar mode Seoul will select does not matter. China's military expert cannot be dispatched to the THAAD battery to supervise its operation," said Kim Joon Hyung, professor of international studies at Handong Global University.
The professor said strong opposition from China and Russia came as the THAAD deployment means South Korea entering a part of the colossal U.S. missile defense network.
Su Rong, former vice chairman of China's top political advisory body. [File Photo: jxcn.cn]
Chinese prosecutors have filed separate lawsuits against four senior officials suspected of graft, the Supreme People's Procuratorate announced Wednesday.
Su Rong, former vice chairman of the National Committee of Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, China's top political advisory body, is charged with taking advantage of his positions to seek benefits for others, accepting a huge amount of bribes and abuses of power which caused "great losses" to the state.
Su's property and expenditure obviously exceeded his legal income, and he could not explain how he came by the money. He is also accused of holding a large amount of property with unidentified sources.
Du Shanxue, former vice governor of north China's Shanxi Province, is charged with offering and taking bribes, and holding a large amount of property with unidentified sources.
Sun Zhaoxue, former general manager of the state-owned Aluminum Corporation of China (Chinalco), is accused of accepting a huge amount in bribes and holding a large amount of property with unidentified sources.
Zhao Shaolin, former member of the standing committee of the Communist Party of China Jiangsu provincial committee and secretary-general of the provincial party committee, is charged with bribing others to seek benefits for his son's business and purchasing foreign exchange through deception.
WASHINGTON, July 12 -- Diplomatic efforts to solve the South China Seadisputes will not be blocked by "a scrap of paper" from an arbitral tribunal nor by "a fleet of aircraft carriers," Chinese Ambassador to the United StatesCui Tiankai said Tuesday.
"China remains committed to negotiation and consultations with other parties (in the South China Sea). This position has never changed and will not change," Cui said at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a U.S. think tank.
His remark came after the tribunal handling the South China Sea arbitration unilaterally initiated in 2013 by the former Philippine government issued its award earlier on Tuesday, which sweepingly sided with Manila's claims.
"Such absurd proceedings were taking place in combination with military coercion -- with mounting activities by destroyers, aircraft carriers, strategic bombers, reconnaissance planes and many others," Cui said. "I believe this is an outright manifestation of 'might is right.' "
By opposing and rejecting the arbitration, China is safeguarding its own interests and defending international justice and the true spirit of international law, the ambassador said.
"We will not yield to any pressure, be it in the form of military activities, media criticism or some self-claimed legal bodies," he said. "And we will certainly not make deals with our core interest just for a few words of praise."
The ambassador reiterated that China firmly stands for freedom of navigation in the South China Sea, as sea lanes there are the economic lifelines for China and many other regional countries.
However, he expressed concerns over the assembly of aircraft carriers, airplanes and sophisticated weapons in the region, warning that it could pose a real threat to the freedom of navigation of commercial and civilian vessels.
"Such a concentration of fire power, anywhere in the world, would be a source of concern," he noted.
Cui said the tensions in the South China Sea started to rise about five or six years ago, about the same time when the world began to hear about the U.S. "pivoting to Asia" policy, and the disputes intensified in the last few years.
"If Asia-Pacific is destabilized, if the momentum of regional economic growth is weakened, if armed conflict started, everybody' s interest will be hurt," Cui said.
On the relations between China and the United States, Cui said the territorial issue in the South China Sea should not become an issue between them, nor should it be seen as part of a "strategic rivalry."
A Cold War mentality will not solve the problems of today' s world, Cui said, calling for partnership among countries and new international relationships centered on win-win cooperation.
"We are here to see what kind of choices the U.S. will make: how you see the world today, how you see China' s development, and how you see the relationship between our two countries," he said.
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BUENOS AIRES, July 12 -- The award issued by the Arbitral Tribunal in the South China Seaarbitration case is "illegal," and the territorial dispute must be resolved through bilateral dialogue, many Latin American experts have said.
Gustavo Girado, head of the Buenos Aires-based Asia &Argentina Consultancy, told Xinhua recently that "first of all, one major question that must be resolved is how this tribunal can establish an opinion over sovereignty matter in maritime spaces."
"It seems that the Philippineswas driven to go to an inadequate institution like the PCA, while going against previous agreements with China, by foreign forces that have a vested stake in the dispute. This has led to a military scaling-up in the region," he said.
Judicial expert Paola de Simone told Xinhua that the PCA's award in favor of the Philippines could hamper future efforts to resolve the dispute through bilateral negotiation.
For her, the Philippines "violated its commitment" as part of the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea.
Arbitration by uninvolved third parties is "an excessive instrument," as "bilateral dialogue" must always be an option, Simone said.
Echoing their views, Evandro Carvalho, a professor of international law at the Getulio Vargas Foundation in Rio de Janeiro, said "it would be very difficult for a nation to admit the jurisdiction of an international tribunal on such a matter."
According to Carvalho, it is the basic rule of international law that allows China to explicitly reject the arbitration process initiated unilaterally by the Philippines.
The expert urged the Philippines to reconsider its action, saying that the complexity of the South China Sea issue deserves a diplomatic solution instead of seeking extra-judicial resolutions.
For Ulises Granados, coordinator of Asia-Pacific Studies at the Autonomous Technology Institute of Mexico (ITAM), the award "does not have much weight."
"In terms of procedure, as long as China has not submitted to the decision of the court, nothing will happen. There will be no consequences from the award," he said.
Granados believed that the arrival of the new Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte opens up a new chance for dialogue.
"It is clear that acting only through a judicial path will not force China to do anything at all," the Granados said.
ULAN BATOR, July 13 -- Chinese Premier Li Keqiangarrived here Wednesday for an official visit to Mongolia and the 11th Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) summit.
This is Li's first trip to the landlocked Asian country since he took office as Chinese premier in 2013, and the first official visit by a Chinese premier to the country in six years.
During the visit, Li will hold talks with Mongolia's new prime minister, Jargaltulga Erdenebat, and meet with Mongolian President Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj and Chairman Miyegombo Enkhbold of the State Great Hural, Mongolia's parliament.
A series of cooperation deals covering trade, infrastructure, finance and energy, as well as climate change and media exchanges, will be signed during the two-day visit, the first half of Li's stay in Ulan Bator.
On Friday and Saturday, the Chinese premier will attend the 11th summit of ASEM, an intergovernmental forum aimed at fostering political dialogue and boosting cooperation in various areas across Asia and Europe.
He is also expected to hold bilateral meetings with leaders of some ASEM members.
ISLAMABAD, July 13 -- The award by an ad hoc arbitral tribunal on the South China Seaissue has drawn wide attention of Pakistan's leading newspapers, most of which gave special coverage to voice support for China's stance on the issue on Wednesday.
Pakistan's major English daily Pakistan Observer published an article on the issue as its super lead at the front page in title "China rejects third-party imposition on South China Sea".
Pakistan Observer also wrote an editorial, pointing out that China's right to the area goes back to centuries, and in 1947 China issued a map detailing its claims.
"Despite all this, China is still in favor of bilateral negotiations to sort out differences, but the United Statesis encouraging other parties to the conflict to raise the ante," it said, urging all sides to avoid escalating conflict and sit on negotiating table to find a peaceful resolution.
China has established its credentials as a peace-loving country and harbors no aggressive designs against any other state, but the United States is indulging in highly provocative activities in the name of freedom of trade patrolling, making it a flashpoint with potentially serious global consequences, it said.
Pakistan's largest English daily The News published the news with a headline "China vows to protect South China Sea sovereignty after ruling", reporting that China vowed to take all necessary measures to protect its sovereignty and maritime rights and interests in the South China Sea.
Pakistan's most prestigious daily Dawn printed the statement from Chinese foreign ministry, which said "the award is null and void and has no binding force. China neither accepts nor recognizes it."
Another English daily Express Tribune published two articles at its front page in titles "China dismisses the case as farce, reaffirms sovereignty" and "Islamabad threw its weight behind Beijing after an arbitration ruled about South China Sea."
Another English daily Pakistan Today said "China thrashes Hague tribunal's verdict on South China Sea."
English daily The Nation said China does not accept any means of third-party dispute settlement without China's prior consent or any imposed solution.
"China has repeatedly denied the tribunal's authority to rule on the issue, claiming that the court's actions are illegal and biased against it," it said.
One of the top ranking English newspapers Daily Times said the unilateral initiation of arbitration by the Philippinesis out of bad faith, which did not aim to resolve the disputes between China and the Philippines or to maintain peace and stability in the South China Sea, but to deny China's territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests in the South China Sea. "The initiation of this arbitration violates international law," it said.
Photo taken on July 13, 2016 shows the white paper titled "China Adheres to the Position of Settling Through Negotiation the Relevant Disputes Between China and the Philippinesin the South China Sea" issued by Chinese government in Beijing, capital of China. "The Philippines' territorial claim over part of Nansha Qundao is groundless from the perspectives of either history or international law," said the document issued by the State Council Information Office on Wednesday. (Xinhua/Chen Yehua)
BEIJING, July 13 -- The Chinese government on Wednesday issued a white paper to expound on its position, which calls for settling relevant disputes between China and the Philippines in the South China Sea through negotiation.
"It is the Philippines that has created and stirred up trouble," said Vice Foreign Minister Liu Zhenmin at a press conference held Wednesday to introduce the white paper.
"Violating bilateral consensus in recent years, the Philippines has repeatedly taken moves that complicate and intensify relevant disputes between China and the Philippines in the South China Sea," he said.
The white paper, titled "China Adheres to the Position of Settling Through Negotiation the Relevant Disputes Between China and the Philippines in the South China Sea," was published one day after an award was issued in arbitration unilaterally initiated by the previous Philippine government.
Describing the award as "a piece of waste paper," Liu urged other countries not to "take the opportunity to threaten China."
China hopes other countries can work with it to protect the peace and stability of the South China Sea and "not let the South China Sea become the origin of a war," he said.
The vice minister also said China reserves the right to declare an Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) in the South China Sea in accordance with the extent of the threat.
The white paper issued by the State Council Information Office stated that the core of the relevant disputes between China and the Philippines in the South China Sea lies in the territorial issues caused by the Philippines' invasion and illegal occupation of some islands and reefs of China's Nansha Qundao (the Nansha Islands).
As the international law of the sea developed, a maritime delimitation dispute also arose between the two states regarding certain areas of the South China Sea, it added.
"The Philippines' territorial claim over part of Nansha Qundao is groundless from the perspectives of either history or international law," it said.
The two countries held multiple rounds of consultations on the proper management of disputes at sea and reached consensus on resolving relevant disputes through negotiation and consultation, which has been repeatedly reaffirmed in a number of bilateral documents, according to the white paper.
In 2013, the then-government of the Republic of the Philippines unilaterally initiated the South China Sea arbitration.
By doing so, the Philippines has violated its standing agreement with China to settle relevant disputes through bilateral negotiation, violated China's right to choose means of dispute settlement of its own will as a State Party to the United NationsConvention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), and abused the UNCLOS dispute settlement procedures, it said.
"The Arbitral Tribunal established at the Philippines' unilateral request has no jurisdiction over relevant submissions, and awards rendered by it are null and void and have no binding force," said the document.
"China's territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests in the South China Sea shall under no circumstances be affected by those awards. China does not accept or recognize those awards. China opposes and will never accept any claim or action based on those awards," it added.
The white paper also explained that Nanhai Zhudao (the South China Sea Islands) are China's inherent territory, saying the activities of the Chinese people in the South China Sea date back more than 2,000 years.
China is the first to have discovered, named, explored and exploited Nanhai Zhudao and relevant waters, and the first to have continuously, peacefully and effectively exercised sovereignty and jurisdiction over them.
"China's sovereignty over Nanhai Zhudao and relevant rights and interests in the South China Sea have been established in the long course of history, and are solidly grounded in history and law," it said.
China abides by the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations and is committed to upholding and promoting international rule of law. It respects and acts in accordance with international law, the white paper said.
While firmly safeguarding its territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests, China adheres to the position of settling disputes through negotiation and consultation and managing differences through rules and mechanisms, it added.
"China endeavors to achieve win-win outcomes through mutually beneficial cooperation, and is committed to making the South China Sea a sea of peace, cooperation and friendship," it said.
In the white paper, China urges countries outside the region to respect the efforts by countries in the region and to play a constructive role in maintaining peace and stability in the South China Sea.
During the press conference, Liu reiterated that settling relevant disputes between China and the Philippines in the South China Sea through negotiation is the theme of Wednesday's white paper, as well as the policy of the Chinese government.
"We hope to work with countries surrounding the South China Sea, including ASEANmembers, abide by the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC), and maintain peace and stability as well as the freedom of navigation and overflight in the South China Sea," Liu said.
Liu noted that this policy has not changed and will not change. He called on the Philippines to return to the track of negotiation, saying it is the only solution to resolve disputes.
Two United Nations peacekeepers from China were killed after an attack in South Sudan on July 10. Five others were wounded, with two in serious condition. The incident came a little over a month after a Chinese U.N. peacekeeper was killed and four others wounded in an attack in northern Mali by al-Qaedas North Africa branch.
Li Lei, a 22-year-old soldier from Chengdu, was one of the victims of the most recent attack. Li's relatives and friends are grieving over his death. Li is the 13th peacekeeper who has died during China's 26 years of participation in the U.N.'s peacekeeping operation. Li died just one day after his 22nd birthday. "I hope all my comrades-in-arms will stay safe," was the last sentence Li recorded on social media.
Li Lei's honor certificate.
Praised by his relatives as a diligent and sensible boy, Li always went out of his way to help his family while he was on leave. Before he left for South Sudan, he told his mother that he hoped to toughen himself up on the frontlines. Li's mother has not stopped crying since she learned of her beloved son's death.
Li's former teacher, surnamed Jiang, remembers being very impressed by him. The brave, responsible student won the respect and admiration of all his classmates. One day Li told Jiang that he planned to drop out of school and join the army. Jiang tried and failed to dissuade him, all too aware that he was just hoping to ease his family's economic burden.
Li Lei and his grandmother.
On Monday, Li's belongings were displayed in front of his house to help his friends and relatives mourn. His military honors and exploits were clear proof of an excellent soldier, and therefore a source of comfort to his loved ones.
"We are all passing by each other. I hope you won't miss me when I'm gone. I never regret my choice," Li wrote in his diary before his death.
Chastity belts devices that were reportedly worn by women in the Middle Ages to prevent sexual intercourse are often referenced in popular culture as an extreme method of enforcing fidelity. But these belts are curiously missing from most legitimate medieval texts, which initially puzzled historians. So what are chastity belts, and did women really wear them?
According to curators at the Semmelweis Museum in Budapest, which displayed an exhibition on the history of the chastity belt in 2010, the belts were thought to be introduced as an answer to unchecked female promiscuity when knights left for battles, pilgrimages or religious crusades.
Albrecht Classen, author of "The Medieval Chastity Belt: A Myth-Making Process" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), told Time magazine that the devices were first mentioned in a treatise on siege machines written by Konrad Kyeser in 1405. According to Classen, Kyeser was a German engineer and artist, and the concept for the chastity belt appeared in the afterword of his treatise. Initially, they were described as an imaginative joke, but the belts went on to become a popular subject of satire. [Hot Stuff? 10 Unusual Sexual Fixations]
Academics began to question the authenticity of the devices when they could find no mention of chastity belts in any serious historical context.
"No author of sermon literature, of penitentiary texts, or didactic and legal writers has ever mentioned the chastity belt probably because already the basic idea behind it defies the basic needs of the human (female) body," Classen wrote.
Not only is there scarce historical evidence that chastity belts were an actual undergarment in the Middle Ages, but there is no logic to support their existence, either.
"How [could] these rough, hard objects be worn on the groin without causing deep and gradually more and more infected cuticular wounds within a few days?" experts at the Semmelweis Museum said.
Lesley Smith, a late-16th century historian and curator for Tutbury Castle in the United Kingdom, agrees with Classen. In a 2007 article for the British Medical Journal, she wrote, "I have travelled abroad and looked at art collections and, as yet, havent seen a chastity belt that can be proved to be medieval in origin."
The inclination to believe the myth of the chastity belt is understandable, though. "In medieval Europe, any sexual activity that did not lead to conception was supposed to be forbidden," Smith said.
Classen likens the chastity-belt myth to another widely held (but similarly incorrect) belief: that medieval people thought the Earth was flat. In his book, Classen hypothesizes that this stems from a desire to demonstrate a lack of civility prior to the present age. Buying into the chastity- belt fantasy is a means of "conceptualizing a 'backward' and dark period prior to [our] own enlightened era," Sarah Bond, an assistant professor in the classics department at the University of Iowa, wrote in her popular blog post titled "Unlocking the Dark Ages: A Short History of Chastity Belts."
Ultimately, the chastity belt's existence as a legitimate historical artifact should be relegated to the category of myth, experts say. However, a recent tech innovation, designed to protect women from sexual assault, has been criticized as a modern reimagining of the chastity belt. AR Wear, "a clothing line offering wearable protection for when things go wrong," developed underwear and other garments that would be difficult, if not impossible, for an attacker to remove.
The controversial product, which was accused of placing the burden of rape prevention on victims rather than perpetrators, gained notoriety in 2013 after the company launched an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign. AR Wear claimed the garment fabrics could not be ripped or cut, "so that women and girls can have more power to control the outcome of a sexual assault."
AR Wear reached their funding goal and finalized a prototype in 2015, but currently their products are not commercially available.
Original article on Live Science.
Like T. rex, Gualicho shinyae had two clawed fingers at the end of its small arms. Also like T. rex, the newfound dinosaur likely would have preyed on smaller animals, as seen here.
Tyrannosaurus rex wasn't the only meat-eating menace with teeny-tiny arms.
Like its distant relative, T. rex, a newly identified dinosaur, named Gualicho shinyae, sported small arms and hands with two clawed fingers.
"We're slowly getting more information on this sort of pattern of limb reduction, and getting at this question of why tyrannosaurs and some other theropods shortened their forelimbs," said study corresponding author Peter Makovicky, curator of dinosaurs at the Field Museum in Chicago. [See Images of the Tiny-Armed Gualicho shinyae]
G. shinyae belonged to a group called the allosaurs and lived about 90 million years ago, during the Cretaceous period. That's a good 23 million years before T. rex entered the scene between 67 million and 65 million years ago.
Because they are only distantly related (both are considered theropods, which are bipedal and mostly carnivorous dinosaurs), the two species likely developed their tiny arms and two-digit hands independently due to similar evolutionary pressures a process called convergent evolution, the researchers said.
Bony discovery
Study lead author Sebastian Apesteguia, a paleontologist with the Natural History Foundation (AZARA) in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and a team of researchers discovered the dinosaur along the northern edge of a large reservoir in Patagonia, Argentina, in 2007. (In fact, five other predatory dinosaurs have also been found in that area, called the Huincul Formation.)
"Unfortunately, it's one of those specimens that was discovered probably 50 years too late," Makovicky told Live Science. "We have the hind limbs and the forelimbs, we have the section of the back and the tail, a little bit of the hips." But they couldn't locate the skull and much of the vertebral column, likely because of erosion.
A schematic showing the excavated bones of Gualicho shinyae. (Image credit: Copyright Jorge Gonzalez and Pablo Lara)
However, based on what they found, as well as the anatomy of other allosaurus dinosaurs, they estimate that at its hips G. shinyae was about 6 feet (1.8 meters) tall, and that it measured about 25 feet (7.6 m) long and weighed about 1 metric ton (1.1 tons), Makovicky said.
"It's not a giant animal by dinosaur standards, but not small, either, so [it's] a midsize predator," he said.
G. shinyae is also a bizarre mosaic of different dinosaurs. It looks a bit like Carcharodontosaurus, another carnivorous theropod, as well as Deltadromeus (delta runner), a carnivorous dinosaur with slender arms found in Africa, which is possibly a close relative, the researchers said. [Photos: Dinosaur's Battle Wounds Preserved in Tyrannosaur Skull]
Divine inspiration
Researchers named the dinosaur Gualicho shinyae after two women: The genus honors Gualichu, a goddess of animals who was revered by the Tehuelche people of Patagonia. When Europeans brought Christianity to the area, the newcomers reinterpreted Gualichu as a demonic entity, the researchers wrote in the study.
The paleontologists joked that Gualichu had put a curse on them during their fieldwork, after their truck flipped over (no one was seriously hurt), Makovicky said. The species name honors Akiko Shinya, who discovered the specimen.
The newfound dinosaur is an exciting find, said Thomas Carr, an associate professor of biology at Carthage College in Wisconsin, who was not involved in the study.
"It really provides a sharper focus on the whole phenomenon of forelimb reduction and finger loss in theropods," Carr said. "It clearly occurs across many different lineages for different reasons and in different ways."
It also shows that "tyrannosaurs' [arms] really aren't unusual," Carr said. "It's not just a one-off."
The new study was published online today (July 13) in the journal PLOS ONE.
Original article on Live Science.
Colli Albani, a volcanic complex outside Rome, was thought to be extinct, that is, until it showed signs of activity.
A volcano outside Rome, long thought extinct, is rumbling to life. But don't panic: The volcano isn't likely to blow its top for at least another 1,000 years.
Colli Albani is a volcanic complex of hills located 19 miles (30 kilometers) from the center of Rome. There are no historical records of eruptions from Colli Albani, so it was long thought to be extinct, according to the American Geophysical Union (AGU). Now, researchers have reported in the journal Geophysical Research Letters that Colli Albani just doesn't erupt that often. In fact, it enters an eruptive phase every 31,000 years or so.
A team of researchers, led by volcanologist Fabrizio Marra of the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology in Rome, used ground-based observations of rising land, earthquake swarms and steam vents alongside satellite data to track Colli Albani's recent activity. An analysis of rocks from the volcano revealed a history of past eruptions, the most recent of which occurred 36,000 years ago. [The 11 Biggest Volcanic Eruptions in History]
Now, the ground underneath the volcano is inflating, rising at a maximum of about 0.08 inches (2 millimeters) per year in areas where steam vents are emerging, Marra and his colleagues reported. During the past 200,000 years, the area has risen by about 164 feet (50 meters) in elevation, they found. This suggests that magma is entering fractures beneath the volcano, they said.
The reason for the change has to do with the subsurface geology of Colli Albani, Marra told the AGU. Until about 2,000 years ago, the surrounding land held together a fracture under the volcano, preventing magma from bubbling to the surface. More recently, however, the subsurface stresses have changed so that the rock on one side of the fracture is moving and sliding against the rock on the other side, according to the AGU.
So far, these changes have manifested in a swarm of earthquakes around Rome that lasted from 1991 to 1995. Another sign was a small fumarole, or steam vent, that appeared in a road near Rome's Fiumicino airport in 2013.
Given its 31,000-year cycle, Colli Albani is arguably overdue for an eruption, but the volcano won't unexpectedly blow its top, Marra told the AGU. It likely won't build up enough pressure for an explosive eruption for at least 1,000 years. Even then, Romans can expect plenty of warning, Marra said, as an explosive eruption would be preceded by initial stages of moderate volcanic activity.
Original article on Live Science.
The fighting between insurgents and South Sudan's government forces continued on July 10 (local time) in the country's capital city of Juba. As a group of Chinese peacekeepers tasked with protecting refugee camps was travelling in an armored convoy, they were hit by a mortar shell, leading to the deaths of two Chinese soldiers.
One of the victims, Yang Shupeng, left behind a wife when he embarked on the peacekeeping mission. After learning that her husband had been seriously injured, Yang's wife Zou Lina spoke to Wen Haidi, a political instructor traveling with Yang's group. Wen sent the widow a message at midnight on July 11, expressing his sorrow for the loss of a heroic soldier. She replied 15 minutes later, "You must be quite busy now over there. I will take care of my family. We are here waiting for him."
Zou recalled that her husband was officially assigned to the peacekeeping mission before the start of the 2016 Chinese New Year. Yang spent the next five days simply enjoying his family and life at home. Then, Yang and his comrades-in-arms left for South Sudan.
Yang was in the habit of making telephone calls to his family every day or two. However, due to rising tensions in the region during the last two weeks of his life, Yang had become very busy with the mission. He could only call his family every three or four days. His wife sobbed, "When he left for South Sudan, he told us [his family] that we shouldn't worry because South Sudan is a safe country. He never said anything bad about his life in South Sudan, and just told us that everything was fine."
Yang joined the army 15 years ago. He was born in 1983 in eastern China's Shandong province. He took part in the flood relief efforts in Lankao county, Henan province in 2003, and also did earthquake relief work in Wenchuan county, Sichuan province. He left for South Sudan for a one-year peacekeeping mission in December 2015. He was once awarded a second-class merit.
"We feel relieved to know that we have veterans working with us," said Wu Niansheng, a villager in Anhui province. The veterans in question are members of a team specializing in flood control, composed entirely of retired soldiers. The team is operating in Anhui province's Langxi County.
The water levels of Langchuan River, a tributary of Nanyi Lake, remain high in recent days. During a recent patrol on July 6, the veteran team discovered water seeping through the dyke. However, it was difficult to pinpoint the exact location of the breach.
Confronted with loosening soil, Xu Fei, one of the retired soldiers, gave an order to dig 15 ditches near the dyke. After more than three hours of hard work, the team managed to find and prevent five sections of the dike from piping.
Xu served in the Chinese armed forces for eight years before he became a militia battalion commander in 2009. He has been working at the dyke for more than 20 days now. He began assisting with flood control on June 20.
As the flooding became more serious, Xu thought about how to mobilize more retired yet still capable veterans to help with relief work.
"As a member of the Chinese Communist Party, I call on youths to build a team for flood control," Li posted to his WeChat moments on July 2. He almost instantly received responses from several of his old comrades-in-arms.
In total, 151 retired veterans said they would join the rescue efforts. They coordinated everything through a WeChat group chat titled "Retired Veterans Join the Efforts to Fight the Flood." At 7 a.m. on July 6, when several landslides occurred near a dyke in a small Langxi County village, 58 veterans were there to lend a hand.
Xu Fei was one of those 58. Many hours later, around 10 p.m., Xu checked his phone and saw a message from his wife: "Today is your birthday. Happy Birthday!" Caught up in his work controlling the flood, Xu Fei had forgotten his own birthday.
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Baku, Azerbaijan, July 13
Trend:
An Azerbaijani delegation headed by President of CJSC Azerbaijan Airlines (AZAL), Jahangir Asgarov attended "Farnborough International Airshow - 2016" in Great Britain.
As part of the event, the Azerbaijani side has held negotiations with major aircraft manufacturers as Boeing, Ilyushin, Antonov and others.
At a meeting with Boeing Senior Vice-President Martin Benrott and Sales Director of the Corporation, Serdar Gurz, the possibility of supply of 10 Boeing 737 MAX aircrafts in 2018-2020 was discussed. At the same time the issue of the project financing was discussed at the meeting.
On the same day, the third round of negotiations were held with Mikhail Gvozdev, head of the Board of the Corporation "Ukrainian Aircraft Manufacturing Company" and President of "Antonov" state enterprise, Alexander Kotsuba on the project of organization of manufacture and maintenance of An-178 transport aircrafts on the territory of Azerbaijan.
Also, negotiations were held between President of CJSC Azerbaijan Airlines Jahangir Asgarov and Director General of JSC Ilyushin Finance Co., Alexander Rubtsov on leasing of MC-21 aircrafts. It should be noted that in June the parties signed a letter of intent on leasing of 10 new MC-21 medium-range aircrafts. Delivery is scheduled for 2019-2020.
At this meeting a contract was also signed for financial lease of the world's largest serial cargo aircraft An-124-100 (Ruslan). The contract was signed by Silk Way Holding President Zaur Akhundov and Director General of JSC Ilyushin Finance Co. Alexander Rubtsov with the participation of Jahangir Asgarov and the United Aircraft Corporation (UAC) President Yuri Slusar.
"Purchasing An-124-100 (Ruslan) aircraft will become a new stage of development of Azerbaijani civil aviation, will allow increasing competitive advantage and strengthening our country's position in the world air cargo transportation market. Over the past 10 years, we have turned the Heydar Aliyev International Airport into a major air cargo transportation hub. Today, Azerbaijani civil aviation presented itself as an official airline of the Great Silk Road project connecting East and West. We make every effort to achieve the same success in passenger transportation," Jahangir Asgarov said.
The Standards in Public Office Commission (SIPO) is to launch a fresh investigation into the conduct of former Longford County Council chief excutive, Tim Caffrey.
In a statement issued yesterday (Tuesday) the Commission said it considered it appropriate to initiate an inquiry into alleged contraventions of ethics legislation by Mr Caffrey.
The Commission said its decision to launch a fresh inquiry was independent from a hearing which was held in September 2015.
A date of September 12 has been set aside for the hearing at SIPO's head offices in Dublin.
This investigation hearing will be to hear evidence relating to alleged contraventions separate from the contravention that it investigated at its hearing on 28 September 2015, read a statement.
That inquiry found Mr Caffrey had failed to fully declare his interest in a house which was to be purchased by a housing charity with the aid of a Government grant.
Mr Caffrey, who retired in March after ten years as county manager and CEO of Longford County Council, insisted he had not been aware of a requirement to notify then mayor Larry Bannon in writing concerning his interest in the property.
The Commission ruled Mr Caffrey had contravened section 178(2)(b) of the Local Government Act 2001 .
Following the release of its report, Mr Caffrey, however, announced he was contemplating launching a judicial review into additional claims that he did not act in good faith.
This new, all-consuming Pokemon GO craze has caught the entire country by surprise and as such we are concerned about the consequences playing this game can have on public safety, said DMV Executive Deputy Commissioner and GTSC Acting Chair Terri Egan. Distracted driving is behavior we at DMV and GTSC speak out against all year long. What is meant to be a fun game can have tragic real-world consequences if youre playing it while driving or crossing the street. Simply put, catching virtual creatures to get to the next level is not worth risking your life or the lives of others. Governor Cuomo announced in April that efforts by state and local law enforcement have resulted in an 840 percent increase in tickets for texting while driving in New York State since 2011. While the number of cell phone tickets have decreased each year since 2011, texting tickets issued during the same period have increased substantially with the proliferation of smartphones. Pedestrian safety is also a New York State priority.
Pets & Animal, Local News, Crime, Press Releases
By Long Island News & PR Published: July 13 2016
The First Squad reports an arrest for Child Endangerment on Tuesday, July 12, 2016 at 4:40 p.m. in Baldwin.
Yvette Seibert, 36, of North Merrick, surrendered to police after investigation finding she endangered the welfare of 2 children and neglected 15 dogs in her home.
North Merrick, NY - July 13, 2016 - The First Squad reports an arrest for Child Endangerment on Tuesday, July 12, 2016 at 4:40 p.m. in Baldwin.
According to detectives, the Nassau County SPCA requested assistance from First Precinct officers to investigate a complaint of animal cruelty at a home in North Merrick. During the investigation the home was found to be in unsanitary living conditions. Fifteen dogs were in the house living in crates, were removed and taken to the Town of Hempstead animal shelter. Child Protective Services were notified and two juveniles living in the home were taken to an area hospital for evaluation. Yvette Seibert, 36, of North Merrick, surrendered at the First Precinct.
Seibert is charged with four counts of Endangering the Welfare of a Child, Neglect of an Impounded Animal and Torturing or Injuring Animals/failure to provide sustenance. She will be arraigned on Wednesday, July 13, 2016 at First District Court in Hempstead.
Local News, Community, Charity & Cause, Press Releases
By EAC Network Published: July 13 2016
DA Madeline Singas and EAC Network honor local organizations for their dedication to community service participants.
Hempstead, NY - July 13, 2016 - EAC Networks Nassau Community Service program, in conjunction with the Nassau County District Attorneys Office of Madeline Singas, celebrated the achievements of local organizations in the community service field on June 22, 2016. The Community Service program places individuals with court-mandated community service with dozens of local agencies to serve out their sentence.
EAC Network and District Attorney Singas honored the Hicksville Boys and Girls Club, Gateway Youth Outreach, and Posh Pets Long Beach Animal Shelter with the Premiere Partner Award for providing outstanding community service experiences to EAC Networks clients. All 65 participating agencies that collaborate with EAC Network were recognized for providing clients with community service and, in some cases thereafter, paid employment opportunities. Community Service participants are also placed within EAC Networks programs, including Stoplift, Anger Management, HEAP, and Supervised Visitation.
District Attorney Singas also awarded Rhonda Wainwright-Jones, a Senior Director at EAC Network, with the Nassau County District Attorneys Certificate of Appreciation and Gratitude for her work with the Community Service program.
We are thrilled to be partnering with District Attorney Madeline Singas in honoring such wonderful organizations on Long Island, said Lance W. Elder, President & CEO of EAC Network. We are thankful for the ability to come together and celebrate all of our Community Service programs participating agencies, as well as to see our staff recognized for their dedication.
Learn more about EAC Network and its Community Service program.
About EAC Network
Founded in 1969, EAC Network is a not-for-profit human service agency serving 68,500 people annually through 70 programs across Long Island and New York City. EAC Networks mission is to respond to human needs with programs and services that protect children, promote healthy families and communities, help seniors, and empower individuals to take control of their lives. Among those the organization assists are children who have been physically or sexually abused, senior citizens needing support, people struggling with substance abuse and/or mental illness, youth in the foster care system, persons on public assistance seeking financial independence, adults and youth who are under or unemployed, individuals needing help to mediate disputes, and families in crisis. For more information about EAC Network, please call 516-539-0150 or visit www.eac-network.org, Facebook, and Twitter.
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
Details added (first version posted on 15:32)
Baku, Azerbaijan, July 13
By Anvar Mammadov Trend:
Director was appointed to Azerbaijans State Social Protection Fund July 13, according to a message from the ministry of labor and social protection of population.
Zakir Babayev was named the State Social Protection Funds director by the order of the minister of labor and social protection of population, said the message.
Babayev worked as an engineer, a senior engineer, and later, as head of production and planning department at the All-Union Scientific and Research, Planning and Design Technological Institute of Petroleum Engineering of the USSR Ministry of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering from August 1974 to January 1986.
Later, he served as senior adviser of the economic department at Azerbaijans Cabinet of Ministers.
Babayev was appointed deputy head of the State Social Protection Fund in January 1993.
By the order of the minister of labor and social protection of population, Amina Seyidzade, Safar Mehdiyev and Sardar Khidirov have been appointed deputies of the head of the State Social Protection Fund.
Azerbaijans President Ilham Aliyev signed a decree in March on measures to improve the management in the sphere of social protection of population.
The State Social Protection Fund became a part of the Ministry of Labor and Social Protection of Population in accordance with the decree.
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Follow the author on Twitter: @Anvar_Mammadov
Baku, Azerbaijan, July 13
Trend:
Azerbaijans President Ilham Aliyev has extended condolences to Italian President Sergio Mattarella over the recent passenger train crash in the south of Italy.
I was deeply saddened by the news of a heavy loss of life as a result of the passenger train crash in the south of your country, said President Aliyev in his letter of condolence. On behalf of the people of Azerbaijan and on my own behalf, I extend my deepest condolences to you, the families and loved ones of those who died and the people of Italy, and wish the injured the swiftest possible recovery.
President Aliyev also offered condolences to Italys Prime Minister Matteo Renzi over the tragedy.
I was deeply saddened by the news of a heavy loss of life and injuries in a passenger train crash in the south of Italy, said the president. On behalf of the people of Azerbaijan and on my own behalf, I extend my deepest condolences to you, the families and loved ones of those who died, and wish the injured the swiftest possible recovery.
Details added (first version posted on 15:40)
Baku, Azerbaijan, July 13
Trend:
It is quite possible that the convention on the legal status of the Caspian Sea will be signed in the first half of 2017, TASS news agency quoted Russias Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov as saying July 13.
Lavrov made the remarks addressing a press conference following the meeting of foreign ministers of the Caspian Sea littoral states - Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Russia, Iran and Turkmenistan.
We have carried out very fruitful work, said Lavrov. We have moved forward in a number of directions.
As for the remaining issues, it is necessary to find proper formulations for the principles agreed by the presidents, he added.
The Caspian states signed the Framework Convention for Protection of Marine Environment of the Caspian Sea in November 2003.
Russia and Kazakhstan signed an agreement on the delimitation of the northern part of the Caspian Sea in order to exercise sovereign rights for subsoil use in July 1998. The two countries signed a protocol to the agreement in May 2002.
Moreover, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan signed an agreement on the delimitation of the Caspian Sea and a protocol to it on Nov. 29, 2001, and Feb. 27, 2003, respectively.
Additionally, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Russia signed an agreement on the delimitation of adjacent sections of the Caspian Sea on May 14, 2003.
A propaganda arm of the Islamic State says that Abu Omar al Shishani, the elite Islamic State commander who earned international infamy, was killed fighting south of Mosul in recent days.
The news of Shishanis martyrdom was posted online by the Amaq News Agency, which is one of the Islamic States main media outlets. Citing a military source, Amaq reported: Shaykh Umar ash-Shishani martyred in Shirqat as he participated in clashes to repel the campaign against the city of Mosul.
Shirqat lies 70 miles south of Mosul and is considered a key location in the approach to the city. The town straddles Route 1, the main road from Baghdad to Mosul, which must be secured so Iraqi forces can advance and resupply from the south.
US officials told CNN that Shishani was targeted in an airstrike near Qarayyah, Iraq, south of Mosul sometime in the last few days and that the US was working to confirm his status. Iraqi forces retook control of the Qarayyah-West Airbase south of Mosul this week.
Shishanis presence south of Mosul is a key indicator that the Islamic State is serious about defending the approaches to the northern city from an Iraqi military advance. Shishani commanded the Islamic States mobile forces that have fought in key battles in Iraq and Syria. Additionally, the Islamic State deployed suicide bombers against Iraqi forces near Shirqat today. This tactic has been used mainly against key targets as the Islamic State has lost territory over the past year. The group claims to have launched nearly 600 such attacks during the first six months of 2016.
Like other senior jihadists, Shishani (whose real name was Tarkhan Tayumurazovich Batirashvili) seemingly had multiple lives. In March, for example, the Pentagon said that Shishani was targeted in an airstrike in the Syrian city of Shaddadi.
According to Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook, Shishani had been sent to al Shaddadi to bolster ISIL [Islamic State] fighters following a series of strategic defeats by local forces we [the US-led Coalition] are supporting, cutting off ISIL operations near the Syria-Iraq border. [See LWJ report, US targeted senior Islamic State military commander in airstrike in Syria.]
Amaq denied that Shishani was killed at the time, claiming he was not even injured. Other accounts said that he had been badly wounded.
It is often difficult for even official US government sources to confirm that a key jihadist leader has been killed. But the report from Amaq is significant because it comes from the Islamic State itself.
If Shishanis death is confirmed, it would mean that a popular commander who was especially influential among jihadists from the Caucasus region has been taken off the battlefield. Although he called himself the Chechen, likely because his mother was from Chechnya and he had other ties to the area, Abu Omar al Shishani was a Georgian national. McClatchy first reported that he was even once a member of Georgias US-backed special forces and led his men heroically during the 2008 Russian invasion of his homeland.
Shishani is believed to have relocated to Syria in 2012 and his legend in jihadist circles grew significantly in the years that followed.
He helped found Jaish al Muhajireen wal Ansar (JMWA), or the Army of the Emigrants and Helpers, which drew fighters from the Caucasus region. Shishani and a group of his men broke off from the JMWA in mid-2013, swearing their allegiance to Baghdadi. The Islamic States ability to woo Shishani was a significant development for Abu Bakr al Baghdadis organization in its rivalry with al Qaeda. It probably helped Baghdadis so-called caliphate convince even more jihadists from the Caucasus region to defect.
The JMWA initially tried to remain neutral in the infighting between the Islamic State and al Qaeda. But the remaining JMWA cadres eventually swore allegiance to Al Nusrah Front, al Qaedas official branch in Syria, in Sept. 2015.
The US government designated Shishani as a terrorist in September 2014 and the State Department offered a reward for up to $5 million for information on his whereabouts.
In addition to holding senior positions within the Islamic State, Shishani also reportedly helped the group capture Mosul in the summer of 2014. In early June 2014, the Rewards for Justice page for Shishani reads, he ordered ISIL [Islamic State] members to travel from Syria to Iraq to retrieve vehicles, weapons, and ammunition. Shishani also issued an important communique ordering the general mobilization of all ISIL provinces to support the groups efforts in Mosul, Iraq, and to prepare for any emergencies.
If Amaqs report is accurate, then Shishani died defending the approach to Mosul just over two years after helping to seize it.
Bill Roggio is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Editor of FDD's Long War Journal. 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.
Baku, Azerbaijan, July 13
Trend:
Azerbaijans President Ilham Aliyev has congratulated Frances President Francois Hollande on the occasion of French National Day.
On my own behalf and on behalf of the Azerbaijani people, I heartily congratulate you and your people with French National Day, said Azerbaijans president in his congratulatory letter.
Azerbaijan attaches great importance to the relations with France, said the president.
He pointed out that the political, economic and cultural relations constantly develop between the two countries.
Our mutually beneficial cooperation is the bright example of the dynamic and comprehensive development of our bilateral relations, added President Aliyev.
We also pin great hopes that the efforts made by France as the co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group and personally by you for putting an end to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, which emerged as a result of Armenias territorial claims against Azerbaijan, for liberating the occupied lands and for return of over a million of our compatriots, who became refugees and IDPs, to their native lands, will soon yield results, said Azerbaijani president.
On this holiday, I wish you robust health, success in your activities, and peace and prosperity to the friendly French people, added President Aliyev.
The State Department announced today that two jihadists have been added to the US governments list of designated terrorists.
One of the two, Ayrat Nasimovich Vakhitov, was once detained at Guantanamo and was recently arrested by Turkish authorities. According to Voice of America, Vakhitov is among 30 people Turkish authorities say they have arrested in connection with the terrorist attack at Istanbuls Ataturk airport late last month. No terrorist organization has claimed responsibility for the assault on the airport, which left more than 40 people dead. But it is widely suspected to be the work of the Islamic State.
The second newly-designated terrorist is Aslan Avgazarovich Byutukaev, who leads the jihadists in Chechnya who are loyal to the Islamic States so-called Caucasus province.
Former Guantanamo Detainee
Vakhitov (pictured on the right) was held at Guantanamo for less than two years, from June 2002 until February 2004. He was then transferred to Russia. The State Departments designation page does not say that Vakhitov was once detained at the American facility in Cuba, but The Long War Journal has confirmed that he is the same individual.
The details of his story, as recounted in a leaked Joint Task Force Guantanamo (JTF-GTMO) threat assessment, are somewhat odd. Vakhitov was arrested by the Taliban on suspicion of espionage, and incarcerated at the Sarpuza prison complex in Kandahar, the leaked file reads. He was apparently transferred to Guantanamo because of his possible knowledge of an American citizen killed at that same prison while he was there.
JTF-GTMO ultimately concluded that Vakhitov was neither affiliated with al Qaeda, nor a Taliban leader. He was recommended for transfer. But JTF-GTMO also thought he would be remain imprisoned inside Russia.
Because of the Russian governments agreement to incarcerate this detainee upon his transfer, and provided that he remains incarcerated under the control of the Russian government, the detainee poses no future threat to the U.S. or its allies, JTF-GTMOs threat assessment reads.
The State Department says that Vakhitov is associated with Jaysh al-Muhajirin Wal Ansar (JMWA, or the Army of the Emigrants and Helpers). Part of the original JMWA organization joined the Islamic State, while the rest of the organization continued to operate independently before swearing allegiance to Al Nusrah Front in Sept. 2015. Al Nusrah is al Qaedas official branch in Syria and the Islamic States rival.
The State Departments designation page does not mention Vakhitovs reported arrest in Turkey, but does say he has used the internet to recruit militants to travel to Syria.
Islamic State leader in Chechnya
The State Department note Byutukaev was a prominent leader in the Islamic Caucasus Emirate (ICE). ICE is openly loyal to al Qaeda, but has suffered a string of defections to the Islamic State.
Russian security forces killed ICEs top emir and his two successors in less than two years time, from late 2013 until mid-2015. The decapitation strikes likely helped the Islamic State win the loyalty of some of ICEs most important remaining commanders, including Byutukaev.
Byutukaev, also known as Emir Khamzat, was a close confidant of Dokku Umarov and led ICEs Riyad-us-Saliheen Martyr Brigade. But Umarov perished sometime in late 2013 or early 2014. His replacement, Aliaskhab Kebekov, more commonly known as Ali Abu Muhammad al Dagestani, was subsequently killed by Russian forces in April 2015.
Less than two months after Kebekovs demise, Byutukaev officially broke with ICE, declaring himself to be one of Baghdadis men.
The pro-al Qaeda contingent in the Caucasus then suffered another blow when Abu Usman, Kebekovs successor, was hunted down in August 2015. Both Kebekov and Abu Usman were vocal opponents of Abu Bakr al Baghdadis Islamic State, so much so that al Qaedas main propaganda arm continues to feature clips of their anti-Baghdadi lectures in its productions.
High value targeting, as it is commonly called, is an essential part of any governments counterterrorism strategy. But it can lead to unintended consequences as well. In this instance, the deaths of ICEs top leaders probably helped drive Byutukaev and his comrades into the Islamic States arms. The large contingent of fighters from the Caucasus region in the Islamic States ranks in Iraq and Syria most likely added to the pressure on the jihadists back home to flip as well.
The State Department notes that Byutukaev is responsible for directing numerous deadly suicide bombing operations, including the January 2011 attack at the crowded international arrivals hall of Moscows Domodedovo Airport. The bombing killed at least 35 people and wounded more than 100 others.
Umarov, who was ICEs emir at the time, quickly claimed credit for the airport attack in a video released online.
Umarov also appeared in another video alongside Byutukaev (seen on the left in the photo included here) and a suicide bomber identified only as Saifullah. Umarov said that he had visited the Riyad-us-Saliheen Martyr Brigades base before sending Saifullah on a special operation, meaning the bombing at Domodedovo.
At the end of video, both Umarov and Byutukaev were shown embracing Saifullah. [See LWJ report, Caucasus Emirate leader threatens Russia with a year of blood and tears.]
Since becoming an ISIL [Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant] leader in June 2015, State reports, Byutukaev has planned attacks on behalf of the group. One of these operations took place in November 2015, when Russian Special Forces discovered a large bomb hidden on the side of the road in Kantyshevo, Ingushetiya, Russia.
The Caucasus province was announced in June 2015, after Islamic State spokesman Abu Muhammad al Adnani publicly accepted the oaths of allegiance sworn by jihadists throughout the region. The Caucasus branch is reportedly led by Rustam Asilderov, a former ICE leader who defected to the Islamic State in late 2014. Asilderovs defection set off a firestorm of controversy and bickering among the Caucasus jihadists.
In Sept. 2015, Foggy Bottom designated the Islamic States Caucasus province as a terrorist organization and also identified other ICE defectors who had joined its cause.
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.
According to reports from Somalia, al Qaedas official branch in East Africa has reportedly recaptured the strategic port city of Marka in the Lower Shabelle region. If confirmed, this is just the latest in a long back and forth for control over the city of Marka since 2012.
Shabaab first announced the regaining the city through its radio stations, as well as its social media accounts, three days ago. The jihadist group said that its forces reclaimed the city without a fight after African Union (AU) forces withdrew from the town. The news was first authenticated by the independent Radio Shabelle and residents of the city yesterday. However, the AU has denied withdrawing from the city. In a statement to Radio Shabelle, an AU official said that, This is false information, Al Shabaab did not take the city, AMISOM forces are just 800m away from the city center and doing their security patrol as always.
In a statement released today, the deputy governor of the Lower Shabelle region confirmed that it was the Somalia National Army that withdrew from the city and not the AU. The governor said that the withdraw was a tactical decision. Photos have also been released by Shabaab and are purportedly from within the last three days. However, AMISOM has tweeted that its forces have seen no militants in the city and scenes of its forces within Marka.
Shabaab first recaptured the city of Marka in February after AU and Somali military forces withdrew from the city. However, the city was retaken by government forces just days later. Shabaab originally lost control of Marka in August 2012 after the Kenyan military invaded southern Somalia in response to Shabaab raids in northern Kenya. While Shabaab lost control of the major population centers in southern Somalia during the Kenyan and African Union offensive, the group maintained its military strength and retreated to rural areas of the country. (See LWJ report, Shabaab regains ground in southern Somalia.)
Shabaab has been able to mount attacks in the region despite the presence of a large African Union mission in Somalia. The jihadist group has also launched numerous suicide assaults on heavily guarded hotels in Mogadishu this year. It has continuously targeted African Union troops in southern Somalia and has taken back some territory in the process. Shabaab has mounted operations in the central part of Somalia and into neighboring Kenya, as well. In late November, Shabaab said its forces temporarily took control over a Kenyan town bordering Somalia.
Photos reportedly showing Shabaab fighters in Marka:
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.
Baku, Azerbaijan, July 13
Trend:
Azerbaijans President Ilham Aliyev signed a decree July 13 on additional measures to improve the countrys business environment and its position in international ratings.
A special commission and a secretariat of the commission has been created in accordance with the decree in order to improve the business and investment environment, increase its attractiveness for local and foreign investors, ensure the sustainability of the recently achieved rapid development in the sphere of entrepreneurship and strengthening the competitiveness, as well as in order to even more improve Azerbaijans position in international ratings.
Azerbaijans First Deputy Prime Minister Yagub Eyyubov has been appointed the commissions chairman.
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Cars / Jets
You dont need to have your feet on the ground to enjoy the life of luxury, as proven by the new kings of the skies Emirates, Etihad and Qatar.
Jul 14, 2016 | By Vimi Haridasan
An airline is more than just a means to an end and Skytrax knows this all too well, hence it has been evaluating and recognizing airlines around the world for excellence since 1999. This year, Emirates is crowned king of the skies, as Worlds Best Airline while Etihad Airways bags top honors in luxury, as the Worlds Best First Class Airline 2016. Making it a triple-header for Gulf airlines, Qatar Airways is the Worlds Best Business Class Airline in 2016. No American airlines made the top 10 this year, which you can see at the bottom of this article.
Etihad didnt just bag the award for Worlds Best First Class Airline. For the second time in its history, Etihad took home two other titles: Worlds Best First Class Onboard Catering and Worlds Best First Class Airline Seat for its First Apartments and Suites.
For its part, Emirates returned to the top of the pile this year, displacing perennial rivals Qatar Airways (last years overall winner) and Singapore Airlines (second last year, third in 2016). Emirates was also crowned best airline for keeping passengers entertained, an award the carrier has won for the last 12 years.
Calum Laming, Vice President of Guest Experience at Etihad Airways, said The airline is tremendously proud that, based on the results of a huge global customer satisfaction survey, we have yet again been presented with these prestigious awards for the worlds finest First Class experience. He added that We have enhanced the experience even further this year through investment in our products, services and cabins and this is a welcome reward for those efforts.
With nine First Apartments aboard the A380, guests can relax tens of thousands of feet above the ground in spaces that are said to be 74% larger than Etihads current First Class suites. Within this 39-square-foot space, the airline has installed a Poltrona Frau leather armchair and ottoman that can create a 80.5-inch long bed. Guests also have a dedicated shower room who said travelling first class was anything but fancy?
To ensure that you never go hungry during a flight, the airline even offers up a sumptuous menu that features fine steaks, sides and sauces that are prepared by onboard Chefs. These professionally trained crew members can even craft a meal based on the request of each passenger for that bespoke dining experience.
Capping off the first class experience with Etihad and cementing its status as the Worlds Best Airline of 2016, is the First Class lounge & spa. Located at Abu Dhabi International Airport, first class passengers are given access to an array of services such as a fitness room. Cigar lounge, Six Senses Spa, Style & Shave barbers and even a nail bar.
Other awards categories see Cathay Pacific emerge tops for cabin cleanliness, which is always a plus, and marked yet another year of Asian airlines dominating the awards. Indeed, only Qantas and Lufthansa cracked the top 10 best in the world 2016, if one counts Turkish Airlines as Asian. Asian airlines were once again honored for their top-quality crews, with Garuda Indonesia winning Best Airline Cabin Staff for the third consecutive year, ahead of All Nippon Airways (second), Singapore Airlines (third), Thai Airways (fourth) and Eva Air (fifth, Taiwan).
In case you are curious, the top 10 airlines in the world for 2016 are as follows:
1. Emirates
2. Qatar Airways
3. Singapore Airlines
4. Cathay Pacific
5. ANA All Nippon Airways
6. Etihad Airways
7. Turkish Airlines
8. EVA Air
9. Qantas Airways
10. Lufthansa
The top First Class airlines are as follows:
1. Etihad Airways
2. Cathay Pacific
3. Air France
4. ANA All Nippon Airways
5. Singapore Airlines
6. Emirates
7. Lufthansa
8. Qatar Airways
9. Qantas Airways
10. Garuda Indonesia
To find out more about the Worlds Top 10 Airlines 2016, click here.
Style / Beauty & Wellness
The experts at mens fashion and lifestyle share with us four luxury fragrances for men that will not only add character but also shape your identity.
Jul 14, 2016 | By Staff Writer
Confidence comes from the perfect outfit and the right attitude. At Mens Folio Singapore, they know that what seals the deal is the right fragrance. We share an office with them and can always smell them before we see them yet they never overpower our senses, which is a compliment, we assure you. The experts at mens fashion and lifestyle share with us four luxury fragrances for men that will not only add character but also shape your identity.
To read on about the fragrances, visit Mens Folio Singapore.
Inside Hurtigruten's New Boutique Explorer Ship, MS Spitsbergen
The island is also where Hurtigruten's founder, Richard With, first started explorer tourism in the Arctic in 1896, so it holds particular significance. MS Spitsbergen joins Hurtigruten's fleet of explorer ships on Norway's coastline, and will set sail on her first voyage from Bergen on July 24, 2016.After spending her first season in Norway, MS Spitsbergen will alternate between the Norwegian coast and polar expeditions. From 2017, guests can sail with her to Greenland, Iceland, the Faroe and Shetland Islands, as well as to Arctic Canada. Here, passengers will discover L'Anse aux Meadows, a UNESCO World Heritage site where the first Vikings settlements were discovered in 1960.The Vikings crossed the North Sea and landed on the British Isles. Although they are often thought of as barbaric raiders, they were also accomplished explorers and settlers.Between year 800 and 1000, the feared and fabled Vikings carried out a number of expeditions to explore the North Atlantic Ocean. This expedition follows a route described in the Vinland Saga.This expedition includes the chance to visit two national parks, several different settlements and intriguing cities. Along the way, guests will get to experience remarkable archaeological remains and get an insight into the interesting history of the Vikings.This voyage explores the unspoiled regions on both sides of Baffin Bay. From Newfoundland and Labrador in Canada; via the grand landscape of Baffin Island; to Greenland where guests can touch an iceberg with their bare hands and marvel at the power of nature in Ilulissat Icefjord.A unique Arctic expedition exploring the northwest coast of Greenland, along the edge of the Greenland Ice Sheet, which stretches 1,500 miles north, covering up to 80 per cent of the island.Guests can discover the spectacular and un-spoilt scenery of Greenland and visit Iceland's capital of Reykjavik, and the charming Faroe and Shetland Islands.Mythical Iceland is the perfect destination for adventurers looking to explore wilderness, wildlife, history and settlements.Visit website:
Baku, Azerbaijan, July 13
Trend:
Mr. Juan Rodrigo Labardini Flores, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the United Mexican States to the Republic of Azerbaijan, visited Baku Higher Oil School (BHOS) and met with Rector Elmar Gasimov.
Briefing about the higher school Rector Gasimov touched upon the mutual relations between the two countries and underlined the importance of the relations in the field of education and research.
The Rector also spoke about the advanced teaching methodologies and tools applied at the higher school for training highly qualified specialists, as well as about the effectiveness of integrating theoretical knowledge and practical skills through the internship opportunities created for the students at the SOCAR structures, international companies working in Azerbaijan and local institutions.
He expressed the schools interest in expanding its international partnership relations, including those with Mexican institutions and universities operating in relevant sectors. The Rector also said that BHOS had already started international admission and wide opportunities existed for Malaysian students to study at BHOS.
Ambassador Labardini Flores expressed his honor to visit the higher school and extended his gratitude to the Rector for the warm welcome.
Underlining that the potentials of the relations, especially in education and research are very promising, the Ambassador expressed his commitment to render his support in initiating comprehensive bilateral relations.
Later, the Ambassador was awarded the Honorary Guest Diploma on behalf of BHOS.
Baku, Azerbaijan, July 13
By Azad Hasanli Trend:
Azerbaijans Economy Minister Shahin Mustafayev has said that it is planned to invest more than 1.1 billion Azerbaijani manats (1.5549 AZN/USD on July 13) in the countrys industrial parks and areas.
He was addressing the ceremony for signing the UN-Azerbaijan Partnership Framework for 2016-2020 in Baku.
It is planned to invest more than one billion manats in Sumgait Chemical Industrial Park, 30 million manats in Balakhani industrial park, 100 million manats in Mingachevir industrial park and 40 million manats in Neftchala area, said Mustafayev.
The minister noted that 17 entrepreneurs obtained incentive documents as part of implementation of projects worth 180 million manats.
These measures will allow opening thousands of news jobs, he added. Meanwhile, there will be new spheres of production, for example, the production of medicines will begin.
Development of entrepreneurship
Mustafayev also noted that the demands of new economic conditions, which emerged due to the recent complex regional and global economic processes, have led to the need to speed up economic diversification and to conduct preventive measures to support entrepreneurship.
Strategic decisions have been made for development of entrepreneurship and the improvement of the business environment in the country under instructions of the Azerbaijani president, he added.
The minister also said reforms have been accelerated in all areas of the economy: logistics, banking sector, finance, agriculture, transportation and others.
Monitoring of business activities was stopped for two years, he noted.
As a result, only 56 inspections were carried out in the first half of 2016, while this figure exceeded 40,000 in the first half of 2015, added the minister.
US-Azerbaijan Partnership Framework
Mustafayev also touched upon the US-Azerbaijan Partnership Framework for 2016-2020.
He said the new program covers three directions the promotion of sustainable and inclusive economic development, which also includes support for economic diversification and decent labor; strengthening the institutional capacity and effective public and social services; modernization of environmental management and the support to increasing resilience against risks and natural disasters.
Nagorno-Karabakh conflict
During his speech, the minister also touched upon the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
One of the main issues in the relations with the UN are the four resolutions adopted by the UN Security Council in connection with the occupation of the Nagorno-Karabakh and surrounding districts by Armenia, said Mustafayev. The resolutions reaffirmed Azerbaijans territorial integrity, the need for immediate ceasefire, stopping military actions and withdrawing the occupation troops from the Azerbaijani lands.
Unfortunately, Armenia has not yet implemented the provisions of the resolutions, he added.
The year of ASEAN
Some people are calling this the year of ASEAN, and I found out why at the AIPPI ASEAN Regional Meeting in Kuala Lumpur earlier this year.
Last year's launch of the ASEAN Economic Community, and ambitious plans for IP reforms (including membership of international systems such as the Madrid Protocol) promise to bring new opportunities in the form of harmonisation and greater efficiency. But they also pose challenges to IP owners, not least the development of free movement of goods.
An introduction to ASEAN is the cover story in our latest issue (subscription or free trial required for full access), which also includes interviews with the heads of the IP offices of the Philippines and Malaysia. But this is just part of what will be a series of online articles and interviews over the coming year as there are further developments in this important region, which accounts for 9% of the world's population. For all the latest analysis, check and bookmark our dedicated page: managingip.com/ASEAN.
An extra big issue
Award winner Lorne Lipkus Award winner Lorne Lipkus
There's much else for readers in our extra big mid-year issue (call it the summer special issue if you're in the northern hemisphere, or the winter special if you're in the south):
Kingsley Egbuonu reveals the winners of the 2016 Global Anti-Counterfeiting Awards held in Paris, which we were pleased to sponsor for the first time.
Tim Bamford and Karen Fong share extracts from their diaries ahead of the recent Collyer Bristow IP debate on online courts and IP litigation.
In our fifth hypothetical UPC scenario, Laura Whiting and Inmaculada Lorenzo tackle a tricky issue involving pharmaceutical patent infringement, and a potential infringer in Spain (which is outside the UPC). Remember you can read all our UPC coverage at managingip.com/UPC.
Eugene Arievich and Yuri Pylnev review the impact of recent changes to patent, utility model and design law in Russia. Look our for another article on Russia's IP Court, which will be posted online soon.
In China, Xiaopeng Zhao explains why recent court decisions on trade names are good news for overseas companies.
We have a rare contribution on Uganda, looking at a controversial High Court decision in a trade mark case. Chris Walters tries to make sense of it.
In the first of a series of articles by members of the MARQUES IP Outer Borders Team, Stella Syrianos, Laetitia Lagarde and Nikos Prentoulis discuss tensions between trade marks and freedom of expression, with some eye-opening examples (right).
In another branding-focused piece we ask: is it safe to bring abandoned trade marks back to life? Carrie Bradley provides a European perspective, and Tony Dylan-Hyde contrasts the position in the US.
Genomics could be the next IP litigation battleground. Dominic Adair and Annsley Merelle Ward discuss why in-house counsel need to be prepared.
The new CIPA President Tony Rollins breaks down the figures on SPCs, and examines what lessons they provide as the European Commission considers introducing a Unitary right. His analysis is particularly timely given the UK's Brexit vote, as supplementary protection for pharma products is one of the key IP issues to be resolved as the UK prepares to leave the EU (see managingip.com/Brexit for all our Brexit coverage).
Finally, in a sponsored piece, Charlotta Vink and Louise Tottie of Valea consider the latest cases on EPO practice relating to amendments under Article 123(2) EPC.
INTA keynote speaker Diane Nelson INTA keynote speaker Diane Nelson
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Kochi: As per the investigation agencies, SIMI suicidal bombers, known as 'ansars' were collaborating with the terror outfit Islamic State in south India. After working in SIMI, the trained militants are ready to work in any terror outfit including including IS, Al-Queda and Indian Mujahideen.
There were also reports that the SIMI members conducted many secret meetings in Aluva. Alab Jeb Afridi, who got arrested by the NIA for his alleged involvement in planning a blast in Kochi is also an ISIS member.
New Delhi: India on Monday reacted sharply to Pakistan's comments on Kashmir situation in the wake of the killing of Hizbul leader Burhan Wani by saying that Pakistan have no right to comment on India's external affairs.
He also added that if the armed and paramilitary forces have to take action to protect their lives and to secure law and order, they will do it and no one had the right to question it. Last day, Pakistan said that the extrajudicial killing of Wani and other innocent Kashmiris was deplorable and condemnable.
Kannur: Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Wednesday said that political vendetta is behind the two recent murders in Kannur, partially owning up his party's role behind the violence. Mr Vijayan added that about ten BJP workers were involved in the murder of CV Dhanraj. Thus killing of BJP worker Ramachandran was a retaliation.
He was speaking on a adjournment motion notice issued by K Muralidharan by pointing the complete breakdown of peace in the state. He also added that the investigations are on as per the complaint filed by Ramachandran's wife.
Dhanraj was brutally attacked at his house by some unidentified assailants. Later in a suspected retaliatory attack C Ramachandran, a BJP worker was murdered allegedly by the CPI-M activists.
Profile Profile History Copagaz Distribuidora de Gas S/A is a private Brazilian company that operates in the LPG bottling and distribution sector. We are proud to be the fifth largest company in this industry in Brazil, according to the National Syndicate of LPG Distributors (Sindigas), with a 55-year track record of growth and success. Founded by its current President, Ueze Elias Zahran, Copagaz has decades of solid business behind it, in addition to excellence in the commercialization of its products and in serving the needs of its diverse constituencies. Aware of its role and its power of economic, social and environmental transformation, the company is always seeking ways to move its business forward with ethics and sustainability. Mission "To bottle and distribute LPG, to satisfy the energy needs of a growing number of people and companies, with quality and at a fair price. To respect the environment, be fair to our partners, create satisfaction among our staff members, strive for the profitability and growth expected by our shareholders, and support our distribution network in such a way that end users of LPG are ensured of being supplied with convenience, practicality, safety and speed." Vision "To be recognized as a company that is concerned about the needs of its customers and the excellence of its service as a model of administrative efficiency, ethical conduct and social responsibility, as a worthwhile investment, and as the best place for its staff members to develop professionally." Values Satisfaction and safety of the consumer;
Ethical conduct and respect in relations with competitors and partners;
Developing the value of staff members: recognition, opportunities and professional growth;
Compliance with the laws in force;
Social and environmental responsibility: respect for neighbouring communities, implementation of socio-cultural projects, respect for the environment.
Operational Structure Operational Structure Copagaz Distribuidora de Gas S/A With its headquarters in the city of Sao Paulo, capital of the state of Sao Paulo, Copagaz is present in 18 Brazilian states as well as the Federal District, serving residential and industrial clients. The company directly employs 1,604 employees and operates in more than 1,255 municipalities. Senior management and directors are only present at the main office. Copagaz operating units break down as follows: 13 Bottling Terminals: commercial operating units engaged in the storage, bottling and distribution of LPG for dealers and industrial, commercial, rural and public clients as well as large residential buildings;
11 Advance Copagaz Depots (DACs): units for stocking of LPG in canisters for resupply of the closest dealers. This structure reduces freight costs, vehicular emissions and delivery time, optimizing the logistics of product distribution, with the DAC of Ibirite project to become a Bottling Terminal currently under way (it is still considered a DAC);
1 Canister factory: the Industria Brasileira de Vasilhame (Ibrava) operating unit inaugurated in 2010 forming part of the structure of Copagaz, allowing the company to engage in all phases of LPG commercialization;
1 Dealership;
1 Maintenance Workshop. Flow of Distribution 1. LPG is produced by refineries, from the refinement of crude petroleum or natural gas;
2. From the refineries, the LPG arrives at Copagaz via pipelines or tanker-trucks ;
3. At Copagaz operating units, the LPG is stored in large pressure vessels, from which it is transferred in a liquid state to the bottling process in transportable receptacles of various kinds (2 to 13 kg canisters and 20 to 90 kg cylinders) or for bulk distribution, via Bob-Tail trucks ;
4. Delivery to residential clients is carried out by dealers , business partners working in retail, who acquire the canisters and make them available for sale to end-consumers;
5. Service for industrial clients, large buildings, small and medium-sized businesses and agricultural enterprises is carried out by Bob-Tail trucks or autotankers, which refill the portable and stationary receptacles installed at clients' facilities.
Corporate Governance Corporate Governance Corporate Governance and Transparency Transparency, accountability and corporate responsibility are good governance practices that Copagaz is adopting in all of its spheres of activity, with the aim of strengthening its own strategic management. In this way, the company is voluntarily following the recommendations of the Brazilian Institute of Corporate Governance (IBGC). To guarantee these practices and ensure the company's alignment with the interests of its various constituencies, Copagaz management is built upon three main committees: the Administrative-Financial Committee, the Ethics and Conduct Committee, and the Business Sustainability Committee. This work is of great importance, and the interaction among the three has proved essential to the strategic functioning of the company, since it makes it possible to take into account risks, impacts and opportunities at all levels of company activity. Accordingly, the composition of the committees seeks to optimize capacity for serious and coordinated work, and each committee has employees from a variety of different departments. Administrative-Financial Committee Created in 2002, the Administrative-Financial Committee holds weekly meetings with the departments of Finance, Accounting, Human Resources, Information Technology, Legal Affairs, Logistics and Sales Administration to map out the guidelines for company business. The meetings address the company's financial projections and results, accounting, the market, oversight of expenses, legislation and other matters of relevance for the management of Copagaz. Committee on Business Sustainability Created in 2006, the Business Sustainability Committee tackles the goal of engaging the different departments of Copagaz in issues relating to sustainability. Thus, it performs the task of consolidating the company's strategic sustainability management, seeking to strengthen integration among social, environmental and economic aspects. To this end, it has been concentrating its efforts in programs and actions geared towards increasing the company's energy efficiency, expanding its economic gains and reducing the impacts generated by its business dealings. Organizing its activities through biweekly meetings, in addition to coordinating actions using the policy of sustainability and environmental protection as a guide, the committee also has the duty of preparing the company's Sustainability Reports. It is made up of representatives of various departments, such as Engineering, Logistics, Human Resources, Marketing, IT, Sales, Industry and Accounting. The chairmanship of the committee is held by a member of the Advisory Office of the President. Subcommittees All business units at Copagaz have an Internal Business Sustainability Committee, made up of staff members from different departments and referred to as Sub-committees. Questions and requests are referred to the Business Sustainability Committee which takes the appropriate measures. The purpose of these bodies is to coordinate in each business unit the conduct of activities involving business sustainability, while also seeking to engage staff members in the issue of sustainability, as well as the initiatives being implemented. Ethics and Conduct Committee With the participation of members of the Legal Affairs Department, Auditing, Information Technology, and the Advisory Office of the President and Human Resources, the Ethics and Conduct Committee of Copagaz is charged with the internal dissemination of standards of conduct at the company, dealing with possible questions concerning ethical issues and judging violations of its Code of Ethics and Conduct. Overall, its function is to ensure an ethical orientation in the practices of Copagaz and its staff members, in addition to assuming the role of explaining the company's posture to its different constituencies.
Marie Claire newsletter Celebrity news, beauty, fashion advice, and fascinating features, delivered straight to your inbox! Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Thank you for signing up to . You will receive a verification email shortly. There was a problem. Please refresh the page and try again. By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions (opens in new tab) and Privacy Policy (opens in new tab) and are aged 16 or over.
Plus, how to wear it all year round
The off-the-shoulder (opens in new tab) trend has experienced unprecedented popularity this summer. Its been years since a look has been so ubiquitously adored - everyone from Kendall Jenner (opens in new tab) to Duchess Catherine (opens in new tab) is on board - and reincarnated into tops, dresses (opens in new tab), jumpsuits, and even swimwear. This morning, we tried to pose the Have we reached peak? question in the Marie Claire offices, but unanimously agreed that an off-shoulder-anything is too damn flattering to ever tire of.
It started on the spring/summer 2016 catwalks and soon took over Instagram, where cult shoulder-less tops including Magda Butruyms delicious floral blouse (as seen below on RHW), and Johanna Ortiz 'Tulum' top, had us booking holidays just so we had a reasonable excuse to start building a shoulder-baring wardrobe in a wash-out British summer. New pseudonyms soon emerged, like Bardot (opens in new tab) or Cold Shoulder, but call it what you will this little crowd pleaser was going nowhere.
Lyst has seen a whopping 583% increase in searches for off-the-shoulder styles since this time last year, Sarah Tanner, an NYC-based publicist for the ecommerce and fashion analytics site tells us, confirming the collective fervour.
Its most obvious appeal lies in its ability to simultaneously cover up parts of our body we may not enjoy exposing, and showing off the parts wed flaunt more often if we could, frankly. If you dont love showing the tops of your arms, but are sick of melting on the morning commute, an off-the-shoulder silhouette takes care of everything with its breezy neckline and numerous sleeve options that range from elbow-length, to XL chipped-mani-concealing bell cuffs. Meanwhile, flaunting our clavicle - a body part that is far more attractive than its name would suggest - exposes two of our daintiest erogenous zones. Collar-bones and shoulder-tops are sexy in a less obvious way (opens in new tab) to cleavage.
According to some more Lyst.com (opens in new tab) intel, the piece atop all of our wish-lists is Tibi's Off The Shoulder Dress (opens in new tab), a simple long-sleeved cream shift dress. Shopbop.com have also seen a spike in sales for pieces from this shoulder-centric American label. We spotted the off-the-shoulder trend early on starting with Amy Smilovics solid poplin styles for Tibi, Caroline Maguire, Fashion Director at Shopbop revealed. She and her trendspotters are now on the hunt for the next, next-big-thing. At this point, the off-the-shoulder top is a staple, a 'basic' in our girls wardrobe, and were excited to see her experimenting with the next big trend: the one-shoulder top. A close aesthetic cousin of the off-the-shoulder top, next season well all be coveting single shoulder styles.
You heard it here first, people.
So, why not tap into this trend early. Tibis new Triacetate Asymmetrical one-shouldered top (380) will arrive on Shopbop at the end of July, and in the meantime Acne (opens in new tab), Marques Almeida (opens in new tab) and Johanna Ortiz (opens in new tab) have some gorgeous mono-shoulder styles available. But dont feel as though you need to dispose of your trusty off-shoulder pieces. A little clever laying will see your this bad boy right through to winter. And by bad boy we mean new basics. Just layer a cashmere poloneck, cotton tee or frilly Victorian blouses, underneath and wear a pair of tailored trousers beneath off-shoulder dresses. Or, most genius of all, turn it into a one-shoudlered top by simply pulling one sleeve up and pushing the other down - a little jaunty layering can go a long way with this one.
Scroll on to see some frugal one-shouldered styling in action...
South Korean shipbuilder Hyundai Heavy Industries said on Wednesday that its affiliate aims to sell its brokerage unit Hi Investment & Securities by the end of this year.
The affiliate, Hyundai Mipo Dockyard, holds an 85 percent stake in Hi Investment & Securities.
In June, Hyundai Heavy Industries announced a plan to sell its non-core assets, as the shipbuilder is grappling with a global slump in trade and commodities, plus rising competition from China.
(Reporting by Hyunjoo Jin; Editing by Gopakumar Warrier)
Baku, Azerbaijan, July 13
Trend:
The World Education Leaders 4th Forum has taken place in Busan city of Southern Korea within 3-8 July. 51 Universitys leaders from 23 countries of Europe, Asia, Central America and Africa attended the forum on Today and the Future of Character Education.
UNEC Rector, Professor Adalat Muradov made a speech on The establishment of the Work on Character Education in Universities and its impact to Students in the first session of the forum. Rector spoke about the created condition for the formation Character Education and steps taken at UNEC.
Basic direction of Character Education forming certain character in students and aimed at improving a number of features in the process of application at UNEC was focused on. Information about the Innovative Business Incubator that serves to realize their start-up ideas and gain a business character was delivered.
Services provided by the Career Center targeted in the development of futures successful cadres were also emphasized. Rector also noted the student organizations activities which contribute to the creation of exemplary character in the students. Rector also said that the organization of the training for the people with disabilities is the direction given special attention and the center created at the university provides services to the formation of the people from this category as a person with a unique character.
UNEC Rector, Professor Adalat Muradov made proposals on the effects of Character Education to the students at the end of his speech. Rector said that the promotion of core values, creation of opportunities for new curriculum, encouragement of the student motivation significantly, achieve the integration of culture and education in universities, as well as the cooperation of parents with the higher education institutions will make effective the force of Character Education.
A wide range of reports on the importance of Character Education for universities and students, expectations in the social changes and improvement directions, sustainable educational innovations and the cases applied and gained success in universities were heard and exchange of experiences were made within the sessions.
UNEC Rector, Professor Adalat Muradov held meetings with a number of university administrations and made discussions on the export of higher education within his trip.
Meeting with the Malaysian University of Malaya official Rohana binti Yusof, UNEC Rector gained the agreement on bilateral cooperation between the two higher institutions. The Memorandums of Understanding between UNEC and the Chandigarh University of India, International Balkan University of Macedonia and Caleb University of Nigeria were signed and the issues of exporting UNEC economic education services to these universities were discussed within the framework of the trip.
UNEC is the brand of Azerbaijan State University of Economics. The brand of UNEC has been registered and patented by the State Committee on Standardization, Metrology and Patent on January 21 2016. In brand approval 41st class of special classification on-educating, ensuring teaching process, organization of entertaining, sport and cultural-educational events and 42nd class on- scientific and technological services and the related researches, industrial analysis and services on scientific researches, technical and program provision of computers and their improvement have been based on by the State Committee on Standardization, Metrology and Patent.
Panama and Cuba, both in the midst of growth and international expansion, are examples of two different economic models that are helping to attract foreign companies through government initiatives providing investor security.
Seeking to generate business opportunities and strengthen corporate and institutional ties between the Cuban and Panamanian logistics communities, the Port of Barcelona said it has planned a multi-sector trade mission to Panama City and Havana from November 19 to 25.
Panama, a business center and a logistics hub
Panama, whose capital hosts a regional business center, now has one of the regions' highest growth forecasts. It offers foreign companies, including importers, exporters and investors, a stable economic and legal framework as well as institutional and private services aimed at economic development. In addition, its tax-free zones have special arrangements to help foreign companies and multinationals to set up in its territory.
Making full use of its privileged geographical location, the country is undertaking significant infrastructure investments to position itself as Central America's main logistics hub. The opening of the Panama Canal expansion on June 26 has put the country back on the international trade map. Today the canal is again the main link between the Atlantic and the Pacific, facilitating the passage of post-Panamax containerships sailing the main intercontinental routes. But the canal expansion also boosts Panama's role as a logistics hub for traffic between the two main trade areas of the Caribbean (covering Central, North and South America) and the U.S. East Coast.
Around this important infrastructure, the Panamanian State is implementing an Interoceanic Area Master Plan covering a total of 50,000 hectares that includes two new container terminals on the Atlantic (Panama Colon Container Terminal) and Pacific coast (Corozal Container Terminal) in addition to the 15 state ports and 16 private terminals already up and running; new terminals for ro-ro and liquefied natural gas traffic; a logistics park covering 1,200 hectares; a network of 19 Tax-free Zones and three Special Economic Zones; developing refrigerated logistics centers; and various infrastructures serving ships and the maritime industry.
The country also has four major airports, the most important of which is Tocumen International Airport, which today is the leading Central American airport for passenger traffic. The expansion of this airport, which includes 325 hectares of logistics area, will help position Panama as a regional leader in air cargo.
Panama is also making significant investments in its internal communications network (motorways, bridges, railways and underground railway) and is strongly fostering other strategic sectors such as trade and tourism to complement the country's growth.
Cuba seeks foreign investment
Cuba's economic model is immersed in a process of change. Reforms to foster foreign investment have materialized in the form of a more secure legal framework facilitating operations for international entrepreneurs. A highlight: the new 2014 Foreign Investment Act and Mariel Special Development Area, reforms to boost the competitiveness and productivity of the local economy.
The country is also starting to thaw its relations with Europe, and especially with the U.S., which could help boost its regional role. Located in the heart of the Caribbean, the island has a network of 17 ports that act as the gateway to the east coast of North America and throughout the Caribbean.
Last year the Cuban State published the so-called Opportunities Portfolio listing the priority sectors in the country, which offer great business opportunities and optimal conditions for foreign investment. To handle the growth in tourist numbers expected over the coming years, mainly from the U.S. and Canada, the State is promoting investment in the agriculture and food sectors; construction, infrastructure and transport; ICT; and energy and waste management.
The government is also developing the Mariel Special Development Area, providing 465.4 km2 for companies to set up, and today it is one of the most ambitious economic development projects in Latin America. One key initiative of the Cuban government is the conversion of Havana Bay. The project (which aims to open up old industrial and port areas to the public, transforming them into a large leisure, culture and tourist area similar to the model of Barcelona's Port Vell) offers many business opportunities for investors.
Business mission
The Port of Barcelona, which acts as a foreign trade facilitator for companies, is capitalizing on the model of its 17 previous missions and this year is organizing the multi-sector trade mission to Panama and Cuba. The mission, organized in collaboration with ACCIO, the General Council of Chambers of Catalonia and Fomento del Trabajo Nacional, aims to strengthen business and institutional ties between the two Caribbean countries and Catalonia and to generate new business opportunities that can contribute to internationalizing their economies and promoting Barcelona's Logistics Community.
In recent years the port has continued to commit to Latin American markets, such as Brazil, Colombia, Mexico and Chile, with missions that have generated growth in traffic and new business among logistics communities, and have been especially well valued by participants. This year, the Catalan delegation will be chaired by Josep Rull, Regional Minister for Planning and Sustainability, and Sixte Cambra, President of the Port of Barcelona. In line with the previous missions, the delegation will share an agenda with a business mission organized by Catalan Regional ministry for Enterprise and Knowledge and ACCIO.
Among the actions prior to the mission to inform interested companies about the opportunities offered by the country, the port organized a seminar entitled Panama, a strategic platform for Latin America last June and will hold a seminar entitled Cuba 2016: preparing for the future, to be held on Thursday, September 8, which will also cover issues relating to the mission.
Britains largest independent ship repairer Burgess Marine said it has partnered with Kent-based European Active Projects Ltd. (EAPL) to manage and operate Ramsgate Slipways in a 50/50 joint venture.
Burgess Marine and EAPL have worked together as customer and supplier for very many years, and both companies have workshops in the locality for quick response times and service.
The Ramsgate Slipways site is to be managed jointly by John Webb and Geoff Barrett from Burgess Marine and Andy Corbett from EAPL.
The footprints principle asset is its No.1 slipway which is 60 meters long, with a maximum 12 meter beam and a 350 ton displacement.
The site will undergo investment and the local customer base is keen, said Steve Jones, Managing Director of EAPL. By working with Burgess Marine were covering all the bases. The reality is that we can comfortably manage the smaller splash and dash dockings right the way up to major ship repair projects. Between EAPL and Burgess Marine weve got the complete suite of expertise from technical management through to the basic areas of marine engineering.
Working with EAPL is great news; weve got it all covered, said Nicholas Warren, the Chief Executive Officer of Dover-based Burgess Marine. We want to support local operators, the port, wind farm support vessels, passing tonnage and with Brexit well potentially be better value for money than docking on the continent too. Ramsgate Slipways is geographically proven and we genuinely look forward to working with EAPL and developing the business further.
United Arab Shipping Co (UASC) is considering the sale of its stake in United Arab Chemical Carriers (UACC) for oil and petrochemicals as part of its plans to merge with German container line Hapag-Lloyd, says Bloomberg.
UASC hopes the sale will fetch over $600m, but deliberations are ongoing. Bank of America Corp has been tasked with finding buyers for the holding, says the report.
The company held 95 percent of UACC according to the chemical shipping firms 2012 financial report, the most recent one available on the companys website. No final decisions about the sale have been made, the people said.
UACC, founded in 2007, is a mid-sized operator with a fleet of two dozen tankers. While container and bulk carrier markets have been plagued by oversupply and depressed freight rates in recent years, the tanker market has performed better as vessels are used to store cheap oil.
Combined, Hapag-Lloyd and UASC would rank fifth in an industry dominated by Danish shipping giant A.P. Moeller-Maersk A/S.
The deal would also give Hapag-Lloyd immediate access to some of the largest container ships available.
UASC operates six vessels with a capacity of 18,800 standard 20-foot containers, a size the German carrier lacks.
In an official handover ceremony at the Den Helder Naval Base, the Royal Netherlands Navy took formal delivery of three Damen ASD 2810 Hybrid tugs. In addition to providing an increase in ship handling capacity, the new vessels are also installed with hybrid propulsion systems. This will contribute to Dutch Ministry of Defence ambitions regarding sustainable operations of the Navy.
The acquisition of the three Damen tugs is part of the Royal Netherlands Navys ongoing fleet renewal programme. The hybrid vessels, named Noordzee, Waddenzee and Zuiderzee, can sail under diesel-direct, diesel-electric or fully-electric power.
This will result in a significant increase in fuel efficiency and reduction of exhaust emissions. For example, when sailing in fully-electric mode possible for up to one hour at a speed of 4 knots the vessels will have zero emissions.
This is highly relevant to the Ministry of Defence Operational Energy Strategy. Recently presented to the Dutch government, this concerns future emissions targets and dependence on diesel as a principle fuel.
New generation of tug
When sailing under diesel power, the Damen ASD 2810 Hybrid can store any electrical energy that is not immediately used in its battery pack. This can subsequently be used to sustain vessel operating systems or for use in electric sailing mode.
In addition to their hybrid capabilities, the new tugs are also more powerful than the vessels that they are replacing. The Damen ASD 2810 Hybrid packs a 60-tonne bollard pull: considerably more than the 22-tonne bollard pull of the ongoing Linge-class of tug.
This increase in bollard pull will support safe and efficient ship handling operations of the largest vessels of the Royal Netherlands Navy fleet, such as HNLMS Johan de Witt, HNLMS Rotterdam and the 204-metre long Joint Support Ship HNLMS Karel Doorman in all weather conditions.
Now that the tugs are in active service, Damen Shipyards Den Helder will perform an ongoing maintenance programme of all three vessels. This is a notable fact because this task is normally
undertaken by the Royal Netherlands Navy itself. This is the first time that Damen has been called upon for ongoing maintenance works for the Dutch Navy for an extended period.
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Hapag-Lloyd remains the market leader among liner shipping companies in Canada. In the past year, the shipping company saw its market share increase to over 18%.
Hapag-Lloyd is the largest liner shipping company in terms of throughput volume at both the Port of Vancouver and the Port of Halifax. Hapag-Lloyd handles more containers in Montreal than in Los Angeles and Long Beach combined the largest port complex in North America.
Deepening the channel is an important topic at the Port of Montreal, as it is in Hamburg. In order to be able to sail the Saint Lawrence River, which is quite shallow in places, with increasing transport volumes, Hapag-Lloyd has included some modern wide-body ships in its Montreal services, which can offer more capacity due to their low draught.
Hapag-Lloyd has three exclusive services that connect Quebec and Europe, which call only at Montreal on the Canadian side (SLCS1 and SLCS2 to Northern Europe and MCA to the Mediterranean). Additionally, three Europe services also call at Halifax on Canadas east coast and six services at Vancouver on the west coast (to/from Asia and Australia/Oceania).
A visit by the Premier of Quebec, Philippe Couillard, to Hapag-Lloyd was conducted as part of the efforts to make the Port of Montreal more efficient and competitive.
The Premier learned about the strategic plans for the Canadian market in discussions with the Executive Board and presented the maritime strategy of the Canadian province of Quebec.
Following this strategy, Quebec wants to make better use of the economic potential of the Saint Lawrence River and secure it over the long term mainly in relation to cargo transport and logistics.
Its not just been since our 2006 fusion with the Canadian shipping company CP Ships that the Port of Montreal has been one of the most important ports in our global portfolio. We are naturally quite interested in the ports further development and infrastructure, said Anthony J. Firmin, Chief Operating Officer at Hapag-Lloyd.
He added: We fully support the maritime strategy and see in it a great deal of potential for the Port of Montreal and all maritime players involved.
Back in 1861, the ships of Hamburg-Amerikanische Packetfahrt-Actien-Gesellschaft (Hapag), which was founded in 1847, travelled to Canada for the first time and services to and from Canada have now been running on a regular basis since 1884.
1812 - The frigate, USS Essex, commanded by Capt. David Porter, captures the merchant brig, Lamprey, in the Atlantic.
1854 - The sloop of war, USS Cyane, bombards San Juan del Norte (Greytown), Nicaragua, in retaliation for ill-treatment of U.S. citizens. Marines and Sailors also seize weapons and powder in retribution for an attack on U.S. Consular officials for U.S. refusal to pay reparation.
1939 - Rear Adm. Richard Byrd is appointed to command the 1939-1941 U.S. Antarctic Service Expedition. Under objectives outlined by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Byrd establishes an east and west base and holds a wide range of scientific observations until international tensions end the expedition in early 1941.
1942 - USS Lansdowne (DD 486) sinks the German submarine (U 153) off the Panama Canal Zone.
1943 - TBF aircraft (VC 13) based on board USS Core (ACV 13) sinks German submarine U 487, 720 miles south-southwest of Fayal, Azores.
1943 - The Japanese are intercepted from landing reinforcements in the Solomon Islands, resulting in the night Battle of Kolombangara. During the battle, the U.S. Navy loses USS Gwin (DD 433).
1991 - USS Kentucky (SSBN 737) is commissioned at Groton, Conn., the third Navy vessel to be named after the Bluegrass state. The Thoroughbred of the Fleet is an Ohio-class ballistic missile submarine.
1996 - USS Wyoming (SSBN 742) is commissioned at Groton, Conn. The Ohio-class ballistic missile submarine is the fourth named Wyoming and is homeported at Kings Bay, Ga.
(Source: Naval History and Heritage Command, Communication and Outreach Division)
While the nature of the United Kingdoms future trading relationship with the European Union (EU) will take some time to become clear, it is important to realise that in the immediate aftermath of the result of the UKs recent EU referendum, says a report from Watson, Farley and Williams.
Nothing has changed in terms of the trading relationship and the movement of people and goods between the EU and the UK and the laws which apply to your maritime business and contractual arrangements.
As the political machinations play out, it is clear that Article 50 will not be invoked until a new Prime Minister is in place, which will not be until at least September.
Once invoked, the UK has an extendable period of two years to negotiate new trade arrangements with the EU. During this negotiating period the UK remains a full member of the EU and subject to all the related rules and regulations.
While trade relationships of various forms between the UK and EU have been suggested as possibilities by different people, organisations and publications, ultimately it is difficult at this stage to know what form that relationship will take, or to be able to advise in detail on the full potential impact of a Brexit from the EU for the maritime sector.
The extent to which changes resulting from Brexit will impact the shipping industry will depend heavily on the relationship of individual companies with the UK and the EU and, ultimately, as for all sectors, where the discussions between the UK and the other EU member states finally come out on the key issues of free movement and access to the Single Market.
It is, at present, business as usual and, as the maritime industry is a global, predominantly US dollar industry many may not directly feel the impact of Brexit. We will be watching developments closely to determine how they will affect our clients.
Indonesia wants to send hundreds of fishermen to the Natuna Islands to assert its sovereignty over nearby areas of the South China Sea to which China says it also has claims.
President Joko Widodo has launched an unprecedented campaign to bolster fishing, oil exploration and defence facilities around the island chain after a series of face-offs between the Indonesian navy and Chinese fishing boats.
"We are aware that if we don't do this there could be many claims that disrupt the integrity of Indonesian territory," Chief Maritime Minister Rizal Ramli told reporters on Wednesday.
The announcement of the plan came a day after the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague rejected China's historic claims to almost all of the South China Sea and said it had breached the Philippines' sovereign rights by endangering its ships and fishing and oil projects.
Indonesia is not part of the broader dispute over claims in the South China Sea and it has remained neutral following the ruling, calling for peace and stability.
But Indonesia objects to China's inclusion of waters around Natuna being included within its "nine-dash line", a demarcation on China's maps to show its claims.
Ramli said he would seek cabinet approval this month for the relocation of fishermen from the crowded island of Java to Natuna.
Under the plan, the government would move about 400 wooden boats of 30 tonnes or more to Natuna by the end of October. Fishermen who go could get subsidised housing, while the island's ports, power supply and internet will be upgraded.
The programme is expected to boost fishing in Natuna waters from 9.3 percent of sustainable catchment levels to 40 percent in less than a year.
"We will build cold storage there. We hope this will become the biggest fish market in Southeast Asia," Ramli said.
Ramli, who also oversees energy as part of his portfolio, said he also would review oil and gas concessions in Natuna and revoke permits from companies that are not developing their blocks.
ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips, Chevron, and PTT Exploration and Production are among foreign oil companies with stakes in Natuna, which holds one of the world's largest untapped gas reserves.
Indonesia's foreign minister, Retno Marsudi, said no one wanted conflict in the South China Sea and she called on all parties to avoid raising tension.
"We are sure that if all sides respect international law, then it will be easier to achieve regional and global peace and stability," she told reporters.
(By Fergus Jensen; Writing by Randy Fabi; Editing by Robert Birsel)
The Black Sea Trade and Development Bank (BSTDB) is providing a USD 17m senior loan facility to AccessBank for supporting the development of SME business in Azerbaijan.
On behalf of AccessBank, CEO Michael Hoffmann commented: We highly value the support of the BSTDB who is a long-term partner and an important shareholder of AccessBank. In the light of the current challenging economic environment the transaction is an important signal of trust and confidence from the side of BSTDB in our Bank and reflects that AccessBank enjoys full support of its shareholders. The funds will be allocated to the Banks SME clients of which many are operating in the regions of the country so that the BSTDB financing will contribute to spur the development of regional economies.
AccessBank was founded in 2002 by organizations such as the Black Sea Trade and Development Bank, EBRD, IFC, KfW, a German consulting company LFS Financial Systems (LFS) and AccessHolding. AccessBank one of the leading banks of Azerbaijan, offers a full range of banking services and has an extensive branch network, which employs about 1,800 people. Fitch Ratings assessed AccessBank as BB+, the highest credit rating among all banks in Azerbaijan.
Korean shipowner ILSHIN and HMD (Hyundai Mipo Dockyard Co., Ltd.) have signed a shipbuilding contract for a 50,000 dwt bulk carrier.
Notably, the vessel will be powered by an MAN B&W 6G50ME-C9.5-GI engine, to be built by HHI-EMD who will also supply the ME-GI and fuel gas supply system.
POSCO, the multinational steel-making company headquartered in Pohang, South Korea, has already agreed to charter the newbuilding upon delivery, and will use the vessel to transport limestone for its operations. POSCO will deliver the LNG fuel tank, which will be made of high-Mn steel as an alternative material to the currently widely used nickel alloy.
The ME-GI dual fuel low speed diesel engine represents the culmination of many years of development work. Depending on relative price and availability, as well as environmental considerations, the ME-GI engine gives shipowners and operators the option of using either HFO or gas predominantly natural gas.
MAN Diesel & Turbo said it sees significant opportunities arising for gas-fueled tonnage as concerns about both CO2 and SOx emission increase. Research indicates that the ME-GI engines deliver significantly reduced CO2, NOx and SOx emissions, and furthermore have only a negligible, unburnt gas slip, consequently adding very little to the greenhouse effects of such slips. In addition, the diesel combustion principle leaves no formaldehyde emissions.
Bear Head LNG Corporation Inc. (Bear Head LNG) received Nova Scotia Environments (NSE) approval for its Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Management Plan for its liquefied natural gas (LNG) facility on the Strait of Canso in Richmond County, Nova Scotia.
The GHG Management Plan provides Bear Head LNGs strategy for managing GHG emissions through technology selection, design of the facility, and operations.
Approval of Bear Head LNGs GHG Management Plan is welcome news, said Greg Vesey, Managing Director and CEO of LNGL and President of Bear Head LNG. Bear Head LNG is designing a best-in-class LNG facility, utilizing state of the art technology. Nova Scotia Environments approval of Bear Head LNGs emissions management system is an endorsement of LNGLs optimized single mixed refrigerant (OSMR) liquefaction technology, as one of the lowest emitters of GHG for LNG liquefaction projects. We are confident that our proprietary technology will meet the new GHG performance standards that have been proposed by NSE.
Bear Heads parent company, Liquefied Natural Gas Limited (LNGL), owns the OSMR technology, which is patented in 16 countries/jurisdictions including Canada and the United States. OSMR technology provides a considerably more efficient design arrangement that generates lower emissions and improved project economics.
Carnival Corporation & plc, DNV GL, ENGIE, ENN, GE, GTT, Lloyds Register, Mitsubishi Corporation, NYK Line, Port of Rotterdam, Qatargas, Shell, TOTE Inc. and Wartsila are among firms that are part of a new cross-industry initiative called SEA\LNG, to accelerate the use of liquefied natural gas (LNG) as a marine fuel.
Explaining the coalitions objective, Peter Keller, chairman of SEA\LNG and executive vice president of TOTE Inc., said, We recognize the need to work closely with key players across the value chain, including shipping companies, classification societies, ports, major LNG suppliers, downstream companies, infrastructure providers and OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) to ensure an understanding of the environmental and performance benefits of LNG as a marine transport fuel. SEA\LNG aims to address market barriers and help transform the use of LNG as a marine fuel into a global reality."
More than 90 percent of global trade moves by sea and this trade is expected to increase substantially over the coming years. In terms of ton miles, shipping is the worlds cleanest form of transport. However, the volumes moved are so large that shipping is a significant contributor to global greenhouse gas (~3 percent of the total global 1 ), sulphur oxides (SOx, ~10 percent of the total 2) and nitrogen oxides (NOx, ~15 percent 3) emissions.
The emissions reduction requirements which have come into force around the world to respond to this challenge are increasing demand for LNG as a shipping fuel. LNG offers significant environmental advantages over heavy fuel oil, the main fuel used in shipping today. LNG significantly reduces SOx, NOx and particulate emissions, and can also contribute to the reduction of GHG emissions. LNG is therefore able to offer a fuel solution compliant with both current and anticipated future regulations.
However, while LNG is a competitive fuel relative to current alternatives, LNG infrastructure is needed in ports around the world to enable quick, safe and cost effective bunkering. In parallel, there remains a price premium for LNG-fuelled vessels which can make investment decisions challenging. Furthermore, regulation is not yet globally consistent, which constrains incentives for investment in the sector. SEA\LNG aims to address and help overcome these and other challenges.
Philip Olivier, CEO of ENGIE Global LNG, commented, Everybody is calling for alternatives to reduce environmental impacts. Thats why we have joined forces to actively promote LNG as a key fuel in maritime transport. LNG has the potential to take a 10 percent market share of global bunker demand by 2030. ENGIE will contribute to achieving this target.
Tom Strang, senior vice president, Maritime Affairs, Carnival Corporation & plc, said, By working together proactively across the whole marine LNG value chain we can make the transition to a lower emission marine sector a reality. We are proud to share this aim and to align ourselves with other innovators in this field.
This new cross-industry initiative is good news, said Lauran Wetemans, Shells general manager downstream LNG. To make the transition to LNG as a fuel happen it needs close collaboration with key players across the full value chain. SEA/LNG aims to promote the benefits and potential of LNG fuel, and create a level playing field for LNG with other fuels. It will complement the work being done by other organizations like the Society for Gas as a Marine Fuel.
The ground work has been laid for LNG to thrive, but we need a cross-industry approach to realize the full potential of LNG fuelled shipping. Having been at the forefront of LNG fuelled shipping since its beginning, DNV GL is proud to work with innovative partners to help LNG take its place as a key fuel for the future, said Tjerk-Johan de Vries, region manager West Europe & Africa at DNV GL.
Leo Karistios, gas technology lead, Lloyds Register, added, LNG fuelled shipping has mainly been for the visionaries and, until now, concentrated in specialist ship sectors short sea shipping and ferries, mainly sailing between two fixed ports. We want to help drive the expansion of LNG as a marine fuel of choice, with not just more short sea and local ships burning gas, but also the deep sea trades.
Scientists from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) have overcome a seeming weakness of global climate models. They had previously not been able to simulate the extreme warm period of the Eocene. One aspect of this era that particularly draws interests to climatologists: It was the only phase in recent history when greenhouse gas concentration was as high as researchers predict it to be for the future. The AWI scientists have now found that the apparent model weakness is due to a misinterpretation of the temperature indicator TEX86. These molecules, which are produced by archaea do not record the surface temperature of the ancient ocean as expected, but rather the temperature of water depths up to 500 metres. In the current issue of the journal Nature Geoscience, the scientists report on this new finding which has now made it possible to correctly simulate the temperature distribution of the Eocene in climate models.
Climate scientists often hear the same complaint: How can climate models accurately predict the future of our planet if it is not even possible to correctly reproduce the climate of the past? One of the unsolved problems was that all previous attempts to simulate the extreme temperatures of the Eocene with climate models failed.
At that time, 49 to 55 million years ago, the carbon dioxide content of the air was likely more than 1000 ppm (parts per million) i.e. at least two times the current greenhouse gas concentration. The earth warmed up so strongly that the icesheets on Greenland and Antarctica disappeared. Instead of ice crystals, palm trees grew there. "Until recently, we believed that the sea surface temperature near the North Pole at the time was 23 degrees Celsius; in Antarctica, it was believed to have been more than 30 degrees Celsius," says Dr Thomas Laepple, climate researcher at the AWI Potsdam.
These temperature estimates were based on data from the climate indicator TEX86. This abbreviation stands for a ratio of specific organic compounds produced by archaea, depending on the water temperature in which they lived. "Archaea are unicellular organisms that can in part withstand surprisingly high ambient temperatures. The molecules of the organisms that were living at that time are still preserved in the sedimentary layers of the seafloor. They are one of our most important archives for warm climate conditions, but as we have seen, we decoded them wrongly in the past," says Thomas Laepple.
He and his AWI colleague at the time, Sze Ling Ho, first had doubts about the interpretation of the TEX86 temperature indicator during a comparison of climate data from the most recent ice age. The scientists noticed that the TEX86 temperatures were far too cold compared to other geological evidence. "The discrepancy was so obvious that we started to review the TEX86 values of around 3,000 sediment samples from different ocean basins and from different epochs of the Earth. It soon became apparent that the average temperature change inferred from TEX86 was exaggerated, always and on all time scales, by one and a half to two times. The temperature it showed for cold periods was much too cold and the one for warm periods was much too warm," explains geochemist Sze Ling Ho.
The cause of this pattern had to be of a fundamental nature, a suspicion that was confirmed upon closer analysis. "TEX86 had previously been interpreted as an indicator of sea surface temperature, in spite the fact that the archaea that produce TEX86 rarely directly live at the sea surface. Through the comparison with other climate archives, we have been able to constrain the depth in which the TEX86 signal is produced. We now assume that TEX86 represents the water temperature at a depth of up to 500 metres," Sze Ling Ho explains.
At this water depth, the temperature difference between the tropical oceans and the polar seas is smaller than at the surface. This has direct consequences for climate reconstruction, since the information generated from the indicator is differently translated into temperature values. "In practice, the TEX86 extreme values need to be roughly halved in the climate reconstructions. Comparing the corrected temperatures with the models shows that they now reflect the climate of the Eocene in a realistic and physically consistent way," explains Thomas Laepple.
However, we also have to correct our temperature-conception of the Eocene. Thomas Laepple: "The era remains the warmest period of the past 65 million years. The water temperatures that we assumed for the Arctic and Antarctica, though, were overstated by at least ten degrees Celsius. Now, we know that the water in the Southern Ocean had a temperature of about 20 to 25 degrees Celsius at that time. The region was therefore still warm enough for there to be palm trees sprouting on the beach."
The Great Eastern Shipping Company Limited (G E Shipping) signed a contract to buy a Medium Range Product Tanker of about 48,539 dwt. The 2005 Japanese built vessel is expected to join the Companys fleet in Q2 FY17.
The Companys current fleet stands at 33 vessels, comprising 23 tankers (7 crude carriers, 14 product tankers, 2 LPG carrier) and 10 dry bulk carriers (5 Kamsarmax, 5 Supramax) with an average age of 9.97 years aggregating 2.48 mn dwt. Additionally, the company has 3 Newbuilding Kamsarmaxes and 1 secondhand Capesize Bulk Carrier on order.
Holland America Line celebrated a significant construction milestone today as the first steel was cut for ms Nieuw Statendam, due for delivery in November 2018. The ceremony took place at Fincantieris shipyard in Palermo, Sicily, Italy, and the block being built there will later be moved to the Marghera yard where the ship will be constructed. Holland America Groups Executive Vice President of Fleet Operations Keith Taylor was at the yard for the event.
The 99,500-ton ship the 15th in the fleet is the second Pinnacle Class vessel for Holland America Line, joining sister-ship ms Koningsdam that sailed its first cruise in April 2016. The steel cutting follows a period of design and development for the 2,650-guest ship that will feature enhanced Pinnacle Class amenities and innovations.
This is an exciting time for Holland America Line, and Nieuw Statendams steel cutting is a milestone that signifies our continued growth and evolution as a company and a brand, said Orlando Ashford, Holland America Lines president. With Pinnacle Class we have been able to try new things, expand our horizons and push boundaries, and while Nieuw Statendam is a sister to Koningsdam, we do have some new ideas that will be revealed in time.
This is the 16th ship built for Holland America Line by Italian shipyard Fincantieri, which most recently constructed Koningsdam.
M.S. Nieuw Statendam Courtesy Holland America Line
Driven by strong imports, The Port of Virginia handled 216,672 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) in its strongest June cargo performance on record that helped to push the port to a solid finish for fiscal year 2016.
We finished fiscal year 2016 in positive territory, but our gains were very modest, said John F. Reinhart, CEO and executive director of the Virginia Port Authority. We forecast for muted container volumes and that was on-target. We are approaching peak cargo season and we expect to see some gains, but they will also be modest.
The fiscal year (July 1 June 30) highlights:
TEUs: FY2016: 2,573,635; FY2015: 2,510,099; up 2.5%
Total containers: FY2016: 1,460,704; FY2015: 1,442,645; up 1.3%
Total rail containers: FY2016: 511,096; FY2015: 465,898; up 9.7%
Total VIP rail containers: FY2016: 40,499; FY2015: 36,060; up 12.3%
Richmond Marine Terminal barge containers: FY2016: 16,347; FY2015: 14,114; up 15.8%
This was the best June on record in terms of TEU volume, but were off in many categories when compared with last year, Reinhart said. Still, we are continuing our focus on excellence in the delivery of service at all of our terminals. Also, The Port of Virginia brand has taken root and we are beginning to discuss our plans for expansion with customers and port users. There is a lot of positive activity taking place at the port right now.
June highlights:
TEUs: 2016: 216,672; 2015: 213,517; up 1.5%
Total containers: 2016: 123,974; 2015: 122,919; up .9%
Total rail containers: 2016: 45,115; 2015: 39,965; up 12.9%
Total import TEUs: 2016: 99,230; FY2015: 93,528; up 6.1%
Reinhart said the port will be begin to see a new, larger class of vessels calling The Port of Virginia that will arrive as the result of the opening of the Panama Canals new locks. On Monday (July 11), the port hosted the MOL Benefactor, which is the largest vessel to date to call Virginia. The Benefactors cargo capacity is 10,100 TEUs and eclipses the previous capacity record set in Virginia by 500 TEUs. The mark set by the Benefactor will, however, be short lived.
Starting at the end of this month, we will see a series five vessel calls, each with 10,300-TEU capacity, come to Virginia, Reinhart said. During the next 12-18 months, the ships calling here will get progressively bigger the 12,000-TEU range and there will be larger cargo volumes associated with those vessels. There will be another jump in size after that, so we are preparing accordingly and are discussing those plans out in the market.
In order to prepare for these vessels, the port is in the process of expanding its cargo handling capacity. The first large-scale capacity project will be to rebuild the upland operation at the South Berth of Norfolk International Terminals (NIT). Reinhart said the $350 million project will increase annual throughput capacity at NIT by 46 percent, or 400,000 containers by 2019.
The UK Gets a New Prime Minister
Well that was fast! The race to replace David Cameron was supposed to last another nine weeks, as Home Secretary Theresa May and Energy Secretary Andrea Leadsom duked it out in the Conservative Party's leadership contest. But Leadsom dropped out suddenly over the weekend, after contracting a case of foot-in-mouth disease[i], leaving May with the prize. Cameron will hand his notice to the Queen after Prime Minister's Questions on Wednesday, May will start her move into 10 Downing Street that evening, and Cameron will go gentle into that good night while perhaps humming a jaunty tune.
May has two main tasks: uniting the Conservatives after a rough Brexit campaign, and overseeing Brexit negotiations. To accomplish the former-and perhaps win over all the Tory voters eyeing UKIP's populism-she has suggested requiring corporate boards to include workers and consumers and cracking down on foreign acquisitions of UK firms. Pundits are a-tizzy, as these aren't exactly stereotypical Conservative proposals, but we wouldn't get too caught up in them. Whether you love or loathe these and other ideas, politicians often talk big, then moderate-especially when they preside over gridlocked legislatures, as May will. The Conservatives' majority is razor-thin, and those Brexit divisions run deep. Passing significant legislation will be a tall order.
As for Brexit, May has said she'll wait until next year to trigger Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty and launch formal exit negotiations. Other EU leaders are urging her to act sooner, but it's her choice, not theirs. Some suggest she might wait until after next year's French and German general elections, and we can see the rationale-it would prevent the negotiations from being used as a wedge issue in those campaigns. Regardless of when May triggers Article 50, however, negotiations likely go slowly. Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond estimates it could take six years to finalize the divorce, as all 27 remaining EU member-states' parliaments might have to ratify the final agreement. This gives markets a long, long time to discover and gradually digest changes well before they take effect, mitigating the potential shock factor.
Overall, May's promotion eases some of the near-term political uncertainty caused by Brexit, which stocks should appreciate. It also seems the UK isn't heading for a snap election, despite calls from Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron. May declined to call for one-resisting temptation, with the Labour Party mired in chaos-and it would take a two-thirds vote in Parliament to override her.
As for Labour, former Shadow Business Secretary Angela Eagle launched a leadership challenge Monday, and on Tuesday, the party's National Executive Committee held that Jeremy Corbyn isn't subject to a rule requiring leadership candidates to have the official backing of 20% of Labour MPs. So he will be on the ballot, but other new rules will bar the 100,000 people who joined the Labour Party after Brexit from voting, and raise the cost of being a "registered supporter" from 3 to 25, potentially limiting pro-Corbyn turnout. The contest's outcome is unknowable today, but also not a major issue for stocks now. The Labour Party's leader and platform will be an issue for the next election, likely in 2020, but until then, it won't have much impact on policy-and stocks care about policies, not personalities. Resolving the contest should help clear up more of the lingering uncertainty, but that's about it.
Australia Gets the Same Prime Minister
Eight days after Australia's closely contested election-and with officials still counting the last few votes-Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull claimed victory Sunday after his rival, Labor Party leader Bill Shorten, conceded. Turnbull's Liberal-National coalition won 76 seats, versus 69 for Labor and five independent/small parties, giving them the thinnest of majorities. Turnbull, who ousted former PM Tony Abbott one year ago, gambled by calling a snap election in hopes of breaking gridlock on his reform agenda. Instead he likely got more, not less gridlock, as his coalition lost seats and still faces an opposing upper house.
While gridlock is usually bullish in competitive, developed nations like Australia, politics are only one driver. Australia's markets and economy are heavily weighted toward commodities, which face headwinds from excess supply and decelerating Emerging Markets demand. While the fact that Australia's political revolving door-which was starting to rival Japan's-didn't turn again might boost sentiment a tad, that probably isn't enough to overcome the rather lackluster economic fundamentals for now.
That being said, the Australian punditry is all atwitter over the news S&P put the country on notice for a possible downgrade from its current AAA, largely based on the revolving door and elevated deficits. This is a false fear. Many suggest the loss of its AAA would send yields spiking, and potentially risks a financial crisis. However, we've seen this movie before, and we are here to tell you that when high-rated sovereigns are downgraded, lower rates typically follow-not higher. We just saw this again in Britain. And we are betting Australia, with its 18.9% net debt to GDP ratio and 1.9% 10-year yield isn't likely to be an exception.[ii] While Australia's near-term outlook isn't robust tied to Materials and Energy exposure, it isn't a crisis in the making based on a dodgy potential downgrade from an outfit that calls its own analysis, "marketing hype" when pressed.
Japan Gets More Talk
Finally, in Japan, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and its coalition partner, New Komeito, won a resounding victory in Sunday's upper house elections. They now have a two-thirds majority in both houses, increasing the likelihood of a new fiscal stimulus package. As he often does, Abe discussed stimulus in his election-night speech, though he didn't offer details on size or scope.
More noteworthy, this election potentially sets the stage to reform Japan's pacifist constitution, which limits Japan's military to defense. Revising Article Nine-the anti-war clause-is one of Abe's lifelong ambitions, and it looks Abe finally has the required two-thirds vote in both houses to move the process forward. It isn't certain, as New Komeito is a pacifist party, but many believe Abe does have enough backing. If the revision were to pass, it would go to citizens in a national referendum. Yet the public overwhelmingly disapproves of the idea, so it seems unlikely Abe would plow ahead in the near term-however, this issue likely remains a distraction, as it has been for his entire premiership, taking the focus off actual economic reform.
Other than that, the election doesn't change much in Japan, which remains in dire need of economic reforms to make labor markets more competitive and corporate governance more effective. These reforms have continually proven more difficult to enact than anticipated, and having a few extra seats in the upper house probably won't make much difference. The Abe administration has enjoyed majority control in both houses for several years, yet it repeatedly favored insufficient monetary and fiscal measures over significantly more beneficial structural measures. With Abe already jawboning about stimulus, it's hard to see that changing now. Absent reform, we continue to believe better opportunities lie elsewhere for global investors.
Baku, Azerbaijan, July 13
By Maksim Tsurkov, Orkhan Guluzade Trend:
Turkey plans to build a logistics center in its Kars province within the implementation of the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars (BTK) railway project, said Turkeys Minister of Transport, Maritime and Communication Ahmet Arslan.
Arslan made the remarks before his meeting with the head of Azerbaijan Railways CJSC Javid Gurbanov, Haberturk newspaper reported July 13.
The minister said the construction of the BTK railway will be completed until the end of 2016.
With the implementation of the Marmaray project for development of Istanbuls railway network, the Great Silk Roads railway segment will be continuous, allowing directly transporting raw materials and finished goods from Central Asia through Azerbaijan and Turkey to Europe, explained Arslan.
The BTK project will further strengthen social, humanitarian and economic relations between Turkey and Azerbaijan, he added.
The minister also noted that once the BTK railway is commissioned, it will transport three million tons of cargo a year, but the figure can rise up to 17 million tons and more in a short period of time.
The Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway is being constructed on the basis of the Georgian-Azerbaijani-Turkish intergovernmental agreement.
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Follow the authors on Twitter: @MaksimTsurkov, @o_quluzade
Not Too Late For Real Money In A World, Distracted
It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning. - Henry Ford
A recent IMF study estimated that the profits of the big banks in the United States are almost entirely due to the government sponsored backstops. Its not just bailouts, but also cheap credit, and judicial negligence.
So when the JP Morgan and Chase pay a $13 billion fine for criminal behavior it's nothing compared to what they're getting simply by having a government insurance policy.
Meanwhile crisis perceived begins a new cycle.
For the renewed European debt crisis, and the Germans on begging, while they blame the Italians. So much for the political/monetary union.
So the Germans have now forgotten.
But, hey... If all of this sounds absurd, reflect on the source. When money is untethered, the license to print extends beyond binary debt script
Don't look now, Japan creeps back into the limelight, soon to be the testing grounds with QE from Helicopters.
If it were only that simple.
We are about to see that complexity unwind. As the huge counter-parties (derivative holders) unravel in a panic, the entire system of circular causality will be revealed.
In Europe, its the troika policies. The population should pay for the risky, careless behavior of the bankers.
Put it to the people for the vote. Brexit is a distant memory, contained by the self-granted legal powers given to the Treasuries, the stabilization funds, and the great liquidity providers.
Remember the what the Swiss did with their EU vote?
The citizens can decide their own fate and then beg for more of it.
Remember, visions of 'Helicopters' will soon morph into QE - in the name of 'fiscal' policy - for what's good (and food) for the unwashed masses.
The creditors are laughing.
Turn off the machines and people dont eat. Sure, let them vote, they imagine.
Give them hope and the illusion of freedom in a flag, while tapping the deep wells of perpetual welfare for the debt slaves.
Let them try and rise up against the economic and social policies deriving from the bureaucracy and the banks.
Historians will be sorting this out for decades. The 'winners' will repaint it all in terms of the little guy -- as if they little guy was more than a pawn in the wealth transfer.
Hyperinflation is here.
We are merely in the early stages, where the last variable is the unmeasurable velocity of money - a concept as close to all or none when it appears.
Sadly, the narratives passed down through the annals of history will eventually enable yet more forgetting.
For now we are fed from the medias carefully crafted script. One side or the other. While the rot is systemic.
The great irony is that it is all right in front of us. Like a slow motion train wreck - broadcast through a maze of information channels.
We are at the crossroads, where information is wide open and accessible. But how long will this last? As each crisis comes with another layer of liberty lost forever.
And the principles are all the same. For the con artist, the pickpocket.
They distract us by using the basic rules of sensation, whilst simultaneously and gently slipping past your guard. They are good at it.
We are told what to believe - neatly organized into one side or the other.
As little black swans are periodically released, tagged, and tracked in the wild.
They have the power and the guns. The long arm of the law, demonstrating more than a willingness to use force.
The banks, enabled by the bureaucracy create devastating economic and social policies abroad and at home. Hope calls for an uprising... as the banks maintain a desperate margined grip on the perception of real money...for now held captive by the greatest risk to the current fiat experiment. Get real before it's gone.
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By Dr. Jeff Lewis
Dr. Jeffrey Lewis, in addition to running a busy medical practice, is the editor of Silver-Coin-Investor.com Copyright 2015 Dr. Jeff Lewis- 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.
Dr. Jeff Lewis Archive
2005-2019 http://www.MarketOracle.co.uk - The Market Oracle is a FREE Daily Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting online publication.
Italy on the Brink of a Full Blown Banking Crisis
As several articles over the past few days have indicated (here, here, here and here), Italy is on the brink of a full-blown banking crisis. Bad debts, or "non-performing loans," held by the banking sector total 360 billion euros, which is a remarkable 17 percent of all the outstanding bank loans in Italy and equal to about one-fifth of the annual Italian GDP. It is also many times the level of bad debt held by Italian banks at the peak of the financial crisis in 2008. Since the beginning of 2016, prices of bank stocks have decreased by more than 50%. In the case of Italy's oldest and most troubled bank, Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena, its share price has declined more than 75%. It doesn't help that the Italian economy is struggling mightily to recover from the last financial crisis and is still 8% smaller than it was in 2008 and roughly the same size as it was at the end of the twentieth century.
The Italian government is considering bailing out the banks in defiance of EU rules concerning "bail-ins." These rules require that a bank's creditors, especially bondholders, "take haircuts" before taxpayer funds can be used to "recapitalize" the banks. The Italian government is reluctant to follow these rules because almost half of the banks' junior, or subordinated, bonds, about 31 billion euros worth, have been sold on the retail market to households and individuals rather than to professional investors. In the case of insolvency, the holders of junior bonds are the last of the bank's creditors to be paid. In its appeal to the EU to suspend its bail-in rules, the Italian government is portraying the retail purchasers of these bonds as small and naive savers. But this does not ring true. In 2015 the Italian government rescued four small banks. In compliance with EU rules it put the burden of the rescue on bank creditors rather than taxpayers. As a result, 12,500 "small savers" lost a total of 430 million euros on junior bonds. That is an average of 34,500 euros lost per bondholder.
Let us consider these "small savers" whom the Italian government is so eager to protect. In 2013, net wealth of the median Italian household was 145,469 euros, including real and financial assets. It is hard to believe that a household which was savvy and disciplined enough to accumulate this amount of net wealth would be so naive as to rashly invest almost one quarter of it in risky junior bank bonds, especially considering that total bank bonds constituted around 3% of gross household wealth in 2013. The reasonable inference is that subordinated bank bonds are a small part of the diversified portfolios of those households whose net wealth is far in excess of the median, that is, rich and likely politically connected households. This would explain why the Italian government is so hell bent on using taxpayer funds from the get-go to bail out the banks.
Negotiations between the Italian government and the EU on this issue may soon be rendered pointless, however, if "various unconfirmed rumors of Italian cashless ATMs end up being true."
Joseph Salerno is academic vice president of the Mises Institute, professor of economics at Pace University, and editor of the Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics. He has been interviewed in the Austrian Economics Newsletter and on Mises.org. Send him mail. See Joseph T. Salerno's article archives. Comment on the blog.
2016 Copyright Joseph Salerno - 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.
Baku, Azerbaijan, July 13
By Azad Hasanli Trend:
Azerbaijans capital will host the 8th Microfinance conference titled New opportunities on the Horizon: Translating Challenges into Perspectives on October 6-7, 2016.
The leadership of Azerbaijans Central Bank (CBA), Financial Market Supervisory Body, representatives of banks and non-bank credit organizations of Georgia, Russia and Central Asia, representatives of investment companies from 12 countries, experts and others will take part in the conference, according to Azerbaijan Micro-finance Association (AMFA).
The main topics of the conference will be: good crediting on microfinance market, exchange risks of currency loans, the use of innovations to meet the needs of small farmers, optimization of pricing policy in the financial sector, financial literacy and others.
Baku, Azerbaijan, July 13
Trend:
The Caspian Five Summit, which brings together the Caspian states leaders, will be held in Astana, Kazakhstan, in 2017, said Erlan Idrissov, Kazakh foreign minister, RIA Novosti reported July 13.
He said the exact date of the Summit will be set later.
Today, we have at the political level confirmed the general attitude and understanding of the need to sign the convention on the Caspian Seas legal status in Astana at the summit of heads of the Caspian states the next year, Idrissov said at a press conference following the talks of the Caspian states foreign ministers in Astana.
The Caspian states - Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Russia, Turkmenistan and Iran - signed a Framework Convention for Protection of Marine Environment of the Caspian Sea in November 2003.
Russia and Kazakhstan signed an agreement on the delimitation of the northern part of the Caspian Sea in order to exercise sovereign rights for subsoil use in July 1998. The two countries signed a protocol to the agreement in May 2002.
Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan signed an agreement on the delimitation of the Caspian Sea and a protocol to it on Nov. 29, 2001 and Feb. 27, 2003, respectively.
Additionally, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Russia signed an agreement on the delimitation of adjacent sections of the Caspian Sea on May 14, 2003.
Amherst logo.jpg
AMHERST -- The Amherst Area Chamber of Commerce has appointed Timothy O'Brien as executive director, according to a news release issued Wednesday.
His start date is August 1.
O'Brien replaces former executive director Don Courtemanche, who resigned in April after two years in the position in order to focus on his real estate career.
Timothy O'Brien
O'Brien currently works as a personal marketing and communications director for Yankee Candle founder Michael Kittredge. O'Brien ghostwrote Kittredge's autobiography, according to O'Brien's page on the business networking site Linkedin.
Prior to that, he worked for the Kittredge family's Kringle Candle and The Farm Table restaurant in Bernardston as marketing and communications director, for Yankee Candle as corporate communications director and as communications director for the Greater Springfield Convention & Visitors Bureau.
He has volunteered with the Visitors Bureau, The Food Bank of Western Massachusetts and as publicity director for both The Westfield Theater Group and The Suffield Players, according to his LinkedIn profile.
Julie Marcus, president of the chamber board, said in a prepared statement:
"Tim brings a wealth of experience and the needed energy and commitment to the Amherst area to serve all of our members."
O'Brien said:
"I am honored to help lead the Amherst Area Chamber team and excited to continue my career in destination marketing as part of this outstanding organization. I look forward to working with the board, staff and AACC members in writing the next chapter of the chamber's influential history."
Marcus thanked the chamber's director of marketing and membership, Kim Alli, and the interim executive director, Jerry Guidera for their efforts over the last four months.
The Amherst Area Chamber of Commerce is celebrating its 60th year of operation in 2016. The chamber represents more than 400 area business, organizations and institutions, according to its news release.
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(Photo Provided)
HADLEY -- Mocha Emporium coffee shop has reopened in new space at the Hampshire Mall, the mall announced Wednesday.
Established in 1995, Mocha Emporium is family-owned and operated. Mohammed Al-Jerozi has operated the Hampshire Mall location since 2008.
He opened in his new, larger space on July 2.
Mocha Emporium's new location is in the mall's Cafe Square, across from what will soon become Autobahn Indoor Speedway, an indoor go-kart racetrack.
Autobahn, at 35,000 square feet, will be the largest indoor karting facility in Western Massachusetts. Mall management said Autobahn is set to open in September.
Mocha Emporium offers a number of items including hot and iced coffee, coffee beans, bagels, smoothies, cookies and other sweet treats. Hours are Monday through Saturday from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. and Sunday from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.
In downtown Springfield, work continues on a Mocha Emporium now under construction in a storefront at the corner of Main and Taylor streets. The downtown Mocha Emporium will be the first new business in the Silverbrick Lofts apartments since the Manhattan-based Silverbrick Group bought the complex in 2014 for $9 million.
ASHFIELD You don't have to take a seat for this show: Double Edge Theatre's annual Indoor/Outdoor Traveling Spectacle takes the audience on a traveling journey around its 105-acre Ashfield farm.
With inspiration drawn from myths and classical literature, the performances lead the audience along the pastures, pond, river and hills of the farm as well as inside the barn. This site specific performance shares elements of Double Edge's visceral and visual theatricality -- aerial work, circus technique, puppetry, live music, movement and dance.
The next production will be its 14th annual indoor/outdoor traveling spectacle, "Once a Blue Moon -- Cada Luna Azul," with previews July 15-17 and performances on July 20 to Aug. 22, (most Wednesday through Sunday) at 8 p.m., rain or shine.
"There is nothing like Double Edge and particularly this performance," said Stacy Klein, director and co-creator of the performance. "It is a magical demonstration of human potential and the possibilities that we can achieve when we work together and share a culture and participate in the creation of that culture. In a world of violence and alienation, [Double Edge] is a force of imagination and spirit and joy."
"Once a Blue Moon" is the first Latin American-based spectacle in Double Edge's history, taking inspiration from Alejandro Jodorowski's "Where the Bird Sings Best," Lawrence Thornton's "Imagining Argentina," Isabel Allende's "Eva Luna" and works of Jorge Borges, Gabriel Marquez, Pablo Neruda, Octavio Paz and Marcel Camus. The highly visual and imaginative performance includes expansive murals and colorful settings by local and international artists.
The performance follows a traveler (played by Carlos Uriona) who returns to his hometown of Agua Santa after many years. He evokes the memories of his past and the stories of the town's colorful inhabitants as well as the events leading to his departure.
It is a story of memory, culture and song, imbued with the excitement of Latin American carnival.
The story reflects an increasingly universal situation in which "progress" displaces people, in this case causing a flood.
"I am not just playing the lead, but the performance is based on my personal past to a great extent," Uriona said. "I'm proud to see that my personal story/history is being enacted by my theatre."
The production reflects "the dark history" that he experienced in Argentina in the 1970's and early 1980's. But it is not just telling it as a memory of the past. "This telling is being tested by the parallel that somehow there is something atrocious going on now with all of the violent tensions that are being displayed in this country and the rest of the world. A parallel danger," he said. "I don't need to tell this only as an attempt to satisfy an aesthetic desire, but to respond to my inner voice that keeps telling me: 'You know about all this! Do something to help!'"
During the production, audience members, traversing the landscape, encounter and mingle with the townspeople of Agua Santa.
"Each production of Double Edge reflects at its roots the story of the group. This is the first time since that the Summer Spectacle performance group has developed a story and a performance not from a classic text, but from the experience of the group itself," said Uriona, lead actor and co-creator of "Once a Blue Moon (Cada Luna Azul)."
The Double Edge Ensemble is composed of 11 artists and three associate artists from throughout the United States and from England, Bulgaria and Argentina who have been working together from 8-34 years creating original performance. Based in Ashfield, the group members lead the art, the training, the producing and the board of the theatre.
"As with all of our spectacles, guest and resident artists, apprentices and emerging immersion artists from around the world (this year Chile, Guinea and Brazil) round out the summer cast and crew of 30," Klein said.
"I believe that the deep and serious commitment of all the performers -- both the longtime Double Edge Ensemble members and the young people new to our process -- to intertwine their work in the theatre with their daily lives and to share that with each other and with the audience makes the experience extremely rich," Uriona said. "The performers believe in what they are doing, thus they believe in the story that they are telling, and that allows the audience to suspend their disbelief and embark themselves into a collective journey into the story, the landscape, the weather. This is not an ordinary, everyday happening; we're creating something magical."
Double Edge Theatre is located at 948 Conway Road in Ashfield.
Music for the production is by Argentine guest artists Manuel Uriona and Micaela Farias Gomez.
Tickets are $35 for adults, $32.50 for students with a valid ID and seniors 65 and older and $30 for children. There are some special prices.
For price information and to purchase tickets, go to https://app.arts-people.com/index.php?show=57580.
STOCKBRIDGE Norman Rockwell a modernist painter?
For the first time, Norman Rockwell Museum will explore the contrast between the abstract and realist movements, placing works by Rockwell, Wyeth and Warhol side by side with Pollock, Calder, Johns and more than 40 other preeminent artists.
On view through Oct. 30, "Rockwell and Realism in an Abstract World" will examine the forces that forged the mid-century dismissal of narrative painting and illustration as well as the resurgence of realist painting during the latter half of the 20th Century, its presence and critical consideration today and the ways in which contemporary viewpoints have been shaped by post-World War II constructs.
"In the 1950s, there was heated debate about the relative merits of abstract art, realist art and popular illustration, and Norman Rockwell was frequently caught in the crossfire," notes Norman Rockwell Museum Director/CEO Laurie Norton Moffatt. "The symbolic artist against whom the art world turned, Rockwell even tried his own hand at modernism in his Jackson Pollock-styled painting 'The Connoisseur,' which will be featured in the exhibition, on loan from a private collection. We look forward to exploring this rebellious turning point in American art, when many artists rejected Rockwell's version of realism and invented a nonrepresentational artistic vocabulary."
After completing the work, Rockwell submitted a section of one of his studies to an exhibition at the Cooperstown Art Association in New York, signing the canvas with an Italian signature. It took first place for painting, and another section of the abstract study, signed under his middle name, Percival, won honorable mention at an exhibition at the Berkshire Museum.
Three painterly studies for "The Connoisseur" are featured in this new exhibition.
By 1961, when Norman Rockwell painted "The Connoisseur"--his visual treatise on the subject juxtaposing Jackson Pollock's nonrepresentational art with his own illusionistic imagery--Abstract Expressionism had been covered in the popular press for nearly 15 years. "The painting was published at a time when he and other figurative painters were criticized for their predilection for visual storytelling," explained Museum Deputy Director/Chief Curator Stephanie T. Haboush Plunkett. In "The Connoisseur," Rockwell had cause to defend himself against his detractors and take a good-humored poke at the pieties surrounding abstract painting. While "The Connoisseur" juxtaposes the conservative with the avant-garde, it offers no clues to Rockwell's opinion of modern art. "You don't know what he's thinking," he said of the viewer whose face he did not even show.
Separated from modern art by the deep roots of his academic training, Rockwell could embrace it only as an observer, as is true of the respectful and awed connoisseur.
"When Norman Rockwell and his illustrator colleagues worked to enliven the pages of American magazines, they were pushing against the tide," Plunkett said. "By the late 1940s, shifts in technology--which brought the world to the masses through photography and television--and challenges by modernist art idioms, conspired to relegate conventional illustration to a lesser status. Traditional narrative illustration was a waning discipline, and though Rockwell was a hero to many, he was also an institution to younger artists who viewed him as the old guard. For all of his complexity, Rockwell became a catalyst for change for illustrators seeking to blur the lines between fine and applied art."
Though alienated from the institutions of high visual culture, illustrators were interested in the vocabularies of modernism, she continued. In the 1950s, a new generation of editorial artists moved beyond prevailing aesthetics. They considered themselves designers of images, and their work often betrayed an abstract sensibility, featuring broad, flat areas of color, skewed perspectives and a profound sense of two-dimensionality.
Rockwell accepted his role as a visual storyteller, noting that to him, "the story was the first thing and the last thing."
He once said, "Some people have been kind enough to call me a fine artist. I've always called myself an illustrator. I'm not sure what the difference is. All I know is that whatever type of work I do I try to give it my very best. Art has been my life."
Illustration turned the corner in the 1960s when new conceptualists like Robert Weaver, Marshall Arisman, Alan E. Cober and Brad Holland conveyed ideas in images that were more intuitive and autographic, informed by approaches typically seen in the world of fine art. "Though never fully rejected, realism and representation in illustration have evolved since Rockwell's time, if only because the role of illustration has changed. No longer the primary mechanism of visual communication, illustration at its best engages the intellect and helps us to look more deeply at the subjects it explores," Plunkett said. "Though magazines are no longer the primary medium of communication, illustration is a popular art today, enjoyed by millions today in books, comics and graphic novels; in animated films and cartoons; on clothing, housewares and other products; on Facebook and in fan art, published only online." Multiple access points have established new interest in the art of illustration.
"Aside from its technical mastery, Rockwell's art was aspirational, and he portrayed the best in people, a vision that many wish to retain - particularly in challenging times," Plunkett said.
His art is accessible, representing the kind of "small moments" that many people throughout the world have experienced. Generations who grew up with his images on the covers and pages of magazines enjoy and appreciate the values and emotions that he represents.
"But younger audiences are also finding meaning in his art, whether his images of simple interactions between generations or the more profound statements he made in paintings like the 'Four Freedoms,' 'The Problem We All Live With' and 'Murder in Mississippi.' For many, there is a sense of humanity in his art that people wish to retain and remember," Plunkett said.
"Rockwell and Realism in an Abstract World" features the art of prominent illustrators, painters and sculptors whose autographic art spans more than 60 years, representing various forms of visual communication.
Among the featured artists are Jackson Pollock, Peter Rockwell, Andy Warhol, Andrew Wyeth and Jamie Wyeth.
An exhibition opening event for "Rockwell and Realism in an Abstract World" will take place on Thursday, July 14, from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. with remarks at 6:30 p.m.
For more information on the exhibition and related events, go to nrm.org.
SPRINGFIELD When Frank P. Magagnoli was growing up in Springfield in the 1960s, his family couldn't go on summer vacation until after the Our Lady of Mount Carmel festival. "Everything revolved around the feast.... You didn't do anything until the feast was over," he said.
On July 16, 1251, the Blessed Virgin Mary is believed to have appeared to St. Simon Stock, a member of the Carmelite religious order. During the vision, she revealed to him the Scapular of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, popularly known as the "Brown Scapular."
The liturgical feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel is celebrated on Saturday; the Springfield festival has taken place around that date for years.
IF YOU GO
Event:
Our Lady of Mount Carmel Feast celebration
When:
Sunday, July 17, beginning with Mass at 10:30 a.m.
Where:
Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church and Our Lady of Mount Carmel Club, Springfield
Cost:
Free
For more information:
Call 413-734-5433
This year the local festivities associated with the feast will take place on Sunday, July 17, beginning with Mass at 10:30 a.m. at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church on William Street. After Mass, there will be a procession from the church to the Society of Our Lady of Mount Carmel Club and Hall on Winthrop Street with a statue of the saint.
As it is carried outside the church, the procession will pause so people can pin money to ribbons attached to the statue, continuing an Italian tradition. Funds raised will be used to defray the costs of the festival.
The procession will make its way to Red Rose Pizzeria on Main Street with a police escort; there will be Italian music for all to enjoy before returning to the club for free refreshments. Fried dough will be for sale for $3 with funds raised helping with festival costs.
The festival used to take place over three days, but as membership decreased, members aged and funds decreased, club members decided to make it a one-day event. In addition, the club's "gorgeous" imported lights from Italy that used to be strung across the street for the festival were broken when a tornado "wiped out" the building in which they were stored several years ago, said Magagnoli, the president of the Our Lady of Mount Carmel Society.
But that did not put an end to the festival. "My heritage is there. I will not see that die," he said. "And 100 percent of our members feel the same way. We will not ignore July 16."
There are about 100 members and another 100 associate members; the latter are not Italian but sponsored by a member of the club.
Magagnoli said many Italian immigrants who settled in Springfield prayed to Our Lady of Mount Carmel for a safe journey from their homeland. They promised if they made it safely to America they would build a church in her honor and pay her homage.
And so they did.
"We cannot go without honoring her," he said.
Maria R. Placanica, a member of the Our Lady of Mount Carmel Festival Committee who grew up in the Italian parish but now is a parishioner of Sacred Heart Church in Springfield, remembers that the festival was a highlight of summer when she was growing up.
She recalls attending the feast day celebrations as far back as the 1950s. "People take pride in their Italian heritage," she said.
Her faith also is important to her. The festival, therefore, "gives me such a sense of belonging and closeness to my religion," she said.
Two similar festivals have been well known in the city: Our Lady of Grace and the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Placanica said the South End of Springfield was once "all Italian people," but many families have moved from the area. So she hopes many people who have roots there will attend the Italian feast. But you don't have to be Italian to enjoy it.
"We hope whomever wants to come will come," she said.
For more information, call 413-734-5433.
Baku, Azerbaijan, July 13
By Elena Kosolapova Trend:
Production of oil and other liquid hydrocarbons will further rise in OPEC countries and reach 39.38 million barrels per day in 2016 and 40.22 million barrels per day in 2017, says the short-term energy outlook for July issued by the US Energy Information Administration (EIA).
The forecast for 2016 was increased by 0.18 million barrels per day, as compared to the EIA report for June, while the forecast for 2017 has remained unchanged.
The production of oil and other liquid hydrocarbons totaled 38.33 million barrels per day in 2015 in OPEC countries, according to the EIA.
On June 2, OPEC failed to agree on output policy and set a new ceiling.
OPEC has 14 members: Algeria, Angola, Ecuador, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Venezuela and Gabon.
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Follow the author on Twitter: @E_Kosolapova
BOSTON -- A Boston man has been arrested and charged with murder and arson in connection to the killing of Richard Long, a Boston man who was found dead inside a Dorchester home last year.
Boston Police said members of the department's Fugitive Apprehension Unit arrested Victor Arrington, 30, of Boston Tuesday night and charged him with murder, arson and armed assault to murder. He is accused of killing Long, a 37-year-old from Boston.
Boston Police found Long on March 31, 2015 after they were called to the area of 332 Harvard St. in Dorchester for a report of a person shot. Police found that a fire had been set in the first-floor of the residence and called Boston firefighters.
"After the fire was extinguished, a search of the location lead to the discovery of a male suffering from what appeared to be a gunshot wound," police said.
Authorities continue to investigate the facts surrounding the killing. Boston Police Commissioner William Evans released a statement about the arrest of Arrington.
"To know the individual responsible for the murder of Richard Long is now in police custody and is no longer in a position to hurt or harm other members of our community is a testament to the BPD's ongoing efforts to protect and serve the citizens of Boston," he said. "To Richard's family, I hope the news of today's arrest brings with it some level of solace, comfort and closure."
Boston Globe Building
In this June 8, 2009 file photo, workers walk past the front of The Boston Globe building in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa, File)
(AP Photo/Charles Krupa, File)
Changes are coming to Boston.com.
In a memo to staffers, the free site's general manager, Eleanor Cleverly, said they're offering a voluntary buyout program as BostonGlobe.com, a site which relies on subscribers, remains a priority.
The two sites, owned by the same company, Boston Globe Media Partners, must become "more complementary," she said.
"There will be a clearer differentiation between the in-depth journalism of Globe.com and the community-centered resources of Boston.com," she wrote in the emailed memo, obtained by UniversalHub.com and POLITICO Massachusetts.
"With resulting efficiencies anticipated, we are offering a voluntary buyout program for those who work in dedicated digital roles across Boston Globe Media Partners," she added. "A reorganization of the digital operation is under way. This will create fewer redundancies, increased collaboration, greater efficiency and cost saving across the company."
Boston.com will stay free and focus on "things to do, where to live, what to drive, where to work, destinations for travel" and "more closely focus on the needs of our audiences in key demographic segments and advertisers who are trying to connect with our audiences," she continued.
"The Boston Globe will continue to build on its remarkable Pulitzer Prize-winning journalism and its position as a leader in paid digital subscribers among metro dailies in the country," her memo said.
The changes come as the Boston Globe gears up to move to new offices in downtown Boston at 53 State Street. The Globe's owner, John Henry, plans to sell the current headquarters on Morrissey Boulevard in Boston's Dorchester neighborhood.
A copy of the memo is available here.
BOSTON -- A Peruvian woman is accused of smuggling over $1.2 million in counterfeit $100 bills through Boston's Logan Airport by hiding the cash in yarn spindles.
Alejandrina Elsa Quispe Ramirez, 47, was arrested Tuesday and charged in U.S. District Court in Boston with one count of delivering counterfeit currency and one count of importing counterfeit currency into the United States.
Quispe Ramirez was detained after her appearance in court, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office in Boston.
Authorities learned Quispe Ramirez was heading to the United States on July 11 and was concealing a large amount of counterfeit U.S. currency in her luggage.
"According to their U.S. visa applications, the purpose of the visit was allegedly to go to Shriners Hospital for Children," the U.S. Attorney's Office said "Federal agents confirmed that Quispe Ramirez's younger son had previously been a patient of the hospital; however, he was not scheduled to return to the hospital until at least November 2016."
Court records said Quispe Ramirez landed at Logan Airport on July 11 and federal agents confirmed that U.S. currency was concealed inside the luggage.
"The agents followed Quispe Ramirez as she took a taxi from Logan Airport to Somerville, and then transferred to a Mazda SUV with Pennsylvania license plates driven by another man," authorities said. "The agents allegedly stopped the vehicle after the driver made an illegal U turn in the middle of the street."
Agents found approximately 140 spindles of yarn each with $85,000 in counterfeit $100 bills, a news release said. The three bags contained approximately $1,212,200 in counterfeit currency.
By BUFFY SPENCER
bspencer@repub.com
SPRINGFIELD - A Hampden Superior Court judge today ruled that the prosecution could not use a key piece of evidence in the case against Tina A. Fisher, the Ludlow teacher accused of making a bomb threat at East Street Elementary School.
Judge Bertha D. Josephson allowed defense lawyer David P. Hoose's motion to suppress a video recording from a school security camera. She made the ruling after viewing the recording on a DVD, which showed the still shots sequentially captured by the security camera. The judge questioned the prosecution's interpretation of the recording.
Josephson gave Assistant District Attorney James M. Forsyth until Tuesday to see if the Appeals Court would hear an appeal of her ruling.
The discovery of the note at 8:45 a.m. on Oct. 25, 2006, caused the building to be evacuated for 45 minutes. No bomb was found. Fisher, who worked at the school for five years and taught autistic children, was suspended without pay.
Hoose said that the state's whole case comes down to the recording. He said the security camera and DVD were inherently unreliable.
Fisher, 37, of Westfield, had been charged with the bomb threat in connection with the note found on a wall at the school. The note said "boom bomb, no (expletive) Bishop," in an apparent reference to school principal Brett Bishop.
Josephson viewed the recording, at some points frame by frame, and heard testimony from Bishop about the security camera.
Josephson, in her ruling, said that one major deficiency in the video is the 17-second gap after a still shot that shows Fisher walking toward the wall on which the note was later found.
The judge said at the point Fisher is 1.5 to 2 feet from the wall "she disappears" and then after the 17-second delay a frame shows the note on the wall, but Fisher is not in view.
Forsyth said when activated by motion, the camera takes a photo every 1.1 seconds. The state believes that Fisher's movements weren't enough to activate the camera or that she was able to put the note on the wall and move out of the camera range in less than 1.1 seconds.
Josephson said it was unlikely that Fisher could have posted the note on the wall and gone through a door out of camera range without her motion triggering the camera, or that she posted the note within 1.1 seconds and no one else could have done it.
NORTHAMPTON -- Following days of race-related violence that shook the nation, more than 300 people gathered downtown Tuesday evening for a "Stand Up for Black Lives" rally and event. Police blocked traffic for nearly two hours as activists spoke from the steps of City Hall.
Organizers said the event was prompted by recent shooting deaths of black men at the hands of police officers. "We're here because of recent police brutality and racist incidents across the country," said Jeff Napolitano of the American Friends Service Committee.
"There is a lack of accountability among police," added Lois Ahrens, founder of the Real Cost of Prisons Project. "Police are executing black people with no culpability." Ahrens, who emceed the event, said that in 2014, she stood at the same spot and asked for four-and-a-half minutes of silence for the police shooting death of 18-year-old Mike Brown, Jr., in Ferguson, Missouri.
"But there's been enough silence," she said. "What we need now is outrage and noise. Stand up! Speak out! Enough!"
Speakers included Zion Barbour, 16, president of the Students of Color Alliance at Northampton High School, who drew parallels between crime and poverty. Andrew Grant Thomas, a black man and co-founder of the group EbraceRace, had words of praise for Northampton Police Chief Jody Kasper, saying "she is someone you can work with."
Romina Pacheco, who works at Smith College, spoke of her experience as a woman of color living in Northampton. "The Pioneer Valley is no better than Louisiana or Mississippi," she said. "Why are we so segregated? There is no safe haven for black people in this country."
Ward 7 City Councilor Alisa Klein, who in late 2014 drew criticism from some Northampton police officers for comments she made in the wake of the Ferguson shooting, delivered another fiery speech where she spoke of the "disappearance" of black men due to violence, incarceration, and early death.
Klein quoted James Baldwin, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Eliza Baker before two young black women emerged from the crowd and asked if they could speak. Klein asked if she could finish first her remarks first, and the two agreed.
However, when the two, who identified as "Afro-Panther and Vee," took the microphone, they ripped into Klein, the largely-white crowd, and event organizers. Afro-Panther forbade white people in the audience from cheering or clapping, and told Klein that if she truly cared about black lives she would have relinquished the microphone immediately.
The two said that white people coming together to hear white activists speak about black lives was not enough. "What are you doing coming here?" Vee said to the crowd. "You can't come to a white savior benefit and think you're doing your part. This is BS. Actions speak louder than words."In recent days, emotions have been raw and crowds have taken to the streets in cities across the country, highlighting the strained relationship between law enforcement and communities of color.
On July 6, 32-year-old Philando Castile was shot killed by a Minnesota police officer during a traffic stop, one day after bystander video showed the fatal police shooting of Alton Sterling, 37, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. On July 7, in an apparent act of payback, Micah Xavier Johnson, a black man, shot and killed five police officers in a Dallas, Texas ambush.
Other speakers in Northampton Tuesday night included Misha Heij of Standing Up for Racial Justice; Toussaint Losier, assistant professor of Afro-American studies at UMass Amherst; Ousmane Power-Greene, assistant professor of history at Clark University; and Holyoke City Councilor Jossie Valentin.
The movement for black lives "will take a massive, massive push," said Valentin. "Dare to speak up. Dare to be unpopular. Dare to have that difficult conversation."
Justin Goldstein WTNH.jpg
Justin Goldstein, a television meteorologist for WTNH, has been arrested on child pornography charges.
(Credit: Justin Goldstein via Facebook)
HAMDEN, Conn. - Justin Goldstein, a television meteorologist for WTNH, has been arrested on child pornography charges.
Goldstein, 33, was arrested Wednesday at the station in New Haven after police executed a search warrant at his Hamden home. Detectives seized computers and equipment, according to multiple reports from Connecticut media outlets, including WFSB.
He was charged with promoting a minor in an obscene performance and first-degree possession of child pornography.
Mark Higgins, general manager of WTNH-TV, said Goldstein is suspended "until the matter is resolved."
Goldstein has been released on bond and is expected to appear in court on July 26.
SPRINGFIELD -- Police are seeking the public's help as they investigate a Monday morning break-in to a Boston Road convenience store.
Police said the suspect broke into the Express Mart at 119 Boston Road sometime between 3 a.m. and 5:40 a.m. Once inside, the suspect stole numerous cartons of Newport cigarettes.
Police posted surveillance images of the suspect on the department's Facebook page.
Those with information on the suspect or the break-in are asked to call detective Gifford Jenkins at 413-787-6355.
Easthampton Licensing Board
Easthampton Licensing Board: Raymond Redfern, chairman Jason Duda, Kelly Richey, and Licensing Board Clerk Nicolette Growhoski.
(Mary Serreze photo)
EASTHAMPTON -- The city's Licensing Board is now accepting applications for eight new "over-quota" all-pour liquor licenses, despite an opinion from city attorney John Fitz-Gibbon that the board should establish a formal decision-making process before doing so.
At the board's July 5 meeting, chairman Jason Duda admitted that the board is "struggling with" language that grants "highest preference to establishments in the mill industrial zone and the downtown business zone" for the licenses, yet announced that the board will start accepting applications, with consideration to begin in August.
Six days earlier, Fitz-Gibbon had advised the board via email to delay accepting applications until it establishes a clear process, perhaps involving a point system, to evaluate applications for the new liquor licenses.
If the board has established a process, "they can start receiving applications," wrote Fitz-Gibbon to Licensing Board Clerk Nicolette Growhoski on July 30. "If they need another meeting to decide on the process, then they can start reviewing applications at a later time."
The "preference" language appears in the special legislation that created the new licenses. The language was crafted by the City Council Ordinance Subcommittee, approved by the full City Council in November, and signed into law last month by Gov. Charlie Baker. Councilors said the idea was to promote economic development in the downtown and mill industrial zoning districts.
However, neither the council nor the Legislature gave the Licensing Board specific guidance on how to award the licenses while honoring the concept of geographical preference. At the July 5 meeting, Duda and board member Raymond Redfern posed hypothetical situations where they would not know what to do.
"What happens if within a span of six months, seven just fly out the door, and then you've got the eighth one, and you get four people applying for it?" asked Duda. "And two are in the districts and two are not?"
Redfern wondered how the board would react if it received a nightclub application from a zoning district outside the preferred zones. "Well, you're not in a downtown area," Redfern said. "So are you allowed one of those?"
Duda at that meeting did, however, agree to accept guidance in the matter from another city board. Economic Development and Industrial Commission member John Casey Douglass, owner of Galaxy, a restaurant at 60 Main St., told Duda and Redfern that the appointed public commission had discussed "how to give you guys maybe a little bit of a guideline" when there are multiple applicants for one license. Douglass said the EDIC, which promotes economic development in the city, could "help with the language."
"I think it's a great idea," Duda said of the offer. "Any help you guys can be, especially with the support of the chamber, that's certainly something that helps us."
Greater Easthampton Chamber of Commerce Director Maureen Belliveau attended the July 5 meeting with Douglass. Belliveau is also a member of the EDIC.
Outside 'preferred' zones
Fitz-Gibbon's July 30 email said the Licensing Board may award a license outside of the preferred downtown and mill zones, if the application is deemed superior.
When considering two applicants, "the board must consider their location, but that does not prohibit the granting of a license to a business outside of the preferred districts if, in the board's opinion, the applicant outside the districts presents a better application," Fitz-Gibbon wrote.
"Again, a point system might work," Fitz-Gibbon opined. "Location must be considered, but it is only one factor in the decision-making process."
Fitz-Gibbon suggested that the board consider establishing a point system "whereby an establishment in either the mill industrial or downtown business districts receive a point in their favor based upon their location, and those in other districts do not."
Duda made mention of the Fitz-Gibbon opinion at the July 5 meeting, but did not mention the lawyer's recommendations around process or a point system. "We asked attorney Fitz-Gibbon ... what his opinion was. And essentially ... he said we still have a bit of leeway," said Duda, while prompting Redfern and Growhoski to "correct me if I'm wrong."
Licensing Board member Kelly Richey was absent from the July 5 Licensing Board meeting, where no formal votes were taken. The board generally meets the first Monday of every month.
Any entity seeking consideration at the board's Aug. 1 meeting must submit a liquor license application by July 25, said Growhoski.
In Massachusetts cities and towns, liquor licenses are limited by population. Since Easthampton is already "over quota," the licenses could only be granted by a special act of the state Legislature. Licensing decisions made locally must then be approved by the state's Alcoholic Beverage Control Commission.
The special licenses, once issued, may not be transferred to a new location. The board may, however, grant a license to a new applicant at the same location, with approval from the ABCC. The annual renewal fee for a full-pour liquor license in Easthampton is $1,313.
SPRINGFIELD - A Ludlow High School teacher on Wednesday denied a charge of making a bomb threat.
Tina Fisher, 46, of Westfield, appeared in Hampden Superior Court to enter the not guilty plea to the charge which says she made a bomb threat by leaving a note in a classroom in December.
She was a special education teacher at Ludlow High School and was placed on administrative leave as the bomb threat note was investigated.
At the request of prosecution and defense, Judge Mark D. Mason ordered Fisher remain released on her own recognizance. Fisher was told to report to the Ludlow Police Department immediately for photographs and fingerprints.
Mason asked if there was any request for an order that Fisher stay away from the school but the prosecution had no such request.
Fisher faced the same charge for a bomb threat found on Oct. 25, 2006, at East Street Elementary School, where she then taught.
She was reinstated as a special education teacher in November 2007 after the prosecution in that case was dropped. When reinstated, she accepted a transfer to Ludlow High School.
Ludlow School Superintendant Todd Gazda on Wednesday provided a copy of a statement he sent out to staff and parents.
He said due to the fact that this is both an employment matter and criminal case he is unable to provide any further details.
In the statement to parents and staff Gazda said the teacher was immediately placed on administrative leave "last fall" while the investigation progressed. He did not name Fisher in the statement to parents and staff, just saying a person will be arraigned soon
"It is truly unfortunate that the alleged perpetrator of this crime is a teacher at Ludlow High School," he said.
"Incidents such as this one are unfortunately becoming a regular occurrence in public schools across our country and it is even more distressing when the alleged perpetrator is a member of our school community," Gazda said.
In the 2006 case, Hampden Superior Court Judge Bertha D. Josephson on Oct. 19, 2007, allowed a request by defense attorney David P. Hoose to prevent a security camera videotape from being used as evidence.
The judge had disallowed evidence from a security camera videotape which the prosecutor and defense lawyer had termed key evidence.
The tape showed Fisher followed by the note, but not Fisher placing the note, according to courtroom testimony. Josephson said there was a 17-second gap in the videotape. The evidence was key to the case, lawyers said.
Now Fisher is accused of placing a note with a bomb threat in a Ludlow High School classroom on Dec. 2. The school was evacuated when the note was found. Students and faculty were allowed to return to the school after about an hour when an inspection of the building determined there was no bomb present.
School Superintendent Todd Gazda at the time characterized it as a "low-level bomb threat." School officials were working with police to find those responsible, he said. The perpetrators, he said, "will face all school and legal consequences that can be brought to bear."
In the 2006 case, an arbiter with the American Arbitration Association ordered that Fisher be reinstated with full back pay and benefits from the date of her suspension. She had been terminated after the suspension.
The note in the 2006 case said, "boom bomb, no (expletive) Bishop," in an apparent reference to principal Brett Bishop.
In the statement to parents Gazda said, "Cases such as these are often very long processes of putting together evidence to prove culpability."
"I realize that these situations create a great deal of anxiety for parents and students, but please know that the safety of our students is always our primary concern," he said.
Gazda said, "I would like to thank the Ludlow Police department, particularly Detective Lou Tulik, along with the State police and the District Attorney's office for their efforts."
Baku, Azerbaijan, July 13
By Elena Kosolapova Trend:
Kazakhstan has named the deputy minister for investments and development.
Berik Kamaliyev was appointed deputy minister of investments and development of Kazakhstan, Marat Igaliyev, director of personnel department at the Ministry for Investments and Development, said in a Facebook post July 13.
According to the post, Kamaliyev had previously served as advisor to the prime minister, deputy minister of industry and new technologies, minister of transport and communications of Kazakhstan and chairman of board of KazAvtoZhol National Company.
Kamaliyev has served as the vice president of the Kazakhstan Temir Zholy National Company since January 2015, added Igaliyev.
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Follow the author on Twitter: @E_Kosolapova
Baku, Azerbaijan, July 12
By Khalid Kazimov Trend:
Iran and Azerbaijan have inked a memorandum of understanding (MOU) for cooperation on road transportation.
Mohammad Javad Atrchian, an official with Irans Road Maintenance and Transport Organization (RMTO), has said the members of a joint commission of road transportation of Iran and Azerbaijan agreed to share data and statistics on transit, IRNA news agency reported July 12.
The sides also agreed to study the issues posing problems for transportation of goods and passengers, the official added.
Under the MOU, Iranian transport vehicles that carry non-dangerous goods will pay $160 as border crossing fee, $80 as road use tax for 14 days, $40 as insurance charges (those who hold insurance green card are excluded), as well as $25 for gaining entry into large cities as Baku, Ganja and Sumgait.
Atrchian further added that the fees for dangerous goods will be clarified considering the ADR convention (the European Agreement concerning the International Carriage of Dangerous Goods by Road).
Managers of various angel funds in North Dakota say the popular program thats received heavy scrutiny in recent months is working just fine while lawmakers and state officials say a thorough review is necessary to ensure proper use of taxpayer money.
Full Story: http://www.jamestownsun.com/news/state/4071404-angel-funds-under-scrutiny
Iran's Central Bank Chief Valiollah Seif discussed issues of mutual interest with President of the Deutsche Bank Jens Weidmann on Wednesday, IRNA reported.
The two officials discussed ways to enhance banking cooperation during their meeting in Frankfurt.
Seif also had a meeting with presidents of AKA Bank and DZ Bank.
He is expected to discuss banking issues with the representatives of German-based Iranian companies during his trip to Germany.
Following the implementation of the nuclear deal between Iran and world powers, also known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, and the removal of western-imposed sanctions, the European countries started considering returning to Iran's lucrative market.
German companies were among the first foreign that started negotiations to invest in Iran.
The trip by Iran's CBI chief comes at a time that there are still financial and banking hurdles on the way of the Islamic Republic to resume full-fledged ties with the western countries.
Bear Paw Development Corporation is a private non-profit organization created for the purpose of administering programs to help improve regional economic conditions in Hill, Blaine, Liberty, Chouteau and Phillips Counties and the Fort Belknap and Rocky Boy's Indian Reservations.
Prospera Business Network is the lead non-profit organization advancing and supporting community-centered economic development in southwest Montana. Our focus is helping people start and grow their business in turn strengthening our regions economy and communities.
Tehran, Iran, July 13
By Mehdi Sepahvand Trend:
Despite many ups and downs and ambiguities, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA, aka nuclear deal) has not been violated as of yet, Director of Political and International Affairs at the Iranian Foreign Ministry Hamid Baidinejad told a press conference.
Speaking on the anniversary of the nuclear agreement, the Iranian official said the sides to the agreement are working to solve the related problems, IRNA news agency reported July 13.
The JCPOA was reached July 14, 2015, between Iran and the group 5+1 (the US, UK, France, Russia, China, plus Germany) to put an end to the 12-year dispute over Irans nuclear program.
The deal came into force on January 16.
Baidinejad in answer to a question regarding an upcoming International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report on Iran said, The draft that has been published is not a full report. Ban Ki-Moons report should be comprehensive and is expected to enjoy a certain amount of fairness. The draft is not fair enough.
Under the JCPOA, Iran has in fact limited its nuclear program and provided enhanced access for international atomic monitors.
The other sides have in return committed to terminating all nuclear-related sanctions imposed by the United States, the United Nations and the European Union against Iran.
Tehran, Iran, July 13
By Mehdi Sepahvand Trend:
Iran believes that transparency, peaceful use of the sea, and avoidance of military forces in relations among the Caspian Sea littoral countries are key to the development of the region, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif told a conference of the Caspian states in Astana, Kazakhstan.
To achieve any economic prosperity, which is a key to the nations well-being, it is necessary to adhere to the Astrakhan summit statement, prevent any third-party military presence at the sea, and cooperate to prevent crises in the region, he stated, IRNA news agency reported July 13.
The foreign minister also called for a general consensus for sustainable development in the Caspian region and rendering a fair dissection of the marine areas.
The one-day conference is attended by the foreign ministers of Russia, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Iran and Turkmenistan, where they will discuss the legal status of the sea.
In the first such meeting that was held in 2002 in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, the member states reviewed the ways to fight environment pollution at the Caspian Sea and also how to preserve the worlds biggest inland water body.
Later meetings were held in 2007 in Tehran, 2010 in Baku, and 2014 in Astrakhan.
Maitre Samia Maktouf, a lawyer defending 17 victims of Paris terror attacks in 2015, announced on Tuesday that her clients intended to file charges against the French government, Xinhua reported.
"We will do everything to obtain the condemnation of the French government for failing to prevent the action of the terrorists, while some of them were under judicial supervision," said the lawyer to the French channel BFM TV.
At the same time, the report of the parliamentary committee of inquiry on terrorism was being delivered to the president of the French National Assembly, media report said.
According to several French media, the committee's report revealed in particular that one of the suicide bomber of the Bataclan Theater was able to go to Syria in September despite the judicial supervision put into place after his indictment for a failed attempt to head for Yemen in 2012.
The French government has been already condemned for negligence by the administrative court of Nimes (Gard) in the case of master corporal Abel Chennouf who was assassinated in March 2012 by Mohamed Merah in Montauban (Tarn-et-Garonne), France.
French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve expressed his reservation concerning some suggestions of the committee's report in a press release on Tuesday, namely, the creation of a new intelligence agency and the fusion of some terrorist monitoring systems.
"This prudence regarding the creation of new structures results in a will to exempt the intelligence service from undergoing perpetual process of reforms without guaranteed substantial gain in efficiency, " said the official.
Cazeneuve added, "In fact, these services have already been subject to numerous reorganizations in the past few months to adjust their practice to a particularly high and constantly changing threat. Moreover, in this context, the urgency of the situation drives them to focus on the protection of the French citizens."
Cazeneuve spoke on Tuesday to the president of the association of the November 13. 2015 Paris attack victims in order to outline French government's position on questions related to counter-terrorism efforts.
Queen Elizabeth II appointed Theresa May new Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, a Buckingham Palace spokesperson confirmed Wednesday.
May's audience, in which the Queen instructed May to form a new cabinet of ministers, took place shortly after the British monarch accepted David Cameron's resignation.
May is then expected to arrive at her new residence, Downing Street, where a ceremonial handing of the keys and a nuclear suitcase will take place.
Theresa May is widely believed to name her key cabinet members by late Wednesday.
A photographic exhibition of PYD and PKK terrorists being held at the European Parliament was criticized as unacceptable by a senior Turkish presidential aide on Tuesday, Anadolu reported.
Ibrahim Kalin, spokesman for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said the display served as a propaganda tool for the PYD, the Syrian affiliate of the PKK, which is listed as a terrorist group by Turkey, the EU and U.S.
It is unacceptable to make propaganda -- under the roof of European Parliament -- about a terror group which targets Turkish citizens every day, Kalin told Anadolu Agency.
We have difficulty understanding what the European Parliament is aiming at by polishing an organic extension of the PKK, which is listed as a terror group by the European Union.
He said that if the event had been staged because the PYD is fighting Daesh in Syria we advise them to open exhibitions on Nusra Front, Hezbollah and the bloodstained Assad regime.
The exhibition features around 30 photographs showing PKK, PYD and YPG terrorists in northern Syria.
In one image, crowds carry a photograph of PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan, who was convicted of terrorism and treason in 1999 and is currently serving a life sentence.
Kalin said that Turkey saw no difference between terror groups such as the Nusra Front, Daesh, the PYD or PKK.
The photographs were taken by Austrian anthropologist Thomas Schmidinger and the Brussels exhibit is hosted by Josef Weidenholzer, vice-president of the parliaments Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats.
The pictures, which purport to represent important figures and historical events in the development of Rojava -- a name given to regions of northern Syria -- will be exhibited until July 15, according to Weidenholzers website.
Turkey has repeatedly criticized such displays as serving to promote terrorism.
In March -- prior to the Brussels attacks that killed 32 people -- the Belgian government allowed PKK supporters to pitch tents near the EU Council building on the eve of a Turkey-EU summit.
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu criticized Belgium for showing double standards in tolerating terrorist groups, saying they should be treated in the same way as Daesh.
Terror organizations such as the PKK and the far-left Revolutionary People's Liberation Party-Front (DHKP-C) are active in Belgium and several PKK figures reportedly live in the country. There are also pro-PKK TV channels and last month Turkish officials protested about YPG flags hanging in the European Parliament.
Chicken will be the best-positioned protein due to its low price position in times of pressure on consumer spending power but rises in production costs and the long-term impact of COVID-19 threaten to disrupt the sector, according to Rabobank.
Prosecutors in Turkeys capital Ankara have prepared a file for extraditing U.S.-based preacher Fetullah Gulen, who is accused of leading a terrorist organization, as well as trying to infiltrate and overthrow the elected government, sources said Wednesday.
Sources from the Ankara Chief Public Prosecutor's Office, speaking on condition of anonymity due to restrictions on talking to the media, said the file will be sent to the Justice Ministry on Thursday, and then later to the U.S. Justice Department with a formal extradition request.
The network led by Gulen, who is self-exiled in the U.S, is accused of wiretapping senior Turkish government figures, including the former prime minister and current president, National Intelligence Organization (MIT) chief, and Cabinet ministers, as well as journalists via state officials.
Last October, an Istanbul court issued an arrest warrant for Gulen after approving a 1,453-page indictment charging him with "attempting to overthrow the government of the Republic of Turkey or obstructing it from conducting its duties by force".
According to the sources, the extradition file includes Gulens identity, his address in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania, as well as accusations and charges against him, with places, dates, and other details.
by Chuck Martin , Staff Writer, July 12, 2016
Augmented reality, which has been kicking around for years, owes a lot to Pokemon Go.
A few years ago, I met with Layar tops execs at their headquarters in Amsterdam. Layar, one of the early AR pioneers, had launched AR back in 2009 for apartment searching.
The idea was that a phone could be pointed at a building and the phone holder would see information and pricing of each apartment for rent or sale, as text overlayed on the phone screen showing the building via the phones camera.
That particular application never caught on in a big way.
Layar ultimately was acquired by UK startup Blippar in 2014, growing the base of Blippar AR users.
Uses were pretty well confined to those in the know or those who happened to come across magazine promotions that incorporated AR with a quick scan of a code to make additional information appear to augment the reality of what was on the page.
And now Pokemon Go has taken AR to the masses.
Fittingly, there was no promotion suggesting that augmented reality is being used to show digital characters in the physical environment.
In the Internet of Things, its not about the technology, its about the experience.
And that is a lesson for anyone involved in introducing or promoting IoT consumer products.
There are several reasons for the Pokemon Go AR phenomenon.
The technology has matured enough so that location and connections are more reliable and phone speed and graphics allow more real time interactions.
This is a boost for augmented reality overall.
People are now getting used to how the technology works, said Jordan Edelson, CEO of Appetizer Mobile, a mobile app development agency.
There also was existing branding with a fanatical following with Pokemon go, Edelson said.
In addition to consumer applications, augmented reality has been in use for various business applications, such as adding data over instruction manuals or for complex troubleshooting.
At a recent multi-day IoT conference I attended in Boston, PTC demonstrated AR technology being used to diagnose and repair large Caterpillar generators in the field, which is about as industrial strength as you can get.
But the numbers for AR in business are nothing like those around Pokemon Go.
For example, the total market forecast for AR in business is $6 billion by 2021, according to the latest report from Index AR Solutions.
Meanwhile, various reports have Pokemon Go being played daily on more than half of Android phones in the U.S.
That is scale.
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Doug Ziewacz, head of North America media and advertising for Under Armour, will present on brands and connected consumers at the MediaPost IoT Marketing Forum Aug. 3 in New York.
by John Motavalli , Columnist, July 13, 2016
Last week, we wrote about media companies planning a powerful network to compete against Facebook. Little did we realize that this appears to be a Dutch-based micro-payment journalism Web site called Blendle, which is currently in beta with 10,000 testers in the U.S. The New York Times and German publisher Axel Springer have provided $3.8 million in financial backing. Of course, with Facebook taking in some $17 billion in ad revenue and Blendle foregoing ads, the contest may be a mite one-sided. And, on another level, we have to wonder if media companies are simply abandoning the ad-supported model because Google and Facebook so dominate programmatic buying. We can understand frustration over that, but thinking micropayments are the answer seems a stretch.
News of Blendle's existence is not new. MediaPost wrote about it as recently as July 7 and published a letter from its co-founder two years ago. What is a revelation, however, is that anybody would take this concept seriously as a potential competitor to much of anything, let alone Facebook.
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Blendle bills itself as the biggest platform of premium journalism in the country. Its not clear what country is meant by this, as Blendle is based in Holland. But the list of media partners on the Blendle Web site is crystal clear, including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Bloomberg Businessweek, Time, The Huffington Post, Advertising Age, The Washington Post, The Economist, Inc., even The New York Review of Books.
According to a summary by Alexander Klopping, the co-founder of Blendle, the new product will be to journalism what Netflix is to video. Journalism needs a Spotify, a Netflix, an iTunes whatever you want to call it, Klopping wrote. One Web site that houses the best newspapers and magazines in the country, that allows people to browse through everything and only pay for the stories they like, where you can see what your friends recommended. And where its really easy to just get the eight or 10 best stories published every day, and discover those really great pieces. Nobody built it, so we did it ourselves.
Content Curated By Editors
A bunch of fairly high-profile editors curate the best stories from the partners. We have some awesome users you can follow that curate the best stories in their field of interest. To name a few, Fusion senior editor Felix Salmon curates his view on the best business stories. BBC journalist Kim Ghattas covers politics. MediaShifts Mark Glaser selects the best media stories. And Pulitzer Prize-winning critic for The New York Times, Michi Kakutani, shares the best in culture journalism.
If you dont like the story you pay for, Klopping promises, you will get your money back. And even if you agree to pay, micropayments like this are for a few cents at best. Not exactly a way to financial power. The sample stories on the Blendle site include a New York Times story on Marco Rubio losing momentum in the Republican primary, hardly a timely or unique piece. Try to imagine someone paying extra for this, and you get an idea of the difficulty of the concept here.
Yes, you will say, people pay for online subscriptions to the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. But what Blendle is supposed to be is not a newspaper with breaking news, but an amalgamation of investigative reporting, revelatory background articles, newsworthy analysis and hard-hitting interviews. All of this, of course, is available for free now on sites like Google News or Yahoo!, or from several sites underwritten by Pierre Omidyar of Ebay.
Moreover, if the idea here is that with Blendle, one would only have to read the highlights of stories from the New York Times or WSJ without subscribing to the whole thing, try this little experiment. If you have read your 10 free articles a month on nytimes.com, and want more, go to the story you want to read, copy the headline, and paste it into Google. The story will come up in its entirety; the paywall disappears. Dont ask me why this works, but it almost always does. I am not a hacker; indeed, a child would know how to do this. And many of the partners listed here do not have paywalls, and make their material available in archives. Why pay for it?
There is a very funny picture of Alexander Klopping online, with his self-described geeky backpack, going into the New York Times building. One gets the feeling that Times security was alerted. So, if on Kloppings slender shoulders, the future of journalism rests, lets examine his project a little.
The U.S. Is Not The Netherlands
He says that the concept has been tested successfully in Germany and Holland, and that all major publishers [are] on board in Germany. In both countries, we have over 650,000 registered users who read millions of articles every month. Half of our users are under 35, people who would usually never pay for a piece of journalism. However, in a reply to a Blendle skeptic, Klopping admits, You think that Blendle will not work as well in English speaking countries as it currently does in the Netherlands. Well see who is right, but even if you are correct: if Blendle works really well in the non-English speaking world, were very happy.
To compare the U.S. to the Netherlands is pretty risky. More people live in the New York metropolitan area than in Holland. Its densely populated, and with a population far less diverse than the U.S., 78.3% of the population is considered Dutch ethnically. We arent sure how many Dutch news sites have paywalls, but not many American ones do. Ask USA Today what happened when they tried that. Certainly most of the partners listed here make their material available readily online.
Another question we have gets to the heart of the dilemma media companies seem to be in right now. Why do august institutions like The Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and Bloomberg Businessweek need a platform provided by a young European who doesnt seem hugely familiar with American media? (For the record, Klopping did not respond to two emails.) Why not just introduce micropayments on their own respective Web platforms? Whats the secret sauce here?
The fact that media companies think programmatic advertising is stacked against them does not surprise us. But their solution does. If I ran a major media company, I would immediately put my staff to work finding new ideas that would work online. And if my staff couldnt come up with anything viable, I would hire new people. History shows us how reluctant media companies were to have avoided investments in just about every major online development, from Google and YouTube to Facebook, so why not reverse the pattern now, go out and use the equity you still have to fund new online concepts that work? There is still time. Barely.
by Laurie Sullivan @lauriesullivan, July 13, 2016
Google released its latest piracy policy report Wednesday, but the focus turns to the amount of cash the company divvies out to content creators and artists. It dispels a myth that the company drives searchers to pirated information.
The majority of media-related queries that individuals submit daily only include results with links to legitimate sites, Katie Oyama, senior policy council, wrote in the post.
For problem links that may appear for rarer, long queries that could include the word "free" or "streaming," Google's system for processing copyright removal notices handle millions of URLs each day, in less than six hours on average.
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When a large number of valid Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) notices for a site come in, the search ranking algorithms reduce that site in future search results.
Piracy also affects content producers such as advertisers and their agency partners. Google, since 2012, has blacklisted more than 91,000 sites from AdSense for violating policies against copyright infringement, the vast majority caught by AdSenses screens.
Oyama writes that Google also has been working with other advertisers to craft best practices aimed at raising standards across the online advertising industry in the U.S., U.K., France, Italy, and Asia.
If it's all about generating revenue for content and rights holders from digital thieves. The BPI, which represents the U.K.'s recording industry doesn't appear content with the report, dismissing it as "greenwash," which the BBC defines as an industry term that means to "attack disinformation used by organizations to make out they are more eco-friendly than they actually are."
In the piracy policy report, Google states that YouTube alone has now generated over $2 billion to rights-holders by monetizing user-uploaded content through Content ID, its rights management system. Google said it invested more than $60 million in technology to stop piracy. And that Content ID now stores more than 50 million reference files.
A inforgraphic explains that 98% of all copyright management on YouTube takes place through Content ID, more than 90% of claims results in monetization. Content ID claims are disputed less than 1% of the time.
The BBC points out that the BPI isn't the only organization to have issues with the report. The International Federation of Photographic industry describes Content ID as "ineffective."
by Wendy Davis @wendyndavis, July 13, 2016
In a mixed ruling, a federal appellate court has said that shuttered social networking aggregation service Power Ventures and its founder, Steve Vachani, didn't violate spam laws by sending unsolicited invitations to Facebook users.
But the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals also said Power violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act by accessing Facebook's site after the company told Power to stop doing so.
The decision, issued Tuesday, vacates U.S. District Court Judge Lucy Koh's 2013 order requiring Power and Vachani to pay around $3 million to Facebook.
The dispute between the companies dates to 2008, when Facebook alleged in a lawsuit that Power violated anti-spam laws and computer fraud laws in order to grow its service.
Power aggregated data from different social networking sites, enabling people with accounts through MySpace, LinkedIn, Twitter and other services to access all of their information from one portal. To accomplish this, Power asked users to provide log-in information for their social networking sites and then imported people's information. Power then contacted users' friends and invited them to join, but made it appear as if the emails came from "The Facebook Team."
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Facebook argued that its terms of service prohibit people from providing user names and passwords, and that Power induced Facebook members to violate those terms. Facebook also said that the emails sent by Power violated the federal CAN-SPAM law on the ground that they were misleading.
A three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit said that Power's promotional emails weren't "materially" misleading -- even though the "from" field of the messages identified Facebook as the sender.
"A Power user gave Power permission to share a promotion, Power then accessed that users Facebook data, and Facebook crafted and caused form e-mails to be sent to recipients," the appellate judges wrote. "Because more than one person may be considered to have initiated the message, we hold that, within the meaning of the statute, Powers users, Power, and Facebook all initiated the messages at issue."
But the appellate panel found that Power violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act by continuing to access Facebook's site after the company sent a cease and desist letter to Power in late 2008.
"Facebooks cease and desist letter informed Power that it had violated Facebooks terms of use and demanded that Power stop soliciting Facebook users information, using Facebook content, or otherwise interacting with Facebook through automated scripts," the court wrote. "Facebook then imposed IP blocks in an effort to prevent Powers continued access. The record shows unequivocally that Power knew that it no longer had authorization to access Facebooks computers, but continued to do so anyway."
That portion of the ruling drew criticism today from George Washington Law School professor Orin Kerr, who points out that Power had the permission of Facebook users to access their data.
"The web is a publishing platform, and everyone is inherently authorized to visit a public website," he wrote at the Volokh Conspiracy. "Power also accessed the individual accounts of users acting as their agents. But as I see it, thats not enough to constitute a computer trespass because its within the permission of the user and acting as the users agent."
The appellate court sent the case back to the district court for the Northern District of California for new damages calculations; the appellate judges said that figure should reflect damages from the time period after Power received Facebook's demand to stop accessing its servers.
by Wendy Davis , Staff Writer @wendyndavis, July 13, 2016
Google has called off its battle with Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood, the company said today in court papers.
The company filed a stipulation agreeing to dismiss its 18-month-old lawsuit against Hood. Google and Hood now "endeavor to collaborate in addressing the harmful consequences of unlawful and/or dangerous online content," the court document says.
Google's move in court officially ends the high-profile legal battle that erupted in late 2014, when the company asked a federal judge in Mississippi to prohibit Hood from following through on a threat to sue the company over illegal content. Google also sought a restraining order barring Hood from attempting to enforce a subpoena seeking "millions" of documents relating to piracy in the search results and on YouTube, among other material.
Google's original complaint incorporated revelations that came to light as a result of the Sony hack, including Project Goliath -- the code name for a Hollywood campaign to persuade state law enforcement authorities to target Google for allegedly enabling piracy via its search results.
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U.S. District Court Judge Henry Wingate in the Southern District of Mississippi sided with Google, ruling that the company had a constitutional right to decide what search results to display. Wingate also wrote that Hood lacks authority to target Google for linking to sites that allegedly infringe copyright; state attorneys general don't have jurisdiction over copyright infringement.
The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals vacated that order earlier this year, ruling that the injunction was premature because Hood hadn't taken steps to force Google to comply with the subpoena.
After that decision came out, Hood withdrew the subpoena. The case remained active, though, because the appellate judges didn't decide whether Google was entitled to a declaratory judgment regarding future enforcement actions.
Google's withdrawal of its complaint comes the same day the company released a report touting its efforts to combat online piracy. "Thanks to the efforts of Googles engineers, the vast majority of media-related queries that users submit every day return results that include only links to legitimate sites," senior policy counsel Katie Oyama writes on the company blog. "For any problematic links that may appear for rarer 'long-tail' queries, our systems for processing copyright removal notices handle millions of URLs each day, in less than 6 hours on average. And when we get a large number of valid notices for a site, our search ranking algorithms demote that site in future search results."
The day when surgeons can stop having to repeatedly cut open the skull to deliver life-saving laser therapy to the brain moves closer with the development of a new material for making transparent skull implants.
Share on Pinterest The researchers have developed a new material for making transparent skull implants so surgeons can deliver repeats of laser therapy to the brain in a minimally invasive way.
Image credit: UC-Riverside
Researchers at the University of California Riverside (UCR) report their progress with the new implant material in two recently published journal papers.
Their aim is to develop a biocompatible window to the brain whereby surgeons will be able to direct laser therapy into patients brains on demand, without having to perform repeated craniotomies.
Such a material could transform a risky, highly invasive operation into a less risky, minimally invasive one.
Brain surgeons use laser therapy to treat patients with life-threatening conditions such as brain cancer, traumatic brain injury, stroke, and neurodegenerative diseases.
The two papers report how the team led by Guillermo Aguilar, professor of mechanical engineering at UCRs Bourns College of Engineering tested the implant materials biocompatibility and ability to help manage bacterial infection.
The Window to the Brain project began when Prof. Aguilar and his team found a way to make a see-through version of yttria-stabilized zirconia (YSZ) the tough ceramic material that is used in hip implants and dental crowns.
This is not the first project aiming to create a window into the brain, but most other researchers are working with glass-based materials that are less impact resistant than YSZ.
Discovery sheds more light on one of world's least understood autoimmune conditions.
Non-Europeans have a higher frequency of the gene variants that increase the risk of lupus as compared to the European population, a new study from researchers at the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Biomedical Research Centre at Guy's and St Thomas' and King's College London, has confirmed.
The findings, which are published in Nature Genetics, could lead to the development of tests to predict if an individual is more likely to develop lupus and may also contribute to the development of personalised treatments for the difficult to treat autoimmune condition the affects more than five million* people worldwide.
The study was led by Professor Tim Vyse, an expert in genetics and molecular medicine at King's College London and an honorary consultant rheumatologist at Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust, who said:
"Lupus is a very poorly understood condition. The confirmation that the condition's increased prevalence in non-Europeans has a genetic basis is an important step towards developing better predictive and diagnostic tools and may eventually help us to develop personalised treatments too."
The research team searched genetic data gathered from 22,670 Europeans, 13,174 Chinese as well as data from South Asian, east Asian and African recorded in the 1000 genomes**. Analysis of the data revealed that non-European populations have a higher number of the gene variants, known as alleles, which are thought to contribute to the risk of developing lupus, amongst the Chinese population.
While the study establishes that lupus is highly hereditary, researchers believe there is still a large 'environmental' component which plays a significant role. Dr David Morris, a researcher at King's College London and one of the study's co-authors, said:
"For the first time we've shown that Chinese populations have a higher number of risk alleles than their European counterparts, but we don't understand why this susceptability hasn't diminished over time for non-Europeans.
"When thinking about whether someone might develop lupus, we use evidence from Twins studies*** which has shown that genetic factors account for two-thirds of the picture and environmental factors make up the final third. Our study advances our understanding of the genetic component, but more work needs to be done to better understand the environmental factors."
Further analysis of the data also uncovered 10 additional risk alleles associated with lupus, bringing the total of known lupus-related alleles to 88. Dr Morris said:
"Identifying more lupus-related risk alleles gives us a clearer picture of the genetic triggers. It's possible that we may never identify all of these triggers, but we are moving closer to a threshold that when crossed will help us to more effectively predict and treat this debilitating and poorly understood condition."
The team is keeping a track of these genes on its website http://insidegen.com/.
The health benefits of quitting smoking are widely accepted, but researchers from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have taken issue with the suggestion that doctors should routinely recommend e-cigarettes as an alternative to cigarettes for their patients who smoke.
The researchers point out in a commentary published in Annals of Family Medicine that existing treatments are more effective than e-cigarettes to help people quit smoking, there are professional ethics concerns about providers who recommend them, and there is no strong evidence that e-cigarettes are safe.
"Providers should not routinely recommend e-cigarettes to patients until we have far more data on their safety and effectiveness compared to established, FDA-approved medications," said Adam O. Goldstein, MD, MPH, a UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center member and professor in the UNC School of Medicine. "There are very few therapeutic devices that we recommend that aren't regulated, that have potential and real side effects, and that are addictive. There are safer and more effective smoking cessation products for the same condition."
The researchers described notable safety and health concerns about e-cigarettes. Batteries inside e-cigarettes have caught fire or exploded, and particulate matter from e-cigarettes, which has been shown to be present in similar numbers to cigarettes, can increase the risk of cardiovascular and respiratory diseases.
The UNC researchers' commentary served as a counterpoint to a paper in the same journal issue by Ann McNeill, PhD, professor of tobacco addiction at King's College London, that suggests e-cigarettes are a less harmful way for smokers, including those trying to quit, to use nicotine.
"Though e-cigarettes are likely not as harmful as conventional cigarettes, a growing number of studies report that they are by no means harmless," said Clare Meernik, MPH, a research specialist in the UNC Department of Family Medicine. "Short-term effects include exposure to toxins, reduced respiratory and lung function and burn-related injuries from exploding devices."
The researchers also noted that e-cigarettes have been less effective than existing treatments to help people quit smoking.
"People are focused on should they use e-cigarettes or not. We can have a conversation about that, but part of the bigger picture is being lost," Goldstein said. "And that is that we need be using the tools that we currently have available, including seven FDA-approved medications in combination with behavioral treatment. We have quit lines that provide free counseling and physician counseling to help patients come up with concrete plans for quitting and developing the skills necessary to quit permanently and to increase social support - all of which significantly increase cessation."
This past May the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced it was extending its authority over all tobacco products, including e-cigarettes. Greater regulatory oversight of e-cigarettes, the researchers said, will be a significant step forward toward ensuring higher safety standards.
"We need more data on effectiveness, we need more data on safety, we need technology that's safe so the products don't explode, we need to ensure they're childproof," Goldstein said. "Right now, we don't know the different amounts of ingredients in these products. We don't know about the nicotine levels that patients are getting."
In addition to examining existing research on e-cigarettes, Goldstein said their views came from clinical observations from helping tobacco users through the UNC School of Medicine Department of Family Medicine Nicotine Dependence Program. A branch of the program exists in the N.C. Cancer Hospital to help cancer patients and survivors safely quit tobacco products, he said
And while they advise against the routine recommendation of e-cigarettes, Meernik and Goldstein know firsthand that smoking cessation for individual patients is rarely black and white, and that providers must look at each patient's unique situation.
"The emergence of any intervention or product promoted as a smoking cessation aid excites many providers, but such tools need to be proven safe and effective before providers routinely utilize them," Meernik said. "Debates such as this can help clarify the evidence for providers and ensure that patients are receiving the highest quality treatment."
Article: Should Clinicians Recommend E-cigarettes to Their Patients Who Smoke? No, Clare Meernik, MPH and Adam O. Goldstein, MD, MPH, Annals of Family Medicine, doi: 10.1370/afm.1961, published 11 July 2016.
China's first seawater desalination plant will be built by Xianda Group. (Photo : Getty Images)
Chinas supposed solution to the growing problem in freshwater supply is drying up as the countrys desalination plants underperform and other related projects stalled due to lack of funding.
In 2011, China announced its plans to desalinize seawater to produce fresh water for the thirsty capital Beijing through China Daily.
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Three years later, the state-run Xinhua News Agency reported that China will be using ice as a source of fresh water through the same desalination process.
Since then, programs to increase the clean water supply in Beijing alone proved to be a challenge to the government due to the country's economic slowdown and the underperformance of already-established desalination plants.
Promising Plans
Desalination is a process of distilling salty water and turning it into drinkable fresh water that is safe for the consumption of humans.
According to Bloomberg, China embraced such technology in hopes of providing enough drinking water for the parched citizens of Beijing and the rest of the population which comprises 20 percent of the world's entire number.
The plan was to establish desalination plants which will be able to produce 50,000 tons of potable water by 2019 and send it to Beijing.
The plant located in Bohai Bay near Tangshan City is supposed to send this amount of fresh water to the capital city, which is 170 miles away.
"In terms of future potential, China may be the most important place. The desalination market is very hot right now," Aqualyng China CEO Paul Bai told Bloomberg.
However, Bai admitted that the project can be very expensive. Of course, with very few options, China is bound to jump on the desalination trend.
Drought
Unfortunately, China was not able to maintain its water desalination project because of underperforming facilities and the country's slowing economy.
According to Technology Review, the desalination plant in Bohai Bay missed its target of 2.2 million to 2.6 million tons of fresh water every day in 2015 and produced only 1.03 million tons a day.
Apparently, the process of desalination requires power-intensive equipment that can be difficult to maintain, leaving the price of fresh water produced from it way more expensive than tap water.
According to the outlet, the price of a ton of fresh water reached 75 cents to $1.20, which is more than double the price the people pay for a ton of tap water.
"When there is a drought, local officials and enterprises all come to see us and say, 'We want to desalinate seawater. But if there is sufficient rainfall the next year, they will drop the idea and invest their money in other things first," Tianjin University Key Laboratory of Membrane Science and Desalination Technology Director Wang Zhi explained.
A patch made from cryopreserved human umbilical cord may be a novel method for treating spina bifida in utero, according to researchers at McGovern Medical School at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth). The findings were published in Obstetrics & Gynecology, the journal of The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.
A patch comprised of the donated outer layer of the umbilical cord from healthy newborns was used for the repairs. The surgeries were performed at Children's Memorial Hermann Hospital.
"The promise of this patch is that the umbilical cord contains specific natural material called heavy chain hyaluronic acid/pentraxin3 that has regenerative properties," said Ramesha Papanna, M.D., M.P.H., lead author, assistant professor in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences at McGovern Medical School and maternal-fetal medicine specialist at The Fetal Center at Children's Memorial Hermann Hospital. "It allows the local tissue to grow in at the repair site instead of a healing by scar formation that occurs with traditional repair methods. This decrease in scar formation may help improve the spinal cord function further and reduce the need for future surgeries to remove the effects of the scar tissue on the spinal cord."
According to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, spina bifida is characterized by the incomplete development of the coverings of the brain, spinal cord or meninges - the protective covering around the brain or spinal cord. It is the most common neural tube defect in the country, affecting 1,500 to 2,000 of the more than 4 million babies born each year. The defect can result in paralysis, urinary or bowel dysfunction and mental retardation.
In 2011, a landmark clinical trial sponsored by the National Institutes of Health found that if a fetus underwent in utero surgery to close the defect, the serious complications associated with spina bifida could be reversed or lessened. In cases where the defect was too large to close with the fetus' existing skin, a patch was necessary. But in some cases, scar tissue may cause adherence of the patch to the underlying spinal cord. This could result in a loss of neurologic function as the child ages. Further surgery was often needed to remove this scar tissue.
"The use of this patch for fetal repair heralds a new era for fetal spina bifida repair," said Kenneth Moise, M.D., co-author, professor, director of the Fetal Intervention Fellowship Program at McGovern Medical School and co-director of The Fetal Center. "For the first time, a bioscaffold has been successfully employed to allow the fetus to heal itself. The implications for the future of a minimally invasive approach to fetal spina bifida repair and even neonatal spina bifida repair are enormous."
In the first case study, the skin lesion in the fetus measured 5 centimeters by 6 centimeters and there was evidence of Chiari II malformation, a complication of spina bifida in which the brain stem and the cerebellum protrude into the spinal canal or neck area. It can lead to problems with feeding, swallowing or breathing control.
At 24 weeks gestation, the patient underwent fetal surgery by KuoJen Tsao, M.D., associate professor and The Children's Fund Distinguished Professor in Pediatric Surgery and co-director of The Fetal Center, and Stephen Fletcher, D.O., co-author, associate professor in McGovern Medical School's Department of Pediatric Surgery and pediatric neurosurgeon affiliated with Memorial Hermann Mischer Neuroscience Institute at the Texas Medical Center and Children's Memorial Hermann Hospital. Moise and Papanna participated in the surgery.
The lesion was closed with skin edges sutured to the human umbilical cord patch in a watertight fashion. The mother was discharged on postoperative day 5. The baby was born at 37 weeks and the patch was intact with no leakage of fluid. The patch at the site of the lesion appeared semi-translucent with incomplete regeneration of the skin. Within two weeks, the skin had healed over the patch spontaneously. The child had normal movements of the lower extremities and bladder control function and there was a complete reversal of the Chiari II malformation.
In the second case, performed by the same team, the patient's fetus had a lesion of 4 centimeters by 5 centimeters and Chiari II malformation. The expectant mother underwent surgery at 25 weeks gestation and the procedure and application of the patch were similar to the first case. The baby was delivered at 37 1/2 weeks and there was complete covering of the lesion with the patch but without skin grown into the patch. As with the first case, the skin grew over the patch and by day 30, was completely healed. There was normal motor and urinary function and the Chiari II malformation was completely reversed.
Both cases were approved by the FDA under Expanded Access use, the Fetal Therapy Board of The Fetal Center at Children's Memorial Hermann Hospital and UTHealth Institutional Review Board prior to the surgery.
The clinical cases were the culmination of seven years of research after Papanna, and co-author Lovepreet K. Mann, M.B.B.S., instructor in McGovern Medical School's Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences, began brainstorming ideas about possible patch materials. This led them to co-author Scheffer C.G. Tseng, M.D., Ph.D., of Ocular Surface Center and TissueTech, Inc., in Miami, Fla., who was using human amniotic membrane and umbilical cord - donated by mothers of healthy infants - to repair corneas. The patch is approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for corneal repair.
"This patch acts as a scaffold, which is watertight and allows native tissue to regenerate in an organized manner, and has anti-scarring, anti-inflammatory properties. Preventing the scarring could prevent tethering, which can prevent further damage to the cord," Mann said.
The patch was first tested in animal models by a team of researchers that included Papanna, Mann, Moise, Fletcher and Saul Snowise, M.D., a maternal-fetal fellow who has now joined McGovern Medical School as an assistant professor in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences.
In 2011, after the landmark national trial for fetal surgery was ended early because of positive results, physicians at McGovern Medical School and The Fetal Center were the first in Texas to perform the newly approved surgery. Since then the team has performed more than 30 fetal surgeries to treat spina bifida.
Mann said the team was taken aback at first by the lack of skin covering the patch at the birth of the first infant but she could see the child's legs moving and knew it was an early success that they hope will continue as the baby grows. "It would mean a lot to the team if we can make a small change and improve the quality of life for the child. That will mean we really did something," she said.
The team has since completed a third surgery and Fletcher has used the new patch in surgeries to untether the spinal cord of children who had previous spina bifida surgery. They wait now to see if the umbilical cord patch will help prevent tethering in the long run.
Currently, the team members are working on finding ways to make the skin heal inside the uterus and different ways to deploy the patch over the defect site through less-invasive ways.
Research collaborators, who come from different disciplines across the country, include Sanjay Prabhu, M.B.B.S., assistant professor of pediatric neuroradiology at Harvard Medical School; Raymond Grill, Ph.D., professor of neurobiology and anatomical sciences at the University of Mississippi; and Russell Stewart, Ph.D., professor of biomedical engineering at the University of Utah.
Article: Cryopreserved Human Umbilical Cord for In Utero Myeloschisis Repair, Papanna, Ramesha MD, MPH; Fletcher, Stephen DO; Moise, Kenneth J. Jr MD; Mann, Lovepreet K. MBBS; Tseng, Scheffer C. G. MD, PhD, Obstetrics & Gynecology, doi: 10.1097/AOG.0000000000001512, published 7 July 2016.
In a study appearing in the July 12 issue of JAMA, an HIV/AIDS theme issue, Xiangrong Kong, Ph.D., of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, and colleagues examined whether increasing community medical male circumcision and antiretroviral therapy (ART) coverage was associated with reduced community HIV incidence in Uganda.
Randomized trials have shown that medical male circumcision (MMC) reduces male HIV acquisition by 50 percent to 60 percent, and that early initiation of ART reduces HIV transmission by more than 90 percent in HIV-discordant couples. There are limited data on the population-level effect of scale-up of these interventions in sub-Saharan Africa. Such evaluation is important for planning and resource allocation.
Using data from population-based surveys conducted from 1999 through 2013 in 45 rural Rakai, Uganda communities, community-level ART and MMC coverage, sociodemographics, sexual behaviors, and HIV prevalence and incidence were estimated in 3 periods: prior to the availability of ART and MMC (1999-2004), during early availability of ART and MMC (2004-2007), and during mature program scale-up (2007-2013).
From 1999 through 2013, 44,688 persons participated in 1 or more surveys. Median community MMC coverage increased from 19 percent to 39 percent, and median community ART coverage rose from 0 percent to 21 percent in males and from 0 percent to 26 percent in females. Median community HIV incidence declined from 1.25 to 0.84 per 100 person-years in males, and from 1.25 to 0.99 per 100 person-years in females. Analysis indicated that increasing community-level coverage of MMC was associated with significant reductions in male community HIV incidence. For example, in communities with MMC more than 40 percent, male HIV incidence was 0.66 per 100 person-years lower than in communities with MMC coverage 10 percent or less.
"This difference is substantial to these communities and suggests that increasing MMC coverage more than 40 percent could reduce male incidence by approximately 39 percent at a population-level. This is comparable with the estimated reduction in individual HIV acquisition risk associated with comparable ART coverage in South Africa," the authors write.
"Because MMC provides direct protection against male HIV acquisition, this association is plausible and consistent with the estimated associations of increasing MMC coverage with male HIV prevalence from cross-sectional analyses in South Africa. Female community HIV incidence was not significantly associated with male MMC coverage during the study period, consistent with mathematical models suggesting that the HIV prevention benefits of MMC to women accrue over longer periods."
The researchers write that if similar associations are found elsewhere regarding increasing community MMC and female ART coverage, this would support further scale-up of MMC and ART for HIV prevention in sub-Saharan Africa.
A study by York University researcher Caroline Davis and her colleagues at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) is the first to demonstrate that variants of the Oxytocin Receptor (OXTR) gene contribute to why some of us overeat or engage in episodes of binge eating. They investigated how the OXTR gene influences appetite, food preferences, food intake and personality risk traits associated with brain-reward mechanisms. These findings will be presented this week at the Annual Meeting of the Society for the Study of Ingestive Behavior (SSIB), the society for the research into all aspects of eating and drinking behavior.
Oxytocin is an evolutionarily ancient molecule produced in the brain that acts at sites throughout the body by triggering the OXTR. It influences many survival behaviors including those used to manage stress, according to Dr. Caroline Davis, the lead researcher on the study. "For example, oxytocin enhances prosocial and related behaviors. On the other hand, increases in oxytocin tend to decrease appetite - especially the consumption of sweet carbohydrates."
Over the past decade, Davis and her co-investigator Dr. James Kennedy, Director of the Department of Neurogenetics at CAMH, assessed a large group of participants ranging in age from 27-50 years. The group had a broad range of body weights and included a substantial number with binge-eating habits. Among other measures, a blood sample was collected from each participant in order to analyze their DNA, the molecules that carry each individual's unique genetic information.
The DNA analysis uncovered a new link between oxytocin and behaviors associated with binge eating. The researchers focused on seven sites in the DNA where chemical instructions for making OXTR could vary between individuals. These "single nucleotide polymorphisms" (SNPs) were already suspected to be associated with psychological traits. The researchers collected questionnaires about their participants' differences in reward sensitivity, punishment sensitivity, sugar/fat food preferences, and overeating habits, to be correlated with the OXTR genetic information.
The researchers tested the prediction that these SNPs relate to psychological risk factors, which in turn are associated with overeating behaviors. "Three SNPs were significantly related to the psychological traits, which collectively accounted for 37% of the variance in overeating," says Davis. "Another SNP was directly related to overeating. These results support the role of genes in giving rise to traits that regulate behavior, and highlight the importance of oxytocin in overeating."
Research: Polymorphisms of the Oxytocin Receptor Gene (OXTR) and Overeating: The Mediating Role of Endophenotypic Risk Factors, Co-Authors: Dr. Karen Patte, Dr Clement Zai, Elnaz Moghimi, and Dr. James Kennedy.
Funding: The Canadian Institute of Health Research and Shire Pharmaceuticals.
Researchers at the University of Cincinnati have found that the brain networks that mediate stress relief after eating highly palatable foods may vary between males and females, and may also depend on the stage of the estrous cycle. The study performed by Ann Egan, a doctoral candidate in the University of Cincinnati Neuroscience Graduate Program in the laboratory of Dr. Yvonne Ulrich-Lai, PhD, used a rodent model of 'comfort food' to investigate the neurocircuitry behind this phenomenon. The research is to be presented this week at the Annual Meeting of the Society for the Study of Ingestive Behavior (SSIB), the foremost society for all aspects of eating and drinking behavior.
"We know that both men and women eat tasty foods as a strategy to reduce stress, and in fact there is some evidence that suggests that women may be more prone to this 'comfort food' style of eating," explained Egan. "This study is important because it suggests that males and females may be using slightly different brain regions, and the stress relief in females may also be affected by the stage of the estrous cycle. This can help us understand how eating behaviors can affect men and women differently, and how eating behaviors are affected by fluctuating hormone levels."
The researchers used a rodent model that is based on human snacking patterns. Female rats were given twice-daily access to a small amount of a sweet sugar drink for 14 days, while other female rats were only given water as a control. Then rats were subjected to a stress test, and their stress hormone response was measured. Similar to previous studies done in male rats, female rats that had been given the sugar solution had a lower stress hormone response to the stress challenge. However, in the female rats the reduced stress response only occurred if the rats were in the proestrus/estrus stage of their estrous cycle, when levels of estrogen are high.
Previous studies in male rats have identified particular brain regions that are important for the stress relief, including the basolateral amygdala and prefrontal cortex. The researchers looked at protein markers of activity (FosB/deltaFosB and pCREB) in these brain regions to see if the sugar drink altered these protein levels similarly in male and female rats. FosB/deltaFosB was increased in the amygdala of males who were given the sugar drink compared to those drinking only water. Female rats also showed this increase in amygdala FosB/deltaFosB after the sugar drink, but only when they were in the proestrus/estrus stage of their cycle. In contrast, amygdala pCREB was increased by the sugar drink in males but not females. Instead amygdala pCREB varied across the estrous cycle in female rats and was unaffected by sugar drink. These different patterns show that comfort eating has some similar effects in male and female brains, but also has unique effects in the female brain that vary across the hormonal cycle. Pursuing these findings could lead to different strategies that could be useful for women and men who habitually eat to manage stress.
Research: Sex-dependent brain activation by palatable food intake and the implications for stress relief by 'comfort' foods, Authors: AE Egan, AMK Thompson, D Buesing, S Fourman, AEB Packard, T Terefe, MB Solomon, YM Ulrich-Lai, Department Of Psychiatry And Behavioral Neuroscience, University Of Cincinnati.
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Great strides have especially been made globally towards preventing children from contracting HIV, with new infections among those under the age of 15 down 56 percent since 2010 and by 70 percent since 2000 to around 150,000 last year, the report showed.- Surging infections in Russia -But at the same time, some 1.9 million adults have contracted HIV globally every year for at least the past five years, according to Tuesday's "Prevention Gap" report. Most regions saw a flat trend, with relatively small increases or declines, but the Eastern European-Central Asian region had shown a dramatic 57-percent increase in new annual infections among adults since 2010, the report said.A full 80 percent of those new infections occurred in Russia, with another 10 percent found in Ukraine, it said, blaming low coverage of prevention programmes, in particular harm-reduction interventions among people who inject drugs. Experts have complained that the Russian government's policy focuses on treatment while neglecting prevention drives such as sex education in schools.Russia also bans methadone replacement therapy for drug addicts, which would allow users to avoid injections, eliminating the risk of contracting the virus from contaminated syringes. Pointing out that more than half of all new infections in Russia were among people who inject drugs, Sidibe warned that "If you don't reach them, you will not be able to control the epidemic."If the epidemic is not controlled among the main risk groups it will become more generalised, he warned. Globally, people who inject drugs and men who have sex with men are 24 times more likely to be infected with HIV than the general population, while sex workers are 10 times more likely, the report said."If you don't control the epidemic among those groups, because you have marginalised them, because you exclude them, because you criminalise them, you will have infection moving into the general population," Sidibe said.- Girls, women at risk -UNAIDS also voiced deep concern over the situation in eastern and sub-Saharan Africa, which continues to account for the vast majority of cases. While the region has seen new infections among adults fall four percent since 2010, Tuesday's report pointed to a stark gender inequality among those contracting the disease.Three quarters of all new HIV infections among people aged 15-24 in the region occurred among adolescent girls and young women, the report found. This was partly due to "extremely high levels of sexual abuse and violence against female children, including underage, child and forced marriage," it said, also stressing that girls and women often lack access to HIV services due to gender inequality and stigma.Such difficulties in the fight against the HIV/AIDS epidemic are being compounded by dwindling funding by international donors, and generally not enough spending on prevention efforts. "We have a five-year window of opportunity. If we miss this window of five years, we will have a rebound in this epidemic, we will have resistance, and will not be able to control the epidemic and make sure we end it by 2030," Sidibe warned.Source: AFP
"The biology of these two prevention strategies has been proven, but the big question was whether these strategies could have an impact on the number of new HIV infections in communities still struggling to control the spread of the disease," says study leader Xiangrong Kong, an associate scientist in the departments of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the Bloomberg School. "Before our study, there was no empirical data to show the effects of scaling up these two interventions in real-world settings. It's important to know whether prevention is working and this is evidence that strongly suggests that African nations should redouble their efforts to scale up these programs."In 2014, approximately 41% were on ART, though coverage rates vary widely. The World Health Organization estimates that between 2007 and 2015, more than 10 million men had been circumcised in 14 priority countries in this region. Given the findings of the new study, these circumcisions should have a dramatic impact on new HIV infections going forward.For the study, Kong and her colleagues used data collected from surveys between 1999 and 2013 in 45 communities in rural Rakai District in south-central Uganda, which included data on community-level ART coverage, male circumcision coverage, sociodemographics, sexual behaviors, HIV prevalence and rates of new HIV infections. They looked at three distinct periods: prior to the availability of ART and circumcision (1999-2004), during early availability of ART and circumcision and during full program scale up of both (2007-2013).Over the study period, the median community coverage of male circumcision increased from 19% to 39% and median ART coverage increased from zero to 21% in males and from zero to 23% in females. The World Health Organization's target is for 80% of men in sub-Saharan Africa to be circumcised.The researchers found that in communities where more than 40% of men had been circumcised, the rate of new infections among men was reduced by 39% as compared to those communities where 10% or fewer men had been circumcised. They also found that in communities where more than 20% of HIV-infected women were taking ART, there was a 23% reduction in rates of new HIV infections in men, as compared to communities where 20% or fewer of the HIV-infected women were taking the medications. No reduction was seen in HIV rates among women, but Kong says that may come going forward as male ART use increases.Convincing adult men to be circumcised is not an easy sell, Kong says, but results like these can go a long way toward expanding coverage in communities.Kong says that low ART coverage observed in their study could be a result of WHO's guidelines for how early to start antiretroviral treatment. During much of the study period, only people with evidence of impaired immunity in their blood were given the treatment. Now that it is understood that ART is vital not just as a treatment but as a preventive measure in that it reduces how contagious someone is, guidelines recommend that it be prescribed upon diagnosis, irrespective of evidence of immune impairment.Scaling up these prevention strategies isn't cheap, Kong concedes, but studies have shown that doing these two strategies together can be more cost-effective. Still, she says, international resources for treatment and prevention have remained flat since 2008. In the meantime, public health awareness programs need to be boosted to get more people tested and treated and get men into circumcision programs."We still have a long way to go in curbing the HIV epidemic in Africa," she says. "People need to adopt these strategies, and we need to have sustainable funding to support these efforts."Source: Newswise
Homeopathy has emerged as a popular and leading alternative in the treatment of menopause . It is widely accepted all over the world as a risk-free, effective and non-hormonal treatment for the problems associated with menopause faced by a large number of women.
In the last decade, Hormone Replacement Therapy [HRT] was widely advocated. But there were increasing concerns regarding the safety of such therapy. Many clinical trials showed an increase of breast, ovarian and uterine cancers. There were also sharp increases in the number of heart attacks and stroke.
Due to controversies regarding hormone replacement therapy, there arose an awareness to opt for safer alternative therapies like homeopathy. HRT was sidelined and preference was given to a holistic approach where safe treatment alternatives along with lifestyle modifications provided the much-needed relief. Homeopathy emerged as a very popular and safe alternative.
Menopause signals the end of menstruation and fertility. Women undergoing menopause will not be able to have children naturally. Menopause is a very important turning point in a womens life. The average age for menopause is around 50 yrs. However certain factors like smoking, genetics, or surgery to remove ovaries may cause menopause to occur early. A large number of women face many physical and psychological issues during menopause for which they seek treatment.
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Homeopathy is a unique treatment that emphasizes on the balance between mind, body and vital force/energy [also referred to as Prana or Chi ] in the treatment of disease. When this balance is upset, signs and symptoms of disease occur. Homeopathy treatment strives to correct this imbalance by stimulating the body to heal itself.
The problems which a large number of women face during menopause include:
Hair loss and thinning of hair
Weight gain
Depression / Mood disturbances
Weakening of the bones
Sleeping difficulty
Memory problems
Less interest in sex
Itchy and dry skin
Pain in joints and muscles
Lack of bladder control especially when sneezing or laughing
Hot Flushes - a sudden feeling of heat especially in the chest and face
The World Health Organization estimates that homeopathy is used by more than 500 million people worldwide, making it the second most widely used medicine in the world.
The homeopathy system of medicine was discovered by a German by the name of Samuel Hahnemann. A detailed list of all the physical and mental symptoms is made during Case Taking. This includes causative factors, nature of onset, progress of disease, and modalities that aggravate or ameliorate the symptoms. A matching homeopathic remedy is prescribed based on the totality of symptoms. As no two people are alike, homeopathic medicines prescribed for the same disease will also be different.
Individuals under the treatment experience a general sense of well-being. People undergoing regular homeopathic treatment develop good immunity, tend to fall less sick over a period of time and thus can live a healthier and fruitful life. Also, homeopathic medicines are palatable and easy to administer.
Homeopathy has a wide range of medicines to offer for the treatment of menopausal complaints. They are made from:
Herbs
Minerals &
Animal sources
Some of the most effective homeopathic medicines prescribed for menopausal complaints are listed below.. Since no two people are alike, different medicines are usually prescribed for the same disease.
Sepia [Inky juice of Cuttlefish]
This medicine is useful in slim built women with a narrow pelvis . They usually have yellowish brown spots on face, drooping eyelids and eyes that are surrounded by dark rings.
. They usually have yellowish brown spots on face, drooping eyelids and eyes that are surrounded by dark rings. They are easily irritated and often cry when telling their symptoms .
. These women are indifferent to their husband, kids and close family members who love them.
to their husband, kids and close family members who love them. There is a constant feeling of heaviness and dragging sensation in the lower abdomen. The women feel the need to provide external support to the pelvic region and hence they sit cross-legged to give artificial support to the uterus.
in the lower abdomen. The women feel the need to provide external support to the pelvic region and hence they to give artificial support to the uterus. Complaints of hot flushes which begin about the chest area and go upward to the head. These end in sweat, throbbing all over the body and a weak faint feeling.
There is always a feeling of coldness even in a warm room.
even in a warm room. There is a tendency to skin eruptions especially in the bends of the elbows and knees .
. All the complaints are aggravated by light, noise, mental labor and motion. There is relief of symptoms from sitting with legs crossed, open air and in a dark room.
There is severe throbbing headaches which are usually one-sided and frequently end in vomiting.
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Calcarea Carbonica [Carbonate of Lime]
This medicine is most suited for fat and flabby women who are sluggish both mentally and physically.
who are both mentally and physically. It is useful for women whose intake of calcium in the diet is adequate but the body does not absorb and assimilate the calcium. This leadsto weak and brittle bones which tend to fracture easily.
This leadsto weak and brittle bones which tend to fracture easily. It is suited for women who are very apprehensive in nature . They have fears of misfortune, loss of reason and contagious disease.
. They have fears of misfortune, loss of reason and contagious disease. All complaints are worse with mental or physical exertion andworking in cold water.
andworking in cold water. There is a general feeling of coldness especially in the feet which feel as ifcold and damp stockings were worn.
especially in the feet which feel as ifcold and damp stockings were worn. A sour smell emits from all body discharges.
emits from all body discharges. Increased perspiration occurs especially in the head region.
A bloating feeling in abdomen due to impaired digestion occurs which leads to an Increase in abdominal girth.
in abdomen due to impaired digestion occurs which leads to an Increase in abdominal girth. There is physical weakness even on doing regular daily activities.
There is strong craving for eggs and indigestible things like chalk and, mud.
Ignatia Amara [Saint Ignatius Bean]
This medicine is most useful in hysterical women when the emotional element is mostly affected.
when the is mostly affected. The women have complaints, which can be traced back to the ill effects of grief and worry .
. The patient is noncommunicative with sobbing and sighing continuously. There is a desire to be alone with her grief and dwell upon her troubles in private.
dwell upon her troubles in private. It is useful in hysteria and manic-panic attacks where there is a rapid change in the mental and physical condition to opposite extremes. The patient at one time is full of joy, which is followed suddenly by sadness and tears .
The patient at one time is full of joy, which is followed suddenly by sadness and tears Severe headache in one spot as if a nail was being driven into the side of the head. The headache often terminates with profuse flow of urine.
All complaints increase after coffee, smoking, loss of sleep and grief.
Cimicifuga racemosa [Black Snake-root]
This medicine is very effective in severe depression faced by menopausal women .
. Women who require this medicine are very talkative and restless both physically and mentally.
and both physically and mentally. They have recurrent dreams of impending evil which leads to depression.
which leads to depression. There is severe throbbing pain in the head with characteristic opening and shut sensation in the head.
in the head. They have pains like electric shocks in different parts of the body.
in different parts of the body. This is one of the leading medicines for muscular and spasmodic pains.
Sanguinaria Canadensis [Blood Root]
It is one of the often prescribed medicines for hot flashes during menopause.
It is useful for women with disturbances in blood circulation , and who feel sick and faint when getting up from sitting position.
, and who feel sick and faint when getting up from sitting position. The women have redness of cheeks from distension of blood vessels and a feeling as if all the blood is being pumped to the head and chest.
They experience burning sensations as if from hot water.
as if from hot water. The complaints are caused by the suns heat and relieved by darkness and sleep.
They experience great soreness and stiffness of muscles especially those of the back, neck and right shoulder.
of muscles especially those of the back, neck and right shoulder. It is useful in severe headaches which begin at the back of the head, spread over the head and settle over the right eye.
Lachesis Mutus [Bushmaster venom]
This is an important homeopathic medicine for early menopause due to frequent pregnancies .
due to . It is indicated in thin women with a dusky and puffy face.
It is useful in talkative and suspicious women who keep jumping from one topic to another.
and who keep jumping from one topic to another. The woman may have religious insanity which leads to constantly praying and beseeching for her salvation.
The woman may experience bouts of depression especially in the mornings after getting up from sleep.
There is a feeling of suffocation on wearing a collar or anything tight around the throat and chest region.
on wearing a collar or anything tight around the throat and chest region. All complaints increase during and after sleep whereas there is a marked improvement of symptoms in the open air.
whereas there is a marked improvement of symptoms in the open air. Fainting spells may occur in sensitive women especially on exposure to sunlight.
Kalium Carbonicum [Carbonate of Potassium]
It is indicated in obese women with swelling over upper eyelids like little bags .
. There is excessive sweat, backache and weakness.
and The women have bloating of the stomach. Everything eaten appears to be converted to gas.
Everything eaten appears to be converted to gas. There is Increased sensitivity to atmospheric changes and marked intolerance to cold weather.
The women experience dryness and falling of hair.
Complaints are worse in cold weather, on intake of coffee and at 3o clock in morning .
. Complaints improve by slowly moving about and during the daytime.
Zincum valerianum [Valerianate of Zinc]
It is indicated in cases of depression and irritation of the nervous system.
of the nervous system. There is a nervous jerking movement of the feet and loud screaming out in sleep without being aware of it.
and without being aware of it. The women have weak memory due to deficient brain power, and difficulty in comprehending and memorizing things.
due to deficient brain power, and difficulty in comprehending and memorizing things. There is severe pain in neck and back due to holding the head in one position for a long time or any exertion with trembling and twitching of muscles.
Sulphur [Sublimated Sulphur]
It is indicated when carefully selected medicines fail to act or when complaints relapse .
. It is suited for women who are lean, stoop-shouldered and prone to skin problems.
It is useful for extremely dry and sensitive skin. Scratching the skin causes burning and offensive discharge especially when skin conditions have been suppressed with local applications.
Standing is most uncomfortable position .
. Burning sensation occur throughout the body but especially in the palms and soles. The woman puts her feet out of bed covers to cool them off.
occur throughout the body but especially in the palms and soles. The woman puts her feet out of bed covers to cool them off. There is a feeling of weakness and faintness followed by sweat especially around 11 am.
Ustilago Maydis [Corn smut]
It is indicated in premenopausal complaints where there is irregular or protracted bleeding.
premenopausal complaints where there is irregular or protracted bleeding. There is a sensation of boiling water along the back.
Women undergoing Menopause are also advised to:
Increase dietary intake of calcium and vitamin D. Dairy products such as milk, cheese and yoghurt contain high levels of calcium. Regular intake of broccoli, kale, figs, oranges, tofu and almonds will improve calcium levels in vegans.
and vitamin D. Dairy products such as milk, cheese and yoghurt contain high levels of calcium. Regular intake of broccoli, kale, figs, oranges, tofu and almonds will improve calcium levels in vegans. Exercise Regularly . It strengthens the bones by reducing the calcium loss. Women who exercise have lesser chances of developing osteoporosis. Physical activities such as brisk walking and weight training are very beneficial for menopausal and post-menopausal women.
. It strengthens the bones by reducing the calcium loss. Women who exercise have lesser chances of developing osteoporosis. Physical activities such as brisk walking and weight training are very beneficial for menopausal and post-menopausal women. Include soy foods and flax seeds in the diet. These contain natural phytoestrogens [plant estrogens]. These have proved to be beneficial in alleviating the symptoms of menopausal women.
and flax seeds in the diet. These contain natural phytoestrogens [plant estrogens]. These have proved to be beneficial in alleviating the symptoms of menopausal women. Avoid hot flash triggers such as deep fried foods, spicy foods, alcohol, hot beverages like coffee, tea, and other stimulants.
Reduce stress. Consider meditation, music, dance, or any other enjoyable activity for stress relief.
Homeopathy is preferred by many women worldwide to treat their menopause problems.
Experts agree that the best and safest way to treat menopause comes from the right combination of lifestyle changes and alternative medicine.
Shanghai citizens volunteer to give blood. (Photo : Getty Images)
To encourage more Chinese to volunteer to donate blood, a Hello Kitty-themed mobile blood donation center was stationed at the Jing'an Park in Shanghai.
This bus, with Hello Kitty designs and interiors, encouraged a lot of citizens to take part in blood-letting. The donated blood is expected to help millions of patients in China.
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The Hello Kitty Corporation and the Shanghai Blood Center collaborated for this endeavor. In particular, the theme of the mobile blood center enticed volunteers aged 20 to 29.
This is the second time that both parties joined in the same effort. In 2008, they were able to get over 800 volunteers in 45 days.
The endeavor also received positive responses from the public, said Zhang Xi, deputy director of the Shanghai Blood Bank. She said that blood donation drives not only increase in supply, but increases awareness on the importance of saving lives.
The ongoing campaign of the Shanghai Blood Bank aims to stop the sale of blood in the black market.
The government banned the sale of blood and encouraged more people to donate. Due to the limited number of volunteers, many were left helpless and sick. Patients are then forced to go to "blood heads."
"Blood heads" are individuals who sell certificates so that patients can have access to state blood banks. According to government laws, only certified patients can get blood.
A retired civil servant from Shanghai said, "To us patients, buying blood solves our problems. If there were no blood heads, what would I do?"
Hong suffers from myelodysplastic syndrome, a debilitating blood condition.
On July 8, 2016, the two-day NATO summit in Warsaw, Poland began. At the summit, NATO members agreed to deploy four multinational battalions to Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, on a rotational basis. Furthermore, a multinational framework brigade in Romania will provide a presence in south-eastern Europe. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg stressed that NATO's military presence in Eastern Europe is "something [NATO] does as a response to what Russia did in Ukraine." Stoltenberg said: "No-one talked about any military presence of the kind we now see in Poland and the Baltic countries before Ukraine, before the illegal annexation of Crimea. What we do is defensive, it is proportionate, and it's fully in line with our international commitments. And it is no way something that justifies any reactions from Russia."[1] However, during a press conference at the summit, Stoltenberg said that NATO does not see any "imminent threat" against any of its allies, though NATO sees "more unpredictability" and "a more assertive Russia."[2]
Despite the strengthening of NATO's military defense in Eastern Europe, Stoltenberg reiterated more than once that NATO's relationship with Russia, NATO's "biggest neighbor," is based on the idea of "strong defense, strong deterrence combined with dialogue." NATO froze all practical cooperation with Russia, after Crimea's annexation in 2014. However, the NATO-Russia Council (NRC) remained functioning to keep political dialogue channels open. The NRC is to meet on July 13 -its third meeting, after the cooperation freeze (the Council's first meeting was held on June 2, 2014, and the second on April 20, 2016).
Stoltenberg said that the West and Russia are not in a "Cold War" situation, but in "a new situation which is different from anything we have experienced before."[3] He also affirmed that NATO will continue its commitment to Ukraine, Georgia and the Republic of Moldova "to help them resist outside pressures", meaning to resist pressures from Russia.[4]
Concerning Ukraine's membership to NATO, Stoltenberg temporized by explaining that this question is not currently on Ukraine's agenda. Stoltenberg stated: "The focus now is how Ukraine can meet NATO standards; how Ukraine can implement reforms and how we can increase the interoperability between Ukrainian forces and NATO forces. And that's exactly also the focus of the comprehensive assistance package of the cooperation between NATO and Ukraine: how we can help Ukraine moving forward when it comes to modernizing, reforming and meeting NATO standards...So we will continue to provide strong political support, practical support for Ukraine, enabling them to move forward and then we have to address the question about membership at a later stage."[5]
NATO Deputy Secretary Alexander Vershbow receives a decoration from the President of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko. (Nato.int, July 9)
It should also be noted, that Montenegro, in an observer status, participated for the first time at the summit . The Balkan country was invited to become NATO's 29th member in December 2015, and subsequently the Accession Protocol was signed in May 2016. Montenegro now enjoys invitee status and is integrating into NATO activities.[6] This was also the first time that the NATO-Georgia Commission convened at a NATO summit. On this occasion, Georgian Foreign Minister Mikheil Janelidze reaffirmed Georgia's determination to achieve NATO membership. For itspart, NATO, given the reluctance of some of its members to extend membership to Georgia, offered as consolation new steps to intensify cooperation, and to help strengthen Georgia's defense capabilities, and resilience capabilities.[7]
Warsaw Summit Communique: 'Russia's Aggressive Actions... Are A Source Of Regional Instability'
On July 9, the Heads of State and Government participating in the meeting issued a Warsaw Summit Communique, that outlined NATO's policy and positions towards Russia. The communique also admonishes Russia to "reverse its recognition of the South Ossetia and Abkhazia regions of Georgia as independent states." The Communique stated (all emphases added):[8]
In point 5 - "...Russia's aggressive actions, including provocative military activities in the periphery of NATO territory and its demonstrated willingness to attain political goals by the threat and use of force, are a source of regional instability, fundamentally challenge the Alliance, have damaged Euro-Atlantic security, and threaten our long-standing goal of a Europe whole, free, and at peace..."
In point 9 - "For over two decades, NATO has striven to build a partnership with Russia, including through the mechanism of the NATO-Russia Council (NRC). Russia's recent activities and policies have reduced stability and security, increased unpredictability, and changed the security environment. While NATO stands by its international commitments, Russia has breached the values, principles and commitments which underpin the NATO-Russia relationship, as outlined in the 1997 Basic Document of the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council, the 1997 NATO-Russia Founding Act, and 2002 Rome Declaration, broken the trust at the core of our cooperation, and challenged the fundamental principles of the global and Euro-Atlantic security architecture. Decisions we have taken, including here at our Summit, are fully consistent with our international commitments, and therefore cannot be regarded by anyone as contradicting the NATO-Russia Founding Act.
In point 10 - "Russia's destabilizing actions and policies include: the ongoing illegal and illegitimate annexation of Crimea, which we do not and will not recognize and which we call on Russia to reverse; the violation of sovereign borders by force; the deliberate destabilization of eastern Ukraine; large-scale snap exercises contrary to the spirit of the Vienna Document, and provocative military activities near NATO borders, including in the Baltic and Black Sea regions and the Eastern Mediterranean; its irresponsible and aggressive nuclear rhetoric, military concept and underlying posture; and its repeated violations of NATO Allied airspace. In addition, Russia's military intervention, significant military presence and support for the regime in Syria, and its use of its military presence in the Black Sea to project power into the Eastern Mediterranean have posed further risks and challenges for the security of Allies and others."
In point 11 - "NATO has responded to this changed security environment by enhancing its deterrence and defense posture, including by a forward presence in the eastern part of the Alliance, and by suspending all practical civilian and military cooperation between NATO and Russia, while remaining open to political dialogue with Russia...."
In Point 14 - "The Alliance does not seek confrontation and poses no threat to Russia. But we cannot and will not compromise on the principles on which our Alliance and security in Europe and North America rest. NATO will continue to be transparent, predictable and resolute."
In point 22 - "We remain committed to a continued coherent international approach, in particular between NATO and the European Union (EU). NATO's response is in support of this overall effort, which includes sanctions as decided by the EU, the G7 and others, to promote a peaceful solution to the conflict and to address Russia's actions."
In point 59 - "NATO missile defense is not directed against Russia and will not undermine Russia's strategic deterrence capabilities. NATO missile defense is intended to defend against potential threats emanating from outside the Euro-Atlantic area. We have explained to Russia many times that the BMD [Ballistic Missile Defense] system is not capable against Russia's strategic nuclear deterrent and there is no intention to redesign this system to have such a capability in the future. Hence, Russian statements threatening to target Allies because of NATO BMD are unacceptable and counterproductive.[9] Should Russia be ready to discuss BMD with NATO, and subject to Alliance agreement, NATO remains open to discussion."
In point 113 - "We reiterate our support to the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Georgia within its internationally recognized borders...We call on Russia to reverse its recognition of the South Ossetia and Abkhazia regions of Georgia as independent states, to stop its construction of border-like obstacles along the administrative boundary lines, and to withdraw its forces from Georgia. NATO does not recognize the so-called treaties signed between the Abkhazia region of Georgia and Russia in November 2014, and the South Ossetia region of Georgia and Russia in March 2015. These violate Georgia's sovereignty and territorial integrity and blatantly contradict the principles of international law, OSCE principles and Russia's international commitments..."
NATO Heads of State and Government (Source: Nato.int, July 8, 2016)
Russian Reactions To The Summit
Gorbachev: 'The Entire Rhetoric In Warsaw Simply Cries Out An Aspiration To Almost Declare War On Russia'
Russian politicians reacted strongly to the statements made at the NATO summit. Mikhail Gorbachev, former CPSU First-Secretary, the USSR's last president and a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, in a July, 9 interview to the INTERFAX news agency was highly critical of the summit claiming that NATO was preparing to escalate a cold war into a hot one. Gorbachev said: "The entire rhetoric in Warsaw simply cries out an aspiration toalmost declare war on Russia. They only talk of defense, but in fact they are getting themselves ready for an offensive action". He then added: "NATO members are trying to give an appearance that nothing frightens them, and this is highly suspect. By doing this they are trying to drag us and the whole world into a greater confrontation.... The world community should exert maximal effort to stop this slide towards war ...so no one will make a habit of playing on the difficulties in the world situation, [while] pushing the world towards a hot war."[10]
Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Maria Zakharova said: "An initial review of the summit shows that NATO continues to live in a military-political alternative reality. Acting contrary to the objective interests of maintaining peace and stability in Europe and the need to combine the capabilities of all responsible international parties against very real modern challenges, the alliance has focused its efforts on containing an illusory 'threat from the East.' The deep divide between the NATO policy of strengthening the [eastern] flank when the enormous terrorist threat is coming from the south is evidence of the bloc's disregard for the critical need to serve and protect the security of the people in the NATO member states."
She then added: "Exaggerated attempts are being made to demonize Russia in order to justify the military measures taken by the bloc and to draw public attention away from the destructive role of the bloc and some of its allies in provoking crises and fanning tensions around the world. At the same time, the alliance refuses to see the negative long-term consequences and risks for the system of Euro-Atlantic security that are coming from Washington and Brussels' persistent efforts to change the balance of forces, which include the accelerated implementation of US-NATO ballistic missile defense plans in Europe."[11]
Russia's Envoy To NATO: 'We Are Dealing With A Significant Change In The Military-Political Situation'
Concerning the deployment of NATO's battalion in Eastern Europe, Russia's envoy to NATO Aleksander Grushko said that Russia is dealing with a significant change in the military-political situation. Grushko stated: "NATO should be aware that the counterbalancing operation will require steps to create the balance we used to have before NATO's attempts to create a counter potential at the borders that are now already NATO's borders. Indeed, these decisions do not match [the Russia-NATO Founding Act]. We are dealing with a significant change in the military-political situation. There is no parity of forces which used to exist before all the latest NATO preparations. Four battalions are only part of NATO efforts, which also include a US initiative of building confidence in Europe. We have an integrated rather than an isolated approach to this activity: how all NATO steps and measures, including defense planning, affect the pan-European security and our interests from the point of view of maintaining our defense capability at an appropriate level."
The State Duma's Committee on International Affairs Deputy Chair, Aleksandr Romanovich, said: "The deployment of NATO's battalions in the Baltic states is not threatening Russia militarily. It's a symbolic act which shows that we should not expect friendly moves from the Alliance". He then added that NATO is displaying its readiness to escalate the tensions even further.[12]
Deputy Speaker of the Duma Igor Lebedev, stated: "NATO utilizes the Baltic states since it's much closer from Tallin, or Riga and from or Vilnius to Moscow and St. Petersburg than from Berlin, Paris or London. It's about pure military strategic interests -to deploy NATO's forces in close proximity to our borders in order to exert military -political pressure on us." He then added: "[Russia] is the only country in the world which is able to stand up to the Western countries in their quest for world domination. They [the Western countries] do understand that clearly, and everything which is taking place around our country now focuses on serving the goal of [making] our influence on the other countries insignificant."[13]
Russian MP: 'This [Missile Defense Shield] System Is Configured Exclusively Against Russia's Nuclear Potential'
Criticism was also directed towards the NATO's missile defense system in Eastern Europe. Professor at the Moscow Higher School of Economics Dmitri Evstafiev said: "As long as some ' Cold War' Mohicans remained in the American establishment, those who remember what it felt like to sit in a bunker while awaiting a nuclear strike, there was nothing to worry about. But lately there are some dangerous signs. Let us remember that during the Georgia war [the Russian-Georgian war of August 8, 2008] the Pentagon seriously contemplated a scenario using tactical nuclear weapon in order to strike the Roki tunnel [the tunnel which the Russian army used to invade Georgia] The discussion about the American missile shield in Europe just demonstrated again contemporary Washington's level of irresponsibility in the sphere of nuclear deterrence. With the new generation of American politicians and military officers, who are used to 'UAV wars,' instead of partners, who understand that you don't play 'bones' with nuclear weapons, we risk facing political 'gamers,' who will look for a reset button, after making the fatal decision"[14]
The State Duma Defense Committee chair and the former commander of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, Admiral Vladimir Komoedov, stated: "Since it [the missile defense shield] is in a state of initial operational readiness, therefore part of its infrastructure is operational and ready for use, i.e. for shooting down our rockets. This system is configured exclusively against Russia's nuclear potential - [the Western claims that the system is needed against] Iraq, Iran are sly tricks and bluffing". He then added that Russia will have to target the NATO missile defense system positioned in Europe, Romania and Poland, stressing that this is a hypothetical scenario, since Moscow has a "defensive military doctrine." Komoedov said: "We will never be the first to use nuclear missiles. We may do so only in a retaliatory counterstrike."[15]
Russia-Poland Summit
On July 12, Russia and Poland, the summit's host, organized Russian-Polish consultations at a deputy foreign minister level in Moscow. Prior to the meeting, Russian First Deputy Foreign Minister Vladimir Titov stated: "Harsher anti-Russian rhetoric can be heard in statements by high-ranking Polish politicians. The 'war' on the Soviet war memorial heritage continues. Facts from our joint history are being distorted. The agreement on visa-free travel between the Kaliningrad Region and Polish regions has been suspended. We, on our part, remain open, as before, to constructive dialogue in the interests of finding reasonable solutions to the problems that have accumulated through no fault of our own."[16]
One of the key items on the agenda of the meeting between Titov and his Polish counterpart Marek Ziokowski was the decisions taken at the NATO summit in Warsaw, as well as Warsaw's demand for the return of the wreckage of the Polish presidential plane that crashed in 2010 in western Russia, killing all 96 people on board including Polish president Lech Kaczynski.[17]
On the same day, Poland's Super Express tabloid published an interview with Polish Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski. In the interview, Waszczykowski said that if Russia decides "that there is no need to escalate tension, we will not take further steps in the context of NATO to further strengthen the Alliance's eastern flank." However, he added that "if the situation becomes inflamed, [Poland] will demand an even bigger increase in the [NATO] military presence."[18]
It is worth noting that although Poland is NATO's staunchest Ally, during the summit, U.S. President Barack Obama voiced concern over democracy in Poland due to legislation passed by the ruling Law and Justice Party. Obama said: "I expressed to [Polish] President Andrzej Duda our concerns over certain actions and the impasse around Poland's Constitutional Tribunal. I insisted that we are very respectful of Poland's sovereignty, and I recognize that parliament is working on legislation to take some important steps, but more work needs to be done." He then added: "And as your friend and ally, we've urged all parties to work together to sustain Poland's democratic institutions. That's what makes us democracies - not just by the words written in constitutions, or in the fact that we vote in elections - but the institutions we depend upon every day, such as rule of law, independent judiciaries, and a free press."[19] Poland's state-run broadcaster TVP reportedly censored Obama's criticism and made it appear complimentary.[20]
Endnotes:
The July 11, 2016 release of high school seniors' final exam results by the Palestinian Authority (PA) Ministry of Education is being widely covered in the Palestinian media. As part of this coverage, on July 12, PA dailies published articles on high school seniors who had been killed during the school year carrying out, or attempting to carry out, stabbing attacks against Israelis, and who thus would never graduate. The articles praised the teenagers' martyrdom, playing with the Arabic word shahada, which means both "diploma" and "martyrdom." The lead article in the PA official daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida listed 16 Palestinian students whom, it stated, had not been able to take their final exams, but had "passed the difficult [test] of dying as martyrs for the sake of the homeland" with flying colors. It added, "Dying as a martyr is the path of excellence and superiority."
The list included 16-year-old Ahmad Abu Al-Rab, who participated in the February 3 shooting and stabbing attack at Damascus Gate in the Old City of Jerusalem in which a female Israeli Border Guard was killed, and Labib 'Aazem and Muhammad Zaghlawan, both 17, who carried out the March 2 stabbing attack at Har Bracha, wounding two Israeli soldiers.
PA Dailies: '16 [Students] Successfully Passed The Difficult Test Of Dying As Martyrs For The Sake Of The Homeland'
Articles in the PA dailies praised the dead students, calling them a source of pride for their families and for the entire Palestinian people. They quoted their relatives' and friends' expressions of praise for them and yearning for them, and referred to the teen attackers as martyred by "the bullets of the occupation" while omitting mention of the attacks they had carried out.
Thus, for instance, a front-page article in Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, which also appeared on page 12, stated: "The places of 16 students was not missing from yesterday's announcement of the general high school [exam] results. This is despite the fact that the occupation's bullets ended their lives and prevented them from taking their final exams, as they became martyrs in Paradise. Sixteen [students] passed the difficult [test] of dying as martyrs for the homeland, since dying as a martyr is the path of excellence and supremacy.
"Sixteen boys and girls, seniors in high-school, died as martyrs, leaving behind friends, ambitions, and sorrow in the hearts of their families and loved ones, who had waited for this day to congratulate them. But the bullets of the criminal occupation were swifter, and denied them the opportunity to be a source of joy for their families..."[1]
The full article in Al-Hayat Al-Jadida
The PA daily Al-Ayyam also quoted friends and relatives of some of the attackers, and, like Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, provided a selective narrative omitting mention of the attacks that they carried out or the victims of those attacks. The article opened by stating: "'Ali Zaghlawan, the brother of the martyr Muhammad Zaghlawan [who carried out the March 2, 2016 Har Bracha attack], from the village of Qariout near Nablus, who was martyred by the bullets of the occupation near the settlement of Eli on the Nablus-Ramallah road, has been waiting since morning for the publication of the high school final [exam] results, in order to congratulate his brother's friends [on their scores]. Muhammad's name should have been among them [i.e. those who received results], especially as he was known for his [scholastic] excellence and diligence..."
The article also quoted the friend of dead student Ahmad Abu Al-Rab, who had participated in the Damascus Gate attack, describing him as having been "martyred by the bullets of the occupation soldiers on the steps of Damascus Gate in Jerusalem."[2]
Palestinian Honor Students Dedicate Their Success To Palestinian Martyrs
One notable article on the finals results, published by the Palestinian news agency WAFA, focused on honor students who said that they dedicated their success to the martyrs of the Palestinian people. Muhammad Abu Nahla, an honors student majoring in industry, dedicated his success to the martyr 'Adnan Al-Mashni, killed while attempting to carry out a stabbing attack. Abu Nahla said: "I dedicate my success to the Palestinian leadership and its head President Mahmoud 'Abbas; to the educational and pedagogical family; to my family and our people; and especially to my friend, the 17-year-old martyr 'Adnan 'Aaid Hamed Al-Mashni Al-Halaiqa, from the town of Al-Shayoukh, who was martyred at Beit 'Einun Junction east of Hebron on January 12, 2016... How I wish that he could have celebrated his success today - but the bullets of the occupation stole him, denying us and his parents of this joy. But we are all proud of the martyr's death he attained."[3]
PLO Executive Committee member Ahmed Al-Majdalani also mentioned the martyred students, saying: "In these moments, we feel the absence of 16 students, the martyrs who should have taken the high school finals but who were prevented from taking them by the violent and aggressive occupation forces, who denied joy to their families..."[4]
Endnotes:
In recent days, a massive Saudi media campaign in support of the Iranian opposition has been underway. The campaign was launched right after former Saudi intelligence minister and ambassador to the U.S. Emir Turki Al-Faisal attended the July 9, 2016 Paris conference of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, an umbrella organization of five Iranian opposition groups in exile, the largest one being Mojahedin-e-Khalq.
Addressing the conference, Al-Faisal harshly criticized the Iranian regime, and expressed explicit support for the opposition's demand to topple the Iranian regime - the first time a Saudi official has expressed such support. Al-Faisal further emphasized that the Iranian people cannot go on suffering from the regime's policy of oppressing and humiliating its opponents and minorities within the country, particularly its Arabs, Sunnis, and Kurds.
Al-Faisal's speech received widespread positive coverage in the Saudi press, and this coverage was accompanied by increased expressions of anti-Iran sentiment and of support for the opposition in that country. Several articles in the Saudi press,[1] including editorials, launched withering attacks on Iran and called for toppling its regime. The articles claimed that the Iranian regime had adopted a policy of racial repression and discrimination within Iran and was even exporting this policy to several Arab countries via Iranian support for various terrorist organizations operating within these countries. The articles encouraged the Iranian opposition to work at bringing down the Iranian regime, a course of action defined as "the optimal way" for restoring peace and security to the entire region. Articles in a similar vein were published in the Kuwaiti and Bahraini press.[2] .
Numerous articles praised the Iranian opposition and its resistance to the regime;[3] also published were cartoons, images, and posters attacking the Iranian regime.[4]
It should be noted that on social media, Saudi intellectuals, for example, the author and journalist Turki Al-Hamad and Muhammad A'al Al-Sheikh, who tweeted on their Twitter accounts that Turki Al-Faisal's participation in the Paris Iranian opposition congress was a mistake. Al-Hamad even argued that by his participation, Al-Faisal may have provided justification for Iranian intervention in the neighboring countries.[5]
Following are examples from the Saudi anti-Iranian regime media campaign:
Turki Al-Faisal At National Council Of Resistance Of Iran Conference: "I Also Want The [Iranian] Regime To Be Toppled"
In his statements at the National Council of Resistance of Iran conference in Paris, Emir Turki Al-Faisal harshly criticized the Iranian regime for oppressing its people. He said that ever since the days of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, the Iranian regime had worked to export the Islamic Revolution to the Arab and Islamic countries, in an attempt to control them by means of interfering in their internal affairs and establishing sectarian terrorist organizations on the pretext of defending "the oppressed" in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen. He also accused Iran of aiding armed sectarian groups, as well as Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hizbullah, and Al-Qaeda, in order to foment chaos in the region. Stressing that this Iranian policy has caused devastation, spread sectarianism, and led to bloodshed in Iran and the Middle East, he added that it has, first and foremost, impacted Iran's own citizens. In response to audience chants of "The people wants to topple the regime" - a common slogan during the Arab Spring - Al-Faisal said: "I also want the [Iranian] regime to be toppled."[6]
Editorials: Toppling The Iranian Regime Is The Best Way To Achieve Global Peace And Security; Al-Youm: Iranians Call To Topple Regime, Many Countries Around The World Agree
Following Turki Al-Faisal's statements, many articles condemning the Iranian regime and supporting its removal were published. The official Saudi daily Al-Youm's July 11 editorial criticized the Iranian regime's policy of exporting the Islamic Revolution to the countries in the region, leading to their destruction, and argued that toppling the regime was the best way to ensure peace and security in those countries that are subject to Iranian interference.[7] The editorial stated: "Exporting the Iranian Khomeinist revolution to the world has led only to the destruction of all nations that experimented, and are still experimenting, with the dictates and principles of this revolution of devastation... Removing the regime of the Rule of the Jurisprudent from Iran, the region, and the world in general is the best way to spread security, peace, and tranquility in many communities that experienced the Iranian regime's interference in their affairs. The Iranian people [itself] is still calling for toppling the regime of the Rule of the Jurisprudent, and many countries around the world agree [with this call], in light of the crimes, horrors, and terrorist actions it carries out...
"The oppression that was and still is being carried out by the Iranian regime against the Ahwazi people and in Yemen, Syria, Libya, Iraq, and Lebanon, as well as its open support for the Lebanese terrorist organization Hizbullah and its total support for destructive and terrorist actions around the world, confirms [the statement] that toppling the regime of the Rule of the Jurisprudent is the best way to achieve security and peace in many regions and countries around the world.
"Since the days of Khomeini, the Iranian regime has tried to force its authority on the Islamic countries and to spread the principle of exporting the revolution to the Arab and Islamic countries. However, this aggressive attempt has only led to the sowing of widespread conflict [in these countries], and to their destruction - sparking wars there and undermining the stability and security of [their] communities. The blatant Iranian interference in the affairs of the other has caused conflicts, riots, and wars."[8]
Iran's satanic policy in the Arab region - the devil remains "on" while the angel is permanently "off" (Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, London, July 11, 2016)
Senior Saudi Writer: Arab Representation At The Paris Session - A Message To The Iranian People To Stop Showing Restraint Towards The Regime
Ayman Al-Hamad, an editorial writer for the official Saudi daily Al-Riyadh, also criticized what he called the Iranian regime's racist policy towards non-Persian minorities, and described how it attempts to apply this policy in other Arab countries, leading to their destruction, which benefitted Israel. He wrote: "The Iranian regime in Tehran has turned its back on its sons, who have criticized its policy and rule... Those who oppose the concept of the Rule of the Jurisprudent and its authority is against the revolution that brought the slogans of liberty, victory for the Iranian man, and the struggle against corruption. The fall of the Shah regime gave rise to an extremist theocratic segment that utilized all forms of barbaric behavior, constitutionally legitimized sectarianism, and championed the Persian race...
"The Iranian regime... attempted to export its crisis in religious guise, by undermining regional security and stability, supporting armed factions in the Arab and Muslim countries by egging them on and aiding them with weapons and training under revolutionary or religious slogans, and later by carrying out terrorist acts [using these same armed proxies]. Today we find in the Arab countries those who are tempted by the slogans of the Iranian clerics who are attempting, by means of these slogans, to win over the Shi'ites, to play upon their religious sentiment, to try to undermine their sense of nationalism, and to cast doubt upon the legitimacy of their leaders. This comes while the regime in Tehran is not concealing its racism against the Arab Shi'ites in Iran - the events in Al-Ahwaz being the best evidence of this regime's racism - and is showering praise on the Palestinian issue, which it sees as its ticket [into] other Arab [countries]...
"It is Iran and its militias that have served the Israeli occupation, through their hostile actions towards the Arab countries, particularly after the Arab Spring. [Iran's] support for the Syrian regime's [actions] against its own people led to the destruction of Syria. This is also true for Iraq. These two countries began dealing with the threat of division, which led to the two greatest Arab armies leaving the Arab balance of power because of Iran's policy, enabling Israel to sleep soundly. The Iranian opposition summit that was held two days ago [July 9] included large-scale Arab and international representation, reflecting the aversion to the existing regime in Tehran and to its actions against its people and its Arab and Muslim neighbors. This Arab, Islamic, and international representation is a message to the Iranian homeland not to continue to show restraint as it witnesses the economic destruction of its cultured, capable, and lofty country, and the expulsion of its people - all for the sake of the empty words of its ayatollahs."[9]
Al-Sharq: "Peoples Can Withstand Any Regime, But At Some Point Things Go Too Far"
The July 11 editorial of the official Saudi daily Al-Sharq argued that the Iranian regime was not working in the interests of its people, and that it was not seeking regional stability because it would ultimately lead to a change that it did not desire, since the peoples always win in the end:
"Peoples can withstand any regime, but at some point things go too far, and in the case of the Iranian people, this point was reached many years [ago]... The Iranian regime does not seek stability in the region, and does not want its people benefiting from the country's resources via development programs and services; rather, it wants illogical and useless adventures aimed at harming peaceful peoples and interfering in their affairs in a way that is unacceptable to the entire world. The rulers in Tehran should note the fact of a turning point, which could lead them to a situation they do not desire, as peoples always emerge victorious."[10]
Articles, Cartoons, Posters In Saudi Press Criticizing Iranian Regime, Praising Iranian Opposition
The Saudi media campaign to topple the Iranian regime also included cartoon, posters, and articles supporting the Iranian opposition and its call for toppling the country's current regime. Below are a few examples:
"The people wants to topple the [Iranian] regime" ('Okaz, Saudi Arabia, July 11, 2016)
The two-faced Iranian "Mullah regime" funds the terrorist organizations while it executes the "Iranian people" (Al-Jazirah, Saudi Arabia, July 12, 2016)
Article in Saudi daily supports Paris conference with headline in Arabic and Farsi: "Freedom Summit... 'Very Good'... Death to Supreme Leader [Khamenei]... 'Death to the Leader of Iran'" accompanied by image of Khamenei crumbling to dust ('Okaz, Saudi Arabia, July 12, 2016)
Infographic: "100,000 Iranians expose the shame of the Rule of the Jurisprudent" (Makkah, Saudi Arabia, July 11, 2016)
Saudi daily posts video titled "The Ayatollah Terrorism" highlighting organizations supported by Iran, such as Hizbullah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen ('Okaz, Saudi Arabia, July 11, 2016)
Article in Saudi daily titled "The Rule of the Jurisprudent Coordinates With ISIS, As the World Turns a Blind Eye to Iran's Terrorism" ('Okaz, Saudi Arabia, July 12, 2016)
Infographic titled "Iran and Israel - Two Sides of the Same Coin" compares Israel's treatment of the Palestinians and Iran's treatment of Arab Ahwazis (Al-Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, July 11, 2016)
"Ahwazi Revolution" strikes blow against "Iranian Government" (Al-Jazirah, Saudi Arabia, July 11, 2016)
Infographic: "The Acid of the [Iranian] Basij Disfigures Iranian Women" (Al-Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, July 11, 2016)
Headline in Saudi daily: "Media: Ayatollah Regime Faces Grave Situation, Undergoes Worst Crisis Since Its Establishment"; the subhead reads: "Former French Human Rights Minister: Political Situation In Iran Is Shaky" (Al-Youm, Saudi Arabia, July 12, 2016)
Infographic: Ayatollah Khomeini's false promises to the Iranian people for a rosy future after the Islamic Revolution (Al-Sharq, Saudi Arabia, July 12, 2016)
Infographic: "The Courts of the Iranian Islamic Revolution - The Most Dangerous Body Established After 1979 [the year of the revolution]" (Al-Sharq, Saudi Arabia, July 12, 2016)
Infographics: "After the nuclear agreement, Iran has become more aggressive" and increased its terrorist acts around the world (Makka, Saudi Arabia, July 11, 2016)
Endnotes:
The Tiangong -1 satellite was Chinas first satellite that was launched in 2011 and maybe free-wheeling through space and could soon re-enter the Earths atmosphere in an uncontrolled manner. The satellite should have come down to Earth in the ocean in a controlled crash. However, scientists and watchers claim that it now appears to have gone into a free-fall and China has lost control of it. This signifies that the space station could crash down to Earth at any time and might crash in your backyard.
Like most objects that enter the Earths atmosphere, it is expected that the space station might burn up on its way back to earth. However, experts have hinted that it can still be a bad turnout if the rocket actually hits land.
Reuters
Thomas Dorman and amateur astronomer told Space.com "If I am right, China will wait until the last minute to let the world know it has a problem with their space station."
Dorman has been tracking the space station using telescopes, binoculars, video cameras and other powerful instruments. He also suggests that "It could be a real bad day if pieces of this came down in a populated area but odds are, it will land in the ocean or in an unpopulated area."
China launched the Tiangong-1 with the purpose of utilising it as a space laboratory to rival the already existing international space station.
Source: The Independent
Nokias business is coming to an end today thanks to some laughable decisions taken by Microsoft. However, the Finnish brand is now looking to make a comeback in the smartphone and tablet market. Nokia has come to an agreement with HMD Global. The brand has just announced that it will license its brand and intellectual property to HMD global, which will produce and sell android smartphones and tablets under the Nokia banner.
Nokia
HMD global has agreed to a conditional deal with Microsoft to acquire rights for the Nokia name and designs that are currently owned by Microsoft. HMD is based in Finland and will be led by Arto Nummela. HMD has plans to invest $500 million over the next three years to develop, produce and promote the products. Nokias involvement in the new devices will be low. However, they are part of the committee to overlook compulsory brand demands and performance-related equipment.
We are mighty excited about this new development from Nokia, and we hope this will change the dynamics of the smartphone market.
Tang Renjian's appointment comes as the urbanization in the country rapidly transforms agricultural land into industrial and residential areas. (Photo : Getty Images)
Former Guangxi vice-chairman Tang Renjian is the latest to join the country's economic inner circle after he was named the deputy director of the General Office of the Central Leading Group for Financial and Economic Affairs, helmed by Chinese President Xi Jinping's right-hand man, Liu He.
The announcement was made through a statement on the official website of the government of Hanting District, Weifang, Shandong, the South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported.
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Tang has also been appointed as the deputy general office director of the Communist Party's Central Rural Work Leading Group, China's top agricultural policy body.
A group that previously operates behind closed doors, it is now increasingly making its way into the limelight.
For instance, Liu has recently made an appearance after he went to Sichuan for economic development assessment. He also chaired a Shanghai symposium attended by economic planners from various coastal provinces.
Tang's predecessor is highly respected rural expert Chen Xiwen. The 66-year-old official, who has become a member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, is known as a staunch condemner of the campaign, "forcing farmers to live upstairs."
Chen strongly opposed when local authorities forced farmers out of their hometowns into high rises, using urbanization policy as an excuse.
Now, Tang's appointment comes as the urbanization in the country rapidly transforms agricultural land into industrial and residential areas.
Tang spent most years of his political career in agricultural policy. He has also previously worked with Chen before he was relocated to Guangxi in 2014.
From 2012 to 2014, he has been by Chen's side during State Council media briefings about China's annual agricultural development policy. He would often take questions from foreign and domestic media personnel.
Back in 2014, Tang remarked that China's agricultural output comes with very high environmental price, which includes excessive use of fertilizers, reduction of farmland as well as water shortages.
PCA Jurisdictional Hearing (Photo : UN PCA)
The U.N. Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) released on Tuesday, July 12, its decision on the arbitration case brought by the Philippines over disputed islands in the South China Sea. The court favored the Philippines, as expected, and found that certain areas are in the exclusive economic zone of the Philippines.
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As such, the PCA said China violated Manilas sovereign rights in three areas. These are in interfering with Philippine fishing and petroleum exploration, the construction of artificial islands and failure to prevent Chinese fishermen from fishing in the zone.
The tribunal also stated that Filipino fishermen, like those from China, had traditional fishing rights at Scarborough Shoal and in restricting access to the shoal, Beijing violated the rights of the Filipino fishermen. By physically obstructing Philippine vessels, the Chinese Coast Guard unlawfully created a serious risk of collision.
The court also disputed Chinas stand that the tribunal lacks jurisdiction over the dispute over historic rights and source of maritime entitlements in South China Sea. It said pre-existing rights were considered but not adopted at the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.
The Tribunal concluded that, to the extent China had historic rights to resources in the waters of the South China Sea, such rights were extinguished to the extent they were incompatible with the exclusive economic zones provided for in the Convention, the press release said.
While it acknowledged that Chinese fishermen and navigators and even those from other countries use those islands in South China Sea, China failed to provide evidence that it had historically exercised exclusive control over the waters or its resources. The tribunal junked Chinas citing the nine-dash line as its basis in claiming historic rights to resources as lacking in legal basis.
As for the Spratly Islands, the court first evaluated if certain reefs claimed by China are above water at high tide. If it is above water at high tide at least a 12 nautical mile territorial, it would generate an entitlement, but if less than the benchmark, there would be no entitlement. The tribunal also took into account if the reefs claimed by China could generate maritime zones beyond 12 nautical miles.
The court concluded none of the Spratly Islands is capable of generating extended maritime zones and declared that certain sea areas are within the Philippine exclusive economic zone since those are do not overlap any possible entitlement of China.
Finally, the court said it does not have jurisdiction over the implications of a stand-off between Philippine marines and Chinese naval and law enforcement ships at Second Thomas shoal because the dispute involved military activities and excluded from compulsory settlement. But the tribunal said Chinas large-scale reclamation and construction of artificial islands are incompatible with the obligations on a state because it inflicted harm on the marine environment.
Ahead of the ruling, China said it would ignore the PCA decision, claiming the tribunal lacks jurisdiction. In a statement, Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said, We wont accept any of their so-called materials, no matter what they are, reported Reuters.
Experts claim that the development of Tibet is a product of the government's massive efforts to boost its productive enterprises. (Photo : Getty Images)
Experts who attended the Forum on the Development of Tibet lauded the region's massive development, saying that it has now reached the point where it has become an integral part of the Chinese as well as global economies, China.org reported.
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Mewati Sitaram Bholaram, a senior correspondent with India's Mumbai Messenger, remarked that the "Tibetan miracle" comes from the massive effort pulled off by the Chinese government to boost its productive enterprises.
Bholaram added that Tibet's growth may be considered as one belonging to the "fast lane of development" together with other regions across China.
For Beijing-based China Pictorial Magazine's Russian editor Maksim Belov, the development achieved by Tibet was beyond expectations, mentioning that significant achievements were made in health and educational systems despite the region's rough terrain and harsh climate.
Looking back on how the area was doing in the 1950s, Stefano Vernole, a researcher with Italy's Eurasia-Mediterranean Study Center, noted that Tibet has turned to become completely different.
"The Tibetan people have freedom, equality, dignity and enjoy the fruits of modern civilization. Development and progress in the region reflect the common aspirations of all ethnic groups in Tibet," Vernole was quoted as saying.
University of South Africa researcher Farhana Paruk said that the growth has helped establish a better standard of living for Tibetans.
Government data shows that in 2015, the urban residents' per capita disposable income was at 25,457 yuan, much higher than the 1978 figure of 565 yuan. Meanwhile, that of farmers and herdsmen was computed at 8,244 yuan, amounting to a 12-percent increase per year.
Christine Davis, vice president of the U.S. Asia Society, suggested that the region could even play a vital role in the landmark Belt and Road Initiative as it connects Chinese provinces with other areas in South and Central Asia.
The government was also urged to look into sustainable tourism as "this will not only increase the incomes of Tibetans but will promote regional economic growth," Thanong Khanthong of the Thailand National TV Station pointed out.
"Currently, tourists from Russia have to fly to Beijing and change planes to reach [Tibetan capital] Lhasa. We hope a direct flight from Moscow to Lhasa will open soon," Belov said.
The two-day forum held last week was participated by over 130 researchers, officials and media men from more than 30 countries and regions.
The forum, which was hosted by the State Council Information Office in partnership with the Tibetan regional government, focused on discussing the region's enterpreneurship and industrial modernization.
The attendees also tackled environmental protection, regional infrastructure, poverty relief and the preservation of the Tibetan tradition, among others.
Gigi Chao (Photo : YouTube)
Although a U.N. report in May said that 75 percent of employed LGBTIs in China the agency surveyed are still in the closet, it is not the case for the daughter of a Hong Kong billionaire who has been very open and vocal about her being a lesbian.
Because Gigi Chao, daughter of property developer and shipping magnate Cecil Chao Sze-tsung, does not hide that she is a lesbian, in September 2012, the father offered HK$500 million to any Chinese man who would marry Gigi who actually had a female partner for nine years, Sean Eav.
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His offer attracted 20,000 men, but no one succeeded in convincing the rich mans daughter to marry a man, so Cecil Chao doubled the amount to HK$1 billion. On Saturday, ABPLive reported that the billionaire further increased the dowry offer to HK$1.4 billion, or US$180 million.
However, 34-year-old Gigi wants her father to accept her gender preference and hope he would stop changing her sexual orientation as well as pushing her into marrying a man.
Although Cecil Chao believes he could still convince Gigi to change her sexual orientation, he also compromised and told a Malaysian magazine that he does not want to meddle with his daughters private life. The billionaire is still hoping she would have a good marriage and bear children who would one day inherit his billions.
Gigi, in turn, wrote him a letter which two Hong Kong newspapers printed in 2012. She asked for his forgiveness in making him think she opted to be a lesbian due to the shortage of good, suitable men in Hong Kong. She wrote, There are plenty of good men, they are just not for me.
In 2015, a Philippine broadcast station made a soap opera inspired by Gigi. The drama was titled The Rich Mans Daughter.
The Alternate Foreign Minister for European Affairs, Nikos Xydakis, today received the Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister for European Affairs, Majid Takht Ravanchi, for a visit and working luncheon at the Foreign Ministry. Also taking part in the talks with the Iranian delegation were Economy, Development and Tourism Minister Giorgos Stathakis and the Foreign Ministrys Secretary General for International Economic Relations and Development Cooperation, Giorgos Tsipras.
The discussion was carried out in an extremely friendly atmosphere, in light of the Greek Prime Ministers official visit to Iran on 7 and 8 February 2016. Mr. Xydakis briefed his Iranian counterpart on the course and future of the European Union following the result of the British referendum and explained Greeces policy on the issue of sanctions. The talks focused on the strengthening of bilateral economic cooperation, while there was an in-depth discussion of promotion of cooperation in the sectors of energy with emphasis on natural gas, LNG and renewables high technology, and the pharmaceutical and food industries. The talks also covered means of further promotion of cooperation in the banking and tourism sectors, and the attraction of foreign investments was a common goal in the discussion.
The Tiangong-2 space laboratory during its construction. The spacecraft is currently undergoing final testing for its launch in September. (Photo : Twitter)
China is on the last stage of testing its Tiangong-2 space laboratory before it is launched into space to serve as the core for a planned space station.
Tiangong-2, which is the country's second space laboratory, arrived at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region on Saturday, China Daily reported. Upon its arrival, the laboratory will be assembled and tested before its launch in September aboard a Long March FT2 rocket.
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Once in space, Tiangong-2 will carry out several missions, including testing its life support systems, performing docking maneuvers with both cargo and manned experiments, and conducting other experiments to test various technologies for the space station the country plans to build in 2022.
According to the China Manned Space Agency, Tiangong-2 will be more comfortable to live in compared to its predecessor the Tiangong-1, with space for two astronauts. The laboratory, as a whole, is comprised of two cabins: the "experiment cabin" which also serves as the crew's quarters, and the "resource cabin" which houses the solar panels, engines and other equipment.
As part of its mission, the Tiangong-2 will dock with a Shenzhou XI spacecraft in October. The spacecraft will bring in the first two astronauts to live in the lab. In April of next year, the Tiangong-2 will dock with a Tianzhou-1 cargo spacecraft carrying fuel and supplies.
Meanwhile, the lab's predecessor is reportedly now starting to fall from its orbit and potentially undergo an uncontrolled re-entry. Experts said that Chinese space officials have previously struggled to control the spacecraft after it entered its "operational management phase" at the end of its mission in 2013, The Independent reported.
Since then, officials have yet to give an update on the status of the decommissioned lab.
Tiangong-1 was launched in 2011, being used as a testing ground for both automatic and astronaut-control docking experiments. The lab stopped operating in March of this year.
Toyota Motor Corp.'s new Prius hybrid car is displayed during its Japan launch event in Tokyo. (Photo : Reuters)
Nielsen Holdings released a report indicating that the sales of new-energy vehicles (NEV) went down in the first half of 2016.
This is due to the recent cuts in subsidies from the government and the low car purchasing quotas in big cities.
The Nielsen report, titled "The 2016 Chinese Automobile Consumers White Paper," was made with the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers.
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Based on the report's findings, NEVs still have "a bright future for gasoline-electric hybrid cars in the long term. Consumer demand for new-energy vehicles is shifting from one that is policy-driven to being driven by individual needs, and NEV owners are young, highly educated and middle class."
Zhao Xinzhi, director of auto vertical of Nielsen China, said, "New-energy vehicles will continue to experience a higher growth rate than gasoline-powered counterparts in the next three years, but the threefold growth of the past two years is no longer possible for the next three years."
Because of the increasing number of educated middle class, the sales of NEVs are seen to grow by 2018. Nielsen forecast that sales will triple the amount of units sold in 2015. Over 200,000 vehicles were sold then and most of it was NEVs.
Zhao forecast that by 2020, the sales of NEVs will explode. This includes vehicles belonging in three categories: pure-electric cars, plug-in hybrid cars and gasoline-electric hybrid cars.
By this time, Nielsen believes that there will be 14 percent of car owners who will switch to pure-electric vehicles. There will be 22 percent who will use hybrid plug-in cars. Nielsen predicts that more consumers will be more environmentally conscious and will push NEV sales further.
The Seville-Cairo flight was the penultimate flight of the solar-powered plane's world tour
Solar-powered airplane Solar Impulse 2 landed in Cairo Wednesday at 7:10 AM (CET) on the penultimate flight of the plane's world tour after a 48 hour and 50 minute voyage from Seville, Spain to Cairo, according to a travel update from the Solar Impulse website.
Pilot Andre Borscherg flew the plane above the Giza Pyramids and Sphinx, accompanied by a military helicopter, before landing at Cairo International Airport, Ahram Arabic website reported.
The airport received 65 European experts to assist the plane during its stop, according to Mohamed Said Mahrous, chairman of Cairo Airport Company, before its final flight back to Abu Dhabi, which marks both the starting and ending point of the plane's world tour.
Pilots Borscherg and Betrand Piccard met with Egypt's civil aviation minister Sherif Fathi to discuss clean technology, as Solar Impulse's idea is to promote the technology worldwide.
"Egypt is a country that has so much #cleantech potential," tweeted Piccard after meeting with Fathi.
The Cairo-Seville leg was the 16th trip of the tour, which started in March 2015 in Abu Dhabi.
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Myah C. Mulrath, 16, of Owendale, died following an automobile accident Saturday evening, July 9, 2016, near her home in Owendale.
She was born Sept. 20, 1999, in Saginaw to Keith and Shereen Mulrath.
Myah was an Owendale-Gagetown High School honor student. She was currently taking dual enrollment classes for college credit. Myah loved working with computers and exploring what she could do with them. She attended the Huron Technology Center in Bad Axe studying AutoCAD and architectural design. Myah enjoyed working with pictures such as wildlife photos and outdoor scenes. She liked editing them and making them better. Myahs college plan was to study animation design. She was a big University of Michigan fan. Myah loved going to Oak Beach with her mother. She enjoyed listening to music, playing video games and helping her dad work on the computer.
Myah is survived by her parents, Shereen Mulrath of Owendale, Keith Mulrath of Bridgeport; grandparents, John and Lois Mulrath of Cass City; many aunts, uncles, cousins and friends.
Her grandmother, Judith Davidson of Owendale also died in the accident. She is preceded in death by her grandfather, Bobby Davidson.
Funeral service will be conducted at 11 a.m. Friday, July 15, 2016, in Kranz Funeral Home, Cass City with Pastor Brian Reinhardt of Sons Life Missionary Church, Sebewaing officiating.
Visitation will be from 7 to 9 p.m. Wednesday, July 13, 2016, from 2 to 5 and 7 to 9 p.m. Thursday, July 14, 2016, and from 10 to 11 a.m. Friday, July 15, 2016, in Kranz Funeral Home in Cass City.
Memorials may be made to St. Judes Childrens Research Hospital.
Family and friends may share memories, prayers and stories with the family at www.kranzfuneralhome.com.
Arrangements by Kranz Funeral Home, Cass City.
The state of emergency was extended for three more months
Related President Sisi extends state of emergency in North Sinai for 3 months
Egyptian president Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi issued a decree Tuesday to extend the state of emergency in specific areas of North Sinai for three months starting on 29 July at 1:00 AM, according to the Official Gazette.
The state of emergency was originally imposed in August 2013 by interim president Adly Mansour after violence erupted following the ouster of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi.
Egypt's security forces are fighting a decade-long Islamist insurgency in parts of North Sinai which spiked following Morsi's ouster.
Hundreds of policemen and soldiers have been killed by militants as the army in turn said security operations have killed hundreds of militants.
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The Coast Guard rescued a man near the surf zone in the vicinity of the Tillamook Bay North Jetty, in Garibaldi, Sunday, after he reportedly got caught in a rip current.
The 29-year-old male was pulled from the water reportedly exhausted and hypothermic by a 47-foot Motor Lifeboat crew from Station Tillamook Bay located in Garibaldi, and transferred to emergency medical services at the station for further care.
Coast Guard Sector Columbia River watchstanders received a request for assistance from the family of the man at 2:21 p.m., when the family reported he had been sucked out by a rip current. The rescue boatcrew rescued the surfer at about 3 p.m., 50 yards past the surf zone.
I got a visual on a person in a black tank top and we made a direct pick up," said Petty Officer 2nd Class Amber Archer, the coxswain and recently certified Surfman from Station Tillamook Bay. We got him out of the water and covered him in blankets. The water was about 58 degrees and he was in it for at least 20 to 30 minutes. My crew did a great job keeping him warm and awake."
A Coast Guard 25-foot Response Boat-Small from Station Tillamook Bay, an MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter from Coast Guard Air Station Astoria and Fire Rescue crews from Bay City and Rockaway Beach were also on scene.
YONGSAN GARRISON, Republic of Korea Eighth Army welcomed Brig. Gen. Tammy Smith, the first female general officer to serve in an Eighth Army headquarters-level position, during a Patch Ceremony July 7 at U.S. Army Garrison Yongsan in Seoul. Smith takes over as the Deputy Commanding General-Sustainment for Maj. Gen. David Puster who is set to retire following 36 years of distinguished service to the nation.
Puster leaves Eighth Army having laid down much of the groundwork for the relocation of more than 29,000 Soldiers, Civilians and Family members under the Yongsan Relocation Plan and the Land Partnership Plan with the South Korean government.
Addressing the jam-packed crowd at the Collier Community Fitness Center, Eighth Army Commander Lt. Gen. Thomas Vandal praised Puster for setting the conditions for a successful transition.
"Today, we bid farewell to a remarkable Soldier, leader, and general officer," said Vandal. "Gen. Puster did a phenomenal job taking care of our Soldiers (and families) in a very complex environment ensuring we were always ready to fight tonight. Equally impressive, David coordinated one of the largest re-locations in the history of the United States military as we prepare our move to Camp Humphreys. His work (has been) instrumental in keeping this project on track and he made sure that it did not impact our readiness."
Smith takes over at a critical juncture of the Transformation and Re-stationing process as the bulk of the moves are set to take place over the next few years including the relocation of the 2nd Infantry Division, Eighth Army and U.S. Forces Korea headquarters elements. Vandal acknowledged the difficult road ahead for Smith as she assumes her new role, but reassured her that she was the best possible leader to handle the transition.
"During your tenure, you will have oversight of the Eighth Army's move and integration into our new Headquarters at Camp Humphrey," Vandal said. "I have no doubt that we have plenty of work in front of us as we move all of the Eighth Army units to Pyeongtaek, but I am confident that we have the right leader in Tammy Smith toensure a successful transition."
Having worked alongside Smith since her arrival, Puster possesses a unique insight into her ability to handle the massive undertaking. As his remarks came to a close he offered words of encouragement for the long journey ahead.
"You come at an exciting time of transformation," Puster said. "I'm certain you will continue to uphold the incredible legacy of the alliance (and) provide valuable support to our partners in the defense of Korea. Our commanders and staff will soon learn what I have already seen during our transition time together (that) you are absolutely the right officer, at the right time, for this job."
Throughout her remarks it was clear that Smith was extremely proud to serve as a trailblazer for aspiring female officers across the Army, but that it carried more weight because it was with one of the Army's most storied units.
"It has taken me 30 years of military service to arrive at what I anticipate will be the greatest assignment of my career," said Smith. "It is a privilege to serve in the Army, and it is a privilege to be trusted with the Eighth Army sustainment portfolio."
When Italian law enforcement officials showed up on Naval Base Sigonella on Saturday to seize assets from the Navy Exchange as part of a wrongful termination lawsuit, the store was closed.
So rather than leave empty-handed, they went to the nearby commissary and seized groceries instead.
"When the local bailiff ordered the seizure of NEX property in satisfaction of the judgment, the local police arrived to execute the seizure on Saturday and found the NEX closed, they proceeded to the commissary and seized or put a hold on all the goods there except for meat and produce," Kevin Robinson, a spokesman for the Defense Commissary Agency, told Military.com on Monday.
Former Navy Exchange employee and Italian national Carmelo Cocuzza's case was upheld by Italy's Supreme Court in March 2014. That case ruled that Cucuzza, who had been fired in 2000 for falsifying timecards, is entitled to rehiring, wages from the time of his dismissal to reinstatement and social security contributions, according to Stars and Stripes and local media MeridioNews.
Rather than leave the base unsuccessfully on Cocuzza's behalf, officials took possession of items in the commissary.
Officials have yet to clarify exactly how the seizure occurred, and the Defense Department is now referring all questions to the U.S. Embassy in Italy.
But what is clear is this: On July 8, the day before the seizure, Navy officials posted to the base's Facebook page that the Exchange would be closed "until further notice."
The next day, they updated readers that, "due to ongoing legal matters, the Navy Exchange will be closed once again today (Saturday 9 July)." Just three hours later, they updated readers again, this time with the closure of the commissary.
"Due to unforeseen legal circumstances the Commissary will be closed until further notice. We are sorry for the inconvenience this may cause," it said. "I can assure you that this issue is being addressed at all levels from the Embassy down. Thank you for your patience."
Finally, five hours later, they posted that although the Exchange and commissary would be open July 10 during normal hours, "due to pending legal action in the Italian court system, only items not marked as off limits in the Commissary will be available for purchase."
Stateside commissary officials on Tuesday did not immediately have information on when the Sigonella commissary will again be fully operational.
-- Amy Bushatz can be reached at amy.bushatz@military.com. Follow her on Twitter at @amybushatz.
WRIGHT-PATTERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Ohio Many scientists and engineers go directly from school to laboratories and do not get the opportunity to work side by side with customers who use the products they create.
For a behavioral scientist in the 711th Human Performance Wing here, thats not the case.
First Lt. Anthony Eastin, a member of the the Battlefield Air Targeting Man-Aided Knowledge (BATMAN) team in the Airman Systems Directorate, had an upcoming deployment and saw an opportunity to conduct field research downrange. He then shared what he discovered from his fellow deployed Airmen with his team at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.
The mission of the Airman Systems Directorate, part of the 711th HPW and Air Force Research Laboratory, is to exploit biological and cognitive science and technology to optimize and protect the Airman's capability to fly, fight and win in air, space and cyberspace.
Some of that mission is tasked to the BATMAN team.
"Essentially, the BATMAN team is charged with finding out what the operators need and what is available out there to make them lighter, smarter and deadlier," Eastin said. "Our goal is to find commercial off-the-shelf technologies, test them, give it to the operators and find out if that's good enough, or we create new technologies that haven't been developed yet."
Eastin explained that in the past, operators out in the field were left to their own devices to create and rig various technologies.
"The operators don't have a lot of experience in creating software materials or brand new technologies they would literally just go to Best Buy or Radio Shack," he said.
But since 2005, the experts in the 711th HPW have worked in-house and with industry partners to create gear and technologies to best assist Airmen.
"This wing is all about collaboration," said Dr. Rajesh Naik, the wings chief scientist. "Whether its collaboration between the wing and our industry partners, or between the various experts within the wing, our goal is to work together to advance human performance for our Airmen."
The wing employs teams of experts in fields such as mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, software engineering, psychology and human factors, among others.
"There's a vast expertise across the table," Eastin explained. "When we are presented with a problem, we all can come together and use our individual insights toward a solution, which will be largely beneficial for the operators."
The directorate stresses the three Is interaction, innovation and integration.
"The Bat Rack, for example one of our operators came to us and explained that they had just received tablets (tuff pads) and that they loved them. They told us that this is next generation material and this is what they want to use," Eastin said. "But the problem was that they needed the tablets to be mounted on them.
"They said, 'And, oh, by the way, we are deploying in three weeks."
The tablets enable combat controllers and other operators to use android mapping applications (or apps) that allow them to conduct close air support, best place to land an aircraft, etc., he said.
This type of mounting device hadn't been developed yet, so the BATMAN team had to create a completely new product.
"So we sat down and created solutions for this. Human factors expert Capt. Caroline Kurtz designed the mounting system that puts the tablet on the operator's chest and makes it easily accessible," Eastin said. "Within two to three weeks, we had it mass produced and given to the operators for their deployment.
Four months later, Eastin then deployed.
Eastin was the executive officer to the commander of Joint Special Operations Air Component-Central, a unit that had air combat controllers, pararescuemen and many other special operators. These operators could be charged missions such as infiltration, extraction, targeting enemies, and close air support. The very tech that his BATMAN team had designed and produced at Wright-Patterson AFB was on the chests of these special operators in Qatar.
"I noticed many were wearing a Bat Rack for their tablets, he said. I asked them, 'Do you know what this is?' and they said, 'No, we just got them out in the field and we've been using them.
After Eastin explained his team had created the Bat Rack, one of the operators took him into a room stacked with them.
"So, the team here provided a solution for the operators who needed to be able to wear their tablets on their gear, and I got to see firsthand all the operators using it downrange, he said.
Eastin wasn't just an observer; he saw the opportunity to interact with Airmen in the field as a way to obtain even more feedback.
"When I was out there, I was able to interact and talk with (the operators) to see what they needed. Then I was able to link up the 720th Expeditionary Special Tactics Group commander with Dr. Gregory Burnett and the BATMAN team here," Eastin said. "This enabled us to have conversations with the people who are actually deployed and not just when they are in training.
"It was extremely beneficial to have one of us on the BATMAN team deployed with the special operations group, he added, because if they had any issues with tools or tech for their missions, I could link them directly with the 711th (HPW)."
In the latest twist to an unpredictable presidential campaign, two retired high-ranking military officers are in the mix as possible vice presidential picks for Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.
Retired Adm. James Stavridis, the former supreme allied commander of NATO who had a reputation as an innovative thinker on strategy and policy, is being vetted as a possible running mate for presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, The New York Times reported.
And though his chances appear to be fading, retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn is also considered a contender as a vice presidential pick by presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, and Indiana Gov. Mike Pence are also considered potential running mates for Trump.
The 61-year-old Stavridis declined comment on his political ambitions and referred calls to the Clinton campaign, which also declined comment, The New York Times said. Stavridis, a 1976 "distinguished graduate" of the U.S. Naval Academy, is now dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.
Stavridis, a career surface warfare officer with experience commanding destroyers, destroyer squadrons, and the Enterprise carrier strike group, retired in 2013 after he was cleared of charges of official wrongdoing. Based on an anonymous tip, the Defense Department's Inspector General's office investigated Stavridis on allegations that he "engaged in misconduct relating to official and unofficial travel and other matters" involving a trip with his wife during his NATO command to the French wine country.
He was later exonerated by Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, who said "I have determined that Adm. Stavridis never attempted to use his public office for private gain nor did he commit personal misconduct."
Flynn, a 33-year Army intelligence officer whose last post was as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, was at the conservative Heritage Foundation on Wednesday to promote his book "The Field of Fight: How We Can Win the Global War Against Radical Islam and Its Allies."
Flynn, an outspoken critic of the Obama administration, claims that he was forced out as head of the DIA for questioning the strategy in the campaign against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. Media reports at the time said that he left because of disputes over his "management style" and vision for the DIA.
Now a national security adviser to the Trump campaign, Flynn has said that he has submitted information to the campaign for vetting as a potential vice presidential running mate and would accept the nomination if picked by Trump.
Flynn, 58, a "distinguished" graduate of the Reserve Officer Training Corps at the University of Rhode Island, told Fox Business Network on Wednesday that "I'm not campaigning for a job here, I'm campaigning for this country. This country is something that I deeply believe in, and I believe the direction that we have been taking for the last eight years is so wrong."
White the vetting of Stavridis by the Clinton campaign came as a surprise, the two were on the same wavelength when Clinton was secretary of State in their advocacy of "smart power" -- the combination of the military, diplomacy and developmental aid in confronting world crises.
-- Richard Sisk can be reached at Richard.Sisk@Military.com.
ANSBACH, Germany Twenty-five six-person teams gathered July 8 at Oberdachstetten Training Area for the 33rd annual German-American Marksmanship Competition.
The friendly competition is co-hosted and co-organized by U.S. Army Garrison Ansbach's Headquarters and Headquarters Detachment and the city of Herrieden. Regular competitors know the event better as the Herrieden Shoot.
As in previous years, the pool of competitors was a mix of novice and expert marksmen and markswomen, Germans and Americans, and military and civilians, all firing side by side and not divided by category.
Determining the best shooter and team of shooters served as the main attraction, but nearly all competitors spent the bulk of their afternoon in a spirit of fellowship and camaraderie.
FARNBOROUGH, England -- Pilots accustomed to legacy versions of the Army's UH-60M Black Hawk chopper sometimes have to be reminded that the aircraft is not flying itself, pilots and maintainers said Wednesday.
The twin-engine Sikorsky aircraft flew across Europe to attend the Farnborough International Airshow, passing over Luxembourg, Belgium and the French coast in its transit from Ansbach, Germany, where ten of the choppers from Charlie Company, 3rd Battalion, 501st Aviation Regiment deployed in April to form a surge force in support of the multinational exercise Anakonda 16.
Sgt. Jason Hook, a standardization instructor for the aircraft, revealed that the M-variant is so technologically advanced that crew like to refer to "Mike" -- using the variant designator -- as the chopper's third pilot.
With the four multi-function display screens, a controller that allows pilots to design flight routes while in flight, and integrated controls that eliminate the need for a bulky EDM thigh-mounted computer to provide blue force tracker information and mapping, the technology can be overwhelming for some accustomed to the Alpha-Lima versions of the aircraft, he said.
"It's important for the pilots to remember that they can fly the aircraft for themselves," he said. "Because sometimes they get task-saturated and let it fly itself and you've got to remind them who's actually flying, who's keeping an eye on the controls."
The UH-60M entered full-rate production in 2007 and saw its first operational combat deployment -- to Afghanistan -- in 2010. The Army ultimately plans to buy 956 of the aircraft and another 419 of the HH-60M medevac variant, with procurement stretching through 2026.
Chief Warrant Officer Four Alex Coronado, a Black Hawk pilot who began flying the legacy version in 2002, said he found learning the advanced system required more focus because of its complexity.
"Looking at switchology, it's a big difference compared to what the Alpha and the Lima provided," he said.
It's even possible "Mike" may be the only pilot aboard the Black Hawk at some future point.
In 2014, Sikorsky and the Army demonstrated an optionally piloted version of the aircraft as part of its development of a fly-by-wire upgrade to the UH-60M that the service ultimately decided not to pursue.
According to a report from AINOnline, Sikorsky may test an autonomous flight kit on a UH-60A Black Hawk variant later this year.
-- Hope Hodge Seck can be reached at hope.seck@military.com. Follow her on Twitter at @HopeSeck.
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FARNBOROUGH, England -- The P-8A Poseidon may soon be flying for Norway, a senior U.S. Navy official said here Tuesday.
On the heels of an announcement that the United Kingdom had contracted to buy nine of the Boeing-made maritime patrol aircraft, Navy P-8A program manager Capt. Tony Rossi confirmed that Norway had expressed interest in acquiring the aircraft, with more nations likely to follow.
"We have been in discussions with Norway, helping them understand what they're looking for as far as requirements nothing specific so far," he said.
Several additional countries that Rossi did not name are in the development phase of identifying requirements, he said. But he did offer a clue as to where new international business might come from.
"Virtually everywhere that P-3s fly today is a potential customer for the P-8," he said.
The Lockheed Martin Corp.-made P-3C Orion, modeled after the L-188 Electra airliner, is the predecessor to the P-8, having entered service in the Navy in 1959. The Poseidon is based on Boeing's 737 commercial airliner. Current plans call for the service to phase out the Orion by 2019, when it expects to complete procurement of the 109 Poseidons it plans to acquire.
The Poseidon is now in service as well with the Indian Navy. And at the start of this year, the Royal Australian Air Force confirmed an order for four more of the aircraft, bringing its total to 12. Earlier this year, multiple outlets reported that the Turkish Navy was also considering a P-8 buy, though no agreement has been announced yet.
In all, 17 nations have flown a variant of the Orion, with other major customers including Japan, Germany and Brazil, among others.
As production of the aircraft enters its eighth lot, officials said the cost of the aircraft has now decreased by 30 percent from what it was during the first production lot.
"We're able to make it more efficiently; we're able to make it faster, and all those savings are passed on to the customer directly," said Steve Tripp, Boeing's military aircraft global sales and marketing executive.
"I suspect all of our new customers are enjoying the fact that the U.S. Navy is procuring the aircraft in significant quantities," he said.
The Poseidon aircraft ordered by the United Kingdom this week will be manufactured on the same Seattle production line as the U.S. aircraft, spread out across three different lots. They're slated for delivery to the Royal Air Force beginning in 2019.
-- Hope Hodge Seck can be reached at hope.seck@military.com. Follow her on Twitter at @HopeSeck.
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A former Navy chaplain removed from the service after disobeying an order not to wear his uniform during a protest in front of the White House 10 years ago is hoping to present his case for reinstatement to the U.S. Supreme Court when it reconvenes in the fall.
Gordon Klingenschmitt, a minister who has served as a representative for the past two years in the Colorado state legislature, said he hopes to show the high court that he did not violate a lawful order or Navy regulations with his appearance at the White House demonstration.
"Because I only said a prayer while in my uniform, and I declined to make any political speeches, and declined any interviews with the media until I changed into civilian clothes, I contend that my prayer in Jesus' name was a religious observance," Klingenschmitt said Tuesday.
In September 2006, a Navy court found then-Lt. Klingenschmitt guilty of disobeying an order by appearing in uniform at a political protest and subsequently separated him from the Navy. He said the Navy had offered to discipline him quietly with a letter of reprimand, but he insisted on a court- martial.
Klingenschmitt, through his attorneys, filed a writ of certiorari with the Supreme Court in May. It's now up to the court to review the petition and decide whether it will hear the appeal.
He said he wants the Navy's ruling overturned and, if it is, to be returned to the chaplaincy and awarded back pay.
Klingenschmitt was elected to the Colorado House of Representatives in 2014 but last month lost the Republican Party primary race to Bob Gardner, who previously served from 2007 to 2013 in the state legislature.
Since being separated from the Navy a decade ago, Klingenschmitt has continued to press the case that military chaplains should be allowed to use Jesus Christ's name in prayer at any time.
Additionally, hisPray In Jesus Name Project claims to have delivered five million faxed petitions to Congress in support of legislation opposing abortion, defending traditional marriage and other causes.
-- Bryant Jordan can be reached at Bryant.jordan@military.com. Follow him on Twitter at@BryantJordan.
Egypt's foreign ministry urged Egyptian citizens in South Sudan's capital Juba to take extreme care and stay in their places of residence until clashes cease, according to a statement issued late Tuesday, the first day of a ceasefire that followed five days of violence.
The Egyptian embassy in South Sudan is following up and getting in contact with Egyptian citizens to offer help, ambassador Ayman El-Gammal said.
Forty-five Egyptian citizens were received at the embassy where they are currently seeking refuge, the ambassador said.
Violence erupted in the city last Thursday during the anniversary of the youngest country in the world's independence from Sudan.
The ceasefire was signed between President Salva Kiir and his opponent Vice President Riek Machar.
Flights were still suspended in and out of Juba's international airport until Tuesday, AP reported.
The foreign ministry said it would take the necessary procedures to help Egyptians leave Juba once flights are resumed.
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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 2015 graduates were calling for state jobs at the administrative apparatus
Eighteen Master's and PhD degree holders were briefly detained Tuesday before being released in the early hours of Wednesday for protesting in front of the Cabinet building in downtown Cairo, Ahram Arabic website reported.
The protests led to clashes between the protesters and security forces, after which the gathering was dispersed.
The 2015 graduates were calling for employment at the state's administrative apparatus, jobs which they say were previously granted to graduates from 2002 until 2014.
Lawyers syndicate head Sameh Ashour called interior minister Magdy Abdel-Ghaffar to ask for the graduates' release without filing reports, to which the minister agreed, Ahram Arabic website said.
A syndicate delegation was present with the detainees at the police station.
Unemployed post-graduate degree holders held several protests throughout the past months, including one in November 2015 in front of the Cabinet that later moved to Tahrir Square before it was dispersed by security forces.
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ANN ARBOR, MI - Religious leaders gathered on Tuesday, July 12, in Ann Arbor in the aftermath of recent shooting deaths of black men by police and the attack at a protest in Dallas that left five law enforcement officers dead.
The Interfaith Council for Peace & Justice in Ann Arbor held an Interfaith Rally Against Violence on Tuesday at Ann Arbor's Liberty Plaza in memory of police shooting victims Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Philando Castile in St. Paul, Minnesota, as well as the police officers shot and killed in Dallas last week.
Rev. Donnell Wyche of Vineyard Church of Ann Arbor and the Washtenaw Faith Leaders Forum, who organized the gathering, said the goal was to bring the public together as a community and in solidarity.
He said the event was about "just bringing people together to recognize our humanity."
"We want to take immediate action and long-term action so that the events that are happening outside of our community do not happen happen here in Washtenaw County or in the city of Ann Arbor or Ypsilanti," he told the crowd.
Wyche, other religious leaders, representatives of area youth programs, and a representative for Mothers Demand Action for Gun Sense in America challenged the attendees, about 100 people, to acknowledge the struggles of the black community and structural racism. They also asked those gathered to contact their local authorities to encourage de-escalation tactics and Citizen Review Boards, and face issues of bias,
Kenneth Rochell, a pastor at the United Faith Prayer Center International and leader of Christian Law Enforcement Fellowship, noted Liberty Plaza's location - at the corner of East Liberty Street and South Division Street.
"For America, we stand at the corner of liberty and division and I hope and pray that we choose liberty - freedom," he said to applause.
Speakers said the names of victims of violence out loud, read prayers of different faiths, and led chants of "Justice for all of us, not just some of us."
Attendee Will Smith, 24, of Ann Arbor said it was good to see the community come together in the name of equality.
"To me it's about standing together against hate and fear," he said. "I appreciate the purpose of coming together and looking at each other, facing each other and hearing each other as a healing process."
Darcie Moran covers cops and courts for MLive and The Ann Arbor News. Email her at dmoran@mlive.com or follow her on Twitter @darciegmoran.
In a video message to its nearly 60,000 followers on Facebook, Bjorn Ahlander, captain of the Draken Harald Harfagre Viking tall ship, explained a recent controversy over "expensive" pilotage fees that have likely forced the ship's crew to end its journey around the Great Lakes following the Tall Ship Celebration in Bay City.
Earlier this week, representatives of the Draken said they were pulling out of the Tall Ships Challenge, including their stop in Bay City, where a four-day festival begins Thursday, July 14, due to nearly $400,000 in, what they called, "unexpected" pilotage fees.
"The fees are not within reason for a nonprofit sail training vessel, it blocks the opportunity for any foreign tall ship to enter the Great Lakes and visit the ports," officials wrote on the vessel's webpage.
Ship officials later reversed their decision and opted to at least foot the bill to make the trip to Bay City, but are likely canceling stops in Chicago, Green Bay, Wisconsin, Duluth, Minnesota, and Erie, Pennsylvania, as part of the Tall Ship Challenge.
In a video posted on the ship's Facebook page, Ahlander, the ship's captain, said the crew is coming to Bay City because "we don't want to let down the people in the city who did big, big efforts to get us here."
He said the crew and ship representatives would continue to work to reduce the cost of pilotage fees in order to complete its scheduled journey through the rest of the Great Lakes.
There was "miscommunication and misunderstanding," officials said when Draken officials were dealing with the Great Lakes Pilotage Authorities in Canada.
Robert Lemire, CEO of the authority, said the Draken crew was alerted in February that they didn't need a pilot on Canadian waters because the ship was under 35 meters long. The ship did opt to use a pilot, however, in the Welland Canal. The ship was invoiced $17,000 for the pilot.
Sarah Blank, a spokeswoman for the ship, said the crew thought the information given to them by the Canadians was valid for the entire Great Lakes voyage, including in U.S. waters. She said the crew didn't receive the information that they would need to pay a pilotage fee until they had embarked on their journey.
An official with the U.S. Coast Guard Great Lakes Pilotage Division said representatives from the Draken were told last February that they needed a pilot if they were going to sail into the Great Lakes for this year's Tall Ship Challenge.
Foreign-flagged ships engaged in commerce are required to have a U.S. or Canadian pilot onboard to safely navigate the Great Lakes. Ships not engaged in commerce, no matter the size of the vessel, aren't required to have a pilot.
Because the ship representatives are taking tickets for people to tour it, it's considered to be engaged in commerce, the official said. Representatives with the ship disagree, saying they "aren't even close to breaking even" on their Great Lakes journey.
Captain Ahlander said he has no issue with the pilots, calling them "professional" and "polite" in his video. He does take issue, however, with the pilotage fees.
Bay City Tall Ship organizers have organized a fundraiser called Rock the Dock from 7-9 p.m. Saturday, July 16, to help raise funds for the Draken's pilotage fees. It's estimated to cost the ship about $10,000 to make the trip from Fairport Harbor, Ohio, to Bay City.
Egypt fulfilled 85 percent of Russias demands regarding aviation safety in order to resume flights, speaker of the Egyptian parliament Ali Abdel Aal said on Wednesday.
Egyptian tourism industry has been hit hard after a number of countries, including Russia and the United Kingdom, suspended flights to Egypt over safety concerns after the aircraft crash.
"Approximately 85% of what Russia had demanded, of those guarantees, was fulfilled by Egypt," Abdel Aal said at the meeting with speaker of Russia's upper house of parliament Valentina Matvienko.
He added that Egypt was now expecting for steps from the Russian side.
"It would be a great sign, if flights between Moscow and Cairo resumed," Abdel Aal stated, adding that Egypt's prosecutor general is expected to visit Moscow in the end of July to discuss the issue of aviation security in the Arab country.
On October 31, Airbus A321 operated by the Russian air carrier Kogalymavia crashed in the Sinai Peninsula. The plane, carrying 224 people, was heading to St. Petersburg from the Egyptian resort city of Sharm El-Sheikh. Russia's Investigative Committee has officially classified the plane crash as a terrorist attack.
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Richard Scheil in court.JPG
Richard J. Scheil appears in Bay County Circuit Court to plead no contest to operating a motor vehicle while intoxicated causing death on Wednesday, July 13, 2016.
(Cole Waterman | The Bay City Times)
Richard J. Scheil
BAY CITY, MI -- A Grand Rapids man has pleaded no contest to killing another man in a drunken driving crash.
Richard J. Scheil on Wednesday, July 13, appeared before Bay County Circuit Judge Joseph K. Sheeran and pleaded no contest to one count of operating a motor vehicle while intoxicated causing death. The charge is a 15-year felony.
No charges were dismissed by the prosecution.
In pleading no contest, Scheil did not verbally admit to having committed a crime. His attorney, John Melton, said his client suffered amnesia as a result of the injury he suffered in the crash and does not remember much of the actual incident.
Sheeran had to rely on police reports to enter a conviction on the record.
Those reports indicate a Bay County Sheriff's deputy at 4:12 a.m. Sunday, Nov. 8, responded to a one-vehicle crash near the intersection of South Farley and East Kinney roads in rural Merritt Township. The deputy arrived to find a white 2010 Ford Taurus in a ditch on the south side of East Kinney Road.
The Taurus had been heading south on Farley, which ends in a T-intersection at Kinney. The Taurus apparently crossed the intersection and came to rest in the water-filled ditch, court records show.
Scheil was still in the driver's seat when the deputy arrived. Scheil was wearing only a pair of underwear and was not responding to the deputy's request to exit the vehicle, court records show.
Firefighters arrived shortly after and rescued Scheil and 51-year-old passenger Ray L. Embrich, who was breathing but unconscious. Both were taken by ambulance to St. Mary's of Michigan Medical Center in Saginaw.
Deputies obtained a warrant to draw Scheil's blood then went to the hospital. When they arrived, they learned Embrich had been pronounced dead at 6:18 a.m., court records show. Embrich's obituary said he lived most of his adult life in Nashville, Tenn., Ionia and Freeland.
Scheil underwent a CAT scan and had to be strapped down as he was combative with hospital staff, court records show.
Deputies tried interviewing Scheil after he completed the CAT scan. He was barely audible and mumbling, but told deputies he had three rum and Cokes and was coming from a party in Bay City. Regarding the crash, he told them, "someone cut me off," court records show.
Scheil described Embrich as a friend, court records show.
A sample of Scheil's blood was taken and submitted to the Michigan State Police Crime Lab for testing. The results indicate Scheil's blood alcohol level was at 0.16 percent. In Michigan, a person is legally intoxicated when his or her blood alcohol level is at 0.08 percent.
Just before Scheil pleaded, Sheeran said he would likely sentence him to a minimum 19 months in prison.
Scheil turns 59 on July 24. He is free on bond pending sentencing at 8:30 a.m. on Monday, Aug. 29.
BAY COUNTY, MI -- A candidate for Bay County sheriff is a repeat sex offender and must register as one for the rest of his life.
Kenneth J. Zolnierek, 52, is a write-in candidate for sheriff in the fall 2016 election. He has at least eight felony convictions dating back to 1984, three of which are of a sexual nature.
Two convictions were for fourth-degree criminal sexual conduct in Alpena County in 1994. Fourth-degree criminal sexual conduct charge is limited to touching and does not involve penetration.
Zolnierek in an interview with The Bay City Times said there was no actual victim in the 1994 case.
"I was young, dumb, and stupid," he said.
Zolnierek said he was urinating outside a bar in Alpena when he said something lewd to a woman who pulled up with two children in her car.
"That wasn't right and I was drinking," he said. "I quit drinking. I want to try to better myself and the community."
However, the Michigan Department of Corrections' website indicates the two convictions stem from incidents are separate dates -- Oct. 22 and Dec. 16, both in 1994.
The Michigan Department of Corrections discharged Zolnierek in December 1996, but he still had to register as a sex offender.
The third sexually related charge is from a Bay County case.
Having relocated to Bay City in 2006, Zolnierek once again came to law enforcement's attention in 2008. A mother in March alerted police that Zolnierek had been cajoling teen girls to pose with his pickup truck.
Police executed a search warrant on Zolnierek's residence and found photos of him grabbing the breast of a clothed 16-year-old. Zolnierek's 17-year-old then-fiancee also turned over photos to police that she had been keeping at another location that showed her and the younger girl engaged in sexual activity as well as photos of the 17-year-old and Zolnierek having sex.
"I used to own a company called Bad Kitty Productions and what we done is made calendars for mechanic shops, welding shops, all that stuff," Zolnierek said, adding an employee of his took some photos which he said were not meant to be seen by others.
Models in sexually explicit photos must be at least 18 years old in Michigan for the images to be legal. The age of sexual consent is 16.
In September 2008, prosecutors charged Zolnierek with one count of distributing or promoting child sexually abusive material, a seven-year felony. He ended up pleading no contest to the charge and in August 2009 Bay County Circuit Judge William J. Caprathe sentenced him to 34 months to seven years in prison with credit for 368 days already served.
"I believe the defendant in this case, with his prior history with sexual assaults, the nature of the photographs, the fact that he was showing them around to people that he knew, it's time for Mr. Zolnierek to go to prison," Bay County Chief Assistant Prosecutor Nancy E. Borushko said at the sentencing hearing.
Addressing the judge, Zolnierek objected to Borushko's characterization of his crimes, and added he had leukemia, lung cancer, rectal cancer and throat cancer.
"I've never showed them around," he told Caprathe. "I've got limited time left so, you know, I'm not much worried about that. You know, what I am worried about is the accusations and innuendos of me supposedly showing them around. I never did. I understand this, it's not a good charge. It is pretty much a heinous charge. And as far as my past goes, Mrs. Borushko, it's for kissing a 16-year-old girl when I was 18. I'm not an animal. I'm not a, you know, heinous person."
The MDOC discharged Zolnierek on Aug. 6, 2015. He must register as a sex offender for the rest of his life.
Zolnierek told The Times his cancer is in remission.
As for why he wants to be sheriff, he said he thinks he can enact some positive change.
"No. 1, protocol needs to be changed," he said. "If you take a look back, in 2009 a 15-year-old got stun-gunned to death. Recently, there was a report about a man who sexually molested a girl and if they had asked her more questions, that man wouldn't have barricaded himself in his house and he wouldn't be dead today."
The incidents Zolnierek is referring to is the Taser-related death of Brett Elder on March 22, 2009 and the Feb. 19, 2016, standoff between Leroi D. Kocsis and police. Kocsis was free on bond on charges of first-degree criminal sexual conduct with a relation between the ages of 13 and 16 when he opened fire on police attempting to arrest him on a bond violation. He injured one officer in the process.
After a nearly 24-hour standoff, Kocsis fatally shot himself.
The two incidents were not related to the Bay County Sheriff's Office, although deputies provided support at the scene of Kocsis' standoff.
"Here in the city, they're running pretty smooth right now but we need to crack down on drug dealers selling to kids," Zolnierek said. "Kids are running around with weapons, stuff like that. That's my main concern. Make the streets safer and people feel more at home so they don't have to lock their doors. Bring that old country feeling back. We shouldn't have to lock our doors, we shouldn't have to do all that."
Asked why the citizenry should vote for him, Zolnierek said, "Because I'm for a better change, to try to better the community, to make everybody equal, to make everybody feel that they're equal and they're treated equal."
The Michigan Commission on Law Enforcement Standards states a person cannot legally be employed as a law enforcement officer with prior felony convictions, including those expunged from a person's record. However, because the sheriff position is elected, and state election laws don't preclude him from running for the office, it's still legal for Zolnierek to run for sheriff.
"It depends on the type of felony conviction," said Fred Woodhams, with the Michigan Department of State's Communications Office. "We're unaware of laws prohibiting (a candidate from running) for crimes other than fraud or deceit."
The Michigan Constitution states a person is ineligible to run for public office if he or she has in the preceding 20 years been "convicted of a felony involving dishonesty, deceit, fraud or a breach of the public trust and the conviction was related to the person's official capacity while the person was holding any elective office or position of employment in local, state, or federal government."
Amber Davis-Johnson, director of Bay County Corporation Counsel, said that she also believes Zolnierek is eligible to run.
"Most of time when you look at those types of offenses (precluding eligibility), it's offenses involving theft, embezzlement, or uttering and publishing; basically, crimes of deceit," she said.
While Zolnierek's rap sheet includes a conviction for uttering and publishing, that dates back to 1988, and is outside of the 20-year window.
Also running for sheriff are Undersheriff Troy Cunningham, Pinconning Police Sgt. Terry Spencer, retired Deputy Robert C. "Bobby" Lee, and Jason Holsapple. The former three are Democrats, and the victor among them in the Aug. 2 primary will advance to face Holsapple, a Republican, in the Nov. 8 general election.
Bay County Sheriff John E. Miller is not seeking reelection.
Tall Ships Map
Some of the best vantage points to catch the 12 tall ships as they arrive in Bay City Thursday, July 14, for the 2016 Tall Ship Celebration. Organizers expect the ships to arrive in downtown Bay City at about 2-4 p.m. Thursday.
(Katie Karnes | MLive.com)
BAY CITY, MI -- Ever seen a dozen sailing ships navigate up the Saginaw River and slide gently to their berths in downtown Bay City?
Chances are you haven't, unless you attended one of the previous Tall Ship festivals in the community.
The jaw-dropping majesty of towering wooden masts and the maze of lines and rigging is an impressive sight to behold along both banks of the Saginaw River.
The 12 vessels featured in Bay City's 2016 Tall Ship Celebration, which runs from July 14-17, will arrive for the four-day festival on Thursday, July 14.
If you want to catch the "parade of sails" as all 12 ships sail into town, there are several prime locations between the mouth of the Saginaw River and downtown Bay City.
Use the map above to help guide you to the best vantage points.
Can't make it to one of the premium spots above to watch the ships arrive?
We've got you covered.
Just follow MLive on Facebook, and you'll get a front row seat to the action as we stream live video of the ships' arrival.
If you can't wait to see some tall ships, here are some of the best images captured during past Bay City Tall Ship events:
The 2016 Bay City Tall Ship Festival is centered around Bay City's Wenonah and Veterans Memorial parks.
Tickets for the Tall Ship Celebration are for sale online at tallshipcelebration.com.
Daily tickets and souvenir passports -- necessary to tour the ships -- each cost $10 per day. All Kroger stores are offering the ticket for a $1 discount per ticket.
Each of the 12 different ships featured this year has something unique to offer.
But if you don't know starboard from port or a bowline from a clove hitch, never fear. There is a lot more to the Tall Ship Celebration than just the ships themselves.
Ten musicians and musical groups, some from as far away as Poland, will perform during the festival.
The daytime music comes at no additional cost for people attending the Tall Ship celebration.
After 5 p.m. July 15-17, the Ballads and Brews event hoists sail at "The Quarterdeck" at Veterans Park. The event features music and Michigan craft beers on tap, with a $5 cover charge (Tall Ship passport holders get in for free).
There's also crafts for kids, an art show, face-painting, a kickball tournament featuring crew members of visiting ships, storytelling and various demonstrations and workshops.
Visit the Bay City Tall Ship Celebration website to learn more about this year's event.
Mark Tower covers local government for MLive/The Saginaw News. Contact him at 989-284-4807, by email at mtower@mlive.com or follow him on Twitter, Facebook or Google+.
Ralph Godbee 910 AM.jpg
Ralph Godbee Jr. Photo courtesy of 910AM
DETROIT -- Former Detroit Police Chief Ralph Godbee Jr. will appear in a nationally televised town hall meeting with President Barack Obama about policing, race and justice on Thursday.
Godbee, who resigned as Detroit's police chief in 2012 after a public scandal involving a relationship with a subordinate officer, is among the hand-picked audience members expected to pose a question to the panel, according to a release from 910AM Superstation in Detroit, where Godbee now works as a radio show host.
"Godbee has been selected to ask at least one question," the station said.
The town hall, named The President and the People: Race in America, is being broadcast by the Disney Media Networks without commercials on ESPN, ABC and their affiliated websites at 8 p.m. Thursday.
Freeform, ABC News Digital, Yahoo, ABC News' Facebook page and YouTube channel and ABC Radio will also air the event.
According to ESPN:
ABC's "World News Tonight" anchor David Muir will moderate the conversation about race relations, justice, policing and equality. ESPN's Jemele Hill, co-host of His and Hers, will join Muir and the president, along with officers, parents, students and families affected by recent violence in Baton Rouge, Minneapolis and Dallas.
The show is being taped in Washington D.C.
"ABC Producers decided to make Godbee part of this important broadcast based on his vast credentials and after viewing what they are referring to as a 'striking Facebook Live Video' posted last week," 910AM said in the release.
It was not immediately clear which video the statement referred to.
Ralph Godbee radio show airs on 910AM Superstation weekdays from 9 a.m. to noon.
DETROIT-- The Draken Harald Harfagre, a 115-foot-long Viking ship that sails under the Norwegian flag made its way up the Detroit River on Wednesday.
The vessel is making its way to Bay City for the 2016 Tall Ships Celebration, which kicks off Thursday, July 14, and runs through July 17.
The Draken Harald Harfagre was constructed in 2010 as the "largest viking ship ever built in modern times," at 115-feet in length, with a beam height of 26-feet.
Powered only by a sail and oars, its sailors nearly turned around on July 11 after discovering they would need to pay $400,000 for pilotage around the Great Lakes, which was not within their budget, according to the ship's captain, Bjorn Ahlander.
But the team decided to press on and at least make the journey to Bay City. The ship will be skipping its last scheduled stops on the tour: Chicago, Duluth, Minnesota and Green Bay, Wisconsin.
The Draken Harald Harfagre left Norway on April 26, stopping in Iceland and Greenland before making its way across the Atlantic and into the St. Lawrence Sea Way, and finally into the Great Lakes.
The ship is following a historical route Vikings are believed to have explored nearly 1,000 years ago.
Other ships coming from Lake Erie include Pride of Baltimore, Appledore IV, S/V Denis Sullivan, El Galeon Andalucia,Pride of Baltimore II and the U.S. Brig Niagra, a replica of the relief flagship used by Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry during a pivotal naval battle in the War of 1812.
Follow the tall ships as they make their way to Bay City for festival using this map.
Tickets for the Tall Ship Celebration are for sale online at tallshipcelebration.com.
Advance daily tickets with a souvenir "passport" cost $8 per day. Prices rise to $10 a day on July 1. All Kroger stores are offering the ticket at a $1 discount per ticket.
Visit the Bay City Tall Ship Celebration website for more.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has announced $1.1 million in supplemental funding to clean-up brownfield sites in Michigan.
"EPA's Brownfield program will help Michigan revitalize distressed properties, improve public health, create jobs and boost local economic opportunities," said EPA Region 5 Acting Superfund Director Douglas Ballotti in a statement. "EPA's funds often make the difference that helps leverage private sector resources to make cleanups and reuse of properties possible."
The EPA awarded $300,000 to Genesee County, $500,000 to the city of Grand Rapids, and $300,000 to the Wayne County Brownfield Redevelopment Authority, according to a news release from the federal agency.
The money awarded to Genesee County will be used to clean up the Chevy Commons site in Flint. The county and city have been working to clean-up the former General Motors manufacturing facility along the Flint River to make the site safe for people to use recreationally and to prevent potentially contaminated water from reaching the river.
Work at the site has already begun with a walking path and small parking area already put in place. There are future plans to add more trails and redevelopment to the site.
The $500,000 in supplemental funding given to Grand Rapids will be used to clean-up the former Proos Manufacturing site so that it can be redeveloped into a mixed-use, mixed-income redevelopment project known as the Diamond Place Project.
Features such as a bus station and grocery store are planned as part of the redevelopment plan, according to the release.
The Wayne County Brownfield Redevelopment Authority will use the $300,000 grant to clean-up contaminated land in Detroit for urban agriculture or other projects designed to provide jobs to Detroit residents, according to the release.
The EPA provides supplemental funding to grantees that have shown success in using previous brownfield grants and need additional funding to continue with clean-ups.
FLINT, MI - Three years after the federal government denied Flint's request for fire funds, the city is asking Washington D.C. to pay for 33 firefighters and reopen a fire station on the city's south side.
Flint asked for $7.9 million in federal money to fund 39 firefighters in 2013 but was turned down.
This time around, the city is asking for $3 million.
The head of the Flint firefighter's union said the city needs the help to keep people safe.
"The amount that we have on shift per day is honestly not enough to protect the community and protect them properly," said Flint Fire Firefighters Union President Jeremy Gilbert. "To do our jobs properly, we need bodies. We do the best with what we have and we always have, but is that safe for us or safe for the community? Probably not. Fortunately, we haven't had any major issues."
In its failed bid for federal money in the 2013, the city warned that it would be left with just 75 firefighters without the grant.
The reality was worse.
The city's current roster of 54 firefighters is just under half the recommended staffing for a city the size of Flint, according to the National Fire Protection Association.
Flint has lost 33 firefighters in recent years due to attrition, said Flint Fire Chief Ray Barton.
As a result of low staffing, Barton said the city sometimes has a dozen or fewer firefighters working and has been unable to keep more than three fire stations open on several different points over the last month and a half.
The National Fire Protection Association standard calls for 16 firefighters per working fire.
Money from Federal Emergency Management Agency's Staffing for Adequate Fire & Emergency Response grant program would allow the city to reopen Station 8 on Atherton Road and attack fires faster.
With rules that require two firefighters outside for every two inside a structure fire, Barton said Flint firefighters now have to wait until a second truck arrives before attacking a fire.
"We would be able to give a better initial attack," Barton said.
The potential to reopen Station 8 full time is good news for Shana Morin.
Morin and her four children live a half-mile away from the station.
She recently went out and purchased a window ladder to hang out one of the windows of a second story bedroom window in the event of a fire.
"If they're coming from a couple of blocks away they'd be here in two minutes tops," Morin said. "Otherwise my house is burning and I'm sitting here waiting."
FEMA said Flint's application is currently under review and all award recipients will be unveiled by the end of September.
A spokeswoman for Flint Mayor Karen Weaver said the money is crucial improving staffing levels and enhancing public safety in Flint.
Barton said if Flint gets the SAFER grant it could start hiring firefighters within two months.
"It would allow some younger firefighters in," he said. "The more people you have on scene the less work on everybody."
Congressman Dan Kildee, D-Flint Township, has advocated for Flint receiving the SAFER grant during past funding cycles.
"As in the past, my office has been engaged with the city of Flint as it submitted its application for a SAFER Grant to support fire and emergency response in the city," Kildee said. "I will continue to advocate tirelessly for resources for Flint. Unfortunately, because of state budget cuts Flint has been forced to lay-off firefighters and live grant-to-grant. The long-term health of Fire Department's like Flint must be tackled by the state and supported by the Federal Government."
Flint had 79 arsons in 2015, according to the Michigan Incident Crime Reporting statistics from the Michigan State Police. Those figures were down from the 133 arsons reported in Flint in 2014. Flint had the second most arsons in the state behind only Detroit.
The number of arsons in the city has declined since it changed the way it investigated arson starting in 2013 when the city had 110 intentionally-set fires.
In 2012, Flint saw 226 fires intentionally set compared to 287 in 2011. Still, Flint had the highest arson rate per capita in the country, according to Federal Bureau of Investigation statistics.
An analysis by The Flint Journal showed there were 1,631 fires to vacant buildings from 2008-2012 - fires that in some cases weren't included in the city's overall arson tallies if they weren't investigated.
Dominic Adams is a reporter for The Flint Journal. Contact him at dadams5@mlive.com or 810-241-8803. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook or Google+.
Paul Ryan
FILE - In this May 24, 2016 file photo, House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wis. faces reporters at Republican National Committee headquarters on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)
(J. Scott Applewhite)
FLINT, MI - U.S. Rep. Dan Kildee is calling on House Speaker Paul Ryan to act to address the Flint water crisis prior to a seven-week long Congressional recess.
A letter from Kildee, D-Flint Township, to Ryan signed by more than 130 members of Congress, states the people of the city continue to lack access to safe drinking water and need continued emergency funding.
"The impacts of lead, a dangerous neurotoxin, are permanent and life-long. While nothing can be done to reverse lead's effects on the body, Congress can act to provide resources to Flint and minimize lead's impact on the victims," reads Kildee's letter, with a similar plea made in April to Ryan.
Kildee is pushing Ryan before the break to bring up The Families of Flint Act that would provide emergency and long-term resources along with the state of Michigan.
Rep. Dan Kildee, D-Mich. testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Feb. 3, 2016, before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing to examine the ongoing situation in Flint, Mich. Flint is under a public health emergency after its drinking water became tainted when the city switched from the Detroit system and began drawing from the Flint River in April 2014 to save money. The city was under state management at the time. (AP Photo/Molly Riley)
The legislation asks for hundreds of millions of dollars to fund infrastructure repairs, wrap-around services for families and children exposed to lead, economic development for business and youth employment, and health monitoring to mitigate impacts of lead.
Kildee's move comes weeks before an emergency declaration first signed off on by President Obama in January 2016 expires in mid-August. The declaration was extended once at the end of March.
State officials have pledged to pick up the entire cost of water supplies, including bottled water, in-home testing kits, and filter cartridges after the declaration expires.
Seventy-five percent of the funding is currently being provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, with the remainder of related expenses coming from the state.
Here's a look at the full text of the letter:
Speaker Ryan:
We request that the U.S. House of Representatives immediately do its job and act to address the ongoing public health crisis in Flint, Mich. The people of Flint continue to lack access to safe drinking water and need emergency funding to respond and recover to this health emergency affecting 100,000 Americans.
In recent months, this Congress has brought forth legislation regarding other crises including the Puerto Rican debt crisis, the Zika virus and the opioid addiction epidemic, but has failed to bring up legislation to send resources to Flint to deal with the water crisis. The impacts of lead, a dangerous neurotoxin, are permanent and life-long. While nothing can be done to reverse lead's effects on the body, Congress can act to provide resources to Flint and minimize lead's impact on the victims. Each day that passes that we fail to take action is a day that the children of Flint cannot get back.
Since President Barack Obama declared a state of emergency for the city of Flint in January, the Administration has used existing authorities to respond to the crisis. The current authorities and funding, however, are not enough to fully address the crisis.
The Families of Flint Act, H.R. 4479, has the support of 172 Members of Congress and would provide federal funding to help Flint recover from this man-made crisis. All of the funding in the Families of Flint Act must be matched by the state of Michigan; the state bears the majority of the responsibility for fixing the crisis that it caused. The federal government must also step up to provide the necessary help. The Families of Flint Act would provide the emergency and long term resources needed for Flint while sharing responsibility.
The House of Representatives must act immediately to provide the necessary help to Flint and respond to the water crisis as it has in the past for other Americans in crisis.
GRAND RAPIDS, MI - Food trucks would get more freedom to roam under a proposed ordinance coming up for a hearing.
Currently restricted to private property, with exceptions for special events, trucks soon could be able to do business in public parks and on the street. A hearing is planned for 7 p.m. Tuesday, July 26, in City Hall, with a city vote scheduled for Aug. 23.
"It's just going to give us more opportunity to get out and be downtown and be in a legal setting serving our food," said Adam Ouellette, owner/operator of a D'Arts Donuts food truck. "This new ordinance is going to give us more opportunity for exposure. It's going to help us food truck owners grow more."
Free the food trucks! Huge thanks to Downtown Grand Rapids Inc. and @mayorbliss for their leadership in getting a new... Posted by Grand Rapids Food Truck Association on Saturday, July 9, 2016
Ouellette currently takes his truck to Rosa Parks Circle for Thursday food truck gatherings sponsored by Downtown Grand Rapids, Inc., and to private locations for catering jobs. If city leaders allow food trucks to operate regularly on public property, the D'Arts Donuts truck might target locations including Calder Plaza and Veterans Memorial Park, he said.
Food trucks currently cluster most commonly outside the Grand Rapids Art Museum.
"Some people are interested in a free for all. A lot of us believe we do better in packs," Ouellette said. "Even if it was a free for all, we would probably eventually find the hot spots and probably all group together after some trial and error."
In line with Mayor Rosalynn Bliss' State of the City call to expand food truck areas and hours of operation, the proposed two-year trial would let food trucks park from dawn to dusk in city parks, from 6 a.m. to midnight in public parking spots and from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. in residential areas. Licensing also would be revamped, getting tied to the truck rather than the operator.
The proposed ordinance states that it "better supports culinary entrepreneurship, small business development and placemaking."
The proposed rules prohibit food trucks from operating within 100 feet of a brick-and-mortar restaurant, unless the buffer is waived by the restaurant.
"When you get much bigger than that in the downtown, you're basically legislating out food trucks," said Kris Larson, CEO of Downtown Grand Rapids, Inc., which is pushing for the changes.
During initial review of the ordinance Tuesday, July 12, City Commissioner David Allen said a distance larger than 100 feet may be necessary to protect restaurants in the city's neighborhoods. DGRI is planning a town hall talk on the rules 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, July 20, at LINC Community Revitalization, 1422 Madison Ave. SE.
Matt Vande Bunte writes about government and other issues on MLive. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook.
Representatives from several state authorities will attend a parliamentary meeting on Monday to formulate a response to Italy's decision not to supply Egypt with military spare parts
Kamal Amer, head of the Egyptian parliament's Defence and National Security Committee, told reporters that representatives from various state bodies will attend a high-level parliamentary meeting on Monday upon the orders of speaker Ali Abdel-Al and in response to Italy's decision not to supply Egypt with some spare parts for F-16 fighter planes.
The meeting will be attended by intelligence officials, the ministries of interior and foreign affairs and the prosecution-general.
Italy's decision, adopted by the Italian parliament on 7 July, came in response to what it says is Egypt's failure to cooperate in the investigation into the murder of Italian student Giulio Regeni in Cairo last January.
Amer said the representatives of the above-mentioned authorities will participate in a joint meeting with parliament's three committees of defence and national security, foreign affairs and human rights.
Amer told reporters that MPs affiliated with the three committees held a preliminary meeting Sunday to prepare for Monday's meeting and issue a report to be submitted to parliament speaker Abdel-Al.
Amer said "Italy as a sovereign state has the right to adopt the decision that suits its interests and we on our side will try our best to convince it to scrap this decision."
However, Amer, who is a former chief military intelligence and is close to President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi, warned that "Egypt's efforts not to adopt a confrontational agenda against Italy does not mean that it does not have other options."
Amer told reporters that "We, Egypts MPs and government, are very keen on seeing Egyptian-Italian relations remain strong. Italy was, after all, the first European country to support Egypt's 30 June Revolution against the Muslim Brotherhood, and Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi was the first to visit Egypt after the revolution," said Amer.
Amer added that in appreciation of Italy's post-30 June stand, President El-Sisi spoke on the phone with Italian PM Renzi several times to assure him that Egypt will provide Italy with all the necessary information about Regeni's death.
"Several Italian delegations visited Egypt, the last of which was on 7 May and after they returned to Italy they stressed that they got all the information they needed from Egyptian prosecution authorities," Amer said.
He disclosed that a high-profile Egyptian internal law professor attended the three committees' preliminary meeting yesterday.
"We wanted to seek his advice on how to contain the crisis with Italy," said Amer, concluding that "for the moment we will refrain from any rough diplomacy with Italy."
"Among the proposals put forward to contain this crisis is that an Egyptian parliamentary delegation visit Italy's parliament," said Amer, adding that "all Italy needs to know is who killed Regeni, and this is also what Egypt wants to know."
Meanwhile, MPs showed mixed reactions to the Italian parliament's decision to halt some military spare parts to Egypt. Many MPs, like Free Egyptians Party MP Tarek Radwan, accused Rome of using the "criminal" Regeni case "as a tool of political exhortation."
"Italian parliament's hasty and arrogant decision comes while Italy has never given Egypt any information on the killing of several Egyptians in Italy," said Radwan.
Radwan and many other MPs believe that it is easy for Egypt to get the F-16 spare parts from several other sources.
"Italy will be wrong if it thinks that this measure can hit Egypt very hard," said Radwan.
An MP who asked not to be identified said "it is no secret that in combating terrorists in Sinai and elsewhere, Egypt is currently depending on different fighter aircraft like the French Rafale and the Russian MIG, and not just the American F-16.
"This is the result of what President El-Sisi, Egypt's former military chief, diversifying Egypt's military imports," said the MP, also indicating that "the US itself, rather than Italy, is Egypt's major supplier of F-16 spare parts."
Another Free Egyptians Party MP, Nadia Henry, begs to differ with her colleague MPs. Henry accuses the Egyptian government of "not dealing seriously enough with the Regeni case."
"Despite its claims to the contrary, the Egyptian government has not been serious about cooperating with Italian judicial authorities in investigating the Regeni case. They thought that the Regeni case will come to an end without any repercussion and this allowed radical MPs in the Italian parliament to exert pressure on the Renzi government and issue their arrogant decision," claimed Henry.
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Katie Jackson is pictured at her Wyoming home on Monday, July 11, 2016. Jackson's daughter, Casey Kempker, was stabbed to death in her Kentwood apartment in April. The alleged assailant, Lamont Gulley, was shot and killed by a Kentwood police officer. After watching the dash cam video released by the prosecutor's office last month, Jackson says his shooting was an injustice. (Neil Blake | MLive.com)
KENTWOOD, MI -- After a man suspected of brutally killing a woman was himself shot and killed by police, a call for more body cameras on officers and more diversity in their ranks is coming from perhaps a surprising place: The mother of the slain woman.
Katie Jackson, of Wyoming, acknowledges that the community wouldn't expect her to stand up for Lamont Gulley, a man with a history of mental illness who allegedly stabbed her daughter -- his wife -- and fled before he was killed by an officer on April 8.
Casey Kempker, 41, was stabbed 15 times in front of her 7-year-old autistic son.
But what a grieving Jackson saw when Kent County Prosecutor William Forsyth released video of the police-involved shooting while clearing the officer of criminal wrongdoing last month left her deeply disturbed.
She thinks Gulley's shooting was an injustice and that police played the roles of "judge, jury and executioner." She said she has forgiven Gulley, 43, for killing her daughter and understands that he desperately needed mental health treatment.
"If anybody should be prejudicial of what they saw, it should be me. He murdered my daughter," Jackson said.
She called the footage of Gulley being shot while on the ground as he attacked a police dog with a knife "horrifying."
A Grand Rapids police officer's body cam captured the gunfire. Jackson said she's troubled by the fact that there wouldn't have been video if Grand Rapids police hadn't been summoned to assist Kentwood.
Now, she wants to see body cams on each Kentwood cop. The department currently has four body cams for cops who patrol on motorcycles and on foot at Woodland Mall, since they don't have access to in-car dash cameras.
Gulley was black, and Jackson takes issue with the fact that there are no black officers on Kentwood's force of 65 sworn police. She thinks Kentwood has "a long way to come" in regard to representation of minorities on its police force and in city government.
"If there were several black officers there at the same time, could it have turned out differently? It might've been," Jackson said about the shooting.
Kentwood Police Chief Tom Hillen said while he has welcomed Jackson's conversation, he can't ignore the fact that Gulley refused to drop his knife when confronted by police.
"He controlled, quite frankly, his own destiny," Hillen said. "He put everybody else at harm's risk. I just don't think that this case is one you want to say that, 'Oh a body cam would have made a difference.'"
Video shows that in the moments preceding the shooting, a group of officers surrounded a knife-wielding Gulley. Police unsuccessfully tried three times to Taser him. His heavy winter clothing blocked the shock.
Gulley fell to the ground and stabbed at a police dog several times before Kentwood Police Officer Darrin Cline fired two shots.
On that snowy night in early April, police were first called to the Kentwood apartment Gulley shared with Kempker. Relatives said there were clues that Kempker had tried to leave her husband, who had a history of mental issues and violent behavior.
When police arrived, they could see blood inside the Pheasant Ridge apartment through the sliding glass door. Officers tracked Gulley's footprints in the snow, locating him nearby.
Forsyth's legal opinion stated Gulley refused to comply with officers' demands to drop the knife with a 4 1/2-inch serrated blade, and also repeatedly said he had a gun and yelled at officers to shoot him.
While on the ground, Gulley swung his knife at the K9 while within 5 feet of the dog's handler. Forsyth said given the slippery conditions, "Officer Cline made a split-second decision to use deadly force to protect" the officer.
The department has been a part of three officer-involved shootings in 18 months. In a fourth incident last month, authorities initially believed a suspected bank robber's death was caused by police, but an autopsy later determined the man took his own life.
Cle Jackson, president of the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), said the fact that the mother of a murdered woman is speaking out against the Kentwood shooting "should give all of us some pause."
Since Forsyth released the video, Cle Jackson and other black community leaders have called for body cams that they say would protect both civilians and police in Kentwood.
"It's just straight up accountability," he said.
He brought the request to Kentwood Mayor Stephen Kepley, who said officials are "still in the process of looking at all aspects" of body cams.
"We run pretty lean in the city of Kentwood, and so there's a lot of things we need to look at for full implementation," Kepley told MLive and The Grand Rapids Press, referencing IT demands and questions of compatibility with the current in-car cameras.
Katie Jackson credited police for walking into unknown and dangerous situations but doesn't think Gulley had to die.
"They took him out instead of letting a jury do this," she said.
10th congressional debate
State Rep. Tony Forlini, David VanAssche, Paul Mitchell, Alan Sanborn and state Sen. Phil Pavlov participate in a 10th Congressional District primary debate July 12 in Shelby Township.
(Lauren Gibbons | MLive)
SHELBY TOWNSHIP, MI -- In the 10th Congressional District's upcoming Republican primary, stakes are high -- five Republicans are vying to fill the void left by retiring U.S. Rep. Candice Miller, R-Harrison Township.
But at a debate in Shelby Township hosted by the Macomb County Republican Party Tuesday evening, the five men found several issues upon which they could see eye-to-eye.
All five expressed disdain for policies and policy recommendations put forward by President Barack Obama's administration and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton's campaign, including refugee settlement programs and dealing with illegal immigration. Each candidate said they would strive to reverse and repeal most, if not all, of the Affordable Care Act.
And when asked for a show of hands on whether they would support Donald Trump as their party's presumptive presidential nominee, all five hoisted their hands high.
"We're sick and tired of politics as usual, and Donald Trump is not politics as usual," former Sen. Alan Sanborn said. "Support Donald Trump, or you run the risk of Hillary Clinton."
The race pits several current and former state lawmakers against each other -- Sanborn, Rep. Tony Forlini, R-Harrison Township, Sen. Phil Pavlov, R-St. Clair, have represented portions of the 10th District at the state level in one or more capacities.
Also running are retired businessman Paul Mitchell, who ran and lost in the 2014 4th Congressional District Republican primary and led a campaign opposing Proposal 1, and David VanAssche, a businessman and Air Force veteran.
The winner will go on to face former state representative Frank Accavitti Jr., a Democrat who also served as mayor of Eastpointe and Macomb County commissioner, in the general election Nov. 8.
The 10th District includes parts of Macomb and Tuscola counties and all of Huron, Lapeer, Sanilac and St. Clair counties.
During the debate, the candidates traded barbs over questions on campaign finance, which came to a head when discussing criticisms of Mitchell moving into the district just before announcing his Congressional run and spending millions of his own money on the race.
"You have some people here who get up everyday for your issues," Pavlov said after insinuating Mitchell funneling cash into his own campaign isn't indicative of the average resident in the 10th Congressional District.
In his own defense, Mitchell compared his campaign to Trump's, noting that Trump "stood up to the club, funded his own primary and he kicked their backside."
"It is my money to do as I wish with," he said.
On the Affordable Care Act -- referred to by Mitchell as the "Unaffordable Care Act" -- several candidates said they'd be interested in keeping certain aspects of the plan, such as allowing parents' insurance to cover children until 26 and prohibiting insurance companies from rejecting a person based on a preexisting condition.
But VanAssche went further, saying the country should start completely afresh.
"There's nothing I would keep in that thing," he said.
When asked to respond to the shootings of Dallas police officers and racial tensions in the country, the candidates had a variety of different responses. VanAssche said the problem was one of education, while Mitchell called Obama a "leading cause of the problem."
Sanborn and Pavlov similarly argued that it's more than a race problem, and that the people of the U.S. need to come together to fix it.
Forlini said recent tragedies have shown a degradation of family values more than anything else.
"It's not about race -- everyone wants to make this about race," he said. "Family values have been taken down to the point where there is chaos. That's what we're seeing today, is chaos throughout the country."
Miller has held the Congressional seat since 2003, but opted out of running for reelection in March 2015, telling supporters at the time that she was ready to "freely pass the baton to whomever my community chooses to serve as their next voice in the U.S. House of Representatives."
She is currently running against Democratic incumbent Anthony Marrocco for the position of Macomb County public works commissioner.
Lauren Gibbons is a political reporter on MLive's Impact team. She can be reached at lgibbon2@mlive.com.
Bill Schuette
Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette speaks with reporters at a June 28 roundtable in Lansing.
(Brad Devereaux | MLive.com)
LANSING, MI -- Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette will be speaking at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, he announced in a statement Tuesday.
Schuette is slated to speak July 18, the opening day of the convention, he said in a statement posted to his Facebook page Tuesday evening. The exact speaking time has not yet been determined.
Schuette said in the statement that he was honored to have been asked to speak at the convention and start the process of electing the Republican nominee.
"I am excited about this opportunity because by working together in Cleveland to build a unified team, we will take back the Presidency," Schuette said. "We simply will not turn the keys to the White House over to Hillary Clinton.
And Cleveland is where it all starts," he continued.
Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump was not mentioned by name in the announcement, although Schuette has previously said he would support Trump's candidacy.
The convention is scheduled for July 18-21 at the Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland.
Lauren Gibbons is a political reporter on MLive's Impact team. She can be reached at lgibbon2@mlive.com.
Related: Ask questions about roadside drug testing coming to Michigan
LANSING, MI -- The Michigan State Police is working on plans to establish a pilot program for roadside drug testing, a spokeswoman said.
A new law instructs the state police to pick five counties where it will run a one-year pilot program for saliva-based testing to check drivers for drugs like marijuana, heroin and cocaine.
"We expect the counties to be finalized this summer with a pilot to begin sometime later in the year," MSP spokeswoman Shanon Banner said.
The five counties will be determined based on criteria including: the number of impaired driving crashes;the number of impaired drivers arrested; and the number of Drug Recognition Experts (DREs) trained in the county, she said.
The "Barbara J. and Thomas J. Swift Law," is named after the couple killed in a March 20, 2013, crash in Escanaba, when a tractor-trailer ran a red light and careened into their Chevrolet Malibu.
Tractor-trailer driver Harley Davidson Durocher was convicted of charges including operating while intoxicated causing death, and sentenced to a minimum of five years and five months in prison for the crash. Durocher's blood was drawn at a hospital following the crash and showed THC, an ingredient of marijuana, leading to the charges.
After the crash, Brian Swift, the couple's son, said he contacted Sen. Tom Casperson, R-Escanaba, to help create a better way to charge drugged drivers.
"The five-county pilot program will be used to help determine accuracy and reliability of the tests," Gov. Rick Snyder said after he signed the bill in June.
Attorney Neil Rockind, founder of Southfield-based criminal defense law firm Rockind Law, opposed the legislation he said would set a "dangerous precedent" for Michigan.
"The criminal justice system wants to take science and turn it into a fast, easy utility," Rockind said. "Science is neither fast nor easy."
According to the Office of Highway Safety Planning, as of February, Michigan had 99 Certified Drug Recognition Experts in 37 counties.
DRE officers have received "highly specified training" to allow them to identify drivers with drug impairment, Banner said.
The saliva analysis will only be administered by a DRE, she said, and will be given along with the drug recognition 12-step evaluation currently used. DREs employed by state, county and municipal agencies could also be involved.
The law instructs the MSP to conduct a pilot program meant to establish policies in the area of roadside drug analysis, Banner said, and to make a determination of the accuracy and reliability of the tests.
-- Brad Devereaux is a reporter for MLive.com. Follow him on Facebook and Twitter.
Glidden Mural.jpg
A 9-by-28-foot glass mural that tells the story of electrical power was located in the former Consumers Energy building on Michigan Avenue in downtown Jackson.
(J. Scott Park | MLive.com)
JACKSON, MI - In a 4-3 vote, Jackson City Council on Tuesday, July 12, approved a $624,330 bid from O'Harrow Construction Company for the construction of a building to house the Glidden Parker Mural.
The city currently has $394,000 in funds for the project, although Councilman Derek Dobies is continuing to meet with groups to raise the additional $230,330 needed. The city's general fund will cover the cost differential, with the hope for reimbursement, City Manager Pat Burtch said.
The structure will be on the north side of Horace Blackman Park, just south of Pearl Street. It was originally estimated to cost $389,980.
"The bids came in a little bit higher than anticipated just because I think of the design of the roof," Dobies said. "We're currently working with the construction company to see what we can do."
The city hopes to negotiate the contract, with an expected savings of around $25,000 already, Burtch said. The city received bids on Thursday, July 7. O'Harrow has until Nov. 15 to complete the project.
"I'm confident that we have the ability to go out and find some other resources to contribute to the gap that you see," Dobies said. "I have some meetings this week for that purpose."
The structure
The building, to be known as CP Federal City Square, originally was designed to house the Glidden Parker Mural.
The 9-foot-by-28 foot mural was commissioned for $35,000 in 1969 by Consumers Power Company - now Consumers Energy - for display in the lobby of the headquarters. The colored, faceted glass on a steel frame illustrates the history of power generation and distribution, according to the city council agenda.
"Eight hundred lights behind the mural flash in sequence, giving the appearance of power from a central reactor moving through a heat exchanger and turbine," according to the agenda.
It was saved when the Consumers Energy headquarters was demolished in 2013. The plan is to have the mural in the urban core park that replaced the old headquarters.
The project since has developed beyond just the housing of the mural, with Burtch saying the mural makes up about 40 percent of the project's focus now.
The building will include an area for art displays, a large stage and amphitheater area and a 30-foot screen that can come down in front of the mural for summer movie nights by the Jackson Downtown Development Authority. Burtch calls it a "multi-use performing arts and visual arts pavilion."
"The stage is designed so the entire JSO could have a full symphony orchestra," Burtch said. "It's a multi-use structure now; it isn't the same as it was when we first designed it."
The supporters, opponents
While the city has $394,000 in received revenue for the project, multiple grants totaling more than $100,000 will expire at the end of the year.
Current funds come from the National Endowment for the Arts 2014 "Our Town" Grant ($50,000), the City of Jackson Public Improvement Funds Contribution ($119,000), the Michigan Council for Arts & Cultural Affairs Capital Grant ($75,000), the CP Federal Credit Union Grant ($100,000) and the Weatherwax Foundation Grant ($50,000).
Dobies also gave a list of groups that support the building, including the Downtown Development Authority, the Jackson Symphony Orchestra, Spring Arbor University, the Jackson County Chamber of Commerce, Ella Sharp Museum, Consumers Energy, the Jackson District Library and Henry Ford Allegiance Health among others.
The four council members who supported the approval were Dobies, Daniel Greer, Craig Pappin and Mayor Bill Jors. Arlene Robinson, Freddie Dancy and Andrew Frounfelker opposed the contract approval.
"It is more than we had anticipated, but I am confident in other fundraiser efforts and working with the contractors to cut as many corners as possible without jeopardizing the integrity of the structure," Greer said. "I will be voting in favor of this this evening, with the faith that other donations will be raised."
Four of the seven public commenters also spoke on the topic, with two people for and two against.
"If the council feels it can afford to spend the (money) on this downtown mural, then hopefully each council member who will favor this mural can justify their vote on this non-essential spending instead of spending tax dollars on the essentials," said John Wilson. "Like adding patrol officers to the dangerous streets of Jackson."
The main concern of the opponents was not the project itself, but the funding for it.
"I think the project's a great project, I want it to go through, I'm totally supportive of the concept and what's happened thus far," Frounfelker said. "But I want to make sure that we show better steps and progression in cutting back on the overages and also locking up some more additional funding."
The government says the move aims to push moderate Islamic ideology and ensure that radical ideas do not spread
The Egyptian government said Tuesday that Muslim preachers in the country must now adhere to uniform pre-written weekly sermons, a controversial move that authorities say is aimed at combating extremism but has irked some clerics.
The Ministry of Religious Endowments has since 2014 been setting topics for weekly sermons delivered during Friday prayers across the country, but the new move would further restrict preachers in Egypt's more than 100,000 mosques to read out the same text.
"The objective [of the decision] is not at all political," Minister of Religious Endowments Mohamed Mokhtar Gomaa said Tuesday, stressing that the aim is to push moderate Islamic ideology and ensure that radical ideas do not spread.
Officials say the move will help address problems in preaching, including being lengthy or politicising topics.
The sermons will be drawn up by ministry officials and senior scholars from Egypt's Al-Azhar the highest seat of Sunni Islam learning with contributions from members of parliament's religious affairs committee, psychologists and sociologists, the head of the ministry's religious division Gaber Tayea told Ahram Online.
The minister, who has yet to set a date for implementing the decision, said he would start with himself and deliver the pre-written sermon next Friday.
He said clerics aged up to 45 years would be selected by the ministry to be trained for preaching at mosques.
Criticism
Several preachers have been incensed by the move, arguing that it would squander preaching talents and stifle eloquence, and that it fails to cater to cultural and demographic diversity in separate communities that may require specific speeches tackling local issues.
"This would turn a sermon into a useless news bulletin that does not appeal to the audience and obliterates the imam's personality and talent by turning him into a machine reading out a script," Ibrahem El-Zafery, an Al-Azhar imam at a mosque in Upper Egypt's Qena, told Ahram Online.
"How would a pre-written sermon fit every community and audience?" El-Zafery asked.
The decision in 2014 mandating that Muslim clerics conform to topics set by the religious endowments ministry for the weekly Friday sermons also sparked anger among some preachers at the time.
Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi has more than once blamed outdated religious discourse for holding back Egypt and called for reform, saying that radicalised thinking has become a source of destruction for the rest of the world.
Following the 2013 overthrow of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi, the religious endowments ministry revoked the licences of all non-authorised Al-Azhar clerics and preachers some 55,000 and forced them to apply for new ones.
The move was part of the government's efforts to stop the use of mosques as a platform for political groups and to clamp down on extremist views that authorities said were being spread by preachers supporting Morsi's now-banned Muslim Brotherhood group and its ultraconservative allies.
Some 12,000 freelance preachers were barred from delivering sermons in 2014.
Around 100,000 clerics and preachers are now licensed in Egypt, including some 57,000 employed by the religious endowments ministry, officials say. The rest are Al-Azhar-educated clerics.
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Egypt's foreign minister is set to hold talks with the US secretary of state in Washington later this month
Egypts foreign minister Sameh Shoukry will fly to Washington on 21 July to participate in the ministerial meeting of the international coalition against the Islamic State militant group, a statement by the Egyptian foreign ministry said.
In an official statement, foreign ministry spokesman Ahmed Abu Zeid said the Egyptian foreign minister received a phone call from US Secretary of State John Kerry during the formers visit to Rwandas Kijali, where he is attending the 27th round of the African Union (AU) Summit.
A meeting will be held between the two officials during Shoukrys visit to the US, where bilateral relations and various regional issues will be discussed.
Kerry also discussed with Shoukry the outcomes of the latter's visit to Israel and the efforts made to encourage the Palestinians and Israelis to resume the peace process.
On Sunday, during the first visit to Israel by an Egyptian foreign minister since 2007, Shoukry reiterated to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Egypt is a "steadfast and unwavering" supporter of the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The Egyptian foreign minister stressed that the two-state solution is supported by Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi and other state officials.
Egypt is currently supporting the Paris peace initiative aimed at reviving negotiations between the Palestinians and Israelis.
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On Kyar Kwet Thit Street in Yangons Tarmwe township, famous because it is home to more than 50 beer stations, dozens of young and middle-aged men and a handful of girls in their 20s enjoyed the nightlife earlier this week.
At around 9pm customers were relaxed as they held mugs of draught beer, while the sound of calls for new orders could be heard clearly along the street.
But inside Maw Shwe Li pub, manager U Tin Shwe was panicked and confused.
Earlier that day he had received a letter from the ward administration office warning him to stop selling beer on tap. Ward administration offices are under control of the General Administration Department, which is overseen by the military through the Ministry of Home Affairs.
Bar owners holding a FL17 licence can no longer serve pump beer, the letter said, and those found breaking the rules will be punished according to the law.
Last week, the township administrator held a meeting with beer stations and told them that FL17 license holders can no longer sell pump beer, then today I received this letter, he said, holding it out. I dont know what to do. If they want to reduce the number of beer drinkers, they can raise taxes.
Most beer stations across the country have served draught beer for many years under an FL17 licence, though officially this is prohibited by law.
U Tin Shwe said that FL17 holders have always been allowed to sell all types of beer including foreign liquor, adding that most beer stations pay K2.4 million each year in licensing fees.
Of the approximately 7000 bars and restaurants that sell tap beer today, only around 2500 hold a FL9 or FL10 licence specifically allowing them to sell draught beer, while the other 4500 operate under a FL17 license.
Pump beer is typically 20 to 30 percent more profitable than packaged beer and, when available, is almost always the preferred choice for consumers, as it is better value and perceived as fresher than packaged beer.
U Hla Win Tin, director of the General Administration Department, said yesterday that the home affairs ministry will not issue any new liquor licences for now, a decision that will come as a major blow to beer station owners forced to stop serving.
A directive from the ministry restricting draught beer sales to establishments holding an FL9 (Foreign Alcoholic Liquor) or FL10 licence was given in the first week of December last year, he said, and has only recently been enforced in regions such as Yangon.
Those hoping to get hold of an FL9 or FL10 licence, or even an FL17 licence, need to wait until someone else goes out of business.
The new direction taken by the Ministry of Home Affairs on draught beer has provoked panic among beer station owners across the country. Local sources who asked to remain anonymous told The Myanmar Times that in Magwe Region more than 50 pubs have been closed for selling draught beer with a FL17 licence, though these reports could not be independently confirmed.
Anthony Clark, managing director of Myanmar Carlsberg Company said he is not sure who will benefit from the change in policy.
It is unclear what the benefit is to the government or consumers, to have pump-beer outlets licensed separately from non-pump beer outlets. However this has a material impact on bars and restaurants, many of which rely heavily upon the income they make on pump beer, he said yesterday.
Under the old system it was understood, and common practice, that bars and restaurants with FL17 licences would be entitled to sell beer in any form.
This is potentially disastrous for bars and restaurants that hold FL17 licences as not only will they lose profit on any beer they sell, but they will also lose consumers, who will [migrate to] outlets that are allowed to sell draught. It is also bad news for consumers as they wont necessarily be able to enjoy pump beer in their preferred restaurant, Mr Clark said.
U Hla Win Tin said the Ministry of Home Affairs issued new guidelines on liquor licences and transport passes for distribution, in 2015.
Pump beer is a separate item [to canned beer], he said. It is not a big policy change. The new directive was given in 2015 and we passed this message on to township administrators across the whole country, to let the stations know. I think some stations have already been informed.
He added, People face difficulties when policies change, it is quite normal. As our liquor policy clearly states, the number of licences must be reduced each year. In the past pump beer stations were operating without a licence we are now trying to do things more systematically.
Military conglomerate Myanmar Economic Holdings Limited, known locally as U Paing, owns a 45 percent stake in Myanmar Brewery, which held a tight grip on the beer market for many years until it was opened to foreign giants Heineken and Carlsberg. It now holds around an 80pc share in the beer market, largely through selling Myanmar Beer, the nations most popular brew.
Tetsuhiko Sato, deputy managing director of Myanmar Brewery, said beer station owners will need to comply with the rules. We just have to obey and we are trying to obey, he said.
Lester Tan, managing director of APB Alliance Brewery Company, which produces and distributes Heineken in Myanmar, said beer stations holding FL17 licences are now likely to apply for FL9 or FL10 licences, despite the fact that no more new licences will be released in the future.
As a result of stronger enforcement of all laws, there is some hesitation within businesses, as owners will not sell beer without the proper licences. Many business owners are now applying for the correct licences, he said. We anticipate that this is a short-term issue ... For the moment, we are working with our beer station business partners to see how we can help to overcome the issue together.
U Tin Shwe said in May when he bought a new FL17 licence, nobody mentioned that it would not cover the sale of draught beer.
Our customers mostly buy draught. If authorities force us not to sell it, we cannot afford to continue, he said.
The manager of Y2T beer pub in Kyauktada township said she has not yet received a letter telling her to stop selling beer on tap, and is waiting for clear instruction.
We have heard the news that FL17 holders will not be allowed to sell pump beer. We hold this licence and so do most of the pubs around the township, but nobody has yet come and told us not to sell it, she said.
Like U Tin Shwe, the manager of Kandawlay pub in Mingalar Taung Nyunt township also received a letter on July 11.
We are a FL17 holder and received the letter today. But we cannot stop selling draught beer right now. We do not know what to do.
Aya Bank plans to open representative offices overseas, while competitor KBZ Bank says it has applied to move into countries such as Japan and South Korea, in a sign that Myanmars banks are growing bolder in exploring overseas markets.
If successful, AYA would become the second Myanmar lender to expand beyond national borders KBZ became the first in May when it received permission from Thailand to open a representative office in Bangkok.
AYA is part of the Max Myanmar Group, owned by tycoon U Zaw Zaw the group and its owner are both blacklisted by the US Treasury, which may prove problematic for overseas business; although a special licence issued by Washington in 2013 allows the bank to form direct correspondent relationships with US companies.
Deputy managing director David Wang Soe Lin said AYA Bank has been building strong relationships with its counterparts across the region and that overseas expansion will be the next step.
As of this moment, we are working with our foreign bank counterparts in countries such as Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Japan to help facilitate cross-border transactions and advisory, he said. We have intentions to move beyond Myanmar and increase our presence in ASEAN in the near future.
He said local banks need to start building a presence beyond Myanmar to support client needs overseas, though at first AYA Bank, like KBZ, will open representative offices.
One must understand the difference between a rep office and a branch set-up, he said. There is a huge limitation to a rep office whereby it can only function as an information collection point, while a branch licence allows the bank to perform banking transaction and services.
While dozens of foreign banks have representative offices in Myanmar, the government only started to issue branch licences to international lenders in 2014, initially to nine banks, then to another four at the start of this year.
Meanwhile KBZ, Myanmars largest commercial bank, which benefits from being free from US sanctions, will begin to operate its first foreign offices in Bangkok and Singapore within the next month, said senior managing director U Than Cho.
He said KBZ Bank already has permission from all relevant authorities to open representative offices in Bangkok and Singapore and has found office space in both countries.
We will start to operate both representative offices within this month and we will apply to open a branch after we have six months or one years experience running an office, he said, adding that the bank is also applying to open a representative office in Malaysia and hopes to do the same in Japan and Korea.
With a representative office we will not be able to offer banking services; it will just make it easier for us to make connections with foreign banks. To open a branch overseas is not difficult, we just need detailed documents, and I believe we can do this soon, he said.
State-owned Myanma Railways will receive US$200 million in development financing from Japan to upgrade Yangons circular railway line and has set an ambitious target of tripling commuter traffic, an official said yesterday.
Every day 73,000 people use Yangons only train line, said Myanma Railways general manager U Htun Aung Thin. Once the railways are upgraded and new trains are running, he hopes this number can reach 263,000.
By upgrading the route, crucially we can cut running times. It now takes 2 hours and 50 minutes for a train to complete the [46-kilometre or 28-mile] circuit, while stopping at 38 stations, he
We aim to reduce this to less than 2 hours. Trains can drive at 15 miles per hour at the moment but we hope to increase this to 26
Myanma Railways will also run more services, U Htun Aung Thin said. Now commuters need to wait between 15 and 45 minutes to take the train, but we hope to reduce the wait to 10 or 12 minutes.
Shorter wait times will be crucial to attract commuter traffic, which currently relies heavily on the citys overstretched bus lines and congested roads.
Manual signaling will be replaced with automatic systems and Myanma Railways will buy 11 new six-carriage trains, U Htun Aung Thin said.
We have signed an agreement to install automatic signals and to buy brand-new Diesel Electric Multiple Use (DEMU) carriages. Japan will give us a 24 billion yen ($206 million) overseas development assistance loan for that, he added.
The Ministry of Transport and Communications will take charge of the project, which he hopes will be finished by June 2019, depending on financing and the labour force.
In the past, commuters relied on the circle line, but gradually they switched to buses, because the trains were old and did not run on time. Better trains will help relieve pressure on Yangons roads which have grown increasingly crowded over the past few years.
Myanma Railways decided to upgrade the railway in collaboration with the Japan International Cooperation Agency study team, U Htun Aung Thin said. JICA completed wide-reaching plans for urban development in Yangon in 2013 and 2014, including a transport master plan.
Finding the right fares will be important, he added. We charge K100 per ticket regardless of the type of train. Because of this our earnings have fallen from K8 million to K7 million per day. So we need to consider all aspects of running the railway.
Yoma Strategic has completed another step on the long road toward starting work on a 10-acre mixed-use luxury development in downtown Yangon.
The Singapore-listed firm, which has major interests in Myanmar real estate, announced yesterday in a filing to the bourse that it had signed a shareholders agreement with several parties involved in the long-delayed project.
Signatories include First Myanmar Investment which is also owned by Yoma Strategic chair Serge Pun and the International Finance Corporation, which has been criticised by some for funding a high-end project run by one of the countrys richest businesspeople, despite its mandate to invest in projects that reduce poverty.
Japanese firms Mitsubishi Corporation and Mitsubishi estate also signed the agreement. The two companies are forming a joint venture in Singapore with equity funding from the Japan Overseas Infrastructure Investment Corporation for Transport and Urban Development (JOIN), which will invest up to $200 million into the project.
Yomas head of real estate Cyrus Pun told The Myanmar Times that full details about the project are likely to be disclosed on July 26 following the companys annual general meeting.
The US$400 million Landmark Development was first imagined several years ago. When complete it will include residential and office space, and a full-scale renovation of the former colonial-era Burma Railway Company headquarters into a five-star Peninsula hotel.
Yet it has repeatedly run into delays due to red tape, which Mr Pun told Reuters is a side-effect of the companys commitment to transparency and good governance.
Myanmars real estate market is highly opaque last week the Jones Lang LaSalle 2016 Global Real Estate Transparency Index ranked it 95 out of 109 markets. Despite some reforms, Myanmar has held onto the title as the least transparent market in Asia Pacific, the report said.
Yesterdays announcement is subject to conditions the Asian Development Bank must join the group of shareholders and Meeyahta Development Limited (MDL), the joint-venture projects developer, still needs Myanmar Investment Commission approval.
Yomas chief financial officer JR Ching told The Myanmar Times yesterday that the ADB is expected to accede to the agreement, once they have finalised some of their internal approvals.
We are also working with MIC on the approval process, Mr Ching said.
He did not respond directly to a question on whether the project has been suspended as part of a Yangon Region government review of high-rise developments across the city saying only, We have a positive outlook on the project and are still working with the relevant stakeholders, including the government, to proceed with the project.
If all goes to plan, Yoma Strategic will own 48 percent of the joint-venture company, FMI will hold 12pc, Japans Mitsubishi companies will together hold 30pc, and the IFC and the ADB will each hold 5pc.
The two development banks will be granted put options allowing them to sell their MDL shares back to Yoma between eight and 11 years after their initial subscriptions.
Yangon authorities have told 12 developers to drastically change their project designs, in the first round of feedback following a drawn-out review of high-rises across the city, according to documents released yesterday, seen by The Myanmar Times.
Developers have responded with anger and frustration, accusing the local government of lacking transparency because its assessment criteria were not made public.
The decision, if legally binding, is likely to result in significant losses for the companies and investors involved in many cases developers have already sold units on floors that now cannot be built.
In one of its first acts after taking office, the Yangon Region government suspended all planned projects in the city with more than nine floors, even those already under construction, to ensure that all development approved by the previous government was in line with draft zoning plans for the city.
Despite promises that it would be quick and pain-free, the review has dragged on, spooking investors, while construction workers have seen their wages cut and sales of construction materials have slumped.
Yesterdays results, which were given directly to developers, detailed the outcome of the first round of inspections; 52 projects are still suspended and awaiting a verdict.
Some of the initial 12 projects appear to involve international investors, though The Myanmar Times was unable to confirm this with the companies by press time, so cannot name any projects or investors. See below for details of the projects and the changes demanded by Yangon government.
U Kyaw Kyaw Naing, developer of i-Green company, who is building a 12.5-storey project called Sein Lae Aung Condominium on Sein Lae May Yeikthar Road, told The Myanmar Times yesterday that he was disappointed the government had told him to build to just six floors.
I say there is no transparency, he said.
We believed this civilian government would be transparent, but that was totally wrong. We have no idea what kind of standards they used to assess our projects and they did not discuss the review with us. They simply came to their own conclusions.
His project is not yet finished but is already 10 storeys high, he said.
When the committee came to inspect it, it already had more than six floors. Their inspection was also very bad. They did not look at the project closely, only from a distance, yet they decided we must reduce the number of floors to six. Its unbelievable, he said.
He said customers have already bought apartments on higher floors, a problem he has no idea how to solve.
This is very upsetting, not only for developers but also for customers who bought our condominium rooms. We cannot solve this problem as we did nothing wrong; we were building under a legal construction permit. So we have to ask the government to take responsibility, said U Kyaw Kyaw Naing.
The governments actions will not only upset local developers, he said, but will also deter foreign investors and hurt the construction industry, with a knock-on effect on economic growth.
Real estate development is a huge business that supports many related industries, so anything that hurts this market will hurt the entire economy.
Yangon Region government has ordered changes to all 12 projects in the first round of results:
Is it art? Or just vandalism? To find out, pay a visit to the third floor of the MYANM/ART Gallery at Bogalay Zay Street. But if you think of graffiti as an urban phenomenon, you may be surprised to find yourself in a forest.
ROAR (Release of Artistic Rage), a group of avant garde artists, chose the indoor jungle as the theme for the expression of their sprayed-on works, their first exhibition.
All four artists have day jobs: DJ, designer, painter and (self-described) geek. But the creatures they encounter in their far-ranging lives of the imagination are now writ large on the walls of the gallery. Dinosaurs, birds of paradise, pandas, vultures and other forest creatures, some mythical, await you.
Bart, also known as Kyaw Moe Khaing, aged 20, is responsible for the vultures and the more colourful birds, plus his pet dog, Damien. When I first became interested in graffiti, I used to draw stealthily at night. Running away from the police gave me an adrenaline shot, like I was Batman. But now I just want to create the perfect drawing. I prefer beautiful tags to big drawings. And I hate people who turn beautiful places into ugly ones. They give graffiti a bad name.
A second-year fine arts student in Singapore, Bart added, Some people might wonder why weve brought graffiti indoors when it should be out on the street. But time moves on. I think of myself as an artist rather than a street kid.
Ko Chit Htut, 29, sprayed pictures of his son. He hopes to take part in more exhibitions in the future. Some graffiti artists overseas have solo shows, spraying on canvas, he said. A graphic designer, he added, The benefit of an indoor graffiti show is that we have the time to create whatever we want. Neither we nor the audience has to run from the police.
Without revealing the source of his statistics, Ko Chit Htut said 40 percent of people now accepted graffiti as street art and not vandalism. A practitioner since 2000, he provides graffiti commercially for bars and clubs.
They used to say we were vandals. Then graffiti artists became popular because of the way we treated politicians. But just being able to spray well doesnt make you a graffiti artist.
The artist currently known as 9micro, Ye Hein, goes for ancient Egyptian themes like the jackal-headed god Anubis. The veteran of many arrests in the cause of his art since taking it up in 2007, he co-founded ROAR, with Bart, in 2012. He works as a DJ.
First graffiti came with tags. But later it switched to street art through illustration, and political satire, he said. And now they call it art. Just as drawing with a brush can be graffiti, drawing with a can can be art.
It was Ko Wanna Aung who drew the dinosaurs fitting, as he is the oldest of the group, aged 38.
We put the canvas where we want to make the focus, he explained. There are nearly 10 canvases on the wall. If anyone wants to buy them, all they have to do is pull them off the wall, just like pulling out our souls from the mural we created.
Adept at painting since childhood, he decided to turn professional after completing an art major at college. He first exhibited his work in 2002 at the Lawkanat Gallery, but grew tired of too much realism and yearned for escape.
Mastering contemporary drawing, he devised his own contemporary style. In 2010 his attention was attracted to street art, and he penned an article on Myanmar Graffiti Artists and Their Artworks for a magazine. That was how he fell in with 9micro and Bart.
An admirer of the English artist Banksy, Ko Wanna Aung said, Spraying on a wall gives me more freedom than painting on a canvas.
ROAR (Release of Artistic Range) comprises 9micro, Bart, Ko Wanna Aung and Ko Chit Htut. Founded in 2012, this is their first group show. It will run until July 18 at the MYANM/ART Gallery, third floor, 98 Bogalay Zay St, Botahtaung township, from 11 am to 6pm.
The state Buddhist authority has agreed to disband the controversial nationalist lobby Ma Ba Tha, according to a state media announcement.
In documents that were initially leaked on social media yesterday, and then picked up by MRTV, the State Sangha Maha Nayaka Committee (Ma Ha Na) has disowned the Committee for the Protection of Nationality and Religion, known by its Myanmar-language acronym Ma Ba Tha.
Since the first to the fifth Sangha conventions of all Buddhist orders from 1980 to 2014, none had endorsed Ma Ba Thas legitimacy or even used the term, Ma Ba Tha, said a version of the State Sanghas statement that appeared on Facebook yesterday.
Citing section 4 of the State Sanghas basic rules, the statement said there must be only one Sangha association composed of all Buddhist orders in the country, which repudiates Ma Ba Thas claim that it was formed in accordance with the Sanghas rules and laws.
This is to clarify the confusion among the public: Ma Ba Tha is not a Buddhist organisation that was formed in accordance with the basic Sangha rules, regulations and directives of the State Sangha authority, the leaked document said.
According to the statement, there are only nine Buddhist orders around the country and the formation of a new Buddhist order is prohibited. Such organisations may also never deal in political affairs, the law said.
The State Sangha plans to issue orders banning members of township Sanghas from participating in Ma Ba Tha, or activities led by the group.
Ma Ha Na was asked to review the nationalist lobby force by Yangon Region Chief Minister U Phyo Min Thein.
He has been after Ma Ba Tha since a trip abroad to Singapore when he called the self-appointed guardians of nationality and religion redundant and unnecessary due to already-extant Ma Ha Na. The chief minister further raised the ire of the nationalist monks when he reiterated the comments to reporters outside Yangon International Airport.
Ma Ba Tha members pledged to stage protests starting on July 14 if the government did not issue a retraction and reprimand the official.
With the organisations future in the lurch, Ma Ba Tha members attempted to soften their tone during a press conference called at Insein Ywama monastery yesterday.
Backtracking from insulting U Phyo Min Thein and a previous castigation of his womanly remarks, central committee member U Tawpaka said all Ma Ba Tha members have been given instructions to drop the nationwide protest.
The protest plan arranged last week cannot continue peacefully, he said.
Instead, the Committee for the Protection of Nationality and Religion vowed to peacefully support the country under a new theme, Ma Ba Thas Myithar covers the world.
Ma Ba Thas statement added that the group will not be paying attention to the chief minister and regards his personal views as irrelevant. The reversal comes after National League for Democracy patron U Win Htein said the party would not be heeding Ma Ba Thas demands for retributive action against the chief minister.
We will not devote attention to his [U Phyo Min Theins] opinions because they are only his personal belief. What he said does not represent the state government. So we wont respond, U Tawpaka said.
Throughout last years election season, Ma Ba Tha was vocal in its campaign against the NLD, urging voters to cast their ballots instead for nationalist parties that had stood for the controversial race and religion bills a package of legislation backed by the monks, and signed into effect by then-president U Thein Sein. NLD MPs had lobbied against the legislation when it was up for debate in parliament, but the new government has since stood up for the bills at a recent UN meeting in Geneva.
Senior members of Ma Ha Na are slated to gather for a two-day quarterly summit starting today, after which a public pronouncement on Ma Ba Tha is expected.
A conscript was shot dead on Wednesday by a sniper at a security checkpoint near North Sinais Sheikh Zuweid, Al-Ahram Arabic news website reported.
According to security sources, the 21-year-old conscript, Mohamed Ashraf Mohamed from Sharqiya governorate, was standing at a security checkpoint in El-Gora, north of Sheikh Zuweid, when he was shot by an unknown assailant.
His body was taken to the mortuary at El-Arish Military Hospital.
No group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack, which comes one day after a decree issued by President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi extended the state of emergency in parts of North Sinai for three months starting 29 July.
Egypt's security forces are fighting a decade-long Islamist insurgency in parts of North Sinai that spiked following the ouster of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in 2013.
Hundreds of policemen and soldiers have since been killed by militants, and the army has stated that security operations have resulted in the killing hundreds of militants by security forces.
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Two international advocacy organisations have slammed the new Myanmar government for failing to address fundamental human rights shortcomings in its first 100 days in office, echoing recent criticism from the international community.
In a joint statement, the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and the Alternative ASEAN Network of Burma (ALTSEAN-Burma) issued a list of key priorities in 10 areas of concern, including unrealised constitutional and legislative reforms, anti-Rohingya policies, military impunity and a failure to adequately protect womens rights. The National League for Democracy government was also urged to immediately establish a national human rights agenda.
In some human rights areas, progress has been slow; in others, key issues have remained unaddressed or been relegated to a low priority status, FIDHs president, Karim Lahidji, said in a press release on July 10.
The long-delayed reforms would allow human rights violations, particularly in ethnic minority areas, to continue and foster a climate of impunity among members of the armed forces, the statement read.
The rights groups questioned the current governments decision to put constitutional reform a central campaign plank in the 2015 election on hold. Parliaments lower house Speaker U Win Myint recently said the issue of constitutional reform would only be dealt with after there is a durable peace agreement with the nations many ethnic armed groups.
The constitution is the biggest obstacle to the creation of a democratic, transparent and accountable institution, Andrea Giorgetta, director of FIDHs Asia desk, told The Myanmar Times. It is not a coincidence that the ethnic armed groups have made constitutional reform an indispensable condition for the success of the peace process.
Arina Khoo Ying Hooi, a Malaysia-based political analyst, said there is a sense of disappointment over the early performance of the NLD government led by President U Htin Kyaw and State Counsellor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.
Further delay in constitutional and legislative reforms could open up to more human rights violations, particularly to the minority groups, the senior lecturer with the Department of International and Strategic Studies at the University of Malaya told The Myanmar Times.
She added that the needed reforms are significant not only to Myanmar but also to the broader Southeast Asia region because some of the countrys problems such as institutional discrimination against the Rohingya Muslim minority in Rakhine State are transnational issues that threaten regional human rights protections.
Last year a mass exodus by boat of Rohingya and Bangladeshis became a regional crisis as human traffickers abandoned their cargo at sea amid a crackdown on the trade by Thailand.
ALTSEAN-Burma coordinator Debbie Stothard raised similar concerns. She said the government must urgently pursue legislative reforms to protect the rights of minorities.
Serious efforts must be made to prevent crimes against civilians in conflict areas and systematic discrimination against religious minorities, including Rohingya Muslims, the human rights activist said.
The NLD marked its 100th day in office on July 7 amid mounting international pressure to prioritise human rights and constitutional reform. On some key issues, such as the latter, the NLD is hamstrung by military lawmakers effective veto over charter change, while there is no civilian control of a military establishment that has continued to wage war against a handful of ethnic armed groups.
Still, despite Daw Aung San Suu Kyis overwhelming electoral mandate, the Nobel laureate has received particular criticism for failing to take a stand in addressing the plight of the Rohingya, who are denied basic rights including citizenship and see their access to education and healthcare restricted.
Mr Lahidji said the government must not fall victim to complacency stemming from the extraordinary public support it earned in the 2015 election, in which Daw Aung San Suu Kyis NLD won an overwhelming majority of elected seats.
The government must set a clear human rights agenda that contains measurable and time-bound benchmarks to assess whether its objectives have been achieved, he said.
The joint statement also questioned remaining limits to freedom of expression. Although censorship of print media was lifted as part of a series of democratic reforms under the previous government, the NLD-led Ministry of Information last month banned the screening of Twilight Over Burma: My Life as a Shan Princess a film critical of the Tatmadaws past at the Human Rights Human Dignity International Film Festival in Yangon.
Other major issues raised and as-yet unaddressed included establishing a UN human rights monitoring office and releasing all remaining political prisoners without conditions.
More than 60 Myanmar workers who have been detained at various camps across Malaysia are heading home today, Malaysia-based Kepong Free Funeral Services said.
The organisation had planned to assist the workers return in time for State Counsellor Daw Aung San Suu Kyis 71st birthday on June 19 but the citizenship verification process was not finished in time.
U San Win, chair of Kepong Free Funeral Services, said they could assist about 250 detained Myanmar migrant workers based on donations they have received but will conduct the repatriations group by group, following embassy approval.
We have already handed over all the donations to the embassy and the embassy arranged the plans. We are happy that we are able to assist them in their return home, he said.
The Myanmar embassy in Malaysia has approved the necessary documents for 39 migrant workers from Belantik Camp and 23 from Merah Camp.
The embassy says it will try its best to help detained migrant workers return home. There are many in similar situations throughout the country, embassy officials said in a statement about repatriation plans on July 6.
Almost 2000 Myanmar migrant workers are detained in camps across Malaysia for a variety of reasons, including immigration violations. More than 300 have already served their sentences but they are unable to return because they have no money, the embassy said.
The embassy is giving repatriation priority to women, children, older people and those who have been in the camps for a lengthy period.
We must visit all camps in rotation and have to arrange for repatriation of almost all of the migrants, the statement said. We are trying to re-check for undocumented migrants in cooperation with related ministries.
Some returnees who have not had contact with friends or family are being allowed to stay at Tha Bar Wa meditation centre in Thanlyin township until they are able to get in touch with their loved ones, said Ko Kyaw Zin, a member of Kepong Free Funeral Services.
Detained migrant workers should depart for home on Myanmar Airways International at 12:50pm Malaysia time, he said, and they are scheduled to arrive at Yangon International Airport at about 1:30pm local time.
Villagers in Kachin State are hoping the government will agree to designate their home town an ancient heritage site, attracting visitors and investors. Myo Haung (old city) village in Mogaung township, Kachin State, is home to many pagodas and cultural buildings of Bamar and Shan origin.
Sai Aung Myo Lwin, a spokesperson for the Moe Kaung Lovers Association, told The Myanmar Times they sought recognition from the Department of Archaeology, National Museum and Library.
Moe Kaung Palace, which is about 1000 years old, was a great source of pride for local residents, he said.
Our main intention is to improve job opportunities for local people and bring in revenue to the government through tourism development by excavating and conserving our heritage, said Sai Aung Myo Lwin.
Myo Haung village, once part of a city during the 16th-century Bayintnaung Kingdom era, now comprises about 45 households located at the junction of the Moe Kaung-Hpakant road and the Shwebo-Myitkyina road, 8 miles (13 kilometres) from the original Moe Kaung city, Sai Aung Myo Lwin said.
We want to be recognised as an ancient heritage zone. We would not need financial support from the archaeology department if we got the designation, he said.
Last month, the Moe Kaung Lovers Association submitted to the Ministry of Religious Affairs and Culture a report on the historical background and the current situation of the village, with supporting photos and a map of historical sites.
Were researching the data about Moe Kaung [and] Myo Haung according to the directives of the archaeology department, and well submit more data in September, said Sai Aung Myo Lwin.
One obstacle might be the presence of residents, religious buildings and farms in the proposed cultural zone, which would be forbidden under conservation law.
Kachin people have lived in Myo Haung village for the past 30 years, said Sai Aung Myo Lwin. Designation would not prohibit them from living there. But there are some rubber farmers who use backhoes that could affect ancient buildings, so were negotiating with them.
Villager U Suu Myint Thein said he and his neighbours would be very glad to see their home designated an ancient heritage zone.
Were proud of the ancient city wall, the buildings and the pagodas in the town. The knowledge we have has been handed down through the generations. We hope to be designated a historical site this year, he said, adding, We will try to excavate the ancient heritage site. Then we will build a city wall like the old one from the historical site in Moe Kaung once the zone is designated.
The new government is taking a closer look at five hydropower projects along the Dokhtawady River in Mandalay Region, mindful of the local opposition its predecessor frequently ran into at several proposed dam sites over the years.
U Zarni Aung, regional minister for electrical power, energy and construction, told The Myanmar Times that some of the dams were undergoing testing.
Impacts on local populations will be assessed, and if the projects are deemed necessary but will require relocating residents, compensation will be paid and those affected will be moved away from the sites systematically, he said on July 11.
There are five projects including the Upper Yeywa hydropower project on the Dokhtawady River. Some projects have started running and some are still being tested, U Zarni Aung said, referring to the under-construction Upper Yeywa dam, which is slated to generate 280 megawatts of electricity.
Mostly, these projects are being run at the Union government level The key point is that through these projects, we including the president are trying to ensure that there is enough electricity [generation] for the coming summer in the region. If the projects are implemented, there needs to be a strong effort to make sure that there are no disadvantages and losses.
President U Htin Kyaw on July 8 visited the Kyaukse township site of the Yeywa hydropower dam a much larger 790MW project that went operational in 2010 and met with officials to discuss minimising the social and environmental impacts of dams proposed, under construction and already completed.
Elsewhere in Mandalay, the previous regional government signed a memorandum of understanding in March with Aung Myint Shein 999 Industrial Company Limited on a proposed trio of small dams on streams in Thazi township. The MoU covers an 18-month viability study.
By law, dams generating less than 10MW of electricity are considered small-scale, and those generating less than 30MW qualify as medium-scale. State- and region-level governments are allowed to manage small and medium-scale electricity generation. At 6MW, 21MW and 27MW respectively, the three Thazi township dams would fall under the regional governments authority.
State media reported early this year that completion of the Upper Yeywa dam was expected in 2018. That same report said five hydropower projects on the Dokhtawady River including the under construction Upper Yeywa and already operational Yeywa dams would generate a total of 1936MW if completed, though it was not clear whether the five dams were the same as those referenced by U Zarni Aung this week.
Last week, a minister in the Shan State government said several major development projects, including hydropower dams, had been suspended pending similar cost-benefit analyses.
Translation by San Layy
Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has taken on yet another title, now at the helm of the re-named National Reconciliation and Peace Centre.
The state counsellor will chair the 11-member centre, which will be the central organ of the new governments peace plan. The centre will draft the policy and a newly created peace commission, headed by National League for Democracy member U Tin Myo Win, will be tasked with implementing the plans, according to U Hla Maung Shwe, a member of the government peace team. President U Htin Kyaw announced the chages in state media yesterday.
At the request of the United Nationalities Federal Council (UNFC), Daw Aung San Suu Kyi will have her first meeting as head of the new centre during talks with leaders of the armed groups on July 17 in Yangon, government peace negotiators said.
At the meeting, the leaders of the UNFC, an armed ethnic bloc of nine groups that did not sign the nationwide ceasefire agreement (NCA), are slated to discuss the 21st-century Panglong Conference, U Hla Maung Shwe said.
During a meeting with the government peace team in June, UNFC members requested a talk between its leadership and the state counsellor during which their leaders would have political dialogue and discuss the peace process of the new government.
Generally, they want to know about things like the objectives and the inclusivity of the peace process and the 21st-century Panglong Conference, U Hla Maung Shwe told The Myanmar Times. There can be further talks on other matters.
Similar meetings were held last year between the previous government and UNFC leadership, before the signing ceremony of the nationwide ceasefire agreement last October in Nay Pyi Taw. It faced boycott from most members of the UNFC because it included only some of the groups.
Last year, after then-president U Thein Sein snubbed some armed ethnic groups, including the three groups fighting the Tatmadaw in Kokang autonomous region, a senior delegation of armed ethnic groups negotiated with the government, seeking to grant military and political guarantees to the three groups. Those negotiations failed.
As a final attempt, UNFC leaders of the Kachin Independence Army, the Karenni National Progressive Party, the Shan State Progressive Party, and the New Mon State Party met with the president.
However, the presidents stance on the offer from the armed groups leaders remained unchanged. As a consequence, only eight of the invited 15 groups signed the NCA.
The NCA has been widely criticised by political analysts for causing division among the armed ethnic groups and creating fresh skirmishes in northern Shan State between the Restoration Council of Shan State and the ethnic Palaung armed group of the Taang National Liberation Army. Thousands of civilians have been forced to flee villages affected by the fighting.
Armed ethnic groups are also planning to hold a fully inclusive summit in Mai Ja Yang, a stronghold area of the Kachin Independence Army from July 26 to 29, to prepare for the 21st-century Panglong Conference. More than 20 armed ethnic groups, including the two most powerful groups along the China-Myanmar border the Wa and the Mongla will be invited.
In a meeting with the signatory groups in Nay Pyi Taw at the end of June, Tatmadaw Commander-in-Chief Senior General Min Aung Hlaing expressed concerns over the planned summit.
Sources in the signatory groups who met with the Tatmadaw leader said the senior general fears that the summit will serve as a place for building up forces among the armed groups, which could further complicate the peace process.
Speaking for himself, U Hla Maung Shwe said he does not think that the summit would be a burden on the peace process.
Members of the UNFC already met in Chiang Mai to prepare for the upcoming Mai Ja Yang summit.
Peace negotiators have said the Panglong Conference should be held before the end of August. Peace negotiators are also pushing to review the dialogue framework with the armed groups.
A signing ceremony is also expected to be held between government negotiators and the groups that have not yet signed the NCA. Those who sign the ceasefire pact will secure seats at the negotiation table for the Panglong meet-up.
Additional reporting by Ei Ei Toe Lwin
East Asia is at a critical historical juncture as two major geopolitical trends unfold: the strategic rise of China and the impact of Chinas rise on the long-standing position of the United States in East Asia.
As US-China competition evolves, both Japan and ASEAN have to assess their strategic policies. Japan and ASEAN are the next two important entities (in no particular order) in the contemporary strategic landscape whose decisions could determine the outcome of East Asian regional stability.
Chinas rise has been the main story of this century. Despite Beijings repeated assurances on its peaceful rise strategy, Chinas behaviour continues to provoke many questions about its intentions. This suspicion stems from Chinas strengthened territorial claims in both the South China Sea and East China Sea, including rapid land reclamation to enlarge the islands and reefs in the South China Sea that alarmed the other claimant states, the US and Japan, and the militarisation of claimed islands through the deployment of anti-aircraft missile systems on Woody Island.
Most projections agree that Chinas assertiveness in the maritime domain will escalate. This is especially true for the South China Sea dispute, as China clearly regards this sub-region as its own backyard. Chinas assertiveness has resulted in run-ins between not only the other claimant states, such as the Philippines and Vietnam, but also with its long-standing partners, such as Malaysia, and with Indonesia, a neutral actor in the dispute.
The second key trend is to keep the US engaged, interested and committed to East Asia. Chinas strategic rise challenges Americas traditional role as the main source of stability in the region. Though US abandonment fears have been a constant feature in East Asias strategic landscape, two factors make this concern more pressing today.
The first is the acquisition of asymmetric technology by China and North Korea, namely the anti-access/anti-denial capability (ballistic missiles, submarines and other weapons) that directly limits the United States ability to access its military bases in Northeast Asia, and in turn weakens Americas extended deterrence capability.
The second factor originates from Americas policy in the Middle East. For East Asia, the Middle East is a constant source of distraction of US attention and resources. With the situation in Syria and the threat from ISIS escalating tensions, Americas involvement in the Middle East will only be heightened, further reinforcing the concerns of the East Asian states.
Japan and ASEANs responses to the geopolitical trends have naturally differed. For Japan, the shifts resulted in a greater clarification of its national security objectives and strategy. Internally, it has strengthened its military capabilities, revised its defence strategy to focus more on the southwest region, lifted the arms exports ban and increased defence spending.
Externally, it has strengthened defence cooperation with the US. A key development was the signing of the new 2015 Guidelines of Japan-US Defence Cooperation the first upgrade since 1997 authorising Japan to help defend the United States and other allies, even when Japan is not under attack (known as collective self-defence missions). Japan has strengthened its security relations with like-minded countries (Australia, India), formed security partnerships with claimant countries in the South China Sea dispute (the Philippines and Vietnam), and engaged in robust defence diplomacy efforts bilaterally and multilaterally (ADMM-Plus).
On the other hand, the impact on ASEAN is as yet unclear. This is no surprise, as ASEAN is a collection of 10 states with individual national interests. However, one clear impact has been the more visible fracture within ASEAN. The differences between pro-China, anti-China and neutral camps have become starker. The 2012 and 2015 ASEAN Foreign Ministers meetings are good examples of this, as ASEAN countries failed to reach a consensus on how to express Chinas behaviour in the South China Sea in the joint communiques released during those meetings. In April 2016, this fracture made headlines again as the foreign ministers of China, Laos, Cambodia and Brunei met to agree on a consensus that the South China Sea should be resolved between China and the claimant states, rather than through the China-ASEAN framework.
Though clearly in response to Chinas rise, Japans comprehensive strategic policy is largely accepted by the ASEAN states, because Tokyos moves are largely perceived as defensive measures. However, Japan should avoid any destabilising behaviour over the unresolved historical legacy issues, such as visits to the Yasukuni Shrine. This reduces Japans goodwill and supports the view that Japan can be a destabiliser. Also, Japan should avoid any anti-China balance-of-power strategies that could fuel regional perceptions that Japan is trying to create an anti-China coalition.
For ASEAN, it is important that the region remains the convening institution for East Asia a strategy that has worked well in engaging great/major powers in the region, as well as sustaining its relevance in the regional landscape.
Addressing ASEANs disunity is the most important challenge for the next decade. ASEAN has to decide the tipping point for when China or Americas actions become detrimental to regional stability, and devise a common approach for challenging this. This is not a push toward the creation of a common foreign and security policy such as the European Union, but a common issue-based approach.
As the 50th anniversary of ASEAN approaches, it is no longer a choice but a necessity for it to start talking about common approaches to traditional security. As a source of stability both individually and through the US-Japan alliance, Japan has an important role in sustaining ASEANs centrality in the regional security landscape, ensuring a cooperative Japan-ASEAN collaboration brings stability to a tense region.
Policy Forum
Bhubhindar Singh is associate professor and coordinator of the Regional Security Architecture Programme at the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.
Thais generally want Thailand to do well anywhere. When it comes to sports, for example, we have even learned the rules of volleyball to support our womens national team, which has shot up from nowhere to be in the global top 10. But when it comes to diplomacy, where Thailand used to be world-class, local cheering recently has not led to international results.
The latest casualty of Thailands diminished international standing took place in New York, where Bangkok failed at a decade-long effort to win one of the 10 non-permanent seats on the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). Such a setback understandably brings time to commiserate and comfort each other with the aim of doing better next time. But it is also time for tough takeaway lessons. Foremost is that Thailand must get its house in order before making such a costly international pitch again, and that it cannot expect to gain international acceptance while having a military government that has curbed basic freedoms and repressed its own people.
In the first tally, where pledged support among the UNs 193 members is kept, Kazakhstan as Thailands sole competitor came out on top with a 113-77 count. With a two-thirds requirement, the second free vote without pledges and obligations left no doubt. The 138-55 count left Thailand in the dust and left Team Thailand with questions unanswered. For some US$20 million (700 million baht) reportedly spent on the UNSC campaign, from wining and dining to pricey flights to lobby far-flung governments and fancy receptions in New York, what was there to show for if the losing margin was so large? This whopping gap suggests we had no chance.
Many have pointed out that Kazakhstan just fit the bill better in most categories. Unlike Thailand, it had never been on the UNSC. It offered a concrete selling point to the UN in denuclearisation, sounding the right tune for the international community. It reportedly spent more than twice as much as Thailand on the globe-trotting lobbying trail. It is also in Central Asia, a region that counts as part of the Asia-Pacific quota but is traditionally underrepresented at the UN.
Unsurprisingly, Astana had the backing of Moscow and Beijing, two of the UNs five permanent members. The three countries enjoy old ties that date back to communist times in past decades when Kazakhstan was part of the former Soviet Union. Since its latest military coup in May 2014, Thailands military government has been wooing China and Russia for recognition and trade ties, while being criticised by Western countries for taking an authoritarian turn and clamping down on basic rights and freedoms. Ironically, it is reportedly these Western countries the United States, the United Kingdom and France, the other three UN permanent members that supported Thailands UNSC bid.
To be sure, non-permanent UNSC seats are not decided by human rights and democracy records. Kazakhstan does not outshine Thailand on the democracy and human rights ledger. But perceptions have mattered over the years.
Kazakhstan has never been known as a bastion of democracy and human rights. Thailand, however, was seen as getting there only to have reversed its course for authoritarian rule, leaving many feeling jilted. Thailands multiple governments, twin coups and a string of foreign ministers fed into global perceptions of a country that has gone off the rails.
For these reasons, Thailand should have abandoned the bid, saved us a large sum and owned up to our military dictatorship. The world broadly no longer countenances coups in this day and age, unlike during the Cold War when Thai coups did not matter much abroad.
For Team Thailand, this is a tough loss. The foreign ministry is one of the countrys top talent pools (second only to the central bank) because its entrance system is so rigorous, selective and comparatively merit-driven. Yet professional Thai diplomats have had to work for inferior political bosses. For roughly half of the past decade, the foreign ministry was dominated by former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, his clan and their political party machine.
When the Thaksin side was in charge, much of the foreign policy work involved battling with the other side at home in foreign arenas, such as the Preah Vihear temple case. Much of the effort was spent looking after Thaksin himself. There was a time when Thailands foreign minister was Thaksins part-time passport manager, equipped with democratic legitimacy but no diplomatic stature. During the rest of the past decade, the foreign ministry was busy keeping the Thaksin side at bay and explaining and justifying Thailands twin coups to the world, armed with some stature but little legitimacy. Although its diplomats remain able and ready, Thailands foreign ministry has not been doing foreign policy work directly for a decade.
But we knew all of this while conducting the UNSC race. In hindsight, it would have been better if we had cut our losses and accepted our diminished place in the global pecking order. Rarely has a country that has been known for its diplomatic prowess and pride sunk so low in the global arena.
Yet the authorities currently in charge wanted to prove that they can have their cake and eat it, too, by having a recurrent coup against international norms and a military government that the world should accept because it is a special case. The chief UNSC lesson should be that the world expects more of Thailand, that we are not as special as we would like foreigners to see us.
Bangkok Post
Thitinan Pongsudhirak is associate professor and director of the Institute of Security and International Studies, Faculty of Political Science, Chulalongkorn University.
[July 13, 2016] Large California Hospital Deploys 11 Portable Digital Radiography Systems to Deliver Rapid Image Access
Huntington Hospital (Pasadena, Calif.) has installed nine CARESTREAM DRX-Revolution Mobile X-ray Systems, retrofitted two existing portable systems with DRX Plus 3543C detectors and purchased a small-format DRX 2530C detector for use with neonatal patients. This Smart News Release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160713006147/en/ Huntington Hospital (Pasadena, Calif.) installed nine Carestream DRX-Revolution (News - Alert) mobile systems and retrofitted two existing portable systems with new Carestream DRX Plus detectors. (Photo: Business Wire) These high-quality imaging systems help enhance care for patients in its emergency department, operating suites, intensive care unit and neonatal intensive care unit. Staff members at the 625-bed hospital used other portable DR imaging systems prior to standardizing on the DRX-Revolution platform. "The DRX-Revolution systems deliver high-resolution images that can help our physicians quickly and accurately assess and treat acute care patients, as well as inpatients who require bedside exams," said Ranilo Blasco, the hospital's Manager of Radiology. "We standardized on these systems because of the platform's innovative design and its ability to deliver excellent quality images as well as reliability and maneuverability." Two DRX-Revolutions capture more than 2,300 exams a month in the hospital's busy emergency department. Dedicated DRX-Revolutions serve the imaging needs of the hospital's six operating suites, intensive care unit and neonatal intensive care unit, while the remaining units perform inpatient exams throughout the hospital. The hospital performs more than 150,000 imaging exams a year. Staff and physicians in all of these areas are extremely pleased with the system's performance, according to Blasco. "Technologists in the operating suites are able to position the unit so surgeons can view images either on the tube monitor or the console without moving away from the patient."
Carestream's software provides a companion image that delivers optimized visualization of tubes and lines. "Physicians use these images to help position tubes and lines for seriously ill or injured patients and to detect pneumothorax. Because the companion image is created from the initial image, we do not need to capture multiple X-ray exams of these patients," Blasco explains. "Converting from CR to DR has not only improved image quality, it also has lowered the dose required to obtain an excellent image. This is especially important for our ICU and NICU patients, so we have installed cesium detectors in these areas to deliver the lowest dose possible while maintaining extremely high-quality imaging," he adds.
In addition to being faster and lighter than previous detectors, Carestream's new DRX Plus detectors offer features designed to help users achieve higher productivity, improved image quality and lower dose. In addition, these detectors can be submerged in one meter of water for 30 minutes without failure, which achieves IPX Level 7 rating for liquid resistance and the IEC (News - Alert) standard 60529. A reduced weight and thinner profile allow even easier handling. The new detectors offer: faster calibration time, boot time, preview time and full-resolution display time; on-detector calibration file storage that enables quicker setup of the detector on multiple systems; and increased battery life to deliver more images between battery changes. A battery hot swap allows a quick battery change without a reboot. About Huntington Hospital Huntington Hospital (Pasadena, Calif.) is a 625-bed not-for-profit hospital that offers the only Level I trauma center in the San Gabriel Valley. In addition to being granted Magnet status in 2011, Huntington Hospital has been ranked nationally by U.S. News & World Report in two specialties, and was named the 8th best hospital in California. The hospital also received Healthgrades 2015 America's 50 Best Hospitals Award which places it in the top one percent of more than 4,500 hospitals nationwide for its consistent, year-over-year superior clinical performance as measured by Healthgrades. For more information visit www.huntingtonhospital.com. About Carestream Health Carestream is a worldwide provider of dental and medical imaging systems and IT solutions; X-ray imaging systems for non-destructive testing; and precision contract coating services for a wide range of industrial, medical, electronic and other applications-all backed by a global service and support network. For more information about the company's broad portfolio of products, solutions and services, please contact your Carestream representative or call 888-777-2072 or visit www.carestream.com. To view Carestream's latest news announcements, please visit www.carestream.com/news. Follow Carestream Health online: http://www.twitter.com/carestream
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[July 13, 2016] American Integrity Insurance Brings New Quoting Tool to Florida Homeowners
American Integrity Insurance Company (AIIC) is making it easier for insurance agents and AIIC's future policyholders to engage in coverage and premium discussions in half the time it takes now. AIIC, along with ISCS, a leading provider of software and services, has co-developed a platform that requires only a few taps, clicks and keystrokes for insurance shoppers to obtain an online homeowners insurance quote. Called MyRateQuote, this tool allows customers to get an electronic quote similar to how a car buyer might conduct online research before visiting a dealership to buy a car. American Integrity Insurance anticipates that Florida consumers will use the MyRateQuote tool to educate themselves about their coverage options prior to finalizing the purchase with their trusted insurance agency advisor. "In today's fast-paced, digital world, MyRateQuote provides the kind of convenience and knowledge that is not only expected, but is priceless," said Robert "Bob" Ritchie, American Integrity Insurance Company's President and CEO. Victor Mandes, American Integrity Insurance Vice President of Information Technology commented that, "With the launch of our new MyRateQuote technology, consumers can quickly and easily obtain an accurate quote, any time of day or night, and then select one of our local insurance agents in order to purchase their policy. Our goal is to provide customers with solutions and a user experience that is unmatched in Florida's home insurance marketplace." MyRateQuote can be used by Floridians seeking up to $1.5M of coverage for their home and up to $1M for those who live in condominiums. Customers will need to work directlywith one of AIIC's insurance agents to obtain a policy for amounts greater than those.
"We are thrilled to be able to use this time-saving technology and help our customers engage in the insurance quote and coverage process so seamlessly," said Danielle Healis, General Manager of Killingsworth Insurance Agency in Brooksville. For more information, please visit the company's web site www.aiicfl.com, or call 866-968-8390.
About American Integrity Insurance Group (American Integrity) American Integrity Insurance, one of the largest writers of Florida homeowners insurance, has in excess of 225,000 customers and is represented by more than 800 independent agents. The Tampa-based company offers sound and comprehensive property insurance solutions, including traditional home insurance and coverage for vacant homes, condominiums, manufactured homes and dwelling fire policies. For more information, please visit the company's website at www.aiicfl.com, call 866-968-8390, or connect with the company on Facebook, Twitter, Google (News - Alert)+, LinkedIn, Pinterest or Instagram. For more information, please visit the company's web site www.aiicfl.com, or call 866-968-8390. About ISCS ISCS is the developer of SurePower Innovation, a cloud-based modern enterprise suite for property and casualty (P&C) insurance organizations writing personal, commercial and specialty lines. SurePower Innovation extends beyond core administration (policy, billing and claims) to include reinsurance, business intelligence, document management, mobile, insurance accounting, producer/commission management, portals and more. ISCS consistently delivers SurePower Innovation as a complete, managed SaaS (News - Alert) solution via ISCS's SurePackageTM deployment option, allowing insurers to focus on the business of insurance. For more information, visit www.iscs.com. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160713006319/en/
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Germany and Italy said Wednesday they were evacuating their nationals and other foreigners from South Sudan, after intense fighting killed hundreds of people and forced tens of thousands to flee their homes.
"The government's crisis task force has decided to evacuate German, European and international citizens from South Sudan. The evacuation is ongoing and being carried out by air using German airforce planes," said German foreign ministry spokeswoman Sawsan Chebli.
Around 100 German citizens were still in South Sudan, and those with German organisations would be given priority in the evacuation, said Chebli.
Berlin would also help bring other foreigners to safety, the spokeswoman said, adding however that she could not give their nationalities for security reasons.
Separately, Rome said an Italian military plane carrying 30 Italians and an unspecified number of other EU citizens departed Wednesday morning for its base in Djibouti.
A ceasefire in South Sudan's capital appeared to be holding for a second straight day Wednesday, but many people remained cautious after four days of heavy fighting. Around 300 people were killed in just a few hours on Friday.
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This handout image provided by the United Nation Mission in South Sudan on July 11, 2016 shows some of the at least 3000 displaced women, men and children taking shelter at the UN compound in Tomping area in Juba. By Beatrice Mategwa (UNMISS/AFP/File)
13.07.2016 LISTEN
Nimule (Uganda) (AFP) - Predatory soldiers and the sluggish brown waters of the Unyama River separate thousands of fearful South Sudanese from the longed-for safety of neighbouring Uganda.
Thousands of people on the South Sudan side are eager to leave following days of intense battles in the capital Juba, 200 kilometres (125 miles) to the north, which have threatened a return to war.
The few who have so far crossed say soldiers relieve civilians of their possessions before letting them pass.
"The soldiers near to the border beat people to force them back," said Mary Modo, a 40-year-old mother of five.
"We got through but when we got to the border the soldiers made me leave all my belongings there. I only kept two cooking pots, the clothes the children and I were wearing, and one change each, and my handbag."
Titus Jogo, a Ugandan official who processes refugees, said the number arriving dropped dramatically from around 200 a day to less than 100 when heavy fighting broke out in Juba on Friday and South Sudanese soldiers blocked the way.
"The South Sudan government doesn't want people to know that there is a problem of displacement. They are violating the right of their people to seek asylum," said Jogo.
Those who have made it come on foot and empty-handed.
- Emergency footing -
The United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, estimates that as many as 20,000 people may be logjammed on the South Sudan side of the border, ready to stream across the narrow iron and tarmac bridge if the way is opened.
But for now there is no indication when that might happen.
Those who have made it are taken first to a transit centre before being resettled at the Pagarinya refugee camp.
The United Nations said on Tuesday that a total of at least 36,000 people have fled their homes in Juba since the latest bout of fighting erupted, while three quarters of the population need humanitarian aid.
"The majority of those arriving in Uganda from South Sudan are women and children," said Sardhanand Panchoe, field coordinator for the UNHCR in the nearby town of Adjumani. Two-thirds are children, he said.
Panchoe said his team had been "on an emergency footing" since December as South Sudan's peace on paper failed to translate into stability on the ground.
"Preparing for tens of thousands of potential new arrivals is a second emergency within an emergency," he said. "We are working to try to avert that."
Cairo (AFP) - The Solar Impulse 2 landed in Cairo on Wednesday for the penultimate stop in the solar-powered plane's world tour, two days after setting off from Spain.
The experimental plane had completed the first solo transatlantic flight to land in Spain last month, and will continue from Cairo to Abu Dhabi, where it began its marathon journey in March 2015.
At least 11 civilians, including three children, were killed in air strikes on a rebel-held town in Syria's northwestern Idlib province on Wednesday, a monitor said.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor said it was unclear if the strikes on the town of Ariha in Idlib province were carried out by Syrian government or Russian war planes.
The town is controlled by the Army of Conquest, a rebel alliance of mainly Islamist groups including Al-Qaeda affiliate Al-Nusra Front that holds almost all of Idlib province.
Video uploaded by activists purportedly showed the aftermath of the strikes, with residents and civil defence workers picking though debris looking for survivors.
Idlib has regularly been targeted by both Syrian government air strikes and raids carried out by its Russian ally.
A longtime backer of the government in Damascus, Moscow stepped up its support for President Bashar al-Assad on September 30, when it began an air campaign aimed at bolstering regime positions.
Elsewhere in the country, the Observatory said at least eight people were killed on Wednesday in the town of Rastan in central Homs province.
Five of them died in air strikes on the town's market place, which also wounded dozens of people. Another three were killed in shelling earlier Wednesday.
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Armed police patrol the streets in Bujumbura on April 12, 2016. By STRINGER (cds/AFP/File)
13.07.2016 LISTEN
Nairobi (AFP) - Former Burundian government minister and spokeswoman Hafsa Mossi was shot dead in the capital Bujumbura on Wednesday, police said.
"Hon. Mossi assassinated 10.30 in Gihosha", in the east of Bujumbura by, "two criminals in a vehicle," police spokesman Pierre Nkurikiye said on Twitter.
Mossi was Burundi's information minister and government spokeswoman between 2005-2007, and was, at the time of her death, a member of the East African Legislative Assembly, a regional parliament.
Mossi, a former journalist in her 50s, was a member of President Pierre Nkurunziza's ruling CNDD-FDD party.
Nkurunziza's controversial but ultimately successful bid for a third term last year triggered a deadly crisis that has killed more than 500 people and driven around 270,000 to leave the country.
Several senior military officers close to the president have been assassinated since the start of the crisis in April 2015, but Mossi, who was not regarded as a party hardliner, is the first senior politician to be killed.
Her murder is being investigated.
Zimbabwean police were on patrol in the capital Harare Wednesday a day after protest leader Evan Mawarire (pictured) was arrested and charged with inciting public violence. By Jekesai Njikizana (AFP/File)
13.07.2016 LISTEN
Harare (AFP) - Most businesses and schools in Zimbabwe opened Wednesday despite campaigners calling for a nationwide strike after a series of protests that have shaken President Robert Mugabe's government.
Police were on patrol in the capital Harare a day after protest leader Evan Mawarire, a pastor who founded the internet ThisFlag protest movement, was arrested and charged with inciting public violence.
Mawarire, who is due to appear in court on Wednesday, organised a widely-implemented one-day national shutdown last week when offices, shops, schools and some government departments stayed closed.
The surge in unrest in Zimbabwe, where protests have been rare under Mugabe's authoritarian rule, has been driven by an economic crisis that has left banks short of cash and the government struggling to pay its workers on time.
"They made sure that they arrested the people who are most vocal and fearless -- that is why the response is not as good as it was last week," said Onias Marongwa, who works in a grocery store.
A group of youths carrying the Zimbabwean flag, which has become a symbol of protest, gathered at the magistrate's court in Harare where Mawarire was due to appear.
In the south-eastern town of Masvingo, most shops and offices were also open.
"The regime's machinery is very visible," Takafira Zhou, leader of the Progressive Teachers' Union in the town, told AFP.
"Today's response to the strike is low as some people who took part last week had their salaries forfeited and they fear for the worst if they are seen to be defiant."
A spate of demonstrations have revealed long-bubbling frustration at Mugabe's regime in a country where 90 percent of the population are not in formal jobs.
Last week security forces used tear gas and water cannon to disperse violent protests outside Harare that erupted over police officers allegedly using road blocks to extort cash from motorists.
Television footage showed police beating protesters with sticks.
Other protests have erupted at the border with South Africa over a ban on imports such as canned vegetables, powdered milk and cooking oil.
On Tuesday evening, Home Affairs Minister Ignatius Chombo held a press conference to warn that anyone who took part in the planned two-day strike would face "the full wrath of the law".
"I urge members of the public to desist from engaging in illegal protests," he said.
Many civil servants have been paid their delayed June salaries since last week.
Paris (AFP) - President Francois Hollande announced on Wednesday that France would end its military mission in the Central African Republic in October.
"Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian will go to the Central African Republic next October to officially declare the end of Operation Sangaris," Hollande said at a reception at the defence ministry.
Operation Sangaris was launched in December 2013 in a bid to still violence between Christian and Muslim militias that left thousands dead and drove half a million people from their homes.
The force, which at its peak had 2,500 troops, has been progressively scaled back, being reduced to 350 personnel in June.
In a bid to suppress the sectarian violence, the UN has sent a peacekeeping force known as MINUSCA, comprising 12,600 foreign police and soldiers, as well as more than 500 foreign civilian staff.
A former journalist at The Ghanaian Chronicle Newspaper says the claim by former President Jerry John Rawlings that he was gifted only $2 million by late Nigeria President Sani Abacha is entirely not true.
William Nyarko says the information he gathered in 1998 during the period of the controversy, indicated Mr Rawlings received the $5 million in full.
One Gwarzo who was sent to deliver the money insists he gave the former Ghanaian leader $5 million.
Mr Nyarko disclosed this on Accra-based Citi FM when he was reacting to an interview former President Rawlings granted to a Nigeria's Guardian Newspaper.
Former President Rawlings came under severe pressure following reports that he had received $5 million from the then Nigerian President in 1998 an allegation he denied fiercely.
Government functionaries of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) then put up strong defence saying he did not receive more than he had put out. An argument the minority disputed.
Speaking to the Guardian Newspaper, Mr Rawlings insisted he was given a suitcase with only $2 million by Gwarzo, one of Mr Abacha's right hand men.
It shocked me a bit that such a fine respectable man could make such a claim. The amount he mentioned shocked me that he could tell such a lie, Rawlings told the newspaper.
Mr Nyarko who was at the forefront of the scandal could not believe the former President would still hold onto his version of the story despite reports to the contrary.
But Mr Rawlings, he said deserves to be given the benefit of the doubt over the matter, arguing, because you and I werent there.
Story by Ghana | Myjoyonline.com | Austin Brakopowers | Email: [email protected]
The 2016 presidential candidate of the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP), Nana Akufo-Addo, has said Ghana, under the leadership of President John Mahama, is being left behind in terms of development by other countries on the African continent.
According to Nana Addo, Ghana, a country blessed with abundance of natural resources and human capital, is struggling to develop because of lack of leadership and clear policy directions from government.
Ghana is being mired in poverty, whilst our neighbours are progressing. We are not a poor country. We have the resources, which when well-managed, can lift the masses out of poverty, he said.
Nana Akufo-Addo made the remark on Tuesday during his campaign tour of the Nkoranza North and Nkoranza South constituencies in the Brong Ahafo Region.
Grains Development Board
Nana Addo assured the people of Nkoranza, whose mainstay is agriculture, that productivity in the sector will be boosted under his government.
They (Cote d'Ivoire) have a marketing system that is helping farmers. That is what I want to do here in Ghana. The same system that has helped cocoa farmers in Ghana is the same system we are going to employ for cashew production, as well as for other produce like maize, he said.
Reject goodies from politicians in election year
Touching on the upcoming elections, Nana Addo urged Ghanaians to reject the governing National Democratic Congress vote buying tactics ahead of the polls.
We are going to improve the livelihoods of Ghanaians so that everyone can have money in their pockets. We will make sure we construct a country where citizens are not dependent on dole-outs during election years. If you believe you have governed this country well, why are you moving around the country distributing cloths for Ghanaians, and commencing election-year projects? We want a country where citizens can buy their own cloths, and where our infrastructure is developed not as election-year gimmicks, but as part of a co-ordinated plan for development, he added.
By: Godwin A. Allotey/citifmonline.com/Ghana
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Assembly member for Abusuakuruwa Electoral area in Kumasi, Maxwell Ofosu Boakye, wants the immediate past Metropolitan Chief Executive officer of the Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly (KMA), Kojo Bonsu, to be investigated for allegedly misappropriating funds during his tenure.
The call comes barely a day after Mr. Bonsu announced his resignation, following weeks of pressure from the Asanteman Traditional Council and other groups.
According to Mr. Boakye, a member of a group who previously called for the KMA boss' removal, there is already a petition before the Economic and Organised Crime Office (EOCO), asking for investigations into the dealings of the former KMA boss.
While welcoming Mr. Bonsu's resignation, he said, as I speak, we have petitioned EOCO about a number of issues but because he was in authority, I think he was able to bulldoze his way through. Till date, EOCO has not been able to come out with its findings.
Allegations against Kojo Bonsu
Citing some instances of financial malfeasance on the part of Mr. Bonsu, Mr. Boakye stated that, the cost of the development of the Rattray Park had been inflated.
We didn't buy the land, it was given to us for free. It was the property of KMA as a body so we didn't have to buy it. But according to him, we spent a whopping sum of GHc17 million it doesn't warrant that amount. For the fence wall alone, the assembly approved Ghc 350,000 for him, but he spent GHc 840,000 instead of the GHc 350,000.
There is this project at Kumasi Academy, the assembly hall. It was at lintel level and Kojo Bonsu raised final payment certificates on that project and effected payments which some of us believe was not the right thing to be done. I believe EOCO has to come out on some of these issues, the Assembly member added.
Revenue from Kejetia Market unaccounted for
Mr. Boakye also noted that, the revenue accrued from tolls collected at the Kejetia market have not been unaccounted for since Mr. Bonsu assumed that responsibility.
The entire assembly requested for a comprehensive report from the Mayor. Till date, he couldn't account for the proceeds from the Kejetia Market and we don't even know the account that he put the monies in and what he has done with the money.
By: Delali Adogla-Bessa/citifmonline.com/Ghana
13.07.2016 LISTEN
Destiny Ugorji
The last is yet to be heard about a certain Abuja-based lady, Charity Aiyedogbon, who is believed to have gone missing for some time now.
Charity, popularly known as Chacha, was declared missing on social media by her Facebook friends. She is said to have been missing since the 10th of May, 2016 and family, friends and Security Agencies are said to be working round the clock to unravel the mystery behind her sudden disappearance.
Different schools of thought have made speculations on the possibilities regarding the whereabouts of the 44-year-old mother of four, who is better known as Deepdeal Chacha Dehammer.
First, a Maryland-based lawyer, Emeka Ugwuonye said he has evidence that the missing Charity was dead, directly accusing her erstwhile husband, David Aiyedogbon of having a hand in her disappearance. He posted this on his Facebook group, The Due Process Advocate.
Reacting to Ugwuonyes allegation, former husband of the missing lady, Mr David Aiyedogbon washed his hands over the disappearance of the woman and wrote his accuser, through his lawyers, demanding an apology, failure which he would seek legal redress.
The letter titled: Defamation of the character of David Aiyedogbon; demand for apology, signed by his lawyer, Obiora Ilo and made available to newsmen, expressly states: It is our instruction to demand an unqualified apology from you to our client through our chambers for the defamatory publications you have made of and concerning our client.
Also, addressing newsmen in Abuja, Mr. Aiyedogbon, a retired civil servant called on the Inspector General of Police, Ibrahim Idris to thoroughly investigate the allegation against him, describing it as cruel, criminal and untrue, stressing that his estranged wife Charity left their matrimonial home on 28th May, 2014, noting that since then, he had neither heard from her, nor had any dealings with her.
He said, since his former wife left his house in 2014, she had petitioned the Independent Corrupt Practices and other Related Offences Commission-ICPC, alleging that he had property in London and across the country, as well as billions of Naira in several accounts and in different banks in the country, urging the anti-graft agency to seize the property and freeze the accounts.
Mr. Aiyedogbon said the ICPC investigated the allegations and has not found anything against him.
Since June 2014, I have not had anything to do with Charity, heard or had any form of communication with her. No member of Charitys family has informed me of Charitys disappearing or death, as alleged by Emeka Ugwuonye. The father, who had not spoken with me since 2014 called me a few days ago to ask after the children and he didnt mention to me that his daughter Charity was missing or dead. So, I do not know where the lawyer is getting his facts.
Explaining the circumstances that led to the disagreement between him and his former wife, Aiyedogbon said his estranged wife Charity left their home in May 2014 following a request for a huge amount of money from him and that his inability to provide the money led to her departure.
While the controversy lasted, a Civil Society Oranisation, Coalition against Crime (CAC) called on Nigerias Inspector General of Police, Ibrahim Idris to arrest the Maryland/Lagos-based lawyer, Mr. Ugwuonye to explain his role in the disappearance of Charity Aiyedogbon.
National Coordinator of the group, Harrison Pepple, made the call while addressing newsmen in Abuja, arguing that Mr. Ugwuonye had some questions to answer.
Hear him: Charity Aiyedogbon is said to have been missing since the 11th of May, 2016 and one Emeka Ugwuonye, a Lagos-based lawyer claims he has evidence that the woman is dead and was murdered. He also posted a photograph of a dead person, some parts of whose body were dismembered. In one of his posts, he wrote, and I quote him: I now have overwhelming evidence that Mr. David Aiyedogbon killed his wife, Chacha. How can Police be looking for a missing person and someone says he has a clue and he has not been invited or arrested for explanations?
In another post, Ugwuonye said, and I quote: this is the headless and dismembered body of Charity Aiyedogbon (posting a corpse on his Facebook handle). DPA has been able to identify this as her body within the limits of resources at our disposal.
Following the intervention by the Civil Society Organisation, the Police eventually arrested Mr. Ugwuonye and later released him on bail.
Meanwhile, several questions remain unanswered. First, what kind of life has the missing woman lived since she left her husbands house? A look at her Facebook profile, Deepdeal Chacha Dehammer suggests something less than decent.
Another issue is the contradiction in the statements credited to those believed to be close to Chacha. She is said to have gone missing on the 10th of June, 2016, but her lawyer, Barrister Nsikak Udo, handling a fresh suit filed at the Federal High Court, Lokoja on 29th April, 2016 against 29 respondents, including her biological children and her former husband claimed she (Chacha) came to his house on the 18th of May, 2016 (eight days after her purported disappearance) and one of his staff accompanied her to Federal High Court, Abuja to sign and deposed to an affidavit in support of the ex-parte motion filed along with the case. How could someone who was declared missing on the 10th of May reappear on the 18th and then disappeared again? It sounds like a scene in a Nollywood movie.
Another source of worry is that Chacha posted a photograph on her Facebook profile, where she said she was embarking on a Road trip on the 11th of May, 2016, a day before her alleged disappearance. The photograph shows that she sat on the passengers seat of her car. That was the last she posted on Facebook, using that particular User ID. The question is: who drove her in the car and where were they going?
In addition, a certain young man, whose name is given as Jo, believed to be Chachas boyfriend and who brought the key to Charitys apartment, opened it for the Police investigation and also gave same key to two young men for CCTV installation, over one week after Charitys disappearance also claimed not to know her where-about. For someone to have the keys to some other persons residence, it means there is a close relationship. What has he to say about Chachas disappearance?
More so, a corpse, said to have been dismembered beyond identification was allegedly seen in Abuja on the 12th of May and Mr. Ugwuonye claims it is Chachas body. The question is: has Chachas extended and nuclear family identified the corpse as that of the missing woman or has any DNA or scientific investigation been carried out to certify the true identity of the corpse? In the 21st century, we cannot be guessing on issues as serious as this. Now, I hear that the body found on 12th May is to be tested for DNA soon. I wonder where Ugwuonye will stand if it is confirmed not to be Chacha's body, or where Udoh will stand if it is confirmed to be Chacha's body. The question here is: why the contradiction, since they are both Chachas lawyers?
Furthermore, the missing Chacha has a case of forgery that is yet to be concluded. A suit instituted in a High Court at the Federal Capital Territory (FCT High Court 8) on the 14th of March, 2016, with suit number CV/1231/16, between Messrs Chibuzor Ogugua and Chigozie Eme (plaintiffs) and Mrs. Charity Aiyedogbon (defendant), made eight prayers to the Court. The last prayer reads: an order of the Honourable Court directing the defendant to pay the plaintiffs the sum of 200,000,000.00 (Two Hundred Million Naira) as damages for the losses suffered on the ground of the unauthorized and fabricated Valuation Report by the defendant.
Chacha has four grown-up children. One of them, Juliet Aiyedogbon just had her wedding put off as a result of the controversy surrounding the whereabouts of their mother. They have also chorused on several platforms that their mother was NOT dead, neither have they identified the corpse displayed by Ugwuonye as that of their mother. The missing woman has siblings and parents who have been going about their normal businesses and have neither said their sister was missing or dead, nor joined in the search for her.
Further investigations show that in May 2014, Chacha allegedly went into hiding and was said to have gone missing as well. She left the house willingly on the 28th of May, 2014. Six days after she left the house, the Police invited a young man, believed to be her boyfriend, Kelvin Tochukwu Emenike for questioning. Emenike also doubles as co-Director in KELICA Nig. Ltd; who then brought her out from where she was hiding, on the 6th day of her disappearance.
After she was brought out of her hiding, she allegedly filed a suit against the Commissioner of Police, Area Commander, Maitama and her ex-husband, David Aiyedogbon, for infringement on her fundamental right, by bringing her out of where she was hiding. The case was before Hon. Justice Adeniyi of the FCT High Court, with suit number CV/1864/14, filed on the 23rd of June, 2014.
There is no doubt that both the law enforcement agencies and private investigators are working round the clock to unravel the mystery behind the disappearance of Mrs. Charity Aiyedogbon, aka Chacha Dehammer. I am optimistic that they shall yield positive results.
If a woman left her husbands residence since May 2014 and chose to live a life full of controversy, as could be seen in her posts on Facebook and with multiple court cases; should her ex-husband not be allowed to enjoy some rest? How can her life and whereabouts be on the mans shoulders? Every club she rocked, she posted a photograph of its bar on her Facebook wall; moving about with a very expensive car, with all the risks?
As per her whereabouts at the moment, it is a puzzle, the law enforcement agencies must solve.
Only time shall tell!
13.07.2016 LISTEN
By Odimegwu Onwumere
"If we were to lose indigenous African religions in Africa, then diviners would disappear, and if diviners disappeared, we would not only lose an important spiritual specialist for many Africans, but also an institution that for centuries has been the repository of African history, wisdom, and knowledge," Mr. Jacob Olupona, professor of indigenous African religions at Harvard Divinity School and professor of African and African-American studies in Harvards Faculty of Arts and Sciences once said to Harvard Gazette in an interview.
Recently, a Niger Delta leader, Chief Government Ekpemupolo, (popularly known as Tompolo), on June 29 2016 called on the leadership of General Muhammadu Buhari-led government to return the spiritual symbol of his Gbaramatu Kingdom that he said was taken away by soldiers who invaded his town of Oporoza, headquarters of Gbaramatu Kingdom, in Warri South-West of Delta State, and took away the symbol of the God he is the Chief Priest.
On the said June 29 2016, Tompolo told Buhari in an advertorial, Your military has not returned the golden sword (symbol of authority), as well as the palace staff picked up at Oporoza town, on Saturday, May 28, 2016, to Gbaramatu Kingdom.
Today is exactly 31 days after the invasion of the traditional headquarters of Gbaramatu Kingdom, Oporoza town, by your military, led by Brig.-Gen. Faruk Yahaya of the 4th Brigade, Benin City, in search of me, with the allegation that I am the one behind the bombing and destruction of crude oil facilities in the Niger Delta region, and the incident happened in my absence...
As I said in my previous publications, the military made away with the Symbol of Authority of the Gbaramatu people from the Egbesu Shrine, which I am the Chief Priest. They also made away with other valuables, worth several millions of naira from the community...
Weeks have gone by and nothing seemed to have been said about the symbol of the God of our people in Gbaramatu Kingdom. The stillness that has characterised the outcry by Tompolo goes a long way to show how demeaning we are to our cultures and traditions for the alien religions of Islam and Christianity. Be it as it may, if such a heinous act was carried away in the church or mosque the way the supposed soldiers desecrated the Egebsu Temple where Tompolo is the Chief Priest, the whole world would have been rattled with noise and nuisance of how a God in Jerusalem or Mecca was disrespected.
Some persons would even be saying if the God that Tompolo was talking about was powerful, the God should fight his battle. But this notion is wrong and balderdash. After all, we have had Muslims and Christians killed by apparent assailants in their places of worship and their Gods never protected them. So, the God that Tompolo was talking about should be accorded with some respect like every other Gods. Taking Tompolos God without a blink is like a case of throwing the child with the bathtub; it is like beating up a child before the mother and asks what the mother will do.
Like Christianity and Islam which the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria gives upper hand against the aboriginal practices due to the toga of mental slavery that still characterises our clime and institutions, Egbesu is not different from other spiritualities of African diaspora that have spread in other parts of the world as a result of slave trade starting in the 15th century. These African spiritualities are revered all over the world, except in Nigeria, due to mental slavery.
In the United States and Europe for instance, Cuban Regla de Ocha, Haitian Vodou, and Brazilian Candomble are among the African spiritualities that the peoples of those areas do not toy with, except in Nigeria. Professor Olupona, said, There is even a community deep in the American Bible Belt in Beaufort County, S.C., called Oyotunji Village that practices a type of African indigenous religion, which is a mixture of Yoruba and Ewe-Fon spiritual practices.
Professor Olupona, added, If we lose traditional African religions, we would also lose or continue to seriously undermine the African practice of rites of passage such as the much cherished age-grade initiations, which have for so long integrated and bought Africans together under a common understanding, or worldview. These initiation rituals are already not as common in Africa as they were only 50 years ago, yet age-grade initiations have always helped young Africans feel connected to their community and their past. They have also fostered a greater feeling of individual self-worth by acknowledging important milestones in ones life, including becoming an adult or an elder.
This is how seriously the outside world takes our aboriginal spiritualities. The Professor, enthused, One of the things these diaspora African religions testify to is the beauty of African religions to engage a devotee on many spiritual levels. A follower of African diaspora religions has many choices in terms of seeking spiritual help or succor. For example, followers can seek spiritual direction and relief from healers, medicine men and women, charms (adornments often worn to incur good luck), amulets (adornments often used to ward off evil), and diviners (spiritual advisers).
When the professor said that there are signs of the revival of African indigenous practices in many parts of Africa, Nigeria and her government are taking the spirituality in Tompolos kingdom away.
But no matter how forces against traditional spiritualities try, the professor would said, Modernity has not put a total stop to its influence. Ritual sacrifices and witchcraft beliefs are still common. Moreover, the religions developed in the Americas impact Africa in that devotees of the African diaspora have significant influence on practices in Africa. Some African diasporans are returning to the continent to reconnect with their ancestral traditions, and they are encouraging and organizing the local African communities to reclaim this heritage.
We can see that the world is returning to Africa, yet, we in Africa are ignorantly destroying and taking away our spiritualities and their symbols to the marines. This article is to join in Tompolos call that the symbol of his native home towns spirituality that he said soldiers took away should be returned if not yet. No one should take the pluralistic nature of African-tradition spiritualities for granted. The professor said that it was as a result of this pluralistic nature of the indigenous spiritualities that has earned their success in the diaspora.
African spirituality has always been able to adapt to change and allow itself to absorb the wisdom and views of other religions, much more than, for example, Christianity and Islam. While Islam and Christianity tend to be overtly resistant to adopting traditional African religious ideas or practices, indigenous African religions have always accommodated other beliefs. For example, an African amulet might have inside of it a written verse from either the Koran or Christian Bible. The idea is that the traditional African practitioner who constructed that amulet believes in the efficacy of other faiths and religions; there is no conflict in his mind between his traditional African spirituality and another faith. They are not mutually exclusive. He sees the other faith as complementing and even adding spiritual potency to his own spiritual practice of constructing effective amulets. Indigenous African religions are pragmatic. Its about getting tangible results.
So, let Tompolos God Be Returned!
Odimegwu Onwumere is a Rivers State based poet, writer and consultant.
Democratic governance in any society cannot be devoid of challenges. The French thinker Francois-Marie dArout (1694-1778) better known as Voltaire asserted that democracy is the idiocy of the masses and that the constitutional monarchy that he witnessed in England must be the ideal forms of government. The Austrian psychologist, Alfred Adler (1870-1937), claimed that final fictive goals regulate the conduct of an individual. For example, the promise of eternal blissfulness in heaven will regulate the behavior of a Christian. As a nation, Ghana since 1992 has chosen the path of multiparty democracy in spite of the challenges.
Press freedom is an essential component of democratic governance. This partly explains why President J.A Kufour and his NPP administration (2001-2008) must be commended for repealing the criminal libel law. The hard works of the investigative journalist Manasseh Azure Awuni in bringing rots, administrative ineptitude and corruption at Ghana youth employment development Agency (GYEDA) and Savannah accelerated development authority (SADA) are of no mean repute. However, my shock knew no bounds when I read an article at peacefmonline.com with a cation: If The Paralysed 'Montie' Amputees Were NPP - Manasseh Azure Awuni Writes. The heading is not only scary but direct affront on the works of a state institution.
Mr Awuni has a democratic right to point out the weakness of any state institution even so he must not place it within the pale of the age-long NPP-NDC political antagonism. Politics of equalization is a major setback to Ghanas developmental fortunes. The former United State Supreme court Judge, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. said: I have no respect for the passion of equality, which seems to me merely idealizing envy-I dont disparage envy, but I dont accept it as legitimately my master. I have no intension to write and endorse the unassertive comments made by the panelist of Montie FM, but stressing the significance of separating wrongdoing from NPP-NDC tension.
Certitude is not the test of certainty. We have been cocksure of many things that were not so (Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr). This somewhat explains why a meticulous investigative journalist like Manasseh Azure Awuni must not join the bandwagon of the normal NPP-NDC friction. Even though there are subjective journalist, I think as Ghana is approaching general elections, it is imperative respectful journalist like Mr. Awuni and other journalist refrain from inflaming tension. When journalist sacrifice their conscience, professionalism and objectivity on the unholy altars of politicians ego-centric convenience then the development of the country could be far from truth.
The media is inadvertently the forth organ of government and any good democratic governance is anchored by a vibrant media. Thus, it is only fair that the journalist, far from trying to sustain or maintain a pose of Olympian detachment, should allow the public identify what his or her own personal convictions are. This is notwithstanding the fact that human values are to some extent inseparable from any qualitative survey and therefore reserve such empathy for journalist Manasseh Azure Awuni. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) claims that our minds contextualize and limit reality, and that we will never be able to transcend these limitations
The Moravian philosopher Edmund Husserl came out with a principle known as epoche which must be useful to professional journalist. Husserl claimed that people take the various aspects of their lives (language, culture, gravity, their bodies, politics, religion, etc.) for granted, and that these aspects are keeping people in captivity. The epoche, however, is the phenomenological reduction where one no longer accepts these aspects to be true. Thus journalist conducting investigation or writing publication must attain a self-consciousness by seeing himself as no longer a part of the things that he has come to accept in the world. Husserl called this process bracketing. Bracketing of personal values, conviction, political and religious affiliations will help the investigator to allow issues to speak for themselves rather than speaking for the issue.
None of the individuals aspiring for the office of president in Ghana is bad as compare to what is going on in other African countries. The problems of Ghana could be attributed to the drawbacks of the 1992 constitution. The rule of the executive is dancing alluringly under the shadow of so-called rule of law. The powers given to the executive especially the president create subliminal dictatorship. If the constitution gives power to the president to appoint Inspector-General of Police, the head of bureau of national investigation, chief justice, we cannot expect those institutions to be totally independent. There has been several calls to detach attorney generals department from the ministry of justice but all to no avail.
There must be a comprehensive national debate on the powers of the president. Journalist on their part must allow issues to speak for themselves instead of speaking for issues. The idea of nationhood must be raised above partisan party interest to move our country forward. We are common people with one nation. I humbly stand for corrections and feedbacks on this article must be address to the following Nana Yaw Osei (Padigo)
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The 2016 presidential candidate of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has mocked attempts by newspapers belonging to the stables of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) to portray him as sick and unable to campaign ahead of this year's elections.
The Monday July 11, 2016 edition of the Enquirer Newspaper reported that the NPP flagbearer had, on Sunday, July 10, suspended his campaign tour of the Brong Ahafo Region due to ill-health, and had been flown back to Accra and was on admission at the hospital.
Additionally, the newspaper, once described as belonging to the rented press by former Attorney General, Martin Amidu, added that a warning has been issued to Akufo-Addo's campaign team by his health handlers to ensure that he does not stay out after 5pm.
On Monday, July 11, whilst campaigning in Jema in the Kintampo South constituency, Nana Akufo-Addo ridiculed the publication, describing it as laughable and a desperate sign of a party that has no message and clutching at straws in order to win an election.
There is a publication in one of the NDC newspapers that I am sick and on admission in a hospital in Accra. Is the Jema lorry park a hospital? I did indicate at the end of Sunday's campaign (at Subinso, in Wenchi) that I had to attend to urgent business in Accra and would return on Monday. Here I am. To the NDC, at all cost I have to be sick. If I'm not sick, it means they have no message to campaign with and that would mean defeat for them in this year's election. They seem to have invested all their political capital in my state of health, he said.
The NPP flagbearer continued, God is the One who looks after us all, and not the wishes of human beings. I am strong. As you see me now, do I look anything close to a sick person? The NDC is claiming that I am a very old man, who is unable to walk. I am fit and full of strength to campaign and, if God so wishes, govern this nation in a proper manner.
Nana Akufo-Addo urged the electorate of Kintampo South to vote for a leader who has love for his country, and who is not into politics to steal the monies of poor Ghanaians and loot the coffers of the state. Vote for a leader who has policies and programmes to bring progress and prosperity to this nation, and who is flanked by able men and women who can deliver good governance to improve the livelihoods of Ghanaians.
The NPP flagbearer on Tuesday, July 12, rounded off his five-day tour of the region in the Nkoranza North and Nkoranza South constituencies.
He is expected to begin another five-day tour of the Ashanti Region from today, Wednesday, July 13.
Fighting in Yemen killed at least 44 people in a 24-hour period to Wednesday, military officials said, as the UN's peace envoy arrived in the capital to meet rebels.
Saudi-backed government forces clashed with the Shia Houthi rebels and fighters loyal to ousted president Ali Abdullah Saleh in battles across western Yemen.
The UN's mediator, Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, landed at Sanaa airport on Wednesday afternoon ahead of meetings with Houthi and Saleh representatives.
The envoy met this week with President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi in the Saudi capital to prepare for a resumption of talks between the two sides in Kuwait on Friday.
Kuwait City has already hosted more than two months of UN-backed negotiations that have failed to make any real headway.
The talks, aimed at ending a war that the United Nations says has killed more than 6,400 people since March 2015, were suspended at the end of June.
Fighting has persisted across Yemen despite a truce that came into force on April 11.
On Wednesday pro-government forces seized a mountain base from Houthis in Nahm, northeast of Sanaa, said military spokesman Abdullah al-Shandaqi.
Eight loyalists and 17 rebels were killed in the battle, he told AFP.
A Saudi-led coalition operating in Yemen since March 2015 supported the assault with air strikes, said military sources.
Four soldiers and four rebels also died during battles in Marib province, east of Sanaa, when pro-government forces repelled a rebel attempt to seize a hill overlooking their base, a government source told AFP.
Further north, coalition air strikes against a rebel convoy killed seven rebels in Jawf province, said the army.
In the oil-rich southern province of Shabwa, four soldiers died during battles that saw the army make "slow progress" against rebels, said Colonel Motleq Jawhar, an infantry commander in the region.
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13.07.2016 LISTEN
Akyea, E. O. (1998) writes that more research needs to be done on the early history of the Ewe (P.15). This is very important for Ewe-speaking people, their family and friends in the diaspora and the younger generation to understand the past and the way of life of the Ewe-speaking people. Akyea, E. O. (1998) argued that the Ewe migrated from the east about 500 years ago. They were originally part of the Oyo Kingdom of the Yoruba people in Nigeria. During the wars in the 1300s, many of the Oyo people fled west to Ketu (Ketou) in the present-day Benin. According to Adediran, B. (1994), before the Oduduwa migrations reached western Yorubaland, the area occupied by the Fon extended as far as the Ogun River.
Indeed, it is widely accepted by the Yoruba, the Aja, and in scholarly circles that the original home of the Aja-Ewe peoples was in the region of modern Ketu and that they were pushed westward to Tado by the expansion of the Yoruba, ostensibly from Ile-Ife. The Aja (Adja), the Fon, and the Ewe, according to Shillington, K. (2005), are often classified together in the historical literature under blanket terms such as the Aja, the Aja-Ewe, or more recently, the Gbe. Although distinct from each other, the Aja, the Fon, and the Ewe share a common set of cultural beliefs and practices, their languages all belong to the Kwa subgroup of the Niger-Congo language family, and they have a collective history of migrations from areas to the east of their present locations.
These migrations originated from Ketu, a walled city in present-day southeastern Benin, probably in the 15th century, according to oral traditions. According to Akyea, E. O. (1998), it is believed that in Ketu, the Ewe separated themselves from the other refugees and began to establish their own identity as a group. Due to Yoruba attacks and conflict between the various peoples of Ketu, a large section of the population moved west again in the late 1400s.
They moved in two large groups. The first group, including both Ewe and non-Ewe, settled at Tado in Togo after 1450. Some of these migrants split away from the main Ewe group at Tado and settled even farther west. The second group of migrants fled Ketu later. They stopped for only a short time in Tado before moving to settle in Notsie, in the south central region of Togo, around 1600. In this second group were the Anlo, Be, and Agu, together with the bulk of all the people that later came to be called the Ewe.
The Ewe adopted aspects of the Yoruba governmental system that they had lived under in Oyo. Over time, many changes occurred, and regional variations developed in the Ewe political system. Akyea, E. O. (1998) writes that they are divided into numerous sub-groups, called dukowo (Chiefdoms). Each chiefdom (duko) is ruled by a paramount, or chief. In conclusion, as indicated by Akyea, E. O. (1998), there is a need for more research on the history of Ewes of southwestern Nigeria. However, there is strong evidence that Ewe-speaking people lived in the old Oyo Empire, of which Badagry was a part. It is practical to note that when people migrate, not all of them leave. It is also practical that people who leave their homeland leave family behind to which they sometimes return. Also, people of a particular tribe may move to other areas not captured by oral tradition or historians because they were not of a significant number.
Based on this, it is my recommendation that any written history that excludes the history of Ewes of southwestern Nigeria, more so from Badagry, is incomplete. Recommendations for more research for scholars of Ewe history:
1. It is accepted by the Yoruba, the Aja, and in scholarly circles that the original home of the Aja-Ewe peoples was in the region of modern Ketu (this was originally in Oyo Empire). Do more research to tease information about the Ewes out of the history of the Yorubas.
2. Badagry was a part of Oyo Empire, as evidenced by maps of old Oyo Empire. Researchers need to identify the contributions of the Ewe-speaking people to the success of that empire.
3. The Ewes adopted aspects of the Yoruba governmental system that they had lived under in Oyo. Over time, many changes occurred, and regional variations developed in the Ewes political system. More research is needed on similarities and differences.
Ref:
Akyea, E. O. (1998). Ewe. New York: Rosen Pub. Co.
Adediran, B. (1994). The frontier states of western Yorubaland: Circa 1600-1889: state formation and political growth in an ethnic frontier zone. Ibadan, Nigeria: IFRA.
Shillington, K. (2005). Encyclopedia of African history. New York: Fitzroy Dearborn.
http://mawueyo.wixsite.com/ewes
13.07.2016 LISTEN
There is no politically correct way of stating that President Mahama and his NDC have failed in delivering on the mandates that were handed to them in 2008 and in 2012. It is one assertion on which Ghanaians are unanimous. Since Mahama and his NDC cohorts took over a middle income Ghana in 2008, it is difficult to point to one area where there have been improvements; every aspect of our nation has regressed.
Thus in keeping with NPP-USAs refusal to engage in bland and general characterizations, we embarked upon a critical evaluation of developments in the past eight years, and we hereby issue this ten-point analysis of why Mahama and the NDC have been an abject failure.
Ten Accounting to the People Tour
This is the simplest of all the ten points. Citizens of a nation have eyes with which to see, ears with which to hear, and other sensory mechanisms with which to feel. A president and an administration that have done a good job of leading and governing a nation would ordinarily leave tell-tale signs everywhere as to their success. When a president has to embark upon a whole tour to show citizens what the citizens themselves should ordinarily see, hear, and feel as they go about their normal daily lives, something is amiss. Especially when one considers that the bulk of the content of the so-called Green Book - which the president is using to show what he claims to have accomplished - is nothing short of lies, fabrications, and artistic impressions, it becomes very clear that president Mahama is trying to manufacture success out of abysmal failure.
Nine Dumsors Persistence
Electricity is the backbone of every society. An abundance of it ensures that life goes on uninterrupted, factories and other businesses are kept in operation, surgical theatres continue to save human lives, and so on. That is what makes it one of the top priority areas for every administration. Yet for seven years now, erratic power supply has been the rule rather than the exception in Ghana under Mahama and the NDC. During this seven year period, there has been not less than twenty bold assurances by either the president or his officials from the energy sector that dumsor, or erratic power supply will be, or has been put behind us. Seven years later, dumsor is still with us, and in front of us. Unforgivably, the problem remains unsolved despite the president creating a whole new ministry dedicated to solve the problem, and as much as $6 billion has been thrown at the problem. If this does not constitute failure, we all need to go back to school.
Eight Unfulfilled Promises
The number of President Mahamas broken promises is outstripped only by the number of new ones he keeps making. Politicians are not new to breaking promises. But there is a sharp difference between promises made in good faith with every intention to fulfil them, and promises made with absolutely no intention of fulfilling them. In the case of president Mahama, it has become obvious that not only does he not have any plans of keeping the million laughable promises that he makes, but also he perfectly knows at the time of making those outlandish promises that he has no intellectual and resource capabilities to fulfil them. And yet he cannot resist the urge to continue making new promises even at a time when Ghanaians laugh at him each time he does so. For instance, after supervising the killing of millions of jobs for the past seven years, president Mahama promisesto create millions of jobs if re-elected for another four years!
Seven Breakdown of Rule of Law
No society can prosper without adherence to, and maintenance of the principles of the rule of law. In certain societies the government tries its best to maintain the rule of law while citizens render such efforts difficult. In the case of Ghana, however, it is the administration with the active participation of the president himself - that is institutionally breaking down the rule of law. The Mahama administration has broken down the rule of law by a wanton disregard for rules such as seeking Parliamentary approval, as required by the constitution, to engage in activities such as making critical appointments, overspending sector budgets, and generally overstepping executive authority. And once the administration is itself complicit in a failure to obey the rules, it also relinquishes its moral authority to rein in those who do same. The result has been a Ghana where impunity has become prevalent from the president all the way down to the radio presenter. The law simply doesnt work, and Ghana cannot continue like this.
Six Crowds Drawn
Some may say crowds at rallies do not translate to votes and they may very well have a point. After all the NPP and Nana Akufo-Addo have been drawing massive crowds for as far back as we can remember and yet the NDC continues to be in government. It is yet noteworthy that the president of an entire country, despite documented fact that it in fact buses paid crowds to his rallies and campaign stops albeit dubbed as Accounting to the people tour still fails to draw the crowds commensurate with his position. And yet the leader of the opposition literally brings, through no fault of his own, entire cities and localities to a halt whenever and wherever he visits. The people have shown in their numbers that they are drawn to hope and honest aspirations, and have seen through propaganda and deception that has characterized just about everything Mahama and the NDC do. Indeed you can fool some of the people some of the time, but you cant fool all the people all the time.
Five Returning to Electoral Commission for Help
As Mahama and the NDC continue to see the writing on the wall, and having made a determined decision to maintain their hold onto power at all cost, the reality has set in that their only salvation lies in the manipulation of the referee charged with conducting and overseeing the election. After all it has worked before as was captured by a recorded quote on an NDC strategic meeting in 2012 that the NPP may win the vote, but we shall win the count. In other words, regardless of how the people vote, it is what the chairman of the Electoral Commission declares that counts and determines who gets to govern. It comes as no surprise therefore, that Mahama circumvented the constitution to appoint a known NDC sympathizer, who allegedly uses Mahamas picture as her mobile phone screen saver, to the position of Electoral Commissioner. Mahama and the NDC are trying unabashedly to win the elections at the Electoral Commission headquarters rather than transparently facing the electorate. That shows an admission of failure.
Four Robbing Peter to Pay Paul
As at the beginning of 2009 when the NDC government assumed office, Ghanas total debt divided among her population was GHC380 each. Today each Ghanaian including those born into the country as you read this article owes GHC4000. For a country blessed with gold, cocoa, timber and other natural resources, and on top of it all, oil and gas revenue of which no other administration has had the luxury of managing, it is inexplicable that in eight years this administration has, in addition to all that revenue, borrowed more money than all administrations from Kwame Nkrumah to John Agyekum Kufuor combined. And yet Ghana is still insolvent to the extent that the nation has to resort to borrowing high interest money to pay relatively low interest debt. This monumental failure has such damning ramifications that its effects will likely hamper Ghanas growth for a long time.
Three Even Bribery Playbook is Not Working
The multi-faceted bribery campaign that Mahama and the NDC pursued in 2012 turned out to be an effective rigging mechanism. Anyone who had an outstretched arm was paid. This included vulnerable stakeholders at polling stations from all other political parties, Chiefs, EC officials at all levels, some members of civil society, security agency heads, and even voters were all beneficiaries of a largesse made available after the late P. V. Obeng said if we have to empty the national coffers to win this election, thats exactly what we have to do. Fortunately, while all these people knew little about then new president John Dramani Mahama, and were willing to give him a chance, many of these same people have now realized that the stipend is not enough to last another four years. They have resolved to not only refuse them this time around, but also stories abound that in some constituencies, NDC functionaries who stopped by to share such largesse have now been run out of town. A couple of them had their vehicles burnt to ashes. The eyes of the electorate has been opened by the incompetence, insensitivity, and open thievery of Mahama and the NDC, and not even bribery can save them in 2016.
Two Defections and Confessions
African economies including that of Ghana are so dependent on government resources and control that in many cases, speaking ill of a ruling government is almost a guaranteed way to take food off ones table. And in an environment where the government has dismantled the rule of law and rendered many institutions completely dependent upon the whims and caprices of the president, it is highly unusual to find that a few members of the ruling NDC who have any conscience left are now boldly confessing that the NDC has failed. Majority Leader Albin Bagbin, Tony Aidoo, former president Jerry John Rawlings, and a host of other NDC members, have all made public statements to the effect that Mahamas NDC has failed to live up to the expectations of the Ghanaian electorate. Some have even predicted doom at the polls for the ruling party. And for those who may say these are top members who already have the resources to continue to provide for their families, consider this: NDC members at the grassroots level are now defecting in droves to the opposition NPP. When members of a ruling party have concluded that their party has failed, who are we to conclude otherwise?
One ITS THE ECONOMY, STUPID
Please allow us to credit the 1992 Clinton campaign slogan. One of the most amazing observations we made at NPP-USA as we embarked upon this analysis is the fact that Ghana is in fact at its worst economically since independence. The average Ghanaian needs about 270% of his or her earnings just to afford the basic things on which to live. Surprisingly, this comes at a time when the nation, as at 2009, was positioned to build upon its middle income status. Aggressive taxation by this administration has unleashed the dual calamity of severely slowing down private sector growth and subjecting monetary resources to the unparalleled corruption associated with government control of cash. As a result, money that would otherwise create private sector jobs is now being embezzled with impunity by public officials.
As government revenues have grown due to tax increases and exports from gold, cocoa, timber, oil and gas, etc. to unseen levels (GHC100 billion over the past eight years), public borrowing has kept pace adding another GHC100 billion over the same period. Thus in eight years, Mahama and the NDC have had at their disposal over GHC200 billion to manage the affairs of the country. Yet nurses, teachers, government contractors, judicial service workers, doctors, and a long list of stakeholders continue to work with intermittent salary payments, and in some cases total non-payments. The administration always respond with the same phrase: we have no money.
If an administration, which has had at its disposal the most resources of any administration since independence, cannot come up with the money to pay workers and government contractors, cannot come up with the money to repair power generation equipment when they come due for service, cannot keep electricity supply stable, cannot repair existing roads, and cannot invest in nation building, then it is very difficult to convince the electorate in an election year that that administration has succeeded, and deserves to be re-elected. Mahama and the NDC administration have failed Ghana, and must be replaced in this years elections.
I decided to ignore the display of absurdity of this boy called Salifu Maase of Muntie FM but it seems the time is up for me to put him into the pit where he belongs. Indeed, his infantile antics and histrionics have gone too far and as such treating him with contempt will be very dangerous because he could plunge the nation into chaos and thereafter run away to enjoy his booty. All well meaning Ghanaians should rise up and tell this half-baked journalist that enough is enough.
The guy is crying for recognition in the Ghanaian media landscape but sadly he is rather becoming notorious instead of doing the right thing to become popular. I have been writing this column for the past seventeen years and surely I have enough recognition and visibility in relevant quarters and yet I do not blow my horns. We need to call his bluff and if he uses any 'patapaa' language (obstreperous bully) and tactics we have to repose in the same manner. If this nonentity thinks he can have his way because he has the support of his paymasters who are in power, somebody must tell him to tarry small because he has bitten more than what he can chew. I, your irrepressible Earth Angel Gabriel will go down the gutter with him and deal with him and with my mission accomplished, I will rise up and fly into the firmament, where angels dwell. In fact, when I am down there in the gutter with him, I will administer appropriate verbal punishment and teach this reckless guy that even though everybody has red saliva in his or her mouth we decide to spit out only the white one just because of peace.
I know some legalistic purists may interpret this proposal or strategy as a threat. If indeed it is, so be it. His masters should tell him to seek propriety, decency, protocol and decorum else we will also turn our guns on them (his paymasters) and when that starts to come I can bet with my last Kufour Cedi that they will regret planting such a crook on air to tarnish the good reputation of people who matter in this country. This obviously mediocre opportunist and undisciplined upstart thinks he is the only person who has been awarded the license to insult and take people to the cleaners and nobody seems to call him to order. The use of the most offensive language by such a nit-wit threatens to question his motives. People from the North are noted for their politeness and discipline but not this particular Salifu. The guy is simply uncultured and crude in his speech and manners. He continues to refer to Nana Akufo-Addo as a wee smoker and nobody does anything to him so he thinks the sky is his limit. That is wishful thinking. There are men in town if he doesn't know.
As for Harry Zakour, I pity him a lot. How can you set up a private radio station with the sole objective of running down the standard flagbearer of the biggest opposition party and treat him like dirt. If the owner of this radio station thinks what he has asked the greenhorn to do is winning souls for John Mahama, he has hit a rock and surely boulders will be released and he will be crushed. If Maase doesn't know, somebody should tell him that what he is doing is making people have sympathy with Nana Addo Dankwa. Is Maase aware that more than five million Ghanaians voted for Nana during the last election? People are asking: What has Nana done to this boy? Has Salifu Maase ever seen the four beautiful daughters of Nana Akuffo Addo and their level of education? Can he compare his father to Nana Addo? Are his parents aware of the tomfoolery their son is playing and the disgrace he is bringing to the whole family?
This boy sat before the console and on air told Ghanaians that Nana Akufo Addo will die in June. June has come and gone and Nana is still alive and kicking. If I were the one who wrote that John Mahama will die in June, by now I would have been in the BNI cells. That is why people are saying Salifu has the backing of the NDC and for that matter the president. In the beginning when this boy started his madness, I thought what he was doing was just a mere irritation of nuisance value but he has crossed the line and as such he must be whipped into line before he brings the country down. Anyway, has Salifu been listening to other presenters on other radio stations? Is he aware he is rather fooling himself into thinking that he is doing something good and that he too matters in the media landscape? As a columnist, if a piece that I write becomes naturally receptive to society, I become happy because there is sweetness in good writings which amuses, as it hurts.
Sometimes I ruthlessly take on erring institutions and individuals because I believe curative medicines are often bitter. Mine is a critical harangue but surely not a verbal showmanship. In fact, there are times when those I chastise write to thank me for correcting them and even court for my friendship. Those who try to take me on, do so based on my un-reprieved, acerbic observation and scrutiny of government policies and the conduct of public officials. If a verbal terrorist like Salifu Maase is not stopped by his paymasters, I will stop him in his tracks. And I am capable of doing so because the pen is mightier than the sword.
THE MADNESS IN THE STOMACH OF ALISTAIR NELSON
Those judges who are trying to stoke the fire, I know where all of them live. I know where the judges live in Accra. I know their quarters. I mean the Supreme Court Judges Alistair Nelson
Listening to this ignoramus making the above mentioned statement, I wondered whether he knew what he was talking about and the implication for that matter. The modus operandi he is planning is similar to what Amedeka and Amartey Quaye used. A day before the abduction and murder of the three High Court Judges and the retired military officer, Amartey Quaye, a Member of the PNDC and his cohorts went around Accra to locate the houses of their victims. On the D-Day, they were issued with a pass since Rawlings had issued a curfew order and people went to bed early. To disguise themselves, they decided to wear Northern smocks for the operation.
Because they had already located the houses of the poor judges and the retired military officer, they picked them one after the other, literally loaded them at the back of a jeep campaniola and drove them to the Bundase forest. Because it was a planned thing, they went along with a gallon of petrol. Their victims were made to sit on blocks and they were shot at their backs mercilessly. After the criminal act, they poured the petrol on them and set their bodies on fire. Very unfortunately for them a heavy rain fell that night and so the bodies could not burn into ashes as they intended in order to hide their act. If today Alistair is telling Ghanaians that he knows where the Supreme Court Judges live in Accra, it is his first step in the operation he intends to undertake. And listen to how the BNI defended the panelists who threatened the judges: The BNI has said their investigation have shown that the two radio panelists who threatened the lives of the judges in the country are actually harmless. The statement from the BNI said the two do not have the capacity of unleashing mayhem on the judges, and that they made the claim in a show of needless bravado. Good Lord, are these BNI operatives well trained like their counterparts in the MOSSAD, FBI, KGB, MI6 etc? I don't believe so and I know you, my cherish readers do not believe so either. After all, they are the same party boys serving their masters. I am looking forward to a new regime that will remake the BNI to suit international standard.
At forty years, Alistair Nelson was barely six years old when the judges were murdered and so he was born too late to experience the mood of the nation when the three High Court Judges and the retired military officer were brutally murdered at the Bundase forest. The memory of that despicable murder is still fresh in our minds and Ghanaians have sworn never to allow that to happen again. The daughter of Justice Cecilia Koranteng Addo, one of the murdered judges is a grown up woman and I wonder what she may be feeling when Alistair made that barbaric statement. This is a girl who was barely three months old when Amartey Quaye and his other murderers whisked her away from the lap of her mother and took away the mother to be killed in a forest.
I don't know what Kwabena Agyapong, the suspended NPP General Secretary is feeling. His father Justice Agyapong was one of the murdered judges and as a result of hardship after the death of his father who was their bread winner, Kwabena had to sell doughnuts to survive. If such a person is reminded of the sordid past the way Alistair did, I believe he will not have a good day. Alistair has scratched wounds and he will pay dearly for it. The problem we have in this country is that the influx of hard drugs into this country has put the whole citizenry in a very dangerous situation. No sane person will say what this man has said knowing very well that even armed robbers could seize the opportunity to kill these Supreme Court judges and put the blame on him.
And did I hear the Deputy Minister of Interior, James Agalga assuring the judges that the government will provide them with adequate security? Habba! Where security means what? Has Mr. Agalga so soon forgotten the statement made by the former National Chairman of the NDC, Dr. Kwabena Adjei on judges? If somebody tells you there are many ways of killing a cat providing security is not the answer. What if Alistair hire the maid or cook of the Supreme Court judges to poison their foods? And what if workers at the Supreme Court are bribed to insert poisonous needles in the seats of the judges at the court? We were in this country when a pick-up car crossed the way of the former Vice President of Ghana Mr. Ekow Nkensen Arkaah killing him in the process. Where is that pick-up and who was the driver of that pick-up?
If a police escort is sitting in the front seat of a Supreme Court Judge and a tipper truck, loaded with sand rams into the car, killing the judge, his driver and the policeman, where is the security? And did I hear that Asamoah Gyan the Ghana Black Stars captain has sued Maase Salifu? The Americans will say You ain't seen anything yet!!!
We acknowledge the unenviable assignment of the National Media Commission (NMC), especially in the run-up to the general election in November or so.
Even the cynic won't deny this fact, given the many frequency modulation radio stations dotted across the country their programmes largely political; some of them are manned by persons with little or no formal training in managing the delicate programmes they set out to run.
It is even more worrying when a radio station is set up to as it were, counter the programmes of another which is perceived to be sympathetic to the other side of the political divide. The owner of one such radio stations was quoted as stating the aforementioned. Under such circumstances, we are inching towards a chaotic ambience the recent polemics on the airwaves offering a perfect case in point.
On Monday the Commission hosted a press conference to press the alarm button about the intemperate language dominating the radio stations. While some radio stations can be spared this charge, it is a fact that many relish it when politicians spew foul language. It is for instance standard practice for hosts to organize clashes among politicians as they sit by and savour the ensuing trading of invectives.
Phone-in segments while they offer listeners the opportunity to partake in programmes, are largely abused as callers indulge in inappropriate language in their communication.
We can bet that when strangers tune into our radio stations in the morning, they would think that the citizens of this country are at one another's throats; the bone of contention being political.
President Mahama recently spoke against the phone-in segments of radio stations, having been driven to that action because of the largely insulting posture of callers in a highly polarized country.
Our age-old Ghanaian values have suffered a major setback in the light of so-called political activism by unruly youth. So-called serial callers insult elders at will a situation which is discouraging highly experienced persons from making their services available to the country. They should be prepared to be insulted whoever seeks to proffer suggestions about how to push the country forward.
Controversies give radio stations the edge in a highly competitive broadcasting, but such contentions should be decent and mindful about the national interest and shenanigans
We recall the Chief of the Defence Staff's observation about the tension in the country a situation exacerbated by the tongues of politicians when they are on the airwaves.
We are relieved that the NMC is set to monitor the radio stations with a view to intervening when such actions become necessary. Our excitement that at last the Commission is going to ensure decorum in media practice is however limited: besides the logistical challenges it is faced with, we are at a loss how it would enforce its decisions without being regarded as working against freedom of expression by those who ignore the responsibilities demanded of them even as they relish this inalienable right. Be it as it may, we wish the NMC Godspeed as it embarks on this challenging journey in a worryingly polarized country.
Berlin (AFP) - Germany said Wednesday it was evacuating its nationals and other foreigners from South Sudan, after intense fighting killed hundreds of people and forced tens of thousands to flee their homes.
"The government's crisis task force has decided to evacuate German, European and international citizens from South Sudan. The evacuation is ongoing and being carried out by air using German airforce planes," said foreign ministry spokeswoman Sawsan Chebli.
Berlin (AFP) - Germany said Wednesday it was evacuating its nationals and other foreigners from South Sudan, after intense fighting killed hundreds of people and forced tens of thousands to flee their homes.
"The government's crisis task force has decided to evacuate German, European and international citizens from South Sudan. The evacuation is ongoing and being carried out by air using German airforce planes," said foreign ministry spokeswoman Sawsan Chebli.
Around 100 German citizens were still in South Sudan, and those with German organisations would be given priority in the evacuation, said Chebli.
Berlin would also help bring other foreigners to safety, the spokeswoman said, adding however that she could not give their nationalities for security reasons.
A ceasefire in South Sudan's capital appeared to be holding for a second straight day Wednesday, but many people remained cautious after four days of heavy fighting. Around 300 people were killed in just a few hours on Friday.
Kennedy Agyapong
13.07.2016 LISTEN
Writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, a 2008 MacArthur Foundation Genius recipient, made the following remarks as part of her TEDx talk (2013), We Should All Be Feminists (see her book of the same title, a title which is also required reading for 16-year-old Swedish girls):
We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller. We say to girls, you can have ambition, but not too much. You should aim to be successful, but not too successful. Otherwise, you would threaten the man.
Because I am female, I am expected to aspire to marriage. I am expected to make my life choices always keeping in mind that marriage is the most important. Now marriage can be a source of joy and love and mutual support but why do we teach girls to aspire to marriage and we dont teach boys the same?
We raise girls to see each other as competitors not for jobs or accomplishments, which I think can be a good thing, but for the attention of men. We teach girls that they cannot be sexual beings in the way that boys are.
The producers and writers of Beyonces Flawless sampled Chimamandas We Should All Be Feminists.
Having brought up Chimamanda and this interesting subject matter on feminism, we will not expatiate upon the social, political and philosophical structure of this presentation except to entreat our readership to locate the text and read it themselves, if it has not already done so.
LATEST NEWS
It has recently come to light that some women groups in Ghana have a wonderful plan in the works, namely to stage a public protest against Kennedy Agyapong, New Patriotic Party (NPP)s Member of Parliament for Assin North and a Ranking Member on the Parliamentary Select Committee on Communications, for his demeaning and controversial sex-for-role exchange allegation he made against Madam Charlotte Osei, Chairperson of the Electoral Commission (EC).
In our opinion, this positive action is long overdue! We still hope this news is not another canard!
Regardless, it bedevils the mind to even imagine how a worm of deceitfulness like Kennedy Agyapong, a political loose cannon, can become a legislator, let alone address himself to the title honorable and qualify as a Ranking Member on the Parliamentary Select Committee on Communications! What are all these negative idiosyncrasies in our political culture about?
Certainly, there is something terribly wrong with Nkrumahs Ghana. As a matter of fact, the country and its beautiful people need to drink jolts of moral catharsis from a soul-searching chalice.
But thanks to the political conscientization of a large segment of the Ghanaian public, particularly women, consciousness about issues of social justice, gender equality and equity, and moral psychology seems to be on the increase. This is a healthy trend for the moral mechanism of gender relations, for, if for anything at all, in theory at least, it demonstrates a great potential to shift the balance of power dynamics in that unequal dichotomy a little bit toward the womens side.
However against a backcloth of popular knowledge of Kens loaded misogynistic dossier kept in the open across the nation, it is only proper that all progressive citizens of goodwill endorse the collective decision of these women groups to protest his scandalous allegations against Madam Osei, even if they are to force him to apologize.
Our view is that a heavy price of moral conviction must always accompany an instantiation of any sincere apology, thus it must not be subjected to coercion.
It must, therefore, flow uninhibitedly from the natural reserves of ones self-conviction and conscionable repertoire of progressive personal ethos.
Alas, stupidity and arrogance and overrated personal worth and moral-intellectual diminution can and do seriously stymie personal investment in moral intelligence and intellectual growth.
The fact is also that while this path to the restitutive normalization of gender relations is more than called for in the Ghanaian body politic, it is also incumbent upon the Ghanaian society and its citizens to ensure that the floodgates of public emotion do not be opened wide such that they lead to the flooding and choking of the rational sense and of our collective sense of judicial moralism.
It also means that we must not rush to judgment by forcing Ken to publicly apologize when he has yet to adduce his supporting evidential bombshell. This contention does not, in and of itself, imply our support for himfar from it. Left to us he should not be in parliament. As a matter of fact his presence there demeans and soils what should otherwise have been an august house.
Madam Charlotte deserves a fair hearing in both the court of public opinion and a competent jurisdiction. This view contends that Ken must unleash the juggernaut of his forensic evidence on any competent jurisdiction that is ready to hear the case Madam Osei brings against him.
Let us also not forget that beyond Kens bombastic allegation which he has yet to adduce any evidence for, Nana Obiri Boahen, another foul-mouthed philistine in the opposition NPP, also says the following of Madam Osei:
I prefer to trust a prostitute who is carrying her trade in the night than the EC of today.
In other words Madam Osei is worse than a night prostitute! Nana Obiri Boahen seems to imply!...
But, it is also quite possible that Nana Obiri Boahen may not have known that Madam Osei is Kennedys own Afia Schwarzenegger, his own motherAll these tabloid publicities for what?
During his infamous public feud with Afia for instance, Kennedy reportedly called her a prostitute and she, in turn, fired back calling his mother a prostituteAfia reportedly also called Kennedy a pedophileanti-netiquette Kennedy reportedly threatened to flood the public domain with her nude pictures for her standing up to hima shameless male-chauvinist bleating he-goat
Kennedy Agyapong, his absolute abuse of public office, decency and diplomacysickeninga questionable behavior that not even the critical methodology of the sociological perspective, the sociology of knowledge and the sociological imagination can sufficiently account for
Then his friendthen his colleague Nana Obiri Boahena Shakespearean fustilarianan unsightly mannequin, a living dead pumpkinmounts his [Kennedys] soiled stage and pretends to give us an echoic reminder of the latters rhetorical bowel movement and comic buffoonery
Then again, is Nana Obiri Boahen also indirectly saying that he will even trust his prostituting mother, sister, niece, daughter-in-law, grandmother, sister-in-law, daughter and wife, and all those females in the opposition NPP who are carrying their trade in the night than Madam Osei?
Are all our politicians, male and female alike, not night prostitutes? So, what is Nana Obiri Boahen saying, if we should ask again and again? What is it about this beautiful and intelligent woman that irks repulsively ugly men such as Kennedy Agyapong and Nana Obiri Boahen?
Could it be inferiority complex?
Could it be that Nana Obiri Boahen is a male prostitute, himself, a man whose internal psychology is infested with moral infections acquired from ingesting the intellectual rot of chlamydia, syphilis and gonorrhea?
Nana Obiri Boahen and his out-of-the-ordinary Couvade Syndromehis eerie sympathetic pregnancy
Could it be that Madam Charlotte Osei is more beautiful than the wives of Kennedy Agyapong and Nana Obiri Boahen?
Could Madam Oseis beauty and intelligence have been why the NPP wrote her secret love letters?
Nana Obiri Boahena wooden, stiffened version of a grimaced bald Idi Amin statue and taxidermy
Kennedy Agyaponga grotesque-caricature version of a smiling, confused and disheveled corpse
These are two dead comic characters who are infatuated with the gracious Black Mona Lisa, Madam Charlotte Osei
Two intellectually and morally dead men whose political portraits strongly take after President Mahamas Dead Goat Syndrome
Thus, for us to appreciate the full story we must also somehow follow the logical arguments Chimamanda advanced in her TED.com talk, The Danger of a Single Story, to know that Ken cannot make his case with only one side of the story without convincing evidence.
A tree hardly can stand tall without the active support of its roots. Ken, it appears, has not learnt this basic fact about life. He somehow thinks he can grow taller than the hair of his Zika-infested head!
He must therefore tell both sides of the story and then allow Madam Osei to defend herself, for intelligent and serious and conscionable characters, namely men and women of character, do not make outrageous allegations, allow them to hang in the air unattended and expect the general public to assume evidence for them.
Such is not how we should our democracy and institutions to grow. We forget that a possibly unjustifiable attack (s) on public figures is a direct attack on our institutions and democracy, even if the latter is sham and nonexistent. The rotten tongues of public figures such as those of Ken are antithetical to the character of liberal democracy.
Here is what Queen Mother Nana Akosua Gyanfiaba (11) has to say:
Weve had discussions and the queen mothers are not happy so we would come together and let the whole nation know that as queen mothers who represent our communities we are not happy because we have women under us, we have our mothers, we have our sisters, we have our daughters that we need to protect them, such comments are unhealthy, it doesnt bring unity
It is rather unfortunate that such a statement could come from no less a person than a honourable MP who stands for a constituency where women both vulnerable and elite, less privileged and sort of people voted for him, because it is a woman who gave birth for him.
Now, let us hear what the Secretary for National Zongo Magajia Association, Hon. Hajia Alima M. Issah, also has to say:
We want to make it clear that to the world that women are not sex objects and therefore no one has the right to insult women for any reason because of their own interestWe therefore call on the Speaker of Parliament, leaders of his political party, the National Patriotic Party (NPP) and women his family to call him to order.
CONCLUSION
Of course, it is arguably the male ego that produces confrontational feminism. But whether male chauvinism is rooted in biology or genetics, environment or culture, or a combination of all three variables, is a very complex question we shall not take up in the dark pages of this two-part text.
Already some scientists are speculating that the male gene is on the verge of extinction, dying out. What is interesting about one indispensable aspect of this complex question is the fact that, we see animals demonstrating an aggressive social instantiation of the male ego, an unconscientious he-goat, in the animal kingdom, too.
Even the name kingdom says it allnot queendom. Queendom is an island where eusocial he-goat politicians such as Kennedy Agyapong, Halidu Haruna, Nana Obiri Boahen liveRapper Queen B Lil Kim is an Amazon-king who rules over this claustrophobic asylum.
Ask Kennedy Agyapong his favorite gospel track and he will almost certainly mention Lil Kims Dont Fuck With Queen Bee!
Ask Halidu Haruna and Nana Obiri Boahen their favorite national and they will almost certainly mention Queen Bitch!
All three unconscientious he-goat politicians are Queen Bitch! Something, of course, must have gone terribly wrong during the developmental psychology of these he-goat politicians that is extremely difficult to place
These three men are the brand new second hand gal that truth-teller Peter Tosh sang about on the track Brand New Second Hand:
Youre only acting like you are somebody
Youre only a show off, your painted face
But underneath that face youre just a disgrace
You think its the dress you wear that make you a lady
Get that out of your mind gal
You must be crazy
Mama used to tell me long ago, not everything you see glitter is gold
Take man fe idiotyoure wicked
Fool ya, you fool ya
We shall return with the concluding installment, Part 2!
REFERENCES
Ghanaweb. I Trust A Prostitute Over ECObiri Boahen. July 7, 2016.
The Enquirer. Queen Mothers To Protest Ken Agyapongs Comment On EC boss. Courtesy of Ghanaweb. July 11, 2016.
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Our sages have said that if you talk too much, you end up greeting a goat. Well, greeting a goat Good morning! may not be the worst mistake in ones life. In fact, it may not be a mistake at all. Actually, I believe what these elderly men and women thinkers and philosophers meant is that Whoever talks too much and too often, ends up leaving their thinking cap [or common sense] behind. When I first read the news story in which the long-shot founding-owner and presidential candidate of the National Democratic Party (NDP) claimed to have footed tuition-fee bills for the tertiary education of the late BBC-World News anchor Mr. Komla Dumor, I couldnt help sighing with contemptuous disbelief.
Even more importantly, I felt that such outrageous claim could not be more offensive and scandalous to the parental integrity and responsibility of the Dumor family, in particular the remarkably successful professorial father of the deceased newscaster. I also knew that it was only a matter of time before somebody far more eloquent and smarter than the claimer from the Dumor family pointedly rejoined this vilest and most vicious of self-aggrandizing mendacities.
For starters, those of us old enough who have studiously followed the political shenanigans of the Rawlingses remember vividly Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlingss very public claim that the Rawlings Clan was not nearly-half as wealthy as it had been widely made to seem by the media; and that it was largely by the generosity of friends of the family that the bloody couple had been able to ship all their four children abroad for tertiary schooling at some of the most expensive academies in the West, even as Chairman Jerry John Rawlings raucously accused the West of vampiric corporate sponging on the natural resources of continental Africa.
The glaring fact of their logics being violently out of whack with the reality seemed to have been completely lost on the bloody pair. In other words, one would have thought that the Gadhafy Green Book pseudo-scholars would have rather shipped their children to some of the Eastern-bloc countries for schooling. But, of course, the preceding matter-of-fact observation is not the focal thrust of this column.
What bears highlighting here is that if, indeed, the Rawlingses were so indigent as to rely on the generosity of wealthy friends to school their four children in some of the most expensive colleges and universities abroad, then how had Mrs. Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings come by the wherewithal to personally and fully foot tuition-fee bills for Mr. Dumor at Ghanas flagship academy, the University of Ghana, for some three or four years? Was this some weird act of robbing Peter to pay Paul, as that tired adage goes?
Well, there is a simple answer here that I am quite certain Nana Konadu may not be too pleased to learn. And it is the very mundane and patently pedestrian fact that having completely run out of fetching material for her endless yarns of mendacities, the old hag has now resorted to liberally, and literally, taking credit for the remarkable achievements of any Ghanaians who came of age during the two protracted decades that the Rawlingses and the Tsikatas effectively hogged our national political culture and landscape. Not that the Dumor family had done anything wrong; but it is still worth pointing out that either by pure accident or design, they had been brought into the orbit of the Anlo-Ewe Trokosi Revolutionary Nationalist Butchers very likely because of their consanguineous affiliation with the equally bloody Tsikatas.
But, of course, we also need to promptly underscore the fact that long before the blood of the martyred three Akan high judges began to flow down the streets of Kutunse into Keta, Sogakope, Anloga and Aflao, there were the highly respected Annie Jiagges, the Baetas, Gbehos and the Apaloos from the same proverbial neck of the woods. This is absolutely no strange juxtaposition to make; after all, havent our ancient Akan sages perspicuously observed that the bile is always found in the passionate embrace of the liver, no matter how rancorous the relationship between this pair might be?
*Visit my blog at: kwameokoampaahoofe.wordpress.com Ghanaffairs
Israel opened a major crossing point between Israel and Gaza on Wednesday to allow the transfer of vehicles carrying goods for the first time in nine years, officials said.
An AFP photographer saw deliveries arriving through the Erez crossing at the entry to the Palestinian territory that has been under an Israeli blockade for a decade.
Erez has been restricted to individuals since 2007, with goods going through Kerem Shalom in southern Gaza.
Residents of the Israeli towns in the area had for months complained about the hundreds of trucks passing through the area daily, which caused heavy traffic and endangered motorists.
In May, then defence minister Moshe Yaalon said Erez would be opened in order to enable a better flow of goods into Gaza and ease congestion at Kerem Shalom.
A spokesman for COGAT, the defence ministry body responsible for implementing government policies in the Palestinian territories, confirmed vehicles had entered Gaza through the Erez crossing.
"This measure has been taken to facilitate the work of Palestinian importers and thus help the economy of the Gaza Strip," the spokesman told AFP.
An association of Palestinian vehicle owners in Gaza said 110 vehicles arrived on their side through Erez.
Located in the northern Gaza Strip, Erez is nearer to major Israeli cities than Kerem Shalom and could make bringing goods from Israeli port cities such as Ashdod easier.
Israel has imposed its blockade on Gaza for a decade, saying it is necessary to prevent the Islamist movement Hamas, which runs the strip, from rebuilding its military forces and positions.
According to the World Bank and the UN, the blockade has killed virtually all exports from Gaza, as well as bringing the economy of the small enclave to the brink.
The Gaza Strip is home to about 1.9 million Palestinians.
*This story was edited by Ahram Online.
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13.07.2016 LISTEN
Whether you are moving to your just completed home or a rented apartment, it is important to personalize it with trendy decorative home accessories. This is because having an aesthetic and well-decorated home will create a pleasant and tranquil haven for you and your family.
This said, there are mistakes that Nigerians make when decorating their homes especially for individuals with little or no interior design experience. Despite this, you can still achieve a pleasing arrangement by avoiding these common interior design flaws cited by Jumia Travel , Africas No 1 hotel booking portal.
Rushing to decorate
Housing is one of the biggest problems residents of Lagos encounter. Hence, there is every possibility that you decorate your home on an impulse. However, if you want to create the perfect ambience, it has to be gradual if you want to accomplish great interior design results. You may realize later that some of the accessories dont fit. For example, your curtains may not properly shield sunlight. Hence, be patient particularly if you are working with a budget.
Painting without testing colours
Oftentimes, painting your home with your favourite colour is not always a good idea. Colours usually appear different on walls. You should test various paint colours before you decide on the one that suits your taste and home. You may also want to consider the colour of your furniture and curtains before painting.
Covering floors with white carpets
White carpets can easily get messed up or dirty. It is the biggest mistakes anyone moving to a new apartment can make. You will have to wash it every day to keep it clean.
Postponing basic renovations until after you move-in
Most Nigerians prefer to complete any renovations after they move in. This is due in part to the home shortage in Lagos and other parts of the country. But if you can, do the basic renovations before packing to your new home.
Cramming your furniture
Resist every temptation to cram your room with furniture because it will be difficult for you to walk around. You dont need to fill up space with too many furniture. Spend money on quality furniture that will make your room classy.
Hanging all your collectibles
You cannot display the collectibles like plaques, pictures, and awards you have amassed over the years. Two or three is enough for your room.
President Mahama meets members of the Upper East Regional House of Chiefs
President John Dramani Mahama has announced that DKM and the Diamond Winners, two microfinance companies accused of swindling millions of Ghana cedis out of several individuals and organisations, will not go without punishment.
Countless clients, including students, security officers, media practitioners, lecturers, members of the clergy and traditional chiefs, suffered a sudden trauma following the inability of the companies to refund their investments after the Bank of Ghana reportedly had suspended the operations of those firms among other micro-financial corporations said to be either engaged in illegal activities or running unlicensed.
The development saw months of street demonstrations repeatedly rekindled throughout the country as hopes of recovery increasingly faded for traumatised clients. Both government and the Bank of Ghana came under sustained pressure from an enraged public who accused the Bank of Ghana of having consciously allowed the companies to dupe the citizenry before it identified them as illegal operators and also slammed government for refusing to go after the alleged fraudsters.
But speaking Tuesday in Bolgatanga, the Upper East regional capital, the President said the two companies would be hunted down and brought to book. President Mahama has since Monday been on a working visit to the region as part of a nationwide trip dubbed: Accounting to the People Tour.
We have warned over and over again that a lot of these companies do not exist. They are not licensed. Many of them are not licensed at all. These are conmen who want to dupe our people. So, the security agencies must be on the alert and be able to stop them as early as possible. I will ask the security services to intensify their efforts to find out wherever they are and bring them to justice, the President said.
Victims seek chiefs' backing
President Mahama's assurance comes after the Upper East Regional House of Chiefs, who had received a petition in the last April from 'swindled clients' seeking a radical action from government through the intervention of the chiefs, had shared the pains of the clients in a meeting of paramount chiefs with the President Tuesday.
Some action has been taken on DKM. But we have another one called Diamond Winners. The number of customers is over two thousand. And they invested twenty-seven million Ghana cedis. They took them to court.
Judgement was given in favour of the clients with warrants issued for them to be arrested. Up to now, zero. We don't know where they are. So, if you can step in so that this problem can be solved, the President of the Upper East Regional House of Chiefs and Paramount Chief of the Sakote Traditional Area, Naba Sigri Bewong, told President Mahama.
Suicide swells as hopes of recovery dim
At least 1,400 people invested Gh11, 829, 371 at DKM in the Upper East Region alone and about 2,000 clients reportedly put in a total amount of 27 million Ghana cedis at Diamond Winners in the same region.
Whilst it has remained difficult to pin down the exact number of individuals bearing the untold misery of the 'missing investments' across the region, some recent suicide cases known to the public have been linked to the sudden fall of the firms once flooded by individuals and groups seeking a 'financial paradise' perhaps too 'generous' to be 'genuine'.
Some of the victims of the reported scam have been telling Starr News marriages are breaking apart, students are dropping out of school and some young people are relocating from the region to faraway areas in search of odd-looking jobs.
It's a serious matter! You sleep by your wife; you want to touch your wife; your wife says DKM. You want your wife to provide you tea that DKM. I'm facing problem in marriage. Anything at all I want my wife to do, she says DKM because I used all my investments, my suffering of fifteen years all in DKM. I can no longer eat three times a day. And I'm telling Mahama that if he [doesn't] do anything about it, he knows that I am coming from Volta Region, and I will go to the Volta Region to campaign against him! Kofi Amatepey, a businessman in Bolgatanga, once groaned.
Students turn 'kayaye' due to locked fortunes
Young people, according to observers, dropping out of school and turning into station porters, locally referred to as kayaye, because either their parents or sponsors have lost their hard-earned fortunes to the gains they only dreamt about with the collapsed companies.
One girl, after finishing JHS, went to Kumasi to do kayaye. She gave the money to her mother. She got aggregate 12. The mother invested the money with a microfinance company. The money was locked there.
When she came, the mother couldn't pay the fees. She had to go back to do kayaye. Many of our children are now in Kumasi because they cannot pay their fees because of the locked monies at the microfinance companies. Many have stopped education because of this issue, Charles Ayambire, one of the leaders of the aggrieved clients, told Starr News.
He added: There are other cases. People have collected their retirement benefits and they have lost those monies after investing them with these companies. Businesses are collapsing. If government comes in, the children, too, who have gone down south will come back home.
-starrfmonline
13.07.2016 LISTEN
The Christian Council of Ghana (CCG) has urged religious leaders to be fair, neutral and objective in their engagement with politicians and utterances on political matters.
According to the General Secretary Rev. Dr Kwabena Opuni- Frimpong, Christians leaders must be firm and resolute in commending or rebuking politicians but biases should not be expressed in doing so.
He maintains the church has a collective responsibility to guide the Christian population in best practices and good behaviour to deepen peaceful coexistence.
Speaking at an election forum as part of the CCG election 2016 education campaign at Obuasi in Ashanti, Rev. Opuni-Frimpong expressed worry about what he described as the lack of respect in the political landscape.
He observed that young politicians are quick to rain abusive, repugnant and unsubstantiated accusation on elderly statesmen and respectable Ghanaians that express divergent views and opinions.
The CCG General Secretary underscored the importance of the media in the development of democracy and the sustenance of national peace and stability.
Further, he urged them to ensure politicians do not take advantage of their platforms to instigate listeners to violence.
On the issue of peace, Rev. Opuni-Frimpong noted it must be premised on justice and fairness, arguing it will be difficult to forge peace when parties feel they have been treated unfairly and cannot seek swift justice.
He also called on the youth to understand the fact that they hold the future of the country, and must be the first to stay away from and condemn violence, whilst encouraging issue based campaign.
Story by Ghana | Myjoyonline.com | Abubakar Ibrahim
Berlin (AFP) - Germany plans to formally apologise to Windhoek for the genocide of indigenous Namibians a century ago, a foreign ministry spokeswoman said Wednesday, but added the move would not carry any obligation of reparations.
"We are working towards a joint government declaration with the following elements: common discussions on the historical events and a German apology for the action in Namibia," the spokeswoman, Sawsan Chebli, told reporters.
The joint declaration with the Namibian government can serve as a basis for a parliamentary resolution, she said, adding however that the step would not translate into legal repercussions for Germany.
"On the question of whether there could be reparations or legal consequences, there are none. The apology does not come with any consequences on how we deal with the history and portray it," she said.
Berlin ruled what was then called South-West Africa as a colony from 1884 to 1915.
Incensed by German settlers stealing their land and cattle and taking their women, the Herero people launched a revolt in January 1904 with warriors butchering 123 German civilians over several days. The Nama tribe joined the uprising in 1905.
The colonial rulers responded ruthlessly and General Lothar von Trotha signed a notorious extermination order against the Hereros.
Rounded up in prison camps, captured Namas and Hereros died from malnutrition and severe weather. Dozens were beheaded after their deaths and their skulls sent to German researchers in Berlin for "scientific" experiments.
Up to 80,000 Hereros lived in Namibia when the uprising began. Afterwards, only 15,000 were left.
Germany has since 2011 formally handed back dozens of the skulls.
But Berlin has repeatedly refused to pay reparations, saying that its hundreds of millions of euros (dollars) in development aid since Namibia's independence from South Africa in 1990 was "for the benefit of all Namibians".
The speaker of the German parliament last July said the slaughter of indigenous Namibians a century ago constituted a "genocide" that stemmed from a "race war".
Norbert Lammert, writing in a guest column for news weekly Die Zeit, said the Herero and Nama peoples had been systematically targeted for massacre by German imperial troops.
Since then, the government has also used the term, with Chebli on Wednesday also saying that "we have spoken of genocide for a long time."
German lawmakers in June passed a resolution recognising the World War I massacre of Armenians by Ottoman forces as genocide, drawing a furious rebuke from Turkey which called it a "historic mistake".
The sudden but justifiably predicted resignation of Kojo Bonsu from the high office of the Mayor of Kumasi for disrespecting the spiritual heads and custodians of the cultural heritage and traditions of the Ashanti Kingdom, (Nananom) and the particularly treasonable act of disobedience to the high court of the occupant of the Golden Stool, Otumfour Osei Tutu II, should be a precedential stark warning to all maverick political charlatans who, soon after appointment to high political positions in our society, easily forget that even under our adopted western democratic system of political governance, power still remains with the people at the grass roots, who in most instances are represented traditionally (or ceremonially) by their traditional leaders. Such political mavericks soon strip themselves of their hitherto virtues of humility, modesty and respect; replacing them with conspicuous display of power, opulence, arrogance, disrespect and corruption. They start dancing to the tune Yentie Obiaa and respond with Ede Bii Keke when caution is thrown to them.
The position taken by the Nananom in the Ashanti region reinforces the proverbial Akan saying which translates literary to before the moustache, there was eyebrows (Abodwese betoo anintonwin). It was not for any better reason that the British adopted Indirect Rule through Kings, Chiefs and Traditional Heads in most of the colonies they controlled in the 19th and 20th centuries, including Ghana and Nigeria.
The legitimacy of Traditional Authority within the framework of the superstructure for the effective governance of these colonies were highly appreciated and respected by the colonial masters before the introduction and adoption of parliamentary democracy. At the core of that traditional authority was, and is still, the respect and reverence given not only to our Kings and chiefs, but also to our elders and seniors in society.
Various political regimes, past and present, military and civilian, have in many ways tried to dilute the political relevance and significance of our Kings and Chiefs in the body politics of our country without much success. Our fourth republican constitution for example has sought to erode the role of traditional rulers in active politics in Ghana by admonishing Chiefs not to dabble in politics, but pragmatism, reality and evidence on the ground point to the inefficacy of that constitutional provision. Indeed, party politics cannot erode the high esteem Ghanaians hold our chiefs, and any political appointee who deliberately courts their wrath and displeasure, through acts of indiscipline, disrespect and disobedience, does so at their own peril in the long run.
By their principled stance against Kojo Bonsu, one of their own, the Nananom of Asanteman have amply demonstrated that they can live up to the high cultural, ethical and moral standards demanded by our rich and enduring traditional values without fear or favour. It is a good demonstration of grassroots democracy and the capacity of our traditional rulers to exercise some form of traditional oversight responsibility on the functions of the democratic arms of government the Executive, the Legislature and the Judiciary. This should be welcomed as a positive development in our political dispensation
Kojo Bonsus resignation, regrettable as it may seem, is a rather self-inflicted fatal wound, which I hope other political appointees will learn from in serving the people they have been appointed to serve with all humility, decency and modesty.
Eric Agyemang
London
President John Dramani Mahama has celebrated as a remarkable achievement of his government the elimination of water storage containers, popularly known as Kufuor gallons, in the national capital.
The mostly yellow water container got the "Kufuor" tag from Ghanaians because its purpose became very synonymous with struggles for drinking water in some parts of the city at the time of former President John Agyekum Kufuor in office.
Many found the spectacle quite distressing, especially in densely populated areas with endless queues of such containers in front an overstretched borehole at one corner, or scores of disappointed individuals roaming with the empty containers in search of water at another.
President Mahama claims his government has toppled that distress period by expanding water coverage systems not only in the national capital but throughout the country.
Our government is a government in a hurry. Over the last three and a half years, we have worked assiduously to provide the people of Ghana with the things that they deserve in order to make life better, to create a decent and dignified existence. In Accra for instance, the whole of the northern part of Accra never used to get water. It was typical to see people holding yellow jerrycans which were eventually nicknamed Kufuor gallons.
Today, you go to Accra, you cant find those yellow jerrycans. At least for fetching water, they are not being used. Because with the expansion of the Kpong Water Project we did, 40 million gallons more of water is being pumped to Accra. And so Adenta and East Legon and all those places that were water-starved today have access to water, the President said.
President Mahama said this Tuesday when he addressed a durbar of chiefs and people of the Builsa Traditional Area as part of his Accounting to the People tour of the Upper East Region.
Ghana has highest water coverage in West Africa
Government, according to the President, has invested a lot of money in water expansion projects to extend water to the doorsteps of the citizenry.
Ghana, he said, now has the highest percentage of access to potable water in West Africa as a result of the investments made so far in both rural and water expansion projects.
Today, as I speak, access to clean drinking water in Ghana, both urban and rural, has risen from 58% in 2008 to 76%. And so 76 percent of our people have access to clean, drinking water And this is the highest in West Africa, the President disclosed.
He added: And I have said by the year 2020 we should achieve universal access to clean, drinking water. So, we are going to continue to do water expansion projects. Weve done hundreds of small town water projects. Weve done hundreds of boreholes. Weve expanded urban water.
Saudi government approves funding for hospital project
The President also touted the strides made so far in the health sector, saying government had built polyclinics, Community-based Health Planning Services (CHPS) compounds, health centres and district hospitals.
He further disclosed that the Saudi Arabia Government had approved funding for the second phase of the ongoing expansion project at the Upper East Regional Hospital in Bolgatanga.
The Bolga hospital, weve almost finished the first phase. The Saudi government has approved funding for the second phase which well build into a proper regional hospital so that if you have any referrals, you dont have to go all the way to Tamale or Komfo Anokye. If you go to the Bolga hospital, there will be all the equipment that you will find in Komfo Anokye or Tamale Teaching Hospital, he said.
Earlier, the President had announced at Bawku his intention to raise funds for the construction of a new government hospital in the area.
Bawku currently does not have a modern government hospital. And so we intend to build a modern government hospital that befits the status of Bawku in my second term in office, he promised.
Builsa may get a UDS campus
The Builsaland has an overwhelming array of accomplished intellectuals around the globe, with a vast reservoir of raw young talents as boundless as its green landscape. But, startling as observers have found it, that endowed zone of the Upper East Region is the only traditional area without any tertiary institution today.
The Paramount Chief of the area, Nab Azagsuk Azantilow II, surrounded by his elders and people, spoke pointblank about that tertiary gap at the durbar with the President.
Colonial governments recognised us. Today as His Excellency is here, we are asking for tertiary institution. It is the only traditional area in the region that has no tertiary institution, yet it was the first in the pre-independence period to have a government middle boarding school, the monarch said.
In response, President Mahama said: Ive taken note of the request youve made with respect of a tertiary institution here. Im going to take it up especially with the University for Development Studies and see if we can put one of the campuses of the University for Development Studies in your area.
The President left the durbar ground, applauded for his promise by a crowd too excited to wait for the dawn of a tertiary institution in their land.
Accra, July 13, GNA - A group of Ghanaian citizens from the Upper West Region (UWR) living in New York, US, have donated assorted items estimated at GH a6,000.00 to children at the Gbankor community in the Region.
The items comprise educational materials and clothes.
The donation was to mark the fifth anniversary celebrations of Naa Jemaa Matarah II, Chief of Gbankor in the Kaleo traditional area of the Region since his ascension to the Gbankor Divisional Skin.
Speaking to the Ghana News Agency, Dr Anthony Naaeke, Secretary to the group in New York who presented the items, said the donation was the first of its kind since the formation of the body.
He expressed the hope that the items would benefit the children of the community.
He said whilst outside the country, the members had read about the efforts of the Chief in enhancing education and social development of the village by seeking partnerships with individuals and groups in Ghana and abroad.
Dr Naaeke said: 'We are very proud of your new role and responsibilities and we immediately thought that on the occasion of your five years on the Gbankor skin, our very first contribution should be directed through you to the children of your community in the hope of supporting your efforts.'
'We hope to continue to find ways to help local communities in Ghana, especially in the Region,' he stated.
Naa Matarah expressed gratitude to the group and pledged his resolve to continue to partner with like-minded groups and individuals in order to inspire and encourage the youth of his community to greater heights.
The group is made up of people from the Upper West and Northern regions, living in the New York area who have come together to support each other, foster closer relationship among members.
GNA
The 2016 presidential candidate of the New Patriotic Party, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, says victory for him in this years elections will mean an opportunity for his government to truly implement the Free Senior High School policy a policy he espoused in the run-up to the 2008 and 2012 elections.
Despite the Mahama government initially describing the policy as not feasible, and later turning around to try to implement it, Nana Akufo-Addo stated that the inability of the Mahama government to implement the policy for the benefit of suffering Ghanaian parents is because they have no belief or understanding of the policy.
At the commencement of his 5-day tour of the Ashanti region in the Ahafo Ano South East constituency, on Wednesday, Nana Akufo-Addo assured parents who still cannot afford to pay the fees of their wards that his government will rectify that anomaly.
I indicated in 2012 that if I won the election I would solve the problem of poor Ghanaian parents who cannot afford to pay the fees of their wards by introducing the Free SHS policy. I was bastardised by President Mahama, who said it was a misplaced priority, a lie, and could only be achieved in 20 years, Akufo-Addo said.
He continued, When President Mahama won, he changed his mind and said it (Free SHS) was possible and could be done. Even after saying it could be done, he has failed woefully to implement it. He said he was going to build 200 Community Day Schools, and even that he has built only five, after four years.
Speaking at Adugyama, his first port of call in the Ahafo Ano South East constituency, Nana Akufo-Addo assured that when he wins the elections of 2016, I am coming to truly implement the Free SHS policy, adding that I will not give a promise to Ghanaians for which I know I cannot keep. Whatever I have said I will do, I will surely do it so Ghanaians can move on.
Lamenting the difficulties the Ghanaian people are facing on a daily basis, he indicated that it is time the Ghanaian people are taken away from the hardships and suffering imposed on them by the Mahama government.
We are coming to change Ghana, and bring relief, progress and prosperity to all Ghanaians, in every part of the country, without discrimination. The stealing of public resources by those in government is just too much, and the reason why there is little to show for all the resources of our country. This will stop, because we are coming into government to root out corruption and end the stealing of the countrys resources, he said.
Oil palm
With the mainstay of the people of the entire Ahafo Ano constituencies being agriculture, particularly the cultivation of oil palm, the NPP flagbearer indicated that the times of over-reliance on cocoa are over, assuring that his government is going to pay particular attention to the diversification of the countrys agriculture.
Improving agricultural productivity, he noted, will be spurred on by the production and marketing of additional cash crops such as cotton, coffee, oil palm, cashew and maize, which will boost export earnings for the country.
Citing the example of Malaysia, which earned $16.1 billion in 2015 from the exports of palm oil and palm-based products, Nana Akufo-Addo indicated that his government, God-willing from January 2017, will help establish an oil palm processing factory in the district, to help create jobs for the teeming masses of unemployed youth in the constituency, as well as earn foreign exchange revenues for the country.
He further added that it is only though rapid industrial expansion and an increase of agricultural productivity that Ghana can generate the hundreds of thousands of jobs that the young people of Ghana need.
Patronise exhibition exercise
Nana Akufo-Addo, in concluding, urged all registered voters to take the upcoming voter register exhibition exercise seriously, and make sure their names can be found in the voters register.
This year, no one should ignore the voter register exhibition exercise. This is because this is the year when we will use our thumbs to effect the change we all desire. Go to the various exhibition centres and make sure your name can be found in the register. We dont want the situation whereby your name will be missing from the roll on Election Day, he added.
The NPP flagbearer, who visited also Sabronum, the main town in the constituency, appealed to voters to repose their confidence in the NPP, and in the partys parliamentary candidate for the constituency, Hon. Francis Manu Adabor, by voting massively and increasing the partys margin of victory.
Upper West Regional Minister, Alhaji Amidu Sulemana, has said the fight against HIV/AIDS must be of great concern to all and should not be left in the hands of the few.
HIV/AIDS affects every Ghanaian either directly or indirectly and all must play their roles effectively in responding to the illness, he said.
Alhaji Sulemana was addressing members of the Upper West Regional Social Accountability Monitoring Committee (SAMC) at their inaugural ceremony in Wa to help improve service delivery, social mobilisation and advocacy for social accountability.
He said the socio-economic development of Ghana depended on her human resource; especially the working population which was the most at risk of contracting the disease.
This, he said, meant that a collective effort was needed to grow the economy as a country and the effort to improve on the socio-economic well-being of the people would be in jeopardy if Ghanaians did not leverage their unique individual strengths as a people for a collective response to the threat posed by HIV/AIDS.
Alhaji Sulemana said the 2014 report of the Health Sentinel Survey showed an unstable regional HIV/AIDS prevalence over the past decade.
For instance, HIV/AIDS prevalence rate in the Region has been on the decline since 2007 from 3.3 per cent in 2007 to about 0.8 per cent in 2013 and it is now on the rise to about 1.3 per cent in 2014 and 2015.
This, he said, is an indication that the Region was still confronted with serious challenges despite government's commitment in ensuring that the HIV/AIDS menace is drastically reduced or eliminated.
Alhaji Sulemana urged the committee members to bring their individual expertise to play while urging the Ghana AIDS Commission and other agencies such as the West Africa AIDS Foundation to ensure that the programme was implemented and sustained.
Dr Angela El-Adas, Director General of the Ghana AIDS Commission, in a speech read on her behalf, said the National HIV/AIDS Strategic Plan for 2016-2020 under the New Fund Model was to provide preventive services to key populations and also strengthen community systems.
This, he said, would offer enormous opportunities for scaling up community and home based care and community tuberculosis care for HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis programmes respectively.
Dr El-Adas said the UNAIDS Global target is to end AIDS by 2030 and some African countries including Ghana have adopted it hence the Global 90-90-90 Fast Track targets by UNAIDS.
He said the target was aligned to the Goal 3 of the Sustainable Development Goals, which states that we need to ensure healthy lives and promote wellbeing for all at all ages.
It is envisaged, he said, that by 2020, he said, 90 per cent of all people living with HIV/AIDS should know their HIV/AIDS status, 90 per cent of all people diagnosed with HIV infection should receive sustained antiretroviral therapy and 90 per cent of all people receiving antiretroviral therapy should have achieved viral suppression.
Dr El-Adas said Ghana has launched its first 90 per cent campaign this year and would test 6 million people by 2017.
13.07.2016 LISTEN
From Sebastian Freiku & Issah Alhassan, Kumasi
DRAMA unfolded at the Conference Hall of Miklin Hotel in Kumasi yesterday, after an elder brother of the former Mayor of Kumasi, Mr Kojo Bonsu, caused a stir during the official launch of the Kumasi version of the ruling partys Green Book. The elder sibling of the former MCE prevented him (Bonsu) from formally announcing his resignation, amidst pressure from the Kumasi Traditional Council (KTC), calling for his dismissal.
The Mayors brother invaded the venue of the programme, much to the surprise of the attendants and immediately took the resignation letter away from his younger brother (Kojo Bonsu).
According to information available to the paper, he (the brother) claimed to be privy to an information that Mr KojoBonsu, after delivering his welcome address at the program, would also go ahead to declare his intention to resign from his position, in order to bring to an end weeks of controversies concerning his fate at the KMA.
His action was preceded by a protest from some women group of the ruling party declaring their unflinching support for Mr Bonsu and swearing to block any attempt to remove him from power, but Mr Bonsu later tendered in his resignation.
The former Kumasi Metropolitan Chief Executive Officer came under intense pressure after the Kumasi Traditional Council, made up of all prominent Chiefs in the Asante Kingdom, passed a vote of no confidence in him, calling on the President, His Excellency John Dramani Mahama, to sack him.
The decision followed what the traditional rulers described as insolence on the part of the Kumasi Mayor after he was reported to have questioned the legitimacy of a representative of the Asantehene on the committee overseeing the Kejetia Central Market Redevelopment Project, Nana Agyenim Boateng, who also doubles as the Amoamanhene.
Earlier on Monday, the Kumasi Traditional Council (KTC) demonstrated that it was not only barking when it called for the removal of Mr Kojo Bonsu as mayor of Kumasi on July 4, 2016.
The Council had actually bitten deep into the flesh of the embattled mayor and given the President seven days to replace him.
At a press conference Monday evening, Baffour Kwame Achamfuor Akowua, Akwamuhene of Kumasi and acting President of the KTC emphasized that the position of the KTC regarding Kojo Bonsu's removal was irreversible and still stand by it.
The Asafohene and member of the Gyase division of the Council denied that the KTC had accepted an apology of the KMA boss.
Baffour Achamfuor Akowuah announced that the Presidency has seven days to move Kojo Bonsu out of office or Nananom would advise themselves and that all 69 paramount chiefs constituting Asanteman Council would be duly informed about Kojo Bonsu's unacceptable conduct to take the next line of action.
He emphasized that the position of Nananom would go a long way to demonstrate who owns Kumasi and Asanteman. He (Kojo Bonsu) is not bigger than Kumasi and Asanteman. All we are saying is that we are done with him, the Akwamuhene indicated.
Otumfuo's Nsumankwahene, Baffour Asare Kogyawoasu Ababio said the slaughtering of a sheep last June 30, 2016, was a seal of Kojo Bonsu's rejection by Nananom, who also raised concerns about Kumasi being engulfed in filth under his tenure of office.
According to the high priest, the President now has the option to choose between Kojo Bonsu and Nananom. Nana Osei Agyeman Prempeh, a royal of the Golden Stool, stressed that enough is enough. Kojo Bonsu is not needed in Kumasi. Period! he said.
Meanwhile, the Assemblyman for Ridge/Nhyiaeso electoral area, Abraham Boadi, alias Opooman has called for a probe of KojoBonsu's administration. He said it is time Kojo Bonsu accounts for his stewardship.
He told listeners of OTEC FM in Kumasi that whether in office or not, Kojo Bonsu the Assembly would have to probe the activities of Kojo Bonus who is said to have acted arbitrarily over the last three years without an effective Assembly.
The Assemblyman said the Assembly had not approved most of the decisions of Kojo Bonsu thus abusing the constitutional rights and provisions having acted without the recommendation of any sub-committee as required by law.
Hon. Boadi pointed to the expenditure of $4.4 million, about GHc17,200,000 (172 billion old cedis) by the Mayor as against the GHc4,100,000 (41 billion old cedis) approved by the Assembly for the Rattray park, as one project which should be probed by the Assembly.
PRESSURE TO RESIGN
According to information available to The Chronicle, the Flagstaff House, the Seat of Government put pressure on Mr Kojo Bonsu to voluntarily relinquish his position instead of being sacked.
Reports indicate that the Presidency would rather want the beleaguered Mayor to tender in his resignation and possibly be reassigned rather being forced out.
NAMES OF POSSIBLE REPLACEMENT POP UP
Meanwhile, The Chronicle has picked signals of possible replacement for the Kumasi Mayor.
A reliable source told the paper that familiar names like the former Ashanti Regional Minister and failed parliamentary hopeful, Mr. Peter Anarfi Mensah and the Ashanti Regional Secretary of the party, Mr. Raymond Tandoh, have already popped up as possible considerations.
The speculations have been buoyed by the fact that the two personalities had previously lobbied for the position when it became vacant, following the dismissal of the then MCE, Mr. Samuel Sarpong.
It is, however, not clear how the President can nominate the Regional Secretary at such crucial period when the party is organizing itself for an election which is just three months away.
Though Mr. Anarfi Mensah is currently serving as a Minister at the Presidency in charge of educational matters, he would gladly accept the responsibility to be the MCE for Kumasi, considering the fact that his current position does not demand much.
The source, however, pointed out that any name that comes up for consideration is subject to the approval of the Manhyia Palace, adding when it comes to positions like the MCE for Kumasi, Nananom would have to be consulted first.
He did not also rule out the possibility of the President asking the Ashanti Regional Minister to have an oversight responsibility at the KMA, until after the elections.
Bahrain says it arrested two men and is searching a third in connection to a June highway bombing that killed a woman and wounded three of her children, an attack in which it implicated Iran, which on Wednesday denied any involvement.
An Interior Ministry statement late Tuesday says the two detained men 35-year-old Hassan Jassim Hassan al-Haiki and 26-year-old Hussain Ibrahim Ali Hussain Marzooq received military training from Iran. It said al-Haiki was taught "in making and using weapons and explosives from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard," the country's paramilitary force.
It said the third suspect, 27-year-old Hussain Ahmed Abdullah Ahmed Hussain, also received military training from Iran and had fled to the Islamic Republic.
The statement didn't elaborate, though Sunni-ruled Bahrain often accuses Iran of fomenting unrest on the Shia-majority island, which is home to the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet.
Bahraini officials did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday. In Iran, Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qassemi dismissed the accusations of Iranian involvement as part of a "false, baseless and worn-out method."
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The Ghana Consulting Engineers Association (GCEA) has expressed its displeasure at the increasing rate of sole-sourcing, appealing to government to make procurement processes competitive and fair.
According to the association, the practice of sole-sourcing has reduced competition among local consultants while it denies local companies an opportunity to secure projects which could be executed by local firms.
Speaking to Citi Business News after his inauguration, the President of the Ghana Consulting Engineers Association, Ing. Albert Ogyiri maintained that sole-sourcing does not only inhibit competition but also denies local companies the ability to expand their operations.
When you do sole-sourcing it is only to be done as an exception depending on the circumstances, and the circumstances must justify the need for the sole-sourcing, he said.
He stated that sole-sourcing of projects can only arise during emergencies or in a specialist area that require a particular service.
That is our position. Sole-sourcing can only be done when we cannot go through the entire procedure during emergencies or when we require a specialist service, he advised.
Ing. Ogyiri stated that the practice has reduced competition and fairness in the procurement system, resulting in sub-standard delivery.
Ing. Ogyiri called on government to appreciate the pivotal role played by local consulting engineers in national development to fully utilize their competences and capabilities.
He lamented the over reliance on foreign consulting engineers, which he said does not only result in huge capital expenditure but also creates jobs for other economies at the expense of Ghanaians.
By: Lawrence Segbefia/citibusinessnews.com/Ghana
The annual congress of the International Federation of Agricultural Journalists (IFAJ) has opened in the medieval German town of Bonn.
Joy News Joseph Opoku Gakpo is one of two Ghanaian journalists participating in the conference of about 200 agricultural journalists/communicators from across the world.
The 60th Congress of the Federation which is running between July 13 - July 17 is discussing how journalists can work with stakeholders across the world to ensure sustainable agriculture.
Scientists, government officials, civil society, researchers, United Nations experts and journalists will be brainstorming on how the worlds major agricultural resources including land and water bodies can be preserved even in the light of intensified efforts to feed a growing world population.
As part of the Congress is an award ceremony which will see Fox FM reporter, Richmond Frimpong, who is also president of the Ghana Agric and Rural Development Journalists Association pick up one of the ten IFAJ-ALLTECH 2016 Young Leaders in Agriculture Journalism Awards. The award recognizes the leadership potential of young members from countries belonging to IFAJ.
The Congress will also elect new executives and plan a range of activities to ensure the professional development of agric journalists across the world over the next one year.
As journalists, we are all linked by a common curiosity - a thirst for knowledge and a desire to become better at what we do. We want to learn more about each other. Yes, it is an exciting time to be involved in this profession and to walk our journey together with fantastic colleagues from all parts of the world, President of IFAJ, Markus Regiger noted.
Speaking on theme for the Congress; Agriculture made in Germany - social, efficient and ecological, Mr Regiger said, We want to show how agriculture contributes to the new Sustainable Development Goals developed by the United Nations. The fight against hunger and poverty, the protection of nature and biodiversity depends on agriculture, Chairwoman of the German Guild of Agricultural Journalists Dr. Katharina Seuser explained.
The Joy News reporter is one of 10 journalists participating in the congress and the Ag Reporters programme at the invitation of the German Guild of Agricultural Journalists with support from the German Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture. Daily Graphics Zainabu Issah is the other participating Ghanaian journalists.
The Ag Reporters project, a curtain raiser for the 2016 IFAJ congress, brought together young international agricultural journalists/communicators and masters students of the Deutsche Welle Academy as well as the Bonn-Rhein-Sieg University of Applied Sciences for training at the premises of Germanys international broadcaster DW-TV.
They also held meetings with the Advisor at the United Nations Convention to Combat Diversification, Sandrine Jaufret, and Spokesperson of the UNs Climate Change Secretariat Nick Nutall, for insight into ongoing efforts to reduce the negative effects of global warming on agriculture.
We have seen the real effect of climate change on agriculture in our part of the world we have done documentaries about farmers not getting adequate yield because of poor rainfall patterns. We have told stories about people in coastal Ghana losing their homes to the rising sea level, Mr Gakpo noted as he quizzed the UN officials on what developed countries are doing to deal with the problem.
The UN officials called for more support from governments to ensure the recent Paris Agreement on climate change is implemented to the fullest to save the world.
Story by Ghana| Myjoyonline.com
13.07.2016 LISTEN
Accra, July 11, GNA - Government is committed to collaborate with donor partners, corporate bodies and individuals to give equitable access to quality basic education in the country.
The Reverend Jonathan Bettey, Public Relations Officer of Ghana Education Service (GES) disclosed this at the 40th Anniversary celebration of Base Ordnance Depot (BOD) Basic School in Accra.
It was on the theme: 'Quality Basic Education, the key to success.'
Rev Bettey said quality basic education is a powerful bedrock on which any higher education and training grows.
He said it is true that quality education occurs only if the right personnel and resources are available and put into good use.
Rev Bettey said the GES had made great strides in reducing the cost of accessing basic education through the implementation of the Capitation Grant, School Feeding and the free distribution of uniforms and exercise books.
He said access to kindergarten education has increased consistently to more than 2,000 kindergartens as in line with the expansion of KG facilities the gross enrolment rate of pupils is more than 96 per cent.
At the Primary School level, Rev Bettey said access had recorded 21,309 schools with the enrolment ratio of 99 per cent while junior high school stands at 13,000 schools as enrolment ratio stands at 99 per cent.
On teachers, he said: 'We have over 150,000 trained ones in our basic schools and the GES still supports them including untrained teachers with in-service training programmes or them to perform.
Rev Bettey urged teachers to take advantage of the special workshops on subjects such as English Language, Mathematics and ICT being organised by the GES for teachers to improve upon their skills and performances.
Mr John Kofi Delasi Bonuedi, Chief Executive Officer of Delbond Limited, said for education to be of quality, it must encompass even more with respect to participation in deliberately researched and designed extra curricula activities.
He urged parents, teachers' educational authorities and past students to contribute to ensure the relevance of the current educational system to the fast changing global economy.
'We all have the responsibility to educate the next generation of informed citizens, introducing them to the best knowledge and instilling in them a love of knowledge and culture for their own sake, 'Mr Bonuedi added.
Mrs Abigail Mary Larweh, Head teacher of the school said the school, which started in 1976, had produced many graduates some of them occupying key positions.
She enumerated some of the challenges facing the school as lack of library and computer laboratory.
Mrs Larweh expressed the hope that in spite of the challenges the school would rise high among the 19 Garrison schools.
GNA
13.07.2016 LISTEN
By Christabel Addo - GNA
Accra, July 13, GNA - Societe Generale Ghana has organised a conference to update its clients on its Global Transaction Banking (GTB) service which aims among other things at facilitating the domestic and international transactional activities of customers.
It is also to update patrons on the key trends in their new set-up banking activities and services.
The GTB also helps in building better client relationship for effective control over transactions through state-of-the-art, centralized and user-friendly tools.
In addition, it helps reduce costs and operational risks through automated processes, ensure real-time communication and reporting of transactions, as well as ensure optimized resource management.
Mr Sionle Yeo, the Managing Director of Societe Generale Ghana, in an address, said the Bank had over the years invested in upgrading its set-up to meet the required connection with its parent Group's business lines and expertise across the world, to avoid local duplication and present the best of the two worlds.
He said the Bank which is a subsidiary of the Societe Generale Group, currently offers tailored financial solutions to its diverse clientele including governments, Small and Medium Enterprises, the oil and gas as well as mining sectors, and multinational companies.
He said the innovation which had already started in the various branches of the Bank nationwide, has been done through the initiation of transformational programmes aimed at streamlining the organization and optimizing its staffing to support the ambitious business development targets.
This, he said, was based on pillars such as ensuring better operational efficiency using the best of technology and the digital world, and ensuring enhanced products and services boosted by continuous innovation and leveraging on the core value of the Societe Generale Group, to reach a high level of customer intimacy.
He gave an overview of the Bank's activities and achievement since it opened in 2013 and the massive investment committed over the years in the upgrading of facilities, products and services, to meet the increasing demands of its clients both domestically and internationally.
The Bank he said has also improved its networking, provided financial support to the oil and gas as well as mining sectors, facilitate Small and Medium Enterprises financing, provided financing for government projects, and offered various tailor made services for business growth and national development.
Mr Yeo said the Bank remains committed to improving the quality of service to its customers.
Mr Fred Obosu, the General Manager in charge of Corporate Banking, said the GTB was developed to meet the needs of clients by providing a one point of contact for Cash management, Trade Finance, Correspondent Banking, Factoring, leasing and Custody on request to its clients.
The GTB new information technology solutions also enable clients to self-manage their accounts and transactions online, cash-out and in, or transfer and receive payments at the bank, carry-out their domestic and international payments, manage and optimize their cash flows, finance their working capitals and secure their trade activities and payments using internet banking and other IT platforms.
He said Societe Generale Ghana was the first Bank to be officially licensed by the Bank of Ghana to sell and offer Factoring and Reverse Factoring, which facilitate trade by providing fast cash advances generally 80 per cent to both buyers and sellers, optimizes cash flows, improves credit management as well as collection procedures and avoid insolvency and default risk on the buyer among other things.
He said GTB he said would help clients to meet complementary needs for their operations, and for efficiency, business experts who would provide specific expert support to clients on their transaction banking needs and on the corresponding IT solutions were stationed at the various branches.
Mr Francois Marchal, the Deputy General Manager of Societe General, thanked participants for their time and feedbacks during the question and answer session, which was crucial to assist Management in their strategies to shape products and services for the optimum benefit of its customers.
GNA
Egypt has strategic reserves of wheat capable of lasting until mid-January 2017
Egypt purchased Tuesday its first imported wheat cargos in 2016 after the government decided to allow up to 0.05 percent ergot, a common grains fungus, in wheat shipments.
The state grain buyer, the General Authority for Supply Commodities (GASC), said on its website that it had bought 180,000 tons of wheat through a public tender on a free-on-board basis, to be shipped 10-20 August.
The GASC website gave a breakdown of the purchase as follows:
60,000 tons of Ukrainian wheat from Louis Dreyfus at $172.19 per ton.
60,000 tons of Russian wheat from Louis Dreyfus at $173.42 per ton.
60,000 tons of Russian wheat from Aston at $173.48 per ton.
Egypt's agriculture quarantine authority had previously rejected wheat shipments for containing trace levels of the ergot fungus, which made international traders lose their appetite for tenders by the world's largest buyer of wheat.
Egypt has enough strategic reserves of the commodity to last until mid-January 2017, supply minister Khaled Hanafi said last month.
Egypt has procured five million tons of domestic wheat, around 25 percent more than the targeted amount for this year.
A parliamentary commission that was formed end of June has been tasked with looking into allegations that local wheat procurement figures are inflated, which may reveal corruption.
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business Tulsian on stocks of the day, IT raid at Indiabulls In an interview with CNBC-TV18, market expert SP Tulsian gave his stock picks for the day and shared his views on the IT raid at Indiabulls Housing.
The chronicle of a life split between urban Manhattan and rural Montana.
Egypt will submit a special application to the World Heritage Committee (WHC) to list Pharaoh Island in the town of Taba in South Sinai, as a World Heritage Site next September, Yasmin El-Shazly, General Supervisor of the International Organizations Department at the Ministry of Antiquities, stated.
The Pharaoh Island includes of a fortress built by the Ayyubid Prince Salaheddin to protect the Islamic Empire from the Crusades.
El-Shazly denies recent reports published in media about the Egypt's failure to submit the files during the annual meeting of the WHC, which opened on Monday in Istabul, instead asserting that the prescheduled date for the delivery of the application is in September.
El-Shazli added that the International Organizations Department is working hard on the preparation of other files to be submitted to the WHC in order to list other Egyptian sites, like those in Alexandria - Kom El-Dekka, the Roman Theater, the Pompey Pillar, and underwater antiquities as well as those in the Ptolemaic temples Dendera, Kom-Ombo and Edfu on the on the WHC's list.
On Monday, the annual ten-day meeting of the WHC was inaugurated.
Ahmed Ebeid, General Supervisor of the Technical Office of the Minister of Antiquities and member of the Egyptian delegation explained that this session, with the participation of delegations from various countries around the world, is considered the most important global gathering that will discuss matters of cultural heritage topics related to registered sites on the World Heritage List (WHL).
He noted that there are seven Egyptian sites currently registered as World Heritage Sites including Deir Abu Mena, Historic Cairo, Saint Catherine, Memphis, Nubia, ancient Thebes and Wadi Al-Hittan in Fayoum.
Ebeid said that during the current session, the group will discuss adding the Deir Abu Mena Monastry as an endangered sites with the WHC.
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The photo, posted to Facebook and Twitter, showed replicas that are to be displayed in the museum as part of a new permanent exhibit
A photo captured at an entrance to the Egyptian Museum which showed a number of golden objects on the dock of a truck has created brouhaha among Facebook and Twitter, as some users claimed that the truck was improperly transporting a collection of authentic artifacts .
"I am very happy of what had happened," Elham Salah, Head of the Museums Sector at the Ministry of Antiquities told Ahram Online, noting that the objects seen in the photos were merely replicas of real artifacts that can be found in the museum.
Salah asserted such an incident shows the efficient work carried out by both Replicas Production Unit and its Art Reviving Department, which are in charge of ministry replica production.
She added that the brief outrage over the incident also shows that modern Egyptian artists have inherited the artistic skills of their ancestors, since users on social media were unable to tell the difference.
Salah said that the transported replicas are to be put on show for the first time at the museum as the first cornerstone of a permanent, forthcoming replica exhibition.
Similar exhibitions are to be held in all museums and archaeological sites around Egypt.
During the 15 days of the exhibition, Salah pointed out, a discount of 20 percent is to be offered on all replicas.
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Egyptian ambassador to Germany says cooperation between the two countries is unprecedented in the history of Cairo-Berlin relations
Egyptian minister of interior Magdy Abdel Ghafar signed a security cooperation agreement with his German counterpart Thomas de Maiziere in Berlin, the Egyptian ministry of interior announced Tuesday.
The Egyptian interior ministry noted that the two governments signed the agreement that solidifies cooperation in preventing all types of crimes, including terrorism and corruption, as well reinforcing airport security and stemming illegal immigration.
The agreement includes also the exchange of information, technical training and expertise between Egypt and Germany.
The Egyptian interior minister arrived in Berlin Sunday in a short visit to hold talks with German officials. He returned to Cairo late Monday.
In statements to state-owned MENA, Egypt's ambassador to Berlin Badr Abdel Atty noted that Abdel Ghafar's visit came after the visit of his German counterpart de Maiziere to Egypt in March, adding that cooperation agreement between the two ministries was unprecedented in the history of Cairo-Berlin relations.
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(Beijing) The state assets supervisor said it has approved the merger of two state-owned travel operators that will lead to the formation of a tourism giant with combined assets worth over 120 billion yuan, or nearly US$18 billion.
The Beijing-based China International Travel Service Group Co. (CITS) will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of China National Travel Service (HK) Group Co. (HKCTS), one of the top three travel companies in the country in terms of assets, the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission said on its website on July 11.
This was followed by confirmations from the three listed companies involved, one under CITS and two under HKCTS, which released the news in their filings to the stock exchanges.
The share prices of the three companies, CITS Corporation Limited, CTS International Logistics Corporation Limited, and China Travel International Investment Hong Kong Limited all rose on July 12, by 1.35 percent, 0.38 percent, and 7.42 percent, respectively.
CITS Corp said in its filing to the Shanghai bourse on July 12 that HKCTS will become its parent company after the deal is completed, but CITS still remains its major shareholder.
CITS operates a chain of travel agencies and duty-free shops. It is the only state-owned company that has been authorized by the State Council to run duty-free businesses in China.
The two listed companies under HKCTS has assets worth more than 100 billion yuan, or five times that of CITS Corp, and the holding company has businesses in several industries including tourism, hospitality, food, property, logistics, finance, and power.
The companies first revealed their plans to merge on February 23.
In recent years, several state-owned enterprises have decided to merge because they were facing losses. This includes the deals between train makers China CNR Corp Ltd and China CSR Corp Ltd, electricity producers China Power Investment Co. and State Nuclear Power Technology Co., and mining companies China Minmetals Corporation and China Metallurgical Group. The profits of all state-owned enterprises declined 6.7 percent in 2015, the Ministry of Finance said.
However, the annual reports of the three listed companies under CITS and HKCTS showed that their profits had not declined in 2015.
The merger was fueled by a desire to integrate the strengths of both sides, said Wei Changren, chief executive of Jinlu Consulting, a tourism research and consulting firm in Beijing.
(Rewritten by Coco Feng)
The European exchange-traded-fund market netted in close to 8 billion of new money in the second quarter of 2016. This represented a decline from the 11 billion of net inflows registered in the first quarter.
Assets under management at the end of the second quarter amounted to 482.4 billion; a 4.2% increase from 462.9 billion at the end of the previous period.
Given the general investment environment in the second quarter, we see these figures in a positive light. Investors have had a tough time in the second quarter of 2016. Most prominently, the uncertainty about the potential result and implications of the UKs referendum on EU membership warranted a cautious approach to investing.
The two most-commonly adopted strategies were either to sit tight and wait to see the actual outcome of this key risk event, or to seek shelter in presumed safe-havens. The two asset classes garnering the bulk of investors interest over the second quarter were fixed income, with 6.75 billion of net new money, and commodities mostly gold with 3.3 billion of net inflows.
This is the best half-yearly outcome on record for European ETPs providing exposure to the asset class, even surpassing the figures seen during the rush to gold at the height of the eurozone debt crisis back in 2012. It must be noted that although within this segment of the European ETP market we find all sorts of commodity exposures, investors have tended to cluster around products offering exposure to gold. And indeed, as was the case in the first quarter, the bulk of net new money invested in the second was largely directed to the yellow metal.
Meanwhile, investment in equity ETFs remained on the back foot for the second quarter running, with a total of 2.7 billion withdrawn over the period. However, the bulk of these redemptions took place in April and May, whereas June bucked the trend, with net inflows of 1.2 billion, which some have quickly highlighted as a potential turn of the negative trend for the asset class.
Strategic beta commonly known as smart beta ETFs attracted 2.16 billion of net inflows in the second quarter. This represented 27% of the grand total for the European ETF market. The general risk-off environment during the second quarter in fact throughout the first half of the year favoured investment in risk-oriented strategic beta ETFs.
In terms of providers, iShares was again top money-gatherer with 5.25 billion of net inflows. By contrast, db X-trackers and Lyxor have not had a good year so far, and have lost market share to competitors.
Brexit Threat Causes Equity Fund Outflows
Investors pulled out 2.7 billion from equity ETFs in the second quarter of 2016. Equity markets had welcomed the second quarter in negative terrain, and the mix of uncertainty leading to the UK referendum and the immediate aftermath of the Brexit vote didnt help their cause.
However, there was a rebound in the dying days of June, and investors flocked back to the asset class. Whether this heralds the start of a positive trend for the equity ETF investing in the coming months is open for debate. However, it seems fair to note that equity investors have taken heart from the fact that the Brexit vote has not triggered the Lehman-like sudden debacle many had foretold. In addition, the upturn in oil prices in the second quarter probably helped prop up sentiment about the shape of the global economy.
Overall, investors found Eurozone-wide and Japanese equities both unhedged and hedged for foreign exchange exposure to be at the low-end of their preferences. In the case of Eurozone equities, the mix of uncertainty and fears about the knock-on effects of the potential later confirmed departure of the UK from the EU are likely to have played a key role.
In addition, although somewhat buried under the cascade of Brexit news, investors also kept a wary eye on the beleaguered Italian banking system. On this point it must be noted that European financial sector equity ETFs had a very good run in June, pulling in close to 500 million in net new flows the highest monthly outturn for well over five years to partly offset the 1 billion in outflows seen over the previous eight months. Investors reacted positively to news that the Italian government is working on a bailout plan for the sector. However, the situation remains very fluid.
Global emerging markets continued to show signs of a turnaround, with 2.12 billion of net new money flowing into the asset class. US large-cap equity was also in favour, with 1.93 billion netted in by currency unhedged ETFs and 630 million by hedged peers.
(Beijing) Reckless urbanization coupled with half-hearted efforts to protect communities from rain-swollen rivers and lakes may have contributed to China's worst flooding in 18 years.
Weeks of torrential rain triggered flooding along lakes and rivers including the Yangtze River in six provinces, displacing about 1.3 million people and killing at least 161 with 61 missing as of July 10, according to the Ministry of Civil Affairs.
The ministry's tally preceded a fresh round of flooding that began after super typhoon Nepartak slammed the mainland July 9. Officials had yet to release damage and displacement data as of July 12, although they blamed the typhoon for at least six deaths on the mainland and two in Taiwan.
Central China's Hubei Province and its capital city Wuhan were among the areas hardest hit by rain-related flooding that worsened over the course of a week before Nepartak's arrival. Later, the southeast coastal province of Fujian bore the brunt of the typhoon's wrath.
Wuhan has been cited as a poster child for the urban sprawl-related conditions that some experts say made the latest flooding worse for the city's 10 million residents.
The Wuhan government let property developers build on so-called "flood diversion" land tracts traditionally left unfarmed and undeveloped in China to buffer against overflowing rivers and lakes, according to Zhou Jianjun, a professor of hydropower at Tsinghua University's Department of Hydraulic and Hydropower Engineering.
With local government support, Zhou said, builders in recent years however have urbanized a large section of a major diversion tract that runs along the Han River, a Yangtze tributary near Wuhan.
"Much of an area that could potentially divert 6 billion cubic meters of flood water has been developed for residential buildings," Zhou said.
In the typhoon's wake, heavy rains were expected to continue into mid-July over a large section of the country including southeast and central provinces, Zhang Tao, chief forecaster at the National Meteorological Center, told Caixin on July 7.
Zhang said the impact of the almost relentless deluge has been especially seriously disruptive for communities and farmers in the Yangtze basin.
"Since this year's flood season started in China on June 18," he said, "rainfall along the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River has exceeded levels not seen since 1998."
Broken Records
Damage from this year's floods has yet to surpass the 1998 devastation, according to Zhou. More than 3,000 deaths and 166 billion yuan in losses were blamed on floods that year along the Yangtze, Songhua and Nen rivers.
And in fact, Zhou said, China's history books are full of accounts of major floods that occurred in July or August.
The city's Dongjing River rose close to an all-time high of 32 meters before subsiding, according to state broadcaster CCTV. Moreover, the Wuhan Meteorological Center said, more than 560 millimeters of rainfall inundated the city between June 30 and July 6, making that week the wettest in Wuhan's recorded history.
The floods crippled the Wuhan public transportation network, including its subway system. Power and even mobile communication links were disrupted in some areas as well.
Neighboring cities fared no better. On July 4 alone, some 285 millimeters of rain swamped the central Hubei city of Macheng, with a population of 1.2 million, while 273 millimeters fell on Jingmen's 3 million residents. For each city, officials said, it was the rainiest day in history.
Across Hubei, some 56 people had died and six were missing as of July 11, according to the provincial government news portal Cnhubei.com, adding that the deluge had seriously disrupted the lives of more than 13.5 million people province-wide. Economic losses in Hubei have exceeded 32.5 billion yuan.
According to the civil affairs ministry's July 10 data, the latest flooding affected some 49 million people nationwide. High water damaged more than 110,000 homes, it said, and caused more than 103 billion yuan in losses.
The pre-typhoon rains also left a swath of death and destruction in areas along the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze in Hunan, Anhui and Jiangsu provinces. Some areas reported more than 500 millimeters of rain for the week between June 30 and July 6. The number of Yangtze tributaries where water levels surpassed the alert line exceeded 300, the highest number in five years, meteorologists said.
Promises in Wuhan
Wuhan's disruptions raised questions among academics and other experts about the city government's flood control efforts. They noted that the government had earmarked 13 billion yuan in 2013 for a project designed to strengthen flood controls, and improve sewer and drainage systems.
Through the project, Wuhan Bureau of Water Resources authorities had promised to revamp the urban drainage system and drastically expand its street and land run-off capacity. The system was supposed to be able to handle up to 200 millimeters of rainfall per day and cloudbursts that dumped up to 50 millimeters an hour by the end of 2015.
If the system had worked as promised, Wuhan should have been protected from the latest rains, which rarely exceeded more than 100 millimeters per day and never reached 200 millimeters. Instead, many parts of the city were submerged.
The water bureau authorities responded to critics at a July 7 news conference by offering three reasons for the severe flooding.
For starters, the bureau said, Wuhan was built on former wetlands that encompass low-lying areas especially prone to flooding. Secondly, he cited an El Nino effect this year that he said was the worst he's seen in his three-decade-long career.
The water authorities also blamed the city's urban drainage network, which he said was installed at a time when China was relatively poor. The system can handle up to 100 millimeters of rainfall in a 24-hour period, and up to 34.5 millimeters per hour, he said.
When asked why Wuhan was flooded despite the sewage system improvement project launched in 2013, an official working for the water resources bureau told Caixin on July 7 that work was still underway.
To date, said the official, who asked not to be identified, only 4 billion yuan of the promised 13 billion yuan has been spent on the project. The money spent has so far gone toward construction of several floodwater pump systems.
And the project spending had been suspended pending further coordination steps that would involve several Wuhan government departments, and require stamps of approval from certain provincial and central government authorities, he said.
Some experts argued that the latest flooding in Wuhan would have been much worse if not for the flood control progress made since 2013. They noted, for example, that in several, badly submerged neighborhoods the water drained away more quickly than in the past.
At the same time, though, these analysts acknowledged that the city's flooding problems are man-made and have little to do with the area's geography or past as a wetlands area.
For example, in addition to new-building sprawl, Wuhan's urbanization has involved government-sanctioned lake draining.
The city boasted 127 lakes within its boundaries in the 1950s, covering some 874 square kilometers, according to a city water bureau official who asked not to be named. Today, Wuhan has 37 lakes covering 645 square kilometers of water surface.
"None of those lakes disappeared naturally," the official said, adding that the lake-draining continues even today.
A large lake in the town of Hankou, northwest of Wuhan, has been drained even though it historically played a key role in flood control, said researchers Tan Shukui and Ren Weizhou, retired Hubei University professors who have studied the history of Wuhan-area flooding.
Thanks to the lake, they said, no flooding occurred in the area between 1906 and 1948 despite 27 heavy rain periods in those years. During each period, up to 275 millimeters of rain fell every day.
Dikes and Diversions
At the height of the recent flooding, Wuhan's largest lake, Tangxun Lake, was the scene of frantic efforts to shore up a bank and save a nearby neighborhood. Some 600 paramilitary soldiers struggled for hours July 5 before successfully plugging a breach in the bank that was 30 meters long and one meter deep.
A major dike breach on a Yangtze tributary about 30 kilometers from the Anhui Province capital of Hefei forced about 11,000 people to flee and flooded more than 1,300 hectares on July 5. The swollen river smashed a hole in the dike that was dozens of meters wide.
It was one of nearly 1,000 breaches of banks, dams and dikes reported in hard-hit areas of the country including Hunan and Hubei provinces, said officials at the central government's Office of State Control and Drought Relief on July 6.
Most breaches affected small flood control networks managed by regional governments built between 1950 and the 1970s, officials said, and few have received adequate maintenance in recent years.
Flood control systems in many areas have not received proper attention from local government officials who would rather focus on generating economic growth, said Weng Lida, a former director of the Yangtze Water Resources Commission's Bureau of Water Resources.
"Spending on flood control infrastructure is something local governments usually try to put off for as long as possible, until there's a major flood," Weng said. "Then they have to do something about it."
This summer's flooding also rang alarm bells over the condition of diversion areas, according to Cheng Xiaotao, who serves on a committee of experts serving the China National Commission for Disaster Reduction.
Central government authorities have designated these tracts of open land, usually in rural areas, to be used for storing water in the event of a flood emergency. Water spilling from overflowing rivers and lakes is to be diverted into these tracts and away from urban areas.
Cheng said the existence of diversion areas has been threatened by a lack of funding for their upkeep. Moreover, he said, many of these areas have fallen prey to government-led farm expansions and commercial development projects.
Planning is now under way to create more than 40 diversion areas along the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze, according to the Ministry of Water Resources. These areas could potentially hold a combined 59 billion cubic meters of flood water.
But some diversion projects have been stymied by a lack of interest among local officials. For example, officials have been blamed for a lack of progress toward building a major diversion area planned in an area near the convergence of the Yangtze and Dongting Lake in central Hunan Province, a ministry official admitted during a recent interview with reporters.
Local authorities did not explicitly set a timeframe, but the Dongting diversion area would be designed to hold up to 10 billion cubic meters of water that would otherwise flood the nearby city of Yueyang with a population of 5.6 million.
(Rewritten by Li Rongde)
The B.C. provincial government recently announced that only around 3 per cent of home buyers in B.C. are foreign nationals, and that only 2.5 per cent of residential sales in the province involved Chinese, statements that have led to much ridicule among the participants of a recent conference in Vancouver.
Industry professionals jeered the B.C. governments numbers at the just-concluded Asia Real Estate Association of America (AREAA) conference, as reported by the South China Morning Post.
No. Absolutely not. It is way, way higher than that, according to Byron Burley, who is the Shanghai-based vice president of foreign residential real estate search portal juwaii.com.
Burley said that millions of Chinese users peruse juwaii.com to look for residential properties in B.C.
Finance Minister Mike de Jong said the information was culled from residential segment volume covering June 10 to 29, with a total of 10,148 sales. The findings stated that only 337 of these transactions involved foreign buyers.
Real estate professionals disputed de Jongs methodology and conclusions.
That is a very small sample. That is the problem. No one has hard data, according to AREAA Vancouver president Tina Mak.
I would say 50 per cent of house buyers, maybe 60 per cent [are foreigners], ventured Eve Chuang of Macdonald Realty.
My intuition says it has to be much higher [than three per cent] just based on the number of people and the number of deals being done at this conference, agreed Michael North, COO of Pacific Royalties.
North, who puts Asian buyers in touch with North American real estate, warned that a next wave of Chinese buyers is approaching Vancouver.
The rollout is accelerating, North stated, adding that at least 10 per cent of home sale transactions in Vancouver involved foreigners. I would like to know where the BC government is getting their statistics.
The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation released information on foreign ownership in Montreal in a bid to address data gaps.Foreigners own 1.3% of homes in Montreal and 4.9% in downtown Montreal, according to the CMHCs latest Housing Market Insight Report which focused exclusively on foreign investment rates in the Quebec city.The presence of foreign investors in the Montreal real estate market is relatively low and concentrated in the condominium segment, especially in the central sectors of the Montreal area, Francis Cortellino principal, market analysis at CMHC said. These results, presented at a round table on foreign investment organized by CMHC, were corroborated by several industry players.The Crown Corporation surveyed condo managers in the greater Montreal area, asking them to provide the number of units in their buildings owned by foreigners.And while additional foreign ownership statistics will certainly be welcomed by industry players, even the CMHC acknowledges potential issues with this specific data.The data provided by the respondents could be approximate in some cases. The presence of foreign owners could therefore be overestimated or underestimated, CMHC said in the report. Some respondents had a register with the addresses where condominium owners could be reached. Such registers could help determine the number of owners with an address outside of Canada, in other words, foreign owners.The CMHC noted foreign owners could use a local address for correspondence.This latest report follows previously released data on foreign ownership in Toronto and Vancouver To view the latest report in its entirety, click here
The very next day after Brexit headlines sunk 10yr yields to long-term lows in late June, we began talking about "1.53%" in 10yr Treasury yields. This was as much weakness as could be mustered before yields continued their journey toward all-time lows. Yields bounced near 1.53 on several subsequent occasions but never broke firmly through. This, then, became our ad-hoc ceiling for yields in the short-medium term.
From the 1.3's last week, rates have risen quickly back to the 1.53 inflection point and stopped there almost perfectly today. That leaves us in a precarious position where any further weakness tomorrow will essentially be making a case for a more prolonged move higher, but where we still have the hope that 1.53 can continue to hold as the perfect little ceiling under which rates can continue making sense of the new normal.
In terms of specific events driving today's weakness, the most notable was the 1pm 10yr Treasury auction, which utterly flopped. Apart from that, traders are trading big-picture themes as the broad notion of "risk" makes a comeback after its post-Brexit bottom. In other words, things like stocks, European bond yields, oil, and British currency have all been moving higher together.
(Beijing) Oil and gas giant China National Petroleum Corp. named industry veteran Zhang Jianhua as its new general manager on July 12 to fill a position left vacant for 16 months.
The Organization Department of the Communist Party and the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission, which overlooks state enterprises, appointed the 51-year-old as general manager of CNPC at a company meeting, the energy giant said in a statement on its website.
I am a podiatris -- a foot doctor; I do not have a foot fetish. Since I am a podiatrist, it might sound self-serving to say that all diabetics need to see a foot doctor regularly. Here is my disclaimer: I do have four young children and a beautiful wife, and they all like to eat, and I do have a practice with room to grow. But it is true; all diabetics should see a podiatrist regularly.
As a podiatrist, I deal with all things feet and ankles; from toenails and bunions to ankle fractures and complex foot and ankle deformities. Newborn babies, children, middle-age adults and octogenarians all find their way to me for their particular ailment. Personally, I enjoy the variety of people and pathology that finds its way into my exam rooms. My job consists of, but is not limited to, orthopedics, dermatology, medicine, endocrinology and surgery. I love it.
While the variety is interesting, I can always count on diabetic foot exams being a regular part of my clinic days. A diabetic foot exam is painless and includes checking foot pulses, looking for deformities such as hammertoes and bunions, checking for skin issues, calluses and ulcers, and checking sensation in the feet. The foot exam also usually involves trimming toenails and calluses to prevent any further issues. In addition to having a private practice, I also do a fair amount of work with inpatients, almost exclusively on diabetic patients suffering from foot infections, and at the Wound Management Center at Midland Memorial Hospital, unfortunately dealing mostly with diabetic ulcerations. The combination of poor sensation, poor blood flow and foot deformities can predispose diabetics to having some serious issues that can lead to ulcerations, infections and amputations.
There are 29.1 million people (1 in 11) in the United States with diabetes and 86 million people (1 in 3) with what is called, pre-diabetes, according to the Center for Disease Control. Almost a quarter of people with diabetes do not even know they have the disease. Most of the time a primary care physician is the one to check blood work and discover the diabetes, but as a podiatrist, I have had multiple occasions to make the diagnosis. There are many symptoms that can indicate diabetes, including excessive thirst and frequent urination, but what I see most frequently is nerve damage caused by diabetes.
Nerve damage, or peripheral neuropathy, is a frequent finding in diabetes, occasionally even preceding the diagnosis of diabetes. Nerve damage can manifest simply as sensation loss but can also include burning, stinging and tingling. In addition, diabetics can have skin changes, bone deformities, and even vascular issues all stemming from their diabetes. Calluses, corns, dry flaking skin, hammertoes, bunions and even some more complex deformities can all be caused by diabetes and can all lead to more significant issues such as ulcerations, infections and unfortunately, amputations. Most diabetics who are admitted to the hospital usually are dealing with significant infections that require intravenous antibiotics, wound care and sometimes surgery. Even ingrown toenails and toenail fungus have the potential to become a more serious problem with diabetics. Even well-controlled diabetics have higher complication rates with surgery and injuries.
The CDC attributes $245 billion in medical costs and lost wages due to diabetes and its complications. The problem is enormous and is only getting worse. Now, back to my original statement, every diabetic needs to see a podiatrist regularly. Multiple studies continue to show the importance of regular foot screenings by a trained podiatrist. Some studies demonstrate up to an 80 percent reduction in amputations in diabetics who are managed by a primary care doctor, a podiatrist and a vascular surgeon. I enjoy being part of the fight against this horrible disease. Let me be clear -- it is necessary for patients to have regular follow-up with their family physician, but seeing a podiatrist is also extremely important. I work closely with primary care physicians, vascular surgeons and a host of other specialties to make sure that diabetes is managed appropriately.
I work at Permian Basin Foot and Ankle with Dr. Joseph Morgan, an amazing podiatrist (who also has a wonderful, hungry family). We have offices in Midland, Odessa and Pecos to serve the Permian Basin. Our wonderful staff at Permian Basin Foot and Ankle are ready to help you with your diabetes, your bunion, your ankle fracture or whatever your problem may be. As I mentioned before, I also work in the Wound Management department at MMH with amazing nurses, techs and staff.
Therefore, if you are diabetic, you have no excuse, give us a call and let us help you navigate your diabetes, your ingrown toenail, your flat foot, your ankle fracture or whatever your problem may be. We look forward to taking care of you and your family.
(Beijing) Stanford University physics professor Zhang Shoucheng was gifted and determined from a young age. Born in 1963 in Shanghai on the cusp of the Cultural Revolution, a decade of political turmoil when universities were closed and lessons in schools were disrupted, Zhang taught himself science and mathematics from books he could find. When the chaos subsided and the university entrance exam resumed in 1977, he seized this opportunity and took the exam a year later. Zhang was 15 years old and had only completed junior high school when he qualified to enter Fudan University in Shanghai, one of the top schools in the country.
After a year at Fudan, Zhang won a government scholarship to study at the Free University in Berlin and then went on to get doctoral degree at the State University of New York at Stonybrook. Zhang joined the faculty at Stanford University, California in 1993 to teach physics after a stint at IBM's Almaden Research Center in San Jose.
The scientist now wears many hats, as a researcher, entrepreneur and venture capitalist. "Human knowledge is like a tree and as civilization goes forward its branches grow in all directions, but the distances between branches also widen, making it difficult to cultivate a form of cross-disciplinary thinking instead of being limited to one silo of expertise," says Zhang, explaining his motivation to cross-over from the research lab to the world of business.
As a physicist, Zhang is known for his studies on condensed matter and his pioneering work that helped discover a new class of materials, which can be used to design the next wave of computer chips. He recently led a team of researchers to design a tin alloy that has superconductor-like properties at room temperature. The discovery was named "stanene" combining the Latin name for tin stannum with the suffix used in grapheme, Zhang's team said in a 2015 research paper published on the scientific journal Nature. It is part of a new class of materials known as topological insulators that Zhang has experimented with for several years. When this material is organized into a wafer-thin arrangement with the thickness of just one atom inside a semiconductor, it has the potential to increase the speed and efficiency of computer chips, while lowering the energy consumed by them, the paper said.
Zhang along with two other scientists, Charles Kane and Eugene Mele from the University of Pennsylvania, won the 2015 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Physics, one of the oldest and most prestigious science awards in the United States for their "groundbreaking theoretical contributions leading to the discovery of a new class of materials," according to the award citation. This adds to his long list of accolades including the Physics Frontiers Prize awarded by the Fundamental Physics Prize Committee in 2013, The Europhysics Prize in 2010, the Oliver E. Buckley Prize in 2012 given by the American Physical Society and the 2012 Dirac Medal and Prize, a prominent science award.
In 2014, he was named as one of the top favorites for the Nobel Prize in Physics by Thomson Reuters news services.
Rolling the Dice
Zhang has now moved beyond decoding physics theories and become a successful venture capitalist in Silicon Valley, home to many of the world's largest high-tech corporations and thousands of start-ups in the San Francisco Bay Area. He is among the earliest investors in VMware Inc., a cloud and virtualization software and services company, founded in 1998. He was also one of the earliest to grab stakes in the augmented reality company Meta Vision Systems Inc. that has also attracted investment from Hong Kong business tycoon Li Ka-shing, Tencent Holdings Ltd. and Lenovo Group, according to company documents.
Zhang said in a recent interview with Caixin that his physics expertise has guided his investment decisions. "(Physics) theories are important as they not only guide you when discovering new materials but also new investment opportunities," said Zhang.
In 2013, he set up a venture investment company, Danhua Capital, in Palo Alto, California, to invest in promising early-stage technology companies in Silicon Valley. The company invested US$ 92 million in its first batch of companies in 2014 and started raising US$ 200 million in January for a second round of funding. The company has invited Chinese Internet giants such as Alibaba Group, Baidu Inc. and Sina Corp. to invest in it.
Zhang says his venture capital firm has given seed money to over 30 start-ups in several fields such as big data analytics, the mobile Internet, virtual reality, augmented reality, Fintech and bioinformatics. About half of them have proceeded to a second round of funding with their individual valuations growing by about 20 times compared to the amount of capital injected at first, said Zhang.
Danhua is now preparing to create a yuan-dominated fund to invest in high-tech start-ups in China. Venture capitalists in China are shifting their focus from traditional industries to technology businesses because there is plenty room for innovation in the domestic market, Zhang said.
Danhua is also trying to link start-ups in Silicon Valley and at Stanford with partners in China who can help expand their businesses, said Zhang.
In 2014, Danhua, and Sierra Ventures, a privately held venture capital firm in California, invested US$ 2.9 million in Qeexo, a touchscreen developer, and helped the company clinch a deal with Chinese smartphone maker Huawei Technologies. Alibaba's cloud computing division also bought Qeexo's technology, Zhang said.
A Double-edged Sword
Zhang predicts that virtual reality and artificial intelligence technologies would become the next hot areas for investment. "Many listed Chinese firms are looking for virtual reality technology assets and have shown an interest in our projects," said Zhang, adding Danhua was an early mover into this field, before it heated up last year.
Zhang suggests Chinese firms should carefully study the business models and the culture of tech start-ups before acquiring them to make sure they can be easily integrated into their businesses. "It is better to start cooperating on a project before a business takeover," he said.
A knack for investment served as a double-edge sword for a scientist. It could hurt research, especially those probing into emerging technologies, said Zhang. "Take experiments into topological insulators as an examplein academic circles, all research information, both successes and failures, can be shared. But when you form a business, some information must be withheld because they are commercial secrets," he said.
Zhang also warned against the dangers of venture capitalists trying to fund early-stage research. "As a scientist, I will never raise funds (from investors) for topological insulators research. But there are venture capitalists chasing these kinds of projects. (But the practice of pouring money too early into fledgling technologies) doesn't benefit investors or scientific development," he said.
According to Zhang, innovation requires a free atmosphere and good coordination between academic circles and businesses backed by an effective market mechanism.
(Rewritten by Han Wei)
(Beijing) China National Chemical Corp., the country's largest producer of pesticides by output, said it has extended its US$ 43 billion agreed takeover of Swiss agrochemicals giant Syngenta AG until September 13, as it waits for regulatory approvals.
It is the second time the Chinese company extended the deadline to fully acquire the pesticide and seed giant headquartered in Basel. Its offer for Syngenta shares, announced in February, was extended in May as it was unable to secure the green light from regulators, and was due to expire on July 18.
"As previously stated, extensions to the tender are expected to occur until all conditions to the offers are satisfied, including obtaining all applicable regulatory approvals," the state-owned enterprise said in the July 11 statement.
The firm says it still expects the deal to be completed by the end of this year, which would be the biggest-ever foreign investment by a Chinese firm.
ChemChina announced in February that it reached a deal with Syngenta to purchase all publicly held registered shares of the Swiss company. The acquisition is subject to anti-trust reviews by authorities in countries where both companies have operations, including the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States.
Although the proposed takeover has yet to receive the necessary stamps of approval from governments, several Chinese and foreign banks have thrown their weight behind ChemChina's bid for Syngenta. A US$ 12.7 billion syndicated loan request has been oversubscribed, with seven banks collectively pledging 20 percent above the loan amount, the consortium's lead bank, China Citic Bank International Ltd., told Caixin.
Meanwhile, Caixin has learned that a separate bank consortium led by HSBC Holdings Plc. is working on a US$ 7.5 billion syndicated loan.
Since 2006, ChemChina has spent billions of dollars on overseas acquisitions in countries including France, Italy, Germany, Israel and Britain. Syngenta reported US$ 11.4 billion worth of pesticide sales in 2014, equal to one-fifth of the global market. It generates about one-quarter of its sales in North America, according to the company.
(Rewritten by Chen Na)
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Charles Leonard Ruoff View Photos
Sonora, CA Perhaps later this month folks will be gathering to celebrate the life of a colorful Sonoran known for living his own words, If you live in a community, you need to give something back to it.
Back in the 1930s before Sonora even had street names let alone addresses Leonard Ruoff, a 12-year-old courier at the time, delivered folks their orders from Millards grocery and the Central Drug Store, the latter of which his father Henry owned.
Developing that ability to remember the people and places of Old Sonora, daughter Sandy Fisher says, served Leonard Ruoff well for a lifetime of volunteer work as a local historian of the region and its film industry. It also turned out to come in mighty handy when, years later, as one of the founding organizers of the Sonora Motion Picture Association, he scouted locations and extras for production companies. This past weekend, those at the Mother Lode Fair may have enjoyed hearing his recollections in a video shown on the making of High Noon, one of Hollywoods best-known movies filmed locally.
At 95, Still A Local History Sleuth
Fisher recounts that Leonard remained an alert active 95-year-old who still drove his Toyota manual shift pickup until he passed away July 1 . At the Tuolumne County Museum and Historical Research Center, he was always available to help identify people and places within the thousands of photographs brought into the museum his mind and memory were a vital resource essential to the museums success, she shares.
He was even writing a response to inquiries of photographs regarding local lumbering equipment used at Westside and Pickering the night before his stroke. When I was visiting with him Monday, he had one more page to do, she recalls, still a bit shocked at his sudden passing. Warmly, she adds, He loved his family, friends, neighbors, and Tuolumne County. He enjoyed being able to still remember and tell stories with a sharp mind.
A fourth generation Californian and third generation Sonoran, he was born at Tuolumne Hospital and lived downtown in part of the Linoberg house with his parents Henry and Hazel; upstairs were grandparents Charles and Cora McCaullay Rudorff. The block served as a family compound of sorts, since the Rudorff family owned it. Great-grandparents William and Henrietta Rudorff made their home on Bradford Avenue, where they ran the Eagle Hotel on Washington Street before the fire of 1852.
Tuolumne Father-son Duo Called To WWII Duty
Leonard graduated from Sonora Elementary in 1934 and Sonora Union High School in 1939. After attending College of the Pacific (now known as University of Pacific-Stockton) and Pasadena City College in 1942, from which he graduated, Leonard and Henry both registered in the February 16, 1942 draft in San Francisco enlisting in the Navy as Seabees, due to their construction ability and were the only father-son duo from Tuolumne County to serve.
Both came home separately with colorful stories to recount from different parts of the world. Ruoff also brought home a wife, Ruth, from Maine, with whom he corresponded through the war. Sandy (Fisher), their only child together, was born in Sonora in 1947 and remained when, a few years later, her mother returned to her home state.
After the war Ruoff worked for his father, who owned Tuolumne County Realty and Insurance, where they bought and fixed up houses to sell or rent. Leonard also repaired equipment being used to build Dodge Ridge, Fisher remembers. Working for another friend in Pasadena, he helped build floats for the Pasadena Tournament of Roses Parade. I can remember him telling me about driving the floats in the parade and having to be face-down and only being able to see the painted line in the street, she laughs.
Helping Make Living History
Ruoff also respectively worked for the Westside Logging and Pickering Lumber companies as a machinist and locomotive fireman and had his own Ford tractor agency on the ranch at Edgemont Acres. From 1969 until his retirement in 1983 he worked for Curtis Creek School, eventually becoming the transportation director of the Tuolumne, Calaveras and Amador special education programs.
At a College of the Pacific reunion in the late 1960s Ruoff rekindled a friendship with Marjorie, a college sweetheart that Fisher calls his lasting love. Married in 1974, the two enjoyed 40 years together before she passed away two years ago. Fisher remembers, Up until that time, they had traveled in their motor home with friends through the US, Canada and Mexicoand also enjoyed Rhodes Scholar tours to Central America, the Pacific and Europe. After Margies passing, Leonard sold their home on Fir Drive and moved to Skyline, so he wouldnt have to mow any more lawns or do any more cooking.
Fisher notes that Ruoff recently received his 70-year pin from the Sonora Elks Lodge that his grandfather Charles helped found and where his own dad was a member. Listed as member #71, his son-in-law Bob is also on the membership roster. A Silver Life Lions Club member, Ruoff also belonged to the Sonora SIRS (Sons In Retirement) and also had a soft spot for Meals On Wheels, personally delivering meals until he was 90. Fisher says she is working with the Elks Lodge to shortly set a celebration of life event date and hopes folks will show up to share their memories of Leonard and recollections of the stories he was known to tell so well.
Fisher shared with Clarke Broadcasting several family and historical photos that may be viewed, slideshow-style, by clicking in the upper left image box.
Uniform Cottage has been at a location on Pleasant Street and Darlington Avenue in downtown Kissimmee for 36 years.
Construction on Toho Square parking garage begins in August
Construction will impact traffic, possibly slow down business
Its my life. Its all I have, said Bobby Abraham, whos owned the business for the past 13 years.
School starts next month and it's a season Abraham looks forward to every year. But construction nearby is also scheduled to start in August.
The city will be building a three and a half story parking garage with 400 spaces on Toho Square. And a private developer will be building 50 new residential units.
During construction, Pleasant Street and Darlington Avenue will temporarily close to add brick streets and wider sidewalks.
Because if parking is too hard, people will walk too far from there. So maybe they choose another place to go, Abraham explained.
While Abraham is worried all the construction will slow down his business, he says the city is working with him to make things come together. One thing he is looking forward to is the plan to add more than 600 parking spaces.
We have great bones downtown and were just building on those. And were holding onto our history, our architecture and were just adding to that, said Craig Holland, the CRA Director for the City Of Kissimmee. A lot of people say they may be losing old Kissimmee but were really preserving that, adding to that and making it better."
Abraham is hopeful that in the near future, all the changes downtown will bring more customers his way. So more customers ultimately coming to downtown, so that will be good for my business, said Abraham.
Orange County Animal Services is getting a new ventilation system, with the next step being a brand new shelter.
Orange County will install new vents at animal shelter
Asked staff for proposal for new shelter
Adoptions are up 75 percent in the last 5 years
The decision to discuss the possibility of building a new animal shelter came after the county commission decided not to renovate the current shelter and add a $2 million air conditioning upgrade for its current general dog center.
We were wrestling with some simple solutions that we can put in place for the short term. But our goal is to build a new facility, Orange County Mayor Teresa Jacobs said.
With temperatures dipping into the nineties inside the ventilated, but not air conditioned shelter, concern for the shelter dogs wellbeing has been in question. During the meeting, commissioners were assured by health officials that the dogs have fans and ventilation currently, but did propose upgrading the system.
The Orange County Animal shelter off of Conroy Road was built in 1987, and at the time it was a state of the art facility. Most of the shelters built during this time period, like those in Palm Beach and Hillsborough counties, have similar indoor-outdoor dog housing areas.
With adoptions up 75 percent over the past five years, county leaders all agreed it was time to look at building anew, instead of temporarily upgrading the facility further.
Instead of choosing to renovate the entire facility, the county moved to install new ventilation units. Now each kennel will have access to a vent. The work on those upgrades are set to begin in the next month.
County staff has been asked to come up with a financial proposal for a new animal shelter for October.
Flagler County Humane Society took in over 30 animals from a home that serves as an animal rescue Tuesday.
Flagler County deputies investigated Saffari Animal Rescue
Deputies found no evidence of pets in unlivable conditions
Rescue surrendered some of the pets to Flagler Humane Society
Flagler County deputies and animal services workers walked throughout the property on County Road 330, checking on the condition of the dozens animals housed inside the Saffari Animal Rescue.
"We went to a judge with probable cause information based on reports we'd gotten that the conditions here were very poor," said Laura Williams, sheriff's office spokesperson.
Deputies said the tip came in when a person came to drop off a dog and decided not to leave the dog because of conditions they believed were unlivable.
Tuesday morning they counted about 40 dogs and more than a dozen cats inside.
"Theres a lot of animals and not a huge amount of space," said Williams said.
This isn't the first time the sheriff's office says it has checked reports of poor conditions at this location.
A veterinarian was on the scene to help check out the animals, looking for illnesses, injuries, food and water deprivation. But deputies say the early investigation didn't show signs of the reported claims.
"There have been so many that have been rescued. This is so sad, so sad," said a woman standing by.
These people told the deputies that the animals are well-taken care of, though declined to comment further.
The Flagler County Humane Society says the rescue owner decided to surrender some of the animals on the property in hopes of getting them adopted.
The humane society said they took in 25 dogs and nine cats. They said the owner won't likely face charges but does not have a permit to house this many animals.
"These are beautiful animals in there and they deserve happy homes," said Williams.
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Following the natural streambeds and waterways along the Caprock Escarpment, advanced ranks of the sugarcane aphid have now invaded the Texas High Plains.
Blayne Reed, Texas A&M AgriLife Extension IPM agent in Hale, Swisher and Floyd counties, reported Wednesday morning that independent crop consultants have found multiple colonies of the costly grain sorghum pest in Floyd County.
Theres no need to panic, Reed told the Herald. They are now above the Cap, but the populations are very light, hard to find, and as of this (Wednesday) morning only along the waterways leading westward up the Caprock or on the very few fields off the Caprock farther east. These draws cut a pretty good way westward into Floyd and Crosby counties.
One of the fields confirmed with SCA is in southwestern Floyd at the edge of one of these draws, Reed said. The description he gave makes the location likely in the Sandhill community which lies on the Runningwater Draw. They also have been found off the Cap in the vicinity of Turkey.
Weve seen them do this during the past three years, he explained. They are using these draws, such as Runningwater and Tule, as little highways, and they are being found in sorghum thats planted on the edge of these draws.
Currently populations are light and difficult to find, he said. They will be reaching treatment thresholds within a few weeks to a month, but we are much better suited these year when it comes to dealing with threshold populations, he noted.
As a tropical species, they should thrive in the extremely hot and dry conditions now being experienced across the region. This is the type of weather they really do like, he explained. They reach maturity very rapidly and will be ready to reproduce in probably two to three days. Thats how their populations can explode so quickly.
However, Reed cautioned that producers throughout the region should be better prepared this season to combat the costly pest.
This is not the time to panic, Reed said. We have much higher populations of beneficial insects and are better prepared since weve been expecting to see them coming. I dont really expect their numbers to explode as they have in the past, but we need to keep scouting so we can treat them as soon as they reach threshold levels.
While independent crop consultants have found SCA colonies in southwestern Floyd County, Reed suspects small still-undetected colonies might be located farther west.
At face value this looks like the same infestation pattern we have had for the two previous years with the aphids either flying on the easiest route or pushed by wind up these funnels and drawn to the irrigated sorghum fields on the edges of the draws, Reed said. In terms of population today, the number of infested plants is well below 1 percent with less than 10 aphids per colony. We all know how fast this can change and all of our consultants involved with these finds have already re-visited these few infested fields with little change so far. There are not many winged aphids yet.
This is a very quick and early find by several of our outstanding area independent crop consultants in the region, Reed said.
Dr. Paul Sadler, who recently stepped down as dean of the School of Religion and Philosophy at Wayland Baptist University, has accepted a new position as director of Church and Denominational Relations.
In his new role, Sadler will work closely with churches in the area and throughout West Texas to develop and maintain positive, mutually beneficial relationships. Sadler said he wants to focus on strengthening relationships between Wayland and the denominational entities -- Baptist and others -- served by the university.
The most important thing Wayland does for our churches is to educate their young people, Sadler said. That is not just in the School of Religion and Philosophy, but also through every other school on campus. Our first and best service to the church is to educate young people in that place where faith and learning come together.
Wayland Baptist University President Dr. Bobby Hall said Sadlers vast experience in the pulpit and with religious education will serve him well in his new position.
Dr. Sadler has had a long and distinguished career of service both to the Baptist denomination and to Wayland, Hall said. He has not only led Waylands School of Religion and Philosophy to new heights, but has also preached and served in churches throughout West Texas and contributed significantly to Baptist life across the state.
Sadler has been at Wayland for 26 years, serving as dean of the School of Religion and Philosophy since 2007. During his tenure as fean, Sadler said he was privileged to work with a dedicated faculty that has developed several new programs and areas of opportunity including the Master of Divinity online program and the Wayland Mission Center.
A graduate of Baylor University, Sadler also has 20 years of experience as a pastor, serving three Waco area churches from 1970-90. While working at Wayland, he has served as interim pastor at churches in Plainview, Farwell, Hart, Petersburg, Springlake and Lubbock. He and his wife, Jimmye, a longtime educator for Plainview Independent School District, are members of First Baptist Church in Plainview.
July 13, 1946: Petersburg residents on Friday can see the fifth performance of the three-act play The Daffy Dills, with a cast of Hale Center residents. The play, given as a benefit for the Hale County Cooperative Hospital at Hale Center, has been seen at Cotton Center and Halfway along with two performances in Hale Center.
--Faola Patton, former Plainview High student who moved to Lubbock, has returned and opened a drapery shop at 602 Ash. She will make drapes from material customers select. She has worked with both the Martha Morgan and Dunlap interior decorating shops in Lubbock.
--Rev. Daisy E. Guthre will begin a revival at Ash and 10th streets Friday night. Rev. Guthrie and a group of musicians from California will conduct the meeting which Rev. Guthrie says will be an old time Holy Ghost revival. She recently conducted a revival in Amarillo.
July 13, 1956: Young Rolando Pancho Martinez, atop a pony, spend Saturday afternoon parading up and down local streets advertising the Walt Disney production, The Littlest Outlaw, which is showing through Tuesday at the Granada. The promotion was the idea of Spud Murphy, Granada projectionist.
--The Panhandle Popcorn Co. of Plainview has been granted a charter by Texas Secretary of State Tom Reavley. It was authorized for organization with 300 shares at $100 per share. The firm was formerly the Glen Beard Popcorn Co. Offices are at 400 Ash St. and board members are Mr. and Mrs. Glen Beard and Harold V. Wilson.
--Funeral services were held Tuesday for Mrs. O.W. Hayes, 44, who died as a result of injuries suffered in an auto mishap late Sunday night in New Mexico. She was traveling with her husband, daughter Mary Ann and son Mark when the car overturned between Elida and Enoch as they were enroute home from a wedding in Las Cruces.
July 13, 1966: R. Barry Tull, son of Mrs. Robert Tull, has receive a years Fellowship grant for study in water resources from the U.S. Public Health Service. The 1962 PHS graduate will be studying toward his masters degree at Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta.
--Jimmy D. Huckabay, 23, son of Mr. and Mrs. J.T. Huckabay of Floydada, received an early promotion to Army pay grade E-2 on completion of basic combat training at Fort Bliss on June 18. He is a 1961 graduate of Floydada High School.
July 13, 1986: The five children of Mr. and Mrs. Charles Mayfield, ranging in age from 16 to 25, are in the Camelot chorus in the Lubbock Summer Rep production. Melissa, Rachael, Todd, Dial and Scott are the grandchildren of Clarence and Claudie Lewis of Plainview. Melissa, a graduate of Texas Tech, recently taught science at PHS.
--Oakwood Acres Mobile Home Park on North Quincy is now leasing. It is adjacent to Wal-Mart Distribution and is inside the city limits. Morton Irrigation is the contractor.
--The Rev. Cecil Golden was elected unanimously as interim pastor for College Heights Baptist Church. He is an assistant professor of modern languages and the assistant chairman in the Division of Languages and Literature at Wayland Baptist University.
Compiled by Doug McDonough
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Twin Peaks got a little bit better or a little bit worse on Wednesday, depending on whom you ask and how he got up there.
Hikers and cyclists were higher than one of the clouds hovering just above the scenic summit of San Francisco. Tour bus drivers werent. They were more bent out of shape than the figure-eight roadway that snakes around the summits two humps and that, around midmorning, was reconfigured by city traffic engineers to separate the bikers and hikers from the motorists.
This is great, said cyclist Wayne Puckett of San Francisco, who was perspiring after his ascent to the 922-foot peak. Anything that makes the road safer is great.
Since views are paramount at Twin Peaks, it was no surprise that veteran tour bus driver Ricard Maguire had the opposite one.
Why make it harder for bus drivers? he said, as his busload of Italian-speaking visitors tried to figure out what he was talking about. If tourism is the major business of San Francisco, why do something that leads to more congestion and makes our lives more difficult?
The old way was easier, said tour bus driver Luiz Galletti. And now the tourists dont get the view of the city until they arrive at the overlook. You used to hear them say oooh while you were driving. Not anymore.
At issue was the long-debated change in the configuration of Twin Peaks Boulevard at the popular scenic overlook. The former northbound lanes on the east side of the Twin Peaks loop are now open only to pedestrians and cyclists. Northbound cars and buses have been rerouted to the west side of the loop, which has been newly designated a two-way road instead of a one-way road.
Pedestrian killed
The changes come four years after Yuee Yao, a 56-year-old woman visiting from China, was killed and two other people injured by a drunken driver as they walked up the hill along the road. The city paid $700,000 to settle lawsuits in the case, although the city maintains it had been considering the changes well before the accident.
The motorist, Gina Eunice, was convicted of manslaughter and drunken driving and sentenced to four years in prison.
On Wednesday, a dozen construction workers in yellow vests were painting new stripes, installing new signs and placing new barriers. City transportation engineer Cameron Beck said that installation of the new road markers was moving right along and that the city would evaluate public reaction to the new setup after the two-year pilot project is over.
Opposition from bus drivers to the plan has been no secret. Some complain that congestion will increase and that the sharp bend in the now two-way road just southwest of the parking area can be tricky to navigate for two buses passing the spot simultaneously.
Big enough for 2
The road is big enough, said Beck. The lanes are wide. And these drivers are trained professionals.
Brand-new cyclist Iain Paul, 10, of San Francisco said the new bike trail was just the spot to get the hang of riding a two-wheeler without training wheels.
I can learn to ride up here, he said. I like it.
Hiker Rosie Galarza, a visitor from Las Vegas, said the new hiking trail was a great idea.
Anything that can make you less scared of being run over is a good thing, she said.
About the only folks with no opinion on the new road setup were Robert and Violette Powell, an older San Francisco couple who spend their days in the parking lot passing out Bibles and religious tracts.
Gods kingdom has been established, Robert Powell said. It doesnt change because of the road.
Steve Rubenstein is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: srubenstein@sfchronicle.com
San Francisco may revise its latest attempt to crack down on vacation rentals in private homes, hoping to stave off issues raised in a lawsuit filed by Airbnb that seeks to halt new enforcement measures.
Supervisors David Campos, Aaron Peskin, Eric Mar and John Avalos introduced new language at Tuesdays Board of Supervisors meeting to update a get-tough amendment that the supervisors passed unanimously in June. The June amendment, which is now facing legal challenges from Airbnb, was scheduled to take effect July 27. Its enforcement is on hold pending a judges ruling on Airbnbs request for a temporary injunction, which will be heard in early September.
The latest revision, which must now go through the legislative process, directly addresses issues Airbnb raised in its lawsuit, which said the city was violating the First Amendment, the Communications Decency Act and the Stored Communications Act.
The ultimate aim of both sets of amendments is to impose steep fines and criminal penalties to hold services like Airbnb, HomeAway and FlipKey accountable when vacation-rental listings lack the citys mandated registration number for hosts. Only about 1,472 hosts, out of many thousands, have met a requirement to register with San Francisco before renting rooms or homes to travelers.
Potential penalties
The newest revision says those consequences would kick in only once a hosting service accepts a fee for booking a tourist to stay in an unregistered home. In the previous version, companies were on the hook for up to $1,000 a day per listing just for showcasing unregistered properties. Airbnb said that was a penalty for publishing content and therefore a violation of the federal Communications Decency Act, which shields Internet companies from liability for user-generated material. The latest update would remove the prohibition on displaying unregistered listings but companies would be fined up to $1,000 each time an unregistered property is booked by a guest.
These commonsense amendments aim to address some of the legal arguments that Airbnb has made in its lawsuit, and they strengthen the citys legal position, Campos said. I think these amendments make the lawsuit moot.
The introduction of today's amendment acknowledges the legal infirmities with the city's recent changes to the short-term rental law, Airbnb said. The fact remains that the ordinance as it stands today violates federal law, and these new proposed amendments still wouldn't resolve the legal shortcomings that were raised in our complaint. We remain hopeful that we can work together to find solutions that address our shared policy concerns.
The revision would allow the citys Office of Short-Term Rentals to subpoena records from hosting services when it discovers possible violations of the citys vacation-rental laws. Airbnbs lawsuit said it could not legally provide information on its hosts without being subpoenaed.
In another change, companies like Airbnb, HomeAway and FlipKey would have to submit monthly affidavits affirming that all their guest stays in San Francisco were in lawfully registered properties. The update would also require the companies to keep three years worth of records on hosts and guest stays in San Francisco.
Possible exemptions
While Airbnb and FlipKey handle all transactions for their hosts, HomeAway and its VRBO subsidiary function more like classified-listing sites, similar to Craigslist. That could exempt HomeAway from the new requirements.
If a platform does not get a fee for booking services, it would be outside the purview of the revised law, said Robb Kapla, a deputy city attorney.
Expedias HomeAway and TripAdvisors FlipKey had expressed interest in joining Airbnbs lawsuit against the city. U.S. District Judge James Donato gave them until Tuesday to file motions. Although sources said they were expected to so, those motions had not been submitted by late Tuesday afternoon. The companies did not respond to requests for comment.
Carolyn Said is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: csaid@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @csaid
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With its first mid-priced car still more than a year away, Tesla Motors on Wednesday unveiled a slightly less expensive version of its new Model X sport utility vehicle.
The Model X 60D starts at $74,000, before state and federal incentives are factored in. Previously, the entry-level version of the Model X was the 75D, which starts at $83,000.
The news comes as Palo Altos Tesla endures a tough month of scrutiny.
Federal transportation officials are investigating a fatal accident in which a Tesla Model S sedan operating in its self-steering autopilot mode smashed into a truck. The Securities and Exchange Commission is reportedly exploring whether Tesla should have disclosed the crash which happened in early May but which the company first publicly discussed on June 30 before its most recent stock offering.
And the company missed its delivery targets for the second consecutive quarter, shipping 9,745 Model S sedans and 4,624 Model X SUVs in the second quarter.
Since Teslas first car, the Roadster, hit the market in 2008, all of the companys electric cars have been geared toward well-off buyers. A fully loaded Model X, equipped with premium features and the biggest available battery pack, can run more than $140,000.
And yet, the companys long-range plan has always called for using the proceeds from expensive early models to design more affordable cars later on. When CEO Elon Musk unveiled Teslas next car, the $35,000 Model 3, in March, close to 400,000 people placed orders.
The Model 3, however, will not be available until late next year assuming Tesla stays on schedule. The company has missed production deadlines in the past.
Last month, Tesla tried to address the demand for less expensive cars by offering a $66,000 version of its popular Model S.
Both of the new, entry-level Model S and Model X cars feature battery packs that have been limited by software to store 60 kilowatt hours of electricity, giving the Model X an estimated range of 200 miles between charges. Both can later be upgraded through a wireless software update that costs $9,500 for the Model X to store 75 kilowatt hours, increasing the range.
Although offering a lower-priced version of the X fits with Teslas long-term strategy, the move comes at a time when Tesla has had a hard time ramping up production of the vehicle. And Tesla has turned a profit in only one quarter of its six-year history as a public company.
Karl Brauer, senior analyst at the Kelley Blue Book auto information service, said the lower price suggests that demand for the Model X may not be as strong as the company had indicated.
The Model S has been available since 2012, and giving buyers the option of a slightly cheaper version helped keep the sedan fresh, he said. But the Model X is new, with most deliveries coming this year. And it falls in the hottest part of the automotive market right now sport utility vehicles.
Standard issue for any company is to charge as much as they can for their product, Brauer said. So theres no reason to lower the price unless they fear theres a demand issue.
David R. Baker is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: dbaker@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @DavidBakerSF
Courtesy photo
San Antonio biomedical company StemBioSys Inc. has reached another distribution agreement with a company overseas, this time to distribute and market its products in South Korea.
The privately held StemBioSys, which has 10 employees, all in San Antonio, manufactures and develops advanced stem cell technologies using platforms licensed from the University of Texas System. The company reached a deal with SeouLin Bioscience to distribute and market StemBioSys products in The Republic of Korea, beginning with its cell expansion product known as BM-HPME.
East Bay Regional Park District Police Department
Investigators with the East Bay Regional Park District are seeking the publics help in finding the killer of a young woman after a family on a fishing trip discovered her body earlier this month on a Rodeo beach, officials said Wednesday.
Dara Toeun, 27, who moved to Rodeo in January, was found dead the morning of July 2 on the shoreline of San Pablo Bay, said Carolyn Jones, a spokeswoman for the regional parks. Police think she may have been associated with a nearby homeless camp and have not identified a motive in the murder.
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With her bruises healed and her spirits bolstered by scores of well-wishers, the nations oldest park ranger returned to work Tuesday eager to get back to her normal routine after being beaten in her East Bay home two weeks ago by a robber who stole a prize coin given to her by President Obama.
Betty Reid Soskin, 94, was calm and composed as she returned to the Rosie the Riveter World War II Home Front National Historical Park on Richmonds waterfront, greeting a crowd of fellow park rangers and volunteers with smiles and hugs as they welcomed her back.
I dont think there was any way to prepare myself for this morning, Soskin told the crowd. Its good to see all of you, and to feel the support the community has given me.
She bristled at being referred to as a victim.
I was almost obsessive about not wanting to look like a victim because I didnt feel like a victim, Soskin said.
She recalled going to bed around 11 p.m. on the night of June 26 only to be awakened two hours later by a hooded burglar standing in her bedroom with a flashlight.
She crept out of bed and grabbed her cell phone, but before she could call for help the prowler threw his arms around her and wrestled her phone away. Soskin screamed as the robber dragged her into the hallway and punched her repeatedly in the face. She was able to escape by grabbing his genitals and then running into the bathroom, where she barricaded herself with her feet against the doorway and her back against a cabinet.
She plugged in her iron and had it ready to use as a weapon if he entered the bathroom. She stayed put for about 45 minutes until she was sure he had gone.
If he had opened the door, I was going to brand him for the police, Soskin said.
Following the attack, she went to a neighbors home to call the police. They have yet to identify the attacker, or recover the commemorative presidential coin Obama gave her.
She said she is nervous about learning the identity of her attacker.
I almost need him to remain in the shadows, she said. I dont think I want him to become real.
Public outcry has been swift and widespread since the robbery, with community members and people across the nation offering support to Soskin during her recovery.
The White House has promised to replace the stolen coin, according to Tom Leatherman, the parks superintendent. More than $50,000 has been raised to help her replace the stolen items, which included her computer and cell phone.
Just as widespread has been admiration for Soskins strength in the face of such a brutal assault. It was a feat to keep her away from the park for even two weeks, Leatherman said. She wanted to come back the moment her bruises had faded.
I still struggle, but I dont feel as vulnerable as I did, Soskin said. I can stay alone.
Soskin became a park ranger at the age of 85, a career move inspired in part by her desire to share her own experience of being a young African American woman in Richmond during World War II. She hosts a regular talk, Of Lost Conversations, at the parks visitor center in which she discusses her time as a 20-year-old clerk working in a segregated union hall in Richmond. The city was a shipbuilding center, but she never saw a ship under construction or a ship being launched.
She doesnt identify with Rosie the Riveter a white woman, said Sue Fritzke, the parks deputy superintendent. What she tries to do is flesh out the history, not just of women in World War II, but of African Americans and people with disabilities.
Since the attack, family and community members, including Soskins two sons, have come out in full force to ensure she feels safe in the community. Soskin has had a burglar alarm system installed in her home, where she lives alone.
Victim Witness Assistance Program offered to relocate her after the robbery, but she refused. She said Tuesday that she feels safest in her apartment, where she was known by neighbors and local police.
Soskin is still sleeping with her light on to maintain peace of mind, but on Tuesday she navigated the park center and prepared to interact with visitors without a trace of fear.
Betty is a woman of resilience, said her former co-worker Kimiko De Pedro. She is authentic in how she speaks to the public and that is what makes people connect to her.
Libby Rainey is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: lrainey@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @ rainey_l
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Texas Public Radio of San Antonio is daring you to listen no, not half-listen or pretend-listen just so you get the chance to state your own opinions but truly and actively listen to the people around you, while keeping an open mind.
In these trying times, when our great country is becoming increasingly polarized over more and more issues, we are asking everyone to Dare to Listen to their fellow citizens, Joyce Slocum, president and CEO for Texas Public Radio, states in a news release.
Many San Antonio notables have pledged to do so, including televisions Scandal star Ricardo Chavira, Mayor Ivy Taylor, local media personality Nina Duran, former U.S. Congressman Charles Gonzalez, City Councilman Ron Nirenberg and many other political, educational and religious leaders.
Many of these testimonials will be played on local public radio stations: KPAC 88.3 FM and KSTX 89.1 FM in San Antonio and KTXI 90.1 FM in the Texas Hill Country.
In a follow-up phone chat, Slocum elaborated: Were trying to encourage people to view listening as a truly courageous act to truly listen and risk changing their mind, really understand anothers point of view.
They dont have to agree, she added. Diversity of opinion is the cornerstone of our democracy. But instead of waiting for the other person to take a breath so we can say our own opinion, actually listen. Otherwise were never going to make any progress.
Slocum and Dennis Noll, executive director of the San Antonio Area Foundation, which is partnering with public radio on this initiative, hosted a prominent group of leaders today the official launch date of Dare to Listen. These political, media, educational and religious notables have agreed to be among the first to take the dare.
Already, nearly 300 people have taken the dare publicly, Slocum said, including Desperate Housewives actor Chavira, who recently tweeted @RicardoAChavira: I dare to reserve judgment. There are names you might recognize, but also lots of others whom you may not recognize.
The essence of the idea came about years ago within public radio in general, Slocum added, but Texas Public Radio is the first to launch an actual initiative. Every day the message has become more relevant, she said.
The initiative organizers hope that better listening and communication ultimately will help unify people and reduce such tragic, violent incidents as the Dallas police shootings by a sniper during a peaceful Black Lives Matter protest and the killing of African-Americans during traffic stops or other police action.
But we started planning this before these really tragic elements came about, Slocum said.
She said Texas Public Radio also will broadcast conversations on some of the difficult issues that face our city and country. And in September, a series of Dare to Listen events on campuses will take place. Among those participating are San Antonio College, Palo Alto College, St. Marys University, Trinity University and the University of Texas at San Antonio.
For a better understanding of the initiative and to participate, go to idaretolisten.org.
jjakle@express-news.net
Paramount Pictures
Captain Fantastic: Ben (Viggo Mortensen) is raising six kids off the grid in the Pacific Northwest after his wife was institutionalized for bipolar disorder. His world is turned upside down when she kills herself and he takes them to New Mexico for the funeral. The film has a 76 Tomatometer score after premiering at Sundance in January, playing Cannes in May and getting a limited release last week.
Hillarys America: Conservative commentator and filmmaker Dinesh DSousa, who in 2012 warned us of the dire consequences of President Barack Obamas re-election in 2016: Obamas America, is back right on schedule for this alleged takedown of Hillary Clinton and the Democrats.
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A 17-year-old has been arrested in the killing of a small-business owner during a suspected robbery spree that stretched from southwest Houston to Missouri City.
The teenager is accused of killing Tri Minh Nguyen, 36, on March 29 at Wahoo's Fish N Wings, Nguyen's business was located at 12306 Fondren.
READ MORE: Deadly crime spree stretched from southwest Houston into Missouri City
According to a Houston Police Department release, the juvenile was taken into custody on Monday.
The teen has not been identified. Because he was 16 at the time of the shooting, he has been referred to Harris County Juvenile Probation authorities on a capital murder charge, the release said.
A juvenile cannot face the death penalty, but a capital murder conviction brings an automatic life sentence with the possibility of parole after 40 years for juvenile offenders.
HPD had said Nguyen was shot during an attempted robbery and died at the scene.
READ MORE: Police looking for man who fatally shot Houston restaurant owner
The teenaged suspect is also believed to be linked to other robberies after the slaying, including one in April at Shipley Do-Nuts, 8802 Stella Link.
He's also accused of robbing a Food Dollar store at 13210 South Post Oak, and the New China Restaurant at 6302 Texas 6 in Missouri City.
The suspect allegedly fled all four scenes in a gold-colored car. At the time of Bguyen's death and the robberies, the suspect was described as wearing tan pants, a gray hoodie and distinctive light blue shoes.
Rome's Via dei Condotti was named for the channels that once brought water to the Baths of Agrippa. These days, it carries credit cards from the Spanish Steps to Gucci, Prada, Hermes and virtually every other luxury store you could possibly imagine.
So on a recent trip to the Eternal City, I walked down the street and treated myself to some window shopping.
That glittering diamond bracelet? Too flashy for my taste. Those shoes? Way more heel than I could handle. But when I arrived at Largo Carlo Goldoni, I looked up and found something I'd definitely want to take home: my husband and daughter.
They were up on the third floor of Palazzo Fendi, the fashion house's flashy new flagship, which features the brand's largest store in the world, a VIP area for big spenders and a Japanese restaurant imported from London. It's also home to Fendi Private Suites, a hotel with just seven rooms that began welcoming guests in December.
The hotel project is the latest evolution for Fendi, which got its start as a handbag and fur shop in Rome in 1925. The empire now dresses men, women and children from head to toe. (Extremely wealthy men, women and children.) It peddles timepieces, as well as a Casa line of home furnishings and accessories.
Like all of these pricey products, Fendi's expansion into the hospitality realm is very much on trend.
More Information If you go WHERE TO STAY Fendi Private Suites: Via di Fontanella Borghese, 48, Rome, 011-39-06-9779-8080; fendiprivatesuites.com. Luxury hotel of just seven designer suites located near the Spanish Steps in Rome; rooms begin at $460. Includes breakfast, nonalcoholic drinks and evening tea service. Portrait Florence: Lungarno degli Acciaiuoli 4, Florence, 011-39-055-2726-8000, lungarnocollection.com. The newest property in the Ferragamo family's hotel collection with a view overlooking the Ponte Vecchio and Arno River. All 37 suites feature retro photos of glam celebrities and Salvatore Ferragamo's Tuscan Soul bath products. Special services available for dogs. Rooms begin at about $415. Armani Hotel Milano: Via Manzoni, 31, Milan, 011-39-02-8883-8888; milan.armanihotels.com. Ninety-five guest rooms located in the heart of Milan's Brera district. Amenities include an indoor pool, a business center and meeting facilities. Rates start at about $460. See More Collapse
The fabulous fingerprints of French designer Christian Lacroix are all over three hotels in Paris. In London, you can crash at Claridge's in a Diane von Furstenberg-designed suite. Todd Oldham designed The Hotel of South Beach in Miami, which is where Tommy Hilfiger has plans for a membership-based boutique hotel of his own.
No fashion designers have gotten as gung ho about hotels, however, as the Italians, says Alice Dallabona, a teaching fellow at the University of Leeds. She studied the industry for her fashion marketing Ph.D. and discovered that brands from her home country are dominating the scene.
When the opulent Palazzo Versace debuted on Australia's Gold Coast in 2000, it was billed as "the world's first fashion-branded hotel." The Ferragamo family could dispute that claim: Their hotel business - the Lungarno Collection, which includes properties in Florence, Rome and the Tuscan countryside - celebrated its 20th anniversary last year.
But it's a series of newer ventures that have made the Italian fashion hotel craze impossible to miss. The Armani Hotel Dubai opened in 2010 in Burj Khalifa, the tallest building on the planet. A year later, Armani unveiled a Milan location that occupies an entire city block with the brand's trademark elegance. From there, it's just a quick Vespa ride to the first hotel developed by Bulgari, which opened in 2004. The Italian jeweler has since expanded to London and Bali and has plans to roll out three more properties in 2017: in Shanghai, Beijing and Dubai.
Dallabona's theory about what's driving this boom? "Italian luxury labels can capitalize on (the country's) reputation as a place with beauty, excellence and a desirable lifestyle," she says. So, although all designers can market aesthetics, Italians can also promise a taste of "la dolce vita" - and a nice Chianti.
It's a combination that doesn't always quite work. Dallabona focused her doctoral research on Hotel Missoni Edinburgh and Maison Moschino in Milan, which opened in 2009 and 2010, respectively. They closed in 2014 and 2015, respectively. She was a fan of both hotels, especially the way Moschino translated its ironic take on fashion into a hip hideaway. Her favorite detail: An "Alice in Wonderland"-themed room featured a table made from a giant cup. Apparently, not enough guests showed up for the tea party.
So, although there's a strong demand for luxury experiences, Dallabona says, a prestigious label on a hotel won't guarantee success.
That's probably one of the reasons Fendi is being relatively cautious with its first foray into the hospitality business. Rather than a stand-alone venture, Fendi Private Suites is part of the larger Palazzo Fendi project. And with just seven suites, it's probably not even large enough for your average celebrity entourage.
There's no question that the company knows how to make purses - such as the popular Baguette, so named because it can be tucked under one's arm as easily as a loaf of fresh bread. Running a hotel, however, comes with a different kind of baggage.
Or, rather, luggage.
When my family showed up with our stuff for check-in, we found ourselves gazing through a window at a mannequin in a $2,400 coat. It took a few moments for us to discover the discreet doorway marked "Fendi Private Suites," next to a side entrance to the store. Inside was just a small room with a beautiful woman standing behind a desk. She greeted us by name and then sent us on what seemed to be a secret mission.
We should leave our things here, she instructed. Our job was to ride the elevator up to the third floor, where we'd be met by another contact with further details on our stay.
As the doors opened on the lobby, I heard soft music thumping and caught a whiff of something pleasant. Perhaps a signature scent? (For Ferragamo's pair of Portrait hotels in Florence and Rome, that company developed a sweet fragrance called Vendemmia, which means "harvest.")
Beside the reception desk - a marble masterpiece uniting blocks of varying heights, shapes and shades - stood a row of employees who looked as if they'd been transported from "Downton Abbey," except in uniforms that belonged on a runway. On other occasions, I'd peeked into Florence's Portrait hotel and the Armani Hotel Milano and noticed that their staffs were impeccably turned out in designer threads. The Fendi look is undeniably edgier.
It was tough not to stare at the maid, whose bright-gold sleeve cuffs popped from her mostly black-and-white ensemble. And she wore clogs adorned with a quirky Fendi motif, a string of triangles resembling a row of chomping teeth. I somehow managed to turn my attention to a woman in a navy-blue jacket with white piping who seemed ready to command a chic spaceship. But first, she got us our room key.
Although there are just a few suites, the hotel sprawls across an entire floor of the palazzo, so we crossed through two communal lounge areas on the way to our room. One features a fireplace, a fuzzy gray couch made of connected blobs and a display case showing off a purse with red paint dripping from it. The other has lights dangling from the ceiling on leather straps, a trio of pointy black cones in lieu of an end table and an impressive art book collection.
I was prepared for something equally wacky, yet tasteful, inside our room. Instead, I was blown away by how tame the place was. The interior was dominated by calming neutral tones and appeared to be functional as much as fashionable. Fendi labels were on pretty much everything, and the available reading material would appeal only to true Fendi-philes. (I tried, and failed, to get into a coffee-table book of bag portraits called "Fendi Baguette" and a four-volume series, "Metamorphoses of an American," by legendary Fendi creative director Karl Lagerfeld.) Still, the place doesn't scream "showroom."
To my left was a bank of gray doors that floated off the floor and were surrounded by a soft glow. That's where we found the closet (with an empty Fendi shopping bag hanging inside, naturally), the safe and the marble-topped mini-bar.
Straight ahead was the bathroom, where that same brownish-red Lepanto marble graced the double vanity and the I-could-get-lost-in-here shower. The dark color provided a bold backdrop for the gleaming white of the soaking tub, the fluffy Fendi towels and the Diptyque toiletries.
We opted to head right, to take a rest on the leather couch and crimson velvet armchair in the seating area and to peruse the goodies that greeted us on the desk: a plate of candied dates, a bottle of water, a map of Rome and an iPad loaded with our room guide.
Here's what we learned: The lighting system is fully adjustable, so you can decide how bright or dim to make various fixtures. This includes the niche above the bed occupied by "the Fendi fur tablet," a framed collage of dyed pelt that's a reminder of the company's core business. The sheets are a "twisted and mercerized Mako cotton satin-feel fabric," although linen is available on request. And the "Menu Guanciali" (aka Pillows Menu) allows guests to choose from six styles offering various benefits. That's right - it's your call whether to go for "utmost comfort" or "one of a kind rest."
At that point, I noticed it wasn't only my head that was spinning. My husband had figured out that the flat-screen TV - which comes mounted in the middle of a glass room divider - can swivel to face either the couch or the bed.
We switched it on and were soon engrossed in the Fendi channel, which shows a mesmerizing cartoon on a loop. Set to a soundtrack of flowing water, a series of squiggly line drawings depict scenes from Rome, including Palazzo Fendi, cobblestone streets and various fountains.
That's a not-so-subtle way of reminding visitors that Fendi is also taking part in another Italian fashion trend: paying for monumental renovation projects. Prada and Versace collaborated to spruce up Milan's Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II before Expo 2015. In Rome, Bulgari is funding a fix of the Spanish Steps, while shoemaker Tod's is taking on the Colosseum.
Fendi's contribution was more than $2 million for a restoration of the Trevi Fountain, a 250-year-old landmark that had begun crumbling. It reopened in November, so it seemed like a fitting first stop for our family once we ventured out of the palazzo.
As we made our way back past the fuzzy blob couch, we had our only encounter with another guest. Her age was indeterminable, partially because she had sunglasses on indoors. But it was also because she sashayed way too quickly for me to get a look at anything other than the backs of her silver boots.
My guess? She had some very important shopping to do. Probably most of the folks booking rooms at Fendi Private Suites think a lot about their wardrobes. It's not a requirement, though. Even my husband immediately felt at ease, which I suspect is by design. There must be plenty of people who would never consider dropping $650 on a leather iPhone cover but would gladly accept that price for a memorable night at a hotel.
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Albany
Tuesday's meeting of the state Board of Elections was its first since the late May release of a report from the state Inspector General that revealed John Conklin, the Republican spokesman for the bipartisan entity, had leaked a confidential referral outlining the findings of an investigation into the campaign spending activities of groups affiliated with New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio.
The de Blasio probe was conducted by the board Independent Enforcement Counsel Risa Sugarman, whose office operates separately from the board's staff an arrangement that has led to friction in the past.
After the referral, which was sent to the Manhattan district attorney and federal prosecutors, was leaked to the Daily News, Sugarman asked the IG to investigate. The eventual report was yet another black eye for the board, and based on the evidence of Tuesday's meeting it has renewed the tension between certain members of the board's staff and Sugarman's unit.
Democratic Co-Chair Doug Kellner noted that the board had taken action in response to Conklin's leaking, though Republican Commissioner Greg Peterson objected to any public description of what that action might have been. (Conklin was not present for the meeting; one staffer mentioned that he was ill.)
When the commissioners prepared to begin discussion of a proposed set of document confidentiality rules something called for by the IG's report Sugarman asked to speak.
"Commissioners, I was given this proposed policy 24 hours ago," she said, initially reading a brief prepared statement. "I've not had the time or the chance to process the contents, or conduct a legal analysis to determine whether it is appropriate in scope, or consistent with the law that created my independent division or position with the Board of Elections."
She asked for any discussion of the proposal to be tabled until her office could do that work, and said that the draft was deficient in at least one of its analyses of existing case law.
Peterson and Republican co-chair Peter Kosinski proceeded to scold her, noting that the board was supposed to respond to the IG by the end of the week.
"You've had six weeks to do this, let's be fair," Kosinski said, referring to when the IG's report was released. " ... You need to share whatever you have with us."
Asked why she hadn't made her own proposals, Sugarman said she had been unaware that anyone was working on the matter until a meeting last week.
"We're not operating in a bubble here," Peterson shot back. " ... That's disingenuous, it really is."
"I'm sorry, commissioner, but it's a condition in which I've been working for two years," Sugarman responded drily.
"By choice," Peterson said, his voice rising and his index fingers jabbing at Sugarman. " ... You should be part of this team. Certainly there are certain things that are sacrosanct as far as you're concerned, which I respect, but you're still part of this organization, the New York State Board of Elections. And as such, you have a responsibility, just like the commissioners have a responsibility, to have input. You had six weeks to have input. If you had something that was bothering you, you should have said, 'Gentlemen, this is what I suggest, this is what I wanna do, this is how I need the protection and I hope that you'll go along with this!' And you submit that to the staff, they have something to chew on and then today we would have had something on the table to vote on!"
There was a pause.
"Now, that being said I think we should just cut this thing short," Peterson said. "End of story, we'll give you some time to get this thing done."
cseiler@timesunion.com 518-454-5619 @CaseySeiler
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STAMFORD A city man who hoped to run as a Democrat for a state House of Representatives seat has lost his court battle to get on the ballot.
As a result, David Michel will not run in the Aug. 9 primary for the 146th District against incumbent Terry Adams and Dan Dauplaise.
Michel said Wednesday he will support Adams.
Ill continue to fight for the welfare of this city through local politics, community service and protecting our public spaces, said Michel, an environmental activist who has been involved in cleanups in Shippan.
Michel and his campaign manager, Dan Honan, lost Tuesday in state Superior Court in Stamford against Democratic Registrar of Voters Ron Malloy and Deputy Registrar Lynne Fife.
The judge made the right decision. He followed the law, just as we did once we realized an error was made, Malloy said.
Michel, who switched from the Green Party in May, had been approved by Malloy in early June to collect signatures to secure his place on the primary ballot.
At the end of the month, however, state officials informed Malloy that Michel was ineligible based on a rule that prevents new party members from engaging in certain party activities for 90 days. Michel challenged an interpretation that prohibited petitioning during this period.
A final issue raised by plaintiffs is whether candidacy would be considered participation in a primary or a privilege accompanying party membership, Judge Charles T. Lee wrote in his decision. To state the question is basically to answer it. It is difficult to imagine a more profound example of participation in a primary than actually running as a candidate.
The 146th District race will still be one of 10 Democratic and two Republican primaries happening statewide next month in advance of the general election Nov. 8.
The Stamford DCC supports the ruling from Stamford Superior Court (Tuesday) as consistent with state law, DCC Chairman Josh Fedeli said. We look forward to the primary on Aug. 9 and allowing the electoral process to select a Democrat to run for office of state representative in the 146th District.
Democratic delegates from Stamford convened on Monday to endorse Adams, who was elected in 2014, for another term. Adams is also on the city Board of Representatives, a post he told delegates he would resign if re-elected.
Adams will face Dauplaise, an attorney who ran for state Senate in 2012 in the 36th District against Republican L. Scott Frantz, and who collected signatures to be on the ballot.
David brought passion and, most importantly, attention to the environmental issues that affect the citizens of the 146th district, many of whom live on the Long Island Sound, Dauplaise said. Mr. Michel spent countless hours knocking on doors around the district to collect signatures to appear on the primary ballot.
In a similar case last month in Bethel, a Democratic candidate was deemed ineligible to run based on the same rule.
eskalka@scni.com
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BRIDGEPORT The jobs of five school police officers may be saved, thanks to a city deal that freezes salaries in exchange for restoring those positions, but its not clear who is responsible for paying the five salaries.
The citys deal, which school officials had no hand in negotiating, could worsen, not improve the districts financial picture, officials said Tuesday night.
Word of the deal caused Interim School Superintendent Fran Rabinowitz to consult with the school board attorney, while Mayor Joe Gamins office promised an announcement on Wednesday.
For school parents such as Mary Tracy, the deal is welcome news.
When my children start school in September, I wont have to worry about them, said Tracy, who has a daughter at Harding High School, where lock downs are common.
In June, the city school board voted to eliminate the five school resource officers to save $492,000 in its deficit-plagued 2016-17 operating budget.
The school resource officers, who are sworn cops and carry weapons, are part of the National Association of Government Employees. The union agreed to forgo raises in 2017 in exchange for two years of job security.
Dwayne Harrison, a school resource officer, is president of the union local. More than 470 NAGE members work for the school district, not only as school cops, but as security guards, cafeteria workers, custodians and clerical staff.
Last weekend, Rabinowitz told the school board the deal would not apply to school resource officers, whose jobs were eliminated by the board last month.
On Tuesday, Rabinowitz took that assurance back after receiving a memo from Janene W. Hawkins, director of the citys Office of Labor Relations. Hawkins told Rabinowitz the layoffs of the special officers were rescinded.
The Board of Education action to lay off Special Officers only a week before this proposal was passed may expose the city and the Board of Education to liability," Hawkins wrote.
Rabinowitz said she was also told the board would be responsible for the salaries.
How do I work that if the board of education has eliminated the positions? Rabinowitz asked.
Rabinowitz said she will consult with the boards attorney. Under state law, the city cant tell the school board how to spend its budget.
This is all shenanigans, board member Maria Pereira said Tuesday. They are not being rehired. They were eliminated as a budgetary expense ... We have every right to defund positions.
And then there are the cost implications: Freezing salaries of NAGE workers and the City Supervisors Union is estimated to save the district about $237,000, said Marlene Siegel, the school districts finance director.
Those savings would have been used to keep a handful of the 47 kindergarten teaching assistants whose jobs are facing elimination.
If the district is forced to pay the salaries of the school police, the district would lose the savings of the frozen wages and increase its budget gap by $255,000.
When the school board cut the school resource officers, members indicated they would be open to keeping the SROs if the city picked up the tab.
On Tuesday, Gamins office refused repeated requests for comment.
We will have an announcement on that (Wednesday), said Av Harris, Ganims spokesman.
Last month in an interview, Bridgeport Police Chief A. J. Perez decried the possible loss of the SROs.
What they do is safeguard the lives of 22,000 children, Perez said at the time. All of these guys are professionals. The board of education needs to reconsider. How do I safeguard kids if I am going to lose these guys?
Perez called the possible action reckless. He also said the department was looking into any possibility to save the positions.
DANBURY - The state Elections Enforcement Commission took no action Wednesday on a complaint against embattled city Democratic Party leader Gene Eriquez.
The complaint, filed in January by former city Democratic Party leader Joseph Walkovich, accuses Eriquez and a political ally of violating Connecticut campaign law by failing to keep proper fund-raising records for a political action committee.
The complaint is expected to be taken up at the Commissions next meeting in August, a staff attorney said.
Among the charges in the complaint are:
Late filing of financial disclosure forms
Missing filings for spending on certain candidates
Checks and expenditures that are unaccounted for
Eriquez, a former longtime mayor, ousted Walkovich for the party leadership in March on a promise to take back City Hall, which is home to eight-term GOP mayor Mark Boughton.
But everything changed for Eriquez in May when he was arrested on charges that he beat his wife in a drunken rage.
Amid calls by prominent Democrats for him to resign, Eriquez announced instead that he would step aside. That was not enough for state Sen. Ted Kennedy Jr., who canceled his appearance as the keynote speaker at the Democratic Town Committees mid-July fundraiser.
That gala event will go on as planned Thursday night, with a different guest speaker.
Last week, all six Democratic members of the City Council asked Eriquez to resign. On Tuesday, Eriquez suggested that he had done enough to separate himself from party leadership responsibilities by stepping aside.
Contributed photo / Contributed photo
Ridgefield police will be inspecting and installing car seats at the Prospector Theater Wednesday until noon.
Child Passenger Safety Technicians will help on a first come, first served basis. The inspections and installations are free of charge and no appointment is necessary.
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State Attorney General Kamala Harris got a chance to tout her labor record Tuesday at a union-focused town hall in Oakland, but she quickly pivoted to other issues such as immigration and tensions between police and African Americans.
With four months to go before the November election and polls showing Harris far ahead of Rep. Loretta Sanchez, D-Santa Ana, in the race for U.S. Senate Harris took uncharacteristically provocative positions.
An undocumented immigrant is not a criminal, Harris said, citing presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trumps anti-immigrant comments following last years arrest of a repeatedly deported Mexican national in the killing of a woman in San Francisco. We have to correct our course on that conversation.
The California Labor Federation hosted the town hall at a downtown Oakland hotel to try to cobble together a unifying agenda for an often fractious body of union workers and representatives. Harris contribution to that agenda includes support for retirement benefits, affordable child care and the Affordable Care Act, all of which she highlighted during her speech.
The Democrat also pointed to the 2013 lawsuit her office brought against the for-profit Corinthian Colleges, claiming that they preyed on low-income California students.
Kamala Harris has shown shes a fighter for working people, said Bob Schoonover, president of Service Employees International Union Local 721, who introduced the attorney general.
The town hall took place at a high point in what has been a smooth campaign for Harris. She finished first in the June primary by 21 points over Sanchez, and a Field Poll released last week showed her with a 15-point lead over her fellow Democrat. Rumors have swirled for days that Vice President Joe Biden plans to endorse Harris to succeed retiring Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer.
Asked when Bidens endorsement might come, Harris demurred.
I really cant speak to that at this moment, but I will keep you posted, she said with a smile.
The mood shifted during a protracted question-and-answer period, in which union delegates got to grill Harris on uncomfortable topics including the Black Lives Matter movement and the corrosive relationship between police and African Americans.
As a career prosecutor, I worked shoulder to shoulder with cops, she said. But then I look at this issue as an African American woman, and I do not know a black man who has not personally experienced racial profiling.
Harris already has the backing of the labor federation, whose members endorsed her in the June primary.
Shes in a position to be a U.S. senator not only for the next six years, but perhaps for much longer, said Steve Smith, a federation spokesman.
Rachel Swan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: eswan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @rachelswan
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Helicopter pilots, border patrol agents and Victoria County Sheriffs spent most of Monday scouring an area dominated by trees and brush after area authorities reported a "bailout of undocumented" immigrants along a secluded road.
Two searches brought 11 arrests of individuals from South America, a driver and a person suspected of smuggling the nine people.
RELATED: 25 undocumented immigrants found behind false door on tractor trailer in South Texas
According to alerts posted to the Victoria County Sheriff's Department Facebook, a group of individuals suspected of entering the country illegally were spotted on FM 447 and Lower Mission Valley road on Monday morning.
An initial search of the area returned little results as authorities arrested a suspected smuggler while the individuals who were allegedly smuggled into the country remained on the run as the afternoon approached.
Officials panned the area and called off the search just before noon, but Victoria County Sheriff T. Michael O'Connor decided to check the area again.
RELATED: South Texas Sheriff's son arrested, suspected of helping 14 enter the country illegally
O'Connor went down Lower Mission Valley Road and saw a truck picking up an individual. The Sheriff detained the driver while the individual being picked up ran. This prompted officials to reengage search efforts.
Shortly after reviving the search, Victoria County Sheriff's Department received a tip from a Victoria resident who said they spotted a person that matched the description of the individual seen running from O'Connor earlier.
RELATED: 'El Chapo' is still behind bars, but Twitter users showed preparedness amid rumors of a third escape
The second search returned nine people accused of entering the country illegally, hailing from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala.
The individuals suspected of entering the U.S. illegally were dehydrated. Officials gave the people water before being turned over to U.S. Border Patrol officials.
It is unclear whether the other two people arrested will be facing charges.
MMedina@mySA.com
Twitter: @MariahMedinaaa
A 50-year-old Austin man previously convicted four times for drunken driving was arrested a fifth time last week for allegedly drinking and driving again this time crashing outside a liquor store.
Kevin Lampkin was booked into the Travis County Jail Saturday for a felony charge of driving while intoxicated with three or more previous convictions. His bond was set at $20,000, according to online jail records.
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SAN ANTONIO More than 30 San Antonio Police Department officers are headed to Dallas to help lighten the load on local police as memorial services continue for the five officers who were gunned down last week at the close of a protest against police killings.
SAPD spokesman Sgt. Jesse Salame said officers will assist law enforcement agencies in the area by responding to calls, directing traffic and providing any other support they can.
Salame said SAPD Chief William McManus reached out to Chief David O. Brown on Monday night to ask if the department could use and physical assistance from SAPD.
RELATED: Former President George W. Bush baffles internet with swaying, dancing at Dallas memorial
President Barack Obama attended a memorial service for those who died on Tuesday, but more services that will put additional strain on the department are scheduled throughout the week.
Funerals for DPD Sr. Cpl. Lorne Ahrens, Sgt. Michael Smith and Dallas Area Rapid Transit Officer Brent Thompson were held on Wednesday, according to the Associated Press.
Services for DPD officers Michael Krol and Patrick Zamarippa will be held later in the week.
SAPD Officer Douglas Greene was among officers who volunteered to head north.
RELATED: San Antonio law enforcement on alert after bricks, bullets used to target officers over weekend
He said every officer who was selected volunteered to go.
A lot of those officers (in Dallas) have memorial services that they need to attend, but they still have their assignments that they have to take care of as well, Greene said.
He said the extra manpower will allow Dallas officers to pay their respects to their fallen colleagues without having to worry about the day-to-day operations on their respective shifts.
We feel good that we are able to help in that way and we know that they would do the same for us, he said.
Additionally, Salame said the absence of the officers will have no impact on regular patrols in San Antonio.
RELATED: Police: 3 arrested in 'credible threat' to harm officers
He said most of the officers are assigned to specialized units that do not usually respond to calls on patrol, or used their days off to lend a hand.
It is a kinship that is felt among officers from across the country, he said. It is a way for us to pay tribute to them, while helping out and showing support.
McManus announced on Wednesday afternoon that he would also travel to Dallas to attend ceremonies and memorials on Thursday.
Its always a kick in the gut when you see other officers killed in the line of duty, especially the way it happened up in Dallas, he said, adding that his attendance on Thursday is a show of respect and solidarity.
Since the shootings in Dallas, law enforcement agencies in Bexar County have had dangerous run-ins of their own.
An unidentified suspect fired shots at Public Safety Headquarters on Saturday night, and a Bexar County Sheriffs deputy had a brick thrown at his patrol vehicle earlier in the day.
Despite those incidents, Greene said SAPD has received amazing support from the community.
Weve had food and all kinds of gifts come into the police station, he said. It helps us know that the community has our back.
Salame said officers have received cards, cups of coffee, stress balls, and even letters of appreciation and prayers left on their vehicles.
Theyve given us everything you could ask for, Salame said. We are lucky that in out community we have such a huge amount of support.
Officers are expected to return home on Sunday, after services for the fallen Dallas officers have concluded.
mdwilson@express-news.net
Twitter: @MDWilsonSA
At Tuesday's memorial for the five officers killed last week in an ambush attack in downtown Dallas, President Barack Obama was joined on stage by the first lady, vice president and his wife, former first lady Laura Bush, and a dancing former president George W. Bush.
RELATED: Kanye West gets in bed with former president George W. Bush, other celebs for new 'Famous' video
During a choir rendition of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," the former president, holding hands with his wife and Michelle Obama, began to sway back and forth, smiling and singing along to the music. And many internet revelers believe the apparent joy is misplaced.
RELATED: George W. Bush bicycles with wounded veterans in Texas on 70th birthday
Many took to social media to express their concern, wondering if Bush was drunk, and to make a few jokes. And many seemed upset that Bush appeared so happy at such a solemn event.
Or, as Gawker put it: "It was, as you would expect, a somber affair for everyoneeveryone except George W. Bush, who was ready to f---ing party."
It was his own concert he points to his fans in the crowd, nudges Michelle Obama, who reluctantly smiles back at him, and sings along with the choir.
No one else on stage joined in on the swaying or dancing or whatever it was. There is also an officer standing behind Bush who appears to be wiping tears away during the song.
RELATED: Happy 70th birthday, George W. Bush, the most doll-friendly president
At the memorial, Bush spoke saying, "Too often we judge other groups by their worst examples while judging ourselves by our best intentions."
The former president recently turned 70 last week on July 6.
Click through the gallery to see how the internet reacted to Bush's swaying and dancing.
kbradshaw@express-news.net
Twitter: @kbrad5
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Shortly after a man violated Gypsy Jokers Motorcycle Club rules, his body was found with nails driven through his boots, a fractured skull, leg, rib and multiple slash wounds on his face and back, according to media reports.
Robert Huggins, 56, who died last July, was allegedly tortured and killed by four members of the motorcycle club as punishment for breaking the rules: no intravenous drug use or theft, according to KOIN.
Members of the Portland, Oregon-based group thought Huggins was stealing from them to buy heroin, the TV station reported Monday. The whites-only motorcycle group refers to themselves as a "One Percent" bike club, a nod to their outlaw ways, according to The Daily Beast.
To be in the club, The Oregonian reported in 2008, "members must be male, 21 and own an American-made bike. Cops, gay people, needle users and African Americans need not apply" to the group, according to the Oregonian.
RELATED: 52 white supremacists arrested on meth trafficking charges
In April 2016, nearly nine months after Huggins' death, Mark Dencklau, the club's regional president, Earl Fisher, Tiler Pribbernow and Malachi Watkins were arrested for Huggins' murder, according to Multnomah County Jail records.
Portland Police Bureau Homicide detective James Lawrence testified at a hearing in Oregon on Monday, KOIN reported Monday. Lawrence said Huggins was the motorcycle club's treasurer and "enforcer." He was kicked out with a beating in 2014 for stealing from club members to buy heroin, and was stripped of his patches and motorcycle.
RELATED: 12 facts about the biker gangs involved in the Twin Peaks shooting
Then, last June, Huggins sought revenge, Lawrence said. He was involved in the kidnapping of Dencklau's girlfriend and a robbery. Dencklau's girlfriend was tied up at home.
Seeking revenge for the kidnapping incident, the Gypsy Jokers were out looking for Huggins, Lawrence said. Around June 30, 2015, Huggins was kidnapped from a known drug house in Portland and was taken across state lines into Washington where he was tortured to death, police say.
His body was dumped in a field in Ridgefield, Washington, about 30 miles north of Portland.
RELATED: Confederate, slavery artifacts survive in Texas as nationwide push to remove them widens
Lawrence said detectives used cellphone records that showed the suspects traveling near where Huggins' body was dumped. They also found surveillance footage from a residence and gas station that show two vehicles at the residence where Huggins was supposedly tortured and the group transporting the body.
Loggers found Huggins' body before 6 a.m. July 1 and police were able to identify him from his tattoos.
Watkins remains in custody in Washington. Dencklau, Pribbernow and Fisher are being held without bail in Multnomah County Jail in Oregon, according to jail records. They are expected to go to trial next year.
kbradshaw@express-news.net
Twitter: @kbrad5
Make it a note to never let Jesus or to whomever it is that you pray take the wheel.
A woman in the panhandle of Florida, in Mary Esther, crashed her red Ford sedan into a house after she closed her eyes to pray while she was driving, according to the Okaloosa County Sheriff's Office.
Donald Trump recently told a group of evangelicals that he has doubts about the Christianity of both President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Some were turned off by Trumps accusation, while others winced at the use of religion in a campaign.
Like it or not, religious language has become affixed to American politics. Every campaign season now has a faith component in which candidates use the language of the faithful to attract attention and convince voters that their policies are in line with divine teachings.
What is missing is that while the candidates are espousing a particular political ideology, they are also expressing a religious ideology.
Religious language, practices and beliefs are now used as a proxy for political language. As candidates tout their faith, they are using it as a tool to both inspire and shame people into supporting their policies. Even though many cringe at the use of religion in campaigns because it can be divisive, religion has a rightful place in politics. However, in order for it be a positive, people must be willing to thoughtfully engage their own religious beliefs.
By recognizing and investigating the religious ideologies articulated by candidates, this rhetoric can help people gain both a better understanding of what their religion requires of them and how it can be applied to politics. However, an unwillingness to do this can erode American civil society and make religion even more divisive.
One of the reasons for the continued relevance of religion in America is that the U.S. lacks an official religion, which provides the opportunity for various religious faiths to develop and create a vast religious marketplace. This is especially true of Christianity, the most prominent religion in the U.S., which seems to have more flavors than Baskin-Robbins. This variety is beloved, but it is also the cause of tension. This competition intensifies during election years as candidates have tapped into these differences and used a variety of religious ideologies to advance their political ideologies.
This years election has seen Trump promote both the gospel of prosperity and religious nationalism. The prosperity gospel emphasizes individualism and personal wealth acquisition, while religious nationalism argues that the nation is divinely inspired, favored and directed. These belief systems are manifested in slogans such as Make America Great Again, proposing temporary bans on specific religious groups, and emphasizing the need to reinforce the nations Christian identity. In contrast, Hillary Clinton has worked to tap into the social gospel tradition, which stresses actively working to change societal structures to create a more just society.
What many seem to miss is that this is not a conflict between evangelicals and non-evangelicals. Research has shown that evangelicals are split on their ascription to the various religious ideologies that exist. The battles over the dominant religious ideology are being waged within and across faith traditions.
As religion became increasingly intertwined with American politics, candidates picked up on these divides and used them as tools for mobilizing religious populations. In doing this, the competition moved from being a theological debate to a political debate. Those who believe America is the land of opportunity that provides everyone with a fair shake see the criticisms of American political, economic and social structures as blasphemy. Those who believe discrimination and oppression are rampant argue that America has forgotten or ignores religious mandates to protect the powerless.
What all of this demonstrates is that there is no consensus on what it means to be religious. The constant use of religious rhetoric in political campaigns, however, has made the battle over what it means to be religious a political fight.
Moving forward, we should not just dismiss it as pandering to religious groups, but as signals of what it means to be religious in America and what Americans are divinely mandated to accomplish. Once we appreciate this, we can better understand both the religious and political conflicts in America and what this means as we enter our places of worship and voting booths.
Eric McDaniel is an associate professor of government at the University of Texas at Austin.
1 Iraq bombings: A suicide car bomb ripped through an outdoor market in a Shiite-dominated northeastern district of Baghdad on Tuesday, killing at least 12 people, officials said, as government forces deployed across much of the Iraqi capital in preparation for a major military parade later this week. Five more people died in bombings Tuesday elsewhere in Iraq. No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attacks, but they bore the hallmarks of the Islamic State group. The Sunni extremists consider Shiites as heretics.
2 Mali violence: Hospital officials in northern Mali say at least three people are dead and 32 wounded after a protest in the town of Gao turned violent. One protester, Attayoub Maiga, said demonstrators were marching peacefully Tuesday when police opened fire as they approached the towns central market near police headquarters. The Malian government had banned the demonstration of people opposed to a peace accord signed more than a year ago with various armed groups in the north. Despite the peace accord, extremists have continued to mount attacks against Malian soldiers and U.N. peacekeepers.
Posted on 07/13/2016, 9:00 am, by Farmscape.Ca
Manitobas Agriculture Minister estimates the province will be ready to move forward with a Targeted Growth Strategy for Agriculture within the next six to eight months.
More than 100 agricultural stakeholder groups were represented yesterday in Portage La Prairie for consultations hosted by Manitobas Agriculture Minister to gather input and discuss the development of strategies to help grow the agriculture sector.
Ralph Eichler says agriculture and food production are important economic drivers in Manitoba and the Manitoba government wants to ensure stakeholders play a key role developing a targeted growth strategy.
Were trying to get ready for our Federal, Provincial, Territories Ministerial Meeting coming up in July and I want to be able to carry Manitobas views and their thoughts as we go forward to meet with my counterparts across Canada. The two outreaches that we had, the first one on June 28 and of course this one, weve got an awful lot of feedback. This is an opportunity to get it right. Manitoba has been a leader and we want to just take it to the next level and make sure we get more information out to our other colleagues who have been actually calling and reaching out saying what are you hearing in Manitoba so were excited about that and have that opportunity. The whole concept about the conversation and you heard that word over and over and over today and thats really what its all about. People want to be heard. They want to have the ability to be able to say I talked to the minister about this, yes its important, yes this is what we need to deliver and how are we going to do that together. Again it comes back to that conversation. The other word that came up a lot was education. How are we going to educate the general population about where our food comes from, how do we make sure that it continues to be safe, how do we continue to deliver that food for value and make sure the consumer is rewarded at the end of the day and understands where the food comes from. ~ Ralph Eichler, Agriculture Minister Manitoba
Eichler expects to be ready to roll out a targeted growth strategy within six to eight months.
Posted on 07/13/2016, 1:07 pm, by mySteinbach
The province has reached an agreement with the federal government for additional research and analysis to be conducted on several proposals made by the province to further modernize the Canada Pension Plan (CPP). This announcement was made by Premier Brian Pallister.
We are pleased with the federal governments openness to a continued dialogue around the modernization of the CPP, the premier said.
He indicated the results of this research will guide further discussion on the proposals as part of both the next CPP triennial review and are to be included as an agenda item at the next finance ministers meeting.
On the basis of the assurance provided by the federal government, Manitoba has agreed to sign the agreement in principle on the enhancement of the Canada Pension Plan proposed at the close of the finance ministers meeting in June.
Our government proposed additional items for consideration by finance ministers which would make CPP not just bigger, but better as well, the premier said. We are very pleased by the support that these proposals have received from other jurisdictions and with the willingness of the federal government to conduct research and analysis to support their continued discussion.
Pallister noted Manitobas finance minister spent recent days discussing the provinces proposed enhancements to the agreement in principle with his counterparts from across the country, receiving many favourable responses, and he indicated those discussions will continue.
Reaching consensus on the provision of affordable enhancements to CPP may be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, said Finance Minister Cameron Friesen. Several other jurisdictions have indicated their willingness to both discuss and support these measures. Their input on Manitobas proposals will be an important part of the continued discussion around the modernization of the CPP.
Manitoba proposals to be included on the agenda of the next finance ministers meeting and as part of the next CPP triennial review include:
elimination of the claw back of guaranteed income supplement payments for widowed seniors CPP survivor benefits,
indexation of the CPP death benefit, and
comprehensive review of CPP survivor and disability benefits.
Manitoba will continue to advocate for full consideration of the measures we have proposed, said the premier. We look forward to hearing the views not only of Manitobans, but of all Canadians on these important issues.
WASHINGTON In a formal comment letter sent to Chairman Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) and members of the House Financial Services Committee, NACS expressed grave concerns with proposed legislation to repeal debit swipe fee reform.
Last month, Hensarling included a provision to repeal the Durbin Amendment in his discussion draft of the Financial CHOICE Act. Hensarling has asked for stakeholders to weigh in on his discussion draft before he formally introduces his bill in September. Representative Randy Neugebauer (R-TX) introduced a stand-alone bill, H.R. 5465, that would also repeal the Durbin Amendment.
NACS, along with the Merchants Payments Coalition and other retail trade associations, is actively opposing any efforts that would revoke debit reform, which limited price-fixed debit swipe fees and brought competition into the debit payments market.
In its letter, NACS states, This sensible reform, which merely limited price-fixing and increased competition, has been a clear success. Repealing it would only take the country backwards. It would leave Visa and MasterCard free to price-fix fees that banks charge without limitation. It would dramatically curtail competition among debit networks. And, repeal would increase costs for everyday consumers and merchants, thereby depressing sales and hurting the economy.
More than 120 retail companies sent a letter to the Financial Service Committee yesterday echoing these sentiments and urging Congress to protect competition under the Durbin Amendment. The signatories represented a broad range of the retail communityfrom large chains to small businesses, convenience stores, retail clothing stores and more.
The letter stated: As cornerstones in the business community, we are staunch supporters of free enterprise, and generally do not support any market intervention unless markets are not functioning efficiently. Credit and debit card acceptance is a prime example of a non-functioning marketplace.
Debit card reforms have been a major step in the right direction, and any removal of those reforms would be a monumental step in the wrong direction for U.S. businesses and consumers, stated the merchants.
On Tuesday, the House Financial Services Committee held a hearing on the Financial CHOICE Act entitled, Making a Financial Choice: More Capital or More Government Control? The hearing focused predominantly on other pieces of the bill.
However, one of the witnesses, Adam Levitin, a professor of Law at Georgetown University, commented on the economic ramifications of repealing the Durbin Amendment in his written testimony.
The repeal of the Durbin Interchange Amendment would result in merchants paying an extra $8 billion a year in debit card swipe fees to the 110 largest banks. Much of that extra $8 billion in additional fees will get passed through to consumers in the form of higher prices and worse service. Put another way, section 335 of the CHOICE Act is an $8 billion annual tax on consumers and merchants that is then handed over to subsidize the 110 largest banks in the United States, Levitin stated.
NACS encourages all members of the convenience store industry to contact your member of Congress to ask that debit reform be protected. You can do so in just two minutes by visiting the NACS Grassroots portal.
SEATTLE In a letter sent to U.S. employees on Monday, Starbucks Chairman and CEO Howard Schultz discussed new compensation, health care benefits, scheduling commitments and dress code changes. He emphasized the companys ongoing commitment to make investments in our partners and share some new developments that reflect that commitment.
Those changes include an increase in the base pay of 5% or more for all employees and store managers at U.S. company-operated locations, effective October 3. When an employee reaches two years of continuous service with Starbucks, the company will double the annual award of Bean Stock, a program that offers stock in the company to employees.
Starbucks is also changing its benefits program and online benefits platform to allow employees to shop, compare and choose health coverage. Starting July 18, interactive tools on the site will let workers personalize their health coverage, select an insurance carrier and choose a coverage level that fits their needs, as well as a competitive price that fits their budget.
Schulz pledged support in helping employees with scheduling enough hours on a consistent basis. While we have made progress over the years in providing more stability and consistency in scheduling, our field leaders are committed to make every effort to help you meet your specific scheduling needs, especially when it comes to ensuring your benefits eligibility going forward, he wrote.
Starbucks will also be making changes to the company dress code to allow employees to bring their whole self to work, with some speculation that this may be a loosening of the company ban against bright or unnatural hair color. More details about the dress code will be released at the Partner Open Forum later this month.
Yves here. This post is detailed and carefully argued, so get a cup of coffee. If you want a companion piece as to why Comeys arguments for letting Clinton off the hook were indefensible, the best one-stop shopping is 5 Reasons The Comey Hearing Was The Worst Education In Criminal Justice The American Public Has Ever Had. Please send this post and that link to Clinton defenders.
By Gaius Publius, a professional writer living on the West Coast of the United States and frequent contributor to DownWithTyranny, digby, Truthout, and Naked Capitalism. Follow him on Twitter @Gaius_Publius, Tumblr and Facebook. Originally published at at Down With Tyranny. GP article here
Its going to be a while before the jury of informed comment returns a verdict regarding James Comeys pre-emptive declaration of no prosecution for Hillary Clinton. But lets see what a first look gets us. I want to start with a couple of points made by Marcy Wheeler, then amplify them from other sources. The questions at issue are:
Should James Comey have made the call not to prosecute?
Should Clinton be prosecuted at all?
If she should be prosecuted, why?
If she should have been prosecuted, why wasnt she?
Some of these questions we can answer now. Others will have to wait until the people who specialize in this material discuss it more fully, which could take a while.
Comey Had No Business Making a Prosecutorial Decision
We can start with something were sure of. From Marcy Wheeler, in a piece called Does Jim Comey Think Thomas Drake Exhibited Disloyalty to the United States? we find this initial point (bolding in original):
Before we get into his argument, consider a more basic point: It is not Jim Comeys job to make prosecutorial decisions. Someone else whichever US Attorney oversaw the prosecutors on this case, Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, or Loretta Lynch makes that decision. [H]e has no business making this decision, and even less business making it public in the way he did (the latter of which points former DOJ public affairs director Matthew Miller was bitching about).
Alex Emmons, writing at The Intercept, agrees:
FBI Director Comey Preempts Justice Department By Advising No Charges for Hillary Clinton FBI Director James Comey took the unprecedented step of publicly preempting a Justice Department prosecution when he declared at a press conference Tuesday that no reasonable prosecutor would bring a case against Hillary Clinton for her use of a private email server. The FBIs job is to investigate crimes; it is Justice Department prosecutors who are supposed to decide whether or not to move forward. But in a case that had enormous political implications, Comey decided the FBI would act on its own. Although the Department of Justice makes final decisions on matters like this, we are expressing to Justice our view that no charges are appropriate in this case, he said. Prosecutors could technically still file criminal charges, but it would require them to publicly disagree with their own investigators.
Matthew Miller, a former spokesman for the Justice Department under Eric Holder, also agrees, and is quoted by both Wheeler and Emmons. Emmons account (my emphasis):
Matthew Miller, who was a spokesman for the Department of Justice under Attorney General Eric Holder, called Comeys press conference an absolutely unprecedented, appalling, and a flagrant violation of Justice Department regulations. He told The Intercept: The thing thats so damaging about this is that the Department of Justice is supposed to reach conclusions and put them in court filings. Theres a certain amount of due process there. Legal experts could not recall another time that the FBI had made its recommendation so publicly. Its not unusual for the FBI to take a strong positions on whether charges should be brought in a case, said University of Texas law professor Steve Vladeck. The unusual part is publicizing it.
Which leaves us with a mystery. Why did Comey do this?
It Looks Like Comey Said No Prosecution So Loretta Lynch Wouldnt Have To
Wheeler thinks Comey is covering for Attorney General Loretta Lynch, his boss, whose reputation for impartiality was damaged by her recent tarmac meeting with Bill Clinton. Wheeler writes, By overstepping the proper role of the FBI here, Comey surely gave Lynch cover now she can back his decision without looking like Bill Clinton convinced her to do so on the tarmac.
Emmons largely agrees:
Given the extraordinary circumstances, Vladeck called it both unusual and completely unsurprising that Comey went out of his way to make this statement. He added: Its certainly preemptive on Comeys part. Attorney General Loretta Lynch was widely criticized for meeting with former President Bill Clinton last week while his wife was still under investigation
You read that right: unusual and completely unsurprising. For Emmons and Vladeck it appears to be a case of insiders going out of their way, far out of their way in fact, to cover for insiders. Given how unprecedented Comeys speech was, I think we have to accept this hypothesis until others weigh in with more likely alternatives. This seems perfectly plausible to me. I can think of another motives for Comeys actions, but they dont exclude this one.
Should Clinton Be Prosecuted Despite Loretta Lynchs Refusal to Do So?
So far, weve been able to answer the first question, should Comey have made the call not to prosecute? The answer is clearly no. But that only gets us started. As to the prosecution itself should she be prosecuted and why? were in more complicated territory, which I hope to make clear.
(Note, by the way, that in my heading just above, Im transferring responsibility for the refusal to prosecute from Comey back to the Justice Department, where it belongs. I suggest in thinking about this that you do the same. Comey notwithstanding, its Lynch who has the authority, and Lynch who is refusing to prosecute.)
About prosecution, there are many laws that Clinton appears to have broken. In fact, there may develop a minor cottage industry that lists them. Comey himself identified some transgressions during his post-announcement speech (my emphasis below):
[S]even e-mail chains concern matters that were classified at the Top Secret/Special Access Program level when they were sent and received. These chains involved Secretary Clinton both sending e-mails about those matters and receiving e-mails from others about the same matters. There is evidence to support a conclusion that any reasonable person in Secretary Clintons position, or in the position of those government employees with whom she was corresponding about these matters, should have known that an unclassified system was no place for that conversation.
Note that this confirms, by the way, the fact that Special Access Program (SAP) information one of the highest, most sensitive levels of secret the government possesses was indeed housed on the server. Brian Pagliano, in doing any number of maintenance chores at the Clinton IT home-headquarters, could have read it, as could anyone helping him. Risking SAP information will be a tripwire for many in the intelligence community, who are likely to regard its mishandling as unforgivable. This is one of those areas where well know more over time as specialists weigh in. (The political response of the intel community, if any, could also be interesting, in a drama of retaliation way. This may not occur, but its one of the possibilities.)
Next Comey adds:
In addition to this highly sensitive information, we also found information that was properly classified as Secret by the U.S. Intelligence Community at the time it was discussed on e-mail (that is, excluding the later up-classified e-mails). None of these e-mails should have been on any kind of unclassified system, but their presence is especially concerning because all of these e-mails were housed on unclassified personal servers not even supported by full-time security staff, like those found at Departments and Agencies of the U.S. Governmentor even with a commercial service like Gmail.
In other words, despite Ms. Clintons allegations that nothing she sent or received was marked classified at the time her statements were incorrect. (Note that the extent of this violation is in doubt, however; i.e., the exact number of these properly classified emails and their contents was not revealed. Below, as youll read, Comey admits that the number of these emails is very small. Wikileaks disagrees.)
Finally:
Separately, it is important to say something about the marking of classified information. Only a very small number of the e-mails containing classified information bore markings indicating the presence of classified information. But even if information is not marked classified in an e-mail, participants who know or should know that the subject matter is classified are still obligated to protect it.
The last is important. Some material is born classified, a phrase youve likely encountered if youve been following this story. If an admiral in World War II, for example, doodles a possible plan of attack against an enemy fleet, that doodle contains classified information, whether marked as such or not. And more, the duty to guard this information goes beyond not divulging it. It must be carefully protected in a non-negligent way.
Hillary Clinton and the Espionage Act
So should Clinton have been prosecuted? The duty to protect important government information is codified, among other places, in the Espionage Act, Title 18 of the criminal code, Sections 792 and following. I earlier wrote about Clintons vulnerability to this act, specifically Title 18, Section 793, here: Three Data Points Regarding Clintons Email Server and the Law. There I made two points: first, that the information covered by the act doesnt require a formal classified designation to be relevant; and second, that intent (meaning intent to disclose) is not necessary to trigger the laws penalties. Gross negligence in handling the information is sufficient to trigger prosecution. Part of this section reads:
(f) Whoever, being entrusted with or having lawful possession or control of any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, note, or information, relating to the national defense, (1) through gross negligence permits the same to be removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of his trust, or to be lost, stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, or (2) having knowledge that the same has been illegally removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of its trust, or lost, or stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, and fails to make prompt report of such loss, theft, abstraction, or destruction to his superior officer Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.
To get the gist of this language as it applies to Clinton, just read the part bolded above. Cut down, it says:
Whoever, being entrusted with or having lawful possession or control of any document relating to the national defense or having knowledge that the same has been illegally removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of its trust, or lost, or stolen shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.
If your consideration is whether Clinton violated the letter of the law, thats pretty straight-forward. Storing the information listed by Comey in his non-indictment indictment of Clinton on her unsecured server (and sent, for a time, by unencrypted transmission) puts Clinton at clear risk of prosecution for violating the Espionage Act. And again, the bar isnt intent to risk or violate national security information. The bar is gross negligence in its handling, a phrase thats almost a dictionary synonym for what Comey meant when he accused Clinton and her colleagues of being extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly
classified information.
Thus shes very likely vulnerable under the letter of the law. Yet unlike others she will not be tried (a word that means tested), much less punished, for violating it. Her lack of prosecution, when others have been vigorously pursued in court for similar acts or less, explains much of what exercises her critics. To understand their frustration and anger, lets look at those who have been prosecuted under the Act for negligence or worse. Then lets look at the critical element that separates their situations from Clintons. (Its not just her elevated status.)
The Espionage Act Under Obama
It turns out that the Espionage Act has become a popular tool of punishment under the Obama administration, which has broadened its application from use against actual espionage to use against unfriendly leakers and whistle-blowers:
Under the Obama administration, seven Espionage Act prosecutions have been related not to traditional espionage but to either withholding information or communicating with members of the media. Out of a total eleven prosecutions under the Espionage Act against government officials accused of providing classified information to the media, seven have occurred since Obama took office.[89] Leaks related to national security can put people at risk, the President said at a news conference in 2013. They can put men and women in uniform that Ive sent into the battlefield at risk. I dont think the American people would expect me, as commander in chief, not to be concerned about information that might compromise their missions or might get them killed.[90]
As Glenn Greenwald (among many others) has recently noted:
Even when no leakage or other damage was contemplated or occurred, the Espionage Act was applied against violators. Heres what happened to Naval Reserve Engineer Brian Nishimura (link via Greenwald above):
A Naval reservist was sentenced for mishandling classified military materials. A federal attorney announced Wednesday that Bryan Nishimura of Folsom, California, pleaded guilty to the unauthorized removal and retention of classified materials. Nishimura, deployed in Afghanistan in 2007 and 2008 as a regional engineer, admitted to downloading classified briefings and digital records onto his personal electronic devices. He carried the materials off base and brought them back to the U.S. when his deployment ended. An FBI search of Nishimuras home turned up classified materials, but did not reveal evidence he intended to distribute them.
How was his case handled? He was obviously prosecuted, as the lead paragraph tells us. Then:
He was sentenced to two years of probation and a $7,500 fine, and was ordered to surrender his security clearance. He is barred from seeking a future security clearance.
This is a Navy engineer who took home downloaded briefings and records. Were not told under what act he was prosecuted, but we dont need to be told, just that doing what he did was a crime. The Espionage Act is perfectly suited to that crime, if the prosecutors wished to use it.
Heres a bit from the FBIs description of Nishimuras case:
According to court documents, Nishimura was a Naval reservist deployed in Afghanistan in 2007 and 2008. In his role as a Regional Engineer for the U.S. military in Afghanistan, Nishimura had access to classified briefings and digital records that could only be retained and viewed on authorized government computers. Nishimura, however, caused the materials to be downloaded and stored on his personal, unclassified electronic devices and storage media. In the United States, Nishimura continued to maintain the information on unclassified systems in unauthorized locations, and copied the materials onto at least one additional unauthorized and unclassified system
Sounds like what Clinton did to a T. Should she be prosecuted? Loretta Lynch, speaking through James Comey, doesnt think so. To understand why not, lets look at three more notorious and more vigorously prosecuted cases: Jeffrey Sterling, Thomas Drake and Chelsea Manning. Those cases not only reveal why Clinton, in the eyes of many, should be prosecuted; they reveal why she wasnt.
Jeffrey Sterling, Thomas Drake and Chelsea Manning
This gets to the heart of the problem related to when and why to prosecute. Theres first a question of what should happen and what does happen. Then theres a question of intent, as in, what intent if any is the target of the law, and what intent is the target of prosecutors who apply the law. These are not the same.
Greenwald doesnt think Clinton should be prosecuted, since in isolation her crime, as he sees it, doesnt merit it. What Clinton did was attempt to shield all of her communications to the extent she could, an act that in his mind doesnt deserve jail time, despite the letter of the law. I would add that were talking about applying the Espionage Act after all, and Clinton in no way committed or intended to commit espionage.
But that kind of sensible thinking isnt what does happen. What does happen is that under Obama, certain people are prosecuted and sentenced very harshly. Greenwald again (bolded emphasis mine):
But this case does not exist in isolation. It exists in a political climate where secrecy is regarded as the highest end, where people have their lives destroyed for the most trivial or, worse, the most well-intentioned violations of secrecy laws, even in the absence of any evidence of harm or malignant intent. And these are injustices that Hillary Clinton and most of her stalwart Democratic followers have never once opposed but rather enthusiastically cheered. In 2011, Army Private Chelsea Manning was charged with multiple felonies and faced decades in prison for leaking documents that she firmly believed the public had the right to see; unlike the documents Clinton recklessly mishandled, none of those was Top Secret. Nonetheless, this is what then-Secretary Clinton said in justifying her prosecution
Clintons justification for Mannings prosecution is this (emphasis Greenwalds):
I think that in an age where so much information is flying through cyberspace, we all have to be aware of the fact that some information which is sensitive, which does affect the security of individuals and relationships, deserves to be protected and we will continue to take necessary steps to do so.
Seems damning in retrospect, especially the emphasized portion. For Clinton, necessary steps to protect sensitive information thats flying through cyberspace means the following:
In 2010, Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning, the United States Army Private First Class accused of the largest leak of state secrets in U.S. history, was charged under Article 134 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which incorporates parts of the Espionage Act . At the time, critics worried that the broad language of the Act could make news organizations, and anyone who reported, printed or disseminated information from WikiLeaks, subject to prosecution, although former prosecutors pushed back, citing Supreme Court precedent expanding First Amendment protections.[103] On July 30, 2013, following a judge-only trial by court-martial lasting eight weeks, Army judge Colonel Denise Lind convicted Manning on six counts of violating the Espionage Act, among other infractions.[98]
And the punishment was this:
Manning was sentenced in August 2013 to 35 years imprisonment, with the possibility of parole in the eighth year, and to be dishonorably discharged from the Army.[2]
That harsh punishment doesnt count the torture she endured while in pre-trial detention. The fate that befell Chelsea Manning was (and is) draconian. Again, in retrospect Clintons words at the time are damning.
Lets look at two more cases, starting with Jeffrey Sterling. As you read, see if you can see the thread that ties these three cases together:
Jeffrey Alexander Sterling, a former CIA agent was indicted under the [Espionage] Act in January 2011 for alleged unauthorized disclosure of national defense information to James Risen, a New York Times reporter, in 2003 regarding his book State of War. The indictment described his motive as revenge for the CIAs refusal to allow him to publish his memoirs and its refusal to settle his racial discrimination lawsuit against the Agency. Others have described him as telling Risen about a backfired CIA plot against Iran in the 1990s.[91]
But the evidence of wrong-doing was almost non-existent, flimsily circumstantial, and the conviction relied heavily on the jurys reaction to the governments presentation of motive.
The governments case consisted mostly of records of emails and phone calls between Sterling and Risen that began in 2001 and continued into 2005. The emails were very short, just a line or so, and did not reference any CIA programs. The phone calls were mostly short too, some just a few seconds, and the government did not introduce recordings or transcripts of any of them. Sterling was represented by two lawyers, Edward MacMahon Jr. and Barry Pollack. In his opening statement, MacMahon pointed to the lack of hard evidence against his client. Mr. Trump is a fine lawyer, MacMahon said. If he had an email with details of these programs or a phone call, you would have heard it, and youre not going to hear it in this case . Mr. Trump told you that [Sterling] spoke to Risen. Did you hear where, when, or anything about what happened? No. Thats because there isnt any such evidence of it whatsoever . You dont see a written communication to Mr. Risen from Mr. Sterling about the program at all, no evidence they even met in person.
Nevertheless, despite this lack of real evidence:
[T]he jury convicted Sterling, based on what the judge, Leonie Brinkema, described at the sentencing as very powerful circumstantial evidence. She added, In a perfect world, youd only have direct evidence, but many times thats not the case in a criminal case. A few minutes before three in the afternoon, Judge Brinkema said that Sterling would go to prison for three and a half years. This was far below the sentencing guidelines and was seen as a rebuke of the prosecutions portrayal of Sterling as a traitor who had to be locked away for a long time. But that wasnt much comfort for Sterling or his wife, because he would nonetheless be locked away. After the hearing ended, Sterling walked to the front row of seats to console his sobbing wife. You could hear her wails in the courtroom. His lawyers requested that he be allowed to serve his sentence in his home state of Missouri, so that his wife and other family members could easily visit him. Earlier this week, Sterling reported to the prison that was selected for him. It is in Colorado.
We still dont know for sure that Sterling was the person who leaked information to reporter James Risen. Nothing showing that they worked together was presented in court. Nothing. Yet the prosecutor did a good job of painting Sterling as a traitor motivated by anger, bitterness, selfishness, adding, The defendant struck back at the CIA because he thought he had been treated unfairly. He had sued the agency for discrimination and demanded that they pay him $200,000 to settle his claim. When the agency refused, he struck back with the only weapon he had: secrets, the agencys secrets.
On that basis and almost no evidence, the jury convicted.
Finally, in the case of Thomas Drake, mentioned above by both Wheeler and Greenwald, this happened:
What sets Drake, Sterling and Manning apart from Clinton in the way their violations of the Espionage Act are treated? Its not just her elite status.
Why Is Clintons Case Different?
Clinton may well have been let off because the Justice Department thought prosecution was just the wrong thing to do. Given all the arcane rules of classification, and the fact that Clinton, put plainly, is not a spy, Comey and Lynch may well have decided that prosecution was pointless. Espionage, after all, was never her intent, and getting Hillary Clinton convicted on espionage charges may have looked to them like a very heavy lift. Yet espionage was never the intent of Sterling, Drake or Manning, yet they had the proverbial book thrown at them, and more. (Read the rest of the article on Sterling to see how his prosecution nearly destroyed his life, literally.)
The governments behavior in these four cases isnt clarified when comparing motives, at least not initially. It could be argued that the motives of Sterling, Drake and Manning were entirely beneficial, since whistle-blowers intend to perform a societal good, whereas Clintons motives were more self-centered, less morally defensible, and possibly illegal at the very least, she was attempting to move all of her communication beyond the reach of FOIA records requests. (Well have to wait to see if she may have had other motives, such as shielding the Clinton Foundation from embarrassing scrutiny, or worse. I keep seeing mention of a separate investigation into that.)
Which brings us to the the matter of intent not the intent contemplated by the law (intent to steal or to otherwise mishandle government secrets), but the intent contemplated by the prosecutors in applying the law. Look again at the Sterling conviction and what the prosecution relied on to get it. The man was painted by his prosecutors as, in effect, evil a man whose goal was to harm the government, a betrayer, a traitor, motivated by anger, bitterness, selfishness, a man taking revenge. Though most stark in Sterlings prosecution (and in Mannings torture), you see this thread in all three whistle-blower cases.
What separates these cases from Clintons is the desire of the government to punish evil deeds, attempts to harm the country as the prosecutors defined harm, then secondarily to use the Espionage Act as a tool of that punishment, wielded in such a heavy way as to frighten others. Note that this initial filter looking for who has done the kind of harm deserving of punishment, as opposed to looking for who violated the law precedes the prosecution itself. What doesnt precede the prosecution certainly not in Clintons case is an even-handed application of the law.
Yes, this is selective prosecution, but its much more than elites protecting elites, though its that as well. Its also and primarily using the prosecutorial weight of the established state to mercilessly crush the perceived enemies of that state, while protecting its friends from that weight should they also stray under the laws dark umbrella.
In other words, the key to determining who will be prosecuted is indeed intent, but not intent to violate the law. Whats being prosecuted is intent to violate the state as the state perceives it.
So we return where we started, to Marcy Wheeler, who calls the real crime of Sterling and Drake disloyalty and not a violation of the Espionage Act itself. Wheeler (my emphasis):
I can only imagine Comey came to his improper public prosecutorial opinion via one of two mental tricks. Either he again, not the prosecutor decided the only crime at issue was mishandling classified information (elsewhere in his statement he describes having no evidence that thousands of work emails were withheld from DOJ with ill intent, which dismisses another possible crime), and from there he decided either that itd be a lot harder to prosecute Hillary Clinton (or David Petraeus) than it would be someone DOJ spent years maligning like Sterling or Drake. Or maybe he decided that there are no indications that Hillary is disloyal to the US. Understand, though: with Sterling and Drake, DOJ decided they were disloyal to the US, and then used their alleged mishandling of classified information as proof that they were disloyal to the US (Drake ultimately plead to Exceeding Authorized Use of a Computer). Ultimately, it involves arbitrary decisions about who is disloyal to the US, and from that a determination that the crime of mishandling classified information occurred.
This entirely ignores the political dimension, which Ill take up at another time. But it perfectly characterizes, as I see it, the legal one.
Too Big to Jail, Too Innocent to Flail, or Both
Should Clinton have been prosecuted at all? It depends on whether you wish to apply the law (many do), to apply what others consider common sense, or to rebalance the scale of unequal prosecution. And if the latter, rebalance in which direction? Should Clinton go to jail, or should Manning, among others, go free? I would personally be fine if Clinton never saw a courtroom and prisoners like Manning were freed. For the overall good of the nation, I would take that trade. Others, Im sure, would choose differently.
Returning to why Clinton wasnt prosecuted was it just that Clinton is too important, too protected, to prosecute? Too big to jail in other words? Too high to be brought down by something as low as the law? After all, starting with Nixon, the circle of those who can never be punished for their crimes has grown constantly more inclusive. (I almost wrote for their non-violent crimes, but then I remembered the torturing George W. Bush.) Thats certainly a possible explanation, even a likely one, given our recent failure to prosecute even a straight-up thief like former Goldman Sachs chief, ex-governor and Democratic Party fundraiser Jon Corzine.
But we live in a punishing, prosecutorial state as well, one that treats its enemies as harshly as it treats its friends gently, especially its inner circle friends. Its this second aspect, not just who is too big to jail, but who is too high-minded and innocent to torture and flail too loyal to be treated, in other words, like Sterling and Manning that must be considered before we can understand the unequal application of these laws. Clinton, for all her faults in James Comeys eyes, was no Chelsea Manning.
As Wheeler says in her closing, this is another way of saying our classification system is largely a way to arbitrarily label people you dislike disloyal. On reflection, its hard to disagree.
Invisible particles 'seen' for the first time (Nanowerk News) A new optical effect in nanoscale disks of silicon, namely patterns of radiation that do not emit or scatter light, has been observed by A*STAR researchers and international collaborators ("Nonradiating anapole modes in dielectric nanoparticles"). These modes, which have never before been observed at visible wavelengths, could be used in tiny lasers that are not much bigger than viruses.
Electromagnetic simulations show that light waves stream almost unperturbed past a silicon nanodisk that has anapole modes. The particle is thus effectively invisible at distances far from the particle. (Image: A*STAR Data Storage Institute)
A fundamental principle of electromagnetism is that an accelerating electric charge will emit light, losing energy in the process. But, the possibility of creating special configurations of electrical current that do not radiate electromagnetic radiation has intrigued physicists for many decades. Such configurations may serve as possible models of stable atoms, which do not emit radiation despite having orbiting electrons.
A fascinating example of such a non-radiating source is known as an anapole a distribution of charges and currents that does not radiate or interact with external electromagnetic fields. Elementary particles that exhibit anapole modes have been proposed as a potential source of the mysterious dark matter, which accounts for about 25 per cent of the mass and energy of the observable Universe, but is invisible to astronomers.
Now, a team working with Yefeng Yu of A*STAR Data Storage Institute, along with overseas collaborators, have demonstrated the existence of anapole radiation modes in the lab. Specifically, they have created them at visible wavelengths in silicon nanodisks.
Our collaborators in Australia and Germany theoretically predicted the existence of anapoles in nanoparticles, and we then confirmed it experimentally, says Yu. For such modes, energy does not escape from the nanoparticle through radiation or scattering. And when the nanoparticle is excited by anapole light excitation, it does not scatter the light since it concentrates the energy at close distances and is invisible at long distances.
An anapole mode is a combination of two dipole moments the electric dipole moment and a donut-like one, called a toroidal moment. At large distances from the nanoparticle, these two radiation fields cancel each other out and so appear invisible. The team demonstrated this effect in their experiments by observing that the silicon nanodisks were effectively invisible due to the cancelling of visible light scattering by the nanodisks (see image).
New materials for the construction of metal organic two-dimensional quasicrystals (Nanowerk News) Unlike classical crystals, quasicrystals do not comprise periodic units, even though they do have a superordinate structure. The formation of the fascinating mosaics that they produce is barely understood. In the context of an international collaborative effort, researchers at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) have now presented a methodology that allows the production of two-dimensional quasicrystals from metal organic networks, opening the door to the development of promising new materials.
Physicist Daniel Shechtman merely put down three question marks in his laboratory journal, when he saw the results of his latest experiment one day in 1982. He was looking at a crystalline pattern that was considered impossible at the time. According to the canonical tenet of the day, crystals always had so-called translational symmetry. They comprise a single basic unit, the so-called elemental cell, that is repeated in the exact same form in all spatial directions.
Scanning tunnelling microscopic image of the quasicrystalline network built up with europium atoms linked with para-quaterphenyldicarbonitrile. (Image: J. I. Urgel / TUM)
Although Shechtmans pattern did contain global symmetry, the individual building blocks could not be mapped onto each other merely by translation. The first quasicrystal had been discovered. In spite of partially stark criticism by reputable colleagues, Shechtman stood fast by his new concept and thus revolutionized the scientific understanding of crystals and solid bodies. In 2011 he ultimately received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. To this day, both the basic conditions and mechanisms by which these fascinating structures are formed remain largely shrouded in mystery.
A toolbox for quasicrystals
Now a group of scientists led by Wilhelm Auwarter and Johannes Barth, both professors in the Department of Surface Physics at TU Munich, in collaboration with Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST, Prof. Nian Lin, et al) and the Spanish research institute IMDEA Nanoscience (Dr. David Ecija), have developed a new basis for producing two-dimensional quasicrystals, which might bring them a good deal closer to understanding these peculiar patterns (Nature Chemistry, "Quasicrystallinity expressed in two-dimensional coordination networks").
The TUM doctoral candidate Jose Ignacio Urgel made the pioneering measurements in the course of a research fellowship at HKUST. We now have a new set of building blocks that we can use to assemble many different new quasicrystalline structures. This diversity allows us to investigate on how quasicrystals are formed, explain the TUM physicists.
The researchers were successful in linking europium a metal atom in the lanthanide series with organic compounds, thereby constructing a two-dimensional quasicrystal that even has the potential to be extended into a three-dimensional quasicrystal. To date, scientists have managed to produce many periodic and in part highly complex structures from metal-organic networks, but never a quasicrystal.
The quasicrystalline network built up with europium atoms linked with para-quaterphenyldicarbonitrile on a gold surface (yellow). (Image: Carlos A. Palma / TUM)
The researchers were also able to thoroughly elucidate the new network geometry in unparalleled resolution using a scanning tunnelling microscope. They found a mosaic of four different basic elements comprising triangles and rectangles distributed irregularly on a substrate. Some of these basic elements assembled themselves to regular dodecagons that, however, cannot be mapped onto each other through parallel translation. The result is a complex pattern, a small work of art at the atomic level with dodecagonal symmetry.
Interesting optical and magnetic properties
In their future work, the researchers are planning to vary the interactions between the metal centers and the attached compounds using computer simulation and experiments in order to understand the conditions under which two-dimensional quasicrystals form. This insight could facilitate the future development of new tailored quasicrystalline layers.
These kinds of materials hold great promise. After all, the new metal-organic quasicrystalline networks may have properties that make them interesting in a wide variety of application. We have discovered a new playing field on which we can not only investigate quasicrystallinity, but also create new functionalities, especially in the fields of optics and magnetism, says Dr. David Ecija of IMDEA Nanoscience.
For one, scientists could one day use the new methodology to create quasicrystalline coatings that influence photons in such a manner that they are transmitted better or that only certain wavelengths can pass through the material.
'It just flipped': Busch details final season with Joe Gibbs Racing in 'Race for the Championship' In the latest episode of USA Network's "Race for the Championship," Busch describes the change at JGR and is introduced with a new team.
Clonmel Fine Gael councillor Michael Murphy has been appointed by the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government, Simon Coveney, to take up the position as Head of the Irish Delegation on the Committee of the Regions, the European Unions assembly of regional and local representatives.
The Irish Delegation consists of 9 full members and 9 alternate members.
Im really honoured to have been asked by the Minister and the Taoiseach to take up this key position on the Committee of the Regions. Ive always had a keen interest in European Affairs and I feel strongly about the need to translate the benefits our involvement in Europe has on our everyday lives.
Its so important that Local and Regional Government have a say in the formation of European legislation and policy and I look forward to bringing my experience as a local representative to this new role.
Irish politicians have a duty to act as a bridge between Ireland and Europe. We need as many strong voices as possible working for our best interests, in particular because of the recent Brexit vote and the many challenges that lie ahead. I certainly intend to work hard on our behalf on the Committee of the Regions and will give the role the full commitment that it deserves.
The role of the Committee of the Regions (CoR) is to put forward local and regional points of view on EU legislation and policy. It does so by issuing reports (opinions) on European Commission proposals.
Im really looking forward to the role and will use all the skills available to me to be a strong, constructive, positive and effective voice for Ireland.
The debate over a Republican bill to overhaul the Dodd-Frank Act is increasingly focused on two widely different philosophies about capital regulation, which were both on display at a hearing Tuesday.
In one camp, supporters of House Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling's bill think regulators should throw out the complicated and malleable risk-based capital formulas of the Basel Committee in favor of a bare-bones leverage ratio, which no longer uses risk classifications for different types of assets.
But lawmakers and others opposed to the legislation say Hensarling's approach, which would exempt banks meeting a 10% leverage ratio from Basel and numerous Dodd-Frank provisions, is too extreme. While a leverage ratio would require several banks to raise significantly more capital, critics warn that taking risk weights out of the equation will encourage riskier activities.
In testimony prepared for the hearing, which was the first on Hensarling's bill, Georgetown University law Professor Adam Levitin pointed out that risk weights are "imprecise," "politicized" and "gameable."
"A simple leverage ratio avoids all of those problems. On the other hand, a simple leverage ratio incentivizes banks to [take on] riskier and thus higher-yielding assets," he said. "The CHOICE Act, unfortunately, would adopt a simple leverage ratio while eliminating the regulatory tools necessary to prevent banks from gaming the simple leverage ratio by seeking out high-risk assets."
Many argue that Basel's risk-based capital regime contributed to the financial crisis, saying that the risk weights for certain assets were too arbitrary while the regime allows institutions to design an asset composition that massages regulatory capital levels. But Democrats at the hearing suggested that a better solution than a non-risk-based system is to make risk weights more precise.
"Some people complain that the problem with the risk weights before the crisis was that the risk-weights were inaccurate," said Rep. Carolyn Maloney D-N.Y. But, she added, "Under the chairman's bill, the solution iseven less accurate risk weights."
Maloney's comments echoed those of Federal Reserve Board Gov. Daniel Tarullo, who last week argued that using a simple leverage ratio essentially treats all assets on the balance sheet the same when some are inherently riskier than others.
"If [the simple leverage ratio] were the only requirement put in place, then banks would be incentivized to move towards much riskier assets because their capital requirements wouldn't change," Tarullo said.
But Hensarling and supporters of the bill stressed that simplifying the capital regime not only has the benefit of requiring higher capital, but also would free banks from the time-wasting task of complying with risk-based capital requirements to devote more time to helping their communities benefit from economic growth. The 10% leverage ratio, which is voluntary under the legislation, would exempt banks from certain liquidity requirements as well as the Basel regime and stress testing.
"The Financial CHOICE Act will relieve financial institutions from growth strangling regulations that create more economic burden than benefit in exchange for voluntarily meeting higher, yet simpler, capital requirements," Hensarling said in his opening statement.
John Allison, a former BB&T chief executive and former CEO of the Cato Institute, said the current regulatory reforms aren't working.
"The banks today are focused on making regulators happy instead of going out and making loans," Allison said. "It is a big mistake to believe that regulators know the proper level of riskThey are tightening standards way too much and it is hurting the normal growth rate of the economy."
Rep. Scott Garrett, R-N.J., argued that the regulators and the Basel committee have a poor track record of identifying risk.
Regulators "were wrong when it came to subprime mortgages, saying that they were less risky, they were wrong when they were talking about Greek debt being less risky than some corporate bonds," Garrett said.
"Doesn't Tarullo totally, absolutely, 100% miss the point?" Garrett added. "These were the banks being incentivized to move into riskier assets. Should we recognize that [banks] were already encouraged to under Basel and the prudential regulators?"
In his opening statement, Hensarling agreed, saying the Basel Committee's risk-based capital regime was "discredited" and had proven to be "destructive during the last crisis."
But the top Democrat on the committee, Maxine Waters, D-Calif., said allowing banks to get an exemption from Dodd-Frank provisions by achieving a 10% leverage ratio would effectively give them a free pass from regulatory reforms. She also drew a distinction between Hensarling's bill and the leverage ratio proposals of other policymakers who have consistently backed tougher regulation.
"While credible financial reformers have proposed strengthening capital requirements in exchange for some regulatory relief for community banks," Hensarling's proposal "is not that bill," Waters said.
"In fact, it takes the names of true financial experts in vain, by stealing their ideas and weakening them," she said.
Waters added that the proposal "contains none of the guardrails of other proposals, including limits on banks' derivatives activity."
One of the most outspoken proponents of moving to a 10% leverage ratio is Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Vice Chairman Thomas Hoenig. However, Hoenig has generally been in favor of stronger regulatory oversight for banks, particularly large ones, not less regulation. Hensarling's bill would eliminate certain Dodd-Frank provisions heralded by financial reform backers, such as the Volcker Rule ban on banks' proprietary trading.
Levitin said that although Hensarling's proposal has been billed as a way to help community banks, Wall Street would reap most of the benefits.
"It will help" community banks and megabanks, "but it is going to help megabanks more than it is going to help community banks," Levitin said. "The choice lets everyone opt out of Basel III, but the Choice Act also lets megabanks opt out of Dodd-Frank's prudential standards and out of other certain longstanding provisions."
However, Jeremy Newell, executive managing director and general counsel at The Clearing House Association, which represents some of the largest banks, said he opposed moving to a simple leverage ratio.
"Although the leverage ratio is seen as an alternative to risk-based measures of capital, the leverage ratio is in fact also a risk-based measure of capital, albeit a bad one," Newell said in prepared remarks.
Flying under the radar can be a good thing, but not if it leads to being left out of something beneficial, as one small niche of the credit union movement learned and only just recently resolved.
When credit unions were given access to the Federal Home Loan Bank System in 1989, only federally insured credit unions were specifically mentioned in the enabling legislation, leaving out the relatively small handful of privately insured state charters.
"It was an oversight by Congress," according to Dennis Adams, president and CEO of American Share Insurance, the Dublin, Ohio-based provider of private insurance.
It's an oversight that's easy to make, as privately insured credit unions make up just 2% of the total credit union industry and 15% of the state-chartered CUs in the nine states that allow for private insurance. Currently, PICUs constitute 1.2 million members and more than $15 billion in assets.
Looking at the numbers, it might appear to be a minor oversight and one that would be easy to resolve, but it would be 26 years before that finally happened. This past December, PICUs were given the ability to join the FHLB, an alternative source of liquidity and housing finance that can contribute to a CU's product offerings. "It really took away a discriminatory feature," Adams said.
The change, inserted at the request of Financial Services Chairman Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, and Sen. Joe Donnelly, D-Ind., was included as rider legislation amongst many other additional provisions to a nearly 500-page, $325 billion piece of transportation legislation.
There are 125 PICUs in the U.S. and the total in the US has declined, on average, by 3.4% each year since 1997, according to Credit Union National Association data. "We are an option, but we are a private program that works safely and soundly. We are very efficient, strong but smaller," Adams said. Since 2005, 20 CUs have converted or merged into a PICU, while 31 PICUs have converted or merged into a Federal charter, according to NCUA data.
Although the PICU industry is small, they still originated close to 20,000 first and second mortgages in 2015 that amounted to close to $2 billion, according to CUNA data. The industry holds around $5.5 billion in outstanding mortgage loans as of 1Q 2016.
Adams believes access to the 11-region system that supports housing financing and community investment is, "A very valuable right and power," in addition to being a strong resource for the CU industry as a whole.
Lucy Ito, CEO of the National Association of State Credit Union Supervisors, stated the change was, "the right thing for congress to do." Ito suggested that when the most recent financial crisis hit, there were huge issues surrounding liquidity. With those issues mostly subsided, Ito believes that people wanted the change to be made.
"Having access to the FHLB liquidity pool is good for the entire credit union system. Having diverse sources of liquidity brings stability to the system knowing you have more than one place to go to for liquidity," Ito said in an interview.
Wabash, Ind.-based Beacon Credit Union was the first PICU to join the FHLB system in early June this year; they will be a member of the Indianapolis region of the FHLB. The CU, which serves 50,000 members, described the application process as "pretty painless."
"It was very simple, they had a complete application system on the internet, we contacted them, answered their questions and had it turned into them," said Kevin Willour, president/CEO at the $1.2 billion institution.
Beacon currently provides the standard home lending products for their members and also conducts a significant amount of business in the agriculture sector. "It gives us more flexibility in the liquidity arena, and we can make more mortgages," Willour said, "When our loan to share ratios get up there without us having the ability to sell our mortgages we are kind of limited at what we can do."
The FHLB Indianapolis region branch said that new PICUs approved for the system will have access to, "a safe, consistent and reliable access to the capital markets and the secondary mortgage market at a competitive price," according to a spokesperson for the branch. The process to join is the same federal insured credit unions, the spokesperson added, except that PICUs must first submit a written request to their respective state supervisors.
Another Midwest credit union, Credit Union 1 based out of Rantoul, Ill., was also been approved to join the FHLB system in June, becoming a member of FHLB Chicago. "Ever since we got more heavily involved in mortgages we wanted access to FHLB. We were very disappointed when we first went to apply and found out we couldn't be members," Paul Simons, president/CEO of Credit Union 1 said in an interview.
The $785 million CU has offered long-term mortgages since 1994 and had been eager to become a member. Simons notes that besides the FHLB, there are not many "reliable" liquidity sources available to CUs, which was one of the motivating factors when the 100,000-member CU was inquiring about joining.
Simons described the process of working with FHLB as very simple and intuitive. "They are just easy to work with, they met with us, explained everything," Simons said, "I am highly complementary of their whole process; they make it extremely easy to go through the application."
PICUs are not hesitating to apply for membership in the FHLB system. "We have three approvals already," ASI's Adams said, "and we have applications in the San Francisco FHLB, the Dallas FHLB and the Cincinnati FHLB."
Interra CU, based out of Goshen, Ind., was also approved to join the FHLB Indianapolis branch in June this year. The 66,000-member CU's President/CEO Amy Sink said the process was "simple." Sink had previously been with a CU that had joined the FHLB in 1990 and was well aware of the products offered and the approval process.
"It's not a replacement for our member's savings accounts it's a different source of liquidity," the CEO said. "The FHLB is a very powerful tool that gives us the ability to manage risk, earnings and the important part, it helps us make more loans to our members."
Recently, federally insured CUs are looking into the option of switching to the private insurance model, Dennis Adams suggested. "We have CUs that are federally insured that are members of the bank and have been for years, and they are looking to convert to private insurance," Adams believes the decision not to switch has hinged on the FHLB ruling.
Over the last years, Serbia has become increasingly active within the framework of the NATO Science for Peace and Security (SPS) Programme and identified many areas for practical cooperation with NATO. An Information Day in Belgrade, Serbia on 30 June 2016 provided the opportunity to take stock of the successful SPS cooperation, to explore new areas of cooperation and to raise awareness about the Programme.
Participation in NATO SPS projects will undoubtedly improve the quality of security-related scientific work and provide valuable insights for the Serbian Armed Forces, said Mr Nenad Neric, State Secretary in the Ministry of Defence of Serbia.
One such successful multi-year project is a collaboration between Serbia and Germany where scientists and experts are working on T-Whex: A Robust Robot with Physically Tunable Whegs. Initiated in 2014, this project aims to extend the ability of robots to operate in security-relevant scenarios, including building reconnaissance, explosive ordnance disposal and demining, and CBRN detection and mitigation. The development of a class of robots with whegs (a combination of wheels and legs) will enhance manoeuvrability in rough terrain, thereby increasing the number of operations in which robots could be deployed.
Hosted by the NATO Military Liaison Office (MLO) in Serbia and the Serbian Ministry of Defence, the Information Day underscored the interest and importance of joint cooperation between NATO and Serbia on joint activities such as this. Serbian government representatives and experts presented their priority areas of cooperation and used the opportunity to exchange ideas for potential new SPS activities. The event attracted around 50 participants from military academies, the scientific sector and government. High-level participants included Brigadier General Cesare Marinelli, Chief of the MLO as well as Colonel Katarina Strbac, Director of the Directorate for European Integration and Project Management in the Ministry of Defence of Serbia. Both expressed a desire to deepen practical cooperation in developing new SPS initiatives with Serbia.
Serbia is a valuable partner nation for NATO. We share many interests and we face many common security challenges, which is why we should use the opportunity to work more closely together. The Science for Peace and Security is a valuable partnership programme in this regard and can facilitate dialogue and practical cooperation with concrete results, explained Dr Deniz Beten, Senior SPS and Partnership Cooperation Advisor.
The Information Day was also attended by the NATO Chief Scientist, Major General Albert Husniaux from the Science and Technology Organization (STO), which alongside the SPS Programme, is interested in collaborating with Serbia.
Brigadier General Marinelli welcomes Dr Beten to the MLO
Building upon the successful Information Day in Serbia in July 2015, a follow-up visit was also made to the Ministry of Science and Education of Serbia. During the visit, ideas for new top-down flagship projects with high visibility were identified and future projects in the domains of defence against chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) threats, counter-terrorism as well as cyber defence were discussed.
SPS cooperation with Serbia
NATO and Serbia have steadily built up cooperation and dialogue since 2006. Over the last years, Serbia has become increasingly active in the framework of the SPS Programme. Leading areas of cooperation include energy and environmental security, counter-terrorism, Women, Peace and Security as well as defence against CBRN agents.
Most recently, between 5 and 7 July 2016, an Advanced Research Workshop (ARW) was organised, addressing the implications of climate change and disasters on military activities in the Balkan region. Led by the Crisis Management and Disaster Response Centre of Excellence in Bulgaria and the Serbian Ministry of Defence, this workshop identified policies to build resiliency to potential disaster situations.
(NaturalNews) The EU is making international headlines yet again, but this time for their mandated 18-month extension of the license for the use of glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto's Roundup , which is used widely in French agriculture. The use of glyphosate in French farming and wine agricultural practices was supposed to cease entirely by June 30, 2016, but after the EU Standing Environmental Committee failed to come to an agreement on whether or not to enforce a ban, they extended the deadline by an additional 18 months.Roundup has been widely used across France for the past two decades, serving as an effective pesticide to facilitate the growth of the country's farming and wine industries. Even though France consistently voted against the EU's extension due to complaints filed by farming and wine industry representatives, the opposition expressed by the nation's federal government was ignored.Studies conducted by the World Health Organization "found that the herbicide solution [Roundup] was 'probably carcinogenic to humans,'" prompting France to implement federal regulations to outlaw the increasingly harmful pesticide.Segolene Royal, the French Minister for Ecology, voiced her displeasure about the extension, and claimed that France remains "determined to ban the use of glyphosate in France by January 1, 2018."Aside from the obvious potential danger to human health, Royal discussed glyphosate's impact on the country's biodiversity, particularly the increasing disappearance of honeybee populations.In September 2014, Natural News reported on the numerous detrimental effects glyphosate has on honeybees and other natural pollinators . In a study published by the, researchers discovered "both chronic and acute effects in honeybees exposed to Roundup at real-life levels."In the study, researchers from the University of Buenos Aires in Argentina observed how trace levels of glyphosate affected honeybees' foraging ability and overall memory retention. To no one's surprise, they "found a reduced sensitivity to sucrose and learning performance for the groups chronically exposed to GLY [glyphosate] concentrations within the range of recommended doses."Researchers found dramatic reductions in memory retention of honeybees exposed to Roundup, as well as the presence of "tainted nectar" in hives, putting the livelihood of the entire colony in danger. According to, "the distribution of Roundup via nectar did have a cumulative effect on the entire hive's ability to function, which includes foraging."The symptoms reported by thestudy are not too dissimilar to those induced by Colony Collapse Disorder, or CCD, the main culprit behind recent honeybee population decline. Neonicotinoids, one of the main pesticides believed to be causing widespread cases of CCD, have been known to cause "behavioral disruptions such as disorientation, reduced foraging, impaired memory and learning, and shifts in communication behaviors," in honeybee populations.Furthermore, an article published by Mother Earth News in 2010, directly linked the use of Roundup pesticides to the development of CCD. Terrence Ingram, a practicing beekeeper for 55 years, "explained how, for years, he observed entire bee colonies collapsing almost immediately after nearby fields were sprayed with Roundup ."Like neonicotinoids, glyphosate's harmful effects on honeybee populations are indisputable. Honeybees continue to die off at alarming rates, with little to no federal regulation to protect them. What's worse is it looks like Monsanto has found a way to influence the EU now as they have U.S. regulators, in hopes of keeping their toxic herbicides in use in French farming industries. Hopefully, the French government will find a way to make sure that when the new 18-month extension on the ban of glyphosate expires, it will finally expire for good.
International scientists and numerous published studies agree: glyphosate causes cancer
(NaturalNews) The world's most evil corporation was dealt a major legal blow recently, after trying to silence a Hawaiian couple for claiming injury from the use of glyphosate , a highly controversial weedkiller that the World Health Organization (WHO) last year linked to causing cancer in humans.It all started when Christine Sheppard, a former co-owner of Dragons Lair Kona Coffee Farm in Captain Cook, on Hawaii's Big Island, stumbled upon a WHO report exposing glyphosate as a probable human carcinogen. Having several years previously developed non-Hodgkin's lymphoma seemingly out of nowhere, Christine put two and two together and tied the chemicals she and her husband were spraying on their farm to her affliction.After looking into the matter further, Christine narrowed the culprit down to glyphosate, a chemical that the couple had been using on their coffee plants for nearly 10 years before deciding to transition to more organic methods . In 2009, Christine wrote an editorial that was published in the newsletter of the Kona Coffee Farmer's Association, explaining what she had been through, and pointing to the glyphosate link.She and her husband later filed a lawsuit against Monsanto over the herbicide's labeling, which doesn't disclose to farmers the true dangers of glyphosate, only to have Monsanto counter the suit with its own claims that the Sheppards had brought forward inadmissible evidence that exceeded the two-year statute of limitations.According to Monsanto, Christine was suspicious of glyphosate long before her cancer diagnosis, and thus doesn't have a case. But after hearing both sides, U.S. District Judge Michael Seabright ruled against Monsanto and in favor of the Sheppards, who will now proceed with the case and hopefully win.In Judge Seabright's view, the Sheppards' complaint is valid on its surface, "especially considering the allegations regarding the 2015 designation [of Roundup as a probable carcinogen] by the WHO." He also added that the Sheppards' complaint is fully consistent with the guidelines of the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA), contrary to allegations levied by Monsanto."The complaint is not attempting to impose a different warning label," he explained, noting that the Sheppards are contending that Monsanto's existing label is "misbranded" because it misrepresents the safety of Roundup , and is thus an inadequate and inappropriate warning label In 2014, scientists from the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) conducted a review of 44 separate papers published since 1980, looking at the safety of Roundup weedkiller. Based on the findings of these studies, IARC concluded that individuals exposed to glyphosate have double the risk of developing non-Hodgkin's lymphoma Their paper, which was published in the, also outed 2,4-D, a Dow chemical used in Agent Orange defoliant during the Vietnam War, as upping the risk of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, not to mention inhibiting immunity and promoting the spread of resistant bacteria and "superweeds."This and other research is among the evidence being put forth in the Sheppard lawsuit , which Judge Seabright agrees warrants a fresh assessment of glyphosate's carcinogenic potential. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), he noted, has a responsibility to form a cancer assessment review committee to look at the "voluminous material" published in reference to glyphosate tolerances in food, and whether or not current guidelines are adequate.Conventional coffee can be a major risk factor when it comes to chemical contamination, which is why we recommend drinking only organic, fair-trade coffee products like Health Ranger Select 100% Organic Hand-Roasted Whole Bean Coffee . You can learn more about the product here
Abusive cycle continues with wide scale release of toxic dicamba herbicide
Dicamba is very drift prone, threatening organic farming and all broad leaf plants
(NaturalNews) Certain kinds of plant growth are becoming more invasive in farmers' fields. These super weeds are resisting the increased use of glyphosate and other herbicides. It has been going on for awhile now. Nature is fighting back. Weeds are finding new ways to adapt and survive.Take for instance, the garlic mustard plant (Alliaria petiolata), which has become increasingly invasive in the Midwest in recent years. It is now recommended that farmers fight back this plant with cold weather application of glyphosate. This strategy also kills many great herbs, such as shepherd's-purse and common chickweed, to name a few.As ecological diversity of plant life disappears and as super weeds take hold in the fields, biotech corporations have only one solution...Corporations, like Monsanto and DuPont, believe the solution to the problems they create is to continue the abusive cycle of creating stronger herbicides - which only endanger public health, strip the soil of its minerals and nutrients, and kill off beneficial, native plant life.How else would these biotech corporations continue to protect their monopoly on genetically modified seeds? How else would they continue to control farmers, agriculture, and the food supply?Even though these corporations continue to destroy the environment and public health, regulators at the USDA continue to give Big Biotech the green light for unleashing new waves of highly toxic herbicides.Like partners in crime, Monsanto, DuPont, and the USDA are coming together to unleash the highly toxic, drift prone dicamba herbicide for Monsanto's new line of GM dicamba-tolerant soybean and cotton seeds.Monsanto always has another "answer" for the problems they create. The USDA even admits that these new dicamba-tolerant seeds are "not likely to provide for agronomic sustainability" but they approved their commercial release anyway.The USDA predicts that there will be an 88-fold increase in dicamaba spraying in the next year. To prepare for wide scale dicamaba sales, Monsanto has already asked the Environment Protection Agency to increase tolerance levels for dicamaba by 150-fold for use on cotton seed.Virtually all broadleaf plants, including fruits, nuts, vegetables, and non-GM commodity crops face certain eradication in the presence of dicamba. Not only does this herbicide drift after it is sprayed, but it also evaporates in the days and weeks after application, drifting for miles before destroying another person's crops and plants. Dicamba is designed to disrupt the normal growth processes of plants through hormonal pathways.Unleashing the new herbicide will have irreversible effects on native flora and fauna and will continue the chemical assault on human health. To make matters worse, dicamba has a bad reputation for drifting to neighboring fields and committing genetic damage to organic, non-GM crops. Organic farmers suffer crop losses because of herbicide drift. Herbicides like dicamba inadvertently yet predictably assault the property of organic farmers, hurting their yields and making it harder for them to keep their food free of toxins. Furthermore, organic farmers have no recourse in the courts because herbicide-doused, GM seeds are a protected, patented property. In fact, Monsanto has a sordid history of actually suing organic farmers, claiming that their GM technology is stolen when their GM seeds mate with plants from neighboring organic farms.On top of all this, organic farms have to go through strict, expensive testing and validation to prove that their crops are indeed clean and free from biotech toxins.Shouldn't toxic GM food be placed under heavy scrutiny, labeled with warning stickers, and strictly sanctioned off so it won't pollute real whole foods?If herbicides and GM traits drift to organic fields, organic farmers should be able to sue Monsanto, not the other way around. Thankfully there are ways to grow clean food and protect it right at home, year round. These clean growing methods can and should be implemented on a large scale, but since the North American agricultural system is rigged and owned by the biotech industry, individuals will have to take matters into their own hands. Learning to grow your own food is a great way to make positive change happen, right at home.
Industry senses new opportunity
FDA colluding with shady research
(NaturalNews) Vaccine industries have their sights set on a new market that they hope will someday be as massive as that created by the just-shy-of-obligatory childhood vaccine schedule: pregnant women The industry is working with the FDA to create new rules to test and develop vaccines designed to be given to pregnant women, in order to pass antibodies on to their unborn infants. The fact that this protection would only be short-term is not viewed as a problem.Indeed, the industry is elated at the possibility to start vaccinating via their mothers babies too young to receive traditional vaccines The concept of maternal vaccination targeting the infant immune system is not a new one. As far back as the 1960s, researchers were working on such a vaccine against respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) a common and mostly harmless infection that nearly everyone gets by age 2, and that is usually only dangerous for premature infants or babies with other health problems. Companies had soured on the idea of developing an RSV vaccine for newborns after the original RSV vaccine was actually found to increase children's vulnerability to the disease, and caused two deaths.But companies also worried that vaccinating pregnant women would not go over well with the public."The companies had some concerns about the use of maternal vaccines in a litigious society," said immunization researcher Ruth Karron of Johns Hopkins University.In recent years, however, pregnant women seem to have become more accepting of getting vaccines "We really had a sea change in the U.S. in terms of pregnant women getting the flu vaccine," said Anne Schuchat of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).The industry traces the start of this trend to the 2009 swine flu pandemic , and to later vaccination campaigns during pertussis (whooping cough) outbreaks.In spite of CDC recommendations, most vaccines including flu and Tdap vaccines have not been proven safe for pregnant women. Just take a look at the FDA package inserts.The industry is looking to change that, by lobbying the FDA for a change in regulations that have made it difficult to test drugs on pregnant women."We are open to discussing alternative trial designs and alternative endpoints," said Marion Gruber, director of the FDA's Office of Vaccines Research and Review.Now major vaccine companies, including GlaxoSmithKline, Novavax and Pfizer are working on various maternal vaccines, including for RSV and for Group B Strep (GBS). They hope that these vaccines will someday be administered routinely during pregnancy Research for a GBS vaccine has posed problems, since pregnant women in the United States are regularly given antibiotics if they test positive for GBS even though research has shown that this practice contributes to antibiotic resistance, may harm children's developing microbiomes, and provides little or no health benefit to the babies it is meant to help. This means that there isn't much of a population to test a GBS vaccine on.So, GlaxoSmithKline is instead carrying out trials on women in sub-Saharan Africa. The FDA has promised to accept the results, even though the followup methodology has been blasted as flawed."Many of [these women] don't deliver in a hospital," said Laura Riley, vice chair of obstetrics at Massachusetts General Hospital. "You can't just go vaccinating people and not know the outcome."While pregnant women have a strong and understandable desire to protect their infants, the evidence still shows that the single best way to protect a child from disease is to breastfeed (or to feed pumped breast milk out of a bottle). Breast milk contains antibodies, immune factors, enzymes and white blood cells that help a child fight off infection. Breastfeeding is even linked to lower lifetime rates of non-infectious diseases, including leukemia and diabetes.Of course, a mother should be sure to keep her own immune system in top shape to provide maximum protection through her milk. One way to support whole-body health is by consuming superfoods such as spirulina
As labs and lecture halls empty, go out of this world with our regular reviewers' recommendations for stellar holiday reading.
The World the Game Theorists Made Paul Erickson Univ. Chicago Press: 2015. 9780226097039 | ISBN: 978-0-2260-9703-9
Credit: Illustration by Tom Clohosy Cole In this deeply researched and readable book, historian Paul Erickson chronicles the passage of game theory from mathematical economics to arms-control theory to evolutionary biology, and back to economics. Along the way, it has changed considerably, and now is dominated almost entirely by noncooperative games that obey the equilibrium laid out by mathematician John Nash.
Until now, there has been remarkably little written about the history of game theory since its creation in 1944 by mathematician John von Neumann and economist Oskar Morgenstern, beyond recounting a storied intellectual lineage studded with economics Nobel laureates. Such accounts do little to explain how game theory came to be applied to the novels of Jane Austen (among much else). Some concepts the prisoner's dilemma, the tragedy of the commons are today almost impossible to discuss without someone scribbling down a 2 2 grid.
Erickson with whom I collaborated on How Reason Almost Lost Its Mind (Univ. Chicago Press, 2013), a history of cold-war rationality brings a distinctive voice to the material. The book will edify and surprise even specialists, let alone the rest of us, who have to live in a world created by game theorists whether or not we can articulate the pay-offs in the matrix.
Michael D. Gordin is a historian at Princeton University in New Jersey.
One Wild Bird at a Time: Portraits of Individual Lives Bernd Heinrich Houghton Mifflin Harcourt: 2016. 9780544387638 | ISBN: 978-0-5443-8763-8
Here, renowned biologist Bernd Heinrich shows us how to find adventure in the nature in our neighbourhood. Heinrich examines the behaviour of the wonderful birds from flycatchers to owls that throng the vicinity of his Maine cabin. He invites us to witness his well-honed scientific process as he demystifies seemingly inexplicable behaviours, from crow-on-crow murder, sapsucker drumming and the 'snow caves' of grouse to some raptors' predilection for adding greenery to their nests.
The book inspires us to become backyard sleuths. Some solutions require more than patience and a keen naturalist's eye. The northern flicker (Colaptes auratus), for example, nests in cavities and so is rarely visible although not to Heinrich, who chainsaws a hole in his cabin wall to install an observable nesting box. This home 'improvement' project, along with Heinrich's insights into the ethological riches to be found in forest and field, will propel you outside this summer, to follow the denizens of your own patch of the wild.
John M. Marzluff is the James W. Ridgeway Professor of Wildlife Science in the School of Environmental and Forest Sciences at the University of Washington, Seattle. His latest book is Welcome to Subirdia.
Mammal Societies Tim Clutton-Brock Wiley-Blackwell: 2016. 9781119095323 | ISBN: 978-1-1190-9532-3
Mammals come in all shapes and sizes, but they share key features of their reproductive biology. For instance, females give birth to live young and produce milk to nourish them. The costs of gestation and lactation shape the females' reproductive strategies, and this, in turn, influences the reproductive strategies of the males.
Over the past 40 years, behavioural ecologists have documented how these dynamics play out in a range of species. Tim Clutton-Brock has had a leading role in this endeavour, conducting long-term studies of Scottish fauna (red deer Cervus elaphus on the island of Rum, and Soay sheep in the St Kilda archipelago) and meerkats (Suricata suricatta) in Africa's Kalahari Desert. In Mammal Societies, he provides a masterful synthesis of what we know about the behavioural ecology of mammals. Clutton-Brock skilfully weaves an immense body of material into a coherent narrative that emphasizes the processes that shape adaptation, and reveals common patterns that have evolved. The text is gracefully written, enlivened by well-chosen examples and beautifully illustrated. (A few of my own photographs of baboons appear in it.) This is a book that Charles Darwin would have wanted in his library; it should be in yours.
Joan B. Silk is at the Institute of Human Origins at Arizona State University, Tempe.
Soul Machine: The Invention of the Modern Mind George Makari W. W. Norton: 2015. 9780393059656 | ISBN: 978-0-3930-5965-6
In this brilliant mixture of history, philosophy and science, psychiatrist and historian George Makari explores the origins of our ideas about self and that ephemeral phenomenon, the mind. Focusing on the 'long eighteenth century' (16601830), Makari explores how early-modern thinkers and Enlightenment philosophers shaped the way we think about reason, knowledge, language and consciousness.
Makari traces disputes between philosophers Rene Descartes, Thomas Hobbes and John Locke in this arena, vividly linking modern neuroscience with thinkers whom many scientists may not have read. He also looks at changing attitudes to mental health, describing how the York Lunatic Asylum in England chained up naked inmates, leading to the death of a Quaker patient in 1790. In response, Quakers set up the York Retreat, with its moral and behavioural treatments a model that had gained broader support by 1814.
Insightful, thought-provoking and encyclopaedic, Makari's book shows how we came to understand where the mind is located and something of its nature. He closes on science's present impasse: the inability to properly explain consciousness or what happens when mental illness affects us. We remain, he argues, modern hybrids of soul and machine.
Matthew Cobb is professor of zoology at the University of Manchester, UK.
The Man Without a Shadow: A Novel Joyce Carol Oates Ecco: 2016. 9780062416094 | ISBN: 978-0-0624-1609-4
The acclaimed US writer Joyce Carol Oates's 44th novel follows the career of fictional neuropsychologist Margot Sharpe and her interactions with E.H., a man with anterograde amnesia who can hold on to newly made memories for a mere 70 seconds. Charismatic and clever, but perennially confused, E.H. can recall only events that happened before his brain was damaged, and is haunted by vivid, mysterious recollections of a drowned girl. Sharpe is far from normal herself: friendless and work-obsessed, she struggles to succeed as one of the few female scientists in her field.
Reflecting real-life research, the story borrows from famous experiments used by neuroscientists such as Suzanne Corkin in her studies of celebrated amnesiac patient Henry Molaison. The claustrophobic action takes place over decades, almost entirely in Sharpe's research lab. As Sharpe is slowly drawn over the ethical line in her obsession with E.H., we witness her triumph and shame. In illuminating the science of memory, this uneasy thriller makes us question how much our capacity to revisit the past allows us to contemplate the future.
Jennifer Rohn leads a cell-biology group at University College London. Her most recent novel is The Honest Look.
The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The US Standard of Living Since the Civil War Robert Gordon Princeton Univ. Press: 2016. 9780691147727 | ISBN: 978-0-6911-4772-7
The must-read book of the moment for economists is Robert Gordon's The Rise and Fall of American Growth. The adjective 'magisterial' applies (making it perhaps too hefty for beach reading). The first half is a fine, detailed description of the dramatic increase in US living standards, which mirrors those of other industrializing economies, from the mid-nineteenth to late twentieth centuries. Gordon concentrates on the role of technological progress, particularly innovations in public health and transportation, as the main driver of growth. In the second half, Gordon airs his more controversial belief that today's advance in digital technologies is much less important, and amounts to a technological slowdown that has flat-lined productivity. However, he has narrowly (and thus unpersuasively) focused on too few technologies.
More convincing on the gradual adoption of innovations in industry, and their influence on jobs and living standards again with plenty of history is James Bessen's excellent and comparatively optimistic Learning By Doing (Yale Univ. Press, 2015).
Diane Coyle is a professor of economics at the University of Manchester, UK, and author of GDP: A Brief but Affectionate History.
The Descent of Man Charles Darwin John Murray: 1871. 0140436316 | ISBN: 0-140-43631-6
Credit: Stock/Getty Images Plus In my archaeological career, I often find myself taken right back to Charles Darwin. A recent visit to the Museum of Mankind in Paris was one such moment. Touring the human-evolution displays in the new permanent galleries, which reopened last year, I found that aside from twenty-first-century twists such as an explanation of the human genome, the exhibits are in many respects like an illustrated edition of Darwin's 1871 The Descent of Man.
In this book, Darwin first establishes that humans carry indelible signs of our origins, such as physiological similarities to the great apes. He then sets out to show that, despite representing a minuscule part of the living world, we have had the greatest impact. Crucially for archaeologists, he identifies the elements that make us human as culture, mind and conscience. Finally, he puts us right back in our biological place by attributing these distinctions to sexual selection.
Arguments about selection are now more nuanced, but who we are, where we come from and where we are going remain fascinating questions for philosophers and scientists. Darwin's Victorian language about women and race is outmoded, but his ideas set the course for debates on what defines humanity, while incorporating instructive observations from nature, from tool use to nest building.
Jill Cook is acting keeper in the Department of Britain, Europe and Prehistory at the British Museum in London.
At Home in the Universe: The Search for the Laws of Self-Organization and Complexity Stuart Kauffman Oxford University Press: 1995. 9780195095999 9780670847358 | ISBN: 978-0-1950-9599-9
Credit: Illustration by Tom Clohosy Cole If we could rewind the tape of life to its inception around 3.6 billion years ago, and press the 'play' button, would humans emerge once more? Are we the expected and inexorable products of evolutionary processes, or are we chance occurrences that might never evolve again? If natural selection were the only organizing principle that determined the structures of living things, it is unlikely that the historical pageant of evolutionary form would recur.
More than two decades ago, in At Home in the Universe, theoretical biologist Stuart Kauffman argued that life's history has been guided and constrained by an additional source of order: the self-organizing and emergent properties of complex, far-from-equilibrium systems poised at the edge of chaos. The well of natural order that issues from such critically tuned complex systems may be driven by a set of deep laws that invisibly guide the evolution of life on Earth, and presumably throughout the Universe. Kauffman explores these by modelling the behaviour of highly interconnected Boolean networks. His prescient observations may have a new relevance in the era of genome editing and microbiome dynamics.
Silence, blessed silence, may be a neurological blessing to your mind. Prolonged silence has been shown to spur new cell development in the brain (among mice), while shorter periods of noiselessness between sounds have put people into more relaxed states.
These findings and others are reported by David Gross in a Nautilus roundup of scientific research on the benefits of silence. It also notes that silence can be considered a rare commodity in our media-saturated world. There are fewer and fewer places were true silence reigns, and it's the very rarity of the experience that may be responsible for the neurological effects found by researchers.
The most intriguing study was one that focused on mice, not humans. But it should not be completely discounted because of that, and its results are fairly impressive. Imke Kirste, a biologist at Duke University, was interested in triggering regenerative effects on brain cells using auditory stimuli.
For her study, Kirste subjected three groups of adult mice to three types of sound: music, white noise and infant mouse calls. Meanwhile, a fourth group meant to serve as a control listened to two hours of silence per day. The first three groups experienced some positive effects, but nothing long-lasting.
Unexpectedly, it was the "control group" that produced the effect Kirste was looking for - the development of new brain cells in the hippocampus, a brain region involved in the encoding of new memories. (People who have experienced severe damage to the hippocampi can have trouble forming new memories and may even lose earlier memories.) Kirste hypothesizes that the unusual experience of a silent environment prompted the mouse brains to increase in activity, as a response to a strange new situation.
In another study on the effects of sound, Luciano Bernardi investigated the efficacy of music in modulating stress in people. A medical researcher at the University of Pavia in Italy, Bernardi and his colleagues C. Porta and P. Sleight played short tracks of music in six different styles to human subjects and observed their physiological reactions.
A two minute pause was inserted into all of the musical sequences used in the study. The researchers had not planned to investigate the effects of the pause, and yet this short two-minute silence produced a deeper state of relaxation in the participants than any kind of music.
Silence - particularly periods of silence contrasted against other sounds - may be just what the doctor ordered for people who are dealing with stress. More than that, prolonged silence may help you improve your brain functions and memory - even if you're not a mouse.
An upcoming change in San Francisco law, which threatened to lodge serious fines against home-sharing websites like Airbnb and Craigslist, is now officially on hold pending the results of a lawsuit Airbnb recently filed against the city.
The new ordinance would have forced home-sharing websites to remove illegal short-term rental listings, which are not registered with the San Francisco Office of Short-Term Rentals. Otherwise, those companies could face fines of up to $1,000 per day.
However, on Tuesday afternoon, San Francisco Supervisor David Campos introduced a proposal to amend the law in hopes of addressing the legal criticisms outlined in Airbnbs lawsuit.
Those tweaks also aim to strengthen enforcement by giving the citys Office of Short-Term Rentals subpoena power to compel companies to hand over information about illegal listings. The full board is expected to vote on that issue by September.
The Investigative Unit recently found that thousands of short-term rentals across San Francisco are unregistered and, therefore, illegal. In May, NBC Bay area discovered that only 1,281 short-term rental hosts registered their homes with the citys Office of Short-Term Rentals. At the same time, however, Airbnb boasted 7,046 hosts in San Francisco with 9,448 listings. In its 18-page lawsuit, Airbnb argued the citys in-person registration process is too burdensome on hosts and said the new law would infringe on the companys first amendment rights of commercial speech.
A federal judge will hear arguments from both sides on September 7. Meanwhile, another popular website, HomeAway, has filed court documents indicating that it, too, would like to join the lawsuit in hopes of blocking San Franciscos new law, which is scheduled to take effect on July 24th. A spokesperson for the San Francisco City Attorneys Office told the Investigative Unit that the city has agreed to hold off on fining companies until the lawsuit is settled.
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Watch the entire series in this NBC Bay Area investigation:
A puppy rescued by a San Diego animal control officer earlier this month after falling 100 feet down a ravine now has a forever home with a Southern California family.
The San Diego County Department of Animal Services said Friday that
The 10-week-old German shepherd puppy was recently adopted by veterinarian Annie Blea, of Los Angeles County, and her husband and her two daughters, Faith and Abby.
Blea said that when she heard the pups story of survival, she knew there was something really special about the dog and the officer who helped rescue the pup.
We saw the story on her and there was just something about her. She called out to me a little bit, said Blea to Animal Services. "Shes just very special she had a look about her and the way she acted for a puppy that had been on the side of a cliff? I thought she was amazing."
Earlier this month, harness in tow, an officer with San Diego Countys Department of Animal Services rappelled 100 feet down a ravine to rescue a stray puppy that had tumbled in rough terrain in Pauma Valley.
According to Animal Services, Officer Denise Gove was called to the area about 65 miles northeast of downtown San Diego to help safely pull a small, 10-week-old German shepherd up from the rocky ravine. Gove is a member of the San Diego County Animal Response Team (SDCART), made up of trained volunteers and Animal Control officers.
When Animal Services received the emergency call about the puppy stranded down the ravine, Gove told colleagues she had been trained in rappelling and wanted to help with the rescue.
When Gove arrived at the ravine, she could hear the puppys whimpers coming from below. The bottom of the ravine was about 200 feet down.
Animal Services said the puppy had dropped about 100 feet down, where a large bush broke the animals fall. She was clinging to the bush.
According to Animal Services, if that bush hadn't been there, the puppy likely would not have survived the drop all the way to the bottom of the ravine.
Little by little, Gove rappelled toward the pup. Animal Services said the rescue was difficult due to the steep incline of the rocky ravine.
[The puppy] clung onto that bush until Officer Gove dropped from the sky to rescue, explained Lt. Loren Bunnell, who took the original emergency call from dispatch for the rescue.
Bunnell said the photos of the tense moments of the rappelling rescue depict the enormity of the situation and how Gove ultimately got the job done.
Following the rescue, Animal Services said the puppy was doing just fine. The dog was considered a stray and was taken to the Countys Northern Region shelter in Carlsbad on Palomar Airport Road.
The puppy became available for adoption a few days later.
Blea was among those who applied to adopt the puppy from the shelter in Carlsbad. Ultimately, the Blea family was chosen as the perfect match to give the pup a forever home.
Fittingly, the puppy has been named Millie, short for milagro, which means miracle in Spanish.
Blea said Millie is a great addition to her family and is getting along with the familys others pets, a dog and cat. Abby and Faith have been very attentive to their new adopted pet, too.
Theyre thrilled just over the moon. Its their first puppy! Blea told Animal Services.
I feel very lucky they picked us, Blea added, speaking about adoption process at the Carlsbad shelter.
More families will have a chance to adopt a pet Saturday at NBCs nationwide Clear the Shelters adoption drive, which will help pets in need across the county find permanent homes.
In San Diego, 13 local shelters will participate in Saturdays event, waiving or discounting adoption fees to help more pets secure forever homes.
President Lee Myung-bak will issue a special pardon as early as Tuesday freeing around 50 people convicted of various offenses, Cheong Wa Dae said.
Convicts on the list include Choi See-joong, a close confidant of Lee's and former head of the Korea Communications Commission, who was convicted of corruption.
A Cheong Wa Dae official said it has not been decided whether Choi's sentence will be commuted or shortened.
But Lee's brother Sang-deuk, who was also convicted of taking bribes, is apparently not on the list since he has not been sentenced yet.
A spokesman for Lee's successor, Park Geun-hye, on Saturday said the president-elect is against this last-ditch amnesty. But a high-ranking Cheong Wa Dae official said the pardon is entirely within the authority of the incumbent president.
Its called the Cheetah Paw.
"You go like this Ha!" said an 8-year-old El Cajon, California, girl as she throws a punch with a slightly closed fist.
The girl credits the martial arts move, which she said she recently learned in class, with keeping her from being kidnapped when a man broke into her San Diego County home while she was sleeping over the weekend.
The suspect tried to grab the girl from her bed in El Cajon. NBC 7s Omari Fleming reports.
The suspect removed a ground floor window screen of the condo in the 1300 block of Hawk Lane around 4 a.m. Sunday morning, El Cajon Police Lieutenant Rob Ransweiler said.
He walked upstairs to the second floor bedroom the girl shared with her 6-year-old brother, who was also asleep, Ranswiler said.
The man began to carry her down the stairs, and while half-awake she silently used the Cheetah Paw to escape her captor's clutches.
When asked how she decided to use the move, she responded: Because it hurt him.
After the Kung Fu punch to the neck, the girl says the man put her down and left the home before she could run to tell her parents what had happened.
Her parents said they were terrified thinking they were unaware an intruder was lurking in their kids' bedroom.
I didnt even know. I laid asleep while all this was happening," her mother said.
The family has since installed a window alarm system and surveillance cameras to protect their family.
It hasn't motivated me enough to want to get a gun, but it made me think about it," she said. "Theres so much to think about after something like this happens."
Neither of the children appeared to be physically hurt, and nothing seemed to have been taken from the home.
The suspect was described as tan with dark, fluffy hair and a slim build, 5-foot-8 to 5-foot-10 inches tall with a bad odor. He was wearing dark clothing and a backpack.
Lt. Ransweiler says they will interview the victim again to get a better description of the suspect and hopefully they will be able to get a sketch made of him.
Shahla Malikyer, who has been living in the area for 20 years, says neighbors look out for one another.
"Sometimes if I see a strange face or (someone) suspicious I call the police," she said.
The suspect may have tried to enter another home but that window was locked. A hand smear was left behind, so police will try to run fingerprints from it to catch the man.
El Cajon officers searched for the suspect with a police dog, but were unable to locate him.
Officers are patrolling the area and using law enforcement databases to try to identify him.
Caltrans will close two lanes of the San Mateo-Hayward Bridge on five successive nights this week in order to make permanent repairs to the bridge deck.
That's because crews need to fix a hole that opened up on the westbound deck just east of the high-rise section on June 15. At that time, Caltrans spokesman Bob Haus said that bridge engineers determined that the hole could not be repaired with a simple patch operation. Maintenance crews secured a metal plate over the hole and reopened the bridge to traffic.
"It was about three feet wide, and it went all the way through the bridge deck," Haus said. "We definitely wanted to move on this as fast as we possibly could."
On Tuesday, crews will close that portion at 7 p.m. through Wednesday at 5 a.m. The closure hours will remain the same for the next three days, until Friday. During the closures, crews will perform the preparatory work necessary for the repair operation.
On Saturday, crews will close the two westbound lanes starting at 7 p.m. through 9 a.m. Sunday. During this time crews will make permanent repairs to the damaged section of the deck.
Commuters weren't looking forward to next few days. Don Marshall works as a fisherman in Half Moon Bay and typically heads westbound on the bridge about 4 a.m.
"If it's already backed up and then you have construction that closes up lanes, it's going to create slowdowns, you're going to get rubberneckers and it might double the commute," Marshall said.
Fliers promoting the Ku Klux Klan surfaced in a San Francisco neighborhood Tuesday, and some residents were a bit shaken up by the hate-filled message they contained.
Mahsa Ashabi said she was stunned to find the flier on her apartment stairs on Haight Street.
"I found a flier for the KKK, saying come join us and saying a lot of terrible things about black people and the Black Lives Matter movement," Ashabi said. "No matter how racist or ignorant your beliefs, you're allowed to have them, but don't bring them to this neighborhood; not going to be recieved well."
Ashabi shared the flier and her outrage on social media. But she didn't call police.
At Tuesday night's park district community meeting Capt. John Sanford encouraged people to report the fliers so police can investigate.
"Essentially, our special investigations unit would see if there is a hate-crime individual or group forming to do any form of illegal activity," Sanford said.
Sanford said at last check the Haight is the only San Francisco neighborhood where the flier surfaced.
Ashabi is hoping whoever left it is gone.
"There's a line to saying it's free speech," she said. "Well, no; you're trying to hurt and smear people who live in this neighborhood, in this city, and that's not OK."
An Instagram photo of a woman wearing a dark pink hijab, covered in egg, is raising interest with San Leandro police who would like to investigate what happened before she was covered in the goo.
But it appears as though police may never catch the culprits as the woman in the photo told them Wednesday afternoon that she was not interested in pressing charges. She was also "outraged" by the media coverage, according to San Leandro Police Lt. Robert McManus. He added that she was not injured in the Sunday evening egging outside the Walmart on Hesperian Boulevard.
Despite her apparent outrage, it was reportedly her son, identified by ethnic outlets including the Arab American News, as Farad Afshar, a student at Chabot Community College in Hayward, who made the egging public by posting it on Instagram. Other outlets, such as Muslims of America also publicized what happened on its Facebook page, where thousands of people shared the story and commented on the horrible behavior of the person or people who threw the egg.
NBC Bay Area tried to contact the person who appears to be the womans son, but he did not respond via Instagram or Facebook for more comment. A phone number couldn't immediately tracked down for him.
In a post on Wednesday, though, a person using what he described as a friend's account, said that his original account got deleted, but my mom is feeling better thankfully.
In his original post saved by Muslims of America, Afshar said his mother is the most "kindhearted, loving and selfless person you'll ever meet...The fact that she can't walk out of her home without feeling safe is sickening."
The Council on American-Islamic Relations in Santa Clara had heard of the egging, but no one had filed a report with the nonprofit, according to executive director Zahra Billoo.
Early Wednesday, McManus said he was alerted on Monday about the egging through Twitter and had spent a few days trying to track the woman down as she had not come forward to police. He had planned to hold a news conference on Wednesday afternoon to help find the culprits. But about 2 p.m., McManus sent an email to reporters saying the news conference was canceled. His detectives had found the woman, he said, who told police she did not want to speak about what happened to her or move forward with a criminal investigation.
Still, McManus said hes sorry this happened to her. Race relations in this country are really breaking down, he said. This is not what San Leandro is about.
A woman outside of a Walmart in San Leandro was egged for wearing a hijab. This makes me so furious pic.twitter.com/3dJro6IJY9 sufya (@ayyesophie) July 11, 2016
Consumers generally seek our assistance when a bill is headed higher.
But not Sorin Damian. He complained to us about a bill that is headed lower: his home insurance.
"I had to read everything [in the policy]," he said.
Like the many trees in his yard, Damians loyalty to his homeowners insurance company bore fruit. A notice offered renewal plus a $56 savings.
But instead or renewing, the retired Romanian businessman questioned the math. He calculated that his premium is falling 12 percent and then discovered that The Hartford is cutting his coverage about 20 percent.
He asked: Wheres the other 8 percent?
"In somebody elses pocket," he said. "Dont tell me whose."
Damian said The Hartford told him he needed less coverage because the cost of rebuilding his San Jose home in the event of a disaster has declined $75,000, from $392,000 to $317,000.
He doubts that drop is accurate. But even if it were, Damian believes that a 20 percent cut in coverage should yield a 20 percent cut in price a one to one ratio.
The Hartford told him thats not the way it works.
"They said, 'its our calculation,'" he said. "And they put it writing."
A spokesperson for The Hartford declined to address Damians policy case. She would only speak in broad terms.
"A decrease in the amount of replacement coverage for the home, does not always correlate to an identical decrease in price," she said. "There are a variety of factors that contribute to the cost of an insurance policy."
We asked for details but didnt get them.
None of this sits well with Damian. He feels misled by a company he trusted.
"Come on," he said with a sigh. "Whats going on?"
Damian said he eventually dropped the Hartford. He said he found better coverage at a better rate.
Thats savvy advice for all consumers: Regularly reconsider your insurance needs. And shop around for the best premium whether its headed up or down.
Sweet relief has come to the checkbooks of folks looking for a place to live in the Bay Area.
That's according to a new report published by the apartment listings website ABODO. Between June and July, rent prices fell five percent in San Francisco, eight percent in San Jose, and 11 percent in Oakland, SF Weekly reported.
Even better news for San Franciscans is that the downward trend could continue over the coming months, ABODO reported.
A staple economic principle can explain why the rents are dropping, according to ABODO.
"The supply is finally catching up with the demand, causing a decline in price," Sam Radbil, an ABODO spokesman, told SF Weekly.
Only time will tell if the trend continues to favor renters down the road, SF Weekly reported.
"The development and construction of new rentals will ultimately bring more units to market for local renters and limit the demand for individual units, while minimizing leverage that landlords currently hold," Radbil told SF Weekly.
What to Know More than a dozen people were taken to hospitals, though it wasn't clear if all ingested the drug
The victims were found in the same Beford-Stuyvesant street corner that has been called the worst spot for synthetic drug use in the city
The city says there have been more than 6,000 K2-related emergency room visits in NYC since 2015
Thirty-three people were taken to the hospital Tuesday morning after authorities responded to calls of people overdosing on K2 near a Brooklyn intersection that has been called one of the worst spots in New York City for synthetic drug use.
Authorities said the victims were taken to Woodhull and Wyckohoff hospitals after authorities were called to the scene near Broadway and Myrtle Avenue in Bedford-Stuyvesant.
Authorities said that it wasn't clear what drug the people who were transported to hospitals had ingested, but the NYPD said that at least five were reportedly smoking the cheap synthetic cannabinoid commonly called K2 outside a building on Stockton Street.
The woman who called 911 to report the men smoking told NBC 4 New York they were vomiting and urinating. Witnesses told DNAinfo that the victims collapsed on the sidewalk and subway platforms.
"When they smoke that stuff, they drop like flies," another neighbor who gave his name as Chino told NBC 4 New York.
Others said use of K2 in that part of Brooklyn is out of control. Residents have even posted warning signs reading "No Smoking K2."
"It's gotten out of hand," said Dennis Gonzalez of Bushwick. "They even sleep in the street, we have to walk around them. It's just too much to keep under control."
Earlier this year, DNAinfo reported that the area around the intersection was becoming a hotbed for K2 use. The site reported that stores in the area were selling the drug even though it was outlawed by the city in 2015.
Since 2015, there have been more than 6,000 K2-related emergency room visits in New York City, according to the city's health department. There have been two confirmed deaths associated with the drug.
The city cracked down on the drug last year, making it a crime to sell K2. But Fin Perez, a self-proclaimed addict who has gone to the emergency room from using the drug, said it hasn't deterred anyone.
"Certain stores that sell it, they have guys that walk around and sell it because they know police are here watching the stores," he said. "So they got guys walking around, two to three streets away. Everyone knows who the guys are."
State Sen. Jeff Klein has proposed legislation that bans chemicals that mimic controlled subtances as they are tweaked, so that the state "stays ahead of the chemists' curve" and that laws can't be subverted. The bill has passed the Senate, but stalled in the Assembly.
A Senate investigation says a senior U.S. diplomat deleted an untold number of work emails, unaware that even routine messages received and sent by a top government official should be saved.
The investigation, released Tuesday, says Michael Ratney, the former top U.S. diplomat in Jerusalem, found emails with attachments to be a nuisance. So, at times, he simply got rid of them to keep his inbox from breaching storage limits. Ratney, now the U.S. Special Envoy for Syria, didn't know he was required to keep the messages, the report says.
The Federal Records Act requires the preservation of government records.
The disclosure of Ratney's electronic housekeeping comes as Republican outrage mounts over Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server for government business during her tenure as secretary of state.
Hillary Clinton is calling on the country including herself to "do a better job of listening" rather than fueling political and other divisions after a series of high-profile shootings.
Clinton says the country must address both gun violence, criminal justice reform and find ways to better support police departments.
"I know that just saying these things together may upset some people," she says. "But all these things can be true at once."
Clinton is speaking in the Illinois Old State House chamber in Springfield, the site of Abraham Lincoln's famous address about the perils of slavery. She is trying to use the symbolic site to contrast her call for civility with what she sees as rival Donald Trump's polarizing campaign.
Clinton said she has work to do, as well.
She says that as someone "in the middle of a hotly fought political campaign, I cannot claim that my words and actions haven't sometimes fueled the partisanship that often stands in the way of our progress."
Clinton adds, "I recognize that I have to do better too."
From rallies to sit-ins, Democrats have tried a number of strategies in recent weeks to force a vote on gun reform.
Democrats dont currently have the deciding vote in Congress, so what did the party accomplish when it did have control back in 2009 and 2010?
Congressional records from that time, the 111th Congress and the first under President Barack Obamas tenure, show that Democrats did pass historic legislation during that time, including the Stimulus Bill, Dodd-Frank and the Affordable Care Act.
Noticeably absent is any significant legislation on guns.
"Lets put it this way, the government was less intrusive, a little bit less concerned, a little bit less involved with some of the other laws that were already on the books," said NBC Bay Area political analyst Larry Gerston. "No changes really to speak of. I mean that was it."
Gun laws by the 111th Congress include legislation that allowed firearms to be carried in national parks and on Amtrak trains, as well as the Law Enforcement Safety Improvement Act, which helps retired, qualifying police officers carry concealed weapons.
"Unfortunately for the last 20 years or so nothing has happened at the federal level," says Juliet Leftwich, legal director at the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. "There's a lot of political cowardice, and the NRA has a stranglehold over Congress."
The Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence and its founders were instrumental in passing the last major piece of federal gun reform legislation, a 1994 federal assault weapons ban. The law went into effect after the 1993 massacre at a law firm in San Francisco, known as the 101 California Street shooting.
Leftwich says the tragic shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, in 2012 shook the nation to its core and was a recent turning point for political sentiment about guns.
"There's just a different feeling in the country now about this issue, and hopefully the politicians will hear that," she said. "Even if it's only for their self-interest, [I hope] that they will act accordingly."
The reality is lawmakers are protesting for gun laws like "No Fly, No Buy," but those reforms were already proposed in the 111th Congress by Democrats and Republicans.
For example, Rep. Mike Castle and Sen. Frank Lautenberg, both Republicans, sponsored legislation to close the gun show loophole. And New York Rep. Peter King, also a Republican, backed a bill aimed at, "denying firearms and explosives to dangerous terrorists."
None of those proposals even made it out of committee. That falls directly at the hands of the ruling party, Gerston says.
"At the end of the day, in the U.S. Senate it is the majority leader," he said. "It is the majority leader. Period. It is the Speaker. Period."
That would be Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, respectively. Theres no guarantee that either leader couldnt moved those bills through their chamber, after all the 60-vote Democratic supermajority was extremely fragile.
Its also true that those leaders chose to use their political capital on other issues.
Male civil servants will be able to take up to three years' paternity leave in a bid to bolster Korea's record-low birthrate.
If both husband and wife work for the government, they will be able to take up to six years' parental leave between them.
The Ministry of Security and Public Administration announced a revision of relevant laws on Monday, which it will submit to the National Assembly during its regular session in September.
So far only women can take childcare leave for up to three years and men just one year, but the policy came under fire for gender discrimination.
But few male civil servants have taken the opportunity, so it remains to be seen whether extending the period will make any difference.
The number of civil servants who applied for childcare leave doubled over the past four years from 20,945 in 2009 to 41,222 in 2013, but they were overwhelmingly women, with men accounting for just 512 or three percent five years ago and 1,798 or five percent last year.
"The new policy aims to help private companies as well as government offices give more of their male staff childcare leaves for a longer period," a ministry official claimed.
Former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich formed a band called the Jailhouse Rockers while serving time at a federal penitentiary in Colorado, according to a sentencing memorandum filed by the disgraced governor's legal team late Monday night.
According to the memo, Blagojevich formed the band with a fellow inmate, described as accomplished musician" Ernie B. An avowed Elvis fan, Blagojevich paid homage to the king of rock 'n' roll by naming his band after one of the famed rocker's biggest hits.
The Jailhouse Rockers performed at a GED graduation ceremony in June 2013 and again on the Fourth of July.
Blagojevich, who also taught GED courses at the prison, studied guitar and vocals with Ernie B until the inmate was ultimately released and the group was forced to disband.
The former governor asked Monday that his sentence be reduced to five years, noting that he never collected fraudulent monies and that he had spent his time behind bars improving himself as a person, through hard work, while also being of service to other inmates."
Blagojevichs attorney Leonard Goodman declared that his clients pursuit of a challenge to his conviction does not in any way lessen the remorse that he feel for his behavior.
Blagojevich has been imprisoned for just over four years. He is serving a 14-year sentence at the Federal Penitentiary in Englewood, Colorado. The former governor is scheduled to be re-sentenced Aug. 9 after the United States Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals overturned five of the 18 counts on which he was convicted.
As part of the filing, Blagojevichs defense submitted a host of letters written on the governors behalf, including notes from Rep. Jan Schakowsky, former Rep. Bob Barr and over a hundred fellow inmates.
One inmate noted that he and other prisoners called Blagojevich the Gov and claimed he had been a nice man, always polite and respectful.
Nevertheless, the government urged Judge James Zagel to keep Blagojevichs sentence intact.
In arguing against a reduction in Blagojevichs sentence, prosecutors noted that the defendant remains convicted of the same three charged shakedowns of which he stood convicted at the original sentencing: the Senate seat shakedown, the racetrack shakedown and the hospital shakedown.
The defendant acted corruptly, repeatedly, and in utter disregard of the trust Illinois voters had placed on him, attorney Julie Burnham Porter wrote. The dismissal of five of the 18 counts in no way detracts from that fact.
Los Angeles has tours of the homes of movie stars. London has Jack the Ripper and the Beatles.
Chicago has corruption.
Hey, you go with what youve got, right?
That's at least what tour master Paul Dailing is doing as he offers Chicago's Corruption Walking Tour, "a look at the darker side of politics."
A properly cast ballot used to buy you the biggest, or coldest beer in town, observes Dailing. Were getting better at catching these people, so I can fill a tour with the ones who didnt get away with it.
Chicago has certainly had its share: 33 aldermen since 1976, four of the last nine governors, congressmen, cops, you name it. And Dailings corruption tour features a veritable whos who of that sordid lot.
Blago and George Ryan, Rosty and Mel, and rogues like Hinky Dink Kenna and Bathhouse John Coughlin-- theyre all there.
And word to the wise, Dailing observes, if you get a nickname like Hinky Dink or Bathhouse, you are not a beloved servant of the people.
Dailings tour stops include the former Workingmens Exchange, the First Ward Alderman Hinky Dink Kennas famous saloon on South Clark street, where beers cost a nickel, and Kenna dispensed jobs, permits, and sage political advice.
And of course, solicited and delivered, thousands of votes.
Among other stops, tour patrons also see City Hall, the Thompson Center, and of course, the Dirksen Federal Building, where so many political careers have crashed and burned amid popping flashbulbs and swarms of reporters.
Other tours of Chicago have featured the more frightening aspects of the citys gangland pastwith the haunts of Al Capone, Elliot Ness, and Machine Gun Jack McGurn. Dailings criminals are the white collar kind.
You know, the ones who drew taxpayer salaries.
This is where public trusts were violated, he says. Its not like theres going to be one end of movie scene where the bad guys are put in jail. Theyre just going to keep popping up and up and up.
The tour tries to educate as well as entertain. Not only does Dailing caution about the evils of corruption, he notes the built-in rules, which allow lawmakers to favorably draw up their own districts to guarantee re-election.
Every ten years, we let the voted, choose their voters, he says, noting that there are other which give office-holders a built-in advantage. The patronage system staffed city services with do-nothing jobs, just because the people were good at bringing in votes on election day.
But its not hopeless, he believes. Even though so many pols have stolen and swindled and scammed, Dailing does emphasize that right thinking people do prevail. Thats why he finishes his tour at a north side tavern which was the site of the Mirage, the famous bar where the Sun Times secretly photographed crooked inspectors. Most of his patrons are locals. And Dailing says as he dismisses his groups, he often sees signs that some are inspired to actually do something about the system.
Ive seen light bulbs to off, which is actually really refreshing, he says. And you cant trade a vote for a beer any more in Chicago. Theyve gotten more clever, but you know what? So have we.
For information visit Dailings corruption tour of Chicago.
Fifty years ago this week, Chicago woke up to a nightmare.
Richard Speck, a 24-year-old drifter with a 9th grade education broke into a townhouse on East 100th Street on Chicagos Southeast Side on the night of July 13, 1966, and brutally stabbed and strangled eight student nurses. For three days the city, and the nation, were gripped with fear.
He was the personification of evil, says former Cook County prosecutor William Martin. Hes the most evil creature that I certainly have ever encountered, or heard about, in the history of the human race.
Speck had never met his victims. Even now, 50 years later, speculation swirls about why the nurses were chosen.
He could see there were no males anywhere near that townhouse, so they were unprotected, Martin said. He went there because he knew there were women who were defenseless.
A would-be seaman, Speck frequented a maritime hiring hall near the womens home, which served as a makeshift dormitory for the nursing school at South Chicago Community Hospital. After breaking into the apartment, Speck confronted six of the women, tying them up with shredded bedsheets, promising only to rob them. During that portion of the evening, a seventh woman came home and he tied her up as well.
But things quickly turned violent. Speck took one of the women from the room, and shortly after that, two others came home together. He assaulted and killed all three, then methodically removed the remaining nurses from the room, killing each of them in different parts of the house.
But somehow, Speck lost count. Despite her bindings, the ninth nurse, Corazon Amarao, managed to roll under a bunk bed and hide. Just before dawn, hearing no more noises, she worked free and walked out of the bedroom, finding all eight of her friends dead. Climbing through a window onto a rooftop, she alerted the world to the carnage inside.
Her voice was so soft that nobody heard her for twenty minutes, Martin said. She said, my comrades! Theyre all dead!
For days, all anyone knew for certain was that a monster was on the loose. What nobody could have known at that point, was that Speck had stayed in Chicago, holing up at a 90 cent per night transient hotel on the near West Side.
Speck attempted suicide by slashing his wrists, but changed his mind and was taken to the emergency room at Cook County Hospital just after midnight July 17th. There, Dr. LeRoy Smith, a 25-year-old surgical resident, had just read a Chicago Tribune article describing the prime suspect in the murders. As he scrubbed the blood from Specks arm, he recognized a key clue described in the paper---a tattoo which read, Born to raise hell.
This guy kinda looked like the same picture I just saw, and so I said to the nurse, can you get me the newspaper? recalls Smith, now an orthopedic surgeon in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. I scratched away the blood, and there was born to raise hell, and the picture was the same as the person, and thats how I put the two together.
Smith says he immediately called his colleagues together and warned them about the man on the bed in front of them.
This patient here, and I raised the newspaper, he said. This is the same person who allegedly committed these murders!
Speck was arrested. Four days after the killings, Chicago and the rest of the nation, could breathe easier. But Martin had a case to prosecute. And he said the evidence was overwhelming.
We had three fingerprints, he said. There were seventeen points of identity, and 10 to 12 are enough.
On top of that, he had the testimony of the surviving nurse. In court, she stepped down from the witness box, strode across the courtroom, and pointed directly at Specks forehead.
This is the man, she said.
It was the most dramatic moment I think any lawyer could see in a courtroom, Martin said. One of the bravest people you could possibly meet in your life!
Indeed, there was a confession as well. Dr. Smith recalled Speck admitting the murders in the hospital that first night.
He said, well I murdered the nurses, he said. And then he went on to describe the killings. At that point, however, Speck had been sedated, and the statements were deemed inadmissible in court.
The confession wasnt necessary. The jury deliberated just 49 minutes. Sentenced to death, Specks sentence would eventually be commuted to 1200 years in prison, after the death penalty was declared unconstitutional in 1971. Outside of periodic parole hearings, he was largely forgotten. Decades later, a bizarre prison video surfaced, showing Speck snorting cocaine and the obvious attributes of years of female hormone treatments inside the jail.
If only they knew how much fun I was having, they would turn me loose, he said. Of the murders, he declared, It just wasnt their night.
Speck died of a heart attack in prison in 1991.
A nuclear power plant on the shores of the Chicago areas largest source of drinking water is facing scrutiny from federal regulators over its fire protection practices.
NBC 5 Investigates has learned the Palisades Nuclear Power Plant in Covert, Michigan, has placed some of its security officers on paid administrative leave as a result, pending completion of an internal investigation.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission said it identified an issue with fire tours at Palisades while conducting routine inspections. According to an NRC spokesperson, inspectors had questions about the tours and began looking further into the issue.
The NRC said a fire tour is defined as when a worker goes into certain areas on a specific frequency to look for evidence of a fire such as smoke, flames or odor.
The NRC has fire protection requirements that are specific to each plant and at Palisades there appears to be discrepancies as to how the procedures were being met, the spokesperson wrote in a statement.
The NRC said it does not have an immediate safety or security concern, but it is monitoring the plants actions in response to the situation.
A spokesperson for Palisades parent company, Entergy, said the plant has implemented strong interim actions to ensure appropriate staffing and that fire tours are conducted properly.
Safety is our number one priority and remains uncompromised, said Val Gent, senior communications specialist.
Nuclear watchdog group Beyond Nuclear said the developments raise deep concerns about security and fire risks at the aging atomic reactor.
If an undetected fire were to spread to safety-significant systems, structures, or components, a reactor meltdown or high-level radioactive waste storage pool fire could result, said Kevin Kamps of Beyond Nuclear.
Kamps also raises questions about why security guards are burdened with the added responsibility of making fire watch rounds in the first place.
In April, the NRC issued a confirmatory order to Entergy following an investigation that determined that workers at the companys Waterford 3 nuclear power plant in Louisiana failed to perform fire inspections and falsified records over a ten month period between 2013 and 2014.
The NRC did not fine Entergy in the Louisiana case because it said the company took corrective actions.
Audio from a 911 call placed by a 9-year-old girl who found a newborn baby abandoned in the backyard of her Indiana home Monday depicts her family's shock and horror after the disturbing discovery.
The call begins with the girl telling the dispatcher her address before she explains what happened.
"We just found a baby we need your help," Elysia Laub tells the dispatcher.
The girl's mother then takes the phone and tells the dispatcher a baby appeared to have been born in their backyard.
"A human child, like the umbilical cord is still attached," said Heidi Laub.
Heidi Laub said she believes the baby was burned in the hot sun, but notes that it was crying and is awake.
"Who does this? A baby," she says, gasping heavily. "There's blood everywhere. I think this thing was just born."
The baby was discovered just before 11 a.m. Monday by Elysia Laub, who found the infant in the backyard of her familys home in the 18000 block of White Oak Avenue in Lowell, according to the Lake County Sheriffs Office.
The newborn girl was wrapped in a black towel and had her umbilical cord and placenta still attached, the sheriffs office said. Though it was not clear how long she was left outside, a preliminary investigation revealed she had been left for anywhere from several hours to one day, officials said.
"Its obvious that this child, from the medical reports, was born just a few hours before it was found," said Sheriff John Buncich. "It could have been overnight."
Temperature highs reached to near 90 degrees Monday.
The infant was taken to St. Anthonys Hospital for emergency medical treatment and is expected to make a full recovery. Buncich said the baby was being treated for sun burns, but was otherwise a "healthy young girl."
"I just saw pink legs kicking away," Elysia Laub told NBC Chicago. "I knew it was alive and I knew we had something. I could not second guess myself. I knew we had to get help."
She alerted her mom who went outside and grabbed the child before the pair called 911.
Heidi Laub said the baby was naked, crying, sun burned and had maggots on the placenta and umbilical cord.
"I thought it was a robotic doll. Then I ran to the baby and scooped it up and I said, 'Elysia run to the house and call 911 as soon as possible,'" Heidi Laub said. "I got to the house and we put one of our baby blankets around her."
Authorities searched the area for the infants mother but she has not yet been found, the sheriffs office said. Forensic evidence was collected at the scene and an investigation was ongoing.
Police dubbed the baby "Miracle Jane Doe" and said the Elysia Laub was her "guardian angel."
"A miracle that [the 9-year-old] was out there to find her," Buncich said.
Indiana does have a Safe Haven Law, which allows a person to give up an unwanted infant anonymously "without fear of arrest of prosecution," according to the Indiana Department of Child Services.
Anyone with information on the incident is being asked to call the Lake County Sheriffs Department Report-a-Crime Hotline at (800) 750-2746.
Just days after Lin-Manuel Miranda, the creator and star of the Broadway megahit "Hamilton," took his final bow, Chicago has learned who will star as the new Alexander Hamilton when the production makes its debut in the Windy City in September.
Hamilton will be played by Miguel Cervantes, Angelica Schuyler will be played by Karen Olivo and (former) King George III will be played by Alexander Gemignani, according to Broadway in Chicago.
Cervantes has been a part of casts in the Broadway shows If/Then, American Idiot, and The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee.
Olivo, a Tony Award-winning actress, appeared in West Side Story and In the Heights. Prior to her role in Hamilton, Olivo taught musical theater performance at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her most recent Broadway performance was in 2014.
The son of famed Broadway musical director Paul Gemignani, Gemignani has performed in iconic shows such as "Les Miserables," "Sweeney Todd" and more.
Other Hamilton cast members reportedly include:
Ari Afsar (Eliza Hamilton)
Chris Lee (Marquis de Lafayette/Thomas Jefferson)
Joseph Morales (Alexander Hamilton alternate)
Jose Ramos (John Laurens/Phillip Hamilton)
Wallace Smith (Hercules Mulligan/James Madison)
Samantha Marie Ware (Peggy Schuyler/Maria Reynolds)
The roles of Aaron Burr and the ensemble cast have not yet been announced.
Miranda performed his last show Saturday alongside two other departing stars in the show that has become a cultural phenomenon. The performance was also the last for Leslie Odom Jr., who won a Tony Award as Aaron Burr, and Phillipa Soo, a Tony nominee who portrayed Eliza Schuyler. The three plus an ensemble member took their bows together but none said anything.
"Hamilton," which won 11 Tony Awards last month, has been praised by politicians and rap stars, influenced the debate over the nation's currency and burst through the Broadway bubble like none other.
This year, it has won the Pulitzer Prize for drama, a Grammy, the Edward M. Kennedy Prize for Drama Inspired by American History and Miranda earned a MacArthur Foundation "genius" grant.
The Chicago production of "Hamilton" opens this fall and a touring production begins a 21-week run in San Francisco in 2017 before moving to Los Angeles. A London production is slated for 2017.
Two Chicago aldermen want to use money from a taxpayer fund surplus to pay for private security guards in their neighborhoods.
Ald. Brian Hopkins (2nd) and Ald. Joe Moreno (1st) have proposed a plan to spend $100,000 for guards to help Chicago police patrol Bucktown and Wicker Park.
This is a common sense measure with the goal of enhancing security for the Wicker Park and Bucktown communities within the 14th District, Hopkins said in a Tuesday news release. Its unnacceptable not to use available resources in addressing issues that are impacting the safety and security of our communities.
Ald. Moreno has publically called upon Chicago police Superintendent Eddie Johnson in the past demanding the department increase the number of patrol officers in the neighborhood.
Without help of the department, Moreno met with neighboring Ald. Hopkins to come up with a "creative way" to address the community's crime with the limited resources of the Chicago Police Department, according to the release.
In the proposal, the funding would be used to contract with private security first that hire off-duty or retired Chicago police and Cook County Sheriff officers.
The budget would be taken from part of an available surplus that Ald. Hopkins says will expire if not spent by the end of the year.
Presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton called for unity in the wake of the nations recent tragedies in Dallas, Minnesota and Louisiana while speaking in Springfield, Illinois, on Wednesday.
Clinton spoke at the Old State House, a historic setting where President Obama announced his candidacy in 2007 and where Abraham Lincoln delivered his monumental House Divided" speech.
Clinton referenced Lincolns speech in her call for unity as the country recovers from a series of high-profile shootings. During her address, Clinton also discussed the police-involved deaths of Chicago teen Laquan McDonald and Sandra Bland, who was born in Illinois.
"Recent events have left people across America asking hard questions about whether we are still a house divided," Clinton said. "Despite our best efforts and highest hopes, Americas long struggle with race is far from finished."
Last week, a pair of police-involved shootings in Minnesota and Louisiana reignited a national debate about race in America. Then on Thursday, a peaceful protest in Dallas turned tragic when a gunman targeted police, leaving five officers dead.
"There is too much violence and hate in our country, too little trust and common ground," Clinton said. "It can feel impossible to have the conversations we need to have to fix what's broken."
Clinton also condemned economic inequality and promised renewed opportunity for Americans. As a response to outsourcing and automation, Clinton promised to make the "biggest investment in new, good paying jobs since World War II."
"We need more jobs you can support a family on, especially in places that have been left out and left behind," Clinton said. "From coal country to Indian country to every place thats been hollowed out when a factory closed or a mine shut down."
"Everyone in America deserves that fair chance in the race of life that President Lincoln described," she added, quoting Lincoln's famous speech.
Clinton discussed the nations partisan politics, taking aim at her opponent, presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.
"In times like these we need a president who can help pull us together, not split us apart, Clinton said to resounding applause.
During her speech, Clinton also referenced a series of Trumps controversial positions, including his proposed ban on Muslim immigration and his plan to round up illegal immigrants living in the country. She also faulted Trump for his comments about the heritage of a Hispanic judge presiding over civil lawsuits against his beleaguered Trump University.
"His campaign is as divisive as any we have seen in our lifetimes," Clinton added. "It is built on stoking mistrust and pitting American against American. Its there in everything he says and everything he promises to do as president."
We dont need that kind of fear mongering," Clinton said. Not now, not ever.
Clinton closed her speech as she started, pushing for unity among the divided country.
In the end, if we do the work, we will cease to be divided, Clinton said. We, in fact will be indivisible with liberty and justice for all and we will remain, in President Lincoln's words, the last best hope of earth.
Clinton was also scheduled to attend an expensive fundraiser in north suburban Wilmette Wednesday. The event is being hosted by Chicago Cubs board member Laura Ricketts and her wife, Brooke.
Hillary Clinton will make two campaign stops in Illinois Wednesday, starting with a visit to the states capitol.
Clinton will stand on the steps at the Old State House in Springfield where Abraham Lincoln delivered his historic House Divided speech. The presumptive Democratic nominee plans to use the same location to deliver the same message, sticking with a theme of unity and healing in the wake of what she describes as "difficult days for America."
Lincoln delivered his address about the perils of slavery in June 1858 to the state Republican convention, famously declaring that "a house divided against itself cannot stand." He was defeated in his Senate bid that year but elected president two years later.
Returning to the site of Lincoln's speech, Clinton intends to address race relations in the aftermath of the shooting deaths of five Dallas police officers who were working at a public protest over fatal police shootings of black men in Louisiana and Minnesota.
Clinton is not the first to reach for Lincoln's legacy. President Barack Obama launched his first presidential campaign in 2007 in a chilly outdoor rally on the steps of the Old State Capitol, echoing Lincoln's calls for unity before the Civil War.
Her campaign said the speech will build off remarks last Friday to the African Methodist Episcopal Church convention in Philadelphia, where she pointed to the recent violence and declared there is "something wrong with our country."
"We have to find a way to repair these wounds and close these divides. The great genius and salvation of the United States is our capacity to do and be better," Clinton said last week in Philadelphia. "We need to find a way to do that again today-because it's critical to everything else we want to achieve."
From Springfield, Clinton heads to Chicagos north suburbs for a private fundraiser. The fundraiser will take place at the Wilmette home of part Cubs owner Laura Ricketts. Tickets start at $33,000 a piece.
Does this come with French fries? is not a question asked on July 13.
Wednesday marks National French Fry Day, where indulging in deep fried potatoes becomes a holiday.
Across social media platforms like Twitter, people have shared their love of fries with quirky tweets and hilarious GIFs. Restaurants across the nation, including Oak Brook-based McDonald's and Chicagos own Frite Street, are celebrating the day by giving out sides of French fries.
Get to Frite Street, 400 S. Financial Place in Chicago, by 4 p.m. to take advantage of its freebie fry deal. The slider-slinging, hand-cut-fry boasting restaurant that calls itself a "French fry dive," is offering free fries until closing.
McDonald's is giving a free medium fry with the purchase of a medium McCafe beverage, according to the chain's official Twitter account. This deal applies at participating locations.
IHOP extended its free fry promotion to July 31. According to an International Business Times article, the pancake diner is giving refills on fries with the purchase of certain burgers.
Your purchase of a sub today at Penn Station Subs includes a complimentary small fry, according to the sub restaurant's official Twitter account.
Penn Station Subs has Illinois locations in Skokie, Lombard and Bolingbrook.
The special amnesty on Liberation Day on Aug. 15 will cover over 2 million people, including a lot of smaller entrepreneurs convicted of corruption but excluding politicians.
A Cheong Wa Dae official said President Park Geun-hye wants to revive the economy and boost consumer confidence, but the amnesty will also cover cash-strapped people convicted of petty crimes and traffic offenders.
Two million people alone have convictions for violating traffic regulations.
When Park first announced the amnesty on the 70th anniversary of Korea's independence from Japan, speculation was that only about 1 million people would be covered by it.
A U.S. Postal Service worker was hospitalized after she was attacked by a swarm of hornets while on her suburban Chicago route Tuesday.
The mail carrier was stung between 30 and 50 times near her head and neck in Wheaton, according to U.S. Postal Service spokesperson Beverly Howard. Witnesses say landscapers working nearby may have aggravated the nest.
The mail carrier was transported to Central DuPage Hospital in Winfield and is expected to recover, Howard said.
Neighbor Sandra Romashko said she heard screaming outside her home just before the postal worker asked her to call 911.
She was very distressed, said Romashko. She wasnt crying. I asked her, Do you know if youre allergic? She said, I dont know but maybe I am.
Exterminators cleared the hornets from the neighborhood Tuesday.
The Postal Service said the incident should serve as a reminder for customers to watch for potential hazards at their homes.
Educate our customers to let them know there are safety hazards, said Howard. Work with us and keep our carriers safe.
A man who allegedly held a gun to his girlfriend's head and threatened to shoot her dog prompted a barricade situation in north suburban Antioch Wednesday afternoon.
Officers received a report of a man with a gun just before noon in the 700 block of Highview Court. A woman claimed her boyfriend held a gun to the back of her head, hit her several times with the frame of the firearm and threatened to shoot her dog.
Police evacuated the home but were unable to make contact with the man, identified by police as 37-year-old Jacobi Marotta. Officers set up a perimeter around the home and asked for the assistance of several area police agencies, including the Northern Illinois Police Alarm System.
Several roads in the area were shut down for about five hours and residents were told to shelter in place.
Negotiation attempts with Marotta were unsuccessful and police claim he refused to exit his home. Gas was deployed and Marotta eventually surrendered to custody just before 5 p.m.
No one was injuries during the incident, police said.
Marotta was charged with felony aggravated battery, enhanced domestic battery, and aggravated assault. He was ordered held in lieu of $500,000 bond, police said.
It was not immediately clear if Marotta had an attorney.
In hopes of fighting terrorism and combating Islamophobia, a suburban Chicago Muslim group is sending a message via two billboards hanging over Chicago highways.
The billboards over Interstate 290 and I-55 carry the message "Muslims to Muslims: See Something. Say Something. Save Innocent Lives." Paid for by members of the Association of Pakistani Americans of Bolingbrook, they follow two other billboards hung in other locations around Chicago earlier this summer, according to the Chicago Tribune.
The founder of the group, Talat Rashid, told the publication the signs aim to "tell average Americans this is who we are, and we do not condone [terrorism]."
While the group believes it is a good initiative, some Chicago-area Muslim leaders are not fully on board, according to the Tribune.
Chariman of the Council of Islamic Organizations of Greater Chicago Mohammed Kaiseruddin called it "vague," noting it doesn't mention what type activity people should report and who they should report it to.
Officials at the Cook County Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management requested that Kaiseruddin promote the billboard slogan but he reportedly refused. Kaiseruddin said the slogan creates a sense of hypervigilance that could lead people to report those who are innocent.
The Association of Pakistani Americans of Bolingbrook reportedly paid almost $7,600 in advertising fees to use the billboard for four weeks. Members of the association believe the message is a proactive way to educate the public about the difference between Muslim beliefs and extreme radical ideas, according to the Tribune.
About 400,000 Muslims call home to the Chicago area, according to Kaiseruddin.
Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump was forced to stay overnight in Indiana due to a mechanical issue on his private plane Tuesday night, NBC News confirms.
The billionaire is reportedly using the extra time in Indiana to continue narrowing his search for a potential running mate.
Trump visited the Hoosier state Tuesday to attend a rally alongside Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, who is being vetted as the presumptive nominee's potential VP pick.
Trump and his family met with Pence at the Governors Mansion Wednesday, further fueling speculation that the candidate may announce the governor as his running mate.
During a press conference after their meeting Wednesday, Pence said hes honored and humbled to be considered for the role.
The conversations weve had between two families are something Karen and I will cherish the rest of our lives, whatever the outcome, Pence said.
Trump is expected to announce his pick at a public event Friday, multiple sources told NBC News.
Aside from Pence, Trump told the Wall Street Journal Wednesday that he is considering New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.
Trump met with Christie and his family Tuesday, according to the Associated Press. Gingrich also traveled to Indiana Wednesday and was seen with members of Trumps entourage, as well as Sen. Jeff Sessions, of Alabama, who was also seen at the hotel after Gingrich left.
Trump was in Chicago Tuesday to attend a big-ticket campaign fundraiser at Trump Tower. According to the Chicago Tribune, Trump is set to collect over $1 million in contributions from the event.
A defiant Bashar al-Assad expressed confidence that Syria's bloody war could be won within months, saying Russia's intervention has helped tip the scales toward victory.
Assad spoke exclusively to NBC News on Wednesday at his office in Damascus in a wide-ranging interview about the Syrian war, ISIS, the U.S. and his legacy.
He was unruffled by the State Department branding his vow to retake every inch of Syria as "delusional," saying it was only a matter of time until he regained full control of his country.
"The Syrian army has made a lot of advancement recently," Assad told NBC News. "It won't take more than a few months."
Watch the full interview here.
A Southwest Airlines flight from Chicago was diverted en route to Austin Wednesday following "severe turbulence" that one passenger said forced him out of his seat at one point as the plane stabilized.
Southwest Flight 1265 traveling to AustinBergstrom International Airport from Chicago's Midway International Airport diverted to Kansas City, according to Southwest Airlines, based in Dallas.
"Out of an abundance of caution, the flight crew elected to divert to Kansas City International Airport (MCI) to conduct a post-turbulence check of the aircraft," spokesman Brian Parrish said in a statement.
Nick Dunbar, a passenger on the flight, said he never experienced anything like it.
"Heavy anxiety on the plane as passengers became uneasy and there were a few starting to be visibly scared and even a few screams," Dunbar told NBC 5 on Twitter. "I was literally out of my seat for a few seconds as the plane was stabilizing."
Emergency crews were seen assessing the plane at Kansas City International Airport after the landing. Parrish said there were no reports of any injuries to passengers or crew.
"Crew was great and calm and made sure everyone was OK," Dunbar said.
The flight continued on to Austin after it was cleared to fly.
The Midwest was expected to see severe weather Wednesday, according to the National Weather Service, with scattered showers and storms forecast for the Chicago area.
One organized group in Connecticut that formally endorsed Sen. Bernie Sanders was the Working Families Party.
The progressive, organized labor focused party that is influential in Bridgeport and Hartford backed the Vermont senator for several of his policy positions.
The party's state director, Lindsay Farrell, told NBC Connecticut, she hopes Sanders' views become more mainstream.
Raising wages, holding wall street banks accountable, making college affordable for young people. Its told all of the politicians that have been watching this primary that there is a real appetite for those policies," she said Tuesday.
The Democratic Party's platform did embrace raising the minimum wage, and coming up with a path to making college more affordable for working families, positions that Hillary Clinton has warmed to since the beginning of the primary season.
For those reasons, Connecticut Democratic Party Chairman Nick Balletto, said he's not concerned about Sanders voters from the April presidential primary turning to vote for Clinton in the Fall. Clinton convincingly won the Connecticut presidential primary.
Balletto said, I think people were very excited during the primary cycle and were standing up and fighting for what they truly believe in but I think theyre beginning to see the common ground between both camps and theyll come together and move forward and were going to win in November.
Governor Dannel Malloy, who sits on the Platform Committee of the DNC, said he's not concerned about having to win over Sanders supporters for Clinton's sake. He said the alternative is something he doesn't think Connecticut voters can stomach.
He said, "I think Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton have done a lot to unify the party. I also think that Donald Trump has helped to unify the Democratic Party as well.
Sometimes reading out loud can be a little scary for a kid, but its a lot easier when your audience is small and very cute.
Rosie the Library Dog is a regular visitor in Willimantic, where she helps kids develop their skills as a certified reading therapy dog alongside her handler Devon Conover, a retired elementary educator.
Conover was looking to give back to the community in a way that incorporated her love for animals and education. She and Rosie became a certified therapy dog team through an organization called Tails of Joy, which is based in Manchester.
Rosies been a therapy dog for about four years, Conover said, and we visit libraries and skilled nursing facilities.
Turning reluctant readers into brave bookworms is all in a days work for Rosie, who isnt there to critique or correct just to listen and encourage. And her pint-sized storytellers say shes an appreciative audience.
I think she likes it, said Rene Montalvo, who read to Rosie in Spanish, because when I read she wiggles her tail, and that's what most dogs do when they're happy.
But just a few years ago, life wasnt so happy for this Corgi mix. Rosie is a former shelter dog found by a rescue group in a high-kill shelter in Alabama.
Now, one little life saved is helping set other little lives down the path to success a reminder of the potential in every shelter pet and the power to give their stories happy endings.
Across the country, there are thousands of animals just like Rosie waiting to be adopted right now.
NBC Connecticut hopes youll open your heart and your home to a shelter pet during our Clear The Shelters adoption event on Saturday July 23. Click here to find a participating shelter near you.
A potato stuffed into a vehicle's tailpipe helped lead police to a Connecticut woman suspected of intentionally setting fire to a construction company in Prospect over a money dispute with her coworker at a strip club.
Willow Martin, 19, of Naugatuck, and her then boyfriend, Matthew V. Garguilo, are accused of setting the fire on 14 Waterbury Road that destroyed the MTM Masonry and extended to a Chinese restaurant on the morning of Sept. 15, according to police.
Police arrested Garguilo, a known heroin dealer, earlier this month. They said he told police Martin wanted to burn the business down because she was arguing with the owner's stepdaughter over money.
After learning about the fire, the business's owner found a potato in his car's tailpipe and brought it to police. Officials processed it for DNA, which led them to Garguilo.
When questioned by police, Garguilo told officers that he handled the potato, but Martin put it in the exhaust pipe, according to the arrest report.
A police report said the money dispute stemmed from Martin lending a coworker, who is the business owner's stepdaughter, $1,200 for clothes while they were on vacation in Wildwood, New Jersey, in August 2015.
Following the vacation, the victim's family said they saw Martin driving by the home, leaving trash on the lawn. The coworker's mother asked Martin in a text message about the garbage and she responded, "What are you talking about? I put trash where it belongs," the police report said.
Martin allegedly told Garguilo multiple times that she wanted to set fire to the woman's stepfather's business, the report said.
Witnesses interviewed by police said Martin had previously started a fire at her home in Naugatuck after she got into a fight with her mother about dating Garguilo. Police confirm that a fire was reported at the home several years ago, but it was deemed to be an electrical fire.
According to Garguilo, the fighting between Martin and the coworker was so bad the two couldn't work at the Hollywood Strip Club during the same shift. He also said Martin tried to give the young woman a bag of Suboxen and heroin, a mixture he said could potentially kill someone, according to the police report.
On the night of the fire, Martin was working at Hollywood when she texted Garguilo, saying she wanted to set the building ablaze, according to the report. He said he was afraid another man might help her if he didnt, so he picked Martin up from the club and drove her to Martin's parents house to get gas cans and hammers, the report said.
When the couple arrived at Waterbury Road, Garguilo said he waited in the bushes, watching through a window, while Martin entered the back of one of the businesses next to the Chinese restaurant. He said he saw Martin pour gas throughout the interior of the masonry business before lighting a napkin to start the fire, according to the report.
After the napkin was lit, Garguilo said he saw Martin get blown out the back door, "just like the movies," the report said.
When the pair got back in the car, they drove past the building that was engulfed in flames and Martin gave her then-boyfriend a high-five, Garguilo said.
Martin has been charged with third-degree burglary, third-degree conspiracy to commit burglary, possession of burglar's tools, second-degree arson, second-degree conspiracy to commit arson, first-degree criminal mischief and conspiracy to commit criminal mischief.
Her bond was set at $110,000.
Garguilo's charges in the arson case include second-degree conspiracy to commit arson, third-degree conspiracy to commit burglary, conspiracy to commit possession of burglar's tools and first-degree conspiracy to commit criminal mischief.
Every morning, Hartford Police Officer Chris White hops into his cruiser for his shift to patrol the north end of Hartford.
The 13-year veteran makes his presence known in certain key spots where crime takes place. Through the day, he investigates loitering and public disturbance call, but he also makes it clear that there to improve life in the community.
"These are my friends!" he yelled out the window to 5-year-old Jayshawn and 6-year- old Rodney.
Then, he took a few minutes out of his day to greet them, stepping out of the car and teaching them his special handshake.
Its a normal shift for an officer during a difficult time after police-involved shootings in Louisiana dna Minnesota as well as the ambush on law enforcement officers in Dallas.
You have to adapt and overcome for the most part. Unfortunately, you dont want things like that to happen but when they do you have to take it in stride and march forward. And continue to do what you do, White said.
During a ride-along on Tuesday, NBC Connecticut asked him if he is more mindful of use of force when he out in the field and he sighed.
"Thats a great question. And thats a great question for so many reasons because this is how were going to get ourselves killed. And I hate to be so blunt with that. We are now second-guessing everything, he said. And sometimes you dont have a second in terms of resolving a situation.
Situations can be scary, but no matter what happens, he said its his duty to protect and its all part of the risk that comes with wearing the blue uniform.
Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, who waged a spirited but unsuccessful campaign against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for the U.S. Democratic presidential nomination, endorsed her candidacy Tuesday against Republican Donald Trump. Sanders called Clinton "far and away the best candidate" and said he intends "to do everything I can to make certain she will be the next president of the United States." The 74-year-old Sanders, who campaigned against the financial clout of Wall Street chieftains and the growing income inequality in the U.S., cited a lengthy list of his liberal-leaning social policies that Clinton has endorsed after months of campaigning against each other. Sanders won 22 of the 50 state party primaries and caucuses against Clinton, but she effectively claimed the nomination with a string of victories over him in the country's biggest states with the most delegates to the party's national nominating convention starting July 25.
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders wave to supporters with during a rally in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where Sanders endorsed her for president on July 12, 2016. /AP
"Hillary Clinton knows that something is very wrong when the very rich become richer while many others are working longer hours for lower wages," Sanders said to a cheering crowd. Even before Sanders joined Clinton at a campaign rally in the northeastern state of New Hampshire, Trump, the billionaire real estate mogul making his first run for elected office, rebuffed Sanders' endorsement of Clinton. "I am somewhat surprised that Bernie Sanders was not true to himself and his supporters," Trump said in a Twitter message. "They are not happy he is selling out!" Sanders said, "Hillary Clinton will make an outstanding president and I am proud to stand with her here today." It has been weeks since it became clear that Clinton would win the Democratic presidential nomination, but Sanders, while saying that they shared the goal of defeating Trump in November's national election, had declined until Tuesday to fully embrace her candidacy as he sought to influence the party's platform of policies.
Clinton, seeking to become the country's first female president, agreed to support a more than doubling of the country's minimum wage from $7.25 an hour to $15 for low-income workers and move toward providing free college tuition. The New Hampshire event came a week after Clinton welcomed another major figure to her campaign effort as President Barack Obama appeared with her in the mid-Atlantic state of North Carolina. Clinton will not become the official Democratic nominee until the party's convention in the eastern city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. What remains unclear is the extent Sanders plans to make campaign appearances for her. He often bested her in the nomination race with support from younger voters, a segment of the American electorate she hopes to capture in the November election to pick a successor to Obama, who leaves office in January. Trump is expected to claim the Republican nomination next week in the midwestern city of Cleveland, Ohio. Both Trump and Clinton are poring over lists of potential vice presidential running mates, with Trump expected to name his choice later this week and Clinton days later.
A third suspect has been arrested in the theft of an AR-15 rifle, two loaded magazines and a bulletproof vest from a state police cruiser in Milford in March.
James Lee, 19, of New Haven, has been charged with firearms trafficking, larceny, stealing a firearm and possession of an assault weapon, among other charges.
The gun, vest and two fully loaded 30-round magazines were taken from the locked trunk of the cruiser on Rutland Road in Milford, according to state police.
In all, there were 12 car break-ins on West Rutland Road, Plains Road and Haystack Road and a green 2015 Ford Fusion with Vermont plates GHK528 was stolen at the end of the crime spree, according to Milford police.
In the months since the theft, state police, New Haven Police and the FBI Safe Streets Gang Task Force have been working together on the case and were able to secure seven warrants for four people.
According to an affidavit, on Friday, May 20, Lee was arrested by New Haven police on an active narcotics arrest warrant. When police executed a search warrant at his resident, a firearm reported stolen was recovered. Lee waived his rights and explained his involvement in stealing the AR-15 .
Lee stated that on Tuesday, March 8, he was picked up by two friends, identified as Leandre Crockett, 18, of New Haven and Julio. Julio was later identified as Travis Ingram, 20, of New Haven. The three then headed to Milford where a State Trooper car was at and began checking cars.
Lee claimed that he and Crockett separated from Ingram and when they reunited Ingram was holding a bag with an AR-15 and ammunition. They dropped the bag and drove a stolen car to New Haven with the AR-15 in the back seat. Lee said he was then dropped off at his home with the stolen firearm.
Lee said he originally intended to help sell the stolen gun but then decided against it. He claimed Ingram sold the stolen AR-15 and shared the profit with Lee.
Lee was already in Department of Correction custody and being arraigned on an unrelated case when he was arrested Wednesday. He appeared in court in New Haven Wednesday and is scheduled to appear in court in Milford on Thursday.
Travis Ingram and Leandre Crockett have already been charged in this case. There is one pending arrest scheduled for next week for another suspect who is already in Department of Correction custody.
Donald Trump assailed Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in a message tweeted late Tuesday after she refused to back off her stinging criticism of the presumptive Republican Party presidential nominee.
"Justice Ginsburg of the U.S. Supreme Court has embarrassed all by making very dumb political statements about me," he posted on Twitter. "Her mind is shot resign!"
Ginsburg first disparaged the candidacy of the presumptive Republican nominee in interviews with The AP and The New York Times, saying she was frightened of what the country, and the Supreme Court in particular, would become if he were elected.
Ginsburg had said that she felt Trump was unqualified for the position. She said in an interview with The Associated Press last week that she didn't want to think about the possibility that Trump would be president and predicted that Democrat Hillary Clinton would win.
"I can't imagine what this place would be I can't imagine what the country would be with Donald Trump as our president," Ginsburg told The New York Times. "For the country, it could be four years. For the court, it could be I don't even want to contemplate that."
If he wins, "everything is up for grabs," she said.
On Tuesday, she continued her assessment of the candidate, telling CNN he was "a faker."
"He has no consistency about him. He says whatever comes into his head at the moment," Ginsburg said in an interview with CNNs Joan Biskupic. "He really has an ego. ... How has he gotten away with not turning over his tax returns? The press seems to be very gentle with him on that."
Trump retorted that her comments were not fitting for a Supreme Court justice.
"I think it's highly inappropriate that a United States Supreme Court judge gets involved in a political campaign, frankly," Trump told The Times. "I think it's a disgrace to the court and I think she should apologize to the court. I couldn't believe it when I saw it."
Her comments only energized his base, he said.
"And I would hope that she would get off the court as soon as possible," he said.
At 83, Ginsburg is the oldest justice.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Tuesday called her remarks "totally inappropriate."
Justices should refrain from commenting on elections, McConnell, the Kentucky Republican, told The AP.
"It raises a level of skepticism that the American people have from time to time about just how objective the Supreme Court is, whether they're over there to call the balls and strikes, or weigh in on one side or another," he said.
As the saying goes, dogs are man's best friend and they are coming through in a big way for staff at Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas.
The hospital networks' assisted animal therapy program includes 103 specially trained therapy dogs. They are used not only for specific therapy treatments, but also to simply visit with patients to brighten their day.
On Friday, a day after the shooting of police officers in downtown Dallas, they comforted the emergency department staff.
Eli is one of the dogs on the team, handled by Linda Marler, the program coordinator, who visited staff.
"It's unconditional love, just gives them an outlet to be able to hug something soft and warm," Marler said.
For Rachel Meyer, a radiology technologist, the snuggly embrace and wet kisses brought smiles on a day where there wasn't much to smile about.
"You forget for a second what happened and you forget what's going with everything. Having to be up here the atmosphere you kind of forget for a second. So it was nice just for that moment forgetting about all that has happened," Meyer said.
Eli also provided comfort to one of the injured officers and his family.
"They were just really glad that we were there. Eli got up on a chair right beside him and he was able to pet on him," Marler said.
A crew that's known for healing people's bodies has begun working to help heal the emotional wounds plaguing many in local law enforcement right now.
Cook Children's Medical Center in Fort Worth launched a campaign simply titled We Support You on Wednesday.
Doctors, nurses and support staff swarmed a table in the Fort Worth campus atrium Wednesday morning to hand-write personal notes of support to local police.
The letters will be sent to the Dallas Police Department and DART Police Department who lost officers in last weeks ambush in downtown Dallas, but notes will also go to Fort Worth police and the hospital's security team as well.
Leaders say all law enforcement are grieving the losses right now, after all.
"Letting them know we're here to back them up," said nurse practitioner Lakeshia Johnson.
Many employees Wednesday morning actually took time to write a letter to each of the four departments, and some patients and families at the hospital also took time to pen letters.
Hospital president Nancy Cychol said staff members are hurting alongside everyone else in Dallas-Fort Worth, and this seemed like a good way to help the healing process for them and the officers who need it most of all.
"They were aching to do something 'How can we get involved to help?' especially when (Dallas Police) Chief (David) Brown said they're all hurting. And that's just what we do. We take care of people," said Cychol.
Cook campuses across the area will participate in the letter writing campaign.
Dallas Police Ambush
Five officers were killed and nine were injured in an ambush at a peaceful protest on July 7, 2016.
Authorities have captured two people they say shot at police in Ennis Tuesday morning.
Ennis police said they were fired upon at about 7 a.m. during the pursuit, which ended by a field near Ensign Road.
The occupants, a man and a woman, then abandoned the vehicle and ran into the field.
Police and sheriff's deputies surrounded the field. A Texas Department of Public Safety helicopter joined Ennis police in the search at about 11 a.m.
The man and woman were taken into custody Tuesday afternoon.
Police said no officers were injured.
Check back and refresh this page for the latest update. As this story is developing, elements may change.
Live video of a funeral for Dallas Police Department veteran Sgt. Michael Smith will appear in the player above beginning at noon Thursday.
Dallas Police Patrol Sgt. Michael Smith was remembered at a public service Thursday, one week after he and four other officers were killed in the shooting at a Dallas protest.
The service was held at noon at Watermark Church in Dallas.
"Mike closed his eyes in history, and then opened them in heaven. That's the belief we hang on to," said Dallas Police Chief David O. Brown.
Speaking at the funeral for slain Dallas police Sgt. Michael Smith, Chief of Police David Brown leans on his faith in a message directed at the officers family.
Brown reiterated that the police community will be support for Smith's wife Heidi and his two daughters, Victoria and Caroline.
Retired Dallas Police Officer Lance Wyatt remembered Smith as the man who served as a protector during his years of service to the U.S. Army and the Dallas Police Department.
Retired Dallas police officer Lance Wyatt remembers his friend, slain Dallas police Sgt. Michael Smith, during his memorial service July 14, 2016.
Smith once received a "Cops' Cop" Award for the Dallas Police Association, and Wyatt said Smith was the recipient of 51 internal and 28 external commendations.
"I personally witnessed that Mike was the police officer that could be counted on by citizens that he served, by fellow officers, and by his supervisors, that included me," said Wyatt.
Dallas police Sgt. Anthony Tyrone Pickens remembers his friend, slain Dallas police Sgt. Michael Smith, during his memorial service July 14, 2016.
Sgt. Anthony Tyrone Pickens recalled Smith's friendship, they had worked 16 years together on an extra job at Cinemark movie theater and attended the same church.
"When promoting to sergeant Mike bought me a gift -- a gold pen and a bottle of Advil aspirins. He said 'you will need the Advil more than the pen,' and said 'welcome to my world,'" said Pickens.
Pickens also recalled Smith as a Christian and devoted family man.
"Our hearts are heavy, we all are heartbroken," said Pickens.
An individual whose identity cannot be released, remembers his friend, slain Dallas police Sgt. Michael Smith, during his memorial service July 14, 2016.
An undercover officer also spoke to the hundreds of mourners about his mentor and one-time supervisor.
"10 and a half years ago, Mike stood behind me, urging me on, but now our roles have changed, Mike, now it's my turn to stand behind you, support you, your family and challenge everyone in this room and listening to be courageous in the days and weeks and months ahead." he said. "This desire to uphold what is right and the unity that has been created between law enforcement and the community can not stop once the last officer has been laid to rest."
At the funeral for slain Dallas police Sgt. Michael Smith, Pastor Todd Wagner gives the opening remarks on Smith and his relationship with service and faith.
Smith's Public Visitation Tuesday
Hundreds attended Smith's public visitation Tuesday at the Mary Immaculate Catholic Church in Farmers Branch. Officers from as far away as New York and Boston attended.
"So happy all these police officers from all over the country are here. That means a lot," Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings said.
The Dallas Police Department choir sings at the funeral for slain Sgt. Michael Smith, July 14, 2016.
Smith's flag-draped casket arrived at the church earlier in the afternoon, escorted by fellow Dallas police officers.
"He's an amazing person. He was a professional from start to finish," said Dallas officer and former partner Marcie St. John. "He was a family man. He was a cop's cop. He was just a good, all around person. What mattered most to him was taking care of other people. His whole life was about service."
Dallas police Sgt. Anthony Tyrone Pickens remembers his friend, slain Dallas police Sgt. Michael Smith, during his memorial service July 14, 2016.
Rawlings and Dallas Police Chief David Brown were among the many who filed past Smith's casket, which will be guarded by two Dallas police officers overnight.
Smith's wife, Heidi, is a fourth-grade teacher at Mary Immaculate Catholic School, where his 9- and 14-year-old daughters attend school.
"It's tough on me. It's tough on my staff. It's heart-wrenching," said Father Michael Forge.
Funerals were held Wednesday for Dallas Police Sr. Cpl. Lorne Ahrens and Dallas Area Rapid Transit Officer Brent Thompson.
Dallas Police Officer Michael Krol's funeral is set for Friday, and Dallas police Officer Patrick Zamarripa's funeral will be held Saturday.
Several North Texas police departments are assisting Dallas police and DART police this week so their officers can attend memorial services and funerals for their fallen colleagues.
"It's important for us all to band together," said Irving Police Officer James McLellan. "It's hard enough when we lose an officer in the line of duty anyway, but particularly in this fashion it's even more difficult. And so whatever way we can give back we try."
At least half a dozen departments sent officer support Tuesday to assist with traffic control during the presidential visit.
Arlington police led the presidential motorcade to and from Dallas Love Field, while officers from Irving and Grand Prairie blocked the streets along the way.
"They're here to help us because we are stressed," said Dallas Police Lt. Charles Epperson. "We have emotional problems like anyone else trying to get through a very traumatic situation, but they're here for our help and the help of the citizens as well."
Many departments will send police honor guards to this week's funerals, while other patrol units may answer 911 calls in Dallas to allow additional DPD officers to attend the services.
"Very appreciated, and they're always volunteering their services. We really don't have to ask, they'll come to us," Epperson said.
Beginning Wednesday, police officers from several of the 13 cities served by DART will ride the trains, allowing DART police to attend the services.
"We understand that they have some limited manpower," said Plano Police Officer David Tilley. "They, too, are hurt and they're grieving and they still have a job to do, so we want to try to help out."
"We all want to be able to try and do something," McLellan said. "Certainly when we have a police officer or multiple police officers lost in the line of duty we want to be able to pitch in somehow."
Before protesters marched in Ferguson, New York and Baton Rouge, South Dallas residents came face-to-face with police during protests of a 2012 officer-involved shooting.
Adolphus Johnson still recalls the heat that day. Under the sweltering summer sun hundreds of South Dallas residents took part in a tense protest after the killing of James Harper, an unarmed black man fatally shot by a Dallas police officer during a struggle in 2012.
"I just remember 300 of my friends family members crying, mourning, over a death that could have been prevented," Johnson said. "It causes me to feel down, of course, because I lost a friend, but it also causes me to be angry."
Johnson said Harper's killing only deepened the mistrust of police in minority communities. Following the death of five officers last Thursday, Johnson said rebuilding that trust will take a long time.
"I believe change can come, but will it happen immediately? No. Will it happen next year, or the next five years, 10 years?" he asked. One of his friends then yelled "it might get worse."
Johnson said calls to unify ring hollow when neither the police nor the protesters seeking to hold them accountable listen to each other. He believes officers need better training and must engage the community at the neighborhood level, not just those who show up at protests and rallies.
"We need people who represent that are more like us, who live this life," he said.
Engagement is a main component of the Dallas Police Department's community policing approach, which has received high praise following Thursday's shooting. Sgt. David Davis of the Black Police Association said community policing is only a starting point.
"There must be a dialogue. I think both sides really need to take a look in the mirror and listen and identify the issues each has with the other," Davis said.
Davis is from Dallas and has been a police officer for nearly two decades. He said losing five officers in one night was surreal. According to police, the killer targeted white police officers, but had also grown angry with the Black Lives Matter movement.
Davis said he hopes both sides can come together to prevent future acts of violence and gain a better understanding of one another's views.
"Become involved in the areas that will affect social change as a whole," he said. "That's my message. Become involved and become part of the solution and not part of the problem."
House Speaker Paul Ryan defended his decision to support Donald Trump, noting that he was still a better choice over Hillary Clinton even though Ryan disagreed with the candidate on many issues, NBC News reported.
"It's a binary choice," Ryan told a skeptical voter at a CNN town hall Tuesday. "It is either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton you don't get a third option. It's one or the other and I know where I want to go."
Ryan has spoken out against Trump before, including disavowing his proposed temporary ban on Muslims entering the United States and Trump's attack on a federal judge with "Mexican heritage" presiding over a lawsuit against Trump University.
In a landmark ruling, the UN arbitration court is dismissing China's territorial claims in the South China Sea, saying it has "no historic title" to the vast maritime region. Tuesday's ruling by the Hague-based Permanent Court of Arbitration answers a complaint brought by the Philippines in 2013 that accused Beijing of violating the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) with its aggressive actions on the Scarborough Shoal, a reef located about 225 km off the Philippine coast. Chinese President Xi Jinping rejected the ruling and said "China's territorial sovereignty and maritime interests in the South China Sea" will not be affected. China's foreign ministry said on its website, "The award is null and void and has no binding force." The court said Beijing's claim of virtual sovereignty over nearly all the South China Sea under a so-called "nine-dash line" runs contrary to UNCLOS, which sets a country's maritime boundaries 22 km from its coast, and control over economic activities up to 370 km from its coast. The court ruled China had violated Manila's sovereign rights by interfering with Philippine fishing and oil exploration activities in the area. In Manila, Philippine Foreign Secretary Perfecto Yasay called the ruling "a milestone decision" in a press conference moments after the announcement. Yasay said the ruling makes "an important contribution" to resolving the ongoing maritime disputes, and urged all parties "to exercise restraint and sobriety." New Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has called for bilateral negotiations to resolve the controversy. U.S. State Department spokesman John Kirby called the ruling "an important contribution to the shared goal of a peaceful resolution to disputes in the South China Sea."
Protesters shout slogans during a rally outside of the Chinese Consulate in Makati city, east of Manila, Philippines on July 12, 2016, hours before the Hague-based UN international arbitration tribunal is to announce its ruling on the South China Sea. /AP
China had boycotted the proceedings at the court, saying the body has no jurisdiction over the dispute, and insists it will not accept, recognize or implement any ruling on the South China Sea, despite being a signatory to UNCLOS along with the Philippines. In a statement issued just hours before The Hague panel announced its decision, a spokesman for China's foreign ministry said it would not accept "any so-called material" from the court. Analysts said the court ruling is a significant decision in favor of the Philippines. Ernest Bower with the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies said, "China now faces reality that if it continues to assert, through actions and words" its claims in the region, "it is breaking the law." Amarjit Singh, a senior consultant at the British think tank IHS, said the ruling "undermines China's claims in the South China Sea and potentially limits China's negotiating stance" with other countries that have also asserted claims there, including, Brunei, Malaysia, Taiwan and Vietnam. Chinese Dissatisfaction State media Xinhua and online netizens expressed strong dissatisfaction the ruling. A Weibo user said in his posting that "We should unite behind the country's claim and make no concessions on the South China Sea dispute even if we have to go to war," while another user said "China should show no fear for any future economic sanction" shall China decide not to comply with the order. In its harsh-worded editorial, Xinhua even lambasted the international arbitration court to be "the source of chaos." Meanwhile, the ruling is coming in the midst of the two-day EU-China bilateral talks, which began in Beijing on Tuesday. The EU advised China to stick to rules and abide by the ruling. German think tank, Mecator, said the EU would never grant China's request for a Market Economy Status if Beijing defies the court decision. An estimated $5 trillion in global trade passes each year through the South China Sea, which is home to rich fishing grounds and a potentially vast wealth of oil, gas and other natural resources. About 100 demonstrators marched outside the Chinese consulate in Manila, calling on Beijing to relinquish the Scarborough Shoal, shouting "Chexit Now" -- a play on the term coined for Britain's controversial push to leave the European Union.
China has launched a massive land seizure and rebuilding effort throughout the South China Sea in recent years, transforming numerous reefs into artificial islands that can support military installations, all the while ignoring competing claims over the region by Brunei, Malaysia, Vietnam and Taiwan, as well as the Philippines. The Hague court also ruled Tuesday that none of the Spratly Islands granted China an exclusive economic zone, and that its construction activities on Mischief Reef caused "irreparable harm" to the reef's ecosystem. Enforcement of Ruling Despite Tuesday's ruling, the United Nations has no mechanism to enforce the decision, either through military action or economic sanctions. But it could prompt China's other Asia-Pacific rivals to also file suit, putting increased diplomatic pressure on Beijing to reduce its presence in the South China Sea. The United States has also challenged Beijing's increasing aggressiveness in the region, holding a number of naval exercises and deploying warships near the rebuilt reefs to assert the international freedom of navigation rules.
Authorities were searching for a man who shot a driver Tuesday night after a car crash in South Los Angeles, police said.
The shooting occured around 9:30 p.m. near 21st Street and Central Avenue, according to the Los Angeles Police Department.
One vehicle struck the other and a chase ensued. A man got out of the vehicle that was chased and asked "what do you want." The man then pulled out a handgun and fired at least two shots at the driver, hitting him in the neck and back, according to the LAPD.
The victim was transported to a hospital in unknown condition.
The shooter left in a black Honda driven by woman.
Police said the incident was also being considered a hit-and-run crash.
Oleevia Woo and Corey Arvin contributed to this report.
The board of supervisors voted 3-2 Tuesday to ask voters in November to approve a special marijuana tax of up to 10 percent of gross receipts to fund the fight against homelessness.
"There's an emergency," said Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas, who has unsuccessfully pressed Gov. Jerry Brown to declare a statewide emergency to free up additional funding. "It is urgent that we address this issue."
However, in the end, Ridley-Thomas voted against the marijuana tax, even after his push for a quarter-cent sales tax failed to garner the four votes it needed to pass. Supervisor Michael Antonovich cast the other dissenting vote.
The county's chief executive officer has estimated that $450 million in annual funding will be needed to effectively combat homelessness in the region.
A marijuana tax is projected to raise $78-130 million annually, leading Ridley-Thomas to call it the "least effective" choice.
The board also considered a three-cent parcel tax which was taken off the table before a vote a quarter-cent sales tax and a general tax on medical and recreational marijuana that would not have been dedicated to fighting homelessness.
More than 100 advocates for the homeless urged the board to move forward with at least one of the measures, including a homeless man who said he hadn't showered in months.
Many activists pushed for the sales tax, saying it would be the most reliable and timely source of funds. That option was projected to generate $355 million annually.
Others chose not to dictate a particular path, while some suggested that the board put all measures on the ballot and let voters decide.
Pollsters hired by the county found roughly equivalent public support ranging from 67-69 percent for all the options.
However, poll numbers fell below two-thirds when measures were in the third rather than first position on a hypothetical ballot or when voters heard additional messaging about the issues.
Revenues from the marijuana tax would depend on voters passing a separate November measure to legalize the use of recreational marijuana.
The tax would be on both medical and recreational marijuana and when paired with state and other taxes, could mean that buyers pay up to 34 percent in taxes on purchases. Some marijuana advocates warned that high taxes could create a continuing black market for the drug.
Based on experience in Colorado, Washington and Oregon, staffers said revenue would come in slowly and build over a period of about two years after legalization. No tax on recreational marijuana could take effect until at least 2018, according to county attorneys.
Supervisor Michael Antonovich objected to the idea of taxing a drug that he believes should be illegal.
"Drugs don't build strong societies," Antonovich said, adding that legalization "runs counter to our public health approach" as "marijuana is tied to dependence and addiction."
Supervisor Hilda Solis said the issue "makes me feel a bit uncomfortable," but believes that voters are likely to pass legalization and the board should begin to worry about "bringing in revenue that this county deserves."
The county could chose to ban marijuana even if the state legalizes it though it could not ban personal indoor use or cultivation or the use of public roads for transportation but in that case would not receive any of the state taxes generated by the drug.
Supervisor Sheila Kuehl said the board shouldn't worry about answering all the questions about how to regulate marijuana before moving forward with a ballot measure to tax cannabis.
"It's time to do this now," Kuehl said.
The county had previously considered a millionaire's tax, a half-percent tax on personal income in excess of $1 million that was projected to raise $243 million per year to combat homelessness.
State legislators who would have had to grant the county the right to levy that tax failed to take the issue up before the summer recess, leaving the measure unable to meet deadlines for the November ballot.
France is sending an aircraft carrier to help fight ISIS in Iraq and Syria, NBC News reported.
French President Francois Hollande said Wednesday a battle group will be deployed in the fall.
The country intensified its military campaign after 130 people were killed in Paris in November. The previous January, gunmen attacked the office of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris, killing 17 people.
France sent the aircraft carrier near the Syrian coast to carry out airstrikes in November following the Paris attacks.
Miami-Dade Police Department detectives found plastic bins clearly marked "BIOHAZARD" and medical backboards among stolen items during a raid as part of an investigation into stolen plastics.
The bins and backboards are supposed to be closely tracked but how they ended up among the stolen items is being investigated.
In March, NBC 6 Investigators were there when 20 people were arrested and accused of stealing plastic crates and other items from retails stores. The arrests came after an investigation by Miami-Dade Economic Crime detectives. The 20 are accused of stealing $1.5 million worth of plastic crates from local retail stores. Police say the plastics were ground up into bits to be sold.
During the raid, NBC 6 photojournalist Adam Rice captured images of the plastic medical bins and backboards. The bins are used at hospitals to store medical waste. The backboards are used to transport injured and sick people.
Because these items could hold biohazardous waste, health officials expressed concerns about who is handling them.
"Only authorized people, only people with training should be handling this type of waste," said Dr. Samir Elmir, the Division Director for the Environmental Health and Engineering unit of the Florida Department of Health in Miami Dade County.
He said people handling the items could be exposed to infection.
So, NBC 6 Investigators wanted to find out how these items ended up with stolen plastics.
The Florida Department of Health in Miami Dade County attempted to determine how the medical items ended up at the warehouse, but was unsuccessful.
The bins that were found are typically used at area hospitals.
The backboards are shared among six fire departments including Miami Beach Fire, Hialeah Fire Rescue, Coral Gables, Key Biscayne, Miami-Dade Fire Rescue and the City of Miami.
One of the backboards found at the raided warehouse appeared to belong to the City of Miami Beach. However, records from Miami-Dade Fire Rescue show that the backboards went into general circulation to be shared by all six departments in 2012.
Now all backboards used by the six departments are labeled with a multi-agency logo. That logo was not visible in the stack of backboards found at the warehouse.
Late Wednesday, the Miami-Dade Fire Department said the private company that has a contract to sterilize and distribute the backboards sold old backboards. They now believe those backboards are the ones found at the warehouse.
"We take the security of our equipment backboards very seriously, said EMS Chief Officer for Miami-Dade Fire Rescue Rowan Taylor. "They are purchased to be used by the residents of this county."
Stericycle, a waste-management company in Doral, has a $56,000 yearly contract with Miami Dade County to sterilize and re-distribute used backboards and miscellaneous medical equipment to be shared among the six fire departments, according to Miami Dade County records.
The contract states Stericycle is "responsible for collecting multi-governmental agency orange blackboards," among other medical equipment from Miami Dade and Broward County hospitals.
Stericycle did not respond to our questions late Wednesday about if the backboards had been legally sold.
In a previous email asking for response about the plastic items found, Jennifer Koeing, Vice-President of Corporate Communications for Stericycle, wrote "We appreciate that you have contacted Stericycle about this issue. However, we are not open to an interview or commenting as it is our policy not to publicly discuss services provided to our customers."
Miami Dade Fire Rescue sent this statement:
"The safety of our patients is our top priority, as we follow strict guidelines to ensure we provide top quality services to our residents and visitors. We can positively assure our residents that none of the backboards in question in this investigation ever belonged to MDFR."
What to Know Four members of Congress have introduced a bill that would halt plans for future commercial flights between the U.S. and Cuba.
Several members of Congress are worried about potential security concerns on flights from Cuba to the United States and want any potential plans for those flights to stop until tests can be conducted.
Four U.S. Representatives three Republicans and one Democrat are calling for a halt to recently announced commercial flights between U.S. cities, including Miami and Fort Lauderdale, and the island nation.
Ten cities were approved last week to run round trip flights to Cuba on one of the six airlines that received approval to begin operation. The flights are expected to start sometime in the fall.
The Congressional members cite worries about Cubas security infrastructure and want to make sure that Cubas airports have adequate security in place according to U.S standards. They also want the TSA has had a chance to certify those standards have been met.
Commercial flight plans were seen as one of the biggest steps for the Obama administration since the December 2014 announcement that the United States was going to thaw relations between the neighbors, eventually with the goal of returning them to normal.
The legislation is likely not going to go far, as politicians on both sides of the aisle seem to be warming to the idea of restoring relations completely between the countries.
Police in Key West say Cuban migrants landed early Wednesday at a tourist attraction marking the southernmost point in the continental United States.
Officer Matthew Hansell reported that three men and three women tied their fishing boat to the red, black and yellow buoy where streams of people pose for pictures daily.
He said none required medical attention after coming ashore. Immigration authorities were notified, but under the federal "wet foot, dry foot" policy, Cubans who reach U.S. soil are generally allowed to remain in this country. Those intercepted at sea usually go back.
Groups of migrants from the Caribbean regularly come ashore in Florida. One Tuesday, two dozen Cubans landed on an island in Miami-Dade County.
Miami Police are investigating after a man was left critically injured during an altercation with a security guard at a lounge last month.
Eduardo Gonzalez, 20, was rushed to Jackson Memorial Hospital on June 18th, after a night out at Rubi Lounge in Brickell, his mother says to celebrate a friend's birthday. He remained hospitalized Tuesday.
When Miami police were called to Rubi Lounge, investigators say the victim was unconscious, hit by a bouncer who told police he asked Gonzalez to leave several times. The bouncer told police Gonzalez got aggressive with him and so police say the bouncer punched him, the victim fell and hit his head.
NBC 6 reached out to the lounge for comment Tuesday but didn't hear back.
Now describing his injuries brings Gonzalez's mother to tears.
"She's here to ask the police to please arrest the gentleman who assaulted her son," the family's attorney said. "Johena, as any mother would be, has not left her son's bedside since this incident, she stood over his bed, she prayed her son would wake up and he did."
Police said the incident remains under investigation.
A prayer vigil was held in Fort Lauderdale Tuesday for the five officers killed in Dallas as well as the men killed in Louisiana and Minnesota.
An "All Lives Matter" anthem was echoed at the vigil, where pastors put an empty casket at the center of the gathering as a reminder that death comes for everyone regardless of skin color.
"That's the message we want to get out to everyone, that we are one. Forget the black and white situation and talk about people," said Dr. Dennis Grant, senior pastor at Place of Restoration.
Broward County Sheriff's deputies, along with the top cop himself, Sheriff Scott Israel, lit candles in solidarity with the pastors and community leaders in mourning.
They remembered the five Dallas police officers killed last week, along with Alton Sterling and Philando Castile who both died at the hands of law enforcement.
"United we stand and divided we fall. If we continue to separate from everything happening around us we will certainly fall," said Dr. Gwen Denton, of Lauderdale Lakes.
"This isn't a time for lawlessness or hate, it's a time for love and healing and compassion and to make sure justice and truth is served, not injustice," Sheriff Israel said.
Sheriff Israel said he wants to build trust between the community and his deputies. He said he's bringing in an independent consultant to look at BSO's training program and give recommendations on how to improve.
"I'm going to invite them to our agency to let them come under the hood and see how we train and diffuse and de-escalate situations," he said.
It's the kind of change the group wants to see, so the expressions of unity transfer to the street.
A North Miami Beach business owner says his mechanic shop was vandalized with spray paint just days after he had painted the building.
Security cameras surround Transmissions Unlimited in North Miami Beach so it captured every angle of the spray can crime from beginning to end.
"Just saw that somebody didn't have nothing better to do than come by and paint on our building," owner Jorge Vizcaino said.
Not just paint but graffiti, lines, scribble and nonsense. Vizcaino said he found it when he showed up at 7:30 Wednesday morning.
"It's pretty hard, North Miami Beach is trying to make an image for all the shop owners and they're trying to make examples out of the buildings and make it beautiful," Vizcaino said, "We spent a lot of money painting these buildings and making the properties look decent, and we get people that have nothing better to do in life than go around painting people's properties."
Cameras showed the suspect coming from behind the store with his cell phone lit in in his hand. You see the criminal walking along side the building, to the front. When he notices somebody else approaching on the sidewalk, he tries not to look suspicious, and when it's clear he whips out his spray paint and marks up the building.
The motive is the big mystery.
"Anybody can be aggravated, I think you solve a lot more by talking than going out and painting people's buildings," Vizcaino said. "We have no idea, we don't usually have problems with customers.
The building was quickly repainted but now police are looking for the vandal. Anyone with information is asked to call Miami-Dade Crime Stoppers at 305-471-TIPS.
Final approval from both governments seems "almost certain," the source added. A joint task force is imminently submitting its recommendation for approval as early as this week.
A government source on Tuesday said Seongju was chosen considering strategic value, safety of residents and environmental concerns because it is already home to an anti-aircraft missile base.
South Korea and the U.S. have selected Seongju west of Daegu in North Gyeongsang Province as the location for Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense batteries. They are conducting a final assessment of the site.
The Air Force missile base in Seongju is home to Hawk mid-range anti-aircraft missiles and around 170 troops, but they will apparently be moved to another location once the THAAD battery comes.
The Defense Ministry declined to comment but promised a press conference explaining the earmarked site.
Seongju is strategically located to defend U.S. military stockpiles at Camp Carroll in Chilgok in the same province, as well as key U.S. bases in Pyeongtaek and Osan south of Seoul and in the southern landing ports of Busan and Gimhae.
Seongju is sparsely populated, which reduces the chances of protests from locals.
Defense Minister Han Min-koo told the National Assembly, "The THAAD has assumed enormous proportions in our minds, but from a military standpoint it's just an artillery battery. THAAD is just THAAD, but I think neighboring countries are giving it excessive strategic value and worsening the problem."
Han denied claims by some boffins that the THAAD would be useless in a war, saying otherwise China and Russia would not be so sensitive about its deployment here.
"I can clearly state that there are no doubts about its military value," he added.
Extensive delays struck half a dozen subway lines Wednesday afternoon due to power issues, making for a nightmarish commute for early commuters.
An electrical issue at the rail control center in Manhattan, where workers monitor trains' progress electronically, caused major problems on the Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 lines through the afternoon. Workers inside certain subway lines had to watch and signal trains for a time, until a backup rail control system was up and running.
By 4:30 p.m., the MTA said normal service had resumed with lingering delays.
The cause of the electrical problem is under investigation.
Straphangers stuck on the platforms waiting for trains, though, said they felt trapped. One woman said she was going to have to walk home; another, as she was leaving the packed station, said she was going to take the bus.
At the 59th Street station, NBC 4 New York captured video of frustrated riders standing on the edge of platforms as a music group sang The Five Fairsteps' '"O-o-h child, things are gonna get easier ... " in the background.
A former Hofstra University student who authorities say injected his girlfriend and himself with heroin before her overdose death has pleaded guilty to criminally negligent homicide.
Newsday reports 19-year-old Joseph Joudah entered the plea on Monday in the death of Olivia McClellan but he isn't likely to go to prison after an appeal for mercy from the victim's family.
Defense attorney Kevin Keating says a judge and prosecutors agreed to sentence Joudah to five years of probation as a youthful offender.
Prosecutors say Joudah was taking heroin with McClellan in her dorm room in April 2015. They say when McClellan began to overdose, Joudah left.
Prosecutors say he anonymously called campus security 17 hours later. Officials found McClellan's body in her dorm room.
Authorities say a New York man has been charged with cruelty to animals after firefighters found a dead cat cooking in his oven.
Police say firefighters responded around 9 p.m. Monday to a public housing apartment in the city of Batavia, midway between Buffalo and Rochester. The apartment was filled with light smoke when firefighters arrived.
Firefighters were seeking the source of the smoke when they discovered the cat.
Batavia police say they believe the cat was alive when it was placed in the oven.
Police charged 42-year-old Darren Annovi with aggravated cruelty to animals.
He was being held in the Genesee County Jail without bail. Annovi is scheduled to appear in court Wednesday morning.
It was unclear if he has a lawyer.
A few hundred mourners gathered Wednesday for a private Catholic funeral service for Dallas police Sgt. Michael Smith, a former U.S. Army Ranger known for his upbeat attitude and compassionate approach to others.
Smith, his wife and their two daughters were members of Mary Immaculate Catholic Church in Farmers Branch, north of Dallas, where his service was held Wednesday.
"My heart is broken, and I am full of rage," said Smith's sister Yea-Mei Sauer. "He was taken so senselessly, violently, unjustly, and I rack my brain, I pray, trying to think of what he would do, say."
His sister spoke at the ceremony of all the qualities Smith possessed that made him a "cop's cop."
"My brother's murder will not be in vain, his selfless legacy will live on," Sauer said. "He would want us to continue the good fight, to be guardians, leaders, peacemakers, to love one another, to set the example, because that is what we are supposed to do."
Pastor Rev. Michael Forge delivers remarks at the funeral mass for Dallas Police Sgt. Michael Smith at Mary Immaculate Catholic Church in Farmers Branch on Wednesday.
A public service is scheduled Thursday for Smith at a Dallas church where he worked security.
Smith was an Army Ranger before joining the Dallas police force in 1989. He once received a "Cops' Cop" award from the Dallas Police Association.
[[386076381, C]]
Smith and four other officers were fatally shot last week during a protest against the police killings of black men in Louisiana and Minnesota. Nine officers and two civilians were injured in the attack.
"There is no comfort us for right now, we are raw and we are wounded," Sauer said. "But I know Michael is in the arms of God now, I have no doubt."
Phoenix police have tied four more shootings including a murder to a string of incidents they believe are the work of a possible serial killer.
Investigators have now released a sketch of the gunman, who is suspected of killing seven people since March 18. The motive is unknown.
Last month, cops announced that they had connected four shootings in the Maryvale neighborhood in which victims were ambushed outside their homes, near their cars. Law enforcement sources told NBC News that physical evidence links the murders, NBC News reported.
As part of the investigation, police began reviewing all shootings since the start of the year a process that revealed four more crimes as part of the pattern.
The spate of shootings has sent a current of fear through the working-class neighborhood. The Guardian Angels neighborhood-watch group have been patrolling, and some shopkeepers are closing early since the shootings have occurred after dark.
For African-American police officers in the U.S., being both black and "blue" can mean being caught in the midst of a cultural crossfire.
America is reeling after two black men were fatally shot by police near St. Paul, Minnesota and Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and the subsequent killing of five officers in Dallas during a peaceful rally in response to those slayings.
The events occurred after a spate of high profile deaths of black men, women and children at the hands of the police over the past few years, which has given rise to the "Black Lives Matter" movement and stirred public debate about the need for policing reforms.
"I've been black a long time," said Dallas Police Chief David Brown, who's black, responding to a reporter's question about bridging the gap between the community and police. "It's not so much of a 'bridge' for me, it's everyday living. I grew up here in Texas ... it's my normal to live in this society that had a long history of racial strife ... we have much work to do, particularly in our profession and leaders in my position need to put their careers on the line to make sure we do things right."
The shooter who gunned down five police officers in Dallas last week was "klutzy" and "goofy sometimes" when serving in the military, according to his onetime squad leader.
Micah Xavier Johnson "was a nice guy, I mean he really was," former Sgt. Gilbert Fischbach told NBC News. "He was happy. He would joke around he [was] usually smiling."
Fischbach said Johnson served under him in the 284th Engineering Company out of Seagoville, Texas, in 2009 and 2010. Johnson spent more than four years in the Army before being discharged in 2015.
Fischbach said he had felt "incredibly upset like someone had just sucked the life out of you," when he heard the about the attack. "This was one of my soldiers ... I had specifically trained him."
Johnson was killed in a standoff with police.
A memorial is growing outside Headliners Barber Shop along S 8th Street in Allentown a day after its owner was shot and killed in front of the business.
Eric Wagner, 40, was sitting in a chair on the sidewalk outside his shop around 4:30 p.m. Tuesday when a gunman walked up to him and opened fire. Witnesses told NBC10 they heard almost a dozen shots.
"I saw the guy laying right there and I started screaming and crying and hollering," said Milta Acevedo.
Wagner was taken to the hospital where he was later pronounced dead. The suspect ran off after the shooting. Witnesses say the gunman had been acting strange and was asking around for cigarettes prior to the shooting.
Wagner was a newlywed father and longtime mentor to people in the community who recently opened the shop in order to support his family.
"He was a great man," said Wagner's nephew Jaohne Duggan.
Duggan told NBC10 Wagner taught him how to play football, ultimately helping him secure a scholarship for Rutgers University next fall.
"He[the shooter] took him from his son, his family, and his wife," Duggan said. "It's crazy. We've got to go through this. It's a big loss. I hope we get justice though."
Wagner's family said they don't know who would want to hurt him and are unsure of the motive. Police continue to investigate.
Japanese prosecutors on Tuesday called for a five-year prison term for a Korean who planted a home-made bomb in a toilet near the militarist Yasukuni shrine in Tokyo last year.
The shrine honors convicted World War II criminals among the country's war dead and is attached to a museum celebrating Japan's ill-fated expansionist adventures.
Prosecutors told a Tokyo district court that the 28-year-old committed an "act of terror."
Chon arrived at Tokyo's Haneda Airport in November last year and was spotted on CCTV planting a pipe bomb with a timer in the public toilet next to the shrine.
Chon joined the Air Force in December 2009 as a sergeant and served at a base in Gunsan, North Jeolla Province until he was discharged in March 2015.
Authorities say a bear broke into a northern New Jersey home and was shot with rubber bullets before it escaped into the woods.
The Daily Record reports Denville police fired "conditioning shots'' with rubber bullets on Monday afternoon after the bear resisted officers' attempts to chase it out of a basement and into the woods.
Capt. Paul Nigro says police responded to a report of a bear eating garbage and found it in an unoccupied home. He says police tried to chase the bear away from the neighborhood but it then moved to a neighboring home and began eating garbage.
Fish and Wildlife officials and police tried unsuccessfully to track the bear to determine its condition. Officials say they believe the bear suffered a superficial wound that isn't life-threatening.
A dramatic photo session on top of a Center City hotel led to a response from Homeland Security and an arrest, according to police.
Ivan Wong, 28, of Edison, New Jersey is charged with criminal mischief and defiant trespass.
Police say Wong and a woman were on top of the Hyatt at the Bellevue Hotel on 200 South Broad Street Monday night. Wong was taking pictures of the woman and tried to use smoke bombs and other chemicals to create a smoke effect for the photos, police told NBC10.
Both police and Homeland Security officials were alerted to the hotel and Wong and the woman were taken into custody, investigators said. They continued to search through the hotel but did not find any other suspicious materials.
No one was hurt during the incident and the hotel was never evacuated.
Police say Wong was released after signing a summary citation. The woman was not charged.
A former airman stationed at Dover Air Force Base is on trial on a murder charge in the 2012 death of a 21-month-old boy who was left in his care.
The trial of Justin Corbett was scheduled to begin Tuesday with jury selection.
Corbett is charged with first-degree murder by abuse or neglect, recklessly causing the death of a child.
Authorities say Corbett was caring for Evan Dudley in November 2012 while his mother, also a Dover Air Force Base airman, was deployed. Police say Corbett called 911 to report that Evan was unresponsive after falling down stairs.
The boy died at a hospital a few days later. His death was ruled a homicide by blunt force trauma.
Corbett has denied killing the boy.
A Delaware County woman accidentally stepped off an edge at Grand Canyon National Park and plummeted hundreds of feet to her death.
Officials say 35-year-old Colleen Burns fell at Ooh Aah Point on Friday, about a mile down the popular South Kaibab Trail.
Park rangers found her body about 400 feet from where she had been standing.
Park officials say Burns had been with family hiking and taking photographs of the sunrise on the trail. They announced her death Monday. [[386610951, C]]
Burns died nearly two weeks after a California man fell to his death at the national park.
Burns mother told NBC10 her daughter used to live in Morton, Delaware County before moving to Florida. Burns also attended Cardinal OHara High School in Springfield.
For the first time in nearly 50 years, a new federal bill seeks to lower how much lenders and collectors can seize from debtors through the courts, revisiting caps set in 1968 by the landmark Consumer Credit Protection Act.
The Wage and Garnishment Equity (WAGE) Act of 2016, sponsored by Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., and Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., would substantially reform protections for debtors by exempting many lower-income workers from garnishment and reducing what collectors can take from the paychecks and bank accounts of others.
As ProPublica has reported in a series of articles over the past three years, consumer debts such as medical or credit card bills result in millions of garnishments every year. But the scale of the seizures and their consequences for the poor have largely been ignored by lawmakers, in part because no one tracks how often they happen.
In their press release announcing the legislation, Cummings and Merkley cited ProPublica and NPR's reporting that 4 million workers had wages taken for consumer debts in 2013. The garnishments hit low-income workers most frequently: Nearly 5 percent of those earning between $25,000 and $40,000 per year had a portion of their wages diverted to pay down consumer debts in 2013.
Under current federal law, even workers below the federal poverty line can have up to a quarter of their after-tax wages taken. But there is no limit on what collectors can take from bank accounts, so if a paycheck is deposited, all of the money in the account can be grabbed to pay down the debt.
"Every day, some Americans are having every penny in their paychecks garnished," Cummings told ProPublica. "Congress should not sit on the sidelines and watch our constituents be kept in a cycle of poverty."
The WAGE Act is "a long-overdue first step to correct the inadequate protections for working families," said Carolyn Carter of the National Consumer Law Center.
ProPublica asked several representatives of the debt collection industry for comment on the bill, but all declined. With no Republican sponsors as of yet, the bill's fate is uncertain, particularly in a Congress often beset by partisan deadlock.
Before 1968, there were no federal limits on how much a creditor could seize from a debtor's paycheck. Congress capped seizures at 25 percent of after-tax pay, a limit that seems to have been arrived at haphazardly. Since bank account garnishments were not common at the time, Congress didn't address them.
Garnishments over consumer debt can only take place after a company files a lawsuit and secures a court judgment. Some states provide protections beyond federal law, but most have simply adopted the 25 percent mark. Four states 2013 Texas, Pennsylvania and the Carolinas 2013 prohibit garnishment for most consumer debts.
Under the WAGE Act, lenders and collectors would only be allowed to take up to 10 percent of a debtor's disposable income for most workers.
For some debtors, that extra money could mean they can afford the basics each month. Last year, we reported on the experience of Cori Winfield of St. Louis, a single mother dealing with a garnishment over an old subprime car loan. With a quarter of her paycheck gone, she "was not making it," she told ProPublica.
Because Missouri has a "head of family" exemption, Winfield was able to get that reduced to 10 percent. The extra $300 each month this provided was "a lifesaver," she told us, and meant she could "at least pay rent and pay bills."
The WAGE Act would also limit what can be seized from debtors' bank accounts. Most garnishments are through wage seizures, ProPublica has found, but bank account garnishments can be particularly devastating, leaving debtors with no money at all. Our analysis of Missouri court data found that most bank account garnishments hit debtors with only a few hundred dollars in their accounts.
"It really does put people into complete turmoil," said Martha Bergmark, executive director of the nonprofit Voices for Civil Justice, which represents civil legal aid organizations across the country. "It's a rolling disaster" with potential consequences in every aspect of a low-income debtor's life, she said.
The bill would protect about $12,000 in a debtor's bank account from garnishment, a level pegged to the federal poverty guideline for a single-person household.
Separately, on the state level there's also a movement to overhaul garnishment laws. As ProPublica reported in 2014, the effort is backed by payroll professionals who are frustrated with inconsistencies among the various state laws.
Later this year, the Uniform Law Commission, a nonprofit that attempts to sculpt model state laws, will release its final version of a new wage garnishment law. While the primary purpose is to resolve employer headaches, the bill is also likely to have some consumer-friendly provisions, such as requiring that clear, plain-language notices be provided to debtors spelling out their legal protections.
"The notifications that go out to employees are just horrendously bad," said William Henning, executive professor of law at Texas A&M University School of Law, and chair of the ULC Wage Garnishment Act committee. The push to get the model bill passed in state legislatures will likely begin early next year, he said.
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An American flag stolen in New Jersey from the family of a Philadelphia man who was killed during the Vietnam War has been returned.
A family associate said Tuesday the flag was located and an unidentified woman returned it to a neighbor.
The family wanted the flag back "no questions asked" and won't pursue charges against the woman.
Police say the flag had been hanging from a flagpole on the Fourth of July in North Wildwood when someone stole it.
The flag was given to the family of 19-year-old Navy Seaman Patrick Corcoran during his funeral.
"It's the last item we really have of Patrick's memory," brother Tom Corcoran told NBC10's Ted Greenberg last week. "We don't have a body, we don't have a tombstone, we don't have anything."[[385765151,C]]
Corcoran and 73 other sailors were killed in 1969 when the USS Frank E. Evans collided with an Australian aircraft carrier in the South China Sea. Corcoran's body was never found.
A teen boy and a woman wound up hospitalized after a gunman shot them following a fight inside a Philadelphia apartment complex.
Police responded to Building A at the Monte Vista apartment complex on North 63rd Street around 9:20 p.m. Tuesday where they found a 25-year-old woman and a 15-year-old boy inside both suffering from gunshot wounds to the thigh. They were both taken to Penn Presbyterian Hospital in critical but stable condition, said said Lt. John Walker of the Southwest Detectives.
"There was some type of fight inside the building earlier today," said Walker. "At some point someone called someone and a male showed up... entered the apartment gets into some sort of argument with the female, shoots her, shoots the 15-year-old."
The unidentified man then left the building and fled southbound on 63rd Street in a dark-colored Chevy Impala.
No arrests were immediately made. Police are asking any witnesses to come forward and contact police. [[386607011, C]]
Gunfire also rang out overnight along Bouvier Street in North Philadelphia where a 25-year-old man was shot twice in each leg and left in critical condition, said police.
The frustrations of Atlantic City workers will be heard in New York on Wednesday.
Members of the UNITE HERE Local 54 are taking their demonstration from the A.C.'s boardwalk to Manhattan specifically heading to the offices of Trump Taj Mahal casino owner Carl Icahn, according to the union.
After rallying outside his offices, the group plans to march to Trump Tower once again pairing Icahn with presumptive GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump.
Local 54 leaders have said the business decisions of both Trump and Icahn brought them short-term profits at the expense of casino workers and the city.
To read the full story, click here.
For more business news, visit Philadelphia Business Journal.
A threat against three Philadelphia Police districts was not credible, according to investigators.
A Philadelphia Police spokesperson told NBC10 Monday that a person alerted a 39th District officer about a Facebook message stating someone would blow up three Philly police districts with a bomb. When officials investigated however, they found no evidence that the threat was legitimate.
The investigation came less than a week after a gunman shot and killed five police officers during a protest in Dallas. Police departments across the country have been on high alert since the incident, which was the deadliest attack on police officers since September 11, 2001.
Some 75 percent of public servants take advantage of paid maternity leave compared to only 35 percent of workers in the private sector, a study finds.
The Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs said Tuesday that the study of 788 working women who had their first child after 2011 showed only 41.1 percent of them took maternity leave.
That was a huge improvement compared to only 5.3 percent who had their first baby before 2000, but six out of 10 employed women are still missing out on the benefit.
Civil servants and teachers (75 percent) or employees of state-run firms (66.7 percent) take maternity leave relatively freely, but workers in private companies (34.5 percent) are often reluctant to take time off.
"Only employees of companies offering state unemployment insurance benefits can take maternity leave, so workers at small businesses without such benefits cannot benefit from the measure," a KIHASA spokesman said. "Also, women in some private companies are afraid of losing their jobs if they stay away for extended periods."
The figure was also brought down by women on non-regular contracts. Among regular employees, 46.9 percent took maternity leave, but among contract workers only 1.9 percent.
Park Jong-suh at KIHASA said, "Government policies are needed to boost the number of employers who join the unemployment insurance program for their workers. This could also decrease the number of women who quit their jobs in the middle of their careers to raise children."
Pennsylvania is in full swing-state mode for the upcoming presidential general election, according to a new polls released Wednesday, and both major party candidates could take away some optimism from the varied findings.
A Quinnipiac University Swing State Poll released Wednesday showed Republican presumptive nominee Donald Trump gaining in three crucial states since Quinnipiac's last poll on June 21.
He leads Democrat Hillary Clinton 43 to 41 percent in Pennsylvania, the poll found, compared to a 42-41 edge for Clinton last month.
With Pennsylvania being a key state to win over the presidential race, both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are planning grassroots gameplans for the Keystone State.
But in polls jointly released later in the day by a NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist University partnership, Clinton held a notable lead over Trump in the Keystone State. Clinton leads 45-39, NBC News reported, with 19 percent still undecided.
In yet another poll released by GenForward, the news is less positive for Trump. GenForward found that just 19 percent of young people have a favorable opinion of the New York businessman. That said, Clinton has a favorable rating of only 39 percent. The poll surveyed people 18 to 30 years old.
In the Quinnipiac poll, the Democrat and Republican presumptive nominees are tied 41-41 in Ohio, and in Florida, Trump now leads 42-39. Clinton held a lead of 47-39 in Florida on June 21.
While there is no definite link between Clintons drop in Florida and the U.S. Justice Department decision not to prosecute her for her handling of e-mails, she has lost ground to Trump on questions which measure moral standards and honesty," said Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac poll.
She also faces the biggest obstacle of establishment candidates this year, according to the Quinnipiac pollsters. Voters in the three swing states overwhelmingly agree with the statement: "The old way of doing things no longer works and we need radical change."
In Pennsylvania, Clinton's campaign appears to be entering a new phase, with several events scheduled this week across the state. Surrogates, like local and regional elected officials, are taking part in those events. Three events are scheduled for Wednesday alone.
Trump, on the other hand, remains a political force from afar. His campaign, which reported very little cash on hand prior to the last federal finance disclosure filing, appears in traditional terms to have little presence in Pennsylvania.
Since 1960, no candidate has won the presidential race without taking at least two of the three states polled, according to Quinnipiac.
Theresa May entered No. 10 Downing St., on Wednesday as Britain's new prime minister, following a bittersweet exit by David Cameron that was tinged with humor and regret.
"I was the future once," Cameron quipped as he left office. But that future now belongs to May, and it involves instability, uncertainty and tough wrangling over Britain's departure from the European Union.
Britain's transition of power unfolded with startling speed since the June 23 referendum on EU membership. Cameron announced his resignation after voters rejected his appeal to stay in the 28-nation bloc, and May, the former home secretary, became Conservative Party leader Monday after an abbreviated contest in which her only remaining rival dropped out.
Then came Wednesday's ceremonial choreography: Two trips to Buckingham Palace and two audiences with Queen Elizabeth II that ended with one prime minister out of a job and a new one curtseying to the monarch to begin her term.
May stood in front of the iconic door of No. 10 with her husband, Philip, as the 13th prime minister of the queen's reign and the first woman to hold the job since fellow Conservative Margaret Thatcher served from 1979 to 1990.
She acknowledged that Britain faces a rocky road ahead as it undoes 43 years of EU ties and forges a new relationship with its neighbors.
"Following the referendum, we face a time of great national change," May said. "And I know because we're Great Britain we will rise to the challenge.
"As we leave the European Union we will forge a bold new positive role for ourselves in the world and we will make Britain a country that works not for a privileged few, but for every one of us," she said.
May promised to fight for social justice in a speech that addressed "hard-working families" who have struggled during the years of instability since the 2008 financial crisis. Many of those people, fed up with remote politicians and bureaucrats, voted to leave the EU.
"When it comes to opportunity we won't entrench the advantages of the fortunate few. We will do everything we can to help anybody, whatever your background, to go as far as your talents will take you," May said, in language more often used by left-of-center politicians, rather than by members of the center-right Conservative Party.
May began appointing her new Cabinet within an hour of taking office, and several posts went to "leave" supporters.
The most notable was former London Mayor Boris Johnson, who was given the meaty job of foreign secretary, Britain's top diplomatic post. The blond, Latin-speaking Johnson a leader of the campaign for a British exit, or Brexit had aspired to be prime minister himself before his bid failed because of party infighting.
Former Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond was named Treasury chief, ousting George Osborne, a strong "remain" voice in the referendum. May's former job of home secretary went to Amber Rudd.
May has said she will create a new post of "Brexit" minister to oversee talks on a British EU exit from the 28-nation EU. That key job went to veteran Conservative lawmaker David Davis a longstanding advocate of leaving the EU and he will lead at least two years of negotiations with the bloc.
Wednesday's carefully orchestrated political changeover began with Cameron making a final appearance in Parliament, turning the usually raucous prime minister's question time into a session filled with praise, thanks, gentle ribbing, cheers and a sprinkle of criticism.
Later, in a brief speech on Downing Street, the 49-year-old Cameron defended his government's legacy.
"It has been the greatest honor of my life to serve our country as prime minister over these last six years, and to serve as leader of my party for almost 11 years," he said. "It's not been an easy journey, and of course we have not got every decision right, but I do believe that today our country is much stronger."
Then, he and his wife, Samantha, and his children 12-year-old Nancy, 10-year-old Elwen and 5-year-old Florence left their home of six years and made the short drive to Buckingham Palace.
The palace soon confirmed that Cameron had "tendered his resignation as prime minister and First Lord of the Treasury, which her majesty was graciously pleased to accept."
Minutes later, the palace released a photo of May curtseying to the monarch and confirmed that the queen had "requested her to form a new administration."
As home secretary, the 59-year-old May has been in charge of immigration and law and order for the past six years. She has the tough task of calming the country and global financial markets after the upheaval that followed the referendum.
Although May had backed remaining in the EU, she has reassured "leave" supporters that "Brexit means Brexit, and we will make a success of it."
Not all believe her. As May spoke in front of her new residence, a small band of pro-Brexit demonstrators down the street chanted "Theresa May, don't delay!"
She is under pressure from pro-Brexit Conservatives and other EU leaders to start formal exit talks with the bloc. But Tony Travers of the London School of Economics said May probably would not rush to trigger Article 50 of the EU constitution, which starts a two-year countdown to a departure from Europe.
"I don't detect Theresa May being an impulsive person," Travers said. "I think she's a cautious person, and the British political establishment needs to come to terms with this massive decision."
Cameron used his final day in office to try to stake a claim on a legacy beyond his status as the prime minister who by gambling on a referendum took Britain out of the EU.
He said his government had cut the deficit, overseen economic growth and legalized same-sex marriage. And he offered the closest thing he has ever given to a mission statement: "I believe that politics is about public service in the national interest."
"I will miss the roar of the crowd, Cameron told Parliament. "I will miss the barbs from the opposition."
He ended by referring to a jibe he directed at then-Prime Minister Tony Blair more than a decade ago: "He was the future once."
"Nothing is really impossible if you put your mind to it," Cameron said. "After all, as I once said, I was the future once."
He left the chamber to applause from all sides of the House and a standing ovation from his Conservative colleagues.
Drivers and riders dealt with delays Wednesday morning as crews closed off a busy SEPTA hub after some sort of device was found nearby.
The incident blocked off Ridge Avenue near the Wissahickon Transportation Center near the Main Street split in Manayunk around 7 a.m.
As SkyForce10 hovered overhead a short time later, you could see traffic coming off the City Avenue Bridge and the Schuylkill Expressway (I-76) backing up as Philadelphia Police blocked off roads around the area.
SEPTA also briefly detoured its 1, 38, R, 123, 124 bus routes.
After about 45 minutes, crews gave the all clear and began letting traffic through again.
To stroll by the window of a comic book store and spy a flier detailing a fundraiser for a favorite artist or writer or customer isn't all that unusual.
Comic shops have long been nexuses of true community, a place where people come to not only purchase the latest graphic novel but to hang out with fellow fans and discuss all manner of topics.
Comic-Con International, which could be looked at, in a way, as the world's largest, busiest comic book shop, keeps that fan-nice community spirit aglow throughout its four-day run each year. (Those dates in 2016 are just ahead: July 21 through 24.)
And much like seeing the fundraising flier in the window of your corner shop, it isn't unusual to stroll by an impromptu charity event or giveback drive during the convention, a fundraiser that is helping the San Diego community or another specific organization.
The annual Robert A. Heinlein Blood Drive returns to the mega pop culture convention for its 40th go-around. Billed as "the San Diego Blood Bank's longest-running event," the Comic-Con blood drive has collected "16,652 pints of blood" over its four-decade history.
Talk about superheroes. Want to give? Head for Grand Hall D at the Manchester Grand Hyatt.
Once you've given your pint, and you want to look for more ways to lend a hand, consider two off-site traditions that, while not affiliated officially with the convention, still keep ties to its cape-wearing themes and charitable heart.
The Heroes Brew Fest raises money each year for Warrior Foundation Freedom Station. Yep, you can wear your costume, yep, you'll drink nice beer, and yep, you'll need to zoom through the clouds from the convention center, or at least catch a ride, to San Diego's Waterfront Park on Saturday, July 23.
Earlier in the day the Helen Woodward Animal Center's Pawmicon returns, though don't head for Rancho Santa Fe, the home of the center. The "Cosplay for a Cause" think furry pumpkins in their "Star Wars" and superhero best is happening at the Hazard Center in the late morning.
If you dig helping out dogs, and kitties, and beasties of all stripes, swing by and "awww" over the pop culture cuteness, while helping those animals who need homes.
Where can you lend a hand during Comic-Con International? Keep your supersight goggles on for the opportunities that pop up, heroically, near the world's largest pop culture convention.
A woman implicated in a crash that killed a young girl and seriously injured her friend in Tierrasanta might have been texting just before the crash, police said in court Wednesday.
A judge decided that Julianne Little, 30, should be bound over for trial on manslaughter and hit and run charges in connection to the February crash.
Little told investigators that she fell asleep at the wheel on Feb. 20 when her vehicle hit two girls, 10-year-old Raquel Rosete and 12-year-old Mekayla Lee. The impact seriously injured both girls and Rosete later died.
San Diego police said Little swerved off the road and hit the girls as they were walking along the sidewalk at about 6 p.m. in the area of Santo Road near Shields Street.
In court on Wednesday, San Diego police Officer Jason Costanza said he noticed an outgoing phone call and text from Little's phone at the time of the accident.
"It said, 'I'm going to miss you, my friend,'" Costanza said.
Further details about the phone activity and the connection to the case were not revealed in court. However, a prosecutor told NBC 7 that Little is being investigated for gross negligence.
She was initially arrested on suspicion of being under the influence of drugs, but now police said there is no evidence of impairment.
Little initially fled the scene; however, after driving home, police said, Little returned to the scene with her father.
The defendant appeared to struggle with her emotions in court at times when witnesses spoke about the crash.
Lee, the living victim, testified in the preliminary hearing about what she remembered. She wore a shirt in Rosete's honor.
"I was like in a bush, and I remember seeing bright lights and a woman and a man, I guess with the ambulance," she said, noting she didn't remember the impact.
Little faces charges of vehicular manslaughter and hit and run; investigators say she drove along the sidewalk for at least 100 feet before striking the girls.
As a defense, her attorney has told NBC 7 that his client was stressed over a stalker, causing her to lose sleep.
NBC 7 has learned that the former Poway Unified School District Superintendent could face criminal charges.
The school district confirmed Tuesday that it had turned over to the District Attorneys office results from its investigation into John Collins, who was fired on Sunday.
The Board of Education released an audit that showed Collins allegedly collected more than $345,000 in unauthorized pay over the last several years.
But Collins' attorney said the alleged independent audit is replete with errors.
It's kind of shocking. It's kind of disappointing, said Amy Parnell, a former student in the Poway Unified School District.
Im not surprised and not disappointed really with the cost of the loan when he was running things, said parent Conrad Sansbury, speaking of Collins.
Sansbury was referring to a $1 million dollar bond to build new schools that will costs the district about $1 billion over the term of the loan.
Meantime, NBC 7 spoke to Ed Velasquez, who will be the interim Superintendent beginning in August.
Velasquez said he thinks there is something that can be done to refinance the bond. He also said parents should focus on keeping Poway among the best school districts in the county, while he takes care of the legal and financial matters facing the district.
San Diego Police are investigating the report of a homeless man struck on the back of the head in the East Village area of downtown.
The man was injured at 10th Avenue and G Streets just before 6:30 a.m.
Police have been on high alert for crimes against the city's homeless since a deadly series of attacks began on July 3.
SDPD tells NBC 7 the East Village victim was bleeding from the head and was at the hospital with what's described as non-life threatening injuries.
The victim, described by police as a transient, told police the suspect was riding a blue bike and hit him over the head with an unknown object.
Investigators say they are not sure if the suspect got off the bike or attacked the victim while riding.
The suspect was last seen leaving the area on a blue mountain bike traveling eastbound on G Street and south on 9th Avenue. No other information was immediately available.
Hours later, San Diego Police posted an update on Twitter saying they do not think Wednesday's attack is connected to last week's violent crime spree.
**CRIME UPDATE** We do not believe this morning's attack at 800 G st. on a homeless man to be related to our recent homicide series. San Diego Police Department (@SanDiegoPD) July 13, 2016
Four men were beaten in four days with two of the men set on fire, according to homicide investigators. Only one of the men survived. He's hospitalized in critical condition.
A U.S. Navy sailor who allegedly stabbed his girlfriend to death at a Riverside park and then led law enforcement officers on a 100-mile chase was charged Wednesday with murder and other charges.
Jared Gordon Bischoff, 25, was arrested Monday morning following the pursuit that began near his home in San Diego and ended back in Riverside.
Along with murder, Bischoff is charged with attempted kidnapping, evading arrest and possession of a controlled substance.
He's being held without bail at the Robert Presley Jail in Riverside and is slated to make his initial court appearance this afternoon at the Riverside Hall of Justice.
According to Riverside police Detective Adrian Tillet, Bischoff and the victim, whose name has not been released, got into a domestic dispute at Challen Park, near the intersection of California Avenue and Calmhill Drive, about 5:15 p.m. Sunday.
During the argument, the defendant allegedly pulled a knife and stabbed the woman several times, Tillet said.
Witnesses called 911 as the victim staggered along a sidewalk, collapsing unconscious. Officers arrived moments later and had her transported to Riverside Community Hospital, where she died less than an hour later.
According to Tillet, investigators worked through the night to identify the perpetrator, and after confirming Bischoff was the alleged assailant, notifications were issued to area law enforcement agencies.
About 5 a.m. Monday, San Diego police officers located Bischoff's 2013 Kia Optima in the 8200 block of Hurlbut Street in Serra Mesa, but he allegedly took off northbound, leading officers down various city streets in the
Clairemont Mesa area before entering northbound Interstate 805.
The pursuit, which at times reached speeds around 100 mph, continued to northbound Interstate 5, then to eastbound on state Route 78 in the Oceanside area. Near Rancho Santa Fe Road in San Marcos, the California Highway Patrol took over the chase, which soon entered northbound Interstate 15.
Tillet said the CHP chased Bischoff onto the Riverside (91) Freeway, until he exited onto Madison Avenue, where Riverside police units assumed the lead.
Bischoff eventually pulled over and surrendered peacefully at Grand and Rubidoux avenues, according to the detective.
The defendant has no prior felony convictions. According to the U.S. Navy, he enlisted in February 2013 and, as an aviation boatswain's mate 3rd Class, did fueling system maintenance work.
Biotech scientists and technology developers in San Diego will be able to test their research in a lab orbiting miles above Earth as part of a partnership announced Tuesday in Mission Valley.
The Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS) and the International Space Station (ISS) will work with CONNECT to develop projects with startups and research labs located in San Diego.
Greg Johnson, CASIS President and Executive Director, said the center is excited to join the innovative cluster found in San Diego.
We can learn things in space in a microgravity environment, outside of our atmosphere and from a vantage point to observe our planet that we simply cant do anywhere else, Johnson said.
San Diego was chosen because of the presence of innovative companies and organizations in our region.
Calling it a huge coup, Mayor Kevin Faulconer said the operators of the U.S. lab on the ISS will be establishing a permanent lab in San Diego.
This is a proud day for our region, for our city and I cant wait to have the discussion about breakthroughs that will be happening in the space station and in space that have started here from creative people right here in San Diego, Faulconer said.
To start, CONNECT will serve as a liaison between CASIS and local companies. Eventually, CASIS will have a physical hub in the city.
CASIS was selected by NASA in July 2011 to focus on how the strides made by NASA for those living in space can benefit life on Earth.
The announcement was part of the annual International Space Station (ISS) Research & Development conference which brought astronauts like twins Mark and Scott Kelly to San Diego this week.
Authorities are searching for a teen accused of stabbing a man at the San Diego County Fair.
The stabbing happened shortly before 11 p.m. on July 4 near the swing ride by the west gate when a 22-year-old man was walking with his friend toward the exit, San Diego County Sheriff's officials said.
The victim had a fight with a teen, authorities said, and at some point during the fight, the victim was stabbed in his upper body.
The victim survived his injuries, authorities said.
The suspect and victim do not know each other. No motive was provided.
The suspect appeared to be 6 or 17 years old, authorities said. He was described as 5 feet 2 inches tall and weighs approximately 140 pounds. At the time, he was wearing a dark ball cap with the letter "C", a white t-shirt, khaki shorts and white socks. He was seen with five other men, authorities say.
Authorities are asking for help: if anyone was at the fair on the 4th of July near the west gate, deputies would like to speak with you about what you may have seen at the time of the stabbing.
Anyone with information on this case should call the North Coastal Sheriffs Station at (760) 9663500 or the Crime Stoppers anonymous tip line at (888) 5808477. You may be eligible for a $1,000 reward for information leading to an arrest in this case.
No other information was immediately available.
The U.S. is trying to quell concerns over the stationing of Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense batteries here by allowing the Korean media a peek at a THAAD battery in Guam.
A military source said Tuesday the main aim is to ease concerns here over potentially harmful electromagnetic radiation from THAAD bases.
"The aim is to give the public a chance to see a realistic use of a THAAD battery after the issue turned from a military matter into a political controversy."
Guam is so far the only place outside the continental U.S. where a THAAD battery has been deployed. The U.S. military operates five THAAD batteries, the other four at a military base in Texas.
The battery in Guam is equipped with an AN/TPY-2 radar with a range of 600 km, but there is another mode using the same hardware that has a reach of some 1,800 km, and this is what China and Russia are worried about.
Around 195 soldiers man the THAAD battery in Guam including operators, technicians and security. The THAAD unit in Korea will have a similar structure.
The U.S. military initially balked at the idea of allowing media access but changed its mind after some persuasion from Korean officials.
"The U.S. maintains strict security over its military installations, and the decision to allow media access reflects how urgently it wants to resolve controversy over the anti-missile system," a military source here said.
The Obama administration will file a case with the World Trade Organization against China, the 13th case filed against the country in an effort to level the playing field for American businesses, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden announced Wednesday in San Diego.
The Vice President spoke at the Port of San Diego about removing trade barriers and increase export opportunities worth billions of dollars to American workers, farmers, and businesses.
Raw materials like graphite and cobalt, used by manufacturers like San Diego-based Qualcomm, Inc., are taxed before export by China.
That drives up the cost for the buyers in other countries and puts American countries at a disadvantage, Biden said.
Any business owner will tell you its tough to compete when youre paying 20 percent more for raw materials, he said.
With San Diego Bay as a backdrop, Biden also commented on the beautiful weather enjoyed by San Diegans.
When I die I want to be reborn here, he said.
One firefighter was injured while battling a 2-alarm fire in Northeast Washington Wednesday morning.
Firefighters were called to a commercial building in the 3100 block of Bladensburg Road NE just after 2 a.m.
Fire officials say the fire was difficult to fight because of the building's depth and difficult access. Firefighters worked for an hour and a half before the blaze was declared under control.
One firefighter was taken to the hospital for heat exhaustion, fire officials say.
The cause of the fire is under investigation.
Fire officials say Bladensburg Road is expected to be closed through the morning rush hour.
A Maryland man took five people hostage in an SUV and then opened fire at officers, provoking a gun battle that left bullet holes in the windows of a nearby elementary school, police said.
The incident appeared to start with an armed robbery that quickly escalated near 6th Street and Alabama Avenue SE, investigators said.
Luvell Alverson, 22, of Suitland, Maryland, is in custody.
An armed suspect approached four people in the 3200 block of 6th Street SE shortly before 12:15 a.m. and demanded their property, forcing them to the ground, police said. They complied, but the man fired multiple shots in their direction.
Police responded to the gunfire, but the man jumped into a nearby SUV that had five other people inside.
The robber held them hostage and tried to use them to escape before opening fire at officers, police said. The officers fired back and hit the suspect in the leg.
Despite his injury, the suspect ran off, but police said they later found and arrested Alverson.
The gunfight left the SUV riddled with bullet holes, as well as a blown-out side window and rear windshield. The nearby Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School appeared to have seven bullets holes in its windows.
Alverson is charged with robbery (gun), kidnapping and assault on a police officer.
"When you have officers who are not in any way under any kind of protective that are fired upon, who take cover and then are fired upon again, it is a miracle we don't have dead police officers," said D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier.
Police had the victims in the SUV slowly exit with their hands up.
"And yes, the other individuals in that car, if you would imagine as a police officer arrives and approaches a car and bullets come flying out of that car, the officer has no idea who the other occupants in the car are," Lanier said. "All they know [is] that the shots are coming from that car.
Police took the hostages, who initially were considered possible suspects, in for questioning.
Neighbors say they felt like they were living in a war zone.
"Last night, it was kind of horrifying, because, you know, there were these random shots going off, and you could really tell there was a battle, a gun battle," said Michaelisa Jones. "So at that point, we just kind of took cover in the house and just waited until everything was over."
No victims or officers were injured.
Authorities said their investigation doesn't indicate this was part of a targeted attack on police.
Last week, an Army veteran fatally shot five police officers during a peaceful protest in Dallas, Texas, over the police killings of Philando Castile in Minnesota and Alton Sterling in Louisiana.
The nation's oldest full-time park ranger, Betty Reid Soskin, has returned to work about three weeks after she was brutally attacked and robbed in her Richmond, California, apartment.
"I've had a hard time marking time," the 94-year-old said at a news conference Tuesday at the Rosie the Riveter/WWII Home Front National Historical Park, her first time back since she was attacked in a home invasion on June 27. "That experience took something away from me."
[NATL] Bay Area Woman is World's Oldest Park Ranger
She hadn't wanted to return until her face had healed from the bruising she sustained during the violent robbery, her colleagues said. Police said the thief punched her several times and stole a coin given to her by President Barack Obama at this year's National Christmas Tree lighting ceremony.
"I didn't want anyone to see me with black eyes and put it on YouTube," the tech-savvy woman, an avid blogger, half joked.
But Soskin showed no signs of physical trauma on Tuesday, and said she was ready to be back at work with her beloved colleagues and guests.
"I wanted to get back into routine life," she said, her voice full of gratitude and emotion.
She paused for a while, before saying: "I didn't think there was any way to prepare myself for this moment. It's so good to see you all and feel the support of the community."
Soskin has led tours at the Bay Area museum since she was just 85 years old, explaining her slice of history to student groups and adults 40 hours a week. During World War II, Soskin worked as a clerk for the all-black Boilermakers A-36. She grabbed headlines in the 2013 federal funding crisis when she urged Congress to get its act together so she didn't have to sit at home, not getting paid during the national furlough.
Because of all her work, Soskin was invited to light the national Christmas tree in December, where she introduced President Barack Obama.That's when he slipped her a presidential coin.
Then, late last month, someone broke into her apartment, beat her and stole her cell phone, laptop, jewelry and the coin Obama gave her to mark the event. Richmond police had not announced any arrests as of Tuesday morning.
Soskin said that while she as at home convalescing, she pondered the violent attack she survived and the deadly violence around the country, though she didn't specifically mention the ambush attack that killed five police officers in Dallas last week, or the two deaths of black men by police in Minnesota and Louisiana.
"I couldn't deal with the world close up," she said. "So I had to move the lens out. I needed the distance, but then I began to see myself as part of the whole. The violence we are suffering individually is an expression of what we are all what we are experiencing collectively."
She said she's still trying to make sense of what happened to her.
But what she knows is how loved she is by those she works with and strangers who heard her story. Her colleagues at the National Park Service, and members of the community at large, have raised more than $50,000 to help her replace those items, as well as fund a documentary being made about her, according to the park service.
Her boss, Supt. Tom Leatherman, told NBC Bay Area that he received an email from Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell, saying that Obama would replace the coin. As of Tuesday, Leatherman said the coin hadn't come.
Until it does comes, Soskin summed up her horrifying experience like this: "It was an adventure. One that I wished I'd never have, but it's over now."
A 10-year-old Massachusetts girl is being credited with helping two wandering children out of the middle of a Brockton road, and the children were reportedly found with beer in a sippy cup.
Navaya Veiga was playing outside her home on Nye Avenue Monday evening when she noticed a 4-year-old girl and a 2-year-old boy and a car coming at them. She went to them and asked where their parents were, and said the girl was stumbling.
"I saw two little kids on the street and one fell," Viega said. "She kept falling down and there were scrapes on her nose and mouth."
Veiga went to get help from an elderly neighbor and detected that there was beer in the girl's sippy cup.
"I thought it was apple juice but it wasn't. It was alcohol," Viega said.
The police report says the girl smelled of alcohol and had minor scrapes and scratches on her, but didn't mention alcohol in the sippy cup. The two were transported to Brockton Hospital, but expected to be OK.
Police said the mother of the children did not call to report them missing until two hours later. They are crediting Viega with finding them before anything happened.
"I didn't want to be a person that likes to be rude. I like to help people," Viega said.
Police said DCF is investigating, but as of Wednesday afternoon, no charges had been filed against the mother.
Viega said first responders told her she may get a certificate in the future for her efforts.
Authorities say two West Gardiner women died and a 14-year-old girl was injured when their car collided with a tractor-trailer in Litchfield, Maine.
Kennebec County Sheriff Ryan Reardon says 92-year-old Grace Marston was driving a Chevrolet Impala on Tuesday when her car collided with a tractor-trailer that was heading south toward Tacoma Lakes.
Reardon says Marston died hours after she was airlifted to a Lewiston hospital. Her front passenger, 82-year-old Anita Wade, was pronounced dead at the scene.
A girl in the back seat was hospitalized with injuries not considered life-threatening. The driver of the tractor-trailer, 67-year-old Robert Morang of Chelsea, was not hurt.
Reardon says alcohol or drugs are not believed to be factors in the crash. The incident is under investigation.
The presence of blue-green algae prompted officials to close a popular beach on Lake Champlain in Burlington, Vermont.
North Beach was closed on Thursday. The Burlington Parks and Recreation Department also warned people not to allow dogs to swim in the water at Texaco Beach where the algae also has been spotted.
Blue-green algae or cyanobacteria can release a toxin that can sicken swimmers and pets.
The toxic algae blooms that kill aquatic life and degrade the water quality on the lake have grown, fed by phosphorus-laden runoff of rain and snowmelt from farms, roads and parking lots and discharges from municipal wastewater treatment plants. The algae can multiply rapidly in warm conditions.
The Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center (BCNC) is lending life-changing support to Asian-Americans.
Yuzi Li is just 19-years-old, but in the four years since she arrived in America, she has overcome the struggle of a lifetime. She spoke broken English, fell back in class and found few friends.
"I felt like, why am I doing this? Why did I come here," said Yuzi. "I kinda felt like I was alone.
Things began to change when her mom, a Chinatown waitress, and dad, a delivery driver, brought her to BCNC.
"I don't feel embarrassed when I tell them my mom is a waitress," she said.
At the BCNC, Yuzi learned English and all about American culture, even understanding slang. The center helps some 2,000 immigrants from China and Vietnam navigate new words and ways in a new world.
"We can relate, and at some point in our lives, we also felt alone," said Sandra Lee, Youth Program Director at the BCNC. "Because we looked different or we spoke different languages."
Now, Yuzi is a student at Boston University on full scholarship after graduating at the top of her class.
"One of the reasons I work really hard is when I see how hard my parents work. Compared to their work, mine is like nothing," Yuzi said.
She knows it takes a team to achieve the American dream.
"We can get through it together," she said.
The Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center offers programs for all ages, including adult education, family child care, and after-school activities. You can find more information here: http://www.bcnc.net/.
A Boston city councilor wants to crack down on utility companies that don't repair leaking gas lines throughout the city.
During a public hearing at city hall on Tuesday, Councilman Matt O'Malley said a new law would give companies the incentive to fix the issue in a timely manner.
"We have anywhere from 2,000-6,000 gas leaks in the city of Boston. One sat there for 30 years," said O'Malley. "This is a significant issue."
Under his proposal, companies would be required to fix a leak within six years of when it's reported. The law would also require gas providers to coordinate with the city on street repairs, so that they could potentially schedule maintenance on leaks at the same time.
"It makes me angry for the waste," said Audrey Schulman, president of the Home Energy Efficiency Team (HEET).
A couple years ago, Schulman's organization created a map of gas leaks around the state using data provided by energy companies. They tracked thousands around Boston and surrounding cities, indicating when the leak was reported and whether it had been fixed. Aside from environmental impacts of the leaks, Schulman said consumers should be equally upset about what this is costing them.
"Somewhere between $90 million and $120 million per year across the state," Schulman explained. "On your gas bill, the utility can factor in how much they lose into your price, which is like going to your gas station and the nozzle dribbles all over be ground and you have to pay for it."
But repairing the issue is costly and complicated. Given Boston's aging infrastructure, utility companies respond to leaks based on a rating system, which monitors the safety of the leaks. That often means even large leaks don't get repaired immediately because they are not necessarily a threat to public safety.
Boston is serviced by two gas providers and both have expressed opposition to the proposal. Eversource, which only supplies to Hyde Park, said it has already made adjustments under new state regulations.
"We have an accelerated program that follows the recently revised state regulations for replacement of leak prone pipes," said Eversource spokesman, Mike Durand. "This year alone, for example, we're investing nearly $53 million to replace pipes made of unprotected steel. Some of that work will include the part of Boston that we serve, which is Hyde Park."
National Grid, the city's largest gas provider, sent necn the following statement:
"We, too, are concerned about the impact of gas leaks on our environment. With some of the oldest infrastructure Massachusetts, Boston is a microcosm for the types of challenges we face while investing in our gas distribution system in the safest, most effective and sustainable manner possible.
The city's pending ordinance is in conflict with existing and pending legislation that we support. We remain committed to working with our stakeholders and finding the best solution to address this important issue for all of our customers.
The company is involved in several active cooperative efforts and is leading the focus within the gas industry on the need to include environmental considerations into developing replacement and repair policies. As methane emissions have no borders, we are exploring ways to address them in a safe, efficient, and workable manner that ensures those leaks that have the greatest impact on the environment are addressed in coordination with our leak prone pipe replacement programs.
The company believes the recently opened DPU rule-making proceeding is the best forum to address issues regarding classification and repair of gas leaks in a way that is consistent with the law and based on the severity of each leak. The law allows the DPU to consider environmental factors and there is currently pending state legislation that would strengthen that requirement."
For decades the Citgo Sign has been an iconic figure of the Boston skyline.
But the Beacon Street building it sits on top of in Kenmore Square is being sold, and that puts the sign in jeopardy.
I see it as a living part of the skyline, like a heartbeat, and it cant speak for itself, and to lose it -- there's theres some very quirky parts of Boston that we all love, said sign proponent, Erika Tarlin.
Tuesday night, fans of the sign spoke out at the Boston Landmarks Commission, and the commission took the first step in possibly designating the sign a landmark, by voting to study the issue and see if it should qualify for landmark status.
It has a pop art historic root in the 1960s popular culture and I think thats where the signs great historic value lies, said sign proponent, Arthur Krim.
Unanimously voting, the commission accepted petition for further study.
Designating the Citgo sign a landmark could make it harder for future owners of the building to take it down or even move it.
We are optimistic. I have trouble believing anyone would want the Citgo sign to go down under their watch, said Greg Galer of the Boston Preservation Alliance.
The Landmarks Commission said it could take three to six months to complete the study, before it comes back to the full commission for a vote whether to recommend to Boston Mayor Marty Walsh that it be designated a landmark.
It pulsates, its alive, you know where you are when you see it," said Tarlin. "Sure it is just a sign, leave the politics, leave the gas company out of it, it is a symbol of Boston to a lot of people it would be a shame to lose it purely for development reasons.
More than 8 million tourists visited Korea in the first half of this year as the stigma of the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome outbreak wore off and Chinese package tours returned to industrial scale.
The Korea Tourism Organization on Tuesday said the number of foreign tourists in the first six months of this year rose 21 percent compared to the same period last year to 8.1 million.
A KTO staffer said, "If there are no unexpected events, we will be able to achieve our annual target of attracting 16.5 million tourists this year."
A convicted felon in Massachusetts is accused of possessing assault rifles along with other firearms and weapons.
Robert Kurtzer, 37, of Weymouth is charged with being a felon in possession of firearms and ammunition.
FBI agents say they've been investigating Kurtzer for the past two months, and on Tuesday, state police stopped Kurtzer's pick-up truck, where they found a knife, pepper-spray, ammunition for several guns, a pill bottle with two types of pills and $6,000 in cash.
Kurtzer also allegedly told troopers that he did not have a license to carry.
He was arrested, and law enforcement officers then searched his home on Memorial Drive in Weymouth after his girlfriend, whose name is on the lease, consented to a search.
There, police say they found two assault rifles, a bolt-action rifle, two handguns, numerous weapons parts for the assembly of assault rifles and handguns, a firearm silencer, six unfinished firearm silencers, numerous rounds of ammunition, milling machinery to manufacture handguns and rifles.
Authorities add they also found nearly 700 rounds of ammunition in a storage facility under Kurtzer's name in Weymouth.
The FBI did not state why the agency had been investigating Kurtzer.
Kurtzer, who was convicted of armed robbery in 2001, is set to be arraigned on Wednesday, and it's unclear if he has an attorney.
The fire chief in Peabody, Massachusetts, says it could be another day before a fire at an industrial building is out.
The fire first sparked along Fifth Street around 3 p.m., sending plumes of smoke into the air.
Property Owner Dave Harrison became emotional as he looked at the charred remains of his family's property.
He said, "It's a total loss up there. Were hoping we can salvage a section of the building."
The 140,000 square-foot building housed 2 companies, CNE Direct, which repurposes computer parts and LiFoam, which makes foam packaging material.
Everyone inside the building managed to get out safely when the fire started Tuesday afternoon.
Efforts to stop it have been difficult. Firefighters are still on scene putting out hot spots nearly 24 hours later.
Chief Steven Pasdon said, "We've got sunscreen for the guys for the sun exposure, we have rehab units, we feel like we have everything covered."
One man who lives nearby showed us his view overnight.
Chuck Wood said, "It was pretty smoky outside and we were told that we should probably find a different place for the night."
He decided to remain home while Hazmat crews tested the air quality, which they determined to be safe.
One firefighter sustained a minor injury.
Harrison plans to rebuild the property.
The displaced workers are still waiting on word from their bosses.
The cause of the fire remains under investigation.
Some of the record heat that has been impacting much of the nation the last few weeks is spreading into New England. However it is not record warm here, or even as warm as last Wednesday, but many spots do warm to near 90 today, and through the weekend.
A strong storm system is crosses northern Quebec, a series of trailing cold fronts will push into Western New England each afternoon the next few days.
necn
The fronts are running out of energy as they cross New England so the heaviest weather is mostly off to our west and north.
For today we have partly to mostly sunny skies with warm to hot temperatures in the 80s to low 90s, just a slight chance of a shower or thunderstorm late in the day.
Wind from the south-southwest increasing 15 to 20 mph during the afternoon, as humidity levels go up with the dewpoint in the 60s.
Warm and muggy overnight tonight, with a low temperature in the 60s to near 70.
Tomorrow is a bit more humid with temperatures once again near 90, and a better chance for thunderstorms during the afternoon.
The map for 4:30 PM shows a line of thunderstorms near the Connecticut River, some of these thunderstorms will contain wind gusts past 55 mph that will cause localized damage.
necn
The line of storms, shown in red and orange on the map, will be moving from west to east in about 25 to 30 mph and will weaken rapidly as they reach our eastern shores and the Boston area around 8 PM.
necn
Friday will feature similar warmth, without slightly less chance for the shower or thunderstorm.
This weekend we still have a front around, but it should get just for enough away to leave us more sun and clouds, a chance of a shower or thunderstorm Saturday, high temperatures in the 80s, slightly lower humidity.
Sunday looks mostly sunny with moderate humidity, and a high temperature in the 80s once again.
A second day of testimony was heard Wednesday in Saugus, Massachusetts, in a rape trial stemming from a video posted on Snapchat.
Rashad Deihim, 21, and Kailyn Bonia, 20, both of Saugus are accused of raping a 16-year-old girl and capturing it on the social media app in September 2014.
Sydnee Enos, who has known the alleged victim since middle school, received the videos on her cell phone that night. She took the stand on Wednesday to tell the jury what she saw.
"She was trying to walk," said Enos. (She) couldn't really speak. It was a fast video."
Enos said the victim wasn't wearing any clothes and was trying to walk.
"It was almost like she was intoxicated," said Enos. "She was stumbling."
Enos said a second video she received was even more graphic, telling the jury that her friend appeared to be assaulted.
"I saw KK, she was holding her down by her neck and I saw her grabbing her and she was kissing her neck," said Enos. "She was holding her down by her neck so it was pretty much in her elbow. Almost in a headlock."
The defense argues the sex that night was consensual. But prosecutors say the alleged victim was not coherent enough to say 'no.'
Police in Brentwood, New Hampshire, say a man in a pick-up truck tried to abduct a 10-year-old boy Tuesday evening.
The attempted abduction happened in the area of Mary Vey Drive and Mill Road around 6:10 p.m.
The suspect, who was balding, tried unsuccessfully to usher the boy in the vehicle. The vehicle, which was red and had a white stripe along the side, had New Hampshire Registration plates.
According to the Union Leader, police said the man showed no weapons and made no threats.
The boy ran away from the scene and ran home to tell his parents.
Anyone with information is asked to call police at 603-642-8817.
A Hyannis, Massachusetts, woman is facing charges after she allegedly left her infant son home alone to pick up Burger King.
According to the Cape Cod Times, court documents say Stefanie DiSilva, 19, pleaded not guilty to reckless endangerment in court Tuesday.
The documents say police responded to an apartment on West Main Street Monday for a report of a baby crying inside the home.
Officers entered the home through a window after no one responded and found the baby in the crib with a wet diaper. The infant was taken to a hospital.
DiSilva is set to appear in court on Aug. 17.
The founder of MS-13 in Massachusetts, Carlos Geovanni Martinez-Aguilar, was sentenced on Tuesday in the U.S. District Court in Boston for illegally reentering the United States after being deported.
Martinez-Aguilar, 38 of Mesquite, Texas was sentenced to three years in prison and two years of supervised release.
Prior to his initial deportation, Martinez-Aguilar was a leader of the MS-13 gang in the North Shore area. He was well known by fellow gang members and local law enforcement as the founder of MS-13 in Massachusetts.
Martinez Aguilar was born in El Salvador and illegally entered the U.S. in 1995. In September 2002, he was convicted of unarmed robbery and deported from the U.S. back to El Salvador in July 2003.
In 2005, federal law enforcement learned that he had returned to the U.S, and was arrested using a false name in Lawrence for assault with a dangerous weapon, making threats, giving a false name to police and armed robbery. He posted bail before the police learned his true identity, and he later defaulted on the charges and had a warrant issued for his arrest as a fugitive.
Federal agents continued to track him, and he was finally arrested in Dallas, Texas on Septembre 23, 2015.
In April 2013, he pleaded guilty to unlawful-re-entry of a deported alien.
During Tuesday's hearing United States District Court Judge Nathaniel M. Gorton referred to MS-13 as a deadly and violent gang and cited the need to protect the public as a basis for his sentence of incarceration.
MS-13 is a transnational street gang, that originated in El Salvador, and it is notorious for using extreme violence, including violence against their rival gangs.
The New Hampshire fire marshal has recommended that negligent homicide charges be brought against the operator of a circus tent that collapsed last year in Lancaster, killing two people.
Bill Degnan said Tuesday he recommended felonies and misdemeanors to Coos County attorney John McCormick, who would determine which charges to bring before a grand jury. McCormick did not immediately return a message seeking comment.
Forty-one-year-old Robert Young, and his 6-year-old daughter, Annabelle, of Concord, Vermont, died Aug. 3, 2015, when a storm blew through the Lancaster Fairgrounds, toppling the tent just minutes after about 100 people had settled in for a show. Fifty people were injured.
Walker International Events, of Sarasota, Florida, has contested fines proposed by federal safety officials for the collapse. A listed number is no longer in service.
A Derry, New Hampshire, man has been arrested after he allegedly tried to drive his car away as firefighters were inside to help him for possible cardiac arrest.
Adam King, 27, is facing charges of driving while intoxicated, possession of a controlled drug and reckless conduct.
Manchester firefighters responded to the area of Lowell Street and Ash Street Tuesday evening for a report of a person passed out in the driver's seat of a running vehicle.
Police say firefighters observed a hypodermic needle and spoon with brown residue between King's legs, so they attempted to put the vehicle in park.
They say King woke up and drove forward and reverse several times with the firefighters still in the car.
Another firefighter flattened a tire using a halogen bar.
The firefighters were able to take the keys out of the ignition and subdue King until police arrive.
Police say the residue on the spoon tested positive for heroin.
King will appear in court Thursday.
It was not immediately clear if he has an attorney.
An elite boarding school in New Hampshire is reportedly once again facing criticism about and an investigation into how it handles sexual assault allegations in the wake of a new case.
The Boston Globe reports a 17-year-old student at Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter repeatedly told a student-athlete, Chukwudi "Chudi" Ikpeazu, to stop groping her, and when she went to the school's minister, the school minister asked him to deliver baked bread for the rest of the year as an "act of penance."
Eventually the student went to police, and Ikpeazu was arrested on a misdemeanor charge of sexual assault.
Police are also investigating the school for how it handled the alleged victim's case and other allegations, according to the Globe.
Lively movement of vehicles, supplies and equipment, has been detected recently near the North Korea's nuclear test site in Punggye-ri in remote North Hamgyong Province.
In an article written for the website 38 North on Monday, the often reliable military boffin Joseph Bermudez said that satellite imagery from last Thursday indicates supplies and equipment, small vehicles and several mine ore carts at the facility.
"Based on imagery alone, it is not possible to determine whether this activity is for maintenance, excavation or preparation for a fifth nuclear test," Bermudez wrote. "Nevertheless, it is clear that North Korea is ensuring that the facility is in a state of readiness that would allow the conduct of future nuclear tests should the order come from Pyongyang."
A Unification Ministry official said, "The North Korean regime is ready to conduct another nuclear test whenever [leader] Kim Jong-un gives the order."
But a military spokesman here said further analysis is needed and there are "no signs of a test yet."
The death of a 2-month-old found at a Stamford, Connecticut daycare with signs of head trauma has been ruled a homicide, according to police.
Stamford EMS responded to Little Bears Beginnings Daycare, on Wardwell Street, around 3:12 p.m. Tuesday after a worker called 911 and reported that the baby girl, Bella Redondo, of New Canaan, was having trouble breathing, police said.
She was immediately transported to Stamford Hospital, where she stopped breathing, police said.
Lt. Diedrich Hohn/Stamford Police Department
55:17 A daycare worker called from a daycare on the east side and said the baby was having trouble breathing. At that point EMS arrived and transported the baby to Stamford hospital. 26
55:33 We were notified. There was some suspicious activity as far as trauma goes to the head. 38
55:38 At this point, were looking at it as a possible suspicious death. We dont know if its an accidental death or there is some overt act.
Bella was pronounced dead at the hospital at 6:20 p.m.
The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner ruled the baby's death a homicide and said the cause of death is blunt force trauma to the head, police said.
A criminal investigation is underway.
"Some person caused this injury to happen to this baby," Lt. Diedrich Hohn, of Stamford police, said on Wednesday.
NBC Connecticut reached out to Little Bears Beginnings Daycare but the employee who answered declined to comment.
Two other children who were at the daycare at the time of the incident, including Bella's 2-year-old sibling, were not hurt.
Police said this has been the first homicide in 2016 for Stamford.
The image of Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders embracing was the moment that seems almost impossible a couple of months ago when Sanders was still painting Clinton as an old-school moderate, closely tied in with the Wall Street crowd.
But in the past month, as democrats became more concerned about Donald Trump's momentum, the pressure for Sanders to get behind Clinton grew stronger, culminating in these words from Sanders at a Portsmouth, New Hampshire high school on Tuesday.
"I have come here to make it as clear as possible as to why I am endorsing Hillary Clinton and why she must become the next president of the United States," said Sanders.
Clinton, who was pushed by Sanders to take more liberal positions then she might have, was happy to let bygones be bygones.
"Thank you for your endorsement, but more than that, thank you for your lifetime of fighting for injustice," Clinton told Sanders.
But some Sanders supporters are finding it very hard to move forward.
"I believe he was coerced into telling us to vote for her," said Sanders supporter Audrey Murphy. "I think Hillary is a very evil and corrupt woman and will do anything she can to get her way. I will never, ever vote for Hillary."
Kathleen West describes herself as a Bernie or bust person adding that despite being a lifelong democrat, she is just not ready yet to support Clinton."
In fairness, most Sanders supporters, while disappointed, say they are fully on board now with Clinton because they will do anything to prevent Donald Trump from becoming the next president.
Undoubtedly, the most common method used to contact emergency services is simply calling 911. While that will work just fine for most of us, for the 50 million citizens in the U.S. who are deaf, are deaf-blind or have a speech disability, dialing 911 on the phone is not an option.
Think about that for a second. You are deaf and experiencing a medical emergency, or witnessing one, and you can't report it, at least not in a timely or efficient manner.
Waitdidnt we solve this problem decades ago?
Sort of, but as it turns out, not completely. It is true that in the 1960s scientist Robert Weitbrecht proposed the use of surplus recycled Teletype (TTY) machines for communications devices for the deaf. The TTYs were modified to allow the use of acoustic couplers, which made them easy to attach to any telephone receiver. The BAUDOT tones that they transmitted could be carried as audio on phone lines. And despite the machines being not very portable, for the first time a deaf person could reach out and communicate over phone lines.
That solved the problem to a degree, but a major drawback remained. Anyone wanting to use this technology could only communicate with a person who also owned a TTY device. This limited the scope of the calling party to a few select resources.
With advances in hardware technology, device transportability became less of a problem, and the 1970s and 1980s saw a significant redesign of these devices. The incorporation of modern electronics and rudimentary firmware logic allowed TTYs to become more compact and include functions such as memory and speed-dialing.
The distribution of units increased as various state entities advocated for the deaf and hard of hearing community and began to support equipment distribution programs, many of which still exist. Deaf users would be subsidized, making TTY technology affordable to a wider community base.
Despite those efforts, TTY development and advancement came to an abrupt halt, and then stagnated over the next 30 years. Meanwhile we saw incredible advances in other forms of personal communications technology used by the general public.
Why didnt TTY technology flourish?
Even though TTYs werent convenient to operate, their use and deployment was widespread, primarily as the result of requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), signed into law in 1990. TITLE I of the law mandated that any employer with 15 or more employees could not discriminate against any person who has a disability. Furthermore, TITLE III of the act required that a business of any size ensure that any individual who has a disability has equal access to all the business has to offer a customer who doesn't have a disability.
In 2007 the smartphone was introduced, with Apple, Microsoft and Google all introducing solutions. Wireless carriers expanded with data plans and capabilities, as well as the internet connectivity that would accompany it. This was probably the main reason TTY use plummeted. Devices that could use SMS, text message, and the proprietary iMessage and FaceTime protocols have all brought ubiquitous multimedia communications to the masses. Apps have allowed services such as high-definition video relay calling to be provided to people who are deaf, are deaf blind or have speech disabilities, making the smartphone the device of choice for more and more people.
What about emergency calls?
While communicating with nearly anyone on the planet is only a click away, when it comes down to life safety issues and reaching officials at 911 centers, the legacy network once again stands in the way, blocking any possibility for direct access from these devices and the ability to use any multimedia capability. Think of it like trying to videoconference with that 1973 Harvest Gold, rotary dial wall phone that used to hang in your kitchen. Not going to happen.
The 911 network itself is the very thing that keeps public safety agencies from using these new modalities of communicationsand the problem is not a new one. This same issue has suffocated the industry for decades, preventing use of an intelligent, multimedia-capable, data-centric, network-connecting public safety agencies with the public they are charged with protecting.
As I have written many times in the past, the current 911 architecture in the U.S. is an antiquated, analog-based infrastructure capable of providing a single mode of communications: voice.
Even now, with carriers and public safety answering points (PSAPs) committed to rolling out Text to 911 services, its evident by the lack of implementations that progress is moving at a snails pace. In fact, according to the FCC report on PSAP Text to 911 Readiness, less than 10 percent of the counties have implemented the service, despite all major wireless carriers making this technology available through several mechanisms, requiring minimal effort on behalf of the PSAPs.
Mark J. Fletcher, ENP The current status of 911 PSAP deployments of Text to 911 services as reported to the FCC Public Safety Homeland Security Bureau.
Are we building the wrong technology?
Next Generation 911 (NG911) systems will utilize an IP-based Emergency Services IP Network, also known as an ESInet. While it is politically correct to use the term "migrate," in reality, the cutover to NG911 will be a flash cut, and transitional networks are there only to work out the policy and procedures required. This is why the Text to 911 solutions being deployed now are destined to be short lived. These networks, despite being new, are not deemed as "NENA i3 compliantthe adopted standard that designates the NG911 network from a functional and operational perspective.
Does that mean the existing Text to 911 network is a waste of time and money? No, I am clearly NOT saying that. What I am saying is that what we have for Text to 911 is not the end state goal of the NENA i3 NG911 network, and we need to continue to strive towards a goal that will include better accuracy. The FCC even warns on their FAQ Page about location concerns with Text to 911 today:
Texting to 911 is different from making a voice call to 911 in this respect. When you make a voice call to 911, the call taker will typically receive your phone number and your approximate location automatically. This is called "Enhanced 911" or "E911." However, in most cases when you text 911 from a wireless phone, the call taker will not receive this automated information. For this reason, if you send a text message to 911, it is important to give the 911 call taker an accurate address or location as quickly as possible, if you can.
While we navigate this transitional phase of emergency communications, public safety officials everywhere remind us that the safe move continues to be:
"Bots" have been around for decades. Recently, however, it's become the norm for large technology companies to build, support and develop bots for a wide variety of uses. Because bots can be so many different things, it's often difficult to parse the bona fides from the wannabes or even determine what bots do.
What exactly are bots?
"A bot is an autonomous machine interface that's built to serve a purpose that traditionally was served by a human," says Michael Facemire, a principal analyst with Forrester Research.
Bots can stimulate human conversation, but their greatest strength lies in the capability to simplify business processes that don't require human intervention, according to Adam Fingerman, chief experience officer at Arctouch, a mobile app design and development company. "From a utility point of view, bots will have an even bigger impact on how we work than how we live," he says.
[Related: From tacos to HR, chatbots make it personal]
Bots can also help navigate complicated data systems, according to Fingerman. Bots "can be the friendly interface that points users to the right content, answers time-sensitive questions, and ushers them to the right human to get the feedback they need," he says.
Bots are nimble, and they don't need to be anchored to a single platform, interface or purpose, according to Raj Koneru, founder and CEO of Kore, a message-based bots platform for enterprise. "A bot can live in many places," he says. "The beauty of a bot, unlike a mobile app, is that it's conversational in nature so it can be in many, many places."
Different takes on bots at Apple, Facebook and Google
Apple and Facebook have embraced bots in meaningful but disparate ways. These companies' histories and their legacy platforms help explain their different approaches to bots today, according to Facemire. "The differentiation is driven by more traditional business models that these folks have as opposed to looking at the entire space and saying, 'We'll differentiate by providing a different technology choice' or anything like that," he says.
[Related: Facebook is bringing in the bots and AI]
Apple recently elevated its bots, calling them "apps" that will run within the Siri voice assistant, iMessage and Maps in iOS 10. Facebook lets developers build bots that operate within its Messenger service. Apple provides a "closed system that locks you into the Apple way of doing things," whereas Facebook "wants to be as open as possible" to give developers a greater say in how bots function, according to Facemire.
Google has been mum about its plans for bots in Allo, its forthcoming messaging app, but the company's history suggest it will lean toward a more open approach, he says. "Google just wants the traffic," Facemire says. "Google monetizes information that they can glean from knowing who was talking about what, and taking that information and selling it to advertisers, which is their true business model."
[Related: What Apple's new stance means for iOS apps]
"[Facebook and Google] want to get their existing customers to utilize their platforms by providing tools that can easily be embraced, ultimately directing more traffic to their pages," says Claus Jepsen, chief architect at enterprise software vendor Unit4. "Apple, on the other hand, wants their customers to integrate to other capabilities within the software itself, and relies heavily on Siri's closed platform."
Bots in enterprise
A paradigm shift is currently happening in the ways people use technology today and how they'll use it in the future, according to Jepsen. "Data collection is becoming pervasive, automatic and non-intrusive, instead of spotty, manual, and requiring high levels of interaction," he says. The separation between work and personal life will erode as bots empower people to interact and communicate with software in much the same ways that they talk to friends, Jepsen says. This shift "will allow for more unified exchanges between a consumer's work and day-to-day requests."
[Related: CIO banks on bots to bolster customer experience]
"For IT leadership, bots are an opportunity to reduce trivial help desk to-dos and allow their teams to focus on the important initiatives that will make a real difference to their business," according to Fingerman.
Apple, Facebook and Google may currently lead pack when it comes to consumer bots, but Fingerman thinks things will play out differently in enterprise. "We often talk about how it is important for businesses to look to consumer technology as a model for building a great user experience for their workforce," he says. "But the use cases are dramatically different, so we don't see a future with a lot of bot crossover."
This story, "Taking a closer look at bots from Apple, Facebook and Google" was originally published by CIO .
Spare Change: Hard-working farmer Louis Escobar was one of a kind
Louie performed the kind of job most try to avoid. And he did it with little, if any, complaint.
Researchers at the University of Birmingham have found that the children of migrants to Chinese cities have lower rates of obesity than youngsters in more affluent established urban families.
Large-scale migration sees millions of Chinese families leave the countryside and settle in the country's biggest cities in search of economic prosperity.
Birmingham's research shows a trend that is the reverse of what is generally found in Western countries, where children from families in wealthier, more educated social classes tend to be fitter and slimmer than their counterparts in lower-income families.
They suggest that the Chinese Government could have an opportunity to keep obesity rates down among rural-urban migrants and those with lower household income and education by introducing food and physical activity policies.
Researchers worked with experts from the Guangzhou Centre for Disease Control and Prevention to study 9,917 children aged between five and 12 in the city of Guangzhou, in southern China.
The team's research showed that the prevalence of obesity in resident children was 20% compared with 14.3% in migrant children. It is the first study to compare childhood obesity in urban migrants with city residents.
Migrants now comprise up to 50% of the population in major cities across China. In general, they tend to have lower levels of income and education than city residents.
Professor KK Cheng, Miranda Pallan, Bai Li and Peymane Adab, from the University of Birmingham and Dr. Weijia Liu, Wei Liu and Rong Lin of Guangzhou Centre for Disease Control and prevention published the results of their research in BMC Public Health.
Professor Peymane Adab, Professor of Chronic Disease Epidemiology & Public Health, said: "The increase in obesity observed among boys and girls in Guangzhou is opposite to that seen in developed countries and may be due to the current stage of economic development in China.
"There is an opportunity to apply lessons from countries at a more advanced stage of the obesity epidemic. Rural-urban migrants and those with lower household income and education have lower rates of obesity, which could be maintained with the introduction of government food and physical activity policies."
The study found that the obesity among resident urban children was higher in boys than compared with girls. It also increased as children grew older and per-capita household income and maternal education increased.
Over a third of 9-12 year old boys from higher income households were overweight or obese; a rate which is similar to that seen in the West. The study also found that the rates of overweight differed greatly between boys and girls, being more than twice as high among boys from high income families, compared with girls.
Obesity was higher among fathers of resident compared to migrant children at 41.5% and 36.9% respectively. The reverse was true for mothers, with 17.7% and 20.1% respectively.
Dr Weijia Liu, said: "At present, Childhood obesity is an important public health problem in China, Guangzhou. With the cooperation of University of Birmingham, UK, Guangzhou Center for disease control and prevention deepens the research of factors contributing to childhood obesity in China.
"Our research does not only provide scientific basis for formulating effective intervention for childhood obesity in the city, but also strengthens the friendship and cooperation between the two cities."
Increasing the number of men who undergo circumcision and increasing the rates at which women with HIV are given antiretroviral therapy (ART) were associated with significant declines in the number of new male HIV infections in rural Ugandan communities, new Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Health research suggests.
The research, published July 12 in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), is believed to be the first to show that two promising prevention methods that were successful in tightly controlled clinical trial settings have real-world effects. The findings suggest that further scale-up of these programs throughout sub-Saharan Africa could slow the HIV epidemic in the region.
"The biology of these two prevention strategies has been proven, but the big question was whether these strategies could have an impact on the number of new HIV infections in communities still struggling to control the spread of the disease," says study leader Xiangrong Kong, PhD, an associate scientist in the departments of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the Bloomberg School. "Before our study, there was no empirical data to show the effects of scaling up these two interventions in real-world settings. It's important to know whether prevention is working and this is evidence that strongly suggests that African nations should redouble their efforts to scale up these programs."
The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) estimates there are roughly 25.8 million people living with HIV in sub-Saharan Africa. In 2014, approximately 41 percent were on ART, though coverage rates vary widely. The World Health Organization estimates that between 2007 and 2015, more than 10 million men had been circumcised in 14 priority countries in this region. Given the findings of the new study, these circumcisions should have a dramatic impact on new HIV infections going forward.
For the study, Kong and her colleagues used data collected from surveys between 1999 and 2013 in 45 communities in rural Rakai District in south-central Uganda, which included data on community-level ART coverage, male circumcision coverage, sociodemographics, sexual behaviors, HIV prevalence and rates of new HIV infections. They looked at three distinct periods: prior to the availability of ART and circumcision (1999-2004), during early availability of ART and circumcision and during full program scale up of both (2007-2013).
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Over the study period, the median community coverage of male circumcision increased from 19 percent to 39 percent and median ART coverage increased from 0 percent to 21 percent in males and from 0 percent to 23 percent in females. The World Health Organization's target is for 80 percent of men in sub-Saharan Africa to be circumcised.
The researchers found that in communities where more than 40 percent of men had been circumcised, the rate of new infections among men was reduced by 39 percent as compared to those communities where 10 percent or fewer men had been circumcised. They also found that in communities where more than 20 percent of HIV-infected women were taking ART, there was a 23 percent reduction in rates of new HIV infections in men, as compared to communities where 20 percent or fewer of the HIV-infected women were taking the medications. No reduction was seen in HIV rates among women, but Kong says that may come going forward as male ART use increases.
Studies have shown that male circumcision provides direct protection against male HIV acquisition by removing the foreskin, which is rich in HIV target cells. Convincing adult men to be circumcised is not an easy sell, Kong says, but results like these can go a long way toward expanding coverage in communities.
Kong says that low ART coverage observed in their study could be a result of WHO's guidelines for how early to start antiretroviral treatment. During much of the study period, only people with evidence of impaired immunity in their blood were given the treatment. Now that it is understood that ART is vital not just as a treatment but as a preventive measure in that it reduces how contagious someone is, guidelines recommend that it be prescribed upon diagnosis, irrespective of evidence of immune impairment.
Scaling up these prevention strategies isn't cheap, Kong concedes, but studies have shown that doing these two strategies together can be more cost-effective. Still, she says, international resources for treatment and prevention have remained flat since 2008. In the meantime, public health awareness programs need to be boosted to get more people tested and treated and get men into circumcision programs.
"We still have a long way to go in curbing the HIV epidemic in Africa," she says. "People need to adopt these strategies, and we need to have sustainable funding to support these efforts."
Bioarray, S.L., IVF SPAIN S.L. and iGLS will present clinical outcomes of IVF treatments with PGS by NGS, after two years providing this genetic test as part of a cooperation supported in a framework agreement. The upcoming Annual Meeting of ESHRE, European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology (Helsinki, 3 to 6 July) will be the chosen context for this release, being a key event for the fertility community in Europe and worldwide.
Blastocyst biopsy for PGS
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PGS, Preimplantation Genetic Screening, is a genetic test that analyses biopsied cells from embryos produced by in vitro fertilization (IVF) techniques. PGS determines whether the embryos are chromosomally normal (euploid) or not, thus giving the chance to transfer chromosomally normal embryos that are more apt to successfully implant and develop into a pregnancy.
In 2014 Bioarray developed, validated and released PGS using NGS, Next Generation Sequencing, currently the most advanced molecular technology for the study of human genome. Since then, the alliance between Bioarray genetic lab and IVF-Spain fertility clinic has provided PGS to more than hundred European couples, with the first born baby screened by this method in September 2015. To date an overall of 64 born babies and 53 ongoing pregnancies have been achieved.
Moreover, this alliance has also provided PGD, Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis by NGS for a number of couples carrying a single-gene disorder, who had their embryos checked to prevent the disease being passed to their children. In this regards Bioarray integrated PGD setup + PGD + PGS in a single fast robust NGS workflow, providing unparalleled benefits to patients.
A new study, published in current issue of The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, shows that the highest levels of blood selenium or of selenoprotein P, the protein that distributes selenium from the liver around the body, are associated with a decreased risk of developing liver cancer (particularly hepatocellular carcinoma), even when all other major liver cancer risk factors are taken into account. The study, which was led by Dr David Hughes, Honorary Lecturer at the Department of Physiology and Centre for Systems Medicine at RCSI (Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland), also shows that selenium level is not associated with the development of gall bladder or biliary tract tumours.
The research is a joint project involving the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), RCSI, Charite Medical School Berlin, and collaborators in the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC). The project was jointly funded by the Health Research Board (HRB) in Ireland and the French National Cancer Institute.
Selenium is a trace mineral micronutrient that is found in foods like shellfish, salmon, Brazil nuts, meat, eggs, grains, and onions. However, selenium levels in foods depend largely on the levels of selenium in the soil where the food is grown and animals graze. Soil levels tend to be low in many regions in Europe, contributing to lower body levels of selenium in those populations compared with people living in regions with higher soil selenium concentrations, such as North America. In humans, selenium is essential, particularly for the effective functioning of the immune system and in controlling oxidative processes linked to cancer development.
Commenting on the study, Dr David Hughes said:
The research findings tentatively suggest that where selenium is lower than the optimal level, increasing selenium intake may help to prevent liver cancer in addition to moderating or avoiding alcohol consumption, maintaining a healthy body weight, and stopping smoking. However, these findings are based on a single study with a modest number of liver cancers, and thus our results need to be validated by further studies before any public health recommendations can be made.
The study was based on the EPIC cohort, which is composed of more than half a million participants across 10 European countries, using a casecontrol design of 121 liver cancers and 140 gall bladder and biliary tract cancers matched to equal numbers of individuals free of cancer within the cohort. Blood levels of selenium and selenoprotein P were measured in the study participants by the laboratory of Dr Lutz Schomburg at Charite Medical School Berlin.
In 2012, worldwide, there are estimated to have been 782 000 new cases of liver cancer. It is the second most common cause of death from cancer worldwide, estimated to have been responsible for nearly 746 000 deaths in 2012 (9.1% of all cancer-related deaths that year). The prognosis for liver cancer is very poor (with an overall ratio of mortality to incidence of 0.95), so the geographical patterns in incidence and mortality are very similar.
IARC scientist Dr Mazda Jenab, one of the studys authors commented The incidence of liver cancers is increasing in developed countries. Liver cancers are often diagnosed at late stages and have limited treatment options. Further research is needed into the modifiable determinants of these cancers and effective prevention strategies.
NASA's Human Research Program launched Phase 1 of the NASA Analog Missions website, a site devoted to studies around the world that help prepare for long duration human spaceflight.
An Analog is a situation on Earth that produces affects on the body similar to those experienced in space, both physical and emotional. The site, http://www. nasa. gov/ analogs is a one-stop website for all analog missions linked to NASA.
How real is an analog mission? Andy Self, Flight Analog Project operations lead at the Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston explained, "When we set up an analog research investigation, we try to mimic as many spaceflight conditions as possible. Obviously, they are not in microgravity, but confinement and the stress that goes along with spaceflight can be mimicked."
NASA is associated with at least 15 analog missions throughout the world, including Antarctica, Germany, Russia, Canada, Florida, Houston, and Hawaii. The new webpage gives an overview of the analogs, including a description of the habitats and the types of research conducted, along with a link to each analog mission.
The Human Exploration Resource Analog (HERA) mission site shows a 360-degree photo of the outside and inside of the HERA habitat which is located at JSC . It also has photos from previous missions and tweets from current missions.
Details as to how to apply to be a crewmember, or test subject, for an analog research mission may be found on the "Want to Participate" page on the website. Researchers can find links to calls for research and instructions on how to submit proposals on the "For Researchers" page.
Future phases of the Analog Missions webpage will give more details for each analog, more 360-degree experiences, and more history and education on analog missions.
A new, minimally invasive procedure appears to be effective for many patients with Fuchs endothelial dystrophy (FED), a common eye disease, without the potential side effects and cost of the current standard of care, a cornea transplant.
In a proof-of-concept study, published in the journal Cornea, researchers led by Kathryn Colby, MD, PhD, the Louis Block professor and chairman of the Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Science at the University of Chicago, showed that removing a few square millimeters of a single layer of cells on the inside of the cornea allowed rejuvenation of the surrounding tissue, without the need for a corneal transplant. This simple procedure restored clear vision to three out of four patients suffering from FED, the most frequent cause for corneal transplantation in the United States.
Over the past two years while at Harvard Medical School, Colby performed the new procedure, known as Descemet stripping, on 11 patients, aged 51 to 91. Two patients had the procedure in both eyes, one at a time.
When assessed six months after the operation, ten of the treated eyes (77 percent) had clear corneas and eight had 20/20 vision or better (two patients had retinal disease that limited their final vision). The other three eyes did not respond and required a standard cornea transplant.
"It's too soon to call this a cure," Colby said. "We performed the first operation just over two years ago. But when it works, it's a wonderful thing. It's quick, inexpensive and it spares patients from having someone else's cells in their eyes, which requires local immunosuppression."
The first patient to undergo Descemet stripping, 69-year-old Eric Thorp of the Boston area, was pleased. "It's quite a breakthrough," he said. His vision, now 20/20 in that eye, "is equivalent to what I had as a boy," he said. "Amazing."
"It's kind of an honor to have been the first," he added. "It was worth doing."
Descemet stripping involves removing a small patch of the corneal endothelium (the pumping cells that stop working in FED) attached to an underlying layer (the Descemet membrane). In patients with FED, water accumulates in the cornea, the clear front window of the eye, because of the dysfunction of the pumping cells, causing reduced vision, glare and haloes. If left untreated, the condition progresses to painful blindness.
Removal of the central dysfunctional cells enables healthier peripheral cells to migrate to the center of the cornea, where they reestablish pumping capacity and removal of fluid from the layers above. This gradually restores clear vision.
"Although Descemet stripping is a relatively simple procedure, its potential is revolutionary," Colby said. In 2015, 14,000 corneal transplants were performed in the United States, just for FED, the most common reason for this operation. The transplants work well, but the tissues are expensive and there is a limited supply in some areas of the world. Because the corneal transplant tissue is foreign, patients must apply topical steroids for the rest of their lives to dampen their immune response and prevent rejection of the transplanted cells. Steroid eye drops are known to cause glaucoma and cataract and can predispose to infection.
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The researchers classified patients into four groups based on how they responded to Descemet stripping. Fast responders regained clear vision within a month after surgery. Responders recovered within three months. Slow responders took more than three months. Nonresponders had persistent corneal edema and required endothelial keratoplastya streamlined cornea transplant.
Of the 13 eyes treated, four were fast responders, four were responders and two were slow responders.
The next step is to try to understand why some patients, about one out of four, don't respond to removal of the dysfunctional cells. Fuchs dystrophy is a polygenic disease, but in the last few years researchers have found connections between the extent of a repeating nonsensical genetic abnormality seen in other neurological diseases and the severity of FED. Colby hopes to find genetic clues that predict which patients are most likely to respond to this approach.
Thorp, the first patient treated, had 20/20 vision when last assessed in January of 2016 at the University of Chicago, 24 months after his operation. He was first diagnosed with FED and had a cornea transplant in his right eye in 2002, a two-stage operation. It was successful, but the recovery process meant "foggy vision" in that eye for nearly a year. This prevented him from driving.
That eye slowly recovered, but by 2013 vision in the left eye began to decline. After Colby offered her new procedure and explained the logic behind it, Thorp felt "a great deal of confidence and understanding in what she was doing," he said. He volunteered to go first.
"It certainly turned out to be worth it," Thorp said. His operation, removal of a cataract plus Descemet stripping, took less than 30 minutes. That was "about 20 minutes for the cataract and one minute for the stripping," he recalled.
"After I performed Mr. Thorp's surgery, I waited eight months to make sure nothing unexpected happened to his cornea," Colby said, "then I started offering the procedure to patients whom I felt could benefit."
"Few things remind you as constantly as deteriorating vision," Thorp recalled. "Your world steadily narrows as you lose the ability to see. But mine expanded again at the other end. I remember walking the dog at night right after the operation. Each night, the streetlights would be a little more in focus. You could see the improvement, night after night over the course of a few weeks, like the fog lifting out of London. It was cool. Really cool."
Stomach MRI images combined with functional fMRI of the brain activity have provided scientists new insight into how the brain listens to the stomach during eating. Research from Wageningen University in the Netherlands shows - for the first time - real time data of the brain, the stomach, and people's feelings of satiety measured simultaneously during a meal, in a study to be reported this week at the annual meeting of the Society for the Study of Ingestive Behavior, held in Porto, Portugal. The researchers collected data from 19 participants during two separate sessions with different consumption procedures and found that a simple change like drinking more water can alter messages from the stomach interpreted as fullness by the brain. This new research approach can be used to investigate the interplay between satiety feelings, volume of the stomach and activity in the brain.
In the experiment, participants drank a milk-shake on an empty stomach, which was followed by a small (50 mL) or large glass of water (350 mL). MRI images were used to see how the different amounts of water affected stretching of the stomach: the large glass of water doubled the stomach content compared to the small glass. Together with this larger volume subjects reported to have less hunger and felt fuller.
This novel approach - combining information obtained simultaneously from MRI images of the stomach, feelings reported by the subjects, and brain scans - can offer new insights which would otherwise have been unknown, for example that activation in a brain area called the mid-temporal gyrus seems is in some way influenced by the increased water load in this experiment. The Wageningen University scientists developed the combined MRI method as part of the European Nudge-it research project, which seeks to discover simple changes that promote healthier eating. They will use it to search for a brain signature that leads people to decide to stop eating, to determine how strategies like water with a meal can be effective at feeling fuller sooner.
"Combining these types of measurements is difficult, because MRI scanners are usually set-up to perform only one type of scan. We've been able to very quickly switch the scanner from one functionality to another to do this type of research" says Guido Camps, lead author of the study. "In conclusion, we've found that simply adding water increases stomach distension, curbs appetite in the short term and increases regional brain activity."
Source: Society for the Study of Ingestive Behavior
A recent review and analysis suggests that some policies restricting opioid prescriptions to curb overdose deaths could be harming those who need them the most: pain patients.
"Negative outcomes of unbalanced opioid policy supported by clinicians, politicians, and the media" was published in the latest issue of the Journal of Pain & Palliative Care Pharmacotherapy. Co-authored by Willem Scholten and Jack E. Henningfield, the article suggests that the opioid epidemic has at times been misrepresented by politicians and the media.
"There is a disturbing tendency among doctors, politicians and the media in the US to be preoccupied by certain aspects of opioids: their benefits are questioned and their risks sensationalised," said Scholten, a medicine and controlled substances consultant. This, he says, can lead people to lose sight of the bigger picture of pain management.
The article advocates balanced and comprehensive drug control policies that are based on accurate evaluation of the science and epidemiology, rather than what is sometimes portrayed in the mainstream media. The authors provide a number of recommendations for responsible prescription of opioids, such as regular assessment of the patient's pain and functioning and informing the patient and his/her caregivers about the correct use of prescribed medicines, as well as how to safely dispose of unused medicines.
Scholten and Henningfield said while opioid overdoses are on the rise in the United States, this is not the case in places such as Europe. While they encourage the creation of policies minimizing the harm of opioids, they suggest doing so in the right context and in a rational way.
"Blocking access to prescription opioids should not have a negative impact on pain treatment or worsen overall harmful substance use," Scholten said.
Chapman University has published research on how breastfeeding rates differ among white, black and Hispanic mothers. The study looked to see if ethnic and racial disparities in breastfeeding could be explained by differences in the use of formula in hospitals, family history of breastfeeding, mother's belief that "breast is best"; and demographic measures including poverty, education and relationship status.
The research found that, "Black mothers were nine times more likely to be given formula in the hospital than white mothers," according to Jennifer Hahn-Holbrook, Ph.D., assistant professor in psychology at Chapman University and co-author on the study.
"This fact alone accounted for about 20 percent of the racial disparity in breastfeeding duration between black and white mothers. In-hospital formula introduction is something that hospital policy makers and breastfeeding advocates can seek to change, whereas some other factors that led to breastfeeding disparities in our study are not so easily addressed," Hahn-Holbrook continued.
Higher rates of poverty and lower levels of education were also found to explain the breastfeeding gaps between black and white mothers, especially in determining whether mothers started breastfeeding in the first place.
The CDC has known for decades that racial and ethnic differences in breastfeeding rates result in life-long health disparities between black, white and Hispanic infants. Until recently, however, the reasons behind these breastfeeding disparities have remained somewhat of a mystery. For example, breastfeeding gaps between black and white mothers are not fully explained by differences in poverty and education. Even more puzzling is the fact that black and Hispanic mothers share many of the same economic characteristics, yet Hispanic mothers consistently have some of the highest breastfeeding rates in the US.
The researchers also examined why breastfeeding rates tend to be so much higher for Hispanic mothers compared to white or black mothers.
"Hispanic mothers were much more likely to have a family member who breastfed than white or black mothers," said Chelsea McKinney, researcher at the NorthShore University Health System and lead author on the project. "This intergenerational factor proved to be the most powerful driving force behind Hispanic mothers' better breastfeeding outcomes. A strong family history of breastfeeding, especially on the mother's side, seemed to help Hispanic mothers overcome some of the breastfeeding barriers that impoverished women often face."
The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months of life, with continued breastfeeding at least until the child's first birthday. Substantial research shows that breastfeeding benefits the neurological, immunological, digestive, and physical development of children. Despite this, roughly half of U.S. children are no longer breastfed by six months.
"Our results suggest that hospitals and policy makers should limit in-hospital formula introduction and consider family history and demographics to reduce racial and ethnic breastfeeding disparities," said Madeleine Shalowitz, MD, a Director at NorthShore University HealthSystem Research Institute and co- investigator on the study.
"Changing the relationship between hospitals and formula companies is notoriously challenging, even for hospitals that strive to improve breastfeeding outcomes, because many hospitals, especially those serving low-income communities, are economically reliant on free formula," said Dr. Hahn-Holbrook.
"Change is possible, however," says Dr. McKinney. "And we hope to see racial and ethnic disparities in breastfeeding diminish as more hospitals serving low-income populations become 'baby-friendly' and encourage breastfeeding through close maternal-infant contact after birth and discouraging formula use."
Here are some additional findings:
In the black/white disparities, poverty, college education and marital status fully mediated the gap in breastfeeding initiation.
Black mothers weaned their infants 10.3 weeks earlier than did white mothers.
White mothers were significantly less likely to experience in-hospital formula introduction than black mothers, which was the biggest predictor of breastfeeding duration.
Black mothers were less likely to have a family history of breastfeeding and were also less likely to live with the baby's father.
White mothers breastfed nearly seven weeks longer than did English-speaking Hispanic mothers; and the latter group tended to be younger and lack a college degree.
In addition to family history of breastfeeding, higher rates of co-resident fathers and marriage among Hispanic women accounted for some of the disparities.
"This finding supports previous research showing the important role that the baby's father can play in fostering positive breastfeeding outcomes," said Dr. Hahn-Holbrook.
Methodology
The study examined 1,636 mothers who delivered in hospitals in Los Angeles, CA, Baltimore, MD, Washington, D.C., and Lake County, IL. Researchers evaluated post-natal intent in the hospital after birth, followed by an assessment one month later and again six months postpartum. Modeling was used in the evaluation of initiation, duration, maternal age, income, household composition, employment, marital status, postpartum depression, preterm birth, smoking, belief that "breast is best," family history of breastfeeding, and in-hospital formula introduction.
Marketing researchers at the University of Arkansas and their colleague at the University of Mississippi compared nutrition information labels on the front of packaged food products to understand which labels help consumers choose more healthful items. Their conclusion: It depends.
"Our research suggests that there is no single, 'one-size-fits-all' front-of-package nutrition label that is suitable for all the different types of situations in which consumers are evaluating and choosing products," said Elizabeth Howlett, professor of marketing in the Sam M. Walton College of Business.
Shoppers often find it daunting to decide which packaged food products are the healthiest. A typical supermarket carries more than 40,000 different items, and previous marketing research has shown that consumers make the vast majority (82 percent) of their purchase decisions while shopping in the store.
Consumers sometimes evaluate a single product, an activity marketing researchers call non-comparative processing. More often, however, consumers participate in comparative information processing, which means they evaluate multiple products simultaneously. For example, a consumer might ask himself whether he should purchase the French-style lemon yogurt, the Greek-style blueberry yogurt, or the low-calorie berry variety.
Comparative information processing is considerably more difficult than non-comparative processing, because consumers must make direct comparisons between several options and multiple types of calorie and nutrient information. Though these tasks are clearly very different, Nutrition Facts panels provide only one type of standardized nutrition information.
Howlett, Scot Burton, Distinguished Professor of marketing in Walton College; and Christopher Newman, assistant professor of marketing at the University of Mississippi and former doctoral student at the U of A, examined two formats for front-of-package nutrition labels. One format provided specific, objective and quantitative information - for example, 10 grams of fat. The other format provided evaluative information, such as Walmart's green "great for you" icon.
The researchers found that the different formats worked better in different situations. A front-of-package label that provided specific, objective and quantitative information was more suited to a non-comparative choice, the instance in which a consumer is evaluating a single product. Front-of-package labels that provided evaluative information were more suited to a comparative task, when customers were evaluating multiple products.
"Currently, many different types of front-of-package nutrition information formats appear on product labels and their effectiveness in different choice contexts needs to be better understood," said Newman. "We believe that public policy decision makers such as those at the Food and Drug Administration must consider how well the type of nutrition information presented on a product label matches the consumer's specific type of choice task."
"If the primary goal of nutrition labeling is to help consumers make healthier choices, then the ability to easily identify the most healthful alternatives from a broad set of options is crucial," said Burton. "Our results suggest that, in general, when there is a match between the choice processing context and the type of format used to present front-of-package nutrition information, consumers tend to make more healthful food choices. This is particularly important in comparative contexts in which evaluative information may improve choice from a set of brands."
The American Autoimmune Related Diseases Association, Inc. (AARDA) is spotlighting two new research studies originally reported in ScienceDaily. The first study advances understanding of a potential cause of autoimmune disease, while the second examines a new treatment approach that could have wide-ranging implications for many autoimmune diseases.
In both cases, AARDA believes the research is promising and additional studies are needed to confirm the findings.
Potential Genetic Trigger of ADs Identified
Researchers at the Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS) in New York City, reporting in the June issue of Arthritis and Rheumatism, have found virus-like elements within the human genome that may be a potential genetic trigger of systemic autoimmune disease.
According to ScienceDaily (June 27, 2016):
"For their study, the HSS researchers hypothesized that the abnormal expression of genetic elements known as LINE-1 ( L1) retroelements might trigger an innate immune response similar to that produced by outside viruses and contribute to an overproduction of interferons.
Interferons are molecules our body produces in the presence of viruses and other pathogens to mobilize the immune system. They're part of the complex immune response to combat danger. However, if levels of interferon are too high, instead of playing a protective role it can contribute to the development of autoimmune disease."
The researchers sought to understand why a class of interferon known as type 1 interferon, is excessively produced in patients with SLE and Sjogren's syndrome.
"Our genomes are packed with sequences derived from viruses that were inserted many thousands of years ago, and these virus-like sequences can move around, causing genetic mutations and contributing to the evolution of our genomes. We hypothesized that they sometimes generate virus-like RNA sequences that can be detected by the immune system," said Mary K. Crow, MD, physician-in-chief at Hospital for Special Surgery and senior study author.
"Our findings support the hypothesis that L1 retroelements, perhaps along with other virus-derived genomic elements, may contribute to the development of autoimmune disorders characterized by high levels of type 1 interferon," said Dr. Crow, chair, Department of Medicine, and Benjamin M. Rosen Chair in Immunology and Inflammation Research at HSS. "Although it may not be the only cause, it's intriguing to think that virus-derived elements in our own genome are either quiet and don't cause any trouble, or they get stirred up and contribute to disease."
Commenting on the study, Noel R. Rose, MD, Ph.D., chairman emeritus of AARDA's Scientific Advisory Board, said the findings, "Iook very much like what I have always called the "adjuvant effect". All of us are prone to develop some autoimmunity (self-reactive lymphocytes) depending upon our genetics. But we need an extra push -- the adjuvant to move from benign autoimmunity to autoimmune disease. Often the adjuvant is supplied by infection or the body's response to infection. This study suggests that an interferon-like molecule is the adjuvant."
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Promising New AD Treatment in PreClinical Study Reported
A new treatment approach used in a preclinical study may hold promise for a wide array of autoimmune disease. Scientists at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine (Penn) have developed "a method for removing the subset of antibody-making cells that produce autoimmune disease without harming the immune system,"
ScienceDaily (June 30, 2016) reports:
"The key element in the new strategy is based on an artificial target-recognizing receptor, called a chimeric antigen receptor, or CAR, which can be engineered into patients' T cells. In human trials, researchers remove some of patients' T cells through a process similar to dialysis and then engineer them in a laboratory to add the gene for the CAR so that the new receptor is expressed in the T cells. The new cells are then multiplied in the lab before re-infusing them into the patient. The T cells use their CAR receptors to bind to molecules on target cells, and the act of binding triggers an internal signal that strongly activates the T cells -- so that they swiftly destroy their targets.
Current therapies for autoimmune disease, such as prednisone and rituximab, suppress large parts of the immune system, leaving patients vulnerable to potentially fatal opportunistic infections and cancers.
The Penn researchers demonstrated their new technique by successfully treating pemphigus vulgaris, an otherwise fatal autoimmune disease, in a mouse model, without apparent off-target effects which could harm healthy tissue. The results are published in an online First Release paper in Science.
"This is a powerful strategy for targeting just autoimmune cells and sparing the good immune cells that protect us from infection," said co-senior author Aimee S. Payne, MD, PhD, the Albert M. Kligman Associate Professor of Dermatology.
Payne and her co-senior author Michael C. Milone, MD, PhD, an assistant professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, adapted the technique from the promising anti-cancer strategy by which T cells are engineered to destroy malignant cells in certain leukemias and lymphomas.
"Our study effectively opens up the application of this anti-cancer technology to the treatment of a much wider range of diseases, including autoimmunity and transplant rejection," Milone said.
AARDA's Rose said of the study, "What a great example of the 'Ying-Yang' synergy between cancer research and research on the autoimmune diseases. Many of the key ideas behind CAR T cells arose from years of fundamental research on autoimmunity. Now a new method of cancer immunotherapy is being applied to treating autoimmune disease.
"You never know where basic research will take you."
Thiruvananthapuram: CPI-M in Kerala on Wednesday said the party is in favour of entry of women of all age groups to the Lord Ayyappa hill shrine at Sabarimala, where as per tradition entry of women of menstruating age is restricted.
The party is of the view that all women should be allowed to enter the Sabarimala Ayyappa Temple, CPI-M state secretary Kodiyeri Balakrishnan said in Thiruvananthapuram.
"In fact, party is of the view that women should be allowed in all the temples," he said.
"If there is any practical difficulty in allowing women (of all age groups) to Sabrimala hill shrine, Travancore Devaswom Board, which manages the temple, should bring that matter to the notice of the Supreme Court," he added.
The party-led Left Democratic Front government would file a fresh affidavit in the apex court in a case related to the issue of women's entry to the Sabarimala Temple, he said.
The previous Congress-led United Democratic Front government and Travancore Devaswom Board had taken the stand that customs and traditions of the temple should be preserved.
The apex court had on Tuesday indicated that it may refer to a five-judge constitution bench the issue of the centuries-old practice of barring entry of women between 10 and 50 years of age to the historic temple, saying it pertains to violation of fundamental rights.
On reports of some Keralities gone missing and suspected to have joined the terror outfit Islamic State, Balakrishnan said efforts to blame the entire Muslim community on the issue "is not appropriate".
"CPI-M is against all types of terrorism... Those type of people should be isolated from the society," he said.
Referring to some Indian Union Muslim League leaders in the state supporting Islamic preacher Zakir Naik, who came under scrutiny after it was reported that his speeches inspired some of the Dhaka attackers, he said, "Indian Union Muslim League should make its stand clear on Zakir Naik."
Asked about the CPI-M stand, he said, "After getting more information about Naik, the party would make its stand known (on the issue)."
Rashid, a qualified engineer, is known to have a greater focus on Islamic preaching and conversion, and was closely associated with the Peace Foundation in Thrikaripur where he taught the Quran.
A report by Immigration officials said all the 21 travelled to Tehran in separate batches over the last one month from where are suspected to have moved on and joined the Islamic State.
I have never seen Rashid. But he was with Ejaz and Shiyas and it's they who influenced my son," recalls Hafeezuddin.
The local police however say there is not enough of a case against the man yet.
As state investigation agencies grapple with a complex web of conversions and suspected radicalisation, one person has emerged as a common link to the 21 people who have gone missing in Kerala.Abdul Rashid is a preacher from Thrikkaripur who worked at the Peace International school and is among the ones suspected to have left the country along with his wife and child.Rashid is known to the families of the missing brothers Ijaz and Shiyaz, their wives; and was also in touch with Nimisha, from Thiruvananthapuram who converted to Islam and became Fatima.Rashid was also known to Fatima's husband Eesa and his brother Yahiya all of whom were related to the Peace Foundation.Abdul Rashid's parents refused to speak to CNN-News18 and his neighbours have mixed opinion about him. Some claim he used to be a recluse, and never even visited the neighbourhood Shia mosque.But Abdul Rehman who lives nearby alleges that Rasheed indoctrinated his sons - Dr.Ejaz and Shiyas, who are also missing - and that he had warned them to stay away from him."He used to come here to take classes. Once I even shouted at him," Rehman said.Hafeezuddin, whose son Abdul Hakeemuddin who is among the missing, blames Abdul Rehman's sons for what happened.Rashid is said to have allegedly recruited for ISIS by influencing many in Kasaragod through the Peace foundation.The acting Principal of the Peace International School defended Rashid."He was a quiet and nice person. We do not know why he left. I still don't think what is being reported about him is true," Manorama added.What makes Rashid intriguing is the multiple accounts of his personality which show him as aloof and a man of letters on one hand and a hawkish terror recruiter on the other.A special police team has been set up, and till they come out with their findings, it remains unanswered whether he was just a preacher or a terror recruiter.
Bengaluru: Karnataka CM Siddaramaiah on Wednesday announced a judicial probe into alleged suicide by Deputy Superintendent of Police MK Ganapathy.
Fifty one-year-old Ganapathy committed suicide earlier in July and a note was recovered from the room which also named Karnataka Minister KJ George's son and senior officers for forcing him to take his own life.
The incident came to light later when the lodge receptionist when to check for Ganapathy as some police personnel came to visit him.
He was found in uniform with service revolver around the waist, hanging by rope to a ceiling fan in a lodge room.
Incidentally, in a television interview to a local (Kannada) news channel aired in the afternoon in Kodagu district, Ganapathy had accused his senior officers of harassing him and putting pressure on him in various cases.
He (Ganapathy) declared that if anything happened to him, former state home minister K.J. George, Lokayuktha (ombudsman) IGP Pranab Mohanty and ADGP (intelligence) AM Prasad would be responsible.
Srinagar: Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti on Wednesday sought people's support in pulling the state out of the vortex of violence and bloodshed, saying her heart is overwhelmed with great sadness and sorrow as a result of the killings in the Valley.
"The 27-year-long violence has left deep wounds in almost each home here and we have to jointly safeguard our state and our people from further bloodshed and destruction.
"While my government's immediate priority would be to reach out to the affected families with a healing touch, in the long run a concerted effort shall have to be launched to make peace and stability a reality in Jammu and Kashmir, with youth being the focus of the government's welfare initiatives," she said in Srinagar.
The Chief Minister was speaking after paying homage to the martyrs of 1931 at the Martyrs graveyard in Khawaja Bazar area of downtown city in Srinagar.
Mehbooba said she needs people's support in realising the dream of a politically emancipated, economically self-reliant and socially secure Jammu and Kashmir.
"I seek people's support in pulling Jammu and Kashmir out of the vortex of violence and bloodshed. My heart is overwhelmed with great sadness and sorrow as a result of the killings in the latest spate of violence in Kashmir," she said, adding, "I won't let the people down, despite facing a challenging task."
Paying tributes to the 1931 martyrs, the Chief Minister said these valiant men scripted a new dawn in the state's history by laying the edifice for democracy and human dignity.
July 13, 1931 will always be remembered as a defining moment in the history of Jammu and Kashmir when the foundation for democracy and people's rule was laid in the state, she said.
"Each period of the state's history has had its special challenges and those confronting us today are as demanding as any in the past," she said.
Talking to media persons, the Chief Minister said the biggest tribute to these martyrs would be to protect Jammu and Kashmir's dignity and democracy which became a reality in the state because of their huge sacrifice.
The real homage one can pay to these martyrs is to protect and safeguard what these valiant men achieved for Jammu and Kashmir by sacrificing their precious lives, Mehbooba said.
The sacrifices of the martyrs laid the foundation for democracy and people's rule in the state and their struggle against autocratic rule resulted in the people becoming the fountainhead of power, she said.
She appealed the people not to fall prey to the machinations of those elements who want to disturb peace in the state.
"I appeal to the people to protect the sacrifices rendered by them (the martyrs) to pave way for peace. We should not play with that peace."
"I think the biggest tribute to them would be to protect that peace and not fall prey to the machinations of those elements who want to disturb peace here," she said.
The Chief Minister was accompanied by some of her Cabinet colleagues, legislators, party functionaries and top officers of the civil and police administration.
Islamabad: Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has convened a special Cabinet meeting in Lahore on Friday to discuss the "deteriorating situation" in the violence-hit Kashmir and chalk out "future course of action" on the issue.
"The Cabinet will discuss the oppressive actions of Indian security forces against innocent civilians and the over all situation in Kashmir after the brutal assassination of Burhan Wani," the Prime Minister's Office said in a statement.
The meeting at the Governor House in Lahore will discuss the "rapidly deteriorating situation" in Kashmir and the Prime Minister will chalk out "future course of action" on the issue, it said.
The statement also noted that on the directions of the Prime Minister, the foreign office summoned Indian high commissioner to the foreign office and conveyed "strong concerns of the Pakistani government and people on rapidly deteriorating human rights situation in Kashmir and increasing oppression by Indian security forces."
It said that a detailed briefing was also given to ambassadors of all permanent members of UN security council of UN "regarding atrocities of the security forces."
India had asked Pakistan to refrain from interfering in its internal affairs after Sharif issued a statement expressing "shock" at the killing of Hizbul commander Burhan Wani.
Sharif on Wednesday said the "voice and struggle" of the people of Kashmir cannot be suppressed through use of "brutal force and human rights abuses".
He said this during a meeting with PoK Parliament Special Committee Chairman and Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam Fazal (JUI-F) President Maulana Fazlur Rehman in Lahore.
During the meeting, Rehman apprised the Prime Minister on his recent talks with separatist leaders over the "human rights violations" by Indian military and paramilitary forces in Jammu and Kashmir.
Rehman said the "Kashmiri leadership looks towards Pakistan in difficult times", according to an official statement.
Sharif said, "The government and people of Pakistan respect the sentiments of their Kashmiri brethren and will continue to support the Kashmir cause at each and every forum internationally come what may."
"The resolution of the Jammu and Kashmir dispute is only possible by the realisation of the right to self-determination of the people of Jammu and Kashmir, as per the UNSC resolutions, through a fair and impartial plebiscite under UN
auspices," Sharif said.
Meanwhile, Foreign Secretary also briefed the Islamabad-based Ambassadors of the member countries of the OIC Contact Group on Jammu and Kashmir (Azerbaijan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Niger) over the situation in the Valley.
In the meeting, Pakistan called on the OIC member states to raise their voice against "the blatant human rights violations" of Kashmiri Muslims.
The Foreign Secretary also briefed the Ambassadors of the European Union over the situation and emphasised the need for a fair and transparent inquiry against individuals responsible for these killings.
We are launching OP #SankatMochan to evacuate Indian nationals from South Sudan. My colleague @Gen_VKSingh is leading this operation./1 Sushma Swaraj (@SushmaSwaraj) July 13, 2016
Minister of State for External Affairs VK Singh will lead Operation Sankat Mochan to evacuate Indians from South Sudan, which has been rocked by violence that has claimed hundreds of lives, it was announced on Wednesday."We are launching OP #SankatMochan to evacuate Indian nationals from South Sudan. My colleague @Gen_VKSingh is leading this operation," External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj tweeted.She said Singh will be accompanied by Amar Sinha, Secretary (Economic Relations) in the External Affairs Ministry, Joint Secretary Satbir Singh and Director Anjani Kumar."Our Ambassador in South Sudan Srikumar Menon and his team is organising this operation on the ground," Sushma Swaraj said.She also thanked Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar and extended her best wishes to the Indian Air Force (IAF) for providing two C-17 Globemaster heavy-life aircraft for the operation.There are around 500 Indians in the country.South Sudan President Salva Kiir on Monday evening ordered a ceasefire after days of heavy fighting between government troops and forces loyal to Vice President Riek Machar in Juba.President Kiir directed all commanders to cease all hostilities, control their forces and protect civilians, Information Minister Michael Makuei said in a televised speech on the state broadcaster SSTV.The ceasefire took effect from 6 p.m. local time on Monday any member of the Machar-led forces who surrendered must also be protected, Makuei said.The latest bout of violence started after a localised gunfight outside Kiir's residence in Juba on July 7 when he was holding a meeting with Machar.Earlier on Wednesday, External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Vikas Swarup tweeted that the two C-17s will take off for Juba on Thursday.The Indian embassy in Juba said in a statement said the airccraft were expected to land at 11 a.m. local time and Indian nationals with valid travel documents will be allowed to board.The return flights will be only up to New Delhi, the statement said.The UN has said 36,000 South Sudanese civilians have fled their homes due to the fighting.Embassies and aid organisations in South Sudan are moving to evacuate staff from Juba amid the tenuous ceasefire.The US military in Africa said it has sent 40 additional soldiers to Juba to help secure American personnel and facilities in the war-torn city, Fox News reported.
Disney had revealed the first glimpse of what its Star Wars theme park expansion will look like, unveiling a rendered artwork on a fence along Big Thunder Trail in Frontierlands at Disneyland, which will eventually serve as an entry point to the Star Wars Lands.
While construction is still underway, the image hints at what the Star Wars Lands will look like once they open at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida, and Disneyland in Anaheim, California.
Nestled amongst towering rock formations, trees and jungle-type shrubbery, the scene depicts a thriving port which contains a seemingly familiar architecture of markets, landing zones and buildings, along with some iconic additions including an Imperial Shuttle, a Blockade Runner and the Millennium Falcon, which is expected to be one of the main park rides.
The 14-acre land will be the largest-ever single-themed land expansion at Disneyland Resort, with the Disney Parks Blog to continue dropping updates about the forthcoming attraction, as well as the citizens, aliens and droids who will populate it.
New Delhi: Actress Anushka Sharma, who is currently riding high on the success of her latest release Sultan, is keen to work in Hollywood, as she thinks it would be a "great opportunity".
Other Bollywood actresses Priyanka Chopra and Deepika Padukone have made their foray into international showbiz, and now Anushka has also shown interest in Hollywood.
Asked if she would like to work in a Hollywood project, the NH10 actress told IANS over phone from Mumbai: "Yeah, it would be a great opportunity, because as an actor you would want to do all kinds of work. Working in a different set-up will be interesting".
However, Anuskha said she is "not actively trying to get work from outside".
"I feel today is the right time for Indians and other representations we are getting in international films... So (I would like to do) something where I am not playing a stereotype of an Indian and something interesting and realistic," she added.
The 28-year-old actress said that she wouldn't do something in Hollywood that she hasn't tried in the Hindi film industry.
"Something that I am not doing here (Bollywood), I would not do it in Hollywood either. It would always be a content or a challenge that would take me there, (and) for no other reason I would work there because ultimately for me everything is the same as long as I get to play a good and challenging role any place is most welcome," Anushka said.
New Delhi: Former Arunachal Pradesh chief minister Nabam Tuki on Wednesday evening resumed his duty as chief minister of the state at the Arunachal Bhavan in New Delhi. Tuki was in the national capital when the apex court issued its historic verdict.
A statement issued through e-mail by media cell of the Arunachal Pradesh CMs office said Tuki resumed his duties "in compliance with the order of the honble Supreme Court."
Tuki, who was earlier "dismissed" by a special session of the state assembly held in a make-shift venue in Itanagar on December 16 and 17 last year, also sent a letter to state governor Roy giving details of the pertinent points of the Supreme Court order.
Earlier in the day, Supreme Court ordered restoration of the Congress government in Arunachal Pradesh by quashing as "unconstitutional" Governor Jyoti Prasad Rajkhowa's decision to advance the assembly session, saying he cannot embroil himself in any "political thicket" or take "individual call" when an elected government enjoys majority in the House.
In its unanimous verdict, a five-judge constitution bench headed by Justice JS Khehar held that when the Chief Minister and his council of Ministers have majority in the House, power vested with the Governor under Article 174 of the Constitution to summon, prorogue and dissolve the House must be exercised in consonance with their aid and advice and this was binding.
Panaji: Congress leaders in Goa have now come out openly in favour of a 'grand alliance' with like-minded parties for the state Assembly polls in 2017.
After former state health minister Vishwajit Rane recently threatened to quit the party if Congress wants to go alone in Goa polls due next year, other leaders like former Chief Minister Digambar Kamat, and MLAs Jeniffer Monserratte, Pandurang Madkaikar and Aleixo Reginaldo Lourenco have also voiced their opinion in favour of the grand alliance.
"I have expressed my opinion before the party high command. I feel that all like-minded parties should come together," Kamat said.
He said the party high command had sought his opinion recently on the matter and he had favoured the grand alliance, rather than going alone in the Goa polls.
The Congress party had earlier announced that it would not have any alliance for the Assembly polls.
All India Congress Committee General Secretary Digvijaya Singh, who was in Goa last month to assess the situation, had refused the possibility of an alliance.
But, the local leaders have strongly expressed that pre-poll alliance is the need of the hour to save the division of votes among secular parties which will give an edge to BJP.
"All attempts should be made to protect the division of votes as it will help BJP. We should join hands with like minded parties. Whoever is like-minded, we should consider being with them," Congress MLA Aleixo Reginaldo Lourenco said.
Responding to a question, Reginaldo said the parties like Goa Forward can be considered for alliance.
"Whatever I have said is my personal opinion, but the final decision has to be taken by high command," said the legislator representing Curtorim constituency.
Another MLA Pandurang Madkaikar said Congress will commit a grave mistake if it does not join forces with like-minded non-BJP parties during the next election.
"BJP will benefit if Congress goes alone. There will be division of votes which will not be in favour of secular forces," Jeniffer Monserratte, the Congress legislator from Taleigao constituency said.
Vishwajit Rane had recently spoken in favour of an alliance for the forthcoming elections.
However, he was criticised by Goa Congress chief Luizinho Faleiro, who had said that the party (Congress) legislators should first show their alliance on the floor of the House along with other independent MLAs.
New Delhi: Supreme Court on Wednesday ordered restoration of the Congress government in Arunachal Pradesh by quashing as "unconstitutional" Governor Jyoti Prasad Rajkhowa's decision to advance the assembly session, saying he cannot embroil himself in any "political thicket" or take "individual call" when an elected government enjoys majority in the House.
The apex court held that there can be no interference at the behest of the Governor as long as democratic process in the assembly functioned through a majority government.
He must keep clear of any political horse-trading and even unsavoury political manipulations, irrespective of the degree of their ethical repulsiveness and avoid acting as the "ombudsman" of the state legislature, it said.
In its unanimous verdict, a five-judge constitution bench headed by Justice JS Khehar held that when the Chief Minister and his council of Ministers have majority in the House, power vested with the Governor under Article 174 of the Constitution to summon, prorogue and dissolve the House must be exercised in consonance with their aid and advice and this was binding.
"It is not within the realm of the Governor to embroil himself in any political thicket. The Governor must remain aloof from any disagreement, discord, disharmony, discontent or dissension, within individual political parties."
"The activities within a political party, confirming turbulence, or unrest within its ranks, are beyond the concern of the Governor. The Governor must keep clear of any political horse-trading, and even unsavoury political manipulations, irrespective of the degree of their ethical repulsiveness," the bench, also comprising Justices Dipak Misra, Madan B Lokur, P C Ghose and N V Ramana, said.
Dealing with the Governor's powers, the bench said it is not within his domain to interfere with the functions of the Speaker as the Governor is neither a guide, nor a mentor to the Speaker and has no role whatsoever in the removal of Speaker or Deputy Speaker.
"Both the Governor and Speaker have independent constitutional responsibilities," Justice Khehar, writing the judgement for himself and Justices Ghose and Ramana, said.
Misplaced priorities that put theatrics & falsified public participation over & above the ground realities so as to befool bosses in Delhi. Omar Abdullah (@abdullah_omar) July 13, 2016
Shameless Govt should have been focused on restoring calm & on helping our doctors who are struggling to treat 1200+ injured people. Omar Abdullah (@abdullah_omar) July 13, 2016
Hon @narendramodi ji. After Kerala fire you carried a plane load of burn specialists with you. Please send eye/trauma specialists to Kashmir Omar Abdullah (@abdullah_omar) July 13, 2016
The injured include SF persons & young boys who risk losing their sight forever. This is the time to reach out with a healing touch. Omar Abdullah (@abdullah_omar) July 13, 2016
Pls don't let the fact that these youngsters people have been injured in protests stop us from giving the best care possible. Thank U jenab. Omar Abdullah (@abdullah_omar) July 13, 2016
Brazen shamelessness of the @MehboobaMufti #BJPDP Govt, ferrying people in police buses to state function to convey normalcy has returned. Omar Abdullah (@abdullah_omar) July 13, 2016
More than 30 people have died & all @MehboobaMufti & her party want to do is put up party flags & get police to ferry people to her function Omar Abdullah (@abdullah_omar) July 13, 2016
Former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister and National Conference leader Omar Abdullah minced no words in hitting out at Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti and Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the widespread protests in the state. The Valley continues to be on the edge after the killing of Hizbul Mujahideen militant Burhan Wani with the death toll crossing 30.Omar slammed 'shameless' Mehbooba government for not putting efforts to restore calm in the state and tweeted, "Misplaced priorities that put theatrics and falsified public participation over and above the ground realities so as to befool bosses in Delhi. The government should have been focused on restoring calm."Martyrs' Day is being observed in the state on Wednesday. Mehbooba Mufti paid tribute to 1931 'martyrs'. Omar said he was shocked to see people being brought in the state function in police cars just to normalcy is returning to the state.The NC leader attacked Modi for not doing enough for the state. He asked the Prime Minister to send eye specialists to Kashmir."Hon Narendra Modi ji. After Kerala fire you carried a plane load of burn specialists with you. Please send eye/trauma specialists to Kashmir. The injured include security force persons and young boys who risk losing their sight forever. This is the time to reach out with a healing touch. Please don't let the fact that these youngsters people have been injured in protests stop us from giving the best care possible. Thank you jenab," Omar tweeted.Omar hit out at Mehbooba-led BJP-PDP government for ferrying people to state function even as more than 30 people have been killed in the protests in the state."Brazen shamelessness of the Mehbooba Mufti- BJP-PDP government, ferrying people in police buses to state function to convey normalcy has returned. More than 30 people have died and all Mehbooba Mufti and her party want to do is put up party flags and get police to ferry people to her function," Omar tweeted.More than 350 people including over 115 security force personnel have been injured in the clashes and militant attacks since July 8 following Burhan's killing.
New Delhi: A day after being appointed new Congress chief in Uttar Pradesh, Raj Babbar on Wednesday met party president Sonia Gandhi and her deputy Rahul Gandhi who told him to work unitedly as a team and consider the responsibility as a mission and not a challenge.
"Their message to me is to take this responsibility not as a challenge but as a mission. They told me to work as a united team and steer it to victory. We will move together as a team," he told reporters after meeting the top party leaders.
Entrusted with the big responsibility in the crucial state where Congress has been in political wilderness for more than 26 years that saw emergence of 'Mandal' and 'Mandir' issues and the rise of BSP, he said he will help strengthen the party.
"We will form the government and will reach out to everyone. Our main opposition is 'loot-tantra' and the people of Uttar Pradesh are great who know everything. "We believe that people of Uttar Pradsh will do a 'chamatkar' (miracle) and when they decide they will elect us with a bigger majority," he said.
Asked how he felt after being entrusted with the new responsibility, he said, "I am very happy and have got fresh energy to take Congress forward with everyone along. I will work together along with the team and not alone."
On Priyanka Gandhi's role in the state, he said she is a prominent member of an important family, which has given supreme sacrifices for the country. "Where Congress is today, it is due to the Gandhi family," he said.
Babbar said Congress is a family and a pillar that is everywhere and one cannot re-build it as it is there in every city, block and mohalla.
"Our fight is against corruption and the 'loot-trantra' in Uttar Pradesh. On one side, there are people who want to burn Uttar Pradesh, while on the other there are those who want to loot the state and divide it on caste lines. Our fight is against 'loot-tantra' and those who want to divide society," he said.
Asked if Congress had prepared a game-plan, he denied so and said, "We cannot go to society with a plan. There is no plan in politics."
He, however, skirted questions on whether they will align with other parties like BSP in Uttar Pradesh. Babbar was appointed yesterday, along with four senior vice presidents, including Imran Masood, who had courted controversy and was arrested with his hate speech against BJP's prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi in 2014.
Reaching out to Dalits, Babbar lauded Kanshi Ram and referred to him as a "saint" and said Mayawati is "a respectable woman whom I respect a lot". "I have always called Kanshi Ram ji, a saint. I have great respect for Mayawati. She is my senior colleague in Rajya Sabha and I stand in her honour every time I meet her."
Supreme Court re-writes history. Democracy wins with a thumping majority, Modiji's politics of defections & conspiracy fails miserably. 1/2 Randeep S Surjewala (@rssurjewala) July 13, 2016
Cong Govt restored. SC calls conduct of Arunanchal Governor-'Illegal'. He should be sacked for impropriety and diservice to constitution.2/3 Randeep S Surjewala (@rssurjewala) July 13, 2016
PM & Amit Shah should apologize to the Nation for trampling upon democracy & the Constitution. Take a vow to never ignore people's will.3/3 Randeep S Surjewala (@rssurjewala) July 13, 2016
SC judgment yet another tight slap on dictatorial Modi govt. Hope Modi ji wud learn n now stop interfering in democratically elected govts Arvind Kejriwal (@ArvindKejriwal) July 13, 2016
In a major setback to the Centre, the Supreme Court on Wednesday quashed the imposition of President's Rule in Arunachal Pradesh and ordered restoration of the Congress government in the state. In its landmark unanimous verdict, a five-judge constitution bench, headed by Justice JS Khehar, ordered that status quo ante as prevailed on December 15, 2015 be restored in Arunachal Pradesh Assembly.It held that all steps and decisions taken by Arunachal Pradesh Legislative Assembly in pursuance to Governor Jyoti Prasad Rajkhowa's order of December 9, 2015, are unsustainable.The apex court said the Governor's decision advancing Arunachal Pradesh Assembly session by a month is violative of the Constitution and liable to be quashed. The court said that the Governor's direction on conducting assembly proceedings is violative of the Constitution.With this judgement, Nabam Tuki-led Congress government has been restored in the state.Welcoming the order, former Arunchal Pradesh chief minister Nabam Tuki said, "We were hopeful since the beginning that we will get justice from the Supreme Court. Our expectations have been fulfilled. The democracy of the state has been restored. BJP illegally tried to remove ministers. We have received justice. I will go back to the state and will talk to the party members. We will summon a meeting and things will be decided accordingly. I am yet to receive the details of the judgment copy."Besides Justice Khehar, other members of the bench were Justices Dipak Misra, MB Lokur, PC Ghose and NV Ramana. Today's verdict comes as a shot in the arm for Congress months with Arunachal Pradesh becoming the second state after Uttarakhand where the party-ruled government was restored by the apex court.Refusing to comment on the verdict, the Home Ministry said it is waiting for a copy of the screen order. "Only after we see the order can we decide on action if any by Centre. This has to be discussed," the Ministry said.The bench had segregated two other sets of petitions which were filed against the subsequent promulgation of President's Rule in the state and its revocation thereafter, which had led to the formation of a new government.Hailing the verdict, Congress spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala said, "Supreme Court re-writes history. Democracy wins with a thumping majority, Modiji's politics of defections and conspiracy fails miserably."Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal was quick to hit out at the Narendra Modi government and tweeted, "The SC judgment is yet another tight slap on dictatorial Modi government."Just before the apex court had reserved its verdict on February 20, rebel Congress leader Kalikho Pul was sworn in as the ninth Chief Minister of Arunachal Pradesh with the support of 18 dissident Congress MLAs and two independents and 11 BJP MLAs who gave outside support.Congress party, which had 47 MLAs seats in the 60-member assembly, suffered a jolt when 21 of its lawmakers rebelled in January 2016. Eleven BJP MLAs backed the rebels in the bid to upstage the government. Later, 14 rebel Congress MLAs were disqualified.Arunachal Pradesh was placed under President's Rule on January 26.Hours after the Union Cabinet had decided to recommend revocation of President's Rule in Arunachal Pradesh, the apex court had on February 17 ordered maintenance of status quo in the politically fragile state till it examined judicial and assembly records on disqualification of the 14 rebel Congress MLAs by former Speaker Nabam Rebia.On February 16, the court had also refused to pass an interim order on a plea of Congress leaders that Rajkhowa be restrained from swearing in a new government in Arunachal Pradesh.(With additional information from PTI)
The Supreme Court on Wednesday quashed the imposition of President's Rule in Arunachal Pradesh and ordered restoration of the Congress government in the state. In its landmark unanimous verdict, a five-judge constitution bench, headed by Justice JS Khehar, ordered that status quo ante as prevailed on December 15, 2015 be restored in Arunachal Pradesh Assembly.
With this judgement, Nabam Tuki-led Congress government has been restored in the state.
Here is the timeline:
December 24, 2014: Health and Family Welfare Minister Kalikho Pul dropped from ministry after he alleges fiscal mismanagement in Arunachal Pradesh
April 2, 2015: State Congress expels Pul for alleged anti-party activities.
May 18, 2015: Local court in Itanagar stays Pul's expulsion.
September 16, 2015: Chief Minister Nabam Tuki invites his MLAs to dinner and makes them sign 'irrevocable resignation letters' in the wake of dissidence.
October 6, 2015: Two MLAs who attended dinner 'quit' but ask speaker Nabam Rebia to treat 'resignation letter as invalid' as they were forced to sign it.
November 8, 2015: Led by Pul, 21 Congress MLAs issue statement against "autocratic" Tuki and denounce his "legitimacy as leader of CLP".
November 19, 2015: State BJP adopts resolution for removal of Rebia as Speaker.
December 10, 2015: Governor JP Rajkhowa issues order advancing the Assembly session from January 14-16,2016 to December 16-18,2015.
December 15, 2015: Rebia issues notice disqualifying 14 of the 21 rebel Congress MLAs.
December 16, 2015: Government locks Assembly building but deputy speaker TN Thongdok holds session in community hall for 33 MLAs, including 11 of BJP and two independents, to impeach Rebia as pro-Tuki groups disrupt normal life.
December 17, 2015: Rebels hold Assembly in hotel after community hall is razed, vote against Tuki; elect Pul as 'CM'. Rebia moves HC to keep assembly and related developments in abeyance.
January 5, 2016: HC stays disqualification of 14 Congress MLAs.
January 13, 2016: HC rules in favour of dissidents, vacating order that kept December 16-18 Assembly session in abeyance.
January 13, 2016: SC stays convening of Assembly session till January 18.
January 14, 2016: SC refers all the petitions to a Constitution bench.
January 15, 2016: SC starts examining the constitutional position on the scope of discretionary powers of the Governor and other related issues.
January 24, 2016: Union Cabinet recommends imposition of President's rule in Arunachal Pradesh.
January 25, 2016: Congress moves SC against the NDA government's move.
January 26, 2016: President Pranab Mukherjee accepts the Cabinet's recommendation.
January 27, 2016: SC issues notice to Centre, Governor on Congress's petition. The hearing scheduled for February 1.
February 17, 2016: Union Cabinet decides to recommend revocation of President Rule; but SC order status quo.
February 18, 2016: SC clears decks for formation of new government by vacating the status quo order.
February 22, 2016: SC reserves orders against a Gauhati High Court verdict that upheld the discretionary powers of the Governor to summon or advance a sitting of the assembly.
July 13, 2016: The Supreme Court orders the restoration of the Congress government, scrapping all decisions by the Governor that precipitated the fall of the previous administration.
South Korea's LG Display is seeing signs of improvement in the display panel industry and expects its business performance to pick up in the second half of the year, the firm's chief executive said."There is a sign of things changing a bit starting in late second quarter," LG Display CEO Han Sang-beom told reporters at an embargoed media event, without providing specific details."We are making various cost-related efforts and I think we'll look a bit better in the second half."Panel makers have suffered from price declines in recent quarters due to weak sales of consumer electronics such as smartphones and televisions. But there are signs that the bottom is near, with panel prices for some televisions, tablets and monitors picking up in June, according to research house IHS.The bottom could not come soon enough for LG, the world's top liquid crystal display (LCD) maker, which is expected to post a 96 per cent fall in April-June operating profit to 18 billion won ($15.72 million), according to the average forecast of analysts in a Thomson Reuters survey.Lacklustre sales for key client Apple's iPhones have also hurt LG Display's bottom line. The company will report its second-quarter earnings on July 27.Han said flexible organic light-emitting diode screens were proving popular and LG Display was preparing to supply them to "major" Chinese clients for mobile products. He did not elaborate.The company currently supplies such screens, mainly for smartwatches, to LG Electronics Inc and Apple."It's clear that plastic OLED is a major trend. While the smartphone market has stagnated it is still a growth market, so we will focus on preparing capacity and developing products accordingly," Han said.
The image shows the famous Great Red Spot, and three of the massive planet's four largest moons - Io, Europa and Ganymede, from left to right in the image.
After successfully looping in Jupiter's orbit on July 4, NASA's Juno spacecraft has shot back the first in-orbit view around the largest planet of the solar system.The JunoCam aboard the Juno mission is now operational and is now sending data back to Earth for research.The first view, obtained on July 10, was captured when the spacecraft was 4.3 million kilometers from Jupiter on the outbound leg of its initial 53.5-day capture orbit and shows the atmospheric features on Jupiter. It also shows the famous Great Red Spot, and three of the massive planet's four largest moons - Io, Europa and Ganymede, from left to right in the image.Candy Hansen, Juno co-investigator from the Planetary Science Institute, Tucson, Arizona, said, "JunoCam will continue to take images as we go around in this first orbit," adding that the first high-resolution images of the planet will be taken on August 27 when Juno makes its next close pass to Jupiter."The JunoCam is a colour, visible-light camera that has been especially designed to capture the pictures of Jupiter's poles and cloud tops. It will provide a wide view of the planet and the images will prove useful for both public engagement and scientific research.During its mission, the spacecraft will circle the planet 37 times and try to fly as low as about 4,100 kilometers over the planet's cloud tops. It will probe the atmosphere and study its auroras to learn more about the planet's origin and structure.The Juno team is currently working to place all images taken by JunoCam on the mission's website, where the public can access them.
Your next big idea is right around the corner. Tune in to #Unpacked live on August 2. pic.twitter.com/H7gDH73gdR Samsung Mobile (@SamsungMobile) July 12, 2016
Samsung Galaxy Note7 in (from l to r) Black Onyx, Silver Titanium, and Blue Coral pic.twitter.com/QiePUEG9GP Evan Blass (@evleaks) July 1, 2016
Samsung is all set to announce its new Galaxy Note smartphone at launch events that will simultaneously take place in New York, Rio de Janeiro and London on August 2.While many expected it to be called Galaxy Note 6, Samsung had something else in mind. The company decided to skip the Note 6 product name, and instead, will jump straight to Galaxy Note 7.There are a couple of reasons for this. As Samsung explains, first, Galaxy Note 7 will complement the company's Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge lineup , and unify the product portfolio.Second, the company believes that Galaxy Note 7 will minimise confusion about its latest mobile technology, and provide full alignment with the Galaxy S smartphone.However, if you take into account the 2014 Note Edge , the upcoming Galaxy Note 7 will be the seventh Note smartphone in the lineup.While Samsung is yet to unveil the smartphone, leaked images are already doing the rounds on the internet.If reports are to be believed, Galaxy Note 7 will have a dual-curved display. If this turns out to be true, it will be the first Note phone to come with such a display. The Note Edge also had a curved display, but it was curved only on one side.Also, speculation is rife that it would have an iris scanner for authentication. Samsung is yet to confirm that, but the iris-like blue graphic in the invite hints at the same.With Galaxy Note 7, Samsung is also expected to bring back the microSD card slot - something that was missing in the Note 5 . This is more so because the Note 5 was heavily criticised for not having a microSD card slot. And also given that Samsung included a microSD card in the Galaxy S7 after giving it a miss in the Galaxy S6, it becomes more plausible for the Note 7 to have it too.Samsung will reveal more details about the phone including detailed specifications, pricing and availability next month.The event will be live streamed here
China vowed to take all necessary measures to protect its sovereignty in the South China Sea and said it had the right to set up an air defence zone, after rejecting an international tribunal's ruling that denied its claims in the region.
State media called the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague a "puppet" of external forces, after it ruled that China had breached the Philippines' sovereign rights by endangering its ships and fishing and oil projects.
China has repeatedly blamed the United States for stirring up trouble in the South China Sea, where its territorial claims overlap in parts with Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan.
"China will take all necessary measures to protect its territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests," the ruling Communist Party's official People's Daily said in a front page commentary on Wednesday.
The case, overseeing an energy rich region that is home to also one of the world's busiest trade routes, has been seen as a test of China's rising power and its economic and strategic rivalry with the United States.
Beijing called the Philippines claims of sovereignty in the South China Sea "baseless" and an "act of bad faith".
In a government white paper published on Wednesday China also said its fishing boats had been harassed and attacked by the Philippines around the Spratly Islands.
"On whether China will set up a air defence zone over the South China Sea, what we have to make clear first is that China has the right to...But whether we need one in the South China Sea depends on the level of threats we face," the Vice Foreign Minister Liu Zhenmin told reporters in Beijing, adding that China hopes to return to bilateral talks with Manila.
"We hope that other countries don't use this opportunity to threaten China, and hope that other countries can work hard with China, meet us halfway, and maintain the South China Sea's peace and stability, and not turn the South China Sea in a source of war," Liu said.
U.S. officials have previously said they feared China may respond to the ruling by declaring an air defence identification zone in the South China Sea, as it did in the East China Sea in 2013, or by stepping up its building and fortification of artificial islands.
China's Liu also took aim at the judges on the tribunal, saying that as not one of them was Asian they could not possibly understand the issue and it was unfair of them to try.
COMPLICATED, UNCLEAR
The Philippines reacted cautiously to the ruling late on Tuesday, calling for "restraint and sobriety".
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte held a cabinet meeting after the ruling was announced, but no comment was made about the what was discussed and the presidential palace cancelled a regular briefing on Wednesday.
One of the lawyers who argued the Philippines' case said that though the decision had been delivered, how and when the country would enforce the decision was complicated and unclear.
"There's no timeline for this game, it might have an extended period of gestation," said Florin Ternal Hilbay, a former solicitor general.
London: Outgoing British Prime Minister David Cameron on Wednesday said that post-Brexit the UK should "try and be as close to the European Union as we can be".
In his last address to parliament, he said he would advice his successor that British trade, cooperation and security would be best served by a close relationship with Europe.
Cameron, who was given a standing ovation in the House of Commons, defended his achievements in office, saying there had been many "amazing moments" during his six years in power.
Cameron, who had campaigned for Britain to remain a part of the economic bloc, had announced he will be stepping down for a new PM to handle the Brexit negotiations.
He began his day with his weekly Prime Minister's Questions in the House of Commons for the 182nd and final time as PM, at the end of which he was bid farewell by British MPs from across party lines with a round of applause.
He admitted he will miss "the roar of the crowd" and the "barbs from the Opposition" as he moves on from office. "But I will be willing all ofyou on," he said to fellow MPs in his parting words.
"You can achieve a lot of things in politics...and that in the end, the public service, the national interest, that is what it's all about. Nothing is really impossible if you put your mind to it. After all, as I once said: 'I was the future once'," said Cameron, who has said he intends to carry on as a backbench Conservative party MP for Witney in Oxfordshire.
Cameron, 49, has been Prime Minister of Britain for six years and 62 days since he took charge in 2010.
"I came into Downing Street to confront our problems as a country and lead people through difficult decisions so that together we could reach better times. As I leave today, I hope that people will see a stronger country, a thriving economy, and more chances to get on in life," he told The Daily Telegraph in one of his farewell interviews.
The Camerons will now move into a temporary rental accommodation in central London as their own home in Notting Hill area of the city is still occupied by tenants.
Theresa May, 59, is set to take charge as new Prime Minister today to begin the work of taking the UK out of the European Union (EU).
I intend to do everything I can to make certain she will be the next president of the United States," the U.S. senator from Vermont said.
Bernie Sanders endorsing Crooked Hillary Clinton is like Occupy Wall Street endorsing Goldman Sachs," Trump said on Twitter.
I am absolutely certain I will not vote for Hillary Clinton," said Gale Bailey, a Sanders supporter and an unemployed graphic designer from Rochester, New Hampshire, who attended the rally in a Sanders T-shirt.
Democrat Bernie Sanders endorsed former rival Hillary Clinton for president in a display of party unity on Tuesday, describing her as the best candidate to fix the United States' problems and beat Republican Donald Trump in the Nov. 8 election.With Clinton nodding in agreement beside him, Sanders put aside their bitter campaign for the Democratic nomination and said she would take up the fight to ease economic inequality, make college more affordable and expand healthcare coverage for all Americans."This campaign is about the needs of the American people and addressing the very serious crises that we face, and there is no doubt in my mind that, as we head into November, Hillary Clinton is far and away the best candidate to do that," he told a raucous crowd in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, that included plenty of vocal Sanders supporters.His endorsement, five weeks after Clinton became the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, brought the most prominent holdout in the party's liberal wing into her camp.Sanders threw Clinton his support less than two weeks before the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, where she is to be formally nominated."I can't help but reflect on how much more enjoyable this election will be now that we are on the same side," Clinton said of Sanders. "Thank you, Bernie, for your endorsement, but more than that, thank you for your lifetime of fighting injustice."Trump ridiculed the move in a series of Twitter posts, saying Sanders had abandoned the supporters who flocked to his insurgent campaign to rein in Wall Street and get big money out of politics.In a statement, the Trump campaign said Sanders was now officially part of the rigged system the senator had criticized during his long primary battle with Clinton."Bernie's endorsement becomes Exhibit A in our rigged system - the Democrat Party is disenfranchising its voters to benefit the select and privileged few," said Stephen Miller, a senior policy adviser to Trump.In a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll released on Tuesday, Clinton extended her lead over Trump to 13 percentage points, up from 10 points at the end of last week.The former U.S. secretary of state hopes the Portsmouth appearance with Sanders will help her win over his supporters, some of whom held Sanders signs at the rally and chanted his name. In recent Reuters/Ipsos polling, only about 40 percent of Sanders backers said they would back Clinton, and the crowd at Tuesday's rally made it clear she still had work to do."She's a crook, and I'm not going to vote for a crook," Bailey said, adding that she would write in Sanders' name on the November ballot.
New York: A potentially giant earthquake may be building up beneath Bangladesh and eastern India and could endanger as many as 140 million people, a study said on Monday.
The earthquake is not imminent but inevitable as sections of the Earth's crust press against one another, according to the study published in the journal Nature Geoscience.
No estimate on when such a quake may occur is possible without additional research, the study's lead author Michael Steckler, a geophysicist at Columbia University in New York, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Some 140 million people live within 62 miles (100 km) of the potential epicenter in eastern India and in Bangladesh, the world's most densely populated country and among the poorest, the study said.
In Bangladesh, shoddy, unregulated building construction abounds, and heavy industries, power plants and structures at natural gas sites would likely be destroyed, the study's authors said.
Mud that has accumulated some 12 miles (19 km) deep in the delta of the Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers could shake "like gelatin, and liquefy in many places, sucking in buildings, roads and people," said co-author Syed Humayun Akhter, a geologist at Dhaka University, in a statement.
The area at risk measures some 24,000 square miles (62,000 square km), the study said.
The damage could be so severe as to render Dhaka, Bangladesh's capital, unlivable, Akhter said.
The area at risk lies along the same fault lines in the Earth's crust where a 2004 earthquake and tsunami in the Indian Ocean killed some 230,000 people, the researchers said.
The researchers used computer models to analyse 10 years of data showing that the Earth's plates under eastern Bangladesh and eastern India have been creeping northeast into neighboring Myanmar, causing instability.
Last supper delivered to no 10 Downing Street by #theKTLondon. It's been a pleasure Prime Minister! pic.twitter.com/dib7f0I6J2 Kennington Tandoori (@TheKTLondon) July 12, 2016
Cameron and his wife Samantha are keen curry fans and make a point of tasting local curry restaurants during the Conservative party conference season - whether in Birmingham, Manchester or Brighton, the DailyMail.
It was curry for David Cameron's last dinner as British PM, with the Kennington Tandoori, a favourite haunt of MPs, delivering more than 50 worth of food to Number 10 on Tuesday evening.The restaurant tweeted a picture of a delivery worker about to set off on his moped with four insulated bags on the back containing dishes including their mixed grill, samosas and sag aloo.They tweeted: "Last supper delivered to no 10 Downing Street by #theKTLondon. It's been a pleasure Prime Minister!"Cameron's official spokeswoman told British Media, the delivery had been for civil servants who were working on arrangements for the change of prime ministers.But Kennington Tandoori - where many Westminster plots originated - might find their custom from Downing Street fading after Wednesday, as his successor Theresa May is more keen on cooking her own meals.The restaurant has been a favourite venue of some of Westminster's most famous players over the years - including Ken Clarke, Charles Kennedy, Ann Widdecombe and John Prescott.Situated across the Thames from the Houses of Parliament, it provides MPs a curry house within easy staggering distance if they need to rush back to the Commons for votes.
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Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus in the Marvel Universe ... and he's a mutant!
No, really. Is starting the holiday season sooner and sooner every year Santa's Marvel mutant power?
HOUSES LIKE HOPS
The Prime Minister said yesterday, It has reached a state now where people are saying, I want a house and my MP aint giving me a house, just in the same tone and approach as I want a hops bread.
You have a bag of hops bread and I want one, not really realising that a house is an expensive item. At the sod-turning for the River Runs Through housing estate at Arima Bypass Road, Arima, yesterday, Rowley hoped for a reversion to the days of yesteryear when families built their own houses not the State, adding that such self-help after Hurricane Flora, which devastated Tobago several years ago, has today left Tobago with a good housing stock.
A shrunk treasury, the Prime Minister noted, means that citizens should rely less on State housing but instead use funding from the HDC to build their own houses as once done in Tobago.
Pointing to some 100,000 applicants for public housing units, Dr Rowley said the population is over-reliant on the State to meet a need that cannot be fully satisfied.
He hoped to encouraging private efforts by both construction companies and individuals.
The Prime Minister said that except for Central Trinidad, land-availability is extremely challenging, suggesting a revocation of the Slum Clearance Act could help create fresh spaces for new construction in Port-of- Spain.
From his years of building 21,000 housing units for $2 billion per year as a former Housing Minister, Dr Rowley said the irony is that the more you build is the more that demand increases due to people seeing other persons get a State house.
Hitting the former Peoples Partnership (PP) regime for building housing units for about $1 million each, the Prime Minister vowed to promote proper competition among contractors so as to reduce costs to a value typified by the $530,000 price-tag of the Arima units.
Dr Rowley promised a shift towards the lower middle income group who really need public housing, as he complained that the former PP government had spent too much money to upgrade units at Victoria Quays, Diego Martin, and had so put their $3 million to $4 million price-tag beyond the affordability of the average wage-earner. Better off persons should go to the free-market for housing, not seek State subsidies, he advised.
Saying the Ministry of Housing is now forced to sell Victoria Quays units on the open market for $2 million to $4 million each, he lamented the extravagant construction costs, saying, Youll see no more of that. The subsidy will be reasonable and acceptable. He said the States oversight of private contractors will mean that good houses are built at a reasonable price for the individual purchaser. Small and medium- sized contractors would be encouraged, he said, picking up on Housing Minister, Randall Mitchells, earlier scorn for big contractors who allegedly had run price-fixing cartels.
Dr Rowley explained the need for ideas to let the private sector put up funds to build housing units, given low national reserves.
He saw an altered role for the Housing Development Corporation (HDC) to be a broker and facilitator for private individuals wanting to build their own homes.
The State can supply plots of land plus pools of funding to individuals who can their use own efforts - that he termed family efficiencies - to build a home, as had once worked very well in Tobago after Hurricane Flora in 1963. One of the things that strikes me is the quality of the housing in Tobago, Dr Rowley said. Virtually every village in Tobago has a large number of very good quality houses. Very many of those houses were built by HDC loans to families after Hurricane Flora destroyed their housing. Families were able to go to that pool of money, borrow money within their means and build houses beyond their means because of the industriousness of the family. That model of families building with the initiation of help from a pool of funds is something that we look at, the Prime Minister continued .
Dr Rowley said Minister Mitchell will seek finances to set up a fresh pool of funds that low-income families can directly borrow from.
They normally start out building small units but somehow the units mushroom into magnificent edifices, he added.
Get set for poetry in motion
From:chinadaily.com.cn | 2016-07-13 08:13
Sangjijia's Fragile Beauty will be staged during the Beijing Dance Festival. [Photo provided to China Daily]
An ethnic Tibetan's production is just one highlight as 15 contemporary dance works are staged by professional troupes from 10 countries, plus other 47 choreographed works, starting Wednesday. Chen Nan reports.
In 1999, Sangjijia arrived in Hong Kong and worked as a dancer at the City Contemporary Dance Company of Hong Kong. As an ethnic Tibetan from Northwest China's Gansu province, who spent his childhood herding on the grasslands and listening to monks chanting mantras, Sangjijia found himself in a totally different worldCantonese pop songs and high-rise architecture.
"I have two favorite things when it comes to Hong Kong. One is the fireworks, which illuminate the sky over Victoria Harbour during holidays, and the other is Stephen Chow's comic movies, especially the sound of his laughter," he says.
Last year, Sangjijia returned to the Hong Kong dance company as its resident choreographer.
His new work Fragile Beauty is a tribute to the city.
Premiered in Hong Kong on June 3, the production will be staged in the capital on July 22 during the upcoming Beijing Dance Festival.
"I have lived in many cities. Whenever I return to those places, I go back to where I lived and worked. When I returned to Hong Kong, I did the same thing," says Sangjijia, 42, who studied at the Minzu University of China and became a professional dancer with the Guangdong Modern Dance Company in 1993.
He moved to Paris in 1996 after winning the gold medal at the Paris International Modern Dance Competition, and began his career there as a star dancer/choreographer.
In 1998, Sangjijia lived in New York for a year after winning the Asian Cultural Council fellowship and the American Dance Festival Scholarship.
Sangjijia, dancer/choreographer of Tibetan ethnic group [Photo provided to China Daily]
He also lived in Frankfurt while working at the Forsythe Company of Germany before returning to the Chinese mainland in 2007.
When he started work on Fragile Beauty he did not know where to begin, because lots of things have changed in Hong Kong over the years and the city is no longer like what he remembered.
So he asked the City Contemporary Dance Company dancers, who are all native Hong Kongers, to join the choreography process.
"One of the dancers told me that his grandfather was a construction worker, who made less than HK$1 per day. So, whenever he walked past an old building, he couldn't help wondering if his grandfather had once worked on it," says Sangjijia. "Their stories inspired me. The work (Fragile Beauty) is about connections between the people and the city."
"The stories are as glorious as the fireworks in the sky, which vanish at the height of their magnificence. What is left is only the memory," he says.
Musician Dickson Dee, who has collaborated with Sangjijia on his earlier works, including Layer Code and As if to Nothing, has composed music for this new work.
Along with Sangjijia, Dee collected typical sounds of Hong Kong, such as classical Cantonese pop songs, people's voices and Sangjijia's favorite sound, Stephen Chow's laughter, and used them in the work.
[Photo provided to China Daily]
Sangjijia says that for the first time he has added actual words into a work by projecting them onto a huge LED screen at the back of the stage. The words are about people's memories of Hong Kong, including his own.
"This way, even words can be as powerful as movements," says Sangjijia, adding, "For a moment, you will be overwhelmed by the dancers' physical expressions. Then, there is an empty period, which has just a few words to wipe you out."
Speaking of the show, Willy Tsao, the artistic director of the City Contemporary Dance Company, which was founded in 1979, says: "I was curious and interested to see how a Tibetan choreographer would interpret Hong Kong. But after I watched the premiere, I believe the work is not just about Hong Kong, but also about his homeland and the cities where he has lived."
Tsao is also the founder and artistic director of Beijing Dance/LDTX, the first non-government professional dance company in the Chinese mainland and the managing director of Guangdong Modern Dance Company, the first government-supported contemporary dance company.
The Beijing Dance Festival, Tsao's brainchild, will run from Wednesday through July 26. Now in its fifth year, the two-week event will showcase 15 contemporary dance works by professional troupes from 10 countries as well as 47 choreographed works by 200 young talents from around the world.
Contact the writer at chennan@chinadaily.com.cn
If you go
Fragile Beauty
8 pm, July 22. Beijing Tianqiao Performing Arts Center. 9 Tianqiao Nandajie (South Street), Xicheng district, Beijing. 400-635-3355.
Thanks to FDA, Women Will
Be Told of Their Breast Density
(Newser) A would-be kidnapper got more than he bargained for after snatching a girl from her bed Sunday. Authorities say a man broke into a home in El Cajon, Calif., through an unlocked window, then grabbed an 8-year-old girl from her upstairs bedroom. Unbeknownst to her attacker, the girl knew kung fu. She tells KGTV she awoke in the man's arms as he carried her downstairs and punched him in the neck with what's known as the leopard or cheetah paw.
"It hurt him," the girl tells NBC San Diego. The man dropped the girl and fled as she ran to get her parents, per KTRK. Authorities arrived around 4am and searched the surrounding area with police dogs but didn't find the suspect, who "smelled like garbage" and may have been homeless, per KTVU. He's described as 5-foot-8 to 5-foot-10, with tanned skin and dark "fluffy" hair. Police plan to run fingerprints from a hand smear on the window of a neighboring home. (Read more California stories.)
(Newser) When Maria Teresa Rivera, a 28-year-old factory worker in El Salvador and single mom of a young boy, began to bleed heavily and collapsed, her family called an ambulance. She had just miscarried a baby she didn't even know she was pregnant with, and the next thing she knew she was in jail, accused of aggravated homicide. Rivera was sentenced to 40 years in prison and had to leave her son behind, reports Mother Jones. "I was forced to abandon him for four and a half years, and he suffered greatly during that time," she told Rewire in May. (Mother Jones notes that 19,000 illegal abortions were reported in El Salvador, which has the world's strictest total abortion ban, between 2005 and 2008, nearly a third of them on adolescents. The World Health Organization reports that 9% of maternal deaths in Central America are from illegal abortions.)
But a judge who reviewed her case four years into her sentence ordered her release this past spring, and she enjoyed an entire month of freedom"To hug my son again after four and a half years it was the happiest feeling that I could have felt, something I will never forget"before El Salvador's attorney general challenged the decision in what Fusion is calling "an act of mustache-twisting nastiness." And while Rivera awaits a three-judge panel's decision this week, there is increased attention on "the 17," a group of women serving 12 to 40 years for having miscarriages or spontaneous abortions. While three women have been released since the group formed in 2014, another dozen have been locked up. "I have to fight for them," Rivera says. (One woman's conviction in El Salvador was based solely on her allegedly abusive husband's testimony.)
(Newser) From scandal to lawsuits to a dethroning, it's safe to say that the inaugural year of the Corpus Christi Latina beauty pageant was not an unqualified success. Acirema Alayeto, Miss America Latina's national director, says Caitlin Cifuentes has had her crown revoked and has been replaced by runner-up Valeria Barrera, Action 10 reports. Barrera was one of six runners-up from the June 11 pageant who sued the pageant's local director, saying the 25-year-old Cifuentes should not have been allowed to compete because of issues such as her deferred adjudicated probation on a 2013 charge of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. She is also on probation for a misdemeanor DUI stemming from the same incident in 2013, a car crash that injured four.
Cifuentes and local pageant director Kayla Alvarez had argued that Cifuentes technically had no convictions and no pending charges, which made her eligible to compete, the Corpus Christi Caller-Times reports. Alayeto countered that Cifuentes has to complete the probation to avoid a conviction, so the assault chargewhich she pleaded guilty toshould be considered pending. Cifuentes will no longer be eligible for the national pageant, reports the Houston Chronicle, which notes that the organization's motto is "more than a model ... a role model." In a Facebook post, Cifuentes thanked supporters and described herself as a positive role model. "Everyone makes mistakes but what you do after is what counts," she wrote. (Read more beauty pageant stories.)
(Newser) "This was an actual, credible threat," says Louisiana State Police Superintendent Mike Edmonson of an alleged plot to kill police officers that officials say they foiled in Baton Rouge. NOLA.com and ABC News report three of four suspects who broke into the Cash America Pawn store on Saturday afternoondays after Tuesday's police shooting of Alton Sterlingand stole eight guns have been arrested; the fourth remains at large, along with two stolen handguns.
Police say the first suspect, who was quickly arrested, gave up details of the alleged plan: to source guns and ammunition and go after police. The pawnshop owner says no ammunition was taken. With one suspect and some of the guns still at play, the threat is considered active. (Read more Baton Rouge stories.)
(Newser) It was an epic journey that was to end with the world's largest Viking ship making a tour of the Great Lakes. Now the ship might have to make a U-turn. The Draken Harald Harfagrewhich made stops in the Shetland Islands, Faroe Islands, Iceland, Greenland, and Newfoundland while repeating explorer Leif Eriksson's 1,000-year-old crossing of the Atlantic from Norwaywas set to appear at ports across the Great Lakes beginning Thursday. But upon entering the St. Lawrence Seaway, the crew was informed it would need a $400-per-hour pilot for a total fee of at least $400,000, which it can't afford, reports the Minneapolis Star Tribune. The crew says it believed the ship would be exempt from such a feeit was given free passage through Canadabut the US Coast Guard requires ships carry a pilot in international waters.
As the Draken is set to visit Chicago, Green Bay (Wis.), New York City, and ports in Ohio and Connecticut, "the fees are just not possible," the owner of the nonprofit project says. "The people in the harbors around the lakes are expecting us," the ship captain adds, per MLive. "It is a pity if we cannot pursue this expedition." The Drakenwith an oak hull and 3,200-square-foot sailwill visit Bay City, Mich., this week, then await a possible return to Norway, per a release. A rep for a tall-ships festival in Duluth, Minn., where the ship was to appear in August, tells the Duluth News Tribune that it's a "devastating" development. But "there are heroic efforts to save the day, and I believe the Draken will be here in Duluth," he adds. A petition calling for the fees to be waived has reached 8,000 signatures. (This discovery could change everything we know about Vikings.)
Greater people-to-people interaction needed: Indian Sinologist
From:chinadaily.com.cn | 2016-07-13 10:16
Sanjay Pulipaka attends the opening ceremony of the 2016 Visiting Program for Young Sinologists at the National Library of China on July 6, 2016. [Photo/Chinaculture.org]
Sanjay Pulipaka is a senior consultant of the East-Asian research program with the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations. His research areas include India's foreign policy and his country's relationship with China. He shared his China story and views on the two countries' relationship as he took part in the 2016 Visiting Program for Young Sinologists in Beijing.
It was in school when I heard of China for the first time. Our school text books had references about Chinese travelers visiting India. I used to wonder as to how these travelers traversed mighty mountains the Himalayas.
Little did I know that some of these travelers came into India via Central Asia and Afghanistan. Buddhism also travelled from India to China and there was movement of scholars and pilgrims such as Fa-Hein.
This movement of people resulted in enrichment of philosophies and creation of knowledge systems between the two countries. Further, they established civilization connections between the two and such connections continue to impact the interactions between these two countries.
During India's freedom struggle many Indian leaders looked at China as important country to collaborate in the fight against European colonialism in Asia.
Noted poet Rabindranath Tagore visited China and through his writings China became an intimate cultural space for many Indians. If one visits Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan, one can see the Cheena Bhavana (Institute of Chinese Language and Culture), a physical manifestation of Tagore's interest in China.
Sanjay Pulipaka attends a lecture during the 2016 Visiting Program for Young Sinologists. [Photo/Chinaculture.org]
As a kid, I remember watching a movie on Dr. Dwarkanath Kotnis on state-run television network. While I did not fully comprehend the movie, the memory of an Indian rendering service in conflict situations lingered in my memory for a long time.
It is the work of people such as Rabindranath Tagore and Dr Kotnis that contributed to better understanding and solidarity between the two countries. Not surprisingly when Indian leaders, before and after independence, articulated their views about "Asian Solidarity", China figured prominently as a fellow traveler in creating a peaceful Asia. Moreover, India was the first non-socialist country to recognize and establish diplomatic relations with the
Peoples Republic of China in April 1950 and the two countries signed the Panchsheel, or the Five Principles of Peaceful Co-existence in 1954. Sadly, there are some bad memories as well. For many Indians, the border dispute and the defeat in the 1962 war continue to impact the perceptions about China.
Today, China invokes both admiration as well as concern.
China commands immense respect, among young Indians, for the economic growth it has achieved. India and China shared more or less similar economic and human development indicators in 1950s. However, today China is the second largest economy with more than $ 10 trillion economy, sustained high economic growth rates and human developmental indicators much better than India.
China is not just known for its silk products but also for it electronic goods, heavy machinery and its capacity to operationalise massive infrastructure projects quickly.
It should be noted that China has a long history of infrastructure development that one can see at the Great Wall of China. Recently, I had an opportunity to witness the recent as well as ancient infrastructure achievements in China.
China is now deploying its capacity to build infrastructure across the Asian continent under One Belt One Road. Not surprisingly, many young people wish that even India will replicate high economic growth rates and implement big infrastructure projects in their country within the existing political frameworks.
Simultaneously, there is also an apprehension if the Indian industry can survive the competition from Chinese industry. Further, the reports pertaining to boundary dispute and movement of troops tend to generate concern in India.
However, I must hasten to add that "concern" does not imply "hatred" or "animosity." On the other hand, there is a deep reservoir of goodwill for China in India. If the political concerns can be addressed peacefully then both countries will benefit immensely from enhanced engagement. So what are the next steps?
I my opinion the following measures will go a long way in improving the bilateral relationship: There needs to be greater interaction among think-tanks/educational institutions and collaborative research initiatives; There is need for enhanced economic engagement which will result in equitable outcomes;
There should be greater people-to-people contact. During my recent visit to China, many people often walked up to me to ask "Indu Ren"? And in my broken Chinese I managed to state: "Wo shi Indu ren." These interactions suggest that there is genuine eagerness among people to know each other more.
Related:
All roads lead to Sinology
The story of China and I: Canadian Sinologist
The fourth Visiting Program for Young Sinologists kicks off
(Newser) The call lasted less than 20 seconds: After the Virginia dispatcher answered "Fredericksburg 911, where's your emergency?" she was greeted with silence, which she followed with "hello?" twice. Then she hung up, thinking it was one of the dozen butt dials or otherwise inadvertent calls the city gets each day, reports the Free Lance-Star. It wasn't, but rather was a dying man's call for help, and now his family is railing against the city's protocol. On April 23, 56-year-old Robert Paulus, who had heart disease, called 911 from his iPhone. The Free Lance-Star's copy of the recording suggests he made a few barely audible sounds toward the end of the call.
Per the city's emergency dispatch policy, the dispatcher may end the call if he or she cannot raise the caller. A return call is made and police are sent if the caller hangs up, but a callback isn't required in the case of the reverse. WJLA notes that protocol is specific to the call center, with the nearby Fairfax County's call center obligated to place that return call. Paulus' body was found two days later after coworkers were concerned he didn't come to work; his family later discovered the record of the call on his phone. The city says it's "reviewing protocol" and will make the changes needed to prevent such a situation in the future. Paulus' stepdaughter tells the paper, The hardest part for us is that he was alone. That was the heartbreaking part. (Read about another 911 call gone wrong.)
(Newser) Three men in a car in Norfolk, Va., were ambushed and shot Tuesday evening, and the phone of one of the men streamed the entire incident on Facebook Live, USA Today reports. In the video, a man IDed as TJ Williams is seen hanging out with two other men, listening to music and smoking, when a few minutes into the clip shots start ringing out, continuing for about 20 seconds, WVEC notes; around 30 shots were fired. Williams dropped the phone onto the floor, where it continued recording for more than an hour afterward. Norfolk Police say they found three men, ages 27 and 29, with gunshot wounds, NBC News reports. The police later tweeted that all three men were taken to a local hospital, two with life-threatening injuries. A police rep confirmed the Facebook video was indeed tied to a Bainbridge Boulevard shooting being investigated, per the New York Daily News.
A few seconds after the shooting (which can be partly seen in a brief WTKR news clip), a man's voice can be heard saying, "Call the ambulance, please," and soon after that, another man can be heard comforting the victims. "Stay relaxed," he says. "Stay with me. Keep your eyes open. Keep listening to my voice." Police aren't saying yet if they have a suspect or motive. Per the Hollywood Reporter, following last week's Facebook Live streaming of the aftermath of the shooting of Philando Castile, Facebook updated its guidelines for posting live video, noting that when people share "violent or graphic images of events taking place in the real world context and degree are everything." Williams' entire video can be viewed here (warning: graphic content).
(Newser) A good percentage of 30 town hall workers in Boscotrecase, Italy, located just outside Naples, have absenteeism issues, with some resorting to ridiculous measures to game the time-clock system by signing in, then leaving, or even punching each other's cards. But while cops recently arrested more than two-thirds of the workers for fraud, there's a new workplace wrinkle: There may not be enough municipal employees to keep the town running, Reuters reports. "I'll probably have to shut down the town hall," Mayor Pietro Carotenuto laments, noting that four departments were shuttered Tuesday. The arrests, which nabbed the town's accounting chief and the head of the traffic police, among others, come during a continuing countrywide sting against what the Local calls "public sector shirkers."
Some of those shirkers weren't exactly inconspicuous: A police video shows at least one man fiddling with a security camera, then putting a cardboard box over his head before running two timecards through the machine; the Local says at least two people were caught on tape going the cardboard-box-on-head route. Twenty-three Boscotrecase employees in total were busted, with six placed under house arrest, four suspended for six months, and 13 suspended for an entire year. And the other handful of employees who (so far) haven't tried any funny business? The Local notes they can get in trouble if they pretend they don't see what their colleagues are doing. (Maybe the busted employees have perpetual hangovers.)
(Newser) A surveillance device that "tricks" cellphones into revealing their location has been a civil rights concern since it debuted. Now, for the first time, a federal judge agrees that using such a tool to ID a suspect's home without a warrant is an "unreasonable" violation of the man's rights, Reuters reports. US District Judge William Pauley ruled Tuesday the DEA shouldn't have used the "stingray" to find Raymond Lambis' NYC apartment during a drug-trafficking probe and, therefore, that the narcotics and drug-related items found at his home can't be used as evidence. "Absent a search warrant, the government may not turn a citizen's cellphone into a tracking device," Pauley wrote in his decision. The charge against Lambis happened just before a September Justice Department mandate that now requires a warrant "supported by probable cause before using a cell-site simulator," the New York Times notes. The stingray mimics cellphone towers and fools phones into transmitting pings to the fake tower, allowing authorities to track where the pings are coming from.
In Lambis' case, the DEA had a warrant for numbers called from a phone suspected in the drug investigation, as well as for records of the cellphone towers that phone was hooking up to. But the agency went a step further and used the stingray, finding an apartment building (and then Lambis' apartment) where the pings were especially stronga step not covered by the original warrant, which led Pauley to insinuate the DEA had simply been lazy in not acquiring a second warrant, the Register notes. Lambis concedes he consented to the search of his bedroom, where the evidence was found, but he says in a court filing that's only because he didn't want his family's entire home "trashed" by a search if he didn't acquiesce, Ars Technica reports. "A federal court has finally held the authorities to account," a move that "strongly reinforces the strength of our constitutional privacy rights in the digital age," a staff lawyer for the ACLU's Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project tells the Times. Lambis' lawyer says he's not sure if his client's conspiracy charge will be dismissed. (Read more cellphones stories.)
(Newser) People around the country are being arrested for anti-cop social media posts in the wake of last week's violence, and that's raising questions about the limits of free speech. A Connecticut man was charged with inciting injury when he called for the killing of police in a Facebook post, the Intercept reports. An Illinois woman was charged with disorderly conduct for a Facebook post that claimed she would shoot any officer that pulled her over. A New Jersey man was charged with cyber harassment after saying on social media that he'd destroy police headquarters. A Louisiana man was charged with intimidation for a video threatening a police officer. And four men in Detroit were arrested for Facebook posts calling Micah Johnson a "hero" and advocating to "kill all white cops," according to the Detroit News.
If someone threatens to kill the president, that person would be arrested and prosecuted," Detroit Police Chief James Craig tells the News. "How is it any different when someone threatens to kill white cops? A Detroit law professor counters: Posting that kind of thing on social media is a bad thought, but having a bad thought isnt necessarily a crime. The Supreme Court says prosecutors must prove online posts are intended as threats and would be seen that way by reasonable people. Arresting people for speech is something we should be very careful about, a security technologist at Harvard tells the Intercept. Cops are also getting in trouble on social media after the killings in Dallas. The only racists here are the piece of shit Black Lives Matter terrorists and their supporters," one Detroit detective posted on Facebook. The Detroit Free Press reports he was demoted to officer and reassigned in response. (Read more social media stories.)
(Newser) Civil rights groups and activists sued Baton Rouge law enforcement agencies over their treatment of protesters rallying against the police shooting death of Alton Sterling, saying officers used excessive force and physically and verbally abused peaceful demonstrators, the AP reports. The lawsuit was announced Wednesday by the ACLU of Louisiana. Authorities arrested about 200 protesters over a three-day period, often taking to the streets in riot gear or riding in military-style vehicles. The governor and the Baton Rouge police chief have defended the response, with the chief saying Tuesday that authorities discovered an alleged plot against police over the weekend. "We have been questioned repeatedly over...why we have the tactics that we have. Well, this is the reason, because we had credible threats against the lives of law enforcement in this city," Police Chief Carl Dabadie said.
The lawsuit blames law enforcement for escalating the situation. "Plaintiffs have engaged in this peaceful speech, association, and protest on the streets, sidewalks, and medians of Baton Rouge," the lawsuit read. "Unfortunately, this exercise of constitutional rights has been met with a military-grade assault on protestors' bodies and rights." In the first few days after Sterling's death, police took a reserved approach to enforcement, keeping a low profile as hundreds gathered outside the convenience store where Sterling died. But protests escalated during the weekend as demonstrations moved away from the store and into other parts of the city, marked by a show of force by law enforcement that included police wielding batons, carrying long guns, and wearing shields. (Read more Baton Rouge stories.)
Premier Li Keqiang urged to make scientific and accurate judgment on economy to facilitate sustainable and healthy development, at a symposium with experts and entrepreneurs on July 11.
He exchanged views with attendees on issues including structural adjustment and demand management, potential risks of the economy, real estate market, smart manufacturing, and industrial transformation and upgrading, as well as entrepreneurship and mass innovation.
Premier Li noted that through effective macro policies, Chinas economy is running in a stable manner and its performance meets expectations.
The economy in the second quarter continued to grow steadily as domestic demand plays a major role. New economies witnessed rapid development, which helped create more than seven million jobs.
In addition, some enterprises in traditional sectors have made great achievements in transformation and upgrading through new technologies and modes.
But the Premier also noted that considering unexpected circumstances of the world economy and domestic downward pressure, efforts should be made to stabilize macro policies, strengthen timely control and adjustment, and prevent all kinds of risks, to keep the economy run within a reasonable range.
We should continue to promote transformation and upgrading of Chinas economy by through reform, opening up and innovation, said the Premier, adding that the aggregate demand should be appropriately expanded to promote the structural reform on the supply side.
In response to the expectations of market entities, efforts should be made to intensify reform to streamline administration, delegate more powers, enhance supervision, provide better services and bring into play the benefits of tax and fee reduction policies such as replacing business tax with VAT.
Comprehensive market-based measures that are in line with rule of law should be adopted to gradually reduce the leverage ratio of enterprises. And the balance between cutting overcapacity and protecting legitimate rights of employees should be well handled to transfer redundant workers to other posts.
This year marks the beginning of Chinas 13th Five-Year Plan period, and we face both opportunities and challenges, said the Premier.
He hoped that experts and entrepreneurs attending the symposium will contribute good advice to address major issues and difficulties in national reform and development.
The Premier also called for concerted efforts from all related parties to overcome difficulties, strive to achieve the main economic and social development targets of the whole year, and maintain economic growth at a medium-high speed.
New Delhi:
14-year-old school going kid has come up with a chilling revelations on how Communist leader Govind Pansare was gunned down by a pillion rider while he was taking a walk back home in Kolhapur last February.
A news daily quoted kid, "I suddenly heard a sound like a cracker and saw a short pillion rider on a motorcycle holding a small gun. He fired a shot which hit an old lady who was walking. She fell. Then the biker raced and did a u-turn. The bike kidded and hit a cyclist's wheel, causing him to fall. By then the young pillion rider stood on the foot rest and fired at an azoba (grandfather, in Marathi) who was walking towards them. He fired many shots. He (grandfather) fell."
The Bombay High Court on Monday rejected the bail plea of Samir Gaikwad, held in connection with the murder of veteran communist leader and rationalist Govind Pansare, saying there was prima facie ample evidence to link him with the crime.
Gaikwad is the only suspect arrested by Kolhapur police in connection with this case. He was arrested on September 16 last year from his residence in Sangli in Western Maharashtra.
Pansare and his wife were shot by unidentified persons in Kolhapur during their morning walk on February 16 last year. While his wife survived, the CPI leader died at a Mumbai hospital four days later.
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Srinagar:
With unrest still prevailing in valley, next 48 hours needs more alertness as July 13 is commemorated as "martyrs day" in Kashmir and Friday is the 'jumme ki namaz'. Intelligence agencies have reported that Pakistan-supported groups may try to incite violence in next two days.
Home Ministry has also alerted security forces to ensure peace and clam remains on the streets.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday reviewed the situation and appealed for calm with the hope that no innocent person would face any inconvenience or suffer any loss.
In Delhi, Modi held a high-level meeting to review the Kashmir situation soon after his return from his five-day Africa visit. It was attended by Home Minister Rajnath Singh, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and National Security Adviser Ajit Doval.
The Prime Minister voiced concern over the situation in the state where the death toll rose to 25 in the violent protests and clashes with security forces, triggered by the killing of Hizbul militant commander Burhan Wani last Friday.
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New Delhi:
Theresa May is all set to take over the British Prime Ministers office after David Cameron resigned in the aftermath of the Brexit vote, referendum held on June 23 this year to decide whether United Kingdom will remain or exit European Union. May will be the first female Prime Minister of United Kingdom since Margret Thatcher, who was elected in 1979 and stepped down 1990. According to reports, her new cabinet will have majority women ministers.
Charged with the burden of negotiating Britains exit from the European Union over next two years, May is known for her strong anti-immigration stand, although she supported the remain camp during Brexit vote.
Born in October 1959 in Sussex, Theresa May mostly attended State school and has a degree from Oxford University in geography. Before entering politics, May worked at the Bank of England from 1985 until 1997.
After unsuccessful attempts to be elected to the House of Commons in 1992 and 1994, she was elected MP for Maidenhead in the 1997 general election. May has served in the Shadow Cabinets of William Hague, Iain Duncan Smith, Michael Howard and David Cameron, including Shadow Leader of the House of Commons and Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary. She was also the Chairman of the Conservative Party from 2002 until 2003.
Since 2010, May has also held the portfolio of Home Office, making her the U.K.s longest-serving home secretary in more than a century.
May was appointed Leader of the Conservative Party on July 11, 2016, after her competitor Andrea Leadsom pulled out of race. According to British Parliamentary system, Leader of Conservative Party automatically becomes Prime Minister without the need of a re-election in case the serving PM vacates the post, through resignation or death. Theresa May is set to become Prime Minister after a meeting with Queen Elizabeth on July 13, 2016.
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Mumbai:
Director Ashutosh Gowariker said that he failed in history during his school days, but telling untold stories from the past has always fascinated him.
I never remember dates. I failed in history..I had no connection with geography. I get drawn to untold stories, Gowariker told reporters at a promotional event of his upcoming period drama Mohenjo Daro here. What this (referring to Mohenjo Daro and Indus Valley civilisation) city or society would be like I dont know. It excites me to tell a story of that era, he said.
From his first film Lagaan, the 52-year-old filmmaker has always preferred to set his movies in the eras one only reads about in history books. Mohenjo Daro, set in the Indus Valley civilisation, is his second collaboration with actor Hrithik Roshan post Jodha Akbar.
It fascinates me what happened there, who were the people and how they have lived. I am happy I made this film. I hope I have done justice, he added. The Swades helmer said he believes in doing extensive research for his projects, which is the reason that there is a gap between release of his films.
I do extensive research on my films be it for Lagaan, or Jodha Akbar, so there is a gap between my films. These are special films. I was waiting for Hrithik to come on board for this film. Despite all the ups and downs, I am glad Mohenjo Daro happened, he added.
On the title of the film, Gowariker said he used the popular name the way it was written by the archaeologists. There are lot of different ways to right Mohenjo Daro, but we choose something that is internationally popular. We couldnt change the name. I am glad I got opportunity to bring this civilisation. I did the film with my vision.
Gowariker revealed that he has taken some creative liberty in the making of the film. This film was constantly re-written. People questioned costume of Pooja Hegde (lead actress) in the film but the truth is during that period there was nudity. How can I show it on screen? So we had to imagine and create things that viewers will enjoy, he said.
For different opinions coming in way for the film, Gowariker says it is okay if everyone does not align with his vision of the film. We have tried to create a world that we had imagined. It is my make belief world. There will be reservations, I wont say it is wrong but I would request one should look at it with little openness, he said.
Mohenjo Daro is set to release on August 12.
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Premier Li Keqiang co-chaired the 18th summit between China and the European Union with European Council President Donald Tusk and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker in Beijing on July 12.
As two major forces in maintaining world peace and development, China and the European Union should keep close communication and cooperation, sending positive signals to the world amid complex international political and economic developments, according to Premier Li.
China firmly supports European integration and is willing to see a prosperous and stable European Union, said the Premier. He also said that China is willing to make joint efforts with the European Union to consolidate political mutual trust, implement cooperation consensus, and promote the well-being of both Chinese and European people as well as world peace and prosperity.
Premier Li spoke highly of the development of pragmatic cooperation since the 17th summit between China and the European Union.
China hopes the agreement on high-level bilateral investment could be reached and the feasibility research regarding free trade starts as soon as possible.
Based on the platform construction of inter-connectivity between China and the European Union, efforts should be made to boost cooperation in infrastructure sectors, strengthen cooperation with Central and Eastern Europe as well as Southern Europe, said Premier Li. Cooperation in sectors such as 5G communication technology should also be enhanced, with an effort to strengthen cooperation in innovation, research and internet security, as well as promote maritime cooperation and people-to-people exchanges.
Premier Li stressed the pragmatic and win-win cooperation between China and Europe. He noted that stopping basing its anti-dumping investigation against China on the surrogate country system is the EUs obligation stated in Article 15 of Agreement on Chinas Entry into WTO, which should not depend on the national standards of any EU member, or be aligned with any other issues. Both sides should conduct cooperation in accordance with international rules, honor their commitments, and properly resolve other issues through dialogue and negotiation.
Donald Tusk and Jean-Claude Juncker expressed condolences and sympathies over the death of Chinas peacekeepers in South Sudan.
They noted that Europe and China are two major economies in the world, and the establishment of good and stable partnership between them is of great significance to the stable growth of world economy and addressing common global challenges.
Positive results have been achieved in China-Europe cooperation over the year. And EU is willing to strengthen dialogue and negotiation with China, deepen cooperation in various fields including trade and investment, innovative R&D and inter-connectivity, facilitate the negotiation on EU-China bilateral investment agreement, and continue to promote the development of EU-China comprehensive strategic partnership, so as to jointly make contribution to the worlds peace and prosperity.
The EU is also willing to make efforts to fulfill its obligations stated in Article 15 of the Agreement on Chinas Entry into WTO.
Talking about the South China Sea issue, Premier Li said that the Chinese government neither accepts nor recognizes the award of an arbitral tribunal in the South China Sea arbitration established at the request of the Philippines. As one of the countries involved, China is concerned about and dedicated to the peace and stability of the South China Sea area, and is willing to settle disputes through negotiations and in accordance with the Declaration on the Code of Conduct on the South China Sea and international laws.
Ahmedabad:
Ahmedabad crime branch has nabbed Imran Batuk, key accused in 2002 Godhra train incident, from Malegaon.
The accused has been nabbed in a joint operation executed by ATS and Ahmedabad crime Branch. The cops have been tracing his moves from past one month.
After receiving valid information about his whereabouts, both teams rushed for Malegaon and took him under custody.
More than 59 people had lost their lives in a fire inside the Sabarmati Express train near the Godhra railway station in the Indian state of Gujarat.
The victims were mainly Hindu pilgrims who were returning from the city of Ayodhya after a religious ceremony at the disputed Babri Masjid site.
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New Delhi:
Japanese Defence Minister Gen Nakatani will arrive in New Delhi on Wednesday on a three-day visit. The agenda of his visit is to deepen defence ties amid increasing Chinese assertiveness in the Indo-Pacific region.
During the visit, greater defence cooperation including defence manufacturing would be a focus of discussion with the top civil and military leadership besides the issue in Asia Pacific region.
Gen Nakatanis visit comes immediately after international tribunals ruling which rebuffed Chinas historic claim on the majority of South China Sea. The subject will most likely be high on agenda during the leaders discussions with his Indian counterparts.
Gen Nakatani will hold delegation level talk with Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar on July 14.
During Parrikar's visit to Japan last year, Japanese leaders had emphasised on the commonality of strategic interests between the two countries and conveyed Japan's desire to enhance bilateral defence and security cooperation including in the field of maritime security.
They had also said Japan would like to further enhance economic cooperation with India and work jointly to enhance regional connectivity.India and Japan are looking at deepening bilateral defence cooperation amid Tokyo's ongoing tussle with Beijing.
Japan has been witnessing conflict with China over control of private islands in South China sea. A territorial dispute even exists between China and Japan over the Senkaku Islands, which Beijing refers to as the Diaoyu Islands.
India considers relations with Japan very important, which is evident from the fact that Parrikar chose Japan as the first country to visit after assuming office of Defence Minister.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abehad had told Parrikar that "a strong" India-Japan partnership was not only in the "national interest of the two" but also "important for peace and security in the region".
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Washington:
US Secretary of Defence Aston Carter will host defence ministers from 34 nations along with senior leaders from countries part of the counter-ISIL coalition and NATO next week to discuss the ongoing military campaign against the Islamic State terror group.
The Pentagon said that the meeting will discuss progress to date, the essential next steps in the campaign and how the nations of the coalition can accelerate the drive to deal ISIL a lasting defeat, the Pentagon said.
The Secretary of Defence Ashton Carter will host ministers of defence and other senior leaders from nations of the counter-ISIL coalition and from NATO at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, on July 20 to discuss the ongoing military campaign against ISIL, the Pentagon said.
For this, 34 nations have been invited to attend the second meeting of defence ministers contributing forces or basing to the counter-ISIL coalition. The meeting comes at a significant moment in the counter-ISIL campaign, the Pentagon said.
It follows Carters visit to Iraq this week, in which he congratulated Iraq forces for recent progress against ISIL forces in Fallujah and Qayyarah and announced the latest support to help accelerate the campaign.
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Beijing:
China today issued a white paper to re-assert its claim over the South China Sea, after an UN-backed tribunal struck down its historical claim over the strategic region. The country also used the White Paper to accused Philippines of illegally occupying its territory.
The White Paper said the core of the relevant disputes between China and the Philippines in the South China Sea lies in the territorial issues caused by the Philippines' invasion and illegal occupation, starting in the 1970s, of some islands and reefs of China's Nansha Qundao (the Nansha Islands).
"The Philippines has concocted many excuses to cover up this fact, and to pursue its territorial pretencions," said the document, titled 'China Adheres to the Position of Settling Through Negotiation the Relevant Disputes Between China and the Philippines in the South China Sea'.
The Philippines' relevant claim is groundless from the perspectives of either history or international law, said the white paper issued by the State Council Information Office.
The document asserted that China has claims over the South China Sea for 2,000 years and the Philippines, which had filed the petition before the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague, was occupying Chinese territory.
It attacked the Philippines for turning "a blind eye to bilateral consensus", saying Manila has repeatedly taken moves that complicate the relevant disputes, gradually intensified them between China and the Philippines in the South China Sea.
In a major diplomatic blow to China, the tribunal working under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) struck down the Communist giant's claims in the strategic waters yesterday.
The Hague-based court said China violated the Philippines' sovereign rights. It said China has caused "severe harm to the coral reef environment" by building artificial islands.
China has often accused the US for fomenting trouble in the South China Sea, through which USD 3 trillion of trade passes annually and where Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan have rival claims to the waters.
The white paper said with the development of the international law of the sea, a maritime delimitation dispute also arose between China and the Philippines regarding certain maritime areas of the South China Sea.
The Philippines built military facilities on some islands and reefs of China's Nansha Qundao (the Nansha Islands/Spratly islands) it invaded and illegally occupied and deliberately destroyed survey markers set up by China, it said adding that Manila attempted to illegally occupy China's Ren'ai Jiao by using a military vessel illegally run around it.
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Dhanbad:
Only days after Bihars topper scam debacle, Jharkhand has now come under fire after students were found cheating in exams. Students of RS More College in Govindpur in Dhanbad district were caught on camera using unfair means to write their class 11 examinations outdoors on July 9.
The mass copying incident has caused greater embarrassment for state government as Chief Minister Raghubar Das had only recently invited Bihar students to come and study in the educational hub Jharkhand to save their career and credibility.
Responding to media reports on the incident, Jharkhand Academic Council (JAC) deputy chairman Phool Singh told a newspaper that he learnt about the large-scale cheating by students at the examination centre from newspapers reports and will take action against people responsible.
It is a serious matter and after holding discussions with the JAC chairman (Arvind Prasad Singh), a probe will be conducted and action will be taken, he told media.
Five to six examinees were also seen sitting on a bench on Monday and copying answers from books. The father of an examinee was caught in camera while writing answers for his son.
Media reports quoted Centre Superintendent Kiran Singh as saying there was not enough room for all the students to sit indoors. A nearby school was used for the examination after getting permission of the Govindpur block circle officer, but the space was not enough for more than 1000 students, said Kiran Singh, also the principal of the college.
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New Delhi:
External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj today tweeted a throwback picture on her wedding anniversary as a thank you note to her well wishers and followers.
In the photo, Swaraj is seen as a young bride with her husband Swaraj Kaushal, a senior Supreme Court lawyer. The photograph has been liked 4500 times so far, inundated with congratulatory messages and best wishes for the couple.
Swaraj has been quite an active social media user who not only helps the needy in crisis but also keeps sharing old memorable pictures.
Recently, Swaraj reassured actor Akshay Kumar who requested her on Twitter for speedy evacuation of Indians from South Sudan. The 64-year-old Minister has also been praised for her work and responding actively to SOS calls for help.
Thanks for your greetings and good wishes on our wedding anniversary. @sushmaswaraj & @GovernorSwaraj pic.twitter.com/d80OTAiMjc Sushma Swaraj (@SushmaSwaraj) July 13, 2016
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New Delhi:
In a big blow to Asaduddin Owaisi, his Hyderabad-based political party AIMIM can no longer contest civic body elections in Mumbai. According to Maharashtra election commission Owaisis party did not submit relevant documents for its registration.
Along with AIMIM, 191 other political parties have also been derecognized. The decision means that MIM cannot contest local body elections in Maharashtra, including panchayat and civic body polls.
Despite serval notices by the committee of election commission requesting the party to submit the pending relevant documents, they didnt do so,
It is noteworthy that next year's Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation elections are also crucial for the partys expansion plans in Mahrashtra. Owaisi's party won 11 seats in the Nanded municipal polls in 2012.
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Beijing:
Grappling with the international tribunals verdict quashing its claims over the South China Sea, China today turned down US advise to follow Indias example of settling its maritime row with Bangladesh by implementing the judgement saying that there is no comparison between the two cases.
There is a premise for the settlement of the relevant territorial dispute between India and Bangladesh through arbitration, that is, the two respected each others sovereign wills and reached an agreement on the arbitration request through consultation, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang told PTI here.
It is not like imposing one partys will on the other unlike the Philippines which unilaterally filed the petition in Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA), he said in response to question over US Assistant Secretary of Defence for East Asia Abraham Denmarks recent comments that China should follow Indias example of resolving its maritime boundary dispute with Bangladesh by implementing the award by a similar tribunal appointed by the PCA.
India accepted the award which was given in favour of Bangladesh to resolve the over 40-year maritime row. The tribunal awarded Bangladesh 19,467 sq km of area in Bay Bengal in 2014.
To Indias great credit, it accepted the decision and has abided by it, noting at the time that settlement of the issue would enhance mutual understanding and goodwill between the two countries. This is an example we would encourage China to follow, Denmark told lawmakers at a Congressional hearing in Washington last week.
The arbitral tribunals upcoming ruling will present an opportunity for those in the region to determine whether the Asia-Pacifics future will be defined by adherence to international laws and norms that have helped keep the peace and enabled it to prosper, or whether the regions future will be determined by raw calculations of power, Denmark said.
China however emphatically rejected the verdict questioning the legality of the tribunal. Lu said previous Philippines President Benigno S Aquino unilaterally opted for arbitration and imposed it on China.
By doing that the Aquino administration severely violated the agreement between China and Philippines and the consensus in the region, breached relevant provisions under UN Convention on Law of Seas (UNCLOS), infringed upon Chinas right as a sovereign state and state party to UNCLOS to resolve disputes by means of its own choice and went against international law, he said.
Therefore there is no comparison between the two things, he said. China claims almost all of the South China Sea but its claims are fiercely contested by the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan.
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London:
Britains outgoing Prime Minister David Cameron spiced up his last supper at his 10 Downing Street office-cum-home with some spicy Indian food such as Hyderabadi Saffron Chicken, Kashmiri Rogan Josh and Samosas.
Kennington Tandoori in central London tweeted last evening that it had delivered the soon-to-be-former-prime-ministers last supper.
The dishes include Hyderabadi Saffron Chicken, Kashmiri Rogan Josh, Nasheeli Gost, KT Mixed Grill (Lamb and Chicken), Chiecken Zalfrazi, Saag Alloo, Saag Paneer, Palak Gost, Veg Samosas, Naan bread and Rice among other dishes, restaurant Manager Dr Kowsar Hoque told PTI.
The restaurant is a firm favourite with politicians across all parties. The residents of No. 10 Downing Street have enjoyed meals from the Kennington Tandoori since the restaurant opened in 1985 and the KT would hope that they continue to do so, the restaurant said.
Its been a pleasure Prime Minister, said the restaurant which claims to offer modern Indian cuisine and is popular among MPs based in the Westminster area near Parliament.
Cameron has often spoken of his love for Indian food which he says he likes pretty hot and it would seem he went for the spicy option once again as one of his last takeaway meals as Prime Minister.
It ended a day of moving vans, boxes and bubble wrap as the Cameron family wrapped up their lives living above 11 Downing Street.
Over the years, the Prime Ministers office has been at 10 Downing Street but the family home has been next door as it is more spacious.
UK Chancellor George Osborne currently occupies No 10s upstairs living quarters but may soon have to move if new Prime Minister Theresa May decides to shuffle him out of the post.
This evening, Cameron will be joined by wife Samantha Sheffield, daughters Nancy Gwen and Florence Rose Endellion, and son Arthur Elwen as the family leave for their new privately rented home in central London as their own home in Notting Hill area of the city is not yet vacant.
They also have a home in Oxford but are unlikely to move there while all three children are at school in London.
The son of a stockbroker, 49-year-old Cameron enjoyed an upper-middle class upbringing and studied philosophy, politics and economics at Oxford University.
He began working for former prime minister John Major from 1988-93 and gradually rose up the ranks of the Conservative party. He briefly quit politics in 1994 to work for media company Carlton Communications as director of corporate affairs.
He concluded his final day as Prime Minister after six years in office today on a light note, exchanging banter with fellow MPs and Opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn in the House of Commons.
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Islamabad:
Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has convened a special Cabinet meeting in Lahore on Friday to discuss the deteriorating situation in the violence-hit Kashmir and chalk out future course of action on the issue.
The Cabinet will discuss the oppressive actions of Indian security forces against innocent civilians and the over all situation in Kashmir after the brutal assassination of Burhan Wani, the Prime Ministers Office said in a statement.
The meeting at the Governor House in Lahore will discuss the rapidly deteriorating situation in Kashmir and the Prime Minister will chalk out future course of action on the issue, it said.
The statement also noted that on the directions of the Prime Minister, the foreign office summoned Indian high commissioner to the foreign office and conveyed strong concerns of the Pakistani government and people on rapidly deteriorating human rights situation in Kashmir and increasing oppression by Indian security forces.
It said that a detailed briefing was also given to ambassadors of all permanent members of UN security council of UN regarding atrocities of the security forces.
India had asked Pakistan to refrain from interfering in its internal affairs after Sharif issued a statement expressing shock at the killing of Hizbul commander Burhan Wani.
Sharif today said the voice and struggle of the people of Kashmir cannot be suppressed through use of brutal force and human rights abuses.
He said this during a meeting with PoK Parliament Special Committee Chairman and Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam Fazal (JUI-F) President Maulana Fazlur Rehman in Lahore.
During the meeting, Rehman apprised the Prime Minister on his recent talks with separatist leaders over the human rights violations by Indian military and paramilitary forces in Jammu and Kashmir. Rehman said the Kashmiri leadership looks towards Pakistan in difficult times, according to an official statement.
Sharif said, The government and people of Pakistan respect the sentiments of their Kashmiri brethren and will continue to support the Kashmir cause at each and every forum internationally come what may.
The resolution of the Jammu and Kashmir dispute is only possible by the realisation of the right to self-determination of the people of Jammu and Kashmir, as per the UNSC resolutions, through a fair and impartial plebiscite under UN auspices, Sharif said.
Meanwhile, Foreign Secretary also briefed the Islamabad-based Ambassadors of the member countries of the OIC Contact Group on Jammu and Kashmir (Azerbaijan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Niger) over the situation in the Valley.
In the meeting, Pakistan called on the OIC member states to raise their voice against the blatant human rights violations of Kashmiri Muslims.
The Foreign Secretary also briefed the Ambassadors of the European Union over the situation and emphasised the need for a fair and transparent inquiry against individuals responsible for these killings.
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London:
Scientists have discovered a new species of orchids which have features that look like a devils head. The species has been found from a lone and unique population of about 30 flowers that grow on the small patch in Colombia.
With its only known habitat restricted to a single population spread across a dwarf montane forest at the border between departments Putumayo and Narino in southern Colombia, the devilish orchid is assigned as a Critically Endangered species in the IUCN (The International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources) Red List.
The new orchid species called Telipogon diabolicus has been named after its demonic patterns. It grows a stem measuring between 5.5 to 9 cm in height.
Marta Kolanowska and Dariusz Szlachetko, both affiliated with University of Gdansk in Poland, together with Ramiro Medina Trejo from Colombia discovered the species.
Although the curious orchid could be mistakenly taken for a few other species, there are still some easy to see physical traits that make the flower stand out.
Apart from the demons head hidden at the heart of its colours, the petals themselves are characteristically clawed. This feature has not been found in any other Colombian species of the genus.
In the most recent catalogue of Colombian plants almost 3600 orchid species representing nearly 250 genera are included, researchers said.
However, there is no doubt that hundreds of species occurring in this country remain undiscovered. Only in 2015 over 20 novelties were published based on material collected in Colombia, they said.
(With PTI inputs)
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London:
Outgoing British Prime Minister David Cameron today wished continued success for his country in its post-Brexit future as he left the Downing Street to meet Queen Elizabeth II to tender his resignation.
The outgoing PM was accompanied by his wife Samantha, who he described as the love of my life and thanked her for keeping him vaguely sane, as well as his three children Nancy, Arthur and Florence.
I want to thank my children...for whom Downing Street has been a lovely home no more boxes, he said outside the famous black door in London on drizzly Wednesday evening.
Its not been an easy journey and of course weve not got every decision right. But today the country is much stronger; our economy is immeasurably stronger...For me politics has always been about public service in the national interest. It is easy to say but hard to do, the 49-year-old said before getting into waiting cars to be driven to Buckingham Palace to meet Queen Elizabeth II.
Later, Queen accepted Camerons resignation. Cameron also made a reference to his successor, UK home secretary Theresa May, in his final speech, saying he wished her well and was proud that for the second time in British history the Prime Minister will be a woman and once again a Conservative in reference to Margaret Thatcher as the first female PM of Britain.
He also reflected on the spirit of service, which he said was one of the most remarkable qualities of the British character and praised the commitment of the armed forces and volunteers.
As I leave for the last time, my only wish is for the continued success for this great country that I love so very much, he concluded, before the traditional waves and posing for family photographs outside 10 Downing Street.
In his last address to parliament, he said he would advice his successor that British trade, cooperation and security would be best served by a close relationship with Europe.
Cameron, who was given a standing ovation in the House of Commons, defended his achievements in office, saying there had been many amazing moments during his six years in power.
After he offers his own resignation, Cameron will recommend that the Queen as Britains Head of State invites Theresa May to take charge of the new government.
The Queen then invites May, who will be waiting in the wings to step in. She is then expected to make her first official speech as British Prime Minister outside the same famous black door in London later on Wednesday evening.
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Brussels:
European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker today urged new British Prime Minister Theresa May to swiftly engage divorce talks with the European Union.
The outcome of the UK vote to leave the EU has created a new situation which the United Kingdom and the European Union will have to address soon, Juncker said in a letter to May published on his Twitter account.
I wish you every success in the task ahead, he added. European Parliament President Martin Schulz also piled on the pressure as he congratulated May.
Leadership issue settled, now I expect we work quickly to deliver certainty, he said. EU president Donald Tusk meanwhile said he looked forward to a fruitful working relationship with the incoming May.
I look forward... to welcoming you to the European Council of European Union leaders, Tusk added in a brief letter.
Mays first meeting with key EU leaders could be at the G20 summit in China on September 4, but her first encounter with all of the other 27 EU leaders will be at the next European Council summit on October 20-21.
Since Britons narrowly voted for Britain to leave the bloc in June 23 referendum, European leaders have asked London to quickly formalise its divorce but May has indicated she will not be rushed.
On a visit to Brussels today, US Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew urged Britain and the EU to remain highly integrated after Brexit.
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BETHEL The suicide of a retired police officer Tuesday night shocked friends and former colleagues who remembered Lt. Kevin Kennedy as kind, caring and devoted to his profession.
Police said Kennedy, who retired last year, shot himself after authorities were called to the Plumtree Heights Condo Complex at around 9 p.m. Kennedy was brought to Danbury Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
Im empty. . . utterly shocked, said David Bruckenthal, a friend and former police officer who also retired last year.
Bruckenthal said he last spoke with Kennedy about a month ago, when they got together with another retired officer visiting from out of state. He described the encounter as jovial and did not at all suspect that his friend of 30 years was depressed.
Our whole career in law enforcement is to help others, Bruckenthal said. Did I fail? Did I miss something? I was beating my head up all night, but I didnt see anything that was there. You want to be there to help, and its tough when you cant or dont have a chance.
Police were called to the complex by Kennedys family. After a brief dialogue, police said, Kennedy turned his gun on himself.
First Selectman Matt Knickerbocker described Kennedy, a 34-year veteran of the department, as an active member of the police union.
This is really an awful and tragic situation, Knickerbocker said. This was the last person on earth you would think of having difficulties so severe that he would contemplate taking his own life. Our hearts go out to the family members who are left to deal with this.
Members of the department expressed their condolences to Kennedys family in a Facebook post Wednesday morning.
Our officers and their families are devastated by this loss, the post read. Our thoughts and prayers are with the entire Kennedy family right now.
It was unknown Wednesday what prompted Kennedy to take his life, but Bethel Police Chief Jeffrey Finch said suicides are not uncommon in the law enforcement community.
In May, Westport Police Sgt. Robert Meyer committed suicide. Norwalk officer Kenneth Cerulli did the same in January 2013.
I dont think its hard for us to grasp at all, Finch said. We see it happen within our own ranks. Its just hard to watch.
These cops live with guns and carry guns all the time, he continued. When they are depressed or angry, they can become a serious danger to themselves (because) its so convenient. Its worrisome when you have cops going through hard times and stressful times.
Bruckenthal said that the stress of working in law enforcement can take a toll on officers.
We find that we internalize the hurt, he said. We find a way to just say it didnt affect us, when it does.
Weve gotten better as a law enforcement community to try and talk about these things, Bruckenthal said. Socially, its more acceptable to seek help. But a lot of times we get too proud or too caught up. In general, we think were tougher than we are sometimes.
The area near Kennedys Huntington Court home returned to normal Wednesday after a large police presence the night before.
Neighbor Joe Kusek said he saw officers and EMTs outside the building Tuesday night, but did not realize what was going on.
I really didnt know, Kusek said. It was just something with Kevin. Its very hard to believe.
Nancy Monaco-Capirichio, a neighbor and friend, said her husband played golf with Kennedy and that their families knew each other well.
He was an amazing man, a dear friend and a wonderful neighbor, Monaco-Capirichio said.
awolff@newstimes.com; 203-731-3333; @awolffster
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The agency that promotes tourism in Fair field County and northwestern Connecticut has suspended most operations this month and could soon shut down completely after losing 100 percent of its funding from the state.
State budget cuts proposed by Gov. Dannel P. Malloy and approved by the General Assembly this year cut $1,168,112 in funding that had been spread over the states three regional tourism districts.
The Western Connecticut Convention and Visitors Bureau lost $420,000 in annual funding from the state with the start of the new fiscal year on July 1, according to Chairman Dan Bolgani. Its total budget is only $500,000, with the difference coming from grants and private funding.
The agency, which employs four people and provides marketing, advertising, websites, newsletters and research promoting tourism the region, and arranges trade shows and tours for local attractions as well.
Bolgani said most of its operations have been suspended, as regional tourism advocates make a last-ditch attempt to get the state to reconsider.
Tourism is an economic driver, Bolgani said. Its an investment, not an expense. We expected state budget cuts, as did many other entities in Connecticut, but were confused as to why we were one of the few entities with a 100 percent cut. We are an organization with 30-plus years of expert regional knowledge. We have a proven track record. Now, in the busiest season, weve come to a dead halt. We have so much in play at the moment.
With this new budget cut, he said Connecticut will be one of the only states in the country that does not have publicly funded regional tourism bureaus.
I understand the governor needs to do what he has to do, but tourism is an investment for the state, said Irene Dickson, a Norwalk representative on the bureaus board. For every dollar spent in marketing and advertising, it generates $10 in tax revenue.
Betty Cordellos, owner of Connection Tours in Fairfield, is worried about the effect on her small business.
As a niche tourism business owner since 1997, I rely on the business-to-business pipeline that the bureau provides to reach our target audiences and markets across the country, Cordellos said. Its a valuable and free resource for attracting new business that I dont have staff or budget to reach.
Howard Lasser, executive director of the Brookfield Craft Center, said, I do think (the budget cut) will impact this region, particularly in the fall when the people come up from the city and surrounding areas for leaf peeping. We do get a lot of carriage trade from that in our retail shops, I hate to think it will be significantly impacted, but it could be.
The craft center has not received direct marketing or advertising support from the bureau in recent years, but still benefits from tourism, said Lasser.
Besides Fairfield County, the Litchfield Hills is the other region that received support from the western tourism bureau.
Brigid Guertin, executive director of the Danbury Museum, said money spent on tourism promotion for the region trickles down to local businesses and cultural attractions, such as her museum.
It was a shock to hear the news, Guertin said. The western bureau has always been excellent in increasing tourist interest. They have been crucial to our success.
Bolgani said the bureau is on life support from its private funds until alternate funding is found, which seems unlikely.
Bolgani plans to discuss the matter with the Office of Tourism and the Office of Policy and Management, but is not sure the argument will fall on the right ears.
So, you've got a problem: The talent that you've determined fit so well into both your organization overall and the designated role specifically has just slipped through the cracks. Now, what?
Related: 7 LinkedIn Tools for Recruiting New Employees
This happens all the time. Talent-acquisition professionals follow their process and find an "A" player, but before an official offer can be made, the candidate is off to greener pastures. However, take heart: Just because this person moved on doesnt mean he or she is permanently off the market.
A 2016 LinkedIn study found that fully 90 percent of the 33,000 global professionals surveyed said they wanted to hear about open jobs. In other words, most employees are at least passively looking on a continual basis, always interested in new opportunities.
So, before you again chase the talent that got away, look at what may be wrong with your process. A June 2016 CareerBuilder study found, unfortunately enough, that only 31 percent of the 1,505 employers surveyed said they had tried applying to one of their companys open jobs to see what the process was like.
Increase that percentage at your own company. Step into the candidates shoes to fully understand his or her experience. This will help guide efforts in improving the recruitment process, to continually attract and hire top talent.
Here are several aspects of the candidate experience that can turn job-seekers off, and some strategies employers can use to both attract more qualified candidates and win back the ones who got away:
1. Stay connected with 'A' players.
Dont lose contact with the talent that slipped away. The worst thing employers can do is take it personally when a candidate selects a different opportunity. Instead, make it a priority to stay connected and supportive of this person's endeavors.
Be proactive and stay connected through social media channels. Connect via LinkedIn, or send a casual message or email once in a while to check in. Invite these people to job fairs that the company is attending or suggest virtual meetings if their schedule is tight.
Related: 4 Creative Tactics to Find and Recruit the Best Talent
Given that the majority of workers want to know about other opportunities, perhaps these people you are in contact with will still be interested in future postings. Keep the connection casual and consistent, but not overly pushy. Remind them that they have a place in the organization whenever they feel ready to reapply. This will make them feel comfortable with reaching out on their own terms, at their own convenience.
2. Maximize your reach.
Is your brand reaching enough people? How is your company marketing open positions? These are crucial questions to ask.
The CareerBuilder study found that 64 percent of the 4,505 workers surveyed said they spent time researching a company after they read a job posting. So, what kind of presence does the organization strive for?
A large online presence is crucial, because 37 percent of those job-seekers will move on to another listing or company if they cant find the information they want. The internet has changed the way people hunt for work. The culture now values transparency more than ever before.
The study also found that job-seekers surveyed used up to 16 sources in their job search. Thats a large piece of digital real estate to cover!
Invest in building a strong employer-branding strategy that actively engages on social media. By expanding the reach of your companys employer brand, the talent that got away will stay informed about new openings.
Your companys career site should share information about your company culture, values, mission and overall vision. Talent wants to see how they align with their potential employers.
2. Create an easy application experience.
The job market has shifted toward being employee centric, which gives job-seekers more flexibility so they can always find another posting. CareerBuilder found that 20 percent of talent surveyed said they wouldn't complete an application that takes 20 minutes or more, and three out of four wanted to know how long the application process would be before they began.
Additionally, a September 2014 study from Jibe found that a poor application experience deterred 25 percent of the 1,000 job-seekers surveyed. That means that from the get-go, a company may be losing one out of every four candidates -- one of whom could be the best person for the job.
Employers must cater to this demand in order to attract and retain people. Make your application process simple and straightforward. Allow applicants to link with social media accounts like LinkedIn for one-click application options. This makes it easy for those candidates who moved on to quickly apply when they see something that sparks their interest.
Mobile optimization is also critical. A November 2015 study from Pew Research found that 94 percent of the 2,001 job seekers surveyed said they had looked for and researched jobs online using their mobile device. If the interface is clunky, job-seekers will swipe left and continue their search elsewhere.
3. Prioritize your responses.
This is one of the biggest pet peeves candidates have -- waiting too long for feedback or not receiving any at all. They feel disrespected when they are left waiting to hear or, worse, when they are completely ignored.
Focus on the candidate here. Reach out and give this person an idea of the time frame to expect, to receive a follow-up. Just as applicants like to know how long their application process will take, they also want to know when they have either advanced in, or been eliminated from, consideration.
Related: 3 Ways to Be Constantly Recruiting Star Talent Through Social Media
Most are probably already waiting to hear from other companies, so when your HR staff recognizes top talent, have them speed up the process so applicants can be reached and interviewed before they're snatched up by someone else.
Related:
From the World of Recruiting, 4 Tips to Help You Rethink How to Attract Talent
4 Automation Techniques That Will Make You Rethink Recruitment
8 Types of Photos You Should Never Use on Your LinkedIn Profile
Copyright 2016 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved
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Barry Labendz now invites people to his home every Saturday.
Well, not his home exactly, but the brewery he runs Kent Falls Brewery, which is a 50-step commute from his front door.
Starting June 11, Labendz and two other live-in managers of Kent Falls Brewery and Camps Road Farm in Kent opened their brewery to the public.
Now, instead of a cat and mouse game of package store runs, farmers market trips, bar calls and bar crawls, Kent Falls fans can just stop in at the farm nestled near Lake Waramaug in Lichfield Countys rolling hills from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. to buy bottles of brew.
Its great to finally see people, Labendz said, adding that before the brewery got licensed to sell beer out of the farm, the about 18-month-old brewery could be a lonely place.
The brewery, which distributes kegs of its farmhouse brew around Connecticut and New York, has some loyal fans even though its small and fairly new.
More Information How to go: Kent Falls Brewery and Camps Road Farm Open Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. 33 Camps Road, Kent CT 06757 More Info: http://www.campsroadfarm.com/ http://www.kentfallsbrewing.com/ See More Collapse
People drool over limited production India pale ales, American India pale ales, saisons and other styles of beer with names like I Am Table, Are You Single? and Awkward Hug.
Now, surrounded by beer in bottles, in barrels and in massive tanks folks can take in the hoppy smell Labendz has grown accustomed to.
Its a boost to business, he said, adding that the brewery is so far averaging about 100 purchases a Saturday, sales they didnt have before.
But it wasnt easy to get people in the door. It took months to figure out just how to license the place, Labendz said.
Is it a farm? A brewery? A farm-stand? A retail store?
Its a little bit of each, Labendz said, as he passed a pig pen and walked into a 1.5-acre field of high-lofted hops, just steps away from the brewery.
To even get the brewery itself licensed to be operational, it took about a year of talks with the town of Kent, Labendz said. No farm brewery laws exist, he said.
The brewery and farm has a special permit from the town that allows it to exist.
And to get the brewery itself ready for the public, it took plenty of work. Kent Falls had to add a bathroom, construct a septic tank and expand parking, Labendz said.
Before the build-out, if a visiting friend came to check out the brewery and had to use the bathroom, Labendz told them they had two options.
They could go outside, or they could use my house, he said, adding that it was an awkward experience.
Although people can stop by and stock up on Saturdays, they still cant drink on site although its legal for them to do a taste test.
But there have been, and will be, special events for beer tastings, he said.
For now, Labendz and company are just happy they have company on Saturdays, and that they can sell beer one day a week without having to leave the farm.
I already drove 200 miles today delivering beer, Labendz said on a recent Friday afternoon.
VANCOUVER, July 12, 2016 /CNW/ - Rockwell Diamonds Inc. ("Rockwell" or the "Company") (TSX:RDI; JSE:RDI) announces results for the three months ended May 31, 2016.
Currency values are presented in Canadian dollars, unless otherwise indicated.
Salient features
Gross profit - $3.3 million before amortisation and depreciation for the first quarter of fiscal 2017.
- before amortisation and depreciation for the first quarter of fiscal 2017. Rough diamond revenues - up 41% year-on-year and 20% on Q4 2016.
- up 41% year-on-year and 20% on Q4 2016. Average cash operating costs on a unit basis - down 29% year-on-year
on a unit basis - down 29% year-on-year Wouterspan ("WPC") processing plant - commissioning expected to commence at the beginning of August 2016 .
- commissioning expected to commence at the beginning of . MOR grades - substantially improved from the previous year, to 0.67 carats/100m 3 of gravel processed, reflecting the results of the Remhoogte-Holsloot ("RHC") acquired May 2015 .
- substantially improved from the previous year, to 0.67 carats/100m of gravel processed, reflecting the results of the Remhoogte-Holsloot ("RHC") acquired . MOR revenues - up 67% year-on-year and 31% quarter-on-quarter.
- up 67% year-on-year and 31% quarter-on-quarter. Average price per carat - increased by 27% on the previous quarter from own operations. Two stones larger than 90 carats were recovered at RHC.
- increased by 27% on the previous quarter from own operations. Exploration - mapping and pitting programmes continued on RHC and on properties around WPC.
- mapping and pitting programmes continued on RHC and on properties around WPC. Safety - As at May 31, 2016 , Rockwell had achieved 1 500 000 lost time injury free hours at its MOR operations. Sadly, a fatality occurred on 23 June 2016 at a contractor's operation on the SHC property.
FINANCIAL HIGHLIGHTS
$ million unless otherwise stated Q1 2017 Q1 2016 % Change Q4 2016 F2016 Total Revenue 12.5 9.2 36% 10.4 47.3
Rough diamond sales 12.1 8.6 41% 10.2 37.7
Beneficiation 0.4 0.9 (56%) 0.2 9.6 Average price per carat sold (US$) 1 801 1 432 26% 1 448 1 513 Gross (loss) profit before amortisation and depreciation 3.3 (3.1) 206% (0.2) 0.4 Average cash operating cost / m3 (US$) 9.26 13.09 (29%) 9.1 11.4 Cash generated / (used) in operations 1.7 (5.1) 133% (4.6) (4.2)* Profit / (loss) attributable to owners of the parent 0.6 (5.1) (112%) (17.4) (28.3) Net Cash and cash equivalents (0.1) (1.3) 92% (1.3) (1.3) * Net of debt repayments
Commenting on the first quarter financial performance, James Campbell, CEO and President, said:
"Rockwell has begun fiscal 2017 with a significantly changed operational profile from just one year ago. Niewejaarskraal has been placed on care and maintenance, Tirisano sold, Remhoogte Holsloot (RHC) acquired and, against most expectations, Saxendrift is still in production, albeit at a reduced rate and grade.
Fiscal 2016 was a challenging time of change and restructuring. Our substantially improved results for the first quarter of fiscal 2017 reflect the benefit of the strategic interventions of late fiscal 2016. Enhanced productivity on our operations has resulted in improved diamond recoveries and diamond values, which have translated in increased diamond revenues, on both a year-on-year and quarter-on-quarter basis.
Production at RHC is stabilising after a difficult six months, as reported in fiscal 2016. The drilling and pitting results at RHC indicate significantly less Rooikoppie gravels, but potentially significantly more Palaeo gravels than previously thought. Further work is underway to refine the Palaeo estimates, which will be reported in the next quarter; meanwhile the mine plan for the next six months at RHC has been amended to accommodate these findings.
We are encouraged by the steady progress on the re-commissioning of Wouterspan which should commence initial operational ramp-up in August, 2016. We are confident that our renewed MOR operational profile will enable us to process 350,000 m3 of gravel per month before the end of fiscal 2017.
We still have some challenging quarters ahead as we consider transitioning RHC to Palaeo gravels and ramp up Wouterspan and work to deliver on our pipeline of new opportunities which should deliver additional flexibility and move us towards our goal of being sustainably profitable.
The outlook for the diamond market is stable for the remainder of fiscal 2017, and the underlying fundamentals remain strong".
Financial review
Revenue: The Group reported a 41% increase in rough diamond revenues at $12.1 million (Q1 F2016: $8.6 million ), chiefly due to the contribution of new production from RHC, where better mining and processing volumes were achieved during the quarter. With beneficiation revenue down 56% at $0.4 million (Q1 F2016: $0.9 million ), this resulted in total revenues increased by 36% to $12.5 (Q1 F2016: $9.2 million ). Compared with Q4 2016, total revenues were up by 20% reflecting the gains that are being made in productivity on Rockwell's operations.
The Group reported a 41% increase in rough diamond revenues at (Q1 F2016: ), chiefly due to the contribution of new production from RHC, where better mining and processing volumes were achieved during the quarter. With beneficiation revenue down 56% at (Q1 F2016: ), this resulted in total revenues increased by 36% to (Q1 F2016: ). Compared with Q4 2016, total revenues were up by 20% reflecting the gains that are being made in productivity on Rockwell's operations. Production Costs: The Group's consolidated average cash operating costs for the first quarter at its MOR operations was US$9.26 (Q1 F2016: US$13.09 ; Q4 F2016: US$9.10 ) per cubic metre processed. The average total cash cost (including royalty payments) for all the operations for Q1 F2017 amounted to US$9.50 per cubic metre processed (Q1 F2016: US$14.07 ).
The Group's consolidated average cash operating costs for the first quarter at its MOR operations was (Q1 F2016: ; Q4 F2016: ) per cubic metre processed. The average total cash cost (including royalty payments) for all the operations for Q1 F2017 amounted to per cubic metre processed (Q1 F2016: ). Cost of sales before amortization and depreciation decreased to $9.2 million (Q1 F2016: $12.3 million ), mainly due to to the impact of the substantial restructuring that has taken place since last year, and the costs associated with closing NJK in the prior year.
decreased to (Q1 F2016: ), mainly due to to the impact of the substantial restructuring that has taken place since last year, and the costs associated with closing NJK in the prior year. Gross (loss) profit before amortization and depreciation : A profit of $3.3 million was reported by the Group for Q1 F2017, which compares to a loss of $3.1 million for Q1 F2016. MOR carats sold were up 59% on the previous year, and MOR revenue per carat increased 5% to US$1,864 (Q1 F2016: US$1,772 ).
A profit of was reported by the Group for Q1 F2017, which compares to a loss of for Q1 F2016. MOR carats sold were up 59% on the previous year, and MOR revenue per carat increased 5% to (Q1 F2016: ). Profit attributable to owners of the parent of $0.6 million (Q1 F2016: $5.1 million loss) reflecting the improved operational performance in the current year, and the impact of closure of NJK in the comparative period last year.
of (Q1 F2016: loss) reflecting the improved operational performance in the current year, and the impact of closure of NJK in the comparative period last year. Net cash position: At May 31, 2016 the Group had net cash and cash equivalents of ($0.1) million overdraft (FY F2016: ($1.3) million overdraft; Q1 F2016: ($1.3) million overdraft).
At the Group had net cash and cash equivalents of overdraft (FY F2016: overdraft; Q1 F2016: overdraft). Middle Orange River ("MOR") operating performance: Volumes mined from Rockwell's MOR operations during the quarter totalled 0.9 million m3 (Q1 F2016: 0.8 million m3); this was up 10% year-on-year, due to production from RHC compensating for the reduction of operations at Saxendrift and the closure of NJK. Gravel processed was up 32% year-on-year at 0.8 million m3 (Q1 F2016: 0.6 million m3), chiefly owing to higher volumes processed at RHC.
Market update
The diamond market remained stable during Q1 F2017, after some price recovery in the open market at the beginning of the year. De Beers had two sights during this period; Sight 3 featured increased quantities compared with Q1 2016 and stable prices, while quantities in Sight 4 were reduced by 5.5% compared with Sight 3. Prices for Sight 4 were stable, and Sightholders achieved single digit premiums on most boxes. Alrosa maintained prices and supply over the quarter.
Secondary market demand has improved due to restocking by manufacturers, but concerns exist over a potential oversupply within the polished market once these goods reach polished inventories. Whilst polished prices have recovered a couple of percent during this quarter compared with January 2016, prices for goods sized 1ct and below are down 5% and 3ct polished prices are down 15% compared with Q1 2016.
During Q1 F2017 two major events occurred, namely the Basel and Las Vegas Shows. Attendances at both were comparatively reduced, but trading did occur albeit at reduced levels compared with prior years. Auctions during this quarter had excellent results in the rare fancy colored market, with record prices achieved, but prices on more regular gem quality diamonds were relatively low with some bargains to be found.
The outlook for the remainder of the year as we head into the summer season - which is historically a quiet trading period - should see some froth coming off the market, but there are no expectations for rough diamond prices to further reduce this year. The restrained supply by major producers and the proposed generic marketing campaign for diamonds by a Producers association has greatly assisted in maintaining the strength of retail markets.
Outlook and priorities
The re-commissioning of Wouterspan and review of the mining plan at RHC remain key priorities for the Company in the short term, as it continues to pursue its strategic processing target of 500,000m3 of gravel per month.The terms of a new contractual arrangement which will outsource mining on a fixed pay-per-volume delivered basis were approved by the Board on 8 July. Under this new arrangement, the volume risks related to EMV availability will be transferred to the mining service provider.
Rockwell remains focused on rebuilding its MOR production profile and delivering new growth opportunities. The Company continues to evaluate new projects and value accretive consolidation opportunities. Exploration efforts to identify new value opportunities with potential to add to the Company's resources will continue on the properties surrounding Wouterspan.
Rockwell's focus continues to remain firmly on safety, with zero tolerance for complacency or deviations from Company procedures. The royalty mining contract with Direka Delwery was been terminated immediately following the fatality that occurred in June.
Priorities for fiscal 2017 include:
Successful completion of construction and commissioning of the Wouterspan processing plant
Effective closure of Saxendrift with seamless transition of resources to Wouterspan
Revision of resource estimates and mine plans at RemhoogteHolsloot, and further delineation of Palaeo gravels
Securing prospective ground for kimberlite exploration
Continued development of properties in the Middle Orange River
Conference Call:
Rockwell will host a telephone conference call on Monday, July 18, 2016 at 09:00 a.m. Eastern Time (15:00 p.m. Johannesburg / 14:00 p.m. London) to discuss these results. The conference call may be accessed as follows:
Country Access Number Canada and USA (Toll-Free) 1 855 481 5362 South Africa (Toll-Free) 0 800 200 648 South Africa Johannesburg 011 535 3600 South Africa Cape Town 021 819 0900 UK (Toll-Free) 0808 162 4061 Other Countries (Intl Toll) +27 11 535 3600 Other countries Alternate +27 10 201 6800
A transcript of the audio webcast will be available on the Company's website: www.rockwelldiamonds.com.
The conference call will be archived for later playback until midnight (ET) June 20, 2016 and can be accessed
by dialling the relevant number in the table below and using the pass code 49744#.
Country Access Number South Africa (Telkom) 011 305 2030 Canada and USA (Toll Free) 1 855 481 5363 Other Countries (Intl Toll) +27 11 305 2030 UK (Toll-Free) 0 808 234 6771
For further details, see Rockwell's complete financial results and Management Discussion and Analysis posted on the website and on the Company's profile at www.sedar.com. These include additional details on production, sales and revenues for the quarter, as well as comparative results for fiscal 2015.
About Rockwell Diamonds:
Rockwell is engaged in the business of operating and developing alluvial diamond deposits. The Company also evaluates consolidation opportunities that have the potential to expand its mineral resources and production profile and provide accretive value to the Company.
Rockwell is known for producing large, high quality gemstones comprising a major portion of its diamond recoveries. This is enhanced through a beneficiation joint venture that enables Rockwell to participate in the profits on the sale of the polished and certain re-traded diamonds, which are not beneficiated.
Rockwell has set a strategic goal to become a mid-tier diamond production company. In pursuit of this goal the Company has embarked on a strategy to grow its Middle Orange River (MOR) operational base and minimise production and recovery volatility by setting a medium term target to process 500,000m3 of gravels per month from its MOR operations.
Rockwell's common shares trade on the Toronto Stock Exchange and the JSE Limited under the symbol "RDI".
No regulatory authority has approved or disapproved the information contained in this news release. Forward Looking Statements
Except for statements of historical fact, this news release contains certain "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable securities law. Forward-looking information is frequently characterized by words such as "plan", "expect", "project", "intend", "believe", "anticipate", "estimate" and other similar words, or statements that certain events or conditions "may" or "will" occur. Although the Company believes the expectations expressed in such forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, such statements are not guarantees of future performance and actual results or developments may differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements.
Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in forward-looking statements include uncertainties and costs related to the transaction and the ability of each party to satisfy the conditions precedent in a timely manner or at all, exploration and development activities, such as those related to determining whether mineral resources exist on a property; uncertainties related to expected production rates, timing of production and cash and total costs of production and milling; uncertainties related to the ability to obtain necessary licenses, permits, electricity, surface rights and title for development projects; operating and technical difficulties in connection with mining development activities; uncertainties related to the accuracy of our mineral resource estimates and our estimates of future production and future cash and total costs of production and diminishing quantities or grades if mineral resources; uncertainties related to unexpected judicial or regulatory procedures or changes in, and the effects of, the laws, regulations and government policies affecting our mining operations; changes in general economic conditions, the financial markets and the demand and market price for mineral commodities such as diesel fuel, steel, concrete, electricity, and other forms of energy, mining equipment, and fluctuations in exchange rates, particularly with respect to the value of the US dollar, Canadian dollar and South African Rand; changes in accounting policies and methods that we use to report our financial condition, including uncertainties associated with critical accounting assumptions and estimates; environmental issues and liabilities associated with mining and processing; geopolitical uncertainty and political and economic instability in countries in which we operate; and labour strikes, work stoppages, or other interruptions to, or difficulties in, the employment of labour in markets in which we operate our mines, or environmental hazards, industrial accidents or other events or occurrences, including third party interference that interrupt operation of our mines or development projects.
For further information on Rockwell, Investors should review Rockwell's home jurisdiction filings that are available at www.sedar.com.
SOURCE Rockwell Diamonds Inc.
For further information: For further information on Rockwell and its operations in South Africa, please contact: James Campbell, CEO, +27 (0)83 457 3724; David Tosi, PSG Capital - JSE Sponsor, +27 (0)21 887 9602
OTTAWA, July 13, 2016 /CNW/ - The Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, today issued the following statement to welcome the new Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Theresa May:
"On behalf of the Government of Canada, I would like to extend my warm congratulations to the United Kingdom's new Prime Minister, Theresa May.
"Prime Minister May has dedicated her life and her career to public service. She has sat as a Member of Parliament since 1997, and, more recently, has become one of the longest serving Home Secretaries in the United Kingdom's history.
"Canada and the United Kingdom are not only important strategic partners and allies, we share a deep friendship a rich and diverse relationship built and maintained through our strong people-to-people ties and our shared history. We look forward to working closely with Prime Minister May as we continue to address issues of mutual interest that will ensure ongoing stability and prosperity for all of our people.
"I would also like to thank David Cameron for his service and dedication to the people of the United Kingdom, especially during times of economic uncertainty. I wish him the best of luck in all his future endeavours."
This document is also available at http://pm.gc.ca
SOURCE Prime Minister's Office
For further information: PMO Media Relations: 613-957-5555
CALGARY, July 12, 2016 /CNW/ - TVI Pacific Inc. (TSX: TVI) (OTC Pink: TVIPF) ("TVI" or "the Company") announces that, as part of an ongoing initiative to reduce annual operating costs, it has applied to voluntarily delist its common shares from the Toronto Stock Exchange ("TSX") and to list them on the TSX Venture Exchange ("TSX-V") through the streamlined listing procedures of the TSX-V. The Company has now received all approvals from both exchanges to delist from the TSX on July 29 and to list on the TSX-V on August 2, 2016.
Since the beginning of 2016, TVI has initiated numerous measures to reduce its annual operating costs. The initiatives include rationalization of head office support and accounting staff, reduction and/or deferral of management and staff compensation, deferred director compensation, and negotiating reduced rates for key service providers. A move to the TSX-V will allow the Company to further reduce costs through lower listing fees while continuing its commitment to keep shareholders informed through the disclosure and regulatory standards of the TSX-V.
"Following a strategic review of TVI's activities with a view to reducing operating costs, the Board concluded that the TSX-V is a more appropriate listing platform given the Company's current capital structure, market capitalization and activities," stated Clifford James, Chairman and CEO of TVI. "By switching from the TSX to the TSX-V, TVI will benefit from greater operational efficiency and lowered costs without impacting our continuing project evaluation and acquisition activities or our ability to raise further funds to advance our corporate development objectives."
TVI expects that the transition from the TSX to the TSX-V will be completed in an efficient and seamless manner, with no interruption in the ability of shareholders and investors to trade shares of TVI. Shares of TVI will continue to trade on the TSX up to the end of business day on July 29. On August 2, TVI's shares will begin trading at market open on the TSX-V.
About TVI Pacific Inc.
TVI Pacific Inc. is a Canadian resource company focused on the production, development, exploration and acquisition of resource projects in the Asia Pacific region. TVI's track record of success includes putting the first foreign invested mine into production in the Philippines after the passage of the Philippines Mining Act of 1995. From 2004 to 2014, the Canatuan mine produced 105,200 ounces of gold, 1.8 million ounces of silver, 199,778 dry metric tonnes of copper concentrate and 30,558 dry metric tonnes of zinc concentrate.
TVI currently holds a 30.66% interest in TVIRD, a private Philippine resource company engaged in the production of nickel laterite ore at the Agata project, advancing its 100% owned Balabag Gold-Silver project towards production and achieving a listing on the PSE in 2016. In addition to its interest in TVIRD, TVI also holds (i) a 27.24% equity interest in Foyson Resources Limited; (ii) a 14.4% equity interest in Mindoro Resources Ltd.; (iii) a 10% interest in the Amazon Bay Iron Sands project in Papua New Guinea; and (iv) a 100% investment in shares of TG World.
IMPORTANT INFORMATION REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS
Certain information set out in this News Release constitutes forward-looking information. Forward-looking statements are often, but not always, identified by the use of words such as "seek", "anticipate", "plan", "continue", "estimate", "expect", "may", "will", "intend", "could", "might", "should", "believe", "scheduled", "to be", "will be" and similar expressions. Forward-looking statements in this News Release are based upon the opinions and expectations of management of the Company as at the effective date of such statements. Although the Company believes that the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are based upon reasonable assumptions, it can give no assurance that those expectations will prove to have been correct. Forward-looking statements are subject to certain risks and uncertainties (known and unknown) that could cause actual outcomes to differ materially from those anticipated or implied by such forward-looking statements.
Various risks to which the Company is exposed in the conduct of its business (including mining activities) are described in detail in the Company's Annual Information Form for the year ended December 31, 2015, which was filed on SEDAR on March 24, 2016 and is available under the Company's profile at www.SEDAR.com. Subject to applicable securities laws, the Company does not undertake any obligation to publicly revise the forward-looking statements included in this News Release to reflect subsequent events or circumstances.
SOURCE TVI Pacific Inc.
For further information: Shirley Anthony, VP Corporate Communications, TVI Pacific Inc., Phone: 778.999.2771, E-mail: [email protected]
bierabbeycrop.JPG
The Bier Abbey. 613 Union St. in Schenectady, has been seized by the state tax department over nearly $700,000 in overdue sales taxes.
(The Bier Abbey)
SCHENECTADY, NY -- One of Upstate New York's best known craft and import beer bars has been seized by the state tax department after racking up nearly $700,000 in back sales taxes.
A sign indicating a property has been seized by the state of New York for overdue taxes.
The Bier Abbey, 613 Union St., was shut down Tuesday afternoon by the Taxation and Finance Department, according to reports in the Schenectady Daily Gazette and Albany Times Union. The pub's locks were changed and a bright orange "seized" sign was placed in a window.
The pub owes $698,597 in past due sales taxes, state tax department spokesman James Gazzale told the Times Union. If the bill is not resolved, the state can sell the pub at auction. The owner is George S. Collentine of New Fairfield, Conn.
The Bier Abbey opened in 2012 and was noted for its extensive beer selection, especially in Belgian-style ales, and its church pew seating. It routinely made lists of the best beer bars in New York state.
The $698,597.72 in overdue tax includes penalties and interest. The penalty is an amount equal to twice the amount of the tax not paid, plus 14.5 percent interest on the unpaid tax, according to the tax department.
Don Cazentre writes about food, beverages, restaurants and bars for syracuse.com and The Post-Standard. Contact him by email, on Twitter, at Google+ or via Facebook.
It's official, Theresa May has been appointed the new prime minister of Britian at an audience with Queen Elizabeth at Buckingham Pa...
It's official,has been appointed the new prime minister of Britian at an audience with Queen Elizabeth at Buckingham Palace.It will be a mid-week start for the Conservative leader as she takes over as the second female Prime Minister of the United Kingdom on Wednesday.After six years in office, David Cameron resigned as British Prime Minister following the UK's vote to leave the European Union.The outgoing PM formally offered his resignation to Queen Elizabeth II in a meeting at Buckingham Palace.is an alumna of Oxford University where she studied geography. Prior to becoming a member of parliament (MP), May worked at the Bank of England and went on to hold posts at the Association for Payment Clearing Services (APACS) as Head of European Affairs Unit and Senior Adviser on International Affairs.May married banker Philip May in 1980 after the two met at a Conservative Association dance party while May was studying at Oxford University.She started out stuffing envelopes at her local Conservative Association before becoming a councillor in the London Borough of Merton from 1986 to 1994.From 1988 to 1990 she was the Chairman of Education; thereafter she became the Deputy Group Leader and Housing Spokeswoman between 1992 and 1994.May became an elected Member of Parliament for Maidenhead in May 1997 where she currently lives and is an active campaigner. Her campaigns include improving local train service, inclusion of a minor injuries unit at St. Marks Hospital and improvement of Maidenhead town center.May quickly rose to prominence in the Conservative Party and has held several positions in Parliament since 1997. She was a member of the Shadow Cabinet from 1999 to 2010, including as Shadow Secretary of State for Education and Employment, Shadow Secretary for State for Work and Pensions and Shadow Leader of the House of Commons.From 2002 to 2003 she became the first female Chairman of the Conservative Party.May was appointed Home Secretary and Minister for Women and Equalities in May 2010 by Prime Minister David Cameron as part of his first Cabinet. She became the longest serving Home Secretary of modern times.In her role as Home Secretary, she led the government's work to free up the police to fight crime more effectively, secure the borders and reduce immigration. She also worked towards protecting the U.K. from terrorism.Being one of the most senior female Cabinet members of the Conservative party, May worked towards Women's equality and adoption rights. She expressed support for the introduction of same-sex marriage by recording a video for the Out4Marriage campaign and became one of the first high-profile Conservative MP's to pledge support for same-sex marriage.A 'Remain' campaigner, May has vowed to unite those divided by the EU referendum. While she supported the 'remain' campaign, May did not extensively campaign in the referendum.In a speech after confirmation as the winner of the Conservative Party's leadership contest, May reiterated earlier comments that there would be no second referendum or backdoor attempts to join the European Union and pledged to set out economic plans to deal with the current instability."Brexit means Brexit, and we're going to make a success of it," May said.(CNN/NBC)
The Lagos State chapter of the All Progressives Congress, APC, says Senator Dino Melaye needs psychiatric examination over his threat to...
The Lagos State chapter of the All Progressives Congress, APC, says Senator Dino Melaye needs psychiatric examination over his threat to beat up Senator Oluremi Tinubu, representing Lagos Central.Melaye had threatened to beat up Tinubu and impregnate her on the floor of the Senate, a statement that had elicited wide condemnation but which Melaye denied.Reacting to this verbal assault against Senator Tinubu in a statement, Joe Igbokwe, Lagos APC Publicity Secretary, described Melayes outbursts as unguarded and reckless.We take it that this is a slip of tongue but if it is indeed true that this statement came from the heart of Dino Melaye, we need a psychiatric doctor to examine the state of his mind.His actions and deeds in recent times have contributed in no uncertain terms to various setbacks we have witnessed in the 8th Senate since its inception on June 9, 2015. The hallowed chamber of the Senate of the federal republic of Nigeria is a prestigious place for the serious-minded, cerebral men and women, men and women of honour and integrity, those who can hold their heads when others are losing theirs, experienced but humble men and women.It is not for lunatics, rascals, street urchins, ethically challenged bigots or integrity challenged charlatans. It seems to us in Lagos APC that Senator Dino Melaye has reached a point of diminishing returns, the statement said.The statement added that: The unstable and funny man from Kogi State has reached a point where there is no other place to go but to go down irretrievably. He can only go down with his likes and not with our own Senator Oluremi Tinubu, the highly revered, honoured and distinguished wife of our National leader, His Excellency, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu.Lagos APC wants Dino Melaye to move quickly to apologize to Senator Oluremi Tinubu and her beloved husband, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, and have the statement credited to him withdrawn without any further delay.
The Minister of Labour and Employment, Sen. Chris Ngige, has condemned the spate of strikes in the health sector, describing it as inimica...
The Minister of Labour and Employment, Sen. Chris Ngige, has condemned the spate of strikes in the health sector, describing it as inimical to the oath of medical profession.Ngige said this at the opening of this years Annual General Meeting and scientific session of the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA), FCT Chapter, on Tuesday in Abuja.Making reference to the medical doctors, Ngige said incessant strike was against the oath they swore to when they were inducted into the profession. He added that the past government did not do well with regards to meeting agreements on remuneration, welfare, among others, in the profession.He, however, said that there should be room for bargaining rather than endangering the lives of patients.He then urged the NMA to look for a better way of resolving the lingering crisis in the sector so as to reduce the rate of strikes. The minister said that in most cases, it was the patients that suffer the consequences and appealed to them to make the health of patients as their priority as enshrined in the oath of secrecy.Ngige quoted some portion of the oath to remind the doctors which says my patient will be my first consideration. I will not permit consideration of age, disease or disability, creed, ethnic origin, gender, nationality, political, race, sexual orientation or social standing to intervene between my duty and my patient.The minister explained that taking into consideration these provisions, you are not supposed to proceed on strike as a medical professional in any circumstance. Responding, Dr Zara Mairami, the Chairman, FCT NMA, attributed the bane of poor healthcare facilities, the lack of universal health coverage, among others, to medical tourism outside the country.Mairami explained that by right, every Nigerian was supposed to have access to quality healthcare services at an affordable rate, adding, however, that the reverse was the case.Making reference to the theme of the event Universal Health Coverage: An Enduring Concept, she explained that if there was no universal health coverage for everyone, there was virtually no way every common man could access healthcare.According to her, healthcare must be accessible by all, especially the poor in rural areas who could not afford it. She said if healthcare is accessible, the issue of medical tourism will be highly reduced.If we have the kind of facilities which other countries have, and have the requisite manpower that can boast of adequate welfare and job security, people will stay back home and access healthcare because they are sure to get the best.We all will then be sure of universal health if our hospitals are improved and everything is of best practice.
Donald Trump called Wednesday for the resignation of Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, charging that the 83-year-old judges min...
Donald Trump called Wednesday for the resignation of Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, charging that the 83-year-old judges mind is shot after she branded him a faker.It is exceptional for a US Supreme Court justice to speak openly about politics and their political preferences.But Ginsburg dropped all pretenses of reserve in two interviews she gave recently and which have caused a sensation.He is a faker, Ginsburg said Monday of the presumptive Republican presidential nominee in an interview with CNN.He has no consistency about him. He says whatever comes into his head at the moment, said the Brooklyn-born justice, a diminutive but tough-as-nails figure who has earned the nickname Notorious RBG.He really has an ego, she said. Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, hit back Wednesday at the leader of the courts progressive wing, suggesting she is getting senile.Justice Ginsburg of the US Supreme Court has embarrassed all by making very dumb political statements about me. Her mind is shot resign! Trump wrote on Twitter.The Supreme Court normally has nine justices but has been one short since the conservative Antonin Scalia died in February.There is an even tie between conservatives and liberals, who include Ginsburg. Worried that a court dominated by conservatives could now tip in the liberals favor, President Barack Obamas Republican foes in the Senate have refused to vote on his nominee to replace Scalia, Merrick Garland.They insist the decision must wait until after voters choose Obamas successor in November. Ginsburg told The New York Times in an interview published Sunday that the stakes in the 2016 election were positively huge.I cant imagine what this place would be I cant imagine what the country would be with Donald Trump as our president, she said.For the country, it could be four years. For the court, it could be I dont even want to contemplate that, said the judge.
Source: TopCongo
Former Chelsea starlet Gael Kakuta has pledged his international future to the Democratic Republic of Congo, this after rejecting to play for the African country five years ago.According to TopCongo, Kakuta has come out saying he now intends to represent the Leopards at national level.While on loan at Bolton in 2011, the now 25-year-old famously said: "I want to play for France. Can't change my mind overnight."Kakuta represented France at youthful, playing for six different age groups between 2006 and 2013.Much was expected from the winger, but he has failed to live up to the billing and after six stints on-loan. at six different clubs - in five different countries - the Blues sold him to Sevilla.His stint with the Europa League champions didn't last long and he currently plies his trade in China for Hebei China Fortune.
The Lagos State Task Force has arrested a fake military man, Mr. Oluwayelu Adewole Rahmon claiming to be a 2nd Lieutenant in the Nigeria...
The Lagos State Task Force has arrested a fake military man, Mr. Oluwayelu Adewole Rahmon claiming to be a 2nd Lieutenant in the Nigerian Army.According to the Public Relations Officer of the taskforce, Adebayo Taofiq, sequel to the arrest, Lagos State Commissioner of Police, Mr Fatai Owoseni directed Task Force Chairman SP. Olayinka Egbeyemi to immediately charge the fake soldier to court for impersonation.Owoseni said the Lagos State Police Command and other security operatives across the State would continue to arrest miscreants and criminals at their different hide-outs until they have a change of mind of becoming good citizens.Adebayo said the suspect Mr. Oluwayelu Adeboye (27 years) of No. 4 Union Street, Dopemu, Agege claimed to be 2nd Lieutenant in the Nigerian Army in order to secure the release of an impounded commercial vehicle by the operatives of the Lagos State Task Force.The suspect who according to investigations was rusticated from the Federal Polytechnic, Ilaro (2014) for same offence of impersonation claimed that he had at many instances deceived different security formations across the country.Further investigation equally revealed that the suspect was an habitual impersonator who had once also impersonated the son of a General in the Nigerian Army during an interview where he wanted to secure admission into Nigerian Defence Academy (NDA).He disclosed that he has variously at different times and places impersonated as both officer of Nigerian Army, Nigerian Navy and Nigerian Police in order to secure the release of anyone arrested at different Police stations across Lagos, the PRO said.Adewole, Adebayo said, equally impersonates through telephone conversations for release of impounded vehicles from different law enforcers and that if he had succeeded he would have charged the owner of the impounded vehicle for a fee of N15,000 or more.The suspect narrated that he was on his way to Ogba in Ikeja to collect his original Year 2010 West African Examination School Certificate results with examination No 20108040DC when he saw operatives of the Agency impounding someones vehicle for traffic obstructions and that he felt it was another good business for him as usual, that was why he quickly intervened.He claimed he is among those shortlisted for the new recruitment into the Nigerian Police Force.The impounded commercial vehicle belong to one Mr Muritala Feyisola Ayowunmi, an Officer of the Nigerian Navy of Military Clearing Office, Wharf at Apapa who lives at BT 88, Flat 10A, Gowon Estate, Egbeda, Lagos.The suspect confirmed further that he followed the owner of the impounded commercial vehicle to Lagos State Task Force Headquarters at Ikeja where he was interrogated by the Chairman SP Olayinka Egbeyemi and later got arrested with his fake documents.The PRO said the suspect said it was the devil work, he however pleaded promising to repent and be a good citizen if the government could have mercy and release him.The owner of the impounded commercial vehicle Ayowunmi denied knowing the suspect, claiming that he just came to him and introduced himself as a Lieutenant Colonel in the Nigerian Army and I gave him a full compliments as a Senior Officer only to later find out after interrogation at Lagos Task Force Headquarters that he was an impersonator, Adebayo said.
Ekiti State Governor, Ayodele Fayose, has insisted that the wife of the President, Mrs Aisha Buhari, was mentioned in the Halliburton sc...
Ekiti State Governor, Ayodele Fayose, has insisted that the wife of the President, Mrs Aisha Buhari, was mentioned in the Halliburton scandal.Fayose had last month, while reacting to the freezing of his Zenith Bank accounts by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, claimed that Aisha, was allegedly involved in a transactions with an american, Jefferson, that was jailed in the Halliburton Scandal in United States.There was a judgment against the wife of the President, where she wired $170,00 to Jefferson that was convicted in the Halliburton scandal, he said.Slighted by the statement, Mrs. Buhari through her counsel, Mary Ekpere & Co had written a letter dated June 22, 2016, to the governor demanding a retraction of the statement. She threatened a legal action if the retraction was not made within five days.The acting Public Affairs Officer, United States Consulate General, Lagos, Frank Selin, had also revealed yesterday that the US had no information to provide on the matter.However, Fayose, through his lawyer, Chief Mike Ozekhome (SAN), has replied the wife of the president through her lawyer justifying his claim that she was indeed mentioned in the Halliburton scandal.In a July 8 letter, Ozekhome affirmed that the statement made regarding her involvement was correct and justified in law, having been factually premised on an existing court judgment.The letter read, Our client has referred to us your letter dated 22nd June, 2016, on alleged defamation of the character of your client, Her Excellency, Mrs Aisha Buhari, the wife of Muhammadu Buhari, GCFR, with firm instructions to reply to and reject same in its entirety.Our client states and reaffirms categorically that the statement he made as regards the involvement of Mrs Aisha Buhari, the wife of President Buhari, in the Halliburton scandal, is correct and justified in law; having regards to a court judgement convicting one Mr William Jefferson for bribery in the Halliburton case.Therein, the name of the Presidents wife featured conspicuously. At page 22 of the said judgment delivered by the United States District Court, Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division, USA, in criminal No 1: 07CR209, the said Mr William Jefferson was sentenced at 9.00am on November 13, 2009, by Mark D, Lytle. Your client, Mrs Aisha Buhari, was specifically mentioned in the judgment. The judge referred to Exhibits 36-87 in the following words, for clarification;See also Government Exhibits 36-87 (6/26/02 $170,000 wire transfer from account in Nigeria in the name of Aisha Buhari to an account in the name of The ANJ Group, LLC, identifying William Jefferson as Beneficiary) Given the age of the defendant, the severity of the sentence calculated by the Probation Office, the defendants frequent travel overseas and unexplained wire transfers from overseas locations to financial accounts used by the defendant, the defendant cannot rebut the presumption at sentencing that he is a risk of flight.
Counsel to Governor Ayodele Fayose of Ekiti State, Chief Mike Ozekhome (SAN) has replied the wife of President Mohammadu Buhari, Mrs Aisha...
Counsel to Governor Ayodele Fayose of Ekiti State, Chief Mike Ozekhome (SAN) has replied the wife of President Mohammadu Buhari, Mrs Aisha Buhari through her counsel, Mary Ekpere & Co, justifying the governors claim that Mrs Aisha Buhari was indeed mentioned in the Halliburton scandal.In the letter dated July 8, 2016, Ozekhome affirmed that the statement made regarding the involvement of Mrs Aisha Buhari in the Halliburton scandal was correct and justified in law, having regards to a court judgment convicting one Mr William Jefferson for bribery in the Halliburton case.Counsel to the presidents wife, Mary Ekpere & Co had written a letter dated June 22, 2016, to Governor Fayose, demanding a retraction of the governors statement that the Presidents wife was involved in the Halliburton scandal, threatening a legal action if the retraction was not made within five days.However, Ozekhome said the statement of Governor Fayose was correct and justified, having been factually premised on an existing court judgment.The letter reads; Our client has referred to us your letter dated 22nd June, 2016, on alleged defamation of the character of your client , Her Excellency, Mrs Aisha Buhari, the wife of Muhammadu Buhari, GCFR, with firm instructions to reply to and reject same in its entirety.Our client states and reaffirms categorically that the statement he made as regards the involvement of Mrs Aisha Buhari, the wife of President Buhari, in the Halliburton scandal, is correct and justified in law; having regards to a court judgement convicting one Mr William Jefferson for bribery in the Halliburton case.Therein, the name of the Presidents wife featured conspicuously. At page 22 of the said judgment delivered by the United State District Court, Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division, USA, in criminal No 1: 07CR209, the said Mr William Jefferson was sentenced at 9.00 am on November 13, 2009, by Mark D, Lytle. Your client, Mrs Aisha Buhari was specifically mentioned in the judgment. The judge referred to Exhibits 36-87 in the following words, for clarification;See also Government Exhibits 36-87 (6/26/02 $170,000 wire transfer from account in Nigeria in the name of Aisha Buhari to an account in the name of The ANJ Group, LLC, identifying William Jefferson as Beneficiary) Given the age of the defendant, the severity of the sentence calculated by the Probation Office, the defendants frequent travel overseas and unexplained wire transfers from overseas locations to financial accounts used by the defendant, the defendant cannot rebut the presumption at sentencing that he is a risk of flight.The said Williams Jefferson is currently serving a jail term in the USA and to the best of our clients knowledge; this judgment has not been challenged, or set aside by any Appellate court of law anywhere in the world.The statement of His Excellency, our client, is therefore correct and justified, same having been factually premised on an existing court judgment above referred to.On the immunity enjoyed by Governor Fayose against civil and criminal proceedings, the Senior Advocate of Nigeria said; Your attention is also hereby drawn to Section 308 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999, as altered, on the immunity enjoyed by our client from civil or criminal proceedings for the period that he occupies the office of the governor of Ekiti State.You may therefore advise your client to wait until after 16th October, 2018, when our clients tenure expires. When that happens, we shall join issues with your client in a competent court of law, in the event that your client does not have a change of heart.Meanwhile, the US government recently disclosed that wife of the president, Aisha Buhari has no case to answer in the Halliburton scandal.
Fitch Ratings, one of the three biggest rating agencies in the world, has downgraded two of the biggest banks in Nigeria, at the same time...
Fitch Ratings, one of the three biggest rating agencies in the world, has downgraded two of the biggest banks in Nigeria, at the same time attesting to the viability of all Nigerian banks.Fitch downgraded First Bank and United Bank for Africas (UBA) long-term foreign currency issuer default ratings (IDRs) to B from B+.Though the outlooks are stable, the agency also downgraded the national long-term rating of FBN Holdings Plc (FBNH), the parent holding company of FBN, to BBB+(nga) from A(nga).On the bright side, Fitch affirmed the IDRs of eight other Nigerian commercial banks, while also affirming the viability ratings (VR) of all Nigerian banks.The viability ratings corroborates the stance of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) that no Nigerian bank is in distress.The outlook on the long-term foreign currency IDR of Guaranty Trust Bank (GTB) has been revised to stable, from negative, due to continuing strong earnings and stronger-than-expected liquidity.The senior debt ratings of Zenith, Access (issued via Access Finance BV), GTB (issued via GTB Finance BV), Diamond and Fidelity are affirmed in line with their respective long-term IDRs.The subordinated debt ratings of FBN (issued via FBN Finance BV) and Access are rated one notch below their respective VRs to reflect higher-than-average loss severity for subordinated relative to senior debt.GTBs and Zeniths VRs, which at B+ are the highest in Nigeria, are sensitive to deterioration in their financial profiles, particularly asset quality and foreign currency liquidity.All other banks, apart from Wemas, Support Rating Floors (SRFs) have been affirmed at B. Wemas SRF is affirmed at B-, reflecting Fitchs view of the banks lower systemic importance. Fitch has affirmed the IDRs of all of these banks.Since the last review in February 2016, bank asset quality has continued to weaken with average impaired loans (NPL) ratios of about 6.2% at end-March 2016, although this is skewed by FBNs high NPL ratio of 21.5%.Fitch reports that impairments in banks are increasing in the commercial, trading and manufacturing segments, mainly due to foreign currency depreciation and scarcity.NPLs in the oil sector are also rising, but most of the larger problem loans are being restructured. FBNs high NPL ratio is mainly due to the banks exposure to the downstream oil sector.Sustained low oil prices and continuing production disruptions in the Niger Delta could cause industry NPL ratios to rise more dramatically.It is expected that loan impairments will rise in the wake of the Naira devaluation. Devaluation will primarily affect those Nigerian companies that are not adequately hedged by foreign currency income streams, and which will find it more difficult to service their foreign currency loans at the current exchange rate.The devaluation could also affect customer demand in the domestic economy. Despite slower asset growth and higher loan impairment charges, Fitch expects banks to remain profitable in 2016 due to still strong earnings generation.Also, Fitch expects foreign currency liquidity to remain tight in 2016 despite the new FX regime saying that naira liquidity is satisfactory.
The House of Representatives yesterday directed Inspector General of Police Ibrahim Idris to ensure a thorough investigation of the kill...
The House of Representatives yesterday directed Inspector General of Police Ibrahim Idris to ensure a thorough investigation of the killing of a preacher, Mrs. Eunice Elisha Olawale.She was murdered around Gbazango-West area of Kubwa in the Bwari Area Council of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) while evangelising last Saturday morning.The lawmakers also urged the IGP to ensure that perpetrators of the heinous crime are brought to book.The police on Sunday announced the arrest of six suspects.The resolution of the House followed a motion of urgent national importance by a member, Hon. Babatunde Gabriel Kolawole (APC Ondo).Moving the motion with the title: Gruesome murder of Mrs. Eunice Olawale in Kubwa, Abuja and the need to protect other citizens in the FCT, the lawmaker said the woman and the wife of a pastor of Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG) Pastor Olawale Elisha, was hacked to death in the early hours of Saturday, while preaching the gospel a few meters from her house in Kubwa, by unidentified miscreants.The late Mrs. Eunice Olawale is from Ilawe (Ekiti State) while her husband Pastor Elisha Olawale is from Ikare-Akoko in Ondo state, and that she was allegedly murdered by miscreants who were said to be annoyed by her early morning preaching in the area.This incident has caused ethnic tension in the Federal Capital Territory because some are claiming she was killed by extremists while others say they are miscreants, and there is therefore the need for the House to be proactive to prevent the breakdown of law and order and further loss of. lives.When Speaker Yakubu Dogara called for a vote on the motion, it was overwhelmingly supported by members.The lawmakers thereafter observed a minute-silence for the late Mrs. Olawale.Also yesterday, the General Overseer of the RCCG Pastor Enoch Adejare Adeboye visited the family of the late Assistant Pastor of the Divine Touch Parish of the church in Abuja.Adeboye visited the husband of the deceased, Pastor Olawale Elisha and the family around 6 a.m. to condole with them.He was received by Pastor Olawale, his children and other church members.In the condolence register, Adeboye wrote, E. A Adeboye; Glory to God for a divine warrior gone to glory.Wife of the vice president, Mrs Dolapo Osinbajo, also a pastor of the RCCG, on Sunday visited the family.In a statement yesterday, the RCCG, said the church is appalled and in grief on the sad incident of the gruesome murder of our sister, daughter and minister, Mojisola Elisha Olawale, in the early hours of Saturday the 9th of July 2016 while making early morning call to salvation.We are indeed mournful in RCCG. As sweet as heaven is, death of our youths is not what we wish for.The RCCG shall not cease to pray that God will end bloodshed in Nigeria and all over the world. The church sympathizes with the widower, and prays The Lord will restore joy to the Olawale family and intervene speedily to make the innocent safeIn its statement, the national leadership of the Christian Association of Nigeria, (CAN) described the killing of Christians across some states especially the recent one in Abuja as brutal and unacceptable.CAN said: Authoritys inaction is becoming unbearable and may not be tolerated anymore.It called on Christians all over to always be ready to defend themselves against further attacks.CAN advised authorities both at the states and federal level to do everything possible to bring the perpetrators to justice before the crisis gets out of control.The statement by CAN General Secretary Rev. Musa Asake added: Mrs. Eunice Elisha was murdered in Kubwa area of Abuja, FCT, in the early hours of the day. Her neck was slashed and she was also stabbed in the stomach. About a month ago in Kano, Mrs. Bridget Agbaheme, a 74 year old Christian was murdered at Wambai market due to an altercation with a Muslim man who came to the front of her shop to perform ablution. Her offence was that she objected to the Islamic washing rite in front of her shop.Just last week a clergyman of the Evangelical Church Winning All (ECWA) Reverend Zakariya was killed by attackers suspected to be Fulani Herdsmen in Obi LGA of Nasarawa State.Before the situation escalates into an unmanageable national crisis, the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) is calling on the authorities both at the states and federal to do everything possible to bring the perpetrators to justice if the confidence of Christians on this government must be maintained.
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) says Ayodele Fayose, governor of Ekiti state, cannot determine how it operates.
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) says Ayodele Fayose, governor of Ekiti state, cannot determine how it operates.Wilson Uwujaren said this in response to inquiries by newsmen on Fayoses accusation that the agency is fighting its anti-graft war through trial and error.I will not respond to that because Fayose has no business with how the EFCC runs its operation, Uwujaren told reporters.The governor had alleged that operatives of the commission had stormed the hotel where he lodges in Abuja, which they felt belonged to him, with the intention of sealing it, only to discover that it belongs to a retired military officer.Officials of the EFCC stormed a popular Guest House on Gana Street, Maitama, Abuja to seal off the property believing that Governor Fayose owned the Guest House only for the EFCC officials to be confronted with the fact that operator of the Guest House leased the property from its owner for ten years, read a statement issued on the governors behalf by Lere Olayinka, his spokesman.It was at the point of sealing off the property that the owner of the Guest House told the EFCC officials that he only leased the property for ten years from its owner, a former chief of defence staff, who was also a one-time minister of defence.The EFCC operatives moved to the next building to the guest house, which is the residence of the retired army general and they were told by the generals wife that the building being used as guest house as well the one next to it belonged to the general and not Governor Fayose.It is shocking that in its desperate bid to nail Governor Fayose so as to satisfy their paymasters, EFCC is going about claiming that properties owned by other law abiding Nigerians are owned by the governor and the result of this investigation by trial and error by the EFCC is the embarrassment it faced at Gana Street, Maitama.That was the same way they told Nigerians that they discovered mansion in Asokoro, Abuja owned by the governor. Unknown to the EFCC, the mansion being referred to is a property rented by the Ekiti state government and being used as governors lodge.Fayose has been increasingly critical of the EFcc since last month when his personal accounts with Zenith Bank were frozen.
Slovakia defender Martin Skrtel has passed a medical with Fenerbahce ahead of his proposed move from Liverpool, the Turkish club have confirmed.The 31-year-old defender, who had been at Anfield for eight-and-a-half years, passed a medical on Wednesday morning.Skrtel made 319 appearances for Liverpool and scored 18 times for the club, including a goal in the 2012 League Cup final victory over Cardiff at Wembley.He played in all four matches for his country at Euro 2016, where Slovakia lost in the second round to Germany.Prior to his 6m move to Liverpool in 2008, Skrtel played for four years in Russia with Zenit Saint Petersburg.
The Niger Delta Avengers, NDA, which vowed on Monday to continue to obstruct all avenues by President Muhammadu Buhari to export crude oi...
The Niger Delta Avengers, NDA, which vowed on Monday to continue to obstruct all avenues by President Muhammadu Buhari to export crude oil because of his refusal to address its demands, blew up the Qua Iboe 48-inch oil crude oil export line belonging to Exxon Mobil in Akwa Ibom State in defiance of him.Que Iboe returned to operation after a month long force majeure in June, buoyed by the now aborted ceasefire between the Niger Delta Avengers and government, but the militant group, which claimed responsibility for the attack, wondered why the International Oil Companies deceive themselves with governments false sense of security.Spokesperson of the group, self-styled Gen. Murdoch Agbinibo, said: At 7:30p.m., the Niger Delta Avengers blew up ExxonMobil Qua Iboe 483 crude oil export pipeline. When will these International Oil companies learn to listen, we (Avengers) said no export. Qua Iboe which crude oil grade stood at a $0.90 per barrel premium had witnessed strong trade interest since the release of its provisional August programme on June 27.Same day, Shell Petroleum Development Company, SPDC, shut down the Trans Niger Pipeline, one of the two major pipelines that carries the Bonny Light crude grade for export following an outflow in Gio, Ogoni land, Rivers State. The company had only last week resumed export on the pipeline after almost two months of force majeure, following the restoration of production to Bonny Terminal.Officials said the company was working on a joint investigation into the leak on Trans Niger Pipeline. However, the militant group, which said it was closely monitoring repairs on damaged pipelines, attacked the Nembe 1, 2 and 3 Tedeba Brass trunk lines in Bayelsa and Rivers states on June 8, after the company carried out repairs on leaking Nembe Creek Trunk Line, NCTL. It also bombed the Forcados 48-inch Crude Export Terminal in Delta State afresh, last month, because Shell flouted its order not to carry out repairs of any sort on its installations damaged by the militant group until government addressed its demands.Series of deliberate attacks on facilities of Chevron Nigeria Limited and Nigeria Agip Oil Company, by the militant group to stall export had also hampered oil production by the companies. it was learned that the gain of the temporal ceasefire by militants, which saw an increase in oil export, has disappeared with the recent attacks.The militant group, it will be recalled had said: Until President Buhari takes our demands seriously and set up a genuine framework to address the Niger Delta question, we will continue to obstruct all avenues to export our crude oil to develop his 97 per cent (95 per cent). In fact, whenever we have any contact to establish a genuine negotiation and dialogue, we will not hesitate to let the world know that we are in dialogue with the government and her representatives.The armed forces are reportedly considering the next line of attack against the Avengers. The Chief of Army Staff, Lt-Gen Tukur Burutai, and other security chiefs are not disposed to dialogue with militants. They are supposedly mobilizing for a combined fresh offensive by all the relevant security agencies.
Three militant groups Niger Delta Volunteers, Niger Delta Peoples Liberation Movement, and Bakassi Freedom Fighters have criticised ...
Three militant groups Niger Delta Volunteers, Niger Delta Peoples Liberation Movement, and Bakassi Freedom Fighters have criticised Vice President Yemi Osinbajo saying that militants were fighting for their pockets.Osinbajo had reportedly accused the militants of being partly responsible for the economic woes of the country, while delivering a lecture at Elizade University in Ondo State.The militant groups, however, said instead of ridiculing them, the vice president should have advised President Muhammadu Buhari to address the injustice in the Niger Delta.They made their grievances known in a statement signed by their spokespersons Ekpo Ekpo for NDV; Henry Etete for NDPLF and Asukwo Henshaw for BFF.In the statement, which was made available to journalists in Uyo on Tuesday, the militant groups also criticised Buhari for saying that Nigerias unity was not negotiable.They added that the people of the Niger Delta were tired of one Nigeria filled with injustice, marginalisation and oppression minority ethnic groups.As a result, they vowed to resume attacks against oil companies operating in the region and they urged oil unions to withdraw their members from rigs and platforms for their safety during the period.The groups also condemned the newly constituted Board of the Nigeria National Petroleum Company and demanded the appointment of someone from the Niger Delta as GMD.It is an insult on the Niger Delta region that the Minister of Petroleum who also doubles as the President of Nigeria is from the North, the Group Managing Director, Dr. Maikanti Baru and four other members of the board are also from the North, they said.Furthermore, the group asked the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission to investigate what happens to local government funds in Akwa Ibom State.This, they said, was because in the past one year there local government area in the state had carried out people-oriented projects.
Super Eagles midfielder John Ogu made a scoring UEFA Champions League debut for Hapoel Beer Sheva who defeated FC Sheriff 3-2 at the Vasermil Stadium in Tuesdays first leg second qualifying round clash.The Nigerian midfielder drew his side level in the 43rd minute when he fired in a shot past Bozhidar Mitrev into the right corner for his first-ever European goal.This was after Josip Ivancic had stunned the hosts with a 22nd minute opener.Elyaniv Barda had put the Israeli champions into the lead from the penalty spot but the lead didnt last long as Sheriffs Josip Brezovec pegged The Camels back in the 64th minute.But Maharan Radi sealed the victory for Hapoel Beer Sheva in stoppage time from the spot. Ogus compatriot, Anthony Nwakaeme, was also on from start to finish in the encounter.Read Also: Best Foreign Player Award Excites Ogu, Targets Israeli League TitleAt the Victoria Stadium in Gibraltar, Efe Ambrose suffered a defeat in his first start of the new 2016/17 campaign for Celtic as they lost 1-0 to Gibraltars champions Lincoln Red Imps at the Victoria Stadium in Tuesday nights second qualifying round Champions League match.A 48th minute goal from Lee Casciaro gave hosts Lincoln Red Imps a lifeline going into the second leg in Scotland next week.The Nigerian international was cautioned in the 10th minute of the encounter.Lincoln Red Imps who have won 14 consecutive domestic titles beat Flora Tallinn in the previous round but have never progressed past the second qualifying round.
The Ogun State Government on Wednesday announced the immediate removal of a Commissioner in the State Civil Service Commission, Mr. Ebene...
The Ogun State Government on Wednesday announced the immediate removal of a Commissioner in the State Civil Service Commission, Mr. Ebenezer Olubena, over acts of misconduct.The Secretary to the State Government, Mr. Taiwo Adeoluwa, disclosed the commissioners sack in a statement released in Abeokuta, the state capital.Adeoluwa said the removal was in accordance with extant laws.The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that Olubena was directed to hand over all government property and documents in his possession to the Permanent Secretary at the Commission.
A former President of the Christian Association of Nigeria, CAN, and Catholic Archbishop of Lagos, Anthony Cardinal Okogie, has alerted ...
A former President of the Christian Association of Nigeria, CAN, and Catholic Archbishop of Lagos, Anthony Cardinal Okogie, has alerted Christians nationwide of the danger of preaching in hostile areas.Commiserating with the family of female evangelist, Mrs Eunice Elisha, who was murdered in Bazango, Kubwa area of the FCT last Saturday, Okogie warned all Christians to apply wisdom whenever they have reasons to preach the gospel in hospitable environments.Okogie said he would not assume that the killing was carried out by Muslims, urging the Federal Government to provide adequate security for every Nigerian citizen irrespective of religion and ethnicity.Okogie appealed to Christians to refrain from any act of vengeance.God says vengeance belongs to Him and no man should assist God to fight His battle, he said.
Paul Pogba has agreed to join Manchester United, according to reports.Spanish daily Marca say that the Juventus midfielder has given the thumbs up to the Red Devils' proposal.He will earn 10.8m-a-year on a five-season deal, according to the paper.Real Madrid had shown an interest in the 23-year-old but United look to have won the race.Pogba has apparently told his team of advisors - including agent Mino Raiola - that he wants to join United with Madrid as the only other team he would consider joining.Raiola was widely expected to be set for a bumper payment for his role in making the deal happen but Marca say that would be because he owns 20% of the player's rights, rather than a fee.That means he will bank around 20m from the 100m transfer fee leaving Juventus with the other 80m.The transfer will make the Frenchman the world's most-expensive player after he left Old Trafford for just 800,000 in compensation four years ago.His 100m deal eclipses Gareth Bale's 86m move from Tottenham to Real Madrid in 2013.Source: Marca
Nigeria is indeed a complex country with well over 350 ethnic groups straddling the 37 states including the federal capital territory.
Nigeria is indeed a complex country with well over 350 ethnic groups straddling the 37 states including the federal capital territory.It is not an easy task governing a country like Nigeria. This is where I empathize with President Muhammadu Buhari. But again, he signed for it, and it should ordinarily not be a surprise if he is overwhelmed with the myriads of challenges confronting us as a people.In recent times, there have been calls for a break-up of Nigeria by various interest groups. And in truth, the agitations have been strongly resonating from the creeks of the Niger Delta region and the valleys in the South East region. They all have come out with one demand. Break up Nigeria.The complexity inherent in the Nigerian state is not something that can be wished away with a whisker because of certain factors. One of such factors is politics. In truth, the outcome of the last presidential elections is somewhat a significant element in the recent agitations most political analyst would allude. Former President Goodluck Jonathan was defeated in a very free and fair contest; he accepted defeat. But his kinsmen from the Niger Delta region have refused to agree on the reality. They felt their son was cheated. A willing ally in the South East suddenly remembered that their pride of place in the Nigerian setting was no longer guaranteed because Ebele is no longer president. Hence they must all leave for a non-existent Biafra. Most of the agitators didnt experience the civil war and as such their ignorance should be forgiven.These and much more are the various undercurrents rocking the boat called Nigeria and by extension the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari which is barely one year gone and has recorded giant strides in the areas of insecurity, and management of our scarce resources. And of course the restoration of law and order in a country where before now, one individual can decide to dip hands into government coffers and allocated billions of naira to himself without any question, while our brothers and sisters in the North East were displaced by insurgents and rendered homeless despite voting large sums of monies for that purpose. Then Nigeria wasnt good enough for the division because the milk of Ebeles kindness flowed freely at our collective detriment.God bless President Buhari! And I want to appeal to our brothers and sisters that have suddenly realized that dividing Nigeria is the best option to have a strategic rethink and allow their conscience prick them. For some of us, there is no place called home except Nigeria because creation is always harder than destruction, and greed easier than greatness. And just like President Buhari rightly stated, Nigerias unity is non-negotiable. And there cant be anything farther than that.What is the way forward for Nigeria? President Buhari must be given all the support he needs at this critical point of our existence. For once we are beginning to experience a new lease of life in a setting where impunity and outright theft of public funds are highly prohibited. For once we can boldly say Nigeria is no longer a banana republic where anything goes. But for the activities of a group of people that are blinded by crass ignorance not to see their actions as not only inimical but senseless in all ramification. If you continue to blow up pipelines and destroy our economic infrastructures on a daily basis, of what benefit is that? What are you avenging? And on whose behalf? It is estimated that Nigeria loses about N1.3 billion daily because of the attack on oil pipelines and other economic infrastructures. Are we that confused as a people? Imagine what such an amount can do for us in the face of dire economic crisis? This is untoward a huge distraction. The government has called for dialogue as a responsible way of resolving whatever the issue is, but it hasnt yielded any tangible result because the Avengers as they call themselves dont even know why they are blowing up pipelines and attacking other economic infrastructures.I stand to be corrected; President Muhammadu Buhari has performed creditably well since he assumed leadership of the country. In no particular order, I will list some of the outstanding achievements. There is a great reduction is the size of government administration, monies more than three trillion Naira which would otherwise have been wasted or shared out to officials at the end of the financial year have been saved with the full implementation of the Treasury Single Account (TSA). There is also the restoration of diplomatic relationships between Nigeria and the rest of the world made possible by the various foreign trips the President has embarked on in the last one year, One million of the countrys poorest of the poor will get a monthly supplement of N5,000.00. Another one million will get start-up loans from the Bank of Industry, Boko Haram insurgents have been decimated and no longer in control of any territory, and the sustained war against corruption and much more.I am convinced more can be done towards restoring our greatness as a country. And this is where it behooves on all well-meaning citizens to speak in one voice against those who do not wish us well with their actions and words. We cant continue to see those whom through their actions are enemies of Nigeria continue to distract the president. For them, Nigeria must fail, but for us, Nigeria must succeed. We also need to remind them that there are consequences for our every actions and inaction and the earlier they retrace their steps and join the progress train, the better for them. We have to give our unalloyed support to President Buhari.There is just one message that is stronger than all other whispers. The unity of Nigeria is non-negotiable! And so shall it be by Gods grace.By Philip AgbeseAgbese is Coordinator, Stand Up Nigeria (SUN), a civil rights group based in the United Kingdom and contributed this piece from London.
President Muhammadu Buhari has said that security situation has improved in the country since he took over the mantle of leadership. B...
President Muhammadu Buhari has said that security situation has improved in the country since he took over the mantle of leadership.Buhari said the situation would continue to improve under his leadership. The President stated this on Wednesday in Wanke village in Gusau Local Government Area of Zamfara during a one-day working visit to the state.He expressed confidence in the ability of the Nigerian security agencies to contain any form of terrorism in any part of the country. He also said that the Federal Government, through its micro economic and monetary policies of the Central Bank, would soon revitalise the nations economic sector. President Buhari said that part of his visit to the state was to encourage the military that were currently in the state for the 2016 Nigerian Army Day celebration.He said this years event aimed partly to root out cattle rustlers and armed bandits in the state as well as in neighbouring states of Kaduna, Kebbi, Katsina and Sokoto. Earlier, Gov. AbdulAziz Yari said the president had rekindled the hopes of Nigerians through his policies and programmes.In order to complement the Federal Governments efforts to address security issues in the state, more access roads have been opened to ease the operations of security agents. It is only when the fight against criminals is won that the states economy can improve,Yari said. He appealed to the Federal Government to continue to come up with meaningful programmes that would be replicated by the states for the benefit of Nigerians.
Shell be the U.K.s second woman prime minister, after Margaret Thatcher.
Theresa May will take over the job of British prime minister from David Cameron on Wednesday after a series of political shocks caused by Britains vote to leave the European Union.May, who has been interior minister for six years and is seen by her supporters as a safe pair of hands to steer Britain through the disruptive process of leaving the EU, will become Britains second woman prime minister, after Margaret Thatcher.Cameron, who led the campaign to remain in the 28-member bloc Britain had joined in 1973, announced the morning after the June 23 referendum that he would stand down, triggering a leadership contest in the ruling Conservative Party.The contest had been due to last until September but ended unexpectedly on Monday when junior energy minister Andrea Leadsom, Mays last rival candidate after others were eliminated, abruptly pulled out.After taking part in his last weekly session of Prime Ministers Questions (PMQs) in parliaments House of Commons at lunchtime, Cameron will make his way to Buckingham Palace to tender his resignation to Queen Elizabeth.May will then enter Number 10 Downing Street as prime minister before the end of the day.She is expected to immediately start putting together a new cabinet, a complex political balancing act in which she will try and satisfy opposing camps in her party, which was bitterly split over the EU issue.Before the referendum, May had campaigned for Britain to remain in the EU, albeit in a low-key fashion. Since the vote, she has repeatedly said that Brexit means Brexit and her backers say she is determined to make the exit a success.Despite pressure from other EU capitals to quickly start negotiating the terms of Britains exit, May has said she would not be rushed into triggering article 50 of the EUs Lisbon Treaty, the formal step that will kickstart the process.She is expected to promote women ministers to several senior roles, and Camerons long-serving finance minister George Osborne could lose his job, according to media reports.PMQs is usually a rowdy event, involving combative exchanges between Cameron and the leader of the main opposition Labour Party while lawmakers from both parties boo and cheer.But with Cameron on his last day in the job and Labour mired in a profound crisis, the atmosphere at this PMQs is likely to be very unusual.After months of simmering discontent among Labour lawmakers with party leader Jeremy Corbyn, the conflict exploded into the open after the referendum when the vast majority of the lawmakers rejected his leadership. He is being challenged for the job by lawmaker Angela Eagle.Corbyn has clung to his job, citing support from the party grassroots, and the 116-year-old party is now locked in a bitter power tussle that risks destroying it.
At a memorial for slain police officers, US President Barack Obama declared that a week of deeply troubling violence has seemed to expose...
At a memorial for slain police officers, US President Barack Obama declared that a week of deeply troubling violence has seemed to expose "the deepest fault lines of our democracy."But he insisted the US is not as divided as it seems and called on Americans to find common ground in support of racial equity and justice.Obama acknowledged that Americans are unsettled by another mass shooting and are seeking answers to the violence that has sparked protests in cities and highlighted the nation's persistent racial divide.Five Dallas officers were killed last Thursday (local time) while standing guard as hundreds of people protested the police killings of black men in Louisiana and Minnesota earlier in the week."It's hard not to think sometimes that the centre might not hold, that things might get worse," Obama said. "We must reject such despair."He joined politicians, police officers and families of the fallen in the wake of the shocking slayings by a black man who said he wanted revenge for the killings of African-Americans by police."The soul of our city was pierced," Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings said as he welcomed Obama to the memorial service.It was organised to help combat "a common disease" of violence and honour those who fight it, "our men and women in blue, our peacemakers in blue."Rawlings spoke steps from five empty chairs and portraits of the dead officers.A call for national unity and solidarity was reinforced by several speakers at the interfaith service, including former President George W Bush, a Dallas resident, who attended with his wife, Laura."At times it feels like the forces pulling us apart are stronger than the forces binding us together," Bush said."Too often we judge other groups by their worst examples, while judging ourselves by our best intentions. And this has strained our bonds of understanding and common purpose.""We want the unity of hope, affection and higher purpose," he said.Obama has denounced the shooting as a "vicious, calculated and despicable attack on law enforcement" by a "demented" individual. And he has argued that, despite the heated public outcry of the past week, the country is not as divided as it may seem.Obama's choice of travelling companions underscored the theme.Republican Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi of California joined Obama on Air Force One for the flight to Dallas.Republican Senator John Cornyn of Texas spoke at the service but did not travel with the president.He said the attack was deeply personal."Being a Texan doesn't describe where you're from, it describes who your family is," the senator said.The White House said the president worked late into the night writing his speech and consulting scripture for inspiration.Just a few weeks ago, Obama spent hours in Orlando, Florida, consoling the loved ones of 49 people who were killed in a shooting rampage at a nightclub.The Dallas attack ended with the gunman, Micah Johnson, 25, blown up by a bomb delivered by a police robot.The African-American Army veteran portrayed his attack on the officers as payback for the fatal police shootings of black men in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and suburban Minneapolis.Portions of both shootings were videotaped and broadcast nationwide, leading to fresh outrage, protests and scores of arrests.The killings also put the country on edge, heightened racial tensions and pushed the issue of the use of deadly force against black males by white police to the forefront.Obama sought to begin bridging those issues with his tribute to the fallen five, who included a former Army Ranger, a Navy veteran and a newlywed starting a second family.Some police officials blame the president for the rise in racial tension, saying he is insufficiently supportive of law enforcement.In comments since the Dallas shooting, Obama has urged the public to recognize and respect that police officers have a tough job.Meanwhile, he has been criticised by others for going to Dallas before visiting Louisiana or Minnesota.As Obama landed in Dallas, spokesman Josh Earnest said the president had telephoned the families of Alton Sterling, the man shot by police in Baton Rouge, and Philando Castile, the Minnesota motorist shot by an officer, to offer his and the first lady's condolences.Obama included references to both men in his remarks at the service.The Obamas, the Bushes, Vice President Joe Biden and his wife, Jill, and other officials on stage held hands in a show of unity as the service was brought to a close with "The Battle Hymn of the Republic."Audience members also clasped hands during the patriotic song.Before walking offstage, Obama, Michelle Obama, Bush and Laura Bush turned and applauded the audience of uniformed police officers.The Obamas and the Bidens were also meeting privately with families of the slain officers and those who were wounded.At least nine other officers and two civilians were injured in the attack.- AP
The Emir of Kano, Alhaji Muhammadu Sanusi II, on Tuesday said the Hausa Community in Kano had no axe to grind with the Igbo, stressing th...
The Emir of Kano, Alhaji Muhammadu Sanusi II, on Tuesday said the Hausa Community in Kano had no axe to grind with the Igbo, stressing that Kano had for decades been accommodating and still accommodates Ndigbo without grudge, animosity and rancour.Addressing members of the Abia State Council of Chiefs, led by its Chairman, Mr. Ebere Chidik, Sanusi said the time had come for both communities to appreciate the peculiar interest of each other, adding that there was no justifiable basis for the two communities to antagonise one another.According to him, all the misapprehension, animosity and rancour were the handiwork of rabble-rousers, whose intention was to cause disaffection in a cosmopolitan city, like Kano.He stressed that Ndigbo have been embraced and treated equally in virtually all spheres of human endeavour.He also said Ndigbo have since carved a niche in all spheres of business endeavour in the commercial city of Kano, affirming that if their host community had been hostile, they would have found it difficult to co-exist.Responding, the Chairman, Abia State Council of Chiefs, Mr. Ebere Chidik, said they were at the palace to pay a special homage to the monarch, as well as to express their appreciation for his role in dousing tension and peacefully resolving the dispute.
Ibrahim Magu, acting chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), says the anti-graft agency will soon go after senior...
Ibrahim Magu, acting chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), says the anti-graft agency will soon go after senior lawyers who aid and abet financial and economic crimes.He said this at the opening of a one-day workshop organised by the Nigeria Bar Association (NBA) in collaboration with the Presidential Advisory Committee against Corruption (PACC) at the Rockview hotel in Abuja on Tuesday.According to a statement issued by Wilson Uwujaren, EFCC spokesman, Magu said at the workshop that the EFCC could not stamp out corruption in the country without the support of all stakeholders.We consider everybody a stakeholder, as the EFCC does not have monopoly of knowledge to defeat all shades of graft, he said.The anti-graft czar urged legal practitioners to always play by the rule and avoid being used by corrupt elements to pervert justice, adding that what is important is the interest of the nation which should be placed above any other interest.Magu, who commended the bar for being good partners in the fight against graft, however decried the attitudes of some lawyers who compromise on their jobs for criminals to escape justice. He added that lawyers have a greater stake in the war more than any other class of professional.In reiterating his commitment towards fighting money laundering, the EFCC boss warned that, we will not stop going after people who are involved in laundering money.It doesnt matter who you are, the law is a respecter of nobody especially those who commit crime, he said.Whether you are EFCC, SAN or whatever, sooner or later we will start going after people who buy properties with stolen funds as well as people who help others to escape justice.In his keynote address, the chief justice of Nigeria (CJN) Justice Mahmud Mohammed urged members of the bar to examine themselves with a view to develop workable ways to curb corruption.Mohammed, who spoke through Justice Kudirat Kekere-Ekun, charged them to look inward as individuals in the system, and collectively as a body to improve the legal system.You have a role to play as an individual and it is when we all change our attitude that we can see it reflected in the society. No doubt, the legal profession is crucial in the maintenance of a high quality of justice delivery within the justice system and such success or failure of our fight against corruption will depend on our willingness to take the right ethical path, the CJN said.
EMERSON -- The owner of Just Pups agreed to close his Kinderkamack store Wednesday after the borough council voted against renewing his business license, the Daily Voice reported.
Vincent LoSacco had kept the store open past June 30, when his license expired.
Just Pups locations in Paramus and East Brunswick closed earlier this year after authorities charged him with a combined 401 counts of animal cruelty. Police found more than 60 puppies left unattended in small crates in a cold van outside the Paramus store.
The council voted unanimously after a six-hour hearing that ended just before 1 a.m. Wednesday.
LoSacco still faces code violations Thursday in Emerson Municipal Court. The dogs from the Emerson store will go to the Just Pups location in East Hanover or a local rescue, Mayor Lou Lamatina said.
Myles Ma may be reached at mma@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @MylesMaNJ. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
NORTH WILDWOOD -- The casket flag that was taken from the residence of a fallen sailor's family has been located, according to Philly.com.
The flag, which was stolen from the Corcoran's home in Wildwood, is flown only once a year on Independence Day in remembrance of Patrick Corcoran, who was killed in 1969 when the Navy ship he was on collided with an Australian aircraft carrier. He was one of 74 sailors lost that day and his body was never recovered.
The stolen flag was the one placed on Patrick's casket at his funeral service.
"We have nothing of Patrick's," Tom Corcoran said in a press conference. "The connection to our brother Patrick is the flag."
Thankfully, according to Philly.com, an unidentified woman returned the flag to one of the Corcoran's neighbors. The family is not looking to press charges on the woman.
Caitlyn Stulpin may be reached at cstulpin@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @caitstulpin. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
When Taylor Hall was traded to the Devils in June, he knew he would have one tough decision to make when he arrived in Newark.
What jersey number would he wear?
Hall sported No. 4 with the Edmonton Oilers, and since that number is retired by the Devils in honor of Scott Stevens, he needed a new one.
That decision was made official on Wednesday, with Hall making the move to No. 9.
Stitched a Taylor Made jersey for @Hallsy04! Here's the new number he'll debut in Jersey pic.twitter.com/GfHnBCt4SG NJD Equipment Staff (@NJDSk8Guy) July 13, 2016
Chris Ryan may be reached at cryan@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @ChrisRyan_NJ. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
TRENTON -- New Jersey school districts that have yet to test their drinking water for lead will be required to do so within one year under new state regulations going into effect this week.
The testing rules, passed by the state Board of Education on Wednesday, will also require all school districts to test their water used for drinking and cooking at least once every six years.
Districts that test within 365 days will be eligible for state reimbursement through $10 million allocated for water testing in the state budget.
"The health, safety and welfare of the children in the state are of the utmost importance," Education Commissioner David Hespe wrote in a memo to the board. "The potential expose to lead-contaminated drinking water poses serious health problems, particularly for children."
The regulations were ordered by Gov. Chris Christie and fast-tracked through the state board's approval process after elevated lead levels were found in the water at several districts, including Newark Public Schools, last school year.
Even at low degrees of exposure, lead can affect a child's intelligence, ability to pay attention and academic achievement, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
A NJ Advance Media survey of 50 school districts conducted in April found that some schools had not tested the water coming out of their fountains and faucets for decades, dating as far back as 1993, prior to testing this spring.
Any districts that has tested its water in the past five years will be eligible to apply for a waiver from the mandate that schools test this year, according to the new regulations.
However, those districts will not receive any reimbursement from the state for tests that have already been conducted.
Districts will be required to make all future test results publicly available and must notify parents if testing reveals lead levels higher than the CDC recommendation, according to the regulations.
Adam Clark may be reached at adam_clark@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on twitter at @realAdamClark. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
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Ice-T headlines the Art of Rap festival, which has been canceled in Austin and Dallas. (Mahala Gaylord/The Star-Ledger)
Ice-T and Public Enemy were among the hip-hop acts scheduled to take the stage in Dallas and Austin this week to open the Art of Rap festival. But now, on the heels of the shooting deaths of several police officers, both of the shows have been canceled.
Ice-T, 58, a Newark native born Tracy Marrow who lives in Edgewater, tweeted Wednesday that promoters canceled the shows "because of the recent drama."
"It's out of our control," he told a fan. "Sorry."
He did not specify the recent shooting deaths of five police officers in Dallas as a possible factor in the decision to cancel the shows, but acknowledged that one particular theme of his songs, as well as music from Public Enemy, may have played a role.
"Ice T and Chuck D," a fan tweeted. "On stage together, you know they scared! #RealHipHop."
"Yes," Ice-T tweeted, in reply. "That scares people."
The Promoters canceled the ArtOfRap concerts in Texas because of the recent drama. It's out of our control. Sorry https://t.co/nT2zArBXJ2 -- ICE T (@FINALLEVEL) July 13, 2016
The song "Cop Killer" by Ice-T's metal band Body Count, written as a response to police brutality and dedicated to the Los Angeles Police Department, caused controversy when it was released in 1992. The song was condemned by Tipper Gore, co-founder of the watchdog group Parents Music Resource Center, and Ice-T eventually pulled the track from the group's first album.
Public Enemy takes on the authorities in "Fight the Power" (1989), the soundtrack to Spike Lee's "Do the Right Thing" and the paramedics in "911 is a Joke" (1990).
In addition to Ice-T and Public Enemy, East Orange's Naughty by Nature, which is celebrating the 25th anniversary of its first album, and Englewood's Sugarhill Gang were on the bill for the show, officially called "SiriusXM Backspin Presents The Art of Rap Festival," at Gexa Energy Pavilion in Dallas on July 16. Other scheduled acts were MC Lyte, Grandmaster's Furious Five, Mobb Deep, Kurtis Blow, EPMD and Busy Bee. The festival show at the Austin360 Amphitheater on July 17 was also scheduled to feature Grandmaster Melle Mel, Scorpio and Doug E. Fresh.
Event pages for the concerts now simply say that ticket refunds are available and the dates have been completely scrubbed from the Art of Rap website.
The Dallas Morning News reports that promoter Live Nation has given no reason so far for the cancellation of the shows.
In the wake of the Dallas shooting, a photo of Micah Xavier Johnson, the gunman who fatally shot five police officers, was circulated that saw him posing next to Professor Griff, a former member of Public Enemy who was not scheduled to perform at the Texas shows. Griff said he does not know Johnson.
"I will not sit back and let these people assassinate my character and tie me to the Dallas shootings," he tweeted.
Ice-T produced the 2012 documentary "Something from Nothing: The Art of Rap," and hosted a smaller Art of Rap music festival last year in California, featuring hip-hop pioneers like Big Daddy Kane, Slick Rick and Afrika Bambaataa.
Art of Rap shows for Los Angeles, Las Vegas, San Francisco, Brooklyn, Atlanta, Toledo, Ohio, Tinley Park, Ill. and Sterling Heights, Mich. are still listed on the concert's website.
Amy Kuperinsky may be reached at akuperinsky@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @AmyKup or on Facebook.
You don't have to move to the country to eat a lot of peaches. Now that peach season is underway in New Jersey, you too, can enjoy local peaches -- in your hand, or can, or a pie.
The New Jersey Peach Promotion Council has sounded the peach alarm for a variety of peach-themed contests and festivals at markets and farms across the state.
For those who have a sweet thumb, the council is sponsoring a Perfect Peach Pie (or cobbler) contest, held at a series of local farmers' markets. Winners will compete for two $300 cash prizes in South Jersey and North Jersey.
Peach pie perfectionists will present their peachy pieces at farmers' markets and peach festivals across the state. (New Jersey Peach Promotion Council)
See the list below for a selection of peachy offerings. And to find places to pick your own peaches in New Jersey, see our list (always call ahead to confirm) or Jersey Fresh.
Peach festivals and events:
Bernardsville Famers' Market (Route 202/Claremont Road) hosts a Peach Party from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on July 16, with fresh peach drawing, peach cobbler, and free peach ice cream;
Margate Community Farmers' Market (9700 Amherst Avenue), hosts the Perfect Peach Pie amateur baking contest and peach tastings at 10 a.m. on July 21;
Downtown Wildwood Farmers' Market's (Pacific and Schellenger avenues) peach celebration starts at 10 a.m. on July 23, with fresh peaches and peach pound cake, pie and soap;
ShopRite of Marlton (307 W. Route 70) and ShopRite of Evesham Road in Cherry Hill (400 E. Evesham Road) host their peach festivals from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on July 23.
Edison Farmers' Market hosts a peach party and pie contest from 10 a.m. to noon on July 24;
Salem Farmers' Market (West Broadway) has a peach cobbler contest and peach celebration from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on July 29;
Burlington County Farmers' Market (500 Centerton Road in Moorestown) hosts a peach festival on July 30 with peach ice cream, pie, baskets, salsa and plenty of local peaches. There will be a peach-themed cooking demonstration at 10 a.m.;
Hammonton's Downtown Market (lot at 209 Vine St.) has its peach party and pie contest from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. on July 30 with peach pancakes, cannoli, jam, waffles and games;
Chatham Borough Farmers' Market
A winning peach pie entry from the Hunterdon Land Trust Farmers' Market. (New Jersey Peach Promotion Council)
On August 6, Community Presbyterian Church in Chester (220 Main St.) has a peach festival, with pie, cobbler, jelly, jam and relishes, starting at 10 a.m. with a country auction;
Terhune Orchards (330 Cold Soil Road) in Lawrence Township hosts its
Alstede Farms in Chester (1 Alstede Farms Lane) hosts its peach festival from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. on July 30 and 31, August 6 and 7 and August 13 and 14, with peach ice cream, pie, smoothies, hayrides and pick-your-own peaches;
Collingswood Farmers' Market (between Collings and Irvin avenues) will have its Just Peachy
Nutley Farmers' Market
Ramsey Farmers' Market (73 Elbert Court) has its peach festival, pie contest, demonstrations and crafts from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. on August 7;
Riverview Farmers' Market in the Jersey City Heights (Riverview-Fisk Park on Ogden Avenue between Griffith and Bowers) hosts a peach party and pie contest from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on August 21;
The Women's Community Club of Cape May hosts its 41st Peach Festival from 8:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. on August 12 at
Boonton Farmers' Market (620 Main St.) has its peach party and craft fair from 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. on August 13;
Brigantine Farmers' Market
West Windsor Community Farmers' Market (Vaughn Drive lot at Princeton Junction train station) has a peach party and pie contest with live music and vendors from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on August 13;
Montclair Farmers' Market (Walnut Street train station) hosts its peach party from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. on August 20, with peach tastings, recipes and quizzes;
Pennington Farmers' Market (101 Route 31 North at Rosedale Mills) celebrates peaches from 9 a.m to 1 p.m. on August 20 with recipes and a cooking competition;
Amy Kuperinsky may be reached at akuperinsky@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @AmyKup or on Facebook.
Cheryl Liu-Lien Tan, whose latest novel "Sarong Party Girls" is grabbing attention as one of summer's hot reads, is speaking at Words bookstore, 179 Maplewood Ave., Thursday, July 14, at 7:30 p.m.
Set in Singapore, the book is written entirely in "Singlish" a patois of English with Malay, Mandarin and various Chinese dialects.
It chronicles, Jazzy, 27, maneuvering her way through the materialistic circles in Singapore where old mores clash with the new. The book takes a deep look at sarong party girls, Asian women who want to marry white men.
Jazzy has decided that she and her best pals should marry within a year. And not just any husbands will do but they must have fabulously rich Western husbands. And Jazzy is one very determined woman.
"But it's true that Singaporean men are a bit fussy - especially when it comes to older girls. But luckily for us, we still have one big hope: ang moh guys. That's what we need to be thinking about. These white guys - they really catch no ball about Asian ages. Us twenty-something-year-old Asian girls, if you wear a tight tight dress or short short skirt, these angh mohs will still steam over you. (Some of them even go for the really old ones - thirty-year-old women also have chance!)
Tan, a journalist who has written for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and others also wrote "A Tiger in the Kitchen: A Memoir of Food and Family."
-- A Newark man was arrested in the hit-and-run death of an artist and longtime Verona business owner, who was
last month, authorities said Wednesday.
Jose A. Asencio, 44, is charged with leaving the scene of an accident causing death, Acting Essex County Prosecutor Carolyn Murray and Verona Police Chief Mitchell Stern announced in a statement.
Asencio was driving a Ford van when the vehicle struck Matthew BeneduceMcGrath on June 24 around 9:30 p.m. at Bloomfield Avenue and Hillcrest Terrace, according to authorities. Emergency services rushed BeneduceMcGrath, 59, to University Hospital, where was pronounced dead about 30 minutes later.
Investigators collected surveillance footage that identified the light colored van, the prosecutor's office said. Authorities also released still images from a police car dashboard camera of possible witnesses to the crash and urged anyone with information to come forward.
Asencio was arrested Tuesday in Newark and ordered held at the Essex County Correctional Facility in lieu of $150,000 bail, with a 10 percent cash option, authorities said.
Investigators recovered the van involved in the crash, according to prosecutor's office spokeswoman Katherine Carter. Asencio did not own the van, but had "unrestricted access" to the vehicle, she said.
BeneduceMcGrath owned Benegrathic Sign Design on Bloomfield Avenue and was known for creating hand crafted signs used at parks around the area. The Indiana-native was married for 32-years and lived in Verona for nearly 30 years.
Authorities said the investigation was continuing. Anyone with information was asked to contact the prosecutor's office Homicide/Major Crimes Task Force tips line at 1-877-TIPS-4EC or 1-877-847-7432.
Matthew BeneduceMcGrath, Verona sign maker killed in hit-and-run Friday, made all the big signs for @essexparks . pic.twitter.com/sR5ZaYFEI2 MyVeronaNJ (@myveronanj) June 29, 2016
Noah Cohen may be reached at ncohen@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @noahyc. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
JERSEY CITY -- As police departments in cities nationwide face criticism for not mirroring the racial diversity of the cities they serve, Jersey City today promoted 62 cops who city officials say represent one of the most diverse groups of promoted police officers in the city's history.
The officers rising in rank at today's standing room-only City Hall ceremony include a woman captain, two Hispanic lieutenants, an African American sergeant and the city's first Asian American sergeant. Mayor Steve Fulop said the promotions are part of an effort to make the 874-officer police force and its leadership more representative of the city's 264,000 population, often cited as one of -- if not the -- most racially diverse cities in the nation.
Jonathan Thomson, 41, today became the city's first Asian American sergeant. Thomson told The Jersey Journal that it's important for a city that is 25 percent Asian to show that members of his community can both join the police force and excel at the job.
"The other Asian officers that came before me set the example, showing this is something anyone can do," he said.
According to figures provided by the city, the police department is now 54 percent white, compared to 63 percent in August 2013; 12 percent black, up from 10 percent three years ago; 30 percent Hispanic, versus 25 percent in 2013; and 4 percent Asian/Pacific Islander, compared to 2 percent in 2013.
The racial diversity of the police department still lags behind the population as a whole, which Census figures show is 35 percent white and 26 percent black. Twenty-seven percent of the city's population identifies as Hispanic. Fulop today acknowledged the city has "more work to do.
"We were woefully underrepresented in some communities" when he was elected mayor in 2013, Fulop told The Jersey Journal. "We've made many strides forward ... this class is certainly amongst the most diverse we've ever had."
Capt. Patricia Cassidy, 46, said she has mixed feelings about becoming the highest ranking woman police officer in Jersey City. Cassidy comes from a family of police officers, and her father, Joseph, was county sheriff for four terms.
"Obviously, it's fantastic that there's a female captain," she said. "My colleagues studied just as hard as I and they're just as deserving."
Though today's ceremony was largely a joyful affair, last week's shooting that that left five cops dead in Dallas and yesterday's killing of two court bailiffs in Michigan weighed on the minds of the officers in attendance and their families. Daniel Sollitti, 47, a 26-year veteran of the force promoted to deputy chief today, said his family is "tuned in" to the dangers he and other officers face.
"They know I'm well-prepared, they know I'm well-trained," he said. "Their prayers and thoughts go with me to work every day along with the bulletproof vest I bring."
Terrence T. McDonald may be reached at tmcdonald@jjournal.com. Follow him on Twitter @terrencemcd. Find The Jersey Journal on Facebook.
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Freeholder Bill O'Dea, standing, and Jersey City Fire Chief Darren Rivers, right, talk at a Ward F public safety meeting on Monday, July 11. Michael Dempsey | The Jersey Journal
JERSEY CITY -- Leaders of the city's fire department feel they're playing a game of Russian Roulette when choosing which engine companies should be taken out of service during staff shortages, Fire Chief Darren Rivers said.
Rivers' rare public admonishment of the administration was joined by Freeholder Bill O'Dea at a public safety meeting at the Mary McLeod Bethune Life Center on Monday night, where Rivers said he went to "address the issue of closing firehouses."
The fire department's quandary reared its head in May when a 64-year-old man died inside home after a fire on West Side Avenue. Two days later, a three-alarm fire displaced 25 residents from their homes on Ege Avenue. In both cases, the Kearney Avenue pumper truck, housed around the corner from each fire, was not in service.
Firefighters previously told The Jersey Journal they believed the city could keep all companies open by paying more overtime. Rivers -- who said he understands the budgetary constraints the department faces -- said overtime cannot be triggered for firefighters until fewer than 22 companies are in service.
Deputy fire chiefs are tasked with making the "difficult decision" as to which rigs stay on duty, he said.
"They feel that they are playing Russian Roulette," Rivers said. "What we would like is for some way for the administration to understand that we have 26 fire companies, we need 26 fire companies on duty 24/7, 365 days a year."
Jersey City spokeswoman Jennifer Morrill previously said the city budgets for all 26 companies to be in service, but must close companies when numerous absences are reported. Morrill said more than a dozen firefighters were using sick or comp days on the day of both May fires.
"We agree with Freeholder O'Dea and Chief Rivers and are working with the Fire Department to move to get this accomplished," Morrill said in an email to The Jersey Journal yesterday.
Rivers noted Jersey City's three-minute response time for fires is among the best in the country, adding that his deputy chiefs find it increasingly difficult to maintain that efficiency when they must close companies.
"We are committed to protecting the residents of the city," Rivers said.
The department cannot close any single rescue or hazmat company at any time, the chief said. The north district is least likely to see closures because there are already fewer companies in that section of the city, according to Rivers.
O'Dea, whose mother died in a fire several years ago, was quick to back Rivers Monday night, saying rigs should not be taken off duty in Jersey City and that residents should not let the "issue die out."
"Russian Roulette is unacceptable when it comes to people's lives," said O'Dea.
JERSEY CITY -- Members of the firefighting and first responders community from across the state paid their final respects today to Jersey City Deputy Fire Chief Kevin Stewart, who died last week at 61.
Streets were closed off this morning to make room for the long procession of vehicles and marchers who cut a path through the city to pass by firehouses that were special for Stewart, who was a 37-year veteran of the department.
Nearly 200 mourners attended the funeral Mass at St. Joseph's Church on Baldwin Avenue. Fire Chief Darren Rivers spoke at the Mass and Stewart's family were given three fire helmets in tribute.
Those in attendance today included the State Police, New Jersey Task Force 1 Search and Rescue and the Jersey City Fire Department.
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A Jersey City police officer was hospitalized after a pursuit of a stolen car, officials said.
(Jersey Journal File Photo)
JERSEY CITY -- A Jersey City police officer was hospitalized this morning after being injured while pursuing a stolen car driven by a Newark teen, a city spokeswoman said.
At about 7 a.m., Jersey City police were called to assist Hudson County Sheriff's officers who were pursuing a black BMW near Newark and Central avenues. The car was reported stolen out of Morris Plains, city spokeswoman Jennifer Morrill said.
A Jersey City police car blocked the driver, 18-year-old Khalyl Harley, near Herbert Place and Newark Avenue. Harley put the car in reverse and slammed into a police car behind him, Morrill said.
One police officer suffered back and neck injuries in the crash. As of this afternoon, the officer remained hospitalized at Jersey City Medical Center, she said.
Harley was charged with aggravated assault on a police officer, eluding, burglary, and receiving stolen property. He also provided police with a false name during his arrest. The Hudson County Sheriff's Office also issued Harley multiple traffic summonses, Morrill said.
Two passengers in the car, a 15-year-old from Newark and a 17-year-old from East Orange, were both charged with receiving stolen property, Morrill said.
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Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop, left, is proposing a ban on outside-Jersey City donations to local campaigns, an apparent slap at Councilman Michael Yun. Michael Dempsey | The Jersey Journal
(Jersey Journal file photo)
JERSEY CITY -- Since last July, Mayor Steve Fulop has reported receiving $343,120 in donations to his 2017 reelection campaign fund from donors across New Jersey and beyond.
A Paramus makeup artist donated $350 in February. An Annandale man gave $500 in November. The political action committee for the Seafarers International Union -- based in Suitland, Maryland, about eight miles east of the nation's capital -- contributed $1,000 in September.
One locale Fulop doesn't report collecting donations from often is the city he governs and calls home. Of the 314 donations listed in his last three quarterly campaign reports, 242, or 77 percent, were from people who live outside of Jersey City. Eight of those were from donors who reported working in Jersey City.
Fulop's reliance on out-of-town donations is not unprecedented, but it is raising eyebrows among his critics now that he has proposed banning outside donors entirely. Last week Fulop emailed Ward D Councilman Michael Yun and said he wants to add the ban to a package of bills Yun has proposed to close loopholes in the city's pay-to-play restrictions.
"It was mentioned that several people have made a priority of fundraising from people that don't live, or work, or have any ties to Jersey City," Fulop said in his email. "So that was an additional layer of protection as it begged the question why would someone with no interest in (Jersey City) be donating huge money."
Allies of Yun, a frequent Fulop critic, believe Fulop's comment was a barb masquerading as a helpful suggestion. The councilman, first elected in 2013, also collects heavily from outside donors: his most recent campaign finance report shows 70 donations, 16 of which are from people who live or work in Jersey City. Last month he held a fundraiser in Fort Lee to raise money for a possible mayoral bid in 2017.
Yun said today he will not back Fulop's plan.
"It's unconstitutional so I cannot support it," Yun said.
City spokeswoman Jennifer Morrill said "of course" Yun opposes the mayor here.
Yun "is a candidate for mayor who is doing fundraising entirely from outside Jersey City and our belief is that Jersey City elections should be decided by Jersey City residents," Morrill said in an email.
Yun countered: "Jersey City elections are always decided by the people of Jersey City. Outside people are never able to vote ... I don't know what that means."
Fulop, 39, is widely believed to be planning a run for the Democratic nomination for governor in 2017.
It's not clear whether Fulop's proposed ban on outside donations will ever make it to the City Council dais, and experts believe it would not withstand a legal challenge if it did. Yun's allies believe Fulop included it in Yun's pay-to-play measures as a "poison pill" to keep them from becoming law.
Flavio Komuves, an attorney and former New Jersey deputy public advocate working with Yun on the councilman's proposed pay-to-play legislation, told council members the council has no authority banning donations from people living outside of the city.
Jeff Brindle, executive director of the New Jersey Election Law Enforcement Commission, said local bodies can restrict donations from city vendors but they cannot implement blanket bans on outside donors.
"That's problematic because that seems to usurp state campaign law, which you can't do," Brindle told The Jersey Journal.
Matthew Hale, a political science professor at Seton Hall University, said outside donors are often used as a weapon in local races, though they are usually referred to as "special interests," a term Yun himself used today when describing Fulop's donors.
"Geography is less important than the idea the other guy is bought and paid for by nefarious characters," Hale said.
The most recent campaign disclosure forms available, dated April 15, show Fulop's reelection campaign reported raising $1.1 million total, with $243,609 cash on hand. Yun reported raising $92,567 total and having $88,967 on hand.
A super PAC connected to Fulop reported raising $3.5 million as of March 31. Its president, Bari Mattes, has said the PAC, does not support any one individual. Sources say the PAC is intended to fund Fulop's expected gubernatorial bid. One of the PAC's donations was $1 million from a Delaware company about which little is known.
Terrence T. McDonald may be reached at tmcdonald@jjournal.com. Follow him on Twitter @terrencemcd. Find The Jersey Journal on Facebook.
BAYONNE -- A city resident who was part of a three-person recall committee against Second Ward City Councilman Sal Gullace has dropped out of the group after he and Gullace met to discuss his concerns.
In a letter obtained by The Jersey Journal that is dated today and addressed to the City Clerk, Ryan Walker asked that his name be removed from the committee "effective immediately."
"Upon meeting with Mr. Gullace, I do not find that he has committed wrongdoing that is sufficient to justify a recall election, or early removal from office," he wrote.
City Clerk Robert Sloan said he isn't sure how Walker's withdrawal will impact the recall process but added that it likely won't kill the current petition or force the committee to restart its collection of signatures.
As of today, two other city residents, Jacqueline Force and Mary Curtis, remain on the committee.
Sloan said Force and Curtis may have to find a replacement for Walker, but that he will make a final decision within "a couple days" about what adjustments, if any, need to be made in the recall process.
Reached by phone this afternoon, Curtis said she didn't know Walker had dropped out of the committee, and had to find out more information before she could comment on the news.
Gullace and Walker said today that they met in person late last month to go over Walker's concerns, which primarily had to do with the councilman being provided health benefits in violation of state law.
"He was under the belief that I stole that insurance money," Gullace said.
The city has said that its health benefits coordinator mistakenly believed that Gullace and two other council members who accepted health insurance illegally were entitled to the benefits because they would spend 35 hours a week on city business.
Gullace has previously said that he is forgoing his annual councilman salary of $21,600 until the city is compensated for the $22,289.50 he owes it.
After going over the health benefits error with Gullace, Walker said he doesn't think there was "any intentional wrongdoing" on the councilman's part.
"I don't think he deserves to be recalled," Walker said, adding that while others certainly have the right to continue the recall effort, he personally doesn't believe it is necessary.
Gullace said today that he and Walker discussed a few other issues, including the city's plans for development, and that the conversation between them ended amiably.
"We're looking forward to working together for the Second Ward," the councilman said, calling Walker "a great guy."
Gullace said he hasn't reached out so far to the remaining two members of the recall committee to go over their concerns.
The Second Ward covers roughly the area from 16th Street to 32nd Street in Bayonne, sandwiched between the First Ward to the south and the Third Ward to the north.
To move onto the next step in the recall process, the recall committee must collect 2,569 signatures -- which represents 25 percent of the 10,273 registered voters in the Second Ward -- by Nov. 2, the City Clerk has said.
Information about how many signatures have been collected so far wasn't immediately available this afternoon.
If the group is successful with the multi-step recall process, a special election would be held at an estimated cost of $75,000.
Jonathan Lin may be reached at jlin@jjournal.com. Follow him on Twitter @jlin_jj. Find The Jersey Journal on Facebook.
Sandy Ridge Church in Delaware Township welcomed women from the Good News Home in Flemington, to their worship service on July 10, followed by a luncheon in the fellowship hall. The Good News Home located in Flemington, is a residential rehab center for women who want to overcome life-destroying effects of alcohol and other drug addictions.
Recovery and growth is achieved at the Home through a comprehensive non-denominational, but spiritually focused program. During the service the group performed with musical hand bells and singing hymns. A few of the women stood up and gave their testimony how God has helped them thru this dark time in their lives.
Anne Marie has been in the program for 11 days. She says it is her first, and hopefully last, rehab. She is dealing with heroin addiction and has hope in herself and in her future. She is learning crocheting, cooking and daily life skills and is learning about God and how to use Him in everyday life. She wants to stay in the program as long as she can.
Kaitlyn has been in the program for a month. This is her third Christian rehab; she relapsed twice before. She is dealing with a "pretty bad" opiate addiction along with legal and family issues. She'd like to stay in the program for 90 days or even 6 months if possible, then go to a halfway house before going back out into the world. She likes the fact that this program offers counseling, as her previous programs did not. She was saved in 2014 and is enjoying learning better how to pray.
Tangie has been in the program for two months. She heard of the Good News Home through New Jersey's addiction hotline. She was abused as a child. At age 13 she started using drugs and progressed to worse drugs. She has three children, ages 22, 17 and 16. She has always had a relationship with God but in her addiction other things turned her away from Him - not deliberately but became "idols" which took up her attention. She likes the fact that Good News is a spiritual Christian program. She wants to develop her relationship to God and become closer to Him.
Staff member, Danielle told how she "loves seeing women change when they come into the program, she sees a world of difference in them in a short time."
Good News Home For Women is a Mission program that Sandy Ridge Church supports on a yearly basis. The Sandy Ridge Church is an open arms Community Church near Stockton NJ. We are looking to grow our membership and would love to have you come by and check us out.
For more information, call 609-397-0371 or email Jvaliantjr1@yahoo.com and visit us on Facebook at Sandy Ridge Community American Baptist Church.
This item was submitted by Sandy Ridge Church.
SOMERVILLE - The Somerset County Sheriff's Office has a new addition to its K9 force. Intimidating at first with his ferocious bark, Billy is a true sweetheart who loves giving hugs and slobbery kisses.
"I don't know if Billy has an aggressive bone in his body. He is a true cupcake," said K9 handler and Somerset County Sheriff's Officer Albert Bauer.
Billy, who will be certified next week, will be the county's first arson K9, making Somerset County one of the few in New Jersey to have one.
The other K9 arson units are in Morris County and with the State Fire Marshal. Prior to Billy's arrival, if an arson unit was needed, it could take up to four hours to wait for the K9 to arrive on scene.
Billy has been with the force for six months, but has not been able to start work until his certification. During this time he has been training with Bauer to prepare for his certification, which includes testing his ability to detect up to 20 different odors and seek them out.
After successfully completing his certification, Billy will be used to look for accelerants in suspicious fires.
Bauer has been with the Somerset County Sheriff's Office for 14 years, during which time has received his own certification in K9 training and handling. Bauer has had three K9 partners over that time. In addition to Billy are Diesel, who works in explosive detection, and Nemo, who retired in June.
"I really enjoy seeing how we take what we refer to as a 'green dog' that knows nothing and developing them into a partner," Bauer said. "I believe it's the best job in law enforcement, but it's not for everybody."
Billy is a Dutch Shepherd who is just under two years of age. He has already reached his full size in height and length, and weighs in at 67 pounds, although Bauer said Billy will fill out as he matures.
He was donated by K9 Soldiers, Inc., operated by J.T. Gabriel in Frenchtown. When Gabriel received Billy at 11 months it was clear that he was a dog that needed to be constantly doing something.
"He is a very active dog that needed to work," Gabriel said.
Originally, Billy's sister, Bella, was going to be donated to Bauer. On the day Gabriel was due to bring Bella in for testing, she went outside to find that Billy had chewed through a chain fence, uprooted a tree and pulled the branches off. She packed him up in the car with her and Bella and brought him to see Bauer.
Bauer went through the course that consisted of various obstacle most dogs would not want to do, including walking over metal grates and slippery floors, jumping over walls, and other situations they might come across on the job. Bauer said he exceeded expectations and knew Billy was right for the job.
"Everything I asked of Billy, he did. He has so far proven to be phenomenal," Bauer said.
Gabriel insists that Billy has an extremely high play and prey drive. The play drive is a type of reward response and the prey drive is their hunting instincts.
The play and prey drive are both used in training to tap into the dog's primal instinct that Bauer said is ingrained in every animal. He said the first step in training is determine what Billy's favorite toy was, stuff it with a scent, and play fetch.
"The dog doesn't realize it's drawing a correlation between the toy and the odor," Bauer said.
As time goes on they will remove the toy and Billy will begin to search just for the odor.
Bauer said Billy's hunt drive didn't come as easy and Diesel's, but will improve over time with his training.
"His work ethic is incredible. When it comes to working, he gives 110 percent," Bauer said.
Gabriel said she believes Bauer is one of the best trainers and has no doubt that Billy will be a success.
Khan alleges that the CPM government was intervening in varsities matters to appoint close associates of its ministers or their aides, especially as professors and vice-chancellors, flouting all UGC norms.
WASHINGTON (AP) The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol has issued a subpoena to Donald Trump. The nine-member panel sent a letter to the former president's lawyers on Friday, demanding his testimony under oath by mid-November and outlining a series of corresponding documents. The decision by lawmakers to exercise their subpoena power comes a week after the committee made its final case against the former president, who they say is the "central cause" of the multi-part effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election. It remains unclear how Trump and his legal team will respond to the subpoena, if at all.
'It can happen in minutes:' 5 children dead in New Orleans area drownings since May
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Can a link be made between aluminum powder administered to miners over more than three decades and neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimers, Parkinsons and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS)?
Can a link be made between aluminum powder administered to miners over more than three decades and neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimers, Parkinsons and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS)?
Advocates are hoping a growing body of anecdotal research will demonstrate a link between aluminum and occupational disease and force more scientific study on the subject.
In May, Timmins played host to an intake clinic designed to catalogue the experiences, job histories and illnesses of miners who have worked in Northern Ontario mines and were mandated to inhale a finely ground aluminum dust called McIntyre Powder as part of their employment.
Participants came by the dozens from around the North, out of the province, and out of the country and for those former miners who are now deceased, their families were there to advocate on their behalf.
The clinic was spearheaded by Janice Martell, an Elliot Lake woman who began researching the powder after her father, Jim Hobbs, a 30-year mining veteran, was denied a compensation claim by the Workers Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB) after he developed Parkinsons disease in retirement.
As word spread, the United Steelworkers (USW), the Occupational Health Clinics for Ontario Workers (OHCOW), and the Office of the Worker Adviser (OWA) have come on board to support the initiative.
Martell felt her father, and miners like him, deserved to have a voice.
I just think that their stories need to be heard, and at least now somebodys looking into it and doing something, which is a lot more than what has been done in the past, she said.
McIntyre Powder was developed by the McIntyre Research Foundation by mining executives who were looking for a way to cut down on the number of silicosis claims being filed by employees.
Between 1943 and 1979, the powder was administered to miners across Ontario and Canada, and globally, as a preventive measure against silicosis, but the practice was ultimately abandoned when its efficacy as a prophylactic was disproved.
There has been little follow-up in the years since.
Andy LaDouceur, a representative with the United Steelworkers Union (USW) Local 2251, said former miners with whom hes spoken feel a sense of resentment at being coerced into inhaling the powder as a condition of their job.
Many feel the companies took liberties by experimenting on them, LaDouceur said, and view it as a human rights violation.
Its especially frustrating, as foundation paperwork from the time indicates the powder was to be administered by prescription only. A warning on the tins reads, For use only under doctors direction.
But the powder was commonly pumped through the ventilation system into the mine drys, where miners were instructed by supervisors to inhale deeply for a minimum of 10 minutes to ensure full exposure.
I asked every person thats been through here if they were prescribed aluminum powder, LaDouceur said during the clinic. Not one single person has, and yet they were all exposed to it, which to me demonstrates that the employers had a total disregard for that federal law that was cited on the can.
The use of McIntyre Powder was common before the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms came into effect in 1982, however, and the timeline for filing complaints for many cases has expired, he added.
Also working against miners is a WSIB policy that automatically denies claims citing neurological conditions related to aluminum exposure, LaDouceur said.
Were telling them that we think that policy is not only unfair, but we dont think its supported by the legislation that requires WSIB to consider every WSIB claim on its individual merit, he said. So, if theyre automatically denying a claim, what have they really considered?
There have been no research studies establishing a link between aluminum and neurodegenerative diseases, but theres nothing denying the link either, he added.
We're trying to identify how strong a link it is and whether or not we can do it just depends on the number of people we have coming through to share their story, because there's strength in the numbers, in the cases," LaDouceur said.
Typically, researchers rely on epidemiological studies to identify links between workplaces and illnesses, noted J.P. Mrochek, a worker representative with the USW Local 6500.
If researchers were studying cancer, for example, a group of workers and their rate of cancer would be compared to the Ontario or national average.
A workplace would be identified as the cause of cancer when the incidence of disease is higher in the worker group than the national or provincial average.
In this case, because the field of study is so broad it encompasses miners who worked at a variety of mines, which produced a variety of metals the clinic is automatically creating a bias, Mrochek said.
But the upside is that the clinic gets firsthand, anecdotal accounts of what it was like to inhale the powder, an approach Mrochek called very progressive, very forward-thinking.
Ultimately, with that, its an opportunity for some of these, mostly, retirees to share with us some of their experience, he said. We feel were at a point in time where, if we dont capture that information, its going to be lost forever, and we really want to capture the information through the eyes of a worker.
Former miners participating in the clinic visited a series of stations where a variety of information was gathered, including the years they worked, the mines they worked at, and what illnesses or diseases theyve experienced.
Four doctors, occupational hygienists, nurses, and ergonomists were on hand to help assess participants and, in some cases, to provide references for follow-ups.
The process took two to three hours.
Gathering information so miners can file WSIB claims wasnt the primary focus of the clinic, Mrochek emphasized.
But through interviews with clinic workers, some miners did find out they could be eligible for compensation they didnt know they qualified for, like noise-induced hearing loss, which entitles them to funds to help pay for hearing aids, for example.
(Mining is) not an easy life; its not an easy way of winning the bread and butter, especially in the days before health and safety legislation, Mrochek said.
These people were exposed to a lot of stuff and they toughed it out. There was just that culture. So when they get to tell us the stories today, they have a lot of information to share and weve got a lot of people here who are just so fed up.
Dave Wilken, OHCOWs chief operating officer, said its too early to draw any conclusions about potential links between McIntyre Powder and neurodegenerative disease, as it will take weeks for the organization to parse through the information gleaned from the roughly 150 participants who registered at the clinic.
A second clinic is slated to take place in Sudbury from Oct. 3 to 4, at which time volunteers will have even more information to analyze.
At this point, it is really sort of a step back to assess the information that weve collected, because weve collected a lot more than you can analyze on the fly, just over a couple of days, Wilken said.
The doctors will get together to discuss what they saw, and participants files will be reviewed to look at the exposures they had and the medical conditions theyve been complaining of to see if anything jumps out there, Wilken said.
At that point, OHCOW will look to consult with medical professionals familiar with aluminum and its biochemistry.
Then determinations will be made about whether or not there are individuals who should have individual testing of some kind, or whether or not here should be some kind of research proposal that should be put together to look at a group of workers, Wilken said. All that needs to be determined based on the information collected.
Martell said whatever the outcome of the clinics she will have achieved one of her primary goals: lessening the feeling of isolation for families who believed they were alone in struggling with these debilitating diseases.
In numbers they have found camaraderie, and the relief on participants faces after they completed the Timmins clinic was palpable, she said.
Its a real sense of kinship and family, and I think when you are in a mining community, if theres an accident underground, if its one of us, its all of us, Martell said.
Because we know it could have been my dad, it could have been my brother, it could have been my son or my daughter.
The Parramatta Eels have stood down Corey Norman from the club's Round 19 game against the Penrith Panthers on Sunday.
Norman pleaded guilty in a Sydney court to one charge of drug possession and one charge of possessing a restricted substance.
In each matter, Norman has had a conviction recorded and been fined $400; he now has 28 days to lodge any appeal to the sentence.
The club will meet with the NRL to review the matter, before Norman meets with the Eels' disciplinary committee next week.
Ask long-time Northwest Indiana residents, and they'll tell you about the Whiting Refinery explosion on Aug. 27, 1955, an event vividly etched in their memory. But there was a big fire 100 years ago, too. The Lake County Times told the story on July 13, 1916.
"Whiting Has Spectacular Fire Last Night in Big Oil Still," the large headline on the front page proclaimed. "Thousands Leave Their Beds to Watch Progress of Fire," a subhead said.
Spectacular is the right world for it.
"A costly fire caused by a defective condenser connecting vapor lines with a pressure still, last night furnished the biggest spectacle that this city ever witnessed," the story began.
"For three hours the efficient fire fighting force assisted [as] hundreds of workmen from the plant battled the stubborn conflagration with chemicals, as water was ineffective against the burning oils and by-products.
"So sure was Standard Oil fire fighting company of its own ability to battle the flames that no call was even made on the city fire department. The loss lies mainly in the expensive construction work and affects only one pressure still unit ten of which form a battery. The entire plant contains approximately forty batteries."
The story was filed without much punctuation, and a few words seem to have been AWOL as well.
The fire began at about 12:45 a.m., according to the story.
"In each home it seemed a door had been slammed. At one o'clock the deep toned whistle of the Standard Oil plant let three long blasts the fire signal. It was an ominous sound for the town and everybody was up with a jump.
"The streets were literally choken with running people between whom dodged cracking motorcycles and snorting automobiles, all carrying their capacity loads toward the plant. It was a sort of midnight carnival for which the Standard Oil Company paid the bill," the story said. "The spectacle of gigantic flames leaping into the clouds as they found new food in the distilled and half distilled oils was offset by the tremendous heat that the fire threw off. It could be felt for blocks around."
Fortunately, no one was injured.
In the summer of 1989, freshly minted Crown Point High School graduate Jason Akers applied for a job at a Toyota dealership washing cars to make some extra cash before he left for college. He planned to go to Ball State in the fall to become a TV weatherman.
Applying for a summer job, the 18-year-old followed his fathers advice: always wear a suit and tie to a job interview.
Its funny, because I found out during the interview that they were actually interviewing me for a sales position because I had a suit on, Akers said.
He was hired into sales and his first month at Toyota, Akers made $8,000 in sales commissions.
Twenty-six years later, Akers is with the same dealership as the general manager of Team Toyota in Schererville, as well as Team Chevrolet in Valparaiso.
Since then, the now 45-year-old Akers has racked up many personal accomplishments as well as helping his dealership team reach new heights and aid in charity fundraising events.
In 2014, Akers became a chairman of the American Heart Association and in 2015 he was the chairman for the Heart of Gold Gala, a big fundraising event for the association. This year he was a premier sponsor for the gala in May and raised about $25,000 to contribute to the organization.
In the three years Team Toyota has worked with the American Heart Association under Akers' leadership, his team has raised $75,000 in total.
Akers also supports Go Red for Women, the American Heart Association's movement focusing on ending heart disease and stroke for women.
As a business professional you have to have a 'why,' " Akers said. My 'why' is my employees. I employ 40 percent women, which is rare in the car dealership business. All of the women I work with are the reason I fund Go Red. Thats how I found my passion.
The dealership also raises funds for the Northwest Indiana Food Bank every year and participates in Team Chevrolets Relay for Life. If the bottom line is profit in the business world, why put so much money, time and resources into nonprofits?
Its part of our culture, to give back, Akers said. There are a lot of companies that think like that. Profits are hard to come by these days. We just find a way, its nonnegotiable in our culture because its the right thing to do.
Beyond that, Team Toyota in Schererville has won the President's Award, the highest award Toyota can bestow, three years in a row because customers voted them top in customer satisfaction.
They were awarded katana, or Japanese sword, for being ranked in the top 5 Toyota dealerships in the nation for customer satisfaction in the service department.
The fun part is customer interaction, breaking down the stigma about the car-buying experience, Akers said. A lot of car dealerships make the process hard, but we make it easy and fun. Thats exactly what my employees do on a daily basis.
Team Toyota has 500 cars on their lot and sell about 225 cars every month. Akers said the success is owed to the employees. He oversees 75 employees at Team Toyota and 60 at Team Chevy. His philosophy is if you make the employees No. 1, then in turn they will give excellent customer service.
Its definitely different in the car business, but I truly believe we are special because the relationship I have with the employees, Akers said. People will work harder for a company that cares about them. Its not all about money all the time.
Thats why Akers prioritizes things like taking his employees and their families on trips to Wrigley Field and holding employee appreciation events. Akers also makes sure his employees are rewarded within their careers as well.
Our store promotes from within, and thats why I came here, said David Brubaker, general sales manager of Team Toyota. Akers hired him in 2004 into sales. You show up to work every day with a great attitude and great things will come, and thats what happened for me. Everyone starts in sales and moves up, Jasons drive to be number one every day is a part of that. He makes sure we are doing everything we can to change lives on a daily basis.
Brubaker worked for another car dealership before he began at Team Toyota and knows other people in the industry, so he can testify to the difference in the work culture.
Theres not a lot of dealerships that appreciate their employees front to back, Brubaker said. I dont hear much of that going on, I know a lot of people in the car business and its not too common. Its exciting to come into work every day, we train our sales people every day, its a good feeling that everyones on board to go in the right direction. This place is home, thats how we all look at it.
However, when it comes to Akers' list of his biggest accomplishments, he said raising two sons as a single parent is at the top. His oldest is a sophomore studying in the business field at Ball State University and his youngest goes to Crown Point High School, and also plans on going to college for business. Akers said his career has inspired them to see the importance of hard work.
While Akers business is cars, he sees himself as more in the people business.
To be honest, I dont know much about cars, Akers said. But I do know a lot about people.
Strack & Van Til, the Region's largest grocery chain, is looking to make grocery shopping more convenient so convenient that your groceries are ready and waiting when you pull up to the store.
The Highland-based chain, which has 37 locations in Indiana and Illinois, has partnered with online ordering service Instacart to offer curbside grocery pickup at its Schererville location. Shoppers can use their computer or smart device to order groceries, which Stracks employees would pick out, bag and have waiting when they pull up to the curb at 1515 U.S. 41.
If enough shoppers use the service, it will be rolled out to other Strack and Ultra grocery stores.
"We're very excited about piloting a pickup option for our customers," Strack & Van Til CEO Jeff Strack said.
Meijer and Whole Foods also offer the curbside pickup service in some markets, but Strack & Van Til is believed to be the first to roll out a "click and collect" program in Northwest Indiana.
Strack & Van Til previously teamed up with San Francisco-based Instacart to offer home delivery of groceries on the northside of Chicago, and Ultra Foods in Downers Grove, Westmont and the surrounding area.
"Our initial launch with Instacart for delivery in the Chicago area has been incredibly successful in a few short weeks," Strack said. "Customers everywhere are looking for ways to make the shopping experience more convenient and we believe curbside pickup will be a great fit for the Schererville customer."
Strack & Van Til Vice President Chris Bengston said the expectation is that the service will be rolled out to other Strack and Ultra locations, but not to all of them. The grocery chain will offer it in communities where it is in demand.
Both Strack & Van Til and Instacart are testing new waters, since the fast-growing, online personal shopping service has been focused on home delivery in more densely populated urban areas until recently.
"Grocery Pickup is a relatively new product extension for Instacart," said Dave Osborne, Instacart general manager for Midwest markets.
Interested customers can go online to instacart.com or download the Instacart app on their phone, select the Schererville store, add items to a virtual cart, and then make the purchase. The service costs a flat $1.99 for orders of more than $35, or $149 for an annual membership.
For orders less than $35 the fee varies based on the amount of the order and the pickup time. The minimum order for curbside pickup is $10.
CROWN POINT A Gary man was sentenced to prison in the shooting death of a man who was stealing his car.
James Adams, 52, was convicted of reckless homicide, a Level 5 felony, in the shooting death of Anfernee Jones, 18, of Gary. Lake Criminal Judge Samuel Cappas sentenced him to six years in prison, adding that auto theft doesn't justify the killing of the thief.
"You can't shoot people for stealing your car," Cappas said. "This is not the Wild West."
A Lake County jury acquitted Adams of the murder charge he had faced. A person convicted of reckless homicide could face one to six years in prison.
Wednesday's hearing was the second-part of Adams' sentencing. He maintained he acted in self-defense.
"It's a tragedy for both of us," he said.
He apologized to Jones' family, explaining that everything happened really fast.
Last Halloween, Adams was inside the Discount Liquors store when he saw Jones get in his car. He had left the 1995 maroon Cadillac unlocked with the keys in the ignition.
Adams was seen on surveillance video leaving the store and firing into the vehicle. Jones was shot four times and crashed into an abandoned garage near 15th Avenue and Roosevelt Street. He died at the scene.
It was still in dispute during Wednesday's hearing what exactly happened. Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Eric Randall argued the shooting was an intentional act, arguing one shot was so close to Jones that the spent shell casing was later found inside the vehicle.
Randall argued Adams hasn't shown any remorse in the case. He said when Adams was first told that Jones died, his reaction to detectives was, "Oh."
Defense attorney Scott King argued his client, who doesn't have any previous convictions, didn't immediately reach for the gun as the state theorized. He also pointed out jurors acquitted Adams of murder.
King said it was hypocritical for the state to have lax gun rules, but then act surprised when people arm themselves out of fear that everyone else is armed.
Randall countered by saying the state has laws to control what people do with guns. He described the shooting as a vigilante act.
During the first hearing for the sentencing, Jones' mother, Quiana Felders, told the court her son's slaying has left her angry and bitter.
"You took my son's life over a car," she said. "Something you can get back. Can I get my son back? No."
GARY A witness to a hit-and-run crash told troopers she saw a uniformed officer involved in the incident look back at the scene and then speed away, according to court records.
Lt. Guy Mikulich, 37, of Merrillville, is the officer accused of crashing into Derrick Dircks as Dircks arranged items in the rear of his 2014 Toyota Sienna van. Dircks' four children were inside the van during the time of the crash, according to the affidavit.
Mikulich faces 13 criminal charges, the most serious of which is leaving the scene of an accident resulting in serious bodily injury after operating while intoxicated, a Level 3 felony.
He had his initial court hearing Wednesday and was granted permission to live outside the jurisdiction, according to court records. He also paid by credit card the $30,000 surety or $3,000 cash bail that had been issued in the case.
The crash happened about 4:50 p.m. Sunday as Mikulich was heading west on Oak Avenue near Pike Street in Gary's Miller neighborhood.
Mikulich was working at the Gary Air Show and had been released from his assigned area, police said.
'I know I'm (expletive) up'
Mikulich was in his police uniform and in his black unmarked Ford Crown Victoria police vehicle when he said he dropped his phone while driving. According to the affidavit, he told troopers he thought he hit a pothole or something else.
The vehicle's passenger side mirror was hanging off the car, the front passenger side fender was damaged and there was a large spiderweb-shaped crack on the front windshield, court records stated.
A witness to the crash told troopers that Mikulich had his window down and looked back at the crash before driving away, according to the affidavit. The crash also was captured on a nearby resident's surveillance video.
A Gary police officer told troopers she saw Mikulich driving just before she heard on the police radio that an unmarked Crown Victoria could have been involved in a hit-and-run crash. The officer caught up to Mikulich in the 5900 block of Hemlock Street in Gary.
He allegedly told the officer, "I know I'm (expletive) up because I can hear me slurring my own words, and I can take a lot. I can drink a lot but when I can hear me slurring my own words, I know I'm (expletive) up," according to the affidavit.
Mikulich initially refused to submit to a test to see if he had consumed alcohol. It wasn't until 10:05 p.m. that officials were able to secure a search warrant to collect blood and urine samples from him, according to the affidavit.
The tests showed he had an alcohol-blood content of 0.15, more than five hours after the crash, according to court records.
Dircks, 34, of Frankfort, Illinois, lost consciousness at the scene, but he later regained it while he was being treated in an ambulance. According to court records, Dircks could have hit Mikulich's windshield with his head. Dircks also was treated for injuries to his eye, right thigh, leg and arm.
Dircks was taken to Methodist Hospitals Northlake Campus after the crash and was released from the Gary hospital Tuesday, according to Indiana State Police.
Mikulich has been placed on paid administrative leave pending a hearing before the Lake County sheriff's department Merit Board. Lake County Sheriff John Buncich is seeking Mikulich's termination from the department.
Troubled history
Mikulich earlier this year was demoted from department commander after he was involved in a scuffle with a man on New Years Eve at the Radisson Hotel. Mikulich and the man reportedly had past personal problems because of a woman.
In 2009, the county paid $130,000 to a one-armed East Chicago man who alleged Mikulich used his authority and police training to severely beat him. The incident happened June 14, 2006, and stemmed from a dispute about a woman.
Mikulich sued White Rhino Inc. and Jacob Lange, of Illinois, in 2010 after Lange allegedly beat Mikulich outside the Dyer bar when they both were intoxicated, according to a complaint filed in Lake Superior Court.
Mikulich claimed he suffered "public embarrassment and humiliation" and severe and permanent injuries in a fight Jan. 17, 2010. Attorneys for the bar wrote in a response to the lawsuit that Mikulich was partly at fault because he assaulted or provoked Lange and that Mikulich's alleged assault "necessitated Lange's use of reasonable force to repel" Mikulich.
Lange died in November 2010, four months after the lawsuit initially was filed, court records said. Mikulich and White Rhino eventually settled the suit in late 2015 for an undisclosed amount.
Mikulich's next hearing in the hit-and-run case is scheduled for Sept. 8 in front of Lake Criminal Court Judge Salvador Vasquez.
VALPARAISO A 29-year-old Valparaiso man faces a criminal charge after emergency officials revived him from a suspected heroin overdose using the drug Naloxone.
Valparaiso police said they were called out shortly before midnight Tuesday to a home in the 100 block of Bedford Court in response to the suspected overdose.
The man, who was lying on his back in bed, was reportedly breathing, but unresponsive.
The officer administered the drug in hopes of reversing the overdose. Emergency officials arrived at the same time and also gave the man the drug, which resulted in him becoming slightly combative before being taken to the hospital.
Police said they found syringes, a burnt spoon and a used marijuana smoking pipe.
Kelli Burns, 27, of the same address, was arrested and faces a misdemeanor count of possessing paraphernalia.
A warrant was requested on the same charge for the man taken to the hospital, police said.
CROWN POINT Weeks before a former Highland High School teacher was scheduled to stand trial, Samuel Fies pleaded guilty to sexual misconduct with a child.
Wearing a tan suit with a black button-up shirt, Fies pleaded guilty to the Class C felony along with a charge of inappropriate communication with a child, a Class A misdemeanor.
When Lake Criminal Judge Samuel Cappas asked how he pleaded to the charges, Fies answered, "Guilty, your honor."
Fies, 37, of St. John, had faced charges of child molesting, criminal confinement, child solicitation and child seduction. The Lake County prosecutor's office is expected to dismiss those charges as part of the plea agreement.
He was accused of developing a relationship with one student in 2009 when the girl was in seventh grade. According to court records, he was accused of trying to touch the girl, brushing up against her and putting her fingers down her pants.
Fies also was accused of contacting another student, who was 13 years old at the time, through MySpace. According to the affidavit, he messaged the girl and asked her to do sexual acts to herself.
He also was accused of contacting a third girl, who was 17 years old, through a dating website.
Two of the girls were learning disabled, according to court records.
Fies was fired from Highland High about a month before charges were filed on Dec. 13, 2011.
He had been scheduled to stand trial Aug. 15, but the trial was vacated following Tuesday's court hearing.
Cappas set a sentencing hearing for Sept. 13.
HAMMOND A 63-year-old Chesterton man plans to admit he had sexual contact with a then-12-year-old girl in 2014 and induced her mother to take lascivious pictures of the girl for him, federal court records said.
Willard Abatie had sexual contact with the girl at least five separate times between March and December 2014, according to a plea agreement filed Monday in U.S. District Court.* He is expected to plead guilty to one count of coercion and enticement of a minor.
Abatie could face up to 10 years in prison and five years on supervised release.
Federal prosecutors plan to recommend a sentence at the low end of guidelines in exchange for his plea. However, several sentencing enhancements apply, in part, because of the girl's age and Abatie's use of a smartphone to solicit her mother.
The amount of restitution Abatie must pay will be determined at his sentencing hearing, the plea agreement said.
An affidavit in the case said authorities interviewed Abatie at the East Chicago Police Department and again at the Hammond Police Department.
He persuaded the girl's mother to allow him to molest her daughter once a month after the mother became ensnared in an apparent Internet scam, court records said.
The mother sought Abatie's help because a man she met on Facebook was demanding she wire him $600 per month or face death, according to the affidavit.
* Editor's note: This story has been updated from a previous version.
Clarification: A story Wednesday about a Chesterton man taking a plea agreement was unclear. Willard Abatie, 63, plans to admit he had sexual contact with a then-12-year-old girl in 2014 and induced her mother to take lascivious pictures of the girl for him.
HAMMOND Police are searching for a 19-year-old accused of robbing two men at gunpoint Friday during a drug deal.
Emanuel Oscar Sims, of Markham, is charged with armed robbery and firearm theft.
His alleged accomplice, Brandon Christopher Smith, 19, of Gary, is in custody and has been charged with assisting a criminal a level six felony, according to a probable cause affidavit.
The two victims initially told police they didnt know Sims, but later admitted they were meeting him in Hammond to buy marijuana.
Sims allegedly walked up to the victims car about 5 p.m. Friday while stopped at a traffic light near 167th Street and Indianapolis Boulevard in Hammond. He then robbed the driver of $100 and a .40 caliber semi-automatic pistol in the console.
Sims then allegedly got into the passenger side of a Silver Chevrolet Impala before the vehicle took off down 167th Street.
Later that night, police stopped a vehicle matching that description to find Smith, accused of assisting Sims in the crime. They arrested him on probable cause.
The vehicle description, coupled with victims testimony, aided police in confirming Smith and Sims involvement.
CROWN POINT A Gary man charged in a double homicide told a Lake County jury that he ran to a bedroom after he saw a gun was being waved around inside in a living room.
"Bullets don't have eyes," Kevin Blackmon said.
He then heard a loud gunshot followed by 11 to 12 additional gunshots.
His co-defendant, Shelton "T-Man" Curtis, is on trial this week in Lake Criminal Judge Salvador Vasquez's courtroom. Curtis, 23, of Gary, is accused of shooting to death James Powell, 18, of Gary. He is charged with murder and attempted dealing in marijuana, hash oil, hashish and salvia.*
Curtis had originally been charged with murder in the shooting death of Raymond Washington-Whitehead, 17, of Merrillville. The Lake County prosecutor's office dismissed that murder charge on Monday when the trial started.
Blackmon, 23, faces charges of assisting a criminal and attempted dealing in marijuana in the double homicide. He told jurors the state intends to dismiss those charges in exchange for his testimony.
On Aug. 6, he walked to a gas station in Gary where he happened to run into Curtis. The two left in Curtis' red truck and drove to the 1100 block of Lane Street in Gary. According to the affidavit, Curtis rented a room in the home.
In a soft-spoken voice, Blackmon said Curtis used a digital scale to weigh and then bag a high-quality form of marijuana referred to as "loud." A third man was in the home and at one point smoked synthetic marijuana with Curtis, Blackmon said.
Another man, who Blackmon only knows as "Dude," briefly stopped by the house but left just as Washington-Whitehead and Powell arrived. Blackmon said Curtis had arranged by phone to sell them an ounce of marijuana. Blackmon testified he saw Curtis load his gun and place it in his waistband after taking the call from Washington-Whitehead and Powell.
When the men arrived to the home, Washington-Whitehead asked if all the marijuana was there. Blackmon said Powell, who was standing near the door, told Washington-Whitehead that they can wait until their other "man" woke up if he didn't want to buy the marijuana from Curtis.
Washington-Whitehead then pulled a gun from his pocket and pointed it at Curtis who put his hands up and backed away, Blackmon testified. He heard Curtis say, "I thought we were better than that."
Blackmon said he ran to the bedroom as Washington-Whitehead and Curtis began tussling. He then heard the series of gunshots, which he said sounded like they came from two different guns. Blackmon ran out of the home after the gunshots stopped.
Crime scene photos showed Powell on the ground outside the home and Washington-Whitehead inside the living room.
Dr. Joe Wang, from the Lake County coroner's office, testified Powell was shot nine times with the most serious wound being the gunshot to his back. Wang said it injured Powell's lung and caused hemorrhaging.
As Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Michael Toth began showing photos from Powell's autopsy, three visibly shaken women seated in the gallery walked out. They later returned as the state showed a photo of Powell's bloody back. One woman rocked back and forth in her seat as the state continued showing the photos.
Toth later read a stipulation stating that an autopsy determined Washington-Whitehead was shot in the chest.
Detective James Tomko, of the Lake County Sheriff's Department, said multiple shell casings were collected at the home. Some of the casings were found on the floor while at least two were found within the walls. There were also bullet holes in two walls and in the ceiling.
The trial is expected to continue Wednesday.
Editor's Note: The online version of this story was changed to correct the charges Shelton "T-Man" Curtis faces.
Northwest Indianas Civil War story plays a prominent role in the second part of a new documentary airing Thursday night on all Hoosier PBS stations.
Part II of Hoosiers: The Story of Indiana airs at 8 p.m. Thursday on Lakeshore Public Television WYIN Channel 56.
The series, produced by the PBS flagship station in Indianapolis, chronicles the history of the state in honor of the Indiana bicentennial this year.
Part II covers the states role with particular attention to Northwest Indiana volunteer soldiers during the Civil War.
The Times Editorial Page Editor Marc Chase, who founded the Calumet Region Civil War Preservation Project and South Shore Civil War Memorial Trail, appears in Part II, chronicling the story of the fighting 20th Indiana Volunteer Infantry.
Chase was interviewed for the documentary in the fall and again a few weeks ago at Crown Points Historic Maplewood Cemetery, where Wheeler and dozens of other Region Civil War veterans are buried.
Hundreds of men from Crown Point, Valparaiso, Lowell, Merrillville and LaPorte County served in the regiment, which fought in nearly every major battle of the Civil Wars eastern theater from 1861 to 1865.
Crown Point Col. John Wheeler, a major focus of the documentary, died while commanding the 20th Indiana at Gettysburg, the bloodiest battle of Americas bloodiest war.
INDIANAPOLIS As expected, former U.S. Sen. Evan Bayh filed paperwork Wednesday to replace Baron Hill as the Indiana Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate.
Theres only one reason to run for public office, and thats to try and help meet the challenges that people face in their daily lives and help do some good for our state and country, Bayh said. Thats why Im running.
Bayh said in the six years since he voluntarily left the Senate, after representing Hoosiers from 1999 to 2011, the partisanship and divisiveness he declared at the time he no longer wanted to be part of only has gotten worse.
But with a new president on the horizon, a House speaker who seems interested in actually enacting policies, and a public less willing to tolerate gridlock, Bayh is modestly hopeful he once again can lead the Senate to find common ground and move forward together.
Ive always been able to work with people across the aisle: Democrats, Republicans and independents. Ill bring a practical approach to solving problems rather than engaging in political food fights, Bayh said.
Ill work with people regardless of party and whoever the next president is to try and make progress for America.
At the top of his legislative agenda is creating good jobs at high wages for more Americans.
While Bayh conceded achieving that goal will take time, he said the federal government immediately can improve enforcement of trade agreements to protect good jobs that already employ thousands of Hoosier workers.
Too often our workers and businesses are forced to run uphill, because foreign countries are violating the rules, stealing our intellectual property and taking too many of our jobs, Bayh said. Thats got to stop.
He also he wants to build on the 21st Century Scholars program that he created during his eight-year tenure as Indiana governor to make college more affordable for every student.
In Northwest Indiana, Bayh said if elected he will resume his past efforts using federal programs to clear some 6,000 abandoned houses in Gary and rehabilitate those properties so they can be redeveloped.
Thats not just important for Gary, thats important for the whole Region, he said.
Bayh said he is clear-eyed about how difficult it will be to break through the partisan divisions that have paralyzed Congress.
But he insisted its an effort worth making, especially with forces outside the United States aiming to harm Americans.
I dont think its a fools errand. I wouldnt be doing it if I thought it was, Bayh said. Will it be hard? Yes it will. May it take some time? Yes it might. But some progress is better than none.
We cant keep going on like this, or our state and country will continue to suffer as a result. ... Were all Americans with more in common than a lot of the politicians, who just want to tear down and get negative, would have us all believe.
The 33-member Democratic State Central Committee is set to meet July 22 to decide whether to substitute Bayh for Hill on the November ballot.
Hill withdrew Monday from the race against Republican nominee Todd Young, a congressman from Bloomington, because Hill said Democrats need a strong nominee who has the money, name identification and resources to win.
Youngs campaign already is on the attack against Bayh, claiming he is a professional lobbyist and part of a rigged political system in Washington, D.C.
In fact, Bayh never has registered to lobby members of Congress.
This Senate seat does not belong to the Bayh family for whenever its convenient, Young said. It belongs to the people of Indiana, and Hoosiers expect a senator to share their values and their experiences, and to represent their interests.
Indiana Republican Chairman Jeff Cardwell declared Bayh an out-of-touch retread dug up by a desperate Democratic Party.
We need a senator that will fight every day for Hoosiers in Washington, that will keep the ideals and concerns of Hoosiers at the center of his campaign and wont leave when the job becomes too hard, Cardwell said. We have all of that and more in Todd Young.
We cant keep going on like this, or our state and country will continue to suffer as a result. ... Were all Americans with more in common than a lot of the politicians, who just want to tear down and get negative, would have us all believe. Evan Bayh, Democratic U.S. Senate candidate
WESTFIELD, Ind. Gov. Mike Pence gave presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump a rip-roaring introduction at a campaign rally Tuesday, just days before Trump will decide whether to make Pence his vice presidential running mate.
Standing in front of a massive American flag, the first-term governor and former six-term congressman told some 1,500 Trump supporters gathered at Grand Park in north suburban Indianapolis that he wants Indiana to be the first state on Election Night to go red for Trump.
After seven-and-a-half years of the failed policies of Barack Obama that have weakened Americas place in the world and stifled our nations economy, were ready for a change in this state, were ready for a fighter, a builder and a patriot in the Oval Office, Pence said.
Were ready for Donald Trump to be our next president!
Pence said no candidate in his lifetime, save Republican Ronald Reagan, understands the hopes and frustrations of the American people better than Trump.
Donald Trump gets it. Donald Trump hears the voice of the American people, Pence said. Hes been successful on Wall Street, but hes never turned his back on Main Street.
Sliding into the traditional attack dog role of vice president, Pence said Democrat Hillary Clinton has disqualified herself from becoming commander-in-chief for failing as secretary of state to rescue U.S. personnel during the 2011 attack on the consulate in Benghazi, Libya.
He also said America doesnt need a president who sees Obamacare as just a good start and who promises to put coal miners out of work and raise utility rates on businesses and homeowners.
Donald Trump knows that the boundless potential of the American people awaits and we can make America great again, Pence said.
Trump did not say in his traditional, lengthy speech that followed whether he was leaning toward Pence for vice president.
He did tell Pence great job following his introduction and thanked Hoosiers for helping him effectively clinch the Republican presidential nomination in the May 3 Indiana primary.
This was the final Trump rally with a potential running mate before the onetime Gary casino owner makes his selection.
In recent days, the former Apprentice game show host also has been joined on the campaign trail by former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie for a kind of veep tryout competition.
However, Pence was the only potential running mate who got to host a Trump rally in his home state.
Trump is expected to announce his vice presidential selection Thursday or Friday.
If its Pence, he only has until 11 a.m. Region time Friday to withdraw from the Indiana ballot as the Republican gubernatorial nominee to run instead for vice president.
The 24-member Republican State Central Committee then would have 30 days to fill the gubernatorial candidate vacancy, and no shortage of potential candidates.
Trumps pick for vice president must also be ratified next week by delegates attending the Republican National Convention in Cleveland.
Prior to the rally, Trump and Pence attended a fundraiser for Republican candidates at the private Columbia Club on Monument Circle in downtown Indianapolis.
The approximately 200 guests who collectively paid more than $1.5 million to spend about an hour with Trump generally were tight-lipped entering and exiting the private club that originally was founded in 1889 to support the presidential campaign of Hoosier Republican Benjamin Harrison.
Considerably more vocal were about 100 individuals across the street from the club continuously chanting Pence must go referring to his tenure as governor, not as a kind of backhanded endorsement of his bid to become Trumps vice president for which Pence presumably would have to leave Indiana.
Among those in the largely Democratic crowd was former East Chicago state Rep. John Aguilera.
He said Trumps recent accusation that an Indiana-born federal judge cant be impartial in a case involving the allegedly fraudulent Trump University due to the judges Mexican heritage was an insult to all Hoosiers and one that required a stronger Pence condemnation than inappropriate.
(Judge) Gonzalo Curiel is a Hoosier and if Mike Pence cannot stand up for one us, especially when hes our governor, then what makes you think that he would stand up for us if he was the vice president? Aguilera asked.
We deserve better than Mike Pence and Donald Trump, he said.
HIGHLAND Twenty four youth and adults from First Presbyterian Church in Highland and St. Johns United Church in Chesterton traveled to White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, on June 19 to provide missionary work to those in need.
Youth director Dave Gibbs of First Presbyterian Church explained how historic flooding occurred during their trip. We had no power for 28-hours and our water supply was contaminated. In spite of this and the difficulty traveling after the flood we were still able to get to our homes and finish our work.
During their mission trip the group worked on two homes. In the first home they built a handicap ramp, new back porch, cut down overgrown bamboo and painted several rooms. They built a roof and fixed ceilings for an elderly couple in the other home.
The group also took flooded victims water and cleaned mud out of a house.
The youth love making a difference. They do most of their mission work right here at home all year long. We think it is important to take one week a year and go someplace different from where we live and serve those in need. We help others but we find we are richly rewarded by the experience, Gibbs said.
Gibbs has been doing youth ministry for 25 years. He has led 31 mission trips. In a world with so many problems it seems like we cant make a difference. On these mission trips the youth know that they have made a difference for those in need, Gibbs said.
The American Red Cross has issued an emergency call for blood and platelets, urging all eligible donors to give now to replenish an extremely low summer blood supply.
Blood donations have fallen short of hospital needs for the past few months, resulting in about 39,000 fewer donations than whats needed, as well as a significant draw down of the overall Red Cross blood supply. In addition, the Independence Day holiday may have caused many regular donors to postpone donations due to vacation plans. A recent Red Cross poll revealed that more than 75 percent of donors surveyed indicated vacation plans this summer, many of them occurring the weeks before and after July 4.
Right now, blood products are being distributed to hospitals faster than donations are coming in, which is why we are making this emergency request for donations, said Rodney Wilson, communications manager of Red Cross Blood Services. Donations are urgently needed now to meet the needs of hospital patients in the coming days and weeks. If youve thought about giving blood and helping to save lives, now is the time to do it. Its the blood donations on the shelves that help save lives when an emergency occurs.
To donate, visit redcrossblood.org or call (800) 733-2767).
Upcoming blood donation opportunities:
10 a.m. to 3 p.m. today, Indiana Department of Transportation, 315 E. Boyd, LaPorte
Noon to 6 p.m. Friday, Lowell Volunteer Fire Department, Inc., 1331 E. Commercial Ave., Lowell
8 a.m. to noon. Saturday, Merrillville Blood Donation Center, 791 E. 83rd Ave., Merrillville
8 a.m. to 1 p.m. Sunday, First Presbyterian Church, 3401 N. Valparaiso St., Valparaiso
11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sunday, Taltree Arboretum, 450 W. 100 North, Valparaiso
1 to 7 p.m. Monday, St. Teresa of Avila, 1604 Lincolnway, Valparaiso
Noon to 5 p.m. Monday, Merrillville Blood Donation Center, 791 E. 83rd Ave., Merrillville
1 to 6 p.m. Monday, St. John Township Community Center, 1515 Lincoln Highway, Schererville
1:30 to 5:30 p.m. Monday, St. John Kanty, 7012 N. County Road 600 East, Rolling Prairie
Noon to 4 p.m. Tuesday, Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, 1100 N. Mineral Springs Road, Porter
1:30 to 6:30 p.m. July 20, First Christian Church, 1507 Glendale Blvd., Valparaiso
10 a.m. to noon July 21, Aperion Care, 10352 N. County Road 600 East, DeMotte
2 to 4 p.m. July 21, Anytime Fitness, 1334 15th St., Demotte
11 a.m. to 3 p.m. July 21, LaPorte High School, 602 F St., LaPorte
10 a.m. to 2 p.m. July 22, Thomas Rose Industrial ParkBOSS Air, 1761 Genesis Drive, LaPorte
WASHINGTON Kaylin Luces found herself in a difficult position last week: In one moment, she was texting her sister, a police officer, telling her, "Be careful out there. Cops are getting shot." In another, she sent a text to her two young nephews to be mindful of how they act when in the presence of police.
Luces' comments to her loved ones reflect a debate over two movements that appear to be increasingly at odds with each another: Black Lives Matter, which seeks law enforcement reform after police killings of black men, and Blue Lives Matter, which defends officers.
During a recent protest over the issue, Luces, who is black, carried a sign in the nation's capital with the message "Black and Blue Lives Matter," a hope that perhaps the two ideas are not mutually exclusive.
But rhetoric on both sides shows how difficult that has already become: Just in the past week, a white Detroit police detective was demoted after calling Black Lives Matter activists "racists" and "terrorists." And an off-duty police officer in Missouri fatally shot a man who was trying to enter the officer's home. A relative of the man who was shot said the two had been arguing on Facebook about the Black Lives Matter movement.
That movement first emerged in 2012 after Florida neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman was acquitted in the fatal shooting of an unarmed black teenager, Trayvon Martin. It gathered strength in ensuing years following the deaths of other black men at the hands of police in New York, South Carolina, Baltimore, and elsewhere.
This month, police in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, fatally shot Alton Sterling after pinning him to the ground, and Philando Castile was shot dead by a white police officer during a traffic stop in a suburb of Minneapolis-St. Paul.
There have been some signs of conciliation between those protesting and defending the police: Before Micah Johnson opened fire last Thursday in Dallas, killing five officers, some demonstrators were seen taking selfies with the police officers on duty. And several Black Lives Matter activists were quick to condemn the deadly violence against Dallas police.
"They are on the same team," said Phillip Goff, director of the Center for Policing Equity. "They want a more safe, more equal society."
But Kelly Orians, a 30-year-old white public defender who attended a die-in protest in New Orleans, said the two movements are not and should not be equal.
"I don't believe in a Blue Lives Matter movement in the same way that I don't believe in a White Lives Matter movement or a Men's Lives Matter movement," she said. "Because we're pretty clear that those lives matter and our institutions are built to protect those lives, whereas our institutions are not built ... to protect black lives."
Tracie Washington, a black civil rights lawyer in New Orleans, expressed the same frustration with the Blue Lives Matter movement, as well as with a law Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards recently signed extending hate crime status to crimes targeting police and other emergency responders.
"It tries to marginalize Black Lives Matter," Washington said. "And it pits two equally important interests against each other that weren't against each other."
William Colarulo, the white police superintendent of Radnor Township, Pennsylvania, is equally opposed to the Black Lives Matter movement, which he called a "violent, hateful organization that condones violence against police."
"They chant, 'Pigs in a blanket, fry them like bacon,'" he was quoted by Philly.com as saying. "I give no credit to that organization. They tend to instigate rather than heal and find solutions to the problem."
Comedian Trevor Noah, host of Comedy Central's "The Daily Show" and a biracial native of South Africa, said people "shouldn't have to choose between the police and the citizens that they are sworn to protect."
"It always feels like in America ... if you take a stand for something, you automatically are against something else. It's such a strange world to be in," he said last week on the show.
In an editorial published Monday in The New York Times, Brooklyn Borough President and former NYPD Captain Eric L. Adams, who is black, said police and black citizens share the concern that they may be in the line of fire.
"My solution to the tension between the police and the people which I recognize as my own inner tension is to seek unity, not find division," he wrote, adding that community education and police reforms are also needed.
Neither side should stereotype the other, said Gregory Thomas, president of the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives.
The Dallas shooter and others who fired at police in retaliation for the deaths of the black men are not "reflective of the vast majority of citizens who are engaged with and supportive of the law enforcement community," Thomas said.
Likewise, he added, the police shootings are not "reflective of the professional work that members of the law enforcement community conduct dutifully every day."
Philadelphia Police Department Commissioner Richard Ross said the terms Black Lives Matter and Blue Lives Matter should not be mutually exclusive, but he acknowledges the growing divisions between the two groups.
"It's this either-or proposition," said Ross, who is black. "This is where we're stuck. ... It's gotten so far down the tracks that I'm afraid even people who want things to be resolved don't have a loud enough voice."
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Whack reported from Philadelphia. Associated Press writers Jessica Gresko and Paul Holston in Washington, D.C.; Kevin McGill and Cain Burdeau in New Orleans; and Rachelle Blidner in New York City contributed to this report.
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Jesse J. Holland covers race and ethnicity. Contact him at jholland@ap.org, on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/jessejholland and on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/jessejholland. Read more of his work at http://bigstory.ap.org/content/jesse-j-holland .
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Errin Haines Whack covers urban affairs for The Associated Press. Contact her on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/emarvelous and read more of her work at http://bigstory.ap.org/journalist/errin-haines-whack .
PORTSMOUTH, N.H. With hugs and handshakes, Bernie Sanders endorsed Hillary Clinton for president on Tuesday and emphatically told his supporters their "political revolution" must now turn to electing his Democratic former rival.
Sanders bestowed his long-awaited support before a boisterous New Hampshire crowd, declaring he wanted to make it "as clear as possible as to why I am endorsing Hillary Clinton." He congratulated her for securing enough delegates to win the Democratic nomination and vowed to do everything he could to help her defeat Republican candidate Donald Trump.
"This campaign is not really about Hillary Clinton, or Donald Trump or Bernie Sanders, or any other candidate who sought the presidency. This campaign is about the needs of the American people and addressing the very serious crises that we face," Sanders said.
He added: "And there is no doubt in my mind that, as we head into November, Hillary Clinton is far and away the best candidate to do that."
As Sanders delivered the endorsement just two weeks shy of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, Clinton offered a huge smile, embracing him as they raised their arms in unity. The former secretary of state said the final four months of the campaign would be "much more enjoyable" working alongside Sanders and echoed her campaign slogan, "We are stronger together."
During much of her remarks, Clinton embraced many of Sanders' causes, vowing to oppose trade deals like the Trans-Pacific Partnership, fight to raise the federal minimum wage adopting Sanders' tone, she called it a "starvation wage" and overhaul the campaign finance system.
"These aren't just my fights. These are Bernie's fights. These are America's fights," Clinton said.
Sanders has vowed to continue on until the convention and even though he endorsed Clinton he is still an active candidate, his campaign said after the joint appearance. Spokesman Michael Briggs said Sanders still supports holding a roll call vote at the convention to determine the nomination.
Democrats have coalesced around Clinton's candidacy since she defeated Sanders in primaries last month in California and five other states, helped along by endorsements from President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and others. In a high-profile rally last month, Clinton was embraced by Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a liberal stalwart popular with Sanders' followers.
Sanders has spent the past month seeking to influence the party's platform for the Philadelphia convention and promote electoral reforms including allowing independents to participate in future primaries. He called the platform "the most progressive" in history and hailed steps to create a $15 an hour minimum wage, prevent Wall Street malfeasance and address climate change.
The event at a Portsmouth high school sought to project Democratic unity before Republicans formally nominate Trump next week in Cleveland but some Sanders' supporters in the crowd did not appear to be ready to move on.
Chants of "Bernie" broke out in the gymnasium while opening speakers addressed the crowd, prompting Clinton's faithful to chant, "unity." When Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, a Clinton supporter, told the audience, "We need to elect Hillary," some Bernie supporters stood and shouted, "No," which was followed by chants of "Hillary" in the crowd.
"It's like he's giving up if he endorses her," said Steve Rand, a hardware store owner from Plymouth, New Hampshire, before the two candidates took the stage. He added: "She stands for everything that I am against.
But James LePage, a 25-year-old teacher from Denver who attended the rally, said he felt Clinton was "genuine" in her remarks.
"I heard a lot of Bernie in her voice, which I wasn't willing to listen to before," LePage said.
Recent polls have shown that many Sanders voters plan to back Clinton but have reservations about her honesty.
A new GenForward poll of adults ages 18 to 30 found that Clinton was struggling to make inroads among young Americans who overwhelmingly supported Sanders. The poll found a majority of the nation's younger blacks and Asian-Americans have a favorable impression of Clinton, but the presumptive Democratic nominee struggles with whites and Hispanics.
The Vermont senator saw his longshot bid for the White House quickly catch fire in 2015 at large-scale rallies where he denounced income inequality, the influence of Wall Street and the role of big money in politics all part of a system he described as "rigged."
Sanders was powered by an impressive online fundraising machine that generated more than $200 million and threatened Clinton's once overwhelming lead in the Democratic primaries with the help of college students, independents and white voters drawn to his anti-establishment message.
In his remarks, Sanders warned that Trump was a divisive figure who would create further splintering.
"In these stressful times for our country, this election must be about bringing our people together, not dividing us up," Sanders said. "While Donald Trump is busy insulting Mexicans, Muslims, women, African Americans and veterans, Hillary Clinton understands that our diversity is one of our greatest strengths."
Trump, who has courted Sanders' backers as the primaries have winded down, wasted little time going after Sanders, accusing him of capitulating to Clinton.
"Bernie Sanders, who has lost most of his leverage, has totally sold out to Crooked Hillary Clinton," Trump wrote on Twitter. "Sanders was not true to himself and his supporters."
Just when I think Ive got the current election scene figured out, someone gives the political snowglobe a hard shake or two. Conventional wisdom walked out the door months ago.
Everyone was adjusting to Indiana Gov. Mike Pences potential run for vice president when Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Baron Hill dropped a bombshell Monday by saying he was dropping out of the race. That paved the way for someone with a better chance of defeating Republican Todd Young, who is a current member of the U.S. House of Representatives, to enter the Senate race.
And who might that candidate be? None other than former U.S. Sen. Evan Bayh, who helped build the last Democratic dynasty in Indiana.
Bayh announced his retirement from the Senate in 2010, saying he was disgusted with the bitter partisanship and gridlock in the Senate.
Bayhs entry changes the dynamics of this race.
Young is conservative, but hes not on the far right. Bayh will give him a run for the money, and Bayh has a lot of it. He left the Senate with a campaign war chest of about $10 million, and he hasnt been a spendthrift since then. All along, the question of that campaign money has lingered. Would he run again? Would he save it for his young sons political ambitions?
Hill wasnt getting traction in a race that had been closely watched nationally. Bayhs candidacy means theres a very real possibility a state that had been seen as deep red could be represented by two Democrats.
And Bayhs reassertion of his presence on the Indiana political landscape means the Indiana Democratic Party has a chance of rebuilding itself.
Sen. Joe Donnelly, a Democrat, is up for re-election in 2018. Republicans are salivating at the prospect of picking up that seat in a mid-term election. That could be an uphill battle. Donnelly, like Bayh, is a centrist, despite Republican opponents efforts to paint him as a liberal.
Whether Donnelly keeps his seat in the Senate could depend in part on the outcome of this years presidential election.
Pence is reported to be among Trumps three finalists for vice president. That could make a difference, one way or the other.
Then theres the possibility that Purdue University President and former Gov. Mitch Daniels could replace Pence on the gubernatorial ticket another hard shake of the snowglobe.
Indiana has a July 15 drop/add deadline for candidates. And the Republican National Convention starts next Monday. Drum roll, please!
Conventional wisdom before it stormed out the door said former Congressman Pence wants to return to the federal government, possibly as president. The Religious Freedom Restoration Act controversy last year tied an anchor to those hopes, if Pence truly had them, for 2016.
But now Trump could give Pence a hand while Pence helps Trump. Pence is locked in a re-election battle that is neck-and-neck. Democrat John Gregg, who ran against Pence last time, has been getting strong support.
Could Pences selection as a vice presidential candidate boost Trumps candidacy? Perhaps. Pence does have the strong social conservative credentials.
And what happens if Trump wins? Often, the opposing party picks up seats in Congress in the mid-term election. That could boost Donnellys re-election chances.
With Bayh and Donnelly both in the Senate in 2016, they could help rebuild the Democratic Party maybe even in time for the next redistricting.
If theres anything this election has taught me, its that anything is possible.
It's an account repeated season after season on our Region's beaches.
This time, two Northwest Indiana men drowned Saturday while trying to save another swimmer near Gary's Miller section. Three other people were rescued from the water during the same incident, which occurred with Gary's Air Show as the backdrop.
It's the starkest of reminders to heed water safety warnings from the National Weather Service and other public safety officials before venturing into Lake Michigan waters.
Such incidents also reinforce taking personal responsibility for one's safety as people who can safely provide rescue services aren't always near enough to emergencies to make a difference.
Saturday's drowning deaths were preventable tragedies.
The National Weather Service issued a beach hazard warning Friday and Saturday, urging people to stay out of the water because of hazardous conditions. The Great Lakes Surf Rescue Project forecast high winds capable of producing dangerous currents and 6-feet-high waves.
Gary spokeswoman LaLosa Burns noted Air Show announcers repeatedly warned people not to swim because of dangerous rip currents.
Emergency help isn't always directly on hand.
U.S. Coast Guard teams in Michigan City and other lake regions can respond to calls of swimmer and boater distress. The Lake County Sheriff's Department Marine Unit provides similar services from a base in East Chicago.
But drowning emergencies occur very quickly.
The best defense is contacting or visiting the websites of the National Weather Service, Coast Guard or Great Lakes Surf Rescue Project before heading to the beach to ensure swimming is safe.
And if it's not, enjoy the sands, the sun and the view but stay out of the water.
If you do get caught in a rip current pulling you away from shore, don't try to swim directly back toward shore. Even the most experienced swimmers can become fatigued and drown trying to fight a swirling rip current.
The Great Lakes Surf Rescue Project recommends floating on your back to conserve energy rather than fighting waves and current.
If you can feel the direction in which the current is pulling, try to swim perpendicular to it until you're out of the current's pull and can safely return to shore.
But in the end, your best chance at safety is taking personal responsibility for you and your family by determining water conditions before heading to the beach.
It's a long summer. Stay safe so you can enjoy it and many more beach seasons.
SPRINGFIELD Gov. Bruce Rauner announced Tuesday that he is convening a bipartisan panel to propose an overhaul of the way Illinois distributes money to local school districts.
It is widely acknowledged that the current funding formula, which has been in place for two decades and relies heavily on local property taxes, does a poor job of directing state money to the schools that need it most. In fact, a study last year from The Education Trust found that Illinois has the widest funding gap between high-poverty and low-poverty districts.
Rauner said his goal and the goal of the new commission is to find a way to provide adequate and equitable funding to all schools in the state.
We are the worst state in America for funding our schools, the governor said at a Chicago news conference announcing the plan.
The states overreliance on local property taxes to fund schools denies the American dream to low-income families because they dont get the same level of resources as higher-income families do, Rauner said.
Education is a fundamental right in America, he said. Its the way that people raise their quality of life, their standard of living, their incomes. Education has got to be the priority, and low-income kids deserve the opportunity for a good education just as much as any other young person.
The commission will be made up of 25 members, with each of the four leaders of the General Assembly appointing five members and Rauner naming the remaining five. One of the governors picks is Education Secretary Beth Purvis, who will serve as chairwoman.
The group will be assigned to produce recommendations for an overhaul of the funding formula by Feb. 1, which should provide time for the General Assembly to take up the issue during its spring session and approve legislation ahead of the 2017-18 school year, Purvis said. She said the group plans to meet at least monthly beginning in August.
Just before the states new fiscal year began July 1, Rauner and legislators reached an agreement on a plan for the upcoming school year that boosts funding for schools but doesnt address the underlying formula used to divvy out the money.
We believe right now is the time to work in that bipartisan spirit to move forward with something that is important to both parties and to every parent, teacher and administrator in the state, Purvis said.
Spokesmen for House Speaker Michael Madigan and Senate President John Cullerton, both Chicago Democrats, confirmed that they will appoint members to participate.
The school funding formula has long been a contentious issue at the Capitol, dividing lawmakers based on party and geography, while also highlighting differences between majority Democrats in the House and Senate.
The Senate has approved several school funding bills in recent years, including versions two this spring, that have languished in the House. The House, meanwhile, convened its own panel this spring to conduct a series of hearings on the issue.
Sen. Andy Manar, D-Bunker Hill, has been a leading voice in his caucus on school funding reform and is one of Cullertons five appointees.
While hes criticized Rauner in the past for not taking a leading role in the conversation, Manar praised the governors latest effort.
Im of the belief that anytime there can be a public conversation between Republicans and Democrats representing all geographic areas and school districts in our state, thats a step in the right direction, Manar said. Im encouraged that this can be a forum that can finally produce the overhaul thats desperately needed.
He said the Feb. 1 deadline is aggressive but achievable.
Like Manar, Sen. Jason Barickman, R-Bloomington, has been a point man on education funding for his party and will serve on the commission.
Barickman said the fact that Democrats havent been able to come to an agreement among themselves on rewriting the formula demonstrates the complexity of the issue.
The Legislatures like a bunch of cats, and somebody needs to herd them, he said, adding, For the first time, we have a governor who is engaged and recognizes the problem that exists and says he wants to provide the leadership necessary at the statewide level for us to come to a bipartisan agreement.
Sen. Dave Luechtefeld, R-Okawville, a retired teacher, also was named to the panel by Senate Minority Leader Christine Radogno, R-Lemont.
City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito on Wednesday defended a deal reached with NYPD officials that she says will improve interactions between New Yorkers and the police.
The agreement is coming under fire from some Council members and advocates who preferred to pass legislation requiring changes in the way police interact with the public.
Instead, the agreement calls for changes to be made in the NYPD patrol guide.
Police officers will be required to ask someone if they can conduct a search and get a "yes" before moving forward.
Officers will also have to offer people a business card after any searches.
"I believe that this is the right approach. I believe we are getting reforms done. There are changes administratively and in procedures and operations that the NYPD will be implementing immediately. This is not any waiting game. This is within the next nine months. Officers will be trained in these policies and procedures," Mark-Viverito said.
Critics argue without legislation the reforms could easily be changed in the future and would not carry the weight of law.
Protesters demand answers on three separate shootings that occurred over the last six years. NY1's Shannan Ferry filed the following report.
Katina Tillman said she misses her brother George Tillman more than anything.
The 32-year-old was killed during a police involved shooting in South Ozone Park in April.
Investigators say officers opened fire after Tillman ran away from them, and allegedly reached for a gun.
"He's dead, and they shot him on the streets," Katina Tillman said.
Tillmans sister joined dozens of community leaders for a march and rally that kicked off on Jamaica Avenue Tuesday.
Protesters called for justice for George Tillman, and a pair of brothers killed separate shootings just blocks apart in Far Rockaway.
Neshawn Plummer was shot and killed in 2015, his brother Shawn was fatally gunned down just three years earlier in 2012.
"I choose life for my children, and for somebody to just take them away from me like that, no," said their mother Sharon Plummer.
Organizers said the goal of the march is to make sure the shootings aren't forgotten.
All three cases remain open homicide investigations according to a spokesman at the Queens District Attorneys office.
That was the only information provided by the DA following NY1s request for comment on the rally. NY1 received a similar response from the NYPD.
"This is where Southeast Queens, where the murders happened, and so we need to let our community to know that we're not gonna sit around on our hands and let this to continually happen," said Kevin Livingston, who organized the event.
Marchers said they also hope taking their message to the streets will encourage elected officials to pass stricter gun laws.
"We think this is going to be make change, and you start with the small steps," said Malech Meir, who marched.
"Our young brothers today think it's an honor to go to jail, because this is the environment that has manifested here in Queens," said Larry Love, who also marched.
Until that environment changes, organizers said they will continue calling for justice and peace.
MONTCLAIR, N.J. When Gretchen Carlson was asked how her last week had been, she looked down at her wrist.
These are the bracelets I wear on my arm, Ms. Carlson, the former Fox News anchor, said in an interview on Tuesday.
She stood up from her seat at the dining room table here in the home of her lawyer, Nancy Erika Smith, and pointed to three silver bracelets, each emblazoned with text.
Carpe diem, she said, reading the words. Brave. Fearless.
Speaking publicly for the first time since she filed a sexual harassment lawsuit against her former boss, Roger Ailes, the Fox News chairman, Ms. Carlson repeated the allegations she made in the suit, saying Mr. Ailes made sexual advances toward her and later fired her because she complained about sexual harassment at the network.
The song has rung out at marches and vigils throughout the country over the last week: We Shall Overcome.
With its message of solidarity and hope, and its legacy as a civil rights anthem, We Shall Overcome has become a symbol of peaceful protest. Along with Woody Guthries This Land Is Your Land, it is so deeply woven into the countrys fabric that it is considered an American treasure, akin to a national park or a presidential monument.
Both songs are considered private property, however, since each of them enjoy copyright protection. But that status could soon change, through a pair of lawsuits that seek to have the songs added to the public domain, where they would join Happy Birthday to You, a formerly copyrighted classic recently ruled to be among the creative works available for any and all to use as they choose.
While money is at the heart of almost every copyright case, the lawsuits over We Shall Overcome and This Land also have a decidedly political tinge they seek to decide who gets to co-opt the message of songs that were written in service of a particular point of view.
The shoe wars are once again about to escalate. Hermes International, the French luxury group, announced on Wednesday that it had taken a minority stake in the shoe brand Pierre Hardy.
This makes Hermes something of a footwear power when shoes are proving to be the It bags of the moment, given that it also owns the British cobbler brand John Lobb. And it heralds a new stage in the growth of Pierre Hardy as the brand attempts to leverage the footwear boom. The last few years have seen an explosion of shoe floors in department stores worldwide and the first shoe initial public offering.
(Hermes also owns the crystal brand Saint-Louis Cristallerie, Puiforcat silversmiths, as well as some of their suppliers of textiles and leather goods, among other companies.)
A federal judge in Manhattan ruled on Tuesday that drugs seized from a man charged in a narcotics case could not be used as evidence, because agents had not obtained a warrant for a covert cellphone tracking device that led them to his Washington Heights apartment, where the drugs were found.
The portable device, known as a cell-site simulator and often referred to as a Stingray, has been used widely by federal and local law enforcement officials around the country, including in New York, to solve crimes and locate missing people.
Last September, just weeks after the search in the Manhattan case, the Justice Department announced a new policy that requires federal law enforcement officials to obtain a search warrant in most cases before using a cell-site simulator.
The simulator essentially mimics a cellphone tower (or cell site), and tricks cellphones into transmitting pings to the device, allowing agents who have narrowed down a targeted phones location to determine where it is in use.
No one could mistake the voice of David McCullough, either in the books that have made him one of the most influential United States historians of his era, or in the documentaries he has narrated for the American Experience television series.
Authoritative and measured, Mr. McCullough typically strikes a tone of determined neutrality. In public appearances, he said, he deliberately avoids commentary on contemporary politics.
Very often, during question-and-answer sessions, people ask me some question about the president or other would-be candidates, he said in an interview this week. Ive always said, My specialty is dead politicians. In that way, I could sidestep the question without getting myself involved.
On Monday, Mr. de Blasio said that the Black Lives Matter movement had hit the right note.
The very phrase Black Lives Matter is a necessary part of the national discussion, he said. It has helped us to recognize that sadly our history over and over again did not value African-Americans.
Mr. de Blasio, a Democrat, has not framed the discussion in terms of politics, but if race-related issues continue to fester in the city and elsewhere, it could play to his advantage as he faces re-election in 2017. He could then speak directly to some of the central concerns of black New Yorkers, a key constituency that helped him get elected, while also potentially reassuring other groups anxious about the citys direction.
Hes got to watch that hes on the early stages of his re-election, and I think that he knows that his strongest base remains in the African-American community, said the Rev. Al Sharpton, who has been a supporter of the mayor. And if hes going to maintain that base, hes got to speak to the issues that concern that base.
But he also said that Mr. de Blasio might have more immediate concerns, since Sunday will be the second anniversary of Eric Garners death (Mr. Garner died after being held in a chokehold by a police officer on Staten Island, one of the earliest videotaped episodes that helped prompt the Black Lives Matter movement). Mr. Sharpton said the mayor was undoubtedly bracing for more protests.
I think that he knows hes got to get in front of this weekend, Mr. Sharpton said.
Mr. de Blasio won the Democratic primary in 2013 with strong support from black voters, partly because he promoted the image of his interracial family. While polls show that his approval among whites has slipped considerably since he took office, they also show that black voters continue to back him strongly even though there, too, he has seen some erosion in support.
As Yale continues to debate the legacy of John C. Calhoun, an alumnus and leading 19th-century politician and slaveholder for whom one of its residential colleges is named, the university said on Tuesday that it would not press charges in the case of a black dining hall worker who smashed a stained-glass panel depicting slaves carrying cotton.
The Yale police initially arrested the worker, Corey Menafee, 38, after he climbed on top of a table in the Calhoun College dining hall and smashed the window, one of several related to Calhoun and to slavery, with a broom handle.
The episode, which took place in mid-June but only recently garnered widespread attention, was first reported by The New Haven Independent.
1. Mourners lined the streets and police cars filled church parking lots as funerals were held for some of the five Dallas officers killed by a sniper last week.
President Obama gathered law enforcement officials, civil rights activists and political figures at the White House and spoke about building trust between law enforcement and communities of color.
Kansas City, Mo. THE first war stories I heard came from my grandfathers friend, Redman Callaway, who led a company of 140 black soldiers in Europe in 1944. Like most white men of his generation, when Lieutenant Callaway discovered that he had been put in charge of an African-American company, his first reaction was, Why me? followed by How do I get a transfer?
I thought of Callaway when the Department of Defense recently announced that it would no longer bar transgender soldiers from military service. Some service members will have a similar reaction to working with these soldiers not to mention gay and female soldiers, given that the Pentagon also ended its dont ask, dont tell policy in 2011 and allowed women to assume combat roles in 2015.
In addition, civilian conservatives cant admit that their recent political attacks on gay and transgender people via bathroom bills and state religious freedom acts now put them in direct conflict with the policies of the United States military, an organization they normally praise.
So theyll cite concerns about the readiness of these soldiers.
These concerns will be as bogus as the concerns about the readiness of black troops in 1944. Callaway and his men drove supply trucks because the white infantry didnt trust them to fight. So they excelled at their task, delivering fuel and ammunition for Gen. George S. Pattons advance across France.
At last! Senator Bernie Sanders joined Hillary Clinton on a New Hampshire stage Tuesday to say two things many of us had begun to despair wed ever hear from him. One, that he actually did lose the 2016 primary campaign to Secretary Clinton, and two, that he was endorsing her for president of the United States.
Sure, Senator Sanderss embrace of the presumptive Democratic nominee included all the inclinations that many of us have come to find, shall we say, a tad grating about the man: his interminable, self-congratulatory stump speech, wearingly bereft of humor, argument, story or anecdote, more a listing of all bad things in the world and how they must be put right, delivered in his usual droning shout. The need to make it all about the platform concessions he had wrangled out of Mrs. Clinton, and the historical magnitude of the Senator himself: Together we have begun a political revolution to transform America and that revolution continues. Followed by about as short and perfunctory an actual endorsement as possible.
At least it was done. If Achilles had sulked this long in his tent we would all be speaking Trojan, but never mind. Bernie Sanders did, clearly and unequivocally, say that Hillary Clinton had won the most elected delegates, that she will make an outstanding president and I am proud to stand with her here today, and that he intends to do everything I can to make certain that she will be the next president of the United States.
This was a welcome departure from Mr. Sanderss tactic of repeatedly questioning the legitimacy of the Democrats admittedly imperfect nominating process. After being beaten by over 300,000 votes in New York, Mr. Sanders implied that he might have won, had tens of thousands of people not been purged from the voter rolls, while a spokesman called the election a shameful demonstration and a disgrace. A decisive loss in Californias primary elicited another dark (and baseless) insinuation that, somehow, the vote was not quite right.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg needs to drop the political punditry and the name-calling.
Three times in the past week, Justice Ginsburg has publicly discussed her view of the presidential race, in the sharpest terms. In an interview with The Times published Sunday, Justice Ginsburg said, I cant imagine what the country would be with Donald Trump as our president, joking that if her husband were alive, he might have said, Its time for us to move to New Zealand.
Earlier, in an interview with The Associated Press that appeared on Friday, when asked to consider a Trump victory, Justice Ginsburg replied, I dont want to think about that possibility, but if it should be, then everything is up for grabs.
Image Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Credit... Todd Heisler/The New York Times
On Monday Justice Ginsburg doubled down, calling Mr. Trump a faker, who has no consistency about him. In that interview, with CNN, she added: He says whatever comes into his head at the moment. He really has an ego.
I have many qualms about Barack Obamas presidency. I worry that he exhausted too much political capital too soon on Obamacare. That he overcorrected for his predecessors foreign debacle. That he wore his disdain for Congress too conspicuously.
But I cry foul at the complaint that he has significantly aggravated racial animosity and widened the racial divide in this country. Its a simplistic read of whats happening, and it lays too much blame on the doorstep of a man who has sought imperfectly on some occasions, expertly on others to speak for all Americans.
That complaint trailed him to Dallas, where he appeared on Tuesday at a memorial for the five police officers killed by a sniper last week. He was there not just to eulogize them which he did, magnificently but to try to steady a nation reeling from their deaths and the ones just beforehand of Alton Sterling in Louisiana and Philando Castile in Minnesota.
He painted a profoundly admiring portrait of cops, asking their detractors to consider how it feels to be unfairly maligned by hyperbolic cries of pervasive police misconduct. Then he painted a profoundly sympathetic portrait of protesters, explaining why so many African-Americans feel unfairly targeted.
How China reacts to the sweeping legal defeat over its claims to the South China Sea will tell the world a lot about its approach to international law, the use measured or otherwise of its enormous power, and its global ambitions. So far, the signs are troubling. Beijing has defiantly rejected an international arbitration courts jurisdiction over a case brought by the Philippines and insisted it will not accept Tuesdays pathbreaking judgment.
The unanimous ruling, by a five-judge tribunal in The Hague, was more favorable toward the Philippines and broader in scope than experts had predicted. It said that under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, China had no legal basis to claim historic rights over most of the waterway, which is rich in resources and carries $5 trillion in annual trade.
The panel also faulted China for its aggressive attempts to establish sovereignty by shipping tons of dirt to transform small reefs and rocks into artificial islands with airstrips and other military structures. Chinas neighbors fear that it intends to use these outposts to restrict navigation and the rights of others to fish and explore for oil and gas.
LONDON BREXIT means Brexit, and were going to make a success of it, Theresa May said on Monday, when she became the new leader of the Conservative Party and therefore Britains new prime minister. It was the one discordant note in an otherwise clear, wide-ranging speech.
So Brexit means Brexit. But what does that mean? In the June 23 referendum on Britains membership in the European Union, 52 percent of voters expressed a desire to leave, having been given precious few details of what exactly that entailed or how it might be achieved. Some 48 percent voted not to leave at all. Negotiating a deal that satisfies both groups or even just a healthy minority is a herculean task for the new government.
Moreover, Britains exit from the European Union will now be overseen by someone who advocated staying inside it, albeit tepidly. Ms. Mays reassuring sound bite about her commitment to Brexit was aimed at her own colleagues, many of whom are virulent euroskeptics.
The greatest threat she faces comes from them. The only possible alternative government would be led by the Labour Party, which has been hopelessly divided over its future since the election of a left-wing outsider as leader last year.
Barack Obama has now addressed the nation eloquently on 11 occasions following mass shootings in various parts of the country. But his speech on Tuesday, at the memorial for five police officers slain in Dallas by a black Army veteran who set out to kill whites, stands apart both in terms of the challenges it presented and the feeling with which it was delivered. This speech, which found hope for national unity in a moment of profound division and despair, will most likely be seen among the rhetorical high-water marks of his presidency.
The president consoled the families of the fallen, named the victims and condemned what he described as a demented act of racial hatred. At the same time, he implored the nation to empathize with the pain suffered at the hands of abusive police officers by black communities and specifically by the families of Alton Sterling of Louisiana and Philando Castile of Minnesota two black men whose deaths ignited nationwide demonstrations, including the one in Dallas where the officers were killed.
I know that Americans are struggling right now with what weve witnessed over the past week, the president said. First, the shootings in Minnesota and Baton Rouge, and the protests, then the targeting of police by the shooter here an act not just of demented violence but of racial hatred. All of it has left us wounded, and angry, and hurt.
Faced with such grotesque violence, he continued, we wonder if the divides of race in America can ever be bridged. We wonder if an African-American community that feels unfairly targeted by police, and police departments that feel unfairly maligned for doing their jobs, can ever understand each others experience.
However, rather than retreating back into focused identity politics, resistance in this context means connecting the plight of the Rohingya to global struggles, the context of which is needed in order to address any particular situation. Older, national, identity-based struggles like those you mention are less persuasive in a globalized world. All of this is especially relevant as Myanmar sets up its first stock exchange and prepares to enter the global capitalist system.
In globalization as such, when the nation states are working in the interest of global capital, democracy is reduced to body counting, which often works against educated judgments. The state is trapped in the demands of finance capital. Resistance must know about financial regulation in order to demand it. This is bloodless resistance, and it has to be learned. We must produce knowledge of these seemingly abstract globalized systems so that we can challenge the social violence of unregulated capitalism.
B.E.: What are the implications when the promotion of human rights is left to what you have called self-appointed entrepreneurs and philanthropists, from individuals such as Bill Gates onto organizations like the World Bank, who have a very particular conception of rights and the rule of law?
G.C.S.: It is just that there be law, but law is not justice.
The passing of a law and the proof of its existence is not enough to assure effective resistance to oppression. Some of the gravest violations of rights have occurred within legal frameworks. And, if that law governs a society never trained in what Michel Foucault would call the practice of freedom, it is there to be enforced by force alone, and the ones thus forced will find better and better loopholes around it.
That is why the intuition of democracy is so vital when dealing with the poorest of the poor, groups who have come to believe their wretchedness is normal. And when it comes time to starve, they just tighten their nonexistent belts and have to suffer, fatefully accepting this in silence. Its more than children playing with rocks in the streets. It takes over every aspect of the peoples existence. And yet these people still work, in the blazing heat, for little or next to nothing for wealthy landowners. This is a different kind of poverty.
Against this, we have this glamorization of urban poverty by the wealthier philanthropist and aid agencies. There is always a fascination with the picture-perfect idea of poverty; children playing in open sewers and the rest of it. Of course, such lives are proof of grave social injustice. But top-down philanthropy, with no interest in an education that strengthens the soul, is counterproductive, an assurance that there will be no future resistance, only instant celebrity for the philanthropist.
NEW YORK
An article on June 24 about a vote by the New Jersey Senate to eventually raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour referred incorrectly to the figure $27,552 cited in a study by the United Way of Northern New Jersey. That amount is the average household budget necessary to support a single adult, not the average household income of a single adult. The article also misstated the year the study was published. It was 2014, not 2015.
BUSINESS DAY
An article on Tuesday about an initial public offering by the Line Corporation, a Japanese company that developed a popular messaging app, misstated, in some copies, the metric used to measure the number of users of Lines app. It is monthly active users, not monthly average users. The error was repeated in an accompanying picture caption.
A picture caption on Friday with an article about Pavlo Lazarenko, the former Ukrainian prime minister, misstated, in some copies, the amount of time Mr. Lazarenko spent in the federal prison at Terminal Island, Calif. He was sentenced to nine years, but was held there from 2009 to 2012, not more than 10 years.
SPORTS
An article on June 18 about Russias criticism of a decision to ban its track and field team from the 2016 Summer Olympics over a doping scandal misidentified the European region whose conflict in the 1990s ranks as violent as the 2014 war in eastern Ukraine, whose pro-Russian rebels won Russias support. The region is the Balkans, not the Baltics.
The choreographer and performance artist Monstah Black is a neighborhood fixture in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn and not just for his eccentric, eye-catching style. During a recent mild summer afternoon stroll there, Black and his longtime partner (and now husband), Manchildblack, seemed to know everyone. Friendship and collaboration especially with Manchildblack, a D.J. and producer are at the core of Blacks life and practice, with one notable exception: his current genre-bending, wild solo act Hyperbolic! (The Last Spectacle), playing at the experimental theater Dixon Place.
For this project, I really wanted to be in my own space and not have any outside information, so I could launch out from my same old patterns, Black explained as he thumbed through a rack of trousers at the Lafayette Avenue vintage shop Harold and Maude. Before long, he was distracted by a pair of plum jodhpurs: I havent had a pair of these in a while I used to wear this green pair that were just fun, so I have to get another pair! Fittingly, Harold and Maude is owned by his friends Mami Nagase and her boyfriend, Ryoma Hashimoto, whom Black has known for more than a decade.
Now in his late 30s, Black came up in the gay dance clubs of Washington, D.C. in the late 90s. The conservative city proved to be just unguarded enough: Black had the freedom there to create a dance company and stage his first crazy performance art pieces in art galleries, independent theater spaces, and warehouses. Black and Manchildblack met in D.C., and moved New York in 1999 first to Harlem and Washington Heights, then to Bed-Stuy.
Its a super inclusive neighborhood, and its starting to really grow, especially as friends are moving in, and shops like these are opening, Black said, taking a quick detour to pop into Nostrand Cafe and give a friend a hug. He cut quite a figure marching down Nostrand Avenue in futuristic creeper sandals with four-inch platforms, a plumed hat from Harold and Maude, a cutoff muscle tee I dont take off made by his friend Zulu Rose (with whom he once created a capsule collection of T-shirts), shiny black shorts and 70s-style tube socks pulled all the way up. But for as bold as his look is, the multihyphenate artist is soft-spoken, even a bit reserved.
WASHINGTON The Obama administration, arguing that Congresss funding of the fight against the Islamic State amounts to a ratification of President Obamas power to wage that war, has urged a federal judge to dismiss a lawsuit that says the military action is illegal.
In a 45-page legal brief filed in Federal District Court for the District of Columbia, the administration offered its most extensive public explanation yet of its war powers theory.
While Mr. Obama has not received new and explicit authorization from lawmakers for the war against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, the brief said that the president has determined that he has the authority to take military action against the group, and that Congress has ratified that determination by appropriating billions of dollars in support of the military operation.
The brief asked the court to dismiss a lawsuit against Mr. Obama filed in May by Capt. Nathan Michael Smith, an Army intelligence officer deployed to Kuwait for the war. Citing his oath to uphold the Constitution, Captain Smith said he believed that the operation violated the War Powers Resolution, which limits to 60 days combat operations that lack congressional authorization.
Health officials in Arizona are pressing federal officials for better cooperation after an outbreak of measles at an immigration detention center was prolonged because some employees were slow to be vaccinated.
The outbreak started in late May in the detention center in Eloy, Ariz., and has grown to 22 cases, currently the largest episode in the country of the disease, which was once eradicated in the United States. The cases include nine employees of the facility, which is overseen by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a federal agency.
What was surprising was the failure by the organizations that run the facility to make sure their staff was vaccinated, said Thomas Schryer, the director of public health for Pinal County, home of the center. The lingering issue has been the staff passing the illness among each other and going out into the community.
The facility, 65 miles southeast of Phoenix, holds about 1,250 immigrants from many countries, both men and women, who are awaiting court proceedings or deportation. They include migrants who have come in recent months from three violence-torn countries in Central America. The center is supervised by the federal agency but operated by a private prison company, Corrections Corporation of America, or CCA, which has more than 300 employees.
How does a former senator ... stateswoman ... hoping to build a financial stockpile ... find a way to make it worth her donors while?
Hamilton tickets.
At a special Tuesday matinee, deep-pocketed supporters of Hillary Clinton filed into the Richard Rodgers Theater for a special performance that was, in a rare turn, a touch more expensive than a typical show.
But with seats available for $2,700 and status as event chair on offer for $100,000 the gathering, held for the Hillary Victory Fund, did include an uncommon guest: Mrs. Clinton, who took the stage after the final bows of a show she has now seen three times.
I cry every time, she said, after embracing the shows creator, Lin-Manuel Miranda, who left his role as the title character over the weekend but returned on Tuesday to introduce her.
WASHINGTON Donald J. Trump on Tuesday said Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburgs involvement in the presidential campaign was a disgrace to the court after she expanded on the criticism of the presumptive Republican nominee that she first voiced last week.
In an interview published online by CNN on Tuesday, Supreme Court Justice Ginsburg called Mr. Trump a faker who has an ego and has been treated too gently by the press. She said Mr. Trump says whatever comes into his head at the moment and has no consistency in his thinking.
Justice Ginsburgs comments came just days after she said she could not imagine the impact of a Trump presidency. For the country, it could be four years. For the court, it could be I dont even want to contemplate that, Justice Ginsburg said in an interview on Friday with The New York Times.
In an interview with The Associated Press, she said something similar.
Mr. Trump responded on Tuesday, lashing out at Justice Ginsburg, who was nominated to the court in 1993 by President Bill Clinton, the husband of Hillary Clinton, Mr. Trumps rival for the White House.
DHAKA, Bangladesh Amnesty International called on the Bangladeshi government on Tuesday to clarify the whereabouts of a former hostage from the recent attack on a Dhaka restaurant who was detained by the police but whose fate is now uncertain.
The Dhaka Metropolitan Police confirmed that they had questioned the former hostage, Hasnat Karim, a British citizen who works for a family-owned civil engineering firm, as well as a second former hostage, Tahmid Hasib Khan, 22, a student at the University of Toronto.
But the police have said that the two men are no longer in custody, though their families say they believe that some branch of the government is still holding them because they have not returned home.
Amnesty International said that Mr. Karim has a heart ailment and that his family is worried about his health. Mr. Khan suffers from epilepsy, and his family said they are worried that stress he has experienced could induce seizures.
Nominees for the New York Dance and Performance Awards, known as the Bessies, were announced on Wednesday evening.
The awards, the dance worlds equivalent of the Tonys, will be presented on Oct. 18 at the BAM Howard Gilman Opera House a change for the ceremony, which has taken place at the Apollo Theater for the last five years.
Twelve works were nominated for outstanding production, among them Justin Pecks Heatscape, for Miami City Ballet; Dada Masilos postmodern take on Swan Lake; and Camille A. Browns Black Girl: Linguistic Play, which is being revived on July 21 at the Prospect Park Bandshell in Brooklyn.
Other nominees for the category included dances that leaned toward performance art, like Jack Ferver and Marc Swansons Chambre an adaptation of Genets The Maids, at the Crossing the Line Festival last year and Maria Hassabis Plastic, in which performers were more like sluggish sculptures at the Museum of Modern Art.
PARIS On Saturday, the New York City Ballet will wrap up a 20-ballet, three-week season at Theatre du Chatelet here, the companys longest international tour to one city since 1976. City Ballet was presented by Les Etes de la Danse, an annual summer festival that brings dance companies often American ones to the French capital.
I spent a lot of time here with Balanchine, listening to him talk about his experiences in Paris, said Peter Martins, the companys ballet master in chief, referring to George Balanchine, the co-founder of City Ballet, whose groundbreaking choreography forms the backbone of the companys repertory. Balanchine didnt get good reviews here; they liked Jerry Robbins, and Balanchine knew that, Mr. Martins added. So our first week was all Balanchine because I wanted to say, this choreographer is not only arguably the greatest choreographer in history, but our choreographer.
The logistics are impressive: 150 people came from New York, including 94 dancers; an additional 60 board members and patrons came for the opening and a gala dinner. Four sea freight containers were sent, containing costumes, scenery, props, lighting booms, physical therapy equipment, orchestra music and stage management supplies. (These include floor tape, tissues, ammonia, mops, Sharpies, bandages and Altoids.)
Houses have been full, critics have been fulsome, and audiences rapturously appreciative. Meanwhile, the dancers have been enjoying Parisian life, sightseeing on their days off, hanging out in cafes and occasionally proposing marriage. Here are some snapshots of City Ballet in Paris, and edited excerpts from conversations with the dancers.
PARIS It was possible on Monday night to rush from Justin Pecks Entre Chien et Loup, a new work for the Paris Opera Ballet at the Opera Bastille, to his Everywhere We Go, danced by the New York City Ballet, currently on tour here at the Theatre du Chatelet. The two works, and two companies, offer instructive lessons in national and company styles, but what is clear from both ballets is Mr. Pecks bold and adventurous choreographic voice.
Entre Chien et Loup, set to Poulencs 1932 Concerto for Two Pianos in D minor, shares a program with Balanchines 1966 Brahms-Schoenberg Quartet, new to the Paris Opera. The pairing is clearly to show the Balanchine legacy, but the idea is muffled by the dancers lack of ease with Balanchinian speed and dynamics, and by the tension between Mr. Pecks very American energy and spirit and the more restrained classicism of the Opera dancers.
The new work, Mr. Pecks first commission outside the United States, is not as substantial or brilliant as Everywhere We Go, but it is fascinating nonetheless. (The title Entre Chien et Loup, or between dog and wolf, is a French expression describing crepuscular light at dusk.) With set designs by the American artist John Baldessari and lovely costumes by the Greek designer Mary Katrantzou, the piece is a benchmark for the creative collaborations championed by Benjamin Millepied, who will leave his position as director of dance at the Opera at the end of July.
BERLIN Thomas Harding, a Briton in his late 40s, led the way into a decrepit single-story wooden structure on an overgrown lakeside plot on Berlins westernmost border in Gross Glienicke. There used to be French doors there that opened onto the terrace, he said of his Jewish great-grandparents weekend house. And behind there, he said pointing to the wall on the right, There was Elsie and Bellas bedroom, with a door into the living room.
The house, which had been built by Mr. Hardings German Jewish great-grandfather Alfred Alexander in 1927, is the subject of his book The House by the Lake, which traces German history through the five families that occupied the property. The book became a best seller in Britain when it came out last fall and was released last week in the United States.
What started as a family history quickly turned into a history of families the five that shaped the plot and the house from the time of the kaiser to its desertion in 2003 in a reunited Germany. The labor of one writer fostered a team effort involving Harding family members in Britain and locals in Gross Glienicke. The Alexander House, as it is now called, is scheduled to open as a public memorial in 2017. A facility for interfaith and intercultural dialogue and reconciliation is planned for 2019.
For Mr. Harding, the history of the house by the lake is one of trauma and loss many times over same location, different people, different tragedies, different times, he said.
In a recent phone call from a vacation on Georgian Bay on Lake Huron, north of Toronto, where the show is filmed, Mr. Adams talked about Mikes decisions, lurking danger and ditching those bespoke suits. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.
We know where Mike has been, but where is he headed?
At the end of Season 5 we saw Mike make the decision to take the bullet for his friends and, finally, responsibility for what hes been doing the last five years. Now we get a lay of the land of what prison is like, and plant the seeds for Mike and Harvey working together to get him out of there before those two years are up.
So we should expect a prison break?
Were going to attempt some pretty creative maneuvering. In the world of Suits, the law is a very bendable thing filled with back-room deals and owing people favors. And in that spirit, theres going to be a lot of Mike and Harvey trying to convince the powers that be to let him out early before something severe happens in the hands of his enemies.
Frank is currently enemy No. 1. What fuels his rage?
Harvey has a checkered past hes done a lot of things to a lot of people and put a lot of people away, and Frank Gallo is one of them. But hes different than a lot of villains, whove done duplicitous things or hurt people in ways that arent physical. This is a character whos very much a physical menace, and thats new to our show.
How realistic is the prison set?
They did a pretty incredible job building it to scale and getting the details rights. In these white-collar prisons, theres more room to breathe, the doors of the cell are left open, theres a little bit of moving around in the common spaces. But for Mike thats an even more threatening situation. He never quite knows where Frank could sneak up on him.
Anyone who has spent time in Russia over the past 30 years should be deeply grateful for Arkady Ostrovskys fast-paced and excellently written book, The Invention of Russia: From Gorbachevs Freedom to Putins War.
Too often, the story of post-Soviet Russia is presented through a Western prism as a clash of good Westernizers and evil reactionaries, or as a lamentation about what the West could, and should, have done once it won the Cold War. Mr. Ostrovsky doesnt waste time on that. A first-class journalist who has spent many years covering Russia for the London publications The Financial Times and The Economist, he is also a native of the Soviet Union, with an instinctive understanding of how politics, ideas and daily life really work there.
In Mr. Ostrovskys book, the West plays a minor role as a utopia for liberal intellectuals, a scapegoat for Vladimir V. Putin or a place of exile for fallen oligarchs. His is an insiders story about how the uniquely Russian contest of ideas, myths and invented histories shaped the chaotic search for a new Russia, once Communist rule crumbled from Mikhail S. Gorbachevs illusion that Soviet rule could be reformed and democratized, to what Mr. Ostrovsky calls the hatred and aggression of Mr. Putins kleptocratic state.
In The Invention of Russia, those primarily responsible for Russias emergence from authoritarianism and for its descent back into it and the great dramas that accompanied it Boris N. Yeltsins firing on his Parliament, the Chechen wars, the hostage-taking in a Beslan school are the Russians who invented (as the books title proclaims) a progression of narratives, either in print or, more powerfully, on television. It was there, on the media front, Mr. Ostrovsky argues, that the real struggles over Russias future were fought.
Americas banks require more creativity. That conjures up fears of accounting tricks or overly complex products with zero economic or social benefit. The truth is simpler: Return on equity at the nations lenders and investment banks remains too low, and banks need to try something new.
At least income statements for the second quarter ought to look better than they did for the first three months of the year. JPMorgan Chase, which kicks off earnings season on Thursday, Goldman Sachs and Bank of America look ready to beat their first-quarter showings, according to Thomson Reuters estimates. Stock deals, the trading environment and mortgage refinancing have all picked up.
The trouble is, earnings are set to be worse than in last years second quarter, meaning few banks are likely to earn enough to beat their cost of capital which is usually pegged at around 10 percent. Of the larger banks, only Wells Fargo and U.S. Bancorp are likely to do so. That has often been the case for several years now. Executives everywhere have been trying to improve matters by dumping unprofitable businesses, crimping expenses or laying off staff.
That can do only so much when top-line growth is stagnant. Citigroup and JPMorgan have pushed their efficiency ratios which measure how much per dollar of revenue is spent on operations below 60 percent. That is impressive; the average of banks tracked by Credit Suisse analysts is around 63 percent. But it is not enough to breach the cost-of-capital threshold. And few are likely to manage to do so in the next couple of years, according to Thomson Reuters estimates.
The Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has broadly agreed with the federal bankruptcy court in New York that a certain type of bankruptcy asset sale can bar successor liability claims, but disagreed with the bankruptcy judges no harm, no foul analysis in the specific case of General Motors and its failure to give proper notice to some potential creditors. Most people will focus on the second point of Wednesdays decision, but the first has much more significance in the long run for Chapter 11 practice.
The case involves General Motors notorious and lamentable decision to hide from the public a flaw in its ignition switches that could unexpectedly shut off engine power, with potentially lethal consequences, until several years after its bankruptcy case had concluded.
In the G.M. bankruptcy case, perhaps the most prominent example of the collateral damage caused by the 2008 crisis in the banking sector, the assets of old G.M. were sold to new G.M., which was a newly created company supported by the American and Canadian governments.
The sale order that the New York bankruptcy judge Robert Gerber approved in 2009 provided that all of old G.M.s creditors were prohibited from going after the new G.M. for claims, save for certain express exceptions. But nobody knew about the ignition switch problem then.
But there are trade-offs. For access to Europes single market, which Britain still seeks, Norway pays hundreds of millions of euros a year into the blocs budget. It is also required to accept every law that Brussels adopts, like the one that threatened Mr. Braathens business, without getting to vote on them.
Crucially, it must also allow citizens from the European Union to pass freely through its borders, meaning it does not have control over immigration, a pivotal issue for British voters who wanted out of the bloc. As a result, Norway has even higher per-capita immigration than Britain.
Its integration without representation: You get access to the market, but you dont get a voice, said Ulf Sverdrup, the director of the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs and the author of a report tallying the cost to Norway outside the European Union. For a country like Britain, if you have ambitions to be a leader in Europe, its not a good thing.
Britain has other options, but they are hardly more palatable. It could negotiate trade deals with 27 remaining member nations, as Switzerland did. But that would be a lengthy mess. Or it could follow Canadas approach, striking deals for trading goods but limiting services, which could hit Britains vaunted financial industry.
Or the European Union might decline to strike any deal, creating uncertainty in Britain and around the world. In a meeting this week between the United States Treasury secretary, Jacob J. Lew, and the chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, Mr. Lew urged that both sides demonstrate flexibility in their discussions. A highly integrated relationship between the E.U. and the U.K. is in the best interests of Europe, the United States and global economic growth, stability and security, he said.
The easiest thing, analysts say, is to just join the European Economic Area like Norway.
That arrangement gives Norway sovereignty over two crucial industries that were the focus of Brexit campaigners. The country is free to pursue protectionist policies for its farmers and fishermen, for instance by slapping import tariffs of more than 270 percent on cheese from Europe.
Frank Venegas Jr. has both a daughter, Linzie, and a son, Jesse, working at the Ideal Group, a Detroit manufacturing and construction services company he started in 1979 with $12,000 he earned selling a Cadillac Coupe DeVille that he won in a raffle. Today, the Ideal Group employs 850 and has four divisions.
Ms. Venegas is the vice president for marketing, finance and human resources, while her brother runs one of the divisions. But which one will lead the company is still not known.
God knows what will happen, Mr. Venegas said. But they separate roles really well.
In the meantime, he has begun transferring stock to his children and putting an official succession plan into place to clarify roles and titles. He is now the chairman and his brother Loren is president, acting as a bridge to the next generation.
I always hated all of those titles, he said. They dont mean anything. But they really do in a transition phase because if you dont have a place to write in what everyone is supposed to do, it gets real shady.
Such formal succession planning, however, is not that common among family enterprises. The latest PricewaterhouseCoopers Family Business Survey, published last year, found that almost three-quarters of family businesses do not have a succession plan for senior roles and that half of the founders stay involved longer than is optimum. Addressing what the report called the sticky baton syndrome, when the founder is not willing to let go even when its time, is perhaps the most difficult conversation among family members.
With a founder generation struggling to let go, we often see them hand over the title, but they dont really give over the control or the leadership, said Jonathan Flack, a partner in PricewaterhouseCoopers and leader of its family business services in the United States.
The scenario this produces, Mr. Cathers said, is that patients often feel compelled to prove that they really are the gender they say they identify as, believing that only if they are persuasive enough will they secure the therapists letter enabling them to get what they want. Mr. Cathers often begins by telling his patients, You dont have to prove anything to me.
Yet while Mr. Cathers, Dr. Sadownick and others believe that it is urgent for L.G.B.T. patients to be treated by therapists who have been specifically trained to help them or risk the psychic hurt of not being truly seen they also believe that the potential benefits of such therapy are in no way reserved for just these clients.
The sensibility imparted by L.G.B.T.-affirming therapy is of huge worth to straight clients, too, they say, because it is built around the urgent need to wake up to the social assumptions that shape all of our lives, whether or not we want them to.
A heterosexual woman is saturated in all of these norms about how she should be with a male, how she should pass her time clock, how she should get married, Dr. Sadownick said. Theres very little maneuver room. And that is where the L.G.B.T.-affirming therapy can also be helpful.
Matthew Silverstein, a psychotherapist in West Hollywood, Calif., who was also involved in the creation of the Antioch program, described from his own practice how freeing the L.G.B.T.-affirming sensibility can be, for straight patients as well as gay. On the question of fidelity, for example: Its not that I dont believe in communication and trust, Dr. Silverstein said, but I have many different models of what it means to be in a relationship, and I can thank the gay community for opening my eyes to that.
So when, for instance, a patient comes in distressed over a husbands affair, real or suspected, he said, I can help her identify what are the expectations she holds that are leaving her so anguished.
As far as partying is concerned, New York Fashion Week: Mens does not compare to the debauchery of the larger fashion weeks. But there were still plenty of opportunities to hang with models, designers and celebrities.
The festivities began on Monday night, when the Council of Fashion Designers of America and Cadillac held a party at the Cadillac House, the car brands new public space in Lower Manhattan. Celebrities like Kellan Lutz, Shaun White and Jerry OConnell mingled with fashion insiders, and Common performed.
Topping off the clear liquid in his plastic drinking cup, Michael Kors signaled that it was time to get started. Ive refilled my vodka, so Im ready to roll, the designer said.
It was at 11 a.m. on a Tuesday and Mr. Kors was joking. I think.
From that point forward he was all business, presenting a fine and restrained spring mens wear collection to a small assortment of invited critics and editors, as is his custom.
To observe the intensity of Mr. Korss focus as he describes, say, perfectly proportioned wide-legged chambray denim trousers or a khaki colored tissue-poplin windbreaker/blazer designed for some imaginary moneyed young man on the go is to gain insight into a quality he consistently projects, whether on Project Runway, at an investor conference or in department store trunk shows: sincerity.
In a city of majestic bridges, it is a relatively modest one. But this bridge near the Brooklyn waterfront became well known for all the wrong reasons.
Now, after closing abruptly nearly two years ago, the so-called bouncy bridge that had linked the Brooklyn Heights Promenade to Brooklyn Bridge Park will undergo repairs that park officials believe should solve, at long last, the riddle of the troubled pedestrian crossing.
The bridge, officially called Squibb Park Bridge, would have been a footnote to Brooklyn Bridge Park were it not for its embarrassing debut. The connection was intended to give residents of Brooklyn Heights easier access to the 1.3-mile Brooklyn Bridge Park, which is cut off from the historic neighborhood by the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway.
But while it was essentially just a shortcut, the bridge was expensive costing $4.1 million and like most everything else about the wildly popular Brooklyn Bridge Park, fun and stylish.
To the Editor:
Re Obama Consoles and Challenges a Shaken Nation (front page, July 13):
President Obama did not sugarcoat racial or police issues in this country. But from the bottom of his heart and soul, he asked us: Can we find the character, as Americans, to open our hearts to each other? Can we see in each other a common humanity and a shared dignity?
Mr. Obama suggested that we ask too much of the police and too little of ourselves. He said we are struggling over what we saw in the past week on both sides and asked whether the divides of race in America can be bridged.
Can we find it in our hearts not to stereotype, but to see individuals for who they are? Is it possible? Let us try.
My condolences to the families of the fallen Dallas police officers.
GEORGIA STAPLETON
Shawano, Wis.
To the Editor:
George W. Bush delivered the best speech of his life in Dallas. It was smart, well crafted and balanced and delivered the perfect message. For me there is irony in this observation. I always believed that Mr. Bush was ill suited for the presidency. Now, however, compared with Donald Trump he came across as a scholarly, caring, intelligent, superstar orator.
The European Union has lost one of the strongest supporters of its sanctions against Russia for the war Mr. Putin is waging in Ukraine. This will tip the balance of power in favor of those member states, including Cyprus and Slovenia, that are prepared to lift sanctions tied to compliance with the commitments Russia made in the Minsk II agreement, the Ukraine peace accord signed in February 2015. Russia has, over the past year, promoted bilateral relations with those it sees as sympathetic to Moscow like Greece, Austria and Hungary and it will continue to do so.
Although Minsk sanctions were recently rolled over for another six months, there is fatigue in Brussels. The Slovak newspaper Dennik N reported in February that the countrys prime minister, Robert Fico, had said of the sanctions: The sooner they are removed, the better. Last month, Germanys foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, argued that they are not an end in themselves and should lapse. When they do lapse, the European Union will have conceded Russias right to invade or intervene in whatever territory it wants. Moscows authoritarianism will have defeated Brussels liberal democracy.
There are also fears of a Brexit domino effect in Europe. Polands president, Andrzej Duda, said last month that everything must be done to prevent other countries from leaving the European Union. Mr. Putin knows this, which is why he devotes considerable effort to cultivating and funding euroskeptic groups across the Continent.
Frances far-right National Front party received an $11.7 million loan from a Russian bank in 2014; the Kremlin has also nurtured ties with extreme-right and nationalist parties like Jobbik of Hungary, the Peoples Party of Slovakia and Ataka of Bulgaria. The United States is so concerned over Moscows determination to exploit European disunity that in January, James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, began a review of Russias clandestine funding of European parties.
The future of Britain is at stake: In both Scotland and Northern Ireland, major political parties (the Scottish National Party and Sinn Fein, respectively) are poised to demand further referendums of their populations on whether to leave the United Kingdom. If its systematically one-sided coverage of Brexit is anything to go by, RT Mr. Putins mouthpiece English-language television channel will focus heavily on any future out campaign in Scotland or the North of Ireland.
The State Department dissent channel memo on the United States policy in Syria, leaked last month, is just the latest expression of a widespread belief in and out of government that American intervention in Syria is necessary and would be successful.
After five years of brutal, grinding war, this view is understandable. The idea of the United States saving the Middle East from itself appeals to liberal hawks and neoconservatives alike. Unfortunately, when that notion has carried the day as it did in Iraq in 2003 and Libya in 2011 regional security and stability have worsened. Indeed, in light of Syrias geopolitical circumstances, intervention along the lines suggested in the memo could produce consequences more dangerous than those of the two previous adventures.
The memos authors and other interventionists fail to recognize that the United States in fact has effectively weakened President Bashar al-Assad already. In 2015, the administrations aggressive covert action program facilitated significant gains for the opposition in northern Syria, exposed Latakia the regimes heartland to attack, and diminished the Syrian military position in the northwestern province of Idlib.
But these losses were also key factors in Russias decision to enter the Syrian fray after years of sitting on the sidelines. This gives the lie to the interventionists belief that judicious airstrikes could somehow disempower the Assad government, sap Russian resolve and improve prospects for a negotiated solution.
Then she became the Scorned Wife after her divorce (and, later, Mr. Pitts marriage to Angelina Jolie) ushered in the feverish Team Aniston era, which spanned several years and created an insane Bermuda Triangle, as she told GQ in 2008.
And the title of that GQ article, Lordy, Lordy, This Woman Is 40, signaled a new era for Ms. Aniston.
She became the Single Aging Woman.
If I am some kind of symbol to some people out there, then clearly I am an example of the lens through which we, as a society, view our mothers, daughters, sisters, wives, female friends and colleagues, she wrote in the Huffington Post essay. The objectification and scrutiny we put women through is absurd and disturbing.
Ms. Anistons marriage to the actor Justin Theroux whom she wed in 2015 after years of speculative headlines about their relationship has entered the territory of constant conjecture over whether or not she is pregnant.
As Ms. Aniston puts it, she has grown tired of being part of this narrative.
Heres where I come out on this topic: We are complete with or without a mate, with or without a child, she wrote. We get to decide for ourselves what is beautiful when it comes to our bodies.
It seemed to be a coup for Theater for a New Audience: Its first summer Shakespeare production would be Hamlet, with the much-lauded Tony-winning director Sam Gold at the helm, and the rising Hollywood star Oscar Isaac in the title role.
The play, announced in April and scheduled to open next June at the Polonsky Shakespeare Center in Brooklyn, had been in the works since 2014. Tickets were sold to subscribers, and a creative team was assembled.
But the production has fallen apart.
Last month Mr. Gold, citing insurmountable artistic differences, backed out and took the play and Mr. Isaac to the Public Theater, which is in talks to add the production to its 2016-17 season. Theater for a New Audience canceled its Hamlet.
The productions move from one nonprofit theater to another is unusual. Even more of an anomaly is the response of Jeffrey Horowitz, Theater for a New Audiences artistic director, who has decided to go public with the details of what happened.
Each week, Nate Cohn, The Upshots elections analyst, based in Washington, and Toni Monkovic, an Upshot editor in New York, discuss the 2016 race and post a lightly edited transcript of their written exchange. This week: Good poll/bad poll; Bernie Sanderss endorsement; Nevadas not-so-easy race for Hillary Clinton; and does Mike Pence make sense? But first ...
Toni Some people still assume Donald Trump cant possibly win. But he certainly has a chance, even if its not a huge one. Lets imagine the election were today. Ill make a few statements, and you contradict me if Im wrong and chime in as you like.
Nate O.K.
Toni Donald Trump would be president of the United States if only men voted.
Nate I think thats true.
[Note: A Pew poll shows Trump with a 49-43 edge with that group in a head-to-head matchup.]
Toni Donald Trump would be president of the United States if only whites voted.
Less than a week after the troubling images of Philando Castile, bloodied by gunshots from a police officer, were broadcast on Facebook Live, another shooting has been streamed as it happened thanks to the popular feature. This time three men in Norfolk, Va., were badly wounded.
The authorities said the men, ages 27 to 29, came under attack Tuesday evening, as one of them was streaming live video of the group hanging out in a car.
Less than six minutes into the broadcast, as the men smoke and listen to the hip-hop of Lil Bibby, gunfire erupts, sending the camera to the floor. With the lens now pointed away from the men, more than 30 pops can be heard over the span of a gut-wrenching 20 seconds.
The three men, whom the police declined to identify, were transported to a hospital with life-threatening injuries. A spokesman for the Norfolk police, Officer Daniel Hudson, said early Wednesday that two of them had improved overnight, but that one remained in critical condition.
But there is more: Rewind the clock a few additional months from June 2015, to October 2014 during the Ebola crisis. Dallas was the site of the first three cases of Ebola confirmed in the United States. The Dallas police fought that war, too, helping to calm the first American city to contend with a widespread Ebola public-health emergency. Officers stood guard outside apartments suspected of being contaminated, the very places many residents wanted to get far from. That line that is repeated often these days that the police run toward danger as the public runs away from it applies even when the danger is invisible.
It is not just the horror of last Thursday. Not many police forces have been through what the one in Dallas has been through in so brief a time. That officer in the cafe came under fire last year from Mr. Boulware, just as he came under fire on Thursday from Mr. Johnson, and yet there he was the other day, in uniform and on the job. When people ask how Dallas can recover from the past catastrophic week, some of the answer lies in what officers have already been through.
Its kind of like diamonds, said Detective Arturo Martinez, a friend of Officer Patrick Zamarripa, one of the five officers killed last week. The more pressure you get, the stronger you get, the more beautiful you are. No matter how much pressure you put on us, were just going to get better.
Detective Martinez, 29, trained in the police academy in 2009 and 2010 with Officer Zamarripa, 32, a Navy veteran who served in Iraq. Detective Martinez said his friend was always down to go chase the bad guy, one of the type of officers their peers call dope chasers.
DALLAS From a young age, Brent Thompson pushed the bounds of life so hard that he almost always found a way to get hurt.
There was that time as a youngster when he nearly broke his neck playing in a hammock. Or when he wrecked his brothers Mustang after begging him for the keys. Or the time he broke his arm during motorcycle training for the Police Department.
It was his fearlessness and desire to serve his country that led Mr. Thompson to join the Marines and, after returning from deployments in Afghanistan and Iraq, to become a police officer, his longtime pastor, Rick Lamb, said Wednesday.
So it came as no surprise to people close to Mr. Thompson, 43, that when gunfire started ringing out during a protest here last Thursday, he was one of the officers running toward the shooting. This time, however, Mr. Thompson suffered the ultimate injury. He and four other officers were killed when a black Army veteran upset over killings by the police across the country opened fire, targeting white officers, the authorities said.
Nearly four-fifths of white evangelical voters plan to cast their ballots for Donald J. Trump despite his multiple marriages, lack of piety and inconsistency on the issues they care about most, a new poll has found.
Support for Mr. Trump among white evangelicals is even stronger than it was four years ago for Mitt Romney, the previous Republican nominee for president, according to the poll of religious voters, released on Tuesday by the Pew Research Center.
White evangelicals make up about one-fifth of all registered voters and are a coveted bloc who, when energized, can turn out the vote through their churches and social networks. It has been unclear to what extent Mr. Trump will be able to capture this core Republican constituency, because some leading evangelicals have spoken of being disturbed by his penchant for boasting about himself and belittling others, his pledges to deport Mexican immigrants and bar Muslims from entering the country, and his past support for abortion rights and gay rights.
Some influential evangelical leaders have joined the Never Trump camp, while others have pledged support for Mr. Trump. More came on board after he wooed about 1,000 of them in a closed-door meeting in New York.
The latest New York Times/CBS News Poll is based on telephone interviews conducted July 8 to 12 with 1,600 adults throughout the United States. Of those, 1,358 said they were registered to vote.
SSRS of Media, Pa., conducted sampling, interviewing and tabulation for the survey. Interviews were in English or Spanish.
The sample of landline telephone exchanges called was randomly selected by a computer from a complete list of more than 82,000 active residential exchanges across the country, maintained by MSG of Horsham, Pa. The exchanges were chosen so as to ensure that each region of the country was represented in its proper proportion.
Within each exchange, random digits were added to form a complete telephone number, thus permitting access to listed and unlisted numbers alike. Within each landline household, one adult was designated by a random procedure to be the respondent for the survey.
Sixty-nine percent of Americans say race relations are generally bad, one of the highest levels of discord since the 1992 riots in Los Angeles during the Rodney King case, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.
The poll, conducted from Friday, the day after the killing of five Dallas police officers, until Tuesday, found that six in 10 Americans say race relations were growing worse, up from 38 percent a year ago.
Racial discontent is at its highest point in the Obama presidency and at the same level as after the riots touched off by the 1992 acquittal of Los Angeles police officers charged in Mr. Kings beating.
Relations between black Americans and the police have become so brittle that more than half of black people say they were not surprised by the attack that killed five police officers and wounded nine others in Dallas last week. Nearly half of white Americans say that they, too, were unsurprised by the episode, the survey found.
Armstrong Williams, who was a top adviser to Ben Carsons presidential campaign, has been sued on charges of sexually harassing a male aide and then having him fired after he rebuffed the advances.
Mr. Williams served as an informal mentor to the aide, Charlton Woodyard, after meeting him in a clothing store in Union Station in Washington in 2013, according to a lawsuit filed Wednesday in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.
Mr. Williams offered Mr. Woodyard introductions to the capitals elite and had him serve as an unpaid assistant before helping him find work in Alabama with a television station controlled by Howard Stirk Holdings, a media company that Mr. Williams owns, the lawsuit says.
In November, according to the lawsuit, Mr. Williams asked Mr. Woodyard, who is 30 years his junior, to come to his home to talk about business. The lawsuit accuses Mr. Williams of demanding that Mr. Woodyard get into his bed and give him a massage, and of groping Mr. Woodyard.
Senator Bernie Sanders has at last enthusiastically endorsed Hillary Clinton. Now Democratic Senate candidates are rallying around the push to ease college debt that Mrs. Clinton embraced last week to show Sanders supporters that she had adopted some of his political and policy ideals.
The Progressive Change Campaign Committee says that multiple candidates in top-tier Senate races are jointly endorsing the debt-free concept, which could eventually provide free in-state tuition to eligible students. The move suggests that the program to try to ease student debt is going to be a central element of the national Democratic argument for a Senate majority.
We have to fight to ensure that graduates of public colleges and universities are able to begin their career without this growing burden, said Patty Judge, the Democratic opponent to Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa.
Other Democratic Senate contenders now backing the approach, according to the progressive organization, include Russ Feingold in Wisconsin; Kamala Harris in California; Gov. Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, who is seeking a Senate seat; and Deborah Ross in North Carolina. Senators Ron Wyden of Oregon and Michael Bennet of Colorado, who are both seeking re-election, have also lent their support.
Hillary Clinton and Donald J. Trump are deadlocked in the crucial swing states of Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida, according to new polls showing the presumptive Republican presidential nominee gaining strength on his Democratic rival because of doubts about her honesty.
Surveys from Quinnipiac University show the two candidates statistically tied in the states going into their party conventions in Cleveland and Philadelphia this month. Mr. Trump leads Mrs. Clinton in Florida by three percentage points, 42 percent to 39 percent. In Pennsylvania, he is ahead by two points, 43 percent to 41 percent. And in Ohio they are tied, with each having support of 41 percent of voters.
When Gary Johnson, the Libertarian Party nominee, and Jill Stein, the Green Partys candidate, are included in the polls, Mr. Trump does even better, leading Mrs. Clinton by five points in Florida, six points in Pennsylvania and one point in Ohio. Mr. Johnson is expected to be on ballots in all 50 states.
The polls, which have margins of error of plus or minus three percentage points, show improvement for Mr. Trump in Pennsylvania and Florida, where he is starting to do better with women and independent voters while gaining more support among men. In June, Mrs. Clinton held small leads over Mr. Trump in Florida and Pennsylvania and they were tied in Ohio.
SPRINGFIELD, Ill. On the grounds of the Old State Capitol here, where nearly 160 years ago, Abraham Lincoln held forth on a house divided, Hillary Clinton on Wednesday lamented the Party of Lincolns transition to the Party of Trump, casting the present moment as an indelible stain on Republican history.
Yet even as she savaged Donald J. Trump as an existential threat to American democracy, a week before Republicans plan to nominate him for president in Cleveland, Mrs. Clinton set off on a delicate balancing act of her own.
She waded with care into the thickets of national reckonings over police violence and violence against the police, hoping to position herself as an unlikely agent of harmony.
And in an uncharacteristic admission, Mrs. Clinton assumed responsibility for at least a small measure of the fractiousness in the national discourse.
Donald J. Trump is demanding more than $10 million in damages from a former campaign adviser he accuses of leaking confidential information to the news media, court documents made public on Wednesday showed.
Mr. Trump has had a long and complicated relationship with the adviser, Sam Nunberg, who was fired from the campaign nearly a year ago after he posted racially charged Facebook posts under the candidates name.
Lawyers for Mr. Trump have taken Mr. Nunberg to arbitration, asserting that he violated a nondisclosure agreement by leaking false and defamatory information to reporters, including details used in a recent New York Post Page Six article about a public argument between two high-level campaign staff members.
Mr. Nunberg has engaged in a calculated, willful and malicious scheme to disclose certain confidential information concerning the campaign to various international media outlets in a blatant attempt to harm the campaign and its candidate, Donald J. Trump, wrote Alan Garten, a lawyer for Mr. Trump, in a legal filing on May 28.
CAIRO Hours after being fired from her job as a presenter on one of the few remaining television news programs in Egypt critical of the government, Liliane Daoud found herself on a plane to Lebanon.
Plainclothes police officers barged into the Cairo home of Ms. Daoud, a Lebanese-British journalist, on June 27 and whisked her to the airport, forcing her to leave her tearful 11-year-old daughter. Ms. Daoud was told President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi had personally ordered her deportation.
They said it didnt matter who I called, because it was a presidential order, Ms. Daoud said recently, speaking by telephone from Beirut, the Lebanese capital.
Ms. Daoud is among nearly 500 people mostly activists, lawyers and reporters who have been deported, barred from travel or temporarily detained at Egyptian airports since Mr. Sisi came to power in 2013, according to Daftar Ahwal, a local civil rights group that monitors the incidents.
UNITED NATIONS The thousands of United Nations peacekeepers trying to stave off disaster in South Sudan already have a tough, clear mandate: to protect civilians by any means necessary.
Their track record, however, shows that they have not always been able or willing to do that.
When civil war broke out in South Sudan more than two years ago, the United Nations took pains to tell the world that its peacekeepers in the country had opened their compound gates and given refuge to tens of thousands of civilians.
Since then, however, the troops have faced blistering criticism for not taking steps in time to head off an ethnic massacre in a camp for displaced people; for being unable to protect women who were raped when they ventured outside camps to gather firewood; and for being confined to their bases as new spasms of violence over the weekend led to the deaths of even more civilians.
On Wednesday, as senior United Nations officials warned of the risks of renewed fighting between rival South Sudanese factions after deadly clashes over the weekend, Security Council diplomats met behind closed doors to discuss whether to send more troops or give them new orders.
HARARE, Zimbabwe A pastor who has emerged as a leading voice against the government of President Robert Mugabe was freed on Wednesday after a court ruled that the states efforts to increase the severity of the charges against him were unconstitutional.
The pastor, the Rev. Evan Mawarire, 39, who spent one night in jail after being arrested on Tuesday, walked out of the Harare Magistrates Court in the evening as cars honked and hundreds of people holding candles cheered in celebration.
With a Zimbabwean flag draped around his neck, Mr. Mawarire sounded defiant, telling the crowd, Lets remain resolute.
The authorities had arrested him the day before and charged him with inciting public violence. But on Wednesday morning, prosecutors tried to charge him with attempting to overthrow a constitutionally elected government, a far more serious charge that would have made it more difficult for Mr. Mawarire to be released on bail.
But unlike many tragedies involving indigenous Canadians, these victims were linked by important common denominators: All were young people from remote towns. All were unaccustomed to city life. All were forced to stay in privately run boardinghouses a lonely, unsupervised life for students as young as 14.
The inquest became a window into broader questions over how Canada handles education for such a vulnerable population. Testimony underscored that despite Canadas national pride over inclusiveness, a racial line often separates indigenous Canadians from the rest of society.
Theres racism here, said Sara Brady, an Ojibway teacher who runs a team of workers who assist indigenous students at a high school in Thunder Bay. You have kids who have never experienced racism before, and thats a big thing for some of them. They dont understand what that is until they get here.
Among the statistics offered at the inquest, a calculation by Dr. David Eden, the presiding coroner, stood out. Two of the students, Kyle Morrisseau and Robyn Harper, came from Keewaywin, population around 300, about 350 miles northwest of Thunder Bay. For Thunder Bay to suffer a proportionally similar tragedy, he said, 700 high school students would need to die.
BEIJING The Chinese government is trying to slow down the approval of new coal-fired power plants because of overcapacity, but projects already in the pipeline, as well as loopholes in policy, mean China is on track to add an average of one new coal-fired plant a week until 2020, according to a report released on Wednesday by Greenpeace East Asia.
The construction boom would result in about 400 gigawatts of excess capacity and would waste more than one trillion renminbi, or $150 billion, on building unneeded plants, the report said.
China now has 910 gigawatts of coal-fired capacity and is expected to retire 70 gigawatts of that. The new construction means the country would increase capacity at a time when additional coal-fired power is not needed, Greenpeace said.
BEIJING After three days of torrid heat in Beijing, with thermometer readings in the upper 90s Fahrenheit, the air in the citys concrete canyons and on its giant ring roads has cooled a little, to 95. Enough for city officials to drop the health warning they had posted on Sunday, as they do whenever temperatures exceed that threshold.
Sure, it is not the heat of the deserts of Rajasthan in India, where temperatures in May crackled to 123.8 degrees. But the air in Beijing and other parts of China can reach 106 in the summer, and work rarely stops on the 24-hour construction sites even under these bamboo steamer conditions, as The Beijing Evening News described them.
China has something rare to address the problem. By law, many people who work outdoors are eligible for a heat subsidy when temperatures go above 95, or 35 degrees Celsius a pay supplement that in Beijing amounts to 180 renminbi a month, or $27, China News Service reported.
Employers do not always give the money, and workers may not know about it or may fear losing their jobs if they ask, said a business and legal consultancy based in Shanghai.
TOKYO For the first time in nearly two centuries, an emperor of Japan has said that he will abdicate the throne before he dies.
According to NHK, the public broadcaster in Japan, Emperor Akihito, 82, who in 1989 succeeded his father, the wartime emperor Hirohito, told close aides that he intended to pass the throne to his son, Crown Prince Naruhito, 56, before he dies. No modern emperor has done so: The last emperor to abdicate was Emperor Kokaku, in 1817.
The emperors role is now entirely ceremonial. Until the end of World War II, the Japanese public revered the emperor as a demigod, and he served as commander in chief of the army. After Emperor Hirohito surrendered at the end of World War II, the countrys American occupiers stripped him of all political authority. Today, many Japanese still hold the emperor in high regard.
The North Koreans would like people to doubt that the United States would trade Seattle for Seoul, Mr. Fitzpatrick said, referring to a Cold War adage that the United States accepted risks to its own cities so as to defend those of its allies.
B. R. Myers, a North Korea scholar at Dongseo University in South Korea, takes this theory one step further. The nuclear program, he believes, is meant not only to scare off the United States, but to one day coerce the South into accepting the Norths long-stated demand: reunification on its own terms.
It is the only goal big enough to make sense of a nuclear program that has made the D.P.R.K. less secure than it was 10 years ago, Mr. Myers said, using the abbreviation of North Koreas formal name.
North Koreas greatest source of insecurity, he argued, is not its enemies abroad whose efforts at rapprochement it has long spurned but its own looming crisis of legitimacy.
Because the country positions itself as the true protector of the Korean people but is so much poorer than the South, it has no reason to exist as a separate state, Mr. Myers wrote in a recent research paper. Unification is therefore the only long-term solution to the regimes chronic security problems.
While such scenarios may sound outlandish, Mr. Lewis pointed to the 2003 United States-led invasion of Iraq and NATOs 2011 intervention in Libya, which led to the grisly deaths of those countries leaders. North Korea is far weaker than its enemies, whom the country sees as bent on its destruction. And it faces a possible legitimacy crisis of the sort that seems to topple another government every year.
These fears, analysts say, could be spurring Kim Jong-un to drastically change his countrys behavior upending long-held assumptions in the process.
HONG KONG Taiwan is an often-overlooked player in the debate over control of the South China Sea, where its emphasis on multilateral negotiations tends to be drowned out by the bold claims of China, which considers Taiwan part of its territory and tries to limit its voice in world affairs.
But after an international tribunal broadly rejected Chinas claims to the strategic waterway, Taiwan reminded the world that it, too, had a stake in the sea. It denied the tribunals findings soon after they were released, and on Wednesday, it sent a warship to patrol the contested region.
The mission of this voyage is to display Taiwan peoples resolve in defending the national interest, Tsai Ing-wen, the president of Taiwan, said in a speech before the departure of the ship, a La Fayette-class frigate. The patrol had already been scheduled, but the ships departure was moved up a day after the tribunals announcement.
Ms. Tsai said the decision on Tuesday by the tribunal, which was established by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, had gravely harmed Taiwans rights in the South China Sea, which is also claimed in part by Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam.
SEOUL, South Korea South Korea announced on Wednesday that a rural southern county would be the site of an advanced American missile defense battery, the planned deployment of which has angered China and North Korea and, now, thousands of local residents, who demonstrated against the plan.
Villagers rallied under a sweltering sun to condemn the choice of their county, Seongju, which is about 135 miles southeast of Seoul, the capital, for the so-called Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense system, known as Thaad. South Korea and the United States say the powerful missile and radar system is needed to defend the country, and American forces stationed here, against North Korean missiles, but residents fear it will threaten their health and ruin their agricultural economy.
We oppose Thaad with our lives! the residents chanted, holding banners that bore the same slogan. Local political leaders, wearing red headbands, wrote the same vow in blood after cutting their fingers, a dramatic form of protest that has a long history in South Korea. Some of the politicians and protest leaders also began a hunger strike.
If we lose our precious land to Thaad, we will be ashamed before our ancestors and posterity, Kim Hang-gon, who oversees the Seongju county government, told the crowd, many of them aging melon farmers, according to the news agency Yonhap. The county, which has a population of about 50,000, provides 60 percent of all melons sold in South Korea.
ROME Italian authorities said on Wednesday that they were investigating an archaic phone alert system and delays in railway upgrades, along with human error, as possible causes of the head-on train collision that killed about two dozen people in the southern region of Puglia this week.
The chief prosecutor in the investigation, Francesco Giannella, said on national television that human error was only a starting point in the investigation.
The investigation will not only look into human error we must examine all possibilities and responsibilities, Mr. Giannella told TG1, an Italian public station, anticipating new developments in the case in a few hours.
The police said they had interrogated the two station masters in the towns of Andria and Corato, from which the two trains departed on Tuesday morning, and were analyzing the stations registers and recordings. On Wednesday morning, officials also recovered the two trains black boxes. The trains were going an estimated 60 miles per hour when they crashed.
SOT MAY 1168 BIRMINGHAM, ENGLAND, UK (JULY 11, 2016): we will make Britain a country that works for everyone. VO:Theresa May was really an incredible candidate left in the race, but the speed with which she was installed was very surprising. Im Stephen Castle, a London correspondent for The New York Times SOT CONSERVATIVE LEADER OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, BREXITEER WHO NOW SUPPORTS THERESA MAY, CHRIS GRAYLING - 1190 - JULY 11, 2016 LONDON :We all know that Theresa will do everything she can to equip our country for the challenges that lie ahead. The general consensus at the highest level of the Conservative party is that there were needed some swift actions to end the uncertainty. SOT Theresa May: Ive been Home Secretary for six years now... VO: Theresa May is known as a very tough operator. In fact, the homeland business has been described as SOT May 1172 - Taking control is about making sure that our voice is heard and that it counts. O VO: Theresa May is the second female PM that Britain had. The first was Margaret Thatcher. SOT MAY - Women in the World/Youtube: - Was she influential on you? - Im not someone who has a role model. VO: Shes a conservative and generally regarded as extremely methodical, effective and a pretty good negotiator. SOT MAY: 1172 As we look at issues like the movement of illegal firearms across Europe, the sharing of criminal records, reducing the pull factors that is leading my people to want to migrate into Europe, I am very clear that the United Kingdom can take a lead. VO: As a new prime minister, Theresa May will have a plausible control over the whole range of government including economics and foreign policy, 2 areas shes never really dealt with in much detail. As a conservative politician, she has a big drop on her hands, because personally Thesera May didnt vote to leave the E.U. SOT MAY on June 15, 2016 BBC [0.25]: Wed be more secure and safe inside the E.U. VO: But she now has the job of delivering Brexit. SOT 4180 MAY The country voted to leave the European Union and its the duty of the government and - parliament to make sure we do just that. VO: She said Brexit means Brexit, but no one knows what it really means. VOXPOP: AMY ROSS LONDON July 11 - 1190: Hopefully that will mean that shes able to negotiate the best position for us. SOT: (German) BAADER BANK HEAD OF CAPITAL MARKETS ANALYSIS, ROBERT HALVER 2134 FRANKFURT, GERMANY (JULY 12, 2016) There are connections between Brussels and London, which one cant cut off. This means, the Britons somehow remain with us even if they leave. VO: So she is going to have to define how much control Britain has over immigration and how much access it has to european markets. SOT 1158 MAY: Brexit means Brexit and we are going to make a success of it. END
LONDON A French company that dismissed a Muslim woman for wearing a head scarf when dealing with clients unlawfully discriminated against her, according to an advisory opinion that the European Unions highest court released on Wednesday.
The opinion while not the final word in the case was the latest intervention in a debate in Europe over the role of Islam in public life and the challenge of integrating foreigners, an issue that has gained resonance in recent years with the large influx of refugees and asylum seekers, many of them from Muslim countries. The question of religion in the public sphere is particularly fraught in France, which has a strong tradition of secularism.
In the advisory opinion, Eleanor Sharpston, an advocate general with the European Court of Justice, sided with the Muslim woman, Asma Bougnaoui, who lost her job with Micropole, a French information technology consultancy, in 2009 after she refused to abide by the companys request that she remove her head scarf when meeting with clients. She took her case to a French court, which referred it to the Luxembourg-based European Court of Justice.
Ms. Sharpston found that Ms. Bougnaouis dismissal amounted to direct discrimination on the basis of religion or belief. She said that there was nothing to suggest that Ms. Bougnaoui was unable to perform her duties as a design engineer because she wore an Islamic head scarf, and she noted that the company had affirmed her professional competence.
BRUSSELS The European Union authorities, seeking to balance the scale of the migration crisis with the reluctance of some countries to take in refugees, offered a series of proposals on Wednesday that would give member states more latitude while offering them 10,000 euros for each refugee they accept.
Europe has struggled to come up with a cohesive plan to deal with the more than one million migrants who have reached Europe in the past two years, and the proposals from the European Commission, the blocs executive arm, reflect a renewed effort to impose clearer rules for both countries and migrants.
The commission proposed a common procedure for resettling refugees from camps in countries outside the bloc, like Turkey, that would give member states the option of joining together to decide the overall number of people to take in and how to spread out the refugees among those nations.
I was then taken to a small room and left alone for about a half-hour before someone came back with a document in Russian that they wanted me to sign, he said in a telephone interview.
Image Jeff Shell Credit... Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images
Mr. Shell said he refused, telling the Russian authorities that he would not sign something he did not understand. He said he was then given a translation of the document, which explained that he had been barred from the country. He said that he was then escorted to another room at the airport and that he was locked inside for nearly three hours, until a flight to Amsterdam was arranged.
An armed guard came and got me at about 5 a.m. and walked me onto the plane and to my seat, Mr. Shell said. He gave my passport to the pilot and said not to give it back to me until I was on Dutch soil. It was quite embarrassing.
A spokesman for the Russian Foreign Ministry said he was not aware of the details of Mr. Shells case. The ministry did not respond to a written query. Mr. Shell said he was never told why he was denied entry.
That may never be known. But the incident comes after a series of actions against American diplomats by the Russian security services in recent months, using surveillance and psychological pressures that are intense and bizarre even by Moscows standards, State Department officials have said.
A reader from Concord, N.H., said in an email that Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia reminded him of conservative evangelical Christians in the United States.
And Ginny, from Pittsburgh, wrote on The Timess website about similarities that she sees between Saudi Islam and Orthodox Judaism, noting that both segregate men and women and both mandate that women dress modestly. Some Jewish communities, she said, even have their own version of Saudi Arabias Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice.
There are informal modesty police in some sects of Judaism who have been known to throw stones at women and girls and heckle them for having skirts that are too short, or wearing pants.
She acknowledges that women are not treated exactly the same in Judaism as they are in Islam, but adds:
It seems unfair to me to select Islamic customs which seem too strict for our cultural tastes and not acknowledge similar ones which are accepted in our society. Jewish customs are not viewed with the opprobrium with which we describe Islamic ones.
Andrew Workman, of Lancaster, Penn., grew up in a family with Amish and Mennonite roots, and he later earned a masters degree in Islamic Studies from McGill University. He said in an email that he was interested in the similarities between the different traditions, beyond what he called the lazy beard and technology comparisons.
Muslims in Saudi Arabia and Mennonites in American seek to apply scripture to daily life, he said, leading to surprising cultural similarities.
I used to live in the Gulf, and once in a mosque in the suburbs of Muscat I thought to myself that this felt closer to home than living in another part of the U.S., he wrote, recalling his time in the capital of Oman, Saudi Arabias neighbor.
A Society Closed to Change
One Saudi who emailed me privately said he is gay, but in the closet, and did not want his name used. He said that my article illustrated the forces that keep Saudi culture so closed.
We live in a society where the word liberal is considered an insult by many and its often either proceeded or followed by the word secular. Most times, change is shot down because its viewed as nothing but Westernization of our society. But in my opinion, change is change. It shouldnt matter if other societies embraced it first.
Fond Memories of Living in the Kingdom
Many foreigners who had lived and worked in Saudi Arabia wrote to share their own stories about life there.
Jim Murray made many friends in Saudi Arabia when he worked as a teacher on military bases in the kingdom in the 1970s and 80s, though he encountered very few women.
Mr. Murray, who is from Minnesota, once attended a wedding in a rural part of the country, where his party was welcomed with a volley of gunfire, he said, and he ate rice and meat with his hands. He also made his own booze, out of raisins, sugar, oranges and yeast.
Can a stretch of land be a person in the eyes of the law? Can a body of water?
In New Zealand, they can. A former national park has been granted personhood, and a river system is expected to receive the same soon.
The unusual designations, something like the legal status that corporations possess, came out of agreements between New Zealands government and Maori groups. The two sides have argued for years over guardianship of the countrys natural features.
Chris Finlayson, New Zealands attorney general, said the issue was resolved by taking the Maori mind-set into account. In their worldview, I am the river and the river is me, he said. Their geographic region is part and parcel of who they are.
From 1954 to 2014, Te Urewera was an 821-square-mile national park on the North Island, but when the Te Urewera Act took effect, the government gave up formal ownership, and the land became a legal entity with all the rights, powers, duties and liabilities of a legal person, as the statute puts it.
Some of the worlds greatest art treasures are remote and immovable. Such is the case with the complex of nearly 500 Buddhist cave temples and monasteries known as the Mogao Grottoes near Dunhuang in northwestern China, an ancient trading city on the edge of the Gobi Desert. Hand-carved into stone cliffs between the fourth and 14th centuries A.D., many of the caves are covered with religious murals and painted clay sculptures of Buddhist deities.
Exposed to desert weather and contact with steady streams of pilgrims and tourists, the painting gradually began to deteriorate. In 1989, the Getty Conservation Institute joined the long-resident Chinese archaeological team, the Dunhuang Academy, in a huge conservation project, which included making full-size replications of some of the more spectacular interiors. Three of these replicas are now on view at the Getty Center in Los Angeles for Cave Temples of Dunhuang: Buddhist Art on Chinas Silk Road, along with multimedia galleries featuring 3-D digital projections. Most significant for a true being-there experience, though, is the presence of 43 precious objects discovered in the sealed Library Cave at Mogao, including paintings on silk, a Jewish manuscript in Hebrew, a Christian text in Chinese and a ninth-century Buddhist Diamond Sutra that is the worlds oldest dated complete printed book. (Through Sept. 4 in Los Angeles; 310-440-7300; getty.edu.)
Raise a glass to finally finding something close to adulthood, Patrick (Jonathan Groff) says not long into Looking: The Movie, which airs at 10 p.m. on Saturday, July 23, on HBO. After months of working as a video game designer and swearing off relationships in Denver, he has returned to San Francisco for the wedding of Agustin (Frankie J. Alvarez) and Eddie (Daniel Franzese). (After Looking was canceled in 2015, Mr. Groff spent time prancing through the hit musical Hamilton as the deliciously pouty King George III.) But there are loose ends to tie up: with Dom (Murray Bartlett), the friend who could be more; Kevin (Russell Tovey), his boss turned beau; and Richie (Raul Castillo), his barber ex.
Even before Looking was canceled, much was made of its banal portrayal of the gay experience. And this movie, directed by the shows co-creator Andrew Haigh, wont do much to dispel that notion, at least not at first. In the end, its a sensitive, bittersweet farewell to a show that many loved for precisely the reason others did not: that real isnt always the same as interesting. But thats life.
In 1926, the year he died, Rainer Maria Rilke wrote to an acquaintance about a new device that he believed could change the way we appreciated poetry: the phonograph, or as he called it, the talking-machine. In the letter, Rilke lamented that the device was seldom used for recorded speech, but he envisioned a future in which we would read poems while simultaneously listening to a recording of the poem but not just any recording. The prerequisite, Rilke explained, for such an exercise would in any case be that the talking-machine had received the sound picture of the verse sequence from the poets own lips and not indirectly by way, say, of the actor. The actor, however talented, must be kept from reading an authors work, Rilke insisted, for he almost always errs and goes astray.
These days, Rilkes dreams for the talking machine have turned into the nightmare in which we now live. The vast majority of audiobooks are read by actors, something I find not just disappointing but appalling. Though I love being read to and believe that you gain insight into a piece of writing when you hear it read, I cannot bear listening to fiction read by anyone other than its author. There are particularly abject examples. Purity, for example, Jonathan Franzens latest novel, is read by a range of actors. But part of the novel is set in Germany, and when the German characters speak, their dialogue is rendered in German-accented English. Which. Is. Crazy. Crazy not because the accent is bad (its terrific). But crazy because its stupid the same stupid logic present in Hollywood movies, in which German characters speak to one another in English, viss uh chermunn ahksint.
That kind of stupidity seems to be the rule these days. In the audiobook version of Laila Lalamis The Moors Account, when Spanish explorers set foot in the New World and are speaking Spanish to one another, they do so with Spanish-accented English so thick it sounds like something out of a Cheech and Chong movie.
A couple of weeks ago, I went to visit Chuck Close at his beach house on Long Island. The drive there always reminds me of an escape to the Hamptons in reverse. From the aristocratic brownstones of Park Slope, you work your way steadily down the socioeconomic ladder, past the towering Soviet-style apartment complexes of Coney Island, through strips of pawn shops and gimcrack hotels that give way to rowhouses fronted with plaster statuary, until at last the journey comes to an end at the sun-beaten waterfront of Long Beach, a haven for cops and firefighters looking to blow off summer steam, where you pay for access to the sand amid a throng of rented umbrellas and creatine-engorged pectorals, all of which vanish at sundown into a surfeit of bwomp-bwomping nightclubs along the strip.
If all this sounds like an odd place to find one of the worlds most celebrated painters, a master of the modern portrait whose work is displayed in the great museums, all I can tell you is that pretty much every close friend and relative of Closes feels the same way. After 30 years of splitting his time between the tony enclaves of Manhattan and Bridgehampton, he has recently set about leaving much of his old life behind: filing for divorce from his wife, Leslie, after 43 years of marriage, disappearing for the winter to live virtually alone in a new apartment on Miami Beach and retreating from his summer friends to the crowded isolation of Long Beach. Even when Close ventures into the city for a gallery opening these days, he will often turn up in some outlandish costume, in fabrics printed with giant starfish and sunflowers, with lipstick smeared across his face and billowing, extravagant scarves.
Over the past year, I have been stopping off to see Close in various homes and apartments up and down the Eastern Seaboard, trying to get a handle on the changes in his life and their connection to his work. On my most recent visit to his beach house, I arrived a few minutes early, and one of his assistants let me in, gesturing toward a staircase that leads to his bedroom and studio. I found Close waiting at the top with a gentle smile. At 76, it must be said, he is starting to look run-down. Apart from the obvious fact of his being restricted to a wheelchair since 1988, when an arterial collapse left him mostly paralyzed from the neck down, he is also entering that awkward phase in life when bodies degenerate unevenly, so that even as hes become a little corpulent at the middle, his cheeks are starting to hollow out and his powerful neck to narrow, giving the impression that his shiny bald head and tufted white goatee are elongating with time. What hasnt changed, and mercifully so, is that smile. It is the most hopeful, eager, childlike smile a person can imagine. It would not be going too far to say that it can fill and break your heart at once. Another element of lingering beauty about him is the contour of his wrists and hands. Thirty years of muscular atrophy have left them as stretched and sinewy as fine silverwork, and with only the slightest motor control, he tends to hold them perfectly flat, gesturing this way and that with all five fingers at once. The effect is vaguely regal. When he needs to pick something up, he will pinch it between the outer edges of his palms, which gives the impression of a man cupping water from a stream.
On this particular morning, he wore a paint-splattered smock over a white T-shirt and blue pants, swishing a small glass of cappuccino with both hands. After a quick hug and hello, we went outside to a balcony overlooking the water. The morning sun raked over the dune grass, and the beach was just filling with tourists. Close leaned back in his chair to let the light pour onto his face. He looked tan and rested, healthier than Id seen him in months, and had been working all morning in the studio behind us on a large self-portrait that I knew he was excited about.
The Brooklyn writer Nicole Dennis-Benns debut novel, Here Comes the Sun, published this month, looks beyond Jamaicas tourist staples to explore class, race and exploitation in her homeland. Ms. Dennis-Benn, 34, was raised in Kingston and moved to the United States to attend Cornell University. She later went on to receive a master of fine arts from Sarah Lawrence College and teaches writing at Baruch College.
Following are edited excerpts from a conversation with Ms. Dennis-Benn.
Q. Why did you leave Jamaica?
A. I left when I was 17 because I wasnt really happy with my educational choices at home, but more importantly it was the class structure. My family was working class and its very hard to move up. On top of that, with being a lesbian in a homophobic place, the U.S. seemed the best choice. My father had remarried an American and I was able to get a green card.
When people learn youre Jamaican, whats their typical reaction?
They always say, Oh my God, the beaches are so beautiful! And, of course, they say how nice the people are, right? Nobody asks why I left. Yes, it was beautiful, but most of us didnt have access to what tourists do because of the classism. What bothers me most is when people talk about reggae and Bob Marley as if hes all about smoking weed. He was actually a voice of the working-class people. I dont say anything negative to people, because I dont want to ruin their positive thoughts, but I did let my characters say it. I do feel a sense of pride in Jamaica, and I want people to go there, but I also want them to be aware that its not all paradise.
Democratic Convention in Philadelphia, July 25-28
The Primary Protest Area Is Across the Street From the Arena
400 feet Six demonstration zones are available for permitted protesters in F.D.R. Park 400 feet Six demonstration zones are available for permitted protesters in F.D.R. Park 400 feet Six demonstration zones are available for permitted protesters in F.D.R. Park 400 feet Six demonstration zones are available for permitted protesters in F.D.R. Park 400 feet Six demonstration zones are available for permitted protesters in F.D.R. Park Imagery from Google maps | The New York Times
The Democratic convention is being held at the Wells Fargo Center, an indoor arena in South Philadelphia, far removed from the citys central district. The primary area set aside for permitted protesters is F.D.R. Park, across the street from the arena.
The Secret Service has designated a secure zone, which will include the arena, its surrounding parking lot and the adjoining section of Broad Street. It is fenced off and limited to people with credentials or tickets; banned items include backpacks, balloons, selfie sticks and any weapons.
Protests Also Are Allowed to Spread Out Across the City
Independence Mall Market St. City Hall Where protests have been approved S. Broad St. Philadelphia Marconi Plaza F.D.R. Park Wells Fargo Center 0.5 mile The New York Times
The city issued permits for demonstrations across Philadelphia, not just in F.D.R. Park. The A.C.L.U. of Pennsylvania succeeded at getting the city to back off a ban of marches on Broad Street, a main thoroughfare, even during rush hour. On Sunday, more than 1,000 people marched down a four-mile stretch of Broad Street in the first of many planned demonstrations to support Senator Bernie Sanders.
So far we have not seen any kind of no-go zones in Center City, and thats great, said Mary Catherine Roper, the deputy legal director of the A.C.L.U. of Pennsylvania. People should be able to protest all over downtown.
Last month, Mayor Jim Kenney signed a bill decriminalizing nuisance offenses in the city, including disorderly conduct, failure to disperse and public drunkenness. The policy was part of a larger effort to decrease the incarceration rate in the city, but the mayor has also said that no one will be arrested solely for protesting without a permit during the convention.
Republican Convention in Cleveland, July 18-21
Official Demonstrations Were Limited to a Few Sites, Blocks From the Convention Center
Designated protest areas: Speakers stage were reserved for 30-minute slots Public art or tables were installed in two parks with a permit Parade route for protesters with permits to march in 50-minute slots 500 feet 1.7-square-mile event zone with security restrictions Lake Erie Ontario St. Cuyahoga River Carnegie Ave. I-90 Designated protest areas: Speakers stage were reserved for 30-minute slots Public art or tables were installed in two parks with a permit Parade route for protesters with permits to march in 50-minute slots 500 feet 1.7-square-mile event zone with security restrictions Lake Erie Ontario St. Cuyahoga River Carnegie Ave. I-90 Designated protest areas: Speakers stage were reserved for 30-minute slots Public art or tables were installed in two parks with a permit Parade route for protesters with permits to march in 50-minute slots 500 feet Lake Erie Ontario St. Cuyahoga River 1.7-square-mile event zone with security restrictions Carnegie Ave. I-90 Designated protest areas: Speakers stage were reserved for 30-minute slots Public art or tables were installed in two parks with a permit Parade route for protesters with permits to march in 50-minute slots 500 feet Lake Erie Ontario St. 1.7-square-mile event zone with security restrictions Cuyahoga River Carnegie Ave. I-90 Designated protest areas: Speakers stage were reserved for 30-minute slots Public art or tables were installed in two parks with a permit 500 feet Lake Erie 1.7-square-mile event zone with security restrictions Carnegie Ave. Ontario St. I-90 Parade route for protesters with permits to march in 50-minute slots Imagery from Google maps, TerraMetrics, NOAA | The New York Times
The City of Cleveland issued permits to groups that wanted to demonstrate at the convention, but official protest areas were hundreds of feet from the Quicken Loans Arena, or the Q, where the main events took place. While the city prepared for large-scale and potentially violent protests, the weeks demonstrations were modest and largely peaceful. The most noteworthy encounter between protesters and police occurred Wednesday, when officers arrested 18 people after some of them burned an American flag near the convention center.
Last month, the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio brought a lawsuit against the city, saying that its convention security plan severely limited the opportunities for free expression. A federal judge agreed and threw out the plan, resulting in a new agreement that, among other things, expanded the parade route for protesters, which is the area where demonstrators are permitted to march. Also, the number of available time slots for marches were increased and buffers between groups were added.
Christine Link, the executive director of the A.C.L.U. of Ohio, said that the Secret Service participated heavily in the negotiations and that her organization achieved almost all of its goals in ensuring that the government balanced security with the least restrictions. City sidewalks were still open for anybody to carry a poster, speak or march, she said, if they did not block intersections or enter secured areas.
Much of Clevelands Downtown Was a Restricted Zone. But Guns Were O.K.
Road closures or restrictions Secret Service secure zones Welcoming event zone* LAKE ERIE EVENT ZONE Media Center CLEVELAND Quicken Loans Arena 0.4 mile Road closures or restrictions Secret Service secure zones Welcoming event zone* LAKE ERIE EVENT ZONE Media Center CLEVELAND Quicken Loans Arena 0.4 mile *The secure zone around the welcoming event area and surrounding road closures only applied on Sunday, July 17, the day before the convention began. | The New York Times
The official event zone where a long list of everyday items, like glass bottles, were banned blanketed 1.7 square miles in downtown Cleveland. However, guns were allowed inside the event zone because Ohio is an open-carry state, and state law overrules any regulations put into place by the city. Firearms were not allowed in the smaller secure zones managed by the Secret Service, including the convention arena.
In the wake of the shooting of police officers in Baton Rouge, La., on Sunday, the head of the Cleveland police union asked Governor John Kasich of Ohio to suspend the open-carry laws during the convention. While a spokesperson for the governor said that he did not have the power to do so, no incidents involving the use of firearms were reported during the week.
Prohibited items in the larger zone included large bags and backpacks, mace, loudspeakers, tents, coolers and canned goods. Residents, including homeless people, were be given some leeway.
ANAHEIM The city will reimburse an estimated $550 million dollars from so-called bed taxes to two developers, including Disney, that will build three four-diamond hotels in Anaheims resort district.
During a City Council meeting that began Tuesday night and spilled into Wednesday, the City Council decided to give Wincome Group and Disney the combined $550 million or so from taxes generated by their projects.
When guests pay the transient occupancy tax on their stays, 70 percent of that for two decades will go to the companies rather than to the city.
These hotels arent just for the visitors, they are for the residents, Lucille Kring said. We get back what they produce.
The City Council voted 3-1 to approve agreements for three hotels:
Good Hope International, an affiliate of Wincome Group, is building a $208 million, 580-room hotel on the current site of the Anaheim Plaza Hotel & Suites, near Disney California Adventure.
A 630-room, $225 million development for FJS Inc., an affiliate of Wincome Group, will replace another of its existing properties, the Anabella Hotel, adjacent to the Anaheim Convention Center.
Disney will construct a 700-room luxury hotel and parking structure on 10 acres along Disneyland Drive, at the north end of the Downtown Disney parking lot.
Councilman James Vanderbilt was the lone dissenter. Mayor Tom Tait, a big critic of the subsidies, left the meeting before its conclusion. He caught a red-eye flight to Washington, D.C. for a hastily arranged meeting with President Obama and other mayors and police chiefs concerning the recent spate of officer-involved civilian deaths.
The councils approval brings to five the number of luxury hotels being developed in Anaheim.
Supporters say the new developments will enhance the image of Anaheim, home to the Convention Center, Angel Stadium and the Honda Center, and the high-end hotels will keep more-affluent overnight guests in town and their wallets and purses. Further, eventually, all of the bed tax will roll into the citys coffers.
But opponents say the massive incentive packages will strip away funds essential for city services, and they point out that the city is still making bond payments for the improvements made to the resort area in 1996.
Before the meeting, union construction workers and hotel supporters lined up in front of City Hall, with signs such as Temporary incentive, long term benefits and Union jobs = better quality of life.
Mary Niven, senior vice president of Disneyland, said the incentives lured Disney to build another four-diamond property. The company already has Disneys Grand Californian Hotel & Spa and the Disneyland Hotel.
Although we knew the demand was there, this proposed hotel was not part of Disneys long-term plans until the city put this incentive in place, Niven told the council.
She later added, in a statement, that the hotel will provide a new and direct revenue stream for the city to help pay for essential city services for its residents for decades to come.
The mayor, frustrated that the council majority didnt postpone the vote until he returned from Washington, said before he left that the incentives would be financially devastating for the city. Lower-end hotels, he said, will mean more to Anaheims revenue because subsidies wont be shelled out.
This is a thriving hotel market, probably the best in decades, Tait said. Why would a hotelier not want to build now?
Some city officials have said theyve tried for more than a decade to lure developers to build new four-diamond accommodations but found no takers until incentives were put in place.
Anaheim as a market doesnt have that type of product or the percentage of luxurious rooms that a San Francisco, Los Angeles or San Diego have, said Steve Hennis, a vice president at STR, a hospitality research group. In order for them to regain a strong position in the West Coast, this is a necessity.
Lukas Hartwich, senior analyst at Green Street Advisors, a real estate research firm, said giving developers such incentives usually doesnt pan out.
The market is pretty good in determining what needs to be built and where, Hartwich said, adding that people who can afford a luxury hotel will stay in Newport Beach or Los Angeles and commute.
Anaheim has shown theres no demand for them, he said. We often see governments try to change the narratives of their city, helping developers across the finish line. My sense is that these generally dont work out. There are few success stories.
Contact the writer: 714-796-2443 or jpimentel@ocregister.com or follow on Twitter @OCDisney
DANA POINT City officials are looking to the California Coastal Commission for direction after Measure H, which requires voter approval for changes to a development plan for the Lantern District, bested a city-sponsored initiative.
Efforts to revitalize the Lantern District just blocks from Dana Point Harbor began in 2008 when the Coastal Commission approved the citys revitalization plan for the town center. That plan seeks to transform Dana Point into a vibrant tourist destination with mixed-use developments, shops and restaurants.
On Tuesday, the city sent a letter to the Coastal Commission asking for an opinion on whether the city needs an amendment to its land use plan for the coastal area to certify Measure H. City officials asked the Coastal Commission to respond by Monday in advance of the City Councils upcoming Tuesday meeting.
The council last week declared Measure H the winner following a report of primary results from the Orange County Registrar of Voters. Measure H, a citizen-sponsored initiative, won by 1,920 votes, or 17.4 percent, said Registrar Neal Kelley. In total, 11,868 ballots were cast on the two measures.
City Manager Doug Chotkevys said city staff is preparing a coastal plan amendment in case it is required.
Measure H supporters are calling the move a stall tactic.
Measure H only reinstates the 2008 plan and clarifies its implementation, said Debra Lewis, one of the measures authors. It makes no substantive changes to the plan other than voter approval for future changes, but that change does not affect coastal resources.
Residents who authored Measure H in 2015 said they were frustrated with developers getting exceptions to the Lantern District plan, which puts restrictions on building heights and density and includes requirements for parking lots within walking distance of shops, restaurants and homes.
The Raintree project, with 109 apartments and 32,500 square feet of retail space, has been at the epicenter of the competing ballot initiatives and continues to be a source of contention over what impact Measure H will have.
The project was initially known as the Majestic Housing & Development and planned with condominiums. The new plan by Laguna Niguel developer Raintree Partners calls for apartments.
Lewis said Raintree made substantive changes to the previously approved Majestic plans but the city did not require the developer to go back to the Dana Point Planning Commission for a public review.
The city has fast tracked the Raintree project and even issued a building permit on election day to build underground parking structures to help Raintree avoid requirements of Measure H, Lewis said.
There is a concern that the city will not be cooperative with obtaining Coastal Commission approval for Measure H quickly because once thats done, H becomes law that (developers) must follow, she said.
City officials say the project was approved in 2014, before the adoption of Measure H.
Two permits were issued on June 7 but have nothing to do with Measure H, said City Attorney Patrick Munoz.
The project is proceeding and demolition is almost complete. The construction phase will begin soon, Munoz said.
Contact the writer: 714-796-2254 or eritchie@ocregister.com or on Twitter:@lagunaini
Part 1: 1955, the year Disneyland opened. Part 2: 1956-1959. Part 4: 1970-1979. Part 5: 1980-1989. Part 6: 1990-1999. Part 7: 2000s.
It was the 60s, a decade of change. And just like society, Disneyland would change too in dramatic fashion.
1960
Just like previous years, Walt Disney was constantly tinkering with Disneyland as the decade started. The first year of the decade, he added more scenes to the Rainbow Ridge Mine Train, and changed its name to the Mine Train Through Natures Wonderland. The mules got a new name, too, the fairly obvious Pack Mules Through Natures Wonderland both were in Frontierland.
That same year, the Horse-Drawn Fire Wagon was parked beneath his apartment in the Disneyland Fire Department building in Town Square on Main Street U.S.A. It sits there for all to see to this day.
Electric cars appeared on Main Street U.S.A., too. Walt frequently used them to take other notables on tours around his Magic Kingdom.
In Tomorrowland, Disney closed several of the day one exhibits, like the World Beneath Us, the Aluminum Hall of Fame, the Bathroom of Tomorrow and Space Station X-1. But he added the Art of Animation that year to make up for it.
1961
In 1961, Disney received a gift of statues of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. He left it up to Disney Imagineer John Hench to stage them where they are to this day, in front of Sleeping Beauty Castle as part of the Snow White Grotto and Wishing Well.
Skull Rock bared its head by the Pirate Ship in Fantasyland that year.
Tomorrowland got more futuristic in 1961 when the Flying Saucers landed. The much-loved attraction was also a troublemaker in the form of maintenance and constant breakdowns, and they flew away in 1966.
That same year, the monorail really became a form of transportation when its track was extended and a second station was built at the Disneyland Hotel.
But 1961, also saw the closure of Holidayland, the first new and unsuccessful land at Disneyland but Disney had plans for that land, big plans.
1962-63
In 1962, a new comical scene was added to the Jungle Cruise: The sacred bathing pool of the Indian elephants. In 1964, a safari got lost in the jungle, too. Thats about the time that the humorous spiel really took root that the skippers used as their narration, all approved by Disney.
And Disney decided that he knew how to build a treehouse. But first he needed a tree made out of concrete and rebar, not wood to house the Swiss Family Robinson Treehouse. The attraction was based on the treehouse seen in the Disney movie, Swiss Family Robinson, and has its own Latin name: Disneyodendron semperflorens grandis.
But all of that was the warm-up act for the rest of the 1960s, as more innovative shows and attractions were on the way.
The first to fly in was Walt Disneys Enchanted Tiki Room where the birds sing words and the flowers croon to this day, thanks to Disneys Audio-Animatronics technology. Roy Disney, Walts brother, was afraid the show was too much of a risk for the corporation so Walt built it with his own money. It was a big success, and a few years later, the corporation bought the attraction.
1964-66
Disney was also developing several shows for the 1964 New York Worlds Fair. But he had plans for those shows, and they all made it to Disneyland.
One of them was Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln, where the president began giving his speech inside the Main Street Opera House in 1965.
The following year, the dolls began singing in its a small world in 1966, after a successful run in New York. The song has been estimated to have been played millions of times, making it the most played song in the world.
Meanwhile, on the western side of Disneyland, a new land was cropping up where Holidayland once stood. This one was based on the Crescent City New Orleans.
New Orleans Square was the landing for one of the largest milestones in theme park ride history, the Pirates of the Caribbean. This was the last attraction at Disneyland personally overseen by Walt Disney. Though he would not live to see it officially open to the public, he did ride it.
In fact, in a little-known piece of trivia, Disney rode it on July 24, 1966, the day New Orleans Square officially opened to the public. But, after getting off the attraction that day, he immediately ordered it closed because he felt it wasnt ready. According to then-cast member Ben Harris, he left copious notes of things that needed to be done to it before the attraction could open notes that were followed to the letter by his Imagineers.
Besides the new attraction, the area also had three restaurants and a myriad of specialty shops.
1967-68
Over in Tomorrowland, it was time for an update. In 1967, a new movie format Circlevision 360 debuted, where a new version of America the Beautiful played out on its nine movie screens, which surrounded the audience with scenic vistas. Across the mall, riders could shrink down to the size of an atom on the Monsanto-sponsored Adventure Thru Inner Space.
Riding down the center of Tomorrowland was a new transportation system, the WEDway Peoplemover. Above that soared the Rocket Jets, replacing the Astro-Jets, along with an outdoor stage for celebrity concerts.
From the 1964 New York Worlds Fair, a great big beautiful tomorrow unfolded in the General Electric-sponsored Carousel of Progress.
Also from the fair, the Primeval World diorama was added to the Disneyland Railroad in 1966.
1969
Finally, to cap off the 1960s, the Haunted Mansion opened in 1969 with 999 ghosts and theyre still looking for number 1,000 to take up residence.
While Walt Disney passed away December 15, 1966, the company that bore his name and the Imagineers he trained kept his legacy going. One of his quotes guides Walt Disney Imagineering to this day: We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because were curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.
For more details about Disneyland in the 1960s including additions and changes to attractions and shows click through the slideshow.
Reporter Mark Eades worked as an Imagineer for Walt Disney Imagineering, the company that designs Disneys theme parks, from 1982 to 1993.
Contact the writer: meades@ocregister.com
Before he could off-load his bulldozer, the wildfires flames rushed up to greet him.
Erratic winds fed the flames. Air currents carried embers in all directions. It was Joey Maders job to plow into the fiery brush and deny the blaze its fuel.
Ten years ago, that Sawtooth fire in San Bernardino County gobbled up 67,000 acres, 58 homes and 200 vehicles, and killed a resident.
Every place you looked, there was just fire coming, the firefighter said.
At any moment, Mader, now 51, can end up in that same orange inferno.
Of the Orange County Fire Authoritys 1,400 firefighters, Mader and Ryan Monteleone, 41, are the lone bulldozer operators. In California, there are an estimated 200 such sworn firefighters assigned to plowing through flames, brush and trees.
Just weeks into Californias six-month wildfire season, sharpened by the drought, each could be dispatched at any moment to a brusher or to a wildfire so massive it draws firefighters from around the state.
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The pair are plopped into great peril. But the payoff is plentiful.
A dozer, in three minutes, clears the same amount of vegetation it takes a 20-person hand crew an hour to rip out, explained Larry Kurtz, a captain with the Orange County Fire Authority. And bulldozers create clearings where firefighters can huddle for safety.
Without their assistance, fires would extend to much greater parameters, the captain said.
Smoke, dust and darkness of night obscure visibility. Water drops create a muddy film on the bulldozers windows. Fire retardant cascading from the sky can temporarily color the yellow bulldozers crimson.
It sounds like the windows are going to blow out, Monteleone said.
HOT TECH
Dozers weigh 30 tons. Silt and slate can send them sliding about as if on ice.
When fire threatens to race over them a burn over, in firefighter parlance the men unfurl thick, reflective curtains down over the dozers windows.
This cocoon buys time, keeping the temperatures lower, which even with air-conditioned cabins can still reach 170 degrees Fahrenheit, until the operator can trundle to a fire-free refuge.
You have to have some sort of exit strategy at all times, Monteleone said. You always know, I have enough time to get back here if I need to. Get back to the black.
The black is the charred land that the fire has already passed over.
Its been so hot my eyes water and its hard to breathe, said Scott Price, president of the California Dozer Operators Group, an organization for special bulldozer operators to share safety and other tips. It can get miserable. Thats the time you need to back off.
During massive, multi-agency fires, dozer operators, like hand crews, can work 12 to 24 hours. They eat Meals Ready-to-Eat the emergency food soldiers rely on.
There are two ways to attack a fire with a bulldozer.
The first is to drive the blade up to 1 foot into the ground, directly uprooting vegetation, denying the flames their fuel. Even below-ground roots burn.
The other is based on winds and topography, moving the machinery to where the fire will likely spread and cutting it off by creating dirt swaths.
Dozer operators typically sit 8 feet above ground, rolling four to six miles per hour if that with up to 100 gallons of fuel in the tanks.
With limited visibility, the operators guide their equipment by feel as much as by vision.
I have more of a fear of rolling off a hill at night then I do of pushing up against fire, Mader said. The fire I can see, and I get whats going on.
At night, youre going down this virgin soil, down these ridges, and its rocky and dusty and you just hope theres a bottom to this, and not a drop off.
In 2007, Matt Will, 30, with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection and fighting the Colorado fire near Monterey, was crushed when his dozer plummeted 150 feet from a cliff.
SWAMP SAFE
The dozer operators best line of defense is their swampers. Not all agencies deploy them, but the Orange County Fire Authority does.
Eric Tindle is Maders swamper a sworn firefighter who walks near the dozer, scouting out where the mass of machinery should go and where it shouldnt.
Patrick Garcia is Monteleones, his bird dog guiding him via radios, or hand signals when visibility is clear.
Sometimes the swampers drive ahead in their tenders, small pickups packed with extra fuel, spare parts and hand tools. Usually the swampers park them and just walk ahead.
His job is basically to keep me safe, Monteleone said of his partner. Hes my eyes out there.
Garcia, and Tindle, watch out for hand crew members, abandoned mine shafts, the fires behavior, and cliffs obscured by flames, smoke and dust.
If theres something I see that he doesnt maybe, Ill let him know, Garcia said.
Together, Mader and Monteleone have 49 years of experience and, separately, have fought hundreds of fires, from Mexico to Canada, transporting their bulldozers to the fire front lines themselves.
Besides wildfires, the two respond to large dump fires, extricate vehicles stuck in the back country and create the beach berms in Seal Beach each winter that protect against flooding. They also maintain fire roads.
Monteleone, the married father of four boys, spends several days each week living at Station 47 in Irvine, strategically placed so he can quickly get to South County brush fires.
Married, Mader is a father of five grown sons and a grandfather to six. He is based at Station 53 in Yorba Linda. He pilots the Fire Authoritys newest dozer, purchased in 2008 for $350,000 with its bells and whistles.
BORN FIREFIGHTER
At age 4, Mader would drive his firefighter peddle car across the street to a fire station and ride about in its bay. In second grade, firefighters visited his class, handed out those plastic red helmets and something clicked.
We all laugh that this is where I was supposed to be, Mader said and then grew pensive: Its very satisfying when you see you stopped a fire that was heading toward changing the lives of people.
When each shows up to work, neither knows when he will go home.
On Monteleones first day with the Fire Authority last August, Mader shook his hand, welcomed him to the team and was dispatched to Northern California to help with lightning wildfires.
Monteleone didnt go home that night as expected with Mader gone, he needed to stay on duty in case a wildfire broke out here.
I told my wife I would be home at 5, he recalled, and I didnt come home for 27 days.
Contact the writer: lwilliams@ocregister.com
Its easy to spend a fortune while youre visiting Oahu, but there are ways you can keep the costs down.
1. See the memorial free
Did you know that you can visit the USS Arizona memorial for free? Parking is free, too. This is the World War II Valor in the Pacific National Monument, which chronicles the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. You can get timed tickets for the basic tour for free. The National Park Service gives out 1,300 same-day tickets daily starting at 7 a.m., first-come, first-served. (They often run out in high season, so you may wish to reserve ahead of time and pay the $1.50 reservation fee at recreation.gov, which includes the boat ride to the memorial.) Admission to the Pearl Harbor Visitor Center is also free, including a 23-minute documentary film. (If you want an audio tour, it costs $7.50.) This memorial was built in 1962 over the battleship Arizona, which sank in the attack that killed 1,177 of its sailors and Marines. Learn more here: nps.gov/valr/index.htm
2. Rent a condo
It might cost a tiny bit more to rent a space with a kitchen than a basic hotel room, but you will more than make up the difference with the ability to cook your own meals, saving both time and money. I like to rent timeshares, which come outfitted with every piece of equipment you need for cooking and making those tropical cocktails. Go to the Timeshare Users Group at Tug2.com/timesharemarketplace to look for rentals, or browse for free at Redweek.com. But note that you have to pay $14.99 to join Redweek.com in order to contact owners directly about their rentals. And it never hurts to call the resort and make sure the owners are who they say they are before you give them money.
3. Fly flexible
Because of the competitive nature of the airline industry, you can often find lower airfares to Oahu by flying from San Diego or other airports than the more central LAX.
One reader recently told me his family saved $100 per ticket by boarding one plane in San Diego, disembarking at LAX and then getting on a second plane, rather than if they had just flown direct from LAX. Dont ask me to explain it, it has to do with airline competition.
Other readers told me to check fares from Carlsbad as well. Some vacationers fly from Hawaii with their final destination elsewhere, then get off the plane at the stop at LAX and never board their final flight. I cant really recommend that, because it raises a host of complications, such as, what about your luggage? Also it violates airline rules. So Im just reporting that some travelers do it, and you can make up your own mind.
4. Go to Costco
Costco has two stores in Honolulu, where you can look for local deals on attractions like luaus.
Be cautious about buying food, though how much of that giant package can you really eat before you go home? The store at 525 Alakawa St. near the harbor and Chinatown has a gas station, too. Costco also sells a four-day Go Oahu card for a discounted $179.99 that includes 34 attractions you can visit in four days. You can buy this online before you go. Learn more: Costco.com.
5. Go to the park
Hawaii has five state parks and even more historic sites on Oahu, most of which are ignored by tourists. None of them charges for admission. One includes the ruins of what was at one time the islands greatest heiau, or temple, covering 2 acres and likely built in the 1600s. The Kaiwi State Scenic Shoreline includes a 2-mile round-trip hike including a new trail and viewing area to the historic Makapuu lighthouse. Its also free to visit Royal Mausoleum State Monument, where Hawaiian royalty were buried, including members of the Kamehameha and Kalakuaua dynasties. Its open 8 a.m.-4 p.m. Mondays-Fridays. Learn more: dlnr.hawaii.gov/dsp/parks/oahu/
6. Go camping
There are four state campgrounds on Oahu, three offering shoreline camping. One is in the mountains. All the state park campsites on Oahu are for tents only. It costs $18 per night for up to six campers, $3 per person after the first six. It might be worth figuring out whether you could buy a cheap tent and sleeping bag when you arrive, and still save money. Learn more: dlnr.hawaii.gov/dsp/camping -lodging/oahu/
7. Get a Go Oahu card
This pass includes admission to 34 attractions, shuttles and such that you might pay more for individually. Dolphin encounters, a luau, snorkeling, lots of fun stuff. Dont buy it unless youre the type of person who wants to sightsee relentlessly, because often you end up enjoying only a fraction of the offerings.
If you mostly want to go to the beach and go hiking, you dont need it. The basic three-day card is offered at $188, but you can find deals. At this writing, Groupon was offering it for $166. And if you go back to the website more than once, it might offer you a discount.
Got a good travel tip for me? Or a suggestion? Email me at mfisher@ocregister.com.
I love to hear from readers.
Contact the writer: 714-796-7994 or mfisher@ocregister.com
FULLERTON Two Pokemon Go players in Fullerton found more than virtual monsters while on a walk Tuesday morning. They helped catch a man wanted on suspicion of attempted murder, according to police.
While searching for virtual characters at 10:30 a.m. Tuesday near the intersection of Wilshire and Pomona avenues, the pair encountered a man who accosted two women and their children, touching one child on the chest, foot and leg, said Seth Ortega, one of the men who helped stop the suspect.
Just before Spanish class at Fullerton Community College, Ortega, 24, went searching for Pokemon with his roommate Javier Soch, 27, when Sochs game froze. When Soch looked away from the screen of his smartphone, he spotted a woman with three children running away from a man who they later learned touched one of her children with a plastic rose, Ortega said.
Hes looking up and thats when he gives me a nudge and says, Hey, whats going on, Ortega recalled. When we look up in their direction all we see is the mother and her children running across the street away from him.
The man was dressed in peculiar attire with a hat and loose-fitting jacket so Soch and Ortega kept their eyes on him, and told the man that his actions made the woman uncomfortable.
We go to approach the guy to let him know, Hey, you shouldnt be here. Youre bothering the people trying to enjoy the park, Ortega said.
Ortega directed the man to the nearby police station, where officers could put him in contact with a homeless shelter, but the man lingered in the park and approached another woman with children, Ortega said.
The man patted one of the boys on the chest and then followed him to the playground, where he touched the childs leg, Ortega said. He and another passerby stopped the man until police arrived.
My roommate, who was with me, and I are both Marine Corps veterans and were able to keep a calm head and not let things escalate, Ortega wrote on the Pokemon Go SoCal Facebook group page. Im a single father myself and seeing this go on really upset me, but luckily we didnt have it escalate.
Sgt. Kathryn Hamel confirmed that Fullerton police arrested a man for child annoyance and found that the man had an outstanding warrant for attempted murder in Sonoma County. Police did not release his name.
When you think Pokemon Go, the worst thing you think of is someone walking out in the street or bumping into a sign, Ortega said Tuesday night. Just definitely not expecting to find this guy.
INDIANAPOLIS As a conservative talk-radio host in the 1990s, Mike Pence described himself as Rush Limbaugh on decaf.
Two decades later, Pence is the unflappable conservative governor of Indiana who has caught the eye of another fiery personality: Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.
Where the brash billionaire is impulsive, Pence is cool-headed. Where Trump makes conservatives suspicious, Pence has credibility. And where Trump struggles to draw evangelical Christians, Pence is well-regarded by them.
A favorite quote highlights how Pence might smooth some of the sharp corners of the Trump campaign and its supporters.
Im a conservative, Pence has often said. But Im not angry about it.
The former congressman also is a proven fundraiser with close ties to billionaire industrialists David and Charles Koch and their network of wealthy donors, many of whom have been dismissive of Trump.
One thing you can say about Mike Pence is hes got a very calm, steady demeanor that in some ways is a little Reaganesque, said Christine Mathews, a Republican pollster for former Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels. Hes a counterbalance to Trump in that way.
Trumps decision, expected by the end of the week, would cap months of speculation.
Not so long ago, their relationship was a little awkward. Trump met privately with Pence before Indianas primaries, seeking his endorsement. Instead, Pence, under pressure from national conservatives, tepidly endorsed Trumps rival, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, while still lavishing praise on Trump. Trump won that primary. Before the night was over, Cruz had quit the race.
For Pence, a former six-term congressman, selection by Trump would offer a return to national politics after his embrace of the role of a governor of conservative social issues sidelined his own presidential ambitions. Describing himself as a Christian, a conservative and a Republican, in that order, Pence marched Indiana to the front lines of the nations culture wars. In 2015 he provoked a national backlash after signing a law that critics said would have allowed businesses to deny service to gay people for religious reasons.
Even some Indiana Republicans have questioned his decisions, suggesting Pence has at times seemed more interested in appealing to national conservatives than doing whats best for the state. For example, Pences support of the states religious objections law led to a revolt from the business community, which joined gay rights advocates in successfully pushing for changes to the law.
Raised in Columbus, Indiana, in an Irish-Catholic family, Pence revered the Kennedys growing up and has said he voted for Jimmy Carter in 1980. He later identified as an evangelical Christian and was inspired to join the Republican Party by former President Ronald Reagan, whose happy warrior rhetorical style Pence has since tried to emulate.
After attending Hanover College, Pence graduated from Indiana University Law School in 1986. He met his wife, Karen, around the same time and twice unsuccessfully ran for Congress before taking a job at Indiana Policy Review, a conservative think tank. In a 1991 essay titled Confessions of a Negative Campaigner, Pence swore off harsh political tactics he used in one of the most divisive and negative campaigns in Indianas modern congressional history while calling for basic human decency.
That means your First Amendment rights end at the tip of your opponents nose even in the matter of political rhetoric, Pence wrote, though in the face of a difficult re-election campaign in Indiana he has since backtracked.
In Congress, Pence sponsored a few bills that became law as amendments in other legislation. But he built a national following among conservatives for his willingness to buck his own party after opposing President George W. Bushs Medicare expansion and the No Child Left Behind education overhaul. During the early years of President Barack Obamas administration, Pence helped lead the opposition to the Democrats agenda.
He has a particularly strong talent, a gift if you will, for being able to stick to principle while making his political opponents or those who disagree with him feel like they are being heard and respected, said Ryan Streeter, a former Pence aide and George W. Bush staffer who is now a public affairs professor at the University of Texas at Austin.
Pences congressional experience is one trait that Trump, who has never held public office, said he seeks in a running mate.
Marc Short, a former Pence aide and top Koch Brothers operative, elaborated: Hes worked with (House Speaker) Paul Ryan. Hes worked with the team in House leadership. Hes somebody who has deep relationships in the evangelical movement, and hes somebody who has foreign affairs experience.
Pences one term as governor has drawn mixed reaction, and he has managed to alienate moderate Republicans over social issues.
Groups threatened boycotts over last years religious objections law and late-night television hosts mocked the policy, leading lawmakers to approve changes.
This year Pence clashed with the local Catholic archdiocese by opposing the settlement of Syrian refugees in Indianapolis.
Pence was also slammed for the planned 2015 launch of JustIN, a state-operated news service that was ditched after critics panned it as Pravda on the Plains.
But he has also presided over Indianas improving economy and plummeting unemployment rate, which Republicans credit to the states low taxes, limited regulation and pro-business climate.
ANAHEIM Mayor Tom Tait plans to meet with President Barack Obama today, joined by other mayors, police chiefs and community leaders, to discuss recent police killings across the country.
Obama was in Dallas on Tuesday for a tribute to five police officers killed by a sniper during an otherwise peaceful Black Lives Matter protest. As the country reels from the deaths of the officers and the shootings of African American men in Baton Rouge and Minnesota last week, debate over police accountability and gun violence has grown louder.
Outside Anaheim City Hall on Tuesday night, more than 50 protesters gathered, carrying signs reading Black Lives Matter, Police have zero accountability and No justice no peace and to hear from families of men killed by police.
The meeting at the White House comes days after the death on Sunday of Fermin Vincent Valenzuela, 32. Valenzuela went into cardiac arrest after Anaheim police used a stun gun on him on July 2.
Anaheim police officers were responding to a call about a man who allegedly had followed a woman to her home, authorities have said. Police approached Valenzuela at a nearby coin laundry.
Anaheim police Chief Raul Quezada released security videos Tuesday showing Valenzuela struggling and running from officers.
Valenzuelas family said he was not armed and had not committed any crime and police should not have tried to subdue him with a Taser stun gun, especially by firing it at his chest, because it caused his heart to stop.
The Orange County District Attorneys Office is investigating Valenzuelas case, as it does in all in-police-custody deaths.
Tait announced the invitation from the White House at the start of a busy City Council meeting Tuesday where community members turned out for several issues. The council was set to ratify a ban on short-term rentals and decide whether to give more than $560 million in tax incentives to developers to build three luxury hotels in the resort district.
Outside, protesters circled the civic centers quad, put their hands up and chanted, Hands up, dont shoot! and They say get back, we say fight back!
Im here to support all the people who have died because of police, said Tamara Attia, 19, of Mission Viejo. They are dead and I believe its the responsibility of the living to speak up for them.
Alex Rubiano, 20, of Anaheim said she was at the protest to support the Black Lives Matter movement.
Its really important to be here, she said. You see all these videos and stories of people shot and killed because of their skin color.
Go back in time six years to 2010, when the top two primary election system awaited a decision from California voters. Up until then, Republicans could only cast ballots for Republicans in primary elections, while Democrats allowed votes from people who declined to choose a party.
In general elections, the many lopsided races where voter registration is dominated by one party or the other were essentially done deals before any ballots were counted. In Democratic-dominated districts, Republicans had no voice, even if their party put a name on the ballot. The same for Democrats in Republican districts.
The result was extremism in both major parties, with extreme liberal Democrats and extreme conservative Republicans virtually guaranteed election, often leaving moderates in both parties essentially unrepresented.
The top-two system ended that. It has often allowed Republicans in Democratic districts to decide which Democrat they prefer, and vice versa. It has forced the majority party in one-sided districts to heed voters in the other party, for the first time in generations. It has basically taken minor parties off almost all general election ballots.
That, in turn, eliminates the possibility of those parties being used to manipulate voters and distort elections, a la what the late Democratic U.S. Sen. Alan Cranston did in 1986. Faced with a close race against tough GOP opponent Ed Zschau, Cranston backers advertised heavily for the previously unknown, extreme conservative American Independent Party candidate Ed Vallen, who took 1.5 percent of the vote in an election Cranston eventually won by just 1.3 percent.
Top-two also produced a new reality in California politics, creating a quasi-party within the Democratic spectrum, loosely called business Democrats, who vote with their more liberal colleagues on social issues, but often seem a bit like Republicans on money-related items.
All this caused little furor for the last six years, even though dozens of races for the Legislature and Congress were all-Democrat or all-Republican affairs.
But this summer is different, mostly because Democratic Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez snagged the second spot in the November runoff for the U.S. Senate. Without the top-two system, Sanchez would have finished a distant second to state Attorney General Kamala Harris in a Democratic primary. This would have left Harris with only token opposition, as no Republican managed more than a fraction of her primary election vote.
Republicans are whining this summer about the Senate race, where they can either stay home or vote for a Democrat.
Thats happening because those same Republicans were unable to coalesce around a single candidate last spring, instead fracturing their votes among 11 Republicans in a field of 34 Senate candidates. Had one of them drawn support from even one of every five voters, a Republican would be running now.
But in a state where Democrats hold a voter registration edge of more than 17 percent, any such Republican would have little chance in the fall against Harris, the leading Democratic vote-getter. Like all other statewide GOP candidates of the last 20 years other than muscleman actor Arnold Schwarzenegger, the GOP survivor would have been autumn mincemeat.
Not so with Sanchez, who now is free to expand her mostly Latino voting base by going after Republican voters dismayed by the likelihood that Harris, part of the San Francisco political establishment that has held almost all major offices in this state for the last six years, might get at least six years in the Senate.
Its up to Sanchez to make those GOP adherents comfortable with her, because they cast well over 25 percent of the primary election votes, enough to make her a credible challenger for Harris.
Thats what top-two was designed to do, and it performed this year exactly as advertised.
Hes with her. But are his followers?
Bernie Sanders much-anticipated endorsement of Hillary Clinton on Tuesday provided the symbolic moment sought by the Democratic Party. But the sight of Sanders with his arm around a candidate who represents everything that his most ardent supporters despise did anything but inspire his followers.
Its kind of like disbelief (and) a little bit of disgust, said Alex Milledge, a 23-year-old from Brea who is part of OC Millennials for Bernie.
An endorsement based on fear of Donald Trump is not the sort of platform that we all came on board with, said Joey Aszterbaum, a 41-year-old from Hemet who is a Sanders delegate to the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia this month.
Were not voting out of fear. Were voting out of love and things we want to see.
The endorsement will demoralize a lot of his delegates and supporters, Aszterbaum added.
Sanders endorsement followed more than a year of sometimes heated campaigning against Clinton. The Vermont senators independent streak and embrace of democratic socialism did surprisingly well, especially with whites, independents and young voters who gravitated toward Sanders message of economic equality, health care for all, and contempt for Wall Street and billionaires.
His campaign won more more than 20 states and forced Clinton to embrace more liberal stances. But in the end, she won more votes, more states and more delegates, becoming the first woman in American history to be the presidential nominee for a major political party.
PLATFORM CHANGES
While many Democrats believe Sanders should have endorsed Clinton months ago, the timing is clearly intended to encourage Sanders supporters to vote for Clinton in the fall, said Marcia Godwin, an associate professor of political science at the University of La Verne.
Sanders is able to declare some success in influencing the Democratic Party platform, which is unusual for the runner-up. The announcement also takes media coverage away from the Trump campaign ahead of the Republican convention.
California Democratic Party Chairman John Burton spelled out the draft platforms more progressive elements.
The platform committee endorsed positions that line up with what Americans believe about the need to reform Wall Street, expand Social Security, regulate carbon emissions, support the $15 minimum wage, expand the earned income tax credit to help working people, and end mass incarceration, Burton said.
The endorsement gives a psychological OK for Sanders supporters to vote for Clinton, said Jennifer Walsh, dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Azusa Pacific University.
It is also likely that many of Sanders supporters will simply sit out this election, Walsh said. A lowered turnout for Democrats may not keep Clinton from winning the White House. But the disappointed Bernie voters who skip the ballot in November could mean fewer Democratic victories in tight House and Senate races.
NOT ABOUT HIM
Sanders supporters in Southern California say what drew them to his candidacy was the message, not the man.
It was never really about him, said Travis Traber, a 22-year-old from Lake Elsinore who is a Sanders delegate. It was really about starting this revolution and this movement that we had.
Traber said when he listened to Sanders speech Tuesday, he heard Sanders say I when he normally says we.
We need to make sure that we vote for the most progressive (Democratic Party) platform and to hold the Clinton administration accountable, said Traber, adding hes undecided about who hell vote for in November.
Milledge is supporting Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein, who called Sanders the latest in a series of reformers to be undermined by the Democratic Party.
I call on the tens of millions inspired by Bernie Sanders call for political revolution, the 60 percent of Americans who want a new major party, and the independents who outnumber both Democrats and Republicans to reject the self-defeating strategy of voting for the lesser evil and join our fight for the greater good, Stein said in a statement.
Milledge and Mary Aleece DePuey, a 49-year-old Sanders delegate from Moreno Valley, believe Sanders was forced to endorse his rival.
We are disappointed Bernie didnt keep his word of fighting until the convention, DePuey said. We understand that he was under terrible pressure from the Democratic Party and under threat of being marginalized in the Senate if he didnt endorse.
A Pew Research Center poll released last week showed that 85 percent of Democrats who voted for Sanders in the primaries said theyll vote for Clinton in November.
Why? Two words: Donald Trump, said Jack Pitney, a professor of politics at Claremont McKenna College. Even though they may be suspicious of Wall Street and free trade, they will not embrace a candidate who has retweeted material from neo-Nazis.
Contact the writer: 951-368-9547 or jhorseman@pressenterprise.com
From the moment it was announced that there would be a reboot of Ghostbusters with an all-female cast, the film has been under fire from those hostile to the idea of women taking over the beloved franchise.
So not long into the new film, which opens Friday, the movie addresses the gender issue how else? with a rude, sexist online comment directed at the team. The insult sounds like any one of the barbs that have been aimed at the cast, the films director, Paul Feig (Bridesmaids) and his co-screenwriter, Katie Dippold (Heat).
When Paul asked me to work on the script, I was really excited, but I was also really nervous, says Dippold. I knew that it would really be tough to pull off because the original so magical.
What the 36-year-old screenwriter says she didnt realize was how many people were going to be down on it even before the release.
Never mind that the film stars some of the top comic talent around these days in Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Kate McKinnon and Leslie Jones. The new cast takes over from the original stars of the 1984 film, Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, the late Harold Ramis and Ernie Hudson.
Another group of the discontented, while not weighing in specifically on gender politics, are upset that anybody would even dare touch the spooky comedy classic even though original director Ivan Reitman and Aykroyd, who co-wrote the script with Ramis, are producers on the new film. Murray, who has a cameo in the film, has voiced his support for this Ghostbusters even though hes stayed away from doing another one in the past.
Since Ghostbusters II in 1989, there have been a few attempts to get a third one off the ground, but Murray, who played the wisecracking Dr. Peter Venkman, passed on them all. The actor told Variety in October 2014 there was never a script he wanted to do.
Dippold notes there is a third group of unhappy people: fans of the original who didnt want a reboot but some type of sequel instead, possibly having the women be the daughters of the guys. That didnt appeal to Feig and Dippold.
As a fan, I dont really want to know what happened to Venkman or what happened to Egon (Ramis), says Dippold. They meant so much to me.
Reitman was still game for it, and he recruited Feig, who recruited Dippold the two had worked on the successful comedy Heat together.
I have such a love for the original, Feig says. I just wanted to bring it to a new generation and give them their own team.
Though there was a debate at the beginning whether to do a remake, Dippold says, We felt it was important to have a new story and characters and go from there.
Feig liked the idea that the sudden existence of ghosts would be fresh for the new characters instead of having been established for 30 years as in a sequel. Also as a self-professed tech head, I didnt like the idea of them being handed technology, and the filmmakers wanted to come up with some gadgets of their own.
In the new version, Kristen Wiig plays a physicist named Erin, who is struggling for tenure at Columbia University, while hiding her past as a co-author of a book on the paranormal with a childhood friend, Melissa McCarthys Abby, a scientist at a less prestigious institute.
Abby has been working with Jill, the real eccentric of the group. Played by Kate McKinnon, known for her Hillary Clinton impressions on Saturday Night Live, the mad engineer gleefully creates all the crazy anti-ghost devices for the team.
A haunting at an old New York City mansion sets the adventure on its way, and Leslie Jones transit worker Patty makes it a quartet after seeing a ghost herself. She brings her expertise of city history and places along with her uncles hearse to help out.
Once it was decided that the new Ghostbusters would be a reboot, the filmmakers had to think about what they wanted to include from the original.
Some people might think theres too many nods to the old film, says Dippold, but we just kind of thought about the superfans. For me, I wanted to see people from the original cast, and I wanted to see Slimer.
Slimer is the green blob-like ghost known for his gigantic appetite and the goo he deposits on the living. Aykroyd first conceived a paranormal comedy as a vehicle for himself and pal John Belushi, but after Belushi died in 1982 Reitman came onboard and suggested major changes in the concept, taking it from outer space to New York City, for one thing. On the set Aykroyd started to refer to Slimer as The Ghost of John Belushi as a nod to his pal.
Though just 4 years old when the original was released, Dippold remembers it being constantly on throughout her childhood.
I was a real odd kid, she says. I thought Ghostbusters was the funniest thing ever, but I also love ghost stories. My dream was to go into a haunted library, referring to the spot where spirits first appear in the opening of the original movie.
Calling herself an atheist who loves ghost stories, Dippold has even gone with friends to look for paranormal spirits in supposedly haunted places but hasnt found one yet. She will have to make do with having been on the set of Ghostbusters where she worked with Feig and the cast throughout the filming.
I kind of look at the script like a launch pad, she says. These are all brilliant comedians amazing improvisers. Everything they did was hilarious.
The screenwriter says it was often a back-and-forth process while shooting. If one of the actors came up with an ad-lib, Dippold or Feig might suggest trying to build off it. So while they had a script, lines were adjusted as they went along.
They were tweaked to be a little bit more specific to what we were facing in making the film, says the screenwriter.
Dippold is working on the set of another film she wrote a couple of years ago, this one a mother-daughter adventure starring Goldie Hawn and Amy Schumer. The screenwriter, who has a small role in Ghostbusters as a real-estate agent, says she writes about what interests her and sometimes those are things women dont always get to do.
Heat was escapism because I wanted to be a cop, and I wanted to be out there solving crimes. So it was wish fulfillment, she says. Its all been wish fulfillment with Ghostbusters, like going into a spooky subway trying to catch a ghost.
Feig says he is thrilled that young girls have already started to embrace the female characters.
Getting pictures of little girls in new Ghostbusters costumes, really chokes me up, he says.
For Dippold, one of the themes of the new film is finding your passion, no matter what people say.
Nowadays, I feel like people are under pressure to act and talk a certain way, she explains. What I liked in this movie is its about weirdos who find each other and succeed at what theyre doing and enjoy it even when other criticize them.
When Paul Paulsen listens to a recording of the Beatles 1964 Hollywood Bowl performance, he cant help but hear his sisters voice in the multitude of screaming fans who filled the arena that night.
Deborah Paulsen, a Beatlemaniac of the 60s, was one of seven people who died 40 years ago in a shooting at Cal State Fullerton. Paul Paulsen shared his memory of her during a candlelight vigil Tuesday night in the campus Memorial Grove.
Bob Niccum attended the vigil with his wife, Terri, in memory of professor Seth Fessden, in whose class they had met.
Its amazing that so much time has passed. Given the events in the past two weeks, it shows that occurrences like this still happen, Niccum said.
On July 12, 1976, Edward Charles Allaway, who worked on campus as a custodian, shot nine people, killing seven, in a Cal State Fullerton basement. At the time, it was the most deadly shooting in Orange County history.
Allaway, found guilty of murder by a jury but ruled not guilty by reason of insanity by a judge, has been in mental health facilities in California for four decades.
Patricia Almazan, who lost her father, Frank Teplansky, in the shooting, spoke at the vigil, as did county Supervisor Todd Spitzer and CSUF President Mildred Garcia.
Surrounded by seven trees planted in honor of those killed, the group flicked the switches of electric candles. One by one, yellow lights appeared, illuminating each pair of hands as the sun set.
You cant put a time limit on grief, Almazan said.
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Making good on a strategy to open more restaurants in high-volume urban locations, Irvine-based Taco Bell announced plans Tuesday to bring an experimental cantina to Las Vegas.
The Las Vegas Strip location, across from the sleek Cosmopolitan hotel, is the chains first restaurant along the notorious Las Vegas thoroughfare. The two-story restaurant, slated to open this fall, will be the third Taco Bell Cantina in the country. The chain introduced the concept, which serves alcoholic drinks, last year in Chicago and San Francisco.
Of the 2,000 restaurants the chain plans to open by 2022, 200 will be urban locations, Taco Bell said Tuesday.
Expansion into urban markets is a key focus for us both this year and over the course of the next several years, Brian Niccol, chief executive officer at Taco Bell, said in a statement. When we talked about where to establish a flagship store, it didnt take long to realize that having a presence in the heart of Vegas would undoubtedly create a unique, distinctive and fun destination and experience for Taco Bell fans.
Taco Bell Cantinas serve shareable dishes, beer, wine, sangria and liquor-infused slushie drinks dubbed Twisted Freezes. Eight flavors will be available in Las Vegas. Alcohol choices include rum, tequila or vodka. Some current flavors are the Mountain Dew Baja Blast, Cantina Punch and the Cantina Margarita, Taco Bell said. Freezes can be ordered without alcohol, as well.
In Las Vegas, the restaurant will feature an outdoor patio for al fresco dining.
When Taco Bell opened the first Cantina in Chicago, the company said the design was part of the restaurants strategy to eliminate the one size fits all look of fast-food chain restaurants. The restaurant opened with reclaimed materials such as restored brick and prismatic glass.
Meals are prepared in an exhibition kitchen.
Taco Bell is expanding its experience to reflect growing requests from fans to keep the brand relevant, the company said when it opened the first Cantina.
There are no plans right now to bring a Cantina to Orange County. Taco Bell said Atlanta is being explored as the next urban development, as well as New York, Boston, Ohio, Berkeley, Austin, Texas, and Fayetteville, Ark.
The cantina is one concept among several under the chains umbrella. Taco Bell also is planning to introduce four new restaurant designs that represent its next generation fast-food restaurant. Each store will have a name to match its aesthetics: Modern Explorer, California Sol, Heritage and Urban Edge.
Taco Bell previously said those four designs would make their debut this summer in restaurants in Newport Beach, Santa Ana, Tustin and Brea. Going forward, new Taco Bell restaurants are expected to adopt one of the four designs that best fits the community it serves, Taco Bell has said.
The company joins the fray of decades-old food brands upscaling their looks.
McDonalds, Lake Forest-based Del Taco and Wendys have been remodeling restaurants to mimic contemporary fast-casual brands such as Panera Bread.
Contact the writer: hmadans@ocregister.com or Twitter: @HannahMadans
Orange County can expect another epidemic West Nile virus season, with La Habra emerging as this years hotbed of infected mosquitoes, Orange County Mosquito and Vector Control District officials said Tuesday.
Eight out of 17 positive mosquito samples have been found clustered in northern La Habra, said Jared Dever, spokesman for the agency. Countywide, twice as many samples have tested positive for the virus than at the same time last year which, like in 2014, caused severe illness and human fatalities.
Mosquitoes carrying the virus have been found in six other cities around the county: Seal Beach, Anaheim, Irvine, La Palma, Orange, and most recently Stanton. So far, no Orange County residents and no Californians have tested positive but theres a significant lag time between transmission, emergence of symptoms, and medical testing, Dever said.
That transmission is most likely already occurring in the human population, we just dont know to what extent or where that is occurring, Dever said.
In 2015, eight Orange County residents died after contracting West Nile virus and nine died the year before. Prior to the 2014 season, only nine Orange County residents had died since the virus was first discovered in humans here in 2004.
In response to the high concentration of infected mosquitoes, the vector control agency has doubled the number of abatement crews in La Habra. Employees are inspecting properties and going door-to-door to educate residents about preventing breeding and bites.
Awareness and education in the community is absolutely paramount, Dever said. That is how we prevent the transmission of this disease to humans. Our agency is doing everything we can to reduce the number of mosquitoes, but there comes a point when our actions arent going to prevent and preclude an epidemic. The public has to step up.
La Habra Mayor James Gomez, who is also a trustee on the mosquito and vector control board, said the city has begun providing free repellant at community events such as evening concerts in the park.
This is the first time weve taken that extra step to try to protect the public, he said.
Gomez said if human infections endanger community safety, the board may have to consider aerial pesticide spraying, which was shelved last year after failure to secure a necessary flight permit.
Its very controversial but when lives are at stake you have to look at every option, Gomez said. We would only do that as a last resort. Thankfully, there have been no human cases yet.
Up to 80 percent of people who contract West Nile virus never develop symptoms, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Among those who do, symptoms may include fever, headache, body aches, joint pain, vomiting, diarrhea or rash. The most severe cases cause brain disease manifested by headache, high fever, neck stiffness, disorientation, coma, tremors, seizures or paralysis.
West Nile season typically runs from May to October when conditions are hot and dry. To prevent mosquito breeding and prevent infection, residents are urged to do the following:
Wear repellant when outside at dawn and dusk, along with light-colored, loose-fitting long sleeves and pants.
Dump or drain any standing water left outdoors.
Keep screens on windows and doors in good repair to keep out mosquitoes.
Contact the writer: cperkes@ocregister.com 714-796-3686
Tokyos Sembikiya Fruit Parlor looks like a luxurious jewelry store and the prices of the items on offer arent too far off either, only instead of diamonds and gold this place sells fruits. If youre looking for perfectly shaped, delicious-tasting cantaloupes, apples, grapes or any other Japanese fruits, Sembikiya is where youll find them, but youd better stop by the bank first, because they dont come cheap.
In Japan, its customary to give high-quality fruits for formal occasions like weddings, business meetings or hospital visits. But were not talking about fruits you usually find at the local market or grocery store. Specialized fruit shops like Sembikiya sell only the rarest, most perfect products, grown in special conditions to ensure they look and taste as good as possible. Take the Yubari muskmelons, also known as Yubari King melons, priced at 15,750 ($160) for one, or 26,250 ($265) for two, at the exclusive Tokyo fruit parlor. Thats a small fortune for produce, wouldnt you say? But these Japanese cantaloupes are pretty special. The Yubari King sold at Sembikiya only come from Shizuoka prefecture, where they get the most sunshine. They are grown in specially-designed greenhouses with air-conditioning and paper hats in the hot summer months, and heaters during wintertime. Farmers prune the less perfect fruits early on, leaving just one melon to ensure it gets the best flavor possible. A 12-pack of Queen Strawberries sells for 6,825 ($68), a box of perfect cherries costs 15,750 ($159), and a Senkai-ichi (Japanese for worlds best) apple will set you back 2,100 ($21). They might seem like outrageously-priced fruits to most people, but with 11 parlors opened in Japan, at Sembikiya business is booming.
Photo: Aiste/Luxeat
Established in 1834, by a samurai called Benzo Ohshima, Sembikiya was originally a Mizugashi Yasuuri Dokoro (fruit discount shop) where people could find cheap fruits and vegetables. It was the wife of Ohsimas son who came up with the idea of turning the concept on its head and focusing on luxury fruits. By the third generation of owners, Sembikiya was importing produce from overseas and focusing on improving the quality of domestic products. Its recognized as the oldest fruit parlor in Japan, but throughout the years, Sembikiya evolved into a complex fruit business. In 1887 it opened Japans first fruit restaurant, the forerunner of todays Fruit Cafe, where customers can enjoy fresh fruit juices, parfaits and sliced fruits. Apart from the network of fruit parlors, Sembikiya also operates several sweets factories.
Photo: David L. Mansfield
Buying fruits at a Sembikiya parlor, and especially at its flagship store in Nihonbashi Mitsui Tower, is a unique experience. Not only because of the outrageous prices and the picture-perfect items on display, but also for its counselling. For example when you buy a gift melon, the store clerk asks you on which day it will be consumed. According to your budget, he will give you one that will be at its peak time for consumption on that very day. He will also give you instructions on how to store it until the day you get to savor its perfect flavor. If the fruits youre interested in are not in their peak season, the clerk will warn you that the best time for eating them has passed and they wont taste as sweet as they can be.
Photo: BBC
Shopping at the Sembikiya Fruit Parlor isnt for everyone, but even if you dont plan on spending hundreds of dollars on a few fruits, its worth a visit just to admire the perfection of their products. But if youre not planning a trip to Japan anytime soon, at least check out the video at the bottom of this page.
Photo: Photo: Aiste/Luxeat
Photo: Photo: Aiste/Luxeat
Sources: Sembikiya, Food, Sake Tokyo, Luxeat
Maite Velez-Couto
With influencers becoming more commonly integrated into brand marketing campaigns, a controversy has begun to emerge. Are brands really seeing the benefits? How can marketers identify authentic influencers who do not buy followers or artificially inflate their numbers to secure contracts then not deliver on goals? Do the influencers act in a way so that they continue to maintain the trust of consumers who follow them? All these questions are causing companies big and small and across diverse industries to ask themselves whether they should invest in influencer marketing, and if and when they will see real returns, either at the cash register or in greater mindshare among consumers.
Trust and transparency are essential when determining the true value of an influencer. The best but not all influencers will disclose their relationships with a brand up front and with their audience on an ongoing basis. There seems to be a double standard of sorts, however, with celebrity influencers and certain retailers that believe they can fool the public. Examples include when Kim Kardashian ignored the rules without consequence and when brands like Lord & Taylor promoted sponsored content without a disclaimer.
Bad practice doesnt pay. Brands and influencers can face serious risks when they forego transparency, including loss of consumer trust, overall credibility, legal issues, fines and, ultimately, business. A clause necessitating transparency in every influencer contract is a best practice to adopt that can reduce these risks.
See beyond the numbers
Not all influencers are created equal, so its important for brands to do some research and ask the right questions before forming relationships. Reach remains an important baseline comparator, although influencer numbers should not be the only factor weighed. Brands also need to look at engagement potential. Having 1,000 contacts in your phone does not mean very much unless youre sure most of them will take your call and value what you have to share.
Think beyond the obvious audiences. Consider engaging with an influencer who can deliver messages effectively to a specific or niche target audience that would otherwise be difficult to reach. In other words, a travel brand seeking greater reach and engagement among a senior audience should not focus solely on travel influencers. Instead, consider influencers who align with a target audiences lifestyle or passion points to drive a comprehensive marketing strategy.
Content is only the beginning
Social media is fundamental for influencer reach, but successful brands think beyond content creation. Giving influencer partners access to a bigger platform can make engagement deeper and more meaningful. Using their persona and content with controlled media e.g., satellite media tours and advertising or contests are some effective ways to expand their reach.
Prioritize influencers who have a good eye for design or presentation; this can ensure compelling visuals are used along with content across social media platforms. Also consider on what platform Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn an influencer is most popular as that will determine the demographic audience reached. Influencers with experience as media experts, spokespeople or videographers also add a lot of value to a brand campaign. Someone like Johnny Jet, Diane Mizota and Jeana Shandraw are great examples.
Adopt award-winning strategies
The most successful brands take the time to lay a strong foundation for their influencer campaigns prior to launch. As a VP at rbb Communications, I helped develop the award-winning Hampton by Hiltons Seekender campaign. Prior to selecting influencers, we finalized a strategy and goals with our client. This is a simple but crucial step. Then a customized ranking system was created that compared the strengths and weaknesses of the influencers identified. Also important was to speak directly with each candidate to negotiate and customize agreements. This careful planning established trust and a comfort level with each ambassador that remained effective throughout our Seekender campaign.
Our #MomsEscape campaign for Dreams Resorts & Spas is another prime example where a thoughtful approach to influencer selection made a big difference in securing measureable results. That campaign reported a 12 percent overall increase in bookings year-over-year for the brand following program launch.
Both campaigns were set up in ways that enabled us to demonstrate and assess the roles influencers played in the success of each, such as exclusive offers and tailored messages for their followers only and special URL codes for tracking purposes. Business results were achieved with double digit increases in bookings and new followers engaged via social channels.
Start smart to avoid mistakes
Common mistakes brands make when enlisting influencers include:
Being fixated on a specific number of followers and/or only focusing on brand name influencers;
Insufficient research to identify the best influencers.
Believing they do not need to pay influencers for their work; they dont work for free.
Hiring influencers but not providing them with appropriate tools to drive a specific sales message.
Seeing influencers solely as content creators without tapping them as partners in brand promotion in other effective ways (lending their name to contests, special offers, etc.).
Thinking every influencer should have the same agreements. Customization will bring better results.
Not being specific enough with the scope of work or expectations. Set specific goals.
Not granting influencers enough editorial freedom to create organic content with added review/approval guidelines.
Theres a lot of subtlety, nuance and expertise involved in the most effective influencer campaigns. A brand with limited internal resources can enlist the help of a communications agency with experience navigating the influencer landscape. These agencies help companies make smart decisions and avoid getting little or no return on their investment. The right partner can also help ensure all the benchmark measures are in place, and test them before a campaign launch to increase the likelihood that the effort will translate into long-term success for the brand.
* * *
Maite Velez-Couto is a Vice President at rbb Communications in Miami.
Hillary Clintons support of 5G technology has drawn the ire of Wi-Fi health advocates who say she ignores radiations health effects.
The proposed 5G Spectrum Frontiers is a boon to industry and a devastation to our health, says Parents for Safe Technology under the headline, Take action against 5G now!!!
FCC chair Tom Wheeler
The Federal Communications Commissions is scheduled to vote on approval of 5G technology tomorrow (July 14).
Joe Esposito of emfsafetynetwork.org says there is a palpable danger from untested 28GHz radiation blasting from millions of new hidden antennas and tuned-up smart meters.
Joe Esposito
He describes it as a corporate free-for-all, with oversight eliminated. Total, for-profit surveillance. An internet of everything with hundreds of billions of microchippable products. Everywhere and everything... and eventually, everyone.
Clinton is not much different from former Cellular Telephone Industry Association Director Tom Wheeler now turned FCC chair, said Ed Friedman of the Maine Coalition to Stop Smart Meters and Friends of Merrymeeting Bay.
They are a pair of predators guarding the hen house believing technology should drive policy instead of the other way around where humanity comes first. All radiofrequency radiation [RFR] is biologically active and the recent NIH National Toxicology Program study results along with countless earlier studies prove causation between RFR and various cancer and non-cancer harmful health effects. First do no harm.
Clintons support for 5G is in a paper titled Hillary Clintons Initiative on Technology and Innovation. It is as follows:
Deploy 5G Wireless and Next Generation Wireless Systems: Americas world-leading rollout of 4G wireless networks in the first half of this decade has been a success story for policy-makers, industry, and American consumers. The Obama Administration played a key role by repurposing spectrum and auctioning licenses, as well as by making new spectrum available for unlicensed technologies.
Hillary will accelerate this progress and help foster the evolution to 5G, small cell solutions, and other next-generation systems that can deliver faster wireless connections. Widely deployed 5G networks, and new unlicensed and shared spectrum technologies, are essential platforms that will support the Internet of Things, smart factories, driverless cars, and much moredevelopments with enormous potential to create jobs and improve peoples lives.
Espositos email urging citizens to battle FCCs proposed acceptance of 5G is below:
SPEAK UP AND STOP "5G":
The government's own NTP cancer study inconveniently concluded that yes -- cellular radiation DOES increase cancer. Now, the industy-lobbyist-turned-government-czar gave an uber-creepy speech invoking technocracy's endgame with a stomach-churning sense of urgency.
Check out Wheeler's speech for yourself, here. He stammers through it like a man mostly-possessed. This is desperation on their part. They know full well that the next phase of the megalomanic rollout needs to happen before the SHTF for them, and the tipping point is reached in terms of a convergent awareness of wireless health / surveillance / technocratic insanity and their liability.
So let's engage and make some noise. Your voice is needed today. This plan is being fast-tracked & voted on tomorrow, Thursday July 14. Let the FCC and this government know that if they do not listen to science and reason, they will be held accountable and liable for their actions. Money is not only their god - it's their language.
SPEAK UP AND STOP "5G" NOW:
1) 34 Scientific Studies Showing Adverse Health Effects From Wi-Fi:
http://wifiinschools.org.uk/30.html
2) Several thousand studies that indicate a biological effect and/or harm:
http://www.powerwatch.org.uk/science/studies.asp
http://www.justproveit.net/studies
http://www.emf-portal.de
http://stopsmartmeters.org.uk/resources/resources-scientific-studies-into-the-health-effects-of-emr/
3) Radiofrequency science charts to visually compare studies, radiation intensities and biological effects:
http://www.bioinitiative.org/rf-color-charts/
4) Apple manual states to keep your iPhone away from your body at all times:
http://www.newsweek.com/iphone-6-bendgate-apple-says-your-iphone-shouldnt-go-your-pocket-avoid-273313
5) Study: Mobile phones are cooking men's sperm:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/news/12167957/Mobile-phones-are-cooking-mens-sperm.html
6) Brain surgeon Dr Charlie Teo warns against mobiles, wireless home appliances:
http://www.news.com.au/technology/brain-surgeon-dr-charlie-teo-warns-against-mobiles-home-appliances/story-e6frfro0-1225791947213
7) American Academy of Pediatrics warns: Limit children's exposure to cellphones:
http://www.today.com/video/pediatricians-warn-limit-childrens-exposure-to-cellphones-559871555807
8) More than 60 international warnings on Wi-Fi and microwave radiation:
http://www.safeinschool.org/2011/01/international-warnings-on-wi-fi.html
9) A List of Teacher Unions and Parent Teacher Organizations Taking Action On Wi-Fi (USA, Canada, UK, etc):
http://safetechforschoolsmaryland.blogspot.com/2016/02/teacher-unions-and-parent-teacher.html
10) TED Talk from a former Environmental Engineer in Silicon Valley:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0NEaPTu9oI
11) Insurance giant Swiss RE has given electromagnetic frequencies the HIGHEST possible long term risk rating:
https://takebackyourpower.net/major-insurance-firm-swiss-re-warns-of-large-losses-from-unforeseen-consequences-of-wireless-technologies/
12) Another insurance giant, Lloyd's of London, will not insure anything wireless:
http://www.naturalhealth365.com/wi-fi-radiation-electromagnetic-fields-lloyds-of-london-1356.html
13) Risk Management Magazine - The Invisible Threat: Radiofrequency Radiation Risk
http://www.rmmagazine.com/2010/08/01/the-invisible-threat-radiofrequency-radiation-risk/
14) US CDC retracts cellphone radiation warning following pressure from industry lobbyists:
http://microwavenews.com/news-center/caution-vs-precaution
15) WHO involved in suppression of additional science showing harm, since 2011:
https://takebackyourpower.net/tag/who/
16) Study Uncovers How Electromagnetic Fields Amplify Pain in Amputees
www.utdallas.edu/news/2016/2/3-31891_Study-Uncovers-How-Electromagnetic-Fields-Amplify-_story-wide.html
17) CEO of 1 Billion-dollar U.K. company speaks out on microwave sickness:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4DKNs0G2kU
18) Dozens of specific scientific abstracts that all show harm:
http://emfsafetynetwork.org/shortcut-to-science/
19) Solutions: Reducing Wirelesss Radiation and EMF
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWCk7RYGGS4
20) Solutions: Reducing Your EMF Exposure
http://www.emfanalysis.com/solutions-interview/
21) Cell Phone Radiation Boosts Cancer Rates in Animals; $25 Million NTP Study Finds Brain Tumors
http://microwavenews.com/news-center/ntp-cancer-results
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Blue Cross Blue Shield of Nebraska will send 93,000 letters to customers this week to say that it might terminate its contract with Catholic Health Initiatives-Nebraska, which includes Alegent Creighton Health hospitals and physicians.
The disagreement involves rates charged by Alegent Creighton Healths hospitals and by more than 3,000 Alegent-affiliated physicians, nurse practitioners, physician assistants and other UniNet providers in the Omaha metro area.
If an agreement isnt struck by the end of August, patients of CHI hospitals across Nebraska and of UniNet providers in the metro area will have to either pay higher out-of-network fees to continue to go to those hospitals or providers, or they will have to change providers.
The companies are major players in health care. Blue Cross executives said Alegent Creighton has about 50 percent of the metro-area market. Blue Cross has about 500,000 Nebraska members, more than any other commercial health insurer.
The two sides will continue to meet over hospital and physician rates in hopes that they wont have to part ways, said Lee Handke, a senior vice president with Blue Cross in Omaha. Handke and Pat Bourne, another senior vice president with the insurance company, said its the first situation of its kind in Blue Cross recent history.
Catholic Health Initiatives-Nebraskas chief executive officer, Dr. Cliff Robertson, said health care has to change the way hospitals and providers are paid, here and elsewhere in the United States. He said his system wants to move away from a payment structure that simply reimburses physicians and hospitals for doing procedures the fee for service model to one that rewards them for providing excellent care and keeping patients healthy.
Handke said Blue Cross Blue Shield wants the same thing, but Handke told The World-Herald on Monday: Its a very simple issue. Alegent Creighton Health is more expensive than other local providers.
Handke said his insurance firms concern involves Alegent Creighton Health and not other CHI hospitals across Nebraska, but CHI didnt want to consider them separately.
He said Blue Cross proposed that Alegent Creighton take three years to bring its rates closer to those of the Nebraska Medical Center and Methodist Hospital and their affiliates. But that was rejected.
Robertson said that he is willing to freeze his systems rates but that the issue is about more than rates. Its about, how do we transition to a different reimbursement model? Thats what were committed to, and thats what were trying to work through with Blue Cross Blue Shield.
He asked: Why would they resist moving to a much deeper, value-based model?
Blue Cross executives said Alegent Creighton facilities and affiliated providers typically are 10 percent to 30 percent more expensive than the Nebraska Medical Center, Methodist Hospital and their affiliated hospitals and providers.
Blue Cross showed average hospital reimbursement rates for five procedures delivery of a baby, appendectomy, spinal fusion, hip replacement and chemotherapy indicating that Alegent Creighton hospitals cost patients and Blue Cross more than its competitors.
That, Handke said, is generally true across the board of procedures and providers. The price gap is not defensible because its so large, he said. He said the difference in rates costs members and Blue Cross tens of millions of dollars.
Robertson said the cost of a procedure is only one element in the equation.
Its about total cost of care, Robertson said. Looking at the cost of a procedure is just one piece of information and perspective that I would say is inherently flawed.
Coordinating patients care so they dont have to be readmitted and offering patient-centered medical homes that strive to keep diabetics and others with chronic illnesses healthy are examples of quality strategies that add value to medical care, he said.
He said he hopes insurers provide health care systems a modest margin for procedures while supporting quality innovations.
Handke said the Blue Cross contract with CHI automatically renews at the end of the year unless one of the parties terminates it. He said Blue Cross notified CHI of its intentions in late April.
Bourne said state law requires a health insurer to give its customers, or members, 90 days notice before terminating a contract. Thats why the letters went out early this week.
Thousands of Medicare supplement customers also will receive the letter from Blue Cross, but it will inform them that they are unaffected.
Blue Cross said members may go to www.nebraskablue.com/update to see if their providers are included in the Alegent Creighton, CHI or UniNet affiliation.
The disagreement was foreshadowed two years ago when Blue Cross put Alegent Creighton into Tier II for popular SelectBlue policies. Blue Cross said Alegent Creighton rivals offered better rates and won Tier I status in SelectBlue, which provides cost incentives for patients to use Tier I providers.
Contact the writer:
Comparing hospital rates
Blue Cross Blue Shield of Nebraska compared average hospital reimbursement rates for five common services at two Omaha hospitals with Alegent Creightons rates. Blue Cross did not say which of the comparison hospitals had which rate, but said they are Methodist Hospital and the Nebraska Medical Center. The rates do not include charges for the providers.
FREMONT, Neb. The City Council approved a resolution endorsing the Planning Commissions recommendation to designate as blighted almost 1,000 acres of land south of Fremont, moving the city one step closer to landing a $300 million chicken-processing plant.
The board resolution, which passed unanimously Tuesday night but was met with vocal opposition from some community members, clears the way for tax-increment financing, a publicly funded financial incentive, to aid in development of the plant to be owned by mega-retailer Costco.
Such an incentive is commonly adopted by cities and allows developers to divert property taxes generated by a development to repay the cost of improvements associated with it.
Cecilia Harry, executive director of the Greater Fremont Development Council, said the 992-acre designation and with it, the availability of TIF for redevelopment is a breakthrough for the Costco development and holds great potential for a lot of other industries already existing in Fremont to take advantage of the redevelopment area.
David Mitchell, a local attorney and board member for the Greater Fremont Development Council, agreed. He referred to the site as a bridesmaid and said it has been passed over by other large, local businesses in the past because of what he said was the decaying state of existing infrastructure and a relative lack of available funding help, like TIF.
This is something we have wanted to develop for a long time, he said.
The proposed facility includes a feed mill, hatchery and slaughterhouse capable of processing 350,000 birds per day.
Plans call for the plant to be operational in 2018; at full capacity, it would employ 1,100 people and carry with it an estimated annual economic impact of $1.2 billion.
Proponents point to economic ripple effects that would reach into the states agriculture sector, with area farmers contracting to raise chickens that would be processed at the Fremont plant. Even though Costco would own the facility, it would be operated by Georgia-based Lincoln Premium Poultry.
Opponents of the plan sharply criticized the City Council, citing concerns including the health of potential workers at the plant, a tidal wave of new students into the Fremont school system and even accusations of illegal behavior on behalf of the council.
The course of action being asked to take tonight is illegal, said Lincoln attorney Gregory Barton, who was representing an organization called Nebraska Communities United, which opposes the plant.
It is illegal for city to include a vacant agricultural area within a blighted area for the sole purpose of providing TIF to a private developer, he said.
He characterized the citys inclusion of industrial, urban land with vacant agricultural land in the blight assessment as an attempt to circumvent state law for Costcos benefit.
Jeff Ray, a planner with JEO Consulting Group, which conducted the blight assessment, batted down that assertion. He said his organizations conclusion holds up under Nebraska law and said Bartons accusation dealt with annexation of land and not declaration of blighted or substandard property.
Costco already nixed plans for a site in nearby Nickerson after the Village Board there voted against annexation of land for the proposed plant. The company had not yet identified itself at that time, but opponents rallied against the proposal nonetheless, citing concerns over pollution and what they said could be an influx of illegal immigrants.
Contact the writer: 402-444-1534, cole.epley@owh.com
The latest hearing in the murder case against Anthony Garcia didnt offer a lot of insight into the alleged crimes but made one thing abundantly clear: the opposing attorneys wont be going out to lunch together anytime soon.
Fireworks erupted in a Douglas County courtroom over a motion by Garcias attorneys asking a judge to remove Douglas County Attorney Don Kleine as prosecutor in the case.
Robert Motta Jr., Garcias Chicago-based attorney, offered a blistering assessment of how Kleine has handled the case. Much of it centered on salacious and slanderous charges and statements he said Kleine had made against Mottas wife a former lead attorney in the case and other absolutely reprehensible conduct by Kleine that he argued tainted Garcias case.
I dont practice here, so I can take a scorched-earth policy, Motta said, offering his own assessment of his words regarding Kleine.
Kleine said he almost didnt know where to begin with Mottas claims, most of which he said were based on Motta being upset that the judge earlier this year had removed Alison Motta from the case.
Most of the stuff that he said is the rant of an individual upset his spouse is not allowed to practice in this case anymore, Kleine said. Thats not my fault. Thats their fault.
At the end, Motta asked that if Douglas County District Judge Gary Randall chooses not to remove Kleine from the case, would he at least reconsider his decision to bar Alison Motta.
Randall did not immediately rule on Mottas motion, ending a roughly four-hour pretrial hearing. The three-year-old case, at least for now, appears to remain on track for a possible September trial.
Garcia, a former Creighton University pathology resident, is charged in two 2008 slayings in the home of a Creighton pathologist and the 2013 slayings of a Creighton pathologist and his wife.
Tuesdays hearing was the first since a Nebraska Supreme Court ruling regarding Alison Mottas participation in the case.
Randall earlier this year had booted her after statements she had made that DNA evidence exonerated Garcia. Garcias legal team, including Mottas husband and father-in-law, appealed Randalls decision to the Supreme Court.
The appeal originally included a letter from Garcia in which he said he was upset that Randall had not let him speak on the matter of who should represent him. But a month later, Garcia had changed his tune, saying in a letter to the high court that he no longer wanted Alison Motta as part of his team. The Supreme Court subsequently upheld Randalls decision to remove her.
Given the conflicting statements Garcia had made on his legal representation, Randall began Tuesdays hearing by asking Garcia if he wanted to address the issue.
Garcia didnt answer directly, saying he felt he was being cornered and forced to choose.
Randall made it clear he was not trying to put Garcia on the spot. Having heard no objections from Garcia on his legal representation, Randall proceeded with the hearing.
Kleine then asked whether Garcias attorneys would seek to raise the issue of Garcias competency to stand trial. That question arose when Garcias attorneys had asked the high court to appoint a guardian to oversee him during trial, a request the high court also dismissed.
In response to Kleines request, Randall then asked Garcias attorneys, including local counsel Jeremy Jorgenson, whether they intended to raise the issue of Garcias competency. After a brief conference with Motta, Jorgenson declined to raise the issue.
Its not here, Randall said. Im finding no competency issue.
Much of the hearing was taken up by Jorgensons questioning of Omaha Police Officer Nick Herfordt about cellphone evidence in the case and how it was obtained. Included in that evidence is a search on Garcias iPhone for the address of Dr. Roger Brumback, who was killed at his home.
Garcia seemed to pay little attention to that part of the hearing, sitting at the defense table with his eyes closed much of the time. But he was more attentive in the afternoon when Randall took up the motion to remove Kleine.
Many of Robert Mottas oral arguments centered on a motion for sanctions Kleine had earlier filed against Alison Motta. That motion had accused her of telling a key witness she would love for the witness to disappear. Alison Motta adamantly denied making the statement, and prosecutors later dropped the motion, saying they didnt want it to delay the case.
But Mottas husband brought it up in court Tuesday, saying the tampering allegation was continuing to harm his wife in her legal practice. He charged that Kleine had attacked Alison Motta in desperation to win the Garcia case.
The lines have blurred between politician and county attorney, he said. My client is not getting a fair shake.
A brief exchange followed between Kleine and Motta, causing Randall to intervene.
I dont care if you like each other, the judge said. I dont care if you like his tactics.
Motta also argued that other conduct and statements by Kleine and police had tainted Garcias ability to get a fair trial. Talk about a poisoned jury pool, he said. Its a swamp.
Kleine did not spend a lot of time addressing the specifics of Mottas motion to remove him. He said he has been professional in all of his conduct in the Garcia case. And if the Mottas believe he has not acted properly, he said, they have the ability to take a complaint against him to the state bar association.
I can look myself in the mirror every day, he said.
Contact the writer: 402-444-1130, henry.cordes@owh.com
LINCOLN A sixth inmate has been charged in connection with a May 2015 riot at the Tecumseh State Prison that left two inmates dead and the facility scorched and ransacked.
Justin Busch, 24, has been charged with four counts of first-degree arson in connection with four separate fires that were set during the rampage, in which inmates took control of two housing units for several hours at the medium-maximum security prison.
Busch, who is known by the nickname Zero, was sent to prison in 2012 after being convicted of four counts of robbery, possession of stolen firearms and tampering with a witness in Douglas and Sarpy Counties. He was sentenced to 18 to 24 years in prison.
He is scheduled to be in Johnson County Court on July 20 for an arraignment and a preliminary hearing on the charges that were filed last week.
The riot was the worst at a state prison in six decades.
This spring, the State Legislature allocated $1.2 million to complete the repairs on the damaged prison. That is on top of more than $1 million in repairs funded by insurance. In addition, the state will spend $1.9 million to upgrade the camera and cell-locking systems at the 960-bed facility.
In November, five other Tecumseh inmates were charged with assaulting prison staff, and two have already been convicted and sentenced. Trials for three others are pending.
No charges have yet been filed in connection with the deaths of two inmates, Donald Peacock and Shon Collins, who were found dead after authorities retook control of the prison.
Collins family has asked the state for $1.2 million in damages, alleging that prison officials failed to protect him.
In a recent interview, Nebraska Attorney General Doug Peterson said that investigating the slayings of the two inmates has been difficult. Some witnesses in a prison are reluctant to testify, for fear of reprisals, he said.
But the attorney general said his goal is to build a strong case rather than rush a prosecution.
Contact the writer: 402-473-9584, paul.hammel@owh.com
The Omaha Public Schools board Monday night approved several administrative appointments for the upcoming school year:
Dana Barker, a student support liaison, will become the new principal of Sherman Elementary.
Amanda Cordoba, an OPS teacher, will become the new assistant principal at Indian Hill Elementary.
Mary Griger, an OPS teacher, is the new assistant principal at Belvedere Elementary.
Andrew Karmazin, a student support liaison, is the new program director of the Parrish/ Expelled Student Program.
Andrew Walters, an assistant principal with the Avoca-Hancock-Shelby-Tennant Community School District in Iowa, will be the new assistant principal at Burke High.
WASHINGTON Its been nearly 16 years since a racially fraught controversy pushed Dr. William Reyn Archer III from his role as Texas health commissioner.
Now hes back in government work as chief of staff for Rep. Jeff Fortenberry, R-Neb.
The Lincoln lawmaker told The World-Herald that hes known Archer for a long time, describing him as an extraordinarily qualified individual who has worked with him on tribal hospital issues.
Fortenberry said he was aware of the controversy that led to Archers 2000 resignation.
This was a very long time ago, Fortenberry said. This man is deeply dedicated to helping those who are in structural poverty, to coming up with innovative policy solutions that are community-oriented. I am grateful to have him.
An Associated Press report at the time noted that Archers downfall came after Dr. Demetria Montgomery, a Texas Health Department administrator, was fired in 2000 by her supervisor, who was also African-American.
As part of a race and sex discrimination claim, Montgomery produced a tape-recorded conversation with Archer from seven months before her firing.
During a rambling, mostly one-side conversation, Archer can be heard referring several times to Montgomerys race and said you are fair (skinned) as a black woman, you get certain privileges in white culture that others dont get for that. He also made a reference to lynching, according to the AP story.
Archer had been appointed to the post with the approval of then-Gov. George W. Bush, who called the conversation with Montgomery inappropriate. Archer resigned.
In an interview with The World-Herald, Archer said he was trying to help Montgomery, who had been at odds with her supervisor. He said the context of his remarks was lost when they became public. He said he learned a lot about the way certain words can be perceived.
I took that lesson as an important lesson for me to be more careful about words I use and also making sure that I understand the mind of the receiver and not just my own intentions, said Archer, 61.
He said his reference to lynching, for example, came as he made a general point about how people should not rush to judgment. But he acknowledged that he used that loaded word.
Archer said he had built his career working in public health, trying to help governments improve outcomes, particularly for low-income people, both in the U.S. and abroad. He said he used to receive standing ovations when speaking to minority audiences about public health issues, which made the 2000 controversy especially hard to take.
It was an unfortunate set of circumstances, Archer said. It has caused tremendous personal pain, just sadness for me.
Archer started working for Fortenberry months ago as a fellow, helping with issues facing the troubled Winnebago Indian Health Service Hospital, which was cut off from Medicare reimbursements last year.
When his previous chief of staff left, Fortenberry asked Archer to take over, starting July 1. He is being paid $140,000 a year.
Archer said he and the congressman discussed his history. Archer stressed that he didnt want it to overshadow Fortenberrys efforts on behalf of Nebraskas 1st District.
Before joining Fortenberrys office, Archer worked for a year as a consultant. Before that, he was chief medical officer at the Burson-Marsteller public relations firm, where he worked on policy advocacy, mostly in public health, nutrition and mental health.
That one conversation with Montgomery was not the only time he caused waves as health commissioner.
He also generated headlines and a fair amount of outrage when he was quoted by the New York Times in April 2000 saying that Texas high teen pregnancy rate was the result of the states Hispanic population lacking the belief that getting pregnant is a bad thing.
The Dallas Morning News reported that he later apologized for those remarks and met with a group of Hispanic state lawmakers.
Archer told The World-Herald that his comments about Hispanics had been twisted, however.
He said he had been asked why Hispanic teens had higher pregnancy rates. He said he was suggesting that it might involve their religious beliefs and that he didnt want to judge them.
Archer said he loves and respects the Hispanic community and its culture, reflected in the bracelet with a flag of Mexico that he wears on his wrist, and said he just wants to serve.
People can be improperly judged, Archer said. And I also think that people who are improperly judged that run away and dont come back to serve thats a travesty for this country.
Metro Community College could lose eligibility for millions of federal dollars if board Chairman Fred Conley doesnt resign, documents obtained by The World-Herald show.
The U.S. Department of Education notified the college that it will no longer be eligible to receive federal funds as long as Conley remains on the board, Metro officials said.
Last month, Conley was banned by another federal agency from participating in federal contracts. The ruling, called a debarment, stemmed from claims that he failed to disclose a potential conflict of interest while serving on the Omaha Housing Authority board.
Conley could not be reached for comment Tuesday.
In its letter, the Department of Educations Federal Student Aid Office said an institutions administrative capability is impaired if an institutions principal, such as a board member, is prohibited from participating in federal contracts.
Metro received more than $25 million from the federal government in 2014-15, with the majority coming from Title IV education funds, the main source of federal student aid.
If a board member has been debarred by a federal agency, a school must remove that person from such a position in order to retain its administrative capacity, and, hence, its eligibility to receive federal student aid program funds, according to the letter dated June 30.
Neither the Metro administration, nor its board, has the authority to remove an elected official from office an official must resign voluntarily, said Metro Executive Vice President Jim Grotrian and the schools general counsel, James Thibodeau. Conleys continued presence on the board jeopardizes the schools access to federal funding, they said.
That conclusion has been clearly communicated to him, Thibodeau said. Any decision regarding (a) resignation has to be made by him.
Metro has until Aug. 8 to respond to the Department of Educations letter.
Losing federal funding would be devastating for the college, board member Steve Grabowski said.
We would have to figure out some way to regenerate that kind of money in order to keep the college functioning, he said. We could raise taxes, but Im sure you know how well that would go over if we would even mention that.
No formal request has been made of Conley to resign, board Vice Chairman Roger Garcia said. The board is working to find out what the letter means and if there are negative repercussions for Conleys continued membership on the board, he said.
I could say that my hope is that there would be no risk to the college, but at the moment were just trying to fully understand the situation, Garcia said.
Conley and David Domina, the attorney who represented him in the OHA matter, said in June that they didnt expect the debarment to have an effect on his service as a member of the Metro and Papio-Missouri River Natural Resources District boards. Conley said last month that he disagreed with the ruling and was considering appealing it.
The Papio-Missouri River NRD also receives federal funding. Seven percent of its funding in 2016 came from the federal government, according to the agencys website.
John Winkler, the NRDs general manager, said the agency had not heard from the federal government. He said the NRD receives different types of federal funding than do the housing authority or Metropolitan Community College.
We havent heard or seen anything that would raise a red flag for our agency, he said.
But the agency will seek a legal opinion.
Were having our legal counsel review the situation to make sure were not jeopardizing any current or future funding, Winkler said.
In May, a U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, or HUD, administrative judge issued an order prohibiting Conley from participating in federal contracts for three years.
Conley, a former Omaha City Council member, served on the OHA board from 2009 to 2013. During that time, HUD conducted a wide-ranging audit of the housing authoritys business.
One thread of that audit led HUD to seek penalties against Conley last year. The government alleged that Conley had a conflict of interest because of his relationship with the Davis Cos., whose businesses include an insurance brokerage that does business with OHA.
Conley had a free cubicle in the offices of Davis Cos. He used an email address with a Davis Cos. identification.
The government said Conley should have disclosed his relationship with Davis Cos. It also said Conley had a conflict of interest because he was on both the OHA board and the board of a nonprofit corporation, Collateral Guarantee Fund Inc., and did not disclose that.
That corporation signed a contract in 2010 to rent space atop OHA apartment towers for low-frequency radio transmitters for a radio station. But the contract didnt require the station to pay any money to the housing authority.
Conley contended last year that he didnt have any conflict of interest and didnt believe that he needed to disclose his relationship with Davis Cos. or Collateral Guarantee Fund.
He said people at OHA knew about the email address because he used it to communicate with them. He said he used the cubicle for his volunteer activities in coordinating a jazz festival.
Conley has said he made no money from the Collateral Guarantee Funds contract with the housing authority and had nothing to do with the contract.
The HUD administrative judge found that Conley had a duty to disclose his relationship with the Davis Cos. and did not fully do so, but the judge also said HUD had not shown that Conley had a duty to disclose his contract with Collateral Guarantee Fund.
Conley, who has served on Metros board since 2005, is running for re-election to the board in November.
Members of the 11-member body serve four-year terms and govern the college, set policy, approve the budget and set the local college tax levy. Metro serves more than 26,000 students and has several campuses.
Board members are not paid but can be reimbursed for certain expenses, such as mileage.
Its unclear whether the board will discuss the issue at its next meeting, July 26. The agenda is set by Conley, the board chairman, and by Metro President Randy Schmailzl.
Conleys membership on the board also could play a role in Metros ongoing recertification of its eligibility to quality for financial aid funds, Grotrian and Thibodeau said. Conleys debarment is a major factor that the Department of Education will consider, which could delay or jeopardize the colleges recertification, they said.
Grabowski said he would certainly resign if he were in Conleys situation. Board member Linda McDermitt agreed.
If it were me, and I knew I would jeopardize the college, Im guessing between $25 and $30 million in aid, I think I would step down, Grabowski said. Thats all there is to it.
Added McDermitt, It would be a tragedy to lose the money.
Its extremely difficult. I know that, but we have to remember why were there and that is to provide college for students, and we cant do that if our hands are tied.
Contact the writers: 402-473-9581, emily.nohr@owh.com
LINCOLN Relatives of murder victims, death row exonerees and family members of the executed will speak at a series of public meetings about why they oppose the death penalty.
The meetings will be held in Omaha, Lincoln and across Nebraska.
Journey of Hope will start its speaking tour at 10 a.m. Sunday at St. Benedict Catholic Church in Omaha. It will make six additional appearances in Omaha along with about 20 more in Lincoln, Grand Island, North Platte, Norfolk, Columbus, Scottsbluff and other communities.
Some locations also will feature film screenings.
Nebraskans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty invited the group as part of a public eduction campaign in the groups effort to keep capital punishment off the books.
State lawmakers repealed the death penalty in 2015, making Nebraska the first conservative state to end capital punishment since North Dakota in 1973. Death penalty supporters have since collected enough signatures to allow voters to decide in November if the repeal should be overturned.
Among the 10 speakers on the tour:
Derrick Jamison, who was removed from Ohios death row in 2005 after the courts ruled that he was convicted through false testimony and official misconduct.
Marietta Jaeger-Lane of Three Folks, Montana, whose 7-year-old daughter Susie was kidnapped and murdered by a serial killer in 1973. When the killer later called to taunt the mother, Jaeger-Lane disarmed him by saying she was praying for his healing. The phone call led to his arrest and conviction, and Jaeger-Lane has remained an advocate for forgiveness.
George White, who, along with his wife, was repeatedly shot during a 1985 robbery in Coffee County, Alabama. Despite Whites wounds, authorities said he staged the robbery. White was convicted and sentenced to life in prison in 1987. The conviction was set aside in 1989 after an appellate court found serious errors by the trial judge. But charges were not dismissed until 1992, when Whites attorney discovered a witness who had seen a man fleeing the business where the robbery occurred.
For a full list of speakers, times and locations, go to nadp.net.
Contact the writer: 402-473-9587, joe.duggan@owh.com
LINCOLN Two former Cambridge High School students accused of hazing at a wrestling camp last summer have been ordered to serve probation until their 19th birthdays.
The incident prompted the Nebraska Legislature to expand the legal definition of hazing this year so that it applies to children still in high school and younger.
In February, the two 17-year-olds were charged as juveniles with felony child abuse. Now 18, both have pleaded no contest to disturbing the peace after prosecutors agreed to reduce the charges to misdemeanors.
Adams County Judge Timothy Hoeft sentenced both to probation until they turn 19. One of them was sentenced in May, the other this week.
School officials have said they disciplined the students as well, but they declined to provide details.
One of the students, however, filed a lawsuit against the Furnas County School District appealing a decision to expel him for the fall semester of 2016. In addition, the school prohibited the student from participating in extracurricular activities or school events upon his return in the spring semester, based upon the students petition with the court.
In May, Furnas County District Judge David Urbom upheld the expulsion.
The case stemmed from a June 30, 2015, incident at a wrestling camp in Hastings. Some students were reportedly forced to eat doughnuts that had been placed on the genitals of other students.
The Adams County attorney determined that what occurred was an act of hazing, which at the time was a charge reserved for college-age students. The prosecutor opted not to charge the high school students under a different criminal statute.
Attorney General Doug Peterson later decided to file the child abuse charges.
In response to the incident, State Sen. Dan Hughes of Venango introduced Legislative Bill 710. Under the bill, hazing charges can also apply to younger students. Indecent exposure and lewd caressing of the body are included in the bills definition of hazing.
The bill passed on a vote of 47-0 and was signed by the governor. It takes effect July 21.
Hazing will still include actions such as forced consumption of alcohol and food, exposure to elements and sleep deprivation. The charge is a misdemeanor with a maximum penalty of six months in jail and a $1,000 fine. Organizations that engage in hazing can be fined up to $10,000.
Contact the writer: 402-473-9587, joe.duggan@owh.com
A theme of President Barack Obamas counterterrorism policy has been a relentless narrowing of focus. Under his watch the U.S. has not been at war with terror or radical Islam. It has been in discrete conflicts with al-Qaidas core leadership and its affiliate in Yemen and the Islamic State.
And while Obamas war has waxed and waned, he has never explained its disparate parts as a whole the way his predecessor did.
Michael Flynn, who served as Obamas second Defense Intelligence Agency director, takes the opposite view. Field of Fight, a new book Flynn co-wrote with historian Michael Ledeen, argues that America is up against a global alliance between radical jihadis and anti-American nation states like Russia, Cuba and North Korea.
They say this war will last at least a generation. And they say it will require outside ground forces to go after al-Qaida and the Islamic State, as well as a sustained information campaign to discredit the ideology of radical Islam.
One might think a big war is a quaint throwback to the era after 9/11, when President George W. Bush delivered his speech about the axis of evil.
But Flynn is very much a man of the moment. Over the weekend, the Washington Post reported this former special operations officer and three-star general was Donald Trumps leading choice for vice president. At the very least he has the real-estate moguls ear when it comes to national security.
In some ways this makes for an odd pairing. While Trump has promised to vaguely knock the hell out of the Islamic State, the candidate of America First has also promised to reach out to Russias president, Vladimir Putin, to see if more cooperation is possible.
Flynn, who flew to Moscow last year to attend a conference sponsored by the states propaganda outlet, RT, is nonetheless critical of Putin.
When it is said that Russia would make an ideal partner for fighting Radical Islam, it behooves us to remember that the Russians havent been very effective at fighting jihadis on their own territory, and are in cahoots with the Iranians. In Syria, the two allies have loudly proclaimed they are waging war against ISIS, but in reality the great bulk of their efforts are aimed at the opponents of the Assad regime, Flynn and Ledeen write.
But all of this raises questions about the central theme of Field of Fight, that countries such as Russia are in an alliance with radical Islam. If the Russians have fought ineffectively against jihadis, are we also to believe they are in an alliance with them?
When I spoke with Flynn, he said why he chose to call it an alliance: It was a simpler way to explain the relationships.
So what binds these countries and movements together? The authors say the countries and revolutionary movements in this alliance share a fondness for totalitarianism and perceive America as their chief threat. In this sense its similar to how Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler had a brief pact in World War II.
The countries and movements that are trying to destroy us have worldviews that may seem to be in violent conflict with one another, Flynn and Ledeen write. But they are united by their hatred of the democratic West and their conviction that dictatorship is superior.
To bolster this claim, Ledeen and Flynn focus primarily on the nexus between Iran and Russia and then later Iran and Sunni Muslim jihadis such as al-Qaida.
Some of this is familiar material. After its safe haven was smashed in Afghanistan in 2001, some of al-Qaidas leaders and their families fled to Iran. Iran has supported al-Qaidas franchise in Syria at times, and the first leader of al-Qaidas Iraq franchise traveled to Iraq through Iran.
Flynn and Ledeen promise that more details about al-Qaidas relationship with Iran can be found in the documents captured in 2011 from Osama bin Ladens compound in Pakistan. But those documents remain classified by the Obama administration, Flynn says, for political reasons.
As far as Russias relationship with Iran goes, they point to Russian arms sales to Iran and the aid Russian engineers have provided to Irans Bushehr reactor.
Left out of this, though, is Russias cooperation with the West on sanctions against Irans financial system and oil exports. Flynn himself allows that in some areas, its possible for the U.S. to cooperate with Russia in the larger war against radical Islam.
In this sense, the authors are not really arguing that America should be in a shooting war with all of the countries that dont like America and with radical Islam. Instead, they call for a kind of two-track approach. On the battlefield, they call for more tactical alliances with regional countries against the Islamic State and al-Qaida. But another component is a political war. Specifically, they say the next president should wage an ideological campaign to discredit not only radical Islam but also the dictatorships that oppose the West.
To the skeptical reader, this broad campaign may sound like a recipe for endless war. But Obamas alternatively narrower and discrete war has landed in the same place. Despite Obamas best efforts to phase out Bushs war on terror, his successor will inherit it. Flynn and Ledeen argue the next president should go big and try to win it.
The writer, a police officer in Arlington, Texas, wrote this for the Dallas Morning News.
There are few jobs that require employees, in the course of performing routine duties, to check in every few minutes to assure co-workers they are not seriously injured or dead. But as a police officer, thats part of my daily routine.
Friends, let this sink in. A teacher is writing her lesson plans for the next week, and every few minutes, the principal calls her room to make sure she isnt dead. A nurse is making rounds, handing out medication, and every few minutes, the charge nurse calls his phone to make sure no patient has assaulted him.
That sounds ridiculous. However, if I stop you for a traffic violation, I am expected to answer when the dispatcher calls every few minutes to check on my welfare. While you are berating me and asking why Im not out stopping real criminals, someone downtown is waiting for a timer to go off to again check to make sure I am alive. To make sure that traffic stop does not cost me my life.
I have been searching my soul and seeking and listening for months upon months to understand this complex issue of race and policing in America. There are people whom I love and respect on both sides of this issue. This has led me to wonder why there are sides in this issue at all.
As a profession, policing has a long and honorable history. For hundreds of years, millions of honorable men and women have served their communities with honor and integrity. They have served, they have protected, they have laid down their lives for strangers and friends.
But we cannot deny the other, very dark, side of the coin. Our history as a profession has been marred by officers who have used their power in unjust and violent ways. That cannot be denied. Whole communities have been affected by this abuse. As a result, people are afraid, and their fears are not unfounded.
Officers are in a difficult position. When we watch a video that shows an officer unjustly taking a life, we feel a hollow place in the pits of our stomachs. And we have discussions about those videos, usually only among ourselves.
I am privileged to work for a department that seeks to build partnerships and understanding with our community and is intentional about transparency. I serve every day with honorable men and women. We seek not only to serve and protect but also to improve our communities. We are not perfect, and we make mistakes, but we truly have a heart for serving our communities and keeping all our citizens safe.
So why then do you not hear us speaking out publicly to denounce corrupt officers? I believe this is rooted in fear rather than denial. I cannot speak for everyone, but I believe that most of us fear being lumped in with the bad apples. Working for this department, I do not conduct myself, either personally or professionally, in a way that is colorblind. Instead, I seek to understand and appreciate the perspectives and needs of people different from me. So I, too, fear being lumped in with the corrupt officers when my very life depends on the respect of the community.
After what happened in Dallas, you can be sure that our lives depend on the actions of officers hundreds of miles away from us. Officers have long known this, and I think our citizens are beginning to understand.
As all of these thoughts tumble around in my head, I am struck by the fact that people of color who do good in their communities and seek to build bridges of understanding are probably feeling the same fear of being lumped in with the bad apples. So in all of this, are there really any sides?
It is a slap in the face for anyone to imply that I take my oath so lightly that I would fail to protect all citizens, even those who hate me, or that I would flee in the face of danger. These statements only further damage police credibility. I have vowed to serve all in my community and will continue to do so with my head held high. This is a dark time in our nation. I choose to be light.
Officer has the right to free speech
I cannot believe the way we are stomping on freedom of speech.
Omaha Police Officer Bryan Kuhlanek was placed on administrative leave for expressing his opinion on his private Facebook page (Officer on leave as department investigates Facebook post, July 12 World-Herald). This is a clear violation of his constitutional rights.
As an Air Force veteran, I can tell you that I put my life on the line to protect the right of free speech. What is happening to this country when someone expresses an opinion and is investigated?
Its not right. Whats next? I cant say I dont believe the president has the best interest of the country at heart?
Remember: I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
Everyone has a right to express an opinion freely; its guaranteed by the Constitution.
John Wright, Omaha
Kulhanek punished for speaking truth
Having read Omaha Police Officer Bryan Kulhaneks post before it disappeared, it is no surprise to me that it would upset the politically correct crowd.
I expect that he will be branded a racist by the radical progressive movement and there will be calls for his dismissal from the Omaha Police Department.
This happens when someone dares to say something about radical factions of our society that is contrary to their narrative. I believe everything in Kulhaneks post was true; I believe the Black Lives Matter movement is nothing more than the renaming of the Black Panthers of the late 60s, an antigovernment, antiwhite, Marxist group of community organizers.
The fact that we have to clarify that all lives matter should be concerning to all.
I support Officer Kulhanek and his right to express himself as an American. I call on all Americans who believe in our Bill of Rights to call, write and email Omaha Police Chief Todd Schmaderer and to show support for him as well.
Mark Dreier, Bellevue
It wasnt broke, whyd they fix it?
In the past, street maintenance had all the chuckholes filled on main drags and then would move into the residential neighborhoods.
Our motor graders would blade unimproved roads and alleys, and by spring we had a good handle on our chuckholes.
Have you ever come to an intersection and not come to a complete stop before you turned? By the letter of the law, you would be guilty of a traffic violation.
The same holds true in street maintenance. In the past, we would fix all holes, whether they were on improved or unimproved streets. The current street maintenance engineer and his predecessor are using the letter of the law to not do their jobs, putting a hardship on all taxpayers who live on an unimproved road or have an alley that was never paved.
Why is it that before 2003 street maintenance crews could take care of all snowstorms and chuckholes in a timely manner, but now the chuckholes dont get fixed and street maintenance doesnt want to do the job it is required to do?
It cant plow snow, and it cant or wont fix our streets and alleys.
The city doesnt need to make Omaha residents pays millions in taxes. It just needs to use the policies it had in place prior to 2003.
Vince Emmanuel, Omaha
retired street maintenance supervisor
Already quite an education
As a recent graduate of Papillion-La Vista South High School, I wanted to do some volunteering before starting college at the University of Nebraska. A friend suggested I volunteer at Retain A Just Nebraska, the campaign against the death penalty.
Since volunteering, I have learned more about the death penalty and why it is a broken program. I am now 100 percent against capital punishment and am confident that Im helping out a great cause.
I would encourage everyone to take a look at Retain A Just Nebraskas website to learn more about this important issue.
Miranda Kuzela, Bellevue
The ultimate deterrent
I disagree with July 10 Public Pulse writer Donald Bredthauer, who argues that Nebraska should keep the death penalty repeal, arguing that it doesnt serve as a deterrent.
It certainly does. The killer is never given the opportunity to kill again.
S.K. Guthrie, Omaha
Show vets respect and courtesy
In response to Don Shennums July 11 Public Pulse letter (Where can he sign), in my neighbors yard was a sign that read Combat Veteran, please be friendly with your fireworks.
I wonder if the people who shot off the loudest and latest fireworks are the same people who, when they encounter a man or women in uniform, thank them for their service or are the same people that are up in arms when the Veterans Adminstration comes under scrutiny. Yet, during the Fourth of July celebration, they dont seem care about the vets in their neighborhood.
What a pathetic society we have turned into.
Phil Zellner, Omaha
Lions attack man near Gir forests, spotted in Junagadh town
Ahmedabad
oi-IANS
By Ians English
Ahmedabad, July 13: One person was seriously injured when three lions attacked him in Gujrat's Amreli district on Tuesday while a video on the social media depicting a pride of eight lions roaming about a human habitat in Junagadh district created panic in the area.
Forests officials said a man from the shepherd community was attacked by three lions while he was grazing goats near Adsang village. He was admitted to a hospital in Savarkundla.
Three persons were killed in attacks by lions in Amreli district between March and May this year. An old woman was killed in similar attacks by lions in the adjoining Gir Somnath district during the same period.
Meanwhile, a pride of eight lions, including two cubs, was seen loitering in the residential area of Junagadh town near the Girnar Darwaza area last night. Captured on a mobile phone, the video was posted on social media causing panic in the area.
IANS
Why India as most populous nation may help get UN Security Council membership
Global Tiger population up by 40%, but they are still under threat
Gap between rich and poor has widened, needs to be bridged: Gadkari
Family Welfare Ministry hosts Events to mark World population Day
Feature
oi-Lisa
By Lisa
Since many decades we have been hearing about India being highly over populated country and that over population is the cause of many socio-economic problems that India faces. Various measures like spread of education, encouraging male and female sterilisation, opening more health centers, spacing birth, increasing awareness about the use of contraceptives and family planning methods, increasing welfare and status of women and girls, and others have been tried to check population explosion in India.
However, not much has been of help as being over populated continues to plague us by keeping many unemployed, by increasing pressure on infrastructure, by causing income inequity, by bringing down production and increasing costs, etc.
In a bid to create more awareness about family planning, Health and Family Welfare Minister, Mr. J P Nadda gave away awards to the winners of the painting competition organised by Jansankhya Sthirita Kosh to create awareness regarding family stabilisation among young children. The event was held to mark the World Population Day.
Happy to have addressed the #WorldPopulationDay at Vigyan Bhawan, New Delhi today. pic.twitter.com/uIOHWAjwtS Jagat Prakash Nadda (@JPNadda) July 11, 2016
Sh @JPNadda with winners of the painting competition to mark World Population Day, at Vigyan Bhawan today. pic.twitter.com/Tnz5BUT8y4 Ministry of Health (@MoHFW_INDIA) July 11, 2016
At the event Health and Family Welfare Minister addressed the gathering and talked about various measures undertaken by the NDA Government to keep population growth in check. He also talked about how the government will re-strategise and focus on the districts where fertility rate is high.
Quotes from J P Nadda speech:
"The government will re-strategise and focus on the districts where total fertility Rate (TFR) is high in order to bring down the TFR level in the country. There is a need to do micro-planning for these districts and develop need-based programmes to address TFR."
I have asked my ministry to focus on 23 districts with TFR above 4 and 123 districts with TFR between 3 to 3.9. Jagat Prakash Nadda (@JPNadda) July 11, 2016
"Communication skills need to be developed at all the levels so that we can send the right message to the target audience."
I urge all stakeholders, NGOs, the private & corporate sectors to work together towards achieving the target of #populationcontrol in India Jagat Prakash Nadda (@JPNadda) July 11, 2016
"To reach out to the unreached we must do mapping and find out who we have missed in the programme."
A focussed approach on preparing microplan for these 146 districts will result in significant impact on population stabilisation efforts. Jagat Prakash Nadda (@JPNadda) July 11, 2016
"The promotion of family planning - and ensuring access to preferred contraceptives are essential for securing the well-being of the people, while supporting the health and development of communities."
Avail #familyplanning services during Jansankhya Sthirtha Pakhwada, 11-24th July from government health facilities #worldpopulationday2016 Jagat Prakash Nadda (@JPNadda) July 11, 2016
"There is a need to enhance male participation in the family planning process. We cannot achieve the desired results unless the men are not motivated to actively take part in family planning. Our strategy should also focus on this aspect."
Faggan Singh Kulaste, Minister of State for Health and Family Welfare:
"Population explosion is a big challenge for us. We can reap the benefits of population dividend only if we are able to provide good health, education and look after overall well-being of the people."
"Keeping population in check requires participation at all levels from all stakeholders. There are many challenges in addressing the family planning needs in the backward areas of the country."
Anupriya Patel, Minister of State for Health and Family Welfare:
Interacting with children #WorldPopulationDay
Sh @JPNadda with MoS(H) Smt. Anupriya Patel & Sh.Faggan Singh Kulaste pic.twitter.com/g7nD6953VB Ministry of Health (@MoHFW_INDIA) July 11, 2016
"The problem of over-population calls for global revolution. It is our collective responsibility to fight this challenge."
She appealed the people to come together and ponder over this issue and come out with solutions.
Official discussion:
On World Population Day at the event many senior officials were present who also deliberated on the theme "Zimmedari Nibhao, Plan Banao" focusing towards the benefits of family planning extend well beyond woman's health, to incorporate her well-being and prosperity.
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Story first published: Wednesday, July 13, 2016, 10:08 [IST]
US Navy tries to recover jet that fell into South China Sea
Know all about South China Sea Dispute
Feature
oi-Preeti Panwar
South China Sea (SCS) is a part of the Pacific Ocean and is located at the south of mainland China. It shares border with Brunei, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Macau, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan and Vietnam.
SCS is bone of contention among these countries as it is rich in energy reserves, fishery resources, and is a vital conduit for much of world trade. The dispute surrounding the SCS is seen as Asia's most potentially dangerous point of conflict.
South China Sea is a resource-rich strategic waterway through which more than $5 trillion worth of world trade is shipped each year. China has placed runways and radar facilities on new islets in the disputed waters, built by piling huge amounts of sand onto reefs.
[Why should India be bothered with the South China sea dispute?]
China's expansive claims over the South China Sea, contested and mirrored by the Philippines, Brunei, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Taiwan have triggered concerns globally, with the US sending its warships in the disputed waters.
What happened on July 12, 2016?
In a bitter dispute that risks stoking further tensions in Southeast Asia, The Hague-based Permanent Court of Arbitration said, "China has no legal basis to claim "historic rights" to islands in the South China Sea." [Beijing's South China Sea claims rejected]
The tribunal concluded that there was no legal basis for China to claim historic rights within the sea areas falling within the 'nine-dash line'.
Reactions
Angry China remains defiant
"China neither accepts nor recognises the ruling of a tribunal in the South China Sea arbitration established at the request of the Philippines. The award is null and void and has no binding force. China's territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests in the South China Sea shall under no circumstances be affected by those awards"-- the Chinese Foreign Ministry.
Philippines welcomes verdict
"The Philippines welcomes the issuance on the arbitration proceedings initiated by the Philippines with regard to the South China Sea. The Philippines strongly affirms its respect for this milestone decision as an important contribution to ongoing efforts in addressing disputes in the South China Sea"-- Foreign Secretary Perfecto Yasa.
South China Sea ruling 'legally binding': US
"The United States expresses its hope and expectation that both parties will comply with their obligations. The decision by the tribunal is an important contribution to the shared goal of a peaceful resolution to disputes in the South China Sea. The United States strongly supports the rule of law. We support efforts to resolve territorial and maritime disputes in the South China Sea peacefully, including through arbitration"-- State Department spokesman John Kirby.
Pakistan backs 'all-weather' ally China
"Pakistan opposes any imposition of unilateral will on others and respects China's statement of optional exception in light of Article 298 of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. Pakistan maintains that disputes over the SCS should be peacefully resolved through consultations and negotiations by states directly concerned in accordance with bilateral agreements and the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea"-- Ministry of Foreign Affairs Spokesperson Nafees Zakaria.
India
"India supports freedom of navigation and over flight, and unimpeded commerce, based on the principles of international law, as reflected notably in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). India believes that states should resolve disputes through peaceful means without threat or use of force and exercise self-restraint in the conduct of activities that could complicate or escalate disputes affecting peace and stability"-- Ministry of External Affairs.
China's stand
China claims about 90% of the South China Sea, including reefs and islands. China asserts sovereignty over almost all of the strategically vital waters in the face of rival claims from its Southeast Asian neighbours.
Beijing waged a months-long campaign to discredit the panel, which it says has no jurisdiction in the multinational dispute, and it refused to take part in the case.
Conflict
In 1947, China had issued a map of the sea, detailing its claims and the same claims were also made by Taiwan. Vietnam aggressively disputed the claims saying that China had never claimed soveriegnity over the islands before 1940s.
In 1974, a brief conflict with Vietnam over SCS had led to the death of over 70 Vietnamese soldiers.
In 1988, Vietnam again lost its 60 sailors in one of the stand-offs.
In Sept 2011, China and Vietnam had signed an agreement, in an attempt to contain the dispute over SCS.
In 2012, China and Philippines accused each other of intrusions.
In Jan 2013, Philippines challenged that it will take China to the UN tribunal under the auspices of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, to challenge its claims in the South China Sea.
In May 2014, China began to drill the sea for oil in waters disputed with Vietnam, that led to multiple incidents between Vietnamese and Chinese ships.
In July 2016, the tribunal backed the Philippines' case, saying China had violated the Philippines' sovereign rights.
US intervention
In July 2010, the then US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called China to resolve the territorial dispute. In response, China told US to keep itself out of the issue.
ASEAN's arbitration
On April 27, 2015, 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), had issued a statement during a summit in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, saying, "Chinese island-building efforts may undermine peace, security and stability in the disputed South China Sea."
"We share the serious concerns expressed by some leaders on the land reclamation being undertaken in the South China Sea, which has eroded trust and confidence and may undermine peace, security and stability," it had said. [India enhances presence in South China Sea]
Despite its rhetoric of a united ASEAN community, the regional grouping has a history of failing to respond in a robust manner to Beijing due to China's immense trade and diplomatic leverage and because not all ASEAN states have a stake in the maritime disputes.
India's take
India supports the "freedom of navigation" in international waters including in the South China Sea. [Oceans should not become new theatres of contests: PM Narendra Modi]
Supporters of China on SCS
Pakistan
Moro National Liberation Front (A political party in the Philippines)
'Congress can't take me on, so insulting my mother': Modi
Don't trouble Hanuman too much or your Lanka will be on fire, Raj Babbar warns BJP
Raj Babbar an Interesting Choice as Congress UP Chief
Feature
oi-Lisa
By Lisa
Uttar Pradesh being the most populated state in India, all political parties aim to form a government in the state. With Uttar Pradesh Assembly Election 2017 closing in all political parties are busy figuring out a strategy to form the next government in the state.
Congress Party after much deliberation today named movie actor and former Samajwadi Party member Raj Babbar as their Uttar Pradesh Chief. This is an interesting choice as many names were doing rounds for the post including that of former Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit.
What makes Raj Babbar's choice interesting:
It is being speculated that Priyanka Gandhi will have bigger role to play in the UP campaign now that Raj Babbar has been given the post of UP Chief.
Raj Babbar was a star campaigner in the recently held Assam Assembly Election and his campaigning didn't help Congress at all as Congress could not come to power in Assam despite having a government there for 15 years.
Raj Babbar has lot of political experience and he has been elected to Lok Sabha thrice and he has been elected to Rajya Sabha twice.
He had in 2009 Lok Sabha by election defeated Dimple Yadav wife of UP Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav and daughter-in-law of Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav.
However, in 2014 Lok Sabha election Raj Babbar has lost to BJP candidate General V K Singh. Raj Babbar had lost the Ghaziabad seat to General by a huge margin of 5.67 lakh votes.
Raj Babbar had entered politics by joining Janta Dal in 1989 and then he had joined Samajwadi Party and won Agra seat in 2004 Lok Sabha election.
He was thrown out of party after he questioned views of Amar Singh on privatising the airports.
Raj Babbar is a Punjabi and so had no influence on the caste or community equation in UP. The Congress party has taken care of balancing the caste and community equation by naming four state vice-presidents. The four vice-presidents in Up will be Rajesh Mishra, Rajaram Pal, Bhagwati Prasad Chaudhary and Imran Masood.
Recent controversies courted by Raj Babbar:
While defending the poverty line figures given by Planning Commission in 2013 he had infamously said this during a press conference: "People should have full meals two times a day. How one can have it is a very good question that you have asked. Even today in Mumbai city, I can have a full meal at Rs. 12. No not vada paav. So much of rice, daal and with that some vegetables are also mixed."
In 2013 itself he had compared Narendra Modi the then chief minister of Gujarat with German dictator Adolf Hitler. The comparison came in wake of Gujarat government opposing appointment of Lokayukta.
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Story first published: Wednesday, July 13, 2016, 15:13 [IST]
Tuki government reinstated: Timeline
Feature
oi-Pallavi Sengupta
Today has been a face saver for Congress....yet again. After the Uttarakhand feat, the Congress-led government was reinstated in Arunachal Pradesh by the Supreme Court.
In fact, the SC called the decisions leading to the dismissal of the government as "illegal" and "unethical". So now, Nabam Tuki is back and Governor Jyoti Prasad Rajkhowa is facing the ire for a decision in December 2015 to advance the state assembly session by a month.
Here's discussing the chronology of events for our readers:
December 2015: On December 9, a group of Congress MLAs met the Governor JP Rajkhowa who sought the impeachment of speaker Nabam Rebia, who they alleged were trying to get them disqualified from the Assembly.The Governor agreed for an emergency session on December 16 when he would take up the impeachment issue.
While the Congress protested the Governor's action, the Centre went ahead and issued President's Rule under Article 356. The meeting was attended by 20 rebel Congress MLAs, 11 BJP leaders, and 2 independents. The impeachment motion was passed and Pul was elected the Leader of the House. The Speaker disqualified the 14 Congress MLas the same day.
[Read: SC restores Congress government in Arunachal Pradesh]
Jan 5, 2016: The speaker's plea was turned down by the Gauhati High Court, which also stayed the disqualification of the Congress MLAs.
Jan 15, 2016: The entite batch of petitions filed by the Speaker were referred by the Supreme Court to the constitution bench. The bench examines the discretionary powers of the Governor.
[Read: Rahul Gandhi thanks SC for 'explaining democracy' to PM Modi]
Jan29, 2016: Nabam Tuki filed a fresh petition in the Supreme Court, challenging the imposition of President's rule in the state.
Jan 30, 2016: The Centre justifies the President's rule here and also states that the Congress is in a minority.
Feb 2, 2016: Governor Rajkhowa says this is a temporary set up and that a new government will soon be set.
Feb 4, 2016: SC spoke in support of the Congress and said that it was rather unfortunate that all the decisions of the Governor are not reviewed and that it cannot be a mute spectator when the democratic processes are "slaughtered".
Why political adventurism is bad for Arunachal Pradesh]
Feb 10, 2016: The top court rejects the plea of the rebel Congress MLAs against the Speaker.
Feb 19: President's Rule lifted in the state.
Feb 20: Kalikho Pul sworn in as the CM with the support of 18 rebel Congress MLAs Pul's swearing-in came a day after the Supreme Court vacated its interim order to maintain the status quo, paving the way for government formation.
[Read: Gogoi welcomes SC judgement on Arunachal Pradesh]
Feb 23: The supreme Court observed that it has the power to re-instate the previous government if it witnessed constitutional violations in the manner in which the Arunachal Pradesh Governor issued orders that have eventually led to the formation of a new government in the state.
Feb 25: Pul won the vote of confidence without any opposition. 17 Congress MLAs including former chief minister Nabam Tuki were absent in the House.
March 3: 30 rebel MLAs, along with CM Pul joined the People's Party of Arunachal (PPA). Congress had no scope of taking any action against them. Pul said that they had to take this action as the Congress had left no choice for them.
May 6: Top leaders of the Congress initiated a March from Jantar Mantar against 'undemocratic' policies that the Centre too by imposing the President's rule. Some leaders were arrested.
July 13: Citing the Governor's action as 'illegal', the SC restored the Congress government in the state.
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Story first published: Wednesday, July 13, 2016, 17:29 [IST]
Accession Day: Valley lights up on this day when J&K became part of India
Amarnath yatra: Death toll reaches 10
India
oi-PTI
Srinagar, Jul 13: An Amarnath pilgrim and a local driver were killed and 23 others injured when their bus collided with a truck on Srinagar-Jammu National Highway today, officials said.
A CRPF jawan, posted at Chandanwari, died of cardiac arrest, raising the death toll related to ongoing yatra to 10, they said.
A bus, carrying Amarnath pilgrims, collided with the truck at Sangam near Bijbehara, 45 kms from here, in the wee hours today, killing two persons-Pramod Kumar of Meerut, Uttar Pradesh and driver Bilal Ahmad Mir of Kangan, Ganderbal, the officials said.
23 pilgrims also received injuries in the accident which took place when the bus was on the way to Jammu from Baltal base camp in Ganderbal district.
Soon after the accident, the people in Bijbehara, who are mourning the death of two youths, including a Delhi University student in the widespread violence following the killing of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani last week, rushed to the scene despite the curfew and evacuated the injured to the hospital.
Amarnath Yatra resumes in Kashmir after three days
Constable Rajinder Kumar of 115th Battalion CRPF died at Chandanwari, along the traditional Pahalgam-cave route in Anantnag district of south Kashmir, last night.
The CRPF jawan, who was posted on security duty, suffered a massive heart attack, the officials said. Meanwhile, a pilgrim Mukesh Kumar of Delhi suffered injuries when he fell down from his motorcycle at Qazigund, 80 kms from here, on Srinagar-Jammu national highway, the officials said, adding he was shifted to the hospital.
27 persons, including 25 yatris and a 'ponywalla' also suffered injuries mostly due to the fall while trekking the arduous 3,880 metre-high route to holy cave which houses the naturally formed ice-shivlingam, they said.
Despite the unrest in the Valley in the wake of the killing of the young militant commander which has claimed 34 lives in the clashes between protestors and security forces, the yatra was going on smoothly from the twin routes. Nearly 1.40 lakh pilgrims have visited the cave shrine and had 'darshan' of the ice-lingam so far, the officials added.
PTI
Bengaluru: Another Army imposter held following Intelligence tip off
India
oi-Oneindia
By OneIndia Defence Bureau
Bengaluru, July 13: The Karnataka Police arrested an imposter near Air Force Command Hospital on Old Airport Road yesterday.
According to Ministry of Defence officials, the arrested has been identified as Debabrat Raut (22) hailing from Jhani Pada in Odisha. The police made the arrest following inputs from Military Intelligence (MI).
Officials said that Raut had been duping prospective candidates by fraudulently promising jobs in Indian Army.
He impersonated as Gunman (Sepoy) posted at ASC Centre, Bengaluru. He is said to have confessed duping several candidates.
"He has taken over Rs 8 lakh from various candidates so far. He is been detailed by the Halasuru police station an FIR has also been lodged. A thorough investigation is on to find out whether he received any help from those serving with the Army," an official said.
Earlier this year in May, an Ex-Serviceman, who has been duping many people with the promise of getting jobs in the Indian Army, was arrested by the police.
The imposter identified as Biju Abraham and hailing from Kerala had earlier worked with the Madras Engineer Group.
Here again MI inputs came handy for the police and Biju was picked outside the Command Hospital.
The accused duped prospective candidates by promising them jobs in the Army with the fake identity as Colonel (Dr) Biju Abraham, a neurosurgeon. He had collected over Rs 17 lakh from various candidates.
Similar to last time, the Indian Army has again cautioned the public not to fall into the trap of imposters promising jobs.
"All recruitment drivers are advertised online. There is no scope for any middlemen," says an official.
OneIndia News
Delhi-NCR likely to choke in the coming days
'Red light on, gaadi off' postponed as LG hasn't given nod: Delhi Minister
Explain the word 'thulla', HC tells Arvind Kejriwal
India
oi-IANS
By Ians English
New Delhi, July 13: The Delhi High Court on Wednesday asked Chief Arvind Kejriwal to explain the meaning of the word "thulla", which he used during a television debate on policemen.
Justice Mukta Gupta granted relief to Kejriwal by exempting him from personal appearance in the trial court on Thursday after summons were issued to him in a criminal defamation complaint filed by a constable, Ajay Kumar Taneja.
The court posted the matter for August 21. The trial court had summoned Kejriwal saying his statement was prima facie defamatory and had asked him to appear in the court on July 14.
Hearing Kejriwal's plea, Justice Gupta said the Aam Aadmi Party leader must explain the meaning of "thulla" as the Hindi dictionary doesn't contain this word.
Modi wants to run this country with dictatorial attitude: Kejriwal
"If you (Kejriwal) use this word (thulla) for somebody, you must know the meaning. You have to satisfy the court with the meaning of the word," said the court.
Senior advocate N. Hariharan, appearing for Kejriwal, said "thulla" was not used against all police personnel but against those indulging in wrong practices.
"It is a word with no meaning, so it is not defamatory," he added. The court also issued notice to Taneja and sought his response.
In his complaint of July 23 last year, Taneja, posted at the Lajpat Nagar police station, claimed Kejriwal used the "derogatory" term in reference to police personnel on a news channel.
IANS
Guj: Dalit man stripped, beaten with iron rods by cow protection vigilantes, 3 arrested
India
oi-Pallavi Sengupta
Gir, July 13: A group of Dalits were allegedly tied to a car and beaten with iron rods and sticks as they were found skinning a cow at a village in Gir Somnath district. Three persons have been arrested, while the rest three are absconding.
Although the victims testified that they were skinning an already dead cow, the six accused claimed that the animal was already dead before being skinned.
The incident took place on Monday when the six people started harvesting blows on th ethree men whom they found skinning a cow. Wile two people sustained severe head injuries and were referred to Junagad civil hospital for treatment.
The six people have been identified as Ramesh Giri, Balwant Simer, Ramesh Bhagwan, Rakesh Joshi, Rasikbhai and Nagjibhai Vaniya. According to the police, the accused also looted three mobile phones. A case was lodged under IPC sections 307 (attempt to murder), 395 (dacoity), 324 (causing hurt by dangerous means or weapons), 323 (causing hurt), and 504 (intentional insult to provoke breach of peace), and relevant sections of the SC and ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act.
OneIndia News
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Story first published: Wednesday, July 13, 2016, 11:25 [IST]
Jharkhand class 11 students cheat in groups, authorities claim innocence, say not enough rooms
India
oi-Pallavi Sengupta
Ranchi, July 13: If Bihar 'toppers' made mess of the 'Prodigal science', Jharkhand class 11 students are not behind. In a major embarassment for Jharkhand Chief Minister Raghubar Das, a picture has come to the fore where class 11 students of the R S More College in Dhanbad are sitting in groups and copying from each other.
Over 100 students were seen sitting close to each other and copying from their peers during their class 11 examination paper on July 9.
One of the examinees said, "There is no space in the college, that's why we are sitting outside. All the seats have been occupied."
Manoranjan Gupta, the college professor said, "I cannot see anyone cheating. The students are honestly giving their examination. The capacity of the college is not much. Two students should sit on one bench, but as of now four to five students have to adjust on one bench. It is a congested place."
The students could also be seen sitting with bags and notebooks although the professor said that they were not allowed in the campus.
Earlier picking at the Bihar School Education Board (BSEB) scam, Das had said that the students of the neighboring state could save their career by studying in the education hub Jharkhand. BSEB chief Lalkeshwar Singh and his wife were arrested in the Bihar merit scam along with many others. Incidentally, the matter came to light after the results of the Class 12 board examinations were declared and the 'toppers' were shown clueless about the subjects they topped.
Ruby Rai, who topped the Arts section was asked what was Political Science. She said, it was the art of cooking. Meanwhile, the science topper Saurabh Kumar was kept wondering what was the relation between water and H20.
Rai and three others were later arrested after failing the re-test.
OneIndia News
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Story first published: Wednesday, July 13, 2016, 16:24 [IST]
Karnataka cop's suicide: Protest rallies held for minister's ouster
Bengaluru
oi-IANS
By Ians English
Bengaluru, July 13: Opposition BJP on Tuesday stepped up its demand for the resignation of Karnataka Minister K.J. George for allegedly abetting the suicide of police officer through protest rallies held in various parts of the state.
Even as the opposition Janata Dal-Secular (JD-S) lawmakers also sought George's resignation in the state assembly here, hundreds of students, social activists and citizens joined BJP cadres in the protest rallies against the state government at Madikeri, Mysuru, Tumakuru, Hubballi, Belagavi and Bidar.
George was the Home Minister till October 31, 2015, before he was made Bengaluru Development Minister and the Congress' state unit president G. Parameshwara replaced him.
"We will continue to protest till George resigns or the chief minister (Siddaramaiah) sacks him, as Ganapathi had named him in his dying declaration along with two IPS officers for harassing him and forcing to take his own life," BJP's state unit president and former chief minister B.S. Yeddyurappa told reporters here.
Mangaluru Deputy Suprintendent of Police (DSP) M.K. Ganapthi, 51, in an interview to a news channel hours before his body was found hanging in a lodge at Madikeri in Kodagu district blamed the trio for forcing to take his own life.
The two IPS officers are Additional Director General of Police, Intelligence A.M. Prasad and Lokayukta (Ombudsman) inspector general of police Pronab Mohanty.
The opposition parties also demanded the suspension of Prasad and Mohanty till the CID probe was completed and the inquiry was handed over to the CBI.
Accusing the chief minister of protecting the trio, JD-S leader and former chief minister H.D. Kumaraswamy asked the government why an FIR was not filed against the trio even after Ganapathi's family filed a complaint in Madikeri police station on Monday.
"As per the Supreme Court's ruling, the accused could be booked under Section 306 of the IPC, as Ganapathi had named them in his interview, which should be treated as his dying declaration under section 32(1) of the IPC," Kumaraswamy said in the house during the discussion.
In a suo motu statement on Monday, Parameshwara said a case of unnatural death was registered under Section 174 of the IPC as Ganapathi had committed suicide.
Refuting the opposition's charges, George said he would resign if the chief minister directed him to do so and asked the BJP and JD-S to produce evidence of him harassing Ganapathi.
IANS
Karnataka to hold judicial probe into cop's suicide
India
oi-IANS
By Ians English
Bengaluru, July 13: Warding off the opposition attack on his government, Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Wednesday ordered a judicial inquiry into the alleged suicide by Mangaluru DSP M.K. Ganapathi on July 7.
"A retired high court judge will head the judicial commission to investigate the Ganapathi case and submit a report within six months," a defiant Siddaramaiah said in the assembly, intervening in the heated debate that rocked both the houses of the state legislature since Monday during its 20-day monsoon session here.
Rejecting the opposition parties' demand for a CBI probe, Siddaramaiah said the circumstances under which Ganapathi committed suicide did not warrant an inquiry by the premier investigation agency but by the state CID.
"Though the state CID (Criminal Investigation Department) has been conducting the probe since July 9, I am sure a judicial inquiry will also find out what forced Ganapathi to take his own life in unusual circumstances," Siddaramaiah told the lawmakers of the opposition BJP and Janata Dal-Secular (JD-S).
Refusing to budge from their tough stand, the opposition members decided to stage a night-long demonstration in the state legislature (Vidhan Soudha) till the government relented and former Home Minister K.J. George resigned for abetting Ganapathi's suicide and as he was named in an interview the DSP gave to a local news channel on that fateful day.
"We don't trust this Congress government as it has been protecting George and shielding the two IPS officers Ganapathi had named in the same interview for harassing him. George should resign till the inquiry is completed," opposition leader and former BJP Chief Minister Jagadish Shettar told reporters later.
The opposition parties also reiterated that the two IPS officers whom Ganapathi named in the same interview should be suspended till the inquiry was completed.
The two IPS officers are Additional Director General of Police, Intelligence A.M. Prasad and Lokayukta (Ombudsman) inspector general of police Pronab Mohanty.
George was the Home Minister till October 31, 2015, before he was made Bengaluru Development Minister and the Congress' state unit president G. Parameshwara replaced him.
The 51-year-old deputy superintendent of police (DSP) was found hanging by rope from a ceiling fan in a lodge room at Madikeri in Kodagu district, about 260km from Bengaluru in the old Mysuru region.
Based on preliminary investigation, the Chief Minister said there was no evidence of harassment of the late officer by the trio (George, Prasad and Mohanty).
"As per the service records, Ganapathi never worked under Mohanty, and George had, in fact, approved the late officer's promotion to DSP post during his tenure as Home Minister," Siddaramaiah recalled.
IANS
Kashmir Cauldron: Peaceniks appeal to security forces, angry youth to end violence
India
oi-Oneindia
By Maitreyee Boruah
Srinagar, July 13: As the tussle between the security forces and angry mob continued in Kashmir for the fourth day on Tuesday (July 12), a group of peace-loving citizens appealed to all the stakeholders in the Valley to end the cycle of violence.
An open letter signed by 40-odd people was addressed to Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti, the protestors, the political leadership and the civil society.
Kashmir has been on the boil ever since the killing of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani , who was the poster boy militant, on Friday (July 8) in an encounter with security forces in Anantnag. Reports say death toll in Kashmir violence has reached 32, as clashes between the protestors and security forces continue.
The signatories of the letter called themselves "the peaceful and law-abiding citizens of Kashmir and other parts of India, with stakes in a peaceful Kashmir and belief in non-violent resolution of conflict situations".
Some of the peaceniks are Rajbir Bhattacharjee, Rafiul Alom Rahman, Pickee Kaul, Danish Iqbal, Sushant Taing, Saransh Joshi and Shoaib Mehraj, to name a few.
Read the full letter below:
In the past few days, we have seen Kashmir sink once again to unprecedented levels of anarchy. Kashmir is burning yet again.
The tragic deaths and maiming of youth due to firing, pellet guns and excessive use of force is unacceptable. Arson, loot and destruction of public property, attacks on the security personal of CRPF [Central Reserve Police Force] and J&K [Jammu and Kashmir] police and sporadic attacks on the vulnerable communities and their places of worship that are continuing unabated, also are unacceptable.
We, the peaceful and law-abiding citizens of Kashmir and other parts of India, with stakes in a peaceful Kashmir and belief in nonviolent resolution of conflict situations, make this humble appeal, first of all to the Chief Minister of J&K: Please take immediate steps to reign in the security forces and issue orders for minimal use of force against the angry mobs.
At the same time, we extend this appeal to the political leadership of Kashmir and the civil society members in India and in Kashmir to exercise their moral leadership and urge the volatile and angry youth of Kashmir to calm down and find more peaceful ways to express themselves.
To the youth, who are out in the streets to express their rage and anguish against the state, we urge that they take a moment and contemplate on the consequences of escalating an already out of control situation.
Irrespective of which side of the complex political problem one stands on, we are certain that no idea is worth more than the life of a fellow human being. Many precious lives have been lost in this turmoil in the past twenty-six years and we are continuing to lose more in the present, with each passing hour. Families are being shattered for their entire lives losing loved ones. Please spare a thought for the incalculable harm and damage the consequences of your anger will inflict on these families for many years to come.
The need of the hour for both sides - ever more for the state administration and its security establishment, which has experienced in the past how such situations can spiral out of control and escalate - is to exercise thorough restraint and prevent the unnecessary loss of lives in the state.
To the young protesters, we urge calm and suggest peaceful ways of expressing themselves even if they want to protest about some issue. This can only be achieved if we work together through secular and peaceful means. We urge the involved parties to choose a middle path of non-violence and inclusiveness. Let us create an atmosphere that enables peaceful resolution of the current situation. Only dialogue is the most viable means. Let us bring back peace to the valley of Kashmir.
OneIndia News
Mehbooba Mufti gets notice to vacate official bungalow 'meant for J&K CMs'
Accession Day: Valley lights up on this day when J&K became part of India
Mehbooba Mufti pays tribute at martyrs' graveyard, appeals for calm
India
oi-IANS
By Ians English
Srinagar, July 13: Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti on Wednesday morning paid tributes to the martyrs of 1931 struggle against Dogra autocratic rule, and appealed for calm in the violence gripped valley.
Under heavy security, Mufti went to the martyrs' graveyard in Naqashband Sahib area of old Srinagar city where a guard of honour was presented to her.
Mehbooba calls on Guv, discusses situation in Valley
The chief minister appealed for calm across Kashmir Valley where violence has plagued normal life for the last five days after a top militant, Burhan Wani, was killed by the security forces on Friday evening.
At least 34 people, including 33 civilians and a policeman, have been killed in the clashes between the security forces and unruly mobs during the last four days in the valley.
Mufti laid a wreath at the graveyard to commemorate the martyrdom of those who fell to the bullets of Dogra Maharaja's soldiers this day in 1931 outside the central jail in Srinagar city.
People had stormed the central jail in Srinagar on July 13, 1931 where the trial of Abdul Qadeer Khan, an Afghan cook of a British official, was going on.
Qadeer had been arrested for delivering a fiery speech against the oppression of Kashmiris by autocratic rulers.
IANS
MES takes over memorial project from DRDO; Peoples President still rests under tin shed
India
oi-Oneindia
By Dr Anantha Krishnan M
Rameswaram, July 13: Bharat Ratna Dr A P J Abdul Kalam will continue to rest in peace under a tin shed for some more time. The temporary tin shed shelter will continue to be protected by iron barricades, normally used by the policemen to block\divert traffic.
India will observe the first death anniversary of People's President on July 27. House of Kalam is planning to launch many initiatives from Pei Karumbu, his burial site (kabar) in Rameswaram.
After OneIndia first reported (December 2, 2015) about cows and dogs defecating the burial site, a nation-wide media campaign followed, prompting the central government to entrust the fencing work to the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO).
Reports had also emerged that DRDO would conduct a memorial design contest and pick up a suitable winner.
But it is now confirmed that DRDO is off the project and Military Engineering Services (MES) have been given the mandate to build the memorial.
MES team members visit Rameswaram
A three-member team consisting Mala Mohan, Additional Director General, Directorate of Architecture, MES along with Rajesh Kumar Kundal, Commander Works Engineer, Navy Chennai and G Raja Mahendra Reddy, Executive, Garrison Engineers, Naval Base Port, Thirunelveli visited Rameswaram on July 12. The team also met members of House of Kalam to elicit their opinion.
Speaking to OneIndia, Mala Mohan said that MES is hoping to get more land from the government. "We have also sought the opinion from the family. We are keen to have a total of eight acres of land (currently it is around 1.6 acres). Nothing is final as of now," she said.
House of Kalam has decided to adopt a 'wait and watch' approach though some family members express their disappointment over the delay in the memorial construction.
Prior to the sad state of affairs of the memorial site was brought to light, Union Urban Development Minister Venkaiah Naidu had announced on October 15, 2015 -- the 84th birth anniversary of Dr Kalam - that a committee comprising him and Union ministers Manohar Parrikar, Pon Radhakrishnan along with former Chief Election Commissioner N Gopalaswamy will work out the details of a memorial for Dr Kalam at Rameswaram.
Read: PIB Release from Ministry of Urban Development (MoUD) here
But, the memorial plans seem to have got into a loop now with the DRDO confirming that they are no more heading the project. The Ministry of Urban Development handed over the memorial site to DRDO in the first week of February this year so that a fencing could be constructed.
DRDO completes fencing work within 3 months
DRDO began the work for fencing in March this year and completed the task by June, spending around Rs 25 lakh.
"Hamne tho apna task kar diya (We have completed our task)," says an official not wanting to be quoted. "We are off the project now and it's over to MES," he adds.
Sources say at a meeting held on February 23, 2016, it was officially decided to hand over the memorial construction task to MES. The meeting was the first sitting of the 5-member committee set by the MoD.
The committee is headed by J R K Rao, Additional Secretary, MoD with a Joint Secretary from MoUD, ADG (Architect), MES and two representatives from DRDO as its members. The committee had another sitting on April 21, 2016.
DRDO Chief Dr S Christopher had told OneIndia during his recent visit to Bengaluru that the project is now being handed over to MES.
"We have completed our task of fencing. The MoD-appointed committee was of the opinion that Dr Kalam's memorial should not be built by DRDO alone, since he was People's President. The committee wanted to hand over the memorial work to MES," Dr Christopher said.
MES is a premier construction agency which provides rear line engineering support to the Armed Forces. Sources say that the decision to pass on the memorial mantle to MES from DRDO has already been conveyed to Manohar Parrikar.
The online campaign #Justice4GuruKalam launched by Dr Kalam's followers has again picked up momentum with close to 50000 signatories backing the cause since its launch six months ago.
Also read:
Cows, dogs defecate near Kalam's kabar in Rameswaram; memorial work at snail's pace
Dr Kalam's 99-year-old brother Maraikayar launches campaign for memorial
Memorial: House of Kalam wants sand and brick from every state
Memorial: House of Kalam adopts a wait-and-watch approach
(The writer is an author, blogger and seasoned defence journalist in India. His just-launched book 'Precious Souls' captures inspiring stories of special children and their families. He is the Consulting Editor (Defence) with OneIndia. He tweets @writetake.)
OneIndia News
Nitin Gadkari woos the US Investors to Invest in India
News
oi-Lisa
By Lisa
Union Minister for Road Transport and Highways & Shipping Nitin Gadkari has called upon investors in the United States to invest in India, saying it is a golden opportunity for them, with the present government giving topmost priority to infrastructure development.
Road Min. @nitin_gadkari will address investors in DC. Some key achievements of the @MORTHIndia in the last 2 years: pic.twitter.com/CDolw1DTxU U.S.- India Business (@USIBC) July 11, 2016
At an event hosted by the U.S.-India Business Council (USIBC) in Washington yesterday, Mr. Gadkari held discussions with senior executives of United States and Indian companies, regarding his plans and vision to strengthen India's infrastructure, investment opportunities in road construction and port-led industrialisation, and how U.S. industry can collaborate with the Government of India.
India's Road Min. @nitin_gadkari to address investors in DC, here are some key trends to watch out for in the sector pic.twitter.com/ZGKHBVqd3p U.S.- India Business (@USIBC) July 8, 2016
The U.S.-India Business Council is the premier business advocacy organisation, comprising 400 top-tier U.S. and Indian companies, advancing U.S.-India commercial ties. USIBC is the largest bilateral trade association in the United States, with liaison presence in New York, Silicon Valley, and New Delhi.
Road Min @nitin_gadkari talks about bringing in new technology and innovation to India's logistics sector pic.twitter.com/9i8ZvO9knO U.S.- India Business (@USIBC) July 11, 2016
Speaking to investors, Mr. Gadkari said, "Prime Minister Modi has made the country's infrastructure development the top-most priority of the government. We are committed to improving the country's road, highways, and port connectivity in a time-bound, result oriented, corruption-free and transparent manner that includes e-governance and fast-tracking decision-making. The pace of road construction has accelerated to an all-time high of 20 kilometers per day and next year we plan to increase it to 41 km per day. This is a golden opportunity to invest in India."
The Minister also spoke on the new highways under construction in the country, financing mechanisms under PPP models, framing policies for logistics parks, modernisation of roads, building intelligent traffic systems for road safety and further innovation and technology to India's logistics sector.
Mr. Gadkari's team also outlined the progress that has already been made in the roads, highways, and shipping sectors. Mr. Rohit Kumar Singh, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, highlighted specific investment opportunities in the highways sector while Mr. Alok Srivastava, Additional Secretary, Ministry of Shipping, shared details on the Sagarmala Program - the Ministry's flagship port-led development initiative to bring down logistics cost and boost investment, exports, and jobs.
USIBC President Dr. Mukesh Aghi said, "With an upsurge in India's e-commerce markets and the unprecedented growth in Indian cities, there is a critical need for advanced logistical services and better transportation infrastructure. India needs $1 trillion for developing new roads, ports, rail lines, and airports over the next few years and U.S. companies can provide the necessary expertise as well as capital to enable the robust growth of this sector. We are excited to witness the rapid growth of this sector- under Minister Gadkari's leadership, road construction rates have gone up, infrastructure spending has received a boost and India has jumped ranks in the Logisitics Performance Index. It is timely and urgent to explore the full potential of U.S.-India collaboration in this sector."
Usibc pres Mukesh Aghi congratulates @nitin_gadkari on his vision for the road and transp ministry pic.twitter.com/ys6AmRILqh U.S.- India Business (@USIBC) July 11, 2016
Dr. Ravindra Verma, Managing Director of TransAsia Infrastructure Group, a confederation that manages and executes multi-modal integrated transport and logistics infrastructure in Asia provided an industry perspective during the discussion. Dr. Verma said, "Under Minister Gadkari's leadership, the Indian highways sector is now at a critical turning point. More than $100 billion in capital is now needed over the next several years to expand existing corridors and build new ones to keep up with the growth in traffic. This presents an opportunity for all players in North America to mobilise resources on a major scale. We are now actively gathering over $1 billion in global capital towards a dedicated multi-modal surface transport platform RoadStar, with major focus on India."
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Story first published: Wednesday, July 13, 2016, 12:14 [IST]
No change in stand on GST: Congress
India
oi-PTI
New Delhi, Jul 12: Ahead of the Monsoon session of Parliament, Congress today said there is no change in its stand on the three principal demands on the Goods and Services Tax (GST) bill and it is still awaiting the government's offer on the issue.
"Till the time the government doesn't share with us its offer on the issue, we will not comment. There is status quo on GST bill. There is no change in our stand," party spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi said amid reports of a thaw between Congress and the BJP on the issue.
Ghulam Nabi Azad, Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha where the Constitution Amendment Bill is pending, said though a proposal from the government has come to resolve the pending issues, Congress is yet to decide on it.
"Government has given a proposal for resolving pending issues. We will decide. There is still time for the Parliament session. We will put forth our views and hold discussions with government sitting across the table," he said.
Singhvi was more categorical in stating that Congress is firm on its three demands, two of which had been backed by the government-appointed panel on the tax reform legislation which seeks to bring in uniform tax regime across the country.
"Congress is never dogmatic or unreasonable. It has never practised rigidity on this issue. The government hasn't proposed anything. Till the government spells out its proposal our stand is as it is," he said.
Azad and Anand Sharma, the Deputy Leader of Congress in the Rajya Sabha, met party president Sonia Gandhi earlier in the day to discuss the issue. However, Singhvi said the meeting was not limited to a particular issue.
Congress has been demanding a cap of 18 per cent as part of the Constitutional Amendment bill to which the government is not agreeing. Insiders say, this very demand has become a sticking point between Congress and the government.
The government plans to push the Constitution Amendment bill in the Rajya Sabha for roll-out of GST in the Monsoon session beginning July 18. The bill was approved by the Lok Sabha earlier.
PTI
SC judgment 'tight slap on dictatorial Modi govt': Kejriwal
India
oi-PTI
New Delhi, Jul 13: The Supreme Court's verdict on Arunachal Pradesh is a "tight slap" on the Narendra Modi government and a lesson for the Prime Minister to stop "interfering" in states, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal today said. "SC judgment yet another tight slap on dictatorial Modi govt.
Hope Modi ji wud learn n now stop interfering in democratically elected govts," Kejriwal tweeted.
Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia also chose the occasion to hit out at the Centre demanding the removal of Arunachal Pradesh Governor Jyoti Prasad Rajkhowa.
"If you have minimum prestige left, then immediately remove the Governor whose action has been deemed unconstitutional. Modi ji, learn to respect democracy. Stop punishing people of a state that elects government of another party," Sisodia tweeted.
In a blow to BJP and the Centre, the apex court has ordered restoration of Congress government in Arunachal Pradesh by quashing as "unconstitutional" the Governor's decision to advance the Legislative Assembly session by a month in December last.
The apex court's verdict paves the way for the dismissed Congress government of Nabam Tuki to return to power and sets aside Governor Rajkhowa's message directing the manner of holding the proceedings of sixth session of the Assembly scheduled from January 14, 2016, to December 16-18, 2015.
PTI
SC restores Congress government in Arunachal Pradesh
India
oi-Vicky
New Delhi, July 13: The Supreme Court of India on Wednesday, July 13, restored the Nabam Tuki led Congress government in Arunachal Pradesh. A Five Judge Bench in its ruling said that all steps taken by the Arunachal Legislative Assembly after December 15 are quashed.
The court said that the action of the governor to dismiss the Tuki led government was illegal. The government led by Tuki was dismissed after 21 MLAs had rebeleld against the Chief Minister. This led to the Governor, J P Rajkhowa suggesting the dismissal of the government. The action today has been held illegal by the Supreme Court.
As a result of this verdict the present government headed by Kalikho Pul will have to step down and make way for a government led by Tuki. The SC in its verdict also struck down the removal of Nabam Rebia as the Speaker. The Bench observed that his position as Speaker would be restored.
Further the judges also said that the decision taken by the governor was quashed. It observed that the decision of the Governor taken last year was in violation of both Articles 163 and 175 of the Indian Constitution. The Bench also said that the governor had no powers to summon an assembly without prior consent of the council of ministers headed by the Chief Minister.
A crisis had broken out on December 16 when 21 rebel Congress MLAs joined hands with 11 BJP members and two Independents to impeach speaker Nabam Rebia. This led to major infighting within the Congress. 21 out of the 47 MLAs had broken away from the Congress which led to calls for a floor test. Allegations of Tuki trying to delay an assembly session too were made.
The governor then called for called for rescheduling the session and directed the deputy speaker to take up a motion seeking the removal of the speaker. The matter then went up to the Gauhati High Court which kept the speaker's decision in abeyance. This was challenged before the Supreme Court.
The leader of the dissident faction, Kalikho Pul, was sworn in as chief minister on 19 February, with the support of the 20 Congress rebels and 11 legislators of the BJP.
OneIndia News
SIT can now prosecute former Karnataka Lokayukta in graft case
India
oi-Vicky
New Delhi, July 13: In a major boost to the Special Investigating Team, the Karnataka Governor and the government has granted sanction to prosecute the former Lokayukta Justice Bhaskar Rao. The sanction has been granted under Section 197 of the Code of Criminal Procedure.
Justice Rao who stepped down as the Lokayukta had come under the scanner following the arrest of his son, Ashwin. It was alleged that Ashwin was running an extortion racket. It was further alleged that Justice Rao had known about it and even delayed action against his son.
Does Karnataka Lokayukta have moral right to probe corruption?
The SIT which was formed to probe into this case had sought for sanction to prosecute Justice Rao. Under the law it is mandatory to seek sanction to prosecute a former judge. After careful scrutiny, the government as well as the governor accorded the sanction.
OneIndia News
Delhi-NCR likely to choke in the coming days
'Red light on, gaadi off' postponed as LG hasn't given nod: Delhi Minister
Supreme Court has given historic verdict: Nabam Tuki
India
oi-IANS
By Ians English
New Delhi, July 13: Former Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister on Wednesday hailed the Supreme Court judgment restoring his government and called it a "historic" ruling.
The apex court directed the restoration of the ousted Chief Minister Nabam Tuki as it quashed the decision of Governor Jyoti Prasad Rajkhowa preponing the assembly session in December 2015.
"The Supreme Court has today given a historic verdict," he said.
He said this will help protect "healthy democracy" in the country. "This is a historic and remarkable judgment."
The court nullified the decision of Governor Rajkhowa on December 9 to advance the assembly session. "According to the judgment, our government has been restored," Tuki added. "I'll go to the state and talk to all the 47 Congress MLAs. We will call a meeting," he said.
IANS
Accession Day: Valley lights up on this day when J&K became part of India
What we know about Mehmood Ghaznavi, Hizbul Mujahideen's new commander
India
oi-Vicky
Srinagar, July 13: The Hizbul Mujahideen was quick to find a replacement for Burhan Wani who was killed last week in an encounter. The name of the new commander in Jammu and Kashmir is Mehmood Ghaznavi.
Intelligence Bureau officials tell OneIndia that Ghaznavi is an alias and the person in question that we are talking about could be the 21-year-old Zakir Rashid Bhat.
Bhat was close to Burhan and he had joined the Hizbul Mujahideen last year. His decision to join the Hizbul Mujahideen was taken following the killing of Burhan's brother Khalid by the security forces.
The appointment of Ghaznavi was made by the head of the outfit, Syed Salauddin through a statement on a local news agency KNS.
Who is Mehmood Ghaznavi?
There is very little information on Ghaznavi. The police had in fact last year declared a cash reward on him. The Jammu and Kashmir police too were seeking out information relating to this man. Officials say that Ghaznavi is a resident of Rathsuna in South Kashmir.
He was a good friend of Burhan's and had joined the Hizbul Mujahideen only an year ago. It was the killing of Burhan's brother Khalid which prompted him to join the Hizbul Mujahideen in April last year.
There is however some confusion about Ghaznavi. While there are clear indications that this man is Zakir, another section feels it could be another operative who goes by the name Sabzar Ahmed Bhat who too was close to Burhan.
Zakir Bhat is aged 21 and was an engineering student in a Chandigarh college. A low key operative, he is unlikely to take the path that Burhan took. Burhan had taken to the social media to make his point.
Chosing a low profile commander may have been a deliberate attempt by the Hizbul Mujahideen which wants some of the heat on it to be lowered.
The journey into the Hizbul Mujahideen:
Officials say that it was following the death of Khalid that he decided to join the outfit. Following that incident he left behind a note for his father who was a government employee.
In that note he wrote that he could not bear the atrocities that the people of Kashmir were facing and hence it is time that "I perform Jihad".
He had been active since a young age. He had also taken part in several protests that took place in Kashmir including the one in 2010. Following this, he left to Chandigarh to do his engineering. Upon his return, he felt that he needed to fight for Kashmir.
OneIndia News
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Story first published: Wednesday, July 13, 2016, 9:37 [IST]
This is 21st century, where have we reached in name of religion: SC on hate speeches
Special anti-corruption courts in every district: SC to take up plea next week
Why political adventurism is bad for Arunachal Pradesh
India
oi-Vicky
Guwahati, July 13: After a long legal battle and political mudslinging, the Supreme Court today restored the Nabam Tuki led Congress government in Arunachal Pradesh.
While quashing as unconstitutional the governor's decision to advance the legislative assembly session by a month in December 2015, the Court also ruled that decisions taken by the legislative assembly pursuant to the governor's order are unsustainable in law.
To sum it up, the verdict paves the way for Tuki to take over as the Chief Minister and the government headed by Kalikho Pul will need to step down.
While this was clearly a political slugfest between the BJP and the Congress that played out in Arunachal Pradesh, the bigger question one needs to ask if such political adventurism and absurdity was needed in this state.
Just to recap nearly thirds of this state is claimed by China. The part being claimed by China is referred to them as South Tibet and if one may recollect they have protested visits by the Indian Prime Ministers and Presidents to these areas.
No scope for political adventurism in Arunachal:
An official who has served in Arunachal Pradesh tells OneIndia that China very carefully observes the events in this state.
Political turmoil and slugfests do not exactly send out the right message. China would thrive on Indian problems in this state. Such events are bound to lead to protests and there is a chance that the dormant Naga insurgency may come back to life, the officer also adds.
An army official however gives another point of view. A President's rule in the state does help to a certain extent. State governments have often come in the way of the army exercising its duties. However with President's rule the centre will have a firm grip over the state.
However, he also points out that in the long run President's rule is never good. What would be ideal is to have a cordial relationship between the state and the central government.
Former officer with the Research and Analysis Wing, V Balachandran points out that uncertainty is never good not just in Arunachal Pradesh, but in any of the bordering states. In Arunachal which is watched by China all the time, there is a need to have a clear direction.Destablising the administration will do more harm.
When there is uncertainity in the administration the defence machinery is weakened. No doubt there is a bureaucracy but they look up to the political leadership.
If there are problems in this state such as incursions or any other issue then it is the state which needs to act first. China will only fuel to the problem in Arunachal Pradesh.
The dormant Naga insurgency could come back to life and one must remember that China is capable of motivating anyone.
Officials in the Intelligence Bureau too say that working in a bordering state with political instability is always tough.
The central and the state IB need to coordinate at all times and if there is a breakdown this could suffer. Arunachal Pradesh is one of the toughest assignments for us considering the Chinese problem.
The officer also says that political or law and order problems only makes the situation worse. The Chinese observe everything and are looking to create problems.
They will look for leaders who are disgruntled politically and try using them against the system. Hence the coordination between the centre and the state needs to be perfect at all times, the officer also noted.
OneIndia News
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Story first published: Wednesday, July 13, 2016, 15:40 [IST]
The crimes of Zakir Naik: Extolling every Muslim to be a terrorist, paid Rs 50k per Islamic conversion
Prosecutions story may be attractive but should be backed by evidence
Rs 15 crore funding to Zakir Naik's Islamic Research Foundation under scanner
International
oi-Vicky
Dhaka, July 13: The Islamic Research Foundation that is headed by the controversial Dr Zakir Naik is alleged to have received funds to the tune of Rs 15 crore in four years.
The details which are there with the Ministry for Home Affairs shows that between the years 2008 and 2012 the foundation had received an approximate of Rs 15 crore from abroad.
Investigations are now focusing on two aspects where these funds are concerned. An officer informed OneIndia that they are checking if the funds were clean or in violation of the FCRA norms. Further the investigators are also checking to find out the purpose of these funds.
Funds from abroad:
The probe has gone on to show that a large part of the funding had come in from Saudi Arabia. A certain amount of money has also been traced to the United Kingdom as well. This is a crucial aspect of the probe and concerns two very key aspects, investigators say.
Investigators are keen on finding out the purpose for which these countries had funded the IRF. Naik is being investigated for allegedly instigating youth who later took to terrorism.
His name had cropped up following the Dhaka blasts in which it had been found that one of the terrorists was inspired by his speeches.
Naik had however rubbished these allegations and said that in none of his speeches had he encouraged anyone to kill.
OneIndia News
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Story first published: Wednesday, July 13, 2016, 8:18 [IST]
Delhi-NCR likely to choke in the coming days
'Red light on, gaadi off' postponed as LG hasn't given nod: Delhi Minister
South Sudan crisis: Sushma Swaraj assures Akshay Kumar of swift evacuation
New Delhi
oi-Sandra Marina Fernandes
New Delhi, July 13: While there is rising concern for the safety of Indians stranded in Juba, South Sudan, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj has assured that all the arrangements have been made for their evacuation.
Swaraj even assured Bollywood actor Akshay Kumar that Indians stranded in Juba will be evacuated safely.
Indian embassy in South Sudan asks Indians to stay calm amid unrest
Kumar had appealed to Swaraj and tweeted: "@SushmaSwaraj Ma'am request for speedy measures and actions to evacuate Indians stranded in Sudan. Prayers with them. #SaveIndiansInJuba."
.@SushmaSwaraj Ma'am request for speedy measures and actions to evacuate Indians stranded in Sudan. Prayers with them. #SaveIndiansInJuba Akshay Kumar (@akshaykumar) July 12, 2016
Swaraj, who is known for her prompt replies on social media said: "Akshay Kumar ji - Pl do not worry. We are evacuating Indian nationals from Juba (South Sudan)."
Akshay Kumar ji - Pl do not worry. We are evacuating Indian nationals from Juba (South Sudan). https://t.co/Ppj3ojcIlm Sushma Swaraj (@SushmaSwaraj) July 12, 2016
The Indian Embassy has asked Indians in Juba to remain calm and has assured them that they are in touch with authorities in India. Meanwhile, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) is said to have held a meeting to plan the evacuation of Indian nationals. A task force has been set up to monitor the situation.
Following the meeting on Tuesday, Swaraj said: "We are evacuating Indian nationals from Juba (South Sudan)."
Juba, is currently witnessing clashes between former rebels and government soldiers in the city that had killed 300 so far. MEA in its advisory had said Indian nationals desirous of departing for South Sudan may register themselves at the email ID controlroomjuba@gmail.com.
(With PTI inputs)
OneIndia News
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Story first published: Wednesday, July 13, 2016, 10:25 [IST]
How Kerala missed the warning signals from ISIS
Thiruvananthapuram
oi-Vicky
Thiruvananthapuram, July 13: Donations collected and diverted to Syria, a Telegram Channel in which the youth conversed with those in Syria. This was going on for over a year and yet the local authorities missed the warning signals. A probe is on to find the trail of nearly 21 persons who have gone missing and are suspected to have joined the ISIS.
Officials have learnt that there was a concerted effort on by several youth to fund the trips of those who wanted to join the ISIS. Donations were collected citing the Palestine cause, but the same was diverted to Syria.
Kerala's tryst with the ISIS continues: More suspected to have joined outfit
Missing the warning signs
Kerala has been a hot bed of terror activity. The SIMI and the Indian Mujahideen had used this is state as a training ground and also a hideout. In fact the first non Kashmiri Mujahideen from India to fight in Kashmir was also from Kerala. Over the past year or so there have also been reports of the rising Wahhabi influence in the state.
When the ISIS announced the setting up of a Caliphate it attracted the attention of many. Some in Kerala felt the need to contribute to the ISIS cause.
They decided to collect donations in the name of the victims in Palestine and a high amount of money was channelised through businessmen in Kozhikode, Mallapuram and other places. Investigators however suspect now that the money could have been routed into Syria instead.
Another Facebook post had spoken about a Telegram Channel called Brothers From South India who migrated to Sham (Syria). There were messages repeatedly being put out to share with like minded youth in Kerala and the rest of South India.
This was also followed up by another post which speaks about a large number of people from South India leaving for Syria.
Probe on
Friends and relatives had sought the intervention of the Chief Minister of Kerala after they found their loved ones had gone missing. In some of the cases the relatives have got messages saying that they had reached their destination or requesting them not to look out.
Investigations have revealed that almost all of them had landed in Iran on the pretext of going on a pilgrimage before they allegedly made their way into Syria and Iraq. Investigators probing 21 missing cases have learnt that they had left in seven different batches.
Six batches left separately from Mumbai and Bengaluru while one left via Hyderabad. The travel was between May and July. The last person to have left was on July 5 from Mumbai. The flights they took out from these places were either to Muscat, Abu Dhabi and Dubai. They are suspected to have left for Iran from there.
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LeoVegas Player Lands 2.9 Million Jackpot in Yggdrasil's Joker Millions Slot
Published July 13, 2016 by Florin P
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A lucky player from Norway has won 2.9 million playing the popular Joker Millions slot by Yggdrasil. The jackpot is pooled across the entire network of casinos powered by their software. Chris from Oslo was spending some quality time spinning its reels at LeoVegas on Monday, betting in increments of 1.25. The video slot is mobile friendly, so he chose to gamble on his smartphone, while waiting on his girlfriend who was shopping for apples.
The Largest Ever Jackpot on Joker Millions Slot
Yggdrasils game made other players rich in the past, with two major winners emerging since March 2015 when it was launched. In September, somebody scooped a prize worth 720,000 and three months later another jackpot worth 460,000 was won.
Both winners had good reasons to celebrate, but the amounts they won pale in comparison to the $2.9 million won by Chris. With this newfound fortune, he can fulfill all his dreams and a trip to the Maldives now sits at the top of the list. Once the lucky couple returns from this great vacation, Chris plans to invest the money in two apartments.
The First Progressive Jackpot by Yggdrasil Gaming
The software developer has an impressive collection of games and a handful of popular progressive jackpot slots. This however was the first game produced by them and so far the best paying video slot. Fredrik Elmqvist, CEO at Yggdrasil Gaming was quick to congratulate the winner and looks forward to other players claiming seven digit amounts.
The progressive jackpot will now be reset at a value of 2 million and is expected to pick up speed. The fact that it can be played on mobile devices and it also features an attractive base game explains its popularity among fans of the genre. As new casinos join the Yggdrasil network, progressive jackpots are expected to hit new highs and set more records.
Bailey McCann, Opalesque New York:
London-based $28 billion credit shop Alcentra has hired Glenn Weiner to the newly created role of Head of Consultant Relations for the Americas. Weiner will be based in the firm's New York office and report to Jack Yang, Head of the Americas, Global Head of Business Development who was brought on last year.
Weiner will focus on strengthening relations across the North American consultancy community. Glenn brings over a decade of experience developing and managing relationships with US consultants. He joins from Guggenheim Partners, where he was a Managing Director and Head of US Consultant Relations. Prior to joining Guggenheim, Glenn was with Babson Capital Management where he was Co-Head of US Consultant Relations, and prior to Babson, he held consultant focused positions at Capital Guardian Trust, Wellington Management, and Barra Rogerscasey.
Alcentra has been expanding its operations and business of late. The firm is currently in market with its second pan-European direct lending fund which is targeting 2 to 2.5 billion. Fund one closed on 1.25 billion in 2014. The firm's direct lending and credit alternatives business accounts for 31 percent of AUM and is one of the fastest growing business lines.
"What we're seeing in the market today amounts to one of the most radical asset allocation shifts Ive seen in my career," Alcentra CEO David Forbes-Nixon, tells Opalesque. "The next 10 years could be golden y......................
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Benedicte Gravrand, Opalesque London:
Dyal Capital Partners has acquired a minority investment in Silver Lake, for an undisclosed sum. The investment is a passive, non-voting interest of less than 10%.
Silver Lake will use the proceeds of the transaction for new growth initiatives and to extend its global investing capabilities, according to the announcement.
Silver Lake is a technology investor with more than $24bn in combined assets under management and committed capital. The firm was recently involved in a court case which ruled it had underpriced a $24.9bn buyout of 5.5 million shares in computer maker Dell in 2013.
Dyal Capital Partners is a unit of New York-based Neuberger Berman that acquires minority equity interests in institutional alternative asset management companies. It bought a 20% stake in activist hedge fund firm Jana Partners worth $2bn in March. It also acquired a stake in the $12bn Halcyon Asset ......................
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Opalesque Industry Update - Centaur Fund Services has announced the opening of a new service location in Bermuda. Bermuda is a key strategic location for Centaur and will act as an important servicing office, primarily for North American based clients. Eric Bertrand, Founding Partner of Centaur: Centaur is excited to be expanding to this important location. Opening a full working office in Bermuda allows us to grow the services we offer clients and increase our global reach. The Bermuda office will be headed by Marc Weaver, who brings 15 years experience in the fund administration industry. The new office will work closely with Centaurs other offices to provide administration services to Centaurs global client base. Marcs extensive expertise lies in fund administration. He has held senior roles in managing client operations and relationships during his career. This is such an exciting time to be joining Centaur, which has been growing steadily year on year both in terms of assets under administration and the breadth of services offered. I can see great potential for opportunities in Bermuda and North America, especially in areas such as Private Equity, Family Office and ILS which are embracing the trend to outsource administration. Centaur Fund Services (Bermuda) Limited is authorized as a licensed fund administrator by the Bermuda Monetary Authority. With offices in Europe and North America, Centaur delivers independent fund administration services, backed with accountability, to some of the worlds largest institutions. Our breadth of service and operational excellence enable Centaur to deliver customized solutions to match our clients requirements. Centaur Fund Services Limited is authorized by the Central Bank of Ireland and Centaur Fund Services (Bermuda) Limited is authorized by the Bermuda Monetary Authority.
A pragmatist is the guy in front of the firing squad who asks for a blindfold: "if you can't see the firing party, perhaps it isn't happening!" Channel surfing last night (without a blindfold) I caught two political events on C-Span.
On one channel I caught who I call 'The Mad Queen' at her campaign event in New Hampshire. Standing behind her (not wearing a blindfold) was Senator ' Feel the Bern' Sanders. He told the world he was now endorsing ' The Mad Queen' Hillary. Wonder how many of those nice, decent young and old Berninista's felt like wearing a blindfold? After all, they know how much 'The Mad Queen' is the antithesis of what they and their (once) fearless leader stand for. Well, let's say half of what he stands for. You see, 'Feel the Bern' Sanders had to run as a Democrat because he did what all of the other Democratic politicians are doing; which is to remain silent on our obscene foreign policy. More damaging than that to anyone who calls himself or herself a 'progressive' is to wear a blindfold on the highest amount of military spending ever which, is happening under Mr. 'Change We Can Believe In' Obama.
Surfing to the next C-Span channel I caught a live campaign event in Indiana for 'Il Duce With The Orange Comb Over'. Check out old film clips of Mussolini giving speeches (here ) and then watch 'The Donald Duce' (here). Amazing the similarities...except of course the original Duce did not continually repeat statements one after the other like ours does.
The 'Donald Duce' likes to strut around taking the bit from Teddy Roosevelt and rearranging it to say, "Walk loudly and carry a big stick". His a-hole wall and his Islamophobia, while promising to Make Amerika Better , seem to carry the day. What the working stiffs who support 'Donald Duce' do not realize is that the jobs he intends to 'Make Amerika Better' with will be more of the same dead-end jobs with bum paychecks... and most likely part time with no benefits.
We have become a nation that is more laughable than any Woody Allen satire (here). With a compliant sellout media in place 27/7, and the suckers are fed this total "He said she said" distraction until the 1st week in November.
Two super rich deviates, one a billionaire and one just a multi-millionaire, are telling you to follow them to happy days are here again . The skeletons and dirty laundry they both carry with them will 'factor out' any total disgust by the majority of the electorate...while a more enlightened minority will see through the crapola and vote Green Party or Libertarian or some other 3rd party alternative. Yet, all those wonderful pragmatists out there will continually tell us "Yours can't win so wear a blindfold".
" A sucker is born...Every four years !""paraphrased from P.T. Barnum.
http://www.lobbydelegates.com/delegates.php
In his speech yesterday endorsing Hillary Clinton as the Democratic Presidential candidate, Bernie included a crucial phrase:
"when the roll call at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia is announced it will show that we won almost 1,900 delegates."
The following was posted on Facebook:
L eslie Lash White"- Bernie Sanders: Advice and Strategies on HOW TO WIN Yes, he had to "endorse" but he did not concede - he WILL demand a roll call of his delegates at the convention. That's not what someone who's conceding does.
She said that Bernie held a conference call with his pledged delegates after his speech, to instruct them to vote for him when the roll is called. In contrast, Hillary suspended the roll call vote at the 2008 convention, and conceded her delegates to Obama.
On the same facebook page, Alex Klenski explains that "according to DNC rules, a candidate with an active campaign is not allowed to deny an endorsement of another campaign. Doing so would result in forfeiture of said candidate's superdelegate status, and the loss of access to the convention floor stage. Bernie's just playing their game."
It's worth noting that Sanders was the roll call amendment king while serving in the House of Representatives from 1995 to 2007, passing more roll call amendments in a hostile Republican Congress than any other representative. He is a consummate strategist.
Bernie could still win if enough superdelegates switch sides. You can write to them easily. A link to Clinton superdelegates, given by state, is http://www.lobbydelegates.com/delegates.php
You could point out that Hillary is only winning because of voter fraud, especially in California, NY and Arizona. A study by Stanford students revealed widespread primary election fraud favoring Hillary Clinton, in multiple states. http://yournewswire.com/stanford-university-confirm-democratic-election-fraud/
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The nation of Djibouti, officially the Republic of Djibouti, is a country located in the Horn of Africa. It is bordered in the north by Eritrea, in the west and south by Ethiopia, and in the southeast by Somalia. For the last sixteen-plus years, the country has been headed by Ismail Omar Guelleh (IOG), except for the earliest hours of that period, when it was managed by its security services and then briefly led by the current leader's uncle, Hassan Gouled Aptidon. IOG himself parachuted to the top step of power in 1999 with an overwhelming electoral victory. In 2016, he was re-elected with more than 80% of the vote--which actually peaked at 86%.
Unfortunately, Ismail Omar Guelleh has a problem with abuse of power, though it is not directly related to the very long period he has held office. Sixteen-plus years does seem a bit long, but it is not, after all, too much longer than, for example, the 14-year reign of Mitterrand in France. The problem with IOG, ultimately, is not even the overwhelming majority with which he has won two elections. Those majorities do pretty much resemble results you get in a Banana Republic, but, very well, why not give him the benefit of the doubt? Perhaps he's simply gifted with extraordinary charisma! So he may be, but I'll tell you precisely why his hold on power can't be explained away that easily! Following removal of the limitation on presidential terms by parliament in 2010 in a vote boycotted by the opposition, and especially following six elections, three presidential and three legislative, in which the outcome was either fraudulent or boycotted, Mr. Dictator Ismael Omar Guelleh, just a few weeks before another fast-approaching presidential election, blocked the process of democratizing and building a state of law in Djibouti.
On December 21, 2015, the police and the army fired on the participants at a private meeting (Yonis Moussa), causing dozens of deaths--at least 27, according to the International Federation for Human Rights (in Djibouti, the FIDH). In addition, many more participants went missing or were injured. In the afternoon of the same day, police fired on the leaders of a Union of National Salvation (USN) meeting. In this act of repression, the bloodsucker IOG and his government perpetrated a massacre on people who had gathered to celebrate a private ceremony (Siiyarad).
According to political opposition members and a domestic human rights organization, IOG's Djibouti government seldom makes an effort to prosecute unlawful attacks on the exercise of civil rights. Instead, it has engaged in arbitrary arrests, prolonged pretrial detentions, unlawful killings, abuse of journalists, and, especially, harassment and abuse of its political opposition. There is no freedom of speech and press in Djibouti and no democratization. Instead, there is only corruption, discrimination, and violence against women.
In its ranking of 175 countries for their level of corruption (no. 175 being the most corrupt), the 2015 Corruption Perceptions Index reported by Transparency International lists Djibouti 99th. In earlier corruption rankings from the same source, Djibouti averaged 100.33 from 2007 until 2015, reaching an all-time high ranking for corruption at 111th in 2009 and a record low ranking of 91st in 2010.
The idea of a race war occurring in the United States today, much less one that leads to open genocide, is not something that the American people see as a real possibility. Yet the United States was born of genocide. The ethnic cleansing of Indigenous peoples starting in the Eastern United States through events such as the Trail of Tears was a continuation of the mass genocide began by the Conquistadores of Spain. Millions of Indigenous Americans were victims of the expansion of European civilization across the Americas including the ethnic cleansing that was the American-Indian Wars.
Similarly, the slave trade cost millions of Africans their lives during the Middle Passage. Victims of the Middle Passage were packed like sardines in slave ships for months on end. They died of suffocation, disease, malnutrition and violence and then were thrown overboard without any modicum of dignity.
After the civil war--in the face of "freedom and Reconstruction," the rise of the Klu Klux Klan initiated a wave of ethnic cleansing. The Klan not only lynched a myriad of Black individuals and farmer families, they also murdered and burned-down entire towns comprised of African American people. Such events wiped Black lives and places off the map of America forever. Others faced ethnic cleansing as well. During the conquest of the Western territories thousands of Mexicans were brutalized, hung and chased off of lands that their families had lived on for generations. The Chinese also faced lynching and white race riots. Moreover, such violent racial aggression continued well into the Twentieth Century.
Much of the racially based brutality throughout American history occurred at the hands of white commoners (i.e., not government sponsored actions). However, the policies that implicitly supported and sometimes explicitly initiated the ethnic cleansing in America--almost always emanated from the highest levels of society--the moneyed power elite and the governments that they control.
The genocidal underpinnings of America did not stop with the above obvious examples it evolved and continues to this day. The American Indians herded onto reservations and African Americans forced to endure Jim Crow faced such poverty and cultural destruction that the mortality rate and socio-cultural deformity for these communities were crushing and continue to reverberate today. The assault on communities of color, theoretically, evolved from slavery and ethnic cleansing, Jim Crow and American Indian reservations and then through the intellectual inspiration of Eugenics to legislation supportive of abortion as a remedy for poverty. "Family planning" is today emphasized in poor communities of color. Overall society may see these "pro-choice" efforts as benevolent, even so, the result addresses a goal established by the Eugenics movement in that it emphasizes the reduction of people of color in America. From this point of view population control can indeed be described as having an element of ethnic culling--a kinder gentler form of ethnic cleansing . This matters because there is political power in numbers. In the nineteen-nineties new laws on drug offenses (that implicitly targeted people of color) and the three-strikes-you're-out laws (even for the most minor offenses like shop-lifting) led to millions of Black men becoming incarcerated for decades, often for life. This in effect was a powerful birth control imposition that also impeded the growth of the African American community. We cannot confirm that the policies described above have been implemented with an eye on ethnic culling. However, the fact that talking about the consequences of these policies is (almost) a social taboo is telling of the implicit aggression that still exists around race in this country. America is steeped in implicit and explicit racial aggression that could lead to full-blown genocide. Full-blown genocide is apart of America's DNA and it waits, like all DNA, to be activated by the right environment.
The emerging environment for full-blown genocide in America today begins with the will of members of the Elite such as Donald Trump, Rupert Murdoch and so forth. What (in addition to racial hatred) could motivate such an elite to initiate a campaign of full-blown racial genocide in America today? The answer is the same things that motivated the Donald Trumps of American history to commit genocide in the past--a greed and power-lust so perverse as to demand control of all resources whatsoever--be it land and slaves to todays monetary printing, internet, media, crop seeds, even our thoughts and genetics. The Elites motivation for genocide is and has always been fear and greed. Genocide is a tool used to redirect the anxiety and anger of the masses. It allows the Elite to feed their insatiable, narcissistic, psychopathic greed and lust for power while others pay the price for their deeds.
The rise of Trump represents one group of elites challenging another group for top dog status. There methods differ but not their goals. If the likes of the Clintons and Obamas could make tens of millions, even hundreds of millions of dollars as an indirect result of their presidencies (for themselves, not to mention the billions reaped by their Elite controllers)--what could a man like Trump garner for himself and the Rupert Murdochs of the world? The masses, of course, potentially stand in the way of all these Elite acquisitions. The solution posed by the problem of the masses is dividing and conquering. A prime mechanisms for implementing the divide and conquer strategy is use of us against them memes that blame the victim and thereby establish scapegoats whom the Elite can deflect their sins onto. These memes prepare the minds to be manipulated into carrying out all kinds of acts on behalf of the Elite including genocide through war, slavery or ethnic cleansing. The minds of those needed to implement the genocide must first be inundated with the emotions of fear, anger, envy, and greed in order to assimilate the us-against-them-memes into their worldview and energize them for activation. The convenient rise of Obama (and the white anger that followed), the success of the Black athlete, immigrant workers, Black Lives Matter, Latinos ("fastest growing population in America"), Affirmative Action, China's economic challenge to America and let's not forget Middle Eastern inspired terrorism--fill much of white America with all the above emotions. How these images are framed makes all the difference in the world and they have too often been framed by media coverage in a manner that divides Americans along racial lines. The argument that is used to justify this reporting style is that it's done for ratings. However, it cannot be creditably argued that the media is unaware of the social consequences of this approach.
The act of genocide requires that the in-group have power over the out-group--the group to be exterminated. Initiators of genocide target the defenseless. They target the mentally ill, the sick, the old and the poor--the voiceless. They also target the defamed, those that the institutions of the society deem "evil." For example, the popular saying of the Ninetieth Century "the only good Indian is a dead Indian" (promoted in the literature of the day) illustrates the tactic, as does the accusation that problems facing post WWI Germany were the fault of "evil thieving Jews and Gypsies" (also promoted in the literature of the day). Genocidal gateway memes (i.e., cultural ideas that open the door to genocide) continue in America through the decades, e.g., the "super-predator" (black youth) that emerged in the 1990s, and today the "rapist, murderous, drug importing Mexican" (the undocumented Hispanic worker). The idea that terrorism is some how synonymous with all Middle Eastern looking people is another example. These memes are part of a dehumanization process that grants society permission to harass, oppress, incarcerate and ultimately target entire groups for murder and ethnic cleansing. Those in-group individuals that challenge this system legally, and all that protest against it of course risks being targets as well.
The American population has been undergoing a battle against oppressive rule by the Economic Elite since it was a colony of the British Empire. The resistance includes the movement to unionize, the women's right to vote movement, the Civil Rights Movement and most recently the Occupy, Tea Party and Black Lives Matter movements. These awakenings can be of course the greatest threat to the Elite whom hold economic power over the masses as their core value and prime objective. The Elite also can use awakenings of the masses as means to further their desired end. In defense of their power no guile is too diabolical to employ including co-opting/instigating social movements and using them like sheep's clothing to conceal their wolf-like predatory intentions (e.g., the Tea Party movement).
In the 1980s, members of America's Elite launched an offensive against the progress achieved by many of the awakenings described above and the middle class in general. During this effort the CIA's introduction of drugs and illegal guns (possible gang organizational structure and values as well) into ghettos, laid the foundation for gang culture and activities and ultimately the new Jim Crow and prison industrial slave complex that followed as a result. The CIA's efforts ultimately worked in concert with the Clinton administration's policies on crime. But this was just part of the Elite's strategy--globalization and trade agreements created a smaller and smaller economic pie that the American masses had to share (while Elites like Trump grew richer). To manage the growing resentment there would have to be scapegoats. Right wing radio talk shows and Fox News walked point on creating--through dog whistle racist reporting and editorials--white anger and fear directed toward Blacks, Mexicans, Muslims and the Chinese. Yet the media has all but ignored the fact it was the policies of the Economic Elite that instigated the above sources of white fear. It was CIA activities, trade agreements, militaristic foreign policy that lead to the rise of Isis, drug gangs and jobs leaving and immigrants entering our country. That is until very recently--when such information could be used to create a new illusion capable of co-opting the white working class--a billionaire populist, aka Donald Trump. Meanwhile Blacks, Hispanics, Muslims and Chinese have been successfully blamed for these problems and, as far as many white Americans are concerned, should pay the price! This shifting of responsibility was easily achieved--it played on deeply rooted cultural orientations of the white masses (fear and rejection of people of color and historic scapegoating of these communities). This practice of scapegoating people of color is an institution of the American media owned by the Economic Elite. It is the Elite whom stand to benefit most from racial division because it weakens the working class that the Elite fear could challenge their rule.
The media is the primary apparatus for disseminating the genocidal-gateway memes that target communities of color for imprisonment and death. Media sources from The Economist (see "Under Attack" June 4th-10th, 2016) to numerous Fox News sources and Real Time with Bill Maher are calling to normalize "politically incorrect" language and consequently provide the likes of Donald Trump with cover. The cameras of the American genocide apparatus already focus on any little action that support the notion that the races are a threat to each other as opposed to our economic or policing systems being threats to the American worker. For example, there have been numerous police shootings of unarmed white Americans (e.g., Zach Hammond), but instead of following these cases with the same elevated status as police shootings of racial minorities, the media buries them. The result is reality is distorted in a manner that encourages racial divide.
Since the Elite benefit from racial divide, it is possible that elite entities purposely help inspire the emergence of even social movements like Black Lives Matter. Police lynching (i.e., police shootings, beatings or choking to death of unarmed Black Americans) have been going on in this country since slavery. But through the use of the media, awareness of these state sanctioned killings has been elevated just in time to inspire a movement that helps to frame the 2016 election in racial conflict. The billions of dollars of free media lavished on Donald Trump's suspicious rise not only empowers a figure head for hate, but serves as the gasoline on the fire of the kind of racial conflict needed to turn this country into an open police state! Under a Trump Administration the riots will be bloody and the crackdowns brutal. When the conflict spills over into white communities the stage will be set for the coming race war that of course communities of color can not possible win. Not only do communities of color lack the population, economics, organization and mass media to defend themselves effectively in a race war but preparations supplied by the Elite policies and programs described above have assured that such a war would be a slaughter of the bloodiest kind. The CIA inspired drug (gang) wars (and Clinton policy) not only helped further the political disenfranchisement of Black and Latino communities, they helped minimize legal gun ownership in communities of color, while encouraging white America to legally arm themselves and "stand their ground." The millions of Black felons, for example, not only lost their right to vote for life, they also lost the right to legally bare arms. The violence in African American and Latino communities created by drug wars (with illegal guns) helped to fuel the Democratic Party mantra for making legal purchases of guns more difficult. The anti-gun meme reproduced widely among Democrats of which a very large majority of Black and Latinos consider themselves to be. This has resulted in less legally armed communities of color. This also means that a smaller percent of people of color will be legally concealing and carry during any race war that may emerge. Consequently, this also means that they will be less trained in using firearms and less able to "stand their ground" legally in the event that they are attacked by Trump followers. Of course an argument can be made that a Black man with a gun is a target for police with or without a permit to carry. But certainly, the illegal use of guns in self-defense by people of color would summon the full weight of our militarized police apparatus and heavily biased judiciary against these communities.
The anti-gun lobby became a mainstay cause of the Democratic Party, but it didn't win-over the Donald Trump crowd. Instead, it encourages them to load up on arms and ammunition before Obama or some other Democrat can take their guns and ammunition away. More and more white Americans continue to arm themselves as encouraged by rightwing media personalities that have mastered the dog-whistle-racist-call-to-arms such as Glen Beck. Moreover, the message to whites, if you listen carefully to media celebrated "stand your ground" legal cases--is that in the case of shooting a Black man in the name of "self-defense," you will likely not be charged and certainly not jailed (e.g., George Zimmerman). Why is this the case? The "super-predator" meme is why. This is even more so the case with respect to police killings of unarmed Black men and women. In fact, police lynching of people of color is becoming normalized in America. We see them prominently on the news, and we see that the Black community is enraged. We also see time and time again the police go free. The message is clear--it's perfectly legal for police to kill unarmed Blacks. The consequences of this message is either 1) a retaliation where police are gun down by unstable and unaffiliated Black shooters. This provides the illusion that the Black community is a highly militarized threat to white America, justifies further crack downs on the Black community, and plays perfectly into the hands of white supremacist seeking a race war or, 2) nothing changes and whites become one step closer to being accustom to the "infotainment" news of police modern day lynching of Black men and women. Blacks become hopeless. "It is what it is," becomes the norm. Through the media, the lynching of Blacks as a community event becomes institutionalized in America once again. The difference between a race war and genocide is that in a war it is a contest between more or less equally armed opponents. In genocide the victim (contrary to propaganda) is essentially unarmed. There can be no race war in America. There can only be ethnic cleansing and full-blown genocide. People of color are no more prepared to defend themselves from an American system bent on their imprisonment and death than the Jews of Nazi Germany were against Hitler.
The election is set. With (essentially) the end of the Voting Rights Act, the purging of voters of color from voter registration lists going largely unchallenged, the hacking of electronic voting booths and the disappearing of early votes, are we assured the rise of Trump? His election could mean racism in American would become legalized. With a corporate sponsored Supreme Court appointed by Trump that confirms the assertion that "racism is pretty much over in America," the removal of the remaining laws protecting communities of color could easily follow. When Trump exercises his "right to change his mind" with respect to his pro-worker rhetoric, and the Trump that has always stabbed American workers in the back shows his true self (i.e., a man of Elitism, by Elitism and for Elitism)--he will have to sacrifice a scapegoat or two to appease the angry masses. In fact, when the American people are betrayed this time, after all his rhetoric, he will have to sacrifice a lot of scapegoats and this is when the race war comes into play.
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President Barack Obama's lawyers, working on our dime, have just laid out a 46-page explanation of why current wars are legal. They've done so in response to a lawsuit, which has limited the argument in some significant ways.
First, while Obama has bragged about bombing seven nations, this lawsuit deals only with whichever parts of the world ISIS is in. But there is every reason to believe that Obama would make similar arguments for the legality of his other wars.
Second, while Tony Blair may be in hot water for violating the UN Charter's ban on threatening or using war, and while Germans and Japanese were once prosecuted for violating the Kellogg-Briand Pact's ban on waging war, this lawsuit takes no notice of such laws whatsoever, and thus neither does Obama's response. In fact, the "Most Progressive Democratic Party Platform in History" itself violates the UN Charter by threatening war on Iran and, a bit less explicitly, on Syria.
The lawsuit accuses Obama of waging war against ISIS in violation of the War Powers Resolution. Obama's lawyers (or, if you prefer the idiom of "our troops," we can say "our lawyers") try four different arguments for why that isn't so.
Their first argument takes up the bulk of the document. In it they claim that courts must not touch political questions, which must be left to the President and the Congress. This is not an argument against a special tribunal or the World Court or the International Criminal Court -- or for that matter the U.S. Supreme Court -- taking up the matter of violating the UN Charter and the Kellogg-Briand Pact. Rather, this argument assumes that the United States government can do what it wants to the rest of the world. At stake is which branches of the U.S. government are permitted any say in how such crimes are committed. But if you can't appeal violations of law in which the other two branches are complicit to the third and judicial branch, then what's it for beyond legalizing bribery?
In the course of making this first argument, Obama's lawyers make several others, including that the U.S. District Court is just too ignorant to deal with war matters.
Our lawyers claim that Obama has "constitutional" authority to wage war, which just isn't so, and is why an appeal to the Constitution would have been even stronger than to the War Powers Resolution.
Then they claim that he has authority under the authorizations for the use of military force passed by Congress in 2001 and 2003, the former authorizing illegal war against those responsible for the crimes of 9/11, the latter authorizing illegal war against Iraq. To make the former fit the case of ISIS, our lawyers claim that even if it's split from al Qaeda, ISIS retains forever its former al Qaedian identity, which is close enough to its having caused 9/11.
U.S. support for al Qaeda in Syria goes unmentioned, but showing up for a cameo is the Khorasan Group. Remember them? They made it into the media in a big way a couple of years ago, despite not really existing. They live on forever in Department of Justice arguments. If you remember the Khorasan Group you may also remember Obama "ending" the war on Iraq. A few voices at that time asked why the authorization for war on Iraq shouldn't end along with the war. This is why. It, too, lives on forever in legalistic justifications for wars.
While Obama and Congress have never allowed a major public debate and vote on whether to wage war on ISIS, our lawyers argue that Congress has squeezed into much larger legislation authorization of and funding for this particular war. However, the same lawyers admit that Congress stated in that legislation that no funds could be used in violation of the War Powers Resolution.
The trouble with this, for both Congress and the President, is that U.S. warmaking in Iraq and Syria does violate the War Powers Resolution. That law (see section 2b) affirms what anyone can read in the Constitution: Congress is in charge. Then in section 2c the War Powers Resolution tries to give presidents powers the Constitution does not. Yet those powers do not encompass what Obama has done. Under section 2c, a president gets to make war if he has "(1) a declaration of war, (2) specific statutory authorization, or (3) a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces." Obama didn't and doesn't have #1 or #3. He has a shaky claim to #2 only in the same legislation that forbids violating the War Powers Resolution.
Now, what many in Congress and the media and the President and our lawyers want to maintain is that the War Powers Resolution is, in fact, just a requirement for the President to send Congress reports periodically while he wages his wars. The ridiculousness of this is shown, not only by failed efforts in recent years in Congress to amend the resolution to turn it into that, but more so by what the resolution actually says is supposed to happen after a president sends in a report. According to the War Powers Resolution, when a president starts a war, he has 48 hours to send in a report, and then 60 days to cease use of the U.S. military unless Congress has declared or authorized the war.
Our lawyers also argue that unless Congress mandates the end of a war or cuts off the use of funds for a war, and certainly if it appropriates funds for the war, then it has approved of the war. And Congress did appropriate funds for this war in the same legislation in which it brought up the War Powers Resolution. Our lawyers use that fact to argue that, therefore, Congress believed that the war was indeed in compliance with the War Powers Resolution. (But then why bring it up?)
In fact, I think, Congress is just too corrupt and spineless to do anything other than allow wars, and fund wars, and fail to actually authorize wars. Whether that state of affairs would make the wars legal if the UN Charter and the Kellogg-Briand Pact vanished is anybody's guess. But the arguments Obama's lawyers make suggest that even a responsible law-abiding Congress could not stop him if it wanted to. He has "constitutional" powers, the actual Constitution notwithstanding.
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Reduced Drug Development Costs Steer Pharmaceutical Companies to Develop Companion Diagnostics
http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=S&rep_id=387
Pharmaceutical companies are bearing high costs involved with the development and commercialization of drugs and drug discoveries. Thus, there has been an increased focus by pharmaceutical companies on regulating the costs incurred by means of developing companion diagnostics along with therapeutic drugs. The strategy of co-development allows for the commercial availability of safe and effective drugs and thus, companion diagnostics are expected to materialize as efficient diagnostic tools that will be advantageous for pharmaceutical manufacturers.Of late, there has been an increased demand for personalized medicines, which in turn is driving the demand for companion diagnostics, states a research report by Transparency Market Research (TMR). According to the report, the market for companion diagnostics is expected to expand at an 18.1% CAGR from 2013 to 2019.TMR analysts answer key questions that companies operating in the companion diagnostic market need to ask:Q. How are companion diagnostics revolutionizing patient care?Companion diagnostics help eliminate the possibility of side effects by identifying the patients who are most likely to be at risk of several side effects by the use of a particular therapeutic drug. They identify the patients who are most likely to benefit from a particular therapeutic drug and monitor the response of the patient to a treatment with a particular therapeutic drug.Monitoring patients response to a medicine is done to enable adjustments in the treatment, for improved effectiveness and safety. For instance, the cobas 4800 BRAF V600 mutation test, which is a companion diagnostic for vemurafenib, helps in the detection of the BRAF V600E mutation in the DNA extracted from human melanoma tissue. Developed by Roche Holdings AG, a Switzerland-based biotech company, the test is intended to be used on selected melanoma patients whose tumors carry the BRAF V600R mutation.Q. What are the factors challenging the growth of the companion diagnostics market?The global companion diagnostics market is hampered to a great extent by prolonged developmental and approval period. The need to have both the drug and the device ready to be launched in the market at the same time, can potentially delay approvals. The delays in approvals of personalized medicines deprive the patients of these medicines for prolonged periods, thus hampering the uptake and sales of companion diagnostics.Clinical societies have a huge influence on the acceptance of companion diagnostics by end users. The views and opinions of these societies can affect the market as they impart education by giving biased opinions on their own experience with companion diagnostics. These clinical societies pose as key opinion holders and can alter the preference for companion diagnostics among patients.Get Free Sample Research Report:Q. What is the progress in the field of companion diagnostics?Companion diagnostics have been highly successful in the oncology area. This success is encouraging the development of companion diagnostics for other indications such as metabolism disorders, central nervous system (CNS) disorders, and infectious diseases. There have been discoveries of biomarkers for newer indication areas, which is expected to lead to a high growth and increase the revenue generation of the companion diagnostics market.Case in point, Exosome Diagnostics, Inc. has entered into a collaboration with Takeda Pharmaceuticals International Co. to develop an exosomal RNA sequencing platform for biomarkers. With a goal to develop a platform for serial analysis of gene expression patterns beyond oncology, the analysis of RNAs will provide an innovative tool for patient characterization to select patients. It will then monitor the disease and track the response to the therapeutic drug over the time of the treatment in the patient. This biomarker platform is expected to be an effective therapy for patients not just with cancer but with CNS disorders.Transparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. We have an experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, who us e proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.90 State Street, Suite 700 Albany, NY 12207
Global Cord Blood Banking Services Market Driven by Rising Awareness, Government Support
http://tinyurl.com/gwbafbk
Cord blood banking refers to blood banks that specialize in storing stem cells from the umbilical cord blood. Cord blood and the stem cells it contains are becoming increasingly important in the global medical scenario due to the ability of stem cells to develop into various types of human cells. This ability has made their use practically imperative in several medical fields that deal with tissue and organ damage. The rising awareness about the utility of cord blood has driven the global cord blood banking services market and will continue to be a major factor in the markets growth trajectory in the coming years.According to a market report recently released by Transparency Market Research, the global cord blood banking services market was valued at US$12.4 bn in 2012. Exhibiting a steady 5.60% CAGR from 2013 to 2019, the market is expected to rise to a valuation of US$15.2 bn.What are the major drivers for the global cord blood banking services market?Since cord blood and the stem cells that are a part thereof can only be obtained at the culmination of a pregnancy, making parents more aware of the benefits of cord blood banking has emerged as a major driver for the global market. Several developed countries have been moderately successful in educating a significant part of the population about cord blood banking, which has allowed the market to establish a firm foothold in regions such as North America and Western Europe. Not only is cord blood banking a public good, but having access to cord blood stem cells also increases the chances of the babys own successful recovery from various diseases at any point in its life.The global cord blood banking services market has also been driven by the rapid technological development observed in the sector, which has led to the process steadily becoming safer and more reliable. This has also been helped by the active role played by various healthcare bodies in spreading awareness about cord blood donation.Why is it important to support the development of public cord blood banks?The lack of public cord blood banks on a large scale has held the global cord blood banking services market back. While private cord blood banks store cord blood for use on the individual and their immediate family only, public cord blood banks operate as a network to supply cord blood wherever it is needed much like a regular blood bank. While private cord blood banks are the more popular type of cord blood banks at present, public banks are expected to steadily increase in number over the next few years due to the growing government support afforded to this field.Stem cells can help cure some of todays deadliest and most widely prevalent diseases, such as leukemia, lymphoma, several disorders regarding proliferation of blood, and several congenital disorders. The use of stem cells in treating autoimmune diseases, cardiac diseases, and neurological diseases is also under trial and is likely to come to the fore in the coming years as long as the government support to this sector remains steady.Get Report Sample and Customization:What are the major regional players in the global cord blood banking services market?North America dominated the global cord blood banking services market in 2013 and is likely to retain the position over the forecast period. However, Asia Pacific is the market to be for cord blood banking market players in the coming years, as government support to healthcare upgrades is rising in this region and the increasing urban population is becoming both more aware about cord blood banking and capable of paying the relatively high prices of cord blood banking services. As prices level out over the coming years with increasing demand, Asia Pacific could well become the dominant regional market for cord blood banking services.Transparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. We have an experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, who us e proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.90 State Street, Suite 700 Albany, NY 12207
Growing Demand for Targeted Viral Conjunctivitis Drugs Compels Drugmakers to Formulate Aggressive Research Strategies, observes TMR
http://tinyurl.com/gl3vf3q
The growing demand for targeted drugs for the treatment of viral conjunctivitis has compelled drugmakers to undertake aggressive research strategies to develop efficient therapies alongside developing quick, accurate, as well as affordable viral conjunctivitis detection tests. As there is no drug available for the treatment of viral conjunctivitis in the global market at present, companies need to power up their commercialization activities through agreements and partnerships with major ophthalmic drug manufacturers in order to expand their product portfolios, Transparency Market Research observes in a new study.In the coming years, a candidate with a wide range of activity but less toxicity and irritation properties will dominate the global market for viral conjunctivitis pipeline drugs, says a TMR analyst. Leading drugmakers operating in this market would need to focus on the development of new products as well as up-gradation of existing products at reasonable costs. Startups would also need to develop innovative products with substantial benefits in comparison to existing pipeline drugs.Unmet Needs Driving Demand for Targeted DrugsA thumping growth has been witnessed in the incidence of infections across the world. Cases of viral conjunctivitis account for a substantial share of it. Approximately 6 million people get affected by acute conjunctivitis every year. Brazil, Japan, and several countries in Europe have also been reporting a high prevalence of viral conjunctivitis over the past few years.However, despite such a large pool of patients, there is a huge shortage of efficient drugs for its treatment. These large unmet needs are driving the demand for targeted drugs for viral conjunctivitis, strengthening its therapeutic pipeline. At present, there are no drugs in the late-stage pipeline. The key pipeline drugs, FST-100 and APD-209, are in the second phase of clinical trials. Other drugs are still in the preclinical trials stage.Get a Free Sample Report:Availability of Conjunctivitis Detection Tests Backs U.S. Potential as Most Promising MarketTMR estimates the global viral conjunctivitis pipeline drugs market to expand at an exponential CAGR of 69.60% between 2020 and 2023. During this period, the market opportunity is likely to increase up to US$462.4 mn. The U.S. is emerging as the most promising market for viral conjunctivitis therapeutics. The availability of efficient conjunctivitis detection tests such as AdenoPlus, relatively higher cost of medicines than other economies, increasing awareness about the harmful effects of improper consumption of antibiotic, and high expenditure on healthcare are drawing heavy investments from drugmakers, increasing the development of new drugs.Estimations of analysts indicate that the opportunity in the U.S. market for viral conjunctivitis pipeline drugs will reach US$91.1 mn by 2020 and US$286.4 mn. Besides, the imminent launch of FST-100 in Brazil is projected to strengthen the Brazil market for viral conjunctivitis pipeline drugs in the near future and get it at the second position in the global market by 2020. The U.K. and Germany are likely to follow closely.Transparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. We have an experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, who us e proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.90 State Street, Suite 700 Albany, NY 12207
Improving General Fertility Rate Steers Sales of Pregnancy Products Worldwide, says TMR
http://tinyurl.com/jsmql4r
The top three players leading the U.S. pregnancy product market collectively hold a share of 25% in the overall market, Transparency Market Research (TMR) finds. The largest share of about 10% is held by Expanscience Laboratories, Inc. Its leading brands, Mustela and Piascledine 300, are spread over 97 countries, garnering a remarkable presence and indomitable revenues. Currently, Expanscience Laboratories, Inc. has 808 patents registered around the world, which will give it a competitive advantage over others in the foreseeable future.E.T Browne Drug Co., Inc. is the next big contender in the overall market with a share of about 8.1%. The unique ingredients used to make effective line of products and the usage of cocoa butter to enhance the quality of products are giving this company the much-needed boost in the vendor landscape. TMR also observed that the third important player in the overall market, Clarins, has been winning a significant share as the company has toiled towards introducing a new treatments for body and face over the past few years. A majority of its luxury products by Clarins are centered around pure plant extracts, which has been a clear choice amongst pregnant women.Rising Fertility Offers Growth Opportunities to Pregnancy ProductsThe rise in general fertility rate has been an important driver for the market, says a TMR analyst. As the number of pregnancies are expected to go up in the coming years in the U.S. it is also going to make women prone to various pregnancy-related changes, thereby making them potential customers for these products added the analyst. To reduce the negative impact of changes to the skin during pregnancy such as sagging, stretch marks, and itching the majority of the women are very likely to invest in various pregnancy products.Advertisements Play Crucial Role in Defining Success of Overall MarketThe indelible impact of advertisements through newspapers, television, magazines, and other forms of media are also likely to create a fertile space for the U.S. pregnancy products market. Analysts anticipate that the stretch mark minimizer will be the popularly sold product in the overall market due to its long-term necessity during the course of pregnancy, affordable pricing, and non-invasive usage. The easy availability of stretch mark minimizers through various distribution channels is also likely to boost the sale of these products.Get Free Sample Research Report:The safety of pregnancy products has always been a big restraint for this market. For instance, several topical solutions contain retinoids, which is known to cause birth defects if administered orally. However, how much of it is actually absorbed by the skin and what is its exact impact still remain under study.Several players in this market are trying to develop products that have natural extracts as opposed to synthetic chemicals to mitigate the risk of health problems these products can lead to.The U.S. pregnancy products market was valued at US$266.6 mn in 2014. However, analysts are projecting that the opportunity of this market will value US$439.2 mn by the end of 2023. To reach this valuation, the market is anticipated to sprint at a pace of 5.7% CAGR between 2015 and 2023. As of 2014, the stretch mark minimizer held a formidable share of 50% in the overall market and is expected to retain this dominance in the coming years as well. The other product segments are anticipated to surge at a CAGR of 6.3% during the forecast period.Transparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. We have an experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, who us e proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.90 State Street, Suite 700 Albany, NY 12207
Future Market Trends of Global Building Energy Management System Market 2016
Global Building Energy Management System Market 2016
http://www.marketintelreports.com/report/QYR08789/global-building-energy-management-system-consumption-2016-market-research-reportn
http://www.marketintelreports.com/pdfdownload.php?id=qyr08789
www.marketintelreports.com
The Global Building Energy Management System Consumption 2016 Market Research Report is a professional and in-depth study on the current state of the Building Energy Management System market.First, the report provides a basic overview of the Building Energy Management System industry including definitions, classifications, applications and industry chain structure. And development policies and plans are discussed as well as manufacturing processes and cost structures.Check Complete Report @Secondly, the report states the global Building Energy Management System market size (volume and value), and the segment markets by regions, types, applications and companies are also discussed.Third, the Building Energy Management System market analysis is provided for major regions including USA, Europe, China and Japan, and other regions can be added. For each region, market size and end users are analyzed as well as segment markets by types, applications and companies.Get Sample Brochure of the Report @Then, the report focuses on global major leading industry players with information such as company profiles, product picture and specifications, sales, market share and contact information. Whats more, the Building Energy Management System industry development trends and marketing channels are analyzed.Finally, the feasibility of new investment projects is assessed, and overall research conclusions are offered.In a word, the report provides major statistics on the state of the industry and is a valuable source of guidance and direction for companies and individuals interested in the market.About us:MarketIntelReports (MIR) aim to empower our clients to successfully manage and outperform in their business decisions, we do this by providing Premium Market Intelligence, Strategic Insights and Databases from a range of Global Publishers.A group of industry veterans who are well experienced in reputed international consulting firms after identifying the sourcing needs of MNCs for market intelligence, have together started this business savior MarketIntelReports.MIR intends to be a one-stop shop with an intuitive design, exhaustive database, expert assistance, secure cart checkout and data privacy integrated. It curates the list of reports, publishers and studies to ensure that the database is constantly updated to dynamically meet the targeted, specific needs of our clients.MarketIntelReports currently has more than 10,000 plus titles and 35+ publishers on our platform and growing consistently to fill the Global Intelligence Demand Supply Gap. We cover more than 15 industry verticals being: Automotive, Electronics, Manufacturing, Pharmaceuticals, Healthcare, Chemicals, Building & Construction, Agriculture, Food & Beverages, Banking & Finance, Media and Government, Public Sector Studies.Contact us:Mayur SSales Manager2711 Centerville Road, Suite 400,Wilmington,Delaware,19808United Statessales@marketintelreports.comTelephone: 1-302-261-5343
Global leaders and youth advocates launch new partnership and fund to end violence against children everywhere
NEW YORK, 12 July 2016 Today at the United Nations children joined worldleaders to launch a new partnership and fund to make ending violence a publicpriority and a collective responsibility. End Violence Against Children - The GlobalPartnership brings together governments, foundations, the UN, civil society, the academia, the private sector and young people in driving action toward achieving the new global target to end abuse, exploitation, trafficking and all forms of violence and torture against children."The Global Partnership to End Violence against Children is mobilizing the world,said United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. There could be no more meaningful way to help realize the vision of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development."The worlds governments set ambitious targets to end violence by 2030 as part of the Sustainable Development Goals. Working through the Global Partnership,governments and organizations can pool their resources and expertise to makeaccelerated progress toward this critical goal.Every day, in every country and every community, children are victimized byviolence and far too often, this violence is accepted as normal, permissible, or a private matter, said Susan Bissell, Director of the Global Partnership. Violence against children is not inevitable if we challenge the status quo that harms the lives and futures of so many children. Every child has the right to grow up free from violence and we all need to work together to realize that vision.The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has reported that in the past year as many as one billion children around the world have experienced physical, sexual, or psychological violence. Globally, one in four children suffer physical abuse. Nearly one in five girls is sexually abused at least once in her life. Every five minutes, a child dies as a result of violence."Violence against children is a problem shared by every society so the solutionmust also be shared, said UNICEF Executive Director Anthony Lake, who serves as founding co-Chair of the Global Partnership Board. When we protect children fromviolence we not only prevent individual tragedies and support childrensdevelopment and growth. In doing so, we also support the strength and stability of their societies.In coordination with the United Kingdom, the multi-donor trust fund has beenestablished to support the Global Partnership. The UK Government is making a40m contribution to catalyze the Fund in collaboration with the WePROTECT Global Alliance. The UK funding will be dispersed over the next four years and will focus on ending online child sexual exploitation.Online child sexual exploitation is a global crime that transcends borders, anddemands a global response, said Baroness Joanna Shields, UK Minister for InternetSafety and Security. This important new Fund will help tackle this abhorrent crime and protect children no matter where they live in the world. I encourage countries and organizations to seek this funding, and to support the Funds work to tackle the violence our children face online, in their everyday lives, and in places affected by conflict and crisis.At the launch event, government ministers from Sweden, Mexico, Indonesia andTanzania committed to developing specific plans that will combat violence against children, including tackling behaviours and traditions that further violence, making schools and institutions safe for all children, and strengthening data collection about violence and children, among other efforts.The Global Partnership today also launched the new INSPIRE package of sevenproven strategies to prevent violence against children, created with the WorldHealth Organization (WHO), the CDC, End Violence Against Children, the PanAmerican Health Organization (PAHO), The U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), Together for Girls, UNICEF, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the United States Agency for InternationalDevelopment (USAID), and the World Bank. Drawing from decades of research and building on the progress made so far, the new INSPIRE strategies include parent and caregiver support programs, life skills training, the implementation and enforcement of laws, and services for victims.The launch of the Global Partnership includes the premier of a new PSA featuringLiam Neeson, UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, and international childrens peaceprize winners from Liberia and the Philippines. The PSA tells the story of the impact of violence from the perspective of children, and includes powerful appeals from Asa Regner, Swedens Minister for Children, the Elderly and Gender Equality, Elisabeth Dahlin, Secretary General of Save the Children Sweden, Elaine Weidman- Grunewald, Vice President of Sustainability and Corporate Responsibility for the Ericsson Group worldwide, and others all calling on governments, societies, communities, and families to #ENDViolence against children.The Fund to End Violence Against Children will provide financial support toprograms that accelerate action, initially focusing on three priority areas: Preventing online violence, with a particular focus on sexual exploitation Addressing violence in every day lives of children, with an initial focus oninvestments in path finding countries to implement evidence-basedprogramming Addressing the prevention of violence against children facing conflict andcrisisAmy DiElsi, 215-990- 3006, amy@jacobsonstrategic.comMadeline Eisner, UNICEF, 212-735- 4455 or 917-860-0345, meisner@unicef.org,10 Downing St, London SW1A 2AA, United Kingdom
Akzo Nobel, BASF, DOW, DuPont and Lanxess Are The Top 5 Vendors In A Billion Dollar Specialty Chemicals Market
Worldwide Speciality Chemicals market to be worth more close to US$ 1 billion by 2021The specialty chemicals market is expected to be worth a little less than US$1 billion by 2021. With market posing such a potential there are a number of companies that have started capturing a share in this market and many more expected by the end of the forecast period. As of date, Beige Market Intelligence analysts have identified Akzo Nobel, BASF, DOW, DuPont and Lanxess as the top 5 leading vendors in the Strategic Assessment of Worldwide specialty Chemicals Market Forecast Till 2021.The evolving landscape of the chemical industry has allowed for numerous participants to enter this market which was once dominated by the large players in the chemicals market. As of date, there are more than 5 key applications of specialty chemicals that by themselves are driving the vast portion of the specialty chemicals market. Other factors such as the consensus between federal governments across the world on reduction of carbon emissions to counter climate change is also driving the market for specialty chemicals which are being used to increase energy efficiency to reduce carbon footprint.APAC to account for more than 40 percent of the specialty chemicals market by 2021The APAC region as of date is the leading the specialty chemicals market and is continued to continue by the end of the forecast period. On account of cheap factors of production, progressive government policies and huge domestic consumption, the region is the hub for chemical manufacturing, as the leading chemical companies across the world set up their manufacturing locations in the region. While the developed markets in Europe and North America are unable to keep pace with the growth of emerging markets of Asia, these markets are growing both in consumption size and purchasing power. The region is expected to account for a little less than US$ 500 million by 2021 in the specialty chemicals market.Dynamic competitive landscape in specialty chemicals marketThe global specialty chemicals market is dominated by chemical majors such asAkzo Nobel, BASF, DOW, DuPont and Lanxess. These companies have an expanded portfolio of specialty chemicals with integrated distribution network and rely on their proprietary manufacturing technologies. They have manufacturing facilities located across the world and operate capacities through strategic partnerships and joint ventures. New capacities are being setup by them to ensure proximity and easy access to the fast growing markets of China, India, and other Southeast Asian countries.The global specialty chemicals market is fragmented in nature because of the presence of a number of players. The factors play that major role in defining the competitive structure of this market are proprietorship over technology, economies of scale, R&D capabilities and level of vertical integration. R&D plays an important role as it enables a vendor to identify new applications for the product and gain first mover advantage. Production technology is an avenue that attracts intense R&D expenditure by major vendors as proprietorship over technology can turn out to be a promising revenue earning tool.The report by Beige Market Intelligence has more than 130 pages of insights on the changing dynamics of the specialty chemicals market.Worldwide specialty Chemicals market research report covers the present scenario and the growth prospects of the worldwide specialty chemicals market for the period 2015-2021. The report provides in-depth analysis of market size and growth of worldwide specialty chemicals market. This market research report includes a detailed market segmentation of the worldwide specialty chemicals Market by the following segmentation typesBy applicationPaints and CoatingsPolymers and Plastic AdditivesAgrochemicalsFood AdditivesHomecare SurfactantsWater Management ChemicalsLeather and Textile ChemicalsConstruction ChemicalsLubricant and Fuel AdditivesPulp and Paper ChemicalsGeographic segmentationAPACEuropeLatin AmericaMiddle East and AfricaNorth AmericaMarket share analysisAPAC (Degree of competition and fragmentation of vendors in the region)Europe (Degree of competition and fragmentation of vendors in the region)Latin America (Degree of competition and fragmentation of vendors in the region)MEA (Degree of competition and fragmentation of vendors in the region)North America (Degree of competition and fragmentation of vendors in the region)Why should you buy this market research report?Specialty chemicals are those specific chemicals that are used for a single or a very limited number of applications. Commodity chemicals on the other hand can be used for a variety of applications and hence, when the commodity chemicals are manufactured in large volumes, there is no problem as there is always a market for these chemicals. The situation today however is very much different. There are a number of companies today that are targeting the specialty chemicals potential and this is possible because of the various factors that have contributed to this growth.The study will tell the reader how the market has been performing over the last few years and how it is expected to perform over the next five years. Detailed analysis of the performance of the market is provided thereby providing the reader with key insights into what is taking place and how the market is being affected, both positively and adversely. Further to this, the specialty chemicals market is one where companies need to be aware of high potential applications in order to tap them today.In short, the study will provide a holistic view of the specialty chemicals market, which are the companies that are involved in the production and what are the factors that contribute to this market. The report will also provide information on what are some of the trends that have started to surface and are expected to be a strong driving force in the market over the next five years.Beige Market Intelligence: We are a new-age provider of competitive business intelligence, working across various industry verticals. Our expertise and knowledge ensures that the market analysis Beige provides is comprehensive, detailed and complete. The analysis helps our client organizations become aware and make educated decisions, as far as investing or devising a marketing strategy is concerned. The actionable insights delivered through our market research provide a comprehensive market analysis for every level of market segmentation in an industry. Beige Market Intelligence is a quality driven high end Market Research organization. Our team of experts ensure the analysis you receive is not just analyzed and smartly presented, but is completely customized based on the clients requirement. Our deliverables guarantee our current global client base does not look beyond Beige when it comes to any kind of industry and market analysis.KhyamaBeige Market IntelligenceEmail: khyama@beigemarketintelligence.com/media@beigemarketintelligence.comphone: 9986433385address: Chinnapannahali, Doddanekundi Main road, Bangalore-560037
Canyon Calling Adventures for Women Now Offering Their First Cuba Tour
www.canyoncalling.com
Flagstaff, AZ: Canyon Calling Adventures for Women, a touring company specializing in womens adventures, has set dates for their first People to People tour of Cuba. Featuring historical, cultural and recreational attractions, the tour provides an opportunity for women travelers to experience Havana and the scenic Cuban countryside in a supportive environment. The company is now welcoming bookings for their tour departing May 3, 2017.The unique people to people aspect of the tour will feature time with Cuban dancers, students, car enthusiasts, artists, entrepreneurs, farmers, and more over a period of seven days. The tour has been a dream of company owner Janet Scalzo, Just connecting with a different culture helps us as global citizens as humans really. Its interesting and fun to see this happen.The tour features such cultural landmarks as the Nacional Hotel, Ernest Hemingways Farm and Old Havana. Other highlights are visits to UNESCO World Heritage sites, Vinales Valley, a region known for its stunning scenery, and the town of Matanzas, known as the Athens of Cuba.This new Cuban tour adds to Canyon Callings roster of trips throughout the world. Scalzo says her companys mission is to create adventure, camaraderie and lasting memories for her guests, Eighty percent of our women come solo and make lifelong friendships on our trips. As an added bonus, Canyon Calling does not charge a singles supplement for their solo guests.About Canyon Calling: Canyon Calling Adventures For Women is a womens adventure travel company based in Flagstaff, AZ. Founded in 1996, Canyon Calling offers trips to some of the most scenic places on earth.ADVENTURES TRAVEL TOURS FOR WOMEN SINCE 1996Canyon Calling was created in 1996 so that active women could enjoy extraordinary adventures!Our trips for women focus on amazing scenery, challenging yet attainable activities and the fun, enrichment and support of women in the outdoors. Canyon Callings vacations for women are meticulously researched and well led. Come solo, as 80% of our travelers do, or bring your friend, sister, mom, daughter or partner.Janet ScalzoCanyon Calling928 284-8654trips@canyoncalling.com200 Carol Canyon Dr, Sedona, AZ 86336
AMCI's New Website Launches with Live Help
AMCI Launches new Website for Any Device
www.amci.com
www.amci.com/website-tour
www.amci.com
www.amci.com
Terryville, CT - July 12, 2016 - Advanced Micro Controls Inc (AMCI) is inviting visitors to access its new website, from anywhere. The new, mobile-friendly website design provides a clean, uncluttered experience with richer online content that is easier to navigate and share with others, simplifying the specification process. Visitors can now access detailed product information & pricing, videos, and other resources easily on any device.The new website is live at the same addressand gives better access to Products, How to Buy, About Us, News, Resources, Support, and Contact information.Watch a quick preview video of the new site here:The new website provides customers, distributors, and OEMs open access to all product pricing and detailed product information in a clean format on desktop, tablet, or mobile. The improved design eliminates the guesswork during the specification process by providing part numbers and pricing for related accessories, linking directly to the applicable accessory from the product page.The new 3D drawing tool, which has currently been rolled out on the resolvers product pages, provides visitors with an interactive product drawing, making it easier to visualize product solutions in the framework of their applications. Users can select different product options and the tool instantly reflects those options in the drawing. The tool provides over two dozen 2D and 3D file formats to choose from for download.AMCI's new website enhances the company's customer service levels and application support through a live chat feature, with on-staff operators available Monday-Friday, 8am-5pm EST to help with product sales & support.Visitors are encouraged to explore the website and sign up for direct emails from the Company atAbout Advanced Micro Controls Inc.Founded in 1985, Advanced Micro Controls, Inc. (AMCI) is a leading U.S. based manufacturer with a global presence. AMCI industrial control products improve PLC-based automation systems with specialized position sensing and motion control technology that simplifies automation and adds reliability to manufacturing processes. AMCI designs and manufactures all of their products, enabling superior quality and innovation. The company provides 24/7 technical support staff, ready to answer questions about installation, configuration and operation of all AMCI products.Media Contact: Rachael NovakTelephone: (860) 585-1254 ext-132Email: rnovak@amci.comAdvanced Micro Controls Inc.20 Gear DrivePlymouth Industrial ParkTerryville, CT 06786 USATelephone: (860)-585-1254Facsimile: (860) 584-1973
HISTORIAN PREDICTS REDSHIRT FASCISM, SECOND CIVIL WAR.
Where Mussolini had blackshirts, Trump would have redshirt stormtroopers.
www.alcarroll.com
http://trumpfascism.blogspot.com/
www.newagefraud.org
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: July 13, 2016HISTORIAN PREDICTS REDSHIRT FASCISM, SECOND CIVIL WAR.Human rights activist predicts Trumps election would be even worse than the worst predictions.Washington, DC, July 13, 2016 A dystopian novel by historian Al Carroll predicts the most likely outcome of Donald Trumps election would be years of repression, economic depression, the destruction of American democracy, disastrous wars overseas, and millions of minorities expelled from the US. And to top it off, Trumps reign would lead to an outright civil war, with the military the only force strong enough to halt Trumps fascism.A compelling political thriller, warning, and prophecy, scrupulously researched and carefully based on documented facts, logical exposition, and direct public statements. Trump Fascism is already winning good reviews from readers. Timely and scary. Fascinating! All too possible. A Tom Clancy for the left. Reminds me of Seven Days in May.Dr. Carrolls book is newly available at Amazon, Smashwords, Lulu Books, and Book Baby. More information is at, and on Facebooks Trump Fascism page.Al Carroll is Associate Professor of US, American Indian, and Latin American History at Northern Virginia Community College, and a former Senior Fulbright Scholar in Indonesia. He is the author or editor of six history books and numerous articles that have appeared in Articles Base, Beacon, Bristle, Counterpunch, History News Network, Indian Country Today, LA Progressive, Raw Story, Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Truth Out, Wall Street Examiner, and elsewhere. He is best known (and often vilified and demonized by racists) for his work as a human rights and anti-racist activist for New Age Frauds Plastic Shamans based atDr. Alton CarrollNorthern Virginia Community College12100 Campus Drive, Sterling, VA, 20164703-507-3958acarroll@nvcc.edufacebook.com/TrumpFascism/
Gulf State Software Wins Web Development Awards From Best Web Development Companies
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Houston, TX, USA -- Gulf State Software () won best web development and software development company award for 2016. Award is placed by bestwebdevelopmentcompanies.com ().CEO of Gulfstatesoftware.com Al Rashid said, "We are heavily enjoying the award winning race. We like to keep our trace always be best. We not only like to work in Houston, In Texas but also around the USA. Our service not only pay to us for service, we like to return you money through our development that we did for you."The judging was performed at the monthly best development Awards by bestwebdevelopmentcompanies.com. The Best Web Development Companies is the largest, most coveted and most prestigious award in digital design, development. The factor of this AdWords mostly: Budget, Quality, Time and efficiency.About Gulf State SoftwareFounded in 2016, Gulfstatesoftware.com operates everywhere in USA through remote development. The company specializes in website design, eCommerce development, SEO, Webhosting, Software development and web development, security planning and development, advertising strategies, platform integration, mobile marketing, A/B testing and other areas that comprise its turnkey approach of providing marketing solutions for any company that wants to succeed in today's competitive, global digital marketing environment.Media Contact:Al RashidGulf State Software LLC11455 Bissonnet 1001Houston, TX 77099800-959-6184info@gulfstatesoftware.com
Global Cell Culture Protein Surface Coatings Market to Exhibit Strong Growth as Investments Grow
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Transparency Market Research has announced the publication of a new research report about the global cell culture protein surface coatings market. The research report, titled Cell Culture Protein Surface Coatings Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast, 2014 2020, provides a comprehensive overview of the overall market.Download Free exclusive Sample of this report :According to the research report, the global cell culture protein surface coatings market was valued at US$256.2 mn in 2013. By the end of 2020, analysts predict that this market will reach a valuation of US$623.4 mn as it expands at an impressive CAGR of 13.60% between 2014 and 2020. The positive sentiment in this market will be supported by the growing interest of several pharmaceutical companies in stem cell research and the subsequently rising number of investments.Cell culture refers to cultivating cells in an external environment that matches the native setting of the cell. This is created by controlling the physical elements such as temperatures, humidity, and light as well as maintaining the right about of nutritional needs of the cells. These manmade cell cultures are used for analyzing developing model systems for research, stem cell research, cellular structures and functions, drug discovery, and genetic and molecular engineering. This method of cell culturing requires protein surface coatings. In the recent past, the increasing research and development activities pertaining to cell culture have been driving the overall cell culture protein surface coatings market.The global cell culture protein surface coatings market is segmented on the basis of protein source, type of coating, and geography. The protein sources studied in this research report are human source, animal source, plant source, and synthetic. The types of coatings available in this market are self-coating and pre-coating. The pre-coating segment is further divided into petri dishes, multi-well/micro-well plates, slides, flasks, and cover slips. Geographically, this market is segmented into Europe, Asia Pacific, North America, and Rest of the World.As of 2013, North America held a share of 40.90% in the overall cell culture protein surface coatings market. Europe followed this in second place in the same year. However, analysts predict that Asia Pacific will surge at a remarkable CAGR of 15.40% between 2014 and 2020 due to robust developments in the biotechnology and healthcare sectors. Furthermore, the rising number of drug discovery activities will also boost the Asia Pacific cell culture protein surface coatings market.View Exclusive Strategic Business Report:Some of the key players operating the global cell culture protein surface coatings market are Greiner Bio-One International AG, Corning Incorporated, Merck Millipore, Sartorius Stedim Biotech SA, Sigma-Aldrich Corporation, Thermo Fisher Scientific, Inc., and Viogene BioTek Corporation. The research report profiles these players and provides a complete analysis of the regulatory framework governing these companies along with the competitive landscape. Additionally, the report also details the financial overview, research and development activities, investment outlook, and expansion plans of these players operating in the overall market for the coming few years.Cell Culture Protein Surface Coatings Market, by Protein Source Plant source Animal source Human source SyntheticCell Culture Protein Surface Coatings Market, by Type of Coating Self-coating Pre-coatingo Multi-wellmicro-well plateso Petri disheso Flaskso Slideso Cover slipsCell Culture Protein Surface Coatings Market, by Geography North America Europe Asia Pacific Rest of the World (RoW)About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The companys exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.Contact us:Mr. Sudip STransparency Market Research90 State Street,Suite 700,AlbanyNY - 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free 866-552-3453Email:A sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Microscopy Devices Market : Market projections for upcoming years
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Nanotechnology, which has applications in semiconductors, life sciences, and material sciences, requires high-resolution microscopes for the study of materials at an atomic or molecular level. Microscopes are also a critical requirement in manufacturing industries demanding precision. Initiatives by various governments aimed towards increasing the R&D funding in the healthcare sector are also triggering the demand for microscopy devices. Thus, the global microscopy devices market is expected to rise from US$5.7 bn in 2013 to US$9.7 bn by 2020 expanding at a 7.60% CAGR from 2014 to 2020.Download Free exclusive Sample of this report :TMR analysts answer key questions that companies operating in the microscopy devices market need to ask:Q. What are the growth opportunities in the microscopy devices market?Of late, the trend of miniaturization has taken the world by storm. This trend offers a great opportunity for advanced microscopy devices such as transmission electron microscopes (TEM), scanning electron microscopes (SEM), and scanning probe microscopes (SPM). The semiconductor industry is moving towards miniaturization of transistor chips. Companies such as Samsung and United Microelectronics are anticipated to roll out ultra-nano chips soon. Thus, this trend is expected to generate new demand for advanced microscopy devices.The entry of quantum dots (QD) technology in the semiconductor industry will also benefit the microscopy devices market by opening another door of opportunity for growth. QD technology has already been used in the Bravia television series by Sony. The QD technology, which is currently at its nascent stage, is expected to be commercialized in the future and will bring huge opportunities of growth for the SPM and electron microscope types.Q. What is restricting the growth of the global microscopy devices market?The complex instrumentation of advanced microscopes is one of the challenges faced by the market. The special, intricate sample preparation techniques required by these microscopy devices also pose a challenge. This is because the samples, when viewed under these microscopes, are altered structurally or even destroyed. This restricts the use of microscopy devices in many potential fields.Scanning probe microscopes have glitches such as inability to examine the buried interfaces between two media, low scanning rate, and smaller image size.The premium pricing of advanced microscopy devices also limits the penetration of these devices. Several private research institutes and small companies need high-end microscopy devices but are unable to purchase them since they cannot afford them. Insufficient funding is also restricting the purchase of these devices by many research institutes that are dependent on federal and corporate funding.View Exclusive Strategic Business Report:Q. What are the recent developments in microscopy devices by key players?Carl Zeiss, a company based in Germany has introduced a new hardware auto focus and clean room kit for the Axio Imager microscope system. FEI Company, headquartered in Oregon, has announced the new ASPEX CleanCHK analyzer that offers a particulate contamination monitor, and is explicitly designed for application in the automotive industry. Hitachi High-Technologies has introduced the new generation TEM that functions even in room light environments.Such new developments and, most importantly, the growing use of microscopy devices in various fields will bring about healthy growth in the market.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The companys exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.Contact us:Mr. Sudip STransparency Market Research90 State Street,Suite 700,AlbanyNY - 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free 866-552-3453Email:A sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Global Pigments Market 2015 - 2020
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The report covers forecast and analysis for the Pigments market on a global and regional level. The study provides historic data of 2015 along with a forecast from 2016 to 2021 based on volume and revenue (USD Million). The study includes drivers and restraints for the market along with the impact they have on the demand over the forecast period. Additionally, the report includes study of opportunities available in the Pigments market on a global level.Browse Full report @In order to give the users of this report a comprehensive view on the Pigments market, we have included a detailed competitive scenario, and product portfolio of key vendors. To understand the competitive landscape in the market, an analysis of Porters five forces model for the Pigments market has also been included, strategic development along with patents analysis is included in this report. The study encompasses a market attractiveness analysis, where in type segments are benchmarked based on their market size, growth rate and general attractiveness.Inorganic, Organic, Specialty Pigments are the major types of Pigments. Pigments finds widespread applications in Paints & Coatings, Printing Inks, Plastics, Construction Materials and Other Applications. All the segments have been analyzed based on present and future trends and the market is estimated from 2015 to 2021.The regional segmentation includes the current and forecast demand for North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America and Middle East and Africa with its further bifurcation into major countries including U.S. Germany, France, UK, China, Japan, India and Brazil.Get Free Request Sample @The report covers detailed competitive outlook including company profiles of the key participants operating in the global market. Key players profiled in the report include Chemours Company, Huntsman Corporation, BASF SE, Lanxess AG, Clariant AG, Altana AG, and DIC Corporation.This report segments the Pigments market as follows:Pigments Market: Type Segment Analysis Inorganic Organic Specialty PigmentsPigments Market: Applications Segment Analysis Paints & Coatings Printing Inks Plastics Construction Materials OthersGet Illustrative Sample before buying:Pigments Market: Regional Segment Analysis North Americao U.S. Europeo UKo Franceo Germany Asia Pacifico Chinao Japano India Latin Americao Brazil Middle East and AfricaSyndicate Market Research provides a range of marketing and business research solutions designed for our clients specific needs based on our expert resources. The business scopes of Syndicate Market Research cover more than 30 industries includsing energy, new materials, transportation, daily consumer goods, chemicals, etc. We provide our clients with one-stop solution for all the research requirements.Contact US3422 SW 15 Street, Suit #8138,Deerfield Beach,Florida 33442,USATel: +1-386-310-3803GMT FREETel: +49-322 210 92714USA/Canada Toll Free No. 1-855-465-4651 FREEWeb:Email: sales@syndicatemarketresearch.com
mHealth App Market Sizing 2015 - 2020 Published By MarketResearchReports.biz
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Despite the hype around mHealth apps, the global mHealth app market is a niche market today. This will change over the course of the next five years as mHealth app publishers will more and more concentrate on business models that uses mHealth apps to sell connected devices and services. Traditional apps store revenue sources like paid downloads, in-app purchase and in-app advertisement will not be big enough to support the growing number of mHealth app publishers.mHealth app users will remain the main driver for the next years allowing monetization strategies based on B2C business models. B2B models will become more important with health plans and HCPs integrating mHealth apps into the traditional healthcare market.The report has five main parts:Current market size: Provides current sizing of the mHealth market in terms of app numbers, app downloads and app store revenues for all mHealth apps or by app category. It identifies key application segments according to their current reach.Country mHealth markets: The report looks into the mHealth app market of 56 countries. It profiles 10 countries which currently offer the best market potential for mHealth app publishers. It provides information about the country mHealth app market characteristics, such as which platform leads in the country and required download numbers to enter a top 5 ranking position.17 mHealth business models: Describes performance of mHealth app publishers and their different monetization strategies. It identifies the most commonly used business models for mHealth apps and provides overview and best practice examples.Top mHealth app publishers: Publishers background and performance differ significantly for the Health&Fitness and Medical app section. The report list and describes current most successful Health&Fitness and Medical app publishers. It analyzes their product portfolio and its performance.Download Sample Copy of This Report at:mHealth market forecast: Estimates market size and market revenue until 2020. The market forecast provides a detailed outlook on demand and supply side of the mHealth app market in the next five years. It forecasts the number of mHealth app users, their platform preference and the number of downloads. The mHealth market revenue is provided for the main revenue sources.Table of Content1 Summary2 Scope3 Current status of the mHealth app market3.1 mHealth app categories market share3.2 Country market share by downloads and revenues4 Top 10 mHealth countries profiles4.1 China4.2 USA4.3 Germany4.4 Japan4.5 United Kingdom4.6 France4.7 Russia4.8 Brazil4.9 Italy4.10 Turkey5 mHealth business models5.1 Paid downloads5.2 Device sales5.3 Commission for appointments5.4 Featured listing5.5 One-time service fee for a consultation5.6 Service subscription5.7 Transaction5.8 Advertising5.9 Sponsored content or incentives5.10 Contract work for 3rd parties5.11 Technology licensing5.12 Sales of source code/white label5.13 Integrated in-app healthcare services5.14 Sales of user tracking data5.15 Affiliate sales5.16 Processing fee5.17 FundraisingMarketResearchReports.biz is the most comprehensive collection of market research reports.MarketResearchReports.Biz services are specially designed to save time and money for our clients.We are a one stop solution for all your research needs, our main offerings are syndicated researchreports, custom research, subscription access and consulting services. We serve all sizes and typesof companies spanning across various industries.Mr. NachiketState Tower90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-621-2074Website:E: sales@marketresearchreports.bizFollow us on LinkedIn:
Global BOM Software Market to grow at a CAGR of 8.14% during the period 2016-2020
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"The Report Global BOM Software Market 2016-2020 provides information on pricing, market analysis, shares, forecast, and company profiles for key industry participants. - MarketResearchReports.biz"DescriptionAbout the Bill of Materials (BOM) Software MarketThe BOM is a list of raw materials, parts, and components and the quantity of them required to manufacture a product. There are three types of BOM:Manufacturing BOM: It is a list of parts required to manufacture a complete product.Engineering BOM: It is a list of parts required as per the engineering drawing notes, which are made prior to manufacturing a product. It also includes substitute parts and alternative parts that are required during the design stage.Service BOM: It is a list of parts required during the maintenance and service stage.BOM software helps to visualize and share BOM information across various units of an organization on a real-time basis.View Full Report at:BOM software is widely used to track the changes made to a product during different stages of its life cycle. It is used to maintain consistency and have a record of the raw materials consumed during the life cycle of a particular model.Technavios analysts forecast the global BOM software market to grow at a CAGR of 8.14% during the period 2016-2020.Covered in this reportThe report covers the present scenario and the growth prospects of the global BOM software market for 2016-2020. To calculate the market size, Technavio considers the revenue generated from the total application of BOM globally. The report does not include revenue generated from the aftermarket service of the product.Download Detail Report With Complete TOC at:The market is divided into the following segments based on geography:APACEuropeNorth AmericaROWTechnavio's report, Global Bill of Materials (BOM) Software Market 2016-2020, has been prepared based on an in-depth market analysis with inputs from industry experts. The report covers the market landscape and its growth prospects over the coming years. The report also includes a discussion of the key vendors operating in this market.Key vendorsAutodeskArena SolutionsArasDassault SystmesPTCSiemens PLMOther prominent vendorsIQMSOmnify SoftwareOpen systemsOracleSAPSiliceon Expert TechnologiesMarket driverImproved efficiency of supply chainFor a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket challengeGrowing concerns over data securityFor a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket trendIncorporation of PLM software into enterprise and MES softwareFor a full, detailed list, view our reportKey questions answered in this reportWhat will the market size be in 2020 and what will the growth rate be?What are the key market trends?What is driving this market?What are the challenges to market growth?Who are the key vendors in this market space?What are the market opportunities and threats faced by the key vendors?What are the strengths and weaknesses of the key vendors?Browse all latest Press Releases of Market Research Reportsat:About usMarketResearchReports.biz is the most comprehensive collection of market research reports.MarketResearchReports.Biz services are specially designed to save time and money for our clients.We are a one stop solution for all your research needs, our main offerings are syndicated researchreports, custom research, subscription access and consulting services. We serve all sizes and typesof companies spanning across various industries.ContactMr. Nachiket90 Sate Street,Suite 700 Albany,NY 12207 USATel: +1-518-621-2074Canada Toll Free: 866-997-4948Website:E: sales@marketresearchreports.biz
Global Pea Protein Market 2016-2020 Analysis of Market Size, Functional and Economic Impact of the industry
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Global Pea Protein Market 2016-2020 Size and Share Published in 2016-06-14 Available for US$ 2500 at Researchmoz.usDescriptionFull Report##Pea protein is extracted from yellow peas, known as Pisum sativum, and has a typical legume amino acid profile. Being highly nutritive and functional, pea protein has gained a strong foothold in the plant-based protein market. It is also a clean-label product with non-allergic attributes and is a viable alternative to eggs and is therefore used in a variety of bakery and confectionery applications. There are three types of pea protein: isolates, concentrates, and textured protein.Technavios analysts forecast the global pea protein market to grow at a CAGR of 8.83% during the period 2016-2020.Covered in this reportThe report covers the present scenario and the growth prospects of the global pea protein market for 2016-2020. To calculate the market size, the report considers the revenue generated through the sales of pea protein in the product forms listed below:ConcentratesIsolatesTexturedThe market is divided into the following segments based on geography:Asia-Pacific (APAC)EuropeNorth AmericaRest of world (ROW)Download Sample of this Report at:Technavio's report, Global Pea Protein Market 2016-2020, has been prepared based on an in-depth market analysis with inputs from industry experts. The report covers the market landscape and its growth prospects over the coming years. The report also includes a discussion of the key vendors operating in this market.Key vendorsAxiom FoodsBurconCosucraGlanbia NutritionalsNutri-PeaRoquetteSotexproOther prominent vendorsA&B IngredientsAgridientFarbest BrandsFenchemMartin & PleasanceNorben CompanyNOW FoodsShandong Jianyuan FoodsThe ScoularYantai Shuangta FoodMarket driverDemand for high-protein productsFor a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket challengeFormulation challenges in pea protein productsFor a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket trendPea protein as alternative protein source for pet foodFor a full, detailed list, view our reportKey questions answered in this reportWhat will the market size be in 2020 and what will the growth rate be?What are the key market trends?What is driving this market?What are the challenges to market growth?Who are the key vendors in this market space?What are the market opportunities and threats faced by the key vendors?What are the strengths and weaknesses of the key vendors?You can request one free hour of our analysts time when you purchase this market report. Details are provided within the report.Make an Enquiry:Table of ContentPART 01: Executive summaryHighlightsPART 02: Scope of the reportMarket overviewBase yearVendor segmentationNumerical figuresTop-vendor offeringsPART 03: Market research methodologyResearch methodologyEconomic indicatorsPART 04: IntroductionKey market highlightsOverviewPART 05: Market landscapeMarket overviewMarket size and forecastFive forces analysisAbout ResearchMozResearchMoz is the worlds fastest growing collection of market research reports worldwide. Our database is composed of current market studies from over 100 featured publishers worldwide. Our market research databases integrate statistics with analysis from global, regional, country and company perspectives.Contact Us:ResearchMozMr. Nachiket Ghumare, +1-518-621-2074USA-Canada Toll Free: 866-997-4948sales@researchmoz.us
Engineered Wood Product Market - Global Industry Analysis, Growth, Trends, Forecast, 2013 2019
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Transparency Market Research Added A New Report "Engineered Wood Product Market". Engineered wood, also known as composite wood comprises of a number of wood products made by binding veneers, particles, fibers and strands of wood, together with adhesives to form composite materials. They are modeled to absolute design requirements as per the clients specifications and tested to meet international and national standards. They include a variety of products ranging from plywoods to roof trusses.Get Free Sample Report Copy :Increasing demands for cost effective wood products for building applications such as load bearings, structure panels and flooring is expected to drive the growth in the market. With the rising trend of green technology, certain smart products are being encouraged which aid in reducing green house gas emissions. North American countries such as the U.S. have initiated establishment of green building standards in several states. They provide momentum for certified wood products that are linked with low emission levels. Although the future of the market looks significantly bright, challenges such as fluctuation of cost of energy due to volatile oil prices could stall the momentum of the engineering wood market.The global engineering wood market has been impacted due to the controlling trends of the furniture and housing sectors. The market development depends on its type of products such as glulam, laminated veneer lumber (LVL) and oriented strand board (OSB). Despite the downfall of demand in large scale remodeling projects and new houses, the volume consumption is expected to pick up grip owing to rising consumer acceptance.Europe was the largest revenue generator in the engineering wood market with its major contribution in industrial appliances, followed by North America and Asia Pacific. Shenzhen Risewell Industry Co. Ltd, Georgia-Pacific, Boise Cascade, Home Depot and Lowes are some of the companies leading the engineered wood market.About Us :Transparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The companys exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.TMRs data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With extensive research and analysis capabilities, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques to develop distinctive data sets and research material for business reports.Contact Us :-Transparency Market ResearchState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-618-1030Email:sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Hospital Linen Supply and Management Services Market - Global Industry Analysis, Growth, Trends, Forecast 2013 2019
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Hospital linen supplies include scrub wear, patient gowns, thermal blankets, hospital sheets, pediatric gowns, pillow cases, towels, surgical linen, and many other hospital supplies. Clean linen supply and management services are some of the vital elements for hospitals in providing high quality medical care to the patients. Hospital linen supply and management services plays major role in reducing infection rate, increase patient satisfaction and reduce operational costs for hospitals. Efficient supply and management of linen without any defect and delay becomes good support for hospitals to deliver satisfactory healthcare services to the patients. Medical facilities like Intensive Care Units (ICUs) and Operation Theatres (OT) demands more frequent linen supply.Get Free Sample Report Copy :Increasing use of disposable linen and outsourcing of linen supply and services by key players stimulates the market growth of hospital linen supply and management services. The growth of hospital linen supply and management services market is also attributed to novel services provided by key players in various countries. For example, Synergy Health provides large scale linen management services in the United Kingdom and in other European regions. The company also offers distribution and collection of bulk rental service to a total linen management solution in these regions. Additionally, many hospitals provide cost effective linen processing program which will drive the market growth. For example, Angelica Corporation, a leading linen service provider to healthcare industries offer cost-effective and sophisticated linen processing and distribution program to their customers. In addition, the company also offers customized services such as baby blankets, thread count sheets and premium wash cloths for linen supply which will further increase the number of customers. Thus, these types of services will attract new customers and hence supports the market growth.Moreover, some hospitals are contracting with third parties in order to meet increasing demand of linen supply which will further boost the utilization of hospital linen supply and management services. However, shortage of linen coupled with high cost restrains the market growth of hospital linen supply and management services globally. In addition, linen clothes demand regular laundry otherwise it may increase the chances of infections to the patients which further hampers the market growth.Geographically, North America represents the largest market of hospital linen supply and management services. The growth is mainly attributed to the presence of key players like Angelica Corporation, ImageFIRST Healthcare Laundry Specialists and Healthcare Services Group, Inc. This factor would increase the quality of services in North America and hence drives the market growth of hospital linen supply and management services. Europe is considered as the second largest market of hospital linen supply and management services owing to increasing demand of linen supply by healthcare facilities in Europe. In addition, Asia-Pacific region is the emerging market and holds immense growth opportunities for hospital linen supply and management services because of increasing number of medical facilities coupled with development of healthcare infrastructure in Asia-Pacific region. This factor would in turn increase the demand of hospital linen supply and management services hence stimulate the market growth.Various Key Players contributing to the global hospital linen supply and management services market comprises Synergy Health plc, ImageFIRST Healthcare Laundry Specialists, Healthcare Services Group, Inc., Healthcare Services Group, Inc., E-town Laundry Company, Angelica Corporation, Faultless Healthcare Linen, Emes Textiles Pvt. Ltd., Unitex Textile Rental Services and others.About Us :Transparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The companys exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.TMRs data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With extensive research and analysis capabilities, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques to develop distinctive data sets and research material for business reports.Contact Us :-Transparency Market ResearchState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-618-1030Email:sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
[Webinar] NextGen Enterprise Solutions- A Panel Discussion
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July 08, 2016: Looking forward to 2016 and beyond with virtualization and cloud computing as present realities, we are excited to announce our next webinar in the form of a live panel discussion with industry experts. Business enterprises are shifting to Hybrid Ecosystems, integrated with smart IT solutions which is dictating our behavior as employees.In this webinar, industry experts will reveal the secrets of successful implementation IoT, Data Science, Virtual Reality & Augmented Reality in your business.This webinar will help you gain insights on Hybrid Ecosystem and smart solution for IT, Small & Medium scale solutions for eCommerce, mCommerce, print commerce, and employees, along with what and why of SaaS model for B2B & B2C enterprises. The industry experts will also discuss topics like Enterprise de-facto "Online" through Cloud offerings, Engineering Practices & standard processes to assure software quality demands and importantly IOT, Data Science, VR & AR enablement in Hybrid Ecosystem of modern business enterprisesIf you are leading technology and/or operations in your organization in domains like Cloud Offering, Enterprise Mobility, DevOps, SAAS, Database Architecture or IOT & Reality Consulting, you should attend this webinar.To register for this webinar, please click on the link below:Cygnet Infotech is an IT Services company, empowering businesses by delivering diverse and holistic solutions forging long-lasting, win-win relationships.Cygnet Infotech is a distinguished brand when it comes to offering exclusive IT services to its global clients. Renowned for its huge knowledgebase across different verticals and technology, Cygnet emerged as one of the most-recommended IT companies evaluated on different parameters including people, processes and technologies.Cygnet Infotech Pvt. Ltd.16-Swastik Society, Nr. AMCO Bank,Stadium Circle, Navrangpura,Ahmedabad 380009, Gujarat, India
Regulatory Mandates in Oil and Gas, Mining Sectors Enable Large-scale Deployment of Wireless Mesh Networks
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The global wireless mesh networks market is extremely competitive in terms of the services and products offered by leading companies. Transparency Market Research observes that this current scenario of the vendor landscape has compelled market players to focus on the addition of innovative products and services to their portfolio to differentiate their offerings from their rivals.Keeping this in mind, two of the most common and successful strategies that companies have been resorting to are partnerships and acquisitions. Strategic collaborations with other leading players, niche vendors, and other strong contenders in the wireless mesh network market are commonplace in this highly competitive environment, the author of the study states. This has a favorable impact not just in terms of the development of newer products and services but also in terms of improved sales channels.For instance, ABBs acquisition of Tropos Networks has enabled the Zurich-based company to develop new products based on the existing prototypes by combining their own technology with that of Tropos. This has resulted in ABB establishing itself as a major brand and leveraging its present market position to further sales.Download PDF Brochure for more Professional and Technical insights:Developing Regions Hold Lucrative OpportunitiesTMR predicts that the government sector is likely to present a large demand for wireless mesh from the public safety and communication networks owing to the cost-effectiveness of mesh networks. Given that the implementation of these networks will be part of large-scale projects, players in the market can make the most of the high-profit opportunities presented by the government projects despite the low pricing scenario, a TMR analyst states.Moreover, wireless mesh network providers can benefit from low competition in developing regions such as Latin America, Asia Pacific, and the Middle East. These regions provide major opportunities for new entrants, wherein they can make the most of the availability of distributors, resellers, and service providers and develop a healthy position for themselves in the wireless mesh network market, the analyst suggests.Research Report with ToC and Free Analysis:The Opportunity in NumbersThe demand for wireless mesh networks is anticipated to surge from 13.3 mn units in 2015 to 37.2 mn units by 2024. The market worth, on the other hand, is projected to rise from US$3.9 bn in 2015 to US$8.9 bn by the end of the forecast period, registering a 9.7% CAGR. The flexibility that mesh networks offer and their fast and easy deployment drives the adoption of wireless mesh networks, the author finds.Among the major radio frequency bands used, 2.4GHz is the largest segment considering it is the most commonly used frequency band for Wi-Fi applications in most parts of the world. Although this segment will continue leading the market throughout the forecast period, it is predicted to lose market share by 2024. On the other hand, the segment of sub 1GHz is expected to register the highest growth, registering an 11.7% CAGR from 2016 to 2024.This review is based on the findings of a TMR report titled Wireless Mesh Network Market: Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends, and Forecast 2015-2023.Wireless Mesh Network MarketBy Radio Frequency BandSub 1 GHz Band2.4 GHz Band4.9 GHz Band5 GHz BandBy ApplicationHospitalityGovernmentLogisticsMiningEducationHealth CareOthersBy GeographyNorth AmericaU.S.Rest of NAEuropeEU7CISRest of EuropeAsia PacificJapanSouth KoreaChinaTaiwanHong KongRest of ChinaSouth AsiaIndiaPakistanBangladeshSri LankaIndonesiaMalaysiaThailandVietnamMyanmarPhilippinesSingaporeRest of South AsiaAustralasiaAustraliaNew ZealandGuineaRest of APACMiddle East and AfricaGCC CountriesNorth AfricaSouth AfricaRest of MEALatin AmericaBrazilRest of Latin AmericaTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Europe Mobile LBS System Market 2016 Industry Growth, Trends, Analysis, Size, Share, Research and Overview
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http://www.qyresearchreports.com/report/europe-mobile-lbs-system-industry-2016-market-research-report.htm
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In an industry where trends are highly dynamic and client and consumer preferences are a high priority, the players the europe Mobile LBS System market need to adapt to the shifting times in order to keep up with the increasing demand. The researchers for this report have compiled about the europe Mobile LBS System market while heavily considering these changes. This document includes numerous tables, figures, and charts that will be helpful in the simplification of the various categories present in the europe Mobile LBS System market and also the projections for it for the near future. This is executed through a chapter-based format designed to keep the flow of data simple yet wholesome.Fragments of the report can be classified under the various categories of the europe Mobile LBS System market, such as products, technologies, end users or applications, and geography. For each segment of every category, the report provides a high level of details pertaining to the markets current status and its expected shape in the future. Each segment is elaborated on through all its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats for players and investors in the europe Mobile LBS System market. This will impart a high level of clarity to a business and allow it to yield the most out of their next market-based move.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @Porters Five Forces analysis has been utilized to get a holistic snapshot of the europe Mobile LBS System market. This analytical method reveals multiple key factors of the market, such as competitive intensity, the bargaining power of suppliers and consumers, and the overall threat posed by new players in the market. Another perspective of analysis taken up in the report is the allocation of investments coupled with the region-based regulatory frameworks for the europe Mobile LBS System market.Browse Complete Report with TOC @Table of Contents1 Industry Overview of Constant Mobile LBS System1.1 Definition and Specifications of Constant Mobile LBS System1.1.1 Definition of Constant Mobile LBS System1.1.2 Specifications of Constant Mobile LBS System1.2 Classification of Constant Mobile LBS System1.5.2 Europe Major Regions Status of Constant Mobile LBS System2 Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis of Constant Mobile LBS System2.1 Raw Material Suppliers and Price Analysis of Constant Mobile LBS System2.2 Equipment Suppliers and Price Analysis of Constant Mobile LBS System2.3 Labor Cost Analysis of Constant Mobile LBS System2.6 Manufacturing Process Analysis of Constant Mobile LBS System3 Technical Data and Manufacturing Plants Analysis of Constant Mobile LBS System3.1 Capacity and Commercial Production Date of Europe Constant Mobile LBS System Major Manufacturers in 20153.2 Manufacturing Plants Distribution of Europe Constant Mobile LBS System Major Manufacturers in 20153.3 R&D Status and Technology Source of Europe Constant Mobile LBS System Major Manufacturers in 20153.4 Raw Materials Sources Analysis of Europe Constant Mobile LBS System Major Manufacturers in 20154 Capacity, Production and Revenue Analysis of Constant Mobile LBS System by Regions, Types and Manufacturers4.1 Europe Capacity, Production and Revenue of Constant Mobile LBS System by Regions 2011-20164.2 Europe and Major Regions Capacity, Production, Revenue and Growth Rate of Constant Mobile LBS System 2011-20164.4 Europe Capacity, Production and Revenue of Constant Mobile LBS System by Manufacturers 2011-20165 Price, Cost, Gross and Gross Margin Analysis of Constant Mobile LBS System by Regions, Types and Manufacturers5.1 Price, Cost, Gross and Gross Margin Analysis of Constant Mobile LBS System by Regions 2011-20165.2 Price, Cost, Gross and Gross Margin Analysis of Constant Mobile LBS System by Types 2011-20165.3 Price, Cost, Gross and Gross Margin Analysis of Constant Mobile LBS System by Manufacturers 2011-20166 Consumption Volume, Consumption Value and Sale Price Analysis of Constant Mobile LBS System by Regions, Types and Applications6.1 Europe Consumption Volume and Consumption Value of Constant Mobile LBS System by Regions 2011-20166.3 Europe Consumption Volume and Consumption Value of Constant Mobile LBS System by Types 2011-20166.4 Europe Consumption Volume and Consumption Value of Constant Mobile LBS System by Applications 2011-20166.5 Sale Price of Constant Mobile LBS System by Regions 2011-20166.7 Sale Price of Constant Mobile LBS System by Applications 2011-20167 Supply, Import, Export and Consumption Analysis of Constant Mobile LBS System7.1 Supply, Consumption and Gap of Constant Mobile LBS System 2011-20167.2 Europe Capacity, Production, Price, Cost, Revenue, Supply, Import, Export and Consumption of Constant Mobile LBS System 2011-20167.3 USA Capacity, Production, Price, Cost, Revenue, Supply, Import, Export and Consumption of Constant Mobile LBS System 2011-20167.4 EU Capacity, Production, Price, Cost, Revenue, Supply, Import, Export and Consumption of Constant Mobile LBS System 2011-20167.5 China Capacity, Production, Price, Cost, Revenue, Supply, Import, Export and Consumption of Constant Mobile LBS System 2011-20167.6 Japan Capacity, Production, Price, Cost, Revenue, Supply, Import, Export and Consumption of Constant Mobile LBS System 2011-2016Read more @QYResearchReports.com is an unimpeachable source of market research data for clients that comprise acclaimed SMEs, Chinese companies, private equity firms, and MNCs. We provide market research reports on various categories such as Energy, Chemicals, Alternative and Green Energy, Manufacturing, Machinery, Pharmaceuticals and Materials, and Glass.1820 AvenueM Suite #1047Brooklyn, NY 11230United StatesToll Free: 866-997-4948 (USA-CANADA)
Underwater Monitoring System For Oil And Gas Market 2016 Industry Growth, Analysis, Research, Size, Share, Demand and Developments
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http://www.qyresearchreports.com/report/china-underwater-monitoring-system-for-oil-and-gas-industry-2016-market-research-report.htm
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Each player in the China Underwater Monitoring System For Oil And Gas market requires the best perspective on it in order to make the most of their current standing and then some. To achieve this, this publication offers a wide array of facts and statistics aimed at clarifying the status that the China Underwater Monitoring System For Oil And Gas market is in for the current year, and what it is expected to become in the coming years. The users that avail this report can rest assured of accuracy and move into consolidating or expansive mode as per their business ideas. The report goes beyond stating the current and predicted market sizes; it delves into a fragmented method of research to reveal the nuances of each major segment in the China Underwater Monitoring System For Oil And Gas market.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @The intention of this report is to offer its users a precise and simple analysis of the China Underwater Monitoring System For Oil And Gas market and all its related studies. To do so, the market analysts have included the various factors that have been so far responsible for the way the China Underwater Monitoring System For Oil And Gas market has been shaped today through a competitive SWOT analysis. Nothing describes a market better than where all the players are guiding their focus, and the report helps establish and reveal that using a network of data pertaining to the competitors strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Each factor can explain the competitor a bit better, and consequently, the market as a whole.The China Underwater Monitoring System For Oil And Gas market is therefore explained in a guided analytical pattern that provides a 360 degree view of it. This report accomplishes the recreation of a holistic view of the China Underwater Monitoring System For Oil And Gas market using proven analytical methods such as the Porters Five Forces analysis, competitor business strategy overview, and forecast predictions based on elaborate surveys and algorithms for recent market data.Browse Complete Report with TOC @Table of Contents1 Industry Overview of Constant Underwater Monitoring System For Oil And Gas1.1 Definition and Specifications of Constant Underwater Monitoring System For Oil And Gas1.1.1 Definition of Constant Underwater Monitoring System For Oil And Gas1.1.2 Specifications of Constant Underwater Monitoring System For Oil And Gas1.2 Classification of Constant Underwater Monitoring System For Oil And Gas1.5.2 China Major Regions Status of Constant Underwater Monitoring System For Oil And Gas2 Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis of Constant Underwater Monitoring System For Oil And Gas2.1 Raw Material Suppliers and Price Analysis of Constant Underwater Monitoring System For Oil And Gas2.2 Equipment Suppliers and Price Analysis of Constant Underwater Monitoring System For Oil And Gas2.3 Labor Cost Analysis of Constant Underwater Monitoring System For Oil And Gas2.6 Manufacturing Process Analysis of Constant Underwater Monitoring System For Oil And Gas3 Technical Data and Manufacturing Plants Analysis of Constant Underwater Monitoring System For Oil And Gas3.1 Capacity and Commercial Production Date of China Constant Underwater Monitoring System For Oil And Gas Major Manufacturers in 20153.2 Manufacturing Plants Distribution of China Constant Underwater Monitoring System For Oil And Gas Major Manufacturers in 20153.3 R&D Status and Technology Source of China Constant Underwater Monitoring System For Oil And Gas Major Manufacturers in 20153.4 Raw Materials Sources Analysis of China Constant Underwater Monitoring System For Oil And Gas Major Manufacturers in 20154 Capacity, Production and Revenue Analysis of Constant Underwater Monitoring System For Oil And Gas by Regions, Types and Manufacturers4.1 China Capacity, Production and Revenue of Constant Underwater Monitoring System For Oil And Gas by Regions 2011-20164.2 China and Major Regions Capacity, Production, Revenue and Growth Rate of Constant Underwater Monitoring System For Oil And Gas 2011-20164.4 China Capacity, Production and Revenue of Constant Underwater Monitoring System For Oil And Gas by Manufacturers 2011-20165 Price, Cost, Gross and Gross Margin Analysis of Constant Underwater Monitoring System For Oil And Gas by Regions, Types and Manufacturers5.1 Price, Cost, Gross and Gross Margin Analysis of Constant Underwater Monitoring System For Oil And Gas by Regions 2011-20165.2 Price, Cost, Gross and Gross Margin Analysis of Constant Underwater Monitoring System For Oil And Gas by Types 2011-20165.3 Price, Cost, Gross and Gross Margin Analysis of Constant Underwater Monitoring System For Oil And Gas by Manufacturers 2011-20166 Consumption Volume, Consumption Value and Sale Price Analysis of Constant Underwater Monitoring System For Oil And Gas by Regions, Types and Applications6.1 China Consumption Volume and Consumption Value of Constant Underwater Monitoring System For Oil And Gas by Regions 2011-20166.3 China Consumption Volume and Consumption Value of Constant Underwater Monitoring System For Oil And Gas by Types 2011-20166.4 China Consumption Volume and Consumption Value of Constant Underwater Monitoring System For Oil And Gas by Applications 2011-20166.5 Sale Price of Constant Underwater Monitoring System For Oil And Gas by Regions 2011-20166.7 Sale Price of Constant Underwater Monitoring System For Oil And Gas by Applications 2011-20167 Supply, Import, Export and Consumption Analysis of Constant Underwater Monitoring System For Oil And Gas7.1 Supply, Consumption and Gap of Constant Underwater Monitoring System For Oil And Gas 2011-20167.2 China Capacity, Production, Price, Cost, Revenue, Supply, Import, Export and Consumption of Constant Underwater Monitoring System For Oil And Gas 2011-20167.3 USA Capacity, Production, Price, Cost, Revenue, Supply, Import, Export and Consumption of Constant Underwater Monitoring System For Oil And Gas 2011-20167.4 EU Capacity, Production, Price, Cost, Revenue, Supply, Import, Export and Consumption of Constant Underwater Monitoring System For Oil And Gas 2011-20167.5 China Capacity, Production, Price, Cost, Revenue, Supply, Import, Export and Consumption of Constant Underwater Monitoring System For Oil And Gas 2011-20167.6 Japan Capacity, Production, Price, Cost, Revenue, Supply, Import, Export and Consumption of Constant Underwater Monitoring System For Oil And Gas 2011-2016Read more @QYResearchReports.com is an unimpeachable source of market research data for clients that comprise acclaimed SMEs, Chinese companies, private equity firms, and MNCs. We provide market research reports on various categories such as Energy, Chemicals, Alternative and Green Energy, Manufacturing, Machinery, Pharmaceuticals and Materials, and Glass.1820 AvenueM Suite #1047Brooklyn, NY 11230United States
Adverse Climate Changes Threaten Breeding of Salmon, Sardines, and Clams in Aquaculture.
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http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/aquaculture-market.html
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The growing awareness about the health benefits offered by the consumption of fish has propelled the growth of the global aquaculture market.The global aquaculture market is anticipated to expand at a CAGR of 5.10% during the period from 2013 to 2019. The overall market stood at a valuation of US$135.1 bn in 2012 and is expected to be worth US$195.1 bn by 2019.Get Free PDF Brochure :How is China emerging as the fastest growing market for aquaculture?Since 2012, China has been the dominant region in the global aquaculture market. The presence of natural reserves and easy availability of cheap labour have propelled the growth of the aquaculture market in China. The domestic aquaculture companies in China are looking for partnerships to boost the cultivation and export of fishes. For example, China-based Guangxi Hiseaton Foods has recently established a joint venture in Brunei for the cultivation and export of golden pompano fish.While the juvenile pompano fish will be brought from China, it will be raised and processed in Brunei. The U.S. and the Middle East are the key export markets for aquaculture products reared in China. Though the economic slowdown in China has hit the domestic aquaculture market, the region is anticipated to lead the overall market in the near future. The lake farmed salmon from the Qinghai region has witnessed an increasing demand and has accounted for over 60% of Chinas online seafood market.How is climate change impacting the growth of the global aquaculture market?Climate change due to global warming is expected to significantly impede the growth of the global aquaculture market. A strong El Nino this year has led to the warming of oceans and is expected to negatively impact the production of salmon. Issues of algal bloom and sea lice have surfaced due to ocean warming and are also anticipated to hinder the markets growth as they restrict the breeding of salmon, sardines, and clams. Furthermore, poor aquaculture practices have added up to the deterioration of the aquaculture farms.Research Report:What are the key products driving the demand for aquaculture?The key products in the global aquaculture market are mollusks, carps, salmon, crustaceans, trout, milkfish, sea bream, mackerel, sea bass, and others including turbot and catfish. As carps display a higher compatibility to tough environmental conditions as compared to other fishes, they drive the demand from the global aquaculture market. However, in the coming years, the demand for mollusks, clams, and mussels is anticipated to rise phenomenally.The rapidly depleting volume of captured fishes across global reserves is expected to significantly push the growth of the global aquaculture market. The current share of aquaculture in the global fisheries industry is lesser compared to capture fisheries. This gap is projected to be overcome at a fast pace in the near future with the growing focus on aquaculture across the developing economies.About UsTransparency Market Research is a global market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. We are privileged with highly experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, who use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information.Our data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts, so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With a broad research and analysis capability, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques in developing distinctive data sets and research material for business reports.ContactMr. Sudip S90 State Street Suite 700Albany NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453E-mail: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
MAC e-Learning Revolution Pvt Ltd
http://www.macelearn.com
Why MAC? (Yes, we know you must be wondering the same; and rightly so. However, MAC e-Learning indeed is very different from the others and has constantly raised the bar with innovations including the fact that we are the first company on the planet to provide Online Training solutions for Mechanical, Architecture and Civil Engineering Professionals and Graduates. This, however, just begins to cover it, heres more - We are the First to introduce the concept of Non Linear Video Training Methodology. We assist our clients with Real-Time project Execution in all phases and aspects. Highly Experienced Experts from the Industries are associated with us to help in preparing the premium content for Professionals We help bridging Gaps between Industries and Universities along with our Prompt Customer Support Team. We help our professionals and students in achieving their Career Goals and living their Dream.Who We are What we doMAC is a Leading Online Video Training Publisher, Founded in 2015 with the mission in mind to provide High Quality CAD/CAM/CAE training for Working Professionals/Students/Consultants and with innovative new fun way of communication. With High Quality tutorials on the Worlds most widely used CAD/CAM/CAE Software, we are always seeking to push the boundaries of e-Learning and Interactive Education. Since MAC started creating its own CAD software Training Titles, we have published over 50 individual Titles and 100 Titles are under production. MAC continues to innovate and lead the market in New Technology and training techniques, and will continue to do so for many years.We care about your Success in CareerWith our High Quality videos, you're on the right track to mastery.We know you're hoping to achieve something here... not simply learn something That's the reason our Application based Step-by-step instructional exercises/Projects give you pertinent abilities to apply to real word scenario/applications, at this time. Every course is portioned into diverse sections so you can learn consecutively or hop to points of particular premium.Our Training specialists are mentors. Our specialists demonstrate to you HOW the product functions utilizing genuine undertaking cases. As a rule, viable working documents are incorporated so you can work along with the instructor.Expect to ace the abilities you have to succeed Customers let us know they're utilizing their newly discovered aptitudes promptly to unhesitatingly finish activities and enjoyment partners and CLIENTS. We're enthusiastic about conveying the best, most moderate application based cad/cam/cae Software step-by-step videos, ideal for innovative experts, developers, students, working professionals, entrepreneurs, and others. DVD instructional exercises truly do rival classroom-based instructional classes, yet at a small amount of the expense and at your free time.Sumadhura Symphony, Sai Sagar Enclave,RTC Colony, Thrimulgherry.Hyderabad- 500015
Global Hydraulic Turbine and Water Wheel Market to Gain Immensely from Government Support for Renewable Energy.
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Hydropower is one of the cleanest sources of energy across the globe. With the growing shift toward renewable sources of energy such as solar energy and hydropower, the demand for hydraulic turbines and water wheels has surged. For the developing economies, hydropower is very useful as it is a cost effective, environment-friendly, and efficient source of power generation. Smaller generators can be utilized to harness hydropower, thereby reducing the dependence on major power plants and conventional sources of energy.Get Free PDF Brochure :Why is Europe termed as the upcoming region in the global hydraulic turbine and water wheel market?Among the key regions in the global hydraulic turbine and water wheel market, Asia Pacific holds the top spot owing to the incentive-based support offered by governments for the usage of hydraulic turbines and water wheels.However, Europe is anticipated to emerge as the leading region and define the future outlook of the market in the near future. In many European nations, the increased focus on renewable energy has boosted the demand for hydraulic turbines and water wheels. In Ukraine, for instance, the government is planning to double the countrys hydroelectric power output within the next decade. In Romania, the 220-MW Vidraru hydro facility is undergoing refurbishment in order to keep up with the growing demand for hydro energy for the generation of electricity.The European Union has been funding projects for the development of advanced hydraulic turbines. For example, projects such as HYDROACTION and HYLOW are centred on the development of low cost tailor-made small hydro-turbines. In March 2007, EU leaders signed a mandate to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 20%. As part of the mandate, a fifth of all energy consumption across Europe is expected to come from renewable resources by 2020. Such initiatives taken by the EU have propelled the growth of the hydraulic turbine and water wheel market in the region.Research Report:What are the key factors impeding the growth of the global hydraulic turbine and water wheel market?The restrictive design of generators is one of the major factors hindering the growth of the global hydraulic turbine and water wheel market. The design of generators is crucial in the development of torque and rotation of the turbine shaft. With better design of generators, it is easier to gain more efficient power generation rates.According to the International Energy Agency, small-scale hydro schemes have a comparatively localized and modest impact on the environment. The negative socio-economic impacts of large hydropower projects on the surrounding environment are expected to hamper the growth of the global hydraulic turbine and water wheel market.About UsTransparency Market Research is a global market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. We are privileged with highly experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, who use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information.Our data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts, so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With a broad research and analysis capability, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques in developing distinctive data sets and research material for business reports.ContactMr. Sudip S90 State Street Suite 700Albany NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453E-mail: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Global Pharmacovigilance Market: Worldwide Industry Trends, Analysis & Forecast expected to Reach US$6.1 bn by 2020
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http://goo.gl/iCtzwn
The Global Pharmacovigilance Industry 2015 Market Research Report is a professional and in-depth study on the current state of the Pharmacovigilance industry.The report provides a basic overview of the industry including definitions and classifications. The Pharmacovigilance market analysis is provided for the international markets including development trends, competitive landscape analysis, and key regions development status.Development policies and plans are discussed as well as manufacturing processes and cost structures are also analyzed. This report also states import/export consumption, supply and demand Figures, cost, price, revenue and gross margins.The report focuses on global major leading industry players providing information such as company profiles, product specification, price, cost, revenue and contact information.With 146 the report provides key statistics on the state of the industry and is a valuable source of guidance and direction for companies and individuals interested in the market.Get Sample Copy of Report with TOC@TOC:1 Industry Overview1.1 Basic Information of Pharmacovigilance1.1.1 Definition of Pharmacovigilance1.1.2 Classifications of Pharmacovigilance1.1.3 Applications of Pharmacovigilance1.1.4 Characteristics of Pharmacovigilance1.2 Development Overview of Pharmacovigilance1.3 Enter Barriers Analysis of Pharmacovigilance2 Pharmacovigilance International and China Market Analysis2.1 Pharmacovigilance Industry International Market Analysis2.1.1 Pharmacovigilance International Market Development History2.1.2 Pharmacovigilance Competitive Landscape Analysis2.1.3 Pharmacovigilance International Main Countries Development Status2.1.4 Pharmacovigilance International Market Development Trend2.2 Pharmacovigilance Industry China Market Analysis2.2.1 Pharmacovigilance China Market Development History2.2.2 Pharmacovigilance Competitive Landscape Analysis2.2.3 Pharmacovigilance China Main Regions Development Status2.2.4 Pharmacovigilance China Market Development Trend2.3 Pharmacovigilance International and China Market Comparison Analysis3 Environment Analysis of Pharmacovigilance3.1 International Economy Analysis3.2 China Economy Analysis3.3 Policy Analysis of Pharmacovigilance3.4 News Analysis of Pharmacovigilance4 Analysis of Revenue by Classifications4.1 Global Revenue of Pharmacovigilance by Classifications 2010-20154.2 Global Revenue Growth Rate of Pharmacovigilance by Classifications 2010-20154.3 Pharmacovigilance Revenue by Classifications5 Analysis of Revenue by Regions and Applications5.1 Global Revenue of Pharmacovigilance by Regions 2010-20155.2 2010-2015 USA Revenue and Revenue Growth Rate of Pharmacovigilance5.3 2010-2015 Europe Revenue and Revenue Growth Rate of Pharmacovigilance5.4 2010-2015 Japan Revenue and Revenue Growth Rate of Pharmacovigilance5.5 2010-2015 China Revenue and Revenue Growth Rate of Pharmacovigilance6 Analysis of Pharmacovigilance Revenue Market Status 2010-20156.1 Revenue of Pharmacovigilance 2010-20156.2 Revenue Market Share Analysis of Pharmacovigilance 2010-20156.3 Revenue Overview of Pharmacovigilance 2010-20156.4 Gross Margin of Pharmacovigilance 2010-20157 Analysis of Pharmacovigilance Industry Key ManufacturersCompany ProfileRevenue and Gross MarginSWOT Analysis( Online, Sparta Systems, ArisGlobal, Ennov, EXTEDO, Sarjen, UBC )8 Sales Price and Gross Margin Analysis8.1 Sales Price Analysis of Pharmacovigilance8.2 Gross Margin Analysis of Pharmacovigilance9 Marketing Trader or Distributor Analysis of Pharmacovigilance9.1 Marketing Channels Status of Pharmacovigilance9.2 How Countries Meet Their Needs9.2.1 USA9.2.2 China9.2.3 Japan9.2.4 Germany10 Development Trend of Pharmacovigilance Industry 2016-202110.1 Revenue Overview of Pharmacovigilance 2016-202110.2 Sales Price Overview of Pharmacovigilance 2016-202111 Industry Chain Suppliers of Pharmacovigilance with Contact Information11.1 Equipment Suppliers of Pharmacovigilance with Contact Information11.2 Major Suppliers of Pharmacovigilance with Contact Information11.3 Key Consumers of Pharmacovigilance with Contact Information11.4 Supply Chain Relationship Analysis of Pharmacovigilance12 New Project Investment Feasibility Analysis of Pharmacovigilance12.1 New Project SWOT Analysis of Pharmacovigilance12.2 New Project Investment Feasibility Analysis of Pharmacovigilance13 Conclusion of the Global Pharmacovigilance Industry 2015 Market Research ReportMake an enquiry @QYResearch Group is a single destination for all the industry, company and country reports. QYResearch Group also carries the capability to assist you with your customized market research requirements including in-depth market surveys, primary interviews, competitive landscaping, and company profiles. We feature large repository of latest industry reports, leading and niche company profiles, and market statistics. QYResearch Group is the comprehensive collection of market intelligence products and services available on air.3422 SW 15 Street, Suit #8138, Deerfield Beach, Florida 33442,
The Mission Society Highlights Plight of Refugees - And the Struggles to Practice Compassion of Christ
http://www.themissionsociety.org/unfinished-magazine
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http://www.inchristcommunications.com
New Issue of "Unfinished" Magazine Describes On-the-Ground Outreach.Norcross, GA, USA -- As the refugee crisis continues to grow, The Mission Society is taking an in-depth look at the situation's complexities, examining the issues facing Christians who feel called to help but have misgivings about the process.In the summer edition of The Mission Society's magazine, Unfinished, "Rediscovering hospitality: Getting serious about welcoming the stranger," the outreach ministry looks at how Christians are responding, while noting that "God is the God Who Helps.""As we look to help, many of us are afraid, afraid that we will all be pulled under by the tremendous need," said Max Wilkins, president and CEO of The Mission Society. "While God doesn't expect any of us to help everyone in need, I know God has blessed us to be a blessing."I know God wants us to care for those who have been - or will be - placed on our doorsteps," he said, adding that Amnesty International found that 80 percent of the polled people in 27 countries would welcome refugees.In the magazine, Charlie and Miki Chastain, missionaries in Europe with The Mission Society, describe their efforts to assist the refugees. "A night spent volunteering in a refugee camp breaks through apathy and emotional barriers we put up," wrote Charlie Chastain. "When you look into the eyes of these individuals and hear their stories, it becomes abundantly clear that these men, women and children are not that different from us."But for others, the slow pace of resettlement is a source of frustration. In Spain, few refugees have been allowed in by the national government, despite urging from local officials and nonprofit groups. "I'm sure that God's heart is sad," said missionary Laurie Drum in Spain. "People whom He loves are standing at the door, and we cannot open it. With our hands tied, we wait and pray for solutions."Jim Ramsay, Vice President for Mission Ministries, also reflected on the appropriate Christian approach. "As Christians, we are to seek the heart of God in the midst of this unfolding story," he wrote. "How God's people respond matters not only to the physical and emotional needs of the refugee, but our response also matters in how faithfully we are living into our identity as His people."The summer issue of Unfinished also features ethicist and author Christine Pohl, Ph.D., whose article "The Perils of Hospitality," outlines seven risks to opening our lives to others, particularly to those not like us. It's an important practice. "A life of hospitality," she writes, "is basic to what it means to be Jesus' disciples." The magazine also tells the experiences of Christians in North America who helped guide refugees through the complexities of Western society and provides practical advice on how to become engaged in assisting refugees through prayer, donation and personal involvement.The latest issue of Unfinished is available for free atTo schedule an interview with a leader with The Mission Society, contact Ty Mays @ 770-256-8710 or tmays@inchristcommunications.com.Founded in 1984 in the Wesleyan tradition, The Mission Society () exists to mobilize and deploy the body of Christ globally to join Jesus in His mission, especially among the least-reached peoples. The Mission Society recruits, trains and sends Christian missionaries to minister around the world. Its church ministry department provides seminars, workshops and mentoring for congregations in the United States and abroad, helping equip churches for outreach in their communities and worldwide. The Mission Society has 180 missionaries serving in 35 countries.Media Contact:Ty MaysInChrist Communications256 S. Academy Street, Mooresville, NC 28115770-256-8710tmays@inchristcommunications.com
Johannes Hubner Giessen is introducing a new incremental encoder for explosive atmospheres in the heavy-duty sector
Encoder Ex FG 40: Explosion-proof to ATEX and IECEx
Explosive atmospheres are a special field in heavy industry subject to stringent safety requirements. With this in mind Johannes Hubner Giessen developed the incremental encoder Ex FG 40 for applications in extremely harsh environments and stringent explosion protection requirements. These include explosive gas environments such as in the production of oil and gas on platforms and offshore drilling rigs, petrochemical plants, oil and gas processing, paint shops in the steel sector as well as application fields with explosive dust atmospheres such as in mining and bulk materials handling terminals.Dual certification to ATEX and IECExThe Ex FG 40 is certified according to both the latest Directive ATEX 2014/34/EU across the European countries as well as the international IECEx concept for Zones 1 and 2 (gas) and Zones 21 and 22 (dust); the precise marking is: II 2G Ex db IIC T6-T5 Gb (gas) and II 2D Ex tb IIIC T85C Db IP6x (dust). Dual certification means it is possible to deploy the Ex FG 40 in a very large number of countries without the need for additional national certificates of conformity. The device is built to achieve protection level db (flameproof enclosure) for gas-laden environments and tb (protection by enclosure) for dust-laden environments.Extremely robust, user-friendly connection optionsThe Ex FG 40 is a further development of the standard Hubner encoder FG 40, from which the electronics are derived. In contrast, the mechanical components are completely new. Distinguishing features of the device are its extremely rugged construction thanks to the thick-walled enclosure, a long service life due to the large ball bearings and robust stainless steel shaft with feather key, its resistance to shock and vibration as well as the high-level of corrosion protection thanks to the high-quality anodic coating. Despite the high protection class IP66 the Ex FG 40 offers a wide speed range up to 6000 rpm as well as suitability for an ambient temperature range of -40 C to +60 C. It is possible to deploy the device up to 4000 m AMSL.In addition, the device is made of salt-water proof aluminum, which ensures it is predestined for use on offshore drilling rigs and in harbour facilities. The user-friendly wiring option is a particularly special characteristic, for which there is sufficient space in the large terminal box. The flange attachment option with 30 grid alignment makes it possible to install the encoder perfectly aligned to the lay of the cable. Since the terminal box cover can be removed from the rear of the Ex FG 40 the user is able to terminate the wiring for the power supply and signals according to requirements. That facilitates variable cable lengths; completely sealed devices can only offer a predetermined fixed cable length. If the user has several encoders in use, for example installed at various motors, the latter means he will have to carry a large stock of individual device types with different cable lengths. Installing the Ex FG 40 means it is possible to reduce the variety of versions and lower the costs for spare parts as a consequence.Two redundant output signals possibleIt is possible to deploy the Ex FG 40 with dual signal output for applications requiring a second output signal. A second output signal can be required, for example, for higher-level controls or as a redundant signal where increased safety requirements are imposed. The dual signal output means the user does not need to install a second encoder or an additional pulse splitter. The dual signal output is optionally available with HTL, TTL or sinus signals. Utilizing precision optical scanning the Ex FG 40 generates a very high signal quality, with up to 1 million pulses per rotation. The maximum transmission frequency is up to 200 kHz.Johannes Hubner Giessen operates in the following fields of industry: Steel and rolling mills, mining, container cranes, oil and gas industry, railway technology, hydroelectric power plants, wind turbine generators and power systems. The company is widely recognized as the industry leader in the fields of measurement, encoder and drive technologies. In more than 80 years Johannes Hubner Giessen has installed several thousand applications in heavy industry. The specialist offers an all-round complete service from determining on-site installation conditions through to installing the complete encoder systems. The company presently employs 100 staff.Company contact:Johannes Huebner Fabrik elektrischerMaschinen GmbHFrank TscherneyManaging DirectorSiemensstr. 7D-35394 GiessenTel.: +49 641 / 79 69-0Fax: +49 (0) 641 / 73 645frank.tscherney@huebner-giessen.comPress:Wassenberg Public Relations furIndustrie und Technologie GmbHMichaela WassenbergRollnerstr. 43D-90408 NurembergTel.: +49 911 / 598 398-0Fax: +49 911 / 598 398-18m.wassenberg@wassenberg-pr.de
Russell Bedford discuss the UK EU referendum: doing business in a post-Brexit world
Britains vote to leave the EU has left politicians and markets reeling. But while the new political order undoubtedly presents challenges, those businesses most likely to weather the storm will be those with the flexibility to adapt to it. And for these, the new economic order could promise opportunities in the longer term.After the stunning 52:48 vote in favour of the UK leaving the European Union on 23 June 2016, businesses the next day woke up to a new world. Initial responses from politicians as much as the markets have done little to abate a sense of disbelief. But in the face of such unprecedented change, it would be wrong to lose a sense of context. The FTSEs 100 has now recovered to the level it has maintained since September 2015; commentators point to a firming market in safe-haven gilts; the pounds dramatic adjustment augurs a new and more competitive environment for exporters.The Brexit vote, of course, raises issues of immediate uncertainty for businesses in terms of financial reporting, indirect taxation, financial services, M&A, mobility and personnel particularly for those trading cross-border. A situation not helped by current controversies as to when Article 50 the start-point for Brexit negotiations might (or should) be invoked, and the likely response of EU Member States, when it is.Against this background, one point must be made. Post-2008, for any UK or European SME business owner it is a fact that change and uncertainty are the new normal. In such a challenging business environment, flexibility is key. And SMEs and mid-market organisations have proved themselves among the most adept at this.In the short term, Russell Bedford member firms in the UK, Europe and beyond it will be working closely with clients to monitor the full implications of the UKs new relationships, as these become clear.The immediate outlook for many businesses is likely to be one of reflection and readjustment. But, in an environment of uncertainty and change, those best placed to benefit from the opportunities provided by new business environment are likely to be those most able to adjust to it. It could well be the case that, for many, there might be more to gain than to fear.About Russell Bedford InternationalEstablished in 1983, Russell Bedford International is a global network of independent firms of accountants, auditors, tax advisers and business consultants. Ranked amongst the worlds leading accounting and audit networks, Russell Bedford is represented by some 600 partners, 5000 staff and 290 offices in more than 100 countries in Europe, the Americas, the Middle East, Africa and Asia-Pacific. Russell Bedford International is a member of the IFAC Forum of Firms and a member of EGIAN, the European Group of International Accounting Networks and Associations.Russell Bedford International3rd Floor, Paternoster House65 St Paul's ChurchyardLondonEC4M 8ABUnited Kingdom
Russell Bedford Poland ranked in top four mid-tier tax advisers
Business newspaper DGP names Russell Bedford Poland as one of the countrys top firmsPolands leading daily legal and business journal, Dziennik Gazeta Prawna (DGP), has ranked Russell Bedford International member firm Russell Bedford Poland as one of the one of the countrys top four mid-tier tax and legal consulting firms.Conducted annually for the past 10 years, the DGP survey ranks the countrys leading tax advisers in terms of revenues, client numbers and staff levels over the preceding 12 months. Winning firms are then ranked in three categories, according to size the Big Four, firms with more than 10 qualified professionals, and firms below that level.Russell Bedford Poland was ranked in fourth place within the mid-tier category behind three other local firms.Andrzej Dmowski, managing partner of Russell Bedford Poland, commented: "This ranking is the best proof that our firm is growing rapidly and is constantly aiming to provide services at the highest level. This year we are celebrating the fifth anniversary of our re-branding as Russell Bedford Poland. I believe our success is due to our very strong market position in the fields of taxation, law and training and to our tailored approach to each client. Looking back at all we have achieved in the last five years, I am very proud of the fact that we have been able to help so many people and businesses."In a separate survey by the national daily newspaper Rzeczpospolita, taking into account all kinds of tax advisory service providers (consulting firms, specialist tax advisers, law firms, etc.), Russell Bedford Poland was ranked 17th by revenue and 29th based on the number of licensed tax advisers.About Russell Bedford InternationalEstablished in 1983, Russell Bedford International is a global network of independent firms of accountants, auditors, tax advisers and business consultants. Ranked amongst the worlds leading accounting and audit networks, Russell Bedford is represented by some 600 partners, 5000 staff and 290 offices in more than 100 countries in Europe, the Americas, the Middle East, Africa and Asia-Pacific. Russell Bedford International is a member of the IFAC Forum of Firms and a member of EGIAN, the European Group of International Accounting Networks and Associations.Russell Bedford International3rd Floor, Paternoster House65 St Paul's ChurchyardLondonEC4M 8ABUnited Kingdom
Continuing exploration of alternative energy sources due to increasing demand will drive hydrogen generator market growth: GMI
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Hydrogen Generator Market size was valued over USD 735 million in 2015 and with estimated gains over 5.3% CAGR by 2023. Continuing exploration of alternative energy sources due to increasing demand coupled with depleting fossil fuels will drive industry growth. Stringent regulatory norms for cleaner fuels such as hydrogen by electrolysis of water using renewable energy source such as wind, solar, & water and desulfurize petroleum products and is likely to propel demand from 2016 to 2023.Global hydrogen generator market is broadly categorized on basis of process, product, application, and capacity. Easy abundant availability of low cost natural gas feedstock coupled with high percentage purity hydrogen is anticipated to be key propelling factor for industry growth. In addition, hydrogen is used in food & beverage sector to remove harmful viruses and bacteria, which may positively impact on product demand.Request for an in-depth table of contents for this report @Chemical processing application was dominant and accounted more than 55% of global share in 2015. However, fuel cell technology is likely to be fastest rising market due to increase in demand from automotive sector for abiding pollution free standards. In addition, this technology is expensive compared to internal combustion engine, which may restrict its application across commercial vehicles segment. Hydrogen transportation requires high safety as it is a highly flammable fuel. Furthermore, improper distribution channels increases overall costs which may impose restrain for hydrogen generator market.However, industry has witnessed huge investments to restrict cost related with production transportation, and distribution due to rapid industrialization coupled with rising green fuel energy solution across military, residential, and commercial which may positively impact on hydrogen generator market size growth. This will reduce dependency on conventional energy source such as fossil fuel which is comparatively economic but hazardous.Refining application segment was another significant market share contributor in 2015. Refining industry comprises production of lubricating & fuel oils, kerosene, propane, gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) products. Increasing spending on refining and downstream application coupled with exploration of shale gas reserves in the U.S is likely to drive hydrogen generator market during the forecast periodBrowse complete summary of this report @Hydrogen generator market is segregated in terms of product (On site and Portable). On site product was largest market share contributor in 2015 and comprised more than 70% volume globally. Portable product produces temporary electricity, which may find applications across remote construction site to power tools and lights.Hydrogen generator market is further segmented by its process type (steam reformer, electrolysis). Steam reformer process segment was dominant with over 80% share in 2015. Although, electrolysis process based hydrogen generators are preferred solution for ample scale hydrogen production over steam reformers. They are favorable and convenient product system which achieves desired traits for hydrogen production owing to less energy consumption, and minimal installation and operation costs.North America dominated the hydrogen generator market in 2015, and would continue to grow during the forecast period. Increasing demand for hydrogen in the U.S and Canada across power generation plants and refueling stations (for FCEV) will stimulate hydrogen generator market demand. Europe was prominent market accounting above 35.6% of global industry share in 2015. This region is likely to grow owing to presence of major industry players. However, the region is forecast to witness moderate growth rate over the forecast timeframe.About Global Market InsightsGlobal Market Insights, Inc., headquartered in Delaware, U.S., is a global market research and consulting service provider; offering syndicated and custom research reports along with growth consulting services. Our business intelligence and industry research reports offer clients with penetrative insights and actionable market data specially designed and presented to aid strategic decision making. These exhaustive reports are designed via a proprietary research methodology and are available for key industries such as chemicals, advanced materials, technology, renewable energy and biotechnology.Media ContactCompany Name: Global Market Insights Inc.Contact Person: Jack DavisPhone: 1 302-846-7766Address:29L Atlantic Avenue, Suite L 105City: Ocean ViewState: DelawareCountry: United StatesWebsite:
Global Home Healthcare Equipment Market Outlook 2016-2021
Home Healthcare Equipment
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http://www.qyresearchgroup.com/market-analysis/global-home-healthcare-equipment-market-outlook-2016-2021.html
Global Home Healthcare Equipment Industry 2016 Market Size Share Growth Forecast Research and DevelopmentThe Global Home Healthcare Equipment Industry report gives a comprehensive account of the Global Home Healthcare Equipment market. Details such as the size, key players, segmentation, SWOT analysis, most influential trends, and business environment of the market are mentioned in this report. Furthermore, this report features tables and figures that render a clear perspective of the Home Healthcare Equipment market. The report features an up-to-date data on key companies product details, revenue figures, and sales. Furthermore, the details also gives the Global Home Healthcare Equipment market revenue and its forecasts. The business model strategies of the key firms in the Home Healthcare Equipment market are also included. Key strengths, weaknesses, and threats shaping the leading players in the market have also been included in this research report.Get Sample Copy of Report @The report gives a detailed overview of the key segments in the market. The fastest and slowest growing market segments are covered in this report. The key emerging opportunities of the fastest growing Global Home Healthcare Equipment market segments are also covered in this report. Each segments and sub-segments market size, share, and forecast are available in this report. Additionally, the region-wise segmentation and the trends driving the leading geographical region and the emerging region has been presented in this report.Get Complete Report with TOC :The study on the Global Home Healthcare Equipment market also features a history of the tactical mergers, acquisitions, collaborations, and partnerships activity in the market. Valuable recommendations by senior analysts about investing strategically in research and development can help new entrants or established players penetrate the emerging sectors in the Home Healthcare Equipment market. Investors will gain a clear insight on the dominant players in this industry and their future forecasts. Furthermore, readers will get a clear perspective on the high demand and the unmet needs of consumers that will enhance the growth of this market.Table of ContentChapter One Home Healthcare Equipment Industry Overview1.1 Home Healthcare Equipment Definition1.1.1 Home Healthcare Equipment Definition1.1.2 Product Specifications1.2 Home Healthcare Equipment Classification1.3 Home Healthcare Equipment Application Field1.4 Home Healthcare Equipment Industry Chain Structure1.5 Home Healthcare Equipment Industry Regional Overview1.6 Home Healthcare Equipment Industry Policy Analysis1.7 Home Healthcare Equipment Industry Related Companies Contact InformationAbout Us:QYResearch Group is a single destination for all the industry, company and country reports. QYResearch Group also carries the capability to assist you with your customized market research requirements including in-depth market surveys, primary interviews, competitive landscaping, and company profiles. We feature large repository of latest industry reports, leading and niche company profiles, and market statistics. QYResearch Group is the comprehensive collection of market intelligence products and services available on air.Contact US:Joel John3422 SW 15 Street, Suit #8138,Deerfield Beach, Florida 33442,United StatesTel: +1-386-310-3803GMT Tel: +49-322 210 92714USA/Canada Toll Free No. 1-855-465-46513422 SW 15 Street, Suit #8138, Deerfield Beach, Florida 33442,3422 SW 15 Street, Suit #8138, Deerfield Beach, Florida 33442,
United States Home Healthcare Equipment Market 2016 Industry Trends, Survey, Growth and Forecast
Home Healthcare Equipment
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http://www.qyresearchgroup.com/market-analysis/united-states-home-healthcare-equipment-market-2015-industry.html
United States Home Healthcare Equipment Industry 2016 Market Size Share Growth Forecast Research and DevelopmentThe United States Home Healthcare Equipment Industry report gives a comprehensive account of the United States Home Healthcare Equipment market. Details such as the size, key players, segmentation, SWOT analysis, most influential trends, and business environment of the market are mentioned in this report. Furthermore, this report features tables and figures that render a clear perspective of the Home Healthcare Equipment market. The report features an up-to-date data on key companies product details, revenue figures, and sales. Furthermore, the details also gives the United States Home Healthcare Equipment market revenue and its forecasts. The business model strategies of the key firms in the Home Healthcare Equipment market are also included. Key strengths, weaknesses, and threats shaping the leading players in the market have also been included in this research report.Get Sample Copy of Report @The report gives a detailed overview of the key segments in the market. The fastest and slowest growing market segments are covered in this report. The key emerging opportunities of the fastest growing United States Home Healthcare Equipment market segments are also covered in this report. Each segments and sub-segments market size, share, and forecast are available in this report. Additionally, the region-wise segmentation and the trends driving the leading geographical region and the emerging region has been presented in this report.Get Complete Report with TOC :The study on the United States Home Healthcare Equipment market also features a history of the tactical mergers, acquisitions, collaborations, and partnerships activity in the market. Valuable recommendations by senior analysts about investing strategically in research and development can help new entrants or established players penetrate the emerging sectors in the Home Healthcare Equipment market. Investors will gain a clear insight on the dominant players in this industry and their future forecasts. Furthermore, readers will get a clear perspective on the high demand and the unmet needs of consumers that will enhance the growth of this market.Table of ContentChapter One Home Healthcare Equipment Industry Overview1.1 Home Healthcare Equipment Definition1.1.1 Home Healthcare Equipment Definition1.1.2 Product Specifications1.2 Home Healthcare Equipment Classification1.3 Home Healthcare Equipment Application Field1.4 Home Healthcare Equipment Industry Chain Structure1.5 Home Healthcare Equipment Industry Regional Overview1.6 Home Healthcare Equipment Industry Policy Analysis1.7 Home Healthcare Equipment Industry Related Companies Contact InformationAbout Us:QYResearch Group is a single destination for all the industry, company and country reports. QYResearch Group also carries the capability to assist you with your customized market research requirements including in-depth market surveys, primary interviews, competitive landscaping, and company profiles. We feature large repository of latest industry reports, leading and niche company profiles, and market statistics. QYResearch Group is the comprehensive collection of market intelligence products and services available on air.Contact US:Joel John3422 SW 15 Street, Suit #8138,Deerfield Beach, Florida 33442,United StatesTel: +1-386-310-3803GMT Tel: +49-322 210 92714USA/Canada Toll Free No. 1-855-465-46513422 SW 15 Street, Suit #8138, Deerfield Beach, Florida 33442,3422 SW 15 Street, Suit #8138, Deerfield Beach, Florida 33442,
Frontier Pharma: Hematological Cancers - Highly Innovative Pipeline Continues Trend towards Targeted, Patient-Specific Therapies | Researchmoz
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Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Frontier Pharma: Hematological Cancers - Highly Innovative Pipeline Continues Trend towards Targeted, Patient-Specific Therapies" to its huge collection of research reports.Hematological malignancies are a class of cancer that affect the blood, lymph nodes and bone marrow, and include numerous forms of leukemia, lymphoma and myeloma. Hematological malignancies constituted 9% of all newly diagnosed malignancies in the US in 2011, with data indicating that lymphomas are more prevalent than leukemia or myeloma. Excluding acute lymphocytic leukemia and Hodgkins lymphoma, these types of malignancy are generally associated with increasing age. Therefore, considering the aging population globally, this class of malignancy is likely to become more prevalent.The report assesses first-in-class innovation in the hematological cancer pipeline, highlighting key trends in first-in-class product distribution. Analysis reveals that the hematological cancer pipeline is among the most innovative in the industry, with 463 first-in-class products, representing 45.3% of the pipeline with a disclosed molecular target.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @The first-in-class targets in the pipeline are numerous and varied in nature. Cancer immunotherapies are the most common, with a total of 128 across all stages of development, followed by the signal transduction group of targets. The most commercially successful targeted drugs in the market fall into these two categories, including Rituxan (a cancer immunotherapy) and Gleevec (a signal transducer). The other target families have much fewer first-in-class products, reflecting the strong interest in cancer immunotherapies and targets implicated in signal transduction.Over the past 15 years, the treatment of hematological malignancies has changed significantly, with the development of targeted therapies. These developments have been based on the growing understanding of the signaling pathways involved in disease pathogenesis. A notable example is the approval of Rituxan in 1997, which is used to treat multiple types of hematological malignancies, including Non-Hodgkins lymphoma. Analysis indicates that the current pipeline is following this trend of focusing on innovative, targeted therapies.ScopeThe hematological cancers market is characterized by commercially successful therapies.Which classes of drug dominate the market?What additional benefits have newly approved therapies brought to the market?The pipeline contains a range of molecule types and molecular targets, with a strong emphasis on targeted therapies, as opposed to chemotherapeutic agents.Which molecular targets appear most frequently in the pipeline?To what degree is the pipeline penetrated by first-in-class innovation?Which target families have the most first-in-class products?First-in-class products differ substantially in their clinical potential, based on their alignment to disease-causing pathways.How well are first-in-class targets aligned to known disease-causing pathways?Which targets are specifically found in early-stage development?Which are the most promising first-in-class targets in early-stage development?There have been 284 licensing deals and 238 co-development deals pertaining to hematological cancer products since 2006.Which territories show the most deal activity?What were the trends in deal completion by product stage of development?Which of the first-in-class products in development are not currently involved in a licensing or co-development deal, and therefore represent investment opportunities?Reasons to buyThis report will allow you to -Understand the current clinical and commercial landscape. It includes a comprehensive study of disease pathogenesis, diagnosis, prognosis and the treatment options available.Visualize the composition of the hematological cancers market in terms of dominant molecule types and targets, highlighting what the current unmet needs are and how they can be addressed. This knowledge allows a competitive understanding of gaps in the current market.Analyze the hematological cancers pipeline and stratify by stage of development, molecule type and molecular target. There are strong signs in the pipeline that the industry is seeking novel approaches to treating hematological cancers.Assess the therapeutic potential of first-in-class targets. Using a proprietary matrix, first-in-class products have been assessed and ranked according to clinical potential. Promising early-stage targets have been reviewed in greater detail.Identify commercial opportunities in the hematological cancers deals landscape by analyzing trends in licensing and co-development deals and producing a curated list of hematological cancer therapies that are not yet involved in deals, and may be potential investment opportunities.Make an Enquiry of this report @About ResearchMozResearchMoz is the one stop online destination to find and buy market research reports & Industry Analysis. We fulfill all your research needs spanning across industry verticals with our huge collection of market research reports. We provide our services to all sizes of organizations and across all industry verticals and markets. Our Research Coordinators have in-depth knowledge of reports as well as publishers and will assist you in making an informed decision by giving you unbiased and deep insights on which reports will satisfy your needs at the best price.Mr. NachiketState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesWebsite @Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Follow us on LinkedIn @
US Regenerative Medicine Industry Analysis and Research Report 2016-2020
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Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Regenerative Medicine Market in the US 2016-2020" to its huge collection of research reports.Market outlook of the regenerative medicine market in the USRegenerative medicine deals with the process of using therapeutically-induced or laboratory grown human tissue to treat diseased or injured human cells, tissues, or organs. It is an emerging field of treatment that helps in producing new cells to substitute malfunctioning or injured cells as a vehicle to treat disease and injury. The regenerative medicine market can be characterized into three major modalities, namely tissue engineering, biomaterials/biomolecules, and stem cell therapy.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @Technavios market research analysts expect the regenerative medicine market in the US to grow at a fast pace, posting a remarkable CAGR of more than 33% during the forecast period because of the growing demand for tissue-engineered and stem cell products for the treatment of various diseases. The potential of these medicines in regenerating diseased organs is one of the major factors that drives the market in the US. The stem cells application and advancements in nanotechnology will further drive the progress in this market.Segmentation by product and analysis of - cell therapy and scaffoldCell therapy helps in treating the diseases or to improving the functioning of the existing cells, by administrating of cells into the body. This therapy addresses medical conditions related to the bone, cartilage, heart, skin, digestive system, reproductive system, eye, blood, spine, brain, and the nervous system. In 2015, cell therapy segment accounted for approximately 80% of the market share.The report offers an analysis of each of the following segments and discusses its impact on the overall market growth - Cell therapy ScaffoldSegmentation by application and analysis of - dermatology, musculoskeletal, ocular, and cardiovascularThe year 2015 saw the precedence of the dermatology segment, accounting for a market share of more than 51%. Dermatology includes the treatment of burns and chronic wounds that requires a quick response, and skin grafting is essential in many cases. Factors such as the increase in obesity and diabetes, growing elderly population, and an increase in life expectancy are some of the causes contributing to the growth of the dermatology market.The report offers an analysis of each of the following segments and discusses its impact on the overall market growth - Dermatology Musculoskeletal Ocular CardiovascularCompetitive landscape and key vendors - AkzoNobel, Jotun, PPGRegenerative medicine market in the US is highly competitive and fragmented because of the presence of several established vendors and this competitive environment is expected to intensify with advances in R&D and technological innovations. International players are likely to acquire regional or local players to enhance their products and expand their market share during the forecast period.The top vendors in the market are - Acelity Mesoblast Organogenesis Reprocell StrykerOther prominent vendors include Aastrom Biosciences, Acologix, AlloCure, Allosource, Alphatec Spine, Altrika, Amorcyte, Argos Therapeutics, Athersys, Avita Medical, Axogen, Bacterin International, Baxter, Bellicum Pharmaceuticals, BioCardia, BioLife Solutions, BioRestorative Therapies, BioTissue Technologies, Bluebird Bio, BrainStorm Cell Therapeutics, Calimmune, Capricor, Celyad (Cardio3 BioSciences), Cell Medica, Cesca, CryoLife, Cynata Therapeutics, Cytori, Cytori Therapeutics, Dendreon, DiscGenics, Fate Therapeutics, Fibrocell, Fibrocell Science, Forticell Bioscience, Fortress Biotech, Gamida Cell, Geron, Harvard Apparatus Regenerative Technology, Healthpoint, Histogen, Histogenics, Humacyte, Immunocellular Therapeutics P, Integra Life Sciences, Intercytex, InVivo Therapeutics, iSTO Technologies, Juventas Therapeutics, Kensey Nash, Kiadis Pharma, Kinetic Concept, Living Cell Technologies, MaxCyte, Medtronics, Mesoblast, MiMedix Group, Nanofiber Solutions CTO, Nanotope, Neuralstem, Newlink Genetics, Northwest Biotherapeutics, NovaRx, Ocata Therapeutics, Opexa , Therapeutics, Organovo Holdings, Orteq, Orthofix, Osiris Therapeutics, Osteotech, Pfizer, Pluristem Therapeutics, Prima BioMed, Q Therapeutics, RhinoCyte, RTI Surgical, SanBio, Sangamo, Shire Regenerative Medicine, StemCells, Stratatech, TEI Biosciences, Tengion, Thermo Fischer Scientific, TiGenix, Tissue Genesis, TissueGene, VentriNova, Vericel, ViaCyte, Vistagen, and Zimmer.Key questions answered in the report include What will the market size and the growth rate be in 2020? What are the key factors driving the regenerative medicine market in the US? What are the key market trends impacting the growth of the regenerative medicine market in the US? What are the challenges to market growth? Who are the key vendors in the regenerative medicine market in the US? What are the market opportunities and threats faced by the vendors in the regenerative medicine market in the US? What are the key outcomes of the five forces analysis of the regenerative medicine market in the US?Make an Enquiry of this report @About ResearchMozResearchMoz is the one stop online destination to find and buy market research reports & Industry Analysis. We fulfill all your research needs spanning across industry verticals with our huge collection of market research reports. We provide our services to all sizes of organizations and across all industry verticals and markets. Our Research Coordinators have in-depth knowledge of reports as well as publishers and will assist you in making an informed decision by giving you unbiased and deep insights on which reports will satisfy your needs at the best price.Mr. NachiketState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesWebsite @Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Follow us on LinkedIn @
Global HVAC Market by (Equipment, Applications and Regions) 2016 -2020; New Market Research Report by NOVONOUS
Global HVAC Market by (Equipment, Applications and Regions) 2016 -2020
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http://www.novonous.com/publications/global-hvac-market-equipment-applications-and-regions-2016-2020
http://www.novonous.com
NOVONOUS has announced the addition of Global HVAC Market by (Equipment, Applications and Regions) 2016 -2020" research report to their websiteThe global HVAC market is skewed towards unorganized and local regional players with around 55% market share in terms of revenue and sales in hands of multiple local regional players. This report covers a detailed analysis of 10 companies which comprises of around 30% share in total revenue of the global HVAC market.The objective of this report is to analyze the current scenario of global HVAC industry and to project the market growth over the next 5 financial years. NOVONOUS estimates that Global HVAC market is currently expected to grow at an average annual growth rate of 7% by the year 2020. The growth will be fueled by high growth in emerging economies which will increase the industry base and infrastructure in the regions leading to high demand for HVAC instruments. Increased construction activities, growing replacement demand in developed countries, need for energy efficient HVAC systems and developing infrastructure in emerging countries will be the key driving factors for the industry.Ambarish Kumar Verma, Managing Director of NOVONOUS Business Consulting Private Limited said Worldwide industry players in the market are adopting different strategies to increase their market share. Diversification and market development are the two most prominent strategies adopted by players in APAC, whereas product development and market penetration are common strategies adopted by players in North America and Europe. Minimizing competition through M&As has been adopted as a market strategy. The fact that small and regional players hold significant shares in the market will support such strategies and provide opportunities for players to bolster their footholds in the market.The sector is likely to see good progress and growth over the next 5 years as the global HVAC market is experiencing a steady push due to recovering world economies, growing industrial base, rising construction activities, helping government rules and regulations, various promotional campaigns from government, rising standard of living and better purchasing power in the society. The trends which are likely to drive the market growth in the near future will be building automation systems, advanced monitoring systems and intelligent technologies, efficient maintenance and personal services for HVAC systems, increased focus on energy savings and maintenance, rise in adoption of smartphones for controlling HVAC devices, implementation of zero-energy systems, rise in use of DEVap (Desiccant-Enhanced Evaporative Air Conditioning) systems, shift toward green technology, growth of smart cities and emergence of smart thermostats. However, environmental regulations and guidelines, high market competition and capital intensive market can be a barrier for the growth of this sector.This report provides segment-wise and usage wise insights on global HVAC market, growth drivers and inhibitors, key trends, profiles of key players, major challenges for new players, current and future trends and recommendations for policy makers, manufacturers, end users and investors.To know more about this newly launched market research report visit Global HVAC Market by (Equipment, Applications and Regions) 2016 -2020Spanning over 162 pages and 121 exhibits, Global HVAC Market by (Equipment, Applications and Regions) 2016 -2020 report presents an in-depth assessment of the industry from 2016 till 2020.Scope of Global HVAC Market 2016 2020 Report:- This report provides detailed information about Global HVAC Market including future market forecasts.- This report identifies the need for focusing on HVAC sector.- This report provides detailed information on growth forecasts for overall Global HVAC market up to 2020.- This report provides detailed information on Equipment wise (Heating, Air Conditioning, Ventilation) growth forecasts for global HVAC market up to 2020.- This report provides detailed information on application wise (Residential and Commercial) growth forecasts for global HVAC market up to 2020.- This report provides detailed information on geography wise (Asia pacific, Africa & Middle east, Europe, Latin & South America and North America) growth forecasts for global HVAC market up to 2020.- The report identifies the growth drivers and inhibitors for global HVAC market.- This report has detailed profiles of 10 key players in Global HVAC market covering their business strategy, financial performance, future forecasts and SWOT analysis.- This report covers in details the competitive landscape in Global HVAC market.- This report identifies key industry bodies and associations and their role in Global HVAC market.- This report provides PESTLE (political, economic, social, technological, legal and environmental) analysis for Global HVAC market.- This report provides Porter's Five Forces analysis for Global HVAC market.- This report provides SWOT (strengths, weakness, opportunities and threats) analysis for Global HVAC market.- This report identifies the key challenges faced by new players in Global HVAC market.- This report provides future trends and opportunities for Global HVAC market.- This report also provides strategic recommendations for policy makers, end users, service providers and investors.For more information and purchase this report please visit:About NOVONOUS Business Consulting Private LimitedNOVONOUS helps organizations differentiate themselves, break entry barriers, track investments, develop strategies and see through corporate fog by providing business intelligence that works for their business.Press Contact:Mr. Sudeep ChakravartyDirector - OperationsNOVONOUS Business Consulting Private LimitedNo. 579, Ground Floor, 16th Cross, 10th Main, ISRO Layout, Bangalore, India 560078Tel USA: +1-302-703-7787Tel India: +91- 8762746600
Dr. Bharat Agravat Received Honored with an Invisible Braces Credential from Dr Maria Orellana
Dr. Bharat Agravat Received Honored with an Invisible Braces Credential from Dr Maria Orellana
http://drbharat.agravat.com/invisible-braces-for-adult
http://www.drbharat.agravat.com/what-are-clear-braces-or-invisible-braces
http://www.dentalimplant.agravat.com
Dr. Bharat Agravat received credential on invisible braces ( Transparent and Alignment of crocked teeth at home without traditional metal braces ) and spent a well day for advanced orthodontic learning also intense training with the Master Dr. Maria Orellana, DDS, MSc, PhD. Director of Orthodontics, University of California, Behalf of ClearPath Orthodontics USA.The clear braces are hygienic, comfortable to use and almost invisible that can hardly be found by any naked eyes. These advanced invisible braces are a perfect solution for people who want to improve the appearance of their smile without shouting unnecessary care to their teeth in the procedure.The treatments procedure of clear invisible braces are based on transparent orthodontic aligner is a comfortable, lifestyle-friendly and clear alternative to braces possible to straighten teeth without braces, wires and brackets.Dr. Bharat Agravat has been working in Ahmedabad, Gujarat in India to help the local people get their smile back that they lost because of their Crowding of teeth, Crooked teeth, Spacing between teeth, Deep bite, Cross bite and Open bite. The clear braces provided Dr. Bharat Agravat can easily straighten and align teeth that are crooked or turned. Clear aligners work whether teeth are crowded or spaced and can correct most overbites and under bites. People at any age can use these invisible braces to straighten their teeth.Dr Bharat Agravat said, Many people ask me, Can adults wear braces? I say its never too late to perfect your beautiful smile. Our transparent braces straighten your teeth at any age without metal braces. Alignment of crocked teeth at home naturally with invisible adult clears braces.For more information on invisible teeth braces in Ahmedabad, India please visit their website at:andAbout Dr Bharat AgravatDr Bharat Agravat: Indias iconic cosmetic Implants dentist is the personification of natural flair and magnetic charisma coupled with an inborn talent in the field of cosmetic dentistry 17 years experienced and award winner brings to you wide and amazing range of Smile Makeover helps to enhance beauty within the people with dental problems.Contact Information:Dr. Bharat Agravat Cosmetic Implants DentistAddress: Mohini Complex, First Floor, Beside Pride Hotel, Near Judges Bungalow road,, Satellite, Bodakdev, Ahmedabad, Gujarat 380054Email: dragravat9@rediffmail.comMobile/WhatsApp: 098257 63666Website:Best Cosmetic Implants Dentist India: drbharat.agravat.comAffordable dental implants cost in Ahmedabad India:Instant Dental Smile Makeover India: smileinhour.comDr Bharat Agravat: Indias iconic cosmetic Implants dentist is the personification of natural flair and magnetic charisma coupled with an inborn talent in the field of cosmetic dentistry 17 years experienced and award winner brings to you wide and amazing range of Smile Makeover helps to enhance beauty within the people with dental problems.Dr. Bharat Agravat Cosmetic Implants DentistAddress: Mohini Complex, First Floor, Beside Pride Hotel, Near Judges Bungalow road, Satellite, Bodakdev, Ahmedabad, Gujarat 380054
Automotive coatings market size is set to register USD 28.3 billion by 2022: Global Market Insights, Inc.
https://www.gminsights.com/industry-analysis/automotive-coatings-market
Automotive coatings market size was calculated at 3.76 million tons in 2014, as per the latest research report by Global Market Insights, Inc. Increase in consumer preference to safeguard the vehicle from foreign particles, UV radiation, extreme temperature conditions and acid rain will boost global automotive coatings market size. Key attributing factors, aesthetic appearance and durability, also play significant role in influencing consumer preference.Automotive coatings market size is set to register USD 28.3 billion by 2022. Automotive refinish coatings market will positively influence demand owing to increase in number of vehicle body and repair shops for damage recovery & timely maintenance.Solvent borne coatings dominated the demand by accounting over 43% of the total volume in 2014. Solvent borne technology is predicted to sluggishly grow owing to stringent measures taken by regulators to curb VoC emissions, particularly in the U.S. and EU.In the U.S., manufacturers of paints & coatings should comply with regulations levied by EPA. This has led to increase usage of waterborne, powder and UV-cured coatings.Key raw materials, titanium oxide, additives, pigments and resins face supply imbalance and price fluctuations, which may affect costing and result in upswing of automotive coating market price.Technology innovation towards reducing manufacturing costs and enhancing product performance may provide new growth opportunities and increase industry profitability.To access sample pages or view this report in detail along with the table of contents, please on click the link below:Key insights from the report include:Global automotive coatings market size is forecast to grow at 4.9% CAGR and reach 5.51 million tons by 2022.Basecoat automotive coatings demand was largest and accounted for over 38% of the total demand in 2014. Basecoat products, mainly metallic paints, pearlescent paints and solid paints, are preferred by OEMs to impart exterior aesthetics and decorative effects.Metal applications were dominant and accounted for over 70% of the total automotive coating market share in 2014. Predominant use of steel and aluminum for vehicle production is expected driver influencing demand.Plastic applications, influenced by vehicle weight reduction along with better fuel efficiency, expect highest gains at 5.2% CAGR up to 2022.APAC, led by India and China automotive coatings market size, was dominant regional base, with overall consumption of over 2 million tons in 2014. Favorable regulations supporting FDI to set up automobile base in China, India, Indonesia and Thailand coupled with rise in per-capita disposable income, expects surge in demand.China light vehicle OEM demand generated close to USD 1.8 billion in 2014 and expects to significantly grow at over 5.2% CAGR up to 2022.North America, dominated by U.S. consumer base, most likely will generate over USD 5.5 billion revenue by 2022. U.S. waterborne automotive coatings market size was worth over USD 870 million in 2014.Germany powder coatings demand was worth close to USD 290 million in 2014. This technology expects to grow at significant rate with over 4.5% CAGR by 2022.Global automotive coatings market share is competitive and consolidated, with PPG Industries, Axalta, BASF and Kansai catering to major industry demand. Nippon, AkzoNobel, Arkema, Berger, Eastman, DSM and Solvay are among notable key industry players.Global Market Insights, Inc., headquartered in Delaware, U.S., is a global market research and consulting service provider; offering syndicated and custom research reports along with growth consulting services. Our business intelligence and industry research reports offer clients with penetrative insights and actionable market data specially designed and presented to aid strategic decision making.29L Atlantic Avenue, Suite L 105
Dyslipidemia Drugs Market Decline to USD 9.5 Billion by 2020 Owing to Patent Expirations and Absence of New Drugs
http://www.ihealthcareanalyst.com/report/dyslipidemia-drugs-market/
http://www.ihealthcareanalyst.com
Dyslipidemia Drugs Market Global Dyslipidemia Drug Classes Analysis and Forecast 2013-2020, estimates the global dyslipidemia drugs market decline to reach nearly USD 9.5 Billion in 2020, at a CAGR of 10.3% from 2016 to 2020 due to patent expirations and absence of new drugs - iHealthcareAnalyst, Inc.Visit the Dyslipidemia Drugs Market Global Dyslipidemia Drug Classes Analysis and Forecast 2013-2020 report atThere are four classes of lipid-lowering drugs in the market: the 3-hydroxy-3-methylglutaryl coenzyme A (HMG-CoA) reductase inhibitors (the "statins"), the fibrates (gemfibrozil, clofibrate, and fenofibrate), niacin/nicotinic acid, and the bile acid binding resins (colestipol and cholestyramine). The major effects of the lipid lowering drugs include lowering of serum low density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol levels which are believed to predispose to atherosclerosis and its complications, acute myocardial infarction, cerebrovascular ischemic stroke and peripheral vascular disease. The dyslipidemia drugs market report estimates the market size (Revenue USD million - 2013 to 2020) for key market segments based on the drug class (bile acid resins, fibric acid and omega-3 fatty acid derivatives, niacin, statins, and other drugs such as combination drugs and cholesterol absorption inhibitors), and forecasts growth trends (CAGR% - 2016 to 2020). It also provides the detailed market landscape and profiles of major competitors in the global market including company overview, financial snapshot, major products and services offered, and recent trends in strategic management.The global dyslipidemia drugs market is segmented as:1. Drug Class1.1. Bile Acid Resins1.2. Fibric Acid and Omega-3 Fatty Acid Derivatives1.3. Niacin1.4. Statins1.5. Others (Combination Drugs and Cholesterol Absorption Inhibitors)2. Geography (Region, Country)2.1. North America (U.S., Canada)2.2. Latin America (Brazil, Mexico, Rest of LA)2.3. Europe (U.K., Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Rest of EU)2.4. Asia Pacific (Japan, China, India, Rest of APAC)2.5. Rest of the World3. Company Profiles3.1. Abbott Laboratories3.2. Amgen, Inc.3.3. AstraZeneca plc.3.4. Bayer AG3.5. Bristol-Myers Squibb Company3.6. Merck & Co., Inc.3.7. Mylan N.V.3.8. Novartis AG3.9. Pfizer, Inc.3.10. Shionogi & Co., Ltd.3.11. Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited3.12. Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd.iHealthcareAnalyst, Inc. is a global health care market research and consulting company providing market analysis, and competitive intelligence services to global clients. The Company publishes syndicate, custom and consulting grade healthcare reports covering animal healthcare, biotechnology, clinical diagnostics, healthcare informatics, healthcare services, medical devices, medical equipment, and pharmaceuticals.iHealthcareAnalyst, Inc. provides industry participants and stakeholders with strategically analyzed, unbiased view of market dynamics and business opportunities within its coverage areas.Ana AitawaiHealthcareAnalyst, Inc.2109, Mckelvey Hill Drive,Maryland Heights, MO 63043United StatesPhone: (314) 736-9294.Email: sales@ihealthcareanalyst.com
Author Sid Nachman, First Person In US To Be Treated Successfully For Bipolarism, Releases Memoir, 'Bipolar Me'
Author Sid Nachman
http://www.sidnachman.com
Author Sid Nachman has announced the release of 'Bipolar Me'. Sid Nachman was the first person in the US to be diagnosed and successfully treated for bipolarism over 50 years ago. Sid writes engaging nonfiction books that revolve around his experiences growing up in Philadelphia.Nachman's somewhat acerbic wit, no-holds-barred writing style and deft storytelling takes readers on a carnival ride, filled with stories that demonstrate that life is ultimately just plain good. BookLover USA said that the book is "A roller coaster ride through the mind of one of the funniest and endearing story-tellers of his generation."'Bipolar Me' is a highly entertaining memoir that allows readers to take a ride with Sid into the unfettered mind of a bipolar boy who never grows up until his hair turns white. Readers will get to see his world in black and white and vivid color and will feel what he feels when he feels like he weighs three thousand pounds and a minute later can leap over tall buildings. Sid's life is a life gone wild that settles down when its almost too late.I wrote this book for a number of reasons," Nachman stated. "As a legacy for my kids. To dispel some myths about mental illness. To thank God for holding my hand through the good and bad. And last but not least, to make enough money to pay off my car so my wife, Linda has nothing to worry about and I can die in peace.Sid Nachman is also the author of 'Strictly For Seniors' - an entertaining book of fifteen short stories about what happened to Sid "after breakfast on Delancey Street" in West Philly during the 30s and 40s when his Mom gave him a big hug and kiss and sent him on his way. Readers will enjoy this engaging memoir, full of entertaining stories about how Sid had fun, faced his demons, survived bullying and learned how to take care of himself. Sid also included a few fairy tales that just happened to drop in.Both books have received rave reviews and comments from reviewers and readers alike. One stated, "Like James Joyce, Sid Nachman can take the ordinary and turn it into magic with a fluency that's imperceptible." Another said "Sid's stories touch the human soul with wit, charm and realism."Sid Nachman is available for media interviews and can be reached using the information below or by email at mollymax210@gmail.com. Both books are available at Amazon. More information, including samples from the books and a recent interview with The Authors Show, is available at his website.Sid Nachman was the only child of immigrant parents from Russia and Germany who tried for 13 years to have him and were very tired from trying so hard. His initials are S.I.N. for Sidney Irving Nachman. He never found out if he was a sin or a joy. He resides in Florida and is the author of two books.PO Box 1613Shallotte, NC 28459
Photonic Sensors and Detectors Market : Value Chain, Dynamics, Regional Outlook and Key Players (2015 - 2021)
Photonic Sensors and Detectors Market
http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/4719
http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/toc/4719
Photonics is a technology which is involved with the use of light which replaces the traditional or usual electronics in several applications. The photonics sensor technology is motivating the growth in several main end markets which includes advanced manufacturing, energy, defense, communications and information technology, medicine and healthcare among others.View Sample Report @The photonic sensor technologies have become more significant in the field of material characterization and material processing. The complexity of physical, biological and chemical systems is not feasible without the use of photonic sensor and detectors technologies. Photonic sensor and detector found its way into the surgeries, industries, and in the ordinary life as well its usage in the research laboratories. The main benefits provided by this technology include contact free, straight measurements and the non destructive analyses of systems, products and substances.The photonic sensors and detectors technology has now been renowned as a technology that impacts and strengthens a whole host of industrial sectors, from security to healthcare, from telecommunications to manufacturing, from the environment to the energy, and from biotechnology to the aerospace. The major burning issue in this market is the compatibility of the photonic sensors and detectors with other products.The main factors that are driving the photonic sensors and detectors market are the increase in requirement for security and safety, a substitute for a failed technology, rise in the growth in wireless sensing technology market, increased in the usage of wind power, distributed sensing and the increase in the need for oil reserves among others. The main factor that is restraining the growth of this market includes high initial cost required and the lack of industry standards. The main opportunity for the growth in future of the photonic sensors and detectors market includes the industrial assets safety and usage of this technology in the structural health monitoring. Fiber optics sensor is estimated to rise at a high rate as it is gaining significance in the areas such as oil & gas exploration and civil engineering which mostly considers border security and fencing.The photonic sensors and detectors market is segmented on the basis of its types which includes fiber optic sensors, laser sensors and bio-photonic sensors. The fiber optic sensors are further classified as distributed sensors and point sensors. The laser sensors are further classified as analog laser sensors and digital laser sensors. The bio-photonic sensors are classified as intrinsic bio-photonic sensor and extrinsic bio-photonic sensor. In addition, the market is segmented on the basis of technology which includes spectrally based fiber optics sensor, intensity based fiber optics sensor, distributed & multiplexing sensing, and polarization based fiber optic sensors. Further, the distributed & multiplexing sensing is classified as multiplexing sensing and distributed sensing. Furthermore, the market could be segmented on the basis of geography which includes North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific and RoW.Request Report TOC @Some of the major companies that are dominating in the photonic sensors and detectors market include Banner Engineering Corp., Bayspec Inc., Baumer Holding AG., Fiber Optic Sys. Tech. Inc. (Fox-Tek), Omron Corp., St. Jude Medical Inc., Lap Laser LLC., Qorex LLC., Bbn International Ltd., Fibertronix Ab., Ibsen Photonics A/S, Smart Fibres Ltd. and Mitsubishi Electric Corp. among others.About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a third-platform research firm. Our research model is a unique collaboration of data analytics and market research methodology to help businesses achieve optimal performance.To support companies in overcoming complex business challenges, we follow a multi-disciplinary approach. At PMR, we unite various data streams from multi-dimensional sources. By deploying real-time data collection, big data, and customer experience analytics, we deliver business intelligence for organizations of all sizes.ContactPersistence Market Research305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United StatesUSA - Canada Toll Free: +1 800-961-0353
Sapphire Technology Market : Potential and Niche Segments, Geographical regions and Trends to 2021
Sapphire Technology Market
http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/4785
http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/toc/4785
Sapphire is basically aluminum oxide in its pure from which has no porosity or boundaries, and hence dense in nature. Low dislocation and high purity have led to adoption of sapphire as an ideal material to be used in wide range of electronic substrates. Thin sapphire wafers are used as an insulating substrate in high-frequency and high-power CMOS integrated circuits. These integrated circuits are known as silicon on sapphire (SOS) chip. These chips are primarily used for high-power radio-frequency (RF) applications which include satellite communication systems, cellular telephones, and others. In SOS chip both analog and digital circuitry integration takes place. Since, sapphire has higher conductivity for heat and lower for electricity; sapphire provides good insulation and even balances the generated heat in the circuit.View Sample Report @Owing to these advantages, sapphire has evolved as a versatile material that is used specifically in semiconductor industry, which is characterized by requirement for cost effective, time saving, and efficient operational solutions. Incorporation of sapphire technology for fabrication of components for use in end-use products across industries such as consumer electronics, aerospace and defense, power, and other sectors can help device manufacturers, achieve efficient performance. There is huge potential for sapphire technology in different devices and applications required across different end-use industries. Thus, demand for sapphire technology is directly influenced by trend across these industries. For instance, a Silicon-on-Sapphire chip, which is formed by depositing a very thin layer of silicon in a sapphire wafer at high temperature, has profound use in consumer electronics sector majorly for LED technology market. There are primarily two ways to make SOS wafer which include epitaxial SOS semiconductor technology and bonded SOS technology. .Factors such as high cost effectiveness as compared to other substrate materials, increased demand for LED technology are expected to drive demand for sapphire technology in future. Moreover, improved manufacturing processes resulting in use of silicon on sapphire for wafer processing is further expected to fuel demand for sapphire technology.. n addition, manufactures are also keen on developing solutions using sapphire technology, which would result in less operational cost and maximize profits. This is due to the benefits of insulating substrate, which includes low power consumption, low parasitic capacitance resulting in increased speed, and better isolation, and high linearity as compared to bulk silicon. Furthermore, there are low entry barriers for players to invest in this market resulting is high degree of competition.The sapphire technology market is segmented on the basis of various parameters which include technology, substrate wafer and orientation type, and by application. Sapphire technology comprises of sapphire substrate technology and process, different production methods, and other growth methods for sapphire. The sapphire technology process is further classified as slicing, die polishing, lapping, and chemical-mechanical planarization (CMP). Different production methods for the same include kyropoulos method, Heat Exchanger Method (HEM), Czochralski Crystal Pulling Method, and Edge-Defined Film-Fed Growth (EFG) Method, among others. The market is further classified on the basis of silicon substrate wafer and orientation type which includes different sapphire types such as Silicon Carbide on Sapphire, Gallium Nitride on Sapphire, Silicon on Sapphire (SOS), and others. Based on the wafer size, classification includes 12 inch, 24 inch, 36 inch, and others. Moreover, varied plane orientations such as a-plane, c-plane, r-plane, and others are used to define orientation of sapphire substrates. Sapphire technology market classified on the basis of devices comprises of power semiconductor market and opto-semiconductors. The power semiconductor segment includes market for power discrete devices such as diodes, switches, Radio frequency integrated circuit (RFIC), Monolithic microwave integrated circuit (MMIC), and others. Sapphire technology has wide applications across consumer electronics, power, aerospace and defense, industrial, automotive, and others.Request Report TOC @The prominent players of this market include ACME Electronics Corporation, Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, Monocrystal Inc., Kyocera Corporation, Rubicon Technology Inc., DK Aztec Co., Ltd., GT Advanced Technologies Inc., Sapphire Technology Co., Ltd., Namiki Precision Jewel Co., Ltd, Tera Xtal Technology Corporation, Sumitomo Chemical Co., Ltd. among others.About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a third-platform research firm. Our research model is a unique collaboration of data analytics and market research methodology to help businesses achieve optimal performance.To support companies in overcoming complex business challenges, we follow a multi-disciplinary approach. At PMR, we unite various data streams from multi-dimensional sources. By deploying real-time data collection, big data, and customer experience analytics, we deliver business intelligence for organizations of all sizes.ContactPersistence Market Research305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United StatesUSA - Canada Toll Free: +1 800-961-0353
Analog ICs Market : Latest Innovations, Drivers, Restraints, Challenges and Industry Key Events 2015 - 2021
Analog ICs Market
http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/4799
http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/toc/4799
Integrated circuits are set of electronic circuits in which all the active and passive electronic components are fabricated on a single chip. Different active components include operational amplifiers (op-amp) and batteries among others. Passive components are capacitors, resistors and inductors. Continuous development of production processes and design of ICs lead to cost reduction of electronic equipments.. Additionally, these ICs increase the reliability as different components are fabricated on a single silicon chip and thus reducing the size of circuit board.View Sample Report @Integrated circuits can be classified on the basis of circuit technology, design style, circuit size and design type. Technologies used in manufacturing ICs are complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS), n-type metal oxide semiconductor (NMOS), bi-polar junction transistor (BJT) and BiCMOS among others. Different design styles are standard cell, field programmable gate array (FPGA) and gate array. On the basis of size ICS can be categorized as circuit size includes very large scale integration (VLSI), large scale integration (LSI), medium scale integration (MSI), small scale integration (SSI), and giga scale integration (GSI). The design types available are analog, digital and mixed-signal.Analog integrated circuits are those ICs which performs functions of amplification, demodulation and active filtering. In an analog IC current and voltage vary continuously with time. These ICs are consists of electronic components that allows them to communicate and connect with the microprocessor. They are widely deployed in most of the electronic products as these ICs consume less power while maintaining their functionality. Integrated circuits have widespread applications in computers, mobile phones and electronic digital home appliances such as digital camera. These circuits offer various advantages such as low power consumption and low cost for implementation. They reduce the size and complexity of an electronic circuit and provide high speed of operation. Due to these advantages ICs are used in televisions, portable devices such as laptops, microwaves, play stations, cameras, computers and cell phones. Additionally, they are used in data processing and switching telephone circuits. Analog ICs are used in LED Lighting systems due to their less power consumption capability.Need of power management in electronic product and increasing demand of ICs in automotive sector is supporting the growth of market. However, imbalance in demand and supply of analog IC is affecting the market growth. Moreover, rapid technological advancement and increasing applications of analog ICs in LED lighting system offers potential opportunity for the market.Analog integrated circuit market can be segmented on the basis of category, type of analog ICs and end-users. Analog ICs are categorized into radio frequency IC and linear ICs. Different types of analog ICs available are operational amplifiers, sensors and power management circuits. Analog ICs have widespread application across various industries such as electronic industry, automotive sector, telecommunication industry, healthcare and semiconductor industry among others.Request Report TOC @Some of the key players in analog ICs market are Analog Devices Inc., Qualcomm Inc., STMicroelectronics NV, Infineon Technologies AG, Caterpillar Inc., Texas Instruments Inc, EPOS Development Ltd., Linear Technology Corp., Intel Corp., LG Electronics, NXP Semiconductors, Maxim Integrated products, ON Semiconductor, Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., Renesas Electronics Corp., Cummins Inc., Kohler Co. and Skyworks Solutions Inc among others.About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a third-platform research firm. Our research model is a unique collaboration of data analytics and market research methodology to help businesses achieve optimal performance.To support companies in overcoming complex business challenges, we follow a multi-disciplinary approach. At PMR, we unite various data streams from multi-dimensional sources. By deploying real-time data collection, big data, and customer experience analytics, we deliver business intelligence for organizations of all sizes.ContactPersistence Market Research305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United StatesUSA - Canada Toll Free: +1 800-961-0353
Notify Your Customers about the Product Back In Stock With Out Of Stock Notification Extension!
https://www.mconnectmedia.com/out-of-stock-alert-magento2.html
www.mconnectmedia.com
www.mconnectmedia.com
Georgia, July 5th, 2016 The creation and management of an eCommerce site has been made easy with release of the new version for the Magento platform.M-Connect Media, to improve the performance of Magento 2.0, has released various extensions. One of the extension developed is Out of Stock Notification Extension which is helping the online shop owners to retain their customers, in the simplest way possible.The extension has lot of beneficial features which eases the store owners as well as the customers. With this amazing extension, the admin can display out of stock on the products with no stock. The customers who would like to buy that out of stock products, can subscribe to the notification. The system updates the inventory when the products are available together with sending a notification email to the customers that the product is now available on the website for being purchased.On product page, the Subscribe to back in stock alert message is displayed with a blank to enter Email address and a Subscribe button, to get notified about stock update of the out of stock product.In the storefront, the customers can see that the product which they are likely to buy, is out of stock right now. The system will give them an option to subscribe for getting alert notification when the product is back in stock. There are various types of products in a Magento store and the benefit is that it works for all types, whether it is simple, bundled, virtual or downloadable or grouped. The Admin is able to add the alert subscriptions manually Spokesperson, M-Connect Media, says.It offers various benefits to the admin as well as to the users. Along with notifying the customers about the back in stock product, it also informs the admin that the subscribers have been notified about the stock of the product they wished to buy. If you wish to install and configure the extension before using it on your webstore, our Magento experts can do that for you.To know more about the feature details of Out of Stock Notification extension, read:This Out of Stock Notification extension from M-Connect Media not only gives an easy handling of stock and customers but it also helps the customers to trace the availability of the out of stock products.About M-Connect MediaM-Connect Media offers professional services for Magento eCommerce development and Extension development. They provide services from eCommerce Consulting, Website development to support services after sales. They assist their clients in improving the performance of their website, installation of the extensions or managing admin panel. The company has made 1000 clients happy, completed 1200 projects and developed more than 70 Magento compatible extensions. Get a closer look:Contact UsM-Connect Media353 McCook Cir NW,Kennesaw, Georgia 30144,United States.E-mail: info@mconnectmedia.comPhone: +1 319 804-8627Website:
Green Buildings Drive Demand for Bio-based, Low VOC-Content Floor Coatings
http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=S&rep_id=1949
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Concrete floors are often subjected to thermal shock, abrasion, and chemical attack. As these floors are usually porous, they need a coating to protect them from erosion, peeling, and cracking. The global concrete floor coatings market is anticipated to expand at a CAGR of 6.80% during the period between 2014 and 2020. The market stood at a valuation of US$0.7 bn in 2013 and is expected to be worth US$1.1 bn by 2020.Rapid Growth of Construction Industry Plays a Pivotal Role in Growth of Global Floor Coatings MarketThough the global construction industry has been affected by a weak economy worldwide, the industry is expected to grow positively this year. The rapid growth of the construction industry can be attributed to the increasing investments in the infrastructure sector across the developing economies. In the developed countries as well, the construction sector is rapidly recovering.Interpret a Competitive outlook Analysis Report with FREE PDF Brochure :This has propelled the growth of the global concrete floor coatings market. However, volatile crude oil prices are expected to cast a shadow over the growth of the market as crude oil is the major raw material for concrete floor coatings. The global concrete floor coatings market has a significant opportunity to grow with the growing demand for bio-based concrete floor coatings.The bio-based concrete floor coatings such as polyurethane (PU) floor coatings are registering higher demand owing to their lower environmental impact, low cost, easy availability, and biodegradability. Various bio-based raw materials such as Eucalyptus tar, vegetable oil, and cashew nut shell liquid are used to synthesize polyols and isocyanates that are used for the production of bio-based concrete floor coatings. With the growing focus on environment friendly floor coatings across green buildings, extensive research activities are being carried out to identify the bio-derived materials that can act as precursors for the synthesis of polyurethane.Key Market Players Focus on Development of Low VOC-Content Concrete Floor CoatingsSome of the key players in the global concrete floor coatings market are PPG Industries, RPM International Inc., BASF SE, The Valspar Corporation, Sherwin-Williams, and DSM. The market players are focusing on the development of bio-based concrete floor coatings with the growing demand for green buildings. Furthermore, the key players are introducing concrete floor coatings with lesser VOC content to adhere to various environmental regulations. For example, PPG Industries Inc. has developed the next-generation Break-Through acrylic coating containing less than 50 grams per litre VOC. The coating displays excellent block resistance and adhesion to a broad range of surfaces across the commercial and residential sectors.The key players are focusing on Asia Pacific owing to the rapid growth of the construction sector in the region. Rapid urbanization and steady economic development in Asia Pacific will significantly aid the growth of the global concrete floor coatings market in the near future.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The companys exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.TMRs data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With extensive research and analysis capabilities, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques to develop distinctive data sets and research material for business reports.ContactTransparency Market Research90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:Visit Blog :
Booming Automotive Industry to Become Cornerstone of Growth for Glass Fiber Market
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The competitive landscape in the global glass fiber market is fairly consolidated, finds TMR in a new study. The leading players in the overall market are focusing on developing export channels to increase their international presence and subdue Chinas hold in the foreign markets.TMRs findings also indicate that major companies are focusing on aligning their research and development activities to develop improved product portfolio. For instance, Jiangsu Jiuding New Material Co. Ltd. invested about US$3.2 mn in R&D in 2013. This move enabled the company to create 44 technology and product patents. Similarly, Nippon Electric Glass Co., Ltd. is gunning for expanding its capacities to improve its market position and cater to the pharmaceutical sector as well.Heightened Marine and Automotive Production Improves Glass Fiber DemandExceptional qualities of glass fiber such as low weight, higher impact resistance, and superior strength make it a popular choice of material across the building and construction industry. TMR analyst says, The growing population of Asia Pacific, which accounted for 60.5% of the total global population, has spurred a huge demand for construction of residential projects. These interlinked factors have created a massive demand for glass fiber that is largely used for building walls, pipes, and furniture and fixtures amongst others.Get FREE PDF Brochure For More Professional and Technical Insights :The rise of the marine and the automotive sector has also contributed significantly to the demand and usage of glass fiber. Their peculiar characteristic of being lightweight has won them a special place in these industries. Over the years, e-glass fibers and performance glass fibers have played an important role in the design of high-speed vehicles and vessels and will continue to do so with increasing research and development.The growing pressure to reduce carbon footprint has prompted several governments across the globe to investment in renewable energy. This, in turn, has created a demand for wind turbines, which use glass fiber to a large extent. Therefore, as the operations to devise sustainable solutions for renewable energy remain underway, they will boost the glass fiber market by generating a demand for wind turbines. Strict renewable energy targets are thus likely to create a lucrative opportunity for the growth of wind turbine market.China Holds the Lions Share in Overall MarketIn terms of geographical segmentation of the market, Europe and North America are facing a challenge in the overall glass fiber market due to Chinas stronghold. The dominating nature of Chinas glass fiber market, which is exceptionally export oriented, is creating an insurmountable hurdle. The generous government subsidies given to China-based manufacturers of glass fiber are preventing other regional markets from winning bigger shares.The research report states that the opportunity of the glass fiber market will be worth US$17.44 bn by 2024 as compared to US$8.50 bn in 2014. Between the forecast period of 2016 and 2024, this market will expand at an impressive CAGR of 7.5%.In terms of volume Asia Pacific accounted for a share of 47.5% in the overall market in 2014. Research projects demand from China will keep this region in the forefront in the near future as well.The review of the global glass fiber market and its products and applications is based on the observations and inferences of a Transparency Market Research report. The document, titled Glass Fiber - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends, and Forecast 2016 2024, includes a comprehensive outlook of the elements shaping the trajectory of this market.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The companys exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.TMRs data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With extensive research and analysis capabilities, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques to develop distinctive data sets and research material for business reports.ContactTransparency Market Research90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:Visit Blog :
Stringent Environmental Regulations Restrict Usage of Titanium Dioxide
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Titanium dioxide is largely manufactured through sulphate and chloride processes from raw materials such as rutile and ilmenite. The white coloured, inorganic chemical displays poor solubility and high thermal stability, and hence, is used across a number of end-use industries. The global titanium dioxide market is anticipated to expand at a CAGR of 3.7% during the period from 2015 to 2023. The overall market was worth US$12.18 bn in 2014 and is projected to reach a valuation of US$16.79 bn by 2023.What is the key factor impeding the growth of the global titanium dioxide market?The growing concerns over the impact of titanium dioxide on human health and environment have led to the implementation of stringent environmental regulations regarding the usage of the chemical. This is expected to hinder the growth of the global titanium dioxide market.The French Agency for Food, Environment, and Occupational Health and Safety has put forward a proposal to label titanium dioxide as a potential carcinogen. The chemical is often used as a pigment in a number of food and consumer products. If titanium dioxide is labelled as a carcinogen under European Unions toxic substances regulatory rules, it would restrict the usage of the chemical in consumer products. The usage of titanium dioxide in food and consumer products has raised concerns about its impact on human health. Dunkin Donuts had decided to remove titanium dioxide as a whitening agent from their powdered sugar formula last year. The current proposal to label titanium dioxide as a carcinogen has raised staunch opposition from the manufacturers who have stated that the workers in titanium dioxide manufacturing plants display no adverse health effects from exposure to the chemical.Download And Get FREE Sample PDF File Of Titanium Dioxide :How are the rapidly expanding automobile and construction industries defining the future of the global titanium dioxide market?The rising demand for lightweight automobiles has propelled the growth of the global titanium dioxide market. Consumers are increasingly preferring low-emission and fuel-efficient vehicles. Though polycarbonate is used extensively in the production of lightweight vehicles, it has low scratch resistance. Titanium coatings offer high scratch resistance and hence, are ideal for coating applications in the automobile sector. In the construction sector, titanium dioxide is used in building materials and reportedly helps to neutralize elements of air pollution. However, the paints and coatings, and plastics industries are anticipated to majorly contribute towards the growth of the market in the coming years.It has been observed that the rapid expansion of the automobile and construction sectors in Asia Pacific has led to the growth of the titanium dioxide market in the region. In fact, Asia Pacific is pegged to emerge as the fastest growing region in the market in the years to come. As a result, major players in the market are focussing on this regional market.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The companys exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.TMRs data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With extensive research and analysis capabilities, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques to develop distinctive data sets and research material for business reports.ContactTransparency Market Research90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:Visit Blog :
Chemical Pulp Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2014 2020
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Chemical pulp is a man-made fiber of cellulose which is acquired from plant material and is further processed predominantly in the paper industry, white pulp being used to produce printing and writing paper and brown pulp being used to produce paperboard and packing paper. Chemical pulping results in superior quality papers as the process dissolves the lignin existing in the wood and separates the cellulose fibers. The main applications for chemical pulp are board production and paper. The manufacture of high-quality and cost effective chemical pulp requires efficient programs for washing, cooking, deposit control, bleaching, metal and water quality and quantity management. Chemical pulp process can be subdivided into the following categories: sulfite pulp process and sulfate pulp process.The sulfite process cooks wood pieces in sulfurous acid mixed with limestone to manufacture calcium bisulfite. The blend of calcium bisulfite and sulfurous acid separates the lignin in the wood and releases the cellulose fibers. The sulfite pulp is flexible and durable and is generally used to enhance the characteristics of mechanical pulps, mostly in newsprint industry. The sulfate pulp process is the most commercially viable chemical pulping method. The process originated from the soda processes developed in the early nineteenth century, which used alkaline solutions to digest wood. Paper manufacturers added sodium sulfate to the soda process and a superior pulp was produced. To increase brightness and whiteness of chemical pulp and to discard residual lignin, chemical pulps can be bleached.Download FREE Exclusive Sample Of This Report :The global chemical pulp industry is expected to increase, due to rising demand for tissue products and paperboard packaging. In addition, growing demand from end use industries in emerging economies is expected to boost the revenue of the chemical pulp industry. The growth in emerging economies is expected to be driven by rapid urbanization and a growing population. The growth in mature markets is being driven by increasing use of hygiene, packaging and specialty products However availability of substitutes and volatile raw material prices could hamper the growth of this market.Asia Pacific, the fastest growing market for chemical pulp industry, is expected to generate substantial revenue during the forecast period. China and India are expected to be the largest consumer of chemical pulp in Asia Pacific due to presence of an established paper industry. Malaysia, Republic of Korea, Indonesia, Macau, Australia, Republic of China (Taiwan), Philippines and Japan are other key markets in Asia Pacific. Europe and North America currently dominate the chemical pulp market and account for majority of the global consumption. Germany, Italy, and France are expected to be the largest consumers of chemical pulp in Europe.The chemical pulp industry is dominated by large and small enterprises. Companies are using aggressive marketing programs to capture global market share. In addition, they are focusing on research and development to develop new products for specific industries. Furthermore, companies are expanding in emerging markets such as Asia Pacific to expand their geographical presence. Some of the key players operating in this market are AkzoNobel NV (Netherlands), BASF SE (Germany), Bayer AG (Germany), Clariant International AG (Switzerland), Dow Chemical Co (U.S.), ERCO Worldwide (Canada), FMC Corp (U.S.), Shell Chemicals (Netherlands), Solvay SA (Belgium), Ashland Inc (U.S.), Kemira Oyj (Finland), Buckman Laboratories International Inc (Canada), Cytec Industries Inc (U.S.), Enzymatic Deinking Technologies LLC (U.S.), ExxonMobil Corp (U.S), Nalco Holding Co (U.S.)and SNF Floerger (France) among others.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMR's experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.Our data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts, so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With a broad research and analysis capability, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques in developing distinctive data sets and research material for business reports.ContactTransparency Market Research90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:Visit :
QualityTaskForce and Soflab joining Forces - High Quality Testing with an internationally competitive Pricing
QualityTaskForce AG and Soflab Technology started a strategic partnership for Quality Assurance/Testing Services with an internationally competitive pricing. The target markets for our combined service offer are Switzerland, Germany and Austria.The degree of complexity of the object under test is constantly going up. So in order to keep budget under control and your customers happy, you have to look for more cost effective solutions. We strongly believe that the advantage of having a European near-shore testing partner bundled with innovative testing solutions and agile testing approaches enables us to create a better Quality Assurance solution for our European customers, with an internationally competitive pricing.QualityTaskForce (QTF), founded in 2012, and since then working for the 3 biggest telecom providers in Switzerland, established itself in the area of Triple Play (Broadband, VoIP and TV) testing, monitoring and automation. Furthermore, we provide products in order to improve compatibility/interoperability for online services. Our on-shore test lab in Zurich QTF has copper and fiber access to all the major Swiss providers. QTF also offers test automation solutions for two areas: online services and Telecommunication/ Video OTT. With human testers no longer tied down with mundane repetitive testing, they are free to focus their efforts on other tasks like setting up more complex tests, subsequently this combination improves the efficiency of the testing process.Soflab, the biggest Polish testing provider, which has been ranked among 20 best testing companies in the world in the latest issue of British TEST Magazine, is known for supporting their clients in ensuring the reliability of implemented software and maintaining business continuity. They provide accurate reports on the quality of inspected IT solutions. Soflab is focused on the following areas: software testing, QA, project management, security audits and testing support services. They delivered high quality services for over 2,000 projects, and the Test Center of Excellence (TCOE) in Warsaw and Wroclaw enables the company to work with international clients.QualityTaskForce (QTF), founded in 2012,established itself in the area of Triple Play (Broadband, VoIP and TV) testing, monitoring and automation.QualityTaskForce AGGemeindehausweg 1CH-6330 ChamSwitzerlandDoinaPhone: +41 (0) 41 760 75 73
Asia-Pacific Flue Gas Desulphurization market to reach $12,600.8 million by 2019
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The flue gas desulphurization market in Asia-Pacific was valued at $9,173.1 million in 2014, and is expected to reach $12,600.8 million by 2019.The market is expected to reach a CAGR of 6.6% from 2014 to 2019. The China market has held a major share of approximately 83.8% in the Asia-Pacific flue gas desulphurization market, and is projected to grow at a CAGR of 6.4% from 2014 to 2019.The statistics are given by "Asia Pacific Flue Gas Desulphurization Market by Type, Application & Countries - 2019".PDF brochure of this research -The Asia-Pacific Flue Gas Desulphurization (FGD) market is expected to witness substantial growth, the main reason being that the use of coal in electricity generation. The coal-fired power plant tends to have high sulphur content so burning it causes sulphur dioxide to be released. The FGD technology removes this from emissions. FGD systems are also used to reduce SO2 emissions from process plants such as smelters, acid plants, refineries, and pulp and paper mills.The Asia-Pacific flue gas desulphurization (FGD) market constitutes 60.3% of the global flue gas desulphurization (FGD) market. The large share is attributed to the rising government regulations regarding stringent emissions. These rigid regulations force industry players to install and upgrade flue gas desulphurization (FGD) systems in their manufacturing plants. This thereby influences the growth of flue gas desulphurization (FGD) market.The FGD technology is based on a chemical reaction that occurs when the warm exhaust gases from the industries come in contact with limestone. This reaction removes 92% of the sulphur dioxide from the flue gas and converts the limestone into calcium sulphite.The end users of FGD market include power generation, cement manufacturing, chemical, iron and steel and other industries. The power generation industry and cement manufacturing are the maximum users of FGD systems due to the high grade by-products that are generated during the flue gas treatment process.'Asia Pacific Flue Gas Desulphurization Market - Forecast 2019', is aimed at identifying emerging trends and opportunities in flue gas desulphurization market along with detailed classifications, in terms of revenue till 2019.Know more about this research at -Discuss on this research at -About Report Publisher:MicroMarket Monitor identifies and attends to various unmet needs of different industrial verticals, which include value chain impact analysis. The company publishes about 12000 Market Research Reports on various Micro Markets across the world. The graphical nature and multidimensional analysis of these reports provide advanced Business Intelligence Tools to the clients in that particular target market.Contact:Mr. Priyank TiwariUNIT no 802, Tower No. 7, SEZMagarpatta City, HadapsarPune, Maharashtra 411013, IndiaTel - +1-888-502-0539
Terryville, CT - Rockwell Automation and Advanced Micro Controls Inc. (AMCI) have released their first PartnerNetwork Solutions brochure. Over twenty years ago, AMCI was one of the first companies to partner with Rockwell Automation through the Pyramid Solutions Program, now called the Encompass Program. Rockwell Automation designed a new brochure that would recognize this 25 year relationship between AMCI and Rockwell Automation. The brochure includes a brief
SPOOKY, SCARY SPOOKY, SCARY Neighborhoods in Orchard Park are more than ready for Halloween. In the top photo, at a house at the corner of Orchard Hill Drive and Briar Hill...
Bremer finds seven residential lots storing items on town property Thanks to a new property-line shot by the Engineering Department, Building Inspector Steve Bremer was able to identify seven residential lots near Highmark Stadium that were placing all sorts of...
Highway Department receiving number of calls on dying ash trees Highway Superintendent Andrew Slotman warned in the spring that the ash tree population in Orchard Park would soon dwindle to zero due to the presence of the emerald ash borer....
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Two girls, including one who was prostituted to customers when she was 13, are suing Stars Cabaret for a combined $8 million, according to court documents.
(Everton Bailey Jr/Oregonian)
Two girls, including one who was prostituted to customers when she was 13, are suing Stars Cabaret for a combined $8 million, according to court documents.
Steven Toth, who managed the strip club chain's location in Beaverton, hired the 13-year-old girl to dance nude for customers and have sex with some of them. He split the profits with her pimp, Victor Moreno-Hernandez.
The second girl was later hired to work at the club, where she was induced to dance nude and people were allowed to "grope and/or inappropriately touch" her, according to one of two related lawsuits filed last week in Washington County Circuit Court.
She was 15 at the time, the suit said.
Toth was convicted in September 2014 of compelling prostitution, first-degree sex abuse and second-degree sodomy, court records show. He was convicted the same day of promoting prostitution in a separate court case.
Moreno-Hernandez was convicted of 13 felony charges, including second-degree rape, delivery of methamphetamine to a minor and four counts of compelling prostitution.
The Oregon Liquor Control Commission said Stars Cabaret is in the process of selling the Beaverton strip club. Spearmint Rhino, a strip club chain with a location on Southeast Division Street in Portland, is buying the location, according to media reports.
The OLCC in June 2015 proposed canceling the Beaverton strip club's liquor license, the agency said in a news release. The club took responsibility for five violations and will give up the license Aug. 1 or when the sale is finalized, whichever happens first.
Oregon Labor Commissioner Brad Avakian also launched a civil rights case against Stars Cabaret "for unlawful sexual harassment of minors," the Bureau of Labor and Industries said in an April 6 news release.
The bureau's Administrative Prosecution Unit will seek at least $4 million for each girl, according to the news release. The lawsuits are separate from those efforts, "although the damages may overlap," Janis Puracal, one of the attorneys representing the girls, said in an email.
The lawsuits state the club and individual defendants knew or should have known the girls were minors and that girls "are vulnerable to sexual exploitation" -- especially "by those in positions of money, power, or authority..." The girls suffered bodily injury and emotional damage, according to the lawsuits.
Stars Cabaret "create(s) and perpetuate(s) an environment of sexual exploitation at their strip clubs where young women are objectified and sexualized in exchange for money," the lawsuits allege. The lawsuits allege they host theme nights such as a "naughty school girl night."
-- Jim Ryan
jryan@oregonian.com
503-221-8005; @Jimryan015
Emily E. Smith of The Oregonian/OregonLive staff contributed to this report
A former Estacada city councilor pleaded no contest Tuesday to possessing child pornography and sexually abusing a female relative for six years beginning when she was 6.
Curt Steininger is scheduled to be sentenced in Clackamas County Circuit Court on Aug. 16 for first-degree sexual abuse and first-degree encouraging child sexual abuse. The prosecution and defense will recommend an eight-year prison sentence as part of a plea agreement.
Steininger, a 34-year-old Oregon Army National Guard veteran and father of five, won a seat on the Estacada City Council in 2012. He resigned from the position in April 2014 citing family obligations, National Guard duties and aspirations to obtain a bachelor's degree as factors. Steininger's wife filed for divorce that same month.
According to Clackamas County Deputy District Attorney Russell Amos, the relative told her mother in January 2014 that she'd been asleep during a trip to an Estacada supermarket when she awoke to find Steininger putting her hand down his pants to touch his penis. Her mother informed police.
The girl told investigators that Steininger had repeatedly groped her genitals and forced her to touch his penis since 2008, Amos said. She reported that there were occasions when he would crawl into her bed at night and abuse her, the attorney said.
The Clackamas County Sheriff's Office later obtained Steininger's laptop and found nearly 125 pictures of child porn that had been downloaded, Amos said. Hundreds of more photos were discovered during a search of two external hard drives that belonged to Steininger.
Steininger was indicted in July 2014 and arrested a month later.
Steininger appeared in Clackamas County Circuit Court out of jail custody in a gray suit and red dress shirt. He was ordered by Judge Katherine Weber to continue to have no contact with the victim while awaiting his sentencing. He appeared to avoid making eye contact with the girl and other relatives in the courtroom throughout the plea hearing.
-- Everton Bailey Jr.
ebailey@oregonian.com
503-221-8343; @EvertonBailey
Here are five food and booze events we think should be on your calendar:
So berry in love: Celebrate Oregon berries at the 6th annual fest this weekend at Northwest Portland's Ecotrust Building. There'll be a blackberry pie contest, a fruit-focused farmer's market, cooking demonstrations and more.
Free; July 15, noon to 6 pm., July 16, 11 a.m. To 5 p.m.; 721 N.W. 9th Ave., oregonberryfestival.com
Montavilla Brew Works anniversary: Head to Montavilla Brew Works' for a weekend-long celebration of their first anniversary with giveaways during peak hours, special beer releases and tamales, tacos and more from Mixteca Catering.
July 15, 3 p.m. To 10 p.m., July 16, noon to 10 p.m. and July 17 noon to 7 p.m. Food on Friday and Saturday from 4 to 9 p.m., only; 7805 S.E. Stark St.; 503-954-3440; montavillabrew.com
Wonton soup pop-up: TAM, the Sellwood wonton noodle soup shop that shuttered earlier this year, will rise again from the floodwaters July 16 for a summer soup pop-up. Stop by for noodle soup, cold dishes, handmade sodas and more.
July 16, 5 to 9 p.m.; 8235 S.E. 13th Avenue
Gotta catch 'em all: We're finding poke, the Hawaiian raw fish salad, all over Portland and now there's an entire restaurant dedicated to it. Head to the freshly cut Poke Mon to get a taste.
1485 S.E. Hawthorne Blvd; 503-894-9743, pokemonpdx.com
#Sharethelove on National Ice Cream Day: For National Ice Cream Day (July 17), various shops, farms and restaurants will hand out tokens for free scoops of Salt & Straw ice cream. Visit Salt & Straw's social media for locations.
July 17, 10 a.m. to 11 p.m.; 3345 S.E. Division St.; 2035 N.E. Alberta St.; 838 N.W. 23rd Ave.; 126 S.W. 2nd Ave.; saltandstraw.com
-- Samantha Bakall
sbakall@oregonian.com
Follow @sambakall
OSU President Ed Ray is on his 13th year in Corvallis
OSU President Ed Ray, pictured in 2010, is the dean of university presidents in Oregon. The presidents formed a council to speak with "a collective voice" to policy and funding issues.
The presidents of Oregon's seven public universities hired an executive director this week for a new organization that will lobby for their interests at the Legislature and respond to public-policy issues.
Dana Richardson, deputy director of the state's Higher Education Coordinating Commission and a former legislative director for Senate President Peter Courtney, will start reporting to the presidents in September. Richardson will be the executive director of the Oregon Public Universities Council of Presidents.
According to a statement, Richardson "will work with the presidents and their leadership teams to advance their collective goals of serving the students and the citizens of the state of Oregon as high quality public universities."
Ben Cannon, Richardson's boss at the state coordinating commission, said losing his deputy is a big loss but a gain for the presidents' organization.
"We expect to work very closely with the presidents' council and with Dana," Cannon said.
Richardson was one of the chief architects of legislation that created the new structure of independent governing boards in Oregon. "She's been there every step of the way and involved at the core level of every change we have made," Courtney said in a 2014 press release.
The university presidents formed their own advocacy organization after the state's higher education board disbanded in 2015, eventually replaced by the coordinating commission and independent boards of trustees at each school. The presidents have been meeting for months, and penning advisory notices and feedback to the commission on policy ideas.
While each school's board of trustees has the authority to hire and fire the presidents and holds public meetings, the presidential council doesn't intend to open its doors to the general public.
The new arrangement has raised some questions from at least one citizen who believes the meetings should be subject to open-meetings law.
University officials say the arrangement is a "voluntary association" and therefore the council is not subject to public meeting laws.
"Legally, it's not a public body," said Ryan Hageman, Western Oregon University's general counsel. Western Oregon will host Richardson and any other staffers hired by the council of presidents.
The presidents signed an agreement in January outlining the association's goals and overall mission. The presidents will vote on issues by consensus. Oregon Health & Science University is an "affiliate member" of the council, and will only vote when specific issues affect OHSU. The seven schools will pool money and have an annual budget for the organization. That information isn't yet available, according to Hageman. But the presidents have met in person, on the phone and through video conference for months, he said.
"I think they were being very cautious in not wanting to create a big entity," he said.
But Les Ruark, a Gilliam County farmer, asked a state lawmaker to look into whether the council is subject to meeting and records laws. Rep. John Huffman, (R-The Dalles), asked the state's Legislative Counsel to offer its nonbinding opinion on whether the council is exempt from the laws.
In an opinion authored July 1, the state lawyers said the council is "probably subject to disclosure under the public records law," but likely does not meet public meetings law because it was "created informally" and not through a government action.
Roy Saigo, outgoing interim president of Southern Oregon University, said he was under the impression the meetings were open to the public because some meetings had dozens of attendees. "I just assumed they were public," he said in an interview this week.
The Department of Justice may eventually have to offer a formal opinion on whether the council is subject to public meetings and record laws. According to a spokeswoman, legislators can ask the DOJ to examine the issue, but that hasn't happened yet.
-- Andrew Theen
atheen@oregonian.com
503-294-4026
@andrewtheen
CORRECTION: This post has been updated to correct Rep. John Huffman name. An earlier version of this story was inaccurate.
Michael Strickland, the man charged with waving a gun at protesters last week at a Don't Shoot PDX march, has been banned from Portland State and Portland Community College's campuses.
The two schools confirmed Wednesday that Strickland will not be allowed to set foot on campus if and when he is released from custody. Portland State is banning Strickland for two years. PCC's ban is indefinite, but Strickland could appeal the decision. Both schools informed Strickland of the ban last week.
The 36-year-old is in jail and faces one count of menacing, two counts of unlawful use of a firearm and second degree disorderly conduct. Strickland, who is being held on $250,000 bail, is due in court again Monday.
Strickland was a recognized figure at both higher education institutions, where he occasionally filmed videos for a website called "Laughing at Liberals."
In a statement, PSU Public Safety Chief Phil Zerzan said Strickland is not allowed on campus "based on his behavior -- pointing a gun at people during a public demonstration."
Kate Chester, PCC spokeswoman, said Strickland was increasingly seen on the college's various campuses. He attended several sessions in April during PCC's Whiteness History Month and "made the rounds," appearing at the Southeast, Cascade and Sylvania campuses to film for his blog.
The college didn't have any significant issues with Strickland at those events, Chester said, but he was routinely "pushing buttons" and made his presence known at certain speeches and published heavily edited videos from the events that raised eyebrows on campus.
Chester said some Whiteness History participants attempted to block Strickland's view at sessions. "He got a little bit squirrely, but he didn't pull a gun or anything like that," Chester said.
PCC decided to ban Strickland shortly after his arrest. "The overall temperature [at PCC] was one of concern," Chester said.
So far in 2016, PCC has banned 29 people from its campuses.
The practice is more common at Portland State's busy southwest campus. Six hundred people are currently excluded from campus, according to public safety officials.
Guns are prohibited inside buildings on PSU's campus, but the school cannot prohibit concealed carry permit holders from walking through campus with their guns.
PCC has no such provision banning permit holders from carrying weapons inside buildings, according to its online firearm policy.
-- Andrew Theen
atheen@oregonian.com
503-294-4026
@andrewtheen
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Oregon Health & Science University, with its main campus in Southwest Portland, will pay nearly $3 million to federal authorities over two data breaches in 2013.
(Oregon Health & Science University)
Oregon Health & Science University has agreed to pay federal authorities $2.7 million for two data breaches in 2013 that involved more than 7,000 patients.
OHSU also will enact a "rigorous three-year corrective action plan" as part of a resolution agreement with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights, according to a statement released Wednesday.
The two breaches occurred within three months of each other. One occurred after a surgeon's laptop was stolen from a Hawaii vacation rental. The computer, which had information on 4,022 patients, was not encrypted. The other case involved newly minted physicians in residency programs for both plastic surgery and urology, and kidney transplants who used an internet-based storage device, or cloud service, to maintain a spreadsheet of patients. The spreadsheet had information on 3,044 people.
OHSU also had two other big data breaches in 2009 and 2012 involving more than 15,000 patients. The 2009 incident stemmed from the theft of a laptop from an employee's car. In 2012, a burglar stole a thumb drive from a staff member's home that included medical histories for 14,300 premature infants.
Having secure data has become increasingly important with the move from paper charts to electronic health records. It's also become common for patients to communicate with their providers via email and to have electronic access to their records.
OHSU offered free identity theft protection to nine people whose Social Security numbers were potentially compromised following the 2013 breaches. An OHSU spokeswoman said none of them reported to the university that they'd been harmed because of the breach.
Bridget Barnes, OHSU's security chief, said the university has increased electronic security. In a statement, she said that OHSU is "now investing at an unprecedented level in proactive measures to further safeguard patient information."
But the federal agreement requires more.
OHSU officials will work with a consultant investigating patient data storage, trying to identify any potential threats or gaps that could be breached. According to the agreement, the university has to regularly report to federal authorities and make changes to eliminate any risks over the next three years.
The university said in the statement that electronic health records and emails are a boon to patients and physicians but also introduce the potential for breaches.
"In the face of these challenges, OHSU is proactively working to ensure the creation of a sustainable gold standard for protected health information security and HIPAA compliance," the statement said.
-- Lynne Terry
lterry@oregonian.com; 503-221-8503
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(AP)
Randy Quast, who helped start local chapters of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, including one in Portland, will serve as interim director of the national group.
Quast, 56, replaces Allen St. Pierre, NORML's longtime director. St. Pierre announced this month that he would step down to devote time to his family. He and his wife recently had their first child.
"As a new father-at-fifty the frenetic workload and travel schedule that I've maintained for so long at NORML/NORML Foundation -- compounded by low pay and no genuine prospects to increase one's compensation after twenty five years at the non-profit organization -- to be the father that I've always aspired to become does not at all comport with continued full time employment at NORML/NORML Foundation," St. Pierre wrote in a post published on the NORML site this week.
He said he recruited Quast in 2013 to serve on the organization's board of directors. He noted that Quast, who sold his successful trucking business in the late 1990s, "has selflessly donated over half a million dollars in support of Minnesota, Portland and national NORML."
Quast remains active in Minnesota NORML and serves as treasurer of Portland NORML. He maintains a home in Southwest Portland. He said he plans to shuttle between Washington, D.C., and Portland to meet the demands of his new position.
Quast, meanwhile, is involved in a legal battle with Travis and Leah Maurer, two marijuana activists who were deeply involved in the campaign to legalize pot in Oregon. He sued the couple this year in Multnomah County Circuit Court seeking $1 million in damages.
In his suit, which is pending, Quast accuses the Maurers of breach of contract, defamation, negligence and fraud. The suit alleges that he entered into a business arrangement with the Maurers to grow and sell cannabis commercially. He claims he gave them nearly $700,000 to build the business and that they used $340,274.94 to cover personal expenses and debts. Travis Maurer has denied Quast's allegations.
-- Noelle Crombie
503-276-7184; @noellecrombie
Response to Dallas shootings: In responding to the horrific attack in Dallas, police used a bomb disposal robot to deliver a bomb and kill the alleged perpetrator. This tactic has apparently been occasionally used in the military but never domestically. With the increasing militarization of police forces around the country, the Posse Comitatus Act -- preventing the use of the military domestically -- has had its purpose further eroded. This appears to be another large step in the wrong direction.
One of the hallmarks of our system of government is the right to a trial by a jury of your peers. We tried the Nazis at Nuremberg for their crimes. Our nation's continued detention of alleged terrorists at Guantanamo Bay, held without trial, and use of drones overseas to kill suspected terrorists without trial, appears to now be joined by "robot bombs" for domestic use. No matter where you fall on the political spectrum, this should be cause for concern.
Our justice system only works when those accused are tried in a court of law, given counsel, and have an opportunity to defend themselves. We seem to be falling far short of that standard both domestically and abroad. We are discarding our values, paid for by our forefathers' blood, treasure and toil. We should and can do better than this.
Max Wall
Southwest Portland
*
Response to Dallas shootings: "America is weeping." So goes the headline on the July 9 Oregonian -- and yes, while it is true that we elected a black president, America has never "reconciled its fractured history with race." Our elected lawmakers, made up mostly of white Americans, set the tone early on by making sure that they will never lend any support to the black president. All through eight years of President Obama's term in office, all they had for him was nothing but "No" -- making sure that a black president will leave without any legacy that history might sing about. Now the conservatives are ready to nominate a candidate for the next president who is not even ashamed to express his bigotry. So, what is there to weep about?
Al Arboleda
Northeast Portland
*
Response to Dallas shootings: The article about the encounter between Police Capt. Michael Crebs and Alonzo Chadwick was so refreshing and reassuring. The news lately seems to be salivating with an emphasis on violence. This article instead presented a real and balanced understanding of how we can, and must, move forward through simple acts of mutual respect and listening. I would love to see more opportunities for public dialogue between police and community members. The city has had a difficult time sponsoring this. Perhaps it is something The Oregonian might consider?
Marcia Suttenberg
Northeast Portland
Suttenberg is a former member of Portland's Human Rights Commission.
*
Response to Dallas shootings: As I read the Saturday July 9 Oregonian, with all its pain and tragedy, there was one report that described a true hero in Portland, and his name is Police Capt. Michael Crebs. This officer had the courage to sit through a performance of "Hands Up" with his ears and heart open, and then to speak from his heart. Reading, I was moved to tears. This description illustrates the only possible way forward in every community -- to a place of understanding and love. I believe in South Africa they called it "Truth and Reconciliation."
Jere Grimm
Northwest Portland
*
Response to Dallas shootings: In light of what we have been witnessing over the past couple of years -- and especially the past few days -- it's obvious that the racial divide that exists in the U.S. has gotten worse, not better. When President Obama took office, he had a golden opportunity, as someone with African roots, to use his bully pulpit to work towards racial unity. Instead he has used every opportunity to comment on the sad state of affairs for blacks in the U.S. Instead of telling young black men to obey the police when stopped, despite some endemic racism that surely exists, he has sympathized with those, such as Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, who break the law. Instead of telling black children to stay in school and study hard to open up their futures, he has continued to condemn racism. Evidence of the basic fairness existing in the U.S. is his own life. If racism were the order of the day, he would never hold the office he has occupied for the past 7 1/2 years.
Marten King
Southwest Portland
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Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg speaks at Georgetown University Law Center in Washington in this file photo from 2015.
(AP Photo)
By Aaron Blake
I first wrote about Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's controversial comments about Donald Trump earlier this week. Since then, the situation has erupted into an all-out feud, and now the editorial boards of both The New York Times and The Washington Post have weighed in against Ginsburg's decision to insert herself into the 2016 campaign.
But plenty on the political left are still defending Ginsburg. And their preferred argument is that Ginsburg's comments weren't actually all that remarkable. Justices have gotten political plenty of times before, they say, and the name they most often cite is Ginsburg's close friend and ideological opposite on the court, conservative Antonin Scalia.
But how similar were Scalia's more controversial comments? And do other recent political tempests involving justices -- most of whom make a practice of staying out of politics entirely -- really compare to Ginsburg's?
I'll say at the top what I've said before: It's hard if not impossible to find a direct analog to what Ginsburg has said in recent days. Supreme Court experts I've spoken to were unaware of any justices getting so directly and vocally involved -- or involved at all, really -- in a presidential campaign.
But there are instances in which justices have been judged by some to have gone too far with comments that could be more broadly described as political. In some of these cases, there were calls for them to recuse themselves from cases.
Below is a recap of some of the more notable examples, listed by justice, starting with Scalia. You can judge for yourself how similar they are.
---
Antonin Scalia
June 2012: Criticizing Obama in Arizona immigration dissent
In dissenting from the court's decision on a controversial Arizona immigration law, Scalia invoked President Obama. "Must Arizona's ability to protect its borders yield to the reality that Congress has provided inadequate funding for federal enforcement - or, even worse, to the Executive's unwise targeting of that funding?" He also criticized Obama's then-recently announced executive order to exempt young illegal immigrants from deportation, saying the fact the Obama declined to enforce the law "boggles the mind."
Some said the comments were overly political -- specifically by referring to Obama in a case that was about a state law. The Post's
editorial
board said "Justice Scalia strayed far from the case at hand to deliver animadversions on President Obama's recent executive order." Liberal Post columnist E.J. Dionne called for his resignation.
March 2006: Enemy combatants have no right to a jury trial
Newsweek reported that Scalia had told an audience in Switzerland that prisoners at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, had no legal right under the U.S. Constitution to a jury trial. "War is war, and it has never been the case that when you captured a combatant you have to give them a jury trial in your civil courts," Scalia reportedly said. "Give me a break."
The comments, notably, came as the court was weeks away from hearing an appeal from Salim Ahmed Hamdan, Osama bin Laden's former driver. Hamdan said then-President George W. Bush's ordering of a military trial for him violated his rights.
"I had a son on that battlefield and they were shooting at my son, and I'm not about to give this man who was captured in a war a full jury trial," Scalia said, referring to his son, Matthew, who served in Iraq. "I mean, it's crazy."
A group of retired U.S. generals and admirals asked Scalia to recuse himself from the case. Scalia did not do so.
January 2004: Hunting trip with Dick Cheney -- 'Quack, quack'
This one wasn't so much a Scalia comment, but rather concern about him being too close to the Bush administration. He went on a hunting trip with then-Vice President Dick Cheney "three weeks after the court agreed to hear a White House appeal in a case involving private meetings of the vice president's energy task force," according to the Associated Press.
After some cried foul, Scalia declined to back down, noting that the case wasn't about Cheney as an individual. "This was a government issue," Scalia said in February 2004. "It's acceptable practice to socialize with executive branch officials when there are not personal claims against them. That's all I'm going to say for now. Quack, quack."
November 2015: Comparing gay rights to child molesters' rights
Scalia has regularly inflamed the political left with his comments about gay rights and homosexuality more broadly. Perhaps his most controversial comment on this count came last year when he suggests the court's logic on protecting gay rights -- the court legalized gay marriage in June 2015 -- could also be used to protect child molesters.
"What minorities deserve protection?" he asked, according to The New York Times. "What? It's up to me to identify deserving minorities?"
---
Samuel Alito
January 2010: An animated reaction to Obama's SOTU
Obama opted to criticized the Supreme Court to its face during his 2010 State of the Union address. With the justices seated nearby, Obama attacked their opinion deregulating campaign finance in the Citizens United case: "With all due deference to separation of powers, last week the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that, I believe, will open the floodgates for special interests, including foreign corporations, to spend without limit in our elections." Alito's response was caught on-camera, with the justice shaking his head and clearly mouthing the words "not true."
Alito's reaction was dissected frame-by-frame and deemed out of line by some. But in this case, he wasn't the only one drawing criticism; some said Obama's decision to question the court's decision so publicly and directly was out of line as well.
---
John Paul Stevens
July 1987: Supporting Robert Bork's nomination
The last Supreme Court nominee to be rejected by a vote of the Senate was Robert Bork. But as his nomination divided Washington, he got a vote of confidence from an unlikely source: then-Justice John Paul Stevens. The center-left justice said Republican President George H.W. Bush's very conservative nominee should be confirmed by the Senate.
"I personally regard him as a very well-qualified candidate and one who will be a very welcome addition to the Court,'' Stevens said in a speech in Colorado that took two weeks to work its way into the national press. "There are many, many reasons that lead me to that conclusion."
Weighing in on other nominees to the Supreme Court, as the Times noted back then, is rare for a justice, because it's seen as the Senate's prerogative to confirm or deny them.
What some might have missed this weekend is that, while slamming Trump in her New York Times interview, Ginsburg also ventured into Stevens-esque territory, criticizing the Senate for not voting on Obama's nomination of Merrick Garland to replace Scalia on the court:
"I think he is about as well qualified as any nominee to this court," she said. "Super bright and very nice, very easy to deal with. And super prepared. He would be a great colleague."
Asked if the Senate had an obligation to assess Judge Garland's qualifications, her answer was immediate.
"That's their job," she said. "There's nothing in the Constitution that says the president stops being president in his last year."
---
Ruth Bader Ginsburg
. . . which brings us to Ginsburg herself. If there was one justice that would break new ground in criticizing a presidential candidate, there was little surprise it would be her. Ginsburg has become increasingly outspoken on political issues in recent years. It has earned her a following on the political left and even cult-hero status.
The most prominent examples of Ginsburg ruffling feathers with her public comments have come on the issue of abortion. Below are some prominent examples:
- "It makes no sense as a national policy to promote birth only among poor people." -- to Elle magazine in September 2014
- "Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe [v. Wade] was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don't want to have too many of." -- to the New York Times in July 2009. (Conservative Post columnist Michael Gerson said it appeared as though Ginsburg "is describing the attitude of some of her own social class -- that abortion is economically important to a 'woman of means' and useful in reducing the number of social undesirables."
- "How could you trust legislatures in view of the restrictions states are imposing? Think of the Texas legislation that would put most clinics out of business. The courts can't be trusted either. . . . I don't see this as a question of courts versus legislatures. In my view, both have been moving in the wrong direction." -- to the New Republic in September 2014. (Conservatives argued that Ginsburg was pre-judging the Texas abortion law, which the court struck down two weeks ago.)
Ginsburg also said in February 2015 -- before the court legalized gay marriage nationwide and before oral arguments in the Obergefell v. Hodges case that led to that outcome -- that the country was ready for it.
"The change in people's attitudes on that issue has been enormous," she told Bloomberg. "In recent years, people have said, 'This is the way I am.' And others looked around, and we discovered it's our next-door neighbor -- we're very fond of them. Or it's our child's best friend, or even our child. I think that as more and more people came out and said that 'this is who I am,' the rest of us recognized that they are one of us."
(c) 2016, The Washington Post
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Worshippers mourn during a memorial service for Dallas police Sgt. Michael Smith on Wednesday. Smith was among the five officers killed by a sniper last week.
(AP Photo)
By the editors of Bloomberg View
The open-carry movement faced a very public test in Dallas last week. It failed.
While concealed carry can be championed ostensibly as a means of self-defense, open carry prioritizes performance over pragmatism. After all, openly carrying a firearm is an ideological statement more than a self-defense posture: It cedes the crucial element of surprise to an armed assailant. Open carry's true goal is to normalize extreme gun culture by making firearms familiar, visible and ubiquitous.
Last Thursday, more than a dozen participants in Dallas's Black Lives Matter protest came prominently armed. When shots from a sniper rang out, police officers had to discern instantly -- working in chaotic conditions, at night, under fire -- whether the armed protesters were murderous criminals or something else. Police stopped some of those carrying guns, and designated one a "person of interest." Trying to divine the intentions of the armed marchers diverted time and energy from the pursuit of the sniper.
This led Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings to observe that "in a shooting situation, open carry can be detrimental to the safety of individuals." That's true as far it goes, which is not nearly far enough: Open carry is detrimental to public safety, period.
In addition to exposing the danger of open carry, the mayhem in Dallas revealed once again the inanity of the National Rifle Association's "good guy with a gun" talking point. The simplistic assumption that the world can be divided between good guys and bad guys bears no relationship to reality. Before he went on a murderous rampage, there was nothing to identify the Dallas sniper as anything but a "good guy with a gun." Likewise, a man carrying a rifle down a street in Colorado Springs, Colorado, last fall was deemed a "good guy" right up until the moment he started killing.
In Dallas last week, open-carry activists did not serve as protectors. Instead, they heightened the risk faced by police officers and civilians and made a fraught, uncertain and dangerous situation all the more so.
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Sandra McDonough, president of the Portland Business Alliance, at a Portland Harbor cleanup session held in December at the Oregon Convention Center. Looking on is Portland Commissioner Nick Fish, who this week underscored the need for the city to marshal support for a cleanup plan to be configured this year by the Environmental Protection Agency.
(Stephanie Yao Long/Staff)
It's an open question whether the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will, after more than 15 years of study and negotiation, finally configure a cleanup plan this year for the Portland Harbor portion of the Willamette River.
http://media.oregonlive.com/opinion_impact/photo/agenda-2013jpg-da8a3522a991b9c6.jpg
Editorial Agenda 2016
Get Oregon centered
Better leadership in education
Make Portland a city that works
Build Oregon prosperity
Protect and expand personal freedom
Get pot right
_______________________________
How much that matters is debatable. But the calendar is clear: Only 83 business days remain in the year following Sept. 6, the close of a recently extended public comment period on a proposed cleanup plan released last month. If upon reviewing the public's comments EPA decides substantial revisions in its proposed Superfund cleanup are warranted, it will be impossible to make the self-imposed deadline.
It could matter a great deal to Portland.
The nation will in November elect a new president. He or she will take the reins in early 2017 and possibly change his or her administration, which includes an EPA administrator expected to sign off on Portland's cleanup plan. That's to say nothing of EPA's Northwest region, directly responsible for devising and executing the cleanup plan and whose Seattle-based administrator also could change -- this following churn in recent years in the ranks of project managers.
The city of Portland, meanwhile, has been waiting for the cleanup of a river whose sediments are so sullied from past industrial use that consumption of resident fish is considered a cancer risk. Missing the mark this year would mean irresponsibly kicking the can down the road for an indeterminate amount of time on the correction of a waterway that's vital to Portland's environmental and recreational integrity as well as to Oregon's economy.
Therein lies the rub. A deep divide already evident in public sentiment must in the coming months be closed substantially in EPA's vision of the cleanup.
Portland environment leaders -- Bob Sallinger of the Audubon Society of Portland and Travis Williams of Willamette Riverkeeper among them -- insist that EPA's $746 million proposed plan does far too little to dredge long-life toxics such as PCBs from the river bottom and properly dispose of them. Portland business leaders -- Curtis Robinhold of the Port of Portland and members of the industrial Lower Willamette Group among them -- argue that the proposed cleanup plan looks eerily close in scale to a previously rejected $1.4 billion proposed plan. They wonder how that is possible and challenge the economic assumptions upon which EPA estimates costs, expected to spike as cleanup work proceeds and adapts to in-water conditions that vary across the cleanup zone and by season. The opposing views, all made clear to the editorial board of The Oregonian/OregonLive, underscore the complexity of the project in a dynamic river whose pollution profile and sediment contours differ today from years ago, when a cleanup was declared to be so dire. Waiting years more won't fix it, though.
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Erik Lukens, Steve Moss
and Len Reed.
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Significantly, federal law requires of EPA that any Portland Superfund cleanup enjoy community support. That's as it should be. But more than 100 industries past and present, as well as public entities such as the Port of Portland and the city of Portland, are implicated in the historical pollution and will be on the hook to pay their share for the cleanup. Meanwhile environment and recreation advocates, joined by Northwest tribes that have historically depended upon the river, bring to the table concerns about river health and insist a heavy reliance upon the passage of time, and with it so much river water, cannot offset insufficient dredging.
EPA's decision to extend the public comment period was wise. The numbing complexity of the project challenges any civilian seeking to grasp it. But the extension lights a faster fuse on achieving a final cleanup decision this calendar year, necessary if Portlanders are to believe they will actually see their hallowed river restored.
The final in a series of EPA-sponsored hearings on the proposed Superfund cleanup will be held July 20, from 11:30 a.m. to 8 p.m., at the Ambridge Center in Northeast Portland. A worthy sentiment to be expressed would be that federal regulators, joined by city of Portland officials, show the leadership necessary to bridge the divide among constituents and get a cleanup launched. Portlanders, and the river, deserve nothing less.
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Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg takes part in a discussion at the U.S. Court of Appeals Second Circuit Judicial Conference on Thursday, May 26, 2016, in Saratoga Springs, N.Y.
(The Associated Press)
By Noah Feldman
Doesn't everyone have an outspoken Jewish grandmother? That was my thought on reading the indignant commentary on Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's unflattering assessment of Donald Trump in an interview with the New York Times.
To put the point more seriously, there's nothing wrong with a sitting Supreme Court justice expressing her personal political views when they don't implicate any case that's currently before the court.
Justices aren't priests -- and the myth that they are is bad for democracy and constitutional law. If a justice chooses to open up, the skies won't fall. The 83-year-old Ginsburg's rigorous ethical reputation will remain intact. And the legitimacy of the court will not be harmed.
Don't let the black robes fool you. Nothing in the Constitution - which, by the way, also says nothing about robes -- demands that the justices be nonpartisan, or even pretend to be.
John Marshall, the greatest chief justice, served as John Adams's secretary of state at the same time that he was chief justice. The Constitution says you can't be in Congress and also work for the executive branch. But it doesn't demand a similar separation for justices.
Sure, Marshall's dual role, which ended after Thomas Jefferson defeated Adams and became president in 1801, would be unthinkable today. But it's good proof that the Founders' generation, at least, wasn't obsessed with the idea that justices have to be outside the reach of politics.
Indeed, Marshall, a loyalist of the Federalist Party, was understood to retain his beliefs while serving as chief justice subsequently.
Two of his most revered opinions, Marbury v. Madison and McCulloch v. Maryland, are historically incomprehensible except through the lens of partisan politics. In the first, he went to great lengths to embarrass the Jefferson administration by insisting that Marbury had a right to a justice-of-the-peace commission granted by Adams, before tacking back and holding that the law that would have allowed the court to force the delivery of the commission was unconstitutional.
In the second, he upheld the constitutionality of the Bank of the United States, originally such a fundamental partisan issue that it helped drive the creation of his Federalist and Jefferson's Democratic-Republican parties.
Turning to the present, a judge shouldn't announce her views about the case pending before her court. But there's no Trump-related case before the justices now. And any case arising during a Trump presidency would be likely to involve the executive branch, not Trump personally.
I suppose I can imagine (although God forbid it) a case of Bush v. Gore II, the sequel, in which Ginsburg might be called upon to decide the fate of the presidency between Trump and Hillary Clinton. In that unlikely event, Trump could argue that Ginsburg's comments mean she should recuse herself. That would be a plausible argument. But under the Supreme Court's rules, it would remain up to Ginsburg to decide. She can cross that bridge if she comes to it. It would seem that she's not that worried about it.
The arguments against Ginsburg's candor almost all come down to the idea that she should have respected propriety and upheld the myth of judicial neutrality. But who, exactly, believes in that myth in the year 2016? It's been 16 years since Bush v. Gore killed off any vestiges that might have existed.
Since then, the justices' individual and collective reputations haven't declined. The court remains legitimate in the eyes of the public.
That's because the public understands that hard cases in constitutional law inevitably involve judgments of political morality. This term, the court ruled on affirmative action and abortion rights, two issues where, to put it bluntly, the Constitution alone doesn't provide a definitive answer. The public understands that Justice Anthony Kennedy's views and beliefs determined the outcome in both cases.
So there's no harm to the court - or to Ginsburg - in acknowledging that she's worried by Trump and what he stands for.
It's true that if the tables were turned, Democrats would be upset about pro-Republican remarks by conservative justices. But they would be wrong.
If Ginsburg's comments help put to rest the myth that the justices are uninterested in politics and unaffected by it, that's good. A strong democracy rests on a correct understanding of its institutions - not myths that no one has ever really believed, anyway.
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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Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani in a file photo from 2014.
(AP Photo)
By Jonathan Capehart
During an appearance on CBS's "Face the Nation," former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani said, "When you say black lives matter, that's inherently racist." Asked whether he agreed with Giuliani, presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump said: " A lot of people agree with that. A lot of people feel that it is inherently racist. And it's a very divisive term. Because all lives matter. It's a very, very divisive term."
Folks, I've run out of things to say. The ignorance flowing out of the mouths of politicians has me reaching for words I've already written. So, let me restate some of them. The best way to understand the meaning of the phrase "Black Lives Matter" is to think of it as an incomplete sentence. To those African Americans and other Americans marching to protest lives extinguished by law enforcement, the unspoken finish to the phrase "Black Lives Matter" is "as much as anyone else's."
To hear that, to have that message sink in, requires a level of empathy that Trump and Giuliani appear incapable of having. To hear that means you have watched and understand that routine traffic stops, playing in the park or shopping at Walmart could be fatal activities for African Americans.
Mayor Bill de Blasio, the current mayor of New York whose wife and children are black, gets it. "The very phrase 'Black Lives Matter' is a necessary part of the national discussion," the New York Times reported he said on Monday. "It has helped us to recognize that sadly our history over and over again did not value African-Americans."
Pointing out this discrepancy in life experiences is not "inherently racist." Those who insist otherwise are trapped in a world of make-believe. A world where there are no differences. Or worse, such differences are neither recognized nor acknowledged. That kind of myopia makes the necessary discussion of race impossible.
I've long known that Giuliani lived in a racial world of make-believe. During his mayoralty, Giuliani's relationship with the Big Apple's black community was volatile thanks to his aggressive policing strategies and harsh dismissiveness and vilification of those who dared to complain.
"That's their problem," Giuliani told me in a City Hall interview in March 1999 when I asked him for his reaction to the notion that most people of color in New York thought he was racist. "I'm fair with people. I do not see that racial, ethnic or religious differences should mean anything in terms of the way I do my job. I think I've been one of the more neutral mayors the city has had in terms of all the distinctions. .... What they want is for you to pander like they do. I'm not going to do it. I think it is destructive for the city."
At the memorial service for the five Dallas police officers who were ambushed last Thursday night during an otherwise peaceful Black Lives Matter protest, President Obama urged the audience and the nation to have a heightened state of empathy. He urged understanding of the enormous strain we put on police as we demand they handle societal ills we have neither courage nor will to address. And Obama talked as only the nation's first black president could about the strain African Americans feel under the weight of racial indifference.
"And so when African Americans from all walks of life, from different communities across the country, voice a growing despair over what they perceive to be unequal treatment; when study after study shows that whites and people of color experience the criminal justice system differently, so that if you're black you're more likely to be pulled over or searched or arrested, more likely to get longer sentences, more likely to get the death penalty for the same crime; when mothers and fathers raise their kids right and have 'the talk' about how to respond if stopped by a police officer -- 'yes, sir,' 'no, sir' -- but still fear that something terrible may happen when their child walks out the door, still fear that kids being stupid and not quite doing things right might end in tragedy -- when all this takes place more than 50 years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act, we cannot simply turn away and dismiss those in peaceful protest as troublemakers or paranoid." (Applause.) "We can't simply dismiss it as a symptom of political correctness or reverse racism. To have your experience denied like that, dismissed by those in authority, dismissed perhaps even by your white friends and coworkers and fellow church members again and again and again -- it hurts. Surely we can see that, all of us ... .
"But even those who dislike the phrase "Black Lives Matter," surely we should be able to hear the pain of Alton Sterling's family. We should - when we hear a friend describe him by saying that 'Whatever he cooked, he cooked enough for everybody,' that should sound familiar to us, that maybe he wasn't so different than us, so that we can, yes, insist that his life matters. Just as we should hear the students and coworkers describe their affection for Philando Castile as a gentle soul - 'Mr. Rogers with dreadlocks,' they called him - and know that his life mattered to a whole lot of people of all races, of all ages, and that we have to do what we can, without putting officers' lives at risk, but do better to prevent another life like his from being lost."
And then the president added this:
"Because with an open heart, we can learn to stand in each other's shoes and look at the world through each other's eyes, so that maybe the police officer sees his own son in that teenager with a hoodie who's kind of goofing off but not dangerous -- and the teenager -- maybe the teenager will see in the police officer the same words and values and authority of his parents. "
Both of those statements are true. Only an open mind and open heart will allow you to see it. Giuliani and Trump have yet to demonstrate that they have either.
(c) 2016, The Washington Post
Jonathan Capehart is a member of the Post's editorial board and writes about politics and social issues for the PostPartisan blog.
By Alan Hirschmugl
I will start by stating that I know many people if not the vast majority will criticize me, with versions of, "That's what you get for not being more safe!" I understand that and, honestly, I had always thought the same thing when I saw the fireworks-injury stories in the newspaper or on the TV news each July 5.
I can gladly accept that criticism and commentary because I am so incredibly grateful that the injuries that occurred to my son on July 4 are not worse. While there will be mental and physical scars, the blast did not take his vision, his mental capacity or his life. I can gladly accept outside criticism because I know how lucky my family is to still be able to hold and hug him.
We celebrated this year's Fourth of July in Gold Beach, gathering on the north jetty to watch the city's professional fireworks display with a couple hundred other visitors and residents. Many, including me, had our "fun," illegal fireworks, maybe from the big, flashy commercial tent in Vancouver, Washington, where I've gone each year to buy them. Many other groups had the Oregon-approved variety. Some groups had no fireworks but just gathered to watch the spectacle.
The gathering is a tradition for my family and surely is for many of the others that were there. The police and fire departments show a presence but do not enforce the fireworks laws strictly. They step in if someone gets out of hand but try mainly to contain rather than stop the activity. Frankly, they're outnumbered. I'm sure the Gold Beach public safety teams do not handle this situation much differently than many other cities in Oregon.
During our personal display, one of the large multi-mortar boxes failed, with only a portion of the tubes firing. I told all in our group to leave that one alone and to douse it with water and discard it. We have known that a dud firework can be even more dangerous that an unlit one.
We continued to light the other fireworks with no mishaps. At 10 p.m., the professional show took place and was fantastic, as always. The evening turned out wonderfully.
At 12:30 a.m., my wife and I were woken up by our 19-year-old nephew telling us that he and our 18-year-old son had gone down to the beach to light more fireworks and that our son had been hurt. They had pulled the earlier dud out of the trash and tried to light the remaining tubes. That dud exploded immediately as our son was bent over to light it, 12 inches from his face.
The results of his injuries were a Life Flight trip from Gold Beach to Portland, first- and second-degree burns on his face, multiple lacerations requiring stitches, multiple facial-bone fractures and all of the associated swelling and discomfort.
The follow-up will consist of six days at Oregon Health & Science University, corrective and reconstructive surgery and many weeks of healing.
My point in relating this experience is to show that I, like many others, had developed a false sense of security over years of using these fireworks. I felt I was doing everything right and safe. We had taught all of our kids to be safe. They weren't allowed to light the fireworks until they were adults. They were shown what I felt was the safe way to secure and direct the fireworks. But the accident still happened. It happened because amateurs cannot possibly know about, or control, all of the variables that are involved with lighting fireworks. And it happened because humans will make mistakes and bad decisions.
Hopefully, some readers will keep that in mind the next time a chance arises for them to buy, use or watch "amateur," high-powered, mortar-style fireworks displays. The years of good memories my family collected during our own displays have been wiped out by the pain we are all going through now.
I will never buy any type of fireworks again -- but others will, because they are allowed to, believing they can be safe and that the accident won't happen to them. But the truth is, if these fireworks are available, it will happen to someone.
*
Alan Hirschmugl lives in Gresham.
A federal court judge on Wednesday allowed for the pretrial release of Oregon standoff defendant Kenneth Medenbach but was reluctant to allow co-defendant David Fry out of jail before a Sept. 7 trial.
U.S. District Court Judge Robert E. Jones said he remained concerned about Fry's mental instability, threats of "suicide by cop'' hours before his surrender to FBI agents, and that he came to Oregon in violation of the conditions of his probation in Ohio.
Jones also shared in court statements from a psychological report on Fry, including that he's concerned about invasions from outer space and has spoken of a desire to be reincarnated as a woman.
Fry, the last occupier to surrender at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge on Feb. 11, stood beside his defense lawyer and objected to the judge's characterization of those statements. The 27-year-old has pleaded not guilty to charges of conspiring to impede federal officers from doing their work at the refuge through intimidation, threats or force and possession of a firearm in a federal facility.
He argued that he's never been diagnosed with a particular mental illness, that he has the right to believe in what he chooses to believe in, and that yes, he had said he'd rather be a woman "because it seems easier.'' The suicidal statements he made before his surrender at the refuge came because he was fearful of being raped in jail, he told the judge.
Fry urged the court to release him, citing his desire to see his aging pet, a 15-year-old dog who he said he might not have a chance to see again. His defense lawyer suggested Fry be released to his parents in Ohio and placed on electronic monitoring until trial, when he can be returned to custody as the trial proceeds.
"I give you my word I will be here to see this through,'' Fry told the judge.
But after Jones made his ruling, Fry continued to object.
"You've had your say, sir,'' Jones told him.
"You're a bigot and a liar. You're a racist,'' Fry yelled out, as a deputy U.S. marshal led him from the courtroom.
Fry's attorney, Per C. Olson, had asked the court to reconsider releasing Fry in light of several developments since his last detention hearing in April. Olson pointed out that the third count of the federal indictment, possession of a firearm in relation to a crime of violence, was dismissed by the court. Fry also no longer is on probation in Ohio for a misdemeanor offense, that the one-year term expired on June 19, Olson said.
Further, considering some of the plea agreements already made with several co-defendants in the case, the duration of Fry's detention already - five months - "may outpace any sentence he might receive in this matter in the event of a jury finding of guilt,'' Olson wrote in his motion. He also noted that three others who were with Fry at the refuge until the end of the occupation -- Sean and Sandra Anderson and Jeff Banta -- all were granted pretrial release.
But Assistant U.S. Attorney Ethan Knight countered that Fry is unlike any of the co-defendants in the case, namely because he's been so "unpredictable.''
Knight argued that Fry is unique because he's "more volatile, more unpredictable than the others.''
The fact that Fry's Ohio probationary term is completed should not work in Fry's favor but rather worry the court because there would be no "backstop'' to ensure his appearance in this case if he were to be released pending trial, Knight said. With about seven weeks to a Sept. 7 trial, Knight argued that Fry's release "carries too much risk.''
Jones said he was concerned that Fry was walking around the refuge with a gun, when he has had a prior commitment to a mental hospital. Fry had broken down a door and escaped from a mental hospital about four to five years ago. He was caught within hours and taken to a different facility for several days.
Fry's lawyer said the escape occurred because Fry didn't want to be forced to take any psychotropic medication and didn't agree with the initial diagnosis of schizophrenia.
"It's not correct to diagnose someone with one hour,'' Fry told the judge. "I didn't want to take the medication. I felt like it was necessary for me to leave there because I had no other choice.''
Olson said Fry has been doing well mentally and is emotionally stable now. He described his client as "very mild mannered'' when he's not facing stress.
"He's probably the least volatile client I've had in a long time,'' Olson added.
The judge wasn't convinced.
"There's no assurance you would not once again find a reason to do what you want to do,'' upon release, as opposed to what you're ordered to do, Jones told Fry.
Kenneth Medenbach, of Crescent, left the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge to tear down a section of fence bordering a rancher's property that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service installed, January 11, 2016, near Burns, Oregon. Medenbach was later arrested for driving a stolen government vehicle. Thomas Boyd/Staff
Medenbach, with his standby counsel, Matthew Schindler, appeared next before the judge.
In April, a federal jury in Eugene found Medenbach guilty of unlawfully occupying and camping on federal public land in Josephine County in May 2015. The judge in that case has allowed for Medenbach to be released from custody as of July 15, basically granting Medenbach credit for the six months he's already served in the Multnomah County jail toward his expected six-month sentence in that case.
In federal court in Portland, Medenbach has pleaded not guilty to conspiring to impede federal officers at the federal wildlife sanctuary in Harney County and theft of government property. He was arrested Jan. 15 in the parking lot of a Safeway in Burns in a truck bearing federal government license plates. He's accused of stealing a 2012 Ford pickup belonging to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service from the refuge. Medenbach has said in court that he just borrowed the truck to pick up groceries.
His lawyer argued that Medenbach is eager to defend himself in the refuge occupation case.
"Mr. Medenbach fundamentally believes in being here because it's so critically important to him,'' Schindler told the court. "It's what his life has been about beyond his employment.''
Assistant U.S. Attorney Craig Gabriel objected to Medenbach's release, telling the court he's been unable to comply with the simplest of court conditions already. He came to the refuge on Jan. 3 in violation of a pretrial release condition in the 2015 illegal camping case. He was ordered not to occupy federal land, but he went to Malheur refuge and then lied to his pretrial services officer when contacted, claiming he was at home, Gabriel said.
He also has continually challenged the court's authority and jurisdiction in the pending federal conspiracy case, demanding repeatedly to see U.S. District Judge Anna J. Brown's oath of office.
"I'd like to hear from him,'' Jones said.
The judge told Medenbach he's heard from all kinds of defendants who challenge the court's authority, and described it as "legal nonsense.''
"I have jurisdiction over you. The court has jurisdiction over you. Do you understand?'' Jones asked.
"Yes, I do,'' Medenbach replied.
Medenbach, 63, will be released to his Oregon home in Crescent, where he'll face a 7 p.m. curfew. He was ordered to not possess any weapons, and his travel will be limited.
In related action, Jones issued a written ruling, denying co-defendant Ryan Bundy's motion for a protective order to ensure his jail calls are not monitored or shared with law enforcement. The judge noted the already "extraordinary accommodations'' the court has made for Bundy to meet with his standby lawyer, and brother and his brother's lawyers, to prepare for trial.
-- Maxine Bernstein
mbernstein@oregonian.com
503-221-8212
@maxoregonian
lightbar
Joshua Bolster of Salem, 29, was suspected of trespassing and harassing an ex-girlfriend at an apartment complex and pulling a knife on a man during a confrontation, according to the Oregon State Police. He was later fatally shot by a Polk County sheriff's deputy.
(The Oregonian/OregonLive/file photo)
UPDATE: Sheriff's deputy justified in fatal shooting of Salem man: grand jury
State police on Tuesday identified a man fatally shot by a sheriff's deputy west of Salem earlier this month.
Joshua Bolster of Salem, 29, was suspected of trespassing and harassing an ex-girlfriend at an apartment complex and pulling a knife on a man during a confrontation, the Oregon State Police said in a news release.
Polk County Sheriff's Deputy Casey Gibson fired shots and injured Bolster during a separate confrontation, troopers said. Authorities tended to Bolster, who later died at Salem Hospital.
Bolster was shot July 5 on Oregon 22 near Doaks Ferry Road Northwest, where deputies stopped his car and started giving him commands in an attempt to arrest him, troopers said. Gibson fired shots during the confrontation, and a state police trooper who arrived after the shots were fired "deployed less lethal force options," troopers said.
Troopers said Bolster still wasn't obeying commands after Gibson shot him.
A state police spokesman previously told The Oregonian/OregonLive he didn't know how many shots were fired, how many times Bolster was shot or if Bolster was threatening deputies.
There weren't any reported injuries to law enforcement officers, the spokesman said.
Monmouth police initially responded to the trespassing and harassment call, troopers said. Officers learned when they arrived at the apartment complex that Bolster had allegedly been involved in a confrontation with another man who lives there.
They learned, as well, that Bolster allegedly pulled out a knife during that confrontation, troopers said. Bolster left the area, and police sent information about him and his car to other local agencies.
Monmouth police told the agencies they thought Bolster was armed with a knife and that they had probable cause to arrest him pending trespassing and menacing charges, troopers said.
Gibson, 28, has about three years of law enforcement experience, troopers said. A grand jury will review the shooting, the Polk County District Attorney's Office said in a news release.
-- Jim Ryan
jryan@oregonian.com
503-221-8005; @Jimryan015
Eighty people were displaced early Wednesday morning after a fire at a Northeast Portland apartment complex, Portland Fire and Rescue officials said.
The fire was reported at a complex at Northeast 41st Avenue and Tillamook Street, American Red Cross spokeswoman Katherine Kim said in a news release. Portland firefighters and the Red Cross responded at 12:30 a.m.
The fire was caused by an electric equipment malfunction near the building's power meter, Fire and Rescue spokesman Lt. Rich Chatman said.
The fire was fairly small, but affected power throughout the building and disabled the complex's fire detection systems, Chatman said.
Residents should be able to return to the apartments after power is restored, he said.
No one was injured in the fire, officials said.
-- Samantha Matsumoto
smatsumoto@oregonian.com
503-294-4001
A Multnomah County judge on Wednesday dismissed a lawsuit filed by business and neighborhood groups seeking to end Mayor Charlie Hales' policy that allows tent camping and sidewalk sleeping.
The lawsuit asked the court to stop the widespread camping that's been tolerated in Portland since Hales in February authorized a new "safe sleep policy" as a six-month experiment in the city's effort to cope with homelessness.
Judge Marilyn Litzenberger's dismissal without prejudice allows the plaintiffs to refile their case in the coming weeks. She said their amended complaint needs to make clear how Hales' policy affects them.
The list of plaintiffs includes the Portland Business Alliance, the Building Owners and Managers Association of Oregon, Central Eastside Industrial Council, the Overlook Neighborhood Association, the Pearl District Neighborhood Association and Cartlandia, a food-cart pod located along the Springwater Corridor.
Attorney Paul Conable, who represents the plaintiffs, told the judge he'd not included those details because he wanted to keep the focus on Hales' policy instead of the most vulnerable people in Portland. But his clients could offer plenty of examples to show how the policy is hurting them, he said.
The plaintiffs' complaint calls Hales' plan "impractical" and "irrational," with no chance of solving the city's homelessness crisis.
"Telling people to sleep on the streets is not humane," the complaint says. "In fact, it is the opposite of humane; as recent events have shown, the Mayor's Camping Policy has resulted in violence, unhealthy conditions, and pain and suffering for our most vulnerable residents."
Conable argued that Hales' policy is unlawful because it violates existing rules prohibiting tents and because Hales implemented the policy unilaterally without approval from City Council.
Chief Deputy City Attorney Harry Auerbach argued that Litzenberger should toss the case because the plaintiffs had raised a political question that the court had no authority to answer. The city, he said, may use discretion in enforcing laws that are on the books.
Auerbach further argued that the plaintiffs had not demonstrated how the mayor's plan had directly affected them.
"How has this policy exacerbated the problems of homelessness? That is not alleged in the complaint," he said.
Brad Schmidt of The Oregonian staff contributed to this report.
-- Emily E. Smith
esmith@oregonian.com
503-294-4032; @emilyesmith
Fraud_Alert.jpg
Phone scammers are posing as law enforcement and demanding money for outstanding fines and arrest warrants, Portland Police warned the public on July 12, 2016.
(Portland Police)
Portland-area residents who receive phone calls from police demanding money should know this: It's a scam.
Police have received reports of a variety of scams, Portland Police Bureau spokesman Sgt. Pete Simpson said in a Tuesday news release.
Callers claim to be members of a police or sheriff's department and demand money to pay off outstanding fines, missed jury duty or an arrest warrant, Simpson said. Some callers have used the names and numbers of real officers and agencies, he said.
The scammers typically instruct targets to purchase reloadable cards and call back with the numbers. Recently, scammers have been asking for payment in iTunes gift cards.
Real law enforcement agencies will never call and ask payment for outstanding fines, taxes or warrants, Simpson said.
Anyone who believes they've been scammed should call the Portland police department's non-emergency line at 503-823-3333.
Victims may also be able to refund cards at MoneyPack/Green Dot and Vanilla Reload if they have not been cashed.
Police say there are ways to protect yourself from scams:
Never give personal or financial information to an unsolicited caller.
Be suspicious of callers who demand immediate payment.
Regularly update privacy settings for social media sites. Scammers often make their stories more believable by trolling for personal information on Facebook, Twitter and similar sites.
Remember that anyone who has the number on a prepaid card has access to the funds on your card.
Never wire money or provide card numbers to a stranger.
Ask the caller for information about the warrant or unpaid traffic ticket. The caller should have the court case number, date of ticket and vehicle license number.
Verify the debt or confirm other details by calling the OJD collections hotline at 1-888-564-2828.
Use
-- Samantha Matsumoto
503-294-4001
Like many of you, I watched cell phone video of three different shooting deaths last week.
And like many of you, I spent too much time on Facebook arguing about what it all meant.
First the fatal shootings of Alton Sterling in Louisiana and Philando Castile in Minnesota, then the murder of five police officers in Dallas. What are we to make of all this?
Online, I saw nothing but fear, anger and distrust: of the cops, of protesters, of the media, of our justice system, of statistics.
Social media can be a terrible place after a tragedy.
I decided to get out of the house. I needed to find unity around a middle ground, and that's far easier in person than over a computer screen.
Sunday evening, Rev. W. J. Mark Knutson of Augustana Lutheran Church in Northeast Portland hosted an interfaith service that was advertised as a time to pray for peace and "look at where we are as a country."
I'm not a religious person, but I find comfort among people of faith, so I went.
The service started with joyful music from a live jazz band. I heard "Get Happy," made famous by Judy Garland, and "It's a Good Day" by Peggy Lee. Then Native American spiritualists entered, banging drums and singing a wordless version of "Amazing Grace" as a procession of other faith leaders -- Lutheran, Episcopalian, Baptist, Jewish, Quaker, you name it -- walked up to stand behind the pulpit in a show of solidarity.
Rev. Knutson, after a few introductions, went for the meat of it.
"We've decided tonight we can't wait any longer for others to take care of this," he said. "So together ... we're going to begin an intense campaign to ban assault weapons and (high capacity) magazines in the state of Oregon."
The congregation erupted. The little old lady sitting next to me, who up to that point had said nothing, shot up a fist and yelled out "Hallelujah."
I hadn't expected anything political, but I had found unity.
From there, a parade of pastors and community leaders spoke. Alcena Boozer, rector emerita of St. Philip the Deacon Episcopal Church, said "It's not enough to say 'I'm sad,' not enough to even say 'I'm sorry.'" She said God will hear our prayers "if we will realize we must work to help answer our prayers for peace and justice on the earth."
Marilyn Sewell, minister emerita of First Unitarian Church, called on people to address the "systemic evils" of violence.
"The poverty leading to hopelessness, a broken criminal justice system, an economic structure that rewards a few and grinds others into dust," she said. "There is no end to violence without justice."
Michael Cahana, senior rabbi with Congregation Beth Israel, encouraged the crowd to step from their familiar camps and seek out understanding.
"Tell me your story, tell me your pain," he said. "Tell me what it is to be a grandmother and have to tell grandchildren how to stay alive when they encounter police. It's not my reality, but it is my reality because you're my friend and we share this world."
This was everything I needed to hear.
The following day, I reached out to Penny Okamoto with Ceasefire Oregon, who also spoke at the service. She said it was too early to talk legislative specifics. An Oregon assault weapons ban - something in place in seven other states - is just in concept form. The U.S. Supreme Court recently refused to hear a challenge to Connecticut's ban, so that might be a state to model, she said.
Is this an issue around which Oregonians can unite? I also reached out to Tom O'Connor, board member with Gun Owners for Responsible Ownership. The Oregon-based organization was formed after the 2012 Clackamas Town Center shooting and has focused on educating gun owners about safe storage and advocating for universal background checks.
"Our focus to date has been on measures preventing dangerous people from getting access to firearms, and we haven't looked at any specific legislation around high-capacity magazines or military-style weapons," Tom said. "That being said, there's good reason to have a discussion around this, and there's good reason for gun owners to participate in that discussion and see if we can avoid going to corners on this one."
Our law enforcement officers are being put into dangerous situations, he said. "It can't help to have firearms out there in the general public that are designed really for nothing else but to spray out as much ammunition as you can as fast as you can."
Penny, Tom and dozens of pastors believe we can find middle ground on gun reform. And yet, my faith wavers.
Sunday's service was supposed to end at 7:30 p.m., but it ran over by 45 minutes. During the final song - a rousing version of "When the Saints Go Marching In" - I looked back and saw the pews of the once full church were empty.
It had been a long night, I know.
But the journey toward change can be bumpier and longer than we imagine. If our faith community wants to see real political action, it can't leave the pews empty in overtime. It's going to take more than an extra 45 minutes. It's going to take days, weeks, maybe years. The drums must remain steady.
Because those who don't want change? They are constantly drumming. They will call their representatives every day, they will attend every city and county and state hearing on the subject.
And, frankly, they have the easier road. Doing nothing is easier than doing something.
But doing nothing keeps us in the endless cycle of violence. That's not good enough. We have to do better - to be better - than that.
Do we have the stamina for it?
UPDATE: I've had several people ask "what does assault weapon mean?" Here's a link to the more than 1,500 words that the State of Connecticut uses to define the term. Admittedly, it's tricky to create that definition. You can't just look at a gun and know if it's an assault weapon. I hope the link helps.
-- Samantha Swindler
@editorswindler / 503-294-4031
sswindler@oregonian.com
Markell D. Hilaire
A 27-year-old man accused of abusing a 1-year-old Sherwood boy under his care is scheduled to change his plea in a case that drew national attention to Oregon law, according to court records.
Markell D. Hilaire of Tacoma, Wash., pleaded not guilty last month to one count each of first-degree criminal mistreatment, third-degree assault and fourth-degree assault. He is scheduled to appear July 28 for the change of plea hearing in Washington County Circuit Court, records indicate.
Police arrested Hilaire after the case grabbed the national spotlight and caused public outcry because an arrest was not initially made.
The boy's parents said they came home from a date night in March to find their son, Jacob, screaming and their babysitter asleep on the couch. The next morning, they awoke to find the boy covered in bruises.
The parents went to police, but weeks went by, and no criminal charges were filed.
Details about the case emerged when the boy's father, Joshua Marbury, took to Facebook to express his outrage over an Oregon court ruling that he believed prevented an arrest and charges. The post soon went viral.
Marbury was referencing a 2012 Oregon Court of Appeals ruling that prosecutors say made it more difficult to file charges in abuse cases involving victims who can't speak.
Authorities have not said what led them to eventually make an arrest in the Sherwood case.
Emily E. Smith of The Oregonian/OregonLive contributed to this report.
-- Rebecca Woolington
503-294-4049; @rwoolington
Baton Rouge Police Chief Carl Dabadie
Baton Rouge Police Chief Carl Dabadie Jr.
(Kevin Litten, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)
Law enforcement officials in Baton Rouge say four suspects broke into a local pawn shop and stole guns with the intent to attack police officers, just days after the officer-involved shooting of Alton Sterling.
Police said the burglary occurred Saturday at the Cash America Pawn Store. One of the suspects was arrested on or near the scene of the burglary with a handgun, a second suspect was arrested after the burglary on Saturday, and a third, a 13-year-old boy, was arrested on Monday.
Police recovered six handguns from the three suspects, as well as a BB gun pistol. Another two handguns are still on the street, and police are concerned that they remain with the fourth person, who remains at large.
Police said they still have not identified the fourth person. Two of the people arrested were identified as Antonio Thomas, 17 and Malik Bridgewater, 20. The 13-year-old was not identified. Thomas was arrested on the scene of the burglary; Bridgewater was arrested on Sunday at his home at 2050 Hemlock St.
Bridgewater and Thomas were held on charges of simple burglary and theft of a firearm.
State Police Superintendent Mike Edmonson called the information developed since Saturday "an actual, credible threat." Baton Rouge Police Chief Carl Dabadie Jr. said that police responding to the protests were dressed in riot gear and armed with automatic weapons because police were concerned that some people in the crowd might be armed with the intent to harm police officers.
"The statement was to get bullets to harm police officers in the Baton Rouge area," Dabadie said. "We have been questioned repeatedly over the last several days about our show of force and why we have the tactics we have. Well, this is the reason. We had credible threats to the lives of law enforcement in this city."
Officials said police were able to get information about the plot from the first person arrested. That person said three other people were involved and that they were looking for guns and ammunition to target police officers, authorities said.
Officials said they considered the threat still active, noting one of the suspects remained at large and two of the stolen weapons have not been recovered.
Dabadie pleaded with the fourth person to come forward.
"We ask that suspect, you know who you are, please turn yourself in," Dabadie said. "Please come on in, You won't be harmed. ... that way we can recover the rest of the firearms that were taken in this case."
East Baton Rouge Sheriff Sid Gautreaux said that police decided not to disclose the information about the threats against law enforcement when concerns were raised about whether the tactics were heavy-handed. Gautreaux said police did not want to disrupt the investigation, and the arrests were only disclosed after information began to leak in local news reports.
"What you saw in the response is because of the very real, viable threats against law enforcement," Gautreaux said. "Look what happened in Dallas. A very peaceful protest. And then some crazy madman did what he did. We can't take anything for granted anymore."
State Police Superintendent Mike Edmonson said one other credible threat against police has been identified outside of the pawn shop burglary. He said police were investigating whether a police officer was being followed by a suspicious person.
Police said that there was no indication of when or where an attack against police might take place.
A fourth person was also in police custody, but was not involved in the plot against police. Police said Trashone Coats, 23, was found in possession of two of the eight handguns, and had purchased them illegally on the street. He was charged with illegal possession of a stolen firearm.
Micah Johnson, the man who killed five police officers in Dallas on July 7, purchased an AK-47 through Facebook and then picked up the gun in a Target parking lot, according to the New York Daily News.
Colton Crews, the man who sold Johnson the gun, said he had forgotten about the sale, which happened in 2014, until federal investigators came looking for him.
"I don't even know how I feel about it right now," Crews told the Daily News. "I have no idea. It's awful. It's just bad."
Crews says he sold the gun for $600 in November of 2014 because he wanted to pay for tickets to a destination wedding in Mexico. While he did a little bit of an online background check, in the state of Texas no official background check is required if the person selling the gun isn't a licensed gun dealer.
"First off, it was my belief he would have passed a background check," Crews told the Daily News. "He didn't seem weird in any way, just a normal guy."
The AK-47 was one of many weapons so far associated with Johnson. Officials found a "cache" of weapons and ammunition at his house. But Crews isn't sure if his old gun was used in the attack that killed the five officers. He told the Daily News that he asked a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agent if Johnson used his gun in the shooting and, "He said, 'All we can say is it was recovered. We're just finding out everything we can.'"
-- Lizzy Acker
503-221-8052
lacker@oregonian.com, @lizzzyacker
Donald Trump
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks at a rally in Westfield, Ind., Tuesday, July 12, 2016. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy)
(Michael Conroy)
"I will be so presidential, you will be so bored," Donald Trump said in April. "You'll say, 'Can't he have a little more energy?'"
That was the presumptive Republican presidential nominee's promise for the general-election campaign. He was acknowledging that he had said some startlingly nasty things to get attention during his rise to the top of the GOP primary field, and he wanted Americans to know that when the whole world started watching, he would make us proud.
There have been some signs that he's become more disciplined in the run-up to the Republican National Convention, which takes place next week in Cleveland. He's even read a few speeches from teleprompters rather than winging it on the stump. But acting presidential -- at least the old-school sense of what that means -- has eluded him. Nowhere is this more obvious than on his Twitter feed, his preferred mode of communication.
Just today, he hit back hard at U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg for calling him a "faker." Certainly, it's unusual -- though not unprecedented -- for a Supreme Court justice to weigh in on a presidential candidate. It can be argued that justices should stay above the political fray. But Trump's response, declaring that the 83-year-old's "mind is shot," is both vicious and childish.
Justice Ginsburg of the U.S. Supreme Court has embarrassed all by making very dumb political statements about me. Her mind is shot - resign! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 13, 2016
Then there's his Nixon-like hatred of the press. His silly response this week to a CNN program recalls his equally silly attack on National Review magazine back in January. Rather than address whatever criticisms have been lodged against him, he labels the journalist and the news organization failures and moves on.
I heard that the underachieving John King of @CNN on Inside Politics was one hour of lies. Happily, few people are watching - dead network! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 10, 2016
And perhaps the most Trumpian tweet of the past week is the one below in which he blames President Barack Obama and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton for the ideological divisions in the country, with no mention of the Republican Congress, Fox News or conservative talk radio.
Look what is happening to our country under the WEAK leadership of Obama and people like Crooked Hillary Clinton. We are a divided nation! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 10, 2016
Does it matter that Trump is not having much success being "so presidential"? Perhaps not. The government email scandal has further eroded the public's trust in Clinton, and -- in this reality-TV and internet age -- Americans' attitudes about what constitutes acceptable behavior from political leaders are rapidly changing. As Trump also notes on Twitter, new polls put him in a dead heat with Clinton in the key battleground states of Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania.
Nonetheless, Trump no doubt will feel this rehashing of his recent Twitter prose is unfair. He might want to retweet the message below.
The media is so dishonest. If I make a statement, they twist it and turn it to make it sound bad or foolish.They think the public is stupid! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 10, 2016
-- Douglas Perry
There's nothing particularly distinctive about the architecture of the seven-bed, eight-bath house near Tigard. Its blocky style appears to be a human-scale version of a child's Lego project.
It's the complicated history, blackberry vines and broken windows that make the 9,000-square-foot home at 15990 S.W. 133rd Ave. intriguing.
At a time when so-called "zombie houses" have become a political issue in Portland, this one shows that the complications of how to deal with unoccupied dwellings is not limited to the urban core. But unlike abandoned or derelict houses elsewhere, this one appears capable of living a dual life. In fact, the appeal of this structure to a potential buyer may hinge on it.
The structure and its 1.5 acres are for sale and can be yours for $595,000. Just be prepared to invest another half a million dollars to make the place livable. And be prepared to get 17 title holders to sign off on the sale.
When construction started in 2006, owner Bill Nuess envisioned a house for his family, including his mother, said John Owen, the Re/Max real estate representing the property.
Nuess, who worked as a builder and developer, anticipated his family would outgrow the property after about 10 years. So the layout foresaw an elderly adult residential-care facility, Owen said, which explains the structure's number of bedrooms and bathrooms and the unfinished elevator shaft.
Anticipating the structure's conversion to a care facility, Nuess formed a limited liability company called Point West Development LLC, which includes 17 investors, Owen said.
As the Great Recession hit, Nuess faced a complicated freeze of his building loan, Owen said, and construction stopped before the structure could be completed.
Point West Development LLC shareholders would not be compensated without a sale of the property, Owens said. The property has been for sale since at least 2010.
What remains of the structure is a mostly completed shell, although several windows have been broken and others are covered by sheets of oriented strand board. The interior is unfinished, with exposed framing and concrete.
"Every time we cover up windows somebody breaks another one," Owen said.
But there are signs of inhabitation by vagrants, such as food wrappers and other trash. Owen said it does not appear there has been long-term occupation of the property, but that he's called the Washington County Sheriff's Office because of squatters from time to time. Deer Creek Elementary School is located across from the property on Southwest Beef Bend Road. A spokesperson for the Tigard-Tualatin School District could not be reached to comment about safety concerns about the property.
Over the years, blackberry vines and other vegetation have swallowed the building. The interior has no electricity.
"It's a little spooky," Owen said. "I strongly encourage (other agents) not to go in there other than on a well-lit day."
Owen said no one connected with the property had the money for continued upkeep of the exterior.
However, a Tillamook-based person linked with Point West Development LLC paid $816 on Sept. 23, 2015, toward the property tax bill, which now stands at about $21,000, Washington County records show.
As a result of that payment, the property is not on Washington County's tax foreclosure list. (That list has 233 properties, most of them residential.)
Owen said he still hopes a buyer, recognizing the structure's potential for conversion to a residential-care facility, will emerge. He is less confident, however, that a sales proposal will secure the agreement of the Point West Development LLC investors, in part because he is not certain of the whereabouts of all of them.
As for Bill Nuess, he died May 4 of this year at age 63 in Sinton, Texas.
--Allan Brettman
503-294-5900
@allanbrettman
A new "Millennial-minded" concept store from Whole Foods, called 365, is set to open this week in Lake Oswego. The store, the second in the country to use the format, will open at 9 a.m. Thursday at 11 State Street, at the site of a former Albertsons.
The store is a smaller, stripped-down version of a typical Whole Foods, with changes designed specifically to reduce overhead or appeal to younger shoppers.
365 President Jeff Turnas said Whole Foods views its first three concept stores as test stores, to gauge how different communities react to it. (The first opened in the Los Angeles area in May, and the third is slated to open in Bellevue, Washington this fall. Ten more are scheduled to open next year.)
Whole Foods wants to reach a wider audience while keeping true to its values, Turnas said.
"We do recognize the competitive landscape has changed," he said. "We were pioneers of natural and organic, but now a lot of people have caught up."
To ensure Whole Foods remained competitive, Turnas said the retailer studied Trader Joe's and Fred Meyer as it developed its 365 stores.
"We want people walking out saying, 'Wow, I can't believe how much that cost.' In a good way," he said.
We got a sneak peek at the new store as workers prepared for the opening day. Here's what we learned about Whole Foods' concept:
It's no-frills
You won't find any fancy shelf displays here. With bare concrete floors, exposed ceiling beams, LED lights and products stacked on wooden pallets, the 365 stores are a little more Aldi (read: industrial) and a little less Whole Foods.
Turnas said the company spent about half as much on the 365 store as it would on a typical Whole Foods store.
"When you spend less capital you can offer lower prices," he said.
The layout is simple
This mindset also applies to the store's layout, which Turnas called "thoughtfully simple."
As shoppers walk in, they're greeted by the produce section, with meat and cheese cases in the back of the store. Grab-and-go items are located in the center of the store, with packaged foods and household items on the opposite side, along with a wall dedicated to wine and beer.
Twelve registers at the front of the store lead shoppers out to a seating area with free wifi. The store's two restaurant partners - Portland juice company Canteen and Bend vegan joint Next Level Burger - flank the seating area.
Canteen, a Portland-based juice bar
Turnas said the cookie-cutter layout enables the retailer to easily drop it in various sites.
It's smaller
While Whole Foods stores average 43,000 square feet, the Lake Oswego store is slightly smaller, at 36,000 square feet.
And instead of the usual selection of up to 40,000 types of products, the 365 store offers only 7,000, Turnas said. (This means that instead of 20 types of ketchup, you might just find two or three.)
About 40 percent of these 7,000 products are from Whole Foods' private label, 365 Everyday Value. The other 60 percent are from national, regional and local brands.
What's more, 365 stores employ fewer people: About 100, instead of Whole Foods' usual 200-250, Turnas said.
It's high-tech
Shoppers will be hard-pressed to find any paper price tags on the Lake Oswego store's shelves. That's because all the price tags are digital. The store also features digital signage, along with kiosks for ordering food like pizza and hot dogs to go.
In the produce section, digital scales allow shoppers to print off price tags for their fruit, vegetables and bulk items for a speedier checkout.
In the wine aisle, a kiosk enables shoppers to scan bottles of wine to read crowdsourced reviews.
And near the front of the store, a Teabot machine stands ready to create custom tea blends, suggesting popular mixes like "Moroccan mint" and "wild strawberry."
So is it cheaper?
While overall prices at 365 stores are almost guaranteed to be lower than those at Whole Foods stores, we'll have to wait and see how they compare to those at Trader Joe's, Fred Meyer and others. (Can't wait? Check out this price comparison from the Los Angeles Times.)
But here's what we do know about 365's prices and promotions:
Like Trader Joe's, 365 stores price produce by the item, instead of the pound.
365 will offer a loyalty card with three types of perks:
"Flash finds" scattered throughout the store promote special finds by 365's buyers. But when these products sell out, they're gone.
The wine section only has a handful of bottles over $20, and offers four varietals for $2.99 a bottle under its Three Wishes label. (Which is better - Charles Shaw or Three Wishes? Read reviews
As with any store opening, special deals will be available during the store's first few days to get shoppers in the door. Look for a comprehensive price comparison from us later this summer, after the 365 store has been open for several weeks.
-- Anna Marum
amarum@oregonian.com
503-294-5911
@annamarum
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After Sunny Kim graduated from H.H. Dow High School this year, cash flowed in from family and friends. The total reached $2,000.
And she gave it all away.
Kim, 18, gave her graduation money to the Disability Network of Mid-Michigan and the nonprofit U.S. chapter of Global Campaign for Education.
Midland has been so gracious to me, Kim said. I really didnt need the money.
Kim was born in Seoul, South Korea, where she attended school from kindergarten to fifth grade. She moved to Midland to start sixth grade, and said most of her family remains in Korea.
Kim says she realizes its unusual for an incoming college student to donate money received for high school graduation especially with ever increasing college costs. But for that, she was covered: scholarships from the Midland Area Community Foundation and Albion College will carry her through her time at Albion, where she plans to double major in communications and music performance with a minor in French.
So her grandfather, in town from South Korea for Kims graduation, suggested donating the money.
They (the Disability Network) embody what I really value and believe in, Kim said. When I grew up, I always had a soft spot for disabled people.
There is a stigma Kim said shes seen growing up in Southeast Asia, where mothers are sometimes advised to give up for adoption babies with disabilities. She said shes seen it in the U.S., too.
Its very sad to say, but there is a stigma that we have to look down on people with disabilities, she said. Youre not better than them, they are not better than you; were equal.
Inequality is something Kim said she endured while in high school. As an outspoken female, she said she was called bossy and discriminated against, that the obstacles were excruciatingly painful and that she was left to wonder why people would not trust her.
Which led her to make the $1,000 donation to the U.S. chapter of Global Campaign for Educations School Girls Unite activist group, whose mission is to tackle prejudice against girls worldwide and expand their freedom and opportunities through education and leadership.
Breaking through that negativity, Kim aspires to be a leader; she said she wants to manage and own a dance studio after graduating, and inspire kids to pursue music and arts. Currently, she teaches violin lessons, dance classes and ballet and jazz, and works at the Midland Mall. Volunteering was a really big part of her schooling, she said.
Steven Locke, associate director of the Disability Network, said Kim called about a month ago asking to use the organizations label at her graduation open house.
I was completely in awe and deeply touched that a young lady who just graduated from high school had such a well developed sense of community, Locke said.
Locke says the donation will help expand the Disability Networks STAGES Youth Program, which helps people with disabilities who have been referred by teachers, parents and area agencies.
Sunny making this gesture out of the blue certainly doesnt happen every day, and not even in the 10 years Ive been here, he said.
However, Kim said the donation isnt a move to present myself as generous, its to thank those in Midland who have helped her.
Residents who are unable to attend sessions and provide input for the Downtown Midland Streetscape Redevelopment study now have another option to vote for what they would like to see happen in the district.
Community Affairs Director Selina Tisdale talked about the concept design plan being worked on by Ann Arbor-based SmithGroupJJR at Mondays Midland City Council meeting. The concept design plan was commissioned by the Downtown Development Authority, which is also providing the $150,000 to fund the study. The city council approved an amendment to the DDAs budget Monday in order to appropriate those funds.
Tisdale said the new platform E-CityHall has already been used by residents and provided results on one topic so far.
This was a great first launch of E-CityHall, Tisdale said.
At least 123 responses were recorded on E-CityHalls first topic How Do You Interact with Downtown Midland? and 27 hard-copy surveys were also completed, Tisdale said.
The next topic has been posted in the online forum: Which streetscape design concepts do you want to see in Downtown Midland? and has received a few responses.
If they werent able to attend a scheduled meeting or werent able to drop in, they would go online and join us as well, Tisdale said.
This topic includes the options provided at the last streetscape public input session at Dow Diamond on June 23, when project designers revealed several options for key parts of the concept design plan including two-way streets, removing traffic signals on Main and reinventing the current tree pattern downtown.
To read what else happened at that session, go to http://bit.ly/28VYtcC.
SmithGroupJJR, along with MKSK and DLZ of Michigan, was contracted to create a concept design plan for the entire downtown district, along Main Street from Jerome to State and along Ashman Street from Larkin to Ann. The project designers started with focus group sessions with various stakeholders, and has since moved on to a public input session that involves drop-in workshops and open meetings.
There were 80 people at the second input session, Tisdale told the city council, and another 50 people stopped by to see the options the next day at the drop-in workshop.
Moving forward, project designers will use the feedback provided through E-CityHall and the public input sessions to create a draft concept design plan. It will be presented to the DDA at 3 p.m. on July 13 in the Council Chambers, 333 W. Ellsworth St. Following that will be a community input session for the draft plan, tentatively scheduled for July 27, with a goal to finalize the concept design plan in August.
Throughout August into December, Tisdale said the concept design will enter an engineering phase and the DDA will start at looking for sources of funding for the project. There have already been a few discussions started, she added.
What the streetscape design plan is going to look like will first be visible near the H Residence, where developers are waiting to finish construction in order to collaborate their designs with that of SmithGroupJJR. It could be open for viewing as soon as October.
Construction on the streetscape project itself could take anywhere from 12 to 18 months, Tisdale told the city council. Tom Adams, Ward 1, said he is pleased to see the level of public involvement and the different strategies used by project designers to communicate with the public.
Steve Arnosky, Ward 3, agreed and said he was skeptical at first of the high cost of the concept design plan but has attended some of the sessions.
It would be nice to have that number be a thousand, Arnosky said about the number of responses received through E-CityHall. These always seem to be emotional issues ... now is the time to provide your input.
Havent had a chance to voice your opinions? Visit E-CityHall at http://bit.ly/29eLuQm to see the options posted and provide your feedback for project designers. E-CityHall can also be accessed from the front page of the City of Midland website. It is free to sign up for a E-CityHall account, however registration is not required to participate.
4:39 p.m. update: Sheriff tells TV station that 2 bailiffs, gunman are dead at a western Michigan courthouse where shooting happened.
ST. JOSEPH, Mich. (AP) Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder says state police have secured the scene after shots were fired at a southwestern Michigan courthouse.
No other details were available on injuries, but Snyder tweeted that he was praying for those affected.
State police Lt. Mike Shaw says the department is gathering information but could not confirm whether there are any casualties.
St. Joseph is located in far southwestern Michigan's Berrien County, which borders Indiana.
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Perched close to eight lanes of hustling traffic near Ashman Circle at the center of Midland, Sleepy Hollow becomes a silent escape to those looking for the next adventure.
Walk in the used bookstore and youre greeted by a quiet cove of paper and words, inked in some 52,000 books. The whiff of aged wood, a result of the lignin chemical breaking down in the pulp of the pages, wafts unmistakable to the noses of seasoned and new readers alike. Books are stacked to the ceiling on a couple dozen shelves.
Its kind of like a sanctuary, owner Jo Henton said. Boy, I love books. Feeling them, smelling them, reading them.
Its a sanctuary that Henton, 63, plans to close by the end of August. The 3,400-square-foot building occupied by Sleepy Hallow is for sale, and Henton is liquidating the inventory. Those with in-store credit are advised to use it before Monday, July 18.
The plan is to sell trade books for 75 cents and hardcovers for about $2 apiece.
Whatever is left over after that will go to charity, Henton said.
Sleepy Hollow started 20 years ago in a house on Ashman Street, across from Kroger, according to its website. Henton has been the owner since 2008 with the help of part-timers.
Its become an expensive hobby, she said. The truth is, its not making money. I think the economy has definitely made its mark; (digital) has definitely made its mark.
Jo Henton and husband, Dan, a retired chemist, were married in 1982 in Midland. She moved from Colorado into gray, she said of Michigans climate. They have three children, but are empty nesters. Hentons background is in drafting, technical writing and publishing; she says she was the first person in Midland to have a desktop publishing business listed in the phone book. Her mother is full-blooded Mayan Indian.
On a recent word day, as the small wall clock behind the cash register ticked toward noon, customers trickled in and out. One bought a cookbook. Another opted for sci-fi. One approached the counter to ask why the store is closing.
Its time, Henton said simply.
Dont say that, the customer said.
Another customer inquires of the closing. She tries to think of another used bookstore in the area, but cannot.
Maybe someone else will start something, Henton said.
Someone younger, she later said, with a fire in their belly because the store has potential, but shes too tired to try it again.
Im not going to pawn it off on somebody, she said.
With a couple months to go before the planned closing, about a dozen bookshelves at Sleepy Hollow house titles ranging from High Pressure Boilers to Guide to Getting it On, and seemingly everything in between. There are a few H.H. Dow High School yearbooks (1979-1980 and 2002). On display at one shelfs end sits the more modern, Hatching Twitter.
Popular genres, Henton said, have been romance, mysteries and general fiction.
Paranormal romance just blew up with the Stephanie Meyer (Twilight) series, she said. And about that time, Christian fiction exploded.
Linda Van Wormer browsed the store on Thursday. She recalls Henton being her right-hand person while teaching at Midland Academy.
We had some good times together, Van Wormer said.
I got some of my favorite books from here, said Cyndy Posenel, alongside Van Wormer. Many good books and thoughts.
Henton, after hugging the two, warns, Youre going to make me cry.
Me, too, Van Wormer said.
Even after Sleepy Hollows final chapter, Henton plans to keep reading a lot.
I may never die, I have so many books to read, she said, jokingly.
The list could include textbooks: Henton says she plans to take classes as part of Saginaw Valley State Universitys graphic design transfer program.
The world does not exist in outlines, she said. Art has always been in my background.
She was quick to identify what will be missed most: the people.
There have been some stinkers, I tell ya. But these people are readers. They are thinkers, and we have great conversations, she said. I didnt see the same people every day. I dont care how rich or poor they are, they are the salt of the earth.
Sleepy Hollow is open 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday; 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday; and closed Sunday. See more information at www.sleepyhollowbookshop.com or at the Sleepy Hollow Bookshop Facebook page.
Residents are invited to witness the Moving Wall on its route through Midland Thursday morning, as the half-size replica of the Vietnam Memorial Wall heads toward its next destination at American Legion Post 443 in Sanford.
Motorcades from local American Legion posts from as far away as Battle Creek and Oscoda will be accompanying the memorial for the 45-minute trip. The procession will leave Valley Plaza and head down Bay City Road, turn right on Saginaw Road, travel through the Village of Sanford before turning right on Center Street and heading on M-30 towards the post at 2080 Meridian Road.
Were asking people, as many as can, to please line the streets and if you have a flag, wave it, said Commander Mark J. Authier, of the Thomas-Daniels-Hand Post 443 in Sanford. Just give the Wall the honor that it deserves.
The Moving Wall will be touring all summer, and this will be its first stop in mid-Michigan in a few years, Authier said. It was in Auburn about two years ago.
It has taken that long of a time to come back to Midland County and weve very honored that Sanford was picked to host, that our American Legion post was picked, Authier said.
It features 58,479 names of military service members who lost their lives during the conflict. An opening ceremony is planned at 6:30 p.m., and the Moving Wall will remain in Sanford until July 18.
Authier said the memorial is available for viewing around the clock, for those who may seek privacy when going to remember loved ones or military friends. Volunteers will be on hand throughout the days and nights, to offer medical aid or whatever visitors may need.
Its a very private moment, Authier said about veterans visiting the Moving Wall. If they do that, someone will be there for them.
He expects at least 3,000 people will visit the memorial and said it has been an amazing experience working with volunteers and community groups to ensure the Moving Wall makes it to Sanford.
DALLAS (AP) At a memorial for slain police officers, President Barack Obama declared Tuesday that a week of deeply troubling violence has appeared to expose "the deepest fault lines of our democracy." But he insisted the nation is not as divided as it seems and called on Americans to search for common ground in support of racial equity and justice.
Obama acknowledged Americans are unsettled by another mass shooting on their streets and are seeking answers to the violence that has sparked protests in cities and highlighted the nation's persistent racial divide.
Five Dallas officers were killed last Thursday while standing guard as hundreds of people protested the police killings of black men in Louisiana and Minnesota earlier in the week.
"It's hard not to think sometimes that the center might not hold, that things might get worse," Obama said. "We must reject such despair."
He joined politicians, police officers and families of the fallen in the wake of the shocking slaying by a black man who said he wanted revenge for the killings of blacks by police.
"The soul of our city was pierced," Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings said, as he welcomed Obama to a memorial service. The group had assembled because to combat "a common disease" of violence and honor those who fight it, "our men and women in blue, our peacemakers in blue."
Rawlings spoke steps from five empty chairs and five portraits of the dead officers.
A call for national and solidarity was reinforced by several speakers at the interfaith service, including former President George W. Bush, a Dallas resident, who attended with his wife, Laura.
"At times it feels like the forces pulling us apart are stronger than the forces binding us together," Bush said. "Too often we judge other groups by their worst examples, while judging ourselves by our best intentions. And this has strained our bonds of understanding and common purpose."
Bush called on Americans to reject the unity of grief and fear.
"We want the unity of hope, affection and higher purpose," he said.
Obama has denounced the shooting as a "vicious, calculated and despicable attack on law enforcement" by a "demented" individual. And he has argued that, despite the heated public outcry of the past week, the country is not as divided as it may seem.
Obama's choice of traveling companions underscored the theme. Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi of California joined Obama him on Air Force One for the flight to Dallas. Republican Sen. John Cornyn, attended and spoke at the service but did not travel with the president.
He described the attack as deeply personal.
"Being a Texan doesn't describe where you're from it, describe who your family is," the senator said.
The White House said president worked late into the night writing his speech and consulting scripture for inspiration.
Just a few weeks ago, Obama spent hours in Orlando, Florida, consoling the loved ones of 49 people who were killed in a shooting rampage at a nightclub.
The Dallas attack ended with the gunman, Micah Johnson, 25, blown up by a bomb delivered by a police robot. The black Army veteran portrayed his attack on the officers as payback for the fatal police shootings of black men in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and suburban Minneapolis.
Portions of both shootings were videotaped and broadcast nationwide, leading to fresh outrage, protests and scores of arrests. The killings also put the country on edge, heightened racial tensions and pushed the issue of the use of deadly force against black males by white police to the forefront.
Obama sought to begin bridging those issues with his tribute to the fallen five, who included a former Army Ranger, a Navy veteran and a newlywed starting a second family.
Some police officials blame the president for the rise in racial tension, saying he is insufficiently supportive of law enforcement. In comments since the Dallas shooting, Obama has urged the public to recognize and respect that police officers have a tough job.
Meanwhile, he has been criticized by others for going to Dallas before visiting Louisiana or Minnesota.
As Obama landed in Dallas, spokesman Josh Earnest said the president had telephone the families of Alton Sterling, the man shot by police in Baton Rouge, and Philando Castile, the Minnesota motorist shot by an officer, to offer his and the first lady's condolences.
The president, joined by his wife, Michelle, and Vice President Joe Biden and his wife, Jill, were also meeting privately in Dallas with families of the slain officers. At least nine other officers and two civilians were injured in the attack.